Full Length Episode | #172 | February 10, 2022

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, episode 172.

00:00:11.760 | Here in my Deep Work HQ,

00:00:17.080 | joined as always by my producer, Jesse,

00:00:21.900 | and we've got ourselves a good old fashioned

00:00:24.740 | listener calls episode, which I am looking forward to.

00:00:29.260 | Now, this is the first recording session

00:00:32.480 | that we have done in the month of February.

00:00:34.760 | We're doing this, I don't know what today is,

00:00:36.280 | February 4th, maybe, February 5th, something like that.

00:00:40.020 | So you know what that means,

00:00:40.920 | if it's the first session in a new month,

00:00:43.760 | we should take some time to talk about

00:00:45.840 | the books I read in the preceding month.

00:00:49.400 | We're trying to make that a habit here on the show.

00:00:53.600 | So I thought we would start things off today

00:00:55.560 | talking about the five books I read in January 2022.

00:01:00.560 | Quick background on that,

00:01:05.640 | I usually aim to read around five books a month,

00:01:08.840 | and the two things I do to accomplish this goal is,

00:01:11.440 | one, I make reading more of a default activity.

00:01:14.020 | So instead of looking at a phone or a tablet

00:01:17.320 | for random online distraction,

00:01:19.640 | I make looking at a book my default activity.

00:01:22.220 | And two, I read a wide variety of books

00:01:25.380 | of different styles, different genres,

00:01:28.820 | different levels of difficulty

00:01:30.160 | so that it doesn't become tedious

00:01:31.440 | or doesn't become too much of a chore.

00:01:33.500 | I don't care what format, audio, Kindle,

00:01:37.140 | hardcover, whatever, just keep reading.

00:01:40.380 | I also believe in not overthinking what you read.

00:01:42.960 | Just reading a lot of interesting stuff

00:01:44.500 | is better than having some sort of carefully curated list

00:01:47.860 | with which you're trying to impress people.

00:01:50.300 | All right, so let's get into it.

00:01:51.360 | The books I read in January 2022.

00:01:55.540 | So those who have followed this segment

00:01:58.500 | in previous months know I've been on a kick recently

00:02:02.180 | of reading books that have to do

00:02:04.020 | with the entertainment industry.

00:02:05.180 | I'm not sure why, I just like that genre.

00:02:08.780 | I did some cinema books,

00:02:11.100 | I've done some biographies of directors.

00:02:15.440 | My entry in this sequence of books for January

00:02:20.060 | was Will Smith's new biography, which is titled "Will",

00:02:25.060 | which I actually quite enjoyed.

00:02:27.820 | Now, "Will" is co-authored,

00:02:29.820 | Will Smith co-authored it with Mark Manson,

00:02:34.180 | who you might know as the author

00:02:37.740 | of the subtle art of not giving an F word, that book,

00:02:42.740 | which sold, and I'm using the official terms here, Jesse,

00:02:47.000 | all the copies.

00:02:48.580 | That's what I have here.

00:02:49.780 | I have here on my official notes.

00:02:51.420 | It sold, that book sold an absurd number of copies.

00:02:54.060 | I'm talking like 18 million copies.

00:02:56.500 | It's a crazily successful book.

00:02:59.020 | So he co-authored, so Will Smith, I think,

00:03:01.060 | liked the subtle art and asked Mark

00:03:04.320 | to co-author "Will" with him.

00:03:06.580 | The way I learned about this is Mark told me,

00:03:10.440 | it's a pretty small world,

00:03:11.700 | Jesse, you could probably imagine this to be the case.

00:03:14.060 | There's only so many of us that are sort of in our 30s

00:03:17.340 | or now late 30s now who write pragmatic nonfiction books

00:03:22.340 | for major publishers.

00:03:23.580 | There's a group of us,

00:03:25.020 | and we all kind of know each other, right?

00:03:26.660 | Because we're all like the same age.

00:03:28.900 | We all sort of write the same thing.

00:03:30.220 | So Mark is in that group.

00:03:31.500 | Ryan Holiday is in that group.

00:03:33.020 | Tim Ferris is in that group.

00:03:34.460 | James Clear is in that group.

00:03:35.780 | I'm in that group.

00:03:37.480 | So we all know each other.

00:03:38.320 | So a few years ago, Mark was giving a talk.

00:03:42.380 | He was doing a lecture tour.

00:03:43.380 | He was giving a talk here in the DC area,

00:03:45.860 | actually kind of near to where I live, near here.

00:03:47.780 | He was in Silver Spring was the talk at the Fillmore,

00:03:50.100 | which is near Tacoma Park.

00:03:52.140 | So I was like, well, just come hang out,

00:03:53.140 | like before your talk.

00:03:54.540 | So he came and we wandered the streets of Tacoma Park

00:03:56.980 | and just talked as one does.

00:04:00.700 | And I remember him telling me,

00:04:01.740 | he's like, here's what I'm working on now,

00:04:04.500 | a biography with Will Smith.

00:04:07.100 | I was like, well, that's crazy.

00:04:08.180 | That's interesting.

00:04:09.020 | Not at all what I thought you were going to say.

00:04:10.660 | And it sounded awesome.

00:04:12.420 | He was like, yeah, Will's method was he would be like,

00:04:16.740 | hey, Mark, I'm going somewhere cool.

00:04:20.020 | Do you want to just come with me?

00:04:21.420 | And he would just bring them and they could just chat

00:04:23.260 | when they had downtime.

00:04:25.100 | I thought that was the coolest thing.

00:04:26.780 | I was like, all right, go for it.

00:04:28.980 | And the book is good.

00:04:30.740 | It's good.

00:04:31.560 | I sent Mark a note about this.

00:04:33.100 | It's really hard to write these memoirs

00:04:34.660 | 'cause you have to capture like a unique voice

00:04:38.020 | and you need to be psychologically self-reflective

00:04:41.740 | and yet also capture how did the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

00:04:44.620 | become a show.

00:04:45.460 | And I thought it did it really well.

00:04:47.420 | I'm actually surprised this book

00:04:48.620 | has not gotten more critical love.

00:04:51.740 | So I sent Mark a note and said,

00:04:52.740 | I think you did a great job.

00:04:53.700 | This is a hard book to write.

00:04:54.700 | I couldn't have done this.

00:04:55.620 | And so I really enjoyed it.

00:04:57.020 | That'd be my analysis.

00:05:00.060 | Have I told you my Will Smith story?

00:05:02.380 | - No, I want to hear it.

00:05:03.460 | - All right, so I was in my first year,

00:05:07.220 | maybe my second year of graduate school at MIT.

00:05:09.860 | And I had just published "How to Win at College"

00:05:11.940 | and "How to Be a Straight A Student."

00:05:14.200 | And I got contacted by Will's people.

00:05:18.940 | And maybe it was Jaden at the time.

00:05:21.160 | One of his kids was, you know,

00:05:24.060 | of the age where you care about grades,

00:05:27.800 | like junior high or something.

00:05:28.700 | And they're like, can you come like down to Miami

00:05:31.240 | and like just talk with Will about how to study

00:05:33.820 | and how to do whatever.

00:05:35.360 | And do you play golf?

00:05:37.940 | I remember like, you want to just come down to the golf course

00:05:39.460 | and for various reasons, it didn't work out.

00:05:41.180 | But I remember--

00:05:42.020 | - Do you play golf?

00:05:42.840 | - I don't play golf.

00:05:43.680 | And I told him, I was like,

00:05:44.520 | I cannot go to a golf course with Will Smith.

00:05:46.980 | When I literally, I would be holding,

00:05:49.620 | this would be the scene, right?

00:05:51.060 | So Will Smith would walk in superhero shape, you know,

00:05:54.420 | like everyone's just happy to see him there.

00:05:57.500 | He's incredibly competitive.

00:05:58.500 | So he's probably been at that point

00:06:00.320 | getting one-on-one golf training.

00:06:02.540 | - He's going to gamble with you, get you nerves.

00:06:03.940 | - Gambling, yeah, let's gamble with me.

00:06:06.180 | I'm going to walk out there.

00:06:07.220 | He's like, I'm glad you're here, Cal.

00:06:09.020 | And then he's going to say, I don't mean to interrupt,

00:06:12.000 | but you're holding the golf club upside down.

00:06:14.760 | That's not a handle.

00:06:16.120 | That's the face of the golf club

00:06:17.820 | you're supposed to hit it with.

00:06:18.860 | Point two, I think our business here is done.

00:06:21.700 | And that's how that would have played out.

00:06:22.740 | That would not have been good.

00:06:23.780 | That would not have been good.

00:06:25.400 | But I like his, I like that attitude though of like,

00:06:28.260 | okay, you have a problem.

00:06:30.060 | Like, I want to help my kid with studying.

00:06:32.100 | Nice situation to be in.

00:06:33.500 | To be like, all right, so who's the guy

00:06:35.780 | who's like top at study strategies right now?

00:06:38.400 | Let's get him down here.

00:06:39.260 | And I don't know if Will Smith had anything to do with,

00:06:42.060 | like, that could have been his people.

00:06:43.260 | He might've just told someone like,

00:06:44.620 | can you find someone to come talk to me?

00:06:46.100 | And they will come down.

00:06:46.940 | - So did you go down there?

00:06:47.760 | - I didn't go down there.

00:06:48.600 | - Because of golf or because you were busy

00:06:50.180 | with other stuff?

00:06:51.260 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:06:53.420 | I mean, also like, I'm not a one-on-one tutor, you know?

00:06:57.700 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:06:58.540 | - Like, you know, I get it.

00:06:59.380 | I don't fault people for trying to get the best,

00:07:03.200 | best for their kids, but like, it just felt weird to me.

00:07:05.940 | I was like, I don't know, man.

00:07:06.940 | I'm like a doctoral student here at MIT

00:07:09.620 | trying to do whatever.

00:07:10.900 | I don't, and I'm not good at one-on-one tutoring.

00:07:13.140 | That's not my thing.

00:07:14.020 | You know me, if I'm not in front of a microphone,

00:07:15.980 | I'm weird and antisocial.

00:07:17.220 | - That's not true.

00:07:19.180 | - Yeah, anyways, that did not make it to the book.

00:07:21.100 | So I flipped to that.

00:07:23.260 | I didn't see that in the book.

00:07:24.140 | And so I threw it out.

00:07:24.980 | No, but it was a good book.

00:07:25.800 | I really enjoyed Will.

00:07:27.060 | You know, that gets a driven guy.

00:07:30.700 | It's just a driven guy.

00:07:32.420 | - All those people make it to that level are so driven.

00:07:34.500 | It's insane.

00:07:35.500 | - The thing about that personifies Will Smith

00:07:38.700 | that I learned in that book is

00:07:40.500 | he hired a Monopoly coach at some point

00:07:44.500 | just because they played Monopoly a fair amount.

00:07:46.900 | And he's like, I want to be the best at Monopoly

00:07:49.620 | and hired a professional Monopoly player, which exists.

00:07:53.300 | The tournament player to drill him

00:07:56.980 | until he could like for sure dominate his family

00:08:00.940 | when playing Monopoly.

00:08:02.040 | I think that tells you everything you need to know, right?

00:08:04.820 | About why he was the biggest superstar in the world.

