Ep. 205: Become Hard To Reach, Ignore Social Media, And Tell Your Friends To Grow Up

00:00:00.000 | I'm Cal Newport and this is deep questions episode 205

00:00:06.440 | I'm here in my deep work

00:00:13.560 | HQ and by myself no, Jesse

00:00:16.240 | Jesse's on vacation down in Florida

00:00:19.040 | Quick public service announcement just about what to expect

00:00:23.640 | For the midsummer episodes of this show Jesse is gone today. So he's not going to be here on this taping

00:00:30.740 | Then I'm going on vacation once he returns

00:00:33.180 | So what you should expect if all goes well and I'm knocking on wood here in the HQ is

00:00:40.320 | Next week's episode will be recorded by me in an undisclosed location up in the

00:00:47.240 | Mountains of New England. I'm bringing a microphone with me. I'm going to try to

00:00:52.880 | record

00:00:54.880 | Outside what's the painting expression plin d'air?

00:00:57.960 | French expression gonna record outside. Maybe I'll have some meditations on life in the woods or something similarly deep or

00:01:04.920 | More likely it'll be like a normal episode but with worse sound quality and a lot of annoying

00:01:10.120 | Animal sounds in the background then the week after that

00:01:13.080 | There is a an interview I recorded actually back in December. It's a digital

00:01:20.040 | Minimalism case study. It's a two-part interview. I combined kind of an interesting experimental idea. I had for an episode

00:01:25.760 | Jesse's editing that up and and we're gonna release that two weeks from now and

00:01:30.560 | Going forward from there. It'll just be normal episodes

00:01:34.520 | Recorded back in the HQ with Jesse. Sorry

00:01:38.320 | so this is one of three episodes will be a little bit different because of

00:01:41.680 | Vacations now what I like to do when Jesse is not here is try things different

00:01:46.560 | It's a time to experiment and what I thought I would do for today's episode is let's get back to basics

00:01:52.840 | I don't know how to operate all the fancy stuff. Jesse does so no news reactions. No split screens. No calls. I gathered ten

00:01:59.920 | Questions ten questions one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine ten

00:02:04.620 | I just want to rock and roll through ten questions one after another and see if we can do some damage get back to our roots

00:02:11.180 | It's just seeing question answer question see question answer question. So that is my challenge in

00:02:16.700 | today's episode

00:02:19.180 | Is to get through ten questions. All right, let me talk briefly about a sponsor

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00:05:16.340 | All right, let us get into it with some questions

00:05:23.740 | Question number one comes from Dan

00:05:25.740 | Dan says I'm currently pursuing a degree in computer science and I'm having trouble finding time to do a much-needed

00:05:33.020 | self-study in

00:05:35.860 | Parentheses Dan says what I learned in college is nowhere near enough in parentheses

00:05:40.620 | How much self-studying do you recommend and how do you fit in with all of the schoolwork?

00:05:44.860 | without getting

00:05:47.980 | overwhelmed

00:05:50.300 | Okay. Well

00:05:52.380 | I'm

00:05:53.700 | Not exactly sure

00:05:55.700 | What self-study refers to here? Do you mean you're not learning enough in the classroom to actually?

00:06:02.020 | Succeed in your computer science classes or do you mean there is topics you want to learn in general and you're not able to satisfy

00:06:08.780 | That through your college curriculum

00:06:11.660 | either way

00:06:14.460 | Either way, we have a more general challenge here

00:06:17.060 | Which is you have an intellectual pursuit that is separate from your direct course responsibilities that you want to fit into your college life

00:06:24.540 | I am familiar with this. I

00:06:26.540 | had my share of

00:06:28.980 | Independent intellectual pursuits when I was a college student. I wrote my first book how to become know how to win at college

00:06:36.140 | How to win at college. I wrote that during my senior year at Dartmouth

00:06:40.660 | I also edited a magazine and was a opinion columnist for a while

00:06:44.660 | While at school, so I'm used to this idea of having non class intellectual but non class related work to do while in college

00:06:52.180 | And so here's a few things to recommend to make that work one. Keep your course load reasonable. I

00:06:57.900 | Used to do a lot of work on

00:07:01.220 | student stress and reducing student stress and I can tell you one of the biggest cause of student stress, especially at elite schools is students had

00:07:08.420 | Course loads that were too heavy

00:07:12.020 | Double majors major into minors trying to fit in an extra course three or four really hard courses push together

00:07:18.860 | This is a problem if

00:07:22.380 | Your schedule is too hard your entire semester is going to be difficult

00:07:25.820 | so you want to have the most reasonable possible schedule in terms of both the overall difficulty and the

00:07:31.340 | diversity of different course types

00:07:33.740 | not all quantitative not all

00:07:37.540 | Humanities focused balance types keep the course load

00:07:40.860 | reasonable

00:07:42.420 | If you have a lot of credits coming into college

00:07:44.780 | I did some of this

00:07:45.620 | Cash that in later in your career to maybe have an independent study or just to take a lighter course load one year

00:07:50.580 | Keep your course loads reasonable. It is the most effective thing you can do to reduce stress. I think students get

00:07:57.220 | What I used to call heart attack semesters on my study hacks blog back in the day

00:08:01.540 | They would get into these hard scheduling situations either because they weren't paying attention

00:08:06.380 | When they're setting up their schedule there's trying to solve problems

00:08:08.900 | Well, I need this requirement and dad. Why don't I get this out of my way? That sounds interesting

00:08:12.100 | there's not paying attention to the impact of

00:08:14.540 | their choices or

00:08:17.260 | They're laboring under the delusion that the harder their schedule somehow the more

00:08:22.780 | Impressive that will make them a lot of college students labor under this delusion that there is a

00:08:27.140 | College admission style committee in their future that's going to look at their schedule and say how many things did Dan do how hard was?

00:08:34.020 | Dan scheduled to figure out whether or not to let them in that doesn't happen after college

00:08:37.500 | That's not the way job interviews work. That's not the way you move through the professional world. No one cares that your

00:08:42.380 | Sophomore fall semester was really difficult. No one will even notice you suffer that pain you get very few benefits for it

00:08:49.820 | So make your course load easier Dan if you want to do extra work

00:08:55.500 | If you're doing extra work treat it like a major extracurricular

00:09:00.420 | Meaning don't have many other major extracurricular pursuits. This should be one of them

00:09:04.740 | don't be trying to edit a magazine and

00:09:08.260 | Writing for the paper and being a part of the dance team and do major self-study

00:09:13.100 | You actually have to treat it with respect if it's one of the things you're working on

00:09:16.580 | Don't put too many other extracurriculars onto your schedule and finally

00:09:20.500 | leverage autopilot schedules

00:09:23.820 | Big piece of advice I give the college students for every work that happens regularly. I

00:09:29.940 | Always have this reading assignment in this English class. I always have a weekly problem set in this computer science class

00:09:35.660 | For work that happens regularly

00:09:38.300 | Figure out when and where each week that work gets done this day this time then this location

00:09:44.460 | That's when I do the first half of my reading this day this time this location. That's when I do the second half

00:09:49.420 | My problem set I always do one hour right after the class when it's assigned

00:09:53.860 | I go to the library right next to the classroom and I prep it I go through the problems

00:09:58.500 | I see which ones I know how to solve which ones look hard

00:10:00.660 | Then I have a meeting with my problem set group. We always do that the next night at 7

00:10:05.820 | Here in the study room that we have a reservation for and then I have a two-hour block

00:10:10.100 | I always put together the next morning to clean up what we did and write it up

00:10:14.460 | Whatever. These are sample schedules, but it's the same time same day same places

00:10:18.140 | It's an autopilot schedule because it makes you not have to actually

00:10:23.340 | Think and make decisions about when and where you're going to work. Should I work now?

00:10:27.480 | What should I work on today? It's all made

00:10:29.480 | automatic

00:10:32.020 | Automatic so autopilot schedule your schoolwork add the self-studying to the autopilot schedule

00:10:36.200 | That is how I wrote how to win a college my senior year 90 minutes first thing in the morning. Everyone was still asleep. I

00:10:43.340 | Remember the Wheeler apartments for Dartmouth people. I was in a Wheeler apartments with a couple buddies of mine

00:10:50.380 | How it tipped to John?

