Ep. 347: The Forgotten Phone Harms

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Education, Self-improvement, Technology

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Phones have been receiving a lot of criticism recently, but what if these concerns are missing the mark? In this episode, Cal introduces the difference between primary and secondary phone harms, and argues how our obsession with the former hides the importance of the latter. He then answers reader questions and reviews the books he read in March 2025. Find out more about Done Daily at DoneDaily.com! Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo Video from today’s episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia Deep Dive: The Forgotten Phone Harms [3:32] - What do you do when your writing doesn’t quite feel right? [24:32] - How should I prioritize responding to different types of communication? [33:29] - Should personal and work tasks be split into different Trello boards? [39:10] - What is the difference between a two-status board and a reverse task list? [41:47] CASE STUDY: A student adopts the Tao of Cal [45:17] CALL: Structuring weekly templates [49:00] MARCH BOOKS: The 5 books Cal read in March 2025 [57:24] - Believe (Ross Douhut) - How to Winter (Kari Leibowitz) - Letter and the Scroll (Jonathan Sacks) - I and Thou (Martin Buber) - Coming into the Country (John McPhee) Links: Buy Cal’s latest book, “Slow Productivity” at calnewport.com/slow Get a signed copy of Cal’s “Slow Productivity” at peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/cal-newport/ Cal’s monthly book directory: bramses.notion.site/059db2641def4a88988b4d2cee4657ba? Thanks to our Sponsors: This show is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/deepquestions and get on your way to being your best self. shopify.com/deep indeed.com/deep mybodytutor.com Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, Kieron Rees for the slow productivity music, and Mark Miles for mastering. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show about cultivating a deep life in a distracted world.
0:22.8	I'm here on my Deep Work HQ.
0:25.2	I'm joined, as always, by my producer, Jesse.
0:28.8	Jesse, we got a good show.
0:30.1	I want to give a caveat or maybe reassurance to the audience.
0:35.3	The Deep dive is going to start on a baseball related topic.
0:40.6	Yeah, baby.
0:41.4	Because it is baseball season,
0:42.6	but you will see it quickly will generalize into a topic about all of us.
0:47.6	So it won't actually be a baseball theme deep dive,
0:50.3	but I had to throw it a little Easter egg there for baseball fans.
0:52.6	So we got some good questions.
0:54.4	It's the first episode of April.
0:56.1	So in the final segment, we'll take a break for my increasingly pendantic AI-themed
1:02.6	tech corners, which I've been enjoying, to talk about the books I read in March.
1:07.0	So there should be a good change of space.
1:08.7	Before we get there, have you, I don't know if you've seen this, Jesse.
1:11.0	People I know who barely use Twitter or X, where we call it, keep saying, hey, I've seen,
1:18.1	I'm seeing you on there.
1:18.9	I'm seeing you on there, right?
1:20.8	And so I looked into it.
1:23.1	And there's one of these Twitter threads that people do.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Cal Newport, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Cal Newport and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.