Ep. 254: The Laws Of Less

00:00:00.000 | So let's make that today's deep question.

00:00:02.800 | Why should I do less?

00:00:05.380 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions,

00:00:14.600 | the show about living and working deeply

00:00:16.800 | in a distracted world.

00:00:18.220 | All right, well, I am not in the Deep Work HQ.

00:00:25.100 | For those who are watching the video,

00:00:26.800 | you will see right now I am actually outside.

00:00:30.640 | I am recording from my house in New Hampshire

00:00:33.520 | where I will be spending most of the summer.

00:00:36.560 | Jesse, however, is joining us

00:00:38.320 | from within the Deep Work HQ, so the HQ is recognized.

00:00:42.560 | It still is represented in this episode.

00:00:44.320 | And I have to say, Jesse, seeing you in there

00:00:45.860 | does make me a little homesick.

00:00:47.560 | Hopefully everything is going well down there.

00:00:50.120 | - How's the house out there?

00:00:53.200 | - It is good, it is good.

00:00:54.840 | So here's what I'll tell you about it,

00:00:56.520 | because actually it's relevant

00:00:57.720 | to what we're going to talk about today.

00:01:00.360 | This house is provided by the fellowship program.

00:01:03.760 | So I'm a fellow at Dartmouth College this summer.

00:01:08.120 | And this particular fellowship program,

00:01:10.240 | they own this house that's here on Occom Pond

00:01:13.800 | up in Hanover, so it's sort of this old historic house.

00:01:17.320 | But this fellowship program's actually been around

00:01:19.320 | for a long time.

00:01:20.800 | And what they do is they have interesting people

00:01:23.640 | from all sorts of different backgrounds,

00:01:25.040 | professors, writers, journalists.

00:01:26.920 | They've even had an ex-president here or there come through.

00:01:29.840 | They come through, they stay in the house

00:01:31.320 | for various amounts of time.

00:01:32.680 | Some people are just here for a week.

00:01:34.360 | Some people, like I'm doing, will come for a whole semester,

00:01:36.880 | a whole quarter, and teach a class.

00:01:38.240 | And they come and stay in the house,

00:01:39.360 | and usually they give some sort of lecture.

00:01:41.640 | And so it's cool.

00:01:42.480 | There's a history to this house

00:01:44.720 | of really big, interesting people coming through.

00:01:47.280 | It's also intimidating, though, because what they've done

00:01:50.480 | is every time someone stays in the house,

00:01:52.960 | they get a book that they wrote

00:01:54.920 | and put it on the bookshelf.

00:01:56.200 | So there's bookshelves full of books

00:01:59.000 | from the last 40 years that this fellowship program

00:02:02.420 | has been running.

00:02:03.440 | And you know that every book on that shelf

00:02:05.180 | was written by someone who at some point

00:02:07.580 | stayed here in this house.

00:02:09.400 | It's quite intimidating.

00:02:11.120 | I was just jotting down some names I saw earlier today.

00:02:14.160 | David McCullough, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion,

00:02:18.280 | Robert Caro, Cornel West, Louise Erdick, Kurt Vonnegut.

00:02:23.280 | All of these people at some point have stayed in this house

00:02:26.040 | and done deep work and thought deep thoughts.

00:02:28.080 | I don't know how I feel about, at some point,

00:02:30.280 | deep work being on the shelf

00:02:33.160 | between Gore Vidal and Joan Didion.

00:02:35.400 | I think somehow I'm gonna be bringing down

00:02:37.520 | the average intellectual quality

00:02:40.600 | of the fellows' contributions to the house.

00:02:43.640 | - You're gonna put the time block planner up there.

00:02:45.920 | - I'm gonna put the time block planner

00:02:47.800 | right next to Kurt Vonnegut.

00:02:49.360 | And that's gonna be the heavy hitting intellectual shelf

00:02:53.640 | right there.

00:02:54.600 | - Do all those people have ties with Dartmouth

00:02:56.760 | or is it just random?

00:02:58.520 | - No, so the fellowship, they don't.

00:03:00.000 | So the fellowship program just brings,

00:03:01.720 | I don't know how it works.

00:03:03.000 | They just invite various people to come for various reasons

00:03:06.200 | and they're all sorts of different backgrounds.

00:03:07.920 | So some of them do have a Dartmouth background.

00:03:10.960 | Some of them don't.

00:03:11.840 | Some of them are coming through here anyways.

00:03:13.280 | I don't really know the full story,

00:03:14.960 | but it's a really cool house though.

00:03:16.080 | It's basically a rich person's house

00:03:17.540 | that they donated to this program

00:03:21.440 | at some point in the '70s.

00:03:23.640 | So it's one of these rambling sort of rich person

00:03:26.720 | country type houses, which is, it's fun.

00:03:29.680 | Fun if my kids don't destroy it

00:03:31.400 | and it'd be the end of the program.

00:03:33.480 | That's it, it'll just be the end of the program.

00:03:35.960 | Once they come in, here's what's gonna happen.

00:03:38.240 | We're gonna leave.

00:03:39.160 | I was just gonna say, we're gonna leave.

00:03:42.000 | They're gonna come in.

00:03:42.840 | They're gonna see the damage we've done

00:03:44.400 | and say, burn it down.

00:03:46.640 | And that's just gonna be that.

00:03:47.620 | And they're just gonna, the house is gonna go up in flames.

00:03:49.740 | That'll be the end of this fellowship program.

00:03:51.980 | - How far from the main campus is it?

00:03:54.660 | - It's right down the road.

00:03:57.520 | Yeah, no, it's a pretty ideal.

00:03:59.620 | I taught my first class.

00:04:01.100 | I'm teaching a class up here this summer.

00:04:03.500 | I just walk to my classroom.

00:04:07.900 | The other direction, there's a woods full of hiking

00:04:12.420 | and walking, they're actually cross country ski trails,

00:04:14.180 | but I can walk four minutes down the road

00:04:16.460 | and walk by the river and do thinking walks.

00:04:18.980 | I mean, it's essentially, and I can see water.

00:04:21.300 | So I'm looking at a pond right in front of me now.

00:04:24.340 | So it's essentially a deep work generation machine.

00:04:29.340 | Drew up on paper exactly what you wanted

00:04:32.980 | for doing deep work.

00:04:34.860 | This would probably be,

00:04:36.100 | this probably what you would come up with.

00:04:38.420 | - That's sweet.

00:04:39.260 | - But I wanted to actually use

00:04:43.100 | what I was just talking about there

00:04:45.460 | about these books and you find them in the house.

00:04:47.420 | I actually wanted to use that as the foundation

00:04:49.180 | for what I wanted to talk about today

00:04:50.700 | because here's what happened.

00:04:52.340 | You know, I got up here a few days ago.

00:04:54.120 | I see those books, it's cool, it's inspiring.

00:04:56.140 | It's also kind of intimidating.

00:04:57.460 | Then last night I was doing an event, a dinner,

00:05:00.780 | a dinner with a bunch of students and some professors

00:05:04.180 | and the students were asking me questions.

00:05:06.340 | And one of the students asked me a question

00:05:08.520 | that made me unexpectedly draw from these books

00:05:13.520 | and what they were making me think about.

00:05:15.120 | So a student just asked me,

00:05:15.960 | "Hey, you've done interesting things.

00:05:17.580 | You've met a lot of interesting people

00:05:20.220 | in your various things you've done in life.

00:05:22.920 | What's something you've learned?"

00:05:24.180 | That's what she asked me.

00:05:25.020 | "What's something you've learned

00:05:26.220 | from being around all these interesting people

00:05:28.140 | that you would pass on as advice?"

00:05:31.380 | And this got me thinking about all of those books,

00:05:34.140 | all those impressive books on the shelf.

00:05:36.820 | And so on the fly, I put together this piece of advice.

00:05:40.460 | I said, "Well, one thing I would advise

00:05:42.740 | would be to shift your time scale

00:05:46.260 | when it comes to thinking about productivity

00:05:49.220 | from days and weeks to years.

00:05:52.780 | So focus on producing a small number of things

00:05:55.220 | you're proud of over the course of the next few years."

00:05:58.600 | And the books in this house

00:06:00.460 | is what was making me think about that

00:06:01.900 | because no one knows what Joan Didion was up to

00:06:06.460 | on some random Tuesday in 1967.

00:06:08.940 | No one knows, was she busy?

00:06:10.460 | Was she doing a bunch of things?

00:06:11.940 | Was she here and over there and doing this call

00:06:15.540 | and contributing this article?

00:06:16.940 | No one knows that.

00:06:17.820 | What they know now, 55 years later,

00:06:20.340 | is that the next year,

00:06:21.620 | "Slotching Toward Bethlehem" came out and it was great.

00:06:24.180 | And these books represented that to me.

00:06:25.740 | These books are interesting and high impact

00:06:29.100 | and made a change on the world.

00:06:30.940 | And they took a long time to write

00:06:33.700 | and no one really cares or remembers or knows anymore

00:06:35.860 | what these people were up to on the hourly basis

00:06:38.260 | or the daily basis or the weekly basis.

00:06:40.020 | The sense towards activity in the short term

00:06:43.620 | can often be really disconnected

00:06:45.700 | from impact in the long term.

00:06:48.380 | So this was the advice I was giving these college students

00:06:50.340 | is when you're young, it's go, go, go.

00:06:52.820 | I remember this.

00:06:53.660 | I remember this exact feeling

00:06:55.260 | being on this exact campus 20 years ago.

00:06:57.820 | I remember this feeling of, I need to do stuff.

00:07:01.580 | I need something next month to be done.

00:07:03.700 | I need to show myself.

00:07:05.460 | And in the end, the stuff that brought me back here,

00:07:08.220 | the stuff that brought me back as a fellow

00:07:10.740 | was actually the stuff I spent years and years on.

00:07:13.140 | The slowly building up my writing craft,

00:07:15.780 | spending years on a book and trying to step back

00:07:19.300 | and figure out what I wanted to do next,

00:07:20.660 | building up that type of craft.

00:07:21.740 | So that was the advice I gave.

00:07:23.580 | And I thought that's what we would tackle today

00:07:25.300 | in the deep dive.

00:07:26.420 | This deeper idea of doing less as being at the core

00:07:32.380 | of having high impact.

00:07:34.020 | Top layer, plan for the remarkable

00:07:36.820 | because systematically doing less in your professional life,

00:07:40.700 | focusing on just a small number of things,

00:07:42.700 | maybe even just one thing at a time

00:07:44.100 | that you wanna be really good,

00:07:45.620 | that's actually a strategy for professional remarkability.

00:07:48.420 | It's a type of strategy you might put in place

00:07:50.380 | because you want one day to have a book

00:07:52.700 | that's on the shelf in a house like this.

00:07:54.940 | So even though the calm layer

00:07:57.300 | is about controlling your obligations,

00:08:00.620 | we're talking more specifically now about doing less

00:08:02.900 | as a professional strategy for actually finding distinction.

00:08:05.860 | Now, of course, everything builds off each other.

00:08:07.940 | If you have not established that calm layer,

00:08:10.020 | so if you've not established control

00:08:11.780 | over your time and obligations,

00:08:13.220 | you don't have enough control over your life

00:08:15.300 | to be able to implement this strategy

00:08:16.900 | in your professional life.

00:08:18.500 | So the stack layers build,

00:08:20.740 | you do need to work your way up the stack

00:08:24.020 | before you get to this final advanced professional strategy.

00:08:28.260 | But I'm gonna put this as a strategy for remarkability.

00:08:30.940 | That's what we're really doing here

00:08:32.760 | when we wanna try to do less.

00:08:34.980 | So what I did is I have one, two, three, four, five,

00:08:37.300 | I'm gonna call these the laws of less.

00:08:40.140 | These are five laws I came up with

00:08:41.900 | that explain both why it can be an effective strategy

00:08:46.540 | to focus on a small number of things

00:08:48.060 | over a long period of time

00:08:49.140 | and to some degree how you succeed in doing this.

00:08:54.140 | So we'll call these the laws of less.

00:08:57.820 | All right, so number one,

00:09:00.300 | accomplishment is non-additive.

00:09:05.600 | And what I mean by that is when you think about

00:09:07.560 | your standing in the professional world,

00:09:10.120 | you are often categorized.

