{"id":40581,"date":"2017-09-19T13:11:50","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T20:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=40581"},"modified":"2017-09-19T13:11:50","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T20:11:50","slug":"thoughts-deep-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/thoughts-deep-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on \u2018Deep Work\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In a recent blog post entitled \u201cHow to Stop Flipping\u201d<\/a>,Inger Newburn outlined the dangers of flipping between tasks without progressing on any of them. Her suggestion was to write a detailed and time bound to-do list, using the example of the literature review. The second dot point advised students to \u201clook in your diary for stretches of uninterrupted time of at least 2 hours, but not more than four. Mark them as dedicated to your literature review\u201d. The phrase \u201cdeep reading\u201d recurred often throughout her list.<\/p>\n

Inger\u2019s focus on deep reading provides a neat segue into my discussion of Cal Newport\u2019s recently published Deep Work<\/em><\/a>. Newport is a highly successful computer scientist at Georgetown University. Alongside his academic work, he has written a number of self-help guides for students in secondary and tertiary education: How to Win at College<\/em><\/a>, How to Become a Straight-A Student<\/em><\/a>, How to Be a High School Superstar<\/em><\/a>, So Good They Can\u2019t Ignore You<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Titles like these make me feel uncomfortable and reinforce my reservations about the genre as a whole: in my view, self-help books operate on the assumption of deficiency, they are prescriptive and often read as clumsy attempts to deal with complex problems. I probably wouldn\u2019t have read Deep Work<\/em> if a friend of mine hadn\u2019t told me about it over lunch earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Newport divides professional work into two categories: deep and shallow. Deep work encompasses \u201cprofessional activities 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\u201d. A PhD, in other words.<\/p>\n

Newport presents deep work as a state under constant threat from its enemy, shallow work: \u201cnoncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate\u201d.<\/p>\n

Shallow work could designate many different tasks: data-entry, committee work and time spent on network and social media applications (email, twitter, facebook etc.).<\/p>\n

Newport\u2019s advances his argument along two, inter-related lines. The first relates to the impact of technology on the economy and the corresponding mechanisation of jobs: as machines learn to do an increasing number of tasks better than humans, employability becomes correspondingly specialised. As the capacity for deep work is not easily replicable by machines, humans who have this capacity will be well-placed for employment now and into the future. Deep work further advantages its adherents through an \u201cability to quickly master hard things\u201d and \u201cproduce at an elite level in terms of both quality and speed\u201d<\/p>\n

Newport divides Deep Work<\/em> into two parts, beginning with \u2018The Idea\u2019 (deep work is meaningful, valuable and rare) before elaborating on \u2018The Rules\u2019: work deeply, embrace boredom, quit social media and drain the shallows (be ruthless, in other words, in the amount of time allocated to admin, emails, meetings and social media). Deep work should be so cognitively demanding that it cannot be sustained longer than four hours \u2013 after that point, we head into brain mush. Those new to deep work may only manage one hour.<\/p>\n

For regular readers of Ingers’s blog, this is not new advice. The Pomodoro technique<\/a> and Thesis Boot Camps <\/a>are all built around these principles. If we know all of this already, it\u2019s fair to ask what possible value there is in a book such as Deep Work<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Newport\u2019s contribution is situating the ability to engage in cognitively demanding work within existing and future economies. Transposition of Newport\u2019s argument to the world of the PhD candidate reads something like this: it\u2019s worthwhile cultivating deep work habits not only because they will help you get things done, but also because they will be an asset in the post-PhD marketplace.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For me, Deep Work<\/em> provided a welcome opportunity to review and refine my study skills. Newport\u2019s demarcation of deep from shallow work functions as a convenient heuristic for categorising the different tasks involved in producing a doctoral thesis. I felt challenged, in a good way, to work on the knotty and demanding questions woven into my research and to do this in a disciplined, distraction-free state.<\/p>\n

In my spare time I work as a gym instructor, and in much the same way that I encourage others to push beyond their limits (\u201cyou are stronger than you think!\u201d), I felt that Newport pushed his readers to curb tendencies towards distraction and to engage in an intimate\u2014not to mention uncomfortable\u2014relationship with their intellectual potential.<\/p>\n

Newport\u2019s disdain for social media will not be for everyone, nor his advocacy of a purposefully distant approach to email and administration. He concedes that this type of shallow work is inescapable but urges readers to limit it to the absolute periphery of their schedule.<\/p>\n

The strategies promoted by Newport may appear to contradict findings from Inger on academic employability<\/a>: that to be a successful academic today you need to be as strong in the \u2018shallows\u2019 as you are in the deep. And this means using social network tools to connect and engage within the academy and beyond. Yet these contradictions are not as worrying as they seem: Newport would likely respond that by committing to deep work (and remembering that this is never going to exceed a maximum of four out of eight working hours) PhD students can make time for the \u2018other stuff\u2019 too.<\/p>\n

A far more disturbing element to the book for me was its gender politics. Almost every example featured a male protagonist to illustrate the virtues of deep work. Male scholars provided the primary theoretical ballast to Newport\u2019s argument. I couldn\u2019t help feeling that Newport had imbibed and regurgitated the unhelpful equation that deep work equals brilliance equals male. Women were present on the periphery, stranded in the shallows of Newport\u2019s consciousness.<\/p>\n

Author Bio: <\/strong>Imogen Mathew is a PhD candidate in Australian Literature at the Australian National University. Her thesis explores how Anita Heiss\u2019s chick lit creates a more diverse, inclusive and glamorous Australia. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent blog post entitled \u201cHow to Stop Flipping\u201d,Inger Newburn outlined the dangers of flipping between tasks without progressing on any of them. Her suggestion was to write a detailed and time bound to-do list, using the example of the literature review. The second dot point advised students to \u201clook in your diary for […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":40582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[136884],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-40581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-professional-work"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThoughts on \u2018Deep Work\u2019 - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/thoughts-deep-work\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thoughts on \u2018Deep Work\u2019 - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a recent blog post entitled \u201cHow to Stop Flipping\u201d,Inger Newburn outlined the dangers of flipping between tasks without progressing on any of them. 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