Ep. 224: A World Without Twitter?

00:00:00.000 | Here's what I noticed in my cursory examination of media coverage of Elon Musk and Twitter

00:00:07.400 | is that essentially a decision has been made that Elon Musk is public enemy number one

00:00:14.600 | and it has led to news coverage that I find to be both boring and ironic.

00:00:27.560 | I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, episode 224.

00:00:39.080 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ joined by my producer Jesse.

00:00:43.900 | As Jesse will attest, I was late getting here today.

00:00:47.500 | I want to mention why because I think there's a general point relevant to the topics we

00:00:51.780 | talk about here on the show.

00:00:54.280 | Here was the mistake I made today.

00:00:57.000 | I had about an hour to kill before needing to start prepping for the podcast recording

00:01:03.520 | today.

00:01:04.800 | And I had an idea that is common among people who are working on long-term projects that

00:01:08.920 | require deep work.

00:01:10.080 | This ambitious optimistic idea that you know what I'll do?

00:01:13.520 | I'll write for an hour.

00:01:15.480 | I'm working on a book, listeners know this, I'm writing a book on slow productivity and

00:01:20.120 | I figured I want to get an hour in writing because I have this little window before I

00:01:25.160 | move on to other things.

00:01:27.360 | That never works.

00:01:28.880 | So an hour goes by and now I'm up to my cognitive ears, my proverbial ears in this argument

00:01:34.360 | I'm trying to make.

00:01:35.360 | And here's the real issue.

00:01:36.360 | The argument I was trying to make wasn't working.

00:01:38.320 | And that's the worst case scenario from actually keeping deep work in a tightly constrained

00:01:42.800 | box is when what you're working on, the cognitive puzzle you're working on isn't quite working.

00:01:47.700 | Your brain basically refuses any alternative but to make this function because there's

00:01:55.620 | an unease if you're writing.

00:01:57.660 | I'm sure this is the same for people who are putting together code or working on some other

00:02:01.060 | type of creative process.

00:02:03.140 | There's this cognitive unease to this isn't quite working.

00:02:06.220 | We have these pieces from this paragraph we've been working on for the last hour.

00:02:09.700 | They're all loaded up in our head.

00:02:11.100 | They don't click together quite right.

00:02:13.540 | That's very uneasy.

00:02:14.540 | And our brain says we got to keep grinding on this until these things click and we get

00:02:18.380 | that relief of, okay, good.

00:02:21.380 | We're at a stopping point.

00:02:22.620 | This makes sense.

00:02:23.620 | So when the hour passed, my pieces weren't fitting.

00:02:26.660 | My brain was revolting and I had to keep writing.

00:02:30.540 | Then eventually I had to write Jesse and say, look, I'm running late.

00:02:34.220 | I'll be honest with you.

00:02:35.220 | I just got, I got caught up writing.

00:02:37.220 | It's a reminder that an hour is not enough time for most deep work activities because

00:02:42.260 | it takes 20 minutes to get loaded up and man, that's not enough time.

00:02:46.100 | If what you're working on is not making progress, good luck stopping.

00:02:49.900 | So there would be a little bit of planning optimism that came back to bite me.

00:02:55.220 | So a case study, Jesse, my own struggles is a lesson that everyone else can learn from.

00:02:59.900 | What's the optimal, what's the minimum time for writing?

00:03:03.060 | I mean, for me, for book writing, I need two hours, maybe two and a half hours for that

00:03:08.340 | particular activity.

00:03:09.440 | There's other deep work activities I can get in and out in 90 minutes, which is the minimum

00:03:14.340 | I usually say.

00:03:15.340 | There's other activities I can do it, but they're typically activities where it's clearly

00:03:18.380 | encapsulated.

00:03:19.380 | Like, yeah, in 90 minutes of which maybe 60 will be hard thinking, you'll be able to make

00:03:24.260 | progress.

00:03:25.260 | There'll be a clear stopping point.

00:03:26.260 | You know, uh, brainstorming is sometimes like this.

00:03:29.580 | Sometimes if I have a, a, a proof idea, that's pretty for my mathematics work, that's pretty

00:03:35.140 | concise.

00:03:36.140 | I was like, I got to just write this down and I know it'll take an hour.

00:03:37.980 | That's fine.

00:03:38.980 | But if I'm starting from scratch to try to make an argument, I need two hours or two

00:03:42.180 | and a half hours.

00:03:43.180 | So I'm going to try to write after this today.

00:03:45.680 | That's not my optimal time, but I, I'm going to throw a ritual at it.

00:03:50.340 | I'm not going to touch my email inboxes.

00:03:52.280 | I want to go complete context shift from our work to getting in a writing block.

00:03:57.660 | Maybe I'll go to a different location, but I want to, I want to solve this puzzle.

00:04:03.260 | So we're going to, I'm going to try a little off schedule writing time for me.

00:04:06.740 | It's like the, uh, potion from episode two 23.

00:04:09.620 | Yes.

00:04:10.620 | When I was establishing myself as awesome and not a nerd where we talked about Felix,

00:04:14.580 | wait, Felix Felicity, it's Felicity.

00:04:17.580 | I don't know.

00:04:18.580 | We'll see if we get email about that, but yeah, this was okay.

00:04:21.300 | If you listen to the last, uh, podcast where I was being awesome because I was referencing

00:04:24.980 | Harry Potter, I was saying the way people time block too often is with huge optimism.

00:04:30.540 | And so it's a plan of in a perfect world.

00:04:33.380 | If they were taking that potion from Harry Potter six in a perfect world, how they would

00:04:37.700 | want their day to unfold, not the reality.

00:04:40.400 | That was me this morning.

00:04:42.660 | It was, I was Harry Potter as a Harry Potter.

00:04:46.280 | If he had not successfully use the potion instructions from the half blood princes,

00:04:52.780 | potion making manual that won him in slug horns class, the, the good luck potion, which

00:04:57.140 | gave him that good luck day.

00:04:58.260 | It would be as if Harry Potter never actually found or use those instructions.

00:05:01.840 | If he had listened to Hermione's reprimand that you should try to do your work on your

00:05:05.660 | own without the help and did not get the potion.

00:05:08.620 | That was me this morning when I optimistically said, I'm sure I can get an hour of intro

00:05:13.280 | writing done.

00:05:14.280 | No problem.

00:05:15.280 | Cut it off after an hour and get right back to podcasting.

00:05:17.780 | But I did not have that potion.

00:05:19.180 | I did not get it done.

00:05:20.700 | Oh man, that cracks me up.

00:05:23.300 | That's so good.

00:05:24.300 | Harry Potter.

00:05:25.300 | Jesse loves when I talk Harry Potter.

00:05:26.300 | Cause even when I was editing up stuff for YouTube for two 23, I heard you say it again

00:05:31.820 | and again, and I was dying every time.

00:05:34.060 | It's so good.

00:05:35.060 | You know, there's these, it's true though.

00:05:36.740 | In the early days of podcasting, some of the monster, some of the monster podcast out there,

00:05:41.260 | I'm talking like Oh seven, right.

00:05:44.100 | Where Harry Potter podcast, like that was, these were like the original deep dive on

00:05:49.700 | a topic podcast.

00:05:50.700 | That's normal now, but pre the major podcast revolution, you had these podcasts like Melissa

00:05:56.340 | Anelli's the leaky cauldron, and I read her book at some point where they would just obsess

00:06:01.900 | over like every detail about Harry Potter is like the original intersection of fan culture

00:06:06.620 | and podcasting.

00:06:07.620 | I don't know if that's still a thing because I guess the books are over, but yeah, what

00:06:11.140 | I'm trying to say, Jesse is I think we should change format.

00:06:14.940 | There is a gap in the world of hardcore Harry Potter podcasting that we can go and refill

00:06:20.940 | throw a little nationals baseball and then we'll be golden nationals baseball.

00:06:25.020 | So there's a long list of things that our listeners write in and say, please stop talking

00:06:29.380 | about this.

00:06:30.820 | Baseball is very high up on the list.

00:06:32.060 | I think we can get Harry Potter on that list pretty quickly.

00:06:34.460 | I think a couple more segments, a couple more segments.

00:06:38.420 | We will have our readers begging us stop.

00:06:41.220 | Stop talking about Harry Potter.

00:06:42.620 | All right.

00:06:43.780 | Well, speaking of topics that our listeners sometimes say, stop talking about, I do, I

00:06:50.460 | am going to want to do a deep dive here shortly about Twitter.

00:06:53.700 | I do feel somewhat obligated to talk about it given my background on this topic and current

00:06:58.140 | events, but worry not.

00:06:59.660 | As you will see, we are going to take an oblique angle onto this topic.

00:07:03.460 | We're going to come at it from a different angle, so hopefully we'll get somewhere new

00:07:08.220 | later in the show.

00:07:09.220 | We also have another live caller.

00:07:11.540 | So this is where I get to go back and forth with one of the deep questions, listeners

00:07:15.100 | and help them in real time with their issue.

00:07:17.700 | We have a great collection of just old fashioned voice and written questions.

00:07:22.020 | And at the end of the show today, we have a segment that I call three interesting things

00:07:27.860 | where I take three things from the world of, I don't know, entertainment, media, literature,

00:07:33.580 | et cetera, that caught my attention this week.

00:07:35.460 | And I will go through all three briefly.

00:07:37.340 | So maybe point you towards some interesting ideas or things to consume in the week ahead.

00:07:42.100 | All right, Jesse, sound like a plan?

00:07:43.700 | Yeah, sounds great.

00:07:44.700 | All right, well, let's go on to our deep dive.

00:07:47.500 | I'm calling this one a world without Twitter.

00:07:52.940 | So I made what's perhaps the mistake of checking in this week on media coverage of Twitter,

00:08:01.300 | Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, what's going on there.

00:08:05.460 | I regret it.

00:08:07.100 | I kind of want those 30 minutes of my life back.

00:08:09.940 | Here's what I noticed in my cursory examination of media coverage of Elon Musk and Twitter

00:08:16.740 | is that essentially a decision has been made that Elon Musk is public enemy number one.

00:08:24.380 | And it has led to news coverage that I find to be both boring and ironic.

00:08:30.340 | So I think it's boring because what we have is just everyone lining up to take their shot

00:08:35.600 | at attacking Musk and why he's bad, right?

00:08:38.280 | So there's a pinata hanging, a proverbial pinata hanging, and there's a full consensus

00:08:44.180 | that this is a bad pinata that is going to destroy democracy.

00:08:48.340 | So I don't know where you buy your pinatas from, but don't buy it from that store.

00:08:51.220 | And everyone's just lining up to take their take.

00:08:53.420 | Now, why this is ironic is because it feels as if this consensus of, you know, he is bad

00:08:58.860 | guy number one needs to go away was formed on Twitter, is being enforced on Twitter.

00:09:05.500 | And after everyone takes their turn with their takedown piece on Musk, they then return to

00:09:10.420 | Twitter to see if they're getting enough lottets or how much celebration they're getting.

00:09:15.140 | So it's this weird sort of incestual circularity going on where all these reporters are obsessed

00:09:21.860 | with Twitter.

00:09:23.300 | That obsession with Twitter is fueling their takedown of Twitter on which they're seeing

00:09:27.980 | what the reaction is to their takedown of Twitter.

00:09:30.140 | All of it's all mixed up and it's just uninteresting to me.

00:09:33.540 | So I thought, let me come at this topic from a different angle.

00:09:39.300 | So one of the discussions that's happening, which I think is more interesting, is will

00:09:42.420 | we see a viable alternative to Twitter emerge?

00:09:47.300 | And in particular, there's a strain of conversation that's big right now that's saying, will the

00:09:51.140 | potential fall of Twitter lead to the rise of one of the independent social media alternatives?

00:10:00.020 | So these independent social media alternatives that are not massive platform monopolies owned

00:10:05.060 | by billionaires.

00:10:06.060 | Now, I don't want to act as if I'm ahead of all trends, but I do want to point towards

00:10:11.020 | an article I wrote for the New Yorker back in 2019.

00:10:14.500 | I'm loading this on the tablet now for people who are watching at youtube.com/calendarportmedia.

00:10:21.060 | This was actually my first article I ever wrote for the New Yorker.

00:10:25.020 | It is from May of 2019 and the title is, "Can Indie Social Media Save Us?"

00:10:33.940 | So the point of this article was to look at this subset of the social media universe which

00:10:38.980 | had been overlooked, which is independent social media services, small, often open source

00:10:44.860 | social media alternatives.

00:10:46.780 | At the time, there wasn't much discussion of these.

00:10:49.300 | Today there is.

00:10:50.300 | And in particular, in the last new cycle or two, there's been a lot of focus on one particular

00:10:56.180 | independent social media service called Mastodon.

00:10:59.220 | I'm going to scroll here in this article to show you that Mastodon is something I mentioned

00:11:04.860 | about.

00:11:05.860 | So here we go.

00:11:06.860 | From my piece, "Mastodon, another popular indie web service, exists in the middle ground

00:11:10.900 | between centralized and decentralized social media."

00:11:12.980 | So I talked about Mastodon back in 2019 as a potential Twitter alternative.

00:11:18.580 | So this is what I want to get into today.

00:11:21.660 | How does Mastodon work?

00:11:24.340 | Will it emerge as a potential more independent alternative to what Twitter was doing?

00:11:30.420 | And if so, would that be better?

00:11:31.540 | And if not, what does that tell us?

00:11:32.620 | So how does Mastodon work?

00:11:33.820 | Will it become an alternative to Twitter?

00:11:38.740 | And then I'll return to what I wrote in this article.

00:11:40.300 | We'll see how my conclusions from back then mesh with what I'm thinking today.

00:11:44.060 | All right.

00:11:45.060 | So what is Mastodon?

00:11:46.980 | The right way to understand it is, it is an open source Twitter style service.

00:11:53.780 | But unlike Twitter, it is distributed.

00:11:57.180 | So there is open source software for running a Mastodon server.

00:12:01.060 | Anyone can go and download the software.

00:12:03.120 | They can install it on their own server and they can run a Mastodon server.

00:12:07.380 | It's open source, so it's free.

00:12:08.540 | You just have to give proper acknowledgement that, "Hey, this code comes from the Mastodon

00:12:13.060 | project."

00:12:14.060 | A little aside, there's a whole controversy that only really tech nerds understood.

00:12:18.140 | But when Donald Trump first launched his social media network, Truth Social, they essentially

00:12:23.060 | just stole all the code from Mastodon without doing any of the acknowledgements.

00:12:28.180 | And that created a bit of a problem.

00:12:29.900 | That sounds familiar.

00:12:30.900 | Anyways, so anyone can download the software, start their own server.

00:12:34.020 | So Jesse and I could put a computer here in the studio and we could run a Mastodon server

00:12:38.420 | on it.

00:12:39.820 | When you're running a Mastodon server, you can have users join, sign up, have a username

00:12:45.180 | for your server.

00:12:46.220 | And what the server implements is something like Twitter.

00:12:49.280 | You can post things on the server, up to 500 characters, and you can see what other people

00:12:55.400 | have posted in reverse chronological order.

00:12:58.300 | So very much like a Twitter short form post reverse chron sorting type system.

00:13:05.020 | It has a similar follower dynamic to Twitter as well.

00:13:07.940 | So you can actually say, "Well, here are the people I want to actually follow.

00:13:11.040 | So show me their posts when they come up in reverse chronological order.

00:13:14.380 | I don't want to know about that person, et cetera."

00:13:16.060 | So that's the core of Mastodon.

00:13:18.580 | I can start my own mini Twitter for free.

00:13:22.280 | Anyone can join it.

00:13:23.280 | Typically, the way these servers are supported is a Patreon.

00:13:26.700 | That's pretty common.

00:13:27.700 | I mean, it's not super expensive to run one of these servers, but you might just ask the

00:13:30.740 | members, "Hey, can you kick in and donate?"

00:13:33.120 | So that's a nice benefit from those who are concerned about attention economy dynamics.

00:13:38.460 | It's typically not ad based.

00:13:39.820 | It's, you know, "Hey, this is going to cost whatever, a couple thousand dollars a year

00:13:42.980 | to run.

00:13:43.980 | Hey, users on my server, can you chip in some money?"

00:13:47.380 | Mastodon also comes with a protocol for different servers to talk to each other.

00:13:53.300 | So now what can happen is, let's say you have an account on the server that Jesse and I

00:13:58.300 | have here in the studio, and there's whatever, a hundred users who use this server and you

00:14:02.780 | follow some of them and you post and it looks like Twitter.

00:14:05.900 | You can follow people on other servers as well.

00:14:09.680 | So let's say someone else we know has their own Mastodon server and someone else who's

00:14:13.380 | interesting, who you find to be more interesting than Jesse and I, is over on that other server.

00:14:18.940 | So maybe you're like, "You know, I kind of like the Cal and Jesse server, a lot of Harry

00:14:22.580 | Potter talk going on.

00:14:24.460 | Not so sure that I only want to hear what they have to say, but someone else we like

00:14:29.300 | is on another Mastodon server."

00:14:31.140 | You can say, "I want to follow them."

