Cal Newport

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A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload by Cal Newport

Cal Newport, call centre, Claude Shannon: information theory, cognitive dissonance, collaborative editing, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, COVID-19, creative destruction, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, fault tolerance, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, Garrett Hardin, hive mind, Inbox Zero, interchangeable parts, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Nash: game theory, Joseph Schumpeter, Kanban, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Marshall McLuhan, Nash equilibrium, passive income, Paul Graham, place-making, pneumatic tube, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, Richard Feynman, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, technological determinism, the medium is the message, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, web application, work culture , Y Combinator

This study was also cited and summarized by Edward Tenner in Why Things Bite Back (cited in the preceding two notes), which is how I first came across it. 4. Cal Newport, “Is Email Making Professors Stupid?,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 12, 2019, www.chronicle.com/interactives/is-email-making-professors-stupid. 5. Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (New York: Crown Business, 2014), 1–3. 6. Readers of my book Deep Work might identify this phenomenon as what I called the whiteboard effect. Generally speaking, using a common screen or board to work collaboratively with a small group on a hard problem will intensify the depth of concentration you achieve compared with working alone. Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016). 7.

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Also by Cal Newport The Time-Block Planner Digital Minimalism Deep Work So Good They Can’t Ignore You How to Be a High School Superstar How to Become a Straight-A Student How to Win at College Portfolio / Penguin An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC penguinrandomhouse.com Copyright © 2021 by Calvin C. Newport Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission.

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Repenning, “Breaking Logjams in Knowledge Work: How Organizations Can Improve Task Flow and Prevent Overload,” MIT Sloan Management Review, September 6, 2018, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/breaking-logjams-in-knowledge-work/. Chapter 3: Email Has a Mind of Its Own 1. The story of the CIA’s pneumatic tubes and the general push for practical asynchrony is adapted from my 2019 New Yorker article on the history of email: Cal Newport, “Was E-mail a Mistake?,” Annals of Technology, New Yorker, August 6, 2019, www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/was-e-mail-a-mistake. 2. According to the CIA historians I consulted during my research, office networking technology was a big part of the reason the tube system was not expanded during the headquarters renovation.

Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less by Michael Hyatt

Atul Gawande, Cal Newport, Checklist Manifesto, death from overwork, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Frederick Winslow Taylor, informal economy, invention of the telegraph, Jeff Bezos, job automation, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lock screen, microdosing, Parkinson's law, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, side hustle, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, zero-sum game

Free to Focus offers a practical, flexible framework for centering your life around what matters most, and unleashing your best work every day. Michael Hyatt has helped thousands of people take back control of their lives, and he’ll do the same for you. Todd Henry, author, The Accidental Creative “Busyness is meaningless. What matters is consistently executing the work that actually matters. This book shows you how.” Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author, Deep Work and Digital Minimalism “Success, we are often told, requires backbreaking work and never-ending hours in the office. And then we meet the truly successful who seem to get more done in less time than anyone else. Michael Hyatt shines the light on the secrets of the most productive people in his new book, Free to Focus.

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Then we pride ourselves about our ability to multitask. The problem is, the human brain doesn’t really multitask. Instead, as journalist John Naish says, “it switches frantically between tasks like a bad amateur plate-spinner.”1 This kind of switching comes with heavy costs. When you jump between tasks, according to Georgetown computer scientist Cal Newport, “your attention doesn’t immediately follow—a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task.”2 Switching isn’t seamless. “Attention residue” gunks up our mental gears. One study by the University of California at Irvine found workers averaged twenty-five minutes to resume a task after an interruption like an email or phone call.3 By breaking our focus, switching also slows our processing ability.

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I’ve heard people say that social media provides breaks in the day, the way people used to walk or go outdoors for a smoke. That’s part of what’s happening, but the accessibility of social media means people aren’t usually working for a long period and then taking a break. They’re breaking their concentration multiple times in what Cal Newport calls “quick checks” during the working period. Instead of taking a break, they’re breaking their focus. Doing Downhill Work. A lot of this has to do with low frustration tolerance. In their book The Distracted Mind, professors Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen say humans are inherently attention-seeking.

Working Hard, Hardly Working by Grace Beverley

Cal Newport, clockwatching, COVID-19, David Heinemeier Hansson, death from overwork, glass ceiling, global pandemic, hustle culture, Jeff Bezos, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, stop buying avocado toast, TED Talk, TikTok, unpaid internship, work culture

Books Business, Self-Development and Big Ideas Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, James Clear (2018) Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close, Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow (2020) Black Box Thinking: Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High Performance, Matthew Syed (2015) Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, Anne Helen Petersen (2021) Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport (2016) Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights, Helen Lewis (2020) Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, Cal Newport (2019) Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team, Simon Sinek with David Mead and Peter Docker (2017) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D.

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Let’s get this straight: productivity ≠ ticking off your traditional to-do list. You have to have the right to-do list, filled with deep work, comprehensive tasks directed towards larger goals, and a number of quick boxes to tick. Deep work3 As defined by computer scientist and professor Cal Newport, deep work is any ‘professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.’ We’re about to get into some real juicy productivity tips – but first we need to get comfortable with tough love.

