It’s football season. For some reason, nothing seems to rally a town like the success of the local high school’s football team. Soccer and Lacrosse teams vie for championship berths, cross-country runners string out through worn paths winding in and out of parks and woods like a twisting rainbow, all may grab some nice headlines. But when there’s a chill in the air, and the lights come on and the whistle blows, the crowds pack tiny stadiums across the country every Friday night or Saturday afternoon. The marching bands seem to never stop pounding their drums and the cheerleaders dance and jump in unison, in secret competition with the opposing sides’ cheer squad. In fact, even on Sundays as the bobble-headed tykes of pee-wee football hit the gridiron on the sacred ground of their future selves, the stands and sidelines are packed. Hot cocoa is dispensed like water from an oasis well in a desert. Dads all over, burst with pride and longing to be back out there just one more time. Everyone holds their breath and then cheers when the kid with special needs is handed the ball to make a run for it, or when the pig-tailed quarterback sends a Hail Mary into the end zone.

All of them, every one of them, has dedicated countless hours of practice and training before each big day of competition. Out of a desire for that elusive prize, athletes will put themselves on careful diets, log every detail of their training regimen, consult with coaches, trainers, therapists and doctors to squeeze out every bit of potential from their minds and bodies. The advanced development of certain skills will take a level of concentration that is highly respected. A shhhhhh comes over a crowd as the high jumper, already the last one standing, attempts a record height. This feat requires a laser-sharp focus to coordinate weather, body, and emotional conditions, against the fleeting split-second timing required to float their body against the wiles of gravity over a simple fiberglass bar as they have never done before. The crowd acknowledges this moment of intensity and respectfully quiets until the jumper raises her hands and begins a rhythmic clap that the crowd now echoes as if they too can help push her over the barrier.

But what of the kids who’s talents exist primarily above their shoulders? Who cheers them when they ace the math test that everyone else fails, or publishes the poem or drawing in Highlights where it will remain in solitude forever more on the coffee tables of every dentist’s office? Of course family plays a big part in that youngsters development. Parents are the ones who spot the innate possibilities demonstrated while the children are still playing with blocks or Knex or simply soaking up their surroundings and playing them back in words or drawings or maybe asking questions that do not have easy answers nor are they satisfied with them. These mini-intellectuals become driven by a curiosity that is insatiable. The roar of any crowds is muffled by their personal pleasure at having solved something challenging or created their latest masterpiece. These individuals will go on to pave their own paths, some will use machetes to carve paths never traveled before. All with a natural ability to focus intently and deeply when it is called for, then developed and nurtured even further in the halls of academia or studios in SoHo or even the historic halls of Bell Labs, Murray Hill.

But what of the rest of us who feel resigned to the sidelines, always the bridesmaid, never the bride, always wishing but never quite doing? What have these whiz kids who usually grow up to run the world anyway, got that we haven’t got? Is it just a high IQ? Or what about these athletes who go on to win medals at the Olympics or other championships, or become professional athletes, making money from a game that kids all over the world also play in sandlots and back yards every day? Is it wishful thinking, fantasy that we might yet aspire to such levels even in our daily work – to be more than what we have become? Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, says an emphatic, NO!

Sammy the Dog – by Carolyn, age 6

As I have been studiously working my way through his book, I cannot help but experience more than a glimmer of hope. My life is a whirlwind of distraction. It hasn’t always been like that. An artist my whole life, (I was oil painting at the age of 5 though I could barely spell my name) my mother used to say the world could burn around me when I was busy working on my latest masterpiece. Deep work even at a young age was not difficult. But then, I enjoyed it and it was at my leisure.

That did not translate to great grades in my elementary days. I remember my dad going over flashcards of math to the brink of tears. Answers I would know one minute, I would get wrong the next. My fourth-grade teacher once called me “dizzball” because I wasn’t paying attention. But as I learned to read, I found whole new worlds to explore and things began to change. I loved Nancy Drew stories. Did I really need math anyway? I recall getting a final grade of ‘B’ in accelerated English in junior high. I couldn’t figure out why I was even in that class, with all the smart kids. We spend so much time diagramming sentences – I hated it. I just couldn’t understand all the parts of sentences, rules, etc. I always felt as if I had been absent during some critical week that explained everything and I just never learned what everyone seemed to know. I asked my teacher, Mrs. Randolph, why she gave me a B (I had gotten B’s and C’s) and she told me, with great care, that I had earned it. I struggled and studied and asked questions after class. I was doing the same in Algebra too, even coming in early for extra help, and got an ‘A’ in that class. I went into high school not knowing what to expect, but graduated with nearly straight A’s and named scholar athlete. I was only ranked 64th, but my graduating class was around 600-plus, and I did not take any more accelerated courses that would have boosted that ranking. My parents already made it clear that my next destination was community college, so rank wasn’t very important at the time.

