I am experimenting with a new way of podcasting. Rather than create single topic episodes such as a book review, I will structure it in a way that will make it resemble more like a blog, but in audio format. Whatever I am reading and researching will be discussed. This will allow me to deliver content in a more timely manner, reducing the possibility of missing an upload.

The latest book I am reading:

Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success In A Distracted World by Cal Newport

I’m more than half way through the book.

Deep work is defined by the author as the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively-demanding task. The more time spent and the more intense you can make your focus, the more productive your deep work will be. The author describes attention residue as the trailing off of your thoughts relating to a previous task. Imagine deep work analogous to athletic work. Your brain is like a muscle in the way that it needs to warm up and cool down after rigorous work. Envision an athlete, like a major league baseball pitcher. He can’t simply walk out onto the pitchers mound cold. He needs to warm up in the bullpen getting his muscles and joints limber and loose. The warm-up can take several minutes or more. The same goes for the cool-down. Mild exercise and other activities like wearing a jacket or icing the elbow happen after pitching in the game. This is why we need to do deep work in blocks as lengthy as possible – maximize our deep work time because the beginning and end are consumed with warm-up and cool-down. If both warm-up and cool-down take 30 minutes, and we have only an hour to perform deep work, then we get hardly any deep work done.

Shallow vs Deep work. Shallow work is filled with interruptions, non-cognitively demanding tasks which are usually of logistical nature. The interruptions can come from external sources such as email, calls, visitors asking for help. They can also come from internal sources such as an impulse to surf the web, check social media, and other undisciplined and useless activities. The external distractions can be mitigated with out of office auto-responses or escaping from your office to a secret location. Tell everyone you know that you have a do not disturb time-frame from 1-3pm every day. Internal interruptions can be eliminated with practicing discipline and integrating habits and schedules into your day.

 IMHO deep work takes on different forms:

Creation – Creating a great work of art like a novel or painting

Problem solving – Developing a cure for cancer or inventing the next computer

Consumption – Learning a new skill like piano or tennis, or reading/studying to become a doctor

It can be physical (muscle memory) or mental (philosophy or document)

 Deep work is diminishing due to more distractions being present in our lives mostly caused by modernity such as computers and smart phones. The authors mentions this and declares deep work in the modern day as “rare”. Back in the day craftsmen and artists frequently engaged in deep work. There was a lack of sources for distractions. However today’s modern world is full of tempting distractions and time wasters. Some examples are TV, video games, surfing the web and click bait, notifications specifically, social media in general, and email.

I want to briefly address email – most of us perform a lot of our work via email. Email should not be vilified, but it is often a source of distraction and time wasting. I believe this is the case because among the work-related important emails we have many other spam and non-work related messages. Carefully filter out the important emails and prioritize them. Also email is a slow form of communication. A much faster way to communicate is to call the person or talk in-person. Email is perfect if you need a written record or the answer is a simple copy and paste away. However if you are typing for more than a minute, consider calling