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Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
In my writing on technology and culture I try to be judicious about citing scientific studies. The issues involved in our ongoing wrangling with digital ... 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
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If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)
The Berlin Study In the early 1990s, a trio of psychologists descended on the Universität der Künste, a historic arts academy in the heart of West ... Read more
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Advice on Getting Better from an Accomplished Piano Player (2011)
The Piano Player Confessions I recently received a message from an accomplished piano player. Let’s call him Jeremy. This is someone who majored in piano ... Read more
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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
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Mastering Linear Algebra in 10 Days: Astounding Experiments in Ultra-Learning
The MIT Challenge My friend Scott Young recently finished an astounding feat: he completed all 33 courses in MIT’s fabled computer science curriculum, from Linear ... Read more
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Our Brains Are Not Multi-Threaded
In computer programming, it’s common to split your program into multiple different threads that run simultaneously, as this often simplifies application design. Imagine, for example, ... Read more
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Quit Social Media (2016)
Anti-Social Grumblings I recently gave a deliberatively provocative TEDx talk titled “quit social media” (see the video above). The theme of the event was “visions ... Read more
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How to Cure Deep Procrastination
The Deep Procrastination Crisis Above is a snapshot of my blog e-mail inbox, filtered to only show e-mails from students struggling with deep procrastination. Notice ... Read more
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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
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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
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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
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A Look Inside the Process of One of the World’s Most Efficient Studiers
Scott Young’s Graduation Gift to Study Hacks I have to give credit to Scott Young: it was talking blogs with him back in 2007 that ... Read more
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On Digital Minimalism
The Curmudgeonly Optimist People are sometimes confused about my personal relationship with digital communication technologies. On the one hand, I’m a computer scientist who studies and improves these tools. ... Read more
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How to Ace Calculus: The Art of Doing Well in Technical Courses
Tangent Troubles Calculus is easy. Or at least, it can be. The key is how you digest the material. Here’s an example: when you’re first ... Read more
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The Pyramid Method: A Simple Strategy For Becoming Exceptionally Good
The Power of Good In early May, I received an interesting e-mail from a reader. After the standard introductions, he said: Though I’m progressing towards ... Read more
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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
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Paperbacks and TikTok
In 1939, Simon & Schuster revolutionized the American publishing industry with the launch of Pocket Books, a line of diminutive volumes (measuring 4 by 6 ... Read more
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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
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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
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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
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On the Pleasures and Sorrows of Life Without Screens
I recently received a message from a friend of mine, a young man named Mike. He told me that Digital Minimalism had changed his life. ... Read more
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The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination
Survivor: Paleolithic Edition Rewind time 100,000 years ago: several different species of humans co-exist on earth.There was, of course, our own species, Homo sapien, but ... Read more
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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
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“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
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Why Donald Knuth Checks E-mail Only Once Every Three Months
E-mail Zero Redux Two weeks ago, I introduced E-mail Zero, the concept of living life with no e-mail. The motivation was to investigate innovative ways ... Read more
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How Professional Writers Write
[UPDATE: 2/18/08] Welcome new readers! If this is your first time here, Study Hacks is a blog that focuses on hacks to help you do ... Read more
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Beyond the 10,000 Hour Rule: Richard Hamming and the Messy Art of Becoming Great
What Makes Great Scientists Great? In March of 1986, an overflow audience of over 200 researchers and staff members from Bell Laboratories piled into the ... Read more
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The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
Steve and David Let’s try a simple experiment. Imagine that you’re an admissions officer at a competitive college, and you’re evaluating the following two applicants: ... Read more
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How to Solve Hard Problem Sets Without Staying Up All Night
I Have all the Time in the World… Last weekend, I sat down for a cup of coffee with Jake from College Chronicles fame. We ... Read more
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Focus Hard. In Reasonable Bursts. One Day at a Time.
Dissertation Hell Writing a doctoral dissertation is a peculiar endeavor. There’s a general understanding, suspended out there in the stress-fraught ether of graduate student life, ... Read more