You don’t, in other words, need to be toiling in an open-air barn for your efforts to be considered the type of craftsmanship that can generate Dreyfus and Kelly’s meaning. A similar potential for craftsmanship can be found in most skilled jobs in the information economy. Whether you’re a writer, marketer, consultant, or lawyer: Your work is craft, and if you hone your ability and apply it with respect and care, then like the skilled wheelwright you can generate meaning in the daily efforts of your professional life.
It’s here that some might respond that their knowledge work job cannot possibly become such a source of meaning because their job’s subject is much too mundane. But this is flawed thinking that our consideration of traditional craftsmanship can help correct. In our current culture, we place a lot of emphasis on job description. Our obsession with the advice to “follow your passion” (the subject of my last book), for example, is motivated by the (flawed) idea that what matters most for your career satisfaction is the specifics of the job you choose. In this way of thinking, there are some rarified jobs that can be a source of satisfaction—perhaps working in a nonprofit or starting a software company—while all others are soulless and bland. The philosophy of Dreyfus and Kelly frees us from such traps. The craftsmen they cite don’t have rarified jobs. Throughout most of human history, to be a blacksmith or a wheelwright wasn’t glamorous. But this doesn’t matter, as the specifics of the work are irrelevant. The meaning uncovered by such efforts is due to the skill and appreciation inherent in craftsmanship—not the outcomes of their work. Put another way, a wooden wheel is not noble, but its shaping can be. The same applies to knowledge work. You don’t need a rarified job; you need instead a rarified approach to your work.
The second key observation about this line of argument is that cultivating craftsmanship is necessarily a deep task and therefore requires a commitment to deep work. (Recall that I argued in Chapter 1 that deep work is necessary to hone skills and to then apply them at an elite level—the core activities in craft.) Deep work, therefore, is key to extracting meaning from your profession in the manner described by Dreyfus and Kelly. It follows that to embrace deep work in your own career, and to direct it toward cultivating your skill, is an effort that can transform a knowledge work job from a distracted, draining obligation into something satisfying—a portal to a world full of shining, wondrous things.
Homo Sapiens Deepensis
The first two chapters of Part 1 were pragmatic. They argued that deep work is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy at the same time that it also is becoming increasingly rare (for somewhat arbitrary reasons). This represents a classic market mismatch: If you cultivate this skill, you’ll thrive professionally.
This final chapter, by contrast, has little to add to this practical discussion of workplace advancement, and yet it’s absolutely necessary for these earlier ideas to gain traction. The pages ahead describe a rigorous program for transforming your professional life into one centered on depth. This is a difficult transition, and as with many such efforts, well-reasoned, pragmatic arguments can motivate you only to a certain point. Eventually, the goal you pursue needs to resonate at a more human level. This chapter argues that when it comes to the embrace of depth, such resonance is inevitable. Whether you approach the activity of going deep from the perspective of neuroscience, psychology, or lofty philosophy, these paths all seem to lead back to a connection between depth and meaning. It’s as if our species has evolved into one that flourishes in depth and wallows in shallowness, becoming what we might call Homo sapiens deepensis.
I earlier quoted Winifred Gallagher, the converted disciple of depth, saying, “I’ll live the focused life, because it’s the best kind there is.” This is perhaps the best way to sum up the argument of this chapter and of Part 1 more broadly: A deep life is a good life, any way you look at it.
PART 2
The Rules
Rule #1
Work Deeply
Soon after I met David Dewane for a drink at a Dupont Circle bar, he brought up the Eudaimonia Machine. Dewane is an architecture professor, and therefore likes to explore the intersection between the conceptual and the concrete. The Eudaimonia Machine is a good example of this intersection. The machine, which takes its name from the ancient Greek concept of eudaimonia (a state in which you’re achieving your full human potential), turns out to be a building. “The goal of the machine,” David explained, “is to create a setting where the users can get into a state of deep human flourishing—creating work that’s at the absolute extent of their personal abilities.” It is, in other words, a space designed for the sole purpose of enabling the deepest possible deep work. I was, as you might expect, intrigued.
As Dewane explained the machine to me, he grabbed a pen to sketch its proposed layout. The structure is a one-story narrow rectangle made up of five rooms, placed in a line, one after another. There’s no shared hallway: you have to pass through one room to get to the next. As Dewane explains, “[The lack of circulation] is critical because it doesn’t allow you to bypass any of the spaces as you get deeper into the machine.”
The first room you enter when coming off the street is called the gallery. In Dewane’s plan, this room would contain examples of deep work produced in the building. It’s meant to inspire users of the machine, creating a “culture of healthy stress and peer pressure.”
As you leave the gallery, you next enter the salon. In here, Dewane imagines access to high-quality coffee and perhaps even a full bar. There are also couches and Wi-Fi. The salon is designed to create a mood that “hovers between intense curiosity and argumentation.” This is a place to debate, “brood,” and in general work through the ideas that you’ll develop deeper in the machine.
Beyond the salon you enter the library. This room stores a permanent record of all work produced in the machine, as well as the books and other resources used in this previous work. There will be copiers and scanners for gathering and collecting the information you need for your project. Dewane describes the library as “the hard drive of the machine.”
The next room is the office space. It contains a standard conference room with a whiteboard and some cubicles with desks. “The office,” Dewane explains, “is for low-intensity activity.” To use our terminology, this is the space to complete the shallow efforts required by your project. Dewane imagines an administrator with a desk in the office who could help its users improve their work habits to optimize their efficiency.
This brings us to the final room of the machine, a collection of what Dewane calls “deep work chambers” (he adopted the term “deep work” from my articles on the topic). Each chamber is conceived to be six by ten feet and protected by thick soundproof walls (Dewane’s plans call for eighteen inches of insulation). “The purpose of the deep work chamber is to allow for total focus and uninterrupted work flow,” Dewane explains. He imagines a process in which you spend ninety minutes inside, take a ninety-minute break, and repeat two or three times—at which point your brain will have achieved its limit of concentration for the day.
For now, the Eudaimonia Machine exists only as a collection of architectural drawings, but even as a plan, its potential to support impactful work excites Dewane. “[This design] remains, in my mind, the most interesting piece of architecture I’ve ever produced,” he told me.