00:10:53.860 | Who else was in that apartment Lee maybe hat tip to Lee? I don't quite remember everyone who was there, but I had a

00:10:59.660 | Room with a radiator that would spit hot water into the air because this was very old heating technology

00:11:06.220 | And there was one of those old-fashioned

00:11:08.220 | Overpolished varnish

00:11:10.840 | Indestructible college desks in the room. I would get up go to the desk and I would write 90 minutes weekday mornings

00:11:16.600 | Repeat the book was written

00:11:18.840 | All right, Dan. So I used your question as an excuse to go broader

00:11:22.920 | To some of my more general thoughts about getting through college

00:11:27.520 | All right, we got next question here from Sam

00:11:31.840 | Sam who doesn't seem too happy with me says isn't it a bit too selfish and myopic

00:11:37.880 | To make it so difficult for others to reach you and make them work with you on your terms while disregarding

00:11:45.760 | others needs

00:11:49.520 | Sam I don't have time to answer your question right now. What I need you to do is

00:11:53.440 | Engrave it if you could I'm talking about four by two by one inch pine

00:11:59.880 | Preferably engrave it in that and I want you to mail it to me

00:12:03.680 | And if you can mail it to me needs to get here on a Wednesday

00:12:06.460 | Then maybe I will answer your request. The answer though is going to come three to six months later. It will be

00:12:13.380 | Via perrier-kitchen. I

00:12:15.960 | Just mix those up

00:12:18.400 | Carrier pigeon I said perrier-kitchen

00:12:20.400 | When Jesse's not here I get a little punchy. All right, Sam, I'm being facetious there. Your question has two interpretations

00:12:28.840 | So, I don't know if you're talking about it being selfish myopic to be hard to reach as let's say public facing media figure

00:12:36.920 | So thinking about the way people reach me as an author a podcaster, etc

00:12:42.480 | Or are you referring to some of the rules and things I talk about in books like?

00:12:46.160 | Deep work and a world without email about being more careful about communication protocols. It's just an individual

00:12:52.320 | Someone who's more careful about how do they communicate with their colleagues or their friends, etc

00:12:57.080 | To prevent their life being constant context shifts and distractions. So these are two different areas

00:13:02.160 | You could be referring to being hard to reach as a media figure or as an individual both are interesting

00:13:09.560 | So let's cover both. Let's start with media figure. I am hard to reach as a media figure. I'm not on

00:13:15.920 | Social media so you can't throw messages my way. I don't have general-purpose

00:13:21.280 | email addresses

00:13:24.040 | There's particular addresses for particular things with rules about what you should expect or not

00:13:28.720 | Expect a lot of requests go straight to publicist or agents, etc. So I am kind of purposely hard to reach

00:13:37.680 | Now my motivation for why that's reasonable

00:13:39.680 | Really came from author Neil Stevenson's famous essay why I am a bad

00:13:46.400 | Correspondent now Sam if you will indulge me. I

00:13:50.320 | Want to read some excerpts?

00:13:53.160 | I'm gonna read some excerpts from this essay and then give you my my personal take on how I put this

00:13:58.880 | Into action in my own life. So here's what Neil says and I'm skipping things. So these are just parts of his essay

00:14:06.280 | Writers who do not make themselves totally available to everyone all the time are frequently tagged with the recluse label

00:14:13.140 | Well, I do not consider myself a recluse. I have found it necessary to place some limits on my direct interactions with

00:14:19.540 | individual readers

00:14:21.720 | These limits most often come into play when people send me letters or email and also when I am invited to speak publicly

00:14:27.540 | This document is a sort of form letter explaining why I am the way I am

00:14:33.000 | like dot dot dot Stevenson goes on later to say

00:14:36.020 | Writing novels is hard and requires vast unbroken slabs of time

00:14:41.660 | For quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use

00:14:45.200 | Two slabs of time each two hours long might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken

00:14:52.820 | for

00:14:54.560 | men, sir Stevenson

00:14:56.560 | If I know that I'm going to be interrupted I can't concentrate and if I suspect that I might be interrupted

00:15:01.080 | I can't do anything at all

00:15:03.040 | likewise

00:15:04.200 | Several consecutive days with four hour time slabs in them gives me a stretch of time in which I can write a decent book chapter

00:15:10.500 | But the same number of hours spread across a few weeks with interruptions in between are nearly

00:15:14.760 | Useless the productivity equation is a nonlinear one. In other words

00:15:20.360 | This accounts for why I'm a bad

00:15:22.920 | Correspondent and why I very rarely accept speaking engagements if I organize my life in such a way that I get

00:15:28.320 | Lots of long consecutive uninterrupted time chunks. I can write novels

00:15:31.800 | But as those chunks get separated and fragmented my productivity as a novelist drops

00:15:36.400 | Spectacularly what replaces it instead of a novel that will be around for a long time and that will with luck be read by many

00:15:44.880 | People there's a bunch of email messages that I have sent out to individual persons and a few speeches given at various conferences

00:15:51.960 | All right. I mean I read that early on and my career as a writer is very influential

00:15:57.200 | You could definitely see ideas from that

00:15:59.200 | Showing up or being echoed in deep work. I quote this essay in deep work

00:16:03.580 | These ideas have also come up in my subsequent writing about distraction as well

00:16:08.100 | Stevenson I think is making the right point for public facing figures. The productivity equation is

00:16:16.400 | nonlinear

00:16:19.240 | if I can just have time to think and write write my books write my articles and

00:16:26.200 | Talk to you folks here through the podcast microphone. I can reach lots of people

00:16:31.680 | I can do my best work if I instead am easier to reach I can talk to a lot of individual people

00:16:36.160 | That leaves me with a history of individual back-and-forth conversations as Stevenson goes on to say of mediocre value

00:16:42.880 | Reaching many fewer people than being able to actually put work out into the larger public sphere

00:16:48.000 | So I agree with Neil with that now. I remember vividly when I had to make this transition. I

00:16:52.920 | Was a graduate student at MIT

00:16:56.080 | I had written three books

00:16:58.080 | Aimed at students. I was running the study hacks blog and newsletter, which at the time was very student focused. I

00:17:04.080 | Had really enjoyed during my time at MIT

00:17:07.300 | Having an open email address where students would send me

00:17:11.480 | questions about what I was writing about and I would answer the students questions and I really felt like it was

00:17:16.560 | Almost a philanthropic investment of my time. I could help dozens of real students with real issues and it was very satisfying

00:17:24.960 | and

00:17:25.960 | There was a selfish component to it as well because I would learn from these questions

00:17:30.680 | What was really affecting people what was really going on?

00:17:34.640 | It was my intelligence networking to the life of students and it would evolve what I wrote about

00:17:38.840 | if you go back and look at my first books and

00:17:41.440 | Very early study hacks post you'll see they're very tactical

00:17:45.740 | How do you study? How do you manage your time?

00:17:48.520 | My whole focus shifted to be much more emphasizing of stress student stress and overload and burnout

00:17:54.440 | Where did that shift come from?

00:17:56.440 | Hundreds of these emails just hearing. Oh, what is really affecting people what these elite schools? It's not just that there's time management system

00:18:05.620 | Needs a tune-up. They're overwhelmed. They're stressed. They don't know why they're there. So it was very important to me

00:18:11.680 | the problem is dozens became hundreds and

00:18:14.640 | They're long messages

00:18:17.080 | I mean people are pouring out their life story and their issues and their caveats and their parents and what's happening with their

00:18:24.200 | Boyfriends or girlfriends? I mean these long life stories and I ran out of time and I and I

00:18:29.920 | Remember thinking I can't do this halfway

00:18:33.040 | I can't answer a few people's questions and let the let rest just go by

00:18:37.800 | Because they were putting so much effort into these questions

00:18:41.080 | I couldn't get to him and it made me feel bad

00:18:42.920 | I remember that vividly feeling bad and at some point realizing my audience is too big for this one-on-one interaction

00:18:48.840 | it's taking up all of my time a

00:18:51.640 | Well crafted article can get to thousands a well-crafted email helps one person and at some point

00:18:57.600 | I don't know the exact year but somewhere in this

00:19:00.080 | Graduate student period I had to change

00:19:03.040 | and I had to change my contact page get rid of the general-use email address and

00:19:07.440 | No longer be accessible for just over the transom questions and it was traumatic. I thought that was difficult

00:19:13.400 | I remember having a hard having a hard time with that

00:19:17.040 | Maybe did a series around that point called college chronicles where I helped four or five

00:19:21.000 | Individual students and I popped and I wrote about it on the blog just that I was so used to helping

00:19:26.000 | Individuals and I wanted to still do it. So I figured if I helped people publicly

00:19:30.000 | Maybe their lessons would help other people and it was an interesting time. There's a difficult time

00:19:34.520 | So the decision to go Neil Stevenson and become a bad correspondent, it's not easy

00:19:38.760 | public facing figures often

00:19:41.440 | Have a hard time like I did with it

00:19:43.920 | It really is necessary though once your audience and reach grows past a certain place

00:19:48.400 | All right. So if you're in that situation

00:19:51.080 | The only thing I would recommend is just be very clear about your expectations if readers know I

00:19:56.360 | Can't just reach and get a question answered. But here's a here's a address where I can

00:20:01.160 | Send you something interesting that you'll probably see but you probably won't respond if I have a media request. Here's the person I talked to

00:20:08.360 | Clarity Trump's accessibility 95% of the time people get upset when they expect some sort of interaction that they don't end up

00:20:16.320 | Getting all right. Now, what about?

