Deep Work

This book is divided into two parts. Part One does a very good job at convincing you why deep work is important, and Part Two is about the rules and methods that we can adopt to do deep work. Rule of Commas: A comma signals to the reader: **“pause here - a new piece of information is coming.”**

1. Joining two independent clauses (compound sentences) When you join two complete sentences with a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so — remembered as FANBOYS),
2. After an introductory word or phrase You’re giving the reader some context before the main idea. The comma says “the setup is done, now here’s the real point.”
3. In a list of three or more items
4. Setting off extra information (non-essential clauses)
5. Direct address When speaking directly to someone**
6. Dates and addresses

Notes

Part One:

Deep Work is valuable

• Three groups will have a particular advantage: It’s all about the leverage you can get
  • Those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines
  • Those who are the best at what they do
  • Those with access to capital

Deep Work is Rare

• The Principle of Least Resistance: In a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviours to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviours that are easiest in the moment.
• Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.
  • By responding to emails and slack messages we look busy in a public manner but actually we are not getting any knowledge work done.

Deep Work is Meaningful

• The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile

Following are excerpts from the book

1. To remain valuable in our economy, you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things.
2. If you can’t learn you can’t thrive
3. It’s important to focus intensely on the task at hand while avoiding distraction is because this is the only wya to isolate the relevant neural circuit enought to trigger useful myelination
4. Concept of attention residue: By working on a single hard task for a long time, without switching, Grant minimizes the negative impact of attention residue from his other obligations
5. Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.

Authors / Books / Materials that is recommended in this book

1. Adam Grant