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00:01:34.640 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of all the hacks, a show about upgrading

00:01:42.000 | your life, money, and travel.

00:01:43.760 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm excited you're here today.

00:01:46.400 | And since you're listening to all the hacks, I'm pretty sure you're interested

00:01:49.600 | in optimizing your life in a lot of different ways, and you probably also

00:01:53.240 | love technology, but paradoxically, those two do not always mix well.

00:01:57.320 | And that's the message of my guest, Cal Newport.

00:01:59.720 | He probably doesn't need an introduction because he's the award-winning author

00:02:03.180 | of seven books that have been translated to over 40 languages, including deep

00:02:07.520 | work, digital minimalism, and most recently, a world without email.

00:02:11.560 | His writing explores the intersection of culture and technology, and he's been

00:02:15.960 | featured in so many publications, including the New York Times, New Yorker,

00:02:19.800 | Washington Post, and Economist.

00:02:22.280 | He's also an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University.

00:02:26.160 | He hosts the top rated podcast, Deep Questions, and he's a dad with a young

00:02:30.600 | family.

00:02:31.100 | We're going to talk about what a deep life means and some of the ways you can

00:02:34.920 | create the best life possible for you.

00:02:37.120 | Why the hyperactive hive mind of constant email and messages is making you less

00:02:42.240 | productive, what you can do about it, how to implement what Cal calls high quality

00:02:47.120 | leisure time into your life, and so much more.

00:02:49.920 | So let's jump in.

00:02:52.200 | Cal, welcome to the show.

00:02:53.760 | Oh, Chris, I'm excited to be here.

00:02:56.120 | I want to just jump right into the big picture to start.

00:02:58.840 | Talk about a deep life and what that means and maybe an example of what your

00:03:03.720 | deep life looks like.

00:03:04.760 | Well, the term came along before I had a good definition for it.

00:03:09.720 | It was at first one of those when you see it type of concepts and it emerged.

00:03:14.720 | This might not be surprising, but in the first month of the pandemic.

00:03:20.160 | So I started doing a lot of writing.

00:03:22.160 | I have a newsletter and blog that I would typically update once a week and I was

00:03:25.240 | doing it every single day.

00:03:26.160 | I just felt like I wanted to grapple with the various disruptions in a more public

00:03:31.360 | way with my longstanding audience.

00:03:32.920 | It was in that initial month or so of writing that this term, the deep life

00:03:38.520 | emerged as an umbrella term, very roughly speaking about the type of things I

00:03:43.480 | talked about.

00:03:44.120 | And then in May of 2020, I started a podcast because I couldn't see anybody.

00:03:50.160 | I wasn't on the road.

00:03:50.960 | I wasn't seeing people.

00:03:51.840 | And half of the show was dedicated to the deep like it had just emerged forcefully

00:03:57.600 | into what I was thinking and writing about.

00:03:59.200 | And it was at first when you see it, a deep life is a life that you look at and

00:04:03.760 | it just resonates something about that.

00:04:06.480 | It's exciting.

00:04:07.280 | It's interesting.

00:04:08.080 | And it just sort of resonated.

00:04:09.280 | But over time, I've worked through the definition.

00:04:11.200 | I've tried to become a lot more clear about it.

00:04:12.960 | And now the way I typically define it is a deep life is one in which you make

00:04:18.800 | radical changes to align with your value.

00:04:20.960 | So, it's when you see someone that have done somewhat radical things and where

00:04:24.560 | they live, how they live, their work, the nature of their life, they've made

00:04:27.520 | radical changes to align their daily existence with things they truly care about.

00:04:31.600 | When you see that come together, you're looking at the deep life.

00:04:33.840 | And when you see the deep life, something inside you typically sings a little bit.

00:04:38.240 | Yeah, that's right.

00:04:38.880 | Are there some examples of those kind of radical changes you've seen people make,

00:04:43.520 | or maybe you've made yourself to get closer to a deep life?

00:04:48.320 | There's a couple of general categories you often see when you're looking at deep

00:04:51.280 | lives.

00:04:51.600 | So, one, I think certainly involves work, where people radically upend or focus their

00:04:59.120 | working life to be closer to their values.

00:05:01.760 | So, it's where you see the person who becomes whatever, the full-time writer or starts that

00:05:08.000 | really interesting business or moves away from the job that maybe was stable, but soul

00:05:13.920 | deadening and goes towards something that has a lot of autonomy.

00:05:18.160 | Just to make it concrete, there's someone I know named Paul Jarvis, who wrote this great

00:05:21.680 | book, Company of One, which is about the value of not trying to grow your business to be

00:05:27.360 | as big as possible, but to make it the best possible small business.

00:05:30.320 | And I remember the move he made, he talks about early in that book was leaving, he called

00:05:35.520 | it his glass cube in downtown Vancouver, the condo and the big crowded building.

00:05:40.320 | And they moved to the middle of nowhere, the tip of Vancouver Island, not far from where

00:05:46.080 | they filmed the History Channel show alone, several seasons of the show alone.

00:05:49.840 | So, this really was in the middle of nowhere, but they can surf in the morning and walk

00:05:55.680 | through the woods in the afternoon.

00:05:58.160 | And he was doing this very thoughtfully.

00:06:00.400 | He wanted to slow down his life, quiet his life, focus on just the work that's important.

00:06:05.680 | You see it in craft a lot.

00:06:07.440 | You see it when you look at someone who's deeply involved in craft and maybe it's not

00:06:12.960 | the most lucrative thing, but it feels really meaningful.

00:06:15.840 | You see it when people make location shifts that just the location itself really speaks

00:06:22.000 | to them.

00:06:22.480 | One of the types of case studies I like to gather is writers who have really cool second

00:06:28.320 | homes where they spend half the year to go and write.

00:06:31.120 | Usually these writers will spend the other half the year in cities.

00:06:33.760 | And I've become a collector of those stories.

00:06:35.680 | Sebastian Younger has this farmhouse in the scrub pines of Turo, Cape Cod.

00:06:41.040 | So, it's the sort of non-populated area of Cape Cod.

00:06:44.080 | It's a little artist colony.

00:06:45.520 | It's not on the water.

00:06:46.400 | It's in the woods.

00:06:47.120 | You have to go down a really long dirt road to get to the house.

00:06:50.320 | They spend half the year there.

00:06:51.680 | Simon Winchester leaves New York in the summers to go to a farm in Sandless Fields, Massachusetts

00:06:57.920 | in the foothills of the Berkshires where he converted a barn.

00:07:00.720 | That's where he goes and that's when he writes.

00:07:03.360 | And they tend bees in the afternoons when he's not doing that.

00:07:06.000 | These are the type of examples that sing out to me of people who made radical changes in

00:07:11.120 | their lives to align it with what they really care about.

00:07:14.480 | There's a lot to touch on there with work and career and where you live.

00:07:18.080 | But I want to ask something I haven't seen you write too much about or talk about is

00:07:21.440 | what about people?

00:07:22.320 | Is there like a deep version of a relationship that is much more important in this kind of life?

00:07:26.880 | Well, I think community is a big part of the deep life.

00:07:29.440 | Typically, when I talk about this concept, I break it into different areas.

00:07:33.760 | There's a long running joke on my podcast where everything has to be alliterative with

00:07:38.000 | C's when we talk about the deep life.

00:07:39.200 | But there's typically the five areas I talk about.

00:07:41.280 | There's craft, which is like work, producing things.

00:07:45.680 | There's community is number two.

00:07:46.960 | So, that's what we'll talk about here in a second.

00:07:48.320 | And then you can have - I use constitution just to be alliterative, but to talk about

00:07:52.720 | health and fitness.

00:07:53.920 | You can talk about contemplation to talk about philosophy, theology, etc.

00:07:57.760 | Sometimes we throw in celebration to talk about gratitude, enjoyment of life, just developing

00:08:03.360 | interests that have no functional reason other than just appreciation and enjoyment.

00:08:08.720 | So, community is, of these five things, incredibly important.

00:08:11.840 | And I think that's another thing.

00:08:12.960 | It's actually something my family did in our own life.

00:08:15.840 | When we were looking to move, we were going to have our third child.

00:08:18.800 | Our house was too small.

00:08:19.920 | One of the things we really focused on and thinking where to move was community.

00:08:24.400 | So, we found on the outskirts of DC, right across the border, there was a town that had

00:08:30.880 | been around since the 1800s.

00:08:32.480 | And the city has grown out past it since, but the town is still there and retains all

00:08:37.040 | the character of a town, has its own mayor, its own police force.

00:08:40.000 | And it's a place where everyone knows each other.

00:08:42.480 | It's a place where your kids come and live after they go off, they come back and live

00:08:46.880 | there and they take over your houses.

00:08:48.240 | We moved here purposefully because we wanted to be deeply enmeshed in community.

00:08:54.720 | So, I think that's another thing you certainly see when you look at people living deep lives

00:08:58.240 | is the role of these interpersonal connections, actually being deeply connected to other people,

00:09:02.800 | sacrificing non-trivial time and energy on behalf of other people, try and take up a

00:09:06.560 | role of leadership among real flesh and blood people around you.

00:09:10.720 | I think all that's critical to deep living.

00:09:12.480 | - What about within your family?

00:09:13.920 | What about those relationships?

00:09:15.200 | Is there anything changed as you've thought through this?

00:09:17.120 | - Something that came out, and this was before I really coined the term deep life.

00:09:21.040 | But when I was doing research for a book I wrote about our relationship with digital

00:09:25.920 | devices, one thing that emerged from that is that the human social brain, which is a

00:09:33.520 | very large portion of our brain, we're very social animals.

00:09:36.640 | We dedicate a lot of neuronal firepower to interacting with other people, maintaining

00:09:42.800 | relationships.

00:09:43.520 | It doesn't understand digital connection.

00:09:47.520 | It does not understand text on a little piece of glowing glass with bitmap smiling face

00:09:53.920 | emojis.

00:09:54.400 | It does not understand that in the same way it understands you are right here.

00:09:59.360 | I can see you, I can hear you, I can look at your body language, I can look at your

00:10:03.360 | inflection.

00:10:04.320 | I know that this was a sacrifice.

00:10:06.880 | I had to take time out of my day to come to your house and spend time with you.

00:10:10.160 | Out of that sacrifice, I actually increased the importance I'm going to assign to this

00:10:14.720 | as an interaction.

00:10:15.840 | This is what our social brains expect when it comes to relationships.

00:10:19.760 | If you move more of your social life into a digital context, especially a text-based

00:10:26.160 | digital context, it can actually make you profoundly lonely because so much of our social

00:10:31.040 | brain doesn't know what that is.

00:10:33.280 | But it does not think about that in the same way it thinks about I'm spending the afternoon

00:10:38.480 | with you, with a real person in person.

00:10:40.560 | So, certainly, that seems to be an important element about our current moment, especially

00:10:44.080 | post-pandemic is getting back to real-life analog interactions that require non-trivial

00:10:50.640 | sacrifice of time and energy on your behalf.

00:10:52.480 | If you're doing that, your brain's going to be a lot more happy than if you're instead

00:10:57.280 | juggling seven or eight WhatsApp threads.

