The Benefits of Deep Work: The Ultimate Trend among Employees

Productivity

In today’s world of a busyness culture, when we try hard to do more by multitasking and working flat out, deep work looks like a poor time management technique that makes us do less. If so, then why do employees crave it for skyrocketing productivity? It’s the latest trend in the modern workplace. While deep work isn’t easy to achieve in the busy digital age, it promises better productivity, efficiency, and happiness.

What is that, and what’s so magical about it?

This article reveals the benefits of deep work and tells how to make the most out of this concept.

What Is Deep Work?

Deep work is “professional activities performed in a distraction-free concentration state that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit.”

This definition belongs to Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University. He’s the author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, the bestselling book introducing the concept and its benefits to the world.

In plain English, deep work is about the ability to focus on a single, challenging task for a prolonged time without getting distracted. You may know it as a flow state, the experience of complete immersion in whatever you do.

Deep work sessions make us innovative, creative, and super productive. No wonder this concept is the latest trend among employees:

Today we are “busier than ever,” multitasking and getting interrupted by tons of shallow work like emails, notifications, online calls, etc.

We can’t reach a productive flow when flitting between the tasks and often switching the context. The brain needs 15-20 minutes to focus after each interruption, so no wonder we become less efficient when multitasking and getting pulled out of work every 30 minutes.
With that in mind, employees now see deep work as an antidote for unproductive working practices and inefficient productivity techniques.

The Benefits of Deep Work to Consider

Let’s face it: Constant task switching and digital interactions end up with receiving and consuming information rather than acting to do the job in the best possible way. It’s draining and stressful, leaving employees unsatisfied with their productivity and work results.

In contrast, deep work brings satisfaction and happiness. Such work provides fulfillment, challenging us to accomplish cognitively demanding and high-skill tasks. It encourages our professional value and proactivity to deal with even more creative callings like project planning or project management.

But there’s a catch:

Deep work is not that easy to master. Entering the state of flow and distraction-free concentration requires effort and sustained willpower. Regular practice makes perfect, and once you’re able to perform it — get ready for the competitive advantage in the workplace and other benefits:

  • Better focus: Critical for business strategists, data analysts, researchers, freelance writers, and everyone working with a lot of cognitively demanding information to complete a project.
  • Enhanced productivity: A distraction-free environment without shifting from one task to another allows doing more in less time.
  • Improved sense of professional value and, as a result, better proactivity.
  • Job satisfaction: By accomplishing meaningful tasks, employees get a framework to extend the productive flow state, produce their best work, and feel a sense of purpose.
  • New skills and higher employability: Deep work helps to master problem-solving, critical thinking, and other essential skills that move projects forward; those able to produce it outpace colleagues and move up the career path.

How to Do Deep Work: 5 Practical Tips

1. Choose Your Approach

Speaking of deep work, you have several options. Ensure you understand all the details and stick to the one matching your life- and workstyle.

  1. Journalistic: Not perfect for deep work novices because it’s about switching to this mode when you have time. (Like journalists often do.) It requires discipline, and it will best work for those with no set schedule or structured routine.
  2. Monastic: The hardcore one, meaning you remove ALL distractions and don’t prescribe any set timeframe but do deep work for the whole day. It’s perfect for specialists like researchers or writers who can immerse in their work without negative consequences.
  3. Rhythmic: This one is about scheduling deep work sessions in your calendar with AI tools or by yourself and making them regular practice. Thus, you’ll create a rhythmic habit and spend some time on deep work daily, maintaining your work progress.
  4. Bimodal: Here, you divide time between deep and shallow work. For instance, you’ll schedule the whole day for deep work and then devote the next to routine tasks like checking and replying to emails, communicating with clients, online meetings with your team, etc. The bimodal approach is for those unable to remove or ignore low-effort repetitive tasks from their schedules.

2. Prioritize Tasks

Prioritizing is an integral part of time management:

First, decide on the goals; then create a work plan; and, finally, divide all the tasks so they would help you achieve those goals. Once you organize your tasks into priority and urgency, you’ll see the estimated time needed for their completion.

If all the tasks look essential, categorize them according to Stephen Covey’s (the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) strategy:

  • Urgent and important: Do them first.
  • Important but not urgent: Schedule time blocks for deep work on these tasks in your calendar.
  • Urgent but unimportant: Delegate these tasks or schedule shallow work sessions for them.
  • Not urgent and unimportant: Remove them from your to-do list.

