For the last two months, I've been quite busy with two particular tasks other than my dissertation proposal: editing a fellow student's dissertation and working on the Lili Elbe Digital Archive (post on this later). I've been feeling a bit stressed about the fact that my own work has taken a backseat up until now. Given that I have several upcoming obligations in July (vacation, moving, visitors), I was worried that my dissertation proposal would have to remain on the backseat until nearly August, when a whole new crop of responsibilities would pop up (finalizing my new syllabus, for example).
When a fellow graduate student recommended "Deep Work" to me, I figured that if I were to ever benefit from learning more about time management and productivity, this would be the most useful time.
I found Newport's book extremely helpful, and, I have to admit, I don't usually like self-help nonfiction texts. I decided to summarize and reflect on a few of the topics in the book in case anyone stumbles upon this post, and to remind myself of the important points in future months. My plan for the post is to summarize main ideas and sections, then reflect upon what this means for my own work schedule and dissertation.
Newport begins by suggesting that "Deep Work" (def: "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") is undervalued and hard to attain in our modern, distraction-ridden work environment. Deep work would include things like writing my dissertation, or doing research. Deep work is the opposite of "Shallow Work" (def: 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.)
In the first half of the text, Newport argues that Deep work is "Valuable," "Rare," and "Meaningful." Valuable in the sense that great productivity and ingenuity can come from sustained deep work; rare in that most workspaces and environments don't actually facilitate deep work because of their layouts and insistence on interruption (meetings, email chains,); Meaningful in that psychologists and neurologists actually find that deep, interested, concise work actually makes us feel better about ourselves and our lives. By focusing very specifically on an important task at hand, we can turn off our distraction about annoying/troubling things in our lives and feel more accomplished and successful-- let alone more productive.
The second half the text is about how to integrate deep work into one's schedule, or how to make sure that you can optimize your time to do your work. Newport covers many of the most relevant topics that might be brought up-- social media, location you do your work, time management, etc. His chapters are "Work deeply, embrace boredom, quit social media, and drain the shallows." I'll briefly talk about each chapter.
"Work Deeply" was the longest chapter, and perhaps the most interesting. There are four plans that Newport lays out here for deciding what kind of deep worker you want to be. 1. Monastic (literally avoids all shallow work. I'm thinking of J.D. Salinger who lived in the woods and basically never came out.) 2. Bimodal (having on days and off days, multiple at a time. This works best for people who are easily distracted and need a hardline approach to really get into the deep work). 3. Rhythmic (having a chain of days where you accomplish deep work at a set time each day for many days in a row. Works best if you have mornings off, or a similar schedule every week). 4. Journalistic (squeezing in random moments in the day to set everything aside and do deep work for a short time. Newport gives an example of a friend leaving a patio party for 20 minutes to enter deeply and briefly into work mode).
Once you've entered your deep work mode, whichever type of schedule you choose, there are a few tips Newport provides that he gets from a book called The 4 Disciplines of Execution: 1.Focus on the wildly important 2. Act on the Lead Measures 3. Keep a compelling scoreboard 4. Create a Cadence of Accountability. I can see numbers 1,3,4 being useful for academics. The scoreboard is to list how many hours you're focused on deep work. Two other important points of the chapter are to ritualize and "be lazy." By this he means that a deep worker should make a space and time that speaks "DEEP WORK" to you, and that doesn't include your phone or other distractions. Also, include an end-time on deep work; don't let it be an all-out marathon everyday and drag yourself into mental exhaustion. Being lazy means that when you're in downtime, be in downtime. Don't check your emails, don't think about the tasks for the next day, etc. Really relax so that the next time you sit down to work, you can really focus.
The chapter entitled "Embrace Boredom" encourages you to top trying to get little dopamine hits from your smartphone at every turn. Waiting in line at the DMV? relax and be bored. Let your mind sit in boredom so that you're not needing distraction every 2 minutes when you're trying to work. I think this just sounds healthier anyways.
The next chapter is "Quit Social Media." I think this speaks for itself. The thing I found interesting in this chapter is something Newport calls the "any-benefit" approach to social media. If a person sees ANY benefit in using a service (like academic twitter, or instagram, etc.) then they'll sign up for it. Newport says that if it really affects your top priorities in your social life or career, then it's fine to keep that service. But for most people, we're spending valuable minutes looking at stuff that has basically no effect on us besides amplifying the amount of shallow work we have on our plates. Just because a service COULD help us doesn't mean we should sink minutes into it when they could be spent in Deep Work. It might seem obvious, but I think it's an important point to be really considered.
"Drain the Shallows" is just what it sounds like as well. He suggests letting emails go that are too vague or unimportant; reducing the number of small tasks you agree to do out of a sense of obligation. I feel like this could include things like excessive amounts of comments on student papers, though he doesn't mention that specifically.
My response to the book:
Newport isn't particularly writing about humanitarians, but he is writing about professors. Some points feel very business-world appropriate, or appropriate for tenured professors. I can't just ignore emails, and I don't try to raise profit margins by "acting on lead measures." However, I'm really interested in giving in to Deep Work; While I can't plan my exact schedule now, I can implement some of the things that impacted me from the text, like the following:
-Have a routine. Start at a certain time and work until your designated cut-off time.
-Work deeply as long as your brain can, but don't force it afterwards. He suggests stopping all work at 5:30, so that your brain can do work in the background while you relax. He says that most people can do about 4 hours of deep work in a day. I think that sounds about right. Note that this doesn't include shallow work or breaks.
-Hold yourself accountable to the things that matter. A calendar on the wall might help you if you put giant red Xs through days that you did your deep work. Deep work shouldn't include regular activities like grading, or preparing for class. Some of that might be deep work, but I think Newport isn't including that in his definition because it's repeatable and doesn't produce new information. I would probably argue this a bit with him, but it still wouldn't give me reason to put my dissertational work on hold to make a lesson plan for 2 hours.
-Disconnect at the end of the night and plan out your next work. This one is huge for me. Even when I was in junior high, I used to write silly little bullet points on a notepad next to my bed. They weren't even necessarily things I needed to do the next day; it was just anything I was thinking about. Then your brain feels like "ok. That's all logged. I don't have anything else to do tonight." I slept much better back then when I did that. I should probably do this again, and especially for work. I have an app that I plan to-do-lists for long term goals, but it would be helpful to review those goals before quitting for the day. Planning at the end of the work period lets you have an accomplished feeling and you don't have to worry about forgetting what you're working on the next time you work.
I hope to work at least 4 hours every day in deep work in my dissertation. This will include turning my phone off (or putting it away from my desk), having silence, not answering emails, and prioritizing this time for my own productivity.
At the beginning of this post I mentioned how I was worried about getting my dissertation proposal done before the summer gets busier, or ends. My initial reaction to only having a little over a week before my next obligation was of fear and hand-wringing-- what could I honestly hope to do in that time? I'll just be busy and get out of the loop with my thoughts and then have to start over later on. I don't feel that way anymore, even though I spent the first two days of my free time reading Newport's book. I will have a draft of my proposal done before I go on vacation! I'm excited to start, and I feel that Newport's book really gave me a double-shot of motivation.
Book is recommended to anyone starting a large project or wanting to get in a better headspace about work and productivity.