Cal Newport

Ever since I learned that people's score on an IQ drops by 15 points if they're regularly distracted during it (eg. by a phone), I've been pretty wary of my attention. 15 points of intelligence is a _big_ price to pay for anything! About a year ago I got rid of my smart phone, and downgraded back to a flip phone. It's been working pretty well for me.

Digital Minimalism is Cal Newport's take on this phenomenon, and what to do about it. It gave me some vindication that maybe I'm not crazy for show more not wanting to sign up for instagram. Perhaps more importantly, it discusses a significantly less-haphazard-than-mine-was approach to weening yourself off these services.

The thesis of the book is "your smartphone provides much less value than you think," but even if you already agree with that, there is value to be found in this book. Newport successfully argues that we've collectively lost the idea of active leisure and do-it-yourself-edness as a society, and suggests that these activities are a healthier substitute for mindlessly dicking around on our phones/netflix/what-have-you.

It's not Newport's best book (So Good They Can't Ignore You is), but it's worth a read. show less

This was an interesting listen as apparently it was written maybe five plus years ago, and the amount of change in social media has made some of this book obsolete. I mean as far as I can tell he seems to be mainly FB focused, and I don’t know if Snapchat was even around then and TikTok definitely wasn’t. Anyway it was interesting for me mostly because I apparently have organically become a “digital minimalist” just by not wanting to deal with most of it while also valuing my show more solitude to a ridiculous degree. I wonder if the author cares to revisit it considering all the changes that have taken place, and maybe he can do some sort of follow up research with his group who initially changed their ways (i.e. where are they now?). show less

A student said to Master Ichu, “Please write for me something of great wisdom.” Master Ichu picked up his brush and wrote one word: “Attention.” The student said, “Is that all?” The master wrote, “Attention. Attention.” The student became irritable. “That doesn’t seem profound or subtle to me.” In response, Master Ichu wrote simply, “Attention. Attention. Attention.” Frustrated, the student demanded, “What does the word ‘attention’ mean?” Master Ichu show more replied, “Attention means attention.”

But no one will publish your book with only the word "Attention" in it, hence we have this one instead. To be fair, this book has to prove its thesis. We don't just accept what the master says without studies using fMRI and references to the brain these days. Am I suggesting we should? Our culture is a skeptical one in which ideas need to be marketed and someone claiming authority is assumed to be operating out of self interest. This book is steeped in the values of western capitalism, its masters having credentials from elite institutions or being CEOs of corporations. Though, in theory, we could attempt to replicate the results of experiments, in practice, we follow today's masters. We envy them and wish to join their ranks or even to replace them. This book is telling us (and selling us) the magic trick that it claims can enable us to do so.

Its thesis is you, the reader, have a chance. Great things are produced by the right kind of work, not by the specially endowed. That kind of work is called "deep" and research shows that those we thought specially endowed actually do a lot of deep work. What's more, most people (i.e. readers of this book, and especially those people who aren't readers like us) do practically none. Instead our attention is scattered for various reasons, some cultural (e.g. Facebook) and some due to lack of discipline. Though deep work is ultimately deeply satisfying, few of us ever get to taste that satisfaction.

The rest of the book suggests those "weird tricks" that can help us engage in deep work. Examples are getting off social media, engaging in habit-forming rituals supporting deep work, investing lavishly in tools for the work as an expression of commitment, emulating others who choose the life of depth. Some of these tricks are phrased as rules, one of which (rule#1 in chapter 4)is to "focus on the wildly important."

I would like to suggest a reversal of cause and effect here. To me, those whom the author calls deep focus on "wildly important goals" do so because they find them wildly important. They pay attention to what they find interesting out of interest, not out of following a rule. Even singling out goals doesn't really happen for these people. The goals call out to them and they respond. Mr. Newport's example of Bill Gates's "preternatural deep work ability" is a case in point. It wasn't an ability but an inability to do otherwise. If you've never experienced that kind of obsession, you don't realize that this isn't the kind of mind state that you cultivate just for the results. It's more like the kind of mind state that were it not having positive effects, would get you diagnosed with a mental illness.

Often, while reading this book, I felt like I was experiencing an infomercial. What makes this especially ironic is that advertising is a major source of distraction in our culture and our willingness to subject ourselves to it is symptomatic of our undervaluing our attention. I don't want to say that cultivating more focus and less distraction can't improve one's life, but that there's something shallow about turning depth into a growth tool. show less

I am always amused by books that never mention the word capitalism and have no intention of critiquing it, yet do just that. 'A World Without Email' is the latest example I've come across. Newport sets out to explain the problems caused by email's domination of the knowledge economy and suggest solutions. He grounds his analysis in a hilariously (to me) neoliberal combination of theories: predominantly technological determinism and evolutionary psychology, with a dash of utilitarianism. The show more iniquitous tragedy of the commons also gets an airing. In his view, the stress of constantly full inboxes is due to how email was invented and fundamental human social dynamics. What he struggles to explain using these theories is why nearly all businesses, indeed employers, oblige their non-manual workers to respond constantly to emails. In his view, this is inefficient as knowledge workers can create more value by focusing on their actual area of expertise, rather than the more general task of sending endless messages.

