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I honestly would give zero fs about what he thinks is best, except for the fact that Cal Newport is the author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work, t

I honestly would give zero fs about what he thinks is best, except for the fact that Cal Newport is the author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work, two books that changed how I view things and I believe made me understand better what's really going on in the world. Though I didn't become the Taylor Swift of coding, I think that I ended up in a good place in part thanks to his books. Another reason why this article probably resonated with many is that they see the issue in their own or their friends life. Some can't just simply work, or be with their loved ones, they constantly need something, YouTube in the background, minutes of scrolling through Twitter/HN/Facebook/Instagram, some addicted to porn, etc, and some started to pinpoint this issue to "overstimulation".

Exuma 3y ago
That is awesome he helped you, I'm happy to hear that.
dnissley 3y ago
What practices did you adopt as a result of reading his books?
- serial_dev 3y ago
  Nothing that sounds immediately impressive, just the small things that made an impact. I learned to notice when I interrupted my deep work, for example while waiting for the build to finish I'd browse HN, or watch YouTube videos while working, listening to podcasts in the background, etc. I no longer forced myself to work with the pomodoro technique as it intentionally interrupts your focus (it's still good if you struggle to get anything done at all). I also learned that the relatively small work needed to uplevel from being average to good (so that people in my field know me) is worth it, so organized meetups, gave talks and had a podcast. Another important point of his book (so good they can't ignore you) was that, paraphrasing, passion is BS, so I learned to push through the initial phase of learning something new and work hard enough to enjoy basically anything as I got better and better. It's not perfect, I'm not perfect, but it really helped me to stop being a scatterbrain, slightly below average developer.
chrisbrandow 3y ago
I truly believe that ~50% of why I was able to make a career transition into iOS programming at the age of ~42 was b/c of "So Good They Can’t Ignore You".

Exuma 3y ago

That is awesome he helped you, I'm happy to hear that.

dnissley 3y ago

What practices did you adopt as a result of reading his books?

serial_dev 3y ago
Nothing that sounds immediately impressive, just the small things that made an impact. I learned to notice when I interrupted my deep work, for example while waiting for the build to finish I'd browse HN, or watch YouTube videos while working, listening to podcasts in the background, etc. I no longer forced myself to work with the pomodoro technique as it intentionally interrupts your focus (it's still good if you struggle to get anything done at all). I also learned that the relatively small work needed to uplevel from being average to good (so that people in my field know me) is worth it, so organized meetups, gave talks and had a podcast. Another important point of his book (so good they can't ignore you) was that, paraphrasing, passion is BS, so I learned to push through the initial phase of learning something new and work hard enough to enjoy basically anything as I got better and better. It's not perfect, I'm not perfect, but it really helped me to stop being a scatterbrain, slightly below average developer.

chrisbrandow 3y ago

I truly believe that ~50% of why I was able to make a career transition into iOS programming at the age of ~42 was b/c of "So Good They Can’t Ignore You".