How To Reinvent Your Life In 4 Months (My Full Step-By-Step Process)

00:00:00.000 | So today's deep question, how can I reinvent my life in four months?

00:00:08.200 | Now that four months number is not arbitrary.

00:00:12.000 | If it is the beginning of September now, where does four months put us?

00:00:15.160 | September, October, November, December.

00:00:16.680 | That means this overhaul process we're going to talk about

00:00:19.680 | will finish right around new year's.

00:00:22.160 | So right around the time all of your friends are buying copies of James

00:00:25.120 | Clear's book and getting gym memberships, you'll already be done with doing a

00:00:29.560 | reinvention for the year and you'll be well into this new life, not just starting.

00:00:34.960 | Now, not surprisingly for long time listeners of my show and viewers of my

00:00:40.000 | videos, I'm going to use the deep life stack framework to structure our

00:00:46.360 | discussion of how to reinvent your life this fall, but I'm going to be specific

00:00:50.880 | this time and we're going to have particular timelines, how long to spend

00:00:54.440 | at this layer, how long to spend at that layer, because I want this whole process

00:00:57.900 | to fit exactly within four months.

00:01:01.640 | All right.

00:01:02.680 | So with great trepidation, I'm actually going to do a little bit

00:01:05.000 | of drawing while we talk here.

00:01:06.880 | So we can actually see the deep life stack that I am discussing.

00:01:11.880 | So what I'm going to do here is bring up my drawing screen and we are going to

00:01:18.640 | draw ourselves a deep life stack and we're going to annotate it as we go.

00:01:24.480 | All right.

00:01:25.420 | So at the bottom of the stack is the discipline layer.

00:01:30.080 | So I will actually write this on the screen with my almost

00:01:35.840 | calligraphy quality handwriting.

00:01:37.640 | What do you say, Jesse, for those.

00:01:39.200 | Looks pretty good.

00:01:39.960 | For those who are, for those who are watching instead of just listening,

00:01:44.400 | what you're seeing is a master, a master draftsman.

00:01:47.560 | All right.

00:01:48.700 | And let me put a nice, I see here, let me put a nice box around that.

00:01:54.960 | Okay.

00:01:55.460 | So let's start with discipline as the starting place.

00:01:58.820 | So if you're new to the whole concept of the deep life stack, discipline

00:02:04.140 | is the place that we start.

00:02:07.220 | All right.

00:02:08.940 | So what are we going to do here?

00:02:09.900 | First thing I want you to do as part of your reinvention, as we start down here

00:02:15.420 | at the discipline layer of the deep life stack, I'm going to label this set up core.

00:02:23.940 | So you want to get set up a place where you keep track of everything that's going

00:02:28.760 | to happen in this reinvention that follows.

00:02:31.540 | So here are the habits I follow here are my disciplines,

00:02:34.320 | here are the systems I'm using.

00:02:35.660 | This is going to grow, but at the very beginning of the reinvention, you set it up.

00:02:39.600 | And really the easiest way to do this, if you don't already have digital things in

00:02:45.460 | your life that you check regularly is to print out your current collection of all

00:02:49.360 | the things you're committing to put it in a clear plastic sleeve, a protector, like

00:02:54.560 | you would put a page in to put inside a binder and just put it on your desk or

00:02:57.960 | the drawer next to your desk where you work every day.

00:02:59.860 | So you have a physical artifact.

00:03:01.660 | And as we add things to this list of commitments, you will just grow this list.

00:03:06.840 | So we want to set up that core location for everything we're about to do.

00:03:10.840 | The other thing we're going to do when we're down here in the discipline

00:03:14.920 | stack is three keystone habits.

00:03:18.980 | It's going to be step this early step.

00:03:20.780 | All right.

00:03:24.600 | So a keystone habit is a habit that you do every day.

00:03:28.080 | It should not be trivial, right?

00:03:30.520 | So it shouldn't be look at my home jam every day, but it also should be tractable.

00:03:35.240 | So it shouldn't be do 90 minutes of intense exercise every day, somewhere in between.

00:03:40.440 | You have to put a little effort into doing it, but you can almost certainly

00:03:44.440 | succeed in doing this every day, even with schedules that vary with unpredictability

00:03:48.580 | and difficulty.

00:03:49.400 | So let's start this reinvention.

00:03:51.520 | Once you set up your core, I want you to figure out three

00:03:53.760 | keystone habits to put in place.

00:03:55.300 | I'm going to say divide their subject matter, have one focus on your professional

00:04:00.000 | life, one focus on your health and fitness, and one be purely focused on something

00:04:04.200 | personal, optional, and high quality.

00:04:07.240 | So this could be around reading or nature or meditation, something that has no

00:04:12.080 | instrumental value beyond just giving you a sense of quality or awe.

00:04:18.380 | And what we're going to do here, as we move through this stack, I'm going to, at

00:04:20.920 | the end, I will show you how long to spend on each of these things.

00:04:23.840 | All right.

00:04:24.800 | So we're going to do the timing last, but I'm going to go through the steps first.

00:04:27.860 | All right.

00:04:28.100 | So let's go to the next stage of the reinvention, which is going to be value.

00:04:36.000 | Values.

00:04:38.000 | So we start with discipline.

00:04:38.920 | Now we're going to values.

00:04:40.820 | So we draw, oops, I'll make this blue.

00:04:44.360 | All right.

00:04:46.120 | So let me draw the box here again.

00:04:47.760 | My draftsmanship is it's like watching, it's not unlike watching, uh,

00:04:52.680 | Picasso draw the, the peasant's hands.

00:04:55.800 | I think we can all, and also it's clear for people watching.

00:05:00.480 | I have expert control over how notability works.

00:05:04.560 | I definitely know what I'm doing here.

00:05:05.860 | Okay.

00:05:06.240 | Let's just write all I'm trying to do here for those who are listening.

00:05:08.880 | I'm literally just writing the word values and drawing a box around it.

00:05:12.160 | All right.

00:05:13.080 | I'll get better at this.

00:05:14.000 | All right.

00:05:15.080 | Values.

00:05:15.640 | What do we want to do here?

00:05:18.440 | The first thing is the reconnect.

00:05:20.000 | I'm going to label this as reconnect.

00:05:21.800 | It's going to be reconnect with your moral intuition.

00:05:28.880 | So you're sort of reconnecting with what is important to you in your life, but

00:05:33.000 | also what defines a life well lived, regardless of circumstances, regardless

00:05:39.680 | of specific accomplishments.

00:05:41.680 | So when I say reconnect with your moral intuition, probably the right way to do

00:05:45.600 | this is to go back and reread something that you've read before that really spoke

00:05:49.520 | to you, perhaps a Viktor Frankl man search for meaning style book that really, at

00:05:56.480 | some point you remember grounded you in thinking, this is what's important in life.

00:06:01.440 | This is a, this resonated with my moral intuition.

00:06:04.960 | So try to find something that you have experienced with what's influential to

00:06:09.000 | you and go back to reread that to reconnect with these moral intuitions.

00:06:12.680 | You might want to watch things as well.

00:06:14.960 | If there's a particular documentary or movie that really touched you in that

00:06:19.040 | deeper way, go rewatch that as well.

00:06:20.600 | So you're reconnecting here with what is at the core of your value system.

00:06:27.600 | Once you have done that as part of this reinvention, I'm going to

00:06:31.080 | write the word code here.

00:06:32.280 | You want to write a first draft of your code.

00:06:34.280 | You should have a personal code.

00:06:35.960 | And the code is not just what you stand for and what you don't stand for, but

00:06:39.920 | you should think of it as a roadmap for how you approach your life through good

00:06:43.320 | and bad, how you approach your life during the hard times in a way that makes you

00:06:48.560 | proud, how you approach your life during the good times, this could be harder

00:06:52.640 | sometimes in a way that makes you proud as well.

00:06:55.200 | So it's, it's a roadmap for living that lays out.

00:06:57.840 | Here's what's important to me.

00:06:59.560 | What I think it means to, to be a good person and live life while live, but

00:07:04.160 | also how you were going to apply that.

00:07:05.720 | The sense of here is how I go through my life through good and bad.

00:07:09.360 | That is your code.

00:07:11.440 | And finally, as this step of your reinventions, I want you to put in place

00:07:15.040 | some number of rituals that regularly connect you back to your moral intuition

00:07:20.560 | that regularly reinvigorate that connection for you in a visceral way, way that you

00:07:25.960 | feel, this could mean a lot of things depending on what you're set up in life.

00:07:30.400 | If, if you're religious, these rituals, you'll almost certainly be drawing from

00:07:35.040 | long standing religious rituals that are set up to do exactly that.

00:07:40.840 | The five time a day, Islamic prayer, the daily Torah study in Judaism and so on.

00:07:47.320 | If you're not religious, there's any other number of things you can do that.

00:07:50.080 | Once you know what's in your moral intuition, and once you have your code

00:07:53.080 | written down, that will reconnect you with this.

00:07:55.360 | This could be, you know, every week you hike to this place that

00:07:58.880 | gives you a sense of natural world.

00:08:00.880 | Ah, it could be meditation.

00:08:02.600 | It could be a particular type of volunteering you do on a regular

00:08:07.920 | basis to sort of humble yourself and reconnect you to helping other people.

00:08:11.880 | All of this can be written down your code, your rituals.

00:08:14.720 | You can connect this all to what we set up in the first stage, that core

00:08:18.440 | document or folder, you have a place for this to go.

00:08:21.280 | Okay.

00:08:23.360 | So now we've moved through the value stack as part of our reinvention.

00:08:28.480 | Remember, we will get to at the end, how long to spend on each of these.

00:08:32.680 | Next layer.

00:08:35.160 | So I'm drawing another box here.

00:08:38.000 | Beautifully.

00:08:38.800 | Definitely looks the same as the other boxes.

00:08:41.920 | You get to the control layer of the deep life stack.

00:08:48.360 | The control layer is where you begin to organize, make sense of and curtail

00:08:55.960 | the various obligations in your professional and personal life so

00:08:59.520 | that you have breathing room so that you have space to think, space to

00:09:06.240 | enjoy what's good about your life, freedom from the anxiety of overload

00:09:10.280 | and disorganization and freedom to actually experiment with new things

00:09:15.200 | or important things you want to add to your life in the final

00:09:18.200 | step that's going to follow.

00:09:19.240 | So at some point you do need to get control over everything in your life.

00:09:23.040 | Or a lot of this other work is going to be for not because you'll be so short

00:09:27.720 | on time and overwhelmed and anxious that you won't really get to it.

00:09:32.400 | So what I have here is three things for our reinvention.

00:09:36.720 | First thing I say, multi-scale planning.

00:09:39.480 | This is for your work.

00:09:42.440 | So when it comes to your professional life, put multi-scale planning into work.

00:09:49.600 | Get this executed.

00:09:51.680 | This is where you have a quarterly or semester plan that you update every

00:09:56.040 | quarter or semester or season, whatever, three to four months.

00:10:00.160 | You look at that plan every week and use it to create a weekly plan, your

00:10:03.600 | weekly plan, you're consulting your calendar, you're seeing what's actually

00:10:06.640 | on your plate that week, and you're looking then also at your seasonal

00:10:09.760 | semester quarterly plan for reminders of the bigger things you're working on.

