“In my retiring room”; “I keep the key”; and “The feeling of repose and renewal”: Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Trans. Richard Winston. New York: Pantheon, 1963.
“Although he had many patients” and other information on artists’ habits: Currey, Mason. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. New York: Knopf, 2013.
The following timeline of Jung’s life and work also proved useful in untangling the role of deep work in his career: Cowgill, Charles. “Carl Jung.” May 1997. http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/jung.htm.
Anders Ericsson from Florida State University is a leading academic researcher on the concept of deliberate practice. He has a nice description of the idea on his academic website: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html.
My list of the deep work habits of important personalities draws from the following sources:
• Montaigne information comes from: Bakewell, Sarah. How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. New York: Other Press, 2010.
• Mark Twain information comes from: Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals.
• Woody Allen information comes from Robert Weide’s 2011 documentary, Woody Allen: A Documentary.
• Peter Higgs information comes from: Sample, Ian. “Peter Higgs Proves as Elusive as Higgs Boson after Nobel Success.” Guardian, October 9, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/08/nobel-laureate-peter-higgs-boson-elusive.
• J.K. Rowling information comes from: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling.
• Bill Gates information comes from: Guth, Robert. “In Secret Hideaway, Bill Gates Ponders Microsoft’s Future.” Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2005, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB111196625830690477.
• Neal Stephenson information comes from an older version of Stephenson’s website, which has been preserved in a December 2003 snapshot by The Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20031207060405/http://www.well.com/~neal/badcorrespondent.html.
“A 2012 McKinsey study found that”: Chui, Michael, et al. “The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity Through Social Technologies.” McKinsey Global Institute. July 2012. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_social_economy.
“What the Net seems to be doing is” and “I’m not the only one”: Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic Monthly, July–August 2008. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/.
The fact that Carr had to move to a cabin to finish writing The Shallows comes from the Author’s Note in the paperback version of the book.
“superpower of the 21st century”: Barker, Eric. “Stay Focused: 5 Ways to Increase Your Attention Span.” Barking Up the Wrong Tree. September 18, 2013. http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/09/stay-focused/.
Information about Nate Silver’s election traffic on the New York Times website: Tracy, Marc. “Nate Silver Is a One-Man Traffic Machine for the Times.” New Republic, November 6, 2012. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/109714/nate-silvers-fivethirtyeight-blog-drawing-massive-traffic-new-york-times.
Information about Nate Silver’s ESPN/ABC News deal: Allen, Mike. “How ESPN and ABC Landed Nate Silver.” Politico, July 22, 2013. http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/07/how-espn-and-abc-landed-nate-silver-168888.html.
Examples of concerns regarding Silver’s methodology:
Davis, Sean M. “Is Nate Silver’s Value at Risk?” Daily Caller, November 1, 2012. http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/01/is-nate-silvers-value-at-risk/.
Marcus, Gary, and Ernest Davis. “What Nate Silver Gets Wrong.” The New Yorker, January 25, 2013. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/01/what-nate-silver-gets-wrong.html.
Information about David Heinemeier Hansson comes from the following websites:
• David Heinemeier Hanson. http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/.
• Lindberg, Oliver. “The Secrets Behind 37signals’ Success.” TechRadar, September 6, 2010. http://www.techradar.com/us/news/internet/the-secrets-behind-37signals-success-712499.
• “OAK Racing.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OAK_Racing.
For more on John Doerr’s deals: “John Doerr.” Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/profile/john-doerr/.
The $3.3 billion net worth of John Doerr was retrieved from the following Forbes.com profile page on April 10, 2014: http://www.forbes.com/profile/john-doerr/.
“We are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring” and “Our technologies are racing ahead”: from page 9 of Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. Cambridge, MA: Digital Frontier Press, 2011.
“other technologies like data visualization, analytics, high speed communications”: Ibid., 9.
“The key question will be: are you good at working with intelligent machines or not?”: from page 1 of Cowen, Tyler. Average Is Over. New York: Penguin, 2013.
Rosen, Sherwin. “The Economics of Superstars.” The American Economic Review 71.5 (December 1981): 845–858.
“Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance”: Ibid., 846.
The Instagram example and its significance for labor disparities were first brought to my attention by the writing/speaking of Jaron Lanier.
Details on Nate Silver’s tools:
• Hickey, Walter. “How to Become Nate Silver in 9 Simple Steps.” Business Insider, November 14, 2012. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nate-silver-and-fivethityeight-works-2012-11.
• Silver, Nate. “IAmA Blogger for FiveThirtyEight at The New York Times. Ask Me Anything.” Reddit. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/166yeo/iama_blogger_for_fivethirtyeight_at_the_new_york.
• “Why Use Stata.” www.stata.com/why-use-stata/.
