Ep.240: The Hard Work Of Taking it Easy

00:00:00.000 | I have a take on nuancing productivity that I think will be useful.

00:00:04.880 | And I'm capturing that take in today's deep question, which is, is productivity about

00:00:10.120 | optimization or autonomy?

00:00:14.360 | And in answering that question, I think we're going to get a more nuanced take of how to

00:00:18.760 | think about productivity and its potential roles in our life.

00:00:27.920 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show about living and working deeply in

00:00:33.840 | an increasingly distracted world.

00:00:41.000 | I'm here in the Deep Work HQ, joined as always by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:47.160 | You know, Jesse, last week we talked about Ginny O'Dell and her new book that was taking

00:00:55.480 | a nuanced look at time and the treatment of time in our lives.

00:01:01.040 | And one of the things that we brought up during that episode, one of the things that caught

00:01:04.120 | my attention was there's typically this, I don't want to say bad guy, but antagonist,

00:01:09.920 | I would say, in these sort of new treatments of time, these antagonists that are often

00:01:14.600 | go by the names of productivity bros.

00:01:19.880 | Now I feel out of touch because I don't use the internet that much.

00:01:22.560 | I'm not on social media.

00:01:23.960 | I don't browse on YouTube.

00:01:25.040 | So I didn't really know.

00:01:26.040 | I mean, I remember the old school productivity bros from when I was coming up, when Tim Ferriss

00:01:31.640 | was very focused, when there was 43 folders, was very focused on optimizing time.

00:01:35.440 | But I didn't really know what has productivity bro culture evolved into.

00:01:41.360 | So I did a little searching to try to understand what was going on.

00:01:44.780 | And I found an article that I think was useful in enlightening us.

00:01:48.040 | I'm going to put it on the screen here for people who are watching at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

00:01:53.120 | This is episode 240.

00:01:54.760 | You can also find it at thedeeplife.com.

00:01:57.040 | So I found this article from Vice titled the relentless rise of the quote productivity

00:02:03.680 | influencer in quote.

00:02:06.000 | This is an article from Claire Hubble from last year, last winter.

00:02:11.320 | So I was looking through here.

00:02:13.160 | There's our friend Ali Abdul.

00:02:16.080 | I did a show.

00:02:17.080 | I did his podcast.

00:02:18.080 | I like him a lot.

00:02:19.080 | All right.

00:02:20.080 | So here's some quotes.

00:02:21.080 | I just want to read a couple of quotes from this because it helped bring me up to speed.

00:02:24.720 | With the way people are thinking about this online culture.

00:02:27.400 | So here's one quote.

00:02:28.400 | I have it on the screen right now.

00:02:29.920 | In recent years, the popularity of heavily staged managed self optimization has diversified

00:02:36.440 | beyond the tech bros of Silicon Valley, spawning the rise of a new influencer niche, the productivity

00:02:42.960 | guru.

00:02:44.400 | These content creators have gained thousands of followers by posting time saving tips,

00:02:49.120 | life hacks and productivity advice on line.

00:02:54.320 | Here's another quote.

00:02:55.800 | This comes from a critic of these of this new culture, I suppose.

00:03:02.480 | This is someone named, what is her name here?

00:03:05.280 | I don't know who this, but she's on the screen right now.

00:03:09.880 | Anyways, this was her critique.

00:03:13.200 | I have no desire to grind 24/7 and exhaust myself.

00:03:16.920 | I've suffered from burnout many times before.

00:03:19.380 | So I've really tried to actively remove those toxic hustle culture ideas from my mind.

00:03:24.540 | My focus was just to get through each day, sometimes at a bare minimum.

00:03:28.300 | All right, so here's what I'm concluding from this piece.

00:03:31.860 | The new world of online influencer, which is more based on YouTube and Instagram and

00:03:37.180 | TikTok, this new visual social media world has bred a new generation of what seems to

00:03:43.500 | be relatively young productivity influencers.

00:03:47.780 | You know, kids these days, I like the idea that this reporter for Vice thinks that's

00:03:52.100 | new.

00:03:53.100 | I'm old enough to remember when Stephen Covey sold 14 million copies of the seven habits

00:03:58.540 | of highly effective people.

00:04:00.140 | Hint, there had been people talking about productivity for a while now.

00:04:03.900 | Though I see this a lot often where something is rediscovered by TikTok culture and then

00:04:08.540 | is thought by that generation to be brand new.

00:04:11.160 | It's like when time blocking took off on TikTok and I went on the today show to talk about

00:04:16.540 | it.

00:04:17.540 | I mean, we've been talking about this for a while, but TikTok is its own world.

00:04:20.540 | They sort of rediscovered time blocking.

00:04:23.140 | I was like the old man on that today show clip.

00:04:25.980 | I'm like, well, let's have the old man come on and talk about TikTok because our viewership

00:04:32.300 | is older and we need someone that our old audience relates to who doesn't understand

00:04:37.220 | the TikToks.

00:04:38.220 | So this seems to be happening is that productivity obviously as a topic has been a popular topic

00:04:45.100 | for a long time, but it's now being picked up in this online world.

00:04:49.740 | And as based off this quote here, it seems like this online productivity culture seems

00:04:55.380 | to be focused on grinding, hustling, producing more.

00:05:01.580 | Some of the other videos I watched stemming off of this article here seem to focus on

00:05:08.020 | making money on the side.

00:05:10.060 | How do you make $500,000 extra dollars a year?

00:05:12.180 | Here's how I'm going to make a million extra dollars a year.

00:05:13.900 | Here's how I'm going to fit that all in.

00:05:17.140 | So I wanted today to dive a little bit deeper into this because I think if we blinker our

00:05:23.780 | understanding of productivity to be what we see in these online videos of here's how to

00:05:29.940 | hustle to make an extra $500,000 a year by being very careful with your time management

00:05:37.900 | and low friction systems, we lose a lot.

00:05:41.420 | We push people to take a more of the philosophical route towards, I want to wash my hands of

00:05:48.100 | all of this.

00:05:49.940 | Productivity is this weird hustle culture stuff.

00:05:52.100 | I am with weary resignation going to just say that's not for me.

00:05:56.140 | And I don't know that walking away from any sort of systematic intent to control and organize

00:06:03.620 | the obligations in your life is really actually a good solution.

00:06:06.680 | So what we need is a more nuanced understanding of technology.

00:06:11.020 | That's what I want to, or not technology, productivity.

00:06:13.680 | That's what I want to tackle today.

00:06:14.820 | I have a take on nuancing productivity that I think will be useful.

00:06:19.660 | And I'm capturing that take in today's deep question, which is, is productivity about

00:06:24.900 | optimization or autonomy?

00:06:29.180 | And in answering that question, I think we're going to get a more nuanced take of how to

00:06:33.540 | think about productivity and its potential roles in our lives.

00:06:35.820 | So I want to do a deep dive on that.

00:06:37.500 | I've then pulled five questions that all loosely orbit around this topic.

00:06:43.460 | So it's five questions from you, my listeners, that I'm going to come at each of these from

00:06:47.300 | the perspective of a productivity perspective, based on what we're just about to talk about.

00:06:52.180 | And then for the third segment of the show, we'll shift to something different.

00:06:56.300 | Today what I want to talk about later in the show is the books I read in February.

00:07:01.260 | So every, every month I like to talk about the books I read.

00:07:03.340 | So we'll shift gears later in the show.

00:07:06.220 | All right, so let's start about, let's start with this question.

00:07:09.780 | Is productivity about optimization or autonomy?

00:07:11.980 | Well, what do I mean about that?

00:07:13.700 | Well, what I mean by this is there's two frames through which you can think about and engage

00:07:18.500 | with productivity.

00:07:21.420 | The first frame is optimization.

00:07:23.740 | Now, optimization is on my mind.

00:07:26.060 | I'm actually reading a pretty interesting book right now about optimization and its

00:07:30.020 | influence on our culture.

00:07:31.740 | I'm not going to talk too much about the details of that book yet, because I want to wait until

00:07:35.540 | I finish it and it's closer to it actually coming out.

00:07:38.860 | But I will say it has been giving me some interesting food for thought.

00:07:42.500 | So one of the things that's clear is optimization, if we're going to be technical about it, focuses

00:07:47.140 | on maximizing an objective function, all subject to constraints.

00:07:53.620 | So you have some thing you're trying to maximize, the amount of money you make per year from

00:07:58.300 | your side hustle, for example, the number of pages you write in your book, you have

00:08:02.740 | some constraints about what's available to you, what time, etc.

00:08:06.860 | And given those constraints, you want to come up with models or approaches that's going

00:08:11.460 | to maximize that output, maximize the benefit that is captured by that objective function.

00:08:17.860 | So it's about getting the most of something that is valuable to you.

00:08:22.620 | Now, I think the YouTube types that are being referenced in that Vice article, the YouTube

00:08:28.260 | types that maybe Ginny Odell is thinking about in her critiques, look at productivity through

00:08:34.140 | this optimization frame.

00:08:35.620 | Here, let me pull one up.

