[PragmaticPulp]

It's easy to dismiss "Deep Work" articles for their use of buzzwords and pop-psychology, but this sort of structured language really does help drive the point home for some people.

The core concept of Deep Work isn't really controversial. Everyone knows that hard problems require focus, but that doesn't seem to stop people from surrounding themselves with notifications and distractions. It also doesn't stop many companies from burying their employees under a deluge of Slack notifications and must-respond-immediately e-mail expectations.

Once you start putting a name on it (It's not focus, it's "Deep Work (TM)"!) it becomes an easier sell to many (though not all) of the people who need to hear it. Attaching an explanation, a methodology, or a movement to something really does seem to amplify the importance.

It's the same effect that makes "Dopamine fasting" more poignant than suggesting that people take a day off of watching TV, checking their phones every 10 minutes, and browsing time-waster websites all throughout the day. They're the same thing in concept, but once you attach a catchy name and/or a semi-scientific explanation to something, many people start taking it more seriously.

In my time mentoring junior devs, one of the biggest predictors of future success was a person's ability to sit down, focus, and get work done. Many college grads are coming from an environment where their classes are neatly divided into 1-hour classes spread throughout the day. They're pulled in many directions by their phones, social engagements, activities, homework, and classes. They get in the habit of only focusing for 1-2 hours at most before going on to the next thing. Once they graduate and have to sit in one place and work on one thing for 8 hours a day, many of them struggle. If I try to lecture them on the importance of sustained focus and minimizing distractions, I sound like an out of touch old guy. If I instead say "Hey, we practice Deep Work here. Let me get you a copy of a Deep Work book so you can join us" then they're on board.

So you may not like the branding. You may not like seeing the same topic rehashed over and over again. But practically speaking, I don't care how it's accomplished. As long as it gets more people to take sustained focus seriously (both employees and managers alike) then I'm all for it.

[ZephyrBlu]

I'm grad age (22), but I dropped out of uni. I don't understand how people get anything done if they only spend 1-2hrs on it. It takes me that long to get into a flow state and become productive, then ideally I would spend at least 3-4 more hours working productively. Based on the article, I definitely fall into the Monastic category.

> Once they graduate and have to sit in one place and work on one thing for 8 hours a day, many of them struggle.

Funnily enough, I'm finding that a work environment isn't actually very conducive with doing work. I spend most of my day being distracted with very little opportunity to focus on something.

> If I try to lecture them on the importance of sustained focus and minimizing distractions, I sound like an out of touch old guy. If I instead say "Hey, we practice Deep Work here. Let me get you a copy of a Deep Work book so you can join us" then they're on board

I would have the opposite reaction. "Deep Work" is cringy, but if you said "we value sustained focus and minimizing distractions" I would be very interested.

[crdrost]

I like this idea of phrasing it as branding.

In my experience nobody sits in one place and works on one thing for 8 hours a day. I am tempted to say that it's not only rare but it's undesirable.

I can work for approximately 5 hours straight without needing any sort of break; but part of becoming a more senior developer was to realize that this is actually a really bad thing for me. The “sweet spot” for me appears to be either 1.5 or 2 hours long. If I have some urgency I will literally shut down my laptop and move to a coffee shop or some other physical context and spend at least 15 minutes taking in the new ambiance before opening up the laptop and resuming a separate 2-hour burst of focused work.

The reason is basically that the flow state is good for one very important parameter that we might call ‘grit,’ the actual overcoming of pain and moving a project to completion... but it fails of course at a whole range of metacognitive processes which I might imperfectly class along at least three separate axes as... well, the words are not great but ‘creativity’ and ‘organization’ and ’empathy’ work. Flow states are really good for when you know what needs to be done and how to do it because your project is well-organized. They can be poor for stepping back and thinking “is this really the best way to satisfy that person’s needs?” and for stepping back and thinking “is there some more powerful idea I could leverage here which would make all of these sorts of problems just go away, even if it is a little strange given how the system exists right now?” and for simply asking “how can I clean things up now to make my life easier in the future?”. Even if you have individuals who by their personalities simply exude grit and radiate it for everyone else, which is an absolute treasure to have, you may want to balance them out with people who have a sort of moralistic imperative of “this is how a system like this should be built.” I don’t want to work with just hackers—but with hackers, engineers, dreamers, and evangelists—on my dev team. Either as separate people or as separate hats which people take on over the course of the day.