The SQL example I gave was from postgreSQL, an open source database system popular in both industry and (especially) academia. I don’t know what specific system Silver uses, but it almost certainly requires some variant of the SQL language used in this example.
“Let your mind become a lens”: from page 95 of Sertillanges, Antonin-Dalmace. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirits, Conditions, Methods. Trans. Mary Ryan. Cork, Ireland: Mercier Press, 1948.
“the development and deepening of the mind”: Ibid., 13.
Details about deliberate practice draw heavily on the following seminal survey paper on the topic: Ericsson, K.A., R.T. Krampe, and C. Tesch-Römer. “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.” Psychological Review 100.3 (1993): 363–406.
“We deny that these differences [between expert performers and normal adults] are immutable”: Ibid., 13.
“Men of genius themselves”: from page 95 of Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life.
“Diffused attention is almost antithetical to the focused attention required by deliberate practice”: from page 368 of Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer. “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.”
Details on the neurobiology of expert performance can be found in: Coyle, The Talent Code.
Coyle also has a nice slideshow about myelination at his website: “Want to Be a Superstar Athlete? Build More Myelin.” The Talent Code. www.thetalentcode.com/myelin.
For more on deliberate practice, the following two books provide a good popular overview:
• Colvin, Geoffrey. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. New York: Portfolio, 2008.
• Coyle, Daniel. The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. New York: Bantam, 2009.
More about Adam Grant, his records, and his (thirty-page) CV can be found at his academic website: https://mgmt.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/1323/.
Grant, Adam. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. New York: Viking Adult, 2013.
The article on Adam Grant in the New York Times Magazine: Dominus, Susan. “The Saintly Way to Succeed.” New York Times Magazine, March 31, 2013: MM20.
Newport, Cal. How to Become a Straight-A Student: The Unconventional Strategies Used by Real College Students to Score High While Studying Less. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006.
Leroy, Sophie. “Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 109 (2009): 168–181.
“He is a disrupter on a massive scale and a repeat offender” and “I do a lot of my work at stand-up tables” and details on Jack Dorsey’s daily schedule come from the following Forbes.com article: Savitz, Eric. “Jack Dorsey: Leadership Secrets of Twitter and Square.” Forbes, October 17, 2012. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/10/17/jack-dorsey-the-leadership-secrets-of-twitter-and-square/3/.
The cited Jack Dorsey net worth number was accessed on the following Forbes.com profile on April 10, 2014: http://www.forbes.com/profile/jack-dorsey/.
“I can go a good solid Saturday without”: from an interview with Kerry Trainor that was conducted in October 2013 by HuffPost Live. A clip with the e-mail usage quote is available here: http://www.kirotv.com/videos/technology/how-long-can-vimeo-ceo-kerry-trainor-go-without/vCCBLd/.
“the largest open floor plan in the world” and other information about Facebook’s new headquarters: Hoare, Rose. “Do Open Plan Offices Lead to Better Work or Closed Minds?” CNN, October 4, 2012. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/04/business/global-office-open-plan/.
“We encourage people to stay out in the open” and other information about Square’s headquarters:
Savitz, Eric. “Jack Dorsey: Leadership Secrets of Twitter and Square.” Forbes, October 17, 2012. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/10/17/jack-dorsey-the-leadership-secrets-of-twitter-and-square.
“province of chatty teenagers” and “new productivity gains” from the following New York Times article about instant messaging: Strom, David. “I.M. Generation Is Changing the Way Business Talks.” New York Times, April 5, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/technology/techspecial4/05message.html.
More on Hall can be found at Hall.com and in this article: Tsotsis, Alexia. “Hall.com Raises $580K from Founder’s Collective and Others to Transform Realtime Collaboration.” TechCrunch, October 16, 2011. http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/16/hall-com-raises-580k-from-founders-collective-and-others-to-transform-realtime-collaboration/.
An up-to-date list of the more than eight hundred New York Times employees using Twitter: https://twitter.com/nytimes/nyt-journalists/members.
The original Jonathan Franzen piece for the Guardian was published online on September 13, 2013, with the title “Jonathan Franzen: What’s Wrong with the Modern World.” The piece has since been removed for “legal” issues.
Here is the October 4, 2013, Slate piece, by Katy Waldman, that ended up titled “Jonathan Franzen’s Lonely War on the Internet Continues.” Notice from the URL that the original title was even harsher: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/04/jonathan_franzen_says_twitter_is_a_coercive_development_is_grumpy_and_out.html.
“Franzen’s a category of one”: from Jennifer Weiner’s response to Franzen in The New Republic: Weiner, Jennifer. “What Jonathan Franzen Misunderstands About Me.” New Republic, September 18, 2013, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114762/jennifer-weiner-responds-jonathan-franzen.
“massive distraction” and “If you are just getting into some work”: Treasure, Julian. “Sound News: More Damaging Evidence on Open Plan Offices.” Sound Agency, November 16, 2011. http://www.thesoundagency.com/2011/sound-news/more-damaging-evidence-on-open-plan-offices/.