00:08:06.660 | It's just, there was a driven mentality

00:08:08.940 | of like, let's get after it.

00:08:10.100 | Like, I don't want to lose, you know, which I,

00:08:12.760 | all of these guys and women that are

00:08:14.740 | at the top of their field, the same way.

00:08:16.940 | Like if I'm going to play Monopoly, I'm going to win.

00:08:19.340 | - Yeah, they're extremely competitive business athletes.

00:08:22.740 | - Yeah.

00:08:23.580 | All right.

00:08:24.400 | So I liked that book.

00:08:25.240 | Then I read, oh, I should say good audio book too.

00:08:27.060 | They do clips and audio, like his songs.

00:08:31.020 | We was talking about his songs.

00:08:32.100 | Like they play the audio of the songs.

00:08:33.860 | It's actually, it's well, well produced audio book.

00:08:35.780 | All right.

00:08:36.620 | So I actually did two books in January

00:08:39.180 | that had to do with the entertainment industry.

00:08:41.060 | The other one was "The Late Shift,"

00:08:44.020 | which was a book that came out, I guess in the 2000s

00:08:48.860 | or the nineties about the battle between Jay Leno

00:08:53.180 | and David Letterman to see who was going to get

00:08:54.900 | the "Tonight Show" after Johnny Carson retired.

00:08:58.260 | And the reason why, it was actually the show,

00:09:01.900 | our show that motivated me.

00:09:03.700 | It's like, I actually would be interested to find out more

00:09:05.820 | about this world of late night TV and how these,

00:09:09.060 | how these top performers crafted these shows

00:09:12.540 | and tried to build audiences.

00:09:13.820 | And that was actually my inspiration.

00:09:16.220 | Interesting book there.

00:09:18.500 | What I learned is Dave Letterman

00:09:20.380 | was a huge broadcasting talent, right?

00:09:23.420 | So his show was incredibly original

00:09:25.940 | and he was pushing the medium.

00:09:28.100 | He was very much understood the medium of visual television

00:09:31.540 | and would do things with the camera

00:09:33.100 | and take it different places

00:09:34.260 | and had a very distinctive voice.

00:09:35.700 | So he was a huge talent.

00:09:37.500 | Jay Leno didn't have that talent so much,

00:09:40.500 | but what Jay would do was the monologue.

00:09:43.780 | And that was his whole thing.

00:09:45.260 | We're going to, the jokes in the monologue

00:09:47.260 | are going to be top-notch and topical.

00:09:50.260 | And it's going to be longer than Letterman's monologue

00:09:53.100 | by far, it's going to be longer than Carson's monologue was.

00:09:56.340 | And he was all about the monologue.

00:09:58.220 | And that in the end sort of won the late night war.

00:10:01.100 | The people just, let me just turn over

00:10:03.380 | and see like really funny jokes

00:10:04.740 | about what's going on in the news.

00:10:06.620 | I was a huge Letterman fan,

00:10:08.460 | huge Letterman fan in the nineties.

00:10:10.540 | Me and my friends got tickets.

00:10:11.940 | We went out to the Ed Sullivan Theater.

00:10:13.340 | I've seen him perform back when he was doing the show,

00:10:15.860 | but it was like smart, weird,

00:10:18.780 | wry, eccentric humor, beautifully done.

00:10:22.220 | In the end, what won that late night war was just,

00:10:24.980 | I want like a really good Clinton joke.

00:10:28.820 | And so it was fascinating, fascinating book.

00:10:31.260 | And the other thing I learned from that is like,

00:10:32.620 | it's incredibly hard to run a late night show,

00:10:35.500 | just to not come across as weird on camera.

00:10:39.940 | Like to be someone who can be on screen like that

00:10:42.020 | for 90 minutes and the audience stays with you,

00:10:44.900 | it's just really hard to do.

00:10:46.500 | And so if you were one of the few people who could do it,

00:10:49.180 | they would just dump truck money at your house.

00:10:51.820 | Like the money involved in this was crazy.

00:10:54.100 | Leno was getting 7 million and that jumped up.

00:10:56.700 | Letterman was in the teens per year,

00:10:58.900 | 15 plus million dollars per year in the nineties

00:11:01.580 | because no one could do this.

00:11:04.380 | People tried and it was a debacle.

00:11:06.580 | But like, if you could, you got all the money basically.

00:11:09.600 | - Are they around equally wealthy?

00:11:12.420 | - Yeah, they're just super rich.

00:11:15.300 | - Yeah.

00:11:16.140 | - Yeah, they both just got really wealthy.

00:11:17.740 | All right, moving away from books

00:11:20.560 | about the entertainment industry.

00:11:22.580 | I read this book, which we've talked about on the show now

00:11:24.840 | multiple times in the last few weeks,

00:11:27.100 | How to Take Smart Notes.

00:11:28.680 | And so this was the book about Zettelkasten note-taking.

00:11:33.020 | And I mean, I don't know if this is true,

00:11:35.800 | but I think it was one of the books that helped bring

00:11:38.940 | the details of this method to an English-speaking audience.

00:11:43.140 | So the author is drawing from research

00:11:46.620 | that was done in Germany, where they were studying

00:11:50.040 | the productivity of the sociologist, Luhmann,

00:11:52.940 | who used this Zettelkasten method to great effect

00:11:55.800 | and had this incredibly productive academic career.

00:11:57.900 | And then this team from the University of Berlin

00:12:00.500 | was trying to study how is he so productive.

00:12:02.460 | And they're like, oh, it's this note-taking system.

00:12:04.100 | So this was kind of a German thing.

00:12:06.700 | And How to Take Smart Notes brought the concept over

00:12:10.860 | to English-speaking audiences.

00:12:13.140 | This book took a long route to get to me.

00:12:16.420 | Actually, one of my readers sent it to me

00:12:18.980 | at some point early in the pandemic.

00:12:21.660 | Now, Georgetown was pretty, they shut down for a long time.

00:12:26.620 | Long story short, Georgetown shut down for a long time.

00:12:28.820 | So I don't know how long this book,

00:12:30.300 | someone at some point, someone put it in my office

00:12:32.220 | with a big stack of mail, but I was gone for a year.

00:12:34.700 | They shut down, more than a year.

00:12:36.460 | I mean, they shut down in March of 2020.

00:12:39.340 | And I was back in my office in the fall of '21,

00:12:43.220 | like five months ago, right?

00:12:45.260 | And so there's a whole stack of mail, and this was in there.

00:12:48.740 | So it might've been in my office for a year.

00:12:50.780 | And the whole thing got water damaged.

00:12:52.340 | There had been a flood and so,

00:12:53.780 | but I rescued from the stack this book

00:12:55.540 | that a reader had sent me.

00:12:57.700 | And it's really cool.

00:12:59.340 | It's always interesting.

00:13:00.180 | So if you're interested in the Zettelkasten stuff

00:13:01.700 | we're talking about, that's the book.

00:13:02.940 | That's the book, it's short.

00:13:04.500 | It gets into it.

00:13:05.740 | It's incredibly optimistic.

00:13:07.460 | It has this Lumen philosophy of,

00:13:09.620 | if you have your system right, writing becomes effortless.

00:13:12.580 | Listeners know I don't quite buy that,

00:13:14.380 | but it is the right introduction, I believe,

00:13:16.620 | into that type of note-taking.

00:13:20.580 | All right, moving on now.

00:13:22.500 | Then I read "The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything."

00:13:26.820 | So this was a nonfiction book that basically surveyed

00:13:33.220 | for a popular audience, Jesuit theology,

00:13:38.740 | and tried to extract lessons from the different parts

00:13:43.140 | of Jesuit theology that would be applicable

00:13:45.980 | to a large crowd, including large secular crowd.

00:13:50.060 | I'm at a Jesuit university, I figured I should know more

00:13:52.980 | about Ignatian spirituality,

00:13:54.540 | so I read "The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything."

00:13:57.100 | So it's really advice-y.

00:13:59.420 | So it'll be, okay, here is something that we Jesuits do,

00:14:02.940 | but here's why this is important,

00:14:04.300 | and here's why, whether you're a Catholic or not,

00:14:06.860 | or religious or not, you should think about

00:14:08.260 | doing these type of things in your life.

00:14:09.460 | That's the general format of this book.

00:14:12.300 | And it was pretty good.

00:14:13.700 | It was long, but it was good.

00:14:16.820 | It was good to get a nice survey and history

00:14:18.820 | of the Jesuit order.

00:14:21.940 | You also got a pretty good insight biographically

00:14:24.340 | into what it's like to join a monastic order,

00:14:28.900 | like what that process is like,

00:14:30.180 | what life is like as a Jesuit,

00:14:32.020 | like what that's actually like.

00:14:33.180 | And the author, Father Donovan, gets into it.

00:14:37.940 | Here's what it's like, here's the hard parts,

00:14:39.420 | here's why I did it, here's how old I was.

00:14:41.580 | Kind of interesting.

00:14:42.420 | - You and Ferris kind of had a religious conversation

00:14:45.540 | when you were on his podcast yesterday or two days ago.

00:14:48.900 | - Yeah, yeah, we got into it, yeah.

00:14:51.820 | Yeah, we were joking about it before

00:14:53.020 | because we had a similar conversation with Lex Fridman

00:14:55.100 | that for some reason, for the tech podcast crowd,

00:14:58.100 | I've become the sounding board for thinking

00:15:00.820 | through the role of religion in your life.

00:15:02.260 | It's an interesting role.

00:15:04.340 | Maybe because I'm one of the few commentators

00:15:07.220 | in that space that will just talk religion straight up

00:15:11.500 | and just treat it as something to think about

00:15:13.460 | and look through its advantages.

00:15:15.300 | I mean, there was such a powerful, not to digress,

00:15:17.260 | but there was such a powerful impact on that space

00:15:21.100 | caused by the new atheist in the 2000s

00:15:24.220 | that has, like it really boxed in religion,

00:15:27.900 | especially if you're a Silicon Valley type,

00:15:29.940 | to like an untouchable thing.

00:15:31.940 | And that box is only now, I think, starting to dissolve.

00:15:35.860 | Like people are taking tentative steps,

00:15:37.580 | people who are hardcore tech or whatever.

00:15:40.340 | Let me just think a little bit more about religion.

00:15:42.980 | But for a while, it was the new atheist,

00:15:46.940 | Dawkins and Dennett and Harris had just packaged that up

00:15:51.180 | and it was sort of intellectually unavailable.

00:15:52.700 | So it's interesting to see it come back.

00:15:55.580 | Honestly, I think it was probably Jordan Peterson

00:15:57.820 | that his rise and fall and rise again or whatever,

00:16:01.860 | I think had a big impact on shaking loose

00:16:06.100 | the new atheist grip on religion

00:16:10.420 | in certain types of circles.

00:16:12.180 | That's my best guess.

00:16:13.900 | And I think what we forget about the new atheist

00:16:16.180 | is that they were a reaction in large part to the Bush era.

00:16:20.940 | So for the younger people listening,

00:16:24.180 | they might not have this background,

00:16:27.140 | but like new atheism in 2003,

00:16:29.700 | when you're writing this type of stuff,

00:16:31.220 | like new atheism,

00:16:32.060 | you had two really strong motivating factors.

00:16:35.860 | You had the 9/11 attack.