00:10:13.640 | And you write out longhand, here's my plan for the week ahead.

00:10:17.680 | Okay.

00:10:18.200 | Then you look at that weekly plan every day.

00:10:20.840 | When you do a daily time block plan for the actual hours of your day.

00:10:24.600 | I of course recommend my own time block plan or second week plan.

00:10:29.200 | Time block planner, second edition, timeblockplanner.com, but you can use

00:10:32.760 | whatever you want, but your time block planning your actual day in consultation

00:10:36.120 | with your weekly plan, your time block plan every day is informed by your weekly

00:10:41.040 | plan, which is written every week, which is informed by your seasonal plan, which

00:10:44.760 | is updated every three to four months.

00:10:46.680 | That's multi-scale planning.

00:10:47.800 | And there's, you can watch, I have, we'll talk about it later in the show.

00:10:51.400 | I think there's a question about it.

00:10:52.560 | You can look at the time management video for my YouTube page at

00:10:55.640 | youtube.com/calendarportmedia.

00:10:57.280 | So we won't belabor the details, but it puts you in control of your

00:11:03.840 | time and your professional life.

00:11:04.960 | And gives you really clear feedback on what your current load of work looks

00:11:10.340 | like, how long things take, how well things fit, what's really killing you

00:11:14.400 | in your schedule, what's not so bad.

00:11:15.820 | Multi-scale planning gives you all of that.

00:11:17.720 | It will give you all that information.

00:11:19.760 | I'm going to say, and I'm going to call this household planning.

00:11:25.160 | And I'll put that in quotation marks.

00:11:26.920 | Not everyone lives in a house.

00:11:28.000 | But what I mean by household planning is getting some sort of basic system in

00:11:33.160 | place for your work outside of work.

00:11:34.760 | I have to, I, when I use household in quotation marks, I'm thinking, you

00:11:39.180 | know, I got to clean the gutters.

00:11:40.340 | We got to fix this hole that just got knocked into the drywall.

00:11:43.040 | We have a problem with electricity.

00:11:44.560 | You got to mow the yard, whatever these are.

00:11:47.080 | Right.

00:11:47.360 | And in your, my car needs to be, the oil needs to be changed.

00:11:50.360 | I need to go pick up a new parking pass for my neighborhood, all the stuff

00:11:53.800 | that's non-work related, but related to life outside of work, we want

00:11:57.640 | some control over that as well.

00:11:59.720 | Now you don't need something as extreme as full multi-scale planning, but you

00:12:03.520 | should probably have full capture for your work outside of work, someplace

00:12:07.560 | where everything gets written down.

00:12:09.040 | I would then suggest reviewing that capture system when you do your weekly

00:12:13.640 | plan for work and the weekly plan can now you can add to it a section for home.

00:12:19.400 | Okay.

00:12:20.920 | Let me look at the week ahead.

00:12:22.320 | Let me look at all the things I've captured for non-professional tasks.

00:12:26.320 | What am I going to do this week?

00:12:27.360 | And when things need to go on your calendar, put them on your calendar.

00:12:29.800 | Okay.

00:12:30.040 | I got to take the car to get the admissions inspection.

00:12:33.640 | Let me, this is the right time to do.

00:12:34.840 | It's going to be Thursday.

00:12:35.920 | Um, let me move this meeting and put that there.

00:12:38.360 | I'll put that on my calendar and let me protect Saturday, put a note, like I

00:12:41.840 | got to mow the yard and do some housework and let me get a big list of that.

00:12:45.160 | So you're building a plan for the week that allows you to make some

00:12:47.600 | progress on the household things.

00:12:49.120 | And you have this full capture system.

00:12:50.900 | So if you jot down household tasks, when you shut down your work at the end of

00:12:53.960 | the day, you can put them in that system and trust it, I'm not going to forget

00:12:57.680 | the mow the yard, I'm not going to forget that I have to hand in this new

00:13:01.400 | medical paperwork to my kids school.

00:13:03.760 | So full capture review.

00:13:07.460 | When you do your weekly plan for work, add a household

00:13:10.280 | component to that weekly plan.

00:13:11.800 | Now you're in some control of that work as well.

00:13:14.080 | It's not a hazard.

00:13:15.680 | It's not just organized and you're learning what's on your

00:13:17.480 | plate and how long it's taken.

00:13:20.280 | The final thing I'm going to suggest here for this control step of our

00:13:23.160 | reinnovation, reinvention, not re-innovation, reinvention is using this

00:13:30.440 | information you learned about both your professional life and personal

00:13:34.500 | life to automate and curtail.

00:13:37.800 | So one of the big advantages of having these systems, and this is crucial.

00:13:42.380 | One of the big advantage of having these organizational systems is not that your

00:13:47.540 | goal is to try to fit more work into your life, this is the common barb made

00:13:53.620 | at this type of thinking of the only reason why you'd want to do multi-scale

00:13:57.020 | planning is so that you can work more.

00:13:58.380 | And you probably watch a lot of hustle culture, YouTube videos,

00:14:00.540 | ah, but that's not why we do this.

00:14:03.300 | We do this because we want information about how long things actually take

00:14:07.920 | control about how we spend our time.

00:14:09.640 | And then we can use this information to make our life better, not worse

00:14:13.220 | to make it less busy, not more busy.

00:14:15.460 | So this is why I say automate and curtail.

00:14:17.700 | Once you know, here's what I'm doing each week.

00:14:20.320 | And I have a fine grain control over it in my work and non-work

00:14:23.260 | you can begin to automate.

00:14:25.160 | So for work, you say, here's something that comes up again and again, and it's

00:14:28.220 | taking up a lot of cognitive cycles.

00:14:29.940 | And it's causing a lot of back and forth emails to deal with every week.

00:14:34.380 | Let me find a way to quote unquote automate this.

00:14:37.720 | I created a Google form.

00:14:39.800 | Everyone in my team knows they just fill in this information in that form by

00:14:43.380 | Friday, it automatically goes to a Google drive and I have a half hour set aside

00:14:48.220 | at the end of the day, every Monday to gather that information.

00:14:51.200 | It's already in a useful format.

00:14:52.820 | It takes me 15 minutes and I post the thing they need.

00:14:55.360 | And now I've automated that work that happens regularly in a way

00:14:59.760 | that minimizes its footprint.

00:15:01.300 | For your life outside of work, there's also often many ways to automate.

00:15:05.540 | Once you see what you're spending your time on, you can say, okay,

00:15:08.000 | how do I get this off of my, think of it as my ad hoc scheduling plate.

00:15:12.920 | How do I get this work that I have to do all the time around my house off of the

00:15:17.420 | list of just ad hoc, random things that I have to remember to do.

00:15:20.600 | So maybe I set up a biannual visit with the gutter cleaning company and I get

00:15:26.860 | that all arranged so I don't have to think about it.

00:15:29.140 | They just come, they just do it.

00:15:30.740 | That's set up.

00:15:31.500 | Okay.

00:15:32.140 | I'm kidding myself about raking the leaves.

00:15:34.060 | I never really have time to do this.

00:15:35.680 | I can work with a landscaping company.

00:15:37.520 | This is just when they come.

00:15:38.840 | Okay.

00:15:39.080 | Here's something I always have to do with my car.

00:15:43.060 | You know, let me, let me, let me find a mechanic I like that's nearby and I bring

00:15:47.860 | it, I put on the calendar when the oil change happens, now I don't have to think

00:15:50.580 | about it when I get there, I execute the more things you can have automated by

00:15:54.280 | which I mean, you do not have to remember and schedule on the fly.

00:15:58.220 | The work will just happen either.

00:16:00.300 | Actually automatically, or you will get to regular calendar reminders

00:16:04.460 | when you know the process, you know exactly what to do.

00:16:06.980 | It is off of your plate of things you have to remember and schedule.

00:16:10.220 | So that's what I mean by automate.

00:16:12.160 | So now you're reducing the planning footprint of your life outside of work as

00:16:17.340 | well.

00:16:17.660 | The other word I wrote down here was curtail.

00:16:20.080 | And what I mean by curtail is get rid of.

00:16:21.760 | So now when you know what's going on, you have this fine grain control over your

00:16:26.520 | time and you're getting this fine grain, detailed feedback on your schedule.

00:16:30.920 | You see the problems and your work life.

00:16:34.380 | You realize being on this committee is killing me schedule wise.

00:16:38.880 | It's putting all these little meetings that eat up there.

00:16:41.120 | There it's 10 people being scheduled and it's three meetings a week and they're

00:16:44.880 | short, but I have very little control over where they fall because we have to find

00:16:48.220 | an intersection that works for 10 people.

00:16:49.880 | And it's just partitioning my days in a terrible way.

00:16:52.940 | Let's take that off our plate.

00:16:55.220 | Or if you're at home, it's like, okay, it's this one thing I'm doing in the house

00:16:59.800 | is taking me hours and hours and stressing me out.

00:17:01.880 | You know what?

00:17:02.560 | I'm going to quit this thing over here and use that money to pay someone to do

00:17:05.260 | this.

00:17:05.620 | Or it's this, uh, this involvement I have this, this community group I'm a part

00:17:10.240 | of.

00:17:10.420 | This is really a killing my schedule.

00:17:12.880 | If I just quit that one thing, this is going to open up all the space.

00:17:16.820 | This is going to make a move.

00:17:18.400 | This sports team to this sports team.

00:17:19.880 | Saturdays are completely open now.

00:17:21.440 | That's going to be a huge blessing.

00:17:23.400 | So it's all about once you know how things are landing on your schedule and their

00:17:28.600 | impacts, you can be incredibly high impact and strategic about get rid of that, get

00:17:33.200 | rid of that and change this and get huge returns back.

00:17:36.360 | That's much better than just getting overloaded and stressed out and randomly

00:17:40.480 | starting to quit things left and right.

00:17:42.000 | So this is all what control is about.

00:17:44.920 | I control my time so I can automate and curtail until my load is reasonable.

00:17:49.000 | And now I have breathing room, breathing room to reinvent breathing room to

00:17:53.640 | appreciate the results of reinvention.

00:17:57.160 | All right.

00:17:57.320 | This brings us up now to the final.

00:18:00.400 | Layer of the deep life stack.

00:18:04.040 | Okay.

00:18:04.280 | I finally figured out by the way, how to draw thicker lines.

00:18:06.560 | This final layer is vision.

00:18:11.400 | This is where you take in the typical deep life process.

00:18:16.240 | This is where you take specific aspects of your life and you overhaul them to be more

00:18:23.440 | remarkable.

00:18:24.960 | So now you have this great foundation of discipline, meaning that you have

00:18:29.440 | reinvented your identity as someone who is capable of doing things that have a long

00:18:33.800 | term reward.

00:18:34.360 | Even if they're hard in the moment, you're in touch with your values.

00:18:37.160 | So you have this foundation that can get you through the good and bad.

00:18:39.520 | It's a compass that keeps you aiming in the right direction.

00:18:41.760 | You have control over your time.

00:18:43.360 | So now you have the ability to aim yourself in your energies and intentional

00:18:47.400 | directions.

00:18:47.840 | And now you figure out where to aim it, how to take aspects of your life and make

00:18:52.360 | those aspects of your life remarkable.

