Ep. 210: Dictate How You Feel With Lifestyle-Centric Planning

00:00:00.000 | What I care about is, do I have the opportunities where I am?

00:00:04.760 | Do I have the opportunities right now to make my life something I really like that's really

00:00:07.480 | meaningful?

00:00:08.480 | And for me, the person speaking in the voice of the person that book, that's probably staying

00:00:12.000 | in the Pacific Northwest and finding the right skill set that allows you to not be stressed

00:00:15.380 | about money and to have this flexibility.

00:00:17.280 | I really think it's the way to go.

00:00:20.480 | Career serves your life because ultimately your daily experience of your life is what

00:00:25.420 | dictates how you feel.

00:00:26.680 | Life justice or career planning is the natural consequence of that truism.

00:00:32.140 | I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, episode 210.

00:00:39.040 | I'm here in my deep work HQ.

00:00:42.520 | No Jesse today.

00:00:44.720 | Jesse is on vacation to Scotland.

00:00:47.200 | I'm jealous of Jesse.

00:00:49.420 | I have always thought that in another life, Scotland is probably where I belong.

00:00:55.920 | I mean, think about it.

00:00:56.920 | I'm a pale skinned, don't like being hot intellectual who likes dramatic, quiet, natural

00:01:04.560 | landscapes as an inducement to think.

00:01:06.640 | So imagine an alternative universe in which I live in Edinburgh near the city, little

00:01:13.840 | townhouse, the garden out back that I tend to where I can go on my morning walk and see

00:01:17.760 | the Edinburgh castle.

00:01:19.320 | But then I also have the small house on some aisle off of the Scottish coast where I go

00:01:27.540 | to think and write and walk in the drizzle with my barber jacket as I think deep thoughts.

00:01:33.960 | I mean, I think this is probably what I'm wired to be doing.

00:01:37.640 | So not living in Washington DC in August.

00:01:40.240 | So Jesse, I'm jealous.

00:01:41.560 | Look forward though to having you back.

00:01:43.600 | All right.

00:01:44.760 | Two quick announcements.

00:01:47.400 | Announcement number one, last week we released a survey to get your feedback on this show.

00:01:52.920 | Jesse and I are doing an overhaul of the show this fall to make it even better.

00:01:56.500 | So we want your feedback.

00:01:58.440 | Thank you everyone who submitted their thoughts.

00:02:01.040 | If you haven't already, there will be a link to this survey in this week's episode notes

00:02:05.920 | as well.

00:02:06.920 | Announcement number two, I have been told I should do a better job of connecting this

00:02:14.520 | somewhat informal deep life media network that I have created.

00:02:20.920 | We have podcasts and audio, we have video, we have articles and newsletters, and we should

00:02:25.640 | probably try to connect it better.

00:02:26.700 | So here's my attempt to do a little bit of that.

00:02:28.800 | If you're a listener of this podcast and you do not subscribe to my newsletter, you should.

00:02:35.480 | You can do that at calnewport.com.

00:02:37.640 | Once a week, I write an essay on the types of topics covered here in the show, the theory

00:02:43.360 | and practice of living and working deeply.

00:02:47.200 | Over 70,000 people subscribe, so you can join this crowd.

00:02:50.960 | I also have plans to improve this newsletter somewhat soon to have a specific day in which

00:02:56.440 | my weekly essay returns.

00:02:58.960 | When it falls on, I might add a second message, second email each week so I can have an outlet

00:03:05.040 | for all these interesting links and ideas and articles I come across.

00:03:09.280 | So maybe drop some weekend reading in your inbox as well.

00:03:11.960 | So it's a good time to sign up for the newsletter.

00:03:14.560 | Do that at calnewport.com.

00:03:16.400 | All right, so let me give you the summary of the show ahead of us today.

00:03:21.720 | There are three segments, three segments in today's episode.

00:03:27.680 | Segment number one will be a deep dive because Jesse is not here to constrain me.

00:03:34.640 | I have a relatively geeky deep dive.

00:03:39.280 | This is me putting on, I guess I would say, the different hats I wear, more my New Yorker

00:03:44.040 | hat and I go deep into a theoretical framework for understanding the media economy of the

00:03:50.940 | internet.

00:03:52.560 | Once you understand this framework, it really will help you make sense of the history of

00:03:56.160 | the internet, where we're going, why things we're trying right now won't work, what things

00:04:00.280 | might work.

00:04:01.280 | So it's a framework I'm testing out.

00:04:04.080 | So beware, we have some geekiness ahead of us.

00:04:06.360 | Segment two will be focused on working deeply in an increasingly distracted world of work.

00:04:14.560 | A good collection of pragmatic questions, real readers, real listeners with real issues

00:04:19.640 | trying to be deep in a shallow world.

00:04:22.000 | We will end that segment two with a new feature, a reader case study.

00:04:28.140 | So I have a brief case study to read of someone reporting back on successfully deploying one

00:04:34.600 | of the ideas we talked about on the show in her own working life.

00:04:37.660 | This is something I want to do more of.

00:04:39.940 | Jesse is working on the technology infrastructure required to actually do some of these work

00:04:46.660 | case studies in the future live.

00:04:49.600 | So my goal is to eventually be able to have listeners call in live, talk with me back

00:04:53.820 | and forth and give us reports on what has been working for them in their life.

00:04:59.140 | Segment number three, focus on living deeply.

00:05:03.940 | And here we have another new feature to try out.

00:05:06.900 | I call it the deep life academy.

00:05:10.780 | We will have a listener question, motivate a topic relevant to living deeply in a world

00:05:15.700 | that's increasingly shallow and upset and distracted.

00:05:19.580 | And then I will give a series of lessons on this skill on this topic.

00:05:23.540 | So I call that deep life academy.

00:05:25.540 | All right.

00:05:27.280 | So without further ado, and I really do mean that because to keep today's recording even

00:05:33.100 | more interesting, I'm looking at my watch now.

00:05:35.120 | I have a call with my doctoral student in one hour and eight minutes.

00:05:41.700 | So we are going to stay on task.

00:05:43.540 | I have no other option.

00:05:45.620 | Nothing like having a little bit of motivation to keep moving.

00:05:49.340 | All right.

00:05:50.980 | Segment number one, deep dive.

00:05:51.980 | I call this deep dive loops, networks and links.

00:05:59.660 | What I'm going to talk about here is something you probably never knew you should care about,

00:06:03.180 | which is distributed curation of user generated content online.

00:06:08.620 | That is the most boring title you have probably heard.

00:06:11.740 | This is why most people don't think about it, but it is actually a subject that is incredibly

00:06:15.340 | important for understanding the dynamics of the current Internet economy.

00:06:21.420 | So let me start with the backdrop to this discussion, which is this idea that right

00:06:26.180 | now, if we look at the Internet economy, there are companies making a huge amount of money

00:06:33.380 | monetizing content generated by users, largely unpaid users generating content, making lots

00:06:41.340 | of money.

00:06:42.340 | And I'm underscoring the word lots here.

00:06:43.860 | We're talking about some of the biggest corporations in the world right now are using this model.

00:06:51.100 | So it's not just here's a nice niche where some people made some money monetizing user

00:06:56.700 | generated content on the Internet has become a massive industry.

00:07:01.940 | Here's the thing that is new.

00:07:04.540 | That is relatively new.

00:07:05.580 | That's less than 20 years old.

00:07:07.580 | This idea that you could make a lot of money off of this type of content.

00:07:11.580 | So quick beats of the timeline leading up to this current state of our economy before

00:07:16.940 | the web, for the consumer facing web became available in the 1990s.

00:07:23.340 | There was basically no way to make a lot of money off user generated content.

00:07:26.700 | The model was, if you're a media company, pay a small number of talented people to create

00:07:33.140 | content to be consumed by a lot of consumers.

00:07:36.380 | It's not user generated content, it's highly paid professional generated content.

00:07:40.940 | This created various economies.

00:07:42.720 | So if you were trying to reach a very broad audience, like you're a national television

00:07:46.380 | network, there could be a lot of competition for this talent because you wanted the best

00:07:49.780 | television writer, you wanted the best actor and they could be really highly paid.

00:07:53.260 | But this model didn't require the superstar economics because of localization.

00:07:56.780 | This is why you had conglomerates like Gannett become really, really big because they found

00:08:03.420 | it was a good model to buy up local papers.

00:08:06.300 | Local papers used to be a lucrative model.

00:08:08.540 | You pay people who are as good as anyone else who's writing for your particular market,

00:08:14.220 | then you can make money off of everyone who lives in that market.

00:08:16.620 | All right, web 1.0 comes along, 96, 97, 98.

00:08:22.500 | Now it is possible for individuals to create content that can be consumed by anyone else.

00:08:30.340 | We got to emphasize that this was a major transformation in the history of media production,

00:08:39.580 | that now anyone could produce content that could be generated by anyone else.

00:08:43.460 | We're talking, of course, almost primarily about written content here.

00:08:47.140 | This did not change the main media economics yet.

00:08:50.860 | It was too hard to do.

00:08:52.420 | It was technically demanding.

00:08:54.220 | You had to hand code HTML often to try to put stuff online.

00:08:57.140 | It didn't really look that good.

