Ep. 196: Shutting Down Anxiety, Seinfeld on Friction, and Taming WhatsApp

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:01.280 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions,

00:00:05.440 | episode 196.

00:00:07.720 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ,

00:00:15.200 | joined by my producer, Jesse, on a beautiful day.

00:00:17.920 | Jesse, when it's beautiful outside,

00:00:19.480 | I always say we need to get inside quickly

00:00:21.400 | into a windowless small room surrounded by black curtains.

00:00:25.760 | So mission accomplished to us.

00:00:28.000 | We are getting no advantage.

00:00:29.400 | I mean, for you, you're a golfer.

00:00:31.480 | You probably see a day like today

00:00:33.800 | and think, "What a waste that I'm not out there

00:00:36.520 | with a glove in my hand."

00:00:37.800 | I agree.

00:00:38.640 | I am golfing tomorrow though, so I'll be okay.

00:00:40.640 | Yeah, it works.

00:00:41.600 | It's a hard life we live here.

00:00:43.360 | We were a little late getting started on our schedule

00:00:45.920 | because, as Jesse knows, I was stuck on a proof.

00:00:50.680 | So I was working on a theoretical computer science paper.

00:00:53.920 | I was getting some momentum in a proof, and it was tricky,

00:00:56.960 | and I couldn't quite make it work,

00:00:58.120 | but I figured I could get around the obstacles

00:01:00.800 | a little bit more concentration.

00:01:02.640 | That is a circumstance in which

00:01:04.520 | it is very difficult for me to stop.

00:01:07.040 | It's a very similar circumstance to be on a roll

00:01:09.440 | when you're writing a section

00:01:11.480 | of like a book chapter or an article.

00:01:13.440 | It's very difficult to stop mid-writing.

00:01:15.920 | But anyways, I was thinking about that

00:01:17.160 | given what we talk about on this show

00:01:20.640 | because it underscored the degree

00:01:22.520 | to which concentrated mental work,

00:01:25.960 | so deep work efforts on really hard cognitive problems,

00:01:30.240 | is something we don't really understand.

00:01:32.040 | I mean, it's very intense.

00:01:33.680 | Once you get all of that context loaded into your brain,

00:01:36.520 | it can be very hard to stop.

00:01:38.480 | I mean, I couldn't help but think

00:01:39.800 | as we were winding down to record this episode,

00:01:42.280 | the ideal setup for working on something like a math proof

00:01:45.160 | or working on a book would literally be just to do that.

00:01:47.960 | You gotta do that all day long,

00:01:50.520 | and then you do nothing else.

00:01:52.960 | That would probably be the ideal setup

00:01:54.840 | if we just wanna say what's the best way

00:01:56.320 | to get value out of a human brain.

00:01:58.440 | And that, of course, is so far,

00:02:00.600 | so far from what we actually do

00:02:02.000 | in almost any knowledge work job.

00:02:03.320 | So to me, this was just a parable

00:02:04.720 | about how little we understand

00:02:06.760 | when it comes to extracting value from the human brain.

00:02:10.640 | And because of that, how bad we are at setting up

00:02:14.040 | our companies, our organizations

00:02:17.320 | to actually accomplish that goal.

00:02:20.000 | And honestly, one thing at a time

00:02:21.680 | probably is the right way to do this.

00:02:23.600 | I will say though, progress,

00:02:25.200 | when talking about getting more focus into organizations,

00:02:29.720 | on the show, and I don't remember what this was, Jesse,

00:02:32.480 | maybe it was a couple of weeks ago,

00:02:34.600 | I got a question from someone

00:02:36.400 | about how I would redesign university life.

00:02:40.480 | And I had all these ideas, some big, some small.

00:02:42.640 | And one of the ideas I had was

00:02:44.400 | all of the outgoing communication, the broadcast,

00:02:49.120 | like everything that any organization

00:02:51.120 | in the university is sending

00:02:53.520 | that a professor in the university needs to read,

00:02:57.360 | all of that should be consolidated

00:03:00.040 | into some sort of weekly broadcast divided by categories,

00:03:03.680 | maybe pulling out at the top stuff

00:03:05.640 | in which action is required versus purely informational,

00:03:08.920 | have some sort of hyperlinked index or table of contents

00:03:12.320 | so you can quickly jump down

00:03:13.320 | to the parts of the message you like.

00:03:14.720 | And you get this as a professor once a week,

00:03:17.600 | as opposed to getting 30 or 40 individual messages,

00:03:21.200 | all coming from different stakeholders at the institution,

00:03:23.560 | all coming at different times.

00:03:25.240 | Well, I got a note from a listener,

00:03:28.160 | shout out to Rebecca, who said her university does this.

00:03:33.160 | So it does exist.

00:03:35.440 | So some people are doing this, this makes me happy.

00:03:37.880 | I can see the flaw, I can see the flaw in the plan.

00:03:42.120 | And I really started thinking about this more recently

00:03:44.720 | 'cause my older two sons school does this as well.

00:03:47.760 | They consolidate all of their communication

00:03:50.360 | into one weekly email.

00:03:53.400 | And it's a lot less communication

00:03:54.720 | you probably get at a university

00:03:56.520 | and people miss things all the time.

00:03:59.600 | So it's the problem.

00:04:00.920 | So they have this one email and on page 17 out of 40

00:04:05.920 | is where it says, "By the way, on Wednesday,

00:04:08.440 | your kids need to wear blue."

00:04:10.400 | Or, "On Thursday, there's this thing you have to sign,"

00:04:13.400 | or something like this.

00:04:14.240 | Things get missed all the time

00:04:15.280 | because it's such a long message,

00:04:16.480 | but that's a problem that can be solved

00:04:17.600 | with a good table of contents,

00:04:19.080 | pulling out the stuff that requires action to the top.

00:04:21.320 | Anyways, I was heartened to see

00:04:23.480 | that there is some nice innovation happening out there

00:04:26.040 | when it comes to protecting our ability to concentrate.

00:04:29.820 | Now, we do have a good show for today.

00:04:35.480 | We have some questions that have been sent in.

00:04:38.360 | We have some calls to go through.

00:04:41.720 | Later on, stay tuned for this.

00:04:44.280 | Jesse and I are going to try to introduce a new technology.

00:04:47.800 | Later on in the show, we're gonna do a

00:04:49.400 | Cal Reacts to the News segment

00:04:52.080 | where I'm actually going to be able to,

00:04:54.080 | for those watching this on YouTube,

00:04:55.800 | to bring up the article in question on screen

00:04:59.440 | and annotate and highlight it.

00:05:01.240 | So for those who are watching at youtube.com/calnewportmedia,

00:05:06.880 | you'll actually get to see me interacting with the article.

00:05:09.760 | Now, of course, we have a bad track record

00:05:11.480 | with introducing new technologies.

00:05:13.120 | We tend to get some gremlins in the systems.

00:05:15.360 | I don't want you to be alarmed.

00:05:16.680 | I'm just saying there's a 50% chance

00:05:18.720 | that before that segment is over, I will be on fire.

00:05:22.020 | Now, again, that just comes down to it.

00:05:24.840 | It takes Jesse and I a little time

00:05:26.480 | to get new tech up and running, so stay tuned for that.

00:05:30.400 | So all of that is coming up.

00:05:31.800 | I wanna kick off, gonna kick off today's episode

00:05:34.760 | with a new segment in which I look at messages that arrive

00:05:38.800 | in my, I was gonna say world famous.

00:05:42.160 | What I mean is famous among the small group of people

00:05:44.920 | who are longtime fans of my inbox,

00:05:46.800 | my interesting@calnewport.com inbox.

00:05:48.800 | But before I do even that, I want to briefly mention

00:05:52.400 | my longtime friend, Eric Barker,

00:05:55.940 | has a new book out called "Plays Well with Others,

00:06:01.920 | The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know

00:06:05.080 | About Relationships is Mostly Wrong."

00:06:08.380 | I've known Eric for a long time.

00:06:10.200 | He runs the very well-subscribed,

00:06:13.040 | Barking Up the Wrong Tree email newsletter

00:06:16.840 | where he does these exhaustive articles

00:06:19.120 | where he'll take a topic,

00:06:21.000 | really understand the scientific literature on it,

00:06:23.640 | and present to you the big insights

00:06:25.480 | from what people know from the literature on that topic.

00:06:28.040 | It's a great newsletter.

00:06:31.000 | He has a podcast where he goes through these ideas.

00:06:33.760 | I've been on that podcast over the years many times.

00:06:36.040 | He had a really great book out a few years ago

00:06:38.160 | called "Barking Up the Wrong Tree."

00:06:40.060 | This is his next book.

00:06:41.300 | It focuses specifically on what we can learn

00:06:44.300 | from the scientific literature

00:06:45.500 | about how to make relationships work.

00:06:47.860 | Eric's a great writer.

00:06:49.100 | That book just came out.

00:06:51.300 | The week before you hear this, it just came out.

00:06:53.540 | So "Plays Well with Others," Eric Barker,

00:06:56.340 | I suggest you check it out.

00:06:58.420 | Dan Pink said the following about it,

00:06:59.980 | "Humorous and profound,

00:07:00.960 | 'Plays Well with Others' will revitalize your life."

00:07:03.940 | One little bit of insider tidbit about Eric,

00:07:07.660 | I think the reason why his books and newsletter

00:07:09.900 | read so well, and not a lot of people know this,

00:07:12.100 | he was a screenwriter

00:07:13.960 | before he switched over to nonfiction writing.

00:07:16.860 | So he spent many years as a screenwriter.

00:07:19.940 | So I think that construction

00:07:22.220 | follows through into his writing.

00:07:23.820 | All right, so that is a unsolicited plug.

00:07:27.060 | Eric is not paying me for this.

00:07:29.900 | He didn't save my life.

00:07:31.580 | I don't owe him $10,000 from a gambling bet gone awry.

00:07:34.540 | I just like Eric and I want others to read his book.

00:07:38.200 | All right, so let's get into our first segment here.

00:07:40.400 | I'm gonna call this,

00:07:41.840 | Cal Reads His Interesting Inbox.

00:07:45.080 | So for those who don't know,

00:07:46.960 | I have long maintained an email address

00:07:50.260 | called interesting@calnewport.com.

00:07:54.120 | It's where I say you should send me

00:07:55.740 | any interesting article or link or book,

00:07:59.280 | anything you think I might be interested in,

00:08:01.640 | send it to interesting@calnewport.com.

00:08:04.520 | I introduced that address many years ago,

00:08:07.280 | earlier in the history of my blog and email newsletter

00:08:12.440 | when I got to a point in my writing career

00:08:14.680 | where I could no longer individually answer

00:08:17.400 | every email that people sent me.

00:08:19.800 | I used to answer every email.

00:08:21.240 | They were mainly from students back then.

00:08:23.440 | They felt like it was an important part

00:08:24.840 | of my giving back or ability to mentor.

00:08:28.040 | Eventually the number of messages I got overwhelmed me.

00:08:30.680 | It was taking hours and hours.

00:08:32.020 | And so I had to, with sadness,

00:08:34.640 | move past my habit of I will respond

00:08:37.960 | to every email I received.

00:08:40.400 | Part of that was introducing this interesting address.

00:08:43.160 | So I didn't want to cut off all of the cool

00:08:45.440 | or interesting stuff people would send me.

00:08:46.800 | So I said, here is an address, interesting@calnewport.com.

00:08:49.720 | It's really clear if you go and see that link on my website

00:08:53.200 | that I'm probably not gonna be able to respond to you,

00:08:55.440 | but I will read what you send me,

00:08:56.680 | or I will look at what you send me.

00:08:58.360 | So it's a way I can still get interesting articles

00:09:00.880 | and tips from my readers.

00:09:02.560 | I've had that now in place for years and years,

00:09:04.640 | and it's one of my favorite traditions.

00:09:06.400 | So I grabbed a few messages that people sent me

00:09:09.240 | in that inbox, and I figured let's go through them now.

00:09:13.180 | So the first thing I want to talk about was an interview

00:09:17.200 | conducted with Jerry Seinfeld

00:09:20.680 | by the Harvard Business Review.

00:09:22.420 | This is not new.

00:09:23.880 | This is from 2017.

00:09:25.360 | This is what I like about my interesting inbox

00:09:27.360 | is people find cool stuff to send to me.

00:09:30.240 | So hat tip to Andy for sending me this interview.

00:09:33.440 | I'm not gonna read the whole thing,

00:09:34.920 | but I just want to read one exchange

00:09:37.840 | that I thought was particularly interesting.

00:09:40.000 | So the interviewer says,

00:09:43.400 | you and Larry David wrote Seinfeld together

00:09:45.520 | without a traditional writer's room,

00:09:47.540 | and burnout was one reason you stopped.

00:09:50.320 | Was there a more sustainable way to do it?

00:09:52.920 | Could McKinsey or someone have helped you

00:09:55.760 | find a better model?

00:09:58.840 | Jerry then responded, who's McKinsey?

00:10:01.340 | To which the interviewer responded, it's a consulting firm.

00:10:05.880 | Jerry then said, are they funny?

00:10:08.180 | The interviewer said, no.

00:10:10.360 | So Jerry responded by saying, then I don't need them.

00:10:13.640 | If you're efficient, you're doing it the wrong way.

00:10:17.120 | The right way is the hard way.

00:10:19.100 | The show is successful because I micromanaged it.

00:10:21.240 | Every word, every line, every take,

00:10:23.400 | every edit, every casting.

00:10:25.240 | That's my way of life.

00:10:28.800 | All right, so I like that exchange.

00:10:30.800 | I've heard that by the way about other successful shows.

00:10:35.040 | So this was true, for example, of 30 Rock.

00:10:38.120 | You know, Tina Fey and her head writer

00:10:40.280 | basically hand wrote together every beat of that show.

00:10:44.080 | And the way she describes it was,

00:10:45.140 | it's just really hard work.

00:10:46.280 | They had an incredible density of jokes.

00:10:47.880 | If you watch a 30 Rock episode,

00:10:49.320 | you don't go more than 30 seconds without a joke.

