I really enjoyed meeting so many of you at my Politics and Prose event a couple weeks ago. It was meaningful for me to be ... Read more The post Two Chances to See Me Next Week appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Earlier this month, a group of scientists from universities around the world published the results of an ingeniously simple experiment in the journal PLoS ONE. ... Read more The post Can You Tweet Your Way to Impact? appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
A brief book update: I wanted to share that Slow Productivity debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list last week! Which is ... Read more The post ChatGPT Can’t Plan. This Matters. appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
I know it’s been a minute since I’ve published one of my normal essays. I’ll be returning to these soon as the chaos of the ... Read more The post Come See Me Saturday in DC + TikTok Falters appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
My podcast producer recently turned me onto a show called Acquired, which features its co-hosts, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, diving deep into the backstories ... Read more The post How the Acquired Podcast Became a Sensation appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In 1951, Abraham Joshua Heschel published a monograph titled simply, The Sabbath. It consisted of ten short chapters, comprising of less than a hundred total ... Read more The post Heschel on the Joys of Slowness appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
It’s hard to believe that we’re less than two months away from the publication of my new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment ... Read more The post My new book: Slow Productivity appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Someone recently forwarded me an essay from a blogger named Henrik Karlsson. It opens with an admission: “When I started writing online, the advice I ... Read more The post On Slow Writing appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
One of the least understood components of my time-block planner is the “daily metrics” box that tops every pair of planning pages. Given that we’ve ... Read more The post On Metrics and Resolve appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In the fall of 2016, I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that pushed back against the conventional wisdom that social media was ... Read more The post Standing Up to Technology appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Earlier this week, Neil Gaiman was interviewed on Icelandic television. Around the twenty-five minute mark of the program, the topic turned to the author’s thoughts ... Read more The post Neil Gaiman’s Radical Vision for the Future of the Internet appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In the context of knowledge work there are two primary ways to communicate. The first is synchronous, which requires all parties to be interacting at ... Read more The post Should This Meeting Have Been an Email? appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Starting a few years ago, ads for a web-based software start-up called Monday.com began to show up everywhere online. A subsequent S.E.C. filing revealed that ... Read more The post The Quiet Workflow Revolution appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Disruption and disorder have always stalked the human condition. This reality sometimes plays out on the grand scale, as in the brutality of terror and ... Read more The post On Disruption and Distraction appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
The other day the low tire pressure indicator came on in my car. I didn’t see an obvious flat, so the likely explanation was some ... Read more The post On Tire Pressure and Productivity appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In the summer of 2022, an engineer named Keegan McNamara, who was at the time working for a fundraising technology startup, found his way to ... Read more The post On Tools and the Aesthetics of Work appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In July, Meta announced Threads, a new social media service that was obviously designed to steal market share from Twitter (which I still refuse to ... Read more The post We Don’t Need a New Twitter appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Within my particular subfield of theoretical computer science there’s perhaps no individual more celebrated than Edsger Dijkstra. His career spanned half-a-century, beginning with a young ... Read more The post Edsger Dijkstra’s One-Day Workweek appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In a recent article written for Slate, journalist Dan Kois recounts the shock his younger coworkers expressed when they discovered that he had, earlier in ... Read more The post When Work Didn’t Follow You Home appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
I found myself recently, as one does, watching the mini-documentary featurettes included on the DVD for the popular 2014 Keanu Reeves movie, John Wick — ... Read more The post On the Slow Productivity of John Wick appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Believe it or not, one of the most important technology announcements of the past few months had nothing to do with artificial intelligence. While critics ... Read more The post The End of Screens? appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Not long ago, my kids’ school asked me to give a talk to middle school students and their parents about smartphones. I’ve written extensively on ... Read more The post On Kids and Smartphones appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Based on a tip from a reader, I recently tumbled down an esoteric rabbit hole aimed at the writing habits of the novelist Danielle Steel. ... Read more The post Danielle Steel and the Tragic Appeal of Overwork appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In recent months, I’ve received quite a few emails from readers expressing concerns about ChatGPT. I remained quiet on this topic, however, as I was ... Read more The post My Thoughts on ChatGPT appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
