[srndsnd]

Cal Newport has become a particular kind of hustle culture charlatan, and it's been pretty fascinating to watch. I began reading his writing when was focusing on teaching study habits to college students when I myself was a college student. As he grew up, finished his PhD and started his academic career, he began building a brand around offering advice on "deep work". It sells the idea that you can, and should, only work on meaningful problems with limited distraction, and have a solid work-life balance, filled with "valuable leisure activities".

You can debate the merits of his arguments, and should, as ultimately what he sells is advice, but something truly rubs me the wrong way about how he has continued to market himself. A kind of Andrew Huberman-esque, long form podcast, a thinly veiled advertisement for his courses, books, and products.

One would think that if you were truly living a "deep life", watching a two hour long video podcast every week wouldn't exactly fit into your schedule.

While I credit his critique of the attention economy to opening my eyes a little bit and changing how I view my time, I can't help but feel that as he's risen in popularity following his "deep life" work, he's continued to become more and more of what he used to decry, just another way to waste your time while feeling like you're being productive.

[_yb2s]

I don't see how reading good advice on doing deep work is at odds with spending time doing it. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe," etc.

It seems pretty unfair to call him a "hustle culture charlatan" when at the same time later on pointing out his emphasis on work-life balance. Isn't that the opposite of hustle culture?

I've found his advice incredibly useful in my career.. both for getting more done (that is actually important to ME), and for having a less stressful life.

[srndsnd]

>I don't see how reading good advice on doing deep work is at odds with spending time doing it. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe," etc.

If you read his book(s), and got something out of it, great! So did I. But my issue with where Cal's ideas end and his business begins. His philosophy itself is relatively simple but his business revolves around getting you into his ecosystem and keeping you consuming the same content on how the "deep life" operates. He ultimately becomes a cog in the attention economy he is trying to avoid, and for me, that casts him as a hypocrite.

Like many 21st century self-help gurus, the true content can fit on an index card, and the rest is examples that are repeatedly teased out for additional length. His podcast is the most brutal extension of this. I've listened to it since its inception, but gave up because it hit the right neural circuitry that let me feel like I was improving myself without doing so. It was productivity porn. It stopped being about helping people, and started being about merchandising long ago. You can even hear it in his voice when he says things like "don't waste your time with frivolous podcast listening. Except our podcast of course! we're not frivolous. We're deep". Happens like once an episode.

> It seems pretty unfair to call him a "hustle culture charlatan" when at the same time later on pointing out his emphasis on work-life balance. Isn't that the opposite of hustle culture?

Even his discussion of how you spend your personal time revolves around doing activities that he refers to as "high quality leisure time". It is yet another relentless pursuit of min-maxing efficiency, with the underlying idea being that leisure is the fuel that allows you to burn brighter for longer than the other people around you, but winds up with your personal pursuits functioning as yet another resource to optimize. I think this idea, while well meaning, can be destructive. Embracing this idea that there are certain "right and wrong" leisure activities has led me to constantly question the utility of things I've enjoyed in the pursuit of "high quality". Plus how many people who seek out advice about the kind of optimization that Cal preaches are truly interested in work life balance?

It's like an alcohol company telling you to drink responsibly. It's plausible deniability. This point acts as a defense against criticism for Newport. The people who truly embrace Cal are just as likely to look towards other figures who are selling the same shtick he is. His discussions of these points only serve to differentiate his rhetoric from a figure like Tim Ferris or Andrew Huberman, when they are less distinguishable than they'd like you to believe.

[_yb2s]

Indeed, I think the "right way" to use advice like his is to understand the index card version and apply it. Spending a lot of time following everything he writes isn't really consistent with the concept of deep work.

Ruthlessly optimizing life to squeeze every inch of productivity doesn't make for a great life, unless it happens automatically without even thinking about it, because you are already so passionate about what you are doing that you don't have time for much else. If it's just to win the rat race, it will suck, and then suck for everyone once everyone starts doing it.

The flip side of that is that critically evaluating how you spend your time and cutting out things that you don't really need or appreciate can make life a lot more relaxing and fun.

My main criticism of the Deep Work concept is that it ignores peoples internal emotional state, and treats people like robots. Most of peoples work issues come from things like self sabotage due to trauma, imposter syndrome, etc. and can't be fixed with a more optimized schedule or anything like that.