Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is the definition of deep work?
Deep work is professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. these efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate
What is the definition of shallow work?
Shallow work is Noncognitively demanding, logistical style tasks, often performed while distracted. these efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate
What are the two reasons a person should learn the skill of deep work?
We live in an ever-changing technological environment that requires knowledge workers to rapidly pick up new skills. in today’s economy, producing the best you can produce is key to success. We are in a highly competitive landscape and deep work can give knowledge workers the edge they need to drastically outperform their peers.
What is the Deep Work Hypothesis?
It is the statement that the importance of deep work will continue to grow in value and decline in use, thus, the person who attains a Deep Work skill set will thrive
What are the three types of workers that will do extremely well in the new economy and what are their descriptions
High skilled workers: those that can take advantage of intelligent machinery and extract lots of value from it. example is nate silver, statistician
the superstars: those who are so skilled that very few can compete with them. they get the jobs and leave the rest in the dust. example is the founder of Basecamp
The Owners: These are people with a large access to capital to employ in the Great Restructuring like venture capitalists.
In summary: those that will thrive in the New Economy are those that can extract value from intelligent machines, are the best at what they do, have access to capital to take advantage of firms that do extremely well according to Bargaining Theory
What is Bargaining Theory?
Bargaining Theory is the theory that returns on capital investment and labor are proportional to their input, thus, with less labor needed in the grand restructuring, the returns an investor can expect are huge!
What are the two skills necessary to become a highly skilled worker or superstar?
The ability to quickly master hard things. The ability to produce quality work at a rapid pace.
What is the central thesis of the book?
The two core abilities (the ability to master hard things and the ability to produce at an elite level) stem from the underlying skill of Deep Work.
What are the two components of deliberate practice?
Undistracted focus on a particular skill and feedback so that the process can be improved so that attention is focused on whatever is most productive
What is the law of productivity formula and how does it relate to Adam Grant?
High Quality work = # of hours worked X intensity of focus. Adam Grant practices batching which is the process of devoting all of his time to one thing and not allowing for any distraction during that time.
Why is it that switching between tasks is detrimental to producing quality work?
residue is left behind from the previous task which carries over and prevents complete attention to the task at hand
Why is it that people like Jack Dorsey can practice seemingly shallow work and create so much value?
It relates to their key role which is to make many decisions quickly. Deep work does not apply to them due to the nature of their profession.
