Audio Review :Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

Georgetown University professor and popular blogger Cal Newport reveals the new key to achieving success and true meaning in one's professional life.An Amazon Best Book of 2016 Pick in Business & LeadershipWall Street Journal Business BestsellerA Business Book of the Week at 800-CEO-READDeep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill. A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. DEEP WORK is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.

As a self-proclaimed productivity nerd, I am always looking for ways to be more productive, and books on this topic are like crack to me. They have been ever since a college professor gave me a copy of Getting it Done when I was overwhelmed with everything that was going on.

I have noticed in the past few years my attention span and ability to focus has gone down tremendously. I used to be able to concentrate for HOURS at a time. Now I am lucky to focus FOR an hour. I even got me some ADHD meds (Strattera) to help.  After reading Deep Work, I finally understand why it is so hard to focus. It is because we are always on social media where you get info and stuff a tweet at a time. I have been a heavy social media user for years, and after I thought back to those years, I realized that BEFORE Twitter and Facebook and all of that I could focus for about 4 hours before needing a break. I missed doing that, and when I saw this book popping up all over the small business websites, I knew I had to get my hands on a copy.

Luckily scribed had it as an audiobook, so I downloaded it, and I found myself agreeing with everything he says. While different people have a different method of productivity, I find that I do best with long stretches of uninterrupted writing time.  I mean you can’t just hop on a treadmill then turn it up to 9 without warming up right? It is the same with writing, have to have a pre-writing session (i do morning pages) to warm up my writing muscles and to write halfway decent English.

It tends to take me a couple of hours to hit my stride, and I will be the first to admit that my focus only lats an hour. The good news is Cal Newport explains in Deep Work that you can retrain your brain to hold attention longer. I also ran across the Pomodoro app, so I set it for an hour then a 15 min break then another hour, etc.. once I get that down, I will increase my hours til I am at 4 hours again.

Another way to go deep is to only focus on one thing at a time. No one is very good at multitasking when I realized I was not always doing my best work I stopped trying to do a million things at once. It is funny how the less I do regarding being able to check an item off of my todo list the better my work.

After reading this, I have slowed down a LOT to make sure everything is top quality. I may not get as much done but what I do finished ir=t of better quality than if I had rushed.