How To Stop Wasting Time: The 5-Step Productivity System To Organize Your Life

00:00:00.000 | All right, so what I want to talk about today is how to get organized in a world where all

00:00:05.840 | of the digital incoming, this email, the Slack, the digital meaning invites seem to be doing

00:00:12.300 | their best to drown you in obligations.

00:00:15.400 | Now, this is a common topic on the show, but what's different, what I want to focus on

00:00:20.200 | right now that is different is what to do on the very first day on your journey from

00:00:28.600 | disorganized to organized.

00:00:32.000 | So it's the day one steps I want to focus on today.

00:00:35.000 | My plan is I have five steps to go through.

00:00:38.100 | The first four steps are highly technical.

00:00:39.940 | What to do in the first four to six hours on the quest to become a more organized person.

00:00:46.480 | The fifth step will then give you the maintenance activities to do for the 30 days to follow

00:00:50.080 | to make sure that everything you do this first day actually sticks.

00:00:54.680 | So this is not about having the most advanced ongoing system, but instead taking the biggest

00:01:00.720 | possible steps on the very first day.

00:01:05.620 | Before we get into those details, though, let's start by briefly discussing the psychological

00:01:11.560 | obstacle that we have to get past before we can hope to succeed in this quest to become

00:01:20.000 | more organized.

00:01:21.560 | Here is what I think the main problem is that people have is a misperception about the reality

00:01:28.040 | of their workload.

00:01:29.040 | So I'm actually, again, with great trepidation, going to draw a picture here for those who

00:01:32.760 | are watching instead of just listening.

00:01:35.320 | I want to draw a picture about how most people think about their workday.

00:01:41.320 | This is just sort of implicitly in their mind.

00:01:44.240 | So we have here a very happy stick figure, and he's sitting, I don't know, he's sitting

00:01:49.560 | at his desk, and there we go.

00:01:52.640 | He's sitting here at his computer, expertly drawn.

00:01:55.760 | So let's draw a little computer here.

00:01:58.440 | Perfect perspective.

00:01:59.440 | All right, so there he is, happy at his computer.

00:02:03.560 | Because in the world of the way most people just sort of imagine their work is, what's

00:02:07.440 | going on?

00:02:08.440 | Well, there's maybe a couple phone messages to return.

00:02:14.400 | I have three little phone messages over here, and there's two projects.

00:02:20.200 | Let me choose one of these projects to make progress on, and there's a few phone messages

00:02:24.240 | that you might want to return.

00:02:25.240 | And in fact, our happy person here, I'm going to give them a notebook.

00:02:31.240 | And in this notebook, with colored pencils, kind of have this nice little plan for the

00:02:35.880 | day.

00:02:36.880 | Work on project A, and then return these calls, and go for a nice walk, and then take lunch.

00:02:42.600 | This is sort of the implicit assumption people have about what their work life is like.

00:02:48.240 | I have some stuff I'm working on, some things I have to get back to people.

00:02:51.600 | All right, what's the reality?

00:02:53.600 | Well, I'm going to draw a picture of what I imagine, this is what I think the reality

00:02:59.160 | is for most people.

00:03:01.880 | So what I have here is our same person, now very unhappy, running as fast as he or she

00:03:13.520 | can, because there is a giant cloud of an overwhelming quantity of projects, and requests,

00:03:20.920 | and tasks, and things that people need from them.

00:03:24.040 | And it's chasing him or her, I'm going to say, for whatever reason, it's shooting lightning

00:03:34.200 | bolts at this person.

00:03:37.880 | Huge cloud chasing after the running person, there's lightning bolts.

00:03:42.320 | For some reason, things are on fire, because I don't know, that's kind of what it feels

00:03:45.640 | like, so there's just flames everywhere.

00:03:47.920 | This is the reality.

00:03:52.080 | Most people think, "Oh, I use my color pencil, so that I can differentiate my phone call

00:03:58.760 | from when I work with a nice cup of tea on project A."

00:04:02.360 | Reality, running from fire as there's this giant swarm chases after you, firing lightning

00:04:07.800 | bolts at you.

00:04:08.800 | All right, why is it important that we have this misconception?

00:04:11.960 | It's because when you think, "It works not so bad," two things happen.

00:04:17.160 | One, you don't think you really need to do much to get more organized.

00:04:21.360 | Work is not that hard.

00:04:23.120 | I just need to maybe draw out a to-do list in a nice format, be a little bit careful,

00:04:29.080 | or just buy, like I bought this nice-looking Japanese paper planner online, and we'll write

00:04:34.960 | it, and it's going to make our lives a little easier.

00:04:36.640 | You don't see the urgency of actually taking major action.

00:04:39.680 | The second issue that's generated by this misconception is that if you do begin wandering

00:04:44.680 | towards some more systematic organization, it's you open the door to this reality, and

00:04:50.480 | my God, it's so terrible that you just slam that door shut and say, "Let's just pretend

00:04:54.400 | that doesn't exist."

00:04:55.400 | Denial.

00:04:56.400 | "I don't want to confront the reality of how much stuff is going on."

00:05:01.720 | Here's the thing, though, and this is the first step of the five steps I want to talk

00:05:04.400 | about today.

00:05:05.920 | The very first step on your very first day of becoming organized is preparing yourself

00:05:11.080 | to face this reality.

00:05:13.760 | So it is a psychological preparation step.

00:05:16.400 | There is a term of art that I used to use in the early days of this show, and that was

00:05:20.360 | called "facing the productivity dragon."

00:05:25.360 | The idea behind facing the productivity dragon is that you confront the reality of everything

00:05:30.400 | that is on your plate, even if it is terrifying and overwhelming and shooting lightning bolts

00:05:34.880 | at you and lighting the world around you on fire.

00:05:37.120 | It is better to confront the reality than to pretend it doesn't exist.

00:05:42.420 | So step one is to prepare to face this productivity dragon.

00:05:48.240 | Now this is not a new idea.

00:05:50.520 | If we go back to the OG of digital age productivity, that is David Allen, he wrote about what was

00:05:58.120 | involved in trying to get your arms around for the first time, the step of getting started

00:06:04.540 | on being organized.

00:06:05.540 | He wrote very clearly in his 2001 classic, Getting Things Done, how much is involved

00:06:11.720 | in taking that first step from chaos towards calm.

00:06:14.640 | I'm going to read you from chapter five of his book here.

00:06:16.800 | Here's a short excerpt.

00:06:19.400 | Just gathering a few more things than you currently have will probably create positive

00:06:23.400 | feelings for you.

00:06:24.800 | But if you can hang in there and really do the whole collection process 100%, it will

00:06:28.600 | change your experience dramatically and give you an important new reference point for being

00:06:32.520 | on top of your work.

00:06:34.880 | When I coach a client through this process, the collection phase usually takes between

00:06:38.440 | one and six hours, though it did once take all of 20 hours with one person.

00:06:45.040 | All right, so what Allen is teaching us here is this very first step of confronting the

00:06:51.120 | productivity dragon takes time.

00:06:53.640 | It takes hours because there is more in there than you probably want to admit.

00:06:57.760 | So the concrete advice that comes out of this first step is that you need to put aside a

00:07:02.000 | full day for this day.

00:07:05.600 | When I say, what do you do the first day of becoming more organized?

00:07:08.160 | I don't mean here's something you can do for 30 minutes in the morning and then you'll

00:07:12.140 | be more organized.

00:07:13.320 | You actually are going to need a full day to do this right.

00:07:16.680 | So you could take a put aside a day that was otherwise quiet or put aside a weekend day

00:07:20.840 | or a vacation day if you need to.

00:07:22.600 | We have plenty of those coming up.

00:07:24.080 | But you need to prepare yourself that you're going to need something like a full day to

00:07:27.640 | actually make the transition I'm going to talk about right now from chaos to calm.

00:07:33.160 | All right, step two, let's get technical.

00:07:36.840 | You need to set up your first storage system.

00:07:41.140 | The place that is going to gather and make sense of all of these things that you actually

00:07:45.780 | have to do.

00:07:46.780 | Now, if you go back and read David Allen, one of the things you're going to notice is

00:07:50.360 | that he relies a lot on a embodied physicality in the obligations in people's lives.

00:07:57.680 | So he sort of imagines that many of the obligations in people's lives have a physical embodiment.

00:08:02.800 | There's a receipt that has to be submitted.

00:08:05.520 | There's a phone slip for a call that has to be returned.

00:08:08.640 | There's a printed report that was given to you that you have to do your revisions on.

00:08:12.640 | And so his process of collection from getting things done is all about having these physical

00:08:17.320 | inboxes, literal boxes.

00:08:19.460 | And you're going around your space and collecting these artifacts and putting them into these

00:08:24.040 | inboxes.

00:08:25.040 | You're building piles of your stuff.

00:08:28.620 | And for the small number of things that don't actually exist in the real world, he says

00:08:31.280 | you write down a pointer to it and put that piece of paper in the physical box.

00:08:35.360 | So it's a very physical process.

00:08:37.720 | I'm going to suggest something different.

00:08:39.800 | I think that the difference between the late 90s and early 2000s when Allen was putting

00:08:44.440 | together this methodology and now in the 2020s is that the vast majority of professional

00:08:49.560 | obligations in your life as a knowledge worker are digital.

00:08:53.840 | Very few of them are embodied.

00:08:55.240 | Maybe you printed something, but the thing you printed has a digital counterpart for

00:08:59.600 | which it began.

00:09:01.040 | Most stuff is actually implicitly in an email somewhere.

00:09:05.080 | It's a request that was in a slack.

00:09:06.880 | It's a, it's a appointment that's lurking on your digital calendar for which work has

00:09:10.840 | to be done.

00:09:12.600 | So to try to translate now that the vast majority of our obligations are digital, to try to

00:09:16.720 | somehow translate those into the physical world, the gathering back into the digital

00:09:20.280 | would be inefficient.

00:09:22.380 | So our storage systems is going to, we're going to start digital and we're going to

00:09:25.680 | remain digital.

00:09:26.680 | All right.

00:09:27.680 | So no physical inboxes.

00:09:30.200 | What is going to be the digital system in which we're going to store everything?

00:09:35.800 | It's going to require three things, a collection of lists, the ability to rapidly add, update,

00:09:41.880 | or move items between these lists, and the ability to efficiently append information

00:09:47.480 | such as links or notes or texts copied out of emails to individual items on these lists.

00:09:52.840 | These are the three capabilities we're going to need in our storage system.

00:09:56.560 | This clearly is going to have to be digital.

00:09:59.120 | You're not going to be able to get all of those features in a purely analog system,

00:10:02.640 | the quickly moving things with back and forth, the pending information and things.

00:10:06.560 | So we're going to need a digital system here that can satisfy those three things.

00:10:09.960 | Hey, quick interruption.

00:10:12.140 | If you want my free guide with my seven best ideas on how to cultivate the deep life, go

00:10:19.340 | to calnewport.com/ideas or click the link right below in the description.

00:10:25.520 | This is a great way to take action on the type of things we talk about here on the show.

00:10:30.520 | All right, let's get back to it.

00:10:32.520 | I'm going to give you three options here from simple to most complex.

00:10:36.280 | The simplest way to implement a system that has those three properties would just be with

00:10:41.320 | word processing or text files.

00:10:44.020 | So just imagine you have a text file, you can just have a bold header for each of the

00:10:48.200 | lists that we're going to find, and then just write below it, separated by white space,

00:10:53.520 | different items of the list.

00:10:55.040 | If you want to append information to an item in this particular implementation, you can

00:10:59.040 | just put a bullet point or a collection of bullet points under the item and just copy

00:11:02.880 | and paste whatever information you need.

00:11:05.160 | It doesn't have to be neat.

00:11:07.220 | So you could just get going with Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

00:11:11.040 | Any number of online task programs let you do this easily as well.

00:11:14.400 | A favorite of mine is WorkFlowy.

00:11:17.360 | All it is, is list that you can indent.

00:11:20.120 | Press enter, you get another item, press tab, it indents over.

00:11:24.040 | What's nice about this is you can hide indentations.

00:11:27.200 | So if you have a bunch of things, extra information, there are tasks, you can click assign to have

00:11:31.560 | it all collapse, and then you can just open it again when you want that information.

00:11:36.560 | So for our three properties, text files will be fine.

00:11:39.360 | Next more complicated solution for implementing this system is going to be something like

00:11:42.920 | Trello.

00:11:44.840 | This is what I use.

00:11:47.080 | It's just very well set up for what we're talking about here.

00:11:49.980 | Each list can be a column on a Trello board, each item can be a card on a Trello board,

00:11:54.800 | extra information can be appended to the back of the cards, and the cards are easy to move

00:11:58.880 | back and forth between different columns.

00:12:01.660 | The more advanced solution would be to build something more custom, perhaps using a task

00:12:06.160 | view database system like Notion.

00:12:08.840 | I would not start here for your very first day of becoming organized, unless you're already

00:12:14.520 | a pro at one of these systems, and it's as easy for you to put together as it is for

00:12:17.920 | someone else to set up WorkFlowy.

00:12:20.280 | This is the type of thing you can think about down the line.

00:12:23.480 | Once we've made this initial leap from chaos to control, chaos to calm, down the line,

00:12:29.240 | you might think about if you're more tech oriented, building a more advanced system,

00:12:32.760 | but I wouldn't start there.

00:12:35.000 | Okay, so we now know what a system broadly speaking needs these lists that you can update

00:12:40.200 | and move stuff behind between an append information.

00:12:43.240 | We know what tech tools you can use to actually store these lists.

00:12:47.000 | What are the actual lists we need in our initial system?

00:12:52.620 | I'm going to suggest six for your starter system.

00:12:56.040 | Again, whether this is in Docs, Trello, or Notion.

00:12:59.920 | Ready, Backburner, Waiting, To Discuss, Clarify, and Scheduled.

00:13:11.280 | So in fact, I'll even write these on the screen so we can be on the same page.

00:13:17.640 | I want to talk a little bit about each of these.

00:13:24.020 | I always try to type on here, Jesse, but it always just creates, makes the world just

00:13:27.580 | fall apart.

00:13:29.260 | By the way, see that issue with the trying to type on here?