00:10:51.280 | Everything is a joke.

00:10:52.540 | That's a lot of writing.

00:10:54.340 | Joke writing is hard.

00:10:55.940 | Maybe it's not too hard to come up with a premise,

00:10:57.760 | but to get the timing right is difficult.

00:10:59.400 | This is hard work and they just did the work.

00:11:01.380 | That's what made that show successful.

00:11:03.760 | I like this general point that Jerry is making,

00:11:06.040 | which is valuable work is hard.

00:11:08.960 | There is a lot of friction.

00:11:10.400 | It's not very convenient.

00:11:11.600 | It's not very efficient.

00:11:13.520 | That is an interesting point because it is running at odds

00:11:18.520 | to the notion of efficiency,

00:11:21.160 | to the notion of optimization.

00:11:24.120 | These are two different things going on.

00:11:25.560 | Jerry and Larry were not trying to optimize.

00:11:27.800 | They said the reason why the show is funny

00:11:29.080 | is because the two of us just sit in a room

00:11:30.680 | and ignore network notes

00:11:31.600 | and just try to go until it's funny.

00:11:33.320 | There's nothing optimal about it.

00:11:35.360 | But it's in that friction that the heat is created.

00:11:37.400 | And that heat in this case was a world changing show.

00:11:41.360 | And so we have this interesting tension

00:11:42.880 | caught by that article.

00:11:45.160 | Producing things of great value,

00:11:46.560 | who cares about efficiency?

00:11:47.940 | Use an old notebook.

00:11:49.460 | Come back to things again and again.

00:11:51.400 | Dedicate half of your day every day

00:11:53.180 | to doing nothing but trying to polish this further.

00:11:55.500 | Copy your notes from one thing to another.

00:11:58.080 | Go to annoying difficult locations

00:12:01.120 | that are awe inspiring to do your thinking.

00:12:03.880 | Be hard to reach.

00:12:05.660 | Do not have really efficient ways

00:12:08.520 | of people getting to contact you

00:12:09.800 | and moving information back and forth.

00:12:11.160 | Because you know what?

00:12:11.980 | None of that matters when it comes to producing value.

00:12:14.880 | So I think that's important.

00:12:16.160 | Not that you don't want to be efficient

00:12:17.720 | where efficiency is called for,

00:12:19.280 | but it tells us let's not put efficiency or optimization

00:12:21.960 | at the top of the altar,

00:12:23.360 | especially when it comes to adding value to information.

00:12:25.740 | The core grist of the knowledge work mill,

00:12:29.700 | these are two separate magisteria.

00:12:31.820 | Producing valuable things

00:12:33.920 | and getting things done efficiently.

00:12:36.800 | They're not the same.

00:12:38.660 | And we have to respect both of them.

00:12:39.820 | So I think that's a nice quote from Seinfeld.

00:12:42.140 | I also like the idea that he said, "Who's McKinsey?"

00:12:45.180 | Is he funny?

00:12:46.400 | I think Seinfeld run by the McKinsey Consulting Company

00:12:50.420 | would be a much different show.

00:12:53.460 | All right, so I got another thing here.

00:12:54.620 | Another article came from my interesting inbox.

00:12:56.800 | This one comes from Joshua, hat tip to Joshua.

00:13:00.740 | All right, this is from the journal Nature.

00:13:03.460 | And this is actually a news and views column.

00:13:06.780 | So if you don't know Nature,

00:13:07.620 | this is actually an article

00:13:10.260 | that is talking about a research article.

00:13:12.900 | So it's not the original research article,

00:13:14.900 | but it's some authors talking

00:13:16.540 | about some important new research.

00:13:18.860 | Here's the headline.

00:13:20.340 | Virtual collaboration hinders a key component

00:13:24.220 | of creativity.

00:13:25.980 | So this was looking at Zoom in particular.

00:13:31.380 | There's two researchers here, Brux and Lavaz.

00:13:35.900 | And they did a pretty thorough study.

00:13:38.260 | This was over five different countries.

00:13:40.440 | They were using technology like eye trackers

00:13:42.880 | and movement trackers.

00:13:43.880 | It was a pretty complicated study.

00:13:46.320 | And they were looking at,

00:13:47.420 | and I'm reading from the article here,

00:13:48.780 | two measures of creativity,

00:13:50.680 | ideation performance and idea selection quality.

00:13:55.100 | And they were comparing both those metrics

00:13:57.600 | when they were looking at teams that were in person

00:14:00.260 | and teams that were connecting over video conference.

00:14:05.480 | So Jesse, I'll quiz you before I tell you the results.

00:14:09.560 | We have two things here,

00:14:11.060 | idea generation and the identification

00:14:14.820 | of good ideas once they come up.

00:14:17.860 | How do you think these compared between in-person and Zoom?

00:14:22.060 | So you have two activities,

00:14:24.980 | either they're the same between the two

00:14:26.380 | or one is better in one context or the other.

00:14:28.700 | Idea generation, idea selection.

00:14:31.340 | What do you think was affected by Zoom?

00:14:33.260 | - Generation by Zoom.

00:14:37.380 | - All right, so you say generation.

00:14:39.140 | Yes, that's exactly right.

00:14:42.660 | In-person meetings result in better ideation performance.

00:14:45.700 | However, there is no difference

00:14:47.460 | between the collaborative approaches

00:14:49.820 | in terms of the quality of the ideas selected.

00:14:53.820 | So that's interesting.

00:14:56.160 | I'm not surprised.

00:14:59.420 | I looked into, not this exact question,

00:15:01.920 | but I did some research for both digital minimalism

00:15:05.540 | and a world without email about communication.

00:15:07.960 | One of the key insights of that research

00:15:10.620 | is that there is a lot involved in communication

00:15:14.460 | that's not just linguistic.

00:15:16.700 | So there's body language,

00:15:19.220 | the ways that people move their bodies in space,

00:15:22.340 | there's facial expressions and timing.

00:15:23.980 | Some of this comes through video conferencing,

00:15:25.540 | but not all of it.

00:15:27.340 | And so if you're trying to work together

00:15:29.060 | to feed off of each other to come up with ideas,

00:15:30.800 | I'm not surprised that when you take

00:15:32.340 | or reduce some of these streams of information

00:15:34.640 | that the outcome is not as good.

00:15:38.060 | This turns out to be one of the hypotheses

00:15:40.060 | these authors found.

00:15:41.020 | I'm quoting from the article here.

00:15:42.340 | The authors think that the use of video screens

00:15:44.260 | limits the amount of information that can be shared

00:15:46.740 | between teammates during virtual communication.

00:15:49.660 | The only other thing that came to mind

00:15:50.980 | is also people don't pay nearly as close attention

00:15:55.280 | when they're in a video conferencing setup.

00:15:59.020 | I have email open, I have Slack open, I have my phone open,

00:16:01.440 | I'm in and out in terms of my attention window.

00:16:04.780 | You're just gonna get less value out of it.

00:16:06.600 | So definitely something to keep in mind

00:16:08.100 | when we're thinking about the design of the future office.

00:16:12.060 | There's differences, there's a lot of differences.

00:16:14.700 | Keep those in mind.

00:16:15.660 | All right, so I have one other item to summarize here.

00:16:22.140 | This came to me from Josh,

00:16:24.940 | different than the Joshua who sent the last article.

00:16:27.500 | He's pointing me towards a discussion paper

00:16:31.400 | from the London School of Economics

00:16:34.720 | that looked at 102 different firms communication data.

00:16:41.820 | So how many emails and how many meetings

00:16:44.300 | were going on in these firms?

00:16:46.320 | Here was the abstract.

00:16:48.740 | This paper uses novel firm level measures

00:16:53.020 | derived from communications metadata

00:16:54.700 | before and after a CEO transition in 102 firms

00:16:58.300 | to study if CEO turnover

00:16:59.940 | impacts employees communication flows.

00:17:01.980 | We find that CEO turnover leads to an initial decrease

00:17:04.820 | in intra-firm communication

00:17:06.660 | followed by a significant increase

00:17:09.240 | approximately five months after the CEO change.

00:17:12.740 | The increase is driven primarily

00:17:14.260 | by manager to employee communication.

00:17:16.820 | Greater increases in communication after CEO change

00:17:20.780 | are associated with greater increases

00:17:23.140 | in firm market returns.

00:17:26.200 | So Josh is asking,

00:17:28.260 | is this repudiating a world without email?

00:17:30.940 | It's finding that after a CEO changed,

00:17:33.420 | if there was more communication happening, more email,

00:17:36.780 | that company was more likely to do better in the marketplace

00:17:40.760 | in the immediately following circumstance.

00:17:44.320 | So I think that is a cool study.

00:17:47.160 | Here's what I would argue, however,

00:17:48.920 | just simply looking at email volume in this context

00:17:54.240 | is probably not the right measure of productivity.

00:17:57.300 | The A/B test here that matters

00:17:59.080 | is hyperactive hive mind versus non-hyperactive hive mind.

00:18:04.160 | If you're in a hyperactive hive mind oriented organization,

00:18:08.720 | so most things are worked out

00:18:09.900 | with ad hoc back and forth messaging,

00:18:12.500 | and you don't change that,

00:18:14.340 | all you change is more messaging,

00:18:16.780 | well, there's gonna be more things that probably get done.

00:18:19.680 | So what's probably happening in this scenario

00:18:22.580 | if I had to guess is that increased email communication,

00:18:26.140 | since nothing else changed

00:18:27.200 | about how they structure their communication,

00:18:28.740 | increased communication was just a second order side effect

00:18:32.960 | of more active management overhaul.

00:18:35.780 | So when you had a CEO change

00:18:37.420 | that had more email communication than this company

00:18:39.560 | that had a CEO change,

00:18:40.940 | that's probably because in the first company,

00:18:42.500 | they're doing more stuff, it's a more active CEO.

00:18:45.260 | If you do more stuff,

00:18:46.180 | you're probably more likely in that post-change period

00:18:48.540 | to have more growth.

00:18:49.540 | There's a reason why you're making those changes.

00:18:51.540 | So what you're really measuring there

00:18:53.180 | is just how much activity are these companies doing

00:18:57.940 | after they have a CEO over change,

00:18:59.660 | the companies that do more after a change and do better,

00:19:01.980 | which I don't think is super surprising.

00:19:03.980 | Now you might argue, yes,

00:19:07.120 | but even if you don't move away

00:19:10.040 | from the hyperactive hive mind,

00:19:12.080 | more email versus less means more context shifts.

00:19:15.040 | More context shifts,

00:19:15.920 | according to the world without email theory

00:19:17.600 | means people should be less productive.

00:19:19.480 | Again, I think that's not a huge factor here

00:19:21.400 | because in all cases,

00:19:22.960 | I think everyone was already probably saturated

00:19:26.040 | with context shifting from email.

00:19:28.360 | In other words, I do not think there is a difference

00:19:30.880 | between the companies that did more communication

00:19:33.920 | than the companies with less.

00:19:35.960 | It's not the case that the companies doing less

00:19:37.940 | had people working long periods of time without disruption.

00:19:41.740 | And then the companies that did more

00:19:44.060 | was breaking up that time.

00:19:44.980 | I'm sure in all cases,

00:19:46.820 | people are checking email once every five to six minutes.

00:19:49.060 | So once you're past the saturation point,

00:19:51.180 | you've done the damage for context shifting.

00:19:52.860 | Everyone is miserable.

00:19:53.820 | Everyone is in a state of reduced cognitive capacity.

00:19:57.420 | Piling more on top of that

00:19:58.780 | maybe makes people more miserable,

00:20:00.540 | but you're already in that hyperactive state.

00:20:02.720 | It's not gonna make much of an impact

00:20:04.260 | on what you're able to do with your brain.

00:20:06.640 | So again, the real test you'd wanna see in my opinion

00:20:10.340 | is a hyperactive hive mind firm versus that same firm

00:20:13.100 | where the only thing that changed

00:20:14.200 | is they replaced most of that ad hoc messaging

00:20:16.300 | with structured communication.

00:20:18.200 | That's where I think you're gonna see a big advantage

00:20:22.220 | for those who embrace the ideas from my book.

00:20:24.420 | So at least that's the way I justify that.

00:20:28.140 | All right, so anyways, interesting@calnewport.com.

00:20:30.860 | I always appreciate tips, articles, interesting things,

00:20:35.860 | videos I should know about.

00:20:37.220 | I can't respond to most messages, but I try to read them all.

00:20:40.900 | You can also bother Jesse at jesse@calnewport.com.

00:20:43.780 | He passes along things that are cool as well.

00:20:46.040 | All right, we have some good questions,

00:20:48.160 | but before we can get to the questions,

00:20:50.340 | we have to talk about some of the sponsors

00:20:52.280 | that makes the Deep Questions podcast possible.

00:20:57.540 | One of those sponsors you've heard me talk about

00:20:59.540 | many times before and for good reason,

00:21:01.500 | because I'm a fan and that is Blinkist.

00:21:04.880 | Blinkist is a subscription service

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00:21:47.080 | consolidating and capturing their thoughts

00:21:48.980 | in this one compact format.

00:21:51.060 | So you need to be up on books

00:21:53.340 | to be up on the biggest ideas of the moment.

00:21:55.460 | However, there's a lot of books out there.

00:21:57.660 | It's a big investment to start reading one.

00:22:00.220 | Blinkist can help you do that triage.

00:22:02.220 | What I suggest is when you're interested in a topic,

00:22:04.980 | read blinks from the major nonfiction titles in that topic.

00:22:09.900 | Now you know the lay of the land,

00:22:11.420 | you know the major terminology,

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00:22:16.080 | and you can figure out which of those books

00:22:18.780 | is probably worth buying and diving deeper in

00:22:21.780 | and which you probably have learned enough

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00:22:42.140 | That's Blinkist spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T.

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00:22:52.580 | Blinkist.com/deep.

00:22:55.440 | We are also sponsored by ZocDoc.

