Ep. 193: The Future of Twitter, Reading More, and Fixed-Schedule Productivity

00:00:00.000 | I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, episode 193.

00:00:05.000 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ, joined once again

00:00:16.840 | after his well-missed absence by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:21.160 | Jesse, welcome back.

00:00:22.640 | - Thanks, good to be back.

00:00:24.340 | - I hope your tournament, the lacrosse tournament

00:00:28.700 | for the team you helped coach, I hope that all went well.

00:00:31.440 | - Yeah, it went pretty good.

00:00:33.400 | I coached at Gonzaga College High School

00:00:35.360 | down in Washington, D.C., right next to the Capitol.

00:00:37.800 | We had some ups and downs,

00:00:39.480 | but we're trying to play better lacrosse.

00:00:42.980 | - Yeah, I mean, I like to imagine,

00:00:44.120 | I don't know if this is true,

00:00:45.840 | but I get a kick out of imagining

00:00:47.560 | that your coaching philosophy entirely comes out of my books.

00:00:52.480 | - Yeah, pretty much.

00:00:53.320 | - Yeah, that you're out there yelling at your kids.

00:00:57.280 | - Enough with all of this hyperactive hive mind,

00:01:01.000 | ad hoc, back and forth,

00:01:02.680 | unstructured communication on the field.

00:01:04.440 | We need communication protocols

00:01:07.680 | to avoid all of the cognitive capacity hits

00:01:10.040 | from this context switching.

00:01:12.000 | So now here's how it works.

00:01:13.680 | If you wanna make a pass to the player down by the net,

00:01:18.320 | there's a Google Doc.

00:01:19.360 | So you put that in the Google Doc.

00:01:22.700 | We can check that when the player down by the net

00:01:24.720 | is ready to check it.

00:01:26.080 | You're not gonna be able to interrupt them

00:01:28.320 | and create a context shift.

00:01:30.360 | That's the secret to your success, I assume.

00:01:32.440 | But is my terminology right?

00:01:33.700 | The player down by the net,

00:01:35.040 | there's probably a good term.

00:01:36.320 | - Attackman.

00:01:37.160 | - The attackman.

00:01:37.980 | - But especially on defense,

00:01:39.120 | so it either goes really well or it goes really bad.

00:01:41.280 | So the communication is just on point,

00:01:43.560 | don't give up any goals, or we just give up 20.

00:01:45.800 | - Well, that's what, I mean,

00:01:47.480 | I think that's your key, is that's gonna be the secret.

00:01:49.840 | - Especially sometimes if the Google Drive

00:01:51.380 | doesn't refresh when they come over to the sideline.

00:01:54.360 | - Yeah, I mean, look.

00:01:55.200 | - And then they're lost.

00:01:56.680 | - I don't wanna tell you how to do your business,

00:01:57.920 | but I was just scouting St. John's,

00:02:01.200 | what, their number one team in the country this year?

00:02:04.200 | - They are, they're in our league, they're good.

00:02:06.360 | - Yeah, well, look, I don't wanna give away their secrets.

00:02:08.520 | I was scouting them, but I'll give it to you secretly.

00:02:12.040 | Trello boards.

00:02:13.060 | That is how St. John's is dominating.

00:02:16.280 | They are using Trello boards to keep track

00:02:19.120 | of their different obligations on the field

00:02:21.300 | in a way that allows them to attach files

00:02:23.200 | and see context quickly.

00:02:24.320 | So look, I don't wanna speak out of school.

00:02:25.960 | - Probably definitely helps with the recruiting,

00:02:27.440 | I'll tell you that.

00:02:28.280 | - Yeah, they're like, look, you come here to St. John's

00:02:31.080 | and you're not gonna be on Slack.

00:02:33.960 | We're gonna have communication protocols

00:02:36.680 | that minimize context shifting.

00:02:38.320 | They have a giant picture of me,

00:02:39.400 | I don't know if you've seen this in their locker room,

00:02:41.260 | but there's like a giant picture of me

00:02:43.280 | giving double thumbs up and it just says,

00:02:46.240 | do it for Cal today.

00:02:47.720 | - Yeah.

00:02:48.560 | - And they hit it as, you know, like in Notre Dame,

00:02:49.680 | they all hit it as they go out and they get real psyched.

00:02:52.500 | - I'm trying to get Gonzaga to be the only team

00:02:54.220 | in America that doesn't use social media,

00:02:56.720 | but that's kind of hard to do.

00:02:58.280 | So all high school kids, it's hard.

00:03:00.160 | But remember that, there's this thing

00:03:01.720 | that went around for a while.

00:03:03.720 | I mean, or I got it sent a lot.

00:03:05.400 | It was a couple of years ago,

00:03:06.380 | there was one of the college basketball teams,

00:03:08.240 | I think it was Texas Tech.

00:03:09.320 | I think we've talked about this before.

00:03:11.160 | They banned phones on the road.

00:03:13.840 | Like you can't bring your phone with you on the road,

00:03:16.240 | you can't bring it with you into the hotel room.

00:03:18.320 | Like they were like, we wanna just focus.

00:03:19.600 | And the team made like a really deep

00:03:21.920 | March Madness run that year.

00:03:23.780 | There's something to that.

00:03:25.020 | And there's research on that from the NBA,

00:03:28.620 | where they could correlate Twitter usage,

00:03:32.820 | 'cause you can see it, there's a record,

00:03:35.040 | with performance.

00:03:36.460 | And it was economists who were doing this.

00:03:38.380 | And they could see, okay, the players on a night

00:03:41.180 | in which they were up doing Twitter,

00:03:42.940 | like they were tweeting, maybe it was Instagram,

00:03:44.620 | I thought it was Twitter,

00:03:45.580 | their performance was under their average the next day.

00:03:48.300 | So there's like, there's these direct connections,

00:03:49.820 | I think, obviously between social media and sports.

00:03:52.620 | 'Cause I think it's why some of my stuff,

00:03:54.260 | like digital minimalism is popular

00:03:56.380 | among professional athletes.

00:03:57.660 | Is that like every epsilon matters.

00:03:59.460 | This is a pretty big epsilon.

00:04:01.440 | And people are starting to figure that out.

00:04:04.180 | - Yeah, it all plays into focus, what you talk about.

00:04:07.060 | - Yeah, and when you're in sports, focus.

00:04:09.300 | Focus is everything.

00:04:10.740 | All right, well, speaking of focus,

00:04:12.300 | we have an announcement,

00:04:14.100 | another administrative announcement.

00:04:16.460 | We are for our, what we're gonna call our spring season,

00:04:20.420 | or our summer season, however we wanna call it,

00:04:23.020 | are temporarily dropping down

00:04:25.140 | to a one episode per week format.

00:04:30.140 | So we'll have one episode per week.

00:04:33.580 | The episode will probably be longer

00:04:35.820 | than they had been before.

00:04:37.680 | We're gonna mix in calls with written questions

00:04:40.980 | with various segments.

00:04:42.060 | We'll all get mixed into these longer episodes.

00:04:45.580 | A lot of it will go on YouTube, individual segments.

00:04:47.940 | We're gonna do some straight to YouTube videos as well.

00:04:51.180 | We're kind of messing around with that.

00:04:53.140 | But here's the reason why

00:04:54.940 | we're going through the summer season is we have,

00:04:57.100 | it's good news, but we have grown the show enough

00:04:59.620 | that we can actually satisfy our ad contracts

00:05:04.540 | in one episode per week.

00:05:06.180 | So it used to be the ad contracts we sold,

00:05:08.260 | and we've sold out all of 2022.

00:05:10.060 | We would play each ad on Monday and Thursday

00:05:14.660 | to get to or beyond the number of downloads we had sold.

00:05:19.620 | Now the show is popular enough that in just one episode,

00:05:22.620 | we will hit our obligations for how many downloads

00:05:26.260 | each ad is supposed to be attached to.

00:05:29.660 | So what we could have done is said,

00:05:30.860 | great, we can now double our ad inventory.

00:05:33.780 | So put the ads we sold on Monday's episode,

00:05:36.620 | sell new ads for the episodes on Thursday.

00:05:38.860 | But I wanted to put in the practice what I preach,

00:05:41.220 | the craftsman bucket of the deep life.

00:05:43.260 | I stepped back and said, what I would rather do first

00:05:45.580 | is actually take the time it would free up

00:05:47.660 | to temporarily not record two episodes,

00:05:49.660 | but just record one episode.

00:05:51.340 | Take the time that frees up to improve the show.

00:05:54.340 | To think deeply about what's working, what's not working,

00:05:57.860 | to do more writing before we get on air,

00:05:59.860 | to see how can I make this show,

00:06:01.820 | to use a phrase that you may have heard me say before,

00:06:05.020 | be so good it can't be ignored.

00:06:06.820 | So that's what Jess and I are trying.

00:06:08.900 | We're cutting back to one episode,

00:06:10.100 | we're doubling the amount of time we're spending prepping,

00:06:12.340 | we're gonna be experimenting, we're gonna be tightening,

00:06:14.860 | we're gonna be trying out new segments.

00:06:16.780 | And the hope is we'll come out of the summer

00:06:18.380 | with a even better show.

00:06:21.020 | We'll push the show up to its next level.

00:06:24.500 | With that in mind, we're always happy to hear feedback

00:06:26.460 | on what you like or don't like on the show.

00:06:28.380 | Your best bet's to send that towards Jesse,

00:06:30.140 | jesse@calnewport.com.

00:06:33.500 | He's more likely to see and keep track of that than I am.

00:06:36.740 | And so send your thoughts, what's working,

00:06:38.100 | what's not working to jesse@calnewport.com.

00:06:41.300 | And hopefully you'll like the innovations we attempt

00:06:45.540 | in the weeks and months ahead.

00:06:48.260 | So what do you think, Jesse, one episode a week?

00:06:51.340 | I think it'll be good.

00:06:52.740 | - I think it would be good.

00:06:54.140 | You put a lot of thought into stuff

00:06:55.980 | and you've been thinking about it

00:06:57.420 | and bouncing some ideas off myself.

00:06:59.260 | And I think, like you said,

00:07:01.180 | you can make the show even better.

00:07:03.140 | And I know that your audience likes to hear from you a lot,

00:07:05.820 | but I think that the show is like real solid

00:07:08.900 | with like some really good segments.

00:07:10.460 | - Yeah, and then once you figure out,

00:07:13.300 | once you figure out the format that's really working,

00:07:16.460 | then it can become more efficient to work on it again.

00:07:18.340 | And then we can expand the amount we're producing.

00:07:20.660 | But anyways, it should be fun.

00:07:21.700 | Also, it's the summer and I'm tired

00:07:23.300 | and it's nice to just have a little bit more breathing room.

00:07:26.380 | So, you know, we've definitely, okay, behind the scenes,

00:07:28.700 | Jesse, you will attest to this.

00:07:29.620 | There's definitely, especially during my busy period

00:07:31.580 | in the spring have been times where it's like,

00:07:33.580 | we have this window and there is a lot of recording

00:07:36.060 | that has to be done.

00:07:37.300 | And I'm basically like running into the room,

00:07:39.420 | jumping down, grabbing the mic, let's roll.

00:07:41.820 | Like we've had to do some pretty high intensity,

00:07:45.660 | high stress, rapid recording.

00:07:48.020 | So it's gonna be nice that we can just have

00:07:49.660 | some breathing room around our sessions,

00:07:51.260 | actually kind of enjoy it a little bit more.

00:07:53.460 | All right, well, let us do our first segment.

00:08:00.060 | I have been enjoying doing some of these

00:08:03.700 | news reaction segments.

00:08:06.380 | What I'm really looking for, of course,

00:08:07.740 | is not to just give my opinion on everything

00:08:09.340 | and who cares, but to look at segments in the news

00:08:11.380 | that overlap things that we talk about here on the show

00:08:14.300 | and give me a chance to actually bounce off them

00:08:17.460 | and elaborate some of the theories

00:08:20.020 | I've been developing on the show,

00:08:21.300 | some of the theories that I talk about commonly on the show.

00:08:24.100 | So it's news that's relevant to the show.

00:08:25.980 | And unlike prior Cal Reacts to the News segments,

00:08:29.260 | I actually wanna do several different pieces here.

00:08:32.860 | So I'm gonna start with an article returning

00:08:36.900 | to what we've been discussing,

00:08:38.060 | returning to Elon Musk and his potential takeover of Twitter.

00:08:43.060 | There's an article I read this morning,

00:08:47.380 | it came out the morning I'm recording this,

00:08:49.580 | from the New York Times.

00:08:52.180 | It was titled, "Elon Musk Details His Plan to Pay

00:08:56.180 | for a $46.5 Billion Takeover of Twitter."

00:09:01.060 | And this article starts by noting,

00:09:03.420 | Elon Musk said on Thursday that he had commitments

00:09:06.660 | worth $46.5 billion to finance his proposed bid for Twitter

00:09:11.660 | and was exploring whether to launch a hostile takeover

00:09:14.940 | for the social media company.

00:09:17.580 | Jesse, I think he's beating out the $5,000 bid

00:09:20.740 | that we put in.

00:09:21.620 | I think our vision for Cal Newport Twitter,

00:09:24.460 | look, they haven't said no yet,

00:09:27.380 | but it looks like Elon has the better bid

00:09:29.540 | he's putting together here.

00:09:31.060 | The article goes on to say,

00:09:31.940 | "The financial commitments gathered a week

00:09:34.020 | after Mr. Musk made an unsolicited offer for Twitter,

00:09:37.020 | put pressure on the social media company's board

00:09:38.940 | to take his advances seriously."

00:09:41.940 | "It's serious," Stephen David Solomon,

00:09:45.060 | a professor at the School of Law

00:09:46.300 | at the University of California at Berkeley,

00:09:47.700 | said of the new filing.

00:09:49.020 | "He's getting more professional,

00:09:50.540 | and this is starting to look like a normal hostile bid.

00:09:53.140 | You do not do that unless you are going to launch an offer."

00:09:57.340 | So I was actually, I think I was leaning towards

00:10:02.940 | this was probably not for real until I read this article.

00:10:07.300 | I thought he might've just been messing with people.

00:10:09.380 | This article is seeming to imply

00:10:12.260 | that he is actually serious.

00:10:13.700 | Did you take him seriously, Jesse?

00:10:15.220 | You were never quite sure

00:10:16.580 | if he was actually gonna do this.

00:10:18.140 | - I thought he was serious.

00:10:20.780 | - Okay, so you more understood it.

00:10:22.740 | Now, the breaking news that almost happened this morning

00:10:25.940 | is he tweeted today, the day we're recording this,

00:10:29.540 | what was his exact words here?

00:10:31.020 | It was "moving on..."

00:10:33.820 | Now, this is big news in part

00:10:37.540 | because I never see Twitter breaking news

00:10:39.460 | because I don't use Twitter,

00:10:41.300 | but I had to go on the Twitter to get this tweet thread

00:10:44.780 | I'm gonna talk about for the next story

00:10:46.140 | that a user sent me, and it was popped up.

00:10:49.060 | So I was like, maybe that was must saying

00:10:50.420 | he was moving on from this,

00:10:51.420 | but then he clarified, it was breaking news.

00:10:53.180 | It was 14 minutes before I came over here.

00:10:55.300 | He clarified that when he said "moving on,"

00:10:57.740 | it wasn't about his Twitter takeover bid.

00:10:59.940 | It was him moving on from making fun of Bill Gates

00:11:04.260 | because Bill Gates had shorted Tesla stock

00:11:08.220 | at a time where he was talking a lot about climate change.

