Deep Work quiz
Cal Newport · 2016
Ten questions on Cal Newport's key ideas, each with a short explanation. Read it a while ago? Take the quiz before you look at the summary: what you can recall now is what you'll keep.
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Question 1 of 10
Which of these best fits Newport's definition of deep work?
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B. Two quiet hours drafting a hard chapter, phone off Deep work needs two things: no distractions, and a task that pushes your abilities and creates something hard to copy. Clearing email or filing an expense report can be done without interruptions, but it's still shallow work: logistical, and easy for someone else to do.
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Question 2 of 10
Sam works ten hours a day with email open and checks his phone often. Priya works four uninterrupted hours and often gets more done. Which idea from the book explains how that's possible?
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D. Output depends on how hard you focus, not only on time Newport sums it up as a rough equation: high-quality work produced equals time spent multiplied by intensity of focus. Raise the intensity and you can do more in fewer hours. He uses it to explain how Wharton professor Adam Grant publishes so much: he saves his hardest work for stretches of several days with his door closed.
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Question 3 of 10
You stop writing a report "just for a second" to check your inbox, then go back. What does Sophie Leroy's research, which Newport cites, suggest happens?
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A. Part of your attention stays on the inbox for a while Leroy called this attention residue: after a switch, your mind keeps partly working on the task you left, and performance on the new one suffers. Newport argues that even a quick inbox check leaves residue, especially if you see something you can't deal with yet. Hence his case for long, unbroken blocks.
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Question 4 of 10
Your team answers email within minutes and praises whoever is always online, though nobody can say what it adds. How would Newport explain this?
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C. Busyness fills in for value that's hard to measure Newport calls this busyness as a proxy for productivity. Because it's hard to measure what a knowledge worker really contributes, or what constant connection costs, people fall back on doing visible things: quick replies, lots of meetings. It feels productive while the deep work waits.
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Question 5 of 10
Carl Jung built a stone tower in the village of Bollingen and retreated there to think and write, while keeping up a busy clinical practice. Which of Newport's depth philosophies does he illustrate?
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B. Bimodal Jung split his time between long stretches of deep work at the tower and his practice and public life. That's the bimodal philosophy. Monastic would mean dropping shallow duties almost entirely, like Donald Knuth giving up email. Rhythmic is a daily habit; journalistic fits depth into any spare gap.
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Question 6 of 10
Facing a deadline, the entrepreneur Peter Shankman booked a round-trip flight to Tokyo and wrote his manuscript in the air, there and back. Why does Newport think moves like this work?
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D. Spending that much makes the task feel too important to delay Newport calls this a grand gesture: a dramatic change of setting, often with a real cost in money or effort. The investment raises the task's importance in your own mind, which weakens the urge to procrastinate. J.K. Rowling's stay at Edinburgh's Balmoral hotel to finish the last Harry Potter book is another of his examples.
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Question 7 of 10
You stop work for the day with three tasks unfinished, and they keep nagging at you all evening. What does Newport's shutdown ritual have you do about them?
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A. Make a plan for each open task before you call it a day Unfinished tasks tug at your attention, but research by E. J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister suggests you don't have to finish a task to quiet it: a concrete plan is enough. So the ritual reviews every open task, checks the calendar and ends with a set phrase. Newport's is "Shutdown complete."
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Question 8 of 10
A friend plans to beat her phone habit with one screen-free day every Sunday. What would Newport say?
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C. Plan when you go online each day instead of one day off Newport compares a weekly break from the internet to eating well one day a week: the other six days still shape you, and your brain keeps craving distraction. He suggests the reverse. Schedule the blocks when you're allowed online, and stay off outside them, even when you're bored in a line.
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Question 9 of 10
A colleague says he stays on a social network because now and then it surfaces a useful article. How does Newport respond to this kind of reasoning?
