Cal Newport
Computer science professor · author of Deep Work
Georgetown computer scientist and author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism and Slow Productivity. He argues that the scarce resource is uninterrupted concentration, and that most productivity advice ignores it. Famously, he has never had a personal social media account.
- Entries
- 28
- Does
- 18
- Recommends
- 9
- Discusses
- 1
Gear
7 pieces of gear in this stack
- GearDoes it$$$Expensive: Several hundred dollars and up.
Home gym
Weights go in the garage gym the family built during COVID, 45 to 50 minutes before dinner. He calls it a psychological handover from work to family time, and says the fixed slot forces him to stop working on time.
Source: Huberman Lab podcast transcript: Cal NewportView item: Home gymOn record from 7 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 2 recommend it - GearDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Paper notebook
Really good notebooks have always made a difference for him, and he means paper ones. As a postdoc he spent about $70 on a bound lab notebook with archival paper, partly so he would take what went into it more seriously. Going back through it years later he counted seven papers or grants whose core ideas started there.
Source: Huberman Lab podcast transcript: Cal NewportView item: Paper notebookOn record from 3 of 62 tracked people: 3 do it - GearDoes it$$$Mid: Roughly $50 to $500, or up to $50/month.
Dedicated writing desk
The library where he writes has no permanent technology in it, no computer, monitor or printer. What it does have is a desk he had built to fit the room by a Maine company that makes desks for college libraries. Printers, filing and the big monitors sit in a separate home office.
Source: Huberman Lab podcast transcript: Cal NewportView item: Dedicated writing deskOn record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it - GearDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Paper time-block planner
Hand-formatted generic notebooks for years to satisfy his time-block planning before designing his own paper planner.
Source: calnewport.com: my new plannerView item: Paper time-block plannerOn record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it - GearDoes it$$$Expensive: Several hundred dollars and up.
reMarkable
Paper is still his default, but he said he had recently been messing around with a reMarkable, the E ink writing tablet. His description: like a Kindle you can write on, with pages that do not run out.
Source: Huberman Lab podcast transcript: Cal NewportVisit remarkable.com (opens in a new tab)On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it - GearDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Uni-ball roller pen
Working out an idea on a hike is pen and paper for him: a notebook and a Uni-ball micro 0.5mm roller pen. He reckons a 0.7 starts to bleed, and says the finer tip is what you need for the epsilons and exponents in his computer science work.
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #568 transcriptView item: Uni-ball roller penOn record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it - GearDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Whiteboard
When offices were set up near his house, a whiteboard was one of the first things to go in, because he says computer science collaborators cannot work on theory without one. He traces that to the MIT theory floor, where two or three people at the same board pushed each other into a higher level of concentration.
Source: Huberman Lab podcast transcript: Cal NewportView item: WhiteboardOn record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it
Apps
4 apps in this stack
- AppDoes itFREE, no cost
Google Docs
Answering a reader question about his weekly plan.txt files in a 2010 comment on his own blog, he said the old ones used to sit in a folder on his desktop and that he had moved them to Google Docs, keeping one document per month with a space for each week.
Source: calnewport.com: plan.txt post, 2010 commentVisit docs.google.com (opens in a new tab)On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 do it - AppDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Scrivener
Switched to Scrivener when he became a New Yorker contributor, and every article he writes there goes through it. He picks out the double pane view, which lets him keep the piece he is citing open beside the draft. At the time he had not yet tried it on a book.
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #568 transcriptVisit literatureandlatte.com (opens in a new tab)On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it - AppDoes itFREE, no cost
Trello
Trello holds what he is working on. He describes it as virtual index cards in piles, with files and notes attached to each one, and says the point is that nothing gets forgotten and a team can see the same list.
Source: Huberman Lab podcast transcript: Cal NewportVisit trello.com (opens in a new tab)On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it - AppRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Website and app blocker
Has long advised hard blocking software as a way to start deep work training, and he is dismissive of gentler app-based wellness nudges.
Source: calnewport.com: digital wellness for grown upsView item: Website and app blockerOn record from 4 of 62 tracked people: 2 do it, 2 recommend it
Books
4 books in this stack
- BookRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Deep Work
Undistracted concentration is a trainable skill and increasingly the source of value in knowledge work, which is the argument of his own book.