00:11:10.100 | So I guess Elon Musk has been dunking on Gates recently

00:11:13.660 | for that.

00:11:14.500 | Captain climate change is shorting Tesla stock.

00:11:17.060 | And so he was moving on from that.

00:11:18.780 | Musk goes on to say on Twitter,

00:11:22.300 | "If our Twitter bid succeeds,

00:11:23.500 | "we will defeat the spam bots or die trying."

00:11:27.740 | So that's interesting because that's a new spin.

00:11:30.900 | I think a lot of the coverage of Musk's plans for Twitter

00:11:34.940 | had to do with content moderation.

00:11:36.460 | We'll get into that more here in a second.

00:11:38.540 | And here he is emphasizing another type of improvement

00:11:41.940 | he would look to do in this case, get rid of spam bots.

00:11:45.100 | That's interesting that he is making that pivot.

00:11:48.460 | The final thing is I would point out

00:11:51.100 | that Morgan Stanley is a big part of the money

00:11:55.340 | he is raising for this takeover bid.

00:11:58.220 | And they quote a lecturer from Cornell University saying,

00:12:02.340 | "There are lots of very senior people at Morgan Stanley

00:12:04.380 | "that are responsible for that brand.

00:12:06.380 | "That in my view would not allow this to happen

00:12:08.260 | "unless there was some level of seriousness behind it."

00:12:10.460 | Okay, so all of the coverage seems to be saying

00:12:15.460 | this is probably serious.

00:12:17.460 | It's probably not Musk.

00:12:19.580 | It's probably not Musk messing with us.

00:12:21.180 | Here's the two thoughts I have about that.

00:12:23.140 | One, it really still could be Musk messing with everyone.

00:12:26.100 | I think he gets enjoyment out of it.

00:12:28.380 | I think he's very persuasive.

00:12:29.940 | I think he could persuade Morgan Stanley to come on board

00:12:33.140 | even if he never actually planned to make the bid.

00:12:35.940 | So I'm still not sure about that.

00:12:38.540 | The other thing I was thinking about this morning

00:12:40.380 | is that there could be a silver lining

00:12:43.860 | to this Musk takeover that isn't really being reported,

00:12:48.660 | but I think it could be good.

00:12:50.780 | And that's the fact that the media for the most part

00:12:54.540 | doesn't like Elon Musk for a lot of complicated reasons,

00:12:58.620 | but of course the fact that he messes with them this way

00:13:00.660 | is probably one of them.

00:13:02.140 | So if he did take over Twitter,

00:13:04.500 | the media might stop using Twitter and focusing on Twitter

00:13:10.700 | and allowing Twitter to influence them as much.

00:13:14.620 | Because on principle, they're like,

00:13:15.780 | "I don't like Elon Musk.

00:13:17.220 | "Twitter is now his.

00:13:18.500 | "I don't wanna use Twitter as much anymore

00:13:20.300 | "as a TV reporter or a newspaper reporter.

00:13:22.860 | "I don't wanna be a part of something that he owns."

00:13:26.220 | And this would be good for the Republic.

00:13:30.180 | I think if reporters and journalists in general

00:13:33.500 | spent less time on Twitter and being influenced by Twitter,

00:13:36.300 | it's probably better for everybody.

00:13:37.460 | So there's a silver lining here.

00:13:39.140 | If Musk continues acting sort of erratically

00:13:42.020 | and the media continues to dislike him

00:13:43.860 | and he takes over Twitter,

00:13:45.220 | maybe it will actually ironically and paradoxically

00:13:49.180 | reduce the impact of Twitter on our culture.

00:13:52.140 | And I think that would be a good thing.

00:13:55.300 | Basically anything that hurts Twitter, I'm kind of a fan of.

00:13:59.980 | All right, so then I had a second article here

00:14:02.220 | that elaborates on what's going on with Musk and Twitter.

00:14:07.060 | And maybe it's not fair to call it an article.

00:14:08.860 | It's a Twitter thread.

00:14:10.140 | So there's all sorts of recursive ironies abounding here.

00:14:14.620 | It's from the former CEO of Reddit, Yisheng Wang,

00:14:19.180 | and hat tip to listener Andy, who emailed this to me.

00:14:23.860 | In general, by the way, if you have tips or articles

00:14:26.220 | you think I would like,

00:14:27.580 | my longtime address for that is interesting@calnewport.com.

00:14:32.380 | That's where Andy sent me this Twitter thread.

00:14:34.980 | And I thought it was quite interesting

00:14:36.300 | as this has gotten quite a lot of play.

00:14:38.740 | Yisheng starts in this thread by saying,

00:14:42.180 | "I've now been asked multiple times

00:14:43.580 | for my take on Elon's offer for Twitter.

00:14:46.460 | So fine, this is what I think about that."

00:14:48.820 | All right, so here's his main point.

00:14:52.180 | If Elon takes over Twitter, he's in for a world of pain.

00:14:55.980 | He has no idea.

00:14:58.980 | I'm gonna summarize, this is a long thread.

00:15:01.900 | But Yisheng says, "There is this old culture of the internet,

00:15:06.140 | roughly Web 1.0 and early Web 2.0,

00:15:09.780 | that had a very strong free speech culture.

00:15:13.100 | This free speech idea arose out of a culture

00:15:15.260 | of late '90s America, where the main people

00:15:17.180 | who were interested in censorship

00:15:18.380 | were religious conservatives.

00:15:19.980 | In practical terms, this meant that they would try to ban porn

00:15:22.660 | or other imagined moral degeneracy on the internet.

00:15:25.260 | Many of the older tech leaders today,"

00:15:29.300 | he points to Elon Musk or Marc Andreessen,

00:15:32.460 | "grew up with that internet.

00:15:33.820 | To them, the internet represented freedom, a new frontier,

00:15:36.060 | a flowering of the human spirit, and a great optimism

00:15:38.060 | that technology could birth a new golden age of mankind."

00:15:42.220 | Skipping ahead here a little bit.

00:15:43.860 | Reddit, which he ran, "was born in this last years

00:15:48.340 | of this old internet when free speech meant freedom

00:15:50.380 | from religious conservatives trying to take down porn

00:15:52.380 | and sometimes first-person shooters.

00:15:54.180 | And so we tried to preserve that ideal,

00:15:55.580 | but this is not what free speech is about today."

00:15:59.260 | He then goes on to argue, "The internet is not a frontier

00:16:01.980 | where people can go to be free.

00:16:03.340 | It's where the entire world is now,

00:16:04.700 | and every culture war is being fought on it.

00:16:06.580 | It's the main battlefield for our culture wars."

00:16:09.420 | And he says, "It means that upholding free speech

00:16:11.260 | means you're not standing up

00:16:13.100 | against some religious conservatives

00:16:14.860 | lobbying to remove Judy Blume books from the library.

00:16:16.900 | It means you're standing up against everyone

00:16:18.540 | because every side is trying to take away

00:16:20.180 | the speech rights of the other side."

00:16:22.740 | And so he goes on to say, for example,

00:16:24.340 | that all of his left-wing woke friends are convinced

00:16:28.740 | that the social media platforms uphold

00:16:30.500 | the white supremacist misogynistic patriarchy,

00:16:32.700 | and they have plenty of screenshots and evidence.

00:16:34.980 | And at the same time,

00:16:35.820 | all of his center-right libertarian friends

00:16:38.260 | are convinced that social media platforms

00:16:40.420 | uphold the woke BLM Marxist LGBTQ agenda,

00:16:43.420 | and they also have plenty of screenshots, blah, blah, blah.

00:16:45.860 | So his point is everyone has their own definition

00:16:50.060 | of free speech.

00:16:51.380 | Everyone wants to stop the other side,

00:16:54.380 | wherever the other team is, from whatever they're doing

00:16:56.620 | to impede their team and to get more freedom

00:16:58.660 | for their own team, that it's a battlefield

00:17:00.900 | where there is no clear sides.

00:17:05.100 | And he says, "Elon Musk doesn't realize this."

00:17:08.060 | He says, "Elon doesn't understand

00:17:10.460 | what has happened to internet culture since 2014.

00:17:12.980 | I know he doesn't because he was late to Bitcoin.

00:17:16.980 | Elon's been too busy doing actual real things

00:17:18.980 | like making electric cars and reusable rockets."

00:17:21.380 | Cutting out some inappropriate language here.

00:17:25.980 | So he has a pretty good excuse for not paying attention,

00:17:28.700 | but this is something that's hard to understand

00:17:30.300 | unless you've run a social network.

00:17:32.660 | All right, I'll call it there.

00:17:36.060 | That's my summary.

00:17:36.900 | Basically what this former Reddit CEO is saying

00:17:39.780 | is that Elon Musk is from an old generation

00:17:42.700 | where free speech was an ideal

00:17:44.460 | that all tech people supported.

00:17:46.100 | It was pretty clear.

00:17:46.980 | It was like the internet is for free speech

00:17:48.540 | and we have to stop Jerry Falwell

00:17:50.700 | from trying to prevent first-person shooters

00:17:54.180 | or Al Gore's wife from preventing first-person shooters

00:17:57.180 | or whatever was going on at the time.

00:17:58.300 | He's like, "Today that's no longer the case.

00:18:00.420 | Free speech means different things for everybody.

00:18:02.660 | There's no solution that's gonna make everyone happy.

00:18:04.740 | What this team wants is completely different

00:18:06.980 | from what this team wants.

00:18:08.260 | And you're gonna have to either pick sides.

00:18:10.420 | And if you don't pick sides,

00:18:11.740 | everyone's gonna hate you.

00:18:12.580 | You're gonna be in a world of pain from all sides."

00:18:15.260 | So this thread has gone somewhat viral.

00:18:19.820 | And I think it is an interesting take.

00:18:22.340 | All right, so here's what I think about that.

00:18:24.260 | Having thought a lot about this

00:18:25.540 | and written a lot about this,

00:18:27.740 | there's some things here I agree with.

00:18:29.620 | Yes, there certainly was an older internet culture.

00:18:34.180 | I think they're often described

00:18:35.580 | as the open culture techno-optimist

00:18:39.300 | that were a big believer in the internet

00:18:41.460 | as bringing openness to everyone.

00:18:44.020 | This is a movement that was really tied to things

00:18:46.220 | like information wants to be free, open source software.

00:18:49.780 | They were very anti-digital rights management.

00:18:52.300 | They thought software and music and text

00:18:55.540 | and everything should just be freely available

00:18:57.100 | on the internet.

00:18:57.940 | And it was a utopian movement.

00:18:59.540 | It came out of California techno-optimist circles.

00:19:02.260 | Kevin Kelly, who I know and respect

00:19:03.940 | was one of the big thinkers of that.

00:19:05.060 | So that movement did exist.

00:19:06.700 | Their version of the internet

00:19:07.860 | is very different than it is today.

00:19:09.820 | A lot of writers have talked about that transition.

00:19:11.940 | I think Jaron Lanier is probably the most eloquent.

00:19:14.460 | He was an open culture techno-optimist

00:19:16.340 | who became decidedly not that

00:19:17.940 | after the internet took a turn in the early 2000s.

00:19:21.180 | So I think that is definitely true.

00:19:23.660 | I think he's also right.

00:19:26.060 | I think we've seen this clearly

00:19:27.900 | that it's also right that there is no obvious solution

00:19:32.500 | that's gonna make most people happy

00:19:34.060 | when it comes to things like content moderation.

00:19:36.300 | The left wants this moderated,

00:19:38.260 | the right wants that moderated.

00:19:40.380 | And then there's other weird, crazy offshoots

00:19:43.060 | of the mainstream left and right

00:19:44.340 | that have all sorts of crazy thoughts

00:19:46.020 | about what should be moderated or not.

00:19:49.220 | And so there's no way to keep everyone happy.

00:19:51.260 | Facebook saw this.

00:19:52.900 | Facebook somehow got everyone,

00:19:55.300 | no matter where they were in the political spectrum,

00:19:56.780 | mad at them.

00:19:58.100 | The right wing got mad that they were being censored.

00:19:59.940 | The left wing got mad they weren't censoring enough.

00:20:01.780 | And so it is a very difficult place to be in.

00:20:04.740 | There is no politically neutral stance

00:20:06.820 | where people will see like you're doing it well.

00:20:08.140 | So I think he's right about that as well.

00:20:10.620 | What I think he's getting wrong though

00:20:13.860 | is this idea that Elon Musk or Marc Andreessen

00:20:16.380 | don't understand that.

00:20:18.380 | Gen X, I think, is too new of a generation.

00:20:20.940 | The sort of middle-aged tech oligarch class,

00:20:24.860 | the Peter Thiel's, Andreessen, Musk.

00:20:28.940 | You might have David Sachs,

00:20:32.700 | the sort of big, made a lot of money, Reid Hoffman.

00:20:36.820 | They were not really from that school

00:20:39.140 | of the original open culture techno optimist.

00:20:41.380 | They're a little bit older.

00:20:42.340 | That's a little bit of an older time.

00:20:43.980 | That's Kevin Kelly, that's Stuart Brand,

00:20:45.980 | that's Jaron Lanier.

00:20:47.260 | That's a slightly older group.

00:20:48.940 | This group came up in the dot-com boom of the '90s.

00:20:51.700 | They're much more money-focused

00:20:53.900 | than the original techno optimist are.

00:20:55.540 | And they know exactly what's going on.

00:20:58.540 | I do not think Elon Musk misunderstands

00:21:01.460 | what's actually happening on Twitter.

00:21:05.100 | I think what's going on when he talks

00:21:07.180 | about content moderation is much simpler.

00:21:09.060 | And I don't know why we don't just simplify this to this.

00:21:11.780 | I think when Elon Musk says, look at my notes here,

00:21:16.180 | but when Elon Musk says basically,

00:21:18.060 | he wants free speech,

00:21:20.140 | I think almost certainly what he means

00:21:22.100 | is he thinks that content moderation

00:21:25.060 | should come more from a centrist position

00:21:28.740 | than from a farther influence

00:21:30.860 | to the farther to the left position.

00:21:32.660 | I think that's all it is.

00:21:35.140 | And I think we see the split.

00:21:37.840 | We saw this split happening in Silicon Valley

00:21:43.060 | where this small group of these tech oligarchs,

00:21:47.260 | especially the ones with brand names,

00:21:48.820 | the people who made a lot of money, were very successful,

00:21:52.700 | had accrued a lot of power in the internet,

00:21:56.620 | out of the internet's growth.

00:21:59.020 | When there was the shift more recently in our culture

00:22:03.580 | towards using postmodern critical theories

00:22:06.060 | as the main perspective through which

00:22:07.300 | we understand the world, that group largely resisted it.

00:22:10.140 | And there might be a bit of a, don't tell me how to think.

00:22:14.580 | Look, I'm used to being the smartest person in the room

00:22:16.540 | and explaining how things work.

00:22:17.900 | And I don't want someone from a university coming along

00:22:21.340 | and telling me how to think.

00:22:22.180 | I don't know what it was.

00:22:23.260 | It could be the antagonism that grew

00:22:26.020 | between the media and these groups.

00:22:27.540 | So as more of the culture, and especially media culture,

00:22:31.260 | shifted to using postmodern critical theories

00:22:33.280 | as their main lens, their treatment

00:22:35.980 | of these tech bro oligarchs got pretty rough.

00:22:39.700 | And there's this whole tension that's not reported a lot,

00:22:42.020 | but basically there's been a complete break

00:22:44.100 | between these Silicon Valley brand name leaders

00:22:47.380 | and the East Coast media,

00:22:48.700 | where they just won't talk to them anymore.