00:08:36.820 | I've been watching a lot of productivity YouTube recently.

00:08:39.380 | So here's an example of one of the videos I've been watching recently.

00:08:43.980 | This is from a productivity YouTuber named Amy Landino.

00:08:48.100 | This video is called Secrets of a Super Productive Boss Lady.

00:08:51.580 | If you're watching along online, you'll see this up on the screen.

00:08:56.200 | It's very meta.

00:08:58.020 | On the YouTube video of this podcast, we're showing someone else's YouTube video.

00:09:01.540 | So there you go.

00:09:03.140 | I watched this video and it's a bunch of advice about how to fit more into your day.

00:09:08.940 | Amy has a clear definition of high achiever.

00:09:12.900 | That means juggling lots of things.

00:09:14.460 | So her whole goal with this video is how can you be a high achiever without completely

00:09:18.380 | burning out?

00:09:19.380 | So it's about juggling lots of different obligations.

00:09:23.020 | I think this is probably a pretty common theme among these types of productivity YouTubers.

00:09:27.920 | So this is all about optimization.

00:09:29.340 | You have something that's valuable, like the number of things you get done, you're trying

00:09:32.860 | to optimize it.

00:09:34.800 | How do I get the highest value of this function?

00:09:37.620 | How do I get, in this case, the most things done?

00:09:39.020 | And you say, well, let me use color-coded planners and I can use my Google Calendar.

00:09:44.640 | She talks about this in that video.

00:09:45.980 | She lives by her Google Calendar.

00:09:47.780 | Even her sleep is on there.

00:09:49.100 | Let me use very careful systems that can low friction, capture notes and keep things at

00:09:54.260 | bay.

00:09:55.260 | There's a lot of work in these about hiring lots of different virtual assistants to help

00:09:58.640 | manage things.

00:09:59.640 | So it's all about maximizing an optimization function.

00:10:03.480 | There is however, another frame through which to think about productivity, and that is autonomy.

00:10:09.840 | Now to understand the connection between productivity and autonomy, it's important to think first

00:10:17.200 | about what the antonym of productivity is.

00:10:19.960 | So instead of trying to define productivity, let's define what it is to not have any organized

00:10:26.520 | thinking about productivity in your professional life.

00:10:28.960 | And what you're going to end up with is what I call haphazard busyness.

00:10:34.580 | So if your life sub comes to haphazard busyness, which is where you will almost certainly end

00:10:38.280 | up if you, like Ginny O'Dell, you say, I just want to enjoy the birds, right?

00:10:45.040 | If you're saying I'm rejecting this idea that I want to think in an organized fashion about

00:10:49.560 | how I manage my obligations and time, you will probably end up with haphazard busyness,

00:10:54.400 | where you have a uncontrolled influx of various obligations of various urgency that you have

00:10:59.960 | a hard time keeping track of and tend to pull at your attention suddenly in an emergency

00:11:04.920 | type situations.

00:11:07.000 | Haphazard busyness reduces your options.

00:11:08.640 | It makes you feel stressed.

00:11:09.720 | It's almost certainly going to lead to overload, too much to do.

00:11:13.800 | And it tends to push people towards extreme solutions such as this is what work is.

00:11:18.960 | So I need to find a way to leave the workforce, for example.

00:11:24.400 | Productivity can be understood as applying organizational tool and deliberate processes

00:11:29.120 | to take back control of your obligations in such a way that you avoid haphazard busyness.

00:11:34.700 | This is where, for example, you might deploy the types of approaches I talk about often

00:11:39.000 | on this show.

00:11:41.320 | One of the big productivity frameworks I've often preached is capture, configure, control.

00:11:49.280 | I have my video, my deep ideas video.

00:11:53.160 | What do we call them?

00:11:54.160 | Core ideas, Jesse?

00:11:55.160 | Core ideas.

00:11:56.160 | My core ideas video on time management goes deep into this.

00:11:58.320 | Actually that video was also Tim Ferriss played that whole video on his podcast feed not that

00:12:05.560 | long ago.

00:12:06.560 | So I don't want to go in too much detail now.

00:12:07.880 | You can dive into it there, but at a high level, capture, configure, control is about

00:12:11.560 | capture things, obligations that enter your life, potential obligations that enter your

00:12:16.640 | life get captured.

00:12:18.080 | They move out of your mind and in the trusted systems where they can later be dealt with.

00:12:21.520 | You're not keeping track of what's on your plate just in your mind.

00:12:24.840 | You have well-tinted task lists and calendars so that your mind is not responsible on its

00:12:29.320 | own to remember everything that's going on.

00:12:32.480 | That alone is a huge stress reliever.

00:12:34.480 | Then comes configure.

00:12:35.960 | Configure is the glue of the caption, configure, control framework.

00:12:40.280 | It's where you make sense of all these obligations.

00:12:43.000 | You figure out what they mean.

00:12:45.200 | Critically it's where you implement your specific intentional workload management systems.

00:12:51.500 | How much of this different type of work can I reasonably do?

00:12:55.640 | What are my quotas here?

00:12:57.240 | What once it's captured, do I keep going on with?

00:12:59.880 | What do I push out?

00:13:01.440 | If something has to happen later, when am I going to do it?

00:13:03.480 | It's where you actually make sense of all of your obligations in an intentional way.

00:13:07.480 | Not doing configure is what creates haphazard busyness.

00:13:11.280 | You're just in this world of there's more than I can do and I'm just running around

00:13:14.800 | like a chicken with my head cut off.

00:13:16.480 | And then control.

00:13:17.480 | You control how you actually use your time.

00:13:19.320 | Weekly planning, daily planning, strategic planning.

00:13:22.000 | What am I doing today?

00:13:23.080 | When am I working?

00:13:24.080 | When am I not working?

00:13:25.080 | When is this project going to unfold?

00:13:26.080 | Maybe I'm going to put this one here, start this project here.

00:13:29.140 | That's where you actually assess the time resources available and come up with a plan

00:13:33.960 | for it.

00:13:35.020 | So when you have something like a capture, configure, control framework in action, you

00:13:40.800 | move away from haphazard busyness.

00:13:43.480 | Now here's where the autonomy frame takes its critical turn.

00:13:48.760 | I think it is too often assumed that the only destination of taking control of your obligations

00:13:56.580 | with something like capture, configure, control, that the only destination you can then go

00:14:00.120 | to is optimization.

00:14:02.760 | I control everything.

00:14:03.940 | I configure everything.

00:14:04.940 | I've captured everything.

00:14:05.940 | Great.

00:14:06.940 | Now I can get more done.

00:14:07.940 | I can be like the boss lady video.

00:14:10.540 | What I want to argue today is that is selling short the potential of productivity.

00:14:17.440 | Productivity gives you autonomy over what you want your work life to be like.

00:14:21.780 | And this autonomy does not just mean optimization.

00:14:24.340 | So let me give you four different options for what you can do, how you can aim your

00:14:29.300 | work life once you have your arms around it with some sort of reasonable productivity

00:14:33.360 | framework.

00:14:34.820 | Number one, you could say my goal is a state in which like the boss lady video, I'm juggling

00:14:40.660 | lots of hard but important things successfully.

00:14:44.420 | And I think this is, again, this is reasonable.

00:14:47.260 | Let's say you've just started a new business.

00:14:49.660 | This is going to be the reality, right?

00:14:50.660 | You're going to have a lot of different things that have to happen.

00:14:53.260 | Productivity framework is going to help you do that in a way that doesn't overwhelm you.

00:14:56.540 | So that optimization mindset, what I'm trying to say here is not in itself malformed, but

00:15:03.180 | it's also not totalizing.

00:15:05.280 | It's not going to be the only option we have here.

00:15:07.980 | A second place you could aim your professional life once you have a productivity system is

00:15:12.780 | perhaps a state in which you're able to focus on a single thing that is hard, but really

00:15:18.500 | important to you.

00:15:20.260 | So it's another, this is John Grisham, for example, controlling his obligation so he

00:15:25.260 | can just work on writing one book a year.

00:15:27.380 | Without a productivity system, it is very difficult to focus on a single hard thing

00:15:33.180 | that's important.

00:15:34.820 | Another writer example here, of course, is Neil Stevenson with his famous essay, Why

00:15:38.820 | I'm a Bad Correspondent.

00:15:40.520 | He had to go through a lot of trouble to make sure that he could just focus on writing and

00:15:46.540 | not ending up in a more Brandon Sanderson-esque situation in which it's just constant work

00:15:52.100 | and projects and busyness.

00:15:55.340 | The third place, by the way, speaking of Brandon Sanderson, not to go on a tangent here, Jesse,

00:16:02.100 | but one of our esteemed listeners sent me a photo of a bookstore that had a whole table

00:16:06.900 | of name of the wind that was labeled as Patrick Rufus.

00:16:11.380 | And he was like, the gaslighting continues.

00:16:13.740 | They keep trying to trick us into thinking Patrick Rufus wrote the name of the wind.

00:16:17.180 | Again, if you're not a longtime listener, you don't know what we're talking about.

