Deep Work – The life-changing yet underrated concept.

In 2021, I had a significant problem with burnout from staring at my computer screen for about 7-8 hours, writing around 1,500 words per day. After a long time of suffering, I decided to find the cause and solution for several days because my body and brain were exhausted and won't be held any longer before being knocked out during typing.

Until finally, I came across the book 'Deep Work' by the author, professor Cal Newport, which is the book that effectively solved this chronic problem and fixed all those mental fatigue stuff.

While reading 'Deep Work', I discovered many exciting concepts, such as the modern work environment influencing and promoting knowledge workers to stay shallow. Still, the essential idea is the meaning of deep work, which is "a state of distraction-free where it will push your cognitive capabilities to the limit". 

This idea has changed my work principle. From sitting in front of the computer screen for 7-8 hours to get 1,500 words done. Right now, just 2 hours of intense focus was more than enough. And interestingly, I never experienced burnout from writing again after implementing this concept.

Also, the impact of deep work continues beyond immersing myself in an intense work session, which also affects my task priority management because the author suggests that our brain power or cognitive capabilities are like physical strength, which has limits. 

TBH, when I first implemented this concept, one hour of deep work was all I could endure. It's a challenge that makes me think about which tasks I should use this limited time and cognitive capabilities and gives me the highest value.

In addition to the priority-setting idea, 'Deep Work' also inserted another one: quitting social media. (Literally, this is the idea that Prof.Newport was fascinated by so much, which made him expand it into another book of his, 'Digital Minimalism'.)

This concept, 'Quit Social Media', is simplified around the any-benefit approach, which is the act of justifying any possible benefit to its use. Simply put, it's the idea that makes us analyze the advantage of using social media if it is worth the price we must pay.

As you see here, the fact that I chose to use LinkedIn as a platform to write articles has already been evaluated, and it's worth enough for me to use and stay on this platform. Meanwhile, I chose to quit Instagram because the benefit I possibly get is not worth the diminished attention span and my self-image will undoubtedly worsen.

From my story with deep work, you may notice how much this concept has impacted me. And my argument here is that deep work is an underrated concept.

Even in 2022, which will change to 2023 within two weeks, the environment and culture in the modern working society still encourage many knowledge workers to expend their cognitive capabilities on shallow tasks, at least in Thailand. 

Employers still expect a timely e-mail response from an employee, or the occurrence of many pointless meetings, without clearly defined boundaries for participants. These unoptimized working cultures let knowledge workers inevitably waste their limited cognitive capabilities on the shallow instead of depth one. 

And, of course, there must be knowledge workers who justify that their job positions cannot apply the concept of deep work. For example, the one job that I heard many arguments coming from is sales executive. They said they must keep in contact with a client, input data in CRM, attend meetings with the team, etc. While I initially agreed with this argument, after reading another great book, 'Fanatical Prospecting' by Jeb Blount, I immediately realized that all these arguments = excuses.

No matter what kind of system that sales executive is working on, they need to do outreach because it's one of the sales executive's daily tasks, and here's where deep work comes into play. In 'Fanatical Prospecting', Jeb Blount calls this intense outreach moment 'The Golden Hour', the same concept as deep work, which is the fierce period for putting all the cognitive capabilities into the outreach session through the cold calling method; the most uncomfortable way for many sales executive :)

As a Christmas gift for you, in this article, I have a simple criterion which you can implement to assess whether you need to apply the concept of deep work. If the answer is yes to all three, I recommend adapting it to your daily life.

• Your work is not a day-to-day routine.
• Your work needs creativity.
• Your work will be assessed by quality, not the number of hours you put in.

So, from all the content I have shared, I hope you will be able to know whether it is essential to implement deep work or not. If you are still unsure of this concept, I highly recommend you check out the book 'Deep Work' by Professor Cal Newport, as it will solve all your doubts. [Also, his explanation of this concept is much more precise and transparent than mine.]

Please do not hesitate to share any thoughts with me if you find something useful or if you'd like to have a more in-depth discussion, feel free to directly messaging through my LinkedIn profile.

Thank you for reading up here.

Have a great day.

Patrick Gunn