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I truly believe that as long as you know what works for you and you’re honest about where to apply it, you’re on the path to productive and mindful success. Deep work To take your time-blocking to the next level, I want to introduce deep work back into the conversation. We touched on it very briefly earlier, but as any Cal Newport diehard will know, a little is not enough. Deep work is all about accepting that we will be bombarded from all sides by notifications and instant distractions,5 and that it’s our job to combat that and protect our space when we need to. In other words, it’s all about changing the way you work, setting deep work slots (aligned with time-blocks) and concentrating fully on your work during those times.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

airport security, Albert Einstein, Cal Newport, coronavirus, COVID-19, digital nomad, Douglas Hofstadter, fake news, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Floyd, gig economy, Gödel, Escher, Bach, heat death of the universe, Inbox Zero, income inequality, invention of the steam engine, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kanban, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, New Journalism, Parkinson's law, profit motive, scientific management, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs

“Spring is here, even in London N1”: George Orwell, “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad,” first published in Tribune, April 12, 1946, available at www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/some-thoughts-on-the-common-toad/. Appendix: Ten Tools for Embracing Your Finitude “You could fill any arbitrary number of hours with what feels to be productive work”: Cal Newport, “Fixed-Schedule Productivity: How I Accomplish a Large Amount of Work in a Small Number of Work Hours,” available at www.calnewport.com/blog/2008/02/15/fixed-schedule-productivity-how-i-accomplish-a-large-amount-of-work-in-a-small-number-of-work-hours/, with further discussion in Cal Newport, Deep Work (New York: Grand Central, 2016). “When you can’t do it all, you feel ashamed and give up”: Jon Acuff, Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done (New York: Portfolio, 2017), 36.

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To whatever extent your job situation permits, decide in advance how much time you’ll dedicate to work—you might resolve to start by 8:30 a.m., and finish no later than 5:30 p.m., say—then make all other time-related decisions in light of those predetermined limits. “You could fill any arbitrary number of hours with what feels to be productive work,” writes Cal Newport, who explores this approach in his book Deep Work. But if your primary goal is to do what’s required in order to be finished by 5:30, you’ll be aware of the constraints on your time, and more motivated to use it wisely. 2. Serialize, serialize, serialize. Following the same logic, focus on one big project at a time (or at most, one work project and one nonwork project) and see it to completion before moving on to what’s next.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

8-hour work day, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bluma Zeigarnik, business climate, Cal Newport, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Clayton Christensen, David Brooks, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, digital divide, disruptive innovation, do what you love, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, experimental subject, follow your passion, Frank Gehry, Hacker News, Higgs boson, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Jaron Lanier, knowledge worker, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Merlin Mann, Nate Silver, Neal Stephenson, new economy, Nicholas Carr, popular electronics, power law, remote working, Richard Feynman, Ruby on Rails, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, statistical model, the medium is the message, Tyler Cowen, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, winner-take-all economy, work culture , zero-sum game

Sign Up Or visit us at hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters Contents Cover Title Page Welcome Introduction PART 1: The Idea Chapter 1: Deep Work Is Valuable Chapter 2: Deep Work Is Rare Chapter 3: Deep Work Is Meaningful PART 2: The Rules Rule #1: Work Deeply Rule #2: Embrace Boredom Rule #3: Quit Social Media Rule #4: Drain the Shallows Conclusion Also by Cal Newport Notes Newsletters Copyright Copyright Copyright © 2016 by Cal Newport Cover design by Elizabeth Turner Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc. All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

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But if you’re willing to sidestep these comforts and fears, and instead struggle to deploy your mind to its fullest capacity to create things that matter, then you’ll discover, as others have before you, that depth generates a life rich with productivity and meaning. In Part 1, I quoted writer Winifred Gallagher saying, “I’ll live the focused life, because it’s the best kind there is.” I agree. So does Bill Gates. And hopefully now that you’ve finished this book, you agree too. Also by Cal Newport So Good They Can’t Ignore You How to Be a High School Superstar How to Become a Straight-A Student How to Win at College Notes Introduction “In my retiring room”; “I keep the key”; and “The feeling of repose and renewal”: Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Trans. Richard Winston.

Reset: How to Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money: The Unconventional Early Retirement Plan for Midlife Careerists Who Want to Be Happy by David Sawyer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, beat the dealer, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Cal Newport, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency risk, David Attenborough, David Heinemeier Hansson, Desert Island Discs, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fake news, financial independence, follow your passion, gig economy, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, imposter syndrome, index card, index fund, invention of the wheel, John Bogle, knowledge worker, loadsamoney, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, mortgage debt, Mr. Money Mustache, passive income, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart meter, Snapchat, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, TED Talk, The 4% rule, Tim Cook: Apple, Vanguard fund, William Bengen, work culture , Y Combinator

According to a 2018 report by management consulting firm McKinsey[37], artificial intelligence, automation and robotics[38] will have made many unskilled jobs redundant, and there’ll be a bigger pool of knowledge workers for employers to choose from. Whether you’re a PR consultant, accountant, or lawyer it won’t matter if you’re in Glasgow, Gothenburg or Ganzhou. All that will matter, in the words of Deep Work author Cal Newport, is: “Your ability to quickly master hard things.” “The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed[39].” You think your job’s in danger now. Try ten years down the line. And it ain’t going to get any better unless you do something about it now. They’re not real Before we go any farther in this book, you need to understand something.

