Ep. 213: Saying No! | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | The topic I want to tackle in today's deep dive is the art of no.

00:00:05.440 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, episode 213.

00:00:26.200 | On this show, I answer questions from my audience about the theory and practice

00:00:31.160 | of living and working deeply in an increasingly shallow world.

00:00:36.680 | If you want to submit your own questions or case studies, there is a link

00:00:41.160 | in the show notes for this episode, or you can go to calnewport.com/podcast.

00:00:47.280 | Video of the full episodes, as well as highlighted clips, is available

00:00:50.800 | at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

00:00:55.080 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ, joined as always by my producer, Jesse.

00:01:00.680 | Jesse, it's good to see you.

00:01:01.720 | Good to see you, too.

00:01:03.200 | I got to say, in the last week, I have fully transitioned back

00:01:07.680 | after my summer relaxed approach.

00:01:12.080 | I was going to say hiatus, but let's say my summer relaxed

00:01:14.840 | approached the organization.

00:01:16.880 | I am back now, among other things, into my full daily planning

00:01:23.680 | habit routines, the sort of middle of the school year, hardcore

00:01:27.840 | Cal Newport planning everyday routines.

00:01:29.760 | It takes me about a week or two to get back into it, but I'm back into it.

00:01:32.720 | I use my time block planner.

00:01:35.560 | First thing in the morning, I go in and check my weekly plan.

00:01:40.360 | I look at my calendar, sort of figure out what am I working on today?

00:01:44.280 | Sketch out my initial plan.

00:01:46.880 | I do a shutdown complete at the end of my workday where I'm processing

00:01:50.680 | any tasks that have been captured in the planner throughout the day.

00:01:54.680 | I bring it then back upstairs.

00:01:57.360 | So it's upstairs in my room.

00:01:58.760 | I bring it downstairs to my study, do that initial planning.

00:02:00.880 | It comes back up to my room because then at the end of the night,

00:02:03.440 | when I'm getting ready for bed, all the relevant metrics for the day

00:02:05.960 | go in the metric planning space.

00:02:08.240 | When I'm at full throttle, that's all the things I'm doing.

00:02:11.680 | And I'm back to it after a summer of, you know, I always pull back

00:02:15.960 | a little bit in the summer because I have like seven jobs.

00:02:18.800 | And it's pretty intense to keep it all running.

00:02:21.280 | And so I pull back when I can.

00:02:23.480 | But now I'm back to it. I feel good.

00:02:25.320 | Do you still have morning writing blocks every morning?

00:02:27.760 | Yeah, every morning.

00:02:28.640 | Well, six days a week.

00:02:29.520 | The plan is six days a week.

00:02:31.960 | I'm writing in the morning.

00:02:33.520 | That's still rolling.

00:02:34.360 | Some mornings I can write a lot.

00:02:35.600 | Some mornings I can't write as much.

00:02:36.960 | This morning I got in 75 minutes.

00:02:39.640 | That's on the short side.

00:02:41.480 | But it was 75 good minutes.

00:02:43.760 | I was writing about Georgia O'Keeffe.

00:02:46.240 | That's cool.

00:02:46.800 | In case you're wondering.

00:02:48.680 | You know, given my career in writing,

00:02:52.640 | I sort of have an ear for story that highlights interesting points.

00:02:56.280 | And Georgia O'Keeffe has a really interesting story.

00:02:58.440 | This is my slow productivity book I'm writing about seasonality,

00:03:01.320 | having different seasons throughout the year where you do

00:03:04.560 | different times with your work.

00:03:05.640 | And I wrote about how through the first eight years of her adult life,

00:03:09.960 | starting when she was 21, job after job, after job all over the place.

00:03:13.880 | She would be in Texas teaching and then TAing back in New York

00:03:16.920 | in the summers and taking some courses, then teaching in South Carolina,

00:03:20.880 | like all over the place.

00:03:21.840 | Her art was developing, but really slow.

00:03:24.520 | She had a period in there of four years where she'd even pick up a paintbrush.

00:03:28.080 | Then she meets Alfred Stiglitz, the famous photographer who runs

00:03:33.480 | it was running this famous gallery in Manhattan that was showing

00:03:36.200 | a lot of the early modernist.

00:03:37.360 | And he saw her work and exhibited it.

00:03:39.280 | They became friends.

00:03:40.880 | And he's like, you got to come out to my family's property near Lake George.

00:03:45.240 | So Stiglitz's dad in 1880 had bought 36 acres

00:03:49.800 | right north of Lake George Village on the western shore of Lake George.

00:03:53.800 | And so she leaves the bustle of the city, goes up there.

00:03:58.040 | They lived a little farmhouse on the property.

00:04:00.600 | And in doing that, it like unlocks all of her all of her productivity.

00:04:05.040 | I mean, for the next however many years it was probably 1918 to 1934.

00:04:11.440 | She's just writing, painting every summer, doing studies of the lake,

00:04:15.520 | studies of the mountains, studies of the barn, studies of the flowers,

00:04:18.640 | studies of the leaves.

00:04:19.880 | This is the stuff she starts exhibiting in the 1920s in Manhattan.

00:04:22.720 | It's what makes her name is what makes her famous.

00:04:24.760 | It's the most prolific period of her career.

00:04:26.240 | And it's because she changed what she did during that part of the year.

00:04:29.720 | So, you know, that's the type of thing I'm working on.

00:04:31.840 | That's cool.

00:04:32.640 | Yeah.

00:04:32.960 | So I'm back into it.

00:04:35.000 | But back to my planner.

00:04:36.440 | So anyways, the thing I was thinking about this morning is every summer,

00:04:39.240 | when I come back to full-time block planning at the end of the summer,

00:04:42.160 | I, it's, I struggle.

00:04:44.920 | There's always resistance.

00:04:46.000 | And the, the, the point this brought up for me is there is a real mismatch.

00:04:52.280 | I'm guessing there's a real mismatch between our brains and the type of

00:04:58.760 | planning and motivation that they're wired to do and the complexity of the

00:05:04.640 | highly artificial type of organization we have to do for modern complicated

00:05:09.560 | knowledge, work, family existences.

00:05:11.600 | So the, the brain, my brain, when it thinks about, wait a second, we have to

00:05:15.800 | pull out this planner every morning.

00:05:17.000 | We have to stop.

00:05:17.720 | We have to take five minutes.

00:05:18.800 | We have to write down our plan for the day and we have to record metrics in there.

00:05:22.040 | We have to follow the plan.

00:05:23.760 | This seems like constraint.

00:05:25.080 | It seems like energy that's being spent without an immediate reward.

00:05:28.200 | It seems like options being taken away.

00:05:29.800 | There's this resistance to doing it because the part of the brain, the

00:05:33.560 | motivational center that gets you going to do something does not understand.

00:05:37.680 | This structure over the course of a month is going to two X the amount of

00:05:42.280 | valuable knowledge product that we produce.

00:05:44.240 | It does not understand that.

00:05:45.400 | So it just generates resistance because it's confused by it.

00:05:47.600 | So I feel that resistance every time.

00:05:49.320 | However, once you've done it for a while, the brain is pretty adaptable.

00:05:53.640 | And it's like, oh, this is part of our routine.

00:05:56.200 | Something good is happening.

00:05:58.080 | There's a structure to our days.

00:05:59.280 | We feel good about it.

00:06:00.000 | And then it's easy to keep going.

00:06:01.200 | So there's some sort of interesting science of habit formation going on here.

00:06:04.160 | But every, at the end of every summer resistance at first to get all the

00:06:09.360 | systems up and running, give it two weeks and the brain's like, yes, what we do, man.

00:06:14.120 | We didn't have our planner.

00:06:15.800 | We weren't doing the things like we'd be all adrift.

00:06:17.520 | And so I don't know.

00:06:18.960 | There's an interesting commentary in there about what it takes to get our brain on

00:06:23.560 | our side for doing things that our brain doesn't really know much about in

00:06:26.720 | terms of evolutionary instinct.

00:06:28.360 | That's my brainstorm.

00:06:31.440 | All right.

00:06:31.800 | So how's our, uh, how's our show look today, Jesse?

00:06:34.480 | We got a good show today.

00:06:36.320 | We have two blocks of questions.

00:06:38.280 | There's some, something in there about hobbies, career anxiety, and then people

00:06:45.640 | want your advice on leaving a job.

00:06:48.120 | Uh, we also have some calls and then we have, uh, a picture that you're going to

00:06:54.400 | take a look at that involves a closet, a little case study.

00:06:58.880 | I like it.

00:07:00.200 | I like it.

00:07:00.600 | All right.

00:07:00.800 | Sounds good.

00:07:01.240 | All right.

00:07:01.680 | So we have all that coming up.

00:07:02.680 | Uh, let's start however, as I like to do with the deep dive, the topic I want to

00:07:08.440 | tackle in today's deep dive is the art of no.

00:07:12.880 | So saying no is a major part of my own professional life because I'm someone who

00:07:19.720 | has multiple jobs with multiple demands and am somewhat in the public eye.

00:07:25.040 | So I have to spend more time saying no and thinking about how to say no and

00:07:29.720 | the ramifications of saying no, I would say than probably the average person.

00:07:33.120 | So it's something that I have thought a lot about.

00:07:35.480 | Uh, there's a couple of observations I've always had about saying no.

00:07:39.040 | Number one, I think the average person creates this false binary between either

00:07:47.120 | you're someone who basically says yes, or you are a disagreeable person who says no.

00:07:52.560 | And they say, well, if those are my two choices, I don't want to be the

00:07:55.480 | disagreeable person that seems stressful and emotionally taxing.

00:07:58.680 | So I'm just the person who, who says yes, I kind of have to say yes, but it seems

00:08:02.800 | at all like it would be difficult to say no.

00:08:04.880 | The reality though, is that everyone says no a lot, whether they know it or not,

00:08:11.080 | whether it's implicit or explicit.

00:08:12.320 | But if you think about it, most knowledge workers, you know, they have a full

00:08:15.800 | schedule, usually about 20% more full than they want it to be, but not impossibly full.

00:08:20.600 | They're not working until 2am, but maybe they're working until 6pm.

00:08:25.000 | It is highly unlikely that the exact volume of things that was put onto their

00:08:30.880 | plate that they said yes to just happened to exactly match an eight or nine hour day.

00:08:34.720 | Right.

00:08:35.040 | Almost certainly there was many more things coming at them and they had the,

00:08:39.040 | they had the sorted through and they basically were implicitly or explicitly

00:08:42.360 | saying no, just enough to keep a day full.

00:08:44.640 | So we're already all saying no, even if we don't realize it, we

00:08:47.280 | just do it somewhat haphazardly.

00:08:48.920 | And I wrote a New Yorker piece about this last fall, where I said my theory

00:08:52.160 | about how most people informally handle the goal of saying, no, they don't have a

00:08:56.480 | plan, they don't have an intention, they don't have a vision for what

00:08:58.960 | they're trying to accomplish.

