Critical Thinker

1C Agenda 9-7-17: Deep Work Lesson Three: Rules for Achieving Deep Work

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. 

Typical Essay Structure for an Argument

One. Introduction

Two. Claim (also called a thesis) with mapping components

Three. Supports otherwise known as mapping components 

Four. Counterargument-Rebuttal (usually 1 or 2 in a 1,000-1,200-word essay)

Five. Conclusion: Dramatic restatement of your claim

Six. Works Cited with credible sources.  

Sample Thesis #1

Cal Newport's book Deep Work is a life-saving masterpiece that has slapped me in the face and made me stare into the mirror and confront my wasted time on my smartphone, it has diagnosed the insidious ways I do busy work to placate my conscience and thereby encourage my own proclivity for mediocrity, it has diagnosed the stifling work environments that breed complacency and mundane work, and has given me strategies to help me dig myself out of my shallow-work grave. 

Sample Thesis #2

Cal Newport's book Deep Work is a work of pompous propaganda designed to scold us for spending too much time on our technology when in fact that time might be in our best self-interests, designed to make us feel like losers if we're better suited for shallow work than deep work, designed to impose a rigid system of deep work that doesn't work for all personality types, and designed to present an over simplistic representation of that which is supposed to be "deep work" and that which is supposed to be "shallow work" when in fact the dividing line is not as clear as Newport would have us believe. 

Sample Thesis #3 (That Refutes Newport):

While the value of deep work over shallow work is a necessary and self-evident principle, Newport's attempt to show how shallow work has triumphed over deep work for students and employees is rooted in too many superficial observations, over simplifications, either-or fallacies, and rigid "deep work" systems that too often have zero application to the complexities of real life. 

Sample Thesis #4 (That Supports Newport):

While some of Newport's deep work dogmas are too rigid and could be improved with some flexibility, his program to wean us off shallow work and to help us find tools to be more conscious of doing deep work is effectively presented in terms of his diagnosis of the problem, his prognosis, and his prescription. 

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)?

Deep Work.

What about people who find life to be easy? I know such a person. His name is Will Moton. 

Two. Do we all need Deep Work?

We have basic needs in life: to love and be loved, a good job that pays well. For some, that's enough. I know a lady who works in the court house. She takes attendance of prospective jurors in the morning and afternoon for ten minutes and reads or watches TV in her office when she isn't taking attendance. She makes 85K a year, has full medical benefits, and excellent job security. She is content. 

To be a Somebody

But for many people, the above is not enough. Some of us "have to be somebody."

What does that mean?

I'm not talking about grandiose status or riches or fame. I'm talking about achieving something in your work or art that gives you distinction as a craftsman. 

You are a master of what you do. You have attained excellence, mastery, and distinction in what you do. You have become, in other words, "a somebody."

Pastry chef

Pianist

Cyber Security Analyst 

Comedian

Risk Assessment Consultant

Physician's Assistant

Painter

Singer

Song Writer

Novelist

Satirist

Special Needs Therapist

Social Worker

Actor

Video Producer

Beats Producer

TV script writer

But you can't be a somebody unless you put in at least 10,000 hours of deep work with a mentor or teacher to monitor your progress. 

Creating a Deep Work Station

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.

Some people break up with their friends, romantic interests, even their own family. 

Some people move far away where no one can find them. 

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

The 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.

Revisit Writing 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. 

Typical Essay Structure for an Argument

One. Introduction

Two. Claim (also called a thesis) with mapping components

Three. Supports otherwise known as mapping components 

Four. Counterargument-Rebuttal (usually 1 or 2 in a 1,000-1,200-word essay)

Five. Conclusion: Dramatic restatement of your claim

Six. Works Cited with credible sources.  

Introduction:

Do you need to be "a somebody" by doing Deep Work or would you be content getting by with a well-paying, comfortable job? Explain your answer in a paragraph. 

Or

Do you need an intervention to get you off your smartphone? Is your smartphone interfering with your Deep Work? Is your smartphone in essence ruining your life? Explain. 

Then transition to your thesis. 

"Based on my response to the question of being a "somebody" or not, I find Cal Newport's proposition that we need to engage in Deep Work to be . . . 

 

UnPlug by Baratunde Thurston

 

Recognizing Logical Fallacies

Begging the Question

Begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident when it actually requires proof.

Major Premise: Fulfilling all my major desires is the only way I can be happy.

Minor Premise: I can’t afford when of my greatest desires in life, a Lexus GS350.

Conclusion: Therefore, I can never be happy.

Circular Reasoning

Circular reasoning occurs when we support a statement by restating it in different terms.

Stealing is wrong because it is illegal.

Admitting women into the men’s club is wrong because it’s an invalid policy.

Your essay is woeful because of its egregious construction.

Your boyfriend is hideous because of his heinous characteristics.

I have to sell my car because I’m ready to sell it.

I can’t spend time with my kids because it’s too time-consuming.

I need to spend more money on my presents than my family’s presents because I need bigger and better presents.

I’m a great father because I’m the best father my children have ever had.

Weak Analogy or Faulty Comparison

Analogies are never perfect but they can be powerful. The question is do they have a degree of validity to make them worth the effort.

A toxic relationship is like cancer that gets worse and worse (fine).

Sugar is high-octane fuel to use before your workout (weak because there is nothing high-octane about a substance that causes you to crash and converts into fat and creates other problems)

Free education is a great flame and the masses are moths flying into the flames of destruction. (horribly false analogy)

Ad Hominem Fallacy (Personal Attack)

“Who are you to be a marriage counselor? You’ve been divorced six times?”

A lot of people give great advice and present sound arguments even if they don’t apply their principles to their lives, so we should focus on the argument, not a personal attack.

“So you believe in universal health care, do you? I suppose you’re a communist and you hate America as well.”

Making someone you disagree with an American-hating communist is invalid and doesn’t address the actual argument.

“What do you mean you don’t believe in marriage? What are you, a crazed nihilist, an unrepentant anarchist, an immoral misanthrope, a craven miscreant?”

Straw Man Fallacy

You twist and misconstrue your opponent’s argument to make it look weaker than it is when you refute it. Instead of attacking the real issue, you aim for a weaker issue based on your deliberate misinterpretation of your opponent’s argument.

“Those who are against universal health care are heartless. They obviously don’t care if innocent children die.”

Hasty Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)

“I’ve had three English instructors who are middle-aged bald men. Therefore, all English instructors are middle-aged bald men.”

“I’ve met three Americans with false British accents and they were all annoying. Therefore, all Americans, such as Madonna, who contrive British accents are annoying.” Perhaps some Americans do so ironically and as a result are more funny than annoying.

Either/Or Fallacy

There are only two choices to an issue is an over simplification and an either/or fallacy.

“Either you be my girlfriend or you don’t like real men.”

“Either you be my boyfriend or you’re not a real American.”

“Either you play football for me or you’re not a real man.”

“Either you’re for us or against us.” (The enemy of our enemy is our friend is everyday foreign policy.)

“Either you agree with me about increasing the minimum wage, or you’re okay with letting children starve to death.”

“Either you get a 4.0 and get admitted into USC, or you’re only half a man.”

Equivocation

Equivocation occurs when you deliberately twist the meaning of something in order to justify your position.

“You told me the used car you just sold me was in ‘good working condition.’”

“I said ‘good,’ not perfect.”

The seller is equivocating.

“I told you to be in bed by ten.”

“I thought you meant to be home by ten.”

“You told me you were going to pay me the money you owe me on Friday.”

“I didn’t know you meant the whole sum.”

“You told me you were going to take me out on my birthday.”

“Technically speaking, the picnic I made for us in the backyard was a form of ‘going out.’”

Red Herring Fallacy

This fallacy is to throw a distraction in your opponent’s face because you know a distraction may help you win the argument.

“Barack Obama wants us to support him but his father was a Muslim. How can we trust the President on the war against terrorism when he has terrorist ties?”

“You said you were going to pay me my thousand dollars today. Where is it?”

“Dear friend, I’ve been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition. Can we talk about our money issue some other time?”

Slippery Slope Fallacy

We go down a rabbit hole of exaggerated consequences to make our point sound convincing.

“If we allow gay marriage, we’ll have to allow people to marry gorillas.”