00:18:55.160 | So I'm going to put here, I'm going to label this here one small, plan one large.

00:19:04.880 | So what I mean by this is during this final step of your four month reinvention, I

00:19:12.560 | want you to actually take an area of your life, preferably a non-professional area of

00:19:16.280 | your life, where you're going to do a full overhaul of that towards more

00:19:19.840 | remarkability. And I'll give you an example about this in a second, but you take some

00:19:23.200 | aspect of your life and you do a full overhaul towards remarkability.

00:19:26.000 | And then you take one larger areas of your life.

00:19:29.240 | And this could be like what you do for a job where you live and you begin the process

00:19:35.320 | of an overhaul there.

00:19:36.280 | This could be one of these longer term overhauls that could take a year or two to

00:19:40.560 | really think through. But so you get a small overhaul completely done and a big,

00:19:45.000 | exciting overhaul actually started.

00:19:49.520 | All right. So, for example, let me give you an example of a small overhaul.

00:19:52.160 | Let's say you decide my life outside of work, I need more life affirming interest or

00:20:00.000 | hobbies. Right. I want some aspect of my life that's unrelated to my job, but I wanted

00:20:04.200 | to be take it to a kind of a remarkable level, like a real remarkable in the sense

00:20:07.520 | that people will eventually remark this about me.

00:20:09.840 | Oh, this is something that he really does.

00:20:11.240 | So let's say just for the case of a case study, you decide I want to become a serious

00:20:15.120 | cinephile. I like movies.

00:20:17.440 | What if I made movies and appreciation of movies a serious part, a serious part of my

00:20:23.240 | life? Well, what might that type of what might that type of overhaul look like?

00:20:28.800 | Well, it would be a mix of concrete steps that you actually complete, plus new habits or

00:20:36.160 | systems you put into your life that all lead you towards a vision of that part of your

00:20:40.680 | life that's more remarkable.

00:20:41.880 | So I jotted down some ideas here.

00:20:43.520 | So maybe say, OK, first thing first, I want to as a concrete step, I'm going to overhaul

00:20:48.120 | my basement theater, good TV, good sound system, get a Blu-ray DVD player, blackout

00:20:53.920 | curtains for the windows down there, the basement window so I can have a really good

00:20:58.320 | movie going experience.

00:20:59.720 | I'm going to invest some money in this and I'm signaling to myself, I take this

00:21:02.720 | seriously. Now I'm going to add a habit or system to my daily routine as part of this

00:21:07.560 | overhaul. So maybe I want to get into a twice a week I watch a movie schedule.

00:21:12.040 | Maybe there's one evening I put aside for doing that and one extended lunch break or

00:21:17.960 | maybe it's two extended lunch breaks during the week.

00:21:20.520 | Maybe you're working remotely.

00:21:21.600 | Don't tell your boss. Forty five minutes, an hour, and you're able to get through one

00:21:26.560 | movie during the week and you have one evening you've set aside and sort of agree.

00:21:31.920 | I don't do bedtimes that night.

00:21:33.120 | You have one evening in a week that you watch a movie.

00:21:35.560 | So this is like a new habit.

00:21:36.880 | And maybe every week you have this habit of going to the library to return the DVDs or

00:21:41.440 | Blu rays that you rented and you get new ones to watch or you join.

00:21:45.720 | The old fashioned Netflix, which still exist, you can still get DVDs and Blu ray in the

00:21:51.960 | mail through that using the envelopes, right?

00:21:54.960 | So there we go. That's the system.

00:21:57.440 | And then maybe you have the system that says, when I do this twice a week movie watching,

00:22:01.400 | I have to find three articles to read ahead of time.

00:22:03.800 | And I read all three articles about the movie, maybe like two reviews and one longer

00:22:07.520 | article. So I sort of know what I'm looking at.

00:22:09.240 | And in that way, I am I'm enhancing my knowledge.

00:22:13.360 | All right. And then maybe as a concrete, a second concrete step, you say, I'm going to

00:22:17.160 | found an online course about film appreciation.

00:22:19.280 | I'm going to take that. I'm going to take this online course, maybe as a couple of books

00:22:23.520 | I'm going to read. Right.

00:22:24.720 | So what you've done here in this overhaul is you have some concrete things to accomplish

00:22:28.480 | and then a new systems that you're sort of getting into place.

00:22:31.360 | New regular habits are getting the place.

00:22:34.000 | In this example, when this is all done, you're going to find yourself in a place where

00:22:38.320 | you're watching movies on a regular basis in a good home theater.

00:22:41.160 | You've studied film more than you had before.

00:22:43.760 | You have a much better foundation and now you can see your appreciation really growing.

00:22:48.600 | Then you might have a longer term goal.

00:22:49.960 | OK, if I keep this up for three months, I'm going to join a local film club that meets at

00:22:54.320 | this local nonprofit arts theater.

00:22:56.200 | And I'm going to definitely go and they have monthly meetings and watch movies.

00:22:59.800 | And I'll have I do this for three months.

00:23:01.400 | I'll be ready to join that.

00:23:02.480 | That's an example of a small overhaul when you're done with this.

00:23:07.160 | You have made this thing a much more remarkable part of your life and give this a year or

00:23:11.240 | two to unfold from here and people are going to look at you and say, yeah, this is one

00:23:14.080 | of the things we know about you.

00:23:15.120 | You're really in the movies, it's a big part of your life.

00:23:18.000 | You get a lot of satisfaction.

00:23:19.480 | So imagine that on almost any area of your life, that's going to be the small overhaul.

00:23:23.560 | And then you're going to think through a larger overhaul lifestyle, such a career

00:23:28.000 | planning style approach.

00:23:29.280 | What is my ideal lifestyle five, 10 years from now look like?

00:23:32.400 | What are what is a major change I might need to make to get me closer there?

00:23:35.680 | And you begin scheming what would be involved.

00:23:37.600 | And it might be, OK, I have to build a lot of new skills, I'm going to have to get

00:23:41.720 | promoted, I'm going to have to get the side business up to this certain size of income

00:23:45.960 | before I'm comfortable leaving my main job.

00:23:48.040 | This could be a longer term overhaul, but you get that going.

00:23:51.560 | All right, so how do we time all of this?

00:23:54.840 | How do we time all this?

00:23:56.360 | Because we have now quite a few different things I suggested and we need this all to

00:24:00.880 | fit into four months.

00:24:03.800 | So I'm going to draw on the screen here a timeline.

00:24:07.360 | All right, so be our four month timeline.

00:24:12.080 | And I'm going to label this timeline with the relevant months.

00:24:18.840 | So let's see, we got September, we'll imagine we're starting this in September.

00:24:25.920 | And then we get October starts.

00:24:30.760 | The November starts, then December starts, that brings us to January.

00:24:36.000 | All right. So for those who are listening, I have four months written up on the screen.

00:24:41.440 | All right, so let's think about how long should we be spending on each of these things?

00:24:45.520 | I had actually I dropped the page that had my notes, I had to go get that.

00:24:51.880 | OK, so let's start with discipline.

00:24:54.080 | I'll use yellow here on our timeline to mark that.

00:24:57.520 | So remember, in discipline, you set up your core and got three keystone habits up and

00:25:01.120 | running. I'm going to suggest that we just take the first two weeks for this.

00:25:05.320 | I've marked the first two weeks on our calendar just for getting some keystone habits

00:25:10.440 | up and running your core system up and running.

00:25:12.200 | All right. Next comes values.

00:25:14.920 | I'll use a different color for this.

00:25:17.200 | So remember, you have to reconnect with your moral intuition.

00:25:20.200 | You have to get a code going.

00:25:21.440 | You have to get a regular ritual going that reminds you on a regular basis about this

00:25:26.160 | moral intuition. Here, we're going to put aside four weeks.

00:25:29.240 | So on our schedule here, we're going from mid-September to mid-October.

00:25:35.680 | All right. So the next layer here was control.

00:25:38.120 | I'll use a different color here.

00:25:39.280 | Now we have a multi-scale planning, getting going your professional life, some sort of

00:25:44.280 | household capture and planning system and a stepping back after a little while of doing

00:25:49.120 | this and doing some automation and curtailing.

00:25:52.040 | I think we need four weeks for this as well.

00:25:54.120 | So I have mid-October through mid-November marked on here.

00:25:59.360 | All right, because it's going to take a few weeks, you might want to spend two weeks on

00:26:05.720 | the business, one week on the personal life, and then give yourself a week after that of

00:26:09.920 | learning from the system, so starting to make some decisions.

00:26:12.640 | And we're left now with the vision piece.

00:26:14.760 | We're going to do a complete small overhaul of an area of your life and plan out a larger

00:26:19.960 | overhaul. And I'm going to mark on here the final six weeks.

00:26:23.600 | So overhauls can take some time, so we'll give ourselves six weeks.

00:26:26.480 | So if we look at this correctly, this gets us from September to January, moving through

00:26:30.280 | all four layers of the deep life stack, doing specific things at every layer.

00:26:34.480 | By January, if you do this, it will be a pretty significant reinvention of your life,

00:26:40.880 | especially if you are starting right now from a place of shallowness, by which I mean a

00:26:45.880 | life in which you are somewhat unanchored.

00:26:48.680 | You're being pushed around by digital technology in your life outside of work.

00:26:53.240 | You're just looking at your phone and are being dragged along emotionally by whatever

00:26:57.920 | is being shown on social media as the big thing to be upset about or not or having

00:27:03.080 | drool inducing distraction in your professional life.

00:27:06.800 | It's just email and Zoom all day.

00:27:08.320 | You're generically busy.

00:27:09.680 | Don't even know what it is you're doing there.

00:27:11.840 | If you're caught in the shallows of the digital.

00:27:16.560 | The aimless digital, you do four months, go through the stack once in the way I

00:27:22.200 | recommend, you're going to feel a lot more freedom.

00:27:24.440 | You're going to feel more in control.

00:27:26.040 | You're going to feel more grounded in what matters to you.

00:27:28.840 | You're going to feel like not only have you overhauled part of your life, but that

00:27:32.880 | you have the capabilities to keep going.

00:27:34.600 | And pile remarkability upon remarkability.

00:27:37.920 | All right.

00:27:38.840 | So forget New Year's.

00:27:39.600 | Fall is the time to reinvent.

00:27:42.480 | And that is my four month plan for reinventing your life by the time we get to

00:27:48.280 | 2024.

00:27:49.760 | So for yourself, were you you've kind of already done this exercise before, but will

00:27:56.640 | you tweak some things or?

00:27:58.240 | Well, what I do is I start this process typically late June.

00:28:03.880 | Right.

00:28:04.920 | So I time it to my birthday, which is late in June, because I figure why not get started

00:28:10.680 | when I'm in the middle of summer and it's pretty slow.

00:28:13.360 | So I'm usually hitting the ground running by the school year and I'm hoping by

00:28:17.720 | October to have my overhauls all in place.

00:28:20.560 | So I start this a little bit earlier to take advantage of how slow the summer is.

00:28:23.960 | But the point is, it's all aimed towards right around the fall is when I'm going to

00:28:28.760 | have some some big changes in place.

00:28:31.000 | So I have a bunch of changes I'm working on right now.

00:28:34.080 | A lot are in place.

00:28:35.400 | A lot were done over the summer.