00:22:50.540 | Like every time we talk to you,

00:22:51.780 | you just dunk on us in the piece.

00:22:53.180 | And look, we're just not even gonna do interviews with you.

00:22:55.180 | We'll just talk to people directly through our own podcast

00:22:57.540 | and we'll talk to people through our own websites.

00:22:59.180 | And there's this real tension between the two worlds.

00:23:01.940 | That probably didn't help either.

00:23:03.540 | But I think it's as simple as that.

00:23:05.180 | Elon Musk is from that group of brand name tech oligarchs

00:23:08.060 | that says, I don't know.

00:23:09.540 | I don't wanna re-center all my perspectives

00:23:12.020 | through postmodern critical theories.

00:23:13.980 | I think Twitter does that too much.

00:23:16.060 | I wanted to do it less.

00:23:17.220 | So I don't know why it has to be such a complex analysis

00:23:21.340 | of what's really going on with free speech.

00:23:23.300 | And maybe Musk is from this weird prior time

00:23:26.620 | and we have to understand these complex rules.

00:23:29.380 | I think he just has a different location

00:23:33.900 | on the political spectrum and has a lot of money.

00:23:37.100 | You can put those two things together.

00:23:40.660 | I don't know.

00:23:41.500 | I mean, Jesse, you probably hear this, right?

00:23:42.340 | Like there's a lot of bending over backwards

00:23:44.500 | and complex analysis for some of this stuff.

00:23:46.260 | But I think some of it's like pretty straightforward.

00:23:47.940 | Musk is like, I wanna be more centrist on this.

00:23:50.100 | And I have a lot of money

00:23:51.100 | and I'm kind of screwing with people.

00:23:53.100 | - Yeah.

00:23:54.380 | I do think he has a plan.

00:23:56.300 | - Yeah.

00:23:57.120 | - I'm not exactly sure what it is,

00:23:57.960 | but I do think he knows what's going on.

00:24:00.940 | 'Cause he uses Twitter a lot anyway.

00:24:02.100 | He's been using it for years, right?

00:24:03.700 | - Yeah.

00:24:04.540 | He's got 80 something million followers.

00:24:05.620 | - Yeah.

00:24:06.460 | - Yeah.

00:24:07.280 | - So anything he uses that much,

00:24:09.860 | he's obviously thinking a lot about it.

00:24:11.540 | - I mean, this comes back to my bigger point,

00:24:13.820 | which I make often about social media,

00:24:15.420 | which is this is the impossibility

00:24:17.220 | of trying to have universalism.

00:24:18.760 | I just think this model of social media universalism

00:24:21.780 | where everyone uses the same small number of platforms

00:24:24.340 | doesn't make sense.

00:24:26.340 | That's not what the internet was architected for.

00:24:28.620 | Like the whole point of the internet

00:24:30.000 | is now you have potential point to point connections

00:24:33.100 | between everyone in the world.

00:24:35.580 | Meaning that you can put together

00:24:37.300 | any type of communication graph topologies that you want.

00:24:40.580 | Small groups of people,

00:24:42.260 | interesting connections that you surf

00:24:44.260 | to find people you've never known before.

00:24:46.100 | But to go to this broadcast topology,

00:24:48.100 | you say, no, no, no.

00:24:49.420 | Everyone's gonna talk to the same server banks

00:24:51.700 | at the same companies.

00:24:52.740 | And everyone's gonna read the same information

00:24:54.460 | being posted on the same three websites.

00:24:56.540 | Completely gets in the way

00:24:58.060 | and obviates all the advantage of the internet

00:24:59.580 | in the first place.

00:25:00.420 | And it's completely impossible.

00:25:01.240 | And this is really what we're seeing here

00:25:02.900 | in that Twitter thread.

00:25:04.040 | You're never going to make a platform work

00:25:06.180 | where you want it to be the platform everyone uses.

00:25:08.740 | What an impossible task.

00:25:11.940 | You want everyone in the country to use the same platform

00:25:14.480 | with the same interface

00:25:15.700 | and the same content moderation rules.

00:25:17.420 | Of course, that's going to explode.

00:25:19.380 | And it should.

00:25:20.980 | And it's why I'm obviously much more in favor

00:25:23.820 | of social media being,

00:25:25.340 | and by social media I mean,

00:25:26.780 | social interaction on the internet being much more niche,

00:25:29.700 | much more smaller scale.

00:25:31.400 | Do what you wanna do in your particular community.

00:25:35.180 | Let community standards emerge in a grassroots fashion

00:25:38.940 | from the small number of users

00:25:40.340 | that are using each of these particular networks

00:25:42.540 | or groups or however you want to work.

00:25:44.020 | That is where the internet really works.

00:25:47.060 | That people who are into X have a place to go

00:25:49.260 | and hang out with people that are into X.

00:25:50.740 | And the standards for how they talk about things

00:25:52.480 | might be really different than people who are into Y.

00:25:54.260 | And the people who are into Y don't have to know

00:25:55.660 | what the people that are into X are talking about.

00:25:57.500 | And we don't have to have some sort of common set of rules

00:26:00.920 | that the people from X and Y both have to follow.

00:26:04.300 | And so I think the folly here,

00:26:06.460 | the Shakespearean tragedy underlying all this

00:26:08.940 | is this push towards, we need a digital town square.

00:26:13.100 | We need one service that everyone uses.

00:26:15.580 | So look, I don't think Musk doesn't know what's going on.

00:26:20.580 | I don't think he's Kevin Kelly recarnated

00:26:23.340 | and is being too techno optimistic.

00:26:24.820 | He knows what he's doing.

00:26:26.060 | I don't think it's gonna be super successful

00:26:28.820 | because I think this whole project

00:26:30.220 | of having giant platforms everyone uses makes no sense

00:26:32.740 | and is destroying the internet.

00:26:34.620 | But I don't think it's complicated what he's doing.

00:26:36.900 | He likes Twitter.

00:26:38.340 | He doesn't like some of the politics

00:26:39.740 | behind how it's being implemented.

00:26:41.260 | He has money.

00:26:42.660 | So he's like, I'm gonna try to change it.

00:26:45.220 | All right, let's do one more quick article.

00:26:47.980 | So today my theme is social media,

00:26:50.420 | future social media, social media regulation.

00:26:52.420 | It doesn't mean I'm always gonna talk about this,

00:26:53.900 | but just seems to be in the air these days.

00:26:56.100 | So this final one also comes from the Times

00:27:00.060 | from a couple of days ago.

00:27:01.900 | The title of the article is Obama calls

00:27:03.740 | for more regulatory oversight of social media giants.

00:27:08.060 | This is from a talk that Obama gave last week

00:27:12.220 | at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center.

00:27:14.100 | Okay, so the article says,

00:27:15.220 | former President Barack Obama on Thursday

00:27:17.860 | called for greater regulatory oversight

00:27:19.900 | of the country's social media giants,

00:27:21.460 | saying their power to curate the information

00:27:23.060 | that people consume has turbocharged political polarization

00:27:27.460 | and threatened the pillars of democracy.

00:27:29.780 | Waning on the debate over how to address

00:27:31.500 | the spread of disinformation,

00:27:33.060 | he said the companies needed to subject

00:27:35.420 | their proprietary algorithms

00:27:36.580 | to the same kind of regulatory oversight

00:27:38.340 | to ensure the safety of cars, food,

00:27:40.460 | and other consumer products.

00:27:41.820 | Tech companies need to be more transparent

00:27:43.420 | about how they operate, Mr. Obama said.

00:27:46.580 | Well, I mean, there's a lot of things

00:27:50.140 | I agree with the former president on.

00:27:51.580 | I think this take, however, is a little bit out of touch

00:27:54.420 | with the underlying technology.

00:27:56.340 | Social media, quote unquote, algorithms

00:28:00.900 | are not like food safety or car safety,

00:28:05.900 | where, okay, we have data from crash tests

00:28:10.060 | that need to be shared or whatever needs to happen here.

00:28:12.820 | They're very complicated, but they're not just complicated.

00:28:15.540 | They are fundamentally doing something that's ineffable.

00:28:20.540 | So what's actually happening underneath the coverage

00:28:23.900 | of these social media companies,

00:28:25.020 | how, let's say, items are selected to add to the stream

00:28:28.380 | in the timeline that you consume,

00:28:30.300 | in the feed that you can consume.

00:28:31.900 | This is a collection, a complex collection

00:28:34.820 | of complex neural networks

00:28:37.060 | that have been trained in complex ways,

00:28:39.420 | usually with reinforcement mechanisms,

00:28:41.100 | and then they're connected together

00:28:42.260 | in some sort of dynamical way.

00:28:44.620 | You can't look at a complex connections

00:28:47.420 | of neural networks and say, what does this do?

00:28:49.820 | It doesn't work that way.

00:28:53.420 | These networks have learned on their own

00:28:56.580 | through hundreds of millions of trials of training

00:28:59.300 | and back propagation reinforcement.

00:29:01.580 | They have learned patterns, instructions, the information,

00:29:05.580 | what information is more likely to get engagement

00:29:07.620 | from this person versus that person

00:29:09.420 | that cannot be easily reduced

00:29:11.460 | to a human understandable format.

00:29:14.060 | A lot of what's happening here is that the information,

00:29:16.780 | let's say a particular post on Twitter,

00:29:19.020 | is going to exist as a multidimensional vector

00:29:21.700 | of data points, and that these,

00:29:23.740 | any one of these neural networks

00:29:25.220 | in the quote unquote algorithm

00:29:26.500 | is actually creating a multidimensional hyperplane

00:29:29.100 | through which they can actually categorize

00:29:30.820 | a multidimensional location for this point.

00:29:33.140 | And then the user themselves,

00:29:34.820 | they're gonna show this to exist

00:29:36.060 | as their own multidimensional point,

00:29:37.860 | and they can see if they've been segmented

00:29:39.620 | into the same place by this hyperplane,

00:29:41.420 | meaning they're more likely to have an affinity.

00:29:43.420 | All of which I'm trying to say here

00:29:44.740 | is that this is complicated, abstract, multidimensional work

00:29:49.140 | that is happening with these systems.

00:29:50.700 | It is not an algorithm like we would think about it.

00:29:54.020 | It is not a bunch of turbo basic code that says,

00:29:57.940 | you know, if about cats and reader is over 60,

00:30:05.300 | show them this post.

00:30:08.460 | It's not that.

00:30:09.420 | It is vectors of numbers going through

00:30:13.700 | complex linear algebra convolutions

00:30:16.660 | and scores coming out of the other side.

00:30:18.540 | And what happens in between is not understandable by people.

00:30:23.420 | But I think this is an old fashioned view that like,

00:30:25.460 | oh, I think what's happening here is that like someone

00:30:27.660 | who was mustache twisting, you know, mustache twisting,

00:30:31.140 | and was like, hmm, we will get to more views.

00:30:34.660 | I'm looking at this here.

00:30:35.980 | These people like hearing why vaccines are bad.

00:30:38.780 | So let me just type into here,

00:30:40.700 | show articles about vaccines being bad,

00:30:44.580 | because then we will get more money.

00:30:46.140 | And oh, the regulators here.

00:30:47.700 | And he says, don't put that in your algorithm.

00:30:49.220 | So, okay, I'm gonna take that out of my algorithm here.

00:30:50.980 | That's not how it works.

00:30:51.940 | It's these, again, it's incredibly complex and abstract

00:30:54.620 | and you can't break it down into what's really happening.

00:30:57.780 | Now, furthermore, even if you could,

00:30:59.780 | it would be disastrous for these companies

00:31:01.620 | if you could somehow make this algorithm interrogatable.

00:31:05.980 | Right, so maybe you wanna apply

00:31:07.500 | an explainable AI approach here and say,

00:31:09.340 | well, let's just interrogate the algorithms.

00:31:11.620 | See what it says is, you know,

00:31:13.460 | let's put in different things and see which it prefers.

00:31:15.780 | But if you did that,

00:31:17.020 | then everyone would start scamming the system.

00:31:20.380 | Everyone trying to get people to look at their dubious

00:31:24.860 | diet pill site or whatever,

00:31:26.580 | would figure out exactly what to put in their tech

00:31:28.940 | so that it would dominate everything else.

00:31:30.740 | It'd be like showing spammers

00:31:33.220 | the spam filter that Gmail use.

00:31:35.660 | Everything would then slip through the filter

00:31:37.180 | because they could just sit there

00:31:38.100 | and work with it to figure it out.

00:31:39.060 | So you can't really make it clear.

00:31:40.500 | Anyways, again, I respect the former president.

00:31:43.340 | I'm just saying this is out of date

00:31:45.860 | with what's going on with this technology.

00:31:47.220 | It's not so simple.

00:31:48.060 | It's not, you're going in there and turning knobs.

00:31:50.300 | This knob is turned towards bad information.

00:31:52.500 | Let's just turn that down.

00:31:54.060 | And this knob is turned towards good information.

00:31:55.780 | Let's turn it up.

00:31:56.940 | The reality, I think, is much more complicated,

00:32:00.500 | but there's a bigger point here I wanna make,

00:32:02.860 | which is, again, in a lot of discourse,

00:32:04.540 | especially, again, discourse coming out

00:32:06.020 | of more elite circles about social media,

00:32:08.900 | there's this real focus on the problem is

00:32:11.620 | the wrong information is being amplified.

00:32:15.500 | That this is the problem.

00:32:16.620 | It's all about content amplification.

00:32:18.660 | This is bad information.

00:32:20.660 | This platform is sending out this bad information

00:32:23.380 | to a lot of people.

00:32:25.260 | And from the elite perspective, most people are dumb.

00:32:27.420 | So then they get tricked

00:32:28.260 | and then they believe this bad information.

00:32:29.500 | So let's just stop it from spreading out the bad information.

00:32:32.420 | I am more in line right now with John Haidt's latest take

00:32:36.660 | that we talked about last week on the show.

00:32:38.940 | His take from his Big Atlantic article,

00:32:40.420 | which I increasingly think is right.

00:32:43.900 | And I think it gives us a more nuanced understanding

00:32:46.140 | of the issues with social media than simply saying

00:32:48.620 | it pushes the bad information more

00:32:51.540 | than the quote unquote good information.

00:32:53.140 | 'Cause if you'll remember from our discussion

00:32:54.660 | of John Haidt's Atlantic article,

00:32:58.140 | what he was arguing is the problem

00:32:59.540 | is not what it does to information,

00:33:00.900 | it's what social media does to the people.

00:33:03.060 | What it does to the people

00:33:03.940 | who are interacting on social media.

00:33:05.380 | And his whole point was,

00:33:07.340 | once these platforms shifted towards viral dynamics,

00:33:11.940 | where something could get a huge amount

00:33:14.100 | of attention right away,

00:33:15.900 | things could blow up really quickly.

00:33:17.540 | He said, this really changed the way

00:33:19.100 | that people use social media.

00:33:22.940 | Three things happened.

00:33:25.140 | One, there became immediate,

00:33:30.140 | there could be immediate consequences.

00:33:32.540 | If you sort of say the wrong thing,

00:33:34.620 | your team could swarm in a way that was breathtaking.

00:33:38.260 | And it became, he called it a vigilante culture,

00:33:40.820 | where out of nowhere, you could have people

00:33:43.180 | just piled on and destroyed.

00:33:46.780 | Two, it created a culture then

00:33:48.300 | where you became very wary of letting the other team,

00:33:52.340 | depending on how you define the other team,

00:33:53.740 | gain any ground.