“This was reported by subjects” and related results from: Mark, Gloria, Victor M. Gonzalez, and Justin Harris. “No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: ACM, 2005.
“Twitter is crack for media addicts” and other details of George Packer’s thoughts about social media: Packer, George. “Stop the World.” The New Yorker, January 29, 2010, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2010/01/stop-the-world.html.
“A ‘free and frictionless’ method of communication” and other details of Tom Cochran’s e-mail experiment: Cochran, Tom. “Email Is Not Free.” Harvard Business Review, April 8, 2013. http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/04/email-is-not-free/.
“it is objectively difficult to measure individual”: from page 509 of Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014.
“undoubtedly true”: Manzi, Jim. “Piketty’s Can Opener.” National Review, July 7, 2014. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/382084/pikettys-can-opener-jim-manzi. This careful and critical review of Piketty’s book by Jim Manzi is where I originally came across the Piketty citation.
“At first, the team resisted”; “putting their careers in jeopardy”; and “a better product delivered to the client” as well as a good summary of Leslie Perlow’s connectivity research can be found in Perlow, Leslie A., and Jessica L. Porter. “Making Time Off Predictable—and Required.” Harvard Business Review, October 2009. https://hbr.org/2009/10/making-time-off-predictable-and-required.
For more on David Allen’s task management system, see his book: Allen, David. Getting Things Done. New York: Viking, 2001.
Allen’s fifteen-element task management flowchart can be found in Allen, Getting Things Done, as well as online: http://gettingthingsdone.com/pdfs/tt_workflow_chart.pdf.
The h-index for an academic is (roughly speaking) the largest value x that satisfies the following rule: “I have published at least x papers with x or more citations.” Notice, this value manages to capture both how many papers you have written and how often you are cited. You cannot gain a high h-index value simply by pumping out a lot of low-value papers, or by having a small number of papers that are cited often. This metric tends to grow over careers, which is why in many fields h-index goals are tied to certain career milestones.
“To do real good physics work”: comes around the 28:20 mark in a 1981 TV interview with Richard Feynman for the BBC Horizon program (the interview aired in the United States as an episode of NOVA). The YouTube video of this interview that I watched when researching this book has since been removed due to a copyright complaint by the BBC (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE). Transcripts of the relevant quote, however, can be found at http://articles.latimes.com/1988-02-16/news/mn-42968_1_nobel-prize/2 and http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/04/20/richard-feynman-didnt-win-a-nobel-by-responding-promptly-to-e-mails/ and http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/DCARead?standardNo=0738201081&standardNoType=1&excerpt=true.
“Managers themselves inhabit a bewildering psychic landscape”: from page 9 of Crawford, Matthew. Shop Class as Soulcraft. New York: Penguin, 2009.
“cranking widgets”: This concept is a popular metaphor in discussing David Allen’s task management system; c.f. Mann, Merlin. “Podcast: Interview with GTD’s David Allen on Procrastination.” 43 Folders, August 19, 2007. http://www.43folders.com/2006/10/10/productive-talk-procrastination ; Schuller, Wayne. “The Power of Cranking Widgets.” Wayne Schuller’s Blog, April 9, 2008. http://schuller.id.au/2008/04/09/the-power-of-cranking-widgets-gtd-times/; and Babauta, Leo. “Cranking Widgets: Turn Your Work into Stress-free Productivity.” Zen Habits, March 6, 2007. http://zenhabits.net/cranking-widgets-turn-your-work-into/.
More on Marissa Mayer’s working-from-home prohibition: Carlson, Nicholas. “How Marissa Mayer Figured Out Work-At-Home Yahoos Were Slacking Off.” Business Insider, March 2, 2013. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-marissa-mayer-figured-out-work-at-home-yahoos-were-slacking-off-2013-3.
Alissa Rubin tweets at @Alissanyt. I don’t have specific evidence that Alissa Rubin was pressured to tweet. But I can make a circumstantial case: She includes “nyt” in her Twitter handle, and the Times maintains a social media desk that helps educate its employees about how to use social media (c.f. https://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/new-york-times-social-media-desk_b53783 ), a focus that has led to more than eight hundred employees tweeting: https://twitter.com/nytimes/nyt-journalists/members.
Here is an example of one of Alissa Rubin’s articles that I encountered when writing this chapter: Rubin, Alissa J., and Maïa de la Baume, “Claims of French Complicity in Rwanda’s Genocide Rekindle Mutual Resentment.” New York Times, April 8, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/world/africa/claims-of-french-complicity-in-rwandas-genocide-rekindle-mutual-resentment.html?ref=alissajohannsenrubin.
Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.
“It does not make them illegal”: Ibid., 48.
