Full Length Episode | #163 | January 11, 2022

00:00:00.000 | [intro music]

00:00:04.880 | The new year means, as is our new tradition here on the podcast, it is time to go over

00:00:10.380 | my reading list.

00:00:12.320 | So as long-time listeners know, my target is usually to read about five books per month,

00:00:18.080 | and we've started the habit of at the beginning of each new month reviewing the books I read

00:00:23.160 | during the past month.

00:00:24.160 | So now it is time to talk about the five books I read in December 2021.

00:00:32.320 | Are you ready for this, Jesse?

00:00:33.320 | I'm ready.

00:00:34.320 | Let's go.

00:00:35.320 | All right.

00:00:36.320 | So the first book I completed in that month was How Star Wars Conquered the Universe by

00:00:45.200 | Chris Taylor.

00:00:47.300 | This is basically a George Lucas biography that has some pop culture reporting on the

00:00:53.960 | Star Wars phenomenon.

00:00:54.960 | Now, you might remember this, Jesse.

00:00:56.600 | This was controversial.

00:00:57.720 | We talked about this back in December when I was reading it.

00:01:00.960 | I asked the listeners, "Is it okay that I am skipping the chapters that are about the

00:01:09.640 | cultural reception of Star Wars?"

00:01:11.360 | So early on, the book started going back and forth.

00:01:14.600 | It would be a chapter from the timeline of George Lucas's career, so biography.

00:01:20.120 | And then it would switch to a chapter that would be about, "Here's a group of guys that

00:01:23.960 | dress up like stormtroopers and who they are and what's that like."

00:01:28.880 | I was not so interested in the cultural stuff.

00:01:30.880 | I wanted the biography.

00:01:31.880 | This is part of my ongoing effort to—my movie effort.

00:01:35.720 | I'm reading book after book about various people in the movie industry for some weird

00:01:38.840 | reason.

00:01:39.840 | So I asked the audience if it was okay if I skipped that.

00:01:42.400 | Jesse, you gave me the thumbs up on that, I believe, if I'm remembering.

00:01:45.480 | Yeah, that was okay.

00:01:46.480 | That was okay.

00:01:47.480 | Well, so here's the thing.

00:01:49.680 | I have more defense for my approach because he stopped—the author, Chris Taylor, stopped

00:01:54.280 | doing that switching before, I don't know, two-thirds of the way into the book.

00:01:59.480 | And so it became straight biography, really, for the end of it.

00:02:02.040 | So in the end, I probably only skipped, I don't know, 30% of the material.

00:02:07.680 | So I'm going to count that.

00:02:10.000 | So as I mentioned, this is part of my random project to really dive into the film industry.

00:02:18.000 | This is maybe the fourth or fifth book I've read in a row that is on that topic.

00:02:22.720 | I'm not sure why this is interesting so much, but it really has been this fall.

00:02:25.840 | I really wanted to learn about George Lucas, having finished the biography of Steven Spielberg

00:02:29.960 | the month before.

00:02:31.960 | And a few things I learned.

00:02:34.760 | One, Lucas was a really good director.

00:02:38.920 | So in this scene, there's this scene centered around USC where there was Lucas and there

00:02:44.280 | was Coppola, and Spielberg wasn't at USC, but he was in their circle.

00:02:48.760 | Scorsese was in their circle, among some others.

00:02:52.720 | Brian De Palma was in their circle.

00:02:54.440 | So it's this big group of directors, and they all knew each other.

00:02:58.800 | In that circle, Lucas was considered a hotshot.

00:03:03.400 | So he had this great animated student short that won a bunch of awards and put him on

00:03:08.760 | the map.

00:03:09.760 | Like, wow, Lucas is the guy that he's the auteur.

00:03:11.560 | He's the guy with the vision.

00:03:13.080 | And then he did the student version of THX, which also blew people away.

00:03:17.360 | So I think people didn't realize that about Lucas.

00:03:20.160 | Coppola really was trying to get Lucas to direct Apocalypse Now.

00:03:26.040 | But Lucas decided to do Star Wars instead, basically.

00:03:29.120 | So he was considered like the artistic guy.

00:03:31.920 | So that's kind of interesting.

00:03:34.560 | The other thing I found out about Lucas is, like these other guys, timing is important.

00:03:39.240 | Him and Spielberg came up just as the movie industry was changing, just as they were leaving

00:03:45.140 | the studio system.

00:03:46.640 | So Coppola's first movie was Finnegan's Rainbow, which was a classic studio soundstage movie.

00:03:53.160 | Then he did The Godfather.

00:03:54.400 | So it was like right as they were transitioning away from the studio system.

00:03:57.880 | And they invented this idea of the blockbuster, where you could have a movie that appealed

00:04:02.320 | to all these different age groups and could be in 3,000 theaters and make all this money.

00:04:06.440 | And so their timing was right.

00:04:09.120 | They were talented.

00:04:11.160 | And Lucas, even more so than Spielberg, had a relentless go-big ambition.

00:04:19.520 | So if he was going to do a movie, just like a student movie, he was going to do THX student

00:04:23.560 | movie, he was going to find a way to get access to an abandoned military base and push the

00:04:29.560 | setting, push the technology.

00:04:32.440 | He was going to make a movie where you're going to say, "Wow, this is a lot bigger than

00:04:36.520 | I thought someone with that budget could do."

00:04:39.240 | And that was the approach that made Star Wars big.

00:04:42.320 | He was like, "We're going to invent new technology for the special effects.

00:04:44.920 | It's going to be bigger than anyone's ever seen."

00:04:47.960 | Clearly James Cameron picked up that torch from Lucas after the fact.

00:04:52.000 | So anyways, that's what I learned about Lucas, is this guy was incredibly talented, incredibly

00:04:56.520 | ambitious.

00:04:57.520 | He was going to do everything bigger than anyone had ever done it before, and really,

00:05:02.200 | really focused.

00:05:03.200 | Also, very rich.

00:05:04.200 | I don't know if you know that.

00:05:05.200 | Yeah, he's like a billionaire, isn't he?

00:05:06.200 | Yeah, he's a billionaire.

00:05:07.200 | Were you a Star Wars guy, Jesse?

00:05:08.200 | I've seen some of the movies, not all of them.

00:05:09.200 | Probably not as much as you are.

00:05:10.200 | Is Lucas and Spielberg friends?

00:05:11.200 | Yeah, yeah, they were friends.

00:05:12.200 | They all knew each other.

00:05:13.200 | And they were going back and forth.

00:05:14.200 | It's hard to overestimate how much money they were making.

00:05:15.200 | And I think that's what made Star Wars so popular.

00:05:16.200 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:05:17.200 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:05:18.200 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:05:19.200 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:05:20.200 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:05:46.160 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:06:04.040 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:06:33.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:07:00.560 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:07:28.040 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:07:55.520 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:08:23.720 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:08:52.240 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:21.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:23.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:25.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:27.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:29.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:31.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:33.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:35.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:37.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:39.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:41.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:43.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:45.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:47.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:49.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:51.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:53.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:55.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:57.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:09:59.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:01.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:03.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:05.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:07.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:09.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:11.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:13.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:15.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:17.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:19.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:21.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:23.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:25.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:27.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:29.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:31.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:33.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:35.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:37.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:39.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:41.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:43.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:45.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:47.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:49.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:51.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:53.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:55.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:57.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:10:59.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:01.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:03.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:05.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:07.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:09.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:11.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:13.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:15.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:17.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:19.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:21.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:23.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:25.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:27.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:29.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:31.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:33.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:35.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:37.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:39.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:41.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:43.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:45.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:47.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:49.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:51.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:53.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:55.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:57.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:11:59.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:01.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:03.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:05.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:07.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:09.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:11.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:13.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:15.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:17.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:19.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:21.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:23.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:25.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:27.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:29.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:31.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:33.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:35.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:37.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:39.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:41.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:43.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:45.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:47.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:49.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:51.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:53.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:55.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:57.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:12:59.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:01.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:03.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:05.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:07.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:09.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:11.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:13.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:15.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:17.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:19.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:21.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:23.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:25.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:27.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:29.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:31.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:33.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:35.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:37.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:39.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:41.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:43.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:45.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:47.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:49.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:51.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:53.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:55.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:57.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:13:59.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:01.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:03.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:05.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:07.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:09.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:11.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:13.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:15.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:17.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:19.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:21.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:23.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:25.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:27.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:29.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:31.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:33.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:35.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:37.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:39.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:41.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:43.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:45.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:47.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:49.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:51.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:53.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:55.080 | I think that's what made it so popular.

00:14:57.080 | I love that idea of having land with a name.

00:14:59.080 | I love that idea of having land with a name.

00:15:01.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:03.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:05.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:07.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:09.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:11.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:13.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:15.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:17.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:19.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:21.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:23.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:25.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:27.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:29.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:31.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:33.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:35.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:37.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:39.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:41.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:43.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:45.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:47.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:49.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:51.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:53.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:55.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:57.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:15:59.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:01.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:03.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:05.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:07.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:09.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:11.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:13.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:15.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:17.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:19.080 | I think this one's called Goose Hill.

00:16:21.080 | - Well, somewhere there, hopefully you'd have a writing shed

00:16:23.080 | so that wouldn't get burned down,

00:16:25.080 | so you could just escape to there.

00:16:27.080 | - Yeah. Well, that is my dream, is I want a writing shed,

00:16:29.080 | and I don't have room for a writing shed.

