> I will admit to never having been able to read Cal Newport’s Deep Work all the way through — I got too irritated — but I would point to his dismissive naming of the idea of “shallow work”, which he defines as logistical and often repetitive tasks, such as writing short emails. Newport recommends entirely stopping or poorly performing that work; I read this as encouraging readers to commit EFT against others around them.

It’s pretty weird to me that this is what the author took from Deep Work. Then again, they admitted that they didn’t read it fully.

The message of the book is not to dump your shallow work onto other people. It is to eliminate the “shallow” work entirely when possible, and to be mindful of the pitfalls of context switching when such work can’t be avoided. Nor is the word “shallow” used to describe anything other than the difference between something that requires deep focus to accomplish vs. something that does not. It’s not used in a dismissive or demeaning way.

The author is looking for things in that book that do not exist, and worse, using it as a reference to prove the point of the post.

I agree that dark patterns exist, and the hellish process of dealing with insurance is evidence of that.

But I think the post suffers from applying the “EFT” label a bit too broadly, and for circumstances that are far more nuanced than “theft”.