Deep Work

I recently finished reading the book Deep Work by Carl Newport. The book is a practical guide on how to be focused in a distracted world. Newport has coined the term Deep work that he defines as: 

Professional activity 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.

He spends the first part of the book explaining why deep work is important. He argues that in our current economy, there are three groups of people that will do well: 

• Those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines
• Those who are best at what they do
• Those who have access to capital

The core abilities for someone to thrive in the new economy is to quickly master things and produce at elite level, in terms of quality and speed. 

Newport uses the following formula for producing high quality work:

high quality work produced = (time spent) X (intensity of focus)

and as such, argues that we can maximise quality of work by maximising intensity of focus. This is where deep work comes in. 

The author claims that most of us follow the principle of least resistance-  "in business setting without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviours to the bottom line, we will tend towards behaviour that are easiest in the moment."

In today's work place, we use busyness as proxy for productively. That is, in the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in our jobs, we turn to an industrial indicator of productively: doing lots of stuff in visible manner - keeping busy! 

In the second part of the book, Newport provides four rules to build deep work into daily life: 

1. Work deeply
2. Embrace bordom
3. Quit social media
4. Drain the shallow

Work Deeply

One of Newport's claims is that deep work isn't something we can just do. It's a skill and a muscle we need to build. It's not as easy to just have the motivation to want to work deeply on something. 

Our brain has a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as we use it. The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals. The more we minimise the amount of limited willpower we have to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration, the more successful we will become in building a deep work habit. 

Newport spends many pages talking about many famous people and how they have deep work built into their schedule. I am going to skip summarising all of that and instead highlight some of the tips that will be more applicable to my daily work. There are four different types of deep work: 

• Monastic philosophy - This philosophy attempts to maximise deep efforts by eliminating or radically minimising shallow obligations. In practice, you will focus nearly all your time on deep work 
• Bimodal philosophy - This philosophy asks you to divide your time dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else. In practice, you may devote fall and winter to deep work and summer and sprint to shallow work
• Rhythmic philosophy - This philosophy argues that the easiest way to consistently start deep work session is to transform them into a simple regular habit. In practice, you will have scheduled deep work every morning for example
• Journalistic philosophy - This philosophy fits deep work wherever you can into your schedule. In practice, you may schedule deep work if a meeting gets cancelled

For my type of work, I can see myself applying journalistic philosophy and perhaps try to incorporate rhythmic philosophy where possible. 

Regardless of which philosophy you pick, here are some tips to help you build deep work in your schedule: 

Build a ritual

In order to build a deep work ritual, there are a few questions you must address: 

• Location - identify a space to do deep work that is free of distractions. Be sure to indicate to others that you are not to be disrupted 
• Duration - provide a specific timeframe to keep the session a discrete challenge and not an open ended slog
• Structure - define a set of rules and processes to support your work. For instance, you may want to ban the use of internet, you may want to maintain a metric such as number of words produced per min. Anything that will help you keep your concentration honed. Without a good structure in place you will have to mentally litigate again and again, draining the willpower reserves
• Requirements - identify what you require to support your work. This may be a good cup of coffee, music, food, access to specific software, etc.

 

Execute like a business

Newport argues that division between how and what is crucial but often overlook. It's easier to identify a strategy to achieve a goal than it is to execute on the strategy. Newport draws from the 4 disciplines of execution: 

1. Focus on the wildly important

The more you do, the less you accomplish. Execution should be aimed at a small number of wildly important goals. Direct your effort at your most important goals during deep work. 

2. Act on lead measures

There are two types of metrics: lag measures and lead measures. 

Lag measures describes things we ultimately want to improve. For example, we may want to improve customer satisfaction score of our bakery.

Lead measures describes the new behaviour that will drive the success on the lag measures. For example, giving out free samples to customer may increase our customer satisfaction score. 

The idea here is that by the time you measure the lag metric, it's too late. You want to focus on thing you can do to improve while working towards the lag measure. Lead measures give you the ability to do something about it now. 

Lead measure for deep work would be time spent in a state of deep work dedicated toward your wildly important goal. 

3. Keep a compelling scoreboard

Keep a visual scoreboard of your lead measures and track how many hours you've spent in deep work.  Newport suggests keeping a pen and paper tally of how many hours you spent on deep work. 

