Jerry Seinfeld's Unexpected Advice On Productivity & Cultivating A Deep Life

00:00:00.000 | Last week Jerry Seinfeld as part of the promotional tour for his new Netflix movie frosted

00:00:07.200 | Did an interview on the honestly podcast with Barry Weiss now. They covered a lot of territory, but there was a

00:00:14.340 | remarkable 10-minute run that occurred roughly between the

00:00:19.400 | 16 and a half minute mark in the 25 minute mark where Seinfeld peeled off

00:00:25.360 | Multiple deep ideas that are very relevant to the types of things we talked about here on this podcast and in particular

00:00:31.200 | How to cultivate a deep focused life in a distracted world

00:00:36.700 | So what I did here is I grabbed four of the most interesting quotes from Jerry during this period

00:00:44.000 | I will read each of these quotes and then I will respond to them

00:00:48.040 | Helping to identify the wisdom in the quote and offering a few thoughts of my own. So we have our own sort of

00:00:54.320 | Seinfeld Ian Talmud session that we're doing today. I'm excited about this

00:00:58.560 | Now let's start with the first lesson. Here's the setup

00:01:02.440 | Barry asked Jerry if it's true that he still writes

00:01:08.440 | With a legal pad and a ballpoint pen. This is something about a decade ago that Jerry Seinfeld

00:01:13.520 | Noted in a New York Times interview and Barry is saying is that still true? All right. Here's Jerry's exact quote

00:01:19.560 | It's nice

00:01:21.960 | When you write comedy and excuse this pretentious analogy, but it's a lot like poetry

00:01:27.080 | You don't do a lot of writing. It's 90% thinking

00:01:31.080 | 10% actual writing but the feeling of a ballpoint pen on a thick yellow pad is very pleasant

00:01:37.800 | It's like a warm bath to me

00:01:40.760 | All right. I think there's a really important point lurking in here beyond just a specific tool that Jerry uses. It's his indifference

00:01:49.720 | To the details of the efficiency of his tools

00:01:53.120 | That we should really care about because it gets to the difference between two different notions of productivity on

00:01:58.640 | The one hand we have what a lot of us are familiar with it's what I call process productivity on the other hand

00:02:04.600 | You have what Jerry Seinfeld cares about which is what we can call creative productivity

00:02:08.720 | now process productivity is where you have a sequence of defined steps and you want those steps to occur as

00:02:14.320 | quickly and low cost as possible

00:02:17.480 | if I have a assembly line that makes pop-tarts see I'm doing a pop-tarts reference here because of Jerry's new movie if I have

00:02:24.800 | An assembly line that makes pop-tarts. I want that line to go as quick as possible and as low cost as possible. So in

00:02:30.120 | process productivity

00:02:32.840 | You care a lot about the tools

00:02:35.640 | How exactly does this machine put icing on the pop-tarts if there's a faster way to do it, that's better

00:02:40.920 | How exactly do we put the little icing?

00:02:44.680 | Twist on top of the main frosting. Hey, if we have a tool that does that faster or cheaper, that's better, right?

00:02:50.240 | That's often how we think when we're confronting

00:02:52.920 | Productivity tools for us as individual knowledge workers. We think like well, what's this going to make faster?

00:02:59.040 | Is this going to connect my thoughts to other thoughts? Is it going to seamlessly?

00:03:04.520 | Let me move between formats. Will it auto fill in or correct my typing?

00:03:08.500 | Can it even help me think on my behalf by showing me connections between thoughts?

00:03:12.840 | We want the tools to be faster and more featured as a way to get more productivity. That's process productivity

00:03:18.960 | Jerry cares about creative productivity, which is how do I produce the best stuff over time when it comes to creative productivity?

00:03:26.120 | The tools don't matter much

00:03:28.120 | How fast I write how many features I have in my writing software makes a negligible difference in

00:03:35.780 | The ultimate quality and quantity of what I write think about writing in particular

00:03:40.600 | This is something we've been doing professionally for a long time

00:03:43.360 | We've had big publishing houses in the American context since you know, the Revolutionary Period right? This is something we've done for a long time

00:03:50.160 | the tools by which

00:03:52.840 | Writers now write are way more efficient than they've ever been before

00:03:57.120 | Look even in my own lifetime

00:04:00.160 | When I was copy editing my first books, which I wrote in the the early 2000s

00:04:05.840 | They would FedEx you a big printed manuscript with red colored pencils using to do all the corrections

00:04:11.760 | you had to learn all the copy editing marks because you had all these efficient marks that indicate what you meant and

00:04:16.560 | You had to go through each of these things and respond to them with a different color pencil

00:04:21.360 | I mean you would

00:04:23.920 | Check mark things you would cross things out

00:04:25.880 | You would make your own corrections and flag them in the margins and then you have to go to the post office

00:04:29.920 | I remember this so well and put this big thing in a I'd use like a priority mail

00:04:35.520 | Giant envelope and mail it back to Random House and hope it didn't get lost because there was no other copy of this, right?

00:04:41.360 | And now of course we use Microsoft Word and track changes. It's faster

00:04:45.080 | Hemingway would pound out

00:04:48.600 | Each word of his books or a short stories on a Corona typewriter

00:04:52.640 | Now we can copy and paste in a word processor. It's better, right? It's more efficient

00:04:57.080 | But Hemingway wrote a lot and in fact if we look at how much work authors produce

00:05:02.440 | We don't see some major change where as the tools got better authors produced

00:05:06.200 | More writing as the tools got better

00:05:08.760 | We don't see a change that authors produced better writing because ultimately creative acts take a long time. It's much more about the actual

00:05:15.560 | Thinking the construction of the original idea the original voice Jerry's case the original joke. This is what really matters

00:05:24.000 | This is something that is tool agnostic

00:05:26.720 | It is just the very last mile of creation where you actually record that on something and yeah

00:05:31.080 | It's a little bit easier if that's Microsoft Word instead of a typewriter and a typewriter certainly easier

00:05:35.280 | Then it would be writing this on a scroll, but it's the last mile of this long creative process

00:05:40.680 | So it doesn't in the long run affect the quality when I produce or how much I produce

00:05:43.960 | Creative productivity is different than process productivity. If you are a knowledge worker

00:05:48.440 | You're much closer to the creatives than you are to the processes

00:05:53.480 | You're much closer to the Seinfelds and the Hemingways than you are to the pop-tart factory

00:05:59.440 | So there's a good lesson here. Do not get caught up in a process productivity mindset

00:06:03.760 | Updated your tools as a knowledge worker can make your life less annoying on the margins, but is largely

00:06:09.880 | orthogonal

00:06:12.400 | To how much high-quality stuff you produce and how quality those things actually are

00:06:17.360 | All right lesson number two from the Seinfeld interview

00:06:21.640 | Here's the setup Barry Weiss asked Jerry

00:06:25.160 | Do you have a special place?

00:06:28.440 | You like to write. I so here's Jerry's exact quote in response. I

00:06:32.520 | Do but I could write right here. If you would all just leave me alone

00:06:37.040 | Give me a flat surface and I'm good to go. This is the other thing I believe in there is no writer's block

00:06:44.360 | There's no writer's block. There's lazy. They're scared

00:06:48.840 | But there's no writer's block

00:06:51.400 | Just sit down and realize you're mediocre and you're gonna have to put a lot of effort into this to make it good

00:06:56.680 | That's what writing is

00:06:58.680 | But I think we can generalize this to a lot of creative or cognitive pursuits

00:07:04.200 | They're hard

00:07:07.000 | Why are they hard?

00:07:08.080 | well, we can get neurological about this if we want to the human brain is evolved to do lots of things pretty well and

00:07:13.840 | Because we're evolved to do certain things

00:07:16.760 | we don't feel a lot of strain or resistance to doing them if I see a

00:07:21.040 | Animal in the distance that I want to hunt and I'm hungry. I'm evolved to very accurately aim a spear

00:07:28.440 | There's a lot of calculations and machinations that go on within our neural circuitry

00:07:32.800 | But I can aim that spear especially with some practice in a way

00:07:35.840 | That's really quite amazing and have a good chance of hitting that animal. I don't feel resistance to it

00:07:40.240 | It's something I'm doing that I'm evolved to do

00:07:42.240 | abstract cognition

00:07:45.280 | what we some researchers call symbolic processing where we're taking these mechanisms that are meant to encounter a concrete world and we turn them inward and

00:07:52.680 | Say, let's work on an internal abstract world

00:07:55.600 | let's deal with abstractions like writing and concepts and ideas and theories that we're then going to try to wrench into

00:08:00.600 | written words or computer code or a

00:08:04.840 | Design for an ad campaign. We're not evolved to do this. We're again. We're wrenching

00:08:11.560 | Mechanisms meant for a much more embodied physical cognition and we're reassigning them to this more abstract work

00:08:17.680 | Our minds not on board with this and so we feel resistance

00:08:20.800 | this is why if you sit down to write a report or an article or a

00:08:25.600 | novel

00:08:27.200 | You really have a hard time getting started. So your mind's like I don't know what this is

00:08:31.280 | This is not throwing a spear now

00:08:32.920 | It gets easier because once you get going what happens is is you load up all the relevant cognitive context, right?