00:28:37.000 | The, the ones that are not done yet, I'm hoping by October, November, they'll be

00:28:41.240 | locked in.

00:28:41.640 | I mean, I don't want to be thinking about this stuff in January.

00:28:44.000 | I want to be rock and rolling in January.

00:28:46.160 | That's typically the way I see it.

00:28:47.280 | For some of your small overhauls, do you have, do they just pile up on each other or

00:28:51.240 | they come to completion and then you add a new one?

00:28:53.320 | Um, so the way I have it written now, for example, so if you were to look in my, uh,

00:28:58.920 | semester plan, what you're going to see is the way I've broken this up for the things I

00:29:03.880 | still have to do is I have immediate and soon.

00:29:07.360 | So it'll be okay.

00:29:08.000 | Immediately.

00:29:08.720 | That means these are things I want to get done.

00:29:10.600 | And this is broken up in different areas of my life.

00:29:12.560 | These are things I want to get done as soon as I can.

00:29:15.760 | And so when I'm building my weekly plan each week as part of multi-scale planning,

00:29:19.960 | I'm saying, okay, let me see if there's some of these I can accomplish this week or

00:29:23.080 | make a lot of progress on.

00:29:24.240 | Cause I'm trying to get through these as quick as possible.

00:29:26.560 | For some of these areas, I have something labeled soon, which is don't work on it

00:29:30.440 | right now.

00:29:30.800 | But when you're done with the immediate things for most of these areas, here's a big

00:29:35.400 | project to think about getting going next.

00:29:38.320 | And they tend to be the few things I have labeled as soon or a little bit broader, a

00:29:42.280 | little bit more ambitious.

00:29:43.360 | And so I want to get the immediate things done as quickly as possible and then plan

00:29:49.240 | some of these more ambitious ones.

00:29:50.440 | So, so I do have right now, that's the way I'm breaking it up is the final soon things

00:29:54.560 | I want to get done.

00:29:55.240 | Uh, and then the more ambitious now, actually the summer I did it two phases.

00:29:58.960 | I had a phase of this.

00:30:00.080 | I did when I was up in New Hampshire for the summer and then have another phase I'm

00:30:03.280 | doing for the next couple of months.

00:30:04.520 | So I sort of broke up because some things really were relevant to being back here in

00:30:09.480 | DC.

00:30:09.880 | And so I waited for those part of my annual overhaul reinvention.

00:30:13.760 | I waited until I was back and some things actually being up in New Hampshire and away

00:30:17.160 | from DC, that was the right time to do them.

00:30:19.040 | So for those I worked on them on the summer.

00:30:21.600 | So right now this is what's left in different areas of my life.

00:30:24.720 | Uh, soon combination of habits and one-time things to accomplish.

00:30:29.200 | I mean, immediate, I should say habits and one-time things to accomplish.

00:30:32.640 | And then soon, uh, projects to do next once those are done as well.

00:30:36.720 | So for example, uh, overhauling the office, the maker lab office in our HQ, uh, under

00:30:44.320 | one of the areas of my plan is a soon.

00:30:46.040 | So it's like, I'm not doing it right now.

00:30:47.960 | There's a couple more immediate things I'm doing in that area of my life, but

00:30:51.120 | that'll be the soon.

00:30:51.920 | So in theory, by like October, I'll be pretty serious about, okay, let's, I said

00:30:57.640 | my weekly plan.

00:30:58.280 | I want to make progress on this.

00:30:59.320 | Let's get someone out.

00:31:00.160 | Let's hang the thing.

00:31:00.840 | We'll do whatever we're going to do.

00:31:02.320 | So just to, um, just to make that kind of more concrete, uh, another place where

00:31:07.000 | that's useful is fitness stuff.

00:31:08.240 | This will often happen because, you know, September can be busy.

00:31:10.920 | So it's sometimes I'll do something like right now, here's what I'm going to do for

00:31:16.120 | six weeks or eight weeks, just to make sure that, uh, I'm exercising, I'm moving,

00:31:21.480 | I'm outside, I'm lifting things.

00:31:23.160 | But as I get into the rhythm of the semester, maybe six to eight weeks from now,

00:31:27.280 | uh, and I'm used to this, then I'm going to upgrade and do a, you know, two or three

00:31:31.600 | months of something more intense.

00:31:32.760 | So that's another thing you might, there's a, there's an easing into more intense

00:31:36.400 | efforts that can happen as well.

00:31:39.520 | It's like, let me get used to doing something new in my life on a regular basis.

00:31:43.040 | So I think about this as being a key part of my life, and then I can upgrade it later

00:31:48.440 | to now, let me get really intense about what that thing is, because often making

00:31:51.800 | something a regular part of your life, that's the really hard step.

00:31:55.920 | Upgrading that once you're committed to it, it tends to be not as hard.

00:32:00.400 | So that's another thing I'll do as well.

00:32:01.520 | All right.

00:32:03.600 | So let me give you the lay of the land for the rest of the show.

00:32:06.400 | I want to move on now and do some questions, all of which will orbit more or less

00:32:11.360 | around this general topic of reinventing your life, the deep life, the deep life

00:32:15.840 | stack, anything about trying to improve major areas of your life to escape the

00:32:19.360 | shallows and get more depth.

00:32:20.440 | I'm going to, we have five questions that orbit that theme.

00:32:22.800 | And then in the final segment, I want to do a cover reveal for my new book and

00:32:26.360 | tell you a little bit about why I made such a drastic change in how that book

00:32:31.440 | cover actually looks.

00:32:32.560 | So you want to stay tuned for that.

00:32:33.920 | First, however, I want to talk about one of the sponsors that makes this show

00:32:38.560 | possible, and that is our friends at Cozy Earth Bedding.

00:32:44.040 | So as I've mentioned on this show many times, my wife and I are massive fans of

00:32:51.560 | Cozy Earth, the Breezeable temperature regulating bed sheets.

00:32:56.680 | This is a brand that made Oprah's favorite things five times in a row.

00:33:00.800 | We love them.

00:33:02.360 | We originally got a pair for free when we were considering having Cozy Earth be a

00:33:06.720 | sponsor and we liked it so much.

00:33:08.120 | We went out and bought more pairs so that we wouldn't have to have time without the

00:33:13.280 | sheets while we were washing the main pair.

00:33:15.080 | I will say this is probably one of the things high up on the list of things I

00:33:19.160 | missed when we were up in New Hampshire for the summer was our Cozy Earth sheets.

00:33:23.760 | They really, really are comfortable.

00:33:25.760 | I really do like them.

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00:33:30.720 | and more comfortably, they will refund your purchase price plus shipping.

00:33:34.280 | No questions asked.

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00:33:37.280 | You're not going to return them, however, because they are super comfortable sheets.

00:33:41.000 | I mean, they're made out of viscus, which is a substance removed, taken from bamboo

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00:33:57.640 | That's not nothing.

00:33:58.520 | These aren't cheap sheets.

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00:34:01.080 | If you go to CozyEarth.com that's C O Z Y earth.com and enter my

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00:34:22.840 | deep questions, try the sheets for a hundred nights.

00:34:25.280 | If you don't sleep cooler, send them back for a full refund.

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00:34:31.560 | Also want to talk about our friends at Shopify, the commerce platform that is

00:34:38.040 | revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide, whether you're a garage

00:34:43.680 | entrepreneur or an IPO ready company.

00:34:46.960 | Shopify is the only team tool you need to start run and grow your

00:34:50.200 | business without the struggle.

00:34:52.440 | Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel.

00:34:55.120 | So whether you know, you're selling really comfortable sheets or I don't

00:35:01.800 | know what we would sell, Jesse.

00:35:03.000 | I think, I don't know.

00:35:05.200 | What would people want to buy from us?

00:35:06.520 | Oh, we had a coin idea.

00:35:07.640 | Didn't we like Ryan holiday did with you can buy the Minto Mori.

00:35:11.880 | I actually, okay.

00:35:12.800 | So I have an idea.

00:35:14.880 | Will you Shopify to sell this?

00:35:16.400 | I found a logo, a slogan for our coin.

00:35:19.160 | We're going to sell.

00:35:20.400 | So Ryan holiday, the, the, the stoic popularizer sells a coin that says

00:35:24.080 | momento more, remember death so that you'll hold it and remember to sort

00:35:28.920 | of live each life to its fullest.

00:35:30.520 | Um, I have to remember the Latin.

00:35:32.760 | I learned this from Susan Casey's new book, the underworld about deep sea diving.

00:35:37.360 | And there's a, uh, a motto that means, um, in depth knowledge.

00:35:44.840 | So in the deep knowledge, and it's something like, uh, in, I

00:35:49.960 | can't remember the word, but it's a Latin phrase, uh, something like

00:35:54.200 | a BSO or something, Cogito, right?

00:35:57.480 | It's not exactly that, but I figured that's what should be on our coin in depth.

00:36:01.760 | Like, so like in the depth, in the deep knowledge, I'd be really cool.

00:36:06.480 | That'd be a good coin.

00:36:07.240 | Yeah.

00:36:07.600 | And then just, uh, me on the, me on the coin, I guess, like thumbs up.

00:36:12.320 | I'm not sure.

00:36:12.800 | Anyways, if we were to sell something like that, which I'm sure would be very

00:36:16.000 | successful, we would do Shopify because this is what Shopify does.

00:36:20.000 | If you have a business and you want a super professional e-commerce setup,

00:36:25.960 | that's really easy to do.

00:36:27.320 | You use Shopify.

00:36:29.320 | You've probably used it all the time.

00:36:31.680 | You might not even realize it.

00:36:32.800 | You just think, Hey, I, there's a lot of things I've bought from people where it's

00:36:35.400 | been a really good e-commerce solution.

00:36:37.000 | I bet 80% of those have been Shopify, Shopify customers.

00:36:40.840 | Uh, it really does make it easy.

00:36:44.120 | They have an incredibly professional e-commerce experience with your, uh,

00:36:49.480 | with your audience.

00:36:50.280 | I mean, look, Shopify has the internet's best converting checkout.

00:36:53.160 | So not only is it very easy to use, it will help you convert.

00:36:56.080 | Customers are potential customers to actual buyers.

00:37:00.120 | We're going to need that.

00:37:00.720 | Jesse, if we're going to convince people to buy our coin, but I think

00:37:04.080 | people will, if we use Shopify.

00:37:05.600 | So sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/deep.

00:37:13.720 | Keep in mind, that's all lowercase deep lowercase.

00:37:17.920 | So go to shopify.com/deep to take your business to the next level today.

00:37:22.560 | That's shopify.com/deep.

00:37:25.440 | All right.

00:37:28.760 | Well, while we daydream about selling our incredibly lucrative coin,

00:37:32.000 | figure we do some questions.

00:37:33.680 | So who do we got first, Jesse?

00:37:35.280 | Hi, first question from multiscale planning amateur.

00:37:40.000 | Is it hard to implement multiscale planning all at once?

00:37:44.040 | Is there a step-by-step plan similar to the deep life stack for

00:37:47.120 | gradually implementing this system?

00:37:48.880 | Well, a timely question since we talked about multiscale planning and the

00:37:52.800 | deep dive earlier in this episode, as I often do, because my systems

00:37:57.760 | are way too complicated, I have to start by critiquing our terminology here.

