Productivity · Personal Development · United States
Georgetown computer science professor and author of Deep Work and Slow Productivity. Hosts the Deep Questions podcast and co-teaches the paid online courses Life of Focus and Top Performer with Scott Young.
Calvin C. Newport (born June 23, 1982, in Pennington, New Jersey, according to Wikipedia) is an American computer scientist and author who writes about focus, technology and knowledge work. He holds a BA from Dartmouth College (2004) and an MS and PhD in computer science from MIT (2009), where he was also a postdoctoral associate until 2011. He joined Georgetown University in 2011, received tenure in 2017 and became a full professor in 2024. His own website describes his research as distributed systems theory and digital ethics, and says he is a contributing writer for The New Yorker.
His books include So Good They Can't Ignore You (2012), Deep Work (2016), Digital Minimalism (2019), A World Without Email (2021), The Time-Block Planner (now in a second edition) and Slow Productivity (2024), plus three earlier student guides published by Crown between 2005 and 2010. According to his website, his books have sold more than 2,000,000 copies in over 40 languages; no independent figure has been located.
He publishes the Study Hacks blog (since 2007), a weekly newsletter that his website puts at more than 100,000 subscribers, and the Deep Questions podcast, which thedeeplife.com lists with more than 420 episodes and which carries sponsors. The YouTube channel @CalNewportMedia, linked from thedeeplife.com, showed 359,000 subscribers when read on September 14, 2026. No official Instagram or TikTok account linked from his websites was found.
What he sells: books through his publishers (Grand Central Publishing for Deep Work; Portfolio/Penguin Random House for Slow Productivity and The Time-Block Planner, each with a $30.00 US list price on the publisher page), and two online courses co-created with Scott Young and sold on join.ingeniumcourses.com, a platform run by Young's company ScottHYoung.com Services Ltd. Life of Focus is a 12-week program with 35+ video lessons, three worksheets and a private community; its sales page listed three tiers on September 14, 2026: Standard at $497 one-time or $49 x 12 months, Expert at $697 or $69 x 12 months, and Multi-Course Access at $1,997 or $199 x 12 months, with a 60-day money-back guarantee. Top Performer is an eight-week career course based on So Good They Can't Ignore You; its sales page did not show a price when read. According to the Life of Focus page, Top Performer has served more than 5,000 students, a figure with no independent source.
Reputation: he has been interviewed at length on The Tim Ferriss Show (February 2024), ReThinking with Adam Grant from TED Audio Collective (2024) and Sam Harris's Making Sense (2024). Penguin Random House lists Slow Productivity among the Economist and NPR best books of 2024. A search of ftc.gov on September 14, 2026 returned no page mentioning him. Mentor Explorer has not located any court case, regulatory action or press controversy under his name; published criticism of his books consists of individual book reviews rather than documented disputes.
Not confirmed: the current price of Top Performer, whether the Life of Focus tiers differ in content beyond the course access listed on the page, and how revenue from the courses is shared between Newport and Young.
Objective facts about their offer, taken from public sources. We don't rate the quality of the programs or the results you may get.
One without a public price
4 official channels
Large audience
Facts checked on Sep 14, 2026.
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| Program | Type | Published price | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Life of Focus Twelve-week online program co-taught with Scott Young: one month each on focused work, a digital declutter and mental training, with 35+ video lessons, three guided worksheets and a private community. Standard $497 one-time; Expert $697; Multi-Course Access $1,997, which adds Top Performer and three Scott Young courses. Installments and a 60-day guarantee offered. | Course | $497 Checked Sep 14, 2026 | View |
| Top Performer Eight-week online career course co-created with Scott Young and based on the book So Good They Can't Ignore You. No price was shown on the sales page when read on September 14, 2026. | Course | Not published Checked Sep 14, 2026 | View |
| Deep Work Book on focused, distraction-free work, published by Grand Central Publishing in 2016. Hardcover list price on the publisher's site. | Book | $30 Checked Sep 14, 2026 | View |
| Slow Productivity Book published by Portfolio on March 5, 2024, proposing doing fewer things, working at a natural pace and obsessing over quality. Hardcover list price on the publisher's site. | Book | $30 Checked Sep 14, 2026 | View |
| The Time-Block Planner (Second Edition) Spiral-bound daily planner published by Portfolio that applies his time-blocking method, with a daily grid and a task collection page. List price on the publisher's site. | Book | $30 Checked Sep 14, 2026 | View |
Prices are those published by the mentor on the date checked and may change. “Not published” means we couldn't find a public price.
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A computer science professor at Georgetown University (full professor since 2024) and author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, A World Without Email and Slow Productivity. He was born on June 23, 1982, in Pennington, New Jersey, according to Wikipedia, and holds a PhD from MIT.
Yes. Life of Focus, co-taught with Scott Young, was listed on September 14, 2026 at $497 (Standard), $697 (Expert) or $1,997 (Multi-Course Access) as one-time payments, with 12-month installment options and a 60-day money-back guarantee. The Top Performer course page did not display a price when checked.
Penguin Random House lists The Time-Block Planner (Second Edition), a spiral-bound daily planner based on his time-blocking method, at $30.00 US. Slow Productivity has the same list price in hardcover on the publisher's site.
He hosts the Deep Questions podcast and publishes video on the YouTube channel @CalNewportMedia, which had 359,000 subscribers on September 14, 2026. He also writes the Study Hacks blog and a weekly newsletter at calnewport.com.
What can be checked: his academic post at Georgetown, books from major publishers, long interviews on shows such as The Tim Ferriss Show, and no page mentioning him on ftc.gov as of September 14, 2026. Student counts and sales figures come from his own pages.
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