#166 – Cal Newport: Deep Work, Focus, Productivity, Email, and Social Media

Cal Newport is a computer scientist who also writes about productivity. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:

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EPISODE LINKS:

A World Without Email (book): https://amzn.to/3blXyjv

Deep Work (book): https://amzn.to/3c0npMM

Digital Minimalism (book): https://amzn.to/3kJPMmx

Cal's Website: https://www.calnewport.com/

Deep Questions (podcast): https://www.calnewport.com/podcast/

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OUTLINE:

Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

(00:00) - Introduction

(08:24) - Deep work

(13:10) - Focus

(18:52) - Time blocking

(25:47) - Deadlines

(35:22) - Do less, do better, know why

(38:04) - Clubhouse

(52:07) - Burnout

(58:34) - Boredom

(1:06:19) - Quit social media for 30 days

(1:16:13) - Social media

(1:41:21) - How email destroyed our productivity at work

(1:51:07) - How we fix email

(1:58:09) - Over-optimization

(2:02:23) - When to use email and when not to

(2:10:06) - Podcasting

(2:14:42) - Alan Turing proving the impossible

(2:18:41) - Fragility of math in the face of randomness

(2:27:30) - Neural networks

(2:36:16) - What will the P=NP proof look like?

(2:39:55) - Is math discovered or invented?

(2:44:02) - Book publishing

(2:54:09) - Love

(2:57:30) - Death

(3:00:26) - Meaning of life