Uncomfortable Truth About Social Media (Avoid Distracting Content & Control Your Life)

00:00:00.000 | So today I wanna talk about digital distraction.

00:00:04.840 | One of the big issues we face with our digital lives

00:00:08.360 | is the following dual reality.

00:00:09.840 | On the one hand, we are not happy with our relationship

00:00:13.680 | with the type of digital content

00:00:15.160 | that's delivered through our phones.

00:00:16.720 | We're spending too much time looking at it.

00:00:18.480 | We don't love the quality of what we're looking at

00:00:20.520 | during all that time.

00:00:21.880 | On the other hand, calls to step away

00:00:25.600 | from new and popular technologies can seem regressive

00:00:29.800 | or unsustainable.

00:00:32.360 | I mean, what are we gonna do?

00:00:33.200 | Just pretend like phones don't exist,

00:00:35.760 | like people did not ever invent social media.

00:00:38.200 | So we're sort of trapped between both unhappiness

00:00:42.040 | and inevitability with distracting digital content.

00:00:46.000 | So what I wanna do today is offer an interesting new way

00:00:49.160 | to think about and navigate these challenges.

00:00:52.560 | At the core of this new way

00:00:53.760 | is going to be an analogy about food.

00:00:57.840 | So this is actually based off of a newsletter article

00:01:01.640 | I published a couple of weeks ago.

00:01:03.440 | So you can also find the article at calnewport.com/blog,

00:01:08.200 | or if you subscribe, check your newsletter.

00:01:11.240 | All right, so I opened up this essay

00:01:13.080 | and I wanna open up this discussion

00:01:14.440 | with something I noticed when I was in London

00:01:16.240 | a few weeks ago.

00:01:18.320 | There was a big marketing push going on

00:01:20.920 | when I was in London for the paperback edition

00:01:22.940 | of Chris Van Toleken's big UK bestseller,

00:01:27.240 | Ultra-Processed People.

00:01:29.520 | Why do we all eat stuff that isn't food

00:01:32.880 | and why can't we stop?

00:01:34.200 | So this was in all of the bookstores

00:01:36.840 | that I could see in London

00:01:39.000 | and I went to a lot of bookstores in London

00:01:40.480 | because you know me, that's the type of thing I do.

00:01:42.520 | All right, so I had to find out more about this.

00:01:44.640 | I ended up looking at the book

00:01:46.440 | and I discovered this term ultra-processed food,

00:01:50.000 | which is at the core of Van Toleken's book

00:01:52.920 | is a term coined in 2009

00:01:55.320 | as part of a new food classification system

00:01:57.960 | and it was inspired by Michael Pollan's concept

00:02:00.560 | of edible food-like substances,

00:02:02.480 | which he talks about in his book, In Defense of Food.

00:02:06.080 | So ultra-processed foods are made

00:02:08.880 | by breaking down real food

00:02:10.920 | to their organic building blocks.

00:02:13.600 | You might take soy, you might take corn

00:02:15.940 | and break it down into these organic building blocks

00:02:19.200 | and then you reconstitute new fake food

00:02:21.580 | from these organic building blocks

00:02:23.400 | that you fill with a lot of sugar

00:02:25.120 | and salt and fat and you soak in all sorts

00:02:27.440 | of other types of chemicals to make them shelf-sable

00:02:29.880 | or to have the right mouthfeel

00:02:31.480 | and you end up with these, as Pollan would call them,

00:02:33.760 | edible food-like substances

00:02:35.480 | that are not like any real food that exists,

00:02:38.000 | but they're hyper-palatable.

00:02:39.600 | Once you start eating them, you can't stop to eat,

00:02:42.960 | which is a problem because they're highly caloric

00:02:44.660 | and they're junk.

00:02:45.500 | Like they're made from base building blocks

00:02:48.100 | and full of salt and full of fat.

00:02:50.880 | So very bad for us.

00:02:52.480 | This book was all about how ultra-processed foods

00:02:55.540 | is very profitable, is very bad for us.

00:02:57.200 | We should basically avoid them

00:02:59.600 | and it's causing huge amounts of problems

00:03:02.080 | in our current health system.

00:03:04.320 | So once I learned about this,

00:03:05.840 | this made me think a little bit about our problems

00:03:08.280 | with digital content.

00:03:10.180 | I began to come up with what I think is a useful analogy

00:03:15.040 | between digital content and the way we think about food.

00:03:20.820 | So I'm gonna bring up a diagram here

00:03:23.400 | for those who are watching as opposed to just listening.

00:03:28.040 | Jesse, people will be disappointed to see

00:03:29.760 | that I actually pre-typed out the words here

00:03:34.320 | so you don't get to see me actually

00:03:37.000 | write by hand the words,

00:03:39.320 | which looks roughly as you would expect

00:03:41.760 | if you tried to teach writing to an inebriated chimpanzee.

00:03:46.620 | I would say that's roughly what my handwriting looks like

00:03:49.740 | when I try to write on screen.

00:03:50.580 | So I typed this out.

00:03:51.420 | Instead, I'm making a bit of like a food pyramid here.

00:03:53.960 | And what I'm gonna do is analogize types of food,

00:03:56.620 | starting with minimally processed,

00:03:58.060 | moving up to moderately processed

00:03:59.440 | and ending with ultra-processed.

00:04:00.760 | So the food hierarchy that nutritionists use right now,

00:04:03.360 | I'm going to analogize these to types of technology.

00:04:06.660 | And we're gonna find this in the end to be useful

00:04:08.680 | for how to think about the most distracting of technologies.

00:04:12.700 | So at the bottom of this pyramid,

00:04:15.120 | we have minimally processed.

00:04:17.960 | So for food, minimally processed food

00:04:20.760 | is gonna describe things like whole foods, right?

00:04:24.720 | So it's an apple, it's a broccoli

00:04:28.480 | or something like this, right?

00:04:30.600 | We can make a connection between minimally processed foods

00:04:35.600 | and printed linguistic media, right?

00:04:39.280 | So I'm starting to make a connection now

00:04:41.640 | to types of foods and types of media.

00:04:43.120 | So I'll draw this on here now,

00:04:45.560 | but when it comes to minimally processed,

00:04:48.400 | let's think about things like books, linguistic media.

00:04:53.400 | This is a type of media that's been around for a long time,

00:04:55.880 | at least 5,000 years,

00:04:58.120 | not enough time for a lot of brain evolution,

00:05:00.460 | but plenty of time for cultural evolution.

00:05:02.280 | We've sort of, our culture has evolved

00:05:05.000 | along with written media like books.

00:05:06.800 | We sort of have, we know how to deal with them.

00:05:08.900 | Our mind knows how to handle them.

00:05:10.440 | There's a lot of quality in written media.

00:05:12.620 | So I think about our media equivalent

00:05:15.780 | to minimally processed food

00:05:16.900 | is gonna be linguistic media like books.

00:05:20.440 | Then we move up to moderately processed food.

00:05:24.300 | All right, in the world of food,

00:05:25.540 | this is where we get things like white bread,

00:05:27.500 | dry pasta, and canned soups, all right?

00:05:32.500 | When these came along, we're like, okay,

00:05:34.220 | these are, they're more convenient

00:05:36.900 | than minimally processed food.

00:05:38.460 | They don't require as much prep,

00:05:40.120 | but they tend to be higher calories,

00:05:42.540 | maybe a little less quality.

00:05:43.700 | It's easy to maybe eat a little bit too much.

00:05:45.980 | And so, you know, we thought about

00:05:47.980 | moderately processed food with some care.

00:05:50.520 | Well, I'm gonna draw a media analogy

00:05:52.440 | from moderately processed food to mass media.

00:05:56.020 | Right, so you put mass there.

00:05:59.320 | It's like television, like radio.

00:06:01.620 | I'm also gonna put,

00:06:03.020 | I'm putting web two here.

00:06:06.500 | That's not quite right, but what I mean by this,

00:06:09.580 | I'm gonna mean things like email newsletters and podcasts.

00:06:14.480 | So it's user-generated content,

00:06:18.260 | but not super curated,

00:06:21.380 | a little higher quality than like a comment on a post

00:06:23.980 | or something like this.

00:06:25.220 | So that sort of older early web two version

00:06:27.820 | of user-generated content,

00:06:29.660 | sort of like high quality, low barrier to entry,

00:06:33.020 | but hard to find, hard to curate.

00:06:35.020 | Like I have to be convinced

00:06:36.660 | to subscribe to an email newsletter.

00:06:37.900 | I have to be convinced to subscribe to a podcast.

00:06:41.060 | And then we have the ultra processed food at the top,

00:06:44.580 | which is more recent.

00:06:45.700 | And when it comes to media,

00:06:46.740 | I'm gonna analogize this to social content.

00:06:48.900 | So I'll put social media.

00:06:52.220 | It's a useful analogy,

00:06:55.420 | minimally processed, moderately processed, ultra processed.

00:06:57.740 | Now here's the thing, when it comes to food,

00:06:59.940 | we know how to deal with each of these levels.

00:07:03.220 | The advice is pretty straightforward.

00:07:04.620 | You can eat, don't worry about minimally processed food.

00:07:06.580 | Go ahead and eat what you want to eat.

00:07:08.100 | When it comes to moderately processed food, have moderation.

00:07:11.460 | You don't have to avoid it, but be careful about it.

00:07:14.780 | It's very palatable, it's easier.

00:07:16.700 | Be careful about eating too much of it.

00:07:18.580 | And for ultra processed food, as we now know,

00:07:20.980 | eat sparingly.

00:07:22.060 | In fact, avoid it altogether if you can.

00:07:23.980 | You don't necessarily need that in your lives.

00:07:26.340 | We could have similar advice for the corresponding media.

00:07:31.180 | So when we go to the minimally processed level

00:07:34.180 | and we get printed linguistic communication like books,

00:07:37.300 | as much as you want to read, it's great.

00:07:38.620 | Consume as many books as you want.

00:07:41.060 | No limit.

00:07:42.300 | Read, read, read.

00:07:43.420 | We're not worried about it.

00:07:44.780 | When it comes to the moderately processed media,

00:07:47.380 | so now mass media like television or online streaming shows

00:07:50.660 | or podcasts or email newsletters, have some moderation

00:07:54.660 | and maybe look for the higher quality spectrum

00:07:58.500 | of these things, right?

00:07:59.380 | Like the same way we deal with moderately processed food.

00:08:01.940 | So what might that mean for media?

00:08:04.740 | That might mean, for example, schedule.

00:08:07.580 | If you're gonna watch TV shows, be like, yeah, at night,

00:08:10.540 | I'm gonna watch for like this 90 minutes

00:08:12.460 | and here's what I'm gonna watch.

00:08:13.620 | And I chose something that's pretty good,

00:08:15.180 | pretty high quality, right?

00:08:16.260 | As opposed to I just default to watching stuff

00:08:19.300 | and I'll binge for hours at a time.

00:08:21.020 | When it comes to something like email newsletters,

00:08:25.780 | it's fine to read them.

00:08:26.820 | I think email newsletters are great.

00:08:28.460 | You don't want them to be a portal to other distractions,

00:08:31.020 | just like you don't want processed food

00:08:32.380 | to be the portal to binge eating.

00:08:33.900 | So maybe use one of these clipping services.

00:08:36.820 | Someone was telling me the other day

00:08:37.940 | about a really cool service.

00:08:39.100 | One of the listeners emailed me about this,

00:08:41.700 | where you can send articles or email newsletters

00:08:45.220 | to your Kindle.

00:08:46.700 | There's you like press a button,

00:08:47.620 | it shoots it to your Kindle.

00:08:49.140 | So you can kind of shoot stuff to the Kindle

00:08:50.620 | throughout the day.

00:08:51.460 | And then later you're like, I'm gonna go sit on the porch

00:08:53.980 | or at like the beer garden at the local whatever.

00:08:56.140 | And I'm gonna read these, like I have five articles

00:08:58.100 | I found that it's like on my Kindle.

00:09:00.860 | So it's not distracting.

00:09:01.860 | There's no portals to other types of distraction.

00:09:04.260 | Same thing, podcast, it's fine.

00:09:06.060 | Like to listen to these while you're doing other things.

00:09:07.740 | Just make sure, for example,

00:09:08.980 | that you have a regular dose of vitamin boredom.

00:09:11.460 | We talk about this in my book, "Digital Minimalism."

00:09:14.300 | You wanna make sure that you don't take all solitude

00:09:17.540 | out of your day.

00:09:18.380 | So as long as every day you have a little bit of time

00:09:19.900 | where you're doing something boring

00:09:20.740 | with nothing in your ear,

00:09:21.700 | and every week you have an extended amount of time

00:09:24.000 | where you're doing something boring,

00:09:25.100 | like going on a long walk without something in your ear,

00:09:26.780 | you should be fine.

00:09:27.620 | Otherwise, yeah, you can listen to podcasts.

00:09:28.780 | So we can have these like reasonable rules.

00:09:30.740 | Hey, it's Cal.

00:09:31.580 | I wanted to interrupt briefly to say

00:09:33.500 | that if you're enjoying this video,

00:09:35.540 | then you need to check out my new book,

00:09:37.740 | "Slow Productivity,

00:09:39.540 | "The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout."