00:08:59.920 | They instead wait until their level of experience stress is high enough that

00:09:07.560 | they feel emotionally justified turning someone down.

00:09:10.200 | So it's like, I am so overwhelmed right now.

00:09:13.560 | I feel justified saying no.

00:09:15.720 | And until that point, I don't.

00:09:16.960 | And what I argued in that New Yorker piece is that this is a terrible way to

00:09:21.720 | go about this because it ensures that you remain at a persistent level of

00:09:25.960 | elevated stress.

00:09:26.800 | If you have to be sufficiently stressed to feel comfortable saying no, then

00:09:30.120 | you're never going to start saying no until you're sufficiently stressed.

00:09:32.400 | So you're going to stay at this level of being sufficiently

00:09:34.600 | stressed, basically persistently.

00:09:36.600 | So when we are not intentional about how we filter what we do and don't do, we

00:09:40.840 | end up in this default purgatory, this productivity purgatory of having just

00:09:46.480 | enough, just enough on our plate that it is bearable, but uncomfortable.

00:09:51.520 | And we persist there.

00:09:53.200 | So we burn out and don't produce what we want and all the other negatives to come.

00:09:57.880 | So what we need to do is be more specific with ourselves about how we figure out

00:10:04.520 | what's a reasonable workload, what that workload should be made up of, how we're

00:10:09.040 | going to go about dealing with requests to fit that load and not overload.

00:10:13.200 | We need to be more specific about it.

00:10:16.200 | That's why I was happy to see an article that someone sent to me, an alert

00:10:21.000 | listener sent to me, that appeared in a, it's a column in the journal Nature,

00:10:26.400 | and it is written by 4Scientist.

00:10:29.760 | And it is titled "Why 4Scientist Spent a Year Saying No" and it is an article

00:10:36.120 | that gets into the tactical weeds about the challenges and proper strategies

00:10:41.720 | for declining or turning away stuff that's going to overload you.

00:10:45.280 | Turning away work.

00:10:46.560 | So I want to go through this article because I often harp about this.

00:10:50.080 | Hey, you got to be more intentional about how you say yes or no, but we don't

00:10:53.080 | necessarily get into enough tactics about, well, how do I actually say no without

00:10:58.360 | feeling really bad or annoying people?

00:11:00.760 | All right.

00:11:01.480 | So I have the article here.

00:11:02.360 | So those who are watching on YouTube, so you can find this at

00:11:05.720 | youtube.com/CalNewportMedia.

00:11:07.640 | You'll see on the screen that we have the date highlighted.

00:11:10.640 | This is from August 25th.

00:11:11.880 | So this is recent.

00:11:12.920 | Now the, the 4Scientist who wrote this column, their names don't show up in this

00:11:19.440 | version I have here, but, but probably relevant to this article, I believe all

00:11:23.560 | four are women.

00:11:24.240 | So let's just, that'll come up a little bit later.

00:11:26.960 | All right.

00:11:27.800 | So I want to highlight a couple of things here.

00:11:29.160 | First, just to start, let's give the premise for what they were doing here

00:11:32.280 | before we get to their specific advice.

00:11:33.800 | So the premise is the following.

00:11:36.120 | Last May, I'm quoting the article here, "Last May, facing pandemic and career

00:11:42.480 | burnout, this member whimsically suggested..."

00:11:45.360 | So member of these four scientists have a group that meets regularly to discuss

00:11:51.680 | just their career and the challenges of being scientists.

00:11:53.880 | All right.

00:11:54.160 | So back to the quote, "a member of the group whimsically suggested we make a

00:12:00.560 | game out of saying no by challenging ourselves to collectively decline 100

00:12:06.840 | work-related requests.

00:12:11.040 | Thus, we spent a year tracking and reflecting on our decisions to say no."

00:12:14.440 | So they started in May of 2021.

00:12:16.440 | They finished in March of 2022.

00:12:19.680 | So they got systematic about saying no and had four observations.

00:12:24.760 | They call them here four insights about what they learned saying no systematically

00:12:30.000 | a hundred times over the course of a year.

00:12:31.480 | So let's go through these four insights real quick.

00:12:33.480 | All right.

00:12:34.680 | The first insight, "Tracking helped make no an option.

00:12:41.880 | So they started keeping track of all the things they said yes or no to just a

00:12:46.280 | simple list.

00:12:46.880 | So this is separate from whatever other organizational system you have for

00:12:50.080 | organizing your time or projects.

00:12:51.280 | Let's just have a yes, no list.

00:12:52.680 | So as they pointed out, first of all, it helped them understand how much they'd

00:12:57.600 | already said yes.

00:12:58.520 | It's easy to forget.

00:12:59.760 | It also induced the gamification motivation of, well, how many no's do we

00:13:04.560 | have?

00:13:04.880 | I want to get a couple more no's this week.

00:13:06.600 | Maybe I do want to say no.

00:13:10.120 | What they then talked about is that once they started tracking no, this got them

00:13:14.560 | in the tracking mindset, which helped them in other ways as well.

00:13:20.160 | So reading from the article here, they say, "We logged completed tasks to

00:13:25.120 | counteract imposter syndrome.

00:13:26.920 | We kept a running count of active projects and tracked how we were spending

00:13:31.400 | time each day."

00:13:31.920 | This is all the type of stuff I recommend when you actually start tracking your

00:13:35.960 | time, your projects, what you're doing, what you're not doing.

00:13:38.320 | When you actually confront what we talked about in the show, the productivity

00:13:40.720 | dragon of what's really on your plate, what you've slayed in the past.

00:13:44.320 | This is all very important for you getting your arms around your work and

00:13:47.760 | making confident plans for how you want to go forward.

00:13:50.280 | As long as you exist in this liminal space of emails coming in, you're saying

00:13:55.320 | yes or no, you're jumping in and out of meetings and just always scrambling, but

00:13:59.360 | you're not really sure, what am I doing?

00:14:01.320 | How much am I doing?

00:14:02.160 | What have I gotten done?

00:14:03.000 | What am I saying yes to?

00:14:03.760 | If you don't know these things, you're a fireman.

00:14:06.600 | You're putting out fires.

00:14:07.840 | And people who put out fires eventually get burnt.

00:14:09.920 | All right.

00:14:10.160 | Number two, second thing they observed from this experiment, say no more often

00:14:15.520 | and to larger asks.

00:14:18.120 | So when they were reflecting, they said, "We declined too many little things, such

00:14:24.320 | as reviewing journal articles and not enough big tasks."

00:14:28.120 | I think that's a good point.

00:14:31.120 | They were saying, "You could rack up the no's, but you could also rack up the

00:14:37.120 | no's quicker if you're aiming on the little things, the things that might take

00:14:41.920 | you a couple hours of the afternoon."

00:14:43.600 | But they're noting the things that caused the most stress were the big asks.

00:14:47.400 | And they give some examples here, leadership opportunities, the chance to

00:14:51.920 | help write large grant proposals, et cetera.

00:14:56.120 | By the way, all of this is giving me cold sweats because this is too close to home.

00:15:00.760 | Jesse knows this.

00:15:04.120 | Okay.

00:15:04.360 | So what they ended up doing is coming up with a series of questions, a series of

00:15:09.360 | questions to help evaluate when to say yes and when not.

00:15:14.560 | So here's their questions.

00:15:15.720 | They have five of them.

00:15:16.640 | This is what they started asking to try to figure out, "Okay, is this something I

00:15:20.080 | should say yes to?

00:15:20.920 | One, does it fit to my research agenda and identity?

00:15:23.920 | Two, does it spark joy?

00:15:25.200 | Three, do I have time to do a good job without sacrificing extra commitments?

00:15:29.240 | Four, does the opportunity leave space for my personal life?

00:15:32.560 | Five, am I uniquely qualified to fill this need?"

00:15:36.520 | Right?

00:15:37.800 | So that made it easier for them to say no because they had, eventually

00:15:41.560 | they had these criteria.

00:15:42.400 | So when something big would come along, they would say, "Look, there's two of

00:15:44.800 | these criteria.

00:15:45.360 | It doesn't pass.

00:15:46.080 | So now I have a reason to say no."

00:15:49.120 | Three, and this is an important one, maybe sometimes overlooked, saying no is

00:15:59.720 | emotional work.

00:16:02.440 | It really is.

00:16:03.400 | I have to say no a lot.

00:16:05.280 | I just earlier this week got out, you know, said no to a speaking thing that I

00:16:11.320 | sort of went down the road with it because I thought it would be interesting, but it

00:16:14.560 | logistically was going to be a pain.

00:16:16.960 | I knew I would regret it later on and it's hard.

00:16:19.760 | And sometimes the other people get upset.

00:16:22.200 | I would say nine times out of 10 people aren't really upset.

00:16:24.680 | They just need an answer and they're moving on.

00:16:26.120 | But just emotionally, the lived experience of saying no because of the way it plays

00:16:30.400 | on our interpersonal social network wiring in our brain, the lived experience

00:16:35.400 | is often quite stressful.

00:16:37.200 | This hits different people differently.

00:16:39.640 | So here's the authors here I'm reading.

00:16:41.200 | "In myriad ways, we saw how our cultural conditioning as women, academics and

00:16:46.640 | public servants contributed to our difficulty with setting boundaries.

00:16:49.680 | Tracking not just how often we said yes or no, but also our emotional responses

00:16:55.160 | made the emotional labor of saying no visible.

00:16:59.000 | We often do ignore the emotional side of some of this otherwise seemingly dry

00:17:06.120 | technical productivity, uh, strategery.

00:17:09.960 | That there is an emotional side to it.

00:17:13.120 | I talk about in a world without email, there's non surprising, but well done

00:17:19.200 | surveys of workplace behavior that says if you start to categorize what they

00:17:22.960 | call non-promotable behavior.

00:17:24.680 | So these are behaviors that aren't directly projects, activity tasks, not

00:17:28.400 | directly tied to being promoted.

00:17:30.280 | So I will help organize the birthday party for Jesse, you know, next month.

00:17:37.000 | Women were way more likely than men to be doing those like they were, they were

00:17:40.840 | disproportionately spending more hours on it.

00:17:43.600 | So there's these, these subtleties in terms of just the emotional exchange and

00:17:47.600 | saying no, not wanting to let someone down.

00:17:50.000 | Uh, women are much less likely just to be straight up jerks.

00:17:53.880 | The guys can kind of get away with that.

00:17:56.240 | In academia, you have a lot of guys that are barely in some fields, barely fit for

00:18:03.600 | social, like human social interaction.

00:18:05.520 | If that makes sense, you can ask my wife about this.

00:18:08.160 | She's been throughout grad school.

00:18:09.600 | I brought her to a lot of, uh, computer science parties.

