[kashyapc]

Newport is on a 3-book contract[1] on more or less the same subject with slightly different framing. So he's obliged to drum-up attention about it. Also as someone else pointed out in a different thread, Newport places too much attention on "quantity"; it doesn't sit quite well with me.

Yes, his bigger point is entirely valid (and I appreciate him bringing it to our attention), but no—there is not enough material to write three damn books. Take inspiration from Kahneman, he condensed his 40-year work (in collaboration with Tversky) into one book.

As I've noted on HN before, I'd much rather recommend the book by the Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's (or Prof. C): Flow—the psychology of optimal experience

Prof. C has defined the idea of "flow" (he discusses it in various contexts, including human well-being), and dedicated his entire life to studying it. IMHO, the signal-to-noise ratio is extremely high in this book—no wonder, it was Prof. C's seminal work.

[1] http://calnewport.com/about/

[skorbenko]

I wholeheartedly second your opinion on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book. In fact, I liked the book so much I even tried to condense it into somewhat of a summary [1]. The book is thought to be a Modern Classic, and at least in my opinion, it deserves the title. Deep Work has some interesting ideas, but is not yet time-proven, whereas Flow is.

Just my 2 cents ;-)

[1] https://skorbenko.github.io/books/books/flow.html

[blub]

Does Prof. C also discuss the benefits of mixing focused time with communication and idea exchange time? E.g: closed door work with open work areas.

I encountered a similar idea in "The New Science of Building Great Teams" by Alex Pentland, where the concept of exploration is introduced: "The best team players also connect their teammates with one another and spread ideas around. And they are appropriately exploratory, seeking ideas from outside the group but not at the expense of group engagement".

[kashyapc]

Not quite. In my view, Prof. C's work is more fundamental in nature; he doesn't prescribe anything particular. But describes what works, based on his observations, and lets us judge for ourselves.

Among other things, he goes in detail (with studies backing up his points) on what provides "optimal experience" to humans. And covers topics like "order in consciousness", "sense of self", "entropy", "freedom", "purpose", and so on.

A couple of random quotes from my notes:

(1) "The inevitable consequence of equally attractive choices is uncertainty of purpose; uncertainty, in turn, saps resolution, and lack of resolve ends up devaluing choice. Therefore fredom does not necessarily help develop meaning in life—on the contrary."

(2) "There is one very important and at first apparently paradoxical relationship between losing the sense of self in a flow experience, and having it emerge stronger afterward. It almost seems that occasionally giving up self-consciousness is necessary for building a strong self-concept. Why this should be so is fairly clear. In flow a person is challenged to do her best, and must constantly improve her skills. At the time, she doesn’t have the opportunity to reflect on what this means in terms of the self—if she did allow herself to become self-conscious, the experience could not have been very deep. But afterward, when the activity is over and self-consciousness has a chance to resume, the self that the person reflects upon is not the same self that existed before the flow experience: it is now enriched by new skills and fresh achievements."

[chrisweekly]

Thanks, yes, this. Rel to your 2nd quote, an explanation might be found in the "experiencing self" vs "remembering self", which IIRC Kahneman mentions in the intro to "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow."

[kashyapc]

Yes, that is is one my favorite stories from Kahneman. If you look up "The riddle of experience vs. memory", you can hear Kahneman himself narrating it.

[spectrum1234]

This is a good book but also could be summed up in a few pages.

[kashyapc]

Afraid, I completely disagree. How could you meaningfully "sum up" someone's lifetime's worth of work into a couple of pages and explain the related complexity? (Not talking about academic abstract-style summaries.) Prof. C is cited many thousands of times (did a quick look up on Google Scholar) in well-being and motivation studies. On the other hand, for Newport this is a "side hustle", because his primary work is supposed to be a "computer science professor".

Time will tell which book provides durable value.