Ep 232. The Lumberjack Paradox

00:00:00.000 | Why are lumberjacks happier than lawyers?

00:00:05.000 | I think by unpacking this,

00:00:07.580 | we're gonna get some interesting insight

00:00:08.880 | into how to get more depth and meaning

00:00:10.560 | out of almost any type of job.

00:00:12.540 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions,

00:00:23.580 | the show about working and living deeply

00:00:25.740 | in a increasingly distracted world.

00:00:30.320 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ.

00:00:33.680 | I'm joined by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:36.100 | So Jesse, this weekend,

00:00:40.700 | I was reading my physical copy of the Washington Post

00:00:43.980 | because as I often emphasize on this show,

00:00:46.300 | in my leisure life, I strive to be as much as possible

00:00:49.240 | like a depression-era farmer.

00:00:52.360 | I read newspapers and listen to the radio,

00:00:56.000 | and I sit on the porch with a rocking chair

00:00:58.880 | holding a pitchfork.

00:00:59.960 | Maybe not the pitchfork part,

00:01:01.960 | but I aspire to be in my leisure life

00:01:04.620 | like a depression-era farmer.

00:01:06.040 | Anyway, so I'm reading the physical newspaper,

00:01:08.680 | and I come across an interesting article

00:01:10.840 | in the business section of the Washington Post.

00:01:12.860 | This is from Sunday.

00:01:14.020 | The title is "The Happiest, Least Stressful Jobs on Earth."

00:01:19.020 | So it looks like here there is new data,

00:01:22.380 | new data on how people feel

00:01:24.160 | about how happy their job makes them,

00:01:27.080 | as well as how stressful their life makes them.

00:01:30.480 | And I'm looking at this here.

00:01:32.560 | This is a Bureau of Labor Statistics.

00:01:34.240 | They were adding these new questions

00:01:36.360 | to their standard American Time News survey.

00:01:37.940 | So they kind of wanted to understand

00:01:40.040 | what jobs make us happy, what jobs make us unhappy,

00:01:42.640 | what jobs stress us out, what jobs don't stress us out.

00:01:45.800 | I was a little surprised, actually, by the top choice,

00:01:50.240 | so what was the happiest, least stressful job

00:01:53.560 | from the survey.

00:01:54.580 | I was less surprised by the bottom,

00:01:57.900 | what was the least happy, most stressful job.

00:02:01.100 | Let me quiz you, Jesse.

00:02:02.780 | What do you think the happiest, least stressful job

00:02:06.300 | in America is according to this survey?

00:02:08.340 | - Probably some volunteer job

00:02:11.460 | with somebody that's retired, you know?

00:02:14.180 | - I thought you were gonna say podcast producer.

00:02:15.780 | (Jesse laughs)

00:02:17.020 | And the fact that you didn't say podcast producer

00:02:19.100 | tells me everything I need to know.

00:02:21.740 | You're outta here.

00:02:23.260 | All right, good guess.

00:02:24.460 | And what about least happy, most stressful job?

00:02:27.740 | What would you guess?

00:02:29.020 | - Most stressful job, I think,

00:02:30.140 | is air traffic controllers, aren't they?

00:02:32.140 | - Okay, and then you think that's also the least happy?

00:02:35.740 | - Least happy, lawyers.

00:02:39.820 | - So you are 100% correct about least happy.

00:02:45.380 | Least happy, most stressful does turn out to be lawyers.

00:02:51.260 | The surprising question, the surprising response

00:02:53.340 | was happiest, least stressful, lumberjacks.

00:02:56.680 | - Really?

00:02:57.520 | - Lumberjacks.

00:02:58.540 | Followed closely by various other agricultural jobs,

00:03:03.540 | so farmers, and then also foresters.

00:03:05.780 | - Yeah, I guess that's that.

00:03:06.620 | - So if you're like a forestry agent

00:03:07.860 | or something like that.

00:03:08.740 | So I thought this was a good, deep question

00:03:11.740 | for us to dive into in today's episode,

00:03:14.820 | which is why are lumberjacks happier than lawyers?

00:03:20.820 | I think by unpacking this,

00:03:22.900 | we're gonna get some interesting insight

00:03:24.180 | into how to get more depth and meaning

00:03:25.860 | out of almost any type of job.

00:03:28.220 | All right, so let's actually jump into this article

00:03:29.940 | to get an answer.

00:03:30.780 | I have the physical copy here,

00:03:32.300 | but we also loaded it up on the tablet.

00:03:34.580 | So if you're watching at youtube.com/calnewportmedia,

00:03:39.480 | this is episode 232, you'll see this on your screen.

00:03:42.860 | If you're just listening, I'll narrate it.

00:03:44.820 | So I have the article here.

00:03:46.220 | I should give credit to the writer, of course.

00:03:48.160 | This is Andrew Van Dam.

00:03:49.860 | This came out on January 6th, 2023 online,

00:03:54.020 | the physical paper much more recently.

00:03:56.020 | All right, so to start off in this article,

00:03:57.740 | we get what I was just talking about here.

00:04:00.740 | We have an analysis based on thousands of time journals

00:04:04.660 | from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

00:04:06.900 | American Time Use Survey.

00:04:09.180 | And they found, the researchers quoted in this article

00:04:13.100 | found agriculture, logging and forestry

00:04:17.360 | have the highest levels of self-reported happiness

00:04:20.180 | and the lowest levels of self-reported stress.

00:04:25.140 | This is over all major industry categories they looked at.

00:04:30.140 | Here's the actual questions they added.

00:04:32.620 | So in four recent surveys,

00:04:34.020 | they added to the Time Use Survey,

00:04:36.460 | instead of just asking what activities are you doing,

00:04:39.420 | they were asking people how meaningful their activities were

00:04:41.920 | and how happy, sad, stressed, pained and tired

00:04:44.580 | they felt on a six point scale.

00:04:46.300 | So these were the questions they used to get this data.

00:04:49.360 | All right, some other things I wanna point out

00:04:50.560 | from this article,

00:04:51.460 | healthcare workers and social workers

00:04:55.160 | rate themselves as doing meaningful work.

00:04:58.120 | In fact, they're at the top

00:04:59.480 | of the meaningful work ranking scale,

00:05:03.440 | by far the most likely to say they're doing meaningful work,

00:05:05.520 | but they rank low on happiness.

00:05:07.520 | They also rank high on stress.

00:05:09.480 | If we look at stress in general,

00:05:11.500 | the most stressful sectors were finance and insurance.

00:05:15.800 | The single most stressful occupation, lawyers.

00:05:18.820 | So interesting.

00:05:20.940 | Even jobs that felt very meaningful

00:05:24.220 | could be low happiness and high stress.

00:05:26.960 | Jobs like lumberjacks weren't particularly

00:05:29.540 | highly ranked on meaning scales,

00:05:32.000 | but they were happier and they were less stressed.

00:05:36.260 | Now this is a bit of a puzzle.

00:05:39.420 | I mean, let's give this a name

00:05:40.960 | because I like to give things names.

00:05:41.980 | We can call this the lumberjack paradox.

00:05:44.820 | Why is this the case?

00:05:45.940 | And the reason why this is a bit of a paradox

00:05:47.740 | is if we think about it,

00:05:48.820 | I mean, lumberjack jobs and farmers and forestry,

00:05:52.060 | but we'll focus just on lumberjacks here.

00:05:53.940 | It's not particularly meaningful in the sense

00:05:55.900 | that what I'm doing is connected to a bigger cause

00:05:59.100 | that I feel is really important.

00:06:01.220 | That's rarely the case.

00:06:02.620 | It's also physically perilous.

00:06:04.500 | I have this on the screen here.

00:06:05.780 | They point this out.

00:06:06.960 | This job, especially lumberjacks is particularly perilous.

00:06:11.380 | They report the self-report,

00:06:13.060 | the highest levels of pain on the job, right?

00:06:15.380 | So it's a physically demanding job.

00:06:16.620 | You're more likely to get hurt on the job.

00:06:18.940 | The actual activity from moment to moment is,

00:06:22.380 | often let's say not rote,

00:06:24.620 | but very, very physical and demanding,

00:06:27.460 | yet they're happy, yet they're less stressed.

00:06:31.160 | So what is the answer?

00:06:33.020 | Well, when it comes to this particular survey

00:06:35.820 | and that particular observation

00:06:37.580 | of lumberjacks and related jobs

00:06:40.500 | being happier than white-collar jobs,

00:06:43.380 | the answer they honed in on for this particular example

00:06:45.860 | is just what Jesse pointed out.

00:06:47.940 | They take place outside.

00:06:50.000 | So when they were doing this time-use survey,

00:06:53.700 | they found that being in the great outdoors

00:06:56.300 | ranks in the top three for both happiness and meaning

00:06:59.140 | among locations in which measured activities occurred.

00:07:03.300 | Only places of worship consistently rated higher

00:07:06.140 | on those meanings.

00:07:06.980 | So they said, look, our data shows

00:07:08.100 | that whether you're working or not,

00:07:09.940 | when you're outside, you're more likely to be happy.

00:07:13.460 | You're more likely to be less stressed.

00:07:16.020 | Lumberjacks, farmers, foresters, they're outside a lot.

00:07:19.820 | And so they're reaping that benefit throughout the day.

00:07:22.380 | If you're a lawyer, by contrast, you're not outside.

00:07:24.620 | So you don't reap that benefit.

00:07:25.860 | And you have high stress because of the nature of your job.

00:07:29.520 | So this leads us to a broader answer

00:07:32.380 | to the lumberjack paradox.

00:07:33.620 | And this is the thing that,

00:07:34.860 | the idea that we're gonna explore throughout today's episode,

00:07:38.120 | which is the idea that the characteristics of your workday

00:07:42.460 | matter as much as the content of your work.

00:07:46.460 | Especially in American thinking,

00:07:50.320 | we tend to focus a lot on the latter.

00:07:53.180 | What specifically do I do for a job?

00:07:56.380 | We assume that this is where we're gonna find meaning,

00:07:58.820 | it's where we're gonna find happiness,

00:08:00.100 | and it's gonna be the main thing controlling our stress.

00:08:02.580 | Am I a doctor?

00:08:03.740 | Am I a lumberjack?

00:08:04.940 | Am I a podcast producer?

00:08:07.140 | Or am I a drug dealer?

00:08:09.380 | Similar professions in terms of their drain on society.

00:08:12.980 | Isn't that right, Jesse?

00:08:13.820 | - Yeah. - No, thank you.

00:08:15.660 | I'm just joking, I'm just mad.

00:08:16.980 | I'm still just mad you didn't say podcast producers

00:08:18.940 | the happiest job on earth.

00:08:21.820 | So we care a lot in American culture about what is my job.

00:08:24.940 | The reality that I think is being emphasized

00:08:28.060 | by the study summarized in the Washington Post article

00:08:32.320 | is that the characteristics of your workday,

00:08:34.740 | independent of the specific content of your job,

00:08:37.220 | the characteristics of your workday

00:08:38.900 | can matter just as much.

00:08:41.120 | Those lumberjacks are happy not because on paper

00:08:44.380 | there's something abstractly really exciting

00:08:46.520 | or meaningful about being a lumberjack,

00:08:47.860 | but because of the characteristics of the workday.

00:08:50.180 | They're outside, they're fresh air,

00:08:53.900 | and other things going on,

00:08:55.080 | I'm gonna summarize here in a second,

00:08:55.980 | but the characteristics can play a huge role.

00:08:58.980 | So what I wanted to do here was list,

00:09:01.580 | I wrote down four different characteristics of a workday

00:09:05.540 | that are relatively independent of the content of your job

00:09:09.260 | that seem to have a big impact

00:09:12.580 | on how happy you are in your job.

00:09:15.380 | All right, so I wanna go through these four

00:09:17.020 | because what I wanna do, of course,

00:09:18.060 | is generalize our toolkit here

00:09:20.140 | beyond just telling people quit your lawyer job

00:09:22.820 | and become a lumberjack.

00:09:23.740 | Let's have a more nuanced approach on this.

