2023-04-13_The_21st_Century_Superpower_That_Will_Radically_Increase_Your_Earnings_and

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00:00:30.620 | The holidays start here at Ralph's

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00:00:59.900 | - Hey friends, quick ad as we begin.

00:01:01.900 | Today is Friday, April 13.

00:01:03.740 | As of this recording, I have 18 consulting slots left.

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00:01:30.060 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:01:31.300 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:01:32.940 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:01:34.900 | to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:01:37.000 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:01:38.460 | in 10 years or less.

00:01:39.660 | My name is Josh Rasheeds, I'm your host.

00:01:41.360 | Today I wanna share with you some ideas

00:01:43.400 | on the importance of cultivating a super skill

00:01:48.240 | that will lead you and your children to success.

00:01:52.580 | Anybody who's been listening to the show

00:01:54.120 | in an up-to-date manner knows

00:01:55.500 | that I have been going through a series

00:01:57.380 | called How to Invest in Your Children at a Very Early Age.

00:02:00.960 | And the basic premise of this series is simply,

00:02:03.740 | there are many things that you can do

00:02:05.040 | to invest into your children

00:02:07.000 | so that they have a high capacity

00:02:10.200 | as they pass into adolescence and into young adulthood.

00:02:14.680 | And I believe that these investments,

00:02:16.740 | these things that you can do,

00:02:18.340 | are a worthy source of our attention and of our money.

00:02:22.840 | And so far I've been talking about investing

00:02:25.720 | into their bodies and investing into their minds.

00:02:27.640 | And I've done, I would say half a dozen shows now

00:02:30.380 | on how to enhance the intelligence of your children.

00:02:34.280 | Because if you want smart kids, you can do that.

00:02:37.540 | You can cultivate smart children.

00:02:39.760 | You can cultivate intelligent children.

00:02:42.000 | It's not an accident.

00:02:43.240 | Whatever the baseline genetic potential

00:02:45.320 | that your children have,

00:02:47.040 | that's something that can be cultivated

00:02:48.760 | with intentionality on your part as a parent.

00:02:53.760 | But being smart is not enough.

00:02:57.080 | It's not enough for you or me to simply be smart.

00:03:03.040 | And it's not enough for our children to be smart.

00:03:08.000 | Simply being smart will not cause your children

00:03:12.840 | to be financially successful.

00:03:15.080 | It will not cause your children to be successful at work.

00:03:17.780 | There are other skills that are associated with this.

00:03:21.080 | Now, while this topic is related to intelligence,

00:03:23.520 | I'm probably not gonna label this

00:03:25.360 | as connected to that series.

00:03:28.800 | You feel free to listen to this

00:03:30.120 | through the eyes of investing in your children if you like.

00:03:33.160 | But I wanna talk to you, you, someone who is not a child.

00:03:38.160 | Because what I'm going to share with you in this podcast

00:03:44.880 | is a core foundational,

00:03:48.160 | it's a foundation of you taking the intelligence

00:03:52.540 | that you have and turning it into success.

00:03:55.940 | See, this lines up with another long-held belief I have had,

00:03:59.420 | which is simply that financial products

00:04:02.280 | don't generally cause people to be financially independent.

00:04:07.280 | It's everything else that causes people

00:04:09.520 | to be financially independent.

00:04:11.140 | And the financial products come in at the end of the line.

00:04:14.900 | In the almost 10 years I've been doing this podcast,

00:04:17.620 | I've been saying that financial advisors

00:04:19.560 | are very good at helping rich people stay rich

00:04:22.060 | and get richer,

00:04:23.400 | but they're not good at helping poor people get rich.

00:04:27.760 | Quite simply, because you can't get rich

00:04:30.320 | with a financial product.

00:04:31.440 | You have to get rich with work,

00:04:33.560 | with income, with smart decisions.

00:04:36.280 | So how do we do that?

00:04:39.460 | Well, you could talk about skills.

00:04:41.160 | I have other podcasts devoted to developing

00:04:44.520 | highly compensated skills,

00:04:46.560 | skills that the marketplace values.

00:04:48.800 | We could talk about action and activity.

00:04:51.000 | That's exceedingly important.

00:04:52.320 | At the end of the day,

00:04:53.160 | setting goals doesn't actually cause you to be successful.

00:04:57.280 | Reading doesn't cause you to be successful.

00:04:59.640 | Learning doesn't cause you to be successful.

00:05:01.960 | It's the application of those things,

00:05:04.620 | the activities that you do.

00:05:07.140 | It's the action that matters.

00:05:08.620 | If we could just only measure action and action alone,

00:05:12.960 | then we would know how to cause your financial success.

00:05:17.960 | Why are people fat?

00:05:21.280 | They're not fat due to lack of knowledge.

00:05:23.640 | They're fat due to lack of action,

00:05:26.840 | exercise and eating habits.

00:05:30.480 | Why are people poor?

00:05:32.760 | They're not poor due to lack of knowledge.

00:05:35.920 | They're poor due to lack of action.

00:05:39.000 | So I could aim this entire podcast in that direction,

00:05:44.580 | in the direction of you, you're taking action.

00:05:47.400 | And someday, maybe I will.

00:05:48.660 | I have other shows on this topic.

00:05:50.880 | But today I want to talk about one of those things

00:05:53.820 | that is related to intelligence

00:05:56.340 | that can either be a resource,

00:06:02.640 | a catalyst that helps you to take lots of action,

00:06:06.840 | or something that keeps you from taking action.

00:06:10.520 | That topic is attention span.

00:06:16.200 | Your ability to pay attention

00:06:21.960 | is something that you must evaluate,

00:06:28.680 | measure, and enhance or grow.

00:06:33.680 | If you do everything that I've talked about

00:06:38.920 | to help your children be very intelligent,

00:06:43.520 | if you do the things I have talked about

00:06:45.280 | to help you be intelligent,

00:06:47.980 | but you do not simultaneously exercise the discipline

00:06:54.000 | necessary to enhance attention span,

00:06:58.480 | you will be limited in your actual application

00:07:01.640 | of intelligence to action.

00:07:04.780 | And that's a horrific state to be in.

00:07:08.120 | What a pain to go through all the work

00:07:12.480 | of developing a giant, powerful brain,

00:07:16.080 | and then have that brain's output and usefulness

00:07:20.320 | limited by the inability to pay attention.

00:07:23.500 | Think of it like this.

00:07:24.760 | Imagine that you had access

00:07:26.260 | to a mainframe supercomputer,

00:07:29.240 | running the latest, greatest AI software

00:07:32.160 | that has access to all of the resource of the internet

00:07:34.920 | at its fingertips.

00:07:37.040 | And yet your ability to access that computer

00:07:41.440 | comes only through a dial-up modem.

00:07:44.760 | Remember those?

00:07:45.840 | A dial-up modem.

00:07:47.060 | The brain is there, the computer is there,

00:07:50.100 | the computer is running great software,

00:07:52.240 | but you can't get all of the fullness of its capacity

00:07:56.180 | because you're limited to this tiny,

00:07:59.120 | horrifically slow internet connection.

00:08:01.080 | You'll get something, but it's deeply limited.

00:08:04.660 | Every step you could take up the wireless pathway

00:08:11.440 | to go from a dial-up modem to some sort of faster access,

00:08:16.000 | up to a direct fiber optic connection to the computer

00:08:20.800 | through the internet,

00:08:21.720 | up to directly plugging into the computer,

00:08:23.920 | speeds, speeds, speeds your ability

00:08:25.600 | and allows you to tap into the potential

00:08:30.520 | of that massive, powerful computer.

00:08:33.520 | And this is how I think of our attention span.

00:08:36.240 | Our attention span is basically the connection

00:08:41.240 | that we have to our computer.

00:08:42.640 | How long can we access that computer

00:08:44.960 | and how long can we then direct it

00:08:47.560 | in the direction that we want it to go?

00:08:50.240 | If you have a powerful brain,

00:08:52.400 | Just like if you have a powerful computer, and you ask it a really important question,

00:08:59.640 | then that powerful brain can give you a glimmer of insight or answer a question very, very

00:09:05.740 | quickly, but it would be better to have a tremendous connection to a less powerful computer,

00:09:16.340 | but a connection that you could just ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask,

00:09:19.760 | the best questions and get the best results out of it.

00:09:22.440 | Think like, again, think chat GPT is a great metaphor for us to use.

00:09:26.440 | You could just ask it everything, and it could give you everything, and it could boom, fast,

00:09:29.200 | fast, fast.

00:09:30.200 | It'd be better to have a high-speed connection to a less powerful computer than a very limited

00:09:35.280 | connection to the most powerful computer.

00:09:38.960 | I think of that as like a tension span.

00:09:42.120 | A guy who's got a less powerful brain, but who's cultivated the skill of paying attention

00:09:50.600 | and focusing on important work is the guy who will take vastly higher quantities of

00:09:58.360 | action, and the right action, because they're governed by his brain, versus the guy who

00:10:03.880 | can take perhaps the perfect action one time, but he's limited by his attention span.

00:10:10.560 | Whenever we talk about intelligence, we have to recognize that intelligence is not everything.

00:10:17.100 | Attention span, in order to take action, accounts for most of the results.

00:10:23.200 | Yes, you want to take the right actions, but as we've learned ever since we were first

00:10:29.280 | told the tale of the tortoise and the hare, the guy who continues taking steps forward

00:10:34.920 | steadily, steadily, steadily, steadily, steadily wins the race compared to the guy who's the

00:10:40.400 | fastest.

00:10:42.160 | Nothing has changed.

00:10:43.160 | In today's podcast, I want to share with you the importance of attention span, and I want

00:10:50.800 | to highlight this, especially with a discussion on intelligence, because for the last few

00:10:56.080 | years we faced something dramatic, something new.

00:11:01.480 | That something is that IQ seems to be falling.

00:11:07.520 | Now this has been known for a number of years.

00:11:11.120 | One of the earlier articles that we can read on this would come from going back to 2018,

00:11:18.800 | but I'll read you in a moment an article from just the last few days.

00:11:23.720 | But here's an article from ScienceAlert.com published June 13, 2018.

00:11:29.800 | IQ scores are falling in "worrying reversal of 20th century intelligence boom."

00:11:36.640 | A defining trend in human intelligence tests that saw people steadily obtaining higher

00:11:40.720 | IQ scores through the 20th century has abruptly ended, a new study shows.

00:11:46.900 | The Flynn effect, named after the work of Kiwi intelligence researcher James Flynn,

00:11:52.360 | observed rapid rises in intelligence quotient at a rate of about three IQ points per decade

00:11:57.800 | in the 20th century, but new research suggests these heady boom days are long gone.

00:12:04.040 | An analysis of some 730,000 IQ test results by researchers from the Ragnar Frisch Center

00:12:09.920 | for Economic Research in Norway reveals the Flynn effect hit its peak for people born

00:12:14.620 | during the mid-1970s and has significantly declined ever since.

00:12:19.840 | This is the most convincing evidence yet of a reversal of the Flynn effect.

00:12:24.760 | Professor Stuart Ritchie from the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the

00:12:28.040 | study, told the Times, "If you assume their model is correct, the results are impressive

00:12:33.360 | and pretty worrying."

00:12:35.200 | The researchers sourced their data from the IQ test scores of 18-19-year-old Norwegian

00:12:40.440 | men who took the tests as part of their National Compulsory Military Service.

00:12:45.680 | Between the years 1970-2009, three decades of these young men, born between 1962-1991,

00:12:52.080 | were conscripted, resulting in over 730,000 IQ test results.

00:12:57.160 | What the results show is that a turning point for the Flynn effect occurred for the post-1975

00:13:03.200 | birth cohorts, equivalent to seven fewer IQ score points per generation.

00:13:08.240 | Pay attention.

00:13:09.240 | It's not the first time we've seen this kind of dip.

00:13:12.280 | Research by Flynn himself that looked at the IQs of British teenagers almost a decade ago

00:13:16.680 | observed a similar fall in test scores.

00:13:19.360 | "It looks like there's something screwy among British teenagers," Flynn told the

00:13:23.680 | Telegraph at the time.

00:13:25.320 | "While we have enriched the cognitive environment of children before their teenage years, the

00:13:31.560 | cognitive environment of the teenagers has not been enriched."