00:33:55.260 | Can't let the other team gain any ground.

00:33:57.660 | So we gotta like quickly tamp down or attack.

00:34:00.700 | Don't give, we give in on anything,

00:34:02.300 | that might get amplified.

00:34:03.300 | So it created this really tense,

00:34:05.300 | anxious type of environment.

00:34:07.140 | And three, that drove out almost everyone but the extremes.

00:34:10.420 | So as Haidt documents,

00:34:11.540 | you're left with the extremes on the left

00:34:13.060 | and the extremes on the right,

00:34:14.740 | basically fighting back and forth,

00:34:16.580 | desperate to avoid being attacked by their own team,

00:34:18.620 | desperate not to give any ground to the other team.

00:34:20.940 | It became a spectacle of the elite extremist.

00:34:24.500 | That is what is happening on a platform

00:34:26.660 | like Twitter right now.

00:34:27.500 | And it's great entertainment for those groups

00:34:30.460 | and a larger group of adjacent people

00:34:32.140 | that quietly like to watch it,

00:34:33.740 | but it's a terrible environment.

00:34:36.500 | So the incentives there,

00:34:38.780 | our incentives were really wonky information,

00:34:41.740 | really weird, bad information,

00:34:43.780 | can really spread and take hold

00:34:45.100 | because the point there is not,

00:34:46.660 | hey, let's try to spread interesting information,

00:34:48.460 | is we're gonna win,

00:34:49.300 | and I don't wanna get hung by my own team.

00:34:52.300 | So we'll grasp onto something crazy

00:34:54.180 | if that gives us a little advantage.

00:34:56.020 | And we will ignore refuting evidence

00:34:58.020 | about something with a diligence,

00:35:00.700 | with diligent blinders,

00:35:02.020 | if that might lead to an attack,

00:35:04.460 | if I acknowledge it,

00:35:05.300 | or if I might give the other team room.

00:35:06.940 | So Haidt's argument is the problem is not,

00:35:09.020 | what is the social media algorithms,

00:35:10.940 | how do they amplify

00:35:11.860 | or choose what information to amplify?

00:35:13.380 | It's what do they do to the people?

00:35:15.180 | And the viral dynamics turn people

00:35:16.620 | into these weird, obsessive, extreme tribal warriors.

00:35:20.780 | And that is an environment

00:35:22.100 | where really wonky or bad information can spread,

00:35:25.420 | can take hold,

00:35:26.260 | can be really difficult to dislodge.

00:35:29.940 | I mean, I think if there was somehow a way

00:35:35.620 | to really dunk on Trump by believing in flat-earthism,

00:35:39.940 | you would see a lot of flat-earthism.

00:35:41.860 | Other way around,

00:35:43.560 | if there's some way to really,

00:35:45.460 | really get at Biden,

00:35:47.900 | if by believing in lizard people,

00:35:49.900 | lizard people stories are gonna spread really strong

00:35:52.620 | and people are really gonna grasp them.

00:35:54.180 | It's not the information that matters here.

00:35:57.100 | It's the human dynamics.

00:35:58.500 | Social media warps the people

00:36:01.380 | to a mode in which all sorts of crazy stuff

00:36:05.180 | is gonna spread.

00:36:06.640 | So again, so I think the solution is,

00:36:08.380 | we gotta get away from platform universalism.

00:36:11.540 | We gotta get away from this idea

00:36:13.000 | that everyone needs to be on the same platform,

00:36:14.880 | that we need these quote unquote,

00:36:16.380 | what we call digital town halls,

00:36:18.360 | which aren't digital town halls at all.

00:36:19.880 | It's the digital Roman Colosseum.

00:36:21.700 | It's a spectacle for elite extremists doing combat

00:36:25.020 | and the small group of people who like to watch the blood,

00:36:27.540 | but it's a spectacle that has a trickle-down impact

00:36:29.540 | on everyone.

00:36:30.420 | Most people don't use Twitter.

00:36:32.080 | Most people, the vast majority of people

00:36:34.180 | never post anything on Twitter,

00:36:35.300 | but there's huge impacts about what happens in their life

00:36:38.300 | because of what's going on in that elite Colosseum.

00:36:40.620 | And I think Haidt is absolutely right about that.

00:36:42.420 | And the problem is not just,

00:36:43.560 | again, we have to go in there and turn some content knobs.

00:36:45.900 | Don't promote this content, promote that content.

00:36:47.740 | We're way past that.

00:36:48.940 | We gotta stop the impact it has on people.

00:36:52.100 | And I think the way we do that is,

00:36:53.640 | we de-emphasize the importance of these platforms.

00:36:56.520 | Once we recognize it's an elite spectacle,

00:36:58.300 | maybe we'll spend less time paying attention to it.

00:37:01.120 | We'll reduce its impact.

00:37:02.320 | So Obama goes on to say,

00:37:05.220 | one of his proposals was to look at section 230

00:37:09.100 | of the Communications Decency Act,

00:37:10.640 | which protects social media platforms

00:37:12.140 | from liability for content that the users post.

00:37:14.500 | So he is supporting proposals to get rid of that.

00:37:19.460 | That makes companies more liable for what's posted.

00:37:22.160 | And again, I think that's interesting.

00:37:23.620 | 230 is complicated.

00:37:24.820 | Like technically 230 is what would give me protection.

00:37:27.920 | If commenters on my blog said something damaging or illegal,

00:37:32.920 | 230 would say, well, it's,

00:37:35.300 | I'm not gonna be held responsible

00:37:36.580 | for what other people posted on my platform.

00:37:38.820 | The social media companies are really leaning the 230.

00:37:41.460 | I'm not opposed to the idea of getting rid of 230

00:37:44.540 | to some degree, because I think, again,

00:37:46.100 | anything that might lead to fracturing social media

00:37:49.420 | is probably gonna be better for everyone involved.

00:37:52.820 | I mean, I like a world if like, okay, we drop 230

00:37:56.540 | and maybe I have to turn comment threads off

00:37:58.260 | because like, I don't be liable, sure.

00:38:00.560 | But it means that it's no longer legally viable

00:38:03.060 | to be a massive universal platform.

00:38:05.100 | What you get instead is more of a Reddit type culture

00:38:07.180 | of smaller communities where things are,

00:38:09.600 | there's community moderation and people are responsible

00:38:11.980 | for what's posted on there.

00:38:13.100 | And there's care to how the community interacts

00:38:16.340 | and the people who are really into this

00:38:18.100 | are not talking to the people who are really into that.

00:38:20.260 | That's probably a better world.

00:38:21.580 | So probably from a legal principle,

00:38:24.180 | there's problems with just saying drop 230,

00:38:26.060 | but I like anything that might fracture social media

00:38:29.500 | away from this form it is now,

00:38:32.820 | where we have the spectacle of the elites.

00:38:35.180 | And though most of us don't wanna pay attention to it,

00:38:36.980 | it ends up really affecting, really affecting our life.

00:38:41.340 | So I don't know.

00:38:44.920 | You probably know Twitter better than I do, Jesse.

00:38:48.680 | - I don't think so.

00:38:49.520 | I never know Twitter. - You don't know either?

00:38:50.340 | Yeah, see, that's the thing.

00:38:51.280 | Most people don't.

00:38:52.200 | And yet it has a big impact in all of our life.

00:38:54.520 | Like it could have a big impact

00:38:55.640 | on how our employers operate, the news we receive,

00:38:59.880 | the legislation taken up or not taken up,

00:39:03.100 | what politicians pay attention to.

00:39:05.200 | It's like the Roman Colosseum,

00:39:07.440 | the only people going there are like the elite landowners

00:39:11.600 | because they really like it.

00:39:12.520 | But what's happening in the Colosseum

00:39:13.720 | is completely affecting what happens

00:39:15.080 | to the rest of the Roman citizens

00:39:16.640 | who are just like out there trying to run their farms.

00:39:18.440 | - It's a great analogy.

00:39:19.640 | - Yeah, and I think Haidt actually mentioned

00:39:23.560 | the Roman Colosseum in his Atlantic article.

00:39:25.440 | So I'm sort of taking and running with his perspective,

00:39:29.240 | but it's elite capture.

00:39:31.240 | And I think that's all this stuff is,

00:39:33.680 | that's what keeps capturing me about all of this.

00:39:36.240 | It's, you know, we're in 1750 France

00:39:41.240 | and there's like huge arguments going on

00:39:43.800 | about the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

00:39:47.080 | It's like, it's not what most people in France

00:39:48.680 | cared about right then.

00:39:50.680 | And so I think there's more of that going on

00:39:51.920 | with social media than other people are willing to let on.

00:39:56.200 | So there we go.

00:39:57.680 | That's what I think about that.

00:40:01.960 | Let's take a quick break here.

00:40:04.160 | Talk about a couple of sponsors

00:40:05.360 | that make my rants possible.

00:40:07.880 | And I see our sponsors here are,

00:40:10.160 | oh no, it's Twitter and Tesla.

00:40:12.840 | See, we did it again, Jesse.

00:40:14.200 | We didn't check, we didn't check who it was.

00:40:17.880 | And President Obama, oh no, one of our sponsors was,

00:40:22.280 | they were sponsoring President Obama's speech

00:40:24.680 | at the Young Innovators Club or whatever.

00:40:26.720 | We got to check these things.

00:40:28.160 | No, we actually, those are not our sponsors.

00:40:31.520 | We do have a great sponsor, however.

00:40:34.440 | Zocdoc, Z-O-C-D-O-C, which is a free app

00:40:39.080 | that shows you doctors who are patient reviews,

00:40:41.600 | take your insurance and are available when you need them.

00:40:45.120 | So Zocdoc is the way when you need a new doctor,

00:40:47.920 | I need a dentist, I need a new primary care physician,

00:40:51.480 | how do I figure out who to go and sign up for?

00:40:54.280 | This is actually a really hard problem.

00:40:56.200 | I mean, what I've done in the past

00:40:57.840 | is just randomly ask people I know.

00:41:00.120 | Zocdoc makes it easy.

00:41:01.520 | It says, okay, here's dentists, here's doctors,

00:41:03.480 | here's primary care physicians, here's dermatologists,

00:41:05.320 | whoever you're looking for, here they are in your area.

00:41:07.440 | I'll tell you which ones already take your insurance

00:41:09.480 | and are looking for new patients.

00:41:11.640 | Zocdoc also makes it easy to do that patient intake forms.

00:41:16.320 | You can do it right from the app.

00:41:18.280 | I use Zocdoc with my dentist.

00:41:20.200 | It's really great.

00:41:22.640 | I can schedule things real easily.

00:41:24.400 | I do my paperwork on my computer ahead of time.

00:41:28.000 | It has my information saved,

00:41:29.400 | so I don't have to sit there with the clipboard

00:41:31.040 | and feel things out.

00:41:32.560 | It's one of these ideas that once you hear it,

00:41:35.600 | you say, of course, finding doctors,

00:41:38.520 | the right doctors, my area, takes my insurance.

00:41:41.480 | Patient reviews, I also like that about it.

00:41:44.840 | What do other real patients say about it?

00:41:47.280 | It's an app that just makes a lot of sense.

00:41:49.440 | So go to Zocdoc.com, say that four times fast,

00:41:55.440 | Zocdoc.com/deep,

00:42:00.040 | and download the Zocdoc app for free.

00:42:03.880 | Then start your search for a top-rated doctor today,

00:42:07.320 | many of whom will be available in only 24 hours.

00:42:10.460 | That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com/deep,

00:42:15.460 | Zocdoc.com/deep.

00:42:22.440 | We are also sponsored by Magic Mind.

00:42:27.440 | Jesse, I've told you about Magic Mind,

00:42:29.920 | 'cause I did the experiment with it.

00:42:31.720 | A product I needed,

00:42:35.240 | a product I needed because I had been known to drink

00:42:37.920 | what scientists would call an absurd amount of coffee.

00:42:42.360 | Like I think absurd is the official unit of measure.

00:42:46.680 | And when you use Magic Mind,

00:42:48.160 | which is an elixir that makes you focus better,

00:42:52.240 | be more creative and rely less on caffeine,

00:42:54.520 | comes in a shot-like container, so it's not much.

00:42:58.520 | You drink it first thing in the morning

00:43:00.060 | before your first cup of coffee.

00:43:02.600 | You don't need as much coffee throughout the day

00:43:04.840 | to get that focus to fall into your flow state,

00:43:07.080 | especially if, and this is the key thing, you stick with it.

00:43:09.120 | You need to stick with it for at least five days

00:43:10.820 | to get the full effect.

00:43:12.200 | But once you've stuck with it for about five days,

00:43:13.800 | you are gonna find that you're able to focus better

00:43:16.320 | and fall in that flow faster

00:43:17.820 | without having to keep slamming the caffeine.

00:43:21.240 | So it was actually just what I needed.

00:43:24.980 | Drink less coffee, be more creative,

00:43:29.040 | fight off procrastination, fight off brain fog.

00:43:31.400 | It has all sorts of natural ingredients.

00:43:32.800 | It's all natural ingredients, adaptogens, nootropics,

00:43:36.480 | energy boosters, inflammation decreasers.

00:43:40.440 | I don't even know how to say all the scientific names,

00:43:42.920 | but it's all good stuff, all natural ingredients.

00:43:45.320 | It was created by James Bechera, who I spoke with,

00:43:48.240 | who is a Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur,

00:43:51.680 | who was working on this stuff on his own.

00:43:53.600 | He was mixing his own brews to help him be more productive

00:43:56.400 | and focused in his kitchen.

00:43:57.400 | That's how he got the idea for Magic Mind.

00:44:02.240 | So if, like me, you want to avoid drinking all the coffee

00:44:06.480 | in the world in order to be creative, in order to be focused,

00:44:10.120 | try taking Magic Mind with your morning coffee.

00:44:13.200 | I think you will enjoy it.

00:44:15.880 | So I actually have a special offer for my listeners

00:44:18.400 | from the guys at Magic Mind.

00:44:19.600 | All you have to do is go to magicmind.co/deep.

00:44:24.600 | That's magicmind.co/deep,

00:44:29.960 | and then use the discount code DEEP20 at checkout.

00:44:34.960 | That will give you 20% off your first order.

00:44:38.680 | So that's magicmind.co/deep,

00:44:40.480 | and use that discount code DEEP20

00:44:43.680 | to get 20% off your first order.

00:44:46.840 | I should Magic Mind before each episode,

00:44:51.360 | not just in the morning.

00:44:52.520 | Just put it into my veins.

00:44:54.360 | I just have like a Magic Mind dispenser.

00:44:56.440 | It's like- - Good idea.

00:44:57.720 | - Time to go, especially before these long epic episodes.

00:45:01.240 | So when I have a particularly long and coherent rant,

00:45:04.240 | you'd be like, "Oh, it's a Magic Mind day."

00:45:07.200 | Magic Mind day.

00:45:08.280 | All right, Jesse, I think we should do some questions.

00:45:10.440 | Speaking of coffee.

00:45:14.320 | All right, we got a question here about reading.

00:45:18.400 | I combined two, actually.

00:45:20.080 | We had two questions about reading.

00:45:21.400 | So let's just read both, and I'll answer them together.

00:45:24.400 | So the first of these two combined questions came from Rid,

00:45:27.120 | who said, "How do I get back into reading fiction?

00:45:30.720 | I'm a lawyer and read a lot of cases and briefs all day.

00:45:34.480 | Reading anymore when I'm off the clock

00:45:36.000 | just feels like more work.

