Is Time Blocking Oppressive? - Manage Your Time & Productivity In An Overloaded World

00:00:00.000 | All right, so one of the time management ideas I'm known for is time blocking.

00:00:06.420 | This is where during your workday, you give every minute a job in advance.

00:00:11.860 | That is, you partition your available minutes into blocks and assign specific projects or

00:00:16.040 | tasks to those blocks.

00:00:18.260 | I even produced a planner called the Time Block Planner to help implement this idea.

00:00:23.740 | Now last week, the writer Oliver Berkman, who I know and whose writing I really like

00:00:30.860 | and respect, in particular his breakthrough book, 4,000 Weeks, which is just fantastic,

00:00:35.900 | was talking about time blocking briefly on the podcast, Farewell.

00:00:40.300 | By the way, a show you should also be listening to.

00:00:42.140 | I did an appearance on that not long ago talking about slow productivity.

00:00:45.840 | Great show.

00:00:46.840 | Check that out.

00:00:47.840 | Anyways, with great care intact, Berkman admitted that time blocking does not work that well

00:00:53.140 | for him, and in fact, he feels like it is a little oppressive.

00:00:59.000 | So who's right?

00:01:00.000 | In today's deep dive, what I'm going to do is I will play the clip of Oliver talking

00:01:04.980 | about time blocking, and then I will give you my thoughts on it.

00:01:08.360 | My conclusion might very well surprise you.

00:01:11.700 | All right, so let's hear what it is all the hubbub is about.

00:01:16.620 | Let's see.

00:01:17.620 | Do we have a clip here?

00:01:18.620 | Can we play this, Jesse?

00:01:19.620 | All right, let's listen.

00:01:20.620 | "I will see you next hour," in a sort of meaningful way.

00:01:25.600 | In the middle there is something like time boxing and time blocking.

00:01:32.780 | I am, for the record, a huge fan of Cal Newport's work in all sorts of different areas, and

00:01:38.200 | his new book on slow productivity is absolutely fantastic.

00:01:43.040 | But I'm looking forward to a conversation that I think we will have one day about time

00:01:48.360 | blocking and time boxing.

00:01:49.620 | I've found very often for me, like that is in this category of things that I think really

00:01:55.500 | help people.

00:01:56.500 | I'm talking about where you sort of, you map out the day with what you're going to do in

00:02:00.120 | each period of hours.

00:02:02.140 | And you know, maybe it's my personality, and maybe it's a bad personality, but for me,

00:02:09.200 | that sort of almost all the time ends up feeling oppressive to a degree that just gets in the

00:02:14.740 | way of me being productive.

00:02:18.020 | And I've learned the hard way, because it feels kind of indulgent or something, but

00:02:21.920 | I have learned that it is better for me to have some room in my approach to work to do

00:02:28.500 | what I feel like doing in a given moment.

00:02:31.780 | Not just always, not just like who cares about deadlines or earning a living, I'll just do

00:02:35.840 | what I feel like, but to be able to harness that energy of like, oh, well, it's 2 p.m.

00:02:40.580 | and I wasn't expecting to feel like this, but I'd really like to get stuck into that

00:02:43.900 | thing.

00:02:44.900 | All right.

00:02:45.900 | So we'll clip it there.

00:02:48.740 | So let me start.

00:02:49.740 | I'll start with the end in mind.

00:02:51.140 | I will start with my conclusion about all of this, and then we will work backwards to

00:02:54.620 | support why that's my conclusion.

00:02:57.100 | There's two things I think are true at the same time right now.

00:03:00.340 | Number one, Oliver Berkman is right about time blocking.

00:03:05.860 | Number two, time blocking is still really important.

00:03:09.020 | All right.

00:03:10.020 | So let's unpack why both of these things are true at the same time.

00:03:14.700 | I'll start with the first point.

00:03:16.420 | Time blocking does feel oppressive, right?

00:03:20.420 | This is something that comes up often on this show where people eager about time blocking

00:03:25.380 | say, why not time block my time outside of work?

00:03:28.260 | Why not time block my weekend?

00:03:29.840 | I say, man, it is so, it's so demanding.

00:03:33.340 | It's such a temporal taskmaster.

00:03:37.780 | You got to take a break from it.

00:03:39.020 | If you tried to time block your whole life, you're going to, you're going to burn out.

00:03:42.500 | It really does have this sense of when you're working, you are locked in.

00:03:47.580 | It is not a relaxed sensation because you have to, you're trying to stick with the blocks.

00:03:53.380 | You want to hit the blocks.

00:03:54.380 | There's a bit of urgency in there.

00:03:56.460 | There's an act of will and resistance of the inertia deadening impulse to stop or do something

00:04:04.060 | else.

00:04:05.060 | So it is, you feel it.

00:04:06.060 | It could really exhaust you.

00:04:07.260 | You have a bunch of long time block days in a row.

00:04:08.980 | You feel it.

00:04:09.980 | So Oliver is absolutely right about that.

00:04:10.980 | It's not just his personality.

00:04:12.580 | I think that's most people.

00:04:14.380 | All right.

00:04:15.380 | And second point, the approach Oliver mentions as an alternative, where you give some leeway

00:04:23.700 | to say, what do I feel like doing?

00:04:26.680 | Where is my energy level?

00:04:28.280 | What seems, you know, interesting or appropriate right now?

00:04:31.780 | That is more flexible.

00:04:32.780 | It is probably more natural.

00:04:33.780 | It is certainly something that's going to be more, it's going to feel better, right?

00:04:37.760 | Like that probably better fits the rhythms of humans as we've evolved over a long period

00:04:43.980 | of time.

00:04:44.980 | And it's because it's difficult to predict in advance where your energy level is going

00:04:49.400 | to be at a certain time of the day.

00:04:52.540 | What's going to be more appealing than something else, you know?

00:04:55.340 | And so it's to be able to say, this is what I feel well keyed to do, you know, that's

00:05:01.060 | going to feel more natural.

00:05:02.060 | That is more flexible.

00:05:04.980 | This requires a course, but I don't think it's a critique.

00:05:06.900 | I think we just accept this.

00:05:08.180 | This requires, of course, some level of self-awareness and resistance to procrastination, right?

00:05:15.060 | I mean, obviously, you have to be at a certain level of trust with your own work execution

00:05:20.180 | to just say, I'm going to see what I sort of feel like this afternoon and go with that.

00:05:23.340 | You have to have some trust.

00:05:24.340 | You're not going to always just say, well, I feel like doing nothing.

00:05:26.820 | But you know, people get there, right?

00:05:29.680 | So what he's talking about, that approach would be more natural.

00:05:32.860 | It's also more relaxed.

00:05:33.860 | You don't have that sense of urgency to it.

00:05:35.780 | You feel like you have breathing room.

00:05:37.260 | So those two points, I think are true, Oliver's right.

00:05:40.220 | Time blocking is oppressive.

00:05:42.380 | Being more on the fly in deciding what to work on is more flexible, probably feels more

00:05:48.260 | natural.

00:05:50.260 | Point three, it is true at the same time that time blocking is brutally effective.

00:05:57.220 | It is really, really effective.

00:05:59.700 | The amount you get done in a time block day is on average 2X versus other approaches.

00:06:08.020 | This is not an exact number, but sort of heuristically, I hear more or less this number again and

00:06:13.740 | again.

00:06:14.820 | It's part of the popularity of time blocking and the time block planner is, man, it is

00:06:19.260 | just effective.

00:06:20.260 | A time block day ships stuff at a really high rate.

00:06:25.060 | And there's various reasons for it.

00:06:26.540 | One, there's less context switching, right?

00:06:28.980 | This is what I'm doing now until I'm done, then I'm doing this.

00:06:32.820 | Non-time blockers, you're much more likely to shift back and forth between different

00:06:35.900 | things, especially when it comes to communication interruptions.

00:06:38.460 | Time blockers have blocks for it.

00:06:40.560 | Non-time blockers just sort of have this as a background process going on.

00:06:43.540 | What's going on with Slack?

00:06:44.780 | What's going on with email?

00:06:45.780 | And you have these constant context shifts, which reduces your cognitive capacity.

00:06:49.980 | Batching is a good way to tackle things as well.

00:06:51.980 | So I'm doing this for a 90 minute block.

00:06:53.900 | It allows your brain to completely get the context, the cognitive context set on what

00:06:57.940 | you're doing, and now you're able to operate at a higher level of effectiveness.

00:07:03.060 | It's a better use of your hours because you're looking ahead at the whole day.

00:07:05.940 | So you're sort of seeing like, oh, this is going to be the best time to do this, where

00:07:09.020 | this time is good for this.

00:07:10.760 | It's a more optimal assignment of time to activities than if you just sort of say, what

00:07:16.100 | am I doing now?

00:07:17.100 | You might realize as the day goes on, you know what?

00:07:20.460 | That morning block was probably the best time to do this thing.

00:07:23.420 | And I've missed it now because I wasn't thinking about it.

00:07:25.660 | I just got started with my inbox or something like this.

00:07:28.500 | It also leads to less energy being wasted on the persistent question of, should I keep

00:07:33.420 | working or should I take a break, right?

00:07:36.380 | You're not going to work all day.

00:07:37.380 | You are going to take breaks.

00:07:38.380 | When these breaks aren't scheduled, every minute is a potential opportunity to take

00:07:43.700 | a break or check your email or do something else, which means every minute you have to

00:07:47.500 | have this mental battle with yourself of, should I take a break now?

00:07:50.700 | Should I check my email now?

00:07:52.260 | You have to win that battle.

00:07:53.500 | No, let's keep going.

00:07:55.060 | The next minute that battle comes again.

00:07:57.740 | When you're committed to time blocks, you don't have to fight this battle because there

00:08:00.140 | is no question.

00:08:01.140 | This is what I'm doing for the next hour.

00:08:03.340 | I'm checking my email then.

00:08:04.340 | It's on here.

00:08:05.460 | I'm not in that block.

00:08:06.540 | So the only commitment you have to maintain is to sticking with your blocks as opposed

00:08:10.860 | to having to have an on-demand conversation and debate with yourself throughout the day.

00:08:15.020 | All right, so we have these things true at the same time.

00:08:19.500 | It's oppressive and not supernatural, a time block.

00:08:22.100 | It also produces a huge amount of stuff.

00:08:25.780 | So why do I preach it?

00:08:28.100 | Because so many modern knowledge work jobs have so overwhelmed us with work, and in particular,

00:08:33.860 | the administrative overhead that comes along with all of our work, that if we don't harness

00:08:38.660 | the brutal effectiveness of time blocking, we'll drown.

00:08:43.060 | This is an unfortunate reality of many knowledge work jobs today, especially more office-style

00:08:48.020 | jobs in which you have uncontained work assignments when you have sort of uncontained back and

00:08:54.940 | forth conversations about work.

00:08:57.020 | There's a sort of ad hoc freneticism to it.

00:08:59.760 | Time blocking gives you a fighting chance of sort of being able to do a shutdown at

00:09:03.180 | the end of the day and sort of keep your head above water.

00:09:05.460 | All right.

00:09:06.460 | Hey, it's Cal.

00:09:07.460 | I wanted to interrupt briefly to say that if you're enjoying this video, then you need

00:09:12.600 | to check out my new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

00:09:20.060 | This is like the Bible for most of the ideas we talk about here in these videos.

00:09:25.500 | You can get a free excerpt at calnewport.com/slow.

00:09:30.860 | I know you're going to like it.

00:09:32.680 | Check it out.

00:09:33.680 | Now let's get back to the video.

