{"id":12683,"date":"2017-05-11T12:56:28","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T19:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=12683"},"modified":"2017-05-11T13:00:41","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T20:00:41","slug":"deep-work-i-guess-i-should-have-been-a-craftsman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/deep-work-i-guess-i-should-have-been-a-craftsman\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Work = &#8220;I guess I should have been a craftsman&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201cWhether you\u2019re a writer, marketer, consultant, or lawyer: Your work is craft, and if you hone your ability and apply it with respect and care, then like the skilled wheelwright you can generate meaning in the daily efforts of your professional life.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\"><strong>[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>My Challenge:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My workday begins when my alarm wakes me up at 5:30am. From there I snooze until I hear that first \u201cding\u201d on my phone indicating that I have received my first work email for the day. In technology companies\/departments the definition of a work day is very fluid. It depends on your role and level of responsibility. For some work occurs 7 days a week and for others it is a modified 4-5 day from 7am to 4pm. \u00a0In most cases, companies value visible productivity until the results do not match with the perceived work being completed. Employees are encouraged to multitask and maintain the momentum of the projects they are tasked to manage. The challenge is not so much in the work required but in the questions most ask themselves everyday \u201cam I doing meaningful work?\u201d and \u201cis the way in which I am doing my job accomplishing my end goal?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Book:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cal Newport in his book <em>Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success In A Distracted World<\/em>\u00a0attempts to address\u00a0the issues\u00a0that underline the questions posed above. In doing so, he lays out practical rules that are to be applied to his\u00a0theoretical solution that has yet to be proven within the personal anecdote that I shared above. He breaks his discussion down into two main parts: Part 1 The Idea and Part 2 The Rules. In part 1, he advocates that in order to have deep work a person must give undivided attention and focus to their craft. One must remove all distractions and\/or interruptions to allow for in-depth concentration. The goal of this book he says is \u201c<em>to systematically develop your personal ability to go deep\u2014and by doing so, reap great rewards<\/em>.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>To further explore his deep work theory, Newport uses the analogy of a craftsman honing their skills and spending time alone with their work mastering one skill after the next.\u00a0 He argues that by attempting to multi task a person can never fully give their time to produce meaningful work and it forces the mind to become distracted by prioritizing between what is currently happening and what a person is feeling compelled to focus on. \u00a0He writes \u201c<em>Deep work, therefore, is key to extracting meaning from your profession \u2026 It follows that to embrace deep work in your own career, and to direct it toward cultivating your skill, is an effort that can transform a knowledge work job from a distracted, draining obligation into something satisfying\u2014a portal to a world full of shining, wondrous things<\/em>.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In Part 2, he defines four rules that must be followed as a way to measure if you are doing \u201cdeep work\u201d:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Rule #1- Work Deeply- Develop habits that become rituals to allow for deep work to take place overtime.<\/li>\n<li>Rule #2- Embrace Boredom<em>&#8211; <\/em>It is important not to fill gaps of time with distractions. If your minds must be stimulated at all times it will not be able to focus on deep work for long periods of time.<\/li>\n<li>Rule #3- Quit Social Media- Remove your presence from social media activities. This will provide more time to focus on deep work without using social media as a distraction.<\/li>\n<li>Rule #4- Drain the Shallows- remove work that is \u201c<em>noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate<\/em>.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>He concludes his book by saying that \u201c<em>The deep life, of course, is not for everybody. It requires hard work and drastic changes to your habits. For many, there\u2019s a comfort in the artificial busyness of rapid e-mail messaging and social media posturing, while the deep life demands that you leave much of that behind<\/em>\u2026 <em>But if you\u2019re willing to sidestep these comforts and fears, and instead struggle to deploy your mind to its fullest capacity to create things that matter, then you\u2019ll discover, as others have before you, that depth generates a life rich with productivity and meaning<\/em>.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>My Thoughts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Although this book was an easy read, I found it to be more of a \u201ctelling\u201d me how it should be done than \u00a0a\u201cshowing\u201d \u00a0me how it is currently being done today.\u00a0 While I appreciate his theoretical assessment on\u00a0how to achieve meaningful work, I was put off by the way in which ,on one hand,\u00a0he was presenting examples that were disproving his theory and then, on the other hand would, conclude that he had provided enough evidence to prove his point of view.<\/p>\n<p>I agree that the way in which many work environments are set up they are not conducive to maintain in-depth work 100% of the time. I also agree with the notion ,for those who can, of incorporating rituals and habitual behavior that will allow for some deep work to take place every day. Where I tend to disagree is with his emphasis on removing current technological resources as a solution to the problem. I believe it requires a more integrated lifestyle approach. It felt to me, as I read the book, that there was a disdain or shame he placed on those who do not choose to engage in this \u201cdeep life\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us will never work in environments where it will be distraction free and majority of us will still be successful in accomplishing our goals. Throughout the book, he provides examples where CEO\u2019s who have the time, money, and ability to retreat are able to do \u201cdeep work\u201d and concentrate on how to take their company to the next level. He focuses primarily on jobs that do not require much collaborative work like\u00a0the role of a code developer. Their primary job is to sit alone and write code all day in a silo environment in order to render the results necessary to contribute to their team.\u00a0 Being a person who has these skills it is very easy to retreat when only tasked to do one specific role. However, If now that same developer had to\u00a0also manage a team of developers, attend meetings and produce reporting to their managers this example loses its ability to be a practical example for his \u201cdeep work\u201d theory.<\/p>\n<p>I was left wondering if this really was a practical and scalable approach to meaningful work. For example, how does the platform development manager ,who has to use all web-based tools and run an agile product team while being required to work weekends to push new products to production apply his theory? What about the blue collar manufacturing mid-level manager, whose job is primarily time boxed with rigorous deadlines and requires constant collaborative planning and implementation across his team and other departments?<\/p>\n<p>While his discussion on deep work does have merit, I would have liked for him to have spent more time \u201cshowing\u201d a more scalable approach on how these rules are being practically\u00a0applied across various types of \u00a0roles that are not already inherently concentration based occupations (i.e. writers, consultants, developers, lawyers, etc.) . Instead, it felt like he spent majority of his time explaining theories and philosophical methods to defend his point of view and rules.<\/p>\n<p>I guess my questions would have been answered if I had simply chose to roll back in time and became a craftsman by trade.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Cal Newport, Deep work: rules for focused success in a distracted world (New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2016). Location 973.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Ibid. Location 764.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> Ibid. Location 986.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> Ibid. Location 2504.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> Ibid. Location 2887.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhether you\u2019re a writer, marketer, consultant, or lawyer: Your work is craft, and if you hone your ability and apply it with respect and care, then like the skilled wheelwright you can generate meaning in the daily efforts of your professional life.\u201d[1] &nbsp; My Challenge: My workday begins when my alarm wakes me up at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[951],"class_list":["post-12683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-newport","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12683"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12694,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12683\/revisions\/12694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}