00:09:43.420 | This is like the Bible for most of the ideas

00:09:46.120 | we talk about here in these videos.

00:09:48.860 | You can get a free excerpt at calnewport.com/slow.

00:09:53.860 | I know you're gonna like it.

00:09:55.900 | Check it out.

00:09:56.940 | Now let's get back to the video.

00:09:59.260 | Here's where things get interesting.

00:10:00.380 | When we move up to the ultra-processed level,

00:10:02.660 | what do we say about ultra-processed food?

00:10:04.460 | Avoid that stuff.

00:10:05.600 | Why don't we say something similar

00:10:08.340 | about ultra-processed content like social media content?

00:10:12.720 | Like, yeah, use that sparingly,

00:10:14.720 | and if possible, actually,

00:10:16.380 | you probably just want to avoid that.

00:10:18.220 | Now, I want to make this,

00:10:21.180 | I mean, this is kind of the key of the discussion here.

00:10:23.880 | I want to make this analogy much more precise

00:10:27.520 | when it comes to ultra-processed food and social media,

00:10:29.460 | 'cause I want to convince you

00:10:31.540 | that the way we deal with ultra-processed food

00:10:33.460 | is a perfectly reasonable way

00:10:34.700 | to think about ultra-processed content

00:10:36.340 | like social media content, all right?

00:10:38.780 | So here's the thing about ultra-processed food.

00:10:42.860 | We talked about how they build things down

00:10:44.220 | to the building blocks and then recombine

00:10:45.820 | and build these fake foods that are highly appealing.

00:10:50.820 | Something similar is happening

00:10:52.860 | with social media content, right?

00:10:56.300 | It's not just some vague notion of, like, it's addictive.

00:10:59.060 | Something very similar is happening.

00:11:00.700 | So let me get more specific about this, okay?

00:11:03.700 | In fact, I'm going to draw this here.

00:11:04.860 | So let me go to a clean screen.

00:11:08.520 | All right, I'm going to draw this visually.

00:11:10.220 | There is a loop that happens

00:11:12.940 | when it comes to social content

00:11:15.460 | that I think makes this analogy to ultra-processed food

00:11:19.340 | more than just a very rough analogy.

00:11:21.260 | So here's the current loop for social media content.

00:11:23.700 | We start with, I'm drawing sort of like a blue box here.

00:11:28.880 | All right, so Jesse, this is a pool, all right?

00:11:32.600 | Why do I have a pool here?

00:11:33.480 | Because this is what we start with

00:11:35.040 | is in the feedback loop for social content.

00:11:37.880 | You start with a pool of user-produced content

00:11:39.960 | that's very large.

00:11:40.920 | Lots of people are posting content

00:11:42.560 | on TikTok, on Instagram, whatever it is.

00:11:44.740 | All right, this then is going to move along the cycle

00:11:48.520 | and we are going to have recommendation algorithms.

00:11:53.960 | So, you know, there's a computer involved.

00:11:57.840 | So I'll draw my world-famous computer drawing.

00:12:01.220 | All right, so we have a computer involved, right?

00:12:04.440 | So then we have recommendation algorithms

00:12:06.440 | that selects among this very large pool of content

00:12:08.880 | to figure out what to show you, the user.

00:12:12.160 | So I'll put the user is over here.

00:12:15.360 | All right, and then whether you like it or not,

00:12:21.540 | then that feedback makes it back

00:12:26.360 | to the producers of the content for the pool, right?

00:12:30.000 | So now you're getting this feedback.

00:12:31.400 | A lot of people viewed it.

00:12:32.560 | Not very many people viewed it.

00:12:33.760 | This got a lot of likes.

00:12:34.680 | This not get a lot of likes.

00:12:35.600 | This got a viral lift.

00:12:36.600 | This other thing did not get a viral lift.

00:12:38.800 | So that then affects how you produce your content

00:12:42.560 | so that it better serves the out,

00:12:44.000 | better works with the algorithm

00:12:46.360 | and the taste of the users and on and on and on.

00:12:49.320 | The output of this, the effect of all of this

00:12:54.500 | is something like what food scientists do

00:12:57.160 | with ultra-processed food.

00:12:59.240 | So the producers of content in this,

00:13:01.440 | constantly getting this feedback

00:13:03.400 | about algorithmically mediated consumption,

00:13:06.000 | constantly adjusting what they're doing,

00:13:08.040 | end up, and this is the cycle

00:13:09.520 | of almost any large-scale social platform,

00:13:11.880 | end up basically breaking down media content as we know it

00:13:14.880 | into its base building blocks

00:13:16.800 | and then reconstructing them into these forms

00:13:19.240 | that have never existed before,

00:13:22.120 | but are hyper-palatable to these very specific dyads

00:13:25.340 | between recommendation algorithms

00:13:26.780 | and the particular consumption habits of consumers

00:13:28.960 | that they're trying to get their media to.

00:13:30.900 | The result is frankenfood, but in media form.

00:13:35.460 | So this is why we see really unusual

00:13:39.300 | types of content forms suddenly begin to proliferate

00:13:43.420 | on these platforms.

00:13:44.260 | It's this feedback loop.

00:13:45.820 | And this is very similar to what the food scientists do.

00:13:47.820 | I'm gonna read a quote from my article on this

00:13:49.820 | that gets to the heart of this.

00:13:51.580 | "In this way, the users of social media platforms

00:13:54.940 | "simulate something like the food scientist's ability

00:13:58.080 | "to break down corn and reconstitute it

00:14:00.520 | "into a hyper-palatable edible food-like substance.

00:14:04.260 | "What is a TikTok dance mashup, if not a digital Dorito?"

00:14:09.260 | All right, so if we go back to this, we're like, okay,

00:14:12.100 | this connection between ultra-processed food

00:14:14.620 | and social content is not just a lazy analogy.

00:14:18.040 | It's very similar.

00:14:19.560 | And so for the same reasons we say,

00:14:21.100 | why don't we just avoid ultra-processed food

00:14:23.820 | because we will consume a ton of Inez crap,

00:14:27.300 | we could say the same thing about social media content.

00:14:30.260 | Now, here's why it's really, I think, useful

00:14:34.780 | to think about this through this analogous form

00:14:36.780 | is that we are comfortable with that food advice.

00:14:40.140 | No one says, if you come out and say,

00:14:44.100 | you know what, ultra-processed food,

00:14:45.740 | for all these reasons, you should avoid it.

00:14:47.360 | No one comes out and says, whoa, you're anti-food.

00:14:51.880 | No one says that.

00:14:53.120 | No one comes out and says, when you're like, look,

00:14:55.240 | just, I would not eat Doritos and Oreos,

00:15:00.240 | and this is not real food, and it's weird,

00:15:03.560 | it messes with your mind.

00:15:04.600 | No one will say, hey, Luddite,

00:15:07.300 | this is the inevitable progress of food technology,

00:15:10.400 | don't get in the way of it.

00:15:12.480 | No one will say, when you push back

00:15:14.160 | on ultra-processed foods, well,

00:15:15.800 | that's just because you're older.

00:15:17.320 | The kids, see, this was invented,

00:15:20.480 | Fruit Roll-Ups were invented when we were kids.

00:15:22.520 | We don't say to our parents' generations,

00:15:24.100 | well, look, the kids are just more up on more newer foods,

00:15:27.800 | and you're just being old-fashioned

00:15:29.000 | and are scared of what's new.

00:15:30.560 | No, we say, this particular type of food

00:15:33.540 | is built in a lab by scientists

00:15:35.280 | so that we'll buy a lot of it, and it's very expensive,

00:15:37.400 | and it's really bad for us, let's just avoid that.

00:15:39.980 | So when we make this analogy to content,

00:15:42.200 | we realize, oh, it's possible to be more selective

00:15:44.840 | about digital content without having to be accused

00:15:47.600 | of being anti-technology, without having to be accused

00:15:50.680 | of ignoring the inevitable progress of technology,

00:15:53.960 | without having to be accused of being

00:15:55.480 | a sort of kids-these-days codger on their porch

00:15:57.680 | trying to yell at the stuff

00:15:58.600 | that the young people find natural.

00:16:00.280 | We can instead say, there's all sorts of media content,

00:16:03.520 | we can be savvy about how we approach it

00:16:05.960 | and read a bunch of books,

00:16:07.760 | have some more structure and moderation

00:16:09.720 | about stuff like TV and streaming and podcasts,

00:16:13.040 | and then stay away from the digital Doritos.

00:16:15.760 | It's completely compatible

00:16:18.280 | with a healthy media consumption diet.

00:16:20.680 | So that's why I found this analogy to food really useful,

00:16:24.920 | because it helped me see how strange and unusual

00:16:27.680 | and eccentric and narrow and specific

00:16:29.520 | social media content is.

00:16:30.920 | And when I see it as ultra-processed food,

00:16:34.200 | I can recognize it's high-tech,

00:16:36.160 | I can recognize a lot of advances

00:16:37.720 | were needed to make this possible,

00:16:39.440 | and I can also say, I don't want any of that on my plate.

00:16:43.040 | And so this analogy gives us a way

00:16:45.120 | of stepping away from the stuff that's making us unhappy

00:16:48.360 | without somehow feeling like we're doing something radical.

00:16:51.600 | If you're okay without eating

00:16:54.480 | Lay's potato chips every day,

00:16:56.400 | it's really not that much different to say,

00:16:58.320 | I don't use Instagram every day.

00:17:01.280 | All right, so that food analogy I find useful.

00:17:05.000 | That there is something exceptional and unusual

00:17:09.240 | and not somehow teleological

00:17:11.520 | built into the future of the internet

00:17:13.360 | with a lot of this stuff that's happening with social media.

00:17:16.440 | It's not the future of the internet, it's food science.

00:17:20.000 | It's we've made Snickers bars irresistible, you know?

00:17:24.040 | And when I see it that way, I'm like, okay, not for me.

00:17:27.280 | And hopefully we don't have to see that anymore

00:17:28.740 | as being some sort of weird, unusual stance.

00:17:32.240 | All right, so I don't know, Jesse, ultra-processed content,

00:17:35.020 | it doesn't have to be a big political statement

00:17:36.760 | not to consume it.

00:17:38.360 | - The one thing I think you want to think about

00:17:39.840 | is most grocery stores you go into,

00:17:42.480 | the middle of the store is basically moderate

00:17:45.160 | to ultra-processed food, right?

00:17:47.080 | So it's pretty hard to avoid.

00:17:48.840 | You have to really know to stay on the outskirts

00:17:52.360 | of the grocery store.

00:17:53.520 | - So what's the phone equivalent?

00:17:55.220 | It's like you want something about apps on your phone

00:17:57.800 | or something like this, the middle of your phone

00:17:59.600 | versus the outskirts of your phone.

00:18:01.360 | Yeah, I know, it's the same thing.

00:18:05.240 | There's a lot of pressures going into making you,

00:18:08.240 | so the store puts it right up front and center,

00:18:10.640 | and in our cultural lives, people just keep talking about

00:18:13.440 | the stuff that's being spread around it.

00:18:15.840 | - And you go in the app store, the most popular apps

00:18:17.880 | are probably some of those social media apps

00:18:20.160 | that you see and people buy.

00:18:21.400 | - And cultural stories are happening there.

00:18:23.080 | But do you buy this analysis, Jesse?

00:18:25.240 | It seems to me, before, and even maybe

00:18:28.340 | when we started the show, but certainly a few years

00:18:30.460 | before that, the talk about social media content,

00:18:35.460 | the way I'm talking about it now,

00:18:37.080 | is this was this weird profit-seeking diversion

00:18:40.980 | from the internet that got really big,

00:18:44.060 | but it's really not good for us,

00:18:45.200 | and we can kind of move on without it.

00:18:47.000 | That used to be crazy talk, right?

00:18:50.680 | I mean, people are like, "What are you talking about?

00:18:51.980 | "That is the internet.

00:18:53.660 | "This is what the internet is supposed to be."

00:18:57.200 | It doesn't feel like crazy talk as much anymore.

00:18:59.760 | So now I'm really trying to give people

00:19:01.200 | vocabulary and ways of thinking about,

00:19:02.840 | yeah, all you're doing is saying no to Doritos.

00:19:04.440 | This is not some anti-technology stance.

00:19:07.000 | It's not even a major stance.

00:19:08.240 | No one is going to think twice

00:19:10.440 | if you don't have the craziest of junk food in your house,

00:19:13.600 | like the stuff we had growing up.

00:19:15.800 | Do you remember Dunkaroos?

00:19:18.840 | - Kind of.

00:19:19.680 | - Right?

00:19:20.500 | It's not TikTok Dunkaroos.

00:19:22.020 | Dunkaroos was cookies shaped like kangaroos

00:19:27.020 | and a bowl of chocolate packaged up with chemicals

00:19:32.320 | so it could stay shelf-stable for whatever,

00:19:34.860 | and you would dip the cookie in the chocolate.

00:19:37.320 | That's what our generation was told.

