Deep Work

By Cal Newport

  • High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)
  • The differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.
  • Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit, these efforts crate new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
  • Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity.
  • The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy, As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skills and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.
  • This brings us to the question of what deliberate practice actually requires. it's core components are usually identified as follows: 
  1. Your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you're trying to improve or an idea you're trying to master;
  2. You receive feedback so you correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it's most productive.
  •  Why deliberate practice works?

The answer includes myelin---a layer of fatty tissue that grows around neurons, acting like an insulator that allows the cells fire faster and cleaner, You get better at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevant neurons, allowing the corresponding circuit to fire more effortlessly and effectively.

  • By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you're forcing the specific relevant circuit to fire, again and again, in isolation.                                                                                                                  
  • The repetitive use of a specific circuit triggers cells called oligodendrocytes to begin wrapping layers of myelin around the neurons in the circuits--- effectively cementing the skill.
  • If you're trying to learn a complex new skill in a state of low concentration, you're firing too many circuits simultaneously and haphazardly to isolate the group of neurons you actually want to strengthen.
  • To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction.
  • "[Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants"
  • In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.