Health / Wellness

How To Train Your Brain To Do More 'Deep Work'

In our busy and demanding world, how do we create the space to engage in work that creates real value?

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Jeena Cho

Jeena Cho

What percentage of time do you spend during a workday in a state of mild to moderate stress, rapidly bouncing from one task to another? Your Outlook pings constantly with email notifications, your iPhone is buzzing non-stop, your phone rings, or perhaps you’re simply lost in a state of mental fog. An unexpected benefit I gained from a consistent meditation practice is that intentionally carving out time to simply sit quietly everyday has allowed me to see the distracted and incredibly hectic qualities of my mind. As lawyers, our most important tool is our mind, yet rarely do we take the time to pause and notice the state of our own mind.

The question is this: In our increasingly busy and demanding world, how do we create the space to engage in deep work? Perhaps more importantly, what are the basic foundation blocks we need so that we can engage in more deep work?

I first learned the concept of “deep work” from the book of that title. The author of Deep Work, Cal Newport, defines it as:

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.

He distinguishes deep work from “shallow work,” defined as:

Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

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In looking at these two definitions, it’s obvious that as lawyers, our goal should be to maximize the time we spend on deep work and minimize shallow work. However, this is becoming increasingly difficult, for two reasons:

  1. Our current default is to jump from one seemingly important task to the next. It’s often difficult to evaluate whether something requires deep or shallow work. In other words, properly evaluate the nature of the work, and intentionally choose it or reject it. Or delegate appropriately when possible.
  1. Our mind is in a constant state of distraction, stress, or anxiety, which often makes it difficult to engage in deep work.

Some of the most important deep work I engage in on a regular basis is writing. When I was writing the manuscript for The Anxious Lawyer, I had to carve out large chunks of time (two to six hours) on a very regular basis. Of course, finding large blocks of time is always challenging, but the biggest challenge was actually getting my brain to cooperate. The brain enjoys less taxing (shallow work), and it can resist doing deep work.

This is where a meditation practice can be incredibly helpful. When you meditate day after day in silence, focusing your mind on the breath, your mind gets better at paying attention. This is helpful in at least three ways.

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  1. Increasing Awareness

When I say awareness, what I mean is using all of your senses to observe what is happening in the moment. When I was writing the manuscript, I would tell myself—I’m going to write from 8:00 a.m. until lunch. I would even block the time in my calendar. Then, while sipping my morning coffee, I’d casually grab the iPhone and check email. (By the way, I am completely aware that this is probably a very bad idea.) Naturally, there’s an email that completely captures my attention. Again, in that moment, I am aware that this is happening. I am also aware that I have a choice — I can either jump down the rabbit hole and explore the email further, or I can keep my commitment and write.

Notice that the more awareness you can have in each moment, the more room there is for consciously making a choice. This gives me the opportunity to always turn toward deep work, rather than acting from a place of a poorly formed habit.

  1. Increasing Focus

I define focus as the ability to direct the attention for a sustained period of time. When you meditate, you choose what is referred to as “the object of attention,” which is a point of focus during your meditation. The most common focal point is the breath.

The breath is an easy object to pay attention to because it’s constantly with you. It’s very accessible. While this practice sounds simple, the practice is not easy. As soon as you try to direct your mind to do nothing but pay attention to breathing — literally, paying attention to the sensation of air moving in and out of the body — the natural tendency for the mind is to wander off. You’ll start thinking of the past, the future, the price of milk, whether you remembered to pick up the dry cleaning, the first person who broke your heart, all the work you should be doing, and likely, you’ll think you suck at meditating. This experience is normal.

The practice of meditation isn’t about using brute force to chain your attention to the object. It’s about gently encouraging your mind to return to the object of attention — over and over again. With practice, your ability to pay attention and focus will increase.

The more you practice focused time, the more deep work you’ll be able to accomplish.

  1. Habit Forming

Additionally, when you practice daily meditation, you are developing another underutilized mental muscle — forming a new habit.

Think back to all of your broken New Year’s resolutions. My guess is that the majority of them required some type of sustained, regular practice (for example, changing your diet, exercise, quitting smoking, etc.). The ability to create a new habit through this simple practice of sitting quietly everyday has allowed me to build additional lasting habits.

Also, as I mentioned before, since you are more aware, you can notice habitual patterns — for example, the excuses for skipping yoga or eating a burger while sitting at your desk, again.

Engaging in deep work necessarily means you have to be able to endure some amount of monotony. Even though I genuinely enjoy writing, there were many days where I didn’t feel like writing. Similarly, there are days when I simply don’t feel like meditating either. However, I have practice at creating a new habit so building a regular writing habit felt familiar and doable. I’m able to endure and accept the many challenges and bumps along the way. The opposite is also true! I’m able to savor the good parts, both the small and big victories.

In the spirit of forming a new habit, please join me in for an eight-week challenge. Over the past couple of posts, I mentioned that my co-author Karen Gifford and I have partnered with the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) and Seyfarth Shaw LLC to offer an online eight-week mindfulness program. This program was just approved for three free CLE credits. This program is absolutely free to attend and is open to everyone. It starts tomorrow, Wednesday, September 7th.

Here’s the eight-week challenge. Spend just .1 hour everyday for the next eight weeks to start a regular meditation habit. That’s 336 minutes or 5.6 hours. Train your mind for increased clarity and calm, and increase its capacity for more deep work.

There’s also a research study that you can opt into, which is examining the impact of meditation on lawyers.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World [Amazon (affiliate link)]
The Anxious Lawyer [Amazon (affiliate link)]

Earlier: How Cal Newport’s ‘Deep Work’ Principles Can Fundamentally Improve Diversity In The Legal Profession
Make The Time To Be Remarkable

Jeena Cho is the author of The Anxious Lawyer: An 8-Week Guide to a Joyful and Satisfying Law Practice Through Mindfulness and Meditation (affiliate link). She is a contributor to Forbes and Bloomberg where she covers diversity/inclusion, resilience, work/life integration, and wellness in the workplace. She regularly speaks and offers training on women’s issues, diversity, wellness, stress management, mindfulness, and meditation. You can reach her athello@jeenacho.com or @jeena_cho on Twitter.

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