“If we allow gay marriage, my marriage to my wife will be disrespected and dishonored.”

Appeal to Authority

Using a celebrity to promote an energy drink doesn’t make this drink effective in increasing performance.

Listening to an actor play a doctor on TV doesn’t make the pharmaceutical he’s promoting safe or effective.

Tradition Fallacy

“We’ve never allowed women into our country club. Why should we start now?”

“Women have always served men. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it always should be.”

Misuse of Statistics

Using stats to show causality when it’s a condition of correlation or omitting other facts.

“Ninety-nine percent of people who take this remedy see their cold go away in ten days.” (Colds go away on their own).

“Violent crime from home intruders goes down twenty percent in a home equipped with guns.” (more people in those homes die of accidental shootings or suicides)

Post Hoc, Confusing Causality with Correlation

Taking cold medicine makes your cold go away. Really?

The rooster crows and makes the sun go up. Really?

You drink on a Thursday night and on Friday morning you get an A on your calculus exam. Really?

You stop drinking milk and you feel stronger. Really? (or is it a placebo effect?)

Non Sequitur (It Does Not Follow)

The conclusion in an argument is not relevant to the premises.

Megan drives a BMW, so she must be rich.

McMahon understands the difference between a phrase and a dependent clause; therefore, he must be a genius.

Whenever I eat chocolate cake, I feel good. Therefore, a chocolate cake must be good for me.

Bandwagon Fallacy

Because everyone believes something, it must be right.

“You can steal a little at work. Everyone else does.”

“In Paris, ninety-nine percent of all husbands have a secret mistress. Therefore adultery is not immoral.”

 

1C Agenda 9-5-17: Deep Work Lesson #2 Shallow Work, Easy Stupid Things, 6 Ways of Arguing, Logical Fallacies

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 hardwiring, 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. 

Typical Essay Structure for an Argument

One. Introduction

Two. Claim (also called a thesis) with mapping components

Three. Supports otherwise known as mapping components 

Four. Counterargument-Rebuttal (usually 1 or 2 in a 1,000-1,200-word essay)

Five. Conclusion: Dramatic restatement of your claim

Six. Works Cited with credible sources.  

Sample Thesis #1

Cal Newport's book Deep Work is a life-saving masterpiece that has slapped me in the face and made me stare into the mirror and confront my wasted time on my smartphone, it has diagnosed the insidious ways I do busy work to placate my conscience and thereby encourage my own proclivity for mediocrity, it has diagnosed the stifling work environments that breed complacency and mundane work, and has given me strategies to help me dig myself out of my shallow-work grave. 

Sample Thesis #2

Cal Newport's book Deep Work is a work of pompous propaganda designed to scold us for spending too much time on our technology when in fact that time might be in our best self-interests, designed to make us feel like losers if we're better suited for shallow work than deep work, designed to impose a rigid system of deep work that doesn't work for all personality types, and designed to present an over simplistic representation of that which is supposed to be "deep work" and that which is supposed to be "shallow work" when in fact the dividing line is not as clear as Newport would have us believe. 

 

Study Questions 

One. What is the Principle of Least Resistance?

Shallow Work is easier.

Shallow Work creates the illusion of hard work.

Too many corporate environments scatter-brain their employees by making them do a lot of shallow work. Why? Because of the Principle of Least Resistance:

Without clear feedback on how shallow work affects the bottom line, companies surrender to a shallow work environment, not because it’s most effective, but because it’s the easiest of all available options.

Additionally, getting a quick response creates the illusion of productivity. “Constant connectivity” creates the illusion of professionalism and efficiency. “Constant connectivity” is an example of an Easy Stupid Thing.

Another Easy Stupid Thing is forwarding emails. It’s super easy to forward an email to everyone in your office, but then you make them sweat and labor over your half-baked thought for hours while you did nothing. These half-baked forwarded emails ruin productivity, but they are easy to do.

As a corollary, we can postulate that on a personal level we do the same thing with social media, allowing the smartphone to be the slow-opium drip machine hooked up to our brain: We don’t question the damage this does to our personal and professional life. We simply “fall” into it because it’s easy, peer pressure dictates a certain conformity, and social media brands itself effectively as a way of being hip, now, sexy, and successful when in fact it’s a complete lie.

Another seduction of shallow work is that we think we’re productive when we’re busy, but we’re not. We can be “human routers” of busy work, but not producing high-quality deep work.

Newport warns us to not let busyness be a proxy for deep work.

Another seduction of busyness that can drain our capacity to deep work and suck us into shallow work is the grand lure of “having an internet presence” on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

While such a presence may be important for a lot of people, too many people find these social media presences a “time suck” that takes away from deep work.

Review of Easy Stupid Things:

Just because something is easy does not mean it is efficient, productive, or serve our self-interests in any way. 

Just because we're in a routine with relatively low conflict does not mean that this routine is our best self-interests. Think of brain-dead jobs or brain-dead relationships. 

Just because your technology makes "connecting" easy doesn't mean you're being benefitted or enhanced in any way. 

Just because something is easy like forwarding email doesn't mean it's productive; it could be busy work creating the facade of productivity. 

Example: My daughters get a lot of homework that is worthless busy work. It's supposed to appease parents, but this busy work annoys me. 

Fear of Being Invisible and Irrelevant in the Technopoly

We get sucked into the shallow work of having a social media presence (and constantly responding to comments and messages) because in the technopoly, the blind worship of technology for its own sake, we fear that not having an internet presence will render us invisible and irrelevant.

This constant pull to social media traps us in shallow work. We can never surrender to singular focus because we are addicted to social media. Addiction comes from the word slave. 

Two. What profound purpose is Cal Newport trying to achieve in his book? 

Newport is trying to show us that a life hooked to social media, internet, and the technopoly is one of fragmentation, scatter-brained disorientation, soulless mediocrity, depression, shallow work and emptiness.

In contrast, a life of deep work in the service of becoming a master craftsman results in the personal distinction that is valued by others, performance of high-quality work that cannot be easily replicated by others, deep satisfaction, and deep meaning in both one’s personal and professional life.

It’s like the difference between heaven and hell.

Focus, Not Desirable Circumstances, Lead to Happiness

Referring to the wisdom he finds in Winifred Gallagher’s book Rapt, Newport makes the point that a life of focus, not desirable circumstances, lead to happiness.

Focus helps unify our thoughts and makes us feel whole, complete, and happy.

The opposite is also true then: Attention-fragmentation makes us feel scattered, incomplete, empty and depressed. This emptiness and depression can afflict us even in the most desirable circumstances imaginable.

He quotes Gallagher:

“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”

If you love “sharing” on social media photos of your fish tacos from Rubio’s or your bread sticks from Olive Garden and in general your “happy” life with your friends at restaurants, then that’s you who are. But remember that your focus is shallow; therefore, you’re not experiencing meaning and happiness.

If you focus on honing your craft at the piano, or singing, dancing, acting, math, or architecture, to give a few examples, your mastering your craft and your focus and you will be happier than if you’re constantly “sharing” and doing shallow work.

Deep Work Equals Happiness

Citing the psychological studies of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on happiness, Newport quotes the researcher:

“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

The above quote is an excellent reiteration of what it means to do deep work, and it leads to happiness no less.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi concludes that life is easier when we’re focused on deep work than when we’re lollygagging through free time. Deep work causes intense happiness called “flow.”

Piddling away several minutes or hours in a waiting room or on an airplane or in a classroom is a form of misery, yet we’ve been manipulated into believing by the social media industry that we’re having “fun.”

When we’re plugged into the slow-drip opium drug of our smartphone, we’re in hell, but we’re in denial of this fact.

Philosophical Argument for Deep Work

For centuries, educated humans knew there were two kinds of time: sacred and profane time and the two time zones should never mix.

A caveman telling a fable about the meaning of life to other cavemen around the campfire would be in sacred time.

A man and a woman contemplating the idea of spending the rest of their life with each other are in sacred time.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a story about sacred time.

The story of Adam and Eve being expelled from Paradise is a story about leaving sacred time and entering profane time.

Listening to music at a concert is entering sacred time.

Watching a movie is entering sacred time.

Walking along the beach with your children and pointing at the waves is sacred time.