“It’s this propensity to view ‘the Internet’ as a source of wisdom”: from page 25 of Morozov, Evgeny. To Save Everything, Click Here. New York: Public Affairs, 2013.
“I do all my work by hand”: from Ric Furrer’s artist statement, which can be found online, along with general biographical details on Furrer and information about his business: http://www.doorcountyforgeworks.com.
“This part, the initial breakdown”; “You have to be very gentle”; “It’s ready”; and “To do it right, it is the most complicated thing”: from the PBS documentary “Secrets of the Viking Swords,” which is an episode of NOVA that first aired on September 25, 2013. For more information on the episode and online streaming see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-viking-sword.html.
“The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely”: from page 15 of Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft.
“The world of information superhighways”: from Ric Furrer’s artist statement: http://www.doorcountyforgeworks.com.
“not just cancer”; “This disease wanted to”; and “movies, walks”: from page 3 of Gallagher, Winifred. Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. New York, Penguin, 2009.
“Like fingers pointing to the moon”: Ibid., 2.
“Who you are”: Ibid., 1.
“reset button”: Ibid., 48.
“Rather than continuing to focus”: Ibid., 49.
Though Rapt provides a good summary of Barbara Fredrickson’s research on positivity (see pages 48–49), more details can be found in Fredrickson’s 2009 book on the topic: Frederickson, Barbara. Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive. New York: Crown Archetype, 2009.
The Laura Carstensen research was featured in Rapt (see pages 50–51). For more information, see the following article: Carstensen, Laura L., and Joseph A. Mikels. “At the Intersection of Emotion and Cognition: Aging and the Positivity Effect.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 14.3 (2005): 117–121.
“concentration so intense”: from page 71 of Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990.
“Five years of reporting”: from page 13 of Gallagher, Rapt.
“I’ll choose my targets with care”: Ibid., 14.
For more on the experience sampling method, read the original article here:
Larson, Reed, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. “The Experience Sampling Method.” New Directions for Methodology of Social & Behavioral Science. 15 (1983): 41-56.
You can also find a short summary of the technique at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_sampling_method.
“The best moments usually occur”: from page 3 of Csikszentmihalyi, Flow.
“Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy”: Ibid., 162.
“jobs should be redesigned”: Ibid., 157.
“The world used to be”: from page xi of Dreyfus, Hubert, and Sean Dorrance Kelly. All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. New York: Free Press, 2011.
“The Enlightenment’s metaphysical embrace”: Ibid., 204.
“Because each piece of wood is distinct”: Ibid., 210.
“is not to generate meaning”: Ibid., 209.
“Beautiful code is short and concise”: from a THNKR interview with Santiago Gonzalez available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBXZWB_dNsw.
“We who cut mere stones” and “Within the overall structure”: from the preface of Hunt, Andrew, and David Thomas. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. New York: Addison-Wesley Professional, 1999.
“I’ll live the focused life”: from page 14 of Gallagher, Rapt.
Hofmann, W., R. Baumeister, G. Förster, and K. Vohs. “Everyday Temptations: An Experience Sampling Study of Desire, Conflict, and Self-Control.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102.6 (2012): 1318–1335.
“Desire turned out to be the norm, not the exception”: from page 3 of Baumeister, Roy F., and John Tierney. Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.
“taking a break from [hard] work”: Ibid., 4.
Original study: Baumeister, R., E. Bratlavsky, M. Muraven, and D. M. Tice. “Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74 (1998): 1252–1265.
“What I do takes long hours of studying” and “I have been a happy man”: from Donald Knuth’s Web page: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html.
“Persons who wish to interfere with my concentration”: from Neal Stephenson’s old website, in a page titled “My Ongoing Battle with Continuous Partial Attention,” archived in December 2003: http://web.archive.org/web/20031231203738/http://www.well.com/~neal/.
“The productivity equation is a non-linear one”: from Neal Stephenson’s old website, in a page titled “Why I Am a Bad Correspondent,” archived in December 2003: http://web.archive.org/web/20031207060405/http://www.well.com/~neal/badcorrespondent.html.
Stephenson, Neal. Anathem. New York: William Morrow, 2008.
For more on the connection between Anathem and the tension between focus and distraction, see “Interview with Neal Stephenson,” published on GoodReads.com in September 2008: http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/14.Neal_Stephenson.
“I saw my chance”: from the (Internet) famous “Don’t Break the Chain” article by Brad Isaac, writing for Lifehacker.com: http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret.
“one of the best magazine journalists”: Hitchens, Christopher, “Touch of Evil.” London Review of Books, October 22, 1992. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n20/christopher-hitchens/touch-of-evil.
Isaacson, Walter, and Evan Thomas. The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. New York: Simon and Schuster Reissue Edition, 2012. (The original version of this book was published in 1986, but it was recently republished in hardcover due presumably to Isaacson’s recent publishing success.)
