NOTE: I've also put together a general writeup on Deep Work here.
You are sitting at the kitchen
table in the early morning intending to spend some time praying. A minute
later you hear a buzz and can’t help but to glance at the notifications on your
phone. Back praying once more, your mind wanders and you find yourself
thinking about a meeting at work later that day. This prayer time is
going nowhere. Why can’t I focus? Why is prayer so difficult?
Sunday morning you are sitting
in church listening to Pat preach. You’re jotting down his points in
Evernote on your phone. Then a notification pops up. Then you’re
checking an alert on Facebook. Back to writing some notes. And back
and forth. As you drive home, your wife asks what you thought about the
sermon--you draw a blank. How can I not remember anything from 30
minutes ago?
You arrive early at the office
and open your inbox. Opening up your Chrome browser, you get a few tabs
going: Facebook, Twitter, The Washington Post, your Gmail. As you answer
a few emails, you swing back and forth between your inbox and Facebook feed,
then you read a bit of a news article. Then back to looking up some
information for a report that’s due later that day. You blink and the day
is over and you’re driving home wondering:
Where did my day go? What
did I even accomplish today?
You are waiting in the line at
the post office. The overworked clerk is fighting a losing battle with
the outdated shipping software and you resign yourself to losing the next 30
minutes of your life. So you spend it swiping. Swiping through
Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, reading some news, sending a text, reading an
email, deleting some old ones. Getting things done. The
thing is, you leave the post office, feeling unfocused and tired.
Why does my mind race around?
Why do I feel so distracted?
At your Missional Community
everyone is going around the room sharing prayer requests. After two
couples have shared you realize you have no idea what they said. You had
glanced a few times at your phone--really just to check a few irrelevant
“breaking” news alerts that buzzed in your pocket and then found myself
thinking about a multi-meter that you needed to return to Lowes. You made
it through listening to another couple’s prayer request and then your mind was
meandering again thinking about how to phrase your own prayer request.
Why is it so hard to listen?
Why am I listening but not really hearing?
Can you relate to any of these
scenarios?
Do you desire to have a closer
relationship with Jesus?
Do you want to learn more of
the bible?
Do you want to have a better
prayer life?
Do you want a quieter, quiet
time?
If so, then Cal Newport’s Deep
Work: Rules For Focused Success in a Distracted World is for you.
While the intended audience of Deep Work is clearly a secular
business one, the lessons that he lays out are ones that can benefit anyone
that desires to “be better.” For the follower of Jesus, his call to limit
distraction and to focus on the priorities in your life (and to figure out what
those priorities are) should be a convicting one. For the Christian
reader, Newport’s thesis that learning hard things quickly and efficiently
requires intense distraction-free focus (i.e., deep work) should ring true
because these very principles are affirmed in scripture.
Take for example, one of
David’s songs (Psalms 46). He ends it by echoing God’s call to each of
us.
Be still. And know that I
am God.
God isn’t calling us
necessarily to a physical stillness, of course, but instead he wants us to
quiet our minds. He calls us to a focused meditation on his very nature.
After spending several verses extolling the virtue and might of God,
David beckons the listener into a denouement—a time to reflect and direct one’s thoughts to
the nature of our Creator. In Deep Work, Newport examines
the biological process of myelination—the science of which affirms the
idea that the very type of continual, undistracted, focused reflection that
David calls us to can build a deeper understanding and relationship with God.
But what does biology have to
do with your relationship with God you ask? Well, myelin is a layer of
fatty lipids and proteins that grow around your nerve cells. The more
myelin that builds up, the faster these nerve cells fire off. The buildup
of myelin (i.e., myelination) comes when you focus solely on a specific task or
skill. The specific ‘circuit’ associated with that task fires off
repetitively as you work which triggers cells to produce and envelope your
nerves with myelin. This process then creates a ‘permanent’ skill or
knowledge base. Where learning and myelin buildup go awry is when
one tries to multitask. Multi-tasking fires off multiple circuits at once
and doesn’t allow your body to isolate the specific circuit in order to learn a
new language or write that term paper--thus no myelin is produced when you are
distracted.