00:09:35.620 | So I want us to get to a world in which Oliver's approach can be much more widely applied into

00:09:43.520 | many more jobs because it's more natural, it's less exhausting and oppressive.

00:09:47.000 | In our current world, however, we have to go with the brutally effective technique to

00:09:53.040 | make sure that we don't completely drown, that we're not up all throughout the evening

00:09:56.100 | having to try to catch up on emails.

00:09:57.760 | We don't have to get up at 4 a.m. to get the work done because nothing could get done during

00:10:01.040 | the day.

00:10:02.040 | So it's sort of a necessary compromise.

00:10:04.400 | I won't say necessary evil, but sort of a necessary compromise.

00:10:07.520 | All right.

00:10:08.520 | So why do we get to this place?

00:10:09.840 | If we want to solve work, and now we have this alternative definition of solving work

00:10:15.320 | where we don't need something like time blocking anymore.

00:10:18.560 | If we want to solve work, we have to understand where the problem came from.

00:10:21.640 | Well, this is what I get into deeply in my new book, Slow Productivity, the whole first

00:10:26.280 | part of the book is sort of understanding what went wrong with knowledge work, right?

00:10:32.360 | And the key idea from that book that I think explains why we unfortunately still need time

00:10:37.760 | blocking was the lack of any sort of consistent workload management philosophy in most knowledge

00:10:44.160 | work sectors.

00:10:45.840 | In most knowledge work jobs, there is no consistent agreed upon way to keep track of workload.

00:10:50.540 | How much are you working on?

00:10:51.680 | What are you working on?

00:10:52.680 | How much should you be working on?

00:10:54.200 | Where is the work that needs to be done that no one is working on right now?

00:10:57.240 | We don't do this in most knowledge work settings.

00:10:59.280 | We just throw work at people through email meetings and chats, and it just gets on your

00:11:03.280 | plate.

00:11:04.360 | No one knows how much you're working on or how much that person's working on.

00:11:07.560 | It's all uncontrolled.

00:11:09.400 | And this leads to overload.

00:11:11.360 | And the reason why the overload is a problem is not only is it hard to make progress on

00:11:15.080 | 10 things at the same time, but each of those 10 things brings with it administrative overhead,

00:11:20.160 | emails, meetings, and conversations needed to keep that task rolling.

00:11:23.880 | This administrative overhead begins to pile up until most of your day now becomes stuck

00:11:28.040 | trying to service these different tasks.

00:11:29.700 | You're trying to then desperate to find any time that's left to actually make progress

00:11:33.400 | on the tasks themselves.

00:11:35.920 | This is the environment we're in.

00:11:37.520 | It's caused by lack of consistent workload management philosophies.

00:11:40.680 | It's an environment in which you have to like a general, unfortunately, but like a general

00:11:46.120 | plan your strategy for each day to try to keep the forces of email and meetings at bay

00:11:51.280 | enough so that your pincer move to get progress on this report actually succeeds.

00:11:57.280 | It's a metaphorically war out there because of this overload epidemic and time blocking

00:12:02.360 | right now is sort of the best weapon that we have.

00:12:07.160 | So what is the solution?

00:12:08.160 | I mean, okay, slow productivity gets into this, but at the core of the solution is we

00:12:13.520 | have to fix this workload management problem.

00:12:16.920 | Your team, your organization, yourself, if you're a freelancer entrepreneur, needs an

00:12:21.880 | agreed upon rational way to manage who's working on what, how much they should be working on,

00:12:27.360 | and how you keep track of things that need to be done that no one is working on in particular.

00:12:31.000 | This means probably you have to have some sort of centralized list of work that is waiting

00:12:34.340 | to be worked on.

00:12:35.680 | If you're a team, you have this all on a shared document or a board somewhere.

00:12:38.720 | If you're an individual, do the same thing.

00:12:40.400 | Here's things I'm not working on yet, but I've agreed to work on.

00:12:44.740 | We need some way of keeping track of the active things.

00:12:48.000 | What are the two things you're working on right now?

00:12:49.360 | What are the three things you're working on?

00:12:50.760 | This should be visible.

00:12:51.760 | This should be transparent.

00:12:52.760 | This should be public.

00:12:54.000 | And then we need really smart limits to what the right amount of work to do concurrently

00:12:58.880 | should be.

00:12:59.880 | And it's probably two or three things of any non-trivial size at a time.

00:13:05.080 | We can add all sorts of other, and I get into this in the book, we can add all sorts of

00:13:08.140 | other minutiae here.

00:13:10.120 | Some things aren't discrete tasks, but are more, we could think of them as ongoing or

00:13:13.760 | service oriented.

00:13:14.920 | Can you serve on this committee?

00:13:16.940 | Can you be in charge of the birthdays for the office?

00:13:20.000 | Can you be in charge of making sure the website stays up to date with client testimonials?

00:13:24.960 | We need a limit for ongoing service obligations like this as well.

00:13:28.120 | Yeah, you should have like two of those and two major projects you're working on, and

00:13:32.280 | that's it.

00:13:33.280 | When you finish a project, we pull another one in and we can all decide what makes sense.

00:13:35.840 | We need these types of systems so that we're not overloaded.

00:13:39.160 | If you're not overloaded, now you got some breathing room.

00:13:43.860 | And now something like Oliver's method might make some sense.

00:13:46.440 | All right, which of these do I want to work on today?

00:13:48.600 | You know what?

00:13:49.600 | I should think I'm going to work on this one.

00:13:50.600 | Actually, I'm going to kind of take it easy today.

00:13:52.760 | You have this breathing room in your schedule where you can have your work follow the more

00:13:56.120 | natural ebbs and flows of both your energies and your interests, and it seems less oppressive.

00:14:00.980 | It seems less like you're ending each workday out of breath.

00:14:05.920 | In fact, I say, this is rough, but I have this prediction claim, let's say, that really

00:14:12.920 | the optimal type of workday and knowledge work would be one in which about 30% of your

00:14:17.120 | time is flex, that you could consistently do nothing for 30% of your day in aggregate

00:14:24.240 | and everything would be fine.

00:14:25.600 | That's about the amount of flex you need.

00:14:27.040 | Like some days you're feeling more of that.

00:14:28.880 | Some days you're doing less of that.

00:14:30.120 | You can shift around where work happens.

00:14:31.880 | Work can take longer than you thought.

00:14:34.160 | A 30% buffer, rather, is probably where we should be.

00:14:37.720 | We'll never get there without more systematic ways of thinking about workload management.

00:14:41.880 | All right, so returning to the original debate, in air quotes, between me and Oliver, there's

00:14:48.120 | really no debate at all.

00:14:50.440 | He's right that time blocking is oppressive.

00:14:52.200 | He is right that it'd be much nicer to be able to let your work to unfold more naturally.

00:14:56.680 | The problem is, how do we get there?

00:14:59.440 | That's where the ideas I just talked about might help.

00:15:02.000 | Read a book like Slow Productivity to get a better diagnosis of the problem and solutions.

00:15:06.720 | Read Oliver's fantastic book, 4,000 Weeks, to get a better understanding of why his more

00:15:13.960 | natural method is where we want to get to, why that's more natural.

00:15:17.680 | But in the meantime, while we're working towards these solutions, time blocking is probably

00:15:23.520 | what's going to work day to day.

00:15:25.680 | So it's interesting, Jesse.

00:15:26.680 | It's like I've created a tool and now all of the rest of my work is trying to make that

00:15:31.000 | tool obsolete.

00:15:32.000 | There's like a weird energy, like I put out that planner and then my Slow Productivity,

00:15:38.440 | the next book I published, if those ideas were put into practice, the planner would

00:15:42.120 | become obsolete.

00:15:43.160 | So it's like I want to make that part of my advice not needed anymore.

00:15:48.520 | There's a lot of things I give that are like that.

00:15:49.920 | I have a lot of advice in time management organization where I say, I wish we didn't

00:15:53.760 | need to do this.

00:15:55.640 | And if we fix knowledge work, we wouldn't have to.

00:15:57.240 | But in the meantime, we got to run our lives like we're, you know, uh, in the mission control

00:16:04.120 | of the Apollo missions.

00:16:05.120 | Like there's just so we got to keep track of this information.

00:16:07.600 | We got to keep it around, you know, not because I wonder if this is why sometimes productivity

00:16:13.440 | critics aren't often in these jobs.

00:16:16.080 | So they'll look at me and say, um, yeah, you guys must just be trying to optimize for the

00:16:21.000 | sake of optimizing.

00:16:22.960 | You must be trying to squeeze in as much as possible because you've fallen in love with

00:16:29.040 | a hustle culture, right?

00:16:31.200 | Or the reality is people say, no, I don't want to have to optimize my day.

00:16:35.400 | I don't want to have to do so much every day.

00:16:38.400 | It's my job has put so much stuff on my plate and I can't keep up with it.

00:16:42.760 | And it's super stressful and I want to be less stressed.

00:16:45.660 | So there's this sort of interesting tension between where we want to get with productivity

00:16:51.160 | and like what we have to do right now.

00:16:53.200 | Well the big thing it helps with is not task switching that you talk about all the time.

00:16:57.280 | It's a huge difference.

00:16:58.280 | Yeah.

00:16:59.280 | But it's hard, right?

00:17:00.280 | Like the way of working with time blocking, you don't test switch.

00:17:02.360 | I work on this.

00:17:03.360 | I'm done.

00:17:04.360 | Now I'm working on this.

00:17:05.360 | Now I'm done.

00:17:06.360 | It produces, but that's hard because you have to keep your focus on one thing.

00:17:11.000 | Then another it's, you know, my, my friends and family know this because I, they text

00:17:15.560 | message on a family text thread, right?

00:17:18.180 | I'm a ghost on that thing during the day because we are a time blocker.

00:17:21.740 | You're just like, you're locked in, right?

00:17:25.060 | You know it's a, it is a more oppressive, faster paced approach to the day.

00:17:30.940 | But you know, like in my case it allows me to have three jobs and still fit it into nine

00:17:34.600 | to five.

00:17:35.600 | So it's brutally effective.

00:17:37.660 | But on the other hand, man, it'd be nice not to have to, not to have to do it.

00:17:41.660 | But even if you go back to like the 1800 or something with like very good schooling, they

00:17:46.620 | would probably like teachers there would teach you to work, study and focus on a certain

00:17:50.580 | subject, right?

00:17:51.580 | They would.

00:17:52.580 | Uh, you know, this was Teddy Roosevelt secret at Harvard.

00:17:54.620 | So if you read, I guess it was probably the Edwin Morris volume one rise and fall of Teddy

00:18:00.100 | Roosevelt.

00:18:01.100 | Theodore Roosevelt, uh, he figured this out at Harvard because he had a lot of things

00:18:06.540 | he wanted to do.

00:18:07.540 | He had a lot of interest in hobbies or whatever is that if he could use intense focus, he

00:18:12.420 | could get his work done much faster.

00:18:14.260 | And he writes about in his diaries how he would like focus like a laser beam.

00:18:17.980 | Let me get this like reading done.

00:18:19.820 | He got really good at doing that.

00:18:21.380 | It's why he could finish a book a day in the white house.

00:18:23.380 | He got really good at just when I'm reading laser focus and then he could move really

00:18:27.100 | quickly.

00:18:28.100 | You know, it's why he could write a naval history of the war of 1812 while at law school.

00:18:36.360 | He just would, he could just laser, he just learned laser on one thing, laser on another

00:18:39.820 | thing had this really intense concentration.

00:18:42.080 | So yeah, I mean that's always been known.

00:18:43.940 | Yeah.

00:18:44.940 | It's always been known.

