Table of Contents
Introduction
This is the first time that I am writing an article that is not directly related to my work as a consultant, but has been on my mind for the last 2 years. It is about improving my productivity. I have just finished reading Cal Newport’s book “Deep Work – Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” earlier this year (while on vacation in the United Arab Emirates). I am excited to share my thoughts on it and explain how I will implement certain methods in my daily life.

‘Deep Work’ von ‘Cal Newport’ – ‘Taschenbuch’ – ‘978-0-349-41190-3’ (thalia.de)
I will not give you a comprehensive summary, nor will I go into detail about every aspect of this book. The book was a pleasure to read and made me rethink how I organize my life. It gave me actions to take to improve my productivity that are easy to implement.
I highly recommend reading this book if you struggle with focus and are trying to improve your productivity.
What is Deep Work?
Cal Newport distinguishes between two states of work – deep work and shallow work. Shallow work is something you can still do while distracted. This could be the coordination of work or some type of communication task. This type of work is also called easily reproducible work. In contrast to this type of work is “deep work,” which is what Cal calls the state of being completely focused on a topic and working on it undistracted for a period of time. Because our brains need time to switch between two different contexts, it is important to stay focused and avoid distractions when you have a specific task that benefits from deep work. But there are not only distractions – your brain will surely try to switch to other topics like “How are my friends – let me check my Instagram!” or “My girlfriend asked me to pick up something from the grocery store after work – what was it again?”
So on the one hand you try to minimize distractions, and on the other hand you have to train your brain to stay focused. The total amount of time a person can stay in the deep work state for a day is limited, but it can be trained and improved.
If you learn how to work deeply, you will most likely improve the quality of your work and reduce the time it takes to accomplish a particular goal. In addition, you will improve your mood because you will feel satisfied and happy after a long session of deep work. In Cal Newport’s words, “a deep life is a good life”.
The Depth Philosophy
To work deeply, you need to plan the time you want to spend in this state. This depends very much on your life circumstances, your job and your preferences. Cal Newport describes four approaches to deep work scheduling in his book:
- The Monastic Philosophy
This philosophy seeks to drastically eliminate all shallow commitments and maximize deep efforts. - The Bimodal Philosophy
Practitioners of this philosophy believe that the minimum amount of time to spend in the deep state is one day. In one study, some consultants blocked off one day a week for deep work, and it had a positive effect on their work quality and productivity. - The Rythmic Philosophy
Following this philosophy turns your deep work sessions into a simple, regular habit. One approach might be to block off the hours for deep work on a recurring daily basis. This could be from 7 am to 9 am each day. The advantage of this approach is that it reduces the barrier to entering the deep work state because it becomes a habit. - The Journalistic Philosophy
Unlike the rhythmic philosophy, this approach has no structure at all. You simply use any free time to quickly enter the deep work state.
From my perspective, I am trying a combination of the rhythmic and the journalistic philosophy. For writing posts for this blog, I am now starting to block out two mornings in my work week to work on creating new articles. Right now I am trying Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7 to 9 am. I am a morning person and find the morning hours to be my most productive. The remaining three days of my work week I try to schedule deep work sessions related to my professional work as a consultant. This could be solving a complex problem or writing a PowerShell script. This is my way of benefiting from the rhythmic approach. In addition, I try to follow the journalistic philosophy and try to go deep whenever I have free time that I do not need to spend on shallow work like Teams meetings or communication.
The 4DX Framework
The 4DX framework, or 4 Disciplines of Execution, is based on extensive consulting case studies and is designed to help companies execute high-level strategies. Cal Newport adapts the strategies described in this framework to his personal work habits and the result is a set of four disciplines. I adapt the disciplines to achieve my goal of writing more blog posts with high quality content.
Discipline #1: Focus on the wildly important
Following this discipline, you should identify a small number of ambitious outcomes for your deep work sessions. In my desire to write more blog articles, it is to write two blog articles each month, resulting in 24 articles per year.
Discipline #2: Act on the Lead Measures
Once you have identified your goal, you need to measure your success in achieving that goal. For someone trying to accomplish a goal with deep work, the measure is the time spent in the state of deep work dedicated to achieving the defined outcome. In my example, the measure is the time spent deeply working on new blog posts.
Discipline #3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
Tracking your investment in your lead measures helps to create a sense of competition and can also be a reinforcing source of motivation. Since your lead measure is the time spent in the deep work state dedicated to achieving your goal, you should try to track this time and make it visible.

I use an app on my iPhone called ATracker, which I also use to track my professional time. The app has a widget on my home screen when it is tracking my time, so I can see how much time I have currently spent in my session.

In the app, you just tap the task to start time tracking and tap again to stop. I set a goal of 4 hours a week to work on my blog, which the tracker counts towards. You can see at the top of the screen that I have completed 3 hours and 27 minutes, which is 86% for this week.