So why is email ubiquitous? Could it be because capitalism is not actually a system that pursues efficiency or use value, but one that exploits labour and natural resources to exhaustion in pursuit of shareholder returns? Newport wonders why the adoption of email resulted in administrators being downsized and admin tasks piled onto knowledge workers. I think Marx can assist here: capitalism tends towards reducing labour-intensity of production and increasing capital-intensity, both of goods and services. In the 21st century, this manifests as adopting new technology so employees have to work more hours for the same pay, rather than hiring more people. Email overload looks to me like a recent symptom of the same old disease.

Despite not acknowledging that capitalism might be the problem here, Newport does offer interesting insights. The hyperactive hive mind of constant text-based communication is a useful conceptualisation of the weirdness of 21st century knowledge work. This presumption of constant availability and immediate response to communication is very strange, as it actually slows work down and by its nature impedes considered thought. The book suggests avoiding the use of email as much as possible, restricting how often it is checked, and creating more tailored processes and protocols instead. I believe this is also known as 'bureaucracy' and I found Newport's carefully argued support for it fascinating. How I miss [a:David Graeber|29101|David Graeber|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1479657149p2/29101.jpg], RIP, whose perspective on this I would love to read. In [b:The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy|22245334|The Utopia of Rules On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy|David Graeber|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1417415465l/22245334._SY75_.jpg|41620170], Graeber described bureaucracy as a means of avoiding emotional labour by automating responses without considering individual circumstances. That is indeed what Newport thinks should happen, as the time and attention required to craft individual responses to email is burning employees out. He is proposing to extend the automation principles already predominating in industrial and ill-paid service jobs to better paid knowledge employment.

You really can't win under capitalist employment: either you have so much alleged autonomy that you're overwhelmed by competing demands, or you have virtually none at all. The compromise this book seeks for knowledge workers is setting up rules and processes for predictable repeated tasks, streamlining communication, and maximising time that can be spent concentrating on so-called deep work. I don't disagree with these aims, however I think they're very hard to achieve in most actual workplaces. Project management methods, including those explained in case studies here, have attempted these things for decades while communication has only grown more frenetic. In his conclusion, Newport frames the need to escape the hyperactive hive mind in terms of productivity gains. I think that is just part of what needs to be critiqued, as constant responsiveness must be linked to surveillance capitalism (the best term for our current economic system I've come across so far, thank you [a:Shoshana Zuboff|710768|Shoshana Zuboff|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1563298665p2/710768.jpg]).

As the preceding paragraphs might suggest, my reason for reading 'A World Without Email' wasn't actually that I'm struggling with a deluge of email myself. It was mostly my appreciation of Newport's [b:Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World|40672036|Digital Minimalism Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World|Cal Newport|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1549433350l/40672036._SY75_.jpg|63988240] and interest in seeing how the principles articulated there would be extended to the world of work. Just as while reading [b:Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World|40672036|Digital Minimalism Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World|Cal Newport|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1549433350l/40672036._SY75_.jpg|63988240], I found that I'm already doing several things that Newport suggests out of instinctive antipathy for constant communication. The closest I got to being overwhelmed by emails was in academia, when multitudes of students would send me queries. This was still better than them actually turning up in my office, though, as in most cases my response was, "The information you need is at this link". Even in that job, I didn't feel the obligation of instant response that Newport treats as inherent to the human psyche. Then and now, unless an email specifically states that an urgent response is required I'll get to it when I'm ready, after some thought/procrastination/coffee. Also, I believe in asking closed questions in emails. None of this, "When are you free?" or "Tell me what you think". Instead: "Are you available at 3pm or 4pm on Tuesday?" or "Here is my understanding of the issue. Do you have any changes to suggest?"

Now let me tell you my ultimate lifehack for avoiding excessive quantities of work emails: start a new and specialised job remotely during a pandemic. In video meetings, ensure that you are unmemorable. When none of your colleagues have met you and most don't know who you are, they won't email you. Microsoft Teams messages and emails aren't intrusive if they're only from a few immediate colleagues regarding specific tasks for specific projects. If I may brag for a moment, some mornings I boot up my laptop to find no new emails at all and can go directly to my actual work. I just took a week of holiday and came back to only thirty new messages! As a result I can spend hours on end in what Newport calls 'deep work', hyperfocused on statistics without interruption. It's lovely; so much more intellectually satisfying than admin-plagued academia ever was. I'm not looking forward to the return of office work, which is bound to spoil this peace and quiet.

As a counterpoint to all this, neither of my parents have ever used email in a professional context, so consider it purely as a fun form of personal communication. 'A World Without Email' is aimed at generation X and millennials with degrees working in the Western knowledge economy. It raises some interesting questions about how communications technology has reshaped our experience of work, but only covers a small corner of a much bigger set of interrelated issues. Thus I'd recommend reading it with [b:Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World|40672036|Digital Minimalism Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World|Cal Newport|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1549433350l/40672036._SY75_.jpg|63988240], [b:The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power|26195941|The Age of Surveillance Capitalism The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power|Shoshana Zuboff|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521733914l/26195941._SY75_.jpg|46170685], and [b:Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy|34928269|Capitalism Without Capital The Rise of the Intangible Economy|Jonathan Haskel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1493303382l/34928269._SY75_.jpg|56192358]. The practical advice for reducing distraction is pontentially useful, depending on your willingness to turn off notifications and not reply immediately to everything. show less