I have recently read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport. While reading the book I highlighted, underlined and made various notes along the way. This is a collection of those notes with the intent is to use them to refresh the book contents every now and then. Other people might also find it useful as a refresher as well or as a quick overview. So here we go...

Disclaimer Note !!!
Some pieces in this article have been interpreted (ideas that were summarised)
Other pieces have been copied (definitions or conclusions)

Part 1 : The Idea

Types of work

Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These effors create new value, improve your skill and are hard to replicate

Shallow Work: Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate

The Deep Work Hypothesis

The basis of the Deep Work Hypothesis is that the skill or ability to perform deep work is becoming highly valuable but rare. In our current economy , the people who are thriving have the ability to (1) master hard things relatively quickly and (2) to deliver fast and high quality results. The succees level of performing these two core ability is highly dependent on the abilities to perform deep work. Thus, the ones who cultivate the skill of deep work will reap the rewards of being able to master complex skills at a high level and be able to thrive!!

Busyness as Proxy for Productivity

The fact that you answered some emails and attended some meetings or answered some colleague's messages does not mean you were productive. It might feel that way (getting some dopamine by checking things off), it might seem that way to others (colleagues think you are on fire, being on top of everything!!!) but at the end of the day, without doing work that moves you towards your targets/goals, you just fell back to the old "industrial indicator of productivity" of doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.

Especially if your work requires some creativity or to be able to connect multiple dots to find a solution or a plan of action, then deep work is essential for your success. Not only professionally but personally as well, as the experience of flow produced by deep work has been a proven path to deep satisfaction.

In order to be more desciplined in your deep work practice, maybe a system or a schedule is needed.

Deep Work Scheduling Philosophies

The Monastic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling: In this type of deep work, people want to hyper focus so much on a single task, that they basically drop everything distracting from their professional life. Even things that for the rest seem "weird", like not having social media or even email.

The Bimodal Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling: In this type of deep work, people divide their time between deep and open. In their deep time (which vary from a full day to a season) they act monastically by dropping all destructions until their open time where everything else can take up their focus again.

The Rhythmic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling: In this type of deep work, people set aside some time for daily deep work with the intent of getting into a "rhythm" and making it easier to get into flow work. This system might not get you the daylong concentration sessions that bimodal philosophy will give you, but it is a system that fits the everyday reality of most humans as it's not easy for everyone to drop everything for 2 weeks of monastic deep work. If applied with rigorous dicipline, it is very possible that a rhythmic scheduler will log a larger total number of hours per year.

The Journalistic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling: In this type of deep work, people try to fit deep work any time they can find some free time (kids are sleeping, partner went out, meeting got canceled, waiting for airplane etc). To actually get benefits from this philosophy one needs to have practiced a lot their open/deep work switching. Only by being able to switch very fast in deep work flow, will you be able to actually get some results.

Ritualize

When applying scheduling philosophies like Rhypthmic or Journalistic, you want to be able to switch fast into your deep work flow. In order to help yourself do that, it might be a good idea to adopt a ritual. As your brain is quite good at pattern recognition, with such a ritual in place, you will be putting your brain on autopilot and after a while, it will automatically get you into deep flow once it realizes the ritual/pattern. Things that might be good to consider for your ritual are a dedicated place for deep work, defined duration, rules on how you'll work once you start and any other similar rules and processes to structure each session.

Part 2: The Rules

Rule #1 :Work Deeply

• Define the things/goals you want to pursue, keep a scorecard of deep work hours and achievements, create accountability by having a weekly review.
• When you work, work hard. When you play, play hard. (no quick email check-ins at the dinner table)
• Deep work requires you to be focused with high intensity. There is no point in trying to cram extra work hours in the evening as there is a limited amount of deep work hours you can perform, making those extra hours of low quality. Thus, you should try to do your deep work hours in your "normal" work hours and when you are done, you are done! Do your end-of-day ritual and enjoy your downtime till the next day.

Rule #2: Embrace Boredom 

• To succeed with deep work you must rewire or train your brain to be better at resisting distractions (social media, TV or other). It does not mean that you should not do ANY distracting behavior. You will need to become better at managing it, so that it does not interfere or hijack your deep work scheduling. A tool you can use is "Internet Blocks" or "Distaction Blocks". Within those blocks, you can indulge in your favorite distraction, but once the time block is over you must stop. An example: instead of endless scrolling for hours, do if for 20m.
• Practice productive meditation. While doing a physical but not mental activity (walking, washing dishes etc), try to focus on a problem at hand and every time your mind wanders away, bring your attention back to the problem. This will help improve your distraction resisting ability.

Rule #3: Quit Social Media

• Learn to use the tool and don't let the tool use you. Social media platforms are specifically designed to grab your attention and keep you on the screen as much as possible. DONT LET THEM!!! Use them in appropriate time blocks and stop after that.

Rule #4: Drain the Shallows

• Shallow work is unavoidable (sending emails, meetings etc). You will have to try to limit shallow work so that it does not interfere with your deep work.
• You don't have to answer an email directly. As a matter of fact, you don't have to answer at all if it is a "bad" written email (if this could make your boss mad, maybe just answer it at your Shallow Work Block :P :P ).

I hope these notes will help you refresh the contents of the book or spark an interest to read more about the topic and grab a copy of Cal's book from your local bookstore. Cheers!!