Deep Work vs Shallow Content: A Very Brief Review of Cal Newport's Work

October 22, 2024

You can get into Harvard by staring at the clouds.

Well, that’s a catchy title found on Cal Newport’s blog, Study Hacks. His post, Want to Get into Harvard? Spend More Time Staring at the Clouds, is one of many that sell a dream: you can achieve extraordinary accomplishments without working yourself to death in the process.

I remember discovering his blog for the first time. I was immediately hooked by the dream he sold. Here was a computer science grad student at MIT dishing out secrets to a productive life. While his tips and tricks weren’t flawless, his writing contained a lot of wisdom about time management and productivity that I still think about today.

The Bad

Sadly, I can no longer say the same about his most recent content. While he likely means well, his content has become unoriginal, shallow and ultimately reading like a cash grab with some brand building. Maybe it’s because he’s spreading himself so thin? Books, podcasts, articles in the New Yorker, full time professorship: that all takes time.

Here’s a recent book review that captures my feelings,

… meh. The book is built on such a fundamentally weird premise, pulling lessons from people like Jewel on how to be a better knowledge worker. But his exploration into these unusual case studies leads to some surprisingly unoriginal guidance: don’t try to do so much, then maybe you’ll feel less busy? Make a 5-year plan? Take your time developing your skills? I like Cal Newport’s perspective generally, I enjoy his podcast and have a learned a lot from his other books. I wanted a lot more from this one.

— Anon

A lot of Newport’s advice boils down to anecdotal evidence. He doesn’t really cite studies. His style is to talk about his own experience and the experiences of highly accomplished individuals and draw conclusions based on their experiences. It’s good food for thought, but shouldn’t be taken as an absolute truth. Ultimately I feel like I’ve gotten the most out of his content and don’t plan on consuming anymore, but I want to stop and reflect on some of the good ideas he’s shared over the years.

The Good

These are ideas that still sit with me after all these years and I see myself returning to articles to refresh my memory.

Fixed schedule productivity

source: accomplishing a lot of work in a small number of hours

It’s quite simple. If you force yourself to stick to a schedule, say 9-5, and not procrastinate, you can accomplish a lot of work in a small number of hours. Having a schedule that you try to rigorously stick to forces you to make the hard decisions. You say no to things. You’re forced to think about how your time was spent, so you can do better tomorrow. Now that you know you only have an hour left in the day, you might only spend five minutes catching up on emails instead of thirty.

It’s easier said than done of course. Sometimes I’d rather just spend a few more hours on something than change a core behavioral pattern of mine.

It’s kind of like going to the gym. There are some people who can go 110% on every workout. The rest of us may half-ass or even skip a day when we’re feeling tired. The consistency of staying 110% every day is where the magic happens.

Focus hard

sources: on the value of hard focus, on becoming a math whiz

Since we decided to have a fixed schedule then hard focus is how we can do more in a day. Twice the focus = twice the work.

You won’t have the ability to laser focus overnight. It takes practice and time. It takes intellectual honesty and not pretending like busy work is real work. If you spent 60 minutes drilling math problems that you already know how to do then you’re wasting your time. Now if you spend 30 minutes sweating how to solve a single hard problem just out of your reach, that’s moving the needle.

Think about your mistakes

source: you’re not as good as you think you are

Drop the ego. A lot of people are scared to look at their mistakes: don’t be one of them.

Most of us want to just do our work and move on with life. We want to be recognized for our successes, but the failures are chalked up as experience we don’t look back at. However, valuable experience only comes from thoughtful reflection.

It’s hard to even fathom how many mistakes get made every day and it’s so easy to look over them when you’re used to doing things a certain way. One way to find these mistakes is to get feedback from a peer, coach or mentor.

Moving Forward

The irony strikes me: the champion of Deep Work now produces increasingly shallow content. Newport’s recent work suffers from the very distractions and dilution he once warned against. Yet his early principles remain valuable.

Would I recommend Cal Newport’s work to a friend? I think I’d tell them to skip the podcasts and books and instead look at his older blog posts (anything before 2015, see: https://calnewport.com/archive/).