Deep Work

Being busy is not the same as being productive. To be your most productive, you actually need to be less busy and more focused on what really matters (i.e. remove distractions). That's the short version of Cal Newport's book, Deep Work. 

The longer version includes a more detailed explanation of why deep work ("Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.") is more difficult to engage in, but more valuable than shallow work ("Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate."). Which leads to the following equation for personal productivity:

High Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

To help people increase these two variables (time and intensity of focus), Newport offers 4 rules to follow:

1. Work Deeply. Newport offers a diversity of approaches to giving yourself time to work deeply, including a monastic (work deeply all the time), bimodal (give yourself several weeks or months each year in isolation to do deep work), rhythmic (give yourself a set amount of time each day), and journalistic (work deeply whenever you have some free time to do so - only for the most seasoned deep workers). There is no single system for working deeply. Two ways to make sure your system works is to ritualize it (don't do it ad hoc) and give yourself time limits (so you get as much done in that time as possible rather than think you have an unlimited amount of time to do it).
2. Embrace Boredom. The modern world seems to be premised on removing boredom from our lives with on-demand distractions always available, especially thanks to the internet and smart phones. However, if you always need external stimuli and distractions, your ability to engage in deep work is significantly diminished. Being bored means interacting with your thoughts and nothing else. The more that you develop your mind through tactics like memory improvement, the more you improve your ability to engage in deep work.
3. Quit Social Media. You don't have to quit everything, just re-evaluate what you engage in here. Just because a social media platform can add some value to your life doesn't mean it will add overall value. Take opportunity costs into account and only choose to engage in a social media platform for a particular purpose. Perhaps most importantly: don't use the internet for entertainment (I thought this was one of the best pieces of advice in the book).
4. Drain the Shallows. Most people go through their work days on autopilot. Stop this. Be conscious and intentional about what you're doing. Plan out every minute of your day so you know when to spend time on what really matters instead of continually pushing off what matters because you got another email that you answer, even though it won't actually create more value.

Besides this, there were a few other interesting insights in the book:

1. You can work deeply with others. The best organizations in the world facilitate this. The key is to have people working in total concentration together, without distraction. Unfortunately, often when we're supposed to be working with others, we're very distracted.
2. Newport says that CEOs may not need to engage in deep work as much as others because they are just decisionmaking machines rather than producers. However, I think he goes off the tracks here. CEOs need to engage in deep work at least as much as others for many reasons including, effective decisionmaking requires concentration, CEOs need to continuously learn to keep making the right decisions, leading by example requires showing people how to engage in deep work, and the best CEOs are engaged in meaningful projects and processes other than just making decisions.
3. Newport argues convincingly that there are two core abilities people need to succeed in the economy of today and tomorrow: the ability to quickly master hard things and the ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quantity and speed. The old economy was about putting in time, going through the motions, and making incremental improvements. Today, the best economic actors are those who can learn difficult things and get quality products out the door quickly.

While I don't think the book offered many significant insights into deep work, I think its overall message is one that deserves greater attention from anyone who wants to be successful and produce real value in the world.

To learn more, order the book and/or listen to Newport's podcast at the Art of Manliness: ​http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/01/12/podcast-168-the-value-of-deep-work-in-the-age-of-distraction/.