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I recently read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport, and I wish I had employed this 50-page rejection rule instead of pushing through the whole thing. I’m a big

by mlthoughts2018 8y ago

I recently read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport, and I wish I had employed this 50-page rejection rule instead of pushing through the whole thing. I’m a big proponent of deep work habits, avoiding open-plan offices, etc., ... most of the stuff the book talks about. But it is just so poorly and shallowly written, mixing in little factoids or sound bytes that have no real evidentiary weight behind them and as a result just go in one ear and out the other. Most of the advice is entirely subjective, supported by anecdotes about unrealistically successful people who can use their positions of luck-driven-success to be sounding boards for whatever grandiose selection bias and retrospective plaudits they want. I was very disappointed after seeing the book praised often here on HN. But boy, it was a total stinker and there are many better books on the topic (Peopleware, for one). The whole book of Deep Work could have (and should have) been summarized with about 5 pages of bullet points, and published just as some blog post. It is absolutely dreadful as a long form book.

randcraw 8y ago
I recently read "Deep Work" too. I found it unenlightening but generally well written. Newport's main failing was his laser focus on how to schedule your waking hours to spend more time doing deep work. At least half of the book addressed only this. Personally, I'd have preferred to hear more about what deep work is, what ends it serves, and how to do it better. But I guess we were supposed to read Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow" for that. Mostly I came away from the book with deep insights into how Newport manages his daily routine for maximum productivity. Useful info perhaps, but not what I sought. However, as a self-help book, Deep Work shines. And seen in this light, its many 5 star reviews start to make more sense.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I would disagree in the strongest terms. The book is essentially the opposite of what you described. It’s strong points are the general discussions of what deep work is and the differences with shallow work. As a self-help book, it’s beyond pitiful. The advice given is often totally impractical for most people and is extremely hard to read because of the meandering inclusion of useless anecdotes about what this or that CEO does or the throw-away sound byte statistics cherry picked from old research studies and quoted out of context. The closest thing to a self-help guideline that the book gives is to just state, unqualified, that you should make a ritual out of dedicating certain hours to deep work that cannot be interrupted by shallow work (unless you’re a journalist, in which case he advises some totally fictitious concept of just grabbing deep work time in an ad hoc way, whenever you can). Really, I was interested in reading it primarily as a self-help guide for how to effectively enforce deep work time in my schedule despite meeting-oriented company culture and open plan offices. In terms of self-help, not only does the book fail to deliver anything useful, but it could even be considered harmful to the extent that people buy into the anecdotes and sound bytes in the book.

randcraw 8y ago

I recently read "Deep Work" too. I found it unenlightening but generally well written. Newport's main failing was his laser focus on how to schedule your waking hours to spend more time doing deep work. At least half of the book addressed only this. Personally, I'd have preferred to hear more about what deep work is, what ends it serves, and how to do it better. But I guess we were supposed to read Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow" for that. Mostly I came away from the book with deep insights into how Newport manages his daily routine for maximum productivity. Useful info perhaps, but not what I sought. However, as a self-help book, Deep Work shines. And seen in this light, its many 5 star reviews start to make more sense.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I would disagree in the strongest terms. The book is essentially the opposite of what you described. It’s strong points are the general discussions of what deep work is and the differences with shallow work. As a self-help book, it’s beyond pitiful. The advice given is often totally impractical for most people and is extremely hard to read because of the meandering inclusion of useless anecdotes about what this or that CEO does or the throw-away sound byte statistics cherry picked from old research studies and quoted out of context. The closest thing to a self-help guideline that the book gives is to just state, unqualified, that you should make a ritual out of dedicating certain hours to deep work that cannot be interrupted by shallow work (unless you’re a journalist, in which case he advises some totally fictitious concept of just grabbing deep work time in an ad hoc way, whenever you can). Really, I was interested in reading it primarily as a self-help guide for how to effectively enforce deep work time in my schedule despite meeting-oriented company culture and open plan offices. In terms of self-help, not only does the book fail to deliver anything useful, but it could even be considered harmful to the extent that people buy into the anecdotes and sound bytes in the book.