What Did Your Readers Learn From Deep Work?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:04.700 | Alright, let's see here. We got a question

00:00:06.700 | from Mark.

00:00:09.500 | Mark, who describes himself as from Utah, the gateway to Colorado.

00:00:13.200 | What's, Jesse, is that like, uh,

00:00:16.600 | Utah,

00:00:18.200 | self-hating Utah? What is that, like, self-deprecation?

00:00:21.200 | Is there, like, an--

00:00:22.000 | I couldn't tell. I was thinking maybe he goes to Colorado a lot. I mean, maybe he drives.

00:00:26.800 | This is like a pro-- this is like a pro-Colorado partisan, anti-Utah guy.

00:00:30.700 | Alright, so here's what he asks.

00:00:33.500 | "What are you learning from people

00:00:37.600 | who apply your work?

00:00:39.300 | You have to be hearing good things from people who are reading and applying the principles in deep work.

00:00:44.600 | I'd love to hear them. Also,

00:00:46.100 | what are the important things that you can learn from your book that you wish

00:00:49.500 | your fans/cultist

00:00:52.100 | could learn?"

00:00:54.800 | Well, the only place I have cultish followers, I think, is in that

00:00:58.100 | Utah.

00:00:59.400 | Because they--

00:01:00.600 | it just really--

00:01:01.700 | they really suck. If only--

00:01:03.500 | here's what I always say, and Jesse knows this.

00:01:05.100 | If only Utah could just be more like Colorado.

00:01:07.900 | Then we'd see-- what I'm doing here, Jesse, is I'm pandering to, uh,

00:01:12.000 | to this question asker.

00:01:13.600 | Okay, so what-- what have people learned from deep work, and what--

00:01:17.800 | what did they not learn that I wish they-- what have I learned about the book?

00:01:21.100 | It's a good question.

00:01:23.100 | Well, Jesse, you're-- you do some deep work. What have you learned?

00:01:25.400 | What's your real-world experience with trying to be deeper?

00:01:29.000 | I think it goes hand-in-hand with all the podcast episodes that you put out in the other books.

00:01:35.200 | I mean,

00:01:35.600 | working on stuff,

00:01:37.100 | you know, without distraction.

00:01:38.600 | You get--

00:01:39.600 | you get a lot more done.

00:01:40.900 | Essentially,

00:01:43.100 | closing down your email.

00:01:45.000 | Yeah.

00:01:46.300 | Not checking that all the time.

00:01:48.100 | You know, just having certain times where you check that.

00:01:50.200 | I would say that's pretty consistent.

00:01:51.900 | Like, people will say,

00:01:53.000 | when-- however I do it,

00:01:55.900 | when I'm able to be more sequential,

00:01:58.400 | and when I do hard things, just do the hard thing without context switching until I'm done.

00:02:02.600 | You hear this a lot.

00:02:03.700 | They say,

00:02:04.300 | "I get so much more done."

00:02:06.500 | I-- I would say that's pretty consistent.

00:02:08.300 | Your "Face the Dragon" motto is really solid, too.

00:02:11.600 | Like, that hit home with me.

00:02:13.000 | I have it on my board at home, so I see it and--

00:02:15.000 | Yeah.

00:02:15.900 | And that's relevant, right?

00:02:18.100 | I mean, with "Face the Dragon," what I'm-- what I'm saying is,

00:02:21.100 | look at everything on your plate.

00:02:22.300 | Like, don't run away from it.

00:02:23.300 | Look at everything on your plate,

00:02:24.500 | and I call it the "Productivity Dragon."

00:02:26.500 | "Face the Productivity Dragon."

00:02:28.000 | And here's the thing.

00:02:29.000 | If it is

00:02:29.800 | inconquerable,

00:02:32.000 | then you have to see it and confront it.

00:02:34.600 | And-- and for a lot of people,

00:02:35.700 | that's why I'm glad you brought it up, Jesse,

00:02:36.800 | what that leads to is they face the Productivity Dragon.

00:02:38.900 | So they've written down everything.