00:18:12.200 | You get some of that.

00:18:13.160 | You get out of a lot of work when you don't even want to have

00:18:16.760 | a conversation with someone.

00:18:17.680 | So I think that's a good point.

00:18:18.840 | They're pointing out.

00:18:19.440 | Um, so what they say here is we need less logistical advice and more emotional

00:18:24.680 | advice when it comes to thinking about yes or no.

00:18:26.720 | So let's acknowledge that.

00:18:27.680 | I think that's a very important point.

00:18:28.840 | All right.

00:18:32.120 | In the same piece, they pulled out.

00:18:33.720 | I want, there's one other thing I want to highlight in the same section here.

00:18:36.520 | They were looking, what's the terminology here?

00:18:40.800 | Soft no or little no.

00:18:43.920 | So they had heard something called little no, which is where like you agree to a

00:18:46.840 | little bit or to do a lesser thing.

00:18:49.400 | So it's not as emotionally taxing.

00:18:50.960 | And they described that strategy.

00:18:53.400 | That strategy for reducing the emotional toll of saying no to be a slippery slope

00:18:58.360 | that led people to ask for a greater commitment later on.

00:19:01.400 | They went on to say only a firm no truly reduced our commitments.

00:19:05.240 | That is so true to my experience.

00:19:08.200 | I, you know, I become a master of that in my time.

00:19:11.840 | You can't, can't try to soften the blow.

00:19:16.040 | You have this sense of like, maybe there's a way I can say no here that I'm not

00:19:20.120 | really saying no, but I don't have to do the work.

00:19:21.800 | It doesn't work.

00:19:22.560 | You have to be incredibly clear.

00:19:23.920 | And, you know, I I've learned this through experience where I'll say, I really

00:19:28.800 | appreciate this invitation.

00:19:30.280 | I'm honored.

00:19:31.120 | You thought of me.

00:19:31.840 | Um, however, because of X, Y, Z, I have to say no to this request.

00:19:36.160 | Like you have to have that piece.

00:19:37.400 | It's I unfortunately are with regrets.

00:19:40.000 | I have to say no to this request.

00:19:42.360 | You have to have that piece.

00:19:43.520 | It can't just be like, yeah, I don't know.

00:19:45.880 | You know, I'm pretty busy.

00:19:47.520 | I'm not sure if this is going to work out and X, Y, and Z, and just hope that

00:19:49.760 | they're going to come back and say, you know what, you seem too busy.

00:19:51.800 | Don't worry about it.

00:19:52.560 | They won't.

00:19:53.320 | They, their life will be easier.

00:19:55.640 | If you say yes, as long as there's any opening, they're going to keep going.

00:19:58.160 | You owe them and yourself clarity.

00:20:00.120 | So that's, you have to have in there somewhere.

00:20:01.800 | I've definitely learned this specifically.

00:20:03.760 | I am saying no period.

00:20:06.200 | And then you can add regrets and stuff like that.

00:20:08.320 | That's fine, but don't give any wiggle room.

00:20:11.720 | The other thing to say is don't say, well, I'm really busy right now.

00:20:15.400 | Um, so I don't think I can do it this semester or this month because

00:20:18.600 | they will be like, great.

00:20:19.600 | How about January?

00:20:20.960 | So it has to be, uh, because of busyness or because of whatever I have to say no.

00:20:26.280 | So you can answer back like, okay, but maybe you mean, yes.

00:20:29.440 | All right.

00:20:29.920 | Fourth thing, they, these authors, the fourth insight practice makes no

00:20:33.760 | easier as they did it more as they got closer to 100, it got easier to do.

00:20:38.600 | So anyways, I like that article.

00:20:43.200 | Uh, and I liked the topic.

00:20:45.200 | You, you, you have to control what is on your plate.

00:20:49.400 | You are doing this, whether you have a plan or not, you are saying no to things.

00:20:54.480 | You're turning things down.

00:20:55.400 | You're probably just doing implicitly.

00:20:57.240 | You're probably just waiting until you're stressed and then lashing out

00:21:00.240 | randomly and trying to get out of things until people see you're so exhausted

00:21:03.280 | that maybe they stopped bothering you.

00:21:04.560 | All right.

00:21:06.160 | That's not a good plan.

00:21:07.280 | It's a plan, but it's not a good plan.

00:21:08.400 | You need a better one.

00:21:09.120 | And I think this article is a, uh, a pretty good treatment of the topic.

00:21:13.120 | So get more systematic about saying no, recognize the difficulty of doing so.

00:21:18.240 | And it'll make your life in the long run, uh, a lot easier.

00:21:22.440 | I say no all the time, Jesse, like my whole life.

00:21:27.000 | Yeah.

00:21:27.640 | Yeah.

00:21:28.280 | I would imagine you get a lot of requests.

00:21:31.080 | I do.

00:21:31.800 | I do.

00:21:32.520 | I mean, it helps.

00:21:33.480 | I don't, this is why I don't have a general purpose way for people to reach me.

00:21:36.640 | It's why there's, there's, um, if you go to my contact page, so if you're

00:21:42.440 | interested in speaking, here's my speaking agent.

00:21:44.160 | If you have like a publicity thing, here's my contact page.

00:21:47.960 | Here's my publicist.

00:21:49.000 | If you have like a question about rights or translations or something about the

00:21:52.200 | books, here's my literary agency, right?

00:21:53.800 | It's like.

00:21:54.160 | Your question has to get moved to someone who is not me.

00:21:58.000 | If you want to send us links, which I love, here's the address,

00:22:01.440 | but, uh, requests won't be answered.

00:22:03.760 | Like we just make that clear on the site.

00:22:05.240 | Like there's just too many of the messages that come through.

00:22:06.760 | I love that you guys send me things, but I can't say I can't actually respond to it.

00:22:09.440 | So there's not actually a general purpose place.

00:22:11.640 | Yeah.

00:22:12.320 | I mean, and then if people make their way, sometimes people make their way to my.

00:22:16.080 | Georgetown address, but then I just feel fine.

00:22:17.880 | Like if you're using that for a non-academic purpose, like you already

00:22:21.240 | know, like I don't, I'm not expecting to get a response.

00:22:23.920 | I don't respond to those.

00:22:24.720 | Yeah.

00:22:25.200 | You know, it, it, it works.

00:22:27.640 | I mean, it's, it's hard because it's nice to talk to people.

00:22:29.480 | And I used to interact with all of our, all my different readers and would answer

00:22:32.680 | every email and it took all my time and then I couldn't do anything else.

00:22:36.520 | Yeah.

00:22:37.000 | So it's, it's, uh, it is hard.

00:22:39.480 | Uh, and then I still get a lot of requests.

00:22:41.600 | I have to say no to, you know, I'll tell you the hard ones.

00:22:43.680 | Sometimes they come from friends.

00:22:45.960 | You know, it'll be, uh, the, the hardest ones and then, and then I'll, I'll leave it.

00:22:50.240 | But I'll just say the hardest ones are, let's say it's a friend of the family.

00:22:55.040 | Are, you know, who doesn't know much about me, but just

00:23:00.240 | like comes across something.

00:23:01.680 | And then is like, oh, I know him.

00:23:04.120 | Like I know his wife, I know his mom or something like that.

00:23:06.840 | And like, Hey, can you, uh, it's so exciting.

00:23:09.240 | I saw you like, um, can you come like down to our office and like, come give a talk

00:23:13.320 | and like, you know, come join this webinar, do this and that.

00:23:16.400 | And those are kind of the, those are the, those are the hard ones.

00:23:18.520 | Yeah.

00:23:18.960 | You know, it's hard to say no, which I do, but it's just hard to do.

00:23:23.760 | Yeah.

00:23:24.920 | But you just have to, we just have to rip off the bandaid.

00:23:26.920 | Yeah.

00:23:27.520 | Yeah.

00:23:27.880 | My wife's got used to that.

00:23:29.200 | Just saying to people who know her and she's like, he just, he's not doing things

00:23:33.280 | right now.

00:23:33.560 | And she has some phrase, she says, like, he's not, he's not taking

00:23:35.720 | on new things right now or something.

00:23:36.880 | She's got the script optimized.

00:23:39.000 | She's got the script optimized.

00:23:40.480 | All right.

00:23:42.040 | Well, speaking of optimize, this is not a great transition.

00:23:45.440 | Speaking of optimize, let's read a couple ads.

00:23:47.920 | How's that sound?

00:23:50.480 | No, let's, let's pay the bills.

00:23:55.200 | And then we got a good question block.

00:23:56.480 | Uh, I want to talk about again, one of our longest sponsors that is Blinkist.

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00:25:04.400 | 15 minutes, 30 minutes later, you know, the lay of the land.

00:25:07.400 | You know, the big, the big ideas and you know, crucially, do I need to read more?

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00:25:39.680 | Blinkist.com/deep.

00:25:43.440 | I also want to mention SleepMe.

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00:25:55.720 | ChiliSleep, which brings you the coldest, most comfortable sleep system on the

00:26:02.800 | market, so ChiliSleep is now called SleepMe.

00:26:05.560 | You have heard me mention before, I sleep hot.

00:26:08.560 | I blast fans at me.

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00:27:31.880 | up refreshed every day.

00:27:34.480 | All right, well, I'm refreshed, Jesse.

00:27:36.880 | So let's do some questions.

00:27:38.200 | What do you think?

00:27:38.480 | Should we start with a call?

00:27:39.240 | Is that what we're doing here?

00:27:40.000 | Yeah, let's start with a call.

00:27:41.320 | We got a call from Erica and she's going to talk about anxiety and time block

00:27:47.560 | planning.

00:27:48.000 | Hello, my name is Erica.

00:27:54.000 | I am a return caller and general asker of questions.

00:27:59.200 | Today, my question is regarding anxiety and time block planning.

00:28:05.000 | So one side of me loves to have my schedule set so I don't have to think about it.

00:28:11.280 | But when I get to the day where I have something planned at a certain time, I get

00:28:17.000 | anxiety because there's this other side of me that loves flexibility.

00:28:22.160 | I do like schedule throughout my day some unstructured time.

00:28:26.560 | But and once I start an activity, I'm usually happy with doing the activity.

00:28:31.800 | But I just get a lot of inertial pre-event anxiety and just a feeling of not wanting

00:28:39.920 | to do a certain thing at the time I have it.

00:28:42.880 | So I'll give a good example.

00:28:45.440 | Like I schedule a reservation at a restaurant, you know, like a month in advance

00:28:51.200 | or something that I'm really excited for.

00:28:53.760 | But when the day comes, I just don't like feeling boxed in and having to be at the

00:29:00.280 | restaurant at a certain time.

00:29:01.600 | But then I get there and I love it.

00:29:04.840 | So do you have any like tips or thoughts on how I might be able to just get over

00:29:13.200 | this?