00:18:46.140 | It's funny when I first started listening to your podcast, I changed cause I used to

00:18:49.500 | always be list based.

00:18:51.060 | Yeah.

00:18:52.060 | So that in my like personal little time list reactive method, I have like the date where

00:18:56.180 | I changed.

00:18:57.180 | Oh yeah.

00:18:58.180 | Yeah.

00:18:59.180 | I was in like 2020 or something when your podcast and have you been too X productive

00:19:01.780 | ever since?

00:19:02.780 | That's been better.

00:19:03.780 | Yeah.

00:19:04.780 | It's better.

00:19:05.780 | Yeah.

00:19:06.780 | But again, it's not, it's not being productive for the sake of being productive is being

00:19:09.580 | productive because the stuff is on your list, whether you want it there or not.

00:19:12.380 | Like your boss gave this to you, whether you want it there or not.

00:19:16.080 | So getting it done better, faster, that just gives you some breathing room.

00:19:21.340 | Otherwise you just get in that weird panic state.

00:19:23.080 | And then once you get overwhelmed enough, then you just end up saying like, ah, late

00:19:26.660 | state cap, late stage capitalism, let's just overthrow the economy because you're so behind,

00:19:30.380 | you're so overwhelmed by everything.

00:19:31.740 | It seems kind of hopeless.

00:19:32.740 | Well, it goes back to everything you're saying, even about the student books, like mapping

00:19:36.980 | out your plan, like the semester going forward for studying for exams and stuff, not leaving

00:19:41.020 | stuff to the last night.

00:19:42.020 | Yeah.

00:19:43.020 | Stuff like that.

00:19:44.020 | Yeah.

00:19:45.020 | I mean, that stuff works.

00:19:46.020 | Yeah.

00:19:47.020 | I wish I didn't have to do as much of it, but if you have too much to do, you have to

00:19:51.500 | care a lot about how you do it.

00:19:53.420 | So anyways, I'm actually talking to Oliver soon, a couple of days.

00:19:57.180 | Yeah.

00:19:58.180 | I like Oliver.

00:19:59.180 | He's a smart guy.

00:20:00.180 | His column was great too.

00:20:01.180 | His books are great.

00:20:02.180 | His column is great.

00:20:03.180 | I like his stuff a lot.

00:20:04.180 | All right.

00:20:05.180 | So we've got some cool questions coming up.

00:20:06.260 | But first, let's hear from some sponsors.

00:20:10.020 | Want to talk about our friends at Cozy Earth.

00:20:13.740 | I've talked on the show a lot how my wife and I love Cozy Earth products.

00:20:18.720 | We started with the sheets.

00:20:19.940 | The sheets are made out of this bamboo derived material that is super soft and super comfortable

00:20:26.300 | and super, I don't want to say cold, but it like wicks heat away in a way that keeps the

00:20:32.380 | sheets just feeling comfortable and cool even in the summer.

00:20:35.340 | We slowly added more sets of these sheets to our rotation because we did not like when

00:20:39.500 | one set was being washed, that we would have to have a non-Cozy Earth set on our bed.

00:20:44.180 | When we travel in the summer, we bring the Cozy Earth sheets with us.

00:20:48.820 | We have since expanded into other products from Cozy Earth.

00:20:52.820 | I have one of their sweatshirts made out of the same material.

00:20:55.420 | I'm telling you, it's crazy.

00:20:56.460 | You put it on and it feels cold.

00:20:59.100 | This material is crazy.

00:21:00.100 | It feels cold even when it's warm, I don't even know how you say it, viscose bamboo-based

00:21:07.300 | material.

00:21:08.380 | We just got the duvet cover, so now we'll have the sheets and the duvet cover, our Cozy

00:21:14.900 | Earth material.

00:21:15.900 | I mentioned before when my parents watched my kids while we were in London for my book

00:21:22.260 | tour, the gift we gave them was a set of Cozy Earth sheets.

00:21:25.460 | Anyways, I am a huge booster of Cozy Earth's products.

00:21:31.620 | You'll like them.

00:21:32.620 | We love them.

00:21:33.620 | So remember to go to CozyEarth.com/Cal to enjoy 30% off when you use the code CAL.

00:21:43.220 | So after placing your order, oh, okay, then do this.

00:21:47.220 | All right, so how complicated is this, right?

00:21:49.820 | Not at all.

00:21:50.820 | You think I've read this before, but go to CozyEarth.com/Cal and use the code CAL.

00:21:55.420 | Those two things together is what gives you 30% off.

00:21:58.220 | You want the 30% off.

00:21:59.500 | These are high-end products, the 30% off, trust me, is going to help.

00:22:04.860 | Here's the other thing.

00:22:06.420 | After placing your order, if you would, it's a request from me to you.

00:22:09.220 | If you would, there's a little survey that pops up.

00:22:12.260 | Select podcast when it asks where did you hear about Cozy Earth and then select deep

00:22:15.860 | questions from the list.

00:22:17.520 | If you do that, it really helps because then they know that you came to Cozy Earth because

00:22:21.540 | of me.

00:22:22.540 | So go to CozyEarth.com/Cal, use that code CAL to get 30% off, and then mention me in

00:22:28.940 | the survey afterwards.

00:22:30.460 | If you would, every little bit helps.

00:22:32.660 | I also want to talk about our longtime friends at Element, L-M-N-T.

00:22:37.740 | We've talked about them on the show for a while because I'm a big fan of their drink

00:22:41.540 | mix.

00:22:42.540 | This sort of no sugar, no artificial flavor mix you add right to water, and it gives you

00:22:47.720 | the electrolytes you actually need, especially after hard exercise or a long day in something

00:22:53.020 | like the D.C. climate, gives you what you need without all of the junk.

00:22:56.900 | We have a huge bin full of the Cozy Earth drink mix in our kitchen.

00:23:02.340 | It's what I drink after workouts.

00:23:03.840 | It's what I drink after doing long events where I'm speaking a lot, which is very dehydrating,

00:23:09.380 | or if I've been out hiking or now I'm in that season of doing thinking walks outside.

00:23:14.060 | I just did two hours the other day in Rock Creek Park, came right back home, Element,

00:23:18.720 | get that hydration.

00:23:20.380 | They have this cool new product I want to mention, which is the Element Sparkling, which

00:23:25.980 | delivers the same zero sugar electrolyte formulation you already know and trust, but now in a bold

00:23:30.740 | 16 ounce can of sparkling water.

00:23:32.760 | You can just have it in your fridge and pull it out cold or bring it with you on the go.

00:23:39.440 | No sugar, no caffeine, all electrolytes.

00:23:41.460 | I'm very excited about the Element Sparkling.

00:23:46.520 | It's available right now in more of a limited way.

00:23:50.580 | So if you're an Element insider, you have access to it right now.

00:23:56.060 | You can find out more at the website, www.drinkelement.com/deep, but definitely check that out.

00:24:02.500 | If you're a fan of the drink mixes, you'll be a fan of the sparkling.

00:24:06.700 | So good news, you can get a free sample pack of Element with any drink mix purchase if

00:24:12.220 | you go to www.drinkelement.com/deep, that's www.drinkelement.com/deep.

00:24:19.260 | And as mentioned, if you're an Element insider, you'll have first access to Element Sparkling,

00:24:25.120 | a bold 16 ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water.

00:24:27.820 | So check that out at www.drinkelement.com/deep.

00:24:29.620 | All right, Jesse, let's do some questions.

00:24:35.660 | First question is from Sean.

00:24:37.460 | In an earlier episode, you mentioned you utilized acceptance and commitment therapy to tame

00:24:41.660 | anxiety that you had in the past.

00:24:43.740 | In my late 20s, I started having panic attacks due to a high stress move, my job, and overall

00:24:48.620 | poor stress management.

00:24:50.320 | Can you elaborate on your experiences?

00:24:52.300 | Yeah, ACT, acceptance commitment therapy, third wave psychotherapy, it's very well suited

00:25:00.060 | for panic attacks.

00:25:01.060 | I'm glad that you're asking about it.

00:25:04.660 | So let me just give this some context.

00:25:06.820 | I'll talk about one of my uses of this.

00:25:08.720 | This was years ago back in grad school where I had developed an insomnia problem, just

00:25:15.740 | sort of idiopathic, just suddenly there'd be nights where I just wouldn't sleep or wouldn't

00:25:21.460 | sleep a lot, which is a problem, right?

00:25:24.140 | I mean, whatever, you're being tired.

00:25:26.180 | There's a lot of times in life when you're tired, but I was really thrown by the unpredictability

00:25:31.060 | of it.

00:25:32.060 | And I was also really thrown by this idea of like, you can't do your top level cognitive

00:25:37.820 | work if you're tired.

00:25:40.700 | And I couldn't control when insomnia happened or not.

00:25:42.940 | And then there was this sort of revelation of, you know, hey, I'm not in control here.

00:25:46.940 | Like I could just, my job is to think, and this could just be taken away from me by something

00:25:51.100 | I can't control.

00:25:52.100 | So then that gave me a lot of anxiety.

00:25:54.180 | So now I'm in my 20s and it settled into a kind of like a daily, just sort of persistent

00:26:00.900 | anxiety feeling, the physical, physiological feeling of anxiety, all coming from concerns

00:26:07.100 | about sleep that sort of spiraled out of control.

00:26:10.140 | Because I'm a nerd.

00:26:11.140 | I read a bunch of books about it and I did some self-treatment, and I'll explain it to

00:26:15.300 | you in case this is helpful to people, that was a mixture of cognitive behavioral therapy,

00:26:20.700 | which is second wave psychotherapy, with ACT, acceptance commitment therapy, which is third

00:26:25.740 | wave psychotherapy.

00:26:26.740 | All right.

00:26:27.740 | So let me briefly explain both in a way that's going to frustrate sort of any mental health

00:26:31.460 | expert in the audience.

00:26:32.460 | He's like, you're not getting this right, but I'll do my best, right?

00:26:35.300 | So with cognitive behavioral therapy, this is second wave psychotherapy.

00:26:41.200 | The idea is you point out distortions in your ruminations, the thoughts you're having in

00:26:47.340 | your head.

00:26:48.420 | You point out the distortions in the thoughts, you sort of correct the thoughts you are having.

00:26:53.780 | The idea being negative self-talk is the driver of the negative physiological states.

00:27:01.820 | So if you correct the self-talk, things will be better.

00:27:04.020 | This was one of the first evidence-based psychotherapies.

00:27:08.500 | First wave psychotherapy is talk therapy.

00:27:11.220 | Woody Allen, Annie Hall, you know, you're on the couch, someone talking to you.

00:27:14.820 | This was the first that was more, we have this protocol, we're going to test it.

00:27:18.580 | We're going to see if it works or not.

00:27:19.820 | All right.

00:27:20.820 | So that's cognitive behavioral therapy.

00:27:23.380 | Person's commitment therapy, which came later, that's why we call it third wave, doesn't

00:27:26.860 | try to even correct the thoughts.

00:27:29.580 | It has you diffuse or disconnect from the thoughts.

00:27:33.940 | Yeah, I'm having these thoughts.

00:27:34.940 | I'm worried about this.

00:27:35.940 | I'm worried about sleep.

00:27:36.940 | I'm worried about having a panic attack.

00:27:37.940 | Yeah, they're there, but that's not reality.

00:27:41.260 | Those are just thoughts.

00:27:43.020 | And in fact, you'll often sort of name the different stories like, oh, here comes the

00:27:46.620 | panic attack story, you know, as Captain Panic Attack is giving the story.

00:27:49.500 | That's interesting.

00:27:50.500 | That's going on in my head.