00:09:25.520 | So I'm gonna enumerate four characteristics of workdays

00:09:29.260 | that really has an impact on your subjective experience

00:09:31.500 | of work.

00:09:32.340 | Number one, the setting of your work, right?

00:09:37.100 | This is what we got with the lumberjack data.

00:09:39.700 | Being outside, for example,

00:09:40.820 | tends to make human beings happier and less stressed.

00:09:44.140 | Things like stressful commutes, busy offices,

00:09:46.540 | having an ugly home office,

00:09:48.520 | it's in your laundry room and it's loud and it's cluttered.

00:09:51.540 | All of this can matter for how you,

00:09:53.940 | your subjective experience of your workday.

00:09:55.700 | So where it is you do your work,

00:09:57.080 | what it takes to actually get there.

00:09:59.820 | Number two, the stress generated by your work.

00:10:03.100 | I say this is a characteristic of your workday as well,

00:10:05.780 | is how much stress you encounter

00:10:07.980 | independent of the specific source of this stress.

00:10:11.620 | This also shows up in the data summarized in that article.

00:10:15.260 | Lawyers and healthcare workers,

00:10:16.660 | one of the reasons why they're not happy

00:10:18.060 | is that their jobs have many moments of stress

00:10:20.460 | and humans don't like to be constantly exposed to stress.

00:10:25.180 | So if your job has these constant rate of moments

00:10:29.820 | of your cortisol going up, that heart rate getting going,

00:10:32.120 | that feeling of anxiety growing,

00:10:33.660 | if that's happening all the time,

00:10:35.320 | you are likely to be less happy about that job.

00:10:38.900 | Again, independent of the specifics

00:10:41.860 | of the content of your work.

00:10:43.700 | I would say the major source of stress is overload,

00:10:46.720 | especially in white collar work.

00:10:48.860 | So this would be your job has too many things coming at you,

00:10:51.940 | too many things on your plate

00:10:53.080 | for you to be able to really juggle.

00:10:54.540 | So you're constantly context shifting, which is painful,

00:10:57.140 | constantly falling behind on things

00:10:58.980 | that you think need to be done,

00:10:59.980 | not even sure about everything that's on your plate.

00:11:02.100 | That is probably the most common source of acute stress

00:11:06.820 | in white collar jobs, this type of thing matters.

00:11:09.480 | The third characteristic of your workday

00:11:13.100 | that we're gonna talk about

00:11:13.940 | is the clarity or simplicity of your work.

00:11:16.740 | Humans are upset when we have lots of ambiguous tasks

00:11:19.500 | and obligation to deal with

00:11:20.660 | and it's unclear how to deal with them,

00:11:22.380 | it's unclear what to do next.

00:11:25.020 | Let me just tell you a specific example from my life

00:11:28.220 | that I think highlights this.

00:11:29.220 | It's a trivial thing,

00:11:32.100 | a logistical and active logistical organization

00:11:35.400 | I needed to do with my teaching assistants.

00:11:37.700 | And there was a little bit of ambiguity about how to do it.

00:11:40.920 | I wasn't quite sure if I had the right information

00:11:43.420 | or it's complicated in the details,

00:11:46.900 | but it's trivial is the main thing

00:11:47.940 | I'm trying to emphasize here.

00:11:48.860 | It was, I don't really know how to take the next step

00:11:51.700 | towards organizing, it was office hours or something like that

00:11:53.980 | because I'm missing some information

00:11:55.180 | or something was unclear.

00:11:57.080 | That was a huge source of stress for me.

00:11:58.940 | I didn't wanna do it, it was hanging over me,

00:12:01.260 | something that is on paper, a very simple,

00:12:03.940 | let me just think this through and send some messages,

00:12:05.620 | but it was ambiguous what to do next, source of stress.

00:12:08.220 | So the more of that type of work you have on the plate,

00:12:10.820 | the more stressed you're gonna be.

00:12:13.300 | If you're constantly context shifting,

00:12:14.780 | constantly trying to figure out how to put out fires,

00:12:17.540 | whose entire scope you don't quite understand,

00:12:20.140 | it's gonna hurt your subjective experience of work.

00:12:22.700 | Remember, this makes me think of the movie "Office Space".

00:12:26.580 | You know "Office Space", Jesse, the Mike Judge movie?

00:12:28.880 | - Yeah.

00:12:29.720 | - Do you remember the ending of that movie?

00:12:32.400 | - No.

00:12:33.240 | - So for those who don't know, "Office Space",

00:12:34.980 | the Mike Judge movie, I think this was like 1999 or 2000.

00:12:38.580 | And the main character had this job

00:12:42.980 | at a generic office park, office building,

00:12:46.100 | doing something vaguely involving software development.

00:12:49.420 | He filled out TPS reports, et cetera, right?

00:12:51.900 | So it was a send up, right?

00:12:53.220 | A send up of the inanity of modern knowledge work.

00:12:57.660 | And I won't spoil the whole plot,

00:12:59.660 | but where he ends up in the end, he's very happy,

00:13:03.140 | is a construction crew where he's just shoveling debris.

00:13:07.540 | Now it's actually the building, I will spoil it,

00:13:09.980 | it is the building of his company

00:13:12.020 | because it got burnt down to the ground.

00:13:14.820 | So, but the reason why he's happy

00:13:16.540 | is not because his company burnt down

00:13:17.900 | because of the simplicity.

00:13:19.820 | He's like, he shows up, I'm moving this stuff into here,

00:13:22.580 | this is what you want me to do.

00:13:24.020 | And he had this sort of great piece about it.

00:13:25.600 | So that's a sending up a true point,

00:13:28.420 | which is clarity and simplicity about what you wanna do.

00:13:31.460 | The Lumberjacks have this, of course.

00:13:33.660 | The job is clear, we're cutting these trees,

00:13:35.540 | we're moving these logs, here's what has to happen.

00:13:38.540 | The final characteristic of a workday that really matters

00:13:41.140 | for your subjective experience is control over your work.

00:13:44.620 | So this is about having autonomy

00:13:46.260 | about your hard and easy periods.

00:13:47.820 | Not that your job is always easy, but you can control it.

00:13:50.780 | All right, we're gonna have a busy period here

00:13:52.100 | that I can pull back here.

00:13:53.300 | I have the reins of my own career.

00:13:56.180 | I can slow it down, I can speed it up.

00:13:58.540 | I'm not always being evaluated by a boss.

00:14:00.900 | I don't always feel like I'm in a performative state

00:14:02.900 | of trying to act like I'm busy.

00:14:04.780 | That sort of autonomy over how you actually

00:14:07.820 | apply your efforts, that's natural.

00:14:09.960 | When we don't have that, that can also be something

00:14:12.780 | that pulls down our happiness, pushes up our stress.

00:14:17.180 | All right, so we have four characteristics here.

00:14:19.260 | The setting, the stress, the clarity,

00:14:21.140 | and the control of your work.

00:14:23.300 | All of this, again, is agnostic to the content of your job.

00:14:27.160 | These are characteristics that are more general than that

00:14:30.300 | and really matter whether or not you're happy

00:14:32.020 | or not really matter about how stressed

00:14:35.240 | your job actually makes you.

00:14:36.300 | So the practical implication here is that

00:14:38.480 | when we're thinking about the deep life,

00:14:40.980 | and in particular, the craft bucket of the deep life,

00:14:43.160 | how does our work fit into our vision of the deep life,

00:14:47.280 | we should care as much about the characteristics

00:14:50.020 | of these jobs as we do the specifics

00:14:51.740 | of what the jobs actually are.

00:14:54.920 | We should engineer for the characteristics of our work,

00:14:58.680 | just like we might engineer to get in better shape,

00:15:01.320 | or just like we might engineer to live in a place

00:15:03.460 | that has more activities that make us happy.

00:15:06.980 | We should care and engineer for those characteristics.

00:15:10.520 | So what I wanna do is go through

00:15:11.660 | those four characteristics again,

00:15:13.000 | and for each, give you a concrete example

00:15:15.540 | of someone who has engineered their career

00:15:20.440 | to emphasize or push that characteristic

00:15:22.800 | in a good direction, just so we get a sense

00:15:25.080 | of what this type of lifestyle engineering

00:15:27.520 | actually looks like.

00:15:28.560 | All right, so let's go back to the setting of the work.

00:15:32.240 | I mentioned the setting of the work can really matter.

00:15:34.960 | So I wanna give an, oops, it's the wrong browser.

00:15:36.600 | I'm gonna give an example here.

00:15:37.680 | Again, if you're watching at youtube.com/calnewportmedia,

00:15:40.880 | you'll see this on the screen.

00:15:41.920 | Otherwise I'll narrate it.

00:15:43.220 | I wanna give an example here.

00:15:44.980 | This is Nate, I guess I'll call him Nate Frugalwoods.

00:15:49.000 | It's not really his name.

00:15:50.220 | I don't think his name is private,

00:15:51.680 | but he has a blog, him and his wife, Liz,

00:15:54.640 | who I know and who I interviewed

00:15:56.640 | and wrote about in Digital Minimalism.

00:15:58.980 | They have a blog called the Frugalwoods.

00:16:00.680 | They refer to themselves as the Frugalwoods.

00:16:03.560 | And so I have a picture of Nate and his two daughters

00:16:05.560 | up on the screen now from their website.

00:16:08.200 | But what I really wanna show was his house.

00:16:10.440 | So here's what Liz and Nate did.

00:16:11.840 | And I'm gonna focus on Nate's job in particular.

00:16:15.320 | They were living in Central Square in Cambridge,

00:16:19.440 | Massachusetts, so near Harvard and MIT.

00:16:22.720 | It's actually closer to MIT.

00:16:24.400 | No, it's in between MIT and Harvard.

00:16:26.360 | They lived there in a row house and they were stressed.

00:16:29.200 | He worked in computer programming,

00:16:30.840 | IT type stuff for a nonprofit.

00:16:32.540 | She worked in a different policy shop or a nonprofit.

00:16:35.760 | And they decided they were going to leave the city.

00:16:38.760 | And they moved to the house

00:16:39.840 | that I'm showing you on the screen now.

00:16:42.160 | It's in Vermont, Central Vermont.

00:16:45.160 | It's 66 acres on a mountaintop,

00:16:47.840 | beautiful house, showing it on the screen.

00:16:50.040 | And most of it's forest.

00:16:51.980 | I have another picture to show you here.

00:16:53.940 | Here's, I'm showing very scenic pictures.

00:16:56.520 | All right, here's what I wanna show.

00:16:57.800 | Most of it's forest, but they have meadows with,

00:17:00.760 | they have farms on here, a barn,

00:17:03.600 | and then they have all these hiking trails

00:17:05.800 | that they maintain.

00:17:06.640 | Very scenic, isolated up on this mountainside.

00:17:10.520 | What's interesting about what Nate and Liz did

00:17:14.120 | is that Nate kept his job as a computer programmer

00:17:19.120 | for this nonprofit because he was good

00:17:20.780 | and he had career capital.

00:17:21.760 | And he said, "I wanna work remotely

00:17:23.320 | "before that was fashionable."

00:17:24.800 | This farm is isolated, but it has,

00:17:27.080 | due to rural internet, some rural internet programs,

00:17:30.560 | high-speed fiber for the internet.

00:17:33.360 | So he can work from this isolated farm.

00:17:35.520 | So he worked from this isolated farm,

00:17:37.800 | still doing his normal job,

00:17:39.620 | but now interspersing this work on the computer screen

00:17:43.140 | with a growing list of outdoor activities

00:17:45.740 | that he found to be meaningful

00:17:47.800 | or stress-relieving or engaging.

00:17:49.600 | And I've heard the whole list from him.

00:17:51.880 | I won't go through it all,

00:17:52.720 | but he chops a lot of firewood

00:17:54.860 | because they heat their house off a wood-burning stove.

00:17:57.480 | They have this long driveway

00:17:58.960 | that's sort of the bane of their existence.