00:14:32.740 | And this protocol, what it will do is basically your server will then talk to that other server

00:14:36.960 | and say, "Hey, we have someone over here who cares about a user of yours.

00:14:41.220 | Let us know when they post things."

00:14:42.840 | And so now I can see posts from other servers show up in my feed.

00:14:48.020 | All right.

00:14:49.020 | So it's a distributed solution.

00:14:50.980 | Individuals run these servers, but the servers can talk to each other.

00:14:54.140 | So I can see what people post on other servers if I choose to follow them and send a request.

00:15:00.060 | That's Mastodon.

00:15:02.060 | It has a real community niche feel.

00:15:06.040 | So traditionally each individual Mastodon server, which are called instances in Mastodon

00:15:10.500 | speak, will develop their own often quite complex community standards.

00:15:15.460 | That's the whole feel of Mastodons.

00:15:18.000 | Over here we have very specific rules about what you can and can't talk about.

00:15:21.140 | Over here they might be different.

00:15:23.440 | This is similar a little bit to what we see with Reddit and subreddits.

00:15:26.420 | We get these very specific community standards that exist on different reddits.

00:15:31.040 | As has become clear in the recent news cycles, it also has very powerful banning type features.

00:15:36.300 | So you can easily as an admin kick people off your instance.

00:15:40.060 | You can also block people on your server from following anyone from another server.

00:15:45.020 | So I can, if I run the Jesse Cal server and I don't like this rival Harry Potter server,

00:15:52.540 | I can ban that server, which means no one on my server is allowed to follow anyone from

00:15:56.740 | that server.

00:15:57.740 | You can also ban individuals.

00:15:58.940 | No one on my server can follow this particular individual.

00:16:01.340 | So there's a lot of power the admins have to control not just what's posted, but who

00:16:07.360 | the people on their server can actually follow or receive information from.

00:16:12.820 | All right, so that's basically how Mastodon works.

00:16:16.900 | So it is Twitter, but it has its own thing going on.

00:16:21.080 | Back to my 2019 article, I'll just show a couple things I wrote about Mastodon back

00:16:25.560 | then.

00:16:27.400 | So one thing I wrote in that article is because most Mastodon instances are small, typically

00:16:34.880 | each number is a couple thousands of users and crowdfunded by their members, they feel

00:16:38.560 | different from mass social media with an enticing free form energy reminiscent of the internet's

00:16:45.040 | early days.

00:16:46.520 | The contrast between this atmosphere and the one found on existing social networks is striking.

00:16:52.800 | So you definitely get this feel.

00:16:54.080 | I hung out a lot on Mastodon when I was writing that 2019 article.

00:16:59.160 | It feels like early web stuff.

00:17:01.560 | Very specific niche communities, very specific rules.

00:17:06.120 | Reminiscent of the textual conventions of Usenet news groups or the weird acronyms that

00:17:11.880 | were developed, the standards that were developed on early bulletin boards like The Well.

00:17:17.600 | Here's a more concrete summary I gave from that experience.

00:17:21.360 | Mastodon, at least for now, is a human scale environment in which users are happy to chat

00:17:26.760 | about quirky things with other quirky people.

00:17:30.720 | Recently when I logged into the Mastodon instance sunbeam.city, a "libertarian socialist solar

00:17:36.960 | punk" instance, I found a photo of someone's blooming spider plant next to a conversation

00:17:41.820 | about the consequences of ethical transparency in hierarchical systems.

00:17:45.080 | It struck me as the quintessential early internet experience.

00:17:49.680 | So that's what Mastodon looked like to me in 2019.

00:17:51.880 | It's like old Usenet boards.

00:17:53.080 | It's cool.

00:17:54.360 | Everyone's doing their own thing.

00:17:55.940 | The following between servers didn't seem widespread.

00:17:58.800 | It was more, "I like sunbeam.city.

00:18:01.920 | I like these people.

00:18:02.920 | We have our own quirky thing going on.

00:18:04.960 | Let's just go hang out there."

00:18:06.800 | So a really good early web energy.

00:18:10.520 | Can this be a replacement for Twitter that doesn't have one person?

00:18:15.360 | Priorly, that might've been Jack Dorsey.

00:18:17.880 | Today it's Elon Musk.

00:18:18.880 | Can we have a version of Twitter then where there is no one person, some sort of utopian

00:18:23.720 | alternative to Twitter?

00:18:25.400 | Find these good vibes I picked up in 2019 scale to be a Twitter-size impact on the internet.

00:18:33.080 | And here my argument is no.

00:18:35.960 | Mastodon will never be Twitter.

00:18:39.200 | It will never have its same significance or its same audience.

00:18:43.680 | The reason for this, and as I've talked about before on this show, Twitter is incredibly

00:18:48.640 | successful because it is a finely tuned engagement machine.

00:18:54.620 | That is very difficult to do.

00:18:56.440 | So we've gone into this before, but at the core of Twitter success is three elements.

00:19:01.840 | One that it has a massive user base that includes many potentially interesting people with engaging

00:19:06.880 | things to say.

00:19:07.880 | So you need a huge foundation of potentially interesting people with potentially interesting

00:19:12.920 | things to say.

00:19:13.920 | And I'm using interesting here in a completely value neutral manner.

00:19:17.320 | It could be interesting means engaging.

00:19:20.020 | So it could be outrageous.

00:19:21.560 | It could be shocking or it could be funny or it could be very smart.

00:19:25.000 | So you have comedians, you have expert commentators, you have celebrity figures, you have figures

00:19:30.640 | who have interesting takes on different aspects of the culture.

00:19:34.920 | This huge user base.

00:19:36.280 | Number two, Twitter has this massive social graph where all of these people have painstakingly

00:19:41.800 | defined these one-on-one dyadic follower connections.

00:19:45.920 | This creates this densely connected social graph that is encoding these type of social

00:19:51.800 | cultural capital relations.

00:19:53.520 | I'm following you because of all these subtle things I know about you and your standing

00:19:58.040 | in society or the content that you produce.

00:20:00.960 | You combine that with the retweet button and they come together to give you this sort of

00:20:05.320 | emergent distributed curation algorithm that's fantastically effective.

00:20:09.440 | So you have all these interesting people throwing out potentially effective things.

00:20:13.460 | Then you have the cumulative impact of 237 million users clicking retweet in this complex

00:20:18.480 | social graph and what emerges is this really successful filtering function where stuff

00:20:23.520 | that's engaging is identified and spread.

00:20:27.620 | As a result, if you click that Twitter app on your phone, its ability to show you thing

00:20:33.760 | after thing after thing that's going to capture your attention, that you could lose hours

00:20:38.800 | into is almost unparalleled.

00:20:41.880 | Instagram can do this pretty well with a similar sort of setting.

00:20:44.920 | Facebook used to do this pretty well but is now struggling.

00:20:48.760 | TikTok is doing this very well as we've talked about before.

00:20:51.640 | They've replaced this human-centric distributed curation with pure algorithmic curation, but

00:20:57.360 | it works pretty well in the sense of you can get lost in TikTok even more effectively than

00:21:02.880 | Twitter.

00:21:03.880 | But very few people can do this.

00:21:05.780 | It is a tight wire act.

00:21:07.120 | It is very difficult to pull off.

00:21:08.800 | This I can get lost in hour streaming, almost everything I see scrolling on this app is

00:21:13.240 | going to catch my attention in some way.

00:21:16.320 | Mastodon can't replicate that.

00:21:18.160 | It doesn't have enough critical mass of interesting people.

00:21:21.200 | It doesn't have this existing deep complex follower social graph which does a really

00:21:27.280 | good job of amplifying things.

00:21:29.680 | In fact, the dynamics of the Mastodon, there's a few choices that they've made specifically

00:21:34.080 | and by they, there's an actual founder, Eugene Rochko.

00:21:38.800 | They've made these decisions to try to cut down on virality.

00:21:41.400 | You can't quote tweet people, whatever they call it, a Mastodon quote post people.

00:21:46.480 | It's difficult to spread other people's things.

00:21:49.160 | Eugene wanted it to be more people just talking back and forth.

00:21:52.280 | It's difficult to do threads.

00:21:54.480 | You have all this dynamic of very niche content moderation and banning back and forth between

00:21:59.040 | different people.

00:22:00.040 | So you don't have that virality.

00:22:01.680 | You don't have the core of interesting people.

00:22:03.580 | So what you don't get on Mastodon is that experience of I open that app and I am engaged

00:22:07.920 | for as long as I want to scroll.

00:22:10.800 | What I saw when I was on Mastodon, which I think is true of the experience today is you

00:22:14.160 | enter a conversation with a community.

00:22:16.580 | Most of the stuff you see is not that interesting.

00:22:18.720 | It's more about going back and forth with people that over time you get to know and

00:22:23.840 | you find interesting things.

00:22:25.200 | You have to do a lot of work.

00:22:26.420 | You have to do a lot of sifting.

00:22:28.520 | That's early web stuff and it's cool.

00:22:31.880 | But from a pure engagement perspective, can't hold a candle to Twitter.

00:22:36.360 | No one is going to fall down a Mastodon rabbit hole hours at an end as reporter after reporter

00:22:41.480 | is realizing as they write about this service.

00:22:43.520 | It's actually kind of hard to spend a lot of time on Mastodon.

00:22:46.520 | It's like a Usenet news group in the early days.

00:22:48.920 | It's like the well.

00:22:49.920 | There's some cool stuff.

00:22:50.960 | You meet some cool people.

00:22:53.000 | Most of it's not that engaging.

00:22:55.820 | So no, I don't think Mastodon is going to be a replacement for Twitter.

00:23:01.360 | Is that a problem?

00:23:02.360 | I would say no.

00:23:04.840 | I don't think we need a replacement for Twitter.

00:23:09.480 | There is a great danger in taking essentially the entire populace of internet users and

00:23:15.540 | putting them all together on a homogenized interface.

00:23:19.360 | Everyone has easy access, the exact same accounts, all information looks the same, the network

00:23:25.120 | of connections through which information is being amplified, the curation is happening

00:23:28.820 | on the scale of hundreds of millions of users.

00:23:31.620 | I think that is a dangerous recipe.

00:23:35.400 | I think that is a dangerous recipe.

00:23:36.800 | It does not play well with the human social brain.

00:23:39.680 | It creates the virality dynamics, create these, as we've seen intense tribal pressures, intense

00:23:46.880 | psychological distress.

00:23:48.280 | Yes, it's very engaging to look at Twitter, but Twitter of the last three or four years

00:23:52.080 | has become engaging in the same way that the Roman Coliseum was engaging.

00:23:56.080 | It's more about watching gladiators from your tribe do battles from gladiators from the

00:24:00.440 | other tribe.

00:24:01.440 | Revelling in the outrage when someone from your tribe is being unfairly speared with

00:24:06.760 | the proverbial trident and the people commenting on how unfair this is, celebrating when your

00:24:10.860 | team gets someone from the other team.

00:24:12.880 | We found an angle of attack.

00:24:14.520 | We threw that net thing around them and dragged them into the lion pit.

00:24:17.580 | It's spectacle.

00:24:18.680 | It's a spectacle of the elites, as I said in a recent New Yorker piece.

00:24:22.440 | Yeah, it's engaging, but we don't need that type of engagement.

00:24:25.840 | And I know there's lots of other arguments in favor of Twitter.

00:24:28.400 | Journalists like it because it helps them find what's going on in the news.

00:24:31.320 | I don't mind if you have to work harder to find out what's going in the news because

00:24:34.480 | the side effect of you all using the same platform is that everything becomes consensus.

00:24:40.080 | Everyone just says, what is our particular tribe in the world of media think about this?

00:24:44.720 | Great, let's go.

00:24:46.400 | There's not enough interesting new angles.

00:24:48.440 | There's not enough, I would say, diverse viewpoints of world events.

00:24:51.560 | It all just breaks, balkanizes into three viewpoints and everyone goes back to the arena.

00:24:55.240 | So I don't care if it's harder for you to find news.

00:24:58.360 | Yeah, it can help you connect with interesting people.

00:25:01.320 | There's other ways to connect with interesting people that aren't going to put your blood

00:25:04.700 | pressure through the roof.

00:25:06.640 | That's not going to give you a low grade anxiety disorder like Twitter can do.

00:25:10.560 | Mastodon is great for that.

00:25:12.000 | Join an instance, have several instances of affinity groups related to things you care

00:25:18.640 | about.

00:25:19.640 | You can build really interesting relationships there.

00:25:21.280 | It's a small scale.

00:25:22.280 | It's a human style scale, but it's connecting you to people that you never otherwise would

00:25:25.000 | have found without the internet.

00:25:26.440 | That's brilliant social internet possibility at work without those downsides of Twitter.

00:25:32.120 | And the engagement part of Twitter, find other things that are engaging.

00:25:36.200 | Read books, watch streaming shows, listen to episode after episode of the Deep Questions

00:25:40.840 | podcast, do stuff in the real world, make more Harry Potter references.

00:25:46.240 | I don't know.

00:25:48.120 | The fact that this is engaging is not enough of a justification for we should keep it around.

00:25:51.720 | So I don't think Mastodon can replace Twitter, but I don't think we need anything to replace

00:25:56.760 | Twitter.

00:25:57.760 | So let me go back to the conclusion I made in that 2019 article.

00:26:00.600 | Let's see if I was clairvoyant or not.

00:26:04.100 | So I did say the internet may work better when it's spread out as originally designed.

00:26:08.840 | So I like this idea of more distributed, more niche, less universal.

00:26:13.880 | But then I conclude, despite its advantages, however, I suspect that the Indie web will

00:26:19.520 | not succeed in replacing existing social media platforms at their current scale.

00:26:25.000 | For one thing, the Indie web lacks the carefully engineered addictiveness that helped fuel

00:26:29.280 | the rise of services like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

00:26:33.200 | This addictiveness has kept people returning to their devices even when they know there

00:26:36.280 | are better uses for their time.

00:26:38.280 | Remove the addiction and you might lose the users.

00:26:40.840 | All right.

00:26:41.840 | I think that's just another way of saying what I'm saying today.

00:26:44.480 | Those existing giants were fantastically effective at generating engagement in the social media

00:26:49.160 | world.

00:26:50.160 | If you can't compete, get rid of the engagement, you lose most of the users.

00:26:54.380 | As I go on to say, though, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

00:26:59.720 | It may be too that people who are uneasy about social media aren't looking for a better version

00:27:04.800 | of it, but are instead ready to permanently reduce the role that their smartphones play

00:27:09.820 | in their lives.

00:27:13.600 | What I think is the most hopeful potential conclusion here is, sure, there's alternatives.

00:27:21.580 | Some people who are into social internet stuff can find actually healthier, more community-driven,

00:27:26.640 | more eccentric, original, early web-style online communities, and I'm glad those exist.

00:27:32.020 | Most people will say if Twitter fell, "I'm not going to sign up for a Mastodon instance,"

00:27:36.360 | and honestly, it's kind of nice to be able to hear the birds again and see the sunshine.

00:27:40.680 | I'm sort of glad this thing is gone.

00:27:42.760 | I don't need a replacement.

00:27:44.860 | So that's where I fall.

00:27:45.860 | No, we're not going to see an obvious replacement for Twitter, and I don't care that that might

00:27:51.060 | end up being the reality that we go into next.

00:27:54.720 | I mean, the real question, Jesse, is, is Twitter going to go away?

00:27:58.720 | I'm not convinced.

00:27:59.720 | It's hard for me to tell.

00:28:00.720 | >>Jesse Nichols I don't think it's going to go away.

00:28:03.240 | >>Dave Portnoy There's issues about engineering.

00:28:04.900 | This is the conversation right now is because so many people are being fired that it'll

00:28:08.480 | literally crash.

00:28:11.560 | Putting those aside, it's an engagement engine like almost no one else.

00:28:15.760 | For people who are too old or, I'll get yelled at for this, or have too much self-respect

00:28:20.880 | to be on TikTok, it's the next most addictive thing they have.

00:28:23.960 | I mean, it's an incredibly engaging thing, especially if you're a well-educated, upper

00:28:28.720 | middle class, sort of elite knowledge worker type.

00:28:32.040 | It's put it in my veins engagement.

00:28:35.920 | There's very few things that can compete with that.

00:28:39.200 | It's really hard.

00:28:40.840 | That's my thing is that engagement requires all of these elements to come together.

00:28:44.400 | A lot of them relied on first mover advantages.

00:28:47.840 | 237 million users that include all these interesting people.

00:28:50.920 | This incredibly valuable social graph, the interface retweet dynamic that does such a

00:28:55.240 | good job of curation.

00:28:56.360 | It's hard to do that.

00:28:57.360 | So, yeah, I'm kind of with you.

00:28:59.200 | I mean, unless Musk shuts it down, like the tech crashes and he says enough of it, let's

00:29:04.160 | just shut it down, which I don't think is going to happen.

00:29:06.160 | >>Jesse Nichols He wouldn't waste $40 billion to do that?

