What is deep work?

Why deep work matters

The three laws of deep work

Deep work isn’t just about work

The underrated skill of daydreaming

The hidden value of exploration, part I

The hidden value of exploration, part II

Why you need to laugh more, part I

Why you need to laugh more, part II

Why you need to take play more seriously

What is deep work

I know what you’re thinking.


Deep work is about getting things done. Right? It’s about producing ultimately; execution. Outcomes are the sole point of emphasis. But it’s not true.


See, if we’re to fully exploit the tenants of deep work and take advantage of and experience the many powerful benefits that they’re able to render, then this can’t be so much about doing, as it is about being.


Deep work is not just a method. It has to become a lifestyle.


What do I mean by that? See, the story goes that Hermann von Helmholtz, which is not an easy name to say by the way, he was a physicist in the latter part of the 19th Century. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist, actually. And during the dinner to celebrate his 70th birthday back in 1891, he decided to explain his award-winning insights to his dinner guests. And he did so by saying that inspiration never comes whilst you’re seated at your desk.

His point being that after running through or thinking deeply about a particular problem, you would often need at least an hour of what he referred to as “mental and physical renewal” before any good ideas would ever come along. And actually, his best insights often emerged to him whilst he was walking in the sun on the wooded hills.

See, Von Helmholtz belief that deep work, followed by intentional and meaningful intervals of rest, was actually the secret to developing creative insights. And the intriguing or interesting thing about this particular realisation is not just a quirk of some 19th-Century genius’s temperament, but it’s actually to do with a particular aspect or feature of the brain that we can all leverage and make use of.

Attention restoration theory – that’s what it’s called – was actually first discovered by a couple of psychologists back in the 1980s by the names of Rachel and Stephen Kaplan. They suggested that concentrating required the brain to engage in what they referred to as “directed attention” – a particular kind of engagement that is actually a limited or a finite resource.

Think of it like sprinting. Oftentimes the body can do it, but only for limited intervals of time, after which a period of meaningful rest will be required before the body is able to operate at that same optimum level once again. And the same is true of the brain. Concentrating is a finite resource. Once you’ve exhausted it, you cannot perform at the same cognitive optimum full level, which means that rest is absolutely key.

But not just any kind of rest. See, going for a walk like our friend Hermann von Helmholtz was often prone to doing (and like I’m doing right now actually), can be a powerful benefit. But only if done correctly. Walking amidst a busy city street is liable to engage a lot of the same mental processes and neural pathways that we’re actually trying to rest, especially if we’re interested in trying to develop a sustainable deep work practice that we can actually maintain across the long haul.

Whilst walking in nature, on the other hand, as I am right now here in the beautiful grounds of Homewood Hotel in Bath (which is actually one of our FLOWN properties precisely for this reason), actually allows those same mental processes and neural pathways to rest. Whilst also providing just enough stimuli to ensure that our attention is not directed to any one particular thing.

And this isn’t a matter of opinion. At this point, this is actually a scientifically verifiable reality that has been corroborated and demonstrated across a variety of different contexts and studies, each of which have shown that taking meaningful periods of intentional rests specifically in nature, is one of the primary means through which our cognitive capacities can be replenished and restored.

But what’s really intriguing about this and what we’re actually going to discover is that not only is this kind of rest a wonderful opportunity through which we can refresh our cognitive capabilities. When it’s done correctly, it can also enhance them.

Deep work isn’t just about work

What Next?