This God-designed biological
process is important because it confirms Newport’s thesis: “learning is an act
of deep work” and if you want to do it quickly and efficiently, you need to
maintain an intense focus on the subject at hand. If you want to
get better—in your marriage, your academic studies, your relationship with God—you
have to do the (deep) work. Newport offers a useful equation for the
reader:
High
Quality Work Produced = (time spent) x (intensity of focus).
The
deep work of prayer
Prayer (i.e., the time we spend
talking to God), is perhaps the foundational element of our relationship with
Him. Looking to the Gospels we see Jesus modeling both time spent in
prayer and a focused and undistracted intensity in His prayer life. The
gospel writers repeatedly describe Jesus’ concerted efforts to seek out the
“deep work” of building his relationship with God as He withdraws and spends
undistracted time in prayer and communion. Some key examples include:
- Shortly after
beginning his ministry, Jesus withdraws to pray in solitude early in the
morning (Mark 1:35),
- After hearing
the news of John the Baptist’s beheading, Jesus goes off by himself to
pray (Matthew 14:13)
- Before naming
his disciples, Jesus prays to God all night (Luke 6:12),
- Before and
after feeding the five thousand, Jesus prays in solitude(Matthew 14:23;
Mark 6:31; John 6:15)
- At Gethsemane,
Jesus enters into three different prayer periods (Matthew 26:36; Mark 14)
- With his dying
breath on the cross, Jesus’ prays the words of King David’s own song of
trust in God amidst feelings of abandonment (Luke 23:46; Psalm 31:5)
Jesus’ lifelong focus on prayer
is best captured in Luke’s wry observation that “Jesus often withdrew to pray”
(Luke 5:10). In other words, prayer was a focused habit for Jesus.
The question for followers of Jesus then is how do we advance toward that
same place. Following Newport’s template for producing high quality work
(in this case, a deepening relationship with Jesus), we can focus on spending
focused and intentional time with God. Using themes from Deep Work,
I’ve created a month long challenge geared to help retrain and refocus our
thoughts from distraction toward myelination in our relationship and
prayer life with Jesus.
Take
the 30 Day Deep Work Challenge
- Find rest on
your Sundays. Turn
off social media on Sundays. Disable internet connectivity on your
phone as soon as you leave for church until you get home (or at least turn
off those pop up notifications on your phone). Use this time to do
the deep work of growing as a Christian. Orient your heart and focus
your thoughts. The “attention residue” from even a quick
glance at an email during the sermon degrades your ability to re-focus on
learning and internalizing the message. Focusing takes practice.
- Wake up and
put first things first. Resist
the urge to check social media/email when you first awake. Spend
those first moments actively focusing your thoughts on Jesus. Thank
him for three things in your life. Spend time reading or listening
to the Bible and thinking about its application to your own life.
Get up 15 minutes early if you need to.
- Schedule your
nights and weekends and create value. Be proactive—not reactive. During the week, set aside
blocks of time for important tasks/projects/papers. During these
time blocks, disable internet connectivity. For your nights and
weekends, write down three spiritual and/or personal goals/projects.
This could be anything from learning about the theology of baptism,
to memorizing a Psalm, to making a long-term tithing plan, to serving your
community as a family, to being a better dad or husband, to reading with
your kids, to playing catch with daughter, to doing a puzzle with your
son, or to starting a missional community. Set aside an undistracted
hour during the weekend to make progress on those goals.
- Embrace
boredom and leave your phone in your pocket. At least once a day, resist the urge to check
your phone while stopped at a light, while at the post office, or while
waiting in line at the Safeway. This addiction for on-demand
distraction is literally short-circuiting your brain so that when you want
to concentrate on deep work, you won’t be able to.
- Tell Someone. It’s easier to stay accountable if you know
someone’s going to ask you how it’s going.
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