00:08:37.600 | Now your brain is activating the networks that are relevant to what you're writing

00:08:40.440 | It's inhibiting the networks that aren't relevant to it anymore. You get into a cognitive groove and things rolls along much better

00:08:46.320 | So what this tells us is don't expect it to be easy, but it will get easier as you go along

00:08:51.160 | So just go do it

00:08:53.920 | Stop thinking about the muse

00:08:56.040 | Stop imagining that

00:08:57.800 | Your cognitively demanding process that it's just the mood was just right or your skills were just right or the circumstance was just right

00:09:04.240 | It's gonna come effortlessly

00:09:05.960 | Don't obsess over Mahaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow

00:09:08.920 | Maybe you'll get some flow. Probably not. It's just hard

00:09:12.360 | What you're doing at first isn't good and the way things become good is you put them down and work and work and work on

00:09:18.360 | them

00:09:19.560 | This is certainly my experience writing

00:09:21.440 | It's in particular my experience when I work on a New Yorker piece just because the demands of the language is very high

00:09:26.200 | There's no other way to go about those

00:09:28.480 | But they're just right and right and right and go back and fix and right and just trust over time

00:09:33.680 | You will be able to build from your natural mediocreness into something that might actually work

00:09:37.600 | So I think Jerry is really on to something there now

00:09:39.560 | This doesn't mean now here's the subtlety of this look at what his very first two words of his answer

00:09:43.560 | I do the question was do you have a special place to write and he said I do

00:09:47.560 | So this doesn't mean that location is something you should be indifferent to it can help

00:09:52.840 | Talk about this all the time on the show

00:09:55.480 | if you have a location that you

00:09:58.040 | associate exclusively with a certain type of deep work

00:10:03.480 | It will be easier to get into those deep work sessions. Not easy easier if you have a ritual you do

00:10:08.740 | consistently, but before

00:10:11.720 | Deep work sessions. It will make it easier to do that deep work not easy, but easier

00:10:18.000 | But you don't have to have that and even with that it's going to be hard

00:10:21.600 | So I like his mindset of you should be willing to just find a flat surface and go or whatever

00:10:25.640 | Your equivalent of a flat surface is for the creative endeavor that you are involved in. There's one thing

00:10:31.480 | I'm gonna add to Jerry's wisdom here. Hey, it's Cal

00:10:33.920 | I wanted to interrupt briefly to say that if you're enjoying this video, then you need to check out my new book

00:10:39.960 | slow productivity the lost art of accomplishment without

00:10:44.360 | Burnout. This is like the Bible for most of the ideas we talked about here in these videos

00:10:51.120 | You can get a free excerpt at cal Newport calm

00:10:54.780 | Slow I know you're gonna like it. Check it out. Now. Let's get back to the video

00:11:01.360 | A writer's block is largely invented. I agree with that

00:11:05.360 | Writing is hard feeling harsh wouldn't be a problem

00:11:08.280 | There is however an interpretation of it that I think is useful if you're really consistently

00:11:15.600 | Having difficulties mustering motivation to work on a creative project, especially if it's a new or bold idea

00:11:22.860 | Sometimes this is your mind's way of telling you that your plan stinks

00:11:27.640 | Right is the concept we talked about often on the show is that procrastination in many cases is your mind correctly pointing out?

00:11:33.120 | You don't really know what you're doing. Our mind has a way of projected into the future

00:11:37.640 | Simulating the plan for what you're about to do trying to get to the results of this plan so it can then

00:11:43.640 | Evaluate those results and say if this is positive

00:11:47.000 | I'll give you motivation to do what we're about to do and if this is negative I won't

00:11:52.240 | Right again, this goes back to the Paleolithic. I'm in the late Ice Age. I'm hunting a mammoth. I have this idea

00:11:59.680 | Here's what I'm going to do

00:12:00.920 | I'm gonna run and jump off this cliff

00:12:02.920 | Onto the back of the mammoth and club it in the head with a rock until it dies and you find yourself having a hard

00:12:09.000 | Time actually pulling the trigger to run and jump

00:12:11.560 | Well, it's because your brain has simulated this pretty effortlessly and said I probably will

00:12:15.580 | A break my legs as I fall off the cliff and to be stomped to death by a mammoth

00:12:20.080 | That doesn't seem like a really good outcome. So let's withhold motivation

00:12:23.440 | You know, like that's maybe not a good plan and someone else comes along and says why don't we throw a spear from a distance?

00:12:27.280 | Your brain thinks about that. It's like that'll probably work. We won't get stopped and I like meat and you get motivation to do it

00:12:32.840 | It's an adaptive and it's an adaptive reaction, but when it comes to creative pursuits, it still comes to play

00:12:39.240 | So you want to write a novel and you've fallen in love with like you got this like perfect

00:12:45.320 | Set up where you're gonna do your writing every morning with just the right tea and you just love the the accoutrements of the the novelist

00:12:52.760 | Lifestyle, but you don't really know anything about novel writing

00:12:56.000 | You don't know like what does it take to break into the type of writing you're trying to do?

00:12:59.200 | Are you good at it? Have you been evaluated? What's the process? Did you have an agent first?

00:13:03.520 | Did you be working with an editor? You didn't really do any of that work

00:13:06.200 | So your brain is unable to simulate with confidence a future that it trusts. So it's like I don't think so

00:13:12.080 | Motivation with help. So that is the one distinction. I'll give to Jerry's advice

00:13:15.640 | If you really have block on a creative pursuit

00:13:17.760 | Make sure first you really understand how that pursuit works and you have a plan going forward that you have some faith can actually succeed

00:13:24.200 | Then resistance beyond that point you gotta just find a flat surface and write

00:13:29.920 | All right, let's see here lesson number three

00:13:34.240 | Barry asked him Jerry

00:13:38.060 | about the importance of place

00:13:41.640 | Meaning like where you live. All right, here's Jerry's response

00:13:44.680 | It's hugely essential

00:13:48.040 | cataclysmically relevant and potent to your

00:13:50.800 | Psychophysical well-being and productiveness the importance of place to me

00:13:55.600 | The analogy is the tuning fork you have a rhythm a frequency a vibration as a human being

00:14:01.280 | When you were in the place that your frequency vibration matches the frequency vibration of the place then you're comfortable

00:14:09.880 | Now this fits perfectly

00:14:11.880 | With the notion of lifestyle centric planning that we talk about all the time on the show now if you're new to the show

00:14:17.840 | You should listen to last week's episode

00:14:19.160 | I get into the dangers of just assuming that a singular grand goal is going to make your life suddenly meaningful and intentional

00:14:25.920 | We often tell ourselves this fairy tale

00:14:27.920 | Accomplish some singular grand goal and your whole life will be good

00:14:31.200 | The much more consistent way of building a life that you find meaningful and intentional is to actually figure out

00:14:37.440 | what are all of the elements of such a life and

00:14:40.160 | Then systematically creatively and flexibly work towards those properties using all of the resources to your available that you have available to you

00:14:48.480 | It's not as sexy

00:14:49.120 | It's just I've got this grand idea that impresses my roommate when I tell him and if I succeed all is going to be good

00:14:55.040 | But you're also much more likely to make progress

00:14:57.040 | One of the key things when we type talk about lifestyle centric planning is where you live

00:15:02.480 | I don't mean specifically necessarily like this neighborhood or this city, but the type of place you live

00:15:07.640 | I always talk about that when you vision your ideal lifestyle that you're going to now work towards part of this vision has to be

00:15:14.440 | What is the place like where you live?

00:15:16.120 | Are you walking out of the cabin on to the Sun Dapple pond where you're gonna sit quietly with your coffee and watch?

00:15:21.840 | Like the row at Walden the ice melt as you get your thoughts going for the day

00:15:25.760 | Or is it going to be a sort of high energy? You're in a city

00:15:29.080 | You know, you're on your way the the see a reading of an experimental play that people are interesting artistic types of of all sorts of

00:15:36.680 | diverse interesting backgrounds that just what what catches your attention

00:15:39.680 | Seinfeld here is emphasizing why that's important

00:15:43.160 | I always talk about resonance when we do lifestyle centric planning work backwards from what resonates

00:15:48.400 | He uses a tuning fork analogy. What a tuning forks do they resonate?

00:15:52.480 | So he said yeah, this is really important the right type of place for you

00:15:58.440 | Creates a resonance. It's a rhythm. You're comfortable the wrong type of place. It doesn't work

00:16:03.000 | So the type of place you are matters. So again, if you follow the grand goal

00:16:08.800 | The grand goal theory this is the type of thing that you might neglect the grand goal theory might say, okay

00:16:15.280 | Whatever. I want the highest possible achievement in the field on it

00:16:19.480 | I want to find a job does my passion or something like this, right?

00:16:23.160 | Or I want to finally succeed in you know, selling a novel and being a novelist, right?

