Dr. Cal Newport: How to Enhance Focus and Improve Productivity

I think the cultural norms are going to change around this. I think we're going to think about unrestricted Internet usage not as something that we just sort of bequeath on youth as they become 10-years-old but something we're actually much more careful about—probably something just going to be post-pubescent is going to make a lot more sense once you've had more brain development.

I think we underestimate the degree to which our problem with digital distraction is not the Internet; it's not our phones; it is specific products and services that are engineered at great expense to pull you back to them.

The data I like to cite which was looking at email and Slack checks in knowledge workers... The median average interval between checks was 5 minutes... and the mode was 1 minute in this data set. So it was like we are we are checking all the time.

I also walk a lot ... When I'm trying to work through an idea for an article or a math proof or something like this, almost always I'm going to do that on foot.

If you put 2 or 3 people at the same whiteboard to try to alchemize these insights into actual mathematically precise proves, you get a 20-3% boost in your concentration level...

The phone is very good at inducing a network switch. And that's an expensive, time-consuming, energy-consuming neuronal operation.

I'm a big believer in, pretty quickly, you want to capture ideas in the tool you use to do that work.