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Life isn’t The X Factor[449] and the world’s not full of reality TV stars. In the final reckoning, you get out what you put in and nowt beats hard graft. Apart, perhaps, from distraction-free hard graft. 5. The importance of deep work You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks[450]. Winston Churchill Cal Newport, PhD, is assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University. His book, Deep Work, has had a profound effect on how I approach achieving my goals. Here’s the why, what and how on this fundamental RESET principle. The problem We live in a fast-changing world, full of distractions.

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[450] “throw stones at every dog that barks”: “13 Things You Should Give Up If You Want To Be Successful – Medium.” 26 Dec. 2016, toreset.me/450. [451] “Deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy”: “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted... – Cal Newport.” 5 Jan. 2016, toreset.me/451. [452] David Allen’s GTD system: “Getting Things Done – Wikipedia.” toreset.me/452. [453] If you’re one of the 70%: “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop... – Amazon UK.” toreset.me/453, p. 76. [454] “They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated and insecure”: Ibid., p. 84

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport

Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, Cal Newport, data science, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, financial independence, game design, Hacker News, index fund, Jaron Lanier, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Mr. Money Mustache, Pepto Bismol, pre–internet, price discrimination, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TED Talk

Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Newport, Cal, author. Title: Digital minimalism : on living better with less technology / Cal Newport. Description: New York : Portfolio/Penguin, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018041568 (print) | LCCN 2018043187 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525536543 (Ebook) | ISBN 9780525536512 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525542872 (international edition) Subjects: LCSH: Information technology—Social aspects. | Internet addiction—Social aspects. | Technological innovations—Social aspects.

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., 157 Thames, Liz, 172–74, 176 Thoreau, Henry David, xv, 36–41, 100, 101, 120, 251–52 Walden, xviii, 36–40, 99, 109–11 walks of, 118, 119, 122 Time Well Spent, 12 tobacco industry, 9–11 Trump, Donald, 92n Turkle, Sherry, 144–47, 150, 156, 160 Twenge, Jean, 105–8 Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche), 116–17 Twitter, 7, 33, 75, 79, 199, 220, 232, 233, 239, 244 cost vs. value of using, 41–42 TweetDeck and, 234–35 Union Fire Company, 204 USA Rock Paper Scissors League, 127–30, 135 Vail, Alfred, 250 value(s): Amish and, 51–54 digital minimalism and, 28–36 low-value activities, 30 and reintroducing technologies in digital declutter, 60, 70, 71, 75–81 Variety, 112 Verge, The, 222, 244 video games, 63–64, 68, 171, 177, 181, 183, 184 Walden (Thoreau), xviii, 36–40, 99, 109–11 “Walking” (Thoreau), 118 walks, walking, 116–22 with friends, 149, 150, 163 gratitude, 120 Wallace, Mike, 10–11 Wanderer and His Shadow, The (Nietzsche), 117–18 Washington, DC, 85–86, 240 Washington Post, 239 Washington University, 131 watch, 81 weekly leisure plans, 210–12 welding, 194–95 WhatsApp, 7, 65, 156 What Technology Wants (Kelly), 50–51 White House Historical Association, 88 Whitmire, Tim, 187 Wigand, Jeffrey, 10–11 Winchester, Simon, 249–51 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 97 Woolf, Virginia, 97 work, 168 Wu, Tim, 215–16 YouTube, 127, 168, 193 how-to lessons on, 192, 193, 195, 197–98 Zeiler, Michael, 17–18 Zuckerberg, Mark, 103, 222 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ About the Author Cal Newport is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of six books, including Deep Work and So Good They Can't Ignore You. You won't find him on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, but you can often find him at home with his family in Washington, DC, or writing essays for his popular website calnewport.com

Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business by Paul Jarvis

Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, big-box store, Boeing 747, Cal Newport, call centre, content marketing, corporate social responsibility, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital nomad, drop ship, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, follow your passion, fulfillment center, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, growth hacking, Inbox Zero, independent contractor, index fund, job automation, Kickstarter, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Naomi Klein, passive investing, Paul Graham, pets.com, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social bookmarking, software as a service, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, uber lyft, web application, William MacAskill, Y Combinator, Y2K

Her problem-solving focus allows her to better evaluate new business ventures that are presented to her on the show. When you focus on solving problems or on making a difference, passion may follow, because you’re actually involved in the work you’re doing instead of just dreaming that you might be passionate about something. Cal Newport, the best-selling author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, argues that passion is the side effect of mastery. To Newport, following your passion is fundamentally flawed as a career strategy because it fails to describe how most successful people ended up with compelling careers and can lead to chronic job-shifting and angst when your reality falls short of your passionate dream for your career.