00:13:32.020 | That's why I had to stop using this in my classroom.

00:13:33.980 | When you're in projection or screen sharing mode, in Notability, the text does, the typing

00:13:39.420 | doesn't work very well.

00:13:40.420 | All right, I can just write though.

00:13:41.420 | I got beautiful handwriting.

00:13:42.420 | All right, so what are these things?

00:13:43.780 | Ready was number one.

00:13:45.240 | What we mean by ready is going to be, think of it as like a ready for action.

00:13:49.580 | These are things, items that need to be worked on as soon as we can get to them.

00:13:53.820 | I typically think about something under a ready list as something that I want to try

00:13:57.780 | to complete in the given week.

00:14:00.260 | Different people do that slightly different ways.

00:14:03.260 | Next we had Backburner.

00:14:06.100 | These are things that they need to get done.

00:14:08.380 | You've committed to them, but you're not working on them right now.

00:14:12.300 | So we have them on the Backburner, so we're not going to forget about them.

00:14:15.980 | We have a place, and here it is on this list.

00:14:19.220 | If we get more information about this thing that we've committed to, but it's not coming

00:14:22.280 | up yet, we have a place to put that information.

00:14:25.900 | Someone emails us more details about the workshop we've agreed to set up, and we're not really

00:14:29.880 | working on that yet.

00:14:31.060 | We can copy that text from the email and put it on the back of this Trello card or an indentation

00:14:35.300 | under this item.

00:14:36.300 | So that's what's going on the Backburner.

00:14:38.580 | Waiting, this is critical.

00:14:41.580 | I think this is the most important type of list that people do not typically keep.

00:14:47.500 | This is things that you are waiting to hear back about.

00:14:50.020 | All right, so this is I'm working on this workshop.

00:14:54.260 | I sent an email to the administrator about trying to get a room reservation.

00:14:58.820 | I am waiting to hear back from that person about whether or not we can get that room.

00:15:03.660 | That item can be now under the waiting list.

00:15:06.040 | So it's waiting as in waiting to hear back.

00:15:10.340 | Another critical list that most people don't use in their systems, but is very efficient

00:15:16.540 | is to discuss.

00:15:17.540 | So it's where you keep track of things where I'm going to be meeting with this person or

00:15:23.100 | team at some point in the near future.

00:15:26.540 | What do I want to discuss with them at that next meeting?

00:15:29.380 | Now you have two options here.

00:15:31.940 | You can just have one list to discuss and every item on it, the very first thing in

00:15:36.460 | the title of the item in bold is to discuss with Jesse.

00:15:41.500 | So you can clarify for each item, who is this for?

00:15:44.820 | So it's for people or teams you meet with on a regular basis.

00:15:47.420 | And the idea here is if you have things you need more information on, instead of just

00:15:50.700 | throwing an email into the ether, you can kind of collect lists of, okay, next time

00:15:53.800 | I talk to Jesse, I have four things on here to go through.

00:15:57.000 | If there's people you have a lot of things to discuss things with and you talk to them

00:16:00.540 | on a regular basis, they can get their own to discuss list.

00:16:04.220 | You might have multiple to discuss lists with team, with boss, with department chair.

00:16:08.740 | That's fine as well.

00:16:11.260 | Clarify these are placeholders.

00:16:14.220 | All right.

00:16:15.740 | I have this obligation, something I'm supposed to do something about this.

00:16:19.780 | I don't yet know what that means.

00:16:21.460 | In other words, like, I don't know what I should do right now to make progress on this

00:16:26.300 | thing.

00:16:27.300 | I just know I'm committed to it.

00:16:28.300 | I need to think through or learn more about what this actually means.

00:16:30.540 | You know, I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll handle the secret Santa in the office this week or

00:16:36.500 | this month.

00:16:37.500 | And I don't really know what that means.

00:16:38.740 | Like, I don't know how that works or what I need to do, but I just committed to it.

00:16:41.820 | I don't want to forget it.

00:16:42.820 | It can go to the clarify list.

00:16:43.980 | So that means this is an obligation that is pending more clarification on what it actually

00:16:48.660 | is going to require us to do.

00:16:49.940 | So we have a place for it and then scheduled.

00:16:55.460 | So if there's a non-simple task that is scheduled on your calendar, so it's a task that requires

00:17:02.360 | some explanation or maybe has some information that gets appended to it.

00:17:06.220 | Here's what people emailed me.

00:17:07.680 | Here's the list of steps I need to do on this.

00:17:09.820 | I'm supposed to file this report.

00:17:11.620 | I put aside time to do this on Friday morning, but here's the step someone told me about

00:17:15.500 | how to do this or how to submit it.

00:17:18.300 | This gives you a place for that item to live in your system.

00:17:20.500 | So all that information can live somewhere.

00:17:22.760 | So a item under scheduled is also on your calendar somewhere, but the item on your list

00:17:29.980 | can hold all the extra information you need.

00:17:32.780 | Not everything on your calendar needs to be under the scheduled item.

00:17:35.660 | You don't need appointments for the most part under there.

00:17:37.840 | You don't need small things under there, you know, pick up whatever, someone from the train

00:17:43.580 | station, you know, you probably don't need an item there, but if it's complex, there's

00:17:48.860 | information you need to remember about it, then it can live there under the schedule

00:17:54.300 | item.

00:17:55.300 | All right, so you have six lists and that's your initial collection system.

00:17:58.700 | So we've set up six lists in some sort of digital system.

00:18:02.180 | All right, step three, here's the face in the productivity dragon part made real, dump

00:18:08.000 | everything on your mind, in your inbox, in the world, everything that you are obligated

00:18:14.980 | to do gets on these lists.

00:18:17.260 | All right, so what does this mean?

00:18:20.820 | Everything you can think of.

00:18:21.820 | So just start, like, what can I think of that I'm supposed to be working on or I should

00:18:26.040 | be doing?

00:18:27.420 | Maybe I told someone I would do it, or I've just been thinking to myself, this is something

00:18:30.420 | I should make progress on.

00:18:31.820 | I should update the website.

00:18:33.740 | Get everything you can out of your head, get it onto an item in these lists.

00:18:39.040 | Go through your inbox and process every single email.

00:18:44.460 | Get the inbox empty.

00:18:46.780 | This doesn't mean reply to every email.

00:18:49.020 | This doesn't mean take care of every email.

00:18:51.860 | You're translating these emails into task items that go into your system.

00:18:55.600 | So for this initial collection phase, you want to clear everything out of your inbox.

00:19:00.140 | And it might mean you might have things showing up on your list.

00:19:03.260 | It's just like reply to send Jesse the information he requested about skeleton manufacturing,

00:19:11.700 | right?

00:19:12.700 | Like just whatever it is, you're just translating emails and items on this list.

00:19:16.580 | You're, you are denying your email inbox to be a secondary task management system at this

00:19:22.260 | point.

00:19:23.460 | You're putting all your faith into this collection system.

00:19:26.780 | Look at your calendar, they're complicated things on there, reminders that should be

00:19:30.060 | translated into tasks that are on this list.

00:19:32.260 | Then go back and think some more about what else am I forgetting?

00:19:34.620 | What else is just in my head?

00:19:36.560 | Let me give you a couple advanced tips for going through this collection process.

00:19:40.780 | Number one, it does help sometimes to use a working memory dot txt file as an intermediary

00:19:45.900 | in this process.

00:19:47.400 | So just have a plain unformatted text file on your computer.

00:19:51.140 | As you're going through one of these categories, you can just dump things into that text file

00:19:56.260 | and then go from that text file into your system.

00:20:00.140 | It helps, right?

00:20:02.120 | It feels like this is an extra step, but it actually helps, especially if you're cleaning

00:20:05.500 | out an inbox because you can type really quickly into a text file and you don't have to be

00:20:10.700 | organized or really think it through like reply to Jesse about this, send back dates

00:20:15.040 | to so and so.

00:20:16.040 | You can just type really, really fast and just fill in this text file really fast.

00:20:19.660 | I call it working memory dot txt because this text file is like an extension of your working

00:20:23.780 | memory.

00:20:24.780 | Our brain can hold five or six things at a time with a working memory dot txt file.

00:20:29.780 | You can have 20 or 30 things.

00:20:31.180 | It's like you're extending your working memory and then you go from that text file into your

00:20:35.100 | system.

00:20:36.100 | It takes a little bit more time to put things into your system.

00:20:38.060 | You have to choose the list, you have to create the card or do the font formatting if you're

00:20:42.500 | using something like Microsoft Word.

00:20:45.580 | More importantly, as you go from this very fast to fill in plain text file to your system,

00:20:51.500 | you see things to consolidate or to simplify.

00:20:54.100 | Actually, I don't really need to respond to these people or now that I look at this, I

00:20:59.860 | have eight different emails on here from Jesse about merchandising Jesse Skeleton.

00:21:05.340 | I could just combine this into one item on my list, which is set up intervention to talk

00:21:13.440 | to Jesse about his obsession with Jesse Skeleton.

00:21:15.960 | You actually get some on the fly organization and consolidation simplification as you go

00:21:21.220 | to this extended working memory and then into your system.

00:21:26.340 | Advanced tip number two, when you're going through this initial dumping of everything

00:21:29.060 | in your life into this system, lean heavily into the clarify list.

00:21:34.260 | Don't try to work everything out during this process.

00:21:37.100 | There's too many things.

00:21:39.220 | Don't try for everything you come up with like, well, what's going on with this project?

00:21:43.020 | Well, let me follow up with so and so about this and let me look at this a little bit

00:21:48.500 | of when might I be able to do this.

00:21:49.760 | You don't have the time or energy to actually clarify all of the ambiguous obligations that

00:21:54.820 | are on your plate.

00:21:55.820 | Right now, we're just trying to get everything into our system.

00:21:58.280 | So at first, your clarify list might be really long.

00:22:01.500 | You just don't want to forget it.

00:22:02.980 | So you just have, you know, workshop plan.

00:22:05.340 | God, I don't even know what that means, but I'm not forgetting it.

00:22:07.860 | I'm just throw it in the clarify list for now.

00:22:09.940 | We'll deal with this in the next step.

00:22:11.420 | So don't worry about that.

00:22:13.660 | The key role to maintain as you're initially populating your list in your system, and this

00:22:18.740 | is the rule that you should maintain going forward, is that every obligation gets one

00:22:23.740 | item in the system.

00:22:26.140 | It can move between lists.

00:22:27.500 | It cannot exist on multiple lists.

00:22:30.240 | You do not have, okay, under ready, workshop, you know, next steps for this workshop project.

00:22:37.340 | And then if that generates an email to an administrator, you don't keep that item under

00:22:40.860 | the ready list and add a new item to the waiting to hear back list.

00:22:44.620 | You move that full item over to the ready, the waiting to hear back from list and just

00:22:48.760 | update the status up top.

00:22:50.380 | I'm waiting to hear back from so-and-so about this.

00:22:52.900 | All of the information about a given obligation lives in the system, but it moves around to

00:22:59.100 | what is the status of this obligation right now?

00:23:02.060 | So think about these lists as the statuses of various obligations.

00:23:07.780 | If you are actually building a notion-based system to keep track of this stuff, this would

00:23:11.740 | be a lot more explicit because it's, these are database entries that can have a single

00:23:16.380 | status.

00:23:17.420 | It's here, then it's there, then it's here.

00:23:19.740 | So everything just lives in one place.

00:23:22.380 | All right.

00:23:23.900 | This will take a while, one to three hours probably.

00:23:28.400 | We've really spent a lot of our day here getting everything into this list.

00:23:32.380 | But now symbolically, when you're done, everything is captured.

00:23:35.620 | Your inbox is empty.

00:23:37.420 | There's nothing in your head.

00:23:38.780 | There's nothing just sitting there in your calendar.

00:23:40.020 | You don't know what it means.

00:23:41.020 | It's all in this one place, this collection of lists, this system of yours.

00:23:45.780 | That brings us to step four, to do your initial configuring.

00:23:52.660 | Moving forward, configuration of your list, of your system is something you're going to

00:23:56.540 | do on a semi-regular basis.

00:23:57.740 | We'll get to that soon, but we're going to do our very first configuration step during

00:24:01.820 | this very first day that you're making your leap from chaos to calm.

00:24:06.060 | This is a big thing that was always missing from David Allen's methodology, but I think

00:24:10.260 | is really important.

00:24:11.580 | This is where you make sense of all of the things in your system and you clarify and

00:24:15.900 | optimize, remove redundancies.

00:24:18.140 | It's where you sit and move and work around and make more sense of this huge mess of stuff

00:24:24.020 | that's on your plate.

00:24:26.140 | This means a few things.

00:24:27.700 | One, start going through your clarifying, the items under the clarify list and try to

00:24:32.300 | clarify as many as you can.

00:24:35.500 | The stuff that's not particularly urgent, you can skip for now, but the things you think

00:24:39.580 | like, "I need to do something about this," now you can clarify it.

00:24:43.180 | You don't want to clarify as you're filling in your list and doing your dumping everything

00:24:47.580 | in your life because that's too much friction.

00:24:49.740 | But now that you've done that, now we can focus just on moving through this clarify

00:24:52.980 | list and say, "What are the things that really I should be making progress on?"

00:24:56.940 | And start doing the clarification.

00:24:57.940 | Now, this might mean you discard it.

00:24:59.820 | "I don't really need to do this."

00:25:01.660 | Or it might mean you're sending a clarification email.

00:25:04.380 | This is often the case with stuff that ends up on clarifying when you go through a configuration

00:25:08.460 | step.

00:25:09.460 | Often the reaction is, "I got to write this someone to say, 'What the hell does this mean?'"

00:25:14.420 | How do I set up the secret Santa?

00:25:16.180 | You did it last year.

00:25:17.700 | Can you tell me about it?

00:25:18.700 | That's fine.

00:25:19.700 | You moved over to the waiting to hear back from list.

00:25:23.060 | Other things that might be obvious, "Now that I think about it, what I need to do is

00:25:25.700 | set up a meeting with my team and we need to make a plan."

