Why You're Always Tired & Exhausted (No Matter What You Do)

00:00:00.000 | Let's get started with our deep dive.

00:00:04.000 | So here's what I want to talk about today.

00:00:07.100 | Tiredness.

00:00:09.760 | A lot of knowledge workers I hear from are telling me that they are tired

00:00:13.300 | and exhausted all of the time, not the sort of lack of sleep tiredness

00:00:18.200 | where you know where that's from, but more of a psychological exhaustion,

00:00:21.860 | the sort of I have a hard time continuing to work on hard things

00:00:26.300 | after we get to two o'clock in the afternoon.

00:00:30.660 | So what I want to do here is argue that the explanation for this

00:00:34.060 | endemic tiredness is not what you think.

00:00:38.220 | And when we realize what's really causing this tiredness,

00:00:41.560 | some unexpected but targeted solutions become possible.

00:00:46.360 | And I have a couple that I want to give you at the end of this deep dive.

00:00:49.420 | All right, so let's get started with the most common answer.

00:00:54.020 | If you ask people, why are you tired all the time?

00:00:56.860 | The most common answer you're going to hear from knowledge workers

00:00:59.120 | is work volume.

00:01:01.460 | We have too much work.

00:01:03.860 | The metaphor we want to give here is we have a battery.

00:01:06.920 | That's our energy.

00:01:07.760 | Every unit of work, every 10 minutes of work drains a little bit from the battery.

00:01:13.120 | So if you have too many units of work that you have to do in a given day,

00:01:16.360 | you drain the battery down to empty, and that's what caused the state of exhaustion.

00:01:19.760 | I think this is the common mental model that most knowledge workers have.

00:01:24.220 | I think, however, the real answer is more complicated than that.

00:01:27.420 | There's two pieces of evidence that tells us that this draining battery model

00:01:31.060 | is not quite like we think it is.

00:01:33.860 | The first piece of evidence is we can find numerous case studies

00:01:38.720 | of knowledge workers who produce a large quantity of work.

00:01:42.920 | So the total units of knowledge work that they're doing is very, very high.

00:01:47.260 | And yet they don't report being exhausted.

00:01:49.760 | They don't report being tired.

00:01:52.660 | Let me give you an extreme example of this.

00:01:54.160 | I'm going to actually bring up a picture of her on the screen here

00:01:56.420 | for people who are watching instead of just listening.

00:01:59.460 | Up on the screen, I have Maria Popova, the blogger, writer, newsletter writer.

00:02:05.020 | Her site used to be called Brain Pickings.

00:02:06.720 | Now it's called Marginalia.

00:02:08.460 | She does reviews of books, reviews and commentary on books.

00:02:14.020 | She works a lot.

00:02:16.120 | So I found a profile of her from about 10 years ago

00:02:19.720 | where they cataloged her typical workday.

00:02:22.660 | But her typical workday is three essays or posts per day.

00:02:28.460 | She also used to have a regimen of 50 tweets per day all scheduled out.

00:02:34.560 | So I can just tell you from a writing point of view,

00:02:36.320 | that is a large amount of knowledge work,

00:02:37.860 | especially since the articles and posts that she puts on her site

00:02:41.620 | are based off of her reading entire complicated books,

00:02:44.960 | novels, poetry, nonfiction books, memoirs.

00:02:47.720 | So she's reading roughly a book a day.

00:02:50.120 | She's posting three times a day plus at least for a while

00:02:53.460 | was doing 50 tweets a day.

00:02:56.220 | So she works a lot.

00:02:58.020 | But as the quote shows up here on the screen,

00:03:00.060 | she does not describe herself as exhausted or tired.

00:03:02.220 | I'm reading now something she said.

00:03:04.460 | I'm a believer in pacing, creating a rhythm

00:03:07.520 | where you do very intense focus work for an extended period,

00:03:09.620 | but then you take a short break and then cycle back.

00:03:13.420 | I think ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by

00:03:15.480 | on very little sleep as a kind of badge of honor

00:03:17.480 | that speaks to work ethic or toughness or whatever,

00:03:19.880 | but it really is just a total profound failure of priorities

00:03:22.960 | and self-respect.

00:03:25.580 | She does not buy this idea

00:03:26.880 | that you should be exhausted all the time.

00:03:28.220 | Here's another example.

00:03:29.460 | I'll bring him up on the screen.

00:03:31.720 | The famous memoirist, not memoirist,

00:03:33.520 | nonfiction biographer, Robert Caro,

00:03:36.680 | who among other things has written the,

00:03:38.880 | or is still writing the acclaimed multi-volume biography

00:03:43.220 | of Lyndon Johnson.

00:03:46.360 | Robert Caro also writes all the time.

00:03:49.960 | I'm reading here on the screen a quote.

00:03:52.660 | In his New York City office

00:03:53.920 | where everything has this particular place,

00:03:55.680 | Caro works long hours, seven days a week,

00:03:59.960 | pouring through interview transcripts

00:04:01.620 | and primary source notes,

00:04:02.760 | working slowly and deliberately on books he publishes

00:04:05.060 | on average once every 10 years.

00:04:06.680 | He works constantly, huge volume of work.

00:04:08.820 | So just add up the units of work.

00:04:10.780 | There's a lot, yet he's not exhausted.

00:04:14.020 | And in the secondary quote here,

00:04:15.520 | I have him talking about many days

00:04:17.020 | where he jumps out of bed happy.

00:04:20.580 | I'm really getting into it.

00:04:21.560 | I tend to get up earlier and earlier

00:04:22.880 | just because I'm excited to get to work.

00:04:24.880 | He's not exhausted.

00:04:26.480 | All right, so volume of work.

00:04:28.020 | This does not seem to be the full explanation

00:04:30.520 | for why we are tired.

00:04:32.960 | We also can look at some survey data on this as well.

00:04:37.320 | I'm bringing here on the screen another article here.

00:04:39.920 | This is from Work Life.

00:04:41.980 | It's summarizing a study.

00:04:44.320 | And the headline tells you everything you need to know

00:04:46.620 | about the study that they're summarizing.

00:04:49.120 | Nearly half of workers say they work four hours a day.

00:04:53.520 | Right?

00:04:55.560 | So we have examples of people who work a huge amount.

00:04:58.360 | They accomplish a huge amount of work, but are not tired.

00:05:00.860 | We also have evidence that when we work at,

00:05:03.060 | when we look at how many hours most knowledge workers

00:05:05.320 | are actually working,

00:05:06.680 | it's not as large as you might suspect.

00:05:10.680 | So there's something else going on here

00:05:12.060 | than just the total units of work is draining our batteries.

00:05:16.260 | So what is really going on here?

00:05:19.200 | Here's my answer.

00:05:20.100 | It's not the volume of work that matters.

00:05:22.760 | It's how we schedule it.

00:05:23.960 | So let's go back.

00:05:25.900 | What was different?

00:05:26.720 | Our first piece of evidence was Popova and Karo

00:05:28.960 | were not exhausted.

00:05:29.960 | Why did their work schedule probably hit you

00:05:32.320 | as very different than your work schedule?

00:05:34.520 | It's because the way they talked about

00:05:36.160 | how their work was scheduled.

00:05:38.660 | Popova talked about, "I work for a long period of time,

00:05:42.260 | "extended periods of time on something hard."

00:05:44.900 | Karo sits in his office

00:05:46.200 | and he will sit there with interview transcripts

00:05:47.920 | hours and hours at a time, just reading.

00:05:50.420 | The documentary that came out last year about Robert Karo

00:05:53.420 | had the title "Turn Every Page"

00:05:55.400 | because that's his advice on how to write

00:05:56.960 | a good nonfiction biography.

00:05:58.520 | Read every single page in the archives

00:06:00.360 | until you're completely immersed in it.

00:06:03.160 | So what we see in the scheduling of their work

00:06:06.560 | is a sequentialness,

00:06:08.720 | long stretches on one hard thing at a time.

00:06:12.000 | The total amount of work they do is large,

00:06:16.500 | but the total amount of times that they are shifting

00:06:18.920 | from one thing to another is small.

00:06:22.020 | This is very different than how most knowledge workers

00:06:26.020 | are approaching their own work.

00:06:28.960 | The typical knowledge worker

00:06:30.520 | is constantly jumping back and forth

00:06:32.860 | between different targets of their attention.

00:06:36.520 | Now there's a lot of reasons for this.

00:06:39.420 | One is the diversity of things we have on our plate

00:06:42.720 | at any one time is very large.

00:06:44.600 | So we often have many different tasks and obligations

00:06:47.200 | that we're shuffling.

00:06:48.320 | Each of these different tasks, obligations, or projects

00:06:50.920 | brings with it its own demands of overhead.

00:06:53.400 | Emails that have to be sent to keep coordinating it

00:06:57.100 | or moving it forward, calls that have to be made,

00:06:59.500 | meetings that have to be jumped on,

00:07:00.960 | small tasks that have to be accomplished.

00:07:03.360 | So if we have a lot of different types of things

00:07:05.720 | on our plate, we get a lot of these small overhead tasks

00:07:10.660 | crowding out our schedule.

00:07:12.060 | So we have to jump back and forth between them,

00:07:13.720 | an email about this project, a meeting about this project,

00:07:16.260 | on the three emails about that project,

00:07:17.960 | an email about this thing over here

00:07:19.400 | before we're back on a meeting,

00:07:20.500 | and then we have to file this paper over here.

00:07:23.060 | That requires a lot of shifting back and forth of attention.

00:07:26.060 | The other thing that happens, of course,

00:07:28.720 | is just in general, the way that we coordinate

00:07:30.660 | or collaborate in the Knowledge Work environment

00:07:32.500 | is that we use ad hoc on-demand messaging.

00:07:35.660 | We figure things out on the fly

00:07:37.320 | with these ongoing back and forth digital conversations

00:07:40.060 | that are unfolding in an inbox

00:07:41.500 | or unfolding in a Slack chat channel.

00:07:45.020 | This too requires us to keep switching our attention

00:07:47.460 | from whatever we're working on to these channels

00:07:50.460 | so that we can keep those conversations going,

00:07:52.700 | and then back to what we're working on,

00:07:53.860 | and then back to the channel to knock another message back

00:07:56.560 | or to reply to another chat,

00:07:57.600 | then back to what we're working on.

00:07:59.900 | So we create an environment in which our attention

00:08:03.140 | is constantly shifting back and forth

00:08:04.740 | between different things.

00:08:06.460 | Very different than what we observe with Papava or Caro.

00:08:10.500 | Papava will sit down and read for four hours.

00:08:12.340 | All she's doing is reading that book.

00:08:14.400 | Caro will sit down and work on a chapter for five hours.

00:08:16.660 | All he's doing is working on that chapter.

00:08:19.300 | They're doing one thing at a time for long periods of time.

00:08:21.960 | We're switching back and forth frantically

00:08:23.760 | between many different things.

00:08:26.160 | So is this a problem?

00:08:28.460 | It is.

00:08:30.000 | Let me load up on the screen here

00:08:32.400 | a important research article from 2009.

00:08:36.560 | This is Sophie Leroy's paper titled,

00:08:39.760 | "Why is it so hard to do my work?

00:08:42.600 | "The challenge of attention residue

00:08:44.260 | "when switching between work tasks."

00:08:48.640 | I'm just gonna read you something here from the abstract.

00:08:53.640 | So here we go.

00:08:55.200 | "Results indicate it is difficult for people

00:08:58.260 | "to transition their attention away from an unfinished task

00:09:02.000 | "and their subsequent task performance suffers.

00:09:05.400 | "Being able to finish one task before switching to another

00:09:07.940 | "is however not enough to enable effective task transition.

00:09:12.400 | "Time pressure while finishing a prior task

00:09:14.940 | "is needed to disengage from the first task

00:09:16.560 | "and thus move to the next task

00:09:17.800 | "and contributes to highest performance on the next task."

00:09:20.500 | So if you look closer at this paper,

00:09:21.960 | she has these two results,

00:09:24.140 | which is it takes a lot of time

00:09:25.820 | to switch fully your attention.

00:09:30.120 | So when you switch from one task to another,

00:09:33.100 | there is something called attention residue

00:09:34.980 | that is left behind,

00:09:36.340 | which lowers your cognitive capacity,

00:09:39.300 | generates fatigue until it clears out.

00:09:42.040 | You have a conflict of things that you're focusing on.

00:09:44.500 | She says, "Even if you finish,"

00:09:45.700 | this is her second point,

00:09:46.840 | "Even if you finish a task,

00:09:48.100 | "it takes a while before that clears out of your mind."

00:09:50.800 | Now she says, "Time pressure can help here.

00:09:53.640 | "So if you have a deadline,

00:09:55.200 | "I have to submit this thing before the post office close."

00:09:58.080 | And you have a clear deadline

00:09:59.240 | and you submit something right before the deadline,

00:10:01.500 | it's a little bit easier to clear out

00:10:02.980 | that attention residue.

00:10:03.880 | That's what she meant about the time pressure.

00:10:05.660 | But the big picture thing here

00:10:06.940 | is that your brain loads up lots of information

00:10:09.300 | about whatever you're working on,

00:10:10.500 | and it's not a cheap or quick operation

00:10:13.340 | to change that to a different target.

00:10:16.080 | This is why the typical knowledge worker approach

00:10:21.820 | of frantic switching back and forth of your attention

00:10:24.860 | is exhausting us.

00:10:26.340 | It's why you're tired by 2 p.m.

00:10:28.080 | and say, "I can no longer do anything hard."

00:10:30.880 | It's the switching back and forth

00:10:33.440 | is making your brain miserable.

00:10:35.500 | It just can't do it.

00:10:36.740 | You're constantly in a state

00:10:38.140 | where your brain has one context

00:10:39.740 | and you're working on another context,

00:10:40.980 | and before it can load that context,

00:10:42.260 | you switch it back to that context.

00:10:44.500 | It's just really difficult.

00:10:46.160 | It's like if you're a professional runner for your job

00:10:50.420 | and you didn't realize

00:10:52.020 | that you've been wearing a backpack full of bricks.

00:10:54.520 | It makes your job unnecessarily more difficult.

00:10:59.880 | So it's not the volume of work that's the problem.

00:11:03.180 | Maria and Robert do a huge volume of work,

00:11:05.320 | but they're not context shifting.

00:11:06.660 | They're barely context shifting.

00:11:07.940 | So the mental experience is much more sustainable

00:11:11.380 | than those of us who maybe are only getting,

00:11:12.980 | like that study said, four real hours of work in,

00:11:15.340 | but that four hours is completely fragmented

00:11:18.380 | with frenetic back and forth context switching.

00:11:20.380 | So it feels like you just finished

00:11:21.700 | the proverbial knowledge work equivalent of a marathon

00:11:24.740 | with all those bricks on your back.

00:11:26.500 | So it is very self-imposed difficulties

00:11:29.620 | that we're putting ourselves in.

00:11:30.860 | This is why I think we're tired.

00:11:33.300 | We switch our attention back and forth too much.

00:11:35.740 | All right, so that's good news, bad news.

00:11:37.740 | The bad news is, shoot, it's hard to just stop doing that.

00:11:42.120 | My bosses is emailing me.

00:11:44.600 | I have a lot of work on my plate,

00:11:45.940 | but the good news is at least we know

00:11:47.180 | what we're trying to accomplish.

00:11:49.900 | We don't have to argue, give me less work.

00:11:51.900 | We instead have to figure out

00:11:53.120 | how do I make my work more sequential?

00:11:56.300 | So I wanna give you one general piece of advice here

00:11:58.540 | and then one brand new specific piece of advice,

00:12:00.980 | a strategy that I think a lot of people

00:12:03.320 | could get a lot of help out of.