00:16:37.260 | So this was this big, strong, motivating factor,

00:16:40.700 | especially for people like Harris about,

00:16:43.300 | religious fundamentalism just leads to terrible things.

00:16:45.700 | Why are we tolerate it?

00:16:47.140 | And you had the sort of elite liberal reaction to George W

00:16:52.140 | and the evangelicals that helped him get elected.

00:16:56.660 | And so it was like very counter,

00:16:58.540 | it was counter-cultural back then.

00:16:59.780 | Like you were pushing back against this,

00:17:01.500 | especially when he got reelected in 2004,

00:17:03.460 | a lot of people felt like,

00:17:05.340 | "Man, there's this religious majority

00:17:07.300 | and I'm rejecting that."

00:17:10.260 | Like religion's no good or whatever.

00:17:11.700 | So there was a counter-cultural feel to it.

00:17:13.380 | And then the cultural whole flipped, everything flipped.

00:17:15.700 | And now to be religious is,

00:17:18.500 | now you're in the cultural minority

00:17:20.660 | and have very little cultural leverage.

00:17:24.620 | And I think it's in that environment

00:17:25.900 | that that box around religion

00:17:28.140 | starting to open up a little bit.

00:17:29.220 | So I don't know why I'm the person

00:17:31.180 | people are asking about this.

00:17:32.660 | Talk to Father Donovan.

00:17:35.100 | That's the guy you should talk about.

00:17:37.260 | I don't know why people ask me,

00:17:38.420 | but I just think it's interesting

00:17:39.620 | that it's a conversation now,

00:17:40.900 | that Ferris is interested.

00:17:42.540 | Basically, I felt like he was saying,

00:17:44.860 | "I can't be religious, but maybe I should be religious."

00:17:47.740 | - I think he was just looking for your advice

00:17:49.500 | on certain things on how to, as you would term it,

00:17:52.060 | live a deep life and be fulfilled, to be quite honest.

00:17:55.660 | 'Cause I mean, I've listened to every single one

00:17:56.900 | of his podcasts and I think he's got a lot organized,

00:18:00.780 | but I think he's trying to figure some stuff out too.

00:18:02.340 | And you have a lot organized

00:18:03.380 | and you can bounce the ideas off him.

00:18:05.140 | I think you just wanted to, you're well-read, obviously.

00:18:08.460 | - Yeah, yeah, so anyways, that was interesting.

00:18:10.380 | That was interesting.

00:18:11.220 | So that's a trend to keep an eye on,

00:18:12.900 | is the, maybe this is all just cyclical.

00:18:16.340 | Things like religion come and go, come and go,

00:18:17.980 | and in cycles you have flips in the cultural mainstream.

00:18:22.220 | All right, final book from January, 2022.

00:18:25.140 | It was called "Giants."

00:18:26.540 | I don't have the subtitle here,

00:18:28.740 | but so "Giants" is a dual biography

00:18:32.420 | of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

00:18:36.380 | And so it contrasts their life,

00:18:40.820 | and of course in the end they then become intertwined.

00:18:44.100 | Their lives actually collided

00:18:45.540 | during the Civil War presidency of Lincoln.

00:18:47.980 | This is a book, so this was written

00:18:50.500 | by John Stoffer at Harvard.

00:18:52.860 | And I don't know why I haven't read it yet.

00:18:56.340 | So I'm a big Lincolnophile, I read a lot of Lincoln.

00:18:58.940 | This is a signed copy of the book

00:19:00.580 | that I've had since it came out in earlier in the 2000s,

00:19:03.940 | because when we were in Cambridge,

00:19:06.500 | when I was at MIT, my wife worked with John Stoffer's wife

00:19:12.620 | at a history education-focused nonprofit.

00:19:15.300 | So John was always doing events

00:19:18.620 | and was kind of intertwined in that world.

00:19:21.020 | We babysat for his kids and stuff like that.

00:19:23.860 | And so when this book came out,

00:19:25.220 | we went through the book release.

00:19:26.260 | I have a signed copy from him.

00:19:27.820 | Big Lincoln fan, never read the book until now.

00:19:30.500 | I don't know why.

00:19:31.340 | It's fantastic, it's really good.

00:19:32.620 | I mean, it's very hard for scholars sometimes

00:19:36.220 | to be able to write in a way that is accessible.

00:19:39.780 | I thought it was very accessible, but very smart.

00:19:41.820 | And just, I know it won some awards and rightly so.

00:19:44.340 | So I'm glad, basically, I guess I'm glad

00:19:45.900 | that I finally got around to reading Giants.

00:19:48.780 | I think it's a really good profile of that age,

00:19:51.220 | that period leading up to the Civil War,

00:19:54.500 | and that contrast between Douglas coming out of slavery

00:19:58.220 | and trying to define himself

00:19:59.940 | and make his way in what he faced,

00:20:01.700 | and then Lincoln coming out of the rural frontier poverty

00:20:06.420 | and how their views evolved over time.

00:20:09.260 | It was really well handled in a very readable way.

00:20:11.820 | So, thumbs up to Giants.

00:20:14.120 | Thumbs up to Giants as well.

00:20:17.180 | There you go, Jesse, those are my five books.

00:20:20.260 | Let's see, it's November 4th or 5th?

00:20:23.100 | - 4th. - 4th, okay.

00:20:24.380 | I'm almost done with my second book of February.

00:20:26.420 | - I was just gonna ask you that.

00:20:27.260 | - Yeah, progress is coming.

00:20:28.100 | - I was like, how many have you done in February?

00:20:30.380 | - I'm almost done with my second.

00:20:31.660 | Well, I have a beast of a book I'm working on.

00:20:33.820 | I started it back in January, 600 pages,

00:20:36.520 | and I'll talk about it when we get there.

00:20:39.540 | But I'm just working on that a bit at a time.

00:20:42.180 | So I'm front-loading a little bit.

00:20:43.820 | I don't know if I'm gonna finish it in February or not,

00:20:45.500 | though, it's a beast.

00:20:46.340 | It's 600 pages, but 600 pages of dense writing,

00:20:50.340 | and I'm taking my time with it

00:20:51.380 | because I really like this book.

00:20:52.820 | So I'm kind of front-loading some other reading

00:20:55.620 | to see if I can't get this done in February,

00:20:57.660 | I'll get it done in March.

00:20:59.700 | And I'm going to Florida in a little bit,

00:21:01.740 | so that'll give me some good reading time too.

00:21:03.300 | So I feel good about February, I'm on track.

00:21:06.860 | - Less days.

00:21:08.300 | - That's true though, less days, yeah.

00:21:10.700 | Yeah, you gotta get after it.

00:21:12.180 | All right, well, speaking of getting after it,

00:21:14.900 | let's do some listener calls.

00:21:18.300 | So who do we have here first?

00:21:19.880 | - All right, so our first call is from Jeff.

00:21:24.380 | Basically has a deep life question.

00:21:26.540 | He wants an example from you, so we'll take a listen,

00:21:29.300 | see what he has to say.

00:21:30.460 | - Hi Cal, my name is Jeff and I am an IT consultant.

00:21:38.460 | I've been a big fan of yours ever since,

00:21:40.180 | So Good They Can't Ignore You.

00:21:42.340 | And I've read similar books, such as Ultra Learning,

00:21:45.100 | Peak Performance, Grit, and Atomic Habits.

00:21:48.780 | These books are full of practical advice

00:21:51.180 | on how to improve learning and skills

00:21:53.000 | and contribute to the deep life.

00:21:54.580 | However, I find myself never implementing them.

00:21:57.500 | What kind of strategy would you suggest using

00:22:00.240 | to incorporate concepts found in books of this genre?

00:22:03.920 | How long should one try something new

00:22:05.820 | before deciding it doesn't work for them?

00:22:08.820 | And I think it would be great if you can give an example

00:22:11.020 | of a habit or advice you once read about

00:22:13.660 | and then incorporated into your daily life.

00:22:16.460 | Thank you.

00:22:17.300 | - So Jeff, the systematic advice I give

00:22:23.540 | for laying the foundation for a deep life,

00:22:26.500 | integrating new ideas into the deep life

00:22:28.780 | is based on the deep life buckets.

00:22:31.780 | I think that's exactly what you need

00:22:33.000 | for what you're talking about here.

00:22:35.140 | You define the different areas that are important to you

00:22:37.140 | living a life well lived.

00:22:39.520 | We call these the deep life buckets.

00:22:41.740 | The standard examples we give, for example, is craft,

00:22:45.100 | which is the things you produce, your work,

00:22:46.860 | the things you build.

00:22:48.220 | Constitution, which is your health and fitness,

00:22:50.180 | community, your connection to people that are around you

00:22:53.780 | and that matter to you, and contemplation,

00:22:55.860 | theology, ethics, and philosophy,

00:22:57.560 | just as a starting point.

00:22:59.580 | But you have your areas that are important to you.

00:23:02.840 | Then you wanna have a keystone habit in each of these areas,

00:23:06.500 | something you do every day.

00:23:07.600 | So this is where when you learn new things

00:23:11.820 | could be integrated into what this keystone habit is.

00:23:14.800 | And that's a warmup.

00:23:16.100 | So now you say, okay, I'm in the habit of doing

00:23:19.100 | optional activity in each of the areas of my life

00:23:23.140 | that are important on a regular basis,

00:23:24.640 | even though I don't have to.

00:23:26.040 | So you're signaling to yourself,

00:23:27.980 | I take these parts of my life seriously.

00:23:30.020 | Then you dedicate four to six weeks

00:23:31.820 | to each of these buckets, one by one,

00:23:33.540 | to say, now I'm gonna do a more systematic overhaul

00:23:36.580 | of that part of my life,

00:23:37.580 | where I might remove multiple things out of my life

00:23:41.580 | related to that bucket that are just in the way,

00:23:43.000 | that are cluttered, that are taking up time,

00:23:44.660 | streamline, and then I might add into it

00:23:46.680 | or refine the things I do in that part of my life

00:23:49.700 | so I get a maximum value return.

00:23:51.340 | So it's all about focusing on things that are high return

00:23:54.120 | and avoiding the things that don't give you much return

00:23:56.140 | or get in the way.

00:23:57.120 | That is exactly where you can be integrating new advice.

00:23:59.660 | So just do this once a year.

00:24:02.000 | I suggest doing it in the lead up to your birthday.

00:24:04.560 | That's the way I like to think about this.

00:24:06.380 | You're doing an overhaul in the months

00:24:07.820 | leading up to your birthday,

00:24:08.660 | and that's where you can look at what's working,

00:24:10.780 | what's not working in each of the areas of your life,

00:24:13.180 | integrate new ideas, integrate new systems,

00:24:16.140 | integrate new habits.

00:24:18.060 | That's what I would recommend.

00:24:19.900 | All right, in terms of examples from my own life,

00:24:23.860 | things that I've integrated or not integrated,

00:24:26.620 | let me think about that.

00:24:31.220 | I'm thinking in my mind,

00:24:32.140 | if you wanna know what's going on here,

00:24:33.220 | I'm thinking through my mind in different categories.

00:24:38.220 | You know, like I've had a pretty major,

00:24:40.640 | pretty major constitution,

00:24:44.460 | so health and fitness overhaul,

00:24:45.880 | I do those, you know, every once in a while,

00:24:48.580 | and I've done, I put a lot of time into that.