“richly textured account” and “fashioned a Cold War Plutarch”: from the excerpts of reviews of Walter Isaacson’s The Wise Men that I found in the book jacket blurbs reproduced on Simon and Schuster’s official website for the book: http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Wise-Men/Walter-Isaacson/9781476728827.
“every inch of [Caro’s] New York office” and “I trained myself” and other details about Robert Caro’s habits: Darman, Jonathan. “The Marathon Man,” Newsweek, February 16, 2009, which I discovered through the following post, “Robert Caro,” on Mason Currey’s Daily Routines blog: http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/daily_routines/2009/02/robert-caro.html.
The Charles Darwin information was brought to my attention by the “Charles Darwin” post on Mason Currey’s Daily Routines, December 11, 2008. http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/daily_routines/2008/12/charles-darwin.html.
This post, in turn, draws on Charles Darwin: A Companion by R.B. Freeman, accessed by Currey on The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online.
“There is a popular notion that artists”: from the following Slate.com article: Currey, Mason. “Daily Rituals.” Slate, May 16, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/features/2013/daily_rituals/john_updike_william_faulkner_chuck_close_they_didn_t_wait_for_inspiration.html.
“[Great creative minds] think like artists”: from Brooks, David. “The Good Order.” New York Times, September 25, 2014, op-ed. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/26/opinion/david-brooks-routine-creativity-and-president-obamas-un-speech.html?_r=1.
“It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth”: This Nietzsche quote was brought to my attention by the excellent book on walking and philosophy: Gros, Frédérick. A Philosophy of Walking. Trans. John Howe. New York: Verso Books, 2014.
“As I was finishing Deathly Hallows there came a day”: from the transcript of Rowling’s 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey on Harry Potter’s Page: http://www.harrypotterspage.com/2010/10/03/transcript-of-oprah-interview-with-j-k-rowling/.
Details regarding J.K. Rowling working at the Balmoral Hotel: Johnson, Simon. “Harry Potter Fans Pay £1,000 a Night to Stay in Hotel Room Where JK Rowling Finished Series.” Telegraph, July 20, 2008. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/2437835/Harry-Potter-fans-pay-1000-a-night-to-stay-in-hotel-room-where-JK-Rowling-finished-series.html.
For more on Bill Gates’s Think Weeks: Guth, Robert A. “In Secret Hideaway, Bill Gates Ponders Microsoft’s Future.” Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2005. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB111196625830690477?mg=reno64-wsj.
“It’s really about two and a half months”: from the following author interview: Birnbaum, Robert. “Alan Lightman.” Identity Theory, November 16, 2000. http://www.identitytheory.com/alan-lightman/.
Michael Pollan’s book about building a writing cabin: Pollan, Michael. A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder. New York: Random House, 1997.
For more on William Shockley’s scramble to invent the junction transistor: “Shockley Invents the Junction Transistor.” PBS. http://www.pbs.org/transistor/background1/events/junctinv.html.
“‘Ohh! Shiny!’ DNA”: from a blog post by Shankman: “Where’s Your Home?” Peter Shankman’s website, July 2, 2014, http://shankman.com/where-s-your-home/.
“The trip cost $4,000”: from an interview with Shankman: Machan, Dyan. “Why Some Entrepreneurs Call ADHD a Superpower.” MarketWatch, July 12, 2011. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/entrepreneurs-superpower-for-some-its-adhd-1310052627559.
The July 2013 Bloomberg Businessweek article by Venessa Wong titled “Ending the Tyranny of the Open-Plan Office”: http://www.bloomberg.com/articles/2013-07-01/ending-the-tyranny-of-the-open-plan-office. This article has more background on the damage of open office spaces on worker productivity.
The twenty-eight hundred workers cited in regard to Facebook’s open office size was taken from the following March 2014 Daily Mail article: Prigg, Mark. “Now That’s an Open Plan Office.” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2584738/Now-THATS-open-plan-office-New-pictures-reveal-Facebooks-hacker-campus-house-10-000-workers-ONE-room.html.
“facilitate communication and idea flow”: Konnikova, Maria. “The Open-Office Trap.” The New Yorker, January 7, 2014. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap.
“Open plan is pretty spectacular”: Stevenson, Seth. “The Boss with No Office.” Slate, May 4, 2014. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/psychology_of_management/2014/05/open_plan_offices_the_new_trend_in_workplace_design.1.html.
“We encourage people to stay out in the open”: Savitz, Eric. “Jack Dorsey: Leadership Secrets of Twitter and Square.” Forbes, October 17, 2012. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/10/17/jack-dorsey-the-leadership-secrets-of-twitter-and-square/3/.
The New Yorker quotes about Building 20, as well as general background and lists of inventions, come from the following 2012 New Yorker article, combined to a lesser degree with the author’s firsthand experience with such lore while at MIT: Lehrer, Jonah. “Groupthink.” The New Yorker, January 30, 2012. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/groupthink.