00:19:39.160 | I mean, is that not like the current generation and TikTok?

00:19:41.800 | Like, yeah, this is just like what you do on the internet.

00:19:43.840 | We ate Dunkaroos and had fruit by the foot.

00:19:46.560 | Remember that?

00:19:47.400 | - Oh, yeah.

00:19:48.220 | - You'd pull it out.

00:19:49.060 | Yeah, and now we're like, "Oh, that was basically poison."

00:19:51.520 | I mean, I think that's how we're gonna see this current age

00:19:54.780 | of like, "Of course I'm scrolling these videos of people."

00:19:58.600 | It's the weird hyper-palatable

00:20:01.600 | but foreignness of social content.

00:20:04.200 | Just like on, so on TikTok, it's these weird visual forms.

00:20:07.600 | That's just weird.

00:20:08.440 | It's not the way we've ever seen content before,

00:20:10.540 | but it just works right.

00:20:11.600 | On Twitter, I really think it's more,

00:20:13.380 | I mean, it's text, but it's more about this weird

00:20:15.780 | sort of hyper-argumentative tribal sort of cynical warfare.

00:20:20.560 | Like, it's this tone that has evolved to be like,

00:20:23.400 | "This is the Dunkaroos of like text posting."

00:20:26.160 | You know?

00:20:27.000 | Instagram, I don't know it well,

00:20:28.120 | but you get these weird visual niche cultures

00:20:31.240 | of like the mom blogger in the white linen,

00:20:36.240 | wind-bappled, blowing dresses.

00:20:39.360 | He brings her kids to collect wildflowers to put in jars.

00:20:42.740 | And with guys, it's like the muscles and the, you know,

00:20:46.720 | I don't know what you're doing,

00:20:47.560 | like lifting heavy things by private jet.

00:20:48.880 | There's these weird like visual languages

00:20:51.120 | that have this kind of compulsion.

00:20:52.480 | YouTube can get this like Mr. Beast style editing rhythm

00:20:57.120 | that's like unlike anything else that existed before,

00:20:59.480 | but it's this feedback loop.

00:21:00.600 | It's just breaking stuff down and reconstituting

00:21:02.600 | the way that like works well in these algorithm human diets.

00:21:05.760 | So anyways, we don't need it.

00:21:07.240 | We don't need ultra processed content.

00:21:08.280 | Or if we do, eat sparingly.

00:21:10.480 | And don't feel like somehow this has to be

00:21:12.280 | at the core of your diet.

00:21:13.600 | I guess we're stretching this analogy pretty far, but.

00:21:15.920 | - I love the term digital Dorito.

00:21:17.960 | - I mean, that's TikTok, it's digital Dorito.

00:21:20.360 | All right, so we've got some questions,

00:21:21.340 | a lot of questions on people struggling with tech

00:21:23.400 | and distraction and trying to build a more meaningful life.

00:21:26.520 | Excited about those.

00:21:27.360 | But first, let's hear briefly from a sponsor.

00:21:31.360 | All right, this show is sponsored by Better Help.

00:21:36.360 | So we were just talking about

00:21:39.080 | all of this ultra processed content.

00:21:40.980 | Well, one of the things that can make you do

00:21:42.280 | is feel really bad.

00:21:43.360 | You know, you're seeing all this weird stuff.

00:21:46.280 | It's shallow, it's lower quality.

00:21:47.720 | It gets you in your head and you feel bad.

00:21:51.200 | Now, if you're already struggling

00:21:55.320 | with what's going on inside your own head,

00:21:57.980 | the way you feel about yourself or the world,

00:21:59.760 | dealing with ruminations, dealing with anhedonia,

00:22:02.800 | all of these things,

00:22:03.800 | ultra processed content is only gonna make that worse.

00:22:05.640 | So step one, let's cut out the ultra processed content.

00:22:08.400 | Step two, let's get some professional help.

00:22:11.720 | If you are unhappy still with this relationship

00:22:14.900 | within your head, that's where Better Help enters the scene.

00:22:19.140 | If you're thinking of starting therapy,

00:22:21.200 | Better Help is a great way to get started.

00:22:24.440 | Why? Because it's entirely online.

00:22:26.920 | It's designed to be convenient, flexible,

00:22:28.760 | and suited to your schedule.

00:22:30.200 | All you do is fill out a brief questionnaire

00:22:32.180 | and you will get matched with a licensed therapist.

00:22:34.200 | And if you don't like the therapist,

00:22:36.160 | you can switch at any time for no additional charge.

00:22:41.160 | So the barrier between you right now

00:22:42.960 | and getting some professional help

00:22:44.540 | repairing your relationship with your own brain

00:22:46.360 | is very small when you use Better Help.

00:22:49.380 | So stop comparing or floundering

00:22:51.960 | with your ultra processed content

00:22:53.440 | or feeling bad inside your head

00:22:55.640 | and start focusing with Better Help.

00:22:58.880 | Visit betterhelp.com/deepquestions today

00:23:03.760 | and you will get 10% off your first month.

00:23:06.580 | That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P.com/deepquestions.

00:23:11.580 | Following this along on this medical theme,

00:23:16.640 | I also wanna talk about our longtime sponsor, ZocDoc,

00:23:20.760 | a free app and website where you can search and compare

00:23:23.100 | highly rated in-network doctors near you

00:23:25.880 | and instantly book appointments with them online.

00:23:30.780 | This is the right way to find healthcare providers.

00:23:35.660 | You say, okay, I'm looking for this type

00:23:36.880 | of healthcare provider, let me start narrowing my search.

00:23:39.320 | I want one nearby.

00:23:41.320 | I want one that takes my insurance.

00:23:43.680 | I want one who's taking new patients.

00:23:45.840 | Let me look at these, great.

00:23:47.360 | Now let me look at the reviews in the ZocDoc app

00:23:50.360 | or on the ZocDoc website.

00:23:52.400 | So I can see, what do people think?

00:23:54.460 | Oh, they really like this doctor.

00:23:55.800 | They really like the service, this doctor's office, great.

00:23:57.940 | Now let me book my first appointment.

00:23:59.840 | Oh, I'll likely be able to do that online

00:24:01.880 | straight from the app or website as well.

00:24:05.160 | It really just makes sense.

00:24:07.440 | It is the right way to find healthcare providers

00:24:10.740 | when you need them.

00:24:12.800 | The typical wait time to see a doctor booked on ZocDoc

00:24:15.360 | is only between 24 and 72 hours, that's it.

00:24:18.600 | There are even some same day appointments.

00:24:20.640 | You could, whatever that problem is,

00:24:22.720 | stop procrastinating and get the ZocDoc app.

00:24:25.680 | It is also an excuse to use the phrase ZocDoc all the time.

00:24:30.300 | People can say, where'd you find that doctor?

00:24:32.560 | And you say, oh, ZocDoc.com.

00:24:34.380 | Your doctor could ask you, how did you find out about me?

00:24:38.280 | And you could say, hey doc, ZocDoc.com

00:24:40.840 | is how I got the scoop on the doc.

00:24:42.800 | That's not quite right, Jesse, let's see.

00:24:44.400 | Doc, hey doc, ZocDoc.com.

00:24:49.840 | And if you looked it up on the doc,

00:24:51.720 | if you use the app on a doc

00:24:53.680 | and your doctor asks you how you heard about them,

00:24:55.360 | you say, hey doc, ZocDoc.com on the doc, et cetera.

00:24:59.180 | All right, so anyways, ZocDoc is great.

00:25:05.780 | I have used ZocDoc.

00:25:08.360 | I have used it to find healthcare providers.

00:25:09.880 | I also have healthcare providers who use it.

00:25:12.360 | And so like I can do the paperwork for them online

00:25:15.200 | using ZocDoc and it makes them easier.

00:25:16.920 | So it is a part of my life too.

00:25:21.240 | So go to ZocDoc.com/deep

00:25:23.500 | and download the ZocDoc app for free.

00:25:26.320 | You can find a book, a top rated doctor today.

00:25:30.440 | That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com/deep, ZocDoc.com/deep.

00:25:35.440 | Do you remember, Jesse, when we had that competition

00:25:40.120 | and people would send in the best ZocDoc taglines?

00:25:44.600 | - Yeah. - Like who could have

00:25:45.440 | like the longest collection describing,

00:25:48.520 | so they had the longest collection of things

00:25:49.920 | that rhymed with doc or Zoc and got pretty good.

00:25:52.820 | - Yeah, in the early days too,

00:25:53.800 | you used to talk a lot about Greek mythology.

00:25:56.360 | - I know, I know.

00:25:57.480 | We did elaborate ZocDoc reads

00:25:59.460 | and talked a lot about Greek mythology.

00:26:01.800 | And we also, it's funny, the reporter or the photographer

00:26:05.400 | who was here today was like, why is there a skeleton?

00:26:08.460 | Why is there a skeleton in your office?

00:26:10.960 | And I had to explain to them Jesse's skeleton.

00:26:13.640 | And this is true story, as I was explaining that,

00:26:17.360 | I could see the reporter just ripping the pages

00:26:20.720 | from the interview out of his notebook

00:26:22.600 | and just crumpling them up

00:26:23.720 | and putting them in the garbage can.

00:26:25.980 | Just, the more I explained about Jesse's skeleton,

00:26:29.680 | the more I could see, and you know, it was weird.

00:26:32.160 | The photographer actually just was pulling

00:26:33.440 | the film out of his camera.

00:26:34.520 | I mean, it felt a little aggressively unnecessary.

00:26:36.880 | He was like, uh-huh, uh-huh, just exposing it to light,

00:26:39.360 | just like clearly ruining it.

00:26:42.040 | Now, the article is going to be

00:26:44.720 | the full page picture, Jesse's skeleton,

00:26:48.400 | and that's going to be like the focus of it.

00:26:49.880 | All right, that's enough of this nonsense.

00:26:50.980 | Let's do some questions.

00:26:52.320 | All right, who do we have?

00:26:55.800 | - All right, first question's from Ben.

00:26:57.800 | How would you update your book, "How to Win a College,"

00:27:01.360 | adapted to the challenges of modern day tech,

00:27:03.600 | distractibility, email nonsense, et cetera?

00:27:06.700 | Are there new rules you would add?

00:27:08.380 | How might you update some of the old rules?

00:27:10.940 | - Well, certainly, "How to Win a College"

00:27:12.720 | and "How to Become a Straight-A Student"

00:27:14.800 | were written in a different time.

00:27:16.460 | When I went to college, I arrived without a cell phone

00:27:21.360 | and without a laptop.

00:27:23.120 | I ended up with both of those things by the time I left,

00:27:25.440 | but that wasn't necessarily normal.

00:27:27.200 | I had the laptop because I was doing some

00:27:29.440 | computer programming for an optical film company

00:27:32.760 | that was sort of one of my jobs to make money,

00:27:35.160 | and I had the cell phone because of my business,

00:27:37.200 | but it was a different time for sure.

00:27:38.400 | That's what I'm trying to say.

00:27:39.640 | So if you read those books,

00:27:41.020 | there's not a lot of talk about digital distraction.

00:27:43.920 | It just wasn't a big part of college life.

00:27:46.380 | There was a time where I thought about

00:27:48.260 | doing a revised version of

00:27:50.420 | "How to Become a Straight-A Student" in particular,

00:27:52.260 | 'cause that's the book that has the most

00:27:54.080 | sort of hardcore study advice.

00:27:56.500 | So I thought about doing that,

00:27:57.980 | and we actually talked to the publisher about it at the time,

00:28:00.420 | and it sort of fell through.

00:28:02.260 | I wanted to do a big revised edition,

00:28:04.360 | and they didn't really wanna pay a lot of money,

00:28:06.300 | and I was like, "Well, I don't know why.

00:28:07.140 | "I don't wanna just do this on spec."

00:28:09.300 | And so we kind of let it drop.

00:28:10.600 | Now, years later, that was years ago,

00:28:13.380 | years later, I'm kind of glad

00:28:16.460 | that the book just exists at this moment of time

00:28:19.340 | right before this big digital revolution,

00:28:22.140 | because it almost gives it a sort of historical feel,

00:28:25.020 | like you're getting wisdom from a time past.

00:28:28.380 | I think actually somehow it helps it.

00:28:30.600 | Like if I had updated this book

00:28:32.740 | to be relevant to like circa 2013,

00:28:36.420 | it's just gonna seem dated in a weird way.

00:28:38.060 | So I kinda like right now that the book

00:28:39.780 | just exists at this pre,

00:28:41.460 | you see like how did people study

00:28:43.780 | back before there was things like smartphones,

00:28:46.780 | and you can get some inspiration out of it.

00:28:48.900 | But what do I tell people today?

00:28:50.380 | Like what advice would I change for students?

00:28:52.700 | Well, I would say more than ever before,

00:28:55.100 | your mind is your greatest tool and differentiator.

00:28:58.300 | Most of your peers are very distracted,

00:29:01.500 | and this is reducing both the quality

00:29:03.820 | of what they're able to produce with their mind,

00:29:05.380 | but more importantly, the time it requires them

00:29:07.260 | to produce this work.