4. Create a cadence of accountability 

Every week review the scoreboard. Celebrate the good weeks, figure out what led to the bad weeks and how to ensure good scores for the days ahead. 

Be lazy

Newport argues the importance of disconnecting from work when work is over. For one thing some decisions are best left to the unconscious mind to untangle before you revisit it again. Also, downtime helps recharge energy needed to work deeply and since we have limited attention and willpower reserve, the work we end up doing in the evening are usually not that important. 

The key to let go of work is to deal with incomplete tasks/goals/projects by either creating a plan to complete them or capturing them in a place where they can be revisited next. Once Newport reviews and plans for his incomplete task, he has a ritual of saying "shutdown complete." 

Embrace Bordem

As mentioned earlier, the ability to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained. That's why mustering enough motivation to switch from being distracted to being focus doesn't really work and why we need to put in place rituals to build this mental muscle. 

However, just like athletes need to take care of their bodies outside of training by eating healthy, we will struggle to achieve deepest level of concentration if we spend the rest of our time fleeting the slightest hint of boredom. Newport argues that once our brain becomes accustomed to on-demand distraction, it's hard to shake the addiction even when we want to concentrate. For instance, while it may seem innocent to look at our phone when we are waiting inline or waiting for a friend, we are in fact feeding the addiction of finding something to be distracted with. Instead, Newport suggests to create a block of time where you will use the internet. This way, you have control over how much time you spend on the internet. As a general rule, Newport suggests we make focus our default mode. 

Rather than switching back and forth between distraction and work, lowering your ability to perform the latter, keep off distracting websites and apps for a predetermined amount of time. Simply put, make “offline” your default.

Newport also advocates for the practice of productive meditation: 

The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally—walking, jogging, driving, showering—and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem.

He argues that rather than listening to podcast or audiobooks while folding laundry or doing dishes, spend two or three times per week in the state of productive meditation, focusing your thinking on a single problem. This may be difficult at first and you may have to bring your attention back to the problem, but with enough practice you will learn to focus.  

Quit social media

Newport spends quite a bit of time arguing why you should quit social media. I am not going to summarise those arguments. Instead I am going to highlight some key takeaways.  

Social media is not necessarily bad. Like any tool it has its advantages and disadvantages. However, in today's economy many of use use the any-benefit approach to network tool selection. That is we justify using a network tool if we can identify any possible benefit to use it for anything we may miss out on if we don't use it. 

Rather than using the any-benefit approach, Newport suggests we take the craftsman approach to tool selection. Identify core factors that determine success and happiness in our professional and personal life and then adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on those factors substantially outweighs its negative impact. 

Identify a goal that is specific enough to allow you to clearly picture doing it but also general enough that is not tied to onetime outcome. For instance, your goal may be to regularly read and understand cutting edge results in your field. Then consider professional tools available and see which one will best support this goal. Remember you want to use the craftsman approach and not any-benefit approach. 

Newport also highlights the importance of being thoughtful when it comes to leisure time. When it comes to relaxation don't default to whatever grabs your attention at the moment, but instead dedicate some time in advance thinking about how you want to spend your day within a day. For me, this idea is very similar to planning your food when dieting. If you don't plan in advance what you want to eat, you take the risk of snacking on food you otherwise wouldn't have. 

Drain the shallow work

Shallow work is defined as 

non-cognitively demanding, logical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate 

If you are unsure if something is shallow work or not, Newport suggests to ask yourself how long would it take (in months) to train a smart recent college graduate with no specialised training in my field to complete this task? This question will help guide you in figuring out which tasks require more thought and attention from you. 

Some strategies to limit your shallow work include: 

Schedule your day

In order to drain shallow work, Newport recommends scheduling every minute of the day. He is very clear that the schedule here isn't about constraints. Schedules will be disrupted and we will underestimate the amount of time required for tasks. Instead, the idea about planning your day is thoughtfulness. It's a simple habit that forces you to continually take a moment throughout your day and ask "what makes sense for me to do with the time that remains?"

Todoist has an article on time-boxing that draws from Newport among other books and provides a nice visualisation for time-boxing. 

