51 pages • 1 hour read
Cal NewportDeep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
ConclusionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Conclusion Summary
Newport briefly explains how Bill Gates’s ability to perform deep work ultimately enabled him to become a billionaire. Newport then discusses the positive impacts that deep work has had in his own life. As a graduate student, he had exhibited the skills necessary for deep work, but as he entered into a professorship, he became nervous that the demands of his job would be too much for him. He prepared himself by making adjustments in his lifestyle, which included some of the strategies in the book, such as productive meditation sessions and imposing hard limits on the work day. He built into his schedule blocks of time when he could be totally immersed in his work and followed the Roosevelt model discussed earlier.
Newport credits his commitment to deep work as the reason why he has been able to be very productive while at the same time being able to raise a family. He accepts that not everyone will be geared toward deep work, and that his ideas might be extreme for some casual readers. However, he insists that for those willing to hone their focus and concentration skills, opportunity exists. Finally, he repeats the idea that committing to a life of depth is a transformative experience.
Conclusion Analysis
Newport employs a similar rhetorical strategy as he does in the introduction. He begins with an anecdote about a person, in this case, Bill Gates, to illuminate his message. Gates was known as a very deep worker, almost to the point of obsession. Newport contends that Gates’s ability to fully focus on his work in the days prior to Microsoft’s founding is what ultimately led him to become the billionaire that he is. Newport recognizes that performing deep work alone will not guarantee the reader a billion-dollar income. However, his point is to show that having the ability to perform deep work is what sets one apart from the masses when it comes to the new economy.
Newport revisits the notion that people today live in an age where distraction is ubiquitous. He repeats that there can be nuance when discussing a carefully balanced approach to the Internet. He says:
It’s easy, amid the turbulence of a rapidly evolving information age, to default to dialectical grumbling. The curmudgeons among us are vaguely uneasy about the attention people pay to their phones, and pine for the days of unhurried concentration, while the digital hipsters equate such nostalgia with Luddism and boredom, and believe that increased connection is the foundation for a utopian future (258).
Newport, as he has done previously, positions himself as a curmudgeon and a Luddite when it comes to social media. However, he says:
As I emphasized in this book’s introduction, I have no interest in this debate. A commitment to deep work is not a moral stance and it’s not a philosophical statement—it is instead a pragmatic recognition that the ability to concentrate is a skill that gets valuable things done (258).
He insists that a nuanced and careful approach to the Internet is justified. Taking it a step further, he says: “To leave the distracted masses to join the focused few, I’m arguing, is a transformative experience” (263).
Much of the conclusion is autobiographical. Newport provides his own rationale for embracing the idea of deep work. In essence, it has worked for him, even when he doubted that it would. He says:
[I]f you’re willing to sidestep these comforts and fears, and instead struggle to deploy your mind to its fullest capacity to create things that matter, then you’ll discover, as others have before you, that depth generates a life rich with productivity and meaning (263).
He closes the book with an appeal to ethos, stating that he has experienced the transformative power of deep work in his own life.
