(5 takeaways from the book — “DEEP FOCUS” by Cal Newport)

Are your weekdays (& sometimes weekends too) filled with random IMs, emails, “Quick Call” requests & unstructured meetings (one without any defined agendas/goals and mostly filled with statuses & office-lingos) ?

And every time you get these, you end up leaving what you are doing and start replying to these IMs, emails and join “quick calls” ASAP.

You do this everyday , all week. And if you observe at end of the week, you have not been able to finish up your assigned tasks with high quality. This leads to made up (but acceptable) shallow updates during status meetings and quickly a few months pass by.

At the end of the year you get an average performance rating for your shallow work. This goes on & after a few years you realize that even though you have survived (& even promoted a few times), you have not been able to perform deep, impactful work that adds enormous value.

Have you ever experienced this?
Do you want change it?
Do you want to perform high quality, impactful work and enjoy the enormous satisfaction that comes with it?

If not, please stop reading and save some time. Sorry for the blog notification that distracted you from what you were doing 🙂

And If yes, keep reading.

Thankfully, Cal Newport in his book “Deep Work” has addressed this problem, provided valuable guidance & structured methods to resolve this problem.

Here are the 5 takeaways from this book that can help you perform your tasks at work with “Deep Focus” (my interpretation of his work) :

1. Formula for performing “High Quality Work”

High Quality Work = “Time Spent” x “Intensity of Focus”

(We will call “Intensity of Focus” as “Focus Coins”, just because it sounds more cool & we can compare it with money)

So in order to perform high quality work, we don’t just need to spend more and more time on it but also perform the work with Deep Focus (away from distractions).

I know what you are thinking — its pretty obvious. We all know that focus is important. Don’t tell me “what needs to be done”, but tell me “How to do it”

Alright, lets look at how to do it.

2. We have limited “Focus Coins” to spend in a day

Like money, we have limited “Focus Coins” in a day.

And we spend these coins every time we give our attention to something — real work, emails, IMs, meetings, scrolling through phone etc.

However, what many of us don’t know is that we also spend these coins every time we switch between tasks too. And that’s just wasting these coins with no benefit in return.

Hypothetical example:

Let’s assume that you have 100 focus coins in a day. And the cost to buy 30 mins of attention is 10 focus coins. Once you have paid for 30 mins, the coins are gone (non-refundable) even if you don’t use it efficiently.

And you are working on preparing a report that needs 60 focus coins (3 hours of Deep Work) for it to be of high quality.

You start working on that report with full attention (spending 10 coins for half an hour) but suddenly you see an email notification from your manager pop up. You cannot resist ,you HAVE TO reply to your manager. So you do. And there goes your 10 focus coins. Now you are left with just 90.

So you pay another 10 coins for 30 mins of focused work, but now suddenly you get a ping from your team lead. Again, you HAVE TO reply. So you switch from your work again & reply to your lead. You lose your 10 focus coins (remember — non refundable)

No worries, you still have 80 coins left. You can still prepare the report with high quality.

But distractions keep on coming — “quick calls”, “urgent requests”, etc and you keep losing focus coins. After a few hours of such distractions, you are left with only 50 focus coins.

There goes your “high quality” report. You still manage to write the report but you know deep down that you rushed. This can result in silly errors or even worse, incorrect information in the report. This can not only affect the business but also affect your performance review.

Therefore your goal is to use your focus coins well. And like money, don’t waste on unnecessary work (more tips below on how to do this).

3. How to increase our daily “Focus Coins”

Now that we know that focus coins is an import currency, how can we earn more of it? Well unlike business, it is pretty simple. REST

Research has shown that different forms of rest (both physical & mental) helps recharge our batteries & give us more Focus Coins.

Sleep, meditation, massages, exercise, walk in areas with less distraction (like parks), music (not all kinds of music. definitely not hard metal or EDM) helps us earn more “Focus Coins”

Therefore, it is very important to take enough breaks, regulate our sleeping, exercise to become more productive. However, one important thing to note here : Scrolling through your phone while you are on a break doesn’t earn more Focus Coins, but spends more Focus Coins. (You get the idea, right?)

