How To Manage Deepness In The World Of Shallow Work

How do you manage to do any deep work in a world dominated by social media and emails?

This is a hard question to answer. The reason why this question is extremely difficult is the roles employees play.

The average low worker i.e. someone who has no managerial responsibilities is likely to have all of their time focused on shallow work.

The definition of shallow work is:

*Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

This work has become more important to businesses over the last decade, due to the increase in competition.

Below are some statistics**

eBay has roughly 167 million active users and 25 million sellers. (eDesk)

Amazon has over 300 million customer accounts and around 2 million sellers. (eDesk)

169,782 new sellers have joined Amazon's marketplaces in 2020. (Marketplace Pulse)

In 2017, Amazon held 37% of the US eCommerce market. This is expected to grow to 47% in 2020 and 50% 2021. (Statista)

After selecting a product on an eCommerce website, 90% of shoppers visit Amazon to compare prices. (BigCommerce)

In January 2020, Amazon surpassed 150 million Prime subscribers. (Business Insider)

Prime Day will take place on 13th July 2020. Last year, Amazon sold over a million toys, 650,000 cleaning products, 400,000 pet products, 300,000 headphones, and 200,000 TVs during the event. (TechRadar)

46% of online retailers would consider merging fulfillment networks with other brands to compete with Amazon. (Yottaa)

There are now millions of online sellers. And with the likes of Amazon now dominating the market, more and more businesses are having to compete in the online space. With this comes the major issue of customer service.

With business models like Amazon's guaranteeing these quick turnaround times on their products, the demands on other businesses outside of the e-commerce space such as:

Coaching

Marketing Agencies

B2B Sales

All now have had to log in to the online space themselves, as this is now where the majority of money is spent. This has therefore led to an increase in hyperconnectivity, between clients and the businesses they are buying from.

Whereat one time you would have to get on the phone, which took time to do. Now a message can be sent in seconds, with social etiquette demanding an answer within an hour.

This then has led companies and businesses to have to hire employees to focus on shallow work. With the number of businesses that offer Facebook groups as part of their service, this has increased the expectancy of getting a reply. Leading to more shallow work needing to be done.

In a larger business, this is fine, as it only increases the need to hire shallow skilled workers, but it is the effect on the ***SME, ****Micro Enterprises the entrepreneur where these effects will be most felt.

It is in these businesses where this shallow work will have to be done by either:

The Owner

The Manager

Both

This then becomes an issue.

Shallow work as mentioned above are tasks that do not take a lot of brainpower. But make the person distracted. This distraction, then becomes a massive issue, in terms of having the ability to be creative.

Take me as an example, I am a micro business, it falls on me to do all the shallow work, the issue with this is it leaves me less time to focus on my deep work. The work that I need to do. The work that will allow me to expand.

The shallow work is of high importance in the first instance, as this is what leads to a positive cash flow.

However, it is the deep work that leads to an increase of knowledge, a coaching programme that works. An app that helps people, blogs that are informative and have relevant sources.

All this comes from a state of deeper work. This type of work quickly becomes impossible with the amount of shallow work that needs completing.

How do you combat the need for shallow work?

You have to carve out deep work time. In one of the blogs this week I will explain further this topic.

Carving out this time does not have to be difficult, and there are plenty of ways to do it. Just like with scheduling your weekly and daily planners, you will be able to craft time to work deeply.

Deep work is rare in a hyperconnected society. But it is also important work. We have to find the time.

But don't worry, all that will be explained in the future.

Comment down below how much time you spend on shallow work.

Until tomorrow this has been your coach Andrew.

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*NEWPORT, C. (2018). DEEP WORK (p. 6). GRAND CENTRAL PUB.

** 58 Mind-Blowing Ecommerce Statistics for 2021 | eDesk. The Ultimate eCommerce Blog for Online Sellers | eDesk. (2021). Retrieved 6 December 2021, from https://blog.edesk.com/resources/ecommerce-statistics/.

*** Small Medium Enterprise is a business with less than 250 employees & turnover under £50 million Definitions of Small and Medium Business in the UK. TheCompanyWarehouse.Co.Uk. (2021). Retrieved 6 December 2021, from https://www.thecompanywarehouse.co.uk/blog/what-is-an-sme.

**** less than 10 employees & turnover under £2 million Definitions of Small and Medium Business in the UK. TheCompanyWarehouse.Co.Uk. (2021). Retrieved 6 December 2021, from https://www.thecompanywarehouse.co.uk/blog/what-is-an-sme.