00:13:37.160 | Although that kind of environmental attribution remains hypothetical, it's a possibility

00:13:41.000 | that's supported by the latest research, which it's worth emphasizing comes from

00:13:44.880 | just one Norwegian sample, albeit a particularly huge one.

00:13:49.660 | In the new study, the researchers observed IQ drops occurring within actual families,

00:13:53.800 | between brothers and sons, meaning the effect likely isn't due to shifting demographic

00:13:58.000 | factors as some have suggested, such as the dysgenic accumulation of disadvantageous genes

00:14:02.780 | across areas of society.

00:14:04.600 | Instead, it suggests changes in lifestyle could be what's behind these lower IQs,

00:14:10.800 | perhaps due to the way children are educated, the way they're brought up, and the things

00:14:14.100 | they spend time doing more and less, the types of play they engage in, whether they read

00:14:18.960 | books and so on.

00:14:20.440 | It goes on to talk about other possibilities.

00:14:22.960 | By the way, always be careful when you deal with IQ research, because it's very hard

00:14:27.040 | to say that IQ scores are the world's best measurement of intelligence.

00:14:32.560 | For example, do they measure how good people are at taking tests, or do they measure true

00:14:36.640 | intelligence?

00:14:37.640 | It's a very hotly debated area of study, and this argument or discussion is no different.

00:14:45.020 | Now, that was 2018.

00:14:47.020 | In a moment, I'll read you a recent article from Science Norway.

00:14:52.220 | But first, I want to begin with a more recent article here.

00:14:55.740 | This is published in The Hill.

00:14:58.220 | The headline is "American IQs Rose 30 Points in the Last Century.

00:15:02.000 | Now They May Be Falling."

00:15:03.900 | Published March 29, 2023 by Daniel de Visey.

00:15:08.860 | A new study of human intelligence posits a narrative that may surprise the general public.

00:15:13.940 | American IQs rose dramatically over the past century, and now they seem to be falling.

00:15:18.620 | By the way, this new study is not the previous discussion from Norway.

00:15:23.100 | Cognitive abilities declined between 2006 and 2018 across three of four broad domains

00:15:29.540 | of intelligence, the study found.

00:15:32.140 | Researchers tracked falling scores in logic, vocabulary, visual and mathematical problem

00:15:37.780 | solving and analogies, the latter category familiar to anyone who took the old SAT.

00:15:43.980 | In the 12-year span, IQ scores dipped up to two points in the three areas of declining

00:15:49.780 | performance.

00:15:50.780 | Scores declined across age groups, education levels, and genders, with the steepest drops

00:15:55.580 | among younger and less educated test takers.

00:15:58.900 | IQ scores rose in just one area, spatial reasoning, a set of problems that measure the mind's

00:16:04.540 | ability to analyze three-dimensional objects.

00:16:08.060 | The study, authored by researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Oregon, appears

00:16:12.960 | in the May/June issue of the journal Intelligence.

00:16:16.860 | Researchers across the globe have been tracking an apparent decline in human IQs, starting

00:16:21.060 | around the turn of the millennium.

00:16:23.740 | Theories abound as to why scores are dropping, but the smart money says our cognitive skills

00:16:27.980 | may have plateaued, teetering into an era of intellectual lethargy.

00:16:34.260 | If you want to ascribe blame, look no further than this screen.

00:16:37.900 | Cognitive researchers hypothesize that smartphones and smart speakers, autocomplete and artificial

00:16:42.380 | intelligence, Wi-Fi and runaway social media have conspired to supplant the higher functions

00:16:47.380 | of the human brain.

00:16:48.740 | In its quest for labor-saving tech, the world may be dumbing itself down.

00:16:52.820 | "We're all getting super lazy in our cognition because it's getting super easy to do everything."

00:16:57.940 | said Ruth Karpinski, a California psychologist who studies IQ.

00:17:02.340 | "We're using Waze and Google Maps to get where we need to go.

00:17:05.460 | We're losing our whole sense of compass."

00:17:09.340 | The new study joins a growing body of research on something called the Flynn effect.

00:17:13.300 | James Flynn, a New Zealand intelligence researcher, tracked a dramatic rise in IQ scores across

00:17:18.420 | the 20th century.

00:17:20.020 | How dramatic?

00:17:21.160 | If you gave an early 1900s IQ test to a person of average intelligence in 2000, the test

00:17:27.300 | taker would rate in the top 5% of the Teddy Roosevelt-era population in cognitive ability.

00:17:33.860 | "IQs rose all over the world over the course of the century about 30 points," said Robert

00:17:39.100 | Sternberg, a psychology professor at Cornell who studies intelligence.

00:17:42.820 | "To give you a sense of what 30 points mean, the average is 100.

00:17:47.580 | Usually, gifted would start around 130.

00:17:50.500 | So we're talking about the difference between an average IQ and a gifted one."

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00:18:26.700 | Until recently, IQ scores had been rising for nearly as long as we had IQ tests.

00:18:32.260 | The first tests emerged around 1905, tailored for struggling schoolchildren in France.

00:18:36.980 | Then it goes on and talks more about the history.

00:18:39.860 | Talks about some people thought it was nutrition, schooling, better parenting for the rising

00:18:43.660 | scores.

00:18:44.660 | It's not necessarily known.

00:18:46.660 | The article then goes on and talks about the impact of test taking and becoming just better

00:18:51.060 | at taking tests, etc.

00:18:53.780 | Couple of paragraphs here from an article from PopularMechanics.com published April

00:18:58.060 | 8, 2023, just last week.

00:19:01.260 | American IQ scores have rapidly dropped, proving the reverse Flynn effect.

00:19:05.700 | Same headlines.

00:19:06.700 | A Northwestern university shows a decline in three key intelligence testing categories.

00:19:10.700 | Goes on and talks about it.

00:19:11.700 | But the point here is the number of people.

00:19:16.180 | The study published in the journal Intelligence used an online survey-style personality test,

00:19:21.020 | called the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment Project, to analyze nearly 400,000

00:19:26.900 | Americans.

00:19:28.060 | The researchers recorded responses from 2006 and 2018 in order to examine if and how cognitive

00:19:35.260 | ability scores were changing over time within the country.

00:19:38.840 | The data shows drops in logic and vocabulary, known as verbal reasoning, visual problem

00:19:44.540 | solving and analogies, known as matrix reasoning, and computational and mathematical abilities,

00:19:50.860 | known as letter and number series.

00:19:52.980 | On the flip side, however, scores in spatial reasoning, known as 3D rotation, followed

00:19:58.140 | the opposite pattern, trending upward over the 12-year period.

00:20:02.340 | Now one more comment on this.

00:20:05.100 | Let's go now to ScienceNorway.no.

00:20:11.900 | This article published Tuesday, April 4, 2023.

00:20:16.140 | The headline is "Our IQ is steadily declining.

00:20:18.500 | Should be worried" by Bard Amundsen.

00:20:21.780 | Are we scoring lower on IQ tests because of the food we eat?

00:20:25.140 | Are schools and teachers the cause?

00:20:26.860 | Or maybe computers and mobile phones?

00:20:29.300 | Or is the trend due to something completely different?

00:20:32.800 | The phenomenon of declining IQ scores was detected early in Norway.

00:20:38.300 | New researchers are seeing the same trend in other countries.

00:20:42.100 | The researchers don't know what's behind it.

00:20:44.180 | Proposals vary widely.

00:20:45.820 | John Martin Sundet, 81, is a psychology professor and arguably Norway's leading IQ researcher

00:20:51.860 | over many years.

00:20:53.460 | When we ask him why, he answers calmly, "Does it really matter?"

00:20:57.460 | We'll come back to Sundet later.

00:21:00.940 | Two other Norwegian researchers published a study in 2018 in which they established that

00:21:05.760 | starting with a cohort born in 1975, the IQ of young Norwegian men entering military service

00:21:12.080 | has fallen steadily.

00:21:14.140 | Goes on and explains how they measured that because the Norwegian military has a huge

00:21:23.700 | sample set and that was where they started to see it.

00:21:27.060 | Now let's talk about the newest study and the comments on it.

00:21:32.580 | New study on 400,000 Americans.

00:21:35.380 | Researchers discovered a few years ago that the Flynn effect had stopped.

00:21:39.340 | And not only that, it had actually reversed direction in pretty well the entire developed

00:21:43.300 | part of the world.

00:21:44.780 | Rogberg points out that Sundet and two Norwegian colleagues may have been the first to notice

00:21:49.460 | this in a study published in 2004.

00:21:52.260 | The most recent major study to find a decline in IQ looked at the test results for nearly

00:21:56.340 | 400,000 American adults between 2006 and 2018.

00:22:00.620 | The American researchers found the greatest decline in IQ in the youngest participants

00:22:05.620 | of both sexes ages 18 to 22.

00:22:09.300 | The ability to solve problems has declined in mathematics and vocabulary.

00:22:14.220 | Only the participants' ability for certain types of reasoning has increased.

00:22:18.360 | The researchers in the USA point out that similar findings have been made in Finland,

00:22:22.420 | France, Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Australia, the Netherlands, and Sweden in recent years.

00:22:28.540 | The researchers in this American study posed some possible explanations, including poorer

00:22:33.780 | schools, the food we eat, or perhaps the increased use of computer technology at the expense

00:22:38.740 | of book reading.

00:22:40.700 | Still good at logical and abstract thinking.

00:22:43.620 | The test that Norwegian soldiers have to take when they show up for military service is

00:22:46.900 | technically not an IQ test, but it is designed in the same way.

00:22:51.620 | The test is divided into three sections.

00:22:53.720 | One section involves mathematical skills, another section is vocabulary based, and the

00:22:58.140 | third section has to do with logical and abstract thinking skills.

00:23:02.900 | In our 2018 project that looked at the changes in Norwegian soldiers, we only had access

00:23:07.700 | to the total scores based on these three tests, says Rogberg.

00:23:13.020 | But analyses by Sundet, which are based on the results from each sub-test, show that

00:23:17.340 | the ability for logical and abstract thinking has remained at a high level among young Norwegian

00:23:22.140 | men.

00:23:23.660 | Fixed Intelligence and Fluid Intelligence

00:23:26.460 | Mathematical abilities and vocabulary are often called "fixed intelligence", or knowledge

00:23:30.880 | that is accumulated and learned over time.

00:23:34.020 | Fluid intelligence is often described as the ability for abstract thinking and analysis.

00:23:39.540 | These skills involve the ability to solve problems and quickly see things in new ways.

00:23:44.700 | Rogberg finds it interesting that the most abstract skills have remained at a high level.

00:23:49.300 | He does not find it that strange to imagine that pen and paper calculation skills could

00:23:54.780 | have become weaker in recent generations of young people.

00:23:57.860 | Many of them have grown up using calculators at school, and now all young people walk around

00:24:02.140 | with an advanced calculator in their pocket.

00:24:04.820 | The foreign words that new generations of Norwegian soldiers continued to be tested

00:24:08.320 | on were often more common in the 1950s than today.

00:24:12.180 | So maybe we shouldn't be surprised that these scores have declined as well.

00:24:16.420 | Rogberg emphasizes that he is speculating, but it could be that these parts of the IQ

00:24:20.780 | tests are simply poorly adapted to today's young people.

00:24:24.340 | What about TV and mobile use?

00:24:26.500 | At the same time, Rogberg does not rule out that something has changed within schools,

00:24:30.900 | or maybe with the food we eat.

00:24:32.680 | We also know that people are reading fewer books, and that they would rather sit and

00:24:35.640 | watch TV or a mobile screen.

00:24:37.460 | "I'm an economist, not a psychologist," he says.

00:24:40.920 | But if I allow myself to speculate a little more, I think another hypothesis could be

00:24:44.700 | that today we're interested in developing different qualities in our children than what

00:24:48.540 | parents emphasized in the past, says Rogberg.

00:24:51.800 | Maybe we need other cognitive abilities more than math skills now.

00:24:56.460 | That goes on and talks about other aspects of it.

00:24:59.340 | I made sure to read you a little bit of the controversy, to say that this is unknown,

00:25:03.660 | this is speculation, we don't know exactly how and why this is happening, blah blah blah.

00:25:09.860 | At its core, I would be willing to place my money on the idea that a lot of what I've

00:25:15.740 | talked about in my series on intelligence for children is a component of that.

00:25:22.020 | So what are some of the things that I have talked about and discussed of how to increase

00:25:25.500 | the intelligence of your children?