“Traveling the hall’s length” and the information on Mervin Kelly and his goals for Bell Labs’s Murray Hill campus: Gertner, Jon. “True Innovation.” New York Times, February 25, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-and-the-bell-labs-miracle.html.
A nice summary history of the invention of the transistor can be found in “Transistorized!” at PBS’s website: http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/. A more detailed history can be found in Chapter 7 of Walter Isaacson’s 2014 book, The Innovators. New York: Simon and Schuster.
“How do I do this?”: from pages xix–xx of McChesney, Chris, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling. The 4 Disciplines of Execution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.
Clayton Christensen also talks more about his experience with Andy Grove in a July–August 2010 Harvard Business Review article, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” that he later expanded into a book of the same name: http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1.
“The more you try to do”: from page 10 of McChesney, Covey, and Huling, The 4 Disciplines of Execution.
“If you want to win the war for attention”: Brooks, David. “The Art of Focus.” New York Times, June 3, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/opinion/brooks-the-art-of-focus.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=2.
“When you receive them”: from page 12 of McChesney, Covey, and Huling, The 4 Disciplines of Execution.
“People play differently when they’re keeping score”: Ibid., 12.
“a rhythm of regular and frequent meetings” and “execution really happens”: Ibid., 13.
“I am not busy” and “Idleness is not just a vacation”: Kreider, Tim. “The Busy Trap.” New York Times, June 30, 2013. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/.
Much (though not all) of the research cited to support the value of downtime was first brought to my attention through a detailed Scientific American article on the subject: Jabr, Ferris. “Why Your Brain Needs More Downtime.” Scientific American, October 15, 2013. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/.
“The scientific literature has emphasized”: from the abstract of Dijksterhuis, Ap, Maarten W. Bos, Loran F. Nordgren, and Rick B. van Baaren, “On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect.” Science 311.5763 (2006): 1005–1007.
The attention restoration theory study described in the text: Berman, Marc G., John Jonides, and Stephen Kaplan. “The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature.” Psychological Science 19.12 (2008): 1207–1212.
I called this study “frequently cited” based on the more than four hundred citations identified by Google Scholar as of November 2014.
An online article where Berman talks about this study and ART more generally (the source of my Berman quotes): Berman, Marc. “Berman on the Brain: How to Boost Your Focus.” Huffington Post, February 2, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/marc-berman/attention-restoration-theory-nature_b_1242261.html.
Kaplan, Rachel, and Stephen Kaplan. The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Ericsson, K.A., R.T. Krampe, and C. Tesch-Römer. “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.” Psychological Review 100.3 (1993): 363–406.
“Committing to a specific plan for a goal”: from Masicampo, E.J., and Roy F. Baumeister. “Consider It Done! Plan Making Can Eliminate the Cognitive Effects of Unfulfilled Goals.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101.4 (2011): 667.
My estimate of “hundreds of thousands” of daily Talmud studiers comes from an article by Shmuel Rosner, “A Page a Day,” New York Times, August 1, 2012 (http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/considering-seven-and-a-half-years-of-daily-talmud-study/), as well as my personal correspondence with Adam Marlin.
“So we have scales that allow us to divide” and “The people we talk with continually said”: Clifford Nass’s May 10, 2013, interview with Ira Flatow, on NPR’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday show. Audio and transcript are available online: “The Myth of Multitasking.” http://www.npr.org/2013/05/10/182861382/the-myth-of-multitasking. In a tragic twist, Nass died unexpectedly just six months after this interview.
Powers, William. Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in a Digital Age. New York: Harper, 2010.
“Do what Thoreau did”: “Author Disconnects from Communication Devices to Reconnect with Life.” PBS NewsHour, August 16, 2010. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science-july-dec10-hamlets_08-16/.
The general information about Theodore Roosevelt’s Harvard habits comes from Edmund Morris’s fantastic biography: Morris, Edmund. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Random House, 2001. In particular, pages 61–65 include Morris’s catalog of Roosevelt’s collegiate activities and an excerpt from a letter from Roosevelt to his mother that outlines his work habits. The specific calculation that Roosevelt dedicates a quarter of his typical day to schoolwork comes from page 64.
“amazing array of interests”: from page 64 of Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.
The positive receipt of Roosevelt’s book by the Nuttall Bulletin comes from Morris’s endnotes: in particular, note 37 in the chapter titled “The Man with the Morning in His Face.”
“one of the most knowledgeable”: from page 67 of Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. I ascribed this assessment to Morris, though this is somewhat indirect, as Morris here is actually arguing that Roosevelt’s father, after the publication of The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks, must have felt this about his son.
“The amount of time he spent at his desk”: from page 64 of Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.