00:08:59.220 | Most of the leveraging of the first web revolution was actually by media companies that already

00:09:04.900 | were using the old model, small number of highly paid writers serving lots of people

00:09:09.500 | to reduce distribution costs.

00:09:13.420 | So you didn't get brand new creators.

00:09:16.260 | You got existing creators like Time Magazine realizing if we release on the web, it's cheaper

00:09:21.940 | than printing things on paper.

00:09:23.540 | Then we get web 2.0.

00:09:26.540 | This is the major turning point in the economics of content.

00:09:32.900 | Web 2.0, which happens once we get to the new millennium, is where we made it easier

00:09:40.140 | for people to publish information on the web.

00:09:44.580 | Now instead of hand coding HTML, you can type into a box and click submit or click post.

00:09:53.400 | For the old school web geeks among you, there is small technical innovations that were critical

00:09:58.100 | here like AJAX, asynchronous JavaScript, that made it possible for you to send information

00:10:03.100 | from a website to a server, have that server update the website without having to reload

00:10:07.300 | the whole page.

00:10:08.300 | These are the little innovations that made web 2.0 possible.

00:10:10.740 | Now it was easy enough that almost anyone could generate content.

00:10:13.460 | This made it possible to generate a ton of content.

00:10:16.580 | But before we could mine this new resource, this information resource into massive companies

00:10:23.200 | and into massive monetizations, curation had to be solved.

00:10:28.460 | And this is what I want to talk about is the evolution of curation once web 2.0 came along.

00:10:34.780 | Because it turns out having a lot of people generating content does you no good.

00:10:39.300 | If you're trying to make money, selling content does you no good if you can't select for your

00:10:45.680 | audience stuff they actually want to see.

00:10:49.960 | So this goes back to the title of my deep dive loops, networks and links.

00:10:54.940 | These are the three dominant models of curation of user generated content that emerged.

00:11:00.780 | That's in reverse chronological order.

00:11:02.660 | This were first then the network model, then the loop model, I want to walk through these

00:11:06.580 | three models briefly, how they work and their advantages and disadvantages.

00:11:10.220 | And I think this will help clarify a lot of what we see going on.

00:11:13.900 | Alright, so the, the first effective model for curating user generated content in the

00:11:20.300 | web 2.0 era was the link model.

00:11:24.820 | When I say link, I'm talking about hyperlinks.

00:11:28.220 | This is how the blogosphere worked during those early years of this content production

00:11:33.980 | revolution.

00:11:34.980 | It is a distributed curation method that is very human.

00:11:40.420 | It is based on human webs of trust that are augmented with digital technology.

00:11:45.940 | So here's roughly how it works.

00:11:47.420 | If I'm going to enter the world of blogs and websites that are linked to each other, I'm

00:11:51.980 | going to enter it in a place where I have a pre established trust relationship.

00:11:56.100 | Okay, I know this person, this person has a foot in traditional media, maybe I've seen

00:12:01.460 | their newspaper column, they write books I care about.

00:12:04.380 | Friends of mine have really pushed, this is the smart person that you need to read.

00:12:07.620 | Okay, so I enter into this web of trust relationships through an entryway of pre existing trust.

00:12:13.500 | I then see who are the people I already trust linking to.

00:12:19.620 | If sufficient people link to a new source of information, a new blog or a new website,

00:12:24.740 | and that website has sufficient aesthetic capital, that it's trustworthy, it's not a

00:12:30.820 | weird gray background website with animated gifs of eagles and what have you, then that

00:12:37.300 | will enter into my web of trust.

00:12:38.780 | I will trust that too, and I will begin to consume that content.

00:12:41.380 | Now that new site when it's linking to something else, again, will help convey trust into these

00:12:46.500 | new targets and help expand that web.

00:12:49.620 | So ultimately, this is humans building trust, then using that trust to expand where you

00:12:57.460 | get your content from.

00:13:00.780 | This was remarkably effective, it actually works really good at if you actually stick

00:13:07.140 | with it, excavating really interesting quality sources of information you might not have

00:13:13.620 | otherwise had access to, and more importantly, filtering out the weirdness.

00:13:16.980 | Because it's very difficult in this model, it's very difficult to get into someone's

00:13:21.060 | web of trust.

00:13:22.740 | So weird conspiratorial work, blatant misinformation, just general emotional outrage and ickiness

00:13:32.140 | could not gain a lot of traction in the link model of curation, because it would never

00:13:37.260 | get the entry point.

00:13:38.620 | It is very hard in other words to see something like QAnon gain a lot of traction in let's

00:13:45.900 | say 2006 online ecosystem, because for one of these blogs, if you're one of these initial

00:13:53.500 | somewhat eccentric QAnon conspiracy theorists, how is that going to get into a web of trust

00:13:58.020 | that's going to intersect mine?

00:13:59.220 | It probably won't.

00:14:00.660 | It probably won't.

00:14:01.780 | And so it worked pretty well.

00:14:03.060 | The disadvantages were two, one, it was hard to monetize this type of world of user generated

00:14:09.900 | information.

00:14:10.900 | The blogosphere was famously hard to monetize both for large networks and individual content

00:14:16.580 | creators.

00:14:17.580 | There just wasn't the model there.

00:14:19.620 | So that was an issue.

00:14:20.620 | Yet the individual writers, it was hard to aggregate them.

00:14:24.380 | You can look at Nick Denton and Gawker.

00:14:26.260 | And there's a lot of interesting oral history on trying to make money off that model.

00:14:31.860 | It was difficult.

00:14:33.140 | And two, it's hard work.

00:14:36.560 | So if I want to consume content, I have to do a lot of work.

00:14:39.940 | You actually have to spend a lot of time online.

00:14:41.700 | You have to see, build trust, expand this web of trust.

00:14:44.660 | This takes a lot of time surfing, following links, being exposed.

00:14:47.560 | So it was biased towards heavy tech users.

00:14:51.340 | If you wanted to create content, it was even harder.

00:14:55.060 | It was very difficult to gain a foothold.

00:14:57.700 | So this was the flip side of the filtering and curation being very effective.

00:15:02.180 | It allowed a lot more voices than existed in the world of newspapers, TV and radio only.

00:15:06.540 | But it was really hard if you're starting from scratch to gain access to these webs

00:15:10.060 | of trust.

00:15:11.060 | I mean, I remember in the early days of my blog at calnewport.com, when I used to focus

00:15:16.120 | only on student advice, I specifically remember being very frustrated when I would see links

00:15:26.060 | from more established, trusted blogs.

00:15:28.060 | Lifehacker was one that comes to mind, to other student advice sources that I thought

00:15:32.420 | I was better than.

00:15:33.420 | It's like, look, I published these books.

00:15:35.260 | My advice is better.

00:15:36.380 | Why aren't they linking to me?

00:15:37.380 | It's because it's a very slow moving system.

00:15:39.780 | Eventually, I gathered enough trust to get linked to a lot by those types of sources,

00:15:43.660 | but it could take years.

00:15:44.860 | So it was not very exciting for content creators.

00:15:47.620 | It was very difficult.

00:15:49.420 | Very difficult.

00:15:50.420 | All right, that led to model number two.

00:15:54.260 | Call this the network model.

00:15:56.500 | Facebook was the innovator here.

00:15:58.660 | They figured out, okay, if we have a social network where we make it easy for anyone to

00:16:05.500 | create content, so now we can greatly increase the pool of possible content out there by

00:16:10.660 | having these very slick web interfaces.

00:16:12.780 | So you don't have to worry about what you look like.

00:16:14.580 | You don't have to worry about doing the hard effort of gaining aesthetic capital to convince

00:16:19.460 | people that you're someone legitimate.

00:16:21.140 | Everyone looks the same.

00:16:22.140 | Take that off the table.

00:16:23.580 | You don't have to set up a blog WordPress account somewhere.

00:16:26.020 | Take that off the table.

00:16:27.020 | You just sign up for this account, click these buttons.

00:16:28.460 | It looks great.

00:16:29.940 | And if we can get people, they realize, to do the work on their own of teaching us who

00:16:34.900 | their friends are, we can leverage that underlying social graph to do the curation.

00:16:41.460 | So now instead of people having to do the individual hard work of being on the internet

00:16:45.800 | a lot and following links and building up this web of trust, you can have a newsfeed.

00:16:51.180 | The newsfeed will fill in with what's interesting to you.

00:16:53.260 | And what Facebook realized is, well, if we see what your self-declared friends are interested

00:16:58.980 | in, we will guess you're probably interested in that too.

00:17:02.700 | We can use friend relationships plus a little bit of magic secret sauce and to try to keep

00:17:06.800 | redundant information, keep things fresh to curate for you stuff based off of your friend

00:17:13.020 | relationship.

00:17:14.020 | And that worked out really well.

00:17:15.020 | So Facebook innovated that model.

00:17:16.540 | Instagram followed up that model, but with images.

00:17:19.500 | And it was actually really successful.

00:17:20.940 | So now everyone can be involved in producing content and you can get a pretty well curated

00:17:25.980 | stream of stuff that's interesting to you without having to do too much work.

00:17:29.500 | So it lowered the bar.