00:29:08.860 | So if you explicitly cultivate

00:29:11.420 | your ability to concentrate,

00:29:12.460 | you are gonna have a huge competitive advantage.

00:29:14.460 | I didn't have access to that advantage

00:29:17.460 | in the early 2000s,

00:29:18.900 | 'cause people weren't nearly as distracted

00:29:20.620 | as they are today.

00:29:21.580 | So there's a huge advance there.

00:29:23.380 | A couple of ways to do that.

00:29:25.220 | Never study with your phone.

00:29:26.620 | Leave your phone in your dorm,

00:29:28.280 | go somewhere else to study.

00:29:29.520 | It's like the number one thing I tell the modern students.

00:29:31.940 | Your friends will survive not being in touch with you

00:29:34.100 | for a couple hours, they'll get used to it.

00:29:36.360 | Do not have your phone with you.

00:29:38.020 | Turn the internet off on your laptop

00:29:39.540 | if you're using your laptop.

00:29:40.860 | Force yourself to study disconnected.

00:29:43.300 | This will mean at first

00:29:44.220 | that your study sessions are shorter, that's fine.

00:29:46.260 | 20 minutes and then you can go use the public computer,

00:29:49.460 | or 20 minutes and you go back and get your phone

00:29:51.340 | and then come back and do another 20 minutes.

00:29:53.140 | As you get more comfortable,

00:29:54.100 | you can make that 30 minutes, then 40 minutes,

00:29:56.060 | and eventually you wanna be able to do 90 minutes

00:29:58.140 | to two hours fully disconnected.

00:30:00.200 | Studying disconnected.

00:30:02.060 | Really disconnected.

00:30:04.260 | Not trying to not look at your phone,

00:30:05.640 | but really disconnected.

00:30:07.500 | Night and day difference than studying with connectivity.

00:30:10.700 | The contact shifting is just not there.

00:30:12.980 | It will feel uncomfortable,

00:30:14.700 | but your brain is gonna be like

00:30:16.780 | you're on the limitless pill.

00:30:18.740 | At least as compared to what it's like

00:30:20.060 | when you have to keep glancing at unrelated text messages,

00:30:22.420 | social media, and internet posts.

00:30:24.340 | So study without the internet.

00:30:26.220 | Don't even have your phone in the same building

00:30:29.440 | as where you're studying.

00:30:31.140 | Embrace boredom on a regular basis.

00:30:33.900 | Get used to walking between classes,

00:30:36.240 | going and getting lunch,

00:30:38.280 | without putting anything in your ear

00:30:39.240 | or anything in front of your eyes.

00:30:41.460 | You don't have to be bored all the time,

00:30:42.600 | but you have to be very comfortable

00:30:44.040 | with being alone with your own thoughts.

00:30:45.360 | Because what is studying?

00:30:47.480 | What is trying to write?

00:30:48.720 | What is trying to come up with something original on a test?

00:30:51.360 | You alone with your own thoughts, making sense of them.

00:30:53.280 | You have to be comfortable

00:30:54.680 | with your interior cognitive space.

00:30:56.120 | So practice that specifically.

00:30:57.780 | Outside of studying,

00:30:59.240 | practice just being alone with your own thoughts.

00:31:01.280 | Do it at least once every day.

00:31:03.100 | I would recommend do not use ultra-processed content.

00:31:06.860 | You don't need to be on TikTok.

00:31:09.740 | It's not, it's very popular among college kids,

00:31:12.620 | but it's not, from what I understand

00:31:14.880 | from the course I taught last summer,

00:31:16.100 | it's not like heavily integrated

00:31:17.180 | into your social interactions.

00:31:19.420 | Don't use TikTok.

00:31:20.860 | Don't use Instagram.

00:31:21.960 | Don't be super plugged

00:31:24.460 | into the ultra-processed content world.

00:31:26.500 | 'Cause look, you're a cognitive athlete

00:31:28.420 | when you're in college.

00:31:29.240 | You're trying to make your way to the majors.

00:31:33.500 | The baseball analogy would be,

00:31:34.660 | college is like you're in A-ball.

00:31:37.240 | You're trying to get up to speed,

00:31:39.640 | learn how to hit a major league fastball,

00:31:41.660 | get in shape so you have a shot at the majors.

00:31:44.620 | When you're in A-ball as a baseball player,

00:31:46.380 | you're not gonna eat a bunch of junk food.

00:31:47.900 | Well, when you're in cognitive A-ball,

00:31:49.280 | don't consume a bunch of junk media.

00:31:50.660 | So be very wary about ultra-processed content.

00:31:53.860 | People might think it's weird at first you're not doing that,

00:31:55.880 | but actually it will probably differentiate you later

00:31:57.820 | from someone who's interesting.

00:31:59.580 | And read as much as you can.

00:32:01.520 | Outside of your school assignments,

00:32:02.860 | read, read, read, read.

00:32:04.300 | This is gonna be the equivalent of just jogging

00:32:06.140 | and doing a lot of pull-ups as an athlete.

00:32:07.580 | It's really important.

00:32:08.700 | All right, so I'll do a quick summary

00:32:10.660 | of everything I just said.

00:32:12.360 | Your mind's your greatest tool.

00:32:13.940 | There's never been a bigger chance

00:32:15.180 | for you to have a comparative advantage

00:32:16.360 | compared to your peers.

00:32:17.820 | So let's take it seriously.

00:32:19.020 | How do we do that?

00:32:20.020 | Study with your phone in a different building

00:32:21.580 | and the internet turned off.

00:32:23.500 | Full no exceptions.

00:32:24.460 | Studying is disconnected.

00:32:26.260 | Don't give me this.

00:32:27.080 | I have to go to the internet to get access to my,

00:32:28.980 | access to materials on the internet first.

00:32:31.420 | Download it, print it,

00:32:32.540 | and then go somewhere and study from it.

00:32:34.020 | I don't like these exceptions of like once, three years ago.

00:32:37.480 | There was a teacher who had a program for flashcards

00:32:41.940 | that you had to go to the web to use it.

00:32:44.380 | Therefore, I shall forevermore be fully connected

00:32:48.620 | to 17 social services and text messaging while I study.

00:32:51.980 | I get that so much from kids.

00:32:53.300 | What if my homework, my homework's online?

00:32:56.660 | I have to, it's online.

00:32:57.720 | So I must be on TikTok.

00:32:58.880 | Come on, download your work.

00:33:01.020 | All right.

00:33:02.340 | Embrace boredom every day.

00:33:03.780 | Don't use ultra process content if at all possible

00:33:06.040 | and read as much as you can.

00:33:08.300 | All right, so that's my,

00:33:09.140 | those are my missing chapters, Jesse.

00:33:11.380 | Who do we got next?

00:33:12.820 | - All right, next question is from Gemma.

00:33:15.060 | I have no social media.

00:33:16.500 | I don't have a smartphone.

00:33:17.780 | However, I'm obsessed with my work.

00:33:19.780 | As I'm young and without a family,

00:33:21.140 | I can craft my own work schedule.

00:33:22.720 | However, I eventually want to meet someone

00:33:24.380 | and start a family.

00:33:25.260 | How can I bring more balance in my life

00:33:27.080 | and not be addicted to my work?

00:33:28.820 | - Well, this is where, you know,

00:33:30.860 | I recommend lifestyle-centric planning, right?

00:33:33.900 | And so before I get into what lifestyle-centric planning is,

00:33:37.860 | which I'll do briefly because I talk about it a lot,

00:33:39.780 | let's just remind ourselves of what the opposite is.

00:33:42.480 | What is the preferred alternative approach

00:33:46.840 | to lifestyle, life crafting,

00:33:49.100 | is what I call the grand goal approach.

00:33:50.580 | I'm going to have some grand goal that I'm all in on.

00:33:53.220 | And the idea is this will kind of align

00:33:55.660 | all of the parts of my life around something, a common goal,

00:33:58.420 | and that will give me a sense of like intentionality

00:34:00.500 | in my life and direction in my life,

00:34:02.260 | and it'll end up somewhere interesting.

00:34:03.460 | So focusing on your work is like a classic

00:34:06.020 | grand goal strategy.

00:34:07.140 | I'm going to try to just crush it at work,

00:34:09.140 | and that'll just be something to orient my life around.

00:34:11.820 | The problem with the grand goal strategy

00:34:14.100 | is that when you focus exclusively on one area of your life,

00:34:18.260 | you tend to either neglect or actively harm

00:34:21.500 | other areas of your life that are important

00:34:23.820 | and play a big role in your day-to-day

00:34:25.380 | subjective wellbeing.

00:34:27.340 | So where you end up living,

00:34:29.100 | that your connection to other people,

00:34:30.980 | the sort of rhythm of your life,

00:34:32.400 | like these other things that might be important to you

00:34:34.540 | get squashed or actively hurt

00:34:38.420 | when you focus on just one thing.

00:34:40.680 | But here's the thing, the day-to-day experience,

00:34:42.780 | the subjective experience of your life

00:34:44.420 | is determined by all these different parts of your life.

00:34:46.760 | So if only one of them is going really well,

00:34:48.380 | these other ones are going poorly,

00:34:50.420 | overall you're not going to be as happy

00:34:52.980 | than if like more of these things were doing well.

00:34:55.660 | So instead of just having one singular grand goal

00:34:57.940 | you focus on, I suggest lifestyle-centric planning,

00:35:00.820 | which is where you work backwards

00:35:01.940 | from a broad vision of your life.

00:35:05.260 | You identify the different areas of your life

00:35:06.940 | that might be important.

00:35:07.900 | You identify what's important to you in these lives.

00:35:10.460 | I call this the master narrative.

00:35:11.900 | And then you begin figuring out configurations of your life

00:35:15.660 | that support as many of these as once, right?

00:35:19.740 | So work is a big driver of this,

00:35:21.780 | but now you're seeing work through the lens

00:35:23.380 | of not just like what you want out of your work,

00:35:25.160 | but like what type of place you want to live

00:35:26.940 | and what type of rhythm between work and non-work you want

00:35:29.860 | and what type of connection to other people you have

00:35:31.860 | and what your typical day works out.

00:35:33.500 | Work is now an engine to try to support

00:35:35.560 | as many of these things as possible,

00:35:37.300 | which is different than work being a game

00:35:39.980 | in which you're trying to get the highest score.

00:35:42.260 | Now, it may turn out that the particular lifestyle

00:35:44.620 | broad vision you have is best served

00:35:46.260 | at killing it in like your work in a particular way,

00:35:48.840 | or at least for a particular amount of time,

00:35:51.100 | but you need that to be part of this broader vision.

00:35:55.180 | So you got to figure out your broader master narrative here,

00:35:57.760 | all parts of your life.

00:35:58.980 | It's good to be visual here.

00:36:01.020 | One of the things I recommend people do

00:36:02.420 | is like actually have a cultural or like concrete reference

00:36:07.420 | for each of the parts of these lives.

00:36:09.940 | So you're trying to think about like,

00:36:11.500 | what's it like where I live?

00:36:13.020 | Like point to a particular like film or TV reference,

00:36:15.860 | like the way it is in this show or movie, you know.

00:36:19.200 | Friends, if, you know, they're kind of like in a city

00:36:24.440 | and it's kind of, but a lot of people,

00:36:26.960 | the friends all live near each other

00:36:28.640 | and they kind of like hang out a lot

00:36:30.920 | and there's like an energy to it

00:36:32.200 | and like interesting stuff happening.

00:36:33.320 | Or you might be like, no, no, Gilmore Girls.

00:36:36.360 | I went like a small but quirky town

00:36:38.560 | and it's like tightly enmeshed, but it's kind of quiet.

00:36:41.680 | And, you know, use specific references.

00:36:45.520 | Like specific visual references, like each of the areas,

00:36:48.400 | and you can have a couple of notes below each,

00:36:50.720 | kind of like specifying what properties

00:36:52.580 | of these images you like.

00:36:53.640 | And then the whole game is trying to serve

00:36:55.340 | as many of these areas as possible.

00:36:57.220 | So again, your work is the biggest tool you have

00:37:00.520 | to try to satisfy your lifestyle vision, but it's different.

00:37:04.840 | There's a difference between trying to succeed

00:37:06.880 | as much as possible in work,

00:37:08.940 | do the most impressive thing possible in work

00:37:11.180 | versus using work as effectively as possible

00:37:13.900 | to get closer to this broader vision.

00:37:15.620 | So now is a perfect time

00:37:17.440 | to start doing lifestyle centric planning.

00:37:19.380 | This will begin introducing other parts of your life

00:37:21.580 | into your life.

00:37:22.500 | By the way, many of the non-work parts

00:37:25.680 | of people think about, especially when they're young,

00:37:28.620 | end up being, connecting them to other people

00:37:31.020 | and activities, which is a good way to actually,

00:37:33.060 | you know, find someone to settle down with.

00:37:34.560 | So it could work out there.

00:37:36.180 | Lifestyle centric planning.

00:37:38.700 | I'm really just beginning to,

00:37:41.060 | I have to start really articulating the details

00:37:44.740 | and the specificity of lifestyle centric planning

00:37:46.700 | 'cause for the deep life book that I'm working on,

00:37:49.940 | I have to start getting more specific.

