The Best of Cal Newport: Intentional Productivity & Thoughtful Living
This article is a curation of links and resources from Cal Newport over the past 12 years.
In 2012, my family immigrated to Canada from the Philippines and I started Grade 12. I struggled to adjust to the new school system, find friends, and juggle applying for university and swim training (15-20 hours a week).
Around that time I stumbled on to Cal's blog. It changed my life.
"Study Hacks", as it was called back then, documented his journey and strategies in studying more efficiently as a graduate student. The blog morphed into reflections and experiments on finding work one loves as he himself become a tenured professor at Georgetown University.
Eventually, the blog came to be about living a life of focus and meaning, as he published books, grew his audience, and now, started his podcast all without having a social media presence.
In the 9 years that I've been following his blog and books, Cal's work has helped me get a 3.8 in my first year of university (until I got lazy), land my dream job ("finding your passion" is for suckers), and cultivate a life of calm and focus (I recently deleted Instagram).
In this article, I gather the best resources Cal's put out over the years. Whether you're a student, a knowledge worker, or a recovering dopamine addict, he has a book, a blog post, or a course that addresses that. I'll update this page as I finish new books of his or resurface more content.
A few notes before we get into things:
I've put book titles in italics and blog post titles in "quotation marks"
The book links are Amazon affiliate links. You know the drill: if you buy anything from this list, you'll help support the blog (and fuel my 5:00 AM writing sessions).
I don't recommend anything I don't like. Unless otherwise noted, I've personally read and enjoyed every book and article on this list.
A short message before we dive in: If you’re a Cal Newport fan, then you’ll probably enjoy my weekly newsletter on web3, creativity, and the creator economy. Subscribe below to get more posts, or check out previous editions to “try before you buy”.
On living a deep life
Almost everyone in tech has read – or claimed to have read – Deep Work. But unless you read So Good and Digital Minimalism too, the habits won't stick. So Good, in particular, is a severely underrated book for students and new grads early in their careers.
If you're keen to cultivate a lifestyle of calm, enjoyment, and professional fulfillment, I recommend reading Cal's books in this order:
So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. This book's main argument that "find your passion" is BS advice and that mastery of skills comes before passion has proven true in my own life. I have both eBook, iBooks, and a paper copy of this book... And I've read through it at least 3x at this point.
Bonus: Top Performer (course). In collaboration with ultralearner Scott H. Young, this course teaches you to apply the deliberate practice lessons from So Good. I bought the course when it first came out (2017, I think?) and have used its strategies over the years to map my career and to become– in my humble opinion – a pretty good writer, despite not having gone to school for it.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. This book for which Cal is best known and that popularized the term "deep work" This book is the "how" for So Good and the "why" for Digital Minimalism.
Here are some deep work tactics from the blog that are not in the book:
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. This book features Tristan Harris and pre-dates Netflix's The Social Dilemma, but I only picked it up after watching the latter. Applying the ideas and tactics in the book made me calmer, happier, and more productive, despite skipping the core recommendation in the book for a "30-day digital detox".
On productivity
If you're looking for the simplest productivity system in the world, this is it.
For most of my undergrad career, I ran my life the Study Hacks way with a combination pen and paper, Google Tasks, and Google Calendar. My systems have grown since then to accommodate the complexity of my life.
Cal's concepts and systems simplify David Allen's 20-year-old Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy with a focus on mastery of the GTD workflow, not the tools.
Because of their simplicity and comprehensiveness (is that a word?) I've come back to these Study Hacks posts at crucial points in my life over the years, whenever I let my systems get away from me.
Even after becoming familiar with GTD and taking more productivity courses since, I still adhere to all of these tactics as the basics of my system.
"How to Reduce Stress and Get More Done by Building an Autopilot Schedule". Schedule recurring events/tasks into your calendar. This way you can field ad hoc tasks as they come without letting your recurring responsibilities drop.
"Fixed-Schedule Productivity: How I Accomplish a Large Amount of Work in a Small Number of Work Hours". Have a set time to end your day (thus, the "fixed schedule"). Work back your schedule from that end point.
Deep Habits: The Importance of Planning Every Minute of Your Work Day. Best done in conjunction with the tactic above, time -locking keeps you hyper-realistic on what you can actually get done in a day.
Bonus: Cal recently came out with his Time-Block Planner book/notebook. I don't plan to get it (see what I did there?) because I have a personalized daily system in my bullet journal. But if you want to learn time-blocking and squeeze every minute out of your day, then that might be worth checking out.
"Drastically Reduce Stress With a Work Shutdown Ritual". This is an abbreviated, daily version of the GTD weekly review. My adherence to the shutdown (or daily review, because I do it in the beginning of the day now) directly correlates with the calmest, most productive periods in my career.
"Deep Habits: Plan Your Week in Advance". Every Monday morning, I list out my 5 projects for the week and tackle them consecutively. This pre-planning saves me energy throughout the week trying to decide what to do.
For more on weekly planning, read this blog post to learn about the "tool" Cal uses to keep track of his weekly plan (spoiler alert: it's just a plain text file called "Plan.txt").
How to think like Cal Newport
Even more important than learning from smart people like Cal is learning to think like him. If you like Cal's work, here are source books from which he derives his ideas:
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. All of Cal's books are derivative of this one. I've been raving about this book to friends and colleagues. I wish I'd read it earlier (and I don't say that lightly). Highly recommend.
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work & Daily Rituals: Women at Work by Mason Currey. Cal often features the habits of knowledge workers, writers, and creatives on his blog. If you enjoy reading about productivity rituals and morning routines, then you'll enjoy these books.
Getting Things Done by David Allen. This book has been around for 20 years. This is a remarkable feat for a book that tackles a time- and technology-sensitive topic like productivity and speaks to the strength and timelessness of its core workflow. The penultimate chapter on zooming out from productivity is underrated.
Finally, here are three sources that I haven't read myself, but that Cal has cited often in his books and blog posts:
K. Anders Ericsson's much-cited paper on peak performance entitled, "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance" (which eventually spawned a book version)
Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
A final word
The challenge with Cal's work is that he is both prescriptive and prolific.
He's not an armchair productivity pontificator or, as my friend and subscriber Kevin Rapp calls them, "optimales".
Cal's detailed solutions are incredibly specific to his needs (best-selling author, academic, and blogger). While they do work for a wide variety of people, it's impossible to replicate his results without self-awareness about your own situation.
He's also been blogging three times a week since 2008. There's hundreds of blog posts in his archive, as well as 6 books, 2 courses, and a podcast.
I hope this page helps you sort through Cal's recommendations and serve as a starting point for your own life experiments.