00:25:29.580 | So either I can send that doodle pool now to do that, or move this over to the ready

00:25:36.060 | list and change the actual description of the item to set up meeting with team to discuss

00:25:42.340 | this project and all the information about it is attached to this card.

00:25:45.060 | This is what I mean by clarify.

00:25:48.980 | So it's moving things off of that clarify list to where they should go.

00:25:52.940 | This is also a good time to triage.

00:25:55.900 | Go through and triage the back burner.

00:25:59.580 | Do I really need to do this?

00:26:00.700 | I was excited about this, but I'm thinking now I don't need to do that.

00:26:04.340 | So you can kind of go through like what's on the back burner.

00:26:06.580 | Let me triage things out of this.

00:26:08.580 | What do I really want to stick with?

00:26:10.500 | This is where you might send some sorry triage messages.

00:26:13.500 | "Hey, sorry.

00:26:14.580 | I know I said before I could help you with this, but actually I think my schedule is

00:26:19.140 | too crowded."

00:26:20.140 | That creates like seven seconds of annoyance on the recipient's end, but for the sender

00:26:24.380 | that email, it can create seven hours of freedom.

00:26:27.060 | So those are very powerful.

00:26:29.300 | Whenever I get those type of messages from someone, not right before something is due

00:26:33.180 | or after it's due, "Hey, I didn't do this.

00:26:35.060 | I can't really get to this," but like three weeks in advance, "Hey, you know how I said

00:26:37.940 | we should record this thing?

00:26:40.020 | Honestly, I was misreading my schedule.

00:26:43.180 | This is probably not the right time for it."

00:26:44.500 | I know that someone who has their act together, that someone who's looking and configuring

00:26:49.780 | their whole schedule and seeing what makes sense and what doesn't, you'll actually earn

00:26:53.380 | respect if in advance you're stepping back from things.

00:26:56.380 | Now, if you wait until it's due and just don't do it and then step back, that's a different

00:26:59.820 | thing when you look out of control.

00:27:01.900 | Another part of configuring is adding things to calendars that need to be on calendars.

00:27:05.460 | "Okay, this is pretty urgent.

00:27:07.620 | Let me find time for this and get that on my calendar."

00:27:10.700 | If there's information associated with this task, I'll move this over to scheduled.

00:27:13.980 | If it's a one-time thing like set up doc dentist appointment and I get it on my calendar, then

00:27:17.980 | I just delete the item from my list.

00:27:19.740 | I don't need it there.

00:27:21.240 | It's also a good time, and this is an advanced tip, to look for batching opportunities.

00:27:26.660 | I have this, this, this, and this.

00:27:29.580 | All of these things I could really make progress on if I talk to Jesse about them.

00:27:34.700 | So what I really want to do is take all of these five things and put them all on the

00:27:39.180 | back of my Trello card for the item of set up meeting with Jesse to discuss many things.

00:27:46.020 | And you kind of have these things below.

00:27:49.460 | And then I send the email to Jesse saying, "Let's do this meeting."

00:27:51.860 | And that whole card gets moved to waiting to hear back from.

00:27:55.180 | Or I'm like, "Oh, we meet every week when we record our podcast.

00:27:58.020 | Let me batch a bunch of these things and put it under the to discuss list, Jesse's to discuss

00:28:02.860 | list."

00:28:03.860 | So it's in this configuring step, you get all these great batching opportunities.

00:28:07.420 | Let's wait to do this here.

00:28:08.660 | Let's do all these things at the same time.

00:28:11.260 | I'm going into work on Friday.

00:28:13.100 | And so let's put aside a big group of time and we're going to squash through 20 things

00:28:16.540 | that need to get done.

00:28:18.580 | This is really productivity ninja stuff when you begin to do these batching opportunities.

00:28:24.300 | Something that really doesn't happen when you're just reactive and chaotic.

00:28:26.820 | "Oh my God, what do I need to do next?

00:28:28.880 | My inbox is on fire.

00:28:29.880 | Oh my God, this thing is due."

00:28:31.300 | You're never going to see those type of opportunities.

00:28:33.500 | All right.

00:28:34.700 | So at this point, you have your system fully set up.

00:28:38.220 | You're about four or five hours into your first day of trying to be more organized and

00:28:42.220 | you have everything in a intelligently designed digital system in the six optimal list.

00:28:48.380 | And you've done your initial configuring.

00:28:50.180 | So stuff that's important has been clarified.

00:28:52.340 | You batch stuff, you remove stuff, you've moved things where it needs to go.

00:28:55.260 | Some things are on the calendar.

00:28:56.260 | So you kind of have your arms around what's on your plate.

00:29:00.820 | The fifth and final step is how do we then make the use of this system stick?

00:29:07.380 | If you stop trusting this system, it will fall apart.

00:29:12.980 | If you find yourself unwilling, for example, to move something out of your inbox and onto

00:29:18.000 | an item in these lists, that means you don't trust yourself for this system.

00:29:20.940 | It means you say, "I know I'll check my inbox."

00:29:22.940 | Because I get yelled at if I don't.

00:29:25.060 | I don't trust myself to look at this system.

00:29:26.700 | So let me just keep this in here.

00:29:28.440 | If you're writing notes to yourself, you're not trusting your system.

00:29:31.260 | So how do we actually get you into the habit now of actually making this system part of

00:29:36.100 | your workflow?

00:29:37.820 | Well I'm going to suggest two things you do daily and one thing you do weekly for the

00:29:41.380 | next four weeks after this very first day of getting organized.

00:29:44.940 | So the first daily thing, review this system every morning when you look at your calendar.

00:29:51.060 | Use it to help make your plan for the day.

00:29:54.340 | I won't even get into now how you're making your plan for the day.

00:29:56.700 | This is more advanced stuff.

00:29:57.900 | But however you make your plan for the day, and again, the brightly colored pencils on

00:30:02.340 | your fancy planner or you're just jotting stuff down on a text file, I don't care.

00:30:06.340 | For now, I look at my system every day before I make this plan.

00:30:10.540 | I see what's on that ready list.

00:30:12.100 | I remind myself who am I waiting to hear back from.

00:30:14.420 | I remind myself on the to discuss list, "Hey, do I have a meeting coming up today that I

00:30:18.780 | need to discuss things on a to discuss list?"

00:30:22.780 | We're talking five minutes, but you see it all.

00:30:25.940 | You see the mess of stuff in Clarify that you haven't got to.

00:30:28.740 | You see the big back burner.

00:30:30.540 | You see everything.

00:30:33.120 | Number two, at the end of every day, when you're finishing the shutting down your work,

00:30:38.540 | you have to go back and review the system again.

00:30:40.740 | Here the goal is to make sure that anything that is floating gets nailed down back into

00:30:44.860 | the system.

00:30:45.860 | "Oh yeah, you know, I said in this meeting I would do this.

00:30:49.420 | Let me make sure that's written down in my system.

00:30:52.740 | This thing came in, this request in a Slack.

00:30:55.940 | Let me get that into my system."

00:30:57.980 | You're closing the loops, making sure that there's nothing just in your head.

00:31:03.220 | Should you at this point empty everything in your inbox into your system like we did

00:31:06.500 | on the day one?

00:31:07.700 | It's probably not practical because it just is too time consuming.

00:31:11.140 | You might not always have that time.

00:31:12.340 | So let's put that aside for now.

00:31:13.900 | But otherwise, anything else that's loose or urgent, you want it in your system.

00:31:18.300 | You look at your system, make sure there's no obvious changes or updates to do.

00:31:21.820 | Typically, if the day moves fast, there's updates you need to make to your system you

00:31:25.380 | haven't gotten around to.

00:31:26.700 | "Oh, I sent that email about this.

00:31:28.500 | I need to move that over to waiting to hear back.

00:31:30.380 | Or I heard back from this thing.

00:31:32.420 | So I need to move this back from waiting to hear back to over here and then copying what

00:31:36.100 | I heard about it."

00:31:37.100 | So just do that final cleanup so your system, everything is back in it and the system is

00:31:40.260 | up to date.

00:31:41.740 | Do that every day, first four weeks.

00:31:45.520 | The weekly thing I want you to do for the first four weeks is return to that step four

00:31:50.300 | configure step at the beginning of each week for the next four weeks.

00:31:55.100 | You can do it Monday morning, you can do it Sunday.

00:31:57.220 | Some people do it at the end of the day, Friday, so they can go into their weekend, less stressed.

00:32:01.300 | I don't care when you do it, but go back and do something like that configure step, which

00:32:05.220 | remember, it means you're going to the clarify items and trying to like, "Okay, which ones

00:32:08.460 | can I actually make progress on?"

00:32:10.180 | You're triaging, you're batching, you're moving things, your calendar are off.

00:32:13.400 | This is like a 30 minute process of just getting the system fully up to speed.

00:32:18.700 | Critically, when you do that configure process, this is a time to return to your inbox and

00:32:22.620 | empty it.

00:32:23.620 | That's why it's good to do on the weekend or before the week really gets going.

00:32:27.260 | The stuff that's piled up to my inbox that I didn't really have time during the days

00:32:30.780 | or my daily reviews to get to, I want to get that back down to zero and everything back

00:32:35.140 | into my system.

00:32:36.140 | So it's a more thorough configuring than what you're doing at the end of each day.

00:32:41.420 | Do this thing, you're going to be much more organized and you're going to be ready for

00:32:45.260 | the much more advanced ways we talk about of maintaining depth in a world of these increasing

00:32:49.460 | digital distractions in the workplace.

00:32:50.780 | There's all the more advanced stuff we talk about.

00:32:52.700 | This will give you the foundation.

00:32:54.380 | Those first four steps will take you two to four hours.

00:32:57.140 | You put aside a day to do this.

00:32:58.340 | You'll be exhausted after this, not want to do much else work, but that is worth it.

00:33:01.860 | Two to four hours, you have a fully set up and configured task collection system.

00:33:08.220 | That's a huge difference.

00:33:10.140 | And then do the twice daily, once weekly routine for four weeks and your use of this system

00:33:14.740 | is going to stick.

00:33:15.980 | That alone, even if you do nothing else in my advice and have completely idiosyncratic

00:33:19.520 | ways of planning your day or doing long-term planning or anything else, or how you do your

00:33:23.300 | email communication, all the other stuff we talk about, even if you ignore everything

00:33:26.860 | else I say, this will be a night and day difference.

00:33:31.420 | You will no longer feel like there is this cloud of ambiguous, overwhelming obligations

00:33:36.020 | chasing you and shooting lightning bolts at your head.

00:33:38.860 | You will say, I've got this.

00:33:41.700 | And even if what you've got is difficult and impossible and you're completely overloaded,

00:33:46.300 | you're facing the productivity dragon, you know exactly how overloaded you are.

00:33:49.900 | You know, what is the very best thing I can do given my circumstance?

00:33:53.100 | I can't get this all done.

00:33:54.700 | Something's going to have to change until then though.

00:33:56.480 | What can I, what's the best I can do with my time?

00:33:58.600 | It gives you confidence.

00:33:59.600 | It gives you a sense of efficacy and it can really reduce that sense of stress that comes

00:34:05.260 | from my God.

00:34:06.260 | I know I'm forgetting things.

00:34:08.860 | So there's my five steps.

00:34:10.900 | It's not going to make you the most organized person in the world, but it's going to make

00:34:13.460 | you more organized than 99% of the people who work in this world.

00:34:17.460 | So it's a great place to get started.

00:34:20.220 | Do you have those six lists in every board in Trello?

00:34:24.140 | Yeah.

00:34:25.140 | So that's a more advanced tip.

00:34:26.620 | So as you get more advanced in the system, what you then do is clone the six list system

00:34:32.780 | for the different roles in your life.

00:34:34.500 | So we've talked about this on the show.

00:34:36.460 | Sometimes I have different roles in my life, writer, researcher, teacher, professor, media

00:34:43.740 | company related.

00:34:44.740 | Each of those has its own board.

00:34:47.580 | All six of those lists are in each board.

00:34:50.440 | So that's one of the more advanced things you can get to.

00:34:52.580 | And there, if you have multiple roles, like so many of us in complex jobs do, you can

00:34:56.540 | just deal contextually with one role at a time and not mix together tasks from different

00:35:01.020 | things.

00:35:02.020 | Like I don't want to think about Jesse Skeleton at the same time that I'm thinking about

00:35:06.220 | grading, get my grading post for my discrete mathematics class.

00:35:10.180 | So sort of having those worlds separate is one of these advanced tips you can get to.

00:35:13.900 | But just start with the six list.

00:35:17.140 | All right.

00:35:19.140 | So there we go.

00:35:20.140 | Nitty gritty.

00:35:21.140 | I like to balance the big picture with the nitty gritty.

00:35:22.740 | We got now some practical questions to get to about these type of ideas and how you put

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00:39:22.220 | All right, Jesse, let's do some questions.

00:39:28.100 | Sounds good.

00:39:29.100 | Who we got first?

00:39:31.260 | First question's from William.

00:39:32.860 | I find it much more feasible and fulfilling to create and stick to a plan for my personal

00:39:37.500 | life than my job.

00:39:38.900 | I love working towards these daily and big picture goals as they seem to give me purpose.

00:39:43.180 | I do love the company that I work for and feel that engineering is a good fit for me.

00:39:47.100 | So how can I make my career a more important part of my life?

00:39:50.900 | Well, William, there's three things I'm going to suggest because you're heading down from

00:39:56.320 | a psychological perspective, a somewhat dangerous road.

00:40:00.380 | This idea of my work is not what I'm excited about, these other things are.

00:40:06.780 | That can really lead you to despair or job hopping or radical changes that are not well

00:40:12.900 | justified.

00:40:13.900 | Well, why don't I just make canoes full time as my job?

00:40:16.340 | I don't need to be an engineer.

00:40:17.340 | And then you realize that for the most part, people don't want to buy canoes.

00:40:20.540 | So I have three things to suggest for you.

00:40:22.460 | One, and this is not going to surprise longtime listeners, lifestyle-centric career planning.

00:40:29.060 | So when your job, what you're doing in your job, and more importantly, what you're trying

00:40:33.160 | to get to in your job is part of a vision of a lifestyle that resonates with you, you're

00:40:39.100 | excited about and feel really strongly about, your motivation for what you're doing professionally

00:40:44.860 | raises because it's not just an arbitrary thing.

