What if you developed study hacks in the same way that a monk approached their spiritual study or practice? Would it lead to greater productivity or a greater sense of purpose in your academic writing or work? According to a new book by Cal Newport, the answer is yes.
Deep Work is a self-help book by Cal Newport on the importance of learning to concentrate intensively to quickly and efficiently complete cognitively demanding (or hard) tasks. The author believes that this ability is essential to prosper or "win" in a modern economy and allows us to outcompete those unable to master such a skill.
More importantly, the book is a continuation of themes that teh author has written regarding study hacks. So we believed it would be ideal to learn some study hacks from it. Deep work involves a process of intensive concentration to accomplish difficult tasks, akin to traditional and highly skilled craftwork such as traditional ironworking.
Although inefficiently written and narrow in scope and worldview, the book provides a handful of effective strategies that academic scholars, students, and others could implement to make their academic writing more efficient.
In this article, we are going to discuss them here.
What is Deep Work and why is it needed?
The book describes what deep work is in its first section. It portrays deep work as a scarce commodity in an increasingly distracted world. According to Newport, the increasing rarity and value of this commodity mean that if you cultivate it as a skill, you'll win in the modern economy driven by rapidly expanding digital technology.
The winners of the new digital-based economy can be divided into three groups: 1) high-skilled workers, 2) superstars, and 3) owners. The first two categories are not clearly differentiated from each other, but we try to explain them here:
High-skilled Workers. This refers to highly skilled professionals who know how to work with intelligent machines. An example of this type of worker, according to the author, is Nate Silver, who used a complicated statistical model to predict the 2012 election results in the US.
Superstars. This also appears to describe highly skilled or talented workers who benefit from the phenomenon of "the winner takes all" philosophy. This is based on the idea of a flattened global talent marketplace. This principle is best explained by talented artists such as singers. Global media and communications mean that local consumers will choose a global superstar or highly talented performers over their own local talent.
Owners. This refers to people who own massive amounts of capital to invest and own the new technologies that are defining the new economy.
According to Newport, to win most people should strive to be either highly skilled workers who know how to work creatively with the "new machines" of the digital economy or superstars, who are so good at what they do, their talent inspires global demand at high prices.
The book asserts that the ability to achieve either one of these two positions relies on:
The ability to quickly master hard things
The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quantity and speed.
The book goes on to explain that deep work helps you to do just that and the second portion of the book provide practical strategies to implement deep work.
Carl Newport compares deep work to rare traditional crafts that require a high level of skills and concentration to execute, such as ironworking.
Study hacks from the book
We particularly like the second portion of the book which focuses on practical strategies to achieve deep work. The strategies that he advocates are as follows:
1. Work deeply
The author advocates setting apart time to work intensively without any sort of distraction. This means not switching between intensive work and other shallow work, such as checking emails and other social media. But instead intensively concentrating for hours at a time.
2. Embrace boredom
This is based on the idea that instead of taking breaks from distraction, you should take breaks from focus. This means bundling all distractions such as scrolling through social media into a limited time frame, maybe an hour or two. The majority of your working time should be based on practicing deep work.
3. Quit social media
The most controversial strategy involves quitting social media. The author believes that social media has close to zero value and is part of the reason for an increasingly distracted world. To set yourself apart from the inefficient and distracted masses, quitting social media is the only logical step.
4. Drain the shallows
This refers to eliminating all shallow work. This means getting rid of or significantly reducing tasks that require no deep work. He suggests rigorously scheduling every minute of your day as a solution.
What not to like
The cons of the book can be summed up in two points: 1) the author takes too long to state his point and 2) speaks from a very narrow perspective.
Lengthy case studies of individuals to begin and illustrate almost every chapter or every major point the author makes defines the first problem. The second problem is that deep work and most of its associated principles are narrowly defined as the work and interests of the author himself.
1. Too long to get to the point
The book is divided into two major sections--"Part 1: The Idea" and Part 2: The Rules". Part 1 describes the context and meaning of deep work, while Part 2 describes strategies or rules that can be implemented to practice deep work.
The author consistently ignores the advice we give here on this blog about getting straight to the point when writing. Newport takes his time to introduce his ideas. And he invariably does so by using lengthy anecdotes describing his personal encounters with people that he deems interesting and important.
Every chapter of the book apparently begins with a lengthy case study or encounter with these "interesting" individuals, which drags on for pages before the wider point or principle is clearly stated. The first part of the book in particular suffers from this problem. It probably could have been reduced to a single chapter in the name of efficiency.
2. Too narrow
As mentioned earlier, Newport relies heavily on personal anecdotes of individuals that he deems exemplary of the deep work ethic. Almost every single one of these individuals resembles the author. They all work either in academia or the computer sciences.
This is seen in the definition of "superstar" in Part 1 of the book, where a concept normally applied to popular artists and entertainers is used to describe highly skilled computer programmers.
The overall goal of the book is to "win" in a highly competitive economy driven by advancements in digital technology. His definition of winning appears to apply only to a narrow niche of professionals.
Final thoughts
Deep work, although limited in its perspectives, provides several strategies to study academic writing intensively and to develop study hacks that work. Every student can likely benefit from focusing intensively on problems and training their minds to do so regularly.
However, it also includes the impractical extremes of avoiding social media completely, which is hard to do in a world where social media has become part of academic and business models.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, August 17). Study Hacks: The Deep Work Method. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/study-hacks |
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