00:29:08.600 | >>Ted Whittaker Yeah, he has his debt service on his Twitter

00:29:11.400 | act is acquisitions a billion dollars a year.

00:29:13.400 | He owes a billion dollars a year just to service the debt on Twitter.

00:29:17.280 | So I don't think he's going to do that.

00:29:19.480 | I think what's going to happen is, and it's something I talked about a while ago, is that

00:29:23.040 | Twitter was actually well positioned to be taken private like he did.

00:29:28.940 | It could easily be something that generates a couple billion dollars a year in revenue,

00:29:33.000 | pretty sleekly with really high profit margins, which is really all Musk needs out of it.

00:29:38.480 | So once you lose that ambition that Facebook has to be a trillion dollar valuation company,

00:29:45.120 | which was their ambition before the wheels fell off, once you're like, we don't have

00:29:48.040 | to be a trillion dollar competitor to Apple, once it's, you know, hey, this thing generates

00:29:53.040 | $2.5 billion a year off of 150 million really engaged users, and it has a sleek background,

00:29:59.160 | and we have a 2000 employee company, and it's, you know, we can service our debt and it makes

00:30:03.320 | good profit for the people who own it.

00:30:07.920 | I mean, I'm sure that's the play.

00:30:09.840 | The question is like whether he's all there.

00:30:11.560 | That's the only, that's the only eight ball here.

00:30:13.600 | I don't know.

00:30:14.600 | It's hard to tell because everything's so negative on Musk right now.

00:30:16.360 | I mean, if he's literally losing his grip mentally, then God knows what will happen.

00:30:21.980 | But if we, if we assume a strategic Musk, I don't think it's that hard to make this

00:30:26.960 | a sleek, profitable, semi niche service.

00:30:31.920 | It's not trying to be TikTok or Facebook.

00:30:33.920 | It's not trying to be mastodon.

00:30:35.120 | It's somewhere in between and generates like a reasonable amount of money for a small number

00:30:39.280 | of people.

00:30:40.280 | That's probably where it'll end up.

00:30:41.360 | You should ask your boy Lex.

00:30:42.800 | Yeah, yeah, I should.

00:30:45.080 | I think, I think Lex is buddies with Elon.

00:30:47.880 | Yeah, he's on a show.

00:30:49.440 | Yeah, yeah.

00:30:50.440 | I think they're, I think they're buddies.

00:30:51.440 | I'll ask him.

00:30:52.440 | I'll say, what's, what's going on here?

00:30:54.760 | All right.

00:30:55.760 | So I want to get to a live caller.

00:30:57.680 | Enough about me.

00:30:58.680 | Let's get to a live caller.

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00:34:31.160 | All right, Jesse, I'm liking the live interaction we've put into the show.

00:34:40.120 | Last week, we had our friend David Sachs in the studio helping us answer some questions.

00:34:44.600 | Today, let's take a live call from one of our listeners.

00:34:47.720 | Yep, we've got Philip here.

00:34:50.080 | So let's take a listen.

00:34:52.000 | All right, Philip, thanks for calling into the podcast.

00:34:55.700 | What is on your mind today?

00:34:57.120 | Hey, Cal.

00:34:58.760 | So I've been recently going through a bit of a life shift.

00:35:01.920 | I spent a few years as an entrepreneur running two venture capital backed startups.

00:35:06.520 | Then after selling my last company, I worked in product management roles at a couple of

00:35:11.400 | later stage technology startups for a few years.

00:35:14.640 | And that was a lot of hyperactive hive mind, over 100 Slack channels or 30 meetings per

00:35:19.280 | week.

00:35:20.280 | A lot of structured what I was working on also, though.

00:35:23.080 | And so now I've split out to start a new company.

00:35:25.600 | And my goal is to build it solo without external funding, kind of base camp style.

00:35:30.520 | And I'm spending about half of my time doing consulting work to cover costs.

00:35:33.840 | And I'm spending the other half of my time developing my own in-house products.

00:35:37.760 | The goal is to grow these in-house products and revenue so I can eventually focus on them

00:35:41.120 | more full time.

00:35:42.120 | And I split out solo because I did some value based lifestyle centric career planning and

00:35:46.760 | decided that starting a solo product development studio aligns more with the values and lifestyle

00:35:51.520 | that I wanted to pursue.

00:35:53.380 | So my high level question is like, how do I apply the principles of slow productivity

00:35:56.920 | and deep life to set myself up for success?

00:35:59.680 | I've gone from a lot of structure to no structure, and I could use some help making sure that

00:36:03.200 | my habits are sustainable.

00:36:04.720 | Well, I mean, first of all, I'm upset that you're not using our acronym for that.

00:36:10.520 | VBLCCP.

00:36:11.520 | VBLCCP.

00:36:12.520 | Yeah.

00:36:13.520 | I mean, we got to be pithy.

00:36:14.920 | I think we all agree that that rolls off the tongue.

00:36:17.360 | Okay.

00:36:18.360 | This is a great question.

00:36:20.520 | Tell me a little bit more though about this studio situation you have set up.

00:36:26.960 | What's that like?

00:36:27.960 | So what's the work going to be like?

00:36:29.760 | Yeah.

00:36:30.760 | So I'm doing some product development.

00:36:32.800 | So I'm working with a client, kind of building an entire application and end including like

00:36:38.320 | definition and design and things like that.

00:36:40.600 | And I'm working on a couple of personal projects, like one of which is the main focus already

00:36:45.200 | has revenue, already has some customers.

00:36:47.440 | It's not quite like revenue to live off of.

00:36:49.160 | This is a path I used to start my previous company, Moonlight.

00:36:53.280 | So we did some freelancing as we grew the company and eventually it grew in size and

00:36:59.600 | phrase venture capital and kind of took a traditional kind of path.

00:37:04.440 | And I think a lot of what I'm trying to do with this product studio is also not necessarily

00:37:08.560 | trying to pursue that traditional path.

00:37:10.360 | There's a lot of kind of extrinsic markers of success.

00:37:12.920 | Like you could go raise money and hire employees and things like that.

00:37:16.400 | I'm trying to be a little bit more controlled about that.

00:37:19.120 | So my day to day is really unstructured.

00:37:21.560 | I have full control of my time now.

00:37:23.360 | I have one client meeting per week, which is a lot less than what I had at later stage

00:37:28.400 | startups.

00:37:30.320 | So I'm intending to break my day into three, two hour deep work blocks with kind of two

00:37:35.080 | hours in between each for a mix of admin work and breaks.

00:37:39.080 | So I guess kind of like a general high level question I have is, is this too much or too

00:37:42.180 | little deep work in a given day?

00:37:44.760 | And with more control of my time, is it better to break up my day more or to try to keep

00:37:48.760 | deep work and more work admin work focused on more of a traditional kind of nine to five

00:37:54.400 | slots?

00:37:55.400 | Yep.

00:37:56.400 | That's a good, that's a good question.

00:37:57.400 | And we'll get in this nitty gritty.

00:37:58.400 | I want to underscore first, I like your decision you made of, well, let's keep this small.

00:38:06.440 | Have you read Paul Jarvis, The Company of One?

00:38:09.800 | Yeah, I've read part of it.

00:38:11.280 | I don't think I finished it, but it's a good book.

00:38:13.680 | I mean, you're right in line, I think, with Paul's thinking here.

00:38:18.160 | If people haven't read that, they should.

00:38:20.720 | It has a blurb for me, so you know that it's quality.

00:38:24.560 | Paul also, he was a designer, I guess he was in web design.

00:38:27.400 | And the whole book is about instead of expanding your company, so companies that begin with

00:38:32.560 | you and your skill, instead of expanding it, they hit those intrinsic markers of success,

00:38:37.640 | so size, revenue, then funding.

00:38:39.840 | His whole point is keep it small.

00:38:43.200 | If you get more in demand, you can just charge more and therefore even work less.

00:38:47.280 | Like actually, it can be a great engine for a lifestyle that you have a huge amount of

00:38:51.160 | autonomy over.

00:38:52.160 | And I think it's a great model.

00:38:54.280 | So in terms of your specific day, there's no right answer to the exact right way to

00:38:59.560 | move deep work around how many blocks to have.

00:39:02.240 | I have a couple things I'm going to throw out there, a couple heuristics, and you can

00:39:05.480 | see which of these might stick.

00:39:08.840 | I'm a big believer in these situations of doing meeting-free Monday and Friday, if you

00:39:13.520 | can.

00:39:14.520 | So you just have the scheduling heuristic that client calls, client meetings, you know, whatever.

00:39:19.640 | I got to call my accountant.

00:39:20.960 | We got the IT person's upgrading some sort of software, whatever it is, nothing gets

00:39:25.280 | scheduled for Monday and Fridays.

00:39:28.320 | That alone just changes the character of the week because it's like you have a four-day

00:39:32.720 | weekend.

00:39:33.720 | You're just deep working on Friday.

00:39:35.000 | You're deep working on Monday.

00:39:36.280 | You can really get lost in things.

00:39:38.360 | So I think that can make a big difference.

00:39:41.080 | And then the other thing I might suggest would be consolidating the deep work.

00:39:45.440 | All right.

00:39:46.520 | Deep work to lunch, meetings, clients, administrative stuff in the afternoon.

00:39:51.040 | Trying to keep that together, keep that mindset going, and not have anything interspersed

00:39:57.760 | into that that's unrelated.

00:40:00.240 | So those are two heuristics I've seen.

00:40:02.200 | Would that graft well onto your current setup?

00:40:04.760 | Some, yeah.

00:40:06.520 | I really wanted to live more asynchronously when I started this company.

00:40:10.880 | So I only have one meeting per week normally.

00:40:13.680 | All right.

00:40:14.680 | That's easy.

00:40:15.680 | Yeah.

00:40:16.680 | So that makes it easier.

00:40:17.680 | But that also is a lot more uncertainty in terms of should every day kind of be the same

00:40:21.560 | or kind of create more texture throughout the week.

00:40:25.360 | But yeah.

00:40:26.360 | So you think that kind of training to do longer periods of deep work is better?

00:40:31.920 | Yeah.

00:40:32.920 | I would do it first thing in the day until lunch.

00:40:36.840 | Maybe just make that be a standard.

00:40:38.960 | And then the other thing I would do, I mean, you have a very enviable situation here.

00:40:42.480 | You have a huge amount of autonomy in terms of demands on your time because of the way

00:40:46.720 | you set this up.

00:40:47.720 | So congratulations.

00:40:49.660 | This is something I do during the summer.

00:40:51.160 | Like when I'm a professor in the summer, I'm like you all the time.

00:40:53.880 | So I have many fewer obligations.

00:40:56.080 | My time is very, very open.

00:40:58.080 | And so I have the same concern about how to structure it.

00:41:00.480 | It's deep work in the morning and then variable but clearly defined shutdowns.

00:41:05.240 | That's another thing I lean into is I'm going to time block out my afternoon.

00:41:09.400 | I'll be clear about when my shutdown is going to happen this afternoon.

00:41:13.200 | And when I'm shut down complete, I'm not working on work anymore.

00:41:16.440 | That can be really early some days.

00:41:18.200 | Right.

00:41:19.200 | So what this allows you to do is it's Tuesday.

00:41:20.200 | I deep work till lunch and that went really well.

00:41:23.960 | I don't have any particularly pressing administrative thing.

00:41:26.400 | I'm going to do a formal schedule shutdown ritual at one o'clock.

00:41:30.680 | And because I recognize, hey, this day is done and I feel good about it, I can really

00:41:34.360 | lean into those other hours to do other things.

00:41:37.720 | Clearly unrelated to work or whatever.

00:41:39.520 | And then on another day, you said, look, I got my call with my client and now I really

00:41:43.120 | got to figure out whatever this new software package.

00:41:46.040 | And so this is going to take me till five and I'll do the clear shutdown then.

00:41:49.320 | But having the clearly defined shutdown each day, I mean, allows you to really work with

00:41:53.800 | this variable workflow and take a lot more advantage of what it gives you.

00:41:57.680 | I mean, maybe you want to become a cinephile.

00:42:00.000 | It's like, great, two days a week I'm going to the movies at the two o'clock show or whatever.

00:42:04.880 | You know, that's the type of thing you can do when you feel like I shut down.

00:42:08.880 | I feel comfortable shutting down.

00:42:11.320 | I'm looking at my schedule.

00:42:12.760 | This is good.

00:42:13.760 | I'm on track for things.

00:42:15.120 | And so now I really have to figure out what to do with my time.

00:42:18.240 | That's what I might also be concerned about if I was making sure it's not this hazy mix

00:42:21.720 | of work and non-work guilt in the afternoon.

00:42:24.840 | Like I don't know, maybe I should go back on email.

00:42:26.920 | What's going on?

00:42:28.560 | Be clear about it, but then be very comfortable taking advantage of all the advantages you

00:42:32.920 | have.

00:42:33.920 | Okay, great.

00:42:34.920 | Another kind of question along the lines of slow productivity is should I work on weekends?

00:42:40.440 | So I'm trying to do some client work and some personal work.

00:42:43.920 | So I am not sure if I should continue working on weekends right now.

00:42:48.200 | I'm taking one day off per week, but I think there could be value in getting more done.

00:42:53.120 | So how do you think about working on weekends?

00:42:56.160 | Would it be the personal project that you're mainly doing on the weekends?

00:42:59.080 | Yeah, I think it's fine.

00:43:01.880 | I mean, if you have the time and you find it interesting, I think you're smart to take,

00:43:06.200 | you know, whether it be Saturday or Sunday, a full day completely off is fine.

00:43:11.680 | But if you're working on a personal project, I think that's fine.

00:43:14.480 | I typically will write on Sundays, for example.

00:43:17.480 | I don't do any other work on the weekend.

00:43:20.340 | So I'm not going to do CS work.

00:43:24.720 | Producer Jesse knows I'm probably not going to answer emails about issues with the podcast,

00:43:29.280 | whatever.

00:43:30.280 | But I do write because that's a very personal activity for me.

00:43:35.240 | It's meaningful to me.

00:43:37.080 | It doesn't change me into a mindset of hyperactive hive mind.

00:43:41.020 | So I think if your personal project is not throwing you back into a world of scheduling

00:43:46.240 | meetings and sending emails, but it's coding or is trying to master a new system, I think

00:43:51.680 | that's completely fine.

00:43:52.680 | I mean, if you enjoy it, go for it.

00:43:54.760 | Keep you one day off.

00:43:55.760 | I mean, I think you got this pretty well dialed in here, Philip, from what I'm hearing.

00:43:59.760 | So one of the life buckets is community.

00:44:03.800 | I've moved around a lot.

00:44:04.800 | I was a nomad for two years and I'm temporarily in a new city with my significant others and

00:44:09.760 | grad school.

00:44:10.760 | How do you think community should factor in for somebody in my situation?

00:44:15.040 | I think there's not a lot of local people that are in the same situation as me, but

00:44:19.160 | a lot of online communities tend to be more real time like Discord or Telegram.

00:44:26.480 | And I don't want to have those kind of synchronous demands on my attention.

00:44:31.520 | What do you think is a good way to kind of continue to have some community?

00:44:34.080 | Because I don't really have that from coworkers or from kind of other companies in the same

00:44:39.840 | situation through an investor or something like that.

00:44:43.240 | What city are you in?

00:44:44.240 | I'm in Chicago.

00:44:45.240 | Oh, okay.

00:44:46.240 | I mean, I think you should have community involvement.

00:44:52.240 | I think they should have scheduled synchronous demands on your time and I think they should

00:44:56.520 | be in person.

00:44:57.520 | I think that's an important part of the human condition.

00:45:01.680 | As I talk about in digital minimalism, it's actually the non-trivial sacrifice of time

00:45:06.920 | and attention on behalf of other people that makes that connection something that's valued

00:45:10.200 | by your brain.

00:45:12.280 | And so I would put in that work now.

00:45:15.200 | Now, are you saying your significant other is in grad school somewhere else or you came

00:45:18.880 | to Chicago?

00:45:19.880 | Okay, that's good.

00:45:20.880 | Yeah, we're here in Chicago.

00:45:21.880 | She's in school.

00:45:22.880 | I think I agree with what you're saying.

00:45:24.520 | I think what I'm having trouble with is finding peers.

00:45:26.720 | There's a lot of people that are more advanced or learning from me.

00:45:31.960 | But I think where I have issues is a lot of my kind of peers that I know are in other

00:45:37.560 | cities, not necessarily locally.

00:45:39.520 | Yeah.

00:45:40.520 | Well, I mean, I'm saying get entangled in some community involvement here unrelated

00:45:45.240 | to your work.

00:45:46.240 | Okay.

00:45:47.240 | That makes sense.

00:45:48.240 | Yeah.

00:45:49.240 | And I think it could be through fitness.

00:45:50.960 | It could be through faith.

00:45:52.140 | It could be through activity, whatever, trail running or whatever.

00:45:57.320 | I mean, there's such a wide variety.

00:46:00.220 | But I would anchor myself right away with or if you're into, I mentioned movie, you're

00:46:04.360 | into movies, like let me find a club that meets and does these things.