00:09:13.100 | So where you are in that world,

00:09:14.640 | you're often categorized by what you do best.

00:09:17.660 | The best thing you've done

00:09:19.700 | is what gives you your professional category.

00:09:22.420 | What level of skill are you at?

00:09:24.020 | What level of celebrity are you at?

00:09:25.680 | What level of accomplishment are you at?

00:09:28.160 | This is non-additive.

00:09:29.580 | So you cannot add up multiple things

00:09:32.480 | that are done at a lower level of quality

00:09:35.240 | to get the equal impact of doing something

00:09:37.200 | at a higher level of quality.

00:09:39.480 | You can't self-publish three books

00:09:42.040 | that are okayly written, sort of mediocre,

00:09:45.440 | and have that be the same as writing one book

00:09:47.560 | for a publisher that actually caught some attention.

00:09:51.240 | So you can't add lower quality

00:09:54.480 | to push yourself into a higher quality category.

00:09:58.320 | But these categories where the professional world places you

00:10:01.000 | is actually quite important

00:10:02.480 | because these categories is what opens up

00:10:04.640 | and defines the impact you're gonna have.

00:10:06.480 | These categories are often typically

00:10:07.980 | what opens up opportunities.

00:10:10.320 | So if you wanna have higher impact,

00:10:12.520 | the higher category in your field you can be categorized in,

00:10:16.520 | the more impact you're gonna have,

00:10:17.640 | the more seriously people will take you and your work,

00:10:19.700 | and also the more interesting options that come up.

00:10:23.360 | So this is an argument for doing less.

00:10:27.400 | If the function here is a max function

00:10:29.320 | and not a sum function,

00:10:31.400 | then putting more energy into doing one thing really well,

00:10:34.040 | that's the logical strategy.

00:10:36.540 | To instead spread yourself thin over multiple things

00:10:38.680 | that aren't done as well becomes the illogical strategy

00:10:41.720 | because your goal here

00:10:42.720 | is not some sort of accumulation of effort.

00:10:45.060 | Your goal here is to get that peak,

00:10:47.720 | the best thing you've done, as tall as possible.

00:10:49.840 | And the best way to do that

00:10:50.920 | is not to disperse too much energy on other activities.

00:10:56.660 | All right, law number two,

00:10:58.800 | simultaneity, oh, Jesse, I knew when I wrote this down,

00:11:05.060 | I always have a hard time with this word,

00:11:06.780 | simultaneousness, but there's another way of saying it,

00:11:09.700 | simultaneity, simultaneity.

00:11:12.280 | I'm gonna have to add this.

00:11:14.860 | - It's the first time I've ever heard

00:11:15.680 | you mispronounce a word.

00:11:16.620 | - I can't pronounce this word.

00:11:18.060 | So what we need to do here

00:11:20.480 | is somehow integrate this into a ZocDoc read.

00:11:24.260 | ZocDoc.com/simultaneity, to the end of me.

00:11:29.060 | Let's just say simultaneously,

00:11:30.920 | simultaneously breeds stress.

00:11:34.860 | All right, doing stuff simultaneously breeds stress.

00:11:38.900 | Let's just say it that way.

00:11:40.020 | Jesse, I'm up in New Hampshire.

00:11:41.260 | My mind is slowing down.

00:11:42.980 | I don't have that city energy

00:11:44.740 | like I have in the Deep Work HQ.

00:11:46.060 | I can't pronounce things anymore.

00:11:48.540 | Simultaneousness breeds stress, let's just say that.

00:11:52.180 | All right, so what I mean by that

00:11:53.940 | is if you think about what actually creates

00:11:55.620 | a sense of burnout or stress in the world of work,

00:12:00.620 | multiple things at the same time

00:12:03.300 | is often one of the main drivers of this.

00:12:06.260 | So work itself is typically not stressful.

00:12:08.520 | The actual effort of working on something hard

00:12:13.260 | is not typically by itself stressful.

00:12:15.480 | If you talk to a novelist, for example,

00:12:18.260 | they're not particularly stressed out

00:12:20.380 | working on chapter four on some random week.

00:12:23.660 | The actual, it's hard work, but it's not stressful.

00:12:26.100 | Stress is often created by a sense of scarcity.

00:12:29.900 | Stress is often created by a sense of,

00:12:31.500 | I don't have enough time.

00:12:32.540 | This thing is due, and I don't have time to get it done,

00:12:36.020 | or these three things I need to take action on

00:12:38.300 | at the same time,

00:12:39.140 | they're starting to conflict with each other.

00:12:40.460 | So when you're just working on one thing,

00:12:42.220 | the amount of times where you actually have

00:12:43.700 | some sort of deadline where something is due is limited.

00:12:47.580 | You know, every once in a while,

00:12:48.540 | I have to hand in a manuscript,

00:12:50.260 | and very, very rarely do you have things

00:12:52.220 | landing on the same deadlines

00:12:54.940 | because you only have one thing you're working on.

00:12:56.200 | When you work on multiple things,

00:12:57.300 | you don't have multiple different deadlines.

00:12:58.780 | You're never too far from one thing needing your attention.

00:13:02.420 | So once you're working on multiple things,

00:13:04.520 | the friction, the psychological friction of work

00:13:08.420 | becomes more pronounced.

00:13:10.600 | I, of course, know this well as someone who famously

00:13:14.060 | works on two or three things,

00:13:15.520 | it's seemingly at the same time.

00:13:18.020 | And a lot of what I've done

00:13:19.500 | to make my working life sustainable

00:13:21.980 | is to try to avoid having these things conflict.

00:13:24.940 | So I will accomplish this either

00:13:26.540 | by completely automating something.

00:13:28.220 | So our podcast setup is pretty automated.

00:13:31.380 | We know how it works.

00:13:33.140 | It takes up time, like, you know,

00:13:34.720 | I know how much time it takes.

00:13:36.160 | I know how it works.

00:13:37.020 | So it doesn't hang over other work.

00:13:38.780 | I can put time away for it.

00:13:40.540 | And then when it comes to other types of things I do,

00:13:43.420 | I do it sequentially to the degree possible.

00:13:45.500 | I'm working on this book right now.

00:13:47.100 | I'm working on this research paper right now.

00:13:48.680 | I try to actually put things in the sequence.

00:13:52.240 | When you zoom out, it might look like

00:13:53.480 | I'm doing multiple things at the same time.

00:13:55.040 | I actually really try to avoid that to the extent possible

00:13:58.320 | because interleaving, simultaneous work,

00:14:02.120 | that's a breeder of stress.

00:14:03.480 | All right, the third law of less,

00:14:07.440 | overhead destroys originality.

00:14:10.640 | So when you're working on a project,

00:14:14.040 | regardless of the field,

00:14:16.520 | and we've talked about this before on the show,

00:14:18.840 | it brings with it some degree of logistical overhead.

00:14:22.440 | These are things you have to do

00:14:25.120 | in order to help keep that project organized

00:14:27.960 | and moving forward, but it's worked at a shallow, not deep.

00:14:30.960 | So it's the meetings you have to have with collaborators.

00:14:34.800 | It's the emails that have to be exchanged back and forth.

00:14:39.040 | It's the coordination you have to do.

00:14:40.760 | I need to set up this interview for this article

00:14:43.040 | and we're going back and forth to try to figure out

00:14:44.720 | the time when this is going to work.

00:14:47.720 | It's the copy editing for the thing you're working on,

00:14:51.160 | if we're gonna stick with writing examples.

00:14:52.560 | There's overhead, logistical overhead,

00:14:54.900 | that comes along with any sort of non-trivial

00:14:57.480 | or important project that you do.

00:15:00.400 | If you're working on one thing,

00:15:01.740 | the overhead is typically manageable.

00:15:03.880 | The issue with working on multiple things

00:15:06.040 | is that the overhead begins to accumulate.

00:15:08.520 | So now the ratio of your work hours going towards overhead

00:15:11.920 | versus going towards the deep efforts,

00:15:14.480 | the overhead is supporting, that ratio gets larger.

00:15:17.920 | And now we've talked about this in past episodes before,

00:15:20.920 | just from the perspective of time scarcity.

00:15:24.340 | So when we talked about this before, we said,

00:15:26.040 | look, here's the issue.

00:15:26.960 | If you have too many things going on,

00:15:28.720 | the overhead takes up a bigger and bigger fraction

00:15:31.680 | of your time, and then that will begin to squeeze

00:15:34.400 | the time you have to actually work on the projects.

00:15:37.240 | And so now it takes you longer

00:15:38.560 | to try to get the projects done,

00:15:40.000 | which means more things can build up

00:15:41.920 | and you can fall into a spiral

00:15:43.360 | where you spend all day,

00:15:44.520 | eventually you're spending all day

00:15:45.640 | basically just talking about projects

00:15:47.200 | and almost nothing gets done.

00:15:48.400 | So we've talked about that before on the show,

00:15:51.240 | but there is another aspect here that I wanna bring up,

00:15:54.400 | which is the overhead doesn't just squeeze the time

00:15:56.400 | in the short term,

00:15:57.840 | it also reduces the quality of what you're producing.

00:16:00.820 | Because technically you could say,

00:16:02.880 | look, let's do a math equation here.

00:16:04.680 | Let's say you're working on three things instead of one.

00:16:11.240 | So now it takes you the amount of time you have available

00:16:13.800 | for deep work is cut by a factor of three

00:16:17.120 | because you have three times the overhead.

00:16:18.960 | Now we're doing math here, okay,

00:16:20.360 | so we're gonna do some math here outside on this podcast.

00:16:23.280 | Technically, if you just solve this

00:16:24.520 | as an abstract math problem,

00:16:26.320 | you could say, okay, so it's gonna take three times as long

00:16:31.840 | to finish one of these things,

00:16:33.300 | but once you get through this time,

00:16:36.400 | this three times as long, you're finishing three things.

00:16:39.160 | So if something would take you a year to do,

00:16:41.800 | if it's the only thing you were working on,

00:16:43.900 | now, if you're working on three things,

00:16:45.600 | maybe it takes you three years,

00:16:48.260 | but at the end of that three years,

00:16:49.280 | you're finishing three things,

00:16:50.280 | it all averages out to be the same.

00:16:51.520 | There's an abstract math problem you can do here

00:16:53.080 | that says it's all fine, it all works out in the same.

00:16:55.100 | Things take longer,

00:16:56.480 | but the overall throughput works out to be the same.

00:16:59.140 | But what's missed by that equation

00:17:00.680 | is when you have a lot of overhead squeezing your schedules,

00:17:03.760 | when that ratio of overhead, the depth gets too large,

00:17:06.680 | the quality of that deep work goes down.

00:17:09.680 | You're not able to immerse yourself

00:17:11.800 | in the single big project you're working on

00:17:13.800 | to live and breathe it, to have that loaded up,

00:17:16.080 | to be thinking about it, to comfortably slip back into it.

00:17:19.980 | You lose that ability because you have less time to work

00:17:24.000 | and you're switching back and forth

00:17:25.240 | between different things when you work.

00:17:27.120 | You have different deep endeavors.

00:17:28.400 | So the overall quality or the overall originality

00:17:31.480 | of what you produce goes down.

00:17:33.260 | So working on one thing

00:17:35.200 | not only gets you to an accomplishment faster,

00:17:38.940 | but the quality of that accomplishment goes up.

00:17:41.140 | And that's the whole game here with doing less, right?

00:17:43.360 | This was law number one, accomplishment is non-additive.

00:17:46.680 | You're judged by the very,

00:17:47.880 | you're categorized by the very best thing you do.

00:17:51.120 | Doing one thing is gonna push up

00:17:52.920 | the quality of the things that you actually produce.

00:17:56.760 | Let's do law number four.

00:18:02.240 | A slower pace is deeply fulfilling.

00:18:06.940 | In general, humans are happier working on less things,

00:18:11.480 | but really caring about those things

00:18:12.840 | and spending a lot of time on them.

00:18:14.320 | This is back from the deep myths of early mythology

00:18:19.320 | forward to contemporary case studies.

00:18:22.200 | We return to this archetype again and again

00:18:25.900 | of the artist, of the sculptor,

00:18:30.480 | working the marble week after week, month after month

00:18:34.400 | to produce David, to produce the Pieta.