00:20:18.360 | individual limits on communication

00:20:20.720 | Not being accessible all the time by text

00:20:24.040 | Not being good about answering emails right away for your work colleagues

00:20:29.000 | This is a another

00:20:32.280 | Area in which Sam could be referring to when he talks about being myopic and selfish by making people communicate on your terms

00:20:39.260 | All right, when it comes to the individual level scales be it for your work colleagues or family

00:20:44.100 | Honestly my advice here and I articulate this more clearly in a world without email a book world without email

00:20:51.920 | Shut up about it

00:20:54.680 | Do it

00:20:56.320 | Think through communication. Don't just be accessible all the time

00:20:59.800 | Don't constantly be on text on email have other protocols have other other approaches to how you manage this communication

00:21:05.840 | But don't tell everyone about it

00:21:07.840 | Don't tell everyone about it. This is the the Tim Ferriss autoresponder issue

00:21:11.960 | Tim had this great idea in 2007. Don't check email all the time novel at the time

00:21:18.200 | But then he added this very engineering type addition, which logically made all the sense in the world

00:21:23.760 | You should have an autoresponder that announces this intention to whoever writes you you write someone

00:21:29.680 | Like Tim at the time you get an autoresponder and it said something like his suggested autoresponder to serve you better

00:21:34.720 | I'm only checking email at twice a day at 11 and 3 if you need me in between there call my number

00:21:41.200 | To an engineer's mind that makes complete sense

00:21:45.160 | So why not explain to people so they know oh, I won't hear back from Tim till 3

00:21:50.320 | The audience at South by Southwest 2007 who heard him give that example thought it made complete sense. They're a bunch of engineers

00:21:57.920 | Here's the problem in the real world when you get that autoresponder you say that guy is

00:22:02.600 | Annoying and you can't even really put your finger on it, but it's violating some sort of dyadic

00:22:07.640 | tribal paleolithic evolved communication standard

00:22:11.140 | But it just annoyed people and it turned out it's better just check your email twice a day

00:22:14.520 | You don't have to make a thing about it

00:22:16.400 | Yet tell someone what you're doing

00:22:18.400 | You're giving a location for friction to be generated

00:22:22.200 | Well, why are you doing that twice a day? I don't know about twice a day. What if I need that's not good

00:22:27.800 | That's not gonna fly. What if I need you at noon? I don't like this at all

00:22:30.700 | Don't announce what you're doing at the individual scale. It just gives the sites for friction to generate just do it

00:22:35.660 | Apologize if you need to same thing with your family and text messaging

00:22:39.700 | I don't think you should be responding to text messages all day

00:22:42.440 | You have to have set times you do that. You need to accompany that with office hours. Don't call them office hours

00:22:48.120 | You're you're your family will think you're a weirdo or a fink but you know say hey, by the way

00:22:53.260 | I'm always available at 5 to 6 when I'm commuting home

00:22:57.120 | So like just you can always call me then I'll see what's going on or I always have my phone open on

00:23:01.960 | You know lunch at 12, whatever like they have set times

00:23:04.720 | They know or when I'm coming back, I drop the kids off at the bus stop. So that's very consistent and

00:23:09.640 | So from 8 to 8 20, I'm walking back. Just call me then

00:23:13.780 | So you have these implicit office hours and in our explicit

00:23:16.960 | Office hours and implicit times you check and then just do that and like people might complain some I couldn't hear from you

00:23:22.800 | But you're like, I'm sorry. I just saw this now. What are they gonna say?

00:23:25.720 | Unacceptable, you should have saw this earlier. They don't care. They saw. Okay, great. Here's my question

00:23:29.700 | So on the individual scale you do not announce what you're up to you just do it and apologize if you have to

00:23:36.480 | You know this happened with my a contractor is working with recently

00:23:40.720 | The emails were coming, you know

00:23:44.880 | I don't I check emails once a day at most in summer and so that we kept getting in situations where

00:23:49.560 | Maybe she would send an email at 4 p.m

00:23:51.880 | And I'd already checked email for that day

00:23:54.600 | Maybe at 3 and then the next day at 11 a.m. She sent another email. Hey, did you get this?

00:23:59.080 | What's going on? And I hadn't checked email yet that day because I write in the morning and you know what?

00:24:03.200 | I finally just apologized. I sent a letter like, you know, my summer schedule as a professor is I'm usually checking things once a day

00:24:08.740 | So don't expect more than it could be 24 hours right just depending on when I do the check

00:24:14.860 | It doesn't mean I don't see it. This is how I do it. But if it's more urgent

00:24:17.800 | Like a time sensitive thing you can text me and if there's something that really needs a lot of back-and-forth

00:24:23.320 | Because I'm not on email all day. Let's not do back-and-forth on email

00:24:26.440 | We can set up if we need a couple standing sort of office hour times

00:24:30.400 | You can always call me if we think there's gonna be a lot of work

00:24:32.520 | It needs four or five back and forth because that you can't spread out four or five back and forth over four or five days

00:24:37.080 | Do you like yeah, great

00:24:39.080 | And the problem solved right? I didn't have to make a big lecture about it up front

00:24:43.040 | But when it became an issue, I gave a little explanation. Everyone was happy

00:24:45.540 | All right, so that's all I would say if you're a public-facing media figure eventually

00:24:49.200 | You can't be very accessible be very clear about that people understand or if they don't understand

00:24:53.520 | There's others who do to replace them and it comes to your individual life

00:24:56.940 | Don't make a big deal about it. Just do what's best for you and apologize only if pushed into it

00:25:03.960 | All right doing well here, you know what I didn't do I didn't number my questions I know we have ten

00:25:13.560 | But I should have numbered them because now I don't know where we are. Oh, well, let's just roll on

00:25:18.880 | Larry has the next one

00:25:20.880 | Larry says hi professor Newport. I loved your book

00:25:24.040 | So good. They can't ignore you

00:25:26.920 | But it seems to me that only a small minority of people can possess rare and valuable skills at any given time

00:25:32.640 | Does this mean only a minority of people can succeed in achieving the ideal laid out in your book?

00:25:37.780 | If not, what would a world where most people are so good. They can't be ignored look like

00:25:43.360 | Thank you very much for your time

00:25:46.080 | Good question Larry. It allows me to clarify something. Yes, the big idea in my 2012 book

00:25:51.920 | Be so good. They can't ignore you is

00:25:54.760 | That you should build what I called rare and valuable skills

00:25:58.740 | Use those as leverage then to take control over your career move it towards things that resonate and away from things that don't

00:26:06.040 | More more recently. I might talk about that as use that leverage to get closer to your ideal lifestyle

00:26:13.440 | Same idea. So Larry is saying well, who's how many people can really have rare and valuable skills?

00:26:18.880 | How many people are going to be a world-class writer or mathematician or something like this and this is an important clarification

00:26:24.460 | Your definition Larry what you're thinking of when you think of rare and valuable skills is too broad

00:26:30.920 | Too strict I should say when you're thinking rare and valuable skills. You're thinking at

00:26:36.560 | large scales of

00:26:40.680 | Competition rather that you're the best

00:26:42.680 | That's way too strict and ambitious when I say rare and valuable skills. I mean you can do something for your employer

00:26:47.800 | that is valuable to your employer and

00:26:51.120 | They don't have a lot of other people who can do that for them right now

00:26:54.360 | So the scope for rare and valuable skills is your employment situation?

