Book Review – Deep Work by Cal Newport

Are you one of those who constantly feels that they are distracted more than ever before?

Do you always look back at your younger selves with longing eyes and feel that although you had fewer gadgets, but had deeper and richer experiences.

If the answer to the above is yes, as it is for most of us today, you definitely must pick up a volume of this book and devour the same ASAP.

The author Dr. Calvin Newport (a.k.a Cal) is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of five self-improvement books. He also writes the Study Hacks blog – focused on academic and career success.

So what is deep work? The author defines it as 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.

The author keeps the book and its flow simple and engaging. The book is divided into two parts – the first part deals with the idea of deep work and its usefulness, while the second part lists out 4 rules to achieve deep work.

The author draws richly from the experience of achievers across fields, viz. –

Bill Gates’ Think Weeks (taken 2 times a year, where he retreats from regular work commitments to dedicate himself to reading and thinking big thoughts)
Mark Twain writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in shed on a quarry farm, where his study was so isolated from the house that his family blew horns to get his attention
The author Malcolm Gladwell and his insistence on not using Twitter and other social media actively to promote his writings like scores of other authors.
Cal brings out the importance of deep work by an analysis of the working styles of the above and many others.

The best part about the book is that he doesn’t stick to just analyzing the methods of these achievers and the extreme isolation and methods of some of them. Instead, in the second part of the book, he highlights methods in which people working in modern day jobs can bring in periods of deep work within their normal 9 to 5 jobs. And this applies not just to do deep work for pathbreaking work, but for more depth and efficiency in their office work.

The author dedicates a full chapter to the analysis of value of social media, as well as its de-merits. He quashes the oft-quoted benefit of social media ‘it helps me connect, what’s the harm in being on it’. I would suggest reading the book just for this chapter.

P. S. This was a promise to self, more like a self-defined goal – to target reading a book a week and write a review blog about the same.

I have met reasonable success in the former target (reading), although the latter target (writing) has left a lot to be desired. This being the second blog in a day is an attempt to give a push to the latter.