Deep Work and Shallow Work
There were two types of work that knowledge workers might do each day - Deep Work and Shallow Work.
Deep Work (first coined by Cal Newport) is:
- Uninterrupted time
- Important tasks
- Cognitively demanding
Examples include: Creating a strategy, writing a speech
Shallow work is:
- Logistical-style tasks
- Non-cognitively demanding
- Often performed while distracted
Examples include: Email, info sharing, most meetings
When I ask leaders what the ideal amount of time they should do deep work each day, they say on average about 4 hours.
When I ask them how much time they actually spend each day they say on average less an 1 hour (and that is often in the evening with no interruptions).
Many people tell me they spend no time doing deep work. It's all shallow. They often look crestfallen as they know how much more value they could create if they weren’t buried in shallow tasks.
It seems organizations are leaving enormous amounts of $$ and value on the table because they are not prioritising deep work for employees.
Some smart organizations already are.
Dropbox created ‘core hours’ from 9am-1pm PST each day. At this time, everyone must be available for meetings & collaboration. Outside of that is ‘focus time’. You don’t schedule meetings during focus time and you don’t interrupt people. This is protected time for staff to do deep work on high-value tasks.
Slack wanted to increase deep work time each day, but didn’t want to mandate when. So, they requested teams not to do more than 4 hours of meetings per day. The team chooses when works for them. The rest of the time is deep work time.
Asana felt their people were overloaded with low-value, recurring meetings. So, they did a Meeting Doomsday. They had people cancel all recurring meetings and a week later only add ones back in that they considered valuable. People on average saved 11 hours a month of no longer valuable meetings or 17 days a year.
I am working with organizations and teams at the moment to increase the amount of deep work they do each day (for the smallest possible effort).
For each team, there are 3 steps:
1. For 45mins I teach them about Deep Work and how other companies are increasing it
2. In 15 mins the team comes up with 1 experiment they want to try to increase deep work
3. I join team meetings for 1 agenda item – how are we going on our experiments? What’s working? What challenges? (10 mins)
It is proving remarkably easy for teams to increase their deep work hours. I think it’s because:
1. They are very motivated to make progress in this area.
2. The regular check-in means there is light accountability, learning together and a sense of progress.
For most people blocking out just one hour a day for Deep Work makes an enormous difference. Just start small and see what happens.