00:26:59.200 | So everyone can have rare and valuable skills that give them leverage. I mean, let's get concrete

00:27:05.520 | Let's say you went to college you have an entry-level job

00:27:10.320 | You're working at a communications nonprofit outside of Boston. You have your fancy degree, but you're starting at an entry-level job. You're basically

00:27:17.720 | They'll call you an associate but you're kind of like an assistant to someone who's higher up

00:27:22.520 | You're helping organize projects and trips that they work on something like this right a very standard sort of entry-level job

00:27:27.920 | What would rare and valuable skills mean right there?

00:27:31.540 | well, you are

00:27:34.760 | Reliable you accomplish the things you say you're going to accomplish you're organized

00:27:40.200 | You you learn and understand

00:27:42.720 | Whatever it is that the people you assist do

00:27:46.160 | So you can make their life easier

00:27:48.920 | Maybe they work with a particular in this and I'm thinking about an actual person actual job here

00:27:54.760 | This is actually a job. My wife had out of college. So I'm using this as an example

00:27:58.240 | But let's say they work with a particular tour provider

00:28:00.680 | They would take teachers on tours getting to learn how that tour operator works and the people over there. That's all valuable

00:28:07.400 | That's very valuable to this employer and they don't have other people who can do this for him

00:28:12.040 | They could try to hire someone else, but they don't know if they're gonna be good or not that gives you leverage now

00:28:16.040 | You're able to move up you have leverage over what you want to do and what you don't want to do and you can start

00:28:20.200 | Moving up in that job you move up to the next level you do that next level. Well

00:28:23.160 | You get good at it. You master elements of it. They're specific to the job

00:28:28.200 | Other people don't do it as well as you and you move up

00:28:30.220 | So what I'm trying to say Larry is rare and valuable is relative to the employer

00:28:33.800 | Or if you're self-employed relevant to your specific clients

00:28:37.360 | Everyone can build rare and valuable skills in their particular context that career capital is leverage

00:28:43.320 | Use that leverage just keep moving your job closer and closer to supporting the lifestyle that you desire

00:28:50.260 | All right, what do we got here Matt

00:28:55.280 | Matt says you've argued

00:28:58.400 | about not basing

00:29:01.040 | your career decisions on passions

00:29:03.560 | But what about one's temperament specifically under the big five personality model if one is low in conscientiousness or particularly high in openness

00:29:13.320 | How should that be considered to avoid getting into an ill-suited role?

00:29:17.680 | All right

00:29:18.160 | So I put this back-to-back with Larry's question because they're both dealing with careers

00:29:21.680 | And they're both dealing with ideas for my book so good. They can't ignore you

00:29:27.800 | Now I think what's happening here again is

00:29:30.920 | Too strict of an interpretation of what I am talking about. So in so good. They can't ignore you. I

00:29:38.080 | reject what I called up the passion hypothesis, which is this idea that the primary factor in

00:29:44.240 | Generate a feeling of fulfillment or passion in your career is matching the type of work you do to the pre-existing passion

00:29:51.660 | If you can match your work successfully to what you're meant to do you will find your work fulfilling

00:29:57.740 | And if you get this match wrong, you won't

00:30:00.140 | That was a dominant hypothesis

00:30:03.100 | When I was writing so good, they can't ignore you. It is a dominant hypothesis today, though

00:30:08.180 | I would say not as strong now as it was back then. It's often summarized with the

00:30:13.100 | axiom follow your passion

00:30:16.140 | They argued that's wrong

00:30:18.740 | Now Matt, I think you're taking that argument and you're pushing it farther to say, okay, nothing nothing really matters

00:30:25.340 | Nothing intrinsic at all matters for whether or not you're gonna like your job and that's actually not true

00:30:29.140 | I'm pushing back against a strong form of the matching hypothesis that a match to a pre-existing passion is all that matters

00:30:35.980 | And I'm saying no. No, it's more complicated than that. The choice of job is not trivial

00:30:42.020 | But it is not the single determinant factor of whether or not you end up passionate about your work

00:30:47.420 | The real important stuff happens after you choose your job

00:30:49.860 | Do you build rare and valuable skills like we talked about with the last?

00:30:54.820 | question

00:30:55.820 | Are you applying those rare and valuable skills as leverage to move your career towards things that resonate and away from things that don't?

00:31:01.300 | Towards your ideal lifestyle and away from traps that you want to avoid. Are you crafting your career in a way that is?

00:31:08.940 | Consistent and complements your vision of a deep life if you're doing this that's very hard work

00:31:13.900 | It takes time and strategy over many years

00:31:15.900 | That is where real passion grows the actual initial choice of the job is just the first small step in that long journey

00:31:23.020 | That's really what I'm arguing

00:31:25.020 | However making that first small step choosing what job you want to do. That's not throwing a dart at

00:31:31.580 | A job listing board and say it doesn't matter at all. What job I have you still want to think about it

00:31:37.200 | So your temperament? Yes, it matters pick a job that's better suited for your temperament

00:31:41.860 | Do you like to be around people do you like to be alone? Sure

00:31:45.780 | You see your personality matters skills

00:31:48.700 | You already have matters if you're coming out of school with a math degree and you're pretty good at it

00:31:52.460 | Well, that's going to get you some career capital much faster than if you become a yoga instructor

00:31:57.940 | So pre-existing skills matter a general interest in the field. Sure that matters

00:32:02.100 | You know like I'm interested in academia seems romantic to me

00:32:07.700 | So, you know that is a mark in favor of going to graduate school all that stuff matters

00:32:13.740 | So use what you have when making your choice, but keep in mind that there may be many different jobs that make sense for you to pursue

00:32:21.420 | and

00:32:22.900 | Once you make the choices what happens next is ultimately decide whether or not you get

00:32:26.380 | Fulfilling out of it. So Matt you can take your temperament into account take your skills into account interest into account

00:32:31.860 | I'm a big believer in

00:32:33.860 | Looking at what would the opportunities be if and when I get really good at this job?

00:32:38.460 | and do I see down the line opportunities that are really going to give me a lot of

00:32:43.180 | Control over my life or open up the things that are really important to my ideal lifestyle. That's all critical

00:32:49.180 | Don't just throw a dart but don't think that the choice by itself is all that it takes to love your work and

00:32:54.260 | Don't over sweat that choice. There's usually many right answers. The issue is not I'm going to choose the wrong job

00:33:00.180 | The real issue for most people is I'm going to do the wrong things

00:33:04.180 | Once I have a job

00:33:06.780 | All right, I think we've had a bunch of men in a row so I have some women here

00:33:12.980 | There's three in a row. I did this by accident, but actually we had a run of men

00:33:18.320 | They'll have a run of

00:33:20.020 | Women asking questions. So let's actually get to some reasonable questions then

00:33:23.220 | All right, Sarah says how can schools implement a deep work approach?

00:33:27.740 | to learning

00:33:30.420 | All right. So let's think elementary

00:33:32.540 | High school level so like secondary elementary school level at that at that level of education

00:33:39.500 | Can we be doing things to prepare students for cognitive work and in particular deep work type efforts

00:33:47.220 | I think so. I think there's at least three things that we could specifically integrate into

00:33:53.700 | curriculums

00:33:56.140 | One is just the mental model teaching the students the mental model that talks about concentration as a skill. That is a

00:34:03.180 | trainable

00:34:05.460 | It's like running

00:34:07.260 | The more you train the faster you can do it and be

00:34:10.260 | incredibly valuable

00:34:13.020 | This is what allows okay great Andrew Wiles is all formats less theorem sure

00:34:18.220 | But it's also what allows your your favorite musician or songwriter?

