Deep Work For Developers

I have reservations about fully embracing Cal Newport’s Deep Work 100% for software developers. It may work when you have a really high position where you can offload tasks to other people or where it is okay to just not answer emails for a whole day.

What Software Development is Made Of

Software development is a team sport. While I think that the best way of solving hard problems or one(!) task is actually when you get into a flow for 4-5 hours, it may not always be applicable. Sometimes you need to ask someone else for help and distract team members. Other times, someone else on your team needs your help and distracts you. And that’s absolutely fine because that is what software development is made of.

Deep Work vs. Deep Focus

By my understanding, Deep Work is more about getting into a rabbit hole and experiencing deep exploration of a topic. For example, reading a lot of papers about one specific topic, asking the hard questions, and trying to solve them. All of this in such a way that all contingencies are covered and with high-quality output.

The key here is: intense concentration on a topic and deep exploration of it.

I think for software developers, Deep Focus is a better term: setting the scope and focus to one task to get into the flow of solving it without any distractions. There’s no need for a rabbit hole or exploration of a topic. Note that this looks different for software architects and system designers.

So, Deep Focus is a component of Deep Work.

Applicable Ideas for Deep Work Focus

Nevertheless, I got some valuable ideas out of it which led to better productivity for myself. Some other things are just ideas to bring into the team when there is a need for more focused work.

The core idea of all of it is: Although there are distractions which we need to live with, we can also try to reduce them.

Here’s my key takeaway:

• Question your (social) media and smartphone consumption.

Not only during work hours but also in free time. Our brain needs time to calm down. Continuous media consumption can lead to inner restlessness. When was the last time you consumed non-digital media? Or even better: Remove media consumption completely and go out, meet friends, or other people.

I like the idea to ask ourselves: Do we use our smartphone in between tasks or “important things” because there’s just nothing else to do? Or is it reversed, and we work and live just to use our smartphone as often as possible? Do we feel only relief when we check our notifications and answer chats, etc.?

That’s maybe too philosophical and deep, but it gets to the heart of the matter to think through our smartphone consumption.

Personally, I think lower smartphone usage is better, and I know at least from my Android that it helps quite well to reduce it as much as possible.

People who are really hardcore try to use their smartphone consciously by setting a time slot each day to use their smartphone or social media apps.

Other ideas which I took away:

• Ask if you really need to attend every meeting that is set up. Maybe it’s also okay to not attend and just ask someone else what the core statements have been.
• You can set focus time within the team where it is consent to just work for your own and log off of Teams, Slack, …
• Reduce the number of notifications from your phone or at your computer. Android allows for example a list of numbers where the phone rings even when it is in silent mode. So, important numbers of this list will always reach you.

Conclusion

With the idea of deep focus, I reduced the amount of my smartphone and media consumption drastically. I not only locked my social media apps during work hours, but I also set time limits for the whole day.

Furthermore, I try to reduce the number of distractions as much as possible by disabling alerts and notifications or working in quiet places.

I don’t want to be perfect in regards of it, but I feel like changing small things step by step helped myself to be more productive. Even thinking through some of the mentioned things here can be a good process to find other ideas.