00:46:07.900 | And that becomes the offshoot of making friends and people you end up spending time with one

00:46:12.020 | on one.

00:46:13.020 | I think that's really critical.

00:46:14.020 | I would give it, I would recognize it's hard, right?

00:46:17.080 | Because we don't have like an app solution for that.

00:46:18.840 | We can't just like swipe a thing and then like a friend comes over.

00:46:22.720 | But I would put a lot of effort into that, especially if I'm new to a city.

00:46:26.360 | And you have the time and flexibility to do this.

00:46:28.720 | And I think that's a great investment of the time you have.

00:46:30.680 | Yeah.

00:46:31.680 | I've done a good job of meeting friends and communities locally.

00:46:35.560 | But I think the thing that I'm finding hardest kind of being solo is like professional peers

00:46:39.960 | and people that are working on similar problems and things like that.

00:46:42.920 | So I've considered kind of like setting up like a mastermind call or something weekly.

00:46:48.040 | It's the people that are working on similar things here.

00:46:50.400 | I think that's really kind of the main thing that I'm concerned about is meeting other

00:46:54.640 | people that are, that also think this isn't as crazy and that are going through kind of

00:47:00.200 | similar professional challenges or things like that.

00:47:03.800 | Yeah.

00:47:04.800 | Yeah.

00:47:05.800 | I see what you're saying.

00:47:06.800 | I mean, I think that could be helpful.

00:47:07.800 | Writers have the same issue.

00:47:08.800 | It's a very lonely job.

00:47:10.960 | You don't go to an office and it's weird.

00:47:13.160 | Like most people aren't writers.

00:47:14.620 | So it's hard to find.

00:47:16.760 | And I've done something similar.

00:47:17.760 | I've been involved in various writers groups.

00:47:20.320 | I mean, in my sense, the value where the value falls out of those is not the fact that we're

00:47:25.040 | getting together on zoom every other week.

00:47:28.000 | It's the six months in this particular member of the group you kind of connect with.

00:47:32.560 | And now there's someone you text with.

00:47:34.000 | Now there's someone that like you see when they're in town.

00:47:36.520 | So I see your question better now.

00:47:39.560 | I would say it's worth it having the, you talked about the synchronous commitment, make

00:47:44.080 | the commitment.

00:47:45.080 | I think that's fine.

00:47:46.080 | Yeah.

00:47:47.080 | I think that's fine.

00:47:48.080 | Yeah.

00:47:49.080 | They're usually mixed.

00:47:50.080 | These groups are okay, but it's like who you meet in the group could be, could be pretty

00:47:52.560 | valuable.

00:47:53.560 | So I see what you're saying there.

00:47:54.560 | But on the other hand, Hey, as a writer, I can say it is pretty lonely.

00:47:58.480 | I mean, I know other writers, but it's a, it's a pretty, it could be a pretty lonely

00:48:03.640 | job and, and that's just part of it.

00:48:06.280 | So you, you, you find connection, you know, outside.

00:48:10.640 | I mean, look, I built this studio so I can come hang out with people because otherwise

00:48:15.020 | I'm just writing, writing by myself.

00:48:17.000 | But also having my Georgetown position, I noticed a really big difference when the campus

00:48:22.060 | opened again, for example, post COVID like, Oh, just being able to come here, be around

00:48:26.320 | people.

00:48:27.320 | So I think that is really valuable.

00:48:28.320 | It's also just really hard.

00:48:29.320 | I just know a lot of writers who some of them meet other writer friends, but it's a weird

00:48:32.320 | job.

00:48:33.320 | Your situation might be similar.

00:48:34.600 | So I think it's worth it to try those, those groups.

00:48:37.200 | It might help.

00:48:38.200 | You might meet some people, but I think you need to be okay with the fact that you may

00:48:42.720 | not ever have the same experience as the other person, you know, who's in the 30 person venture

00:48:48.840 | backed startup and they're in the office 12 hours a day.

00:48:52.220 | And it's, you know, here's the ping pong table and we're just getting after it.

00:48:55.200 | You know, it is a little bit more lonely.

00:48:57.120 | I think Paul Jarvis is great about that in that book because he moved to the middle of

00:49:00.320 | nowhere and he lives, I don't know, in the woods.

00:49:03.440 | He lives in the woods in British Columbia somewhere.

00:49:06.680 | But they, they love it, but it's like completely different.

00:49:08.800 | I mean, they're, they are on their own up there doing their own thing.

00:49:12.520 | And so you can be happy with that too.

00:49:14.360 | So I basically am validating your pain here, Philip.

00:49:16.920 | It is hard and you can probably, you might be able to do better, but I don't want to

00:49:20.200 | sugar coat it.

00:49:21.520 | Like when you do a solo preneur type situation like this, I think a lot of your community

00:49:26.140 | connection comes outside of, outside of work.

00:49:28.880 | Yeah.

00:49:29.920 | How do you think about coaches?

00:49:32.080 | I think coaching is kind of having a moment right now and I've had some friends recommend

00:49:35.800 | hiring like a professional coach.

00:49:37.520 | I think that also kind of factors into accountability that on some of the client projects, I feel

00:49:42.560 | like I can be working harder for someone else than I work for myself.

00:49:45.520 | Do you think, like, how do you think about coaching?

00:49:48.400 | I think you should try it.

00:49:49.400 | Yeah.

00:49:50.400 | Do, do a six month engagement that like, this is what we're trying.

00:49:53.400 | So it's more like you re-op, not that you would have to actually cancel it yourself

00:49:56.880 | to see if it's a good fit or not.

00:49:58.280 | I have a coach.

00:49:59.280 | It is someone, she, she specializes in dealing with creatives who also are struggling with

00:50:06.560 | the issues of the business side of being a creative.

00:50:08.840 | So I mean, it is a very narrow expertise that I need a lot of help on.

00:50:14.340 | So she works with writers and filmmakers and screenwriters and directors and where businesses

00:50:21.400 | build up around their creative endeavors.

00:50:23.600 | And I found that to be really useful.

00:50:26.440 | So I would say I'm on board with coaching.

00:50:28.400 | Not every coach is going to be a fit.

00:50:30.420 | So try it out, but absolutely invest in that because you can get a huge return on that

00:50:36.660 | investment if it really changes the way you think about your business, the way you change,

00:50:40.420 | you think about your life.

00:50:41.780 | So yeah, you got my stamp of approval on that.

00:50:43.540 | I think there should be more coaching in general.

00:50:46.100 | And I think you're right.

00:50:47.100 | It's having a moment where people are realizing I do a high end job.

00:50:51.820 | There's a lot at stake.

00:50:52.820 | It's complicated.

00:50:53.820 | My, my, there's huge dividends to get in my life.

00:50:56.140 | If I could make big changes, I don't quite know how to do that.

00:50:58.700 | If there's someone who can help me through that, it could massively change the trajectory

00:51:01.940 | of my life.

00:51:02.940 | I'll hire a trainer, I'll hire a doctor, I'll hire all these other things.

00:51:05.740 | Why am I not hiring someone that's going to work on probably the most important thing

00:51:08.480 | I do, which is sort of figuring out exactly how my career unfolds.

00:51:11.680 | So yeah, you got my approval on that one too.

00:51:13.780 | Awesome.

00:51:14.780 | Thanks a lot.

00:51:15.780 | Great.

00:51:16.780 | Well, Philip, thanks for it.

00:51:17.780 | Thanks for calling.

00:51:18.780 | I think it's a good case study and a good constellation of related questions.

00:51:21.500 | So definitely keep us posted on how things are going for you there in Chicago.

00:51:25.100 | Will do.

00:51:26.100 | Thanks, Kyle.

00:51:27.100 | Thanks.

00:51:28.100 | Thank you again, Philip, for calling into the show.

00:51:30.340 | All right, Jessie, let's do some written questions submitted by our listeners.

00:51:34.300 | Hey, by the way, just a reminder, listeners, we want your written questions.

00:51:38.700 | You can go to the link that's right in the show description.

00:51:42.860 | It takes you right to a survey where you can submit your questions for consideration on

00:51:46.900 | the show.

00:51:47.900 | If you want to be a live caller, you can indicate it there.

00:51:50.660 | We also have a link in the show description if you want to leave a voicemail.

00:51:54.540 | So go check those out, submit your questions.

00:51:56.080 | We love them.

00:51:57.080 | All right.

00:51:58.080 | Let's get to the submitted question of this week's episode, Jessie.

00:52:03.140 | Okay.

00:52:04.140 | Question is from B. Have you found effective methods to sell the principles of deep work

00:52:09.060 | at an organizational level?

00:52:11.220 | Now, B elaborated.

00:52:13.220 | In addition to his question, he elaborated some details that he is at a company that

00:52:19.460 | is hardcore into the hyperactive hive mind mode of collaboration.

00:52:26.060 | He elaborated that the department he runs, he wants to move them away from the hive mind

00:52:32.320 | and maybe even spark change throughout the whole company.

00:52:35.300 | But he is concerned about being careful and political about how to do this.

00:52:39.760 | So that if he like in a lot of big companies, if he just rushes in and says, you all bad

00:52:44.660 | Cal good slack, go bad or whatever, that's not going to go well.

00:52:49.200 | So he's he's trying to be strategic about how he helps move his organization away from

00:52:56.200 | the hyperactive hive mind.

00:52:57.200 | All right.

00:52:58.200 | This is the issue I tackle in my book, A World Without Email.

00:53:02.740 | My book, Deep Work pointed out the value of concentration in the knowledge where context

00:53:06.560 | a world without email is about.

00:53:07.920 | How did we get to this point where that's so hard to do?

00:53:11.720 | And how do we go forward?

00:53:12.880 | How do we reform the structure of knowledge work to be more cognitive compatible?

00:53:18.880 | So drawing from that book, I'm going to give three steps.

00:53:23.480 | To be three steps to carefully start moving your department, perhaps organization away

00:53:28.340 | from the hive mind.

00:53:30.280 | Step number one is to identify the proper enemy.

00:53:35.280 | So in your discussions with other people about this issue, do not talk about it in terms

00:53:40.520 | of imposition or distraction.

00:53:43.280 | Don't say, you know, people are doing too many meetings.

00:53:46.960 | People are bad at email.

00:53:48.120 | People are on slack too much.

00:53:49.480 | People need to leave me alone.

00:53:51.340 | It's a negative framing and it's too imprecise.

00:53:54.360 | It rarely leads to actual change.

00:53:56.240 | The proper enemy to focus on, in my opinion, is context switches.

00:54:00.560 | They say, let's do some neuroscience here that neuroscientists have known about for

00:54:06.000 | decades.

00:54:07.000 | The human brain is slow to shift from one target of attention to another.

00:54:11.400 | It is a complex process where lots of things happen in lots of different systems inside

00:54:15.380 | this gray matter between our ears.

00:54:18.120 | So if you are rapidly shifting context, so jumping over to email, back to what you're

00:54:24.000 | writing, onto a short meeting, over to slack, back to what you're doing, it is a cognitive

00:54:28.400 | disaster.

00:54:30.280 | You're initiating context shifts.

00:54:32.880 | You are aborting the context shifts before they can complete, trying to go back to the

00:54:36.200 | original target of your concentration before that you can entirely return to that context.

00:54:42.020 | You shift to something else like slack, then you rip it back.

00:54:45.120 | This puts your mind in this permanent state of being in between context, which is a state

00:54:50.000 | in which it is very difficult to work at high capacity.

00:54:52.600 | It is also a state that is exhausting.

00:54:55.920 | It exhausts us as humans.

00:54:57.200 | We're not meant to be doing this.

00:54:58.560 | So we burn out, we get tired.

00:55:01.420 | Long term, it makes us want to leave our careers.

00:55:03.520 | Short term, it makes us literally dumber.

00:55:05.600 | So now you have a very specific enemy.

00:55:08.400 | How do we minimize context shifts so that we can get more value out of our brain?

00:55:13.200 | So if we want to borrow a sort of a Ginny O'Dell graduate seminar speak here, we are

00:55:19.880 | introducing a productivity discourse into this issue, which is probably the right discourse

00:55:25.240 | if we're working with managers, you're talking to the C-suite.

00:55:27.920 | Let's talk productivity.

00:55:28.920 | We are getting a suboptimal return on investment in cognitive resources if we're having these

00:55:33.320 | minds have all these context shifts.

00:55:35.120 | So the goal now becomes, and this is step two, which is to clarify the solutions.

00:55:39.500 | The goal now becomes, how do we put in place systems for collaboration that gets the work

00:55:44.920 | done with less context shifts?

00:55:46.520 | And we want to do this because the work will get done faster and better.

00:55:49.360 | Oh, we have this nice side effect.

00:55:51.720 | We won't burn everyone out and make everyone miserable.

00:55:55.440 | That becomes the solution.

00:55:57.200 | You feel the difference in this tone versus instead saying at the executive board meeting,

00:56:04.840 | I hate all these distractions.

00:56:06.960 | It's annoying.

00:56:07.960 | You guys have too many meetings.

00:56:09.320 | You're on email too much.

00:56:10.640 | This is all bad.

00:56:11.640 | That just comes across as accusatory and defensive, and it might all be true, but it rarely leads

00:56:15.920 | to change.

00:56:16.920 | When you're instead coming in and saying, okay, we have this clear enemy and here's

00:56:18.920 | a clear solution.

00:56:20.600 | Alternative systems of collaboration that will minimize context shift.

00:56:23.640 | We can quantify this thing.

00:56:25.720 | All you C-suite types are nerds anyway, so they like this type of talk.

00:56:29.160 | Let's try to minimize context shifting, put in place collaboration systems that get the

00:56:34.000 | things done with less context shifting.

00:56:36.660 | The work will get done faster.

00:56:37.800 | It'll be at higher level of quality and you'll have much higher employee satisfaction and

00:56:41.600 | engagement.

00:56:42.600 | Now you're speaking the lingo.

00:56:44.960 | Now you're speaking the corporate lingo.

00:56:46.840 | All right, there's a few critical pieces here when trying to do this solution defining.

00:56:53.760 | One, be very careful in your sales pitch.

00:56:57.720 | A, that you have this very clear goal, context shift reduction, but two, to make sure that

00:57:05.760 | you're particularly pulling out convenience and speed as not particularly useful.

00:57:10.160 | That if our end metric here, the thing we really care about, the end goal, is producing

00:57:15.580 | really good work at a good rate with high sustainability.

00:57:21.400 | Convenience doesn't matter.

00:57:22.400 | Who cares?

00:57:23.400 | Yeah, it's easy if you can email me.

00:57:24.400 | Who cares about convenience?

00:57:26.400 | Good work systems are rarely convenient.

00:57:27.800 | The definition of work is the application of force against the tendency towards rest.

00:57:31.040 | It's supposed to be hard, so forget convenience.

00:57:32.880 | Forget speed.

00:57:33.880 | That by itself is not a value.

00:57:37.400 | Quick responses, getting quick answers to things, that by itself is not valuable.

00:57:41.880 | It is only valuable in so much that it actually helps an end point of high quality solutions

00:57:45.680 | at a good rate in a sustainable way.

00:57:47.480 | So once you pointed out that actually reducing context switches will really boost that, you

00:57:51.320 | can isolate convenience and speed.

00:57:54.060 | Convenience and speed are the handmaidens of the hyperactive hive mind.

00:57:57.640 | It is the secondary end points that you're like, "Let's just pursue those," that leads

00:58:01.200 | you to a culture of we're always on Slack or always on email.

00:58:03.560 | You can now isolate those.

00:58:04.700 | You can segregate those and say, "This is not what we thought they would be.

00:58:07.280 | Forget those."

00:58:08.760 | Context switching reduction is going to make us better, even if it's less convenient, even

00:58:12.960 | if certain things take slower in the moment.

00:58:14.680 | So you have to at some point isolate convenience or speed or they will pull your whole system

00:58:19.240 | back to everyone's on Slack all the time.

00:58:23.160 | Another critical step here for the sales bitch, Steam release valves.

00:58:27.560 | I talked about this in a world without email.

00:58:30.120 | Any system you devise, "Okay, here's how we're now going to do this type of work," and however

00:58:34.800 | you do it, there's office hours plus some sort of shared document, plus we use some

00:58:38.600 | sort of three-day protocol where we know what goes where, however you do it.

00:58:42.880 | And we've talked about this a million times in the show, so I won't go into too many details

00:58:45.840 | about what these systems look like.

00:58:47.720 | But whatever systems you start coming up with, make sure they have Steam release valves.

00:58:52.760 | That is a break glass in case of emergency way to get in touch with someone if the system's

00:58:58.240 | not working.

00:59:00.680 | This is a key piece of psychology for buy-in because what, more than anything else, once

00:59:07.160 | everyone's bought in on the context switching reduction goal, more than anything else, what

00:59:10.360 | will stop you is catastrophizing.

00:59:13.800 | So the CIO is like, "Look, I get what you're saying.

00:59:17.200 | I'm on board about the context shifting.

00:59:19.160 | I'm on board about convenience and speed being overrated.