00:34:21.900 | To do something really innovative with the music or to learn the instrument that they then play it away

00:34:28.340 | That is so impressive what allows this athlete to be so great

00:34:31.700 | that allows this writer to write this book that you love or

00:34:34.260 | That allows this public thinker to really shape the public conversation. You've got to teach them this mental model

00:34:42.180 | concentration especially in today's

00:34:44.180 | knowledge style economy knowledge style economy of ideas as well as actual economic output

00:34:51.820 | Concentration deep thinking careful thinking it's everything

00:34:56.300 | It's like being good with the sword in ancient Sparta, and it's something that has to be trained

00:35:01.340 | Just giving them that model very important

00:35:05.020 | to

00:35:07.380 | Practice this in the classroom

00:35:09.260 | And we're gonna sit here and do this. It's gonna be 20 minutes and

00:35:11.820 | Then you know what by October we're gonna do 30 minute sessions and by November. We're gonna do 40 minute sessions

00:35:18.860 | Just working on whatever these hard visualization problems or math problems are gonna do writing prompts

00:35:23.660 | You just write write write and don't let your concentration wander

00:35:26.460 | But then when it's over everyone can jump up and and you know run around and and get all their wiggles out and then we're gonna

00:35:31.180 | Sit down and do it again. You can actually practice concentration do interval training on concentration in the classroom

00:35:37.260 | A this will make them better at concentrating B. It reinforces that aspect of the mental model

00:35:42.380 | I reference that concentration can be trained let your students see they get better at it

00:35:46.900 | Let them see they get better at it

00:35:49.980 | That's more critical than how good you make them knowing that they can always get better at it

00:35:55.180 | And the three I would have detailed notes for parents

00:35:59.420 | About how homework should go and about this mental model and how homework is is an aspect for them to practice

00:36:07.540 | Sustained and focus concentration at home and how they should set up homework and it should be these set times

00:36:13.820 | They know when it's going to be and it should be

00:36:15.820 | Disconnected and there should be no phone there and you should say your students will 100% I will put

00:36:20.400 | $1,000 on the table wagering that the first thing your student will say to you is I need the computer

00:36:26.020 | I need internet to do research and there's Google Classroom has my notes in it

00:36:29.820 | Call BS on that great

00:36:32.340 | Let's sit down at the computer together and get everything you need and then you can go do the work with it

00:36:36.620 | Don't let them use that or here's the other one

00:36:38.860 | You will see you know, and I'll bet a lot of money on this because I've been doing this for a while. I

00:36:41.900 | Need my phone

00:36:44.460 | Because I have to I have to text my group mates if I have questions

00:36:49.420 | So you get detailed notes from teachers to say call BS

00:36:53.340 | You know homework should be a time for them to practice it by the way

00:37:00.300 | There is an extra mental health benefit to making work at home

00:37:04.700 | Especially for high school age students or junior high age students with pretty intense homework

00:37:08.660 | If you actually work structured without distraction the amount of time it takes to get that work done. Well cuts by a factor of two or three

00:37:16.740 | That's not nothing

00:37:19.260 | If three hours that goes kind of late into the night gets replaced with one hour done right before dinner

00:37:24.180 | It is a much smaller footprint that homework is a much smaller footprint on the student schedule

00:37:29.140 | So yes, I think we should be training deep work

00:37:31.140 | There are some ideas off the top of my head

00:37:33.540 | All right quick question Christine asks, when do you listen to podcast?

00:37:39.980 | For me chores is a big one cleaning dishes cleaning the house mowing the yard

00:37:47.220 | Great time to listen to either podcast or books on tape. I go back and forth. I treat those interchangeably

00:37:52.980 | driving

00:37:55.380 | So driving will be another time. I'll do that the walk home from my kids bus stop

00:38:00.100 | So I take my older two boys to the bus stop in the morning about 15 minutes away

00:38:04.180 | So that walk home I would consistently listen to things and then sometimes I would add on to that walk

00:38:09.460 | So I'd make it a little bit longer than 15 minutes on the way home

00:38:12.860 | So that's when I'm listening the podcast not all the time

00:38:17.100 | But during times when my mind would otherwise be bored the exception of that of course is listening to deep questions

00:38:24.540 | That you want to listen to as soon as it comes out as many times as you can fit into your week

00:38:29.420 | All right, let's do a

00:38:33.580 | Who here's another podcasting question, okay

00:38:36.180 | Got a podcasting question here pontificate a little bit. So caveat emptor

00:38:41.540 | Before we do a couple more sponsors. Okay, this question comes from Paula

00:38:45.180 | Paula says I really enjoy your episodes on

00:38:50.540 | The business of podcasting and its trends when I was looking for information on starting my own podcast

00:38:56.060 | It seemed like a lot of the materials out there were focused on podcast as marketing tools

00:39:00.540 | Ways to do quick easy production with lots of episodes as a content-rich way to show off your expertise

00:39:07.420 | I'm more interested in podcasting as the audio equivalent of long-form nonfiction narrative writing like a planet money or Freakonomics

00:39:15.100 | Paula notes in parentheses that she is a economist herself

00:39:20.700 | So that's why she was using Freakonomics as an example

00:39:23.440 | Paula goes on to say I see the value in all these formats

00:39:27.300 | But if the low barrier to start promotional style podcast fill the directories

00:39:31.140 | Does that turn off the potential audience to other styles?

00:39:34.500 | Do they step into the podcast world get overwhelmed see a lot of styles?

00:39:38.180 | They don't like and that feel very amateur and leave

00:39:40.620 | For amateurs interested in other styles does their entryway become working with an established production company like in traditional publishing thoughts. All right, Paula

00:39:49.060 | I love pontificating on podcasting as a

00:39:53.140 | Business, I have a few thoughts here number one

00:39:56.220 | No, I don't think the proliferation of these sort of low quality

00:40:02.940 | checklist productivity style

00:40:05.660 | Marketing podcast is going to hurt other more serious attempts at podcasting by checklist productivity. By the way, that's my

00:40:12.140 | That's my reference to the genre of productivity that says

00:40:17.380 | If you just have the right

00:40:19.380 | insider information

00:40:21.780 | the right steps and

00:40:24.220 | Just go through and execute these steps. You can accomplish these big really interesting things like you want to just work

00:40:29.420 | You want to triple your income and work a fraction of your time?

00:40:33.060 | Just have the right checklist to go through and at the other end of that you'll accomplish that goal. You want a podcast?

00:40:37.980 | It's going to be a great marketing tool for your company. The key is going through these checklists. That's checklist productivity for anything. That is

00:40:45.780 | Desirable for any type of outcome that a lot of people would want checklist or never enough. They're really appealing

00:40:51.540 | Because it's tractable. I put in a little bit of effort. I make my way through the list

00:40:56.380 | You feel like you're making progress but things that are hard or hard and checklist aren't enough

00:40:59.780 | Anyways, there's a lot of checklist productivity out there for marketing podcasts. You get a bunch of these podcasts that no one ever listens to

00:41:06.540 | Because it's people just

00:41:09.900 | Talking about whatever their industry is in a way that no one would care about

00:41:13.020 | I don't think that hurts other people making a more serious run

00:41:16.140 | Podcasting is developed enough. There's enough podcast out there. People aren't just perusing directories to see what they want to listen to

00:41:24.220 | It's more like radio shows or TV shows on streamers

00:41:27.940 | Now people hear about things through trusted sources a friend recommends it. They hear someone on another show a

00:41:33.900 | Show is spotlighted on one of these top charts or spotlights

00:41:38.980 | That let's say like an Apple or Spotify does that's how people find podcasts now

00:41:42.380 | So the fact that a lot of crap is out there. I don't think it's a problem. All right number two

00:41:45.900 | You ask

00:41:49.580 | Should you work with a production company? That's not really going to be that's not an entryway

00:41:54.660 | So there's not

00:41:57.540 | There's not production companies out there that will say, you know

00:42:01.500 | Paula like you seem like you're smart and interesting will build this podcast around you and like you'll find a big audience

00:42:07.820 | there are production companies, but who they tend to work with is either established podcast or

00:42:13.620 | established figures

00:42:16.060 | So like an established well-known writer and they will say you have a big audience

00:42:20.580 | We will will help you build the podcast around it. But often what they're really offering there is technical expertise

00:42:26.500 | So there's not

00:42:27.660 | There's not an entryway in the podcasting like you would have in publishing where if you have the right idea the right publisher

00:42:32.820 | Might get behind it and you can just focus on the writing and it could take off

00:42:36.860 | Podcasting requires a lot more from the you know, the actual podcaster has to build a show that builds an audience

00:42:43.020 | All right, so that's my second

00:42:45.900 | Third I

00:42:49.020 | Don't quite know how to develop this theory, but see I see a direct line I think blogging and podcasting are connected

00:42:57.100 | Social media which emerged between blogging and podcasting is a very different beast and it warped

00:43:04.300 | It's my pontification everyone should be aware. It warped our understanding of democratized digital content production. Here's what I mean about that