00:18:37.120 | There is this archetype of slowly producing something great

00:18:41.920 | that resonates with the humankind,

00:18:43.440 | it resonates with the human spirit.

00:18:44.880 | So there's just a psychological sustainability

00:18:48.080 | to this approach.

00:18:48.920 | You're working on one thing feels right

00:18:53.000 | in a way that juggling many things,

00:18:54.760 | though there might be some identity

00:18:56.960 | you can get wrapped up in about busyness

00:18:58.920 | and being able to manage lots of hard tasks,

00:19:01.200 | it doesn't hit the human spirit in the same way.

00:19:03.720 | So something about it just feels right

00:19:05.960 | to be working on one thing

00:19:09.560 | or a small number of things at a time.

00:19:12.000 | So those first four laws are descriptive, right?

00:19:14.160 | We're trying to explain why this idea of doing less

00:19:18.260 | is a sustainable, effective approach.

00:19:21.400 | The fifth one, I'm gonna think of this as prescriptive.

00:19:25.200 | And I'll state it this way.

00:19:27.260 | None of this works without disciplined diligence.

00:19:32.020 | So it's actually a very hard strategy to implement.

00:19:37.140 | Even if you have the autonomy to choose what you work on,

00:19:40.040 | it is a hard strategy to implement

00:19:41.600 | because it requires you to stick with something

00:19:44.880 | over a long period of time.

00:19:46.340 | And this is very scary for a lot of people

00:19:47.920 | because the thought is,

00:19:48.760 | if it's just up to me to keep coming back to this thing

00:19:50.640 | and I don't have any particular tight timeframe,

00:19:53.120 | okay, I have a week to get this done

00:19:55.080 | or it's National Novel Writing Month

00:19:57.280 | and I have one month to get this manuscript done.

00:19:59.220 | If I don't have that type of pressure,

00:20:01.400 | I'm just not gonna work on it at all

00:20:03.060 | and this thing will fizzle out.

00:20:04.340 | And that's true.

00:20:05.260 | The strategy only works

00:20:06.560 | if you're able to actually deploy disciplined diligence

00:20:09.980 | to return to the thing again and again,

00:20:12.300 | while also being disciplined enough to keep saying no

00:20:14.660 | to the other things that might come in

00:20:16.060 | and take away that time or focus.

00:20:18.080 | And what I wanna emphasize here is disciplined diligence

00:20:22.680 | is something to work up to.

00:20:25.000 | It's not something you just choose to deploy.

00:20:27.320 | So hopefully this makes you feel a little bit better

00:20:31.260 | if you're concerned about your ability

00:20:33.200 | to actually follow through

00:20:34.420 | with something over a long period of time.

00:20:35.580 | It is actually artificial to do this

00:20:37.140 | and it does require some care and training.

00:20:40.780 | So first of all, you must trust your capabilities.

00:20:45.780 | You must trust the plan you have

00:20:48.280 | for deploying those capabilities to produce something good.

00:20:51.660 | This is very important.

00:20:54.680 | You can't just go after a big project,

00:20:58.080 | focus your energy on it and just invent in your mind

00:21:02.200 | how you want that type of work to work.

00:21:04.660 | You can't just say, what matters is if I, whatever,

00:21:07.900 | write every day and get enough words,

00:21:10.260 | then I'll be able to sell my novel.

00:21:11.920 | You actually have to confront the reality

00:21:14.460 | of how does the field in which your project exists

00:21:16.720 | actually works.

00:21:17.560 | You have to talk to actual people in that field.

00:21:19.820 | You have to convince yourself and your mind.

00:21:22.740 | My current capabilities, I know if I do this type of work

00:21:26.360 | over this time period has a good chance

00:21:28.220 | of succeeding with what my goal is.

00:21:29.980 | If you don't trust that, if there's a part of your mind

00:21:33.860 | and the part I'm talking about here

00:21:35.120 | is going to be the executive functioning centers

00:21:37.140 | that actually deal with motivation for long-term planning.

00:21:40.100 | If it doesn't trust what you're doing

00:21:42.680 | is likely gonna lead to a good outcome.

00:21:44.620 | It will withhold motivation.

00:21:47.660 | And you will feel that subjectively

00:21:49.660 | as a strong urge to procrastinate.

00:21:52.220 | Your mind is smart.

00:21:53.620 | It's not gonna let you keep going if you just say,

00:21:56.640 | I'm gonna write every day and it'll just work.

00:22:00.620 | So you actually have to trust your capabilities

00:22:02.460 | and your plan.

00:22:03.300 | And that means you really have to find a way

00:22:04.340 | to assess your capabilities non-objectively.

00:22:06.940 | Am I ready to do this?

00:22:08.620 | And you need to have evidence from real people

00:22:10.340 | in this field who have succeeded before you

00:22:11.940 | about how does this field actually work.

00:22:14.100 | So that becomes critical.

00:22:15.640 | The second thing needed to develop discipline diligence

00:22:19.220 | is a strategy of working from the smaller

00:22:21.060 | towards the larger.

00:22:21.900 | And this also really helps.

00:22:23.980 | So you don't jump right into the super ambitious project.

00:22:27.320 | You layer or level yourself up to that bigger project.

00:22:31.020 | So maybe the first thing you work on in that field

00:22:33.780 | is smaller, something that takes a few months

00:22:36.180 | and it's not as competitive,

00:22:37.560 | but now you have a little bit more confidence.

00:22:39.220 | You understand that field a little better.

00:22:41.140 | You have a track record to show your mind,

00:22:42.860 | hey, this worked, we succeeded.

00:22:44.240 | And then you level up to something bigger.

00:22:46.940 | And then you go after that bigger one.

00:22:50.300 | That's accomplished.

00:22:51.220 | Again, you get a track record.

00:22:52.540 | Okay, I can succeed in this field.

00:22:53.900 | I know more about it.

00:22:54.740 | So you build yourself up so that when you go

00:22:57.620 | for your big project, it's not grasping in the dark.

00:23:00.880 | It's not necessarily a big stretch.

00:23:04.540 | You feel good about it.

00:23:05.780 | I'll give you a writing example from my own life.

00:23:10.460 | When I decided to become a professional writer,

00:23:13.220 | I didn't jump straight into "So Good They Can't Ignore You,"

00:23:16.220 | which was my first general audience,

00:23:19.460 | big hardcover idea book on the tables

00:23:22.620 | of Barnes & Noble publicity campaign behind it.

00:23:26.020 | I actually started with "How to Win at College,"

00:23:28.900 | because this was a book that I had designed

00:23:30.740 | and sold to be much easier to write.

00:23:33.260 | I purposefully had built that book

00:23:35.620 | around a collection of contrarian rules

00:23:38.740 | that were each just two or three pages long.

00:23:41.340 | It was a book that was much more tractable for me to write.

00:23:44.940 | It was much more similar to the type of journalistic writing

00:23:47.540 | the smaller form writing I had been doing

00:23:49.340 | because each chapter was just a standalone contrarian idea

00:23:53.180 | that was expressed.

00:23:54.020 | So it was actually a bunch of little essays

00:23:55.280 | of the type I was comfortable writing.

00:23:57.100 | This was part of me building up my confidence.

00:23:59.340 | So by the time I got 10 years later

00:24:02.020 | to publishing "So Good They Can't Ignore You,"

00:24:03.780 | I was ready to tackle a much bigger journalistic,

00:24:06.780 | big idea book that was aimed at a large audience.

00:24:09.300 | And we see this in many professional fields as well.

00:24:11.940 | So you wanna build up your confidence.

00:24:13.940 | Don't jump right in.

00:24:15.540 | So that's what this fifth law is so critical

00:24:18.140 | because otherwise we just romanticize.

00:24:20.380 | Think about these fellows at this house

00:24:22.140 | that just disappear for two years

00:24:23.540 | and come back with their essay collection

00:24:25.740 | that changes the world.

00:24:26.620 | And we think, "Well, even if I could do that,

00:24:28.900 | "I don't know if I'd be able to stick with it.

00:24:30.500 | "How would I trust it's actually gonna get done?"

00:24:32.840 | You shouldn't expect to trust to get it done

00:24:34.460 | until you've actually done the work to develop that trust.

00:24:37.900 | And so it gives you a place to start.

00:24:39.980 | Discipline, diligence is developed over time.

00:24:42.620 | You can focus on that as you build yourself

00:24:44.880 | towards a more focused professional life.

00:24:47.840 | You also get the advantage that as you level yourself up

00:24:50.660 | and what you're able to produce,

00:24:52.220 | you can then leverage that to get more autonomy

00:24:55.320 | and the more and more ability to spend more time

00:24:58.080 | on a more focused number of pursuits.

00:24:59.940 | So everything can link together here pretty effectively.

00:25:04.020 | So those are my five laws of less.

00:25:07.260 | I'll just read all five real quick.

00:25:09.380 | Accomplishment is non-additive.

00:25:10.980 | Simultaneous work breeds stress.

00:25:16.000 | Overhead destroys originality.

00:25:18.740 | A slower pace is deeply fulfilling.

00:25:21.100 | And none of this works

00:25:22.100 | without developing disciplined diligence.

00:25:26.160 | All right, so that is my deep dive.

00:25:32.060 | All right, so now we are ready

00:25:34.420 | to move on to the question portion of the show.

00:25:37.460 | If you're watching this on YouTube,

00:25:40.940 | what episode are we, Jesse?

00:25:41.860 | This is episode 254.

00:25:44.620 | All right, so if you're watching this on YouTube,

00:25:46.640 | youtube.com/CalNewportMedia,

00:25:49.600 | episode 254, or thedeeplife.com, episode 254.

00:25:52.680 | You'll notice I have, in preparation for the questions,

00:25:55.000 | I have changed locations.

00:25:57.600 | I thought it was cool to do the deep dive outside.

00:26:00.540 | My laptop was less happy about being in full sun,

00:26:03.400 | so I have now moved to the basement of my house

00:26:05.480 | to do the question portion of the episode.

00:26:09.400 | We've pulled some questions here

00:26:10.600 | that are going to deal roughly with our theme of the day.

00:26:13.480 | So the questions we're gonna deal with

00:26:15.020 | all tackle, roughly speaking, doing less,

00:26:19.260 | this idea of finding more productivity

00:26:21.420 | in reducing what's on your plate.

00:26:23.660 | Before we jump into those questions, however,

00:26:26.140 | I wanna mention one of the sponsors

00:26:27.620 | that makes this show possible,

00:26:29.380 | and that is our friends at Cozy Earth.

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00:26:54.220 | So we bought a pair of Cozy Earth sheets,

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00:27:05.420 | when we would cycle to another pair.

00:27:07.580 | So we went out and bought an additional pair of sheets

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00:27:11.820 | we could be using the second pair

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00:27:16.300 | Then my wife actually went out

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00:28:28.540 | I also wanna talk about our friends at Element, L-M-N-T.

00:28:33.420 | Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix

00:28:35.420 | with everything you need and nothing you don't.

00:28:37.700 | That means lots of salt, but no sugar.

00:28:41.140 | So it's a science-backed electrolyte ratio

00:28:43.860 | of 1,000 milligrams of sodium,

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00:28:51.320 | with no sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients,

00:28:53.380 | no gluten, no fillers, no BS, and it tastes good.

00:28:56.620 | So this is another example of a product

00:28:59.240 | that I first came across when we were thinking about them

00:29:01.500 | being a sponsor years ago.

00:29:03.540 | After we moved on from that first sponsorship agreement,

00:29:06.980 | I kept buying Element.

00:29:09.060 | Of the various drinks of this style that I have tried,

00:29:11.640 | this has been my favorite.

00:29:13.220 | I don't want sugar in my drinks

00:29:15.540 | after I've been working out, after I've been sweating,

00:29:17.380 | after I've been outside doing yard work.

00:29:19.060 | I don't want sugar, but I want that salt.