00:59:23.000 | But what if we get in a situation where this is urgent and we can't get back to the client

00:59:27.520 | and we lose the client?"

00:59:29.520 | Catastrophizing is a big obstacle once you get to the stage of actually constructing

00:59:34.080 | these systems.

00:59:35.200 | Steam release valves is my term for these break glass in case of emergency alternatives

00:59:38.800 | if something like that happens.

00:59:41.000 | All you have to do is have a backup communication method that induces some friction.

00:59:45.800 | Call me.

00:59:46.800 | We all agree that you can call the person on this number, which will never be blocked

00:59:51.360 | if there's some really time-sensitive emergency.

00:59:54.200 | This gives people the psychological cover necessary to avoid catastrophization.

00:59:58.000 | All right, if the client comes back and needs something right away, I can always just call

01:00:02.160 | you.

01:00:03.160 | We're not going to lose the client.

01:00:05.360 | And the thing is, as long as there's a little bit of friction in these release valve strategies,

01:00:08.960 | no one ever uses them.

01:00:10.760 | No one's ever going to actually call you or they'll call you.

01:00:12.720 | It'll happen once.

01:00:14.220 | It's more about giving people that relief of if there's an emergency, we can step out

01:00:20.280 | of this system.

01:00:21.280 | We'll be okay.

01:00:22.280 | If there's not enough friction, this doesn't work.

01:00:23.640 | If you say, well, if there's a real emergency, just hit me up on Slack.

01:00:26.280 | There's too little friction there.

01:00:27.740 | So everyone will just fall back to Slack.

01:00:29.160 | But if I have to pick up a phone and call you and talk to you in real time, I was like,

01:00:32.600 | I'll just follow the system.

01:00:34.760 | All right.

01:00:36.200 | Step three, create a bottom-up culture of ongoing experimentation and participation.

01:00:44.160 | So it's not about just going through and saying, here's our five new collaboration systems

01:00:47.640 | that reduce context shifting.

01:00:50.800 | Many fewer emails we have to answer, many few Slack.

01:00:53.580 | You have to A, have it be participatory.

01:00:55.320 | I didn't say that right.

01:00:57.760 | Participatory.

01:00:58.760 | There we go.

01:01:01.200 | Everyone who's involved in this new system has to have a say in constructing it.

01:01:05.120 | It won't work if you come in and say, Hey, everyone, here's the new system for collaboration

01:01:08.560 | because I read Cal's book and here's how we're going to get rid of context shifts.

01:01:13.000 | Immediately people's hackles will go up.

01:01:14.400 | I don't like this.

01:01:15.640 | I don't know about this.

01:01:18.480 | This is, you know, this is like typical, whatever B was the guy's name.

01:01:23.200 | This looks like typical B type behavior, but if it's instead, here's Cal's work.

01:01:28.840 | We're worried about context shifting.

01:01:30.080 | We'll think blah, blah, blah.

01:01:31.600 | Everyone's on board.

01:01:32.600 | Hey, let's all work together.

01:01:34.160 | What do you think we should do?

01:01:35.160 | Everyone's on board if they're involved with it.

01:01:37.200 | And then ongoing means you have to assume 40% of whatever you do is not going to work.

01:01:42.040 | So it's like every week for a while, we're going to go back.

01:01:43.960 | Let's go through things.

01:01:44.960 | What's not working.

01:01:45.960 | What do we want to throw out?

01:01:46.960 | What do we want to tweak?

01:01:47.960 | It's an ongoing culture because you're not going to get it right the first time.

01:01:51.400 | So people need to be involved and you need an ongoing culture of cutting off the dead

01:01:55.200 | wood.

01:01:56.560 | If this was right for this quarter, but not right for this quarter, get rid of it.

01:01:59.280 | If this never worked, change it.

01:02:00.900 | If this is going well, celebrate it.

01:02:03.200 | So there has to be an ongoing culture as well.

01:02:06.680 | So B I'll just step back and say, here's the thing.

01:02:08.800 | Everything I just described to you adds up to a pretty complicated play.

01:02:14.440 | In some sense, this is the biggest explanation I have for why the hyperactive hive mind continues

01:02:21.920 | to dominate, even if alternatives would be more profitable.

01:02:26.800 | And it is because of complexity.

01:02:28.960 | Those three steps I gave you are not easy.

01:02:31.000 | It requires a lot of buying from a lot of people and a lot of energy engaged.

01:02:35.720 | This is why I think we're still stuck in the hive mind.

01:02:39.280 | And this is often the case.

01:02:40.640 | I think when we have revolutions in business practices throughout different industries

01:02:44.560 | over history, especially technologically driven revolutions, it just takes a long time because

01:02:49.720 | it's hard.

01:02:50.720 | And it's the example I give in the book about Henry Ford and the continuous motion assembly

01:02:55.120 | line.

01:02:56.880 | Once he figured out how that worked, it was clearly more productive than the old ways

01:03:00.920 | of building car.

01:03:02.380 | But the technology was in place for these assembly lines for years and years and years

01:03:06.200 | before he figured it out.

01:03:07.520 | And why?

01:03:08.520 | Because it was hard.

01:03:09.520 | It was hard to get all the details right.

01:03:11.680 | It was hard to get all those things to work.

01:03:13.280 | They had to invent new tools and systems and hire people and spend money and it made things

01:03:16.480 | worse for a while.

01:03:18.480 | So essentially knowledge work needs its own kind of Henry Ford moment.

01:03:23.560 | Someone persisting through the hardness to figure out these better ways.

01:03:28.080 | And then once the rest of the industry sees, hey, that guy is producing digital cars 10

01:03:33.520 | X faster than us.

01:03:35.440 | That's when you start to get the fast spread.

01:03:37.080 | All right, Jesse.

01:03:39.400 | I haven't been able to do my world without email sermon in a while.

01:03:43.600 | Sounds good.

01:03:44.600 | So that's nice.

01:03:45.600 | I got to preach sometimes about hyperactive hive mind.

01:03:49.160 | All right, what do we got next?

01:03:51.920 | Next question is from Charles, a 58 year old software developer.

01:03:55.960 | I'm 58 years old software developer, developer who just quit his job in June.

01:04:00.960 | I spent the summer with my school age kids during their summer vacation.

01:04:04.680 | I figured it was important to do this while they still like me.

01:04:07.680 | Now that they're back in school, I want to take time to do a deep reset on my life.

01:04:12.040 | What are your thoughts and how should I proceed with this?

01:04:15.440 | Well first of all, I'll note that as part of Charles's elaboration, he mentioned that

01:04:20.800 | he had previously in his life already gone through a lifestyle centric career planning

01:04:27.040 | process that actually explains his current situation.

01:04:32.260 | So he works remotely living in a small country town in Oregon, which he said was a big goal

01:04:36.920 | of his early.

01:04:37.920 | He wanted to live in the country, have a country lifestyle, work remotely.

01:04:40.640 | So he had already gone through some lifestyle centric design.

01:04:44.240 | He quit his job in part because he's tired of it.

01:04:46.720 | The particular job he found that allowed him to live in the country was a remote job that

01:04:52.300 | had time zone issues.

01:04:54.320 | So it actually, this company worked with developers in India.

01:04:57.680 | There's a lot of him having to be up at 5 a.m. to manage time zone differences, to check

01:05:03.240 | in with these teams.

01:05:04.240 | He also had a hyperactive hive mind culture that was getting to him.

01:05:07.840 | So it makes sense why he left.

01:05:09.400 | He's a little bit late.

01:05:10.400 | He's later in his career.

01:05:11.400 | He's getting closer to something like retirement or pseudo retirement is on the table.

01:05:15.160 | And so he's looking to make a change.

01:05:16.560 | So I thought this was a good example of lifestyle centric career planning in what we can think

01:05:22.160 | of as like Q3 of your life.

01:05:24.120 | It's a little bit later in life.

01:05:26.760 | So Charles, a couple pieces of advice I'd have for someone in your situation at your

01:05:30.720 | age is let's think location.

01:05:35.280 | So as you think about this, this Q3 of your life where you're heading towards retirement,

01:05:40.120 | do you still like living in the country in Oregon?

01:05:41.760 | Do you want to do something different?

01:05:44.240 | Do you want a part time in the city, part time in the country, depending on the season?

01:05:49.440 | Now's the time to figure out what the new configuration is.

01:05:51.680 | Your kids leave and go to school.

01:05:53.800 | What's the new configuration that you think is going to be optimal?

01:05:58.280 | Two, look through your buckets, your deep life buckets and ask the question, what has

01:06:02.880 | been neglected in recent years?

01:06:06.280 | Are the things that are important to you that you've neglected as you've gone through maybe

01:06:08.720 | this more career centric focused part of your life?

01:06:12.120 | Like for example, is health and fitness neglected?

01:06:14.520 | Are you thinking this would be a great time, especially as they get older, to get an excellent

01:06:18.720 | shape like I'm going to give that a lot of attention or becoming a leader in your community?

01:06:22.920 | Have you been disconnected from the various communities you're involved in and now you

01:06:26.360 | want to do that more?

01:06:27.360 | It's a good time to go through those buckets and say what's been neglected.

01:06:30.680 | And finally, it's a good time to think through what's sometimes called third act missions.

01:06:35.600 | So in this part of your life, as you've gone through the first act of getting started in

01:06:40.640 | the world of work, you've gone through the second act of becoming established and establishing

01:06:44.840 | who you are in the world of work.

01:06:46.480 | You've done that now you're almost 60.

01:06:48.600 | With your third act, do you have a clear mission?

01:06:52.440 | And it could be professional or non-professional, but something that you really want to focus

01:06:55.800 | your energy on and matters.

01:06:57.760 | Those are the type of questions I would be going through right now as part of doing lifestyle

01:07:02.440 | centric career planning from scratch.

01:07:06.720 | Once you have a new lifestyle for this, whatever Q3 of your life, whatever you want to call

01:07:11.000 | it.

01:07:12.000 | Once you have this new lifestyle fixed down, you have a lot of options.

01:07:16.160 | You're a successful software developer.

01:07:19.480 | You left your job at that existing firm.

01:07:21.720 | There is a lot of opportunities for you at a lot of different levels of income versus

01:07:26.400 | autonomy trade-offs.

01:07:27.400 | There's a big demand for software developers.

01:07:30.080 | You could be freelancing, you could be contracting, you could take a job at a company that's fully

01:07:33.800 | remote and has more results oriented so that you can have a lot more flexibility.

01:07:38.400 | You can build your own product.

01:07:39.560 | You have a lot of different options here.

01:07:41.160 | So this is great.

01:07:42.660 | Work backwards from your answers to these questions and say, as I reenter the working

01:07:47.800 | world, what do I need to support my answers?

01:07:52.480 | And seek out employment working backwards from what you've resolved there.

01:07:57.680 | I think this is a really important part of your life where you've had a career, you've

01:08:02.000 | done well, you've made money, you have succeeded.

01:08:04.920 | So it really is, if there's any stage in your career to start seeing your work as functional.

01:08:09.960 | It is a utilitarian means to an end and the ends are what I'm really thinking about now.

01:08:15.160 | This is the time to do that.

01:08:18.360 | So get those answers really clear, focus on those three things and get incredibly strategic

01:08:23.800 | with your work situation.

01:08:25.220 | What do I need to support those while minimizing the negative side effects of whatever I'm

01:08:29.280 | doing for work?

01:08:30.280 | It sounds like that's where you are in your particular life.

01:08:33.440 | I also like, by the way, I just want to make the note, that spending the whole summer just

01:08:37.440 | with your kids.

01:08:41.360 | That I think is a big issue.

01:08:44.520 | I've been talking about this more.

01:08:46.440 | I think as my kids get older, so they've left that little kid toddler age, which is just

01:08:55.080 | all hands on deck kind of survival mode.

01:08:57.240 | And now they're becoming elementary school age kids.

01:09:00.600 | I have certainly noticed this and I have all boys, so there might be a sort of dad boys

01:09:04.640 | things here.

01:09:05.640 | They need as much time as possible with me.

01:09:09.080 | I feel that dynamic now.

01:09:10.680 | I talked about this in our interview with Yale.

01:09:14.040 | I feel that dynamic now much more than I did before.

01:09:17.480 | And it's actually been one of the sparks of my development of the slow productivity philosophy,

01:09:22.640 | because now the question becomes, how can you service ambition to create things of value

01:09:30.120 | and interest and legacy in the world without having to give it most of your time?

01:09:36.100 | How can you find some sort of middle ground where you can, for example, in my case, spend

01:09:39.640 | as much time as possible with my kids while still producing things I'm proud of?

01:09:43.280 | How can you be okay with maybe the rate of that production is lower?

01:09:47.700 | But when you zoom out to 15 years from now, after all my kids are in college, I look back

01:09:51.800 | and I can say, look at these things I did.

01:09:53.280 | I wrote these books and these articles.

01:09:54.880 | There's four things in here I'm really proud about.

01:09:57.440 | I don't care that maybe there could have been seven instead of four.

01:10:00.240 | The thing is I did things I'm proud about.

01:10:01.540 | How do you navigate those dynamics?

01:10:03.880 | That's a big, big question that I'm trying to answer with slow productivity.

01:10:08.040 | So Charles, I really empathize with what you're saying there.

01:10:11.960 | And it's something I'm working on as well.

01:10:14.240 | So everyone should stay tuned to hear my thoughts on that.

01:10:18.160 | All right.

01:10:20.920 | We got time for a few more.

01:10:23.160 | What do we have next year, Jesse?

01:10:24.560 | All right.

01:10:25.560 | Next question is from Gabe, 28 year old in Virginia.

01:10:28.400 | I currently have a dream job.

01:10:30.960 | It's deep work paradise with an excellent work life balance.

01:10:34.760 | My problem is that I'm not used to having this level of autonomy.

01:10:37.920 | As a result, I find myself filling my time with nonsense just to feel busy.

01:10:42.600 | I jump into meetings, reread emails, sometimes put on a video game or Netflix show or another

01:10:48.480 | screen to fill the void.

01:10:50.360 | How do I embrace this deeper environment?

01:10:54.280 | I'm guessing that Gabe does not work at Twitter.

01:10:58.560 | Just based off of what I discovered when I looked for 30 minutes into the news about

01:11:01.760 | Twitter, it looks like that's not the environment right now over at Twitter.

01:11:07.240 | Another piece of background on this particular question is Gabe elaborated that he's been

01:11:14.440 | active service military for 10 years and this is his first job after that.

01:11:18.480 | So he's used to from his military positions, a much more reactive, hyperactive hive mind

01:11:23.040 | style workflow where there's just constantly stuff being given to you or you're constantly

01:11:26.440 | reacting to things.

01:11:27.680 | So in particular, going from that to a fully autonomous, it's a tech industry job, he's

01:11:33.680 | having a hard time with that transition.

01:11:36.360 | So Gabe, I'll start by saying, yeah, it's a good problem to have and the core of your

01:11:41.560 | solution is going to be multi-scale planning.

01:11:44.640 | If you're just haphazard in a highly autonomous workplace, it can be a disaster.

01:11:49.120 | People think, oh, this is the dream to have a job where I have a lot of free time and

01:11:54.280 | I can kind of control what I work on.

01:11:56.320 | It's not a dream.

01:11:57.720 | For most people, this is very difficult.

01:12:00.120 | Gabe goes on to talk about how anxious this is making him.

01:12:03.360 | We don't like having time that we don't know what to do with, where we're in that weird

01:12:09.160 | liminal space between complete relaxation and productivity and we're sort of working,

01:12:14.320 | we're sort of not.

01:12:15.320 | I mean, that is soul crushing.

01:12:16.320 | And that is soul crushing.

01:12:19.240 | The solution is multi-scale planning.

01:12:21.160 | That's going to be the foundation of the solution.

01:12:22.480 | So with multi-scale planning, Gabe, and you can get more details of this, go look at my

01:12:27.440 | time management video at my YouTube page or many other places I've talked about this.

01:12:32.520 | With multi-scale planning, you start at multiple temporal scales to get control and get intentional

01:12:37.760 | about your time.

01:12:38.760 | So you have a quarterly or semester plan that's laying out bigger vision.

01:12:42.200 | You look at that every week when you build a weekly plan.

01:12:44.400 | What am I doing with my week?

01:12:45.780 | This is where you can make changes to your schedule to optimize better what's available.

01:12:49.760 | You look at your weekly plan every day where you build a daily time block plan.

01:12:52.920 | You're giving every minute of your day a job.

01:12:54.920 | You're not just looking up and saying, what do I want to do next?

01:12:58.720 | Learn that habit and you're going to feel much more in control of your time.

01:13:01.480 | All right.

01:13:02.480 | So now you have just the mechanics of multi-scale planning in place.

01:13:08.040 | The extent of the free time you have is going to be clear and this free time is going to

01:13:11.960 | be consolidated.

01:13:12.960 | If you're doing multi-scale planning, when you get to a day, you're looking at your weekly

01:13:18.480 | plan, you're confident about what you're trying to work on this week and therefore what needs

01:13:21.440 | to be done today.

