Deep work & the doing-it-anyway way
I have been torturing myself this week by listening to the 2016 book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. A computer science professor at Georgetown, Newport defines deep work as “the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.”
That sounds nice. So why call reading about it torture? Well, as a mother of three in the summer with a journalism job and a book to write and meals to plan and laundry to fold… everything feels a little “cognitively demanding.” I can almost hear Alanis Morissette crooning “isn’t it ironic… a little too ironic?” as I catch snippets of the book on my drive from bike camp to a nearby library—my brain shouting “squirrel!” at a stoplight over some grocery item I forgot—where I try to focus for a few minutes in a row while saving on gas.
And yet I have found the core concepts of the book helpful. Newport argues that the ability to focus on deep work—the stuff we really want or need to be doing—is a skill we’ve lost amid the constant drip of distractions of our age. In the moment, and without a plan, it always feels easier to do something quick, easy and relatively painless (check a text, look for an email, scroll a little social media) rather than the initially painful work of putting words on a page—or whatever your equivalent is.
These words are reminding me that my attention is precious and it is limited, that I need to steward it well to do each of these disparate tasks. And it’s reminding me that I’m not very good at this. And, if I’m actually going to turn in a book by this coming spring, I need to exercise my atrophied deep-work muscles.
Despite my attention feeling more splintered than ever by summer’s lack-of-routines, I am reading this book now for two reasons: 1) to prepare for an upcoming, 36-hour writing retreat that I want to make the most of and 2) because I put it on hold at my library back when it was not summer-with-kids-always-interrupting and it just became available. My holds often dictate my reading-now list.
So, yes, I am still deciding whether reading this now is torture, serendipity or a dash of both. My life looks pretty different from the author’s right now. And yet, somehow, I hope to produce good work, even in this season.
I am perhaps most intrigued by this book because I recently tasted and remembered what it felt like to do deep work. I slipped away for a 36-hour writing retreat back in February to see if I could turn some of my jotted notes and essays about losing my mom into a book proposal.
a writing corner
And it worked (perhaps the prayers as much as the getting away). My brain functioned in ways I hadn’t felt it work in years. Disparate thoughts came together, themes emerged, the writing really did seem to just flow.
I am a dozen years and three kids into a writing “career” (quote marks because I try to hold it more loosely than that word implies), and I’d never done something like this before. It was an act of faith (made possible by my push-me-out-the-door husband) to step away from my family on a Sunday afternoon and head to a cheap AirBNB in Alexandria to string words together. It was only 15 minutes from my house, but it housed no other humans I needed to feed, no crumbs I needed to sweep and—with a little self-control and an away message—no emails I needed to respond to right away. I also prayed a lot, begging God to make something of the time, to bring some beauty from the ash heap I’d been sitting in and sifting through to know Him more.
And it worked (perhaps the prayers as much as the getting away). My brain functioned in ways I hadn’t felt it work in years. Disparate thoughts came together, themes emerged, the writing really did seem to just flow.
For years, I have seen deadlines as my personal jet fuel for good writing, and they still are. Perhaps nothing has convinced me more that God hears our prayers than the pace at which I can write a story in desperation during a sick child’s nap. So I wasn’t sure I knew how to do long chunks of focused work anymore. I have that same feeling of doubt heading into another writing retreat (this time 15 minutes in the other direction, to another cheap Air BNB in Occoquan) this coming Sunday.
I’ve told my husband not to expect such a tsunami of productivity from each of these times away. Perhaps the words flowed because they had been held back by a dam for many months. But also, I no longer see deep work and do-it-anyway work as pitted against each other. And I’m pretty sure it will take both to meet my deadlines.
Perhaps my very best work (and yours) isn’t limited to retreating but can come in many forms. If I believe in a God who redeems it all, who can take my few loaves and multiply them, then I can see all my work as unto the Lord. The writing done in the little cracks of time that feels like anything but flow is still valuable in his economy, even if it doesn’t feel as valuable in mine.
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” Col. 3:23-24
I am grateful that God cares about the deep work and the shallow. And that if the deep-work flow never comes again, He would equip me to faithfully do it anyway. I haven’t had deep work to write this newsletter, and perhaps it suffers for it. Or perhaps the best work—especially for a mom-in-summer—is the work that actually happens, even if it’s the do-it-anyway kind.