00:29:21.020 | Nothing has hit the spot quite like

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00:29:34.540 | hormonal regulation, nutrient absorption,

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00:29:54.500 | I don't know if this is official,

00:29:56.440 | but sometimes depending on

00:29:58.960 | if I'm just feeling dehydrated in the morning,

00:30:01.100 | I might use half a packet in a drink,

00:30:03.500 | versus if I've just done a workout in the DC summer,

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00:30:49.140 | All right, Jessie, this is our first time in a while

00:30:52.660 | trying to do questions.

00:30:54.540 | We're remote.

00:30:55.380 | We're not in the same room,

00:30:56.380 | but we're still gonna make this work.

00:30:58.700 | What questions do you have for me first?

00:31:00.880 | - Hi, first question's from M.

00:31:05.020 | I'm returning to teaching after a break

00:31:06.940 | to work in administration.

00:31:08.440 | I'm curious if you have advice

00:31:09.740 | for re-approaching this type of work

00:31:11.540 | in a way that guards against burnout

00:31:13.780 | and prioritizes craft, deep work, and slow productivity.

00:31:17.680 | - Well, M, I've heard from teachers in particular.

00:31:22.060 | So let me try to tailor my advice

00:31:24.420 | at first to your particular situation.

00:31:26.140 | And then we can extract from this

00:31:27.340 | some general observations that are relevant

00:31:30.260 | for people in general embracing slow productivity.

00:31:33.740 | One thing that's critical in teaching

00:31:35.500 | at the level that you're doing

00:31:36.580 | is to be very careful about taking on extra responsibilities.

00:31:41.360 | Your margin for time is very narrow.

00:31:44.940 | You're basically in front of students, as you know,

00:31:47.400 | for many of the hours of the typical eight-hour workday.

00:31:52.280 | You're left with, I don't know, an hour,

00:31:55.420 | maybe 90 minutes within a nine-to-five,

00:31:57.820 | nine-to-530 day to work on everything else,

00:32:00.660 | prepping classes, grading, et cetera.

00:32:03.060 | There are a lot of opportunities,

00:32:04.500 | especially if you're teaching at the secondary level

00:32:07.620 | or maybe the middle school level.

00:32:08.620 | There's a lot of opportunities for other things you can do.

00:32:11.580 | Be very careful about that.

00:32:13.920 | Be very careful about volunteering.

00:32:15.420 | I'm not trying to be curmudgeonly

00:32:16.780 | or to make you into a misanthrope.

00:32:18.020 | I'm just saying your time is limited.

00:32:20.980 | So right off the bat, as you return to teaching,

00:32:23.780 | be very protective of that time.

00:32:26.100 | Your first order of business,

00:32:27.620 | especially when you're new back,

00:32:28.660 | is just focusing on doing your core obligation

00:32:32.020 | of teaching and molding these young minds

00:32:34.700 | as well as possible.

00:32:36.980 | Another thing I'm gonna recommend, again,

00:32:38.780 | to, we're all trying to avoid

00:32:40.900 | unsustainable overload right now.

00:32:43.840 | The other thing I'm gonna recommend

00:32:45.140 | is that to the extent possible,

00:32:46.540 | set up assignments in ways that makes your life easier.

00:32:49.940 | Now, this is something professors know a lot about.

00:32:53.660 | There are many different types of assignments

00:32:55.420 | you can give your students.

00:32:57.020 | Some of these forms are gonna require

00:32:59.580 | much more time from you than others,

00:33:03.140 | but there's often the same pedagogical impact

00:33:06.100 | on the students.

00:33:06.940 | So often you can think about different ways

00:33:08.020 | you might evaluate your students,

00:33:09.100 | which gets you to the same pedagogical goals.

00:33:11.100 | The students are going to learn,

00:33:12.660 | they are gonna be assessed,

00:33:14.180 | but there's some ways to do that

00:33:15.300 | that's gonna make your life much easier than others.

00:33:17.900 | Do not feel guilty

00:33:19.340 | about shaping your courses and your assessments

00:33:22.940 | around easier, more sustainable for you approaches.

00:33:27.780 | This is actually about making you into a better teacher.

00:33:32.340 | If you have more time,

00:33:33.900 | if you're not up to your neck

00:33:34.940 | and impossible to grade ambiguous essays

00:33:37.300 | that make you stay up late at night,

00:33:39.300 | if you're not doing that,

00:33:40.140 | you're gonna be better at the other aspects

00:33:41.300 | of your teaching.

00:33:42.500 | And from the student's perspective,

00:33:43.580 | there's lots of different assessments.

00:33:44.660 | They all are basically the same.

00:33:46.020 | They don't really care.

00:33:46.940 | They don't really recognize that much.

00:33:48.260 | So think about yourself.

00:33:50.020 | Do not be a martyr to pedagogical innovation.

00:33:54.220 | I see this a lot.

00:33:55.380 | You say, "I just wanna, I have this cool idea

00:33:58.300 | "for we're gonna do these type of projects."

00:33:59.820 | And it feels kind of innovative

00:34:00.820 | and it sucks a huge amount of time away from you as a teacher

00:34:03.900 | and now you actually can't show up as a teacher.

00:34:06.380 | In your effort to be a better teacher,

00:34:07.820 | you made yourself work.

00:34:08.660 | So be very careful about how you set up your assignments.

00:34:10.860 | Prioritize or keep yourself and your own,

00:34:13.540 | the demands on you, keep that in mind.

00:34:16.860 | You probably are gonna have to work outside of nine to five.

00:34:19.300 | That's just the reality of teaching today.

00:34:22.140 | So let's do that intentionally.

00:34:24.660 | I'm gonna say use automation and elevation here.

00:34:26.620 | So automation means it's the same time, same place,

00:34:29.180 | the same days of the week that you do the work

00:34:31.260 | that has to happen outside of the nine to five.

00:34:33.620 | You do not want these efforts,

00:34:37.020 | the extra grading, the extra prep you have to do.

00:34:38.720 | You don't want it to be something

00:34:39.860 | that just hangs over your head at all times.

00:34:42.740 | And you always feel like you should be working on it

00:34:44.520 | and it just, "Ah, it's Thursday night.

00:34:46.180 | "I better, I gotta do this.

00:34:47.220 | "I have to prep for class," automate.

00:34:50.140 | This is how I do it.

00:34:51.440 | This is when I do it.

00:34:52.560 | This is where I do it.

00:34:53.580 | You're doing the work outside of the nine to five

00:34:55.920 | on your own terms.

00:34:57.020 | And it might be something as simple as,

00:34:59.020 | "All right, on Tuesdays, I've set up with my partner

00:35:01.240 | "that I actually come home at 6.30 instead of five.

00:35:03.740 | "And that is, on Tuesday is when I finish my prep

00:35:07.940 | "for the rest of the week through next Monday."

00:35:10.540 | We just have that set up.

00:35:11.420 | I don't even have to think about it.

00:35:13.540 | And Saturday morning, I have a grading block

00:35:17.100 | and I've given assignments so that two and a half hours

00:35:19.660 | on Saturday morning, I can definitely get the grading done.

00:35:22.660 | Now I know when that work happens

00:35:25.060 | and all the other times outside of work,

00:35:26.680 | I'm not worried about it.

00:35:28.260 | I'm relaxed.

00:35:29.240 | I'm going on with the rest of my life.

00:35:30.520 | I'm not feeling overloaded.

00:35:31.620 | I'm not feeling burnt out.

00:35:33.020 | The elevation piece of this, that's automation.

00:35:36.020 | The elevation piece is be careful about the locations

00:35:39.460 | and the rituals around this work.

00:35:41.640 | Have a cool place you go.

00:35:43.300 | You know, Saturday morning, maybe you do the grading

00:35:44.900 | at a particular coffee shop

00:35:46.480 | or if you live in a city, you go to a cafe in a museum.

00:35:51.480 | So you set up the location to be inspiring or interesting

00:35:54.620 | or have other benefits to it.

00:35:56.260 | It gets you to, you like the coffee they serve here

00:35:58.300 | to a long walk to get to where you do the work.

00:36:01.500 | Think these things through so that the work outside

00:36:04.740 | of the normal nine to five does not hit you as a burden.

00:36:08.300 | It doesn't hit you as, "Oh my God,

00:36:09.620 | "this thing is hanging over me

00:36:10.820 | "and it's sapping away other things I enjoy."

00:36:12.620 | You've actually elevated it into an intellectual experience

00:36:15.740 | that you can actually get some satisfaction out of.

00:36:18.360 | Finally, a lot of this is about keeping work at bay.

00:36:22.840 | The other aspect here is improving craft.

00:36:26.460 | And this is where I'm gonna give you

00:36:27.540 | a slow productivity approach.

00:36:29.440 | Choose one thing per marking period,

00:36:33.820 | one aspect of the teaching craft

00:36:37.280 | that you are systematically but slowly improving.

00:36:39.840 | Don't try to go too fast here.

00:36:44.380 | Days are short, years are long.

00:36:45.860 | That's the way I like to think about it.

00:36:47.680 | If you're constantly working slowly but steadily

00:36:50.700 | on some aspect of your teaching craft,

00:36:52.900 | give that three years

00:36:54.300 | and you're gonna be a much better teacher than you were.

00:36:57.900 | You don't have to rush this.

00:36:59.320 | You don't have to be up till midnight every day

00:37:03.040 | in the first September you're back

00:37:04.380 | trying to come up with all these grand projects

00:37:06.620 | and new schemes that are gonna engage your students.

00:37:08.720 | Slow but steady.

00:37:09.980 | That's the way you avoid burnout here.

00:37:11.900 | Allow these improvements to accumulate over time.

00:37:14.900 | So if in a marking period you say,

00:37:16.060 | I'm just working on this one thing.

00:37:19.360 | How do I, I don't know, I'm teaching calculus.

00:37:22.820 | And I'm working on the way I am trying to convey

00:37:26.900 | some of these techniques to the students.

00:37:28.460 | Maybe I don't wanna just write things on the board.

00:37:30.700 | Let me just really start thinking through it

00:37:32.140 | just a little bit.

00:37:33.220 | On the way to work, I think about it.

00:37:34.500 | I try things, I take notes.

00:37:35.740 | It's not a lot of time in any one day,

00:37:37.140 | but I spend four months or three months

00:37:38.580 | just working on this.

00:37:39.460 | And in that marking period,

00:37:41.060 | I have a slightly better method for teaching calculus.

00:37:44.900 | I figured out what works and what doesn't.

00:37:46.260 | That's working better.

00:37:47.080 | Now the next marking period,

00:37:47.920 | I'm gonna try to push that to the next level.

00:37:49.140 | The slow but steady improvement of craft

00:37:51.340 | is not gonna change things much in the first few weeks,

00:37:54.560 | but after a few years,

00:37:55.500 | you might actually be considered an exceptional teacher.

00:37:58.860 | And you did this without having to break your schedule.

00:38:01.860 | You did this without having to be completely overloaded.

00:38:04.660 | And I think this general template we can export

00:38:06.700 | to many other types of knowledge work professions

00:38:09.980 | that are similar to teaching.

00:38:11.740 | These ideas about being careful with your time,

00:38:14.540 | setting up your work in ways

00:38:16.020 | that keeps in mind the demands on you.

00:38:18.560 | If you have two equivalent ways of doing something,

00:38:20.860 | and one's gonna require much less time,

00:38:22.700 | don't feel guilty about deploying that way.

00:38:25.740 | Automate and elevate where you do work,

00:38:27.460 | especially work that's outside of the normal work hours,

00:38:29.700 | and work on improving craft,

00:38:31.380 | but do it slowly but steadily.

00:38:32.700 | So that's gonna be a general template here

00:38:34.180 | that hopefully we can extrapolate

00:38:35.900 | to multiple different positions.

00:38:38.740 | All right, Jesse, what do we got next?

00:38:41.700 | - All right, next question is from Jim.

00:38:45.820 | How do you know if a big, slow productivity idea

00:38:48.380 | is good enough to warrant the daily effort?

00:38:50.700 | Background, I'm a full-time online writer,

00:38:52.980 | and I have a book idea.

00:38:54.540 | I think that I might find an audience,

00:38:56.780 | but I don't know if it will work.

00:38:58.640 | - Well, this is very important.

00:39:01.340 | Jim, we talked about this

00:39:03.500 | with the final law of less during the deep dive,

00:39:07.900 | but this gives us a specific case study to tackle.

