32 ms·

Deep work. Essentialism in asynchronous culture

168 points by jorzel 4y ago

civopsec 4y ago
As a low-level employee, my noise-cancelling headset helps me way more when it comes to concentration than any how-to book on “deep work” could.
psteitz 4y ago
I agree with the main point here, but one thing that has always puzzled me is how to think about what might be called deep collaborative work. Most meetings, especially the status-y kind, are manifestly not "deep" but some of the most intense work that I have ever done has been with one or a small handful of collaborators.
- jorzel 4y ago
  I think that collaborative work can be deep, e.g. pair programming. However, the more people, the harder to be focused on presise topic / goal.
  - psteitz 4y ago
    Exactly. The key is focus which is not the same thing as organization or just "having one conversation."
  - cptaj 4y ago
    Collaboration is definitely deep work. I think the key is whether the meeting is focused on the work or accessory to it. Keeping a manager updated is annoying because its not real work, its just someone checking up on you.
  - strangattractor 4y ago
    I personally have never found collaborative work all that deep. At least not the kind that necessitates constant communications. The interruptions are simply too much for me. I can never achieve the flow state I like. It also makes me try and come up with solutions during the communications. Most of the time I have to step away and do something else with difficult problems - let the background processor work. That is just likely my style - not for everybody.
    - canadaduane 4y ago
      I wonder if this relates to how comfortable people are with silence? Sometimes one or the other person can feel anxious in the presence of silence because it does not fit the profile of "work being done".
      - strangattractor 4y ago
        Interesting read in you can get past the paywall. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/opinion/what-twitter-can-learn-from-quakers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/opinion/what-twitter-can-...
      - strangattractor 4y ago
        People often dismiss pure thought as effort. But when you think about it that is all programming really is. I worked with a person that started his programming career using cards. Even though his current job provided him a nice editor and build system he would write his program and simply execute in his head for the longest time before even attempting to compile it. He would then make a couple of changes and he was done.
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
>This approach is based on pushing information rather than pulling it This is really what's at the heart of almost every discussion regarding communication. Many if not most places introduce polling rituals as a one-size-fits-all solution, whereas many people work best pushing information and having everyone else react to it. It is no different than event-driven structure vs polling. Every time you create more 'polling' systems and push some claim (the infamous 'new employees won't speak up without standups' comes to mind), there is less pressure to teach them asynchronous ways of working. Every time some manual procedure is pushed as a fix, the alternative of an automatic procedure is pushed aside because 'costs too much money' and 'look, manual works, communication!'.
- pm90 4y ago
  Well the manual solution may be good enough! It always depends on the situation.
Lyngbakr 4y ago
I really like this concise consolidation of these ideas. In my opinion, both Deep Work and Essentialism — like so many books in that genre — could've been pamphlets. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work was pretty jam-packed with different ideas, though.
LunarAurora 4y ago
The article is right: Deep work hates interruptions (including everything synchronous) However, the kind of rigid scheduling it proposes goes against the freedom deep work loves. It is not the lazy/mindless kind of freedom I’m referring to, but the freedom from over-quantified environments : IMO it is counterproductive to aim at always rigidly controlling that "in the zone" experience.
- Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
  Lot of people doing deep work do it on a schedule - and a very hard one at that. It’s based on the creation of habit, instead of relying on luck to be in the zone. The most important thing after all is to show up!
  - LunarAurora 4y ago
    > Lot of people doing deep work do it on a schedule - and a very hard one at that Indeed, and I was not talking about zero/low-schedule, but the minimum necessary. That is, no micro-self-management beyond that. > based on the creation of habit, instead of relying on luck to be in the zone I also agree. That is why I said not the lazy freedom. Habit is important, but a habit-mindset is not always the most creative/productive. Also, habit has that automaticity that can prevent the kind of useful essentialism mentionned in the article. So, it is a balancing act. schedule/habit are only half the story.
- r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
  For me it isn't about maintaining my own schedule it is about managing the expectations of others, be they managers or colleagues. I have "office hours" on my calendar where people can book in with me and then the last couple of hours of my day people know I'm interruptible. Outside of those hours I don't check email, don't have any chat open and my phone goes straight to voicemail with a message to call me again if it is an emergency, which will make it ring. I start work very early (05:30-06:00) and am most productive in the mornings, so my office hours and interruptible time is when I'm starting to wind down and my capacity for deep work is reducing.
