MM#82--Superpower, part 2 - Deep Work Habit

Welcome to the theory to action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately, and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I'm David, and welcome back to another Mojo minute. Well, shame on me. I discovered at the tail end of our last podcast, our last Mojo minute that I talked a lot about, and around this so called superpower of the 21st century. But I never got to what it is, I never got to the core of what it is, it's an essence, that core nugget of wisdom that I always promise you that I will deliver on. Nor did I really define what the superpower of the 21st century is. 

So for all that, I apologize, that's kind of frustrating as I listened back to it. And please allow me to correct myself, like any good teacher should do, when they know they have suffered a bit of a blind spot and missed the essential things. And also, let me say at the outset, that I have been struggling with a code or the Omicron variant. So my voice is a little off today, and probably was the last time we spoke. But I am doing very, very good, no issues there. Just a little, little change in the voice. So I apologize for that, too. 

So let's back up and add some context and paint a much clearer picture for you today. So back in 2016, Cal Newport wrote a book called Deep Work, the rules for focus success in a distracted world. It is a book that I highly, highly recommend. Now who is Cal Newport? You might ask? That's a very good question. He is a theoretical computer scientist by trade. He got his PhD from MIT, and now teaches at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. So he's kind of a nerdy, smart guy, really big brain. And that's exactly the type of guy you want to learn from, when we're talking about superpowers and such. Now, his book, deep work is laid out in two parts. Part one, his hypothesis for this deep work theory, the idea he calls it, and number two, his rules for accomplishing this idea. 

So with that, let's go to the book to get to the heart of this nugget of wisdom, quote, the deep, the deep work hypothesis, the ability to perform deep work is essentially becoming increasingly rare. At exactly the same time it is becoming what you'll learn is is increasingly valuable in our economy. So as a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, then make it their core of their working life will thrive. And the book has two parts, or two goals pursued in two parts, the first part is tackled in part one, it is to convince you that the deep work hypothesis is true. T

he second tackled in part two is to teach you how to take advantage of this reality by training your brain and transforming your work habits to place deep work at the core of your professional life. And then before diving into these details, however, I will take a moment to explain how I became such a devotee of depth, unquote. So that is Cal Newport, explaining to us or introducing us to his concepts. And this habit, the Super 21st century superpower habit of deep work. So that's all very cool. So now that we know a little bit more about this concept of deep work, let's continue to define what is deep work. And most likely the next question is, is there shallow work? Since that's the opposite of deep work? Is there such a thing as shallow work? Ah, very good questions. My young patwin Very good indeed.
So that's a little shout out to the Star War fans, Star Wars movie fans. Turns out there. 

So what is deep work? Let's go back to the book. Deep Work are the professional activities performed in a state of distraction free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skills and are hard to replicate. Deep Work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity. And we know from decades of research in both psychology and neuroscience, that the state of mental strain that accompanies deep work is also necessary to improve your abilities. Unquote. And now, let's go to cow's definition and terms for shallow work. 

Quote, shallow work is non cognitively demanding logistical style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world. And they're easy to replicate in the age of network tools. In other words, knowledge workers increasingly replaced deep work with a shallow alternative, constantly sending and receiving email messages, like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction, unquote. Ah, so now we're getting a clearer picture. It's making a little bit more sense, hopefully. Do you see the dramatic difference between deep and shallow work? And isn't it true that most of us in the 21st century culture go pillar to post at breakneck speed and never slow down fast enough to absorb any of these big ideas. And I know that sometimes in my real job, I can feel like a human network router. In fact, probably most of us do. So this is my humble attempt to help in this matter, and to get us focusing on the real value that we bring to our co workers, to our neighbors and to humanity at large. 

So in today's let's call it correcting Mojo minute. How about you? Are you running around, like I said, from pillar to post, never really digging into your work with focus, like concentration, and no distractions. And if you are the rare person that is actually doing this, or that is digging into that deep work, distraction free Well, good for you, who ya. But like I discovered back in 2016, I think for most of us, there is hard work in developing this fantastic habit of deep work. And we'll cover that in our next Mojo minute. But until then, can we become conscious of our distractions from our phones, our phone notifications, or social media dopamine hits? And then perhaps, is it better to begin to limit those distractions? Because after all, if we're out to live a flourishing life, and we need to develop the right habits to get on that path, this 21st century superpower will be our freeway to excellence. So now let's go to work on that deep work habit.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at T Mojo academy.com where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on