Yadunand Kamath's Key Ideas from Deep Work
by Cal Newport

Performing deliberate practice requires:

1. Tightly focused attention on a skill you're trying to improve or an idea you're trying to master.
2. Feedback to correct your approach and improve productivity.

Attention Residue: when you switch from Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn't immediately follow- a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task.

Therefore, batch hard/intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches.

High Quality Work = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

• Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.
• Who you are, what you think, feel and do, what you love- is the sum of what you focus on.
• Free time is unstructured and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.
• Knowledge workers do lots of stuff visibly to appear busy. However, this busyness is a proxy for productivity.
• Deep work is an activity well-suited to generate a flow state.
• You don't need a rarified job; you instead need a rarified approach to your work.

1. Monastic Philosophy - attempts to maximize deep efforts by eliminating shallow obligations.
2. Bimodal Philosophy - divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else.
3. Rhythmic Philosophy - generate a rhythm by transforming consistent deep work sessions into a simple regular habit.
4. Journalistic Philosophy - switch into deep work mode any time you find some free time. This approach is not for beginners.

• Specify where you'll work and for how long.
• Specify the rules and processes once you start to work.
• Specify how you'll support your work (Ex: coffee, food, light exercise, etc.)
• Sometimes to go deep, you must first go big. Make a grand gesture (go to a library, book/rent a room, etc.)
• The Whiteboard Effect: for some types of problems, working with someone else can push you deeper than if you were working alone.
• Focus on a few "wildly important goals".
• Track your activities and perform a weekly review.

• Some decisions are better left to your unconscious mind to untangle.
• Attention Restoration Theory: spending time in nature can help improve your ability to concentrate.
• Don't try to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings. It can reduce your effectiveness the next day.
• Your capacity to perform deep work on a given day is limited.
• Schedule in advance when you'll use social media, and then avoid it altogether outside these times.
• Put more thought into your leisure time. Don't default to whatever catches your attention at the moment.

E-mails deliver a steady stream of distractions addressed specifically to you.

1. Use a sender filter - "I'll only respond to those proposals that are a good match for my schedule and interests". Send this to everyone to set their expectations.
2. It's the sender's responsibility to convince the receiver that a reply is worthwhile. Do not reply to e-mails if they are ambiguous, or uninteresting, or nothing really good would happen if you did respond and nothing really bad would happen if you didn't.

Check out the following link for vocabularies from this book and more book summaries:

https://whealthlab.blogspot.com/2024/07/book-simplified-deep-work-by-cal-newport.html