seydor 4y ago
For a rhythmic workday, you can try using Pomodoro with other people at the same time like here: https://remoteyo.com/ https://remoteyo.com/
wortelefant 4y ago
a common trap in "deep work only" teams is local optimisation. while interruptions should be minimized and batched, the overall flow of cards and a low average cycle time requires focused collaboration and regular slack time to resolve blockers. Otherwise, important issues spend more time waiting than getting completed. Individual deep work with low collaboration while more important work is piling up would be an antipattern.
- Cardinal7167 4y ago
  I’ve experienced this first hand. When all your colleagues only deep work and you’re tasked with some necessary grunt work, your productivity will plummet when you’re trying to move fast.
lowbloodsugar 4y ago
Deep Work is not a concept that was popularized by that guy. If he popularized anything it was a new name for an existing concept.
robotresearcher 4y ago
> Monastic and bimodal modes are rather reserved for professions that can manage work without intensive communication with people, like writers, scientists, researchers, etc. Many or most scientists are academics. Communication time dominates the job of a professor. Teaching, and the invisible job of running a university takes between 1/3 and 2/3 of a 40 hour week. Both of these are based around strict schedules, so the actual schedule in a non-sabbatical, non-buyout semester ends up journalistic or approaching rhythmic at best. Thus the deep work slots are very precious. I did most of mine after dinner, or after kids' bed time. A professor I respect, well known for his reliable productivity, did a couple of hours of email at 2am for >20 years to create time in the work day for the real work. Professor is a wonderful job, but making time to be a productive scientist is a constant struggle. This is why graduate students feel the science is delegated to them.
- auggierose 4y ago
  Doesn't sound wonderful to me. As a researcher, I want to do research, not administration.
  - selestify 4y ago
    It also sucks for the students. Nearly all my professors were at the uni to do their prestigious research, not to teach —- and it sure showed in class quality.
gorgoiler 4y ago
Your level as an engineer should be based on how much deep work you can do without screwing the pooch. The best engineers can be left alone for months and be sure to return with something cogent. The most junior will be required to have daily design check ins and regular code reviews as they go from start to finish on a project whose problem space needs to be well understood and mapped out before any deep work begins. It is very damaging to an organisation when someone who cannot create understandable solutions is given the deep work breathing space to go crazy. It is a difficult but important thing to find out about candidates / probationary employees sooner rather than later. It’s important to keep a stash of pre-baked project ideas on hand so that you can use them to assess newcomers to the team, especially if you only have three months to figure out if they are able to meet your expectations before being confirmed as a full time employee.
- mym1990 4y ago
  An engineer being left alone for months just sounds like a great way for a user to ask for one thing and get something completely different. I think most engineers would love to just be left alone for days or even hours at a time, and that sounds a lot more reasonable.
  - kamilafsar 4y ago
    Yeah agree 100%. Unless you’re implementing a standard, software engineering is 50% communication with peers/clients/users, if not more..
  - atoav 4y ago
    My best code I have written ever was written like this. I got a very good introduction of the problem, the imagined solution(s) and how the problem is currently solved by different people and what they like/dislike. After that I proposed some rough direction, they said yes and of I went. Arguably I sent some updates in between, but all was unsychronous. No meetings, no presentations. Just me doing the thing. How well you can focus on solving the actual problems when you are actually in charge of your time.
  - woolion 4y ago
fn1 4y ago
All people in a company need to do deep work to make it count. Because if you are able to concentrate and find a solution for a problem, you also need other people to concentrate and understand your solution.
fedeb95 4y ago
What works for me is a rhythmic schedule but that concentrates all shallow things in the morning and deep work in the afternoon. I'm also more productive in the afternoon evening, so depending on your inclinations the opposite may work, deep work in the morning and shallow the rest of the day. The challenge is scheduling calls in the morning only.
- jrib 4y ago
  I agree that scheduling regular time to focus is important. I try to start early and do most of my work in the morning when many people are not active. That helps avoid meetings and interruptions.
  - fedeb95 4y ago
    where I work it's the oppostie, the morning is usually more active. Also I'm a night owl
- arcturus17 4y ago
  Same in essence but I prefer the opposite: all deep work done between 08:00 and 13:00 then whatever.

