Creating in a world
of constant distraction and interruption 1/2
AUGUST 3rd, 2025
Table of contents
Do we need to withdraw from the world to create something profound? Doesn’t creation also – or even primarily – stem from our relationship to the work of others? Between extreme concentration and wandering inspiration, two books struck a resonance in me that was both obvious and unexpected: Deep Work by Cal Newport [1] and Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon [2].
These books came to me in April 2024, well after their initial success; they arrived at a time when my concentration was caught up in some very deep work in physics – which, fortunately, did not turn into a very bad trip, allowing me to finally share my thoughts on creation and its paths with you ^^ Almost a walk in the park compared to the mysterious realms of the quantum vacuum 😉
Rather than a comparative article, which would not be of much interest, I offer here a subjective look at what makes sense to me and what questioning me. A personal synthesis, not exhaustive… but lively!
Two visions of creative engagement
Cal Newport: Concentration as a way of life
Cal Newport could make the same observation in 2025 that prompted him to write Deep Work in 2016: the ability to concentrate intensely on complex cognitive tasks, without distraction, is becoming increasingly rare… and increasingly valuable.
The author proposes an active and methodical approach to learning – comparable to that of a high-level athlete – where passion alone is not enough, but where consistency, feedback, and deep concentration make all the difference. For him, deep work is more of a professional activity, but it can work just as well with passions or hobbies. It is based on deliberate practice, i.e., regular and structured commitment – without distraction – to a discipline that one wishes to master [3].
Newport warns against pitfalls to avoid, including: confusing “working long hours” with “practicing effectively”; thinking that automatically repeating a task leads to improvement; or believing that you can improve while being interrupted every 10 minutes.
In short, working in depth is a way of reclaiming our mind and our time; living in a state of flow where the work we do is more satisfying and enriching. To the point where we feel a genuine sense of accomplishment.
Thus, although the book is structured like a productivity manual, it goes far beyond this framework to offer a vision where deep work becomes a source of value and meaning in life.
While this vision is essentially shared by Austin Kleon, he suggests a radically different path to achieving it…
Austin Kleon: The Art of Guilt-Free Inspiration
Here, the author starts from the premise that nothing is original. For him, creating means drawing inspiration from the work of others, transforming it, and injecting our own energy into it: this is what he calls “creative theft”. Suffice it to say that Austin Kleon has a rather uninhibited approach for creation…
Through 10 simple and inspiring principles, he offers a method to help people discover their artistic side and build a more creative life. Among these principles, the ones that particularly resonate with me are:
- Do good work and share it: recognition comes from creating and sharing
- Use constraints to our advantage: limits encourage creativity
- A stable life makes creation freer: discipline is valuable
- Our secondary passions can become our greatest sources of inspiration
Austin Kleon invites us to embrace influence, to act rather than wait, and to allow ourselves to create without permission. His book is a joyful and accessible manifesto for anyone who wants to live more creatively.
Before arriving at this rather positive overview, I must admit that I was perplexed for much of my reading; let me explain…
The subtle art of creative theft – minus the mental holdup
Steal like an artist: a puzzling title
I came across the French title (Voler comme un artiste) before the original one. Right away, I pictured myself taking flight on the wings of creativity, defying the headwinds of a moody or killjoy mind. Needless to say, the double meaning of the French word voler – which means both to fly and to steal – completely escaped me at the time.
But here’s the thing: I couldn’t find a reasonably priced French version, so I looked for the book in English. And then, to my surprise, the title wasn’t Fly Like an Artist, as I had expected, but Steal Like an Artist. Steal? As in rob, plunder, pilfer? What a strange view of creativity. Not only did this approach seem inappropriate to me, but it also seemed to clip my wings… Plunder like an artist? What next?
How could this book, with such an introduction, have been so successful? Wasn’t the slightly provocative title ultimately a creative stroke of genius on the part of the author? Intrigued, I decided to give Austin Kleon a chance…
To my pleasant surprise, the ambiguity of the title is addressed at the end of the book, so there you go… Nevertheless, the use of the term “steal” leaves me perplexed, even if it is explained to me that it means stealing intelligently, “drawing inspiration, transforming, mixing, recombining”; and even if, in light of the theory of the connected universe, I understand that everything influences everything else. So, yes, we all inspire each other; the individual feeds the collective and the collective feeds the individual. Artists are therefore not privileged… but perhaps some of them have a unique way of “feeding” themselves?
