Deep Work (Occasion and Purpose)

     Deepwork is an instructional book written by Cal Newport that is meant to teach someone strategies on how to achieve deep work, a state of concentration where a person can work in a fast and effective way on a project, whether it is a thesis or a book or a goal one has been striving towards.

     To know why Newport decided to write this book, his background must be taken into consideration. As an associate professor of computer science at a university, Newport can be considered to be a successful person. Surrounded by scholars like him, he was able to write many critically aclaimed theses in a year, baffling his colleagues at the speed and quality of his work, which made them curious as to how he's managing to so such a thing with a busy schedule. In response to this inquiry, he wrote this book outlining some techniques one can practice to improve their quality of work, along with stating many examples and types of deep work that we can find in the real world, along with what not to do to achieve this goal.

     Deep Work, written to directly reflect the title, is a book that is meant to teach people techniques that can make them successful in the future. Newport mentions many instances of successful people achieving their work, likening their quick and quality process to their ability to go "deep". He also mentions many things that one can do to prevent themselves from relying on the "shallows", which pumps out results that are quite lackluster. Some of those things are avoiding social media, avoiding the usage of smartphones, having a positive outlook towards life, developing a routine for oneself, and creating a space reserved for work for oneself. In a society where deep and quality work are valued for being rare, a person must know how to develop that "zone" for themselves in order to become sucessful later in life. To achieve this state of deep work is the main reason why Cal Newport decided, to write this book, as he feels that people deserve to be able to find themselves better opportunities in life.

-Linh Nguyen