00:38:03.160 | Multiscale planning is not a separate entity from the deep

00:38:10.160 | life or the deep life stack.

00:38:11.720 | It's actually something that you are likely to implement as part of the

00:38:15.800 | control layer of the deep life stack.

00:38:17.680 | So it's actually a little bit recursive.

00:38:20.360 | So we can't say use a deep life stack approach to implement multiscale

00:38:25.880 | planning because actually the deep life stack approach might include

00:38:29.720 | implementing multiscale planning.

00:38:30.920 | This is all to say my systems are too complicated, but let's

00:38:33.520 | get to the meat of this.

00:38:34.400 | So multiscale planning, we talked about earlier, quick reminder, you

00:38:37.760 | have three different timescales at which you plan, season, week, day.

00:38:42.400 | You update the season every season, you update the week every week, looking

00:38:46.200 | at the season when you do so, you update the day every day, looking

00:38:48.760 | at the week when you do so.

00:38:49.680 | So everything gets connected back.

00:38:51.000 | Is there a way to break this up to ease your way into this type of planning?

00:38:56.880 | One way to do this, I suppose, is start with daily time block planning.

00:39:02.880 | That's the hardest discipline of all this is because it's not only you do

00:39:06.880 | it every day, but it is how you run your work day.

00:39:09.400 | So it's the, it's the biggest change you're going to see in your day-to-day

00:39:14.440 | experience of your work from the whole multiscale planning philosophy is going

00:39:18.440 | to be doing that daily time block planning.

00:39:20.160 | There's no way to break that up.

00:39:22.320 | You just need to do it.

00:39:23.400 | Now, if you want to help convince yourself, I'm a daily time block planner.

00:39:28.280 | I'm really giving this a try.

00:39:29.160 | That's why, you know, I do sell that planner because it really helps

00:39:32.360 | people signal to themselves.

00:39:33.680 | I'm doing this.

00:39:34.840 | I spent 20 something dollars on this.

00:39:36.400 | At least I'm going to try this for a while.

00:39:37.920 | So if you need a kick, you can look at time, block planning.com and find that

00:39:41.400 | planner time, block planner.com probably, or do it in a notebook or however you

00:39:45.560 | want to do it, but just get going with daily time block planning after you've

00:39:49.400 | done that for a week or two, and you've sort of get the feel of it and you're

00:39:52.200 | seeing the benefits, then you can add in the weekly seasonal planning.

00:39:56.040 | And I'm going to tell you though, that's going to be easy because the time

00:39:59.320 | footprint of weekly seasonal planning is small.

00:40:01.800 | It's not that hard to do.

00:40:04.600 | Weekly planning takes 30 minutes.

00:40:06.440 | Seasonal planning, you're doing what three times a year.

00:40:09.240 | So it's not going to be hard to add that.

00:40:11.560 | The hard part is the daily time block planning.

00:40:13.280 | So you can either just jump right in and do all three or daily time block plan for

00:40:18.880 | a week or two before adding in the other two elements, but don't be, don't be

00:40:23.760 | intimidated by multi-scale planning.

00:40:25.760 | It's not something that's going to require you to spend hours fiddling with systems.

00:40:32.520 | It's streamlined and you are going to, it has an addictive quality to it.

00:40:36.640 | It's very hard to go back from time block planning once you're used to it, because

00:40:39.760 | a non-time block day then feels chaotic and stressful.

00:40:43.120 | So it has this chemical self-reinforcement.

00:40:45.720 | And then once you're doing time block planning, it feels good to have the weekly

00:40:48.440 | plan, and once you're weekly planning, it has good to look at the seasonal plan.

00:40:51.480 | So I would say just get started, start with time block planning,

00:40:53.920 | add the other elements soon.

00:40:55.560 | All right.

00:40:57.640 | What do we got next, James?

00:40:58.520 | All right.

00:40:58.800 | I just about to call you Jamie.

00:41:00.640 | It's all good.

00:41:02.240 | Who do I have in mind, Jamie?

00:41:03.800 | That's Rogan's producer.

00:41:05.760 | That's right.

00:41:08.240 | Is that his name?

00:41:09.600 | Yeah.

00:41:10.320 | Oh, okay.

00:41:11.040 | Yeah.

00:41:11.480 | Next question is from Philip.

00:41:13.840 | I find that occasional unstructured work sessions create a sense of play

00:41:19.280 | that helped drive my creativity.

00:41:20.840 | In my case, one night a week, I'll typically go through my code and make

00:41:24.240 | small tweaks like code formatting or do experimental work, such

00:41:27.880 | as trying new color schemes.

00:41:30.080 | The result is that I end up more focused on my deep work sessions because I know

00:41:33.920 | that I have separate time when my mind wandering is allowed.

00:41:36.840 | Is this something that fits into your deep life framework?

00:41:40.440 | I think it's a really good idea.

00:41:43.480 | Does it fit into the deep life framework?

00:41:46.160 | Well, everything kind of does, right?

00:41:47.800 | So again, I guess I would place this as something you might experiment with in

00:41:52.440 | the control layer of your deep life stack, because that's where you really put in

00:41:56.760 | place the systems that help you take control over what's on your plate

00:41:59.640 | and keep things reasonable.

00:42:02.240 | But let's really look at this strategy because I like it.

00:42:05.640 | I like this idea of having non deep or non intense sessions for your deep work

00:42:13.520 | style of work that compliment the more intense deep work sessions.

00:42:16.920 | So Philip is a programmer.

00:42:18.880 | So he talks about, he has programming time where he's not really writing

00:42:22.760 | code, but just doing all the other stuff that a programmer might fiddle with

00:42:26.920 | when working on code.

00:42:28.720 | So formatting things and changing configurations and their editors.

00:42:32.840 | And then he has completely separate sessions where I'm actually trying to do

00:42:35.160 | the intense cognitive thing of writing code.

00:42:38.200 | So I don't know if I would use the terminology unstructured or structured,

00:42:42.080 | maybe I would do preparatory and focused.

00:42:44.120 | That's maybe a better way of thinking about it.

00:42:46.640 | But I think it's a really good idea because as we know, there is a cost to

00:42:51.560 | cognitive context shifts and even within a given activity, just that shift from

00:42:57.480 | wandering fiddling mode to I'm serious about what I'm doing mode can be really

00:43:03.840 | significant. And we see this with a lot of work.

00:43:06.800 | If you're a writer, this is really easy.

00:43:08.600 | You can fall into Internet research mode and it's very hard to get back into

00:43:13.040 | crafting sentences mode.

00:43:14.440 | You can get into trying to get a formatting thing proper for the article you're

00:43:18.960 | writing. Like, why is this block quote not quite right?

00:43:21.160 | And it's hard to get back into the sense crafting mode.

00:43:24.280 | Certainly, we see this in brainstorming.

00:43:26.760 | Let's say you're brainstorming a product or business strategy.

00:43:29.440 | As soon as you're looking at the features on the fancy smart whiteboard that you're

00:43:33.960 | using. You lose that thread of momentum of trying to think big thoughts.

00:43:38.120 | That's because really hard focused thinking gets your entire mind oriented around

00:43:42.720 | this one thing you're doing and you're holding the relevant variables and

00:43:46.360 | information in your working memory and using those to try to move forward down

00:43:49.800 | the path of critical intense cognition.

00:43:54.520 | As soon as you start messing with that context and putting other stuff into those

00:43:59.040 | working memory, working memory variables.

00:44:01.680 | Once you start loading up other context in your brain, you lose that thread.

00:44:06.760 | The proverbial man falls off of the high wire.

00:44:10.000 | So I think this is a really cool idea.

00:44:11.640 | And so we're going to make the suggestion systematic.

00:44:14.600 | What is Philip actually suggesting here?

00:44:17.200 | For intense, deep work, have unrelated sessions, not touching the deep work session.

00:44:21.720 | For preparation and fiddling.

00:44:23.920 | So if you're a programmer, have a session where you're looking at your code and

00:44:27.560 | formatting things or reminding yourself of where you're going to write and where you

00:44:31.360 | need to write the new section of code.

00:44:32.880 | If you're a writer, you have everything set up.

00:44:35.680 | This is a good time to get your research in order.

00:44:37.560 | You could have a session where you find, OK, what are all the articles I'm going to

00:44:41.000 | need to cite for these next few paragraphs I'm going to write for this magazine

00:44:44.440 | article? Let me go get those and put them nicely

00:44:47.120 | into the system and pull out the quotes.

00:44:48.720 | And then you're done with that.

00:44:49.520 | You're done with that.

00:44:50.160 | And then later you sit down to write code and that's all you do.

00:44:53.280 | Later, you sit down to write the paragraphs of that magazine article and

00:44:57.560 | everything's there and that's all you do.

00:44:58.840 | I think that's a really good strategy when it comes to particularly intense, deep

00:45:05.960 | work. So I like that unstructured preparatory deep life.

00:45:10.480 | All right, cool.

00:45:12.160 | So now we've got a question from James.

00:45:15.120 | Maybe that's what I saw, Jesse, when I called you, Jamie.

00:45:17.480 | I'll call James on the next page.

00:45:18.960 | All right, next question's from James.

00:45:21.200 | When I started college, I had a clear major in mind, but quickly changed to another

00:45:25.480 | subject that I find more interesting.

00:45:27.440 | But I'm constantly thinking about what else I could do.

00:45:31.800 | More recently, I'm thinking about getting into a completely different field.

00:45:34.760 | I daydream about it frequently and often find the possibility very exciting.

00:45:39.640 | I'm worried I'm going to fall into a pattern of forever quitting.

00:45:44.160 | Well, James, I can say there's all sorts of alarm bells that are going off right now.

00:45:49.360 | As I read your question, you, my friend, are deeply tangled into what we call the

00:45:58.280 | passion mindset.

00:45:59.320 | This terminology is from my 2012 book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, which was

00:46:05.360 | basically a book all about this issue that you're facing right now.

00:46:07.960 | In fact, the motivation for that book was dealing with college students switching

00:46:13.120 | their majors all the time.

00:46:14.080 | So we're really in the territory that I spent a lot of time thinking about.

00:46:16.840 | So what is this passion mindset?

00:46:18.600 | It's the mindset that says you should focus a lot on what the current thing you're

00:46:24.680 | doing, whether it is an academic major as a student or a job as a non-student, you

00:46:31.160 | should focus on what the current thing you're doing offers you.

00:46:34.120 | And you should be really worried, is it offering me enough or is something else

00:46:39.720 | going to offer me even more?

00:46:41.520 | So am I loving this major or would that major, I'm going to, that's, I'm really

00:46:45.240 | going to enjoy that more.

00:46:46.080 | Is this job really letting me, is it giving me the things I really love to work on or

00:46:50.080 | would another job have a different setup where I would get even more excitement out

00:46:54.200 | of it or even more fulfillment out of it?

00:46:55.800 | So it's constantly thinking me, me, me.

00:46:57.640 | What's being offered, what could offer me more?

00:46:59.960 | This is a very dangerous mindset, especially when it comes to your professional

00:47:06.720 | life.

00:47:06.960 | So beginning with the majors you choose and then with the jobs you choose after

00:47:10.400 | that, and it's dangerous for exactly the reason that you are experiencing in your

00:47:14.360 | own life.

