Deep Work Cal Newport Book Review

Hard to Reach

In a 2012 article written for a New York Times blog, the essayist and cartoonist Tim Kreider provided a memorable self-description: “I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know.” Kreider’s distaste for frenetic work, however, was put to the test in the months leading up to the writing of his post. Here’s his description of the period: “I’ve insidiously started, because of professional obligations, to become busy … every morning my in-box was full of e-mails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve.”

His solutions? He fled to what he calls an “undisclosed location”: a place with no TV and no Internet (going online requires a bike ride to the local library), and where he could remain nonresponsive. “I read. And I’m finally getting some real writing done for the first time in months.”

Tip#1: Make People Who Send You E-mail Do More Work

Most nonfiction authors are easy to reach. They include an e-mail address on their author websites along with an open invitation to send them any request or suggestion that comes to mind. Many even encourage this feedback as a necessary commitment to the elusive but much-touted importance of “community building” among their readers. But here’s the thing: I don’t buy it.

If you visit the contact page on my author website, there’s no general-purpose e-mail address. Instead, I list different individuals you can contact for specific purposes: my literary agent for rights requests, for example, or my speaking agent for speaking requests. If you want to reach me, I offer only a special-purpose e-mail address that comes with conditions and a lowered expectation that I’ll respond:

Tip#2: Do More Work When You Send Or Reply to E-mails

E-mail #1 “It was great to meet you last week. I’d love to follow up on some of those issues we discussed. Do you want to grab coffee?”

Process-Centric Response to E-mail #1: “I’d love to grab coffee. Let’s meet at the Starbucks on campus. Below I listed two days next week when I’m free. For each day, I listed three times. If any of those day and time combinations work for you, let me know. I’ll consider your reply confirmation for the meeting. If none of those date and time combinations work, give me a call at the number below and we’ll hash out a time that works. Looking forward to it.”

Tip#3:  Don’t’ Respond

As a graduate student at MIT, I had the opportunity to interact with famous academics. In doing so, I noticed that many shared a fascinating and somewhat rare approach to e-mail: Their default behavior when receiving an e-mail message is to not respond.

Over time, I learned the philosophy driving this behavior: When it comes to e-mail, they believe it’s the sender’s responsibility to convince the receiver that a reply is worthwhile. If you didn’t make a convincing case and sufficiently minimize the effort required by the professor to respond, you didn’t get a response.

For example, the following e-mail would likely not generate a reply with many of the famous names at the Institute:

• Hi professor. I’d love to stop by sometime to talk about <topic X>. Are you available?

Responding to this message requires too much work (“Are you available?” is too vague to be answered quickly). Also, there’s no attempt to argue that this chat is worth the professor’s time. With these critiques in mind, here’s a version of the same message that would be more likely to generate a reply:

• Hi professor. I’m working on a project similar to <topic X> with my advisor, <professor Y>. Is it okay if I stop by in the last fifteen minutes of your office hours on Thursday to explain what we’re up to in more detail and see if it might complement your current project?

Unlike the first message, this one makes a clear case for why this meeting makes sense and minimizes the effort needed from the receiver to respond.

When you put yourself in a HARD TO REACH position, ask yourself.

What’s the ONE THING you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?

To-Do List Could do Should do Could do Should do Could do Should do Could do Should do Should do

Success List Should do Should do Should do Should do Should do

80/20 Pareto’s Principle

20% of the effort leads to 80% of the result.

EXTREME PARETO

I want you to go even smaller by identifying the 20% and then go even smaller by identifying the vital few. 

No matter how many to-dos you start with, you can always narrow it to one.

You can take 20% of the 20% of the 20% and continue until you get to the single most important thing

25 X 20% = 5 X 20% = 1

Posted By: michaelherr10x · In: Philosophers Notes