A beginner’s guide to Deep Work

⚡Reading time : 12.5 minutes ⚡

“ I have to complete this assignment by 8 today, I’m almost ready let me…. PING📱 “.

This happens to the best of us, doesn’t it ? We all have been here when we had to complete some assignments, work, projects or even studying and we promise ourselves that we’ll start after watching this one last episode but end up binge watching the entire series.

If you face problems like wavering attention span, checking your phone or social media, constantly putting off work because you don’t feel like doing it then this article might help you to counteract those problems. This is a beginner’s friendly guide anyone can follow whether you’re 13 or 30, if you’re looking to improve your work ethic, productivity and make the most of your day then keep reading ahead.

What is deep work and why do we need it? 👨‍🏫

The theory of deep work first came into light when a renowned author and a computer science professor wrote a best selling book in 2016, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. According to the author, Cal Newport deep work refers to :

“Professional activity 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.”

Cal Newport in,
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

But what about it’s counterpart shallow work?

Shallow work comes into play when you frequently perform non- cognitive demanding or complex operations while being distracted, it usually tends not to generate a lot of new value in the world and is easy to replicate.

Deep work can help you concentrate on what’s really important like your priorities or even helping you learn a new topic in depth, which requires your full attention span while simultaneously creating a true value that cannot be easily reproduced. True value is the deep understanding of a subject and extremely important in these modern times where we are on the brink of replacing clerical tasks by AIs or other automated services🤖and, this true value only comes from in depth analysis of a topic or a subject you’re working upon.

It can also help you improve your focus and increase your concentration while at the same time brushing up your work ethic, making you a hard and smart worker. Skills like these are valued and admired out there in the world either you pursue your career or dream job, deep work can be helpful in various arenas of life whether you’re a student, entrepreneur or a parent, you can practice deep work in absolutely anything.

Who’s to blame? 🙇‍♀️

Getting distracted is very easy especially in this time when everything we do is on our mobile phones📱 and computers💻, we can easily spend hours scrolling through social media or YouTube without batting an eye these things are made to engage the viewer giving them instant gratification and that dopamine rush, they have the endless scrolling system to keep you engaged. If you get bore and instantly start using social media then you’re obviously going to find work very boring and procrastinate more because it’s not as fun or as easy as scrolling endlessly through thousands of posts, mostly because it requires your focused attention to learn something difficult, other than this switching between tasks while you’re working wavers our attention span, making us feel tired fast and wasting our energy on unnecessary things.

If you let yourself get disrated in shallow and unimportant tasks you’ll miss out a real opportunity to learn and grow, there is a reason why all the successful people stress so much on distraction free environment while working, its a universal mantra. If you don’t divide your attention between two things there’s less room for mistakes and the task won’t be as time consuming.

The dopamine factor 💫also plays a big role, most of us think that dopamine basically controls our pleasure center it and makes us happy but what it actually does is make us desire the very thing that increased our dopamine levels. That’s how people get caught in a vicious cycle of addiction. Their brains are never the same when they don’t get their high, they can do anything to get that rush and how it makes them feel.

Social media and drugs aren’t that different the only difference is that withdrawals from drugs are psychological as well as physiological but, the instant gratification we get from social media is generally just psychological and we can train our brains to control that urge to look at our phones in every 5 minutes.

Tips on how to do deep work 🔮

These are some tips that can help you while you’re planning to start deep work, I’ve personally tried them by trial and error method and these are the best ones so far if you’re just getting started.

Try doing these slowly and take one step at a time and bit by bit build on this, then increase your time and push the limits when you’re comfortable, don’t start by taking extreme measures like not using your phone for an entire day and then going back to old habits, it’s not a race it’s a gradual process.

📵 If you have a habit of checking your phone in every few minutes start by either turning off your phone or switching it to DND mode and then place it into a container or a box creating an artificial barrier between you and your phone. If this is not enough for you then go ahead and place your phone in a different room from where you work or study.

💪 Motivation is momentary you can’t feel motivated throughout the day or the entire week on the same level, somedays when you lack motivation discipline will be your best friend. Rely on disciple rather than motivation.

😴 Don’t study where you sleep. Studying on bed is not ideal as your brain is already primed to feel relaxed or sleepy because when you go to bed it is time to relax and sleep.

🤯 Use brain stimulation reward technique, set a target and work till it’s finished then reward yourself. The reward can be anything listen to music, play your favorite instrument, take a nap, go out for a walk, indulge yourself in your favorite food but avoid using social media or using your phone in general.

🖨️ Use apps or websites that keep track of data, of how much you work or use your phone, pay attention to your screen time and try to minimize it.

🛡️ If you work on your computer or phone and find it hard to focus then switch off your notifications, enable focus mode or use website blockers to stop yourself from indulging in your guilty pleasure. This way you’re mildly controlling your urge with the help of external sources.

💭 If you find yourself getting distracted easily without any phone or computer then try to meditate a little everyday to learn how to calm and quite the mind, you don’t need to be a yogi to learn mediation all you need is 1-2 minutes or more if you can spare (it all depends on you) and just close your eyes and breathe in, breathe out focusing on your breath if you get distracted notice that thought and return back to focusing on your breath. There are so many wonderful apps to help you guide through meditation.

📅 Remember during the initial days it will be a lot harder and uncomfortable to control your urges you’ll want to go back to your previous ways but once you make this a habit or maybe do this for 15-30 days it would get easier and you won’t have to force yourself anymore to stick to this new habit.

It’s okay to go on your own pace, you might feel distracted or distressed but it’s only temporary, this was a very basic beginner friendly guide if you’d like to know more about apps, websites or books that might help you in this journey please let me know. 🙂 

Thank you

Sincerely yours ,

U.S.