00:29:13.720 | I don't know.

00:29:14.520 | I don't know.

00:29:15.040 | I don't know the right term for it.

00:29:16.840 | I guess pre-inertial anxiety towards a structured schedule of it.

00:29:23.120 | All right.

00:29:24.040 | Thank you very much.

00:29:24.880 | Take care.

00:29:25.480 | Bye.

00:29:26.080 | Well, I mean, Erica, this is similar to what we were chatting about at the top of

00:29:31.440 | the show about the the resistance I feel to restarting my full time block planning

00:29:37.520 | system at the beginning of the fall.

00:29:39.600 | You're feeling this, but basically on the scale of individual scheduled events or

00:29:44.280 | blocks, same underlying mechanisms and is quite normal.

00:29:48.040 | Our brain does not understand by understand.

00:29:52.560 | I mean, has not been evolved over deep history time to last two to 300,000 years

00:29:59.200 | where modern homo sapiens have walked the earth.

00:30:01.640 | It has not evolved to work with scheduled events.

00:30:06.880 | It's not evolved to work with.

00:30:09.120 | I am now going to start doing this task because it's drawn up in a box on a piece

00:30:15.200 | of paper.

00:30:15.680 | I am now going to head over to a restaurant to eat because it's in my planner that

00:30:21.440 | that's what happens next.

00:30:23.040 | That is not how our motivational loops are evolved to actually function.

00:30:27.920 | They're, they're functioning.

00:30:29.000 | They're, they're, they're meant to function on much more immediate and clear

00:30:32.200 | stimuli.

00:30:33.000 | We need more food.

00:30:35.240 | We're going for a hunt.

00:30:37.480 | This person who's in front of me, who I can see.

00:30:40.600 | So all of the social networks that take up so much of my neuron, neuronal space in

00:30:45.680 | my brain are all fired up and looking at this person in front of me, who's a part

00:30:49.000 | of my tribe.

00:30:49.560 | Who's asking for my help.

00:30:50.720 | Oh yeah.

00:30:51.040 | We're going to go help that person.

00:30:52.240 | We, we expect these more acute stimuli.

00:30:54.760 | The brain does not understand a small box written in one of these or a little green

00:31:00.280 | glowing screen box on your screen, your Google calendar for an appointment.

00:31:04.520 | It doesn't understand that.

00:31:06.640 | So we have some trouble literally getting the motivational system to put the right

00:31:11.760 | chemicals into our system that gets us up and actually moving.

00:31:14.760 | There's something called the ventral striatum that's involved in this.

00:31:17.480 | The neuroscience gets complicated.

00:31:19.000 | Details don't matter.

00:31:20.520 | We can, we'll get Andrew Huberman on the line if we really want to get into this.

00:31:24.120 | Uh, but let's just rest assured.

00:31:26.520 | That's what our brain does.

00:31:27.600 | Different people, Erica have different reactions to this mismatch.

00:31:32.200 | Right?

00:31:34.000 | So some people it's yeah, whatever.

00:31:36.280 | Yeah.

00:31:36.560 | You have to just kind of.

00:31:37.480 | Bull rush into the task.

00:31:39.920 | Then you get going.

00:31:40.520 | It's like, it's minor other people like you, Erica, uh, the mismatch triggers

00:31:44.320 | anxiety, which again, chemicals like anxiety is a physical feeling.

00:31:49.160 | There's a constriction in the chest.

00:31:51.040 | There's a, a difficulty in the breathing.

00:31:53.360 | You can, you can do some self scanning and say, this is just physical.

00:31:57.520 | Hormonal chemical driven reaction.

00:32:00.160 | The autonomic immune system or a nervous system rather is involved in this.

00:32:04.760 | And so for you and a lot of other people, this mismatch can create a literal anxiety.

00:32:10.880 | The thing we have to do about this, uh, uh, put bluntly is sort of ignore.

00:32:17.080 | I mean, we can recognize my brain does this just like my knee

00:32:23.080 | hurts when a storm is coming.

00:32:24.880 | But beyond recognizing it, we still go forward.

00:32:28.880 | We still go forward because let me tell you, let's say you get rid of your

00:32:32.840 | time block planning during the day, like let's just rock and roll.

00:32:35.720 | So I don't have to have the anxiety of having something scheduled.

00:32:37.960 | You're opening yourself up to a much more existential anxiety because you're

00:32:41.480 | going to just ping pong back and forth.

00:32:43.640 | Randomly putting out fires, not making progress on things that are important

00:32:47.200 | for getting about things, having to scramble at the last minute to get things done.

00:32:50.800 | This is not from a physiological perspective or a psychological

00:32:54.480 | perspective, a better subjective experience.

00:32:58.520 | It's a deeper existential anxiety you're going to feel.

00:33:02.200 | So you're trading one for the other.

00:33:03.720 | Same thing.

00:33:04.320 | If you don't go to the restaurant, you don't go to the party.

00:33:09.040 | Uh, you're not going to feel better.

00:33:11.640 | You'll get like relief in the moment because you're resolving the mismatch,

00:33:14.560 | but you're not around friends.

00:33:15.440 | You're not doing interesting things.

00:33:16.560 | And, you know, I get that too, Erica, I don't get, I don't get anxiety around

00:33:20.680 | blocks if it's just work I've put aside.

00:33:24.160 | I just get normal resistance.

00:33:25.880 | When you throw a, there's different aspects.

00:33:29.080 | Sometimes there's social aspects.

00:33:30.240 | So this might be what you have.

00:33:31.440 | There might be like a social aspect in there where there's a little bit of

00:33:33.960 | social anxiety, so that could exaggerate it.

00:33:35.880 | Um, I don't have that so much, but I have, as I've talked about on the show,

00:33:39.640 | these weird, deep rooted issues with surrounding sleep.

00:33:43.960 | And so I'll sometimes get this around events.

00:33:46.680 | If they're at night, like, you know, it's, I don't know how late it's

00:33:50.120 | going to go and what my sleep and, and you know, what I've learned to

00:33:53.040 | do is say, okay, thank you.

00:33:54.120 | Welcome anxiety.

00:33:56.400 | I'm glad you're here.

00:33:57.240 | Chemicals you'll pass soon.

00:33:58.840 | Uh, and I'm going to go on and keep doing this thing.

00:34:01.840 | So that's what I say, Erica.

00:34:02.840 | Um, it's natural.

00:34:04.200 | It's not that you shouldn't find it that interesting in the sense of like,

00:34:07.480 | yeah, here, this comes, it'll go.

00:34:09.040 | And you make the plans that are good.

00:34:11.240 | You execute the plans and find pride in your action and not give so much

00:34:15.640 | attention to the physiological.

00:34:17.680 | It's going to do its thing.

00:34:18.720 | And then Erica, you're going to do your thing.

00:34:20.520 | Because more often than not, it's going to be like an enjoyable experience

00:34:24.560 | to like going to the party or going to the gym or go to a game or something.

00:34:28.360 | That's what I'm trying to separate here is like how much, how much we're

00:34:31.720 | dealing with the, the planning mismatch with Erica, which is a real thing.

00:34:35.480 | I mean, people sometimes anxiety, a lot of times it's just procrastination.

00:34:38.320 | It's like really hard for people to get started on things that are just, that

00:34:42.160 | are planned in some sort of abstract or arbitrary system, and there's also social

00:34:45.880 | anxiety and she's mentioned both.

00:34:48.760 | In the call.

00:34:49.960 | So I'm, I'm assuming they're kind of all mixed together.

00:34:52.720 | Yeah.

00:34:53.120 | I mean, social anxiety is its own, its own thing, which again, is completely

00:34:56.760 | natural because our brain is so attuned to the sociality that it, you know, a lot

00:35:01.120 | of what, you know, 20 years, first century social life is not exactly what our brain

00:35:05.560 | expects.

00:35:06.040 | It expects like, this is my tribe that I am around all day.

00:35:10.040 | Yeah.

00:35:10.880 | I'm with them all day.

00:35:11.720 | That's why I'm miserable when I'm alone.

00:35:13.000 | But if it's strangers and some people I don't know, and it's in like a bar I

00:35:18.320 | haven't been to the brain is like, I don't know about this.

00:35:21.200 | Some people care more than others.

00:35:23.360 | You have negative social anxiety as far as I can tell.

00:35:26.720 | You love people and you love doing things.

00:35:28.560 | Well, I'm around a lot of people a lot, like in various, my other jobs and stuff.

00:35:33.680 | And yeah, I do a lot of things too, I guess.

00:35:37.080 | That's a spectrum.

00:35:37.680 | See, like probably for you, um, the way that wiring is set up is you see the, the,

00:35:43.760 | the potential opportunity in a novel social environment.

00:35:47.640 | Like, Oh, something cool could happen.

00:35:49.360 | I could meet someone interesting.

00:35:50.320 | Maybe I'll see something interesting.

00:35:51.480 | Yeah.

00:35:52.120 | For other people it will be, but what happens if I get there?

00:35:55.520 | And like, I can't find the, I can't find the person or like, as I, as I walk into

00:36:01.520 | the, as I walk into the room, like I'm immediately, you know, caught catch on

00:36:05.240 | fire or whatever it is, the waiter spills water on me.

00:36:08.760 | Really?

00:36:10.880 | I had a friend, we used to joke about that.

00:36:12.880 | We'd be anxious about like going to a bar we'd never been at before.

00:36:15.560 | And we try to one up each other on our predictions for what was going to happen.

00:36:20.600 | And it would usually end up with like, as the door open, just three or four

00:36:24.720 | people already at a full sprint are just charging you to take you down and to beat

00:36:30.200 | you with some sort of like bats or blackjack.

00:36:32.480 | So then we'd see like how, how, how exaggerated we could make the story that

00:36:36.800 | would, you know, explain some social anxiety.

00:36:39.560 | Like, as soon as you're in the door, it's just going to be like fire boys.

00:36:42.360 | And like immediately there's someone with a flamethrower and, you know, you go over

00:36:46.280 | the top.

00:36:46.600 | All right.

00:36:47.200 | Let's do another question.

00:36:47.880 | What do we have next?

00:36:48.520 | All right.

00:36:49.960 | Next question's from Olivia.

00:36:51.400 | Olivia is a product designer from New York city.

00:36:55.120 | She also feels anxious about choosing which hobbies to spend time on because she has

00:37:00.080 | lots of interest.

00:37:00.960 | More specifically, she likes to write short stories and her most recent story was

00:37:06.680 | accepted from the slush pile on a top literary journal.

00:37:11.480 | Now she feels pressure to pursue that hobby like alone versus dabbling in her other

00:37:17.040 | hobbies, which she considers mediocre, like drawing, cooking, exercise, and

00:37:22.720 | volunteering.

00:37:24.160 | All right.

00:37:24.440 | So a hobby question.