00:40:47.100 | I just have this job.

00:40:48.100 | It's no, no, here's what I'm doing.

00:40:49.540 | I work at this engineering firm.

00:40:51.780 | This income is part of this larger vision we have for our lifestyle.

00:40:56.020 | And I have goals for what I'm trying to do professionally.

00:40:58.100 | I want to actually move over to this type of work within engineering.

00:41:03.660 | And once I master this, then move to contract basis, which will allow us to move over to

00:41:09.700 | this small town in Cape Cod, which is actually part of this bigger lifestyle vision we have

00:41:13.660 | of sort of living in Truro in the pine forest and working remotely and living cheaply.

00:41:19.180 | And we have this whole plan.

00:41:20.820 | And my work is building us towards that in a very concrete, tangible way.

00:41:24.220 | Now you're going to be motivated about work.

00:41:26.740 | Because your episodic future thinking center of your brain is saying, yes, this is leading

00:41:30.620 | us towards this bigger vision that we have really inculcated in ourselves, psychologically

00:41:35.100 | speaking as being highly resonant.

00:41:37.020 | So you need to have that bigger plan and see how work fits into it.

00:41:42.580 | I think a lot in this case, when I think about these examples, I think a lot about Mike Rowe

00:41:47.500 | from that old Discovery Channel job that showed dirty jobs where he went and spent time with

00:41:52.380 | people doing "dirty jobs."

00:41:55.620 | So these were more not knowledge work jobs, but more manual jobs, manual but non-knowledge

00:42:03.460 | work.

00:42:04.460 | So, you know, septic tank cleaners or roadkill picker uppers.

00:42:09.260 | And he gave this great talk.

00:42:10.780 | It's a TEDx talk.

00:42:12.860 | This was from years back.

00:42:14.660 | And he gave this great talk about the people he profiled on dirty jobs.

00:42:20.060 | And he said about him, a lot of these people are very happy.

00:42:22.700 | He said, you know, I knew a roadkill picker upper who would whistle on his way to work.

00:42:28.020 | He knew multiple, he had spent time with multiple septic tank cleaners who are incredibly fulfilled.

00:42:33.860 | And why was this?

00:42:34.860 | It's because they own their own business.

00:42:38.340 | They were making good money.

00:42:39.340 | They had their arms around their finances.

00:42:41.020 | This was supporting their family.

00:42:42.300 | They had a nice house by the lake.

00:42:44.660 | They were, they had a vision of their lifestyle and how they fit into their family, their

00:42:49.900 | community life, that this work and this business they created was part of.

00:42:53.860 | The content, and this was his big point, the content of the work is not what's important.

00:42:58.260 | It is the role of the work in their lifestyle, the role of their work in the life that they

00:43:01.460 | think is worth living.

00:43:03.660 | When what you're doing fits with that, it can be incredibly fulfilling.

00:43:07.060 | It is much more of a recent conceit, a conceit, conceit.

00:43:12.780 | Talk to the Jesse.

00:43:13.780 | I thought I was going to look that word up.

00:43:17.020 | More recent conceit.

00:43:18.140 | Well, you always use a lot of like, a lot of vocabulary.

00:43:21.460 | So I'm always like looking stuff up.

00:43:22.860 | Yeah.

00:43:23.860 | In this case, I'm just mispronouncing things.

00:43:24.860 | It's a more recent conceit that the content of your job really matters.

00:43:30.780 | This really emerged.

00:43:31.780 | I mean, I wrote a whole book about this.

00:43:33.140 | So good they can't ignore you.

00:43:34.140 | It came out in 2012.

00:43:35.620 | This really emerges in the 1990s with the whole follow your passion movement.

00:43:39.180 | It's not a timeless movement.

00:43:40.420 | It's a movement that arises in the 1990s that suddenly puts a lot more emphasis on the content

00:43:45.660 | of your work.

00:43:46.780 | The content of your work matching intrinsic passion is the source of happiness.

00:43:50.940 | This was the idea here.

00:43:52.660 | And Mike Rowe was saying that's nonsense.

00:43:54.140 | The content of your work is often not important.

00:43:56.020 | It's not that I like the physical act of cleaning the septic tank, but I like running my own

00:44:00.180 | business and the flexibility and the money and the respectability and the ability to

00:44:03.620 | support myself and my family.

00:44:05.220 | And I like the people I work for.

00:44:08.340 | So lifestyle-centric career planning gets you away from just, do I like the specific

00:44:12.700 | task I'm doing today in my job?

00:44:14.300 | Because there be dragons.

00:44:15.340 | That's not anywhere good.

00:44:17.380 | Number two, you need to connect more with the people you work with, connect more with

00:44:20.180 | the mission of the company.

00:44:22.460 | Extroverts tend to be happier in their jobs.

00:44:25.460 | They're really into the life of the different people they work around.

00:44:29.740 | Those of us who are introverts have to do this work systematically.

00:44:34.120 | My dad was an extrovert.

00:44:35.120 | So when I would go to his office, he knew the life story of every single person who

00:44:39.420 | worked for him and was legitimately interested into it.

00:44:42.860 | That makes a big difference in your experience of work when you're really connected to all

00:44:46.180 | the people around you and what's going on.

00:44:48.420 | Us introverts have to make that effort, especially now in the era of these higher level jobs

00:44:53.660 | give you huge autonomy in terms of when you want to come in or not.

00:44:57.940 | And it's possible to barely come into your office.

00:45:00.100 | You can completely isolate yourself from other people and you have to fight that systematically.

00:45:04.540 | I'm going to go into the office.

00:45:05.940 | I'm going to talk to multiple people.

00:45:07.220 | I'm going to put time in my schedule, get lunches with people.

00:45:10.180 | It really changes your relationship to your work.

00:45:12.420 | I mean, I can feel this difference even in my own life.

00:45:16.620 | The sort of pre-pandemic, there's an era where I was going to Georgetown five days a week.

00:45:24.660 | I just would go every day like a normal job because I don't want to be at home.

00:45:28.060 | When we had young kids, we had a nanny and I was like, I don't want to be home with the

00:45:31.220 | nanny.

00:45:32.220 | I just went in every day and I was like, let me commute.

00:45:34.700 | And this is what I did.

00:45:35.700 | And compare it to like now post-pandemic where now I'm coming in more, but there was definitely

00:45:39.540 | a period where it was like people just weren't coming in that you're coming in to teach.

00:45:43.500 | That was kind of it.

00:45:44.500 | It's a huge difference.

00:45:45.500 | I have all these nostalgic memories of that earlier time at Georgetown where I was not

00:45:49.780 | just connected to the people there, connected to the campus.

00:45:53.660 | Just I knew, hey, they decorate the courtyard behind Healy.

00:45:58.380 | This is when like the Christmas decorations go up and here's the view of the river, just

00:46:02.940 | walking the campus and working in different libraries.

00:46:06.020 | And it had a real strong connection to place that in say 2021, I didn't feel because it

00:46:12.100 | was almost, you know, how elite universities were.

00:46:14.020 | They're almost apologetic about being open.

00:46:15.900 | And it was like, you don't even want to be here.

00:46:18.140 | And just was very different.

00:46:19.140 | It was very transactional.

00:46:20.260 | And now we're coming in much more and it's, it feels a lot better again.

00:46:24.980 | So these things make a difference.

00:46:27.020 | Three, get organized.

00:46:28.700 | So the stuff we talked about at the deep dive of this episode also makes a difference.

00:46:33.300 | When you have your arm around work, you feel efficacious.

00:46:36.080 | When you feel efficacious, you actually feel more motivation and satisfaction about your

00:46:39.420 | work.

00:46:41.520 | Having your act together makes work more enjoyable.

00:46:44.980 | Not having your act together makes it seem like an impossible intrusion.

00:46:49.380 | You kind of hold other people responsible for why is everyone bothering me?

00:46:52.380 | I'm too busy.

00:46:54.020 | And it is a negative force in your life.

00:46:56.380 | Whereas if you act together, like, man, I'm on top of this, it becomes a positive force

00:47:00.700 | in your life.

00:47:01.700 | So I think that's kind of that key word out of motivational psychology, efficacy, sense

00:47:06.660 | of being effective and actually making progress towards your goals.

00:47:11.180 | You feel efficacious, you feel much better, more motivated.

00:47:13.820 | Being organized makes you feel more efficacious.

00:47:15.340 | All right, William.

00:47:16.860 | So let's get hardcore about lifestyle centric career planning.

00:47:19.660 | Let's start connecting to our work and the people who work, who are there and the mission,

00:47:23.300 | like get more involved in the company.

00:47:27.120 | And let's get your act together organizationally.

00:47:28.860 | I think all of that is going to help you feel more motivated to do your actual work.

00:47:32.380 | All right, who do we got next, Jesse?

00:47:35.860 | Next question is from Esteban.

00:47:37.860 | I've been struggling with the Z garnic effect in college due to group work projects.

00:47:43.540 | I'm a software engineering student and it is common that almost everyone leaves everything

00:47:47.300 | to the last minute.

00:47:48.540 | I've tried to tell my friends about time management, but they don't seem to hear me and I always

00:47:52.100 | have to correct what they did.

00:47:53.660 | The situation takes up incredible amounts of time that I could spend doing other things

00:47:57.960 | more valuable to me.

00:47:59.160 | How can I solve this problem?

00:48:00.820 | Oh, Esteban, I feel your pain.

00:48:03.860 | Welcome to my, welcome to my college experience.

00:48:06.900 | Imagine this, that the guy, the kid who was writing books about time management and being

00:48:13.140 | organized in college while still in college.

00:48:17.100 | Imagine how I felt whenever group projects came along.

00:48:21.920 | College students are terrible at being students.

00:48:27.380 | If people worked in other jobs the way that college students worked at their jobs, we

00:48:33.460 | would be living in a Mad Max hellscape.

00:48:36.540 | The power system would shut down, animals would be running wild.

00:48:41.100 | College students are very terrible at being college students.

00:48:42.940 | Now this has been to my advantage in two ways, if I can digress into my own stuff.

00:48:48.220 | I'll come back to you, Esteban.

00:48:49.220 | But in two ways, this was to my advantage.

00:48:50.980 | Number one, by being someone who was not really, really bad at being a student, I could really

00:48:55.980 | dominate.

00:48:56.980 | Because you don't have to be brilliant, you just have to be like, in the world of work,

00:49:01.740 | what you would be considered to be a generally organized person.

00:49:05.500 | In the context of college, you're Thor, you're Wonder Woman.

00:49:11.540 | It's like, my God, this is someone who can move things with their mind.

00:49:16.460 | When I got more organized over the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, I

00:49:20.300 | went from mixed grades to 4.0 every quarter, except for one quarter I got A-.

00:49:25.860 | It makes such a big difference.

00:49:26.860 | It was also to my advantage because I've sold hundreds of thousands of copies of books

00:49:31.500 | to students about how to be more organized because it makes such a big difference.

00:49:34.580 | So I feel your pain.

00:49:35.940 | I hated group projects too because college students are terrible at doing work.

00:49:41.220 | You kind of have to grin and bear it.

00:49:43.500 | You get away from group projects when you can.

00:49:46.420 | If you're looking for groups informally, like to help you work on your problem sets,

00:49:51.340 | be incredibly selective.

00:49:54.100 | This happened at college.

00:49:55.540 | I actually heard from this guy a couple of years ago.

00:49:57.460 | He heard me somewhere and was like, "Hey, do you remember me from college?"

00:50:00.660 | I was a pretty good computer science student, as you might imagine.

00:50:04.340 | MIT, went on to do all this other stuff.

00:50:06.460 | I was a pretty good computer science student.

00:50:09.420 | There was one kid that I could do problem sets with that was useful.

00:50:12.340 | I found the one guy.

00:50:15.940 | We worked on our algorithms problem sets together.

00:50:18.020 | We worked on our theory of computation problem sets together.

00:50:21.620 | We could keep up with each other and it was useful.

00:50:23.500 | I realized, be in no other groups because it just wasn't that useful.

00:50:27.140 | You got to find the people that you should actually work with.

00:50:30.940 | When you're stuck doing group projects, it just kind of sucks, but also it's college.

00:50:34.820 | What do you do?

00:50:35.820 | You try to set things up so that the work is kind of clearly set up.

00:50:40.020 | Give yourself the work, even if it's more work, that you can get it done ahead of time

00:50:45.140 | and not have much to do.

00:50:46.660 | Then finally, you got to stay up the day before projects are due.

00:50:51.460 | This is just college life.

00:50:52.500 | It's like fraternity hazing.

00:50:54.300 | We're going to stay up late to work on this thing.

00:50:56.100 | We could have got this done before, but just assume that's what's going to happen.

00:51:00.420 | Trust me, as you get older, the standards for organization go up and things will get

00:51:05.700 | somewhat easier.

00:51:06.700 | >> Yeah, you never would have done a problem set with me.

00:51:09.180 | I always had to track down.

00:51:11.380 | I had this one guy that I would use for the first couple of years and he pretty much dumped

00:51:16.940 | me.

00:51:17.940 | Then I had to find a new one for the software.

00:51:18.940 | >> He dumped you because you were too lazy or because you were too smart?

00:51:22.580 | >> No, I wasn't too smart.

00:51:23.980 | He was really smart.

00:51:24.980 | I just needed help with a lot of stuff.

00:51:27.540 | >> You got to find someone who's right at your level.

00:51:31.900 | Then you're pushing each other a little bit.

00:51:34.980 | And that are willing.

00:51:35.980 | For me, it was the organization.

00:51:36.980 | They're willing to, I'm saying, I know this problem set is due on Friday, but in my autopilot

00:51:42.260 | schedule Tuesday afternoon is the right time to work on this.

00:51:45.020 | They're willing and able to say, "I'll work on this Tuesday afternoon."

00:51:47.260 | Some people just can't do that.

00:51:49.060 | >> I was good about maybe doing that.

00:51:51.060 | So I helped to a certain degree.

00:51:52.700 | And I needed to see them work through some of the problems so I could do them.

00:51:56.660 | And then.