00:16:31.080 | and I don't have room for a writing shed.

00:16:33.080 | It is a dream of mine, so I need...

00:16:35.080 | I was having this conversation.

00:16:37.080 | For real, I was having this conversation

00:16:39.080 | with two different people in the last month,

00:16:41.080 | writers, who have a getaway plot.

00:16:43.080 | writers, who have a getaway plot.

00:16:45.080 | It's kind of an interesting model.

00:16:47.080 | A place they go...

00:16:49.080 | It's not like a large cultivated land,

00:16:51.080 | and it's not nice, it's quiet.

00:16:53.080 | and it's not nice, it's quiet.

00:16:55.080 | And they have a place to write.

00:16:57.080 | So I have a writer I was talking to who lives

00:16:59.080 | right outside New York City in a town that's kind of like Tacoma Park,

00:17:01.080 | and about 90 minutes up 87,

00:17:03.080 | he has some land,

00:17:05.080 | I guess that'd be like the southern Cascades.

00:17:07.080 | There's a little writing shed.

00:17:09.080 | And then another guy,

00:17:11.080 | a good friend of mine,

00:17:13.080 | was telling me,

00:17:15.080 | he lives in Chicago, in the city in a row house,

00:17:17.080 | and they just bought a plot

00:17:19.080 | that is

00:17:21.080 | four or five acres,

00:17:23.080 | near one of the... I don't know what the Great Lake is,

00:17:25.080 | near there, but whatever that is, Lake Michigan.

00:17:27.080 | It's not on the water, it's one lot in

00:17:29.080 | from the water. And it has like an old barn,

00:17:31.080 | and they're planting an orchard on it,

00:17:33.080 | and they can get there in 90 minutes as well.

00:17:35.080 | And he's building, he was showing me these plans,

00:17:37.080 | like a fireman

00:17:39.080 | forest fire watch tower.

00:17:41.080 | You know, like you would build,

00:17:43.080 | they used to build to look for forest fires,

00:17:45.080 | and at the top of this tower,

00:17:47.080 | so it's like an elevated gazebo.

00:17:49.080 | And that's where he's going to do his deep work,

00:17:51.080 | because you can see the lake.

00:17:53.080 | How does he get up there? Does he take an elevator?

00:17:55.080 | It could be a ladder.

00:17:57.080 | It's like icy up there.

00:17:59.080 | Well, you know, a little bit of danger gets the heart going.

00:18:01.080 | So I'm excited about that. So I don't know,

00:18:03.080 | maybe this is, I like this notion of having a getaway

00:18:05.080 | plot, that it's not super

00:18:07.080 | hard to maintain, you don't need like a really big house,

00:18:09.080 | but the key to a getaway plot

00:18:11.080 | is, I think it has to be

00:18:13.080 | non-trivially

00:18:15.080 | sub two hours away.

00:18:17.080 | If it's two hours or more,

00:18:19.080 | you can't go and write for a day

00:18:21.080 | and come back.

00:18:23.080 | Yeah, I see that. Two quick points.

00:18:25.080 | I, there's

00:18:27.080 | no doubt in my mind that you'll find something like that.

00:18:29.080 | I've been listening to your stuff for a long time, and I

00:18:31.080 | think you'll find it eventually, because you talk

00:18:33.080 | about it a lot. And then,

00:18:35.080 | secondly, in terms of self-help books,

00:18:37.080 | I was listening

00:18:39.080 | to Ferris' podcast recently, and

00:18:41.080 | he quoted you on giving him a

00:18:43.080 | suggestion for the self-help book

00:18:45.080 | that he read when he wasn't even

00:18:47.080 | going to read new books. So that was kind

00:18:49.080 | of cool. I just listened to that recently. Yeah,

00:18:51.080 | that's a good book. So it's Oliver Berkman's

00:18:53.080 | book, "4,000 Weeks."

00:18:55.080 | I talked about it, I

00:18:57.080 | told Tim about it, and then Tim

00:18:59.080 | read it, and then Tim did the thing that I

00:19:01.080 | think every publisher

00:19:03.080 | wishes would happen.

00:19:05.080 | I said, "Tim, I believe he,

00:19:07.080 | you listen to this, he released the first

00:19:09.080 | chapter, the audiobook

00:19:11.080 | version of the first chapter of Oliver's book

00:19:13.080 | on his podcast. Is that right?

00:19:15.080 | Yeah, I just listened to it, actually.

00:19:17.080 | Man, could you imagine having the first chapter

00:19:19.080 | of your audiobook on Ferris'

00:19:21.080 | podcast? So "4,000

00:19:23.080 | Weeks" is a cool book.

00:19:25.080 | I read it a long time ago, because I blurbed it.

00:19:27.080 | I read it back before it came

00:19:29.080 | out. And it's

00:19:31.080 | a great concept. It's called "Time Management for

00:19:33.080 | Mortals," and 4,000 weeks

00:19:35.080 | is roughly how many weeks you live.

00:19:37.080 | Oliver's whole point is

00:19:39.080 | most things you're not going to get done, you have a very

00:19:41.080 | limited amount of time.

00:19:43.080 | All these wild dreams you have, most of them won't happen.

00:19:45.080 | And be okay

00:19:47.080 | with that. And spend

00:19:49.080 | more time enjoying

00:19:51.080 | what you do have and what you can do,

00:19:53.080 | and don't be so aggressively goal-oriented.

00:19:55.080 | It was that book hit a nerve

00:19:57.080 | well before Ferris mentioned it.

00:19:59.080 | That thing was, yeah, that thing crushed it.

00:20:01.080 | I think it's one of the

00:20:03.080 | better-selling in our world of the people

00:20:05.080 | we know that write the sort of

00:20:07.080 | New Yorker-style self-help.

00:20:09.080 | He's a Guardian guy. He's a very smart guy.

00:20:11.080 | I think that book is the one that really crushed it this year.

00:20:13.080 | I'm very happy

00:20:15.080 | for Oliver. I've always loved his stuff, and he's been very

00:20:17.080 | kind to my stuff. So, circle

00:20:19.080 | goes around. All right, one more book.

00:20:21.080 | I finally read

00:20:23.080 | some Wendell Berry.

00:20:25.080 | So I don't know, do you know any...

00:20:27.080 | He's not as well-known as I thought.

00:20:29.080 | Have you heard of Wendell Berry?

00:20:31.080 | No. Cool guy.

00:20:33.080 | He's old now. He's in his 80s.

00:20:35.080 | But he went... grew up in Kentucky

00:20:37.080 | on a small farm.

00:20:39.080 | Went to New York City.

00:20:41.080 | Got educated. I don't know, Columbia

00:20:43.080 | or NYU or something. Got sort of overly educated.

00:20:45.080 | Got a writing job in New York City. He wanted

00:20:47.080 | to be a writer, and he was going to do the whole

00:20:49.080 | modern

00:20:51.080 | cosmopolitan writer thing,

00:20:53.080 | where you live in a city.

00:20:55.080 | You're not from somewhere. You're just

00:20:57.080 | observing things around

00:20:59.080 | the world. And

00:21:01.080 | for whatever reason, he's like, "I don't like this.

00:21:03.080 | I'm from Kentucky.

00:21:05.080 | I want to go back to Kentucky.

00:21:07.080 | I want Kentucky to be my muse.

00:21:09.080 | I want to be from a place and write about the place.

00:21:11.080 | I don't want to be just this

00:21:13.080 | abstraction writer that just

00:21:15.080 | is commenting on the world from a cosmopolitan

00:21:17.080 | detached place. I want to go back."

00:21:19.080 | So he moves back to Kentucky,

00:21:21.080 | gets a professorship at a small

00:21:23.080 | Kentucky college near

00:21:25.080 | where he grew up. Him and his wife

00:21:27.080 | buy... I think it's 12

00:21:29.080 | acres. Like a hobby farm.

00:21:31.080 | He grew up farming, but this

00:21:33.080 | is not a production farm. He's like, "We're going to live on

00:21:35.080 | 12 acres. I'm going to be a professor, and I'm

00:21:37.080 | going to write about Kentucky."

00:21:39.080 | And then another plot became

00:21:41.080 | available. "We should probably buy that."

00:21:43.080 | And then another plot became available after that. "We should probably

00:21:45.080 | buy that." And he ends up with

00:21:47.080 | a real production farm, 100-plus

00:21:49.080 | acre farm. And

00:21:51.080 | this is why he's awesome.

00:21:53.080 | He's like, "I'm not into this whole

00:21:55.080 | gasoline thing.

00:21:57.080 | I'm going to farm the way I learned to farm,

00:21:59.080 | which is teams of horses."

00:22:01.080 | And he still... I mean, he doesn't

00:22:03.080 | farm. He's 80 now. But all throughout

00:22:05.080 | his career, he never went

00:22:07.080 | to tractors. He farmed with horses.

00:22:09.080 | This guy's awesome. So he leaves

00:22:11.080 | New York to farm with

00:22:13.080 | horses this farm

00:22:15.080 | in Kentucky,

00:22:17.080 | rural Kentucky, and

00:22:19.080 | is a novelist

00:22:21.080 | poet, but mainly an essayist.

00:22:23.080 | And he writes essays. He

00:22:25.080 | writes a series of essays,

00:22:27.080 | Bill McKibben-style

00:22:29.080 | essays about the economy and the environment,

00:22:31.080 | and a very influential writer.