00:37:25.400 | Um, so Olivia, I would say what's going to help you here is to introduce the deep

00:37:34.680 | life buckets into this conversation.

00:37:36.480 | I think you're, you're lumping together too many things under the rubric of hobby.

00:37:44.440 | So you're lumping together your amateur writing, which you're doing at a high level.

00:37:50.280 | Right.

00:37:50.680 | If you've made into a top literary journal, you're lumping that in with drawing,

00:37:54.840 | cooking, exercising, volunteering.

00:37:57.760 | You see this as one thing and like, which of these do I do?

00:38:00.240 | Which of these do I have time to, if we look at this through the perspective of, uh,

00:38:04.440 | the deep life buckets and let's go with the standard default buckets here, we'll do

00:38:08.400 | craft constitution, uh, community contemplation and celebration.

00:38:12.520 | Let's do the default buckets.

00:38:13.640 | You'll see that these now, these examples you gave, they fall out into these buckets

00:38:19.360 | in a more diverse way, right?

00:38:21.080 | So the writing you're doing, that's at the level of getting published

00:38:25.480 | in top literary journals, that's going to fall under craft.

00:38:28.240 | It's not your paid job, but that is craft that it's, it's something where you are,

00:38:33.840 | uh, honing a skill at a high level to produce things of value.

00:38:38.600 | So I would, I would deal with that when I'm dealing with

00:38:42.040 | the craft bucket of my life.

00:38:44.560 | Volunteering.

00:38:45.840 | Now that's going to be under community.

00:38:48.640 | I would deal with volunteering as one of the things on the plate when trying to craft

00:38:52.280 | right now, what makes the most sense for me in the community bucket of my life.

00:38:55.000 | Exercising.

00:38:55.960 | Well, that's going to fall into the constitution bucket.

00:38:58.200 | When you're contemplating, what do I want to do with a constitution in my life right

00:39:03.240 | now, my health and fitness exercises going to play in their cooking.

00:39:07.080 | You could see coming into the celebration bucket, the bucket where you're trying to

00:39:11.800 | have gratitude and appreciation and of things in the world and experiences and

00:39:17.000 | things that you do that are sort of celebrating life and all the things that

00:39:20.680 | makes life interesting and good.

00:39:22.040 | So these things fall in the different buckets, not just.

00:39:24.480 | I have to have a hobby.

00:39:25.840 | What's my hobby going to be?

00:39:26.840 | Then how do you figure out which of these you have time for?

00:39:29.440 | Well, now you're working the buckets in the standard way, right?

00:39:33.440 | You, you have a vision for each of these buckets that fit together to make sense

00:39:37.960 | for your life right now and are aiming you towards whatever vision you have for

00:39:41.480 | an ideal lifestyle in the future.

00:39:42.640 | So you're looking holistically at your whole life.

00:39:44.400 | You want to make sure that all of these buckets are represented.

00:39:46.960 | You know, the system, if you've listened to the show, you start with Keystone

00:39:50.080 | habits and you give six to eight weeks to each of the buckets one by one to

00:39:53.440 | overhaul that part of your life.

00:39:54.560 | That's when you deal with these things.

00:39:56.080 | So when you're dealing with the community part of your life, you can say with where

00:40:00.160 | I am right now and the decisions I've made for the other buckets and what I'm

00:40:03.760 | trying to do at this stage of my life.

00:40:05.000 | Community is important.

00:40:07.080 | How am I going to integrate community in my life in a way that makes sense?

00:40:09.600 | And maybe that involves volunteering.

00:40:10.880 | Maybe it does it.

00:40:12.840 | You know, if you're deployed in the military.

00:40:15.520 | This year, then when you're thinking through community, that's going to be

00:40:19.400 | focused much more on, you know, connections with the people important to you back

00:40:23.080 | home, maybe you're thinking I'm going to write a long letters once a week.

00:40:27.200 | They're going to post publicly.

00:40:28.200 | So all my friends can see what I'm up to.

00:40:29.600 | It's going to focus on the people that you're deployed with and being there for

00:40:33.080 | them and mentoring to people below you.

00:40:34.480 | It's not going to be volunteer opportunities.

00:40:36.120 | On the other hand, if you're home and you're working part time and you have more

00:40:40.400 | time than you have before, then maybe that community piece is going to super

00:40:43.120 | expand and volunteering is going to be big, but this gives you a systematic

00:40:46.240 | way of thinking about that.

00:40:47.240 | Same with celebration.

00:40:48.640 | What do I want to do in there?

00:40:50.920 | And you're just, you're thinking through what, what actually fits into your life.

00:40:53.520 | So that's the way I would actually think about it.

00:40:54.960 | All right.

00:40:56.360 | Now, what you're trying to do is come up with answers for these five

00:40:59.760 | buckets that fit together, make sense, and is tractable and be happy about that.

00:41:06.640 | Now, what that looks like will depend on what phase of life you're in,

00:41:11.040 | what you're going after.

00:41:12.040 | So, you know, when I was looking at your elaboration of your question, you

00:41:16.360 | mentioned, for example, that you are getting a part-time graduate degree

00:41:19.800 | in addition to your job.

00:41:21.000 | Like this might be a period of one or two period where craft is really focused on

00:41:26.200 | like your job and trying to get this graduate degree.

00:41:29.000 | And you're in very minimalist deployments of the other buckets, keeping those

00:41:33.360 | part of your life alive, but you have to keep them pretty minimalist because

00:41:35.800 | you don't have much time.

00:41:36.680 | And then maybe when you're done with that graduate degree and you have more

00:41:39.960 | time, you reassess those buckets.

00:41:42.400 | And now suddenly maybe you're reclaiming that time you were spending for your

00:41:45.720 | graduate degree to systematically work on your writing craft as a, as an

00:41:49.480 | outlet for your creative energies.

00:41:50.800 | So this, this can morph and change over time, but you have to see all of the

00:41:56.360 | pieces as part of a big picture.

00:41:57.760 | And that's why I think.

00:41:58.480 | Splitting into these buckets, making sure each bucket is dealt with, but that

00:42:02.560 | they all add up to something that's tractable.

00:42:04.200 | That is the way to think about these, not in this much more simplified way of what

00:42:08.480 | hobby should I choose?

00:42:09.600 | You know, what is my hobby?

00:42:10.760 | I mean, that type of terminology is not that useful.

00:42:13.840 | I mean, it's only recently that I've spent.

00:42:16.120 | Any sort of systematic time on anything that you might qualify as a hobby, because

00:42:22.080 | I have a whole mess of kids and the youngest is now four, but that means until

00:42:28.040 | quite recently, I've always had someone between the ages of one and three,

00:42:31.560 | essentially in my household.

00:42:33.840 | Like it's been really busy and I have seven jobs and that's fine.

00:42:36.880 | So my bucket definitions were really heavy on craft and community.

00:42:41.560 | And then there wasn't the other stuff I had to just have bare minimum.

00:42:44.080 | So I respected them and prove to my point myself they're important, but

00:42:48.440 | they had to be very low impact.

00:42:49.800 | I mean, kids are getting older.

00:42:51.280 | Kids are at school every day.

00:42:52.560 | I can rejigger the buckets.

00:42:54.160 | So anyways, that's the way I would think about it, Olivia.

00:42:56.800 | All right.

00:42:59.520 | What's our next question here?

00:43:01.360 | So we have a follow-up question from Olivia as well, and she took advantage of the new

00:43:07.120 | question survey because we get to answer two questions from her back to back.

00:43:11.520 | Yes.

00:43:11.800 | If you're early, if you're early in answering, filling in that survey, you're

00:43:15.080 | much more likely to get your question answered than a few months from now.

00:43:17.640 | So yeah, good, good advertisement for filling out the question survey.

00:43:21.920 | So in her book, and she says in your book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, you give

00:43:28.080 | the following as a reason for leaving a job.

00:43:31.400 | It presents few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant

00:43:34.680 | skills that are rare and valuable.

00:43:36.640 | She worries that in her job as a product designer, she's repeating the

00:43:40.440 | same work instead of getting better.

00:43:42.160 | She studied literature in college.

00:43:44.200 | And as we talked about, she did a part-time master's and well, she's doing a part-time

00:43:49.080 | master's in economics right now.

00:43:50.760 | These feel much more challenging, like something that you can truly develop

00:43:55.760 | expertise in at the same time.

00:43:58.240 | She gets paid a lot as a product designer in tech.

00:44:01.080 | So maybe the skill is valuable.

00:44:02.680 | How can I, how can she decide if the first disqualifier applies to her career?

00:44:09.000 | So just to put this in context, Olivia is referring to in my book,

00:44:14.680 | So Good They Can't Ignore You.

00:44:15.840 | I lean heavily on this idea that stop worrying about if you have the exact right

00:44:20.920 | job for you, or that you have a passion that has to be matched to your career.

00:44:24.920 | And if you don't exactly match it, then you're going to be miserable.

00:44:27.360 | I argue that many different professional pursuits can be the foundation for a

00:44:33.600 | working life that's a great source of satisfaction, but I did give three

00:44:36.480 | disqualifiers, said, wait, here's three things that tell you that this might

00:44:40.080 | not be a job you should stay in.

00:44:41.360 | So the first was what Olivia mentioned.

00:44:43.760 | You don't really have options to build up skills that can then be used as leverage

00:44:47.960 | to shape your career going forward.

00:44:49.360 | That was disqualifier number one.

00:44:51.000 | Uh, I believe disqualifier number two, was it conflicted with values?

00:44:57.280 | So, you know, you're working for Philip Morris and, uh, the idea of so many

00:45:02.120 | people getting sick from smoking is like against your values.

00:45:04.560 | And then three, I think was, you don't like the people, like these people

00:45:08.120 | are just, I can't stand them.

00:45:09.480 | You know, like, uh, I don't mind being an investment banker from a,

00:45:13.880 | from a values perspective.

00:45:15.640 | I, you're going to have lots of options.

00:45:17.840 | Cause I'll make a lot of money, lots of options if I get really good, but you

00:45:20.640 | know what, I can't take the, these people I work with at Goldman, right.

00:45:25.000 | So that'd be number three.

00:45:26.480 | All right.

00:45:26.720 | So she's asking, do I think that first disqualifier applies to her

00:45:31.440 | job as a product designer in tech?

00:45:35.040 | She's worried, you know, is this something I can keep getting better

00:45:38.680 | and getting options, or is it something that I'm just going to

00:45:40.440 | eventually have to move on from?

00:45:42.200 | What I would suggest in this situation is, and this is a evolution from the way

00:45:47.640 | I talked about this back in so good, they can't ignore you.

00:45:49.880 | So it's been 10 years since that book came out.

00:45:52.680 | So this is a bit of an evolution.

00:45:55.080 | I would lean a little bit heavier on a lifestyle centric career planning

00:46:00.320 | approach to this question, as opposed to remaining more narrowly focused

00:46:04.480 | on just the aspects of the career.