00:16:20.380 | And to which I say, congratulations, it's all nonsense.

00:16:23.180 | A third goal you might aim for, right, with a productivity system in place is a state

00:16:28.980 | in which you are trying to minimize work while maintaining financial stability.

00:16:36.700 | Doing less things is actually ironically hard work.

00:16:40.020 | If you want to set up a situation in which you say, you know what, I'm super flexible.

00:16:43.980 | I work like 10 hours a week, but I have good benefits, make a good salary.

00:16:49.300 | Productivity systems can get you there.

00:16:51.540 | Simply deciding I want to work less probably won't get you there.

00:16:54.380 | If you're in a state of haphazard busyness, it's immediately notable when you try to pull

00:16:59.140 | back and it causes all sorts of problems.

00:17:00.860 | If you're capture, configure, controlling, if you're Cal Newporting, especially in this

00:17:04.420 | age of sort of knowledge workers working remotely, you can get away with a lot if you know what

00:17:09.140 | you're doing.

00:17:11.020 | So yes, being super relaxed is another outcome of productivity systems.

00:17:16.420 | And then finally, and this is probably, I would say the most common goal for those who

00:17:19.900 | listen to my show is trying to achieve a state of reasonable balance.

00:17:23.580 | Hey, look, I like my job.

00:17:25.420 | I want it to be within normal work hours and not expand beyond that.

00:17:29.860 | And I want to have some slack in there.

00:17:32.300 | So you know, if once or twice a month, I kind of need to pull back for a day or two, the

00:17:37.540 | re's appointments, some stuff going with my kids.

00:17:39.180 | I can do that without it being a problem.

00:17:40.900 | I don't want to be, I want to enjoy my job, go to my office, enjoy my coworkers, but feel

00:17:44.340 | like it has a reasonable footprint and have some slack or I can, you know, be sick for

00:17:47.380 | a couple of days and not have it be a big, different, a big deal.

00:17:50.340 | That again is a state that you can achieve if you have some sort of reasonable productivity

00:17:55.620 | system in place.

00:17:57.580 | So this is what I'm trying to argue for is we need a more expansive idea of productivity

00:18:03.300 | and its goals.

00:18:04.300 | Yes, it could be used for sheer optimization.

00:18:07.060 | And yes, there are times where that is appropriate.

00:18:08.980 | If you just took on the $7 million Series A for your startup as a 27 year old tech

00:18:13.540 | entrepreneur, then optimization is probably what you should focus on.

00:18:18.400 | How do I get all these different things that need to happen for my business to succeed

00:18:21.380 | done without a completely overwhelming me, but it can enable all of these other things

00:18:25.620 | as well.

00:18:26.620 | It enables the, the severely pulled back because I have young kids and I just am done with

00:18:32.780 | work but need the financial.

00:18:34.140 | It enables like I've got this nice balance.

00:18:36.020 | It enables the Neil Stevenson, John Grisham, you know, I want to do this one thing, my

00:18:42.260 | art, my craft really well.

00:18:44.660 | I have a major nonprofessional interest I really want to devote time to, but still need

00:18:49.860 | to have some sort of, you know, not let distractions come in and rip me away from it.

00:18:54.180 | It could enable so much.

00:18:55.700 | That is the autonomy frame for productivity.

00:18:58.820 | A good productivity system allows you to take control.

00:19:02.380 | Once you've taken control of the obligations in your professional life, you have options.

00:19:07.580 | It's up to you what you do with those options.

00:19:10.200 | But the message I want you to know is that those options are much more broad than the

00:19:15.540 | productivity bros nomenclature I think would typically reveal.

00:19:19.940 | All right.

00:19:20.940 | So that's my thought on that.

00:19:22.140 | Now I have a, I want to apply this frame of the collection of questions from you about

00:19:25.620 | various issues in which I want to apply this autonomy productivity frame to help answer.

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00:23:13.100 | All right, Jesse, I want to apply our new productivity frames, this idea of productivity

00:23:21.640 | as being a foundation for autonomy.

00:23:23.980 | I'm going to apply it to some real life issues.

00:23:26.580 | I think we've got a good collection of questions here where I can try that out.

00:23:30.940 | Who is first on our docket of queries?

00:23:33.820 | Yeah, sounds good.

00:23:35.300 | First question is from Andrew, a 33-year-old teacher from London.

00:23:39.540 | I'm a full-time teacher, but previously worked in journalism.

00:23:42.860 | I'd like to develop a side hustle writing about using walking to explore the history

00:23:47.040 | in London.

00:23:48.040 | My long-term goal is to write a short book or walking guide on whether I should start

00:23:52.140 | a blog as I want to be writing more frequently to sharpen my skills.

00:23:55.580 | Well, Andrew, I'm going to use this whole desire of a side interest in producing a book

00:24:01.940 | about walking histories of London to test out our productivity perspective.

00:24:08.980 | If you are haphazardly busy in your teaching job, it is going to be very unlikely you are

00:24:14.700 | going to succeed with this endeavor.

00:24:17.580 | You'll have moments of inspiration, other times where you feel like you have no leeway

00:24:21.900 | to work on it, the project will make some progress, and then because of haphazardly

00:24:25.920 | busy periods will disappear for months.

00:24:28.460 | You might sour on the idea, you might lose your momentum.

00:24:32.020 | On the other hand, if you have a productivity framework in place, if you feel like you really

00:24:37.380 | do have control over the various obligations and your time, and when you work on it, you're

00:24:42.300 | capture configuring, controlling your teaching responsibilities, now you have a shot at succeeding

00:24:47.700 | with one of these projects.

00:24:49.660 | You can figure out, do I have time for this?

00:24:54.100 | Where is that time best placed and then actually place that time in those locations.

00:24:58.740 | There's all sorts of different options for how you might do this, but you're not going

00:25:01.100 | to be able to know what options are available or what is best until you really do have a

00:25:04.940 | framework in place in your professional life that is helping you control everything.

00:25:09.820 | Now, I'm going to give a particular suggestion.

00:25:13.580 | So assuming you do this, you get a control productivity system in place, you feel in

00:25:18.300 | control of your time and obligations, I was thinking about your specific project here,

00:25:24.700 | writing this book, walking history and your question in particular about, should you start

00:25:30.220 | a blog?

00:25:32.800 | Is that going to be the right way to sharpen your skills and build this out?

00:25:35.820 | Well, my instinct is this project is probably a quality over quantity play.

00:25:41.500 | I think you want to be producing specific walking tours.

00:25:45.540 | Let's put the digital channel aside for now, but producing particular walking tours at

00:25:50.700 | a very high level.

00:25:51.780 | So well-researched, either well videoed or photographed.

00:25:57.740 | You have a map that you can follow it.

00:26:00.540 | Not that often, maybe this is once every month or once every couple of months, but when you

00:26:03.420 | release one of these things, it's really, really high quality, really easy for people

00:26:07.180 | to follow and use.

00:26:08.180 | It seems really professional.

00:26:09.700 | This is the like Mr. Beast or Tim Urban frequency of content production where it's not every

00:26:16.420 | three days, but the stuff they put out, they've made excellent.

00:26:18.860 | I think that's what you're looking for here.

00:26:22.020 | Be so good, the stuff should be so good it can't be ignored.

00:26:24.560 | I think that's going to be the most fulfilling for you and be the best foundation for eventually

00:26:28.780 | then collecting these into a book.

00:26:31.700 | The channel question, I'm not sure.

00:26:34.100 | I think if you just had a blog, sort of web 2.0 style, you had a domain and a WordPress

00:26:39.500 | blog that might be not enough.

00:26:44.500 | Given the way that digital media has evolved, you probably need some other sort of media

00:26:50.860 | involved here.

00:26:51.860 | I mean, YouTube could be a big player here.

00:26:54.580 | You could have very well produced videos where you're actually doing this walking tour, maybe

00:26:59.220 | sub stack as opposed to just so people could subscribe and you get sent these walking tours.

00:27:03.860 | It would be a narrow band of people subscribing, but you would have a good band of followers.

00:27:10.700 | You could carefully put your toes in the professional social media.

00:27:14.620 | Obviously, I'm not a big believer in spending people using social media as a source of personal

00:27:19.580 | distractions, something people are on on their own time just to sort of keep up with the

00:27:23.300 | world and be distracted.

00:27:24.740 | But an Instagram account, a professional Instagram account where it's just for you, whatever,

00:27:28.860 | posting the photos from your latest tours that you're working on as it builds up to

00:27:32.660 | you, then launching your latest tour on a website connected to sub stack.

00:27:36.820 | I don't know the right mix there.

00:27:37.860 | You probably need a more heterogeneous mix than just a blog.

00:27:41.140 | But that would be my guess is that once you get control over your teaching life, you have

00:27:45.220 | that productivity framework in place.

00:27:47.700 | You'll be able to build a rhythm where you build up to once every couple of months, a

00:27:50.860 | great tour.

00:27:51.860 | And I could imagine you do, you put aside a Saturday to really explore and scout things

00:27:55.820 | out and then you have some sessions to do your background research and writing.

