Reading Book Samples Led Me to Discover This Valuable Skill
And it is not "read a lot."
For the past few months, I have tried to increase my productivity levels. Put it this way, at the elite ranks. It’s so frustrating having to face the blank page every day without moving forward, let alone not posting daily.
However, this is how writers grow (at least I personally) by experimenting and repeating what works.
First, I experimented with switching my writing from night owl shift to early bird. I felt my productive needle move forward a bit. My mind was fresher after a slightly cold shower early in the morning.
I didn’t have to fight to get up early because I stayed up late. Before bed, I spent a short time planning the next day, focusing on organizing my mind.
To light the wick of my pen — that is — of my mind, I began my morning routine by reading a couple of articles to ignite creativity. It felt like my needle was shaking a little, but soon it went back to where it started. I even got up from my desk a few times to walk around and feel the sunshine — practicing the Pomodoro routine.
I have recently downloaded the Kindle app, and I bought several books on writing. However, reading and writing need to have their own separate time.
I have several samples that I need to read to see if I’m encouraged to buy the book. Suddenly, I received a notification from Kindle (another thing I need to turn off to be productive). It was a suggestion about a book by Cal Newport.
You guessed it! “Deep Work.” I instantly imagined from the title alone that it was about learning to focus deep while working.
From the beginning, I got absorbed entirely by the introduction. I felt that I was getting more sunlight through my window when reading it. It lit up my day and mind.
I’m going to share with you everything I absorbed that did me a lot of benefits. It is surprising how valuable the ability to focus profoundly is to achieve more quality, quantity, and speed results.
(I am not promoting the book, nor do I have any affiliation. I want to share how valuable the book “Deep Work” is for us — the people searching to increase productivity levels.)
Understanding Deep Work
First of all, Let’s start with the Hypothesis that Mr. Newport presents to understand it.
The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare while becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. Consequently, the few who cultivate this skill and then make it the core of their working life will thrive — Cal Newport.
This is Mr. Newport’s hypothesis, but it seems that this idea came from another person back in the twentieth century. The name was Carl Jung.
I don’t want to get deep into this character, but his idea made him successful.
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 — Carl Jung.
The book from Cal Newport gives us contingent examples of influential figures where a common theme is a commitment to deep work. Models like Mark Twain, isolated from the main house (for deep uninterrupted work) until his family sounded a horn to attract his attention for meals.
A recent example is the most notable writer J. K. Rowling who was famously absent from social media; her only tweet read: “This is the real me, but you won’t be hearing from me often, I am afraid, as pen and paper is my priority at the moment.”
Then the book talks about why we are losing familiarity with deep work and explains that it is due to the many tools and apps — supposedly to help us be more effective — but end up distracting us much more than they help us. A prominent example is social media networks.
All those networking tools have done is fragment our attention into pieces. The only thing we are getting is shallow work. They are distracting us from work requiring unbroken concentration, simultaneously degrading our capacity to remain focused.
So far, I have summarized the most important things that I read in the book sample.
I have seen two strands of thought: One about the growing shortage of deep work, and the other, about its increasing value, which creates the foundation for everything that continues in the book.
The book will teach you to take advantage of this reality by training your brain and transforming your habits to place deep work at the core of your professional life.
To cultivate the ability to produce real value in a growing and distracting world and acknowledge the truth embraced by many productive and influential personalities.
A deep life; it’s a good life.
Deep work is valuable, and it is becoming a key currency.
With all due respect to the author, I have found it difficult to simplify what I absorbed in the book sample — much more to explain it in my own words without changing the message and teaching depth.
But it has been a summary that was worth reviewing to get the best out of it.
To finish, I leave you with this profound paragraph of the book that deserves your special attention.
Deep work will help you master the art of fast learning complicated things. This task requires deep work. If you don’t cultivate this ability, you’re likely to fall behind technological advances. — Cal Newport
Thanks for reading!
Together we can learn better!
To live a better life: discover keystone habits that create a ripple effect, whose benefits expand to other areas of your life and, over time, improve it as a whole.
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