168 points by jorzel 4y ago

As a low-level employee, my noise-cancelling headset helps me way more when it comes to concentration than any how-to book on “deep work” could.

psteitz 4y ago

I agree with the main point here, but one thing that has always puzzled me is how to think about what might be called deep collaborative work. Most meetings, especially the status-y kind, are manifestly not "deep" but some of the most intense work that I have ever done has been with one or a small handful of collaborators.

jorzel 4y ago
I think that collaborative work can be deep, e.g. pair programming. However, the more people, the harder to be focused on presise topic / goal.
- psteitz 4y ago
  Exactly. The key is focus which is not the same thing as organization or just "having one conversation."
- cptaj 4y ago
  Collaboration is definitely deep work. I think the key is whether the meeting is focused on the work or accessory to it. Keeping a manager updated is annoying because its not real work, its just someone checking up on you.
- strangattractor 4y ago
  I personally have never found collaborative work all that deep. At least not the kind that necessitates constant communications. The interruptions are simply too much for me. I can never achieve the flow state I like. It also makes me try and come up with solutions during the communications. Most of the time I have to step away and do something else with difficult problems - let the background processor work. That is just likely my style - not for everybody.
  - canadaduane 4y ago
    I wonder if this relates to how comfortable people are with silence? Sometimes one or the other person can feel anxious in the presence of silence because it does not fit the profile of "work being done".
    - strangattractor 4y ago
      Interesting read in you can get past the paywall. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/opinion/what-twitter-can-learn-from-quakers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/opinion/what-twitter-can-...
    - strangattractor 4y ago
      People often dismiss pure thought as effort. But when you think about it that is all programming really is. I worked with a person that started his programming career using cards. Even though his current job provided him a nice editor and build system he would write his program and simply execute in his head for the longest time before even attempting to compile it. He would then make a couple of changes and he was done.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago

>This approach is based on pushing information rather than pulling it This is really what's at the heart of almost every discussion regarding communication. Many if not most places introduce polling rituals as a one-size-fits-all solution, whereas many people work best pushing information and having everyone else react to it. It is no different than event-driven structure vs polling. Every time you create more 'polling' systems and push some claim (the infamous 'new employees won't speak up without standups' comes to mind), there is less pressure to teach them asynchronous ways of working. Every time some manual procedure is pushed as a fix, the alternative of an automatic procedure is pushed aside because 'costs too much money' and 'look, manual works, communication!'.

pm90 4y ago
Well the manual solution may be good enough! It always depends on the situation.

Lyngbakr 4y ago

I really like this concise consolidation of these ideas. In my opinion, both Deep Work and Essentialism — like so many books in that genre — could've been pamphlets. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work was pretty jam-packed with different ideas, though.

LunarAurora 4y ago

The article is right: Deep work hates interruptions (including everything synchronous) However, the kind of rigid scheduling it proposes goes against the freedom deep work loves. It is not the lazy/mindless kind of freedom I’m referring to, but the freedom from over-quantified environments : IMO it is counterproductive to aim at always rigidly controlling that "in the zone" experience.

Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
Lot of people doing deep work do it on a schedule - and a very hard one at that. It’s based on the creation of habit, instead of relying on luck to be in the zone. The most important thing after all is to show up!
- LunarAurora 4y ago
  > Lot of people doing deep work do it on a schedule - and a very hard one at that Indeed, and I was not talking about zero/low-schedule, but the minimum necessary. That is, no micro-self-management beyond that. > based on the creation of habit, instead of relying on luck to be in the zone I also agree. That is why I said not the lazy freedom. Habit is important, but a habit-mindset is not always the most creative/productive. Also, habit has that automaticity that can prevent the kind of useful essentialism mentionned in the article. So, it is a balancing act. schedule/habit are only half the story.
r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
For me it isn't about maintaining my own schedule it is about managing the expectations of others, be they managers or colleagues. I have "office hours" on my calendar where people can book in with me and then the last couple of hours of my day people know I'm interruptible. Outside of those hours I don't check email, don't have any chat open and my phone goes straight to voicemail with a message to call me again if it is an emergency, which will make it ring. I start work very early (05:30-06:00) and am most productive in the mornings, so my office hours and interruptible time is when I'm starting to wind down and my capacity for deep work is reducing.

seydor 4y ago

For a rhythmic workday, you can try using Pomodoro with other people at the same time like here: https://remoteyo.com/ https://remoteyo.com/

wortelefant 4y ago

a common trap in "deep work only" teams is local optimisation. while interruptions should be minimized and batched, the overall flow of cards and a low average cycle time requires focused collaboration and regular slack time to resolve blockers. Otherwise, important issues spend more time waiting than getting completed. Individual deep work with low collaboration while more important work is piling up would be an antipattern.

