I listened to an interview with Cal Newport, professor and author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World and So Good They Can’t Ignore You.
“What do you tell people who say they can’t do something because they’re too busy,” he was asked.
“Busyness has no value in the marketplace,” he said. Solving problems, getting results, building assets–these have value. The best of it requires something he calls “deep work,” which is difficult to do when you’re “busy” with lots of less valuable tasks.
“When someone tells me they’re busy, I feel like saying I’m sorry,” Newport said. They’re working too hard for too little results.
Newport says deep work requires intense focus and concentration. To do that, you must eliminate distractions avoid multitasking and reduce the number of low-value tasks on your agenda.
To those who say they are busy creating lots of value, I suspect he would point out that they would be even more productive by doing less work (being less busy) and putting concentrated effort into a small number of more valuable projects.
Creative things like writing or building a business require so much energy and focus, (i.e., deep work), he said, you can only do it for a limited number of hours. Four hours a day of deep work, for example, will allow you to create more value than 14 hours of “busy” work.
Work less, earn more. What a concept.
Deep work for marketing legal services
