Layla Parast, Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, has come up with a new way of working (or deep-working) with her PhD students. She writes:

Have you ever had one of those days where you’ve worked all day, responding to emails, sending emails, attending meetings, leading meetings, reviewing documents — you’ve crossed off an incredible number of tasks from your to-do list, whittled down your email inbox, but yet you look back on your day and think, did I really DO anything? Of course you did. You did a lot. But sometimes it’s hard to shake the feeling that you didn’t really do anything truly meaningful. I have found that if I allow it, every day will end up like this for me. Certainly progress is made on various tasks and projects, but I feel incredibly unfulfilled. Is this how I want to spend my days?

I have discovered that I must aggressively protect my time to give myself space for deep work. It is within this protected time that I find time for work that fills my soul. This is where I have the space to focus and be curious. This is not a new realization, I have been doing this for years, including in graduate school. This concept was perfectly captured in Cal Newport’s 2016 book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, which I highly recommend. Paraphrasing from his book, human beings are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging. He defines deep work as the “ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task” and argues that it provides a sense of true fulfillment that comes from mastery. The ability to actually do deep work is becoming increasingly valuable in today’s economy, in this world where everything is vying for your attention. This ability is also becoming increasingly rare: he argues that those who cultivate this skill and make it the core of their working life will thrive.

Newport describes the phenomenon I described above as “busyness as a proxy for productivity.” That is, when we don’t have clear indicators of what it means to do valuable work in our jobs, many of us revert to a more industrial indicator of productivity i.e., doing lots of stuff in a visible manner. Newport offers concrete suggestions to overcome this busyness trap. For example, as a result of this book, I track my deep work hours. I don’t mean this in a hand-wavy way: I mean that I literally write down the minute I start and the minute I end, and I have a spreadsheet where I collect it all. I only “count” time that I spend giving my full concentration on a single task (almost always related to a statistical methods paper or idea or learning something new) free from distraction. Emailing, “check-in” meetings, scheduling: none of that counts in this time. Because of this I can tell you that in 2023, I spent 356 hours on deep work, while in 2022 I spent 203 hours on deep work (and in 2020, it was only 86 hours, for obvious reasons). Is that a lot, or a little? I have no idea. But it is about all my brain and calendar can handle.

As I said, this is not new to me. What has been new for me recently is my struggle figuring out how to “teach” this to students. I worked outside of academia for a decade and now, in academia, have my first two PhD students. Mentoring PhD students is my favorite part of my job so far. That being said, it’s hard! I understand how to teach, hone, and develop technical skills: theory, methods, coding, data applications, writing, presenting, etc. But “teaching” someone how to both make space for focus, and actually focus, is harder. Focus is a skill that we can improve with effort. By practicing intense purposeful focus, we make room for meaningful work and curiosity.

A year ago, I decided that I would just try showing my students by example. Instead of weekly meetings in my office, we switched to a weekly four-hour deep work session at a coffee shop: one session for each of my two students per week. Yes, this was an incredible commitment. My colleagues and friends gasped at the idea. Don’t you have other things to do? Yes, I did. But I thought it was worth a try for a temporary period of time. And of course, this strategy will not scale as I mentor an increasing number of students. Nonetheless, it has truly been a rewarding decision. Both of my students decided to attend both of the weekly deep work sessions, rather than just “their” session. They get more done in one day than they might have accomplished in a few weeks. (As an added bonus, we’ve had a fun time discovering new coffee shops all over Austin, and have learned to avoid ones that are popular for daytime first dates because it’s impossible to avoid eavesdropping on those conversations.) I model focus for them: I close my email, put away my phone, read relevant papers, take notes, stare off into space while thinking, and write in my notebook. I work only on one particular task/idea related to their thesis work for the entire four-hour period, and we discuss as needed throughout the session. Let me tell you, it’s hard. My brain hurts. Sometimes I just don’t feel like doing it. But it has led to improvement in my own ability to focus, and has certainly improved my students’ as well (and it also motivated me to purchase high quality noise-canceling headphones).

As we gear up for a new academic year, I can truly say that I look forward to continuing these sessions. Every once in a while, I offer my PhD students the opportunity to go back to the previous model of weekly one-hour meetings rather than four-hour work sessions. But they always turn me down. In fact, it seems that many (maybe not all) PhD students would love to have their advisor’s focused attention for four hours a week. Come to think of it, when was the last time you had anyone’s focused attention for four hours?