00:27:51.500 | Oh, I'm feeling this thing right now.

00:27:52.540 | That's interesting.

00:27:53.540 | I'm feeling my throat's a little tighter.

00:27:54.940 | I can feel whatever.

00:27:55.940 | All right.

00:27:56.940 | I'm going to go on and do what's important to me.

00:27:58.700 | So you sort of diffuse from the thoughts and keep committing to take what's called value

00:28:04.660 | driven action.

00:28:05.660 | And so you're kind of limiting their power a little bit.

00:28:09.220 | All right.

00:28:10.220 | So what I did for my sleep.

00:28:11.220 | Here's my combination of the two.

00:28:12.340 | This is my sort of my world famous treatment plan.

00:28:16.340 | Twice a day at set times, we do cognitive behavioral therapy on anxiety about not sleeping.

00:28:23.460 | There's distortions in this.

00:28:24.500 | You're predicting the future.

00:28:25.620 | You're doing black and white thinking.

00:28:28.260 | In between those sessions, it was pure act.

00:28:33.240 | So when I would feel like the ruminations like, come on, Cal, like, let's get going.

00:28:36.940 | Like, let's get into this.

00:28:37.940 | Let's think about this.

00:28:38.940 | And I would say to myself, oh, I already did dealt with this thought earlier at nine and

00:28:46.420 | found that had distortions and that the reality wasn't really so bad.

00:28:49.740 | I'll revisit that.

00:28:50.740 | I'm revisiting again at five until then.

00:28:53.380 | I'm not getting into it.

00:28:54.700 | I'm just going to do like the best things I can with my time.

00:28:57.460 | That's kind of pure act.

00:28:59.660 | And so it was knowing like, you know, I did.

00:29:02.300 | I'm not going to get into it.

00:29:03.340 | I'm just going to accept the reality that I did a CBT session and there's another one

00:29:07.540 | coming up.

00:29:08.540 | And so really, if this thought really is so urgent, if there is a crisis here, I'm going

00:29:13.820 | to get into it again at whatever the time was for the second session, five.

00:29:16.540 | So there's no problem.

00:29:17.540 | I'm not ignoring it.

00:29:18.540 | I'm not trying to ignore it or pretend like it doesn't exist.

00:29:21.000 | But until I get that, I'm just going to do value-driven action.

00:29:23.740 | That actually was very effective.

00:29:24.740 | It was very effective over time.

00:29:28.260 | It really reduced, it either reduced the anxiety, sort of went away, the sleep fears would come

00:29:32.620 | and go, but it didn't have the impact anymore because you weren't feeding the rumination

00:29:37.140 | cycle throughout.

00:29:39.380 | So those are the two different types of sort of evidence-based psychotherapies that are

00:29:43.900 | out there.

00:29:44.900 | I combined them in my own, probably non-approved way with my sleep issues in my twenties and

00:29:48.620 | actually found that to be very effective.

00:29:50.820 | You'll, of course, see echoes of this in my shutdown complete routine for your schedule,

00:29:55.860 | right?

00:29:56.860 | Because I say, after you do your shutdown ritual and you actually say the phrase like

00:30:01.100 | schedule shutdown complete, when you have ruminations about work, you say, no, no, no.

00:30:06.380 | I said that crazy phrase or I checked the checkbox in Cal's time block planner.

00:30:09.420 | I wouldn't have done that if I wasn't sure that it's safe to shut down so I don't have

00:30:12.140 | to get into it again.

00:30:13.460 | That's very similar to sort of what I did with my CBT-ACT hybrid when it came to sleep

00:30:18.980 | concerns.

00:30:19.980 | So Sean, for panic attacks, classically, it's been seen that ACT is better than cognitive

00:30:25.120 | behavioral therapy because with panic attacks, if you're worried about panic, having a panic

00:30:31.180 | attack, it's not necessarily a distorted thought, right?

00:30:34.580 | It's like, no, you might have a panic.

00:30:35.900 | This is like a thing that comes and goes, like it's not a distorted thought, right?

00:30:40.540 | ACT is better here because ACT's like, yeah, you might, but we're still going to do the

00:30:44.420 | best things we can with our time.

00:30:45.420 | And if it happens, it happens.

00:30:46.820 | It doesn't define us.

00:30:48.500 | Let's do something valuable right now.

00:30:50.580 | So ACT is probably the right match for you.

00:30:53.660 | There's a good book called The Happiness Trap, which is the sort of public facing accessible

00:31:00.500 | introduction to ACT.

00:31:01.500 | So definitely check that out.

00:31:02.660 | But anyways, I wanted to get into just all like CBT versus ACT, what I did with sleep,

00:31:07.260 | all as a more general way of emphasizing our minds are weird.

00:31:11.020 | And one of the ways most commonly our minds can be particularly unhelpful is when we have

00:31:17.780 | this internal self-talk ruminations that build up around whatever.

00:31:22.660 | I'm anxious about this thing happening.

00:31:24.500 | I'm really worried about what other people think of me.

00:31:27.580 | Oh man, that conversation I just had, was that good?

00:31:30.340 | Oh no.

00:31:31.340 | I said the weird.

00:31:32.340 | I said the wrong thing.

00:31:33.340 | I think people are really upset at me.

00:31:35.460 | The self-talk drives a lot of the negative physiological states.

00:31:39.940 | The self-talk drives generalized anxiety disorder.

00:31:42.940 | The self-talk is eventually what drives depressive disorder.

00:31:47.740 | It's not just boom.

00:31:48.740 | Oh my God, I'm a hedonic.

00:31:50.660 | It's no, I just came off as six months of like continually berating myself in my mind

00:31:54.900 | and all of these things I'm worried about.

00:31:56.540 | So you got to get a handle on the self-talk.

00:32:00.520 | And that's what the second and third wave psychotherapy is very good at.

00:32:02.620 | So I just want to introduce these things in here.

00:32:04.220 | So if you're out there looking for a professional, you sort of know what they're talking about,

00:32:07.780 | you know what you're looking for, and you know that there is useful ways of dealing

00:32:12.940 | with this.

00:32:13.940 | You're far from alone about it.

00:32:16.300 | I don't know.

00:32:17.300 | I should, Jesse, I should take my CBT act hybrid I invented and should like market it

00:32:23.040 | somehow.

00:32:25.900 | This is what-

00:32:26.900 | New Shopify for the checkout?

00:32:28.460 | Shopify for the checkout for my new.

00:32:29.900 | I got to give it a really cool name.

00:32:32.220 | CBT act.

00:32:33.220 | We can make a, I bet there's, this is like an, an anagram.

00:32:37.200 | These letters are very useful.

00:32:38.200 | So there's probably an anagram here, Quebec, tabic, exhibit.

00:32:43.520 | We could put it together.

00:32:44.520 | Well, we'll get the marketing geniuses on it, but anyway, Sean, thanks for asking that

00:32:47.400 | question because it gives me a chance to talk a lot about rumination and mental health.

00:32:51.020 | All right.

00:32:52.020 | What do we got next?

00:32:53.020 | All right.

00:32:54.020 | Next question is from Nate.

00:32:55.020 | The great, how can I stick to a deep life program and not keep switching based on what

00:32:59.220 | I perceive others to be doing?

00:33:01.460 | Well, good question, Nate.

00:33:05.060 | You need, first of all, your master narrative that describes your ideal lifestyle.

00:33:09.740 | It's okay that this is going to change, but it's something that's going to change.

00:33:14.860 | The change in this is going to be harder and slower than just your whim changes this week

00:33:18.820 | versus last.

00:33:19.980 | So your master, master narrative about your ideal lifestyle should describe five to 10

00:33:26.500 | years from now, what a typical day of your life is going to be like.

00:33:30.260 | It's the type of environment you're in, your interaction with nature and other people,

00:33:35.700 | what's going on with your, what's the feel of your work, not the specific job, but the

00:33:39.620 | feel of your work.

00:33:40.620 | It's a master narrative about this is what I want my life, the all elements of my lifestyle

00:33:45.700 | to be like, and then we're going to work backwards from that.

00:33:49.100 | What can I do creatively right now to take advantage of existing opportunities and to

00:33:53.620 | get around existing obstacles to move closer to aspects of these lifestyles?

00:33:57.100 | And that's where you begin to get creative.

00:33:58.840 | That's where you begin to build these sort of bespoke plans of sort of moving more towards

00:34:02.620 | your ideal lifestyle.

00:34:06.240 | This is an alternative to the more common approach, which is the grand goal approach.

00:34:09.340 | We talked about this in a recent episode, but that's the approach where you instead

00:34:13.460 | say, I just have this real grand goal that I'm going to go after and it'll solve everything.

00:34:17.780 | All right?

00:34:18.780 | So you have your master narrative about your ideal lifestyle.

00:34:21.660 | Don't make any major changes to that outside of, I'm going to say your birthday.

00:34:26.380 | So for a year, you're like, this is my current draft of this.

00:34:29.860 | Do your best to make progress towards this ideal lifestyle on multiple scales, use multiscale

00:34:36.740 | planning at the seasonal scale, at that filter down to your week and then, uh, to your daily

00:34:41.460 | plans, reflect and learn along the way.

00:34:44.100 | So if there's stuff like, you know, I'm, I'm, I have other ideas coming up that might be

00:34:48.620 | needed to be added to my ideal lifestyle, or this aspect of what I have here is not

00:34:51.980 | working for me, or I'm learning this about myself.

00:34:54.340 | I don't really like this.

00:34:55.980 | Make sure that you're capturing those thoughts, but you don't have to act on them yet.

00:35:01.700 | Let that fester, let that marinate, let that evolve and blossom over time.

00:35:06.300 | And when you get back to your next birthday, so let's revisit this ideal master narrative.

00:35:11.280 | This time, this aspect of time and experience is going to buffer the drastic changes.

00:35:15.700 | This, it will evolve some years more than others, but it's going to do so in a more

00:35:19.140 | thoughtful way.

00:35:20.140 | Um, and this slower sort of annual approach where you build up experience and reflections

00:35:25.700 | over the year.

00:35:26.700 | Uh, this slower approach is also going to protect you from just whim.

00:35:29.820 | Oh man, I listened to a Goggins on a podcast and like, forget all of this, I got to go

00:35:36.380 | hammer it.

00:35:37.380 | Right.

00:35:38.380 | It prevents like a, a wave of inspiration leading the drastic changes and how you approach

00:35:43.180 | your life.

00:35:44.180 | Right.

00:35:45.180 | So if you're thinking about the systematically cultivating a life that feels intentional,

00:35:49.980 | you got to just make sure that you have some more buffer in it.

00:35:52.060 | So that's what I'm going to recommend.

00:35:53.260 | All right, who do we have next?

00:35:56.580 | Next question's from Phil.

00:35:58.340 | I've been embracing your ideas about systematically cultivating a deep life, and it's really made

00:36:03.140 | a big difference in a short amount of time.

00:36:05.500 | My girlfriend hasn't adopted these methods, however, and has caught some strain in our

00:36:09.020 | relationship.

00:36:10.020 | I especially get annoyed with her checking her phone a lot and not living intentionally.

00:36:15.340 | What would you recommend in solving this sort of issue?

00:36:17.820 | All right.

00:36:18.820 | There's nothing people love more, especially girlfriends, than getting a Cal Newport thrown

00:36:24.460 | at them.

00:36:25.460 | Right.

00:36:26.460 | They love that almost as much as you telling them what Andrew Huberman thinks you should

00:36:30.340 | do with your morning routine.

00:36:32.340 | All women love that.

00:36:33.340 | All right.

00:36:34.340 | I'm going to pull out two separate issues here, Phil.