00:43:11.040 | when blogging came along and blogging as at the as the

00:43:15.180 | the rearguard action of the web in general web 2.0 the ability for the average person to be able to publish text that's accessible around

00:43:22.940 | The world without having to have access to a magazine or to a newspaper or to a book press this revolution

00:43:28.380 | This democratizing of text in the digital in the digital setting that sort of reached its apotheosis with the blog

00:43:34.180 | This was an important revolution

00:43:37.780 | But most blogs did terribly because it turns out here's what happens when you use digital tools to democratize

00:43:45.340 | different media channels it allows

00:43:48.980 | many more people

00:43:51.700 | to get in and take a swing, but what it doesn't do is lower the bar of

00:43:58.140 | quality of originality for success

00:44:00.940 | So it's a good thing for

00:44:04.420 | the culture writ large because there's lots of diverse voices or interesting voices or or styles or ideas that

00:44:11.020 | That never really would have got a shot to get above that bar if they had to write for life

00:44:15.740 | Magazine and try to get in there blogging minute was possible that you you could take your shot

00:44:20.220 | No one's going to hold you back

00:44:21.720 | So it's good for the culture writ large because you get a more interesting more innovation more interesting set of writers

00:44:27.320 | but for the individual it can seem frustrating because

00:44:29.760 | 99.9% of individuals aren't producing stuff at the bar that it matters. So when you this is the key mistake of the

00:44:37.140 | democratization of digital media that people often make

00:44:40.500 | democratizing access to the media does not

00:44:43.340 | Reduce the quality bar relate required to succeed

00:44:47.260 | So we get this standard pushback around blogging when that happens like well, most blogs are bad

00:44:52.180 | So this isn't changing publishing but it did yes, of course most blogs are bad

00:44:56.660 | But there was a lot of good ones and it brought a lot of people to the into the industry that might have otherwise

00:45:01.420 | Not and innovated the form and you know, you have the whole like just even in politics even the whole

00:45:07.660 | Wonk approach to understanding politics and wonk blog and yet as our client and Nate Silver and all this came out of blogging these voices

00:45:15.380 | That you know would have otherwise had to have worked their way up through newsrooms and the traditional political reporting

00:45:23.460 | Podcasting is very similar. It's democratizing digital audio

00:45:26.620 | Now almost anyone like me can put together a show and have it out there and it can leap across the uncanny valley

00:45:33.780 | between the internet and terrestrial radio that we're used to and and you can

00:45:37.460 | Be in the same ecosystem and almost anyone can do this now and this is all great for the whole culture because you have a lot

00:45:42.460 | Of innovation happening

00:45:43.340 | but for the individual is still hard because the quality bar is still really high to produce an audio program that a lot of people want

00:45:49.400 | To listen to is really hard. It's like why most radio shows failed

00:45:52.940 | It's why the people who were great at it the Howard Stearns of the world the Dave Ramsey of the world make a lot of

00:45:57.580 | Money, it's really hard to do

00:45:59.580 | Now why I talked about social media being a divergence is because social media warped our

00:46:05.180 | understanding of this democratization of digital media because it didn't just democratize

00:46:10.660 | Access to various media they played these weird algorithmic games with attention

00:46:17.420 | and I talked about this some in

00:46:20.540 | Deep work a little bit in digital minimalism as well

00:46:24.060 | But I had more of a for lack of a better word

00:46:26.940 | Collectivist model of attention where it not just gave everyone access to publish we had that before

00:46:32.740 | But it gave everyone access to some attention now. It used to be in the early days of

00:46:38.580 | Social media back when it was really based on the social graph the way this unfolded was

00:46:43.240 | You would post things and your friends would look at what you posted and they would give you comments on it and you would do

00:46:48.720 | The same for them and now you can kind of post stuff and have and you could have

00:46:53.060 | Attention. Yeah. Hey, look, here's a picture. I went to the farm or here's what I was up to today

00:46:58.140 | Here's a little quip and people give you attention. Hey, good work. That looks beautiful or whatever

00:47:02.140 | And if you had tried to post any of that on a blog

00:47:04.220 | Like no one would have come there wasn't a collectivization of attention there

00:47:08.500 | That wasn't gonna attract an audience

00:47:09.500 | I've God forbid you had a newspaper column where you were just posting these observations

00:47:13.460 | You know the paper would have fired you on day two, but social media added this new artificial

00:47:18.580 | Attention redistribution, which is really what people want is the attention

00:47:22.740 | So it used to just be this

00:47:25.380 | Implicit contract between friends. I'll post stuff. Let's be honest garbage. You'll post kind of garbage

00:47:31.540 | We'll all talk about each other's garbage and we'll all feel like we have an audience

00:47:34.980 | then things got more sophisticated and

00:47:38.060 | By the time you get to something like tick-tock

00:47:40.820 | Now you have just direct manipulation of attention redistribution where they will take something you post

00:47:46.700 | Occasionally and show it to a lot of people so that from your perspective you were getting these

00:47:50.960 | Intermittent hard to predict giant burst of reinforcement that make you feel like my god like that really took off

00:47:57.640 | Maybe I'm really close to breaking out

00:48:00.700 | When I was a writing at Bevco yesterday at the coffee shop near where I?

00:48:05.460 | Record this podcast. There was a two gen Z years on I might have been a date

00:48:10.180 | I don't know sound like a date like a first date and they were just going back and forth about tick-tock and like well

00:48:15.460 | I had this one video and you know, it had these views and that's just pure manipulation of attention

00:48:21.140 | So now it used to be an implicit contract between friends on sharing a network and now just the algorithms do it itself

00:48:25.940 | I think that warped people's understanding of success and media and made it feel like more just your personal

00:48:32.180 | expression and observations of the world are

00:48:35.380 | Always just you know one

00:48:38.680 | Mr. Beast breakthrough away from you suddenly having a big audience that everyone has the potential

00:48:44.220 | Potentially having a big audience and you get just enough reinforcement you this trickle of online reinforcement that you're used to it

00:48:49.140 | and then you go back to the

00:48:51.140 | Non-manipulated pitiless media world of podcasting just like blogs were before it and just like traditional media was before that and it's crickets

00:48:59.840 | So Paul I've wandered way off your original question

00:49:03.860 | I just think this is interesting that that we have these two points going on here if we're gonna just pontificate again about

00:49:08.940 | media

00:49:12.060 | democratization of digital media

00:49:13.980 | democratized access to publishing your voice

00:49:16.980 | It did not lower the bar of quality required to succeed with an audience

00:49:20.620 | but social media

00:49:23.300 | collectivized or redistributed attention in a

00:49:26.140 | manipulative manner to keep people using it and retrain people to expect and think

00:49:31.580 | You know if you're just out there and you're interesting you never know

00:49:34.820 | So that all goes to say Paul back to your plan to start a podcast

00:49:40.100 | It's just hard. You know, it's just a very competitive pitiless landscape

00:49:44.420 | You have to have something that's going to have a large audience say this

00:49:48.060 | I have to listen to is it is a hard world out there. This show does pretty well

00:49:51.220 | It's not a super successful show. It does pretty well and is really hard work to get there

00:49:55.700 | We put a lot of effort into this and look I have a large audience. I've been writing books for a long time

00:50:01.540 | I'm published all around the world

00:50:03.540 | I

00:50:04.820 | I've been around I've been known I've been thinking and talking professionally about these things for well over a decade and we work really hard

00:50:11.340 | Jesse and I to try to make this show tighter and tighter. We have a good audience

00:50:14.660 | But it's not massive. I'm just saying it's hard work. It's hard work. You got to think about it like a

00:50:20.380 | large FM

00:50:22.500 | radio station or cable news

00:50:24.500 | Channel hired you to put together a show and how hard you would have to work to try to make that show a success

00:50:28.740 | That's the way to think about it. Don't let the artificial redistribution of attention that's been leveraged by social media

00:50:35.420 | Warp your understanding of what actually goes into success here

00:50:38.460 | All right, well speaking about succeeding with a podcast

00:50:43.500 | Let me talk about a sponsor

00:50:46.620 | See Paula, that's the type of professional transition. You will have to learn to do

00:50:50.260 | If you want to get an audience and make some money off of it

00:50:55.380 | So I want to talk about one of our new sponsors is Z biotics

00:50:59.700 | So I like to say there are a few sponsors that I was more eager for to go rigorously test their product

00:51:07.100 | This is definitely a product. I gave many rigorous tests

00:51:11.260 | So what is Z biotics? It is a pre alcohol probiotic

00:51:17.140 | Indeed, it is the world's first

00:51:19.900 | Genetically engineered probiotic it was invented by scientists to tackle rough mornings after

00:51:26.980 | drinking

00:51:28.940 | So here's how it worked

00:51:30.860 | When you drink alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in your gut it is this byproduct

00:51:37.540 | Not as people often say dehydration does the blame for your rough next day?