00:51:57.660 | >> So here's my just outright brag.

00:52:02.580 | And I loved working with this guy.

00:52:04.260 | And he wrote me a few years ago.

00:52:05.260 | It was like, "Hey, remember we used to work together."

00:52:07.100 | >> Yeah, you mentioned him in the show before.

00:52:08.540 | >> Yeah.

00:52:09.540 | And his thing was, it was something like working with you on those problem sets.

00:52:12.620 | It was something like, whatever.

00:52:15.700 | It was very complimentary.

00:52:16.700 | That's why I realized maybe he was like, "I'm not going to go to grad school."

00:52:19.500 | Or whatever it was, like, "I thought I was really smart on this stuff and then working

00:52:24.020 | with you."

00:52:25.020 | So it was like some big compliment of like, he should have told me that at the time because

00:52:27.380 | it would have gave me more confidence.

00:52:29.460 | But anyways, I thought he was very smart because.

00:52:32.800 | >> But then it's pretty wild because then when he went to MIT, you're like, "Oh my God,

00:52:35.780 | I'm in a different game."

00:52:36.780 | Right?

00:52:37.780 | >> They're so good.

00:52:38.780 | >> I know.

00:52:39.780 | >> They're so good.

00:52:40.780 | Now I will say I aced MIT.

00:52:41.780 | So from a class perspective, I did ace MIT and I did pretty well.

00:52:43.500 | But man, there was people there that were beast.

00:52:45.500 | >> Yeah.

00:52:46.500 | >> The beast at MIT, especially among the faculty.

00:52:51.900 | Faculty in particular, but there are just some real beast.

00:52:54.100 | Yeah.

00:52:55.100 | So it's, I mean, I see it completely like you're playing high school ball.

00:53:00.860 | >> Yeah.

00:53:01.860 | I was just, I was thinking about like a draft pick.

00:53:02.860 | I was like, you're around all in like top 10 draft picks.

00:53:04.900 | >> You're playing high school ball.

00:53:06.140 | You're like, "I'm, this is, come on, I'm dominating these games."

00:53:09.020 | Like basketball or football is not so bad.

00:53:11.100 | You're playing football.

00:53:12.100 | You're like, "It's not so bad.

00:53:13.420 | I like this.

00:53:14.420 | I like this game."

00:53:15.420 | And then, you know, Alabama recruits you.

00:53:18.580 | And you're like, "These guys are 350 pounds and they can jump over me.

00:53:23.380 | Like what the hell is going on?"

00:53:24.780 | Right?

00:53:25.780 | It's like a completely different, it's a completely different game.

00:53:27.100 | And then like a few people percolate up to be the stars in that game and, you know, become

00:53:32.620 | famous.

00:53:33.620 | And it was like, I'm the guy who got drafted, got picked at Alabama, but did not go on to

00:53:38.100 | be the star NFL quarterback.

00:53:39.980 | That's like the way, the way I see it.

00:53:41.340 | There's always like a level up.

00:53:43.300 | Always a level up.

00:53:44.300 | All right.

00:53:45.300 | Enough, enough, humble bragging without the humbleness.

00:53:48.460 | Let's move on.

00:53:49.460 | What's the next question?

00:53:50.460 | All right.

00:53:51.460 | Next question is from Felipe.

00:53:52.460 | How should I organize my deep work time?

00:53:55.060 | Should I spread a big task over four days for one hour each day versus blocking off

00:53:59.420 | a four hour block on a single day?

00:54:01.740 | Ooh, Jesse, I'm going to consider this our slow productivity corner.

00:54:07.740 | We get some sound effects, please.

00:54:12.660 | Beautiful and professional.

00:54:13.660 | I love it.

00:54:14.660 | So as, as listeners know, in honor of or in celebration of my book, Slow Productivity

00:54:19.180 | that's coming out in March, in every episode, I like to have one question that is somewhat

00:54:23.100 | related to concepts of slow productivity.

00:54:25.140 | We call it the slow productivity corner.

00:54:27.620 | I'm going to count Felipe's question as today's slow productivity corner because he's talking

00:54:32.260 | about should I spread out deep work?

00:54:37.100 | What seems to be relevant to principle two of slow productivity, which is work at a natural

00:54:42.980 | pace, ups and downs of intensity, taking more time, et cetera.

00:54:48.740 | Now this is a reverse a roo, if I can use the technical term here, because what we're

00:54:52.140 | seeing is something that seems like a good example of this idea of working at a natural

00:54:57.820 | pace, but is actually organizational foos gold.

00:55:02.420 | There is a trap here.

00:55:03.740 | It is a, uh, an artificial slowing down that I think actually makes things worse.

00:55:09.780 | So let me explain.

00:55:12.000 | So in Felipe's case, I would say work one four hour block.

00:55:16.820 | Don't spread that out over four one hour blocks.

00:55:20.700 | Now why is that right?

00:55:21.700 | If I'm, if, if the slow productivity mindset says be more, let's chill out and be more

00:55:25.340 | natural at our pace.

00:55:26.380 | Why is that?

00:55:27.380 | Well, because when we get to the details of this type of artificial slowing, what we have

00:55:30.900 | to account for is the cost of overhead.

00:55:34.760 | So when I look at my time block planner and I say, I'm about to do one hour of work on

00:55:38.220 | this larger project, I don't just flick a switch and now I am all in on that project.

00:55:44.220 | And over the next 60 minutes, I get 60 minutes of intense work done.

00:55:47.300 | No, there's huge overhead.

00:55:48.540 | All right.

00:55:49.540 | What am I working on now?

00:55:50.540 | I got to clear out of my head what I was working on before.

00:55:53.260 | I got to bring in the context of what's happening here and remember all the different things.

00:55:57.740 | And where was I when I was last working on this, then I have to build up that intellectual

00:56:01.540 | head of steam where you sort of get that intellectual momentum and your mind is focusing in more.

00:56:06.500 | You get those first initial results, which gets your motivational system going, which

00:56:09.740 | allows you to actually capture more energy into your cognition.

00:56:13.460 | And you get that head of steam going and now you're working all cylinders, but you're 30

00:56:18.620 | minutes into your block.

00:56:20.780 | So then you end up getting about 30 minutes of all high cylinder work and then you're

00:56:24.820 | done.

00:56:26.560 | So when you spread this work out over four sessions, you're paying that overhead cost

00:56:30.740 | on each of these sessions.

00:56:32.080 | You're not getting four deep hours of work out of those four sessions.

00:56:36.460 | It maybe is going to take six sections to get that same amount of work done.

00:56:40.360 | Not only does it take longer, because again, slow productivity is not about just winning

00:56:43.680 | the game of in the end, how many total minutes were required.

00:56:47.240 | Those are worse minutes.

00:56:49.040 | It's like the ratio of sort of, I'm not in the zone to time I am in the zone.

00:56:53.860 | That ratio is not very good on the project.

00:56:55.920 | And that's just mentally more difficult and taxing.

00:56:59.720 | You do the four hour block, okay, 30 minutes into it, you're going full cylinders.

00:57:05.040 | And then you get three and a half hours at full speed, you can start to do some damage,

00:57:08.680 | especially if this is really creative or interesting type of work.

00:57:12.760 | So this notion of sort of slowing down and working at a natural pace scale really matters

00:57:17.160 | here.

00:57:18.160 | So we are talking about like a particular chunk of work, just getting after that chunk

00:57:21.400 | of work might be the right thing to do.

00:57:23.520 | If you're talking about at a bigger scale, many, many chunks of work.

00:57:27.720 | So the difference between I want to finish a draft of this book chapter, and I want to

00:57:31.720 | write this book.

00:57:33.840 | Now you want that pacing to be more natural.

00:57:36.080 | Now you don't want it's just every day, six hours for six weeks, we're going to write

00:57:39.440 | this book, it's like now spend the year to write the book and, and work on it and then

00:57:43.280 | take breaks and come back to it and let that let that be more natural in the pacing.

00:57:48.000 | So the idea of natural pacing works at a bigger scale, when you get to the small scale, you

00:57:53.680 | have to be careful about these nitty gritty details, like the overhead involved, like

00:57:57.480 | the cognitive reality of working on specific things.

00:58:00.080 | So Felipe, that is our slow productivity corner of the day.

00:58:02.280 | I appreciate the question, because it allowed us to talk about this common trap when it

00:58:06.960 | comes to work pacing.

00:58:09.880 | We still need our music, Jesse.

00:58:11.320 | I was just thinking that I got to get the music.

00:58:13.440 | We need slow productivity.

00:58:14.440 | People have been sending in suggestions.

00:58:15.440 | Oh, they Oh, can you send me?

00:58:16.840 | I should people have been emailing not songs, just suggestions for like what the music should

00:58:20.240 | be like.

00:58:21.240 | Okay, so no mp3.

00:58:22.760 | No mp3s.

00:58:23.760 | Send if you have an mp3, by the way, you think we should use as our slow productivity corner

00:58:27.280 | of the theme music, send that to Jesse at calnewport.com.

00:58:30.000 | Yeah, just make sure it's like, you know, five seconds.

00:58:33.080 | Yeah, but you do not send a well, but slow.

00:58:35.720 | So we should have like, three minute song, a Brahms concerto.

00:58:41.400 | It takes 17 minutes.

00:58:42.400 | Let's keep rolling.

00:58:43.400 | What do we got next?

00:58:47.760 | Next question is from Martin.

00:58:49.680 | Currently I'm enrolled in a part time online program and due to various issues, I do not

00:58:53.720 | know yet if I'll be continuing with the program during the next semester.

00:58:57.600 | Consequently, my quarterly plan is somewhat open ended.

00:59:01.280 | How do you structure your plans to accommodate such situations?

00:59:04.280 | Well, Martin, write two plans.

00:59:07.600 | One that makes sense if you end up continuing with this online education program the next

00:59:13.360 | semester and one plan for if you do not, and then you can just switch to whatever one fits.

00:59:20.400 | So I wouldn't overthink it two plans and switches needed.

00:59:23.480 | All right, let's roll.

00:59:24.480 | What do we got, Jesse?

00:59:26.640 | Next question is from Tracy.

00:59:28.480 | I'd love to know where the book where your book reading fits in your day.

00:59:31.880 | Is it time blocked?

00:59:32.880 | Or do you just keep a book near you at all times when you get some free time?

00:59:36.840 | I have an ever increasing list of books I'd like to read, including now the ones that

00:59:41.760 | you just mentioned.

00:59:42.760 | It's a good question, Tracy.

00:59:44.840 | I don't time block reading for the most part because I'm doing my reading outside of my

00:59:48.840 | work day and I don't time block my time outside of my work day.

00:59:52.800 | I have a few things I do.

00:59:54.960 | I do keep books around.

00:59:57.360 | So I do have downtime, like a meeting lunch, for example, to have a book to read.

01:00:02.760 | I will do that.

01:00:04.740 | Our family often has a reading block in the evening.

01:00:06.840 | It's just not every day, but it's not an uncommon post dinner activity.

01:00:11.440 | Like let's let's all go do some reading.

01:00:14.600 | I will sometimes add an impromptu reading block during the workday itself, not necessarily

01:00:18.640 | a time block, just if something got done earlier, if I have some time to kill.

01:00:22.520 | And I read every night after the whole family goes to bed.

01:00:25.920 | And so depending on how into I'm in a book, I might stay up later than other days.

01:00:31.200 | That gets through a lot of books.

01:00:32.560 | And then I combine that with finishing sprints.

01:00:34.840 | Hey, I'm into this book.

01:00:36.320 | I did this the other day.

01:00:38.120 | It was 100 pages into a 300 page book.

01:00:41.200 | I'm like, you know what?

01:00:42.480 | I have some time.

01:00:43.480 | Let's just go for it.

01:00:44.840 | And I read for like two hours that evening, another hour that night after I went to bed

01:00:49.040 | and just like this, knock this book out.

01:00:50.480 | So finishing sprints also help there.

01:00:52.880 | My fastest book reading recently, actually, Jesse, is I got a book to thirst.

01:00:57.400 | Someone recommended it to me on a Thursday at a two thirty meeting.

01:01:04.060 | So as a meeting at two thirty, someone mentioned this book and finished it by Friday, Friday,

01:01:11.080 | Friday evening.

01:01:12.080 | So sometimes I just go for it.

01:01:13.440 | Like I just stayed up late tonight, got up, read, put aside time to read.

01:01:18.040 | So sometimes if I'm really into a book, I just rock and rolled.

01:01:20.280 | I had a pretty cool sprint the other day because my loan was ending at the library on Kindle.

01:01:25.440 | Yeah.

01:01:26.440 | And then so I was like, I got to finish this in a day.

01:01:28.720 | Now, you know, the trick, if you leave that the book open on your Kindle, it will it won't

01:01:36.320 | take it back unless you actually leave that book and go somewhere else.

01:01:39.240 | Oh, really?

01:01:40.240 | Yeah.

01:01:41.240 | So if you have a loan from the library on your Kindle, my wife does this a lot.

01:01:45.280 | If you accidentally click out of the book and go somewhere else, it sucks it back.

01:01:49.240 | It can't suck it back when it's literally open.

01:01:51.160 | So just leave it open on your Kindle.

01:01:53.720 | You can you can buy yourself some extra time.

01:01:55.760 | How is the technology not advanced enough to be able to do that?

01:01:58.640 | I don't know.

01:01:59.640 | It seems weird, doesn't it?

01:02:01.040 | And maybe it's different because you'd be D.C. or Virginia.

01:02:03.780 | This is Montgomery County Public Library, but they're probably all using Libby.

01:02:08.160 | Libby.

01:02:09.160 | Yeah.

01:02:10.160 | Yes.

01:02:11.160 | Yeah.

01:02:12.160 | And now that we've said that publicly, they're going to close that loophole.

01:02:13.560 | My wife's always bragging to me about, like, I got this from the library and could keep

01:02:19.360 | it open.

01:02:20.360 | I got that from the library.

01:02:21.360 | And I'm like, you know, you're married to a writer who makes his money off people buying

01:02:25.520 | his books.

01:02:26.520 | Like, why are you always bragging to me about how much little little money you've managed

01:02:30.440 | to spend to read books?