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Vallerand, “On the Psychology of Passion: In Search of What Makes People’s Lives Most Worth Living,” January 2007, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228347175_On_the_Psychology_of_Passion_In_Search_of_What_Makes_People’s_Lives_Most_Worth_Living. 82 following your passion is fundamentally flawed: Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012), xviii. engaging work helps you develop passion: William MacAskill, Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference (New York: Avery, 2015), 147–178. 86 not be just a job but an adventure: Jeffrey Jensen Arnett and Elizabeth Fishel, “Is 30 the New 20 for Young Adults?”

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

Atul Gawande, Cal Newport, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, en.wikipedia.org, financial independence, Goodhart's law, invisible hand, Lao Tzu, late fees, meta-analysis, microaggression, Paul Graham, randomized controlled trial, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, side hustle, survivorship bias, Walter Mischel, When a measure becomes a target

the Two-Minute Rule: Hat tip to David Allen, whose version of the Two-Minute Rule states, “If it takes less than two minutes, then do it now.” For more, see David Allen, Getting Things Done (New York: Penguin, 2015). power-down habit: Author Cal Newport uses a shutdown ritual in which he does a last email inbox check, prepares his to-do list for the next day, and says “shutdown complete” to end work for the day. For more, see Cal Newport, Deep Work (Boston: Little, Brown, 2016). He always stopped journaling before it seemed like a hassle: Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (New York: Crown, 2014), 78. habit shaping: Gail B.

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Cal Newport, call centre, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, desegregation, fear of failure, Mahatma Gandhi, mental accounting, meta-analysis, peak-end rule, school choice, Sheryl Sandberg, six sigma, Steve Ballmer, TED Talk

Absurd but true.) We all love milestones. This brings us to one last point: The desire to hit milestones elicits a concerted final push of effort. To finish the marathon under 4 hours, you sprint the final quarter mile. To hit your 10,000 steps for the day, you obsessively pace the bedroom. Cal Newport, an author and computer science professor, spent years studying the habits of successful people. “From my experience, the most common trait you will consistently observe in accomplished people is an obsession with completion. Once a project falls into their horizon, they crave almost compulsively, to finish it.”

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Scott Ettl reads presidential biographies. Scott Ettl story from interview with Dan in July 2016 Nine million runners in marathons. Eric J. Allen, Patricia M. Dechow, Devin G. Pope, and George Wu (2014, July). “Reference-Dependent Preferences: Evidence from Marathon Runners,” NBER Working Paper No. 20343. Cal Newport, “obsession with completion.” Cited in blog: https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/10/18/the-art-of-the-finish-how-to-go-from-busy-to-accomplished/. Chapter 9: Practice Courage Nashville sit-ins. This case study is based on an episode called “Ain’t Scared of Your Jails,” in the brilliant PBS series Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1995).

Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One by Jenny Blake

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Cal Newport, cloud computing, content marketing, data is the new oil, diversified portfolio, do what you love, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fear of failure, future of work, high net worth, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Lean Startup, minimum viable product, Nate Silver, passive income, Ralph Waldo Emerson, risk tolerance, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, solopreneur, Startup school, stem cell, TED Talk, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, white picket fence, young professional, zero-sum game

Subject matter expert (SME): Sharing ideas, solutions, and best practices on what you know about a specific area; forecasting or interpreting trends in your industry; disseminating knowledge and projections beyond the classroom. For example: in addition to teaching computer science at Georgetown University, Cal Newport shares “study hacks” for career success in his blog and books. Software as a service (SaaS): Create software or systems that improve efficiency or automate a specific market need. For example: online scheduling tools like Calendly and ScheduleOnce make booking meetings a snap; an accountability tracking service like AskMeEvery.com sends a question you have written, such as “Did you work out today?”

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Pink Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman The Start-Up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha Plant The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks Body of Work by Pamela Slim Choose Yourself by James Altucher Scan So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman Tribes by Seth Godin Stand Out by Dorie Clark Essentialism by Greg McKeown Pilot The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy Business Model You by Tim Clark, with Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky The War of Art by Steven Pressfield Launch Smartcuts by Shane Snow The Dip by Seth Godin Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver The Intuitive Way by Penney Peirce Playing Big by Tara Mohr Lead Conscious Business by Fred Kofman The Work Revolution by Julie Clow How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg The Alliance by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier NOTES INTRODUCTION Pivot Is the New Normal People are no longer working: Tyler Cowen, “A Dearth of Investment in Young Workers,” New York Times, September 7, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/business/a-dearth-of-investment-in-young-workers.html.