00:23:00.740 | So ZocDoc is a free app that shows you doctors

00:23:05.020 | who are patient reviewed,

00:23:07.640 | take your insurance and are available when you need them.

00:23:12.540 | This is a big deal when you're trying to find a doctor,

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00:23:48.020 | I use ZocDoc, that's how I found my dentist.

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00:23:58.900 | So I am glad ZocDoc exists.

00:24:02.580 | It's one of these products that,

00:24:05.420 | of course it needs to be out there, right?

00:24:07.620 | I mean, it's like an annoyance in our life

00:24:09.500 | is how in the world do I find a doctor?

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00:24:49.740 | Be cool if our promo code was also rhymed, like rock.

00:24:56.660 | Our show was like something about rocks.

00:24:59.140 | So ZocDoc.com/rock.

00:25:02.100 | ZocDoc.com/rock.

00:25:04.860 | It's good.

00:25:06.900 | I'm getting my professional broadcaster experience here.

00:25:10.460 | - You're gonna start competing with Brady for his contract.

00:25:12.740 | Did you hear about that?

00:25:13.980 | Sports announcing contract?

00:25:15.900 | - Yeah.

00:25:16.860 | - Yeah, let me tell you how that interview went.

00:25:18.660 | They were like, Brady, we like you're well-known.

00:25:21.300 | We like your insights.

00:25:23.860 | We're not sure if you're gonna be able to be clear on air.

00:25:28.860 | And Brady's like, guys, I can do whatever it takes.

00:25:30.860 | Like, well, we got a test for you.

00:25:31.820 | He's like, okay, whatever it takes.

00:25:32.820 | Like, all right, please read this phrase.

00:25:35.340 | Brady's like, all right, let's do it.

00:25:37.020 | ZocDoc.com.

00:25:38.220 | Like, all right, good work, Brady.

00:25:39.340 | You got it.

00:25:40.500 | 25 million.

00:25:41.340 | - 32 or 33.

00:25:43.740 | - Really?

00:25:44.580 | All right.

00:25:46.820 | - After he retires.

00:25:48.300 | - Yeah, whenever he does.

00:25:49.780 | You think he's a little bit of the needle in the arm there?

00:25:54.060 | Or is that all just his longevity?

00:25:56.460 | I heard someone arguing about this recently.

00:25:58.020 | - Steroids, you mean?

00:25:58.860 | - Or whatever, performance enhancing.

00:26:00.660 | - I don't, but I could see the argument for.

00:26:05.060 | - He would say he stretches.

00:26:06.860 | - Yeah.

00:26:07.700 | - He stretches a lot.

00:26:08.540 | - Does a lot of band workouts.

00:26:09.740 | - Yeah, well, whatever he does.

00:26:11.180 | Yeah, a lot of band workouts.

00:26:12.260 | Whatever it is, it works.

00:26:14.420 | All right, well, NFL, if Tom doesn't work out,

00:26:17.860 | let this be my audition tape.

00:26:19.700 | ZocDoc.com.

00:26:20.860 | I'll do it for half his money.

00:26:23.420 | - Yeah, then he'd be making robo money.

00:26:25.020 | - Yeah, yeah, I don't wanna be greedy.

00:26:28.020 | I'll do 15 million.

00:26:29.660 | I'll do 15 million.

00:26:30.620 | In the meantime, that'd be a lot of Blinkist ads.

00:26:35.300 | Get to $30 million or $50 million.

00:26:39.220 | Oh my, okay, let's do some questions.

00:26:41.460 | That's what the show is about.

00:26:43.700 | My first question here comes from Ilev,

00:26:47.340 | who asks, "What do you think about doing two shutdowns a day

00:26:52.260 | "to add an evening session after the kids have gone to bed?

00:26:56.260 | "To increase the time I have with my daughter,

00:26:58.300 | "who's 1.5 years old, I would rather leave work early

00:27:02.940 | "and have a work session in the evening

00:27:04.540 | "after she has gone to bed.

00:27:05.700 | "However, I find it difficult to stop thinking about work

00:27:08.540 | "in the period where I am with my daughter

00:27:10.260 | "between leaving work early

00:27:11.460 | "and my afternoon work session."

00:27:15.580 | So in general, I think having two sessions,

00:27:19.140 | time blocked out with a gap in between

00:27:21.540 | is perfectly reasonable.

00:27:23.820 | There's a lot of people who do it.

00:27:25.500 | I think we had a call on the show once about this.

00:27:27.420 | It was someone who had essentially night courses.

00:27:29.940 | That's pretty common.

00:27:31.500 | So I have to get back into work mode

00:27:33.780 | because I have courses in the evening.

00:27:35.500 | And so you have a work block, then you shut down,

00:27:37.500 | you do other stuff and you go back to a work block.

00:27:39.340 | Completely valid.

00:27:40.740 | A few thoughts about making that work.

00:27:42.620 | Shutdowns are critical.

00:27:45.100 | The shutdown after that first work block must be clean

00:27:50.100 | and it must be complete.

00:27:52.820 | 'Cause as you noticed, the persistence of work thoughts

00:27:56.140 | are only going to amplify

00:27:58.180 | if your mind knows you're returning to them later that day.

00:28:02.700 | So if you're a little bit sloppy with your shutdown,

00:28:05.580 | your mind is going to really push hard

00:28:07.720 | to get back to ruminating or thinking

00:28:09.540 | about professional endeavors during your personal time.

00:28:12.020 | So you need a really hard, really hard shutdown.

00:28:15.020 | Close the open loops, shut down anything that's open,

00:28:18.900 | check your inbox for issues, and most importantly,

00:28:21.340 | look at what you're going to do during your second session.

00:28:25.020 | So your mind trusts that you have a good thing planned

00:28:27.220 | and you don't need to think about it in between.

00:28:29.620 | Be really careful about using your shutdown

00:28:33.140 | to do that cognitive behavioral training

00:28:36.840 | that we talked about with the shutdown routines,

00:28:38.440 | which is you do your first shutdown

00:28:40.180 | when you feel the urge to ruminate

00:28:42.660 | instead of getting into it with that particular work thought

00:28:48.060 | say, look, I did my shutdown routine

00:28:51.020 | after the first session.

00:28:52.240 | I checked that check box in my time block planner,

00:28:54.800 | or I said the unusual phrase like schedule shutdown complete.

00:28:58.500 | I would not have checked that box or said that phrase

00:29:00.940 | if I had not actually convinced myself

00:29:03.580 | we were fine to shut down

00:29:05.460 | and we can wait till the next session.

00:29:06.940 | Therefore, I do not have to get into this rumination.

00:29:09.600 | And at first, you're just gonna be doing that

00:29:10.980 | again and again.

00:29:12.780 | You do it enough time, these grooves fill in,

00:29:14.900 | your mind gives up on it,

00:29:16.200 | and you're gonna have a lot more presence and clarity,

00:29:19.620 | a lot less of these intrusive thoughts

00:29:21.140 | in between your two sessions.

00:29:22.100 | You really got to lean into your shutdown session

00:29:24.060 | if you're gonna have these types of breaks

00:29:26.100 | in between work in the same day.

00:29:28.040 | I would also recommend if possible,

00:29:32.140 | end your first session earlier

00:29:35.380 | but what you're trying to plan for here

00:29:38.380 | is the total number of hours you're working during a day.

00:29:40.980 | That should be a reasonable number of hours.

00:29:43.940 | So if like a seven or eight hour workday

00:29:45.620 | is what you're going for,

00:29:46.900 | don't work eight hours in your first session

00:29:49.900 | and then add a few more hours later.

00:29:51.340 | In that first session earlier,

00:29:52.820 | it sounds like that's what you're doing

00:29:53.900 | because you want that time with your kid,

00:29:55.140 | but make sure you're doing that.

00:29:57.340 | What you want is the total sum of your hours

00:29:59.340 | to be reasonable.

00:30:00.460 | Don't be thrown by the fact that your first session

00:30:02.660 | is ending at a time when other people are still working.

00:30:05.060 | It's the total number of hours that matter.

00:30:07.220 | That's the advice I gave by the way,

00:30:09.620 | the people who were doing night classes

00:30:11.580 | relevant to their work.

00:30:13.820 | I said, pull back when your workday ends to be earlier

00:30:17.340 | because that's cognitively demanding work.

00:30:20.340 | And if you were working straight through to seven,

00:30:21.980 | I might say, look, that's too much work and you would agree.

00:30:23.820 | But if you work till five

00:30:24.860 | and then later in the evening do a two hour class,

00:30:26.700 | it's kind of the same thing.

00:30:28.060 | So again, you want the total number of hours

00:30:30.560 | to add up to something reasonable,

00:30:32.540 | even if that means your first session ends kind of early.

00:30:35.660 | And then finally, be careful about how you divide your work

00:30:38.420 | between these two sessions.

00:30:40.100 | Now this might depend on you

00:30:43.580 | and the type of work you're doing,

00:30:45.020 | the type of rhythms that work well for you,

00:30:46.620 | but maybe you're doing more hard stuff in the first session

00:30:50.020 | and you're doing less hard stuff in the second.

00:30:52.620 | I could see the opposite working too,

00:30:54.660 | that you're really on top of calls and meetings and emails

00:30:57.460 | in the first session.

00:30:58.660 | In the second session, you're working on just one thing,

00:31:01.780 | maybe one thing deep.

00:31:03.040 | That might actually be the best idea

00:31:05.460 | because you probably don't wanna introduce

00:31:06.780 | too many context switches or open loops

00:31:08.720 | at the end of your day.

00:31:09.620 | So maybe that's the way you wanna do it,

00:31:11.020 | but be really thoughtful about how you're dividing work

00:31:13.980 | between those two sessions.

00:31:15.720 | For your particular situation, I believe,

00:31:18.980 | I mean, you elaborated that you're actually a PhD student.

00:31:22.520 | So the other thing I would throw out there

00:31:25.420 | for you to consider

00:31:28.220 | is just ending your work early and being done.

00:31:31.960 | It's not that hard of a job being a PhD student

00:31:35.640 | in most programs.

00:31:36.680 | It's not nearly as hard as other jobs if you're organized.

00:31:41.440 | Most PhD students are not,

00:31:43.480 | but if you are organized, it's like a superpower.

00:31:46.400 | So I don't want you to give up on this idea

00:31:48.240 | that maybe you could finish by three or whatever it is

00:31:51.920 | that you're aiming for and just be done and it's fine.

00:31:54.960 | Don't add that second work session

00:31:56.400 | just because of an abstract guilt

00:31:58.400 | that I should be putting in enough hours.

00:32:01.480 | If you can get your work done early and if you're organized,

00:32:03.240 | I really think you might be able to do it.

00:32:05.080 | Just have all that time for your daughter, for yourself.

00:32:07.800 | Keep that in mind.

00:32:09.560 | Your job might not be as hard as you fear.

00:32:11.880 | - Can I ask one follow-up question for that?

00:32:14.560 | - Yep.

00:32:15.400 | - Are you an advisor to any students?

00:32:17.600 | - Yeah. - Their PhD stuff?

00:32:18.920 | - Yeah. - Do they follow your methods?

00:32:21.280 | - I don't know the degree to which they read my stuff.

00:32:26.200 | I mean, I think certainly they're aware.

00:32:29.000 | They're certainly aware of my books

00:32:30.360 | and they see me on things.

00:32:31.840 | - Has anybody ever asked you about it?

00:32:34.160 | - Well, so there's kind of a two-part answer to that.

00:32:36.640 | So, I mean, I don't always get into that

00:32:38.920 | with my PhD students unless they want to.

00:32:41.400 | But I do at Georgetown have an open office hours policy

00:32:45.880 | where any Georgetown student can stop by,

00:32:48.760 | whether or not they're in my class or not,

00:32:50.520 | to talk about anything they want to during the semester.

00:32:54.160 | And a lot of people stop by to talk about that stuff.

00:32:56.080 | So I have a lot of students come through

00:32:58.560 | who have questions about organization.

00:33:00.960 | Career stuff is a big one.

00:33:03.000 | It's like, "So Good They Can't Ignore You,"

00:33:04.440 | that book is a big one for the college students

00:33:06.840 | because they're trying to figure out

00:33:07.800 | what do I want to do with my life?

00:33:09.240 | I'm trying to make these decisions.

00:33:10.680 | They're typically ambitious, hard-charging students

00:33:12.640 | 'cause they're at this good school

00:33:13.920 | and then they're trying to figure out what comes next.

00:33:15.680 | So I have a lot of students come through

00:33:17.480 | and we talk about a lot of these different types of things,

00:33:21.240 | which is nice because when I was a grad student,

00:33:22.760 | I used to answer emails from students

00:33:24.320 | all around the country.

00:33:25.160 | And then as we talked about, I lost the ability to do that

00:33:27.280 | because it was just too many emails.

00:33:29.080 | And so the way I'm able to maintain that connection

00:33:31.880 | to one-on-one direct advice, which is important to me,

00:33:35.960 | is my open office hour policy.

00:33:38.160 | That being said, let me warn everyone,

00:33:40.400 | it's the summer now.

00:33:41.360 | I don't run office hours during the summer.

00:33:43.000 | I've had to tell three or four people, I think,

00:33:44.800 | in the last two days who have written me students,

00:33:47.040 | like, "Hey, can I come in to talk about X, Y, and Z?"

00:33:49.720 | In the summer, I'm a bit of a ghost, all right?

00:33:51.960 | I pay my own salary in the summer.

00:33:53.680 | I write, I unwind, I don't come to campus that much.

00:33:58.200 | So you'll have to wait until fall,

00:34:00.760 | but I do run those open office hours.

00:34:03.060 | All right, so I have another question here

00:34:05.680 | that goes along the same general track as our last one.

00:34:10.200 | It's about shutdowns.

00:34:11.240 | It's from John.

00:34:12.120 | John says, "How do I get back on track

00:34:15.280 | "to doing a true shutdown ritual?

00:34:19.920 | "I'm in a manager role and my days seem to turn into chaos

00:34:23.420 | "in the afternoons.