00:16:27.600 | You're just focusing on one thing

00:16:29.120 | But if you're focusing on one thing all the other attributes your life get pulled around randomly so in pursuing that goal

00:16:35.420 | Hey, I got into banking out of school because it was the hardest job

00:16:39.760 | And if I can become a managing director and make a million five a year then that's then I'm going to be happy

00:16:44.120 | You're following that goal with singular focus. You don't realize I hate cities. This is not resonating with me. I'm miserable

00:16:49.680 | It makes me anxious because you weren't thinking about the whole lifestyle. You're thinking about just one thing

00:16:54.160 | So think of the whole lifestyle location should be a big part of it Jerry

00:16:57.200 | Emphasizes that and in case you're wondering for Jerry, it's New York the rhythms of New York

00:17:02.560 | I mean, he's being nice about LA which is where he was to record this interview

00:17:06.680 | But but clearly his time in LA filming Seinfeld. He learned that's not his place the rhythms of New York

00:17:14.640 | That's the place the type of place he needs to be

00:17:18.080 | Alright, we got a fourth and final lesson here

00:17:22.320 | The setup is Barry is discussing with Jerry

00:17:25.280 | The meaning of life the importance Jerry places on craft. They started deep things, right? All right. So Jerry has a cool quote here

00:17:32.780 | It's all beautiful. He's referring here to life

00:17:36.740 | But I really but not really until we do something with it make something do something the hard is the good I

00:17:45.240 | Think I was about eight

00:17:47.200 | And I remember where I was the exact Street and I was on my bike just pedaling and I remember it hitting me that there

00:17:52.960 | Was a lot going on and I just wanted to do something really hard

00:17:56.920 | So I love this idea

00:17:59.840 | Should resonate with people who have read my book so good

00:18:02.800 | They can't ignore you or have read my new book slow productivity and a particular principle three obsess over quality

00:18:08.400 | I love this idea that the heart is good. It's in the pursuing of something hard and

00:18:13.400 | Making progress in that pursuit that we do gain a lot of our meaning as humans now

00:18:18.120 | We know this from psychology if we look at self-determination theory Ryan and Decky for example

00:18:22.400 | Or they look at what are the elements you need for motivation and thriving psychologically?

00:18:27.400 | one of the big ones there was

00:18:30.040 | mastery

00:18:31.840 | Mastering something and doing something. Well humans really like that. And again, I'm gonna use a lot of these sort of paleolithic

00:18:37.320 | Evolutionary biology just so tales but some of them are so obvious that we can just sort of

00:18:43.000 | Stipulate that they're true

00:18:45.000 | Clearly it's important for our species that mastery felt good

00:18:50.440 | By getting better at hard things is what allowed us to what we call

00:18:55.120 | Biologists would call refine our extended phenotype in other words

00:19:00.760 | Extend what it is

00:19:02.320 | We are able to do in the world beyond just with what physically we have on our body with how we're born not just our arms

00:19:08.400 | And our legs, but we can master throwing spears that extends our phenotype. We can master art that extends our phenotype

00:19:14.200 | We can master language we can master

00:19:16.200 | Strategy all of this this extended phenotype this ability to gain and master new skills throughout life

00:19:23.160 | Is very important to human survival and it feels really good

00:19:26.760 | Now here's a key lesson, right? I mean, this is a podcast about

00:19:30.200 | Navigating the promises and perils of technology and pursuit of a deeper life technology plays a big role in thwarting

00:19:38.760 | The Seinfeld the envision of the heart is good

00:19:41.000 | Technology wants to trick you especially modern consumer facing internet mobile technologies wants to trick you

00:19:47.280 | Into thinking your online activities that these are hard

00:19:51.520 | That you're a cruel of these sort of fake followers online and the retweets means that you're a leader. This was a hard to do

00:19:59.280 | It's not really that your progress in the video game

00:20:01.880 | That you have a higher ranking among the wizards in World of Warcraft command duty, you know, whatever

00:20:08.480 | Means that you've built up skill that gives you respect among your fellow tribe members

00:20:12.200 | But these aren't real people and these skills are easy to learn the games are set up so that you'll make progress on these skills

00:20:16.640 | Regularly, it's made up. So you always feel better like you you just got a glorified participation trophy now

00:20:22.120 | You're even better at shooting digital Nazis on your TV screen in the basement

00:20:25.580 | The digital wants you to think that you're you're angry

00:20:29.720 | rantings on social media versus your perceived

00:20:34.720 | Political or ideological enemies is somehow moving the arc of progress forward that it matters that you're part of the change

00:20:40.320 | What they don't realize is that you're actually on the set of the Truman Show

00:20:43.680 | You're yelling in an empty warehouse and your sound is being bottled and monetized

00:20:48.400 | To help a small number of stockholders these social media companies. You're not changing the world

00:20:52.080 | You're changing the number of zeros on someone like Mark Zuckerberg's annual worth

00:20:58.340 | All right. So technology

00:21:00.960 | survives in part by subverting this

00:21:03.800 | Instinct towards mastery. Don't let it

00:21:06.760 | seek real mastery

00:21:09.720 | Not the low-friction digital kind but real mastery. There's unambiguous stakes and reward where it's hard to make progress, but you know for sure you did

00:21:16.680 | This is a really important part of living a deep life in a technological world

00:21:23.400 | Alright, so let's pull together all four of these lessons from this 10-minute run. This is Barry Weiss

00:21:32.200 | Interview of Jerry Seinfeld. All right, if I was going to summarize

00:21:34.920 | This sort of scripture of Jerry Seinfeld here work hard

00:21:39.440 | Over time on something you care about don't worry about your tools too much

00:21:43.920 | But just put in the work a day after day live in a location that resonates with you

00:21:48.060 | But don't get caught up about having the perfect immediate surroundings just to get started each day put in the hours

00:21:53.640 | The heart is good. All right, Jerry

00:21:56.280 | I know you didn't mean the sort of right and oral self-help manifesto

00:22:00.960 | But you are on to something my friend and I appreciated

00:22:04.820 | your lessons

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00:26:14.360 | Deep. All right. Let's move on now to some questions

00:26:18.280 | All right, Jesse. Who's our first question today? I first questions from Giacomo

00:26:23.840 | Can I take advantage of projects at work to improve my craft or is dedicated outside practice time necessary?

00:26:30.560 | Well jack well, that's an interesting question

00:26:32.680 | And it gets to I think it a key point

00:26:36.760 | I don't really want to say confusion

00:26:38.200 | But it's a little bit of a little bit of a confusion that people have around

00:26:42.160 | Practicing skills, right? So your idea that you're you want to practice skills makes sense

00:26:47.680 | I've been talking about this for a long time that if you have a knowledge work job

00:26:52.200 | And you really want to build up the career capital?

00:26:55.640 | That's going to give you leverage over the the day-to-day reality of your working life. You have to identify

00:26:59.640 | What is it that I do that is most valuable?

00:27:01.800 | unambiguously valuable to my organization or the market and you have to practice and improve that skill systematically and

00:27:08.000 | That's how you get options

00:27:10.000 | That's how you're going to ultimately craft a job. You feel passionate about so Giacomo is asking

00:27:14.640 | When when and how do I practice these skills? No, so here's the confusion. I want to bring up

00:27:19.920 | when we think about practice

00:27:22.520 | What are the types of fields we typically think about we think about musicians we think about?

00:27:27.640 | Chess players we think about athletes, right? We think about the endeavors where we actually

00:27:34.720 | Explicitly talk about practice. We explicitly schedule times for practice

00:27:38.880 | My son plays baseball. He has baseball practices. He goes to

00:27:43.920 | Here's the confusion. Those are really the exception not the norm when it comes to how you build skills this idea that you can have these

00:27:52.160 | abstract

00:27:54.040 | isolated practice sessions

00:27:56.040 | where I'm going to go for example to a baseball field and take grounders and

00:28:00.800 | Work in the cage in this like isolated abstract way so that later when I'm playing baseball. I'll be better or

00:28:06.240 | I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to lift weights because it's going to make

00:28:10.920 | Me faster when I'm on the football field a sort of isolated abstract practice separate from the actual endeavor in which you want to apply it

00:28:18.600 | That is the exception not the rule

00:28:21.320 | So yes, we do that in sports. We do that in

00:28:26.080 | Music we do that for things like chess, but for most endeavors, especially

00:28:29.560 | Complicated cognitive endeavors like almost any skill you'd be improving in knowledge work

00:28:34.680 | For most endeavors you're better off having the actual work itself be your practice

00:28:39.720 | Instead of saying let me do something

00:28:43.080 | Different and hope that the skills I pick up in this abstract practice carry over to my specific work

00:28:50.760 | Let your work itself be the practice

00:28:54.560 | We actually do this and by we

00:28:56.560 | I'm referring here to the the online course that I have with Scott Young called top performer, which we open up once or twice a year

00:29:05.000 | This is a course in which it's based on my book. So good. They can't ignore you

00:29:08.840 | We help you do exactly this deliberately practice your job to get better at it

00:29:12.280 | So you can take control and we're very specific. We've done this course since

00:29:15.400 | 2014 so we've been doing this course for a while. We've learned to be very specific that to practice

00:29:21.960 | The key is to get an active project that your boss knows you're doing that you're being held accountable

00:29:28.320 | That matters the outcome matters that is designed

00:29:32.120 | Very carefully to stretch your skills beyond where you're currently comfortable. Let the actual work itself be your practice session

00:29:38.680 | That's going to be your best bet especially with professional training

00:29:41.640 | Now this is in part just because the stakes are higher like you actually care about this. I have to do this

00:29:46.840 | It's part of my job. I said I'm gonna do this

00:29:49.280 | There's consequences if I don't but it also has to do with the actual mechanisms

00:29:52.880 | You're practicing specifically the thing you want to be better at as opposed to helping hoping that related skills carry over

00:29:58.720 | Right. It's like we hear this sometimes from people. Here's a common example. I hear

00:30:03.280 | Should I do?

