[nunodonato]

I'm pretty sure he would be able to impart all his "wisdom" in 2 hrs. But, like you said, it can be difficult to put in practice. That's why a question and answer format is helpful for many people. Sometimes its really hard to pick up a seemingly easy idea and apply it to your own life. Having help from someone who has seen it applied in many different ways, and dealt with the usual problems, is really helpful. That's what he does with his podcast. Not really selling anything there, besides occasionally mentioning his books where some concepts are expanded. I honestly don't get the hate.

[Bakary]

It makes more sense to see it as frustration about the space that is then applied to individual authors. Hating on Newport is rather pointless; it will not affect his life or yield useful ideas. What's happening is that people are growing tired of the whole hustle/newsletter/productivity fetish/repackaged stoicism atmosphere that permeates the internet, and are directing their frustration poorly. There is something deeply sterile about the throbbing mass of podcasts and blog posts that revolve around these topics, but there rarely is a precise target to focus on or even a useful way to voice the accompanying frustration.

[Apocryphon]

I will never forgive Cal Newport nor HN for the hype around Deep Work. What an ironically vacuous book stuffed with filler anecdotes about modern day blacksmiths and card deck memorization, completely in contradiction to the very ethos of focused deep work. It should’ve been a nice long blog article but he wanted to write a NYT bestseller so I wasted time and money reading it.

[muldoc]

Same. Bought his book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck" and threw it away in disgust a few pages in. Good thing is, now immediately anybody is referencing him I know they are full of sht.

[cromulentarian]

Different author for that book: Mark Manson

[nunodonato]

That book is not by Cal Newport

[ChildOfChaos]

I'm not sure he gives a ....