Deep Work Is Rare

The favourite example for me from the book is the example of Facebook and its work culture, It talks about how it has an open office concept wherein the employees can freely interact and communicate with each other which is paradoxical to the idea of deep work as it leads to a lot of distractions and a majority of time is wasted in non-productive work.

I find the book fairly realistic as the examples given are from real life and we being a part of the working class and being in the same situation as described in the book can easily relate to it. The anecdotes are realistic and we can see them, in reality, happening in front of us.

I learned a lot of things from the book but the best was how busyness is perceived as being a symbol of efficiency and productivity. People tend to show that they are busy and working by replying to emails on time and being indulged in social media communication and by doing such shallow things, considering that this will give them an image of being diligent, hard-working and productive which is not always true.

If fortunately, I happen to meet the author of the book, I will definitely ask him to give ideas or suggestions to change our mindset and behaviour and to move towards deep work and to avoid doing shallow work mostly. Maybe some tips on how to come out of this paradoxical situation of deep work vs shallow work and to avoid the distraction of social media and internet while doing deep work.

In the beginning, when I started reading the book, I thought that this will be another boring book but as I read further, I started liking it especially second chapter onwards as it is full of real-life examples and anecdotes.

This book indeed changed my perception towards the work habit as even I used to feel that we must have an open work culture wherein we can interact and communicate with our colleagues and also answering to emails on time and being active on social media was considered to be imperative, but after reading the book I realised it’s going to affect my productivity and attention and will hamper the production of quality work.