How Deep Work Focus Can Wipe Out Distractions and Boost Productivity?

Cal Newport initially introduced the concept of Deep Work in one of his best selling books titled, “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.” It is an ideology formulated by Cal Newport to help many individuals work with a free mind and avoid multiple distractions solely surrounding technological devices such as smartphones and laptops.

Such distractions keep us busy from focusing on things that do matter at the workplace. What happens is that we keep ourselves continuously engaged in activities such as answering emails and surfing social media, which in return makes our daily routine feel overwhelmed and filled with unnecessary tasks that could’ve easily been avoided. In return, we fail to do things that do matter. 

Whether you address it not, but the fact is that we are more reactive than we are proactive. 

With the Deep Work ideology in effect, Cal, in his book, teaches us how you and I can turn off all notifications on our communication technologies for an hour or two and focus on work instead. In return, this deep focus hour or two enables us to learn how to avoid distractions. 

How Deep Focus Help You Reshift Your Focus to Tasks that Matters?

While there are multiple benefits of learning the subtle art of deep focusing, one that greatly matters is the one where it ignites your ability to be more productive and strongly effective. 

As far as the Deep Focus is concerned, here’s how it helps you to reshift your focus. 

Deep Focus Keeps All Distractions at Bay

Most distractions take place because of unnecessary emails. Believe it or not, if your inbox is brimming with too many emails, your mind will never be sound enough to create something innovative and worthwhile. You will always feel distracted because you will be flushed with so many unimportant and unnecessary information. Besides, your phone will play a massive role in becoming a part of that overwhelming distraction as you will always be getting those notorious messages saying, “Hey Peter! I just sent you an email, did you go through it?” 

Udemy conducted a survey where it identified that among every 4 workers, 3 of them feel distracted when they are trying hard to accomplish goals and objectives at their jobs. Sadly, 16 percent of these working individuals claimed that they always find themselves distracted. 

Now, can you imagine how much communication technology is playing a role? If we can curtail down some unnecessary tasks in our daily lives, imagine how productive we can be. 

Deep Focus Allows You to Think with Clarity

When distractions surround us, we feel quite overwhelmed mostly because we are unable to think through our problems. What type of suit should I wear at the ball tonight? What gifts should I get my girlfriend? Have I responded back to Mr. Walter on his emails? Did I check on my WhatsApp group today or have I uploaded something on my Facebook or LinkedIn? 

These are just some of the questions that steal our ability to think straight and with clarity. 

How about you change the tools, gadgets, and accessories to help you boost your productivity? It’s one way of avoiding your thoughts to flood with distraction thoughts.

Deep Focus can Enable you to Make Lesser Mistakes

Believe it or not, chances of error increase when your mind is weary and distracted. In fact, just hearing your phone buzz at the workplace can inadvertently make you commit an error. 

Recent research on “The Attentional Cost of Receiving a Cell Phone Notification” indicates that even when we are not paying attention, a simple phone buzz can take our focus away from the tasks which are increasingly important. The fact that you’re only aware that your phone has rung is a good enough reason to hurt your performance and make you distracted.

Stothart, one of the authors of the research said: 

“If we were driving and we felt a vibration for a phone call, that led us to think about the source of that call — who it could be, what the message was,”

And that’s a good enough reason to find themselves getting into an accident. 

Deep Focus Allows you to Easily Meet Deadlines

One of the greatest benefits of adjusting deep work in your daily schedule is that you can easily find time to meet set deadlines. Procrastination is a common habit most employees adapt to; whether they like it or not, they are too attuned to distractions that they ultimately find themselves procrastinating. However, this is something that has not been overlooked by many psychologists who have performed ample research on understanding deadlines. 

According to Yerkes Dodson Law, it has been identified that a person’s performance increases when the deadline nears; however, it increases up to an extent but after that threshold is passed, the performance greatly deteriorates sending the person to failures. 

With Deep Focus, individuals become capable of centering their focus for long hours without distraction into achieving various goals. Apparently, it helps them save good enough time to meet important deadlines too. Practicing Deep Focus keeps helping them to achieve more. 

Deep Focus Takes Away All Unnecessary Stresses

As an individual who is always falling short on deadlines, how would you feel if you know that you can have good enough time to achieve all your deadlines beforehand? 

I am sure you will feel a whole lot less stressed out. 

Stress is one of the major causes which creates setbacks in your working performance. It is a major demotivator that stops you from performing adequately at your work station. 

For example, just imagine you’re a writer and you’ve two tasks in the pipeline which you need to complete in the next 2 days. You can schedule two sessions of Deep Focus and get them completed, edited & submitted. In this way, you will be more confident to complete it on time. 

Deep Focus Will Improve Your Work-Life Balance

Btw, exercising is an amazing way to achieve the perfect work-life balance but is it the only way? Cal has approved that Deep Focus can have a positive impact on work-life balance. 

Do you know one of the reasons why we are unable to achieve our maximum potential in work life is because whatever work we choose begins in fits and starts? As a result, we are often rushing up to our deadlines especially at the end of the weekend or the evenings. 

This greatly hurts our capability to achieve the perfect work-life balance; as a result, it hurts our ability to think in a constant pattern and we suffer from multiple stressful thoughts. 

Deep Focus is a great way to kill those stresses and achieve the perfect work-life balance. Also, it allows you to achieve a focused state giving you the ability to complete everything. 

In the End…

The capability of a person to focus on their tasks is a mere gift and a valuable skill. Sometimes, people find themselves surrounded by countless distractions and as a result, it becomes very difficult for the people to achieve their goals and successes. Such are the times when these individuals feel that all they have learned or achieved is not good enough. 

Deep Focus is a method that can help you overcome that distraction and give you the capability to work progressively forward in your work life and career.

How should one achieve deep work is another topic which I recommend that you take out time from your busy schedule and read about it in the book written by Cal Newport. 

I hope you enjoyed reading this article, until next time, cheers.