As you may already have guessed from the title of Cal Newport's book the topic of the discussion is productivity. But what is productivity?

I can't remember how it started, but time management has a central role in my life today. The people who know me would probably say that I'm obsessed with schedules. And sometimes I find myself agreeing with them. The reason is that I'd like to avoid wasting time living a life I'm not proud of.

So for me productivity is about giving value to what we do.
The title of a recent book from David Allen suggests that productivity is the ability of getting things done. All these productivity "studies" recently flooding the internet usually (check for yourself) transcend the specifics of what you are actually "getting done", which has always been the subject of philosophy, or theology. Instead productivity offers a pseudo-scientific, rigorous approach to stay true to the goals you have set for yourself, avoiding to spend (too much) time on "things" that you do not value.

Now, getting practical, productivity is hard. There is no "perfect routine" because the circumstances change all the time, often without warning (covid has mercilessly demonstrated the truth of this last statement). In software engineering terms, planning your days is a product in continuous delivery. The goal is not to find the shoe that fits your foot but instead to learn to walk well on the ones that you are given. I have been collecting productivity heuristics through the last 3-4 years, unaware of the public discourse on the subject, to which I've only recently been introduced. This discovery offered me the chance to compare my findings to what the "experts" are saying on the topic at the moment, and sharing the results of this comparison is exactly the goal of this post.

This is not a book on productivity. I know, now you're confused.
"Deep Work" is first of all an eulogy and an apology of what Newport defines (guess what) deep work:

Indeed the book is organized in two sections and the first one is entirely dedicated to the definition of deep work in contrast to "shallow work". In the span of three chapters, Newport describes deep work as a crucial skill "for anyone looking to move ahead in a globally competitive information economy that tends to chew up and spit out those who aren’t earning their keep". In order to support his thesis he submits to the reader multiple arguments based on psychology, neuroscience and social science studies, as well as ancient and recent success stories.
In this post we'll only consider the second part of the book, which introduces the reader to a series of techniques (called "rules") to improve the deep work skill. Even though originally crafted in the deep work setting, I believe the concepts presented in the second part of the book to be valuable and useful in the broader quest for productivity, and perhaps also beyond it. With this in mind, I will be discussing the second half of the book purely in productivity terms.

Let me start with a DISCLAIMER. Newport exposes many techniques leading up to the celebrated deep work state, often spending a significant portion of a chapter discussing the "implementation details". Going from the theory read in a book to the everyday practice is hard, especially if you're not given much material advice. However, in my humble opinion productivity is a personal journey and any attempt to shape it into a prescription is doomed to fail. Even equipped with the best of Newport advice, you will need to find out by yourself what works better for you. As many have said before me, the road to success is paved with failed attempts: don't give up!

What comes as a natural measure for the quality of a plan is efficiency, which we can formally phrase as the number of goals accomplished per day. Intuitively, efficiency is the direct answer to the question: "how much have you done today", which is to my surprise often confused with the question "how satisfied are you with your day"? In an ideal world the key to efficiency is a better plan: one doesn't have to turn down any opportunity if he's a good enough planner. You want a good job or you already have one and you want to do your best so you put in those extra hours and energy every day. And you want to stay healthy and fit, so you take time to cook good meals and visit the gym regularly. You also may want to keep up with your share of social life, and you may have a romantic partner, a dog and possibly even kids to whom you want to dedicate a substantial portion of your "quality time". Then one day on a social media you read of this unique opportunity to be part of a band, or to become an active member of a charity organisation, or a professional cook, or any other thing you have always dreamed of. And you just can't say no. So you keep saying yes, armed with the belief that some tweaks in your schedule will make the trick. This perspective naturally leads to (obsessive) multitasking, which, let's be honest, works very well in the beginning. The problems arise when you let these early successes convince you that anything is achievable this way, that you just need to press down on the accelerator and everything will magically fit and hold together.

FLASH NEWS: human beings don't work this way.
In the introduction to the chapter Cal Newport cites this interesting interview from Clifford Nass, who describes the *myth of multitasking* as follows:

As Nass is highlighting here, there is a fallacy in the efficiency-is-the-key mindset. The problem stems from the fact that the mind easily develops addiction to stimuli, and anything that represents a distraction from your current occupation will come to you in form of a stimulus. When you multitask the "frequency" of your input stimuli increases, which has the undesired effect of lowering your attention threshold. Think about this: how often do you find yourself doing exactly nothing, i.e. letting your mind free to wander without cracking under the pressure of refreshing your favorite social media homepage, picking up a new activity or simply checking (again) the email?
What professor Nass is revealing is that multitasking has consequences, which is far from a known and it is a surely underestimated fact. The consequence of course being the loss of your ability to focus more than 2 minutes on any given task.

This is "rule" number 2, and it is the subject of a whole chapter in the Deep Work book (chapter 2, part 2). The chapter dwells on ways to push the limit of your concentration, proposing a few strategies that can help the reader rewire his brain to a configuration better suited for staying on task. Productive meditation, distraction breaks, hard deadlines for focused tasks are some examples of the suggestions to "strengthen your distraction-resisting muscles", and "improve your ability to think deeply". This is not what I will cover now though, as I would like to spend the last words in this section on the core concept: embracing boredom.
When later today you will find yourself free from your daily business try to notice where your mind goes. Instinctively your attention will be drawn to any stimulus in your environment in an attempt to escape the sudden boredom. Even though you now know it, you will give in to this instinct without noticing. However, not all hope is lost, as to gain control of your attention is just a matter of practice. And the method to practice on could hardly be more straightforward. When the compulsion arrives you have to literally do nothing. Embrace boredom.
The simplicity of the approach is maybe the feature that persuaded me to give it a try. What Newport is saying here should seem counter-intuitive to those of us accustomed to the breaks-averse, the work-until-you-pass-out approach. The shift in perspective is radical: to be more productive you should do less. Instead of banning breaks from your workday you should plan them. Vacancy is glorified not vilified. Instead of chasing efficiency with some kind of "schedule horror vacui" we should be digging holes in our routines, as the most powerful weapon against "shallowness", he argues, is emptiness. The right anthem therefore is not "more, more, more", but "less, less, less"...