Limit your workday

Embrace the "fixed-schedule" productivity. Rather than working long hours to accomplish your goals, constrain yourself to a typical eight-hour work day. This will force you to be ruthless when choosing where you spend your time and energy. 

Make yourself inaccessible

Newport offers three suggestions to help deal with emails: 

1. Make senders do more work when they email you - I found this tip doesn't really apply to me. But the general idea is to not list your email address publicly and make senders work for your email addresses. Ask senders to filter themselves by having different contract forms for different queries. 
2. Do more work when you send or respond to email - Reduce the back and forth of emails by adopting a "process-centric approach to email." Send more thorough and complete correspondence so you can close the loop on a conversation more quickly. I know I can be lazy when sending emails and at times asking one line question. Using this technique will take me longer to draft a message, but should hopefully reduce a lot of the ping-pongs. 
3. Don't respond - Not every email that lands in your inbox requires a response. Newport argues we should adopt the mindset that "it's the sender's responsibility to convince the receiver that a reply is worthwhile". While this may or may not work in your current work, here are some criteria that you can think of when deciding if you should respond to an email: 
• It's ambiguous or otherwise makes it hard for you to generate a response
• It's not a question or proposal that interests you
• Nothing good or bad would happen if you don't reply 

Talk Lean

I spend a lot of my time in meetings. Some days I am in meetings 5-6 hours a day. Sometimes I walk away from those meetings feeling positive... like I accomplished something. I had valuable impact and insight. Sometimes though, I walk away from those meetings feeling deflated. Unsure of why I was there to begin with... or why I talked too much... or why I didn't say enough... or why what I did say didn't have the impact I wanted.

In an effort to get better at meetings, I recently read a book called "Talk Lean: Shorter Meetings. Quicker Results. Better Relations" by Alan H. Palmer. Like most books, it had some valuable insights but only meaningful if I can put them into practice.

I've tried to summarise some of the main points of the book below:

Starting the meeting:
When setting an objective for your meeting, you need to be honest, transparent and direct while being polite. Take a look at the following example:

Well, first of all thanks very much for agreeing to see me. I'm delighted to be here. I was hoping today that we could at least get to know each other a bit and I've also brought along some materials describing some of our industry-leading products which I'd like to take you through. And then perhaps we could discuss some areas where we might be able to help you.

That sound pretty good right? I can hear myself saying something like that. In fact, as I was reading this passage I remembered my opening remarks in my team offsite sounding very similar to this. The author argues that this is not a good meeting objective. The speaker is not very clear and explicit about their intention. What does "getting to know each other better" mean? Conditional words such as "hoping", "perhaps" mask the real intention. At best, the speaker comes across as unremarkable and forgettable and at worst, they come across as untrustworthy.

He suggests being open and direct about what you are looking to get out of the meeting. Here's a variation to the above objective:

I'm conscious that John Smith's recommendation gives me an opportunity today - but it also gives me a responsibility, towards both him and you. And I fully intend to assume that responsibility.
To prepare the meting, I've put together a presentation on what I believe to be the principal reasons for Mr. Smith's satisfaction.
And I'd like our exchange today to produce one thing: for you to tell me at the end of the meeting that you'll be calling Mr. Smith to say this was a worthwhile use of your time because you're thinking seriously about placing some money with us right alongside this! How do you feel about that before we move on?

Here are some guidelines when setting meeting objective:

• Define a concrete goal for your meeting in a way that will maximise the chances of the meeting being productive both in terms of results obtained and the impact on the relationship.
• Announce the goal straightaway at the beginning of the meeting.
• A meeting objective has to be measurable and/or observable at the end of the meeting. It can't be something you measure next week or month.
• Do not confuse between means and ends, or between broader business objective and meeting objective. Use my objective is THAT rather than my objective is TO in order to avoid confusing the means and the ends or conflating what you want during the meeting with what you want from the other person at the end of the meeting.
• A meeting objective is always negotiable. There is always a chance that you do not get what you want so in setting your meeting objective you need to ensure that either you are willing to negotiate or the other party genuinely has a choice.

