When was the last time you stayed busy all day, only to realize afterward that you really didn’t accomplish that much of significance? With all the ways today to keep ourselves occupied, it’s all too easy to do this. But staying busy and being truly productive are not the same thing.
In his book, Deep Work, Cal Newport talks about the difference between shallow work and deep work. He defines deep work as, “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capacities to their limit…” (p. 3)
Shallow work, on the other hand, is defined as, “noncognitively 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.” (p. 6)
Shallow work is easier. And while it can be tempting to spend much of our time—perhaps all of our time—doing it, deep work offers a few things that shallow work doesn’t.
Benefits
It’s Valuable: By definition, engaging in deep work means focusing your energy and skill on the task at hand. And this leads to both quality and efficiency: you’re able to do better work, and do it in less time than when your focus is fragmented. And being able to do this is a valuable commodity in the world in which we live. The improved quality of what we produce, coupled with the fact that choosing to spend time in this kind of focused state is so rare, only increases the value of choosing to engage in this kind of activity.
It’s Fulfilling: Beyond being valuable, deep work can also be deeply fulfilling. It doesn’t mean it’s not hard or exhausting at times. But just like in physical exercise, where you may feel tired yet great after working out, deep work can be both tiring and exhilarating at the same time. You work hard, and have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re continuing to both grow and provide value to the world around you.
How deep is it?
So how do you know how shallow or deep a task is?
One rule of thumb that Newport gives in his book—and one that I found helpful—was to think about how many weeks would it take to train a sharp, recent college grad to do the task. If it’s something anyone reasonably able could do with little or no training, it’s probably fairly shallow. But if it would take months or years of training to get someone else to that place, that’s a sign the work is fairly deep.
And it’s these areas—the ones that take extensive training or skill or experience—where we can often provide the most value to those around us. Because if we’re spending all our time on things that anyone could do at the expense of working on things that only we can do, we’re failing to maximize the unique strengths we bring to the table.
Now, I’m not saying that our days should be comprised of only deep work. In most cases, that would be both impractical and unrealistic. But at the same time, deep work shouldn’t be completely absent from our days (or weeks) either. It may not make up all (or even most) of what we do day-in and day-out, but knowing where we can add the most value, and then intentionally spending focused chunks of time working deeply in those area, can make a huge difference.
The problem with busyness
The problem, though, is that staying busy can feel good, and can also make us feel like we’re contributing. It can give us a false sense of accomplishment.
I can stay busy all day long on shallow work, hopping from an email to a conversation to something on social media back to another email and so forth. And I can do this the entire day, checking off all kinds of items on my to-do list. But how valuable is getting 90% of my to-do list complete if I neglect the 10% that’s most important? How much greater would my contribution be if I chose to engage deeply on the tasks and projects that matter most?
But doing this is hard. It requires focus, and it requires time. And depending on the environment, it can be difficult to create space for it. Yet, it’s worth striving for. Because while shallow work may be necessary, if we spend all our days in the shallow end, we miss out on both the value and the fulfillment that comes from going deep.