00:10:58.960 | - Is there science for broader principles of deep work and other parts of deep life

00:11:05.680 | that really support, not just anecdotally, but with evidence and data, the benefits of

00:11:10.880 | making these changes?

00:11:11.760 | - I mean, I think in each of those different buckets we talked about, you can pull upon

00:11:16.400 | your own stream of science.

00:11:18.000 | So, if you want to look at this community bucket and the importance of in-person socialization,

00:11:22.960 | there is no shortage of studies.

00:11:25.360 | I talk about a lot of this in my book, Digital Minimalism, that really gets into the human

00:11:30.240 | processing of social connection and how much information really goes back and forth.

00:11:34.080 | There's a really nice study that I summarize in that book where they brought in business

00:11:40.160 | students, I believe.

00:11:41.440 | They brought them in to hear pitches for business ideas.

00:11:45.680 | So, half the group gathered in a conference room and actually did this.

00:11:50.240 | And then the other half of the group, they gave them written transcripts of the pitch

00:11:55.600 | for the business.

00:11:56.320 | And it was night and day, the difference between the receptions, because the people who were

00:12:00.800 | in the room were actually having a real social connection.

00:12:02.720 | They're getting all this information from the person.

00:12:04.640 | It was a much more sophisticated understanding of what was going on.

00:12:07.040 | There's another really cool study that was looking at email.

00:12:09.520 | What it really focused on is the degree to which when you're writing an email, you completely

00:12:15.200 | overestimate how well you're going to be understood by the recipient, because you know the whole

00:12:20.800 | context.

00:12:21.280 | You know the whole social context.

00:12:22.720 | You know the whole emotional context.

00:12:24.080 | You know when you're writing it, you're chuckling like this is funny.

00:12:26.720 | I know what's going on.

00:12:27.840 | And it all gets reduced down to characters and it gets to the recipient and all of that

00:12:31.920 | context vanishes and they have no idea what's going on.

00:12:34.640 | Is he joking?

00:12:35.440 | Is this serious?

00:12:36.240 | Is he's mad?

00:12:36.960 | What does he mean?

00:12:37.840 | It's a great reflection of how much information is actually captured in the non-linguistic

00:12:42.640 | aspects of communication, the aspects that go beyond just the actual written transcript

00:12:47.040 | of what you're trying to say.

00:12:48.160 | There are similar lines of research you can look at for work and deep work and what happens

00:12:52.400 | with context switching.

00:12:53.680 | There's certainly research, obviously, about health and fitness and the advantages you

00:12:58.240 | get from actually taking care of that.

00:13:00.080 | There's an even broader research on efficacy.

00:13:03.440 | Just the idea that in any of these areas that you are taking control, you're expressing

00:13:09.360 | autonomy on how your life unfolds, that's an elixir.

00:13:13.600 | That is magic.

00:13:15.040 | What it does to yourself, your sense of self-worth, your ability to act when you feel like you

00:13:19.840 | have control, you have agency over areas of your life, that agency itself is incredibly

00:13:26.240 | beneficial regardless of the details of what exactly you're doing with it.

00:13:29.440 | So, there's a lot of different science floating around underneath and supporting up the notion

00:13:34.160 | of the deep life.

00:13:35.760 | I know you've said that you tell people, "Imagine that life that you want, where you are, what

00:13:40.800 | you're doing and work backwards to make that a reality."

00:13:43.520 | I think you've called it lifestyle-centric career planning.

00:13:46.240 | How do you think people put that into place?

00:13:48.800 | Is it something that anyone can do at any point in their career?

00:13:51.680 | Yeah.

00:13:53.200 | I think it's important that you refresh this exercise.

00:13:56.320 | I turned 40 two days after recording this.

00:14:00.400 | And to me, turning 40 is a great milestone to go through this exercise again.

00:14:05.760 | You go through it when you're leaving school and then a lot of people go through it again

00:14:10.480 | in your late 20s.

00:14:11.520 | Once you actually have some momentum going and some sense of what's happening, what your

00:14:16.480 | opportunities are, then you want to redirect.

00:14:18.160 | And then I think 40 is another time to do it.

00:14:20.480 | Now, here's the key about lifestyle-centric career - well, I call it lifestyle-centric

00:14:23.520 | career planning, but it could really just be lifestyle-centric planning.

00:14:25.920 | It's not just about your job.

00:14:27.520 | The key to this is trying to work backwards from almost a sense memory of the lifestyle.

00:14:33.920 | What type of place do you live?

00:14:35.360 | What is your day like?

00:14:36.560 | Are you in the countryside and it's sun dappled and in the evening, some friends are gathering

00:14:42.720 | outside in a picnic table under cafe lights?

00:14:45.200 | Or is it a city and it's hard charging and you're making moves?

00:14:48.240 | You really want to get a sense memory of this ideal lifestyle that you can see and you can

00:14:54.400 | smell and you taste.

00:14:55.680 | The hard part is you don't want specifics about, for example, what you do for work.

00:15:02.560 | So, I think where people get tripped up is they say, "Okay, well, I want to imagine what

00:15:06.880 | job would make me really happy."

00:15:09.440 | And the magic of lifestyle-centric career planning is you go for what lifestyle makes

00:15:12.960 | you happy and then you work backwards to say, "What could I do to get there?"

00:15:16.960 | And it unlocks.

00:15:17.840 | That's when you're thinking through that exercise, "How do I get to that lifestyle?"

00:15:20.640 | So, you start thinking through what type of job might make that possible.

00:15:24.320 | So, you actually want the vision of the lifestyle to inform your professional choices for it.

00:15:30.720 | And I think it's a lot different than how a lot of people do it, which is instead to

00:15:33.440 | try to navel gaze and figure out through reflection, "This is the job I want.

00:15:37.440 | And then how do I make that happen?"

00:15:38.800 | I actually think that can be short-sighted and you get too focused on the job you want.

00:15:43.120 | A, people are terrible at predicting what the actual on-the-ground reality will be of

00:15:47.440 | a given job.

00:15:48.400 | And B, when you're focused too much on just the details of the job, you're allowing all

00:15:52.960 | the other aspects of your lifestyle to be ungrounded and fall into place somewhat arbitrarily.

00:15:57.120 | And they're almost certainly going to fall into a configuration that doesn't resonate.

00:15:59.840 | You might end up unhappy.

00:16:00.880 | So, it's this weird conflicting demand of clarity of what your life is like without

00:16:06.960 | any clarity or specifics at all about exactly what allows that life.

00:16:10.880 | That's what you work backwards to figure out.

00:16:12.720 | I don't know if you're familiar with this concept.

00:16:14.800 | I think it's Japanese of "Ikigai", where it's like what you're good at, what you love,

00:16:18.880 | what the world needs, what you can get paid for.

00:16:21.440 | When I hear what you're saying, I wonder, "How much does it matter what you love doing

00:16:26.800 | professionally as much as how much does what you do professionally allow you to live the

00:16:31.520 | life you love?"

00:16:32.400 | People often say, "Find the thing you're passionate about.

00:16:34.480 | Make it your job."

00:16:35.200 | Do you think that's just overused advice for people and that they could probably be

00:16:39.440 | happy with many jobs?

00:16:41.280 | Yeah.

00:16:41.680 | If they live a life they love?

00:16:43.200 | Yes.

00:16:43.520 | I think the latter is true.

00:16:44.880 | I wrote a whole book about that called "So Good They Can't Ignore You" where the entire

00:16:49.760 | premise was to push back on the idea that follow your passion is the most effective

00:16:55.360 | advice if your goal is to end up passionate about your life and what you do.

00:16:58.720 | And the premise of that book is if you study more closely, people who really do love their

00:17:03.920 | jobs and love their lives, nine times out of ten, they did not start with a clear vision

00:17:10.080 | of their professional life that they then pursued and then once achieved, felt that

00:17:14.800 | passion.

00:17:15.280 | Actually, the passion was emergent as their professional life unfolded and their professional

00:17:19.680 | life often unfolded in directions that they did not predict in advance.

00:17:24.640 | And so, I think this notion that we have an ingrained, innate passion.

00:17:29.680 | So, we're wired for a certain type of job.

00:17:32.160 | And to unlock that feeling of passion, you have to find that job.

00:17:37.040 | I think that construction, which in the American context, I did the research on this, is relatively

00:17:42.560 | recent.

00:17:42.960 | You don't find the phrase "follow your passion" in any professional context really

00:17:47.040 | till the late 1980s, early 1990s.

00:17:49.120 | It's a relatively new concept.

00:17:50.720 | I think it's actually a dangerous construction.

00:17:52.560 | What you want to do is not follow your passion, but follow the goal of being passionate about

00:17:57.040 | your life.

00:17:57.440 | And I think that's a much more complicated endeavor than just having this lightning bolt

00:18:02.560 | clarity when you're 19 that whatever, I'm meant to be a social media brand manager for

00:18:07.920 | an athletic wear company.

00:18:09.200 | And if I can just go get that job, I'm going to be happy.

00:18:11.360 | It's kind of naive.

00:18:12.000 | It's like a Disney tale version of life satisfaction.

00:18:15.760 | The reality is more interesting, but it's also more complicated.

00:18:18.160 | Well, I can tell you when I was coming out of college, I thought, "Oh, I don't know

00:18:22.080 | what I want to do, but it sounds like the best job is to be an investment banker."

00:18:25.360 | And I now, I don't know, as a creator making podcasts, couldn't be farther from that.

00:18:29.840 | And funny enough, I think mine also started May 2020 during COVID.

00:18:33.200 | So, I don't think you can predict that path.

00:18:35.360 | So, I'm definitely a fan of working on things you enjoy, but not trying to presume that

00:18:40.640 | you can figure out what it is in advance.

00:18:42.320 | It explains why I ended up a professor.

00:18:45.360 | But I got there doing lifestyle-centric career planning when I was trying to figure out coming

00:18:50.000 | out of college, what do I want to do?

00:18:53.040 | It was a lifestyle image.

00:18:54.160 | And there's this lifestyle image where autonomy, more control over my time, sort of intellectualism.

00:19:00.800 | I had a pretty clear image of the house.

00:19:02.960 | It's not so big, but there's interesting people coming over to the backyard.

00:19:07.040 | And that really resonated.

00:19:08.320 | I had a job offer from Microsoft and I had grad school acceptances.

00:19:12.480 | And that was the thinking that led me towards grad school.

00:19:16.640 | Not, "I'm super passionate.

00:19:18.880 | I have to be doing theoretical computer science theory."

00:19:20.960 | I liked it, but I also liked the stuff I'd be doing at Microsoft.

00:19:23.680 | It was, "That job out in Redmond is going to be much less autonomous.

00:19:29.440 | My schedule is going to be much less mine.

00:19:31.360 | It's going to be much more driven."

00:19:32.960 | That lifestyle, forget the specifics of the work, that lifestyle doesn't resonate.

00:19:37.360 | And so, then I went over towards grad school and said, "We'll figure out what happens next,

00:19:40.400 | next."

00:19:40.960 | And so, anyway, just to use that as a concrete example of letting the lifestyle pull you

00:19:45.120 | forward.

