Deep Work

Here are some quotes from a section from the book Deep Work by Cal NewPort that I greatly enjoyed and find quite accurate and insightful:

“Most people assumed (and still do) that relaxation makes them happy. We want to work less and spend more time in the hammock. But the results from Csiksgentmihalyi’s ESM studies reveal that people have this wrong:

Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.

The more such flow experiences that occur in a given week, the higher the subject’s life satisfaction. Human beings, it seems, as at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.

The connection between deep work and flow should be clear: Deep work is an activity well suited to generate a flow state (what generates flow includes notions of stretching your mind to its limits, concentrating, and losing yourself in an activity).

A deep life is a good life.