User Profile

Deep Work is a book well written and full of interesting ideas to increase your focus in work and life. I found it surprisingly easy to read. As expected from a self-help productivity book, the arguments are based on many anecdotes and Newport's own experiences. They are sprinkled with references to related books and studies.

The book provides clear and effective advice on reducing shallow work and improving deep work. It's well structured and easy to digest in small chunks. I tried not to read too much at once, only small chunks - chapter by chapter - to be able to think about the ideas and experiment with them in my own life. I believe this was the right approach. I don't believe that Deep Work will affect my life profoundly, but it certainly gave me a lot of good ideas and techniques.

The reason why I only give 4 out of 5 stars is because I'm generally weary of the kind of modern productivity gurus like Cal Newport. Usually the ideas are presented with a tang of secret wisdom, but mostly they are not that profound. We all know that scrolling down that infinite feed is bad for your productivity and that saying "no" to unimportant things makes you get the important stuff done faster.

This book is great for knowledge workers. As a software developer I can relate to the ideas and it contains a lot of useful advice for my line of work. If I was a farmer or craftsman I would probably not have liked it at all. But, to be fair, Cal Newport is very open about this fact early in the book.

My final conclusion is that it's good to be able to do more quality (deep) work in less time, but the productivity-over-everything-mindset is a double-edged sword. I will probably have to add a book about mindfulness and spirituality to my reading list soon to balance things out.

This book aims to be a guide on problem-solving, especially mathematical problems, and it is written with the intent to develop problem-solving skills in the reader

The writing style is sometimes odd an abstract and feels slightly outdated, which doesn't come as a surprise given the year the book was published. "How to Solve It" is mostly written in the format of a dialogue between teacher and student. Pólya doesn't just try to teach the reader how to solve problems, but also how to become a better teacher. He imparts how to interact with a student and what questions to ask, in order to make them solve problems and learn to solve them on their own.

Unfortunately, most of the key points are repeated way to much and the larger part of the book feels redundant.

Problem-solving is an essential skill for anyone, but it's also something that comes naturally with experience. "How to Solve It" was an interesting new perspective for me, but I wouldn't say it's an essential read. It might be a good book to pick up for anyone interested in general mathematical problem-solving or the philosophy of teaching it, however, I think there are other, more modern and more easily digestible books on those topics available.

This is a diary of a young girl who is forced to go into hiding with a bunch of other people for a long time. Her style is easy to read and she was an exceptionally good writer for her age.

The book is written in a way that at times struggles to convey the drama of the situation, but you can easily read that between the lines. She didn't write about the world outside the hiding space a lot, but nevertheless it shows how hard the war has been for the people occupied by the Germans.

If you plan on reading this book you should be prepared that this really is a classical diary and it shows mostly the inner, but nonetheless interesting, life of a young girl growing up in a challenging environment. It might even sound uninteresting at first, but I think it's a book worth reading for everyone. It gives you a unique perspective into both the Second World War and the mind of an intelligent young girl struggling to grow up and gain independence.