00:12:04.380 | It's something I haven't mentioned before on this show.

00:12:06.640 | So the general piece of advice is desperately seek

00:12:11.000 | and try to preserve sequentiality.

00:12:14.940 | Just keep thinking.

00:12:16.020 | Context switching hurts.

00:12:17.700 | Context switching hurts.

00:12:19.360 | Avoid context switches when I can.

00:12:21.220 | You wanna have an almost visceral dislike

00:12:25.780 | of switching your attention so that your instinct

00:12:28.020 | is to try to preserve your focus on one thing at a time

00:12:30.580 | before you switch.

00:12:32.440 | So that might be simple in some cases.

00:12:33.980 | Okay, if I'm working on this, just work on this.

00:12:35.580 | Don't check my inbox till it's done

00:12:37.180 | and then spend 30 minutes on my inbox.

00:12:38.940 | Then work on this thing over here.

00:12:40.640 | Just knowing you're trying to set up your work

00:12:43.380 | to be one thing after another.

00:12:44.900 | Time block planning can help you do this much better.

00:12:47.620 | So if you time block plan,

00:12:49.360 | you lay out a plan for every minute of your day,

00:12:51.360 | you're much better able to figure out where things fit

00:12:54.920 | so everything has its time

00:12:56.360 | and you can give that thing its full attention

00:12:59.040 | when it's actually happening.

00:13:00.480 | To really succeed with making your work more sequential,

00:13:03.540 | you also are probably gonna have to come to grips

00:13:05.360 | with there is less things you can actually

00:13:07.200 | productively push forward in a given day.

00:13:09.440 | We write ourselves these idealized work fairy tales

00:13:14.000 | in the morning about, wow, if I could actually push forward

00:13:16.620 | all six of these different things, that would be great.

00:13:20.040 | I would feel productive.

00:13:21.480 | But you don't actually have enough time

00:13:23.560 | to give all six of the things in this example

00:13:26.200 | enough undistracted attention to make a difference.

00:13:28.820 | Probably should just work on three.

00:13:30.680 | We feel bad in the moment

00:13:32.080 | because we're thinking that's less productive.

00:13:34.520 | But when we zoom out,

00:13:35.800 | we see the sort of just touching on these things

00:13:38.520 | wasn't helping when there was too much of a crowded schedule.

00:13:41.260 | We were just sending out

00:13:42.320 | the proverbial thoughts question mark email

00:13:44.840 | to just try to play obligation hot potato

00:13:47.100 | and get things off our plate.

00:13:48.320 | And just to say, technically speaking, I talked about this.

00:13:51.000 | We stall, we delay, we obfuscate, we do low quality work.

00:13:54.820 | So we also have to be more comfortable

00:13:56.220 | with there's less things per day

00:13:57.620 | than we think that we can actually deal with.

00:13:59.860 | So that's the general advice here

00:14:02.380 | is develop an aversion to context switching,

00:14:05.080 | use time block planning

00:14:06.180 | to better lay out tasks during the day

00:14:08.140 | and get comfortable with actually doing fewer things

00:14:10.340 | in a day 'cause you're probably already

00:14:12.020 | trying to do too much.

00:14:14.020 | All right, now what's my super secret piece

00:14:16.240 | of specific advice?

00:14:18.240 | Well, I wanna tackle your email inbox in particular.

00:14:22.920 | I think this is one of the most devastating vectors

00:14:26.600 | of context switching exhaustion.

00:14:28.840 | There is fewer things more daunting

00:14:31.720 | for your brain's attentional system than a crowded inbox.

00:14:36.400 | And the reason is, is when you see a crowded inbox,

00:14:38.360 | you have dozens of things that you need to respond to

00:14:42.240 | on dozens of different contexts.

00:14:45.180 | So as you go from email to email,

00:14:47.420 | you are drastically switching

00:14:49.540 | the relevant cognitive context from message to message.

00:14:53.580 | And this is incredibly draining.

00:14:56.420 | So you have an email from your department chair

00:14:58.940 | and it's urgent and it's salient,

00:15:00.420 | it's someone that you work for

00:15:01.820 | and you wanna answer them quickly,

00:15:03.540 | but you have to try to load up this context

00:15:05.420 | of all of the issues surrounding the committee

00:15:07.420 | that he's asking you about.

00:15:09.140 | And then two minutes later,

00:15:10.920 | you have an email from a student

00:15:12.140 | in one of your classes.

00:15:13.060 | This is a completely different cognitive context.

00:15:15.380 | All right, the class, what's going on,

00:15:16.760 | what's our schedule, who's the student.

00:15:19.540 | But before you can switch completely over that context,

00:15:21.740 | you have an email from an administrator,

00:15:24.020 | a scheduling question.

00:15:25.580 | That's a completely different context.

00:15:26.940 | Oh my God, like what is going on with my schedule?

00:15:29.700 | Do I have time for this?

00:15:30.860 | Let me see my calendar.

00:15:32.300 | This is a massive demand you are making on a brain

00:15:36.380 | that is used to being much more sequential.

00:15:38.480 | And it's why email clearing in particular

00:15:40.980 | can be one of the most exhausting activities

00:15:43.100 | we have in knowledge work is because

00:15:44.660 | it is pushing this context switching pace

00:15:47.540 | to completely unsustainable levels.

00:15:49.960 | So here's my specific piece of advice

00:15:52.880 | about this specific source

00:15:54.460 | of acute context switching overload.

00:15:56.560 | Single thread your inbox.

00:15:59.240 | Here's what I mean about this.

00:16:02.180 | This is entirely using context theory

00:16:04.500 | to make your inbox worse, less worse.

00:16:07.660 | You have your inbox open,

00:16:08.700 | you wanna catch up on emails.

00:16:10.520 | Choose a single context

00:16:13.420 | for which there are multiple messages.

00:16:14.980 | So messages from students,

00:16:17.540 | messages about scheduling things,

00:16:19.500 | messages about this upcoming conference

00:16:21.560 | that I'm organizing.

00:16:23.260 | And what you were gonna do

00:16:24.580 | is just focus on the messages

00:16:27.260 | that all fall within the same cognitive context.

00:16:31.140 | And I want you to load up right next to your inbox,

00:16:33.700 | a blank text file.

00:16:35.700 | We call these on the show,

00:16:36.860 | working memory.txt files.

00:16:38.780 | So the sort of a blank text file

00:16:40.560 | right there on your browser.

00:16:42.040 | And you are gonna type in a quick one sentence summary

00:16:45.160 | of every email of that context.

00:16:47.960 | So you have a bunch of student questions,

00:16:49.200 | quick summary, every email

00:16:52.080 | from a student that's in your inbox.

00:16:54.520 | Then you're gonna go over to this text file

00:16:56.320 | and say, okay, I forget the inbox.

00:16:57.840 | I don't wanna see these other messages.

00:16:59.280 | I forget all that.

00:17:00.440 | Here are six or seven things

00:17:02.280 | that are all related to the same cognitive context.

00:17:05.280 | Let me think through my answers to all of these.

00:17:08.400 | Yes, no, I'm not gonna delay this.

00:17:11.740 | I'm gonna ask this.

00:17:12.580 | And write, I'm talking,

00:17:13.420 | write bullet points in your text file.

00:17:15.260 | You're tackling all these things together.

00:17:17.900 | And you're gonna find that as you get going,

00:17:19.620 | the friction reduces

00:17:20.540 | because as the single relevant context

00:17:22.580 | gets loaded up into your neural circuitry,

00:17:24.820 | the facility of thinking about this,

00:17:27.460 | the ease with which you can come up with ideas

00:17:29.140 | is going to increase and increase.

00:17:30.380 | And it's gonna be like, okay, great, I'm on it.

00:17:32.180 | You're gonna have pretty nuanced answers.

00:17:33.800 | Okay, great, this is great.

00:17:34.820 | Actually, let me tell these three students to wait to hear.

00:17:37.500 | These two students are wondering

00:17:38.580 | about the timing of this exam.

00:17:39.740 | You know what?

00:17:40.580 | I should move that exam.

00:17:41.420 | Okay, so who do I need to tell the TA?

00:17:43.020 | And you're just in a context.

00:17:44.500 | You come up and you work out all of your answers.

00:17:46.300 | Then you go back to your inbox.

00:17:47.880 | You translate that to responses

00:17:49.420 | to each of those relevant emails.

00:17:50.660 | You clear them out of your inbox.

00:17:53.060 | Right, okay, thread over.

00:17:54.900 | What's my next contextual thread?

00:17:56.980 | Maybe there's a bunch of different things

00:17:59.100 | about scheduling and meetings.

00:18:00.180 | Okay, now I'm in meetings mode.

00:18:01.820 | Over here, every single meeting message

00:18:04.340 | I'm gonna put a line in my text file.

00:18:06.860 | Any dates that they're suggesting,

00:18:08.580 | okay, I need to find a date next week.

00:18:10.900 | I need to suggest a date.

00:18:11.900 | Here's dates they're suggesting I need to choose one.

00:18:14.020 | All that information in your text file.

00:18:16.000 | Close down your inbox, load up your calendar,

00:18:17.860 | load up your text file,

00:18:19.220 | and you're just working on scheduling now.

00:18:20.660 | That's all you're doing.

00:18:21.860 | Again, you're gonna find after a few minutes

00:18:24.900 | as the context loads and you stop trying to interrupt it,

00:18:28.380 | you become a scheduling master.

00:18:29.820 | Oh, you know, I'm gonna move this here

00:18:31.140 | and we consolidate these.

00:18:32.260 | I'm gonna move that meeting.

00:18:33.180 | And if I clear out this Tuesday,

00:18:34.420 | I can fit these all on here.

00:18:35.420 | And then you go back and you answer all these emails.

00:18:38.500 | It's funny because in the end,

00:18:40.700 | maybe you're answering the same total collection of emails

00:18:43.780 | when you're done.

00:18:44.620 | The experience though is gonna be 5X less exhausting.

00:18:47.900 | And it's because you're hacking context shifting.

00:18:51.140 | You're sticking in one context

00:18:52.420 | till you're done, then another.

00:18:53.900 | So single threading your inbox

00:18:56.620 | can drastically change your experience

00:18:58.940 | of what it's like to empty your inbox

00:19:01.900 | and really minimize the contrail of fatigue

00:19:04.940 | that inbox checking can otherwise leave

00:19:07.540 | across your mental sky.

00:19:09.500 | So that's a specific tip.

00:19:12.460 | Before I gave you some general advice as well,

00:19:14.300 | but all of this is wrapped around the same idea.

00:19:16.780 | Is it's a detour or a diversion

00:19:22.300 | when we think too much just about how much am I working?

00:19:25.540 | And if I just had less hours of work,

00:19:26.900 | I'd be less exhausted.

00:19:28.660 | That's not what's causing the issue with knowledge workers.

00:19:30.900 | It's the context shifting itself.

00:19:32.900 | And that is something we can,

00:19:34.220 | as individuals do something about.

00:19:36.060 | It's definitely something that organizations

00:19:37.780 | and bosses and managers could do something about,

00:19:39.540 | but I wouldn't be holding my breath about that.

00:19:42.700 | But it's all about why are we tired?

00:19:44.860 | Well, in large part, because we're scheduling our work

00:19:47.420 | in a way that is designed to exhaust our brains.

00:19:49.740 | Stop doing that.

00:19:51.540 | You still have a lot of other issues to deal with,

00:19:53.060 | but at least things are gonna get a lot better.

00:19:55.900 | You might not be able to have Robert Caro's

00:19:58.300 | eight hours in a row of just reading articles,

00:20:00.860 | but getting closer to that ideal

00:20:02.820 | is going to lower the amount of exhaustion

00:20:05.180 | that you're gonna feel by the end of the day.

00:20:07.420 | - I think Caro still uses a typewriter.

00:20:10.860 | - I believe it.

00:20:13.380 | - At least he did when it was profiled in the New York Times

00:20:16.660 | he was on 60 minutes once.

00:20:19.060 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:20:19.900 | They start to slow him down, stay, not be distracted.

00:20:24.740 | I mean, these are extremes.

00:20:26.900 | Caro's an extreme, Popova's an extreme.

00:20:28.740 | Like they just read and write.

00:20:30.500 | Like that's all they do.

00:20:31.940 | But I do think it's important to study these extremes

00:20:34.140 | 'cause when you study people who do produce huge volumes

00:20:38.420 | of high level knowledge work, you often see this,

00:20:41.220 | they minimize, they naturally lean

00:20:43.380 | towards minimizing context shifting.

00:20:45.580 | And I think in normal knowledge work,

00:20:46.700 | we just don't think about context shifting

00:20:48.140 | as an enemy at all.

00:20:49.820 | I think we should, it's productivity poison.

00:20:51.500 | So once we recognize that,

00:20:52.900 | it can really change a lot of habits.

00:20:55.980 | All right, so what we have is a bunch of questions

00:20:59.740 | and a case study, a live case study actually coming up

00:21:03.340 | where we have someone calling in to give their case study

00:21:05.740 | about trying to do a Robert Caro style book writing project

00:21:10.100 | in the middle of an otherwise busy family

00:21:11.860 | and professional life.

00:21:12.700 | So we've got some great questions

00:21:13.580 | and a case study coming up.

00:21:15.500 | First, however, I wanna talk about one of the sponsors

00:21:18.640 | that makes this show possible.

00:21:20.100 | In particular, Deep Questions is sponsored by BetterHelp.

00:21:25.100 | So fall is often a busy time for a lot of people.

00:21:29.300 | Maybe you're finding that racing thoughts

00:21:31.740 | are keeping you up at night

00:21:33.460 | or anxiety about all sorts of different things

00:21:37.020 | is getting in the way of the activities

00:21:38.700 | that you used to find really relaxing or engaging.

00:21:43.700 | It turns out there's a good way to deal

00:21:46.140 | with these ruminations and these racing thoughts,

00:21:48.140 | and that is working with a professional therapist.

00:21:52.860 | If you were an athlete and your knee was bothering you,

00:21:57.440 | you would say, "I want a professional to help me

00:21:59.540 | "with my knee so it'd stop bothering me

00:22:01.040 | "because it's making it hard for me to do my work."

00:22:03.300 | Well, if you're a knowledge worker

00:22:04.380 | and your brain is all over the place,

00:22:06.900 | why not get a professional to help you build

00:22:09.900 | a better relationship with your thoughts,

00:22:12.300 | to find a way to still have great joy in meeting your life,

00:22:15.980 | even with difficulties going on cognitively?

00:22:19.700 | Now, of course, the issue with therapy,

00:22:21.260 | even if you are considering it,

00:22:22.900 | is that it can seem daunting

00:22:25.420 | from a logistical perspective.

00:22:27.440 | How do I find a therapist?

00:22:29.180 | Are they available?

00:22:31.440 | Are they good?

00:22:32.280 | What if I don't like them?

00:22:33.380 | What if there's not a lot of therapists near where I live?

00:22:35.400 | There could just be no availabilities

00:22:37.300 | in the physical offices that are near me.

00:22:39.420 | This is where BetterHelp enters the picture.

00:22:43.320 | If you're thinking about starting therapy,

00:22:44.640 | you should give BetterHelp a try.

00:22:47.440 | It's entirely online.

00:22:49.720 | It's designed to be convenient, flexible,

00:22:51.960 | and suited to your schedule.

00:22:53.600 | You just fill out a brief questionnaire,

00:22:55.360 | and you will get matched with a licensed therapist.

00:22:57.740 | You can switch therapists at any time

00:22:59.460 | for no additional charge.

00:23:00.900 | So now is the time to build

00:23:03.500 | that better relationship with your mind.

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00:23:09.420 | So get a break from your thoughts with BetterHelp.