00:18:00.680 | So he's constantly tending to the driveway,

00:18:02.800 | cutting logs that have fallen across it,

00:18:04.940 | tending rivets or ruts.

00:18:06.880 | I mean, I don't know about this stuff,

00:18:07.880 | but you know what I mean.

00:18:08.720 | Driving skid steers and doing things with chainsaws.

00:18:12.200 | He grows food.

00:18:13.360 | He manages the chickens.

00:18:15.100 | They started doing sugar mapling.

00:18:18.840 | He maintains the trails on the property.

00:18:20.640 | So like all this outdoor work.

00:18:21.920 | Whenever I would see a picture of Nate,

00:18:23.480 | he was almost always in Carhartt coveralls.

00:18:26.640 | So whatever those suits are you wear,

00:18:28.400 | those Carhartt suits when you're living in New England

00:18:30.520 | and working outside.

00:18:31.600 | And he just back and forth,

00:18:32.680 | working on that stuff, working, taking breaks,

00:18:34.620 | ending his work early, going out and doing that.

00:18:37.600 | This is someone who engineered the setting

00:18:39.540 | in which their work happened in an extreme way.

00:18:42.040 | He's a happy guy.

00:18:43.040 | He loves doing all that stuff.

00:18:44.680 | When I see how much he loves doing all that stuff,

00:18:47.240 | I feel bad for 10 year ago,

00:18:50.020 | Nate living in Central Square in a small row house,

00:18:52.340 | that version of him.

00:18:53.280 | He must've been way less happy than he realized.

00:18:56.300 | All right, example number two.

00:18:58.300 | Let's talk about controlling stress in your job.

00:19:04.240 | I'm gonna point towards Paul Jarvis here.

00:19:08.020 | So those who are watching the YouTube channel will see,

00:19:11.240 | I've loaded an article from Bench

00:19:13.940 | called "Entrepreneur on the Island,

00:19:15.280 | a Conversation with Paul Jarvis."

00:19:17.600 | There's a picture of Paul here.

00:19:19.840 | It's probably a theme you're probably seeing here, Jesse.

00:19:21.680 | He's in the woods, walking a path in a field on his property

00:19:26.260 | towards a greenhouse that him and his wife

00:19:28.100 | use to grow vegetables.

00:19:29.640 | I like the outdoor rural settings.

00:19:32.620 | Here's what, you may recognize the name Paul

00:19:35.420 | 'cause I've talked about him before on the show.

00:19:37.560 | He wrote a book that I blurbed

00:19:39.080 | that was called "A Company of One,"

00:19:41.840 | where he made the argument

00:19:42.940 | that you shouldn't grow your small business

00:19:45.540 | as you get better.

00:19:46.380 | Instead, use that career capital you're growing

00:19:49.600 | to make your business have a smaller footprint on your life.

00:19:52.920 | So if you get really good at what you do,

00:19:54.420 | instead of saying, "Great, I can triple my business

00:19:56.380 | and hire five people,"

00:19:57.700 | you say, "Great, I can work half the hours

00:19:59.660 | and make the same money."

00:20:00.780 | So it was a really cool book.

00:20:02.140 | I thought it was a really good idea.

00:20:03.420 | Well, anyways, he has done this in his own life.

00:20:05.480 | So he was a web developer and he was good at it.

00:20:08.660 | But dealing with clients for Paul,

00:20:10.700 | like a lot of people, is a stress vector.

00:20:14.220 | There's demands that you have to answer.

00:20:15.960 | There's personalities that sometimes clash with your own,

00:20:18.820 | and there's an unpredictability about it.

00:20:20.700 | And if you're like Paul or someone like me,

00:20:22.460 | that unpredictability stresses you out.

00:20:24.620 | That was a big source of stress.

00:20:27.140 | So he shifted from client work to now he does more,

00:20:31.260 | I would call it like esoteric one-off projects.

00:20:35.060 | He'll build a software tool, he'll write a book,

00:20:37.820 | he has a newsletter, he'll build a different software tool.

00:20:40.460 | And then that tool, eventually,

00:20:41.460 | he'll move on and do something else.

00:20:42.740 | So it's things that he completely controls the schedule for.

00:20:46.580 | Now it's not highly lucrative work,

00:20:48.180 | but that's fine because him and his wife moved

00:20:51.460 | to this rural plot of land on Victoria Island

00:20:54.740 | off of Vancouver,

00:20:56.300 | that again has good enough internet for him to do his work,

00:20:58.540 | but they live cheap.

00:21:00.060 | It's near a surf break, she likes to surf.

00:21:02.420 | He has a greenhouse, they tend their land,

00:21:05.940 | and he works on projects on his own schedule.

00:21:07.880 | So this is someone who, again, engineered

00:21:10.700 | the characteristics of their workday

00:21:12.940 | away from what they identified as specific sources of stress.

00:21:16.860 | Let's look now at the third characteristic

00:21:20.540 | we mentioned before, the clarity or simplicity of your work.

00:21:25.540 | So I'm pulling up here a blog post I wrote

00:21:28.260 | about John Grisham, the author John Grisham.

00:21:30.980 | We've talked about him recently before on the show,

00:21:33.140 | but I think he's a great example of this.

00:21:35.500 | He has a very simplified approach to life as an author.

00:21:40.500 | He doesn't have 15 different irons in the fire.

00:21:45.700 | He's not trying to develop television shows

00:21:47.860 | and write movie scripts and direct and have products

00:21:50.460 | and build a James Patterson style partnership deal

00:21:53.800 | with his publisher where he has seven authors

00:21:55.600 | working under him.

00:21:56.500 | And they publish 10 books a year

00:21:58.180 | that are all John Grisham Presents.

00:21:59.540 | He doesn't wanna do any of that.

00:22:01.220 | He wants to write one book a year

00:22:03.660 | that makes him more than enough money,

00:22:05.620 | and then he wants to go on

00:22:06.580 | and do other things with his life.

00:22:07.660 | So in this article on my blog, which is from May of 2017,

00:22:12.660 | I summarize some things I learned deep diving

00:22:15.980 | on Grisham's routines.

00:22:17.540 | And I'll just point out a couple things here.

00:22:20.220 | Grisham primarily writes his novels

00:22:21.980 | during the winter months on his farm.

00:22:24.620 | During this period, he works five days a week,

00:22:26.380 | starting at seven and typically ending by 10.

00:22:29.860 | So you do that math, that is a 15 hour a week work week.

00:22:34.860 | He writes in a period outbuilding on his property

00:22:37.500 | that used to house an antebellum summer kitchen.

00:22:39.700 | He and his wife refurbished the kitchen

00:22:41.140 | to maintain his period details,

00:22:43.820 | adding only electricity and air conditioning.

00:22:46.260 | Crucially, it has no internet.

00:22:49.180 | Grisham says, "I don't want the distraction.

00:22:50.620 | "I don't work online, I keep it offline."

00:22:53.020 | Grisham maintains strict rituals for his writing.

00:22:55.900 | He starts work on a novel on the same day each year,

00:22:58.940 | starts writing each day at the same time.

00:23:00.820 | He works on the same computer.

00:23:02.140 | He drinks the same type of coffee from the same cup.

00:23:05.180 | He always starts a new novel on January 1st

00:23:07.100 | and is usually done by the end of March.

00:23:08.980 | Then he shifts over to editing.

00:23:10.620 | He aims to have the manuscript polished

00:23:12.340 | and submitted by July,

00:23:13.340 | which leaves him half the year to do other things.

00:23:15.860 | So this is someone who engineered the characteristics

00:23:20.740 | of their workday towards simplicity.

00:23:24.020 | And that was a conscious decision he made.

00:23:26.180 | Clearly he had a lot of other options.

00:23:28.780 | Final example is about having control

00:23:31.900 | over how your work unfolds.

00:23:33.540 | We saw a little bit of that with Paul Jarvis.

00:23:36.660 | Another example is friend of the show, Ginny Blake.

00:23:40.340 | I've loaded up here on the page.

00:23:42.580 | So if you read her latest book, "Free Time,"

00:23:45.300 | and there's an interview I did with her on this show,

00:23:48.300 | God, it must've been a year or so ago, I don't know.

00:23:49.980 | I lose track of time with this show,

00:23:51.260 | but I have had Ginny on the show to talk about this.

00:23:54.540 | In her book, "Free Time,"

00:23:55.380 | she talks about how she left her job at Google,

00:23:58.420 | started a company.

00:24:00.300 | The company got to be too demanding,

00:24:02.500 | a source of stress, a source of unease.

00:24:05.900 | So she simplified it around sustainability.

00:24:10.220 | What makes this company maximally sustainable?

00:24:13.740 | And I wrote down some things here.

00:24:16.620 | She works with what she calls a delightfully teeny team,

00:24:21.060 | which is not too many people.

00:24:24.220 | She doesn't want a huge amount of employees.

00:24:26.540 | She is very into processes now.

00:24:28.900 | She does not wanna be a bottleneck

00:24:30.580 | for any of the things their company does.

00:24:32.220 | So she focuses more, for example,

00:24:33.700 | on licensing her material,

00:24:35.140 | as opposed to doing individualized coaching

00:24:38.060 | of different clients.

00:24:39.580 | She has a huge amount of control

00:24:40.940 | over her workload and schedule,

00:24:42.260 | which is, I think, best exemplified by the fact

00:24:44.620 | that she takes off two months each year to not work.

00:24:47.580 | She's built her schedule around that.

00:24:50.380 | Now, as she says, she could be making more money

00:24:54.380 | if she was, whatever, hammering the big keynotes

00:24:56.940 | or the one-on-one consulting,

00:24:59.180 | but her goal is not to make more money.

00:25:00.660 | It's to make enough money with a job

00:25:03.060 | that's very sustainable and interesting.

00:25:04.420 | So again, she engineered the characteristics of her work.

00:25:07.620 | Here's the point I wanna make

00:25:08.780 | about all four of those examples.

00:25:10.580 | We don't know this if we just write down

00:25:14.420 | what is these people's jobs.

00:25:17.100 | These type of details are not captured there.

00:25:18.940 | If I say, what are these people's jobs?

00:25:20.260 | I would say Nate is a computer programmer.

00:25:22.420 | Paul Jarvis is a software developer.

00:25:24.940 | John Grisham is a writer.

00:25:26.100 | Jenny Blake runs a small business consulting company.

00:25:29.820 | There are so many different ways

00:25:32.740 | you could experience those four jobs I just mentioned.

00:25:35.340 | In the examples I gave,

00:25:36.940 | the characteristics of the workdays

00:25:39.140 | that these individuals experience

00:25:40.740 | were engineered radically to make that experience better.

00:25:43.720 | So the content of your job is not the sole determinant

00:25:47.260 | of how you experience it.

00:25:48.320 | You can engineer these characteristics,

00:25:49.940 | and by doing so, really change how you experience your job.

00:25:53.480 | All right, so we don't have to become lumberjacks,

00:25:55.840 | but we do have to care about

00:25:57.420 | whatever our equivalent is of working outside.

00:26:01.420 | How we work matters as much as what we work on.

00:26:05.100 | So Jesse, that's my conclusion from that piece.

00:26:09.820 | - I like it.

00:26:11.060 | Well summarized.

00:26:11.900 | - Outdoor matters, but this other stuff matters too.

00:26:14.800 | And I think we get stuck,

00:26:15.840 | young people get stuck on that in particular.

00:26:17.460 | They really get stuck on just what is my job,

00:26:21.120 | or what do I want my job to be,

00:26:23.100 | as opposed to how do I want it to actually feel.

00:26:26.660 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:26:28.240 | So what I wanna do is, as we now do,

00:26:30.700 | I have five questions and case studies I pulled

00:26:33.800 | that are all relevant to this general topic

00:26:36.640 | of engineering the characteristics of your workday.

00:26:39.840 | So I wanna do five questions,

00:26:40.960 | and then at the end we'll switch gears

00:26:42.320 | and I'll talk about the books I read in December.

00:26:44.900 | First, however, I wanna mention a brand new sponsor

00:26:48.620 | of the Deep Questions podcast.