3. Set Time Limits For Deep Work Sessions

If you are new to the deep work concept or can’t devote all your time to it (like the above Monastic approach suggests), the best option will be to time block all tasks and prescribe time limits for deep work sessions.

Start with 60-90 minute long sessions. Later, you can scale them up gradually if you see you can batch relevant tasks for better productivity and work efficiency.

For assigning time blocks for deep work sessions, consider time-tracking tools like TrackingTime.They’ll also help you define the most appropriate time for sessions: You’ll see how long each task takes to complete, and you’ll schedule your working time accordingly.

4. Remove Distractions

Deep work is about distraction-free concentration. So, to master and make the most out of it, organize your work environment:

Be ruthless! You need to remove all the distractions so you can focus your attention on the task.

  • Mute work communication tools.
  • Turn off the phone with social media notifications.
  • Log out of email.
  • Enable “Do not disturb” mode across the channels: Colleagues and friends can’t see you’re busy, so let them know you’re unavailable.

It would also help to limit time in meetings:

Not only are most of them unproductive, but they also distract employees from doing their job. It’s about switching the context again! Plus, it’s challenging to find a few hours for profitable deep work and focus on it when you have 2-3 meetings every day.

Set meetings for afternoons so your mornings are free for deep work. Learn to prioritize: Ask yourself if all those meetings are worth your time. Also, implement no-meeting days at work to have distraction-free time to do the job.

5. Take Breaks and Track the Progress

This one is among the top productivity hacks in most corresponding guides and tutorials on time management. For better results and your health, balance work sessions with quality rest (deep breaks): It prevents new distractions and stresses and gives you a cognitive breather for further achievements.

Healthy pauses in work ideally take around 15-20 minutes to complete. Take a short walk, read an entertaining article, or do physical exercises. The only rule here is that your chosen activity should be unrelated to your work, project management, or any other tiny tasks from your to-do list.

Deep work can skyrocket your productivity and work efficiency. But, to make it happen, you need to review your performance and track the progress to see if any adjustments or approach changes are worth considering.

Think of a compelling scoreboard to monitor the progress and track time spent on deep- and shallow work. Feel free to use your project management software for that: It will help you see the big picture, overview the progress, identify the main chronophages, and re-schedule the working hours accordingly.

Pro-tip: We recommend TrackingTime as the ultimate online tool for implementing the deep work technique. With its intuitive interface and powerful features, TrackingTime enables you to dive into a state of focused concentration, eliminating distractions and maximizing your productivity. Its robust time tracking capabilities help you track and analyze your deep work sessions, providing valuable insights into your productivity patterns. The ability to set goals and deadlines within TrackingTime keeps you accountable and motivated, ensuring you make the most of your deep work sessions. With integration across devices, TrackingTime offers a seamless experience, allowing you to transition between different work environments while maintaining your deep work flow. Give TrackingTime a try and unlock your full potential for deep, meaningful work.

Give Deep Work a Try to Become More Efficient

Deep work is your ability to focus and do a distraction-free activity in a flow state for a prolonged time. It relates to dealing with high-skill and cognitively demanding tasks, requiring concentration and minimum context switching.

The benefits of deep work are numerous:

It’s about enhanced productivity and employability, a sense of professional value, job satisfaction leading to better proactivity and work efficiency, etc. No wonder it’s among employees’ trends today! By balancing deep work and tiny shallow tasks, you’ll master time management, grow productivity, and provide more value to your company and team.

Author’s bio:

Lesley Vos is a professional copywriter and guest contributor, now blogging at easyessay.us, writing-help.com, and others. Specializing in data research, web text writing, and content promotion, she is in love with words, non-fiction literature, and jazz. Visit her Twitter @LesleyVos to say hi and see more works.

How to do Deep Work

  1. Choose your approach for deep work: journalistic, monastic, rhythmic, or bimodal.

  2. Remove distractions by muting communication tools, turning off phone notifications, and enabling “Do not disturb” mode.

  3. Limit time in unproductive meetings and schedule them for afternoons to prioritize deep work.

  4. Take regular breaks of 15-20 minutes for rest and rejuvenation.

  5. Track progress and performance using a scoreboard or project management software to make necessary adjustments and optimize work hours.