Written by: John Muhanji on October 8, 2019

It has always been a practice by my Kenyan tribe to take their time to do something in life. They have always believed that hurrying to do something is a waste of your energy, for you will find yourself at the same place you were. This was a practice in the early period of life before technology came to be. It was when communication was passed to the communities for a gathering, one would go around the villages blowing the horn in a specific style, and people will start gathering in low tones. It will take almost an hour before most people gather and at a time, more than an hour. Technology is here with us, and we can give notice for over a week b3fore the meeting takes place.
The deep work concept by Cal Newport is speaking to our real condition today in this very distracting world we are living in. The world is indeed distracted for sure. We are facing many challenges, especially those of us living in the third world countries, which has many issues ranging from the economic problem, ethnicity differences, intellectual disparity and high level of poverty. Everybody wants to be productive as quickly as possible to catch up with others, which leads to high-level corruption and destruction of public resources. Very little concentration to deepen thought on how things are to be done is little experienced. Newport stresses that “to succeed, you have to produce the absolute best stuff you’re capable of producing – a task that requires the depth.” This is no different from what we are doing in researching our dissertation process that requires deep work in carrying your research and analyzing it carefully to arrive at a meaningful conclusion. Deep work is essential in producing useful work.
Newport is raising something that seems a new concept, but it’s not new, but what we have always done from a different perspective. He raises two ideas for thriving in a modern economy. They are the ability to quickly master hard things and the ability to produce at an elite level in terms of both quality and speed. Economic development we experience now has a lot of pressure on mass production for both profit-making and higher demand of fast-growing population or consumers in the world. This has caused an increase in deep work even though it is in a confused world. People need to eat, cloth and other services and somebody somewhere must develop the ability to master hard work for mass production. Deep work is genuinely essential for development in a fast-moving and confusing world. As much as the world is confused in the field of morals and other Christian and religious values, the economic growth is increasing, and demands are growing stretching manufacturers and other producers to go deeper into doing work for more production. As the saying goes necessity is the mother of invention. Deep work drives one to learn hard things and how to overcome them. All quality and meaningful work need deep work to achieve your goal. Nothing comes on a silver plate without deep work. Martyn Percy says the Contemporary cognitive science of religion investigates the potential relationship between religious practices and the success of human groups in evolutionary development. What Percy is describing here cannot be realized easily unless one deep work is gone into this.

About the Author

John Muhanji

I am the Director Africa Ministries Office of Friends United Meeting. I coordinate all Quaker activities and programs in the Quaker churches and school mostly in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The focus of my work is more on leadership development and church planting in the region especially in Tanzania.. Am married with three children all grown up now. I love playing golf as my exercise hobby. I also love reading.