Notes on Deep Work by Cal Newport

My friend recommended Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport, and I just finished reading it. It gave me a lot to think about and ideas to consider for "minimizing the shallow" in my life and carving out more periods of time for work on the long-term, less urgent, deeper things that matter more.

I definitely have found myself falling into the trap of shallow work. The deep vs. shallow concept also reminded me of the maker vs. manager schedule by Paul Graham. When you're a founder, there are elements of the job that are deeper and elements that are shallower, and figuring out how to balance between them isn't easy. This book gives some good advice on setting up a balanced schedule with different types of approaches offered to move back and forth.

I definitely think this book is helpful for founders and others wondering how to free up more time for deeper work. Below are my main notes and takeaways.

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​Intro
Jung retreating away to do deep work
Professional activities performed in distraction free environment that push cognitive abilities to limits
Pushes you to get better
Fragmented attention vs deep work
Writing novels vs emails
Network tools pushing us to shallow work
Deep work hypothesis: ability to do deep work is becoming more rare and more valuable
Zero social media and web surfing
Being hard to reach
Minimizing the shallow in your life
Don’t touch computer after work to rest and read books

Part 1 the idea

1 deep work is valuable
Silver, Hansen, Doerr
High skilled workers
Being good at working with intelligent machines
Superstars
10X engineers
The owners
Capital
Two core abilities
Ability to master hard things
Ability to perform at elite level
Both depend on being able to do deep work
Deep work helps you learn hard things
Deliberate practice
Attention focused tightly
Feedback received
Deep work helps you perform at elite level
Batching hard work and batching meetings

2 deep work is rare
Principle of least resistance
People tend toward behaviors that are easiest at each moment
Recurring meetings to track projects
Busyness as a proxy for productivity
Reject technology and social media

3 deep work is meaningful
Flow
Craftsmanship

Part 2 the rules

rule 1 work deeply
Decide on your depth philosophy
Don’t schedule ad hoc
Monastic philosophy
Radically eliminate shallow concerns
Knuth, Stephenson
Bimodal philosophy
Jung
Only eliminate shallow work during certain time periods
Rhythmic philosophy 
Set times per day or week for deep work
Journalistic philosophy
Fit deep work in whenever you can
Difficult to achieve 
Ritualize
Rules and routine for everything
Organization
Ignore inspiration
Think like artist but work like accountant
Specify location and how long and when
How you work and limitations
How you will support the work with
Make grand gestures
Radical change to environment
Take trip or check in to hotel
Don’t work alone
Hub and spoke arrangement of offices 
Discipline
Focus on the wildly important
Let ambitious goals drive attention
Act on lead measures not lag measures 
Keep a score card
Track time spent in deep work weekly and results that week
Create cadence of accountability
Confront score board and review results
Weekly review
 Be lazy
Flee to undisclosed location where can remain unresponsive
Value of downtime 
Need to rest and relax to recharge to be more effective next day
Clear end to work day
Strict shut down ritual at end of day
Examine work from day and plan for next day then say shut down complete

Rule 2 embrace boredom
Take breaks from focus
Digital sabbath
Schedule in advance when you use the internet
Keep time outside this without internet use and stay offline
Don’t switch to distractions at moments of boredom
Trains concentration
Be intense when working
Commit publicly to tight deadline
Productive meditation: use walk or shower to think about a specific problem. Keep coming back when you get distracted. 
Be careful about looping
Structure your thinking. Define specific next steps. 
Studying Talmud in morning to train concentration 
Memory athlete training
Memory palace for card memorization 
Walk through 5 rooms of your home
Pick 10 big items per room
Establish order to look at those items
Add 2 more items in backyard
Associate memorable person or thing to each of the cards in a deck
Walk through house associating memorable images in proper order

Rule 3 quit social media
Craftsman approach to tool selection vs “any benefit” approach
Apply the law of vital few (Pareto principle, 80/20)
Identify personal goals and limit the list
List specific activities 
Vital few activities provide bulk of the benefit
Try 30 days without using all the services
Don’t use the internet to entertain yourself
Put more thought into your leisure time
Structured hobbies
Structured reading program

Rule 4 drain the shallows
Remove shallow work, office politics
Be stingy with your free time
Four day work week with same hours per day
Month to work on whatever you want at work then pitch day
Schedule every minute of your day
People estimate time usage badly
Plan out day in morning and assign each block of time to an activity
Create overflow block for extra time needed for long tasks or urgent issues that come up
Quantify the depth of every activity
How long would it take to train a bright college grad to do the work
Ask your boss for a shallow work budget
 Stick to this budget
Need to say no to some shallow things
Finish your work by 5:30
Fixed schedule productivity
Assume fixed schedule and then work backwards to decide what needed
Set drastic quotas on shallow work like travel
Refuse offers and don’t provide details why or offer consolation prize
Become hard to reach
Make people who send you email do more work. Put warning around your email address for when to email you. Ask sender to fill out form first 
Do more work when you reply
Process centered response to email
Figure out required next step in process to get to completion and send thorough response to get it done quickly with minimal back and forth 
Immediately close the loop
Don’t respond
Don’t reply if message vague or responding hard or nothing good will happen if you do or nothing bad will if you don’t 

Conclusion