Deep Work

I recently read the book entitled "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. In it i found a bit of enlightenment, and it stirred up some internal challenges. I have always known myself to be a happy flow-state worker, often forgetting the time, feeding myself, visiting the bathroom, etc. while in that beautiful state. There is joy and glory there, and I revel in it at the times I have existed there.

Cal Newport led me to think deeper about this in myself, identify it more clearly, and desire to practice the self discipline of "productive meditation" as he names it. I have done some reading on the practice of mental discipline, something my ADD brain needs and desires, and have not ever found a concrete entry point to grapple with the art. This book, for me, gave me a focus, or a target to align my goals with. My main goal: to experience growth toward mastery of the mental discipline of focus where it relates to what I desire to accomplish.

This goal can be practiced throughout the gamut of directions I bend my mind and ply my hands. In the many facets of my school-teacher responsibilities, where the tasks are myriad, the distractions are relentless, and the bathroom breaks are rare, I need to practice sessions of Deep Work. I also need to better organize, and even batch my 'shallow work', minimizing the distractions and hammering away at them with relentless focus. I need to schedule and practice regular sessions of deep work with concrete goals. I need to constantly practice the discipline of focusing on the task at hand, and not being bogged down by any chatter in my consciousness of the things past or to come. The desired outcome is to make my work more productive, as well as more efficient. The secondary goal I desire with this is the ability to relate better with my students during my student time and better disconnect with my job when I am not engaging in it directly.

This goal also needs to be practiced in the other areas of my life: my home life, business life, my pastimes, church life, devotion, and on, and on.......

In essence, the book is about focus. The big ideas I come away with are:

- In order to produce the best stuff you're capable of, you need to commit to deep work; an ability to focus intensely without distraction, and the ability to enter that intense focus at will.

- Deep work is a waning skill in society today, and it is a core ability behind achieving successful results; results of quality and efficiency, at a high level.

- It is WORK that is the craft you should be practicing. If you learn how to learn, and learn how to work, you will be able to better master whatever secondary skill or result you set yourself upon. Constant refinement of this core ability yields results as well as fulfillment in life.

- Human beings are frail, and the success of building Deep Work Abilities necessitates cultivating habits, routines, and rituals in daily life designed to minimize the already-limited willpower necessary to transition into, maintain, and transition away from a state of unbroken concentration.

In my many steps toward efficiency as a strategy of living life more fully I have not, to this point, found a viewpoint that is as exciting as that of Deep Work. It is not an end-all, but it does provide a framework and focus from which approach the challenges I face. It folds many of the strategies I've already been working on employing into the larger concept, and even affirms other strategies bent on making the shallow more efficient.

I am looking forward to practicing letting go of some of the anxiety that the "Busyness as Proxy for Productivity" trend produces in me, and I'm looking forward to employing more strategic downtime to aid my insight, recharge my energy needed for Deep Work, and replace the wasted time on fluff-type work that is largely unnecessary anyway.

Wish me luck as I learn to dive deep!