00:24:51.660 | So I gave it its four to six week focus

00:24:53.900 | to overhaul somewhat recently.

00:24:56.440 | And so there's a few things I do.

00:24:58.880 | So the keystone habit,

00:25:00.740 | the keystone habit I do now is there's a tracking habit

00:25:03.960 | where I track the, as I've done before,

00:25:07.300 | the exercise I do, like what did I do today?

00:25:10.740 | And the steps I take, I had been doing that.

00:25:13.040 | I added to it weight every morning.

00:25:16.220 | You gotta look at it, look at the number,

00:25:19.100 | and that's, you know, you gotta face it.

00:25:21.220 | Best motivator is a very powerful keystone habit.

00:25:23.740 | You have to face it, and you know you have to face it.

00:25:26.060 | And it can really keep you away from, you know,

00:25:29.900 | I should not be eating this or drinking this as much.

00:25:32.300 | And so that was a keystone habit.

00:25:34.220 | Then I've had a pretty radical overhaul

00:25:36.060 | in terms of my actual fitness.

00:25:37.900 | I'm going through a rowing program.

00:25:41.660 | I have a Concept2 rower,

00:25:43.140 | and the stave off the winter,

00:25:46.240 | can't be outside as much,

00:25:47.380 | blues and not get as much sunshine, blues.

00:25:50.020 | I have a daily, it's a daily rowing program

00:25:52.700 | where it's every day, here's the workout you're doing,

00:25:54.340 | here's the workout you're doing.

00:25:55.220 | So that gives me flashbacks from my old college crew days.

00:25:58.820 | I've replaced, I always have a baseline

00:26:00.860 | of doing a thousand pull-ups a month,

00:26:04.220 | but I've now added into it,

00:26:06.740 | I think I have that right, a thousand, yeah, 36.

00:26:08.660 | Am I doing that math right, Jesse?

00:26:09.940 | 36 a day.

00:26:11.480 | - That's solid.

00:26:12.320 | - Yeah, and I've always done that.

00:26:13.940 | But now I'm actually doing workout routines beyond that.

00:26:19.220 | But let me tell you, just to walk you through this,

00:26:21.860 | to me, that's all just breaking the seal.

00:26:23.740 | So this was what I was gonna be doing in January.

00:26:25.940 | I'm doing it now January through February

00:26:27.300 | because I hurt my back in January,

00:26:28.580 | so I got a slow start.

00:26:29.940 | I'm just breaking the seal.

00:26:31.980 | I'm getting used to like, I'm doing a rowing workout.

00:26:36.980 | I'm getting used to doing like real workouts

00:26:38.680 | beyond just my pull-ups or whatever.

00:26:40.520 | All of that is just to get me used to that

00:26:42.460 | being a non-trivial part of my life

00:26:43.980 | so that then I can upgrade that

00:26:46.020 | when we get later in February.

00:26:48.180 | And so now I wanna do some serious training.

00:26:50.980 | But I didn't wanna jump straight into serious training.

00:26:52.780 | I figured I had to overhaul my life

00:26:54.620 | to that that's a big part of my day

00:26:56.540 | and I'm used to it and I'm in that groove

00:26:59.460 | and I'm doing hard work every day,

00:27:01.700 | somewhat randomly, but I'm doing it, right?

00:27:04.200 | And then when I'm done doing that for a month or two,

00:27:07.120 | then I'm gonna say, now I can up my game.

00:27:10.060 | And actually, Jeff, my idea is I wanna train for something.

00:27:12.940 | I don't know what yet,

00:27:14.560 | but that is an example of deep life thinking.

00:27:17.060 | That's me focusing on the constitution bucket.

00:27:19.380 | So I'm turning 40 this summer

00:27:22.560 | and I figure I really gotta start caring

00:27:24.140 | about my health and fitness more

00:27:25.300 | because that's the age for men where a lot of things,

00:27:28.140 | a lot of things go downhill.

00:27:30.020 | And so there's a high leverage moment

00:27:32.540 | to be in really good shape.

00:27:34.380 | And so that's, I made that whole overhaul plan

00:27:37.800 | and that's just for the constitution bucket.

00:27:41.140 | And now that plan's kind of operating.

00:27:42.580 | So now I can, there's other buckets I could think about.

00:27:44.740 | That's an example of what those overhauls look like.

00:27:47.220 | I should get your advice.

00:27:50.100 | So when the time comes, Jesse, I'll get your advice.

00:27:52.300 | Jesse knows about gyms and exercise.

00:27:55.420 | So he'll get me.

00:27:57.060 | That's what we should do with the HQ.

00:27:59.020 | Should we just have it be essentially like a gym?

00:28:01.660 | - We can put a pull-up bar in.

00:28:04.980 | - We should put a pull-up bar in.

00:28:05.820 | - You can just put one right in the door.

00:28:08.220 | - Can I tell you something about pull-up bars?

00:28:09.440 | Those ones you just put in the doors

00:28:11.180 | that are supposed to somehow like counter,

00:28:12.900 | just counter lever in and you can use them.

00:28:14.880 | I've never in my life got that to work.

00:28:16.640 | - Really? I have one at my house.

00:28:17.720 | I've had it forever.

00:28:18.560 | - Where it just like, there's no screws or anything.

00:28:20.580 | It's just, I must be doing it wrong.

00:28:22.420 | - Yeah, it works great.

00:28:23.260 | I've had it for years.

00:28:24.140 | - I must be doing it wrong.

00:28:25.060 | 'Cause I've had multiple of these

00:28:26.420 | 'cause I've been doing pull-ups ever since I was,

00:28:28.860 | left 22 and left college.

00:28:30.340 | It was a rowing thing, right?

00:28:32.900 | I've never got it to work.

00:28:33.860 | I'm like, there's no way this is gonna work.

00:28:35.060 | I put it up there and it just drops to the ground.

00:28:36.860 | Like, how am I supposed to do pull-ups on this thing?

00:28:39.180 | I'm doing something wrong.

00:28:40.160 | All right, we got to figure that out.

00:28:42.600 | We will start doing pull-ups here.

00:28:44.520 | Anyways, thanks for that question, Jeff.

00:28:45.840 | All right, now, before we move on to our next call,

00:28:48.640 | we wanna take a moment to actually talk about the sponsors

00:28:52.360 | that makes this show possible.

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00:29:48.460 | But if you do this, you are probably going to save money.

00:29:53.200 | Jesse, quiz for you.

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00:30:00.720 | over what they were paying before

00:30:02.160 | in home and auto insurance?

00:30:04.960 | - I think the average monthly for insurance

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00:30:10.120 | And then they probably save, six to $800 they save?

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00:30:15.980 | So they do a good job.

00:30:17.240 | Now, here's the thing.

00:30:18.080 | Jesse's numbers are biased because his truck,

00:30:21.240 | which I believe is 75 years old

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00:30:28.880 | I believe the insurance cost on that

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00:32:46.880 | get deep.

00:32:47.920 | Every time I see you try to check your email

00:32:50.120 | or every time I try to see you check Slack

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00:33:20.400 | synerd.app/deepquestions.

00:33:25.720 | - All right.

00:33:26.840 | Well, speaking about productivity,

00:33:28.760 | we should probably keep going here.

00:33:30.080 | Let us move on to our next listener call.

00:33:32.520 | - All right, the next question's from Brian from DC actually

00:33:36.920 | and it's kind of fitting 'cause he's got a question,

00:33:39.280 | goes into detail about physical versus eBooks.

00:33:41.720 | And I know you brought it up before,

00:33:42.760 | but he talks about some good stuff.

00:33:44.480 | So let's take a listen.

00:33:46.040 | - Hi Cal, my name is Brian.

00:33:51.120 | I'm a lawyer down in Washington, DC.

00:33:52.520 | So I guess in a way we're neighbors.

00:33:55.000 | This question has nothing to do with my profession,

00:33:56.880 | but I heard you're looking for more questions,

00:33:58.240 | so I thought I'd give this one a shot.

00:34:00.120 | I'd be curious to hear your thoughts

00:34:01.120 | on eBooks versus physical books.

00:34:03.640 | Instinctually, I always prefer physical books.

00:34:05.960 | I like seeing them on bookshelves.

00:34:07.760 | I like the visual reminder of the books I've read

00:34:10.200 | and the thoughts I've digested.

00:34:11.760 | And perhaps most importantly,

00:34:14.120 | I like the idea that maybe my kids will see them

00:34:16.680 | and be exposed to them and perhaps one day decide themselves

00:34:19.440 | to read some of the books that I found influential.

00:34:21.880 | I know I enjoyed doing that when I was a kid.

00:34:24.520 | But I also noticed that ever since I've dusted

00:34:26.520 | my Kindle off the shelf, I read a lot more.

00:34:29.200 | I think I can read at night while I get the baby to bed.

00:34:31.960 | I can take it with me more easily.

00:34:34.000 | I can get library books very easily on that.

00:34:37.600 | And so my volume of reading has really gone up.

00:34:40.200 | I also have noticed that I'm much more into taking

00:34:43.440 | and reviewing notes since I can just export that

00:34:45.520 | when I'm done reading.

00:34:47.080 | Paradoxically though, that means I very rarely,

00:34:49.040 | if ever, go back and reread passages

00:34:51.640 | out of the electronic book.

00:34:54.280 | Like I might in a hard copy book.

00:34:56.240 | And so not a productivity question,

00:34:58.280 | but I'd be really curious in your thoughts

00:34:59.880 | on eBooks versus hard copy books.

00:35:01.920 | Thanks so much.

00:35:03.600 | - Well, Brian, I would say use all formats

00:35:06.520 | and don't overthink it.

00:35:08.400 | I use all formats.

00:35:09.360 | They all have their advantages.

00:35:10.720 | If we look at the five books I read this month

00:35:13.480 | that we talked about earlier in the show,

00:35:16.200 | this particular month, two of them were audio books

00:35:18.880 | and three of them were physical books.

00:35:21.720 | I would say in a typical month, maybe one audio book,

00:35:25.720 | one or two Kindle books,

00:35:27.960 | and then two or three physical books.

00:35:30.000 | So I have a mix and I don't have a huge rhyme

00:35:33.760 | or reason for it.

00:35:34.600 | I mean, I do like having a physical library.

00:35:37.320 | When you have a reading habit like mine,

00:35:39.080 | where you don't overthink it,

00:35:40.160 | you just grab things that are interesting.

00:35:41.520 | You just, reading's better than non-reading.

00:35:43.240 | I am often taking these books out of my existing library.

00:35:47.200 | So if we look back at this week's,

00:35:49.600 | this month's books, for example,

00:35:51.040 | two of them, two of the books I read in January,

00:35:54.560 | "Giants" by John Stauffer

00:35:56.720 | and "The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything"

00:35:58.240 | by Father Donovan, those were just in my library.

00:36:01.560 | I just looked through my library,

00:36:02.400 | I want to read something else.

00:36:03.240 | I just, hey, I should read this.

00:36:04.520 | I pulled it off my shelf as if I was in a real library.

00:36:06.520 | So I'm a big believer in having a robust library,

00:36:09.680 | not just the books you've read,

00:36:11.120 | but books you want to read.

