Cal Newport Beyond Deep Work: Fixed Schedules and the Hyperactive Hive Mind

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Cal Newport was born in June 1982 and raised in Pennington, New Jersey, the grandson of Baptist minister and theologian John Newport. He graduated from Hopewell Valley Central High School in 2000 after launching a dot-com company with his friend Michael Simmons, and finished Dartmouth College in 2004. At MIT he earned a computer science PhD in 2009 under Nancy Lynch, with a dissertation on distributed computation on unreliable radio channels: how networks reach consensus amid constant interference.

From 2005 to 2010, during his graduate and postdoctoral work, he published How to Win at College, How to Become a Straight-A Student and How to Be a High School Superstar and launched the Study Hacks blog in 2007, while sleeping eight hours a night and rarely working past 5:30 p.m. through what he called fixed schedule productivity. He joined Georgetown in 2011, earned tenure in 2017 and became a full professor in 2024. His focus widened from personal habits to systems, with Digital Minimalism in 2019, A World Without Email in 2021, The Time Block Planner in 2020 and Slow Productivity in 2024.

At Georgetown his lab studied distributed algorithms and communication in nature, including ants and bees.
So Good They Can't Ignore You (2012) argued against following your passion in favor of building rare skills.
The episode says the term deep work was earlier used in clinical psychology, including grief therapy.
In a 2019 GQ interview he compared giving a 13-year-old a smartphone to handing them a cigarette.
He describes the hyperactive hive mind of Slack and email as a network where every node pings every other node until it saturates.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(16184)

The Art of Adult Friendship: Why Quality Matters More Than Quantity

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore how our understanding of friendship changes as we grow old...

9 Nov 18min

Summer Explained: The Science, History, and Traditions of the Warmest Season

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore summer, the season most closely associated with sunshine, ...

7 Nov 18min

Sir Patrick Stewart: From Shakespeare to Star Trek, the Life and Legacy of a Legend

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the extraordinary life of Sir Patrick Stewart, the acclaim...

7 Nov 49min

Larry David: The Genius of Social Awkwardness, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the life and career of Larry David, the comedian, writer, ...

6 Nov 38min

Why Australian Shepherds Aren't From Australia

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the history of the Australian Shepherd, an intelligent, en...

5 Nov 45min

Labrador Retriever: From Newfoundland Fishing Dogs to Modern-Day Heroes

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the remarkable history of the Labrador Retriever, one of t...

4 Nov 53min

Discovering Ireland: A Journey Through History, Culture, and the Wild Atlantic Way

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore Ireland through the philosophy of slow travel: go slower, ...

3 Nov 48min

Willie Hutch: An Overnight I'll Be There Lyric and The Mack's Soundtrack

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!William McKinley Hutchins was born in Los Angeles in December 1944 and raised in Dallas, where h...

2 Nov 21min