00:25:27.740 | Well, first I talked about the mind and the physical care of the mind, good nutrition.

00:25:32.180 | I talked about the importance of fat, a high-fat diet for children.

00:25:36.300 | We live on the backside of the low-fat revolution.

00:25:40.660 | I talked about the importance of protein.

00:25:43.900 | We see people, many of us live, and especially if we eat the standard American diet, very

00:25:48.500 | high carbohydrate, very low protein, and then low fat.

00:25:53.220 | When there are fats, they're often fats from nasty seed oils and things like that.

00:25:57.340 | So there's a decent chance that that's affecting our brains in some way, especially the lack

00:26:02.260 | of fat, lack of protein, not enough animal protein, too much bread, too much sugar, etc.

00:26:06.860 | Maybe that's a factor.

00:26:08.500 | What about movement and exercise?

00:26:09.940 | We know that movement and exercise increases the power of the brain, it increases the blood

00:26:14.820 | flow to the brain, makes it work better.

00:26:17.060 | We know that, at least American children that I know, we know that they're fat and sedentary.

00:26:22.620 | So it wouldn't be a surprise if by being fat and sedentary their brains don't work very

00:26:28.580 | much.

00:26:29.740 | What about oxygen, sunshine, these other physical factors that enhance the brain?

00:26:33.580 | Well, of course, we know that a lot of cases are many of our children, unfortunately, aren't

00:26:38.260 | playing outside.

00:26:39.260 | They're not playing outside in the fresh air, they're not getting lots of sunshine, their

00:26:42.660 | vitamin D production is low, they're sitting inside, they're pasty-skinned and fat.

00:26:48.180 | So that's a problem.

00:26:49.380 | What about physical or chemical trauma and the impact of that?

00:26:52.580 | Well, there's a decent chance that their lives are full of chemicals, that all these, everything

00:26:56.820 | from the plastics in the food and the microplastics to the chemicals and the cleaners and everything

00:27:01.780 | that's in our air fresheners and our candles and the...

00:27:04.940 | Who knows, right?

00:27:05.940 | Maybe that's all a factor.

00:27:06.940 | It certainly could be.

00:27:08.660 | What do we know about literacy in our children?

00:27:11.740 | Well, we know that the amount of reading that they do is substantially diminished.

00:27:18.260 | Although they technically consume a lot of words, the absorption of literature, which

00:27:23.740 | leads to high vocabulary due to the infrequently used, the less common words, we know the consumption

00:27:32.740 | of literature is down.

00:27:34.340 | During this series on children, I shared with you lots of evidence and articles and college

00:27:38.980 | professors noticing it, et cetera.

00:27:40.540 | We know that literacy is down.

00:27:41.980 | If you look at the actual test scores of reading ability for government schools, the test scores

00:27:47.900 | are horrifically bad.

00:27:50.020 | So some people come through and become literate, but the test scores generally are very bad.

00:27:54.700 | We know that while it may be the case that a literate person in 2023 consumes perhaps

00:28:00.740 | more text than somebody did in 1823 when books were less common, certainly, and more advertising

00:28:09.900 | billboards, et cetera, we know, and pay attention because I'm going to talk more about this,

00:28:13.700 | but we know that the ability to follow long form literature has dramatically decreased.

00:28:18.540 | I noticed this myself when I try to read old books.

00:28:21.740 | I am a very highly skilled reader, and it's difficult for me to read old books because

00:28:27.260 | my attention span, I zone out in the middle of the half page sentence.

00:28:31.340 | And so if I'm a highly skilled, experienced reader, and I'm experiencing that, how much

00:28:36.500 | more are children when they have been conditioned to communicate in very short sentences?

00:28:40.900 | Remember the comment that I've made about advertising literature and the fact that successful

00:28:45.100 | advertisers know they need to speak at no more than a fifth grade level and communicate

00:28:49.620 | in written text at no more than a fifth grade level for maximum effectiveness.

00:28:54.000 | So literacy is down dramatically, both in the sense of actually being able to read and

00:29:00.740 | then the ability for the higher level reading.

00:29:04.420 | What about numeracy?

00:29:05.860 | We know, at least from American data, that numeracy is horrifically bad.

00:29:09.980 | The test score results for general American students' ability and mathematical ability

00:29:17.260 | across the population is very, very bad.

00:29:20.780 | And we know that mathematics education, that we're basically trying to do the bare minimum.

00:29:26.300 | Well, I think mathematics is best viewed as a language.

00:29:29.800 | And as a language, it's something that needs to be absorbed over a very long period of

00:29:33.980 | time with lots and lots of strenuous use in order to solve the ability to problem solve.

00:29:39.620 | And we know that.

00:29:41.380 | And so I would say that not only do we have bad test scores, but we have a lot of crutches

00:29:46.460 | that have been introduced that are making for bad outcomes.

00:29:51.220 | I myself am totally opposed to the use of calculators.

00:29:54.200 | And yet the use of calculators is now standard in most of our high school classrooms.

00:30:00.060 | I am firmly persuaded that high school students should not use calculators in any regard.

00:30:05.660 | If Isaac Newton can invent calculus without a calculator, then we can study what Isaac

00:30:09.500 | Newton invented without a calculator.

00:30:11.480 | That slows students down.

00:30:13.760 | It makes many things more difficult.

00:30:16.100 | But that is not a problem.

00:30:18.260 | We don't, in the same way that if we don't give, you know, and this was a, I didn't mean

00:30:23.700 | to get off on this rabbit trail.

00:30:25.340 | It's not that calculators might not be useful in some contexts, but just like using Google

00:30:30.260 | Translate, it might not be useful in some contexts, but the actual forced, in learning

00:30:36.180 | a language, but the actual forced difficulty of thinking, that is why we do math.

00:30:41.900 | Just like that is why we learn a language.

00:30:43.420 | We have to keep our brain going and think it.

00:30:46.840 | So we know that numeracy is in dramatic decline.

00:30:52.100 | What about multilingualism?

00:30:53.100 | Well, we know that multilingualism, at least in English speaking places, is down.

00:30:57.820 | I think multilingualism is probably up in non-English native places, non-English native

00:31:03.300 | countries as English has become so common, but at least in England, the United States,

00:31:10.820 | et cetera, multilingualism is in rough shape.

00:31:13.660 | What about writing ability?

00:31:14.660 | I mean, I talked about cultivating writing ability.

00:31:17.580 | Unfortunately, I think there's good evidence to say that our children, broadly speaking,

00:31:22.620 | are poor writers.

00:31:24.380 | Writing is hard.

00:31:25.380 | They don't have enough time to do it.

00:31:26.580 | There's not enough effort.

00:31:28.380 | Writing by hand, all the things I talked about of really the hard thinking ability, that's

00:31:32.700 | gone because we type everything.

00:31:34.620 | And so we miss out on those skills there.

00:31:38.460 | And then we have learned to write and we teach our children to write, not at a high level,

00:31:44.980 | not highbrow literature, but for the lowest common denominator.

00:31:48.260 | We want short, simple, fast, punchy stuff and we know that that's what's practical.

00:31:53.720 | So again, these things are changing.

00:31:55.060 | Well, I think that this poor writing ability is often reflected in poor thinking ability.

00:32:02.540 | So when I talked about writing, I said one of the reasons we write is because it helps

00:32:05.580 | teach us to be better thinkers.

00:32:07.460 | So regardless of whether or not someone reads it, we want to write in a detailed and careful

00:32:12.780 | way in order to make sure that our thoughts are carefully ordered.

00:32:16.980 | And a lot of times to carefully develop good, deep thinking, we need to write long, long

00:32:24.420 | sentences, long paragraphs, long essays, etc.

00:32:28.340 | This is something I'm acutely aware of as a podcaster.

00:32:31.260 | The appeal of my long format podcasts is very limited in the public space as compared to

00:32:37.940 | an eight minute YouTube video or a very short TikTok video.

00:32:42.380 | And yet the depth that I'm able to deal with ideas is much deeper.

00:32:47.340 | And they all have their place.

00:32:48.900 | Sure, short form content has its place, but if you want to really get into your thinking,

00:32:53.420 | you're going to need to write significantly.

00:32:56.260 | Other things that I've talked about, art, music, often down seemingly.

00:33:01.460 | Not everywhere.

00:33:02.460 | Again, there's programs, but I looked at a lot of programs and I found a lot of music

00:33:06.920 | teachers trying to say, "I need to bring music into these underprivileged children and look

00:33:11.660 | at the results," etc.

00:33:14.060 | Formal logic, philosophy, these things are all down.

00:33:17.500 | So is there a good chance that IQs are down for all of these reasons?

00:33:23.500 | I think so, definitely.

00:33:26.100 | But we need to pay attention to this.

00:33:28.260 | Now practically speaking, back to my initial analogy, what is another limiting factor in

00:33:33.480 | all of these things?

00:33:34.480 | Well, it's attention span.

00:33:36.440 | Because at its core, we live in a world of paradoxes.

00:33:41.620 | On the one hand, it's never been easier to get a world-class education than it is today.

00:33:47.900 | Everything is available for free.

00:33:52.620 | Grab a $30 smartphone, grab an $80 tablet or a computer of some kind, and you have access

00:33:59.100 | to the world's greatest literature, all for free.

00:34:02.580 | You have access to the world's finest minds, the best math instruction, everything free.

00:34:08.260 | And the paradox is, we don't take advantage of it.

00:34:11.940 | What do we do instead?

00:34:13.980 | Well we spend our time swipe, swipe, swipe.

00:34:18.020 | And this affects all of us, you and me included.

00:34:25.300 | I myself have noticed over the years a significant decrease in my attention span, because in

00:34:32.980 | various forms and in various ways, I've allowed myself to become addicted to the new

00:34:37.620 | and novel.

00:34:38.620 | And I've allowed my pretty capable brain to be dramatically handicapped due to this

00:34:44.700 | lack of attention span.

00:34:47.500 | So the first part of recovery is to acknowledge that there is a problem.

00:34:50.740 | I'm going to pick on TikTok for a moment, because I was recently reading an interesting

00:34:56.660 | article about it and I thought it was a pretty good indication.

00:35:00.940 | I'm not super partisan.

00:35:03.420 | I'm not trying to say that, I think people often say, "Well, I'm better than others."

00:35:08.580 | Right?

00:35:09.580 | Well, I'm against TikTok and your mother is against TikTok, totally against TikTok, and

00:35:13.500 | yet she's on Facebook for hours a day.

00:35:15.780 | Okay, fine.

00:35:17.660 | But I think at its core, we need to pay attention to all of these potential things that can

00:35:23.820 | diminish our attention span.

00:35:26.300 | So first let's identify the problem and then I'll share with you the solution.

00:35:30.140 | I'm reading here from a Substack article by Gerwinder.

00:35:33.460 | This article was published in January of 2023.

00:35:36.020 | It's entitled, "TikTok is a Time Bomb, the Ultimate Weapon of Mass Distraction."

00:35:40.180 | Distraction, excuse me, the ultimate weapon of mass distraction.

00:35:42.780 | A little Freudian slip there.

00:35:45.500 | And the basic point of the article that he makes that I'm persuaded is plausible from

00:35:51.660 | various sources is quite simply that the Chinese Communist Party uses TikTok as a form of a

00:35:58.460 | weapon to make Americans stupid and to polarize Americans against each other and erode the

00:36:06.580 | basic foundations of Western civilization.

00:36:10.020 | I think that's a plausible theory, certainly unproven, but plausible.

00:36:14.060 | But most importantly, I want to talk for a moment about this because TikTok is an extreme

00:36:18.060 | form of the social media phenomenon and the distractions that we all face.

00:36:25.540 | From section one, the smiling tiger.

00:36:28.500 | TikTok is the most successful app in history.

00:36:31.420 | It emerged in 2017 out of the Chinese video sharing app Douyin, and within three years

00:36:37.420 | it had become the most downloaded app in the world, later surpassing Google as the world's

00:36:42.740 | most visited web domain.

00:36:44.900 | TikTok's conquest of human attention was facilitated by the COVID lockdowns of 2020,

00:36:50.060 | but its success wasn't mere luck.

00:36:53.180 | There's something about the design of the app that makes it unusually irresistible.

00:36:58.100 | Other platforms like Facebook and Twitter use recommendation algorithms as features

00:37:02.080 | to enhance the core product.