00:34:24.280 | "This is probably my fault for letting the urgent

00:34:26.320 | "get in the way of the important,

00:34:27.500 | "but the result is that I end up doing the important

00:34:31.200 | "during time I've set aside for a shutdown ritual.

00:34:34.860 | "After a couple of days, doing a true shutdown

00:34:36.960 | "becomes seemingly impossible.

00:34:38.660 | "How do I break the cycle of poor shutdowns

00:34:40.480 | "and get back on track?"

00:34:43.800 | Well, John, first of all,

00:34:46.720 | I don't think you have a shutdown ritual problem.

00:34:49.400 | You have a time-blocking problem.

00:34:53.280 | So you're clearly not putting aside enough time

00:34:57.680 | to actually deal with the quote unquote urgent.

00:35:00.960 | If I had to guess, you're way too optimistically

00:35:04.180 | building your time-block schedules.

00:35:07.980 | You are putting, I would assume, very little time in

00:35:10.960 | for dealing with things that come up,

00:35:13.000 | let's say through email or Slack or drop-bys

00:35:15.260 | that are urgent that need responses,

00:35:17.220 | or you're putting aside time for your email inbox,

00:35:19.320 | but you're incredibly optimistically saying 30 minutes

00:35:22.000 | and we'll be good, where what you really need

00:35:23.560 | is 90 minutes or two hours.

00:35:25.360 | And so I'm gonna suggest what you need to do here,

00:35:28.200 | to borrow a phrase from the earlier days of this podcast,

00:35:31.700 | is face the productivity dragon.

00:35:34.620 | Actually time-block the time you need

00:35:38.020 | to keep up with the things that are actually coming in

00:35:40.440 | and require your responses.

00:35:42.020 | Now, here's what you will find at first, I will guess,

00:35:46.520 | is that you are going to be aghast.

00:35:50.440 | Your time-block schedules are going to be 80 to 90%

00:35:55.320 | Zoom meetings, in-person meetings, and email inbox checks.

00:35:59.100 | But that is just reflecting reality.

00:36:02.000 | That is reflecting your reality.

00:36:04.200 | So if you actually time-block all the time

00:36:05.720 | you need to put out fires,

00:36:07.760 | so that when you get to your shutdown routine,

00:36:09.680 | you have time for it,

00:36:10.500 | you might realize that's all you're doing.

00:36:12.840 | So what's happening right now is you're just pretending

00:36:14.360 | like it doesn't take that much time,

00:36:15.960 | and then you spend the time anyways,

00:36:17.320 | and then just blow past your schedule.

00:36:19.400 | Now that doesn't mean you have to settle

00:36:21.680 | for living with that particular productivity dragon.

00:36:24.760 | This can be the wake-up call you need to say,

00:36:26.800 | how do I significantly reduce the number of fires

00:36:30.920 | I'm putting out in an ad hoc manner?

00:36:32.360 | How do I significantly reduce the amount of time

00:36:34.080 | I spend in these meetings?

00:36:35.140 | Let that now be the fire that gets you moving.

00:36:39.800 | And this is where you can begin putting into place

00:36:41.920 | the types of ideas I talk about in my book,

00:36:44.600 | "A World Without Email",

00:36:46.120 | to move more and more of the work

00:36:48.480 | that you're regularly involved in

00:36:50.640 | away from ad hoc unscheduled messages

00:36:52.800 | and towards more structured processes and systems.

00:36:57.800 | Now we have office hours,

00:36:59.520 | now we have task boards for keeping track

00:37:01.600 | of who's working on who,

00:37:02.760 | now we have structured status meetings

00:37:04.600 | to do rapid updates on lots of things.

00:37:06.880 | Now we're taking things off of our plate

00:37:09.020 | because we're more directly seeing the impact

00:37:11.360 | of our current workload.

00:37:12.600 | All of these type of innovations

00:37:14.080 | that are gonna make work more sustainable for you

00:37:15.880 | require a foundation of clarity,

00:37:17.640 | and that clarity comes from facing the dragon

00:37:19.480 | and saying, "I want a time block schedule I stick to.

00:37:22.720 | If I need to spend five hours on email,

00:37:25.520 | I wanna see five hours blocked out

00:37:29.460 | on my planner labeled email.

00:37:32.500 | I want when my supervisor or boss comes by

00:37:35.560 | to be able to say,

00:37:36.400 | 'This is what you have done to me.'"

00:37:39.540 | Clarity.

00:37:40.960 | Face the dragon,

00:37:42.360 | then you can figure out how you are going to slay it.

00:37:47.200 | - All right, let's hear some voices here.

00:37:49.840 | Let's do a call, Jesse.

00:37:50.760 | Do we have a good call we can turn to?

00:37:53.080 | - Yeah, we sure do.

00:37:53.920 | We got a call about Elton.

00:37:56.840 | He's turning 40,

00:37:58.240 | and he's wondering if he should cash in on career capital

00:38:01.280 | or pursue like a hard grind.

00:38:04.320 | He's been doing the job for like 15 years.

00:38:07.040 | - Hey, Cal, this is Elton.

00:38:08.280 | I'm a mechanical engineer.

00:38:10.480 | And turning 40, like other people

00:38:13.280 | that might be interested in this area,

00:38:15.680 | interested in this question.

00:38:17.720 | And division I'm working for is closing,

00:38:21.200 | but I spent the first 15 years of my career

00:38:23.520 | working in a test lab,

00:38:25.760 | doing mechanical testing.

00:38:28.040 | And now I'm kind of looking at

00:38:29.320 | some different jobs that are available.

00:38:30.840 | I can keep working what I think are good,

00:38:33.040 | hard, challenging projects

00:38:37.140 | that I can really focus on and really get into it.

00:38:41.240 | But for the same salary and everything,

00:38:44.840 | there's another job potential

00:38:47.240 | that would then be a much easier job

00:38:50.160 | and kind of cash in that career capital

00:38:52.440 | as you've talked about,

00:38:54.720 | specific in the material testing realm

00:38:57.080 | that I have just built up so much experience.

00:38:59.360 | So at what point do you keep going after a good hard grind

00:39:04.360 | and hard challenges

00:39:07.120 | versus start to cash in on the career capital

00:39:10.600 | that you've built to then have additional time

00:39:13.880 | for other activities?

00:39:16.000 | Love to hear your answers.

00:39:17.400 | - Well, Elton, I think 40,

00:39:23.080 | turning 40 is a good natural checkpoint in one's life,

00:39:28.080 | especially in sort of the modern world

00:39:32.040 | of highly educated knowledge work.

00:39:33.880 | If you figure out how much time you're in schooling

00:39:36.040 | and how much time you're getting on your feet.

00:39:38.840 | By the time you're 40,

00:39:40.080 | you've had enough time to get on your feet

00:39:42.640 | to figure out what you're doing,

00:39:43.920 | to gain some capital and some self-awareness,

00:39:46.320 | and then to step back and take a breather

00:39:47.960 | and say, okay, what's next?

00:39:50.800 | As I've mentioned on the podcast before,

00:39:52.360 | I think midlife crises get a bad rap.

00:39:55.080 | People think about buying convertibles and leather jackets,

00:39:58.800 | but I think we could have some better terminology here,

00:40:01.160 | some better marketing,

00:40:02.320 | like midlife check-in, midlife course correction.

00:40:06.960 | It's a great time to change things up.

00:40:11.240 | So I'm glad you're doing this thinking now.

00:40:13.680 | I'm also about to turn 40.

00:40:15.680 | Jesse, of course, turned 40 long time ago.

00:40:19.040 | - Long time.

00:40:19.880 | - We're talking like two months ago at this point, is it?

00:40:22.360 | Six weeks ago.

00:40:23.200 | So he's probably too old at this point to be useful,

00:40:26.440 | but I'm 39.

00:40:27.600 | I have not yet turned 40.

00:40:28.640 | I'm like you, Elton, we're in our 30s.

00:40:30.000 | We still have our lives ahead of us

00:40:31.520 | so we can think about this.

00:40:32.880 | Here's what I'm gonna suggest.

00:40:36.160 | Dust off your lifestyle-centric career planning hat.

00:40:41.760 | And do that exercise pretty seriously again right now.

00:40:45.360 | So as long-time listeners and readers of mine know,

00:40:49.960 | lifestyle-centric career planning is my theory

00:40:52.120 | that when you're trying to figure out

00:40:54.480 | what to do professionally,

00:40:56.920 | it is easy to get tripped up on very narrow concerns,

00:41:00.240 | such as this notion that you're wired for a particular job,

00:41:04.600 | and is that job matching what you're wired for?

00:41:06.480 | So this is the whole passion hypothesis issue,

00:41:08.720 | the whole follow your passion issue

00:41:10.440 | is you're focusing so exclusively

00:41:11.840 | on this mystical match between work and your inclinations.

00:41:15.960 | Other people get caught up on individual factors of jobs.

00:41:20.200 | So income is an easy one

00:41:21.440 | because it's a number on a scoreboard.

00:41:24.040 | And so you can see that number tick up.

00:41:26.080 | And so it's easy to get locked into that.

00:41:27.920 | Like, well, how can I get this income number

00:41:29.480 | to keep going up?

00:41:30.320 | That becomes a game

00:41:32.320 | where you keep wanting that to go higher.

00:41:33.680 | Prestige is another one.

00:41:35.640 | I want more prestige, more prestige.

00:41:37.560 | How much do people respect this?

00:41:38.800 | How much more will I be respected if I do this?

00:41:40.680 | So it's easy to get locked into individual factors.

00:41:43.560 | Lifestyle-centric career planning says,

00:41:45.560 | take a beat, step back.

00:41:48.480 | Your job is one thing that feeds into your overall life.

00:41:53.080 | What is your goal with all of this

00:41:55.000 | is to have a life that is meaningful,

00:41:57.760 | sustainable, and satisfying.

00:42:00.000 | So the right way to think about your career,

00:42:02.080 | at least according to this theory,

00:42:04.480 | is to fix a very clear picture

00:42:07.360 | of what you want your lifestyle to be like

00:42:09.880 | in the near to medium term future.

00:42:11.920 | So now that you're 40, you can go through this exercise.

00:42:15.160 | It's gonna look very different

00:42:16.160 | than when you do this exercise at, let's say, 21.

00:42:19.200 | You have a lot more miles under that keel.

00:42:21.440 | You have a lot more career capital accrued.

00:42:23.800 | You've also learned a lot more about yourself.

00:42:26.080 | Maybe you're married at this point.

00:42:27.280 | Maybe you have kids.

00:42:28.200 | Maybe you're more involved

00:42:29.480 | in certain community organizations

00:42:31.560 | that you had no connection to earlier.

00:42:32.840 | You have a lot more to work with.

00:42:34.400 | So go back and do this exercise.

00:42:36.280 | Five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now,

00:42:38.320 | what do I want my life to be like?

00:42:40.280 | And you go through all of the details.

00:42:42.080 | Where am I living?

00:42:42.960 | What type of place am I living?

00:42:44.200 | What's my house like?

00:42:45.080 | Am I in the country?

00:42:45.920 | Am I in a town?

00:42:46.760 | Am I in the city?

00:42:47.960 | What's my time like?

00:42:48.960 | What about my connection with people?

00:42:50.400 | How much of my life is connecting with people?

00:42:52.240 | Or is it in work?

00:42:53.480 | Or is it in production?

00:42:55.200 | Look for particular case studies

00:42:57.400 | of individuals that resonate.

00:42:59.640 | I read this profile of this rider

00:43:02.520 | or of this surfboard shaper

00:43:05.000 | or of this master of the universe CEO type

00:43:08.120 | or this nonprofit doctor, whatever it is,

00:43:11.360 | what's resonating?

00:43:13.040 | And you try to deconstruct those stories.

00:43:14.760 | What is it about this person's life I've read about

00:43:16.920 | that's hitting the right buttons for me?

00:43:20.440 | And you nail down this lifestyle.

00:43:22.080 | You imagine yourself in all of the different details,

00:43:24.680 | what your day is like, what things look like,

00:43:27.080 | what it feels like, what it smells like, all of this.

00:43:30.040 | You get that so clear.

00:43:32.040 | And then you work backwards and say, great,

00:43:34.200 | how do I get to something like that?

00:43:37.360 | What are my different options

00:43:38.440 | for moving my life towards that lifestyle?

00:43:40.600 | And work will play a big role in that,

00:43:42.840 | but now it's very instrumental.

00:43:45.120 | Now it's very instrumental.

00:43:45.960 | So when you do this, for example, Elton,

00:43:47.640 | in your particular case,

00:43:48.840 | if when you do this exercise,

00:43:51.120 | you find a lifestyle you're picturing,

00:43:53.800 | does not have a huge,

00:43:54.800 | there's not a huge component to it

00:43:56.000 | where you're whatever, selling a giant company

00:43:59.320 | or up in a boardroom making moves.

00:44:00.760 | Maybe what you envision is you live near the water

00:44:04.600 | and it's quiet and you're building a boat in a woodshed

00:44:09.280 | and maybe you have your kids there or something like this

00:44:11.400 | and they're out collecting fireflies

00:44:13.840 | or something like this.

00:44:14.920 | If you have a lifestyle

00:44:16.400 | that's really resonating that's like that,

00:44:17.880 | and you're like, okay,

00:44:19.080 | I need some amount of money to do that.

00:44:20.840 | How much do I need?

00:44:22.160 | Let's get that number down.

00:44:23.240 | Let's definitely go to the job that's more flexible.

00:44:25.840 | It's remote and flexible

00:44:28.000 | and I can live on the Chesapeake Bay.

00:44:29.720 | And if I do it,

00:44:31.000 | it's kind of nine to five or whatever you figure it out.

00:44:33.920 | And you say, this can be very compatible with this job.

00:44:36.120 | Or you say, what I need to do

00:44:36.960 | is really just keep pushing the skill

00:44:38.600 | because I could start doing that on a consulting basis

00:44:41.640 | and maybe work eight months a year

00:44:43.200 | and take four months off.