00:17:32.500 | Twitter had a twist on this model.

00:17:34.620 | This is the retweet model.

00:17:37.380 | Facebook eventually copied this model as well where they added their share button.

00:17:41.020 | The retweet model says, let's make it really easy for you to share a piece of content with

00:17:46.340 | everyone you're directly connected to.

00:17:48.860 | And those people who you're directly connected to that really like the content will do the

00:17:52.300 | same thing.

00:17:54.300 | Now if you model this out mathematically, what you see is that the most compelling content

00:17:59.700 | on the network at any one point can dramatically, with dramatic speed, spread to huge swaths

00:18:08.020 | of the network.

00:18:09.740 | So this was an even more dynamic and aggressive source of distributed curation.

00:18:15.540 | And it became the core of Twitter's success.

00:18:17.860 | You carefully set up who you follow.

00:18:19.780 | You do the work of propagating stuff you like with this low friction retweet or in Facebook's

00:18:24.900 | case share.

00:18:26.780 | And the resulting fierce viral dynamics will become an incredibly effective distributed

00:18:32.060 | selection mechanism for things that will engage people.

00:18:35.740 | And that's why Twitter became so powerful.

00:18:38.340 | Facebook was interesting to see what your friends are up to and sharing.

00:18:40.740 | But Twitter, man, it would come out of left field with things.

00:18:43.540 | It was almost magical in the trends it would unearth.

00:18:47.420 | And that was all distributed.

00:18:49.420 | That's not a super clever algorithm.

00:18:51.780 | That's not Hal 2000 sitting somewhere learning about the human psyche.

00:18:56.980 | It's 100 million users making hundreds of retweet or not decisions every day.

00:19:03.620 | So that's the network model.

00:19:06.460 | Leverage homogenized interfaces and leverage these networks, these social networks to help

00:19:13.220 | curate the content created within these closed garden networks.

00:19:17.460 | Again, advantages much easier to use.

00:19:19.620 | Much more people could be involved.

00:19:21.780 | You can make a lot more money off it.

00:19:23.020 | Very easy to monetize because these networks work within closed gardens.

00:19:27.220 | Disadvantage, you homogenize all the aesthetics of the content and the curation becomes obfuscated.

00:19:33.300 | You just get this feed of stuff that's interesting and all looks the same.

00:19:37.020 | Now suddenly the QAnon, the proverbial QAnon conspiracy theorist who would never be able

00:19:41.700 | to enter the web of trust in 2005 can easily spread and gain traction in 2015.

00:19:49.500 | All content looks the same.

00:19:51.460 | Curation is happening more behind the scenes.

00:19:52.940 | It's not based off of these more natural deeply human trust relationships.

00:19:58.700 | Other disadvantage of course is the viral dynamics, especially the retweet share dynamics

00:20:03.420 | led to a lot of unexpected externalities, tribalism, outrage culture, mob swarms, heavy

00:20:13.820 | feedback influence on, for example, media outlets where then you have reporters.

00:20:18.220 | So fearful of the fierce pushback possible that can happen overnight because of these

00:20:24.260 | fierce dynamics starting to really start to tailor what they say or don't say.

00:20:27.620 | Then you get the balkanization of media coverage itself and there's all these externalities

00:20:31.420 | that no one could have guessed.

00:20:33.060 | Twitter was not Dr. No with his cat on his island off of Jamaica with an evil plot to

00:20:42.140 | bring down democracy.

00:20:43.140 | They just wanted people to spend time on their service.

00:20:45.680 | These were all unexpected side effects.

00:20:47.300 | All right, moving quickly now, model number three is the loop.

00:20:52.020 | This is personified I think best by TikTok.

00:20:56.780 | So now what we do with the loop is you basically take the human out of the equation and you

00:21:03.300 | use simple but devastatingly effective machine learning loops to just select for you as an

00:21:08.600 | individual from the whole pool of potential content what to show you.

00:21:13.180 | No shares required, no retweets required, no you going through and telling the network

00:21:17.540 | who your friends are.

00:21:18.540 | None of that's required.

00:21:19.540 | And again, to the technicalities of this, what really happens with these machine learning

00:21:23.320 | loops is that all of the content is embedded in some sort of multidimensional statistical

00:21:27.240 | space.

00:21:28.240 | It then feeds you items from this space.

00:21:31.340 | It looks at how long you watch each video to try to assess your preference towards that

00:21:37.160 | particular region.

00:21:38.240 | This gives it some weighted cores in this multidimensional space that it can then weight

00:21:42.200 | its selections of future videos by what's going to be closer to one of these cores,

00:21:46.200 | blah, blah, blah, nerd, nerd, nerd, math, math, math.

00:21:50.480 | It works eerily well.

00:21:52.440 | You start watching videos, scrolling up and down.

00:21:54.960 | It gathers that data, do this for half a day.

00:21:58.560 | And it seems like TikTok knows you better than the people who are closest to you.

00:22:02.220 | So it was an incredibly effective way of doing this.

00:22:04.720 | Of course, services like YouTube do something similar, but YouTube is more complicated.

00:22:09.240 | It has to serve many different purposes.

00:22:11.600 | It doesn't purify this model nearly as well as TikTok, which is just this model purified.

00:22:17.280 | Videos full screen, swipe when you're done, we'll send you the next.

00:22:21.640 | That's it.

00:22:22.640 | And when you purify this model, you saw it was probably one of the most effective curation

00:22:26.480 | methods we've ever seen.

00:22:29.120 | So again, the advantages, no social graph needed.

00:22:33.480 | Anyone can compete in this space.

00:22:35.080 | You just need a reasonable pool of content and a machine learning loop.

00:22:40.640 | And you can be titillating people in a very effective way.

00:22:44.160 | Disadvantages, this is like the fentanyl of distraction.

00:22:47.920 | It's too purified.

00:22:49.000 | It can take over your whole life.

00:22:50.360 | It is distraction now completely purified by any even attempt to connect it to community

00:22:56.480 | relationships or being up on the news or exposure to interesting people.

00:23:00.680 | It is just let's go straight to the brainstem and inject that chemical.

00:23:07.920 | So it is all humanity is now being stripped out of the curation loop.

00:23:12.620 | So we started with 2005 rich humanity, but hard to monetize, hard to use.

00:23:19.400 | 2015, now you have this sort of we're exploiting human things like our friendship networks

00:23:26.920 | and our retweet decisions that produce this.

00:23:30.240 | Let's call this we're gonna use a drug metaphor, kind of cocaine of distraction.

00:23:34.340 | This is Twitter.

00:23:35.340 | This is Facebook.

00:23:36.340 | This is Instagram.

00:23:37.340 | This is TikTok.

00:23:38.340 | And we purify down, get the human out of the loop altogether, purify the curation down

00:23:43.140 | to its strongest form.

00:23:45.060 | And we are living in a tent city drooling out the side of our mouth, waiting to overdose.

00:23:52.680 | All right, so that is the history of distributed curation of user generated content.

00:24:00.920 | Two takeaways.

00:24:01.920 | Once we understand this, a lot of the recent history of the Internet economy makes sense.

00:24:05.280 | Like here, for example, is two practical takeaways.

00:24:07.880 | This framework can help you come up with.

00:24:10.120 | One, we lost something special when we left the link based curation.

00:24:15.360 | Now, I understand we can't go back to a world where the only type of user generated content

00:24:20.720 | is curated in a link based manner.

00:24:22.520 | We can't go back to a pure 2005 blogosphere world.

00:24:25.280 | But couldn't we add this world back to what we have today?

00:24:28.960 | Isn't there a market out there for this more human web, a trust based, slower, harder,

00:24:33.560 | better quality connection, better quality information, really effective filtering of

00:24:39.520 | the weird and the conspiratorial and the based and loose foundations?

00:24:43.440 | Isn't there some sort of revivification of the blog that at least the sort of expert

00:24:50.200 | class or sub expert class could be participating in?

00:24:53.040 | Maybe podcasts are doing this, but there's not a lot of, we don't have the same links.

00:24:56.320 | Anyways, I think that's interesting.

00:24:58.480 | Two, once you understand distributed curation, you see that it is difficult to fix the

00:25:03.360 | negative side effects of in particular the network and loop based curation models through

00:25:10.840 | human intervention.

00:25:14.000 | It's we're mixing too much two different things here.

00:25:16.480 | So if you think you can go in and solve the negative of the let's say, Twitter based retweet

00:25:22.000 | fierce viral dynamics by having humans in the loop, trying to kick people off of Twitter,

00:25:28.640 | good luck.

00:25:29.640 | These are two completely different types of dynamics going on.

00:25:31.440 | You're mixing and matching.

00:25:32.480 | Same thing with TikTok, this fiercely effective machine learning loop.

00:25:36.560 | What are you going to do when you don't like all the outcomes of that is like have a human

00:25:40.000 | come in and try to intervene.

00:25:41.040 | You're mixing two different modalities.

00:25:42.640 | It doesn't work.

00:25:43.640 | If you want to get away from the negative side effects of these distributed curation

00:25:46.920 | models, you have to actually change the cultural zeitgeist to push people onto other sources

00:25:51.320 | of interaction, other sources of distraction, other sources of engagement.

