Cal Newport

Cal Newport is a bestselling author, productivity expert, and an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. At the center of his work is the idea that our modern understanding of productivity is all wrong. Rather than working toward consistent high-quality output, we’ve placed performative busyness on a pedestal, and expectations of constant digital communication and around the clock availability have ruined our capacity to do truly meaningful work. He is the architect of the deep life movement which offers a better, more effective way of working and aims to recondition humanity toward meaning and focus in a world increasingly deluged by technological distraction.

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Cal signed his first book deal soon after his 21^st birthday, while still an undergraduate at Dartmouth College. He has since authored eight books that have collectively sold well over two million copies and have been translated into 40 languages. He is best known for his New York Times bestselling trilogy of books exploring the intersections of technology, work, and society: Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and A World Without Email. In March 2024, he expands on this line of work with Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. Said to deliver “counterintuitive secrets that just might save your career and sanity” by Arthur Brooks, Slow Productivity asks that we do less, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality.  

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In addition to his books, Newport has taken to various forms of other media to communicate his paradigm-shifting ideas on living and working with more depth and meaning. Since 2007, he’s penned weekly posts for his Study Hacks blog and newsletter that gets over two million visits and tens of thousands of subscribers each year. He also hosts the Deep Questions podcast where he offers advice about cultivating focus, productivity, and meaning amidst the noise that pervades our lives. Launched in 2020, the podcast accumulated over seven million downloads in its first two years and has continued to grow ever since. Cal is also a contributing writer for The New Yorker and has also written for New York Times and WIRED.

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Cal Newport is a proponent of the emerging discipline of digital ethics. He is one of the founding members of Georgetown University’s Center for Digital Ethics and the inaugural Director of the College of Art and Science’s Computer Science Ethics and Society major. With the Center for Digital Ethics, Newport works to ensure technological progress supports the betterment of humanity through ethical theory, policy, and practice.

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As an academic, Cal’s computer science research focuses on the theory of distributed systems, with a particular interest in what can and cannot be solved in challenging settings, such as communication networks with unknown participants or changing topologies, or biological systems. He has published over 65 peer-reviewed articles that have been cited over 4,500 times. He earned his PhD from MIT.