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C. Keep it only if it clearly pays off for your main goals That's what Newport calls the any-benefit approach: any upside at all justifies a tool, while the costs to your time and attention go unexamined. He proposes a craftsman's approach instead: name the few activities that matter most to your goals, and keep a tool only if its benefits there clearly outweigh what it costs you.
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Question 10 of 10
You're sorting your tasks into deep and shallow. Which question does Newport suggest asking about each one?
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A. How long would it take to train a bright graduate to do it? Picture a smart recent graduate with no training in your field. If they could pick up the task quickly, it's shallow; if it would take them many months or years, it's deep. Sorting tasks this way lets you and your boss agree on a shallow work budget, which Newport expects to fall between 30 and 50 percent for most people.
Deep Work in one paragraph
Deep Work argues that the ability to concentrate on hard problems without distraction is getting rarer just as it becomes more valuable, so the people who build it will pull ahead. Cal Newport, a computer science professor, makes the case in two parts. First he explains why focused work matters for your career and for a satisfying life. Then he gives four rules for building it into your days: work deeply, embrace boredom, quit social media and drain the shallows.
The 9 key ideas of Deep Work
Deep work is rare and valuable
Newport splits work into two kinds. Deep work is distraction-free concentration that stretches your abilities and creates something hard to copy. Shallow work is logistical and easy to replicate, like most email. Deep work is getting scarcer even as it grows more valuable, partly because the cost of distraction is hard to measure, so looking busy ends up passing for being productive.
Focus drives learning and output
Two abilities matter most in a fast-changing economy: learning hard things quickly and producing at an elite level. Both depend on deep work. Learning a hard skill takes deliberate practice, which means full attention on one skill plus feedback. Output follows a rough rule: the quality of what you produce is the time you spend multiplied by how intensely you focus.
Switching tasks leaves a residue
When you move from one task to another, part of your attention stays behind on the first. Business professor Sophie Leroy called this attention residue and found that it drags down performance on the next task. A glance at your inbox every few minutes seems harmless, but Newport argues each check leaves you working at reduced capacity for a while afterward.
Pick a way to schedule depth
There's no single right way to fit deep work into a life. The monastic approach cuts out shallow duties almost entirely. The bimodal one alternates long stretches of seclusion with normal, open time. The rhythmic one makes deep work a daily habit at a set time. The journalistic one fits it in whenever a gap appears, which takes a lot of practice.
Rituals and grand gestures
Don't rely on willpower to get started. Decide in advance where you'll work, for how long and under what rules, such as no internet. Sometimes a dramatic move helps: J.K. Rowling checked into a luxury Edinburgh hotel to finish the last Harry Potter book. Newport also borrows from The 4 Disciplines of Execution: keep a visible tally of your hours of deep work, not just your results.
End the workday completely
Newport argues that real downtime makes you better at deep work: it gives your unconscious mind room to work on hard problems and lets your attention recover. Evening email takes both away. His tool is a shutdown ritual: review every open task, make sure each has a plan, look over the coming days, then say a set phrase to mark the end of work.
Stop training your brain for distraction
Focus is a skill, and it weakens if you reach for your phone at every dull moment. Newport flips the usual advice: rather than taking the occasional break from distraction, schedule your breaks from focus. Decide when you'll go online and stay off the rest of the time, even in a checkout line. Productive meditation helps too: on a walk, keep steering your mind back to one hard problem.
Choose tools like a craftsman
Most people sign up for a network tool if it offers any benefit at all. Newport calls this the any-benefit approach and proposes a craftsman's version instead: identify the few things that matter most in your work and life, and keep a tool only if its benefits there clearly outweigh its costs. To test a service, quit it for 30 days and see whether your life got worse or anyone noticed.
Give shallow work a budget
Shallow work can't be eliminated, but it can be contained. Plan every minute of your workday in blocks, and when something breaks the plan, redo it rather than give up. Ask how long it would take to train a bright new graduate to do a task: the quicker, the shallower. Then agree with your boss on how much of your week shallow work should get.