00:22:33.080 | And writes it from

00:22:35.080 | this farm where he doesn't own a computer

00:22:37.080 | and you can't read. If you want to talk to him, you have

00:22:39.080 | to call the farmhouse and come out

00:22:41.080 | to the farm. He's an awesome guy.

00:22:43.080 | And they just released the first

00:22:45.080 | definitive

00:22:47.080 | essay collection where they

00:22:49.080 | pulled together. It's called "The World Ending Fire."

00:22:51.080 | This came out in 2019. If you get

00:22:53.080 | it, you'll love it. And I think Nick Offerman,

00:22:55.080 | who I also love from Parks and Recreation,

00:22:57.080 | Ron Swanson, who by the way is a guy

00:22:59.080 | who lives in LA, is a working actor,

00:23:01.080 | but also has a giant woodworking

00:23:03.080 | wood shop in a light industrial

00:23:05.080 | warehouse in LA. And he spends a lot

00:23:07.080 | of time building canoes.

00:23:09.080 | Like Ron Swanson, he does the

00:23:11.080 | intro or the prologue. So on the audio book,

00:23:13.080 | Nick Offerman reads it. Anyways,

00:23:15.080 | so I read my first collection,

00:23:17.080 | full collection of Wendell Berry essays.

00:23:19.080 | Are you going to take a field trip out there and check it out?

00:23:21.080 | I should, man. This guy's awesome. He has an essay

00:23:23.080 | in there that I might write an

00:23:25.080 | essay about for my newsletter

00:23:27.080 | that's called "Why I Didn't Buy a Computer,"

00:23:29.080 | which is cool. And I think this was the

00:23:31.080 | '80s when he wrote this essay.

00:23:33.080 | And he's like, "Look, here's my rules for

00:23:35.080 | technology." And it's very much

00:23:37.080 | like I wrote about in Deep Work,

00:23:39.080 | where I go and I talk to a farmer, Forrest Pritchard,

00:23:41.080 | and say, "Farmers care.

00:23:43.080 | Farmers have

00:23:45.080 | pretty strict criteria

00:23:47.080 | for when they're going to spend money

00:23:49.080 | on a new tool, otherwise they'll go bankrupt.

00:23:51.080 | And we should have that same strict criteria when thinking about

00:23:53.080 | technology. We shouldn't just say, "I don't know.

00:23:55.080 | I heard

00:23:57.080 | about TikTok. I should probably use it."

00:23:59.080 | We should have a farmer's mindset. That was my point in

00:24:01.080 | Deep Work. It'd be like, "What's the value? What's the cost?

00:24:03.080 | Is there better ways to get that value?"

00:24:05.080 | Wendell Berry wrote this essay

00:24:07.080 | about this in the '80s. I didn't know about this. He gave

00:24:09.080 | this whole list of, "Here's how I decide whether

00:24:11.080 | or not to use a new technology, and

00:24:13.080 | the computer doesn't

00:24:15.080 | pass that test."

00:24:17.080 | He published it in Harper's.

00:24:19.080 | But what's cool about it is he got

00:24:21.080 | in trouble.

00:24:23.080 | The whole thing is in the essay collection.

00:24:25.080 | He wrote this essay.

00:24:27.080 | He's like, "I don't need a computer.

00:24:29.080 | See if you can see the part

00:24:31.080 | here we got in trouble." He's like, "Yeah.

00:24:33.080 | I write my things longhand, and my

00:24:35.080 | wife types them up, and

00:24:37.080 | we're good."

00:24:39.080 | That got him in a lot of trouble. In the essay

00:24:41.080 | collection,

00:24:43.080 | Harper's published a lot of these letters,

00:24:45.080 | and they published the letters in the essay collection.

00:24:47.080 | Then a lot of people got mad about that.

00:24:49.080 | They say, "Oh, well, you have a great technology

00:24:51.080 | called Wife, and that's how you actually blah, blah,

00:24:53.080 | blah." Then he wrote

00:24:55.080 | an essay in response.

00:24:57.080 | This is like analog

00:24:59.080 | Twitter. You're like Twitter, but if

00:25:01.080 | Twitter was in Harper's magazine, and there was

00:25:03.080 | a week between every ...

00:25:05.080 | He writes this thing in response, and he's

00:25:07.080 | like, "Basically, screw you. You don't know our

00:25:09.080 | family. You don't know how

00:25:11.080 | our marriage works, or this or that." He goes on this

00:25:13.080 | big, long, whatever.

00:25:15.080 | He's like, "Why are you all so defensive?

00:25:17.080 | I must have touched a nerve saying

00:25:19.080 | I don't need a computer, and you're all so mad at me.

00:25:21.080 | You're all techno-determinists, apologists."

00:25:23.080 | It's really interesting, this heated

00:25:25.080 | back and forth.

00:25:27.080 | This was kind of interesting. He introduces

00:25:29.080 | this

00:25:31.080 | very grounded in farming

00:25:33.080 | idea

00:25:35.080 | of home economics, which

00:25:37.080 | is quite different than what

00:25:39.080 | you would see in suburban D.C., where

00:25:41.080 | it's all

00:25:43.080 | salary, job,

00:25:45.080 | dual-income government families. He's like, "We

00:25:47.080 | have a

00:25:49.080 | home economy." It's a very farmer

00:25:51.080 | way of thinking about it, and that

00:25:53.080 | we all are ... Everyone

00:25:55.080 | in the family, me and my wife, we're all part of.

00:25:57.080 | We have this farm we run, and there's all these different

00:25:59.080 | things that have to happen, and this fence has to

00:26:01.080 | get repaired, and the milking has to happen,

00:26:03.080 | and the horses have to be fed. I don't know how

00:26:05.080 | it works. We're all just working on everything

00:26:07.080 | as part of keeping this

00:26:09.080 | very incorporated, this household economy

00:26:11.080 | functioning, which is a very

00:26:13.080 | pre ... When you're not thinking about salaried

00:26:15.080 | work, but I'm producing from land,

00:26:17.080 | it's the way you think. It's like we

00:26:19.080 | have endless things that have to happen that we're all

00:26:21.080 | working on and trying to keep collectively

00:26:23.080 | our farm running.

00:26:25.080 | He thought of his article writing,

00:26:27.080 | he just placed it in that same context. He's

00:26:29.080 | like, "Yeah, these articles that go

00:26:31.080 | out as part of what keeps the household economy

00:26:33.080 | running, we're all just part of it. I do

00:26:35.080 | some writing, she does some editing, we do some

00:26:37.080 | whatever. It's just like I

00:26:39.080 | put the staves on the fence,

00:26:41.080 | and you whitewash them." It was really interesting

00:26:43.080 | to see this

00:26:45.080 | clash that was happening. It's like

00:26:47.080 | a culture clash. He was coming

00:26:49.080 | from a world where

00:26:51.080 | you

00:26:53.080 | owned land, and

00:26:55.080 | that was your source of income. It was very ...

00:26:57.080 | You're a ...

00:26:59.080 | I don't know what the right term is, but like yeoman farmer

00:27:01.080 | type thing. I'm

00:27:03.080 | trying to make a living off of ... Our family's

00:27:05.080 | trying to make a living off of our land. We all work together

00:27:07.080 | to try to do it. He was coming from that mindset, but

00:27:09.080 | in the '80s, everything was shifting

00:27:11.080 | towards most people weren't on farms.

00:27:13.080 | Most people weren't running their own

00:27:15.080 | small businesses in town, where just the whole family

00:27:17.080 | works at it, the donut shop to keep it

00:27:19.080 | running. It was salaries,

00:27:21.080 | and it was typically dual income salaries.

00:27:23.080 | This whole discussion about work

00:27:25.080 | and meaning and

00:27:27.080 | who's working and not working,

00:27:29.080 | all of that was just beginning, and

00:27:31.080 | this "Why don't buy a

00:27:33.080 | computer?" came out, boom, right as that

00:27:35.080 | was happening. You could see in that frision

00:27:37.080 | this

00:27:39.080 | is when this huge cultural

00:27:41.080 | shift was happening. That was a cool

00:27:43.080 | part of the book, is in this essays and the letters

00:27:45.080 | and the back and forth, you can see these

00:27:47.080 | worlds colliding.

00:27:49.080 | In the collision, you actually got

00:27:51.080 | more insight than what any individual

00:27:53.080 | essay or letter was saying about.

00:27:55.080 | It was a very dialectical thing. It was really cool.

00:27:57.080 | In the collision of Barry with

00:27:59.080 | these letter writers in the '80s, you got more

00:28:01.080 | insight into the changing

00:28:03.080 | culture than you got

00:28:05.080 | from just reading any one individual

00:28:07.080 | essay about that period. I just wanted

00:28:09.080 | to point that out. It was a pretty cool part of the book.

00:28:11.080 | You should send him a letter, because

00:28:13.080 | earlier you were talking about how your friend saw you

00:28:15.080 | mention on Twitter, but this way you

00:28:17.080 | only get in touch with him if you send him

00:28:19.080 | a letter. That's literally how you get in touch with him,

00:28:21.080 | by the way. I know. You should do it.

00:28:23.080 | That's how reporters do it. That's how this essay book

00:28:25.080 | came together. You have to send him

00:28:27.080 | a letter, and then he may answer.

00:28:29.080 | He's very old now.

00:28:31.080 | Probably doesn't get much mail.

00:28:33.080 | Yeah. I wonder what that's like.