Sitting at the table with your family and discussing how your daughter spoke her first words is sacred time.

Getting a speeding ticket from a cop is profane time.

Playing a computer game is profane time.

Chatting on social media is profane time.

Doing deep work and improving your craft so that you can be a master of what you do is entering sacred time.

We Are Elevated as Human Beings When We Keep Sacred and Profane Time Separated

But in the technopoly, we’ve worshipped technology above all else and we’ve lost sight of the very notion of sacred time.

We live in profane time, shallow work, and rude interruptions of sacred events. People text inside churches and at funerals.

People take selfies at concerts.

Deep Work is a return to sacred time.

Shallow Work is to live in profane time and suffer the nihilism of a shallow, empty, meaningless existence.

Newport’s Conclusion

We don’t become happy because we find some amazing “rarified” job. We become happy because we establish a “rarified approach” to our work. We value the sacred time of deep work and find meaning from becoming master craftsmen.

We transform from Opium-Drip Smartphone Zombies to “Homo Sapiens Deepensis.”

 

Six Ways to Improve Your Argumentation

Applying your critical thinking to academic writing 

You will find that your task as a writer at the higher levels of critical thinking is to argue. 

You will express your argument in 6 ways: 

One. Define a Situation That Calls for a Response

One. You will define a situation that calls for some response in writing by asking critical questions. For example, is the reversal of DACA an act of political cowardice and a form of punishing innocent people or is it upholding the law?

Here is what my friend and officemate wrote on Facebook this morning in response to the end of DACA:

I woke this morning to learn that 800,000 Americans will be losing their jobs, their security, their peace of mind, and very possibly their family, their homes, and their homeland -- in short, all that makes life worth living. It rather boggles my mind that anything is being posted this morning that's not on the subject of this heinous and catastrophic act of aggression.

I have personally assisted countless young students and hard workers to take that giant step toward being accepted in this country, only now to see their dreams go down in flames. Each one of them is its own self-contained and individualized tragedy of mammoth proportions.

The decision taken this morning is an affront to decency, humanity, fair-mindedness, compassion, inclusiveness, tolerance, and justice. It was driven by racism, selfishness, stupidity, and callousness -- motivated solely by a desire to pander to the whims of illiterate, inbred, dirt-eating Nazi knockoffs for the purposes of reelection.

Another example

Is the Confederate flag a symbol of honor and respect for the heritage of white people in the South? Or is the flag a symbol of racial hatred, slavery, and Jim Crow? 

Two. You will demonstrate the timeliness of your argument. In other words, why is your argument relevant? 

Why is it relevant for example to address the decision of many parents to NOT vaccinate their children?

Three. Establish your personal investment in the topic. Why do you care about the topic you’re writing about? 

You may be alarmed to see exponential increases in college costs and this is personal because you have children who will presumably go to college someday. 

Four. Appeal to your readers by anticipating their thoughts, beliefs, and values, especially as they pertain to the topic you are writing about. You may be arguing a vegetarian diet to people who are predisposed to believing that vegetarian eating is a hideous exercise in self-denial and amounts to torture. 

You may have to allay their doubts by making them delicious vegetarian foods or by convincing them that they can make such meals. 

You may be arguing against the NFL to those who defend it on the basis of the relatively high salaries NFL players make. Do you have an answer to that? 

Five. Support your argument with solid reasons and compelling evidence. If you're going to make the claim that the NFL is morally repugnant, can you support that? How?

Six. Anticipate your readers’ reasons for disagreeing with your position and try to change their mind so they “see things your way.” We call this “making the readers drink your Kool-Aid.”  

Being a Critical Reader Means Being an Active Reader

To be an active reader we must ask the following when we read a text: 

One. What is the author’s thesis or purpose? 

Two. What arguments is the author responding to? 

Three. Is the issue relevant or significant? If not, why? 

Four. How do I know that what the author says is true or credible? If not, why? 

Five. Is the author’s evidence legitimate? Sufficient? Why or why not? 

Six. Do I have legitimate opposition to the author’s argument? 

Seven. What are some counterarguments to the author’s position? 

Eight. Has the author addressed the most compelling counterarguments? 

Nine. Is the author searching for truth or is the author beholden to an agenda, political, business, lobby, or something else? 

Ten. Is the author’s position compromised by the use of logical fallacies such as either/or, Straw Man, ad hominem, non sequitur, confusing causality with correlation, etc.? 

Eleven. Has the author used effective rhetorical strategies to be persuasive? Rhetorical strategies in the most general sense include ethos (credibility), logos (clear logic), and pathos (appealing to emotion). Another rhetorical strategy is the use of biting satire when one wants to mercilessly attack a target.

Twelve. You should write in the margins of your text (annotate) to address the above questions. Using annotations increases your memory and reading comprehension far beyond passive reading. And research shows annotating while reading is far superior to using a highlighter, which is mostly a useless exercise. 

An annotation can be very brief. Here are some I use: 

? 

Wrong 

Confusing 

Thesis 

Proof 1 

Counterargument 

Good point

Genius 

Lame

BS

Cliché

Condescending 

Full of himself

Contradiction!

Evaluate Sources to Determine Their Credibility

UC Santa Cruz

Harvard

 

Two. How do we generate ideas for an essay?

We begin by not worrying about being critical. We brainstorm a huge list of ideas and then when the list is complete, we undergo the process of evaluation. 

Sample Topic for an Essay: Parents Who Don’t Immunize Their Children

1. Most parents who don’t immunize their children are educated and upper class.
2. They read on the Internet that immunizations lead to autism or other health problems.
3. They follow some “natural guru” who warns that vaccines aren’t organic and pose health risks.
4. They panic over anecdotal evidence that shows vaccines are dangerous.
5. They confuse correlation with causality.
6. Why are these parents always rich?
7. Are they narcissists?
8. Are they looking for simple answers for complex problems?
9. Would they not stand in line for the Ebola vaccine, if it existed?
10. These parents are endangering others by not getting the vaccine.

Types of Claim or Thesis

 

Thesis that is a claim of cause and effect: 

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children tend to be narcissistic people of privilege who believe their sources of information are superior to “the mainstream media”; who are looking for simple explanations that might protect their children from autism; who are confusing correlation with causality; and who are benefiting from the very vaccinations they refuse to give their children.

Thesis that is a claim of argumentation:

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children should be prosecuted by the law because they are endangering the public and they are relying on pseudo-intellectual science to base their decisions.

To test a thesis, we must always ask: “What might be objections to my claim?”

Prosecuting parents will only give those parents more reason to be paranoid that the government is conspiring against them.

There are less severe ways to get parents to comply with the need to vaccinate their children.

Generating Ideas for Our Essays

How do we prepare our minds so we have “Eureka” (I found it) moments and apply these moments to our writing?

The word eureka comes from the Greek heuristic, a method or process for discovering ideas. The principle posits that one thought triggers another.

Diverse and conflicting opinions in a classroom are a heuristic tool for generating thoughts.

Here’s an example:

One student says, “Fat people should pay a fat tax because they incur more medical costs than non-fat people.”

Another student says, “Wrong. Fat people die at a far younger age. It’s people who live past seventy, non-fat people, who put a bigger drain on medical costs. In fact, smokers and fat people, by dying young, save us money.”

Another heuristic method is breaking down the subject into classical topics:

Definition: What is it? Jealousy is a form of insanity in which a morally bankrupt person assumes his partner is as morally bankrupt as he is.

Comparison: What is it like or unlike? Compared to the risk of us dying from global warming, death from a terrorist attack is relatively miniscule.

Relationship: What caused it, and what will it cause? The chief cause of our shrinking brain and its concomitant reduced attention span is gadget screen time.

Testimony: What is said about it by experts? Social scientists explain that the United States’ mass incarceration of poor people actually increases the crime rate.

Another heuristic method is finding a controversial topic and writing a list of pros and cons.

Consider the topic, “Should I become a vegan?”

Here are some pros:

1. I’ll focus on eating healthier foods.
2. I won’t be eating as many foods potentially contaminated by E.coli  and Salmonella.
3. I won’t be contributing as much to the suffering of sentient creatures.
4. I won’t be contributing as much to greenhouse gasses.
5. I’ll be eating less cholesterol and saturated fats.

