[mark_l_watson]

Digital Minimalism was probably my least favorite Cal Newport book, not for the subject matter but because of the reliance on third party stories. I like to hear peoples’ stories first hand.

Even though I ended up being a partially failed case for using this book, I still got value from it. I mostly did the thirty day digital detox but ended up going back almost to my old routine. The difference is that I have perhaps reduced wasted time on my devices by about 1/3. I am more aware of how much time I am spending, while I am spending it reading Twitter, HN, or playing Chess or Go when I have short periods of non-busy time. I am considering removing Chess and Go apps from all my devices.

If you are going to read just one Cal Newport book, I recommend choosing Deep Work.

[kashyapc]

As I've noted here before[1], Newport is on a 3-book contract on more or less the same topic with minor tweaks. And is likely to subtly market them to the hilt at every opportunity.

Besides unsound fundamentals (relying too much "third party stories", and other issues noted elsewhere), he focuses too much on "quantity" and "productivity" than on quality and effectiveness.

Sure, he has something of value to say, but he should absolutely have compressed it into one book, and avoid the filler content. But my (uncharitable?) conjecture is, as he values "productivity", he happily gives into the demand of publishers to have X number of pages in a book, to sell, lest it looks like a pamphlet.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19047303

[paulriddle]

Books for general audience are filled with light content. That's just the way things are nowadays. It is not going to change. Any self help, any book about basics of something is going to have massive amounts of filler. I remember listening to Shallows: What Internet Does to Our Brains, and just suffering from being forced to listen to history about reading. How the monks or somebody read in the past, how valueable it was. I didn't care about any of that. I wanted to hear stories about people falling into deep depression because of too much internet. I wanted summaries of research into changes of the brain addicted to the internet. Instead what I got was history of papyrus, and what came after that, how novel it was, and how books became available for everybody, not just select few. How monks read aloud, and how there was one special monk who could read without speaking words. Terrible book.

I remember reading something about geniuses and high performance individuals, and of course examples were about sports. Because everybody understands sports and the book was for everybody. I wanted to read about workings of the minds of best mathematicians or professionals in intellectuals fields, like engineering, programming, businessman. As I was reading I felt physically ill, until I closed the book, yelled as loud as I can "BWHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" and made a cup of coffee for myself. I realized that most of the books I wanted to read were fluff written for the publishers and editors. Not for me. I can get the idea from the title, description, table of contents, and maybe a few Amazon reviews.

I notice the same thing with technical books. Sections about history, long winded explanations of what is going to be taught paired with long conclusions. Recaps. I can't tell you how many times I've read history of Linux, and I can't remember anything about it: these mad diagrams of standards, what came from where, and how it was improved, extended and replaced by something else. I wanted to read a book on algorithms, a free one, it had very warm reception on HN[0], and guess what? It starts out with history of numbers. With detailed names of people who came up with ideas, of places, and even pictures. I hate these forms of introduction. But the book still seems to be good. I can recognize whether a book is "heavy" or "light". Heavy books often have exercises, they start fast, and go deep. Light books just can't get to the fucking point.

Heavy book: Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective Light book: Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby: An Agile Primer

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18805624

[mark_l_watson]

You make good points. I used major publishers like McGraw-Hill, J. Wiley, Springer Verlag, etc. for the first ten books I wrote. You really give up a lot of control over subject matter. I now use Leanpub, write whatever I enjoy writing about. I pitch the advantages [1] of writing to people I know, and usually suggest writing one or two books with a publisher and after that self publish.

[1] largest advantage is getting to meet and get to know really interesting people. I enjoy writing but being an author also opens up a lot of opportunities.

[rchaud]

Having read a couple of Newport's books, I've discovered how he manages to teach university classes, conduct academic research AND write these general-audience books. No, it's not "having a 6PM work shutdown schedule" as he writes (although it's not a bad idea for some work styles):

His formula is to take 50 paperback-size pages worth of good material from his blog posts, and then assemble 250 additional pages of fluff to surround the central thesis and actionable tips.

I don't want to single him out, and this is the MO of most productivity/self-help books, but it's especially noticeable on his, as he's quite distinct from a self-help guru or the ex-CEO types that tend to write books like these.

[ck425]

I don't agree. I've not read the new one yet, but So Good They Can't Ignore You was brilliant.

The 'fluff' was all the examples, and unlike many other writers (Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene are particularly bad for this) he goes in-depth in his examples and references them going forward too. They're well thought out examples and not throw away anecdotes. Sure you could get the basic content from his blog but I genuinely think the books are better as they highlight the theory through good use cases. I also enjoy his deliberately provocative style, it's like a toned down MMM. That might not be for everyone but I find it entertaining.

[bubblewrap]

What bothers me a little is that he preaches digital minimalism, but his newsletter comes by email and seems very frequent.

Maybe he should offer a snail mail subscription to his blog?

[beat]

I concur; Digital Minimalism is his weakest book, and Deep Work is his best. On the other hand, I think Digital Minimalism is also his most immediately useful and applicable work, and is probably a necessary precondition for engaging in deep work properly.

I did have a slip and started using Facebook again recently, but a two day bout of people I think of as allies being profoundly and loudly wrong on the Internet got me right back off it. Once you recognize the patterns, it's almost self-reinforcing to stay away.