00:37:51.900 | I'll tell you, I got about 2,500 words in that book

00:37:54.780 | and threw it out because I had a realization,

00:37:58.620 | it's like, that's not the way I wanna structure these.

00:38:01.100 | This is not the right structure for the chapters.

00:38:03.200 | This is gonna be better.

00:38:04.940 | Shoot, this is gonna be harder.

00:38:06.180 | I have to kind of throw out what I did, but I did.

00:38:08.860 | So it's like, I wasn't feeling my first swing at it.

00:38:13.380 | - I get a lot of questions and inquiries

00:38:15.100 | about updates to the stack.

00:38:17.080 | - Yeah, okay, that's interesting.

00:38:20.340 | I don't use the exact stack metaphor right now in my thinking

00:38:24.580 | but it's definitely, I mean, I've definitely broken down

00:38:29.580 | the sort of get your act together part.

00:38:33.020 | Like, you gotta prepare.

00:38:33.860 | Get your act together before you transform your life.

00:38:35.480 | Like, we often skip that part and go right to the like,

00:38:37.580 | I'm gonna move to Rotonga.

00:38:39.060 | You gotta get your act together first, right?

00:38:41.020 | Then planning.

00:38:42.540 | And this is where this lifestyle-centric planning

00:38:44.060 | versus the singular grand goal thinking comes up, right?

00:38:47.660 | Why lifestyle-centric planning's gonna be more effective

00:38:51.500 | than just having a singular grand goal

00:38:53.180 | and how do you actually build

00:38:54.860 | and build these master narratives, right?

00:38:58.580 | Then there's like the execution, the art.

00:39:02.220 | The art of like, I wanna work backwards

00:39:04.060 | from this broad vision and figure out configurations

00:39:06.860 | of things that's going to advance

00:39:09.420 | as much of these as possible.

00:39:11.100 | Like, there's an art to that and you have to get into,

00:39:15.020 | how do you research your opportunities

00:39:16.860 | and figure out what might work and be more flexible?

00:39:19.820 | And there's a whole navigating, like, how you actually,

00:39:22.780 | these plans, how you shape your plan

00:39:25.700 | to move closer to your ideal vision.

00:39:27.020 | So like, that's a big part of it.

00:39:29.260 | That's kind of like part three as well.

00:39:31.020 | And then there's these other ideas.

00:39:32.420 | I don't know where they integrate

00:39:34.060 | about looking for the remarkable opportunities.

00:39:36.460 | Like, these come up typically once you're like,

00:39:37.980 | really locked into what matters to you

00:39:39.620 | and you're working very systematically towards it.

00:39:43.540 | Really cool opportunities,

00:39:44.860 | that's when the cool radical stuff emerges.

00:39:46.460 | So how to identify that and pursue that

00:39:48.060 | if that's what you wanna do.

00:39:49.780 | Evolving these things over time.

00:39:51.220 | Like, there's these other loose pieces too.

00:39:52.900 | But these pieces I think are big.

00:39:55.420 | The prepare, the planning, and then the actual execution

00:40:00.100 | is sort of like layer one, layer two, layer three.

00:40:03.020 | But as I'm still working on it.

00:40:05.620 | The big change I've been making recently

00:40:07.140 | is I decide, I'm toying with,

00:40:09.220 | it's very technical, not technical before,

00:40:12.580 | but very like dense and idea-y.

00:40:15.420 | And I'm thinking I actually wanna have

00:40:16.900 | some journalism in it.

00:40:18.140 | Like, I wanna go some places, talk to some people,

00:40:23.020 | and do some things.

00:40:25.100 | And have that as a spine for each of these sections.

00:40:28.100 | It's harder, but I think it might

00:40:31.060 | inject some more life into it.

00:40:33.180 | - Yeah.

00:40:34.180 | - So I'm thinking about that.

00:40:36.380 | In case people are wondering.

00:40:37.220 | All right, let's keep rolling.

00:40:39.380 | - Next question is from Gabriella.

00:40:41.980 | Once I finish my deep work, I do other shallower work,

00:40:44.860 | like audio books, podcasts, while playing Candy Crush.

00:40:48.220 | I really can't consume any of this content without it.

00:40:50.820 | Is this okay?

00:40:52.460 | - Not really.

00:40:53.700 | Not really, I'd be worried about that.

00:40:56.060 | So your mind has created one of these dopamine traps

00:41:02.700 | where it wants the potential rewards

00:41:07.420 | of the Candy Crush game.

00:41:08.340 | It's associated that with these other activities.

00:41:10.580 | And now you get flooded with the dopamine

00:41:13.340 | when it's like you're putting on the podcast

00:41:14.860 | of I gotta get out Candy Crush and play this thing.

00:41:17.740 | This is gonna hit all of these buttons for me.

00:41:20.380 | I think it's a little bit dysregulated.

00:41:22.740 | Like you should be able to do other things

00:41:25.420 | without having that particular

00:41:27.780 | kind of highly addictive engineered content with you.

00:41:31.060 | So I kind of hear this like,

00:41:34.140 | look, I have to have a cigarette when I'm watching TV.

00:41:37.100 | And it's like, you should probably not be smoking, right?

00:41:40.540 | Or like you have all these occasions

00:41:41.820 | where you have to have a drink

00:41:42.780 | because you just like, I just associate,

00:41:44.100 | I need a drink to do this, I need a drink to do that,

00:41:45.540 | I need a drink to do this.

00:41:46.780 | And I was like, eh, I think you're getting

00:41:48.700 | these like addictive loops, it's slightly dysregulated.

00:41:51.420 | So I think this is a good wake up call

00:41:53.940 | to sort of do a dopamine detox here

00:41:56.980 | on this particular behavior.

00:41:59.540 | Otherwise your mind stimulation requirements

00:42:01.220 | are gonna be too high.

00:42:03.060 | So a couple of things here that might help

00:42:05.380 | because it's gonna be a hard habit to break.

00:42:08.420 | You mentioned particularly podcasts and audio books.

00:42:10.940 | So listen to those while you're doing other things,

00:42:13.660 | things that would eliminate your ability

00:42:16.100 | to also play Candy Crush.

00:42:17.260 | So like you're doing chores,

00:42:18.540 | you're mowing the yard, you're driving.

00:42:21.220 | So you can start to build an association

00:42:23.740 | with these, you can build an association

00:42:27.940 | with these listening activities

00:42:29.860 | but not actually also playing the game, right?

00:42:32.740 | And it won't be too hard to do

00:42:33.700 | because you're listening to these things

00:42:34.780 | in situations where it's just impossible to play the game.

00:42:37.580 | Then I would work on building up tolerance.

00:42:41.980 | There's a couple of things you could do.

00:42:42.940 | Build up, do reading, build up your reading tolerance.

00:42:46.340 | So when you're reading,

00:42:47.180 | you have to give something your attention

00:42:48.500 | and you can't play Candy Crush at the same time.

00:42:50.540 | So try to build up reading sessions.

00:42:52.540 | That's gonna be good calisthenics for your brain

00:42:54.460 | and wean it off of that particular need for distraction.

00:42:57.820 | I would use the phone foyer method

00:42:59.980 | when watching TV or movies.

00:43:01.780 | So don't have your phone with you

00:43:03.060 | but have it plugged in in a different room.

00:43:05.300 | Again, this is gonna give you practice

00:43:07.060 | avoiding that knee jerk,

00:43:08.260 | like let me pull something out

00:43:09.500 | while I'm watching this and play it.

00:43:11.460 | So you're trying to break these associations

00:43:14.500 | between the passive consumption of content

00:43:16.620 | and needing to do this other thing as well.

00:43:19.300 | Give this about three weeks.

00:43:20.620 | So about three weeks of being uncomfortable

00:43:22.620 | and then you'll readjust

00:43:24.780 | and then you'll find like it's not a big deal

00:43:26.580 | not to have this game in your life.

00:43:27.820 | But yeah, I very much worry about the games

00:43:29.700 | that are built along slot machine principles.

00:43:31.620 | It screws with your stimulation requirements.

00:43:34.540 | They're addictive.

00:43:35.380 | It could lead to dysregulated behavior

00:43:36.700 | and that's what this feels like.

00:43:37.620 | So I would wean off that.

00:43:38.980 | So use the advice I have there to help do that.

00:43:41.340 | All right, who do we got next?

00:43:44.420 | - Next question is from Nina.

00:43:46.420 | I'm a homeschooling mom and I struggle to find the time

00:43:49.060 | where I have enough energy

00:43:50.220 | without getting distracted by urgent kid needs

00:43:53.180 | and household tasks to actually do my house school prep

00:43:56.620 | and planning.

00:43:57.780 | What should I do?

00:43:59.300 | - So Nina, you have to give some priority

00:44:02.340 | to the energy and depth required to do the homeschool prep.

00:44:06.260 | Don't give it the lowest priority.

00:44:08.860 | So like what might be happening here,

00:44:10.700 | I hear this a lot with a lot of types of cognitive work

00:44:13.900 | that there's deep components

00:44:15.540 | and then lots of also shallow stuff that has to be done.

00:44:18.620 | Is that the shallow stuff is often given priority

00:44:20.860 | because the deep stuff, it feels like,

00:44:22.380 | well, I'll do this when I get time.

00:44:24.540 | It's not like necessary it happens right now,

00:44:26.500 | but I'll do this when I get time.

00:44:28.660 | And then it gets shunted off

00:44:29.660 | to when you don't have any energy.

00:44:31.460 | I would prioritize this as like

00:44:32.940 | the most important thing you do.

00:44:35.060 | So probably first thing in the morning, right?

00:44:38.540 | When your energy is high,

00:44:40.260 | you can build this into your homeschooling day structure.

00:44:43.300 | All right, what do we do first thing?

00:44:46.060 | We do quiet reading and then like reflection questions

00:44:49.340 | and math worksheets.

00:44:50.460 | And this is the first 45 minutes of every day.

00:44:52.940 | It kind of gets us in the school mindset.

00:44:54.380 | And that's when me as the homeschooling teacher

00:44:56.980 | does my prep because I'm at my highest energy state there.

00:45:00.060 | So like be willing to change how your schedule,

00:45:04.020 | to change what you're asking of other people,

00:45:06.380 | to prioritize this critical deep work task.

00:45:10.860 | The other thing I would say,

00:45:14.300 | this comes from experience knowing people who homeschool.

00:45:19.260 | You have to treat homeschooling from a family perspective

00:45:23.700 | as a very demanding job.

00:45:25.900 | You're like a litigator.

00:45:27.820 | And therefore you have to treat what happens

00:45:31.460 | after the homeschool day,

00:45:33.180 | like the way you treat it when the litigator gets back

00:45:35.620 | from like the hard day at the law firm.

00:45:37.300 | A lot of what happens in these situations

00:45:39.380 | is maybe one person is doing homeschooling

00:45:43.580 | and their partner has like a job outside the house.

00:45:47.620 | And they sort of don't treat the homeschooling

00:45:50.100 | as if it's like a super draining job.

00:45:52.060 | So like you're still doing a bunch of other

00:45:54.180 | kind of related work all evening as well.

00:45:56.300 | Like hardcore childcare,

00:45:58.780 | which is very similar difficulties

00:46:01.740 | to what you were doing all day during the homeschooling.

00:46:03.700 | So it's as if the litigator comes back from the law firm

00:46:08.460 | and their partner is like,

00:46:10.060 | I have all these legal documents

00:46:11.740 | I want you to like review and file tonight, right?

00:46:14.060 | You'd be like, well, this is, I just did this all day.

00:46:16.020 | I'm exhausted.

00:46:16.860 | I don't want to sit here.

00:46:18.620 | Can't you do the legal documents or file?

00:46:21.060 | That's all I've been doing all day.

00:46:22.620 | But we don't think that way when the work is inside the home.

00:46:25.580 | So like, well, you were home and it was autonomous

00:46:28.100 | and the, you know, it's kids said you should do the childcare

00:46:30.940 | and you're the mom and this and that.

00:46:32.660 | So we underplay, this happens a lot in these partnerships

00:46:35.380 | that the homeschooling is like one of the most draining

00:46:37.140 | things you can do.

00:46:38.100 | And if you have to do a bunch of like household work

00:46:39.620 | and childcare on top of it, it really can be draining.

00:46:42.420 | So you have to figure this out.

00:46:45.180 | Where I've seen things be successful

00:46:46.540 | is actually if someone is homeschooling,

00:46:48.420 | the other partner is going to do a disproportionate amount

00:46:51.180 | of like household work after work, right?

00:46:54.140 | Because that's very different.

00:46:55.060 | If I've been at the law firm all day,

00:46:57.420 | it's not going to exhaust me to have to do chores.

00:46:59.940 | It's very different than what I was doing.

00:47:01.460 | It's not going to exhaust me to have to be with my kids.

00:47:03.380 | It's very different than what I was doing.

00:47:04.820 | But if I was homeschooling all day

00:47:06.260 | and it's right into like household chores and childcare,

00:47:08.740 | there's no relief there.