00:39:11.820 | So let's go back and remember what I said

00:39:14.260 | in that fifth law of less,

00:39:15.580 | and we'll apply it to your particular situation

00:39:17.480 | about working on a book idea.

00:39:20.560 | So first of all, you're going to want to work up

00:39:25.020 | to bigger size projects.

00:39:27.620 | You might not wanna start right away

00:39:29.420 | with just I am writing a book, right?

00:39:32.780 | What is actually happening here is, okay, can I write?

00:39:36.260 | Have I actually published some writing before?

00:39:38.980 | All right, that's a step.

00:39:40.980 | Do I have an agent?

00:39:42.720 | Well, that's gonna be another first step.

00:39:44.100 | If I can get an agent, that's gonna be a justification

00:39:47.540 | or validation that my idea is good,

00:39:49.580 | and there's someone else who's a professional

00:39:51.040 | who thinks I'm the right person to write it.

00:39:52.580 | So let me make that the next step.

00:39:53.620 | Now I got that done.

00:39:54.700 | Now I feel a little bit more confident.

00:39:55.980 | Now I'm writing sample chapters for the proposal.

00:39:58.160 | I can write two sample chapters.

00:39:59.980 | That's hard, but that's more tractable.

00:40:01.740 | My agent likes these sample chapters.

00:40:03.260 | Oh, now we've sold the book.

00:40:04.820 | Now we've actually can go,

00:40:05.980 | now when I'm going ahead and writing this book,

00:40:07.460 | I've done some writing, I've gotten an agent,

00:40:09.740 | I've written some sample chapters.

00:40:10.900 | Those sample chapters convinced the publisher.

00:40:13.020 | Now you're gonna find motivation to finish this book.

00:40:16.100 | This is all very different than just saying,

00:40:18.460 | let me just start writing.

00:40:19.820 | I think I could produce something really good.

00:40:22.420 | The executive functioning center of your brain

00:40:24.020 | is gonna look at that plan and says, says who?

00:40:27.220 | How do you know that anything,

00:40:28.700 | that this at all is gonna turn up?

00:40:30.340 | We have no evidence.

00:40:31.460 | We have no background experience

00:40:35.260 | with just writing every day

00:40:36.380 | and it turns out producing a book.

00:40:37.900 | So I would say you really wanna ladder your way up

00:40:40.260 | to this bigger, longer project.

00:40:44.240 | Now the foundation to what I'm talking about here

00:40:46.740 | that sort of underscores all of this

00:40:48.900 | is to be ruthlessly evidence-based

00:40:51.380 | in figuring out your plan

00:40:53.900 | for the thing you want to accomplish.

00:40:55.660 | So again, I'm really worried when I hear about,

00:40:59.340 | for example, a writer saying,

00:41:00.740 | yeah, I'm just gonna start writing every day

00:41:02.180 | because that tells me you haven't talked to someone

00:41:04.300 | in the publishing industry.

00:41:05.420 | You don't understand how the publishing industry works

00:41:07.180 | or you do understand and you reject it.

00:41:09.020 | You're nervous about talking to an agent

00:41:10.700 | 'cause they might not like your book idea.

00:41:11.980 | So you're gonna have the circuitous approach

00:41:14.020 | where well, write it myself,

00:41:15.420 | but then I'll be very clever about the marketing

00:41:17.160 | and we'll do this and that.

00:41:18.100 | And then the agents will come to me later

00:41:19.460 | and wanna buy my book.

00:41:20.540 | You're inventing your own story

00:41:22.420 | about how the industry works

00:41:24.420 | because you either don't know or you don't like

00:41:27.040 | or you're afraid of what the actual story really is.

00:41:31.180 | You have to be ruthlessly evidence-based

00:41:33.460 | when coming up with what you're gonna work on

00:41:35.140 | and how you're gonna work on it

00:41:36.140 | for one of these diligent, disciplined,

00:41:39.060 | long-term project endeavors

00:41:41.700 | because it's a really big investment of time.

00:41:44.220 | Your brain has to trust.

00:41:45.700 | You know what you're doing

00:41:47.300 | and this has a chance of succeeding.

00:41:49.860 | So do not skip the step of ruthlessly gathering evidence

00:41:53.860 | about how your field actually works.

00:41:57.160 | Now, I see this all the time.

00:41:58.100 | There's a lot of other common examples

00:41:59.740 | where people will write their own stories

00:42:01.900 | instead of actually figuring out how a field works.

00:42:05.040 | This happens in tech startups a lot.

00:42:06.560 | I talk to people that like the idea

00:42:08.800 | of having a technology startup,

00:42:10.720 | but don't actually want to talk to,

00:42:13.560 | let's say funders or investors

00:42:15.200 | or get a sense of what would make a company attractive

00:42:19.240 | to an investor that would allow an exit,

00:42:21.080 | that would allow growth or acquisition.

00:42:22.720 | They don't want those stories.

00:42:23.900 | They want it just to be the fun stuff

00:42:26.940 | that I have a Slack account set up

00:42:29.500 | and I'm jumping on calls with people

00:42:31.700 | to get their ideas about things

00:42:33.280 | and paying web developers to set up a website.

00:42:35.160 | They don't want the reality

00:42:36.840 | of what is the technical skill required?

00:42:38.780 | What is the work that actually goes into producing something

00:42:42.100 | that is good enough that has the potential scalability

00:42:44.380 | that can actually attract funding?

00:42:45.520 | How much talent does that actually require?

00:42:48.180 | I don't know how many times I've heard someone say,

00:42:49.660 | yeah, I just need to find a programmer type

00:42:52.780 | to build the thing, but I've got this great idea.

00:42:55.380 | They want just the fun part, not the hard part.

00:42:58.140 | And there's other fields too,

00:43:00.220 | where you'll see the same thing.

00:43:01.380 | You'll see it in podcasting.

00:43:03.220 | But what actually, talk to a successful podcaster.

00:43:06.080 | How does a podcast become financially viable?

00:43:08.460 | It's rare.

00:43:10.160 | So what are the elements

00:43:11.180 | that makes a podcast financially viable?

00:43:12.900 | How do you, what is required to actually get there?

00:43:14.900 | What type of audience or content

00:43:16.780 | and what differentiates a successful one

00:43:19.460 | from a non-successful one?

00:43:20.300 | People don't wanna hear that too.

00:43:21.380 | They just say, I just wanna start recording

00:43:23.100 | because you never know, maybe I'll be Joe Rogan.

00:43:26.020 | Even though that's not how it actually happens.

00:43:27.300 | So ruthlessly evidence-based approach

00:43:29.660 | to these big ambitious projects.

00:43:31.180 | It sounds at first like a downer,

00:43:33.340 | but it is the fuel that will allow you

00:43:34.780 | to actually continue and get something big done.

00:43:37.100 | The bad news is it might take a lot of things

00:43:39.720 | off the table at first.

00:43:40.780 | Things that you wanna do for your big projects.

00:43:43.300 | You gather the evidence and you realize

00:43:44.980 | I'm not in a good position to do this.

00:43:46.560 | And that is a downer.

00:43:47.400 | But what it does mean,

00:43:48.780 | and this is the side, the benefit.

00:43:51.220 | When you do find a thing that is reasonable

00:43:53.100 | for you to pursue, that feeling of motivation you have,

00:43:57.580 | when the evidence is there to back it up,

00:43:59.800 | you've built your way up to this,

00:44:01.020 | your mind believes that that feeling of motivation

00:44:02.980 | is really powerful.

00:44:03.820 | And a lot of people don't even recognize it

00:44:05.260 | until they get it.

00:44:06.080 | And then they say, oh, this is what it feels like

00:44:08.240 | to go after something big

00:44:09.580 | in a way that is deeply grounded in reality

00:44:13.980 | and has a real chance of succeeding.

00:44:16.020 | It just feels very different than the,

00:44:18.500 | I'm writing every day, I'm doing my thousand words,

00:44:21.500 | I'm having Zooms with people about my startup idea,

00:44:24.260 | I bought a USB mic and now I'm a podcaster.

00:44:27.420 | It really feels different once you have

00:44:28.900 | that foundation of evidence.

00:44:31.940 | So I'm glad you brought this up, Jim,

00:44:33.500 | because I think that's, it's downplayed too much

00:44:36.180 | when we talk about these big, ambitious, long-term projects.

00:44:39.460 | All the prep work is often ignored.

00:44:41.260 | And we just say, well, have the courage

00:44:42.780 | to follow your passion and just go for it.

00:44:45.540 | Don't go for it until you're so convinced

00:44:48.060 | that you'd be dumb not to, that you have no other choice.

00:44:50.860 | All right, Jesse, I don't know, Jesse,

00:44:53.660 | I kind of feel now like I'm temporarily back

00:44:55.540 | in that beginner podcast phase.

00:44:56.940 | I have a USB microphone, I'm in a basement,

00:45:00.660 | I'm not in the HQ.

00:45:02.420 | I feel like we're taking steps backwards here.

00:45:05.540 | Though actually, I think, this is what's gonna be fun.

00:45:07.500 | I think listeners are gonna see

00:45:09.140 | and viewers are gonna see,

00:45:10.580 | I'm slowly going to evolve my setup here

00:45:13.300 | as the summer goes on.

00:45:14.860 | Because I flew up here and I'm flying back

00:45:16.580 | to drive up with my family.

00:45:17.740 | So I'm gonna be bringing more equipment up

00:45:19.700 | in a couple of weeks.

00:45:21.060 | Nice cameras, some nice lighting.

00:45:23.460 | My goal is by the time we get to mid-August,

00:45:26.460 | that this house here at Hanover

00:45:29.340 | is gonna be producing a really slick looking podcast.

00:45:33.060 | I think it's gonna be a fun project.

00:45:34.900 | I'm gonna build a cool setup here.

00:45:38.700 | It really will be the Deep Work HQ North once I'm done.

00:45:42.980 | So that'll be a fun progression to watch

00:45:45.620 | as the summer unfolds.

00:45:46.460 | - Yeah, baby.

00:45:47.300 | - All right, let's do another question.

00:45:50.260 | What do we got?

00:45:51.100 | - Hi, next question's from Amanda.

00:45:54.860 | I work in secular teacher education

00:45:57.380 | and I've been considering whether I would

00:45:58.700 | eventually do a pivot to apply everything

00:46:00.580 | that I've learned within my career

00:46:01.980 | to independently offering courses

00:46:03.620 | related to Christian topics that interest me.

00:46:06.460 | Your concept of slow productivity is encouraging

00:46:09.100 | as it shows how great work can develop

00:46:11.060 | little by little on the side of a main career.

00:46:14.220 | How should I apply these ideas

00:46:15.740 | in slowly building toward my pivot?

00:46:18.220 | - Well, Amanda, I like that you're embracing

00:46:21.420 | slow productivity here.

00:46:22.660 | I think this idea of working slowly and steadily

00:46:25.940 | on one thing is a great fit for this particular scenario

00:46:29.900 | you're talking about.

00:46:30.740 | And we haven't touched on the scenario yet in this show,

00:46:33.900 | so I'm glad you brought it up.

00:46:34.740 | But the scenario of I have this job,

00:46:38.060 | I wanna do this other job,

00:46:39.900 | so I want to on the side work on something

00:46:42.500 | to distinguish myself.

00:46:43.560 | And that is a great place for the slow but steady

00:46:46.700 | approach to be applied.

00:46:48.500 | And I think it's a great place for two reasons.

00:46:51.420 | One is just a quality reason.

00:46:52.740 | So as I covered in the Laws of Less,

00:46:55.260 | when you have this one thing in a particular field

00:46:57.780 | that you're giving all of your attention to

00:46:59.180 | and just keep coming back to again and again,

00:47:01.960 | relentlessly but sustainably,

00:47:04.980 | you're never too long from working on it,

00:47:06.700 | but you're never working a lot on it

00:47:08.420 | in a short period of time.

00:47:09.380 | You're never staying up late to work on it.

00:47:11.320 | That is, as we talked about in the Laws of Less,

00:47:14.180 | the recipe for producing the highest quality

00:47:17.300 | that you are capable of producing.

00:47:19.820 | That is critical when you have a side project

00:47:23.060 | that eventually is gonna provide the pivot

00:47:25.100 | into something else.