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American ideology, big-box store, Cal Newport, call centre, cognitive load, collective bargaining, COVID-19, David Brooks, death from overwork, delayed gratification, do what you love, Donald Trump, financial independence, future of work, gamification, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, helicopter parent, imposter syndrome, Inbox Zero, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, late capitalism, longitudinal study, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Minecraft, move fast and break things, precariat, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, school choice, sharing economy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, TikTok, uber lyft, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Vanguard fund, work culture , working poor, workplace surveillance

That’s how social media robs of us of the moments that could counterbalance our burnout. It distances us from actual experiences as we obsess over documenting them. It turns us into needless multitaskers. As you’ll see in the next chapter, it erodes what used to be known as leisure time. And perhaps most damagingly, it destroys opportunities for solitude: what Cal Newport, drawing on the definition of Raymond Kethledge and Michael Erwin, describes as the “subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds.”4 In other words, hanging out with your own mind and all the emotions and ideas that experience promises and threatens to unearth. Ask yourself: When was the last time you were really bored?

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Joanna Stern, “Cell Phone Users Check Phones 150x a Day and Other Fun Facts,” ABCNews, May 29, 2013; Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Generation X More Addicted to Social Media Than Millennials, Report Finds,” New York Times, January 27, 2017. 2. Rina Raphael, “Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: Sleep Is Our Competition,” Fast Company, November 6, 2017. 3. Paul Lewis, “Our Minds Can Be Highjacked,” Guardian, October 6, 2017. 4. Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2019). 5. Katherine Miller, “President Trump and America’s National Nervous Breakdown,” BuzzFeed News, March 26, 2017. 6. Brad Stulberg, “Step Away from the 24-Hour News Cycle,” Outside, December 1, 2018. 7.

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World by David Sax

Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, bread and circuses, Buckminster Fuller, Cal Newport, call centre, clean water, cognitive load, commoditize, contact tracing, contact tracing app, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fiat currency, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, indoor plumbing, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Minecraft, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Thiel, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, retail therapy, RFID, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, TikTok, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unemployed young men, urban planning, walkable city, Y2K, zero-sum game

The digital future of work is thoroughly stuck in the past. Despite the tremendous advances in digital technology and their inventors’ promise to bring about a productivity revolution, it remains a mystery to economists why measures of productivity seem to have stalled over the past few decades. Cal Newport has argued over the past few years, with increasingly strident urgency in his best-selling books Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and A World Without Email and in his articles, that digital technology has actually brought us the opposite: a decline in productivity. Rather than liberating us from unproductive tasks, as promised, digital tools like email, instant messaging, video meetings, and so on have inundated us with pointless time-sucking distractions.

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Not better, just more. The future should challenge that, so we can get closer to the promise of liberation from work’s drudgery that digital aimed for but ultimately failed to deliver. A future where we can work smarter, doing more productive, meaningful work, in the time that work actually requires. Cal Newport frequently promotes ideas like “slow productivity,” where managers can only assign workers new tasks if the previous ones have been completed, which is the opposite of the modern digital multitasking that inevitably leads to burnout. We need to have an honest, difficult conversation about the boundaries between work and life and how the nineteenth-century framework of a five-day, forty-hour workweek is anathema in a world where knowledge work requires a more fluid and flexible concept of time.

Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life by Ozan Varol

Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Wiles, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Arthur Eddington, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Boeing 747, Cal Newport, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, dark matter, delayed gratification, different worldview, discovery of DNA, double helix, Elon Musk, fail fast, fake news, fear of failure, functional fixedness, Gary Taubes, Gene Kranz, George Santayana, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Inbox Zero, index fund, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johannes Kepler, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, late fees, lateral thinking, lone genius, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, move fast and break things, multiplanetary species, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occam's razor, out of africa, Peter Pan Syndrome, Peter Thiel, Pluto: dwarf planet, private spaceflight, Ralph Waldo Emerson, reality distortion field, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Schrödinger's Cat, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Skinner box, SpaceShipOne, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subprime mortgage crisis, sunk-cost fallacy, TED Talk, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Tyler Cowen, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, Yogi Berra

Damon Young, “Charles Darwin’s Daily Walks,” Psychology Today, January 12, 2015, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-think-about-exercise/201501/charles-darwins-daily-walks. 46. Pang, Rest, 100. 47. Melissa A. Schilling, Quirky: The Remarkable Story of the Traits, Foibles, and Genius of Breakthrough Innovators Who Changed the World (New York: PublicAffairs, 2018). 48. Cal Newport, “Neil Gaiman’s Advice to Writers: Get Bored,” Cal Newport website, November 11, 2016, www.calnewport.com/blog/2016/11/11/neil-gaimans-advice-to-writers-get-bored. 49. Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (New York: Scribner, 2000). 50. Mo Gawdat, Solve for Happy: Engineering Your Path to Joy (New York: North Star Way, 2017), 118. 51.