00:47:15.320 | Because the answer to what is this offering me is always less than something else

00:47:20.680 | could be.

00:47:21.080 | And so if you're a student, you're going to start changing your major.

00:47:24.960 | Why did you, why are you changing your major?

00:47:26.560 | Because what happens is as you move through your major, the courses get harder,

00:47:30.840 | harder courses are less fun.

00:47:32.800 | And then your mind says, this must not be my passion.

00:47:35.000 | Let's switch.

00:47:35.480 | And guess what?

00:47:35.960 | The new major is going to get hard too.

00:47:37.600 | And you say, well, this is not really my passion, but maybe this one is.

00:47:40.760 | Same thing will happen in your job.

00:47:42.040 | I'm not, I don't really love this.

00:47:44.000 | And I'm spending a lot of time doing this, which is not my favorite.

00:47:45.960 | I really want to have more autonomy.

00:47:47.720 | I'm going to quit.

00:47:48.320 | Let me try this one.

00:47:48.880 | Well, this is not quite it either, but that job, that job is going to be the key.

00:47:51.960 | It's constant anxiety that you are not doing the right thing, which leads to

00:47:55.640 | constant quitting and shifting, which has all sorts of negative consequences.

00:47:59.520 | What you need to do instead, James is lifestyle centric career planning.

00:48:04.760 | We talk about this all the time, but you fix a clear vision of what you want your

00:48:09.480 | life to be like five or 10 years from now.

00:48:11.560 | This is a vision that captures all aspects of your life.

00:48:14.880 | And it is visceral.

00:48:15.840 | What does it feel like?

00:48:16.760 | Where are you?

00:48:17.320 | What do you see?

00:48:18.160 | What do you hear?

00:48:19.280 | What's the rhythm of your day-to-day life?

00:48:21.640 | It's not just work, but what's happening in your life outside of work.

00:48:24.320 | What, when you see in a magazine or a documentary or a

00:48:27.480 | book has resonated with you.

00:48:28.800 | Oh, I want that in my life.

00:48:30.800 | I want that in my life.

00:48:31.480 | You want this really clear vision of the aspects of your ideal

00:48:34.280 | lifestyle five to 10 years from now.

00:48:35.800 | And then you work backwards from that and say, how do I move my

00:48:38.640 | life in that direction when you're doing lifestyle centric career planning?

00:48:42.280 | You're freed from the pressure of all that matters is what

00:48:46.320 | I choose to do professionally.

00:48:47.560 | That is the sole arbiter of how happy I feel, how fulfilled I feel in my life.

00:48:51.920 | Your work instead becomes instrumental.

00:48:54.040 | It's one of the levers you have to pull to move yourself

00:48:57.120 | closer to your ideal lifestyle.

00:48:58.440 | And once you start seeing your major and then the work that your major

00:49:02.160 | enables through this lens, you become less worried about, is this the right

00:49:09.240 | thing for me, because what is the right thing for you now, it is something I

00:49:12.280 | can leverage to get closer to my ideal lifestyle, not is it perfect?

00:49:15.600 | Not, is it my passion?

00:49:16.640 | So now you can apply the alternative to the passion mindset to your work, which

00:49:21.560 | is what in my book, I call the craftsman mindset.

00:49:24.720 | So if the passion mindset says, what does this job offer me?

00:49:29.560 | The craftsman mindset says instead, what can I offer this job?

00:49:32.800 | And it turns your focus towards how do I get better?

00:49:36.360 | How do I get more invaluable?

00:49:38.920 | How do I make myself indispensable?

00:49:41.560 | How do I build up what I call in my book, career capital, the metaphorical

00:49:45.760 | substance you acquire as you become better and better at things that are rare

00:49:48.880 | and valuable, because that is your leverage to shape your life.

00:49:51.520 | That is your leverage to shape your work towards the things that resonate

00:49:54.720 | in a way from things that don't.

00:49:56.080 | That's the thing that allows you to shape your work towards what's going

00:49:58.760 | to get you closer to your ideal lifestyle.

00:50:00.800 | What can I offer my job?

00:50:03.840 | What can I offer my professors in my classes?

00:50:06.480 | How can I stand out?

00:50:07.240 | How can I be the best in this class?

00:50:08.720 | That is the route, the building of a filling life.

00:50:11.440 | Now it's really hard, right?

00:50:13.440 | Because you have to put your head down and do really good work and build up career

00:50:16.760 | capital, then have the courage to leverage that capital and not just follow the

00:50:19.800 | expected path that that career path has.

00:50:21.720 | You have to have clarity and vision about what you want your life to be like, but it

00:50:25.280 | frees you from the high stakes decision of one choice, what I do for my major, what I

00:50:30.520 | do for my work, it frees you from that one choice somehow being all important.

00:50:33.840 | Once you have a vision for your ideal lifestyle, there are any number, any

00:50:38.880 | number of different professional paths you could use as the foundation for

00:50:42.640 | building yourself closer to that goal.

00:50:44.320 | The choice doesn't matter that much.

00:50:45.920 | What happens is what you do.

00:50:47.400 | Once you actually have that work.

00:50:52.280 | Now, one thing I might suggest if this is troublesome to you, right?

00:50:55.520 | Because you're young when you're young, you haven't lived that long as an adult yet.

00:50:59.280 | So every year feels like a big portion of your life.

00:51:01.560 | If you're having a hard time with this idea of I just took this major, this major is

00:51:05.240 | going to lead to this job.

00:51:06.000 | It's going to take me a couple of years to build up some career capital here.

00:51:08.440 | If that feels stultifying to you, you can be focusing during this period of heads

00:51:13.560 | down craftsman mindset in your job.

00:51:15.600 | You can be putting a lot of attention to the other parts of your life as well and

00:51:20.400 | turning those towards the remarkable.

00:51:23.080 | You know, maybe you're, you're hiking all of the high peaks in the white mountains

00:51:28.320 | or you're training for some sort of athletic event, or you get really into

00:51:32.560 | movies or building up some sort of community center.

00:51:35.760 | You can find other aspects of your life that you can push towards the remarkable

00:51:39.320 | much quicker while going through that slow I'm 23 and just building up my

00:51:43.440 | reputation and skills phase of your professional life.

00:51:45.880 | But the key here is to be working backwards from a vision and applying a

00:51:50.400 | craftsman mindset to get yourself forward towards that goal.

00:51:53.520 | And you got to escape this passion mindset.

00:51:55.640 | The grass will always seem greener.

00:51:57.560 | But the thing is, if you keep popping fences to the next field, you never have

00:52:01.680 | time to actually enjoy the ground that's right there under your feet.

00:52:04.760 | I actually did some events, Jesse up at, um, Dartmouth this summer

00:52:10.880 | on so good, they can't ignore you.

00:52:12.720 | So it's been a while since I really got into that career mode.

00:52:15.560 | Uh, but there's a couple of events I did where that's what

00:52:17.880 | they wanted to talk about.

00:52:19.240 | There's a lot of people and, uh, one grad student there had this great old copy of

00:52:23.960 | so good, they can't ignore you where the cover had faded so much that you

00:52:28.160 | could barely see the words on it.

00:52:29.440 | That's great.

00:52:30.320 | I signed it.

00:52:30.800 | I was like, yeah, that's it.

00:52:31.680 | And he still was like, look, I've been using this for the

00:52:33.480 | last decade to shape my life.

00:52:35.040 | Did you have to read the book again to remember all the key ideas?

00:52:38.160 | I remembered it.

00:52:38.960 | I even did an event on one of my student books.

00:52:41.560 | Those are getting pretty old now.

00:52:43.400 | Now we're talking 2005, 2006.

00:52:45.920 | Yeah.

00:52:46.400 | I remembered though.

00:52:47.960 | I was going to say that would count for one of your, uh, four, five books a month.

00:52:51.200 | Yeah.

00:52:51.720 | Yeah.

00:52:52.240 | How to win at college.

00:52:54.400 | Yeah.

00:52:55.040 | That's going to count as one of my five books.

00:52:56.400 | Oh, I can't go back and reread my own books.

00:52:59.520 | All right.

00:53:00.280 | Let's, um, let's do a couple more.

00:53:01.360 | What else do we got here?

00:53:02.120 | Next question's from agent three zero.

00:53:05.040 | I graduated with an MA about five years ago, but despite some good interviews, I

00:53:09.920 | haven't been able to land a job in my field and have therefore spent the last five

00:53:13.880 | years consistently underemployed.

00:53:16.840 | Since discovering the ideas associated with the deep life, I've been trying to

00:53:20.120 | pursue my goals in a more disciplined way, focusing on methodically progress,

00:53:25.000 | progressing and skill building.

00:53:26.400 | However, I feel like my mind doesn't fully trust the approach based on slow

00:53:30.200 | productivity, because in the back of my mind, I feel like it's going to come too

00:53:34.040 | little too late.

00:53:34.920 | Well, okay.

00:53:37.200 | I'm worried here as well, uh, because I'm seeing hints of the same passion mindset

00:53:41.880 | that we were talking about with the last question.

00:53:47.280 | So I looked at the extended version of your question.

00:53:49.920 | What I learned from it is this last five years where you've been trying to

00:53:54.120 | methodically progress and skill build, you have been pursuing those five years.

00:53:57.800 | What you've been methodically building towards is this idea of some sort of ideal

00:54:02.120 | job that matches your academic training.

00:54:04.520 | And you have this vague idea that I have this arts degree.

00:54:07.680 | I should be, you know, in some sort of arts job because that's why I got this

00:54:11.600 | degree and I don't want it to go to waste.

00:54:13.120 | What I'm going to say is that's not working.

00:54:16.560 | There isn't a easily accessible, ideal job for you.

00:54:19.760 | You spent five years trying to do it.

00:54:21.640 | So the slow productivity approach here is not be slow in terms of trying to find

00:54:26.680 | work, the slow productivity approach.

00:54:29.000 | That's a mindset that says when you're working on specific accomplishments, be

00:54:34.720 | okay with that taking time, make steady progress on it, work at a natural pace,

00:54:39.040 | try to make it really good.

00:54:40.080 | But when it comes to finding a job, you need a job.

00:54:44.080 | Now, I think Lifestyle Centered Career Planning is going to help you here, remove

00:54:47.760 | the concern about just finding a job that works because what you really need here

00:54:51.960 | is something that is going to reward career capital if and when you build it

00:54:55.440 | with autonomy and opportunities.

00:54:57.760 | There are many different jobs.

00:55:00.280 | You have a master's degree, so you're just generally an educated person.

00:55:03.360 | There's many different jobs you can likely find that will offer you those

00:55:07.160 | attributes.

00:55:07.760 | They might not have any connection to the specific arts topic you studied, but

00:55:12.720 | there's something that you can use as a foundation towards building towards your

00:55:15.520 | ideal lifestyle.

00:55:16.400 | So I would say right away, blank slate, five-year lifestyle.

00:55:20.080 | What are all the aspects?

00:55:21.560 | Nail that down.

00:55:22.400 | Next, figure out, okay, of jobs that are actually accessible to me now, which is

00:55:29.440 | going to be the best foundation on which to build towards this ideal lifestyle.

