Anticynical #11: Working Deeply
Anticynical #11: Working Deeply
Deep Work, Architect Your Office.
Hey there 👋,
Welcome to the 11th edition of Anticynical! Last week, I published the first edition of Synthesis, where I wrote about common threads between the first ten ideas of Anticynical.
A quick announcement: I'm going to transition Anticynical into a biweekly newsletter. That is, you'll receive a new idea every two weeks instead of one.
I want to create another newsletter/blog related to programming, software, tech, and AI. I plan to work on the new thing every other week and similarly work on Anticynical every alternate week.
I still love writing Anticynical, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon!
This week's idea is working deeply.
Idea: Working Deeply
In a nutshell: Focused, uninterrupted mental effort not only enhances productivity and output quality but also provides a profound sense of fulfillment and meaning. With the right strategies, we can integrate such practices into our daily routines.
I first read Deep Work by Cal Newport in 2016, just a few weeks after its release. I was in my junior year of college then. Working more deeply was at least partially responsible for my grades jumping up in my junior and senior years.
Since then, I've committed to regularly working deeply, which got me through my CS Masters program with an almost perfect GPA and enabled me to get a job at big tech (Apple).
These days at work, I protect my deep work hours against a barrage of meetings and other interruptions. Thankfully, my manager is supportive of my tendency to negotiate myself out of unnecessary meetings.
In this essay, I will describe what deep work is, why it's important, and how to implement it.
What is deep work?
Here’s the definition from the book:
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.
When designing a new feature or application at work (I’m a software engineer), I spend hours nailing down various requirements, iterating through prototypes and experiments. I minimize distractions, and I am focused. This is one example of the kind of deep work I do at work.
Writing code to implement those features is another example. And writing essays like this is also deep work.
Checking and responding to emails is not deep work. Many meetings I attend at work are not deep.1
Why work deeply?
To produce greater value
Early in the book, Newport presents the following equation:
High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)
The first term in the product (time spent) makes obvious sense. Spending more time will produce more and often higher-quality work.2
When I first read Deep Work in 2016, the intensity of focus didn't seem all that important. As a student, almost all my study or work sessions had similar intensity, and I didn't have many data points varying over the intensity of focus.
Now, as a software engineer, I clearly see the effect of intensity of focus. To illustrate, when I'm working on hard problems,3 I've found that a day with zero interruptions is equivalent to two or three days with a few (one to three) interruptions/meetings. Even though I have double or more the total time in the 2-3 days with meetings, the intensity of focus allows me to make quicker progress with lesser time.
At least some of this is explained by the science of attention residue. According to Sophie Leroy, a business professor at the University of Washington, when we switch from one task to another, a "part of our attention often stays with the prior task [...] instead of fully transferring to the next one." This means that your "performance on [the second task] is likely to suffer, especially if [the second task] is cognitively demanding."4
To stand out in a distracted world
Newport presents an interesting hypothesis titled The Deep Work Hypothesis:
The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.
It's clear that by enabling you to produce greater value, deep work is valuable. But why is deep work "becoming increasingly rare"?
Studies after studies have shown that our attention span and ability to concentrate/focus are declining with increasing connectivity and social media usage.5
Further, organizations have been over-prioritizing things like rapid communication (Slack) and serendipitous collaboration (open offices) that make deep work more difficult.
These forces make it more and more difficult for deep work to thrive. If you can cultivate and protect your time for deep work, you'll stand out as being more effective and productive.
To create meaning and fulfillment
Newport uses three arguments to show that deep work can be a solid foundation for a meaningful life.
1. Neurological argument: This argument is based on the behavior science writer Winnifred Gallagher's Rapt. Gallagher reviews research across various fields--anthropology, behavior economics, education, etc.--to conclude that our brains construct our reality based on what we pay attention to. So if our life is filled with deep work, our world will seem "rich and deep in meaning," as Newport says.
2. Psychological argument: This argument is based on Csikszentmihalyi's work on flow. Based on a decade of research, Csikszentmihalyi says: "The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile." This is a description of the flow state of mind. Not surprisingly, deep work is highly conducive to the flow state.