The 1% Rule: How to Fall in Love With the Process and Achieve Your Wildest Dreams by Tommy Baker

Cal Newport, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, Elon Musk, Kaizen: continuous improvement, knowledge worker, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, passive income, side hustle, solopreneur, Steve Jobs

I caught myself wanting to be social, and I made excuses to text, e-mail, or do anything but write. Needless to say, that version of the book never got to 1,000 words. I conveniently put it on the backburner, and never opened the document again. At the end of the year, I was exposed to a powerful text that shifted the way I view work, life, and business. This book was Deep Work by Cal Newport (Newport 2016), an accomplished professor, writer, and researcher who seems to accomplish more than anyone in his field. He used examples of those who took deep work to the extreme and extracted themselves from society, including Carl Jung, Benjamin Franklin, and others. I was floored by the distinctions in the book and realized how much I’d been letting the monkey mind control my life.

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future by Julia Hobsbawm

8-hour work day, Airbnb, augmented reality, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cal Newport, call centre, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Graeber, death from overwork, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, digital nomad, driverless car, emotional labour, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Greensill Capital, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Ocado, pensions crisis, remote working, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snow Crash, social distancing, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Upton Sinclair, WeWork, work culture

However we do it, in the hybrid world we will need to manage our own time – those stubborn, un-stretchable 168 hours in the week which we humans need a third of to sleep through and another third to do things like get ourselves or a child dressed, put on a kettle, clean a bathroom or pay our bills. Time is going to be judged and measured differently now, less so in seconds and minutes and hours but by tasks which we match to our environment. Quiet time to do Cal Newport’s famous Deep Work concentration. Or time to collaborate, brainstorm, exchange information in a loose way someone described to me as ‘random collision’. Or time for our private lives with the implicit agreement of managers and leaders about what success looks like professionally – leaving us to decide how to allocate the time we need to achieve this.

The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha

Airbnb, Andy Kessler, Apollo 13, Benchmark Capital, Black Swan, business intelligence, Cal Newport, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, David Brooks, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, en.wikipedia.org, fear of failure, follow your passion, future of work, game design, independent contractor, information security, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joi Ito, late fees, lateral thinking, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, out of africa, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, recommendation engine, Richard Bolles, risk tolerance, rolodex, Salesforce, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social web, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the strength of weak ties, Tony Hsieh, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen

In particular, I’d like to call out three of my teachers whose early gifts of time and insight changed my life: Lisa Cox and Tom Wessells from the Putney School, who set me on my initial path of being a public intellectual, and Jonathan Reider at Stanford University, who amplified that path. —RGH I’m grateful to the many people who supported me in this project. A special tip of the hat to Jessie Young, Stephen Dodson, Chris Yeh, and Cal Newport for going beyond the call of duty. And heartfelt thanks to my parents for everything they do. —BTC Notes Chapter 1 1. “Centuries of immigrants” and “risked everything” were inspired by Barack Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address. “Obama’s Second State of the Union (Text),” New York Times, January 25, 2011, http://​www.​nytimes.​com/​2011/​01/​26/​us/​politics/​26obama-​text.​html?​

So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport

adjacent possible, Apple II, bounce rate, business cycle, Byte Shop, Cal Newport, capital controls, clean tech, Community Supported Agriculture, deal flow, deliberate practice, do what you love, financial independence, follow your passion, Frank Gehry, information asymmetry, job satisfaction, job-hopping, knowledge worker, Mason jar, medical residency, new economy, passive income, Paul Terrell, popular electronics, renewable energy credits, Results Only Work Environment, Richard Bolles, Richard Feynman, rolodex, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stuart Kauffman, TED Talk, web application, winner-take-all economy

She not only read drafts of my work in progress but also listened through endless iterations of my thinking, always offering honest and clear feedback. She was joined in these efforts by my friend Ben Casnocha, who conceived, sold, and wrote a career-advice book concurrently with my own, allowing us to share numerous useful conversations at all stages of the process. About the Author CAL NEWPORT is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. He previously earned his PhD from MIT and his bachelor’s from Dartmouth College. Newport is the author of three books of unconventional advice for students: How to Be a High School Superstar, How to Become a Straight-A Student, and How to Win at College.

Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction by Chris Bailey

Albert Einstein, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Bluma Zeigarnik, Cal Newport, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, correlation does not imply causation, deliberate practice, functional fixedness, game design, imposter syndrome, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Parkinson's law, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, side hustle, SimCity, Skype, TED Talk, twin studies, Zipcar

Over the course of the day, we alternate between doing two types of work: focus work and collaborative work. Focus work benefits from all the attention we can bring to it—the less we’re distracted, the more deeply we’re able to focus, and the more productive we become. This allows us, as author Cal Newport has put it, to do “deep work.” The breakdown of how much focus and collaborative work you do varies depending on your job. If you’re an administrative assistant, your work may involve 90 percent collaboration and 10 percent focus work. If you’re a writer, your work may require 90 percent focus work and 10 percent collaboration.