01:13:22.620 | You time block the time exactly when you're going to do the various things this day.

01:13:26.520 | All of that's really clear.

01:13:27.680 | The time that remains is clearly left over.

01:13:30.400 | So you've clarified and consolidated the free time you have.

01:13:33.640 | And it sounds like right now that's a lot.

01:13:35.680 | Good.

01:13:36.680 | First step.

01:13:37.680 | Let's just get our arms around it.

01:13:38.760 | Here it is.

01:13:39.760 | Three hours today, one hour this day.

01:13:41.200 | I had nothing to do on Thursday.

01:13:43.160 | You've isolated it and clarified it.

01:13:46.000 | Now that you've captured this elusive substance free time, you can be concrete about what

01:13:52.640 | you want to do with it.

01:13:54.600 | And you have options here.

01:13:56.280 | We've talked about a lot of these on the show before.

01:13:59.120 | Number one is the phantom part-time job.

01:14:00.920 | So maybe you are accomplishing what your employer wants you to do and you're doing it well.

01:14:05.800 | And with confidence, you know that you're giving it enough time and you can shut down

01:14:09.000 | that work with clarity.

01:14:10.080 | Great.

01:14:11.080 | Maybe you're working on a side hustle with the time that remains.

01:14:14.600 | We call these phantom part-time jobs because you don't talk about this publicly.

01:14:19.960 | We talked about what last week show, Jesse, this over-employment movement.

01:14:23.240 | Yeah.

01:14:24.240 | And I felt like that was going too far, but that was this movement where you have like

01:14:26.800 | an actual another job.

01:14:29.760 | But phantom part-time jobs is more side hustling.

01:14:32.280 | You know, I'm building out something on the side, but you're doing it with complete control

01:14:36.560 | of your time.

01:14:38.040 | It's a bit of an ethical gray area, but I do think there's some integrity in phantom

01:14:41.920 | part-time jobs if you really are an expert multiscale planner, because you are being

01:14:45.720 | very clear about how you're using your time.

01:14:48.240 | You're accomplishing the goals your employer has given you.

01:14:50.680 | The time is very clearly segregated from your work time.

01:14:54.000 | As long as you're getting the things done and your employer is happy.

01:14:57.600 | I think it's okay.

01:14:58.600 | All right.

01:14:59.600 | That's one option.

01:15:00.600 | Option two, rapid career capital acquisition.

01:15:02.080 | Great.

01:15:03.080 | I have this free time.

01:15:04.780 | Let me do some careful self-research on my industry to figure out what skills are valuable,

01:15:09.040 | what skills aren't, what would really help me write my own ticket.

01:15:12.480 | I'm now going to systematically dedicate this free time, this clear on everyday time

01:15:16.520 | clock schedule towards the rapid acquisition of these skills.

01:15:20.040 | I'm then going to take these skills out for a spin, shift my career in directions that

01:15:24.600 | resonate and away from things that don't.

01:15:27.240 | That would be the method I would talk about in my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You.

01:15:31.280 | Great.

01:15:32.280 | I am in five years going to have so much career capital that, like the listener from before,

01:15:38.840 | his question, I can live in the small town in Oregon and trail run all day and only work

01:15:43.240 | three hours a day and make a good living.

01:15:45.520 | That's another good option.

01:15:47.720 | Another rapid advancement.

01:15:50.080 | The third option, of course, is nonprofessional structured pursuit.

01:15:53.800 | I will use this time to pursue something true to my values that servicing one of my nonprofessional

01:15:58.800 | buckets in my deep life schema that's very important to me.

01:16:01.440 | I'm in a lucky stage of my life where I have this free time.

01:16:04.480 | I'm in control of my time.

01:16:05.800 | I'm on top of things.

01:16:06.800 | My employer is happy.

01:16:07.800 | I'm going to whatever.

01:16:10.160 | And maybe it's, you know, like Cam Haines, who has a full-time job working for the state

01:16:16.320 | of Washington, Oregon, I forgot which, but, you know, became this high endurance, super

01:16:21.680 | endurance, super athlete, bow hunter, which he documented and has become like a source

01:16:26.440 | of inspiration for a lot of people.

01:16:27.520 | So maybe it's some sort of, you know, over the top fitness pursuit that gives meaning

01:16:31.280 | to your post-military life and could be a source of inspiration for others and structures

01:16:34.800 | your life and injects all this discipline.

01:16:37.080 | Maybe it's a community investment.

01:16:40.640 | You know, this small church in my town that I belong to is struggling and I'm going to,

01:16:44.400 | you know, step up and really help turn this around.

01:16:46.960 | Or I'm going to start up a community service program.

01:16:49.960 | You know, maybe it's a creative pursuit that is not for profit, but just you're trying

01:16:56.720 | to be a part of this community.

01:16:57.880 | There's a lot of things here.

01:16:59.160 | Maybe you buy land and you're renovating the land, you're refreshing it, and you're going

01:17:01.920 | to eventually retire from your job and it's going to be a retreat center.

01:17:06.120 | I don't know.

01:17:08.020 | But you could have a very structured pursuit that's not directly related to making money

01:17:12.240 | or your job.

01:17:13.240 | What I'm saying here is multiscale planning is what gives you the clarity required to

01:17:16.600 | make the most of the resources you have.

01:17:18.480 | And if you're in a lucky position to have a lot of leftover time, don't squander it.

01:17:23.200 | This type of structure is what's going to allow you to actually take advantage of that

01:17:26.800 | time.

01:17:27.800 | We tell ourself the story, all I want is free time and no thoughts about it, completely

01:17:32.820 | unstructured free time.

01:17:33.940 | But that's not true.

01:17:35.280 | We want like three hours of that a week.

01:17:37.680 | And then we get unhappy.

01:17:39.560 | We want autonomy.

01:17:41.200 | We want control over what we're doing.

01:17:42.680 | We want to aim our actions towards things that are meaningful.

01:17:46.000 | We want a variety in our activities.

01:17:47.460 | We want to get to those key human nutriments like mastery and connection, et cetera.

01:17:53.240 | But we don't necessarily just want nothing to do and no plans.

01:17:56.400 | So multiscale plan, Gabe, and then lean into being very clear about what do I do with the

01:18:01.040 | time that remains.

01:18:02.040 | All right, why don't we do, we've done an old fashioned call in a while, Jesse.

01:18:07.960 | Yeah, we got a call from Raquel.

01:18:09.960 | So we'll take a listen.

01:18:11.960 | Hello, Cal and Jesse.

01:18:13.680 | My name is Raquel.

01:18:15.880 | I create online courses for a company.

01:18:19.920 | My productivity problem is the number of added bags to carry with me.

01:18:24.520 | The time block planner, a moleskin notebook reserved for meetings, which I rarely use,

01:18:30.080 | a loose leaf notepad that I make out of half sheets of recycled paper attached by one metal

01:18:36.120 | book ring in the corner, which I use to dump everything in my mind as I work or create

01:18:41.320 | checklists as I'm working on a project.

01:18:44.560 | I also find myself implementing a working memory.txt file on my computer based on your

01:18:51.040 | recommendations.

01:18:52.040 | But then on Sundays, I switch completely to my Franklin Coffee Planner.

01:18:59.000 | When I go to work in the office or when I go to a doctor's appointment and I need to

01:19:03.120 | wait, I want to take one planning item with me to do some planning, either weekly planning

01:19:08.320 | or a new routine I want to try or habits and initiatives I want to incorporate.

01:19:12.920 | But I find myself in a dilemma as to which item to bring.

01:19:18.040 | I wish I could stick to one item, but I think my personality prevents me from staying at

01:19:23.160 | peace with one system.

01:19:25.480 | Any advice?

01:19:26.480 | Raquel, good question.

01:19:29.160 | I think the answer here is to have one of those old school media carts like we used

01:19:34.280 | to have in grammar school with the TV on it and everything, multiple layers.

01:19:38.520 | I just drag this thing with me.

01:19:40.800 | You can have monitors, you can have multiple notebooks, you can have an easel that you

01:19:45.360 | can put out and write with with a sharpie.

01:19:48.360 | Now, OK, what too many artifacts, what to bring when you are on the road?

01:19:55.520 | It's a good question.

01:19:56.520 | I think the right thing to do here is to separate capture from long term systems.

01:20:02.440 | So let's get that right first.

01:20:05.360 | Have your long term systems, for most people, these will be digital, for long term tasks,

01:20:11.840 | task storage, long term note keeping, ideas, etc., thoughts about whatever changes you

01:20:19.720 | want to make in your life.

01:20:20.720 | You have these permanent systems that you use.

01:20:23.640 | You have your calendar for appointments, you have your weekly plan for what you're doing

01:20:26.820 | this week, you have your time block plan for today, you have your task management system

01:20:30.120 | for keeping task, you have your note taking system for ideas and other types of long form

01:20:34.680 | capture.

01:20:35.680 | Preferably, you know, there's ways you check in on each of these.

01:20:39.160 | So with multi scale planning, that's just built into the system.

01:20:41.680 | But you know, I like to do roughly monthly check in on my my broader catch all note taking

01:20:45.920 | systems just to see, hey, am I missing ideas, etc.

01:20:49.760 | That's all permanent.

01:20:50.760 | None of that has to be particularly portable.

01:20:52.720 | None of that has to have particularly efficient interfaces for entering information to it.

01:20:58.400 | Things like that from capture.

01:21:00.880 | Doctor's office and meeting.

01:21:01.880 | Let's use those as our two case studies here.

01:21:04.120 | I'm at the doctor's office.

01:21:05.360 | I'm in a meeting.

01:21:06.360 | I'm attending in person.

01:21:07.360 | Like, what do I bring with me?

01:21:10.200 | You could bring a laptop and try to interface into all of these systems on the fly.

01:21:14.200 | Not going to work.

01:21:15.200 | You're not going to have the laptop at the doctor's office.

01:21:17.200 | It's too hard to think through and interface with your systems on the fly anyways, because

01:21:22.080 | often you have a half formed thought in the moment that you have to actually later give

01:21:26.780 | some attention to to even figure out what does this mean?

01:21:29.880 | Where does it go?

01:21:30.880 | How do I word this?

01:21:32.780 | So we need some sort of capture intermediary to capture this information for it to later

01:21:38.540 | be integrated into the background systems.

01:21:41.640 | And there I'm going to say just have a digital and a paper working memory dot txt.

01:21:46.360 | If you're in the media and you have your laptop open, always have working memory dot txt right

01:21:50.400 | there on your desktop.

01:21:51.840 | Have it be a plain text file.

01:21:54.560 | On my Mac, I use text to edit for this and I have it set to plain text.

01:22:00.480 | So there's no fonts, there's no formatting, there's no bolding.

01:22:03.760 | It's just all plain text, as simple and fast as possible.

01:22:06.400 | So if you're in the meeting and there's ideas that come up, appointments you have to add

01:22:09.960 | to your calendar, tasks that need to go on your task list, things you're confused about

01:22:12.960 | that you just need to think, like, what does this even mean?

01:22:16.240 | You're writing that at the speed of typing into working memory dot txt.

01:22:20.280 | When you're at the doctor's office, you have a good high quality spiral bound notebook

01:22:24.400 | and you can capture right in there.

01:22:28.840 | If you're bringing a time block planner with you that has no capture spaces for this information

01:22:34.280 | as well.

01:22:35.280 | And then you just need the discipline that by the time I get to the shutdown, as part

01:22:39.120 | of my shutdown routine, I look at these two captures.

01:22:42.080 | Obviously my working memory dot txt on my computer, I process it before I shut down

01:22:45.380 | for the day.

01:22:46.520 | What's going on here?

01:22:47.520 | Where does this go?

01:22:48.560 | And you that finds a home.

01:22:50.380 | You just have the notebook right next to you when you do this and you take the same stuff

01:22:53.600 | out of your notebook, the things you jotted down and it goes into a permanent system.

01:22:57.980 | So I think that differentiation helps, helps people.

01:23:02.400 | Permanent systems can be big and clunky, but you trust them.

01:23:06.800 | On the go capture should just be simple.

01:23:08.720 | One digital, one paper.

01:23:11.600 | There are systems that try to put all of these in the one artifact.

01:23:14.760 | I think bullet journaling is a good example.

01:23:17.620 | Now that's fine.

01:23:18.620 | If your life has a level of complexity that enables that.

01:23:22.400 | I just think for a lot of knowledge workers, that doesn't work.

01:23:25.200 | There's just too many things coming at them.

01:23:27.280 | Too many hundreds of ongoing tasks, rapidly moving calendars, seven or eight different

01:23:32.480 | roles that you have different objectives for.

01:23:34.560 | Typically you need the power of digital systems.

01:23:36.980 | You can't have all that captured in one notebook.

01:23:38.960 | So I just separate the two and I just allow there to be glorious inefficiency and clunkiness

01:23:43.120 | in my permit systems, but incredible low friction efficiency in the mobile systems I take with

01:23:47.580 | me.

01:23:48.580 | All right.

01:23:49.580 | Let's, let's do, let's do one more question here before we get to our three interesting

01:23:56.400 | things segment.

01:23:57.400 | All right.

01:23:58.400 | Sounds good.

01:23:59.400 | Question from Italia.

01:24:01.440 | You've mentioned that one way to answer the question, what makes a good life good is to

01:24:05.640 | turn to biographies of people whose life you admire.

01:24:09.200 | Who do you personally admire?

01:24:10.480 | Well, I have a lot of answers to that question, but why don't I just give you one example

01:24:15.760 | of someone I admire and that admiration has been developed and nuanced through the reading

01:24:20.200 | of biographies.

01:24:21.600 | And one of my classic examples there is Abraham Lincoln, real influence on me.

01:24:27.400 | I'm actually reading John Meacham's new biography of Lincoln and there was light.

01:24:31.920 | So I'm about halfway through that.

01:24:32.920 | I'm enjoying that one.

01:24:33.920 | I've read a lot of Lincoln books, but that one is ranking pretty high up so far.

01:24:38.720 | So I like what he's doing there.

01:24:40.040 | All right.

01:24:41.040 | So here's the, the two things I, I learned about Lincoln through going deep through biographical

01:24:48.400 | material that makes him someone I admire.

01:24:52.800 | One is the fact that Lincoln was a, a moral being.

01:24:58.280 | I want to be really clear about what I mean by that.

01:25:01.240 | I don't mean that in the sense that he was a superlative example of morality that, you

01:25:07.440 | know, even by 21st century standards, we look back at everything he does did or think and

01:25:12.720 | said, wow, he had found some sort of crystalline, pure morality.

01:25:16.200 | He had, you know, broken free from any sort of parochial or cultural influences and just

01:25:20.160 | saw the, the, the abstract platonic light of the perfect moral sentiments.

01:25:24.080 | It's not that his morality was at a very high polished plane, but that he saw his morality

01:25:32.360 | as an important part of his life.

01:25:34.120 | And he worked on it explicitly throughout his life.

01:25:37.200 | He is a moral being.

01:25:38.240 | What you get out of reading his biographies is the degree to which he thought that maintaining

01:25:42.720 | and evolving his sense of principles and living his life by them was a key project of a life

01:25:49.560 | well lived.

01:25:51.800 | A good book that really looks at this is William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues.

01:25:58.440 | Miller it's a, it's a moral biography or an ethical biography, I think he calls it of

01:26:02.300 | Lincoln.

01:26:03.300 | And it goes through just the development of, of how Lincoln repeatedly would interrogate

01:26:09.060 | his own underlying principles and evolve them and grow them and nuance them.

01:26:14.100 | And then let that then speak back to what he was doing in his life and in his political

01:26:17.740 | career.

01:26:18.860 | That's what I think was important.

01:26:20.340 | He thought that was, he thought that was key.

01:26:23.260 | I am more impressed by someone who throughout their life really cares about struggles with

01:26:29.420 | and tries to evolve and live by a evolving empathetic moral code than I am by someone

01:26:34.940 | who maybe has in isolation, the better moral beliefs, but came by it easy.

01:26:40.420 | That they were born at a time where it was just really obvious.

01:26:42.580 | And in fact, if you had a different belief, someone would yell at you anyways.

01:26:46.780 | There's no strain there.

01:26:48.980 | It's the life interrogated.

01:26:50.700 | That's really rare.

01:26:52.700 | He really did that.

01:26:53.700 | All right.

01:26:54.700 | Number two, the other thing I've learned about Lincoln, why I admire him, is the fact that

01:26:58.780 | he has a purposive intelligence.

01:27:01.060 | P-U-R-P-O-S-I-V-E.

01:27:02.060 | I think it was actually William Lee Miller who used that term in talking about Lincoln.

01:27:09.020 | What that means by purposive intelligence was he had a brain that worked and he put

01:27:14.100 | this brain to work to try to impact the world in positive ways.

01:27:19.620 | He saw his brain as an asset and systematically developed this asset to try to get a return

01:27:27.980 | out of it, in particular return in terms of making a positive impact on the world.