00:30:06.000 | meditation or like play a game like chess

00:30:08.680 | So that I get more comfortable with sustained concentration when I'm doing my work and

00:30:16.080 | To that my answer is always the better way to practice

00:30:19.920 | Concentrating on your work is to practice

00:30:23.440 | Concentrating on your work to actually sit there with a stopwatch schedule out the time

00:30:28.880 | We're gonna do 20 minutes at a time until we're comfortable

00:30:31.160 | Then we're gonna do 30 minutes if my attention wanders

00:30:33.840 | I'm gonna stop the clock and I'm gonna start over like it's better to actually practice

00:30:37.840 | Specifically what it feels like to concentrate on specifically what you do for your work

00:30:42.480 | Feeling the specific distractions that are unique to your workplace the slack channels the email than it is to do something unrelated and hope

00:30:49.240 | Concentration skills carry over this carries over for lots of other skills. You want to be a better computer programmer. Don't do Sudoku

00:30:55.920 | Give yourself harder computer programming challenges that makes you harder at it. You want to be a better

00:31:01.000 | writer

00:31:03.600 | Don't do crossword puzzles give yourself increasingly challenging writing assignments for work and really push yourself to meet the bar

00:31:10.920 | So almost always that's going to be the right thing to do

00:31:13.560 | Use your work itself to practice the key is

00:31:16.960 | When finding a work project to double as practice the key is typically two things

00:31:22.480 | Stakes slash accountability like it needs to matter

00:31:25.760 | Someone's going to see this work if it's bad

00:31:29.240 | It's gonna be a problem my boss is waiting for it like you want stakes or accountability and to design the project

00:31:34.960 | This is the hard part, but you have to design it to require you

00:31:40.280 | To stretch your current abilities beyond where you're currently comfortable to succeed

00:31:44.360 | This is why this is hard. Is that it's easy to go too little or too far

00:31:49.320 | It's easy to have a project that doesn't really stretch your abilities

00:31:53.200 | You're not getting much practice from that or to be way too ambitious

00:31:55.840 | Right. So if you're the computer programmer way too easy is like yeah, I'll

00:32:00.440 | I'll write the library calls for the UI and it's something you've done all the time

00:32:04.480 | You can just do this automatically. You're not getting any better. But on the other hand if you say yeah, I'll go through and

00:32:09.840 | I'll rework all the algorithms in a dynamic programming paradigm so that we can you know, cut down our

00:32:15.440 | Asymptotic efficiency here by a linear factor and you don't really know much about dynamic programming that you're gonna be in trouble

00:32:21.280 | So you got to kind of find that sweet spot of like this is like something I know how to do

00:32:26.080 | But I'm pushing it to a higher level

00:32:29.040 | I've written the first drafts of the client reports, but then someone has edited it now

00:32:35.320 | I'm gonna say let me write the full draft, right? So you're pushing yourself not too little not too far

00:32:39.760 | So yes use your activities to get better. You don't need abstract training when it comes to complex cognitive activities like your job

00:32:47.080 | It's hard to believe we're a decade out from so good. They can't ignore you

00:32:51.360 | I have a hard time that was like my first real hardcover idea book

00:32:54.480 | 2012 so it's been

00:32:57.440 | More than a decade that books important because it was my first hardcover idea book

00:33:01.880 | it was I it came out right when I started as a professor right before I had my first kid so like that's such a

00:33:08.440 | Turning point that kicked off an era that I feel like just ended with

00:33:14.640 | Just recently with

00:33:18.200 | Getting full professor I'm out of promotions, right? So I started my professorship there. I'm like out of promotions

00:33:25.960 | My oldest kids going to middle school next year like leaving elementary school like there's all these things sort of symbolically

00:33:31.800 | My writing is at a different level and I don't know it's interesting. There's some sort of period here. That's ending

00:33:38.240 | All right. Who do we got next a fan just sent a a hard copy

00:33:42.040 | Right picture of our old

00:33:45.680 | So good. They can't ignore you like a really worn cover. I saw that. Yeah, I've seen a few of these I

00:33:52.640 | Wonder if this has to do with the inks or something

00:33:56.960 | So, alright, so for people who don't know so good they can't ignore you

00:33:59.400 | I don't have a copy in here to show you I think my copy looks okay out there

00:34:02.560 | Yeah, but it's a it's like a red orange like a very

00:34:05.720 | dominant color

00:34:08.440 | Cover, I've seen a lot of covers people bringing them to get signed and a fan sent it to us as well

00:34:14.860 | Yeah, super faded

00:34:17.360 | When I was up at Dartmouth someone brought me a copy to sign that was like you could barely read it

00:34:22.960 | It was like bleep now. He told me he had left it in the back of his car

00:34:25.720 | So I got a lot of Sun, but I think there's something about the inks in that cover

00:34:30.240 | That it can fade

00:34:32.840 | Something about it. So if you have an unfaded so good, they can't ignore your cover. I guess that's extra rare. Nice. I suppose. Yeah

00:34:39.840 | Alright next question from Sharma

00:34:43.480 | I'm a developer

00:34:45.040 | Software developer, but I also want to become better writer and reader working on both simultaneously would do too much with my current job

00:34:51.560 | Should I focus on reading first?

00:34:53.720 | All right. That's a

00:34:56.680 | That's a good question. Okay, I think that's fine. I

00:35:00.320 | Mean, that's fine. All right. So here's the let me can't make this more general the the the issue here is

00:35:06.960 | Let's get beyond the specific things to Sharma's trying to get better at

00:35:11.640 | she has a few things she wants to get better at and

00:35:14.240 | It feels like pursuing them all at the same time would be too much and what I'm saying is that's fine

00:35:19.820 | Don't pursue them at the same time

00:35:21.820 | There's a principle in here that sort of suffuses my new book slow productivity

00:35:26.720 | which is this idea of

00:35:29.480 | slow, but steady

00:35:31.600 | like what you want to avoid is sort of

00:35:34.160 | Disengagement with your work disengagement with trying to work on something important you want to

00:35:41.520 | avoid sort of long periods of

00:35:43.680 | Full disengagement, but you also want to avoid overload overload is like the one of the central villains of my book

00:35:50.800 | It causes a lot of problems. All right, so yeah do one thing at a time

00:35:54.280 | Because here's the thing. It's all about timescale

00:35:57.520 | If for the next six months you might feel like oh, man

00:36:00.680 | I'm only working on in this case reading but not my writing and I really want to be good at my writing

00:36:05.360 | I wish I was just better at all of them fast forward to six years

00:36:09.440 | Spend some time on your reading spend some time on your writing come back spend a year on your reading spend another year on your

00:36:14.760 | Right fast forward six years like oh, wait, I'm good at both of these things

00:36:17.640 | This is the thing about accomplishment about skill building about endeavors. They aggregate and

00:36:23.040 | Over time you aggregate more and more things I can do more things than I could before I know more things than I did before

00:36:28.560 | I

00:36:29.960 | produced more things than I have before and

00:36:31.960 | Overtime and aggregates, right?

00:36:34.520 | So think about all this on a larger timescale and you can be easier on yourself in the shorter timescale

00:36:39.960 | Back in the day. I used to write about this when I was just dealing with students

00:36:44.140 | I had this phrase for this the paradox of the relaxed Road Scholar

00:36:48.200 | This is of course a much more compressed time frame example, but even among college students. There is this phenomenon

00:36:54.840 | where if you would look at the resumes of

00:36:58.320 | national or international scholarship winners

00:37:02.200 | They seemed sort of impossibly full and I know about this because my very first book how to win at college the whole premise of that

00:37:08.760 | Book is that I interviewed international national scholarship winners

00:37:12.080 | I interviewed

00:37:12.800 | Road scholars and Marshall scholars and Goldberg scholars and a few others and they were the source of the wisdom for how to win at

00:37:18.960 | College, right? So I really got to know these resumes

00:37:21.160 | Students would often be intimidated

00:37:23.240 | They'd read the resume of a Road Scholar and said they did this and they did this and they did that

00:37:27.000 | I couldn't imagine doing all three of those things

00:37:29.760 | But if you talk to the actual Road Scholars, they'd like well, I didn't do them at once

00:37:33.080 | I did this and then I did that and then I did this other thing

00:37:38.680 | And then when we zoom out and look back we say oh my god, you did all these things

00:37:41.520 | I get this in my own life, right because I have this book out about slow productivity and sometimes interviewers will say well

00:37:47.640 | Wait a second, but you do this and you do that and you do this that feels like it would be very busy. How can you

00:37:52.120 | Fulfill your first principle of the book to do fewer things

00:37:55.600 | If like you're writing books and you're doing this and you're doing that and it seems like you would be very busy

00:38:00.920 | What I often say is yeah, but I don't do those things at the same time. I'm very seasonal

00:38:06.760 | Right, if I'm writing a book, I'm not doing other things if I'm working on a lot of academic ideas

00:38:11.280 | I'm not doing other things if I'm promoting a book. I'm not writing a book or working on academic ideas

00:38:14.960 | Everything has its season. I feel like I work at a pretty slow pace in the moment

00:38:20.480 | But when you fast-forward out and said what happens between as we just talked about so good

00:38:25.000 | They can't ignore you in 2012 and slow productivity in

00:38:28.080 | 2024 a lot happened, but I didn't do all of that stuff at the same time. So there's there's a power here

00:38:35.160 | too slow, but steady

00:38:37.160 | Relentless, but reasonable that pacing over time is incredibly powerful. It's like compound interest with money

00:38:43.880 | It's boring this month, but you fast-forward to 10 years and you have a lot more money in your account. It's the same thing

00:38:49.680 | slowly, but steady

00:38:52.680 | Relentlessly, but reasonably you keep making progress on things you don't have long down periods, but you also don't overload yourself

00:38:58.800 | That's where that's kind of the sweet spot. I think for where things really things really stack up

00:39:04.680 | All right, who'd we got next next questions from JJ?