3. Philosophical argument: This argument is based on Dreyfus and Kelly's All Things Shining. The authors suggest that craftsmanship--developing mastery and building an "intimate relationship" with a craft--is the way to find meaning and escape nihilism in the modern world. This process of mastery is arguably achieved through deep work.
How to implement deep work?
Schedule every minute of your (work) day
Divide your work days into task blocks, and assign some work--deep or shallow--to each block. I like to use calendar apps (Google Calendar or Apple Calendar) to create my task blocks.
I was surprised when I first implemented this. I got much more done and enjoyed work more than before. By setting my schedule, I could direct and have more control over my work. Additionally, when I kept track of my work day like this, the time wasted went way down.
Some might argue that scheduling every minute is too cumbersome or too inflexible. It doesn't have to be.6
I have a weekly template of how I want to spend my time (see image above). At the start of every day, I assign concrete tasks to every template task block. If I need to work on a task longer than the time I assigned it or if a new task pops up--no problem. After completing that task, I simply restructure the task blocks for the rest of my day. In modern calendar apps, this is merely dragging around or expanding/shrinking the task blocks and doesn't take more than a few minutes.
Startup and shutdown rituals
I like to start my deep work sessions the same way each time. I first clear up any clutter on my desk, if any. Then I make sure that I have water and coffee ready. Finally, I take three deep breaths and begin. This "primes" my brain, and I can more easily transition into a deep mode.
At the end of the work day, I update my "global tasks list," which (as the name suggests) lists all the tasks I need to complete in the next few weeks. I cross out completed tasks and write down the next steps for pending tasks. Then I take a few deep breaths and call it a day. This shutdown ritual cues our brain to put the work down and help combat the "Zeigarnik effect," which "describes the ability of incomplete tasks to dominate our attention."
Question: If you could architect your workplace or office, how would you design it?
What does your ideal office environment look like?
In Deep Work, architecture professor David Dewane talks about the Eudaimonia Machine—a building plan he conceived—"where the users can get into a state of deep human flourishing—creating work that’s at the absolute extent of their personal abilities." See this footnote7 for more info about it.
I'd love to hear from you…
How does deep work play out in your life?
Do you wish your office had more quiet places? Or do you wish that it were more lively?
Or anything else at all. Just hit reply.
That’s not to say that meetings cannot be deep. I have some meetings where there is a sense of deep collaborative work—where the participants have high levels of focus and create value together.
There's an obvious caveat here: there are diminishing returns to spending more time after a point. But this point of diminishing return can vary across tasks and be improved by training and experience.
Interruptions seem less bad for problems or tasks that are not so hard.
For example, in the book Attention Span, Gloria Mark shows that "two decades [of her research] shows that our attention spans are declining, averaging just 47 seconds on any screen."
There are techniques to make this scheduling even more flexible. I didn't include them all here for brevity, but you can find them under the chapter titled "Rule #4: Drain the Shallows" in the book.
The Eudaimonia Machine is "a one-story narrow rectangle made up of five rooms, placed in a line one after another. There is no shared hallway: you have to pass through one room to get to the next."
The five rooms, in order, are as follows:
1. Gallery. Here, the great works produced in the Eudaimonia Machine are on display. This room provides inspiration and some healthy competition and stress.
2. Salon. This room is like a cafe for discussion, debate, and brooding.
3. Library. This room is like the hard drive of the machine. It is a permanent record of all work produced in the machine.
4. Office space. This room is a conference room with whiteboards and cubicles. It is made for low-intensity or logistical tasks or "shallow efforts."
5. Deep work chambers. This room contains isolated 6x10 ft rooms with thick soundproof walls. As the name suggests, these rooms are for doing deep work.
Dewane imagines the users of the machine will "spend ninety minutes inside [their deep work chamber], take a ninety-minute break, repeat two or three times--at which point [their] brain will have achieved its limit of concentration for the day."