It makes a strong case that deep work is increasingly rare, valuable, and meaningful. But it goes way beyond the "what" and the "why", providing the "how", in the form of specific, pragmatic, actionable guidance for achieving just that. Anecdotally, it's been very helpful for me.
Yes, his bigger point is entirely valid (and I appreciate him bringing it to our attention), but no—there is not enough material to write three damn books. Take inspiration from Kahneman, he condensed his 40-year work (in collaboration with Tversky) into one book.
As I've noted on HN before, I'd much rather recommend the book by the Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's (or Prof. C): Flow—the psychology of optimal experience
Prof. C has defined the idea of "flow" (he discusses it in various contexts, including human well-being), and dedicated his entire life to studying it. IMHO, the signal-to-noise ratio is extremely high in this book—no wonder, it was Prof. C's seminal work.
Expanding an idea into book form helps more people discover that "aha" moment than a single blog post does. Plus, people just take books more seriously in general!
From page 3 of the book, Deep Work:
Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
At least read the book before you trash it.
Eckhart Tolle has written a dozen+ books about being in the moment, for instance.
Fluff, fluff and more fluff. Repetitive anecdotes, personal experiences etc etc. I just can’t pretend I’m interested.
I'm an average tech worker in an open office. My office is quieter and more peaceful than most, but I can rarely get much "deep work" in. Meetings, Slack, etc. I have no door I can close and isolate myself with. I assume this is the case with most engineering roles so the usual HN advice of "find another job" doesn't apply.
That said, I still get things done fairly well, so I'm not complaining. I've used his techniques and ideas in my free time when I read, program, etc.
Details: desk facing a wall or window. Failing that, a 3-sided divider. Earplugs plus headphones. Skim my emails once every hour or so and leave notifications off otherwise. When I'm not trying to do deep work, headphones off so people know they can approach me. Nuclear option: work from home one or two days a week.
If you really think you can't get away with these things, then maybe you do need to find a new job where you're less micromanaged and more evaluated on results.
Making good evaluations on 'opportunity costs' is key. As I get older I allow more fun time than I used to (I am almost 68).
"Newport's book "Deep Work" is excellent" -> Newport's book "Deep Work" makes excellent points.
I've benefited meaningfully from reading it, but also agree w/ many commenters' view that it could've been much more concise.
I think the point of reading the book is you will see the ideas in the summary, but may not believe they are true. The book is there to convince you through data, logical arguments, and stories that the ideas are true. In addition, repetition is one of the most valuable techniques for actually remembering things.
I agree with him about the smartphone cancer that has crept into all our lives though I imagine there will be much worse distractions in the near future like deep learning phones that can tell us everything going on in a room the moment we enter it (since everybody else also has the same device). Permanent HUD like a James Cameron scifi
And I would also argue that the phone itself is not the problem. The problem is the reliance on the endorphin hit that comes from a new IM, like, post, etc. Some app makers have optimized their platform for engagement and have consequently made this highly addictive for many people.
But this addiction is much easier to break for most people than an addiction to something like say cigarettes (or even sugar).
I don’t think that’s really true. The health effects of a cigarette a week would be indistinguishable from background noise.
The fundamental problem with cigarettes is that they are addictive, and convenient (at one time very convenient), and so it’s easy to smoke more and more. That’s actually very similar to smartphones: their use is addictive, and convenient (you can get a hit at work, in line, in the car, at the store, walking down the street, in bed).
As with tobacco, I believe that the answer is to responsibly use smartphones. Chain-smoking is bad; so too is constantly getting a hit from your smartphone. Smoking a pipe a couple of times a week (or a cigar a couple of times a month) isn’t a problem, and neither is using a smartphone intentionally & deliberately.
Also, I am guessing that most doctors would not recommend smoking a pipe a couple times a week. I doubt it's harmless.
Is this true? Can you provide a source?
Brb running to the corner store...
I prefer reading emails on my way. I'm distracted anyway and when I arrive at work, no emails anymore.
Physically? I presume you're right. But here's the problem; you don't need cigarettes to accomplish any other expected, daily task in your life. You need your phone for a whole bunch of useful tasks that aren't health-depleting. I once read someone explain eating disorders in a similar way. You still need to eat, so you can't simply kick the root of your problem out of your life forever.
Obesity has skyrocketed as cigarette and other tobacco use has declined. Obesity also increases the risk for most types of cancer, so it is just trading increased lung cancer risk for some people for increased risk of both heart disease and cancer.
In general nature does not like free lunches. There are costs and trade-offs in everything and smart phones are not an exception to that.
As far as I can tell most low wage / manual labor jobs are plagued with cigarette smoking because it allows more breaks / and it's a way to kill time.
Here in germany a lot of 30s people picked up smoking during their mandatory military service (cigarettes were free to avoid creation of black markets, people who smoked had more breaks + herd behavior)
Alas, I guess we'll just have to leave that hard problem to the scientists and philosophers.
+ Inhaling any burned matter / fumes will have an impact the lungs.
