What is deep work and why is it important?

Deep work is now one of the main buzzwords that revolve around the corporate world as we look to improve our productivity levels. But what is deep work? And what is the buzz around it? Does the buzz have any credibility to it? Dive in to answer these questions and more.

What is Deep Work?

Cal Newport introduced the world to deep work, which he defines as, “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limits.” Let us break this definition down further to understand what is deep work.

In the corporate workplaces, even in the most silent ones, distractions still tend to come through. These distractions could be in the form of social media or emails or yet another task for you to complete. As human as we are, our focus tends to falter at the slightest of disturbances. This warrants a need for productivity tools and tools for time efficiency.

Deep work recognizes this issue and strives to eliminate all distractions as we get to work. Cal Newport intends this method to be undertaken in a distraction-free environment. This setting them helps us push our “cognitive capabilities”, mainly our ability to focus and fulfill a task to the bets of our abilities. With no distraction in sight, it helps us push our abilities to their utmost limit. What we get as a result is quality work done in the most time efficient manner.

Why is Deep Work important?

Having understood what is deep work, it is essential to know its importance. Deep work and its benefits go further than just the office-related tasks and can be applied to our daily lives too.  

1. Deep work leads to quality

With the number of tasks that end up in our hands every day, it is easy to confuse ‘quantity’ with ‘quality’. One must never sacrifice delivering good quality work in the guise to complete a few more tasks. Moreover, as technologies advance shallow and menial tasks can be easily automated.   

Focus and concentration on a particular task are the basis of this method. This ensures that one pays optimum attention to the task at hand. All factors that can lower productivity, like distractions, disturbances, shallow work, etc, are kept at bay. Thus this ensures a better quality of work as knowing what is deep work acts as a tool for productivity. 

2. Saves time

As the number of tasks we commit to increases, so does the need for better time efficiency. It allows us to schedule our tasks such that we entirely focus on one given task. Thus, a task that would otherwise take longer to be completed because of distractions, would now take much less time. It is hence a tool for time efficiency.

The time saved could be used to take care of other menial tasks or to just relax and rejuvenate for more focused work. The time and efficiency achieved by knowing what is deep work are hence valued so much more as it gives you the satisfaction that you need.

3. Knowing what is Deep work is healthy

In this fast-paced corporate life, work is on our mind 24*7. With the practice of shallow work, this never-ending list keeps on adding up. Once a task is over, we immediately jump to another task, only to be distracted by something else. This cycle over and over is what is responsible for exhaustion and lowered productivity. Understanding what is Deep work can be our solution against this.

This method ensures that a time and schedule are followed when it comes to task execution. Thus we are at liberty to finish the task at hand much faster and increase time efficiency. This also lets us unplug from work as we focus on ourselves and our lives outside work. 

4. Helps you in the long run

Focusing on getting work done and staying busy should not be the priorities in a company. If proper priorities are not set, we tend to fill our time up with shallow work and menial tasks. Thus we eventually are left with no time and patience left for important tasks. In order to grow in your workplace, focusing at a deeper level is necessary.

These levels of deep focus and concentration do not come easy. But understanding what is deep work is important. The practice of incorporating what is deep work and its importance in your life will help you achieve heights like never before.

Deep work your way to success

The corporate world has a way of getting work done before a stipulated time. But getting work done and delivering quality work is not the same. A major obstacle in our journey of knowing what is deep work is the everyday shallow tasks like email management. Using Mailman for managing your emails can help you take care of shallow tasks while you dive into the world of deep work.