My friend Cal Newport’s new book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World comes out on January 5, 2016, and I highly recommend it.

As Cal defines it, “Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.” Deep work is a superpower in the modern economy, Cal argues, as fewer and fewer people possess the ability of going deep. Instead they get lost in a blur of social media and email and other infosnack addictions.

I’m sold on the diagnosis. Deep work — producing the sort of valuable accomplishments that only happen with hard focus over a long period of time — is critical in many industries. It’s an increasingly rare skill, which makes it all the more valuable in those environments that demand it.

Cal’s solution — the “what do you do about this?” section in the book — is bold. Plan your days diligently week-by-week. Go cold turkey on social media. Embrace boredom and train your mind to not require constant stimulation. Among other ideas.

Cal’s strategy benefits from at least two work patterns, which are not universal to all professionals. First, you know what you want to do and what your priorities are. Clarity around a personal mission drives structured work processes. Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky. Second, you have a relatively structured, not-especially-externally-facing job in which pre-planning is possible, social media absence not detrimental (i.e. you don’t have a boss that insists upon it in order to talk to customers), and so on.

In my long review of The Age of the Infovore, I describe the advantages of a life filled with diverse, “distracting” information inputs, and push back a bit against claims that all distractions are bad distractions. To this end, I won’t be abandoning social media anytime soon.

That said, as social media has expanded deeper and deeper into our lives, I’ve become more and more concerned about my own ability to focus and do deep sea thinking for long periods of time. (How many times have I opened new browser tabs and gotten distracted while even writing this blog post? I’m too embarrassed to say.) What’s more, when I reflect on my accomplishments, I find myself deriving more satisfaction and pride from the things that took a long time to complete and are demonstrably “harder” than average to execute. Publishing books, for example, or building out teams inside organizations. So I find myself more and more drawn to Cal’s thinking. And, even if you don’t accept his prescription wholesale, there are various practical nuggets that anyone can and probably should adopt to be a more effective professional.

Over the years, Cal and I have talked about the thesis for Deep Work many times on walks, over drinks, and on phone calls. To see his thinking evolve and sharpen into this book — the latest in a series of winners — has been a real pleasure. I hope my 2016 involves more deep work.

I’ve been flipping through a bunch of books that people have sent me. A few recent ones on my Kindle that I read in full:

1. How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything by Dov Seidman

Dov is founder and CEO of LRN, a leading corporate learning firm that specializes in ethics and compliance. His book How encapsulates his philosophy of business (and life) very well. It’s a deep examination of what corporate “values” are and why they matter. A few paragraphs I enjoyed (taken out of order):

Roughly two centuries ago, the Scottish philosopher David Hume observed that the moral imagination diminishes with distance. It follows that the moral imagination should increase as the world becomes smaller with the globalization of information and capital. And so it has. We are no longer distant, and therefore we need to reawaken our moral imaginations.

Engagement scores among U.S. and many global workers have tumbled in recent years. I think that’s because we’ve been spending too much time engaging workers with carrots and sticks, and not nearly enough time inspiring them with values and missions worthy of their commitment.

I call it the paradox of success—that you can’t achieve success by pursuing it directly. Inspirational leaders understand that real, sustainable value can be achieved only when you pursue something greater than yourself that makes a difference in the lives of others.

It reminded me of the old story about two guys doing masonry work on a building. The first one, when asked what he was doing, says, “Laying bricks.” The second replies, “Building a cathedral.” Some people see themselves as bricklayers. Angel builds cathedrals. He doesn’t define himself narrowly, as simply a package delivery person

A Swiss person might tend to distrust a South Korean because, in the Swiss person’s view, Koreans don’t respect authority, and that Korean might in turn disrespect the Swiss believing that they do not sufficiently value friendship and loyalty

Metaphorically, leaders don’t show up and tell you perfect time; as James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras told us so brilliantly in Built to Last, leaders build clocks that keep telling the time whether they are there or not.

2. The Power to Compete by Hiroshi Mikitani and Ryoichi Mikitani

In Tokyo a couple years ago, for the release of The Start-up of You in Japanese, Reid and Mikitani, the founder/CEO of Rakuten, did a fireside chat. I was impressed by Miki’s comments that evening and by his accomplishments more generally, obviously. Rakuten is an internet giant by any standard. But more striking than Rakuten is his total commitment to revitalizing Japanese entrepreneurial culture at large. This short book is a conversation between he and his economist father about what Japan needs to do to win in the 21st century. A surprisingly enlightening book and recommended for Japanophiles.

3. Why Information Grows by Cesar Hidalgo

I couldn’t wrap my head around the overall thesis here but the first half of the book contained some quotable nuggets about innovation, information, and globalization. A few quotes:

There are two pieces of bread. You ate two. I ate none. Average consumption: one bread per capita. —NICANOR PARRA

Today our world is still linguistically fragmented, but that fragmentation is both declining and structured. Twelve thousand years ago, humans spoke an estimated twelve thousand languages. An estimated six thousand languages are spoken worldwide today, but most of the world’s population communicates in a few global languages. And in many important online and offline forums, including Twitter, Wikipedia, and book translations, English has emerged as the “hub” language bridging communication between most other languages.20 As a Chilean married to a Russian, working with students from the United States, Israel, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Chile, Argentina, Germany, and India, I am a living example of the benefits that the existence of a global hub language

Knowledge and knowhow are so “heavy” that when it comes to a simple product such as a cellphone battery, it is infinitely easier to bring the lithium atoms that lie dormant in the Atacama Desert to Korea than to bring the knowledge of lithium batteries that resides in Korean scientists to the bodies of the miners who populate the Atacaman cities of Antofagasta and Calama. Our world is marked by great international differences in countries’ ability to crystallize imagination. These differences emerge because countries differ in the knowledge and knowhow that are embodied in their populations, and because accumulating knowledge and knowhow in people is difficult.

It was in this Q&A that a student asked, “Pep, if we built a team of robots, would you come and coach it?” His reply was short and cunning. He said, and I paraphrase: “The main challenge of coaching a team is not figuring out a game plan, but getting that game plan into the heads of the players. Since in the case of robots I do not see that as a challenge, I kindly decline your offer.” Pep’s answer summarized succinctly one of the main challenges of working with teams of humans. His years of coaching experience had taught him that one of the most difficult aspects of his work was not just figuring out a game plan but distributing the plan among his players.