00:45:36.920 | How do I revive my love for reading fiction books

00:45:38.920 | without feeling the need to highlight

00:45:40.800 | every other sentence and markup follow-up questions

00:45:43.360 | in the margins?"

00:45:44.880 | Similar question from Tom, who says,

00:45:47.000 | "I have too many books I want to read.

00:45:48.280 | Where do I start?

00:45:50.040 | I don't make time to read with a busy work schedule

00:45:51.960 | and small children.

00:45:52.800 | Any ideas on how to fix this first world problem?"

00:45:56.680 | Well, first of all, let me motivate what you both want to do,

00:46:01.320 | which is cultivating a reading habit.

00:46:04.200 | Definitely, this is worth it.

00:46:07.960 | I'm gonna give you some advice here in a second,

00:46:09.360 | but I just want to start by saying,

00:46:10.760 | definitely, this is worth it.

00:46:12.560 | The reading life is a deep life.

00:46:14.520 | I think it's absolutely fundamental in so many ways.

00:46:17.440 | There's the pragmatic benefits of just what happens

00:46:20.520 | to your ability to focus and think and make connections.

00:46:23.240 | When you spend time in books, it's calisthenics

00:46:25.760 | for the brain, but there is also these more

00:46:28.720 | almost spiritual advantages of being able to get lost

00:46:32.360 | in different worlds, be it a world of fiction

00:46:34.120 | or a world of ideas or a world of history,

00:46:36.560 | to transport your mind to these other places.

00:46:39.200 | It's stress-relieving, it's invigorating,

00:46:42.000 | it allows you to empathetically connect with other people,

00:46:44.800 | with other experiences.

00:46:46.280 | It's like a magic machine for just becoming

00:46:50.640 | a better person.

00:46:51.480 | I am a huge reading booster, and so I'm glad,

00:46:56.080 | Ryd and Tom, that you're trying to focus on this.

00:46:57.760 | And again, that's why I really push this on the show.

00:47:00.200 | Read, read, read.

00:47:02.000 | All right, so how do I do it?

00:47:03.360 | How do I read five books a month?

00:47:05.720 | I'll mention four things here.

00:47:08.400 | One, so morning and meals.

00:47:12.320 | I'm often up early, I'm often up before my kids wake up,

00:47:14.880 | so I'll have a little bit of time in the morning

00:47:16.400 | before the rush begins.

00:47:18.040 | Reading is my activity then.

00:47:19.520 | I've just built an appreciation for, ooh, it's quiet.

00:47:23.960 | What do I do if I have extra time in the morning?

00:47:26.680 | That's what I go to, reading.

00:47:28.560 | Meals are the other time, especially breakfast and lunch.

00:47:32.560 | That's just the default activity.

00:47:34.520 | Ooh, it's eating time.

00:47:35.520 | What do I do?

00:47:36.360 | I read.

00:47:37.680 | I wanna read.

00:47:38.520 | That's a lot of time you build up,

00:47:41.160 | breakfast, lunch, reading.

00:47:43.160 | I make it a default high-quality leisure activity.

00:47:47.720 | This is number two.

00:47:48.560 | So if I have time,

00:47:49.600 | so if it's a night where we have some time,

00:47:51.000 | okay, we got everyone home, dinner's in an hour,

00:47:55.320 | kids are doing their homework.

00:47:57.880 | I'll be like, ooh, what do I wanna do?

00:47:59.240 | I get to read.

00:48:00.640 | I see that as a treat that I'm looking for.

00:48:04.240 | I don't always get to do it,

00:48:05.320 | but when I have time in the evening or the weekends,

00:48:07.120 | that's the high-quality goal that I'm looking for.

00:48:09.240 | Ooh, I can actually sit down and read

00:48:10.960 | and I have a good chair and I bring some tea

00:48:13.120 | or whatever you need to do.

00:48:14.440 | But you make it a default leisure activity.

00:48:16.880 | Three, audiobooks play a big role.

00:48:19.960 | Walking, commuting, chores, kids' sports games.

00:48:23.080 | It's a lot of time, a lot of time.

00:48:25.680 | And if you listen to audiobooks,

00:48:26.560 | you can actually get through quite a bit doing that as well.

00:48:29.960 | So you put those together,

00:48:31.240 | you get closer to how I read five books a month.

00:48:33.160 | But the biggest factor of all,

00:48:34.480 | and I really wanna emphasize this,

00:48:35.840 | is that I do not use my phone for entertainment.

00:48:40.440 | I do not have a habit of, if I'm bored,

00:48:44.920 | looking at this thing is how I become less bored.

00:48:47.240 | I do not have a habit of, if I am tired,

00:48:51.320 | this is where I'm gonna put my attention,

00:48:52.720 | or if I'm anxious, this is what I'm gonna fall into.

00:48:55.160 | I just don't use my phone in that way.

00:48:57.080 | I use my phone in a Steve Jobs 2007 mode,

00:49:00.520 | which is what a great Swiss Army Knife collection of tools

00:49:04.120 | that are all really useful to me.

00:49:05.920 | If I need to look up the weather, it's right here.

00:49:08.200 | If I need to look up directions to where we're going,

00:49:10.240 | it's right here.

00:49:11.080 | If I need to see what the hours are for this restaurant,

00:49:12.840 | I can pull it up right here.

00:49:14.600 | If I need to listen to music or a podcast,

00:49:16.280 | it's just right here.

00:49:17.440 | And I can jump right over to it and listen to it.

00:49:19.960 | So I use my phone like this fantastic Swiss Army Knife

00:49:23.480 | that has all these cool features

00:49:24.920 | and a beautiful interface all in one package.

00:49:26.760 | And I'm so glad that exists.

00:49:28.520 | It makes life easier than before it didn't.

00:49:31.240 | But it's not a source of entertainment for me.

00:49:33.280 | It's not a force of distraction for me.

00:49:35.600 | This makes a huge difference.

00:49:37.880 | I do not think people understand how much time

00:49:41.200 | in their day goes towards looking at their phone.

00:49:45.400 | It's one of the big points I make in my book,

00:49:46.880 | "Digital Minimalism."

00:49:48.520 | This is what was driving people for change

00:49:50.600 | is when they realized just how much time that was taking.

00:49:53.080 | So people are like, "I'm busy.

00:49:53.920 | "I have work, I have my kids.

00:49:55.520 | "I don't seem to have any other time."

00:49:56.920 | And say, "Well, wait a second.

00:49:58.260 | "I went back and checked and you spent three hours

00:50:00.360 | "looking at Twitter and Instagram today.

00:50:02.760 | "There was not time working.

00:50:03.600 | "There was not time with your kids.

00:50:04.660 | "That's three hours.

00:50:05.500 | "If you were reading in that time,

00:50:07.040 | "you'd get through a lot more

00:50:07.940 | "than just five books a month."

00:50:09.360 | So that's probably the biggest thing I can suggest.

00:50:12.000 | Put your phone back to 2007 mode.

00:50:14.040 | Swiss Army knife, great features when I need it.

00:50:16.840 | It's not a source of entertainment.

00:50:18.000 | So if you wanna be entertained,

00:50:19.560 | you can read, you can talk to people,

00:50:22.840 | you can do something productive around the house.

00:50:24.880 | High quality leisure is what is left.

00:50:27.080 | - In the mornings, how much do you usually read for

00:50:30.800 | before breakfast?

00:50:31.640 | - It depends how early I'm up, but it is my default.

00:50:34.100 | I see it as, "Oh, this is great.

00:50:36.960 | "There's some reading time."

00:50:38.740 | And I'll say, the habit builds.

00:50:40.860 | So I probably should have mentioned this to,

00:50:42.780 | I forgot their names.

00:50:43.980 | - Tom and Rid. - Tom and Rid.

00:50:46.260 | Start with, when you're restarting a reading habit,

00:50:49.500 | stuff that you love.

00:50:51.460 | Don't try to go back and buy the 1948 version

00:50:56.460 | of Thomas Merton, which by the way, I finished

00:50:59.540 | and it took forever.

00:51:00.380 | That's a long book.

00:51:01.660 | It took forever and then I picked up another book.

00:51:05.720 | So we're recording this on April, what's this, 24th?

00:51:09.960 | But there's something like this.

00:51:11.440 | But yeah, I hit my five books for April a couple days ago.

00:51:14.760 | But I was a little touch and go for a little bit

00:51:16.620 | because then another book I found in a little free library

00:51:19.600 | near the field where my son plays little league.

00:51:21.240 | And I'm like, "This looks fun."

00:51:22.400 | It was 450 pages too.

00:51:24.480 | And 450 page books are like two normal size books.

00:51:27.480 | They take a long time to read.

00:51:28.880 | So I had some pretty mammoth books.

00:51:30.680 | I had to work on this month.

00:51:32.080 | So you don't have to grab a 450 page book.

00:51:36.280 | You don't have to have Thomas Merton,

00:51:38.040 | getting into Catholic theology for hundreds of pages.

00:51:42.520 | Just get the Project Hail Mary from Andy Weir.

00:51:46.320 | That's like a really fun book to read.

00:51:48.280 | Like I'm going back now and rereading Born Standing Up.

00:51:51.020 | That's like candy to me, Steve Martin's memoir.

00:51:53.000 | Just get a sports book about a sports.

00:51:55.640 | Just get into, get like a advice book

00:51:58.880 | that's just like put it in my veins,

00:52:00.480 | aspirational, not that hard to read.

00:52:02.100 | Just get back in the habit of reading.

00:52:04.160 | And then you begin to have the default, I want to do that.

00:52:07.120 | And then like me, if I have time in the morning,

00:52:08.760 | like this is great, I can read.

00:52:10.000 | Like this morning I'm reading this Daniel Boone book.

00:52:12.440 | I read a bunch of books at the same time.

00:52:14.920 | And that's what I did this morning before my kids woke up.

00:52:17.560 | Like, this is great.

00:52:18.400 | I can get through some of this book.

00:52:19.280 | And you get in that habit by reading stuff you love.

00:52:22.920 | And you're like, this is much better than my phone.

00:52:25.400 | And then it's not so hard to have to convince yourself

00:52:27.520 | to do it.

00:52:29.360 | But yeah, I'm a big reading fan.

00:52:30.960 | I'm a terrible marketer.

00:52:32.760 | I should have told them the secret.

00:52:35.200 | The only way you're going to get a reading habit

00:52:36.920 | is to read through all of my books.

00:52:39.320 | So you got to buy them all.

00:52:40.480 | You need fresh copies of all my books.

00:52:42.640 | And then you'll--

00:52:44.000 | - Hardcover.

00:52:44.840 | - Hardcover.

00:52:45.660 | You got to give them hardcover.

00:52:47.600 | You know, all of my books, since my student books

00:52:49.500 | are in hardcover still, it's kind of rare,

00:52:53.160 | but So Good They Can't Ignore You, Deep Work,

00:52:55.040 | Digital Minimalism, and A World Without Email

00:52:56.920 | are all only in hardcover in the US.

00:52:59.760 | In the UK, there are no hardcovers.

00:53:01.720 | Everything is paperback.

00:53:03.020 | But if you see any of those books advertised

00:53:04.760 | as paperback on Amazon, that's the UK version.

00:53:07.380 | So when you see Deep Work with the lamp on the front,

00:53:10.200 | that's not the US version.

00:53:11.440 | That's the UK and the British Commonwealth version.

00:53:13.640 | It's like what you'll get in Australia.

00:53:15.920 | It's what you'll get in Britain.

00:53:18.160 | And it's also the cover that like most

00:53:19.800 | of the European versions use.

00:53:21.100 | But the US does hardcovers.

00:53:23.220 | All of those books are still in hardcover

00:53:24.680 | because they keep selling.

00:53:26.480 | So I think it's a good thing.

00:53:27.480 | So typically when sales start to fall off,

00:53:30.080 | then you're like, okay, now we're gonna do

00:53:31.400 | a paperback release because A, it gives you a reason

00:53:34.320 | to repromote a book, and B, they're smaller,

00:53:36.440 | so bookstores are more likely to keep a copy on their shelf.

00:53:39.120 | We haven't had to do that yet,

00:53:40.560 | which I think is a good sign.

00:53:41.960 | So if you look at a book in this space

00:53:44.280 | that you can't find in paperback, like Four Hour Workweek,

00:53:47.440 | there's a reason why you can't find it in paperback

00:53:49.040 | because it's twice as much royalty.

00:53:50.740 | They make twice as much on the hardcovers

00:53:52.360 | and they're still selling.

00:53:53.360 | - Wow.

00:53:54.200 | - Or like Greg McKeown's Essentialism.

00:53:55.680 | Why can't you get that in paperback?

00:53:57.360 | The thing is selling.

00:53:59.080 | A lot of Brene Brown still is in,

00:54:01.360 | I mean, some of that's in paperback now,

00:54:03.060 | but still in hardcover because that thing is selling.

00:54:06.600 | You're not gonna find Ryan Holiday's books in paperback.

00:54:09.880 | They're selling.

00:54:10.760 | So a little insider baseball there.

00:54:12.760 | So it's a good sign if your books stay in hardcover.

00:54:16.280 | All right, man, we're only, where are we?

00:54:19.560 | Woo!

00:54:20.800 | We're really leaning into this longer episode.

00:54:25.200 | We're going a little bit too far.

00:54:26.360 | We're on question number two, Jesse.

00:54:28.520 | We're 55 minutes into the show,

00:54:30.680 | but I have good news for you.

00:54:31.960 | The second question, we're doing rapid fire.

00:54:34.720 | So this was one of Jesse's ideas.

00:54:36.280 | I have three questions, quick answers to each.

00:54:39.080 | Let's do this rapid fire.

00:54:41.240 | Question number one comes from Freddie.

00:54:43.760 | "On average, how much does Cal watch TV,

00:54:46.120 | "including TV shows,

00:54:47.080 | "given the fact that reading is his default activity?"

00:54:49.720 | Okay, this is quite relevant

00:54:50.800 | given what we were just talking about.

00:54:52.520 | Freddie, I don't watch a lot of TV.

00:54:54.800 | I would say a normal day, maybe 30 to 45 minutes.

00:54:57.880 | The only time I really watch TV

00:54:59.860 | is in the brief window between my kids,

00:55:02.760 | once I put my kids to bed and before I go to bed,

00:55:05.120 | which is not much later

00:55:06.200 | because I'm just exhausted dealing with them

00:55:08.480 | by the end of the day.

00:55:09.720 | If we have a show,

00:55:10.780 | my wife and I will try to watch it in that little window.

00:55:14.360 | And so we do our best.

00:55:15.480 | Like right now, we've been watching "Slow Horses"

00:55:19.360 | on Apple TV+.

00:55:20.520 | It took us a little while to get into it,

00:55:23.320 | but now it's kind of picking up

00:55:24.480 | and we're enjoying it.

00:55:25.360 | We like shows where it's weekly releases

00:55:27.680 | instead of binging.

00:55:28.840 | We tried that new show "Open Range"

00:55:31.840 | and I didn't think, I don't know.

00:55:33.440 | I had high hopes.

00:55:34.860 | I liked Jeff Brolin and it was like supernatural

00:55:38.000 | and a ranch, but it wasn't quite working for me.

00:55:40.660 | Last night, we started "The Batman"

00:55:43.520 | and then realized it's like,

00:55:45.000 | and I think this is the official running length,

00:55:47.360 | seven hours long.

00:55:48.480 | - 2.30, right? - 2.30, yeah.

00:55:50.760 | Here's the problem about "The Batman."