00:26:50.020 | I'm excited about this one.

00:26:51.920 | This is Huel, H-U-E-L.

00:26:55.080 | Huel Black Edition is the product

00:26:58.240 | I wanna talk about in particular.

00:26:59.360 | It's a high protein, nutritionally complete meal

00:27:02.000 | in a convenient shake.

00:27:03.440 | So this is a meal replacement shake.

00:27:05.920 | It has everything your body needs in just two scoops,

00:27:08.000 | including 27 essential vitamins,

00:27:10.040 | minerals, and 40 grams of protein.

00:27:12.640 | This is why I was interested in having Huel,

00:27:16.120 | and in particular their Huel Black Edition product

00:27:18.440 | as a sponsor, is because, as I've mentioned

00:27:21.580 | multiple times on this show,

00:27:23.580 | the way I deal with food and nutrition

00:27:25.300 | is that during my work hours, my fixed work hours,

00:27:29.040 | I want to automate eating.

00:27:31.840 | I don't wanna think about it.

00:27:33.680 | I don't want this to be a source of energy drain.

00:27:37.640 | I don't want it to be a time sink.

00:27:39.000 | Oh, I'm gonna go walk halfway across town

00:27:42.280 | to a restaurant or something like this.

00:27:44.040 | I automate my eating so I don't have to think about it.

00:27:46.840 | And as long as I'm automating it,

00:27:48.280 | then I might as well automate it towards something

00:27:50.400 | that's gonna be maximal energy and good for me.

00:27:53.760 | So Huel works perfectly into that plan.

00:27:57.440 | I think the, arguably, at least in my opinion,

00:28:00.060 | the most effective way to use it

00:28:01.120 | is just for a breakfast replacement.

00:28:03.360 | One scoop, you get your 200 calories.

00:28:05.820 | Two scoops, you get 400 calories,

00:28:07.480 | which is about a standard meal.

00:28:09.560 | You have all of those vitamins you need.

00:28:11.280 | You have all that protein you need.

00:28:12.680 | You get vitamin C, calcium, omega-3, iron, magnesium,

00:28:15.600 | the stuff you need, the energy you need,

00:28:17.980 | not all the sugar, not all the stuff

00:28:19.760 | that's gonna make you run down.

00:28:20.740 | And it takes a minute.

00:28:21.600 | You just scoop in the shaker.

00:28:24.560 | You got it.

00:28:25.560 | You take it.

00:28:26.380 | You move on with your day.

00:28:27.960 | So my thought is if you're gonna enjoy eating,

00:28:30.540 | enjoy eating.

00:28:32.480 | Wait when the workday is over.

00:28:34.280 | You know, take your time.

00:28:35.640 | Let that be a source of relaxation.

00:28:37.880 | Let that be a ritualistic aspect.

00:28:40.640 | But when you're in the middle of getting after it,

00:28:42.300 | you're time blocking, you're working,

00:28:44.560 | automate your food.

00:28:45.640 | That's where something like Huel, I think,

00:28:48.200 | plays or could potentially play a really big role.

00:28:51.760 | It's also cost effective.

00:28:54.360 | $2.50, it works out to about $2.50

00:28:57.920 | for each 400 calorie meal.

00:28:59.680 | They give you that shaker I talked about

00:29:01.440 | for making the protein shake.

00:29:04.440 | They'll give you one of those as well

00:29:08.160 | when you order at Huel.com/questions.

00:29:11.920 | So that's Huel.com/questions.

00:29:14.700 | Go to that URL with the slash questions

00:29:16.280 | to get the free shaker when you order.

00:29:19.760 | When you're working, don't think about food.

00:29:22.160 | Use something like Huel.

00:29:23.520 | When you're done working, then you can care about it.

00:29:26.800 | All right, another sponsor I wanna mention.

00:29:28.760 | This is a product that we use heavily here in my life

00:29:32.120 | and at my media company, and that is Notion.

00:29:36.580 | So Notion is one of these electronic note-taking companies

00:29:41.720 | that is not nearly a detailed enough explanation

00:29:44.800 | of everything that Notion does.

00:29:46.320 | This is what you need to know.

00:29:47.820 | There's a lot of these companies

00:29:49.360 | that offer interesting products

00:29:52.000 | for building sort of roughly Zettelkasten-inspired

00:29:55.240 | note-taking database interfaces, et cetera.

00:29:58.080 | Notion is the one I use most often.

00:30:00.760 | It's the one that the people I know

00:30:02.400 | who are into this type of technology use most often.

00:30:05.320 | Here's a couple of different ways we use it.

00:30:08.880 | It's how we interact, ironically,

00:30:11.480 | given that I'm reading the ad.

00:30:12.440 | It's how we interact with our ad agency.

00:30:14.920 | They built a custom Notion view where what happens is

00:30:19.380 | every ad we're supposed to do has its own entry

00:30:22.040 | in this underlying database, but using the magic of Notion,

00:30:25.440 | we can display it all sorts of different ways.

00:30:27.440 | So there's a calendar view where we can just see

00:30:29.240 | what are the ads we're supposed to read today?

00:30:31.480 | There's a view by sponsor.

00:30:33.000 | What are all the different ads that we have done

00:30:35.080 | for this particular sponsor?

00:30:37.920 | The click on one of these items,

00:30:39.760 | we see all the information about the ad.

00:30:41.400 | Here's the script.

00:30:42.900 | It's where we can go back in.

00:30:44.400 | Jesse does this each week and says,

00:30:45.920 | "Here's the timestamp on where the ad showed up.

00:30:48.200 | The sponsors have their own views to quickly pull out.

00:30:50.520 | Can I see all the reads of my ads among different shows?"

00:30:53.360 | All of this is very useful,

00:30:56.560 | simple to build in a tool like Notion.

00:30:58.800 | Here's a completely different use.

00:31:00.160 | So I recently talked with Jenny Blake

00:31:02.360 | and we actually recorded this.

00:31:03.440 | I haven't released it yet on the podcast, but we plan to.

00:31:07.020 | She walked me through how to build

00:31:09.200 | a idea database using Notion.

00:31:11.920 | Blew my mind.

00:31:13.320 | I was like, "I am absolutely going to do this."

00:31:15.280 | She was showing me step-by-step

00:31:17.480 | how she did it with her own idea database

00:31:19.720 | where you can have different ideas

00:31:21.040 | with different categories that link together

00:31:22.560 | that you view in different ways.

00:31:24.480 | Flexible, powerful.

00:31:26.220 | If you need to keep track of information,

00:31:28.440 | collaborate with other people on your teams or clients,

00:31:31.960 | you need a tool like Notion.

00:31:34.280 | This is why I wanted them to be a sponsor of the show

00:31:36.620 | because I think they do it best.

00:31:38.900 | Now, here's the way they say it.

00:31:41.120 | Whether you're starting a new gym routine,

00:31:42.720 | organizing a trip with friends,

00:31:44.000 | or even planning your company goals,

00:31:46.200 | Notion is a flexible, collaborative workspace

00:31:48.160 | that helps you make meaningful progress

00:31:49.600 | in every part of your life.

00:31:51.000 | Get started in seconds by choosing

00:31:52.720 | from thousands of templates for every task

00:31:54.400 | to make it your own from to-do list

00:31:55.720 | to OKR trackers and so much more.

00:31:57.960 | Notion lets you build the exact system you want

00:31:59.560 | so you can work the way you work best.

00:32:01.640 | You need these processes in your business.

00:32:03.480 | Notion's the way to do it.

00:32:04.880 | So start your year off right

00:32:05.920 | and get organized with a free Notion account

00:32:09.480 | at notion.com/cal.

00:32:12.160 | That's all lowercase letters,

00:32:14.240 | notion.com/cal to learn more

00:32:16.880 | and get started for free right now.

00:32:19.360 | Using that /cal link supports the show,

00:32:21.880 | so go right now to notion.com/cal.

00:32:27.840 | All right, so now we're gonna do some questions.

00:32:29.240 | Again, I'm trying to make the questions we pull

00:32:30.960 | be relevant to today's deep question.

00:32:33.160 | Today's deep question is about

00:32:35.360 | engineering the characteristics of your work

00:32:37.400 | to make your work more happy and less stressful.

00:32:40.640 | All right, what's our first question, Jesse?

00:32:42.560 | - All right, first question is from Yosef,

00:32:44.240 | a 36-year-old programmer.

00:32:46.200 | "I like my current job as an AI developer,

00:32:48.360 | "but I'm considering learning web development.

00:32:50.800 | "My motivation is lifestyle design.

00:32:52.720 | "Data and AI are mostly related to large companies,

00:32:55.140 | "which means working as a full-time employee.

00:32:57.580 | "Web development is more flexible

00:32:59.140 | "and suitable for freelancing or consulting,

00:33:01.640 | "doing multiple small projects.

00:33:03.660 | "You could be your own boss,

00:33:04.740 | "leaving me time to follow my passions

00:33:06.320 | "like music and philosophy.

00:33:08.200 | "What should I do?"

00:33:09.580 | - Standard question when thinking about

00:33:12.840 | happiness in your careers is,

00:33:15.000 | "Should I leave my current job

00:33:16.720 | "to go to another job that's more flexible?"

00:33:20.140 | There's a story I tell in my book,

00:33:23.760 | "So Good You Can't," what is it?

00:33:26.740 | "So Good I," why can't I remember my own book title, Jesse?

00:33:29.020 | "So Good You Can't Ignore You."

00:33:30.500 | - They can't.

00:33:31.320 | - They can't ignore you.

00:33:32.160 | - Yeah.

00:33:33.000 | - So good they can't ignore you.

00:33:34.500 | Let me remember my own books.

00:33:37.060 | I don't know if that's a good sign,

00:33:38.000 | maybe it means I'm productive,

00:33:39.860 | or maybe it means I'm getting old.

00:33:42.020 | All right, so in "So Good They Can't Ignore You,"

00:33:45.060 | in that book, I talk about this exact question,

00:33:48.020 | and I tell a story, and I believe the woman's name

00:33:52.100 | was Lisa, and she was, I'm trying to remember here,

00:33:56.540 | I think in marketing or something like this.

00:33:58.620 | So she was in marketing, her particular position

00:34:01.100 | was somewhat stressful, and she's like,

00:34:03.220 | "I want more control over my time,

00:34:05.700 | "I want a more flexible, slower-paced job."

00:34:09.020 | And so she took a yoga instructor certification course,

00:34:13.800 | quit her marketing job to become a yoga instructor.

00:34:16.960 | And the point I made in that book

00:34:19.580 | is that within whatever it was, six months,

00:34:22.780 | that had not worked nearly enough to replace her income,

00:34:26.380 | and she was actually on food stamps at that point.

00:34:29.700 | And the argument I made is, you have to be careful

00:34:32.940 | just thinking about, what is this job gonna offer me?

00:34:36.240 | Oh, a yoga instructor, that's more flexible,

00:34:38.020 | that's less stressful, I don't have to do email.

00:34:39.420 | That's fine, but what do you have to offer

00:34:41.940 | to the world of yoga instructing?

00:34:43.500 | And in this point, in this particular example,

00:34:46.260 | Lisa just had an online certification.

00:34:48.320 | There's a lot of yoga instructors,

00:34:49.580 | it's a very competitive business.

00:34:51.180 | She was not able to offer enough in that marketplace

00:34:53.760 | to actually build up the sort of demand

00:34:55.740 | that would allow her to have a stable income

00:34:57.780 | and actually live this much more flexible life.

00:35:01.460 | The answer I then concluded is,

00:35:03.580 | you have to care about career capital.

00:35:07.340 | Career capital is my term for the rare and valuable skills

00:35:12.020 | that you possess, the things that are of actual value

00:35:14.820 | to the marketplace of jobs.

00:35:17.780 | So if you have career capital, rare and valuable skills,

00:35:20.820 | that gives you leverage, you can use that leverage

00:35:22.640 | to try to get in your work things that you desire.