00:37:04.180 | With TikTok, the recommendation algorithm is the core product.

00:37:08.800 | You don't need to form a social network or list your interests or the platform to begin

00:37:12.300 | tailoring content to your desires.

00:37:14.580 | You just start watching, skipping any videos that don't immediately draw your interest.

00:37:19.140 | TikTok uses a proprietary algorithm, known simply as the "For You" algorithm, that

00:37:24.500 | uses machine learning to build a personality profile of you by training itself on your

00:37:29.620 | watch habits and possibly your facial expressions.

00:37:33.420 | Since a TikTok video is generally much shorter than, say, a YouTube video, the algorithm

00:37:38.680 | acquires training data from you at a much faster rate, allowing it to quickly zero in

00:37:44.200 | on you.

00:37:45.620 | The result is a system that's unsurpassed at figuring you out, and once it's figured

00:37:49.900 | you out, it can then show you what it needs to in order to addict you.

00:37:54.560 | Since the "For You" algorithm favors only the most instantly mesmerizing content, its

00:37:59.700 | constructive videos, such as how-to guides and field journalism, tend to be relegated

00:38:04.880 | to the fringes in favor of tasty but malignant junk info.

00:38:09.900 | Many of the most popular TikTokers, such as Charli D'Amelio, Bella Poche, Porch, and

00:38:14.940 | Addison Rae, do little more than vapidly dance and lip sync.

00:38:19.140 | Individually such videos are harmless, but the algorithm doesn't intend to show you

00:38:23.260 | just one.

00:38:24.260 | When it receives the signal that it's got your attention, it doubles down on whatever

00:38:28.600 | it did to get it.

00:38:30.260 | This allows it to feed your obsessions, showing you hypnotic content again and again, reinforcing

00:38:35.440 | its imprint on your brain.

00:38:37.620 | This content can include promotion of self-harm and eating disorders, and uncritical encouragement

00:38:42.740 | of sex reassignment surgery.

00:38:44.820 | There's evidence that watching such content can cause mass psychogenic illness.

00:38:49.820 | Researchers recently identified a new phenomenon where otherwise healthy young girls who watched

00:38:54.020 | clips of Tourette's sufferers developed Tourette's-like tics.

00:38:58.820 | A more common way TikTok promotes irrational behavior is with viral trends and challenges,

00:39:06.060 | where people engage in a specific act of idiocy in the hope it'll make them TikTok famous.

00:39:12.220 | Acts include licking toilets, snorting suntan lotion, eating chicken cooked in NyQuil, and

00:39:17.980 | stealing cars.

00:39:19.740 | One challenge, known as "devious licks," encourages kids to vandalize property, while

00:39:25.580 | the "blackout challenge," in which kids purposefully choke themselves with household

00:39:30.860 | items, has even led to several deaths, including a little girl a few days ago.

00:39:36.580 | As troublesome as TikTok's trends are, the app's greatest danger lies not in any specific

00:39:42.620 | content but in its generally addictive nature.

00:39:46.780 | Studies on long-term TikTok addiction don't yet exist for obvious reasons, but based on

00:39:51.260 | what we know of internet addiction generally, we can extrapolate its eventual effects on

00:39:55.540 | habitual TikTokers.

00:39:57.500 | There's a substantial body of research showing a strong association between smartphone addiction,

00:40:02.940 | shrinkage of the brain's gray matter, and "digital dementia," an umbrella term for the

00:40:08.700 | onset of anxiety and depression, and the deterioration of memory, attention span, self-esteem, and

00:40:15.500 | impulse control, the last of which increases the addiction.

00:40:20.220 | By the way, I want to reread that to emphasize it, because you've probably zoned out in the

00:40:25.700 | middle of my reading you about five paragraphs, and so I need your attention again.

00:40:30.500 | By the way, this is linked to some interesting research with some of these claims.

00:40:35.220 | Listen carefully.

00:40:36.220 | "There's a substantial body of research showing a strong association between smartphone addiction,

00:40:43.540 | shrinkage of the brain's gray matter, and "digital dementia," an umbrella term for the

00:40:48.820 | onset of anxiety and depression, and the deterioration of memory, attention span, self-esteem, and

00:40:55.260 | impulse control, the last of which increases the addiction."

00:40:59.620 | These are the problems caused by internet addiction generally, but there's something

00:41:04.020 | about TikTok that makes it uniquely dangerous.

00:41:07.400 | In order to develop and maintain mental faculties like memory and attention span, one needs

00:41:14.020 | to practice using them.

00:41:16.500 | TikTok, more than any other app, is designed to give you what you want, while requiring

00:41:21.300 | you to do as little as possible.

00:41:24.540 | It cares little who you follow or what buttons you click.

00:41:27.820 | Its main consideration is how long you spend watching.

00:41:32.700 | Its reliance on machine learning rather than user input, combined with the fact that TikTok

00:41:37.420 | clips are so short they require minimal memory and attention span, makes browsing TikTok

00:41:43.820 | the most passive, uninteractive experience of all major platforms.

00:41:50.020 | If it's the passive nature of online content consumption that causes atrophy of mental

00:41:54.140 | faculties, then TikTok, as the most passively used platform, will naturally cause the most

00:42:00.700 | atrophy.

00:42:01.700 | Indeed, many habitual TikTokers can already be found complaining on websites like Reddit

00:42:06.540 | about their loss of mental ability, a phenomenon that's come to be known as "TikTok brain."

00:42:12.140 | If the signs are becoming apparent already, imagine what TikTok addiction will have done

00:42:16.380 | to young developing brains a decade from now.

00:42:19.740 | TikTok's capacity to stupefy people, both acutely by encouraging idiotic behavior and

00:42:26.340 | chronically by atrophying the brain, should prompt consideration of its potential use

00:42:31.660 | as a new kind of weapon, one that seeks to neutralize enemies not by inflicting pain

00:42:37.300 | and terror, but by inflicting pleasure.

00:42:41.340 | Pay attention.

00:42:43.340 | TikTok's capacity to stupefy people, to make them stupid, both acutely by encouraging idiotic

00:42:51.220 | behavior and chronically by atrophying the brain.

00:42:55.060 | Friend, don't do all the hard work for yourself and your children that we've been talking

00:42:59.100 | about and then cause it all to be undone in a few weeks with TikTok brain.

00:43:04.340 | Or any brain.

00:43:06.180 | Continuing, last month FBI Director Chris Wray warned that TikTok is controlled by a

00:43:11.300 | Chinese government that could "use it for influence operations."

00:43:16.500 | So how likely is it that one such influence operation might include addicting young Westerners

00:43:21.500 | to mind-numbing content to create a generation of nincompoops?

00:43:26.820 | The first indication that the Chinese Communist Party is aware of TikTok's malign influence

00:43:31.140 | on kids is that it's forbidden access of the app to Chinese kids.

00:43:36.640 | The American tech ethicist Tristan Harris pointed out that the Chinese version of TikTok,

00:43:41.740 | Douyin, is a "spinach" version, where kids don't see twerkers and toilet lickers,

00:43:47.940 | but science experiments and educational videos.

00:43:50.940 | Furthermore, Douyin is only accessible to kids for 40 minutes per day, and it cannot

00:43:56.380 | be accessed between 10pm and 6am.

00:44:00.360 | Has the CCP enforced such rules to protect its people from what it intends to inflict

00:44:04.580 | on the West?

00:44:06.020 | When one examines the philosophical doctrines behind the rules, it becomes clear that the

00:44:10.780 | CCP doesn't just believe that apps like TikTok make people stupid, but that they destroy

00:44:16.820 | civilizations.

00:44:20.620 | In a later paragraph he goes on and talks extensively about some of the history and

00:44:25.140 | who's directing TikTok, and some of the people involved in the development of TikTok.

00:44:37.700 | But I want to drop down a little bit later in the article.

00:44:44.180 | As for the CCP itself, it's known to have viewed former US President Donald Trump as

00:44:49.060 | the "accelerator-in-chief", or more accurately, "Chuan Jianguo" – my apologies to my

00:44:57.180 | Chinese speaking friends – literally "build China" Trump, because he was perceived as

00:45:01.940 | helping China by accelerating the West's decline.

00:45:05.140 | For this reason, support of him was encouraged.

00:45:07.540 | The CCP is also known to have engaged in "jiāsù chūyī" – more directly, for instance,

00:45:14.140 | during the 2020 US race riots, China used Western social media platforms to douse accelerant

00:45:20.140 | over US racial tensions.

00:45:22.540 | But the use of TikTok as an accelerant is a whole new scale of accelerationism, one

00:45:27.600 | much closer to Lian's original apocalyptic vision.

00:45:32.020 | Liberal capitalism is about making people work in order to obtain pleasurable things.

00:45:37.500 | And for decades, it's been moving toward shortening the delay between desire and gratification,

00:45:43.580 | because that's what consumers want.

00:45:46.620 | Over the past century, the market has taken us toward ever shorter form entertainment,

00:45:50.860 | from cinema in the early 1900s, to TV mid-century, to minutes-long YouTube videos, to seconds-long

00:45:57.540 | TikTok clips.

00:45:59.060 | With TikTok, the delay between desire and gratification is almost instant.

00:46:03.460 | There's no longer any patience or effort needed to obtain the reward, so our mental

00:46:08.420 | faculties fall into disuse and disrepair.

00:46:12.220 | And this is why TikTok could prove such a devastating geopolitical weapon.

00:46:17.500 | Slowly but steadily, it could turn the West's youth, its future, into perpetually distracted

00:46:23.140 | dopamine junkies ill-equipped to maintain the civilization built by their ancestors.

00:46:28.260 | I'm going to pause the article for just a moment.

00:46:31.540 | I don't know about you, but I feel half the time like we're there.

00:46:35.620 | The time I most – like we're already half there, at least – the time I most recall

00:46:39.940 | this was a few years ago when the footbridge at Florida International University fell down.

00:46:47.180 | And if you remember this, I think I was in Florida, and so it was certainly a big thing.

00:46:51.260 | But an engineering firm is building a pedestrian footbridge across a road in Miami, I think

00:47:01.060 | with the intention of connecting basically a parking lot or a parking garage to the main

00:47:04.620 | campus.

00:47:05.620 | I've forgotten.

00:47:06.620 | A pedestrian footbridge, a standard construction scenario, a standard thing, not a huge giant

00:47:15.060 | bridge across the Grand Canyon, not the world's tallest bridge, a pedestrian footbridge across

00:47:21.340 | a highway.

00:47:23.020 | And while it's in the near-finishing stages, it's sitting there, and then one day it just

00:47:28.740 | collapses and crushed several cars underneath it, killed a handful of people.

00:47:34.180 | And I thought to myself, "What on earth?

00:47:38.060 | Have we become so incompetent that we can't build a footbridge?"

00:47:42.780 | Now clearly that's an anecdote, but for me that was a triggering point.

00:47:47.980 | And I thought, "Are we getting dumber?"

00:47:50.680 | And it sure feels like we're getting dumber in many ways.

00:47:54.180 | That's mixed with incredible advancements, right?

00:47:57.060 | We choose where we focus on.

00:47:58.540 | I try to spend most of my time focusing on the advancements, on sending a man to Mars,

00:48:03.540 | etc.

00:48:04.540 | But when you look back and you realize what the US space program did with handheld calculators

00:48:08.780 | and slide rules and sending a man to the moon, and then you look at the decline that's around

00:48:15.180 | us, it's hard not to notice some difference, even if we can't prove our differences.

00:48:20.340 | Continuing with the article.

00:48:23.380 | We seem to be halfway there already.

00:48:25.260 | Not only has there been gray matter shrinkage in smartphone-addicted individuals, but since

00:48:30.100 | 1970, the Western average IQ has been steadily falling.

00:48:33.780 | Though the decline likely has several causes, it began with the first generation to grow

00:48:38.040 | up with widespread TVs in homes, and common sense suggests it's at least partly the result

00:48:43.500 | of technology making the attainment of satisfaction increasingly effortless, so that we spend

00:48:48.980 | ever more of our time in a passive, vegetative state.

00:48:53.220 | If you don't use it, you lose it.

00:48:55.700 | By the way, this is perfectly proven.

00:48:58.520 | We know this in terms of muscular development and the physical with our body's muscles,

00:49:04.140 | and we know this with regard to our brain muscles.

00:49:06.780 | If you don't use them, you will lose them.

