In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport, an American author and professor, explains the value of focus in this ever-distracting world. Today, the ability to focus on a task is becoming increasingly rare, and at the same time, increasingly valuable. Most of us are aware that we are facing this challenge, given how much we enjoy holding this mobile device in our hands, yet, we don’t seem to get rid of this problem. How to focus? And more importantly, what are the steps to get there? Let’s find out.
Understanding Deep Work
According to Newport, there are two kinds of works: Deep Work and Shallow Work. The former involves professional activities performed in a state of concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit, while the latter is noncognitively demanding, logistical-style work, often performed while distracted. If one wants to create things of lasting value (and hence get paid well), one has to find a way to do Deep Work in this day and age. Otherwise, one might find themselves stuck in low-paying jobs or witness their jobs being taken away by the new tools in technology. But, the ability to focus has much more value than that. It drastically improves the quality of your experience in everything that you do, and hence, the quality of your life.
How to Focus and Work Deeply?
We can start with the ancient wisdom contained in rituals. Rituals bring discipline and they enable us to concentrate on one particular task. So, you will have to identify your work (or study-related) ritual and work on it every single day. This includes, identifying where you will work, how long you will work, how you will start, how you will deal with tiredness or distraction. Make a clear plan for all these and dedicate yourself to Deep Work. In the next few days, you will find remarkable improvement in terms of efficiency.
Embrace Boredom
Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from dependence on distraction. Much in the same way that athletes must take care of their bodies outside of their training sessions, you’ll struggle to achieve the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the test of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom. Therefore, you should not take breaks from distraction, instead take breaks from focus. Embracing boredom, away from Deep Work will have a positive influence on your mind.
The Elephant in the Room
We love social-media. So much that we are addicted to it. That’s the bitter truth that we don’t like to admit, but it is what it is. So what should we do about it? Quit social-media? Newport explains this slightly differently. He says, you are justified in using a network tool if you can identify any possible benefit to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it.
All you need to do is to be honest with yourself with regard to our use of social-media. Is it adding any value? How much and in what way? Can we be more specific about it? Can we find a suitable time to access social-media? Can we stop our fingers from fiddling with the screen as soon as we get a chance? If we attend these questions sincerely, we will be in a much better position to deal with our internet habits.
Of course, the deep life is not for everybody. It requires hard work and drastic changes in our habits. And we know for sure that most people won’t do that and instead find a way to get swayed by the distractions all around us. That does not mean, you can’t.
Kalampedia 