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges

Albert Einstein, AOL-Time Warner, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bear Stearns, Cal Newport, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, Glass-Steagall Act, haute couture, Herbert Marcuse, Honoré de Balzac, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, income inequality, Joseph Schumpeter, Naomi Klein, offshore financial centre, Plato's cave, power law, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Seymour Hersh, single-payer health, social intelligence, statistical model, uranium enrichment

Above all, what is encouraged is the growth of an undisciplined form of self-interest, in which winning is what counts.15 One winter night I was returning books to Firestone Library at Princeton University. I glanced at the book the student behind the main desk was reading. It was How to Win at College by Cal Newport. The flap cover promised that it was “the only guide to getting ahead once you’ve gotten in—proven strategies for making the most of your college years, based on winning secrets from the country’s most successful students.” “What does it take to be a standout student?” the flap read. How can you make the most of your college years—graduate with honors, choose exciting activities, build a head-turning résumé, and gain access to the best post-college opportunities?

Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference by William MacAskill

barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Branko Milanovic, Cal Newport, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, clean water, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, experimental subject, follow your passion, food miles, immigration reform, income inequality, index fund, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, job automation, job satisfaction, Lean Startup, M-Pesa, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microcredit, Nate Silver, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, randomized controlled trial, self-driving car, Skype, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, William MacAskill, women in the workforce

., Well-being: Productivity and Happiness at Work (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Andrew J. Oswald, Eugenio Proto, and Daniel Sgroi, “Happiness and Productivity,” IZA discussion papers, no. 4,645 (2009), http://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/35451. “You have to trust in something”: “‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says,” Stanford Report, June 14, 2005. For criticism, see Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love (New York: Business Plus, 2012), 3–11. “You owe it to yourself to do work that you love”: Jenny Ungless and Rowan Davies, Career Ahead: The Complete Career Handbook (London: Raleo, 2008). A popular YouTube video: “What If Money Was No Object?”

The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour

4chan, anti-communist, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cal Newport, Californian Ideology, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, classic study, colonial rule, Comet Ping Pong, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, dark triade / dark tetrad, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, false flag, Filter Bubble, Gabriella Coleman, gamification, Google Chrome, Google Earth, hive mind, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invention of writing, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Ronson, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, Mohammed Bouazizi, moral panic, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, packet switching, patent troll, Philip Mirowski, post scarcity, post-industrial society, post-truth, RAND corporation, Rat Park, rent-seeking, replication crisis, sentiment analysis, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skinner box, smart cities, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, Timothy McVeigh, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, upwardly mobile, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

The destruction of an ill-founded cyber-utopianism, insufficiently attentive to the political economy of platform capitalism and its pathologies, has given rise to a counter-utopian backlash. It manifests in the proliferation of articles with headlines like, ‘I quit social media and it changed my life’. TED talks such as Cal Newport’s ‘Why you should quit social media’. Books like Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Alongside these are the innumerable head-shaking think pieces about how to combat ‘fake news’ and stop Russian trolls from destroying democracy. Increasingly, the rich absent themselves, professionalizing and delegating their social media accounts.

Beyond Diversification: What Every Investor Needs to Know About Asset Allocation by Sebastien Page

Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, backtesting, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, Bob Litterman, book value, business cycle, buy and hold, Cal Newport, capital asset pricing model, commodity super cycle, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, currency risk, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, en.wikipedia.org, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fixed income, future of work, Future Shock, G4S, global macro, implied volatility, index fund, information asymmetry, iterative process, loss aversion, low interest rates, market friction, mental accounting, merger arbitrage, oil shock, passive investing, prediction markets, publication bias, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, robo advisor, seminal paper, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, sovereign wealth fund, stochastic process, stochastic volatility, stocks for the long run, systematic bias, systematic trading, tail risk, transaction costs, TSMC, value at risk, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

I can’t imagine stronger role models for integrity, humility, investment savvy, and leadership. Our industry suffers from a dearth of skilled investors who can lead people. Rob and Bill are the real deal along both dimensions. On time management, this book took me more than two years to write, little by little, with moments of self-doubt. I started writing after I read Cal Newport’s book Deep Work—one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read. It helped me organize my time. I’ve never met Cal, but I feel I need to thank him for changing how I think about time management. Mary Rolfe and Dan Middelton deserve a lot of credit as well for their help managing my schedule. Last, about support from family, in addition to a passion for finance, I learned the importance of a strong work ethic from my father, Jean-Paul Page.

Reset by Ronald J. Deibert

23andMe, active measures, air gap, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Cal Newport, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, cashless society, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, confounding variable, contact tracing, contact tracing app, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, information retrieval, information security, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megastructure, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, New Journalism, NSO Group, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-truth, proprietary trading, QAnon, ransomware, Robert Mercer, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sorting algorithm, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, techlash, technological solutionism, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, TSMC, undersea cable, unit 8200, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

At the luxurious Grand Velas Riviera Nayarit in Mexico, guests who opt in to the digital detox program are met by a concierge who “cleanses” their suite “by removing the flat screen television from the room, replacing it with classic board games and then whisking away their personal electronic devices … to a safe.”393 A growing number of self-help books advocate for some variation of digital retreat. Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism suggests users follow his guidelines for a thirty-day “digital declutter” process, followed by a conservative approach to the use of social media that includes regular, lengthy periods of solitude.394 Recognizing the growing demand arising out of the retreat movement, social media platforms have even begun to build in tools and techniques to assist in the digital cleanse.