00:49:11.060 | And even those still willing to use their brains are at risk of having their efforts

00:49:14.860 | foiled by social media, which seems to be affecting not just kids' abilities, but

00:49:20.020 | also their aspirations.

00:49:22.300 | In a survey asking American and Chinese children what job they most wanted, the top answer

00:49:28.940 | among Chinese kids was "astronaut," and the top answer among American kids was "influencer."

00:49:37.040 | If we continue along our present course, the resulting loss of brain power in key fields

00:49:42.020 | could, years from now, begin to harm the West economically.

00:49:46.920 | But more importantly, if it did, it would help discredit the very notion of Western

00:49:51.640 | liberalism itself, since there is no greater counter-argument to a system than to see it

00:49:57.480 | destroy itself.

00:49:59.600 | And so the CCP would benefit doubly from this outcome, ruin the West and refute it.

00:50:04.440 | Two birds with one stone.

00:50:06.200 | Or as they say in China, one arrow, two eagles.

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00:50:42.520 | I hope that these articles scare you a little bit.

00:50:46.240 | It's interesting to me that I find myself in the position of trying to, sounding like

00:50:50.400 | the preacher wandering through the streets saying "repent."

00:50:54.680 | But it's funny that when I think back to my youth of how right so many people were, I

00:51:00.200 | just see continued evidence of their rightness.

00:51:03.400 | When I was a child, I grew up with no TV in our home.

00:51:05.720 | My parents just made the decision not to have a TV and I'm deeply grateful that we never

00:51:09.360 | had one.

00:51:10.840 | To this day, we've never had one.

00:51:13.000 | And obviously the concept of TV has changed in terms of how we consume stuff.

00:51:17.400 | Very rarely does anybody just watch TV.

00:51:19.280 | But one of the things that I observe whenever I'm around a TV is how stupid it all is.

00:51:24.600 | And when you're not around it a lot and you walk into a house where the TV is on all the

00:51:29.240 | time and here I'm talking about broadcast television, cable TV, etc.

00:51:32.800 | It's mind-numbing.

00:51:33.800 | I cannot watch, I can't stand listening to cable news or to just any local programming.

00:51:40.520 | It's horrific.

00:51:42.120 | And it comes from not being desensitized to it.

00:51:45.560 | Well of course the same thing happens with regard to our social media consumption.

00:51:52.400 | My generation and younger, we've just turned away from the TV and turned to consuming the

00:51:57.680 | same vapid content and worse on apps.

00:52:01.020 | But the argument that was always made to me, that persuaded me when I was young, is that

00:52:07.600 | TV makes you stupid for two reasons.

00:52:10.800 | The first reason is simply TV fails to... when you watch TV you are a passive spectator.

00:52:20.960 | This is unlike doing something like listening to a book.

00:52:23.960 | If you're listening to an audio book or listening to a podcast, your brain has to consciously

00:52:29.640 | form the mental pictures so that you can follow the story.

00:52:32.800 | So your brain activity is higher when you listen to a book or read a book versus TV.

00:52:38.400 | That's to say nothing of the size of the lexicon used in popular programming versus a book

00:52:44.200 | etc. or the topics covered.

00:52:46.960 | You may be going and reading a thick book about the ethics of cloning and you cannot

00:52:53.800 | even scratch the surface.

00:52:55.120 | Even if a 60 minute documentary is done on that, you can't even begin to scratch the

00:52:59.780 | surface of what you can get out of the thinking that you have to do to think of a 400 book

00:53:04.580 | on some ethical issue or some point of philosophy etc.

00:53:07.360 | So the first argument against TV is that it makes you stupid because it's a passive activity

00:53:12.400 | that's not engaging your brain in a meaningful way.

00:53:15.200 | The second argument against TV has to do with the opportunity cost.

00:53:19.120 | It's not so much the content on the TV that's bad, it's the fact of what you could be doing

00:53:24.000 | with the time in the time that you're watching TV.

00:53:27.960 | So those things are deadly.

00:53:31.080 | And that was the argument from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s etc.

00:53:36.600 | We'll bring that forward to our modern forms of consumption.

00:53:41.200 | Swirling through your Instagram reels or your TikTok videos or your YouTube shorts or even

00:53:46.240 | just your normal YouTube feed etc.

00:53:48.680 | We have the same basic fundamental problem.

00:53:51.280 | The content is stupid and it causes you to become stupid because it doesn't require engagement.

00:53:59.640 | And if you're immediately saying "Yeah Joshua but the only time I go on YouTube is because

00:54:04.320 | I want to learn something about finance or I want to learn how to fix my car."

00:54:09.040 | Yes, that does exist in the same way that TV has always been a powerful medium for learning.

00:54:15.920 | The screen can take certain concepts that you could never effectively teach in a book

00:54:21.400 | and you can teach them in five minutes with a powerfully produced something on the screen.

00:54:25.800 | But you are the exception that proves the rule rather than the other way around.

00:54:30.040 | There are exceptions but if you believe that you can't deny the fundamental truthfulness

00:54:36.480 | of what I'm saying.

00:54:37.480 | And then the second thing is what it keeps you from doing.

00:54:41.800 | And unfortunately TV for all of its flaws was not nearly as addictive as our modern

00:54:48.320 | swiping is.

00:54:49.920 | And so we got to be super super careful and we got to help our children to avoid falling

00:54:54.280 | into these traps of becoming stupid.

00:54:57.140 | We cannot let all of our hard work for ourselves or for our children go away.

00:55:04.520 | So what is the alternative?

00:55:05.920 | How do we solve this problem?

00:55:08.480 | There may be many safeguards that you would put in place.

00:55:10.880 | A couple of practical things would be use a screen time function on your phone or device

00:55:18.880 | to control the amount of time that you spend on any one particular app.

00:55:23.760 | I'm familiar with the Apple screen time on the iPhone.

00:55:26.720 | I'm sure there's an Android equivalent.

00:55:28.420 | If not install an aftermarket app.

00:55:31.080 | And that's a useful tool.

00:55:32.840 | And so you can say I want to spend X amount of minutes per day on this app.

00:55:37.520 | And then when you're done it pops up and says you've reached your limit.

00:55:40.680 | And you say okay and the app disappears.

00:55:42.920 | Or you can say extend it.

00:55:44.040 | But you have to be intentional.

00:55:46.040 | There's a popular app.

00:55:47.440 | Let me look up the name of it real quick.

00:55:49.800 | There's an app that's been super popular these days that's called OneSec.

00:55:57.440 | As in one second.

00:55:58.440 | It's a great little app that you install on your phone.

00:56:01.600 | And what it does is very simple.

00:56:03.240 | You tell it the apps that you're most likely to be distracted by or to click on.

00:56:08.800 | You know when you're just feeling I just don't know what to do and just randomly click.

00:56:13.040 | And when you click on that app it pops open a screen that just gives you a gray screen

00:56:18.060 | for one second.

00:56:19.440 | And then it says are you sure you want to do this.

00:56:21.160 | It says take a deep breath.

00:56:22.300 | You take a deep breath.

00:56:23.300 | You wait one second.

00:56:24.300 | And then it says do you want to continue on.

00:56:26.240 | Do you want to continue on to TikTok or Instagram or do you want to stop.

00:56:30.360 | And you just click yes I want to continue.

00:56:32.440 | And it just inserts that momentary decision where you take one second to breathe and then

00:56:40.240 | make a decision.

00:56:41.240 | Do I really want to do that or am I just mindlessly controlling.

00:56:45.520 | I would encourage you to use these solutions that I have just said.

00:56:49.680 | I think these are the two best.

00:56:51.840 | Go into your phone for any app that you use a lot.

00:56:54.960 | Even for the most positive purposes.

00:56:57.280 | Notice I'm not trying to say that an app is bad or that you have to delete it from your

00:57:01.240 | phone.

00:57:02.240 | The key question is if there's an app that is causing you trouble and is getting in the

00:57:07.720 | way of your accomplishment as a human being.

00:57:11.040 | Just insert a little bit of intentionality of decision making.

00:57:14.640 | Put a time limit on it and add the one second app so that you can just make an intentional

00:57:20.720 | decision.

00:57:21.720 | Those are good strategies.

00:57:23.680 | There are other strategies but at their core we want to be intentional about building our

00:57:29.400 | life.

00:57:30.960 | Imagine where you're going to be a decade from now.

00:57:33.760 | So ten years from now.

00:57:35.960 | And imagine what you could accomplish if you were focused on accomplishment.

00:57:44.200 | We know that over the course of the next ten years there are going to be 87,600 hours of

00:57:54.920 | your life that are going to pass.

00:57:57.720 | 87,600 hours.

00:58:01.320 | Go to your screen time on your phone and look at what some of your screen time is.

00:58:07.600 | Let's say that you spend on average five hours a week.

00:58:13.120 | So five hours a week on an app can be the most positive thing out there.

00:58:18.280 | YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, whatever.

00:58:21.760 | You say this is positive.

00:58:23.640 | Five hours times 52 weeks times ten years is going to be 2,600 hours.

00:58:32.300 | That if you continue with this behavior over the next ten years you will invest 2,600 hours

00:58:40.080 | into this application.

00:58:43.040 | I want you to imagine all of the good that can come from that investment of 2,600 hours

00:58:50.200 | into that app, into that activity.

00:58:53.040 | Think of all the good things that can happen in your life from that 2,600 hours.

00:58:59.160 | Now think of some of the other things that you could do with that 2,600 hours.

00:59:05.800 | What are you giving up?

00:59:07.560 | What's your opportunity cost?

00:59:10.080 | What could you be doing with that 2,600 hours if you didn't invest it into the use of that

00:59:14.800 | app?

00:59:18.360 | You answer the question.

00:59:20.640 | Now let's imagine a similar example or a comparative example.

00:59:28.760 | If you work in your job a normal work week of say 40 hours per week and let's say that

00:59:35.240 | you do that over say a 50 week year in the US, sorry my French friends we work 50 weeks

00:59:41.800 | a year, just kidding.

00:59:44.000 | That would be 2,000 hours.

00:59:46.840 | 2,000 hours per year is what you work if you work a full-time job.

00:59:53.560 | So at five hours per week over the course of the next ten years, if that's 2,600 hours

01:00:01.840 | that's more than one entire year of working a full-time job.

01:00:13.880 | What could you do with that time otherwise in a way that would enhance your life?

01:00:19.960 | And here's where we pivot to this importance of the secret of success.

01:00:25.220 | The man who is going to reach financial independence in the next ten years is not the guy, the

01:00:31.820 | guy that's going to fritter away five hours a week on a worthless meaningful app.

01:00:38.120 | The guy who's going to reach financial independence in the next ten years is the guy who's going

01:00:42.600 | to take hold of that time and going to invest it in the direction that he wants to go, into

01:00:49.040 | the things that he wants to do, that he intentionally decides to do.

01:00:55.520 | The starting point of doing this is to enhance your attention span and to do serious deep

01:01:07.720 | work.

01:01:11.280 | When you're trying to get rid of something in your life, it's not enough just to say,

01:01:15.320 | "No, I don't want to do that."

01:01:17.640 | That's a starting point.

01:01:18.920 | But what you have to substitute is an alternative activity.

01:01:24.720 | You have to substitute something to do instead.

01:01:27.560 | Now what you choose to do should come directly from your goals.

01:01:32.920 | The activities that you do should come from the goals that are in front of you.

01:01:39.280 | But if you would invest yourself into cultivating attention span and you would apply your attention

01:01:47.460 | span towards your goals, you will be unstoppable.

01:01:53.440 | And if you will take control of your children to the degree you're capable of, and you will

01:01:58.440 | surround them with an environment where they have the chance to build their attention spans

01:02:03.560 | in a very intentional way and teach these things to them, they will be unstoppable.

01:02:10.640 | And I am convinced that this is a central strategy that is going to make the difference

01:02:14.460 | in your life and in your finances.

01:02:17.600 | Let me read you an excerpt from the introduction to Cal Newport's book called Deep Work.

01:02:27.640 | In the Swiss canton of St. Gallen, near the northern banks of Lake Zurich, is a village

01:02:32.600 | named Bollingen.

01:02:34.840 | In 1922, the psychiatrist Carl Jung chose this spot to begin building a retreat.

01:02:41.120 | He began with a basic two-story stone house he called the Tower.

