30-Day Deep Work Challenge

In which I attempt to grow my focus and ditch my addiction to Solitaire.

Photo by Saurav Thapa Shrestha on Unsplash

In researching for a book, I picked up Cal Newport’s Deep Work and for better or worse decided on a whim last night that I would use July 1 as a start to a 30-day “deep work” challenge, maybe you’ll consider joining me.

First, “‘deep work’ is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.” The challenge, of course, lies in the fact that we have all been well-trained out of ‘deep work’ by the distracting and addictive apps on the computers we carry with us everywhere (but of course there are a slew of other things that can distract us from engaging in deep work. I believe Brené Brown would call basically any activity we engage in that numbs us out a distraction.

I have been half-assedly attempting to disconnect from my phone for ages, including reading and attempting to practice the tips Newport lays out in another of his books, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, which was published three years after Deep Work.

If you haven’t heard of Cal Newport, he’s a computer science prof at Georgetown University who earned his PhD at MIT. He published his first book on being a successful college student when he was like 12 yrs-old or something (23), has developed at least one successful blog, and now has, I don’t know, 67 (eight) traditionally published books and who knows how many academic essays in reputable journals despite only being 40 yrs old (literally my age—in a couple of months).

Basically he’s a massively ambitious and accomplished dude, so something he’s doing must work.

Deep Work is primarily targeted toward knowledge workers and office settings, but it seems reasonable to me that practicing deep work in our creative and personal lives is also necessary and something most struggle with.

Despite that most of us feel as if all we need to do is shut down our phones (or literally lock them in a safe) and we’ll totally, no problem, get to long hours of focused work on those poems we’re writing or the work project we’re meant to be finishing up, absolutely no problem! And if this is you, I bow to you.

In realty, and this is the premise of the book, achieving a state of deep work actually takes quite a bit of training, intentionality, and conscious decisions to first remove the distractions and then build an ability to focus.

Sort of like no one really suggests you expect to meditate for a full hour on your first go, start with five minutes and build from there consistently over many days or even weeks.

Like now, I lost track of where I was going with this and find myself putting in great effort not to switch over to any of the number of tabs I have open in this window (ideally there would be no other tabs open except, potentially, necessary research tabs, like Cal Newport’s birthday, but I started this challenge on a whim and haven’t taken the time to close these tabs yet).

Of course, stopping to think is 100% part of engaging in deep work, however, is my popping over to Facebook or browsing more holiday lets for my birthday weekend going to help my brain process my thoughts on this writing?

In truth, I could make an argument for either case, the problem, I suppose lies in the fact that if I pop over to Facebook in order to let my brain process, it could, and will likely, lead to my falling down a scroll hole and before I know it it’s eight pm, I completely forgot about this essay, and I have no idea what day it is.

So I’m trying it Newport’s way.

Some guidelines:

1. No social media, no exceptions. Well, unless I can post to social media without actually signing in to social media, but only for business activity.

2. Schedule email checks. Three days a week will be more than enough as I truly don’t get anything urgent.

3. No one I know actually lives near me, so there’s no reason that checking my texts needs to happen more than three times in the week either. I’ll use Focus Mode on my Droid to avoid notifications coming in. (This also aligns with one of Newport’s tenets that we should be taking distraction breaks from deep work rather than taking deep work breaks from our distractions, i.e., disconnecting on Sundays will not train us to focus, it’s just a brief moment of calm before we throw ourselves back in 24/7.)

4. I will, even though it seems to go against everything I’ve been cultivating these last months, schedule every minute of my day. He claims this isn’t something to hold ourselves to, it’s a way to find out how much time things actually take, rest and idle time should and must be scheduled in, and changes are inevitable as tasks take longer than expected or an unplanned insight, idea, task comes up and shifts the schedule. Just rewrite the schedule.

5. If I need a break, I’ll take a break, but with a nap or meditation or movement or staring off into space, not with my phone.

6. There are apps on my phone that are useful tools, calendar, Trello, a journal, Duolingo, I will continue to use these as necessary.

I’ve reached the end of day one with general success. I used my phone to do some Dashing (yes, I’ve just started delivering food to make ends meet before I’m wildly successful with a self-published book) and after I just automatically slipped into checking all the apps including email, so I’ll have to disable it on the phone.

I don’t know if I felt like I was in a state of deep work writing this (certainly not while I was delivering McDonald’s to a house outside of town that I’m pretty sure had freaking emus in the yard!), and my schedule says I’m supposed to be reading right now but, nonetheless, here we go!