Started: 24 Feb 2019  —  Finished: 05 May 2019

As the subtitle goes: “How we lost the ability to focus, and how we can get it back.” A solid book that offers as-rational-as-possible answers to that question. (The Turkish edition is titled Pür-dikkat; the original is Cal Newport’s Deep Work.)

I genuinely lose focus so much while working that I neither enjoy nor really absorb what I’m doing. Trying to push several things forward at once slows you down and pulls you away from your actual goals. If I’m at the computer there’s Slack, Spotify, headphones, ten tabs open; the apps on my phone; notifications from Twitter and Instagram… Single-tasking in the middle of all that gets harder every year.

The author is Cal Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University. He also keeps a long-running blog called Study Hacks, writing about learning, productivity and focus.

My Favourite Paragraph

When a bright idea sparks in my mind, I can cancel everything I’d planned for the rest of the day (except the genuinely unavoidable) and chase that surprise thought — until it loses its hold.

Why does this line click for me? Because I love doing exactly that. Ideas that show up out of nowhere and get acted on immediately tend to produce the most efficient — and most unexpected — results. I’ve felt that over and over.

A Note on Productivity

The book will steer you toward working more productively. Another part I liked:

The fact that our time is limited forces us to be more meticulous about order and structure — and that, in turn, makes us more productive.

Translation: since our time is finite, we’re forced into more disciplined, more focused work — and that’s what makes us productive. To me, the whole book sits inside that single paragraph.