On a recent drive to work, I listened to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts called “Hidden Brain,” which talked about how hard it is to avoid distraction in today’s world of brimming technology. One segment of this episode touched on studies showing how certain technicians or craftsmen who work with very focused tasks can more easily escape from this common problem and, instead, enter into deep work, otherwise known as flow state.1
The podcast host, Shankar Vedantam, stated, “A constant thrum of notifications, tweets, and messages. We often can’t resist these demands, but each time we give in to them by responding to an email or a text or Googling a question that’s just popped into our head, we pay a small price. In the moment, this price seems imperceptible. But over time, it adds up. Most of us haven’t come to terms with the cost of the constant distractions that pervade our lives.”1
Researchers are discovering that individuals who are able to access this kind of experience are much more likely to, as a result, access higher levels of happiness and satisfaction.2
In today’s world, the prevalence of multitasking in a job is immense, as a large majority of careers involve many tasks, such as customer service, project management, or administrative roles. By contrast, while dental hygiene can pose many challenges, the need to multitask is not often one of them.
Dental hygiene is known for being quite focused, specifically with a one-on-one interaction with one patient for one appointment. A hygienist is not able to check their email, look at their phone, or be interrupted by the typical technological disrupters during this time with their patient. As they provide hygiene treatment, their vision, posture, and often even thoughts are all zeroed in on one particular thing.
So what exactly is “deep work,” and how does it benefit individuals?
What is deep work?
Deep work is defined as “The ability to concentrate deeply on a difficult task for prolonged periods of time without getting distracted.”3 Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University, deliberately attempted to distance himself from the distractions of modern technology, and ended up writing his book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.2
In this book, he explains how several highly influential thinkers, like Carl Jung, Mark Twain, and J.K. Rowling, to name a few, all typically have particular habits that bring fairly striking results in terms of getting quality work done. They would often go somewhere considered physically isolated and different from their normal routine, without distraction, to think deeply.2
This concept is almost non-existent in most work positions in today’s world. Even if someone is technically working on one thing, they often check their phone or email inbox every five or 10 minutes or are interrupted by a coworker.
How is deep work beneficial?
In order to explain how deep work is beneficial, it’s easier to explain how the opposite, constant distractions, causes harm. A professor, Dr. Sophie Leroy, conducted a study on “attention residue” where subjects were given something cognitively demanding to do that could be measured, such as a hard puzzle. At some point, the subjects were distracted briefly, and the results showed that when they returned to the original task, their performance clearly dropped for a substantial amount of time.4 This is essentially what happens to all individuals when they take a second to check their phone or their email.
A large portion of workers are using their brains to process information and produce new information or, essentially, produce value. Therefore, the human brain is a part of our economy that needs to be protected to have professional success.1
In this podcast, Newport explains a medical field scenario where deep work comes into play. He mentions a case study involving two different groups of doctors at the same residency and specialty. One group had a culture of email – in other words, they were expected to be available by email constantly – and the other group kept those kinds of conversations strictly to specific, set meetings.1
The study showed that the hospital had a harder time keeping the doctors from the first group employed and generally showed higher levels of unhappiness in their work. Meanwhile, the second group stayed in their positions for much longer and had higher levels of happiness. This study hints toward the idea that deep work produces a kind of intrinsic reward that is not able to be achieved when distractions are consistently present.1
Dental Hygienists and Deep Work
In his book, Cal explains that people who spend a larger portion of their job concentrating intensely on a single high-skill or high-craft target tend to enjoy their work a lot more.1 Does this sound like a familiar idea?
Dental hygienists essentially do that exact thing every hour of their workday! While hygiene can present certain difficulties, such as physical fatigue and exhaustion with repetition, it provides this unique deep work factor that is very difficult to access in most modern-day careers.
In Closing
The next time you are at work, think about how you feel while providing treatment as opposed to how you feel while you’re at home, checking your emails and texts while trying to cook dinner and do the laundry.
Is there a difference in the level of happiness or anxiety present? If so, this is something to be aware of and thankful for in your daily life as a hygienist because it is simply a rarity in our world. Dental hygienists have the unique opportunity to benefit from deep work and all of the intrinsic aspects it can provide, which can also benefit patients and coworkers around them.
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References
- Vedantam, S. (Host). (2016, August 29). You 2.0: Deep Work (No. 40) [Audio podcast episode]. In Hidden Brain. NPR. https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/you-2-0-deep-work/
- Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Grand Central Publishing.
- Timely Team. (2024, February 12). Deep Work: A Complete Guide. Timely. https://timelyapp.com/blog/what-is-deep-work
- Leroy, S. Why Is it so Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 2009; 109(2): 168-181. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597809000399