There are two types of meeting objectives:

• Objective of influence: You want the other person to do, say or think something - for instance, "I'd like our exchange today to produce one thing: for you to tell me at the end of the meeting that you'll be calling Mr. Smith to say this was a worthwhile use of your time because you're thinking seriously about placing some money with us right alongside this! "
• Objective of production: You want yourself and the other person to have produced something - for instance, "By the end of the hour we have in front of us, I'd like us to have listed together the different projects you have in mind and your financial priorities for the next five years so that I can come back to you within a couple of weeks with a made-to-measure proposal."

Sometimes to open the meeting, you may want to talk about what you've done to prepare for the meeting and your state of mind. This is the order for when you are preparing your meeting's opening:

1. My meeting objective - example: "My objective in coming to see you today is that at the end of the meeting, we've defined a new way of working together which I'm happier with and which also works for you."
2. What I did to prepare - example: "I've been thinking about how we work together and the fact that in some areas I'm uncomfortable with that. I've thought about how that's affecting me and I've brought along some suggestions which I want to submit to you."
3. My state of mind - "Jack, I've had to screw up my courage to have this meeting with you, but I'm actually relieved that I've finally done so."

When you are opening your meeting however, you want to reverse the order. Using the example given above the opening will sound like this:

Jack, I've had to screw up my courage to have this meeting with you, but I'm actually relieved that I've finally done so. I've been thinking about how we work together and the fact that in some areas I'm uncomfortable with that. I've thought about how that's affecting me and I've brought along some suggestions which I want to submit to you. My objective in coming to see you today is that at the end of the meeting, we've defined a new way of working together which I'm happier with and which also works for you.

During the meeting:

Three elements occur often in meetings which affect the level of understanding and productivity: things that are felt or though but remain unsaid; things that are said but negligently or artlessly; and ineffective listening.

Listening can seem deceptively easy. They are tips on how to get better at active listen: look at the person directly; smile and lean in; avoid being distracted; etc. However, the author argues that such tactics may seem as if you are listening, but does not really lead to active listening. In order to become a better listener, start writing down everything the person says exactly as they say. Then listen to yourself. What thoughts are being generated in your head as a result of what the person has said?

Take a look at the following example:

I've been looking at your documentation. It's very interesting, but at first glance I think this is a little bit over-engineered for our needs. And officially all our budgets are frozen until the end of the year.

If you hear that, chances are what you take away is that the solution is over-engineering and budgets are frozen. You may respond with "why do you think it's over- engineered?", "why are your budgets frozen?" rather than asking questions such as "based on your saying "at first glance I think this is a little bit over-engineered", I feel the need to spend 15 mins going through the documentation with you in detail. Or "how would I need to re-engineer the product so that it does fit your needs?"

There are 3 paths to take when responding:

Title	HIM/HER	ME	US (Him/Her + Me)
Principles	I dig, decipher, I get more information, I find out what's really happening in his/her head	I tell the other what's really happening in my head, what I think, want, need	I identify a solution with the other person, I launch an action, identify a next step
Applications	"What do you mean by...?", "What leads you to...", "Tell me more about..."	"Hearing you say...., I tell myself... ", "I want.... What do you think?", "I need... what do you think?"	"What do I need to do, so that you....?", "If I ..., what will you do...?", "What do we do?"

When responding, make sure you are coming from a place of equal. Formulating responses as permission, whilst polite, lack transparency, impact and clarify:

• "Would it be all right if I just went through my presentation?" -> "At this point in the meeting, I want to go through my presentation. How does that sound?"
• "Would it be OK to meetup next week?" -> "I want to meet up next week. How would that be for you?"
• "Would you mind making the payment this week?" -> "I need you to make the payment this week."

One of the ways meetings drag on is that participants don't take positions and other participants don't invite them to do so. So next time you are in a meeting, take a position or make a proposal.

End the meeting:

After a meeting, ask: “What do you think of what I just said?” Express your thoughts one at a time so others can digest them. Ask questions like, “What’s your impression...?” And, “how do you feel about that?” If you disagree with others, don’t raise all your points all at once. Raise each point of contention one at a time and give others to respond.


Close each meeting with another question: “What did you think of the meeting?” Use open-ended questions to gather feedback rather than close-ended questions that require a yes or no answer. If your working relationships seem strained, ask, “What do you think of me?” The answers can be informative. Others might be suffering personal problems and taking their anger out on you. Maybe they loved your predecessor, or maybe they don’t like how you handle things.