Book Review: Deep Work

There are books and then there is this book. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. One of the key reasons for me to read books is with the hope they inspire me (Directly by putting up ideas or Indirectly by showing the right path) to do better in my life and in that aspect I believe book comes among the top in terms of its ability to showcase the benefits of how we use our time and how we can better ourselves.

Malcom Gladwell in his book Outliers made the following famous quote

“In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”

Now, there has been a  lot of debate on whether this is really backed up in terms of scientific evidence and whether you really need 10,000 hours. But what is missed is that its not hours that count – after all, if you spend 10,000 hours watching Television, you wouldn’t be any better a judge of Television than your Mom who watches multiple family dramas.

Lets take the stock market – who are the experts out here? Are the guys who sermonize all day long on Twitter (me included?) or Television make them a expert.

We all like to Quote Warren Buffett / George Soros among the other greats, but do we really work the way they do. Buffett for instance claims to read 5 – 6 hours a day. Below is a quote of his taken from Farmstreet Blog

But I read five daily newspapers. I read a fair number of magazines. I read 10-Ks. I read annual reports. I read a lot of other things, too. I’ve always enjoyed reading. I love reading biographies, for example.

As much as we want to be successful, the question is how much effort we are willing to put in for that effort. August – September is the season of Annual Reports out here in India and if you are a stock investor, you surely would have received some of them. If you think yourself a investor who looks at the fundamentals, how many have you read?

And then there is Soros. As some one once mentioned, if you can read and digest his “The Alchemy of Finance“, you really have achieved something. But then again, most of us are happy to just quote him and move along. Yeah, he is great, but I don’t think I can trade / invest like him.

Distractions are part and parcel of our lives and the book is all about how eliminating them provides us with the right context and time for what we really need / want to do.

Valuewalk has very detailed notes from the book, Do Read. Link: Notes