00:23:12.700 | Visit betterhelp.com.

00:23:16.580 | Is it /deepquestions, Jesse?

00:23:17.820 | - Yep, that's it.

00:23:18.660 | - /deepquestions today to get 10% off your first month.

00:23:22.580 | That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, .com/deepquestions.

00:23:27.580 | Another thing that I think is really important to consider

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00:24:12.600 | Now that just having just a little bit of blade stick out

00:24:15.860 | means you get a close shave without the diving board effect

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00:24:21.160 | So by using a Henson's razor,

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00:25:48.080 | All right, so we're gonna move on now to some questions.

00:25:51.080 | I guess these all roughly orbit mental exhaustion,

00:25:55.280 | tiredness, you know,

00:25:56.560 | well, we do our best to keep the theme somewhat on theme.

00:25:59.600 | Later in the questions, as I previewed before,

00:26:01.400 | we're gonna have someone calling in

00:26:03.000 | to give their case study about using some of these ideas.

00:26:05.000 | So stay tuned for that.

00:26:06.480 | But let's just get started with a standard question.

00:26:08.600 | Jesse, who is our first question of the segment?

00:26:11.280 | - First question's from John.

00:26:13.240 | How do I read for longer stretches of time?

00:26:15.480 | I wanna be able to read for 90 minutes in one sitting,

00:26:17.640 | but I just can't.

00:26:18.560 | The best I can do is 45 minutes,

00:26:20.220 | and by the end I'm falling asleep.

00:26:22.040 | How do I build up my reading stamina?

00:26:24.480 | - Well, John, first of all,

00:26:26.360 | let's go back to what we talked about

00:26:28.080 | in the opening segment of the show

00:26:30.640 | and be very wary about context shifts.

00:26:32.940 | So we are so used to today

00:26:35.880 | having this easy access to distraction in our pockets

00:26:40.460 | that we don't even note it as an activity.

00:26:43.400 | So when you say here,

00:26:45.260 | you know, I can read for 45 minutes,

00:26:46.660 | but then I'm very tired by the end.

00:26:48.800 | You think you're reading for 45 minutes.

00:26:50.640 | The neutral observer is probably seeing

00:26:52.840 | seven or eight smartphone checks.

00:26:54.760 | I'm gonna check this text message

00:26:55.960 | and see what's happening with the baseball game.

00:26:57.840 | So keep this in mind.

00:26:58.920 | Every one of those checks is inducing a context shift,

00:27:01.360 | which is incredibly fatiguing.

00:27:03.000 | So of course you're not gonna make it very far.

00:27:05.400 | It's like saying, I wanna go for a 5K run,

00:27:07.600 | but let me just bring this wheelbarrow

00:27:09.000 | full of metal slag with me.

00:27:10.760 | It's a huge extra cognitive weight that you are adding,

00:27:14.100 | which makes the activity all the more harder.

00:27:16.320 | So the easiest thing you can do

00:27:17.920 | is when you read your phones in a different room.

00:27:20.960 | That alone is gonna give you 30 to 50% more reading stamina

00:27:24.800 | without changing anything else.

00:27:26.440 | All right, so then how do we expand beyond that?

00:27:29.440 | Let's say we wanna get all the way up to 90 minutes

00:27:31.460 | or two hours at a sitting.

00:27:33.280 | There, the two-part solution is gonna be two things

00:27:36.640 | that start with the letter I,

00:27:38.700 | interval training and interesting books.

00:27:42.820 | So the second piece is the easiest.

00:27:44.560 | When you're trying to expand your reading capacity,

00:27:47.440 | read the most interesting possible books.

00:27:50.600 | Do not use "Anna Karenina" as the book you're gonna use

00:27:53.840 | for trying to expand your reading capacity.

00:27:56.860 | Don't read "Thomas Pynchon" as the book you're gonna read

00:27:59.360 | to expand your reading capacity.

00:28:00.600 | Get a book that you were like super excited to read

00:28:02.760 | when it came out

00:28:03.680 | and that you have a hard time putting down.

00:28:06.600 | Think about this as the running equivalent

00:28:08.060 | of don't start to get in shape for your 5Ks

00:28:10.780 | by running up a really steep hill.

00:28:12.480 | Maybe go on a flat, nice track that has a lot of give.

00:28:16.800 | All right, interval training.

00:28:18.920 | The technique that I developed

00:28:20.060 | when I used to work with undergraduates

00:28:22.160 | who are trying to build up their capacity for studying.

00:28:25.660 | And all you would do is get a timer.

00:28:27.840 | And we would set the timer for,

00:28:28.960 | okay, how long are you gonna read?

00:28:31.040 | And until this timer goes off, focus on the reading.

00:28:34.520 | If your attention wanders, bring it right back.

00:28:37.040 | And you start that timer at something that's reasonable,

00:28:39.180 | but somewhat ambitious.

00:28:40.140 | So maybe 30 minutes, maybe 45 minutes.

00:28:43.000 | And once you're able to do that

00:28:44.240 | for a couple of weeks at a time,

00:28:45.840 | you increase it by about 15 minutes for the next sessions.

00:28:48.720 | Okay, now I'm going for a full hour

00:28:50.160 | and then it's gonna get difficult for a while.

00:28:51.880 | Okay, I can get through about 45 minutes, no problem.

00:28:54.200 | That final 15 minutes, I'm struggling.

00:28:56.280 | But my timer is here.

00:28:57.720 | I see there's only 15 minutes left.

00:29:00.200 | There's a clear goal.

00:29:01.600 | I wanna make it.

00:29:02.940 | So I will power through.

00:29:05.120 | Now it seems like a little thing,

00:29:06.220 | whether you have a timer on or not,

00:29:07.920 | but it makes a big psychological difference.

00:29:10.080 | If you're just saying read as long as you can,

00:29:13.160 | the voice in your head saying,

00:29:14.400 | "Check your phone, check your phone,"

00:29:16.400 | has a pretty strong argument

00:29:17.640 | because they can say you're gonna stop reading

00:29:19.120 | at some point anyway, so why not stop now?

00:29:22.520 | But when you have a timer

00:29:24.360 | and there's that voice in your head saying,

00:29:25.600 | "Check your phone, check your phone,"

00:29:27.400 | you say, "Well, I can wait nine more minutes."

00:29:30.360 | You know, you have a clarity there.

00:29:32.200 | So then once you get used to the new expanded interval,

00:29:34.960 | which might take a couple of weeks,

00:29:36.800 | you add 15 more minutes.

00:29:38.500 | So it's interval training.

00:29:39.760 | You stretch until that stretch is no longer a stretch

00:29:42.080 | and then you increase it some more.

00:29:44.120 | You can get the 90 minutes

00:29:46.120 | based on my experience working with undergrads

00:29:48.000 | in roughly a semester, so in a few months,

00:29:50.440 | if you're pretty careful about it.

00:29:51.840 | So there we go.

00:29:52.680 | Interesting books plus interval training

00:29:54.760 | and a rule of zero context shifting,

00:29:56.640 | you can significantly increase your stamina

00:29:59.280 | for concentrating on the written word.

00:30:02.320 | All right, Jesse, what do we got next?

00:30:05.160 | - I like that timer stuff.

00:30:07.160 | All right, next question is from Joel.

00:30:09.400 | "I'm getting the recommended eight hours of sleep

00:30:11.440 | "every night, but constantly feel exhausted,

00:30:13.560 | "both when I wake up and throughout the day.

00:30:16.020 | "I've been watching videos on the importance

00:30:17.760 | "of limiting screen time before bed,

00:30:19.600 | "and I think I may be a culprit for my bad sleep.

00:30:23.080 | "Do you have any advice on ways to reduce screen time

00:30:25.540 | "before bed as I find it very addicting

00:30:28.120 | "and hard to break that habit?"

00:30:30.480 | - I love the irony of watching videos

00:30:34.160 | about how to reduce screen time.

00:30:36.080 | I imagine him, Joel, up late, late into the night,

00:30:39.240 | watching videos about how to not watch videos before bed.

00:30:42.740 | All sorts of contradictions and irony

00:30:45.760 | in the online productivity space,

00:30:47.720 | as the channels are exactly the causes

00:30:49.520 | of productivity issues in the first place.

00:30:51.800 | All right, Joel, a couple of things here.

00:30:53.040 | I mean, first of all, of course,

00:30:54.120 | if you're tired throughout the day

00:30:55.560 | and you're getting enough sleep,

00:30:57.160 | if you actually are getting enough sleep,

00:30:59.440 | go back to the opening segment of the show,

00:31:01.720 | make sure that you're not excessively context shifting.

00:31:04.020 | Some of that tiredness may actually be mental fatigue

00:31:06.520 | and not actual rundown tiredness.

00:31:08.880 | So you wanna just set up your day

00:31:10.200 | to be less unnecessarily exhausting.

00:31:12.880 | But if we're gonna focus specifically on this issue

00:31:14.920 | of your sleep being disrupted,

00:31:17.740 | I mean, I agree that good sleep hygiene can help.

00:31:21.740 | And going on to, I think the right way to think about it

00:31:26.860 | is highly salient, highly distracting,

00:31:29.480 | highly arousing content should not be consumed near bed.

00:31:33.600 | So anything where it's coming through an app

00:31:36.720 | that makes money by how much time you look at it,

00:31:39.760 | avoiding that I think is important.

00:31:41.800 | So you should not go on YouTube before bed.

00:31:44.260 | You should not go onto Instagram or Twitter or TikTok.

00:31:47.520 | Anything that's attention engineered

00:31:50.000 | is gonna be a problem because again,

00:31:51.400 | these services, those services work.

00:31:52.980 | Services you don't pay to use work by getting you

00:31:55.280 | to look at the service longer.

00:31:57.200 | So they're gonna be pressing buttons within your brain

00:32:00.300 | to get a response that makes you very engaged

00:32:02.440 | and aroused emotionally and wanting to actually come back

00:32:04.640 | and keep watching more.

00:32:05.840 | That's not a great state to be in if you wanna go to bed.

00:32:08.580 | So if you're gonna be looking at a screen before bed,

00:32:11.360 | a general rule of thumb here is look at things

00:32:13.520 | where they don't make money off of you

00:32:15.120 | spending more time on it.

00:32:16.640 | So if there's the office on Peacock,

00:32:20.800 | like I watch an episode or two of "The Office"

00:32:22.680 | 'cause it's comforting and it's dumb,

00:32:24.700 | that's gonna have much less of a negative impact, right?

00:32:26.960 | These streaming services make money

00:32:28.380 | by you paying a subscription fee.

00:32:29.760 | So they wanna make sure there's stuff on there you like,

00:32:32.040 | but they don't particularly care

00:32:34.120 | if you binge for seven hours in a row or not.

00:32:36.520 | They're just, here's, we have a bunch of shows

00:32:37.800 | we think you'll like.

00:32:38.680 | So there's a real difference.

00:32:40.440 | They both seem like screens,

00:32:42.320 | but watching a comforting, somewhat boring show

00:32:45.120 | could actually help your brain calm down

00:32:47.240 | in a way that watching TikTok videos

00:32:49.200 | or following YouTube recommendations

00:32:50.560 | might actually get your brain fired up.

00:32:53.080 | So the intent of the platform,

00:32:55.560 | is it an engagement or is it customer experience?

00:32:58.400 | Makes a difference on how it's gonna affect your sleep.

00:33:01.480 | The other thing I wanna throw in here,

00:33:02.800 | that's sort of the curve ball,

00:33:04.440 | is another common sleep disruptor.

00:33:06.400 | It's not necessarily what you do right before bed,

00:33:08.500 | but what's happening inside your head.

00:33:10.400 | If your head is keeping track of a lot of open loops,

00:33:15.880 | to use a term from David Allen,

00:33:17.600 | tasks that you're responsible for,

00:33:19.040 | projects you need to work on,

00:33:20.460 | ideas that might lead to cool opportunities.

00:33:22.920 | If you have a lot of these things

00:33:25.480 | that exist primarily in your head,

00:33:27.480 | and if you forget about them, it's gonna be a problem.

00:33:31.400 | Your brain is gonna have a hard time falling asleep

00:33:33.600 | because it feels like the juggler

00:33:34.920 | where the things it's juggling are very fragile and valuable

00:33:37.520 | and doesn't wanna drop anything, so it has to keep moving.

00:33:40.720 | So ironically, one of the biggest things you can do

00:33:42.600 | to help you sleep at night,

00:33:44.700 | is be better about how you control your work during the day,

00:33:48.480 | being better about how you shut down your work

00:33:50.480 | at the end of the day.

00:33:52.300 | Organizational systems that are built around notions

00:33:54.800 | like full capture and planning.

00:33:57.680 | So every task that you need to do that you've committed to

00:34:00.000 | is captured in a trusted location that you review regularly

00:34:02.680 | so your brain doesn't have to keep track of it,

00:34:04.480 | makes a huge difference for your sleep.

00:34:06.520 | Multi-scale planning.

00:34:07.920 | I have a plan for my season,

00:34:09.400 | which gets turned into plans for my week,

00:34:11.120 | which gets turned into plans for my day,

00:34:13.120 | so that my brain doesn't have to just keep thinking,

00:34:16.240 | hey, what am I working on?

00:34:17.280 | What should I be working on?

00:34:18.420 | Should I be thinking more about this or that?

00:34:20.440 | Helps you sleep.

00:34:21.280 | Having, in general, a good shutdown routine.

00:34:26.200 | Okay, the day is over before I shut down work.

00:34:28.620 | Let me check all of the inboxes, my email, my plan,

00:34:32.160 | making sure that everything has a place.

00:34:34.620 | Anything that came up has been written down.

00:34:36.320 | I know what's happening tomorrow.

00:34:37.480 | There's nothing I need to be keeping track of.

00:34:40.160 | We have a good plan.

00:34:41.000 | Everything's captured, great.

00:34:42.360 | Let me now check that shutdown complete checkbox

00:34:46.120 | in my time block planner,

00:34:48.600 | or have a ritual or phrase I say.

00:34:50.960 | And so later, if my mind starts to get ruminative

00:34:54.440 | about work, I can say, no, no, no.

00:34:56.200 | I checked that checkbox in my time block planner.

00:34:58.440 | I said that phrase.

00:34:59.320 | That means I successfully reviewed

00:35:01.360 | and shut down all open loops.

00:35:02.520 | I don't have to worry about things till tomorrow.

00:35:04.240 | That makes a big difference for sleep.

00:35:06.140 | All right, so to summarize,

00:35:08.320 | we have a couple of different things going on here.

00:35:10.480 | Be careful about what screens you expose yourself to

00:35:12.900 | before bed.

00:35:14.160 | It's probably gonna be easier

00:35:15.660 | if you have a bedtime screen habit

00:35:17.360 | to just change what you look at

00:35:18.960 | than it will be to just cold turkey stop

00:35:20.780 | looking at a screen before bed.

00:35:22.300 | Just shift your screens to things

00:35:23.980 | that's not emotionally salient or emotionally arousing.

00:35:28.040 | And then care a lot about how you organize your work,

00:35:31.520 | open loops, shutdowns, and multi-scale planning.

00:35:34.160 | And finally, make sure that some of your daytime exhaustion

00:35:37.040 | is not actually from context shifting

00:35:38.400 | as opposed to sleep disruption.

00:35:39.720 | Those are my three points, Joel.

00:35:41.140 | I think all three of those things combined

00:35:43.760 | will make a difference.

00:35:44.920 | I'm noticing, Jesse, we got,

00:35:47.680 | not only do we have a bunch of J names in a row,

00:35:51.480 | but the next name is literally JJ.

00:35:53.240 | It's as if we go through our questions alphabetically.