Has it held up?
The book's case against constant task switching rests on solid ground. In Sophie Leroy's 2009 experiments, people whose minds were still on an unfinished task did worse on the next one, and switch costs more broadly are well established in lab research on attention.
Some of the other research Newport leans on is shakier. The unconscious thought studies behind his case for evening downtime found no effect in a large 2015 replication. The link between heavy media multitasking and distractibility, from Clifford Nass's lab, has shrunk to a small effect in later studies. And deliberate practice explains less of skill than Anders Ericsson's early work suggested: a 2014 meta-analysis put it at about a fifth of the differences in music and under 1% in professions.
The four philosophies and four rules are Newport's own synthesis, built from anecdotes and his academic routine rather than tested as a program. The closest test of quitting social media, a 2018 experiment that paid people to deactivate Facebook for four weeks, found a small rise in well-being and about an hour a day of freed-up time.
Sources
- Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168–181.
- Monsell, S. (2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 134–140.
- Nieuwenstein, M. R., Wierenga, T., Morey, R. D., Wicherts, J. M., Blom, T. N., Wagenmakers, E.-J., & van Rijn, H. (2015). On making the right choice: A meta-analysis and large-scale replication attempt of the unconscious thought advantage. Judgment and Decision Making, 10(1), 1–17.
- Wiradhany, W., & Nieuwenstein, M. R. (2017). Cognitive control in media multitaskers: Two replication studies and a meta-analysis. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 79(8), 2620–2641.
- Macnamara, B. N., Hambrick, D. Z., & Oswald, F. L. (2014). Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: A meta-analysis. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1608–1618.
- Allcott, H., Braghieri, L., Eichmeyer, S., & Gentzkow, M. (2020). The welfare effects of social media. American Economic Review, 110(3), 629–676.
Deep Work book club questions
10 questions for a book club or a class, from first reactions to where the book can be argued with. They work best once everyone has finished it. For questions that work with any nonfiction book and a plan for the evening, see our book club questions guide.
- When did you last spend several hours on truly focused work, and what made it possible? How did the book change the way you see your typical workday?
- Newport's examples include Carl Jung's stone tower, J.K. Rowling's hotel stay and Peter Shankman's round trip to Tokyo. Which appealed to you most, which seemed out of reach, and why?
- Newport says busyness passes for productivity because real contribution is hard to measure. Where do you see that in your workplace, and who benefits from keeping it that way?
- Newport describes four ways to schedule depth: monastic, bimodal, rhythmic and journalistic. Why might a philosophy that suits one person fail another, and which fits the life you have now?
- Newport argues that reaching for your phone in every dull moment trains your brain for distraction. Is boredom worth practicing, and what have we lost now that it is so easy to avoid?
- Newport says most people adopt a tool if it offers any benefit at all. Why is that reasoning so persuasive, and what costs does it keep out of view?
- The unconscious thought research behind Newport's case for evening downtime did not hold up in a large replication. Does the case for ending work at a fixed time still stand, and on what grounds?
- Newport is a professor with a lot of control over his schedule. How realistic is deep work for people in customer support, nursing or meeting-heavy jobs, and who gets to have it?
- Newport suggests agreeing with your manager on what share of your week should go to shallow work. What share would you propose, and how do you expect that conversation to go?
- If you quit one social network or app for 30 days, as Newport suggests, which would you choose? What do you expect to miss, and do you think anyone would notice you were gone?
How to remember Deep Work
Taking the quiz above was already the most useful thing you can do with a book you've read. Pulling an idea out of memory strengthens it far more than reading a summary again; psychologists call it active recall. The questions you got wrong are the ideas that were slipping away.
What keeps them is timing. Memory fades on a curve, quickly at first, so the next review works best in about three days, then a week later, then a few weeks after that. Our review schedule calculator gives you the exact dates, and how to remember what you read covers the whole method.
