Book Review: Deep Work by Cal Newport

I run my ghostwriting practice almost entirely async: after a project kicks off, my clients get weekly chapter drops and send feedback by voice memo, because calls drag me out of deep work. I am, in other words, the choir this book was written to preach to.

And I still gave it three stars. Let me explain.

Cal Newport’s argument: the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding work is the most valuable skill in the modern economy, and most of us have traded it away for inboxes and feeds. The book is half case-for, half rules for getting it back.

What I Loved About Deep Work by Cal Newport

There’s real, solid advice in here, and one section changed my thinking outright: Newport’s breakdown of why social media isn’t as necessary for your career as an author — at least, not in the way you think it is. For the record, I grew Make Writing Your Job to 42,000+ subscribers over three years with no paid ads, and the whole business runs on email: social media is a rented billboard, and email is the deed to your own shop. There are more gems in here that shifted my thinking, too.

What I Didn’t Love About Deep Work

The writing. This book reads corporate: stuffy, gray-suited, full of consultant case studies. If your shelf leans literary, the register will wear on you. The ideas deserve livelier sentences than the ones they arrived in — and that’s the gap between the three stars I gave it and the four it almost earned.

Final Thoughts on Deep Work

If you can get past the stuffy prose, there are good ideas in here — I’d specifically recommend it to fellow writers who want to level up their productivity in a mindful way, which is the only way I recommend leveling up anything. If you’re choosing just one do-less-but-better book, though, start with Essentialism and come back for this one.

My final score: 3 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Do I recommend this book? 👍 Yes — for writers, if you can forgive corporate prose.

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