Organize classrooms around deep work

Thus fostering a satisfying life full of meaning

Photo by Leah Kelley, courtesy of Pexels

Cal Newport, in his book Deep Work, makes the case for what the book title suggests: deep work. Deep work, unlike the shallow work of writing emails, posting on social media, and attending meetings, allows one to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. It involves sustained focus on cognitively demanding tasks, and not only does such focus make one better at intellectual undertakings, it also provides a sense of fulfillment. 

Newport argues that deep work is a super power in our increasingly competitive 21st century economy. So, why aren't schools structured to encourage deep work? After all, one stated purpose of attending school is to prepare for the workforce, and knowledge workers, Newport's targeted audience, make up much of today's workforce. But even those working in the trades benefit from deep work—in fact, most of their work is deep work—because it also leads to greater life satisfaction.

To make his argument for deep work, Newport tells stories of those who have made such work a priority in their life, and he draws from a variety of research studies showing the benefits of deep work. Winifred Gallagher and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi are two researchers Newport cites to make his case. 

Csikszentmihalyi argues that human beings are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging—when their mind or body is stretched to its limit in an effort to accomplish a difficult task, engrossed in deep concentration, lost in the activity. In other words, we are at our best when we are in a state of flow. Csikszentmihalyi is agnostic to the content of our attention. He argues that the feeling of flow in itself is rewarding because our minds like the challenge regardless of subject matter. Gallagher, on the other hand, argues that the content one focuses on matters. She claims that if one gives rapt—the title of her book—attention to positive, important things, they will experience their working life as more positive and important.

Overall, Newport argues that deep work generates a flow state and that "to build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction." He offers tips for how to integrate deep work that are applicable to career life as well as educational endeavors. Like any other activity one aims to master, his advice for how to accomplish deep work requires practice, and ultimately becoming a habit.

If we assume that Csikszentmihalyi is correct—that a flow state can be achieved when completing any task—then, for the purposes of school, these tips can be translated into the structure of a classroom and the routines of teachers and students.

Tips for school teachers and administrators:

Classrooms should be organized so that there are areas dedicated to individual, deep work separate from areas dedicated to collaborative work. This can be achieved by either having sound-proof pods for collaborative work or sound-proof pods for deep work. If a school chooses the former, which is likely the more financially feasible option, then desks should be in rows, all facing towards one focal point of the room. This way, students can work deeply on their own with fewer distractions from other students, but still have the option to work within groups in pods.

Deep work requires sustained focus; distractions must be limited, if not eliminated. School administrators should reserve school-wide announcements for the start or end of the day, as well as fire drills and any other school-wide events, such as school assemblies. Teachers should make every effort to teach content and spell out all requirements for an assignment before students immerse themselves in deep work, thus limiting how many times a teacher interrupts such work to clarify instructions. 

Computers are a portal to many distractions. They should not be used during deep work sessions unless needed to complete the task; for example, when researching for or writing a paper. Even if the final product of an assignment needs to be typed, as much working, and thinking, as possible should be done without a computer. 

An individual can only work deeply for approximately four hours a day. Because deep work is cognitively demanding, a teacher should not expect more than four hours of deep work from a student. This does not mean that students must be immersed in four hours of deep work in one block of time—no doubt they will need to visit the restroom, and they may complete one task in two hours and move on to another for the remaining two hours. 

Furthermore, any given task requiring deep work should be completed before moving on to the next, unless the task takes multiple days or blocks of time to complete. A student should not be asked to needlessly jump from one subject to the next, without completing a task, even if deep work is required for each subject of study.

Shallow work should be reserved for before or after the completion of deep work. Shallow work is not as cognitively demanding as deep work and requires less sustained focus. In the context of a school, this might include creating a presentation to describe the results of a project. The project likely requires deep work, but the creation of the presentation does not. 

All tasks that need to be completed should be scheduled at the start of the week. Students should spend time every Monday morning creating a detailed schedule for their week. The schedule can include tasks that the entire class is expected to complete as well as what the individual student needs to complete. The tasks should be scheduled by blocks of time. For example, if a student needs to complete a writing assignment, they should estimate how long is required to complete such a task, determine what day and time they can work on the task, and dedicate that block of time to complete the writing assignment. Schedules likely will be amended as the week goes on—for example, maybe a student needs more time on a task than they thought—but having a schedule ensures that students can anticipate what's to come and when time will be dedicated to deep work. 

At the end of the day, students should make note of all tasks left incomplete and make a to-do list for the next day. This is often referred to as a brain dump, the goal of which is to leave work at work, if you will, subsequently feeling prepared for the work to come. Shutting down your brain at the end of the school day, like shutting down and plugging in your laptop, allows your mind to rest, leaving you feeling recharged the next day. This means no homework. 

Students should be provided the opportunity to take productive walks. During a productive walk, one spends the time thinking about a task at hand. They clear their mind of any competing thoughts and, for instance, focus on trying to solve a problem that's come up during the course of completing a mathematical task, or how they might want to structure an experiment they are conducting, or what topic they might want to pursue in a paper they are writing. The walks can be scheduled for before or after a deep work session. Where the walks occur obviously depends on the location of the school, but outside in the natural environment is preferred.

Finally, heeding Gallagher's advice, whenever possible, the deep work students engage with in school should be personally meaningful to them. Unlike a job, the vast majority of students do not choose where they go to school or what they learn. The fulfillment that comes from deep work can be the satisfaction of completing any given task, but, no doubt, satisfaction increases when one finds such work personally meaningful.

The anatomy of a deep work classroom requires an overhaul to how most classrooms are currently structured. But given our present crisis of purpose and school's stated aim to prepare the young for the workforce, deep work produces a life of deep fulfillment, satisfying both aims.