But fast forward more than 30 years, and I still feel like I was absent at times in my career.

Perpetually in the moment, unaware of the deep work that I would invest in at times to crash learn Cold Fusion and create a program the developers said couldn’t be done, or successfully troubleshoot javascript I couldn’t actually write, I survived by backing myself into a corner to sink or swim. It turns out that Cal actually recommends this insane method of work as a means of training your brain to dive into greater levels of focus that produce in you a greater outcome than you could have imagined. I look back on those times and can barely remember them. But then, I didn’t have the internet to distract me either. I was simply determined to make something I was convinced could be done, happen.

Courtney Macaluso leans at the wire in the 100m dash at the 2016 Greyhound Invitational, Moravian College.

So if we circle back to this analogy about athletics, we see something of a pattern here. Athletes too, practice, practice, practice, and then test themselves with great moments of effort. They put it all on the line. If they do not, they assess why they did not. What was not laser-focused on the task? My hope, as I learn about the methods I had and how to improve them or acquire new ones, makes me very excited to try everything Deep Work has to offer.

“The ability to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained. (p.157)” Cal offers several tips that I can’t wait to try. For the most part, I think we tend to know we can do these things, but we don’t do it with purpose. For example, Cal talks about three things that I know I love or have a special inclination towards but yet have never saw it as something that I should build into a routine to expand on my deep thinking, deep working skills. First, he talks about collaboration. I love to collaborate. Unfortunately, and maybe because my career was very silo’d in its activities, I never got enough of it. I discovered the joys of collaboration when my eldest daughter began writing short stories and we would take long walks at night through our woodsy neighborhood, discussing her latest epic, brainstorming ideas, one building off the other like a tower of bricks, each laying a foundation for the next. We would cover a couple miles easily, so engrossed in our ideas we sometimes did not notice oncoming cars.

Cal then mentions a very special place – Murray Hill. Now, he brings up Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ (affectionately called simply Murray Hill to those with a connection to the its great history) because of the layout of this vast complex. It spreads out like Cal’s hub and spoke analogy and works the same way. At the center was the grand entrance, and behind it, the true source of the hub’s brilliance engine – the cafeteria. All the other buildings fanned out from this central location, and had causeways in between them to make it easier to get from one building to another. I was pleased to see Cal’s mention of the other great inventions along with his discussion about the collaboration for the invention of the solid-state transistors. That is because my father-in-law always spoke fondly of his work in transistors as well as satellite communications. He was an engineer on Telstar, the United States’ first communication satellite. My father-in-law retired after nearly 40 years with the Labs. He often spoke of the way some of the big brains would collect followers on their trips to the cafeteria. He did that himself if he knew he needed someone’s input on a project. One guy was known for walking backwards where ever he went but I’m not too sure many people followed him around.

Best yet, I met my husband in those very halls. He worked in “the bat cave” as a draftsman using the Unigraphics CAD system (They used to call it “UG”) while I was a computer graphics artist using Genigraphics. We worked at night on complete opposite sides of the complex. I worked alone but night workers tended to find each other and get coffee or snacks at the canteen at break time. I can also vouch for the rooms where deep thinking went on day and night. Chalkboards covered in writing, books piled high – it looked more like what I imagined college professor’s offices would look like at Ivy League schools.

Murray Hill also had a softball field right out front too. Both my father-in-law and my husband, played ball there at lunch or after work. The Macaluso’s play to win. Athletic success is part of both our families and I am a recovering sports-aholic.

Deep work is something I long for and will start using the how-to’s that Cal has already discussed. Interestingly, I have been discussing my learnings with my family members, all of whom struggle to extract themselves from devices, social media or simply the internet. They are beginning to listen, looking for any means that assist in getting something done. Today, while I sit here on my son’s bed typing, he has downloaded his homework and disconnected the wifi so that he could limit his distractions. And my mere presence is his way of being accountable. I caught him several times on his phone. Practice, practice, practice.

Courtney Macaluso, 55m dash College/Open, 2015 Colgate Women’s Games Champion