How Cal Newport Saved my CS Career

(Originally published on Noteworthy)

I was struggling.

I was halfway through the second year of my undergraduate CS degree. And I wanted to quit.

There were a lot of personal reasons I wanted to quit, but one of the main reasons was that I felt stuck and unable to attain my full potential. Growing up, I had always been told, “Hey, you’re a smart kid. You have a lot of potential.” I had always had a loosely structured work ethic; I worked twice as hard as others to get the same result as them. But this never really sat right with me.

During my degree, I felt like a hamster in a wheel, running in place with no real destination. Always working hard, only to get mediocre results. I was getting really tired, really fast, and I had the “rational” thought of “Hey, why don’t I just quit?”

Luckily for me, somewhere around the same time I was thinking of quitting, I went to a bookstore and came across a book. And immediately, the title of this book really struck a chord with me:

So Good They Can’t Ignore You.

I thought to myself, “Hey, that’s what I want to be: really good at whatever it is I do.” So I picked it up and the book right next to it, “Deep Work”, also by Cal Newport, and it’s safe to say my life’s never been the same since. (Read till the end if you’d like to know how I’m doing now.)

I have since purchased two of his other books “How to be a Straight-A Student” and “Digital Minimalism”, which also had an equally significant impact on me.

Here are some of the things I’ve learnt from these books and how they might help you as well:

Work accomplished = Time Spent x Intensity of Focus

(From How to be a Straight-A Student)

This was one of the foundations for the book “How to be a Straight-A Student”, outlining the unconventional strategies that college students used to study a lot less but still ace their college life. The key part of this formula is Intensity of Focus, which basically refers to how much concentration and focus you’re putting into a particular task.

Haphazardly flitting across different tasks or multitasking are all ways to diminish focus, and is basically the equivalent of completing your assignment with both your hands tied behind your back. Instead, putting in many short intervals of high focus to complete a task is much easier and takes a lot less time in the long run.

Ever since reading about this, I have used this technique for every test or exam I’ve prepared for. I adopted the vastly popular Pomodoro technique, where I study for 25 minutes with high concentration levels and take a 5 minute break after that to recharge. 4–5 of these sessions and I’m done for the day, having gotten a lot more done than if I had just continuously studied for hours together.

Pro Tip: Use the Pomodoro Technique. Now.

Active Recall is the only studying that matters.

(From How to be a Straight-A Student)

Active recall, or Quiz-and-Recall as Cal calls it, is the polar opposite of rote memorization or flipping through a textbook a couple of times. Active recall consists of understanding the concept at hand and then explaining the concept out loud, without any help or referral to your textbook or notes. It’s a variation of the Feynman technique, named after legendary physicist Richard Feynman.

It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. The act of trying to force information out of your brain is painful. But over time, you get used to it. And guess what? If you can explain it well without any help, you’re done. That’s it. It is brutally time-effective.

During the 25-minute Pomodoro sessions, I try and do as much active recall as possible. Although initially uncomfortable, I was able to save a ton of time with this method. In fact, thanks mainly to this method, I was typically done studying the day before an exam or test, and so I’ve never had to pull an all-nighter ever. I’d usually spend the evening and night before relaxing by watching TV or reading.

Pro Tip: Explain things out loud when studying. Nothing else matters.

“Follow your passion” is terrible advice.

(From So Good They Can’t Ignore You)

It’s very likely that you’ve heard the phrase “Follow your passion”. But in the book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, Cal makes the argument that skills matter way more than passion in finding a career that is meaningful and satisfying. Putting in the time to build important, valuable skills should be the mainstream way to build a career that you end up loving.

This particular piece of writing really resonated with me. One of the reasons I wanted to quit my CS degree was because I didn’t feel “passionate” about the subjects I was learning.

I was almost certain that there was a different career trajectory out there for me and this was not it. But after I read this, I realized that if you don’t have a pre-existing passion (I didn’t), then passion is simply a byproduct of building important, necessary skills.

It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

Pro Tip: Don’t worry about passion. Passion doesn’t matter. Only skills do.

The Idea of Career Capital.

(From So Good They Can’t Ignore You)

According to Cal, there are typically 3 traits that make a career compelling and enriching: Creativity, Impact and Control. Being stimulated creatively, having a significant impact and having a degree of control over your own career are some of the things that people ideally want in a career.