00:35:56.920 | I like it.

00:35:57.760 | Fortunately, it's the last of the J names.

00:35:59.320 | I wish we had more, but anyways,

00:36:01.160 | after John and Joel,

00:36:02.400 | let's get rolling with what JJ has to ask us.

00:36:05.920 | - Yep.

00:36:07.080 | So JJ has to say,

00:36:09.080 | "I'm constantly feeling stressed during the evenings

00:36:11.480 | when I'm not at work because I feel like I'm wasting time.

00:36:14.480 | I wanna constantly be improving myself,

00:36:16.240 | but I also wanna take time to do fun things,

00:36:18.480 | video games, see friends, et cetera.

00:36:21.140 | What should I do?"

00:36:22.160 | - Right, so this could be an issue for people

00:36:25.040 | who care a lot about productivity writ large

00:36:28.680 | is evenings can be stressful.

00:36:30.120 | It can be stressful because if you're not doing

00:36:33.780 | anything structured, you feel just unnerved.

00:36:39.260 | You practice multiscale planning,

00:36:41.460 | your workday is time block planned,

00:36:43.300 | it's connected to a weekly plan and a seasonal plan,

00:36:45.640 | and it can feel unnerving to be just around.

00:36:48.440 | Feel unproductive, but then you're worried about like,

00:36:51.840 | well, what do I wanna do is if I treat my day

00:36:53.440 | like my workday, that's exhausting

00:36:54.640 | because it's also really hard to be very structured

00:36:56.480 | during the workday.

00:36:57.320 | And so you can be in a dilemma like JJ is in as well.

00:37:01.000 | So the two things I recommend in this situation is one,

00:37:05.080 | clear separation between work and non-work, okay?

00:37:07.480 | So clear shutdown routine.

00:37:09.560 | We just talked about this in the answer

00:37:12.160 | that I gave to Joel in the previous question.

00:37:16.040 | So you really can shut down work.

00:37:17.720 | That'll help your mind leave the work productivity mindset

00:37:21.160 | of we are constantly trying to keep track

00:37:23.760 | of what's going on and making sure nothing's being misplaced

00:37:26.080 | and we're making good use of your time.

00:37:27.160 | You wanna clear shutdown so your mindset can shift.

00:37:31.260 | But the second thing I would advise

00:37:33.000 | is that especially if you're an organized person,

00:37:36.880 | having no plan is overrated.

00:37:38.600 | We often tell ourselves that the solution

00:37:43.320 | to maybe the exhaustion we feel from work is nothingness.

00:37:48.320 | The goal is if I could just have nothing to do,

00:37:51.840 | then no plan, no intention.

00:37:55.400 | That will be the opposite of having too much to do

00:37:57.520 | and I'm gonna find relaxation and rejuvenation.

00:37:59.920 | Actually does not work that way for a lot of people,

00:38:01.960 | especially if you're organized, having nothing to do,

00:38:04.100 | having no plan is stressful.

00:38:06.320 | And you get that unnerving feeling that you talk about.

00:38:10.560 | So what's the right thing to do?

00:38:11.760 | Sketch a plan, but make sure that plan is varied

00:38:15.560 | and rejuvenating and interesting.

00:38:17.340 | The problem that people have,

00:38:19.960 | what stresses us out about work

00:38:21.660 | is not the fact that we have things to do.

00:38:23.480 | It's not the fact that we have a plan.

00:38:25.160 | It's just that we have too many things

00:38:26.720 | to switch back and forth behind us

00:38:28.600 | because the work is hard, the work is stressful.

00:38:30.280 | It's not the plan itself,

00:38:31.240 | it's what the plan is actually is in the plan.

00:38:33.280 | Work is hard.

00:38:34.140 | You sketch a plan after your shutdown,

00:38:37.320 | it shouldn't be a detailed time block plan.

00:38:39.040 | Be like, yeah, I wanna get a reading session in

00:38:40.720 | and work out and then why don't we watch this show

00:38:43.280 | with the kids that I've been reading about

00:38:45.000 | and think it's gonna be special.

00:38:45.880 | And I wanna make sure that I have a,

00:38:48.200 | go for a walk before we get ready for bed.

00:38:49.640 | You sort of sketch a plan of things that are meaningful

00:38:52.020 | and useful for the family and useful for yourself

00:38:54.740 | and varied and rejuvenating.

00:38:56.820 | And it's not a tight minute by minute plan.

00:38:58.580 | You're actually gonna feel much better about that.

00:39:01.060 | So again, the key to get away from the stress

00:39:03.780 | of a busy workday is not to significantly reduce what you do.

00:39:08.780 | It's not to significantly reduce the idea of having a plan.

00:39:12.060 | It's to make the things you do much better.

00:39:14.900 | To make the things that you've planned to do fun

00:39:17.060 | or interesting or useful to the world

00:39:19.600 | beyond the world of work and completely unconnected.

00:39:21.560 | So shut down work, shift to non-work mode,

00:39:24.920 | but then say, I wanna hit the pillow proud tonight.

00:39:27.360 | Like what do I wanna do with my time

00:39:28.560 | that makes this an evening that I'm proud of?

00:39:30.880 | And it has nothing to do with productivity.

00:39:32.640 | It's not how do I achieve this or get ahead of this?

00:39:34.840 | It's like, how do I like get time

00:39:37.160 | to read this book I really like?

00:39:38.960 | How do I get some one-on-one time

00:39:40.200 | with like my oldest son who I haven't seen recently?

00:39:42.720 | You wanna make intentional use of your time,

00:39:46.560 | which is separate from some notion of optimizing time

00:39:50.220 | or maximizing output.

00:39:52.340 | So doing little can be stressful.

00:39:54.040 | I mean, there's so many books, Jesse.

00:39:55.600 | There's a while where do nothing, how to do nothing,

00:39:57.920 | the art of doing nothing.

00:39:59.440 | There's this whole notion of what we need to do is nothing.

00:40:02.340 | Doing nothing stresses a lot of people out.

00:40:04.920 | Like humans don't like to do nothing.

00:40:07.580 | - Yeah, because people are like

00:40:08.500 | really afraid of being bored.

00:40:10.380 | - Yeah, and boredom is actually a useful human emotion.

00:40:13.800 | Like why do we feel such a strong, distasteful,

00:40:17.240 | emotional reaction that doing nothing

00:40:19.520 | is because we're evolved to actually wanna be doing things.

00:40:22.320 | That's what drives humans to unlike a cat

00:40:25.520 | who's completely happy.

00:40:27.120 | If I can lay in the sun for seven hours and I'm a cat,

00:40:30.280 | it's a good day, right?

00:40:31.820 | Cats don't get bored.

00:40:33.320 | Humans do, but that is the drive.

00:40:35.120 | There's like, okay, well, what else are we gonna do?

00:40:36.360 | Well, I don't know, let's invent fire

00:40:38.480 | or organize a political system or invent religion.

00:40:41.840 | Like the boredom is part of what drove humans

00:40:44.520 | to take advantage of this larger brain that we grew.

00:40:47.120 | So, boredom is important indicator.

00:40:50.520 | The key is, I mean, again,

00:40:51.360 | people are not stressed out by doing things.

00:40:53.120 | They're stressed out by what they're doing.

00:40:55.360 | The reasonableness of what they're doing,

00:40:56.720 | whether they have enough time to do it,

00:40:58.240 | the actual demands of the work they're doing.

00:41:01.820 | That's what's stressful, not the doing itself.

00:41:04.480 | I mean, you can stop your work and be reading

00:41:07.800 | and woodworking and movies, watching sports,

00:41:11.880 | all sorts of things you can do, which are things,

00:41:13.540 | but they're very different than work.

00:41:15.400 | It's really the content of activity,

00:41:17.720 | not so much the planning around activity.

00:41:21.400 | Planning itself is not too stressful.

00:41:23.320 | - Yeah, actually Lex had Yuval Harari on

00:41:26.760 | like a couple weeks ago and I listened to that.

00:41:28.880 | They were talking about like civilization and boredom.

00:41:32.200 | - Oh, interesting.

00:41:33.160 | Yeah, Yuval's real big on the conceptual,

00:41:37.280 | the cognitive conceptual developments

00:41:38.880 | in human evolution that just unlocked everything.

00:41:41.560 | Yeah, I'll listen to that one.

00:41:43.000 | - Yeah, it was just before the Isaacson one, I think.

00:41:45.700 | - I saw someone the other day attribute Sapiens to me.

00:41:51.160 | - That's pretty good.

00:41:52.000 | - They said Cal Newport's book, Sapiens.

00:41:52.840 | - I sold like millions and millions of copies.

00:41:54.880 | - Yeah, I was like, I like that, I suppose.

00:41:57.280 | I mean, it's probably bad news for Yuval Harari,

00:41:59.280 | but I guess good news for me.

00:42:00.720 | I was like, I'll take it.

00:42:02.720 | I'll take it.

00:42:04.260 | Oh man, all right, let's keep rolling.

00:42:05.740 | What do we have next?

00:42:06.840 | All right, next question's from ETN.

00:42:09.680 | Cal, I'm a Benedictine monk in Missouri.

00:42:13.200 | I have a disagreement with a part of your deep life stack.

00:42:16.280 | Discipline is not an identity per se,

00:42:18.080 | but rather a tool for developing

00:42:19.880 | and solidifying an identity.

00:42:22.320 | You use value as a criteria for leading a meaningful

00:42:24.960 | and purposeful life shaped through code, ritual, and routine.

00:42:28.240 | You readily assert that you need discipline

00:42:30.040 | for a value to take hold, but discipline needs a reason.

00:42:33.260 | - Yeah, it's a good question.

00:42:36.160 | I get this debate a lot.

00:42:37.840 | I think it's one of the more unique

00:42:39.200 | and controversial aspects of my conception

00:42:41.920 | of cultivating a deep life,

00:42:44.600 | where I say discipline comes first.

00:42:46.360 | Now, ETN here disagrees.

00:42:49.640 | Part of this is semantic.

00:42:51.840 | I think discipline is an overloaded word.

00:42:55.400 | We have a lot of connotations with it, often negative.

00:42:59.780 | We think about discipline sometimes

00:43:01.440 | as something being enforced upon us.

00:43:04.400 | The cruel headmaster disciplining the kids.

00:43:07.800 | We also have connotations with discipline

00:43:09.760 | with those who are idolizing,

00:43:13.040 | making a false god out of discipline itself.

00:43:16.060 | All that matters is the discipline of what I do

00:43:21.800 | and the harder things I do,

00:43:23.480 | and other people won't do these things as hard,

00:43:25.600 | and all of my self-worth just comes

00:43:27.280 | entirely from my discipline.

00:43:30.000 | This is the sort of David Goggins-style philosophy

00:43:35.000 | of sort of building your identity

00:43:37.960 | around extreme feats of discipline.

00:43:40.040 | This was an idea that was really big

00:43:41.760 | and supported by Instagram culture

00:43:43.760 | sort of over the last decade.

00:43:45.620 | So it's an overloaded term.

00:43:47.160 | So let's use a different term

00:43:48.560 | just for this conversation, efficaciousness.

00:43:51.280 | So efficaciousness describes the degree

00:43:54.860 | to which you believe yourself able

00:43:56.520 | to actually take action towards goals.

00:44:00.320 | If you're an efficacious person,

00:44:01.720 | you say, "Yes, in general, I am someone

00:44:04.320 | "who if I have something I want to do

00:44:05.700 | "and it's reasonable, I can do it.

00:44:07.080 | "I can figure out how to do it."

00:44:09.760 | My argument, having spent a lot of time with people

00:44:12.800 | who are trying to turn around their lives,

00:44:14.520 | is that that is missing a lot of times,

00:44:18.240 | and if that is missing, nothing else works.

00:44:20.800 | Even trying to determine what your values are

00:44:24.480 | and believing that you can build your life

00:44:27.120 | around those values,

00:44:28.080 | even that seemingly fundamental decision

00:44:30.800 | lays on a foundation of efficaciousness.

00:44:34.220 | If you do not see yourself as someone

00:44:36.280 | who can take action towards important things,

00:44:38.160 | even if it's not obligated and even if it's hard,

00:44:40.560 | if you do not see yourself as a person who can do that,

00:44:43.320 | almost any other self-developmental activity

00:44:45.800 | is going to be derailed.

00:44:47.740 | It's gonna dissipate before it actually takes hold.

00:44:50.280 | Now, there's other people, and probably,

00:44:53.280 | Tan, I mean, you're a Benedictine monk,

00:44:55.160 | so you're probably an exemplar of this other type of person

00:44:58.240 | where they just have this strong sense of efficaciousness,

00:45:01.360 | and so what matters right off the bat then is like,

00:45:03.760 | okay, let me figure out my values

00:45:05.280 | and build my life around it,

00:45:06.440 | but most people, the average person,

00:45:08.800 | stumbles before they get there.

00:45:10.640 | So when I say discipline is an identity,

00:45:12.560 | what I don't mean is, what matters is that you

00:45:16.280 | build your identity around discipline,

00:45:18.680 | that you become David Goggins or Cameron Haynes,

00:45:22.600 | that how you define yourself and your value

00:45:24.680 | is through your discipline,

00:45:25.640 | and I agree with you fully there, Atin,

00:45:27.840 | that that's false idol.

00:45:30.600 | That's not gonna get you there.

00:45:32.360 | But on the other hand, I think until you have

00:45:34.680 | built a minor foundation of efficaciousness,

00:45:37.600 | your efforts are likely gonna be wasted.

00:45:39.400 | The average person's efforts are likely gonna be wasted.

00:45:41.560 | So that's why I put discipline first.

00:45:43.120 | You have to just start by convincing yourself,

00:45:45.600 | I can do things, and there's an excitement

00:45:47.880 | and a motivation and a clarity and a drive

00:45:50.040 | that comes out of that that when you then say,

00:45:51.640 | okay, so what do I care about?

00:45:53.320 | You actually care about that question,

00:45:56.520 | and you take it more seriously,

00:45:58.840 | and the answers actually stick.

00:46:00.360 | I'm so kinda convinced about this foundational idea

00:46:03.400 | that I've been recently playing around

00:46:04.880 | with my deep life stack,

00:46:06.680 | and one of the configurations I've been playing around

00:46:08.640 | with more recently actually has a much clearer division

00:46:12.240 | between laying the foundations and then cultivating depth.

00:46:17.440 | Now, and I'm not, this is very early stages.

00:46:19.360 | I'm just throwing out ideas here,

00:46:20.480 | but one of the reconfigurations I've been playing with

00:46:22.720 | in my notebooks recently is one where

00:46:24.760 | it's not just discipline comes first,

00:46:26.640 | but maybe we're gonna do discipline, control,

00:46:30.680 | and maybe even throw in something like craft.

00:46:32.720 | So first of all, how do I convince myself I'm efficacious?

00:46:35.760 | Second of all, how do I just take control

00:46:37.280 | of all the stuff in my life,

00:46:38.480 | learn how to have control over what's on my plate

00:46:40.400 | and how it's gonna get done

00:46:41.720 | and how to take things off of my plate,

00:46:43.720 | and maybe throw in their craft.

00:46:45.160 | Okay, now let me take this out for a spin

00:46:47.640 | and show myself that I can actually get good at something.

00:46:50.440 | When I set my mind to it and almost seeing that

00:46:53.040 | in this new configuration I'm playing with,

00:46:54.960 | that's the foundation.

00:46:56.040 | Now with that foundation set, let's get serious about depth

00:47:00.960 | and that's step two.

00:47:01.800 | Now it's, okay, what do I really value?

00:47:04.320 | Now I'm ready to tackle that question seriously.