00:47:26.400 | You are gonna get the most options

00:47:29.520 | if what you're working on is as good as possible.

00:47:33.760 | So the better the thing you produce,

00:47:36.080 | the more options you're gonna have

00:47:37.820 | about how to leverage that to change your career

00:47:40.740 | or push you into a different trajectory.

00:47:42.300 | So quality is very important here.

00:47:44.360 | Knocking something out of the park,

00:47:45.660 | producing something too good to be ignored

00:47:48.740 | is a really good way to try to actually

00:47:51.140 | induce a professional pivot.

00:47:53.660 | So slow but steady, as we talked about,

00:47:56.780 | is a good formula for that.

00:47:58.880 | The other element that makes that a good match

00:48:00.660 | for what you're doing is that it can fit

00:48:03.820 | into a life where there's other things going on.

00:48:06.940 | Slow but steady work is very flexible.

00:48:10.700 | It means when you have a really busy day,

00:48:13.420 | you don't work on the project, that's okay.

00:48:15.780 | When you have a slightly easier day,

00:48:16.780 | you're able to make more progress.

00:48:18.060 | And when you have a, you're a teacher,

00:48:20.200 | so when you have a summer,

00:48:21.500 | maybe you're working on it a lot.

00:48:22.700 | So you can have this natural variation in pacing.

00:48:26.100 | All that matters with a strategy

00:48:27.540 | is you're never too far from the work.

00:48:29.940 | You just wanna keep coming back to it again and again.

00:48:32.660 | It's relentless, but it's not overwhelming.

00:48:35.260 | And it's very flexible for,

00:48:37.820 | these three days we did nothing,

00:48:39.860 | but these three mornings we did do something.

00:48:41.620 | And during this month where we had time off,

00:48:43.620 | I was working a few hours every morning.

00:48:45.900 | Slow but steady is very adaptable, very sustainable.

00:48:48.680 | It's something you can fit next to other work you're doing

00:48:51.160 | because you're not charging towards some deadline.

00:48:53.380 | This has to be done in this time.

00:48:55.580 | And oh my God, I don't have enough time.

00:48:56.900 | I have to stay up late to get it done.

00:48:58.380 | It can adapt to the time available.

00:49:00.620 | And as long as you don't abandon it,

00:49:02.100 | as long as you've done the other things we've talked about

00:49:04.180 | for developing disciplined diligence,

00:49:06.900 | you will keep moving until you accomplish it.

00:49:10.420 | The timeframe will depend on how busy the work is,

00:49:12.700 | but it will get done.

00:49:14.460 | But it will get done in a flexible and a sustainable way.

00:49:16.540 | So I think the slow but steady,

00:49:18.340 | slow productivity approach is a really good fit

00:49:21.300 | for what you're thinking about, Amanda,

00:49:22.720 | which is building on the side,

00:49:25.460 | something that one day will be at the center

00:49:27.140 | of what you're doing.

00:49:28.180 | All right, let's see.

00:49:30.740 | Let's do one more question.

00:49:31.560 | What do we got here, Jesse?

00:49:32.400 | Let's do one more.

00:49:33.900 | - All right, next question is from Mahmood.

00:49:36.900 | How do you read five books monthly

00:49:38.540 | with all your other duties and responsibilities?

00:49:40.780 | Do you have a one and a half hour time block daily?

00:49:45.020 | Do you have your paper book everywhere with you,

00:49:47.300 | or do you read it on your phone?

00:49:49.580 | - Well, Mahmood, I can, first of all,

00:49:52.020 | I'll say I did a video about this.

00:49:53.260 | So you can find at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

00:49:57.300 | Somewhere on there, there's a video,

00:49:58.540 | how does Cal Newport read five books a day,

00:50:01.140 | or something like this.

00:50:01.980 | I don't think it's too hard to find.

00:50:03.060 | But let me just hit on a few.

00:50:04.740 | - Five books a day, baby.

00:50:05.900 | - There we go, five books a day.

00:50:07.700 | I'm telling you, up here in New Hampshire,

00:50:10.380 | it's super productive.

00:50:11.460 | Five books a day, no problem.

00:50:14.540 | Go for long walks in the woods.

00:50:16.320 | That's the way you do it, five books a month.

00:50:18.880 | Come on, five books a day.

00:50:20.780 | Let's get after it.

00:50:22.220 | All right, five books a month.

00:50:23.720 | So how do I actually do that?

00:50:25.740 | Let me just, I'll mention a couple points here.

00:50:27.500 | I'll mention a couple points here.

00:50:29.300 | A huge part of this, and it's hard for people

00:50:32.060 | to believe until they try this,

00:50:34.180 | is that I don't distract myself with my phone.

00:50:37.340 | I don't have interesting things on my phone.

00:50:40.380 | I don't have social media.

00:50:42.560 | I don't have, I don't know, a YouTube app on there.

00:50:46.540 | My phone is pretty boring.

00:50:47.820 | I mean, the most distracting my phone is,

00:50:50.460 | is if we're in a period where the Washington Nationals

00:50:52.580 | are doing well, I'm gonna be checking those scores

00:50:54.500 | while the game is going on.

00:50:55.740 | Fortunately, I don't have to worry about that right now.

00:50:57.960 | So there is no distraction coming from my phone.

00:51:01.240 | It makes a huge difference.

00:51:02.500 | You don't realize how much of your time

00:51:04.820 | goes towards essentially paying the bills

00:51:07.520 | of these attention economy corporations

00:51:10.160 | that are packaging and monetizing your attention for money.

00:51:12.860 | You don't realize how many shifts you are pulling

00:51:15.960 | in their attention factories

00:51:17.700 | until you actually take that out of your life.

00:51:19.380 | When you do take that out of your life, you have downtime.

00:51:22.260 | There's more downtime than you would think.

00:51:25.160 | Even if you have a busy job, like I do,

00:51:28.300 | even if you have a lot of kids, like I do,

00:51:30.980 | there is still downtime.

00:51:33.020 | The kids are watching a show, dinner's not ready yet.

00:51:37.700 | You know, there's nothing to really do right now.

00:51:40.340 | I could read.

00:51:41.760 | There's a lot more of that downtime than you think.

00:51:44.340 | The second piece of this is just changing your identity.

00:51:46.660 | Your self identity is I'm a reader.

00:51:48.780 | I like to read books.

00:51:49.900 | That's what I do.

00:51:50.740 | I'm excited about books.

00:51:51.780 | I seek out books I'm excited to read.

00:51:54.020 | I look forward to reading more of those books.

00:51:56.000 | When you think about yourself as a reader,

00:51:58.060 | then you're much more naturally going to fill

00:52:00.460 | these type of downtimes with reading.

00:52:02.980 | So I don't schedule time to read,

00:52:05.180 | but a lot of reading tends to get done.

00:52:07.020 | I read during downtime.

00:52:08.340 | I'll read while I'm eating lunch.

00:52:09.640 | If I'm up before the kids,

00:52:10.860 | I'll get maybe 20 minutes of reading in there.

00:52:13.020 | I'll read in bed at night before I go to sleep.

00:52:15.440 | My wife and I often do reading sessions at night

00:52:17.480 | after the kids go to bed.

00:52:19.140 | Go to the library.

00:52:20.260 | If it's the winter, we turn on the fireplace in there.

00:52:21.980 | Let's read for a half hour.

00:52:23.340 | This morning, you know, here in New Hampshire,

00:52:26.040 | I walked down to the Dirt Cowboy,

00:52:28.940 | the coffee shop right there on the main street in Hanover,

00:52:32.380 | and I got a flavored coffee.

00:52:35.180 | I was reading a book I'm working on.

00:52:37.260 | Why not, right?

00:52:38.340 | It's just natural.

00:52:39.580 | So if you aren't distracting yourself with the phone,

00:52:42.580 | and you think of yourself as a reader and take real pride

00:52:45.140 | in engaging with the well-crafted idea

00:52:47.500 | expressed through the written word,

00:52:49.220 | you will get a lot of books read.

00:52:51.640 | So I don't stretch myself that much

00:52:53.220 | to read five books a month.

00:52:54.860 | I just have enough opportunities to read.

00:52:56.580 | Some days I'm reading more than others.

00:52:57.880 | It's usually not that hard for me to hit that mark.

00:53:01.060 | And I have to say, Mahmood, I recommend it.

00:53:03.380 | The reading life is a deep life.

00:53:06.740 | The reading life is calisthenics for your brain.

00:53:10.420 | Your brain is now constantly grappling

00:53:12.360 | with both complex structures of ideas

00:53:14.420 | as well as complex understanding of other human psychology,

00:53:17.420 | especially if you're reading novels.

00:53:18.980 | So it's calisthenics for your brain.

00:53:20.540 | It makes your brain better

00:53:21.900 | at dealing with that information.

00:53:23.660 | It builds the scaffolding of thought

00:53:25.500 | on which you can produce original ideas.

00:53:27.640 | It produces the scaffolding of thought

00:53:29.340 | upon which you can build your own understanding

00:53:31.700 | of yourself and your life.

00:53:33.300 | It literally changes your perception of yourself

00:53:35.540 | and the world the more you are reading.

00:53:37.500 | It is like a superpower.

00:53:40.460 | It calms your mind.

00:53:42.460 | It gives you insight and perception.

00:53:45.020 | It connects you to other people.

00:53:47.160 | It really is, if you wanna have a deep intellectual life,

00:53:50.900 | it really is deferment on which that can be built.

00:53:53.420 | And it's not that hard to do

00:53:56.780 | if you can get the phone out of your life

00:53:58.960 | as a default source of distraction.

00:54:00.920 | So that's what I would recommend.

00:54:02.800 | Get that phone plugged in by your front door

00:54:05.760 | when you get home.

00:54:06.800 | If you need it, you can go near the front door,

00:54:08.840 | pick up the plugged-in phone to look something up.

00:54:10.880 | It's now no longer a default distraction.

00:54:13.320 | Always have a book with you you're excited to read.

00:54:15.480 | You'll be surprised at how quickly you will get things done.

00:54:19.840 | Within a short amount of time,

00:54:21.520 | you'll be reading five books a month.

00:54:23.280 | And of course, if you stick with it,

00:54:24.640 | you'll be reading five books a day.

00:54:26.780 | Right, Jesse, that's where we wanna end up.

00:54:29.100 | Get rid of your phone, you'll be reading five books a day.

00:54:32.300 | But only if you,

00:54:33.540 | we should have a product built around that, Jesse.

00:54:35.820 | My Cal's course for reading five books a day.

00:54:39.460 | - It'd be like that scene in "Short Circuit"

00:54:42.260 | when he was reading all the encyclopedias.

00:54:45.020 | - That's a deep pull.

00:54:47.900 | A "Short Circuit" reference, I like it.

00:54:50.580 | - I remember that movie, yeah.

00:54:52.800 | - What's the name of that actor?

00:54:54.020 | He was also in "Police Academy", the non-robot actor.

00:54:58.000 | - I don't remember the robot.

00:55:01.500 | - Johnny Five?

00:55:02.340 | Is that the robot?

00:55:05.100 | Am I thinking the right one?

00:55:05.920 | Johnny Five, Johnny Five is alive?

00:55:08.140 | - Maybe, I just remember the scene

00:55:09.620 | when he was reading all the books.

00:55:10.660 | Remember, he's like gathering all the information.

00:55:12.940 | - Yeah, so basically what I'm offering you

00:55:15.980 | is you'll be like Johnny Five from "Short Circuit"

00:55:18.180 | and be able to read, just sit there and read encyclopedias.

00:55:21.820 | These are such millennial references.

00:55:24.380 | (Jesse laughs)

00:55:25.260 | All right, here's what I wanna do before we...

00:55:27.580 | Oh, speaking of books,

00:55:29.980 | the final segment I wanna do today, Jesse,

00:55:31.380 | is books I read, so it's well-timed.

00:55:34.460 | But before we get to that, I wanna do a quick case study.

00:55:36.380 | I sometimes like to do these.

00:55:37.420 | People send in case studies about their experience

00:55:41.220 | putting the type of things we talked about

00:55:42.420 | on this show into practice,

00:55:43.540 | and I like to share what they're actually experiencing.