00:19:45.360 | Ultimately, the life you live, what your day-to-day life is like, is what is going to generate

00:19:50.080 | your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with life.

00:19:52.480 | Most jobs, no matter what the content is, 80% of it is not going to be the specific

00:19:56.880 | activity being exciting.

00:19:58.000 | You have to answer this email and pay this invoice.

00:20:00.160 | So, what really determines your day-to-day satisfaction is the actual full experience,

00:20:05.200 | subjective structure of your day.

00:20:07.600 | No content of your work can make a day-to-day existence that's largely out of line with

00:20:12.000 | what really resonates with you, what really matches with what you want your life to be

00:20:15.280 | like.

00:20:15.680 | No specific content of work in the long run can save you from that mismatch.

00:20:19.520 | It's the famous canard.

00:20:20.400 | No matter how great your job is, if there's a two-hour commute, you're going to be miserable.

00:20:23.680 | This is that writ large.

00:20:25.440 | I want to jump into that work moment.

00:20:26.960 | But you mentioned what I think was the brief quote that I've heard you share before from

00:20:30.400 | Steve Martin.

00:20:31.200 | And I just want you to reintroduce us to that because when I first heard it through you,

00:20:35.680 | it had a big impact on my life.

00:20:37.040 | And I know it was an early big impact on your life.

00:20:39.840 | So, the actual quote came from an interview that Steve Martin did about his memoir Born

00:20:46.000 | Standing Up, which I actually just reread last month.

00:20:47.840 | And I highly recommend it.

00:20:48.880 | It's a professional memoir, only focused on how Steve Martin's career took off.

00:20:54.720 | So, it's just really focused on his career.

00:20:56.720 | It's a great encapsulation of how someone does something innovative.

00:20:59.520 | So, he was doing an interview about that book, Born Standing Up.

00:21:02.080 | It was on Charlie Rose.

00:21:03.120 | And Charlie asked him about career advice.

00:21:06.240 | And Martin said, and I'm only slightly paraphrasing here.

00:21:09.200 | He's like, "I always give the same advice and it's never what people want to hear.

00:21:13.840 | What they want to hear is here's the secret to getting an agent.

00:21:18.400 | Here's the secret to getting attention among when other people are trying to do it."

00:21:22.640 | He's like, "But what I always tell them is the same thing.

00:21:24.480 | Be so good they can't ignore you.

00:21:28.160 | If you do that, all the other good things will come."

00:21:30.320 | And that was really important to me, that advice.

00:21:34.160 | I was probably a third year doctoral student at MIT at the time.

00:21:38.800 | And it clarified a lot for me.

00:21:40.960 | I was a writer.

00:21:41.520 | I'd written two books at the time and was working on a third.

00:21:44.720 | And it just clarified so much for me.

00:21:46.880 | Because I still had this sort of entrepreneurial hack culture mindset of the way I'm going to

00:21:53.440 | break out in academia is you got to figure out the right topics that no one else knows.

00:21:57.840 | And market it well and hit a topic that's really cool.

00:22:00.880 | And your books, it's all about getting this marketing plan.

00:22:03.440 | And Martin's advice is slice through that, right?

00:22:05.920 | Like a warm knife through butter.

00:22:08.960 | No, no, no.

00:22:09.440 | You got to just do great stuff.

00:22:10.800 | The other stuff will work it out.

00:22:12.320 | So, that quote was so influential that I mentioned it before in the context of a book I ended up

00:22:16.560 | writing where I actually called the book "So Good They Can't Ignore You."

00:22:20.320 | And that was just a direct quote from that Steve Martin line, which has been a guiding light to

00:22:25.360 | what I've been doing in my career from here on out.

00:22:27.360 | So, maybe we can combine that with lifestyle-centric career planning.

00:22:30.080 | Figure out your lifestyle, work backwards.

00:22:32.720 | "Okay, what can I do for work that's going to get me near that lifestyle?"

00:22:35.280 | Then once you've figured out that work, use Martin's advice.

00:22:38.560 | Aim to be so good you can't be ignored.

00:22:40.240 | Because that's going to unlock more and more leverage, more and more opportunities,

00:22:43.680 | more and more interesting angles you never would have thought about before.

00:22:46.720 | Skill is your best weapon when it comes to trying to fight back on "we" and build

00:22:53.760 | a really cool life.

00:22:54.800 | Continually trying to be good is probably the most useful thing you can do to keep

00:22:58.160 | the options for your life to be cool as interesting as possible.

00:23:01.760 | I was having a conversation with Dan Pink, who you might be familiar with.

00:23:05.360 | And he talks about mastery being one of the biggest motivating factors for people.

00:23:10.080 | I think of what Steve Martin said, and I think of it a little bit as mastery,

00:23:13.520 | is find this thing that you can become incredible at and whatever it is can excite you.

00:23:19.600 | It doesn't have to be the thing you thought you were the most excited about.

00:23:22.320 | But that process of honing a skill.

00:23:24.800 | If you asked me two years ago whether the process of honing the skill of preparing and

00:23:29.280 | researching and planning and conducting interviews would be something that was high on my list,

00:23:33.600 | I never would have put it in the top 20.

00:23:35.520 | And I get so much satisfaction from doing that.

00:23:37.680 | Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be.

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00:24:44.560 | That's D-R-I-Z-Z-L-Y.com today.

00:24:48.640 | Must be 21 plus, not available in all locations.

00:24:51.600 | The other thing you said that made me laugh is that

00:24:55.040 | the show is called All The Hacks and I struggle with the name all the time

00:24:59.440 | because a lot of what I do in my own life is,

00:25:02.960 | "Oh, you have to really put in the work to make this possible."

00:25:05.760 | It's not just there's a trick here and there.

00:25:07.520 | So in many cases, most of the hacks that we end up talking about are

00:25:10.560 | these massive fundamental mindset shifts or changes to your routine.

00:25:14.960 | They're not little tricks and twists.

00:25:16.480 | So I keep coming back to, "Gosh, is that the right name?"

00:25:19.520 | A lot of people see that.

00:25:20.800 | And even if the message isn't there is a trick to fix everything in five minutes,

00:25:26.080 | the story brings people in.

00:25:27.440 | And if I can convince them that maybe life isn't necessarily about just little tricks and hacks,

00:25:31.600 | but bigger fundamental shifts, then maybe the name does its purpose.

00:25:34.960 | I share your situation because my longstanding...

00:25:38.240 | Originally just a blog that I started in 2007 and now also primarily an email newsletter

00:25:44.000 | is called Study Hacks.

00:25:45.440 | Because when I first was writing, I was writing student advice books.

00:25:48.720 | And my longstanding newsletter has the word hacks in it.

00:25:50.800 | And I have the same feeling about it because hacks can mean two different things.

00:25:54.800 | The positive aspect that you're talking about, I think,

00:25:57.600 | is coming at something fresh with intention.

00:25:59.840 | So instead of just assuming, "Hey, what can I do here?"

00:26:02.720 | I just have to...

00:26:03.600 | In my old context, studying, studying,

00:26:06.240 | all that matters is how many hours you put at it.

00:26:08.720 | And the good aspect of that hack mentality is like, "Well, wait a second.

00:26:11.680 | Let's question assumptions here.

00:26:13.280 | What does studying mean?

00:26:15.600 | What am I really trying to do?

00:26:16.560 | I'm trying to prepare for this type of test.

00:26:18.240 | Well, what type of activities could I do to prepare?"

00:26:20.400 | You know what?

00:26:20.880 | These things that everyone else is doing in the library are pretty ineffective.

00:26:24.160 | But if I instead did active recall on index cards and did it first thing in the morning

00:26:29.280 | in a novel location, I could cut this time down by a factor of four,

00:26:34.400 | which I think is a really positive connotation to hacks,

00:26:37.680 | which is questioning assumptions and saying, "Am I really doing this the best way?

00:26:42.800 | Have I really thought this through?"

00:26:43.680 | So you don't just get stuck.

00:26:45.520 | The negative interpretation, I think, is...

00:26:48.560 | When I was saying entrepreneur hacks, there was a period where there was a culture.

00:26:51.920 | I used to call it checklist entrepreneurship.

00:26:54.560 | So maybe this sounds familiar.

00:26:56.080 | Like the early blogging culture, where there's this sense where

00:26:59.600 | you could have a successful blog or something like this, be a successful content marketer.

00:27:03.680 | If you just had the right checklist, the right information.

00:27:06.640 | Do this and this and this and this.

00:27:07.920 | And if you just went down the list and did all the things,

00:27:10.160 | you would have all of this success.

00:27:11.600 | That checklist entrepreneurship that was early on.

00:27:14.240 | And pretty quickly, people found out, "Oh, that's not enough.

00:27:17.600 | It's not enough.

00:27:18.480 | How many words do I publish?

00:27:19.840 | And how do I set up my funnel?

00:27:21.280 | I actually have to write something that's interesting.

00:27:23.360 | And that's going to take some craft."

00:27:24.800 | That was what was tripping me up early in my academic career was

00:27:27.680 | I was trying to hack around the marketing of my work.

00:27:31.040 | I was trying to hack around if you just got the right topic.

00:27:33.600 | It's so easy to fall in love with this idea of everyone else is just conventional.

00:27:37.600 | And just by being more bold, I'll be able to immediately have success.

00:27:41.600 | And in the end, it turns out, no, you still have to do really hard work in the end.

00:27:45.680 | So, I'm with you.

00:27:46.560 | My work is associated with the word hack to this day, proudly so.

00:27:49.440 | Because when you're questioning, "Why are we doing it this way?"

00:27:53.360 | I think there's a lot of value in it.

00:27:54.800 | And then where it becomes a problem is where people leave out the second piece of,

00:27:57.680 | "Okay, anything really important is still going to require a lot of hard work."

00:28:01.120 | That's why I love travel so much is that

00:28:03.680 | part of what gives me the ability to question so many assumptions is that

00:28:07.920 | I've been fortunate to spend a lot of my free time traveling.

00:28:11.120 | And you just see all these people doing different things in different ways all over the world.

00:28:14.560 | I think there's probably 20 or 30 different ways to count money.

00:28:17.920 | And there's like cool videos on YouTube where you watch them and you watch people count money.

00:28:21.360 | And I was like, "Oh, interesting."

00:28:22.560 | And the other day, someone showed me how in Korea, they count numbers on your hand.

00:28:27.600 | And they start with an open hand and they count in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

00:28:31.920 | and then they go out 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and you end up with a whole hand.

00:28:34.960 | And then you could just keep repeating it.

00:28:36.480 | And I was like, "Oh my gosh. I've been counting with my hand in a less efficient way my whole

00:28:41.200 | life." And I just love that ability to see how other people do things can open you up to

00:28:46.720 | how you might be able to do things better.

00:28:49.360 | I'm going to use that to jump into talking a little bit about deep work,

00:28:52.880 | because that was my first exposure to your writing.

00:28:55.840 | I learned that if I can concentrate and focus on things, that's a skill that people can learn.

00:29:00.880 | But for people who haven't read the book,

00:29:02.480 | first off, you probably should because we're not going to do it justice.

