Many modern knowledge workers now spend most of their brain power battling distraction and interruption, whether because of the incessant pinging of devices, noisy open-plan offices or the difficulty of deciding what deserves their attention the most. When Cal Newport coined the term deep work on his popular blog, Study Hacks, in 2012, he found the concept quickly hit a nerve. Most of us, after all, are excruciatingly familiar with shallow work instead - distractedly skimming the surface of our workload and never getting to the important part. Newport began exploring the methods and mind-set that foster a practice of distraction-free productivity at work, and now, in Deep Work, he shows how anyone can achieve this elusive state.

Through revealing portraits of both historical and modern-day thinkers, academics and leaders in the fields of technology, science and culture, and their deep work habits, Newport shares an inspiring collection of tools to wring every last drop of value out of your intellectual capacity. He explains why mastering this shift in work practices is crucial for anyone who intends to stay ahead in a complex information economy and how to systematically train the mind to focus. Put simply: developing and cultivating a deep work practice is one of the best decisions we can make in an increasingly distracted world.

Listening Length

7 hours and 44 minutes
Author

Cal Newport
Narrator

Jeff Bottoms
Audible release date

26 July 2016
Language

English
Publisher

Hachette Audio UK
ASIN

B01CYKOVAI
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	7 hours and 44 minutes
Author	Cal Newport
Narrator	Jeff Bottoms
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	26 July 2016
Publisher	Hachette Audio UK
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B01CYKOVAI
Best Sellers Rank	277 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 6 in Business Management (Audible Books & Originals) 7 in Business Management (Books) 153 in Textbooks & Study Guides

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CJM

Great concepts, too heavy focus on the tech sector

Reviewed in Australia on 5 December 2019

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The idea behind this is great, with an analysis of the possibility of productivity through the use of depth of focus. However, I found the heavy use of examples of success from the tech sector a bit exclusionary and hard to follow. Also lacked any kind of reflection on other power dynamics that could influence peoples 'success', including race, gender, religion, sexuality, (dis)ability etc.

8 people found this helpful

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A manifesto and a how-to in one. Cal Newport delivers.

Reviewed in Australia on 4 February 2016

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A manifesto and a how-to in one. Cal Newport delivers a stand-out guide for anyone who has struggled with distraction from deep work.

Bear in mind, this book isn't for everyone. If you are an academic, writer, or any other kind of deep problem-solver, then big blocks of uninterrupted time for thinking are essential. But this isn't true of all occupations. Some of the guidelines for avoiding distraction will be useful for a wider range of readers, but we should understand that the need for deep work is not uniformly distributed.

I got a lot out of this book. If there is one criticism I had, it's that he seems to assume that it's ok for executives to be always "on", available to their teams and the firehose of information. (He is an academic, after all, where you can get away with avoiding admin work as a strategy to increase research output.) But strategic thinking IS deep thinking, and many senior people in public policy, especially, need to find the balance between the always-on mode and the deeper work that brings the analytical insights needed in that realm. People in those positions might want to complement Newport's book with "Paid to Think" by David Goldsmith.

16 people found this helpful

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Method to madness

Reviewed in Australia on 23 April 2019

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This book provides a great outline to put a method behind digital madness. Carl highlights the significance of distraction and the importance of focus and deep work. His first hypothesis is that economy rewards deep work. Second, as digital intrusions grow, deep work is becoming scarce. Therefore, its economic value is further strengthened. Carl goes on to provide a 4 step method to control the noise. 1. Work Deeply 2. Embrace Boredom 3. Quit Social media 4. Drain shallow out of your life. Its a great book with straightforward practial advice.