00:46:06.280 | So in lifestyle centric career planning, you have your vision for what you want.

00:46:12.560 | Your daily experience, what you want your life to be like in all different

00:46:16.560 | aspects, not just professionally.

00:46:17.920 | And then you can work backwards and figure out how your work can help

00:46:23.200 | get you to that lifestyle.

00:46:24.880 | So if you have this lifestyle fixed, the question then becomes, does this

00:46:28.960 | technology product design career that I'm in, do I see a way to use this,

00:46:35.320 | to grow in this, do I see a trajectory here that is going to support this

00:46:40.280 | lifestyle I have, this vision I have of my lifestyle?

00:46:42.960 | All right.

00:46:43.320 | And in answering that question, you probably want to look for role

00:46:46.320 | models, case studies, and examples, people at your company or other companies,

00:46:49.640 | freelancers, people on their own, but people within the same orbit of

00:46:52.600 | general skills that have done interesting things with it.

00:46:54.640 | This will elaborate your understanding of what is possible with this job.

00:46:58.760 | As you get good, what are the different options of what you can do with this?

00:47:01.520 | You mentioned in your elaboration, I'm looking at it now.

00:47:04.960 | You say some pretty stark things like only people in their twenties can be a

00:47:09.920 | product designer while their mind is fresh.

00:47:11.640 | There are no product designers in their thirties.

00:47:14.040 | Your only chance, your only option is to become a manager, but then even

00:47:17.800 | then you can only do that during your forties.

00:47:19.280 | That's probably not true.

00:47:21.720 | I mean, I think you probably need to be more systematic at learning what the

00:47:26.240 | different possibilities are for this general constellation of skills and not

00:47:32.040 | just, okay, within the company you work for and you know, what's the promotion

00:47:35.600 | chain here, but for product designers in generally people who work in different

00:47:38.120 | industries on product design, people who'd go out on their own, people who do

00:47:41.640 | freelance is there people who do this for this type of company and they do it.

00:47:45.720 | Six months out of 12 and make a pretty good living at it.

00:47:50.800 | And using that, they can live somewhere that's kind of cheap, but exotic and

00:47:54.280 | interesting on a farm somewhere.

00:47:55.600 | I don't know.

00:47:56.160 | You got to get out there.

00:47:57.040 | You got to get the information and then figure out seeing all these different

00:47:59.480 | options.

00:48:00.000 | Do I see a way of deploying any of these to get to my, my image of ideal lifestyle?

00:48:04.240 | And if yes, go for it.

00:48:05.640 | If no, then yeah, you can say this disqualifier applies.

00:48:08.680 | So that's my evolution.

00:48:10.720 | Let's, let's use lifestyle more and be a little bit less narrowly focused on just

00:48:15.240 | what is this job?

00:48:16.160 | What am I going to get from this job?

00:48:17.200 | We're going to go for this job because ultimately.

00:48:20.080 | What does that matter if it's not serving the life that you're actually aiming to

00:48:24.160 | achieve?

00:48:24.840 | That comes back to when you talk about being a reporter for your own job,

00:48:31.040 | essentially, you talk about that a lot.

00:48:32.600 | Yeah.

00:48:33.000 | Act as if you're a reporter and figure out what the steps are to do X, Y, Z.

00:48:38.040 | Yeah.

00:48:38.560 | Like you're writing a book or an article about how people get here in my career,

00:48:42.560 | go talk to people, look up people's resumes online, read profiles of people in

00:48:47.680 | your industry.

00:48:48.200 | Yeah.

00:48:48.400 | You got to be like, I'm going to write a book about product design and the career

00:48:53.200 | possibilities of product design.

00:48:54.280 | So it's a, yeah, a research mindset.

00:48:56.000 | All right.

00:48:58.200 | What do we got next?

00:48:58.920 | Uh, next we have a question from Jackson, 25 year old in Vermont.

00:49:04.960 | For the past two years, I've been working for an ambulance service running a COVID

00:49:09.960 | testing site, which was shut down in late June.

00:49:12.160 | I'm searching for more technical work and I'm struggling to break into the field of

00:49:16.520 | knowledge work.

00:49:17.760 | I have a degree in philosophy and I'm looking mostly at work with, within

00:49:21.520 | Vermont.

00:49:22.040 | Well, I mean, Hey, first of all, good news embedded in that question.

00:49:27.160 | The COVID testing site was a shut down.

00:49:30.840 | So, Hey, there we go.

00:49:32.720 | We get some like positive pandemic news and, uh, Oh, wait, I'm looking at an

00:49:36.120 | update here.

00:49:36.800 | It shut down because, um, everyone involved was hospitalized with COVID.

00:49:41.960 | Oh, so you can see, I thought it was positive.

00:49:44.000 | I thought it was positive.

00:49:45.720 | And Oh no, this guy, this guy was not.

00:49:47.680 | So one person, uh, Oh, but he got monkey pox.

00:49:49.840 | You know, see, I thought, I thought we had something positive here.

00:49:53.520 | Every time we think we're this close to something positive, something negative

00:49:57.600 | happens.

00:49:58.000 | Um, all right.

00:49:59.640 | Well, Jackson, I have, I have a, a, uh, an answer to your specific question, then a

00:50:04.000 | more general suggestion to tack onto the end of it.

00:50:06.440 | So for your, your general question, um, if you want to work for the state, not a bad

00:50:12.760 | idea.

00:50:13.400 | Actually, when I was in Vermont last summer, Jesse, we met several people who

00:50:17.280 | worked for the state in Vermont.

00:50:19.000 | There's a whole thing where like you work for the state and maybe you go to

00:50:21.760 | Montpelier sometimes and they all ski all the time.

00:50:24.720 | And they seem like they're outside all the time and like a really stable job and

00:50:27.840 | they're always outside.

00:50:28.640 | And it's actually, it seems like a, a, a cool state to work for the state because

00:50:32.920 | you can, there's a lot of these jobs.

00:50:35.280 | Yeah.

00:50:35.560 | It's like, yeah, I'm in charge of the like mushroom management program, whatever

00:50:40.520 | that takes like nine hours.

00:50:42.200 | And then they cross country ski the rest of the day.

00:50:44.120 | So Jackson, what I'm saying is you have an interesting plan here.

00:50:46.640 | Um, so I think what you need to think about is not the specific job you're going to

00:50:53.120 | get right away, but the department or program in which that job lives, because

00:50:56.960 | once you're inside that department or program, if, and when you prove yourself

00:51:00.720 | to be so good, you can't be ignored.

00:51:02.160 | You can move within a department or program relatively easily.

00:51:05.960 | So with that in mind, maybe you need to aim at something that you're not

00:51:10.600 | interested in, but you need to aim at something that's temporary, something

00:51:14.800 | that's more entry level than you might be looking for long-term and have the plan

00:51:18.440 | of give me a year and I'm going to move up to something cooler.

00:51:22.800 | I'm going to be moved to something more interesting.

00:51:24.160 | I just need to get my foot in the door.

00:51:25.640 | So lower your standards for the very first job you're going to get in the state.

00:51:29.800 | With the plan of that will be far from your last.

00:51:33.160 | And the way you do that, this is my advice.

00:51:35.080 | I always give the people who are in their, their young twenties and new to some

00:51:39.280 | of the things that I've said, once you have the job, don't let things drop through

00:51:43.240 | the cracks, if you agree to it or it's put on your plate, you will not forget it.

00:51:47.080 | It will get done to deliver things when you said you would.

00:51:51.640 | And three consistently deliver at a high quality, do those three things.

00:51:56.600 | You will become indispensable.

00:51:58.920 | And if you are indispensable, you're going to get more and more freedom and

00:52:02.400 | flexibility because people were going to want you there.

00:52:04.600 | They're going to want to keep you there.

00:52:05.720 | They're going to want you on your projects.

00:52:07.120 | They're going to want you to be there.

00:52:08.480 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:09.640 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:10.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:11.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:12.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:13.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:14.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:15.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:16.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:17.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:19.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:20.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:21.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:22.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:23.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:24.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:25.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:26.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:27.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:28.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:29.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:30.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:31.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:32.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:33.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:34.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:35.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:36.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:37.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:38.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:39.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:52:40.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:06.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:13.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:14.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:15.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:16.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:17.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:19.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:20.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:21.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:22.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:23.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:24.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:25.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:26.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:27.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:28.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:53:54.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:01.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:02.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:03.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:04.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:05.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:06.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:07.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:08.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:09.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:10.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:11.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:12.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:13.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:14.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:15.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:16.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:45.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:46.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:47.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:48.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:49.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:50.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:51.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:52.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:53.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:54.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:55.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:56.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:57.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:58.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:54:59.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:00.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:01.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:27.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:34.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:35.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:36.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:37.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:38.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:39.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:40.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:41.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:42.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:43.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:44.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:45.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:46.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:47.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:48.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:55:49.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:17.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:19.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:20.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:21.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:22.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:23.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:24.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:25.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:26.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:27.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:28.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:29.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:30.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:31.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:32.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:33.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:56:59.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:00.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:01.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:02.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:03.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:04.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:05.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:06.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:07.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:08.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:09.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:10.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:11.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:12.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:13.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:14.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:15.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:39.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:46.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:47.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:48.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:49.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:50.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:51.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:52.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:53.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:54.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:55.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:56.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:57.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:58.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:57:59.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:00.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:01.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:27.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:33.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:34.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:35.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:36.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:37.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:38.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:39.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:40.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:41.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:42.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:43.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:44.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:45.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:46.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:47.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:58:48.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:12.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:19.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:20.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:21.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:22.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:23.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:24.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:25.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:26.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:27.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:28.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:29.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:30.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:31.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:32.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:33.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

