Deep Work in the Social Sectors

Have you ever had a day when you seemed to work constantly, but had nothing tangible completed at the end of the day? Schedule a few evenly spaced meetings, check Slack and respond to emails as they come in, and your day can be eaten up by these light tasks. It is easy to feel busy and virtuous (reaching inbox zero!), but then we look up and realize we got nothing done on our most difficult and consequential products for the day. I have been there many times. 

Every Social Sector professional has their own unique mix of interaction with people (management tasks, emails meetings), administration (forms, bills, time tracking), and creation (documents, graphics, analysis, problem solving) through deep and focused work. 

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These creative ‘deep work’ products are things of substance. They are the tangible and indisputable items of value that move us toward our ultimate work and life goals. Yes, administration and meetings can help us progress. These are sometimes necessary, but without conscientious attention, our professional time is often skewed toward the lightweight tasks, at the expense of deep, productive work that matters most over the long run to advance our Sector Mission. 

The deep work concept
The ‘deep work’ operating system creates awareness around how you are spending your time, and lets you dial in the right balance of rich, focused time, with necessary, but less concrete meetings, interaction and administrative tasks. 

Even the early stages of applying these ideas has pushed me to a higher level of awareness and ability in my chosen field of international humanitarian response. I can produce more work on projects that matter to me and my teams, while also enjoying the workday in new, distraction-free and tranquil ways. My work in international humanitarian response is of  two types:. Some work involves communicating, meeting, discussing and planning together with team members. The other type of work is ‘deep work’. 

Deep work is the hard, individual concentration work on writing, analysis or data visualization products. Cal Newport popularized the term ‘deep work’. He defines deep work as “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction free concentration, that push your cognitive capacities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill and are hard to replicate.” 

While collaborative work, communicating, and meeting is all part of our work, and indeed important, we need to understand the balance between ‘shallow’ and deep work. Shallow, distracted work plays a large part in most Social Sector knowledge workers’ typical day. These are things like email, meetings, and chat messaging programs. We must create awareness around that balance, and set the tradeoff between deep and shallow work in our career.  For example, a project manager is a decision machine, and may only dedicate 5% of his or her time to producing reports or other deep work. The other 95% will be interaction, checking in with team members and pushing the project forward.

Other Social Sector positions require a much higher level of deep work. Proposal writers, analysts, program officers and other specialists must produce to perform. These outputs could be documents, presentations, workshop preparation, spreadsheets, and data graphics depending on our specific role. Deep work produces these tangible outputs that help us advance our chosen Social Sector mission. 

Why we need deep work in the Social Sector
Deep work results in the well-written document, or the illuminating data graphic that brings together key information for a pivotal decision. Deep work is uncomfortable because we are pushing ourselves to the edge of our ability. We are going to the point where our knowledge and skills end, as we push through ambiguity to a new, more advanced result. In this type of edge environment, there are no clear answers.  We are learning, failing and progressing our chosen craft in support of those that we serve. 

We need the concept of deep work in the Social Sectors to reclaim the many hours, days, weeks and often careers that are lost to tasks that appear necessary on the surface but provide little value. This type of light work creates a drag on Social Sector workers’ energy and focus. 

Deep work is not just about cranking out more tasks on the to-do list. Full concentration and production of something meaningful puts us in the zone of the craftsperson who lovingly and meaningfully contributes their work to the world. In our typical distracted Social Sector workplace, we are often drawn into conversation, interrupted with meetings, and struggling to keep on top of a seemingly endless stream of email traffic. This distraction limits our ability to reach what scientists call a ‘flow state’ of engrossed focus. This flow state is enjoyable and we are producing our best work while also enjoying the workday. 

Techniques for deep work in the Social Sector
Here are a few tactics for making deep work a part of your day. I adapted these from Cal Newport’s suggestions, and tailored them for our Social Sector context. 

Deep work inventory - First, we need to think about our position and responsibilities. What level of deep work is happening now in our workflow? Do we have enough time after emails, meetings and interactions at our workplace to get our most crucial work done? How can we update that balance to match our goals?

Schedule work blocks - Schedule every minute of the day using an online calendar app or a sheet of paper. Frequently rewrite the list of time blocks as our day shifts with new responsibilities or unexpected disruptions. 

Turn off alerts - Turn off all alerts - text, email, chat. Put those earphones on and close the door. Set a timer that rings every 50 minutes for a break until the session is complete. 

Ask “what can I do with the time that remains?” - Every plan is made to be broken. We can ask ourselves: “how can we best use the time that remains?” to achieve the most wildly necessary thing on our task list for that day. 

Train your mind to go deep - Deep work is hard. Start by setting a timer for 10 minutes and see if you can fully concentrate on the task for that time period without checking email, internet surfing or glancing at your phone. Over time you will be able to extend the period up to an hour at a time. Scientists studying mastery, report that the highest level practitioners (such as concert violinists) are ‘going deep’ with full focus for around 4 hours per day, with the remaining time spent in less focused activity. 

Batch shallow work - Before and after deep work, we can use the time to take care of emails, admin tasks, and meetings, by scheduling these tasks in batches for maximum efficiency. Let the administrative tasks pile up and then take care of them all at one time. This allows us to use the rest of the time to reset and recharge. 

Switch off - Finally, we need to switch off during parts of the day (usually the evening before sleep) to recharge. This lets us enter a productive deep work state the next day as we again tackle our tough challenges in the Social Sector. 

Making it work in the real world
We work in the Social Sectors because we have designed our lives to serve a cause that we believe in.  Deep work offers a way to enter that space of deep focus and meaning on a day-to-
 day basis. This helps us accelerate our cause for the people we serve while also experiencing the joy of the craftsperson as we create things that help the world. Let’s not let the trivial consume the essential. Deep work offers a path to working immersively and consistently on what matters to you and the world.

Happy trails!