Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Quite shallow. He uses himself and Carl Jung as exemplars of the method - "I published 4 books in 10 years" and so on - but why should I judge either of them to have made a positive impact, merely because they published a lot?
Lots of cherry-picked anecdotes in the normal bad self-help mode, with no attention to survivorship bias. Deep Work has the same feel as the disgraced Why We Sleep : empirically sloppy exaggeration of a plausibly ultra-important topic. Unlike Walker, Newport is not explicitly claiming scientific authority though.
The topic is networked technology as a force against individual productivity. There's a weak and a strong form:
Weak: "You need to focus to do great work, or to learn new hard things. And work on the Internet is extremely vulnerable to distraction and tends to be less focussed."
Strong: "The always-on fragmentary state of being caused by addictive technology is disabling. It has lasting developmental effects, reducing your attention span, serenity, perspective." (Lanier, Carr.)
Newport makes both claims ("Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work."), and the strong one is poorly justified to say the least. But the weak form is plausible and important enough on its own.
I wondered how much this was just a rehash of the Flow idea, and in fact Newport does give it its due. It seems fair to update the idea after 40 great years of tech and the culture of tech. (I had no mobile phone until I was 17, no smartphone until I was 27. My abstinence would be much harder now.)
The weak evidence could be forgiven if the claims were weaker, or if the tone was less pompous. Plus two stars for being about an important possibility, minus one for being unrigorous, minus one for tone.
Things I try to do:
* Track your amount of deep work hours every day.
* Protect your morning: get out of bed quickly and don't browse.
* Do "time blocking", earmarking a whole day for focused work
* Batch shallow work (emails, meetings) in one time slots, probably the evening.
* Leave your phone in a different room.
He talks about scheduling your entire day, which I suspect is perverse. And "become hard to reach" is only possible for people who are already successful / in particular careers. ymmv.
Lots of cherry-picked anecdotes in the normal bad self-help mode, with no attention to survivorship bias. Deep Work has the same feel as the disgraced Why We Sleep : empirically sloppy exaggeration of a plausibly ultra-important topic. Unlike Walker, Newport is not explicitly claiming scientific authority though.
The topic is networked technology as a force against individual productivity. There's a weak and a strong form:
Weak: "You need to focus to do great work, or to learn new hard things. And work on the Internet is extremely vulnerable to distraction and tends to be less focussed."
Strong: "The always-on fragmentary state of being caused by addictive technology is disabling. It has lasting developmental effects, reducing your attention span, serenity, perspective." (Lanier, Carr.)
Newport makes both claims ("Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work."), and the strong one is poorly justified to say the least. But the weak form is plausible and important enough on its own.
I wondered how much this was just a rehash of the Flow idea, and in fact Newport does give it its due. It seems fair to update the idea after 40 great years of tech and the culture of tech. (I had no mobile phone until I was 17, no smartphone until I was 27. My abstinence would be much harder now.)
The weak evidence could be forgiven if the claims were weaker, or if the tone was less pompous. Plus two stars for being about an important possibility, minus one for being unrigorous, minus one for tone.
Things I try to do:
* Track your amount of deep work hours every day.
* Protect your morning: get out of bed quickly and don't browse.
* Do "time blocking", earmarking a whole day for focused work
* Batch shallow work (emails, meetings) in one time slots, probably the evening.
* Leave your phone in a different room.
He talks about scheduling your entire day, which I suspect is perverse. And "become hard to reach" is only possible for people who are already successful / in particular careers. ymmv.