Book Summary: Deep Work by Cal Newport
Are you a knowledge worker seeking the best way to concentrate on complex tasks? Are you struggling to find a balance between staying productive and maintaining work-life harmony? Enter Cal Newport’s bestselling book, Deep Work.
Thanks to this incredible resource, you can proceed confidently towards true mastery of your craft and an elevated level of satisfaction from career accomplishments.
Here is my summary of the Deep Work book by Cal Newport – packed full of key insights, invaluable advice, and a transformational challenge. Let’s get started!
Cal Newport is a bestselling author and computer science professor at Georgetown University. He has written several books on productivity, career development, and the intersection of technology and society.

His most well-known books include “Deep Work,” “Digital Minimalism,” and “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.” Newport’s work has been featured in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist.
So, with this out of the way, let’s dive into this Deep Work summary to learn something today:
Introduction
Cal starts his book with the definition of deep work: Personal 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.
A 2012 McKinsey study found that the average worker spends more than 60% of the workweek searching the Internet or using other electronic communication. And 30% of this work is reading and answering emails alone.
Deep work requires long periods of uninterrupted thinking; doing shallow work is the enemy of concentrated focus. Answering emails is the enemy of deep work. You get interrupted in your deep work whenever you open your email app. Cal calls this shallow work we’re doing.
Shallow work is noncognitive demanding tasks that are often performed while distracted. Therefore, these efforts don’t create new value in the world and are easy to replicate.
Deep work is a skill that has great value today. And unfortunately, we increasingly forget how to focus and concentrate on a single task. Instead, we distract ourselves from vital work by constantly answering emails and doing shallow work.
Deep Work Is Valuable
In our today’s society, there are two core abilities for thriving in the new economy:
- The ability to quickly master hard things.
- The ability to produce at an elite level in terms of both quality and speed
Hard things are, for example, learning computer code, becoming a world-class yoga instructor, and getting a doctor’s title in a particular area of medicine. Learning these skills requires that you hone your ability to master hard things.
And producing at an elite level means mastering the relevant skill is necessary, but more is needed. After honing that skill, you must transform that potential into tangible results that people value.
And being able to focus and work in long uninterrupted stretches is the foundation for mastering new things. So let’s look at the science of learning, concentration, and productivity.
Deliberate practice requires:
- Your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master.
- You receive feedback so we can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive.
By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you’re forcing the specific relevant circuit in your brain to fire repeatedly in isolation. And the only way to isolate the relevant neural circuit enough to trigger useful myelination (fatty tissue that allows the cells to fire faster and cleaner) is by focusing intensely and avoiding distractions.
In other words, to learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction.
Additionally, we need regular feedback on what we’ve done so far. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to check our progress. Without feedback, we wouldn’t notice whether we are on track or not.
Deep Work Is Rare
In 2013, Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer banned employees from working at home. After checking the server logs the employees used to log into the company service remotely, she decided this. The primary reason to log into the server is to check emails. And, in a sense, she punished her employees for not checking emails more.
“If you are not visibly busy,” she said, “I’ll assume you’re not productive.”
However, viewed objectively, the measurement of being productive is no longer by being visibly busy. Knowledge work is not an assembly line.
We must shut ourselves off from the outside world to concentrate on meaningful deep work. Yet, the issue in the modern business environment is that an employee’s productivity cannot be measured for knowledge work.
And this has consequences, as Marissa Mayer did, for banning employees from working at home. Only because she thought they were not productive. These employees were probably highly effective because they didn’t check email all day long.
To achieve more, deep work should be a priority in today’s business environment. But, unfortunately, it’s not.
However, for you, as an individual, there are good news. You are in control of systematically developing your personal ability to go deep – and by doing so, reap great rewards.
Deep Work Is Meaningful
We tend to place a lot of emphasis on our circumstances, assuming that what happens to us or doesn’t happen to us determines how we feel. Instead, our brains construct our world based on what we pay attention to. For example, if you focus on cancer diagnosis, you and your life become unhappy and dark. But if you focus instead on a date evening with your beautiful woman, you and your life become more pleasant. However, our circumstances, what happens to us throughout the day, are in both scenarios the same.
In short, who you are, what you think, feel, and do, and what you love – is the sum and what you focus on.
Another example of when we can do meaningful deep work is in a mental state called flow. Flow occurs when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits voluntarily to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
Most people assume that relaxation makes them happy. So, they want to work less and spend more time in the hammock. But, the study conducted by Csikszentmihályi’s ESM studies reveals something different:
“Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities, they have building goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work to concentrate and lose oneself in it. On the other hand, free time is unstructured and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.”
Human beings are their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.
Work Deeply
We have a limited amount of willpower that becomes depleted as we use it.
For example, you are in the middle of a distracted afternoon of browsing. In this unconcentrated state of mind, you draw heavily from your limited willpower when you switch attention to a cognitively demanding task.
If you deployed smart routines and rituals, a set time, and a quiet location, you would require much less willpower to start and keep going.
When we add routines and habits to our working life, we minimize the willpower used to switch between tasks. In short, we have much more capability for unbroken concentration when building a deep work ritual.
There is no right or wrong deep work ritual. But there are some general questions that any effective routine must address:
Where you will work and for how long:
Your ritual needs to specify a location for serious work efforts. This can be something simple as your desk at home with your door closed and a “do not disturb” sign.
A separate pillow, for example, in your bedroom can be your meditation ritual.
Other than a specific location, you also should set a time window.
How you will work once you start to work:
For example, you can give yourself an Internet ban once you’ve started working on your important task. Or you can keep track of a metric such as words produced per 20-minute interval.
You should give yourself these limitations, so you are not unnecessarily draining your willpower reserves.
