Deep Work: How to Produce More in Less Time (Book Summary)

Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Deep work as described by Cal Newport in his book “Deep Work” is a professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

One to two hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration, can produce a lot of valuable output. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill of going deep, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.

The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.

It’s because every day we are bombarded with emails from co-workers that expect us to answer them immediately. Bosses want us to work in open offices, with massive distraction all around us.

So Cal argues that this type of work doesn’t allow us to go deep. He calls this type of work, shallow work. It’s noncognitive demanding, often performed
while distracted, doesn’t create much new value in the world and is easy to replicate.