Essay Options for Deep Work:
Choose One
Option #1
In a 1,000-word essay, defend, refute, or complicate Cal Newport's argument that Deep Work is an invaluable asset to your personal and professional life while Shallow Work and the mindless Internet habits that accompany it is a liability that results in mediocrity and nihilistic despair.
Option #2
In a 1,000-word essay, write a persuasive essay to someone you know who is shackled to mindless social media habits that they must replace their Internet addiction by radically transforming their brain hard-wiring, which could only be accomplished through the habits of Deep Work.
For both options, you must have 3 sources. You can use the book, and 2 sources from Cal Newport's Study Hack website.
Study Questions
One. How do we reach eudaimonia (our state of full potential)?
Since being in prolonged states of intense focus on meaningful goals gives us deep happiness and helps us achieve our potential, we should learn how to create a Deep Work Station.
We must be “a disciple of depth in a shallow world.”
We achieve this by creating rituals and routines because we cannot rely on willpower alone.
The more we use our willpower the more our willpower diminishes in strength. The solution is to rely on routines and rituals that cut down on our need to use willpower.
An example of a routine is adhering to a daily time block to your deep work.
Two. What is a Depth Philosophy?
You create rituals and routines that suit your life.
Creating a Depth Philosophy is Rule #1.
For example, you may choose a Monastic Philosophy in which you eliminate non-deep work activities from your life. You “minimize shallow obligations” like returning marginal emails and social media comments, or you eliminate social media accounts altogether.
Newport points to novelists who don’t answer emails because if they did, they wouldn’t have time to write their novels.
You shun shallow work. Monasticism may work for some, but not all.
Most people would probably be more suited to a rhythmic strategy in which one carves a daily time block of 3-4 hours of deep work.
Jerry Seinfeld told a comedian to write a joke every day and put it on a calendar so that he was making a “chain” of jokes throughout the year. This rhythmic philosophy is about creating a daily ritual of time blocks devoted to deep work.
A bimodal philosophy means you divide your time in the bustle of society but find a retreat for your deep work, as did Carl Jung.
Rituals are the rule, not “inspiration.” If you wait for inspiration, you’re doomed to a life outside the world of deep work.
To have an effective deep work ritual, you must have a set time and place with set rules to avoid distraction.
Make Grand Gestures
J.K. Rowling stayed in an expensive hotel to write her last novel.
Another Grand Gesture could be to delete your Facebook account, as I did. Or remove social media apps from your smartphone.
Three. What are the 4 Disciplines of Execution?
To achieve deep work, Newport quotes Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen who came up with the 4 Disciplines of Execution.
Discipline #1 Focus on the Wildly Important
You can only focus on so many things. If you try to do too much, you’ll engage in shallow work. Deep work results in finding what you’re wildly passionate about.
Discipline #2 Focus on Lead Measures, Not Lag Measures
Lag measures are areas you’re trying to improve. By the time you work on your lag measures, it’s too late to change your behavior.
For example, working on student evaluation scores is based on my past behavior.
Instead, I should work on lead measures, behaviors that will create success from my lag measures. I should focus on doing deep work on things I’m wildly passionate about, not go into the past and see what I did that rendered my performance scores at that time.
Discipline #3 Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
This means keep measurable goals or objectives. For example, if I’m playing piano for two hours, I must complete the major and minor harmonic scales without looking at the piano three times in succession, and I must write at least part of a song composition.
Or you must learn X amount of computer code every day if you’re a computer science major.
Discipline #4 Create a Cadence of Accountability
This means you regularly meet with peers or a mentor (or boss) to get feedback from the performance of your deep work.
When You’re Not in a Deep Work Time Block, Shut Everything Down
Shut everything down.
“Be lazy.”
Ideas grow while you’re on shut down.
Newport says you gain insights during your downtime.
Downtime helps recharge energy for the next day of deep work.
Rule #2: Embrace Boredom
Undistracted focus becomes a habit like flossing one’s teeth.
Suppose you’re reading a book for class, and some of it’s interesting, but then you hit a boring passage. You’re tempted to check your email or social media “activity.” Big mistake. You just broke your concentration and the myelin “muscle” in your brain isn’t getting stronger. It’s getting weaker.
Newport compares deep work to being an athlete. An athlete must be consistent with getting his or her “reps” in whether it be doing squats in the gym or running around the track. Failure to get in these “reps” results in atrophy and general breakdown. You need to build up your “mental muscle” with time block reps of uninterrupted focus on your deep work.
“Attention switching” makes you “a sucker for irrelevancy” and shallow work. Attention switching and distraction make you a bottom-feeder, not an apex predator at the top of the food chain.
To improve your focus, make huge offline blocks. Learn to be comfortable staying off the grid.
Too many people, seduced by the lies of technology, fear that unless they’re connected to social media and internet they won’t remain visible and relevant. They’ll experience a death, so to speak.
But the opposite is true. When you become dependent on the internet, THAT is the death, that is the condition of someone who got manipulated by the lies of technology.
Learn to stay off the grid for longer and longer amounts of time as you find your happiness and fulfilled potential in deep work.
Rule #3 Quit Social Media
Newport observes Baratunde Thurston’s experiment called “#UnPlugged” in which he goes off the grid. At first, it’s scary, but over time he feels less addicted to news and other people’s shares and he’s less addicted to sharing to feel relevant and alive.
He experiences life more deeply with more focus. He becomes happier.
Newport makes the case that the alleged benefits of social media are far outweighed by the liabilities.
Newport argues that network tools, like any tools, should be evaluated from the point of view of a craftsman, a person who cultivates his or her craft through deep work.
We should only use online internet tools if they are in service to our deep work.
Sharing on Facebook is shallow work.
Maintaining contact with your fans or followers will take away your time blocks to achieve deep work and be the person who created a fan base in the first place.
Newport proposes the Quit Social Media for 30 Days Test and see if you’re life isn’t better. He predicts your life will be better after 30 days and that you will be compelled to delete your social media accounts.
When You Do Deep Work, You Realize How Limited Your Time Is
That’s why people who go on Internet to be entertained go down a rabbit hole of wasted time. Newport argues you should not go to Internet for entertainment. It’s a time suck that steals from your deep work.
Rule #4 Drain the Shallows
A 4-day work week of 32 hours engaged in deep work is far more productive than a 5-day work week of 40 hours largely consisting of shallow work.
Deep work is exhausting, so it’s more suited to 4 days of 32 hours total.
This lesson teaches us to “drain the shallows.” You drain the shallows by scheduling every minute of your day. Too many people spend their day on autopilot, meaning that they are mindlessly wasting hours of their day.
Conquer your mindless autopilot default setting by time-blocking your daily schedule. Know what you’re going to do every hour.
Time Blocking Helps Us Quantify Depth [and Shallowness] of Every Activity
We can know how much of our day is wasted on shallow work only by time blocking our daily schedule.
Review of Shallow Work Definition:
Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts don’t create value and they are easily replicated.
These tasks are not unique or high-quality; therefore, if we define ourselves by shallow work, we are replaceable in our career occupations.
Drain the shallows by becoming less available online and on social media.
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