How Do You Count Time Between Deep Work and Deep Leisure? | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport
Chapters
0:0 Cal's Intro0:10 Cal reads a question about counting hours
0:19 Cal reads the elaboration
0:30 Cal advices to not worry too much
00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:00:03.360 | All right.
00:00:05.860 | We got a question here from Taylor.
00:00:08.260 | Taylor says, how do you count time
00:00:11.660 | that is in between deep work and deep leisure?
00:00:16.300 | Well, before I even get your elaboration,
00:00:18.000 | my quick answer is, why are you counting time?
00:00:21.340 | Does it matter?
00:00:22.460 | Let's look at the elaboration, see if we
00:00:24.120 | get some more clarity here.
00:00:26.260 | I have a practice of deeply reading and taking
00:00:28.260 | careful notes on books that have no immediate relevance
00:00:30.540 | to my scholarly research.
00:00:32.180 | He's a tenured professor.
00:00:34.380 | Because I file my notes into a Zettelkasten system--
00:00:36.500 | oh, man, here we go.
00:00:37.340 | Zettelkasten corner, take two--
00:00:39.580 | there is always a chance that my irrelevant notes may one day
00:00:42.500 | prove useful for my day job.
00:00:43.980 | Should I count this note-taking time as deep work,
00:00:46.060 | or do you consider it deep leisure?
00:00:48.100 | Wondering for the purpose of budgeting my time
00:00:50.020 | and meeting deep work quotas.
00:00:52.660 | I mean, I don't know.
00:00:53.700 | Taylor, I'd say don't care so much about that.
00:00:55.620 | I don't think you have to precisely account for this time.
00:01:00.260 | Is this exactly work, or is this exactly leisure?
00:01:03.940 | What does matter?
00:01:05.460 | That you are making regular progress
00:01:08.740 | on the things that really matter and obsessing over quality.
00:01:12.500 | We talked about this earlier in the show.
00:01:14.460 | You have a certain reasonable number
00:01:16.140 | of projects you're dealing with concurrently.
00:01:18.460 | You're giving those good attention,
00:01:20.740 | working on each thing till a natural stopping point
00:01:22.740 | before switching on to the next.
00:01:24.080 | You feel like you're really exercising
00:01:25.740 | your intellectual muscles.
00:01:27.020 | You see the progress being made.
00:01:28.540 | You have the right amount of your time
00:01:30.080 | focused on the stuff that really matters.
00:01:31.500 | Do that, and don't worry so much about,
00:01:33.260 | like, should that 30 minutes of messing with my Zettelkasten
00:01:36.540 | slipbox, does that count in some ledger book
00:01:38.460 | as deep work or deep leisure?
00:01:40.060 | Don't worry about that.
00:01:41.180 | When you work, when you work.
00:01:42.060 | When you're done, when you're done.
00:01:42.900 | Where it overlaps, it overlaps.
00:01:44.220 | [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:01:47.580 | (upbeat music)