Overstimulation is ruining your life
This guy can only write headlines if he's telling the entire population what is best for them. I couldn't be happier that I give zero fucks about what "cal newport" thinks is best
Though I didn't become the Taylor Swift of coding, I think that I ended up in a good place in part thanks to his books.
Another reason why this article probably resonated with many is that they see the issue in their own or their friends life. Some can't just simply work, or be with their loved ones, they constantly need something, YouTube in the background, minutes of scrolling through Twitter/HN/Facebook/Instagram, some addicted to porn, etc, and some started to pinpoint this issue to "overstimulation".
I learned to notice when I interrupted my deep work, for example while waiting for the build to finish I'd browse HN, or watch YouTube videos while working, listening to podcasts in the background, etc. I no longer forced myself to work with the pomodoro technique as it intentionally interrupts your focus (it's still good if you struggle to get anything done at all).
I also learned that the relatively small work needed to uplevel from being average to good (so that people in my field know me) is worth it, so organized meetups, gave talks and had a podcast.
Another important point of his book (so good they can't ignore you) was that, paraphrasing, passion is BS, so I learned to push through the initial phase of learning something new and work hard enough to enjoy basically anything as I got better and better.
It's not perfect, I'm not perfect, but it really helped me to stop being a scatterbrain, slightly below average developer.