00:28:00.420 | And then you have another session a few weeks later where you actually go to do the video

00:28:03.980 | or photographs for the very nice actual tour put together.

00:28:08.540 | I would also say don't hesitate.

00:28:11.140 | I wouldn't hesitate too much about spending some money on this as well because you're

00:28:14.380 | getting you will get great satisfaction out of producing these really good tours.

00:28:19.160 | So if you gather all this information and then you're hiring, you're paying 200 bucks

00:28:24.220 | to an online contractor to then put it all together digitally in the right format so

00:28:29.060 | that you don't have to spend 30 hours trying to figure out how to do that.

00:28:31.900 | I think that's a very good investment of money, those type of strategic investments.

00:28:35.340 | So that would be my guess.

00:28:37.660 | Quality over quantity is the way to build not only towards a book, but just to enjoy

00:28:41.740 | this as you go along.

00:28:43.140 | But none of this is possible unless you leave haphazard business and really feel like you

00:28:47.540 | have your arms around your day job.

00:28:50.340 | You have that productivity framework in place.

00:28:52.100 | I don't know what other channels people use, Jesse.

00:28:55.380 | If you were, I mean, there's sort of people who've been grandfathered into just having

00:29:00.940 | their own blogs like Marginalia, which used to be Brain Pickings.

00:29:05.020 | I think Tim Urban with Wait But Why.

00:29:08.980 | Mr. Money Mustache.

00:29:10.060 | I don't know.

00:29:11.060 | Starting from scratch though, it's difficult, I think.

00:29:14.580 | I agree with you.

00:29:15.580 | I think you need multiple mediums.

00:29:16.580 | Yeah.

00:29:17.580 | I think the key is just don't let your professional use of a medium be your excuse to have your

00:29:22.940 | personal life devolve into consuming that medium.

00:29:26.020 | It's like you can do the Ryan Holiday thing and have stoic quotes on Twitter, Instagram

00:29:31.580 | photos of these sort of like cool places you are, these videos that you've made without

00:29:35.440 | actually being on Twitter yourself and reading what other people said, without actually being

00:29:39.420 | on Instagram and scrolling it all the time.

00:29:41.940 | So there's definitely a professional mindset that I think helps there.

00:29:44.380 | You can also, I mean, he was saying how he wanted to work on his writing.

00:29:47.340 | You can also do that with both mediums for sure.

00:29:49.860 | Yeah, and I'm not as worried as he seems to be in sharpening his writing skills because

00:29:54.140 | he's a full-time teacher with a background in journalism and the type of writing he's

00:29:58.500 | doing is describing history for a walking tour.

00:30:02.380 | I'm sure he's perfectly capable of doing that.

00:30:05.340 | His craft is where it needs to be.

00:30:06.780 | If he was a 22-year-old college student who has never really written professional before,

00:30:12.060 | okay, you got to get some training to get above that amateur bar.

00:30:15.360 | He's already well above that amateur bar and the writing he's doing is not, the value in

00:30:19.060 | what he's doing is not in the quality of the writing.

00:30:20.940 | It just has to be non-amateur writing.

00:30:22.540 | I bet he can already do that.

00:30:24.060 | Yeah, good point.

00:30:25.060 | All right, what do we got next?

00:30:26.820 | All right, next question is from Ruby, a 35-year-old banker from London.

00:30:31.620 | I'm taking a few weeks off to recover from burnout due to a period where my responsibilities

00:30:35.500 | kept increasing.

00:30:36.500 | What would you recommend to do to make the most of my time away from work?

00:30:41.580 | So Ruby, the productivity perspective here is that if all you do during your time off

00:30:48.380 | is recharge and then just go back into this environment where you were before, give it

00:30:54.260 | six months, you'll be back in the same place.

00:30:57.740 | What is important here, this is what I would do with my time off, is figure out what is

00:31:02.500 | the productivity framework I'm going to put in place so that I have clarity into all of

00:31:09.660 | the obligations entering my world.

00:31:11.700 | None of it is being held only in my mind.

00:31:13.420 | I am configuring.

00:31:14.420 | I can see what it is.

00:31:16.000 | What type of work do I have at different parts?

00:31:18.520 | This is the traditional facing the productivity dragon.

00:31:21.300 | And then I control my time on different timescales.

00:31:24.480 | Here's what I'm doing today.

00:31:25.480 | Here's what I'm doing this week.

00:31:26.480 | Here's how these projects fit.

00:31:28.700 | Now here's the goal here.

00:31:32.180 | Not that with this productivity framework, you can optimize your time enough that the

00:31:37.340 | workload that burnt you out before you can now handle, that's not the goal.

00:31:41.500 | The goal instead is clarity.

00:31:45.380 | Clarity about what's on your plate.

00:31:47.420 | Clarity about what is reasonable to be on your plate.

00:31:51.780 | Clarity about proposing this, this, and this makes sense.

00:31:56.180 | This, this, and this is too much.

00:31:58.780 | The productivity system, a good productivity system can give you the confidence you need

00:32:03.540 | to advocate for yourself.

00:32:06.300 | Now again, this I think is one of the, one of the insidious side effects of rejecting

00:32:12.820 | productivity because you associate it with this optimization over our culture is that

00:32:17.020 | ironically it is exactly what your employer wants you to do.

00:32:20.780 | We think about it, oh no, the productivity is somehow part of this base superstructure

00:32:23.980 | sort of early 20th century Marxist approach of, of trying to exploit more labor from the,

00:32:30.860 | from the, the, the proletariat or something like this.

00:32:33.900 | Right?

00:32:34.900 | So we have this sort of grad school, blah, blah, blah approach to it.

00:32:38.380 | Clarity, knowing what you're doing, knowing what's on your plate, having a extreme clarity

00:32:45.460 | about exactly your workplace, seeing the matrix of the obligations being thrown at you with

00:32:51.100 | clarity.

00:32:52.500 | That's actually what in a lot of these overwhelmed situations, your employer wouldn't want, because

00:32:56.220 | it means you can come back and say, I know this is crazy.

00:32:59.720 | We need to cut this in half.

00:33:00.860 | Let me tell you why.

00:33:01.900 | You know, I have my arms around everything and I'm very careful.

00:33:04.820 | I run my schedule very carefully and I do very good work.

00:33:07.180 | This is 50% too much.

00:33:09.460 | And I have confidence in that conviction.

00:33:11.500 | If you instead fall back into haphazard busyness because you're trying to reject the, the hustle

00:33:17.620 | culture, et cetera, you are at the mercy of these employers.

00:33:22.220 | It's just all stuff.

00:33:23.260 | We're all busy.

00:33:24.260 | You got a bunch of stuff.

00:33:25.260 | Why aren't you doing work?

00:33:26.260 | Why are you complaining?

00:33:27.260 | You're either going to burn yourself out again and again, or give them an excuse to fire

00:33:30.300 | you.

00:33:31.940 | So productivity can actually be what you need to prevent and push back against overload.

00:33:37.940 | Right?

00:33:38.940 | So this is again, the whole autonomy frame for productivity is having your arms around

00:33:42.980 | your obligations is what allows you to do so many different things.

00:33:45.900 | And this is one of the things you can do is it allows you to stand up, allows you to stand

00:33:50.060 | up and say with a clear voice and conviction enough, this is too much.

00:33:55.300 | I know it's too much.

00:33:56.920 | You know that I know that now.

00:33:59.220 | This is my, this is what's reasonable and this is what I'm going to do.

00:34:03.860 | And when people know that you have your act together, when it comes to these sort of productivity

00:34:08.340 | systems, it's much harder for them to push back against that.

00:34:10.540 | So that's what I would say, rest and recharge, but also get your systems fired up so that

00:34:15.380 | when you come back, you're no longer at the mercy of like whatever junk your employer

00:34:18.580 | is just throwing at you and hoping you won't notice that it's completely unreasonable.

00:34:22.060 | Yeah.

00:34:23.060 | I like what you said at the end of the deep dive too, about having options.

00:34:26.300 | Yeah.

00:34:27.300 | Yeah.

00:34:28.300 | And that's the autonomy frame.

00:34:29.860 | Yeah.

00:34:30.860 | If you don't have control over all the different obligations orbiting you and your professional

00:34:34.420 | life, you are at the mercy of whim, your boss's mood, your personality, what you can get away

00:34:41.500 | with and basically we'll probably just be stressed out.

00:34:43.620 | I mean, or you could be okay.

00:34:45.500 | Like maybe you just, whatever, become kind of misanthropic and, and resentful and people

00:34:50.860 | that want to deal with it and you kind of find a way to make it work, but it's all just,

00:34:53.980 | you're drifting towards some sort of steady state.

00:34:56.260 | There's probably going to be a non-optimal equilibrium, but when you know everything

00:34:59.980 | that's going on, you can stand back and say this, this, and this is the problem.

00:35:04.300 | And if I move this, I can't do those.

00:35:06.420 | I got to take this off my plate and no, no, no.