00:28:35.080 | If you only do letters... He probably liked getting mail.

00:28:37.080 | But it's the Internet age. Does he get a lot

00:28:39.080 | of... I'm sure he gets a lot of

00:28:41.080 | stuff from publicists,

00:28:43.080 | like books,

00:28:45.080 | where you blurb this, that type of stuff.

00:28:47.080 | Anyways, Barry's a cool guy.

00:28:51.080 | I'm going to read some more Barry.

00:28:53.080 | That's what I read in

00:28:55.080 | December 2021.

00:28:57.080 | I'm deep into working on January

00:28:59.080 | 2022 books, and we will check in

00:29:01.080 | at the end of this month with how

00:29:03.080 | my current reading

00:29:05.080 | is going. With that,

00:29:07.080 | why don't we go answer some listener

00:29:09.080 | questions. We'll start, as always, with some

00:29:11.080 | questions about deep

00:29:13.080 | work. We did

00:29:15.080 | a pretty long opening segment, so I am going

00:29:17.080 | to be pithy.

00:29:19.080 | Of course, I've said that before. We'll see if that actually works

00:29:21.080 | out. Our first question

00:29:23.080 | comes from Clarissa.

00:29:25.080 | Clarissa says,

00:29:27.080 | "I'm writing my dissertation, and

00:29:29.080 | I am struggling.

00:29:31.080 | As a clinician by trait, I struggle

00:29:33.080 | with this phase of my PhD program. I'm somewhat

00:29:35.080 | traumatized by my advisor who

00:29:37.080 | criticized my ability to write two years ago.

00:29:39.080 | I always received excellent grades during course

00:29:41.080 | work, but now in dissertation phase, she is beginning

00:29:43.080 | to compliment me, but I'm still insecure.

00:29:45.080 | I've hired an editor and a

00:29:47.080 | communication coach. I buy

00:29:49.080 | all the books on how to write a dissertation, but I

00:29:51.080 | still struggle with the writing

00:29:53.080 | process."

00:29:55.080 | Well, Clarissa, what I'm going to do first

00:29:57.080 | is de-emphasize

00:29:59.080 | the writing aspect

00:30:01.080 | of you putting together your dissertation.

00:30:03.080 | This is

00:30:05.080 | a

00:30:07.080 | complaint I've often had about the rhetoric

00:30:09.080 | around dissertations that I used

00:30:11.080 | to voice a lot when I was early in

00:30:13.080 | my professor career because

00:30:15.080 | I had a background in productivity

00:30:17.080 | advice. I was asked to come

00:30:19.080 | to a lot of what are known as dissertation

00:30:21.080 | boot camps, where you

00:30:23.080 | get together a bunch of grad students at a school

00:30:25.080 | who are working on their dissertations, and they all work

00:30:27.080 | together to try to get progress, and

00:30:29.080 | they bring in speakers. I spoke at a lot of these, and this was

00:30:31.080 | the point I often made. Stop

00:30:33.080 | making writing

00:30:35.080 | the only verb you use to describe

00:30:37.080 | working on a dissertation.

00:30:39.080 | Stop making the whole focus on, "Did I

00:30:41.080 | get my pages in? How often am I writing?

00:30:43.080 | How many hours of writing am I doing?"

00:30:45.080 | Because when it comes to academic work

00:30:47.080 | of this type, 80%

00:30:49.080 | of the effort is thinking,

00:30:51.080 | figuring out

00:30:53.080 | what you want to say and making it something worth

00:30:55.080 | saying. Now, what this

00:30:57.080 | actually means depends on the field.

00:30:59.080 | If you're in a more

00:31:01.080 | humanities-based field,

00:31:03.080 | you're doing philosophy or something, this

00:31:05.080 | really might be the framework you're trying to put

00:31:07.080 | together. If this is more of a clinical

00:31:09.080 | research-based dissertation, which sounds like

00:31:11.080 | might be your case, figuring out what to say

00:31:13.080 | is actually doing experiments,

00:31:15.080 | looking at what you discovered, coming up with better

00:31:17.080 | experiments, understanding the literature, figuring

00:31:19.080 | out the thing you want to say is

00:31:21.080 | 80% of the work and where almost all of the value

00:31:23.080 | comes from. 20%

00:31:25.080 | is just getting that down in a way that people can understand.

00:31:27.080 | The writing

00:31:29.080 | is a small part. I'm

00:31:31.080 | saying that, Clarissa, because I want you to feel better.

00:31:33.080 | You are not trying to

00:31:35.080 | get a

00:31:37.080 | Pulitzer for

00:31:39.080 | a book of

00:31:41.080 | fiction you're writing. You are

00:31:43.080 | not trying to pitch to New York

00:31:45.080 | or to do some

00:31:47.080 | long-form piece where what's really going to matter

00:31:49.080 | is the craft and the

00:31:51.080 | poetry of your writing. No, what you're trying to do

00:31:53.080 | is take lots of deep thinking

00:31:55.080 | on something that's new and important and just express

00:31:57.080 | it in a way that people can understand. You need to

00:31:59.080 | be clear and you need to be grammatically correct.

00:32:01.080 | You need your writing to not get in the way

00:32:03.080 | of what you're really trying to do, which is deliver

00:32:05.080 | the idea. So clear writing,

00:32:07.080 | well-constructed,

00:32:09.080 | simple sentences, good

00:32:11.080 | grammar, great.

00:32:13.080 | Everything else goes into actually figuring

00:32:15.080 | out what you want to say. So, look, you hired an editor,

00:32:17.080 | that's fine. They can help you with the clarity.

00:32:19.080 | And that's all you need to worry about.

00:32:21.080 | Have them look at a couple chapters and they can

00:32:23.080 | "Hey, you're using word repetition

00:32:25.080 | and be careful with your commas. Great."

00:32:27.080 | They'll help you with that. Your

00:32:29.080 | writing will be clear. That problem

00:32:31.080 | is solved, and I don't want you to worry about that anymore.

00:32:33.080 | Again, you're not

00:32:35.080 | Joan Didion. You're not thinking

00:32:37.080 | "Can I create poetry with my

00:32:39.080 | sentence rhythm?" So don't worry

00:32:41.080 | so much about the writing.

00:32:43.080 | On the other hand, be very systematic

00:32:45.080 | when you think about

00:32:47.080 | "What do I want to write about?"

00:32:49.080 | Experiments, reading

00:32:51.080 | the literature, working over what

00:32:53.080 | you want to say, checking that with people. "Does

00:32:55.080 | this make sense? Do you buy this argument?" Let me just give

00:32:57.080 | you this argument in words. Just do you buy this

00:32:59.080 | argument? Workshopping your ideas.

00:33:01.080 | Be much more relentless on thinking

00:33:03.080 | about what you're going to say. And once that's right, again,

00:33:05.080 | the writing, when it comes to dissertation,

00:33:07.080 | is just "Can I

00:33:09.080 | get this information from my

00:33:11.080 | head to your head without roadblocks wrong

00:33:13.080 | the way?" And Clarissa, I think you already

00:33:15.080 | can do that. And the editor will give you a little

00:33:17.080 | bit of extra confidence, but

00:33:19.080 | you're there with that.

00:33:21.080 | All right, let's move on to a question

00:33:23.080 | from

00:33:25.080 | Kavindra, who says

00:33:27.080 | "Cal, I have been

00:33:29.080 | implementing ideas from

00:33:31.080 | digital minimalism in a world without

00:33:33.080 | email, and I have found that my work

00:33:35.080 | day has so much extra time in it.

00:33:37.080 | Aside,

00:33:39.080 | everyone finds this

00:33:41.080 | when they actually begin

00:33:43.080 | being much more intentional about

00:33:45.080 | their time allocation, when they become much more intentional

00:33:47.080 | about the processes by which they collaborate,

00:33:49.080 | they realize that I only need

00:33:51.080 | this much hours to get my work done.

00:33:53.080 | It's a little bit of a secret." All right,

00:33:55.080 | going back to the question,

00:33:57.080 | "I only need less than three-fourths of my work hours

00:33:59.080 | to be completely on top of my duties.

00:34:01.080 | Now that I have this time,

00:34:03.080 | I am realizing that

00:34:05.080 | there is much in my not

00:34:07.080 | work buckets that I can tackle.

00:34:09.080 | However, I do not want to mix non-work

00:34:11.080 | things with being at the office for my own mental clarity.

00:34:13.080 | I also don't want to look

00:34:15.080 | like a slacker.

00:34:17.080 | Do you have examples of how people

00:34:19.080 | handle this in between time?"

00:34:21.080 | So, Kavindra, my

00:34:23.080 | standard suggestion here is

00:34:25.080 | that you should take a

00:34:27.080 | phantom part-time job.

