Of late one of the best books I’ve managed to get my hands on is Deep Work by Cal Newport.
I don’t blog about individual books very much anymore but this book is fantastic. It was recommended to me by someone who I have only recently met but is clearly a high level individual who understands this type of thinking a great deal.
Deep work explains the difference between concentrating on what you’re doing and not concentrating on it. It discusses the neuroscience of distraction and how we’re affected in our day to day lives.
It boils this down to a hugely practical essay in the advantages of developing skills in deep work which get better and better over time as they become more and more practiced.
We are clearly addicted to distraction as it’s the line of least resistance and we quote it at all times. We flick to our emails at all times when we’re doing admin work, we have them on at work all the time (even in dental surgeries).
When we try to work in isolation we keep our phone on, we check Facebook, Twitter, texts and emails while at the same time pretending that we’re doing work of high value that will make us or the world around us better.
My job has changed enormously in the last eight years, from being full time as a surgeon to being part time as a business owner and it’s absolutely clear that to ‘batch’ my time and to allocate areas for deep work which is highly valuable in the development of the business or me as a person are the parts that bring me furthest on and are also the parts that make me happiest.
There is no point in me continuing to practice doing the same things over and over again and not getting any better. To remove yourself to a higher place, to look at things and to see things that are going right and going wrong and where you’d like to be next is one of the most gratifying things you can do and can only be handled by deep work. To be distracted every 2 – 3 minutes by another electronic message is to give us the concept altogether and to understand that the distraction that you’ve just allowed to enter into your thought process continues with you for minutes and minutes after you’ve finished it, therefore reducing your effectiveness in the next session of doing something good is to understand the importance of depth.
Deep work lends itself really well to audio format and I got it on an audio book. The audio book author is extremely good and, although an American accent, is really well done and easy to listen to while you’re walking the dog. It seeps into your consciousness and it’s instinctively right. We know that we spend too much time on electronics, we know that we shouldn’t have a screen in front of our face within 2 hours of going to sleep, we know we shouldn’t drink alcohol regularly within 4 hours of going to sleep but we do it.
Deep thought takes you away from the stuff that society dictates back to things that are important, things that make you happy and contented.
Highly recommended – get someone to buy you it for Christmas or better still, buy it for someone else.
Blog Post Number: 1153