00:29:05.280 | But could you talk a little bit about

00:29:07.200 | what you learned that led to that book and how people can work on that skill?

00:29:10.720 | I think what people underestimate is the cost of context shifting.

00:29:16.000 | This is the scientific underpinning of deep work, which is this argument that

00:29:21.600 | concentrating on one challenging thing for a long period of time is a very important activity.

00:29:26.240 | And you should practice it and you should spend a lot of time doing it.

00:29:28.720 | It's a huge competitive advantage.

00:29:30.400 | If you do anything that requires your mind to make a living.

00:29:33.360 | And the reason why it's so effective is when you are focusing on one thing

00:29:38.640 | without distraction, so you're not flipping back and forth.

00:29:43.280 | You're not glancing at your phone.

00:29:44.800 | You're not jumping off and on on Slack.

00:29:46.640 | You're avoiding cognitive context shifts,

00:29:50.240 | which are a productivity poison that most people don't realize that they are ingesting.

00:29:55.600 | Because every time you take your attention off of your primary target

00:29:58.480 | and switch it over to something else, even if it's brief,

00:30:01.840 | even if it's just like got a glance at my inbox,

00:30:05.600 | because I'm waiting to hear back from someone.

00:30:07.280 | We're trying to set up a meeting, even if it's 30 seconds.

00:30:10.000 | When you bring your attention back to that primary hard activity, that little switch

00:30:16.240 | has a massive cognitive impact.

00:30:19.120 | It degrades your cognitive capacity for a non-trivial amount of time going forward.

00:30:23.600 | Because if you look actually under the covers in the neurons of your brain,

00:30:27.040 | what happens?

00:30:27.600 | It sees the inbox.

00:30:28.480 | It sees all of these highly salient pieces of information,

00:30:31.200 | different than what you're working on.

00:30:32.720 | Many of them coming from individuals, from bosses, from clients.

00:30:36.640 | So, there's this whole social situation to it.

00:30:40.160 | You don't want to keep your tribe members

00:30:42.960 | waiting in a Paleolithic evolutionary tour descent.

00:30:45.280 | So, it gets a lot of attention.

00:30:46.960 | You're beginning a very messy process in your brain where certain networks are being amplified,

00:30:51.920 | other semantic neural networks are being inhibited.

00:30:53.840 | So, you begin this big process that takes five or 10 minutes to complete,

00:30:57.040 | but then you abort it almost immediately to try to go back to the original thing.

00:31:00.720 | Now, you have a collision.

00:31:01.760 | Unrelated networks were beginning to be amplified.

00:31:04.720 | Related networks were beginning to be inhibited.

00:31:06.960 | Now, these things are clashing with each other.

00:31:09.440 | The way that actually feels subjectively is fuzzy thinking, resistance, a powerful urge to just,

00:31:17.440 | you know what, screw it.

00:31:19.280 | Like, I got to stop working on this hard thing.

00:31:20.800 | Let's just do email, right?

00:31:22.400 | And so, what most knowledge workers are doing without realizing it is that they are

00:31:25.680 | persistently putting themselves into the state of reduced cognitive capacity,

00:31:29.840 | because every five to six minutes, on average, they have to check an inbox,

00:31:32.560 | check Slack, see what's going on email, see what's going on my phone.

00:31:34.640 | And they think they're single tasking because they don't literally have two

00:31:37.440 | things open at the same time.

00:31:38.960 | They're not trying to talk on the phone while they write.

00:31:40.720 | They think they're single tasking.

00:31:42.160 | But these quick checks every five or six minutes are a neuronal disaster.

00:31:46.480 | And you're working at a fraction of your cognitive capacity.

00:31:50.480 | The work you're producing is worse.

00:31:52.480 | The time it takes to produce it is longer.

00:31:55.440 | And you get to a mental exhaustion where you just give up and go on social media and email

00:32:00.240 | much quicker because your brain can't take it.

00:32:02.400 | It cries "uncle" by whatever, lunchtime, one o'clock, two o'clock.

00:32:06.800 | And so, we don't realize, as people who use our brains to make a living,

00:32:10.560 | that we are giving ourselves this huge handicap.

00:32:14.640 | We are literally making ourselves much dumber.

00:32:17.040 | And it's an unforced error.

00:32:18.160 | So, deep work is basically saying, don't do that.

00:32:21.200 | If you're going to work on something hard, just do that for an hour.

00:32:24.960 | Do it for 90 minutes with no context shifts.

00:32:27.440 | It feels like a superpower, not because it makes you much smarter,

00:32:30.640 | but it makes you avoid the things that's making everyone else much dumber.

00:32:34.800 | So, by comparison, the one-eyed man is a king in the kingdom of the blind or

00:32:39.680 | however that saying goes.

00:32:40.800 | That's really what happens.

00:32:41.920 | If you are not context shifting, you feel like you're the Bradley Cooper character

00:32:46.480 | in Limitless and everyone else is slamming back some shots during the workday.

00:32:52.400 | I get why it's important, but I wonder if you've had any

00:32:54.960 | experiences or learnings to help people fight that discomfort.

00:32:59.440 | One way I've tried is just turn on Do Not Disturb.

00:33:02.480 | I love the features that Apple rolled out where you can basically hide all

00:33:05.840 | of these notifications so you don't see them.

00:33:07.520 | But you still have this urge where you're like, "I wonder what happened."

00:33:12.320 | Is there any tips to try to fight that and get comfortable with it?

00:33:15.680 | Well, you got to do two things.

00:33:18.080 | You have to time block and you have to train.

00:33:19.760 | The time blocking is I'm not just going to wing it.

00:33:23.920 | As I go through my workday, I'm not just going to say, "What do I want to work on next?

00:33:27.520 | What am I in the mood to work on?"

00:33:28.880 | You're always going to lose that battle.

00:33:30.320 | You'll be like, "Well, I got to check this."

00:33:31.680 | And there's all these urgent things.

00:33:32.560 | So, time blocking is you give every minute of your day a plan.

00:33:34.880 | So, during this time, I'm working on this thing.

00:33:37.680 | And then during this time, I'm doing email.

00:33:39.440 | I'm not in the email time right now.

00:33:41.040 | I don't do email during this block.

00:33:42.560 | This block is specifically put aside for writing this article.

00:33:45.520 | So, that's what I'm doing.

00:33:46.720 | And if I stop, I'm failing on my plan.

00:33:49.200 | You make the stakes clear.

00:33:50.720 | Then you actually have to train your ability to concentrate so you can actually

00:33:54.320 | get through those blocks without it being a horrific experience.

00:33:57.680 | And this is something people miss, the trainability of concentration.

00:34:02.480 | And the reason why that's important is if you don't realize that, here's what happens.

00:34:06.240 | You just hear the first part of what I say.

00:34:08.240 | "Okay, I'm going to put aside two hours.

00:34:10.320 | I'm going to focus.

00:34:11.200 | No email, no social media, no Slack."

00:34:14.240 | If you have not trained your ability to concentrate, you're going to make it

00:34:17.840 | 20 minutes into that two hours and it's going to be just that friction and the boredom,

00:34:24.320 | your concentration, you'll just break down because your brain doesn't know how to do it.

00:34:28.000 | Right?

00:34:28.240 | It's the physical equivalent of saying, "I want to be a runner.

00:34:31.920 | All right, I'm going to go run 15 miles."

00:34:34.240 | And after you get half a mile, you're down on your knees huffing and puffing, right?

00:34:38.240 | Because you haven't trained.

00:34:39.520 | The difference is for the aspiring runner, they're like, "Okay, of course, I didn't make

00:34:43.280 | it very far.

00:34:43.680 | I haven't been training."

00:34:44.800 | Right?

00:34:45.280 | But when it comes to focus, because people don't realize it's trainable, they have the

00:34:48.880 | wrong conclusion, which is, "Well, maybe I'm just not good at concentrating."

00:34:52.800 | And they stop trying.

00:34:53.520 | So, knowing it's trainable is critical so that you don't give up when it's hard at first.

00:34:59.440 | And training is actually not that hard.

00:35:00.880 | I'll mention two really quick things you can do.

00:35:03.200 | One is boredom exposure therapy.

00:35:05.360 | So, this is where you, on a regular basis, let's say once or twice a day, give yourself

00:35:11.600 | small controlled doses of boredom.

00:35:14.880 | And all that really means is don't use your phone.

00:35:16.720 | So, if you go to the pharmacy, "Okay, I have to wait in line to get my prescription.

00:35:21.120 | I'm not going to check my phone while I'm in line."

00:35:23.280 | Or, "I'm getting gas.

00:35:24.400 | You know what?

00:35:25.440 | I'm just going to fill up my car with gas and not look at my phone and just stare at

00:35:30.160 | that incredibly expensive price that's piling up and get worried about it," or whatever.

00:35:34.560 | You do this a couple times a day on a regular basis.

00:35:36.640 | Once a week, do a more extended period of boredom.

00:35:38.800 | So, go for a fair-sized walk without your phone.

00:35:40.880 | The reason why you do this is so that your brain gets used to the ideas that sometimes

00:35:46.800 | when you're bored, you don't get novel stimuli.

00:35:49.040 | Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.

00:35:51.440 | That's critical.

00:35:52.080 | So, when it comes time to actually do deep work, which by definition is boring because

00:35:56.240 | there's not a lot of novel stimuli.

00:35:57.520 | You're doing just one thing.

00:35:58.560 | Your brain will tolerate it.

00:36:00.720 | If at every instance, when you get the slightest hint of boredom, you always pull out that

00:36:04.960 | phone, your brain's just going to form a Pavlovian connection that says, "We always get shiny

00:36:08.720 | treats when we're bored.

00:36:09.760 | There's no way we're going to tolerate sitting here for 90 minutes just looking at one thing."

00:36:13.280 | So, boredom exposure therapy is important.

00:36:15.360 | The second thing you can do is interval training.

00:36:17.280 | Literally get a timer.

00:36:20.000 | For 20 minutes, I'm going to concentrate hard on doing this one thing.

00:36:24.000 | If I break my concentration and look at something else, I have to stop and restart the timer.

00:36:28.080 | You will follow through because you don't want to embarrass yourself.

00:36:32.080 | It's only 20 minutes.

00:36:33.040 | You see a finish line.

00:36:34.080 | Okay, seven more minutes and we're done.

00:36:35.600 | I can keep focusing.

00:36:36.720 | And you just do that until it's comfortable and you add 10 minutes.

00:36:39.920 | And then you do that new duration until it's comfortable and you add 10 minutes.

00:36:43.200 | Do this in three or four months of this, you'll be able to lock in for 90 minutes to two hours

00:36:48.960 | without an unbearable friction.

00:36:50.240 | So, those are two examples of things you can do to actually get better at holding your

00:36:53.520 | attention on one particular target.

00:36:55.280 | Is that 90 to 120 minutes?

00:36:58.320 | Is that a good cap for you can't do this for eight hours straight?

00:37:01.760 | I think two hours is a good goal.

00:37:04.160 | So, where the 90 minutes came from is I first started using that technique when I was advising

00:37:09.120 | students.

