Issue 74: Deep work and the art of a double career

Does it work for everyone?

I read “Deep Work” by Cal Newport a few years ago and was floored. By how many things I have been doing wrong with my life.

As a child, I was a conscientious academic, a disciplined practitioner of Veena (a Carnatic musical instrument), and a diligent reader of books. The things I absorbed and retained then have stayed with me for a long time (except biology - that one is hard, I tell you).

What worked so well in those years was the abject lack of multi-tasking. There were no distractions, even if I sat in the middle of the drawing room studying, despite the ongoing noise of a bustling household. I had no role to play in the adults’ lives and they had no role to play in mine, except to not barge into my time with random thoughts and statements.

Cut to adulthood.

Switch off the phone, don’t look at it, focus for four hours on your work, Cal Newport says.

Inspired by his very inspiring statement, I turn DND on in both my phones and focus for an hour. The minute I turn back to life, the world has changed - the ironing person has called twice, kid’s teacher once, and the delivery guy looking for an OTP to hand over the detergent powder, 10 times. Let’s not even get into the barrage of messages on WhatsApp needing immediate attention (I am not counting work emails and messages because those were deprioritised for this one hour while I did deep work on my paying job).

I am sure it is a one off, I tell myself. Let me try again soon, I reassure myself, while my alter ego laughs cynically inside my head.

Today, a friend shares an interesting HBR article where the author encourages us to have at least two careers running in parallel, so that we can leap industries and pivot our lives seamlessly, without paying a high cost for those switches.

She’s annoyed. I am amused. Where’s the time, we both ask each other.

The truth is, we can perhaps prioritise five big rocks in life. And the five big rocks keep shifting with our life stages. Paid work and various family members occupy many of those positions, grudgingly giving way to one hobby in the fifth position. But that’s it. Even managing all of them involves a fair amount of multi-tasking on a regular basis.

So, the next time you pick a self help book or an article that describes an idyllic ideal, pause for a second and ask yourself if it is practical for you. We don’t know what we don’t know. Maybe the people who wrote those self-help pieces have different lives, non parenting, non-sandwiched lives that many of us don’t have the luxury of. And often times, self help books and well meaning HBR articles become guilt traps, making us question our productivity way more than we deserve to.

That said, deep work is possible and necessary too. Sometimes, early in the morning or late at night, when the world sleeps, when we trade sleep off for deep thinking. Some other times, the phone truly can be on DND, because the microcosm of our world is close at hand and doesn’t need us so badly.

Deep work is rejuvenating when done well. But there’s no single holy grail on how and when to do that deep work, that works for everyone.

As to having consistent double careers, I don’t know.. sounds utopian at best and delusional at worst.

How do you get your deep work done, amidst a hundred other must-dos that you cannot wiggle out of? Care to share?

P. S. Views strictly personal.