Deep Work

By: Cal Newport

Narrated by: Jeff Bottoms

Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive 21st-century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep - spending their days instead in a frantic blur of email and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.

In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules", for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the listener on a journey through memorable stories - from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business-class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air - and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide for anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2016 Cal Newport (P)2016 Hachette Audio

Critic Reviews

"This book changed my mind. It has moved me from 'find your passion, so that you can be useful' to 'be useful so that you can find your passion.' That is a big flip, but it's more honest, and that is why I am giving each of my three young adult children a copy of this unorthodox guide." (Kevin Kelly, senior maverick, WIRED magazine)

"'Do what you love and the money will follow' sounds like great advice - until it's time to get a job and disillusionment quickly sets in. Cal Newport ably demonstrates how the quest for 'passion' can corrode job satisfaction. If all he accomplished with this book was to turn conventional wisdom on its head, that would be interesting enough. But he goes further - offering advice and examples that will help you bypass the disillusionment and get right to work building skills that matter." (Daniel H. Pink, best-selling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind)

"Entrepreneurial professionals must develop a competitive advantage by building valuable skills. This book offers advice based on research and reality - not meaningless platitudes - on how to invest in yourself in order to stand out from the crowd. An important guide to starting up a remarkable career." (Reid Hoffman, cofounder and chairman of LinkedIn and coauthor of the best-selling The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career)

1.5x pace

Recommend listening at 1.5x pace to keep engaged throughout. Some dry points, but worth finishing as there are several actionable recommendations and ways to re-imagine how we spend our work and extracurricular time.

40 of 42 people found this review helpful

Taking a stance!

A great productivity book that takes a stance and offers concrete steps you can follow, to be more productive. *Productive* as in *increased creative output* – not "productive" as in David Allen's GTD, where productivity largely means "crankin' widgets and emptying your inbox" – a surefire system to "get busy – and *stay* busy – while feeling productive".

I recommend Cal's book to anyone entrapped in social media and/or email and IM. Especially those who're doing creative work like writing, artistic endeavours, innovation, etc.

If that's you, this book will set you free, unleashing your creative work, by giving it the space, time, energy and *respect* (from yourself) that it rightly deserves – and *needs* in order to thrive, evolve, grow, and be *shared* with the world, in a format that is *usefu*l to other people.

Drafts and ideas on your laptop is just that: drafts and ideas. To turn that raw material (of genius maybe) into something real and concrete: takes deep work. It is the *difficult* part. The crucial, tedious 80% of the creation process. Doing deep work requires dedicated time, space and energy. And taking a stance – respecting *yourself* and *your work* enough. To *do* the work. Your *deep* work.

57 of 61 people found this review helpful

Blocking off time each day to work without distractions will make you more productive

"Blocking off time each day to work without distractions will make you more productive" - This book

There, I just saved you another 7 hours.

147 of 160 people found this review helpful

Formulaic Self Help

This is another book in the Formulaic Self Help Genre. The formula is: Propose an idea that everyone already agrees with, and take it to an extreme, then reference a handful of rich and famous people and claim they sort of follow your extreme proposal, then give a multistep program to implement your proposal in the reader's life.

Most books in this genre have the same weakness, they fail to point out that most people that follow their program are not rich or famous. Such books also don't discuss the many other rich and famous people who do the exact opposite of the proposed method, yet achieve greatness.

In this case, Deep Work is focusing and avoiding distractions while working. Good advice. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that have great focus and avoid distractions while working but don't achieve greatness, because they are focusing quite deeply on the wrong thing. There are also a lot of people who create best with many people working together in a dynamic and distracting environment. Some with rock music, others with 10 screens of continuous data.

I am an introvert and don't engage in social media (never read or sent a tweet, check facebook about 3 times/yearm very limited email). I think the advice given would work pretty well for introverts, I am not so sure about this working for other personality types and work styles.

If you are an introvert with a social media addiction, this book may be helpful to you.
For me it was not worth my time.

The narration was OK for a self help book.
The PDF is basically just a list of references.

152 of 166 people found this review helpful

I quit Facebook after reading... And I love it!

Cal Newport writes a wonderful argument for doing the things that really matter in your life. He wrestles with those that disagree in a way that is very compelling. I am making life changes because of this book. Hopefully it will make me wealthier, healthier, and happier. Perhaps more important: more fulfilled, which I see as different from happiness. Enjoy the book.

23 of 25 people found this review helpful

Waste of time

Let me save you a few hours, this books is worth about three blog posts. The first half of the books is about why Cal believes Deep Work matters. Skip it, it's fluffy stories and motivation. The second half of the book is about how to do "Deep Work" If it's never occurred to you to restrict or remove email and social media then perhaps it's useful to read. There's a tiny section on block scheduling and a short section on improving focus and attention that could be useful, but are better already covered by Newport's Study Hacks blog.

67 of 79 people found this review helpful

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distract

The title tells you what is in the book. Indeed, there are many distractions in our everyday lives. Sometimes we do not recognize the distractions and we may not fully realize how even the minor distractions pull us away from our best work. For college students, like myself, I am always looking for a better, faster way to study and learn. Time seems to be my enemy robbing me of the time needed to finish projects and study for exams. After reading this book and taking allotted time without distractions I am now able to get more accomplished in less time. Originally I was not sure I could find more time, the time I did not have to begin with, to use the guidelines suggested in the book. Just the opposite happened and found the suggestions gave me more free time and made study more rewarding.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Great idea - beat to death!

Too redundant with way way way too many examples from academia. Really should've been 100 to 150 pages tops.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Reality and Cost of Social Flow,

The reality that shallow work pressures distract us from deep work has a significant impact on many people and organizations. Coming from the technology world where Agile development, open office, social collaboration is the trend, we need to be conscious of the impact this shallow work has on the deep work required to build strong foundations. The key to success will be finding the right balance.

12 of 14 people found this review helpful

One of the best books I have ever read

The premise of this book is that deep work is important - that it can change the world. I 100% believe this is true and it's helped me hone my craft to include substantially more deep work opportunities. Thanks Cal, this has helped me a lot.

12 of 14 people found this review helpful