00:25:55.320 | I don't know that you can come in and fix something so cybernetically effective as the

00:26:00.160 | TikTok machine learning loop or, or Twitter retweets with a board of safety.

00:26:05.360 | What we need to do is convince people that they shouldn't really be on Twitter that much

00:26:10.000 | or not.

00:26:11.000 | But anyways, two takeaways just to show you that once you have these frameworks, you can

00:26:15.080 | actually make some useful conclusions.

00:26:17.000 | All right, well, that's what we get when Jesse's away.

00:26:21.840 | I geek out longer than I should, but that is my deep dive.

00:26:24.720 | All right, I want to move on to some pragmatic questions about working deeper.

00:26:30.520 | First just briefly, let me mention one of our sponsors, a long time sponsor, our good

00:26:35.760 | friends at Magic Spoon.

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00:28:26.000 | Jesse's not here.

00:28:27.000 | Jesse's a big magic spoon guy.

00:28:28.000 | He could tell us his favorite flavor.

00:28:29.960 | That's what we get when he goes on vacation.

00:28:31.800 | All right.

00:28:32.800 | Let me also briefly talk for a moment about the Miracle Brand Comforter.

00:28:38.760 | I make this point all the time on the show.

00:28:41.160 | I run hot.

00:28:42.280 | This is why I talked about at the opening of today's episode, why I should live in Scotland.

00:28:48.520 | It's not hot there, right?

00:28:51.080 | It's cloudy.

00:28:52.080 | It's drizzly.

00:28:53.080 | That's what I need.

00:28:54.080 | I hate being hot and I particularly hate sleeping when it is hot.

00:28:57.400 | On the other hand, I am married to someone who likes to have blankets on regardless of

00:29:02.880 | the temperature.

00:29:04.560 | The Miracle Comforter is what saves us.

00:29:08.660 | So here's how it works.

00:29:09.660 | It's designed to be less filling in the middle, which is where we tend to overheat and more

00:29:14.180 | filling at the top where we tend to get most cold.

00:29:17.340 | This helps you keep a perfect temperature all night long with three temperature zones

00:29:23.020 | to distribute heat evenly across your body with the help of fabrics originally designed

00:29:27.460 | by NASA.

00:29:28.460 | You can finally say goodbye to the night sweats.

00:29:32.100 | It also feels good.

00:29:34.340 | The Miracle Comforter is made from the highest quality USA grown Supima cotton.

00:29:40.260 | It's also hyper allergenic, super comfortable.

00:29:42.700 | I can tell you this from experience.

00:29:45.220 | It also is self-cleaning in the sense that it has silver infused fabrics, prevents 99.9%

00:29:53.060 | of bacteria growth, stays fresh three times longer, therefore requires three times less

00:29:57.780 | laundry.

00:29:58.780 | Who wouldn't love three times less laundry, a clean smelling bed and sleeping at the perfect

00:30:03.040 | temperature all year round.

00:30:04.780 | This is why they call this comforter the Miracle Brand Comforter.

00:30:08.700 | So if you're ready to sleep better through the night and do less laundry and moving to

00:30:12.980 | Scotland like Jesse is not an option, then you've got to try the Miracle Brand.

00:30:17.820 | Head to trymiracle.com/cal25.

00:30:25.700 | The name Cal, the number 25 and use that code cal25 to save 25% off.

00:30:31.140 | They'll also give you three free towels and they are so confident that you'll sleep better

00:30:36.400 | that they will offer a 30 day money back guarantee.

00:30:39.920 | So this is basically a risk free trial of a whole new sleep experience.

00:30:44.560 | That's 25% off and three free towels when you head to trymiracle.com/cal25.

00:30:54.880 | Make sure to use that code cal25.

00:30:57.920 | All right, let's coffee up here and get to some questions about working deeply.

00:31:11.040 | First question comes from Newport Novice who asks, can you describe how you manage a semester

00:31:20.480 | long project using your system, particularly your Trello boards?

00:31:26.240 | All right, good in the weeds technical question.

00:31:31.360 | Remember I like to think about my quote unquote systems as organizational systems, not productivity

00:31:37.880 | systems.

00:31:39.600 | So I make this distinction because organizational systems mean systems to keep track of and

00:31:44.360 | schedule the work that you've decided you need to do in such a way that you do it on

00:31:48.400 | time at a high level quality without unnecessary stress.

00:31:52.720 | The question about what you should be working on, how you decide to work on, how you structure

00:31:56.840 | your work life and what demands it makes.

00:31:58.640 | Those are these sort of bigger picture questions that all fall under the header of productivity.

00:32:03.160 | There's a lot of big existential questions about the point of work to answer at the level

00:32:06.960 | of productivity.

00:32:07.960 | So just to set ourselves into a common conceptual map here for this question, we're honing in

00:32:12.160 | on organization.

00:32:14.480 | Once you know what you want to do, what's the right way to organize that work?

00:32:19.120 | So I want to focus in answering this question on my multi-scale planning approach to organizing

00:32:26.200 | work.

00:32:27.400 | This I think is what is most relevant for shepherding a long project through to completion.

00:32:33.840 | All right, so let's start with the quarterly plan, your quarterly plan, or if you're in

00:32:38.160 | academic circles, your semester plan.

00:32:40.080 | This is where that project is going to live once you start working on it.

00:32:43.400 | It's where you make a note to yourself, I'm working on this during this quarter.

00:32:48.040 | Here's where I'm trying to get, here's the milestones I'm trying to hit, any scheduling

00:32:52.400 | heuristics that are relevant, like, okay, to do this, I need to spend at least two mornings

00:32:56.120 | each week.

00:32:57.120 | So why don't I protect Tuesday and Thursday mornings?

00:32:59.960 | All of that, what you're working on, where you're trying to get, any heuristics about

00:33:03.760 | how you're going to work on it, that all goes in your quarterly plan.

00:33:07.000 | You look at your quarterly plan at the beginning of each week when you create a weekly plan

00:33:11.880 | for that week.

00:33:13.280 | This is where the intention of working on the project gets translated into an actual

00:33:20.480 | plan for making progress.

00:33:24.880 | So it's here when you look at your quarterly plan and say, oh, my idea is to work on this

00:33:28.880 | thing Tuesday and Thursdays every morning, that now you might block out those Tuesdays

00:33:32.440 | and Thursdays for the week ahead.

00:33:35.720 | Or you put your note on the weekly plan about every day, do a little bit of work on this

00:33:39.240 | or whatever you need to do, but it's where you actually figure out where this work is

00:33:41.560 | going to get done.

00:33:42.560 | So of course, each individual day of your work week, you look at your calendar, you

00:33:47.280 | look at your weekly plan, you build your time block plan for the day and the actual work

00:33:51.640 | gets executed.

00:33:53.960 | Now how does this intersect with task management systems?

00:33:58.360 | You know, I use Trello, other people use other things to manage their tasks.

00:34:01.840 | It depends on the type of project.

00:34:05.600 | If the project generates ongoing tasks and discussions, then using your task management

00:34:10.940 | system to keep track of what needs to be done, information relevant to those things, and

00:34:17.280 | keeping track of, let's say, people you were waiting to hear back from.

00:34:22.440 | This is a really important role for the task management system to play.

00:34:27.320 | So I use Trello.

00:34:28.320 | So let's say I'm working on a project that's organizing a conference.

00:34:34.320 | I'm probably going to have a lot of specific tasks related to that.

00:34:37.080 | And if this is a big ongoing project, I'll give it its own column in Trello.

00:34:41.680 | And each task will have its own card, I can attach relevant files to these cards.

00:34:47.400 | Oh, here's the contract, here's the notes.

00:34:50.360 | Here's I typed up notes from the last meeting about sponsors, I can just attach those notes

00:34:55.360 | to the card representing the relevant task.

00:34:58.080 | So all your information is in one place, you have clarity about what needs to be done.

00:35:02.080 | You see that all in your task management system.

00:35:04.480 | I would also in this situation, really heavily lean into the waiting to hear back from column,

00:35:09.920 | really critical that you don't rely on just seeing an old email in your inbox as a reminder

00:35:14.680 | here you want to have a card in your system in your Trello system or whatever you use,

00:35:18.680 | where you keep track of specifically, I am waiting to hear back from Bob about sponsor

00:35:25.680 | rates for this.

00:35:26.920 | So it's there, it's not in your head, it's not just in your inbox.

00:35:30.880 | So your task management system is going to help you keep track of all the different information

00:35:35.000 | and ongoing work relevant to this project.

00:35:37.600 | So your multiplayer, multi scale planning, make sure that you don't forget about the

00:35:41.360 | project that gets scheduled things get executed, your task management system keeps track of

00:35:45.440 | the information.

00:35:47.400 | Some projects, however, are more uniform in their execution, they don't really require

00:35:51.440 | tasks to be tracked separately.

00:35:54.240 | So for example, I'm writing the book right now.

00:35:57.540 | This doesn't generate tasks for the most part, to go into my task management system.

00:36:03.320 | It's just something I'm working on most days.

