back to indexCal Newport's Planning System (In Detail)
Chapters
0:0 Cal's intro
1:25 Cal trying to make his tasks fit
5:0 Cal reviews his values
7:11 Cal's maintenance
9:40 Cal's productivity
15:0 Feeling more relaxed
00:00:00.000 |
Before we get to the questions though, I want to do a deep dive. 00:00:04.000 |
The big question I want to address in today's deep dive is the following. 00:00:14.900 |
I've talked about this before, but I'm going to get granular today. 00:00:20.200 |
Because of a recent experience I had just a couple days before 00:00:28.000 |
I got very stressed/anxious to the point where I actually lost a lot of sleep. 00:00:36.300 |
I was having a hard time sleeping because once my mind got fired up, 00:00:41.700 |
Here was the thing that was making me stressed and anxious. 00:00:50.300 |
I go a little bit lax on my systems in the summer. 00:00:53.900 |
So in the summer, I have very little to do but write. 00:00:57.700 |
I take the foot off the gas, put a little bit of my organizational systems. 00:01:01.000 |
And then I have to get things locked back in for the fall because things get more busy. 00:01:06.000 |
Well, in the summer, I had accreted all of these ancillary new or miscellaneous 00:01:12.000 |
disciplines and systems and ideas and projects that I wanted to tackle. 00:01:16.000 |
And I had these notes about all these different things I was working on 00:01:19.000 |
spread out over many different digital media and many different notebooks. 00:01:23.000 |
And a couple days ago, I was like, okay, I have to actually get this stuff all wrangled 00:01:30.700 |
Some of them were redundant with other things. 00:01:36.400 |
Some things seemed like it was just too much. 00:01:38.000 |
I was asking myself, there's too many initiatives I was trying to get going. 00:01:41.000 |
And it really stressed me out to the point where I had a hard time sleeping. 00:01:48.200 |
And I'm going to put quotation marks around epiphany here because it is the exact 00:01:57.900 |
Which is that the planning system that I have been perfecting over a decade, 00:02:02.900 |
I've been using this for a decade, is what works for me. 00:02:07.300 |
And every time I try to reinvent the wheel or add new components onto this, 00:02:13.500 |
And so I said, you know, I need to do forget this like I do every fall, 00:02:19.500 |
get all of the pieces of that standard system up and running, and I feel much better. 00:02:27.200 |
I think I'm going to come up with some new exciting thing that's going to really 00:02:33.900 |
And I always go back to my same old tried and true three-part planning system 00:02:41.700 |
Everything I have done as a professional in the last decade, 00:02:44.400 |
which is most of my books, most of my academic work, 00:02:49.800 |
So in honor of it, and in honor of it being the fall and back to school, 00:02:53.900 |
and work ramping up again for a lot of people, 00:02:59.200 |
but clearly through the planning system I do to organize the stuff in my life 00:03:12.000 |
I call this the root document of the core document, 00:03:16.900 |
This, I think, is an important place to start. 00:03:18.700 |
I call this rooted productivity, where you have somewhere a core document 00:03:22.200 |
from which everything you do actually comes out of it. 00:03:24.900 |
Because to me, it's important that everything is written down, 00:03:27.700 |
So I like to have one core document that just summarizes, 00:03:35.000 |
So the start, I actually had Jesse load up here the actual document I use. 00:03:41.100 |
This is the actual document I use that just summarizes 00:03:45.300 |
The exact wording I use, you'll notice as we go through this here, 00:03:56.200 |
All right, for those of you who are watching on the YouTube channel, 00:03:59.500 |
For those who are listening, I'll narrate it. 00:04:01.300 |
At the top of this document is a title core systems. 00:04:06.300 |
Below are summaries of the three main categories 00:04:11.000 |
that contain the elements of my core systems. 00:04:13.200 |
Core documents, productivity, and discipline. 00:04:16.200 |
So I've broken this document into those three sections. 00:04:20.100 |
Everything related to my core planning system 00:04:26.500 |
All right, so we start with category number one, core documents. 00:04:32.100 |
Two types of core documents I maintain for my system. 00:04:34.000 |
One is values, a document that, as I say here, 00:04:38.400 |
describes my roles and values by which I try to live. 00:04:44.300 |
And you'll see, like, if you're looking at this online, 00:04:51.200 |
It's not polished. It doesn't have to be polished. 00:04:53.400 |
All right, the other type of documents I keep are my career 00:05:01.000 |
I have one plan for each of these two parts of my life 00:05:03.000 |
that lays out my current thoughts, experimental systems, 00:05:10.500 |
is like, just what's my plan for pursuing those parts of my life 00:05:19.400 |
So if there's a particular big project or initiative 00:05:21.800 |
I'm working on, I might describe that in its own document 00:05:25.200 |
and link to it from, let's say, the professional strategic plan. 00:05:32.100 |
My values, here are my values, the roles of my life, 00:05:36.900 |
and then my career and non-career strategic plans. 00:05:42.000 |
I have this subcategory here called maintenance, 00:05:45.200 |
and it talks about how I update these documents. 00:05:49.600 |
and I'll just summarize this at the high level. 00:05:59.300 |
I maybe need to be focusing on or I've fallen off of them. 00:06:09.900 |
calling someone every day, that type of thing. 00:06:19.600 |