Cons

1. It’s debatable that a vegan diet is healthier than a Paleo (heavy meat eating) diet.
2. Relying on soy is bad for the body.
3. My body craves animal protein.
4. Being a vegan will ostracize me from my family and friends.

One. Checklist for Critical Thinking 

My attitude toward critical thinking: 

Does my thinking show imaginative open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity? Or do I exist in a circular, self-feeding, insular brain loop resulting in solipsism? The latter is also called living in the echo chamber. 

Am I willing to honestly examine my assumptions? 

Am I willing to entertain new ideas—both those that I encounter while reading and those that come to mind while writing? 

Am I willing to approach a debatable topic by using dialectical argument, going back and forth between opposing views? 

Am I willing to exert myself—for instance, to do research—to acquire information and to evaluate evidence? 

My skills to develop critical thinking 

Can I summarize an argument accurately? 

Can I evaluate assumptions, evidence, and inferences? 

Can I present my ideas effectively—for instance, by organizing and by writing in a manner appropriate to my imagined audience?

 

 

Recognizing Logical Fallacies

Begging the Question

Begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident when it actually requires proof.

Major Premise: Fulfilling all my major desires is the only way I can be happy.

Minor Premise: I can’t afford when of my greatest desires in life, a Lexus GS350.

Conclusion: Therefore, I can never be happy.

Circular Reasoning

Circular reasoning occurs when we support a statement by restating it in different terms.

Stealing is wrong because it is illegal.

Admitting women into the men’s club is wrong because it’s an invalid policy.

Your essay is woeful because of its egregious construction.

Your boyfriend is hideous because of his heinous characteristics.

I have to sell my car because I’m ready to sell it.

I can’t spend time with my kids because it’s too time-consuming.

I need to spend more money on my presents than my family’s presents because I need bigger and better presents.

I’m a great father because I’m the best father my children have ever had.

Weak Analogy or Faulty Comparison

Analogies are never perfect but they can be powerful. The question is do they have a degree of validity to make them worth the effort.

A toxic relationship is like cancer that gets worse and worse (fine).

Sugar is high-octane fuel to use before your workout (weak because there is nothing high-octane about a substance that causes you to crash and converts into fat and creates other problems)

Free education is a great flame and the masses are moths flying into the flames of destruction. (horribly false analogy)

Ad Hominem Fallacy (Personal Attack)

“Who are you to be a marriage counselor? You’ve been divorced six times?”

A lot of people give great advice and present sound arguments even if they don’t apply their principles to their lives, so we should focus on the argument, not a personal attack.

“So you believe in universal health care, do you? I suppose you’re a communist and you hate America as well.”

Making someone you disagree with an American-hating communist is invalid and doesn’t address the actual argument.

“What do you mean you don’t believe in marriage? What are you, a crazed nihilist, an unrepentant anarchist, an immoral misanthrope, a craven miscreant?”

Straw Man Fallacy

You twist and misconstrue your opponent’s argument to make it look weaker than it is when you refute it. Instead of attacking the real issue, you aim for a weaker issue based on your deliberate misinterpretation of your opponent’s argument.

“Those who are against universal health care are heartless. They obviously don’t care if innocent children die.”

Hasty Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)

“I’ve had three English instructors who are middle-aged bald men. Therefore, all English instructors are middle-aged bald men.”

“I’ve met three Americans with false British accents and they were all annoying. Therefore, all Americans, such as Madonna, who contrive British accents are annoying.” Perhaps some Americans do so ironically and as a result are more funny than annoying.

Either/Or Fallacy

There are only two choices to an issue is an over simplification and an either/or fallacy.

“Either you be my girlfriend or you don’t like real men.”

“Either you be my boyfriend or you’re not a real American.”

“Either you play football for me or you’re not a real man.”

“Either you’re for us or against us.” (The enemy of our enemy is our friend is everyday foreign policy.)

“Either you agree with me about increasing the minimum wage, or you’re okay with letting children starve to death.”

“Either you get a 4.0 and get admitted into USC, or you’re only half a man.”

Equivocation

Equivocation occurs when you deliberately twist the meaning of something in order to justify your position.

“You told me the used car you just sold me was in ‘good working condition.’”

“I said ‘good,’ not perfect.”

The seller is equivocating.

“I told you to be in bed by ten.”

“I thought you meant to be home by ten.”

“You told me you were going to pay me the money you owe me on Friday.”

“I didn’t know you meant the whole sum.”

“You told me you were going to take me out on my birthday.”

“Technically speaking, the picnic I made for us in the backyard was a form of ‘going out.’”

Red Herring Fallacy

This fallacy is to throw a distraction in your opponent’s face because you know a distraction may help you win the argument.

“Barack Obama wants us to support him but his father was a Muslim. How can we trust the President on the war against terrorism when he has terrorist ties?”

“You said you were going to pay me my thousand dollars today. Where is it?”

“Dear friend, I’ve been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition. Can we talk about our money issue some other time?”

Slippery Slope Fallacy

We go down a rabbit hole of exaggerated consequences to make our point sound convincing.

“If we allow gay marriage, we’ll have to allow people to marry gorillas.”

“If we allow gay marriage, my marriage to my wife will be disrespected and dishonored.”

Appeal to Authority

Using a celebrity to promote an energy drink doesn’t make this drink effective in increasing performance.

Listening to an actor play a doctor on TV doesn’t make the pharmaceutical he’s promoting safe or effective.

Tradition Fallacy

“We’ve never allowed women into our country club. Why should we start now?”

“Women have always served men. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it always should be.”

Misuse of Statistics

Using stats to show causality when it’s a condition of correlation or omitting other facts.

“Ninety-nine percent of people who take this remedy see their cold go away in ten days.” (Colds go away on their own).

“Violent crime from home intruders goes down twenty percent in a home equipped with guns.” (more people in those homes die of accidental shootings or suicides)

Post Hoc, Confusing Causality with Correlation

Taking cold medicine makes your cold go away. Really?

The rooster crows and makes the sun go up. Really?

You drink on a Thursday night and on Friday morning you get an A on your calculus exam. Really?

You stop drinking milk and you feel stronger. Really? (or is it a placebo effect?)

Non Sequitur (It Does Not Follow)

The conclusion in an argument is not relevant to the premises.

Megan drives a BMW, so she must be rich.

McMahon understands the difference between a phrase and a dependent clause; therefore, he must be a genius.

Whenever I eat chocolate cake, I feel good. Therefore, chocolate cake must be good for me.

Bandwagon Fallacy

Because everyone believes something, it must be right.

“You can steal a little at work. Everyone else does.”

“In Paris, ninety-nine percent of all husbands have a secret mistress. Therefore adultery is not immoral.”

Critical Writing

Applying your critical thinking to academic writing 

You will find that your task as a writer at the higher levels of critical thinking is to argue. 

You will express your argument in 6 ways: 

One. You will define a situation that calls for some response in writing by asking critical questions. For example, is the Confederate flag a symbol of honor and respect for the heritage of white people in the South? Or is the flag a symbol of racial hatred, slavery, and Jim Crow? 

Two. You will demonstrate the timeliness of your argument. In other words, why is your argument relevant? 

Why is it relevant for example to address the decision of many parents to NOT vaccinate their children?

Three. Establish your personal investment in the topic. Why do you care about the topic you’re writing about? 

You may be alarmed to see exponential increases in college costs and this is personal because you have children who will presumably go to college someday. 

Four. Appeal to your readers by anticipating their thoughts, beliefs, and values, especially as they pertain to the topic you are writing about. You may be arguing a vegetarian diet to people who are predisposed to believing that vegetarian eating is a hideous exercise in self-denial and amounts to torture. 

You may have to allay their doubts by making them delicious vegetarian foods or by convincing them that they can make such meals. 

You may be arguing against the NFL to those who defend it on the basis of the relatively high salaries NFL players make. Do you have an answer to that? 

Five. Support your argument with solid reasons and compelling evidence. If you're going to make the claim that the NFL is morally repugnant, can you support that? How?

Six. Anticipate your readers’ reasons for disagreeing with your position and try to change their mind so they “see things your way.” We call this “making the readers drink your Kool-Aid.”  

