Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Introduction:

I am reading the book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World which is published by Hachette India in the year 2016. It is the fifth book by Cal Newport, the author of the best-selling book, So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. This book contains 263 pages and it belongs to the self-help/productivity genre. Before I begin my review, I would like to say that I might be a bit biased towards the book as it is one of my favorite books and after scrutinizing everything I believe in what the author wants to say. Still, I had put effort to be as objective as possible.

Central Theme:

The book is all based around one topic “DEEP WORK”. The word ‘deep-work’ is coined by Cal Newport to represent the work and the dedication that a person shows for his time and job. According to the author Deep work is “Professional activities performed in the 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.” For minorities, this might be common sense to success, but as the author argues, the majority of knowledge workers are lacking this skill and at the same time such skill is becoming valuable in the current economy.

The book has two parts. In the 1st part, he describes what is deep work and why deep work is important for us. He draws his example from many current generation knowledge workers and shows its correlation with past time craftsman worker theory (On that point, I presume it only strengthens the points from his earlier book “So good they can’t ignore” which speaks about craftsmanship). He also goes on to show how deep work can exponentially improve our work-life balance and at the same time can help to boost our morale and productivity at the same time.

In the 2nd part, he prescribes practical tips on how to help eliminate shallow and non-productive work and replace it with productive deep work. For many of the knowledge worker this part can be difficult to realize, but if put into practice, the author believes, will make your life peaceful and fruitful. He takes snippets from his life events and correlates each rule to a practical example.

Pros:

How do you even know that you need deep work in your life? The author goes on to show varied examples and personality like Bill Gates, Nate Silver, and Carl Jung, etc. who developed this habit (although these personalities would not have described it as deep work) to achieve some of the greatest feat of humankind. All of them are live examples to show what deep work can certainly do for you.

You might say, “So what, I am all right with my current state!”. But that may not be the actual case. The author has gone to great depth to show how we knowledge workers are being pushed to think low productive work like messaging, emails, meetings etc. as the important stuff while neglecting deep work as a tool for success. This is how I feel I came to connect with what the author wants to say and how it can help me to improve my life whether it's professionally or personally.

Cons:

Although it’s a treasure trove of examples, at times the point gets bit iterative. Maybe, the fact that when you are flagging warning against the upcoming trends of today requires you to give multitudes of examples. But nonetheless, I believe the examples could have been written in a few numbers. Also, I was expecting a few exercises that I could have implemented right away. Although more than half of the book includes practical steps, it doesn’t give readers anything immediate to implement on. So many readers might just skip through it as a novel read.

Conclusion:

I was already a great fan of Cal Newport and I follow his blog. And I was happy to get to read this book. I would recommend this book to those who are in the knowledge arena like officers and managers. Also, anyone who wants to improve their productivity and maintain work-life balance should read this book. Since it doesn’t contain much description on sports and other related fields I would say that you may take your time to read it, but not as a first book, since it might be a bit confusing. Also, students can benefit a great deal out of this book.

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