00:35:08.580 | Of course, no, of course, no, of course, no.

00:35:09.980 | Yes, I'll do this.

00:35:10.980 | Here's what I'm going to do.

00:35:11.980 | I mean, it just makes all the difference.

00:35:12.980 | You can do so much if you have a good productivity system and you can't do almost anything without

00:35:16.900 | it.

00:35:17.900 | I mean, you're just left with like, I'm burnt out or I'm quitting the workforce and hoping

00:35:24.100 | that people subscribe to my sub stack.

00:35:25.740 | There's got to be something in between those two.

00:35:27.820 | All right, let's keep rolling.

00:35:29.820 | What do we have next?

00:35:30.820 | All right.

00:35:32.100 | Next question's from Rito, 23 year old from India.

00:35:34.940 | I have too many interests in my life.

00:35:37.060 | I have so many choices.

00:35:38.440 | It's crippling and I end up doing nothing.

00:35:40.260 | My question is how do I learn to prioritize?

00:35:43.500 | So Rito, I included this question because it helps show that the productivity perspective

00:35:49.260 | is also relevant to your life outside of work.

00:35:52.260 | It's also relevant to your leisure life.

00:35:56.420 | So haphazard busyness can cripple you like it's happening here in your leisure life in

00:36:01.100 | the same way that it can in your professional life, especially like Rito, you're young,

00:36:04.540 | you're 23 years old, you have all this time and all this potential.

00:36:08.100 | And there's so many different things you can do that you bounce from one thing to another

00:36:11.380 | and nothing's making progress.

00:36:13.220 | Your brain will eventually stop trying to generate motivation.

00:36:18.500 | I've written about this before, Rito.

00:36:20.140 | What's really happening here, if you want my opinion, is that our brain is very good

00:36:24.380 | at evaluating potential plans.

00:36:27.060 | Is this objective worth it?

00:36:28.620 | And do I have reason to believe this plan is going to work?

00:36:31.500 | Our brain asks and answers those two questions all the time.

00:36:35.660 | We're very good at that.

00:36:36.900 | This is something that is bred into our paleolithic path.

00:36:40.260 | Those mechanisms, when it doesn't trust you really know what you're doing, when it doesn't

00:36:44.380 | trust that there's a plan here that makes sense, that's going to lead to some sort of

00:36:47.320 | mastery or a highly fulfilling outcome.

00:36:50.940 | It says, nope.

00:36:53.000 | And what does it feel like when your plan evaluation apparatus in your brain says, no,

00:36:57.260 | it feels like procrastination.

00:36:59.580 | You can't summon motivation because there is a system in our brain that generates the

00:37:03.600 | feelings of motivation towards action.

00:37:05.500 | It has to believe what you're doing.

00:37:07.300 | So if your leisure life is crippled with or ridden with haphazard busyness, it's like,

00:37:12.660 | I'm not going to just start this whatever by a video camera to become the next Martin

00:37:18.400 | Scorsese, because you don't know what you're doing here.

00:37:19.720 | There's no plan here.

00:37:20.720 | This is one of like 15 different things you have.

00:37:22.560 | That is why you have this feeling of, I can't do anything.

00:37:24.720 | I feel crippled.

00:37:25.720 | It's because it's too haphazard.

00:37:26.720 | It's too busy.

00:37:27.720 | So you can bring a productivity framework into your leisure life to get your arms around

00:37:32.800 | this, to start to be selective, to start to be intentional about what you spend your time

00:37:36.960 | on and in doing so, you're going to end up in a much better place.

00:37:41.120 | So let me give you a particular suggestion here, Rito, just to plant a seed.

00:37:45.700 | So one way you might structure more intentionally your life outside of work would be a four

00:37:51.840 | part focus.

00:37:52.840 | I've talked about this before.

00:37:55.100 | Three routines and one project in one time.

00:37:57.480 | So the three routines that just figure out how to have going in the background would

00:38:00.960 | probably be some sort of fitness health routine.

00:38:04.580 | This is eating and exercise.

00:38:06.500 | This is foundational.

00:38:07.660 | Let's get that going.

00:38:09.740 | Some sort of reading routine.

00:38:12.380 | I'm reading on a regular basis.

00:38:13.940 | I'm moving away from just distraction.

00:38:15.580 | My mind is learning how to actually remain focused on complex thoughts.

00:38:21.060 | You're going to develop as a human being.

00:38:22.740 | You're going to develop as a, as a thinker.

00:38:25.300 | We did a podcast episode a few weeks ago on how to become a reader.

00:38:29.260 | It was called the joys of the reading life.

00:38:30.900 | It's probably like two 38.

00:38:33.140 | Yeah.

00:38:34.140 | Yeah.

00:38:35.140 | Episode two 38.

00:38:36.140 | So go back and watch that.

00:38:37.140 | Your third routine, I would say to put in place foundationally is some sort of community

00:38:40.100 | routine.

00:38:41.660 | These things you do on a regular basis that keep you connected and serving your friends,

00:38:45.340 | your family, other people in the communities that you're involved with.

00:38:48.700 | Get background routines for those three things going.

00:38:51.780 | That's just foundational.

00:38:52.780 | You can tweak those, but you should always on a regular basis.

00:38:55.000 | Those things are just woven into the fabric of your life.

00:38:57.700 | Okay.

00:38:58.700 | And then one major project.

00:39:01.100 | And then do that major project till you get to a great milestone and you can swap in another

00:39:04.060 | major project.

00:39:05.580 | So just one major project at a time, spend six months on it, spend a year on it.

00:39:09.900 | I don't really care.

00:39:10.900 | You're young, you're 23.

00:39:12.460 | You have more time than you think.

00:39:14.140 | So this is just one particular suggestions of how you might establish a more intentional

00:39:18.660 | approach to your leisure life.

00:39:20.860 | But having routines for the things that are foundational to a life well live and then

00:39:24.580 | pursuing one thing at a time until a good point, giving that your full attention.

00:39:30.420 | That for example, works really well.

00:39:33.420 | And it's the type of thing that you're not going to get to until you get more intentional

00:39:36.260 | about your time.

00:39:37.260 | All right.

00:39:38.260 | We're making progress here.

00:39:39.260 | What do we got next, Jesse?

00:39:41.260 | I like this question.

00:39:42.940 | Next question is from Jonas, a 32 year old research analyst.

00:39:47.460 | I'm trying to decide whether a ditch postpone a side hustle idea in order not to overwhelm

00:39:52.100 | myself versus adopting a slow part productivity mindset and see how progress compounds over

00:39:59.020 | time.

00:40:00.020 | So Jonas, what you need is extreme clarity.

00:40:02.220 | And this is where the productivity perspective is going to help you.

00:40:06.120 | You have to get your arms around the job that's making you feel busy right now.

00:40:11.620 | Capture configure control.

00:40:13.740 | See where you can get that.

00:40:15.500 | You reduce the stress, take control of your time.

00:40:18.140 | Begin with the configure step to be more aggressive about workload management.

00:40:22.340 | See where you can get that line in a place that's allowing you to do what you need to

00:40:25.140 | do without feeling overwhelmed.

00:40:26.620 | And then step back and say, where would the side hustle fit?

00:40:32.340 | And answer that question honestly.

00:40:35.660 | And now Jonas, knowing what I know about you, because in your elaboration, you talked a

00:40:38.380 | little bit more about your busyness and you have a lot of going a lot of things going

00:40:41.180 | on with your family and young kids.

00:40:42.620 | When you step back, you might say, there is not time for me to execute a reasonable plan

00:40:48.980 | for the side hustle.

00:40:49.980 | And you know what?

00:40:50.980 | That's fine.

00:40:51.980 | Don't do the side hustle.

00:40:52.980 | But you're going to get that answer with clarity.

00:40:54.700 | Or after you capture configure control, you might really tame your job.

00:40:58.940 | And so you know what, I could work on this two days a week, three hours in the morning,

00:41:02.420 | it's my remote work days, nothing really gets going until noon or whatever.

00:41:07.580 | And this would allow me and here's my plan.

00:41:09.820 | And I could actually make pretty good progress on this.

00:41:12.060 | And then you might find like, okay, now I see exactly where I'm going to work on this.

00:41:14.700 | And I'm looking at exactly where I'm going to work on this.

00:41:16.380 | And this is enough time.

00:41:18.060 | And this is worth it enough to me, let's do it.

00:41:19.940 | But you cannot get to these answers with confidence unless you really know what's going on with

00:41:24.420 | your current work obligations.

00:41:26.540 | And so that's what I want you to do.

00:41:29.060 | Pull out capture configure control until you are a master of your job, then work through

00:41:35.740 | what are the reasonable scenarios for me to make progress on the side hustle and evaluate

00:41:39.980 | those?

00:41:40.980 | Will it work?

00:41:42.460 | And is it worth it?

00:41:44.520 | Is where the achievement the side hustle would generate?

00:41:47.320 | Is it worth it for what I would have to do and be very honest with you answer it and

00:41:50.980 | especially at this stage of life, you have young kids at home, it's completely fine for

00:41:54.460 | your answer there just be no, it's not worth it.

