Our the ability to focus without distraction is becoming increasingly rare and valuable in our ever-connected world. Cal Newport calls this Deep Work and he contrasts it with shallow work:

• Deep work means those professional tasks that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit done in concentration mode (no distractions)
• Shallow work relates to the tasks that do not require much cognitive work (logistical-style tasks) performed while distracted most of the time. They don't bring much new value in the world and are easy to duplicate.

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

The New Law of Productivity states that the amount of knowledge you can create is limited by your ability to focus without distraction. This means that if you want to be productive, you need to be able to focus on one task at a time and avoid distractions.

This is in contrast to the traditional view of productivity, which is that productivity is about multitasking and getting as much done as possible in a short amount of time. An approach is not sustainable and that it actually leads to lower productivity in the long run.

Knowledge workers usually lack explicit indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable at work, so they turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing multiple tasks in a visible manner.

But doing lots of tasks is shallow work. Productivity for knowledge workers is about effectiveness not efficiency. Lots of corporate workers have become experts in effectively doing the wrong things.