00:37:09.520 | So, my first few books were aimed at students and I was helping them with their focus.

00:37:14.560 | And students have terrible focus, especially once the era of smartphones and ubiquitous

00:37:19.760 | wireless internet came along.

00:37:20.800 | I mean, they had terrible focus.

00:37:22.400 | And the way they studied was just awful.

00:37:24.560 | Back then, it was GChat and texting.

00:37:26.400 | They would be doing this simultaneously while they're studying.

00:37:28.560 | My goal with them was always to get them the 90 minutes.

00:37:30.880 | I could do it in a semester, like a three months period.

00:37:34.720 | I could get them up to about 90 minutes.

00:37:36.240 | I think two hours is really good.

00:37:37.600 | If you can go two hours and you take a break and then maybe do another two hours later

00:37:40.800 | in the day, you're going to be in the top 25 percentile of concentrators and you can

00:37:45.760 | do a lot of damage with that.

00:37:47.120 | It reminds me, I took this scrum class where I was being trained to be a scrum product

00:37:52.000 | owner.

00:37:52.400 | And the instructor was sharing that they were doing this test where they shorten the work

00:37:57.600 | week first by half a day, by another half a day, and by half a day increments.

00:38:01.520 | And they found that people could eventually become equally as productive at two and a

00:38:06.880 | half days as they were at five.

00:38:08.800 | And then after two and a half, it fell apart.

00:38:10.480 | You couldn't get to two or one and a half.

00:38:12.560 | And I read something you wrote about slow productivity, which really aligned with that,

00:38:16.640 | which is "Wow, if you can be very productive in smaller periods of time, then you have

00:38:20.800 | other time throughout the week to live a more fulfilling life.

00:38:24.080 | And the net result is better both for work and not."

00:38:27.280 | I think that's somewhat in line with what you talk about with slow productivity.

00:38:30.720 | But I'm curious, how does that practically work in the world?

00:38:34.560 | And is it even possible?

00:38:35.760 | Or is it more an idea that seems amazing, but would be hard to actually execute in our

00:38:41.520 | modern workplace?

00:38:42.560 | It's not impossible.

00:38:43.520 | Part of it is just pulling apart work that you're mixing together.

00:38:48.960 | So everything still gets done, but you're pulling it apart.

00:38:52.560 | So part of it is that easy.

00:38:54.240 | Just saying "When I'm working on this, I'm just working on this.

00:38:56.960 | And when I'm doing communication, email and Slack, I'm just doing communication.

00:39:00.240 | I'm just doing email and Slack."

00:39:01.280 | So just pulling apart the stuff you had muddied together, all the same things happen.

00:39:05.680 | All the same people get email replies, all the work gets done, but the work gets done

00:39:10.720 | faster and at a higher level of quality because you avoid the context shift.

00:39:13.360 | So part of this is just pulling apart stuff that we are mushing together.

00:39:17.680 | There's a bigger challenge, I think, in the world of work, however.

00:39:21.040 | I do apologize that my answer to every question is I wrote a book on this.

00:39:24.160 | This is what happens after you've been writing books for a long time.

00:39:26.480 | But the most recent book I wrote was called "A World Without Email".

00:39:29.600 | And it asked this question of how do we get to this place where especially office work

00:39:33.920 | or knowledge work is so frenetic with so much email and Slack and Zoom.

00:39:38.160 | And we're always running around coordinating and talking about work.

00:39:41.200 | And it's so hard to actually have time left over to work.

00:39:44.320 | How do we get there?

00:39:44.880 | And what should we do about it?

00:39:46.160 | And the premise of that book was we got there accidentally.

00:39:50.240 | In knowledge work, we made this critical decision that productivity should be

00:39:55.120 | personal.

00:39:55.600 | So it's just up to you to figure out how you're going to organize all your work.

00:39:59.600 | You got to read David Allen.

00:40:00.640 | You got to go to 43 folders.

00:40:01.920 | That's all on you.

00:40:02.720 | And in a world where everyone is responsible for their own productivity, we fell into this

00:40:08.000 | least common denominator, optimally flexible, optimally easy way of collaborating,

00:40:14.000 | which I call the hyperactive high fine, which is just back and forth unstructured messaging.

00:40:18.880 | Grab people as you need them, have this ongoing asynchronous back and forth conversation

00:40:22.960 | happening with everyone at all times.

00:40:24.480 | At first, it was just email.

00:40:25.680 | And now we have Slack and Teams, and it's all the same thing.

00:40:28.080 | Just say, what about this?

00:40:28.960 | You have this.

00:40:29.360 | What's going on over here?

00:40:30.320 | And that hyperactive hive mind mode of collaboration, that's probably the biggest enemy

00:40:35.680 | to undistracted focus because it demands a lot of attention.

00:40:41.040 | If there's 15 different things you're involved in, streams of conversation where things are

00:40:46.160 | trying to be figured out and it's asynchronous, you never know when the next chat is going to

00:40:49.760 | come in or the next response is going to come in.

00:40:51.680 | It's really hard to disentangle from checking those channels because if you go away for

00:40:56.240 | three hours, now there's 15 conversations that have to wait for three hours, and that

00:41:00.480 | might not be acceptable because there maybe has to be five back and forth messages required

00:41:05.520 | to figure out what time we're meeting tomorrow.

00:41:07.440 | And so, we can't wait three hours between each message, or we'll never get to a decision.

00:41:10.960 | So, probably the largest systemic enemy to this deeper, more sequential, slower way of

00:41:16.160 | working is this hyperactive hive mind mode of collaboration that demands constant attention

00:41:19.920 | to communication channels.

00:41:20.800 | So, my argument is fixing that is going to have a huge impact.

00:41:25.360 | But even before we fix that, just time blocking and pulling apart.

00:41:29.680 | When I do this, I'm doing this.

00:41:30.960 | When I communicate, I communicate.

00:41:32.400 | And I have to apologize, I'll apologize.

00:41:34.240 | But I'm not mixing those two things together.

00:41:36.640 | Just making that declaration is going to make you a lot more effective.

00:41:39.680 | I just thought of some combo of trying to solve that in a work environment that I might

00:41:44.160 | experiment with, which is putting something public on your calendar that's like

00:41:48.400 | letting people know that this is the time that we can collaborate to schedule things

00:41:52.720 | or communicate.

00:41:53.760 | So, not just time blocking for yourself, but time blocking for others.

00:41:58.480 | Because like you said, sometimes you need five or six back and forth.

00:42:01.440 | But if you can tell someone, "Hey, from 3 to 4pm, I'm available for five to six back

00:42:05.760 | and forth."

00:42:06.160 | Maybe people can work around each other's schedules a little better and get into deep

00:42:10.400 | work more.

00:42:11.120 | Yeah.

00:42:11.360 | Not to overstep, but that is one of the easiest things that people can do that has the biggest

00:42:16.000 | difference is office hours.

00:42:18.240 | And there are companies that do this and that they write about it.

00:42:20.960 | But here are the times in which every day, my office door is open, my phone is on, my

00:42:28.080 | Slack is open, my inbox is open.

00:42:30.720 | If you have anything, any sort of interaction with me that requires more than a one message

00:42:37.040 | answer.

00:42:37.440 | So, anything with any interaction beyond just, "Can you remind me again when the meeting

00:42:42.480 | is next week?"

00:42:43.200 | So, if I can respond to it with one message, that's fine.

00:42:46.080 | I can wait till I next check my email.

00:42:47.200 | If it requires more than that, wait till my office hours.

00:42:49.920 | You wait till my office hours, and then I will go back and forth, we'll all go back

00:42:54.320 | and forth.

00:42:54.880 | And in that one hour period, we can get 15 different asynchronous conversations solved.

00:43:00.080 | It is a game changer.

00:43:01.760 | And it sounds like a simple thing and you worry like, "Oh, people will be annoyed that

00:43:04.800 | they have to wait till three when they could just get it off their plate now."

00:43:08.000 | They'll live.

00:43:08.640 | They don't really care that they have to wait to three.

00:43:10.560 | They just care that there's some way they know that they're going to get an answer,

00:43:13.200 | so they don't have to worry about it.

00:43:14.400 | But think about the mathematics here.

00:43:16.720 | Imagine you have 10 conversations that each are going to require 10 back and forth messages

00:43:23.920 | in order for you to resolve, just to make the numbers easier.

00:43:26.480 | That's 100 back and forth messages that have to happen.

00:43:29.360 | Now, imagine if this is happening with emails going back and forth, you can't wait that

00:43:33.440 | long before each of these replies because you have to keep the conversations going.

00:43:36.880 | So, maybe you check your inbox on average three times before you see each of these messages

00:43:41.760 | because you're waiting for them.

00:43:43.040 | That's 300 inbox checks that we have now associated with these 10 conversations.

00:43:48.560 | Now, imagine if instead, we put aside one hour of the day where you just boom, boom,

00:43:52.160 | boom, boom, boom, handled all 10 of those.

00:43:54.880 | You've taken 300 context shifts out of your week.

00:43:58.160 | That is a massive benefit to how much you can concentrate the value you're going to

00:44:04.080 | produce.

00:44:04.720 | All of that work still got done.

00:44:06.240 | All of that collaboration still happened.

00:44:07.680 | At worst case scenario, people have to wait a couple hours, but you have just become 5x

00:44:11.360 | more effective in terms of the actual underlying value you can produce.

00:44:15.040 | So, you came across a very simple idea that is really, really powerful.

00:44:19.200 | Is it most effective when the whole company adopts the same office hours?

00:44:23.280 | It's like, "Hey, we're all going to, as a company, solve these things from these two

00:44:27.040 | blocks of time every day."

00:44:28.640 | I've seen both.

00:44:29.520 | There's some argument that says you should have coordination of office hours so that

00:44:33.200 | you can basically have impromptu meetings.

00:44:35.520 | A bunch of people going back and forth.

00:44:37.040 | But in practice, often people's office hours are more specialized and that's fine.

00:44:41.040 | What it leads to is what I call a reverse meeting.

00:44:43.200 | So, instead of me being able to take three people and force all of you to come to me

00:44:50.400 | and spend an hour of your time.

00:44:52.480 | So, now we have four total people sacrificing an hour of their time so that we can discuss

00:44:56.960 | some issue.

00:44:57.680 | A reverse meeting is I go to each of your office hours to talk to you about this and

00:45:03.040 | figure it out.

00:45:03.840 | Yes, I had to spend more time, but the total impact on the company's time is much less

00:45:09.360 | because for everyone else, you just stop by their office hours and chat with them for

00:45:12.320 | five minutes.

00:45:12.880 | So, even if you're not all synchronized, reverse meetings makes that a lot more powerful.

00:45:18.160 | That's what one of the big solutions are for non-repeating, one-off ad hoc issues that

00:45:24.640 | need to be resolved.

00:45:25.760 | For any type of work that happens again and again, we produce a podcast episode every

00:45:30.080 | week.

00:45:30.320 | We put out this report to our clients once a month.

00:45:32.720 | Anything that happens again and again, you have to figure out a process.

00:45:36.400 | This is how this work unfolds.