00:47:10.420 | It's the litigator has to come home and do contracts.

00:47:13.180 | So make sure like your partner knows,

00:47:15.380 | this is really, really hard what I do.

00:47:17.180 | I need to like have my equivalent of the 1950s.

00:47:20.100 | Where's my cocktail?

00:47:20.940 | I'm going to put my feet up.

00:47:22.300 | We get confused about that sometimes.

00:47:26.780 | Like the location, maybe this is better now

00:47:29.020 | that we do remote work.

00:47:30.380 | People don't have these weird associations anymore

00:47:32.500 | where if like effort is in the house,

00:47:33.980 | it's somehow different than if it's at an office.

00:47:35.660 | I think now maybe we've dispelled that

00:47:37.100 | because we all work at home more.

00:47:38.540 | Anyways, that's a common thing I'm going to throw in there.

00:47:42.020 | So talk to your partner about that.

00:47:44.380 | All right.

00:47:45.220 | Ooh, do we have another Slow Productivity Corner?

00:47:46.620 | - We do.

00:47:47.540 | - All right.

00:47:49.060 | As people know or don't know,

00:47:50.980 | we try to have one question per week

00:47:52.900 | based on ideas for my new book, "Slow Productivity."

00:47:57.180 | Check out that book if you haven't read it.

00:47:59.140 | More importantly, we have cool theme music

00:48:00.940 | for the Slow Productivity Corner.

00:48:02.180 | So let's hear that now.

00:48:03.320 | (soft music)

00:48:11.180 | All right, Jesse.

00:48:12.020 | I always talk smoother

00:48:14.500 | when we're doing the Slow Productivity Corner.

00:48:16.700 | What is today's Slow Productivity question?

00:48:20.140 | - Our question is from Seth.

00:48:23.420 | I've run across a problem while trying to follow

00:48:25.420 | the three criteria of slow productivity.

00:48:27.880 | I'm a project manager and all the work that I do is shallow.

00:48:31.300 | I'm doing things like making sure other people are working

00:48:33.740 | or planning other people's work.

00:48:35.500 | There are very few places to apply quality or depth.

00:48:38.620 | What do I do?

00:48:39.660 | How should I slowly get deeper in this shallow pond?

00:48:43.180 | - Well, that's a good question.

00:48:44.380 | I think the slow productivity principle

00:48:47.740 | being referred to here

00:48:48.940 | is the principle of obsessing over quality.

00:48:51.540 | It's one of the big ideas in slow productivity

00:48:54.300 | is the more you care about the quality of what you do,

00:48:57.780 | the more fed up you will become with meaningless busyness

00:49:01.860 | and the better you will get at what you do,

00:49:03.280 | which will give you more leverage

00:49:04.340 | to try to do less of the busyness.

00:49:05.580 | So it all works like a good flywheel.

00:49:07.440 | - All right, so this question comes from a product manager

00:49:09.820 | who's saying, what do I get good at?

00:49:12.100 | Everything feels shallow.

00:49:14.060 | It's all like dealing with people and other things.

00:49:17.380 | So I have two pieces of advice here.

00:49:19.380 | One, there are good product managers

00:49:22.060 | and there's bad product managers.

00:49:23.580 | There are very competitive product manager positions

00:49:27.660 | at certain firms, and then there's like less competitive,

00:49:30.020 | less impressive positions at other firms.

00:49:32.080 | So there's something that differentiates

00:49:35.060 | good product managers from bad product managers

00:49:37.380 | or great product managers from okay product managers.

00:49:39.940 | You have to figure that out, all right?

00:49:42.740 | Because you want to be,

00:49:44.660 | whatever the core skill is at what you do,

00:49:47.460 | you want to identify that and get better at it

00:49:49.300 | so that you get more leverage

00:49:51.540 | and you get more fed up with nonsense.

00:49:54.340 | And it might not look like a physicist

00:49:56.260 | at a chalkboard for seven hours, right?

00:49:58.020 | It might have to do with being really good

00:50:02.060 | at anticipating the needs of team members,

00:50:05.380 | being really good at reaching consensus

00:50:08.660 | on like the key decision points,

00:50:10.260 | but not allowing the conversations

00:50:12.660 | to go on too long and derail the process.

00:50:14.740 | Maybe it's being very good at organizational systems

00:50:18.740 | that backstop the product being developed.

00:50:20.540 | Maybe it has something to do with client relationships.

00:50:22.580 | I don't know, but there is a difference

00:50:24.200 | because there's different calibers of these jobs.

00:50:27.460 | I was actually just talking the other day

00:50:30.340 | at our swim club with a product manager

00:50:33.100 | and he walked me through, coincidentally,

00:50:35.020 | walked me through that whole industry,

00:50:37.380 | especially tech product managers

00:50:39.060 | and sort of like the different types of product managers

00:50:41.620 | and the elite positions.

00:50:42.900 | So there is a difference between good and bad.

00:50:44.500 | Figure out that difference.

00:50:45.400 | You can isolate a skill to get better at.

00:50:47.940 | The other thing I want to say here

00:50:51.020 | is be wary about the necessity of communication

00:50:57.140 | you have to do at your job,

00:50:58.780 | convincing you of the necessity

00:51:02.780 | of that communication happening

00:51:04.140 | in a very distracting, haphazard way.

00:51:05.940 | All right, so what I mean by this,

00:51:09.060 | this comes up a lot when I talk to managers.

00:51:11.260 | They will often say, look at this emails and Slack

00:51:17.140 | and online meetings that are filling my day

00:51:18.980 | and are constantly grabbing my attention,

00:51:20.860 | which we know is a cognitive disaster.

00:51:23.900 | It makes you miserable.

00:51:24.740 | You can't think straight.

00:51:25.860 | We know there's research on managers

00:51:27.300 | that says the more time they spend doing this,

00:51:28.940 | sort of the worse they get at actual leadership activities.

00:51:32.820 | We know it's bad,

00:51:33.860 | but the managers will say,

00:51:34.700 | I can point to the things that are in these emails

00:51:36.980 | and in these chat messages and they're important.

00:51:39.620 | And if I didn't have these conversations,

00:51:41.740 | bad things would happen, right?

00:51:42.900 | It's necessary conversations.

00:51:44.580 | This person needs approval to do this.

00:51:46.740 | If I don't give them approval, the project is stuck.

00:51:49.020 | This is necessary communication,

00:51:51.220 | but then they transfer the necessity of that communication

00:51:54.420 | to the necessity of how that communication unfolds.

00:51:57.620 | I have to be distracted all day

00:51:59.620 | because the communication that's distracting me is necessary.

00:52:02.740 | It's not necessarily the case.

00:52:04.940 | I get into these ideas in "Slow Productivity."

00:52:07.260 | I also get into these ideas in my book

00:52:08.780 | "A World Without Email."

00:52:10.700 | There's dozens of ways to structure

00:52:15.500 | how this necessary information gets communicated,

00:52:19.380 | including ways that are gonna generate

00:52:21.500 | many fewer unscheduled messages that require responses,

00:52:25.220 | the things that create the productivity poison,

00:52:27.300 | the things required to have to constantly check in inboxes.

00:52:30.540 | It's hard work, but it's exactly the hard work

00:52:32.860 | a product manager should do.

00:52:34.100 | Let's figure out how we collaborate on things.

00:52:36.020 | Where are we keeping track of information?

00:52:37.700 | When and how do we ask questions of each other?

00:52:40.460 | Are there office hours?

00:52:41.420 | Are there docket clearing meetings?

00:52:42.580 | These are both laid out in my book "Slow Productivity."

00:52:45.660 | Do we have a set process

00:52:48.460 | for how certain things we do regularly unfolds

00:52:51.620 | that doesn't require on-demand communication?

00:52:54.380 | Like I will send this to you at some point.

00:52:56.260 | You have to be checking

00:52:57.420 | so that you get the file when it's ready.

00:52:59.140 | Can we replace that with a system

00:53:00.500 | where it goes into this shared document

00:53:02.020 | by three o'clock on Tuesdays?

00:53:03.500 | There is no me checking an inbox.

00:53:05.060 | I just go after three o'clock on Tuesdays

00:53:07.020 | to get the file out of that shared document.

00:53:08.980 | These type of processes and structures,

00:53:10.700 | which you as the product manager

00:53:11.780 | can help lead the charge towards,

00:53:13.420 | doesn't change the things that get communicated,

00:53:16.980 | but changes how that communication happens.

00:53:18.620 | And that can make a big difference

00:53:19.700 | and make your day feel much less fragmented

00:53:21.820 | and much less frenetic.

00:53:23.380 | So don't let the necessity of communication

00:53:26.860 | trick you into the necessity of a chaotic mode

00:53:29.620 | for that communication to actually unfold.

00:53:32.420 | All right, so that's my two pieces of advice

00:53:33.780 | just to summarize again.

00:53:35.020 | There's good product managers, bad product managers.

00:53:37.580 | Figure out the difference.

00:53:38.980 | Get good at what separates the former from the latter.

00:53:41.460 | Two, you have more control than you think

00:53:44.780 | to work with your team to restructure collaboration

00:53:47.620 | to be less arbitrary, ad hoc,

00:53:51.020 | distractive, and interruptive.

00:53:52.380 | And it'll make a big difference if you do that.

00:53:53.740 | You'll be a better,

00:53:54.860 | whatever you figure out's gonna be important

00:53:56.380 | to be a good product manager,

00:53:57.980 | that's gonna help you accomplish that.

00:54:00.660 | All right, so all hope is not lost.

00:54:02.420 | And more importantly,

00:54:03.580 | we get to hear the theme music one more time.

00:54:05.980 | (gentle music)

00:54:09.560 | So I think that book crossed the 100,000 sales

00:54:21.220 | this last week, I think, or the last few days.

00:54:25.020 | - Are you happy about that?

00:54:26.220 | - Yeah, to me, that's an important threshold.

00:54:28.580 | It's arbitrary, but I think to me,

00:54:31.060 | it's an important threshold.

00:54:32.500 | Of my eight books now,

00:54:36.020 | only two have not crossed that threshold.

00:54:38.100 | So I do have two books that have kind of got stuck

00:54:42.700 | in the 60,000 sales perspective.

00:54:45.140 | - Which ones?

00:54:46.540 | - "A World Without Email," "Pandemic Release,"

00:54:50.300 | kind of slowed down and got stuck around 65,

00:54:53.220 | and "How to Be a High School Superstar."

00:54:56.220 | Those are the only ones that have not crossed 100,000.

00:54:59.860 | So I don't know, it's arbitrary,

00:55:01.020 | but it's hard to sell 100,000 books.

00:55:04.380 | So I'm always happy when that's been done.

00:55:08.020 | So there we go.

00:55:09.660 | We did an analysis of the publisher.

00:55:11.820 | They did a chart of what's responsible for sales,

00:55:15.900 | how responsible different things were,

00:55:17.540 | like here's Amazon Marketing had a sliver here,

00:55:20.940 | and Podcast had a big sliver.

00:55:23.060 | But the 80%, like the majority of the pie

00:55:26.140 | was labeled slow productivity corner theme music.

00:55:29.380 | So that's been like the primary driver.

00:55:32.620 | They're like, probably like 17, 18,000 sales

00:55:34.740 | were from everything else.

00:55:36.500 | All the rest is slow productivity theme music.

00:55:39.420 | - That's great.

00:55:40.300 | And we got it from Kieron.

00:55:43.420 | - Kieron, shout out.

00:55:45.500 | You're selling books.

00:55:46.620 | All right, do we have a call this week?

00:55:47.860 | - We do.

00:55:48.700 | - All right, let's hear this.

00:55:52.820 | - Hey Cal, this is Josh.

00:55:54.900 | I'm a middle school teacher and a lot of my summer

00:55:58.620 | is spent planning for the upcoming year.

00:56:02.500 | But oftentimes I find myself distracted.

00:56:05.620 | I end up getting in a rut where I can only put in

00:56:08.260 | maybe an hour or two each day,

00:56:11.340 | and sometimes even less than that,

00:56:12.780 | planning for the upcoming year.

00:56:14.860 | So my question for you is how do you use extended time off

00:56:20.140 | to plan for the future while not getting stuck in a rut

00:56:23.980 | because you have so much time off?

00:56:26.700 | Thanks so much.

00:56:27.620 | - That's a great question, Josh.

00:56:30.500 | Common for a lot of open-ended pursuits

00:56:33.140 | where you have a lot of time to work on it.

00:56:34.980 | The key is constraints.

00:56:35.980 | Give yourself a lot of constraints,

00:56:37.740 | obey those constraints,

00:56:41.060 | and a lot more is gonna get done.

00:56:42.060 | So like I would tell you nine to 11

00:56:45.300 | Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,

00:56:47.540 | I want you at a coffee shop nine to 11

00:56:52.340 | Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,

00:56:55.100 | all in on planning.

00:56:56.620 | Like you gotta fill that time, get your energy up,

00:56:58.500 | you start the day excited.

00:56:59.780 | And then you have this sort of like Thursday,

00:57:01.340 | Friday, Saturday, Sunday, this four-day weekend

00:57:03.260 | where you're kind of free from thinking about it.