00:36:12.040 | And I agree with you that it's good for your kids

00:36:13.720 | to see that and they can see books around

00:36:15.560 | and see them as a physical artifact.

00:36:17.320 | But I think it's completely fine to use Kindle as well.

00:36:20.160 | If you add real books to Kindle,

00:36:21.680 | you're just going to read more

00:36:22.520 | and then throw audio into that as well.

00:36:23.840 | You're going to read even more.

00:36:25.520 | And so I will go to Kindle if,

00:36:27.720 | A, I want to start a book right away

00:36:29.160 | and don't want to wait to have it sent to me,

00:36:32.160 | is one reason I'll use Kindle.

00:36:33.840 | Or two, if I'm going on a trip or something

00:36:36.160 | where I don't want to bring a physical book

00:36:37.520 | or sometimes it's a book I'm not sure about,

00:36:40.120 | I want to own, maybe I'll get it on Kindle.

00:36:41.800 | So I would say don't overthink it,

00:36:45.200 | use all the formats.

00:36:47.400 | And how you make the decision,

00:36:49.240 | you can just do it like me,

00:36:50.240 | which is, I don't know, randomly.

00:36:52.680 | And it should pretty much work out.

00:36:54.440 | All right.

00:36:58.600 | By the way, reading with your kid,

00:37:00.560 | putting the baby to bed,

00:37:01.600 | that really resonates with me.

00:37:05.000 | That's when we bought,

00:37:06.200 | my wife and I bought the Kindle paper whites.

00:37:09.600 | So we had Kindles that were unlit

00:37:12.080 | and it was midnight feedings.

00:37:14.960 | We're like, okay, we got to get a Kindle

00:37:16.240 | that you can read while you're holding a baby

00:37:18.880 | or while you're trying to rock a baby to sleep.

00:37:20.560 | And so, yeah, that brings back memories.

00:37:22.080 | When I think of my Kindle mini white,

00:37:23.480 | I think about having a baby and being tired.

00:37:26.560 | All right, let's move on here.

00:37:28.680 | What do we got for our next question?

00:37:30.840 | - All right, this is kind of random,

00:37:32.720 | but we actually have another question from Grant

00:37:34.560 | who also just moved to DC.

00:37:36.840 | But he has a question about specifically

00:37:40.000 | establishing KPIs for his career goals.

00:37:42.680 | - This is a tech guy, isn't it?

00:37:44.520 | - He works with Google ads.

00:37:45.720 | - Yeah, I know the tech guys when I hear them.

00:37:49.240 | - We'll take a listen.

00:37:50.320 | - Hi, Cal, my name is Grant.

00:37:55.400 | I work as a embedded software engineer.

00:37:59.040 | I'm also very interested in DIY electronics

00:38:01.560 | in the maker community.

00:38:03.520 | In college, it was easy for me to sit down

00:38:05.800 | and work on personal projects that involved coding,

00:38:08.680 | simple PCB and circuit design, et cetera.

00:38:12.080 | Now, even though I do have mental energy

00:38:14.520 | when I end my workday,

00:38:16.120 | I find it difficult to sit down and do more coding.

00:38:20.480 | You briefly mentioned coding as a hobby

00:38:23.240 | in your book, "Digital Minimalism,"

00:38:25.680 | but you then go on to describe

00:38:27.600 | more traditional offline hobbies

00:38:29.680 | to get your mind off of social media and the internet.

00:38:32.720 | I've tried some of these things first thing in the morning,

00:38:37.680 | but I find it to be a little bit unsustainable.

00:38:40.040 | And more than that, this is supposed to be a hobby

00:38:42.440 | to take my mind off of things after work

00:38:45.520 | so that I don't end up just binging Netflix.

00:38:48.480 | Is this hobby destined to fall out of my life

00:38:52.120 | just because I happen to also do something similar full time

00:38:55.960 | or is there a way I can find a happy medium

00:38:58.000 | for both personal and professional coding?

00:39:02.040 | Thanks.

00:39:02.880 | - Well, Grant, that's a good question.

00:39:06.240 | It hits home.

00:39:07.720 | That's actually a specifically a hobby

00:39:11.360 | I'm interested in as well.

00:39:13.600 | I would like to do more DIY electronics projects.

00:39:18.280 | And I've actually had a hard time,

00:39:19.560 | just like you, getting this up and running.

00:39:21.800 | The time just isn't there right now.

00:39:24.800 | I'm finding I don't quite have the time.

00:39:27.240 | I'm not getting the right momentum going.

00:39:29.760 | I've had computer programming hobbies before.

00:39:32.240 | So a couple of years ago,

00:39:34.360 | I used to build computer games for my older boys,

00:39:37.520 | and I kind of got in a groove on that,

00:39:39.880 | computer game programming,

00:39:40.960 | even though I was working on computers all day.

00:39:43.000 | So I feel you.

00:39:43.960 | Because I'm struggling to get the exact same hobby going

00:39:47.320 | and not haven't been that successful at it.

00:39:49.920 | I have four things to suggest that might make this helpful.

00:39:54.360 | Underscoring everything I'm gonna say here, however,

00:39:58.520 | is don't sweat it.

00:40:00.320 | Like ultimately hobbies are hobbies, right?

00:40:03.120 | Like it's not the end of the world

00:40:05.200 | that you have this working tomorrow

00:40:08.760 | that you have your own channel on tested.com

00:40:12.360 | by next week.

00:40:13.200 | It's a hobby.

00:40:14.320 | Nothing bad is gonna happen if in the end,

00:40:16.440 | it's you're busy or you're exhausted,

00:40:18.040 | or it's not quite clicking and nothing happens,

00:40:20.160 | you're fine.

00:40:21.000 | There's no bonus points for having hobbies.

00:40:25.160 | It's just, you wanna do things that are interesting.

00:40:27.800 | You wanna live deep.

00:40:29.120 | You wanna avoid the shallow distractions.

00:40:30.600 | Okay, so let's not sweat.

00:40:31.880 | Like we have to get this hobby up and going right away.

00:40:33.760 | But here's four things that would help.

00:40:35.640 | One is project choice.

00:40:36.840 | I think that really matters.

00:40:38.040 | For me, when I struggle with a new hobby,

00:40:41.360 | it's I don't have the right project that has gripped me.

00:40:44.840 | And so nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens.

00:40:46.840 | And the right project grips me

00:40:48.440 | and I find myself fighting to make time to work on it.

00:40:51.480 | I definitely had this experience

00:40:52.960 | with the computer game programming projects

00:40:55.120 | I would be doing.

00:40:55.960 | It had to be the right level of difficulty.

00:40:58.960 | If it was too hard, nothing would happen.

00:41:01.600 | If it was too easy, I'd be bored.

00:41:02.920 | But if it was the right level of difficulty,

00:41:05.040 | I'd have to force myself to get started.

00:41:07.680 | But then I would begin to make some progress.

00:41:11.000 | And then I would find myself putting aside time

00:41:14.240 | just to work on it, like looking forward to like,

00:41:16.560 | okay, you're putting the kids to bed tonight,

00:41:18.160 | then I'm gonna go work on the program.

00:41:19.560 | So it was all about having the right product,

00:41:21.520 | the right project.

00:41:22.520 | Like the last game I did, for example,

00:41:24.600 | was I wanted to do a ray casting 3D engine.

00:41:29.480 | I was using Python and using the PyGames library

00:41:32.160 | for some simple low performance graphics, right?

00:41:35.080 | And I wanted to make a game where my boys could

00:41:38.360 | in 2D create a maze, and then you could jump

00:41:42.320 | into that maze in 3D and actually try to navigate it.

00:41:45.120 | So I had to build a 3D engine

00:41:46.800 | so you could actually build the maze.

00:41:48.080 | I was like, let me just do a Wolfenstein 3D style

00:41:51.360 | ray casting engine where you literally are casting rays

00:41:55.880 | from the virtual camera location

00:41:58.120 | and seeing where it hits walls

00:42:00.560 | and how far away that wall is.

00:42:01.760 | So we can figure out how high to draw

00:42:04.680 | that particular piece of the wall.

00:42:06.000 | There's a lot of geometry, basically.

00:42:07.680 | Slow, slow, slow until I got that first screen

00:42:10.560 | of something is drawing that kind of looks 3D.

00:42:14.000 | And then I couldn't not work on it.

00:42:16.280 | So project selection, don't underestimate that.

00:42:19.720 | That's my issue right now with Maker electronics.

00:42:21.840 | I don't have the right project with the right equipment

00:42:24.000 | where like I know how to do it

00:42:25.560 | and I can see progress right away.

00:42:26.800 | I just don't have the right project yet,

00:42:28.200 | but I think it's gonna roll quick when I do.

00:42:30.480 | Two, community.

00:42:32.640 | Get connected, if possible, to a community of people

00:42:35.360 | who are working on this.

00:42:36.200 | That changes a lot.

00:42:38.120 | I'm sure there's robust Maker communities

00:42:42.280 | in the Washington DC area.

00:42:43.800 | You get involved with some other people

00:42:45.360 | that have some equipment, you make it social as well.

00:42:48.680 | That makes all the difference in the world.

00:42:51.040 | Start one up and I'll come to it.

00:42:53.200 | Okay, how about that?

00:42:54.760 | You get it going and I will come to it

00:42:56.480 | and we'll build some DIY electronics.

00:42:58.560 | Work less would be my third recommendation.

00:43:03.880 | So yeah, do less work at work.

00:43:06.840 | Give yourself some more surplus energy.

00:43:09.360 | I know that's a bold thing to say in the abstract,

00:43:12.080 | but here on this podcast, we know how to get that done.

00:43:14.480 | I mean, we know how to actually apply

00:43:16.960 | time management theories that actually

00:43:19.920 | are incredibly effective.

00:43:21.320 | Go back, go to the YouTube channel,

00:43:23.320 | watch the Core Ideas video from the Core Ideas playlist

00:43:26.840 | on time management and I will walk you through

00:43:30.400 | the principles of how I organize my time.

00:43:32.280 | If you're doing those type of things,

00:43:34.240 | you can claw back a bunch of time

00:43:35.840 | and still as far as your bosses are concerned,

00:43:37.520 | be an incredibly productive person that they can count on.

00:43:40.520 | Don't be worried about doing that.

00:43:41.960 | Don't be ashamed about doing that.

00:43:43.280 | If you get more productive, that is your benefit.

00:43:47.240 | You know, if right now you're producing work

00:43:50.040 | that everyone's happy with and you find a way to do that

00:43:52.160 | in two less hours a day, that is not a problem.

00:43:56.160 | That is a benefit you should cash in on.

00:43:57.920 | So consider working less.

00:43:59.480 | Take some projects off your plate

00:44:00.600 | and get much more organized about the work you have.

00:44:02.360 | Free up more energy, more time

00:44:05.400 | so that you have that energy and time

00:44:07.160 | to actually work on the project.

00:44:08.080 | And finally, do the physical first.

00:44:10.520 | The number one hobby you need to do,

00:44:13.520 | and by hobby I mean activity outside of work,

00:44:15.360 | is make sure you have a lot of physical activity.