00:45:38.160 | Here's when we talk about it, where the information goes, how the information moves back and forth.

00:45:42.880 | You have to come up with some sort of process for regularly occurring work that minimizes

00:45:47.600 | the number, and this I think is the key thing, minimizes the number of unscheduled messages

00:45:52.960 | that must be received and replied to get to done.

00:45:56.240 | So, you're not trying to minimize the total time investment.

00:45:59.440 | You're not trying to minimize the footprint on the schedule.

00:46:01.600 | What you're trying to minimize, is there a way to get this podcast episode out or there's

00:46:05.600 | report to clients that does not require the people involved to just keep checking their

00:46:10.320 | inbox and waiting for messages.

00:46:12.160 | Is it some sort of structure?

00:46:13.920 | This goes to this drop box by this time.

00:46:16.320 | There's a standing meeting where we go through these issues.

00:46:18.640 | We annotate report issues in Google Docs.

00:46:20.960 | At end of day Wednesday, whatever's in there, the designer can take however you want to

00:46:23.920 | figure it out.

00:46:24.480 | That I think is the goal for regularly occurring work.

00:46:28.000 | How can we get this done in a way that people do not have to be checking inboxes or chat

00:46:32.080 | channels for unscheduled messages to arrive to prompt them to do the next thing?

00:46:35.840 | I feel like I am ready to redo a few structures and processes specifically related to getting

00:46:41.520 | podcast episodes out.

00:46:42.720 | So, that covers a lot of the work I have to think about.

00:46:44.640 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.

00:46:49.920 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:46:52.720 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to

00:46:57.920 | allthehacks.com/deals.

00:46:58.800 | So, please consider supporting those who support us.

00:47:04.080 | I want to change gears a little bit and talk about not work.

00:47:07.040 | We talked about the deep life and how important it is to think about the things outside of

00:47:10.560 | work.

00:47:11.280 | You talk about high quality leisure time.

00:47:13.680 | How do you spend your free time in ways that adds the most value also?

00:47:18.000 | We work backwards.

00:47:18.880 | We're going to back up backwards in the high quality leisure.

00:47:21.280 | The reason why someone like me who talks about technology and culture and technology and

00:47:25.680 | work and how do I end up talking about leisure is because if you start with the issue of

00:47:31.840 | people spending more time than they think is useful or healthy scrolling, right?

00:47:36.960 | And this is really the big issue I think people have with their phones.

00:47:39.680 | Contrary to what we see in media criticism of things like social media, it's much less

00:47:44.000 | what they're seeing and it's much more how much time they're spending on it.

00:47:47.680 | This is people's main complaint is this slack jaw, just I just am tired and just scrolling

00:47:53.280 | and it's playing with my emotions.

00:47:54.720 | It just makes me unhappy.

00:47:55.920 | I don't want to just be doing this.

00:47:57.520 | How do you solve that problem?

00:47:58.560 | Well, one of the big things that turns up is that this doom scrolling or boredom scrolling

00:48:04.000 | or dopamine hacking or whatever you want to call it actually has a psychologically functional

00:48:09.600 | purpose.

00:48:10.080 | The reason why a lot of people do this is because it is an escape from some sort of

00:48:16.400 | existential void that is really uncomfortable.

00:48:19.600 | In other words, if you go up to someone and say, "Aha, I've solved your problem.

00:48:23.920 | I called all the heads of the social media companies.

00:48:26.320 | They've kicked you off all their platforms.

00:48:27.840 | You're not allowed to use your phone anymore."

00:48:29.680 | What happens is it's frightening for people.

00:48:33.200 | It's despairing for people to be faced with just me alone with my own thoughts.

00:48:37.200 | What do I actually do?

00:48:38.080 | What do I do with my time?

00:48:39.520 | It's what we often miss is that this is an escape that is functional for people.

00:48:42.880 | That's how I ended up talking about high-quality leisure is that if you don't like how much

00:48:46.000 | time you're looking at your phone, you have to build up the attractive alternative first.

00:48:50.800 | You have to have the thing that's more human, more compelling,

00:48:55.680 | that touches deeper parts of our humanity than just scrolling on screens does.

00:48:59.680 | That has to be in place first.

00:49:01.600 | And then it is much easier to walk away from excessive phone use because you have something

00:49:05.200 | else to do instead.

00:49:06.400 | And so, that's why I've been an advocate of high-quality leisure is you have to actually

00:49:10.800 | develop a really high-quality life outside of work that you enjoy and is challenging

00:49:16.480 | and disciplined and meaningful before you have any hope of spending less time looking

00:49:20.960 | at that glowing little screen.

00:49:22.160 | What are some high-quality leisure activities maybe for you or people you've talked to that

00:49:26.720 | can inspire us all?

00:49:28.400 | What makes an activity high-quality is that it's touching more the type of things that

00:49:32.880 | we expect as humans to fill our time.

00:49:35.280 | So, certainly, non-trivial analog, social interaction, things that require non-trivial

00:49:41.680 | sacrifice of time and energy.

00:49:42.960 | I'm spending time with other people.

00:49:44.640 | I'm doing things with other people.

00:49:46.400 | That is really important.

00:49:47.600 | Structured discipline activities that makes you more capable or a better person.

00:49:52.000 | This can be really rewarding.

00:49:53.360 | So, this is fitness training, getting in shape, picking up useful skills.

00:49:58.000 | You'll notice there's a certain circle of podcasters out there now that all really got

00:50:02.400 | into things like bow hunting or jujitsu at the same time.

00:50:06.080 | It's not coincidental.

00:50:07.440 | They're activities that are challenging but feel functional and they touch something deeper

00:50:12.720 | in our evolutionary past.

00:50:14.160 | I can capture my own food or defend myself.

00:50:17.600 | That could be really meaningful.

00:50:19.360 | Cultivating connoisseurship.

00:50:21.280 | So, I'm going to get really into, I don't know, coffee or movies and really build up

00:50:29.120 | a sophisticated understanding of what makes the good good and the not good not good.

00:50:33.600 | There's huge pleasure in that and connoisseurship.

00:50:36.000 | And when you're a cinephile, the pleasure you get out of seeing a beautifully crafted

00:50:40.000 | movie is really difficult to replicate.

00:50:42.560 | So, these are kind of the big categories.

00:50:44.080 | So, just to summarize is deep social connection, real sort of social community-type connection.

00:50:49.520 | Two, disciplined acquiring of what feels like useful, interesting skills.

00:50:55.040 | And then three, building up connoisseurship.

00:50:56.880 | Anything that falls in those three categories, it's much harder than scrolling, but it's

00:51:01.200 | no contest.

00:51:02.000 | When you're spending time doing that, it just feels.

00:51:06.000 | You just feel it in your bones.

00:51:08.320 | This is right.

00:51:09.680 | This makes me come alive as a person, even if I'm exhausted and sweating.

00:51:12.640 | This makes me come alive as a person in contrast to just the scrolling after scrolling on the

00:51:17.920 | screen tends to make us feel like we're closing down.

00:51:20.720 | Like something about our humanity is just being digitized and cybernetically subverted.

00:51:25.600 | People just feel it in their bones.

00:51:26.960 | And I ran this whole experiment for one of my books where I had 1600 people walk away

00:51:31.440 | from their screens for a month and very aggressively cultivate these new leisure activities.

00:51:36.800 | And it's just a report you got again and again.

00:51:39.200 | I forgot how much I enjoyed X or how meaningful Y has been.

00:51:43.520 | It was leaving Plato's cave.

00:51:46.560 | Oh my god, it's not just shadows on the wall.

00:51:49.360 | There's actual sunlight and that world is so much richer.

00:51:52.560 | When I heard you describe social media, not necessarily as the content, but the activity,

00:51:57.360 | it reminded me of binge watching a TV show.

00:51:59.920 | And then you use the cinephile example as okay, well, movies could actually be this

00:52:03.520 | high quality leisure.

00:52:04.640 | Do you think that habit of loving a show and watching an entire season at once could actually

00:52:11.600 | be high quality or does it end up falling prey to be more like social media?

00:52:16.560 | Yeah, it can go either way.

00:52:17.760 | I think it's a really good example.

00:52:19.040 | So, for someone who is a cinephile or really is interested in that particular art form,

00:52:23.040 | watching a great show on HBO can be like a really rewarding thing.

00:52:27.280 | On the other hand, if it is I am binge watching whatever, How I Met My Mother episodes for

00:52:33.680 | the third time because I just don't want to deal with me feeling down on myself and I'm

00:52:39.600 | going to do that for the next two hours, it can be really negative.

00:52:42.480 | And I think that's a really good example.

00:52:44.000 | And it's the same thing with obviously internet and social media or all these various tools.

00:52:48.560 | When they're deployed on behalf of something important to you, they're really powerful.

00:52:51.920 | When they're used as a numbing mechanism, it's really negative.

00:52:55.600 | If you're a whiskey connoisseur, whiskey could be a really positive thing.

00:52:58.960 | Like, wow, I just tried this new whiskey that this new distillery did and they're doing

00:53:02.800 | something great and it's really interesting.

00:53:04.800 | Or you're pounding Jack Daniels, it could be really negative, right?

00:53:08.560 | So, I think there is this duality, this dichotomy to a lot of these activities.

00:53:12.400 | I think recognizing that makes it a more sensible conversation.

00:53:16.640 | It's not useful when you get into these debates about these false binaries.

00:53:20.640 | Is technology terrible?

00:53:21.680 | Is technology good?

00:53:22.640 | Though I'll say, I don't actually ever see anyone arguing any of those points.

00:53:27.280 | You never actually come across anyone who says technology is terrible, we shouldn't

00:53:30.720 | use it or all technology is good.

00:53:32.400 | Yet almost every book or article on techno criticism makes it feel like that's what the

00:53:36.320 | whole world is doing.

00:53:37.520 | Whereas a lot of people are out there just saying technology is terrible or technology

00:53:40.960 | is great, but I'm so smart and nuanced, I think it's somewhere in between.

00:53:43.840 | Everyone knows it's in between.

00:53:45.280 | No one is actually arguing those extreme positions.

00:53:47.600 | No one is saying let's disconnect electricity.

00:53:49.440 | No one is saying that it's great for 12-year-olds to be spending three hours on TikTok every

00:53:53.200 | day.

00:53:53.760 | We're all actually already in the middle.

00:53:55.600 | This little pet peeve of mine is that everyone always makes it seem like there's some sort

00:53:59.120 | of intellectual hero for saying, "I'm not a Luddite."

00:54:02.800 | There hasn't been Luddites for the last 150 years.

00:54:05.440 | It doesn't impress me anymore for someone to say that.

00:54:07.360 | Now, I will push back and say I have seen a TED Talk you gave telling people you should

00:54:12.640 | get off social media, which is the full get completely off.

00:54:16.240 | Now, maybe that's a provocative example to get people to experience it.

00:54:19.680 | Exactly.

00:54:20.240 | But I know you're not on it.

00:54:21.920 | Do you think that it has some positive applications when used in particular ways?

00:54:26.240 | So, my philosophy is called digital minimalism, where the whole idea is you figure out first

00:54:31.840 | what you're all about, what's important to you, what you want to do with your life and

00:54:34.800 | your time.