"Cigarette smoke contains over 7,000 chemical compounds, including arsenic, formaldehyde, cyanide, lead, nicotine, carbon monoxide, acrolein, and other poisonous substances. Over 70 of these are carcinogenic." [0]
I was fortunate to have a childhood without phones, and if I ever have kids myself I want to give them the same experience no matter what it takes.
Hopefully by the time you have kids wisdom highlights why the above is a destructive mentality. So many children are set up for anxiety and pain by their parents imposing so much of their own bullshit on them.
By all means adopt principles that align with your beliefs, but for the love of god numb your ego a touch and realize if you love your children you have to let go of yourself and free them as much as corral and influence them.
Be reasonable, understanding, compassionate, loving and unselfish, and see how 'no matter what it takes' holds up when considering those virtues.
You'll understand better when you have kids. I hope.
Everybody generally wants a few core services from their smartphone: send and receive brief messages, directions, ride hailing, listen to a podcast or some streaming service, mobile payments, take photos (perhaps most importantly).
Sometimes some people want the distractions available on a smartphone: watch video, read the news, social media, browse the web, read a book.
Sometimes some people want to Do Work™ on their phone, but the vast majority of the people don't want that, at least outside of their preferred work hours.
I try to do more and more with my Apple Watch/AirPods only, and it's starting the feel like the future depends less and less on having a smartphone. In our Star Trek utopia, your wearable would let you go up to any screen and access your stuff, and these would be in convenient locations, like a public transit stations, cafes, etc.
You'd do work on a purpose built machine for the work you do, one with a lot of buttons if you type a lot, one with a stylus and weird knobs if you do precision work.
The personal smartphone as it currently exists is this weird mandatory liability we're all burdened with, costly in time, attention, and money. They're worse than cigarettes because at least you can carry on a conversation while smoking.
People (in physics grad school in the 90s mind you) made fun of me when I had an HP100LX (a pocket sized DOS-5 machine you could carry around) for writing fortran code in microemacs or doing Derive/mathematica trace formulas while away from the terminals. It was also a good PDA and had an ebook reader for killing time on the bus. When I saw people with the early smart phones doing vastly worse than me nerding out on my HP, I knew there was no way I'd get one of those things. I'm on the bloody internet all day as it is for work; no reason to be more connected.
Complete access to a large % of Western civilization's collective knowledge is also kind of nice.
Mostly used for restaurant open hours and random Wikipedia articles. But still.
Knowing where nearby gas stations are, checking when a store closes, comparison price shopping, checking nutrition facts, there are many uses for a smart phone outside of the ones you listed. And, as always, the long tail is long.
I don't waste time with my Apple Watch + AirPods: I just process calls/texts/emails and listen to pad casts or music.
> But if you ask yourself who's the healthiest person you know, almost certainly they subscribe to some sort of named philosophy that helps them make consistent and value-driven decisions about what they eat and how they move. Maybe they're vegan or paleo.
Maybe I’m an outlier, but that tends to be more true of the least healthy people I know.
Named philosophies with strict rules give you far more opportunities to measure your failures. It’s too easy to slip, notice you’ve slipped, and figure, “well, I’ve done that much, I guess I’m just off the wagon today.” (Not to mention that vegan and paleo both leave room for some wildly unhealthful decisions without breaking the rules.)
It seems like his philosophy isn’t as strict as that, though. I like the approach in large part because it isn’t like going vegan or paleo. As with so many things, it’s all about finding moderation and an approach that you can stick to sustainably.
She was Catholic and she was practicing the virtue of temperance every day.
We often adopt lifestyles, we do certain things, in order to become healthier, fitter, smarter, richer...
She wasn't doing it because who she wanted become. She was doing it because of who she was.
So she would have had no problem stopping such behavior without fear of repercussion? If not then the motivation is not solely self directed. Many people are engaged in virtuistic pursuits because of fear or selfishness. Their outward actions can't always be taken at face value.
I believe a better title would be about “today’s smart phone” assuming we will still have smart phones in the future but they won’t be designed to be addicting anymore.
> You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.
In fact, even FB/Twitter/IG aren't "real-time". They don't show all the likes as they're coming in. They specifically delay showing the full number so you have a reason to come back and re-check. If you see a higher number of likes, you're going to come back again to re-check.
They definitely do. Not to the same degree that people shun cigarette smoking as a vice though. There's a reason that the phrase 'binge-watching' includes the word binge, as opposed to saying 'marathoning' or something that would communicate the same thing.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/12/02/heads-up-...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-tv-rot-your-...
If we all work really hard we can come up with dumb reasons to ban almost anything. Politicians make careers out of this sort of thing.
- Probably more damaging to our ears than we expect
- Damage is cumulative and takes a while to show the effects
Not a judgement, just a stark contrast from ~10 years ago.
It's especially damaging for kids (still growing + somewhat more malleable bones / joints).
[0] https://www.emarketer.com/content/mobile-time-spent-2018
Something very useful but with negative externalities we did not predict.