00:44:17.840 | You're outside, you're moving, you're exercising,

00:44:19.920 | you're training for something,

00:44:20.840 | just like I was talking about earlier in the show

00:44:22.520 | that I'm doing in my own life right now for The Last Caller.

00:44:25.000 | Do that too because that's a separation

00:44:28.560 | between your work and your non-work life

00:44:30.120 | and it's gonna get your energy back up much higher

00:44:32.760 | than if you're just coming home from work

00:44:34.040 | and sitting on the couch and saying,

00:44:35.200 | I guess I should bring out another screen.

00:44:37.400 | All right, so those would be the four things

00:44:39.000 | I would suggest, but all of this is built

00:44:40.600 | on the underlying foundation of don't over-sweat this.

00:44:44.600 | If you're really busy right now,

00:44:45.680 | if you're really tired right now,

00:44:46.760 | if you're really mentally struggling with whatever,

00:44:49.480 | pandemic, et cetera, it's okay.

00:44:51.880 | It's okay, we'll take our time.

00:44:53.840 | I'm taking my time, you're taking your time.

00:44:55.880 | We'll give ourselves a few months,

00:44:57.080 | but then I wanna be in a really cool maker lab

00:44:58.880 | that you ran building cool electronics.

00:45:00.840 | All right, that was Grant.

00:45:03.560 | All right, Jesse, let's see what we got here.

00:45:04.720 | What's our next question?

00:45:06.760 | - All right, our next call is from Jacqueline.

00:45:08.800 | She basically has a question about asking for help

00:45:11.080 | and how you go about it.

00:45:12.800 | - Hi, Cal, thanks so much for your podcast.

00:45:20.040 | It's helped me so much.

00:45:21.400 | Almost every day I refer to something that you've said

00:45:24.760 | in your podcast, in conversation with other folks.

00:45:28.440 | I really appreciate listening to your outlook on life,

00:45:31.200 | especially your sense of gratitude

00:45:33.200 | and lack of shaming.

00:45:34.760 | So I was really interested in your discussion

00:45:38.480 | with David Epstein in episode 39

00:45:41.000 | about people being hindered by their own expertise or ego

00:45:45.240 | and how these can keep people from asking questions

00:45:49.680 | or asking for help.

00:45:51.520 | My question is about how you approach this problem.

00:45:54.640 | What is your mindset when you are asking questions

00:45:58.160 | or asking for help?

00:45:59.680 | Do you fear looking stupid?

00:46:02.160 | If so, how do you deal with that?

00:46:05.800 | Also at a more technical level, how do you get help?

00:46:08.480 | For example, how do you know when to reach out,

00:46:11.400 | who to reach out to,

00:46:12.800 | and how to get what you need from that interaction?

00:46:15.800 | Just quickly, I consider this a productivity question

00:46:20.360 | because I think my inability to ask for help

00:46:23.240 | has been slowing my ability to get anything done.

00:46:27.520 | My PhD took me roughly nine years

00:46:29.960 | and now I'm still having trouble publishing chapters

00:46:32.760 | of my dissertation.

00:46:34.360 | I have the mindset that I should figure things out

00:46:36.080 | for myself and I'm also scared of looking stupid.

00:46:39.480 | I think asking for help would help,

00:46:42.200 | but I haven't quite figured it out yet.

00:46:44.840 | Thanks so much.

00:46:45.960 | - All right, Jaclyn, I like this question.

00:46:49.640 | Let me set your mind at ease.

00:46:51.720 | I'm a relatively smart guy

00:46:54.240 | and I ask for help constantly in all areas of my life.

00:46:58.720 | And here's why I feel comfortable doing that.

00:47:02.440 | So you can learn from my experience here.

00:47:04.760 | I had, I guess you could call it the privilege

00:47:07.000 | or you could call it the lack of luck,

00:47:10.440 | depending on how it's gonna impact your mindset,

00:47:12.560 | but whatever it is, I got a train at a place

00:47:15.160 | that were surrounded by the very smartest people

00:47:17.000 | in the world, right?

00:47:18.280 | So I was at MIT in the theory group at MIT,

00:47:22.560 | literally the smartest people in the world.

00:47:24.600 | I could throw a stone and hit three Turing Award winners

00:47:28.600 | and three MacArthur Genius Grant Award winners,

00:47:32.200 | one of whom who won the MacArthur when he was 17

00:47:36.200 | and had been a tenured professor at MIT since he was 18.

00:47:40.920 | Incredibly smart people, not just, oh, that guy's sharp,

00:47:43.960 | but their brain can move things by staring at it.

00:47:48.600 | They ask questions all the time.

00:47:52.080 | Like completely the smartest people in the world

00:47:55.120 | will use phrases such as pretend like I am a child

00:48:00.120 | and explain this to me.

00:48:03.920 | They are the very first people to say at a talk,

00:48:07.800 | whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't know what that word means

00:48:10.240 | you just said, wait, slow way down, slow way down.

00:48:13.520 | Like, I don't understand that equation.

00:48:15.800 | Why is that right?

00:48:16.640 | Like, slow it down for me, assume I don't know anything.

00:48:19.360 | It was the defining factor of the very smartest people

00:48:22.480 | in the world is that without any shame,

00:48:25.080 | they are constantly, constantly asking for people

00:48:27.680 | to slow down, to explain things simply.

00:48:29.720 | And they're constantly faced with people

00:48:31.680 | who go way too fast because they're intimidated

00:48:33.840 | and say, well, this person's so smart,

00:48:35.440 | they're gonna think I'm dumb.

00:48:37.280 | And they don't want you to go fast.

00:48:39.440 | They want you to go real slow.

00:48:41.480 | You wanna understand each piece

00:48:43.200 | before they move on to the next.

00:48:45.520 | So to me, that was incredibly instructive.

00:48:47.360 | Now, the reason why, of course,

00:48:48.840 | they don't care about doing that

00:48:50.120 | is that they know they're smart.

00:48:52.080 | They literally have a certificate that says genius

00:48:55.480 | and the 600,000 that comes along with that fellowship.

00:48:57.400 | So they know they're smart.

00:48:58.600 | So they don't care about trying to look smart.

00:49:01.480 | So by studying the smartest people in the world,

00:49:03.680 | you say, what is probably the right thing to do?

00:49:06.080 | And it turns out it's to ask questions all the time.

00:49:09.320 | And so it's not a flaw with you

00:49:10.800 | if you don't understand something

00:49:12.400 | or someone's explaining something very confidently,

00:49:14.600 | like, I didn't get that.

00:49:16.240 | Nine times out of 10,

00:49:17.240 | it's not because you're missing something,

00:49:18.480 | it's because they're going way too fast

00:49:21.120 | and they're just trying to look smart.

00:49:22.920 | This effect is so powerful that you can then,

00:49:25.880 | if you've been around these types of super brains,

00:49:28.360 | it becomes a counter signaling situation.

00:49:30.800 | When you see someone not asking for help

00:49:33.640 | or acting like everything is obvious

00:49:35.280 | or explaining something really fast,

00:49:38.360 | you immediately think,

00:49:39.200 | "Ooh, that person's probably not that sharp.

00:49:41.160 | Like that person's compensating for something.

00:49:42.640 | That person is really worried

00:49:44.320 | about what people think about them."

00:49:45.920 | So it becomes a counter signaling effect.

00:49:47.800 | The more questions you ask,

00:49:49.080 | the smarter you actually seem.

00:49:51.520 | So Jacqueline, I'm gonna say

00:49:52.360 | you learn from that experience.

00:49:53.840 | If you want to actually live in the world

00:49:57.280 | like a smart person,

00:49:58.160 | ask questions about everything you don't understand.

00:50:01.520 | And when you don't know how to do something right,

00:50:03.040 | ask questions about that.

00:50:04.200 | I do this all the time.

00:50:05.560 | I call people, I'm known for this at Georgetown.

00:50:08.040 | If I'm put on a committee for something,

00:50:09.640 | I was like, "I have no idea how this works.

00:50:11.240 | Like, what do I need to do?"

00:50:12.400 | I just like, "Let me just hold on, dial my phone.

00:50:15.520 | You know, hi, I'm dumb.

00:50:17.720 | I have no idea how any of this works.

00:50:19.480 | No, no, slow down even more.

00:50:21.320 | Like, I gotta put, I was doing this recently

00:50:23.400 | where it started a new academic program I'm involved in.

00:50:25.680 | And I had someone,

00:50:27.160 | I had to do this with someone from the registrar's office.

00:50:29.520 | I was like, "Just start from scratch.

00:50:31.880 | I don't even know what that system is.

00:50:33.200 | What do you mean major?

00:50:34.440 | Like, just pretend I am 12."

00:50:36.520 | And then I did this the other day.

00:50:37.720 | I had to call the admissions department

00:50:39.760 | because they needed to turn something on.

00:50:41.600 | I was like, "Look, just start from scratch.

00:50:44.360 | I don't know anything."

00:50:45.640 | And it's really useful to everyone involved.

00:50:47.400 | Everyone always pretends like they understand things.

00:50:49.080 | No one understands anything.

00:50:49.920 | So Jacqueline, that is the mindset you should be in.

00:50:53.440 | By asking the most fundamental questions

00:50:55.640 | about how things work or why something is true,

00:50:57.920 | you are going to be setting yourself up

00:50:59.440 | for having the very smartest insights

00:51:01.200 | and the very best work.

00:51:02.040 | And when it comes to help, ask for it.

00:51:05.600 | "Hey, I'm having a hard time writing my chapters.

00:51:08.360 | Like, let's talk about it.

00:51:09.600 | I need help."

00:51:11.200 | Talk to your old advisors, talk to people you know.

00:51:13.560 | "What's going on here?

00:51:14.400 | Should I rethink this?

00:51:15.240 | Should I change my habits?"

00:51:16.360 | Be in that habit.

00:51:17.440 | I'm glad you asked this

00:51:18.280 | because I want everyone to be in this habit.

00:51:19.880 | Ask for help all the time.

00:51:21.520 | That is what's going to make you paradoxically seem

00:51:24.320 | way smarter than the guy on the other side of the room

00:51:28.040 | trying to play it cool and is fooling nobody.

00:51:30.520 | The guy who's trying to desperately make it seem like,

00:51:32.760 | "I guess I know everything and I understand everything."

00:51:35.640 | No one is fooled by that person.

00:51:37.920 | It is slowing down their ability to have original thoughts

00:51:40.320 | or get useful things done.

00:51:41.520 | Ignore that person.

00:51:43.240 | Ask questions.

00:51:44.560 | If I do it, if those supersized brains at MIT were doing it,

00:51:49.200 | then you should feel absolutely secure doing it yourself.

00:51:52.320 | That being said, whenever Jesse asks me for help,

00:51:55.800 | I yell at him.

00:51:56.640 | But that's more of like a discipline thing.

00:51:59.720 | If you don't know how to do this,

00:52:02.920 | then maybe you don't belong here.

00:52:04.000 | That's what I say constantly.

00:52:06.200 | - Take your $250,000 a month out of here.

00:52:08.680 | - Yeah, what are you doing with that?

00:52:09.520 | - Buy a pull-up bar.

00:52:10.360 | - What do you do with that $250,000 a month?

00:52:12.240 | I know you're not putting it into your truck.

00:52:14.040 | I know that's not where you're investing it.

00:52:16.000 | Go get our pull-up bar installed.