00:54:35.600 | And then you work backwards from that to say, "What's the best way to deploy technology

00:54:40.400 | to support these things I care about?"

00:54:42.000 | And the answer to that question is what decides what tech you use.

00:54:44.720 | So, that's ultimately what I preach.

00:54:47.280 | And so, everyone's going to have their own profile of technology.

00:54:49.760 | I don't really care about the specifics so much as I care about how you get there.

00:54:53.760 | So, the minimalist mindset is I deploy technology in specific ways to gain specific benefits

00:54:59.600 | that are important to me.

00:55:00.560 | That contrast to what a lot of people do instead, which is maximalism, which is why not use

00:55:06.880 | this technology?

00:55:08.560 | Or there might be something interesting over here.

00:55:11.040 | So, why don't I do that too?

00:55:12.480 | It's sort of like it can't hurt.

00:55:13.840 | I don't want to miss out.

00:55:14.640 | So, let me just use everything.

00:55:16.320 | You'll drown if you try maximalism.

00:55:18.800 | Minimalism is much more focused.

00:55:20.480 | And so, everyone's going to end up differently.

00:55:22.480 | When I go through the minimalist exercise, I didn't end up seeing a real powerful use

00:55:26.640 | for the standard social media platforms.

00:55:28.240 | I never had a Facebook account or Instagram account or Twitter account.

00:55:32.000 | But I think YouTube is a powerful medium.

00:55:33.920 | And we release video of my podcasts on YouTube.

00:55:37.120 | I'm a big believer in podcasts.

00:55:38.560 | I've had a blog and email newsletters for a long time.

00:55:40.960 | So, you end up with a very customized portfolio.

00:55:43.440 | It's the intention that I care about.

00:55:44.960 | Why are you using technology?

00:55:46.640 | You can set reasonable guardrails about how you use it and you'll get more benefit than

00:55:50.160 | cost.

00:55:50.880 | If you stumble in the technology, the cost is probably going to outweigh the benefit.

00:55:54.160 | It's interesting.

00:55:55.760 | You just made me feel a lot better about my use of Twitter because I've kind of curated

00:55:59.360 | a particular list of a handful of more or less like news sources that I don't want to

00:56:05.440 | go to their sites and look at every article and stuff.

00:56:08.000 | I want a quick way to almost use Twitter as an RSS reader because I think it's like the

00:56:12.080 | most efficient way for me to have a finite list of things to look at from 20 or so news

00:56:16.880 | sources that I'm interested in, whether they're newsletters or blogs or actual media companies

00:56:22.400 | and publications.

00:56:23.360 | That's my primary use of Twitter.

00:56:24.720 | I think coming into this, I was like, "Oh man, I feel bad about it."

00:56:26.960 | Now, I feel actually a little bit better about it.

00:56:28.480 | So, thank you.

00:56:29.440 | Oh, that's a great example because you don't just use Twitter as not a binary thing.

00:56:34.480 | You don't say, "Oh, because I get interesting news on Twitter, I just use Twitter all the

00:56:38.800 | time for all purposes, and I'm on there yelling with trolls and doing this type of thing."

00:56:42.160 | Because you know why you're using Twitter, you can put guardrails up.

00:56:45.360 | "Oh, if I use it because it's an RSS feed for news sources, and a lot of news sources

00:56:50.960 | will post on their Twitter all their big stories," then you just curate who you follow down to

00:56:55.280 | those lists.

00:56:55.760 | There's no reason why you would ever be tweeting at people.

00:56:59.040 | You don't get dragged into weird pylons or fights.

00:57:02.400 | That's the magic of minimalism.

00:57:03.840 | If you know why you use it, you can put up rules.

00:57:06.000 | The other big example is Facebook groups.

00:57:07.760 | A lot of people use Facebook groups for specific, often local organizations that are very important

00:57:13.440 | to them.

00:57:14.160 | But if they recognize that's why they're using Facebook for the Facebook group, they realize,

00:57:18.000 | "I don't need to be on the news feed.

00:57:19.680 | And I can use a plugin that just eradicates the news feed, and I don't need Facebook on

00:57:23.120 | my phone because I just need to check when the next group meeting is.

00:57:25.920 | I can do that on my desktop.

00:57:27.520 | And my total time on Facebook is six minutes a week.

00:57:31.440 | And it's really useful to me because when I know that Facebook's groups is why I'm using

00:57:34.640 | Facebook, I realize there's no reason to be scrolling through my uncle's political rants

00:57:40.080 | while waiting in line to get my burrito."

00:57:43.040 | Because if you know why you're using a technology, you can focus how you use it.

00:57:46.960 | And there's a real advantage in that.

00:57:48.720 | What do you do when you're waiting in line for the burrito?

00:57:50.720 | Is that practicing boredom?

00:57:52.560 | What are you sitting there in line doing, whether it's on your phone, in your thoughts?

00:57:56.880 | Do you have an activity?

00:57:58.640 | Well, so when you're practicing boredom, you don't have to do it all the time.

00:58:01.120 | You just want to make sure you do it on a semi-regular basis.

00:58:04.000 | On one of your burrito runs every day, practice the boredom.

00:58:07.120 | But you don't want to see boredom as being intrinsically valuable.

00:58:10.880 | That's one place I differ from some others in that I think boredom feels really negative.

00:58:16.000 | Anything that feels really negative, that's usually a pretty strong evolutionary signal

00:58:20.000 | that there's something going on here that we want to avoid.

00:58:21.840 | So, I think our minds actually use the sense of boredom to try to spur us into productive

00:58:27.680 | activities, perhaps is why humans, even when they have food in the cave, get up and go

00:58:32.800 | out and invent the wheel.

00:58:34.160 | We feel boredom.

00:58:35.120 | I don't think cats do, right?

00:58:36.640 | So, I'm not one of these people who thinks boredom is great and you should feel it all

00:58:39.520 | the time.

00:58:39.920 | So, yeah, you can entertain yourself in the line for the burrito.

00:58:42.560 | It could mean a lot of things.

00:58:43.360 | It could be listening to the podcast.

00:58:44.960 | I think it's completely fine.

00:58:45.920 | I'm listening to an interesting conversation.

00:58:47.520 | Chris and Cal are talking.

00:58:48.480 | I want to hear what they have to say.

00:58:49.760 | It could be bringing a book with you.

00:58:51.600 | I have friends who started a company called Mouse Books, which I really enjoy.

00:58:56.240 | You get them in a subscription.

00:58:58.000 | They print books.

00:58:59.520 | It's usually short stories or heavily abridged books in a paper format roughly the size of

00:59:04.560 | a smartphone.

00:59:05.360 | And their whole pitch is, it fits wherever your smartphone would fit.

00:59:08.320 | So, when you would pull out your smartphone, just pull out the latest Mouse Book instead

00:59:12.080 | and you can actually read wherever you are.

00:59:15.600 | And so, yeah, boredom is not a virtue.

00:59:18.880 | But what you want to avoid is never experiencing it.

00:59:23.920 | Or B, I just get really suspicious with numbing behavior.

00:59:27.440 | So, if it's just, "Ugh, I'm just scrolling and it's numbing me."

00:59:30.560 | I get worried about it.

00:59:32.640 | If you're like, "Yeah, when I'm bored in line, I start drinking."

00:59:35.280 | I'm like, "Yeah, it'll numb you a little bit, but I don't know if this is the healthiest

00:59:38.480 | thing."

00:59:38.800 | Maybe there's other things to do.

00:59:39.840 | I'm all for boredom spurring productive activity, but maybe amplifying the level of productivity

00:59:46.160 | to something a little bit higher on some occasions than simply let this algorithmically constructed

00:59:51.280 | stream just start playing my brainstem like some sort of nervous system harpsichord or

00:59:56.960 | something like this.

00:59:57.520 | I want to talk a little bit about how you end your day because I read something that

01:00:02.400 | I think was an older post of yours about your routine at the end of the day.

01:00:06.160 | I think it was like, "Schedule shutdown complete."

01:00:08.400 | I'm curious if you still use that as a way to wrap up the workday and draw things to

01:00:13.600 | a close.

01:00:14.080 | Yeah, you need a clear distinction between workday and non-workday just from a cognitive

01:00:20.080 | hygiene perspective.

01:00:21.440 | And so, what I've always preached as a shutdown ritual where you have to close all the open

01:00:25.280 | loops.

01:00:26.080 | Okay, am I missing anything?

01:00:27.600 | Let me do a final check of my inbox.

01:00:29.360 | Look at my calendar and my plan.

01:00:31.520 | What am I doing tomorrow?

01:00:32.560 | Does my plan make sense?

01:00:33.600 | Am I good?

01:00:34.960 | Am I good to stop working, right?

01:00:37.440 | So, you want to do a sweep like that so you can switch from work to non-work.

01:00:43.040 | The problem is your brain, especially at first, is not going to trust that.

01:00:47.040 | And so, when you stop working, your brain will be like, "Are we sure?

01:00:50.160 | Let's think through our plan.

01:00:51.280 | And what about our boss sent that email?

01:00:53.200 | Did we really send him the right response?

01:00:54.720 | Maybe he's mad.

01:00:55.680 | And are we forgetting this?"

01:00:57.120 | Your mind wants to keep talking and thinking about work, which is difficult.

01:01:00.880 | It drains your energy.

01:01:01.760 | It makes it hard to enjoy other parts of your life.

01:01:03.440 | So, the secret here is to have an unusual hook that you use to indicate that you've

01:01:09.040 | finished your sweep.

01:01:10.000 | And so, I famously used a phrase, "Schedule shutdown complete."

01:01:14.800 | I now sell a time block planner that has a checkbox.

01:01:18.880 | So, for people who don't want to actually say that phrase and attract the scorn or concern

01:01:24.800 | people around them, it actually has a shutdown complete checkbox.

01:01:28.000 | But the point is, it's a unique demonstrable activity.

01:01:30.400 | So, whether you're saying that weird phrase or checking off a very specific checkbox,

01:01:34.240 | it's clear and demonstrable and unique.

01:01:35.920 | The whole reason why you do that is that later in the night, when the work mind tries to

01:01:41.200 | come in and say, "What about, are we sure?

01:01:44.000 | Like, what about tomorrow and our boss?"

01:01:45.520 | You say, "I said that stupid phrase or I checked that checkbox.

01:01:49.360 | There's no way I would have done that if I had not gone through everything and convinced

01:01:52.400 | myself that it was fine to shut down.

01:01:54.160 | So, I'm not going to get into this rumination with you tonight, mind.

01:01:57.360 | I said the stupid phrase.

01:01:58.640 | I trust it."

01:01:59.280 | And the point is, you do that enough times, you're not feeding the beast.

01:02:03.840 | And that urge to ruminate about work after work is done, eventually diminishes.

01:02:08.880 | So, it's a way of calming rumination without engaging.

01:02:11.760 | If you engage it and say, "No, no, look, here's our plan.

01:02:14.000 | Let's go over the plan again and again."

01:02:15.600 | You give it power and the rumination gets more powerful.

