Cal Newport's Deep Work opens with people who arranged their lives around concentration. Here are nine of them, retold in our own words, with a line or two from the book.
The drawings are ours and show places and objects, never portraits. Scroll and each one builds itself.
1 of 9 · Bimodal: deep stretches away, a busy practice in the city
Carl Jung
A stone tower at Bollingen, on Lake Zurich, from 1922
Jung built a plain stone house by the lake and later added a private office that nobody entered without his permission. On mornings there he wrote for about two hours without interruption, then walked or meditated. The tower had no electricity.
“Jung retreated to Bollingen, not to escape his professional life, but instead to advance it.”
The lesson: A place kept for hard thinking can sit right beside a crowded career.
2 of 9 · Distance from the household
Mark Twain
A study at Quarry Farm, New York, one summer
Twain wrote much of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in a shed on the farm where he was spending the summer. He worked there alone, well away from the main house.
“Twain’s study was so isolated from the main house that his family took to blowing a horn to attract his attention for meals.”
The lesson: Distance can do some of the work that willpower would otherwise have to do.
3 of 9 · What Newport calls a grand gesture
J.K. Rowling
A suite at the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh, 2007
Finishing the last Harry Potter book at home had become hard, with a window cleaner at work, children home and dogs barking. She booked a hotel suite for a day of writing, the day went well, and she kept going back until the book was done.
“By leveraging a radical change to your normal environment, coupled perhaps with a significant investment of effort or money, all dedicated toward supporting a deep work task, you increase the perceived importance of the task.”
The lesson: A deliberate change of scene tells you, and everyone else, that this task matters.
4 of 9 · A grand gesture, repeated
Bill Gates
Think Weeks, twice a year
As Microsoft's chief executive, Gates set aside a week twice a year to leave his usual work and family obligations and retreat to a cabin with papers and books. He wrote his well-known memo on the internet during a 1995 Think Week.
“There was nothing physically stopping Gates from thinking deeply in his office in Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters, but the novelty of his weeklong retreat helped him achieve the desired levels of concentration.”
The lesson: Sometimes the leaving is what makes the thinking possible.
5 of 9 · Intensity in short blocks
Theodore Roosevelt
Harvard, 1876–77
As a freshman, Roosevelt took the hours from 8:30 to 4:30, removed his classes, athletic training and lunch, and studied in the gaps that were left. The gaps were short, so he worked in them with complete intensity and still earned honor grades in five of his seven courses.
The lesson: A tight deadline can make a short block do the work of a long one. Newport turns this into an exercise he calls the Roosevelt dash.
6 of 9 · Monastic
Donald Knuth
Stanford, with no e-mail address
The computer scientist lists a postal address instead of an e-mail address. His assistant passes along anything truly urgent, and he answers the rest in one batch every three months or so.
“Knuth deploys what I call the monastic philosophy of deep work scheduling.”
The lesson: When your work is one big thing, you can turn down most of the small ones.
7 of 9 · Monastic
Neal Stephenson
An author website with no way to e-mail him
The novelist explained his silence in an essay called “Why I Am a Bad Correspondent.” He saw a choice between writing good novels at a steady pace and answering lots of individual e-mails and going to conferences, and he chose the novels.
The lesson: Naming what you're giving up makes the trade easier to keep.
8 of 9 · Bimodal
Adam Grant
Wharton, with the year split in two
The Wharton professor stacked his teaching into one semester to free the other for research. In research semesters, perhaps once or twice a month, he shut his door and switched on an out-of-office reply for two to four days at a time.
“…people will usually respect your right to become inaccessible if these periods are well defined and well advertised, and outside these stretches, you’re once again easy to find.”
The lesson: Disappearing is easier when people know when you'll be back.
9 of 9 · Journalist
Walter Isaacson
A summer beach rental, in the 1980s
While rising through the ranks at Time magazine, Isaacson co-wrote an 864-page history, The Wise Men, on the side. Newport's uncle, who shared a beach rental with him, remembers him switching to the book whenever he had free time.
“I call this approach, in which you fit deep work wherever you can into your schedule, the journalist philosophy.”
The lesson: Dropping into depth on short notice takes practice, and confidence in the work helps.
Carl Jung
Mark Twain
J.K. Rowling
Bill Gates
Theodore Roosevelt
Donald Knuth
Neal Stephenson
Adam Grant
Walter Isaacson
A second row
Solitude, from Cal's Digital Minimalism
Deep work shields hard work from interruption, and solitude, as Newport describes it in this later book, shields your own thinking from other people's input: one habit, aimed first at the job and then at the mind.
Abraham Lincoln
A cottage at the Soldiers’ Home, Washington, 1862–64
In the summers and early autumns of the Civil War, Lincoln lived at a cottage outside the city and rode to the White House on horseback. Soldiers camped on the lawn, but few people asked for his time, and he drafted the Emancipation Proclamation there, keeping notes on scraps of paper in his hat.
“We can therefore say, with only mild hyperbole, that in a certain sense, solitude helped save the nation.”
The lesson: You don't need an empty house. You need your mind left to its own thoughts.
Henry David Thoreau
A cabin by Walden Pond, near Concord
Thoreau's cabin stood in a clearing in sight of a public road, about a half-hour walk from town, and he went back often for meals and visits. Newport reads Walden as a cycle that moves between time alone and time with others.
The lesson: Solitude works best as a rhythm you keep returning to.
Raymond Kethledge
A barn office with no internet
The federal appeals judge writes many of his opinions at a pine desk in a barely renovated barn with no internet connection. He co-wrote Lead Yourself First, whose definition of solitude Newport adopts: time spent free from input from other minds.
The lesson: One unplugged room can be enough.
Retold from Deep Work (2016) and Digital Minimalism (2019) by Cal Newport. The books tell these stories in far more detail, with their sources.
Your version can be much smaller.
You don't need a tower or a hotel suite. One protected block tomorrow morning is a fair start.
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