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Cal Newport: Deep Work (2016, Grand Central Publishing) 4 stars

One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you …

Review of 'Deep Work' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Some good tips about methods of work, but ultimately glorifies hustle culture and productivity performance. While these tenets may benefit individuals, they will ultimately fail to meaningfully change the society we live in (apparently this is a superfluous moral argument). I picked this up because I thought Digital Minimalism was ok, but this one is blatant in its lack of critique of the reasons why meaningful engagement (read deep work) occur. For-profit businesses that operate not on common good, but on extractive tactics that steer people away from meaningful dialogue, create further polarization and care little about the health of people or planet is but one of these reasons that is acknowledged, but not questioned. The other is the assumption that everyone has an infinite amount of potential leisure time to recapture by being more effective at concentration. I hope someone extracts the good parts of this book and re-aligns it with a trauma-informed, community minded lens.