00:35:25.380 | So this, Joseph, is how I want you

00:35:27.440 | to think about more autonomy.

00:35:30.660 | Having more autonomy while still being financially sound

00:35:34.960 | is very desirable.

00:35:37.040 | Lots of people want that in their work,

00:35:39.480 | so you should expect a need, a substantial amount

00:35:42.100 | of career capital to offer in return.

00:35:44.720 | Just because you want your job to be more flexible

00:35:46.980 | doesn't mean you actually can get that in your life

00:35:48.860 | unless you have something to offer in return.

00:35:50.980 | So I want you to do this calculus

00:35:52.620 | in thinking through what you're doing with your career

00:35:54.560 | through the lens of career capital.

00:35:56.580 | Right now, you're working on AI development,

00:35:58.840 | data science and AI development.

00:36:00.640 | If you shifted to web development,

00:36:02.240 | you're starting from scratch.

00:36:03.180 | That's a very competitive marketplace.

00:36:05.140 | To make a good living as a web developer

00:36:06.860 | and enjoy flexibility, you have to be really good

00:36:09.380 | at what you do.

00:36:10.500 | And even if you're really good at what you do,

00:36:11.780 | you might not get it.

00:36:12.880 | Remember earlier in the program,

00:36:15.540 | I gave the example of Paul Jarvis,

00:36:17.220 | who was a very good web developer,

00:36:18.700 | but still eventually switched to living cheaply

00:36:21.140 | and doing one-off software projects

00:36:23.660 | because the stress of dealing with the clients

00:36:25.540 | was something he was just done with.

00:36:27.820 | But let's say you do get really good,

00:36:29.260 | you can pick and choose your clients,

00:36:30.460 | you do two at a time, they pay you really good money,

00:36:32.840 | you take a few months off,

00:36:34.320 | that's gonna require a lot of work.

00:36:35.740 | You're gonna have to be better

00:36:36.640 | than a lot of other web developers.

00:36:37.940 | So think through what would really be involved

00:36:39.500 | in getting that good.

00:36:40.720 | Don't delude yourself into thinking,

00:36:42.500 | hey, if I do a summer course online in web development,

00:36:45.340 | that'll be me by the fall.

00:36:47.460 | So think about this all through the context

00:36:49.460 | of career capital.

00:36:51.340 | The flip side to that is in addition

00:36:53.700 | to just trying to evaluate

00:36:55.860 | how much skill would I really need

00:36:58.300 | for this other job to give me these traits I want,

00:37:00.460 | these characteristics I want,

00:37:02.260 | ask the question of, in my current job,

00:37:05.300 | with my current career capital,

00:37:07.420 | which for you has to do with your ability

00:37:08.980 | to do AI relevant programming,

00:37:10.840 | are there other ways I can apply this leverage?

00:37:14.580 | And they might be unusual,

00:37:15.740 | and they might be somewhat radical,

00:37:16.880 | but if I was to really take my skills

00:37:19.140 | in my current profession out for a spin,

00:37:22.020 | what is the full range of possible modifications

00:37:25.660 | or ways forward I might be able to imagine or ask for?

00:37:29.420 | That's often the more fruitful direction.

00:37:32.180 | I'm an in-demand AI programmer.

00:37:33.980 | They really like me here.

00:37:35.460 | Hey, like Nate Frugalwoods,

00:37:37.220 | who we talked about in the first segment of the show,

00:37:38.940 | I'm moving up to the mountains in Vermont,

00:37:40.580 | but I've got good fiber,

00:37:41.820 | and I'm gonna work project-based,

00:37:43.740 | but I'm done at three every day

00:37:44.980 | because I have to chop wood.

00:37:47.580 | That's often where you're likely to find

00:37:50.540 | the tractable solutions

00:37:52.500 | because you already have the capital,

00:37:54.180 | the career capital developed.

00:37:55.460 | It doesn't mean you might not be able

00:37:56.820 | to develop new capital in another area.

00:37:58.460 | You just have to correctly assess

00:38:00.780 | how long of a path that's going to be.

00:38:03.000 | So that would be my advice, Joseph,

00:38:04.640 | is in addition to thinking about what is really required

00:38:08.040 | to be a really autonomous web developer,

00:38:10.100 | ask, if I get even better at what I'm doing now,

00:38:13.340 | are there options I'm not thinking about?

00:38:15.260 | They might be non-standard.

00:38:17.220 | You might be the only person at your company doing that,

00:38:20.500 | but if you're good and they want you,

00:38:23.520 | you would be surprised by how many options

00:38:25.300 | you actually have for manipulating

00:38:27.180 | or modifying the characteristics of your workday

00:38:29.180 | to be things you enjoy more.

00:38:30.580 | All right, so good, they can't ignore you.

00:38:36.340 | That makes sense.

00:38:37.180 | All right, what do we got next?

00:38:39.820 | - All right, next question's from Nick,

00:38:41.380 | a 28-year-old personal trainer.

00:38:44.180 | Hi, Cal and Jessie, I have a question about my career

00:38:46.420 | as a strength and conditioning coach

00:38:48.420 | and my interest in creating a deep life.

00:38:50.340 | I love the training side of what I do,

00:38:51.940 | but I work long hours and my pay is stagnant,

00:38:54.580 | so I'm starting to resent my boss and the company.

00:38:57.280 | Unfortunately, there are no better gyms for me to go.

00:39:00.900 | I'm currently looking for adjunct teaching positions.

00:39:04.080 | I have a master's degree,

00:39:05.600 | but I'm not sure about leaving fitness.

00:39:07.940 | Many personal trainers build an online

00:39:10.220 | or contracting business,

00:39:11.420 | but these take months or years to build.

00:39:13.940 | Any advice you may have is appreciated.

00:39:16.300 | - Well, Nick, I think your solution is I'm gonna hire you.

00:39:21.580 | We're gonna work two hours a day

00:39:23.820 | into building the "Scarsguard" body from the "Viking" movie.

00:39:28.820 | And that's just what we're gonna do.

00:39:30.660 | It's just me and you,

00:39:32.220 | and I'm just gonna get unreasonably large.

00:39:34.220 | Actually, Jessie, yesterday, my sons and I were watching

00:39:37.780 | a series on Disney+ called "Limitless."

00:39:41.220 | I mentioned this to you maybe with Chris Hemsworth,

00:39:43.060 | the guy who plays Thor.

00:39:44.140 | Yeah, and this particular episode,

00:39:47.060 | it kind of overlapped him starting

00:39:48.460 | to film the new Thor movie,

00:39:50.080 | so they kind of gave some insight

00:39:51.860 | into how he prepares for those movies.

00:39:53.820 | So let's give us some insight

00:39:54.660 | into what Nick and I will be doing together.

00:39:56.380 | It turns out, I mean, he stays in good shape

00:39:58.980 | because he's been doing these movies for a decade.

00:40:01.900 | He has to add, in the six-month period

00:40:04.220 | before one of these shoots, 30 pounds of muscle.

00:40:07.540 | - Really? - 30 pounds of muscle,

00:40:10.180 | which means he has to eat, he eats like 10 meals a day.

00:40:13.860 | - Wow. - Yeah.

00:40:15.220 | And then the other thing we learned from that

00:40:16.940 | is when they're on set, if it's a shirtless scene,

00:40:21.940 | there is a long weightlifting session he has to do

00:40:25.300 | right before he goes on camera to get pumped.

00:40:28.320 | So they're doing all of these curls and pull-ups

00:40:32.060 | and all this type of stuff right before they run

00:40:33.540 | and get on camera so that they have,

00:40:36.100 | he has the pumped muscles, I mean,

00:40:38.300 | I don't know how that works.

00:40:39.620 | And then also they dehydrate themselves.

00:40:41.940 | - That's interesting. - So they're like bodybuilders.

00:40:43.260 | They're super dehydrated so that the veins will pop

00:40:45.980 | and then they pump up right before

00:40:47.940 | and then they have like 30 extra pounds of muscle

00:40:50.020 | that's almost impossible to maintain

00:40:52.220 | because of how much food they have to eat to keep it there.

00:40:54.820 | So anyways, Nick, you and I, that's what we're doing.

00:40:58.340 | All that.

00:40:59.180 | Just me, I'll be like the liver king.

00:41:04.460 | Still doing the same podcast material.

00:41:06.780 | No shirt, four muscles, 20 minutes of pumping up

00:41:10.620 | right before every episode so they can get veiny.

00:41:13.220 | I mean, I think this is what the audience

00:41:14.900 | is looking for, Jesse, when it comes to content

00:41:16.980 | about living deeply is veiny muscles.

00:41:21.020 | All right, Nick, let me give you my first reaction

00:41:24.700 | from your question is that my concern is that you're

00:41:28.260 | in your mind right now taking a,

00:41:30.100 | what is essentially a random walk

00:41:32.860 | through the career space.

00:41:34.780 | You're just bouncing off one idea to another.

00:41:37.380 | I don't know, I guess I could be an adjunct professor

00:41:39.780 | or maybe I could just do like an online thing

00:41:41.580 | but that seems like really hard and I don't like my boss

00:41:44.220 | but there's no other gym so I can't do anything else.

00:41:46.180 | You're just ping ponging.

00:41:47.980 | You're ping ponging off a different career ideas

00:41:50.900 | without any actual grounding in research

00:41:54.020 | or systematic thinking.

00:41:55.020 | So what I wanna do is first of all, slow you down

00:41:57.860 | and say, okay, you're unhappy in your current situation.

00:42:01.500 | That I get.

00:42:03.020 | You don't like your boss and the way he's treating you.

00:42:05.660 | That's an issue.

00:42:07.100 | Yeah, my book's so good they can't ignore you.

00:42:08.380 | I really talk about that as being one

00:42:09.900 | of the small number of things that really disqualifies

00:42:11.860 | a job regardless of all the other attributes.

00:42:13.500 | So we need to find you something different

00:42:15.700 | but we have to take our time here.

00:42:18.020 | I don't want you to jump haphazardly

00:42:19.780 | from one thing to another.

00:42:21.380 | So number one, go through the lifestyle-centric

00:42:24.340 | career planning exercise we always talk about.

00:42:26.860 | Really lock in your vision of what you want

00:42:29.020 | your ideal lifestyle to be like.

00:42:30.740 | All aspects of your life, not just work.

00:42:33.380 | Now we have a target that we're working backwards

00:42:36.180 | from when thinking through different career opportunities.

00:42:38.900 | Our goal now is not just, is this a thing I could do?

00:42:43.180 | Our goal is, is this on a path I can articulate

00:42:46.140 | that brings me closer to my ideal lifestyle?

00:42:48.420 | And that might lead you to very different options.

00:42:50.940 | Next, as you explore these different options,

00:42:54.140 | pretend you're a business journalist

00:42:56.860 | and you're writing an article on the reality

00:42:59.100 | of that industry, talk to people.

00:43:01.380 | What is the job really like?

00:43:02.700 | What's the pay like?

00:43:03.980 | How does it fit into their overall income streams?

00:43:07.940 | What's it like being an adjunct professor?

00:43:09.940 | What do these people do in addition?

00:43:11.700 | Are any of these people happy?

00:43:13.260 | Or do they have a lot of complaints about it?

00:43:15.420 | What's going on with people doing online coaching?

00:43:17.460 | Who's successful and who's not successful?

00:43:19.660 | Can you build a whole livelihood on it?

00:43:21.180 | Or is it just an adjunct?

00:43:22.460 | All right, you say there's no gyms nearby.

00:43:24.980 | Where are there gyms you would like to work?

00:43:27.500 | Maybe they're in different parts of the country,

00:43:29.460 | but that's actually a part of the country

00:43:31.220 | that might satisfy some of the other things

00:43:33.540 | on your list that goes into your ideal lifestyle.

00:43:36.700 | Maybe you need to leave where you're living.

00:43:38.460 | And maybe there's something holding you back there.

00:43:40.060 | Like, well, there's whatever, one family member there,

00:43:42.140 | but what if you moved over here?

