Success, Deep Work & Blue Light

What is success? 

I am not sure I know anyone who does not want to be successful. There are people who possess greater drive, but that does not mean that the others do not wish to prosper. Everyone defines success differently. It can vary from aspiring to become the CEO of a company to simply wanting to get far enough to lead a content lifestyle. The dictionary definition of “success” is the “accomplishment of an aim or purpose.” At this point in my life success looks like making a career transition from Graphic Design to User Experience (UX). Once I reach this goal, my idea of success will morph, and the cycle will continue.

What are highly skilled workers? 

According to Cal Newport in his novel Deep Work, a highly skilled worker is one who has the ability to produce results out of increasingly complex machines. From the first few pages of Deep Work, we gather that we are now a part of the Intelligent Machine Age. This is an age where so many jobs are being replaced by automation and soon enough only those who are highly skilled will remain relevant and successful in this economy.

“Our technologies are racing ahead but many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind…this lag predicts bad news.”

– Race Against the Machine

Using myself as an example once more, I have been able to see the shift in my job market. As we move further into the digital realm I notice more and more graphic design jobs are web and application based. While the days of print are not over, the job pool is lessening. To avoid the demise or stagnancy of my career I must become highly skilled in an arena that a computer cannot. This arena is User Experience, which focuses on emotion, psychology and the human interaction with products.

“Graphic design is on a collision course with experience design. Print is already close to dead as a medium of expression, but design has never been more important. In the future, all designers will need to think about context of how their work is experienced by users. It’s the third dimension.”

– Adam Kleinberg, CEO & Co-founder of Traction 

What is deep work and how are people kept from experiencing it? 

So, we know that in order to gain success we must become highly skilled workers, but now we will dive into how we become just that. The answer is simple, it is a necessity to partake in deep work. Deep Work is something that requires intense concentration and deliberate practice. We must take time to focus on the specific skill we are looking to master and do so in an environment that offers no interruption. As K. Anders Ericcson, a professor from Florida State University, declared, “Diffused attention is almost antithetical to the focused attention required by deliberate practice.”

What makes deep work so hard for many to attain is finding a distraction-free environment. We live in a world where we are unquestionably addicted to our phones and devices. The very devices that fuel our job markets are what keep us from furthering our success.

A recent study of nearly 800 people demonstrated how negatively our devices can impact the way we concentrate. Participants were divided into three groups before performing tasks. One group had their phones face down on their desks, another had them in their purses, backpacks, or pockets, and the last group had their phones in a completely separate room. As I am sure you are able to predict, the further away the phones were from the participants the better they performed.

After reading this study I did an experiment of my own. Before I sat down to do my nightly homework, I ran upstairs, tossed my phone on my bed, came back down and opened my book. Time passed and after getting through a good chunk of my readings I realized I had not stopped, even once. For the first time in a long time, I was allowing myself to enter a state of deep work.

Next steps

In order to manifest our own success, we must go back to the days where we did not live in a world filled with distraction. Many of us have become passive readers who only scan headlines off of our favorite apps. It is time to switch gears and put our phones down. In the article, I Have Forgotten How to Read I read a quote that rings true for so many people. “I’ve been trained not to just expect disruption but demand it.” We are currently held at the mercy of our phones, but for me, this is something I want to end, and I will begin practicing during times of study. I want to become a successful UX Designer and the process begins with deep work.