Being a Critical Reader Means Being an Active Reader

To be an active reader we must ask the following when we read a text: 

One. What is the author’s thesis or purpose? 

Two. What arguments is the author responding to? 

Three. Is the issue relevant or significant? If not, why? 

Four. How do I know that what the author says is true or credible? If not, why? 

Five. Is the author’s evidence legitimate? Sufficient? Why or why not? 

Six. Do I have legitimate opposition to the author’s argument? 

Seven. What are some counterarguments to the author’s position? 

Eight. Has the author addressed the most compelling counterarguments? 

Nine. Is the author searching for truth or is the author beholden to an agenda, political, business, lobby, or something else? 

Ten. Is the author’s position compromised by the use of logical fallacies such as either/or, Straw Man, ad hominem, nonsequitur,  confusing causality with correlation, etc.? 

Eleven. Has the author used effective rhetorical strategies to be persuasive? Rhetorical strategies in the most general sense include ethos (credibility), logos (clear logic), and pathos (appealing to emotion). Another rhetorical strategy is the use of biting satire when one wants to mercilessly attack a target.

Twelve. You should write in the margins of your text (annotate) to address the above questions. Using annotations increases your memory and reading comprehension far beyond passive reading. And research shows annotating while reading is far superior to using a highlighter, which is mostly a useless exercise. 

An annotation can be very brief. Here are some I use: 

? 

Wrong 

Confusing 

Thesis 

Proof 1 

Counterargument 

Good point

Genius 

Lame

BS

Cliché

Condescending 

Full of himself

Contradiction!

 

Two. How do we generate ideas for an essay?

We begin by not worrying about being critical. We brainstorm a huge list of ideas and then when the list is complete, we undergo the process of evaluation. 

Sample Topic for an Essay: Parents Who Don’t Immunize Their Children

1. Most parents who don’t immunize their children are educated and upper class.
2. They read on the Internet that immunizations lead to autism or other health problems.
3. They follow some “natural guru” who warns that vaccines aren’t organic and pose health risks.
4. They panic over anecdotal evidence that shows vaccines are dangerous.
5. They confuse correlation with causality.
6. Why are these parents always rich?
7. Are they narcissists?
8. Are they looking for simple answers to complex problems?
9. Would they not stand in line for the Ebola vaccine, if it existed?
10. These parents are endangering others by not getting the vaccine.

Thesis that is a claim of cause and effect: 

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children tend to be narcissistic people of privilege who believe their sources of information are superior to “the mainstream media”; who are looking for simple explanations that might protect their children from autism; who are confusing correlation with causality; and who are benefiting from the very vaccinations they refuse to give their children.

Thesis that is a claim of argumentation:

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children should be prosecuted by the law because they are endangering the public and they are relying on pseudo-intellectual science to base their decisions.

To test a thesis, we must always ask: “What might be objections to my claim?”

Prosecuting parents will only give those parents more reason to be paranoid that the government is conspiring against them.

There are less severe ways to get parents to comply with the need to vaccinate their children.

Generating Ideas for Our Essays

How do we prepare our minds so we have “Eureka” (I found it) moments and apply these moments to our writing?

The word eureka comes from the Greek heuristic, a method or process for discovering ideas. The principle posits that one thought triggers another.

Diverse and conflicting opinions in a classroom are a heuristic tool for generating thoughts.

Here’s an example:

One student says, “Fat people should pay a fat tax because they incur more medical costs than non-fat people.”

Another student says, “Wrong. Fat people die at a far younger age. It’s people who live past seventy, non-fat people, who put a bigger drain on medical costs. In fact, smokers and fat people, by dying young, save us money.”

Another heuristic method is breaking down the subject into classical topics:

Definition: What is it? Jealousy is a form of insanity in which a morally bankrupt person assumes his partner is as morally bankrupt as he is.

Comparison: What is it like or unlike? Compared to the risk of us dying from global warming, death from a terrorist attack is relatively minuscule.

Relationship: What caused it, and what will it cause? The chief cause of our shrinking brain and its concomitant reduced attention span is gadget screen time.

Testimony: What is said about it by experts? Social scientists explain that the United States’ mass incarceration of poor people actually increases the crime rate.

Another heuristic method is finding a controversial topic and writing a list of pros and cons.

Consider the topic, “Should I become a vegan?”

Here are some pros:

1. I’ll focus on eating healthier foods.
2. I won’t be eating as many foods potentially contaminated by E.coli  and Salmonella.
3. I won’t be contributing as much to the suffering of sentient creatures.
4. I won’t be contributing as much to greenhouse gasses.
5. I’ll be eating less cholesterol and saturated fats.

Cons

1. It’s debatable that a vegan diet is healthier than a Paleo (heavy meat eating) diet.
2. Relying on soy is bad for the body.
3. My body craves animal protein.
4. Being a vegan will ostracize me from my family and friends.

One. Checklist for Critical Thinking 

My attitude toward critical thinking: 

Does my thinking show imaginative open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity? Or do I exist in a circular, self-feeding, insular brain loop resulting in solipsism? The latter is also called living in the echo chamber. 

Am I willing to honestly examine my assumptions? 

Am I willing to entertain new ideas—both those that I encounter while reading and those that come to mind while writing? 

Am I willing to approach a debatable topic by using dialectical argument, going back and forth between opposing views? 

Am I willing to exert myself—for instance, to do research—to acquire information and to evaluate evidence? 

My skills to develop critical thinking 

Can I summarize an argument accurately? 

Can I evaluate assumptions, evidence, and inferences? 

Can I present my ideas effectively—for instance, by organizing and by writing in a manner appropriate to my imagined audience?

Study the Templates of Argumentation  

While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . .

 

While the authors' supports make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . .

 

These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . .

 

While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . .

 

Although it is often true that . . .

 

While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . .

 

While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . .

 

While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince when we consider X, Y, and Z.

 

My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z.

 

While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .

Ways to Improve Your Critical Reading  

1. Do a background check of the author to see if he or she has a hidden agenda or any other kind of background information that speaks to the author’s credibility.
2. Check the place of publication to see what kind of agenda, if any, the publishing house has. Know how esteemed the publishing house is among peers of the subject you’re reading about.
3. Learn how to find the thesis. In other words, know what the author’s purpose, explicit or implicit, is.
4. Annotate more than underline. Your memory will be better served, according to research, by annotating than underlining. You can scribble your own code in the margins as long as you can understand your writing when you come back to it later. Annotating is a way of starting a dialogue about the reading and writing process. It is a form of pre-writing. Forms of annotation that I use are “yes,” (great point) “no,” (wrong, illogical, BS) and “?” (confusing). When I find the thesis, I’ll also write that in the margins. Or I’ll write down an essay or book title that the passage reminds me of. Or maybe even an idea for a story or a novel.
5. When faced with a difficult text, you will have to slow down and use the principles of summarizing and paraphrasing. With summary, you concisely identify the main points in one or two sentences. With paraphrase, you re-word the text in your own words.
6. When reading an argument, see if the writer addresses possible objections to his or her argument. Ask yourself, of all the objections, did the writer choose the most compelling ones? The more compelling the objections addressed, the more rigorous and credible the author’s writing.

 To read critically, we have to do the following:

One. Comprehend the author's purpose and meaning, which is expressed in the claim or thesis

Two. Examine the evidence, if any, that is used

Three. Find emotional appeals, if any, that are used

Four. Identify analogies and comparisons and analyze their legitimacy

Five. Look at the topic sentences to see how the author is building his or her claim

Six. Look for the appeals the author uses be they logic (logos), emotions (pathos), or authority (ethos).

Seven. Is the author's argument diminished by logical fallacies?

Eight. Do you recognize any bias in the essay that diminishes the author's argument?

Nine. Do we bring any prejudice that may compromise our ability to evaluate the argument fairly?

Topic for an Argumentative Essay: The Costs and Benefits of College

Writing Assignment:

In a 4-page essay that addresses the major poings in "College Calculus" and "America: Abandon Your Reverence for the Bachelor's Degree," develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the question if college is worth the cost for your particular area of study. You may consult the following:

"3 Reasons College Still Matters" by Andrew Delbanco. 

"Is College Worth It?"

