9:00 a.m. You open the proposal that's due Friday. At 9:04 you take a quick look at your inbox. At 9:12 a Slack notification pops up, and at 9:30 there's a call that was supposed to take fifteen minutes and takes fifty. By 6:00 p.m. you've answered seventy messages, sat through four meetings, and the proposal is still just a title. You're exhausted, and yet you haven't done anything that really matters. If that sounds familiar, the problem isn't how much you work. It's that you can no longer focus on the work that counts. Cal Newport has a name for what's missing: deep work.
Deep work and shallow work
Cal Newport teaches computer science at Georgetown University, and in his book Deep Work he separates two kinds of work. Deep work is done in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your abilities to their limit. It creates value, improves your skills, and is hard to replicate. Shallow work is made of logistical tasks that don't demand much mental effort and are often done while distracted: answering emails, updating a file, sitting in on a call where you don't need to say anything. It creates little value and is easy to replicate.
The trouble is that the second kind eats the first. Newport cites a 2012 McKinsey study: the average knowledge worker spends more than 60 percent of the workweek on electronic communication and internet searching, and close to 30 percent on reading and answering email alone. Tom Cochran, then chief technology officer at Atlantic Media, once counted his own: in a single week he received 511 emails and sent 284. Even at thirty seconds apiece, that's almost an hour and a half a day just moving information around.
Why you can't focus: attention residue
You might think a quick glance at your inbox is harmless. Sophie Leroy, a business professor at the University of Minnesota, showed otherwise.
In her experiments, people worked on a set of word puzzles. Partway through, some were told to stop and move on to a new, demanding task: reading résumés and deciding whom to hire. Others were allowed to finish the puzzles before switching. The result: the people who had been interrupted did worse on the next task. Part of their attention was still stuck on the previous one. Leroy called it attention residue.
Now think about your morning. Every time you check your inbox, you see messages you can't deal with right away. You go back to the proposal, but part of your mind is still on that client email or that message from your boss. Multiply that by dozens of times a day, and it's no wonder you feel like you've run a marathon by 6:00 p.m. without moving an inch.
The formula for high-quality work
Newport tells the story of Adam Grant, who in 2014 became the youngest full professor at the Wharton School. Grant publishes at a pace his colleagues consider almost absurd. According to Newport, he doesn't work many more hours than anyone else. He works differently.
He packs his teaching into a single semester and devotes the rest of the year to research. And when he's writing a paper, he'll isolate himself for up to three or four days at a time, with an out-of-office reply switched on. "It sometimes confuses my colleagues," he told Newport. "They say, 'You're not out of office, I see you in your office right now!'"
Behind it is a simple formula: high-quality work produced equals time spent multiplied by intensity of focus. If your intensity collapses every ten minutes, you can work twelve hours and get very little done. It's the same principle behind the ONE thing worth protecting on your calendar: first decide what matters, then give it time nobody else can touch.
Making room for deep work when you have a regular job
Not everyone can vanish for four days. For people with meetings and set hours, Newport suggests a "rhythmic" approach: a block of deep work at the same time every day, so you never have to decide whether or when to do it.
His example is Brian Chappell, a doctoral student who had to write his dissertation while working full time and having just become a father. At first he tried to fit ninety-minute blocks in wherever he could, and in a year he wrote just one chapter. Then he set himself a rule: up and working by 5:30, until 7:30, then breakfast and off to the office. At that pace he was producing four to five pages a day, a chapter every two or three weeks.
Another trick comes from Jerry Seinfeld. When a young comic asked him for advice, he said to write jokes every day and mark each day of work with a big red X on a wall calendar. After a few days you have a chain. From then on, your only job is not to break it.
Your first deep work session
Start tomorrow morning. All you need is an hour and a half.
- Choose the work. One important, demanding thing: the proposal, the report, the project you keep putting off.
- Book the block. Ninety minutes, always at the same time, on your calendar like a meeting.
- Shut everything else down. Email and chat closed, notifications off, phone in another room. If you need to, switch on an out-of-office reply like Grant's.
- Mark your X. When the block is done, cross off the day on the calendar. Tomorrow, don't break the chain.
By 6:00 p.m. you may have answered fewer messages. But the proposal won't be just a title anymore.
What's the important thing you'd really like to focus on?
Tell me what it is and we'll build a path to protect it from everyday distractions.