00:47:06.960 | Sacrifice, how am I sacrificing my time and attention

00:47:09.400 | on behalf of other people, community around me,

00:47:12.080 | people I care about, let's get serious about that.

00:47:13.800 | There's no meaning without that.

00:47:15.760 | And then finally escape or remarkability.

00:47:18.000 | Then now how do I leave my legacy?

00:47:21.200 | How do I create the remarkable aspects of my life

00:47:23.800 | built around these values?

00:47:25.080 | I mean, I'm almost seeing now

00:47:26.280 | is like a very clear separation

00:47:28.000 | where there's this long process of just becoming,

00:47:30.000 | to borrow a term from Jocko,

00:47:32.320 | an exceptionally capable human being.

00:47:34.280 | And then once you do that, you say,

00:47:36.280 | now I can become an exceptionally deep human being.

00:47:38.360 | And I think when we sometimes swap these things around,

00:47:41.040 | it's not successful for people.

00:47:42.480 | Some people it is, but I think a lot of people

00:47:44.120 | starting with the depth before they have the capability,

00:47:47.720 | leads to a lot of self-incrimination and dissipation.

00:47:50.240 | It might lead people to believe,

00:47:51.360 | I'm just not able to do this.

00:47:53.080 | I'm just fundamentally a broken person.

00:47:55.240 | I'm trying to like build my life around values.

00:47:57.640 | I can't identify them.

00:47:58.600 | I don't trust the values I pick.

00:48:00.320 | It can almost be harmful if you jump right

00:48:02.320 | to the cultivating depth before you've done

00:48:04.160 | the boring hard work of becoming a capable human being

00:48:06.960 | in the first place.

00:48:07.800 | So I don't know, I'm still playing

00:48:08.640 | with these thoughts at teens.

00:48:09.560 | So I'd like the excuse to just discuss

00:48:12.800 | and get some more feedback.

00:48:13.800 | And I love this type of feedback,

00:48:15.440 | but that's a little bit of an insight

00:48:16.520 | into how I've been thinking about this recently.

00:48:18.840 | All right, let's do one more question

00:48:22.000 | before we do our live call-in case study,

00:48:23.880 | which I'm excited about.

00:48:25.200 | - Sounds good.

00:48:26.040 | Next question is from Yalan.

00:48:28.000 | Hi Cal, until three years ago,

00:48:29.920 | I used to be a deep life person.

00:48:31.720 | I had a schedule for each day.

00:48:33.120 | I studied a lot, slept well.

00:48:35.160 | My phone was on airplane or silent mode

00:48:36.880 | for most of the day, the usual stuff.

00:48:39.080 | But since then I've been losing my charm.

00:48:41.680 | I'm having a really hard time making time

00:48:43.440 | for studying or even reading.

00:48:44.880 | I almost never plan anything ahead anymore.

00:48:46.960 | And I've been seriously addicted to video games.

00:48:49.320 | I'm an English teacher and I have my obligations,

00:48:52.000 | but I never do anything beyond the obligatory area.

00:48:55.560 | What's more, being a teacher in Israel

00:48:57.360 | makes you become hooked on your phone

00:48:58.840 | because there are so many notifications,

00:49:00.400 | updates regarding what's going on with the school.

00:49:02.760 | You have to be aware of what's going on.

00:49:04.840 | I wanna get back on track and it feels extremely hard

00:49:07.520 | and sometimes even impossible.

00:49:09.680 | - You know, Jesse, what's interesting about that

00:49:12.360 | is a couple of nights ago,

00:49:13.480 | I was giving a talk up at my kid's school

00:49:15.560 | about smartphones and kids and social media and kids.

00:49:19.520 | And I was talking to a family afterwards

00:49:21.520 | who just moved here from Israel.

00:49:23.600 | And they actually had the same point.

00:49:24.920 | They said, you know, in Israel,

00:49:27.480 | the phone culture is like inescapable.

00:49:30.720 | And they said here, they actually felt like,

00:49:33.840 | so their kid, their middle schooler

00:49:35.200 | had a phone and everything.

00:49:36.040 | He said in Israel, like everything is built around

00:49:37.800 | like WhatsApp notifications and how the schools operate.

00:49:40.360 | And everything is built around the phone

00:49:42.080 | for all these various different reasons.

00:49:43.840 | And here it feels like it's possible not to do that.

00:49:45.960 | And so they were wondering, can we pull it back?

00:49:48.040 | We had that, you know, so it's interesting,

00:49:49.520 | something about Israel.

00:49:50.840 | - Did you read that New Yorker article like last month

00:49:53.360 | about the Chinese school and like all the WhatsApp

00:49:55.680 | and how there's a thousand messages a day for the parents?

00:49:58.440 | - Yeah, I was like completely overwhelmed.

00:50:00.080 | - It's like the same thing.

00:50:00.920 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:50:02.680 | So I think cultural differences

00:50:04.040 | and tech patterns is an interesting one.

00:50:05.800 | But to get back to the bigger issue here,

00:50:07.400 | I think this goes right back to the question

00:50:10.080 | with the Benedictine monk that we just answered.

00:50:12.640 | So what we see here is kind of the opposite.

00:50:16.240 | So the Benedictine monk, this is basically,

00:50:18.640 | what I mean here is this is sort of,

00:50:21.120 | what's the right way to put this?

00:50:22.240 | Yalan, I believe has done the become a capable person piece

00:50:27.240 | of the deep life stack.

00:50:29.920 | As he talks about, he previously had it all dialed in.

00:50:34.200 | He's organized, he has control over his time

00:50:37.840 | and activities and schedules,

00:50:39.160 | and is careful about how he uses his tools.

00:50:41.320 | But then he stopped before getting to the stuff

00:50:44.360 | that Yitan, the Benedictine monk said is important.

00:50:47.920 | The figuring out your values, your vision for your legacy

00:50:50.280 | and purpose on earth, building your life around that.

00:50:53.280 | So this is a really interesting point

00:50:54.840 | because what it shows is if you just do the first part

00:50:57.520 | in my plan, which is like, you gotta be capable

00:51:00.080 | before you can really figure out how to be deep.

00:51:01.920 | If you just do the capable part,

00:51:04.400 | you don't know that it's gonna stick.

00:51:06.880 | So what happened here, you did the capable part

00:51:08.480 | and your mind was basically like, the what purpose?

00:51:11.560 | And so you began escaping back in the video games

00:51:13.920 | and found sort of the capability stuff

00:51:15.560 | starting to dissipate again.

00:51:18.560 | So Yalan, what you need to do is keep moving up

00:51:22.120 | the deep life stack.

00:51:24.320 | So once you regain, you know how to do this,

00:51:26.760 | so just get back to like, okay,

00:51:27.840 | intentional multi-scale planning,

00:51:29.440 | careful about my tools, great.

00:51:31.000 | Now you gotta keep moving up the stack.

00:51:32.600 | Now you gotta get really engaged on your values.

00:51:35.720 | What's my code?

00:51:36.800 | What are the rituals I use to remind myself

00:51:39.280 | of the value of this code on a regular basis?

00:51:42.840 | What is this vision on which I'm gonna build my lifestyle,

00:51:46.720 | my purpose on earth?

00:51:48.440 | Maybe then throw in some sacrifice.

00:51:50.640 | If you're not sacrificing non-trivial time and attention

00:51:54.080 | on behalf of other people,

00:51:55.160 | you're not gonna feel fully alive as a human.

00:51:58.040 | So you're a teacher, so there's many ways

00:51:59.720 | for you to reintegrate this into your life.

00:52:01.840 | And then finally, you have this sort of escape

00:52:03.680 | or markability legacy piece

00:52:05.040 | where you have some ambitious plans

00:52:06.960 | that you put into your life that are meant

00:52:11.560 | to actually take these things you care about

00:52:14.080 | and push them to new extremes.

00:52:15.400 | And now you're working towards something,

00:52:17.120 | your capability, your ability to be organized

00:52:19.800 | on top of things is being deployed

00:52:21.320 | towards something that's important to you.

00:52:23.040 | I think that's what's missing.

00:52:24.520 | So in the last question, I said,

00:52:26.800 | if you just do the second part,

00:52:28.560 | but not the first part, that's a problem

00:52:30.480 | because it's very hard to actually seek depth

00:52:32.400 | and sacrifice and have these legacy building projects

00:52:35.000 | if you're not a capable human.

00:52:36.520 | But we're seeing here is if you just do the first part,

00:52:38.840 | that's not enough either.

00:52:40.640 | You're being productive for the sake of being productive

00:52:42.680 | is eventually gonna probably be something

00:52:44.320 | that is not fulfilling.

00:52:45.800 | So we gotta see both sides of the stack.

00:52:49.880 | Neither of them can act in isolation.

00:52:51.400 | You need both of them.

00:52:53.160 | So Yolan, I'm glad you gave me a chance to talk about that.

00:52:56.040 | All right, so what I wanna do next

00:52:58.640 | is something kind of new.

00:53:00.640 | So we often do case studies on the show

00:53:02.200 | where people send in a written description

00:53:05.040 | of them applying the ideas we talk about

00:53:06.920 | so we can see them in action.

00:53:08.600 | A friend of mine, a magazine editor friend of mine,

00:53:11.880 | however, was telling me about his story

00:53:14.760 | of how he integrated book writing into a busy life,

00:53:18.480 | both professional and personal,

00:53:20.120 | which had a lot of different stuff going on.

00:53:21.920 | And I said, wait a second, let's get you on the air.

00:53:25.200 | Because I think it's a great case study

00:53:26.720 | about integrating ambitious deep projects

00:53:29.760 | into an already busy life.

00:53:31.040 | And it does some myth busting on things

00:53:33.040 | that people worry about and people get wrong.

00:53:36.040 | So my friend, Stuart Reid,

00:53:37.480 | agreed to call in and do a live case study.

00:53:41.400 | So let's do that now.

00:53:43.200 | Let's get Stuart on the line.

00:53:46.520 | All right, Stuart, thank you for jumping on the line

00:53:50.200 | with us today.

00:53:51.800 | Hopefully you're doing well.

00:53:52.800 | It looks like you're in a fancy looking studio there

00:53:55.160 | for those who are watching this instead of just listening.

00:53:57.360 | Why don't you tell us where you are calling in

00:53:59.160 | from right now?

00:54:00.000 | - I am on the Upper East Side of New York

00:54:02.560 | in the Council on Foreign Relations,

00:54:04.000 | which is the think tank that the magazine I work for,

00:54:06.880 | Foreign Affairs, is part of.

00:54:08.080 | And I'm deep in the basement,

00:54:10.280 | although there's a projection behind me

00:54:11.920 | to make it seem like I'm on the rooftop.

00:54:14.480 | - So Stuart is classing up the show here.

00:54:18.200 | We're gonna be talking about foreign affairs

00:54:20.080 | and complicated diplomatic wranglings.

00:54:23.040 | So Stuart, the reason why I wanted you to come on

00:54:25.400 | is you have this new book out,

00:54:27.760 | "The Lumumba Plot,

00:54:29.680 | "A Secret History of the CIA in a Cold War Assassination,"

00:54:32.400 | the type of gripping narrative nonfiction book

00:54:35.120 | you might expect the executive editor

00:54:36.840 | of Foreign Affairs to write.

00:54:39.680 | But the reason why I wanted to get you on the line

00:54:42.240 | was not so much the details of the book,

00:54:45.240 | but how you wrote it.

00:54:46.800 | Because you were telling me offline

00:54:48.760 | about the experience you had

00:54:50.280 | figuring out how to make this project work

00:54:52.840 | in an otherwise busy life.

00:54:54.120 | And I thought, "Aha,

00:54:55.880 | "there is an interesting case study lurking here

00:54:58.800 | "about taking on ambitious projects,

00:55:01.480 | "finding time to do the work,

00:55:03.200 | "and some of the paradoxes of what leads to efficiency."

00:55:07.760 | So I wanna just go through a quick timeline here.

00:55:10.600 | This book is coming out in mid-October,

00:55:12.320 | so imminently when this case study is airing.

00:55:15.360 | But take us back to the beginning just to set the stage.

00:55:18.400 | When did the idea of this book emerge

00:55:20.600 | and what was going on in your life at the time?

00:55:23.240 | - Sure, so thanks for having me.

00:55:25.520 | It's so exciting to be here.

00:55:27.600 | The idea was percolating in 2017, 2018.

00:55:32.200 | I focused on Africa, Foreign Affairs,

00:55:34.560 | and thought there was this cool Cold War story

00:55:37.680 | that was front page news in the New York Times at the time,

00:55:40.760 | but was later forgotten.

00:55:42.600 | And so, as you probably know,

00:55:45.040 | the best day in any non-fiction writer's

00:55:47.280 | journey to publication is the day you get the book deal.

00:55:52.480 | And then you realize, "Oh shoot,

00:55:53.880 | "I have to actually figure out how to,

00:55:55.600 | "I'm legally on the hook to turn in

00:55:58.360 | "a certain number of words by a certain date."

00:56:00.840 | And so I had turned in my proposal to my agent

00:56:05.840 | and then I actually got hit by a car

00:56:08.000 | while biking in Brooklyn,

00:56:10.600 | which would turn out not to be the craziest thing

00:56:14.160 | that happened to me during the whole

00:56:15.760 | book writing experience.

00:56:16.840 | And so that was in January-- - If I could just,

00:56:18.600 | just to interject right there,

00:56:20.080 | I think it would have been to your advantage

00:56:22.400 | to somehow spin that as the forces you talk about

00:56:26.160 | in the book trying to silence you.

00:56:27.360 | You see what I'm doing here?

00:56:28.200 | You could make your own life into a thriller story.

00:56:30.800 | I mean, it's a coincidence, Stuart.

00:56:31.960 | All I'm saying is the day you turn in a book

00:56:33.840 | about the secret history of the CIA,

00:56:35.680 | you mysteriously get hit by a car.

00:56:38.040 | Anyways, go on.

00:56:38.880 | So when was this?

00:56:39.720 | - That was a missed marketing opportunity.

00:56:41.720 | Yeah, I remember sort of sitting in editors' offices

00:56:44.640 | and my tailbone really hurting and trying not to grimace.

00:56:47.680 | That was in January 2019.

00:56:50.940 | I then got married in September of that year

00:56:54.020 | and then went on book leave from Foreign Affairs

00:56:57.660 | for 10 months, the idea being,

00:56:58.940 | oh, you know, an 130,000, 140,000 word book,

00:57:02.820 | you know, I should be able to basically crank that out

00:57:05.020 | in 10 months.

00:57:05.860 | My wife and I moved to Paris

00:57:08.800 | because that seemed like a fun thing to do.

00:57:12.180 | I got a decent amount of research done,

00:57:13.860 | but by the end of that 10 months,

00:57:15.900 | did not have a book at all.

00:57:18.100 | - Right, okay.

00:57:18.940 | So then we have this initial period.

00:57:21.060 | So I'm basically just narrating your life, Stuart.

00:57:22.620 | I hope you don't mind, but this is what I do.

00:57:25.020 | So we have this initial period where you got book leave

00:57:27.480 | and you moved to Paris.

00:57:29.020 | This, I'm just gonna say, is the stand-in

00:57:30.980 | for what people imagine is needed

00:57:34.100 | to successfully tackle a very large

00:57:36.300 | intellectually demanding project.

00:57:37.840 | I need to be able to go somewhere

00:57:41.100 | intellectually stimulating and spend a lot of time

00:57:44.420 | doing nothing but working on this project.

00:57:46.580 | So the first phase of this project

00:57:48.380 | was you doing what people think is needed

00:57:51.780 | to accomplish something of this size,

00:57:53.580 | which is just go away and do nothing but work on the book.

00:57:55.460 | But as you just said, that wasn't enough time.