00:59:57.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:03.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:04.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:05.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:06.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:07.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:08.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:09.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:10.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:11.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:12.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:13.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:14.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:15.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:16.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:17.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:44.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:47.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:48.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:49.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:50.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:51.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:52.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:53.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:54.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:55.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:56.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:57.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:58.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:00:59.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:00.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:01.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:02.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:26.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:32.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:33.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:34.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:35.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:36.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:37.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:38.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:39.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:40.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:41.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:42.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:43.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:44.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:45.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:46.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:01:47.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:16.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:17.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:19.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:20.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:21.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:22.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:23.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:24.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:25.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:26.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:27.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:28.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:29.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:30.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:31.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:32.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:02:58.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:05.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:06.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:07.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:08.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:09.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:10.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:11.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:12.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:13.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:14.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:15.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:16.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:17.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:19.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:20.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:48.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:50.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:51.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:52.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:53.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:54.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:55.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:56.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:57.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:58.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:03:59.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:00.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:01.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:02.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:03.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:04.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:05.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:31.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:34.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:35.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:36.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:37.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:38.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:39.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:40.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:41.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:42.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:43.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:44.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:45.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:46.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:47.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:48.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:04:49.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:15.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:19.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:20.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:21.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:22.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:23.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:24.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:25.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:26.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:27.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:28.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:29.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:30.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:31.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:32.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:33.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:05:57.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:03.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:04.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:05.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:06.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:07.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:08.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:09.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:10.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:11.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:12.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:13.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:14.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:15.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:16.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:17.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:42.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:48.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:49.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:50.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:51.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:52.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:53.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:54.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:55.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:56.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:57.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:58.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:06:59.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:00.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:01.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:02.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:03.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:29.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:32.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:33.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:34.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:35.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:36.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:37.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:38.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:39.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:40.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:41.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:42.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:43.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:44.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:45.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:46.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:07:47.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:11.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:37.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:41.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:42.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:43.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:44.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:45.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:46.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:47.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:48.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:49.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:50.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:51.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:52.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:53.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:54.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:55.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:08:56.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:24.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:25.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:26.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:27.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:28.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:29.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:30.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:31.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:32.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:33.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:34.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:35.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:36.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:37.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:38.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:39.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:09:40.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:04.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:11.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:12.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:13.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:14.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:15.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:16.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:17.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:19.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:20.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:21.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:22.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:23.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:24.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:25.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:26.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:55.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:56.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:57.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:58.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:10:59.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:00.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:01.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:02.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:03.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:04.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:05.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:06.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:07.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:08.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:09.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:10.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:11.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:35.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:42.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:43.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:44.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:45.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:46.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:47.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:48.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:49.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:50.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:51.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:52.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:53.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:54.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:55.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:56.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:11:57.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:23.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:30.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:31.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:32.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:33.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:34.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:35.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:36.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:37.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:38.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:39.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:40.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:41.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:42.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:43.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:44.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:12:45.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:14.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:15.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:16.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:17.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:18.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:19.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:20.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:21.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:22.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:23.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:24.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:25.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:26.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:27.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:28.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:29.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:30.680 | And you're going to be a part of it.

01:13:59.680 | >> Hello, Cal.

01:14:00.680 | My name is Connor Beck.

01:14:02.680 | And I am a copywriter and content marketing specialist from St. Paul, Minnesota.

01:14:07.680 | I really enjoy your show and all of the amazing insights that you provide.

01:14:11.680 | So thank you for that.

01:14:13.680 | My question has to do with project management tools, specifically Wrike and other related project management tools.

01:14:22.680 | My company, my current company, and the past two that I've worked at have used Wrike.

01:14:27.680 | And I've seen it work well and I've seen it work not so well.

01:14:31.680 | And it seems to be less effective when it gets overly complicated.

01:14:35.680 | So my question is how would you suggest companies and teams use tools, project management tools like Wrike or Monday.com,

01:14:45.680 | in order to facilitate deep work rather than create unnecessary distractions and waste of time?

01:14:52.680 | Thanks again for your insight, Cal.

01:14:55.680 | And yeah, keep up the good work.

01:15:00.680 | >> All right. Well, right off the bat, I'll admit I know Monday.com.

01:15:04.680 | I don't know Wrike.

01:15:06.680 | I'm actually going to load it up.

01:15:08.680 | Let's see here.

01:15:09.680 | This could be -- I'm loading up on our tablet here, Jesse.

01:15:12.680 | I'll tell you when I have it.

01:15:13.680 | >> Okay.

01:15:14.680 | >> Wrike.

01:15:15.680 | Let's see what we're dealing with here.

01:15:17.680 | Wrike project management.

01:15:19.680 | Hold on.

01:15:21.680 | All right.

01:15:22.680 | I have this loaded up on the tablet here.

01:15:25.680 | Wrike, W-R-I-K-E.

01:15:27.680 | It says managing multiple projects shouldn't be a struggle.

01:15:31.680 | Sounds good to me.

01:15:33.680 | Trusted by 20,000 happy customers.

01:15:36.680 | Oh, Lord, this is looking complicated.

01:15:37.680 | All right.

01:15:38.680 | Build a path, it says.

01:15:40.680 | Streamline your process and gain visibility at every stage.

01:15:43.680 | You can use custom workflows.

01:15:45.680 | Create custom workflows to help your team stay on the same page.

01:15:48.680 | Easy to implement.

01:15:49.680 | Simple to use.

01:15:50.680 | We have animation here.

01:15:52.680 | Man, there's a lot going on here, Jesse.

01:15:55.680 | You see this?

01:15:56.680 | They're like clicking four deep into this.

01:15:58.680 | They click on a thing to a submenu to a submenu to change the color of the status.

01:16:02.680 | There's a blinking light.

01:16:04.680 | All right.

01:16:05.680 | You can set timelines.

01:16:06.680 | Here's a Gantt chart that they're dragging things on.

01:16:10.680 | Prioritize and visualize.

01:16:11.680 | They're dragging pictures between -- oh, this is like a Trello board.

01:16:19.680 | You've got to have an obligatory photo of someone in an office that's all white.

01:16:23.680 | White shelves, white walls, a few books.

01:16:25.680 | They're always very happy.

01:16:27.680 | Look at this person in this picture.

01:16:28.680 | She's like, "I'm so happy to be using Wrike.com in my white office."

01:16:35.680 | It's never like the disheveled guy with the five o'clock shadow,

01:16:39.680 | the giant Starbucks cup that's like, "Ugh."

01:16:42.680 | Like a kid got sent home from school with headlights.

01:16:44.680 | I've got to get out of here.

01:16:45.680 | All right.

01:16:46.680 | Look, here's my thing.

01:16:48.680 | Here's my thing, Connor.

01:16:50.680 | The issue with project management tools, be it Wrike or Monday.com or what have you,

01:16:59.680 | or methodologies like Scrum or Kanban,

01:17:03.680 | the issue becomes when you think that the tool or the methodology itself is the solution.

01:17:13.680 | If we can just do this thing right, it is going to solve our problem.

01:17:17.680 | Like, "Hey, we're disorganized.

01:17:19.680 | We're seeing too much email.

01:17:20.680 | We're having a hard time keeping up with projects at our company.

01:17:23.680 | What tool will solve this problem?"

01:17:25.680 | This is the way they market themselves.

01:17:27.680 | It's this clear CTA.

01:17:29.680 | You send us this money to subscribe to Wrike and then your problems go away.

01:17:33.680 | But no tool or methodology on its own is guaranteed to solve the problem.

01:17:40.680 | What I recommend doing instead is you have to figure out before you think about technology,

01:17:49.680 | how do we actually want this type of collaborative effort to unfold?

01:17:53.680 | What type of work we're doing?

01:17:54.680 | Who is involved?

01:17:55.680 | What's involved in our specific work?

01:17:57.680 | Let us come up with a process or workflow here to get this done in a way that is not only organized,

01:18:02.680 | but as I like to harp on, minimizes the need to receive and respond to unscheduled messages.

01:18:08.680 | And then you can say, "Okay, now what tools are going to help us do this?"

01:18:11.680 | And here's the thing.

01:18:13.680 | When you do this type of planning, where you plan the process first

01:18:16.680 | and then go looking for the tool to implement it,

01:18:19.680 | more often than not, the tools become the easy part.

01:18:22.680 | You use more simple, versatile, multifunction tools to implement the process you designed.

01:18:30.680 | This is why you're going to see more use of Google Docs or Trello boards or Google Sheets,

01:18:35.680 | like Dropboxes, just simple things,

01:18:38.680 | because the smarts is in the custom process you came up with for the specific work you do

01:18:42.680 | with the specific people you work with.

01:18:44.680 | The promise of something like Wrike or @Scrum or Monday.com,

01:18:50.680 | it's all the complexities of how the work unfolds is already figured out and baked into their software.

01:18:56.680 | So then you have to fit what you're doing to their particular system.

01:19:00.680 | It's like a totem that you trust is going to deliver freedom from stress,

01:19:03.680 | and that's much less likely to work.

01:19:05.680 | And it does lead to, as Connor pointed out in his call,

01:19:08.680 | especially in technical circles, so when technical workers start using these systems,

01:19:12.680 | obsessions with details.

01:19:15.680 | I mean, programmers tell me this all the time about Agile.

01:19:18.680 | Use Scrum, like an Agile methodology like Scrum.

01:19:20.680 | There's some basic ideas here that make a lot of sense.

01:19:23.680 | But people get so in the weeds of like,

01:19:26.680 | "If we don't exactly right have the Scrum master second lieutenant,

01:19:30.680 | use the appropriate every other Thursday tribal council session after intermission

01:19:41.680 | to do its Scrum message circle delivery of this point,

01:19:46.680 | I'm not going to get enough experience points to kill the ogre in the dungeon."

01:19:50.680 | They get really obsessed about these details as if like there's this magic system,

01:19:54.680 | and the reason why it's not working is that you're not satisfying the gods of Scrum properly.

01:19:59.680 | There's some sloppiness in your implementation,

01:20:01.680 | and then it just gets so annoying that nothing happens.

01:20:03.680 | So this is why I always say forget the tools, get the process,

01:20:06.680 | and then implement with the tools, because that puts your focus on,

01:20:09.680 | "Hey, us, people, team, how do we want to do this work?

01:20:13.680 | Like, what makes sense? Let's not just email each other.

01:20:16.680 | I mean, I think what we should do here is have a place where we collect the client questions,

01:20:19.680 | and twice a week we get together and go through the client questions,

01:20:22.680 | and we'll just throw them in a Google Doc, and we can just mark right there.

01:20:27.680 | What's the easiest way to do this? Just mark right there, and you're like,

01:20:29.680 | "Okay, Jesse's going to work on this," you know, put the notes there, and then we'll check it.

01:20:32.680 | You know, just figure this stuff out.

01:20:34.680 | Like, the intelligence is in the custom, informal, flexible, interpersonal plans

01:20:38.680 | you've made with other people that make sense for exactly your context,

01:20:40.680 | and then use tools to implement it.

01:20:43.680 | My main analogy I use for making this point, like when I give talks about this,

01:20:47.680 | is when you look at a really effective system from times past,

01:20:52.680 | like the first efficient continual motion assembly line that Henry Ford put together

01:20:56.680 | at the River Rouge plant up in Michigan.

01:21:00.680 | The way this happened was not Ford was at some industry conference

01:21:06.680 | and saw this assembly line system and methodology and said,

01:21:10.680 | "Let's buy that and install that in our car factory."

01:21:14.680 | No, he invented it from scratch. What's the right way to actually build cars?

01:21:18.680 | And then he brought in existing technology, invented a lot of new pieces of technology

01:21:22.680 | to implement the thing that he came up with as the right way to build cars.

01:21:26.680 | So you start with the process, then you gather the tools to implement it.

01:21:30.680 | And maybe something like Wrike or monday.com is like, "Oh, this is great.