[buffet_overflow]

>They can be poor for stepping back and thinking “is this really the best way to satisfy that person’s needs?”

This is something I stumbled onto recently. I've been hellbent on making sure I had no distractions and could hit that 5 hour flow state, only to find smaller chunks gave me more points to reflect on the state of the work and redirect it more effectively.

Thanks for capturing it into words.

[beart]

The article itself suggests breaking deep work sessions into no more than 4 hours at a time and suggests several "styles" of performing deep work in terms of fitting individual schedules and personality.

[mjayhn]

I greatly appreciate this, as someone who has had a very difficult time avoiding distractions (slack, email, meetings, etc) and tries to convey that I need time to not context switch constantly. I know I'm not the only one because other developers I work with have the same complaints but we keep winding up in environments where it's just kosher and "its how we do things" with regard to meetings and interruptions.

Do you tell managers this as well? That the developers need deep focus time? I've been fighting for this my entire career, it's nearly always our managers not shielding us from interruptions that have been my problem.

I'm not sure if the distractions you're referring to are people just scrolling through twitter all day and not working or actual work distractions.

[PragmaticPulp]

> Do you tell managers this as well? That the developers need deep focus time?

It's a delicate balance. When I was in a manager-of-managers position, I didn't explicitly micromanage how managers ran their teams or run their days. People don't respond well to that. Instead, I tried to lead by example by setting my own focus hours, giving ample notice for upcoming meetings, setting expectations for response times at the tops of e-mail messages, and so on. If you try to create an atmosphere that fosters sustained focus throughout the whole company, people tend to notice. If a specific manager becomes bad about interruptions, we'd have an offline conversation.

> I'm not sure if the distractions you're referring to are people just scrolling through twitter all day and not working or actual work distractions.

It's not an either-or. It's always both. It's not uncommon for juniors devs to complain that their workplace doesn't let them focus while their phone buzzes every 5 minutes from some notifications that they've opted-in to receive.

Work distractions tend to trigger people to check Twitter, HN, Reddit, or other sites before they get back to work. It's easy to turn a 5-minute work interruption into a 15-minute break because getting back into focus is an uphill battle. It's much easier and more enjoyable to catch up on those notifications on your phone.

The difference is that people tend to overlook the distraction of notifications they like, and instead blame everything on the notifications for distractions they don't like.

One of the most valuable skills people can learn is how to return to focus quickly. That's not to say that distractions are okay, but it's up to the person to cultivate a habit of descending back into their work as efficiently as possible when interrupted.

[dennisgorelik]

> When I was in a manager-of-managers position

Why did you quit your manager-of-managers position?

[Shared404]

Not OP, but have limited experience in a manager-of-managers role.

For me, it's miserable. It's like knowing work is being done, but you aren't there doing it. You don't always properly understand it, the people you're managing don't, and it feels like you're the bureaucracy slowing things down.

For me at least.

/rant

[andrepd]

Gotta say, to me it has exactly the opposite effect. I immediately dislike approaches based on buzzwords like this, as my bullshit alert instinctively goes off.

[PragmaticPulp]

That's fine. If you have your own system or motivations for focusing, you don't really need any of these blog posts anyway.

My point was that it's important to recognize that "This doesn't work for me" isn't equivalent to "This doesn't work for anyone."

In this case, the Deep Work concept and associated writings really do work for a lot of people. If they don't work for individuals, that's fine too, but it's not really productive to try to detract from the material without proposing a better alternative.

Also, no one will dispute that there is a lot of questionable or bad self-help material out there, but that doesn't mean that you should immediately discredit and disregard 100% of it. If your skepticism heuristic is so sensitive that everything gets dismissed before you even get into reading it, you're going to throw the good out with the bad.

[nswest23]

Mainly I don't like that the term is just used to sell stuff, like books, now. The entire idea can be encapsulated in two words: deep work.

[TheMightyLlama]

I'm in complete agreement here. One of my personal gripes has been the branding of climate issues as 'Climate change'. In my opinion this should really be 'Climate stability'. It's easier to create an environmental standard and build infrastructure and behaviours that support it.

[curious_fella1]

This is great.