00:57:58.300 | That didn't work out.

00:57:59.340 | You got research done, but only wrote maybe a third or so

00:58:02.300 | of the book by the time that window was open.

00:58:04.120 | So now suddenly you're in this situation.

00:58:06.680 | We have a lot more book left to write.

00:58:08.700 | The book leave is gone.

00:58:10.420 | All right, so bring the narrative.

00:58:11.460 | I'll bring the narrative back to you

00:58:12.460 | because I think things are about to get even more busier

00:58:14.940 | than they were before.

00:58:16.560 | So now what happens?

00:58:17.420 | You have a lot of book left to write.

00:58:18.940 | The magical book leave in Paris

00:58:20.260 | didn't solve your whole problem.

00:58:22.140 | Now what happens in your life

00:58:23.460 | is you're facing the rest of this manuscript process.

00:58:25.860 | - Sure, and to somewhat complicate the point

00:58:28.780 | you're trying to make, I think it was useful

00:58:30.440 | to be able to think about nothing other than the book.

00:58:33.100 | That was certainly luxury, but you're right.

00:58:35.620 | Then in terms of words cranked out,

00:58:38.260 | it didn't quite cut it.

00:58:39.780 | So then suddenly my day job comes back.

00:58:43.900 | You know, you need healthcare and a salary,

00:58:46.640 | and I'm having to compress the writing process into the day.

00:58:51.640 | So I mean, the key thing that really helped

00:58:56.560 | was taking a page from your work is to time block plan

00:59:00.460 | and specifically to in the mornings,

00:59:03.080 | just protect one, ideally two hours,

00:59:06.800 | first thing in the morning where I'm just writing.

00:59:09.860 | I haven't even opened my email inbox

00:59:11.760 | because the minute I open that,

00:59:13.040 | I see an email, oh, an author's mad or whatever.

00:59:15.020 | Suddenly that's in my brain and I can't concentrate

00:59:17.220 | on the actual task of writing.

00:59:19.480 | - How many mornings a week on average

00:59:21.800 | are we talking at this point?

00:59:23.360 | - Every weekday was the goal.

00:59:25.040 | And you know, you've talked about Jerry Seinfeld's

00:59:28.880 | idea of having an X and a chain of Xs

00:59:33.080 | of every day he's worked, and I really followed that.

00:59:35.520 | And what I think that allowed me to do

00:59:37.420 | is even if I only wrote 50 words

00:59:40.960 | and I was tracking how many words I wrote,

00:59:42.520 | it would still feel like I had to advance the ball

00:59:44.800 | a little bit and contributed to the big project.

00:59:48.460 | Hopefully I'd write 700 words,

00:59:51.880 | but some days I would only get literally 20.

00:59:54.720 | But if I'd written one sentence,

00:59:56.200 | it was like, well, at least I didn't do nothing.

00:59:58.800 | - And how hard was it to protect that time?

01:00:01.920 | You're an executive editor, which means there's a big,

01:00:04.640 | there's a big amount of responsiveness to your job.

01:00:06.280 | There's also probably a lot of meetings in your job.

01:00:08.480 | So just walk us through what was required

01:00:10.920 | to protect that morning.

01:00:12.220 | Was it as simple as just,

01:00:14.080 | I don't schedule meetings first thing,

01:00:15.520 | no one really noticed, or was it more of a battle?

01:00:17.360 | What's the reality of protecting five mornings a week

01:00:19.840 | for one to two hours?

01:00:20.940 | - I would just get up earlier, frankly,

01:00:24.120 | and no email that someone sends you

01:00:27.080 | at from 9 p.m. the night before

01:00:29.920 | needs to be answered at seven rather than 9 a.m.

01:00:33.040 | So just literally putting it on my calendar

01:00:37.400 | so no one could schedule a meeting,

01:00:38.720 | not that people were trying to schedule

01:00:40.080 | 7 a.m. meetings with me anyway,

01:00:42.180 | but protecting it that way.

01:00:44.260 | And then, you know, almost like culturally within the house,

01:00:48.800 | just protecting it of like, okay, I'm going to this room,

01:00:51.420 | everyone knows not to bother me.

01:00:53.640 | And then having that time just allowed me

01:00:57.300 | to be purely focused and I had my coffee

01:01:00.820 | and a little ritual, a nice desk, that sort of thing.

01:01:04.100 | And that proved crucial for just really accreting

01:01:07.680 | the number of words I needed to.

01:01:09.620 | - Right, okay, so you're getting up a little earlier,

01:01:12.020 | probably starting your foreign affairs workday

01:01:14.540 | a little bit later than you would have before,

01:01:16.300 | no one noticed.

01:01:17.140 | Because again, no one really keeps track

01:01:19.180 | of exactly when Stuart is answering

01:01:22.580 | his first email of the day.

01:01:24.220 | No one has a chart out of like,

01:01:25.940 | well, what's every meeting time

01:01:27.760 | I've ever suggested to Stuart?

01:01:29.240 | And I can see, wait a second, there's a pattern here.

01:01:31.420 | He never accepts the eight to 8.30s.

01:01:33.500 | I wonder if he's working on something else.

01:01:34.980 | So it basically, you just kept the chain going.

01:01:38.500 | No one really noticed.

01:01:39.820 | Okay, now for a lot of people though,

01:01:41.100 | they're gonna say an hour to two hours max.

01:01:44.420 | That doesn't seem like enough time

01:01:45.660 | to write 150,000 word book or what have you.

01:01:50.660 | But what was your experience in terms of the rate

01:01:52.940 | at which progress accrued during this period?

01:01:56.940 | - Yeah, I mean, slow and steady really works.

01:01:59.020 | There's that John McPhee quote I know you've cited before,

01:02:02.100 | where you add a bunch of drops to a bucket

01:02:05.100 | and all of a sudden the pail's full.

01:02:08.640 | So I'd usually write anywhere from 300 to 700 words a day.

01:02:13.640 | And it really does add up.

01:02:17.880 | I'd supplement this with weekend writing marathon sessions

01:02:21.560 | or I took a vacation where all I did

01:02:24.000 | was work on the book for a week.

01:02:26.120 | But it was, most of the book got written

01:02:29.840 | in those early morning sessions.

01:02:32.680 | So it worked.

01:02:34.000 | - How long would it take you in an early morning session

01:02:36.360 | just to swap in to context?

01:02:40.320 | So is it the first five minutes, the first 20 minutes,

01:02:42.580 | how long did it take you to be up and running

01:02:45.520 | and ready to start writing new words?

01:02:48.400 | - Not that long.

01:02:49.240 | And one trick, I can't remember where I got it,

01:02:51.440 | but is when you're writing to leave

01:02:56.440 | something sort of half finished the day before

01:02:59.960 | so that you have momentum going in.

01:03:01.600 | So that could mean you're writing along

01:03:06.120 | and then you have some notes saying,

01:03:09.200 | add paragraph on blah, blah, blah

01:03:11.120 | and write two sentences where Lumumba

01:03:14.280 | goes to blah, blah, blah meeting or whatever.

01:03:16.240 | And then the next morning,

01:03:17.240 | it's so much easier to start when you're like,

01:03:18.640 | okay, I actually don't have to be fully cognitively present.

01:03:21.680 | I'm just sort of filling in the details

01:03:23.680 | of what I worked on yesterday.

01:03:26.520 | I mean, and another sort of related trick to that

01:03:28.840 | is journalists are familiar with the abbreviation TK,

01:03:33.600 | which stands for to come.

01:03:35.560 | And if you just use a lot of TKs,

01:03:40.040 | you can really get momentum going.

01:03:42.960 | And so, TK quote, and then you write what you know,

01:03:47.200 | and then there were TK number of soldiers in the room,

01:03:49.600 | that sort of thing.

01:03:50.680 | It really allows you to just keep moving forward

01:03:52.600 | and then you can fill in the details later.

01:03:54.960 | - Now, at some point during this post-book leave process,

01:03:58.620 | things got more complicated 'cause you had a child.

01:04:00.840 | So how long into this writing post-book leave writing

01:04:05.080 | was it that you have a child?

01:04:06.120 | And then how did that change up what you were doing?

01:04:07.840 | - It was about a year.

01:04:09.440 | So my daughter was born in September, 2021.

01:04:12.200 | And it was a really crazy,

01:04:15.200 | my wife and I just a very unusual experience

01:04:17.600 | in that our daughter shortly after she was born

01:04:20.320 | started having seizures, had to go to the hospital.

01:04:22.720 | It turns out she has this extremely rare genetic disorder

01:04:27.200 | called STXBP1, which is a neurodevelopmental disorder.

01:04:32.600 | And so that was, when you track the word count,

01:04:36.240 | suddenly there is an abrupt cessation in September, 2021.

01:04:41.240 | And it turned our lives upside down.

01:04:45.560 | I didn't think I'd be able to finish the book,

01:04:49.080 | what would be the point?

01:04:50.480 | And it was a really tough period for us as a family

01:04:55.480 | and this was our first child.

01:04:57.400 | And we were suddenly grappling with

01:05:00.880 | just a very different future than we had imagined.

01:05:04.160 | And so it was, yeah, I mean,

01:05:06.640 | it was the hardest thing I've ever experienced

01:05:09.160 | and hopefully ever will.

01:05:10.640 | - So then what happens after that?

01:05:16.480 | So you get through September is incredibly hard.

01:05:18.280 | Everything comes to a stop.

01:05:20.160 | How does things get going again?

01:05:22.380 | - Yeah, I mean, I think we sort of had to personally,

01:05:29.600 | fully accepting this would be too,

01:05:31.640 | that was a longer process, but just,

01:05:33.680 | you're literally in shock at the beginning

01:05:36.880 | and can barely function.

01:05:39.240 | And so writing a long-term book project

01:05:41.960 | is the furthest thing from one's mind.

01:05:44.380 | But through, I mean, partly just coming to know

01:05:49.800 | our lovely smiling daughter,

01:05:52.280 | and she became more than a diagnosis.

01:05:56.000 | She became this person with all sorts of cute things.

01:06:00.960 | So there was that process of acceptance.

01:06:04.200 | And then also there was just a sort of sheer willpower

01:06:08.040 | and that I'm very much someone who believes

01:06:09.540 | that you just have to constantly be moving forward.

01:06:12.000 | And so that means going to the friend's birthday party,

01:06:15.780 | even though you really don't feel like it,

01:06:17.880 | going to exercise,

01:06:21.440 | even if you really just wanna lie in bed all day.

01:06:24.300 | And just through sort of sheer force,

01:06:27.120 | I think we were able to get out of our funk.

01:06:30.360 | And then on the writing side,

01:06:31.840 | that included just returning to the,

01:06:34.160 | okay, I'm gonna do an hour of writing today.

01:06:38.740 | I mean, I just, I remember also,

01:06:41.920 | I had an interview scheduled with someone

01:06:43.600 | and it was like, had been scheduled,

01:06:45.640 | ended up being the day after I got the diagnosis

01:06:49.760 | and I considered canceling,

01:06:51.180 | but I just sort of made myself show up to that.

01:06:53.040 | And I'm sure I was not at my peak performance,

01:06:56.480 | but sort of just forcing yourself to move forward,

01:07:00.800 | faking it till you make it.

01:07:02.800 | I don't know if that's top shelf psychiatric advice,

01:07:06.520 | but it worked for me.

01:07:07.880 | - Well, and there's another, I think, observation

01:07:10.600 | that's important for my listeners,

01:07:12.560 | which is when you're in the moment of working on something

01:07:16.640 | and working on something hard,

01:07:17.920 | it's easy to focus on the short term

01:07:20.200 | and the short term is critical.

01:07:21.460 | And I, you know, no delays are possible,

01:07:25.880 | but from a slow productivity mindset, when you zoom out,

01:07:29.200 | life has all of these different twists and turns

01:07:32.160 | and it throws curve balls.

01:07:33.380 | And there's hard times and good times

01:07:35.160 | and unexpected things that happen

01:07:36.840 | and houses that flood and people that get sick,

01:07:39.200 | which means, hey, I stopped working for a month

01:07:42.640 | or I put this aside for now.

01:07:44.040 | And in the moment, it might seem

01:07:45.720 | this is a disastrous for this project,

01:07:48.760 | but when you zoom back out,

01:07:49.960 | so we zoom back out now, it's 2023,

01:07:52.640 | you've written this great book, the book is out there.

01:07:55.580 | The fact that there's periods

01:07:57.440 | where other things in your life had priority,

01:07:59.560 | that there was periods where that book got put on the shelf,

01:08:02.920 | don't even factor, no one even knows that right now.

01:08:06.000 | And so this notion of variability in life,

01:08:10.240 | that there's seasons of I'm locked in on this

01:08:12.560 | and seasons where other things are going on,

01:08:14.640 | this notion of really embracing that

01:08:16.920 | and saying in the longterm,

01:08:18.800 | as long as the seasons of stepping away

01:08:21.440 | from something important,

01:08:22.520 | don't turn into lifetimes of that,

01:08:24.240 | so long as when it is appropriate,

01:08:25.860 | you're able to come back to it,

01:08:27.680 | it's not bad for there to be this variability

01:08:30.760 | and effort that are put into it.

01:08:32.000 | So I do appreciate that part of your story,

01:08:34.860 | just because I think there's a lot of people in my audience

01:08:38.480 | who have a very hard time with the idea of slowing down

01:08:41.600 | or putting something on the shelf for a while.

01:08:43.200 | It feels somehow like a failure where I see it

01:08:45.600 | as it feels like being a human being.

01:08:48.640 | So you're a great exemplar of that.

01:08:50.440 | And then you came back to the project

01:08:51.640 | when it was appropriate and the project kept going

01:08:54.240 | and now you have this great book.

01:08:55.880 | And it was also very appropriate in September, 2021,

01:08:58.520 | not to be touching that project.

01:09:00.480 | And in the end, this is a slow productivity principle.

01:09:03.560 | It's what you produce on the scale of years,

01:09:05.540 | not on the scale of weeks that ultimately matters.

01:09:09.280 | So anyways, I think it's interesting to punctuate that.

01:09:12.960 | - Yeah, and I think like you've said this before,

01:09:15.640 | but just giving yourself permission

01:09:17.240 | to have a non-productive month

01:09:19.800 | because other stuff's going on is really important.

01:09:23.080 | That like, of course I wasn't gonna be pumping out

01:09:26.640 | 10,000 words, the craziest thing ever happened to me.

01:09:30.680 | But then, as you said, in the long scale

01:09:33.920 | of slow productivity, it turns out that's just a blip

01:09:36.640 | and a month over the course of years isn't that much.

01:09:40.480 | - Yeah, okay, so now if we fast forward

01:09:43.120 | past that very difficult fall

01:09:45.800 | and you're falling into a bit of routine

01:09:47.600 | of a family with a child

01:09:49.120 | and not just a family without a child,

01:09:52.160 | how did you find, did this timing still work well,

01:09:55.720 | the like doing things in the morning, was that compatible?

01:10:00.080 | You felt that worked well

01:10:01.120 | because that kept your evenings and afternoons free

01:10:03.160 | for all just the chaos of wrangling children

01:10:06.600 | or was some changes needed

01:10:08.120 | because you're dealing with exotic sleep schedules?

01:10:11.320 | How did things, when they got rolling again,

01:10:13.560 | did it get rolling on this similar schedule?

01:10:16.440 | - It did in a way, I think as anyone

01:10:18.200 | who has young children knows,

01:10:19.440 | you wake up earlier than you did

01:10:22.000 | in previous eras in your life.

01:10:23.920 | So I think it actually sort of dovetailed well.

01:10:26.080 | And I mean, I specifically remember a former colleague

01:10:29.560 | of mine who had once written a book

01:10:31.360 | when I was about to write a book,

01:10:32.440 | I said, "Do you have any advice?"