00:55:33.400 | Keep in mind, it might have nothing to do with your degree and then you need to

00:55:37.200 | get into that job.

00:55:37.880 | It's going to take you one or two years, probably of heads down craftsman

00:55:42.040 | mindset, career capital acquisition, skill building.

00:55:45.520 | This is where you put in this energy, not trying to find a job, not trying to make

00:55:50.400 | yourself generally useful to the job market.

00:55:53.000 | It's once you have a job, once you actually have a job that is going to reward

00:55:57.960 | you becoming so good, you can't ignore you with more autonomy and opportunities.

00:56:01.080 | That's where you put your head down because you can very specifically be

00:56:04.120 | building the exact skills that that job will specifically you have evidence for

00:56:08.760 | reward.

00:56:11.760 | So we've got to leave the passion mindset of, like, if I just keep working on my

00:56:14.520 | skills and trying, I'll find this perfect job and get a job and then kill that job.

00:56:18.760 | And when I say kill it, I mean kill it at that job, do really well and use that as

00:56:23.360 | leverage to get towards an ideal lifestyle.

00:56:25.160 | So you really should have a five-year plan here where the next two years in your

00:56:28.080 | professional life are becoming undeniably great at something that you do, not

00:56:33.800 | sweating what that thing is.

00:56:34.960 | And again, like I talked to you with the last person in the last question, you can

00:56:41.000 | outlet some of this deep life energy towards other aspects of your life relevant

00:56:45.640 | to your vision of the ideal lifestyle.

00:56:47.160 | Parts of your life have nothing to do with your work.

00:56:48.840 | Focus on those as well.

00:56:50.240 | So you don't feel like you're just confining your world to just be being very

00:56:55.000 | reliable and good and learning the specific skills that the particular company

00:56:58.520 | needs. You can work on these other aspects of your life as well.

00:57:00.720 | But you need a job.

00:57:02.280 | You need a job before slow productivity matters.

00:57:05.000 | You need a job before becoming so good you can't ignore you makes sense because

00:57:08.320 | there's got to be someone who's paying attention.

00:57:10.440 | There's got to be someone that is looking at and cares about how well you're

00:57:14.320 | actually doing.

00:57:15.080 | So find a good enough job and start moving today towards your five-year vision of a

00:57:20.240 | more ideal lifestyle.

00:57:21.680 | All right, let's do one more question, Jesse.

00:57:25.280 | I think we have time.

00:57:25.960 | Yep.

00:57:27.080 | Next question is from a new, what advice would you give to people with depression

00:57:31.840 | so they can realistically reach their goals for a deep life?

00:57:34.720 | Well, I knew it's a good question.

00:57:37.560 | I've talked to multiple people about this, not on the show, but but over email.

00:57:43.080 | The first caveat, of course, is this is not my area of expertise.

00:57:48.200 | So whatever advice I give here is not going to apply to everyone.

00:57:51.480 | So take that take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt.

00:57:55.200 | All right.

00:57:55.640 | First thing first, before you get into any specifics about the deep life or how you

00:58:01.680 | want to go through a reinvention of your life, if you're dealing with depression

00:58:05.760 | symptoms, you want professional help for it.

00:58:08.160 | Depressive symptoms are often the result of disordered thinking, disordered thinking

00:58:16.360 | about yourself and your life, ruminations that happen with an intensity and anxious

00:58:22.000 | ferocity that they're not easily tamed.

00:58:24.400 | A ruminations that have become so draining and anxiety producing that they

00:58:30.240 | ultimately begin to short circuit.

00:58:33.680 | The circuits of your brain that give you excitement or hope or energy, they put in

00:58:38.560 | their place, a sort of severe a hedonic stupor.

00:58:41.720 | This is really a difficult thing to deal with just on your own.

00:58:47.160 | Therapy helps you fix this.

00:58:49.760 | Let's start reordering your thinking.

00:58:51.920 | Let's start moving the ruminative pathways out of their deep grooves so that we can

00:58:58.760 | begin to rebuild some of these other circuits that allow for other types of more

00:59:04.160 | hedonic subjective experience.

00:59:06.680 | So you need professional help with that.

00:59:08.360 | And you want to get that help as the foundation for anything else.

00:59:12.000 | All right.

00:59:13.480 | So let's put that, let's assume that you're doing that.

00:59:15.440 | What I've heard from other people who deal with various mental health issues of this

00:59:20.360 | type is that the deep life, the way we talk about it here on this show is actually

00:59:25.080 | pretty useful.

00:59:26.920 | It's actually pretty useful because the way we talk about the deep life on the show

00:59:30.000 | is very structured and process based.

00:59:32.040 | And what's difficult if you're coming from a place of depression or just from a hard

00:59:36.360 | time is if you have a definition of success, if your definition of what you're trying to

00:59:41.800 | do is based on either a really positive subjective feeling, like I just want to feel

00:59:47.600 | great.

00:59:48.080 | Or very concrete accomplishments, you know, like I just want to be the best and win and

00:59:53.360 | get the best job and have all the money.

00:59:55.080 | And I'm just going to feel good every time I have that accomplishment.

00:59:57.440 | That's a really bad yardstick, especially if you're dealing with something like

01:00:01.800 | depression, because you're not going to feel good or you will sometimes.

01:00:05.280 | So it's often out of your control.

01:00:06.440 | And if that's the goal you're looking for, then it's just going to create more

01:00:08.760 | rumination. Well, why don't I feel good?

01:00:10.160 | And if you need very particular types of really intense professional accomplishments,

01:00:14.840 | well, that's really hard, too, because those are hard to get.

01:00:17.200 | And actually, if you're depressed, they can be even harder to get because it's the

01:00:21.080 | amount of just I'm willing to just do 15 hours a day becomes really difficult.

01:00:25.120 | When you have anything else difficult going on in your mind, so then you're going to

01:00:27.520 | be self-incriminating and that'll make it worse.

01:00:30.840 | The deep life structure, by contrast, is not it's not about a specific feeling or a

01:00:35.120 | particular accomplishment.

01:00:36.720 | It's about intention. Let's build up some regular discipline in our life in a

01:00:41.120 | tractable way. Once we have this regular discipline in our life, let's get in touch

01:00:44.000 | with what really matters to us and have a code by which we live through good times

01:00:48.520 | and bad. So even just at that layer of the deep life stack, this already is a big deal

01:00:54.240 | for a lot of people who are adrift in the shallows and also dealing with mental health

01:00:58.240 | issues is having a code that you believe in, that is grounded in your moral intuitions

01:01:03.120 | that says this is what we do even when times are bad and we can have pride in that.

01:01:06.840 | It's incredibly powerful as opposed to why don't I just feel good?

01:01:11.360 | All right, then as we move up the stack, well, you get to something like control.

01:01:15.400 | I just have control over what's on my plate so I don't feel disorganized and anxious.

01:01:20.440 | That's useful. More importantly, the automation and curtailing aspects of control

01:01:26.280 | allows you to say, you know what, this is a hard time coming.

01:01:29.160 | And people I know who are dealing with depression often talk about waves.

01:01:33.360 | You feel it coming on and then there could be an extended period that you didn't leave

01:01:38.320 | from. If you have the control stack in place, when you feel a wave coming on, this is

01:01:42.680 | going to be a hard winter.

01:01:43.920 | You have the levers to pull, to pull back from things in a way that's going to make

01:01:48.760 | things more tractable.

01:01:49.800 | OK, I need to Catherine May wintering mode here.

01:01:53.400 | Let me pull back, pull this back, stop doing this.

01:01:56.840 | You have that control allows you to pull back in a systematic way.

01:02:01.000 | Very useful when you have up and down mental states.

01:02:04.840 | And then finally, get to that plan for the remarkable, just building things in your life

01:02:09.440 | that are remarkable, regardless of how you feel.

01:02:11.480 | It gives you a sense of efficacy, gives you a sense of autonomy and adds really

01:02:16.320 | interesting, self-initiated, persistent sources of value into your life that

01:02:24.000 | themselves are like a beacon that shines bright amidst the dark fog, which is the

01:02:29.120 | depressive syndrome. So I think all aspects of the deep life stack can be really

01:02:32.960 | useful to work through, even if depression is an issue.

01:02:37.320 | It'll take longer maybe than someone that's, you know, all Adderall and focused on high

01:02:42.800 | energy and whatever.

01:02:43.800 | Sure, who cares? It takes the time it takes and you have to take breaks for him to come

01:02:48.400 | back to it. Fine. Do that.

01:02:49.360 | I don't care. But you're slowly building these stacks and then working your way

01:02:53.520 | through them again and again.

01:02:54.480 | I actually think it's quite compatible.

01:02:56.480 | It's quite compatible with a systematic response to these all too common types of

01:03:02.360 | mental mental health issues.

01:03:04.440 | So keep with it. Take your time, but keep with it.

01:03:08.000 | I think you are going to find it beneficial in combination with professional help.

01:03:11.440 | All right, so what I want to do next, that's a good good place to end it on the

01:03:16.920 | questions in the final segment today.

01:03:19.000 | I want to do a cover reveal for my new book, Slow Productivity.

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01:06:48.520 | All right, Jesse, I want to talk briefly about my upcoming book.

01:06:53.280 | The title is Slow Productivity.

01:06:55.840 | The subtitle is The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

01:06:59.440 | It comes out in March.

01:07:00.880 | I wanted to talk about the cover.

01:07:03.240 | I put this in my email newsletter, but we haven't talked about it yet on the show.

01:07:06.360 | So I'm going to load up on the screen for those who are watching.

01:07:09.440 | And again, if you're listening, go to the deep life dot com slash listen.

01:07:12.800 | This is episode 263.

01:07:14.600 | Be a link to the video below.

01:07:16.680 | All right. So I've loaded on the screen here.

01:07:19.280 | The cover. Of my new book.

01:07:22.840 | So what you'll see if you're listening is this is not like the covers of my past

01:07:27.440 | books, you think about deep work, if you think about a world without email,

01:07:31.840 | that the two other books I've written about the world of work, it's big fonts

01:07:36.200 | on a sort of solid color background.

01:07:38.080 | Those are books aimed at the world of business.

01:07:41.160 | Like we're going to look at ways that technology has broken the world of

01:07:46.320 | business and what you should, how you should rethink business to get around

01:07:49.600 | these shortcomings, this book, what we see is a mountain range and a wooded, a

01:07:57.160 | pine forest with a path going through it, leading this way up to a cliff side

01:08:02.480 | cabin, overlooking a scenic mountain range.

01:08:06.160 | So a very different look.

01:08:07.440 | Have I showed you this yet, Jesse?

01:08:09.360 | Have you seen this one?

01:08:10.040 | Yeah, I saw it.

01:08:10.720 | Cause you mentioned it and then I went and checked it out.

01:08:12.840 | Yeah.

01:08:13.360 | So what's going on here?

01:08:14.920 | Why, why, why this is a, um, it's a more aspirational, a more human cover.

01:08:20.040 | I thought I'd talk a little bit about it.

01:08:21.520 | Um, I see this book, slow productivity.

01:08:24.200 | As being a part of a more general movement in the book world right

01:08:30.280 | now to reimagine productivity.

01:08:34.040 | Reimagine productivity and move it towards what I call humanistic productivity.