00:34:29.080 | So this is my terminology

00:34:31.080 | for the very common

00:34:33.080 | occurrence among my listeners and readers

00:34:35.080 | where they get very intentional about their time,

00:34:37.080 | realize that

00:34:39.080 | end processes, time and processes, realize they have

00:34:41.080 | a lot of extra time in their day. They can stay on top

00:34:43.080 | of their job with a lot of extra time, which again

00:34:45.080 | is not surprising because most people are

00:34:47.080 | terrible

00:34:49.080 | at the mechanics of what they

00:34:51.080 | do for a living. So when you're not terrible,

00:34:53.080 | you realize you don't need

00:34:55.080 | as much time. And what I recommend

00:34:57.080 | is this idea of you really treat it like

00:34:59.080 | I have a part-time job

00:35:01.080 | and that's what I do in that extra one-fourth,

00:35:03.080 | in your case, one-fourth of my time that's

00:35:05.080 | free. And you schedule

00:35:07.080 | your work for this phantom part-time job

00:35:09.080 | just like you're scheduling your work for your main job

00:35:11.080 | and it happens during the workday and you

00:35:13.080 | can decide if you want to, let's say,

00:35:15.080 | end your workday implicitly

00:35:17.080 | at 3 and then switch to your phantom part-time

00:35:19.080 | job or interleave your phantom part-time

00:35:21.080 | job during the day or like

00:35:23.080 | a lot of people will do their phantom part-time job

00:35:25.080 | first thing in the morning, then switch over

00:35:27.080 | to their other job because there's lots of meetings

00:35:29.080 | and stuff that happen more in the afternoon

00:35:31.080 | the morning, however you want to do it, but you really treat it

00:35:33.080 | systematically like I have two jobs.

00:35:35.080 | You call the second one a phantom

00:35:37.080 | part-time job because you don't make it visible

00:35:39.080 | and you don't talk about it.

00:35:41.080 | Now, what do you do with your phantom part-time

00:35:43.080 | job? You have three options.

00:35:45.080 | One, you use it

00:35:47.080 | to move to the next level

00:35:49.080 | or open up new opportunities in your

00:35:51.080 | existing work.

00:35:53.080 | So you could be dedicating this time to

00:35:55.080 | let's say cultivating a new

00:35:57.080 | rare and valuable skill that's going to give you a lot

00:35:59.080 | more options or

00:36:01.080 | control or autonomy once you do it.

00:36:03.080 | Two, it could be a side hustle.

00:36:05.080 | I am starting, I want to

00:36:07.080 | write a novel. I'm starting a business on the

00:36:09.080 | side. I'm starting a podcast

00:36:11.080 | or whatever it is. So you're working on a side

00:36:13.080 | hustle that may

00:36:15.080 | just be for interest or it may be that you wanted

00:36:17.080 | to eventually generate enough income

00:36:19.080 | that you can renegotiate your main work situation

00:36:21.080 | to be maybe part-time itself

00:36:23.080 | or three, your phantom

00:36:25.080 | part-time job is a

00:36:27.080 | completely non-professional personal

00:36:29.080 | interest.

00:36:31.080 | I want to master

00:36:33.080 | you know, coffee

00:36:35.080 | appreciation. I want to

00:36:37.080 | master a genre

00:36:39.080 | of fiction or whatever.

00:36:41.080 | Just something high quality

00:36:43.080 | leisure that you really want to

00:36:45.080 | invest in and get better at.

00:36:47.080 | The key thing here

00:36:49.080 | about the phantom part-time job is that it's focused.

00:36:51.080 | You are putting this time towards

00:36:53.080 | one thing repeatedly

00:36:55.080 | and carefully planning when

00:36:57.080 | it happens. That is going to get you away

00:36:59.080 | from this weird scattered feeling of just

00:37:01.080 | I'm slacking or doing lots of

00:37:03.080 | hobbies and work and or

00:37:05.080 | getting lost in rabbit holes on the internet. So I

00:37:07.080 | love the focus of the phantom part-time job.

00:37:09.080 | Choose one thing. I am going

00:37:11.080 | to do this thing over the next six months

00:37:13.080 | during my work hours in the one-fourth

00:37:15.080 | of the work hours I have free.

00:37:17.080 | When you're that consistent

00:37:19.080 | and focused, you can do really cool things with that

00:37:21.080 | time.

00:37:23.080 | Alright, moving on.

00:37:27.080 | We have a question here

00:37:29.080 | from Lisa.

00:37:31.080 | Lisa asks

00:37:33.080 | how can I take

00:37:35.080 | regular eye breaks for eye

00:37:37.080 | strain in a way that

00:37:39.080 | accommodates deep work?

00:37:41.080 | Well,

00:37:43.080 | Lisa, I want you to do more

00:37:45.080 | productive meditation.

00:37:47.080 | Make this a bigger part of your habit

00:37:49.080 | that is in almost

00:37:51.080 | any circumstance

00:37:53.080 | where thinking has to be done.

00:37:55.080 | Alright, I'm putting together

00:37:57.080 | this strategy memo. What is the

00:37:59.080 | outline I want to use? I've received an

00:38:01.080 | email from a client

00:38:03.080 | or my boss and it's going to be pretty tricky.

00:38:05.080 | How do I answer this right? I got to really think

00:38:07.080 | this through. What I want to propose here.

00:38:09.080 | I have computer

00:38:11.080 | code I need to write, but I

00:38:13.080 | really don't know what

00:38:15.080 | type of object do I need here? What's the right

00:38:17.080 | algorithmic approach? Whatever it is, whenever you come

00:38:19.080 | across what should be if you're non-entry level

00:38:21.080 | on a regular basis, some

00:38:23.080 | contemplation that has to be done.

00:38:25.080 | Do that on foot

00:38:27.080 | away from a computer screen.

00:38:29.080 | This is what I call productive meditation.

00:38:31.080 | Working on a professional problem in your head

00:38:33.080 | while walking. This will be hard

00:38:35.080 | at first, but you'll get better at it with practice.

00:38:37.080 | Bring a notebook with you.

00:38:39.080 | When we walk, take notes. Walk, take notes.

00:38:41.080 | You're away from a computer.

00:38:43.080 | Notebooks do not cause eye strain.

00:38:45.080 | And then you come back once you've thought it through

00:38:47.080 | and are essentially transcribing

00:38:49.080 | that thinking back into your computer world.

00:38:51.080 | If you do most of your

00:38:53.080 | non-trivial contemplation

00:38:55.080 | on foot,

00:38:57.080 | your head, walking

00:38:59.080 | and notebook, this

00:39:01.080 | will automatically induce a

00:39:03.080 | regular rhythm of

00:39:05.080 | breaks from your computer screen that really should

00:39:07.080 | handle the eye strain, but also

00:39:09.080 | I think make you more effective at your work.

00:39:13.080 | All right.

00:39:15.080 | We have a question from Sophie.

00:39:17.080 | Sophie asks,

00:39:19.080 | "How do you manage long research projects

00:39:21.080 | while reducing

00:39:23.080 | anxiety?"

00:39:25.080 | And Sophie has some elaboration.

00:39:27.080 | She says, "I'm a

00:39:29.080 | PhD researcher in economics.

00:39:31.080 | From the start of a research project to publishing the paper

00:39:33.080 | usually takes three to four years."

00:39:35.080 | Wow.

00:39:37.080 | How do I manage this type of long and draggy research

00:39:39.080 | project, perhaps intertwined with other

00:39:41.080 | concurrent projects?

00:39:43.080 | All right. Well, that's long.

00:39:45.080 | Three to four years is quite long.

00:39:47.080 | I'm assuming

00:39:49.080 | at that duration what happens

00:39:51.080 | is three to four years of work and then a bunch of

00:39:53.080 | papers you produce at the end of it.

00:39:55.080 | If not, make that the case?

00:39:57.080 | I don't know economics well,

00:39:59.080 | but I do remember Adam Grant

00:40:01.080 | explained this to me at some point. I was talking to

00:40:03.080 | the author Adam Grant, who's also a

00:40:05.080 | professor at Wharton.

00:40:07.080 | And he talked about this, that in their

00:40:09.080 | work, which is very data analysis

00:40:11.080 | oriented, he's very economics oriented, even though

00:40:13.080 | he's a business professor,

00:40:15.080 | there's a long period of trying to get

00:40:17.080 | access to data sets that are good.

00:40:19.080 | And then once you have those

00:40:21.080 | data sets, you've really learned them,

00:40:23.080 | you pluck a lot of fruit from them.

00:40:25.080 | Paper, paper, paper, paper. So that might help, by the way.

00:40:27.080 | You might amortize here

00:40:29.080 | when you're doing these long projects, think about getting

00:40:31.080 | lots of papers out of the project.

00:40:33.080 | The other things I'll suggest,

00:40:35.080 | this was sort of an approach

00:40:37.080 | I used a lot in academia,

00:40:39.080 | the two plus one rule.

00:40:41.080 | So have two big

00:40:43.080 | projects you're working on at one time, but in

00:40:45.080 | different stages. So you have a project

00:40:47.080 | that's really in the hardcore,

00:40:49.080 | we're analyzing the data, we're starting

00:40:51.080 | to write

00:40:53.080 | stage. Have another one that's in the

00:40:55.080 | very early stage. I'm negotiating with

00:40:57.080 | the French

00:40:59.080 | Census Bureau to try to

00:41:01.080 | get the data I'm going to need to

00:41:03.080 | do my big Thomas Piketty style

00:41:05.080 | economic growth analysis or

00:41:07.080 | something. So different stages.

00:41:09.080 | So the early stage project

00:41:11.080 | requires sporadic

00:41:13.080 | attention and you can put it on hold for a couple

00:41:15.080 | weeks at a time, it's okay. You feel

00:41:17.080 | better about that because your second project

00:41:19.080 | is much closer to completion.

00:41:21.080 | And once that's done, your first project

00:41:23.080 | gets closer to completion, you can add in another early

00:41:25.080 | stage. So that's the two of the two plus

00:41:27.080 | one rule. The plus one is

00:41:29.080 | do something small

00:41:31.080 | that ships

00:41:33.080 | at least once every four to six months.