00:36:37.560 | The checking the phone a lot, I'm going to separate that from the drive to live more

00:36:43.180 | intentionally.

00:36:44.180 | All right.

00:36:45.180 | So when it comes to checking your phone a lot, look, I say, first of all, you do you,

00:36:50.120 | right?

00:36:51.120 | You do with your phone what you think is right, which if you're a Cal Newport fan probably

00:36:56.160 | means no social media on your phone, using something like the phone foyer method at home

00:37:00.480 | where you don't have it with you at home.

00:37:02.160 | It's in a fixed location you go to when you need to check something or communicate with

00:37:05.400 | people.

00:37:06.460 | Do a digital declutter, as I talk about in my book, Digital Minimalism, so that you're

00:37:11.760 | only using things that like serve real value and you have some fences around how you use

00:37:16.000 | it to make sure that you're getting value but not getting trapped in all these other

00:37:19.140 | types of distractions.

00:37:20.140 | So first of all, get your game dialed in.

00:37:22.160 | That's what's most important, is that you're happy with your relationship with your phone.

00:37:28.480 | I would not try to "fix" your girlfriend's relationship with her phone.

00:37:33.560 | First of all, people don't like being fixed, right, in that manner, especially when they

00:37:38.300 | don't think it's a problem.

00:37:40.020 | And two, you don't know exactly what's going on there.

00:37:43.300 | Like a typical gender divide, like a stereotypical gender divide I've run into with digital minimalism,

00:37:51.420 | and again, it's stereotypical, so it does describe everyone, but often it's the case

00:37:55.060 | that so a woman with a phone might be spending a lot of time managing relationships in a

00:38:01.700 | way that like a guy with a phone might not be.

00:38:04.720 | And so you see, "My girlfriend's on that phone all the time."

00:38:08.500 | You're thinking like, "What would it be if you were on the phone all the time?"

00:38:11.100 | And for you, it might be, "Yeah, I would be on like TikTok and YouTube videos, and

00:38:15.860 | I don't want to spend a lot of time doing this.

00:38:17.420 | There's better things to be doing."

00:38:20.340 | But your girlfriend might be managing like a really complicated social dynamic that's

00:38:23.420 | happening.

00:38:24.420 | I got an answer here, answer here, make sure this person feels okay, and then it's happening

00:38:26.880 | through text message, and it's fraught, and it's complicated, and it's subtle.

00:38:30.180 | So you don't even know really what's going on there.

00:38:32.580 | So I would say focus on making your thing good.

00:38:36.180 | If she appreciates what she sees in you and asks you about it, then you can say, "Yeah,

00:38:41.540 | here's what I'm up to.

00:38:42.540 | I read this book, Digital Minimalism," sort of give the information to her to take in,

00:38:48.060 | but you sort of wait for her to come to you.

00:38:49.580 | All right, when it comes to living intentionally, now this is something where I think there's

00:38:56.340 | a distinction between dating and marriage.

00:39:01.780 | I think married couples need to have, if possible, a shared ideal lifestyle vision, right?

00:39:09.100 | You're doing something like deep life planning, you should agree on here is our vision for

00:39:12.340 | our family, what we want all of the aspects of our day-to-day life to be like five years

00:39:17.660 | from now or 10 years from now, like what type of place we're living in, our connection to

00:39:20.500 | community and family, what our work is like, what type of things it gives to us, but also

00:39:26.100 | what type of footprint it has in our lives.

00:39:28.640 | You really imagine these things, and then as a family, you're working towards this.

00:39:34.300 | You're married, especially when you're starting a family, if you take the tact of like, "I'm

00:39:38.740 | just going to try to optimize my career.

00:39:40.780 | You're going to try to optimize your career.

00:39:42.620 | We're going to see everything else, everything you need.

00:39:44.820 | You're going to see everything I need.

00:39:45.820 | We're going to see everything that our kids need.

00:39:47.940 | All of this is sort of just like an obstacles to our individual optimization," that doesn't

00:39:52.220 | work out well.

00:39:54.020 | Your family vision that you're trying to optimize works well.

00:39:57.260 | When you're dating, don't do that yet.

00:39:58.460 | It's too early.

00:39:59.460 | I don't think it's appropriate yet for the most part.

00:40:02.180 | So when you're dating, work on your own vision, ideal lifestyle, and again, be transparent

00:40:07.380 | about what you're doing.

00:40:08.420 | Answer questions about what you're doing, but I don't think you need to be on the same

00:40:12.440 | page about that until probably after marriage is typically what I recommend.

00:40:18.400 | By the way, all this stuff is just going to make you seem like a more attractive mate

00:40:21.420 | if you're not harping on these things, but you're not on your phone all the time.

00:40:25.660 | You have a vision of what you want for your life.

00:40:27.260 | You're making progress towards it.

00:40:28.460 | These are all really positive things.

00:40:29.780 | It's all going to help you.

00:40:31.320 | You're going to diffuse a lot of that benefit if you preach about it or brag about it.

00:40:35.300 | Just do that.

00:40:36.700 | This person really has their act together.

00:40:38.300 | They really have intention.

00:40:39.300 | They're really systematic about how they live their life.

00:40:41.240 | That is an appealing trait, so stick with it.

00:40:44.820 | I'm great.

00:40:46.220 | We should have dating advice music we play whenever I give dating advice.

00:40:50.540 | I feel like it never goes well.

00:40:52.080 | That's actually a really good idea.

00:40:53.820 | I'll find some.

00:40:54.820 | It never goes well.

00:40:55.820 | All right, what do we got next?

00:40:57.380 | Next question is from Abigail.

00:40:59.140 | Can you elaborate on the blocks in your planner?

00:41:01.220 | For example, how long you're writing blocks?

00:41:03.100 | Do you time block classes that you teach?

00:41:05.020 | What is your shortest block?

00:41:06.380 | Stuff like that.

00:41:07.380 | Well, okay.

00:41:08.380 | Abigail, when I'm doing time block planning, my entire workday is time blocked, so there's

00:41:12.260 | no minute that's not part of a block.

00:41:14.240 | If you look at a column in my time block planner, it's all blocks of various sizes with no gaps

00:41:18.420 | in between.

00:41:20.140 | That's what a time blocking discipline looks about.

00:41:22.460 | We ask like, "Oh, do you time block your classes?"

00:41:24.140 | Yeah.

00:41:25.140 | I mean, every minute has to be in a block, so the minutes that are taking place during

00:41:30.420 | my class are going to be in a teaching time block.

00:41:35.140 | The main place where appointments on my calendar differ from the corresponding blocks on my

00:41:40.460 | time block planner is that on my time block planner, I'm explicitly typically taking a

00:41:45.380 | count of the time required to get to class, to get back from class.

00:41:49.820 | On a calendar, you usually just put like, "Here's the exact hours of an appointment,"

00:41:53.340 | but when you're time blocking, you have to capture the time required to actually get

00:41:56.380 | there, not get there, because every minute has to be accounted for.

00:42:00.380 | If you put the 15 minutes right before class starts in a time block dedicated to something

00:42:04.700 | else, that's a bad block because you have to spend that 15 minutes not working on that

00:42:07.780 | block but getting to your class.

00:42:10.300 | How long are they?

00:42:11.300 | You know, it depends.

00:42:13.380 | Writing, I'm usually at least 90 minutes, I would say.

00:42:19.540 | I'm also willing, and I think it's important about time blocking, you don't get a medal

00:42:25.100 | for not adjusting your plan.

00:42:27.260 | You get a medal for being intentional about your time.

00:42:30.400 | It is fine if several times during the day you have to adjust your time block plan for

00:42:34.460 | the time that remains in the day.

00:42:35.660 | The key is fixing the plan and having intention and not just falling back to, "Okay, what

00:42:39.980 | do I feel like doing?" or "Let me throw in the towel all together on work."

00:42:43.100 | So I bring this up because with writing, I often do this.

00:42:45.660 | If there's not urgent things happening later, the time blocks are just things I've come

00:42:49.180 | up with, like I want to make progress on this, I want to get this done too.

00:42:52.260 | If the writing is going well, I'll let it blow past the block.

00:42:55.820 | If I'm in the groove and I can do it, it's not a hard appointment I can't miss, I'll

00:42:58.660 | just blow past the block, no problem.

00:43:01.860 | Fix the schedule for the rest of the day once I'm done writing.

00:43:04.300 | So the writing sessions can sometimes be three, four hours long, if things are really rolling.

00:43:08.700 | All right, let's see what else is in here.

00:43:11.740 | How long your writing blocks, your time block classes you teach.

00:43:13.820 | What's the shortest block?

00:43:14.820 | All right, another good question.

00:43:15.820 | 30 minutes is the shortest block.

00:43:17.620 | So if you have something that's going to be quicker than 30 minutes, batch it with other

00:43:21.340 | quick things.

00:43:23.580 | Thirty minutes is usually the shortest I do.

00:43:25.580 | A little tip for time blockers out there, if you have a little 30-minute block in which

00:43:29.260 | you're going to do a bunch of things, you can't fit those into a little block on the

00:43:34.220 | planner.

00:43:35.220 | I put a number inside that block, like a one and circle it, and then I replicate that number

00:43:39.980 | over on the side.

00:43:41.580 | And next to it, I put the list of all the things that are supposed to happen in this

00:43:44.180 | small block.

00:43:45.900 | Another time block tip I'll give is I like to customize the borders of the blocks based

00:43:51.780 | on what type of work it is.

00:43:54.220 | Admin work gets a sort of double border, non-filled in though.

00:43:57.420 | So a block and then a slightly smaller block inside.

00:44:01.240 | Deep work, I fill in that border.

00:44:03.500 | So it's like a really thick border.

00:44:06.080 | Meetings or appointments, like where another person's involved, I put three vertical lines

00:44:09.380 | on the right side.

00:44:10.380 | So it's like very clearly this is like a meeting block.

00:44:13.140 | So I have admin, deep, and meetings.

00:44:15.980 | It just helps me when visualizing my day on my planner to see like, "Okay, here's deep

00:44:20.820 | time.

00:44:21.820 | Here's admin time."

00:44:22.820 | It just helps me get a better sense than all those blocks being the same.

00:44:25.460 | So there's a couple of advanced tactics there.

00:44:28.060 | I have a really long expository introduction at the front of every time block planner I

00:44:32.100 | sell where I get into a lot of these details and I give a lot of these extra tips.

00:44:36.180 | There's a lot of diagrams of time block planners.

00:44:38.460 | It's unusual for a planner to come with like a chapter of a book, but mine does because

00:44:42.820 | I'm a writer and I thought it was important to really walk you through exactly how to

00:44:46.540 | do this and the advanced tips and tricks.

00:44:48.340 | So the best thing I've ever written about time blocking is actually the text in the

00:44:53.180 | front of my time block planner.

00:44:54.660 | It's interesting.

00:44:56.180 | All right.

00:44:57.740 | Our next question is our slow productivity corner question of the week.

00:45:02.500 | So Jessie, let's get that slow productivity corner music if we could.

00:45:15.660 | So for those who don't know, I try to have one question every week that's relevant to

00:45:19.260 | my new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, so that

00:45:26.260 | we can get into the details of that book.

00:45:27.980 | If you haven't bought that book yet, check it out.

00:45:30.980 | Slow productivity, you can find it anywhere.

00:45:32.820 | You can also go to calnewport.com/slow to get an excerpt or to hear an audio excerpt

00:45:37.700 | of me reading it, et cetera, et cetera.

00:45:41.700 | We're coming up now, Jessie, on the 100,000 copies sold mark, which is an important mark

00:45:48.560 | to me.