00:51:43.220 | By the way, I believe that claim I remember back in college

00:51:47.380 | We tested it. I would drink two now genes of water

00:51:52.060 | that's 64 ounces of water after a

00:51:57.300 | You would say boisterous night

00:51:59.300 | Yes still have a rough day. The next day is not just dehydration. So as they found out the z-byte X team

00:52:06.740 | There's other byproducts produced by alcohol that can create those rough days

00:52:09.740 | Z-biotics has an enzyme that breaks down

00:52:12.580 | the specific byproduct that they have

00:52:15.620 | pinpointed as causing issues the day after a

00:52:19.660 | celebratory evening

00:52:22.420 | All right

00:52:23.060 | So it does stuff your liver would otherwise do but it takes care of this breaking down in your gut before it causes more issues

00:52:28.500 | So you drink z-biotics before drinking alcohol?

00:52:30.940 | You drink responsibly get a good night's sleep and you will feel your best the next day

00:52:36.700 | very clever idea

00:52:39.340 | Very clever idea. I just read Jurassic Park. We reread that with our kids. We had it. We listened to it on tape a

00:52:45.940 | road trip recently and I think this is a

00:52:48.700 | much better use of genetic engineering and

00:52:52.740 | Instead of putting all that know-how know-how about genetic engineering to bring back dinosaurs from extinction

00:52:59.180 | leading to many gruesome deaths instead and we can

00:53:03.420 | Thank the heavens for this we put that attention instead into something much cooler and much safer

00:53:09.220 | Which is helping to prevent rough days after alcohol consumption

00:53:12.980 | So give z-biotics a try for yourself go to zbiotics.com

00:53:18.380 | Slash Cal to get 15% off your first order when you use Cal at checkout

00:53:23.560 | Zbiotics is backed with 100% money-back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money

00:53:29.420 | No questions asked remember to head to zbiotics.com

00:53:33.660 | Slash Cal and use that code Cal at checkout for 15% off

00:53:38.860 | Also, I'll talk about our longtime friends at Blinkist as

00:53:45.620 | I always say ideas are power in our current moment and the best source of quality ideas are

00:53:51.940 | Books, the problem is figuring out which books to read

00:53:57.260 | Which books you just need to know the big ideas from this is where Blinkist enters the picture. It's a subscription service

00:54:03.780 | That gives you 15 minute text or audio

00:54:08.260 | summaries

00:54:09.900 | called blinks of

00:54:12.380 | Thousands of best-selling non-fiction books. In fact, they have condensed over 5,000 titles in 27

00:54:18.500 | categories

00:54:20.660 | They even now have a new product called short cast which are blinks for

00:54:24.180 | podcast

00:54:27.200 | So the way I recommend

00:54:29.200 | Using Blinkist is if there's a topic that you're interested in find a bunch of relevant books

00:54:34.620 | listen to the blinks learn to main ideas learn the landscape of that of that general area of

00:54:41.660 | knowledge

00:54:42.980 | Now you have a foundation to think and talk about intelligently and you figured out which of these books if any are worth actually diving

00:54:48.420 | Into a more detail and you can buy and read just the books that are really going to matter

00:54:53.020 | This is not just for business this can be for growth

00:54:56.800 | Personal growth self-help. There's a large number of categories over 27 categories covered by Blinkist

00:55:03.300 | You can even download these blinks to listen to offline

00:55:07.100 | So for example, maybe you read

00:55:11.180 | Stapiens by Yuval Harari and you said is his follow-up homo deus worth reading? What's it about? Boom? 50-minute blink?

00:55:17.780 | You know the big deal, you know whether or not you want to read it

00:55:21.300 | So right now Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience

00:55:25.160 | Go to blinkist.com/deep to start your free seven-day trial and get 25% off a Blinkist premium membership

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00:55:42.300 | Blinkist.com

00:55:44.540 | slash deep

00:55:46.540 | All right

00:55:49.660 | 56 minutes in no Jesse no breaks

00:55:53.500 | Pure professionalism. Let's do three more quick questions. I want to get the ten. We're going to do ten

00:56:00.900 | Even if I lose my voice trying. All right, so this would be question number eight

00:56:05.780 | Do a little mental math here question number eight comes from Matt

00:56:10.220 | Matt says it seems to me that a lot of your views that are your most famous for are contrarian

00:56:16.700 | This seems to have served you pretty well

00:56:19.420 | Do you often reflexively adopt these contrarian views if so, does it ever end up backfiring?

00:56:24.940 | And if you are selective and adopting certain country and blues views what factors you weigh when deciding to go against a grain?

00:56:31.500 | Well two points Matt

00:56:33.500 | one

00:56:35.860 | Not all of my views are contrarian

00:56:37.860 | You know, I would say there's really three large categories the type of stuff I write about

00:56:42.300 | So I do have some well-known

00:56:43.740 | Contrarian views in particular my pushback against the idea that you should follow your passion and my pushback against using social media

00:56:50.280 | Those at least in the moments in which I articulated those were quite contrarian not so much anymore a

00:56:57.260 | Lot of my other popular ideas. However, I would put in a different category. I would say it is

00:57:02.140 | Structuring and articulating clearly things people already believe they just need someone to

00:57:07.020 | to help them

00:57:09.500 | Organize their pre-existing

00:57:11.500 | Feeling so with contrarian ideas. You're often trying to convince someone

00:57:15.620 | To change their mind about something

00:57:18.580 | You think following your passion is the right thing to do. I want to convince you of something different. Here is a secret

00:57:24.500 | It's hard to have a really successful nonfiction book convincing people to change their mind. What's much more effective is

00:57:31.060 | Giving structure and voice to something they already believe so a lot of my popular ideas fall under that category

00:57:38.980 | Deep work is an example

00:57:41.460 | It's not contrarian that book didn't do well because people picked it up and said no way

00:57:46.860 | You mean deep work? I want more email. What are you talking about? And then they read it and they were convinced

00:57:52.460 | No, that's not how that book was successful people were overwhelmed

00:57:55.340 | They knew something was wrong with the way work was unfolding and this gave voice to it. That's why that book was successful

00:58:01.420 | Slow productivity is like that

00:58:03.980 | People feel this discomfort with burnout

00:58:07.220 | They feel the ambiguity and lack of specification around our notions of what we even mean to be productive and when they hear slow

00:58:13.660 | Productivity just that term when they hear the three principles do fewer things

00:58:17.700 | working at a natural pace

00:58:20.500 | Obsessing over quality it sounds right from moment one

00:58:24.860 | Structure articulating things people already believe same with a lot of my work on the deep life

00:58:29.580 | I'm convincing people the deep life is

00:58:33.020 | Worthwhile, they know that trying to give some structure to that already existing impulse and then the final category of stuff I write about

00:58:40.260 | It's like a lot of my New Yorker writing. It's more just observing and explaining trends. It's an expository

00:58:46.660 | So I would say most my stuff actually is not contrarian

00:58:49.980 | I do like contrary an idea so Matt and I think it comes from my appreciation of the Socratic dialectic a

00:58:55.100 | Lot of people think this you think that two opposing views collide

00:58:59.980 | truth a burges big believer on hitting one view against another

00:59:05.180 | Taking something you believe in and getting the best articulation to get someone to believe something different in that collision of opposition

00:59:11.300 | The roots of deeper understanding are grown. So when I do go towards the contrary and it's probably

00:59:17.420 | motivated by the dialectic

00:59:20.380 | Danielle says how can I stop my digital minimalism principles from going out the window after?

