Ideas
Yara Amin
The case for doing one thing properly instead of ten things adequately.
Depth is not inefficiency. It is the only way anything gets made that is worth making.
The productivity trap
There is a version of productivity culture that has convinced a significant number of people that the goal is to do as many things as possible in the available time. To optimise the schedule. To eliminate dead time. To be always in motion toward the next thing. This version of productivity is excellent at producing volume. It is considerably less good at producing anything worth the volume it generates. Quantity and quality are not the same metric and they are often in direct conflict.
What depth actually costs
Doing one thing properly costs time that could be spent doing other things. This is the real trade-off and it is worth being honest about it. The person who spends three hours on a piece of writing that could have been produced in forty-five minutes is making a choice. They are choosing depth over coverage. They are choosing the quality of one thing over the existence of several things. This choice has costs that are visible and benefits that are slower to arrive and harder to measure.
What shallow work looks like over time
Shallow work is not always obviously shallow in the moment it is produced. It can look like productivity. It can generate activity and output and the appearance of progress. What it does not generate, over time, is the kind of work that compounds. The work that builds on itself. The understanding that deepens through sustained engagement rather than repeated surface contact. Shallow work produces a lot of things that do not add up to much. Deep work produces fewer things that matter more.
The craftsperson model
The craftsperson model of work is one of the more useful frameworks for thinking about this. The craftsperson does not optimise for volume. They optimise for the quality of the thing being made. They spend more time than is strictly necessary because the extra time is where the quality lives. They develop mastery through repetition and attention and the willingness to do the same thing again when it is not right. This model is unfashionable in most industries. It produces the best work in all of them.
What you get from going deep
The things you get from going deep into one thing are not available from the surface of many things. A genuine understanding of how something works. The ability to see connections that are not visible from a distance. The satisfaction of having made something as good as you are currently capable of making it. The development of taste, which only comes from sustained engagement with a discipline. These things cannot be accumulated quickly. They require time that other things will compete for.
Depth is not inefficiency. It is the only way anything gets made that is worth making.
The discipline it requires
The discipline required to do one thing properly in a culture that rewards doing many things is a genuine discipline. It requires saying no to things that feel productive. It requires tolerating the anxiety of not being in motion toward the next item on the list. It requires trusting that the depth you are building will eventually produce something worth the time it cost. This trust is difficult to maintain when the culture around you is measuring output and the output is currently lower than it could be.
Why it is worth it anyway
The work that gets remembered is almost always the work that was done properly. The thing made with full attention and sufficient time and the willingness to start again when it was not right. This is true across disciplines and across time. The argument for doing one thing properly is not sentimental. It is practical. It is the argument that the thing worth making is worth making well, and that well requires depth, and that depth requires the time and attention that breadth makes impossible.
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About the author
Yara Amin
Writes about culture, ideas, and the questions that take years to properly answer. Started the publication because she could not find a single place that wanted to publish everything she was interested in. Based in Athens, which she chose partly for the light and partly for the coffee.
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