01:02:45.040 | After returning from a trip to India, where he observed the practice of adding meditation

01:02:48.520 | rooms to homes, he expanded the complex to include a private office.

01:02:53.560 | In my retiring room, I'm by myself, Jung said of the space.

01:02:57.040 | I keep the key with me all the time.

01:02:58.820 | No one is allowed in there except with my permission.

01:03:03.200 | In his book Daily Rituals, journalist Mason Currie sorted through various sources on Jung

01:03:09.000 | to recreate the psychiatrist's work habits at the Tower.

01:03:13.520 | Jung would rise at 7am, Currie reports, and after a big breakfast, he would spend two

01:03:17.780 | hours of undistracted writing time in his private office.

01:03:21.580 | His afternoons would often consist of meditation or long walks in the surrounding countryside.

01:03:27.600 | There was no electricity at the Tower, so as day gave way to night, light came from

01:03:32.040 | oil lamps and heat from the fireplace.

01:03:35.100 | Jung would retire to bed by 10pm.

01:03:38.160 | The feeling of repose and renewal that I had in this Tower was intense from the start,

01:03:42.560 | he said.

01:03:43.560 | Though it's tempting to think of Bollingen Tower as a vacation home, if we put it into

01:03:48.800 | the context of Jung's career, at this point it's clear that the lakeside retreat was

01:03:52.680 | not built as an escape from work.

01:03:55.520 | In 1922, when Jung bought the property, he could not afford to take a vacation.

01:04:00.080 | Only one year earlier, in 1921, he had published Psychological Types, a seminal book that solidified

01:04:05.900 | many differences that had been long developing between Jung's thinking and the ideas of

01:04:10.240 | his one-time friend and mentor, Sigmund Freud.

01:04:13.680 | To disagree with Freud in the 1920s was a bold move.

01:04:17.120 | To back up his book, Jung needed to stay sharp and produce a stream of smart articles and

01:04:21.560 | books further supporting and establishing analytical psychology, the eventual name for

01:04:26.360 | his new school of thought.

01:04:28.400 | Jung's lectures and counseling practice kept him busy in Zurich, this is clear.

01:04:32.520 | But he wasn't satisfied with busyness alone.

01:04:35.340 | He wanted to change the way we understood the unconscious, and this goal required deeper,

01:04:40.560 | more careful thought than he could manage amid his hectic city lifestyle.

01:04:44.760 | Jung retreated to Bollingen, not to escape his professional life, but instead to advance

01:04:49.880 | it.

01:04:50.880 | Carl Jung went on to become one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.

01:04:54.960 | There are, of course, many reasons for his eventual success.

01:04:58.360 | In this book, however, I'm interested in his commitment to the following skill, which

01:05:02.960 | almost certainly played a key role in his accomplishments.

01:05:07.720 | Deep work.

01:05:09.960 | Professional activities, performed in a state of distraction-free concentration, that push

01:05:14.800 | your cognitive capabilities to their limit.

01:05:17.680 | These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

01:05:23.240 | Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual

01:05:27.760 | capacity.

01:05:28.760 | Listen carefully.

01:05:30.440 | Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual

01:05:37.360 | capacity.

01:05:38.360 | Remember my metaphor here?

01:05:39.840 | The discussion between the powerful supercomputer and the internet connection?

01:05:47.120 | Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual

01:05:51.120 | capacity.

01:05:52.420 | We now know from decades of research in both psychology and neuroscience that the state

01:05:57.840 | of mental strain that accompanies deep work is also necessary to improve your abilities.

01:06:05.180 | Deep work, in other words, was exactly the type of effort needed to stand out in a cognitively

01:06:10.360 | demanding field like academic psychiatry in the early 20th century.

01:06:15.760 | The term "deep work" is my own, and is not something Carl Jung would have used, but

01:06:20.040 | his actions during this period were those of someone who understood the underlying concept.

01:06:25.840 | Jung built a tower out of stone in the woods to promote deep work in his professional life,

01:06:30.240 | a task that required time, energy, and money.

01:06:33.720 | It also took him away from more immediate pursuits.

01:06:37.020 | As Mason Currie writes, Jung's regular journeys to Bollingen reduced the time he spent on

01:06:43.560 | his clinical work, noting "although he had many patients who relied on him, Jung was

01:06:48.680 | not shy about taking time off.

01:06:51.400 | Deep work, though a burden to prioritize, was crucial for his goal of changing the world."

01:06:57.600 | I interrupt the story to make this application personal.

01:07:02.680 | Deep work in your life, dear friend, though a burden to prioritize, is crucial for your

01:07:11.480 | goal of changing your world.

01:07:17.520 | Deep work, though a burden to prioritize in the life of your child, is crucial for your

01:07:25.080 | goal and perhaps his goal of changing the world.

01:07:29.960 | Indeed, if you study the lives of other influential figures from both distant and recent history,

01:07:35.320 | you'll find that a commitment to deep work is a common theme.

01:07:38.600 | The 16th century essayist Michel de Montaigne, for example, prefigured Jung by working in

01:07:43.640 | a private library he built in the Southern Tower guarding the stone walls of his French

01:07:47.960 | chateau, while Mark Twain wrote much of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in a shed on the

01:07:52.720 | property of the Quarry Farm in New York, where he was spending the summer.

01:07:56.720 | Twain's study was so isolated from the main house that his family took to blowing a horn

01:08:01.440 | to attract his attention for meals.

01:08:04.240 | Moving forward in history, consider the screenwriter and director Woody Allen.

01:08:08.220 | In the 44-year period between 1969 and 2013, Woody Allen wrote and directed 44 films that

01:08:16.140 | received 23 Academy Award nominations, an absurd rate of artistic productivity.

01:08:22.700 | Throughout this period, Allen never owned a computer, instead completing all his writing,

01:08:28.500 | free from electronic distraction, on a German Olympia SM3 manual typewriter.

01:08:34.860 | Allen is joined in his rejection of computers by Peter Higgs, a theoretical physicist who

01:08:39.020 | performs his work in such disconnected isolation that journalists couldn't find him after

01:08:44.420 | it was announced he had won the Nobel Prize.

01:08:46.780 | J.K. Rowling, on the other hand, does use a computer, but was famously absent from social

01:08:52.100 | media during the writing of her Harry Potter novels, even though this period coincided

01:08:56.660 | with the rise of the technology and its popularity among media figures.

01:09:01.340 | Rowling's staff finally started a Twitter account in her name in the fall of 2009, as

01:09:06.100 | she was working on The Casual Vacancy, and for the first year and a half her only tweet

01:09:10.980 | read "This is the real me but you won't be hearing from me often I am afraid as pen

01:09:14.940 | and paper is my priority at the moment."

01:09:18.460 | Deep work of course is not limited to the historical or technophobic.

01:09:22.180 | Microsoft CEO Bill Gates famously conducted "think weeks" twice a year, during which

01:09:27.060 | he would isolate himself, often in a lakeside cottage, to do nothing but read and think

01:09:32.060 | big thoughts.

01:09:33.420 | It was during a 1995 "think week" that Gates wrote his famous "Internet Tidal Wave"

01:09:38.500 | memo that turned Microsoft's attention to an upstart company called Netscape Communications.

01:09:44.460 | And in an ironic twist, Neil Stephenson, the acclaimed cyberpunk author who helped form

01:09:49.700 | our popular conception of the Internet age, is near impossible to reach electronically.

01:09:54.880 | His website offers no email address and features an essay about why he is purposefully bad

01:09:59.060 | at using social media.

01:10:00.940 | Here is how he once explained the omission "If I organize my life in such a way that

01:10:05.540 | I get lots of long, consecutive, uninterrupted time chunks, I can write novels.

01:10:10.600 | If I instead get interrupted a lot, what replaces it?

01:10:14.000 | Instead of a novel that will be around for a long time, there is a bunch of email messages

01:10:18.580 | that I have sent out to individual persons."

01:10:22.660 | The ubiquity of deep work among influential individuals is important to emphasize because

01:10:28.560 | it stands in sharp contrast to the behavior of most modern knowledge workers, a group

01:10:33.440 | that is rapidly forgetting the value of going deep.

01:10:36.700 | The reason knowledge workers are losing their familiarity with deep work is well established.

01:10:41.900 | Network tools.

01:10:43.140 | This is a broad category that captures communication services like email and SMS, social media

01:10:48.320 | networks like Twitter and Facebook, and the shiny tanglement of infotainment sites like

01:10:52.560 | Buzzfeed and Reddit.

01:10:54.420 | In aggregate, the rise of these tools, combined with ubiquitous access to them through smartphones

01:10:59.300 | and networked office computers, has fragmented most knowledge workers' attention into slivers.

01:11:06.100 | A 2012 McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60%

01:11:11.100 | of the work week engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30%

01:11:17.060 | of a worker's time dedicated to reading and answering email alone.

01:11:21.860 | This state of fragmented attention cannot accommodate deep work, which requires long

01:11:26.460 | periods of uninterrupted thinking.

01:11:29.040 | At the same time, however, modern knowledge workers are not loafing.

01:11:32.620 | In fact, they report that they are as busy as ever.

01:11:35.420 | What explains the discrepancy?

01:11:37.500 | A lot can be explained by another type of effort which provides a counterpart to the

01:11:40.940 | idea of deep work.

01:11:43.780 | Shallow work – non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks often performed while

01:11:49.060 | distracted.

01:11:50.180 | These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

01:11:55.400 | In an age of network tools, in other words, knowledge workers increasingly replace deep

01:12:00.100 | work with a shallow alternative, constantly sending and receiving email messages like

01:12:05.260 | human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction.

01:12:10.340 | Major efforts that would be well served by deep thinking, such as forming a new business

01:12:14.420 | strategy, or writing an important grant application, get fragmented into distracted dashes that

01:12:19.800 | produce muted quality.

01:12:22.140 | To make matters worse for depth, there is increasing evidence that this shift toward

01:12:25.780 | the shallow is not a choice that can be easily reversed.

01:12:29.740 | Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to

01:12:35.580 | perform deep work.

01:12:37.900 | What the net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation,

01:12:43.060 | admitted journalist Nicholas Carr in an off-cited 2008 Atlantic article.

01:12:47.860 | And I'm not the only one.

01:12:49.780 | Carr expanded this argument into a book, The Shallows, which became a finalist for the

01:12:54.140 | Pulitzer Prize.

01:12:55.660 | To write The Shallows appropriately enough, Carr had to move to a cabin and forcibly disconnect.

01:13:02.380 | The idea that network tools are pushing our work from the deep toward the shallow is not

01:13:06.300 | new.

01:13:07.300 | The Shallows was just the first in a series of recent books to examine the internet's

01:13:10.580 | effect on our brains and work habits.

01:13:13.060 | These subsequent titles include William Powers' Hamlet's Blackberry, John Freeman's The

01:13:16.820 | Tyranny of Email, and Alex Soo-Jung Kim-Peng's The Distraction Addiction, all of which agree,

01:13:21.860 | more or less, that network tools are distracting us from work that requires unbroken concentration,

01:13:27.620 | while simultaneously degrading our capacity to remain focused.

01:13:32.140 | Given this existing body of evidence, I will not spend more time in this book trying to

01:13:35.260 | establish this point.

01:13:37.020 | We can, I hope, stipulate that network tools negatively impact deep work.

01:13:40.820 | I'll also sidestep any grand arguments about the long-term societal consequence of this

01:13:45.180 | shift, as such arguments tend to open impassable rifts.

01:13:49.220 | On one side of the debate are techno-skeptics like Jaron Lanier and John Freeman, who suspect

01:13:54.060 | that many of these tools, at least in their current state, damage society, while on the

01:13:58.200 | other side techno-optimists like Clive Thompson argue that they're changing society for

01:14:02.460 | sure, but in ways that'll make us better off.

01:14:05.060 | Google, for example, might reduce our memory, but we no longer need good memories, as in

01:14:09.420 | the moment we can now search for anything we need to know.

01:14:12.420 | I have no stance in this philosophical debate.

01:14:16.140 | My interest in this matter instead veers toward a thesis of much more pragmatic and individualized

01:14:21.100 | interest.

01:14:22.460 | Our work culture's shift toward the shallow, whether you think it's philosophically good

01:14:27.420 | or bad, is exposing a massive economic and personal opportunity for the few who recognize

01:14:32.620 | the potential of resisting this trend and prioritizing depth, an opportunity that, not

01:14:38.540 | too long ago, was leveraged by a bored young consultant from Virginia named Jason Benn.

