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Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
In Search of Silence Joel Spolsky is a well-respected figure in Silicon Valley. He created the popular Trello project manager software and is currently the ... Read more
Cal Newport
Official website of Georgetown Professor Cal Newport, author of the Study Hacks blog, Deep Work, and other New York Times bestselling books.
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Visit calnewport.com → On Hacker News Jul 2009 – Sep 2026
Life, Learning & Writing 32Career & Management 14Society, Policy & Culture 12Tech Industry & Business 8AI & Machine Learning 4Web & Frontend 1
2
On the slow productivity of John Wick
I found myself recently, as one does, watching the mini-documentary featurettes included on the DVD for the popular 2014 Keanu Reeves movie, John Wick — ... Read more
3
Meta rediscovers the cubicle
Back in 2016, I reported on a rumor that was circulating about employee dissatisfaction at Meta (then, Facebook). Developers, it seemed, were unhappy with the ... Read more
4
Edsger Dijkstra’s One-Day Workweek
Within my particular subfield of theoretical computer science there’s perhaps no individual more celebrated than Edsger Dijkstra. His career spanned half-a-century, beginning with a young ... Read more
5
Your work matters – Build your schedule accordingly
About halfway through Laura Vanderkam’s sharp new productivity guide, Tranquility by Tuesday, we’re introduced to Elizabeth, an education professor who, worried about her ticking tenure ... Read more
6
Brandon Sanderson’s advice for doing hard things
A reader recently sent me a video of a keynote speech, delivered in 2020 by the popular fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson. The title of the ... Read more
7
On the Law of Diminishing Specialization
On Productive Technology and its Discontents Recently, I’ve been dipping in and out of Edward Tenner’s provocative 1996 book, When Things Bites Back. In following ... Read more
8
When Work Didn’t Follow You Home
In a recent article written for Slate, journalist Dan Kois recounts the shock his younger coworkers expressed when they discovered that he had, earlier in ... Read more
9
What you know matters more than what you do
Insight into Impact I recently had an interesting conversation with some colleagues. We were talking about a young researcher in our field who happens to ... Read more
10
Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)
A Career Crossroads In the early winter of 2004, I was a senior at Dartmouth College and in the fortunate position of having two good ... Read more
11
Michael Crichton’s and John Grisham’s ambition types
By his last year at Harvard Medical School, Michael Crichton, 26-years old at the time, knew he didn’t want to pursue a medical career, so ... Read more
12
“Write Every Day” Is Bad Advice: Hacking the Psychology of Big Projects
A Flawed Axiom Write every day. If you’ve ever considered professional writing, you’ve heard this advice. Stephen King recommends it in his instructional memoir, On ... Read more
13
If You’re Nervous About Quitting Your Boring Job, Don’t Do It
The Courage Fallacy In 2005, Lisa Feuer quit her marketing job. She had held this same position throughout her 30s before deciding, at the age of ... Read more
14
The Einstein Principle: Accomplish More By Doing Less
Einstein’s Push Between the years 1912 to 1915, Albert Einstein was a focused man. His previous work on the special theory of relativity and the ... Read more