00:44:44.120 | You begin to get very innovative

00:44:45.720 | in how you think about your job

00:44:47.200 | when all of it is instrumental

00:44:48.480 | towards a bigger vision

00:44:50.080 | of what you want your life to be like.

00:44:51.840 | So that's what I would suggest, Elton.

00:44:53.600 | Go back, do some lifestyle centric career planning,

00:44:57.200 | see how work fits into that lifestyle

00:45:00.320 | and use that to guide your decisions.

00:45:02.240 | Do not consider your profession at this point in isolation.

00:45:06.600 | Do not say I have to consider just my work as my work

00:45:09.520 | and just focus on very narrow categories like my income

00:45:12.280 | or whether it's my passion.

00:45:14.080 | Fit it into the bigger picture.

00:45:15.840 | Now is a good time to do it.

00:45:17.600 | Now is a good time to take all of that career capital

00:45:20.240 | that you have accrued over the last 20 years

00:45:22.080 | in the working world and take it for a spin.

00:45:25.360 | Make sure that you're leveraging it.

00:45:26.880 | Make sure that you're gaining more autonomy

00:45:28.880 | over what and how your life is like.

00:45:31.520 | So 40 is a great time to do that.

00:45:34.840 | Tune up.

00:45:35.680 | I'm down to, Jesse, I'm down to like six weeks,

00:45:42.800 | six or seven weeks until I turn 40.

00:45:46.040 | Yeah.

00:45:47.440 | And then I make all the changes, make all the changes.

00:45:51.000 | Big birthday project coming up.

00:45:53.360 | Yeah, yeah.

00:45:54.640 | Birthday projects coming along.

00:45:55.960 | There's some big, some potentially bigger things

00:45:58.680 | I'm thinking about, not all professional related,

00:46:01.200 | but 40 has been a good energizer for dusting off

00:46:05.600 | some more lifestyle-centric career planning,

00:46:08.600 | exciting thoughts.

00:46:10.400 | Most of them center around me becoming

00:46:12.320 | a professional HVAC repairman, but I'm gonna crush it.

00:46:15.360 | I gotta say, by the way, I'm joking because I talked

00:46:19.440 | about my air conditioner at the start of the last episode.

00:46:23.120 | I've never received more messages on any topic

00:46:25.520 | than we've talked about on this show.

00:46:27.320 | I received about people who are similarly obsessed

00:46:30.880 | about air conditioners.

00:46:32.160 | It's like a huge issue.

00:46:34.920 | We've talked about controversial topics.

00:46:36.960 | We've talked about really philosophical topics.

00:46:39.960 | We've done topics that I'm a world expert on.

00:46:42.920 | No, most messages we've ever gotten for a topic,

00:46:46.440 | complaining about my air conditioner.

00:46:48.760 | A fun fact about my truck is that the AC

00:46:51.080 | has been broken for 20 years.

00:46:53.280 | I'm not surprised.

00:46:54.280 | - In a DC that's a lot. - I'm not surprised.

00:46:57.280 | - Heat work, so.

00:46:58.360 | - When I look at your truck, I think this is probably

00:47:01.960 | a vehicle in which in the mid 1980s,

00:47:05.720 | a ranch hand was murdered.

00:47:09.960 | That's what I think about.

00:47:11.080 | That's what I think about in that truck,

00:47:12.360 | that the number of ranch hands on a West Texas ranch

00:47:16.000 | whose corpses have been carried in that truck

00:47:19.640 | to a ditch in the far pasture to be buried

00:47:22.920 | is greater than zero.

00:47:24.640 | - It is in the queue to be painted,

00:47:26.080 | but that queue never.

00:47:27.480 | - No, I liked your paint job.

00:47:28.440 | You have the old fashioned stripe,

00:47:30.520 | the old Ford stripe.

00:47:33.040 | Is it, it's like tan?

00:47:34.360 | - Yeah, they're gonna get, there's some rust and stuff.

00:47:36.960 | - No, yeah, the rust is an issue.

00:47:38.520 | - Yeah.

00:47:39.360 | - No, I liked Jesse's truck.

00:47:41.160 | And we need you to have it because when Elon Musk

00:47:43.760 | comes on the show.

00:47:44.600 | - Yeah, I gotta pick him up with no AC.

00:47:46.160 | - Yeah, we gotta pick him up with no AC in the rusted.

00:47:49.600 | Actually, honestly, I don't think Elon Musk

00:47:50.960 | would even notice.

00:47:52.640 | Zuckerberg might notice, I don't know.

00:47:54.560 | Yeah.

00:47:56.280 | Oh, well, I mean, look, I can't complain.

00:47:58.800 | I don't think a lot about cars.

00:48:00.480 | So I drive, the first car I ever owned,

00:48:04.040 | I bought it with my So Good They Can't Ignore You Advance

00:48:07.760 | and bought in cash.

00:48:10.280 | It's like a $15,000 2011 Honda Fit.

00:48:14.800 | They don't even make them anymore.

00:48:16.640 | It's a go-kart, a go-kart.

00:48:18.680 | Like if there's not a parking space,

00:48:19.840 | I will bring it with me into the store.

00:48:22.080 | Like, let me just, I'm just gonna bring this thing in

00:48:25.480 | 'cause I don't care.

00:48:26.320 | But it's fine, I commute through DC on it.

00:48:28.160 | So between the two of us,

00:48:29.480 | remarkably unimpressive vehicle drivers.

00:48:33.640 | All right, Jesse, let's try some new technology.

00:48:37.000 | I wanna do a Cal Reacts to the News segment.

00:48:41.440 | We actually have the article right here on screen.

00:48:45.640 | So for those of you who are watching this segment

00:48:48.280 | at youtube.com/calnewsportmedia,

00:48:50.800 | you will be able to actually see what I'm doing.

00:48:54.360 | You'll also be able to see all the sparks and smoke

00:48:56.520 | when this goes terribly awry.

00:48:59.720 | All right, so here's the article.

00:49:00.800 | This was sent to me by a listener.

00:49:04.000 | It's by Elizabeth Klein.

00:49:06.360 | It's from February of 2021.

00:49:09.440 | And it is titled, "A Catholic Response to Workism,"

00:49:13.440 | call in how to lose at life.

00:49:18.880 | So this is a Catholic response to issues

00:49:21.120 | about work and overwork.

00:49:22.800 | Because I wrote so much about this topic,

00:49:24.800 | especially in my New Yorker column last fall,

00:49:27.440 | I found it interesting.

00:49:28.760 | I'm not gonna go through this whole article,

00:49:31.200 | but I'm gonna point out a few points

00:49:33.560 | that are made up front,

00:49:34.400 | and then I'll give you my reactions to them.

00:49:36.600 | But let's start here in the beginning

00:49:38.200 | with a couple key notes that are being made by the author.

00:49:43.200 | So the author says,

00:49:44.400 | "For everyone, for the vast majority of humans,

00:49:48.680 | life is not very glamorous,

00:49:51.000 | involves doing a lot of boring and tedious things

00:49:53.040 | like paying taxes or cooking dinner or sweeping the floor."

00:49:55.960 | But she points out that these everyday tasks

00:49:59.680 | seem in particular to vex millennials.

00:50:03.560 | This generation, she goes on to say,

00:50:06.880 | has suffered from widespread ridicule

00:50:10.440 | for laziness and the inability to grow up.

00:50:13.760 | But somewhat paradoxically,

00:50:16.120 | millennials also seem exhausted.

00:50:19.340 | All right, so this is a common thing we hear,

00:50:23.220 | but I wanna point it out

00:50:24.220 | as part of the setup for this article.

00:50:26.120 | She goes on to say,

00:50:28.340 | "When talking about us millennials' problems

00:50:30.780 | is that we are,"

00:50:33.580 | look at this, already,

00:50:35.380 | I'm learning this technology pretty quickly.

00:50:36.780 | Or for those who are just listening,

00:50:38.860 | you're seeing me highlight things left and right

00:50:41.260 | that I don't mean to highlight

00:50:42.300 | as I learn the technology.

00:50:44.340 | Elizabeth also says,

00:50:45.700 | "Millennials are frustrated at being unable to obtain

00:50:48.620 | the same level of material wealth

00:50:50.020 | enjoyed by their parents."

00:50:53.180 | All right, so that's the setup.

00:50:54.780 | The article isn't gonna go into saying

00:50:57.180 | why this is or what's wrong with millennials,

00:50:59.300 | but that is the setup.

00:51:00.300 | So let me just start with this

00:51:01.500 | before we get into the why.

00:51:04.220 | I will say, in general, I have heard this a lot.

00:51:06.620 | I'm not super convinced.

00:51:08.140 | The issue here is I say,

00:51:10.540 | almost everything being said here,

00:51:11.740 | I'm sure it could be said

00:51:12.580 | about just about every generation.

00:51:14.480 | A lot of these claims are just made.

00:51:16.280 | Are millennials unusually exhausted?

00:51:19.500 | Are we unusually vexed by having to do small tasks

00:51:23.220 | like more so than other people at our age?

00:51:25.500 | I don't know that that's true.

00:51:27.100 | I know it's widely said.

00:51:28.740 | I don't know that that's true.

00:51:30.260 | What about this idea,

00:51:31.100 | which I hear all the time,

00:51:31.980 | that we're frustrated that our parents

00:51:33.260 | have more money and houses than we do?

00:51:35.540 | Again, I'm not super impressed by that claim.

00:51:40.340 | What is the biggest predictor

00:51:42.460 | of how much money or wealth you're gonna have?

00:51:45.400 | Well, one of the biggest predictors is how old are you?

00:51:47.480 | How long have you had to actually make money?

00:51:50.060 | How long have you had to actually trade up your house

00:51:52.140 | three or four times?

00:51:52.980 | How long have you had to be putting money

00:51:54.500 | into your retirement account?

00:51:56.100 | So I don't think it's some unusual thing

00:51:57.820 | that 70-year-old baby boomers

00:51:59.900 | have nicer houses and more money

00:52:01.980 | than their 30-year-old kids.

00:52:05.180 | And I'm sure that's true of every generation.

00:52:07.380 | That, ah, my parents,

00:52:09.580 | who've been around a lot longer,

00:52:10.500 | have more stuff than I have than when I'm younger.

00:52:12.300 | So I just wanna lay out that foundation

00:52:13.740 | that I'm not acceding the ground

00:52:15.780 | that is made at the beginning of this article,

00:52:17.660 | not acceding the ground to this argument

00:52:19.260 | that, of course, us millennials

00:52:20.900 | are all vexed and overwhelmed and upset at our parents

00:52:23.300 | and worried about our prospects.

00:52:26.340 | I'm not sure that exactly matches

00:52:27.920 | a lot of my day-to-day interactions,

00:52:29.260 | but that could be true.

00:52:30.340 | It could be true for other people,

00:52:32.840 | but let me just start with that.

00:52:34.060 | All right, so why is this the case?

00:52:35.960 | There's a couple options given here.

00:52:38.820 | There's three points in particular that I wanna point out.

00:52:42.420 | All right, so first, this article talks about

00:52:44.660 | Anne Helen Peterson's viral Buzzfeed article,

00:52:48.700 | How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.

00:52:51.300 | She went on to publish a book about this as well.

00:52:53.780 | The book was called "Can't Even."

00:52:56.700 | So this was an article that did a lot

00:52:59.340 | for promoting this idea

00:53:01.460 | that millennials have a hard time doing small tasks.

00:53:06.240 | Here is Helen's argument, or Anne's argument, rather,

00:53:11.640 | all right, so she puts forward the idea

00:53:12.780 | that millennials basically work all the time,

00:53:15.140 | and then when they are non-working,

00:53:16.540 | they are busy trying to excel in other ways.

00:53:20.620 | So she goes on to say, "Drinking enough water,

00:53:22.540 | "going to the gym or running a marathon,

00:53:23.960 | "eating at trendy restaurants,

00:53:25.040 | "and then sharing all these experiences on social media

00:53:27.620 | "for the perfect Instagram life."

00:53:29.300 | So I'll label this number one.

00:53:31.060 | This is point number one.

00:53:32.060 | We'll come back to that.

00:53:33.620 | All right, second argument that's pointed out here

00:53:37.060 | about what's going on with millennials

00:53:38.940 | actually comes from the Ezra Klein Show.

00:53:41.980 | So there was a interview Ezra did with Anne Helen Peterson,

00:53:46.380 | but also with Derek Thompson,

00:53:49.100 | who wrote an article about workism for the Atlantic,

00:53:52.460 | and it reiterated some of these big ideas.

00:53:55.240 | But what was interesting is according to this author,

00:53:59.180 | this conversation took a surprising turn.

00:54:05.540 | So here we go.

00:54:06.380 | "Near the end of the podcast,

00:54:07.200 | "the discussion takes a surprising turn,"

00:54:09.340 | and that turn is towards religion.

00:54:13.740 | All right, so that takes a surprising turn towards religion.

00:54:19.940 | Derek Thompson goes on in that interview to talk about,

00:54:24.940 | and I'm gonna highlight this, but he goes on to comment,

00:54:29.220 | this was unprompted by Ezra,

00:54:32.860 | "When you are religious,

00:54:33.780 | "you do not require the social feedback loop.

00:54:36.560 | "You do not need a public performance of your life

00:54:38.380 | "to make it valuable."

00:54:39.820 | All right, so let's make this our second point.

00:54:42.500 | It's interesting about trying to explain

00:54:44.120 | what's going on with millennials,

00:54:45.260 | this notion that maybe it is religion that is missing.

00:54:49.700 | Millennials that are religious have an outlet,

00:54:54.540 | this drive towards wanting to live a good life.

00:54:59.740 | They now have an outlet for that,

00:55:01.540 | and they don't have to try to simulate it

00:55:04.100 | with performative action online, et cetera.

00:55:07.880 | There's one final point given in this article.

00:55:11.640 | This comes from the author herself,

00:55:16.580 | and this is the focus on capitalism.

00:55:20.960 | So we usually get back here.

00:55:24.120 | She says, "As capitalism has become the religion

00:55:26.400 | "of most Americans,

00:55:27.780 | "so the measures of the worth in our lives

00:55:32.740 | "has become our product."

