[goostavos]

I read 75% of it, does that make me qualified to trash on it? I thought it was complete garbage. Not the idea, mind you, the _book_. It's a blog post's worth of information that's comically stretched out in an early college I'm-trying-to-meet-a-word count way.

The book is almost entirely pointless fluff.

[ergothus]

When I was in some philosophy classes in college I developed my "theory of bullshit".

Basically, when I'm reading your work explaining your theory, if I go through two full pages without encountering a new idea, your work is bullshit.

This doesn't apply to providing EXAMPLES of your theory, and a theory is often many new ideas so that explaining it will take many pages, but if I read 2 pages of explanation and don't find a single new idea - you're wasting my time and trying to build agreement without specificity.

Now, far too many years later, I am both amazed at the raw audacity of my younger self...and how accurate he was in finding which works would be more or less satisfying to read. While I generally prefer escapism in my reading, my virtual and physical shelves have no shortage of books that I've only read the first few chapters of, because of diminishing returns for the effort of reading them.

[peterkshultz]

You should check out the book "On Bullshit" by philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt. He develops a similar theory.

[staticautomatic]

Frankfurt's theory/definition of bullshit has literally nothing to do with fluff.

[Zanta]

I had the exact same reaction to it. Some enormous fraction of all non-fiction is an essay-length idea stretched out into a book length. It's disrespectful to the reader, but it's what they need to do to make a sale. No one wants to buy a pamphlet

[gnicholas]

It's especially disrespectful when the books are being market to people who want to be efficient.

[yesenadam]

>The book is almost entirely pointless fluff.

I thought it was a great read, fascinating, I learned a lot, it made me think, and I've been recommending it to selected people who I think would benefit as a must read etc. So I'm just wrong? You didn't learn anything, great, doesn't mean it's "complete garbage".

I don't understand this need (that I frequently see expressed on HN) to have the most packed into the absolute least number of lines. Do people hate reading or something? Sure, you could leave out the stories, the anecdotes about various places and styles of work..but what would be the point?! Indeed, leave out almost everything and almost nothing would be left. That is not surprising. That La Rochefoucauld or Mandeville can be summed up in a phrase doesn't make them less worth reading.

[Apocryphon]

It’s garbage not for the ideas, but for all of the filler. There is no need for Newport to pad out a simple thesis and tips with anecdotes on modern day blacksmiths and tangents on how to memorize decks of cards. Maybe calling it garbage is harsh, but the book is definitely overrated and should be called out as such amidst all of the breathless hype for it on HN.

[sotojuan]

This applies to almost every self help or business help book popular nowadays. I just listen to or read summaries.

[kevinskii]

I also thought the topic seemed too thin to stretch into a full book, and I almost didn't read it. But I'm glad I did. I agree with other commenters that the signal-to-noise ratio was surprisingly high.

[com2kid]

The few 'new idea' type books I've found to be useful are rather thin, printed on cheap paper, and have rather large text.

Even they are padded out, but at least a bit less so.

The problem is, I don't think people will pay $30 for a 50 page book, even if the ideas inside it are worth the money.

[HiroshiSan]

Yeah, Seth Godin is really good at writing books that pack a punch with few pages.