01:02:31.560 | I am a maximalist.

01:02:33.880 | I buy books just because I I'm not even going to read it.

01:02:38.280 | I buy books.

01:02:39.400 | I will on multiple occasions.

01:02:41.240 | I'll buy a book.

01:02:42.720 | I'm excited to read like from Amazon and then like, oh, there's not going to get here for

01:02:46.880 | four days.

01:02:47.880 | I'll buy the Kindle version and read it while I'm waiting for the heart.

01:02:51.040 | Really?

01:02:52.040 | Physical copy to come.

01:02:53.040 | I'm like, I'm into this book and I'll probably want to have a physical copy for my library.

01:02:56.400 | I've done this twice now in the last two weeks where I bought two copies of the book.

01:03:00.040 | I'm a book buying maximalist because it was one of the things when I was coming up in

01:03:03.080 | grad school, I had no money.

01:03:04.520 | A lot of student loans, no money.

01:03:06.240 | I was a grad student and was, you know, starting to make some money from the blog just like

01:03:10.600 | a little bit to me, like the greatest thing of any financial windfall I've ever have is

01:03:14.960 | where the Amazon associate links on my blog at calnewport.com.

01:03:18.600 | Oh, you mentioned this before.

01:03:20.040 | Allowed me to basically buy books.

01:03:22.000 | And we're talking, it was like $200 a month in Amazon credits.

01:03:25.560 | But I was like, basically I could buy any book I wanted.

01:03:28.400 | And to me that was the greatest.

01:03:30.480 | All other financial milestones I've passed.

01:03:32.680 | The ability to not have to worry about buying the cost of buying books has always been the

01:03:36.680 | greatest.

01:03:37.680 | So because I'm a writer, I'm just always, I just buy books left and right.

01:03:39.000 | I want the authors to have the money.

01:03:43.320 | So if you ever have to move, you're gonna have to pack up a lot of books.

01:03:46.680 | Yeah.

01:03:47.680 | Um, but I, so I, the way I deal with that, I talked about this on the show is I have my

01:03:51.020 | various shelves.

01:03:52.880 | So like my study at my house has a bunch of built in shelves and then our family room

01:03:57.880 | has a bunch of built in shelves.

01:03:59.080 | And then we keep two bookshelves here at the HQ.

01:04:02.800 | That's my space.

01:04:04.400 | So things have to rotate out.

01:04:06.520 | So as new stuff comes in, I'll just take the worst stuff off the shelf to replace it with

01:04:10.800 | stuff I like better.

01:04:12.140 | So like over time, the, your number of books, once you reach stasis doesn't increase, but

01:04:16.880 | the quality of your collection goes.

01:04:18.240 | So then you just donate those to the library?

01:04:19.880 | Yeah.

01:04:20.880 | Okay.

01:04:21.880 | Yeah.

01:04:22.880 | Or wherever.

01:04:23.880 | I do the same thing with my closet actually.

01:04:24.880 | Yeah.

01:04:25.880 | You donate it to places that'll take them.

01:04:26.880 | Yeah.

01:04:27.880 | And then that way over time you get like a better and better collection.

01:04:30.560 | And so like now I'm in the process of getting rid of books.

01:04:32.560 | You're like, yeah, I kept this, but like it's not so great.

01:04:35.560 | Um, all right, let's do a call.

01:04:38.640 | I always like those.

01:04:39.760 | Sounds good.

01:04:40.760 | Hi, my name is Sahil.

01:04:41.760 | First, I just wanted to thank you for your books.

01:04:46.640 | Your book, Deep Work has had a profound impact on my life.

01:04:49.640 | It motivated me to return to school in computer science.

01:04:53.000 | After having not been a great student for most of my life, I've been able to maintain

01:04:55.960 | a 4.0 GPA and was recently awarded a job at a Fang tech company, which has been amazing.

01:05:03.920 | My question now was the way I was able to achieve all these results was through a lot

01:05:07.280 | of shallow work where I followed your advice, the removing distractions where I removed

01:05:10.520 | video games, I removed social networks, I removed a lot of my friends and hangouts that

01:05:14.840 | I was participating in and just completely focused on school.

01:05:18.120 | Unfortunately, I also was not able to focus deeply.

01:05:21.720 | So a lot of times I was zoned out during class or have to watch lecture recordings three,

01:05:25.760 | four times before truly understanding the material.

01:05:28.400 | So I was just working for ridiculously long stretches of time in order to achieve these

01:05:32.400 | results.

01:05:33.400 | I realized that's not going to be possible going into my career, nor do I want it to

01:05:37.280 | be possible because it takes a huge toll on my life.

01:05:40.800 | So my question is how can I actually train those deep focus muscles to actually get tasks

01:05:46.000 | done in less time and actually focus deeply?

01:05:49.440 | Thank you.

01:05:50.440 | Well, Sahil, I appreciate this because it's a mix of a case study and a good question.

01:05:54.800 | It was a nice case study there.

01:05:56.560 | This goes back to what we were just talking about with students being terrible at being

01:05:59.880 | students and how if you're not terrible at being a student, you have this huge advantage.

01:06:03.760 | Here is another example.

01:06:05.360 | Sahil said, I was not a good student.

01:06:08.520 | I returned to work actually caring about the mechanics of being a student and got a began

01:06:15.840 | getting four O's, perfect GPAs and got a job at a Fane company, Fane company.

01:06:19.920 | These are the big tech companies, so Facebook, Amazon, Google.

01:06:25.680 | And what's the in in Fane?

01:06:27.080 | I think Microsoft, but that's an in.

01:06:28.960 | Netflix, right?

01:06:29.960 | Netflix.

01:06:30.960 | Yeah.

01:06:31.960 | So see, it works.

01:06:33.440 | Caring about how you work works.

01:06:34.860 | By the way, the same thing happens in the world of work as well.

01:06:37.320 | It's a little bit less pronounced because the floor is higher.

01:06:41.220 | So in the world of students, of college students, the floor on people's work habits is so low,

01:06:47.820 | so low.

01:06:48.820 | Like, I'm surprised that like you aren't walking in the walls low, that if you're a little

01:06:53.260 | bit organized, you have this huge relative gap in the world of work.

01:06:56.780 | The floor is higher.

01:06:58.780 | If you worked at a normal job, like most college students work at their at their work, you

01:07:02.540 | would get fired pretty quickly.

01:07:03.920 | But the floor is not super high.

01:07:06.660 | And a lot of people are just throwing stress and anxiety and just hours at raising the

01:07:11.060 | floor.

01:07:12.220 | So again, being systematic about how you organize yourself in the world of work, it still opens

01:07:18.140 | up a gap with most people that you can get a big reward out of.

01:07:21.620 | Let's get to the actual question, though.

01:07:23.500 | So Sahil worries, we're not very comfortable with long periods of intense focus.

01:07:29.000 | So as a student, he could just take a lot of time doing half focus.

01:07:33.500 | He's not going to do that in his job.

01:07:34.660 | How do you get better at actually training your ability to concentrate for long periods

01:07:38.800 | of time?

01:07:39.800 | So I'm going to give you three pieces of advice.

01:07:42.360 | One is interval training.

01:07:44.300 | You literally practice hard concentration using a timer.

01:07:48.500 | So you take a piece of work you're going to do.

01:07:51.060 | You set a timer maybe for 30 minutes and you say for that 30 minutes, this is full out

01:07:55.340 | intense concentration.

01:07:56.780 | If my mind wanders or I zone out, I stop that time.

01:07:59.020 | I'll come back and try this again later.

01:08:00.220 | So you have a clear indicator of success or failure.

01:08:03.160 | Success means I maintained full concentration for basically the whole period.

01:08:08.700 | Once you're comfortable with a given duration, you up the time by 10 minutes.

01:08:13.340 | You're just straight up practicing hard concentration.

01:08:17.840 | If you're roughly at a rate, which is what I've observed when I've done this with students

01:08:20.900 | of increasing the duration roughly once every week or two, you can in about two or three

01:08:25.740 | months significantly improve your comfort level with intense concentration.

01:08:30.040 | So practice directly what you want to practice.

01:08:33.180 | Two, reading.

01:08:35.820 | That's your cognitive calisthenics right there.

01:08:38.020 | Reading hard books, books that have difficult information or complex theories.

01:08:43.780 | You could read a complicated primary source like I'm going to read Nietzsche concurrently

01:08:50.580 | with a secondary source about that primary source.

01:08:52.740 | You can kind of go back and forth and have this framework for trying to understand the

01:08:56.220 | primary source that you're trying to read.

01:08:58.980 | Reading is just direct exercise with sustained concentration on abstract symbolic concepts.

01:09:04.740 | Big thinkers are big readers.

01:09:06.740 | So that needs to be your training.

01:09:08.380 | And then three, you need to spend a regular time completely away from distractions.

01:09:11.780 | This gets your mind very comfortable with itself.

01:09:16.100 | Combine this with something interesting.

01:09:17.420 | I would suggest hikes, walking through nature, long walks.

01:09:21.620 | Your phone is turned off in the back of your backpack just for emergencies.

01:09:24.780 | There's nothing in your ear.

01:09:25.780 | It's just you and the world around you and the world between your ears.

01:09:29.020 | It's just comfort.

01:09:30.020 | Your mind gets more comfort just being with its own self-generated thoughts and not just

01:09:36.580 | reacting to digital inputs.

01:09:39.380 | That's a slower gear.

01:09:41.380 | It gets comfortable with that slower gear.

01:09:43.580 | It gets more comfortable than when it comes time to do concentration on something hard

01:09:46.340 | because that's a slower gear than what you get when you get a bunch of those distractions.

01:09:50.620 | Just combine that then with the digital hygiene you already said you're doing, which is being

01:09:54.380 | careful about not having too much of algorithmically engineered distraction.

01:09:59.220 | Be sure not to have too much of that in your life.

01:10:02.300 | That is your metaphorical equivalent of smoking cigarettes while you're training for the marathon.

01:10:06.220 | It's kind of productive to what you want to do.

01:10:08.300 | So continue to be very wary about, "I'm on my phone all the time.

01:10:12.660 | I'm looking at TikTok.

01:10:13.660 | Stay away from TikTok."

01:10:15.580 | Use the phone foyer method.

01:10:17.020 | Don't have your phone with you when you're at home.

01:10:19.060 | Have it at the foyer.

01:10:20.620 | You can go there if you need it.

01:10:21.660 | It's not a constant companion.

01:10:23.020 | All the stuff we talk about, keep up that digital hygiene as well.

01:10:26.540 | And it's practice.

01:10:27.540 | You will get better.

01:10:29.300 | You will get better at deep thinking the more you practice.

01:10:32.300 | At first, you'll catch up to good deep thinkers around you.

01:10:34.500 | Then after a while, you'll be notably deeper with your thinking than other people around

01:10:37.700 | you and you'll reap those rewards.

01:10:41.380 | Before we get to our final segment, I want to do a quick case study.

01:10:45.020 | This is where someone sends in a brief summary of how they've used my advice.

01:10:48.580 | This case study comes from Don.

01:10:51.900 | Don says, "I just wanted to share details about the end result of deep work and time

01:10:56.860 | block planning practices that I learned from you.

01:10:59.100 | I first heard your ideas on an episode of NPR's Hidden Brain.

01:11:02.980 | At the time, I was beginning the research for a book about the chimpanzees used during

01:11:07.020 | the first space race.

01:11:08.020 | Your approach helped me reframe my expectations for writing and research sessions.

01:11:13.440 | My goal shifted from producing X number of words or finding X new sources to investing

01:11:19.420 | concentrated time in the work.

01:11:23.020 | Your time block planner and podcast were regular reinforcers of best practices.

01:11:26.460 | As a side note, the book just received a starred review from Kirkus and the review noted the

01:11:31.620 | book's meticulous research.

01:11:34.300 | That meticulous research happened during deep work sessions and I can't thank you enough."

01:11:37.780 | Jesse, he also sent around the citation.

01:11:41.140 | So the book, which comes out in February, is called The Astro Chimps, America's First

01:11:46.420 | Astronauts.

01:11:47.420 | Well, Don, I appreciate that case study.

01:11:52.100 | What that gets to, and I think this is important, is that we have to, and this is one of the

01:11:56.420 | whole points of the book, Deep Work.

01:11:57.700 | You have to value the intensity of concentration.

01:12:03.460 | Intense concentration is itself an intrinsically valuable activity and it produces extrinsically

01:12:08.580 | much more valuable results than less concentrated focus.

01:12:13.260 | So just saying, "I want to make sure I write a thousand words or I spend three hours on

01:12:16.820 | my book," is not the same as saying, "I want to spend three hours concentrated deeply on

01:12:21.660 | my book."

01:12:22.660 | When you're doing high level knowledge creative output, like creating a book, you're doing,

01:12:27.300 | this is alchemy, right?

01:12:28.300 | You're trying to have this brain take in information and congeal it into something that is more

01:12:33.060 | valuable than the information that came in.

01:12:35.700 | The harder you concentrate, the better this result is.

01:12:38.700 | And so the intensity of concentration should be a really key variable when we think about

01:12:42.980 | doing high level knowledge work, but it's often not.

01:12:45.900 | And we know it's not because in the same companies that we make our money off of people doing

01:12:51.040 | high level knowledge work, we also say you should be on Slack.

01:12:54.300 | You should be contact shifting the email back and forth.

01:12:56.700 | You should be doing seven or eight meetings a day because that makes my life more convenient

01:12:59.700 | as a manager.

01:13:00.700 | A complete disregard for the actual goal of trying to get intense concentration, even

01:13:05.660 | though intense concentration is behind almost any major value production in knowledge work.

01:13:09.340 | So I appreciate that case study, Don.

01:13:11.460 | Not just words, it's not just hours, it's not just task list, it's concentration and

01:13:15.700 | the quality of the concentration that matters.

01:13:18.440 | We should talk about that more.

01:13:19.900 | All right, we have a final segment coming up where I'll talk about the books I read

01:13:24.180 | in November, but first let's hear from another sponsor.

01:13:28.100 | In particular, I want to talk about our friends at Blinkist.

