By: Cal Newport

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Cal Newport has accomplished a lot in a fairly short time since his college graduation. He has published four books, earned a PhD, wrote peer-reviewed academic papers at a high rate, and was hired as a tenure-track professor at Georgetown University.

All the while rarely working past five or six pm during the workweek. Oh yeah, he's also married and has two kids, which he spends time with every night, fully present to what's going on.

He credits his ability to accomplish all of this to what he calls deep work. For three to four hours a day, five days a week, he uses uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration to get done the most important work.

His main argument in the book is that 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 skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.

We'll spend the rest of our time here exploring why this matters for you and I, and what we can do about it.

What's Going On In The World?

We are coming into an age where robots, AI and a bunch of other factors are going to transform the world of work.

Just like in any revolution, there will be winners and losers. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs as their skill becomes automated or easily outsourced. But a lot of people are going to become more valuable in this new economy.

In particular, there are three types of people that will thrive.

First, there are the highly skilled workers who are able to work well and creatively with intelligent machines.

Second are the people who are the best at what they do in the world. Here's an example to bring this one home. Eventually, most of the meals we eat will be made by robots. But there will always be room for superstar chefs who create the recipes and tell the robots exactly how to cook the food. This isn't good for most chefs, but the best ones will do even better under this system.

Third are the people who have the capital to invest in the new technologies that are being created right now.

Short of inheriting a ton of money or quickly starting and selling a company with a big exit, you have the most control over becoming a highly skilled worker in the new economy, or a superstar in your field.

Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy

As we continue our journey into the new economy, there are two core abilities that we all need in order to thrive.

The first is the ability to quickly master hard things. This skill matters in working with new technologies because they rapidly evolve, and so you'll need to master new and hard things over and over again. It also matters in becoming a superstar in your field because you'll need to master a complex set of skills - whether you work in technology, are a world-class surgeon, or a yoga instructor.

The second is the ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed. This should be obvious, but most people miss it. In order to thrive in the new economy, you need to produce at an elite level. It's not enough to master new things, you need to put those skills to work in a way that produces value in the economy.

Which leads us to the next argument...

Your Core Abilities Depend on Your Ability To Do Deep Work

Let's start by defining what Deep Work actually is. Newport defines it as:

Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

Its counterpart is Shallow Work, which Newport defines as:

Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

Deep Work requires what K. Anders Ericsson - a professor at Florida State University - calls deliberate practice. Many books have gone on to quote him, and Malcolm Gladwell made his theory popular as the 10,000 hour rule.

But at the core of Ericsson's theory was the idea of deliberate practice, which requires two things: (1) that your attention is focussed tightly on a specific skill you're trying to improve or an idea you are trying to master, and (2) you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it's most productive.

The part that's important for us to narrow in on with this summary is the idea of focussed attention. Without it, there is no expert skill development.

In today's world, where we check our phones upwards of 75 times a day, we end up in a constant state of partial attention.

Here's why this matters. Let's use the example of reading a book to develop a new important skill. As you are reading the book, your phone buzzes - you got an email. Because of the way your brain was built, you can't resist checking the email, and so you do. It was nothing important, and you get back to reading your book.

You think nothing of it, but what just happened was significant. When you switch tasks like that, a portion of your attention remains with whatever you read in that email (or whatever you say in your Facebook feed, or...) and prevents you from fully focussing on what you are learning in the book.

Which prevents you from developing the skill you need to develop, which over time prevents you from becoming world-class in your field.

If you are running your own business, fighting this battle will be hard enough - your brain and the culture of connectivity we've created are worthy adversaries in the battle for your attention.

It's even harder when you work in a company where "being connected" and available for interruption are seen as positives, and even expected as a "good team player."

All of which leads us into more and more shallow work that adds little to no long term value.

The antidote to this are extended periods with full concentration on a single task, free from distraction. Or, to put it another way, the type of work that optimizes your long-term performance is deep work.

Let's get on to exploring the 4 Rules of Deep Work.

Rule #1: Work Deeply

The first rule focusses on how to fit your deep work into your life.

The key, Newport says, is to move beyond your good intentions and develop routines and rituals to your working life that are designed to minimize the amount of willpower you need to get into a state of unbroken concentration.

There are many ways you can do this, and he describes four very different ways of doing it, which he calls depth philosophies.