00:36:06.160 | So it's obviously a big goal in my semester plan that I see when I make my weekly plan

00:36:10.240 | and I make sure I have plenty of time to write and if I maybe I'm losing a morning somewhere

00:36:13.520 | in my week, I'm going to protect an afternoon somewhere else to catch up on that time.

00:36:16.920 | So I do a lot of thinking about when am I going to write, but the actual activity is

00:36:20.360 | always kind of the same.

00:36:21.360 | I'm writing, I know what that means.

00:36:22.640 | I keep track of my progress in Scrivener.

00:36:24.560 | It doesn't generate tasks.

00:36:27.640 | So multi scale planning is how you get from conception down to execution.

00:36:31.520 | Task management systems enter the scene if and when there's details of the execution

00:36:35.920 | that need to be remembered.

00:36:38.800 | All right, question two, about deep work comes from Aron, who says, I'm curious about how

00:36:49.240 | you approach budgeting time for email checks.

00:36:53.960 | I recently read an academic paper that found on average, the optimal number of email checks

00:36:58.280 | for mitigating stress is two to four times per day.

00:37:00.680 | I find four leads to too much hyperactive hive minding, but one leads to stress accumulating

00:37:07.320 | over how much is waiting.

00:37:09.040 | So what is the right number?

00:37:11.520 | First, that stress issue is a good one.

00:37:15.980 | I don't know if this is the paper you're thinking about, but there's a good paper I cite in

00:37:19.400 | my book, A World Without Email that was written by Gloria Mark, lead authored by Gloria Mark

00:37:24.960 | of UC Irvine, that studied stress in relationship to email.

00:37:29.960 | They used heart rate monitors and cameras that could look for heat blooms on workers'

00:37:34.600 | faces and they could cross what we call it, correlate this data with logs that kept track

00:37:41.940 | of when people are checking email.

00:37:43.120 | And they found that, look, if you batch your email, everyone says, check your email once

00:37:46.120 | a day.

00:37:47.120 | That is really stressful because you know there's stuff building up you're not getting

00:37:50.880 | to and it's pissing people off.

00:37:52.320 | And that makes people stress.

00:37:53.760 | They found that this stress was particularly acute for some people more than others.

00:37:57.620 | If you want to use the big five personality inventory, those who rate high on trait neuroticism

00:38:02.940 | tend to get very stressed by email batching.

00:38:05.280 | I think it's an important observation because it underscores a point I make in that book

00:38:09.240 | again and again.

00:38:10.880 | You do not solve the problems generated by email by having better habits for interacting

00:38:16.500 | with your inbox.

00:38:18.580 | You have to stop all those stressful emails from landing in your inbox in the first place.

00:38:24.640 | So I don't really think that much about how many times should you check your email should

00:38:29.080 | you batch it.

00:38:30.360 | What I care about is how do you change the role email plays in your work so that no matter

00:38:34.120 | when you check your email, it's not stressful.

00:38:37.900 | It's not something you have to do all day.

00:38:39.400 | It's not something that if you wait to do for most of the day, that it's going to be

00:38:41.640 | a particular source of anxiety.

00:38:44.420 | That actually takes work.

00:38:47.480 | You have to rethink the role of email in all of your work processes so that you do not

00:38:52.640 | have an inbox full of urgent things.

00:38:54.400 | Two quick heuristics about doing that.

00:38:55.960 | Again, I wrote a whole book about this.

00:38:57.160 | Let me just give you two quick heuristics.

00:39:00.040 | One, remember that the real productivity poison when it comes to email is messages that arrive

00:39:07.580 | at unscheduled times and will require your response.

00:39:12.480 | And figuring out the basic processes you use to execute your work.

00:39:16.480 | That is what you want to minimize.

00:39:18.640 | Not complexity, not time required to get something done.

00:39:23.120 | Number of unscheduled messages that require a response.

00:39:25.840 | That is what you want to reduce.

00:39:27.760 | That is what creates stress in your inbox.

00:39:29.920 | Knowing that at any moment, messages could be arriving that require a response sooner

00:39:33.800 | being better than later.

00:39:35.180 | As long as that is largely the reality of how you interact with your inbox, you will

00:39:38.440 | have to be in there all the time, which is very distracting, or trying to batch and be

00:39:42.680 | really stressed about it.

00:39:44.840 | Second heuristic I'll briefly mention for taming your inbox is remembering that email

00:39:51.240 | is best for delivering information, contracts, files, announcements, or non-urgent questions

00:40:00.880 | that can be answered with one reply.

00:40:05.160 | So if I need to know, can you remind me again when your trip to Georgia is?

00:40:11.960 | That's a great use of email, I can send it to you.

00:40:15.000 | It's not stressful when you see that message, you can answer it whenever it's not urgent.

00:40:19.880 | And that's a much better way for me to get that information than interrupt you or to

00:40:23.040 | stop by your office.

00:40:25.000 | Anything beyond that, and in particular, back and forth conversation, anything that requires

00:40:28.400 | back and forth conversation, find another place to do it.

00:40:33.040 | And don't just say Slack because that creates the same problem if I have to keep monitoring

00:40:36.700 | Slack to do these back and forth.

00:40:38.640 | Office hours, like we talked about in episode two of nine, docket clearing meetings with

00:40:43.000 | your team, informal conversation, I grab you in the hallway when I see you passing by,

00:40:49.480 | "Hey, quick question, can we figure this out?" or tacking things on to existing meetings.

00:40:54.120 | "Hey, as long as we're here talking about whatever, let's handle X, Y, and Z real fast

00:40:58.400 | as well."

00:40:59.400 | So, I use email for back and forth conversation.

00:41:03.240 | Let me just give a quick vent here.

00:41:04.980 | I've had this happen twice in the last week, and really, this captures my frustration with

00:41:12.240 | email, encapsulates it.

00:41:14.120 | Twice in the past week, this has happened.

00:41:18.280 | Someone will send an email to me and a couple other people, usually like a scheduling type

00:41:23.440 | of thing, like, "Hey, when are we going to get together on this?"

00:41:25.320 | And they'll send this email like in the one case at four o'clock.

00:41:29.960 | I don't see it because I didn't happen to check email after four o'clock.

00:41:32.760 | And maybe the next day, I finally get the check in email after I write and it's noon,

00:41:36.800 | and they have a bunch of back and forth discussion that's ended with like having to call me out

00:41:41.440 | specifically.

00:41:42.440 | "So, Cal, what is your answer here?"

00:41:45.520 | As if like something weird happened, like I must have somehow missed or ignored their

00:41:49.280 | thread because I didn't answer it at 4.30 or at 9 a.m. the next morning.

00:41:54.360 | And whenever I encountered that, and that's happened to me twice, one of them was 4 p.m.

00:41:58.760 | the message was sent and by like 10 a.m. the next morning, they were repeating it for me.

00:42:02.320 | "Cal, what's your answer here?

00:42:03.320 | What's going on?"

00:42:04.320 | The other one was on a Saturday.

00:42:05.760 | And by Sunday, this person was saying, "Cal, what's going on?

00:42:08.320 | What's your answer here?"

00:42:11.420 | When I see that, I say, "Okay, this is someone who is completely captured in the hyperactive

00:42:15.000 | hive mind.

00:42:16.000 | Your entire work is just doing these back and forth ongoing conversations.

00:42:19.720 | And if that's the way you do all of your work, you're dependent on everyone else to do the

00:42:22.960 | same thing."

00:42:24.640 | I refuse to do it.

00:42:25.640 | I also refuse to apologize.

00:42:27.720 | I answer when I get to it.

00:42:31.160 | Just venting there.

00:42:32.160 | All right, rolling right along here.

00:42:34.400 | Question number three comes from Fizz.

00:42:39.400 | Fizz says, "I tried to get my workplace to listen to your podcast and read your books,

00:42:46.560 | but they're too busy.

00:42:48.160 | The pause for long enough to actually listen or read them.

00:42:51.800 | This startup is my first job out of engineering school.

00:42:54.260 | And to me, it seems like my boss is more concerned with looking busy than actual impact.

00:43:00.360 | I often get requests from my boss at noon for something he wants done by the end of

00:43:04.200 | the day.

00:43:05.800 | Following your advice to build career capital, this means that I usually stay late and work

00:43:09.320 | 50 hour weeks to meet these short turnaround times.

00:43:12.360 | How can I push back against this hyperactivity despite not having earned the career capital

00:43:16.440 | yet?"

00:43:18.040 | Well, look, you're new to this workplace.

00:43:23.080 | You're new to the world of work based on your elaboration.

00:43:26.120 | So it's one of your first jobs and it's at a startup.

00:43:30.320 | The short answer is you don't push back yet.

00:43:32.440 | So much as I appreciate the advertising for all of my young listeners out there, all my

00:43:40.600 | 22 year old listeners in their first job, do not push my stuff on people in your office.

00:43:45.720 | They are not going to like you for it.

00:43:48.680 | I will become a, that will be a big source of annoyance.

00:43:51.280 | If you say, listen to Cal Newport, they will say, fill the copier, change the copier ink.

00:43:55.680 | What are you talking about?

00:43:57.460 | So no, you don't push back.

00:44:00.980 | What you do is you deliver and you deliver faster than your boss expects at a higher

00:44:04.880 | level of quality than she expects.

