The book Deep Work asserts that knowledge workers need to intentionally focus to produce and or create work that will help them to accomplish their ultimate goals and provide value to society. Newport also argues that knowledge workers of today and the future need to learn the skill of deep work in order to thrive in the new economy.  

Deep work is defined as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction free concentration that push your cognitive abilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill and are hard to replicate.” (Newport pg. 2) In other words,  being able to focus on a task or project that is complex is what will allow knowledge workers to thrive in the new economy.  Newport also says that in order to engage in deep work we need to choose our style of deep work, which can be one of the following or a combination: commit to a routine, limit distractions and avoid shallow work. 

As teachers, we need to make sure that students are able to work deeply. Do we ourselves as teachers work deeply? When planning, do we provide activities and lessons for students that are cognitively demanding or do we take the easy way out, path of least resistance, so we can say that our planning is done for a month.

Classroom application:

• Modeling deep work for students such as close reading and assign student work that requires students to create and produce.
• Students can complete on demand and process writing tasks, which facilitates deep work.

Next,  Newport states that the ability to master hard things is one of the key factors for people to thrive in the new economy.  Based on my experience, a lot of students struggle with mastering hard things because they’re used to getting the answer from the teacher or do not have the stamina to stay on task or the ability to think for long periods of time.

Classroom application:

• Build student stamina by incrementally increasing the amount of time students need to stay focused on task.
• Incorporate project based learning where the outcome is a creation, solving increasingly complex word problems, creating a complex word problem with multiple steps that is incorporated into a gaming app.

This quote sums up what it means to master hard things. “To become a world class yoga instructor, for example, requires that you master an increasingly complex set of physical skills. To excel in a particular area of medicine, to give another example, requires that you be able to quickly master the latest research on relevant procedures. To summarize these observations: If you can’t learn, you can’t thrive.” (Newport pg. 31)

Additionally, Newport talks about the ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed to to thrive in the new economy.  The expectation can no longer be that the student’s work is complete. Students’ work need to be high quality and completed in the allotted time.

Classroom Application:

• To do this, we need to make sure that we have high expectations of quality work that is supplemented with a rubric that students are well aware of.
• Avoid shallow work. Shallow work can be defined as “non cognitively demanding, logical style tasks, often performed while distracted.” (Newport pg. 6) Limit the use of busy work for students, it will undermine your efforts in teaching students how to work deeply.
• Utilize your classroom management plan to minimize classroom distractions and teach students deep work routines such as time blocking with a block schedule that is used by some schools.

Finally, deep work is an important part of being able to succeed in the new economy. Teaching students how to work deeply will greatly help them to succeed in the 21st century and the new economy.