Hi, I’m Phil Dodson, founder of the Deep Work Project and this project is inspired by the culmination of a lifetime of learning and application of different work practices, the learning from running a coworking space over 5 years and running a series of currently ongoing meetups exploring deep work principles coupled with the influences and further inspirations of the works of Cal Newport’s excellent book ‘Deep Work’, Brian Tracy’s ‘Eat that frog’, Darren Hardy’s ‘The Compound Effect’, the continually brilliant work of Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, James Altucher, Brian Clarke, Amy Hoy, Brene Brown, Stephen R Covey, Neil Fiore and many others who think and work differently. In addition, my friend and coach Debbie Huxton.
The purpose of the project is to enable and focus on a person’s ability to be able to create the best possible work that they can and to learn and apply the skills to further this process in an ongoing journey of self-development and better work, which will lead to happiness, personal meaning and fulfilment of goals and dreams. This is the antithesis of the current digital shallow activity based working environments that the vast majority of today’s workforce finds itself. The shallow repetitive nature of most work has lead to a loss of self-wroth, the ability to carry out deep and focused work and a detrimental personal mental and sometimes physical well-being. Many find they are in a constant state of overwhelm and a feeling of inadequacy as they are unable to complete more complex and demanding work.
We are facing the ongoing challenge of our future purpose as many job functions and people doing them will be replaced by AI and only those who can create specialised deep and meaningful work will be essential as they can not be replaced by AI. Those doing shallow easily replicable work will find that they are not only redundant but often incapable of immediately being able to produce deep meaningful work.
In addition, to boldly create an alternative educational process for people to be better equipped for the world we live in and to be better equipped to deal with an ever changing and more challenging working environment. We need to focus on communication, the art of listening, so that we can first understand others before we try to be understood ourselves as Stephen R Covey brilliantly describes it.
Finally to facilitate further research and development of the concept of Deep Work and to continually strive to be in permanent beta and to develop in collaboration a fluid practice of creating our best work to make a difference for the human race.
Deep Work is the art of continually improving what we are capable of doing to ensure we move forward by looking at what is new and has not yet been achieved, rather than the more conventional approach of only looking back at what has been done before for the pattern of the future.
All of our futures are now and shaped by what we do now. The moment of greatness for all of us is defined by what we do now, not the awards or rewards we achieve later. Now is the time to truly work differently. Life is a continuous series of ‘now’ moments that combine to shape what we are constantly evolving into, good or bad.