The SGI Reading List :: Are We Mistaking Busy for Valuable?

A Review of Deep Work by Cal Newport

Reviewed by Christine Shimoda

Lawyers work in an environment where value is unusually easy to measure.

We record our time. We have billable targets. We know where we stand against them. Hours are visible, comparable and, often, connected to compensation and advancement.

That measurement matters. Law firms are businesses, and billable work drives revenue. But it can also reinforce a very particular definition of value: the work that counts is the work we can count.

And yet, think about why a client chooses a particular lawyer, comes back with the next important matter, recommends them to someone else or trusts them with an increasingly complex problem.

It’s probably not because that lawyer billed a lot of hours last year.

It’s their judgment. Their expertise. Their understanding of the client and its business. Their ability to see something others don’t. Their relationships, reputation and point of view.

Those things are harder to measure. They also take time to build.

That tension between the value we can demonstrate today and the value we need to build for tomorrow is what I kept coming back to as I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work.

Why I Recommend It

Newport defines deep work as the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding work. His argument is that this capacity is becoming both increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.

That idea feels particularly relevant to lawyers because so much of what ultimately differentiates one lawyer from another depends on the quality of their thinking.

Deep Work isn’t really a book about getting more done. At least, that isn’t what I took from it. For me, it’s a book about being more deliberate about where we put our attention and recognizing that our most valuable work may require a very different kind of time than our working lives naturally give us.

Our Know :: Be :: Do :: Take

For The SGI Reading List series, we use SGI’s proprietary Know :: Be :: Do :: Method to explore the ideas that stood out, what they ask us to think differently about, and how we can put them into practice.

KNOW :: Some Value Takes Time to Build

Think about the work that contributes to a successful legal practice over time.

Developing expertise in an emerging area. Understanding a client’s business deeply enough to anticipate what they’ll need next. Working through a difficult legal or strategic problem. Developing a distinctive point of view. Writing and speaking. Building meaningful relationships. Mentoring someone thoughtfully. Thinking deliberately about where you want your practice to go.

Some of that work is billable. Much of it isn’t.

But it’s often the work that develops the expertise, judgment, relationships and reputation that make clients want to work with you, and keep working with you.

It’s also work that rarely happens well in fragments.

That was an important connection for me in Newport’s argument. Deep work isn’t valuable simply because concentration is good. It’s valuable because many of the things that create differentiation and compound over the course of a legal career require sustained thought and attention.

The question becomes less about how much you’re getting done and more about whether you’re spending enough time on the work that will matter later.

BE :: Get Comfortable With a Different Kind of Productivity

This is probably the part I find hardest.

As an introvert, I naturally prefer to go deep rather than wide. I know I do some of my best thinking when I have time to concentrate. But I’m also conscious of the pressure, both external and self-imposed, to demonstrate that I’m doing enough.

There’s something reassuring about work that produces immediate evidence of progress. Deep work doesn’t always give you that.

You can spend two hours thinking about a problem and have little to show for it yet. You can invest time developing an idea that won’t create an opportunity for months. You can spend time getting to know a client’s business without knowing precisely where that investment will lead.

That requires a certain amount of confidence in the value of what you’re building.

For me, that may be the more interesting challenge in Deep Work. Protecting time isn’t just a calendar exercise. It requires being willing to invest in work whose value may reveal itself over a much longer horizon.

DO :: Make Room for Both

Billable work matters. So does the work that builds the lawyer and practice you want to have five or ten years from now.

The practical challenge is making room for both.

That might mean protecting an hour to think strategically about an important client relationship. Blocking time to develop an article or presentation that helps you sharpen and share your thinking. Creating uninterrupted space to learn about an emerging issue in your area of practice. Or simply stepping back periodically to ask where your practice is going and whether the way you’re spending your time is likely to get you there.

Newport’s point is that this kind of focus rarely happens by accident. If the work matters, you need to make space for it deliberately.

The practical question I’m taking away from the book is:

What am I building for the longer term, and am I giving it enough of my best attention?

Who Should Read It?

I’d recommend Deep Work to lawyers at almost any stage of practice, but particularly to anyone who feels that the demands of today are consistently crowding out the things they know will matter tomorrow.

I’d also recommend it to law firm leaders, because there’s an organizational question here too.

If firms say they want lawyers who develop deep expertise, build strong client relationships, grow successful practices, mentor others, think strategically and innovate, they need to consider whether the way they define, measure and reward contribution leaves enough room for lawyers to actually do those things.

Billable hours tell us something important about the value a lawyer is delivering today.

They don’t tell us everything about the value that lawyer is building for tomorrow.

The relationships you deepen, the expertise you develop, the ideas you create, the people you invest in and the reputation you build are harder to measure. But over the course of a career, they’re often what determines who calls you, who trusts you, who refers you and what kind of practice you ultimately build.

Deep Work is a useful reminder to make room for that work too.

Want to read or listen to the book? Access it here.