What is deep work? Cal Newport's idea in plain words

Deep work is focused, uninterrupted work on something mentally demanding: the kind that stretches what you can do and produces something other people value. The term comes from Cal Newport's 2016 book Deep Work, which sets it against shallow work, the email, messages, meetings and admin that can be done while distracted.

Newport's argument is simple: the ability to concentrate on hard things for long stretches is becoming rarer just as it is becoming more valuable. You don't need a cabin in the woods to act on it. One protected hour a day is enough to start.

Deep work vs shallow work

In Newport's terms, deep work is done in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your thinking close to its limit. It creates something new, improves your skill, and is hard for someone else to copy quickly. Shallow work is the opposite: logistical, not very demanding, and usually done with half an eye on something else. It keeps things running, but it rarely adds much.

Shallow work isn't bad. Some of it is essential, and some of it is the job. The problem Newport describes is when it quietly fills the whole day, so that the deep work only happens late at night, or not at all.

If you aren't sure which side a task belongs on, Newport suggests a test: how long would it take to train a bright graduate with no experience in your field to do it? If the answer is weeks, it is probably shallow. If it is months or years, it is probably deep.

Why does deep work matter?

There are two reasons, one practical and one personal.

The practical one is about switching. When you move from one task to another, part of your attention stays behind on the first one for a while. The management researcher Sophie Leroy named this attention residue in a 2009 paper, and Newport leans on it heavily. A day of quick checks between tasks means you are rarely giving anything your full mind. The cost of switching tasks goes into the research and what helps.

The personal one is about how the day feels. Newport argues that people tend to find deep work more satisfying than a day of replies, and many people recognize that from experience: a morning of real progress on one thing often leaves you calmer than a day of clearing small things that come straight back.

For anyone at a Mac, the problem is sharper than for most. Your work and every distraction live on the same screen, a notification or a Command and Tab away. Concentration doesn't fail because you are weak-willed. It fails because the way out is always one click wide.

How many hours of deep work a day is realistic?

Less than you might hope. Newport, drawing on the psychologist Anders Ericsson's research into deliberate practice, suggests that someone new to deep work may manage about an hour a day, and that even experienced people rarely go beyond about four. After that, the quality drops, even if you keep sitting there.

That is good news for anyone with meetings and email. You don't need a whole empty day. One protected block, kept most days, adds up to far more than an empty day you never actually get.

Four ways to make room for it

Newport describes four ways people schedule deep work. Most people with a regular job end up with the rhythmic one, but it helps to see them side by side.

The rhythmic approach works because it takes the decision out of it. You don't wake up wondering whether today is a deep work day. It is, from nine to ten, the same as yesterday.

How to start: one protected block a day

Start small and make it regular. One block, the same time each day, for two weeks.

1. Pick your sharpest hour. For many people that is the first hour of work, before email. Choose the time you can protect most days.
2. Put it in your calendar. In the Calendar app, make a recurring event with a plain name such as "Deep work: no meetings". Colleagues who can see your calendar will usually work around it. Time blocking in the Mac Calendar app shows how.
3. Choose the task the day before. One task, specific enough to start without thinking. "Draft the pricing section", not "proposal".
4. Quiet the Mac. Turn on a Focus mode from Control Center, quit Mail and chat with Command and Q, and put your phone in another room.
5. Set a timer and stop at the end. An hour is plenty to begin with. When it ends, write down the next step so tomorrow's block starts with something to do.

Setting up your Mac for deep work has each of these steps in more detail.

What gets in the way

The practical half of Newport's book is four rules. The first is the work itself, and the other three clear the path for it.

• Work deeply. Build rituals and routines so that deep work happens without a daily act of willpower.
• Embrace boredom. If you reach for your phone at every quiet moment, your mind loses the habit of staying with one thing. Waiting in a queue without scrolling is practice.
• Quit social media. Newport is blunt here, but the point is narrower than the title: keep a tool only if it clearly earns its place in the work and life you want.
• Drain the shallows. Batch email and admin into set times, and plan the day in blocks so shallow work has edges too.

You can start with the first rule and leave the others for later. Once the block is a habit, it tends to show you which of the other three you need.

A robot for the start, a duck for the session

Notchpals can mark the edges of that block for you. With Bolt, the retro robot, as your Focus character, a weekday morning visit, sometime before 11, is a handy backstop on the days you skipped step 3.

BoltI have one antenna and one job. Today, you also have one job. Pick it.

When the block begins, start a 50-minute focus session from the Notchpals menu bar (25 minutes is the other choice). Fifty is close to the hour a beginner can manage. Until it ends, the water, posture and eye reminders in your crew wait. The exceptions are ones you would want anyway, such as a meeting on your calendar that is about to start. If a robot feels too brisk for a long morning of thinking, Debug, a rubber duck who listens until you solve it yourself, can be your Focus character instead.

DebugDeep work begins. I'll be right here. Floating. Listening. Judging gently.

Notchpals and macOS Focus don't know about each other, so turn on both: one holds back notifications, the other holds back the crew. When the session ends, your Focus character comes back to say so, unless a full screen app is in front on the notch's display, where no character appears. Use that visit to write down tomorrow's first step and get up.