"College Is Still Worth It, Despite the Cost"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deep Work Lesson Three: Rules for Achieving Deep Work

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.

#UnPlug by Baratunde Thurston

Deep Work Lesson Two: Bring Sacred Time Back Through Deep Work

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. What is the Principle of Least Resistance?

Too many corporate environments scatter-brain their employees by making them do a lot of shallow work. Why? Because of the Principle of Least Resistance:

Without clear feedback on how shallow work affects the bottom line, companies surrender to a shallow work environment, not because it’s most effective, but because it’s the easiest of all available options.

Additionally, getting a quick response creates the illusion of productivity. “Constant connectivity” creates the illusion of professionalism and efficiency. “Constant connectivity” is an example of an Easy Stupid Thing.

Another Easy Stupid Thing is forwarding emails. It’s super easy to forward an email to everyone in your office, but then you make them sweat and labor over your half-baked thought for hours while you did nothing. These half-baked forwarded emails ruin productivity, but they are easy to do.

As a corollary, we can postulate that on a personal level we do the same thing with social media, allowing the smartphone to be the slow-opium drip machine hooked up to our brain: We don’t question the damage this does to our personal and professional life. We simply “fall” into it because it’s easy, peer pressure dictates a certain conformity, and social media brands itself effectively as a way of being hip, now, sexy, and successful when in fact it’s a complete lie.

Another seduction of shallow work is that we think we’re productive when we’re busy, but we’re not. We can be “human routers” of busy work, but not producing high-quality deep work.

Newport warns us to not let busyness be a proxy for deep work.

Another seduction of busyness that can drain our capacity to deep work and suck us into shallow work is the grand lure of “having an internet presence” on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

While such a presence may be important for a lot of people, too many people find these social media presences a “time suck” that takes away from deep work.

Fear of Being Invisible and Irrelevant in the Technopoly

We get sucked into the shallow work of having a social media presence (and constantly responding to comments and messages) because in the technopoly, the blind worship of technology for its own sake, we fear that not having an internet presence will render us invisible and irrelevant.

Two. What profound purpose is Cal Newport trying to achieve in his book?

 

Newport is trying to show us that a life hooked to social media, internet, and the technopoly is one of fragmentation, scatter-brained disorientation, soulless mediocrity, depression, shallow work and emptiness.

In contrast, a life of deep work in the service of becoming a master craftsman results in personal distinction that is valued by others, performance of high-quality work that cannot be easily replicated by others, deep satisfaction, and deep meaning in both one’s personal and professional life.

It’s like the difference between heaven and hell.

Focus, Not Desirable Circumstances, Lead to Happiness

Referring to the wisdom he finds in Winifred Gallagher’s book Rapt, Newport makes the point that a life of focus, not desirable circumstances, lead to happiness.

Focus helps unify our thoughts and makes us feel whole, complete, and happy.

The opposite is also true then: Attention-fragmentation makes us feel scattered, incomplete, empty and depressed. This emptiness and depression can afflict us even in the most desirable circumstances imaginable.

He quotes Gallagher:

“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”

If you love “sharing” on social media photos of your fish tacos from Rubio’s or your bread sticks from Olive Garden and in general your “happy” life with your friends at restaurants, then that’s you who are. But remember that your focus is shallow; therefore, you’re not experiencing meaning and happiness.

If you focus on honing your craft at the piano, or singing, dancing, acting, math, or architecture, to give a few examples, your mastering your craft and your focus and you will be happier than if you’re constantly “sharing” and doing shallow work.

Deep Work Equals Happiness

Citing the psychological studies of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on happiness, Newport quotes the researcher:

“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

The above quote is an excellent reiteration of what it means to do deep work, and it leads to happiness no less.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi concludes that life is easier when we’re focused on deep work than when we’re lollygagging through free time. Deep work causes intense happiness called “flow.”

Piddling away several minutes or hours in a waiting room or on an airplane or in a classroom is a form of misery, yet we’ve been manipulated into believing by the social media industry that we’re having “fun.”

When we’re plugged into the slow-drip opium drug of our smartphone, we’re in hell, but we’re in denial of this fact.

Philosophical Argument for Deep Work

For centuries, educated humans knew there were two kinds of time: sacred and profane time and the two time zones should never mix.

A caveman telling a fable about the meaning of life to other cavemen around the campfire would be in sacred time.

A man and a woman contemplating the idea of spending the rest of their life with each other are in sacred time.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a story about sacred time.

The story of Adam and Even being expelled from Paradise is a story about leaving sacred time and entering profane time.

Listening to music at a concert is entering sacred time.

Watching a movie is entering sacred time.

Walking along the beach with your children and pointing at the waves is sacred time.

Sitting at the table with your family and discussing how your daughter spoke her first words is sacred time.

Getting a speeding ticket from a cop is profane time.

Playing a computer game is profane time.

Chatting on social media is profane time.

Doing deep work and improving your craft so that you can be a master of what you do is entering sacred time.

We Are Elevated as Human Beings When We Keep Sacred and Profane Time Separated

But in the technopoly, we’ve worshipped technology above all else and we’ve lost sight of the very notion of sacred time.

We live in profane time, shallow work, and rude interruptions of sacred events. People text inside churches and at funerals.

People take selfies at concerts.

Deep Work is a return to sacred time.

Shallow Work is to live in profane time and suffer the nihilism of a shallow, empty, meaningless existence.

Newport’s Conclusion

We don’t become happy because we find some amazing “rarified” job. We become happy because we establish a “rarified approach” to our work. We value the sacred time of deep work and find meaning from becoming master craftsmen.

We transform from Opium-Drip Smartphone Zombies to “Homo Sapiens Deepensis.”

Recognizing Logical Fallacies

Begging the Question

Begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident when it actually requires proof.

Major Premise: Fulfilling all my major desires is the only way I can be happy.

Minor Premise: I can’t afford when of my greatest desires in life, a Lexus GS350.

Conclusion: Therefore, I can never be happy.

Circular Reasoning

Circular reasoning occurs when we support a statement by restating it in different terms.

Stealing is wrong because it is illegal.

Admitting women into the men’s club is wrong because it’s an invalid policy.

Your essay is woeful because of its egregious construction.

Your boyfriend is hideous because of his heinous characteristics.

I have to sell my car because I’m ready to sell it.

I can’t spend time with my kids because it’s too time consuming.

I need to spend more money on my presents than my family’s presents because I need bigger and better presents.

I’m a great father because I’m the best father my children have ever had.

Weak Analogy or Faulty Comparison

Analogies are never perfect but they can be powerful. The question is do they have a degree of validity to make them worth the effort.

A toxic relationship is like a cancer that gets worse and worse (fine).

Sugar is high-octane fuel to use before your workout (weak because there is nothing high-octane about a substance that causes you to crash and converts into fat and creates other problems)

Free education is a great flame and the masses are moths flying into the flames of destruction. (horribly false analogy)

Ad Hominem Fallacy (Personal Attack)

“Who are you to be a marriage counselor? You’ve been divorced six times?”

A lot of people give great advice and present sound arguments even if they don’t apply their principles to their lives, so we should focus on the argument, not personal attack.

“So you believe in universal health care, do you? I suppose you’re a communist and you hate America as well.”

Making someone you disagree with an American-hating communist is invalid and doesn’t address the actual argument.

“What do you mean you don’t believe in marriage? What are you, a crazed nihilist, an unrepentant anarchist, an immoral misanthrope, a craven miscreant?”

Straw Man Fallacy

You twist and misconstrue your opponent’s argument to make it look weaker than it is when you refute it. Instead of attacking the real issue, you aim for a weaker issue based on your deliberate misinterpretation of your opponent’s argument.

“Those who are against universal health care are heartless. They obviously don’t care if innocent children die.”

Hasty Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)

“I’ve had three English instructors who are middle-aged bald men. Therefore, all English instructors are middle-aged bald men.”

“I’ve met three Americans with false British accents and they were all annoying. Therefore, all Americans, such as Madonna, who contrive British accents are annoying.” Perhaps some Americans do so ironically and as a result are more funny than annoying.

Either/Or Fallacy

There are only two choices to an issue is an over simplification and an either/or fallacy.

“Either you be my girlfriend or you don’t like real men.”