Source: calnewport.com: his booksView item: Deep WorkOn record from 6 of 62 tracked people: 5 recommend it, 1 has discussed it - BookRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Digital Minimalism
Selecting a small number of technologies that serve what you value, and ignoring the rest without guilt, is what his own book asks for.
Source: calnewport.com: on digital minimalismView item: Digital MinimalismOn record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it, 1 has discussed it - BookRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Slow Productivity
Makes the case in his own book for fewer commitments, a natural working pace, and an obsession with quality over visible busyness.
Source: calnewport.com: his booksView item: Slow ProductivityOn record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it, 1 has discussed it - BookRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
So Good They Can't Ignore You
His own book.
Source: calnewport.com: his booksView item: So Good They Can't Ignore YouOn record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it
Protocols
5 entriesStructured routines and practices with a defined method.
Ten to twenty minutes each evening go on blocking out the next day, and he rewrites the plan whenever it breaks.
Source: calnewport.com: planning every minute of your work dayConcentration blocks go on his calendar four weeks ahead, and he protects them like appointments. Fragmented attention is what he designs against.
Source: calnewport.com: from deep tallies to deep schedulesEnds every workday with a fixed review of open loops and a spoken phrase marking work finished, so the evening is genuinely off.
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #568 transcriptRecommends a full thirty-day break from optional technologies followed by deliberate reintroduction, not gradual cutting back.
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #568 transcriptNeutral on the pomodoro technique, he prefers breaks taken when concentration flags rather than on a fixed timer.
Source: calnewport.com: on deep breaks
Habits
8 entriesRecurring behaviors recorded in public statements.
Books daily: high-quality leisure is what makes reduced screen time sustainable rather than empty, he argues.
Source: Digital MinimalismDedicated thinking time comes from regular walks, often spent working through a specific problem away from any screen.
Source: Deep Questions podcastFirst thing on arriving at his office he writes; two books came out of the 9 to 10:30am slot.
Source: calnewport.com: my focus-centric work dayMonday mornings go on planning the coming work week. He emails the plan to himself, then allocates individual days against a sensible picture of the week.
Source: calnewport.com: plan your week in advanceHas never had a personal social media account, and argues the professional benefits people assume they would lose are rarely real.
Source: calnewport.com: resolve to live a deep lifeDefines solitude as being free of input from other minds, and coined solitude deprivation for the constant opposite.
Source: calnewport.com: spend more time aloneRecommends charging the phone outside the bedroom: one of the simplest structural fixes to compulsive use.
Source: Digital MinimalismAdvises a morning with no meetings, calls, messages, email or internet until noon, so the day starts on your own work.
Source: calnewport.com: the rise of the monk mode morning
In their own words
Checked word for word against the linked source
“So the 30-day declutter is at the core of my philosophy of digital minimalism. So this was my take on what do we do about the fact that, starting around 2016, people became very uneasy about their phones in a way that they weren’t in 2014.”
The Tim Ferriss Show #568 transcript (opens in a new tab) · 4 Feb 2022 “At the end of your workday, you go through and you close, you use the David Allen term, all the open loops. … And then you have to do some sort of demonstrative ritual at that point to indicate that you did all those checks.”
The Tim Ferriss Show #568 transcript (opens in a new tab) · 4 Feb 2022
Episodes from the feed
Show archive, Deep Questions with Cal Newport (opens in a new tab)Last fetched . A title without a link is an episode the feed publishes no page of its own for.
- How I’m Organizing My Life this Fall | Advice (opens in a new tab) · 52m
- Did OpenAI Create “Secret AI Civilizations”? | Tech Decoded (opens in a new tab) · 27m
- Rethinking the Deep Life Stack (Again!) | Monday Advice (opens in a new tab) · 1h 20m
- Has AI “Gone Rogue”? Let’s Look Closer… | Tech Decoded (opens in a new tab) · 36m
- How to Build a Cognitive Training Plan | Monday Advice (opens in a new tab) · 1h 3m
Stack notes are paraphrased. Anything in quotation marks is a short excerpt copied from the transcript it links to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.