The Secrets To Schedule Deep Work When Travelling

00:00:00.000 | I'm Cal Newport. This is my third weekly update video where I give you a closer

00:00:05.800 | look at my own personal struggles as a professional writer, professor, and

00:00:09.600 | podcaster to work deeply in an increasingly distracted world.

00:00:24.680 | As you can probably see, today I am not in my Deep Work HQ. I'm instead in a

00:00:32.480 | hotel room in Augusta, Georgia of all places. I'm here at a computer science

00:00:39.160 | conference. In about two hours from now I'll be presenting this paper. Now I saw

00:00:46.600 | the house cleaning cart maybe two doors down from now, so my time here is

00:00:50.840 | probably limited before I have to go. So I'll make this quick, but what I wanted

00:00:54.240 | to talk about today, appropriately enough given where I am, Deep Work while

00:01:02.000 | traveling. I have two major pieces of advice to give that I have learned

00:01:07.520 | through hard and long experience. The first piece of advice is don't wing it. I

00:01:14.840 | used to have all this optimism when a trip was coming up because I would

00:01:18.440 | imagine those days as empty. Why did I imagine those days as empty? Because my

00:01:22.360 | calendar would be empty. You don't schedule meetings and appointments on

00:01:26.440 | days when you're traveling. My brain would see empty calendar days and think

00:01:30.560 | we are going to get everything done on the trip. It's all uninterrupted. We'll

00:01:36.960 | write thousands of words, solve major theorems. It's going to be great. The

00:01:41.280 | reality, of course, when you're traveling is your day is not empty. The things that

00:01:45.720 | are pulling at your attention just don't happen to be on your normal calendar.

00:01:49.040 | It's more like conference sessions, conversations with collaborators you

00:01:53.160 | haven't seen, administrative details like preparing a talk that you have to give.

00:01:57.480 | So what I've learned through hard experience is that you have to do a

00:02:00.560 | lightweight form of time blocking even when you're on the road. What I mean

00:02:05.320 | by this is pick out the two or three Deep Work targets you want to make

00:02:10.000 | progress on that day. Plan the time. Plan the time smartly. What I do is I

00:02:15.800 | actually look at my program for the day. Look at the different sessions, the

00:02:20.760 | different events and pick opportune times to step away and work on something

00:02:25.760 | specific. This morning, for example, during a keynote talk, I actually attended it

00:02:30.800 | but was working on a computer science proof during that talk that was

00:02:34.560 | pre-planned. Right now, when I took a break to record this video, I've

00:02:39.440 | been working on writing. This is a good time to get some writing done. I

00:02:43.440 | dedicated the flight here to doing a proposal review I owed someone. I printed

00:02:48.000 | it out. I knew that's what I was gonna do on the flight, that one thing. So by

00:02:51.160 | pre-planning each day when you're gonna do the Deep Work, you're much more likely

00:02:55.600 | to get it done and your plans can be a lot more realistic. A little sub piece of

00:03:02.480 | advice here too is I take administrative stuff. I got to check my email and

00:03:07.640 | keep up with what's going on in the world and I put that into one session. If you

00:03:12.200 | fall into the habit when you're at a conference, for example, of let me just

00:03:16.120 | continually be responding to emails, etc. You get a lot of context shift and you

00:03:21.920 | lose a lot of advantage of being out of your normal environment. So block those

00:03:25.400 | administrative things as well. Second piece of advice I want to give, when I

00:03:30.360 | travel, I always look for at least one unusual novel or scenic location where I

00:03:36.400 | can go to do some deep thinking. So I want to leverage the unique physical

00:03:41.960 | settings of the places that I travel. So here in Augusta I have found the River

00:03:47.840 | Walk on the Savannah River serves that purpose for me. It's a nice walk, you can

00:03:53.240 | see the water, you can see the nature, it's quiet, it's different than anything

00:03:57.080 | I have back in Washington DC. I've done one deep thinking session on that river

00:04:01.520 | so far. I have another one I'm about to do once I get kicked out of here. My

00:04:05.400 | house cleaning. So I'm coming up to a place in my writing right now where I'm

00:04:08.800 | stuck on what's the right way to structure a section. I'm gonna go figure

00:04:12.400 | that out on the river. So that's my second piece of advice. Take advantage of

00:04:16.560 | the location. I was fortunate enough as a graduate student at MIT and as a young

00:04:21.160 | professor to be able to travel all over Europe, all over the world to do these

00:04:24.600 | type of conferences. And so I have written and thought and worked on books

00:04:29.920 | in very interesting places. I remember for example working on how to become a

00:04:35.760 | high school superstar at a rooftop restaurant in Bologna, Italy. I have

00:04:43.240 | memories of being in Toronto with a cool hotel room overlooking the cityscape and

00:04:47.680 | I think I was working on So Good They Can't Ignore You there. So I have a lot

00:04:50.640 | of memories of having a lot of good thoughts by seeking out interesting

00:04:54.180 | locations where I travel. Alright so those are my two pieces of advice.

00:04:59.040 | Lightweight time blocking of the deep work you're going to do. Don't just wing

00:05:02.800 | it. Consolidate administrative work like email checking to schedule times. Don't

00:05:07.120 | make that the default and seek out interesting places to go as long as

00:05:11.000 | you're traveling. Get all of that concentration boosting environments

00:05:15.480 | that you can take advantage of that. Alright that's my update from the road.

00:05:18.560 | I'm gonna go walk on the river and I got to prepare to give this talk but I'll be

00:05:22.200 | back next week in my deep work HQ. See you then.

00:05:28.120 | [Music]

The Secrets To Schedule Deep Work When Travelling | Weekly Update #3

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