00:55:52.920 | If I was the mayor,

00:55:53.840 | well, I guess the mayor got killed in the beginning,

00:55:55.240 | but if I was the mayor of Gotham City,

00:55:56.560 | I would say by far,

00:55:57.400 | number one problem is every single light bulb

00:56:00.160 | in this city is flickering and about to go out.

00:56:02.520 | Like, let's solve that problem.

00:56:05.080 | Let's solve that problem

00:56:07.720 | and then solve the problem of we have like a lot of villains.

00:56:11.920 | The other thing about, okay,

00:56:13.200 | we got 50 minutes in and kind of gave up

00:56:15.080 | because I'm not great with superhero movies.

00:56:16.360 | And it was literally just very dark,

00:56:18.960 | but right off the bat,

00:56:20.720 | Cedric Diggory in his full Batman outfit,

00:56:23.500 | it's just like straight face,

00:56:24.760 | just standing around with normal people,

00:56:26.480 | like with detectives having conversations,

00:56:28.520 | like again and again.

00:56:29.360 | And like, people would just say,

00:56:31.560 | "I'm sorry, this is just crazy."

00:56:33.560 | Like you're wearing a costume,

00:56:34.760 | like a really like elaborate costume.

00:56:36.320 | And you're just sitting here like with the detectives

00:56:38.080 | kind of like commenting on evidence

00:56:39.600 | and like talking in a growling voice.

00:56:40.980 | And it's just ridiculous.

00:56:42.040 | And I think people would call it out.

00:56:44.720 | People would call it out as ridiculous.

00:56:46.120 | So anyways, Friday, we don't watch much TV.

00:56:48.800 | All right, Anna asks,

00:56:50.960 | "When should I answer emails and messages?

00:56:53.280 | Most day I start working at eight.

00:56:54.980 | However, my job as a doctor consumes all the time

00:56:57.180 | I have at work, sometimes up to eight."

00:57:00.500 | Anna, in your situation,

00:57:01.780 | there's two things I would suggest.

00:57:03.080 | One, you need to schedule admin time,

00:57:05.900 | including email checks using your appointment system.

00:57:08.520 | So it needs to take the slot of an appointment.

00:57:11.300 | I know there's pressure within medical practices to say,

00:57:14.620 | "Well, in theory, we could have," whatever it is,

00:57:18.380 | "17 appointments per day,"

00:57:20.500 | because we go back to back, they're these long.

00:57:22.620 | We could fit that many in.

00:57:24.200 | And then you adjust to that level and say,

00:57:26.640 | "Well, that's what we need to do."

00:57:27.720 | And I'm saying adjust to a lower level

00:57:29.440 | and do 14 appointments with three blocks

00:57:32.080 | that would be appointment blocks

00:57:33.080 | to keep up with your communication.

00:57:35.440 | Yes, that's a little bit less money going to the practice,

00:57:37.440 | but it keeps the whole thing tractable.

00:57:39.160 | And the dollar amounts are all arbitrary anyways.

00:57:42.000 | The second thing I would say is find ways then

00:57:44.000 | to reduce the number of messages until it's enough.

00:57:46.520 | So schedule time,

00:57:48.520 | like appointments to handle your messages.

00:57:50.440 | If there's still way more messages you can handle,

00:57:52.520 | then you need to change something.

00:57:54.880 | More processes, maybe different ways you interact.

00:57:57.760 | You mentioned in the elaboration,

00:57:59.440 | you had a secretary helping with a lot of things.

00:58:01.800 | You can have more careful processes

00:58:03.680 | that allow his or her to take more of that off your plate,

00:58:05.880 | but your time is your time.

00:58:07.560 | If you've taken a reasonable amount of your time out

00:58:09.200 | to managing your admin, which is good to do,

00:58:11.560 | and you still can't manage it,

00:58:12.680 | then you have to reduce the admin.

00:58:14.040 | And that might require some work.

00:58:16.380 | Finally, Amadeus asks in our rapid fire challenge here,

00:58:20.760 | "Do you practice journaling?"

00:58:23.360 | I don't, not in the classical sense of taking notes

00:58:27.760 | on my thoughts of the day

00:58:28.960 | on some sort of consistent time basis.

00:58:31.780 | However, of course, as I talked about a lot on the show,

00:58:33.800 | I do collect ideas and notes, strategies, and plans

00:58:37.200 | about living a deeper life in my moleskin journal

00:58:40.080 | that I keep with me most places I go.

00:58:42.720 | And I see that as a form of journaling.

00:58:44.780 | It's not as structured or consistent

00:58:46.560 | as I write every morning,

00:58:48.800 | but it is a place where I do end up working out some thoughts

00:58:51.620 | about what's important to me or what's not.

00:58:53.280 | It's where I have self-observations.

00:58:54.800 | It helps me focus my energies on what matters

00:58:58.140 | and what doesn't.

00:58:58.980 | So I don't formally journal,

00:59:01.640 | but having a notebook about deep life thoughts,

00:59:06.320 | I think for me actually satisfies a lot

00:59:09.480 | of the same function.

00:59:11.220 | All right, Jesse.

00:59:13.740 | Well, I think we should try to mix some calls

00:59:15.320 | into what we're doing here.

00:59:17.400 | Looking at my script,

00:59:18.220 | I think we do have a call queued up

00:59:20.160 | that we can jump over to.

00:59:21.400 | - Yep, we do.

00:59:24.080 | We got a question about,

00:59:26.100 | a specific question about weekly planning

00:59:28.040 | and how that interacts with your travel boards.

00:59:30.600 | - All right, let's get in the weeds.

00:59:32.480 | - Hey, Cal.

00:59:33.320 | I have a question about doing weekly planning.

00:59:35.500 | So when I go into my travel board,

00:59:37.080 | I'm adding cards to a this week column

00:59:39.900 | for each of my functional areas.

00:59:41.840 | But what I'm struggling with is,

00:59:43.560 | what's the information that lives in your weekly planning

00:59:45.960 | doc, your weekly planning summary that you're writing out

00:59:48.820 | that doesn't live in that travel board?

00:59:51.400 | Looking for some clarity about this

00:59:52.660 | and also whether the written document

00:59:55.320 | is really a necessary artifact

00:59:56.940 | if your travel board is really well organized

00:59:59.400 | and has clear goals for the week.

01:00:01.280 | Thanks.

01:00:02.560 | - All right, well, Philip, this is a good question.

01:00:05.580 | It's one that I get a fair amount.

01:00:08.060 | I think weekly plans is probably the piece

01:00:11.440 | of my productivity thinking that it gives people

01:00:15.440 | the most room for confusion.

01:00:17.980 | And of course, I now tell people,

01:00:19.760 | if you want the crash course in time management,

01:00:24.720 | I'm trying to be careful these days, by the way,

01:00:26.680 | to separate time management from productivity.

01:00:29.180 | I think of time management about how do you keep track

01:00:31.520 | of what you have to do and figure out

01:00:32.840 | when you're gonna execute it.

01:00:33.840 | I separate that from productivity,

01:00:36.200 | which I feel like is more teleological.

01:00:38.520 | Like what are you trying to do with your work?

01:00:40.760 | How do you measure that?

01:00:41.800 | How do you reshape your work to get towards those goals?

01:00:44.480 | So time management is what I wanna call

01:00:46.240 | what we're talking about here.

01:00:47.720 | We have a video on the YouTube page

01:00:49.880 | called Core Ideas Time Management,

01:00:51.360 | where I talk about my multi-scale time management systems.

01:00:53.640 | That's the primer for everything we're about to say.

01:00:56.560 | All right, Trello versus weekly plans.

01:00:59.160 | Trello is the software I happen to use

01:01:03.020 | to keep track of tasks.

01:01:04.800 | So obligations, things that I am committed to accomplish,

01:01:08.360 | is where I keep track of those things.

01:01:10.480 | I keep track of their status

01:01:12.020 | based on what column I put them in.

01:01:14.480 | I keep track of what role they are related to

01:01:17.180 | by what board I put them on.

01:01:19.240 | So I might have a separate board for my life as a teacher

01:01:23.080 | versus my life as a researcher

01:01:24.360 | versus my life as a writer.

01:01:26.880 | It's also where I can keep information

01:01:30.560 | related to these tasks.

01:01:31.520 | That's why I like Trello, 'cause it's a card metaphor.

01:01:35.760 | And on the back of these virtual cards,

01:01:37.720 | you can attach files or take copious notes.

01:01:39.840 | So I do like consolidating information.

01:01:43.120 | So Trello is what I use to keep track of the tasks

01:01:46.740 | on my plate.

01:01:48.220 | You can use other software,

01:01:49.780 | but that's the goal I use it for.

01:01:51.740 | A weekly plan, by contrast,

01:01:54.440 | is gonna contain potentially many more things.

01:01:57.380 | So here's, I have a list here, I was thinking about it,

01:01:59.140 | of three main things you will often see on a weekly plan.

01:02:01.940 | One is assignment of specific work to specific days.

01:02:07.660 | So that's something that will happen in your weekly plan.

01:02:10.780 | Now, sometimes these are small things

01:02:12.180 | that exist on your Trello board.

01:02:13.900 | So like discrete obligations,

01:02:15.960 | like I need to submit my conflict of interest form.

01:02:19.700 | Right, so sometimes you're saying,

01:02:20.660 | yeah, I'm doing that on Wednesday morning,

01:02:22.800 | I'm doing this on Thursday morning.

01:02:24.940 | It also can assign ongoing efforts to days.

01:02:28.260 | Big ongoing efforts typically wouldn't live in Trello,

01:02:31.180 | those would live in your strategic or quarterly plan.

01:02:34.540 | So like, let's say for example,

01:02:36.780 | this month I'm trying to get two chapters written

01:02:40.020 | in my book.

01:02:40.860 | I would not have a task in my Trello board

01:02:43.820 | that said write two chapters.

01:02:45.140 | I would see that in my quarterly or semester plan.

01:02:48.300 | And then when I was making my weekly plan, say, okay,

01:02:50.140 | when am I gonna have time to work on my book chapter writing?

01:02:54.540 | And that's when I might say, look,

01:02:55.500 | Tuesday morning's open, I'm gonna write then,

01:02:57.180 | or I'm gonna write one hour every morning.

01:02:59.140 | So again, work gets assigned to specific days

01:03:01.380 | in your weekly plan,

01:03:02.260 | and some of that work might not exist on your Trello board,

01:03:04.820 | but might be coming from your semester or quarterly plan.

01:03:07.660 | Another thing that will often find its way

01:03:10.940 | into your weekly plan are schedule highlights.

01:03:14.260 | So I might point out, for example,

01:03:17.740 | Thursday's an early morning,

01:03:19.380 | we got an 8 a.m. meeting, so we have to get up and going,

01:03:21.860 | or look, we're ending early on Friday.

01:03:25.420 | Let's try to end by three on Friday,

01:03:27.220 | or there's a visitor in town Monday through Wednesday.

01:03:29.440 | So keep in mind, we're gonna be escorting that person.

01:03:31.740 | So it's just highlights

01:03:32.580 | about what's happening in your schedule.

01:03:33.620 | Those are largely coming out of your calendar,

01:03:36.180 | or you looking at your calendar and making some ideas

01:03:39.100 | about let's end early on this day, et cetera.

01:03:41.220 | So schedule highlights go in your weekly plan.

01:03:43.580 | And then finally, reminders about habits

01:03:45.660 | or heuristics that you're executing.

01:03:48.960 | So maybe you're trying out something

01:03:51.340 | where you write one hour every morning.

01:03:53.240 | Weekly plan is where you would remind yourself about it.

01:03:56.480 | Maybe you're thinking that your shutdown rituals

01:03:59.540 | have been lacking, so you have a reminder

01:04:02.380 | in your weekly plan, we're gonna do really hard shutdowns,

01:04:04.540 | check it off at our time block plan,

01:04:05.900 | or let's not be lazy about it.

01:04:08.920 | All of that goes into a weekly plan.

01:04:11.220 | And a lot of that has nothing to do

01:04:13.060 | with what you would have stored just in a Trello board.

01:04:15.560 | So good question, Trello's just task storage,

01:04:18.260 | weekly plans can be so much more.

01:04:21.940 | - Do you put any of your exercise stuff

01:04:24.020 | into your weekly plan, or is that just on autopilot?

01:04:27.740 | - It depends what's going on with my schedule.

01:04:31.340 | So yeah, it definitely can.

01:04:32.500 | If I have a complicated schedule,

01:04:34.540 | a weekly plan would be a good place to work out

01:04:36.900 | where exercise is gonna happen that week.

01:04:38.980 | And so I was definitely doing some of that this spring,

01:04:41.900 | keeping in mind on teaching days were pretty complicated,

01:04:44.700 | where was I gonna fit exercise in?

01:04:46.780 | And so then I would use weekly plan.

01:04:49.180 | Sometimes it's, on other parts of the year,

01:04:50.540 | it's just very autopilot.

01:04:52.420 | This is just when I do it.

01:04:54.140 | I've been doing recently, I call them happy hour workouts,

01:04:58.300 | where it's like my happy hours,

01:05:00.180 | that time right before dinner is when I exercise.

01:05:02.420 | Like that's a pretty consistently open time.

01:05:04.500 | And for me, it's also a good transition

01:05:07.140 | from work mindset to family mindset.

01:05:12.140 | And so when I'm doing that, it's just automatic.

01:05:14.580 | Like that's when I work out

01:05:15.860 | and everyone can be on the same page.

01:05:17.380 | And so I probably wouldn't have to remind myself of that

01:05:20.460 | after a while.

01:05:23.740 | All right, so Jesse,

01:05:24.700 | I was thinking about trying a new segment.

01:05:27.380 | It's named, I mean, it's an old name.

01:05:30.700 | We used to call Thursday episodes this,

01:05:32.540 | but I was thinking about calling the segment habit tune up.

01:05:36.420 | And the idea was I just take a piece of advice

01:05:40.140 | from the types of advice I give

01:05:44.260 | and just get into it a little bit.

01:05:46.100 | So let's just take a piece of,

01:05:47.500 | take of advice out of my toolkit

01:05:48.980 | and get into it a little bit,

01:05:50.260 | even without a question to prompt it.

01:05:53.340 | So we're gonna give that a try.

01:05:55.020 | Today's habit tune up is gonna be about

01:05:58.820 | one of my longest running productivity strategies.

01:06:02.300 | So in terms of strategies that I have run in my own life,

01:06:05.780 | this is pretty high up on the list

01:06:07.940 | of things I've been doing for the longest amount of time.

01:06:11.020 | And that is fixed schedule productivity.

01:06:15.500 | All right, so what is fixed schedule productivity?

01:06:18.660 | It's a simple idea where it says,

01:06:20.460 | you fix the hours that you wanna work.

01:06:25.460 | So like on a typical day,

01:06:27.100 | here's the length I want for my workday.

01:06:29.620 | And then you work backwards and do what you have to do

01:06:32.380 | to make the work actually fit.

01:06:33.980 | So that's primary fixed schedule productivity.

01:06:37.620 | I work 8.30 to 4.30, I work nine to five, I work eight to six

01:06:41.100 | you fix the hours and say, that is my line in the sand.

01:06:44.180 | Now I have to do what I can to make that fit.

01:06:47.420 | There's then secondary fixed schedule productivity,

01:06:49.540 | which is where you take specific types of work

01:06:52.180 | you do on a recurring basis

01:06:53.140 | and give that an even smaller boundary.

