Deep Work: Doing More in a Shorter Amount of Time

By: Sophia Ronga / December 2, 2019

Earlier this week, I had an annoying realization. After getting into the office one morning around 9 AM (around 9:15 if we’re being honest), I opened my laptop and began my day’s tasks. Emails were answered, meetings were scheduled, a big Excel project was opened, Instagram was scrolled through (we said we’re being honest right?), the Excel project was reopened, and then I watch the clock for lunch. Yet when it was time to sit down with my salad, I came to terms with the realization that if my manager had asked what I did with my morning, I wouldn’t have much to respond with.

We’ve all had that workday. You spend your time doing a bunch of small, menial tasks, putting off the larger task at hand. Then, when you finally do “turn your attention” to the real task… you don’t actually turn your attention to it. You’re so distracted by, well, distractions, that it takes you much longer to complete the Excel project than you originally intended.

What I needed that morning was to go into a more productive state, nix the distractions, and tackle exactly what I needed to get done. A lot easier said than done, no?

Working longer is not equal to more output

Americans are spending a ton of time on the job. The average full time employee clocks in 8.5 hours during the week and more than 5 hours on the weekend. But, if I am any example, a worker is not fully productive every minute he or she is on the job. Take a guess for what portion of the time a person actually is productive. It’s around three hours per day (click the link if you want to take a look at what the second most popular activity is during the workday. Hint: I listed it as something I did in this introduction).

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that people aren’t productive all the time, and it also shouldn’t surprise you that hours worked have diminishing returns. In fact, a study at Stanford found that people who worked 70 hours per week had no less output than those who worked 55. Yikes. When you “work harder” (read: longer), you trade sleep, focus, and productivity for that time. And it does not pay off.

The first step toward being more productive is recognizing that productivity does not have to come at the expense of hours out of your day.

Enter the skill of deep work

Deep work is the idea that a person can focus on the task at hand exclusively and without distraction for 1.5-2 hours - getting “in the zone” for that amount of time - and that this level of focus will multiply productivity results. It comes from Cal Newport’s work on the subject and has obvious impact on what you’ll be able to accomplish in a given timeframe.

Not everything is going to require deep work. We all have tasks at our job that we can do while listening to music or the latest Serial episode. So when should we use it?

When the task presents a challenge that would require your full attention and skillset to accomplish it. When the task is something novel and gets you excited, so much so that you’d be able to focus on it exclusively for hours at a time. When there is enough risk involved in the challenge to keep you excited. And when there is the opportunity to get immediate feedback on whether the direction you’re heading is right or wrong (after all, you wouldn’t want to get into a deep work state for two hours only to learn that you went down a complete rabbit hole).

And finally, how do we get there?

First, you need to eliminate sources of distraction. Mute the email app so that you don’t see incoming messages (so long as you’ve warned whomever necessary that you’re going heads down). Place your phone far enough away from you that you won’t even hear it buzz. Close out of the tab on which you were reading the latest Real Housewives drama. Distractions are not necessarily to be demonized - they have a time and a place, because you can’t be in deep work all day long all of the time - but it’s to be recognized that in order to accomplish the most difficult tasks, you need to be free of what would take your mind off it.

Have a clear map of the one thing you’d like to accomplish in mind. The name of the game here is focusing, and that is on one task only. Study after study has shown that multitasking is ineffective, and therefore it’s important to put your eye on a singular prize.

Before working, get your juices going. This can mean different things depending on the task at hand. For me, when I’m writing, it means reading and doing research. When I’m working on a more quantitative task, it means tackling the little things (i.e. emails) so that I’m warmed up for the big thing.

Just work. For an hour or two, focus exclusively on your task.

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Deep work is an important way to unlock your full productivity at work and ensure that you’re getting important tasks done well, all while saving yourself some time for some hard-earned Twitter-stalking. It’s a means of ensuring that if you really are only going to be productive for three hours of your eight (and hey, that’s okay) that you’re getting exactly what you need to get done efficiently.