2 people found this helpful

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Create a meaningful difference in your work

Reviewed in Australia on 10 August 2021

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This is a well-considered, balanced and persuasive book with many insights. While the author is in the sciences, I recommend this book to anyone in the arts who is looking to nurture their creativity and production. This book provides a foundational concept for people who want to build a body of work that creates a meaningful difference.
The idea is that we do our best (deep) work when we have the habits and conditions that support, encourage and build that capacity. It is not for everybody. If you want 'hacks' or shortcuts, this is not the book for you. This book goes beyond the "hustle and grind" approach of putting in time and effort - it presupposes that you're willing to do both of those things. It asks – what will differentiate you then? That is the core goal this book will help you with - to sustain creating and producing work that is the best quality you're capable of (or even better than you've been capable of in the past).
Newport spends the first half of the book providing the research and context to back up the argument that deep, focussed work is what will generate these breakthroughs. The second half of the book steps through the how. Each of the four rules is given with guidance and ideas for implementation that refers to the examples and context given in the first half of the book. This book is not for everybody, that's okay, just consider your needs, your work/art. If you need time to think or plan or create before you do what you do, this book is aimed at you.
I'm grateful to Cal Newport for this book. There are things I have already been able to use as I have made this first read through, and other aspects that will take me longer to try, and test for my own needs. It was absolutely worth reading.

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John Birmingham

This book really spoke to me.

Reviewed in Australia on 28 February 2018

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I’m one of those people who is forever tinkering with his work flows, trying to get them just so. I loved this book because it crystallised a lot of my own partly formed ideas about productivity, creativity and focus. Other reviews have given point by point breakdowns of the content. I’ll just say, I am very grateful for having had the chance to read it.

3 people found this helpful

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Glen Morris

Missed in many ways to convey the real meaning that I could use

Reviewed in Australia on 3 December 2018

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Overall I am sure he has the knowledge without doubt. Just didn’t translate into words on the page. Way too many references to other people on top of another reference. Little disappointed was expecting more

2 people found this helpful

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Oliver

Favourite self-help book this year

Reviewed in Australia on 30 September 2017

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Best self-help book ever. Not because it's inspiring or I want to imitate the feats of the author - but because it just simply works. If you stick to most of the principles in this book you will get stuff achieved and of high quality. Thank you Cal for writing this well-written book.

3 people found this helpful

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Interesting Insights

Reviewed in Australia on 9 June 2020

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Interesting insights on how to adapt working practices to be the most efficient person you can be. The examples are engaging - worth a read!

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Top reviews from other countries

JWH

An inspiring guide to working much better...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 December 2017

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This was quite an inspiring but challenging read. Not challenging in the sense of difficult - the book is very-well written and flows easily - but it goes against the grain of so many current social and work habits and fads. In this reader at least, the book did provoke quite a profound sense of loss when I realized what I could and did achieve earlier in my life against what my current distracted self can achieve. The book falls into two broad sections: the first is the why - why deep work is good but why it doesn't happen; the second is the how - tips to make deep work happen in your life, with very different approaches depending upon the nature of one's life and work.
The book does point out that deep work genuinely isn't for everyone - for different but related reasons, CEOs of huge corporations and carers of young children might be better off entirely working at the 'shallow' level. However, it does make excellent points about how routine administration, productivity checks and social discourse, especially using social media, are vampires of time and attention like nothing else. As well as being very useful for individuals, many managers could usefully read this book, to help empower workers to achieve more of real value and - and this point is not unrelated - stop constantly harassing them with administrative requests of little or no real importance. One important facet of this is it shows very persuasively how deep work is almost the opposite of long work, or overwork - working better decreases working time overall, with much better results. For employees, and intelligent employers, what is not to like about that? It really chimed in with my experiences in the organized working environment.
So highly recommended for anyone interested in how to work better on an individual level, or how work might be done better on an organizational level. I suppose I can't say better than that I actually made one set of the recommended changes immediately on finishing the book...

193 people found this helpful

Low quality. Entire book could be condensed to a leaflet.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 March 2019

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Author drags one or two points out into a whole book of filler. Keeps repeating the same points, backing them up with dragged out character stories and pseudo science. Very American writing style where everything is sensationalized and lacking in real substance.
I bought it after reading the kindle sample. If you've read the kindle sample, you've read the whole book - nothing else is added.