00:55:47.380 | So here's a case study I wanna read here.

00:55:49.380 | I don't have a name with this one, it was anonymous,

00:55:52.500 | but I'm gonna read it to you now

00:55:53.860 | and then we'll talk about it briefly.

00:55:54.900 | All right, so here's the case study.

00:55:57.180 | I'm working full-time as a grants manager

00:55:59.260 | at a mid-sized nonprofit.

00:56:00.860 | I'm almost a year into the role

00:56:02.380 | and I have used all of your productivity tools

00:56:04.620 | and techniques to work an average of four hours a day.

00:56:08.540 | Some days are more, some are less,

00:56:09.860 | but if I can control my day,

00:56:11.140 | I can get my work done in about four hours.

00:56:15.100 | The great part of this is that working an average

00:56:16.900 | of four hours makes me better at my job.

00:56:18.860 | I'm constantly optimizing workflows

00:56:20.500 | and trying to improve the quality of what I do.

00:56:23.020 | I use techniques from your book, "A World Without Email"

00:56:26.340 | to decrease the amount of unnecessary

00:56:28.660 | back and forth on email.

00:56:30.340 | I also track my average weekly hours

00:56:32.300 | so I get immediate feedback if I'm on track.

00:56:34.740 | The result is my organization is on track

00:56:36.420 | to raise the most grant money in its history

00:56:38.380 | this calendar year,

00:56:39.900 | and I can use my extra four hours to my advantage.

00:56:43.260 | I have a part-time job where I do consulting,

00:56:45.100 | coaching, and write a blog.

00:56:46.620 | I also have time to work out

00:56:47.700 | and enjoy meals with my wife and son.

00:56:49.860 | Therefore, within the nine to five window,

00:56:51.580 | I can work a full-time role,

00:56:52.900 | do a phantom part-time job,

00:56:54.780 | work out, and spend time with my family.

00:56:57.660 | The only downside is that I keep this to myself at my job

00:57:00.580 | because technically I'm supposed to be working

00:57:03.660 | all of those hours.

00:57:05.900 | I'm happy with the current setup, however.

00:57:07.660 | The key was I started thinking about this from my first day.

00:57:10.220 | I was working more when I started,

00:57:11.500 | but as I refined my work,

00:57:12.620 | eventually I settled at four hours.

00:57:14.580 | I think others can benefit from doing the same

00:57:16.620 | if they have the ability to do so in their own work.

00:57:20.780 | So I love this case study

00:57:23.380 | because I think it's a good response

00:57:26.820 | to a critique I often hear.

00:57:30.620 | I often hear this critique

00:57:31.820 | that organizational or productivity thinking

00:57:34.660 | is all about just trying to squeeze out more work

00:57:38.620 | so that your employers can exploit you more,

00:57:41.380 | and you're more than just your labor,

00:57:42.780 | and we have to stop this discourse

00:57:44.460 | because it's making us think,

00:57:46.740 | it's turning us into machines.

00:57:48.140 | But this shows the counter-reality.

00:57:50.500 | Being in control of your time and obligations,

00:57:54.740 | actually understanding what's happening,

00:57:57.180 | understanding where your time is going,

00:57:58.540 | and then reacting to that,

00:57:59.700 | building processes or systems

00:58:01.460 | to get rid of the huge sources of distraction,

00:58:03.340 | to get rid of all the context shifting,

00:58:04.780 | to get things done more effectively.

00:58:07.260 | It is not about how can I squeeze out more.

00:58:09.500 | It is not about hustle culture.

00:58:10.740 | It can be about, like we saw in this case study,

00:58:13.620 | making your work much more manageable.

00:58:15.620 | People ask me sometimes,

00:58:17.980 | how can you be a professor and write books and do podcasts?

00:58:20.420 | This is part of the answer.

00:58:21.780 | If you are finding calm through control,

00:58:25.620 | in many different positions,

00:58:27.780 | you realize the amount of time required

00:58:29.860 | to do your work at a respectable level

00:58:32.340 | is much less than what other people are spending.

00:58:34.740 | You are eliminating waste and frustration

00:58:38.740 | with a lot of these techniques,

00:58:40.000 | much more than you're trying to squeeze out more work.

00:58:42.860 | And we see in this case study, what was the result?

00:58:45.220 | They're doing good jobs.

00:58:46.380 | This grant manager actually is on track

00:58:48.700 | to break the record for grants

00:58:50.660 | brought into their organizations.

00:58:51.960 | He's doing a great job.

00:58:53.420 | It only takes him four hours a day.

00:58:55.260 | So during his workday,

00:58:56.340 | he can exercise, have lunch with his wife and kid.

00:58:59.060 | He's working on a sort of side gig

00:59:00.820 | that's just important to him.

00:59:02.260 | If something went wrong in his life,

00:59:04.860 | let's say there was a health scare

00:59:06.140 | with a parent or his wife or something,

00:59:08.140 | he could easily just turn down that side gig

00:59:10.300 | and have hours every day that he could work

00:59:12.180 | or tend towards that.

00:59:13.100 | He has this extreme flexibility.

00:59:15.540 | He could, as I would highly recommend

00:59:17.420 | that he should do during Halloween time,

00:59:19.200 | spend hours every day working on elaborate animatronics

00:59:23.700 | and making that one of the focuses of his life.

00:59:26.260 | This to me sounds like an incredibly sustainable lifestyle.

00:59:29.460 | Now there's two ways we can get here.

00:59:31.860 | We can wait for there to be

00:59:32.860 | some sort of systemic top-down reform

00:59:35.280 | where we pass a law that reduces the work week down.

00:59:39.420 | It can only be three days

00:59:40.900 | or that we have to have some sort of universal income

00:59:44.820 | that allows you to only work a part-time job

00:59:46.860 | and still make in meets.

00:59:47.700 | And all this stuff might be possible

00:59:48.940 | and there might be good arguments for all this stuff.

00:59:50.860 | But what is true about any one of these ideas

00:59:52.820 | is it's not gonna happen tomorrow,

00:59:54.340 | but you could do what he's doing starting tomorrow.

00:59:56.640 | That this one thing that is in our control,

00:59:59.100 | taking advantage of the fact

01:00:01.100 | that everyone else around you, the norm,

01:00:03.560 | the norm is so incredibly inefficient

01:00:06.460 | that if you're one of the few people

01:00:08.400 | to actually find calm through control

01:00:10.960 | to control your obligations and time,

01:00:13.280 | there's these huge inefficiencies for you to eliminate

01:00:17.020 | and these huge advantages that you can extract right away.

01:00:19.880 | And so I think it's important.

01:00:22.040 | This productivity organizational thinking

01:00:24.080 | is not about squeezing out more work.

01:00:26.640 | It's about how do you refine a humane

01:00:29.000 | and sustainable relationship to your work

01:00:30.980 | in an age where technology has pushed work

01:00:33.100 | into this frenzy, this potential frenzy

01:00:35.280 | of exhausting busyness.

01:00:37.360 | And there is a lot that you can do right now

01:00:39.520 | to help try to push back against it.

01:00:41.920 | So I think this is a great case study

01:00:43.680 | of the type of deep life that can be crafted

01:00:46.240 | on top of this layer of controlling your time,

01:00:50.320 | controlling your time and obligations.

01:00:52.220 | I like that, Jesse, four hours.

01:00:54.960 | I bet a lot more people could be doing that.

01:00:56.440 | It's not every job.

01:00:57.600 | I think there's a lot of jobs.

01:00:59.160 | A lot of jobs for four hours a day,

01:01:02.600 | you could be crushing it

01:01:04.120 | and no one even realizes

01:01:05.800 | that you're building a 10 foot witch

01:01:08.440 | that has a broom motion that rotates realistically.

01:01:12.840 | No one even knows.

01:01:13.680 | They just assume you're up late,

01:01:15.080 | especially if you're not in an office,

01:01:17.880 | especially if the work is more results oriented

01:01:20.280 | and a little bit less performative.

01:01:22.040 | So I like these case studies.

01:01:23.520 | That always works. - Yeah, 100%.

01:01:26.320 | - All right, so what we're gonna move on to

01:01:29.140 | is a final segment.

01:01:30.160 | I wanna talk about the books I read.

01:01:32.920 | God, I guess we're looking back to May,

01:01:35.080 | even though this is coming out at the end of June.

01:01:36.600 | We always fall behind.

01:01:38.060 | Before we get to that though,

01:01:39.160 | I wanna mention another sponsor

01:01:41.500 | that makes this show possible.

01:01:42.560 | This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

01:01:46.940 | Now, I think this is important.

01:01:49.240 | We talk a lot on the show

01:01:51.600 | about different buckets or areas of your life

01:01:55.360 | that you wanna think about and make deeper.

01:01:58.640 | Well, one of those buckets or areas

01:02:00.000 | that you really should think about

01:02:01.160 | is actually your mental life.

01:02:04.260 | If your mental life is struggling,

01:02:07.480 | if you're struggling, for example, with excess anxiety,

01:02:12.020 | if you're struggling with depression,

01:02:13.960 | if you're struggling with other types of thinking

01:02:18.960 | that is reducing the quality of your life,

01:02:21.780 | getting in the way of things that matter,

01:02:24.640 | you could use help here.

01:02:27.400 | And not just white knuckling it, but professional help.

01:02:30.460 | Just like if your knee was hurting,

01:02:32.100 | you would say, "I'm gonna go see an orthopedist

01:02:33.700 | "to look at my knee and see why it is hurting."

01:02:35.820 | Just like if you didn't like your mile time,

01:02:37.820 | you say, "I wanna run faster,

01:02:38.720 | "I'm gonna go get a training regime

01:02:40.160 | "and work with a trainer to become a faster runner."

01:02:42.340 | If your mind is not operating the way

01:02:45.360 | that you would like it to operate,

01:02:47.080 | therapy can be that training.

01:02:49.900 | Therapy can be that route to helping your mind

01:02:53.620 | get to that state of health

01:02:54.900 | that's gonna make everything else possible.

01:02:58.980 | Now, the issue with therapy, of course,

01:03:00.140 | is that it's hard and confusing to find a therapist.

01:03:02.900 | A lot of them are busy, a lot of them are filled,

01:03:06.420 | especially if you're just looking for someone nearby.

01:03:08.740 | You might not like the therapist you end up with

01:03:11.260 | and then it's sort of awkward

01:03:12.620 | because now you're going to this office

01:03:14.060 | and how do you change this?

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01:03:35.900 | I personally know people who have used BetterHelp

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01:06:38.620 | All right, so let's talk about the books I read in May.

01:06:44.500 | I had to put on my memory hat here.

01:06:47.300 | That was a while ago, but I went back.

01:06:49.580 | Actually, Jesse, you'll be impressed by this.

01:06:52.140 | There's a long running joke in the studio

01:06:54.740 | where whenever it's a week

01:06:56.020 | that we are going to record the books I read,

01:06:57.940 | I always forget to bring my list of books I read

01:07:01.620 | to the studio, which is down the street from my house.

01:07:03.580 | Well, this time I packed that list with me in my bags,

01:07:06.920 | and I brought it to New Hampshire.

01:07:08.640 | I have my official list with me.

01:07:10.860 | My May books are on there.

01:07:12.060 | My June books are on there.

01:07:13.380 | I'm adding July books to it now as well.

01:07:15.580 | So you are probably impressed, Jesse.

01:07:18.300 | I hope you're impressed

01:07:19.260 | that I actually have my list of books,

01:07:20.940 | even though I'm hundreds of miles from home.

01:07:23.580 | - Very organized.

01:07:25.420 | - That's the way to do it.

01:07:26.840 | All right, so what did I read in May 2023?

01:07:28.940 | Book number one, "The Soul of a New Machine"

01:07:33.620 | by Tracy Kidder.

01:07:34.900 | This is a book from the 1980s.

01:07:37.620 | Tracy embedded himself in a microcomputer,

01:07:43.780 | or I guess it was a minicomputer manufacturer.

01:07:45.960 | Minicomputers are not really a thing anymore,

01:07:47.860 | but these were a big deal for a while.

01:07:49.780 | These were computers that were less powerful

01:07:52.640 | than a mainframe, but more powerful

01:07:54.580 | than a personal computer running off a microprocessor.