00:39:07.560 | What are your tips for the grind part of studying like getting through massive amounts of practice problems and flashcards?

00:39:13.880 | It feels like more like slogging than flowing. I fall behind even if I take one or two days off

00:39:19.460 | Well, we got first of all a correction to make here be very careful in how you think about flow

00:39:25.080 | and

00:39:26.000 | This was something I got into

00:39:27.680 | With my interview with Andrew Huberman and I think this particular discussion sort of made the rounds because I think it's an important one

00:39:34.480 | Is that I think we?

00:39:36.480 | Over generalize or over apply flow as a desirable goal

00:39:40.200 | All right. So let's be you know, we can set a little bit of context here. What do we mean by flow?

00:39:44.300 | Flow is a specific psychological state

00:39:47.920 | The name was coined and the phenomenon was primarily studied by the late psychologist. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and

00:39:55.080 | The idea about flow is when you're in this state

00:40:00.400 | You lose track of time you get lost in what you're doing. It feels almost effortless

00:40:06.120 | so it's really important and he wrote a cool book about flow and

00:40:10.240 | When we get in when we don't get it and it's a very real state and it's a very nice state

00:40:15.660 | Here's the problem about flow

00:40:17.760 | It's hard to get into and there's a lot of things we do that are cognitively important that

00:40:21.840 | Will not generate flow and we can't expect him to generate flow

00:40:25.880 | So I think there was this over generalization. Not my Haley was not saying this but there's been this over

00:40:30.360 | Generalization of this concept where people feel as if this is the goal of all cognitive work to get in the flow

00:40:35.840 | It is very nice. But there's a lot of stuff you can't get in the flow. So what is one of the

00:40:41.560 | distinct

00:40:43.520 | Cognitive activities that is resistant to flow

00:40:45.760 | Deliberate practice so deliberate practice now. This is named for also now the late

00:40:52.240 | Performance psychologist Anders Erikson deliberate practice is our best understanding about how people get better at

00:40:58.120 | Complicated tasks be them physical or cognitive

00:41:02.280 | It requires you to have a clear target the stretch yourself past where you're comfortable to have clear feedback to make sure that you're directing

00:41:09.520 | Your actions in sort of like the correct way

00:41:11.400 | This is how you stretch

00:41:12.760 | Be it a muscle memory or an actual cognitive concept how you stretch and get smarter how you get better at a particular physical

00:41:18.480 | activity

00:41:20.120 | Anders Erikson was very clear about this. He knew my Haley and you know, I had the privilege of actually talking with both of them

00:41:26.480 | too before

00:41:27.800 | Before they pass I've sort of talked to both of them about this as well

00:41:30.560 | Anders was very clear deliberate practice is different than flow

00:41:33.320 | In fact deliberate practice is the opposite of flow in the sense of you don't lose track of time when you're deliberately

00:41:38.760 | Practicing you feel every you feel every minute. It's really hard. You're stretching yourself past where you're comfortable

00:41:45.760 | That's a really hard thing to do and it requires sustained

00:41:49.680 | Intentional concentration on what you're doing is often not pleasant. You don't get lost in it

00:41:54.760 | it turns out like a better way to

00:41:56.760 | Understand the distinction between deliberate practice and flow is to think about preparation and performance because they often fall along those lines

00:42:03.280 | In my book so good. They can't ignore you

00:42:05.800 | For example, I spent time and I tell the story in the book sitting there with a professional guitar player named Jordan watching him practice

00:42:13.560 | and it was

00:42:14.960 | almost excruciating

00:42:16.760 | like he was so focused on speeding up the speed of the lick that he would forget to breathe and then he would have these

00:42:23.680 | Sudden intakes of breath the sharp gas because his body was thinking we need oxygen because that's how focused he was on trying to

00:42:31.000 | Get the speed faster on what he's doing. That's deliberate practice. He's not lost in what he's doing there

00:42:35.920 | He's every minute is requiring intentional focus

00:42:38.280 | But when that same guitar player got on stage to play and he played at our wedding

00:42:42.400 | And that same guitar player would get on stage to play and perform what he had practiced these hard one skills

00:42:48.080 | Then he could get lost in what he's doing

00:42:50.080 | Then he could get into a state of flow

00:42:52.360 | So deliberate practice is different than flow. Alright, so here's the bad news JJ

00:42:56.920 | Learning new things like you're doing as you talked about here studying from flashcards

00:43:02.720 | That's deliberate practice world

00:43:05.280 | That's you trying to rinse your brain into a new understanding of something

00:43:10.040 | It didn't understand before you are not going to get lost in a flow state learning flashcards

00:43:14.520 | Alright, what can we do about this?

00:43:17.640 | Well, here's how I used to approach this type of work and this is relevant beyond academic work as well for anything that sort of

00:43:23.360 | Deliberate and tedious at the same time, right? So a couple things that matter

00:43:28.240 | One you need to control your time as a student, right?

00:43:31.720 | This is how I'm going to study for this test

00:43:34.600 | I used to recommend that you would in the beginning of your semester find all your major exams put them on your calendar and

00:43:41.640 | Then mark on your calendar way in advance when you were going to create your study plan for that exam

00:43:46.960 | And I would say do this three weeks in advance and when you get to that day you would see it on your calendar

00:43:50.600 | And you're laying out the whole thing putting that time on your calendar. I have three weeks to prepare for this exam

00:43:55.400 | I'm not waiting until hey, what's due tomorrow? Oh my god. I have an exam tomorrow

00:43:59.480 | Let me try to learn all this stuff

00:44:00.920 | You're giving yourself time to spread this out when you spread this out. You can be very strategic about the deliberate practice demanding grind behaviors

00:44:07.880 | Like memorizing things from flashcards, you can make those sessions short. You can make them intense. Let me get in 30 minutes here 30 minutes there

00:44:15.400 | I'm gonna spread this out over a week or two

00:44:17.400 | So that it's much more reasonable than trying to sit down and do it all at once where your brains probably gonna cry uncle at

00:44:22.520 | Some point you're gonna have to give up. I

00:44:24.560 | Also then recommend for the actual activity of learning things from flashcards to make sure that you're doing successive refinement now all these ideas

00:44:32.520 | I'm talking about are actually in my book how to become a straight-a student, but I'll just give you the the cliff notes here

00:44:37.600 | The successive refinement is very simple, but it makes a big difference what you want to do

00:44:41.680 | If you're going through a stack of flashcards

00:44:43.680 | Create two piles

00:44:45.760 | Got it, right got it wrong

00:44:47.760 | Then when you do your next pass just use the pile that you got wrong again

00:44:52.760 | What did I get right? What did I get wrong? So you're successively reducing?

00:44:56.560 | You're refining the things you're looking at to only be the things that up to this point. You've still gotten wrong

00:45:01.280 | It's a very efficient way to go through flashcards because it ensures that the things, you know

00:45:06.040 | Get a minimum of time. I saw it once I knew it

00:45:09.080 | I don't want to look at it again the things you're having the most trouble with you're gonna be seen again and again and again

00:45:13.000 | It's a much more efficient allocation of your deliberate practice concentration than going through the whole stack again and again

00:45:18.600 | I was an art history minor little-known fact about me. That's a lot of memorization

00:45:24.400 | Artist names dates of work you had to memorize that for just hundreds and hundreds of paintings

00:45:29.560 | And this is how this is how I would do it

00:45:31.560 | Alright, so our general point here deliberate practice is different than flow

00:45:35.120 | So you want to be structured and organized you want to schedule this time in advance?

00:45:38.600 | You want to keep the time reasonable and then more specifically you want to do successive refinement during these sort of grind flashcard session

00:45:45.320 | So they don't they don't become too overburdened some

00:45:48.420 | All right, what do we got next? All right next questions from Denny

00:45:53.040 | I have a fledgling YouTube channel in the real estate area. You talk a lot about building your craft

00:45:58.600 | I specifically want to build my craft making YouTube videos. How should I do that?

