I like a lot of ideas from Cal Newport but there is something wrong with our work culture when working on the weekend is now seen as a productivity hack.
I wouldn't advocate everyone can or should do this, but I think that the "don't work outside working hours"/"must work during working hours" status quo can hurt flexibility a lot. Personally, weekends to me are just another day of the week, and I want to try normalize that wherever I go.
I appreciate that this works for you but to me this comes across more as an issue with work boundaries more than the benefits of weekend work.
Advocate for 'no-meeting days' multiple times in the week. Advocate for blocks of half-days in the work week where the whole team goes radio silence. We implemented this in both the team I am working in now and in my previous gig.
Managers will absolutely defend the team's time like this if you pitch it constructively and the team delivers results to back it up.
His points are way more nuanced than "work on weekends". I think he mentions Laura's story as a case study in intentionality, not in "work life balance" etc
I'd recommend Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks: Time management for mortals as it's very different from the productivity-oriented time management books that tend to dominate the genre.
This is a source of a lot of the ongoing exploitive or outright abusive behaviours and treatments of those on the lower rungs of the academic totem pole that are frankly endemic in most institutions.
Source: Academic for 5 years.
I assume that the weekdays which Elizabeth spends caring for her children are not spent working at the same time. She has an unusual schedule, but I doubt she works excessive hours. A big part of Deep Work is quality over quantity.
It sounds like our work culture is doing a pretty good job at giving her the flexibility to schedule work around the rest of her life.