01:08:38.240 | So there's a genre of, of, uh, thinking and books that have emerged on

01:08:43.160 | what I call humanistic productivity.

01:08:45.440 | Now, what does humanistic productivity mean?

01:08:48.720 | Well, first of all, it says, what do we, what's the definition, the

01:08:51.000 | general definition of productivity?

01:08:52.360 | It's the general arrangement of effort, the general arrangement of your

01:08:56.520 | efforts with some intention in mind.

01:08:59.240 | So productivity is most general senses.

01:09:01.320 | I do stuff all day.

01:09:03.800 | Let me have some way of organizing these efforts towards

01:09:06.600 | some sort of intentional goal.

01:09:08.400 | Now humanistic productivity believes, uh, if you don't do any such thinking,

01:09:12.880 | you don't end up someplace good.

01:09:15.800 | You don't end up relaxed.

01:09:16.960 | You're going to be, uh, you're going to be prone to two major

01:09:21.560 | sources of negative wellbeing.

01:09:23.560 | The first is in the professional, in the professional sphere, reactive busyness.

01:09:28.080 | So if you say, I just, Hey man, I don't do productivity.

01:09:30.720 | You are going to get, uh, swallowed into a whirlpool of reactive busyness.

01:09:35.720 | Oh my God.

01:09:36.240 | Everyone is emailing me all the time.

01:09:37.760 | And the faster I answer, the more they come out and there's all these zoom

01:09:39.960 | meetings and my God, everything is crazy.

01:09:41.480 | You're not relaxed.

01:09:42.240 | You get supercharged busyness.

01:09:45.480 | And in your life outside of work, again, if you're like, I just, man, I just chill.

01:09:49.440 | You're very prone to get swallowed in a whirlpool of supercharged distraction.

01:09:54.360 | And next thing you know, uh, you know, you're up to 3:00 AM yelling at white

01:10:00.080 | supremacist on Twitter while building your underground bunker because of

01:10:03.720 | catastrophe seven through 11, that's going to hit and destroy

01:10:06.360 | the earth the next three weeks.

01:10:07.480 | So just saying, I don't think about this stuff, man, is going to make you

01:10:12.200 | vulnerable to so many negative things.

01:10:14.720 | So you need some sort of notion of productivity.

01:10:17.600 | Here's how I arrange my efforts with some intention in mind.

01:10:20.320 | But what humanistic productivity recognizes is that we can't leave this

01:10:23.800 | decision to the 2005 version of Merlin man, right?

01:10:27.680 | We can't leave this decision to the people online who spend all day trying

01:10:31.920 | to build their hyper optimized system so that you can have algorithmic support

01:10:35.640 | for generating your, you know, task list, optimization, synced Zettelkasten,

01:10:42.080 | whatever complexity, because that's just exhausting and it's

01:10:46.360 | turning humans into widget grinders.

01:10:48.200 | So the sweet spot in productivity thinking is saying, how do I

01:10:52.480 | intentionally organize my efforts in a way that the entire goal is to support

01:10:56.480 | my humanity, to support a richer, fuller human life.

01:11:00.640 | That's humanistic productivity, grounding productivity thinking in

01:11:05.640 | the pursuit of a richer, sustainable, fuller human life.

01:11:09.240 | So there's a lot of books in this genre.

01:11:11.720 | I think we could go back.

01:11:12.680 | I'll list a couple that I think all belong to this

01:11:14.760 | humanistic productivity genre.

01:11:16.120 | I think Tim Ferriss's, the four hour work week is an early

01:11:19.560 | example of this genre, perhaps.

01:11:21.160 | He was coming in and said, let's completely rethink work.

01:11:25.760 | Let's completely rethink work as this huge means to an end, the end being all

01:11:30.120 | these other things that make a good life good.

01:11:31.920 | And if we can be very clever about how you set up your work and how you automate

01:11:35.760 | it, let's just reduce the footprint and just make it this, this money engine

01:11:40.360 | that produces just enough proverbial horsepower that you can study.

01:11:44.640 | Tango in Buenos Aires.

01:11:46.480 | I think Gregory McEwen's essentialism is another book in this category.

01:11:50.960 | It's about how do you sort of intentionally and aggressively

01:11:53.640 | take stuff off your plate.

01:11:55.560 | So it understands that at the core of any humanistic productivity

01:11:58.800 | philosophy is avoiding overload.

01:12:00.600 | You have Jenny O'Dell's how to do nothing and Celeste Handley's do nothing.

01:12:05.680 | I think both those books are also really in this space.

01:12:08.200 | They're there.

01:12:09.000 | You know, Jenny is embracing a notion of productivity in which you

01:12:14.320 | are moving away from activity.

01:12:16.240 | That you are purposely resisting a push towards activity as a way of

01:12:21.880 | reconnecting with values that aren't based off of action do nothing.

01:12:27.280 | I think is a little bit more Celeste books, a little bit more approachable,

01:12:29.760 | a little bit less academic, but again, about reorienting a productive life

01:12:34.600 | away from quantity of activity, quantity of accomplishments.

01:12:38.560 | I think Oliver Berkman's book 4,000 weeks is another great example of the genre.

01:12:42.920 | It's a definition of productivity.

01:12:45.360 | That's based on being completely fine with the fact that you can't do most things.

01:12:51.160 | So why squeeze in, you know, a few more things, most things you can't do anyway.

01:12:55.160 | So what's the point of overloading yourself?

01:12:57.000 | You're still not doing most things.

01:12:58.160 | So why not just accept that and be happy with the things you are doing

01:13:02.560 | and the opportunities you do have slow productivity.

01:13:04.920 | My new book is sort of in that same genre.

01:13:07.000 | So sort of a more humanistic approach to productivity.

01:13:10.760 | So it's slow productivity.

01:13:11.800 | I don't want to get into details.

01:13:12.720 | Now we've got plenty of time for that as we get closer to the book.

01:13:15.200 | And also I talk about it all the time on the show, but the cover looks like the

01:13:18.720 | way it looks, because this is a book about refinding your humanity in a world

01:13:24.560 | where the definitions of productivity that dominate in the world of work in

01:13:28.280 | particular are based on this inhuman unstoppered busyness, this more is better

01:13:36.280 | than less, it's up to you to decide how much work you do, but more is better than

01:13:40.280 | less, you go make these decisions every day.

01:13:42.800 | And it's this exhausted self-recriminating sort of terrible way to organize work.

01:13:47.800 | This is a more humanistic alternative.

01:13:49.440 | That's why I say the lost art of accomplishment without burnout.

01:13:53.000 | How do we do things we're proud of without having to be completely

01:13:56.880 | burnt out and overloaded?

01:13:58.400 | So anyways, to indicate this is not just a business book.

01:14:02.640 | Here's what's another way that tech is corrupting the world of work and how to

01:14:09.280 | sidestep that to avoid the negative impacts.

01:14:10.920 | It's also a book about refining your humanity and it's within that tradition.

01:14:15.080 | And so I think this cover, I think captures more of that feel.

01:14:19.240 | That's what I'm trying to capture here.

01:14:20.400 | Not to say there's no technology in this book.

01:14:22.560 | Look, I'm a CS professor at a famously liberal arts humanistic university.

01:14:26.800 | So most of my work, one way or the other is about ways tech is having these

01:14:30.160 | impacts and how we refine our humanity.

01:14:32.000 | And yes, at the core of this book, there's the story early on is the way that

01:14:36.040 | technology subverted these creaky definitions of productivity we had in

01:14:40.360 | office work and technology blew them up.

01:14:42.520 | And that's why everyone's burning out.

01:14:43.840 | So there's technologies at the core of the problem here, but

01:14:46.680 | the solution is very human.

01:14:47.840 | And it's a book about refining what matters to you in your life.

01:14:51.040 | And so I think that cover, you know, captures that more so than just slow

01:14:56.960 | productivity, huge text on a clean background.

01:15:00.080 | So there you go.

01:15:00.800 | I'm excited about this one.

01:15:01.880 | You'll obviously hear more about it in the spring as we get closer,

01:15:05.520 | but the cover's out there now it's on Amazon is pre-orderable.

01:15:09.040 | So I figured we would have a quick discussion.

01:15:11.960 | Jesse, my, what I was deciding on with this book cover was either this cover,

01:15:16.040 | which is, you know, the scenic view and the nice fonts.

01:15:20.360 | The other cover I had in mind was I want to wear a kind of like a fun vest, you

01:15:26.720 | know, like a 1980s standup comedian, like a Paula Poundstone vest, and it would be

01:15:31.520 | me on the cover.

01:15:32.400 | So my arms crossed like leaning back and kind of giving a, giving a coy look,

01:15:37.240 | giving a coy look at the, at the camera, or maybe like a saying, like just holding

01:15:42.280 | my chin, just looking at the camera, maybe like a quirky hat.

01:15:46.200 | That's the other thing I was thinking like a bowler hat.

01:15:49.920 | Yeah.

01:15:50.440 | The, the pipe from your French accent guy.

01:15:53.360 | I have a pipe.

01:15:54.240 | I was definitely thinking like loud vest, fun hat, pipe in a sort of silly or like,

01:16:00.320 | you know, maybe I have my arms on my hips and sort of cocky my hips a little bit.

01:16:03.840 | Like, so those are the choices.

01:16:06.560 | So I thought it was that, uh, the third choice was me in a turtle costume, just

01:16:11.400 | slow, you know, so I was like, let's be on the nose here.

01:16:14.240 | So it was going to be me in a turtle costume on all fours, um, holding a day

01:16:19.480 | planner.

01:16:19.920 | So that was like the more of the on the nose option.

01:16:22.560 | So it was me in a turtle outfit, holding a day planner, option three, option two,

01:16:26.640 | me in a loud vest and a funny hat and a pipe in a sort of a quirky position.

01:16:30.360 | And then option one, which we went with in the end was this sort of, um, ascending

01:16:34.640 | um, aspirational humanistic, natural, uh, natural, softer color cover.

01:16:40.520 | So, you know, it's a hard choice, but hopefully we made the right one.

01:16:43.240 | Yeah, hopefully.

01:16:44.280 | All right.

01:16:45.080 | Well, enough of that, enough of that nonsense.

01:16:46.680 | Um, thanks for listening.

01:16:47.760 | Hey, I should say, if this is your first time listening, please subscribe so you

01:16:52.720 | can get the episode every week.

01:16:54.120 | It also helps us out.

01:16:55.200 | If you're not a first time listener, leave a review because you'll help convince

01:16:59.000 | other people to become first time listeners.

01:17:00.520 | So we do appreciate that.

01:17:02.080 | I'll back next week in the studio, me and Jesse.

01:17:04.680 | Yay.

01:17:05.280 | Enough of this remote stuff.

01:17:06.520 | We'll be back in the studio yet again, next week for another episode of the

01:17:10.120 | podcast and until then, as always stay deep.

01:17:13.240 | So if you like today's discussion of reinventing your life with the deep life

01:17:17.920 | stack, then I recommend this episode, episode two 56, where I do a deep dive

01:17:24.720 | on why discipline is the first thing we look at when doing such a reinvention.

01:17:30.840 | Why does cultivating the deep life start with discipline?

How To Reinvent Your Life In 4 Months (My Full Step-By-Step Process) | Cal Newport

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