00:41:57.460 | I've controlled my job.

00:41:58.540 | I like having this flexibility.

00:42:00.880 | I want to just use this to do more things in my family or a hobby.

00:42:04.220 | I think that's a completely reasonable solution as well.

00:42:06.580 | But you don't get those options till you know what's going on.

00:42:09.100 | You're just haphazardly busy, good luck.

00:42:11.540 | You're just going to start doing the side hustle that in a way that you don't have time

00:42:14.500 | for this going to cause stress, you're going to let it peter out.

00:42:17.460 | So again, the productivity perspective here says once you have control, you get autonomy,

00:42:20.540 | autonomy gives you options.

00:42:23.180 | I actually thought when I first read the question, I thought that he had already started the

00:42:26.540 | side hustle and you know, I was working on it for a while.

00:42:29.340 | And then, you know, it's a little hard to tell.

00:42:31.700 | I read the longer one.

00:42:33.140 | He talked a lot about the various things that were he was worried about like his busyness

00:42:38.060 | and there definitely was a sense of haphazard busyness.

00:42:40.660 | Yeah, but it was a little unclear if he had started and it was feeling overwhelmed by

00:42:44.700 | it already or if he was pretty sure that if I just started this, I'd feel overwhelmed.

00:42:49.060 | I mean, the slow productivity approach, it can work with a side hustle, but you really

00:42:54.100 | got to evaluate it.

00:42:55.100 | Right.

00:42:56.100 | So you could say like, at some point it's too slow.

00:42:57.420 | If it's I'm going to work once a month, I'm going to have an hour session like that's

00:43:00.180 | too slow.

00:43:01.180 | Yeah.

00:43:02.180 | I mean, to me, slow productivity also involves obsessing over quality.

00:43:05.940 | It also involves the reduction of things.

00:43:08.220 | You can give more attention to something.

00:43:09.920 | It's not just about you can fit another thing into your schedule because if you stretch

00:43:14.240 | it out long enough, you can find little pockets of time to make progress.

00:43:17.340 | I mean, slow productivity is it's a lot of it's about simplification.

00:43:21.260 | So it can take more of your attention.

00:43:23.940 | Yeah.

00:43:24.940 | Obsession over quality so that you can really come at it again and again.

00:43:29.060 | I think just trying to spread something out.

00:43:30.980 | So you touch it here and there.

00:43:32.740 | It's not really a slow, productive approach.

00:43:34.180 | I think it's just a fragmented approach.

00:43:36.580 | Yeah.

00:43:37.580 | Yeah.

00:43:38.580 | All right.

00:43:39.580 | Let's try to fit in one more question here.

00:43:40.580 | All right.

00:43:41.580 | Next question is from Andrew, 51 year old biology professor.

00:43:45.700 | I'm a professor because research production is not a shared goal.

00:43:49.500 | I have difficulty getting my colleagues to think creatively about system changes, even

00:43:53.620 | if we might benefit from it all.

00:43:55.840 | It's always easier to do what is easiest in the immediate moment.

00:43:58.920 | Other folks productivity be damned.

00:44:00.940 | What should I do?

00:44:01.940 | Well, I included this question in part just because I like professor questions, but it's

00:44:06.380 | another good example for us to apply the productivity perspective.

00:44:11.780 | So what Andrew's talking about is the type of collaboration systems I detail and motivate

00:44:16.820 | in my book, A World Without Email, where I talk about in the knowledge work context,

00:44:23.020 | there's many informal collaboration styles that are built mainly around haphazard back

00:44:27.940 | and forth messaging that are actually really unproductive for everyone involved in the

00:44:32.020 | long term, even though in the moment it's easier just to shoot off a quick email than

00:44:36.780 | it is to actually implement some sort of collaboration system, like whatever.

00:44:40.780 | There's a shared document where the thoughts go.

00:44:42.620 | And on Monday night, I review that and then I put the notes using track changes and you

00:44:47.260 | have till Wednesday, close a business to react to them.

00:44:49.500 | And then we have a standing meeting on Thursday morning.

00:44:51.960 | Those type of systems get you away from constant back and forth messaging, but they're a little

00:44:56.340 | bit more work in the moment.

00:44:57.940 | Andrew was saying, I can't get fellow professors to do this because we're not all working towards

00:45:02.460 | the shared same goal.

00:45:03.740 | It's not everyone in my department is working on getting this new product out.

00:45:07.660 | We're each working on our own thing.

00:45:09.660 | And so we're not that interested in being collectively focused on improving how we collaborate.

00:45:17.580 | So Andrew, my productivity perspective here is you have to shift the scope that you're

00:45:24.100 | thinking about productivity.

00:45:26.160 | If you are a professor at a research institution, you need to think about yourself as a standalone

00:45:34.240 | business.

00:45:35.900 | The other professors in your department and other professors that you interact with and

00:45:39.820 | other departments, the HR department, the whatever, like other, whatever you would call

00:45:45.780 | them groups within university, like their own businesses with which you have various

00:45:49.740 | professional relationships.

00:45:52.740 | You're Ford and you work with Firestone tires.

00:45:56.700 | They're two separate businesses, but you guys have a contract and a relationship that get

00:46:01.380 | the tires for your car manufacturing plant, but you're not the same company.

00:46:05.020 | So you have to think of yourself almost as like a standalone silo.

00:46:08.340 | So when you're thinking about systems internally is where you're really trying to get a handle

00:46:12.100 | on what is my work, what do I work on?

00:46:15.100 | What are my quotas?

00:46:16.100 | What do I not do?

00:46:17.100 | When do I get this work done?

00:46:18.100 | How much time do I have available?

00:46:19.580 | How do I want to use this time?

00:46:20.780 | And you're keeping track of all that and have all your complex systems.

00:46:23.700 | Then when you're interacting with the rest of the world, it's well, you have sort of

00:46:26.700 | interfaces with interacting with these other standalone entities.

00:46:31.020 | And I don't know, they're bothering you with emails.

00:46:33.540 | You could just do what you need to do with that.

00:46:35.780 | Just process centric emailing might work there where you never formally develop a new collaboration

00:46:42.060 | system with someone else.

00:46:43.100 | You just sort of tell them in your response.

00:46:44.700 | Yeah, great.

00:46:45.700 | We should think about this.

00:46:48.100 | Put any thoughts you have in this Google doc that I started.

00:46:51.620 | I will review it.

00:46:52.860 | If I have any questions because you're a professor, I know you have clearly posted office hours.

00:46:57.820 | I will actually just come to your office hours next week and we'll talk about it.

00:47:02.220 | So you just sort of put a process into the communication and there it is.

00:47:06.100 | You're not calling it a process.

00:47:07.260 | You're not negotiating about it.

00:47:08.340 | You're just saying it.

00:47:10.180 | Certain types of work like this is very disruptive.

00:47:13.720 | This person just constantly wants to email things.

00:47:15.860 | Okay, I'm not doing that.

00:47:17.540 | I'm not going to work on that person.

00:47:19.020 | I'm going to leave that committee.

00:47:20.020 | You have all this autonomy.

00:47:21.020 | This is like a company saying we're going to get out of selling at souls because there's

00:47:24.660 | not a lot of profit there.

00:47:25.660 | We're going to focus more on, you know, selling Ford focuses or whatever.

00:47:30.300 | You think of yourself like a standalone business that interfaces with other organizations and

00:47:35.140 | you do your best to keep those interfaces as non-disruptive as possible.

00:47:39.940 | So you need to be more ruthless, Andrew.

00:47:41.740 | That's I guess what I would say.

00:47:43.700 | Your department is not your team members.

00:47:46.860 | They're your colleagues.

00:47:48.020 | You're collegial to them.

00:47:49.020 | You enjoy them, but you're all your own standalone entities trying to figure out how to exist

00:47:54.460 | in the same academic sphere while still accomplishing your internal objectives.

00:48:01.620 | So I don't know, maybe, maybe I'm being a little bit Darwinian there, but I think it's

00:48:05.260 | the best academia really is.

00:48:06.900 | It's entrepreneurial.

00:48:07.900 | Yeah.

00:48:08.900 | You're trying to produce original research.

00:48:10.900 | That's the whole game.

00:48:11.900 | If you don't, you get fired.

00:48:13.020 | That's the whole game.

00:48:14.700 | And you work with other people.

00:48:15.700 | There's other things you have to do and service you have to do.

00:48:17.420 | But, but it's just like Ford has these other things they have to do, but ultimately if

00:48:21.260 | they're not selling cars, they're out of business.

00:48:23.060 | You kind of have to keep that in mind.

00:48:27.100 | I like it.

00:48:28.100 | All right.

00:48:29.100 | So I like at least once a month to talk about the books I read the month before.

00:48:33.140 | So we're going to do that in our final segment, the books I read in February, 2023.

00:48:38.300 | Before we do, let me just quickly mention another one of our long time sponsors.

00:48:41.940 | That is our friends at Blinkist.