01:14:45.020 | Pay attention in this particular story, because it indicates the opportunities that all of

01:14:52.260 | us have.

01:14:53.420 | If you are looking to increase your income so that you can reach your financial goals,

01:14:58.100 | I'm offering you a path to that.

01:15:01.820 | There are many ways to discover that you're not valuable in our economy.

01:15:05.540 | For Jason Benn, the lesson was made clear when he realized, not long after taking a

01:15:09.780 | job as a financial consultant, that the vast majority of his work responsibilities could

01:15:14.080 | be automated by a "kludged together" Excel script.

01:15:18.140 | The firm that hired Benn produced reports for banks involved in complex deals.

01:15:22.420 | It was about as interesting as it sounds, Benn joked in one of our interviews.

01:15:26.260 | The report creation process required hours of manual manipulation of data in a series

01:15:30.820 | of Excel spreadsheets.

01:15:32.780 | When he first arrived, it took Benn up to six hours per report to finish this stage.

01:15:37.860 | The most efficient veterans of the firm could complete this task in around half the time.

01:15:42.060 | This didn't sit well with Benn.

01:15:44.060 | The way it was taught to me, the process seemed clunky and manually intensive, Benn recalls.

01:15:48.980 | He knew that Excel has a feature called macros that allows users to automate common tasks.

01:15:54.500 | Benn read articles on the topic and soon put together a new worksheet, wired up with a

01:15:58.300 | series of these macros that could take the six hour process of manual data manipulation

01:16:02.420 | and replace it, essentially, with a button click.

01:16:05.220 | A report writing process that originally took him a full workday could now be reduced to

01:16:09.540 | less than an hour.

01:16:11.300 | Benn is a smart guy.

01:16:12.860 | He graduated from an elite college, the University of Virginia, with a degree in economics, and

01:16:17.900 | like many in his situation, he had ambitions for his career.

01:16:21.620 | It didn't take him long to realize that these ambitions would be thwarted so long as his

01:16:25.660 | main professional skills could be captured in an Excel macro.

01:16:30.220 | He decided, therefore, he needed to increase his value to the world.

01:16:34.100 | After a period of research, Benn reached a conclusion.

01:16:36.840 | He would, he declared to his family, quit his job as a human spreadsheet and become

01:16:41.760 | a computer programmer.

01:16:43.660 | As is often the case with such grand plans, however, there was a hitch.

01:16:46.820 | Jason Benn had no idea how to write code.

01:16:50.820 | As a computer scientist, I can confirm an obvious point.

01:16:54.140 | Programming computers is hard.

01:16:56.340 | Most new developers dedicate a four-year college education to learning the ropes before their

01:16:59.940 | first job, and even then, competition for the best spots is fierce.

01:17:04.940 | Jason Benn didn't have this time.

01:17:07.420 | After his Excel epiphany, he quit his job at the financial firm and moved home to prepare

01:17:11.860 | for his next step.

01:17:13.540 | His parents were happy he had a plan, but they weren't happy about the idea that this

01:17:16.940 | return home might be long-term.

01:17:19.580 | Benn needed to learn a hard skill and needed to do so fast.

01:17:24.900 | It's here that Benn ran into the same problem that holds back many knowledge workers from

01:17:29.300 | navigating into more explosive career trajectories.

01:17:33.180 | Learning something complex, like computer programming, requires intense, uninterrupted

01:17:38.360 | concentration on cognitively demanding concepts, the type of concentration that drove Carl

01:17:44.060 | Jung to the woods surrounding Lake Zurich.

01:17:46.880 | His task, in other words, is an act of deep work.

01:17:51.240 | Most knowledge workers, however, as I argued earlier in this introduction, have lost their

01:17:56.160 | ability to perform deep work.

01:17:59.440 | Benn was no exception to this trend.

01:18:01.080 | "I was always getting on the internet and checking my email.

01:18:03.520 | I couldn't stop myself.

01:18:04.520 | It was a compulsion," Benn said, describing himself during the period leading up to his

01:18:08.920 | quitting his finance job.

01:18:10.840 | To emphasize his difficulty with depth, Benn told me about a project that a supervisor

01:18:15.400 | at the finance firm once brought to him.

01:18:17.680 | "They wanted me to write a business plan," he explained.

01:18:20.960 | Benn didn't know how to write a business plan, so he decided he would find and read

01:18:24.600 | five different existing plans, comparing and contrasting them to understand what was needed.

01:18:29.880 | This was a good idea, but Benn had a problem.

01:18:32.280 | "I couldn't stay focused."

01:18:34.580 | There were days during this period, he now admits, when he spent almost every minute

01:18:38.480 | (98% of my time) surfing the web.

01:18:41.880 | The business plan project, a chance to distinguish himself early in his career, fell to the wayside.

01:18:47.680 | By the time he quit, Benn was well aware of his difficulties with deep work.

01:18:52.160 | So when he dedicated himself to learning how to code, he knew he had to simultaneously

01:18:56.380 | teach his mind how to go deep.

01:18:59.240 | His method was drastic, but effective.

01:19:02.040 | "I locked myself in a room with no computer, just textbooks, note cards, and a highlighter."

01:19:07.960 | He would highlight the computer programming textbooks, transfer the ideas to note cards,

01:19:12.040 | and then practice them out loud.

01:19:14.160 | These periods free from electronic distraction were hard at first, but Benn gave himself

01:19:19.080 | no other option.

01:19:20.960 | He had to learn this material, and he made sure there was nothing in that room to distract

01:19:25.160 | him.

01:19:26.160 | Over time, however, he got better at concentrating, eventually getting to a point where he was

01:19:30.320 | regularly clocking five or more disconnected hours per day in the room, focused without

01:19:36.080 | distraction on learning this hard new skill.

01:19:39.200 | "I probably read something like 18 books on the topic by the time I was done," he

01:19:43.320 | recalls.

01:19:44.640 | After two months locked away studying, Benn attended the notoriously difficult Dev Boot

01:19:50.440 | Camp, a 100-hour-a-week crash course in web application programming.

01:19:55.480 | While researching the program, Benn found a student with a PhD from Princeton who described

01:20:00.080 | Dev as "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life."

01:20:03.900 | Given both his preparation and his newly honed ability for deep work, Benn excelled.

01:20:09.120 | "Some people show up not prepared," he said.

01:20:11.760 | "They can't focus.

01:20:12.800 | They can't learn quickly."

01:20:14.680 | Only half the students who started the program with Benn ended up graduating on time.

01:20:19.440 | Benn not only graduated, but was also the top student in his class.

01:20:23.760 | The deep work paid off.

01:20:26.240 | Benn quickly landed a job as a developer at a San Francisco tech startup with $25 million

01:20:31.160 | in venture funding and its pick of employees.

01:20:34.200 | When Benn quit his job as a financial consultant, only half a year earlier, he was making $40,000

01:20:39.720 | a year.

01:20:40.720 | His new job as a computer developer paid $100,000, an amount that can continue to grow, essentially

01:20:46.520 | without limit, in the Silicon Valley market, along with his skill level.

01:20:50.700 | When I last spoke with Benn, he was thriving in his new position.

01:20:53.720 | A newfound devotee of deep work, he rented an apartment across the street from his office,

01:20:59.960 | allowing him to show up early in the morning before anyone else arrived and work without

01:21:04.160 | distraction.

01:21:05.160 | "On good days, I can get in four hours of focus before the first meeting," he told

01:21:09.000 | me.

01:21:10.000 | "Then maybe another three to four hours in the afternoon.

01:21:12.000 | And I do mean focus.

01:21:14.160 | No email, no hacker news, just programming."

01:21:17.880 | For someone who admitted to sometimes spending up to 98% of his day in his old job surfing

01:21:23.260 | the web, Jason Benn's transformation is nothing short of astonishing.

01:21:29.920 | Friend, if you're struggling with this, you can change.

01:21:35.160 | I can change.

01:21:37.220 | Your children can change.

01:21:40.520 | Harder to change your children, because then you have to deal with their motivation and

01:21:43.500 | how do you motivate another person?

01:21:45.520 | Difficult.

01:21:46.520 | But you can start by setting an example, and I can start by setting an example.

01:21:52.080 | Change is hard, but it's worth it.

01:21:56.200 | Jason Benn's story highlights a crucial lesson.

01:21:59.240 | Deep work is not some nostalgic affectation of writers and early 20th century philosophers.

01:22:05.320 | It's instead a skill that has great value today.

01:22:09.860 | There are two reasons for this value.

01:22:11.840 | The first has to do with learning.

01:22:14.240 | We have an information economy that's dependent on complex systems that change rapidly.

01:22:19.720 | Some of the computer languages Benn learned, for example, didn't exist 10 years ago and

01:22:23.560 | will likely be outdated 10 years from now.

01:22:26.320 | Similarly, someone coming up in the field of marketing in the 1990s probably had no

01:22:30.160 | idea that today they'd need to master digital analytics.

01:22:33.920 | To remain valuable in our economy, therefore, you must master the art of quickly learning

01:22:38.560 | complicated things.

01:22:40.520 | This task requires deep work.

01:22:43.580 | If you don't cultivate this ability, you're likely to fall behind as technology advances.

01:22:48.320 | The second reason that deep work is valuable is because the impacts of the digital network

01:22:53.160 | revolution cut both ways.

01:22:55.600 | If you can create something useful, its reachable audience, e.g. employers or customers, is

01:23:00.840 | essentially limitless, which greatly magnifies your reward.

01:23:06.440 | On the other hand, if what you're producing is mediocre, then you're in trouble, as it's

01:23:10.760 | too easy for your audience to find a better alternative online.

01:23:15.080 | Whether you're a computer programmer, writer, marketer, consultant, or entrepreneur, your

01:23:20.240 | situation has become similar to Jung trying to outwit Freud, or Jason Benn trying to hold

01:23:25.720 | his own in a hot startup.

01:23:28.040 | To succeed, you have to produce the absolute best stuff you're capable of producing, a

01:23:33.920 | task that requires depth.

01:23:37.480 | The growing necessity of deep work is new.

01:23:40.600 | In an industrial economy, there was a small, skilled, labor, and professional class for

01:23:45.600 | which deep work was crucial, but most workers could do just fine without ever cultivating

01:23:50.340 | an ability to concentrate without distraction.

01:23:53.340 | They were paid to crank widgets, and not much about their job would change in the decades

01:23:57.080 | they kept it.

01:23:58.440 | But as we shift to an information economy, more and more of our population are knowledge

01:24:03.720 | workers, and deep work is becoming a key currency, even if most haven't yet recognized this

01:24:10.200 | reality.

01:24:11.960 | Deep work is not, in other words, an old-fashioned skill falling into irrelevance.

01:24:17.000 | It's instead a crucial ability for anyone looking to move ahead in a globally competitive

01:24:22.480 | information economy that tends to chew up and spit out those who aren't earning their

01:24:27.600 | keep.

01:24:28.680 | The real rewards are reserved not for those who are comfortable using Facebook, a shallow

01:24:34.160 | task, easily replicated, but instead for those who are comfortable building the innovative,

01:24:39.240 | integrated systems that run the service, a decidedly deep task, hard to replicate.

01:24:45.600 | Deep work is so important that we might consider it, to use the phrasing of business writer

01:24:51.680 | Eric Barker, "the superpower of the 21st century."

01:24:57.720 | We have now seen two strands of thought, one about the increasing scarcity of deep work,

01:25:02.960 | and the other about its increasing value, which we can combine into the idea that provides

01:25:08.340 | the foundation for everything that follows in this book.

01:25:12.640 | The Deep Work Hypothesis The ability to perform deep work is becoming

01:25:17.560 | increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our

01:25:24.040 | economy.

01:25:25.440 | As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill and then make it the core of their working

01:25:30.760 | life will thrive.

01:25:33.480 | This book has two goals pursued in two parts.

01:25:37.040 | The first, tackled in part one, is to convince you the deep work hypothesis is true.

01:25:41.720 | The second, tackled in part two, is to teach you how to take advantage of this reality

01:25:45.600 | by training your brain and transforming your work habits to place deep work at the core

01:25:50.480 | of your professional life.

