BEST Cal Newport Books & Quotes of All Time (February 2023)

by Arthur Worsley
M.A. Psychology, Oxford. McKinsey Alum. Founder & Editor at TAoL.

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Contents

1. Who Is Cal Newport?

2. The Best Cal Newport Books of All Time

3. More Books Like Cal Newport's Books

4. Best Cal Newport Quotes

5. Wish There Was a Faster/Easier Way?

Who Is Cal Newport?

Cal Newport is an American computer science professor and author of multiple books that address the risks and advantages of digital technology, doing better in school/college and working more effectively (See e.g., Deep Work)

Learn more about Cal Newport

The Best Cal Newport Books of All Time

Why these best Cal Newport books and not others? To stay objective, I rank all my book recommendations by a combination of what’s most loved (Goodreads rating), what’s most popular (Goodreads review count) and what’s proven timlessly relevant (first publication date).

This isn’t a whimsical list. It’s a data-driven, crowdsourced collection of the best Cal Newport books ever published as decided by book lovers like you.

And if you think something's missing? I LOVE book recommendations so if there are any other books by Cal Newport that you think deserve mentioning, email me and I’ll be sure to include them in the next round of updates.

Until then, here are the best Cal Newport books of all time...

1. Deep Work - Cal Newport (FREE Summary)

Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Deep Work is a timely reminder of the value of deep, focussed work and the dangers of losing yourself in the shallows of entertainment and distraction - by author and associate professor, Cal Newport.

Published 2016 // 296 pages // Rated 4.2 over 109,500 reviews on Goodreads

Best Cal Newport Books: So Good They Can't Ignore You

2. So Good They Can't Ignore You - Cal Newport

Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

Published 2012 // 288 pages // Rated 4.1 over 33,500 reviews on Goodreads

Best Cal Newport Books: How to Be a High School Superstar

3. How to Be a High School Superstar - Cal Newport

A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out)

Published 2010 // 272 pages // Rated 4.1 over 1,000 reviews on Goodreads

Best Cal Newport Books: Digital Minimalism

4. Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport

Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

Published 2019 // 302 pages // Rated 4.1 over 55,300 reviews on Goodreads

Best Cal Newport Books: How to Win at College

5. How to Win at College - Cal Newport

Surprising Secrets for Success from the Country's Top Students

Published 2005 // 193 pages // Rated 4.0 over 2,600 reviews on Goodreads

Best Cal Newport Books: How to Become a Straight-A Student

6. How to Become a Straight-A Student - Cal Newport

Published 2006 // 217 pages // Rated 4.0 over 8,300 reviews on Goodreads

Best Cal Newport Books: A World Without Email

7. A World Without Email - Cal Newport

Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

Published 2021 // 320 pages // Rated 3.9 over 3,000 reviews on Goodreads

See all Cal Newport's books on Amazon
Visit Cal Newport's Goodreads profile

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Best Cal Newport Quotes

Here are some of the best Cal Newport of all time...

"Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive abilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"Shallow Work: Non-cognitively demanding, logistical style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"Part of what fuelled social media’s rapid assent… is its ability to short-circuit this connection between the hard work of producing real value and the positive reward of having people pay attention to you."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"For someone new to such [deep] practice … an hour a day is a reasonable limit. For those familiar with the rigours of such activities, the limit expands to something like four hours, but rarely more."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"Treat shallow work with suspicion because its damage is often vastly underestimated and its importance vastly overestimated."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"Schedule every minute of your day… When you’re done … every minute should be part of a block. You have, in effect, given every minute of your workday a job. Now, as you go through your day, use this schedule to guide you."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"A deep work habit requires you to treat your time with respect."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"A tactic that works well for me [when declining low-value requests] is to be clear in my refusal but ambiguous in my explanation for the refusal."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"Fixed schedule productivity is a meta-habit that’s simple to adopt but broad in its impact. If you have to choose just one behaviour that reorients your focus toward the deep, this one should be high on your list of opportunities."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"A commitment to deep work is not a moral stance and it’s not a philosophical statement – it is instead a pragmatic recognition that the ability to concentrate is a skill that gets valuable things done."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"There’s also an uneasiness that surrounds any effort to produce the best things you’re capable of producing, as this forces you to confront the possibility that your best is not (yet) that good."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"Three to four hours a day, five days a week of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration, it turns out, can produce a lot of valuable output."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction."

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

"[To understand where a task fits on the shallow-to-deep scale ask a simple question:] How long would it take (in months) to train a smart, recent college graduate with no specialised training in my field to complete this task?"

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

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