Light years away from these reflections, let’s return to Cal Newport’s book…
Deep work: a gendered practice ?
Here, there is no subject in the title (the same in English and French), it immediately resonated with me. In familiar territory, I was rather curious to see if my experience of deep work matched the author’s recommendations. Short answer: I could recognize myself in the ways of doing and being of certain personalities mentioned. However, I didn’t expect such a gap between the number of male and female examples; in fact, I can’t say that there were many opportunities for me to identify with a female figure… four out of thirty ^^
A Sort-of Room of Requirement
Among the four: J.K. Rowling. While my ego began to dream of being able to rival the creative effervescence of the author of Harry Potter, it quickly realized that the comparison would be limited to the material conditions of her concentration… In fact, Cal Newport cites her only to recount that when she was writing the last book in the series, at home, she was unable to concentrate due to numerous distractions and demands. She therefore voluntarily isolated herself in order to work in depth; Newport insists that this choice was neither a luxury nor a whim, but a real cognitive need: to complete such a dense and emotionally complex work, she needed to be totally immersed.
Admittedly, she did exactly what Cal Newport recommends: creating a protected space dedicated to concentrated and creative work. But while male figures are presented as masters of their own schedules, free to arrange quasi-monastic working conditions, J.K. Rowling seems, on the contrary, to be reacting to an overload of demands. The moral of the story: she escapes to a hotel, in a state of cognitive emergency, or almost…
Do men feel more free to disappear from the world?
Through this example and the way he deals with the “J.K. Rowling case,” we realize that Cal Newport does not seem to consider the social or gender constraints that can make deep work more difficult for certain people, particularly women (mental load, family life, public pressure, lack of personal space, etc.). This may be the blind spot of his book. Ultimately, the practice of deep work does not depend solely on discipline, but also on conditions of access to availability, silence, and time.
It is clear that the deep workers cited as examples by Newport reflect a marked bias, conscious or not, toward “male models.” This is not necessarily intentional on his part; rather, it seems to reflect an Anglo-Saxon tradition based on male professional efficiency. But it gives the impression that deep work is a matter for “brilliant, solitary men” – which obscures a whole range of female experiences… which I am now going to explore…
Deep work done by women
Women seem to experience deep work more as a flow, commitment, or presence, rather than as a performance or achievement; their commitment, which is also less visible or less valued, is particularly evident in the field of education.
If I had to name a woman who is a “deep worker” off the top of my head, I would say Maria Montessori. I came across her work in 2013, a few months before the question of my daughter’s entry into school arose. After thoroughly researching the subject (you know me ^^), her father and I decided that she would attend a preschool that used this method.
Not only does everything suggest that Maria Montessori practiced deep work to develop her method, but she also instilled in it the ability to prepare the brains of the children exposed to it to work in depth. For nearly 120 years. That deserves a little more attention to the experience of this great lady, doesn’t it?
The quiet revolution
Maria Montessori defined deep work before its time, so to speak; but far from the model of the “hyperproductive monk,” she created a more fluid and embodied relationship to deep work by:
- integrating the body, intuition, and cyclicality into the rhythms of concentration
- cultivating the workspace
- emphasizing meaning and presence rather than productivity alone
She didn’t just focus on creating a teaching method: she observed what deep work produces in children; she designed an environment that makes it possible; and she conveyed a vision of human development centered on this ability to become fully absorbed in a meaningful task.
Even better: beyond improving education, she sought to profoundly transform society through a silent revolution in education. Her work was fully aligned with a higher purpose, a founding vision; which Newport presents as one of the main sources of motivation for deep work.
He also emphasizes that deep work requires perseverance despite social obstacles; and to say the least, Maria Montessori often worked on the fringes of institutions, even breaking with dominant educational trends. In short, she showed that deep work is not just a matter of productivity, but also of inner and social transformation.
In a way, Céline Alvarez has followed in her footsteps, reinterpreting Montessori pedagogy in the light of neurosciences, thus creating an unexpected bridge with Cal Newport’s approach…
Cultivating depth in fluidity
Céline Alvarez has attempted to move beyond the rigid, protocol-based, and standardized aspects of this institutionalized teaching method by emphasizing positive emotions as a driver of learning. Backed by research, she shows that emotional connection is not an obstacle but rather a prerequisite for concentration.