00:45:49.560 | Like symbolically, it's always a mark I like to hit.

00:45:52.980 | Because it's been three months because it came out March 7th, right?

00:45:55.740 | Yeah.

00:45:56.740 | So far, so good.

00:45:57.740 | We're rock and rolling.

00:45:58.740 | If you haven't bought the book yet, check it out.

00:46:00.580 | People are digging it.

00:46:01.580 | And if you dug it, maybe give a nice review or tell someone about it.

00:46:05.060 | I mean-

00:46:06.060 | Buy your dad for Father's Day?

00:46:07.740 | Excellent gift for Father's Day.

00:46:09.460 | Excellent gift.

00:46:10.460 | I would recommend getting four copies though, right?

00:46:12.340 | Because you need one in your room, you need one at your office, you need one in your car

00:46:16.580 | in case like you're stuck waiting to pick someone up-

00:46:19.460 | And you don't want to go on your phone.

00:46:20.460 | And you want to go on your phone, so you need one for the car as well, and then you need

00:46:24.660 | one for the bathroom.

00:46:25.900 | So buy four copies of Slow Productivity for your dad for this Father's Day.

00:46:29.860 | If you don't, I'm going to play the theme music again and again and again.

00:46:32.940 | All right.

00:46:33.940 | Let's see.

00:46:34.940 | What is our Slow Productivity corner question of the day, Jesse?

00:46:36.900 | Hi, it's from Janet.

00:46:38.580 | In your book, Slow Productivity, you recommend obsessing over quality, but I sometimes find

00:46:43.340 | this paralyzing.

00:46:44.340 | I worry so much dealing or so much doing about other things really well that I procrastinate.

00:46:50.660 | Is it really that important to care so much about quality?

00:46:53.300 | It's a good question, Janet.

00:46:54.980 | A lot of people wonder about this.

00:46:58.420 | I think the verb obsess troubled some people as well.

00:47:02.620 | So it's worth diving into this again briefly.

00:47:04.780 | For those who didn't read my book, I have three principles of Slow Productivity.

00:47:08.940 | The first is do fewer things.

00:47:10.620 | The second is work at a natural pace.

00:47:12.700 | The third is obsess over quality, which I argue is the glue for the whole program.

00:47:18.820 | So why is this important?

00:47:21.340 | Well, there's two reasons.

00:47:24.140 | When you begin to care more and more about how well you do the best thing you do, busyness

00:47:29.340 | of the type that defines our current pseudo productivity age begins to seem unnecessary

00:47:36.020 | and eventually to seem negative.

00:47:39.180 | You begin to develop a distaste for busyness.

00:47:42.020 | When you're not caring about quality, busyness can be, in some sort of masochistic way, attractive.

00:47:49.420 | Like, at least if I'm busy, I can't be accused of being a slacker.

00:47:54.980 | At least if I'm busy, I can't tell myself, you know, "Hey, you're not really getting

00:48:00.140 | it done here."

00:48:01.140 | At least if I'm busy, there's some safety in this.

00:48:02.820 | I know how to do busyness.

00:48:05.020 | This is all I know about doing work well.

00:48:07.540 | It's safe.

00:48:08.540 | It's predictable.

00:48:09.540 | Once you start caring about doing something really well, you start to see results.

00:48:13.140 | The busyness becomes an obstacle.

00:48:15.460 | I can't make progress on this thing because I'm so busy with all these other things.

00:48:19.300 | So the other principles of pseudo productivity, the doing fewer things at once, the working

00:48:23.060 | at a natural pace, begin to seem self-evident once you begin to pursue quality.

00:48:30.980 | The other thing that happens, and this is part of the nice flywheel effect, as you get

00:48:34.180 | better at something professionally, you get more freedom to dictate what your work looks

00:48:38.660 | like.

00:48:40.080 | So as you get better at something, you're going to develop a distaste for busyness.

00:48:44.660 | At the same time, you get more leverage to remove busyness from your life.

00:48:47.420 | So these things work together, it's good symbiosis, it gives you the power you need.

00:48:53.580 | A big talking point I hear from people I talk about, about slow productivity, they're like,

00:48:59.560 | you know, a lot of the stuff I get, a lot of the stuff I give advice for, like, here's

00:49:02.740 | how you do this right now in your job with a boss who's a pain.

00:49:06.740 | But they're like, you know, I could do this so much better if I had more control, but

00:49:11.180 | I don't have control.

00:49:12.180 | My boss is really a pain.

00:49:13.180 | So I can do some of your advice, but some of the big ideas I can't do, and I feel like

00:49:16.260 | I'll never be able to do them because my boss will never let me do them.

00:49:19.060 | This is how you earned a right to do them, right?

00:49:23.020 | You get really good at something, they're desperate to keep you.

00:49:26.480 | They really want your skill.

00:49:27.480 | Your skill is very valued.

00:49:28.480 | Now you say, yeah, I'll stay, but here's how I'm going to do it.

00:49:31.260 | And now you begin to gain more control.

00:49:34.660 | So slow productivity, the tactics in the book, part of them are just like right away, put

00:49:38.220 | these into action right now.

00:49:40.180 | They're pragmatic.

00:49:42.100 | The other half are inspirational.

00:49:43.980 | You might not be able to do these now, but they're possible.

00:49:46.780 | You can get there.

00:49:47.780 | Yeah, you can't do this all tomorrow, but a year from now, you could, if you get really

00:49:52.700 | good at something.

00:49:54.100 | That is your weapon you can wield against the scourge that is pseudo productivity generated

00:49:58.820 | busyness.

00:49:59.820 | All right, now the other issue Janet brings up here is the paralyzation, otherwise known

00:50:07.060 | as perfectionism.

00:50:08.060 | If I start caring about doing something really well, maybe I'll never finish it because I'm

00:50:12.580 | never satisfied or I'm worried like this isn't that good yet.

00:50:15.060 | I need to do another draft of this novel.

00:50:16.780 | I need to try to make this computer code even tighter and maybe you'll never actually ship

00:50:21.420 | it.

00:50:22.420 | So if you care too much about quality, you might fall into perfectionism.

00:50:27.940 | So I really get into this in the book because I think it's an important point.

00:50:30.780 | How do you obsess over quality without giving in to perfectionism, which is a natural corollary?

00:50:36.820 | The fear of perfectionism is a natural, unavoidable corollary to obsessing over quality.

00:50:41.780 | How do we walk this tightrope?

00:50:44.660 | Well, the idea I give comes from a story about the Beatles.

00:50:48.380 | I've told it on the show before, so I'll be very quick.

00:50:51.460 | But in the book, I get into the Beatles recording Sergeant Pepper.

00:50:56.620 | And the important thing about this album is that it was the very first album they were

00:51:00.100 | recording where they knew they were not going to tour.

00:51:03.180 | So they did not have to write songs that could be replicated on stage during a tour, which

00:51:07.620 | meant basically they could do anything in the songs, any weird instrument.

00:51:11.660 | They could play with the tape speeds.

00:51:13.260 | They could overlay track after track in unusual or cacophonous arrangements.

00:51:18.960 | Everything was possible.

00:51:19.960 | And they wanted this thing to be really, really good.

00:51:22.260 | This is prime procrastination territory.

00:51:25.480 | They could have stayed in Abbey Road Studios forever trying to build their masterpiece.

00:51:30.700 | So how did they walk the line here between quality and perfectionism?

00:51:34.060 | George Martin released the first thing they had that looked like a single.

00:51:36.940 | He released it.

00:51:39.100 | Now they had a stake in the ground.

00:51:40.820 | They had some pressure.

00:51:42.860 | We want to make this good, but we also have to ship it.

00:51:44.580 | We can't take too much longer because the single's out and we can't have the album come

00:51:47.660 | out too much after the single.

00:51:50.840 | They still took much longer on that album that they did other albums.

00:51:54.500 | They obsessed more about the quality than other albums, but they had to make compromises

00:51:58.900 | and finish things and get something out.

00:52:00.780 | It became their best-selling album to date once it did.

00:52:05.040 | That is the key, Janet, to navigating perfectionism and quality.

00:52:10.180 | You need to put stakes in the ground.

00:52:12.620 | I want to do this really well, but I promised this to this person.

00:52:15.100 | This person is expecting this by this time.

00:52:16.740 | I've made an announcement about this.

00:52:17.980 | This has to happen pretty soon.

00:52:19.740 | And once you put the stake in the ground, it changes the stakes from producing the best

00:52:22.940 | thing that could ever possibly be produced to producing something really good given the

00:52:27.440 | amount of time you have left.

00:52:29.060 | That is the sort of pragmatic way to actually get better at things.

00:52:31.940 | It's the pragmatic way to produce stuff that's too good to be ignored without subcoming to

00:52:36.420 | the full pressures of perfectionism.

00:52:39.780 | All right, Janet.

00:52:40.780 | So thank you for that slow productivity corner question of the week.

00:52:44.580 | Want to hear the music again?

00:52:46.500 | Let's hear it again.

00:52:49.500 | If you don't buy your four copies of the book, that's all you're going to hear.

00:52:57.980 | All right.

00:52:58.980 | Do we have a call this week?

00:53:01.140 | We do.

00:53:02.140 | All right.

00:53:03.140 | Let's hear this.

00:53:04.140 | Hi, Cal.

00:53:05.140 | My name is Emily, and I work for a small nonprofit organization with national reach.

00:53:10.540 | I have a question that I hope you can help me with considering your recent book tour

00:53:14.500 | experience.

00:53:15.500 | I travel for work roughly once every six weeks, and these trips can last anywhere from four

00:53:20.440 | to nine days.

00:53:22.060 | The reason for my travels varies, but most often it's for conferences that require me

00:53:26.420 | to be up early and attending sessions and professional dinners until late in the evening.

00:53:32.720 | These events significantly disrupt my daily habits, routines, and rituals.

00:53:36.780 | I find that it often takes several days after I return, especially if there's a time change,

00:53:41.940 | to feel that I'm back to my normal rhythms.

00:53:44.380 | Of course, some habits and routines are easier to pick back up than others.

00:53:48.540 | What suggestions do you have for how to get back on track quickly after disruptive periods?

00:53:54.260 | And are there habits and routines that you try to keep when you are doing your travels?

00:53:59.140 | Thanks.

00:54:00.140 | It's a good question, Emily.

00:54:02.160 | A couple things here I think are relevant.

00:54:04.740 | One, when it comes to being during your travels, it is good to understand your stripped down

00:54:10.740 | systems that you're going to use, and they really should be stripped down.

00:54:14.460 | So you have to acknowledge that traveling is not the same as just being at your office.

00:54:18.540 | There's much less you can actually do in terms of the normal work you do.

00:54:22.460 | You should lean into that.

00:54:24.300 | Really warn people ahead of time.

00:54:25.660 | I will be traveling during this period.

00:54:28.540 | Get people prepared for that.

00:54:29.540 | You can even use an autoresponder if you need to so that expectations are set, that you're

00:54:33.700 | not as accessible as normal, that you're not able to be part of hyperactive hive mind on-the-fly

00:54:38.740 | interactions as much as before.

00:54:42.140 | I think that's helpful.

00:54:43.140 | I think it's helpful to schedule, if it's a nine-day trip, two or three check-ins.

00:54:47.620 | All right, let's have a half hour pre-scheduled on our calendar that works with, in this case,

00:54:53.180 | the conference schedule.

00:54:54.180 | Or just in real time, we get caught back up.

00:54:56.180 | What's going on?

00:54:57.180 | What do you need from me?