01:21:33.680 | This has all the pieces we need for our plan.

01:21:35.680 | We can turn off these features. We can use these features."

01:21:37.680 | That's great, and that's a good way to use those tools.

01:21:40.680 | But you got to start with the process first before you get anywhere near

01:21:43.680 | giving your credit card number to a software service company.

01:21:50.680 | All right, let's do another question. What do we got, Jesse?

01:21:54.680 | We got a question from Andrew. He's a 33-year-old teacher in London.

01:21:59.680 | And he says, "In episode 211, you laid out your system for organizing your life.

01:22:04.680 | I was wondering how quarterly plans link to the system.

01:22:08.680 | Are they the same as strategic plans or something else?"

01:22:12.680 | They're the same. Quarterly plans, strategic plans, semester plans.

01:22:18.680 | I'm going to say that because I'm a really great clear communicator,

01:22:21.680 | have used all three of those terms to mean more or less the same thing over time.

01:22:26.680 | They all mean the same thing.

01:22:28.680 | A plan that is focusing in particular on the next three to five months

01:22:36.680 | and what your goal is and your approaches,

01:22:39.680 | everything you need to know about what your vision is for that upcoming quarter,

01:22:42.680 | that upcoming semester, whatever you want to call it.

01:22:44.680 | I think strategic plans, if we want to get into the etymology,

01:22:47.680 | strategic plans, I introduced that term because before it was

01:22:52.680 | business people think in terms of quarters, so they call this the quarterly plans.

01:22:55.680 | Academics think in terms of semesters, so they call this the semester plan.

01:22:59.680 | And so both are valid.

01:23:01.680 | I don't want to keep going back and forth or using both.

01:23:03.680 | So strategic plans was supposed to be a general term that captured both.

01:23:09.680 | So thanks for that question, Andrew. That does help clarify things.

01:23:12.680 | Let's do one more, Jesse. What do we got?

01:23:14.680 | All right. Final question is from Allison.

01:23:16.680 | She's a 29-year-old software developer in Washington, D.C.

01:23:19.680 | She says, "Hi Cal. In your previous podcast,

01:23:22.680 | you talked about how you organize your life and your core documents.

01:23:26.680 | How did you create your values document?

01:23:28.680 | How do you know what values are important to you?"

01:23:31.680 | Well, first of all, I'll say I'm distracted by our tablet here

01:23:37.680 | with the Reich animation I'm looking at right now.

01:23:41.680 | My Lord, there's a histogram, a stacked histogram of task completion per person

01:23:49.680 | stacked by the different categories of tasks moving up and down.

01:23:54.680 | Man. Okay. Sorry, Allison.

01:23:56.680 | I'm entranced by the visual complexity that is these project management tools.

01:24:02.680 | Wait till they see our whiteboard, Jesse.

01:24:04.680 | We're too simple. We have a whiteboard and Google Docs.

01:24:08.680 | Dropbox.

01:24:09.680 | We do use Dropbox. Yeah. No stacked histograms.

01:24:13.680 | All right, Allison, I'm sorry. This is an important question.

01:24:15.680 | Okay. How do you come with your values document?

01:24:17.680 | Here's the key thing about values documents, which again,

01:24:19.680 | for people who didn't hear episode 211,

01:24:23.680 | my suggestion is you have a document that has your core values

01:24:26.680 | that you review on a regular basis.

01:24:27.680 | It becomes the foundation for everything else you do.

01:24:29.680 | So when you write your strategic plans for like,

01:24:31.680 | what am I doing for the next semester?

01:24:33.680 | All this stuff comes back to, am I serving my core values?

01:24:36.680 | The key point about that is there's not a single right answer to that,

01:24:40.680 | that you have to get just right before the document can be used.

01:24:44.680 | Your notion of what your values were will evolve over time with experience

01:24:48.680 | and exposure to other systems of thought.

01:24:53.680 | What's important is that you have something that makes sense

01:24:56.680 | and aligns with your experience intuition at the moment

01:24:59.680 | and that you're using it.

01:25:00.680 | This gives you intention and direction with your life.

01:25:03.680 | Even if that direction shifts over time,

01:25:06.680 | you're still always better moving at any one moment

01:25:10.680 | in an intentional direction, as opposed to just wandering around.

01:25:12.680 | So otherwise I'm going to try to say here, Alison, is lower the stakes here.

01:25:16.680 | I wrote my original values document.

01:25:18.680 | I was in my twenties as a grad student.

01:25:20.680 | I remember for some reason, I remember this.

01:25:22.680 | I have a weird memory for certain things.

01:25:24.680 | I wrote in my Moleskine and it was,

01:25:28.680 | we were waiting to go to sit Shiva with a friend of ours,

01:25:31.680 | a friend of ours who was at Harvard grad student, whose dad had died.

01:25:34.680 | So his dad had died, you know, young and we were going to go sit Shiva

01:25:39.680 | and it gets you thinking about things.

01:25:41.680 | And I remember that's when the very first draft

01:25:43.680 | and I'm sure I have that Moleskine somewhere.

01:25:45.680 | I have a stack this high of these old Moleskines

01:25:47.680 | where I keep track of ideas about my values and living the deep life.

01:25:51.680 | That's why I worked out my first value plan.

01:25:53.680 | And this just evolved since then.

01:25:56.680 | Getting married changed that.

01:25:58.680 | I mean, I was married at that point already.

01:25:59.680 | Having kids changed the values plan.

01:26:02.680 | Career shifting changed the values plan.

01:26:04.680 | When you, if you encounter or discover systems of,

01:26:08.680 | organized systems of moralistic thinking,

01:26:11.680 | be it philosophical or theological.

01:26:13.680 | Now you're tapping into really ancient wisdom

01:26:15.680 | going to affect your value plan.

01:26:16.680 | So the thing will evolve, but you do, you got to start.

01:26:20.680 | You want to have something.

01:26:21.680 | So that's the way to think about it, Alison.

01:26:22.680 | Having something is better than not.

01:26:25.680 | Don't sweat if you have the right thing

01:26:27.680 | because that will evolve with your, with your life experience.

01:26:32.680 | So you keep all your Moleskines?

01:26:33.680 | Yeah.

01:26:34.680 | For century twenties?

01:26:36.680 | Yeah.

01:26:38.680 | I keep Moleskines.

01:26:39.680 | I guess if you go back and look,

01:26:40.680 | you can kind of see it's like a diary, you know.

01:26:42.680 | I keep a lot, not all of them.

01:26:44.680 | I also have a lot of time blocking.

01:26:47.680 | So I have a lot of these old planners

01:26:48.680 | and then the ones I was a lot of black and reds from before.

01:26:51.680 | I don't keep all of those.

01:26:52.680 | I realized like I don't need all of these,

01:26:54.680 | but I have a fair number of those.

01:26:55.680 | Yeah, but the Moleskines I keep.

01:26:56.680 | I've gone back through before.

01:26:58.680 | There's some, I've done blog posts from now and then

01:27:00.680 | or email newsletter articles every once in a while

01:27:03.680 | where I'll take a picture of like the teetering stack.

01:27:06.680 | Yeah.

01:27:07.680 | I last went through them for digital minimalism.

01:27:10.680 | I was writing about journaling in digital minimalism.

01:27:14.680 | And so I actually went back and cited a bunch

01:27:17.680 | of things from old Moleskines.

01:27:18.680 | It's kind of cool to go back.

01:27:20.680 | Yeah.

01:27:21.680 | Go back and read.

01:27:22.680 | I mean, you, you get older, your thoughts mature

01:27:25.680 | is what I would say.

01:27:26.680 | That's my, that's my experience going back

01:27:28.680 | and reading my 20, 21 year old Moleskines.

01:27:31.680 | But there's cool things.

01:27:32.680 | I mean, the coolest thing I found was the transition

01:27:34.680 | in my writing life when I was leaving student writing

01:27:38.680 | and trying to make that decision because I'd written

01:27:41.680 | three books for students.

01:27:44.680 | My newsletter slash blog was called study hacks

01:27:47.680 | and it was just for students.

01:27:48.680 | It had traction.

01:27:49.680 | I was probably one of the top people writing

01:27:51.680 | on that topic.

01:27:52.680 | I was like, I can just own this topic.

01:27:54.680 | Like I'm owning it now.

01:27:56.680 | I brought some new things into that world.

01:27:59.680 | I was working.

01:28:00.680 | And then also I was thinking I can't just do this

01:28:02.680 | for the rest of my life though.

01:28:03.680 | Like I'm not going to be a student forever.

01:28:05.680 | And like, do I want to just keep doing this?

01:28:07.680 | And I worked a lot of that out in my Moleskine.

01:28:09.680 | And I have a weird, my wife knows this.

01:28:12.680 | I don't have a fully memetic memory, right?

01:28:14.680 | Like I don't have photographic memory,

01:28:16.680 | but I do for certain things like books.

01:28:18.680 | I can remember like almost every book where I read it

01:28:21.680 | where I was anytime I'm writing or reading.

01:28:24.680 | So I have a very clear memory.

01:28:26.680 | And this must've been God, 2008, very clear memory.

01:28:31.680 | Coolidge corner movie theater, Brookline, Massachusetts

01:28:35.680 | because my wife, I used to see every movie,

01:28:38.680 | literally every movie.

01:28:39.680 | And we were there to see, it was a Disney nature documentary

01:28:44.680 | about lions and lion cubs.

01:28:46.680 | Cause we just saw it.

01:28:47.680 | Like we've seen everything what's playing.

01:28:48.680 | Right.

01:28:49.680 | And I remember being in the main theater at Coolidge corner,

01:28:52.680 | the main, the nice one that has the old fashioned theater

01:28:56.680 | with the curtains or whatever.

01:28:57.680 | And we were watching that movie.

01:28:58.680 | And I remember sitting there with my Moleskine

01:29:00.680 | and working through.

01:29:01.680 | So if I see those notes,

01:29:02.680 | I can remember where I was when I took them.

01:29:05.680 | - That's great.

01:29:06.680 | Yeah.

01:29:07.680 | - All right.

01:29:08.680 | Well, anyways, we have gone on long enough.

01:29:11.680 | Let's wrap this up.

01:29:12.680 | So thank you everyone who sent in your questions.

01:29:15.680 | Go to the show notes has a link

01:29:16.680 | for how you can submit new questions.

01:29:18.680 | You can also go to calnewport.com/podcast for instructions.

01:29:23.680 | Go to youtube.com/calnewportmedia to watch this episode

01:29:27.680 | and clips from this and past episodes.

01:29:29.680 | We'll be back next week with the next installment

01:29:33.680 | of the deep questions podcast.

01:29:35.680 | And until then, as always stay deep.

01:29:38.680 | (upbeat music)

01:29:41.680 | (upbeat music)

01:29:46.680 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 213: Saying No! | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

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