00:41:35.080 | So you feel like there's some

00:41:37.080 | progress happening. So hey, every semester

00:41:39.080 | I'm going to write, I'm going to publish a

00:41:41.080 | book review, I'm going to do a short paper,

00:41:43.080 | I'm going to go back to this data set I really

00:41:45.080 | analyzed and wrote some epic papers about

00:41:47.080 | let me take a month and

00:41:49.080 | put half of my research time on to

00:41:51.080 | extracting an additional cool little

00:41:53.080 | insight that's going to be a short note or a conference

00:41:55.080 | talk or something like that. So there's some

00:41:57.080 | wheel of public

00:41:59.080 | production that spins at a faster

00:42:01.080 | rate. So two plus one is a good rule for

00:42:03.080 | these type of research fields.

00:42:05.080 | All right, let's do one more question

00:42:07.080 | about deep work.

00:42:09.080 | This one appropriately enough

00:42:11.080 | comes from deep

00:42:13.080 | academic.

00:42:15.080 | I think if your parents named you that

00:42:17.080 | it would be, you know,

00:42:19.080 | would be a shame if you became like a YouTube

00:42:21.080 | influencer. So I guess you didn't have many

00:42:23.080 | options about what your job was going to be once your parents

00:42:25.080 | named you deep academic.

00:42:27.080 | Here's the question. How do you

00:42:29.080 | handle paper rejection

00:42:31.080 | as an academic?

00:42:33.080 | How do you help your students get over it?

00:42:35.080 | Yeah, it's a good question. I struggle

00:42:37.080 | with it. Non-academics

00:42:39.080 | don't realize this.

00:42:41.080 | They don't realize how

00:42:43.080 | incredibly competitive

00:42:45.080 | academia

00:42:47.080 | is, especially sort of

00:42:49.080 | tenure-track R1 research institutions.

00:42:51.080 | There's these venues in which you can

00:42:53.080 | publish your papers that are very stratified.

00:42:55.080 | And it is incredibly hard

00:42:57.080 | to get your papers published in the

00:42:59.080 | good venues. It's very competitive.

00:43:01.080 | Most things get rejected. So you're constantly

00:43:03.080 | in this competition. I think

00:43:05.080 | the public sometimes has this view of academia

00:43:07.080 | where A) they call it

00:43:09.080 | teaching, which

00:43:11.080 | again,

00:43:13.080 | research-oriented academics

00:43:15.080 | is a source of frustration

00:43:17.080 | that their job is described as

00:43:19.080 | teaching. It's like if you're

00:43:21.080 | a professional

00:43:23.080 | basketball player and people

00:43:25.080 | were like, "Oh yeah,

00:43:27.080 | you do leg pressing."

00:43:29.080 | You're like, "Well yeah, I do

00:43:31.080 | leg pressing in the gym as part of my training

00:43:33.080 | for being a really good basketball player,"

00:43:35.080 | which is incredibly competitive and hard.

00:43:37.080 | The hardest thing in academia is trying to publish

00:43:39.080 | in these competitive venues. It's intellectual

00:43:41.080 | warfare, the very smartest people in the world fighting

00:43:43.080 | for a small number of slots.

00:43:45.080 | 10 to 15 percent of what

00:43:47.080 | is submitted is going to get accepted. It's very difficult.

00:43:49.080 | So you get a lot of rejections.

00:43:51.080 | It's

00:43:53.080 | competitive and it's difficult.

00:43:55.080 | I struggle with this. I've gone through

00:43:57.080 | different phases in my career.

00:43:59.080 | So when I was a graduate student,

00:44:01.080 | my pace of publication would be much less.

00:44:03.080 | Maybe one or two papers a year

00:44:05.080 | when I first got going.

00:44:07.080 | It would hit me hard when a paper

00:44:09.080 | would get rejected because it's all I had worked

00:44:11.080 | on for a few months.

00:44:13.080 | I have notes in my Moleskines I can go

00:44:15.080 | find of me reacting

00:44:17.080 | to rejections. I took them hard.

00:44:19.080 | Then as I hit my stride

00:44:21.080 | as a junior

00:44:23.080 | faculty member,

00:44:25.080 | the wheel started to click and

00:44:27.080 | I published a lot.

00:44:29.080 | I really got a lot of stuff accepted.

00:44:31.080 | There's a nice golden period where I published

00:44:33.080 | a ton of papers, got tenure early,

00:44:35.080 | got a distinguished professorship. Things were really

00:44:37.080 | rolling well. I was publishing four or five papers

00:44:39.080 | a month.

00:44:41.080 | Then I more recently, I've talked about this on the

00:44:43.080 | show, the pandemic

00:44:45.080 | knocked me back to the world of

00:44:47.080 | not submitting as

00:44:49.080 | much, way more rejections

00:44:51.080 | for the small number of things I was submitting.

00:44:53.080 | I'm back into that world of rejection.

00:44:55.080 | Briefly, what happened

00:44:57.080 | there for people who are non-academics, again,

00:44:59.080 | because it's so competitive,

00:45:01.080 | there is an incredibly high quality

00:45:03.080 | threshold.

00:45:05.080 | What happened to me during the pandemic

00:45:07.080 | is two things happened. One, I got knocked

00:45:09.080 | out of my collaboration cycles because I have collaborators

00:45:11.080 | around the world and we meet in person

00:45:13.080 | twice a year.

00:45:15.080 | They're top-notch collaborators. I've known

00:45:17.080 | most of them since I was

00:45:19.080 | 22 years old at MIT.

00:45:21.080 | They're all over the world, but we meet twice a year.

00:45:23.080 | Usually, there's a time

00:45:25.080 | in the summer,

00:45:27.080 | there's a conference we all go to.

00:45:29.080 | One of my close collaborators,

00:45:31.080 | longtime collaborators, comes back

00:45:33.080 | to DC every summer. His family's here.

00:45:35.080 | We bring in other collaborators. We all get together.

00:45:37.080 | That's where most of the ideas

00:45:39.080 | were generated that we then write papers

00:45:41.080 | on. Turns out,

00:45:43.080 | if you don't have those meetings,

00:45:45.080 | as happened during the pandemic, you don't have the good

00:45:47.080 | ideas to work on.

00:45:49.080 | Two, I just didn't have the time.

00:45:51.080 | It was

00:45:53.080 | the typical impacts a lot of people had, especially

00:45:55.080 | people with kids with the pandemic. I didn't have as much

00:45:57.080 | time to spend on research.

00:45:59.080 | I went to about 50%

00:46:01.080 | effort.

00:46:03.080 | The issue is, in competitive

00:46:05.080 | academia, 50% effort

00:46:07.080 | doesn't mean, "Oh, you publish 50%

00:46:09.080 | less papers." It means any

00:46:11.080 | paper you write, the quality

00:46:13.080 | falls just enough that they're

00:46:15.080 | all below the acceptance threshold.

00:46:17.080 | I

00:46:19.080 | did that for a year. I basically didn't publish

00:46:21.080 | anything. Then I realized, "Oh, I should probably

00:46:23.080 | just put all of my energy into less papers."

00:46:25.080 | Last year, I published

00:46:27.080 | a very nice paper where I put my energy

00:46:29.080 | just, "If I can't have as much time

00:46:31.080 | to spend on this, let me put all the time into one paper

00:46:33.080 | because I can't fall below it." Anyways, I've been really

00:46:35.080 | struggling with it. It's the lowest publication

00:46:37.080 | year last year. It was the lowest publication year

00:46:39.080 | I've ever had

00:46:41.080 | as a professional academic because of the pandemic.

00:46:43.080 | I still struggle with it, the academic.

00:46:45.080 | I think it's hard.

00:46:47.080 | The best thing you can do

00:46:49.080 | is

00:46:51.080 | tune up your process.

00:46:53.080 | After some hard rejections,

00:46:55.080 | tune up the process.

00:46:57.080 | What's missing here?

00:46:59.080 | What would I need

00:47:01.080 | to do to not get

00:47:03.080 | rejected as often?

00:47:05.080 | Do I need better collaboration,

00:47:07.080 | more work, more whatever it is? Figure out

00:47:09.080 | how do I tune up my process? By the way, you can

00:47:11.080 | decide, "I don't want to do that. I don't have time to do

00:47:13.080 | that. That's not where I am in my career," but be clear about it.

00:47:15.080 | Then two, do the real work.

00:47:17.080 | There's no shortcuts around it.

00:47:19.080 | You probably just have to do

00:47:21.080 | the stuff that's hard. Read the papers, understand

00:47:23.080 | what's going on, push your ideas farther

00:47:25.080 | than you think they need to be pushed.

00:47:27.080 | Do the work that's required. Tune up your process.

00:47:29.080 | It's the best you can do.

00:47:31.080 | Then keep in mind there's some

00:47:33.080 | stochasticity too. There is going to be some luck.

00:47:35.080 | That should even itself out.

00:47:37.080 | Anyways, I'm with you.

00:47:39.080 | I came off a five-year period of

00:47:41.080 | hotshot publishing down to

00:47:43.080 | nothing. Now,

00:47:45.080 | I'm

00:47:47.080 | crawling back out of that, but

00:47:49.080 | carefully because I don't know that I want to go

00:47:51.080 | back to hotshot

00:47:53.080 | computer science publishing. There's so much other

00:47:55.080 | interesting stuff happening in the world now, especially my

00:47:57.080 | involvement in digital ethics and some of the public-facing

00:47:59.080 | writing I'm doing. I'm rebuilding my life

00:48:01.080 | from scratch academically.