The Monastic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

This philosophy is an attempt to maximize deep work by eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations.

Donald Knuth, a famed computer scientist, is the epitome of this approach. He doesn't have an email address, and he describes this quirk like this on his website at Stanford (where he was a professor):

I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address...Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

This method won't work for 99% of the working population, who require communication with the outside world regularly to work. But if you can make it work, it's the cold turkey option and is guaranteed to work.

The Bimodal Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

This philosophy requires you to divide your time, devoting some clearly defined parts of your schedule to deep work, and leaving the rest open to other things.

The famous psychologist Carl Jung utilized this method when trying to get away from his mentor, Sigmund Freud. He built a rustic stone house in the woods and spent a good amount of time there - usually a full day or more. However, when he was back in Zurich he led a busy and hectic life.

The Rhythmic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

This philosophy basically has you create a set time every day where you get your deep work done.

While it lacks the ability to create the deepest of deep thinking that the previous two methods create, it has the benefit of being able to fit in with the reality of most people's lives. You know, like a job you need to go to every day.

The Journalistic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

This last method has you fit in your deep work whenever you can in your schedule.

While it seems like this would be the logical starting point for most people, it's actually one of the hardest to implement when you are not in the habit of doing deep work.

For most people, harnessing the willpower and discipline to pull this off is next to impossible.

One last note before we move on. Whichever philosophy you end up adopting for yourself, make sure that you turn it into a ritual. Here are some things you should address:

• Where you'll work and for how long;
• How you'll work once you start;
• How you'll support your work - for instance, maybe it starts with a strong cup of coffee or a walk;
  

Rule #2: Embracing Boredom

There are two sides to your deep work training.

The first side we've already covered - getting your deep work time scheduled and done.

The other side to the same coin isn't as obvious, but equally important - overcoming your desire for distraction.

Clifford Nass - a late researcher at Stanford - found through his work that constant attention switching online has a lasting negative effect on your brain. Essentially, your brain becomes addicted to the distractions, which makes it impossible for you to be laser focussed when you need to be.

The solution, Newport suggests, is that instead of taking breaks from distraction, you should take breaks from focus.

Here's how it works - schedule in advance when you'll use the Internet (or be distracted by whatever you find distracting), and then avoid it altogether outside those times.

There are three important points to consider when putting this into practice:

• the strategy works even if your job requires lots of Internet use and prompt email replies. You'll just have more "distraction" blocks than other people would.
• regardless of how you schedule your Internet blocks, you must keep the time outside those blocks absolutely free from Internet use.
• Scheduling Internet use at home as well as at work can further improve your concentration training.

One additional way you can practice getting into deep work mode is to meditate on a regular basis. Yes, there are plenty of mental health related reasons you should consider about meditation. But this suggestion is purely for the ability to help you concentrate more deeply when it matters.

Rule #3: Quit Social Media

This one is simple. Most people focus only on the benefits of using social media, and pay no attention to the detriments.

Newport identifies this as the "Any-Benefit" approach to tool selection. You're justified in using a network tool if you can identify any possible benefit, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don't use it.

Instead, consider using the "Craftsman" approach to tool selection. You will identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal life. Then, only adopt a tool if the positive impacts on those factors significantly outweigh the negative impacts.

Here's a very practical approach to doing it. Quit all social networking sites for 30 days. Then, ask yourself these two questions at the end of that time about each of the social networks you took a break from:

1. Would the last thirty days have been notably better if I had been able to use this service?
2. Did people care that I wasn't using this service?

If you answer no to both questions, quit the social network permanently. If your answer was "yes" you can let yourself go back.

Rule #4: Drain The Shallows

The final rule to complete your Deep Work journey is to minimize the amount of shallow work you do on a regular basis.

The problem with shallow work is that you probably spend much more time on it than you think, even ignoring the attention switching costs you incur by giving in to distractions.

To combat this tendency to let the shallow work expand to fill your day, you should schedule every minute of your work day.

Two things are guaranteed to go wrong when you do this - your time estimates will suck (things always take longer than you think), and you'll be interrupted with new obligations that appear unexpectedly.

But you, with your newfound calmness and focus will be able to handle this with grace and ease, and will simply take a few moments to rearrange your schedule.

Who knows, you just might be able to finish your work day by 5:30 like Newport does.