Deep Work vs Shallow Work: What Is the Difference?

You look at tomorrow’s list and everything on it feels like work. Which of it is deep, and which can wait?

Here you get the line between the two and why shallow work isn’t the enemy. You also learn what the real opposite of deep work is. And you see where shallow work goes in a day built on blocks.

What is the difference between deep work and shallow work?

Cal Newport drew the line in a 2012 blog post. It was called “Knowledge Workers are Bad at Working (and Here’s What to Do About It…)”.

Deep work is “cognitively demanding activities that leverage our training to generate rare and valuable results”. Shallow work is “tasks that almost anyone, with a minimum of training, could accomplish”.

	Deep work	Shallow work
What it demands	Your full concentration and your trained skill	Little thought: logistics, routine, coordination
Who could do it	Hard to hand over; it needs your training	”almost anyone, with a minimum of training” (Newport, 2012)
Interruptions	Break it: flow is fragile	In one email study: same quality, more stress (Mark et al., 2008)
What it leaves behind	Something new: a draft, a solution, an analysis	Things kept running: replies, bookings, updates
Examples	Drafting a chapter, fixing a hard bug, analysing data	Replying to email, logistical planning (Newport, 2012)
When in your day	When you have energy	When your energy fades

Those are deep work vs shallow work examples at a glance. Email, Newport’s own shallow example, has even been tested under interruption.

In Mark, Gudith and Klocke (2008), interrupted participants finished an email task faster, with equal quality. But they reported more stress, frustration, time pressure and effort.

That finding is about email, not about deep work. For more detail, see what shallow work is and these examples of deep work and shallow work.

Is shallow work bad?

If shallow work needs so little of you, is it the problem? No: shallow work keeps things running, and somebody has to do it. The damage starts when it takes the hours your hardest task needs.

Here is what my days looked like before the blocks.

If you recognise yourself in my story: you don’t lack discipline. You lack a process.

Which hours you protect from shallow work counts more than how much of it you do. Three focused 45-minute blocks per day are worth more than eight hours of half-concentrated work. That also marks the line in deep work vs busy work.

What is the opposite of deep work?

So if shallow work isn’t the enemy, what is? The usual answer to the opposite of deep work is shallow work, but that’s only half of it. Deep work has two opposites: shallow work, which is a kind of task, and distraction, which can hit any task.

• Shallow work: tasks that need little thought, like replying to email or logistical planning (Newport, 2012). Necessary, just not during your deep task.
• Distraction from outside: anything around you that pulls you off the task, from the phone to open tabs. Thirty open tabs are thirty open thoughts.
• Distraction from within: an interesting link, a research tangent, a seemingly productive idea. It feels like work, but it doesn’t belong to the current task.

Shallow work is real work and has to happen somewhere. Whether deep work and shallow work are the only categories of work is a question of its own. Distraction, though, has no place in any block, deep or shallow.

That’s why I clear all disruptions and distractions before a block starts. Whatever still slips through goes on the thought sheet. That is a sheet of paper next to me where I park stray thoughts.

Is there a right ratio of deep work to shallow work?

Once distraction is out, shallow work still needs its share of the day. Instead of a percentage, use three things: a ceiling, your energy and the quality of your blocks. The realistic upper limit for highly concentrated work is four to six hours per day.

On good days I manage five to six hours of highly concentrated work, spread across blocks of varying length. On weak days it’s three.

Then match the task to your energy. Do demanding tasks when you have energy and easier tasks when it fades.

Shallow work needs little thought, so it fits the hours when energy fades. Wasting energy on an easy task is just as inefficient as tackling a hard task without energy.

Say you had four deep hours today and about an hour of shallow work. Is that enough? The signal for when to stop a deep work session answers it.

When the quality of your blocks drops, the workday is over, even if it’s only been three hours. Three good hours are better than five bad ones.

How do you keep shallow work out of your deep work blocks?

Knowing where shallow work belongs is half the job. The other half is keeping it out of your blocks.

Shut it out before the block, park it during the block and deal with it afterwards. In the order of a block, that comes down to six steps.

1. Tell the people who contact you regularly when you’re unreachable.
2. Close email, Slack and social media before you start. They are the biggest attention thieves.
3. Match block length to the task. For creative tasks I choose longer blocks. For routine tasks, shorter ones.
4. Write every shallow to-do that pops up on the thought sheet, then return to the task.
5. Keep emails, messages and calls out of your breaks. They pull your mind into other matters.
6. Go through the thought sheet at the end of the day. Transfer each item, handle it, or cross it out.

Step 1 can feel hard. Turn down someone else’s urgent shallow task, and you may worry about not looking like a team player.

A plain sentence helps with the people around you. Tell them: “I’m unavailable for the next 45 minutes unless the house is on fire.” To go further, read how to drain the shallows and how to schedule deep work.

FAQ

Can the same task be deep work for one person and shallow work for another?

Yes, because whether a task is deep work or shallow work depends on what it demands of you. Something you’ve done ten times may need little thought, while it’s hard for someone who has never done it. That’s why it pays to identify deep work tasks yourself.

Is reading research papers deep work or shallow work?

It depends on how you read. Clicking through the literature, reading abstracts and skimming papers is closer to shallow work. Closely reading a methods section and re-deriving it yourself is deep work, even with the same paper.

Can you do deep work if your job is mostly shallow work?

Yes, if you start small.

The smallest unit of deep work isn’t a free day. It’s a single block of concentrated work, even in a mostly shallow job. Pick the length that still feels doable today, and when in doubt, start shorter.

Keep reading

• Metric Black Hole Deep Work: What It Means and What You Can DoMetric black hole deep work: what Cal Newport's term means, why it keeps deep work rare, and what you can do about it yourself, with an example to count.
• Deep Work vs Focus Work: What Is the Difference?Deep work vs focus work: what each term means, where focus work ends and deep work begins, and why feeling focused isn't the same as being focused.
• Deep Work Examples: Which Tasks Count, and How to TellDeep work examples from writing to code to analysis, a two-question test for your own tasks, and where email, meetings and reading really belong.