Quotes from Daniel Kilov came from personal correspondence. Some background on his story was taken from his online biography, http://mentalathlete.wordpress.com/about/, and Lieu Thi Pham. “In Melbourne, Memory Athletes Open Up Shop.” ZDNet, August 21, 2013. http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/global-observer/in-melbourne-memory-athletes-open-up-shop/. More on Kilov’s scores (memory feats) from his two medal-winning championship bouts can be found on the World Memory Statistics website: http://www.world-memory-statistics.com/competitor.php?id=1102.
Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. New York: Penguin, 2011.
“We found that one of the biggest differences”: Carey, Benedict. “Remembering, as an Extreme Sport.” New York Times Well Blog, May 19, 2014.
For more interesting connections between memorization and general thought, see: The Art of Memory, by Frances A. Yates, which was first published in 1966. The most accessible version seems to be the handsome 2001 reprint by the University of Chicago Press.
“the most connected man in the world”; “I was burnt out”; “By the end of that first week”; “The end came too soon”; and general information about Baratunde Thurston’s experiment: from the Baratunde Thurston article “#UnPlug” that appeared in the July–August 2013 issue of Fast Company. http://www.fastcompany.com/3012521/unplug/baratunde-thurston-leaves-the-internet.
The reference to Thurston’s Twitter usage refers to the tweets on March 13, 2014, from the Twitter handle @Baratunde.
“Entertainment was my initial draw”; “[When] I first joined”; and “[I use] Facebook because”: drawn from comments sections of the following two blog posts I wrote in the fall of 2013:
• “Why I’m (Still) Not Going to Join Facebook: Four Arguments That Failed to Convince Me.” http://calnewport.com/blog/2013/10/03/why-im-still-not-going-to-join-facebook-four-arguments-that-failed-to-convince-me/.
• “Why I Never Joined Facebook.” http://calnewport.com/blog/2013/09/18/why-i-never-joined-facebook/.
For more on Forrest Pritchard and Smith Meadows Farms: http://smithmeadows.com/.
“Who says my fans want to hear from me”: from a Malcolm Gladwell talk that took place at the International Digital Publishing Forum as part of the 2013 BookExpo America Convention, held in May 2013, in New York City. A summary of the talk, including the quotes excerpted in this chapter, and some video excerpts, can be found in “Malcolm Gladwell Attacks NYPL: ‘Luxury Condos Would Look Wonderful There,’” Huffington Post, May 29, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/malcolm-gladwell-attacks-_n_3355041.html.
“I don’t tweet” and “It’s amazing how overly accessible”: from the following Michael Lewis interview: Allan, Nicole. “Michael Lewis: What I Read.” The Wire, March 1, 2010. http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2010/03/michael-lewis-what-i-read/20129/.
“And now, nearly a year later”: from “Why Twitter Will Endure,” by David Carr for the New York Times in January 2010: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/weekinreview/03carr.html.
“Twitter is crack for media addicts”: from an online opinion piece written for the New Yorker website: Packer, George. “Stop the World.” The New Yorker, January 29, 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2010/01/stop-the-world.html.
The law of the vital few is discussed in many sources. Richard Koch’s 1998 book, The 80/20 Principle (New York: Crown, 1998), seems to have helped reintroduce the idea to a business market. Tim Ferriss’s 2007 mega-seller, The 4-Hour Workweek (New York: Crown, 2007), popularized it further, especially among the technology entrepreneur community. The Wikipedia page on the Pareto principle has a good summary of various places where this general idea applies (I drew many of my examples from here): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle.
“Everything’s more exciting when it’s a party” and general information on Ryan Nicodemus’s “packing party”: “Day 3: Packing Party.” The Minimalists. http://www.theminimalists.com/21days/day3/.
Average number of Twitter followers statistic comes from: “Average Twitter User Is an American Woman with an iPhone and 208 Followers.” Telegraph, October 11, 2012. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9601327/Average-Twitter-user-is-an-an-American-woman-with-an-iPhone-and-208-followers.html.
Take this statistic with a grain of salt. A small number of Twitter users have such a large following that the average skews high. Presumably the median would be much lower. But then again, both statistics include users who signed up just to try out the service or read tweets, and who made no serious attempt to ever gain followers or write tweets. If we confined our attention to those who actually tweet and want followers, then the follower numbers would be higher.
“Take the case of a Londoner who works”; “great and profound mistake”; “during those sixteen hours he is free”; and “What? You say that full energy”: from Chapter 4 in Bennett, Arnold. How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. Originally published in 1910. Quotes are from the free version of the text maintained in HTML format at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2274/2274-h/2274-h.htm.
“People should enjoy the weather in the summer” and general notes on Jason Fried’s decision to move 37signals (now Basecamp) to a four-day workweek: “Workplace Experiments: A Month to Yourself.” Signal v. Noise, May 31, 2012. https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3186-workplace-experiments-a-month-to-yourself.