00:52:18.120 | What the hell's going on here?

00:52:19.600 | All right.

00:52:22.880 | Let's move on now.

00:52:25.320 | We have time for two more questions.

00:52:27.240 | Okay, let's get another question.

00:52:28.280 | I think we have time.

00:52:29.120 | Who do we have here?

00:52:29.960 | - All right, next question we have,

00:52:33.400 | it's basically about the deep life during the pandemic

00:52:37.200 | and he's a student.

00:52:38.480 | So he's got a good question for you.

00:52:40.480 | - There's a pandemic?

00:52:42.480 | That's the first I'm hearing of this.

00:52:43.960 | - I'm Mukul.

00:52:44.960 | I'm a long time listener of your podcast.

00:52:47.520 | I'm a college student.

00:52:48.760 | Last year when the pandemic hits,

00:52:51.120 | I moved back to my home.

00:52:52.840 | Throughout the pandemic,

00:52:53.960 | my life become way more structured.

00:52:56.280 | I took your 30 day social media challenge,

00:52:59.160 | removed social media completely

00:53:01.240 | from my life after that challenge.

00:53:03.320 | I really started to enjoy deep life,

00:53:05.880 | but now colleges are opening back again

00:53:09.320 | and I moved back to the university.

00:53:11.000 | The structure which I implemented in my life

00:53:13.160 | during the pandemic is completely trashed away.

00:53:16.600 | I tried time blocking to add the structure again,

00:53:19.800 | but my classes are not properly scheduled

00:53:22.600 | and most of the time they are random.

00:53:25.200 | This left me small chunks of time,

00:53:27.160 | but I cannot figure out a way to use those small chunks

00:53:30.760 | and mostly waste that time on YouTube.

00:53:34.320 | This led to me a burnout feeling throughout the day.

00:53:39.080 | These days I'm mostly stressed out

00:53:40.880 | and just looking forward to the weekend.

00:53:44.000 | I really want to add the structure in my life again

00:53:47.240 | and enjoy this deep life.

00:53:49.320 | Any suggestions how can I implement

00:53:52.320 | the structure back again to my life?

00:53:54.960 | - Well, your old structure's not gonna work,

00:53:59.920 | but you're gonna build a new structure that does.

00:54:02.400 | So yes, whatever deep life structure that was working

00:54:06.400 | when you were at home, it's not gonna work at school,

00:54:08.920 | but there is plenty of options for deep life structures

00:54:12.000 | at school that will work.

00:54:14.680 | So I have a few pieces of advice for you.

00:54:17.000 | Number one, I want you to autopilot schedule

00:54:19.120 | the hell out of your schedule.

00:54:20.880 | So autopilot scheduling was invented originally

00:54:24.240 | for college students and the idea is you look

00:54:26.960 | at each one of your classes and you identify

00:54:29.640 | what is work that has to get done every single week

00:54:32.320 | or every single month, what sort of work happens regularly

00:54:34.440 | for these classes, problem sets that have to be solved,

00:54:37.040 | reading assignments that have to happen,

00:54:38.960 | essay prompts that have to be written,

00:54:40.640 | and you say, when and where do I do that work every week?

00:54:43.600 | And that goes on your calendar like a dentist appointment

00:54:45.880 | or another class, it's in time

00:54:47.800 | that you are not gonna violate,

00:54:49.320 | this is just when I do that work.

00:54:51.320 | And you do that for all of your classes

00:54:52.920 | and now you can move these around like a puzzle piece

00:54:55.000 | and figure out what's a pretty good sustainable schedule

00:54:57.240 | for my work and more importantly,

00:54:58.800 | you're not asking every day, what should I do and when?

00:55:01.240 | That's all figured out.

00:55:02.880 | All right, so you're gonna autopilot schedule

00:55:04.400 | and then you are gonna upgrade your study skills

00:55:06.840 | so that you're not wasting time by spinning your wheels

00:55:09.520 | with inefficient study habits.

00:55:10.960 | I don't want you spending more time than you need to.

00:55:13.600 | So go back and read "How to Become a Straight A Student",

00:55:18.000 | walk through that advice to completely overhaul

00:55:21.120 | your study habits.

00:55:21.960 | The other thing you can do is go to my blog,

00:55:24.600 | calnewport.com/blog and read the first two years

00:55:27.920 | worth of posts, 2007, 2008.

00:55:30.440 | It's all advanced study advice for college students.

00:55:34.720 | I want you to reduce the wasted time doing your schoolwork.

00:55:38.200 | So that's step one.

00:55:39.200 | Now let's say you've done that and you still have no time.

00:55:44.180 | You say, I figured out autopilot schedule,

00:55:48.800 | prom sets, reading assignments, prompts

00:55:51.400 | and my whole calendar is filled up and I still,

00:55:53.520 | and I have no time left except for the weekends.

00:55:55.680 | All right, step two, under schedule.

00:55:59.080 | Drop stuff off your schedule, drop some classes,

00:56:03.800 | simplify your load.

00:56:04.940 | Even if you're going under the load,

00:56:07.400 | you need probably to graduate,

00:56:08.880 | do it for a semester or two as you're trying to get back

00:56:11.040 | on your feet after the pandemic.

00:56:12.760 | Whatever you do, do not try to super overload your schedule.

00:56:16.360 | You need to step away from the mindset

00:56:18.160 | that the job market or the graduate school market

00:56:21.000 | a couple of years down the line is gonna say,

00:56:23.480 | look at how hard Mookle semester was in the spring of 2022.

00:56:28.480 | That's a really hard semester, we really like them.

00:56:30.660 | They don't look at that, no one cares.

00:56:31.840 | They're like, what's your major?

00:56:32.680 | What are your grades?

00:56:33.500 | Simplify your schedule, under schedule,

00:56:35.800 | cut things out of your schedule

00:56:37.360 | until your autopilot schedule fits with plenty of room.

00:56:40.360 | That means dropping classes, dropping activities,

00:56:42.480 | swapping classes for easier classes.

00:56:44.440 | You need breathing room.

00:56:48.120 | So if you're autopiloting with smart schedules

00:56:50.160 | and you're properly under scheduled,

00:56:52.000 | you're gonna find yourself now with some breathing room,

00:56:53.860 | which is what you absolutely need.

00:56:55.840 | Now I want you to reinvent your leisure time

00:57:00.520 | and get involved in some sort of high quality

00:57:02.480 | leisure activity, preferably involving other human beings.

00:57:05.420 | They're also on the college campus,

00:57:06.740 | something that you can really get into.

00:57:08.320 | It could be exercise related, it could be writing related

00:57:10.860 | or theatrical, artistic related,

00:57:12.300 | but something you can really get into

00:57:13.700 | for no other reason than you like it

00:57:15.460 | that other people are involved in

00:57:16.740 | and that can really start to funnel your energy

00:57:18.720 | away from YouTube.

00:57:19.960 | The only YouTube I want in your life

00:57:23.440 | is looking at my channel so you can watch my videos.

00:57:26.180 | And I don't mean to be strict about this,

00:57:28.040 | but I only want you doing that for,

00:57:29.760 | let's say three hours a day.

00:57:31.960 | No more than that, three hours a day watching my videos,

00:57:35.780 | maybe another two hours trying to convince people

00:57:37.880 | you know to subscribe.

00:57:38.760 | But that five hours is the only five hours

00:57:41.260 | I want you spending on YouTube.

00:57:42.800 | The final thing I'm gonna recommend, thing number four,

00:57:46.380 | I want you to Google,

00:57:48.700 | I don't have the link off the top of my head,

00:57:50.520 | but there's a series I did on my blog

00:57:53.060 | back when I was aimed at students

00:57:54.720 | called the Romantic Scholar.

00:57:57.360 | And so you can just Google calnewport.com romantic scholar.

00:58:01.220 | And it was a series about how do you reconstruct

00:58:04.700 | your college lifestyle so that you have

00:58:06.640 | an intrinsically motivated deep interest

00:58:10.140 | in the work you're doing as a student.

00:58:12.640 | How can you rewire your relationship to your schoolwork

00:58:15.080 | so it's not this thing that's intrinsically

00:58:17.720 | being imposed upon you that's causing stress and burnout,

00:58:20.200 | but instead something that's a deep part

00:58:21.760 | of your self-definition and a real source

00:58:25.040 | of interest and motivation.

00:58:26.320 | And it has a lot of advice about how you do that.

00:58:28.440 | And I want you to read that series and put that into,

00:58:30.960 | put that into action.

00:58:33.220 | This is a hard transition for a lot of students.

00:58:35.720 | The pandemic was incredibly disruptive.

00:58:37.480 | Coming back to school after the pandemic

00:58:39.300 | is really disruptive.

00:58:40.180 | It's not just let's load up our schedule

00:58:42.600 | and get after it and do 17 majors and, you know,

00:58:46.680 | and just grind it and something good will happen.

00:58:49.680 | We have to take this transition with care.

00:58:52.120 | I like that you're thinking about using this transition

00:58:54.520 | as a way to preserve depth in your life.

00:58:57.340 | That's my advice to do it.

00:58:58.480 | So here's a quick summary.

00:59:00.580 | Autopilot schedule plus smarter study habits.

00:59:04.000 | If you're still overloaded, under schedule.

00:59:06.360 | Quit, reduce course load, switch to easier courses.

00:59:10.120 | Once you've done that,

00:59:10.960 | get involved in a deep leisure activity

00:59:12.720 | that involves other human beings,

00:59:14.000 | and four, read my Romantic Scholar series on my blog

00:59:17.380 | and take those ideas to heart.

00:59:20.440 | You do that plus five quick hours

00:59:23.360 | of working on my YouTube channel every day.

00:59:24.740 | Those two things, I think we're all gonna be

00:59:27.800 | much better off.

00:59:30.480 | Now, speaking about being better off,

00:59:31.760 | Jesse, there's a couple of the sponsors

00:59:33.500 | I wanna briefly mention

00:59:34.360 | before we get to our last question today.

00:59:37.000 | And the first one is a long time favorite of the show,

00:59:40.600 | which is Magic Spoon.

00:59:42.940 | As you've heard me talk about before,

00:59:46.440 | I used to love eating those type of treat cereals

00:59:49.840 | that were popular in the 80s.

00:59:51.420 | Now that I'm a grown man pushing 40

00:59:54.120 | and realize that those cereals are made out of 50%

00:59:57.720 | old used industrial waste oils,

01:00:00.440 | plus wood filling and sawdust,

01:00:03.640 | that is actually probably not very good for me to eat that.

01:00:06.560 | That's where Magic Spoon enters the picture.

01:00:09.560 | It's a great tasting cereal with flavors like

01:00:13.720 | cocoa, fruity, frosted, peanut butter,

01:00:16.080 | blueberry, cinnamon, cookies, and cream,

01:00:18.600 | but it's not bad for you.

01:00:20.480 | Zero grams of sugar, 13 to 14 grams of protein,

01:00:23.360 | and only four net grams of carbs in each serving,

01:00:25.640 | only 140 calories a serving.

01:00:28.040 | It's keto friendly, gluten-free,

01:00:29.640 | grain-free, soy-free, and low carb.

01:00:33.480 | You can build custom bundles of the flavors you like.