How you will support your work:
The ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee or ensure access to enough food with the right type to maintain energy. Or you could listen to a Spotify playlist that supports improved focus.
Bill Gates, for example, regularly took Think Weeks, during which he would leave behind his regular work and family obligations to retreat to a cabin with a stack of papers and books. He aimed to think deeply without distraction about the significant issues relevant to his company.
The 4 Disciplines of Execution
The following section in Cal’s book is about the four disciplines of execution, or short, the 4DX.
Discipline #1: Focus on the Wildly Important
The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish. Therefore, you should focus and identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours.
Your goal should also return tangible and substantial professional benefits.
Discipline #2: Act on the Lead Measures
Once you have identified a wildly important goal, you must measure your success. There are lag measures and lead measures:
- Lag measures describe a thing you’re ultimately trying to improve. If your goal is to improve customer satisfaction, the relevant lag measure is your customer satisfaction scores.
- Lead measures keep track of the new behaviors that will drive success on the lag measures. In the customer satisfaction example, this can be customers who receive free samples. Your lag measures will likely improve as you increase the lead measures.
Discipline #3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
It’s crucial you have a public place to record and track your lead measures. A scoreboard creates a sense of competition that drives you to focus on these measures even when other demands cry for their attention.
Cal Newport writes about an example of a scoreboard he used. First, he divided a piece of card stock into rows, one for each week of the current semester. Then, as each week progressed, he kept track of the hours spent in deep work.
Additionally, he circled the day whenever he reached an important milestone on this day.
Discipline #4: Create a Cadence of Accountability
Rule number four is a habit of a weekly review in which you make a plan for the work week ahead. Ask yourself questions like:
- Did I focus on the most important tasks?
- What could I have made better this week?
- Did I achieve any small steps toward my goal?
Embrace Boredom
Having a long span of concentration is a skill that must be trained. This might sound obvious, but you must practice improving your focus and concentration.
Many people compare training their focus to a habit like flossing. But this is not the case.
You will struggle to achieve the deepest concentration levels if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom. People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage their working memory. They are chronically distracted.
People say: “Look, when I really have to concentrate I turn off everything and I am laser-focused.”
Unfortunately, they’ve developed habits of mind that make it impossible for them to be laser-focused. They never practiced it. And having a laser focus is a skill that must be practiced and learned repeatedly, or else this doesn’t work.
You could use a digital detox to improve your focus and embrace boredom. This ritual asks you to put aside regular time, for example, one day a week, where you refrain from network technology.
Or you could schedule a time in advance when you use the Internet and then avoid it altogether outside these times.
When boredom arises, you must fight through these situations with only the company of your thoughts. This is the most significant impact on training your focus and attention span.
Quit Social Media
Cal challenges readers to ban themselves from using social media for 30 days. Don’t announce that you will be signing off: Just stop using social media platforms.
After these 30 days, ask yourself:
- Would the last 30 days have been noticeably better if I had been able to use this service?
- Did people care that I wasn’t using this service?
By dropping off these services without notice, you can test the reality of your status as a content producer.
However, here is the harsh truth: Most people don’t even care that you weren’t using social media. They simply don’t notice whether one of their 1000 followers or friends isn’t there.
Maybe social media tools are the core of your existence. Maybe people write you a personal message asking who you are. Either way, you won’t know until you sample life without social media.
Drain The Shallows
Before we start this part of the Deep Work summary, here is the definition of shallow work again:
Shallow work is noncognitive demanding tasks that are often performed while distracted. Therefore, these efforts don’t create new value in the world and are easy to replicate.
In other words, try to treat shallow work with suspicion because its damage is often vastly underestimated and its importance vastly overestimated.
There are points while achieving your goal where this type of work is inevitable. But you must do them consciously with the ultimate goal of attaining more considerable success.
The best way to almost entirely eliminate shallow work is to plan your day ahead and schedule every minute of your day.
The goal is not to stick to a given schedule at all costs. It is instead to be conscious throughout your day in whatever you are doing. Rewrite your daily schedule again and again. It doesn’t matter. Important is that you work the whole day thoughtfully. By asking, “What makes sense for me to do with the time that remains?” ensures you don’t drift into shallow work.
You most likely underestimate how much time you spend on any task when you start planning your day ahead. But don’t worry. Just rework your daily schedule and stay on track.
You are more likely to stay focused and achieve more with a daily structure.
Deep Work Summary Key Takeaways
So, we arrived at the end of this book summary. Here are the most essential key takeaways from Cal Newport:
- Deep work, and the ability to have a laser-focus, are skills you must repeat to master them. Don’t compare it with a habit like flossing. It’s not the same.
- We have a limited amount of willpower. Don’t make it hard for yourself, and use helpful routines and rituals to minimize the willpower you use.
- Measure your goals with a visually attractive scoreboard. Make it fun to keep track of your progress.
- Don’t pick up your phone when you are bored for 5 seconds. Instead, stay in the present moment and stay with your thoughts. Boredom is nothing bad. It’s the opposite. Boredom enhances your creativity and gives you space to think more deeply.
- Quit social media for 30 days. If nobody noticed, delete it altogether.
- Plan your day ahead to avoid shallow work. Remain conscious of whatever you are doing throughout the day.
You can dramatically improve your concentration and productivity by practicing deep work and eliminating shallow tasks.
Read Deep Work quotes: Revolutionize Productivity With These 11 Deep Work Quotes
By being mindful of how much time you spend on specific activities, setting a schedule to stay focused, and taking regular digital detoxes when needed, you can reach more tremendous success in any task or project requiring intense focus.
With these principles in mind, it’s never too late to start working smarter instead of harder – so let’s get started!
Wish you the best, Fabian
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