I've noted on here that I also include in my value plan 00:06:25.700 |
So what am I doing to help keep my mind sharp 00:06:34.400 |
So I try to about once a week to update this values plan. 00:06:52.400 |
at the beginning of each new semester, I overhaul it. 00:06:58.200 |
but I can tweak them at any time I feel like I should. 00:07:00.500 |
And then finally, I talk about my idea notebook 00:07:09.600 |
And at the very least, when I do my semester plans 00:07:30.200 |
to just to help keep that at the center of my life. 00:07:35.500 |
All right, the next category for my core systems 00:07:46.200 |
in a way where I am happy with what I'm producing? 00:07:49.700 |
I break this down into weekly and daily planning. 00:08:01.200 |
my calendar, my task list, and my value plan. 00:08:50.600 |
And if it's a weekday, I make a time block plan. 00:09:01.800 |
And then I make my time block plan for the day. 00:09:03.600 |
If it's not a weekday, then I do something looser. 00:09:15.000 |
So you see how these things start to connect together. 00:09:17.600 |
The strategic plan influences the weekly plan. 00:09:23.600 |
Your daily plan figures out what you're doing right now. 00:09:28.700 |
is influenced by your big picture strategic plans, 00:09:32.500 |
about your big picture strategic plans right now. 00:09:34.600 |
It comes down through these different levels. 00:09:36.800 |
All right, two other pieces to my productivity system. 00:09:40.300 |
Clear work shutdowns with a shutdown complete ritual. 00:09:49.800 |
for what you wanna do with the rest of your day 00:09:59.600 |
Make sure at the very least at the shutdown each day, 00:10:02.100 |
you process all the tasks that you've captured 00:10:06.700 |
Again, this is all about for me, stress management. 00:10:19.400 |
It'll get put on my task list if it's a task. 00:10:23.400 |
if it's a thought about what I need to change for my plan. 00:10:28.000 |
It'll be seen in when I look at my weekly plan. 00:10:37.300 |
I don't have to keep track of things in my mind. 00:10:42.700 |
for how I'm trying to advance these big picture goals 00:10:54.100 |
whatever relaxing thing that I'm trying to do. 00:10:56.600 |
All right, the third category here is discipline. 00:11:10.500 |
It might be things about the number of deep work hours 00:11:15.060 |
about the number of calls you make every day, whatever. 00:11:18.800 |
they're disciplines that I try to strictly follow 00:11:22.700 |
So I think it's important to have hard disciplines. 00:11:25.000 |
I do this, I do that, and I do this other thing. 00:11:32.500 |
to help establish a foundation of a deeper life. 00:11:41.800 |
I talk about here is I often track these with metrics. 00:11:45.700 |
So typically, if it's during an academic semester, 00:11:50.900 |
I'll have a metric code for each of my disciplines 00:11:53.700 |
where I can keep track of in my time block planner 00:12:02.000 |
like in the summer, for example, or over a break, 00:12:04.100 |
I might, there are periods I'll take a break for it. 00:12:11.800 |
That system can support massively complicated ambitions. 00:12:17.400 |
That system can support an incredibly complicated, 00:12:26.140 |
of all the different things that have to fit together. 00:12:29.860 |
This system will support a life outside of work 00:12:34.860 |
that you can be present and intentional and interesting 00:12:37.300 |
and pursue things that are interesting to you 00:12:40.340 |
develop your relationships, not get lost in work 00:12:42.340 |
and not get completely overwhelmed with anxiety and stress. 00:12:49.040 |
of living truer to your values, living a good life, 00:12:52.300 |
trying to actually practice and implement the things 00:13:06.960 |
So all this extra type of stuff I was trying to do 00:13:09.040 |
in the last few weeks, I realized that all fits in here. 00:13:18.940 |
Shouldn't that be part of the weekly planning? 00:13:20.740 |
There's all these little legacy incongruities. 00:13:49.940 |
You have extended plans that you're linking to 00:14:01.800 |
Really just down to the basics, here's my values. 00:14:07.540 |
A lot of like trying to get out of the despair, 00:14:17.500 |
Sorry for thinking I could do a little better. 00:14:23.060 |
This then is my call to you out there in my audience. 00:14:26.100 |
If you don't already have a pretty effective system 00:14:34.340 |
and goes from, captures everything from those big thoughts 00:14:42.180 |
If you don't have a system like that, try this one. 00:14:47.200 |
I don't know why it works so well, but it does. 00:15:00.080 |
At first, it feels like a lot of moving pieces. 00:15:01.940 |
You get in the rhythm and it actually makes you feel freer. 00:15:09.480 |
And in the end, it does produce stuff that matters. 00:15:15.680 |
You've heard me talk about this system before. 00:15:19.680 |
I mean, I'm used to it because I've done it for a decade. 00:15:21.980 |
It's like muscle memory for me, but I don't know. 00:16:20.740 |
was being explicit about what are the disciplines? 00:16:34.640 |
I don't fully trust it and then I get anxious. 00:16:41.440 |
It all has to connect back to this root document. 00:16:47.520 |
- I was listening to an interview with Sisson and Rogan 00:17:09.280 |
and then 15 minutes, like the last 10 minutes, 00:17:22.580 |
I don't know, he was on the show a couple of years ago. 00:17:45.940 |
Laird Hamilton brings an assault bike into the sauna, 00:17:53.820 |
It's like you do your arms and your legs and resistance. 00:17:58.680 |
It's like one of the hardest single exercise you can do. 00:18:02.240 |
He brings one of those into a giant barrel sauna 00:18:11.780 |
his discipline document is more impressive than mine.