The Danger Of Having Too Many Interests | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | All right, part two of the show, we're gonna do some questions about living a deeper life.

00:00:08.280 | We haven't had a call yet, so we'll start with a call.

00:00:12.160 | We'll kick things off with a call from Michael.

00:00:14.440 | All right, here we go.

00:00:16.760 | Hey, Cal and Jessie.

00:00:18.480 | First off, thanks for all that you guys do.

00:00:20.920 | Big fan of your work.

00:00:23.560 | I recently quit my job as a product manager in tech to find more meaning in my work and

00:00:28.360 | really just become self-employed.

00:00:30.360 | I have a few main areas that I want to grow in and would like to know how you suggest

00:00:35.600 | balancing efforts on a macro and micro scale.

00:00:40.540 | Just for context, the three areas are, first off, my main project is a website for runners,

00:00:45.920 | training plans and such.

00:00:46.920 | I have one business partner and we plan to launch it soon.

00:00:49.520 | I've been working on that for about a year.

00:00:52.360 | Secondly, I'm taking a course to build out a skill set as a UI designer.

00:00:57.320 | I want to do UI design for my own projects and perhaps freelance someday.

00:01:01.840 | And then thirdly, I just want to create more online blogging videos, using social to connect

00:01:07.440 | with others and really just make useful content around my interests.

00:01:12.800 | Speaking of my interests, I'm just a super curious person, have a lot of hobbies as it

00:01:16.720 | is, so guitar, action sports, music making, photo video, and all of these interests pull

00:01:22.440 | for my time and attention as well.

00:01:25.160 | I have tried to do day theming and use systematic time blocking really to attack all of these

00:01:31.080 | different areas and interests, but it just felt too rigid and formulaic to me.

00:01:35.720 | So yeah, my key question is how do you suggest I focus on a macro and micro scale to have

00:01:41.440 | progress in these multiple areas, which all feel important to me?

00:01:46.120 | Thanks guys.

00:01:48.000 | Well, the issue is if you're trying to make progress on all of those things at the same

00:01:53.880 | time, you will make meaningful progress on almost none of them.

00:02:00.080 | This is a principle that's on my mind because I write about this actually in the slow productivity

00:02:05.420 | book we were talking about before in my chapter on doing fewer things and not to give away

00:02:09.840 | too much, but I have a whole chapter section in that chapter about this reality that the

00:02:19.360 | function that mediates the relationship between effort and reward, we often incorrectly think

00:02:28.360 | about that as a linear function, no matter what we spend our time on.

00:02:32.280 | So you sort of spend 10 hours working on things, you get 10 hours worth of reward, but that's

00:02:37.440 | not actually how it works.

00:02:39.320 | It tends to be more nonlinear.

00:02:41.480 | So if you spend a lot of time on one thing, the reward you begin to get for that time

00:02:46.040 | takes off and gets bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.

00:02:49.320 | So you kind of have these moments, these discontinuities where the reward you get after you've really

00:02:53.640 | focused on something for a while really jumps up.

00:02:56.320 | That reward curve really jumps up.

00:02:58.440 | So the reality of this is it is not the same to take a set pool of hours and split it among

00:03:06.400 | multiple things or put all that time on the one thing.

00:03:08.820 | You do not end up with the same reward in the end.

00:03:11.520 | If this function was simply linear, then spending one hour on 10 separate projects would give

00:03:17.680 | you the same reward as 10 hours on one project.

00:03:20.080 | You might as well do the 10 separate projects because it's interesting, it keeps your options

00:03:23.160 | open, etc.

00:03:24.840 | But if it's not linear, which is what I argue is true, then putting 10 hours on one project

00:03:28.920 | could give you a massive reward.

00:03:31.280 | We're putting one hour in each project might not get you much at all.

00:03:33.520 | All right, so that's kind of technical here, but it all leads to I think the obvious conclusion,

00:03:38.000 | which is you need to do less.

00:03:40.920 | Now that's scary because you're thinking, well, these things are important to me.

00:03:44.680 | There's different aspects of my life.

00:03:46.160 | There's different options I want to pursue.

00:03:47.320 | I can't just stop everything.

00:03:49.120 | So I'm going to give you a two-step process here.

00:03:51.600 | One, I do think you need to simplify, especially in that world of hobbies, etc.

00:03:58.080 | This is what you're going for in your professional life.

00:04:00.240 | And maybe outside of your professional life, you cut this down to two things, maybe three.

00:04:07.480 | Next, you want to have one point of major focus that is getting most of your time and

00:04:12.720 | everything else you want to baseline.

00:04:15.840 | Baseline means you have some sort of maintenance ritual or habit.

00:04:18.800 | So it's not forgotten, but it's not getting much of your time.

00:04:22.740 | And most of your time is on one thing.

00:04:24.480 | So like professionally, maybe most of that time is going into the new website, though

00:04:30.720 | I might recommend that sounds like this UX, you need a job, right?

00:04:34.040 | You quit your job.

00:04:35.040 | So if UX is going to be your career, that might be the thing you're really putting your

00:04:37.680 | time into.

00:04:38.680 | And you're just baselining the website.

00:04:39.800 | Let's put that on hold for now or just make very small progress.

00:04:42.160 | I'm going all in on the UX design.

00:04:43.920 | Choose one thing I go all in on.

00:04:45.360 | You might again with your hobbies have something similar.

00:04:48.040 | You have a background fitness routines, you stay in shape for various action sports you're

00:04:51.360 | interested in, but you're not doing any training for those sports.

00:04:54.000 | And all of your hobby time is going into guitar.

00:04:56.560 | So like you baseline almost everything, and a very small number of things you put time

00:05:00.400 | into because again, you put enough time into something, that's when you get these discontinuity,

00:05:04.680 | these discontinuity, these big jumps in the rewards you get.

00:05:08.120 | And then once you focus on something for a while, and have had a big jump in reward,

00:05:12.400 | then you can turn your attention to something else and do something similar for the next

00:05:15.040 | six months, next year, the next two years, whatever it takes.

00:05:17.480 | So you have to you have to simplify.

00:05:19.120 | And then even once you simplify, only one or two things should be getting any sort of

00:05:22.680 | serious attention at a time, that in the end is going to unlock way more reward than trying

00:05:28.080 | to keep switching back and forth really quickly.

00:05:31.280 | So that's what I recommend.

00:05:32.960 | What I'm saying here is pretty similar to my deep life buckets, Keystone habit type

00:05:36.760 | advice.

00:05:37.760 | We'll get to that in a second, that sort of more, I would say more philosophical thinking,

00:05:42.800 | which covers not just work, but your whole life.

00:05:44.480 | We'll get into that more in a future question.

00:05:46.280 | But it is similar.

00:05:47.280 | And that's on purpose, because I think this idea of baselining what's important, but putting

00:05:51.280 | huge energy into a small number of things at a time, that's the right formula.

00:05:54.440 | [MUSIC]

The Danger Of Having Too Many Interests | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

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