00:57:04.660 | You have all your afternoons too,

00:57:06.020 | so like you can go like exercise and go do other things.

00:57:08.740 | But it's like those mornings, three days a week,

00:57:10.700 | you're all, you get all, you get in, you go all in.

00:57:14.060 | You'll plan like a really good next year.

00:57:15.860 | You'll probably like the basic stuff will get done

00:57:17.500 | after a few weeks and you can start doing cool stuff.

00:57:20.060 | In general, I find this to be useful.

00:57:21.780 | Constraints can be useful.

00:57:23.380 | Regular time with high intensity

00:57:26.620 | applied over a long time period moves mountains.

00:57:30.780 | Like this is how I write books.

00:57:33.100 | It's two hours, one hour, three hour, no hours,

00:57:35.980 | four hours, three hours, one hour, two hours,

00:57:38.340 | 100 words here, 500 words here.

00:57:41.260 | My eyes are down on the road in front of me.

00:57:45.100 | This few paragraphs is what I care about.

00:57:47.700 | And you just keep doing this.

00:57:49.860 | And you look up after a few months and you're like,

00:57:51.740 | oh, I have a couple of chapters here.

00:57:52.780 | These are pretty good.

00:57:54.100 | And you keep doing it for a while longer.

00:57:55.260 | Oh, there's another chapter here.

00:57:57.300 | Like that's how cool stuff gets made.

00:57:59.300 | My book, "Slow Productivity" is a good quote

00:58:01.060 | in the conclusion from John McPhee about this.

00:58:03.220 | And I'll paraphrase it,

00:58:04.100 | but basically he talks about how intense but not too long,

00:58:09.020 | just like intense writing for reasonable periods of time

00:58:12.300 | done day after day after day can over time generate

00:58:16.180 | a really impressive collection of work.

00:58:17.860 | And he had this quote about,

00:58:19.660 | put a drop of water in a bucket every day.

00:58:22.140 | You'll look up after, I forgot the time period,

00:58:24.660 | look up after a year, I think he said,

00:58:26.460 | and that bucket's gonna be pretty full.

00:58:28.220 | So constraints are great because you get high quality work,

00:58:31.180 | but it's sustainable and stuff builds up.

00:58:33.220 | Just trust the power of compound productivity.

00:58:37.300 | Stuff builds up.

00:58:38.860 | If you keep giving it good attention

00:58:40.900 | and you do that again and again and again,

00:58:42.860 | good stuff will build up.

00:58:44.140 | All right, we got a case study here.

00:58:47.540 | That's where someone sends in their own personal account

00:58:50.020 | of working with the advice we talk about.

00:58:52.540 | So we can see what this type of advice

00:58:53.940 | is like out in the wild.

00:58:55.220 | Today's case study comes from Logan.

00:58:58.660 | So Logan says, I've spent the last 12 years

00:59:03.060 | living with an extreme spinal condition.

00:59:05.780 | Three months ago, I finally got a big promotion.

00:59:08.780 | It changed nothing.

00:59:10.820 | I now had the promotion and related pay raise,

00:59:12.860 | but I'd lost lots of time with family and friends.

00:59:14.980 | My physical health had stalled out.

00:59:16.940 | So while on paternity leave,

00:59:18.380 | I took time to sit down and write out my deep life vision.

00:59:23.380 | I also rated my areas by importance,

00:59:25.940 | health, relationships, enjoyment, and finally craft.

00:59:30.940 | I immediately saw that I had sacrificed all other areas

00:59:35.220 | for the benefit of work.

00:59:36.420 | Coincidentally, this was also the longest I've had away

00:59:40.420 | from a desk in a decade or more,

00:59:42.340 | became undeniably clear how much damage

00:59:44.660 | simply sitting all day was doing to my physical health

00:59:46.820 | and my mental health.

00:59:47.860 | During this time, I've been working with a trainer

00:59:50.980 | for my back and I began thinking

00:59:52.220 | that a career switch might be best.

00:59:53.540 | I talked to the trainers and considered moving

00:59:55.540 | into that field.

00:59:56.580 | I've listened to your show long enough to know

00:59:58.220 | not to just quit the day job

00:59:59.980 | until I have a proven path elsewhere.

01:00:01.860 | I approached my manager about going part-time

01:00:03.700 | and keeping only the work where I am the expert,

01:00:06.220 | cashing in my career capital for autonomy

01:00:09.140 | and accountability.

01:00:10.780 | She agreed almost immediately,

01:00:12.460 | particularly since we've discussed my health issues

01:00:14.380 | in the past.

01:00:15.540 | Going part-time has been something my wife and I had

01:00:17.860 | in our long-time vision for quite a while,

01:00:20.100 | so this simply accelerated the timeline.

01:00:22.460 | It works well for the family anyways,

01:00:24.140 | because my wife is eager to return to work sooner

01:00:26.340 | than we initially planned after being a stay-at-home mom

01:00:29.100 | for three years.

01:00:30.620 | I'm on my second week of being part-time.

01:00:32.940 | I've been fitting in way more workouts

01:00:34.620 | than I ever would have been able to in the past,

01:00:36.460 | and I'm working my way through the necessary certifications

01:00:38.700 | to be a personal trainer.

01:00:40.380 | I can't speak to the financial success of this idea yet,

01:00:42.780 | but my health is better than ever,

01:00:44.260 | and I'm able to be there for my family more.

01:00:46.980 | Here are some takeaways from going through this.

01:00:50.100 | One, your deep work and slow productivity strategies

01:00:53.500 | are invaluable for managing a chronic illness.

01:00:57.980 | Two, when it comes to creating a deep life vision,

01:01:01.460 | having a little bit of space to think is important,

01:01:04.500 | whether it's a few days or several long nights

01:01:06.460 | of holding a newborn.

01:01:07.900 | I was unable to think in this way while working long days

01:01:10.420 | and balancing multiple commitments.

01:01:12.740 | Three, look for opportunities that aren't where you expect.

01:01:18.140 | I'd never thought of being a personal trainer,

01:01:19.900 | but at least three of the people I spoke to

01:01:21.420 | reached a conclusion before I did.

01:01:23.860 | And four, in addition to my deep life areas,

01:01:27.340 | I first wrote out a quick four-sentence blurb

01:01:30.100 | about what my values and attitudes

01:01:31.740 | I wanted to live my life by.

01:01:33.180 | This helped tremendously.

01:01:35.100 | IEA won't be governed by fear or pain

01:01:36.900 | and I'll default to action.

01:01:38.460 | It's a great case study.

01:01:40.740 | There's a lot of good stuff in there,

01:01:42.140 | a lot of good ideas being put into action.

01:01:45.100 | I wanna underscore the lifestyle-centric planning approach.

01:01:49.220 | See, again, when you're just thinking about your job

01:01:52.380 | and maximizing whatever arbitrary scale of success

01:01:56.020 | in that job happens to exist in your industry,

01:01:58.660 | it doesn't mean your life's gonna be better.

01:02:01.180 | So for this person, Logan, sorry, Logan,

01:02:05.900 | for Logan, by focusing just on the job,

01:02:09.580 | almost every other area of his life

01:02:11.060 | that he cared about got much worse.

01:02:12.260 | Well, here's the thing,

01:02:13.100 | all those other areas affect your wellbeing every single day.

01:02:15.740 | So if they're not going well,

01:02:17.360 | the fact that you have a higher title and pay raise

01:02:21.580 | is not going to, on a day-to-day basis,

01:02:24.660 | balance out what you're losing

01:02:26.220 | from these other areas of your life.

01:02:28.300 | Like part of the problem with the grand goal approach,

01:02:32.820 | the life design, is that you really front load

01:02:36.460 | the benefit you get from accomplishing these goals.

01:02:38.780 | Logan probably felt awesome for a day

01:02:41.800 | about I won this promotion and it was competitive

01:02:44.780 | and I make more money and I kind of wish I had a way

01:02:46.820 | of kind of telling people that I made more money.

01:02:49.060 | And then you've got that reward.

01:02:51.860 | You don't get that reward again,

01:02:53.900 | but every day you're missing all the stuff,

01:02:56.140 | the other things you care about that are being diminished.

01:02:58.540 | You're paying that price every day,

01:03:00.140 | but the reward for accomplishing the goal

01:03:02.420 | is already dissipated.

01:03:04.100 | So actually having these other areas of your life,

01:03:06.060 | like it's more time with his family,

01:03:07.620 | his health feeling better,

01:03:09.320 | allowing his wife to go back and do these other ideas,

01:03:14.780 | go back to work and being like,

01:03:16.280 | I'm able to make that happen.

01:03:17.780 | Like these other things that are important,

01:03:20.980 | you're getting benefits from those every day.

01:03:23.300 | Net, net, that's going to balance out better.

01:03:25.340 | So lifestyle centric planning is really important.

01:03:27.660 | And again, it's not about saying your job

01:03:30.020 | is not important or is important.

01:03:31.420 | It's just knowing what you're using this as an engine for.

01:03:34.100 | So he was so good at his job that him going down part time

01:03:38.060 | was still financially viable.

01:03:39.580 | Hey, and by the way, it made his job much better

01:03:41.420 | because he's only doing the work that he's an expert on

01:03:43.420 | and then B or C it opened up all these other things.

01:03:45.740 | So a classic lifestyle centric planning case study.

01:03:49.480 | So Logan, I appreciate that.

01:03:52.140 | And the personal trader stuff could be,

01:03:53.500 | hey, I see this a lot.

01:03:54.460 | People who have a chronic health issue

01:03:57.960 | really care a lot about physical health.

01:04:02.100 | And so a job like being a trainer,

01:04:03.780 | like as a part-time job is really meaningful to them.

01:04:06.340 | It's not arbitrary to be really meaningful.

01:04:07.820 | So I could imagine a world in which you're doing

01:04:10.260 | this part-time job, high salary work,

01:04:13.540 | and then you're doing some of this training work

01:04:14.860 | and it helps keep you really healthy.

01:04:16.460 | And it's really interesting

01:04:17.420 | and it balances out that other job.

01:04:19.120 | And you have more time with your family

01:04:20.620 | and this flexibility.

01:04:21.840 | All of this seems like a great lifestyle centric

01:04:23.540 | planning scenario.

01:04:24.840 | So Logan, thanks for sending that in.

01:04:27.300 | All right, so we've got a final segment coming up

01:04:29.260 | where I'll talk about Jon Haidt,

01:04:31.260 | but first hear from another sponsor.

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01:04:43.800 | to replace the salts you lose when you exercise

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01:04:52.060 | but I think it was roughly 118 degrees.

01:04:55.720 | I'm not sure if that's accurate.

01:04:56.940 | So just walking outside last weekend,

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01:05:06.020 | It's what I drink after every workout.

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01:05:10.600 | It's what I drink by just looking outside

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01:06:36.000 | I also wanna talk about our friends at Ladder.

01:06:41.100 | I don't typically procrastinate on things.

01:06:44.300 | In fact, this interview I did today with a reporter,

01:06:46.940 | he asked point blank, "Do you ever procrastinate?"

01:06:49.820 | There are some things, however, that I do procrastinate on,

01:06:53.120 | and they typically are things

01:06:54.340 | where I don't really know how to take action.

01:06:58.180 | I don't really know what to do.

01:07:00.540 | I'm just gonna put that aside.

01:07:02.540 | Well, for a lot of people,

01:07:04.380 | something that satisfies that condition

01:07:07.700 | is gonna be life insurance.

01:07:10.100 | You know you need more.

01:07:11.160 | You know you wanna protect those who depend and care on you,

01:07:13.440 | but because you don't know how to actually make progress

01:07:17.320 | on how do I get life insurance, you procrastinate on it.

01:07:21.460 | This is where Ladder enters the scene.

01:07:24.380 | It solves that problem.

01:07:25.420 | It makes it easy.

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01:08:33.900 | All right, Jesse, let's do our final segment.

01:08:36.100 | All right, so a lot of people,

01:08:39.360 | I guess, right, Jesse, have been writing in.

01:08:41.640 | - Yeah. - You get most

01:08:42.480 | of these messages.

01:08:43.800 | They've been writing in and asking for my thoughts

01:08:46.900 | on John Haidt's most recent book,

01:08:49.140 | which I've loaded up here on the screen

01:08:50.560 | for people who are listening.

01:08:53.080 | The book is called "The Anxious Generation,

01:08:55.480 | "How the Great Rewiring of Childhood

01:08:57.080 | "is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness."

01:08:59.760 | Let me just point out, by the way,

01:09:00.640 | this book is just killing it.

01:09:02.840 | Number three on Amazon charts.

01:09:04.880 | I just checked, number seven on the Amazon rankings

01:09:07.800 | at the moment.

01:09:08.840 | This book came out in March, right?

01:09:10.960 | It's killing it because John was the leading thinker

01:09:15.960 | and proponent for the research about kids and phones,

01:09:22.240 | and people really started caring about this,

01:09:24.560 | and he had the book on it.

01:09:26.600 | Like, if you have kids and you worry about,

01:09:28.680 | "What should I do with them and phones?"

