Distractions vs Deep Work

Everyone talks about how we’re “more distracted than ever” and how “deep work is more important than ever.” The term “deep work” was popularized by Cal Newport in his book “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World”, but simply put deep work is focusing on a singular task for prolonged periods of time which often results in flow state.

As someone whose productivity highly depends on how much time I spend in flow state, I’ve never found an easy way to communicate that importance to someone whose work does not have this requirement.

The reason certain tasks require long periods of unbroken concentration comes from a limitation of the human brain. We can only retain a small amount of information in our working memory at a time, so tasks that require us to “load in” information have a “warmup” period before we are actually productive. Here’s a few scenarios to illustrate what that impact might look like. Let’s pretend that you can measure progress units (PUs) and that it takes 30 minutes to get warmed up, during which you make 2 PU/hr, and once warmed up you make 10 PU/hr.

Scenario 1: You have a full day to yourself to get things done, you just stop once for lunch. 4 hours focused, 1 hour lunch, 4 hours focused.

(0.5 * 2) + (3.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (3.5 * 10) = 72 PU

Scenario 2: You now have one meeting in the middle of the morning and one meeting in the afternoon, but let’s say you dedicate the same 8 hours as before to your task. 2 hours focused, 30 mins meeting, 2 hours focused, 1 hour lunch, 2 hours focused, 30 mins meeting, 2 hours focused.

(0.5 * 2) + (1.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (1.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (1.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (1.5 * 10) = 64 PU

Scenario 3: You work in an office (what a concept for 2020) with an open floor plan and have a colleague next to you who distracts you every hour.

(0.5 * 2) + (0.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (0.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (0.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (0.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (0.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (0.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (0.5 * 10) + (0.5 * 2) + (0.5 * 10) = 48 PU

We see the dramatic effect that stopping and going can have on a day’s worth of productivity despite the fact that we spent the same amount of time in each scenario trying to focus! Now I’m not here to say that you should never have meetings or never talk to your colleagues (in fact I will later write about why meetings and clear communication are so critical for team projects). And of course this simple model is anything but accurate. But I hope I have shown that there is a real impact that distractions can have on productivity. So the next time someone gets offended that you don’t want to take a meeting in the middle of your working hours, just send them this.

Now that you’re determined to stay focused for longer, how can you actually make it happen? Here’s a few tips to get you started:

• Group your meetings so they interrupt you fewer times in a day
• Turn off notifications when you start focusing
• Set a specific time in the day to check email and messages
• Use an app to block distracting websites and apps
• Try some psychologic tricks like the Pomodoro technique

If you’d like to learn more about anything I touched on today leave a comment!