00:54:58.180 | I'm reflecting a lot of emails and chat, just like we have a couple check-ins.

00:55:01.700 | Let me just check in.

00:55:02.700 | What's going on?

00:55:03.700 | Do this.

00:55:04.700 | Do that.

00:55:05.700 | Put a pin in that.

00:55:06.700 | It's a much more effective way of allowing you to deal with stuff that comes up while

00:55:09.080 | you're away without having to have you always constantly try to be connected.

00:55:14.060 | As I mentioned, you should streamline the set of systems or habits you use.

00:55:17.300 | You're not going to time block, for example, because if you're at a conference, it's fluid.

00:55:22.140 | I don't know what's going to happen.

00:55:23.780 | What's going to happen next?

00:55:25.420 | Don't have a lot of expectations for getting a lot of deep work done.

00:55:29.100 | I often like to have one sort of contemplative project to work on, something I'm in the early

00:55:33.480 | stages of.

00:55:34.480 | And so I put all of my decompressed time, I'm going to go for a walk by this river,

00:55:39.780 | I'm going to go explore the town, the sort of decompressed time I can have one thing

00:55:43.700 | to think about.

00:55:45.460 | And over like a week-long trip, you can make pretty cool progress if you keep thinking

00:55:48.660 | about something in these unusual environments.

00:55:50.860 | But don't expect to do too much more deep work outside of that.

00:55:54.220 | And I would schedule admin blocks onto my calendar each day.

00:55:57.420 | Here's the one hour I'm going to sit down and try to crank through everything that's

00:56:02.380 | admin.

00:56:03.380 | So it's all about consolidation, so that most of your time you can just be doing the thing

00:56:07.220 | you're there to do and not be worrying too much about the other things.

00:56:10.660 | On the way back, if it's a long trip, take a day off the day after, either officially

00:56:14.740 | or not, just to sort of gain back your energy.

00:56:18.560 | Then you need an entire full day of catch-up, right?

00:56:22.740 | So it's a, I'm going through my inbox, I'm going through my calendar, I'm going through

00:56:27.780 | my quarterly plan, my weekly plan, you know, let me get a new weekly plan.

00:56:32.140 | It's like you're wrapping your arms around things, you're pushing things off, you're

00:56:35.540 | telling people I'm back now, but let's wait two weeks to get into it.

00:56:38.780 | You're sort of touching on everything that got temporarily frozen.

00:56:43.660 | You're touching on everything, updating your plans, moving things around, no like long

00:56:49.420 | deep work, no meetings, just like getting your arms around everything, spend an entire

00:56:53.460 | day doing that.

00:56:55.820 | And then you can hit the ground running the next day.

00:56:57.680 | I think the biggest problem people have in this situation, especially after long trips,

00:57:01.860 | is they try to interleave the catch-up with like a normal day of work.

00:57:07.140 | And then it's like, oh my God, the normal day of work doesn't work, the catch-up is

00:57:10.420 | overwhelming, the overwhelmingness then gives you more resistance to your standard systems

00:57:14.700 | and rituals because those don't work well when you feel super stressed.

00:57:17.460 | So just give it the time it requires.

00:57:19.540 | A good way to do this is just when you schedule your trip, you add that one or two days on

00:57:24.460 | the end onto your calendar as well.

00:57:29.180 | So then when you're in the future, when you're scheduling meetings and such, you just don't

00:57:34.140 | use those days.

00:57:35.140 | You've blocked them off just like the seven or eight days before that are part of your

00:57:37.820 | trip.

00:57:38.820 | So just add that one or two days as part of any long trip on your calendar, protect those

00:57:41.900 | days, one day off, one day catch-up, then get back into it.

00:57:45.380 | You will not have as much heart of a time as you think getting back into your ritual

00:57:50.460 | if you have your handle on everything.

00:57:52.500 | So that's what I would recommend.

00:57:53.700 | I do that for sure.

00:57:56.260 | After every major trip, there's definitely a catch-up day.

00:57:59.100 | All right, we've got a case study here.

00:58:03.400 | So something else we like to do is read case studies sent in by you, my listeners, about

00:58:08.420 | how you have specifically put the type of things we talk about in the show into action

00:58:11.940 | in your own life.

00:58:12.940 | It allows people to see sort of what practically these type of ideas look like when the rubber

00:58:16.940 | hits the proverbial road.

00:58:19.300 | So our case study today comes from Prudence.

00:58:23.300 | Prudence says, "I'm a huge fan of your work, and I wanted to share with you some of the

00:58:26.220 | ways it has impacted my work and life.

00:58:29.700 | I was introduced to your work through your conversation with Lewis Howes on the School

00:58:33.860 | of Greatness podcast when you were talking about digital minimalism.

00:58:38.940 | I closed off my personal Facebook account in 2012, but had found a pullback to social

00:58:43.900 | media platforms by the mainstream marketing narrative that it is essential to have a presence

00:58:48.940 | on social media to run a successful business.

00:58:52.340 | Digital minimalism helped me question those beliefs and find other ways to market my business

00:58:56.740 | which feel more aligned.

00:59:00.420 | The ideas in your book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, were also fundamental, this time

00:59:06.020 | in shifting my mindset around my career.

00:59:09.340 | In my 20s and 30s, working as a divorce lawyer with the popular message, follow your passion,

00:59:16.500 | it was tempting to think that doing away with law and the pressures of billable hours and

00:59:20.740 | constant deadlines was the way to go and that I should seek out a totally different job.

00:59:25.620 | But your work helped me open my mind to the possibility of leveraging the career capital

00:59:29.300 | I had worked on over 18 years of legal practice to build and serve my clients in a different

00:59:34.140 | way.

00:59:35.140 | Drawing on the ideas in So Good They Can't Ignore You and your lifestyle-centric career

00:59:38.900 | planning model, I now work as a divorce coach consultant, which uses my skills and experience,

00:59:44.100 | but also helps support my broader lifestyle vision.

00:59:48.980 | In 2022, I sold my bricks and mortar legal practice.

00:59:52.820 | As my coaching practice now is entirely online, my family and I were able to fulfill a long-term

00:59:57.840 | dream of moving from a capital city to a regional beachside community on Australia's sunshine

01:00:04.220 | coast.

01:00:05.740 | The career change has also afforded me the flexibility to be a present and involved parent

01:00:10.580 | and contribute to our local community.

01:00:13.620 | All right, well, Prudence, I really appreciate this case study because it actually captures

01:00:20.220 | a few different ideas from my canon that I think are worth emphasizing.

01:00:24.540 | I love your application of digital minimalism, where instead of just using things by default

01:00:29.540 | until they prove themselves to be dangerous, you instead say, "My default's not using something

01:00:36.140 | until I see its value is really clear and can't be avoided, and then I'll use it with

01:00:39.380 | rails around it."

01:00:40.700 | When you did this with your online business as a divorce coach, you actually found it

01:00:44.460 | sounds like social media wasn't super important, and that saved you from having to be caught

01:00:49.300 | in a relationship with that tool that you didn't really like.

01:00:51.660 | I then love your application of my career capital theory from So Good They Can't Ignore

01:00:55.420 | You.

01:00:56.420 | It's the idea that says the thing that matters most in cultivating a career you love is getting

01:01:01.660 | good at things and then investing the metaphorical career capital that generates to get things

01:01:06.780 | in your job you really want.

01:01:08.820 | The stuff that makes great jobs great is in demand.

01:01:11.300 | You have to do something great to earn it.

01:01:12.820 | So I love this way of thinking.

01:01:15.100 | The follow your passion model that I push back against in So Good They Can't Ignore

01:01:18.860 | You would have told you, as you mentioned here, "This isn't your passion.

01:01:23.300 | Being a lawyer is not your passion.

01:01:25.180 | Quit it.

01:01:26.180 | It's completely different."

01:01:27.960 | That would have been probably a big mistake because without career capital, this different

01:01:32.140 | thing would probably not give you what you need.

01:01:34.500 | And finally, what a great example of the core component of my deep life philosophy, which

01:01:39.220 | is working backwards.

01:01:40.220 | We've talked about this throughout the show.

01:01:42.460 | Working backwards from your ideal narrative, your master narrative of an ideal lifestyle.

01:01:46.060 | And you guys, you had this narrative and you didn't give us the details, but it seems like

01:01:49.580 | it involved living in a quieter place, living closer to nature, more time with family and

01:01:56.700 | flexibility, but also implicitly freedom from worrying a lot about finances.

01:02:02.140 | And so to move closer to that vision, you took the career capital that you had generated

01:02:06.940 | being a successful lawyer for all these years to build up this consultant coaching practice,

01:02:13.540 | which requires your really specialized skills, which allows you to probably charge a good

01:02:17.840 | amount of money, but it's way more flexible than billable hours, actually being on cases,

01:02:23.060 | and is fully remote and allowed you to now move to that other location that's going to

01:02:26.900 | be much better to you.

01:02:28.180 | That's classic deep life sort of jujitsu right here.

01:02:31.140 | It's not one grand gesture.

01:02:33.100 | It's you figuring out, "If I use this skill over here and this develops, it'll eventually

01:02:36.420 | allow me to do X, Y, and Z, that's going to be a better situation."

01:02:39.300 | A little key point, a nuance in here I want to emphasize for the listener.

01:02:45.200 | Notice how she said, "By 2022, I was able to sell my standard legal practice and do

01:02:51.200 | the coaching full time."

01:02:53.000 | That meant she started this thing on the side, validated it was working, built it up in a

01:02:57.580 | natural way, had evidence it was doing well before she quit the legal practice.

01:03:01.420 | It's not always grand gestures for the deep life.

01:03:04.620 | It's knowing what your ideal lifestyle looks like and constantly creatively looking at

01:03:08.340 | ways to move you closer.

01:03:10.300 | So a masterclass prudence in cultivating a more meaningful life along the way applying

01:03:15.940 | other ideas for my books.

01:03:17.140 | So I appreciate that.

01:03:18.140 | It's a good case study.

01:03:19.140 | And anybody can send case studies to me at jesse@calnewport.com.

01:03:22.100 | Yeah, please do.

01:03:24.100 | We love them.

01:03:25.100 | All right.

01:03:26.100 | So we have a cool final segment coming up about a sort of surprise appearance of this

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01:03:31.860 | But first, let me tell you about another sponsor.

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01:06:32.380 | Let's also talk about our longtime friends at Policy Genius.

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01:08:19.520 | All right, Jessie, let's do our final segment.

01:08:24.460 | All right, so this was a nice little treat, but I'm going to use it as an excuse to talk

01:08:30.540 | about something a little bit more specific to the show.

01:08:35.860 | Deep Questions, our podcast that you're listening to here, it made a cool appearance at the

01:08:40.660 | Apple WWDC, their Worldwide Developers Conference, right?

01:08:44.460 | So they have this big splashy conference.

01:08:46.460 | I think you probably remember it from years past when Steve Jobs would give these big

01:08:49.620 | keynotes.

01:08:51.140 | One of the big speeches, it's a pre-produced video, but one of the big presentations at

01:08:55.820 | this conference is what they call the Platform State of the Union.

01:08:59.300 | So if you're someone who develops for Apple platforms, this is sort of like the big deal

01:09:04.180 | speech where they talk about here's what's coming up with the platforms, what new features

01:09:08.660 | or capabilities are coming along, and you can think about like, "Hey, what can I do

01:09:11.660 | with the apps or whatever I build for it?"

01:09:14.140 | Anyways, Deep Questions made a little cameo in the WWDC Platform State of the Union.

01:09:21.180 | I think Jessie's going to bring this up on the screen here.

01:09:24.100 | So if you're watching, you can see there, someone is on the screen.