01:13:33.260 | The Blinkist app enables you to understand the most important things from over 5,500

01:13:37.900 | nonfiction books and podcasts in just 15 minutes.

01:13:42.660 | These short summaries are called Blinks.

01:13:44.180 | You can read them on the app or you can listen to them in your ear if you're doing something

01:13:48.140 | else.

01:13:49.140 | Thousands of these top nonfiction books have these summaries available through the Blinkist

01:13:53.300 | app.

01:13:54.820 | The way that Jesse and I use Blinkist is to triage what we want to read or not read.

01:14:01.180 | The back jacket of a book gives you a sense of what's in a book, but it's typically not

01:14:05.780 | super detailed.

01:14:08.060 | Reading a blink of a book, a 15-minute summary, which covers the actual main ideas, gives

01:14:12.380 | you a much better sense of what is this book about and is it really worth reading.

01:14:17.540 | It's very effective.

01:14:19.620 | You get a really clear intuition if you listen to a 15-minute summary of like, "Oh, I see

01:14:23.740 | what type of book this is.

01:14:24.740 | Never mind."

01:14:25.740 | Or, "Yes, yes, yes.

01:14:26.860 | I want to hear details on all of those ideas."

01:14:30.020 | So if you're a reader, if you're a believer in deep work, you should be.

01:14:33.260 | Blinkist is a great, think of it as an assistant or booster to the reading life.

01:14:41.780 | Here's the good news.

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01:14:45.860 | Go to Blinkist.com/deep to start your seven-day free trial and you will get 25% off a Blinkist

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01:15:15.500 | We also want to talk about our friends at ExpressVPN.

01:15:22.260 | If you do not use a VPN, you should.

01:15:26.140 | If you don't use a VPN, people can see what websites and services you're communicating

01:15:31.540 | with.

01:15:33.020 | If you're at a wireless access point, people nearby can sniff those packets right out of

01:15:36.540 | the air.

01:15:37.540 | If you're at home, your internet service provider can see your packets and gather this data

01:15:40.580 | and sell it to advertisers, which they do.

01:15:42.980 | So even if the content of your messages is encrypted, the headers that say who you're

01:15:48.660 | talking to, what website, what service are not.

01:15:51.020 | And so everyone can know what you're using with your internet time.

01:15:55.420 | VPN saves you from that and gives you privacy.

01:15:58.460 | The way a VPN works is that you write down who you really want to talk to in an encrypted

01:16:04.220 | message.

01:16:05.220 | You send that to a VPN server.

01:16:06.820 | The VPN server then talks to that site or service on your behalf, encrypts the response

01:16:10.260 | and sends it back.

01:16:11.260 | So the people who are watching you know nothing beyond the fact that you're using a VPN.

01:16:14.860 | They have no idea what site or service you're using.

01:16:18.060 | If you're going to use a VPN, I recommend ExpressVPN because they make this process

01:16:21.700 | so simple.

01:16:22.700 | You put their software on the devices you use, you click one button, it turns on and

01:16:26.380 | you use your apps just like you would normally.

01:16:28.340 | All this happens in the background seamlessly.

01:16:32.380 | They have servers all around the world.

01:16:33.980 | So wherever you are, there is probably an ExpressVPN server nearby.

01:16:38.060 | So you can have a very fast connection or a little hint, you can purposely choose to

01:16:44.460 | connect to an ExpressVPN server in a part of the country that a country that's different

01:16:49.620 | than yours in order to access information that's only available to people in that country.

01:16:55.340 | I know people for example, who will in the US connect to an ExpressVPN server in the

01:17:00.180 | UK and then watch Netflix because there's shows like The Office that are on Netflix

01:17:05.740 | in the UK.

01:17:06.820 | As far as Netflix is concerned, because they're just hearing from the VPN server, you're from

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01:17:43.140 | All right, Jesse, let's do our final segment, where I talk about the books I read in November.

01:17:52.140 | Those who don't know, I try to read five books a month and the first podcast or so of each

01:17:55.660 | new month, I talked about the books I read in the month before.

01:17:59.700 | All right, so the first book I read in November was The Identity Trap by Yasha Monk.

01:18:07.940 | Interesting, I talked to Yasha more recently after I read this book.

01:18:11.540 | It turns out when I was up at Dartmouth last summer on a fellowship, he was also up at

01:18:16.500 | Dartmouth on a fellowship, but we never crossed paths.

01:18:19.100 | We didn't realize it.

01:18:20.100 | We're both from the DC area.

01:18:21.780 | At some point, some of my students talked about, "Oh, I just went to see Yasha Monk

01:18:24.860 | give a talk."

01:18:25.860 | I didn't realize we were both there simultaneously, and we just didn't know it.

01:18:29.180 | He doesn't listen to the show?

01:18:30.620 | I guess not.

01:18:31.620 | Dude.

01:18:32.620 | Yeah, that's on you, Yasha.

01:18:34.020 | You should have known.

01:18:35.020 | That's how we know you don't listen to the show.

01:18:37.100 | Yasha's an academic.

01:18:39.620 | He's at Johns Hopkins, works a lot in international relations.

01:18:44.380 | The Identity Trap is taking a look that has two goals.

01:18:48.620 | Goal number one is to try to just give a scholastic history of the modern progressive thought,

01:18:58.660 | the collection of theories that will sometimes be crudely summarized as woke, what I often

01:19:04.540 | call on the show postmodern critical theories.

01:19:07.140 | The first half of his book is academic history.

01:19:10.960 | Where did the particular collection of ideas that make up this collection of beliefs that

01:19:15.740 | the modern progressive left have, where do they come from?

01:19:19.360 | Yasha calls it the identity synthesis.

01:19:21.220 | The second part of the book is then him making an argument for, "Do these ideas work for

01:19:26.980 | accomplishing the goal that they have, which is justice?

01:19:31.060 | And if not, what works better?"

01:19:32.300 | So we've heard of history, then an analysis of what we have, is it actually working?

01:19:38.140 | I know these histories pretty well because I've been an academic my entire life.

01:19:43.140 | I watched a lot of these ideas come together.

01:19:46.260 | I've read multiple books on this as well.

01:19:48.060 | Yasha's was really good.

01:19:49.260 | I thought it was really accessible, but also really accurate.

01:19:54.420 | There's a lot of complexities because academic theories are complicated.

01:19:59.120 | This begets this, and this is similar to this, but not quite this.

01:20:02.240 | It's easy to get lost in that complexity.

01:20:05.340 | I think Yasha did a great job of saying, "Let me cut through.

01:20:08.780 | Here's basically, here's the through lines you need to care about."

01:20:12.900 | So if you're wondering about where did all these ideas we hear today from modern progressives

01:20:18.340 | that are everywhere, where do they come from?

01:20:22.140 | This book is the best one I've read to give a sort of objective story.

01:20:29.260 | The short version of his story, and I think this is probably right, is that the two big

01:20:37.020 | theories emerging in the '80s and '90s on which a lot of the current, what he calls

01:20:42.340 | identity synthesis came from, is he really says the two main ones that begat most of

01:20:46.580 | the other important ones would be post-colonial theory, as in particular initiated by Edward

01:20:52.100 | Said.

01:20:53.100 | So when I was in grad school in the early 2000s, post-colonial theory was the thing.

01:21:00.700 | Everyone was choosing, all the humanities students were choosing Arabic as their language

01:21:03.980 | so that they could do Edward Said-style studies of post-colonial theory.

01:21:10.740 | And then the other big progenitor of the modern thinking would be Derrick Bell's critical

01:21:14.460 | race theory.

01:21:16.700 | Most of these drew heavily from postmodernism, and in particular Michel Foucault's notions

01:21:23.260 | of postmodernisms and the way various discourses create and maintain power imbalances.

01:21:30.700 | Now there's this, and I won't go too long on this because I'm an academic and I'm a

01:21:34.220 | nerd and most people aren't nerds and don't like nerds, I won't go too long on this, but

01:21:37.980 | I just love academic theories.

01:21:40.100 | There's an irony in this because the postmodernism of Foucault was a reaction to the grand theories

01:21:45.140 | of Marxism and basically these French intellectuals were disillusioned.

01:21:50.340 | Marxism kind of fell apart because it turned out like, "Eh, the Soviet Union wasn't so

01:21:53.540 | great."

01:21:54.540 | So like the ideas, these radical ideas got put into action in a lot of places and it

01:21:58.860 | didn't go well.

01:22:01.580 | And so a lot of steam fell out of Marxism as a sort of foundational theoretical family

01:22:06.620 | that a lot of academics were drawing from.

01:22:08.060 | And the postmoderns were very nihilistic and existential.

01:22:11.240 | And they didn't think that any sort of grand political theory of like, "This explains

01:22:15.240 | the world and it's going to improve the world if we just do this."

01:22:18.040 | They gave up on all of that and they talked about, so it was a deconstruction, right?

01:22:21.960 | It was all about deconstructing these theories.

01:22:24.120 | They hated the idea of grand narratives.

01:22:25.520 | Well, you get Sayeed, you get Bell, they're taking these ideas from the postmoderns in

01:22:29.880 | particular about how language can construct and be used to reinforce power dynamics.

01:22:34.360 | And they said, "Let's use this to create grand narratives.

01:22:38.520 | Let's use this to actually create political movements, explain the way the world works

01:22:41.880 | and suggest actual action."

01:22:43.160 | So they're using postmodernism to do the exact opposite of what the postmoderns thought that

01:22:48.440 | you should do.

01:22:49.440 | So there's a little bit of irony embedded in that.

01:22:50.880 | But anyways, from postcolonial theory and from critical race theory, you get a lot of

01:22:55.720 | branches of related descendant theories and connected theories and almost all the ideas

01:23:02.480 | that you would hear today in a DEI seminar or in a march at a college campus, where you're

01:23:10.600 | like, "Where do these terms come from?"

01:23:12.120 | All of it comes back there.

01:23:13.120 | So it was a really, I think, focusing on postcolonial theory and critical race theory, in particular

01:23:17.400 | Sayeed and Bell's initial movements in these worlds and all the ideas they collected afterwards,

01:23:24.960 | it's right.

01:23:25.960 | I think it reads right.

01:23:26.960 | It is a good history.

01:23:27.960 | So it's a really good book and it's accessible.

01:23:30.200 | He writes it much more accessible than even I just talked about it there.

01:23:34.360 | What is his analysis?

01:23:35.360 | Well, he's a big believer in what he calls philosophical liberalism, which is not sexy.

01:23:40.820 | It doesn't have complicated theory.

01:23:43.080 | It doesn't draw from Foucault.

01:23:45.040 | Its core ideas have been around for three millennia.

01:23:48.960 | Its core ideas have been at the core of essentially every major justice movement in the history

01:23:54.720 | of humanity.

01:23:56.560 | We're thinking just even more recently, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movements,

01:24:00.880 | a lot of these recent, even the recent big wins we've seen in the fight for justice all

01:24:06.480 | came from philosophical liberalism.

01:24:09.360 | It's not exciting and it's in opposition to the ideas in the identity synthesis, which

01:24:15.760 | actually try to deconstruct a lot of the key ideas behind philosophical liberalism.

01:24:21.760 | It's more utopian and dystopian at the same time.

01:24:24.960 | And Monk makes a pretty good argument of like, I know it's not exciting, but philosophical

01:24:28.360 | liberalism, which is, it's flexible, but also matches our moral intuitions that go back

01:24:33.360 | to our very earliest emergence of ethics in the very earliest books of the Hebrew Bible.

01:24:40.000 | This idea is what works.

01:24:41.200 | So there's this nice sort of polemic as well of, let me analyze these.

01:24:45.440 | I don't think the identity synthesis is going to lead us to more justice.

01:24:48.440 | I think we have these, these older ideas do.

01:24:50.440 | So I think it's a great treatment.

01:24:52.080 | It's not that long.

01:24:53.560 | It seems very informed.

01:24:55.400 | It seems very even handed.

01:24:57.520 | And so I think it's useful, especially if you're young or sort of new to this, like

01:25:01.560 | something that happens with grand theories is the problem is if you're like 19 and you

01:25:05.640 | go to college and you encounter whatever grand theory is big at the time, the dialectic in

01:25:13.200 | your mind is, or the binary in your mind is no theory in theory.

01:25:16.840 | And so you just think of it as like, most people just don't realize that there's theories

01:25:20.640 | that explain the world and we can use these theories to figure out better ways of living.

01:25:24.000 | But I do understand that.

01:25:25.360 | So you just see it as this binary between no theory and theory.

01:25:29.960 | The good thing about books like monks is it steps back and says, no, there's many different

01:25:33.840 | theories.

01:25:34.840 | So you can't just look at the connection between, I see the world theoretically, or I don't,

01:25:39.720 | you have to say, why do I see it through this theoretical framework?

01:25:43.600 | There's other ones.

01:25:45.440 | Like for example, if you're on a college campus, this is something I think people get wrong

01:25:48.860 | about the modern identity synthesis or postmodern critical theories, outside observers think

01:25:55.000 | that, oh, everyone on a college campus is just completely locked into this and thinks

01:26:00.840 | that's the way the world works.

01:26:01.960 | It's how you get the sort of Ron DeSantis of the world being like, we have to just like

01:26:06.160 | defund colleges and it's all crazy.

01:26:08.320 | If you go to a college campus and go to a philosophy department, philosophers hate that

01:26:13.240 | stuff.

01:26:14.240 | They're like, no, no, no, no, no.

01:26:15.240 | Well, hold on, hold on.

01:26:16.320 | We have been studying philosophy forever.

01:26:19.220 | This is our expertise.

01:26:20.220 | Like these theories, these are wonky.

01:26:22.660 | It's not good philosophy.

01:26:24.900 | They're intellectually inconsistent.

01:26:25.900 | It's like philosophers don't tend to like the identity synthesis.

01:26:30.500 | And these are people on the same campus, professional ethicists don't tend to like it.

01:26:34.780 | So it's not, you have to evaluate these things and not just say it's binary verse, no theory

01:26:41.980 | or theory.

01:26:42.980 | But when you first go to college, so if you went to college 50 years ago, it would have

01:26:45.340 | been classical economic class-based Marxism was everywhere.