01:02:19.280 | It gets more energy.

01:02:20.160 | The groove gets deeper.

01:02:21.440 | But if you don't engage it and said like, "I'm not going to get into any of the specifics

01:02:25.280 | of this cognitive concern.

01:02:26.480 | I'm just going to go back and say I would not have said schedule shutdown complete unless

01:02:31.200 | I'd gone through everything, convinced myself it was okay."

01:02:33.040 | It's a way of actually tamping down rumination and actually getting some cognitive peace

01:02:37.360 | outside of your work hours.

01:02:38.800 | What happens when you're at that end of the workday, but you're not done?

01:02:42.160 | There are things that need to get done.

01:02:43.760 | For example, I release an episode every Wednesday.

01:02:46.560 | And I now have 2 kids as of a couple weeks ago.

01:02:49.760 | And it's like, "Okay, well, we're all sitting down to dinner at X and I'm not done.

01:02:53.520 | I can't check the box."

01:02:55.440 | Any tricks or routines or ways to come back to that in a healthy manner when you know

01:03:02.240 | you're not going to be able to finish before you wanted?

01:03:05.600 | Yeah, so for second shift work like that, usually what works well is, okay, you go through

01:03:09.440 | your first, they call it a provisional shutdown.

01:03:12.000 | You're shutting down most of the open loops, especially the open loops about is there emails

01:03:15.760 | I'm missing?

01:03:16.480 | Is my plan for the week makes sense?

01:03:18.400 | And you set up at the end of that initial provisional shutdown, here's what I'm doing

01:03:23.200 | later.

01:03:23.920 | And it's very focused.

01:03:25.360 | I have to get this episode out.

01:03:27.600 | Here's where the files are.

01:03:28.800 | That's what I'm doing.

01:03:29.600 | I'm not doing email.

01:03:30.480 | I'm not doing slides.

01:03:31.200 | It's very focused what has to happen later tonight.

01:03:33.360 | So, I'm doing a scheduled shutdown on the open loops are closed for the day.

01:03:37.440 | I have a plan for tonight.

01:03:39.120 | I know when that's happening, what has to happen there.

01:03:41.600 | And so, now I can go back to my kids and know when it gets to eight and I have to switch

01:03:45.280 | over to the second plan.

01:03:46.160 | I'm just executing this sort of focus thing I've set aside.

01:03:48.960 | And I don't even have to do a second shutdown after that second shift because I've already

01:03:52.640 | done that after the first shift.

01:03:55.120 | Like, are we good?

01:03:56.960 | Yeah, I can do this tonight and we'll pick it up tomorrow.

01:03:59.600 | You've looked at the whole plan.

01:04:00.640 | You've looked at the email inbox.

01:04:01.920 | You've done that all with the first shutdown.

01:04:03.600 | And then the second shift is like a focus thing you come and do when you're done, you're

01:04:06.960 | done.

01:04:07.280 | And that's what I usually recommend.

01:04:08.720 | The only other thing I'll recommend to people, though, is if you're consistently doing that

01:04:12.160 | second shift, if possible, end your first shift earlier.

01:04:16.880 | Think about, I want the sum of all the work I do in the day to add up to a reasonable

01:04:21.120 | amount of hours.

01:04:21.920 | And that's just a burnout prevention tool.

01:04:23.840 | If you're like, "I'm not gonna be able to get this done.

01:04:25.680 | Can I end work a little earlier?

01:04:28.400 | If I know I always work on this in the evenings or I record my podcast in the evenings, why

01:04:32.320 | don't I end my day work earlier?"

01:04:34.720 | So, the total sum of effort, if possible, remains reasonable.

01:04:38.160 | I really like that.

01:04:39.600 | I might try that this week.

01:04:41.440 | We're recording this on a Tuesday.

01:04:43.920 | I know I'm going to get an episode out tonight.

01:04:45.120 | So, maybe I'm going to end it early, spend some time with the family.

01:04:47.920 | Which leads me to ask this quick follow-up, which is you have more kids than me.

01:04:51.440 | I learned a math lesson with our second child that two is a greater number than one.

01:04:56.240 | And you've learned that as well.

01:04:57.680 | I'm curious how any of these things you've written about, things you've talked about

01:05:03.600 | have changed in a world with children where time is more of a finite resource.

01:05:09.840 | Yeah.

01:05:10.160 | I've had kids now for a little while.

01:05:11.280 | I'll come to a decade now of wrangling kids.

01:05:13.280 | So, a lot of these ideas actually got developed in that crucible.

01:05:17.440 | And I think that's actually not surprising because one of the things that becomes clear

01:05:20.720 | when you have kids and you have a job and you're trying to balance what's going on

01:05:25.040 | with your spouse, et cetera, is you need more structure and clarity about your time.

01:05:30.720 | You know, you can't just wing it.

01:05:32.240 | Now, it suddenly matters.

01:05:33.920 | When am I work?

01:05:34.400 | When do I need to be done at work?

01:05:35.360 | Do I need to go pick up someone from here?

01:05:37.120 | Do I have to drop someone off here?

01:05:38.640 | I think that's probably one of the origins of thinking through, let's say, time block

01:05:41.680 | scheduling.

01:05:42.240 | You got to suddenly be clear about your time.

01:05:45.040 | Work is not just this generic thing you try to do as much as possible about.

01:05:48.320 | No, you have time that you have to allocate among different priorities.

01:05:52.560 | Some professional ones, some family ones, some personal ones.

01:05:55.440 | What's the best possible allocation?

01:05:57.200 | So, I think that's really important.

01:05:58.560 | I'm a big believer in fixed schedule productivity, which I think kids really hammer home.

01:06:02.240 | Where you fix in advance.

01:06:03.360 | Here's how much time I have to work.

01:06:04.720 | That is non-negotiable.

01:06:07.120 | So, I have to work backwards from that to figure out how to make everything work.

01:06:10.960 | And maybe that's going to have to make me more efficient.

01:06:12.800 | Maybe that means I'm going to have to take things off my plate.

01:06:14.560 | Maybe that means I'm going to have to change my professional situation.

01:06:16.800 | But you work backwards from a fixed amount of time and say, "What can I do with that?"

01:06:21.600 | That often leads to a lot of innovation.

01:06:23.600 | So, I think that's important.

01:06:24.880 | And obviously, having kids really emphasizes the importance that work is just

01:06:28.240 | one aspect in a deeper life.

01:06:30.880 | It's not the sole source of meaning.

01:06:33.840 | So, you want to give work its place and do what you can with it.

01:06:37.120 | But you want that place to be controlled and have these other parts of life as well.

01:06:41.200 | It's a final point I'll say is kids are a big source of my millennial generation

01:06:47.200 | who are now all of the age, are all having kids.

01:06:49.760 | I'm an old millennial.

01:06:50.720 | I'm about to turn 40.

01:06:51.760 | They're all in their 30s now.

01:06:52.800 | They're all having kids, starting families.

01:06:54.640 | I think it's a big driver of discontent with social media because when you have these other

01:06:58.720 | things in your life that are important and demanding and require your attention,

01:07:02.320 | suddenly spending a lot of time doing this to escape seems like it's almost an existential

01:07:07.920 | threat.

01:07:08.160 | This is a big threat in a way that if you're 24, you're like, "Whatever.

01:07:11.680 | Why not?

01:07:12.240 | I'm bored.

01:07:12.640 | Why not just look at this thing?"

01:07:13.680 | So, I don't know.

01:07:14.320 | I think having kids has probably shaped a lot of my thinking and can help a lot of other

01:07:18.880 | people start thinking about these issues as well.

01:07:21.600 | It's definitely drived a lot of my desire to be more optimal with my time, my days,

01:07:26.240 | my travel.

01:07:27.520 | Layovers are not nearly as tolerable as they once were.

01:07:31.360 | It's shaped a lot of things.

01:07:32.400 | On that note of travel, our listeners really love travel.

01:07:35.200 | They love getting tips from our guests.

01:07:36.560 | So, I'm going to ask you before we go to pick a place you're familiar with and share

01:07:40.960 | some recommendations for a meal, a place to grab a drink, or some unusual activity someone

01:07:46.080 | should check out.

01:07:46.800 | Maybe I'll pitch where I am right now.

01:07:48.720 | I mentioned I found this small 19th century town that is just nestled right in the middle

01:07:53.120 | of all the DC sprawl.

01:07:54.480 | So, I'll give it a pitch.

01:07:55.920 | The town is called Tacoma Park, spelled with a K instead of a C. It's a cool little town.

01:08:01.680 | It has a metro stop and it's right across the boundary.

01:08:04.560 | But I'm recording right now.

01:08:05.840 | My studio is above a restaurant in downtown Tacoma Park called Republic.

01:08:10.720 | The bar is right below here.

01:08:13.440 | We don't yet have the dumb waiter working, but I'm working on that innovation.

01:08:17.120 | I want to be able to just bring the drink up as we're finishing here.

01:08:21.200 | Great nestled out of the beaten path of the city in the suburbs, a great restaurant.

01:08:26.320 | Down the street from here is where I do a large amount of my writing is a coffee shop.

01:08:30.880 | Shout out to Bevco, just celebrating their five-year anniversary.

01:08:34.880 | So, I live a couple blocks away from my studio, this restaurant, and that coffee shop.

01:08:41.520 | And between the three of those, that's where you get deep work done.

01:08:45.920 | That's where productivity comes from.

01:08:47.120 | So, you should definitely give Tacoma Park a visit next time you're in the DC area.

01:08:51.840 | And if you swing by Bevco, you'll probably see me in a corner somewhere

01:08:54.880 | wrangling a New Yorker article trying to edit a book.

01:08:58.240 | And definitely don't interrupt you because you're in the middle of some deep work.

01:09:00.880 | Yes, you're going to get coffee in your face.

01:09:03.360 | Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here.

01:09:06.800 | Where do you want people to go to find everything you're reading,

01:09:10.080 | writing, producing, talking about on your show?

01:09:12.960 | So, I have that newsletter I've talked about.

01:09:15.120 | You can find out about that at calnewport.com.

01:09:17.840 | And on my weekly podcast, which is called Deep Questions with Cal Newport.

01:09:22.480 | So, you can find that where podcasts are.

01:09:24.320 | We release the full podcast episodes as video and clips of the podcast as video.

01:09:29.920 | That's all on YouTube at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

01:09:33.280 | Really, the only places to find me because I don't use any of the other services.

01:09:36.000 | Great. We will link to all those on the show notes.

01:09:38.880 | Definitely check out the podcast.

01:09:40.160 | I know I enjoyed it a lot.

01:09:41.280 | The last few weeks, I went pretty deep to get to know you a little better.

01:09:44.560 | So, thank you so much for being here.

01:09:46.400 | Well, thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.

01:09:47.600 | I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

01:09:50.960 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:09:52.720 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

01:09:57.680 | I would really appreciate it.

01:09:59.280 | And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me, or just want to say hi,

01:10:03.200 | I'm Chris at AllTheHacks.com or @Huttons on Twitter.

01:10:07.440 | That's it for this week.

01:10:08.480 | I'll see you next week.

01:10:20.400 | you

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