“Packing 40 hours into four days”: from a Forbes.com critique of Fried: Weiss, Tara. “Why a Four-Day Work Week Doesn’t Work.” Forbes. August 18, 2008. www.forbes.com/2008/08/18/careers-leadership-work-leadership-cx_tw_0818workweek.html.
“The point of the 4-day work week is” and “Very few people work even 8 hours a day”: from Fried’s response on his company’s blog: “Forbes Misses the Point of the 4-Day Work Week.” Signal v. Noise, August 20, 2008. http://signalvnoise.com/posts/1209-forbes-misses-the-point-of-the-4-day-work-week.
“I’d take 5 days in a row”: from Fried’s company’s blog: “Workplace Experiments.” https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3186-workplace-experiments-a-month-to-yourself.
“How can we afford to”: from an Inc.com article: Fried, Jason. “Why I Gave My Company a Month Off.” Inc., August 22, 2012. http://www.inc.com/magazine/201209/jason-fried/why-company-a-month-off.html.
The notes on how many hours a day of deliberate practice are possible come from page 370 of: Ericsson, K.A., R.T. Krampe, and C. Tesch-Römer. “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.” Psychological Review 100.3 (1993): 363–406.
The statistics about British TV habits come from this Guardian article, by Mona Chalabi, published on October 8, 2013: “Do We Spend More Time Online or Watching TV?” http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2013/oct/08/spend-more-time-online-or-watching-tv-internet.
The Laura Vanderkam article in the Wall Street Journal: “Overestimating Our Overworking,” May 29, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB124355233998464405.
“I think you far understate”: from comment #6 of the blog post “Deep Habits: Plan Your Week in Advance,” August 8, 2014. http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/08/08/deep-habits-plan-your-week-in-advance.
“Scary myths and scary data abound” and general information about Radhika Nagpal’s fixed-schedule productivity habit:
“The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life,” Scientific American, July 21, 2013. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/07/21/the-awesomest-7-year-postdoc-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-tenure-track-faculty-life/.
Matt Welsh’s quote about typical travel for junior faculty: “The Fame Trap.” Volatile and Decentralized, August 4, 2014. http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-fame-trap.html.
The issue of Science where Radhika Nagpal’s work appears on the cover: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6172.toc; Science 343.6172 (February 14, 2014): 701–808.
“we are slowly eroding our ability to explain”: from page 13 of Freeman, John. The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox. New York: Scribner, 2009.
To see my sender filters in action: http://calnewport.com/contact/.
“So, when I emailed Cal to ask if he”: Glei, Jocelyn. “Stop the Insanity: How to Crush Communication Overload.” 99U, http://99u.com/articles/7002/stop-the-insanity-how-to-crush-communication-overload.
“At some point, the number of people reaching out” and more details on Clay Herbert and Antonio Centeno’s filters: Simmons, Michael. “Open Relationship Building: The 15-Minute Habit That Transforms Your Network.” Forbes, June 24, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelsimmons/2014/06/24/open-relationship-building-the-15-minute-habit-that-transforms-your-network/.
Notice, this Forbes.com article also talks about my own sender filter habit. (I suggested the name “sender filter” to the article’s author, Michael Simmons, who is also a longtime friend of mine.)
See Antonio’s filters in action: http://www.realmenrealstyle.com/contact/.
“Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen”: from Tim Ferriss’ blog: “The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen.” The Tim Ferriss Experiment, October 25, 2007. http://fourhourworkweek.com/2007/10/25/weapons-of-mass-distractions-and-the-art-of-letting-bad-things-happen/.
“a prodigious feat of concentration”: from an article for the Harvard Gazette: Isaacson, Walter. “Dawn of a Revolution,” September 2013. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/09/dawn-of-a-revolution/.
“The one trait that differentiated [Gates from Allen] was focus”: Isaacson, Walter. The Innovators. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. The quote came from 9:55 into Chapter 6 of Part 2 in the unabridged Audible.com audio version of the book.
The details of the Bill Gates story came mainly from Isaacson, “Dawn of a Revolution,” article, which Walter Isaacson excerpted (with modification) from his Innovators. I also pulled some background details, however, from Stephen Manes’s excellent 1994 business biography. Manes, Stephen. Gates: How Microsoft’s Mogul Reinvented an Industry—and Made Himself the Richest Man in America. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Newport, Cal. So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skill Trumps Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. New York: Business Plus, 2012.
You can find a list of my computer science publications, organized by year, at my academic website: http://people.cs.georgetown.edu/~cnewport. The publications from my year of living deeply are listed under 2014. Notice that theoretical computer scientists, like myself, publish mainly in competitive conferences, not journals, and that we tend to list authors alphabetically, not in order of contribution.
“I’ll live the focused life”: from page 14 of Gallagher, Rapt.