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Deep Work

Page created: 2023-05-23

See also: projects and possibly also project-depth.

("Deep Work" is often associated with the book of the same title by Cal Newport. I’ll confess to not having read it yet despite having it cross my radar for many years.)

So this page isn’t about that, yet.

Jonathan Blow has a fantastic talk called How To Design Deep Games (youtube.com) and that’s what this page is about.

Blow defines "deep work" as something which:

  1. Changes you. You are different at the end, your skills and/or insights have advanced.

  2. Takes you to an unknown destination, but has a guiding compass internal to you.

  3. Turns you into a unique specialist. You’ve gone more deeply into specific areas than most in your field.

  4. Is something most people aren’t doing because they don’t think they can.

  5. Can be done from first principles. You don’t always need funding or a special environment to do deep work.

I think this is a very interesting list to ponder.

He goes on to say that long projects aren’t always deep projects. There’s probably a correlation. Deep projects usually are long. But length isn’t what’s important. Ideally, figure out how long you want the project to take and figure out how deep you can go based on that.

Blow also has a list of things that are incompatible with deep work:

  1. Scheduling kills creativity.

  2. "Childproofing" or worrying about what other people will think; self-censoring to grind all the "sharp edges" off of your idea to make it safe or palatable for others.

  3. Chasing success/money/accolades. This is really the same as the above, but from the opposite end. You’re thinking about how others will receive what you’re making.

  4. Distractions. Even just the threat of distraction.

Burnout and the "human animal"

Deep projects are typically long and the danger of long-term projects is burnout. Blow defines it thus:

"Burnout is a discordancy between the rational and the intuitive."

The rational part of you has an exciting idea that you want to work on. But the intuitive, non-verbal part of you knows that you haven’t given yourself a break in a while and:

"Your rational mind says, 'Oh, I’m going to sit down and work today.' And then instead of working, your hand magically goes to the web browser and you spend two hours reading some crappy Web page that you don’t even want to read. That’s what burnout is."

The longer the project goes, the more the discordance grows.

To avoid burnout, Blow has a strategy he calls, "Manage the Human Animal" (awesome name for it).

Things the human animal might want:

  • Physical comfort

  • Emotional comfort

  • Physical and emotional connection

  • External validation

Everybody needs something different. It’s all about telling that intuitive part of yourself that you’re taking care of yourself. Blow mentions buying new clothes or spending time with friends. These are things that you may not think you care about, but they can still comfort the "human animal" inside.

Blow also mentions meditation as a way to keep the "human animal" from taking over. It gives distance and perspective.

You can also take a real vacation or just work on another (small!) project.

Is this the one?

To know if if you’re really ready to embark on some deep work is what Blow calls "The Cry Test". If you’re not on the verge of getting emotional about your project when explaining it to someone, then the drive may not be strong enough to carry you through a truly long, multi-year project.

It needs to feel like the purpose of your life.

You’re also way more likely to accomplish the deep work project if the getting the basic thing done is something you’ve already done before and you know you can accomplish (and make steady, observable progress on):

"Work on something with Implementation Baseline well within your abilities."

Whatever the basic skills are that let you make progress on your deep work project, get good at them. Don’t be working at your limit when you create the basic parts of the project. It’ll be hard to see any progress and you’ll get frustrated and you won’t be able to concentrate on the exceptional parts of your project.

Blow uses his game Braid as an example. He intentionally chose the medium of a 2D platformer because he could easily get that working and concentrate on the deep work of designing unique puzzles.