00:43:43.620 | And then you had access to outdoor fitness

00:43:45.780 | and you could start an online presence

00:43:47.500 | from which you could build an online coaching.

00:43:49.280 | Meanwhile, there's gyms there that are hiring.

00:43:51.220 | So you could start doing personal training there

00:43:53.360 | with an adjunct.

00:43:54.200 | I mean, you could start to get options

00:43:55.540 | that are grounded in research on the reality of options

00:43:59.100 | and guided by your vision of an ideal lifestyle.

00:44:02.060 | So this is what I'm trying to get you to do here, Nick,

00:44:04.580 | is to slow down and be more systematic.

00:44:08.300 | Don't bounce.

00:44:09.660 | Don't just random, that's no good, that's good.

00:44:11.780 | Maybe I should just do that.

00:44:12.620 | Let me fixate on this.

00:44:13.440 | I see that all the time.

00:44:14.540 | Someone just fixates on an idea

00:44:17.140 | that doesn't really necessarily make sense.

00:44:21.300 | It has all these other issues that come with it.

00:44:22.920 | It's going to make these parts of their life worse

00:44:24.460 | if they fix this, but if you're just bouncing around,

00:44:26.460 | we're just going to stick to things randomly.

00:44:28.060 | So let's get more systematic, lifestyle articulation,

00:44:31.660 | research options, consider different locations,

00:44:35.220 | and then really work through things carefully.

00:44:37.260 | What's going to get me closer to my ideal lifestyle?

00:44:39.760 | The combination of decisions you come up with in the end

00:44:42.660 | might be very different

00:44:43.540 | than anything you're considering now.

00:44:45.380 | - Strength and conditioning coaches are hard,

00:44:49.460 | especially for the ones at small colleges

00:44:52.660 | and stuff like that.

00:44:53.500 | It's a hard job or it's hard to get?

00:44:55.580 | - It's a hard job.

00:44:56.820 | You have to be there really long hours.

00:44:58.940 | - I edited the question down,

00:45:01.940 | but he talked about evening hours.

00:45:04.140 | He's there a lot.

00:45:04.980 | - Yeah.

00:45:05.820 | And then the other thing about those coaches,

00:45:07.740 | you have to be so energetic for each client.

00:45:10.820 | - Why do you, what's the appeal of that job?

00:45:13.540 | Is that on a trajectory towards,

00:45:16.300 | I could be a strength and conditioning coach

00:45:17.820 | for a D1 sports program or something?

00:45:21.180 | What's the--

00:45:22.020 | - If it's at a college, yeah, that's the dream.

00:45:25.140 | I think there's five college strength and conditioning

00:45:29.180 | coaches or whatever that make over a million dollars a year.

00:45:31.940 | - Right, so there is a winner take all

00:45:35.700 | kind of trajectory in there.

00:45:37.100 | So you should understand that as well.

00:45:40.260 | This is the thing about those trajectories,

00:45:41.340 | is figuring out am I actually on this trajectory or not?

00:45:44.180 | Or have I already started, I'm over at this small college,

00:45:47.460 | if this is where I'm starting,

00:45:48.540 | I'm never going to be the Notre Dame

00:45:51.700 | or USD head strength and conditioning coach.

00:45:54.980 | - Yep, yeah.

00:45:56.460 | - Interesting.

00:45:57.300 | All right, what do we got next?

00:46:00.140 | - Oh, we got a question from Ben.

00:46:01.860 | Hey Cal, I'm curious,

00:46:03.180 | what does your typical workday look like?

00:46:04.860 | Is it closer to a typical nine to five

00:46:06.660 | or are you up early burning the midnight oil?

00:46:09.700 | - Well, Ben, I'll tell you about my workday in a second,

00:46:13.180 | but I gotta say, I was having fun walking over here,

00:46:17.540 | imagining what my critics think

00:46:20.340 | my typical workday is like.

00:46:21.700 | So I know that I do have some critics out there

00:46:24.220 | that are pretty vocal and their assumptions

00:46:26.660 | about my workday are probably quite different

00:46:29.500 | from the reality.

00:46:31.140 | So I thought it'd be fun to go through a critics assumption

00:46:35.060 | about what Cal Newport's normal workday works like.

00:46:38.380 | So I would say the critics would probably assume

00:46:39.860 | that I'm up at something like 4.30 in the morning.

00:46:42.820 | This is when the head of my extensive household staff

00:46:45.100 | would come in and prep me

00:46:46.100 | on what was gonna happen in the day.

00:46:48.540 | Maybe the head of the household staff would say,

00:46:50.900 | Dr. Newport, I wanted to tell you something

00:46:53.740 | about one of your children.

00:46:54.700 | And I would say, enough, away with you.

00:46:58.260 | Do not bother me with such trivialities.

00:47:01.100 | I have productive work to do.

00:47:03.860 | My worth and meaning as a person is based off of the labor

00:47:07.500 | that I produce for the owners of capital.

00:47:09.620 | Do you not realize this?

00:47:10.700 | Away with you.

00:47:11.700 | After that, I would then go

00:47:12.820 | to my extensive underground lair,

00:47:15.540 | paid for by a massive inheritance

00:47:17.660 | that I came into very young in my life.

00:47:20.300 | In this underground lair,

00:47:21.940 | I would don minority report style art,

00:47:25.340 | augmented reality goggles,

00:47:26.820 | where I would have a souped up Trello board

00:47:28.940 | where I could move cards around,

00:47:30.660 | like Tom Cruise in "Minority Report" at extreme speeds.

00:47:33.620 | Next to me would be a coach who I insist dress

00:47:37.500 | like early 20th century labor consultant,

00:47:39.740 | Frederick Winslow Taylor,

00:47:41.940 | including the mustache, with a stopwatch,

00:47:44.580 | looking for any inefficiencies in my action.

00:47:46.740 | Because again, as I would tell people frequently

00:47:50.820 | and declaratively throughout my day,

00:47:53.180 | my worth as a person is defined by my labor,

00:47:56.660 | which I owe to the owners of capital.

00:48:01.100 | I would take a break maybe around lunchtime.

00:48:03.540 | This is when James Clear and Tim Ferriss would come over.

00:48:06.420 | We'll take supplements and weight lift for two hours

00:48:08.980 | before confidently convincing each other

00:48:10.740 | that we understand how everything in the world

00:48:12.740 | should be done.

00:48:14.420 | Another couple hours of quick work on my Trello board.

00:48:17.900 | At this point, I would then take some time

00:48:20.060 | to go to whatever manuscript of a book

00:48:22.100 | I'm currently writing,

00:48:23.740 | and then look for any examples that feature women

00:48:26.140 | that I could swap out for examples featuring men instead.

00:48:28.980 | So I'll go through and do that swapping out.

00:48:31.740 | Patriarchy preserved, I'll then return to more work.

00:48:35.140 | Maybe by the evening, I'll take some time

00:48:37.020 | to just stare at a poster of Mark Zuckerberg

00:48:40.380 | and just mutter, "You,

00:48:44.020 | you."

00:48:44.860 | Five minutes FaceTiming with my family,

00:48:48.460 | seven more hours of work, boom, 2 a.m. I'm back in bed.

00:48:52.500 | That is what I imagine my critics think

00:48:55.540 | my workday is actually like.

00:48:58.460 | The reality is much less interesting.

00:49:01.420 | From the very earliest days of my grad student career,

00:49:04.960 | I've maintained what I call fixed schedule productivity,

00:49:07.100 | where I fix in advance the hours I wanna work,

00:49:09.580 | and then work backwards to make my career

00:49:11.300 | fit into those hours.

00:49:13.060 | For me, that is roughly nine to five.

00:49:17.140 | So when I drop my kids off at the bus stop,

00:49:18.900 | I'm usually home by like 8.30,

00:49:21.540 | but then it takes some time,

00:49:23.220 | maybe I shower, some of the things.

00:49:24.300 | So usually I'm starting work by nine,

00:49:26.620 | and I like to be done by five,

00:49:27.860 | though I'm often done earlier.

00:49:29.540 | When I'm writing, I'll also put in writing sessions

00:49:31.880 | on Sunday mornings.

00:49:32.880 | I'll occasionally also do like an evening writing session

00:49:35.180 | for my newsletter or something like this.

00:49:36.580 | That's just an old tradition of mine,

00:49:37.860 | but that's 90 minutes once a week.

00:49:41.140 | What I do during those roughly nine to five schedule,

00:49:43.700 | it just depends on the time of year.

00:49:46.380 | So if it's the summer,

00:49:48.260 | or like it was last semester for me

00:49:50.280 | when I had a teaching release and I was writing a book,

00:49:52.740 | those days are gonna be very heavily focused

00:49:54.660 | on three to four hours of deep work writing

00:49:57.140 | right off the bat,

00:49:58.640 | than anything else that has to be done

00:50:00.800 | before I shut down for the day.

00:50:02.740 | Other parts of the year look different.

00:50:04.980 | Right now, for example, I'm in a teaching semester,

00:50:08.140 | I'm not writing a book, I just submitted my manuscript.

00:50:10.980 | And so I have a much more standard

00:50:12.460 | sort of professor schedule.

00:50:14.500 | And Jesse, I actually brought my computer.

00:50:16.020 | So I thought what I would do is I'm gonna grab it

00:50:18.940 | and just, I'll load up my calendar for this week.

00:50:21.880 | I'm not gonna show it to you,

00:50:23.140 | but I will walk through and just quickly summarize

00:50:25.620 | like what each of my days looks like if this is helpful.

00:50:28.460 | All right, so I've grabbed my calendar now

00:50:31.780 | for those who are watching the YouTube channel.

00:50:34.260 | You see, I'm looking down at my screen.

00:50:36.320 | So for this time of year,

00:50:39.660 | where I'm just sort of in a normal teaching semester,

00:50:41.300 | not book writing.

00:50:42.260 | All right, here was my week.

00:50:46.620 | Let's look at the things around the calendar.

00:50:48.180 | Monday was Martin Luther King Day,

00:50:49.940 | the Monday of the week we're recording this.

00:50:51.980 | So there was actually, I didn't have to teach,

00:50:55.460 | nothing on my calendar actually for that Monday.

00:50:58.460 | Tuesday was also a very light day in terms of appointments.

00:51:03.460 | So I don't even remember what I did on Tuesday.

00:51:07.540 | I think I watched a movie in the afternoon.

00:51:10.220 | I think I actually over lunch,

00:51:11.700 | I watched "Downhill Racer" with Robert Redford, 1969.

00:51:16.620 | Fantastic sports movie, I highly recommend it.

00:51:19.580 | Wednesday was a teaching day.

00:51:21.180 | So I did some work on my course in the morning,

00:51:24.900 | drove into campus at 10, taught, office hours, taught,

00:51:28.740 | came home, worked out, day was over.

00:51:31.980 | Today, I was actually up early today

00:51:35.020 | 'cause my oldest kid had a early morning

00:51:37.380 | orthodontics appointment, so I woke up.

00:51:39.700 | My wife still came to that.

00:51:40.940 | And while I was waiting for my other kids to wake up,

00:51:42.820 | I actually did some podcast work in the morning.

00:51:45.740 | Then I did some administrative work, now we're podcasting.

00:51:48.540 | And then I'm gonna do a relatively early shutdown

00:51:50.220 | and workout before I pick up one of my other kids at three.

00:51:53.420 | Tomorrow, I'm going in for,

00:51:55.180 | oh, tonight I'm also gonna do some writing.

00:51:57.780 | I'm kicking off a new New Yorker piece.

00:51:59.540 | So I'm gonna do writing probably

00:52:00.620 | at the local coffee shop tonight

00:52:02.260 | because I need to get out of my normal routine

00:52:04.900 | to get something hard started.

00:52:06.700 | Tomorrow, I'm going to campus for a faculty meeting

00:52:08.460 | and then adventure working.

00:52:09.780 | So I'm gonna go to a scenic library to continue writing.

00:52:12.260 | That's my week.

00:52:13.100 | So it's like not that interesting.

00:52:14.020 | No day am I working past four or five.

