Computer science professor and author Cal Newport has centered his body of work around helping people navigate digital distractions to focus on deep pursuits. He proposed the concept of deep work to refer to the voluntary effort toward completing cognitively demanding tasks with undivided focus—that’s the sole premise of the book.

The traditional concept of success is weaved into ideas about hard work and perseverance. But Newport believes that our professional efforts tend to be watered down in the modern world, mainly due to setbacks like:

Social media and content-related distractions

Time-consuming email and admin work that steal our time

Constant switching between tasks that require different cognitive setups

So, how do we determine success—by the number of hours we worked or the value we added to our business? That’s where we start thinking about the deep and shallow work we do.