She addresses not only trained teachers, but also public school teachers and parents, thereby moving away from a “private” and elitist application of the method. She also advocates for a comprehensive transformation of schools, calling for practices aligned with children’s natural needs [4].
She agrees with Cal Newport, who draws on research in neurosciences and cognitive psychology [5] to show that the human brain is not naturally wired to sustain intense concentration for hours on end; it is through conscious training that we can gradually extend this capacity, although, according to Newport, even for the most skilled individuals, this is limited to a maximum of four hours per day.
According to him, deep work “pushes [our] cognitive abilities to their limits”. By this he means that there is a threshold of cognitive quality that should not be exceeded, at the risk of degrading one’s work [6]. The closer we get to this threshold, the more mentally fatigued we feel and the less clear our thinking becomes; the effort becomes counterproductive and our ability to resist distraction diminishes.
However, as Céline Alvarez has shown, deep work does not have to be rigid or productivity-focused: it can be experienced in a fluid, sensitive way that is attuned to the rhythm of life. By valuing presence and grounding in the body, her approach is – precisely – attuned to mental fatigue.
A brief summary of this first part…
The kid, the monk, and the maker
It’s not quite The Good (the apprentice), the Bad (high-performance mode), and the Ugly (artistic chaos)… but it’s close!
More seriously, in a world saturated with demands, speed, and distraction, Céline Alvarez, Cal Newport, and Austin Kleon each defend, in their own way, depth as an essential condition for growth, learning, and creation.
Céline Alvarez starts with life itself. For her, concentration emerges naturally when children are placed in an environment that respects their sensory, emotional, and cognitive needs. This concentration then becomes their path to personal growth, taking them from a mindset of external authority to one of self-direction supported by a framework. For her, depth is not something to be conquered, but rather revealed through joy, spontaneous curiosity, and fluid attention. She relies on trust in the laws of human development, through a flexible, intuitive approach that is deeply connected to the body and relationships.
Cal Newport, on the other hand, addresses adults and offers a more structured, deliberate, and rigorous vision. Deep work is a demanding, almost ascetic practice that requires discipline, isolation, and ritual. Here, concentration is an act of resistance, a conscious reclaiming of our mental abilities. Beyond passion, it is about method, repetition, and clarity about what we want to accomplish. We enter into deep work as we enter into retreat – to produce meaning through sustained effort.
Austin Kleon, finally, offers a lighthearted and playful approach. He invites us to create every day, even if only a little, even if it’s not perfect. For him, depth can come from a scribbled notebook, a clumsy collage, a project that progresses in small steps. He values the act of doing more than the result; movement more than mastery.
This sheds light on my own paradoxes and my own creative process… to be discovered in the second part!
Notes & references
[1] The book was published in the United States on January 5, 2016, by Grand Central Publishing, and in France on January 3, 2019, by Alisio, under the title Deep Work: Retrouver la concentration dans un monde de distractions (Deep Work: Finding Focus in a World of Distractions).
[2] The book was published in the United States on March 6, 2012, by Workman Publishing, and in France on November 13, 2014, by L’Éditeur, under the title Voler comme un artiste.
[3] The deliberate practice Newport refers to is inspired by the work of Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson (1947-2020) and consists, according to the latter, of structured, demanding, and intentional training that allows one to become an expert not through talent, but through controlled progression. It is based on conscious effort, rapid feedback, and targeted improvement (seeking to improve specific points).
[4] See Céline Alvarez’s book, Les lois naturelles de l’enfant (The Natural Laws of Children), 2016, published by Les Arènes.
[5] Notably the work of Anders Ericsson on deliberate practice; and the work of John Sweller, Richard Mayer, and Paul Kirschner, specialists in cognitive load theory, who show that in order to learn or produce effectively, it is necessary to reduce unnecessary cognitive load, focus one’s attention on a single stream of information, and proceed in digestible steps.
[6] It should be noted that Cal Newport is not interested in what happens “beyond” the cognitive limit; he simply seeks to respect this limit in order to get the most out of it. Nevertheless, I suspect that another level of information may reach us from this “beyond.” You can read My Story to explore this avenue.
Portrait of Maria Montessori: Unknown author — Nationaal Archief 119-0489, Public domain
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