Stirring Point

This piece is a continuation of last week’s essay. For context, here’s a link to that entry: Thoughts on Deep Work. Note: All direct quotes in the below essay are attributed to Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work.

If you’ve toyed with carving out time for your deep work and have managed to do so without interruptions, there are four suggested philosophies on how to arrange your schedule. These approaches, while fruitful, are best served when we arrive at each session with our willpower fully intact. Willpower, as research has shown, functions like a muscle that breaks down with use. And like a muscle, it requires a period of recovery to replenish its stores, before its strength can be redeployed. What’s the most common culprit that depletes our willpower? Our desires.

Desires are constant and our minds swim from one thought to another like goldfish in a bowl. The author highlights this behavior using the following analysis:

“Consider a 2012 study, led by psychologists Wilhelm Hofmann and Roy Baumeister, that outfitted 205 adults with beepers that activated at randomly selected times. When the beepers sounded, the subject was asked to pause for a moment to reflect on desires that he or she was currently feeling or had felt in the last thirty minutes, and then answer a set of questions about these desires. After a week, the researchers had gathered more than 7,500 samples. Here is the short version of what they found: People fight desires all day long. As Baumeister summarized in his subsequent book, Willpower (co-authored with the science writer John Tierney), ‘Desire turns out to be the norm, not the exception.’”

The 5 most common desires that arose for the subjects were eating, sleeping, sex, taking a break from hard work, and checking email/social media sites (lumped in with surfing the web, listening to music, and watching television).

These findings present a problem for deep work. Humans are wired to be distracted by desires. Our minds are pulled toward mammalian needs, and our bodies are biologically required to satisfy many of them. Yet we’re also drawn to the flashiness of modernity and its many switchboards. Combining the two transforms us into factories of perpetual desire, not only for survival needs, but also through our attempts to satisfy our dopaminergic addictions, often driven by social acceptance or standing. And no matter how resilient we may perceive our minds to be, eventually all minds tire. When they do, satisfying a desire becomes our sole objective. Think water in the desert or a warm jacket in the cold.

Deliberate routines help us protect our “willpower batteries.” Fully charged, we’re able to squeeze the most out of our concentration for research and production. The author outlines the following four modalities to manage our time:

The Monastic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

“This philosophy attempts to maximize deep efforts by eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations.” 

Example:

• A person with highly specific goals who sets well-defined and uncompromising terms for their time. Think “university professor” or “researcher” focusing on a niche aspect of dense material that is largely inaccessible to the layman. Their work requires a commitment of time unhindered by email or visits from others. They are purposefully walled off during their periods of deep work (often for long stretches) to remove all potential disturbances. The aim is “to completely eliminate distractions and shallowness from [one’s] professional life.”  

The Bimodal Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

“This philosophy asks that you divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else. During the deep time, the bimodal worker will act monastically—seeking intense and uninterrupted concentration. During the shallow time, such focus is not prioritized.”

Example:

• One’s day job consists of email, instant messaging, meetings, calls, and presentations. The job’s demands keep deep work beyond reach, but on the weekends, one retreats to a quiet space for concentrated effort over the course of several hours. Think “writer’s shack,” a hotel room, or a bedroom in the house while everyone else is away. Large chunks of the day are scheduled and allocated.

The Rhythmic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

“This philosophy argues that the easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit.”

Example:

• This philosophy is also known as the “don’t break the chain” method. A physical calendar with a big red X marked through each day of achieved deep work is motivation to continue the process tomorrow. Of course, the quality of production matters, but more importantly, building strong, stable habits is of primary importance. The scheduled repetition establishes accountability and leads to consistent production over time. Set a time in the day to repeat the process. “Every morning at 6:00 a.m., I wake up and _____ for 60 minutes.”

The Journalistic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

“I call this approach, in which you fit deep work in wherever you can into your schedule, the journalistic philosophy.” Newport continues, “This approach is not for the deep work novice. [As noted in an earlier section], the ability to rapidly switch your mind from shallow to deep mode doesn’t come naturally.”

Example:

• Journalists “are trained to shift into writing mode on a moment’s notice, as is required by the deadline-driven nature of their profession.” This allows them to go deep for a period, as their minds have been calibrated overtime to capture, synthesize, and write up information at the drop of a hat. Most non-journalists haven’t honed this skill, and may easily fall victim to the distractions that surround this method.

Final thoughts:

The above is a chunk to bite off and chew, but when aiming to create work we feel is meaningful, we must allocate appropriate time and remove distractions. Duh, right? So why is it such a struggle to do so?

1. Because it’s hard.
2. Because the world constantly vies for your attention from all angles.
3. Desires guide almost every waking moment of our day.

Maybe you have no project in mind, no art to create, or no physics to explore. I’m certain, though, there’s an idea, an instrument, or a task you’ve flirted with and have yet to start. Deep work is the structure, the time, and the battering ram best suited to bash holes through the blockades listed above. There’s nothing enigmatic about the process, nor is it particularly profound. It is, however, a roadmap on how to establish strong skills and sound routines to produce challenging work in a distracted world.

Deep work is part of the effort, but alone, it’s incomplete. The ability to navigate the resistance encountered within deep work is equally important. Inspiration alone is not enough. 

Most of the creators we admire treat their art like a craft, and craft is a skill requiring constant work. A quote from David Brooks drives this idea home:

“Great creative minds think like artists but work like accountants.”