Of all the books I’ve had the chance to read, this is the one I’ve found most valuable for my professional life, and in a way, my personal life too.

Nowadays, each of us has the power to reach every corner of the planet with little or no difficulty, through the internet, the news, newspapers, social networks and so on. With this ability never seen before in human history, each of us is bombarded with information, much of which is of no value to us in our daily lives. With this comes high levels of distraction, and so it has become increasingly difficult to focus on the things that really matter to us and bring value to our lives, if we don’t have the knowledge of what really matters to us and what distractions are preventing us from achieving or delaying what we want.

Cal Newport, in his book Deep Work, focuses on this theme, illustrating the different ways in which our day-to-day productivity is being restricted by paths that we have unconsciously decided to pursue, and which are limiting us. It touches on both the work environment and our personal lives. The two, in this respect, are connected.

To exemplify in practical terms the theory he is conveying, he uses several real cases of people who have taken maximum concentration literally, and in some cases even to the extreme, and the results they have obtained. For me, it was a demonstration of what a person can achieve if they dedicate themselves totally to what they are doing.

In a way, this book has broadened my horizon and changed certain habits of mine. A practical example of this is if I’m working on a project, whatever it may be, for example an article I’m writing at the moment. The first thing I do is organise my schedule in a certain way so that on that day, week or month I can enter slots, for example of 1 hour, in my schedule. In that slot, I make sure I’m free from any possible distraction, from family members in the vicinity to switching off my mobile phone.

Before I learnt about Cal Newport and his book Deep Work, a task of the nature I described in the previous paragraph could take me two months, and now it takes me a week or so. This is the power of the term he describes as maximum concentration.

I strongly recommend reading this book.