00:48:45.920 | As I've said before, if you enjoy a reading life, so if like I recommend you make reading

00:48:52.160 | books an important part of your development as a human being, Blinkist is a great assistant,

00:48:59.860 | a great whatever you want to call it, sidecar to this pursuit.

00:49:04.380 | Here's how it works.

00:49:05.380 | It's a subscription service that gives you short 15 minute summaries of thousands over

00:49:11.380 | 5,000 different nonfiction books and podcasts.

00:49:15.380 | These 15 minute summaries you can listen to, or you can read.

00:49:19.420 | They're called Blinks.

00:49:21.220 | Now the way I recommend using Blinkist to support the reading life is to use it to help

00:49:25.340 | triage which of the tens of thousands of books that are out there do you actually want to

00:49:30.380 | invest your time in the reading.

00:49:31.760 | So if you're interested in a particular book, read the Blink, listen to the Blink.

00:49:35.560 | You will know, trust me, I've done this a lot.

00:49:37.660 | Jesse's a big user of Blinkist.

00:49:38.660 | He's done this a lot.

00:49:39.660 | The 15 minute summary teaches you really clearly, oh yes, I need to get this book, or I kind

00:49:48.340 | of got the gist.

00:49:49.340 | I'm glad I didn't actually start reading this book and aborted on it.

00:49:51.740 | So it's like you're a sidekick for trying to figure out what books you want to read.

00:49:57.940 | And the advantage is all of the books you read the Blink of that you decide not to actually

00:50:01.540 | buy and read, you still learn the main ideas and the terminologies and the frameworks.

00:50:07.700 | You can file that away and use it when you then encounter a book that you're reading

00:50:12.260 | in its full details.

00:50:13.540 | You know, hey, these five other books I decided not to buy.

00:50:15.660 | I know the main ideas and frameworks.

00:50:17.020 | And when I'm reading this book, I have this foundation.

00:50:19.500 | So it really is a great accelerant to the reading life.

00:50:22.940 | I also want to mention they have a new feature called Blinkist Connect right now, which is

00:50:29.020 | a two for the price of one feature in which you can, with your subscription to Blinkist,

00:50:33.420 | get an extra subscription that you can give to a friend.

00:50:36.780 | So if you have a friend who's also trying to engage in the reading life and you're joining

00:50:40.420 | Blinkist, you can pass on a subscription to them as well.

00:50:45.700 | So right now, Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience.

00:50:48.260 | Go to Blinkist.com/deep to start your seven day free trial and you will get 45% off a

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00:50:55.660 | That's Blinkist spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T.

00:50:58.740 | Blinkist.com/deep to get 45% off and a seven day free trial.

00:51:02.980 | Blinkist.com/deep.

00:51:04.260 | This offer is good through April 30th only.

00:51:08.540 | And now for a limited time, you can even use Blinkist Connect to share your premium account.

00:51:12.300 | You will get two premium subscriptions for the price of one.

00:51:17.780 | I also want to talk about our friends at ExpressVPN.

00:51:23.180 | If you don't use a VPN, you should.

00:51:25.700 | Trust me, I'm a computer scientist.

00:51:28.160 | If you're not using a VPN, people can see what you're doing on the internet, what sites

00:51:34.400 | and services you can talk to.

00:51:36.140 | People who are just nearby when you're connected to a Wi-Fi access point can sniff your packets.

00:51:40.860 | And even if you've encrypted the content of the packets, they see what website or what

00:51:45.180 | service you're talking to.

00:51:47.300 | Your internet service provider at home can and probably does also harvest this information

00:51:53.540 | to figure out what type of sites or services does the subscriber use.

00:51:56.620 | And they can sell that information and they do.

00:51:58.300 | I don't think people realize the degree to which the sites and services you use are being

00:52:02.060 | monitored and collected, packaged up and sold.

00:52:05.500 | A VPN avoids that.

00:52:07.100 | The way it works is when you have a VPN, you connect to the VPN itself.

00:52:12.640 | You send them an encrypted message saying, here's who I really want to talk to.

00:52:16.700 | I want to go to Netflix.

00:52:18.120 | I want to go to calnewport.com.

00:52:20.260 | And the VPN talks to that site or service on your behalf, encrypts the response and

00:52:23.860 | send it back to you.

00:52:25.000 | So what is the person sniffing your Wi-Fi packets, your internet service provider find

00:52:28.620 | out about you?

00:52:29.620 | Only that you're talking to a VPN.

00:52:31.220 | So they have no idea what you're actually doing on the internet.

00:52:35.980 | If you're going to use a VPN, I suggest the one I use, which is ExpressVPN.

00:52:41.100 | I like them for a lot of reasons.

00:52:42.460 | One, they have servers in over a hundred different locations around the world.

00:52:47.020 | So wherever you are in your travels, there's probably a nearby ExpressVPN server you can

00:52:50.980 | connect to.

00:52:52.220 | Nearby is good because that means a faster connection.

00:52:54.660 | They have a lot of bandwidth.

00:52:56.080 | You get very high bandwidth connections with these servers and their software is very easy

00:53:00.980 | to use.

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00:53:05.480 | They click a button.

00:53:06.820 | Now you're going through a VPN and you just use everything like normal.

00:53:10.480 | Use everything like normal, but now it's going automatically through the VPN.

00:53:13.700 | So you need a VPN.

00:53:16.100 | ExpressVPN is the one that I recommend.

00:53:19.900 | So be smart, protect your data and gain more privacy at ExpressVPN.com/deep.

00:53:28.780 | Don't forget to use my link at ExpressVPN.com/deep.

00:53:32.580 | If you include that /deep, you'll get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free.

00:53:40.340 | All right, final segment.

00:53:42.260 | The five books I read in February 2023.

00:53:44.780 | As long time listeners know, I try to read five books a month and I report on what those

00:53:49.680 | books are here on the podcast.

00:53:51.820 | All right, so what did I read in February?

00:53:55.000 | Number one, The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick.

00:54:01.540 | This was roughly speaking a popular history of the Royal Society in London.

00:54:08.300 | More generally speaking, it was a book about the rise of the Enlightenment scientific mindset.

00:54:16.420 | Dolnick makes this point, but a lot of other authors make this point as well.

00:54:19.460 | Isaac Newton was at a turning point.

00:54:21.560 | Isaac Newton was born and came up in a world that was connected more to Greek thought and

00:54:25.860 | mythological thought.

00:54:27.940 | And by the time he died, we were in a world that had a more empirical mathematical approach

00:54:33.760 | to understanding the world.

00:54:35.540 | I love these type of histories.

00:54:36.820 | It's a very readable book, short chapters, it moves pretty quick.

00:54:41.040 | Not as deep as some other histories I've read on this, but had a lot of good information.

00:54:44.860 | So a lot of London in this episode.

00:54:48.020 | Yeah.

00:54:49.020 | Two questions from London.

00:54:50.020 | Two questions from London.

00:54:51.020 | A book about London.

00:54:54.020 | You know why?

00:54:55.020 | It's because I am...

00:54:56.140 | That article we talked about last week in the Financial Times, obviously that's a London-based

00:55:00.340 | publication.

00:55:01.340 | So last week I was killing it in the UK.

00:55:03.980 | So this podcast, number one technology podcast in the UK, number 30 overall podcast in the

00:55:11.780 | UK.

00:55:12.780 | Deep Work at Amazon UK was ranked 60.

00:55:18.420 | That's so good.

00:55:19.420 | Right?

00:55:20.420 | So we've been killing it in the UK.

00:55:21.420 | So as you can see, we're pushing all of our content to be UK-centric.

00:55:24.340 | There's a lot of good golf courses around London.

00:55:26.540 | Yeah, that's true.

00:55:28.260 | We need a podcast out of there.

00:55:30.700 | All right.

00:55:31.700 | I also read Wandering Home by Bill McKibben.

00:55:33.420 | I read that years and years ago, but I had a copy in my library.

00:55:36.900 | So I went back and read it and loved it.

00:55:39.100 | Very nostalgic.

00:55:40.100 | I really remember reading that book in grad school.

00:55:43.500 | Bill McKibben, who I really like, I interviewed him for a New Yorker piece a couple of years

00:55:47.060 | ago.

00:55:48.060 | He wrote this cool book where he walked from his house in Ripton, Vermont, which is sort

00:55:53.880 | of one valley over from Lake Champlain in Western Vermont, to his house in the Adirondacks.

00:56:00.980 | So the McKibben story is that he quit the New Yorker and moved to a cabin.

00:56:07.460 | It was really like a rundown house.

00:56:09.580 | Him and his wife, Susan Halperin, who's an excellent journalist, they moved to this house

00:56:15.220 | in the Adirondacks.

00:56:16.500 | And then once they had their kid, they realized kids need a school to go to.

00:56:20.220 | So they moved across Lake Champlain to Ripton, Vermont, which I actually visited there last

00:56:23.820 | summer.

00:56:24.820 | It's one south of Lincoln.

00:56:27.420 | It's these cool green mountain towns that are up at elevation and really quaint.