Cardinal7167 4y ago
I’ve experienced this first hand. When all your colleagues only deep work and you’re tasked with some necessary grunt work, your productivity will plummet when you’re trying to move fast.

lowbloodsugar 4y ago

Deep Work is not a concept that was popularized by that guy. If he popularized anything it was a new name for an existing concept.

robotresearcher 4y ago

> Monastic and bimodal modes are rather reserved for professions that can manage work without intensive communication with people, like writers, scientists, researchers, etc. Many or most scientists are academics. Communication time dominates the job of a professor. Teaching, and the invisible job of running a university takes between 1/3 and 2/3 of a 40 hour week. Both of these are based around strict schedules, so the actual schedule in a non-sabbatical, non-buyout semester ends up journalistic or approaching rhythmic at best. Thus the deep work slots are very precious. I did most of mine after dinner, or after kids' bed time. A professor I respect, well known for his reliable productivity, did a couple of hours of email at 2am for >20 years to create time in the work day for the real work. Professor is a wonderful job, but making time to be a productive scientist is a constant struggle. This is why graduate students feel the science is delegated to them.

auggierose 4y ago
Doesn't sound wonderful to me. As a researcher, I want to do research, not administration.
- selestify 4y ago
  It also sucks for the students. Nearly all my professors were at the uni to do their prestigious research, not to teach —- and it sure showed in class quality.

gorgoiler 4y ago

Your level as an engineer should be based on how much deep work you can do without screwing the pooch. The best engineers can be left alone for months and be sure to return with something cogent. The most junior will be required to have daily design check ins and regular code reviews as they go from start to finish on a project whose problem space needs to be well understood and mapped out before any deep work begins. It is very damaging to an organisation when someone who cannot create understandable solutions is given the deep work breathing space to go crazy. It is a difficult but important thing to find out about candidates / probationary employees sooner rather than later. It’s important to keep a stash of pre-baked project ideas on hand so that you can use them to assess newcomers to the team, especially if you only have three months to figure out if they are able to meet your expectations before being confirmed as a full time employee.

mym1990 4y ago
An engineer being left alone for months just sounds like a great way for a user to ask for one thing and get something completely different. I think most engineers would love to just be left alone for days or even hours at a time, and that sounds a lot more reasonable.
- kamilafsar 4y ago
  Yeah agree 100%. Unless you’re implementing a standard, software engineering is 50% communication with peers/clients/users, if not more..
- atoav 4y ago
  My best code I have written ever was written like this. I got a very good introduction of the problem, the imagined solution(s) and how the problem is currently solved by different people and what they like/dislike. After that I proposed some rough direction, they said yes and of I went. Arguably I sent some updates in between, but all was unsychronous. No meetings, no presentations. Just me doing the thing. How well you can focus on solving the actual problems when you are actually in charge of your time.
- woolion 4y ago

fn1 4y ago

All people in a company need to do deep work to make it count. Because if you are able to concentrate and find a solution for a problem, you also need other people to concentrate and understand your solution.

fedeb95 4y ago

What works for me is a rhythmic schedule but that concentrates all shallow things in the morning and deep work in the afternoon. I'm also more productive in the afternoon evening, so depending on your inclinations the opposite may work, deep work in the morning and shallow the rest of the day. The challenge is scheduling calls in the morning only.

jrib 4y ago
I agree that scheduling regular time to focus is important. I try to start early and do most of my work in the morning when many people are not active. That helps avoid meetings and interruptions.
- fedeb95 4y ago
  where I work it's the oppostie, the morning is usually more active. Also I'm a night owl
arcturus17 4y ago
Same in essence but I prefer the opposite: all deep work done between 08:00 and 13:00 then whatever.