The False Myth of Deep Work

There are conversations that are had because they are worth it; others instead everyone thinks them but no one has the courage to have them; still others because repeating them is never enough, but everyone starts the conversation in their own way, and that is what gives value. Yes, it is not easy to understand what I am talking about, I am very vague, decidedly too much. I’ll get there, slowly. This is one of those conversations, those that everyone thinks about but no one has the courage to address.

In my life, I have always more or less considered myself a creative person: both as a child, but also today in creating stories, products, services, discussions, ideas. Until my adolescence, I always lived life as if I didn’t know if an asteroid would fall in the next second or not. At that time, everything was a priority. Now that I think about it, until two or three years ago I managed my time and my life in the same way: as if every moment was right to do anything.

I considered, therefore, time as a set of points where each point could be exchanged with the other. A second or a minute at 7 in the morning had the same flavor, the same difficulty, the same essence as a minute or second at 8 in the evening, or even at midnight. I can’t remember how many times I studied at 2 in the morning, played Playstation just after waking up at 8, had lunch at 3 in the afternoon and dinner at midnight. Especially when I was doing ERASMUS in Germany, in 2016, I had an absurd routine. But I had the feeling, the impression that I was doing a lot of things. And in fact I was doing a lot of things, because I traveled a lot, wrote a lot, met many people. But I wasn’t doing things with sense.

I only realized it afterwards, when I started connecting the dots. Connecting the dots is the art of reconstructing the reasons why one arrived at a certain point in one’s working career or in the personal sphere.

When I started, in fact, to connect the dots trying to understand what had gone well in my life and what hadn’t, what had made me waste time and what had made me earn more, I found myself making difficult decisions much more easily than I had ever thought. Connecting the dots means rationalizing one’s life and factoring in the positive and negative aspects of what we have done, of what we have been and of what we have had. I, unfortunately or fortunately, am an optimist by nature. For me, the positive aspects are excellent because they make me understand what is good for me and what I must continue to do, and the negative aspects are even better because they make me understand what I must not do. For me, failing or making a mistake is even more significant than doing well because it means there is room for improvement.

Perhaps it is not clear where I am going with this, because usually when talking about the topic indicated by the title of this episode, one starts from completely different assumptions. Many have written about deep work, focused work, but they all start from the same premise: it is something that serves to improve one’s productivity.

Seeing focused work as an improvement is a huge mistake in my opinion, because it assumes that what we do today has no value. And instead, starting from the considerations and premises that I specified before, the substance changes radically: focused work is the consequence of an inner work that everyone should do on themselves, which has nothing to do with Whatsapp notifications that disturb our quiet, with emails that pester us and with social networks that invade our moments of boredom. There is no rule that applies to everyone to become the productive worker.

For a social media manager, for example, the measure of productivity could depend directly on how much time they stay on social media. From how much they know them. For a TV series analyst (yes, this figure exists), it could be to watch the greatest number of TV series. For the product reviewer, it could generally be the time testing a new phone or a new TV or a new game.

What does focused work mean then? We always listen to these productivity gurus who tell us that we must remove Instagram from our phone, we must put it on do not disturb and we must work alone.

But none of this is true. Or rather, it is not a rule of life. What really counts is the mental structure that leads to focused work. Starting from the assumptions I made before, the first reasoning that comes to mind is: looking back at my life, did what I did lead to the results I had set for myself? All questions must refer to the past, not the future. The future hasn’t happened yet, while on the past we can “"”work”””, we can use it in our favor.

What makes me happy? What makes me sad? Why do I do what I do? If I do something that makes me happy, I will be extremely focused doing it, because I want to do that thing. If something makes me sad, the situations are different: if it is something I can avoid doing, I must not do it, very simply. If it is something I have to do, I try to understand if the fact that it makes me sad or annoyed or angry is a passing situation: I postpone that activity to another time.

If I cannot postpone it, or if even postponing it the situation does not change, I force a behavior called temptation bundling: in coordination with another person, who will be the accountability partner of that activity, I define a reward upon completion of that activity, shifting happiness to the reward: now I will be happier doing that activity, but not for the activity itself, but for the reward that will follow. I can also implement temptation bundling by coupling the boring and ‘sad’ activity with a background activity that gives me some kind of joy, such as listening to a playlist of music I like. Or I can couple an activity I would like to do with one I should do, such as filling out a spreadsheet (boring) and listening to a podcast (nice).

Another very important aspect is knowing what we are doing is for. Very often we find ourselves doing things just because, by inertia, it makes sense to do these specific activities. But that’s not necessarily true at all.

Wait, I missed translating deep work!

One must periodically review the goal associated with each activity. Many activities can be changed, updated, recreated or eliminated totally. We change, and the way we do things changes with us.

Today I spend a lot of time of my day doing things I like, and when I don’t like something I try to do it using temptation bundling. Many times, moreover, I find myself not wanting to do anything. Until recently I was ashamed even just to feel this sensation. “I have to work, I can’t think of sitting around doing nothing”, I thought. And I forced myself to write, send emails. I can’t tell you how many things I got wrong in these moments. Even just writing an email can be a titanic undertaking, if you don’t feel like doing it. Just wait. Do something else in the meantime, and come back to it later. I do it very often. Just before writing the notes for this episode, for example, I should have written some things, checked some documents and planned some activities. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I started reading some articles I had saved on Pocket, and then I decided to start writing a few lines. And now I am about to finish this episode, written all in one breath. With very high concentration, without ever stopping. With many surrounding distractions, which however did not really distract me from my writing.

Focused work is a matter of will, that’s it. And there should exist, in this historical era of continuous distractions, an educational path to stimulate focused work sessions. I always leave you with questions, to make you remain with cues to reflect on. What makes you happy?

What makes you sad? Why do you do what you do? I started from here, and there are days when, between work and study, I accumulate 12-13 hours of commitments, which do not weigh on me at all. And some days I don’t even reach 5 hours. But that’s how it works: not forcing anything and making ourselves ready to work when we best can.