01:09:27.940 | She's talking about, there we go.

01:09:29.820 | See it, Jessie?

01:09:31.100 | Yep.

01:09:32.100 | She's saying the Deep Questions podcast is on an Apple Watch next to it as some computer

01:09:37.700 | code.

01:09:38.700 | So it was a segment where they were really talking about some new hooks in the computer

01:09:42.540 | code if you're writing apps for the watch to make it easier, but hey, Deep Questions

01:09:46.020 | is what they chose as the sort of sample podcast there.

01:09:49.360 | So I think at least when it comes to our nerd audience, we're doing very strong.

01:09:53.300 | I got maybe six messages from listeners who saw that, which meant we have at least six

01:09:58.220 | listeners who were really carefully watching the WWDC State of the Union Platform conference.

01:10:03.780 | It kind of makes sense.

01:10:05.780 | It does.

01:10:06.780 | I'm a computer scientist, so we sort of get it.

01:10:10.620 | So I thought this would be a good excuse to give a brief State of the Union of our own

01:10:15.620 | on the Deep Questions podcast.

01:10:16.620 | It was mentioned in the Apple State of the Union, let's have our own State of the Union.

01:10:20.420 | Like a few thoughts about the podcast, how it's going, and sort of what we have in mind.

01:10:27.680 | So I would say the State of the Union here, should we say, is strong, Jesse.

01:10:32.420 | I mean, I think the show is doing well.

01:10:33.900 | Yeah.

01:10:34.900 | I feel like a lot of things I do, it is successful, but somewhat underground.

01:10:41.460 | We're not a runaway top of the category hit.

01:10:45.740 | It's not like Lex Fridman show or something that's just dominating, but it's really actually

01:10:51.900 | a little underneath the covers, underneath the waves a little bit, but we have a really

01:10:55.260 | big audience.

01:10:56.260 | It's doing really well.

01:10:57.260 | Our listeners really like us.

01:10:58.260 | We sell out all of our slots.

01:10:59.260 | I think this is the sweet spot because it means we can have a strong community of listeners,

01:11:05.620 | but people outside of this community don't know about us.

01:11:09.300 | So we can have our own little thing going on here.

01:11:11.100 | That's my sweet spot.

01:11:12.100 | My newsletter is sort of like that as well.

01:11:13.740 | A lot of my books are like that as well.

01:11:15.660 | It will sell a lot of copies, but it's not atomic habits.

01:11:19.020 | So we can have a big audience and we're all in on the club together, but the club can

01:11:24.260 | still feel a little bit secret, a little bit special.

01:11:27.860 | So I'd like that about where we are right now.

01:11:29.940 | A couple of the thoughts I wrote down, the pandemic was started, I mean, the podcast

01:11:35.660 | was started rather early in the pandemic back in 2020s.

01:11:39.780 | I was listening to a lot of podcasts, sort of lonely and was like, Hey, let's, um, I

01:11:46.340 | think I'll finally pull the trigger on podcasting because I want to have a way of sort of talking

01:11:49.380 | to people and not just be, you know, by myself.

01:11:53.300 | I think that inflects, there's like a big inflection from that origin stories and what

01:11:58.220 | you hear on this podcast.

01:11:59.380 | I think if I had started this podcast in very early 2020 or 2019, it would have been more

01:12:03.980 | 100% just tech and tech impact.

01:12:07.060 | What's going on with your phone?

01:12:08.060 | What's going on with your email?

01:12:09.060 | And that's still a huge portion of what we talk about, but we have this third leg to

01:12:13.680 | our conversations on the deep life, this idea of systematically building an intentional

01:12:19.060 | life as a bulwark against all these digital forces.

01:12:23.060 | It's hard, for example, to, uh, step away from the distraction to versions of your phone.

01:12:28.700 | If you don't have something better to step towards, right?

01:12:32.460 | It's hard to leave the scrum of email Slack driven busyness at work.

01:12:38.180 | If you don't have a better vision of what work could be without it.

01:12:42.740 | So this deep life idea has become critical to these otherwise technology driven topics.

01:12:47.440 | That is an impact of when and how this podcast was started.

01:12:50.860 | We were just thinking about these things in the spring of 2020.

01:12:53.020 | I was newslettering, the deep life just sort of came out of nowhere when I was writing

01:12:56.780 | a daily newsletter in the first month of the pandemic.

01:12:59.340 | It was just the vibe.

01:13:00.500 | The vibe was a lot of people, especially in the knowledge worker tech space saying, what

01:13:04.500 | am I doing with my life?

01:13:05.500 | What do I want to do with it?

01:13:06.860 | And I was saying, Hey, we can talk about this and I'll bring some of my systematic nerd

01:13:10.500 | sort of algorithmic approach to it.

01:13:12.100 | It won't be touchy feely vibes.

01:13:14.020 | It'll be matrices and buckets and whatever.

01:13:18.700 | But let's talk about this.

01:13:19.860 | And so that's an interesting twist to this podcast and that's where that came from.

01:13:25.060 | That it happened to be started during a moment early in a pandemic where a lot of us were

01:13:29.540 | thinking about these issues.

01:13:31.960 | The final thing I'll stay in the state of the unit of the podcast.

01:13:34.500 | It's something I really look forward to recording each week and hopefully that comes through.

01:13:38.220 | I just talk about what I like to talk about.

01:13:41.040 | Like these are the things I like to talk about.

01:13:42.620 | We have our weird little community here.

01:13:46.020 | Our sort of deep life, deep work, digital minimalism geek community on here.

01:13:50.680 | I only talk about what I'm excited to talk about.

01:13:53.940 | You know, some stuff is probably more popular than others.

01:13:57.340 | It's certainly probably not down the mainstream, like what's going to grow things a lot.

01:14:00.900 | And I love that about the show.

01:14:03.400 | For me, what makes it work longterm is not trying to make it work too much in the short

01:14:07.020 | term.

01:14:08.180 | These are the things I care about.

01:14:09.540 | I'll spend a year talking about something that maybe I'm developing into a book.

01:14:13.360 | So I'm going to give this a good, the state of the union of the podcast is strong.

01:14:17.260 | It's doing well.

01:14:19.060 | It's the right size.

01:14:21.760 | It pays for itself, right?

01:14:24.020 | That's the right size.

01:14:25.020 | Our team now.

01:14:26.840 | How big are we now?

01:14:27.840 | So Jesse, you and I are the core people on the show.

01:14:29.360 | We have, um, what's our ancillary team now?

01:14:32.100 | We have an editor, the indomitable Mark.

01:14:36.000 | We have a YouTube guy, the indomitable Jeremy, and that's basically it.

01:14:39.440 | I think we run this pretty lean, right?

01:14:40.800 | Am I missing someone?

01:14:42.320 | Yeah.

01:14:43.320 | Yeah.

01:14:44.320 | That's it.

01:14:45.320 | There you go.

01:14:46.320 | So Jess and I run this with just like a little bit of help.

01:14:47.320 | We are a cool HQ.

01:14:48.320 | So anyways, thanks for listening, everyone who's listening.

01:14:52.260 | I'm still having fun doing this.

01:14:53.920 | It's doing what I need it to do for me and my life.

01:14:57.100 | It's filling what I want it to fill.

01:14:59.380 | And so it's a lot of fun, so let's just keep doing it.

01:15:03.380 | What did you think about first starting it?

01:15:06.120 | Like you said, you thought about like eight years ago, right?

01:15:08.920 | Yeah.

01:15:09.920 | I mean, all throughout I became, so it's interesting kind of backstory.

01:15:15.520 | It reminds me of, there was definitely, this is a weird connection, but you'll see why

01:15:21.200 | it makes sense.

01:15:22.200 | There were some professional comedians and who came up in the seventies and eighties

01:15:27.560 | like Steve Martin, Albert Brooks.

01:15:30.840 | And the way they came up is there's a lot of talk shows, you know, there's like the

01:15:35.680 | tonight show, et cetera, but a lot of shows during the day as well.

01:15:38.320 | There was like the Merv Griffin show and all these other, Donny and Marie and all these

01:15:42.880 | shows that were just on TV.

01:15:44.520 | And there was this group of comedians coming up that just did all those shows all the time.

01:15:49.480 | Martin was just doing all of those shows all the time, right?

01:15:52.280 | Before he finally got to the tonight show, Albert Brooks was just doing all those shows

01:15:55.620 | all the time.

01:15:56.620 | Well, starting around 2014 in the media space, this was podcast.

01:16:00.520 | And I was sort of doing all these shows because deep work had come out and had become an underground

01:16:06.000 | hit.

01:16:07.000 | And a lot of people were asking me on these shows and this sort of early stage of this

01:16:09.440 | type of podcasting.

01:16:10.920 | And I was just doing all the shows.

01:16:12.720 | I'm just someone who was just around and really got used to this medium and it was just a,

01:16:19.120 | and have been a sort of mainstay.

01:16:20.800 | This is why like you get the 2024 and you know, this new book comes out and I basically

01:16:26.160 | did like all the major shows.

01:16:27.920 | This is like a decade of, I've just been on the circuit for a decade.

01:16:31.120 | I just, I know how to do it.

01:16:32.680 | I know a lot of the people in it.

01:16:34.360 | So not surprisingly throughout this whole period, people have constantly been saying,

01:16:38.600 | start your own show, start your own show.

01:16:40.080 | And I was always saying no, because I said, do less, do better.

01:16:42.520 | No.

01:16:43.520 | Why?

01:16:44.520 | That takes time.

01:16:45.520 | I'm very worried about things to take time.

01:16:46.520 | I have young kids at home.

01:16:47.520 | I'm trying to get tenure.

01:16:48.520 | I'm writing books.

01:16:49.520 | It's enough.

01:16:50.520 | Enough is enough.

01:16:51.520 | Uh, so you know, it wasn't really until the pandemic freed up a lot more time that I was

01:16:55.560 | like, okay.

01:16:56.560 | And I was lonely that I said, I'm going to pull the trigger.

01:16:58.040 | That's what led me to finally pull the trigger on it.

01:17:00.360 | Got it.

01:17:01.360 | And I'm glad I am.

01:17:02.360 | And we keep it to a half day a week.

01:17:03.560 | And I think that really works.

01:17:04.560 | It doesn't have a huge footprint on my schedule and it's doing well.

01:17:07.920 | I mean, at the very least it gives us the glory that is the deep work HQ, which is nice.

01:17:14.280 | Yeah.

01:17:15.280 | What we do without the HQ.

01:17:16.280 | So one other quick point, uh, Drake is feuding with Kendrick Lamar.

01:17:19.760 | All right.

01:17:21.320 | So the two big feuds going on at the moment, Drake and Kendrick Lamar, Cal Newport and

01:17:27.820 | Oliver Berkman similar in many ways, similar in terms of like the perceived coolness of

01:17:35.520 | the participants, similar in terms of the savagery of the rap related attacks.

01:17:43.120 | Very similar, not someone to way that actually this doesn't work anymore.

01:17:47.640 | This bit doesn't work anymore because my whole deep dive was about how I agree with Oliver.

01:17:51.120 | He's right.

01:17:52.120 | So it's not an effective, that is not an effective way to feud.

01:17:55.800 | Like Kendrick is right.

01:17:56.800 | All right.

01:17:57.800 | Enough of this.

01:17:58.800 | Thanks everyone who's listening.

01:17:59.800 | Uh, we'll be back next week with another episode and until then, as always,

01:18:03.480 | stay bleeped.

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Is Time Blocking Oppressive? - Manage Your Time & Productivity In An Overloaded World | Cal Newport

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