Introduction

For twenty years, Alcatraz sat in my peripheral vision like an unfinished thought—a gray smudge on the horizon that I'd glimpse from Crissy Field or the Embarcadero, always promising secrets I'd never bothered to unlock. Then I learned that the federal government will reclaim America's most famous prison from the tourists and return it to its original purpose. Suddenly, my childhood curiosity demanded satisfaction.

What I found on that sun-drenched, wind-whipped morning wasn't just a museum of American incarceration, but a masterclass in the economics of attention. Standing in those cramped cells, peering through iron bars at the endless expanse of San Francisco Bay, I finally understood something the prison librarians had known all along: when you strip away every distraction, the mind becomes ravenous for substance. The sign I photographed tells the story—these men "read more serious literature than does the ordinary person in the community." Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel. Not because they were more intelligent than the average citizen, but because they had something most of us have forgotten how to access: uninterrupted time.

The irony hit me as I walked the island's perimeter, tourists chattering around me while sailboats drifted silently across the bay. Here was the ultimate remote work setup—no Slack notifications, no email, no social media dopamine hits. Just books, thoughts, and time. It's the same reason Bill Gates disappears for "Think Weeks," why Paul Graham writes about the power of long, unbroken focus, why every serious writer dreams of that cabin in the woods. Sometimes the greatest luxury isn't freedom of movement, but freedom from distraction.

An overview of Deep Work

Many of us are familiar with the idea of working without distractions and being in the flow of a task, as Deep Work. And there’s a book written entirely on it called Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. The front flap of the book says:

In his book, Newport starts a paragraph within the introduction chapter by saying, “[t]here are many ways to discover that you’re not valuable in our economy. For Jason Benn, the lesson was made clear when he realized…that the vast majority of his work responsibilities could be automated by a ‘kludged together’ Excel script.”

Then throughout the chapter, Newport discusses how mastering the art of Deep Work has helped a knowledge worker go from being a financial consultant to being a top student at a coding BootCamp and later getting a high paying job at a tech startup. All because he learned to work deeply.

Living in a world that’s fast changing, we must master the art of quickly learning new and complicated things, something that requires deep work. Plus, you’ll need to be able to produce the best things, and that requires depth. Hence why there’s a bigger need to learn to work deeply.

With the ability to do deep work becoming scarce and the value that comes with being able to work deeply increasing in value, the ROI for mastering this skill is immense. The lessons Newport brings in his book are more relevant as the gap between machine and human abilities shrink, like we see with Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, etc.

Three groups of people destined for success

Within Newport’s book, Newport identifies three groups of people that will succeed in the Intelligent Machine Age:

1. High-skilled workers

2. Superstars

3. Owners

High-Skilled Workers

Those are the people who are great at working with intelligent machines. Since the intelligent machines will be automating many low-skilled positions, the only jobs left will be the high-skilled positions.

Superstars

With communication technology like email and Slack destroying regionalism, companies will be more keen to hire the best workers, wherever they are globally. Think about it like the music industry, where the best singers get the bulk of the earnings and everyone else gets less, except expand it to all professions.

Owners

Basically those with capital to invest in new technologies that are driving the new age of innovation. Those who own the intelligent machines will reap more of the rewards from the productivity boom than the workers. We see startups with few employees get sold for millions and billions of dollars, and the VCs are one of the big winners of those deals because they owned stakes in that startup.

To secure success in the new age

To secure success in this new age, by being able to (1) quickly master hard things and (2) to produce at an elite level in terms of both quality and speed, you need to master deep work. Without it, one will struggle to do both.

5 Steps to Develop the Habit of Deep Work

There are 5 steps in developing a deep work habit:

1) Choose your Deep Work Philosophy

Select a method (Monastic, Bimodal, Rhythmic, or Journalistic) that best suits your life and work style for integrating deep work sessions.

The Monastic method is the most intense approach. It involves maximizing deep work by drastically minimizing or even eliminating shallow obligations and external distractions.

The Bimodal method involves dividing your time into clearly defined stretches. You dedicate significant, long blocks of time solely to deep pursuits, while the remaining time is open for shallow work and other activities.

The Rhythmic method focuses on making deep work a regular, consistent habit, creating a rhythm. It's often considered the easiest way to start incorporating deep work.

The Journalistic method involves fitting deep work into your schedule whenever you can find an open block of time, much like a journalist might write an article whenever they have a spare moment.

2) Make Deep Work a Habit

Develop routines and rituals to make deep work a regular and consistent part of your schedule, minimizing the willpower needed to start.

3) Execute like a Business

Treat your deep work sessions with seriousness and structure, setting clear goals, rules, and metrics for productivity.

4) Remove Distractions

Actively work to minimize or eliminate interruptions and temptations (like email, social media, or unnecessary meetings) during your deep work blocks.

5) Use Downtime to Enhance Deep Work Efforts

Recognize the importance of rest and unstructured time for cognitive recovery and insight, which ultimately supports your ability to perform deep work effectively.

I won’t go deep into steps 2, 3, 4, and 5 as I don’t want to spoil the rest of the book and encourage you to read Newport’s book.

Learn like an Athlete

In light of this topic, I wanted to share an essay that David Perell made on this subject called Learn like an Athlete. Athletes, Musicians, Performers, they all train but somehow Knowledge Workers don’t. And Knowledge Workers are at the most risk of falling behind this rapidly changing world unless they master the art of deep work.

As Perell said it best, “Even the longest projects are simply a collection of short term tasks. Knowing that, you should break down the project into daily increments, and create a series of daily and weekly goals to learn the skills required to complete the project on time.”

When embarking on this big project of mastering deep work, we will be conducting many small tasks to help train our minds for deep work. Using the five steps of building a deep work habit, we will be able to become superstars in our fields.

Personal Note & Conclusion

The beauty of Newport's framework is that you don't need to literally imprison yourself to access this power. You just need to be more intentional about creating your own constraints. Whether you choose the monastic approach and disappear for days, or the rhythmic method of daily deep work blocks, the key is understanding that distraction isn't just an inconvenience—it's the enemy of excellence.

The prisoners of Alcatraz didn't choose their isolation, but they chose how to use it. We have the opposite situation: we can choose our isolation, but we rarely do. We mistake busy work for important work, confusing motion with progress. The inmates reading Schopenhauer in their cells understood something we've forgotten: that the highest form of productivity isn't doing more things, but doing fewer things extraordinarily well.

As AI continues to automate routine tasks, the ability to think deeply becomes our most valuable differentiator. Machines can process information faster than us, but they can't yet replicate the kind of sustained, creative thinking that emerges from hours of uninterrupted focus. The gap between those who can do deep work and those who can't will only widen.

The choice is ours: we can continue living in the shallows, constantly reactive and perpetually behind, or we can build our own Alcatraz—a place where our minds can finally do what they were designed to do. The bars we need aren't made of iron; they're made of intention, discipline, and the courage to say no to everything that doesn't matter.

Your future self—the one who masters complex skills, produces meaningful work, and thrives in an AI-dominated economy—is waiting on the other side of that choice. The question isn't whether you have time for deep work. The question is whether you can afford not to make time for it.

The island is calling. Will you answer?