Your Best Work Requires the Perfect Environment
By Mathias Zamęcki
Hollywood’s music maestro Hans Zimmer does his best work in a meticulously crafted studio (partially inspired by a 19th century brothel in Vienna) that is conducive to him producing “deep work” — a term coined by Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You.
Newport outlineds the difference between Deep Work and Shallow Work as such:
Deep Work: Cognitively demanding activities that leverage our training to generate rare and valuable results, and that push our abilities to continually improve.
Shallow Work: Tasks that almost anyone, with a minimum of training, could accomplish (e-mail replies, logistical planning, tinkering with social media, and so on)
Deep work, Newport says, requires constructing particular environments:
Deep work can be immensely fulfilling. The deep workers [such as Hans Zimmer, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, etc.] recognize this reality. They built working environments that emphasize what is unique and compelling about their particular expertise, and by doing so were able to squeeze even more meaning and satisfaction out of their working hours.This lesson is important. We should not treat deep work as just another scheduled task to check off our [David] Allen-esque lists. It should be made, instead, the center of our efforts.
Whether it’s a sculpture or a string of code, we need tocreate a perfect space within which we can really do the cognitively demanding, deep work.
