Most of us instinctively understand that work today is different than in the past. Both faculty and staff in higher education are knowledge workers where our value comes from ideas and creativity rather than producing something. While everyone agrees that ideas and creativity are important, our days are instead spent with email, meetings, and paperwork that isn’t adding value to anyone or anything. In today’s post, I want to share a review of Deep Work by Cal Newport, which challenges our current work routines and makes suggestions for how to generate more value.
Newport’s book is a provocative read and I suggest anyone in a job where the quality of one’s ideas is important should read it.
The central premise of the book is that knowledge workers should focus on deep work that provides value rather than shallow work which is really a false productivity.
Deep work, according to Newport, is professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes the limits of your cognitive capabilities.
In contrast, shallow work is noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks often performed while distracted. Furthermore, shallow work is relatively easy to do, but does not create new value for the world.
These aren’t complicated notions to understand. For example, deep work for faculty would include research discoveries and writing. This is the type of activities that will lead to tenure, professional recognition, and improve the world.
Yet, I suspect if we’re honest with ourselves, this isn’t how most of our days our spent. Instead, we send tons of emails, attend meaningless and unproductive meetings, and engage in gossip and campus politics.
Newport attributes this to what he calls the principle of least resistance. Simply put, without clear and immediate feedback on the impact of behaviors, people tend towards those that are easiest in the moment.
Which is easier, responding to an email or solving a problem facing your research?
I believe this concept is central that what derails many faculty, particularly those pre-tenure. The work necessary to succeed in research and get tenure is hard and without immediate feedback on its importance.
Teaching gives immediate feedback. Students respond positively to a great class. The department chair immediately acknowledges your work on a department committee and thanks you for your efforts.
No one sits around praising the great edits you did on your latest manuscript.
Relatedly, the absence of clear indications of what productivity looks like for faculty or staff leads to busyness as a proxy for productivity. If you’re quick to respond to emails, always volunteer to help out, and spend your day bouncing ideas off of colleagues, everyone will see how busy you are and thus you’re productive, right?
Quite obviously this isn’t true, yet it guides so much of our behavior.
What if we instead spent our time on meaningful deep work providing value to our disciplines, departments, and institutions?
Newport makes a truly compelling case for the value of deep work using neuroscience, psychology, and even philosophy to implore knowledge workers to turn away from shallow work.
As he concludes the first part of his book, “A deep life is a good life, any way you look at it.”
All of us in higher education should seek this approach to our work. I hope you will read Deep Work and implement his ideas into your academic and administrative work.