01:10:33.360 | And she said, "Finish the book before you have any children,"

01:10:36.480 | which I utterly failed to follow.

01:10:38.480 | But in a weird way, I think having kids

01:10:41.080 | made me more productive in that it really

01:10:43.680 | fills up your calendar and constrain,

01:10:48.480 | you really can't faff about and waste time

01:10:51.400 | when you have these yapping creatures

01:10:55.600 | who need to be fed and changed.

01:10:57.400 | And so it really, in my case, at least focused the mind

01:11:01.120 | and sort of set the constraints

01:11:04.000 | that allowed me to really just get stuff done.

01:11:07.080 | - Right, so you had already learned

01:11:09.160 | prior to having the child that,

01:11:11.080 | "Okay, if I just do a little bit of work every day,

01:11:13.880 | "it builds up and the bucket gets full,"

01:11:16.600 | to use a John McPhee quote.

01:11:18.200 | And that is a work approach that is more compatible

01:11:22.040 | with a full schedule or a crowded schedule,

01:11:25.520 | because it's about just a little bit of time

01:11:26.960 | before things get going, just do that repeatedly.

01:11:28.920 | It's not a schedule that requires

01:11:31.200 | multiple weeks of being left alone.

01:11:33.120 | It's not a schedule that requires

01:11:35.320 | offloading all family responsibilities to someone else

01:11:38.200 | so that you won't be disturbed.

01:11:39.680 | It's about slow and steady.

01:11:42.440 | So you had already discovered that.

01:11:44.320 | So then when the child came along for some,

01:11:46.760 | to some degree, like you were already in the ideal schedule

01:11:49.560 | for a schedule that was gonna be full

01:11:51.920 | of a lot more responsibilities.

01:11:53.440 | So it sounds like you're able to just keep making progress.

01:11:56.800 | What you couldn't have done is if your publisher said,

01:11:58.160 | "Hey, get this done in three weeks."

01:12:00.160 | You say, "Great, I'm just gonna write 12 hours a day

01:12:02.120 | "for three weeks."

01:12:02.960 | That's not gonna be possible.

01:12:05.320 | But slow and steady, you're already

01:12:08.000 | well configured for that.

01:12:09.520 | - Yeah, I mean, and another thing I should mention

01:12:11.680 | that really helped was you've talked before, Cal,

01:12:15.080 | about sort of the importance of investing

01:12:16.720 | in your own career.

01:12:17.560 | So I took some of my book advance money

01:12:20.880 | plus a grant I received and spent it on research assistance.

01:12:24.760 | I did all the research myself,

01:12:27.680 | but there are certain tasks

01:12:29.200 | that are eminently outsourceable,

01:12:31.160 | like go track down these obscure books at a library

01:12:34.680 | and get me a copy of chapter three of this one, et cetera.

01:12:38.160 | And that cost money,

01:12:41.280 | but it was being able to devolve tasks that didn't...

01:12:46.280 | My highest, best use of time was actually writing the book.

01:12:50.840 | It was not emailing back and forth with an archivist

01:12:54.800 | about could they scan box seven, folder three.

01:12:57.880 | So that was another, I was very fortunate in that respect,

01:13:00.680 | but it helped me focus on writing,

01:13:03.960 | which was the most important thing.

01:13:05.760 | - Well, I think that's a good point.

01:13:07.120 | It's another thing we see often

01:13:09.000 | and talk about often on the show

01:13:10.720 | that some of the biggest impacts on work schedule

01:13:15.240 | is not the cognitive difficulty of a project.

01:13:18.840 | It's not the raw hours required by a project.

01:13:22.200 | It is sometimes the context shifting.

01:13:24.320 | So what makes a new project a really difficult addition

01:13:28.620 | to a professional schedule,

01:13:29.740 | if it's something that you have to keep turning to

01:13:31.920 | back and forth throughout the day.

01:13:33.580 | So if, for example, like you just said,

01:13:36.480 | if you have to have this back and forth email conversation

01:13:38.920 | going with archivist,

01:13:40.120 | where throughout the day, no, no, it's not that box

01:13:42.400 | and get this, yes, and that here, oh, I'll check it.

01:13:44.560 | If it was something that was requiring you

01:13:46.200 | to shift back to the book project and back to work

01:13:48.560 | and back to the book product and back to your work,

01:13:50.680 | the negative impact of that on your schedule

01:13:53.480 | is greatly amplified versus 90 minutes in the morning

01:13:57.680 | and then it's done.

01:13:59.240 | And again, so I think this is another good point

01:14:01.360 | to emphasize, it's not necessarily the minutes,

01:14:04.540 | it's the context switching that really dictates

01:14:08.220 | how much of an impact a particular pursuit

01:14:11.260 | is gonna have on your schedule.

01:14:12.140 | So I think your investment in minimizing context switching,

01:14:15.300 | you said, I'm gonna invest money

01:14:16.460 | to minimize context switching.

01:14:18.140 | So I can work on this project largely

01:14:19.820 | in single continuous context

01:14:22.700 | was actually a brilliant investment

01:14:24.060 | because that could significantly reduce

01:14:26.460 | the negative impact of this project on your schedule.

01:14:30.460 | Was there anything else you had to do with your other work

01:14:33.560 | so you're able to fit this in in the morning

01:14:35.080 | that didn't actually overlap your normal work schedule?

01:14:38.080 | Having a child probably did more, right?

01:14:39.880 | It's now you can't just easily or casually work later

01:14:44.200 | into the night, et cetera.

01:14:46.160 | Was there any other things you had to do in your work life

01:14:48.400 | as an editor, some efficiencies or structure

01:14:51.760 | to make sure that from the outside world's perspective,

01:14:54.560 | you were still more or less producing the same stuff

01:14:56.660 | you'd always produced at the same level of quality

01:14:58.720 | you had always produced?

01:14:59.560 | What other changes might've been necessary

01:15:00.960 | in this new stage of your life?

01:15:02.640 | - Sure, and I should mention that then my wife and I

01:15:05.040 | had a second child in April,

01:15:07.840 | his birth sort of acted as a deadline

01:15:12.400 | for getting in final edits.

01:15:14.780 | And I was actually marking up proofs in the hospital,

01:15:17.600 | I remember.

01:15:18.440 | But I think I definitely got more efficient

01:15:23.640 | at my day job as well.

01:15:25.160 | I can't point to any particular trick.

01:15:28.680 | I mean, it's the whole bag of tricks

01:15:30.760 | that you talk about all the time,

01:15:32.280 | but only going to meetings that are actually necessary

01:15:36.880 | and where you'll add value, not switching between tasks,

01:15:41.780 | just saying, okay, I need to do a top edit of this article,

01:15:44.800 | I'm gonna work on that for the next 45 minutes

01:15:47.100 | and not check any email, not check Twitter,

01:15:49.200 | not do anything else, just being really disciplined.

01:15:51.800 | And I think knowing that I had this other project

01:15:54.380 | that I also cared about in addition to my work,

01:15:57.380 | made it every minute felt like it counted more.

01:16:00.120 | And so, okay, I need to be on my best behavior here at work

01:16:04.560 | and fully show up and do as great a job as I can

01:16:08.680 | so that I can then use the in between times of the day

01:16:13.680 | to work on this other project.

01:16:16.640 | Yeah.

01:16:18.520 | - So if we had gone back in time

01:16:19.720 | and talked to 2018 version of Stuart,

01:16:22.960 | just in the middle of your workday and said,

01:16:25.120 | hey, here's what we want you to do.

01:16:26.240 | We want you to add two extra hours of work per day.

01:16:28.500 | Oh, and by the way, you can never work late.

01:16:30.220 | Like you have to, when you get to this, whatever, 5.30 time,

01:16:33.580 | you always have to stop.

01:16:35.220 | Hey, is that gonna be a problem?

01:16:36.940 | You probably would have said, well, I'm busy.

01:16:39.620 | I'm filling every minute of my day.

01:16:41.500 | I'm often having to stay a couple hours late

01:16:44.100 | just to catch up on things I'm behind on.

01:16:46.900 | How could I possibly do both of those things?

01:16:50.380 | And yet a few years later, it turns out, oh, I can.

01:16:53.760 | Because work is not just work in a generic sense.

01:16:56.140 | Work is actually a combination

01:16:57.580 | of all sorts of different activities

01:16:58.940 | and switching and sequencing and scheduling and systems.

01:17:01.420 | And it's something that has a lot more knobs to turn

01:17:04.780 | and levers to pull.

01:17:06.740 | So what would be the advice you would give?

01:17:09.020 | Let's say in my audience, there's a 27 year old,

01:17:12.140 | doesn't yet have a family, feels very busy.

01:17:15.660 | They're filling their day.

01:17:17.420 | They're checking email at night.

01:17:19.440 | They have this idea of an important project

01:17:21.220 | that they're well through to pursue,

01:17:22.300 | but say, I just don't see how I can do this

01:17:24.940 | unless I quit my job or had some sort of sabbatical.

01:17:28.060 | Now, based on your experience, 2023,

01:17:30.260 | looking back on how you felt in 2018,

01:17:32.460 | what would your advice be to this hypothetical listener?

01:17:35.220 | - One, this is like super technical,

01:17:38.700 | but I thought I was someone who could not get up early.

01:17:43.040 | And that turns out to have just been a lie

01:17:45.680 | that I told myself.

01:17:46.720 | And so, you actually can get up at 6.15,

01:17:50.060 | just go to bed earlier.

01:17:51.300 | Don't waste time going to bed.

01:17:54.560 | So that's a pretty nitty gritty detail,

01:17:57.060 | but it was totally important

01:17:59.340 | for my being able to get stuff done.

01:18:02.140 | I mean, the other thing also, honestly,

01:18:03.500 | was just locking yourself into a contract.

01:18:05.980 | Nothing stimulates figuring out how to get it done

01:18:10.620 | than being actually on the hook for doing it.

01:18:13.300 | And so, kind of making that leap of faith

01:18:16.700 | and deciding that you're gonna do it

01:18:18.140 | and trusting your future self

01:18:20.500 | to make the changes necessary to work it out,

01:18:23.220 | even if you don't know exactly

01:18:24.360 | how you're gonna rearrange your schedule.

01:18:26.460 | Once you believe that it's probably possible in some way,

01:18:30.960 | you'll figure out the details later.

01:18:32.960 | Try and figure out them now,

01:18:34.080 | but know that you can,

01:18:37.440 | that external force,

01:18:39.240 | the stick of having to deliver

01:18:42.000 | and the carrot of wanting to publish your own book

01:18:45.880 | or whatever the project is,

01:18:47.560 | the combination of that can actually just

01:18:49.800 | really force you to figure it out.

01:18:53.380 | - I love it.

01:18:54.220 | It's almost a rule we could name here,

01:18:57.740 | like the 90-minute rule.

01:18:59.580 | If you're willing to always protect 90 minutes a day,

01:19:02.140 | first thing in the day, five days a week,

01:19:04.900 | if you zoom out 10 years, 20 years,

01:19:07.640 | the amount of really cool, interesting stuff

01:19:09.900 | that you are able to produce,

01:19:11.180 | the amount of impact you're able to have is massive,

01:19:14.180 | but it all starts with that smaller commitment.

01:19:18.040 | So this is excellent.

01:19:18.900 | So now that you're done,

01:19:19.820 | this book is out or about to come out,

01:19:21.680 | depending on when people listen to this,

01:19:23.420 | the Lumumba plot, which I highly recommend.

01:19:27.380 | What are you gonna do next?

01:19:29.180 | Are you going,

01:19:30.020 | you've learned how to do this with this boarding block.

01:19:32.620 | You can conquer the world.

01:19:33.740 | So what are you thinking about?

01:19:34.740 | - Yeah, that's a great question.

01:19:35.980 | I mean, I have really loved writing a book.

01:19:39.340 | My day job is editing,

01:19:40.420 | working with other authors

01:19:42.340 | and sublimating my own ego in service of them.

01:19:45.860 | And I love that too,

01:19:46.900 | but it was a special treat to be able to,

01:19:49.360 | as you know, just have basically full control

01:19:52.100 | over this extremely long detailed project.

01:19:55.340 | I let, you know,

01:19:56.180 | the paragraph can be exactly the way I want it.

01:19:58.900 | And so that was really rewarding.

01:20:00.700 | So I'd love to do another book,

01:20:03.600 | but on what we'll see.

01:20:06.420 | - Yeah.

01:20:07.260 | And this time just be careful

01:20:08.820 | about suspicious looking drivers,

01:20:11.180 | depending on how inflammatory your topic.

01:20:14.740 | Stuart, I really appreciate you calling in.

01:20:16.560 | I think this was a great case study.

01:20:17.940 | I get these questions all the time from listeners

01:20:19.720 | who are wondering about how to make big projects work

01:20:22.200 | and busy schedules.

01:20:23.480 | You have a busy schedule.

01:20:25.040 | You didn't have heroic interventions

01:20:28.400 | to make this work possible.

01:20:29.840 | It was just slow and steady early in the morning.

01:20:33.200 | So it was a good case study

01:20:34.240 | and I appreciate you sharing it

01:20:35.880 | and everyone check out "The Fruits of This Labor"

01:20:38.520 | which is Stuart's new book,

01:20:39.800 | "The Lumumba Plot",

01:20:41.360 | L-U-M-U-M-B-A.

01:20:43.800 | Thank you, Stuart.

01:20:44.820 | - Thanks so much for having me.

01:20:46.280 | - All right, so that was great.

01:20:47.120 | Thank you, Stuart, for calling in.

01:20:48.600 | I think we all learned a lot from that story.

01:20:51.960 | Before we move on to the third and final segment

01:20:54.280 | of the show today,

01:20:55.120 | I want to briefly mention another one of the sponsors

01:20:58.160 | that makes Deep Questions possible.

01:21:01.160 | This is the time of year for me

01:21:03.040 | where I'm doing events all the time.

01:21:07.120 | Events all the time.

01:21:08.160 | I was giving a talk at my kid's school two nights ago.

01:21:11.040 | Last night I was at my kid's school

01:21:12.880 | for a welcome back dinner.

01:21:14.760 | Tomorrow I'm gonna be at my kid's school

01:21:17.280 | for a ceremony for my third grader.

01:21:21.360 | Then next week I'm giving a panel discussion at Georgetown.

01:21:25.160 | So it's the season where I have long days

01:21:27.580 | where I'm working and doing stuff after work.

01:21:30.160 | So I care about what I'm wearing,

01:21:33.360 | getting clothes that look fine

01:21:35.960 | but are flexible and cool and don't wrinkle

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01:23:21.560 | We also wanna talk about our good friends at Shopify,

01:23:26.160 | the commerce platform that is revolutionizing

01:23:29.000 | millions of businesses worldwide.

01:23:32.880 | If there's something you wanna sell online,

01:23:35.720 | you should be using Shopify.

01:23:39.720 | They put you in control of every sales channel.

01:23:41.660 | So whether you're selling satin sheets,

01:23:44.300 | sheets, not sheeps, I guess you could sell sheeps,

01:23:47.060 | from Shopify's in-person POS system

01:23:50.060 | or offering organic olive oil

01:23:52.020 | on Shopify's all-in-one e-commerce platform,

01:23:54.580 | you are covered.

01:23:56.920 | And once you've reached your audience,

01:23:58.100 | Shopify has the internet's best converting checkout

01:24:00.300 | to help you turn them from browsers to buyers.

01:24:02.740 | You have probably used Shopify technology

01:24:05.020 | multiple times buying things online.

01:24:06.700 | You just don't realize it.

