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What is deep work?

Deep work is work that requires your distraction-free focus. It’s work that taxes your brain just the right amount. And it’s work that actually makes a difference – whether that’s delivering a meaningful project in your job or work that takes your personal development to a new level. 

Doesn’t that sound great? Does it relate to your actual work life? If not, the four rules for deep work below are for you!

The term deep work was coined by computer science professor Cal Newport. In his book Deep Work: Rules for Success in a Distracted World, Newport defined deep work as…

“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.”

Cal Newport and deep work

Seeing as Cal Newport invented the term ‘deep work’, and wrote a book about it, it’s only fair that you check out what he’s getting at. 

First, let’s establish his credentials. 

Who is Cal Newport?

On top of being a computer science professor at MIT, he’s a prolific writer on the topic of productivity and success. His first few books focused on being a top student (How to Win at College, How to Become a Straight-A Student, How to Be a High School Superstar). 

He then turned his attention to

work and lifestyle, with books such as So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Digital Minimalism, Deep Work, and most recently A World Without Email (we know, quite the bold idea). 

He’s got multiple New York Times bestsellers to his name. He’s a contributing writer for The New Yorker (where he once namechecked FLOWN, swoon!). He also runs a podcast called Deep Questions, and has consistently written on his Study Hacks blog since 2007. 

On top of that, he holds down his job as a professor, publishing academic papers like they’re going out of fashion. (Were academic papers ever in fashion? Not sure, but you get what we mean).

So, Cal Newport knows a thing or two about being productive, and getting stuff done. 

Deep Work: the central hypothesis

The central hypothesis of Deep Work is a call to arms for knowledge workers who want to get on in their careers, and have a better relationship with work. 

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy,” writes Newport. “As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

What does this mean? 

It means that we live in a distraction economy. The biggest companies in the world – Meta, Twitter, Google – are spending zillions of dollars with the sole purpose of distracting you. They hire the best brains straight out of college to find increasingly sophisticated ways to get your attention. 

At the same time, the world of work is becoming increasingly distracting. We’ve all embraced technology, particularly during the pandemic and in the post-lockdown era. But this means that our attention is regularly hijacked, thanks to the little green ‘Available’ sign on all our work apps. 

In this context, it’s a wonder that anybody gets anything meaningful done at all. Indeed, many workers feel constantly overwhelmed and consumed by their inbox. Do you get to the end of the day and feel like you’ve been working non-stop with nothing to show for it? 

When Cal Newport says “the few who cultivate this skill [deep work], and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive”, he’s looking at you. 

Deep work versus shallow work

We’ve already told you Newport’s definition of 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.”

So what is the opposite of deep work? Shallow work. Over to Cal…

“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.”

How do you feel about your days at work now you’ve read these definitions? 

Shallow work isn’t just the opposite of deep work. It’s also its arch enemy. Because while you’re engaged in shallow work, you cannot begin to think about deep work. That work that’s going to make you feel good, and might even advance your career? It’s not going to happen. 

Newport writes in Deep Work that modern work is conditioning you to live in a cycle of shallow work and shallow distraction. 

“In an age of network tools…knoweldge workers increasingly replace deep work with the shallow alternative—constantly sending and receiving email messages like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction.”

It’s a bleak outlook. But the benefits of retraining your mind for deeper work are immense. Indeed, FLOWN has created a load of tools purely to help frazzled knowledge workers do just that. 

The benefits of deep work

Let’s forget the doom and gloom. Embracing a deep work lifestyle is absolutely doable for you. And it brings a host of benefits. 

Do more in less time

According to one seminal study at the University of California, it takes 23 minutes to recover your focus after a distraction. Consider how many times you’re distracted in a day. The implication is horrifying for a messaging-addled knowledge worker.

In a typical seven-hour working day, it would require 18 distractions to prevent you spending any time whatsoever focused on a task.

Extrapolated like this, it explains how you can go a day working full pelt with nothing to show for it at the end. 

What’s the flipside? If you can learn to block out distractions, you’ll be streets ahead of your peers when it comes to focusing and making progress on your projects. 

You’ll be prioritizing the work that makes a difference, rather than spending your days responding to messages and your evenings trying to catch up on the meatier pieces.

TIP: Use an app such as Freedom to block distracting websites and apps on all your devices. FLOWN members get a great deal on Freedom through our member perks. 

Achieve better quality of work

A by-product of the banishment of distraction is better quality of output. If you’re a ‘knowledge worker’, you’re paid for your knowledge – your ability to think critically and solve problems. 

Shallow work means you don’t get the mental space and actual time to deliver any critical thinking or problem solving. 

Committing to deep work means you’ll actually deliver on your remit – and you’ll be demonstrating your value to whoever marks your homework, be that your client, your boss, your editor or your team. 

Enhance your career with deep work

This is what Cal Newport means when he says that deep work is “becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable”. 

If you, as a knowledge worker, repeatedly deliver better output as a result of your commitment to deep work, you’ll be noticed. You’ll also be forgiven for setting your status as ‘Do Not Disturb’ for several hours a day. 

Deep work and wellness

Quite apart from your performance at work, deep work is a recipe for feeling better about your life. Constant distraction is stressful. It triggers the fight, flight or freeze response in your brain and makes you feel like you’re getting nowhere (because you are getting nowhere). 

A deep focus on an absorbing task is central to a human being’s feeling of fulfillment. The highest human need in Maslov’s hierarchy of needs is self actualization – ”the desire to become the most that one can be”. Deep work enables you to do this. 

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Deep Work: the central hypothesis

The central hypothesis of Deep Work is a call to arms for knowledge workers who want to get on in their careers, and have a better relationship with work. 

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy,” writes Newport. “As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

This is what that would look like if you tried to flow text around it.

Deep Work: the central hypothesis

The central hypothesis of Deep Work is a call to arms for knowledge workers who want to get on in their careers, and have a better relationship with work. 

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy,” writes Newport. “As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

Deep Work: the central hypothesis

The central hypothesis of Deep Work is a call to arms for knowledge workers who want to get on in their careers, and have a better relationship with work. 

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy,” writes Newport. “As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

The central hypothesis of Deep Work is a call to arms for knowledge workers who want to get on in their careers, and have a better relationship with work. “The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy,” writes Newport. “As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy,” writes Newport. “As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

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Deep Work: the central hypothesis

The central hypothesis of Deep Work is a call to arms for knowledge workers who want to get on in their careers, and have a better relationship with work. 

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy,” writes Newport. “As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

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“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy,” writes Newport. “As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy,” writes Newport. “As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

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“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.”

Cal Newport and deep work

Seeing as Cal Newport invented the term ‘deep work’, and wrote a book about it, it’s only fair that you check out what he’s getting at. 

First, let’s establish his credentials. 

“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.”

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