00:44:06.800 | And you never drop the ball.

00:44:09.760 | They trust you.

00:44:10.760 | If they put something on your plate, it's going to get done.

00:44:12.560 | If that schedule has to be changed, you'll tell them it has to be changed.

00:44:15.080 | And you deliver when you said it was going to get it done.

00:44:17.520 | You become reliable, you become indispensable and you become someone who is known as a producer.

00:44:24.320 | This is the fastest way to accrue career capital when you are new to a position.

00:44:29.000 | Once you accrue this career capital, then you can start to use this as leverage.

00:44:36.060 | Then you can get to the place where I was just ranting about, where I said, if you send

00:44:40.120 | me an email at four and then bother me at 10 the next morning, I'm not apologizing.

00:44:44.800 | In fact, I might wait a little bit longer before I respond.

00:44:47.400 | You got to get to that place.

00:44:48.400 | And the way you get there is at first you deliver, you're indispensable, you produce

00:44:52.840 | at a high level.

00:44:55.640 | Once you have established this, they're going to want you to stay.

00:44:57.840 | They're going to promote you to new positions.

00:44:59.200 | It's in that upward movement that you deploy your career capital leverage.

00:45:03.480 | But until then, like, yeah, it's not unreasonable in a startup that this is kind of what you

00:45:07.560 | do.

00:45:08.560 | You're the guy who turns the thing around for your boss that he needs in a few hours.

00:45:13.520 | That's where you start.

00:45:14.520 | The key is that's not where you end.

00:45:18.000 | You better know where you're trying to head so that as you build this capital, you know

00:45:22.120 | what to do with it, that you don't just chase what's the next rung of immediate admiration.

00:45:28.520 | What's the thing that's going to make my boss the happiest?

00:45:30.220 | What's the thing that's going to impress my friends from business school?

00:45:32.080 | The most you have to know where you're going so you can deploy this capital when the time

00:45:35.000 | comes.

00:45:36.000 | I talk about this in my book, so good they can't ignore you.

00:45:39.040 | I call them the autonomy traps.

00:45:41.400 | Trap number one, which is what you're falling into until you've really earned some career

00:45:45.640 | capital.

00:45:46.640 | You don't really have much autonomy.

00:45:47.640 | You can't demand much.

00:45:48.640 | But trap number two, once you have some capital, you're probably so good.

00:45:53.280 | There will be all the pressure in the world to just move up to the next rank.

00:45:57.600 | More money, more responsibility, more respect in this very narrow world in which you happen

00:46:01.320 | to work and not exercise your autonomy at all.

00:46:05.340 | Trap hits you on both sides.

00:46:08.240 | The third segment of the show is I'm going to do a deep life academy segment on lifestyle

00:46:14.640 | centric career planning.

00:46:15.640 | So you will get all the lessons you need about how to make sure you have the right vision

00:46:18.640 | in mind.

00:46:19.640 | So once you do build up this capital, you'll know where to go and then you can start recommending

00:46:24.160 | my books again.

00:46:25.160 | All right, let's do a new feature.

00:46:27.800 | Case study, listener case study.

00:46:30.240 | I appreciate these.

00:46:32.360 | This comes from Diane.

00:46:34.920 | She says, this is not a new question, just a follow up on a question I sent before.

00:46:42.640 | My question at the time was about the fact that I'm a writer who works at home and seem

00:46:47.680 | to be able to consistently do whatever I wanted first thing in the morning, but then having

00:46:52.480 | trouble ever moving on to the second thing I want to do due to the distractions of being

00:46:57.760 | at home while I worked.

00:47:00.080 | So update since then, I think I've solved the problem by renting a small office near

00:47:07.400 | my home.

00:47:08.400 | Now I'm exercising first thing and then I go into the office just like a normal pre-COVID

00:47:13.520 | working person and get my writing done.

00:47:16.120 | So it's up to you whether you choose to use my question or not, but I feel like I've solved

00:47:19.400 | it myself and I feel good about that.

00:47:21.360 | So thank you for all your work.

00:47:24.240 | Great case study, Diane.

00:47:26.400 | Work from near home.

00:47:27.960 | WFNH.

00:47:28.960 | I think it's a very important trend.

00:47:31.440 | I've written about this in the New Yorker.

00:47:33.280 | Diane is a exemplar.

00:47:35.520 | There are lots of things we freely spend money on without even really thinking about it.

00:47:40.880 | But for some reason we have this resistance about, I don't want to spend money on a workspace

00:47:46.080 | if I'm a remote worker, if I don't have to go to an office, I don't want to spend money

00:47:50.000 | on a workspace near my home because technically you don't need it.

00:47:55.660 | You have a home office.

00:47:57.200 | Sure.

00:47:58.200 | But the difference in experience about having a place to go versus not is worth quite a

00:48:02.920 | bit.

00:48:03.920 | So let's say, this is a quick thought example building on this case study.

00:48:08.520 | Let's say you had a traditional office job.

00:48:12.360 | You live in a relatively expensive place.

00:48:13.960 | You live in suburban Washington, DC.

00:48:15.960 | All right.

00:48:16.960 | So in this thought experiment, you live in Kensington, relatively expensive house.

00:48:21.240 | All right.

00:48:22.560 | You go permanently remote.

00:48:25.400 | So you have a home office and your house in Kensington, but your dogs are there and, and

00:48:29.720 | your kids come home from school and whatever, right?

00:48:32.280 | Like it's, it's, it's distracting.

00:48:33.520 | Your laundry is there.

00:48:34.520 | The TV is always playing and you find yourself really distracted.

00:48:40.240 | If you could have a office to go to near your house, your productivity, happiness, sustainability

00:48:46.480 | of your work might be much better.

00:48:47.640 | Now let's say you're spending all your money.

00:48:49.840 | Kensington's expensive.

00:48:50.840 | Well, now that you're really remote, you move out of Kensington.

00:48:55.180 | You move for whatever reason, you've always had this dream of having land.

00:48:58.680 | So you move to a farm in Westminster.

00:49:06.200 | My local listeners know who I'm talking about here.

00:49:07.880 | This is actually a real person we know who's doing this and you have some land and a barn

00:49:11.760 | and, and, and you know, it's cheaper to live there.

00:49:15.740 | And then you can, you go and rent a little bit of office space in the nearby downtown

00:49:20.080 | and it's still cheaper than where you live before.

00:49:21.720 | You kind of live in this cool place and you have this land and it's cheaper to live.

00:49:24.740 | So you can spend some of that money you save into an office.

00:49:27.960 | That's what you should do because you know what, if you can go to that office to work,

00:49:30.240 | that works can be much more effective.

00:49:31.440 | You'll have much clearer separation between work and home.

00:49:34.420 | What a great investment in your money.

00:49:35.420 | So what I'm trying to say here is what Diane did is great.

00:49:38.360 | If it is all possible to find a way to invest money in a dedicated working space, that's

00:49:42.720 | not your house, but convenient to your house, do it.

00:49:47.840 | And I think maybe we should see more of this.

00:49:49.800 | If I'm remote, I'm going to move somewhere cheaper.

00:49:53.960 | We claim 50% of that savings invested in a place to work.

00:49:58.160 | All right.

00:49:59.160 | So we have one more new feature to do.

00:50:01.800 | I want to wrap up the show with a deep life Academy feature.

00:50:07.100 | We go through some lessons about a core idea for living the deep life.

00:50:12.000 | I got a first briefly mentioned ZocDoc.com.

00:50:19.720 | One of our sponsors.

00:50:21.400 | This is one of these sponsors that just makes sense that the service exists.

00:50:25.000 | If you're going to go to a restaurant, you're going to look up reviews.

00:50:30.140 | What restaurants are nearby?

00:50:31.760 | Which ones get real reviews from real patrons?

00:50:34.560 | Why don't we do the same thing with dentists, with primary care physicians, with specialists?

00:50:38.300 | Why don't we say, okay, who's nearby?

00:50:40.200 | Who takes my insurance?

00:50:41.200 | And what do people actually think?

00:50:42.280 | What do patients actually think?

00:50:43.480 | It makes a lot of sense.

00:50:44.660 | This is the service ZocDoc provides.

00:50:47.400 | You find what doctors are nearby.

00:50:48.980 | You find what doctors are in your insurance network and you read real reviews from real

00:50:53.600 | patients to see, is this a good doctor?

00:50:55.800 | Do they run their offices well?

00:50:57.880 | What's it like to actually go and see them?

00:51:00.360 | To make things even better, they then provide software to simplify the paperwork.

00:51:07.080 | Got to fill out these forms.

00:51:08.240 | You can do it online.

00:51:09.680 | You can do an advance to showing up in the office.

00:51:11.280 | I now have two different medical care providers who use ZocDoc, my primary care physician

00:51:17.560 | and my dentist, so I know this service well.

00:51:19.960 | I love the ability to fill out forms way in advance.

00:51:23.760 | I get automated text messages.

00:51:25.320 | I go to the website, I fill them out in advance.

00:51:26.880 | When I show up, they have what they need.

00:51:28.840 | ZocDoc is one of these services that just makes a lot of sense.

00:51:33.520 | Free app, shows you doctors, patient reviews, which ones take your insurance, everything

00:51:38.520 | you need.

