@ProfCalNewport profile picture
Cal Newport @ProfCalNewport
Joined March 2021
  • Tweets 138
  • Following 0
  • Followers 9,033
1 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
Cal Newport@ProfCalNewport
15 Feb 2022
To me, the deep life is about focusing with energetic intention on things that really matter — in work, at home, and in your soul — and not wasting too much attention on things that don’t.
15
69
362
The problems I focused on in Deep Work, and in my writing since, have been getting steadily worse. In 2016 my main concern was helping people find enough free time for deep work. Today I think we’re rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all.
4
3
44
2,384
We craft the world in which we work, even if we don’t realize it.
2
5
46
10,987
Different people are wired for different ambition types. Type 1 craves activity and feasts at the buffet of appealing opportunities that success creates. Type 2 craves simplicity and autonomy, and sees success as a source of leverage to reduce stressful obligations.
2
6
59
10,773
A Type 1 personality stuck on a farm, quietly writing day after day, will quickly become bored. A Type 2 personality working on a screenplay at the same time as two books while filling weeks with Hollywood meetings will be crushed with anxious unease.
4
2
19
7,090
The key seems to be to recognize what type best matches you, before success begins to exert significant force on your career.
1
18
4,743
Accomplishment is often best measured on the scale of years not days, and when you zoom out to this grander level, the advantages of a focused slowness become hard to ignore.
3
6
70
5,290
One of the core principles of my emerging philosophy of slow productivity is that busyness and exhaustion are often unrelated to the task of producing meaningful results.
6
11
82
5,693
Too many of us undervalue concentration, and substitute busyness for real productivity, and are quick to embrace whatever new techno-bauble shines brightest.
1
6
39
3,778
In knowledge work, productivity is about psychology as much as it is about tools and process. But we often ignore this reality.
7
54
4,874
The rhythms of our professional lives are not pre-ordained. We craft the world in which we work, even if we don’t realize it.
19
3,636
Busyness is not the engine of production. It can, in many cases, instead be the obstacle to accomplishing your best work.
1
18
3,174
When work was done at work, and there was no chance of continuing your labors at home, your job didn’t seem nearly as onerous. There’s a lot about early 2000s culture I’m not eager to excavate, but this idea of the constrained workday certainly seems worthy of nostalgia.
5
28
3,856
Creating things that are too good to be ignored, regardless of the setting, is an activity that almost without exception requires undivided attention.
6
37
4,069
Your world is the outcome of what you pay attention to.
33
176
18,792
The happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead those who have been around long enough to become good at what they do.
20
113
16,155
Move your focus away from finding the right work, toward working right, and eventually build a love for what you do.
2
14
103
14,132
ChatGPT is amazing, but in the final accounting it’s clear that what’s been unleashed is more automaton than golem.
1
1
31
9,618
Cal Newport retweeted
Cal Newport@ProfCalNewport
19 Oct 2021
A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60 hour work week pursued without structure.
1
7
52
Cal Newport retweeted
Cal Newport@ProfCalNewport
17 Sep 2021
Cognitive work is a fragile endeavor; environment matters. When we pass the laundry basket outside our home office (a.k.a. our bedroom), our brain shifts toward a household-chores context, even when we would like to maintain focus on our work.
6
27
Here's a reminder for the rest of us, nervous about slipping into digital oblivion. What ultimately matters is the fundamental value of what we produce. Everything else is distraction.
2
3
61
8,597
Load more