01:25:52.640 | Before diving into these details, however, I'll take a moment to explain how I became

01:25:57.080 | such a devotee of depth.

01:26:00.440 | I've spent the past decade cultivating my own ability to concentrate on hard things.

01:26:05.400 | To understand the origins of this interest, it helps to know that I'm a theoretical

01:26:08.860 | computer scientist who performed my doctoral training in MIT's famed Theory of Computation

01:26:14.760 | group, a professional setting where the ability to focus is considered a crucial occupational

01:26:19.840 | skill.

01:26:20.840 | During these years, I shared a graduate student office down the hall from a MacArthur Genius

01:26:26.480 | Grant winner, a professor who was hired at MIT before he was old enough to legally drink.

01:26:32.160 | It wasn't uncommon to find this theoretician sitting in the common space, staring at markings

01:26:36.920 | on a whiteboard with a group of visiting scholars arrayed around him, also sitting quietly and

01:26:42.680 | staring.

01:26:43.680 | This could go on for hours.

01:26:44.920 | I'd go to lunch.

01:26:46.240 | I'd come back.

01:26:47.960 | Still staring.

01:26:49.320 | This particular professor is hard to reach.

01:26:51.520 | He's not on Twitter, and if he doesn't know you, he's unlikely to respond to your email.

01:26:55.880 | Last year, he published 16 papers.

01:26:59.240 | This type of fierce concentration permeated the atmosphere during my student years.

01:27:03.920 | Not surprisingly, I soon developed a similar commitment to depth.

01:27:07.360 | To the chagrin of both my friends and the various publicists I've worked with on my

01:27:10.800 | books, I've never had a Facebook or Twitter account or any other social media presence

01:27:14.840 | outside of a blog.

01:27:16.480 | I don't web surf and get most of my news from my home-delivered Washington Post and NPR.

01:27:21.720 | I'm also generally hard to reach.

01:27:24.160 | My author website doesn't provide a personal email address, and I didn't own my first smartphone

01:27:28.320 | until 2012, when my pregnant wife gave me an ultimatum.

01:27:32.440 | You have to have a phone that works before our son is born.

01:27:36.560 | On the other hand, my commitment to depth has rewarded me.

01:27:39.980 | In the 10-year period following my college graduation, I published four books, earned

01:27:44.280 | a PhD, wrote peer-reviewed academic papers at a high rate, and was hired as a 10-year

01:27:49.220 | track professor at Georgetown University.

01:27:51.760 | I maintained this voluminous production while rarely working past 5 or 6 p.m. during the

01:27:57.600 | work week.

01:27:59.160 | This compressed schedule is possible because I've invested significant effort to minimize

01:28:04.360 | the shallow in my life, while making sure I get the most out of the time this frees

01:28:08.920 | up.

01:28:09.920 | I build my days around a core of carefully chosen, deep work, with the shallow activities

01:28:15.500 | I absolutely cannot avoid batched into smaller bursts at the peripheries of my schedule.

01:28:21.160 | Three to four hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration

01:28:27.360 | it turns out, can produce a lot of valuable output.

01:28:32.360 | My commitment to depth has also returned non-professional benefits.

01:28:36.320 | For the most part, I don't touch a computer between the time when I get home from work

01:28:39.800 | and the next morning when the new work day begins, the main exception being blog posts,

01:28:44.800 | which I like to write after my kids go to bed.

01:28:47.480 | This ability to fully disconnect, as opposed to the more standard practice of sneaking

01:28:51.580 | in a few quick work email checks or giving in to frequent surveys of social media sites,

01:28:57.240 | allows me to be present with my wife and two sons in the evenings, and read a surprising

01:29:02.200 | number of books for a busy father of two.

01:29:05.120 | More generally, the lack of distraction in my life tones down that background hum of

01:29:10.160 | nervous mental energy that seems to increasingly pervade people's daily lives.

01:29:15.080 | I'm comfortable being bored, and this can be a surprisingly rewarding skill, especially

01:29:20.620 | on a lazy DC summer night listening to a Nationals game slowly unfold on the radio.

01:29:26.160 | This book is best described as an attempt to formalize and explain my attraction to

01:29:30.880 | depth over shallowness, and to detail the types of strategies that have helped me act

01:29:36.280 | on this attraction.

01:29:37.280 | I have committed this thinking to words, in part to help you follow my lead in rebuilding

01:29:42.040 | your life around deep work, but this isn't the whole story.

01:29:46.360 | My other interest in distilling and clarifying these thoughts is to further develop my own

01:29:50.640 | practice.

01:29:51.640 | Your recognition of the deep work hypothesis has helped me thrive, but I'm convinced

01:29:56.200 | that I haven't yet reached my full value-producing potential.

01:30:00.360 | As you struggle, and ultimately triumph with the ideas and rules in the chapters ahead,

01:30:05.080 | you can be assured that I'm following suit, ruthlessly culling the shallow and painstakingly

01:30:10.540 | cultivating the intensity of my depth.

01:30:12.920 | You'll learn how I fare in this book's conclusion.

01:30:17.120 | When Carl Jung wanted to revolutionize the field of psychiatry, he built a retreat in

01:30:21.960 | the woods.

01:30:22.960 | Jung's Bollingen Tower became a place where he could maintain his ability to think deeply,

01:30:27.800 | and then apply the skill to produce work of such stunning originality that it changed

01:30:31.360 | the world.

01:30:32.760 | In the pages ahead, I'll try to convince you to join me in the effort to build our

01:30:36.040 | own personal Bollingen Towers, to cultivate an ability to produce real value in an increasingly

01:30:41.880 | distracted world, and to recognize a truth embraced by the most productive and important

01:30:47.240 | personalities of generations past.

01:30:50.360 | A deep life is a good life.

01:30:53.700 | And thus concludes the introduction to Cal Newport's book entitled "Deep Work."

01:30:59.480 | Strongly recommended.

01:31:01.120 | Friends, the world of the future is going to be much less egalitarian than the world

01:31:07.320 | of today.

01:31:09.840 | Instead of a fairly homogenous society with a big middle class and everybody earning about

01:31:17.680 | the same amount of money, it's not going to be that way.

01:31:20.880 | The world of the future is going to be a world of extremes.

01:31:25.480 | This continues the trend.

01:31:27.560 | The most productive 20% of workers are going to receive 80% of the compensation.

01:31:35.640 | The most productive of that 20%, meaning the top 4%, are going to receive 80% of the 80%,

01:31:46.240 | which means the top 64% of rewards.

01:31:50.000 | Your career focus should be to always be in the top 4% of your field.

01:31:57.480 | And in so doing, you will be part of the very small cadre of workers earning 64% of the

01:32:04.680 | total income available.

01:32:07.060 | In the fullness of time, you will be in the top 4% of wealthy people who control 64% of

01:32:16.200 | the wealth.

01:32:17.640 | If possible, it would be great if you could move into the top 20% of the top 4%, which

01:32:23.400 | would be the top .8%, let's call it 1% among friends.

01:32:27.640 | And in so doing, you will be part of the top 1% that controls 80% of the top 80% of wealth.

01:32:39.440 | Hopefully I did that right.

01:32:41.240 | That means that you will be part of the top 1% that controls 51.2% of the wealth of your

01:32:47.640 | nation, of your world, etc.

01:32:50.560 | You will have a huge set of problems when that happens.

01:32:55.040 | There will be hordes of people with pitchforks, both physical and digital, desiring to take

01:33:00.680 | that wealth away.

01:33:02.080 | You will also have a huge set of problems to say, "How am I responsible with this wealth?"

01:33:07.720 | But the way that you get there is by using the intelligence that you have and harnessing

01:33:14.840 | your attention span so that you can take actions and produce work that matters.

01:33:21.360 | The reason I read you that entire introduction is to show you, here's a story from someone

01:33:27.280 | else of how that can be gained.

01:33:30.920 | You can start with nothing.

01:33:32.600 | You can put yourself in a room.

01:33:33.980 | You can force yourself to learn something and go into a new field.

01:33:37.160 | And if you continue to work in that field, you'll continue to enjoy the benefits of it.

01:33:44.640 | Deep work is indeed the superpower of the 21st century.

01:33:49.920 | Now one of the things I've noticed over the years is how absurdly easy it is in the modern

01:33:55.200 | world to be in the top 20% of society.

01:33:59.720 | Years ago I did a show on the 1000% formula.

01:34:02.760 | I pointed out how if you're practicing the 1000% formula, you read a book a week, basically

01:34:09.400 | because you read 30 to 60 minutes a day.

01:34:11.040 | You read about a book a week.

01:34:12.040 | You read a book a week.

01:34:13.040 | That's about 50 books per year.

01:34:14.360 | I pointed out how books are the most efficient form of knowledge acquisition because you're

01:34:18.720 | standing on the shoulders of giants who are standing on the shoulders of giants who are

01:34:21.280 | standing on the shoulders of giants of people who have distilled their ideas into the most

01:34:25.920 | fundamental concepts possibly available.

01:34:29.520 | Pointed all that out.

01:34:30.520 | And I showed you.

01:34:31.520 | I said, "Remember, you're living in a society where nobody reads.

01:34:33.800 | Now over the next 10 years, you will have read 500 books in your field.

01:34:39.200 | You're going to be at the top of your field no matter what because nobody reads for the

01:34:44.120 | price of what?

01:34:45.680 | Call it 15 bucks a book times 500 books, $7,500 over the next 10 years of investment

01:34:53.880 | in yourself, you're practically in the top, again, you're guaranteed to be in the top

01:34:59.160 | 20% if not the top 20% of the top 20%.

01:35:04.800 | But today in 2023, the situation is even more lopsided.

01:35:11.200 | When I used to talk about the 1000% formula almost 10 years ago, I talked about it in

01:35:15.440 | the context of reading.

01:35:17.480 | Well, today, even if somebody reads, nobody has the attention span to actually follow

01:35:22.760 | through on anything.

01:35:24.640 | And so your ability to follow through and just do something, because remember, it's

01:35:28.480 | action that leads to outcomes, not knowledge, it's action.

01:35:32.080 | If you can cultivate an attention span and do deep work, just even more, the distinction

01:35:38.360 | is going to be even bigger.

01:35:40.880 | All your friends are going to be glued to their phones, swipe, swipe, swipe on whatever

01:35:45.360 | their app of choice is, rotting their brains, decreasing their gray matter, lowering their

01:35:50.600 | willpower, basically destroying their brains.

01:35:56.000 | Decision is yours.

01:35:58.120 | Same thing with your children, you have a choice.

01:36:01.080 | Do you allow your children to be stupefied by the culture around?

01:36:07.080 | Or do you step in and teach your children how to do deep work?

01:36:13.040 | I've done my best and I will continue to do my best to share with you whatever strategies

01:36:16.480 | I can see that come up with, but you have to just use that paradigm and figure out what's

01:36:20.600 | going to work in your family for yourself, for your children.

01:36:24.000 | Maybe it's those apps that I said, take a look at your screen time, take a look at the

01:36:26.920 | OneSec app.

01:36:29.120 | Maybe it's dumping your phone.

01:36:31.120 | There's all kinds of things that you could do.

01:36:32.600 | You got to figure out what's going to work for you.

01:36:35.440 | The chain starts with the desire to change and then you figure out how to change.

01:36:39.160 | But this is the superpower of the 21st century.

01:36:44.200 | Knowledge is the starting point.

01:36:47.120 | I guess desire, ambition, goals are the starting point.

01:36:50.520 | Then you acquire knowledge, just the knowledge that you need to start your process towards

01:36:54.240 | those goals.

01:36:55.640 | And then from there, you need attention span to do deep work, to take the actions that

01:37:00.920 | are going to move you toward your goals.

01:37:04.240 | But if you'll do that, the future for you and for your family and for your children

01:37:09.360 | is unlimited.

01:37:10.360 | We're living in the greatest time to be alive in human history.

01:37:15.200 | What it takes though, is someone to open their eyes, look around and recognize how do you

01:37:19.800 | thrive in this modern world?

01:37:22.040 | And I've given you the formula as best I understand it.

01:37:25.560 | I hope that you'll take it and you'll implement it.

01:37:55.520 | [music]

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01:38:20.680 | So see your Toyota dealer today.

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01:38:27.240 | Let's go places.

01:38:28.240 | you

2023-04-13_The_21st_Century_Superpower_That_Will_Radically_Increase_Your_Earnings_and_Impact