[jwrallie]

I agree with your points. Cal Newport's content comes up a lot when people are searching for ways to improve productivity by reducing distractions from the web, and people looking for it are more interested in an easy to grasp solution that sounds scientific enough than more complex answers from scientific studies. By definition the target audience that cannot do deep work also cannot comprehend more elaborate studies anyway.

I followed the advice (sometimes attributed to him) to eliminate social media and it works (for obvious reasons), but it is as good as an advice of not going outside on the rain in order to not get wet. We might as well use some dedicated tool to minimize getting wet while still being able to go outside in the rain.