01:26:49.100 | Every professor seemed like they were talking about it and that would be the big thing.

01:26:52.260 | But then that fell out of favor.

01:26:53.260 | And so now we have the identity synthesis and some other things are competing with it

01:26:57.900 | and those will fall out of favor eventually.

01:26:59.420 | So you have to have some epistemic humility when thinking about theories and not just

01:27:05.300 | see it as dumb people don't know about theories and I know about the capital T theory.

01:27:09.180 | There's lots of different theories.

01:27:11.260 | So it's important to step back and say, where did this one come from?

01:27:13.900 | What does it say?

01:27:14.980 | What are the alternatives?

01:27:16.260 | How do I feel about these different alternatives?

01:27:18.180 | Why is this the right one versus the other right one?

01:27:20.820 | And of course, be very suspicious if the proponents of a particular theory say, wait, asking questions

01:27:26.600 | about it is that's wrong.

01:27:28.780 | Don't don't don't ask questions.

01:27:30.100 | Always be nervous about that with any particular theory.

01:27:33.860 | Of course, you can ask those in Soviet Russia who ask questions about does this make sense

01:27:37.980 | and found themselves quite cold in Siberia.

01:27:40.060 | So you have to be, you do have to be careful about that particular strain.

01:27:44.640 | So anyways, I like these type of discussions.

01:27:47.400 | What I told Yasha about is when I was up at Dartmouth, there'll be a final thing I'll

01:27:50.700 | say on this.

01:27:51.700 | When I was up at Dartmouth, I was reading books from people who had had the same fellowship

01:27:57.380 | over the decades earlier, right?

01:27:58.820 | The Montgomery Fellowship had been around for a long time and they buy the books of

01:28:03.260 | the fellows and put them on the shelf.

01:28:05.160 | And so they had a copy of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, which he wrote in the

01:28:10.980 | late 50s, early 60s.

01:28:12.380 | And so I was reading that just because it was there on the shelf.

01:28:15.500 | And Galbraith had come through in the 70s or something like that to be a fellow.

01:28:18.940 | And I have to go back and find this quote, but he has this.

01:28:21.940 | He was writing this at a time when Marxism was really big on college campuses.

01:28:26.260 | It was like the unifying framework of a lot of different departments on campus.

01:28:29.620 | And this is sort of the classic kind of class-based Marxism.

01:28:35.020 | And it was really big.

01:28:36.020 | And there was a sort of Marxist critical theory from the 1930s.

01:28:39.740 | It greatly expanded where you could apply Marxism, not just economics.

01:28:43.500 | It was everywhere.

01:28:44.980 | So that was the big theory of the time.

01:28:47.660 | And Galbraith has this throwaway line where he's like, "This is really popular right

01:28:51.340 | now."

01:28:52.340 | And he didn't, obviously he was not a Marxist, but he's like, "This is really popular right

01:28:55.980 | now on college campuses.

01:28:56.980 | Why is this so popular among so many thinkers?"

01:28:59.260 | And this interesting line, he said, "I don't think most of these thinkers are fully on

01:29:04.620 | board with all of the actual implications of these theories."

01:29:07.540 | Because a lot of them, when it goes back and studies, it can be kind of kooky.

01:29:12.060 | He says, "The real issue here is that these theories are complicated.

01:29:16.700 | To understand them means you're smart.

01:29:19.320 | The fear is that if you don't demonstrate you understand them, people might think you're

01:29:24.420 | not smart.

01:29:25.860 | And that's a huge motivator."

01:29:26.860 | And it was John Kess, Galbraith's analysis.

01:29:29.460 | So why did this theory spread?

01:29:30.540 | It's not because all of these anthropologists and all these economists and all these social

01:29:34.180 | scientists, they all were really on board with the really intricate proposals of Marxism,

01:29:38.980 | but it was complicated.

01:29:41.020 | And to be involved in that theory meant you're with the smart kids table.

01:29:44.840 | And to not meant that maybe people would think you couldn't keep up.

01:29:47.220 | So that's just something to keep in mind whenever a grand theory is sweeping through intellectual

01:29:53.780 | worlds.

01:29:54.940 | It could be that everyone has studied this thing and read Yasha's book and said, "This

01:29:58.100 | is right."

01:29:59.100 | It could also be that people want to seem smart.

01:30:02.180 | Simple questions, all were raised by a book.

01:30:04.420 | That's the sign of a good book.

01:30:05.540 | So good work, Yasha.

01:30:06.540 | Definitely worth checking out.

01:30:08.060 | All right.

01:30:10.060 | So then moving on.

01:30:11.060 | The next book I read was Israel by Martin Gilbert.

01:30:16.540 | Really steering towards a controversy in my books this week.

01:30:20.820 | What else?

01:30:21.820 | The next book we read is Apple Pie is Bad.

01:30:27.940 | And a book that is, I think like what all the, oh God.

01:30:32.540 | Anyways, Israel by Martin Gilbert.

01:30:34.340 | This was part of my, I mentioned this last week.

01:30:36.540 | I got three books about that part of the world to read back to back to back after October

01:30:42.540 | 7th.

01:30:43.860 | This book's written by Martin Gilbert.

01:30:45.180 | This is not an Israeli book.

01:30:46.740 | This is a book written by a British historian.

01:30:50.160 | So it's just more of, I just wanted a TikTok view of like 1850.

01:30:55.140 | This goes up to about, I think the second Intifada.

01:30:58.380 | So like early 2000s, just TikTok history, right?

01:31:01.660 | This is not someone, it's not a Palestinian writer.

01:31:04.020 | It's not an Israeli writer.

01:31:05.100 | Just like, let's get the six.

01:31:06.460 | This is a tome too, as you might imagine.

01:31:08.180 | Big tome.

01:31:09.180 | Hard book to write just because it's a lot of history to fit in the six or 700 pages.

01:31:14.100 | And I thought Gilbert did a really good job in his redaction.

01:31:18.540 | What things to talk about and how not to get lost in the details.

01:31:21.140 | So just as a work of history, I thought it was good.

01:31:24.220 | I mean, it's not edgy or seed excitement.

01:31:28.660 | It's long.

01:31:29.660 | We're talking about like, it's straight up history.

01:31:35.220 | But I thought it was, you know, I do now have the TikTok history of this happened in this

01:31:39.600 | year and that happened.

01:31:40.600 | And here is who this person was and who that person was and how the rise of the PLO and

01:31:47.020 | Arafat and how that changed the PLA and just getting the on the ground details.

01:31:52.580 | So if you're looking for a sort of non-polemical history of that part of the world, I learned

01:31:57.780 | a lot, especially as compared to Noah Tishbe's book, which is much, much more, I think, polemical

01:32:02.340 | and has an actual goal, like a sort of pro-Israel goal.

01:32:07.140 | This book just felt comparably speaking, let's just get the facts.

01:32:11.500 | So it's useful.

01:32:12.500 | I know a lot more about that history.

01:32:13.500 | I know a lot more about those names.

01:32:16.180 | Moving on.

01:32:17.180 | I also read letters to my Palestinian neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi, who I really like.

01:32:24.180 | Actually, he went on Ezra Klein's podcast recently.

01:32:26.660 | I think that episode is worth listening to.

01:32:29.860 | This book is interesting.

01:32:30.860 | You need to get the current edition because it's actually two books in one.

01:32:36.800 | So it's the original, the original book, letters to my Palestinian neighbor, followed by a

01:32:44.380 | bunch of responses from Palestinians to the original book.

01:32:48.140 | So you read the original book and then you get a bunch of responses that were sent back.

01:32:52.420 | And so it's almost like a dialogue, though you get this book and then the responses.

01:32:57.980 | But I thought that was really interesting to get those responses.

01:33:01.900 | Yossi is a very interesting character.

01:33:03.460 | Again, I mentioned before, he was someone who was on the Israeli right wing, who over

01:33:08.100 | time moved to the Israeli left wing.

01:33:12.060 | So he has sort of an interesting self-reflective view on Israel and Palestine and the peace

01:33:18.860 | process.

01:33:19.860 | And so I thought this book with those two parts, his letters and then the letters back,

01:33:24.300 | was really interesting.

01:33:26.540 | Also kind of hopeful.

01:33:27.540 | It was an interesting book.

01:33:28.540 | He has a podcast, by the way, the Hartman Institute produces it called For Heaven's

01:33:33.020 | Sake.

01:33:34.420 | And it's every week or twice a week.

01:33:37.020 | It's him and another host.

01:33:38.140 | It's like 20 minutes an episode.

01:33:39.660 | And it's if you really want to understand what's happening inside Israel right now,

01:33:43.980 | it's like really good.

01:33:44.980 | It's an English language podcast where they're really bring you up to speed on what the mood

01:33:48.420 | is in the country and the dynamics and the political factions.

01:33:51.100 | So it's a useful podcast.

01:33:53.500 | All right.

01:33:54.900 | Then I changed gears because that was a lot of hard reading and read two books that are

01:33:58.860 | maybe a little bit less intellectually sophisticated.

01:34:02.820 | Be Useful by our friend Arnold Schwarzenegger.

01:34:07.260 | This was, I guess it's a self-help book.

01:34:10.620 | It has like seven ideas and he gives his advice.

01:34:14.820 | I think my recommendation, I think Arnold is an interesting person and in a lot of ways

01:34:20.220 | an inspiring person and has good advice to give.

01:34:23.900 | My advice would be to instead of reading this, read his autobiography, Total Recall.

01:34:29.740 | And you will extract for yourself a lot of these same ideas, but it's just his story

01:34:34.180 | is so interesting.

01:34:35.500 | When you read Be Useful, you're just going to want more of his story.

01:34:38.620 | So just read his story.

01:34:40.140 | Total Recall is a fantastic autobiography.

01:34:42.900 | And I would say every lesson in Be Useful, you will extract for yourself as just a consequence

01:34:48.420 | of reading his autobiography.

01:34:50.300 | So that would be my recommendation.

01:34:51.300 | And then finally, I read John Grisham's newest book, The Exchange.

01:34:54.540 | It was okay.

01:34:56.900 | Not much happens.

01:34:57.900 | It's a follow-up to The Firm.

01:35:00.060 | It mainly just helped remind me how good The Firm was.

01:35:03.220 | It's interesting.

01:35:04.220 | I mean, these hit books early on, the books that follow don't have to be so good.

01:35:08.060 | Like there's no way, The Exchange is a fine book, but if this was a debut book, there's

01:35:13.420 | no way it would grab a lot of attention.

01:35:14.980 | I mean, not that much happens in it.

01:35:19.260 | It just reminded me of how good The Firm was.

01:35:20.900 | So I'm not giving that my Roger and Ebert two thumbs up, I suppose.

01:35:27.220 | Which by the way, I'm thinking about because I'm reading a book about Siskel and Ebert.

01:35:31.940 | I'm reading a book about Siskel and Ebert right now, which is kind of interesting.

01:35:34.780 | But it was fine.

01:35:35.780 | If you like Grisham, it's fine, but it's not The Firm.

01:35:39.340 | So there we go.

01:35:40.340 | Those were my books, a real mix of high and low this week, from academic theories to political

01:35:45.700 | conflict to Arnold Schwarzenegger giving-

01:35:49.380 | The identity trap explanation was spot on.

01:35:53.540 | That was good.

01:35:55.020 | I love academic theories.

01:35:57.140 | I love academic theories.

01:35:58.860 | I just, well, it's probably not a fair hope for the world that everyone has time to, not

01:36:06.780 | everyone's professional academics, to deeply engage in ideas and theories.

01:36:12.940 | But it's water for me, it's deeply engaging with ideas and theories.

01:36:17.980 | Yasha did a great job of summarizing these particular theories, what's good, what's

01:36:21.820 | bad.

01:36:22.820 | He makes a pretty compelling case for philosophical liberalism.

01:36:25.060 | I've made a case for philosophical liberalism in so many words, many times before on the

01:36:31.140 | show as well.

01:36:33.180 | So he's an interesting guy.

01:36:34.180 | I want to go up there and spend some time with him.

01:36:35.980 | Is he up there full time?

01:36:37.340 | Yeah, he's at Hopkins.

01:36:38.340 | Oh, right.

01:36:39.340 | Yeah, it's not far.

01:36:40.340 | Yeah.

01:36:41.340 | Baltimore's not far.

01:36:42.340 | Yeah.

01:36:43.340 | I was thinking about Dartmouth for a sec.

01:36:44.340 | No, he was just up there for the summer.

01:36:45.740 | You know, because everyone who lives in the mid-Atlantic, if we're given the excuse to

01:36:49.340 | go to New England during the summer, we'll go to New England in the summer.

01:36:53.220 | We could be like, "Hey, we want you to be a fellow at our water park outside Durham,

01:36:58.660 | New Hampshire, where what we mainly need you to do is help make sure we don't have people

01:37:04.420 | go down the slide too soon after each other.

01:37:07.940 | But also, you can lecture on artificial intelligence."

01:37:11.540 | We'd be like, "Yeah.

01:37:12.540 | Durham, what's the average high in July?

01:37:14.260 | All right, we'll be there.

01:37:15.260 | We all want to get out of the swamp town for the summer."

01:37:18.740 | All right, speaking of which, that's enough time.

01:37:20.620 | I think we've spent enough time talking today.

01:37:22.620 | Thank you for listening, subscribe, and leave a review.

01:37:26.540 | That really does help.

01:37:27.540 | If you want to leave a question, go to thedeeplife.com/listen.

01:37:31.140 | The links are right there.

01:37:32.900 | And we'll be back next week with another episode.

01:37:35.660 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:37:38.420 | So if you enjoyed today's episode about how to get started on being more organized, I

01:37:42.700 | think you will also like episode 272, where I go on to list the essential tools for having

01:37:50.380 | a sustainable organizational system.

01:37:53.580 | My friend, David Epstein, joins me halfway through that episode to help as well.

01:37:57.580 | So it's definitely worth watching.

01:37:59.340 | Check it out.

01:38:00.340 | The goal for today's deep dive is to go through four essential tools that you need to build

01:38:07.100 | your productivity toolkit.

How To Stop Wasting Time: The 5-Step Productivity System To Organize Your Life | Cal Newport

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