Doing deep work requires focus. You have to be free of distractions and have to be wise enough not to drown yourself in mindless web surfing. You should not end up as a slave to an attention grabbing algorithm run by a social media company.

In the Ezra Klein podcast,Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, talks about his technique for overcoming distraction

I try to set my own agenda and not to allow technology to set the agenda for me. I tend to read books, long books, rather than short passages or tweets. I think another thing that has happened over the last century is that we have moved from an information scarcity to a deluge of information. Previously the main problem with information for people was that they didn’t have enough of it, and there was censorship, and information was very rare and hard to obtain. Now it’s just the opposite. We are inundated by immense amounts of information.

We really lose control of our attention. Our attention is hijacked by all kinds of external forces. For me, not just in meditation, but when I work, I try to be very, very disciplined with my attention not to allow external forces to take control of my attention.

It is worth listening to the entire podcast as he also talks about how Vipassana changed his life.