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models by Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann

Abraham Maslow, Abraham Wald, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, anti-pattern, Anton Chekhov, Apollo 13, Apple Newton, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Broken windows theory, business process, butterfly effect, Cal Newport, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark pattern, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, fake news, fear of failure, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, framing effect, friendly fire, fundamental attribution error, Goodhart's law, Gödel, Escher, Bach, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, housing crisis, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, incognito mode, income inequality, information asymmetry, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Nash: game theory, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, lateral thinking, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, LuLaRoe, Lyft, mail merge, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Network effects, nocebo, nuclear winter, offshore financial centre, p-value, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, placebo effect, Potemkin village, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, premature optimization, price anchoring, principal–agent problem, publication bias, recommendation engine, remote working, replication crisis, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, school choice, Schrödinger's Cat, selection bias, Shai Danziger, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Streisand effect, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, systems thinking, The future is already here, The last Blockbuster video rental store is in Bend, Oregon, The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uber lyft, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, urban planning, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, warehouse robotics, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, When a measure becomes a target, wikimedia commons

And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it’s a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind. If you are constantly switching between activities, you don’t end up doing much creative thinking at all. Author Cal Newport refers to the type of thinking that leads to breakthrough solutions as deep work. He advocates for dedicating long, uninterrupted periods of time to making progress on your most important problem. In a November 6, 2014, lecture titled “How to Operate,” entrepreneur and investor Keith Rabois tells a story about how Peter Thiel used this concept when he was CEO of PayPal: [Peter] used to insist at PayPal that every single person could only do exactly one thing.

The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning, Revised and Updated by Gautam Baid

Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, backtesting, barriers to entry, beat the dealer, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, book value, business process, buy and hold, Cal Newport, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commoditize, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, do what you love, Dunning–Kruger effect, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, equity risk premium, Everything should be made as simple as possible, fear index, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, follow your passion, framing effect, George Santayana, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, Henry Singleton, hindsight bias, Hyman Minsky, index fund, intangible asset, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Masayoshi Son, mental accounting, Milgram experiment, moral hazard, Nate Silver, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive income, passive investing, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, power law, price anchoring, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, six sigma, software as a service, software is eating the world, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, stocks for the long run, subscription business, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, tail risk, Teledyne, the market place, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, time value of money, transaction costs, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, wealth creators, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Market’s follies, and emphasizing the margin of safety at all times. Benjamin Franklin taught me the virtues of good personhood and focusing on daily rituals with complete integrity. Napoleon Hill, David Schwartz, and Ian Cassel taught me that the right mind-set is the starting point for all riches. Geoff Colvin, Daniel Coyle, Cal Newport, and Anders Ericsson educated me on the science behind skill development. Charles Duhigg and James Clear educated me on the science behind positive habit formation. Robert Maurer and Darren Hardy enlightened me on the incredible power of compounding small, consistent, positive actions over a long period of time.

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Timothy Ferriss

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, Alexander Shulgin, Alvin Toffler, An Inconvenient Truth, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Madoff, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Beryl Markham, billion-dollar mistake, Black Swan, Blue Bottle Coffee, Blue Ocean Strategy, blue-collar work, book value, Boris Johnson, Buckminster Fuller, business process, Cal Newport, call centre, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, Columbine, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, David Brooks, David Graeber, deal flow, digital rights, diversification, diversified portfolio, do what you love, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fault tolerance, fear of failure, Firefox, follow your passion, fulfillment center, future of work, Future Shock, Girl Boss, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, Howard Zinn, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, life extension, lifelogging, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mason jar, Menlo Park, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, PageRank, Paradox of Choice, passive income, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, phenotype, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, post scarcity, post-work, power law, premature optimization, private spaceflight, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, selection bias, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social graph, software as a service, software is eating the world, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, vertical integration, Wall-E, Washington Consensus, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Feynman), Recession Proof Graduate (Charlie Hoehn), Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy), The Martian (Andy Weir) Kamkar, Samy: Influence (Robert Cialdini) Kaskade: Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath (Ted Koppel) Kass, Sam: Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari), The Art of Fielding (Chad Harbach), Plenty; Jerusalem; Plenty More (Yotam Ottolenghi), The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs (Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg), A History of World Agriculture (Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Roudart) Kelly, Kevin: The Adventures of Johnny Bunko (Daniel Pink), So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Cal Newport), Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts), Future Shock (Alvin Toffler), Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (AnnaLee Saxenian), What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (John Markoff), The Qur’an, The Bible, The Essential Rumi; The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers (Yoel Hoffman), It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff (Peter Walsh) Koppelman, Brian: What Makes Sammy Run?