One of the best books that I read last year was Cal Newport’s "Deep Work Rules,"Â which I also highly recommend. Newport points out that the ability to do deep work is one of the most valuable skills in our economy and it is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results. I may write another article on the subject itself, but today I’d like to share a concept mentioned in the book that has already had a meaningful impact on my research process.
The concept is called the law of productivity, which can be expressed as the following formula:
High-Quality-Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)
The idea is that by maximizing the intensity level, one can maximize the high quality work production per unit of time spent working. Sounds simple and intuitive, right? But why this is the case? Newport cites an explanation given by Sophie Leroy. In a 2009 paper, Leroy introduced an effect called attention residue. According to the research, “When you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow – a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task. This residue gets especially thick if your work on Task was unbounded and of low intensity before you switched, but even if you finish Task A before moving on, your attention remains divided for a while.”
This finding is more profound than it sounds because it implies that even a short period of a minor distraction can affect our work quality. As Newport points out, “It may seem harmless to take a quick glance at your inbox every 10 minutes or so… but that quick check introduces a new target for your attention. Even worse, by seeing messages that you cannot deal with at the moment, you’ll be forced to turn back to the primary task with a secondary task left unfinished. The attention residue left by such unresolved switches dampens your performance. ”
I’ve been thinking about how to put the law of productivity into practice and came up with the following idea: to quantify the high quality work produced.
It’s not perfect, but it has been good enough for me. And it’s very simple. When I research or read I’ll track two things – time spent and intensity of focus. Time spent is easily quantifiable but intensity of focus is not. In a non-precise matter, I came up with a 10 point scale – 10 being the highest intensive and one being the lowest. Ten means absolutely no switching of task or disruption during the deep work period (for me, it’s usually two to three hours broken down into 45- to 60-minute intervals). For every minor disruption (such as checking the phone) I lose one point and for every major disruption (such as browsing the internet), I lose three points.
If we put the formula to work, we can easily tell why deep work is so important. One hour of highest intensity work produces similar results as 10 hours of lowest intensity of work (again, in reality it’s not this precise but you get my point).
It doesn’t take much to get to the lowest intensity. Think about it. During an hour of time, if you receive three notifications from your smartphone -- be it text message or email alert -- and you browsed the internet twice, you are already producing the lowest intensity work. If you work eight hours a day, you basically only get eight units of high quality work – worse than if you work on the highest intensity level for only 1 hour (10 units of high quality work).
This explains why so many of us feel so busy and overwhelmed but frustratingly unproductive. And this may also explain why Buffett and Munger don’t use smartphones and emails.
What’s the best way to maximize the productivity? According to Adam Grant, maximum productivity can be achieved by the batching of hard but important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches. When we research companies and industries, we might want to follow Grant’s method.
Conclusion
The ability to do deep work is a rare skill, even among us value investors. Thus it’s imperative for us to add the law of productivity to our mental models. It takes practice to notice distractions, especially the minor ones such as text message and incoming email alerts. By incorporating the law of productivity, we’ll optimize our investment research process and become better investors.