00:59:27.540 | having a baby

00:59:30.780 | So she talks about I'm gonna condense this some

00:59:33.540 | She's on her phone a lot more because she's taking pictures to send to her family and there's also useful

00:59:38.940 | Things for her baby that she uses on the phone like controlling the lights or the white noise in the room

00:59:43.300 | And reading she really emphasizes

00:59:46.180 | Reading when you're doing those feedings in the middle of the night

00:59:49.520 | You have your phone and she ends up I'm quoting here quoting her here doom scrolling the Guardian online at 5 a.m

00:59:55.780 | The check the latest kovat news

00:59:57.780 | etc

00:59:59.500 | Alright, she says the bad phone habits have now set back in like rot

01:00:03.180 | My phone seems like the most efficient way to stay occupied during this long feeds. I

01:00:08.420 | Don't want to give myself too much of a hard time

01:00:10.380 | But I don't want my son pretty much ever to see me on my phone once he's old enough

01:00:13.380 | Be able to recognize it. You know, what do I do?

01:00:16.020 | Well, Danielle first you're right to go easy on yourself when you're in the infant stage. I mean anything goes

01:00:21.460 | survival

01:00:23.740 | not a time to be really on yourself about

01:00:26.860 | Your phone habits on exercise and food on are you properly socializing with people?

01:00:33.780 | It's a little bit of an all-hands-on-deck at least until you sleep train

01:00:37.820 | And I do hope you sleep train Danielle because you got to balance the needs of the baby with your own

01:00:42.260 | One concrete thing I'll just offer from our own experience is when we had our first my wife had the same issue

01:00:49.220 | With the phone reading during the late night feeds. So she bought a Kindle paperwhite

01:00:54.700 | That's when the pin Kindle paper whites first came into our lives

01:00:57.500 | So you could read a book during the feeds and the paperwhite has its own built-in backlight

01:01:03.500 | That is not disturbing

01:01:05.980 | It doesn't fill the room with light. It's not gonna bother the baby. It doesn't change you into oh my god is daytime and

01:01:12.740 | so that the Kindle paperwhite is

01:01:15.500 | not a bad idea for

01:01:18.100 | Distraction during late-night feedings that is not going to send you down a doom scrolling rabbit hole

01:01:25.340 | The other thing she innovated

01:01:28.380 | In our household was also like the the go basket next to every place you might feed

01:01:34.060 | It had all sorts of various things like snacks water bottles. I'd read I get you know

01:01:39.060 | Fresh ice water and good insulated things before the night

01:01:41.700 | towels, you know for the mess

01:01:44.500 | Yeah

01:01:44.660 | These go baskets next to all the places you would you would feed and see if your paper white all the stuff you need

01:01:49.460 | You just got to make that as easy as you can. I

01:01:51.700 | Like your idea by the way of not having your kids see you on the phone all the time

01:01:55.620 | It doesn't matter with an infant. It doesn't matter even with a one-year-old or two-year-old. I do think it matters

01:02:01.340 | We should talk about this more as a culture when you're talking about a five-year-old seven-year-old a 12 year old

01:02:06.020 | They see you on your phone all the time. You have a hard time convincing them. They shouldn't do the same

01:02:11.100 | All right, one last question family and friend related comes from event

01:02:18.300 | Who says how do you explain a shift to the deep life to friends and family?

01:02:24.620 | I am a law student from Norway and your books and ideas have really helped me in answering some big questions regarding my life and career

01:02:30.940 | My friends and family don't really seem to understand my shift in focus. I

01:02:35.540 | Live with my three best friends and they still

01:02:38.380 | Enjoy the reckless responsibility free lifestyle the early 20s renowned for I did too

01:02:44.100 | But now me and my friends ambitions don't align anymore

01:02:46.500 | They plan a lot of activities during the day, which is when I want to work. I

01:02:51.620 | Still hang out with them almost every evening

01:02:53.300 | But when I now say no to their daytime activities or want to go read a book in the evening

01:02:57.040 | They bugged me about working too much. I feel bad

01:03:00.080 | also, my father

01:03:02.740 | expects me to just kind of hang out in the living room when I am home for Christmas and gets annoyed when I want to

01:03:08.180 | Go for a walk on my own reflect or go to my room and create a small video for a couple of hours

01:03:11.960 | As you've explained the deep life is radical and demands that you are comfortable with missing out on other things

01:03:17.000 | However, I'm finding it hard to steer my life in a different direction than my friends and family and to miss out on some of their

01:03:22.000 | experiences

01:03:23.740 | well, I think you're going through a a

01:03:26.000 | well-known developmental phrase right now and

01:03:29.460 | And I believe the Latin the Latin description of this developmental phase is you're growing the hell up

01:03:38.100 | That's all that's happening here with your friends you're growing up

01:03:42.760 | They're still in that student mode

01:03:46.220 | You are transitioning to more of an adult mode

01:03:49.860 | Where your identity is now largely separated from a group dynamic and is much more individuated

01:03:57.700 | You have autonomy over your time as well as responsibility now. It's kind of up to me to

01:04:03.020 | Take care of myself and make money and pay the bills or with responsibility, but you also have autonomy

01:04:08.820 | Socializing becomes more something that is compartmentalized. I want to spend time with you. Let's make a time to do this

01:04:14.920 | We're gonna work out together. We're gonna go to a movie together, but it becomes a much more

01:04:18.960 | Scheduled it less of this sort of background ongoing home that you would see in a group dynamic

01:04:24.600 | You're becoming an adult

01:04:27.520 | And this happens at different times for different people

01:04:29.800 | Just watch any Judd Apatow movie from 15 years ago and you will see for some people it comes kind of late other people

01:04:36.580 | They get there earlier

01:04:38.580 | You basically are the knocked up character

01:04:42.840 | After Katherine Heigl has the baby not before that's sort of what's happening here

01:04:46.080 | And I think it's good. Everyone goes through this. You're just starting to go through it. Now you got to

01:04:49.760 | focus on work

01:04:53.000 | Get a job with opportunities be so good. They can't ignore you build rare and valuable skills

01:04:57.200 | Build up a little bit more income have your own place some more responsibility gain some more sense of efficacy

01:05:04.240 | This is the standard stuff of growing up in your 20s

01:05:06.680 | Your relationship with your friends are going to change

01:05:09.080 | Some of those friends are going to go away as you find more adult friends

01:05:12.120 | Some of those friends will grow up and will remain your friends. This is all natural

01:05:14.880 | Your relationship with your family is going to change as you become more of an adult

01:05:18.960 | It's not a father-son relationship. It becomes more of a peer relationship and then you realize, you know

01:05:24.680 | If I'm home for a few days for Christmas

01:05:26.680 | You know, I'm here to be around him and socialize with my family. I

01:05:30.480 | can do

01:05:33.200 | my

01:05:34.600 | deep work structured

01:05:36.640 | Reflection on my own time and maybe I cut my trip a little bit shorter

01:05:40.360 | But what if I'm there maybe I want to be there for what does this guy need right now?

01:05:43.120 | Suddenly, it's a different relationship. You're interacting with peers. You're actually thinking what does this person need from me? It's more maturity

01:05:48.600 | Anyways, it's all great. I love being an adult. I was I was an adult early

01:05:53.560 | I was impatient

01:05:54.960 | I was about halfway through college where I was ready to be on my own and doing this type of thing

01:05:58.680 | So it's good what you're going through

01:06:00.680 | Live on your own start building your own way in the world

01:06:04.240 | Let the ideas of the deep life structure this pursuit from day one that will keep you on the right track

01:06:09.400 | But as you move farther down this track with structure to your forward momentum life is going to get deeper and more interesting

01:06:15.200 | So you're just starting event and it's going to get deeper and deeper and yeah, it's painful at first your friends aren't there

01:06:22.040 | They'll get there

01:06:23.080 | But you're going to hell up and I think that's a good thing

01:06:25.200 | All right, everyone ten questions in one hour and six minutes. I feel good about it

01:06:31.560 | One take Tony is what Jesse calls me and that's what we did here. Just went for it and got it done

01:06:36.840 | So thank you everyone who sent in their questions

01:06:40.840 | if you like what you heard you will like what you see at youtube.com slash Cal Newport media full episode and

01:06:46.760 | Clips from the show can be found there

01:06:49.560 | You'll also like what you read subscribe to my newsletter at Cal Newport comm for a weekly essay on these type of topics

01:06:55.900 | I'll be next week from the woods

01:06:58.120 | You don't hear from me. I was probably eaten by a bear send help and until then as always

01:07:03.400 | Stay deep

01:07:05.960 | [Music]

Ep. 205: Become Hard To Reach, Ignore Social Media, And Tell Your Friends To Grow Up | Cal Newport

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