01:27:32.540 | It really is an amazing story how this kid growing up in the depths of early 19th century

01:27:41.660 | American poverty, just on the strength of his brain alone, emerged out of this context,

01:27:48.740 | backwater Kentucky, barely literate father, dead mother, single father, barely literate,

01:27:55.300 | who had him just doing the harshest of manual labors, suspicious of book learning, renting

01:28:02.060 | him out to other people for just be labor for these other people.

01:28:07.540 | You don't get to keep the money.

01:28:08.860 | Lincoln hated that.

01:28:09.860 | He emerged from that just off of the strength of his brain, which he developed.

01:28:13.620 | And he knew there was something there and he developed that and applied it.

01:28:17.420 | All of his impact comes from the very careful cultivation of this intelligence.

01:28:23.260 | You look at his debates with Stephen Douglas, it's a masterclass in just working through

01:28:31.500 | clarity and thinking.

01:28:33.300 | Look at his Cooper Union address as he's building up to his potential nomination for the president

01:28:37.620 | of 1860.

01:28:38.820 | You see here again, a masterclass in weeks, if not months of research into the history

01:28:44.140 | of the country, building step-by-step, these incredibly logical arguments.

01:28:48.260 | You have to understand how unique this was in its time.

01:28:53.000 | The great renauticians of the 19th century were pompous and it was emotional.

01:28:59.820 | It was a lot of classical illusions, a lot of Cicero being quoted and a lot of personal

01:29:05.980 | vindictive or emotional appeals.

01:29:08.160 | It was a lot of trying to get people fired up by appealing and inflaming their passions.

01:29:15.100 | And there's a lot of ad hominem going on and then trying to establish your intelligence

01:29:18.300 | to look at all these different books I can cite.

01:29:20.700 | Stephen came in and said, I'm going to be logical and incredibly plain spoken.

01:29:24.620 | I'm going to step-by-step like the lawyer he was, bring you through why the Nebraska

01:29:32.180 | Act is actually against the founder's intentions, why this would be devastating to the country.

01:29:39.480 | Taking down his anti-slavery arguments were not like you would get more from maybe the

01:29:46.860 | William Lloyd Garrison, not barn burners, but we're going to go A to B to C to E.

01:29:52.700 | And when we get to F, it's clear that this makes no sense.

01:29:55.740 | That was an incredibly effective rhetorical strategy.

01:29:58.180 | It's all based off of purposive intelligence and it made a massive difference.

01:30:02.460 | It was why he got nominated for the Republican ticket, was because he had built this reputation

01:30:08.740 | of he's not out there inflaming people.

01:30:10.700 | He's not out there in the 1860 equivalent of Twitter trying to score points for his

01:30:15.500 | team.

01:30:16.500 | He's got a real reasonableness and logic.

01:30:20.380 | And there's a moderatism that actually that's what worked.

01:30:25.380 | That's what worked.

01:30:26.380 | That's what led to the 13th amendment.

01:30:28.460 | So to me, that was a big inspiration, the way that he cultivated an intelligence to

01:30:34.060 | affect change, very systematic.

01:30:36.180 | A good book for that, so I'm kind of giving book recommendations around the way.

01:30:41.460 | John Stoffer from Harvard, his book Giants.

01:30:44.820 | What it does, and it's interesting, is he takes Frederick Douglass and Lincoln.

01:30:49.980 | Here's two people who are coming out of impossible situations.

01:30:53.740 | Douglass' situation, of course, even more impossible being in a Eastern Shore slave

01:30:59.060 | on the Eastern Shore.

01:31:00.060 | Lincoln, of course, was not a slave, but they were both coming out of these impossible circumstances.

01:31:06.360 | And they both, this is what Stoffer really characterizes, is through the development

01:31:12.200 | of their mind, how they were able to become in the end giants and their lives became very

01:31:17.220 | intertwined.

01:31:18.220 | So that's sort of Giants sort of gets into the intertwining of the lives of Frederick

01:31:21.380 | Douglass and Lincoln.

01:31:22.940 | So they kind of have these parallel emergences all about taking these minds, cultivating

01:31:29.220 | them and then putting them systematically towards what they thought was important uses.

01:31:33.220 | And then their lives ended up becoming quite intertwined.

01:31:35.580 | They were at some point, you know, at some point they were almost adversarial.

01:31:39.660 | So you get Douglass' famous speech on what the Fourth of July means to a former slave,

01:31:47.060 | but they come later in life that Douglass is an incredible supporter, actually, of Lincoln's

01:31:51.980 | very systematic approach and his very functionalist approach.

01:31:55.780 | And, you know, let's try to actually make change happen as opposed to making the people

01:32:01.460 | on our side as happy as possible.

01:32:02.860 | And there's a whole interesting story there.

01:32:05.860 | One more book recommendation then, if you like that particular that particular line

01:32:10.860 | of thinking H.W.

01:32:11.860 | Brand's Zealot, which contrasts John Brown and Lincoln and their approach to anti-slavery

01:32:18.220 | movements.

01:32:19.220 | Brown's was very zealous and very pure.

01:32:20.700 | And we get a lot of likes on the Twitter, but he ended up not only hung, but actually

01:32:28.540 | perhaps even causing issues with the movement.

01:32:31.020 | Lincoln would not be popular on Twitter, but did get the 13th amendment.

01:32:35.500 | So anyways, that's an example.

01:32:38.620 | Natalia, Lincoln is someone who I grew to admire through reading as much as possible

01:32:43.300 | on him and picking out these very specific things, which I think have a general application

01:32:46.740 | are generally relevant to a lot of us.

01:32:49.580 | Justin, I actually met someone at the live event.

01:32:54.300 | Mike.

01:32:55.300 | Mike.

01:32:56.300 | Mike gave me a recommendation.

01:32:57.620 | I got to read this book.

01:32:59.300 | It's about this.

01:33:00.300 | This sounds so me.

01:33:01.660 | It's Lincoln, Civil War, and the role of technology in the Civil War and like how the telegraph

01:33:10.700 | and the and the railroads and you know, it was actually these really advanced technological

01:33:15.300 | systems were so intertwined in Lincoln's managing of the war.

01:33:17.860 | I mean, that's.

01:33:18.860 | That's kind of hitting all my buttons, probably.

01:33:21.460 | How many Lincoln books do you think you've consumed like 30?

01:33:25.540 | Probably not 30 a dozen, I would say.

01:33:28.220 | Have you always been a fan?

01:33:30.060 | I came to him through books.

01:33:31.380 | I came to him through.

01:33:34.900 | My mother-in-law bought me Lincoln's Virtues and then Miller wrote another book about Lincoln's

01:33:40.900 | time in the White House.

01:33:41.900 | I read those.

01:33:42.900 | This would have been grad school and that kind of set me down.

01:33:45.980 | And then John Stauffer, we knew.

01:33:47.340 | So John Stauffer, when I was at MIT, my wife worked at a nonprofit in Watertown with John's

01:33:53.460 | wife and they did not.

01:33:55.860 | It was an education nonprofit, history, education, nonprofits like John.

01:33:59.660 | He was always involved and would do events.

01:34:01.860 | And so I remember like John Stauffer and Skip Gates from Harvard were always sort of around.

01:34:08.140 | And so I remember his, you know, his book signing party for that book.

01:34:11.700 | So we knew John just knew him from our time in Cambridge, babysat his kids before.

01:34:16.260 | So then that book also was exposed to around that same time.

01:34:19.060 | It's a great book.

01:34:21.060 | All right.

01:34:24.060 | I want to get to this new segment.

01:34:26.340 | Three interesting things.

01:34:28.260 | First, let me briefly mention another sponsor that makes this show possible.

01:34:32.380 | That's our friends at 8 Sleep.

01:34:35.000 | As you now know, if you've been listening to this podcast recently, I am an 8 Sleep

01:34:38.800 | addict, addict, addict.

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01:34:42.800 | Addict or addict?

01:34:43.800 | Why can't I say this word, Jesse?

01:34:46.700 | You say it.

01:34:47.700 | Addict like in your basement.

01:34:50.060 | Yeah.

01:34:51.060 | I live in an attic with an 8 Sleep machine.

01:34:54.340 | Addict.

01:34:55.340 | See, it's hard.

01:34:56.340 | It doesn't sound right to my ear.

01:34:57.660 | It all sounds like the word addict, T T I C instead of A D D I C T.

01:35:01.740 | Addict, addict.

01:35:02.740 | I'm an 8 Sleep addict.

01:35:05.060 | Well, anyways, the 8 Sleep pod is a cover you put on top of your mattress and then you

01:35:11.500 | hook it up to this 8 Sleep machine that allows you to control the temperature of what you're

01:35:15.380 | sleeping on.

01:35:16.380 | It has all these little capillaries and it runs water through it and back to this machine

01:35:20.060 | that takes heat out or adds heat in and you control it from an app and you can set the

01:35:25.740 | exact temperature you want the surface of your bed on both sides.

01:35:30.060 | I am completely hooked on this because here's what it does.

01:35:33.940 | It can take the heat away when you sleep.

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01:35:41.180 | not have to wake up two hours later and be completely overheated as all this body heat

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01:35:46.180 | It can just, you set it just right.

01:35:47.420 | It just whisks away enough of that heat that you're always comfortable.

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01:35:51.780 | I now have trouble sleeping on other beds because I have become so used to the 8 Sleep.

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01:36:12.860 | If you're an 8 Sleep user that you'll see they use numbers.

01:36:14.980 | I'm a negative one.

01:36:16.140 | I'm negative one on that scale is my sweet spot.

01:36:18.780 | They have surveys about how it helps people sleep better.

01:36:21.100 | You don't need to hear the surveys.

01:36:22.260 | Hear it from me.

01:36:23.260 | I sleep worse without it.

01:36:25.980 | So even better, the 8 Sleep recently launched the next generation of their pod.

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01:36:38.980 | So it'll actually tell you if you look at the app like, hey, you slept this much last

01:36:43.260 | night, here's, you know, et cetera.

01:36:45.020 | Cool technology.

01:36:46.020 | So the pod's not magic, but it feels like it.

01:36:49.060 | I'm a big 8 Sleep fan.

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01:36:53.860 | So go to 8sleep.com/deep to save $150 on the pod.

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01:37:12.420 | I want you and I want just like an 8 Sleep chair.

01:37:16.060 | You know, so like I don't have to make the podcast studio frigid.

01:37:21.140 | If I just had like an 8 Sleep chair, you know, just like take it, just keep taking like a

01:37:24.980 | little bit of heat off of me.

01:37:26.980 | That'd be great.

01:37:27.980 | I could podcast all day.

01:37:29.180 | David Sachs made a lot of comments about the temperature of the studio.

01:37:32.620 | Oh yeah, he couldn't take it.

01:37:35.420 | Yeah.

01:37:36.420 | I don't want to cast aspersions.

01:37:38.340 | David Sachs did not like the cool weather, but different people run hot and different

01:37:41.180 | people run cold.

01:37:42.180 | When I'm doing an event, my concern is like I'm going to be too hot.

01:37:46.300 | It's always my concern.

01:37:47.300 | I'm never worried I'm going to be too cold.

01:37:49.180 | Sachs came to that event at East City Books wearing a sweater and a jacket and a shirt.

01:37:56.380 | I could never, if I had like an undershirt, a dress shirt, a sweater and a blazer on,

01:38:02.700 | I mean, I would just faint.

01:38:04.380 | I'd be like, thank you for coming out.

01:38:07.020 | Faint, you know, but you know, some people are very different.

01:38:10.700 | So if Sachs was using the eight sleep, he would probably be on the positive side of

01:38:14.140 | the, of the scale.

01:38:15.140 | Like I don't want to get too cold.

01:38:16.140 | I'm the opposite way.

01:38:17.140 | I don't want to get, I don't get, honestly, I, to me, the optimal outfit for like doing

01:38:23.020 | an event, like giving a speech or something, and I, this would be a, might not be the image

01:38:29.020 | I want to give.

01:38:30.300 | It would be like a loose pair of athletic shorts and no shirt.

01:38:33.300 | I don't know how this would go over on the today show or, you know, what I'm doing, Tim

01:38:42.180 | Ferriss's podcast, and we're on the video screen, but honestly, that's what I would

01:38:45.580 | be the most comfortable in outside in October.

01:38:50.260 | So there's like, it's not frozen, but it's like 50 degrees out and there's like a brisk,

01:38:53.180 | a light is brisk.

01:38:54.180 | Yeah.

01:38:55.180 | I'm shirtless.

01:38:56.180 | I try it, but you know, the event organizers never love it.

01:39:00.140 | All right.

01:39:01.140 | Let's also talk about Grammarly.

01:39:02.140 | Grammarly was the original, I believe they were the original sponsor of this show.

01:39:06.540 | And for good reason, I make my living as right as a writer.

01:39:13.100 | But even if you're not a professional writer, clarity in your expression and written word

01:39:17.580 | is at the core of almost every profession.

01:39:20.260 | It seems these days, if you can express yourself clearly, confidently with the right tone,

01:39:25.940 | makes such a difference, especially as more and more work is remote, more and more communication

01:39:30.140 | is happening on email, more and more communications happening on Slack.

01:39:33.100 | It's never been more important to be clear in your writing.

01:39:38.140 | This is where Grammarly enters the scene.

01:39:40.420 | It's like having a professional editor looking over your shoulder as you write every email

01:39:45.020 | and send every chat message.

01:39:47.500 | Grammarly is free to download and works where you do.

01:39:49.900 | And so it will help you be clear and get your projects done faster.

01:39:54.640 | So if you start with the free version of Grammarly, what you're going to get is comprehensive

01:39:59.260 | spelling, grammar and punctuation suggestions.

01:40:01.940 | So this is going to make sure you don't make mistakes.

01:40:03.540 | You're not going to misspell words.

01:40:05.660 | You're not going to get grammar wrong.

01:40:06.900 | Like, don't do this.

01:40:07.900 | That's the wrong form of there.

01:40:09.140 | This is possessive.

01:40:10.140 | It shouldn't be.

01:40:11.540 | You probably should have a semicolon here, not a comma.

01:40:13.900 | So the free version of Grammarly is going to make you come across sharp, right?

01:40:17.820 | This is a good writer who doesn't make mistakes, very professional.

01:40:22.260 | Where the magic really starts to happen, I think, is with the premium version of Grammarly,

01:40:26.980 | which keeps all of the world class spell checking, grammar checking, et cetera.

01:40:32.060 | And it adds clarity focused sentence rewrites.

01:40:36.480 | So this is where it'll actually say, rewrite the sentence this way.

01:40:41.340 | It'll make your point clear.

01:40:42.980 | It's simpler.

01:40:44.300 | This is where you begin to get that reputation as a particularly clear communicator.

01:40:49.540 | When people see your super sharp sentences, they just think you're smarter.

01:40:53.980 | You're going to get promoted faster.

01:40:55.340 | People are going to have more respect for you.

01:40:58.540 | Grammarly also has, once you're at the premium version, a tone detector.

01:41:04.060 | That might be in both versions.

01:41:05.980 | I'm not quite sure about that.

01:41:07.380 | But it has a tone detector, which will look at what you write and say, this is what we're

01:41:11.780 | detecting on tone.

01:41:12.860 | I wrote about this issue in my book, A World Without Email.

01:41:16.300 | We're very bad at judging for ourselves the tone of our written communication.

01:41:22.620 | We think we're being funny.

01:41:24.160 | We think we're being sarcastic.

01:41:26.060 | The other person thinks you're mad at them.

01:41:28.260 | Grammarly's tone detector helps you come in and recognize when this is not the tone that

01:41:32.300 | you're going for.

01:41:34.540 | So in today's world, especially remote focused knowledge work, you have to be a clear communicator.

01:41:38.820 | It means you have to have Grammarly.

01:41:41.860 | So get more time in your day, get more done, be more confident in your communication with

01:41:45.260 | Grammarly.

01:41:46.260 | Go to grammarly.com/deep to sign up for a free account.

01:41:48.900 | When you're ready to upgrade to Grammarly Premium, you will get 20% off for being my

01:41:53.960 | listener.

01:41:54.960 | To get that 20% off though, when you first sign up, you need to have gone to grammarly.com/deep.

01:42:01.020 | Don't forget that slash deep.

01:42:02.840 | That's 25% off at g-r-a-m-m-a-r-l-y.com/deep.

01:42:09.040 | All right, Jesse, for our last segment of the day, I call this three interesting things.

01:42:18.680 | These are things that I either came across on my own or were sent to me in my interesting@calnewport.com

01:42:25.160 | email address that I found interesting, and I will share them with you now.

01:42:30.360 | All relevant links to each of these things are in the show notes.

01:42:33.200 | All right, the first interesting thing is a news report, a news report out of Cleveland,

01:42:40.320 | Ohio.

01:42:41.320 | And I've loaded this on the tablet for those who are watching at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

01:42:44.720 | If you want to find this, this is the video for episode 224.

01:42:49.880 | All right, so here's an article from Ohio in particular, Warrensville Heights, Ohio,

01:42:58.920 | at the T-Squared Honors Academy.

01:43:01.120 | This is a charter school in Ohio.

01:43:03.920 | So this is a report from NBC News.