01:24:09.180 | If you've ever had a really nice experience

01:24:10.940 | and you think, "Wow, this website

01:24:12.220 | really has a great shopping experience.

01:24:13.620 | It knew my information, it filled it all in,

01:24:15.700 | it was easy to do,"

01:24:16.700 | then we're probably using Shopify.

01:24:18.400 | So Jesse, when we figure out

01:24:20.660 | our Jesse Skeleton merchandising strategy,

01:24:23.940 | Shopify is gonna be how we reach our masses.

01:24:27.780 | I mean, we need a platform capable of handling

01:24:31.180 | tens of millions of dollars

01:24:33.460 | of Jesse Skeleton-related orders.

01:24:35.260 | - Yeah.

01:24:36.100 | - I mean, I'm thinking like--

01:24:36.940 | - Seamless checkout process.

01:24:38.100 | - Seamless checkout process, direct ship,

01:24:41.380 | you get your Jesse Skeleton animatronic,

01:24:43.780 | you set it up wherever you work,

01:24:45.700 | and it just sort of at sporadic points during the day

01:24:48.840 | begins moving and motivates you.

01:24:53.620 | I think that'd be a good product.

01:24:54.500 | - Yeah.

01:24:55.340 | Doesn't need to get off your phone.

01:24:56.500 | - Yeah.

01:24:57.580 | Hey, you should, as the arms are moving,

01:25:00.620 | like little animatronic motors,

01:25:02.060 | you should get off your phone.

01:25:03.540 | (Jesse laughs)

01:25:04.380 | (Jesse hums)

01:25:06.300 | And then it goes back quiet again.

01:25:07.420 | I mean, come on, people would buy that.

01:25:08.740 | - Yeah.

01:25:09.580 | - Yeah.

01:25:10.400 | All for just 7.99, 99, 99.

01:25:15.220 | - On a Shopify site.

01:25:16.220 | - On a Shopify site.

01:25:17.220 | But if we were selling something, we would use Shopify.

01:25:21.260 | The people I know who use it absolutely love it.

01:25:23.740 | It powers now 10% of all e-commerce in the US.

01:25:27.940 | They're also a truly global force.

01:25:29.460 | They power Allbirds, Rothy's, Brooklinens,

01:25:31.660 | and soon jesseskeleton.com.

01:25:36.180 | They also work with entrepreneurs in over 170 countries.

01:25:39.300 | It's the service you should use

01:25:41.420 | if you wanna sell things online.

01:25:42.900 | So you can sign up now for a $1 per month trial period

01:25:47.140 | at shopify.com/deep, all lowercase.

01:25:50.640 | Go to shopify.com/deep

01:25:52.460 | to take your business to the next level today.

01:25:54.220 | That's shopify.com/deep.

01:25:57.700 | (cash register dings)

01:25:59.020 | Jesse, I want our jesseskeleton product,

01:26:01.340 | and this is what's really gonna make it a top seller.

01:26:04.020 | Right before it sporadically and unpredictably

01:26:06.140 | starts moving and telling you to get off your phone

01:26:07.980 | and work harder,

01:26:09.020 | I'm thinking incredibly loud klaxon horn sound.

01:26:13.180 | So like get your attention.

01:26:14.060 | So you're working and then just,

01:26:16.500 | (imitates horn honking)

01:26:20.180 | really loud motors, and then it's,

01:26:22.180 | are you working the klaxon?

01:26:25.500 | That's how you know.

01:26:26.340 | And then other people in nearby buildings will ask,

01:26:30.180 | what is that really loud, alarming klaxon sound

01:26:32.340 | they keep hearing every seven to eight minutes?

01:26:34.820 | And you'll say, it's my jesseskeleton.

01:26:36.460 | And they'll say, well, where can I get one?

01:26:38.060 | You'll say online at jesseskeleton.com.

01:26:39.820 | They're like, yeah, but it's gonna be

01:26:41.740 | like a really clunky, difficult e-commerce experience,

01:26:43.860 | so forget about it.

01:26:44.700 | And you're like, no, no, no.

01:26:45.980 | It's powered by Shopify.

01:26:47.660 | And they're gonna buy one.

01:26:48.960 | Got it all figured out.

01:26:51.100 | Oh man.

01:26:53.160 | All right.

01:26:54.500 | We got time.

01:26:55.340 | We used to do a third segment on this show

01:26:57.700 | once we're done with the nonsense,

01:27:00.460 | where we just like to do something interesting or different.

01:27:03.180 | So in our final segment today, Jesse,

01:27:04.660 | I just wanted to talk about,

01:27:05.580 | I wanted to react to an article that I read online

01:27:09.000 | that captured my attention,

01:27:10.400 | 'cause I think there's a couple interesting lessons in here

01:27:13.600 | about our ongoing interest to embrace slow productivity.

01:27:18.220 | I'll load this article up on the screen

01:27:20.100 | for those who are watching.

01:27:22.180 | If you're listening to the podcast,

01:27:23.380 | remember, go to thedeeplife.com/listen.

01:27:25.740 | This is episode 267,

01:27:27.500 | and you can find the videos right there on the episode page.

01:27:30.340 | All right, so this article came

01:27:31.420 | from the New York Times Magazine, I believe, September 9th.

01:27:36.220 | The title is "How Lauren Groff,

01:27:39.100 | one of our finest living writers, does her work."

01:27:43.920 | So I love these knowledge worker,

01:27:46.960 | elite knowledge worker case studies.

01:27:48.780 | So we get some insight into how

01:27:50.860 | really high cognitive performers do their work.

01:27:54.020 | How do we know she's one of the finest living writers?

01:27:55.620 | Well, we see right off the bat

01:27:56.740 | that she is a three-time National Book Award finalist.

01:28:00.500 | Basically, the last three books she has written

01:28:02.700 | were National Book Award finalists.

01:28:04.860 | Probably her new book, "Devastator Wilds," will be as well.

01:28:08.300 | So I just wanna point out a couple,

01:28:10.440 | I marked a couple insights from this article.

01:28:12.620 | I just wanna briefly underscore,

01:28:14.900 | and then we'll talk about it.

01:28:16.340 | Okay, so she has three New York Times bestsellers.

01:28:20.500 | She is unusually productive for a literary writer.

01:28:26.040 | So her new book, "Devastator Wilds,"

01:28:28.940 | is coming out exactly two years after her last book, "Matrix,"

01:28:33.220 | which itself came out just three years

01:28:35.000 | after her book before that, "Florida."

01:28:37.460 | This is a very fast pace for literary writers.

01:28:40.620 | As she goes on to say,

01:28:41.940 | "It takes about five years to write a book of this caliber."

01:28:45.220 | So how is she doing it so fast?

01:28:47.340 | She's interleaving the writing process.

01:28:49.900 | So that's the next thing I wanna talk about here.

01:28:52.500 | She's able to keep up her publishing pace

01:28:55.540 | by working on several projects,

01:28:56.920 | even several novels simultaneously,

01:29:00.040 | holding vibrant, distinct worlds distinct in her mind.

01:29:04.120 | To help do that, she has these different projects

01:29:07.880 | live in different corners of her office.

01:29:11.540 | So she works in different spaces of her office

01:29:14.400 | on different books.

01:29:16.140 | So there's her desk.

01:29:19.440 | She also has a different wooden desk, a different end of it.

01:29:23.320 | She has a day bed, so different projects exist

01:29:26.300 | in different spaces.

01:29:28.260 | All right, so once she's working on a book,

01:29:29.740 | how does she actually do it?

01:29:30.920 | I thought this was crazy and fascinating.

01:29:33.800 | When Groff starts something new,

01:29:35.600 | she writes it out longhand in large spiral notebooks.

01:29:39.440 | After she completes the first draft,

01:29:41.040 | she puts it in a banker's box and never reads it again.

01:29:44.900 | So her method is, I'm gonna write an entire draft

01:29:49.000 | of a book slowly and deliberately longhand

01:29:51.480 | and never look at it again.

01:29:53.660 | 'Cause what she's figured out is to write

01:29:55.380 | at a very high level literary fiction,

01:29:57.580 | the ideas matter, defining those ideas,

01:30:01.500 | those characterizations, those plot points

01:30:03.420 | to just hit the right buttons or everything.

01:30:05.400 | So she figures if she writes a whole book

01:30:07.940 | and never looks at it again,

01:30:09.440 | the stuff that sticks is the good stuff.

01:30:12.580 | So then when she comes to write another draft of the book,

01:30:14.800 | what's gonna come back to her from that initial draft,

01:30:17.240 | if she can't actually go back and read it,

01:30:18.640 | is gonna be the stuff that's stuck.

01:30:20.780 | And what is it makes a great book great

01:30:22.580 | is all these scenes that stick with you after you've read it.

01:30:25.620 | So she's found a way to efficiently filter

01:30:28.820 | for this literary magic by actually writing something

01:30:33.300 | and then seeing what sticks with her

01:30:34.740 | without having to actually go back and look at it.

01:30:37.200 | She calls these lightning bolts,

01:30:39.940 | I'll put this quote here,

01:30:41.540 | "Nothing matters except for these lightning bolts

01:30:45.100 | "that I've discovered."

01:30:46.300 | So she's going back and forth between books.

01:30:49.100 | She has this method of how to do it.

01:30:51.540 | Later in the article, they also talk about her timing.

01:30:55.300 | Like a lot of writers of this caliber,

01:30:58.540 | she wakes up and I'll quote here,

01:31:00.340 | "At 5 a.m. and disappears into a writing for hours

01:31:03.860 | "without having to manage the routine

01:31:07.060 | "of getting her two children fed and out the door."

01:31:08.660 | So she has an agreement.

01:31:10.580 | She has that worked out with her husband

01:31:13.180 | that she can start writing in the morning.

01:31:15.160 | Then she stops writing early afternoon, according to this.

01:31:18.320 | And then the afternoon is more for the business side

01:31:20.380 | of writing, the publicity, et cetera,

01:31:22.180 | taking back over responsibility of the kids.

01:31:23.740 | So she also has a very strict schedule

01:31:25.380 | of just you do this writing morning

01:31:27.780 | to a certain point in time, and then you're done with it.

01:31:30.780 | All right, so I wanna draw a couple

01:31:32.860 | slow productivity observations from this.

01:31:35.140 | This is an incredibly successful writer.

01:31:37.100 | What she did is figured out what's needed

01:31:39.620 | to produce a National Book Award finalist.

01:31:42.040 | If anyone has cracked this code, it is Lauren Groff.

01:31:45.260 | She's done it three times in a row, probably four.

01:31:47.660 | We'll see how her new book does.

01:31:50.380 | So you realize like, okay, it's all about, it's craft,

01:31:53.120 | but it's also about these lightning bolts, as she call it,

01:31:55.260 | having these sort of brilliant moments

01:31:56.740 | of characterization and plot.

01:31:58.340 | So here's the process.

01:31:59.280 | You gotta write a whole book longhand

01:32:00.860 | and basically throw it out,

01:32:02.020 | then write a second draft longhand and see what sticks.

01:32:04.340 | And then only then deliberately

01:32:07.580 | and relentlessly starts transforming that

01:32:09.900 | into a typed up manuscript that you're very carefully

01:32:12.740 | polishing and tweaking and trying to get it just right.

01:32:14.740 | And it takes five years.

01:32:16.660 | And it takes five years and you need plenty of time

01:32:18.700 | in between these things.

01:32:20.060 | And so if I wanna write a book more than once

01:32:21.580 | every five years, then great.

01:32:22.620 | How can I interleave two or three of these at the same time?

01:32:25.420 | Well, I can do it.

01:32:26.260 | I know when I can switch from one to another

01:32:28.260 | and I'll use different spaces

01:32:29.340 | so I don't have confused cognitive context.

01:32:31.060 | And I'll just deliberately work four or five hours a day.

01:32:33.940 | And she has did the math and it works.

01:32:36.300 | Slow but steady.

01:32:38.180 | Here's what I do.

01:32:39.260 | Here's how I do it.

01:32:40.340 | This is what matters.

01:32:41.280 | Don't spend stuff on time that doesn't matter.

01:32:43.540 | Super long hours aren't needed.

01:32:46.040 | I don't need to have no kids.

01:32:47.780 | I don't need to never have any childcare responsibilities.

01:32:49.980 | I just need to be able to have four to five hours a day

01:32:53.220 | and do the right thing during those four to five hours a day

01:32:55.860 | and only do those things

01:32:56.940 | during those four to five hours a day.

01:32:58.700 | And then add in the secret ingredient of time.

01:33:01.020 | You add up enough days.

01:33:02.360 | This is the John McPhee quote.

01:33:03.500 | You put enough drops in a bucket,

01:33:04.780 | it eventually ends up full.

01:33:07.120 | You spend enough four hours, days focusing on

01:33:10.440 | not just writing, but the writing activities

01:33:12.300 | that make the difference.

01:33:14.260 | And you patiently build up over time.

01:33:15.840 | One of the most impressive writing careers,

01:33:17.500 | I would say, of the 21st century so far.

01:33:20.480 | So as I thought, Lauren was a great case study

01:33:24.740 | of slow productivity in action.

01:33:27.820 | Focus on what matters.

01:33:29.600 | Work steadily, but a reasonable amount.

01:33:31.800 | Let time and aggregation do more work than freneticism

01:33:34.840 | and exhausting overwork in the moment.

01:33:37.620 | And really cool stuff can come out of it.

01:33:39.860 | You know, I also like Jessie.

01:33:41.640 | She's summers, New Hampshire.

01:33:43.780 | - Oh yeah.

01:33:44.620 | - Right, she's got it dialed in.

01:33:46.580 | Live in New Hampshire in the summer.

01:33:48.540 | And she's in Florida the rest of the year.

01:33:49.860 | But live in New Hampshire in the summer, I like it.

01:33:51.700 | That's the secret.

01:33:53.040 | She does a lot of physical activity.

01:33:54.840 | Her and her husband were both athletes.

01:33:58.260 | They're also, she sees it as like she's lots of running

01:34:00.640 | and I think he was a rower.

01:34:02.620 | So a lot of like being really good shape

01:34:04.660 | and spend a lot of time outdoors

01:34:05.700 | and write four hours every morning and it just works.

01:34:08.700 | She's got it dialed in.

01:34:09.540 | Slow productivity everyone.

01:34:10.960 | That's the secret.

01:34:12.420 | Not freneticism or busyness or keeping options open

01:34:15.420 | or I don't know, whatever the other stuff we talk about.

01:34:17.100 | So if only someone would write a book on slow productivity

01:34:20.000 | that we could collapse, collect all these insights.

01:34:22.460 | If only let's say in March,

01:34:24.700 | there was a book coming out about slow productivity.

01:34:27.680 | If there was, I would just say everyone should buy it,

01:34:29.560 | but you know, we'll have to wait and see.

01:34:30.940 | All right, enough nonsense.

01:34:32.300 | Quick reminder, you like the show, leave a review.

01:34:37.380 | It does help.

01:34:38.560 | Consider subscribing.

01:34:40.020 | It also helps, helps people find it.

01:34:42.160 | So, you know, I read the reviews

01:34:43.900 | and I really appreciate them.

01:34:46.700 | Otherwise, thanks for listening.

01:34:47.620 | We'll be back next week with another episode of the show.

01:34:50.940 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:34:53.400 | Hey, so if you liked today's episode about tiredness,

01:34:57.180 | I think you'll also like episode 248

01:35:00.660 | about decoding overload.

01:35:03.820 | Check it out.

01:35:04.660 | As you get more stuff on your plate,

01:35:07.300 | the cost of that seems to grow much faster

01:35:10.220 | than the amount of work you're adding.

Why You're Always Tired & Exhausted (No Matter What You Do) | Cal Newport

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