00:51:40.520 | So go to ZocDoc.com/deep and download the ZocDoc app for free.

00:51:45.320 | Then start your search for a top rated doctor today, many available within 24 hours.

00:51:49.040 | That's ZocDoc.com/deep.

00:51:55.400 | Say it three times fast and they'll give you a discount.

00:51:59.520 | I made that last part up.

00:52:00.520 | I also want to talk about ladder.

00:52:05.240 | If you do not have life insurance, but you have people who depend on you and you don't

00:52:09.800 | have a huge pile of cash sitting in the bank somewhere, you need life insurance.

00:52:13.360 | Most people know this, but most people are stymied by the logistical challenge of how

00:52:20.260 | do I even get started?

00:52:22.340 | Where do I go if I need to get life insurance?

00:52:26.120 | This is where ladder enters the scene.

00:52:30.020 | It is a 100% digital, no doctors, no needles, no paperwork way to find good life insurance

00:52:38.740 | coverage.

00:52:40.680 | So if that coverage is $3 million or less, that's where you need no doctors, no needles,

00:52:43.600 | no paperwork.

00:52:44.600 | You just answer a few questions about your health in an online application.

00:52:48.320 | Ladder can work in just minutes.

00:52:50.600 | You apply on your phone or your laptop.

00:52:52.200 | It's algorithms work in real time to find out if you're instantly improved.

00:52:56.200 | No hidden fees, cancel anytime, get a free refund if you change your mind in the first

00:52:59.680 | 30 days.

00:53:00.680 | It's an insurance broker.

00:53:03.180 | So they're not just trying, they're not selling you their insurance.

00:53:06.200 | They are finding you policies that match what you need from insurers with long proven histories

00:53:11.700 | of pain claims.

00:53:14.620 | They have 4.8 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot.

00:53:19.160 | Ladder is now the way to get life insurance.

00:53:20.920 | I'm using ladder.

00:53:22.440 | It's on my to-do list for the week.

00:53:24.480 | This episode is coming out.

00:53:26.240 | Last week we met with our financial advisor.

00:53:28.780 | So we need to up our life insurance.

00:53:30.360 | I know exactly what I'm going to do.

00:53:31.360 | I'm going to go to ladderlife.com.

00:53:32.360 | Give me a couple minutes.

00:53:33.360 | Boom, done.

00:53:34.360 | It's going to make that element of my to-do list easy.

00:53:39.280 | So I am literally using this service next week.

00:53:42.380 | So go to ladderlife.com/deep today to see if you're instantly improved.

00:53:47.040 | That's LADDERLIFE.COM/DEEP.

00:53:51.360 | Ladderlife.com/deep.

00:53:52.360 | All right, segment three, the deep life.

00:53:57.440 | Let's go to the deep life academy.

00:53:58.440 | So what we're going to do here is we're going to start with a question and use this question

00:54:04.160 | to motivate a deeper look at a key idea in the deep life universe.

00:54:09.440 | All right, so our motivating question comes from Anon.

00:54:14.520 | How do you go about figuring out the lifestyle you want to have and the career you want to

00:54:20.320 | pursue?

00:54:21.320 | You talk about lifestyle-centric career planning.

00:54:22.560 | And while I love your idea, I am still unable to put it into practice.

00:54:26.880 | I work in IT as a data engineer, and I'm trying to think about what next, which is where your

00:54:32.800 | advice seemed relevant.

00:54:35.360 | Where can I get inspiration from you to help figure out the type of lifestyle I would like

00:54:39.240 | to lead?

00:54:40.760 | All right, this is an opportunity to open up the deep life academy for the topic of

00:54:48.040 | lifestyle-centric career planning.

00:54:52.080 | One of my favorite strategies, probably the piece of advice I give most often to young

00:54:55.880 | people trying to figure out their careers.

00:55:00.040 | So I have, let's see, three, four lessons, four brief lessons.

00:55:05.000 | Lesson number one, what is lifestyle-centric career planning?

00:55:09.880 | So here's the idea.

00:55:11.620 | When making decisions about what career to follow or what advancement to pursue in your

00:55:17.680 | current career, you should work backwards from a concrete image of your ideal lifestyle

00:55:23.600 | that you hope to be living in the near to intermediate future.

00:55:26.860 | This vision, this concrete image should include details about the physical environment where

00:55:31.160 | you are, the social environment in which you find yourself, the stress pace and general

00:55:37.120 | atmosphere of your life, your mental and spiritual life.

00:55:40.000 | What are the details there and what your time outside of work is occupied with.

00:55:47.160 | So you're building a concrete image that has all of these things in it, concrete specific

00:55:53.160 | imagery, but does not have specifics about what exact career you're doing or what exact

00:55:58.640 | work you're doing.

00:55:59.640 | So it's all of the elements of your lifestyle, save specifics about I work in UX design at

00:56:06.120 | a mid-market tech company.

00:56:09.160 | So that's the exercise.

00:56:11.420 | You then use this image to help figure out what job you want or what career advancement

00:56:15.600 | to take, because now you have a simple question.

00:56:18.440 | Of the things available to me now, what will most effectively move me closer to achieving

00:56:25.240 | this lifestyle?

00:56:27.160 | So you have a clear target for your decisions.

00:56:30.180 | It gets you away from much more vague approaches to making career decisions, such as a what's

00:56:36.040 | my passion, what's my true calling possible to answer questions or just what seems most

00:56:43.560 | respectable or most stable or make my parents happiest.

00:56:49.560 | This is, I think, a much more effective means of pursuing these questions.

00:56:55.320 | We'll get to why in a later lesson.

00:56:58.880 | Lesson number two, and this goes straight to Anand's particular query.

00:57:04.600 | How do you figure out the answers to those questions?

00:57:07.820 | How do you figure out what your ideal lifestyle should look like?

00:57:14.200 | Here you have to trust your gut.

00:57:16.480 | So this is kind of interesting.

00:57:18.920 | I reject the idea that we have a gut instinct about jobs that is pretty effective, right?

00:57:24.840 | This idea that we have a passion, we're wired for this particular job and we'll know it

00:57:29.240 | when we see it because jobs are weird.

00:57:33.440 | We don't have a great instinct for what they really mean for our lives.

00:57:36.360 | We don't have good prediction software on what would that job actually be like.

00:57:40.820 | I don't trust my gut too much about something as vague as a career in UX design versus a

00:57:47.920 | career in QA quality insurance.

00:57:50.060 | My mind doesn't know what that means.

00:57:51.160 | My gut's not going to give me interesting reactions about this, but I do trust my gut

00:57:56.140 | when I'm thinking about specific concrete aspects of my lifestyle.

00:58:02.440 | When I imagine myself going for a long walk among the pine trees in the morning with my

00:58:09.320 | dog and the sun is filtering through and that really resonates, I want to be doing that

00:58:14.720 | every day.

00:58:15.720 | Something about that resonates.

00:58:16.720 | I trust my gut about that because that's concrete that's specific, specific concrete.

00:58:21.240 | So you need to see what resonates.

00:58:23.880 | Where do you find examples to test for resonance?

00:58:26.720 | Documentaries, movies, magazine profiles, books, YouTube videos, people that you know

00:58:31.840 | and experience in your life, all these different forms of media, expose yourself.

00:58:35.240 | Let me watch the thing about Laird Hamilton and his house in Malibu or his house in Hawaii

00:58:42.280 | and that weird kind of like outdoor exercise focused lifestyle.

00:58:44.800 | Let me watch something about Steve Jobs and his hard charging style to try to change the

00:58:51.800 | world.

00:58:52.800 | Let me watch something about a math genius.

00:58:53.800 | Let me watch something about a guy who shapes surfboards.

00:58:55.560 | Expose yourself, expose yourself to all sorts of different stories, all sorts of different

00:58:59.400 | examples and aspects of life and see what resonates.

00:59:02.560 | Trust your intuition.

00:59:03.560 | All right, for lesson number three, let's do a case study.

00:59:08.640 | Let's see this in action.

00:59:12.000 | Using our original question asker as our starting point here, let's go through two possible

00:59:21.320 | lifestyles that he might come up with.

00:59:24.600 | So I want to show you an example of what a good concrete lifestyle looks like and then

00:59:28.720 | discuss how that could impact decisions he makes about his career.

00:59:31.920 | So let's let's make this tangible with a case study.

00:59:34.240 | All right.

00:59:35.240 | So Anand is a data engineer, IT guy.

00:59:39.240 | Let's assume he's early in his career.

00:59:40.520 | I'm not sure if that's true, but just for the case of our case study, he has a technical

00:59:44.780 | degree working in some sort of data engineering job.

00:59:47.640 | All right.

00:59:48.640 | He goes through our exercises here, exposes himself to a lot of media, sees what resonates,

00:59:53.280 | come up with a concrete image of his lifestyle that has all details tangible except for the

00:59:57.200 | specifics of his job.

00:59:59.160 | Let's look at two possible visions he might come up with.

01:00:01.400 | Vision number one.

01:00:04.280 | Maybe the image he creates that resonates is that he's in a house overlooking a sun-drenched

01:00:11.840 | meadow.