An article appearing last month in the Los Angeles Times book section opens with a nondescript picture of a young man in a Hawaiian shirt ... Read more The post On Taylor Koekkoek’s Defiant Disconnection appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Back in 2016, I reported on a rumor that was circulating about employee dissatisfaction at Meta (then, Facebook). Developers, it seemed, were unhappy with the ... Read more The post Meta Rediscovers the Cubicle appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a case that has the potential to fundamentally reshape the internet as we know it. As ... Read more The post On Section 230 and the Dream of a More Human Internet appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a case that has the potential to fundamentally reshape the internet as we know it. As ... Read more The post On Section 230 and the Dream of a More Human Internet appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a case that has the potential to fundamentally reshape the internet as we know it. As you might expect, this caught my attention. The focus of the case is a single sentence, found in Section 230(c)(1) of 1996’s Communication … | Continue reading
A reader recently pointed me toward an intriguing letter, reproduced a few weeks ago in the always-impressive Areopagus newsletter, that was originally sent from Pliny ... Read more The post Pliny the Younger on Happy and Honorable Seclusion appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
A reader recently pointed me toward an intriguing letter, reproduced a few weeks ago in the always-impressive Areopagus newsletter, that was originally sent from Pliny ... Read more The post Pliny the Younger on Happy and Honorable Seclusion appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
A reader recently pointed me toward an intriguing letter, reproduced a few weeks ago in the always-impressive Areopagus newsletter, that was originally sent from Pliny the Younger to his friend Minicius Fundanus around 100 AD. Among other topics, the letter touches on the difficu … | Continue reading
Earlier this week, the New York Times Magazine published a conversation between me and the journalist David Marchese. We touched on a lot of the ideas about digital technology and the workplace that I elaborate in my 2021 book, A World Without Email. At one point during the inte … | Continue reading
Earlier this week, the New York Times Magazine published a conversation between me and the journalist David Marchese. We touched on a lot of the ... Read more The post On Email and Horses appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Earlier this week, the New York Times Magazine published a conversation between me and the journalist David Marchese. We touched on a lot of the ... Read more The post On Email and Horses appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
When the Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro was a boy growing up in Guadalajara, his mother bought him a Victorian-style writing desk. “I kept my comic books in the drawers, my books and horror action figures on the shelves, and my writing and drawing stuff on the … | Continue reading
When the Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro was a boy growing up in Guadalajara, his mother bought him a Victorian-style writing desk. “I kept ... Read more The post Guillermo del Toro’s Inspiration Machine appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
When the Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro was a boy growing up in Guadalajara, his mother bought him a Victorian-style writing desk. “I kept ... Read more The post Guillermo del Toro’s Inspiration Machine appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In my latest essay for The New Yorker, published earlier this week, I tackled the topic of “quiet quitting.” This idea careened into mainstream discourse last summer, powered by a viral TikTok video posted by a twentysomething engineer named Zaid Khan. Here’s the transcript: “I r … | Continue reading
In my latest essay for The New Yorker, published earlier this week, I tackled the topic of “quiet quitting.” This idea careened into mainstream discourse ... Read more The post On Quiet Quitting appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In my latest essay for The New Yorker, published earlier this week, I tackled the topic of “quiet quitting.” This idea careened into mainstream discourse ... Read more The post On Quiet Quitting appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Back in 2019, when I was on tour for my book, Digital Minimalism, I chatted with more than a few parents. I was surprised by ... Read more The post On Teenage Luddites appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Back in 2019, when I was on tour for my book, Digital Minimalism, I chatted with more than a few parents. I was surprised by ... Read more The post On Teenage Luddites appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
Back in 2019, when I was on tour for my book, Digital Minimalism, I chatted with more than a few parents. I was surprised by how many told me a similar story: their teenage children had become fed up with the shallowness of online life and decided, all on their own, to deactivate … | Continue reading
In a recent interview for the BBC podcast Spark & Fire, the novelist Ann Patchett discusses some of the difficulties that come along with finding ... Read more The post Ann Patchett on Scheduling Creativity appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In a recent interview for the BBC podcast Spark & Fire, the novelist Ann Patchett discusses some of the difficulties that come along with finding ... Read more The post Ann Patchett on Scheduling Creativity appeared first on Cal Newport. | Continue reading
In a recent interview for the BBC podcast Spark & Fire, the novelist Ann Patchett discusses some of the difficulties that come along with finding success as a writer. “It used to be a novel lived very nicely in my head as a constant companion,” she explains. “As time goes on and … | Continue reading
Several readers pointed me toward a recent NPR Marketplace segement about a fully-remote tech company called Zapier that tried an interesting experiment last summer: they ... Read more The post What Happened When Zapier Cancelled Meetings for a Week? (Hint: Not Much) appeared fir … | Continue reading