“Either you be my boyfriend or you’re not a real American.”

“Either you play football for me or you’re not a real man.”

“Either you’re for us or against us.” (The enemy of our enemy is our friend is every day foreign policy.)

“Either you agree with me about increasing the minimum wage, or you’re okay with letting children starve to death.”

“Either you get a 4.0 and get admitted into USC, or you’re only half a man.”

Equivocation

Equivocation occurs when you deliberately twist the meaning of something in order to justify your position.

“You told me the used car you just sold me was in ‘good working condition.’”

“I said ‘good,’ not perfect.”

The seller is equivocating.

“I told you to be in bed by ten.”

“I thought you meant be home by ten.”

“You told me you were going to pay me the money you owe me on Friday.”

“I didn’t know you meant the whole sum.”

“You told me you were going to take me out on my birthday.”

“Technically speaking, the picnic I made for us in the backyard was a form of ‘going out.’”

Red Herring Fallacy

This fallacy is to throw a distraction in your opponent’s face because you know a distraction may help you win the argument.

“Barack Obama wants us to support him but his father was a Muslim. How can we trust the President on the war against terrorism when he has terrorist ties?”

“You said you were going to pay me my thousand dollars today. Where is it?”

“Dear friend, I’ve been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition. Can we talk about our money issue some other time?”

Slippery Slope Fallacy

We go down a rabbit hole of exaggerated consequences to make our point sound convincing.

“If we allow gay marriage, we’ll have to allow people to marry gorillas.”

“If we allow gay marriage, my marriage to my wife will be disrespected and dishonored.”

Appeal to Authority

Using a celebrity to promote an energy drink doesn’t make this drink effective in increasing performance.

Listening to an actor play a doctor on TV doesn’t make the pharmaceutical he’s promoting safe or effective.

Tradition Fallacy

“We’ve never allowed women into our country club. Why should we start now?”

“Women have always served men. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it always should be.”

Misuse of Statistics

Using stats to show causality when it’s a condition of correlation or omitting other facts.

“Ninety-nine percent of people who take this remedy see their cold go away in ten days.” (Colds go away on their own).

“Violent crime from home intruders goes down twenty percent in home equipped with guns.” (more people in those homes die of accidental shootings or suicides)

Post Hoc, Confusing Causality with Correlation

Taking cold medicine makes your cold go away. Really?

The rooster crows and makes the sun go up. Really?

You drink on a Thursday night and on Friday morning you get an A on your calculus exam. Really?

You stop drinking milk and you feel stronger. Really? (or is it placebo effect?)

Non Sequitur (It Does Not Follow)

The conclusion in an argument is not relevant to the premises.

Megan drives a BMW, so she must be rich.

McMahon understands the difference between a phrase and a dependent clause; therefore, he must be a genius.

Whenever I eat chocolate cake, I feel good. Therefore, chocolate cake must be good for me.

Bandwagon Fallacy

Because everyone believes something, it must be right.

“You can steal a little at work. Everyone else does.”

“In Paris, ninety-nine percent of all husbands have a secret mistress. Therefore adultery is not immoral.”

 

Deep Work Lesson One: What Is Deep Work and Why Is It Important? Why Is Shallow Work a Curse to the Human Race? Why Are We So Maladapated to Multitasking?

 

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. What is Deep Work and why is it important?

Definition

Deep Work is distraction-free concentration on professional activities “that push your cognitive abilities to your limit.”

To give us a clear grasp of the focus required for deep work, Newport quotes Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges:

“Let your mind become a lens, thanks to the converging rays of attention; let your soul be all intent on whatever it is that is established in your mind as a dominant, wholly absorbing idea.”

Deep Work’s 3 Important Results

Deep Work has 3 important results: It creates new value, improves your skill, and creates unique work that is hard to replicate.

Science Supports Claims About Deep Work

Only through deep work can we maximize our intellectual capacity and see how far we can go with what skills and talents we have.

Neurological and psychological studies support the claim that pushing yourself in non-distracted focus and enduring mental discomfort in pursuit of your goals is the only way to improve your skills.

What Should be Obvious and Commonplace No Longer Is in the Social Media Age

It should be obvious that you need prolonged focus attention to maximize the quality of your work, and it should be commonplace that people follow such a principle.

However, in the age of social media, emails, messaging, and texting, we live in an age of Attention Fragmentation.

Shallow Work

The activities done in a state of multi-tasking and attention fragmentation amount to what Newport calls shallow work.

Shallow work has become the norm, the commonplace. We think it’s natural because everyone else does it.

But shallow work results in mediocrity at best, and more often than not shallow work results in us becoming “bottom feeders” in the competitive economy.

If we want to be on the top of the food chain, we have to engage in Deep Work, which means committing ourselves to losing our distractions.

It’s difficult to commit to deep work because we live in a culture that encourages shallow work. We work in multi-tasking work environments in which were required to instantly respond to email, text messages, not to mention people who are playing games and uploading images on social media sites.

Most people are in a fragmented state and are performing shallow work. What they do is easily replicated.

Shallow work also makes us unfocused, unhappy, depressed, and hollowed-out versions of ourselves.

Recent studies even show that huge declines in teen drug and alcohol use might be explained by drugs and alcohol being substituted with smartphone and social media addiction.

Two. What is the difference between influential people and most people who are employed in the “knowledge work” industry?

Influential people have one thing in common: They make deep work a priority. In contrast, most knowledge workers or white-collar workers do shallow work.

Three. What is shallow work and why is it so dangerous?

Shallow work is non-demanding busy “logistical” work that anyone can do. Shallow work is done in a state of distraction and multi-tasking.

In other words, shallow work is meaningless work, and we can safely conclude that meaningless work, while easy, will bore and depress us.

The vicious cycle of shallow work is the more we’re bored and depressed by our shallow work the more we crave distractions like social media sharing, so that we become trapped in a cycle of shallow work and depression.

When we get jobs that require shallow work, we reduce ourselves to “human routers,” and as such we are very replaceable by new software and new machines. Does anyone want a job that reduces them to a “human router?”

What adds to this tragedy is that as teens we become acclimated to being addicted to our smartphones, social media sharing, and multi-tasking so that at a very young age we are conditioning ourselves for shallow work and depression.

Another tragedy is that shallow work can cripple us so that we may never be able to deep work. As Newport writes: “Spend your time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.”

Four. What practical career matter does Cal Newport want to address in his book?

Newport is observing that as fewer and fewer people are engaging in deep work, deep work is becoming more and more prized so that to be able to perform deep work in this new environment makes one more sought after for the most desirable jobs.

In other words, committing yourself to deep work gives you a huge competitive advantage over shallow workers.

Newport presents this idea in his “Deep Work Hypothesis”:

The Deep Work Hypothesis: 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.

Newport uses the example of Jason Benn who was a replaceable worker doing spreadsheets. He did shallow work and found himself addicted to distraction like checking his emails all the time. When he got replaced by a computer program, he forced himself to learn computer programming, a task that only deep workers can do.

He had to re-condition himself, unplug himself from his “drug”: smartphone distractions, and go into deep work. Only after becoming a deep worker did he surpass others in his field of computer science.

Your friends who think they’re cool, hip, and sexy being plugged in to their smartphones all day and night are conditioning themselves to be bottom-feeders, depressed members of the Shallow Work Society. Do you want to join their ranks or be a Deep Worker? It’s up to you.

Five. Why is deep work more important than ever?

Newport observes that we entering the Intellectual Machine Age, also called The Great Restructuring, in which robots and high-tech are replacing a significant amount of jobs. This job loss if very scary to the workforce.

However, there are 3 fields that will provide “lucrative” income to the American workforce and all 3 fields require deep work.

Being a superstar and a venture capitalist are 2 fields, but those fields are not realistic for most of us. However, Newport points to a third field that should interest us: Being able to work with Intelligent Machines.

The types of majors that allow us to work well with Intelligent Machines are computer science, math, and statistics.

All 3 of these majors require deep work. You’re not getting anywhere if you’re on your smartphone all day and night.

Six. What is deliberate practice and why is it important to deep work?