And to gain these things, Cal introduces the concept of Career Capital, or rare and valuable skills, that you can exchange for these traits. Like a commodity like oil or gold, these skills can be leveraged to build a sustainable career. Without the necessary skills, asking for these factors in a career is close to impossible.

How do you gain these skills? Deliberate practice. Deliberate practice consists of a well-defined stretch goal, a little beyond your current capabilities, and full concentration and effort practicing that skill repeatedly to attain that goal, while getting constant feedback. Active Recall, as discussed above, is one important form of deliberate practice.

Pro Tip: Gain rare and valuable skills using Deliberate Practice.

Embracing Boredom.

(From Deep Work)

Deep Work was arguably one of Cal’s more popular books, and created the largest ripple effect, making the discussion and criticism of current technological use more mainstream. According to Cal, Deep Work is the ability to perform activities in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. Deep Work is becoming increasingly rare, and yet is increasingly valuable, a winning combination for those who can actually practice Deep Work.

In one part of the book, he talks about actually embracing boredom and making that a more significant part of our lives. According to him, Deep Work is not an overnight decision, but rather like a muscle that has to be trained. So if Deep Work is equivalent to working out at the gym, boredom would be adopting a healthy diet and staying away from junk food. They need to coexist to have any kind of effect.

Only by removing the constant distractions around us can we be preparing our brains for the type of hard thinking that Deep Work needs. As Cal says, “Take breaks from focus, not distraction.”

Pro Tip: Be bored, for a fixed period everyday. Let your mind wander, without any distractions. Be intrigued by the thoughts you come across.

Schedule Every Minute of your Day.

(From Deep Work)

Planning is a crucial part of productivity. Without proper planning, it could seem like you’re ‘busy’, but without any major impact. We sometimes run on autopilot, not really worrying about what we do with our time during the day. But over a longer period of time, this turns out to have a really negative impact.

To sidestep this major problem, Cal suggests time-blocking, a planning method in which you plan the entire day using blocks or chunks (Time chunking doesn’t have the same ring to it though). It’s a simple method but it is highly effective.

I adopted this and struggled with it initially, because I always underestimated the time for a given task, and had to switch up my entire schedule sometimes. On some days, interruptions I hadn’t planned for might pop up, which requires some planning around.

But again, over time, I started to get the hang of this technique, and it’s allowed me to really make the most of my days.

Pro Tip: Plan your day by Time Blocking.

Quit Social Media.

(From Deep Work/Digital Minimalism)

Probably the most controversial statement of Cal’s has been ‘Quit Social Media’. He is a huge critic of social media and their highly engineered manner to grab as much of our attention as possible. Having never had a social media account, Cal had a very unique insight into how these apps and devices were wreaking havoc on our brains. He’s even given a TED Talk on this topic.

This piece of advice is the one I have prioritized over any other, simply because I was also getting bogged down by social media. Seeing everyone else’s happy lives made me question the happiness of my own, when the truth is that that was not the full picture that I was seeing.

So, I quit. I quit everything. The first week or two were really difficult. I kept picking up my phone, only to realize I’d uninstalled all the apps. Keeping in touch with friends became a little bit more difficult. I felt like I was missing out on something.

But after the first week or two, I felt free. I had so much more time on my hands now, to do the things that were really valuable to me. As a millennial not on social media, being the only one among my peers not in this hyper-connected state, I had a unique edge over my peers. More importantly, I started enjoying the little things in life. The things people usually missed while looking into their screens.

Now, it’s been more than 2 years since I quit. I have only a select few technologies that I use because they’re valuable to me such as Whatsapp for my college groups and LinkedIn for professional purposes like sharing my projects. Now, I’m really starting to wonder how I ever was on social media. There have been times where I reinstalled some of the apps, only to get disillusioned after a few hours, and uninstalling them again. I’m happier without it.

Pro Tip: Quit social media, either for a fixed period of time, or indefinitely. Push through the initial pain, and see remarkable changes immediately.

So, how’s my life now?

A million times better. I decided to push through and continue with CS, and graduated last month, with a pretty good GPA. I was also accepted into a highly ranked university for my graduate studies (hint: Go Boilermakers!). I’ve picked up quite and mastered quite a few important skills in Data Science, one of my main interests (and dare I say, passion?)

I’m happier, way more productive, not on social media and enjoying the important things in life.

Thank you, Cal Newport, for saving my career before it even started.

Check out Cal Newport’s blog, Study Hacks, or any of his books, for some great content. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, or check out some of the Data Science projects I’ve done on my GitHub.