00:46:02.600 | Well, look, here's my first question. Be sure you really do want to do that

00:46:06.440 | Right YouTube is an interesting beast

00:46:10.080 | It's different. I would say it's different than other even social media products, right? So if you have a business and you're thinking

00:46:18.040 | Look, I want to have a social media presence. I have a presence on Instagram

00:46:22.520 | It kind of helps I can have this audience and it's like people subscribe to it and they can see the things I'm doing

00:46:27.200 | And maybe it helps us get a couple more

00:46:29.840 | Customers or these videos we're doing about like what's happening with the house prices might get sold

00:46:34.600 | YouTube is even more brutal than that, right because you can have as a

00:46:39.640 | As a real estate, I guess you're probably like a real estate agent or something

00:46:44.400 | You can have like an Instagram account

00:46:47.280 | That the people who follow it they're coming to follow it. They sort of know you people are used to this

00:46:53.200 | There's an interpersonal aspect as social media. I live in the same town

00:46:57.000 | I I was looking for houses in this town and I found this there's more of this regionalization the social localization

00:47:03.640 | You can have like a nice size audience

00:47:05.180 | That's actually like maybe a reasonable audience and some good stuff might come out of it

00:47:08.520 | YouTube is way more winner-take-all

00:47:10.520 | Right. We don't have that same habit of there's someone like in my town that has a YouTube channel

00:47:16.800 | I'm gonna go subscribe and watch their videos in the way that like with social media we might

00:47:20.200 | Right. So then what happens with YouTube?

00:47:23.120 | It's algorithmic driven curation, which means your videos will be watched by approximately nobody

00:47:29.900 | unless you can have all of the pieces that have to be in place to play well with the audience and algorithm and

00:47:36.720 | Then an audience can build but it's unclear even what that audience will be. Even if you want them. It's a very complicated world

00:47:42.360 | So here's what you would have to do. First of all, let's talk about the actual content itself. It has to be super compelling

00:47:49.560 | because it has to be something that makes someone say I'm gonna sit here and keep watching this video if they don't do that the

00:47:56.160 | Algorithm is gonna say goodbye. It doesn't matter what you do, right? So it has to be very compelling which means either

00:48:03.000 | You have to you have to promise something really big up front and really deliver it

00:48:07.260 | Or the content itself has to be really unique and deep and something that you're you're well-suited to deliver

00:48:13.240 | The delivery itself has to be just right you have sort of like two options for YouTube delivery

00:48:17.960 | Either you have to do the YouTube editing style like you would see personified in a mr

00:48:22.400 | beast video where it's cut every 10 to 12 seconds so that like it moves moves moves moves moves and the viewer is

00:48:27.040 | Never has that moment of boredom in which they'll leave it or you have to be a professional talker

00:48:32.280 | Right, so you can do what like Andrew Huberman does or I do but we're professional talkers, right?

00:48:36.920 | And we're coming from a place of authority. I've been you know, the public eye writing for a long time

00:48:42.560 | I've sold millions of books. I you know, I can speak for a long period of time

00:48:46.280 | You're either a professional talker. You have to do that YouTube editing, right?

00:48:49.320 | These are all just table stakes then you got to get all the details, right?

00:48:52.560 | You know like one of the things we have a YouTube guy who does our thumbnails and does our headlines

00:49:00.400 | I've gotten a little bit more involved in the headlines

00:49:02.600 | I was like, I want to make these a little bit more accurate a little bit less YouTube II

00:49:05.920 | That these little tweaks that's 10,000 views gone right away

00:49:09.880 | Like these little things matter a huge amount and if any of these things aren't done, right like nothing works

00:49:15.560 | So I don't want to scare you away from this. I just don't want you to waste your time

00:49:19.200 | Like if you have a play here, I have a super unique super compelling thing to do

00:49:23.440 | I can make these videos super compelling

00:49:26.160 | but like an audience feels like they have to keep watching and I'm willing to do all the right work with the thumbnails and the

00:49:32.200 | Headlines that this could grow but then even then you have to say is the audience that it's going to grow going to be useful

00:49:37.760 | For what I'm doing

00:49:39.200 | This is different than other social media where you can build a more localized regionalized audience. I think it gets more directly to

00:49:44.480 | The you know, hey, I want people in this town

00:49:47.360 | To encounter me and you know, we're giving the housing report for this neighborhood like that can work on Instagram

00:49:53.200 | It's not gonna work as well on YouTube. I don't know what Jesse is that you've been seeing the other end of this

00:49:57.480 | It might be a little bit too pessimistic or no, I agree with you. Yeah, it's pretty brutal. Yeah. Yeah

00:50:02.760 | I think for us what we like is

00:50:04.760 | It's there's a segment of audience that I want this to get to that. I don't think we're reaching with the audio

00:50:10.200 | It's like we have a very specific reason

00:50:12.320 | There's a sort of a younger band of an audience

00:50:14.320 | That we can we can get to with YouTube and then we have the secondary reason that I do think video is going to be

00:50:19.640 | Critical for shows like this in the future. I don't think through YouTube necessarily but video delivery is going to be critical

00:50:25.800 | And so we want to make sure we're good at it

00:50:28.240 | So sort of like when the time comes like oh, here's this network this app this video network

00:50:33.360 | Whatever, however this unfolds we want to make sure that we're good at it

00:50:36.480 | But if I just had a small business and I really want to be online, I would look at other social media before YouTube

00:50:41.180 | All right. Who do we got next? We have our corner slow productivity corner. Here we go. Let's hear some music

00:50:49.760 | So

00:50:51.760 | Daniel has to say you have mentioned something to the effect that after getting tenor and after your kids were in school

00:51:03.680 | It became more relevant to think about getting setting a sustainable pace for your work

00:51:07.760 | I am just starting as an assistant professorship at an r1 institution and have a 16 month year old

00:51:13.440 | Can you comment on the mindset you applied to productivity as an assistant professor and how it relates to and differs from the slow productivity mindset?

00:51:20.880 | All right. Good question for those who don't know the slow productivity corner is the one question per episode that we think is

00:51:27.140 | Directly connected to my new book slow productivity, which you should check out if you haven't seen it

00:51:32.660 | alright, so what Daniel is referring to so he's a

00:51:35.000 | Let me decode everything briefly for the audience

00:51:38.200 | Assistant professorship at r1 institution in the US system r1 institution means you're it's a Carnegie ranking

00:51:45.400 | But it basically means categorization, but it means you're a research institution. So it's a professorship

00:51:49.200 | If you have a professorship at an r1 University

00:51:52.900 | It's you're expected to produce a lot of research research will be the foundation on which ten-year decisions will be made

00:51:59.080 | Assistance professorship is the first level of professorship in the American system. So when you start as a professor, you're an assistant professor

00:52:06.520 | Typically associate professor is the promotion you get along with 10-year and then later there's full professorship

00:52:13.200 | Okay, and I've talked about how like this stage of my life. I'm in the third stage as a professor

00:52:19.200 | There's my assistant professor stage. There's my post 10-year associate professor stage. And now I've just entered the full professor stage

00:52:25.280 | as Daniel pointed out when I was an assistant professor, I had a lot of young young kids was sort of the

00:52:33.040 | What was going on right because my I think I there's babies around for like all of my assistant professorship

00:52:39.360 | I became an assistant professor in

00:52:41.360 | 2012 that fall my first kid was born. My second kid was born in

00:52:47.560 | 2014

00:52:49.400 | And then I got tenure in 2016. So I always had someone within two years of birth

00:52:55.000 | All right. So here's the things I did differently in that period Daniel as compared to now or other times

00:53:00.800 | One I was certainly very careful about time block planning and fixed schedule productivity meaning

00:53:06.560 | These are the hours I have to work

00:53:08.640 | I have to make the most of them right because the the child care schedule made anything else impossible

00:53:14.000 | We were working

00:53:16.800 | With a nanny at that period so there's a lot of like hey, you gotta be home at this time

00:53:22.680 | This is when the nanny has to go home

00:53:25.000 | Right, like you can't be working at this time because the nanny won't be there yet

00:53:29.480 | And you know your your wife has to go early here. And so the schedule was everything and limited hours

00:53:36.960 | I had to make the most of those hours

00:53:39.040 | So this was I was really big on time block planning like really thinking through what do I want to do with each day?

00:53:43.360 | To get the most out of it. The other thing I did during the young kid early tenure period is I simplified

00:53:49.400 | I was like, okay

00:53:51.440 | professional goal one two and three

00:53:53.440 | Papers published in good venues to get a lot of citations. That's everything for tenure, right?