00:55:36.920 | So capitalism is the focus here.

00:55:39.820 | She goes on to elaborate,

00:55:43.260 | "My life has become a brand.

00:55:46.700 | "This is why millennials can both seem to be obsessed

00:55:49.000 | "with work and not yet value hard work at all."

00:55:51.920 | So there's this notion of there's a capitalist impulse,

00:55:55.080 | we'll make this point number three.

00:55:56.480 | There's a capitalist impulse that gets us

00:55:59.160 | to constantly want to somehow support our brand,

00:56:02.480 | and so we're not going to tolerate efforts

00:56:04.920 | that don't directly do that, and we have a hard time.

00:56:06.840 | All right, so we have three arguments here.

00:56:08.160 | We have three arguments for why supposedly

00:56:11.120 | millennials are exhausted

00:56:13.040 | and having a hard time doing even simple tasks.

00:56:15.480 | Number one is Anne Helen Peterson's argument

00:56:18.560 | that we're always trying to optimize performatively.

00:56:22.200 | Number two is Derek Thompson's argument

00:56:25.000 | that we don't have religion.

00:56:26.800 | We're trying to fill that hole,

00:56:27.920 | we're not doing a very good job of it.

00:56:29.200 | And number three is it's a capitalist impulse.

00:56:32.560 | Okay, so what do I think about this?

00:56:36.640 | I think of these three options,

00:56:39.680 | the person who is probably most on to something

00:56:41.560 | is Derek Thompson, point number two.

00:56:43.880 | So let me work through point one and three first.

00:56:48.520 | I'll say why I have some concern about it.

00:56:50.960 | My issue with Anne's argument

00:56:53.320 | that it's all about Instagram performance

00:56:55.420 | is that I believe that exists,

00:56:58.240 | but it's a much more narrow tranche

00:57:00.940 | of all of the millennials in this country

00:57:02.480 | that it might actually seem

00:57:03.960 | if you're someone who is quote unquote very online.

00:57:06.500 | So yes, there is this hustle culture on Instagram,

00:57:09.400 | which honestly, I didn't even really know about it

00:57:11.480 | till enough reporters asked me about it.

00:57:13.480 | So there is a subset of Instagram users

00:57:15.560 | that are all about posting these inspirational quotes,

00:57:18.200 | these get after it style quotes,

00:57:19.920 | these bragging about how much they're working style quotes.

00:57:22.600 | There's also a echo of the subculture on YouTube.

00:57:26.480 | In the student space, for example,

00:57:29.440 | there's these YouTube videos of people

00:57:30.960 | who will study on camera,

00:57:32.360 | usually time-lapse for eight, nine hours in a row.

00:57:34.760 | So there is a sort of performative celebration of hustle

00:57:39.760 | that does happen online,

00:57:42.240 | but I think it's actually a pretty narrow audience.

00:57:45.240 | Most millennials, especially as they get older,

00:57:48.600 | millennials are now in their 30s,

00:57:50.800 | millennials in their upper 20s.

00:57:52.920 | I don't know that so many of them

00:57:54.160 | are so plugged into their social media presences

00:57:56.400 | as the main driving thing.

00:57:57.600 | I think as they get older,

00:57:58.600 | there's other things going on in their lives.

00:58:00.120 | They're getting married, they're having kids,

00:58:01.680 | the more important stuff is happening in their jobs.

00:58:03.640 | And so I've never been as big of a believer

00:58:05.760 | that we can extrapolate the most eye-catching things

00:58:09.440 | we see on Instagram to YouTube to an entire generation.

00:58:13.320 | It just doesn't pass the test of matching

00:58:16.940 | all of the people I know who are millennials.

00:58:18.720 | You would think if something is a very widespread trend,

00:58:21.480 | you would see it popping up at least

00:58:23.600 | at a relatively high background rate.

00:58:25.760 | So I think that might be a little bit exaggerated.

00:58:28.920 | Honestly, most millennials I know of a certain age

00:58:32.720 | are mainly just exhausted with social media.

00:58:35.080 | Now, again, we might be mixing up generations,

00:58:37.920 | we have to be careful about that.

00:58:39.800 | People still use the term millennial

00:58:41.560 | to mean everyone who's young.

00:58:44.120 | It's no longer the case.

00:58:45.720 | I'm one of the older millennials born in 1982, so I'm 40.

00:58:49.800 | The youngest millennials though

00:58:50.960 | are in their upper 20s now.

00:58:52.840 | So I mean, sometimes when people say millennials,

00:58:54.720 | they're actually talking about Gen Zers

00:58:56.280 | or talking about people who are in their young 20s

00:58:59.560 | or teen years now, that's a whole other generation.

00:59:01.720 | This is the generation that grew up

00:59:03.080 | with a native use of smartphones and social media.

00:59:06.840 | That's a whole different thing.

00:59:08.320 | But millennials, honestly,

00:59:09.600 | I think there's also a strong thread of,

00:59:12.040 | they're on some social media,

00:59:13.520 | but it's not a major player in their life.

00:59:15.920 | All right, let's jump ahead to number three,

00:59:17.120 | the capitalism critique.

00:59:19.000 | There's a lot of this going on right now.

00:59:21.320 | It's like our entire cultural conversation

00:59:24.600 | is hanging out on campus when the freshmen are going home.

00:59:29.600 | Like everyone has taken their first

00:59:31.800 | sort of Marxist influenced, whatever, critical course,

00:59:36.160 | and now are confidently explaining to their parents

00:59:38.480 | how it's all bourgeois capitalist influence.

00:59:40.360 | There's a lot of this going on right now.

00:59:41.360 | We're going back to these sort of Marxist critiques.

00:59:43.360 | Here's the thing,

00:59:44.360 | there's not like there's something new going on

00:59:47.680 | with capitalism, I would say, generationally.

00:59:50.400 | So if capitalism was driving you to these issues,

00:59:54.520 | it's not that there's some big change necessarily

00:59:56.600 | that happened in capitalism,

00:59:58.040 | let's say during the last 10 years,

01:00:00.720 | that wasn't there 10 years before that

01:00:01.920 | or 20 years before that.

01:00:03.600 | So there obviously are issues with capitalism,

01:00:05.880 | but I don't think it's the right explanation

01:00:07.600 | for what's different about this generation

01:00:11.240 | versus other generations that came before.

01:00:14.000 | It is Derrick who I think is onto something.

01:00:16.840 | I think the gap here, the issue here is a meaning gap.

01:00:19.800 | I think this is an issue with millennials.

01:00:23.880 | It's an issue with every generation.

01:00:25.680 | How do you structure a good and meaningful life?

01:00:29.560 | I think most people are willing for a good

01:00:32.360 | and meaningful life to have hardships,

01:00:33.960 | to require effort, to require toil, to have ups and downs.

01:00:37.880 | People crave meaning much more strongly

01:00:41.200 | than almost anything else.

01:00:43.080 | And there can be an absence of that.

01:00:44.880 | And in the absence of that, I do think people flounder.

01:00:47.640 | And I think when you flounder, lots of effects can happen.

01:00:51.960 | A lots of effects can happen.

01:00:53.400 | So yes, you can get burnout on doing seeming trivial tasks.

01:00:57.240 | Back in my student advice days,

01:00:59.160 | we used to call this deep procrastination.

01:01:01.200 | If you get sufficiently mismatched

01:01:03.520 | between intrinsic motivation

01:01:05.560 | and the efforts you actually have to do,

01:01:07.360 | you can shut down your motivational centers

01:01:09.080 | and have a hard time doing even basic things.

01:01:11.280 | It's similar to depressive syndrome, but not quite the same.

01:01:13.920 | There's probably a lot of that going on.

01:01:16.000 | Clearly, I think there is exhaustion issues with work.

01:01:19.480 | Where does that come from?

01:01:20.440 | Well, as I've argued, I think in the modern age

01:01:22.880 | of digital knowledge work,

01:01:24.400 | so we get more and more ad hoc, frequent communication,

01:01:27.560 | all the context switching as job roles get more ambiguous.

01:01:29.880 | I think that's just fundamentally exhausting.

01:01:31.440 | So yeah, I think that really is an issue

01:01:34.720 | that's going on as well.

01:01:36.520 | I think people are hungry.

01:01:38.600 | We see strong embraces

01:01:42.040 | of all sorts of theoretical frameworks.

01:01:44.600 | For an academic, for example,

01:01:46.040 | to see something as obscure and complex

01:01:49.520 | as post-moderate influence critical theories,

01:01:52.080 | which is in academic circles, is like a very narrow thing.

01:01:54.960 | It's not like most professors in the humanities

01:01:57.840 | are coming at their work from a perspective

01:01:59.920 | of a post-modern influence critical theories,

01:02:01.840 | but they have a huge impact right now

01:02:03.520 | in our culture at large,

01:02:04.840 | that you have huge swaths of my generation

01:02:07.800 | that is quoting like relatively subtle,

01:02:10.880 | but 15 years ago would have been something

01:02:12.720 | you only would have heard

01:02:14.040 | in a pretty high level graduate seminar,

01:02:17.440 | pretty subtle theoretical frameworks.

01:02:18.880 | And I think it's because it's attached to social justice

01:02:22.320 | that seems meaningful.

01:02:23.800 | We're looking for meaning.

01:02:25.280 | We see that, I mean,

01:02:26.280 | you see it in a completely different context

01:02:27.960 | with the rise of conspiratorial thinking,

01:02:30.520 | the QAnon, et cetera.

01:02:32.160 | Look, say what you will about QAnon,

01:02:35.080 | but you can't say you don't feel like your life has meaning

01:02:37.720 | when you are stopping pedophile rings

01:02:40.120 | that live in secret subterranean tunnels beneath the city.

01:02:43.040 | You got something that you're locked into.

01:02:45.480 | So I think Thompson is onto something

01:02:47.040 | that the meaning gap is probably

01:02:48.400 | what's important for millennials.

01:02:50.400 | What millennials need and what Gen Z needs

01:02:52.680 | is some sort of coherent story

01:02:57.600 | about how to build a meaningful life

01:03:00.480 | in the face of inevitable suffering and hardship.

01:03:02.840 | I think that is where the huge hunger is.

01:03:04.640 | I see it in the Gen Z college students I teach.

01:03:06.640 | I see it in my millennial peers.

01:03:08.080 | I see it in the generations in between.

01:03:10.920 | This is what I believe people need.

01:03:15.120 | I believe this is probably what the issue is.

01:03:18.680 | I think we see that hunger out there.

01:03:20.520 | And I think it's what needs to be addressed.

01:03:23.880 | Now, I don't know if the answer is,

01:03:26.040 | you know, this particular article comes from a Catholic,

01:03:29.360 | it's a Catholic perspective,

01:03:30.480 | and so it might say Catholicism.

01:03:31.680 | I don't think there's a specific answer,

01:03:33.040 | like you need a religion to do this or this or that,

01:03:35.080 | but I think that meaning gap,

01:03:36.880 | I think that's a big thing that's going on here.

01:03:38.920 | Universities aren't addressing it.

01:03:41.080 | The baby boomer generations aren't passing down this

01:03:43.280 | to their kids very well.

01:03:44.840 | They got too distracted with just having a family

01:03:48.120 | and living life and trying to figure out life

01:03:49.920 | in their generation.

01:03:51.360 | Everyone has their own things going on.

01:03:52.960 | And, but that hunger, I think that hunger is out there

01:03:55.840 | and there should be more people discussing

01:03:58.360 | concrete answers to that hunger.

01:04:01.280 | Not one, there could be many,

01:04:02.280 | but people should be thinking,

01:04:03.240 | how am I structuring my life?

01:04:04.320 | How do I want to structure a deep existence

01:04:06.360 | in a world of both shallowness and hardship?

01:04:09.160 | So I think that's what's important.

01:04:12.880 | And the reason why I emphasize that

01:04:14.160 | is that otherwise, if we look at

01:04:15.680 | some of these other things being said here,

01:04:17.960 | which again, have some foundation in truth,

01:04:19.800 | I don't want to completely dismiss it.

01:04:22.040 | It's easy just to see this through the point of view

01:04:23.920 | of like, look, there's nothing these kids can do.

01:04:26.240 | There's these other influences that are bad.

01:04:28.440 | So you guys sit tight and we'll go write polemics

01:04:33.760 | and try to like change the circumstances

01:04:35.640 | that are making your life hard.

01:04:37.160 | That can be really disempowering.

01:04:38.800 | And I think that's a thread that goes through a lot of this,

01:04:40.880 | this sort of, what can we even do?

01:04:43.320 | You know, it's just culture and capitalism

01:04:45.520 | and the way our exploitative bosses

01:04:48.040 | are trying to take advantage of us.

01:04:51.680 | And so we need to leave it to like polemical writers

01:04:54.120 | to try to change the society and change the culture.

01:04:56.120 | And in the meantime, we should just, you know,

01:04:58.960 | go easy on ourselves, get back on Instagram.

01:05:02.480 | I don't think that's what's going to help people.

01:05:04.760 | We need people to come in and demonstrate in their life,

01:05:07.120 | here's my structure for a life of meaning

01:05:08.880 | amidst inevitable hardship, mental difficulty.

01:05:11.680 | To see these exemplars out there,

01:05:13.560 | challenge people to stand up

01:05:15.560 | and introduce some structure into their life,

01:05:17.880 | to introduce some pursuit beyond the arbitrary

01:05:21.960 | or in the moment.

01:05:22.800 | There is such a hunger for that.

01:05:23.920 | Anyways, I'm rambling, but that is where,

01:05:28.420 | that's where I land on that.

01:05:30.920 | So there we go.

01:05:33.320 | So what do you think, Jesse, our technology worked?

01:05:35.800 | - I think it's pretty cool.

01:05:37.080 | - Nothing caught on fire?

01:05:38.200 | - Nothing caught on fire.

01:05:40.000 | So we have two new things today,

01:05:41.660 | 'cause we have, we put the boom in.