123 people found this helpful

Nathik

Rules for Deep Work

Reviewed in India on 19 June 2017

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I'm a self-improvement junkie who hates self-help books. Most self-help books (if not all) masquarades poor advice and wishful thinking as a path to self-progress. Every now and then I torture myself reading self-help books to reinforce my above thoughts about self-help books. Luckily I came across this book as strong recommendation from a twitter account which I really value a lot. And I'm glad that I took the recommendation.

Deep Work is a common sense book than a self-help book. The crux of the book is that there are two kind of work we do. One is Deep work and the other is shallow work. Deep work is rare and hard. Shallow work is easy and ubiquitous.

What is Deep Work? Deep work is concentrating on a cognitively demanding work with zero distractions to produce quality work. Its demanding and helps provide valuable things to society that are hard to replicate or replace.

What Shallow work? Any work we do on auto-pilot. Replying emails , social media presence etc. These work are easy to replace and not valued much in society.

The book is dividend into two parts. Part I is about why Deep work matter and its scientific backing. Part II is how to achieve Deep work.

Part I doesn't have to try hard to convince us about the internet chipping away our ability to concentrate and contemplate. And provides all the necessary studies and research on internet and its effects on attention. Most of the critique are well ground and rational, and definitely not a luddite rant on the internet.

Part II is how to achieve Deep Work.

Discusses on what type of Deep work philosophy to choose.
Ritualising Deep work: Identify Location and time to do deep work. Adhere to rules and process to deep work. (like no internet)
4DX fundamentals: Focus unimportant things, Act on measures, Keep a scorecard, Create accountability.
Embrace Boredom:Don't take break from distraction. Instead take breaks from Focus. Schedule your internet usage. Structure your deep thinking.
Quit Social Media.
Drain the Shallows: Schedule your day in blocks in advance to focus on Deep work.

Although it follows the typical science/self-help format with familiar paragraphs like 'The Study conducted by University of X researchers on group of people in Y of the age Z in ABC environment agrees with my thesis', this is a potent work with strong common sense solutions to the ubiquitous problem of shallow work. My thoughts on self-help books remains unchanged. However I would highly recommend this book.

1,298 people found this helpful

Sarvesh Nanjee

Quite relevant in our noisy age.

Reviewed in India on 9 March 2020

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Genre: Productivity | Creativity | Hacks | Self Development | Business
Rating : 5/5

Deep work is a book for everyone although the author emphasises it for knowledge workers. In my opinion it is for businessmen who wants to achieve their goals in their hectic schedule, teachers (faculties) who wants to pursue research despite their academic duties, or an entrepreneur who wants to increase the productivity and creativity of the team, or just some random guy who wants to spend some quality time with family but cannot. Books helps you to develop self discipline.
This book can best be placed among books like Outliers/Mastery/Flow/Peak etc. where importance of work and it’s consequences are explained. Only thing is Deep work is more detailed in terms of strategies and bit less on psychology studies.
The book is hardly 300 pages but will require some time to fully understand all hacks & strategies. Work habits of great people like Carl Jung, J K Rowling, Bill Gates, Walter Isaacson and many others are very well explained. The author also writes about his life and experience.
After reading this book you will definitely be more productive, you might be able schedule every minute/hour/day of your life, you would be able to effectively choose your career job and not fall for dead end jobs, and lastly decipher what is fact from fiction when it comes to big companies.

After completing this book and from my experience at different work places I think the book may be a bit ambitious for developing & undeveloped countries. This is because I think in this countries there is still lack of work ethics and your company/institute may not respond as the book says or they may not even consider deep work as meaningful. All in all deep work gives a positive experience.

81 people found this helpful

Joe

most of them useless. This however is a true gem

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 October 2017

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I have read a lot of books on personal development and self help, most of them useless. This however is a true gem. I put it in the top 5 most useful books I have ever read. It is a great treatise on how to produce high quality work, and is becoming more relevant by the day (with our increasingly distracted world). I feel sorry for kids you are already addicted to their smartphones by age 10.

Highly recommend to anyone, and it has wide relevance across many fields. Also very readable and entertaining. It is a joy to read and has plenty of interesting tales and case studies to make the book flow perfectly, whilst imparting the necessary wisdom.

72 people found this helpful

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