Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Why do you struggle with your grand attempts to escape distraction and aimlessness to make your life deeper? In this episode, Cal draws on an unexpected metaphor – Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and t...

In the first ever live episode of Deep Questions, recorded at People’s Book in Takoma Park, MD, Cal extracts a modern productivity lesson from the tale of Jane Austen’s frustrated ambitions, before ta...

In this episode Cal takes a closer look at a growing trend of artists quitting social media and instead reverting to old-fashioned websites. Are these acts of principled sacrifice or a sustainable way...

One of the biggest problems afflicting knowledge workers in the digital age is frantic busyness; days filled with emails, chats, and meetings, without much to show for all the effort. In today’s episo...

Imagine a world in which AI could handle your email inbox on your behalf. No more checking for new messages every five minutes. No more worries that people need you. No more exhausting cognitive conte...

On his recent book tour, Cal found great success using a small notebook dedicated to developing a single idea. In this episode, he explores this “single-purpose notebook” strategy, identifying when it...

What does the story of the rise of the singing superstar Jewel teach us about escaping busyness in our knowledge work jobs? In this episode, Cal makes the connection, extracting a key lesson about qua...

One of the most common strategies for achieving a powerful ideal lifestyle vision is to leverage entrepreneurial activities to find a stable source of income that allows autonomy and flexibility. To h...

How did we end up tyrannized by our inboxes? How is this related to Tyrannosaurus? What was it like working at a high-tech company at the exact moment email was introduced? In this episode, Cal weaves...

We’ve become so used to our phones in our lives that we’ve stopped realizing how arbitrary and unusual the content we’re watching really has become. In this episode, Cal looks closer at what we’re rea...