To do deep work, one must engage in deliberate practice, which requires two things:

One, is prolonged focus and this strains the mind. However, the longer you do prolonged focus the more you develop the myelin plasma shafts in your brain, which become thicker like bigger broadband. They are fatty tissue that allow brain circuits to fire in your brain. The stronger these brain circuits become the more they can fire effortlessly and effectively.

Later Newport explains that oligodenrocytes wrap layers of myelin around the neurons “cementing the skill.” Only intense focus achieves this.

Shallow work, in contrast, weakens the myelin brain circuits. Transforming yourself from a shallow to deep worker requires a re-hardwiring of your brain circuits.

Two, deliberate practice requires that you receive feedback so that you can correct and improve your approach.

Deliberate practice produces higher quality work. As Newport writes:

High-Quality Work Produced= (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

(The above formulation applies to students’ essays as well)

Seven. What is the relationship between multitasking and “attention residue”?

When we switch back and forth between Task A and Task B (and maybe Task D and C?), we suffer from attention residue in which the previous task is soaking our brain with residue that we’re not focused on the task at hand.

The result is loss of focus intensity, and this leads to mediocrity. We’re drifting into becoming “human routers” and bottom-feeders.

 

 

Critical Writing

Applying your critical thinking to academic writing 

You will find that your task as a writer at the higher levels of critical thinking is to argue. 

You will express your argument in 6 ways: 

One. You will define a situation that calls for some response in writing by asking critical questions. For example, is the Confederate flag a symbol of honor and respect for the heritage of white people in the South? Or is the flag a symbol of racial hatred, slavery, and Jim Crow? 

Two. You will demonstrate the timeliness of your argument. In other words, why is your argument relevant? 

Why is it relevant for example to address the decision of many parents to NOT vaccinate their children?

Three. Establish your personal investment in the topic. Why do you care about the topic you’re writing about? 

You may be alarmed to see exponential increases in college costs and this is personal because you have children who will presumably go to college someday. 

Four. Appeal to your readers by anticipating their thoughts, beliefs, and values, especially as they pertain to the topic you are writing about. You may be arguing a vegetarian diet to people who are predisposed to believing that vegetarian eating is a hideous exercise in self-denial and amounts to torture. 

You may have to allay their doubts by making them delicious vegetarian foods or by convincing them that they can make such meals. 

You may be arguing against the NFL to those who defend it on the basis of the relatively high salaries NFL players make. Do you have an answer to that? 

Five. Support your argument with solid reasons and compelling evidence. If you're going to make the claim that the NFL is morally repugnant, can you support that? How?

Six. Anticipate your readers’ reasons for disagreeing with your position and try to change their mind so they “see things your way.” We call this “making the readers drink your Kool-Aid.”  

Being a Critical Reader Means Being an Active Reader

To be an active reader we must ask the following when we read a text: 

One. What is the author’s thesis or purpose? 

Two. What arguments is the author responding to? 

Three. Is the issue relevant or significant? If not, why? 

Four. How do I know that what the author says is true or credible? If not, why? 

Five. Is the author’s evidence legitimate? Sufficient? Why or why not? 

Six. Do I have legitimate opposition to the author’s argument? 

Seven. What are some counterarguments to the author’s position? 

Eight. Has the author addressed the most compelling counterarguments? 

Nine. Is the author searching for truth or is the author beholden to an agenda, political, business, lobby, or something else? 

Ten. Is the author’s position compromised by the use of logical fallacies such as either/or, Straw Man, ad hominem, non sequitur, confusing causality with correlation, etc.? 

Eleven. Has the author used effective rhetorical strategies to be persuasive? Rhetorical strategies in the most general sense include ethos (credibility), logos (clear logic), and pathos (appealing to emotion). Another rhetorical strategy is the use of biting satire when one wants to mercilessly attack a target.

Twelve. You should write in the margins of your text (annotate) to address the above questions. Using annotations increases your memory and reading comprehension far beyond passive reading. And research shows annotating while reading is far superior to using a highlighter, which is mostly a useless exercise. 

An annotation can be very brief. Here are some I use: 

? 

Wrong 

Confusing 

Thesis 

Proof 1 

Counterargument 

Good point

Genius 

Lame

BS

Cliché

Condescending 

Full of himself

Contradiction!

Evaluate Sources to Determine Their Credibility

UC Santa Cruz

Harvard

 

Two. How do we generate ideas for an essay?

We begin by not worrying about being critical. We brainstorm a huge list of ideas and then when the list is complete, we undergo the process of evaluation. 

Sample Topic for an Essay: Parents Who Don’t Immunize Their Children

1. Most parents who don’t immunize their children are educated and upper class.
2. They read on the Internet that immunizations lead to autism or other health problems.
3. They follow some “natural guru” who warns that vaccines aren’t organic and pose health risks.
4. They panic over anecdotal evidence that shows vaccines are dangerous.
5. They confuse correlation with causality.
6. Why are these parents always rich?
7. Are they narcissists?
8. Are they looking for simple answers for complex problems?
9. Would they not stand in line for the Ebola vaccine, if it existed?
10. These parents are endangering others by not getting the vaccine.

Thesis that is a claim of cause and effect: 

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children tend to be narcissistic people of privilege who believe their sources of information are superior to “the mainstream media”; who are looking for simple explanations that might protect their children from autism; who are confusing correlation with causality; and who are benefiting from the very vaccinations they refuse to give their children.

Thesis that is a claim of argumentation:

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children should be prosecuted by the law because they are endangering the public and they are relying on pseudo-intellectual science to base their decisions.

To test a thesis, we must always ask: “What might be objections to my claim?”

Prosecuting parents will only give those parents more reason to be paranoid that the government is conspiring against them.

There are less severe ways to get parents to comply with the need to vaccinate their children.

Generating Ideas for Our Essays

How do we prepare our minds so we have “Eureka” (I found it) moments and apply these moments to our writing?

The word eureka comes from the Greek heuristic, a method or process for discovering ideas. The principle posits that one thought triggers another.

Diverse and conflicting opinions in a classroom are a heuristic tool for generating thoughts.

Here’s an example:

One student says, “Fat people should pay a fat tax because they incur more medical costs than non-fat people.”

Another student says, “Wrong. Fat people die at a far younger age. It’s people who live past seventy, non-fat people, who put a bigger drain on medical costs. In fact, smokers and fat people, by dying young, save us money.”

Another heuristic method is breaking down the subject into classical topics:

Definition: What is it? Jealousy is a form of insanity in which a morally bankrupt person assumes his partner is as morally bankrupt as he is.

Comparison: What is it like or unlike? Compared to the risk of us dying from global warming, death from a terrorist attack is relatively miniscule.

Relationship: What caused it, and what will it cause? The chief cause of our shrinking brain and its concomitant reduced attention span is gadget screen time.

Testimony: What is said about it by experts? Social scientists explain that the United States’ mass incarceration of poor people actually increases the crime rate.

Another heuristic method is finding a controversial topic and writing a list of pros and cons.

Consider the topic, “Should I become a vegan?”

Here are some pros:

1. I’ll focus on eating healthier foods.
2. I won’t be eating as many foods potentially contaminated by E.coli  and Salmonella.
3. I won’t be contributing as much to the suffering of sentient creatures.
4. I won’t be contributing as much to greenhouse gasses.
5. I’ll be eating less cholesterol and saturated fats.

Cons

1. It’s debatable that a vegan diet is healthier than a Paleo (heavy meat eating) diet.
2. Relying on soy is bad for the body.
3. My body craves animal protein.
4. Being a vegan will ostracize me from my family and friends.

One. Checklist for Critical Thinking 

My attitude toward critical thinking: 

Does my thinking show imaginative open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity? Or do I exist in a circular, self-feeding, insular brain loop resulting in solipsism? The latter is also called living in the echo chamber. 

Am I willing to honestly examine my assumptions? 

Am I willing to entertain new ideas—both those that I encounter while reading and those that come to mind while writing? 

Am I willing to approach a debatable topic by using dialectical argument, going back and forth between opposing views? 

Am I willing to exert myself—for instance, to do research—to acquire information and to evaluate evidence? 

My skills to develop critical thinking 

Can I summarize an argument accurately? 

Can I evaluate assumptions, evidence, and inferences? 

Can I present my ideas effectively—for instance, by organizing and by writing in a manner appropriate to my imagined audience?