The app also has a report section that allows me to show how well I have achieved my goal over the weeks. Since this is the first week I am using this app, I lack some historical data, but I feel good about this implementation of the third discipline of the 4DX framework.
The second part of this discipline is measuring how well I am achieving this goal. Every time I finish a new article, I track that result in a results table. I have just started this process, so at the moment I only have one metric for this article, but I will continue to use this spreadsheet that I created in Notion:

Here you can see Cal Newports implementation of the scoreboard:
Deep Habits: Should You Track Hours or Milestones? – Cal Newport
Discipline #4: Create a Cadence of Accountability
The fourth and final discipline is to implement some kind of recurring review where you make a plan for the upcoming week. In addition, you use this review to look at your scoreboard to gain insight into your past week’s results. You should think about what led to a good or bad week and make sure to improve next week. An important step is to make sure you celebrate a good week.
I do this review every Monday morning before I start my work week. This allows me to review the past week and plan for the upcoming week.
The shutdown ritual
To be productive, it is important to be well-rested. Resting has advantages, such as giving your subconscious mind space to gain insights from your daily experiences. Additionally, being rested is crucial for your ability to work deeply, as you only have a limited amount of deep work capacity per day. Cal Newport recommends implementing a hard cut and a ritual for ending your workday to clear your mind of work-related thoughts. The shutdown ritual instills confidence by providing a well-structured process to end the workday in a sophisticated manner. This ensures a strict end to the workday and prevents further thoughts about work-related matters.
Here is the shutdown process I implemented, based on Cal Newport’s method:
- Check your Inbox and Teams messages
If there is an important email that requires a reply, respond promptly. Any less important emails can be addressed the following workday. This also applies to Teams messages. - Write down To-Dos
A simple but effective way to get ideas and tasks out of your head is to maintain a to-do list. Write down any task that needs to be done or idea that you have, so you can continue to work on it the next workday. - Check the upcoming days in your calendar
Take a look at your schedule for the upcoming workweek and maybe even the following week to gain a high-level understanding of what is ahead. This will help you avoid missing any deadlines and give you confidence. - Plan the next day
Now, focus on your next day and consider what you should aim to accomplish. Block out time for important tasks. - Say out loud your shutdown ritual sentence
For me, the shutdown sentence is “endlich Feierabend,” which translates to “finally off work.” This provides a clear endpoint for every work-related thought.
The shutdown ritual can help you fight the Zaigarnik effect, which describes how incomplete tasks dominate our attention. It is normal that you have incomplete tasks but using the above described ritual you reduce the likelihood that those tasks haunt you and disturb your downtime from work.
In future articles, I will provide more detail about the tools and technologies I use to write down my to-dos and assist my downtime.
Plan distraction times
In addition to planning your deep work sessions, it is also important to schedule time for shallow work, such as answering emails or team messages. You may also want to allocate a specific break to check your preferred social network, such as Instagram. However, be mindful that notifications from your phone or computer may interrupt your focus. You may want to reduce notifications because they can be distracting and reduce productivity.
While I am not currently scheduling specific distraction times, I have reduced the number of notifications I receive and now only check them at specific times of the day. I will provide more details on how I implemented this in a separate article, which I will link here.
Time Blocking
To optimize your day, a technique described in Cal’s book is time blocking. This involves assigning a specific purpose to every hour of your workday. Begin by defining the blocks where you want to accomplish something specific. Although my schedule is filled with planned customer meetings, I always have spare time that I fill with specific time blocks. I use my Outlook calendar for scheduling. This method helps you manage your time more effectively by estimating the time needed to complete each task. It is common to misjudge the actual effort required, so you may need to restructure or replan your day several times. It is common to misjudge the actual effort required, so you may need to restructure or replan your day several times. This technique also provides a deadline for specific tasks, which can motivate you to complete them more efficiently.
Improve E-Mail efficiency
Cal provides two tips for improving email efficiency.
make the senders to more work
The first tip applies to those who have a website and provide a contact email address. In this situation, you may receive unstructured requests that require a lot of time to answer appropriately. To improve the quality of the emails you receive, you can make the senders do more work. This is a guide for setting guidelines on the topics you wish to receive emails about and what the sender can expect from you. You may specify a set of requests that interest you, such as a project request in a specific area where you have expertise. Then, you should set expectations for the sender, including whether they should expect a reply from you. This response sets the expectation that replies will only be sent to requests that align with the recipient’s schedule and interests. While not impolite, it allows for the freedom to not respond to messages that do not meet these criteria. By checking the inbox and selectively responding, the recipient can ensure that they are only replying to emails that match the criteria outlined on their website. By writing only a few sentences on your contact page, you can save time by not having to reply to requests that you won’t accept anyway. Additionally, setting the sender’s expectations to not expect a response from you can lead to greater satisfaction when you actually do reply.
put more effort in composing your emails
The second tip is to put more effort into composing your emails. We are all familiar with short and vague emails that resemble instant messages and often lead to a flood of replies. This can be a major time drain and cause frequent interruptions when you are trying to focus on important tasks. Cal Newport refers to his method of improving email productivity as the process-centric approach. When composing an email, approach it as a small project and strive for efficiency and speed to achieve success. Anticipate your communication partner’s potential questions and define a clear process for communication. It may be helpful to address some questions preventive. If the question is too complex to answer or you expect your communication partner may not fully understand the answer, it may be easier to discuss the topic in a meeting. To reduce back-and-forth and find a suitable time slot for the appointment, you can send possible time slots for discussing open questions in your first email. Although it may feel burdensome to invest more time in writing emails like this, it will significantly improve your efficiency.
Conclusion
I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in improving their productivity. Cal Newport offers inspiring approaches to solving problems faced by knowledge workers. I enjoyed reading his book and found many pieces of advice that I am trying to implement to improve my productivity.
You might as well listen to his podcast:
As productivity is a topic of interest, I will continue to write about the tools and techniques I use to improve productivity and reduce disruptions.
If you enjoyed this article, please leave a comment!