What Coaches and Mentors Can Learn from The Shallows
Between two client calls, Deshawn opens a case study he assigned himself, a detailed account of a coaching approach he wants to fold into his own practice. He reads a page, checks his phone for the third time in ten minutes, and realizes he has retained almost nothing of what he just read. He skims the rest for takeaways he can use in his next session, closes the document, and moves on, telling himself he absorbed enough. Later that week, a client describes feeling scattered, unable to sit with one problem long enough to work through it, and Deshawn offers advice about focus and presence with a straight face, not quite registering that he handled his own reading the exact same way an hour earlier. He has coached people on attention for years without examining his own. Tonight, rereading his sparse notes on that case study, he starts to notice the gap between what he teaches and what he actually practices.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The Skim That Undercuts Your Own Development
The habit of scanning quickly through articles and social posts for professional tips does not stay contained there; it shapes how you approach the denser material, the full book or research paper, that would actually deepen your practice.
You adopt a technique from a skimmed article without understanding the conditions under which it works, apply it with a client where it does not fit, and cannot explain afterward why the approach fell flat.
Choose one substantial resource each month and read it completely before extracting any technique from it, resisting the urge to mine it for quick takeaways on the first pass.
The Understanding Your Clients Actually Need From You
Recognizing a technique's name is not the same as understanding the reasoning behind it well enough to adapt it to a specific person's situation, and that deeper grasp is exactly what a habit of skimming for tips never builds.
A client asks why a framework you introduced does not seem to fit their situation, and you realize you never read past the framework's summary section to understand its actual limits.
Before introducing any framework to a client, be able to explain in your own words the reasoning behind it, not just its steps, which usually requires having read the source completely.
Practicing the Presence You Ask Clients to Build
The sustained attention you coach clients toward is a capacity you can rebuild in yourself the same deliberate way, through repeated, protected practice rather than assuming it will return on its own.
You tell a client to try a single-tasking exercise you have never actually practiced yourself, and the advice comes across as theoretical rather than lived, because it is.
Adopt one sustained-attention practice from your own coaching toolkit, such as protected reading time, and use it yourself before recommending it to anyone else.
An Ongoing Practice, Not a Credential You Earn Once
The pressure toward fragmented attention affects you the same way it affects your clients, and no amount of experience makes you permanently immune to it. Maintaining your own capacity for deep, sustained focus is a practice you keep renewing throughout your career, not a milestone you reach and then stop tending to.
Staying current with new frameworks pulls you toward fast, wide reading, while genuinely mastering any one of them pulls you toward slow, narrow reading, and you cannot fully satisfy both at once. Let breadth guide what you sample, and let depth guide what you actually bring into client work, reserving full, careful reading for the handful of ideas you plan to use for years.
Name one thing, honestly
Which technique are you currently using with clients that you have only ever read about in summary form?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Adopt one sustained-attention practice from your own coaching toolkit, such as protected reading time, and use it yourself before recommending it to anyone else.