Deep Work and the Digital Workplace

In a distracted world, the ability to consistently do deep work is a competitive advantage.

It's impossible to create meaningful works of tech, writing, or art without the capacity to sit down and focus for extended periods.

"The key to thriving in our high-tech world, they’ve learned, is to spend much less time using technology." (Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism)

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.

Deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep—spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.

Scott Belsky coined the term insecurity work to describe work that does not move the ball forward, but is quick enough that you can do it multiple times a day without realizing.

Unlike insecurity work, deep work often feels elusive because it takes time.

It requires weaning yourself from distractions and being unencumbered by the highs and lows of th... See more

You should protect your team’s “deep work” at all costs. Traditional work environments optimize for rapid-fire communication. Meetings, Slack, text messages, and stand-ups are examples. Levels thinks these defaults are disastrous and reduce the amount of “deep work” its team can do. It does everything possible to protect this time.