01:07:57.140 | And so these minicomputers,

01:07:58.700 | which were in between these two things,

01:08:01.260 | were really big.

01:08:02.520 | They were big, and companies would buy them.

01:08:05.360 | You would buy them often through what was called an OEM.

01:08:07.840 | So there would be these third parties

01:08:09.380 | that you would say, "Here's what I need to do,"

01:08:13.060 | from a computational perspective.

01:08:14.500 | And then they would build a custom package for you.

01:08:17.420 | They would buy these minicomputers and set it up

01:08:20.060 | and set it up perfectly for your business.

01:08:21.460 | This was big business for a while.

01:08:23.020 | Anyways, Tracy Kidder embedded himself

01:08:25.340 | in one of these companies to document the creation

01:08:28.300 | of a new minicomputer.

01:08:29.920 | And his whole point was to try to encapsulate in a book

01:08:34.360 | the feel of these technology companies,

01:08:36.340 | these sort of new Silicon Valley,

01:08:38.260 | though this one was not based in Silicon Valley,

01:08:39.940 | but these new Silicon Valley ethic infused,

01:08:42.180 | venture capital backed, super fast working,

01:08:45.900 | move fast and break stuff, stay up all night

01:08:47.940 | to try to get the product out.

01:08:49.620 | This was very new in the '80s,

01:08:51.940 | and he wanted to capture it in a book, and he did so.

01:08:55.060 | This is a, it's a famous book

01:08:56.340 | in the history of technology writing.

01:08:59.300 | I believe it won the Pulitzer Prize.

01:09:00.700 | I believe it won the National Book Award.

01:09:02.540 | It was a highly-fetted book,

01:09:03.860 | and you'll see why if you read it.

01:09:05.000 | It's just a really well-constructed profile

01:09:08.740 | that captures what it was like

01:09:10.780 | to be in one of these tech companies during that period.

01:09:14.680 | All right, the next book I read was "Conscious"

01:09:18.360 | by Annika Harris, who I believe is Sam Harris's wife.

01:09:23.360 | So "Conscious," it's a short book.

01:09:25.580 | It's really cool, though.

01:09:26.420 | I like this type of book.

01:09:27.240 | It just tackles directly the question,

01:09:29.420 | what do we know about consciousness?

01:09:31.460 | And where does consciousness come from?

01:09:32.980 | What are the different theories about where it comes from?

01:09:35.320 | And she just goes through it.

01:09:36.980 | Here we go, boom, boom, boom, without dwelling too long.

01:09:39.600 | And you come out of it with a,

01:09:41.400 | I think where she's successful

01:09:43.160 | is a really good understanding of the major rifts

01:09:46.680 | in the field of those who study consciousness.

01:09:49.320 | There's these big schools of thought.

01:09:52.680 | Some of them are more prominent than others.

01:09:54.720 | And you get a pretty good feel for that landscape.

01:09:56.800 | So I actually read this book as a background

01:10:01.080 | to the writing I've been doing recently,

01:10:02.600 | especially for "The New Yorker"

01:10:03.720 | about artificial intelligence.

01:10:05.320 | And I really wanted to brush up on my understanding

01:10:07.700 | of what we know about consciousness.

01:10:09.400 | I was thinking forward to machine consciousness.

01:10:11.640 | So this was a good primer.

01:10:13.040 | I wish there was more books like this.

01:10:16.280 | Deep topic tackled by really smart scientists

01:10:19.880 | and a book that can deliver you the lay of the land.

01:10:24.760 | And it can do so in 150 pages.

01:10:27.120 | It's a cool book.

01:10:28.720 | Next one, this is kind of weird.

01:10:30.040 | This is a health book,

01:10:30.880 | "A Statin-Free Life" by Asim Malhotra.

01:10:35.520 | This is just me being in my 40s

01:10:38.080 | and worrying about my heart

01:10:39.720 | and reading about lifestyle, food, exercise, heart stuff.

01:10:44.720 | So there's nothing exciting intellectually about this.

01:10:49.600 | This is just someone who comes

01:10:51.960 | from a family with heart disease.

01:10:53.080 | So there we go.

01:10:54.520 | Keep your heart healthy.

01:10:56.480 | All right, this next book I'm gonna recommend,

01:10:57.920 | though I'm not sure I'm gonna recommend

01:10:59.040 | that you go try to read it

01:10:59.960 | because it's incredibly hard to find.

01:11:02.000 | "The Life Cycle of Software Objects."

01:11:06.160 | It's a novella by Ted Chiang,

01:11:08.680 | who of course is a fantastic science fiction

01:11:12.520 | short story writer.

01:11:13.600 | Now, this book was recommended to me by one of my editors.

01:11:17.040 | I really wanted to read it because again,

01:11:18.640 | I'm thinking some about artificial intelligence

01:11:20.840 | and machine consciousness.

01:11:22.920 | It is a really cool Ted Chiang,

01:11:24.920 | classic Chiang style novella about artificial intelligence.

01:11:29.600 | It posits a world in which you develop

01:11:34.400 | these artificially intelligent digital agents,

01:11:37.240 | but you teach them.

01:11:38.800 | So instead of the training be something that happens

01:11:42.240 | in a week offline in a big data center,

01:11:44.440 | it posits a world where you essentially raise,

01:11:46.200 | you have people raise these digital agents

01:11:49.360 | in a virtual world.

01:11:50.760 | And through interaction with humans,

01:11:52.840 | these digital agents learn about language and emotion.

01:11:55.280 | So it's an interesting thought experiment.

01:11:57.080 | Maybe it's easier to build a digital brain

01:12:00.160 | capable of learning,

01:12:02.920 | and then you teach it

01:12:04.320 | like you would teach an actual human kid.

01:12:05.880 | And then it goes into sort of dark places

01:12:07.440 | because what do you, you know, these things,

01:12:08.800 | it's like they're your kids.

01:12:10.200 | And then at some point the technology becomes obsolete

01:12:13.120 | and to just turn off the computers would be like

01:12:16.360 | essentially putting an end to this particular consciousness.

01:12:19.240 | And it all sorts of in very Chang style,

01:12:21.680 | he follows through the implications in interesting places.

01:12:26.240 | The issue about this is really hard to find.

01:12:28.200 | He published this with a specialty press.

01:12:32.160 | It's a beautiful two color print

01:12:34.200 | and he published it with a specialty press,

01:12:36.920 | relatively limited run, and that's it.

01:12:40.120 | So it's not available in Amazon warehouses.

01:12:43.080 | It's not available in Kindle or on Audible.

01:12:46.160 | You have to find one on the secondary market.

01:12:49.320 | I mean, this is probably an example.

01:12:51.040 | Jesse and I used to do a segment called Deep.

01:12:55.040 | What was it, Deep or Strange?

01:12:56.600 | What was the other option, Jesse?

01:12:57.560 | It was like Deep or Crazy, something like that.

01:12:59.360 | Like is this thing I did admirably deep

01:13:03.240 | or concerningly crazy?

01:13:05.760 | And I think the effort I went through to acquire this book

01:13:09.360 | could be used for that segment.

01:13:12.680 | I don't wanna say how much I paid for it,

01:13:15.320 | but I will just say the number of digits involved

01:13:17.680 | was more than two.

01:13:18.600 | And so this might be an example of Deep or Crazy.

01:13:21.880 | So this is why I'm not really recommending

01:13:23.840 | everyone go out and find this book.

01:13:25.640 | But if you do come across a copy in a used bookstore,

01:13:28.560 | definitely read it.

01:13:29.480 | I'm a big Ted Chiang fan and I think it's really cool.

01:13:32.520 | How do you judge that, Jesse?

01:13:33.360 | Is that Deep or Crazy?

01:13:34.440 | - Is it above two or just above two is not crazy?

01:13:40.120 | That's Deep.

01:13:40.960 | - Yeah, three, three figures.

01:13:42.200 | - It's above three figures?

01:13:44.360 | - No, it's not above three figures.

01:13:45.200 | - All right, so wrap. - It's in three figures.

01:13:46.960 | - That's Deep.

01:13:50.080 | - Okay, we'll call that Deep.

01:13:51.160 | Four figures is crazy. - It's not crazy.

01:13:52.800 | - All right, four figures is crazy.

01:13:54.200 | Three figures, Deep.

01:13:55.520 | We agree with that?

01:13:56.960 | - Well, you could always, I mean,

01:13:57.880 | now that you've read it, you could always sell it.

01:14:00.480 | - No. - That's cool.

01:14:01.320 | - You're probably keeping it in your library.

01:14:02.840 | - I'm gonna keep it in my library.

01:14:04.360 | It's a really cool book.

01:14:05.320 | All right, final book I read.

01:14:07.320 | This is also a curve ball.

01:14:10.400 | It was called A Book of Life.

01:14:12.880 | This thing was a beast.

01:14:13.720 | 500 words by Michael Strassfeld.

01:14:17.240 | A complete survey of Jewish theology.

01:14:21.940 | So a rabbi friend-- - 500 words, 500 pages.

01:14:25.560 | - Yeah, it's a rabbi friend of, what was that?

01:14:31.320 | - You said 500 words, 500 pages, right?

01:14:33.840 | - That's right, yeah, 500 words.

01:14:36.320 | That would be selling Jewish theology a little short.

01:14:38.920 | There was Moses-- - Hey, 500 word books,

01:14:41.200 | you could easily read five in a day.

01:14:44.120 | - That's how I read five books a day,

01:14:45.960 | is they're all 500 word books.

01:14:48.320 | Yeah, this book was, yeah, there's Noah, Moses,

01:14:51.960 | yada, yada, yada, Deuteronomy, yada, yada, yada,

01:14:56.720 | prophets, judges, you get the gist.

01:15:00.060 | A rabbi friend loaned it to me.

01:15:01.600 | And I was like, okay, I like understanding religion.

01:15:05.280 | People know I like religion.

01:15:06.440 | So I read it, it's cool, it's interesting.

01:15:09.560 | So I now know some, I now know some about Jewish theology.

01:15:14.560 | All right, so those were my books for May 2023.

01:15:20.960 | I brought a bunch of books up with me to Hanover,

01:15:23.480 | so I'm excited to keep reading.

01:15:25.880 | There's a couple bookstores I'm looking forward

01:15:27.320 | to visiting here as well.

01:15:29.320 | So keep the reading going,

01:15:32.760 | and I will remember to do this update next month as well.

01:15:35.480 | All right, Jesse, I think we should wrap it up here.

01:15:37.480 | I think we, hopefully this was successful,

01:15:39.380 | our first sort of deep HQ North recording of the podcast.

01:15:43.640 | Again, if you're watching at youtube.com/calnewportmedia,

01:15:47.800 | watch how the quality of my setup here

01:15:50.560 | hopefully is going to improve with each passing week,

01:15:52.880 | because I think that's a fun challenge,

01:15:54.200 | a fun engineering challenge.

01:15:55.360 | Maybe I'll assign my students, Jesse.

01:15:56.920 | I'll say, this is their assignment.

01:15:58.880 | How good can you make my podcast studio?

01:16:01.080 | And just make them come and run the studio

01:16:03.120 | and hold the boom mics, and it'll be great.

01:16:05.640 | Your grade is 50% dependent on the viewer numbers

01:16:08.960 | of my podcast for the next three weeks.

01:16:11.080 | But one way or the other, it's gonna look--

01:16:13.160 | - And write a compelling piece describing it, the ordeal,

01:16:16.720 | 'cause aren't you teaching a writing class?

01:16:18.520 | - That's true, they could write about it.

01:16:19.560 | Actually, they should just write my question answers.

01:16:21.220 | So they're gonna write all my segments for me and run it,

01:16:24.360 | and also make sure my coffee is fresh.

01:16:26.320 | Yeah, this is what you do.

01:16:28.280 | This is the right way to be a professor.

01:16:29.880 | All right, well, let's wrap this up, Jesse.

01:16:31.800 | Thank you, everyone, for listening.

01:16:32.960 | I'll be back next week with another episode

01:16:35.120 | recorded up here from my northern headquarters.

01:16:38.780 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:16:42.200 | (upbeat music)

01:16:44.780 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 254: The Laws Of Less

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