00:53:59.440 | Confidential letter writers from the field evaluating your research productivity. That's what I focused on

00:54:05.840 | To the exclusion of almost everything else. I wasn't launching a lot of other endeavors a lot of other ideas

00:54:12.280 | I wasn't starting initiatives on campus like the type of things I'm involved in now with digital ethics and starting new programs and none of that

00:54:18.480 | super focused

00:54:20.920 | This is why I had strict quotas on academic service

00:54:25.000 | Only this many program committees and this many peer reviews will I do per semester because I had the focus on research above all else

00:54:31.120 | You definitely see this in my general audience book writing. So I had a book come out in 2012 right before my first kid was born

00:54:38.200 | That whole assistant professor period

00:54:40.640 | Four or five years. I published one book

00:54:43.440 | the deep work

00:54:45.720 | So you could there's this year the first two years of my first kids life

00:54:50.440 | I did zero writing altogether because I was like I've got to take care of this kid and I got to publish papers and then

00:54:55.560 | I slowly wrote one book

00:54:57.560 | During that period and that's it

00:54:59.800 | Right, so I deeply simplified during that period

00:55:03.480 | Post ten year and as my kids got a little bit older this sort of began to get some breathing room

00:55:08.720 | I wasn't on the treadmill of like I if I don't get this many papers

00:55:12.000 | I'm not gonna get ten year and things do change Daniel, but I think that's a good way to think about it

00:55:15.820 | Be very careful about your time. Here's the hours. I have to work. I want to make the most of them

00:55:20.400 | Be very protective about your time what you agree to do keep first things first, which is publishing papers that matter

00:55:26.560 | Low profile just publishing is what matters keep your life simple

00:55:31.220 | Just when you're working make that what you're working on as much as possible be very effective efficient with your time during work

00:55:37.000 | And if you do that, then it works out, but I'm not working. I'm not working and I'm you know

00:55:42.200 | Taking care of kids and all the other stuff that comes with that period it can work out

00:55:46.520 | But you got to focus you got to simplify you got to take care of your time as carefully as possible

00:55:51.000 | I'll tell you when it's all going to go down the drain is when that kid well 16 month old

00:55:56.040 | Yeah, once they start going to preschool because then you're gonna be sick half the year

00:56:00.000 | But that's a you'll see that soon enough Daniel learn how to work when you have a cold

00:56:04.280 | All right. Let's let's do a quick case study here

00:56:06.880 | This comes from M

00:56:09.760 | M says

00:56:12.160 | Professionally, I use your ideas to plan my next career move within my organization in the foreign service

00:56:17.560 | We rotate assignments every two to three years and I had a feeling a bit burnt

00:56:21.800 | Oh, I had been feeling a bit burnt out with my current position and not motivated to start looking for my next job

00:56:27.840 | Using your lifestyle centric planning. I set criteria for the type of positions. I would target

00:56:33.980 | I wanted to move back to DC and avoid positions involving emergency or after-hours duties

00:56:38.800 | I had accepted that this could be a career detour and not great for my promotion

00:56:42.800 | But to my surprise, I found many intriguing positions that matched my criteria last month

00:56:47.640 | I happily accepted an offer at the State Department's Diplomatic Training Institute. I'll be leading a medium-sized team

00:56:53.120 | So it'll still be a substantive role, but it offers an element of seasonality flexibility and hopefully no after-hours

00:56:58.640 | Emergency. All right, so we get a good example there of lifestyle centric planning

00:57:03.640 | We talked about this last week in last week's deep dive

00:57:07.080 | You're not going to build a deep meaningful intentional life just by pursuing a singular grand goal

00:57:12.320 | That'll fix all your problems. You got to figure out directly. What are all the elements of the lifestyle?

00:57:16.940 | I want and then flexibly think about all of your options for taking advantage of opportunities and avoiding obstacles to move closer to that vision

00:57:24.720 | It's not as sexy as saying I have this big goal that will fix everything

00:57:28.200 | But by looking directly and identifying directly

00:57:31.840 | These are the parts of my life and what I want them to be like you come across really interesting solutions

00:57:36.400 | That make your day-to-day existence more meaningful and intentional. So that is a great example

00:57:41.520 | All right, we got a cool final segment coming up. But first briefly, I want to hear share a word from another one of our sponsors

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00:58:44.120 | I know use it to try to quickly get the lay of the land of interesting topic areas

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01:01:09.520 | All right. Let's move on to our final segment. I

01:01:12.960 | Will just bring this down to our final segment where I typically like to react to something. I

01:01:19.760 | Have encountered over the internet in the past week now this week instead of reacting to a specific article or a specific

01:01:28.320 | clip

01:01:30.120 | I'm going to react to a particular internet

01:01:34.400 | figure and

01:01:36.000 | Spoiler alert there is going to be an apology for me at the end of this reaction

01:01:40.920 | All right. So who's the figure I want to talk about the youtuber James Scholl's

01:01:45.560 | S-c-h-o-l

01:01:48.480 | Z now, let me give you a little bit of background on how my path has

01:01:53.440 | Intersected with that of James Soules since I chose since I talked a lot about

01:01:59.480 | Productivity typically in the context of trying to push back against digital distraction, but I talk about productivity

01:02:06.200 | I have a book out that has productivity in the title. I'm often asked in interviews about hustle culture and

01:02:12.120 | The dangers of hustle culture. So this seems to be this this big

01:02:16.520 | Concern is that everyone is subscribed to hustle culture and this is a bad thing

01:02:24.040 | Now I often got a little bit confused about this, right?

01:02:27.400 | Because what would happen is someone would read something like Oliver Berkman's fantastic book 4,000 weeks

01:02:32.120 | Which is about life being short and there's only so much you can get done and it's really good meaningful pragmatic philosophical reflections

01:02:37.940 | but they'll read something like 4,000 weeks and they'll say finally a

01:02:41.880 | Book that's pushing back against hustle culture and this idea that you can get everything done and you should do more

01:02:49.480 | Finally and I would always be confused because I said look I've been a professional book writer for the last 20 years

01:02:54.720 | Where are these books that are saying something different?

01:02:58.120 | What are the what are the best-selling?

01:03:00.720 | productivity books quote-unquote of the

01:03:03.640 | 2010s it's

01:03:05.640 | essentialism

01:03:06.720 | About doing fewer things. It's a deep work about doing fewer things. It's one thing right about doing fewer things

01:03:14.600 | It's it's Oliver's book itself 4,000 weeks go back to the 2000s you get Tim Ferriss. How do we stop working so much?

01:03:21.680 | How do we work less? How do we have more vacations?

01:03:24.520 | We get David Allen's getting things done, which is not about getting more things done

01:03:28.080 | But trying to survive the onslaught of work so that at least you can find some peace

01:03:33.040 | It's the opposite of a call to get things done. So I would always say I don't know what this hustle culture is where it is

01:03:39.640 | That we're so afraid of so then people would say what's online

01:03:43.100 | It's like okay. I don't know the online world as much. I don't use social media

01:03:47.260 | I'm not a big person. I don't spend a lot of time on YouTube

01:03:50.880 | My podcast if you're watching it now is produced put on YouTube, but I don't spend a lot of time on YouTube

01:03:55.920 | It's like okay, maybe there's this hustle culture out there on

01:03:58.880 | Line and that's what people are talking about

01:04:01.400 | And this is where I first heard the example of James Scholes because in the first year of the pandemic what James did famously

01:04:09.120 | Was basically every day for a year

01:04:11.560 | would record himself a live stream himself studying

01:04:15.720 | Not for 20 minutes not for an hour, but often 10 11 12 hours at a time

01:04:20.760 | He's just sitting there in his apartment

01:04:22.840 | Studying usually Pomodoro style 50 minutes on 10 minutes off or hour on 10 minutes off

01:04:28.600 | He'd do a little bit of narration the breaks, but it's really just him

01:04:30.740 | just studying

01:04:33.440 | People would tune in they would study with them and you can still see all these videos on the James Scholes his

01:04:38.320 | original

01:04:39.560 | YouTube channel

01:04:41.080 | And so I was like, okay

01:04:42.280 | Yeah

01:04:42.440 | maybe that's that's our good example of hustle culture like the guy that like studies for 12 hours at a time because look I wrote some

01:04:47.740 | Books about how to study when I was young and the right way to study is the opposite of studying for 12 hours at a

01:04:52.800 | Time that's that's just gonna burn you out. I was like that maybe that's hustle culture. I just sort of used James as a

01:04:57.960 | Canonical example of like yeah online there's this hustle culture thing

01:05:02.280 | But those of us who are writing books about it and we're thinking about this more

01:05:06.120 | Expansively, I wasn't the only one to make those connections. I'm gonna read a couple quotes here from an article from 2022

01:05:12.500 | About James, I won't link to the article because I don't like the non-famous writers

01:05:18.000 | I don't like to throw under the bus, but let me just read some quotes from this article about James

01:05:22.800 | it talks about

01:05:25.480 | Watching a lot of James then getting disillusioned. So the article says

01:05:30.160 | Yet another part of me felt disappointed that this had become my measurement of time

01:05:34.440 | Well spent ceaseless hours in a brightly lit room staring at a screen whilst listening to YouTube videos boredom

01:05:40.080 | Begin to feel like the culmination of many things that had been brewing in my mind about productivity the hustle and what it all meant

01:05:47.000 | This article goes on to say lots of nice things about Oliver Berkman

01:05:51.240 | Let me see. I have a couple other quotes. I want to read from towards the end

01:05:55.800 | Productivity gives the false impression that we can do everything we want. We can become an all-conquering person never again subcoming to the limitedness

01:06:02.480 | Limitedness that time imposes upon you but this is simply not right the day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control

01:06:10.520 | Berkman writes later. This author says having everything under control is the glistening of the productivity diamond

01:06:16.780 | We're constantly attempting to master time to channel ourselves into a position of dominance and control

01:06:21.480 | Over unfolding lives so that we might finally feel safe and secure and no longer so vulnerable to events

01:06:26.920 | Protection from vulnerability is now learning but impossible

01:06:29.800 | state

01:06:32.080 | So James Schultz represents this hustle culture that has an unobtainable

01:06:36.680 | Belief of like what's possible through productivity? Okay

01:06:40.660 | Here's the thing. I recently went down more of a rabbit hole on James. I listened to some interviews with him

01:06:49.240 | and listen to him talk about

01:06:51.240 | himself and why he did these videos and

01:06:53.680 | I no longer think it is correct to make him the patron saint of hustle culture. I

01:07:00.320 | Don't think that's what he's doing at all. Let's look back to this discussion of hustle culture again from this article

01:07:06.240 | What are the properties they point out about hustle culture?