4. How to perform DEEP work regularly ? (How to efficiently use “Focus Coins” ?

In the book, Cal mentions 4 different methods that one can use to improve their quality of work. However, here I am going to talk about what will help 99% of us (Sorry to the cool 1%).

Rhythmic Approach: Design your environment, Define the time, Remove all the distractions, Work & Repeat.

Design your environment: Clean, clutter free and dedicated area helps a lot. Have a dedicated space that you use only for focused office work.

Don’t use this area for anything else. You shouldn’t work on your dinning table where you have a TV & also kitchen right in front of you. It just confuses your brain.

Define the time: Dedicate a fixed time-slot everyday for only “that” work.
example:
8AM to 10AM: Dedicated hands on Deep office work (not shallow work like reading emails, attending meetings, etc.)

Unless its a life and death issue, do not compromise your Focused time-slot for anything.

Remove all distractions during your focused time: Get rid of whatever distracts you for the Deep Work time-slot.

If you decide 8AM-10AM is your dedicated time slot for Deep work, get rid of all the distractions — phone, Outlook, Teams, all the tabs on your laptop, and if needed Internet Connection too.

Work & Repeat: Now start working and repeat it everyday. Human brains love rhythmic tasks. Your brain tries to optimize the tasks that you perform regularly. Therefore as you keep repeating, you will need less and less of Focus Coins for the same task.

Also note that rhythmic approach is only for the dedicated time (in our example 8AM to 10AM). It is impossible to plan each and every second of your day, but you can certainly pick just a few hours in a day(not everyday of your life, but most of the days).

Over time, not only it will make you more disciplined in your work, but it will also produce an outcome that you have not experienced before. And it will bring enormous amount of satisfaction with it.

5. “Get rid of” or “Add a structure to” shallow work so that it consumes less “Focus Coins”

Now that we have a plan to spend our Focus Coins on the work that matters, lets take a look at how to “not give a F” to our shallow work. The goal is to reduce your focus on shallow work or completely get rid of shallow work.

Everybody has different types of shallow work in their life that are consuming their energy.

First thing to check is if you can get rid of your shallow work.

Examples:
– House Chores take up most of my time: Can you outsource it? Buy a robo-cleaner, hire a Gardner, etc.
– I don’t like ironing cloths: Well, don’t do it then. There are alternatives available where you don’t need to iron.

And there are certain shallow work that you still need to perform (otherwise they will fire you). For such shallow work, try to bundle them together.

Examples:
– Replying to emails: Promise to your self that you will check your emails only two times a day.
– Go offline when you want to focus, so that no one can IM you: If you are working with deep focus, it is okay to go offline and reply to messages later.
You can explain the person who messaged that you were working on something & you wanted to focus (99.99% of our colleagues won’t mind and also respect it. And if you have those 0.01% in your team, change your job)

Conclusion/Opinion:

I generally refrain from writing or mass communicating about motivational or self-help books. In my opinion, most of them just write extreme stuff like work out 4 hours a day, meditate 2 hours a day, don’t eat, don’t drink, wake up at 4am, don’t watch tv, etc. Its like they are telling us not to live our lives at all.

But this book doesn’t say that. And I am also not trying to pass on that message here. The simple message is “You can get a lot done in just a few hours of focused work and then enjoy the rest of your day”

I personally tried applying the concepts & ideas mentioned in this book and I was able to read 3 books, 4 Annual letters and write 2 blogs this month. And the best part, I did it along with my Job and also didn’t work on weekends. I have promised myself to try it out for an year and see where it takes me.

I hope this helps you as well. Good luck!

Side Note:

This blog was an outcome of one of my deep work sessions. If you liked it, you might also like my other blogs (mostly on investing) : Click here

Also if you are looking for recommendations on what to read next, here is my complete list: Go Read