00:52:16.380 | Some days I have appointments,

00:52:18.620 | other days I have less appointments.

00:52:20.140 | So it's not exciting.

00:52:22.140 | - Where's your adventure writing gonna be?

00:52:24.460 | - I don't know.

00:52:25.940 | It depends how crowded various libraries are.

00:52:28.420 | I think we're early enough in the semester

00:52:30.100 | that I might still have options.

00:52:31.660 | - You mean at school?

00:52:32.500 | - Yeah. - Oh, okay.

00:52:33.540 | - 'Cause my thought is if I'm going into Georgetown

00:52:35.180 | for a meeting, I might as well take advantage

00:52:37.500 | of the fact that I'm in a new location

00:52:40.100 | to work in interesting places.

00:52:41.900 | So I like, for example, the bioethical library

00:52:44.140 | in Healy Hall at Georgetown.

00:52:46.220 | If that's crowded, I'll go to a lesser used floor

00:52:49.260 | of the main library on campus.

00:52:52.340 | If I have thinking to do, I like to walk.

00:52:55.220 | So there's these trails that go up through Glover Park,

00:52:58.260 | down from the canal up through Glover Park,

00:53:01.860 | intersected by Reservoir Road.

00:53:03.740 | I love those trails, I used to live by them.

00:53:05.340 | So I'll often leave campus and walk up and down those

00:53:07.700 | if I have thinking to do.

00:53:09.060 | When the weather's nicer, I have a bunch of outdoor spots

00:53:11.980 | on campus where I'll bring my laptop to write.

00:53:13.980 | It's too cold this time of year.

00:53:16.380 | But you know, I'm writing a hard article

00:53:19.300 | and it's hard to get started and get a hard article going.

00:53:23.300 | So I like to do this trick whenever possible,

00:53:25.460 | use interesting locations to try to get the juices flowing.

00:53:29.900 | If you're on chapter seven of a book,

00:53:32.140 | six months into the writing, you're just, let's just go.

00:53:34.780 | You know, you start each morning at your office.

00:53:37.020 | When you're starting something, you're like,

00:53:38.220 | this needs to be, I don't know how I'm gonna even do this.

00:53:41.260 | You know, you wanna be at the whatever,

00:53:44.060 | at the coffee shop or in the woods

00:53:46.620 | or somewhere kind of interesting to shake it out.

00:53:48.580 | But the reality here, Ben,

00:53:49.660 | is my workday is not that interesting.

00:53:52.280 | I don't work crazy hours.

00:53:54.180 | Now, the two things I will say is,

00:53:55.540 | during my actual work hours, I'm locked in.

00:53:58.620 | I time block plan, I don't waste time.

00:54:01.020 | I mentioned that I watched a movie on Tuesday.

00:54:02.820 | That was scheduled well in advance.

00:54:05.100 | This 90 minute block that I'm going to sit

00:54:08.060 | and watch this movie,

00:54:09.140 | it's not something I just casually did

00:54:10.980 | because I was procrastinating.

00:54:12.380 | So I do work really hard when I'm working,

00:54:14.560 | but I don't work an unusual amount of hours.

00:54:17.060 | The key to my apparent productivity

00:54:20.020 | is that over time, a lot of things pile up.

00:54:24.460 | So when I work, I work hard.

00:54:25.660 | I'm careful about what I work on.

00:54:27.500 | I am usually working on a couple things at a time.

00:54:30.500 | I keep making slow but steady progress

00:54:32.160 | on multiple things at a time and things finish.

00:54:35.420 | And then you look at the end of the year

00:54:36.380 | and say you wrote all these articles

00:54:37.420 | and finished this book and did all these things,

00:54:39.260 | but they weren't being done simultaneously.

00:54:41.940 | It's just the steady application

00:54:43.860 | of a reasonable amount of intense effort

00:54:45.620 | over time aggregates to some pretty cool results.

00:54:48.020 | All right, let's do, I have a case study.

00:54:53.500 | Let's do one more question,

00:54:54.420 | and then I have a case study I want to share.

00:54:56.400 | - Sounds good.

00:54:57.240 | - All right, next question is from Moritz,

00:54:59.220 | a high school student from Germany.

00:55:00.980 | "I worry that to create the career I want,

00:55:03.780 | "I need to be really skilled at something.

00:55:05.720 | "I worry that I don't really have found an activity

00:55:08.180 | "which I find so fulfilling as to accomplish that.

00:55:10.940 | "Do you have any recommendations on getting started?"

00:55:14.220 | - Well, Moritz, it's good that you're thinking

00:55:15.700 | about this at an early age.

00:55:17.460 | I also want to reassure you

00:55:18.740 | that you're still at an early enough age

00:55:20.640 | that you should not need to have

00:55:23.400 | your whole career figured out.

00:55:26.300 | Now, I think what you're expressing here

00:55:28.440 | is maybe the German equivalent

00:55:31.480 | of the follow your passion mentality

00:55:34.180 | that's here in America.

00:55:36.800 | At the core of follow your passion is this notion

00:55:39.640 | that you can figure out in advance

00:55:41.240 | at the beginning of your career journey

00:55:43.240 | what it is that you're best suited to do,

00:55:45.060 | and therefore use that certainty to actually guide you

00:55:47.640 | through the work required to get there.

00:55:49.920 | My big argument is that that's rarely the case.

00:55:53.760 | Really cool careers that are meaningful,

00:55:57.160 | that require a lot of skill, that create impact,

00:55:59.240 | they often unfold more haphazardly

00:56:01.260 | and in a less predictable fashion

00:56:03.140 | than most young people imagine.

00:56:05.740 | So as a high school student,

00:56:08.380 | I would focus on figuring out how to be a student,

00:56:12.820 | treating it like a job,

00:56:14.500 | letting that open up various university opportunities.

00:56:17.580 | As you go to university opportunities,

00:56:19.340 | choose a field of study that matches the skills

00:56:21.380 | you already have and interest of yours.

00:56:23.940 | Do well at the university level.

00:56:25.800 | Again, treat your studying like a job,

00:56:27.640 | the type of things I talk about in my book,

00:56:29.740 | how to become a straight A student,

00:56:31.820 | be efficient, autopilot schedule, time control, et cetera.

00:56:36.360 | That's gonna open up opportunities.

00:56:38.440 | Choose an opportunity that is well-matched to your skills.

00:56:41.680 | You're getting, at this point now,

00:56:43.040 | the career capital you built up in college or university,

00:56:46.080 | you're actually now really able to deploy it

00:56:48.040 | and use it as leverage, and that's interesting to you,

00:56:51.000 | and that has interesting opportunities down the line

00:56:53.960 | if and when you continue to get good,

00:56:55.600 | and then just start doing that.

00:56:57.120 | I mean, really, it's often not until you're five years in

00:56:59.880 | to a career opportunity out of a university

00:57:02.120 | that was well-suited to your skills and interesting

00:57:04.800 | that you really get to start doing cool things,

00:57:07.060 | that you've built up enough skill

00:57:08.280 | that now you can shift your job role

00:57:10.640 | or go over to another company or start your own thing.

00:57:12.800 | So that's down the line.

00:57:14.440 | Right now, just be a good high school student,

00:57:17.880 | get to university, figure out how to ace that particular job,

00:57:22.880 | open up opportunities, choose an interesting one,

00:57:26.560 | put your head down, do really well,

00:57:28.440 | look up after a few years and say,

00:57:29.680 | "Okay, now I'm ready to take my career capital

00:57:32.640 | "out for a spin,"

00:57:34.040 | and that's when things really do start to get interesting.

00:57:36.440 | Jesse, I think I have it in the library,

00:57:41.500 | but the German edition of "So Good They Can't Ignore You,"

00:57:45.120 | maybe this says something about Germany,

00:57:46.920 | but in America, the book is called

00:57:48.480 | "So Good They Can't Ignore You,"

00:57:49.520 | it's focusing on the positive.

00:57:51.520 | The German edition, it's a newspaper on the cover

00:57:55.180 | and the headline translates to,

00:57:57.680 | I think it's called "The Dream Job Delusion."

00:58:00.080 | I like that, it's very German.

00:58:02.640 | So the Americans are like, "Yeah, be so good

00:58:04.680 | "and you're gonna find meaning,

00:58:05.900 | "but this is just an alternative way,"

00:58:07.560 | and the Germans are like, "Ah, that dream job delusion?

00:58:10.940 | "You delusion to think the dream job,

00:58:15.740 | "that's not how it works.

00:58:17.260 | "Efficiency, efficient effort applied

00:58:21.900 | "towards a pragmatic goal.

00:58:23.940 | "For a dream job is delusion."

00:58:28.100 | Bon, I don't know, bon is,

00:58:29.940 | I don't know what that means, road or something like that.

00:58:32.620 | Oh, well, let me do a quick case study

00:58:34.660 | before we get to the books I read.

00:58:36.120 | All right, so our final case study,

00:58:37.060 | again, all of these questions and case studies

00:58:38.700 | are trying to relate to the central theme

00:58:40.200 | of today's episode, which is engineering

00:58:42.240 | the characteristics of your workday

00:58:45.140 | to be more satisfying.

00:58:48.220 | All right, this one comes from Dana,

00:58:49.820 | a 40-year-old lawyer from British Columbia.

00:58:52.420 | So she, Dana, or it might be a he, I'm not sure,

00:58:55.700 | wants to redeem the profession of law.

00:58:58.640 | We said earlier in this episode

00:59:00.060 | that it ranked last in terms of happiness,

00:59:02.780 | ranked last in terms of stress,

00:59:05.220 | so it's the most stressful, least hapful job.

00:59:07.780 | Are all lawyers doomed?

00:59:09.260 | Dana says, "Not necessarily."

00:59:10.820 | Let's listen to this case study.

00:59:13.000 | She says, "I work as a lawyer in civil litigation

00:59:15.620 | "in a small firm.

00:59:17.640 | "It is a deadline-driven client service profession.

00:59:21.080 | "Your suggestion that people focus

00:59:22.500 | "on lifestyle-centric career design,

00:59:24.580 | "where you try to figure out how work fits into your life,

00:59:26.780 | "has been very informative.

00:59:28.800 | "For example, I have turned down jobs

00:59:30.800 | "as well as offers of partnership in this firm

00:59:32.940 | "because they offered less freedom in my schedule.

00:59:35.900 | "At present, I work more as a contractor

00:59:38.100 | "who can dictate my schedule and quota of cases.

00:59:41.980 | "If I took a more traditional path

00:59:43.620 | "of buying into a partnership,

00:59:45.480 | "then I'd probably have to take out a loan

00:59:47.060 | "or be paying money to the partners for a share.

00:59:49.320 | "Alternatively, if I went into the public sector

00:59:51.200 | "or a larger firm, then I would lose autonomy.

00:59:54.180 | "I have found that lifestyle-centric career planning

00:59:56.640 | "is indispensable."

00:59:58.600 | That's what it looks like

01:00:01.840 | when you engineer the characteristics of your workday.

01:00:04.860 | You reject the inertia towards what everyone else is doing

01:00:07.980 | and say instead,

01:00:09.180 | "These are the characteristics I want in my job.

01:00:11.120 | "I'm pretty good.

01:00:12.520 | "I have some leverage.

01:00:13.520 | "I have some say over how my working life unfolds.

01:00:16.680 | "What can I do to get more of these and less of that?"

01:00:19.520 | And for Dana, the lawyer, she said,

01:00:21.820 | "Okay, I know everyone else thinks being a partner

01:00:24.320 | "is the ultimate goal because I guess ultimately

01:00:26.400 | "that's the highest prestige and/or the highest income,

01:00:29.060 | "but who cares?

01:00:29.900 | "I make more than enough money as a non-partner lawyer.

01:00:33.060 | "What I want is autonomy.

01:00:34.120 | "So no, I don't wanna be a partner.

01:00:35.600 | "I wanna stay right here.

01:00:36.680 | "I want my relationship

01:00:37.600 | "to be a contractor-type relationship

01:00:39.240 | "where I tell you how many cases I wanna take on

01:00:41.360 | "and then I will do those cases really well.