01:09:30.500 | This is the book you read.

01:09:31.760 | Everyone at our school is talking about it.

01:09:34.140 | Just perfect timing, perfect topic.

01:09:35.840 | It's a writer's dream.

01:09:36.680 | So, John, like, congratulations to you.

01:09:38.520 | All right, what do I feel about this?

01:09:40.960 | I agree with basically everything John says.

01:09:44.800 | Why?

01:09:45.940 | Well, I've known John for a while.

01:09:48.760 | I've known his research for a while.

01:09:51.160 | You know, I interviewed him for a "New Yorker" piece

01:09:52.980 | back in 2021, and he gave me access

01:09:55.400 | to this sprawling annotated bibliography

01:09:58.640 | of all of the research on kids and phones,

01:10:01.760 | and they would grow it.

01:10:02.800 | He worked on this with Gene Twenge,

01:10:04.320 | or Gene Twenge, sorry, Gene,

01:10:06.120 | and they would add and add to this,

01:10:07.640 | and they had conversations in this.

01:10:09.400 | Like, someone would publish a critical,

01:10:11.320 | a critique of another article,

01:10:13.000 | and then the authors of the original article would respond,

01:10:15.520 | and the critique authors would respond to that.

01:10:17.160 | I mean, it was a living, breathing document

01:10:19.260 | of everything that was being published,

01:10:21.320 | and it became clear to me following this research,

01:10:23.560 | talking to John about it, but following this research,

01:10:25.920 | that a clear signal was emerging.

01:10:28.240 | Smartphones are harmful for teenagers on average, right?

01:10:33.240 | There was harm here.

01:10:36.440 | Like, all of these research fields,

01:10:38.320 | at first, it's, you know, I don't know.

01:10:40.160 | Like, we have this, but other people are saying this,

01:10:42.360 | but what happened is we got more and more clarity.

01:10:44.540 | As you got different instruments of measurement,

01:10:46.760 | as you got more refined data, more refined studies,

01:10:50.460 | more different ways of looking at this question,

01:10:52.840 | all of the arrows started pointing in the same direction.

01:10:55.120 | That's how you know a real signal

01:10:56.360 | is emerging in the literature.

01:10:58.520 | Those who are still out there saying

01:10:59.960 | we're not quite sure yet,

01:11:01.360 | there was, for example,

01:11:04.000 | I think a intellectually vacuous

01:11:07.820 | and somewhat mean-spirited review of the book,

01:11:10.900 | I think it was in Nature,

01:11:12.080 | that was still trotting out this circa 2019 argument

01:11:16.740 | about like, we don't even, we don't know for,

01:11:18.880 | you know, it's correlation,

01:11:20.320 | and we're not even sure if they cause problems.

01:11:21.940 | The literature is way past that.

01:11:23.080 | I know that by reading these research bibliographies.

01:11:25.520 | So, I think John's summary of this is good.

01:11:28.440 | I think his conclusions are also good.

01:11:31.240 | You wanna wait until a kid is probably post-puberty

01:11:33.720 | before they get unrestricted access to the internet

01:11:35.640 | through a smartphone.

01:11:36.760 | It's gonna be somewhere around 15 to 16.

01:11:38.920 | At the very least, you'd wanna wait till high school,

01:11:42.120 | but probably even 15 or 16

01:11:44.080 | is like what is going to be most recommended.

01:11:46.560 | I've been saying that for multiple years now

01:11:48.240 | because of John's work.

01:11:50.120 | It still is right.

01:11:51.600 | I still think that's the right answer.

01:11:53.180 | I still think that's right.

01:11:54.180 | I think this book is killing it now

01:11:55.440 | because everyone else is catching up to where he was.

01:11:58.240 | If you want a shareable summary of these conclusions

01:12:02.120 | in this research to show like parents at your schools

01:12:05.440 | or like parents of friends or what have you,

01:12:08.400 | I did a podcast episode last May of 2023.

01:12:12.360 | This was episode 246 called "Kids and Phones."

01:12:15.160 | And in that episode, I basically gave the talk

01:12:19.300 | I had prepared for my kids' school

01:12:21.080 | where I went through all of the research

01:12:23.860 | and conclusions about kids and phones,

01:12:25.500 | drawing heavily from John Haidt's work.

01:12:27.520 | So, if you want a video or an audio episode

01:12:30.400 | that's shareable, that gets to the core argument

01:12:32.560 | about what do we know about this?

01:12:34.240 | How has our understanding of phones changed?

01:12:35.920 | What's the best recommendation?

01:12:37.560 | Check out episode 246, "Kids and Phones."

01:12:40.080 | And again, that's from May of 2023.

01:12:43.000 | But yes, John is the real deal.

01:12:45.080 | He's been on this.

01:12:46.600 | His meta-analysis here I think is right.

01:12:49.420 | I've been saying this for a while now on the show, Jesse,

01:12:51.240 | that five or six years from now,

01:12:53.600 | we're gonna look back at giving phones to kids

01:12:56.540 | under 15 or 16 as crazy.

01:12:59.320 | And I think now we're finally seeing,

01:13:02.280 | people are catching up with this literature.

01:13:03.760 | We're beginning to see those shifts.

01:13:05.760 | And I think it's a good thing.

01:13:07.240 | Doesn't make me popular at my kids' school,

01:13:09.940 | but I think it's a good thing.

01:13:10.780 | We can't keep saying, "Kids these days,

01:13:12.320 | "they gotta have the phone.

01:13:13.200 | "They're 12 now and they're friends of,"

01:13:14.960 | and trust me, the research is not pretty.

01:13:18.200 | - Did you ever listen to the Tyler Cohn/Haidt interview?

01:13:21.240 | - Some of it.

01:13:22.080 | Yeah, that was pretty aggressive.

01:13:26.080 | - Yeah, it seemed to be.

01:13:27.880 | But then I think Tyler was asking him,

01:13:30.160 | "What's your concrete advice?"

01:13:31.940 | Like, "Do you want government intervention,"

01:13:35.200 | stuff like that.

01:13:36.040 | - I honestly think, I think John was very,

01:13:38.640 | here's my, I don't know, I haven't talked about this.

01:13:40.480 | It read to me like an early cycle interview

01:13:44.400 | where John hadn't finished his media prep yet.

01:13:47.080 | Like, so people don't know the process

01:13:49.040 | of doing these media tours like I just did

01:13:50.840 | for slow productivity, but you get your ducks in a row.

01:13:54.800 | Like, you know what, you know your ideas,

01:13:59.720 | you know your advice, you know the scenarios,

01:14:01.760 | you just have this down, right?

01:14:03.820 | Like, you know how to navigate

01:14:06.120 | and then you're ready to go out there

01:14:07.280 | and do a bunch of interviews.

01:14:08.440 | Early cycle, you're still trying

01:14:09.600 | to get these things together.

01:14:10.680 | So I'll often, for example,

01:14:13.080 | I'll record my first interviews pretty early.

01:14:15.400 | I recorded my first interviews

01:14:17.400 | about two months before the book came out.

01:14:19.760 | And I did 'em typically with like mid-tier podcasts

01:14:22.480 | with smaller audiences just to sort of get my legs

01:14:24.840 | under myself, okay, to be released later.

01:14:28.520 | But just to like get my ducks in a row.

01:14:30.460 | And then by the time I'm on Huberman

01:14:32.400 | or like I'm going back and forth with Sam Harris,

01:14:35.400 | I've really got all my things down

01:14:37.480 | and I know how I feel about things

01:14:38.920 | and I have really tight responses to things.

01:14:41.680 | The Tyler Cowen just felt like,

01:14:43.440 | I mean, it was early cycle for John

01:14:44.760 | and he was doing a big show.

01:14:45.760 | And so Tyler's like, what about this, what about this?

01:14:47.840 | And John was like, hold on,

01:14:50.020 | I haven't like fully worked through these answers

01:14:52.160 | and I wasn't expecting to be like asked about my politics.

01:14:55.720 | But then he just sharpened up

01:14:56.800 | and I think he's like a phantom.

01:14:58.280 | If you listen to like Hype Now, boom, boom, boom, boom.

01:15:01.800 | Like he's fully, 'cause he got a,

01:15:03.520 | there's a lot of attacks that came.

01:15:05.880 | He got some attacks, not as much as I feared.

01:15:08.220 | He got some attacks because his past book,

01:15:12.000 | "The Coddling of the American Mind"

01:15:14.480 | was in a very, I think, very like fair

01:15:17.640 | and centrist and low-key way

01:15:20.600 | was still like pushing back against

01:15:23.880 | what it sounds like progressive cancel culture

01:15:25.720 | and some of the excesses of wokeness.

01:15:28.560 | So that put him on the hit list a little bit

01:15:30.560 | of especially, the memo wasn't really going around.

01:15:33.920 | So do we not like this guy or not?

01:15:35.600 | And so he kind of got a variety.

01:15:37.600 | There were some sort of scurrilous attacks.

01:15:39.960 | By scurrilous, I mean, I just got the memo,

01:15:42.640 | we're supposed to take this person down.

01:15:44.080 | I'll sort of figure out how to do it on the fly.

01:15:45.920 | And you could sort of tell that.

01:15:47.040 | But he didn't get as much as that as you would have expected.

01:15:49.700 | Like the New York Times book review was very positive

01:15:52.560 | that look, erudite, engaging, combative, crusading.

01:15:55.760 | So I think he didn't get as much of that.

01:15:59.680 | I do think one of my New Yorker colleagues

01:16:01.080 | sort of casually was like, well, you know, he's racist,

01:16:02.980 | but there's some things in this book that are good.

01:16:05.320 | So there's like some of that going on.

01:16:06.920 | But he, you know, so he's,

01:16:09.200 | I'll try to say he's had to toughen up.

01:16:10.920 | And then I think now he's like (imitates punching)

01:16:13.320 | He knows what he's doing.

01:16:14.160 | - It's not a lot of books.

01:16:15.200 | - My God.

01:16:16.040 | I think this book is gonna do--

01:16:18.080 | - Atomic Habits?

01:16:19.760 | - It's not gonna Atomic Habits.

01:16:21.440 | But he is gonna do,

01:16:25.760 | man, let me try to predict this.

01:16:27.360 | 'Cause I've already done 100,000 copies.

01:16:30.640 | So he's probably,

01:16:31.680 | I think he's gonna pass a million copies in his first year.

01:16:34.880 | And then I don't know what the,

01:16:37.360 | I think a book like this has a long half-life

01:16:39.200 | because it's like the reference.

01:16:40.160 | Like this is the book you buy

01:16:42.080 | when you have a question on the phone.

01:16:43.160 | So I think this is gonna be a like

01:16:45.600 | three to five million copy seller.

01:16:47.640 | - Really?

01:16:48.480 | - Yeah.

01:16:49.300 | Maybe more, probably not.

01:16:51.360 | I don't know.

01:16:52.640 | Could be.

01:16:53.880 | Good for John.

01:16:54.720 | All right, well, anyways, that's all the time we have.

01:16:58.700 | We weren't sure if I was even gonna be able

01:16:59.800 | to do this episode in studio

01:17:01.160 | because I'm leaving imminently for undisclosed locations

01:17:04.300 | for the month of July.

01:17:05.760 | But we got this one in under the wire.

01:17:07.420 | So there'll be a couple episodes coming up

01:17:08.880 | that Jess and I will record remotely,

01:17:12.400 | but the show will go on more or less as it always has,

01:17:16.340 | just from a different location.

01:17:17.560 | I'll see this time, Jesse,

01:17:18.520 | if I can get a scenic locale for my filming.

01:17:21.520 | We kind of failed at that at Dartmouth

01:17:23.120 | 'cause the thing would overheat

01:17:24.880 | and we had all these problems,

01:17:26.480 | but I have a new beefy laptop,

01:17:28.620 | like a brand new MacBook Pro.

01:17:32.600 | And it's got a good camera

01:17:35.160 | and it can handle higher quality streaming.

01:17:36.760 | I got a good light for it.

01:17:39.000 | I got my mic.

01:17:39.840 | I'm gonna try again

01:17:40.680 | to see if we can have like a scenic location.

01:17:43.320 | It probably won't be, but you know,

01:17:45.280 | we'll mess around with it.

01:17:46.120 | So anyways, next time you hear me,

01:17:47.280 | I'll be in my undisclosed location,

01:17:48.800 | but the show will go on and I'm looking forward to it.

01:17:51.920 | So we'll be back.

01:17:53.520 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:17:56.020 | Hey, so if you liked today's discussion

01:17:59.240 | of ultra process content,

01:18:01.000 | and you wanna find out more about what about kids

01:18:04.560 | and this type of content, especially kids using phones,

01:18:07.040 | check out episode 246,

01:18:10.180 | where I get into the research on kids and phones.

01:18:14.280 | Check it out.

01:18:15.160 | So that's the deep dive we wanna do today.

01:18:16.760 | Today's deep question is,

01:18:18.040 | are smartphones bad for kids?

01:18:22.340 | And if so, how do we know that?

Uncomfortable Truth About Social Media (Avoid Distracting Content & Control Your Life) | Cal Newport

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