00:48:03.080 | I will have more publications

00:48:05.080 | than I just had, but maybe not as much as I used to.

00:48:07.080 | It's hard. I feel

00:48:09.080 | your pain. Tune, process,

00:48:11.080 | do real work, recognize there's luck,

00:48:13.080 | and otherwise, try

00:48:15.080 | not to obsess too much about it because

00:48:17.080 | man, paper rejections is

00:48:19.080 | tough.

00:48:21.080 | All right. That's all the time we

00:48:23.080 | have for questions on Deep Work. Why don't

00:48:25.080 | we try to do a few questions now about

00:48:27.080 | the deep life? Moving on

00:48:29.080 | with questions about the deep life, our first one

00:48:31.080 | comes from Loves

00:48:33.080 | Deep Work.

00:48:35.080 | Good name.

00:48:37.080 | This question is, what are your thoughts

00:48:39.080 | on fasting

00:48:41.080 | and deep work?

00:48:43.080 | Well, I will say

00:48:45.080 | I do this accidentally

00:48:47.080 | quite a bit, as

00:48:49.080 | my wife will tell you and

00:48:51.080 | complain about sometimes when I'm really

00:48:53.080 | locked in on a deadline.

00:48:55.080 | I will just work all day and not eat.

00:48:57.080 | And I'll be honest, it doesn't

00:48:59.080 | seem to affect my work, though it does make me a

00:49:01.080 | real annoying person to be around

00:49:03.080 | afterwards. That's why she does not like that.

00:49:05.080 | My producer, Jesse, though,

00:49:07.080 | knows more about fasting.

00:49:09.080 | Jesse, do I have this right? You don't eat,

00:49:11.080 | what, lunch or you don't eat breakfast?

00:49:13.080 | You have some fasting thing going on. You probably know

00:49:15.080 | more about this. I eat

00:49:17.080 | basically just dinner every day.

00:49:19.080 | But I started,

00:49:21.080 | I discovered it through Tim Ferriss'

00:49:23.080 | podcast when he was interviewing Terry Crews.

00:49:25.080 | Terry, I saw a picture

00:49:27.080 | of him, he looked jacked anyway. And he's

00:49:29.080 | like, "Yeah." Ferriss asked him if he

00:49:31.080 | could do one thing.

00:49:33.080 | He's 50-something at the time.

00:49:35.080 | What would he do? He goes, "I would have fasted earlier."

00:49:37.080 | And I immediately started doing that.

00:49:39.080 | But I started an eight-hour

00:49:41.080 | period. I did that for a year. Then I just narrowed

00:49:43.080 | it even more. So now I just eat dinner.

00:49:45.080 | So what

00:49:47.080 | do you get

00:49:49.080 | out of that? What was Terry Crews

00:49:51.080 | pitching? If you do it, you get

00:49:53.080 | cut. Oh, interesting.

00:49:55.080 | Because you're, it all

00:49:57.080 | kind of calories in and calories out.

00:49:59.080 | So I mean, I wanted to get

00:50:01.080 | more cut. And

00:50:03.080 | I work out a lot anyway.

00:50:05.080 | And it was amazing. It was

00:50:07.080 | like, I immediately, well,

00:50:09.080 | not immediately, but over time,

00:50:11.080 | I got a lot more cut, more

00:50:13.080 | cut than I've ever been. And I've been doing this now for

00:50:15.080 | four or five years. By the way,

00:50:17.080 | those are all phrases you would

00:50:19.080 | never hear at a computer science

00:50:21.080 | faculty meeting.

00:50:23.080 | I wanted to get more cut.

00:50:25.080 | I'm working out a lot anyways.

00:50:27.080 | These are all phrases you wouldn't hear.

00:50:29.080 | But what about your concentration

00:50:31.080 | ability? Do you get hungry? Do you

00:50:33.080 | find that you're not able to think as clearly?

00:50:35.080 | Do you get the opposite? When it comes to this question about

00:50:37.080 | deep work, what do you think the impact

00:50:39.080 | would be? I think you actually

00:50:41.080 | think more clearly.

00:50:43.080 | Are you hungry? Do you get hungry? Yeah, I definitely

00:50:45.080 | get hungry. But every day is kind of like

00:50:47.080 | a battle. So

00:50:49.080 | every day you kind of just get

00:50:51.080 | through it. And eventually you get to

00:50:53.080 | the evening and you can eat.

00:50:55.080 | The other thing about it too is

00:50:57.080 | you can't really gorge at night

00:50:59.080 | either. You still got to eat healthy, especially

00:51:01.080 | as you get older and stuff. So that's one

00:51:03.080 | thing I realized.

00:51:05.080 | But the healthy food, just the nature

00:51:07.080 | of that food also probably just

00:51:09.080 | regulates what you can eat, right? Because if you're

00:51:11.080 | eating vegetables or whatever, there's only

00:51:13.080 | so much you can eat. Whereas if it was like a bag

00:51:15.080 | of tortilla chips, you could probably

00:51:17.080 | crush three of those.

00:51:19.080 | Yeah, you can't eat any processed foods for the most part

00:51:21.080 | unless you're cheating. I was just

00:51:23.080 | reading, I just revisited Tom Brady's

00:51:25.080 | TB12 book where he has

00:51:27.080 | a nutrition chapter

00:51:29.080 | in there. And it's

00:51:31.080 | simple stuff. He doesn't do anything that crazy. He just

00:51:33.080 | eats healthy foods. And

00:51:35.080 | you have to do

00:51:37.080 | that most of the time. But in terms of

00:51:39.080 | thinking and doing work,

00:51:41.080 | I think it really helps. And plus

00:51:43.080 | it doesn't,

00:51:45.080 | it limits

00:51:47.080 | the cognitive strain of

00:51:49.080 | buying a lot of stuff and think about getting

00:51:51.080 | food all the time and stuff like that.

00:51:53.080 | All right. So it sounds like maybe

00:51:55.080 | if this listener wants to experiment, experiment

00:51:57.080 | start with the eight hour. So skip breakfast

00:51:59.080 | or something. Yeah, I've

00:52:01.080 | had a lot of buddies because I've been doing it for a while and some

00:52:03.080 | of them do like eight and eight and a half hours, which I

00:52:05.080 | did for a year. And then

00:52:07.080 | I was like, I think I can crank

00:52:09.080 | this up even more because sometimes

00:52:11.080 | in the evenings and stuff,

00:52:13.080 | I want to still be able to have

00:52:15.080 | beer and stuff every once in a while. So I wanted

00:52:17.080 | to have more flexibility. So then I was just like, let me

00:52:19.080 | experiment with narrowing the number.

00:52:21.080 | And then it just became

00:52:23.080 | basically like an hour

00:52:25.080 | and a half to two hour, pretty

00:52:27.080 | narrow window. So I think we

00:52:29.080 | now have a bestseller here. Here's the diet.

00:52:31.080 | Only beer

00:52:33.080 | for eight hours. And

00:52:35.080 | then you go to food for the four

00:52:37.080 | hours that remains. The one

00:52:39.080 | thing I have heard, I've tried this before

00:52:41.080 | informally, I might try this more. I do

00:52:43.080 | know a couple of buddies who

00:52:45.080 | swear by

00:52:47.080 | they do

00:52:49.080 | like Laird

00:52:51.080 | Hamilton's coffee creamer or something

00:52:53.080 | like this, like a coconut oil, like a healthy fat

00:52:55.080 | in their coffee for breakfast

00:52:57.080 | and no other food.

00:52:59.080 | And they swear by

00:53:01.080 | that really

00:53:03.080 | giving them mental clarity.

00:53:05.080 | So it's like the caffeine, I guess

00:53:07.080 | there's a couple of things that goes on. One,

00:53:09.080 | the fats they use in these

00:53:11.080 | sort of high fat creamers

00:53:13.080 | slows down potentially

00:53:15.080 | the spread of the caffeine. So it spreads

00:53:17.080 | it out. And I don't know if there's a ketone

00:53:19.080 | situation or just an energy situation,

00:53:21.080 | but I do know people who swear by that, that

00:53:23.080 | they

00:53:25.080 | do one of these, I don't know how you

00:53:27.080 | call them, clean fat

00:53:29.080 | coffee creamers. And the one I've tried is Laird

00:53:31.080 | Hamilton's. Yeah, I've tried that too. I

00:53:33.080 | like it. Most of the time

00:53:35.080 | I try to drink my coffee black, but three

00:53:37.080 | times a week, I give myself the

00:53:39.080 | flexibility to have some cream. Yeah.

00:53:41.080 | That's something you could try.

00:53:43.080 | Maybe the, what's his

00:53:45.080 | name? Dave Asprey has something too. The Bulletproof

00:53:47.080 | guy, they have some other, but it's all the same thing.

00:53:49.080 | It's like coconut fat

00:53:51.080 | style MCT oil.

00:53:53.080 | You know, you give that a try and

00:53:55.080 | then just wait till at least lunch.

00:53:57.080 | The only thing I know for sure

00:53:59.080 | is true is that high carb or processed

00:54:01.080 | food crashes your thinking.

