Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Cal Newport’s primary claim in the book is that cultivating the skills and habits for deep work will lead one to become far more productive in a measurable and lasting way. This will also help a person become more sought after in the labor market. Newport spends much time in the book discussing some of the consequences of living in the communication and information age. He examines the impact that networking tools have on one’s attention span and their ability to perform deep work.

Newport says:

In aggregate, the rise of these tools, combined with ubiquitous access to them through smartphones and networked office computers, has fragmented most knowledge workers’ attention into slivers. A 2012 McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a worker’s time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone (5-6).

His point is that just because someone is using these kinds of network tools, this does not make them productive in any real sense. Instead, behavior gives the appearance of productivity.

Newport refers to this phenomenon as “Busyness as Proxy for Productivity,” which he defines as: “In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner” (64).