To be fair, it's hard to get people excited without fresh branding.

Come to think of it, there have been previous campaigns to get people to reduce their screen time, but "Deep Work" seems to be the most successful yet. Perhaps because it focuses on what you stand to gain (long periods of uninterrupted focus) rather than what you stand to lose (dopamine hits from your smartphone). I think Deep Work succeeded because it doesn't just say "X is bad for you," it says "X is holding you back from being a better version of yourself," and therefore allows you to daydream about being super productive.

Not quite, in the book it's clear that by "Deep Work" Newport is specifically referring to difficult tasks which create significant value. The book includes several heuristics for identifying this sort of work. It's true that the arrival of electronics has made "Shallow Work" easier to fall into, but by no means would going to work somewhere without a computer or a phone mean you are doing "Deep Work."