01:07:09.320 | It's about the impression. You can get everything you want. You can be all-conquering

01:07:14.040 | You'll never succumb to the limitlessness of time that you can have everything under control

01:07:18.200 | You're caught you can master your times. You can channel yourself to a position of dominance. Where is that in?

01:07:24.120 | The quiet video of James Schultz just sitting there studying all day long

01:07:29.640 | Where is he talking about you can get everything done? Where is he talking about you can have full control over your life?

01:07:34.840 | Where is he saying you can get into a position of dominance and I will show you how he barely talks

01:07:41.160 | He just sits there and he quietly studies

01:07:44.040 | So what is really going on with James Schultz? Well as becomes clear if you listen to some interviews with him

01:07:49.880 | He is not promoting to people that

01:07:52.340 | What he is doing this extreme is somehow

01:07:56.280 | Something that everyone else should be doing that people should be studying for 12 hours. Trust me

01:08:00.480 | I wrote books about studying you don't have enough stuff to study for 12 hours

01:08:03.440 | I don't know what he was studying for 12 hours. That was not the goal of these videos. They had two purposes

01:08:08.560 | One small one big the small purpose was to be live

01:08:12.160 | This was early pandemic

01:08:14.800 | Many places were in current lockdowns

01:08:17.360 | Right, so people were stuck at home and in particular students were stuck at home learning online

01:08:22.380 | So he was offering this idea that whenever it was you happen to be studying

01:08:26.640 | You could go and this live stream was probably going on and you wouldn't feel alone

01:08:30.840 | It's not a video that someone recorded before of studying

01:08:34.760 | He would be studying when you needed to study other people would be watching him

01:08:37.960 | You could see how many people are watching them. It was creating a sense of digital community

01:08:41.160 | So why was he studying 12 hours to make sure he covered as much of the day as possible?

01:08:47.040 | so as many people as possible who we're gonna study for an hour that day would have a chance of

01:08:52.440 | Being able to intersect with this ongoing live stream. I think that was the small reason right not you should study 12 hours

01:08:58.600 | But to make sure whatever hour you do study, there's a good chance. My live stream will be going on

01:09:03.360 | The bigger version here though is I think this is an exemplar of something we've seen in other areas of well

01:09:08.480 | We could call it these sort of monastic prototype

01:09:11.060 | where there's a there's an issue that's afflicting a

01:09:14.560 | population and the monastic

01:09:17.360 | Right the monastic of this example

01:09:19.880 | Goes in in a very public and showy way does the opposite to an extreme

01:09:24.360 | not because the monastic thinks that the whole population should have an aesthetic lifestyle and

01:09:30.960 | Move to the caves and meditate under the tree all day

01:09:34.040 | But to make the point clear

01:09:36.800 | That what they are doing is hurting them and there's power in the opposite, right? So the monastic

01:09:43.600 | Removes themselves from everyday life and does things to an extreme so those who are still in everyday life can find and draw inspiration. I

01:09:51.280 | Think this is another big part of what James Schultz is doing again. He's talking to other young people

01:09:57.640 | He was young when he did this he was aiming these videos largely at students

01:10:01.320 | They were finding their lives overcome with distraction procrastination. They were stuck at home. They're on their phones all the time and

01:10:08.400 | It was a dark and bleak

01:10:11.160 | Sort of soul-sapping existence

01:10:12.880 | I saw this among my own students at Georgetown is that first year the pandemic wound on is that you could see the light going?

01:10:17.800 | Out of their eyes. They're just stuck at home. And so he went hard the other way. I'm not gonna look at my phone

01:10:22.240 | I'm gonna use retro equipment. He had these old-fashioned computers retro equipment

01:10:26.560 | And I'm just gonna sit here and concentrate for hours all day long and in doing so I'm going to sort of make the point

01:10:32.240 | That there's power in the opposite of what you're doing

01:10:34.240 | So there's power in the opposite of staring at a screen and being lost in an algorithmic rabbit hole. It was a monastic behavior

01:10:40.240 | we see this play out a lot in the Internet age the Internet age has

01:10:43.400 | Made this type of monastic behavior this inspiring monastic behavior more common another example

01:10:49.160 | Internet age example David Goggins

01:10:53.080 | Right. David Goggins is a character that for those who don't understand

01:10:57.280 | What he's responding to he's mystifying right Goggins has this very hard upbringing

01:11:03.640 | Really hard troubled childhood

01:11:07.200 | Grows up a little bit out of shape right going nowhere and gets his act together eventually becomes a Navy SEAL right getting after it Navy SEAL

01:11:15.840 | leaves Navy SEALs and starts doing in a sort of

01:11:20.560 | documented online sort of way just extreme feats of

01:11:23.840 | endurance athletics

01:11:26.600 | Extreme feet ultra marathons running every day

01:11:29.440 | He got the record for most pull-ups in a 24-hour period these type of things

01:11:34.600 | He started making these videos and then this would spread he began becoming a guest on a lot of

01:11:40.760 | Podcasts that has sort of male audiences where he was just saying, you know, hey get hard be disciplined. Just do it

01:11:47.080 | You got to get out there. Just do hard work

01:11:48.560 | He's puzzling to a lot of people like this guy's crazy

01:11:51.200 | Like he is a little bit crazy. I'm just like obsessive doing the physical activity all day long

01:11:56.880 | To like the point of almost nothing else his knees had been completely destroyed like his body is probably falling apart

01:12:02.680 | Like what's the point of this? We're not gonna no one's gonna go and do this

01:12:05.480 | I'm not gonna run a hundred miles like twice a week. I'm not going to you know, do a thousand pull-ups

01:12:11.880 | I'm not going to just run around and curse and say get hard like I have a family do other sorts of things

01:12:15.640 | But that was not the port-a-goggins. He was monastic. He was responding to there was a subset of sort of American Western male culture

01:12:22.680 | That was feeling

01:12:24.520 | Unengaged was feeling on efficacious was feeling sort of out of shape and useless. They were drinking too much

01:12:30.080 | They were out eating too bad food. They weren't being good fathers. They weren't being good husbands, but they were sort of lacking discipline and

01:12:38.720 | So seeing this extreme monastic aesthetic example of discipline was inspiring for that subset of guys

01:12:44.360 | It confused everyone else but for them they didn't go off and do the same elite

01:12:48.160 | Endurance athletic events, but they got in better shape. They got their finances under control. They became better fathers

01:12:54.480 | They cared more about their kids and their family. They stopped drinking right? It really turned a lot of lives around

01:12:58.640 | So when you do this sort of extreme example of something that's in reaction to a problem

01:13:04.440 | It really helps other people leave the problem. That's all I think is going on with James Schultz. It's just for a younger audience

01:13:10.000 | So I think I was wrong. I think others are wrong to label him as a paragon of hustle culture is really the opposite

01:13:16.560 | He is actually a prophet or saint or monastic in the digital era

01:13:21.840 | From the young generation speaking to the young generation. Don't be lost in your phones all day

01:13:26.800 | There be dragons and I'm going to sit outside decay for hours at a time. So you learn how to resist it

01:13:35.380 | So that's an apology at James Schultz. He's a much more rich interesting cultural

01:13:39.220 | Character and I think we made him out to be

01:13:41.920 | So I'm still searching. I'm still searching for the core of hustle culture. I need another example now

01:13:48.360 | Again, it really does feel like almost everyone I talked to even people who are really in this world of productivity

01:13:55.440 | They want to be organized but typically because they don't like the stress of being disorganized

01:13:58.860 | They're often worried about doing too many things

01:14:02.380 | They want to be good at what they do, you know, but we're the the group out there. That's really pushing

01:14:08.440 | I have the hack that's going to allow you to conquer everything in the world

01:14:13.380 | That group wherever they are needs to be louder because I'm not running into them a lot and I think that's a good thing

01:14:18.700 | But anyways James, I think what you did was cool and interesting and as much performance art as it was anything else

01:14:24.300 | And so, you know my hat actually now is tipped to you

01:14:27.380 | All right. That's all the time we have for today. Thank you for tuning in

01:14:31.520 | We'll be back next week with another episode of the show and until then as always

01:14:36.280 | Stay deep. Hey, if you like today's episodes about Jerry Seinfeld's advice for living a deeper life

01:14:43.340 | I think you'll like last week's episode episode 303 where I talk about the danger of trying to use

01:14:49.100 | Grand goals to find depth spoiler alert. It doesn't work. Take Jerry's advice instead. Check it out

01:14:56.260 | I think you'll enjoy it. How do you create a

01:14:59.500 | Deep life a life that is lived on purpose a life that the people who know you find to be in a quite

01:15:07.460 | literal sense

Jerry Seinfeld's Unexpected Advice On Productivity & Cultivating A Deep Life | Cal Newport

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