Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World on calnewport.com.

It’s unfair to write this book off as an elaborate essay on how to (finally) get to work. Instead, Cal Newport explains why deep work is becoming more and more essential and how you can implement more of it in your professional life. Personal anecdotes, practical tips, and eye-opening statistics keep one enticed along the way.

If you’ve read the one or other productivity blog before, some methods will sound familiar. Even then, this book might just give you the necessary nudge to actually follow through on them if you haven’t been fully convinced so far. Be warned, though, that it comes with a tang of elitism. It caters to experienced knowledge workers who would like to “produce the absolute best stuff” and haven’t yet reached their “full value-producing potential”.

As for myself, this book resulted in taking out my (digital) marker more often than I’d like to admit. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of learning about one productivity tip after another and never putting any into practice. Let’s hope one or two techniques will stick.

Read in April 2020.