00:54:03.080 | Yeah, 100%. I mean,

00:54:05.080 | the food marketing

00:54:07.080 | industry is like, does one of the best

00:54:09.080 | food marketing campaigns of all time convincing

00:54:11.080 | us that we need to eat? Go to any grocery store and you can

00:54:13.080 | see aisles and aisles of stuff

00:54:15.080 | that you should just avoid. Yeah. So I mean,

00:54:17.080 | if you're eating, you know,

00:54:19.080 | a burger and fries for lunch,

00:54:21.080 | you're not deep thinking that afternoon.

00:54:23.080 | All right, we'll go on to

00:54:25.080 | the next question here.

00:54:27.080 | This is from Cal Fan.

00:54:29.080 | All right, so this must be someone

00:54:31.080 | who went to school

00:54:33.080 | in California. How do you maintain a healthy

00:54:35.080 | body posture while being at

00:54:37.080 | computer throughout the day?

00:54:39.080 | Don't be at a computer

00:54:41.080 | all throughout the day.

00:54:43.080 | It's much easier than

00:54:45.080 | you know, having to buy one

00:54:47.080 | of those Twitch streamer

00:54:49.080 | style jet engine

00:54:51.080 | jet fighter pilot gamer chairs

00:54:53.080 | to try to get your posture just right.

00:54:55.080 | Just don't be at your computer all day.

00:54:57.080 | In response to an earlier question

00:54:59.080 | this episode, I suggested anytime you have

00:55:01.080 | actual non-trivial contemplative

00:55:03.080 | thinking to do, do it on

00:55:05.080 | the foot. Just have that rule

00:55:07.080 | and you're gonna do better thinking

00:55:09.080 | but you're also gonna be up a lot more.

00:55:11.080 | So that's the key. Make the posture

00:55:13.080 | I mean, have good posture, but

00:55:15.080 | make it somewhat irrelevant because you're not

00:55:17.080 | at your chair long enough at a stretch

00:55:19.080 | that non-perfect posture is gonna cause a problem.

00:55:21.080 | All right, a question here from

00:55:23.080 | Monkey Mind.

00:55:25.080 | Hi Cal, what do you suggest to people

00:55:27.080 | who pick up habits and suggestions

00:55:29.080 | you give but not

00:55:31.080 | stick to them for more

00:55:33.080 | than a few days?

00:55:35.080 | I tell them they're

00:55:37.080 | losers. I tell them they need to give

00:55:39.080 | up and just

00:55:41.080 | watch TikTok videos.

00:55:43.080 | No,

00:55:45.080 | this is, here's the thing, you're probably

00:55:47.080 | you're probably bringing on too much at a time

00:55:49.080 | it's probably unrealistic

00:55:51.080 | and your mind is probably not on board

00:55:53.080 | with all the different things you're doing.

00:55:55.080 | So if you have all these big plans

00:55:57.080 | there's a deeper part of your mind, the

00:55:59.080 | planned evaluation center is probably saying

00:56:01.080 | I don't know Monkey Mind

00:56:03.080 | this stuff is not all gonna

00:56:05.080 | work, this is too much and

00:56:07.080 | we're not gonna do it.

00:56:09.080 | You kind of overloaded that planning.

00:56:11.080 | What I usually tell people is the

00:56:13.080 | foundation

00:56:15.080 | to any of these type of

00:56:17.080 | professional style habits is

00:56:19.080 | daily metric tracking.

00:56:21.080 | That's the one thing you have to do.

00:56:23.080 | It takes seven seconds at the end

00:56:25.080 | of each day or you can do it each morning

00:56:27.080 | and you have some metrics you track

00:56:29.080 | and you always do it. That's the thing you have to

00:56:31.080 | commit to. It's why my time block planner

00:56:33.080 | has this metric

00:56:35.080 | planning section on

00:56:37.080 | every daily page is you do that.

00:56:39.080 | Now these metrics

00:56:41.080 | then can point

00:56:43.080 | towards the

00:56:45.080 | habits you're trying to do through the day and you keep track

00:56:47.080 | of it with the metrics. Did I time block plan?

00:56:49.080 | Check. Did I do my

00:56:51.080 | whatever, my morning deep work session? Check. Did I do my exercise

00:56:53.080 | section? Check. How many

00:56:55.080 | chapters did I read? Whatever you're tracking

00:56:57.080 | and you track it there. The key thing

00:56:59.080 | is you track it even if it's zero, even if it's

00:57:01.080 | no. And even if it's again and again, no, I didn't do this,

00:57:03.080 | I didn't do this, I didn't do this. That's fine.

00:57:05.080 | But you're tracking.

00:57:07.080 | Here's what actually happened. That's the

00:57:09.080 | foundation for any consistent

00:57:11.080 | habit formation when it comes to professional habits.

00:57:13.080 | Then you begin to experiment with, okay,

00:57:15.080 | what is the

00:57:17.080 | right

00:57:19.080 | first step collection of habits that

00:57:21.080 | my metric tracking, I eventually actually start

00:57:23.080 | positively marking those things down

00:57:25.080 | on a consistent basis. And you start small. All

00:57:27.080 | I want to do is a

00:57:29.080 | good morning planning session.

00:57:31.080 | And I'll give a check if I do that.

00:57:33.080 | Okay, I'm doing that. I'm doing that.

00:57:35.080 | Now all I want to do is

00:57:37.080 | time block plan my day. Let me

00:57:39.080 | check if I'm doing that. Then you slowly

00:57:41.080 | start seeing what works and what doesn't. If you try

00:57:43.080 | something and you have the evidence in your metric

00:57:45.080 | tracking, you're not doing it, you pull it back, let me try something

00:57:47.080 | else. You slowly build up these habits.

00:57:49.080 | But you have to have that foundation of

00:57:51.080 | I'm keeping tabs on a

00:57:53.080 | record every day of what I did or didn't do.

00:57:55.080 | Your mind knows it's being tracked. It's

00:57:57.080 | embarrassed if you blow things off

00:57:59.080 | that you could do. That is the foundation.

00:58:01.080 | So do the metric tracking even if you're embarrassed

00:58:03.080 | by what you're tracking. And then slowly

00:58:05.080 | and experimentally add things into your life.

00:58:07.080 | Once something sticks, move

00:58:09.080 | on to something else. Give this a

00:58:11.080 | year of work and you'll come out on the other

00:58:13.080 | side with a pretty good set of

00:58:15.080 | carefully tested habits that work really

00:58:17.080 | well for you and your situation that you consistently

00:58:19.080 | follow. But it takes work and you can't do that

00:58:21.080 | work without tracking metrics.

00:58:23.080 | I will do one more question here. This one's from

00:58:27.080 | Alexander who asks

00:58:29.080 | how does a digital

00:58:31.080 | minimalist find interesting books

00:58:33.080 | to read?

00:58:35.080 | Well, my advice here is don't

00:58:37.080 | overthink it.

00:58:39.080 | Books are interesting

00:58:41.080 | just by definition.

00:58:43.080 | It's someone who has thought a lot about

00:58:45.080 | something, be it a fictional world or an idea

00:58:47.080 | or a period of history or event,

00:58:49.080 | have put a lot of effort into getting

00:58:51.080 | their thoughts on the paper.

00:58:53.080 | Just read.

00:58:55.080 | Don't overthink what you read.

00:58:57.080 | You're more likely to do more reading

00:58:59.080 | if you don't care so much about what it is exactly

00:59:01.080 | that you're reading. Go back

00:59:03.080 | and listen at the beginning of this

00:59:05.080 | episode or from last month or the month before

00:59:07.080 | the segments I do on the books

00:59:09.080 | I read each month and you will

00:59:11.080 | see it is all over the place.

00:59:13.080 | I'm not trying to impress anyone.

00:59:15.080 | I'm not trying to rigorously

00:59:17.080 | expand my knowledge

00:59:19.080 | of some niche area. I just wander

00:59:21.080 | all over the place. I've been obsessed recently

00:59:23.080 | with Hollywood figures.

00:59:25.080 | Why not? Let's read a bunch of books about that.

00:59:27.080 | I'll read random fiction. I'll throw in

00:59:29.080 | straight up self-help, but then I'll

00:59:31.080 | mix that in with essay collections and journalistic

00:59:33.080 | nonfiction. I don't care. I grab

00:59:35.080 | stuff. I finish. I need

00:59:37.080 | a new book. I grab stuff. I don't overthink

00:59:39.080 | it. You shouldn't overthink it either.

00:59:41.080 | Reading is like calisthenics

00:59:43.080 | for your ability to understand and

00:59:45.080 | think about the world. Don't

00:59:47.080 | sweat exactly what grip

00:59:49.080 | you're using on this metaphorical pull-up bar.

00:59:51.080 | Just get on that bar most days and do

00:59:53.080 | some exercising.

00:59:55.080 | All right. Well, that's all the time we have

00:59:57.080 | for today. Remember, if

00:59:59.080 | you like what you hear on

01:00:01.080 | this podcast, you will like what you read

01:00:03.080 | on my longstanding email newsletter.

01:00:05.080 | You can subscribe at calnewport.com.

01:00:07.080 | We'll be back on Thursday

01:00:09.080 | with a listener calls mini episode. And

01:00:11.080 | until then, as always, stay deep.

01:00:13.080 | [Music]

01:00:15.080 | [Music]

01:00:17.080 | [Music]

01:00:19.080 | [Music]

Full Length Episode | #163 | January 11, 2022

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