01:06:55.500 | In our life, my biggest example of that

01:06:58.940 | is probably this podcast.

01:07:00.180 | It exists for me in a half day.

01:07:04.220 | It gets a half day per week.

01:07:06.260 | And as Jesse knows, we will work backwards to fit

01:07:09.340 | whatever it takes, we will work backwards.

01:07:10.660 | And sometimes it takes some scrambling,

01:07:12.860 | but we work backwards to make things fit.

01:07:16.180 | I mean, that's why, for example,

01:07:18.380 | now that we're going down to one episode,

01:07:19.620 | we had to go down to one episode

01:07:20.740 | to spend more time thinking about the show

01:07:22.940 | because the fixed schedule productivity

01:07:25.700 | is secondary fixed schedule productivity.

01:07:27.140 | I'm running here, it says half day for the show.

01:07:29.220 | So if we want to spend more time prepping

01:07:30.620 | and record two shows, we would break that boundary.

01:07:32.700 | So we had to change something else.

01:07:33.780 | So it forced to change.

01:07:35.340 | So this is one of my oldest ideas.

01:07:38.060 | I wrote about this way early in my blog.

01:07:41.300 | I'm thinking back 2007, 2008,

01:07:45.100 | I was writing about this idea.

01:07:48.540 | Now this works for a few reasons.

01:07:53.540 | One is it's, you can consider it a meta productivity

01:07:57.380 | strategy because it is a high level commitment

01:07:59.820 | that's going to induce a lot of low level specific changes.

01:08:04.100 | When you have the boundary, you have to hit.

01:08:07.140 | To hit that boundary, you end up having to do

01:08:12.140 | lots of evidence-based custom fit tactics

01:08:15.020 | that are custom fit to your particular life.

01:08:17.980 | You quickly sort out the stuff that works,

01:08:19.700 | that doesn't work.

01:08:20.540 | It really is a great way of inducing a lot of small changes.

01:08:24.460 | If instead you try to come up with a lot of ideas

01:08:26.620 | from scratch of what you think will help you

01:08:28.580 | manage your time or be more productive,

01:08:29.940 | you're just throwing darts.

01:08:30.940 | So fixed schedule productivity is a meta productivity habit

01:08:34.420 | and it helps lead to good low level tactics.

01:08:37.780 | It's also a forcing function

01:08:39.060 | to help keep your load sustainable.

01:08:40.820 | So it'll enforce better productivity ideas

01:08:43.860 | in the low level, it'll also lead you to say no to more,

01:08:45.940 | get a better sense of what your load is.

01:08:47.660 | When you have these limits, that pushes back

01:08:50.740 | and it keeps you or makes it harder

01:08:52.540 | for you to overload yourself,

01:08:53.900 | which is likely to lead to burnout.

01:08:56.400 | It also helps you better take advantage of seasonality.

01:09:00.620 | So you go through a period where maybe things are lighter,

01:09:04.180 | you're in between jobs,

01:09:05.420 | you're in a quiet season of the job.

01:09:07.260 | With fixed schedule productivity, if you're used to this,

01:09:11.020 | you can take advantage of that situation

01:09:12.820 | by collapsing in your fixed schedule.

01:09:15.860 | Now that you could fit your work in less time

01:09:18.660 | and you get used to fit in the less time

01:09:19.500 | and you can take advantage of the new time that frees up.

01:09:22.100 | It's like me in the summer.

01:09:24.260 | I have less demands because I don't work

01:09:25.740 | for Georgetown in the summer, I'm on my own dime.

01:09:28.580 | So I can bring in my working schedule

01:09:30.580 | and I do to be much smaller.

01:09:32.740 | And because I'm used to fixed schedule productivity,

01:09:34.940 | I do what I need to fit it in there

01:09:36.260 | and I'm able to take advantage

01:09:37.340 | of the extra flexibility in summer.

01:09:38.660 | It is so easy without that to just fill in your time

01:09:41.020 | because there's always more things possible

01:09:42.620 | for you to do, then you have time to accomplish.

01:09:45.500 | So without these boundaries, it is going to fill up.

01:09:48.380 | So here are some innovations that have come out

01:09:51.380 | of my own commitment to fixed schedule productivity.

01:09:54.420 | It's where all of my multi-scale planning ideas were formed.

01:09:57.460 | Semester planning, weekly planning,

01:10:00.220 | daily time block planning.

01:10:01.820 | All of that was forged in the fires

01:10:04.620 | of fixed schedule productivity.

01:10:05.860 | How do I make my 75 jobs fit in the small time I work?

01:10:10.580 | For me, it's roughly nine to five,

01:10:12.060 | nine to 5.30 and Sunday mornings

01:10:13.740 | is roughly my main work blocks.

01:10:16.500 | That's where that came out of is because that's what allowed

01:10:18.380 | me to actually fit a reasonable amount of work in there.

01:10:20.980 | Ruthless quotas and reduction in what's on my plate.

01:10:24.660 | Fixed schedule productivity pushes that for me.

01:10:26.500 | And I think it helps keep me away from burnout.

01:10:29.380 | If I can't make it fit,

01:10:30.420 | even with my good productivity systems, I have to quit.

01:10:33.140 | I can't do this, I need to step away from this,

01:10:34.900 | I need to take a break from that.

01:10:36.540 | I'm much more likely to have a sustainable load of work

01:10:39.100 | because I have this forcing function of it has to fit

01:10:42.500 | during these hours.

01:10:43.780 | It also helped me lead to more efficient processes.

01:10:46.700 | The type of things I talk about in my book,

01:10:49.380 | "A World Without Email" come from the demands of,

01:10:53.340 | I can't just be going back and forth with you all day

01:10:57.580 | on email because my time is really precious.

01:11:01.580 | I have to get a lot in here.

01:11:03.100 | So I have to stop work at 5.30.

01:11:04.620 | So we got to figure out a better way to collaborate.

01:11:06.300 | Again, this back pressure from these boundaries

01:11:10.220 | really causes a lot of good.

01:11:11.860 | All right, so I'm a big fan in working backwards

01:11:15.420 | from the hours, the secondary and tertiary positive

01:11:18.620 | and effects it has on your life can be quite big.

01:11:22.220 | You know, Jesse, I'll have to say,

01:11:25.140 | fixed schedule productivity is at the source

01:11:29.500 | of the amusement and confusion I often get.

01:11:31.940 | And we talk about this sometimes on the show,

01:11:33.340 | but I'm very commonly,

01:11:35.940 | there's a very common critique of me.

01:11:37.780 | When people hear about like the work I do

01:11:40.140 | or the type of things I talk about,

01:11:41.740 | the very common critique where they say,

01:11:42.940 | well, you know, you can do that probably

01:11:45.940 | because of your wife.

01:11:47.780 | There must be some sort of like unusual support,

01:11:51.820 | maybe someone else having to sacrifice

01:11:54.380 | in order for you to work on these different things

01:11:57.260 | and you'll do this deep work.

01:11:59.900 | So this comes up a lot.

01:12:01.500 | Shout out to my friend, Scott,

01:12:02.780 | who likes to collect these references.

01:12:05.100 | There was one this week, I forgot who it was,

01:12:07.180 | but someone on a podcast,

01:12:08.220 | he had collected a new example of someone saying like,

01:12:11.100 | yeah, I like this stuff, but you know,

01:12:12.220 | I think the real hero is probably his wife.

01:12:14.380 | The reason why it always baffles me in the moment

01:12:17.780 | is because since I've been a working adult,

01:12:21.580 | practice fixed schedule productivity,

01:12:23.900 | my work hours are just normal standard,

01:12:26.820 | I'm a government worker, nine to five style work hours,

01:12:29.380 | right, like I just work the same work hours

01:12:31.380 | as like any other normal job.

01:12:33.700 | So it's not like there's some weird Herculean support

01:12:36.260 | I need from other people beyond just the standard

01:12:39.180 | like thing that everyone who works has to do,

01:12:41.580 | like my kids need to be in school and that type of thing.

01:12:45.540 | So I'm always baffled.

01:12:47.860 | It's like, well, what do you mean?

01:12:48.700 | Like I just, I work actually probably less hours

01:12:50.740 | than most people I know.

01:12:52.220 | And what does the fact that during my normal working hours,

01:12:55.620 | I'm very focused, I don't see what that has to do

01:12:57.460 | with needing external support.

01:12:58.740 | But the reason why I think people fall back on that critique

01:13:02.660 | is that most people don't do fixed schedule productivity.

01:13:05.420 | And when you don't do fixed schedule productivity,

01:13:07.340 | the assumption is because it's what you're used to.

01:13:10.140 | It's more things means more time.

01:13:11.980 | And if you're doing like a kind of like an impressive thing

01:13:14.180 | or an impressive number of things,

01:13:15.240 | there must be some impressive time commitment.

01:13:17.760 | You must be Einstein in the 1920s,

01:13:20.620 | disappearing till your office till three in the morning.

01:13:23.580 | But the thing is with fixed schedule productivity,

01:13:25.200 | it does work.

01:13:26.040 | You can actually get a lot of interesting stuff happening

01:13:28.500 | in a very normal, reasonable amount of time

01:13:30.660 | that does not require unusual support,

01:13:34.060 | does not require unusually long working hours.

01:13:36.780 | Fixed schedule productivity does really work

01:13:38.520 | because that back pressure gets you to focus,

01:13:41.240 | it gets you structured, it gets you organized,

01:13:42.940 | it gets you to essentialize.

01:13:44.220 | It really is like a tonic,

01:13:46.440 | really is like a tonic for productivity.

01:13:48.220 | - Do you remember what the podcast replaced

01:13:50.980 | before you did the podcast?

01:13:52.540 | Like that half day, was it just writing or?

01:13:54.700 | - It's a good question because I started it

01:13:57.740 | during the early days of the pandemic.

01:14:00.780 | - Oh, so you weren't going to Georgetown and stuff.

01:14:02.540 | - I wasn't going to Georgetown.

01:14:03.820 | So I didn't, so it's a good point

01:14:05.460 | 'cause I didn't have the fixed schedule

01:14:07.900 | around the podcast at first

01:14:09.060 | because I started it during the summer of 2020.

01:14:12.460 | So I had a lot of time.

01:14:14.180 | And we went into the fall, still had a lot of time.

01:14:16.360 | Georgetown was remote and so I wasn't going in.

01:14:19.740 | And then I was on leave that spring,

01:14:24.660 | like my book came out.

01:14:25.500 | So like I had a lot of time.

01:14:27.100 | The half day came in once we got back to the normal schedule

01:14:31.340 | which was like this fall.

01:14:32.780 | Oh, I got to go in, I got to teach,

01:14:34.180 | I'm on committees again.

01:14:35.460 | And that's when I was like, okay,

01:14:36.300 | I have to corral this more.

01:14:39.680 | So yeah, it's a half day of time.

01:14:43.380 | There's a lot of things I could easily spend

01:14:44.620 | a half day of time on.

01:14:45.460 | I think it honestly is, I went on,

01:14:48.060 | after my last book launch, I'm not, as you know,

01:14:49.700 | I'm not doing a bunch of interviews right now.

01:14:52.380 | 'Cause I'm not, I'm thinking about all the time

01:14:53.940 | I would be doing podcast interviews or reading interviews.

01:14:56.260 | I do a little bit.

01:14:57.120 | I was on, when you were away last week in Canada,

01:15:02.700 | their main morning radio show on CBC, The Current.

01:15:08.580 | So I did a 30 minute, so I do a few things.

01:15:11.980 | I do a few things.

01:15:13.660 | That's probably where a lot of the time comes from,

01:15:14.980 | is I focused in my writing life to the podcast

01:15:18.020 | as a half day and then on my book and article writing.

01:15:20.460 | - Yep.

01:15:21.700 | - Yep.

01:15:22.540 | All right, so fixed sale productivity, I do recommend it.

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01:17:59.960 | I gotta work on my terms and conditions voice.

01:18:05.420 | This is my first time getting to do the sort of like

01:18:07.500 | radio style, like in the legally required disclaimer

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01:18:12.320 | I think I need a quicker, deeper voice.

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01:19:33.020 | All right, I'm thinking, Jesse, we should try another call.

01:19:39.000 | - Yep, so we got a call about your thoughts

01:19:42.160 | on how to structure the ideal world to teach

01:19:44.860 | in a university without all the admin work.

01:19:47.620 | - Ooh, I like it.

01:19:49.140 | - Hello, Cal, greetings from Brussels.

01:19:51.460 | My name is Irab and I'm doing a postdoc in computer science.

01:19:56.460 | In your podcast, you sometimes mention

01:19:59.660 | that a modern professor has to do a lot of work

01:20:03.740 | not related to the main job.

01:20:07.660 | Things like participating in different committees

01:20:11.100 | related to teaching, administrating of the university

01:20:16.260 | and more, but someone has to do these things, right?

01:20:21.260 | So what are your thoughts on how university

01:20:27.780 | could be structured?

01:20:29.180 | What is the role of professor there

01:20:33.780 | and other professors specializing in teaching

01:20:38.780 | and those specializing more in research?

01:20:42.860 | Who should develop educational programs?

01:20:46.620 | Shall professor write and compete for grants

01:20:49.980 | or funding money shall be more available?

01:20:54.060 | And who should evaluate those grant proposals?

01:20:57.700 | Professors again, eager to know your thoughts

01:21:02.700 | on things, how to optimize our university system.

01:21:07.580 | Thank you.

01:21:08.420 | - Well, good question.

01:21:11.020 | It's something I think about a lot.

01:21:13.020 | It's on my mind now as the 2021, 2022 academic year

01:21:18.020 | comes to a close, definitely a busy one for me.

01:21:22.860 | I think people will say I'm a reasonable guy.

01:21:25.260 | My proposals for improving the university,

01:21:29.260 | I think are straightforward and practical.

01:21:32.260 | Number one, we need a $2 million a year minimum salary.

01:21:36.420 | Let's just be, again, just reasonable practical advice here.

01:21:39.420 | Number two, I'm thinking one class per two year period

01:21:44.420 | is probably about right.

01:21:46.900 | We should probably do like a one semester

01:21:48.740 | on four semester sabbatical,

01:21:50.780 | one semester on four semester sabbatical.

01:21:52.980 | I think we did those three reasonable things

01:21:55.460 | and we can all agree that that'd be good

01:21:59.700 | for everyone involved.

01:22:00.540 | I'm not quite sure why people aren't doing this.

01:22:03.020 | I'm gonna get yelled at by the Dean again, Jesse,

01:22:06.940 | if I'm not careful.

01:22:09.540 | I'm not careful.

01:22:11.180 | No, okay, I do have some more serious thoughts about it.

01:22:13.820 | There's a lot you had in there,

01:22:14.980 | so I'm gonna pick it apart a little bit

01:22:17.020 | and kind of focus on the areas of academic life

01:22:20.180 | that I have thought about.

01:22:22.500 | So there's two things I think for sure.

01:22:24.900 | A, I'm a big believer in service budgets.

01:22:27.660 | It's an idea I proposed in that article I wrote years ago

01:22:31.980 | for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

01:22:34.060 | It was called, "Is Email-Making Professors Stupid?"

01:22:38.540 | And in that, I argued that we need to be less haphazard

01:22:41.020 | about service.

01:22:42.020 | Service is important.

01:22:44.980 | So for those who don't know,

01:22:46.100 | professors spend some of their time in what's called service,

01:22:49.340 | either to the department or to the university

01:22:51.100 | or the broader academic community.

01:22:52.980 | And it's important for universities to run.

01:22:55.820 | We need professors to sit on tenure committees.

