Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You are books both written by the same author (Cal Newport) and were recommended to me at the same time. With no reason I decided to start with the later and I just finish reading the former. Deep Work is a masterpiece tactical companion to So Good They Can’t Ignore You. The crux of the book is that there are two kind of work we do; deep work and shallow work. The author begins by specifically defining both, noting;
“Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”
“Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.”
The author divides the book into two parts. Part I is about why Deep Work is necessary in information economy. Part II is how to achieve Deep work.
It was not hard for the author in part one to convince me about the internet chipping away my ability to concentrate and contemplate. Deep Work is required to must master the art of quickly learning complicated things in this information economy. The author argues “This ability to learn hard things quickly, of course, isn’t just necessary for working well with intelligent machines; it also plays a key role in the attempt to become a superstar in just about any field—even those that have little to do with technology.”
In part II the author presents types of Deep Work philosophy to choose from. Here are three advices that got my attention:
- Quit Social Media
- Don’t Use the Internet to Entertain Yourself
- Execute Like a Business (here I came across to a must read book titled The 4 Disciplines of Execution).
The studies and research on the internet the author shares in this part helps me to understand why I’m still struggling to get viewers on my personal portfolio and audience/followers on my twitter profile. As it turns out, I had already practiced most of the philosophies the author advises. (I recently started using twitter and Facebook as tools to learn how APIs work when integrated with my personal portfolio website.)
Generally, it’s a solid read with number of good anecdotes and quotes that have provoke my cognitive capability and contemplate doctoral PhD program partly because it was written from an academic perspective. I’m recommending this book to anyone who is looking for tactics that will enable him/her to fulfil ambitious goals and eventually to experience what it means to live, and not just existing.
