[JamesMcMinn]

I tried to read his Deep Work book, and it was truly awful. Usually I avoid writing reviews for books that I didn't finish, but Deep Work is one of the worst books I've ever tried to read. To describe it as a 10 page blog post would be generous.

[olegious]

Interesting. I found it great, it completely changed the way I work.

[JamesMcMinn]

I could not take the book seriously due to how shallow it was. Written to sound clever, but lacking any actual substance. It literally could have been 2 pages of bullet points and delivered more value by dropping the pseudoscience nonsense and excessive "[famous name] is productive because they do X" trope.

The only takeaway I got was that Deep Work is a bullshit term for having focus.

[olegious]

I thought it was the perfect level of depth, contrast this with something like "Art of Impossible" which spends paragraphs talking about your biochemistry and how it impacts motivation, focus, etc- I couldn't get through it because I don't care about biochemistry, I just want actionable advice with concrete examples from high performers so I can think about how and if I want to apply the advice to my life.

[pas]

Can you please detail how it changed the way you work?

[olegious]

Sure, here are the most impactful changes, they may sound simple to some, but they had a big impact on me:

1. I had already been blocking out "no meeting" time of 2-4 hours a day to get work done, but during this time I would listen to music and sometimes check slack. The book got me to use focus mode on my Mac and phone, set a "heads down until [time x]" away message on Slack and work without music or any other distractions ON ONE HARD PROBLEM. My effectiveness skyrocketed and I was happier at work (the only downside was that I wanted to work more).

2. When dealing with a hard problem, taking a break, taking a walk and thinking through the problem using the framework he mentioned in the book, have used this method to solve multiple hard problems.

3. Forced me systematize how I end my work day and what time I end it (unless there's an emergency)

[rg111]

I read Deep Work. Twice. It has truly helped me in my life. I have done some really great work of my life using it: created value-adding solutions in Computer Vision, worked three research papers.

I am much more saner, calmer, and get more done because I adopted Deep Work philosophy in my life.

I would highly advise reading the book and judging for yourselves (for the people reading the above comment).