Cal Newport

speaker

1,088 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 22 Jul

Cal Newport’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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since knowledge work emerged as a major economic sector in the mid 20th century, pseudo productivity has really been the only game in town.

And one of my big arguments is that it's not working.

Pseudo productivity, especially plus modern technology, that's a really bad mixture.

And it's going to lead to burnout.

It's going to lead to unhappiness.

It's going to lead to companies struggling, too, because not enough valuables being produced.

We're in a bad moment right now because pseudo productivity isn't working in a world of email and Slack and meetings.

It's a volatile combination.

You have to shift your mindset towards what am I finishing and how good is it?

what over the last month, what over the last two months, we need a bigger timeframe here.

What have I finished that is valuable and how good was it?

Like if that becomes the source of your pride, then whether or not you got through a lot of emails in a given day becomes unrelated or irrelevant.

Like who cares?

What matters is what did I produce over the last month?

Because once you move to that bigger timeframe,

you're not going to remember the number of emails you sent or the number of meetings you attended.

When you say, how did last month go?

You don't say it was fantastic because I sent 500,000 emails and this was a great number for me.

You're not going to remember the emails.

You're going to say, I finished these two reports.

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