01:05:44.320 | - Oh, the boom is awesome.

01:05:46.080 | Yeah, so you can't see this at home,

01:05:48.620 | but I'm sitting at a big round table

01:05:52.480 | and Jesse's on the other side of this round table, right?

01:05:55.120 | So we're kind of looking right at each other.

01:05:57.240 | Our computer that we run everything through

01:05:59.520 | is way off to the side.

01:06:01.080 | So it's very difficult to see.

01:06:02.280 | We have to look over at this computer

01:06:04.600 | way over at the side to do anything with it.

01:06:07.600 | Jesse has installed this crazy boom arm.

01:06:10.000 | So we can now pick up this big iMac screen

01:06:12.100 | and move it right over here to look at,

01:06:14.540 | move it right over to Jesse to look at.

01:06:15.980 | If I'm doing zoom, I can have it near the camera.

01:06:18.620 | And so, yeah, we're high tech in here today.

01:06:21.300 | - It kind of feels like a completely different setup.

01:06:24.420 | Feels good.

01:06:25.300 | - I like it.

01:06:26.120 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:06:27.420 | - And then with the iPad,

01:06:29.540 | and you're gonna be able to do some cool stuff with that.

01:06:31.980 | - Yeah, so look, I'm getting used to this,

01:06:33.860 | everyone who's watching the first episode.

01:06:35.460 | I wanna be able to diagram ideas.

01:06:38.980 | I wanna get better at reacting to articles.

01:06:41.580 | We're working on the tech here,

01:06:43.520 | but the point is the tech is now in place.

01:06:45.100 | Now we can focus on improving it.

01:06:47.060 | And this is part of why we went down

01:06:48.180 | the one episode a week for the summer

01:06:49.980 | is trying to figure things out, make the show better.

01:06:52.680 | Speaking of the show and making it better,

01:06:56.940 | let's talk about some of the sponsors

01:06:58.260 | that allow us to keep buying boom arms

01:07:01.500 | and trying to figure out how to hook up iPads to our screen.

01:07:04.460 | And that is Ladder.

01:07:07.560 | So in our last segment,

01:07:08.600 | we were talking about finding meaning in your life.

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01:07:13.960 | we should also mention life insurance.

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01:10:31.800 | All right, let's move on.

01:10:33.920 | Now we got a question from Frank.

01:10:37.300 | Frank asks, "What kind of processes you go through

01:10:41.600 | to figure out what projects to commit to?

01:10:43.860 | I feel that much of the conversation of productivity

01:10:47.120 | is around figuring out how to tackle everything

01:10:48.920 | that is on my plate.

01:10:50.720 | There is advice on working efficiently through that,

01:10:53.220 | as well as ways to get some of the stuff off my plate.

01:10:55.400 | This is all great stuff, but what about making sure

01:10:57.200 | that the work that I get put on my plate

01:10:58.800 | is the best choice for my skills and my goals?"

01:11:02.000 | Well, Frank, this is a perfect excuse for me

01:11:05.320 | to remind everyone about the productivity funnel,

01:11:10.240 | a concept from earlier in the podcast

01:11:14.400 | that I think is worth reviewing

01:11:15.640 | because it's very relevant to your question.

01:11:18.480 | So let me see here.

01:11:21.000 | I actually could draw a picture.

01:11:22.360 | In theory, I'm gonna try this.

01:11:24.560 | I'm gonna draw a picture of the funnel.

01:11:27.720 | So here we have, for those who are watching at home,

01:11:31.220 | we now have the screen back up.

01:11:35.120 | So just for those who don't remember,

01:11:37.120 | the productivity funnel has three levels,

01:11:42.120 | which I will expertly draw.

01:11:46.000 | Keeping in mind all three levels

01:11:49.040 | is what's gonna be important for actually

01:11:51.920 | getting a good answer to your question here, Frank.

01:11:55.240 | All right, so if we're gonna label these levels,

01:11:56.840 | what are we gonna get?

01:11:57.920 | At the bottom is where we have,

01:12:03.800 | and people who are watching along at home,

01:12:05.560 | see, I have impeccable handwriting.

01:12:08.280 | I'm still learning this pen.

01:12:09.680 | I don't know, Jessie, what would you think?

01:12:11.520 | It looks like someone having a stroke

01:12:14.840 | because they were drinking too much.

01:12:18.040 | And in the middle of that process,

01:12:19.680 | the drunk person having a stroke was writing the word.

01:12:22.680 | So I'll rewrite it.

01:12:24.760 | So what I was trying to write here

01:12:25.760 | is the word execution.

01:12:27.120 | I'm labeling the bottom level of the three-level funnel.

01:12:32.120 | There we go, that looks better.

01:12:35.000 | - Yeah, that looks good.

01:12:35.840 | - With execution.

01:12:37.120 | Above that, the middle level of the productivity funnel,

01:12:41.780 | we can label organization.

01:12:46.060 | And then the top level,

01:12:51.120 | and this is where it gets relevant, Frank,

01:12:53.640 | let's just summarize, I call this different things,

01:12:55.920 | but for now let's call it selection.

01:12:59.240 | All right, so we have this funnel.

01:13:02.200 | Selection, organization, and execution.

01:13:04.440 | Whoops, I just accidentally moved everything on the screen.

01:13:09.600 | Not to worry.

01:13:11.640 | Boom, now we're back.

01:13:13.480 | All right, and so what happens is you have

01:13:15.760 | a lot of possible things coming into this.

01:13:20.040 | Oh, man.

01:13:22.360 | I'm doing all sorts of interesting things

01:13:23.680 | on my screen down here.

01:13:24.840 | There we go.

01:13:27.080 | Oh my goodness.

01:13:29.380 | There we go.

01:13:31.720 | I'm getting good at this.

01:13:32.680 | It's not riveting radio,

01:13:33.880 | but I'm actually making a lot of progress

01:13:36.000 | on this technology.

01:13:36.840 | So you have a bunch of possible activities

01:13:38.920 | coming to the top of this productivity funnel.

01:13:42.280 | And let me just scroll this up so we can see it.

01:13:44.520 | And then what happens?

01:13:46.760 | Okay, all right, so now I have the whole picture drawn.

01:13:48.960 | Again, for those listening at home,

01:13:50.120 | I'm sure you love the riveting radio here,

01:13:51.840 | but I have a three-level funnel drawn.

01:13:53.640 | At the top, widest part of the funnel is selection.

01:13:58.440 | The middle level of the funnel is organization.

01:14:01.240 | At the bottom is execution.

01:14:03.320 | And there's a bunch of stuff coming

01:14:04.880 | in the top of the funnel.

01:14:06.720 | These are potential activities.

01:14:08.520 | So when it comes to productivity,

01:14:09.920 | there's three parts to it.

01:14:10.760 | Selection is actually trying to figure out

01:14:12.360 | of these things that are incoming,

01:14:14.840 | of these things that are incoming to the funnel,

01:14:17.160 | which of them am I actually going to bring into my system

01:14:20.600 | and actually hope to execute at some point?

01:14:22.720 | So a lot of the things coming in

01:14:24.400 | get blocked right at this point.

01:14:26.800 | We'll talk about more about this in a second, Frank,

01:14:28.560 | because it's at the core of your question.

01:14:29.920 | But just so you know how these pieces fit together,

01:14:32.000 | the things that make it through selection

01:14:33.600 | then have to be organized.

01:14:34.880 | So where are they kept track of?

01:14:36.520 | Where's the information associated

01:14:38.040 | with them getting track of?

01:14:39.320 | Where is the plans that may lay out how they're executed?

01:14:42.880 | When do those plans get made?

01:14:44.160 | How do those plans get consulted?

01:14:45.960 | What role do they have in their life?

01:14:47.480 | All of that happens within organization.

01:14:50.400 | So for example, this is where you'll have capture systems.

01:14:53.280 | This is where you're gonna have

01:14:54.560 | your quarterly, weekly planning,

01:14:57.080 | your quarterly, weekly, daily planning,

01:14:58.560 | where you're figuring out big picture plans,

01:15:00.640 | that goes down to a weekly plan.

01:15:01.840 | You figure out what you'll be doing each day.

01:15:03.240 | So there's a lot of work that goes into

01:15:04.680 | organizing what's on your plate.

01:15:06.680 | And then often missed is the bottom,

01:15:08.400 | smallest level of the funnel, which is execution.

01:15:11.840 | We figure out, well, now that I know

01:15:13.360 | what I'm supposed to be doing right now, how do I do it?

01:15:16.160 | Okay, and this is where things like

01:15:19.760 | deep work or the shallow work, minimizing context,

01:15:22.360 | switching rituals, locations, scheduling philosophies,

01:15:24.720 | all the things you do to actually execute your work

01:15:27.240 | at the highest level, that goes there.

01:15:29.280 | This is also where tools that make you more efficient

01:15:31.760 | when you're doing shallow tasks

01:15:33.120 | that would benefit from efficiency,

01:15:34.640 | they would go here as well.

01:15:36.360 | All three of these go into this big picture idea

01:15:39.320 | of productivity.

01:15:40.640 | Now, Frank, based on your question,

01:15:43.200 | you're focusing when you think about productivity

01:15:44.760 | mainly on the middle level organization.

01:15:48.360 | A lot of people make that same distinction.

01:15:50.840 | So the nuts and bolts of how I keep track of and schedule

01:15:53.640 | and organize everything on my plate,

01:15:55.800 | people often think about that's what productivity means,

01:15:58.440 | but that's just the middle part.

01:15:59.800 | You need it, without it, it's chaos.

01:16:02.960 | You're the list reactive method,

01:16:04.360 | just pulling things off of your inbox

01:16:05.840 | and trying to keep your head above water.

01:16:07.920 | But it is not by itself gonna give you a complete approach

01:16:11.000 | to being productive.

01:16:14.220 | That is having a transition from possible inputs to outputs

01:16:18.120 | that matches whatever criteria are important to you.

01:16:21.120 | You're gonna need that activity selection

01:16:22.680 | to come in place first.

01:16:24.240 | So what I'm trying to do here with this funnel, Frank,

01:16:26.000 | is emphasize that figuring out

01:16:28.280 | what to bring onto your plate or not

01:16:29.880 | should be at the core of any thinking about productivity.

01:16:33.480 | And this is deep thinking.

01:16:34.520 | I mean, this is figuring out like,

01:16:35.400 | what do I do for a living?

01:16:36.560 | What is my role?

01:16:37.720 | What are the things I'm gonna focus on in my role?

01:16:39.760 | What are the things that are overwhelming me?

01:16:41.300 | What is the work volume I can actually manage?

01:16:43.560 | And where am I now?

01:16:44.480 | And am I beyond it?

01:16:45.360 | And how do I figure out how not to go beyond it?

01:16:47.280 | This is where you have the hard conversations with your boss.

01:16:49.880 | It's where you do deep to shallow work tracking

01:16:51.480 | and use those metrics to say,

01:16:52.600 | this is too much on my plate.

01:16:54.120 | It's where when you move something

01:16:55.560 | from just individual messages

01:16:57.360 | in which work is implicitly attached,

01:16:59.120 | you move over towards something transparent,

01:17:01.460 | like a task board,

01:17:02.560 | where you can see all of the work that needs to be done

01:17:04.320 | and who's doing what.

01:17:06.060 | So you can point to that and say,

01:17:07.840 | look at how overloaded this is.

01:17:09.520 | This is where you, when you switch from push to pull,

01:17:12.380 | okay, I have another free slot.

01:17:15.660 | Hey, everyone, what should I do next?

01:17:17.080 | As opposed to just send me stuff

01:17:18.880 | when you think of it and I'll take care of it.

01:17:20.680 | All of these things fall

01:17:21.880 | under the rubric of activity selection.

01:17:23.520 | And it is the part of the funnel

01:17:25.480 | that gets the least amount of attention.

01:17:28.920 | Organization is like the meaty, sexy stuff, right?

01:17:31.280 | Oh my God, I have my notion thing set up

01:17:34.000 | and I'm using Trello in the sophisticated way.

01:17:36.160 | And I have these different planners.

01:17:37.420 | That's like the meaty productivity prawn stuff.

01:17:40.400 | Execution, that bottom part of the funnel,

01:17:42.480 | that's the real fun stuff.

01:17:44.920 | That's the, you know, I built my deep work shed

01:17:48.000 | and I go through the hike through the woods.

01:17:49.620 | That's really fulfilling and fun.

01:17:51.080 | It's the try to in the moment

01:17:52.520 | getting the most out of your work.

01:17:54.080 | But activity selection gets ignored.

01:17:55.880 | Even though it's the very top of the funnel.

01:17:58.960 | So it impacts everything that comes below.

01:18:01.120 | It's what gets ignored.

01:18:04.000 | And a lot of the issues we have right now,

01:18:05.780 | I think in knowledge work,

01:18:07.040 | the burnout issues, the overload issues,

01:18:08.800 | all comes from ignoring activity selection.

01:18:12.660 | And instead just letting stuff fly at us randomly,

01:18:15.680 | doing our best to keep our head above water

01:18:17.660 | and occasionally calling uncle

01:18:19.680 | when it becomes too hard to stay afloat.

01:18:22.420 | So Frank, I want you to emphasize activity selection.

01:18:26.640 | I want to encourage you to keep in mind that this is hard.

01:18:30.520 | I want to underscore the notion

01:18:32.360 | that there's many different things that go into

01:18:34.660 | trying to figure out that activity selection

01:18:36.620 | piece of your funnel.

01:18:37.460 | It's not just a simple strategy

01:18:38.660 | you can put into place tomorrow,

01:18:40.060 | but I'm glad you're thinking about it.

01:18:41.460 | And it's what you really need to be focusing on.

01:18:44.620 | I'm getting better at this, Jesse, I would say.

01:18:49.220 | I still have quite a few bumps in my pen handling,

01:18:53.420 | but I like this tablet.

01:18:54.900 | And also I'm a fantastic artist.

01:18:57.100 | I think people who are listening

01:18:58.660 | and not watching the YouTube video,

01:18:59.980 | so they can't confirm this.

