I spent last Tuesday staring at a blank Google Doc for three hours while responding to “quick pings” on Slack. By 4:00 PM, I felt like I’d run a marathon, but I had produced exactly zero words of substance. I was busy. I was responsive. I was also completely useless.
We’ve been lied to about what work actually is. We’ve been convinced that being “available” is the same thing as being productive. It’s not. It’s a performance. Most of us spend 80% of our day performing the role of a worker—clearing notifications, attending status meetings that could have been a bulleted list, and formatting spreadsheets that nobody will ever actually read—rather than doing the thing we were actually hired to do.
This is the difference between Deep Work and Shallow Work. And if you don’t figure out how to separate them, you’re going to burn out while achieving absolutely nothing of note. I know that sounds dramatic. It is.
The day I realized I was a glorified switchboard operator
A few months ago, I was working on a project for a client who needed a complex data analysis. It required about four hours of uninterrupted thought. Instead, I gave it forty-five minutes of fragmented attention between 9:15 AM and 5:30 PM. Every time I got into the flow, a notification would pop up. “Hey, do you have a sec?” “Where is that file?” “Did you see what Sarah posted in the lunch channel?”
I ended up making a massive error in the final report. I missed a decimal point that skewed the entire projection. My boss was annoyed, the client was confused, and I was humiliated. The worst part? I had worked a ten-hour day. I was exhausted. But because I was trying to do “Deep Work” in a “Shallow Work” environment, I failed at both. I wasn’t fast enough on Slack to satisfy the vultures, and I wasn’t focused enough to get the math right.
Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
Basically, Deep Work is the stuff that gets you promoted or makes you feel proud of yourself. Shallow Work is the administrative tax we pay to exist in a corporate environment. It’s necessary, but it’s hollow. It’s like eating cotton candy for dinner—it fills the space, but it has zero nutritional value.
I used to think multitasking was a skill. I was completely wrong.
Multitasking is a myth. What we’re actually doing is “context switching,” and it’s neurologically expensive. I tracked my output for 22 workdays in October using a manual tally counter on my desk. Every time I switched from my main task to check an email or a message, I clicked the counter. On average? 74 times a day. 74 times.
What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. It’s not that Slack or Teams is evil. It’s that we use them like slot machines. We’re addicted to the little red dot because it gives us a hit of dopamine that makes us feel important. “Ooh, someone needs me!” No, they don’t. They’re just bored or too lazy to look for the file themselves.
I know people will disagree with this, but I think most middle managers actually hate the idea of Deep Work. If everyone just put their heads down and did their jobs for four hours a day without needing constant check-ins, what would the managers do? Their entire career is built on the friction of shallow work. They are the facilitators of the noise. (Anyway, that’s a rant for another time. But I digress.)
The part where I tell you how I actually fixed this
I didn’t buy a $2,000 standing desk or start waking up at 4:00 AM to drink butter coffee. I just changed how I treat my time. Here is the rough, unpolished system I use now:
- The 90-Minute Lockdown: From 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM, I am dead to the world. My phone is in another room. Not on the desk. In the kitchen. If the house isn’t on fire, I’m not answering.
- Batching the Garbage: I check email exactly three times a day. 10:00 AM, 1:30 PM, and 4:30 PM. That’s it. If you email me at 10:05 AM, you’re waiting three hours for a reply. The world hasn’t ended yet.
- I stopped using Monday.com: I genuinely hate that software. I know it’s popular, but the UI feels like being shouted at by a caffeinated rainbow. It creates more work just to manage the work. I went back to a Leuchtturm1917 notebook and a black pen. It costs $26 and it doesn’t send me notifications.
- The “No-Meeting” Wednesday: I blocked it off on my calendar. I told my team I’m doing “heads-down research.” Usually, I’m just doing the work I was too distracted to do on Monday and Tuesday.
I might be wrong about this, but I think we’ve reached a breaking point with “collaboration tools.” At some point, we have to actually work, not just talk about working.
A risky take on why you’re still doing shallow work
Here is the uncomfortable truth: Shallow work is easy. It feels good to clear an inbox. It feels productive to sit in a meeting and nod your head. Deep work is hard. It’s physically taxing. It makes your brain feel like it’s being stretched. Most people stay in the shallow end because they’re afraid to find out they aren’t actually that good at the deep stuff.
It’s a hiding spot. If you’re “too busy” with emails, you have a built-in excuse for why you haven’t written that strategy doc or finished that code. “I just didn’t have time!” No, you had the time. You just spent it on the easy stuff because the hard stuff is scary.
I say this as someone who still fails at this at least twice a week. Last Friday, I spent two hours looking at mechanical keyboard subreddits instead of finishing a project. I’m not a monk. But I stopped lying to myself about it. I didn’t call it “research.” I called it what it was: a failure of discipline.
Does any of this actually matter?
I don’t know if the world is going to get less noisy. I suspect it’s going to get worse. AI is going to generate ten times more shallow content and “status updates” for us to sift through. We’re going to be drowning in even more automated garbage.
The only way to survive is to become a person who can actually focus. It’s becoming a rare skill. And rare skills are expensive. If you can be the person who produces one high-quality, deep thing per week while everyone else is just vibrating in their Slack channels, you win. It’s that simple.
I’m still trying to figure out if I can sustain this. Some days I feel like I’m winning, and other days I feel like I’m just being a jerk to my coworkers who just want a quick answer. Is it possible to be a “team player” and a deep worker at the same time? I’m honestly not sure yet. Maybe the two are fundamentally at odds.
Go put your phone in the other room. See how long you last.
