The simple secret of productive people

Quick tips on how to regain your ability to concentrate at work

Imagine the most productive person you know. The one who can do in a day what will take others a week. The one who quickly solves the most complicated problems.

That person who always makes everything look effortless.

What differentiates that person from the rest of us?

It’s NOT IQ, or some god-given technical ability (although some of them are).

It’s the ability to focus and work deeply.

The huge problem in today’s workforce is that in an 8-9 hour workday, we usually get only 1-2 hours of deep work. The rest of the time is wasted on shallow activities.

In Deep Work, Cal Newport covers HOW to get more deep work done, for a more satisfying life.

So what is Deep Work?

Deep Work is work that is:

• Important

• Rare

• Meaningful

It is work that requires a big part of your brain power and usually gives some unique value. Deep work can’t be done while distracted!

That’s the easiest test - if you can do a task during a Zoom call, it means it’s NOT deep work.

Shallow Work is the opposite - things you can do without engaging 100% of your brain. The ‘can-I-do-it-during-a-zoom-call’ test works here too, but there is another way to classify the shallow work:

If you take a person who just completed a Bachelor’s degree, teach them for a few months, and they can do the task with the same quality as you, it’s shallow work.

For example:

• Creating presentations.

• Answering emails & Slack messages.

• Working with Excel spreadsheets.

• Fixing small bugs.

Software engineering used to be a haven for people who enjoy deep work. There is a reason why software engineers are often depicted as working alone with their headphones in the basement. Nowadays, it’s becoming very hard to get those ‘deep work’/‘focus’ times.

So what can you do?

How to create more ‘Deep work’ in your life

Work Deeply

Duh. This is obvious, right? So why so few people do it? Because it’s so HARD!

Deep work requires you to be fully immersed, without any distractions. The length of time you can allow to be disconnected depends on your type of work. Newport suggests 4 main options:

1. A few months (for authors, researchers)

2. A few days (artists, innovators)

3. A few hours each day (most of the jobs, programmers included)

4. Chunks of less than an hour (mainly for managers, and people who can’t be disconnected).

The most relevant for most of you is the 3^rd option, - a few hours each day. The optimal amount of hours our brain can perform at the top level is only 4. Nothing to worry about though - most of us achieve barely a quarter of that...

No distractions means – no meetings, no emails, no Slack, no WhatsApp, no notifications!

To work deeply is to focus every bit of brain power on solving a problem. Newport’s research shows that modern life changed our brains. Test yourself - how long can you work without reaching for your phone, or visiting some website?

The average American smartphone user reaches for their device 352 times per day

If you are anything like me and you find it hard to work deeply - worry not!
You can still train your brain to be focused again - it just takes time and practice.

There are many different techniques to improve your focus, the most famous one being the Pomodoro Technique.

It doesn’t really matter which you choose - as long as you teach your brain how to be patient again. When starting a deep work period, Newport suggests setting a target, something feasible but hard to achieve, which will take all our efforts.

For example - let’s say want to practice, and set aside 60 minutes for deep work, to work on a specific programming task.

After 20 minutes, you get stuck, but you have your ‘non-deep’ time (where you can talk to people on Slack) only in 40 minutes. In this case - don’t break the deadline. Yes, even if it’ll take you longer to solve that problem - you’ll reap the long-term benefits of training your brain.

If you are “nothing-I-can-do-without-help’’ stuck (which should be very rare), you can move the deadline closer (for example 20 minutes from now), but never break the focus time immediately.

Embrace Boredom

Being bored without reaching for your smartphone is a very rare skill. You know, just sitting there, thinking some thoughts…
Turns out those moments are very important for our brains!

If we use our phones in every spare second we have, our brains don’t stand a chance.
It’ll be re-wired, and not be able to focus deeply anymore.

A simple technique for increasing our concentration powers is to cut off the internet and social media. Some people call it digital detox - giving up your devices for a short period of time. Newport is against that - doing a detox for one day a week is akin to one day of eating healthy food, and the rest of the week eating whatever you crave – it is not a very good diet…

To really increase your concentration ability, Newport suggests instead of setting times for not using the internet and social media, setting times for when you can use them.

Every type of job requires a different balance, but a good example is that every 2 hours, you can have 20 ‘free’ minutes. During that time you can answer emails and Slack messages, browse Facebook/Instagram/TikTok, and so on. Even 5 minutes every half hour is better than nothing - the point is to teach your brain to control the impulse, and not react to the craving.

Drain the Shallows

Make sure you have as little shallow work as possible, so it’ll be easier for you to get to the deep work.

Organize your emails and Slack, decide which messages can be ignored/responded to later, and what parts of your shallow work can be automated.

Quit Social Media

This one is the hardest to change. While Newport suggests completely quitting it, he acknowledges that it might be nearly impossible.

His simple advice is: define what are your goals in life/work, and examine if the tools you use serve those goals.

• Do you want to stay connected and know the latest news? Twitter is good for you.

• Do you want to build a network of friends and keep in touch with people? Facebook is your choice.

Just make sure it’s a choice, and not only a habit. I’ve closed my Facebook for a few months and felt a drastic improvement (but had to reopen it to search for an apartment…). Now the only social network I use is LinkedIn (and Substack, if you count it as one).

Final words

A life filled with deep work is a lot more satisfying.

Orel here:

Personally, I found Deep Work to be extremely useful.
I notice the urge to grab the phone from time to time when I get bored or when I wait for my lambdas to deploy quite often.

Ever since I read Deep Work and practiced having deep sessions, I realized that not only the code and articles I produce are much better, also my discipline has also improved significantly.

Take for example this session. It’s 10:35 and I haven’t done anything but write and wake up my girlfriend since 08:00.

Breaking the flow not only kills my concentration but also hurts my ability to do things like writing, which is hard for me, for more than 10 minutes.

So trust me when I say:
It’s worth the effort.

Cal Newport’s book recommendations

If you like the genre, you’ll enjoy some of the books Newport suggests. For an easy way to save them, I created the list in BookWiz for you.

What we enjoyed reading this week

1. The Tarzan method for your career - why sometimes you should take the path less traveled in

   The Engineering Manager

2. 19 startups that might just change the world - funny and surprisingly genius startup ideas you can steal, in

   Marketing Ideas

3. An engineer’s guide to talking to users in

   Product for Engineers