00:56:32.060 | Anyways, he walked from Ripton to the old house in the Adirondacks.

00:56:37.700 | He had someone row him across Lake Champlain.

00:56:42.020 | And in doing so, he visited all these places and talked a lot about the type of things

00:56:47.180 | he writes about in Deep Economy.

00:56:48.580 | Is that the book?

00:56:52.100 | Deep Economy.

00:56:54.380 | Sustainable commercial endeavor, etc.

00:56:56.380 | It was a really cool book, really nostalgic.

00:56:58.180 | Makes you want to just move to Vermont and drink Otter Creek beer and hang out at Middlebury.

00:57:05.220 | Another book I read, you'd appreciate this one, Jesse, America's Game by Michael McCambridge,

00:57:09.420 | the history of the NFL.

00:57:10.420 | It's a long book.

00:57:11.420 | I read it for, I'm in a dad book group that only reads sports books.

00:57:18.220 | Just a lot of journalists and stuff that we don't want to read anything that's too close

00:57:23.740 | to our work.

00:57:24.740 | Anything that's too close to home, so we read sports books.

00:57:27.420 | I like that.

00:57:28.420 | Yeah.

00:57:29.420 | I know a lot about the history of the NFL now, at least up until 2005, that's when this

00:57:34.940 | book came out.

00:57:35.940 | In the early days, back during Lombardi, the Canadian Football League was a big, it was

00:57:41.740 | a definite competitor.

00:57:42.940 | People would go over there and-

00:57:43.940 | That's not mentioned at all in this book.

00:57:46.100 | Really?

00:57:47.100 | Yeah.

00:57:48.100 | I read his historian on earlier in the week and they were actually talking about that

00:57:52.060 | because somebody died.

00:57:53.420 | Michael McCambridge, man, you missed the big storyline here.

00:57:59.060 | I also read The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell.

00:58:05.260 | The philosopher, mathematician Bertrand Russell wrote this book.

00:58:09.220 | This would have been in like 19, I think it's like 1919 or something like that, maybe 1930,

00:58:14.620 | somewhere in that period, maybe a little later than that.

00:58:17.700 | I might be messing it up.

00:58:18.940 | He died remarkably late.

00:58:21.780 | He lived a long time.

00:58:22.780 | I'm going to say the 1930s.

00:58:24.780 | Anyways, there's a really nice new edition of this book that I found at Barnes & Noble.

00:58:29.460 | I was like, "Okay, I got to read this."

00:58:31.100 | It's kind of like a self-help book, but written before people wrote self-help books and written

00:58:36.820 | by an eminent philosopher and mathematician.

00:58:39.100 | It's him trying to deconstruct and understand the sources of human happiness as well as

00:58:44.180 | the things that pull away from human happiness and trying to lay out some sort of program

00:58:47.780 | for how you can maximize it in your life.

00:58:50.620 | This is what philosophers used to do.

00:58:53.340 | This is why I really dislike this tendency we have for, especially the very online types,

00:58:58.220 | to be very dismissive about, well, their self-help.

00:59:02.540 | They're a guru.

00:59:03.540 | Where you have to throw this disclaimer at the front of everything you write.

00:59:06.740 | You're like, "I'm no guru.

00:59:08.580 | In fact, I'm terrible and I can barely walk and I'm not giving any advice."

00:59:13.860 | You really think people are going to applaud, like there's all these gurus who are preying

00:59:17.540 | on people.

00:59:18.540 | But look, it used to be professional thinkers and philosophers were like, "This is one of

00:59:21.180 | the things I want to do, is try to think through big questions from life and take my swing."

00:59:26.380 | So good for Russell for doing it.

00:59:28.020 | Very readable.

00:59:29.260 | There's some anachronisms in it, but actually otherwise reads as a pretty modern book.

00:59:32.900 | >> RUSSELL: A lot of similar concepts to the deep life stuff that you talk about?

00:59:36.020 | >> DAVE: There's some, yeah.

00:59:37.020 | Yeah.

00:59:38.020 | I mean, I get- >> RUSSELL: Like getting outside.

00:59:39.020 | >> DAVE: There's that stuff, but also a lot of psychological stuff like jealousy and pride

00:59:44.100 | and trying to understand.

00:59:45.100 | It's interesting.

00:59:46.100 | So it's kind of mental healthy, a lot of it.

00:59:50.060 | The habits of mind that can really pull you down.

00:59:53.100 | I mean, it actually reads pretty relevant, but it is an issue of mine.

00:59:55.900 | It's this like, I'm not impressed by people who have to put these long disclaimers about

01:00:01.460 | like, "I'm not a guru who's going to tell you exactly how to live your life."

01:00:04.900 | I mean, where are these gurus who are trying to tell people exactly how to live their life?

01:00:09.420 | I think smart people should take swings at, "Here's a big question.

01:00:13.740 | Let me take a swing at how you might answer it."

01:00:16.340 | People are smart.

01:00:17.620 | They will adapt it to their own circumstances.

01:00:19.820 | They will discount the obvious caveats.

01:00:24.540 | This weird, whatever it is, negative reaction that sort of very online elite types have

01:00:31.540 | to trying to be instructive or like to tackle big questions.

01:00:36.860 | I don't think it's healthy.

01:00:38.540 | It's similar in sports how they always say, "Oh, the naysayers say X, Y, Z."

01:00:43.140 | I think in online culture, it's very safe to be a naysayer because you'd be applauded

01:00:46.860 | for your world weary critiques.

01:00:48.260 | People are like, "Oh, that's a good, I didn't see that angle of critique."

01:00:51.780 | And there's no real risk.

01:00:52.780 | Yeah, being a little bit too critical.

01:00:54.660 | They're like, "Well, you know, sophisticated people are critical."

01:00:57.520 | But you're really opening yourself up if you say, "This is my thoughts about this," or

01:01:03.420 | like, "This is my philosophy for how you should do something."

01:01:05.660 | I mean, I think it's why I've sold a lot of books is because I'm not online, so I don't

01:01:09.700 | care.

01:01:10.700 | It's like, "Look, I think this is interesting.

01:01:12.620 | I loved reading this stuff.

01:01:13.660 | I love books like Bertrand Russell's Conquest of Happiness.

01:01:16.460 | Let's just get after it."

01:01:17.700 | And I don't care.

01:01:19.220 | So I guess more books for me if everyone else is afraid of it.

01:01:21.780 | A lot of smart people who could be writing really interesting, cool, reflective books

01:01:25.220 | aren't because they don't want to get yelled at on Twitter.

01:01:27.100 | So hey, more books for us.

01:01:30.960 | Final book I read, part of this is kind of a holdover from Thriller December, Rising

01:01:35.520 | Sun by Michael Crichton.

01:01:37.560 | I'm sure I read that at some point when I was a kid, but I found the paperback in a

01:01:43.360 | used paperback, and so I read it.

01:01:45.880 | Well-constructed sort of murder mystery thriller.

01:01:49.040 | It's two detectives.

01:01:50.040 | I saw a movie about this with Sean Connery and God, who was the other person?

01:01:55.880 | Was it Wesley Snipes?

01:01:56.880 | I think it was.

01:01:57.880 | I saw that movie like 30 years ago.

01:01:59.160 | Yeah.

01:02:00.160 | I have to go back and watch the movie.

01:02:01.160 | I mean, essentially, it's a detective thriller, right?

01:02:05.640 | These are detectives, and they're trying to figure out a murder, and then there's some

01:02:08.280 | like Crichton high-tech stuff.

01:02:10.120 | The thing I didn't really realize this about Crichton until more recently, he got really

01:02:15.200 | reactionary.

01:02:17.080 | This is like a pretty reactionary kind of anti-Japanese book.

01:02:20.960 | Oh, really?

01:02:21.960 | Yeah.

01:02:22.960 | Like he was very worried, clearly very worried about the economic influence of, then I guess

01:02:29.800 | Japan had this massive outsized economic influence.

01:02:32.960 | Not very nice to Japanese people.

01:02:34.800 | I'm thinking about disclosure.

01:02:36.160 | I'm thinking about state of fear.

01:02:37.280 | I was like, "Oh, he kind of became curmudgeonly in his 90s."

01:02:41.760 | So it is pretty reactionary.

01:02:45.560 | He just works this stuff into his book, but still a good murder mystery.

01:02:51.480 | But it's an interesting layer.

01:02:53.400 | Any of these books audio?

01:02:56.160 | I'm sure they're all...

01:02:57.160 | No, none of these were audio.

01:02:58.160 | So you read them all?

01:02:59.160 | I read them all.

01:03:00.160 | Yeah.

01:03:01.160 | Yeah, I've been doing a lot of audio books recently.

01:03:03.160 | All right.

01:03:04.160 | Well, anyways, that's what I've got, Jesse.

01:03:06.420 | So thank you everyone for watching or listening.

01:03:09.440 | Today's episode, we'll be back next week with another full episode of the show.

01:03:14.080 | Until then, as always, stay deep.

01:03:16.480 | [Music]

Ep.240: The Hard Work Of Taking it Easy

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