01:00:12.840 | There's kind of land here.

01:00:16.560 | That evening, friends come over.

01:00:19.580 | It's like the opening scene in that NBC show Parenthood where there's cafe lights over

01:00:26.320 | an old picnic table and some Tibetan prayer flags.

01:00:29.240 | You're sort of outside.

01:00:30.240 | It's a little bohemian, enjoying some wine from a local vineyard that someone brought,

01:00:36.240 | just enjoying people's company.

01:00:39.180 | Maybe as part of this vision, Anand is imagining sort of in the late afternoon, sort of as

01:00:43.760 | his workday is over.

01:00:45.000 | In his workday, he imagines he's looking out through a picture window over the meadow,

01:00:51.880 | working generically at a computer screen, but with his tea and it's quiet.

01:00:56.140 | By three, he's done and he has a riding shed at the corner of the property, maybe by a

01:01:01.120 | garden with a deer fence up that he tends and he's working on a novel, speculative

01:01:05.720 | fiction novel.

01:01:07.580 | Not stressed about money, but nothing in this image shows him being particularly rich.

01:01:16.120 | That's an image with lots of concrete attributes about different aspects of his life.

01:01:20.240 | Let's say that's what resonates.

01:01:22.920 | What impact might that have on how he advances in his career as a data engineer?

01:01:28.800 | Well, it might tell him, I need autonomy, so I'm going to move towards highly valuable

01:01:34.920 | project-based skills.

01:01:37.460 | So skills where you can do a project, applying the skill and it's really valuable, it's really

01:01:42.320 | hard one skill.

01:01:44.280 | This would then give him going forward, a lot of flexibility in where and how he looked.

01:01:51.080 | So for example, he might follow the path of Lulu from my book, So Good They Can't Ignore

01:01:58.400 | You where I discuss these things.

01:02:00.600 | Lulu did database design, so this is very similar.

01:02:03.800 | She got very good at doing a particular type of database design that was relevant for financial

01:02:07.560 | institutions, left her job and did this freelance.

01:02:13.080 | Projects took, you know, four or five months.

01:02:15.960 | So she constructed a life where she worked half the time and then the other half of the

01:02:23.420 | year would go do adventure to do something else.

01:02:26.840 | So maybe Anand has this model in place.

01:02:29.480 | I got to build up some specific skill where I can take on a few projects a year.

01:02:33.400 | I can do them forever.

01:02:34.400 | I want to do, I have control over how many I do, but it's lucrative enough that if we

01:02:38.280 | live someplace that's not super expensive, can have the house in the meadow because,

01:02:41.840 | you know, we don't need to be in suburban DC.

01:02:45.200 | So you're looking for that type of skills.

01:02:48.160 | You're looking for shifting to a position that's more location independent.

01:02:51.880 | Let me leave this firm where it's all in person to work for this remote firm.

01:02:55.120 | So now I have more arbitrage over where I live.

01:02:58.320 | In fact, if I, let me find a location.

01:03:00.480 | If I live here, it's actually pretty cheap.

01:03:04.040 | And so I don't have to get as high up the income possibility salary with my skills before

01:03:08.640 | I make that move.

01:03:09.640 | So all these things become relevant once you have the vision.

01:03:14.520 | Vision number two.

01:03:15.520 | So let's assume instead of that being the vision, when Anand does lifestyle centric

01:03:21.080 | career planning, he comes up with the following image.

01:03:24.200 | He sees himself in a high rise apartment in the city, and he's got a cool view of the

01:03:30.320 | buildings and the light at night.

01:03:32.400 | He's plugged into the cultural scene of the city.

01:03:34.480 | So he's seen like the latest movies and interesting music.

01:03:38.320 | He's really plugged in, being exposed to the interesting culture.

01:03:42.820 | He has an exciting type of professional life where he's leading a team.

01:03:46.080 | There's a Steve Jobsian feel to it that they're getting something new off of the ground.

01:03:51.160 | He's respected in this world of entrepreneurs.

01:03:53.360 | There's this sense of like, if this goes right, like we might be wealthy.

01:03:58.240 | We're making a big play, getting after it.

01:04:01.280 | Very exciting, very plugged in.

01:04:02.880 | Maybe Anand came from a quieter background and felt bored and wanted the energy.

01:04:07.640 | All right.

01:04:08.640 | So if that's your vision, it would lead to different decisions about what to do with

01:04:12.360 | your early stage data engineering career.

01:04:14.520 | Now you might take on a more aggressive path where you're trying to get into team leadership

01:04:18.600 | positions, take on more responsibilities.

01:04:20.900 | You're not trying to develop a very bespoke skill that you can then trickle out in as

01:04:26.200 | many projects as you want.

01:04:27.480 | You instead want to prove yourself as someone who can get things done.

01:04:32.460 | Maybe he moves from his company to a company that's in a bigger city and faster growing

01:04:36.640 | where there's startup capital at play so he can meet investors, meet higher end players,

01:04:42.480 | be around more skilled people, the people who are going to get the biggest investment

01:04:45.760 | and make the biggest moves to try to get new companies started.

01:04:51.160 | Completely different types of decisions will be made if that's the vision.

01:04:53.920 | Same person, different visions, both give you clear images of what to do.

01:05:01.160 | Final lesson here.

01:05:02.660 | Why does lifestyle centric career planning works?

01:05:07.620 | Because ultimately the daily reality of your lifestyle is what affects your sense of well-being.

01:05:13.740 | The details of your life each day is what is directly acting on your body and your mind

01:05:19.220 | from which your affect is generated.

01:05:22.980 | So working backwards from what are the details that I am going to enjoy, they're going to

01:05:27.180 | be meaningful to me, they're going to be sustainable to me.

01:05:29.500 | Working backwards from that is the most consistent way you have of getting to a place where you

01:05:33.140 | actually feel good about your life.

01:05:37.460 | To instead focus on your career in isolation.

01:05:41.700 | Forget all that.

01:05:43.960 | What job's my passion?

01:05:45.980 | How can I be as successful as possible?

01:05:47.660 | And to just hope that after you make those decisions, you can get the rest of your life

01:05:52.980 | to sort of fit.

01:05:53.980 | Get the rest of your life to sort of fix.

01:05:57.100 | You're just rolling the dice.

01:05:59.820 | You are very likely to end up in a career path in which things that are really important

01:06:05.540 | to you to enjoy and find meaning in your life are difficult or unavailable.

01:06:09.520 | You might get lucky, but you probably won't.

01:06:14.220 | I was reading a book the other day.

01:06:15.940 | I won't mention the specific book, but, but the, the author had moved from the Pacific

01:06:22.020 | Northwest to suburban Washington, DC, and like being outside outdoor activity, exercise,

01:06:28.900 | fresh air, the woods, like all of this was really important to her.

01:06:33.700 | And they moved to the suburban DC because this is a better job.

01:06:38.500 | And if I'm just going to put on my blinkers and say, what do I want to do?

01:06:42.460 | What's a good job?

01:06:43.460 | What's a good opportunity?

01:06:44.460 | I can't pass up a good opportunity.

01:06:45.460 | So they come to the suburban DC, which is not near any nature.

01:06:48.260 | She was miserable.

01:06:50.060 | Now this book wasn't just about that, but I pulled that thread out of it.

01:06:53.420 | I was thinking, man, if you're a lifestyle, such a career planning, you would say, I could

01:06:57.340 | care less that there is a quote unquote, good opportunity at a think tank in DC.

01:07:05.860 | What I care about is do I have the opportunities where I am?

01:07:09.460 | Do I have the opportunities right now to make my life something I really liked?

01:07:12.060 | It's really meaningful.

01:07:13.060 | And for me, the person speaking in the voice of the person, that book, that's probably

01:07:16.620 | staying in the Pacific Northwest and finding the right skillset that allows you to not

01:07:19.780 | be stressed about money and to have this flexibility.

01:07:22.100 | I really think it's the way to go.

01:07:25.300 | Career serves your life because ultimately your daily experience of your life is what

01:07:30.240 | dictates how you feel.

01:07:31.500 | Life's just a career planning is the natural consequence of that truism.

01:07:37.380 | All right.

01:07:39.060 | I have six minutes until my meeting with my doctoral students.

01:07:44.880 | So let's wrap it up here.

01:07:46.200 | We made it.

01:07:48.300 | As Jesse likes to say, one take, Tony is my name today.

01:07:51.940 | We just turned on the camera and rocked and rolled.

01:07:54.620 | Thank you everyone who sent in their questions.

01:07:57.500 | There'll be a new question survey being posted soon.

01:08:00.580 | We just want to get the answers to our feedback survey first before we do it.

01:08:03.460 | So keep an eye open for that.

01:08:05.300 | As I like to say, if you like what you heard, you will like what you see.

01:08:10.140 | Full episodes and highlight clips are available at youtube.com/CalNewportMedia.

01:08:13.220 | If you like what you heard, you'll also like what you read.

01:08:16.980 | Sign up for my newsletter at calnewport.com.

01:08:19.380 | Be back next week with Jesse in the studio.

01:08:22.740 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:08:24.980 | [MUSIC]

Ep. 210: Dictate How You Feel With Lifestyle-Centric Planning | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

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