01:43:06.340 | So what happened with this charter school is coming back from COVID-19 last year, they

01:43:11.200 | had a lot of challenges, especially with discipline, etc.

01:43:15.960 | So the leaders of this charter school started looking through their data to say, what is

01:43:19.920 | causing these issues?

01:43:22.080 | And what they found is that the bulk of the problems, and I'm quoting this article now,

01:43:26.680 | were linked either directly or indirectly to cell phones.

01:43:32.240 | Students were scrolling social media, playing games and late to class because they were

01:43:35.740 | making TikToks in the hall.

01:43:39.300 | So last week we talked about a boarding school, or was this two weeks ago, Jesse, when we

01:43:43.960 | talked about the boarding school?

01:43:45.540 | Last week?

01:43:46.540 | I think it was two weeks ago.

01:43:47.540 | Two weeks ago, we talked about a boarding school that banned smartphones.

01:43:50.400 | We said, okay, you can kind of do that at a boarding school.

01:43:52.740 | Would this work at just a normal, this is a charter school, but a school you just go

01:43:55.360 | to in the morning and come home.

01:43:57.020 | Here's how they solve the logistical problem.

01:44:00.300 | They're using yonder, Y-O-N-D-R bags.

01:44:04.720 | These are the bags that they use at, for example, performances, comedians that are working on

01:44:10.780 | a new set, a big comedian like Dave Chappelle, they will have you put your phone into one

01:44:15.360 | of these bags.

01:44:16.360 | And what happens with these bags is you get to keep your phone.

01:44:19.320 | So it solves the issue of, oh, we have to store everyone's phone and get it back to

01:44:23.040 | them.

01:44:24.040 | If there's an emergency, they can't get it.

01:44:25.040 | You get to keep your phone, but it's in this bag.

01:44:27.280 | And as long as it's in this bag, it can't receive, it's a Faraday cage in a bag form.

01:44:31.760 | It can't receive calls, can't receive texts.

01:44:33.480 | So you keep it with you, but it can't work.

01:44:37.000 | And then when you leave the performance hall, you take it back out.

01:44:38.880 | Well, at the school, they're like, great, you can keep your phone, but you have to keep

01:44:40.800 | it in this bag.

01:44:42.840 | So that solves the logistical problem of how do we collect phones from 200 kids.

01:44:47.180 | But it also introduces an environment where no one's on their phone.

01:44:49.680 | And now, of course, it's really easy to see violators here.

01:44:51.560 | If you see anyone holding a phone, anyone taking it out of their bag, you say, okay,

01:44:55.960 | look, discipline.

01:44:57.080 | So they use these yonder bags.

01:44:59.780 | Students lock up their phones, and I'm quoting the article here, from the moment they walk

01:45:02.440 | into the school to the time they are dismissed at the end of the day.

01:45:05.280 | All right, so how did this go?

01:45:07.880 | Well, I have a couple of quotes here.

01:45:11.160 | So this charter school was initially worried about enrollment dropping with this new policy

01:45:16.240 | because the charter school, so people can choose to not go there anymore.

01:45:19.720 | They ended up having the opposite problem.

01:45:22.320 | More parents wanted to send their kids to this charter school specifically because of

01:45:26.560 | their policy of putting the phones in these bags.

01:45:31.280 | Here is a couple of other quotes.

01:45:32.520 | Here's from the principal.

01:45:34.360 | It's taken a layer of distraction and stress for some kids away.

01:45:37.260 | So it's great to see.

01:45:38.960 | The principal went on to say that transitioning to the pouches was surprisingly smooth for

01:45:43.440 | the students.

01:45:44.440 | And most of all, it's been refreshing to see kids just being kids again at lunch, in the

01:45:47.200 | halls and at recess, interacting, having fun, talking.

01:45:50.760 | At recess, they're playing football, basketball, and just being kids.

01:45:55.240 | It turns out that over 25 schools in Ohio are using these cell phone bags to get cell

01:46:01.520 | phones out of the schools, including six in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District

01:46:05.840 | alone.

01:46:06.840 | That's where this particular charter academy is.

01:46:09.040 | There's over 1,200 schools across the country that are doing something similar.

01:46:15.160 | A survey of 900 of these schools that are putting cell phones in these bags throughout

01:46:19.840 | the day found that 74 reported an improvement in student behavior, 65% have an improvement

01:46:26.280 | in academic performance.

01:46:28.520 | Anyone in school reform knows those percentages are massive.

01:46:34.160 | That's like magic bean level, almost like don't try to find some intervention that's

01:46:38.720 | going to make such a difference in schools.

01:46:41.160 | This one thing is.

01:46:42.160 | Anyways, I like this article.

01:46:43.920 | I found it interesting because it shows this notion that kids these days have to have their

01:46:50.000 | phones.

01:46:51.400 | There's no way to take them away.

01:46:53.240 | Pandora's box has been opened.

01:46:55.400 | All we can do is just say we had our own things when we were kids, our parents understand

01:46:58.920 | they have theirs.

01:47:00.000 | Those arguments do not have strong support.

01:47:03.800 | There's over a thousand schools already in this country that takes kids' phones away,

01:47:07.760 | and they're almost all finding very positive benefits.

01:47:11.080 | It's almost like a secret weapon to improvement of school environments.

01:47:15.600 | So I no longer accept the argument of kids these days as a way of maintaining the status

01:47:22.040 | quo with phones.

01:47:23.400 | A lot of schools are doing things about it, and the kids are happier, the teachers are

01:47:26.960 | happier, performance is up, discipline is up.

01:47:29.260 | So to me, that's good.

01:47:30.520 | That's progress.

01:47:31.520 | So that is an interesting thing.

01:47:33.040 | All right.

01:47:34.040 | My second interesting thing is one of these buzzy articles from the Atlantic that is making

01:47:39.680 | the rounds.

01:47:40.680 | It's from November 10th.

01:47:42.800 | It's titled The Age of Social Media is Ending, written by Ian Bogost or Bogost.

01:47:49.880 | The subtitle is It Never Should Have Begun.

01:47:52.840 | It has just what I think is a confusing graphic.

01:47:55.600 | So for those who are watching on the YouTube channel, I thought this was a white domino

01:48:01.000 | with blue, three blue dots that for some reason had a little thing coming out of it.

01:48:04.720 | But I guess this is like a plastic version of, I don't know, like the I'm typing in text

01:48:13.360 | message bubble.

01:48:14.360 | You see what I'm saying?

01:48:15.360 | Do you think that's right?

01:48:16.440 | It looks kind of like a speech bubble with three dots in it.

01:48:18.960 | Or is that a Twitter thing?

01:48:19.960 | I don't really know.

01:48:20.960 | >>AJ Yeah, it looks like a text thing with the dots.

01:48:26.120 | >>DAVE So look, not to blame here, but this is an article about social media not texting.

01:48:31.420 | So I don't know about this graphic choice.

01:48:33.520 | But if we can make it past there, this is a buzzy article.

01:48:39.160 | It starts by saying it's over.

01:48:41.360 | Facebook is in decline.

01:48:42.640 | Twitter is in chaos.

01:48:44.600 | Mark Zuckerberg's empire has lost hundreds of billions of dollars and laid off 11,000

01:48:48.720 | people, blah, blah, blah.

01:48:51.400 | It never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end and soon.

01:48:56.400 | But now that we've washed up on this unexpected shore, we can look back at the shipwreck that

01:48:59.820 | left us here with fresh eyes.

01:49:02.260 | And perhaps here we can find some relief.

01:49:04.320 | Social media was never a natural way to work, play, and socialize, though it did become

01:49:06.800 | second nature.

01:49:07.800 | All right.

01:49:08.800 | So basically, I'm glad this is spreading.

01:49:11.560 | And Jesse, you can back me up here.

01:49:13.400 | But my reaction to this is, all right, well, welcome to my party.

01:49:19.000 | I've been hosting this for a while now.

01:49:20.920 | I mean, it really was about two years ago that I began going on major shows and saying,

01:49:26.040 | you guys don't understand that the decline of social media has already been set into

01:49:31.280 | motion.

01:49:32.280 | That this age of these monopolies being at the center of cultural life, the apex of that

01:49:37.560 | has already passed.

01:49:38.560 | You just don't notice it yet.

01:49:40.360 | And there's going to be this decline in fragmentation.

01:49:43.000 | And no one really bought that.

01:49:45.160 | And now like a year or two later, I feel like I was right.

01:49:48.800 | That A, it is fragmenting like I predicted it would.

01:49:52.880 | And B, that's good because it's very unnatural.

01:49:55.840 | These are the two things that no one would accept in 2020 or 2019.

01:50:00.080 | No one would accept that it was somehow unnatural, all of this tweeting back and forth and Instagram

01:50:05.120 | with these tags.

01:50:06.120 | And you click on these icons and you forward these things and you swipe on the phone.

01:50:10.480 | And I'm saying, this is so out of character, human character.

01:50:13.960 | This is an artificial way to interact.

01:50:15.720 | It is a perversion of the internet to try to run it through a small number of walled

01:50:20.920 | gardens.

01:50:22.060 | And this is very unstable and it's not going to last.

01:50:24.080 | And no one came around to that.

01:50:25.160 | But now in this article, it's being proposed and what's happening now.

01:50:29.200 | So welcome to my party.

01:50:30.480 | And I'm glad people are, I guess I'm glad people are showing up.

01:50:34.720 | This may be maybe the way I'll think about it.

01:50:36.520 | People are coming to your party.

01:50:37.520 | Like I'm in my party.

01:50:38.520 | All right, let's do the third interesting thing.

01:50:41.520 | All right.

01:50:42.520 | So here, what I'm going to do for this third interesting thing is I haven't read this yet.

01:50:47.500 | Someone sent this to me.

01:50:49.680 | The concept sounded great.

01:50:51.720 | So we can discover this together.

01:50:54.520 | So this is an article from the Wall Street Journal.

01:50:58.720 | Let me get the date.

01:50:59.720 | I think this is recent.

01:51:00.720 | Let's see here.

01:51:01.720 | November 17th.

01:51:02.720 | All right.

01:51:03.720 | So here's the name of this article.

01:51:04.720 | And this is all I know about this so far is the article and subtitle, but you'll see

01:51:07.680 | why this caught my attention.

01:51:09.480 | Here's the title.

01:51:10.480 | Eat, Pray, Heard.

01:51:13.120 | How an IT guy found career happiness owning 78 camels.

01:51:19.300 | And the subhead is Muhammad Isaac grew tired of office life in Canada.

01:51:25.300 | So he returned to a Somaliland birthplace and took up an ancient trade.

01:51:31.640 | So speaking of deep life and deep resets, getting back in touch with something, making

01:51:36.140 | a radical move, getting back in touch with values, shaping your life in a very intentional

01:51:40.840 | way.

01:51:41.840 | This seems like it's one of those canonical examples.

01:51:43.720 | All right.

01:51:44.720 | So let's let's get just a couple of details here together.

01:51:49.680 | Let's see.

01:51:50.680 | He took 78 camels, but Muhammad Isaac is no longer miserable and reversal.

01:51:55.560 | The usual way of things.

01:51:56.560 | Mr.

01:51:57.560 | Isaac had fled distress of city life in the West to become a camel herder in the drought

01:52:00.280 | stricken scrub lands of Eastern Africa.

01:52:02.800 | Oh, Jesse, is that all cliche?

01:52:05.240 | If I had a dime for every knowledge worker, he reacted to the stress of the life, the

01:52:13.480 | move to drought stricken Africa to raise camels.

01:52:17.480 | I would have one dime.

01:52:21.160 | I'm going to let me just push back.

01:52:22.440 | We're reading this together live in the reversal, the usual way to do things.

01:52:26.000 | That's not a reversal right now.

01:52:27.160 | The usual way to do things.

01:52:28.160 | I mean, if anything, this is the big trend of the last three years is especially knowledge

01:52:32.080 | workers radically rebuilding their lives in ways are more valuable.

01:52:35.440 | So I would say in a further exemplification or a particularly strong example of how things

01:52:41.800 | are going now.

01:52:43.640 | Mr.

01:52:44.640 | Isaac fled the stress of the city.

01:52:45.640 | I mean, unless the implication here is the usual way of doing things is that camel herders

01:52:51.480 | from the scrub lands in Eastern Africa moved to Canada to become IT professionals.

01:52:56.520 | Then that might make sense, but I don't know how strong that pipeline is.

01:52:59.520 | All right.

01:53:00.520 | We get a little more details here.

01:53:02.360 | Mr.

01:53:03.360 | Isaac worked as a computer network administrator in Ottawa.

01:53:06.120 | This is not fair, Jesse.

01:53:07.120 | I don't know if you agree with this, but for some reason I, you know, office life is something

01:53:11.720 | I don't love.

01:53:12.720 | I like to be my own boss.

01:53:13.840 | For some reason it feels like office life in Canada is probably even worse.

01:53:17.080 | It's like even like nicer and more bland, like at least in the U S like you're going

01:53:21.640 | to have one or two people who are kind of crazy and it's, you know, like a, there'll

01:53:25.600 | be like the Q and on guy and at least there'll be like some excitement, right.

01:53:29.480 | Or like the guy who has like way too into, you know, weightlifting or the, like, I'm

01:53:35.080 | really into the woman really in the goop.

01:53:37.200 | And like, at least you're going to have some wacky characters that sort of also like are

01:53:41.840 | very threatening.

01:53:42.840 | So there's like some spice to it.

01:53:43.840 | I just feel like in Canada, everyone would just be, it'd be like really nice.

01:53:46.440 | Not as fun.

01:53:48.600 | Anyway, so he returned, we'll just, we'll just skip through this, but this is just to

01:53:52.320 | get the highlights here.

01:53:54.400 | He has a long family history of the, of the camel herding.

01:53:56.800 | So he's not just doing this from scratch.

01:53:59.840 | And what he says is what's important is happiness.

01:54:03.600 | So it's interesting.

01:54:06.920 | The nomad life is not easy.

01:54:08.120 | He also adds, but this is our heritage.

01:54:10.360 | He's 53.

01:54:12.700 | He looks much younger because he worked as an IT administrator his whole life instead

01:54:15.960 | of a camel herder.

01:54:18.480 | He worries about sunburn.

01:54:19.480 | That's some interesting details here.

01:54:22.560 | Interesting details.

01:54:24.400 | So you know, this is cool.

01:54:27.840 | Let's just pull out the, there's a lot of interesting history of Somalia, Somalia here

01:54:31.960 | and other types of things.

01:54:32.960 | It's a good article, but I'm just, I'm scrolling here as we read.

01:54:39.600 | It's about how he learned how to do this.

01:54:41.000 | He read camel herding books, not a lucrative niche in the publishing industry.

01:54:44.540 | I can tell you that from experience.

01:54:47.020 | They watched a documentary called Camelicious.

01:54:49.700 | All right.

01:54:51.320 | And he learned how to do it, move there and began camel herding.

01:54:56.140 | So I think the takeaway message of that interesting thing is not to become a camel herder, but

01:55:01.140 | look at the general outline of what Muhammad Isaac did here.

01:55:05.100 | He stepped back to do a deep reset.

01:55:06.860 | He was a network administrator in Ottawa.

01:55:08.820 | He was bored.

01:55:10.360 | He felt disconnected from his heritage and his family.

01:55:12.580 | So he said, let me do some equivalent of a deep reset.

01:55:15.500 | What are, what's important to me?

01:55:17.420 | How can I radically realign my life around what's important to me?

01:55:19.940 | And for him, reconnecting to a ancient family trade from his homeland that he had left and

01:55:25.400 | felt disconnected from, that is pure intention, a crafting of a life around things that really

01:55:31.940 | matter, throwing in a dash of radicalness and doing so.

01:55:35.280 | That general structure I think is replicatable in a lot of different specific flavors.

01:55:40.840 | So I should say that general recipe is implementable in a lot of different flavors.

01:55:45.540 | But what, what I think these type of deep reset share is that intentionality, values

01:55:51.200 | based and radicalness.

01:55:54.560 | I want to be very careful about how I craft my life.

01:55:56.760 | I want to base this off of what's important to me and I'm willing to do radical things

01:56:00.800 | to follow it.

01:56:01.800 | So you don't have to become a camel herder, but a lot of people have their own, probably

01:56:05.120 | equivalent of camel herding in their own life.

01:56:09.440 | Heritage, family, connection, things really important to them that you could make a radical

01:56:13.120 | change around.

01:56:14.120 | So that was definitely a interesting thing.

01:56:16.080 | All right, Jesse, I think we've talked enough today.

01:56:20.120 | Let's wrap things up.

01:56:21.760 | Thank you everyone who sent in their questions and left voicemails and did live calls and

01:56:25.760 | sent in interesting things.

01:56:26.960 | Wow.

01:56:27.960 | We really have a lot of interaction going on.

01:56:28.960 | So thanks for that, everybody.

01:56:30.600 | We will be back next week with another episode of the Deep Questions Podcast.

01:56:34.720 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:56:36.720 | [Music]

Ep. 224: A World Without Twitter?

Chapters