01:00:37.080 | Our esteemed producer, Jesse,

01:00:40.040 | is a Magic Spoon cereal consumer.

01:00:43.420 | Correct me if I'm wrong, Jesse,

01:00:44.520 | it is the only food you eat.

01:00:46.400 | Is that right?

01:00:47.600 | - That is not true, but I do really like it.

01:00:49.280 | I like the peanut butter the best.

01:00:50.600 | - Yeah, and as we talked about on Monday's episode,

01:00:52.480 | pro tip, mix the peanut butter with the cocoa.

01:00:54.720 | To get those two flavors in your custom bundle,

01:00:57.520 | you got Reese's Flavor Cereal.

01:00:59.440 | Can't go wrong.

01:01:00.640 | So go to magicspoon.com/cal

01:01:03.480 | to grab a custom bundle of cereal

01:01:05.960 | and start your new year off right.

01:01:08.640 | Use the promo code CAL, C-A-L,

01:01:11.600 | when you check out and you will get $5 off your order.

01:01:15.520 | Magic Spoon is very confident in their product,

01:01:17.960 | so it has a 100% happiness guarantee.

01:01:20.400 | If you don't like it for any reason,

01:01:22.000 | they'll refund your money and send that cereal

01:01:24.480 | to Jesse to eat.

01:01:25.880 | No questions asked.

01:01:27.280 | So remember, get your next delicious bowl

01:01:29.020 | of guilt-free cereal at magicspoon.com/cal

01:01:32.480 | and use that code CAL to get $5 off.

01:01:37.480 | Also want to talk about ExpressVPN.

01:01:41.840 | Jesse has heard my computer scientist lectures before

01:01:46.000 | about how a VPN works.

01:01:48.940 | He could probably explain it well himself now.

01:01:52.100 | Jesse, I should put you on the spot

01:01:53.340 | and ask you incredibly complicated questions

01:01:55.500 | about packet filters and IP proxies.

01:02:00.500 | We'll do like 20 minutes of intense questioning

01:02:02.460 | on VPN technology.

01:02:03.300 | Are we ready for this?

01:02:04.140 | - And then you'll lose all your YouTube subscribers

01:02:05.820 | and your fans.

01:02:06.740 | - And my sponsors.

01:02:08.940 | Okay, all right, so we won't do that.

01:02:10.860 | We'll let the computer scientist tell you,

01:02:12.380 | take it from me, you can trust me,

01:02:14.260 | you should be using a VPN,

01:02:16.140 | especially when you're away from your house.

01:02:18.180 | It is a way of securely connecting to a VPN computer

01:02:21.980 | that then talks to the internet on your behalf.

01:02:24.780 | So people nearby don't know who you're talking to and why.

01:02:28.460 | There's a lot of reasons to do this.

01:02:29.640 | You can do this for privacy is one of the big reasons.

01:02:32.060 | Your ISP can't figure out who you're talking to or why,

01:02:35.340 | but ExpressVPN sent me some copy

01:02:38.340 | about a really cool bonus feature of using a VPN,

01:02:43.420 | which is you can get around geographic restrictions

01:02:48.420 | on content.

01:02:50.420 | Netflix, for example, shows different content

01:02:52.940 | depending on where you're connecting from.

01:02:55.980 | So if you're an ExpressVPN user,

01:02:58.860 | you can connect to a VPN server in a different country

01:03:03.100 | and then connect to Netflix from that server

01:03:06.460 | and Netflix thinks you're in that country

01:03:07.900 | and will show you that country's content.

01:03:10.380 | ExpressVPN has over 100 different server locations.

01:03:13.940 | So you can try this trick with a lot of different locations.

01:03:17.340 | So that's just a bonus feature you have for using a VPN.

01:03:21.420 | And if you're gonna use a VPN, use ExpressVPN.

01:03:24.500 | They've got the most server locations.

01:03:27.020 | This is why I like them and they're fast.

01:03:29.240 | You have to have that bandwidth.

01:03:31.160 | I also like how easily it integrates into my machines.

01:03:34.840 | Very simple to use.

01:03:36.500 | You turn it on, select a server,

01:03:38.580 | and then you just load up Netflix,

01:03:39.900 | load up your browser, and it's fast.

01:03:42.220 | You don't even realize that you're going through a VPN.

01:03:44.920 | So you should use a VPN.

01:03:46.860 | And if you do, make it ExpressVPN.

01:03:49.820 | And if you have any questions, don't ask Jesse, ask me.

01:03:54.020 | I am the expert on this technology.

01:03:55.900 | So be smart and stop paying full price

01:03:59.420 | for streaming services and only getting access

01:04:01.520 | to a fraction of their content.

01:04:02.660 | Get your money's worth at expressvpn.com/deep.

01:04:08.340 | Don't forget to use my link at expressvpn.com/deep

01:04:13.340 | to get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free.

01:04:18.700 | All right, Jesse, I think we have time

01:04:22.820 | for one last question.

01:04:24.060 | So let's see what we have here.

01:04:25.700 | - All right, the last question is a new father

01:04:28.340 | and he's got some questions about managing that

01:04:30.820 | and doing some deep work.

01:04:32.220 | - Hi, Cal, my name is Judd

01:04:36.740 | and I'm a longtime fan of your work.

01:04:38.740 | In a recent podcast, you said nothing has negatively impacted

01:04:41.680 | your productivity as much as being a new parent.

01:04:44.760 | I'm a father of two children under the age of two

01:04:46.980 | and I'm experiencing the same thing.

01:04:49.060 | Do you have any tips for parents of babies

01:04:50.800 | to help navigate the challenges of being a new parent?

01:04:53.660 | While I love being a father, the sleepless nights

01:04:56.280 | and near constant attention the girls require

01:04:58.620 | have seriously reduced my ability to do deep work.

01:05:01.500 | They've also killed my creativity and ability

01:05:03.500 | to come up with Greek mythological references,

01:05:05.760 | for which I apologize.

01:05:07.260 | Thanks so much, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

01:05:10.680 | - Well, I mean, I think in order to reprioritize

01:05:14.180 | mythological references,

01:05:16.060 | toddler boarding school is what we need.

01:05:18.460 | Where you send off your daughters,

01:05:20.460 | they'll come back for the summers and for the holidays

01:05:23.280 | and then you can really focus

01:05:24.660 | on good mythological references.

01:05:27.480 | No, Judd, I think it is, there are seasons.

01:05:31.560 | And there's a big idea from slow productivity.

01:05:34.560 | Seasonality at multiple scales,

01:05:36.740 | from the week to the month,

01:05:37.820 | through the years to multiple years.

01:05:40.680 | Two young kids under two, this is a season

01:05:42.640 | in which you're not writing the great American novel.

01:05:45.540 | I think that's okay.

01:05:46.960 | Life is long.

01:05:48.700 | You have babies.

01:05:49.560 | It's batting down the hatches time.

01:05:52.780 | Now I had seasons like that, obviously with young kids.

01:05:54.900 | I had a season, I think the pandemic

01:05:56.660 | caused some seasonality for me.

01:05:58.340 | Our schools were closed, there's chaos

01:06:01.980 | and I had to pull back on a lot of things

01:06:04.420 | and in the grand scheme of things,

01:06:06.500 | I think that's reasonable.

01:06:08.100 | That was a slow season.

01:06:09.260 | Different seasons are different.

01:06:10.540 | I mean, when my kids finally all go off to college,

01:06:15.060 | I know exactly how old I'll be when that happens.

01:06:16.900 | We've done this math, trust me.

01:06:18.980 | I'm either going to explode

01:06:20.560 | into a frenzy of productive output.

01:06:22.720 | I'll be writing three books a year or I'll just die.

01:06:25.180 | It'll be one of the two.

01:06:26.020 | I'll either just be at the end of the finish line and die

01:06:27.900 | or I'm gonna be writing three books a year or something.

01:06:31.620 | And I see different seasons are different.

01:06:32.900 | So first of all, I just wanna give you that,

01:06:35.180 | I wanna give you that reassurance.

01:06:36.780 | I think it's fine to slow down

01:06:38.200 | and this is a very important thing in your life.

01:06:39.820 | Give it some focus.

01:06:41.280 | Now, keep a handle on the other things.

01:06:44.000 | You don't want the work you have to do

01:06:45.260 | to become a major source of stress right now.

01:06:46.860 | So go watch my core ideas video

01:06:48.720 | on time management, for example,

01:06:51.220 | and make sure that you have a ship shape

01:06:53.980 | organizational system so that you have

01:06:55.460 | the breathing room necessary to not work so much

01:06:57.780 | and not have it be a crisis.

01:06:59.340 | The only other advice I'll give,

01:07:00.760 | and I gotta be wary about giving parenting advice.

01:07:03.620 | I get yelled at a lot, but I gotta tell you, sleep training.

01:07:07.700 | And don't yell at me, anti-sleep training people,

01:07:10.540 | but you've got two kids, you guys both work,

01:07:14.980 | you gotta do sleep training, right?

01:07:17.520 | I'm very trepidatious.

01:07:20.120 | Jesse can say I look very trepidatious

01:07:21.380 | because the parenting advice gets you in a lot of trouble.

01:07:23.940 | If your strategy is just, I think eventually

01:07:26.440 | the kid will figure it out and start sleeping,

01:07:28.700 | they will torture your soul and they'll fake you out

01:07:32.640 | and they'll start sleeping more.

01:07:34.640 | And then you'll all be high-fiving

01:07:36.160 | and telling your friends how good you are,

01:07:38.480 | like your kids are good sleepers.

01:07:40.000 | And then they'll just twist a knife

01:07:41.880 | and start getting up at four and getting up at two

01:07:44.660 | and getting up at nine.

01:07:45.680 | And so this was my wife and I's survival strategy

01:07:49.000 | is we're doing a lot for these kids,

01:07:51.880 | but these kids need to do one thing for us.

01:07:53.560 | And that is they're gonna have to go

01:07:54.720 | through some sleep training.

01:07:55.600 | So don't put up with four years of not sleeping.

01:07:58.560 | A lot of people do.

01:08:00.340 | You could make that four months

01:08:02.020 | if you're willing to think about sleep training.

01:08:04.120 | Any complaints about that, that always upsets parents.

01:08:07.600 | So you can send all your complaints

01:08:09.440 | to jesse@calnewport.com and really, really let me have it.

01:08:14.440 | But send those to jesse@calnewport.com.

01:08:18.760 | All right, Judd, well, good luck and congratulations.

01:08:20.760 | And yeah, go easy on yourself and look into sleep training.

01:08:24.480 | All right, Jesse, I think that's all the time

01:08:26.000 | we have for this episode.

01:08:27.760 | Thank you everyone who called.

01:08:29.920 | Go to calnewport.com/podcast to find out

01:08:32.440 | how you can record your own calls

01:08:35.160 | for these listener calls episodes.

01:08:37.600 | If you like what you heard,

01:08:38.560 | you will like what you read on my newsletter,

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01:08:43.680 | Videos of all these episodes and individual videos

01:08:46.200 | of every question we do can be found on YouTube.

01:08:49.480 | Look for the link in the show notes.

01:08:51.640 | We'll be back on Monday.

01:08:53.360 | And as always, until then, stay deep.

Full Length Episode | #172 | February 10, 2022

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