Educators: Your Student’s Success and Future Depends on Developing this Diminishing Skill
There is an ability that students need to develop to be successful in college and it is critical for their career success. This ability is referred to by author Cal Newport as “Deep Work” and he discusses it in detail in his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Deep work requires the capacity to intensely concentrate or focus on a difficult task or project for a sustained period of time without interruption and distraction. One cannot do deep work without developing the skill of intense concentration. People in every field have performed deep work in order to produce work of extraordinary value.
Most of the good jobs that are interesting and pay well will require the ability to learn quickly and effectively. This process of quick and effective learning must be applied again and again throughout one’s career because of the rapid changes taking place in the 21st century job market. To learn complicated and challenging jobs and to produce work of high quality and value will require the ability to do deep work.
According to Newport, the capacity for intense concentration is diminishing and becoming a rare ability at the same time that the demand for this skill is increasing. Students who develop this skill can set themselves apart from the majority of their peers and increase their competitiveness for the best jobs.
The value of deep work is also supported by the research of Anders Ericsson, author of Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Ericsson discovered that those who become experts and the best in their fields put in long hours of what he calls “deliberate practice.” One of the characteristics of deliberate practice is to intensely focus on a goal for the purpose of improving one’s performance in a chosen domain whether it is chess, music, science, sports, etc.
With intelligent machines projected to take over more jobs, workers will need to produce their best work and become experts in their career fields to avoid being replaced and this will take depth and focused attention to do deep work.
Many students are spending hours multi-tasking and doing shallow work such as texting, emailing, talking on the phone with their friends, checking likes on Facebook and studying while glancing at their phones and social media pages. Their attention is often divided and scattered. According to Newport, “Spend enough time in a state of frenzied shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.”
Students need to be encouraged to reduce the amount of time that they spend multi-tasking and doing shallow work. They need to set aside uninterrupted periods of time without distractions to practice focusing on one challenging task at a time. Otherwise, the work that they produce will be easy to replicate and they can be easily replaced in the workforce by low-skilled workers or machines. On the other hand, those who develop the skill for intense concentration and deep work will be in greater demand and are more likely to thrive.
Educators: Give some thought to how you can help students to reduce their divided attention and distraction and to increase their capacity for deep work.
By Raymond Gerson
Raymond Gerson is the author of Achieve College Success: Learn How in 20 Hours or Less and Achieve Career Success: How to Discover and Get the Job You Want. He is an adjunct professor of college and career success courses at Austin Community College.
References:
Ericsson, Anders and Pool, Robert. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. 2016. Eamon Dolan/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Newport, Cal. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. 2016. Grand Central Publishing Company.
Questions for Student Discussion:
What activities are you doing that might be reducing your capacity for deep work?
How much time per week do you spend doing shallow work and multi-tasking?
What is an example of when you did deep work and focused on one difficult task or project for a long time without interruptions or distractions? What was the result?
What are you willing to do to create more uninterrupted and less distracted time so that you can practice deep work and increase your ability for intense concentration?