01:19:00.900 | Let me just say what I drew,

01:19:03.540 | the productivity funnel was beautiful,

01:19:06.060 | perfectly proportional, well-shaded.

01:19:08.780 | My handwriting is fantastic.

01:19:11.940 | And for those who can see this on the video,

01:19:14.620 | don't tell them, that's not nearly true.

01:19:17.300 | - Related to golf, it's like,

01:19:19.540 | but you're also like using other people's clubs.

01:19:21.340 | So like once you get your Apple Pen,

01:19:23.060 | you'll be, you know, cruising.

01:19:24.820 | - That's true.

01:19:25.660 | So I teach with the same software.

01:19:27.180 | So when I teach in the classroom,

01:19:29.180 | I was a blackboard teacher

01:19:32.700 | because I do theory and mathematics

01:19:34.300 | and I don't want to show PowerPoint slides.

01:19:36.100 | There's a natural pacing to writing,

01:19:38.240 | but my handwriting is very bad.

01:19:39.780 | And a lot of the chalkboards at Georgetown are no good.

01:19:41.620 | They're pitted, so you erase them once

01:19:42.980 | and the whole thing is white.

01:19:44.340 | And so I figured out it was really the pandemic

01:19:47.020 | that forced me to switch over to this technology.

01:19:50.220 | During the pandemic,

01:19:51.180 | I began when we were doing Zoom teaching

01:19:54.460 | using my iPad as a whiteboard.

01:19:57.340 | And then I would share the screen on Zoom.

01:19:58.820 | And so then when we got back into the classroom last year,

01:20:02.220 | I realized, oh, I could project my iPad

01:20:05.100 | on the big screen at the front of the room.

01:20:07.340 | And so now I'm writing on my iPad,

01:20:09.160 | but it's projected up on the big screen.

01:20:10.600 | So it's equivalent to me writing on a big whiteboard,

01:20:12.580 | except for it's on my iPad and I can save all the notes

01:20:15.520 | and send them to the students.

01:20:16.800 | And I can scroll and go back to things I wrote before.

01:20:19.760 | So we're using the exact same setup here for the show.

01:20:24.540 | So you think I'd be quicker at it,

01:20:25.520 | but I am using Jesse's pen.

01:20:26.720 | - Yeah, which isn't as good as your pen.

01:20:28.840 | - That's true.

01:20:29.660 | - I have a good pen.

01:20:30.840 | - All right, what do we have here?

01:20:31.720 | Ooh, 120.

01:20:32.560 | Let's do one more quick question, Jesse,

01:20:33.720 | and then we'll call it quits.

01:20:34.960 | This last one comes from Oscar.

01:20:37.500 | Oscar asks, "How should I organize my circle of friends

01:20:40.780 | "and acquaintances in order to make them stop texting me

01:20:44.000 | "via WhatsApp?"

01:20:45.620 | I'm gonna give you three suggestions, Oscar.

01:20:49.460 | All of these suggestions are gonna be built

01:20:50.980 | on this foundational observation

01:20:52.460 | that I make in my book, "Digital Minimalism,"

01:20:54.220 | which is that this is actually the area

01:20:57.820 | in your personal technology life

01:20:59.900 | that is the hardest to change.

01:21:01.620 | By hardest, I mean the area

01:21:02.820 | where you're gonna get the most pushback.

01:21:05.700 | People worry about social media.

01:21:08.480 | Oh, if as part of becoming a digital minimalist,

01:21:11.880 | I stop using social media as much,

01:21:13.640 | all of these bad things might happen.

01:21:15.880 | I'm not gonna be able to grow my business.

01:21:17.920 | People are gonna miss me and worry, where are you?

01:21:20.480 | I'm gonna disappear from the public discourse,

01:21:22.440 | et cetera, et cetera.

01:21:23.280 | But in reality, when people embrace minimalism,

01:21:26.120 | it's text messaging, instant messaging,

01:21:29.920 | back and forth conversations with people they know on apps.

01:21:32.920 | That's the hardest place to change their behavior.

01:21:35.360 | They leave Twitter, no one notices.

01:21:37.700 | They leave WhatsApp,

01:21:39.420 | and a private investigator's knocking at their door

01:21:42.180 | with a corpse-sniffing dog.

01:21:43.920 | So let me just make that the foundation.

01:21:45.260 | I feel your pain, Oscar.

01:21:46.420 | But I'm gonna give you three ways

01:21:47.460 | to make this transition away

01:21:48.700 | from constant WhatsApp accessibility.

01:21:51.900 | Three suggestions to give you.

01:21:53.620 | One, I would say apologize instead of instructing.

01:21:59.580 | So instead of trying to instruct people,

01:22:02.380 | okay, everyone in my family, okay, all my friends,

01:22:04.900 | here's how I'm using WhatsApp now.

01:22:06.420 | Here's the right way to get in touch with me.

01:22:08.580 | Everyone will get defensive.

01:22:10.240 | It's the guy with his one-day AA chip

01:22:14.060 | going to the bar and lecturing about alcohol.

01:22:15.860 | People are gonna get defensive.

01:22:17.460 | So I would say instead, just switch to your new rules

01:22:20.980 | for using instant messengers, whatever those rules are,

01:22:24.180 | and apologize when people complain.

01:22:26.120 | You just simply get ready to say a bunch at first.

01:22:30.900 | Oh, sorry, yeah, I don't keep WhatsApp open

01:22:32.540 | when I'm working on work,

01:22:33.820 | or I don't keep WhatsApp open when I'm exercising.

01:22:36.660 | Whatever it is, just keep apologizing, right?

01:22:40.540 | And people will eventually get it.

01:22:41.980 | Like, oh, I guess Oscar doesn't keep WhatsApp open,

01:22:44.540 | so I cannot expect that if I send him something,

01:22:46.900 | he's gonna get back to me right away.

01:22:48.420 | They're not defensive

01:22:49.260 | because you're not telling them that's better.

01:22:50.980 | They're not defensive

01:22:51.820 | because you're not telling them, don't bother me.

01:22:53.460 | You're apologizing.

01:22:54.660 | But the apology is sneaky, sneaky effective,

01:22:58.460 | because even if it annoys them,

01:23:01.180 | that they can't reach you

01:23:02.260 | because you don't keep WhatsApp open at work,

01:23:04.740 | it's a hard argument for them to make,

01:23:06.620 | hey, Oscar, no, no, that's unacceptable.

01:23:08.300 | You need to be monitoring WhatsApp at work.

01:23:09.980 | When they actually put in the words what they're doing

01:23:12.260 | and what in the moment they're hoping you would be doing,

01:23:14.380 | it seems somewhat absurd, and so they don't.

01:23:16.800 | Two, provide a higher friction emergency option.

01:23:20.580 | This is actually an idea that came up.

01:23:23.020 | We called it escape valves in my book, "A World Without Email."

01:23:27.860 | By the way, I don't know why I use this royal we.

01:23:30.700 | Have you noticed this, Jessie?

01:23:31.740 | I've noticed this more and more,

01:23:33.460 | podcasts and videos,

01:23:37.780 | there's this real temptation to use we,

01:23:40.000 | even when it's not we.

01:23:42.060 | I guess it makes it seem like everyone has big teams

01:23:45.100 | or seems more important,

01:23:46.060 | but I don't think it actually works.

01:23:47.420 | I think it just sounds weird, but look, I just did it there.

01:23:49.740 | I said, in "A World Without Email," we,

01:23:53.220 | there's no we, it's a book I wrote.

01:23:54.660 | There's not a team of crack scientists

01:23:57.620 | that got together to put together this book.

01:23:59.460 | So I'm trying to be better about that.

01:24:01.060 | Or if I'm talking about this show,

01:24:02.140 | I'll just say like Jessie and I,

01:24:03.820 | 'cause I don't, I don't, I don't know.

01:24:05.260 | There's a lot of that goes on now.

01:24:07.580 | Podcasters, YouTubers,

01:24:08.780 | they all wanna emphasize their teams.

01:24:10.920 | Like there's some large office building

01:24:14.700 | that all their workers are in.

01:24:16.760 | Anyways, in my book, "A World Without Email,"

01:24:21.580 | when I was talking about,

01:24:23.260 | it's a slightly different context,

01:24:24.700 | but people reworking professional communication protocols

01:24:29.020 | so that there's less ad hoc messaging.

01:24:31.500 | I talked a lot about the importance of an escape valve.

01:24:35.700 | So you give people a way that they can contact you

01:24:40.180 | and get an immediate answer in the case of an emergency,

01:24:44.540 | but it's a higher friction solution.

01:24:47.580 | So like you have to call me, right?

01:24:49.540 | Something that's higher friction,

01:24:50.660 | not impossible, but higher friction.

01:24:53.080 | No one really is gonna use it,

01:24:55.280 | but it provides people a psychological piece,

01:24:58.260 | knowing if I did need to use it, I could, right?

01:25:01.620 | So people might be worried in your family

01:25:04.220 | or your circle of friends,

01:25:05.060 | if they're thinking, "Oh, you know, Oscar's not on this,

01:25:06.820 | but what if there's an emergency?

01:25:08.260 | What if we really need him?

01:25:09.180 | My goodness, like maybe this is better that you're on it."

01:25:10.980 | But if they have an escape valve,

01:25:12.460 | "Oh, this is how you get me if it's really urgent

01:25:14.420 | and I'm not on WhatsApp,"

01:25:15.660 | then that issue, that concern goes away.

01:25:18.160 | You're not worried about that anymore.

01:25:21.780 | It also, again, I don't mean to keep coming back to this.

01:25:24.740 | I don't mean to be villainizing

01:25:25.820 | your family and friends, Oscar,

01:25:26.760 | but it diffuses potential defensive responses.

01:25:29.920 | 'Cause there's a response that's like,

01:25:30.920 | "Hey, look, I need you.

01:25:33.400 | I need you to be on WhatsApp because I'm swinging by."

01:25:37.680 | You know, your mother-in-law is like,

01:25:39.120 | "I have to swing by to drop something off

01:25:41.200 | and I need to know if you're there."

01:25:42.800 | If they have the escape valve,

01:25:44.200 | it's like, "Yeah, but you know what you can do?

01:25:45.200 | You can call me."

01:25:46.040 | It's a bit more of a pain,

01:25:47.120 | but it's there and you can do that.

01:25:49.560 | No one will actually use it.

01:25:50.880 | Escape valves are all about the piece.

01:25:53.360 | Finally, consider personal communication office hours.

01:25:58.360 | So I was reminded of this idea.

01:26:02.000 | I mean, I first heard this idea

01:26:04.280 | from an entrepreneur I know named Chris Yeh.

01:26:07.200 | And then I talked to Chris the other day.

01:26:09.120 | So it reminded me of this concept

01:26:11.520 | that he had innovated years ago.

01:26:13.960 | But Chris had office hours every day

01:26:17.540 | during roughly the same time when he was commuting

01:26:19.680 | from his office back to his house.

01:26:21.240 | He's in San Francisco.

01:26:23.080 | Maybe he was on the 101 and there's traffic.

01:26:27.080 | So he knew there's a 45 minute period

01:26:28.520 | where I'd always be in my car.

01:26:30.240 | And so he had personal communication office hours

01:26:32.760 | for people who knew him, friends, family members.

01:26:35.200 | You can always call me during that time.

01:26:37.440 | And so it's a way that he could stay in touch with people

01:26:39.920 | and have serendipitous conversations

01:26:41.520 | and see what's going on

01:26:42.700 | without have to constantly be monitoring

01:26:44.840 | some other type of asynchronous communication medium.

01:26:47.160 | So personal communication office hours

01:26:48.600 | are a great way of maintaining connection

01:26:51.180 | when people are used to being able to just outsource that

01:26:54.000 | to doing quick messages back and forth.

01:26:56.500 | Now you're like, "Hey, call me, man.

01:26:57.520 | Call me.

01:26:58.360 | This is my time I'm available.

01:27:00.240 | When are you gonna call me?"

01:27:01.340 | Or if they're texting you

01:27:02.280 | and you don't see it till three hours later,

01:27:03.660 | you're like, "Just call me at my next,

01:27:04.800 | call me, you know, you can always call me at these hours.

01:27:07.100 | Call me next time you can, let's talk about it."

01:27:08.800 | So it's a way to have connection with people with, again,

01:27:10.880 | not having to monitor that screen all the time.

01:27:13.520 | All right, Oscar, so that's what I'd recommend.

01:27:15.040 | I think you're thinking about the right thing.

01:27:16.720 | I do not think the constant monitoring

01:27:18.980 | of instant messenger type channels

01:27:20.600 | is compatible with a deep life by almost any definition.

01:27:23.640 | It is an issue, but it's also really hard to get past.

01:27:26.720 | Those are the three things I would keep in mind.

01:27:28.280 | People will still complain,

01:27:29.340 | but they'll complain a lot less

01:27:30.440 | if you do those three things.

01:27:31.840 | It is worth it.

01:27:34.120 | You just can't live a focused life

01:27:37.600 | if every four minutes you have to check

01:27:39.240 | and jump in on an asynchronous back and forth conversation.

01:27:43.160 | So reform your WhatsApp usage.

01:27:45.080 | If they still complain, you can blame it on me.

01:27:49.680 | All right, Josie, that's a good tight hour and 28 minutes.

01:27:53.420 | So we should probably wrap this up.

01:27:55.220 | Thank everyone who sent in their questions and calls.

01:28:00.260 | If you liked what you heard,

01:28:02.300 | you will like what you see at our YouTube channel,

01:28:04.580 | youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

01:28:06.700 | You will also like what you read

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01:28:10.180 | You can sign up at calnewport.com.

01:28:12.900 | I'll be back next week and until then,

01:28:15.360 | as always, stay deep.

01:28:17.620 | (upbeat music)

01:28:20.200 | (upbeat music)

01:28:22.780 | (upbeat music)

01:28:25.360 | (upbeat music)

01:28:27.940 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 196: Shutting Down Anxiety, Seinfeld on Friction, and Taming WhatsApp

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