01:22:58.540 | We need professors to be part of the faculty governance.

01:23:03.180 | We need professors to work on, let's say,

01:23:05.780 | overhauling the curriculum for a department.

01:23:07.740 | So part of what professors have to do is service

01:23:10.900 | outside of their core activities,

01:23:12.900 | but it shouldn't be haphazard.

01:23:15.180 | We should figure out,

01:23:16.020 | here's how many hours you should be doing.

01:23:18.340 | It should be negotiated.

01:23:19.980 | It should be tracked, and you can't go beyond it.

01:23:22.780 | People can't put work on your plate beyond it.

01:23:24.620 | If they want to,

01:23:25.460 | there has to be a special sign-off by your dean.

01:23:28.220 | So let's get more transparent about service

01:23:31.980 | so we can keep it both more equitable,

01:23:33.660 | so you don't have nice people doing a lot more than jerks,

01:23:36.660 | and we can be more reasonable

01:23:38.260 | about how much levels people can actually hold.

01:23:40.860 | I think that would create back pressure

01:23:43.380 | that would then maybe call out the amount of service demands

01:23:46.620 | pulling attention from people

01:23:47.740 | when the time is actually a scarce resource.

01:23:50.860 | I think the service commitments that survive

01:23:53.220 | will be of more importance.

01:23:56.180 | Also, we need to focus more on intellectual specialization.

01:24:00.100 | That's actually a term of art

01:24:01.820 | from people that study productivity in the business sector.

01:24:06.740 | So intellectual specialization says

01:24:08.940 | the people you hire, you want them to spend more time

01:24:11.140 | focusing on the specific skills for which you hired them,

01:24:13.620 | the specific skills that create value for your organization

01:24:18.300 | and less time on skills that don't.

01:24:21.620 | So in the life of professors,

01:24:24.420 | what matters is service, teaching, and research.

01:24:27.460 | So we just talked about service.

01:24:29.060 | Then you have teaching and research.

01:24:32.100 | The thing that pulls a lot of professors' time away

01:24:34.420 | is administrative details.

01:24:36.900 | And so there needs to be a real focus, I believe,

01:24:38.740 | in the university to minimize the amount of time

01:24:42.300 | professors need to spend on administrative work.

01:24:44.140 | Now, you just said, well, someone has to do the work,

01:24:46.860 | and that's true,

01:24:47.700 | but that's true about everything at the university.

01:24:49.700 | Someone has to fix the pipes when they leak.

01:24:52.260 | Someone has to fix the HVAC when it doesn't work.

01:24:54.100 | Someone has to actually do the landscaping in the spring.

01:24:57.180 | Someone has to actually run the computer system

01:24:59.500 | that allows the students to register for those courses.

01:25:02.220 | In other words, most of the stuff

01:25:03.460 | that happens on the university,

01:25:05.420 | there's non-professors who do it.

01:25:06.820 | It's just a matter of where we wanna draw that line.

01:25:08.740 | And I think a lot of what happened at some point

01:25:11.460 | is computer systems meant that professors

01:25:14.420 | could technically actually accomplish things

01:25:16.740 | that before would have been too hard

01:25:18.700 | or cumbersome for them to do.

01:25:20.660 | So more work got put on the professors

01:25:23.500 | because in the moment, it seemed like it was cheaper,

01:25:26.820 | and we could have less support staff.

01:25:28.620 | We have this nice, weird intranet

01:25:31.820 | that the professors can go through

01:25:33.820 | these weird arcane interfaces

01:25:35.500 | to enter the reimbursement request.

01:25:37.140 | That allows us to not have this full-time person

01:25:40.420 | that helps actually process reimbursement request

01:25:43.820 | or what have you, right?

01:25:44.660 | So it's short-sighted.

01:25:45.500 | In the short term, like, hey, we can fire this person.

01:25:47.460 | Yay, we've saved money.

01:25:48.580 | But in the long term,

01:25:51.420 | your professors are miserable and half as productive.

01:25:54.060 | So is that really what you're looking for?

01:25:55.260 | So I think we have to focus on intellectual specialization.

01:25:57.860 | Most of that is more admin support.

01:25:59.620 | I think universities do invest much more

01:26:01.860 | in administrative support.

01:26:03.180 | That is what enables professors to do

01:26:07.300 | what you actually have hired professors to do.

01:26:09.900 | Now, I have some more far-out ideas I've talked about

01:26:13.100 | before I'll just mention real quick.

01:26:15.100 | These are blue sky ideas that I don't think they'll happen,

01:26:18.700 | but it'd be kind of cool if they did.

01:26:20.540 | One, I like the idea of broadcast digest.

01:26:25.060 | I can't tell you how much information arrives in my inbox.

01:26:29.900 | At Georgetown from various organizations

01:26:33.220 | and administrators, announcements for this and for that

01:26:36.740 | and this event and this new policy.

01:26:38.620 | And this is what's happening now with COVID.

01:26:40.140 | And a big university just has dozens and dozens

01:26:43.420 | and dozens of different organizations

01:26:44.780 | that might wanna actually send information to,

01:26:47.660 | let's say faculty.

01:26:49.340 | They all can just on their own, just send out messages.

01:26:51.700 | I would love a broadcast digest model

01:26:53.980 | where like all the information you need for the week

01:26:56.580 | comes to editors who put it together

01:26:58.620 | into basically like a broadsheet newspaper.

01:27:00.580 | Like here's news and different types of categories

01:27:02.660 | and here's the things that require requests

01:27:04.340 | and here's all the links for the information.

01:27:06.020 | And this thing gets delivered to you once a week

01:27:08.700 | and you can sit there and you can browse it.

01:27:10.220 | What's relevant, what's not,

01:27:11.340 | what do I need to follow up on?

01:27:12.940 | It seems small, but it really changes the cognitive footprint

01:27:16.380 | of all those requests.

01:27:17.460 | Another far-out idea I had was all interactive admin.

01:27:22.820 | So administrative tasks that require professors

01:27:25.300 | to sort of give information or fill something out

01:27:27.580 | or answer questions, have a two-hour session

01:27:31.580 | once a week for each professor.

01:27:35.540 | And a bunch of professors can do this at the same time.

01:27:38.460 | And whatever admin is working with you

01:27:40.620 | or that particular research group comes in

01:27:43.140 | and just like a chief of staff or the president says,

01:27:46.460 | "All right, I have a stack of things we need to get through

01:27:49.060 | "that's gonna require some interaction from you.

01:27:51.060 | "And I'm just gonna ask you questions

01:27:52.380 | "and get from you the information."

01:27:54.140 | So it's human to human interaction.

01:27:56.140 | All right, so you need to fill out this form.

01:27:58.780 | So I'm just gonna ask you some questions.

01:28:00.060 | What about this?

01:28:00.900 | What about that?

01:28:01.740 | Okay, I'll submit that on your behalf.

01:28:03.500 | I need a yes or no on the following five things.

01:28:05.660 | So you as the professor are not,

01:28:07.820 | okay, these are full obligations on my plate

01:28:09.500 | where I have to navigate ambiguity,

01:28:11.220 | maybe follow up, ask follow-up questions,

01:28:13.060 | figure out how to do these interfaces in two hours.

01:28:15.420 | That's where all the admin work happens.

01:28:17.180 | And if there's more administrative requests

01:28:18.700 | for the professors that can fit into that two hours,

01:28:21.340 | then it'll have to get spread out to a future week.

01:28:23.500 | Again, this would stop so much context shifting.

01:28:26.780 | So now there's no administrative requests

01:28:28.340 | coming to your email.

01:28:29.380 | There's no information broadcast coming to your email.

01:28:31.260 | Think about it, how much you'd be able to focus.

01:28:33.460 | The final thing, and this is only half serious,

01:28:35.420 | is get rid of email.

01:28:36.820 | I've said before, and I think it's true,

01:28:39.700 | if you had an upstart university

01:28:42.100 | and you wanted to hire some of the top people in the world,

01:28:45.740 | the only sales pitch you would have to make

01:28:47.460 | is come to this university,

01:28:48.700 | we will not assign you an email address.

01:28:50.980 | Work out the way, I don't know, how's it gonna work?

01:28:53.740 | Figure everything else out.

01:28:54.620 | So we could do these admin things,

01:28:56.180 | they get rid of admin work,

01:28:57.420 | broadcast could happen in these digests, that would help.

01:29:00.260 | There's just other ways of interacting.

01:29:02.620 | Office hours would obviously be much more important.

01:29:04.620 | You might have multi-typed office hours.

01:29:06.780 | Here's student office hours, here's colleague office hours.

01:29:09.220 | It's daily, I don't know, but you could figure it out.

01:29:11.900 | But if you work backwards

01:29:12.860 | from the challenge of no email addresses here,

01:29:15.180 | you get Nobel Prize winners by the dozens.

01:29:19.460 | Get Fields Medal winners, Turing Award winners.

01:29:22.060 | They would be game.

01:29:23.700 | There's nothing for me to check.

01:29:25.820 | Working on my class, I'm working on my research.

01:29:27.740 | Here's my admin block,

01:29:28.820 | here's when I get the broadcast digest,

01:29:30.140 | here's my office hours.

01:29:31.380 | Everything else, there's literally nothing for me to look at.

01:29:35.060 | That would be the dream.

01:29:36.940 | So there you go.

01:29:38.100 | Those are my thoughts on university.

01:29:41.220 | All right, we're at the 130 mark.

01:29:45.180 | We're going a little long.

01:29:48.380 | Voice is getting a little weak.

01:29:50.140 | But let's try to fit in one other quick question here

01:29:52.060 | before we wrap up this episode.

01:29:53.740 | Comes from Vasilky, who says,

01:29:58.540 | "Do you think a college student should abstain

01:30:01.420 | from social media completely?

01:30:04.740 | Many students communicate with social media.

01:30:07.260 | Completely abstaining has made me feel

01:30:09.820 | like I'm missing out on opportunities to discuss homework.

01:30:13.060 | When I miss a class,

01:30:14.100 | I can ask a friend over Messenger for notes.

01:30:16.180 | Even if I use only email,

01:30:17.300 | other people may feel discouraged

01:30:18.500 | to send you over email notes

01:30:20.500 | because they find Facebook or Discord more easy

01:30:22.780 | to scan with their phones.

01:30:23.740 | I don't live near the campus,

01:30:24.700 | so I can't interact with other students.

01:30:26.980 | What do you advise to give a student to communicate

01:30:29.860 | to their peers that need to abstain from social media,

01:30:31.980 | but to remain in the community?"

01:30:33.580 | Well, short answer, long answer, short answer,

01:30:37.540 | separate communication tools from social media.

01:30:40.420 | What do I mean by social media here?

01:30:43.340 | I mean things where you post information

01:30:45.220 | to people you don't know,

01:30:46.460 | or consume information posted by people you don't know.

01:30:49.820 | Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook.

01:30:52.820 | Don't do that.

01:30:55.460 | I mean, you can, but I would say, yeah, abstain from that.

01:30:57.940 | I think you have other things

01:30:59.340 | that are more important in college.

01:31:00.420 | That's a distraction.

01:31:02.340 | It's not giving you any benefit.

01:31:04.540 | But separate that from the fact

01:31:06.100 | that you use WhatsApp for your study group.

01:31:08.460 | Separate communication tools from the social media.

01:31:12.060 | The key thing to keep in mind is that latter context,

01:31:14.300 | that the tools where you post information

01:31:15.980 | to people you don't know,

01:31:16.820 | or read information from people you don't know,

01:31:18.180 | that's engineered to be distracting.

01:31:19.540 | That's what you want to stay away from.

01:31:22.020 | Having a study group on WhatsApp,

01:31:24.300 | or having a Facebook group that you're,

01:31:26.340 | you know, whatever club uses.

01:31:28.660 | If you've configured Facebook,

01:31:29.700 | like I talk about in digital minimalisms,

01:31:31.300 | and go straight to the groups and have no newsfeed,

01:31:33.580 | that's fine.

01:31:34.420 | I don't care about communication tools.

01:31:36.740 | But don't use social media tools that are engaged,

01:31:39.380 | I mean, that are engineered to distract.

01:31:41.660 | That's what I would recommend.

01:31:42.620 | And in fact, in general, I think college students,

01:31:45.660 | there's so much intellectually, socially,

01:31:49.020 | just spiritually, philosophically to enjoy

01:31:52.100 | during that period of life that gets leeched away.

01:31:55.580 | If you're looking at TikTok videos

01:31:58.820 | as just a default when you're bored.

01:32:01.300 | I mean, just life is really interesting

01:32:03.380 | and vibrant at that point.

01:32:04.260 | And if you take that out of your life as a college student,

01:32:07.820 | what's left is in technicolor.

01:32:09.740 | It's just like a much more interesting period of time.

01:32:13.700 | My long answer is be wary of the justification game

01:32:17.020 | you're playing.

01:32:18.620 | I get this type of thing all the time,

01:32:20.540 | the little bait and switch.

01:32:22.500 | You find this corner case of technology

01:32:24.420 | that there's no debate you need to use,

01:32:28.220 | then allow that to justify chaos.

01:32:31.100 | I hear this from students a lot, like,

01:32:33.620 | "Look, Cal, my math teacher posts our homework

01:32:38.620 | on the internet.

01:32:40.140 | So I need to use the internet to download my math homework.

01:32:43.900 | So that's why I'm playing Fortnite till 3 a.m."

01:32:47.340 | These are two really separate things.

01:32:49.620 | And I'm seeing this in your answer here.

01:32:52.380 | You're like, "You know, like maybe a friend

01:32:54.100 | doesn't wanna share notes with me over email.

01:32:56.420 | So I'm gonna be on TikTok all day."

01:33:00.060 | Remain specific.

01:33:01.260 | And I think that's at the core of my philosophy

01:33:02.940 | of digital minimalism.

01:33:04.020 | Figure out the life you want, what's important to you.

01:33:08.220 | Figure out what technology will support that

01:33:10.340 | and what rules you wanna use it to get the benefits

01:33:12.300 | and avoid the cost.

01:33:13.900 | And outside of those decisions,

01:33:15.060 | be comfortable missing out on everything else.

01:33:16.740 | So be specific.

01:33:17.940 | Don't just use the term social media

01:33:20.580 | and lump the fact that you ask a question over WhatsApp

01:33:25.180 | with the fact that you're on Instagram all day.

01:33:27.540 | Be specific, work backwards from values.

01:33:29.460 | And yes, is your main question,

01:33:30.860 | should you abstain from the social media that you can?

01:33:34.380 | Almost certainly the answer is probably yes.

01:33:36.980 | I think for almost any college student,

01:33:39.060 | that is gonna make their college life richer.

01:33:42.140 | All right, Jesse, 135.

01:33:46.780 | Got some good legs on this episode.

01:33:49.380 | It's gotta last people a whole week,

01:33:50.780 | so I'm glad we got there.

01:33:52.020 | Thank you everyone who sent in their questions or calls.

01:33:57.940 | If you like what you heard, you will like what you see.

01:34:01.700 | Video of the full episode as well as individual clips

01:34:03.940 | can be found at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

01:34:08.860 | Soon to be Jesse Scarecrow Incorporated.

01:34:11.020 | I will be back next week,

01:34:14.780 | a whole week from now with a new episode

01:34:16.940 | of the Deep Questions podcast.

01:34:18.100 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:34:21.060 | (upbeat music)

01:34:23.660 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 193: The Future of Twitter, Reading More, and Fixed-Schedule Productivity | Deep Questions

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