01:00:43.760 | "I will control my workload.

01:00:45.420 | "I'm happy with the money I make here."

01:00:48.440 | That's engineering the characteristics.

01:00:50.080 | Now, I didn't read these details in the episode,

01:00:52.840 | but Dana sent a huge amount of information

01:00:54.880 | about her organizational systems

01:00:57.640 | that her and her legal assistant use.

01:00:59.540 | That's the other aspect of that

01:01:01.440 | is she's really dialed in.

01:01:02.800 | It's really kind of cool.

01:01:03.980 | I mean, it's insider baseball,

01:01:05.160 | so I didn't wanna get into all the details on the show,

01:01:06.760 | but they have these really detailed systems

01:01:09.200 | for keeping track of each case,

01:01:11.600 | what needs to be done each week.

01:01:13.680 | They group together tasks by type

01:01:16.200 | so that if the legal assistant's gonna go

01:01:17.680 | pull records for one case,

01:01:19.460 | she can see all the other cases that need records pulled

01:01:21.800 | so she can do it all at once.

01:01:23.360 | They have a system they use

01:01:25.720 | to pass notes back and forth on cases

01:01:27.600 | without having to just interrupt each other.

01:01:29.100 | They use Agile-style weekly check-in planning.

01:01:31.560 | So that's the other aspect of this

01:01:33.260 | is that Dana plugged in the organizational systems

01:01:35.680 | to try to shave the rough stress edges off

01:01:39.080 | of the work that she does do.

01:01:40.560 | Let's get the processes dialed in.

01:01:43.040 | Let's make this less haphazard.

01:01:44.480 | Let's make this less interrupt-driven.

01:01:47.000 | That's controlling the characteristics of your workday.

01:01:49.600 | So I thought that was a good example to end on.

01:01:52.300 | All right, so that's our discussion of today's theme.

01:01:55.660 | I wanna end the show by talking about

01:01:57.640 | the books I read in December.

01:01:59.240 | First, I wanna talk about another sponsor of this show.

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01:05:42.320 | All right, Jesse, it's late, but better late than never.

01:05:46.880 | This final segment, I wanna mention the books

01:05:48.640 | I read in December, 2022.

01:05:53.400 | As you might recall, December for me is Thriller December.

01:05:57.920 | It is the month in which I like to read adventure

01:06:01.520 | or thriller novels.

01:06:02.560 | That's the genre that I'd say genre I really like.

01:06:06.040 | There's a lot of holidays in December.

01:06:07.360 | So it's a tradition of mine is to read more thrillers

01:06:10.040 | than normal in December.

01:06:11.360 | So I read three thrillers in December, Jesse,

01:06:13.600 | and I will go through them all right now.

01:06:16.040 | All right, the first one I read,

01:06:17.640 | The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield.

01:06:22.840 | This is a action thriller that takes place

01:06:25.920 | in an alternative timeline.

01:06:28.200 | So it's in the seventies

01:06:30.240 | and it's positing an alternative timeline

01:06:33.200 | where we did a few more Apollo programs.

01:06:35.720 | And I don't wanna give too many details away

01:06:38.320 | other than there's gun battles happening in space

01:06:42.120 | with the Soviets.

01:06:43.720 | What was cool about this book, what attracted me to it

01:06:45.800 | is that Chris Hadfield, the author, is an astronaut.

01:06:49.480 | So this actually has realistic details

01:06:53.840 | of how all the 1970s era Apollo space program

01:06:58.520 | technology actually worked.

01:07:00.120 | He actually understands space and what this world is like.

01:07:03.480 | So I liked that idea that it was written by an astronaut,

01:07:05.560 | a book about astronaut murders.

01:07:06.840 | It's pretty good.

01:07:08.120 | The next one I read was Recursion by Blake Crouch.

01:07:11.320 | I wanna flag this book for a second

01:07:14.600 | because I read a lot of thrillers.

01:07:17.960 | Recursion is about as platonic of an example

01:07:22.680 | I have found of perfection in pacing.

01:07:27.520 | It's like a masterclass in thriller structure and pacing.

01:07:32.520 | Really that this piece of it is brilliantly done.

01:07:37.360 | It's datelined chapters

01:07:40.240 | and you're moving back and forth between two timelines

01:07:42.280 | and those timelines kind of catch up

01:07:44.000 | and the way it moves back and forth, back and forth

01:07:46.680 | and ratchets up is just a precision plot construction.

01:07:51.480 | It's a book that's really hard to put down

01:07:54.160 | once you pick it up.

01:07:55.600 | I was really impressed by it.

01:07:56.880 | I mean, actually I was so impressed by it

01:07:58.000 | that I was a little bit disappointed

01:07:59.160 | when I went back to read a prior book of Blake's,

01:08:01.920 | which was good, but man with Recursion,

01:08:05.520 | he has the pacing just locked in.

01:08:07.640 | It's the best thriller pacing I've read.

01:08:10.960 | One of the best thriller pacing I've probably ever read.

01:08:13.120 | - When was it written?

01:08:14.440 | - This book would have been, I don't know,

01:08:15.480 | the last 10 years or something like that.

01:08:17.720 | It's like a time, I won't give away everything that happens,

01:08:21.480 | but the way it opens is it's playing with time.

01:08:25.840 | So he's a techno thriller writer.

01:08:28.360 | He's like our age.

01:08:29.200 | He's not like, I used to say relatively young.

01:08:31.560 | I guess we're not that young anymore,

01:08:33.600 | but there's this virus sort of happening

01:08:36.200 | where people are having memories of different lives

01:08:40.480 | suddenly appear and it seems to be contagious.

01:08:43.440 | Like people nearby have the same thing happen.

01:08:46.880 | And there's a detective that's trying to unwind

01:08:49.120 | like what's going on.

01:08:50.220 | And then it starts to unravel.

01:08:54.600 | And then you get a plot line from back in time

01:08:56.960 | and it catches up and then it gets crazy at the end.

01:08:58.680 | Anyways, perfection in structure and pacing.

01:09:02.600 | The last thriller I read in December

01:09:04.600 | was The Last Juror by John Grisham.

01:09:06.520 | I just had it from a little free library

01:09:08.400 | here in Tacoma Park.

01:09:10.760 | Here's the thing about being a writer like John Grisham.

01:09:15.240 | If you have that one or two huge successes early on,

01:09:17.800 | you can just keep writing books

01:09:19.320 | that don't have to be blockbusters.

01:09:22.600 | Like if The Last Juror was written by someone else,

01:09:26.560 | like that's nice.

01:09:29.720 | But because he wrote The Firm,

01:09:32.160 | because he wrote The Pelican Brief and The Client

01:09:35.240 | and he became such a superstar,

01:09:36.960 | you could just write these books

01:09:38.200 | where they don't have to be bangers.

01:09:40.200 | It's just interesting.

01:09:41.040 | It's just, it's a guy starting up a newspaper

01:09:43.120 | in the small Mississippi town that he likes to write about.

01:09:46.480 | And there's a trial and 20 years later,

01:09:50.520 | like some of the jurors start dying out,

01:09:53.000 | like getting killed, right?

01:09:53.900 | And then they kind of figure out what's going on.

01:09:55.800 | That's the book, but I enjoyed it.

01:09:59.280 | I enjoyed it.

01:10:00.120 | But if this was the book you ran instead of The Firm,

01:10:03.200 | you wouldn't know the name John Grisham.

01:10:04.760 | So it's a good gig if you can get it.

01:10:06.980 | There's another thriller I didn't quite finish

01:10:08.800 | in December, so I'll get to that in the January.

01:10:10.280 | So I really read four in December,

01:10:11.720 | but the fifth one I didn't finish until into January.

01:10:15.180 | So we'll get it with the next list.

01:10:16.920 | All right, I read two other books as well, non-thrillers.

01:10:20.480 | One was called Living with Frankenstein

01:10:22.800 | by Steven Schoen.

01:10:24.920 | This is, I'm working on some things

01:10:28.200 | with artificial intelligence.

01:10:29.240 | So this is like a small philosophical tract

01:10:32.560 | about machine sentience.

01:10:34.640 | And this is like a gentleman scholar

01:10:38.000 | has this thesis about what does it really mean

01:10:41.720 | for technology to be conscious,

01:10:43.400 | and he has a much lower bar for that,

01:10:44.760 | and things were already there.

01:10:46.480 | I needed it for something I was doing.

01:10:48.380 | What I enjoyed more was John Meacham's

01:10:51.360 | And There Was Light.

01:10:52.680 | It was John Meacham's new Lincoln biography.

01:10:55.360 | It was very good, very good.

01:10:57.360 | So Meacham is taking a,

01:11:00.040 | he's looking at Lincoln through the lens

01:11:02.200 | of in part ethics and in part religion.

01:11:06.560 | So the virtue ethics worldview of Lincoln,

01:11:10.080 | and then also the impact of religions on Lincoln.

01:11:11.880 | I think the early part of Lincoln's life,

01:11:13.480 | I really enjoyed the way this Meacham treated it

01:11:16.080 | because what he does good in this book,

01:11:17.520 | and I've read a lot of Lincoln books.

01:11:19.680 | What he does good in this book is set context.

01:11:22.160 | So there's a lot of primary sources

01:11:24.280 | that he pulls from to set the context.

01:11:25.920 | So it's one of the better, for example,

01:11:28.760 | depictions of Southern culture

01:11:31.120 | during the pre-war period.

01:11:35.080 | Because he pulls from sermons and newspapers

01:11:38.000 | and headlines to try to really understand

01:11:41.000 | the reactionary culture that was emerging in the South

01:11:44.680 | in defense of slavery.

01:11:46.360 | And understanding that really helps make sense

01:11:48.920 | of some of the big historical things that happened.

01:11:50.640 | He goes to primary sources to get there.

01:11:53.480 | Another thing I learned from Meacham,

01:11:55.200 | which was really interesting, was,

01:11:56.720 | I didn't know this, and I read a lot of Lincoln,

01:11:59.120 | that Lincoln's family, when he was a young kid,

01:12:02.340 | was attending a church, one of these rural churches,

01:12:06.220 | that was, it's very anti-slavery.

01:12:09.260 | So he was exposed to anti-slavery thinking,

01:12:12.380 | in part because of, this was the early exposure

01:12:15.900 | he had to it, was in church, which I hadn't heard.

01:12:18.200 | I had heard about the, there's a labor argument.

01:12:21.060 | His dad was a working, poor, working class white

01:12:26.020 | in Illinois, were worried about the economic ramifications

01:12:29.480 | of slave labor coming into their state.

01:12:31.680 | So I had heard that piece of it.

01:12:33.020 | So he grew up in an anti-slavery household,

01:12:35.020 | but he was inculcated with a religious anti-slavery message.

01:12:38.780 | And Meacham went back and found, here's the preacher,

01:12:42.260 | and here's the type of things they talked about.

01:12:43.620 | So I thought that was all good.

01:12:45.420 | Once they get to the war, and the presidency,

01:12:47.460 | it's like, (imitates explosion)

01:12:48.700 | real fast.

01:12:49.980 | He just covers it in 70 pages.

01:12:52.220 | It just, it moves by really fast, but enjoyed it.

01:12:55.420 | All right, Jesse, those were my five books from December.

01:12:58.220 | Next month, we will talk about the five books I read

01:13:01.540 | in January.

01:13:02.380 | We'll try to do a little bit sooner next time.

01:13:04.120 | All right, well, that's all the time we have

01:13:05.420 | for today's episode.

01:13:06.360 | We'll be back next week with a new episode.

01:13:09.540 | If you wanna submit your own questions,

01:13:10.880 | there's a link right in the show notes.

01:13:12.560 | If you want to watch these episodes instead of listening,

01:13:14.840 | go to youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

01:13:18.040 | See you next week.

01:13:18.880 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:13:21.460 | (upbeat music)

01:13:24.040 | [Music]

Ep 232. The Lumberjack Paradox

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