A shutdown habit, therefore, is not necessarily reducing the amount of time you’re engaged in productive work, but is instead diversifying the type o… - Cal Newport

Breaking news, for example, is almost always much lower quality than the reporting that’s possible once an event has occurred and journalists have had time to process it. A well-known journalist recently told me that following a breaking story on Twitter gives him the sense that he’s receiving lots of information, but that in his experience, waiting until the next morning to read the article about the story in the Washington Post almost always leaves him more informed. Unless you’re a breaking news reporter, it’s usually counterproductive to expose yourself to the fire hose of incomplete, redundant, and often contradictory information that spews through the internet in response to noteworthy events.

monastic philosophy of deep work scheduling. This philosophy attempts to maximize deep efforts by eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations.

Like several other parents who participated in my experiment, Tarald invested his newfound time and attention in his family. He was unhappy with how distracted he was when spending time with his sons. He told me about how, on the playground, when they would come seeking recognition for something they figured out and were proud of, he wouldn’t notice, as his attention was on his phone. “I started thinking about how many of these small victories I miss out on because I feel this ridiculous need to check the news for the umpteenth time,” he told me. During his declutter he rediscovered the satisfaction of spending real time with his boys instead of just spending time near them with his eyes on the screen. He noted how surreal it can feel to be the only parent at the playground who is not looking down.