00:02:40.200 | A lot of times what'll happen is they write down everything,

00:02:42.800 | and then they try to come up with a strategy for,

00:02:45.400 | "How do I deal with all of this?"

00:02:46.600 | They start trying to build out their autopilot schedule,

00:02:48.400 | and, "I'll work on this here and this here,"

00:02:50.200 | and it just doesn't work because it's just way too much stuff.

00:02:52.600 | And what that leads them to do is to say,

00:02:55.100 | "Oh, I'm going to cut out half of this stuff."

00:02:57.100 | Yeah.

00:02:58.100 | And then the other thing that's great is,

00:03:00.000 | with your time block planner, you showed how,

00:03:02.800 | if certain things go over, you cross out your existing plan

00:03:06.200 | and just start a new one, you know, on the same day.

00:03:08.400 | Yeah.

00:03:08.800 | So there's oftentimes where

00:03:10.300 | I'll be doing stuff and run out of time, and it's--

00:03:13.100 | as slow productivity as you talk about,

00:03:15.300 | you just wait till the next day.

00:03:17.300 | Yeah.

00:03:17.500 | And then try to factor it in.

00:03:18.600 | I like that.

00:03:19.100 | You had a plan, you were intentional,

00:03:21.500 | you've won the game.

00:03:23.100 | Yeah.

00:03:24.300 | I mean, no, there is no gold stars for,

00:03:27.000 | "Wow, you came up with a time block plan,

00:03:30.100 | and you hit it exactly."

00:03:31.600 | Or, "You came up with a weekly plan or a--

00:03:33.600 | or even worse, a quarterly plan

00:03:37.000 | about how this thing was going to unfold,

00:03:38.500 | and you hit it exactly."

00:03:39.800 | No one comes along and says,

00:03:41.400 | "Great, you get extra money,

00:03:43.400 | you get extra sales for your book,

00:03:45.400 | you get, you know, gold bars," or something like that, right?

00:03:48.400 | It doesn't matter.

00:03:49.200 | What matters is,

00:03:50.000 | are you being intentional with your time?

00:03:52.200 | Because who cares?

00:03:53.000 | If you get it right or not,

00:03:54.600 | is--

00:03:55.900 | all that tells you is it's a little bit of luck,

00:03:59.500 | and how good are you at guessing how long something takes?

00:04:02.700 | But in the end, it's going to take however long it takes.

00:04:05.300 | And so the key thing is that you're working on something

00:04:07.500 | consistently and with intention

00:04:09.400 | until it's done, and it gets done well.

00:04:11.900 | Whether you guessed properly how long that was going to take

00:04:15.300 | or not is not that important.

00:04:18.700 | The automate--

00:04:19.600 | the automation stuff and finding different environments

00:04:22.700 | for different work is awesome.

00:04:24.800 | Like, I'm taking Spanish lessons right now,

00:04:27.300 | so I know like certain days I'm going to do my homework,

00:04:29.900 | you know, in a different spot.

00:04:31.000 | All right.

00:04:31.600 | And it's just, you know, done.

00:04:33.600 | All right, so good.

00:04:34.100 | So we have three things so far

00:04:35.600 | about applying deep work in the real world,

00:04:38.500 | what people have learned.

00:04:39.500 | So in particular, what Jesse has learned.

00:04:41.500 | Facing a productivity dragon is important.

00:04:43.700 | Intention trumps accuracy.

00:04:46.400 | The key is that you have plans.

00:04:48.000 | Don't beat yourself up if you don't have plans.

00:04:50.600 | And then three, Jesse is saying the idea of having set times

00:04:54.200 | and places you do set work is a hack that really works

00:04:56.600 | pretty well.

00:04:57.200 | Where's your Spanish lesson environment or ritual?

00:05:03.400 | It depends on the day.

00:05:04.900 | This Saturday, I'm going to do it.

00:05:07.100 | I'm going to do it tomorrow morning at, you know,

00:05:10.600 | at a separate desk in my house and then not at the same desk

00:05:13.800 | that I do something else.

00:05:15.900 | Which is a good point.

00:05:16.700 | Sometimes it's minor.

00:05:17.800 | We talked about this in a recent episode.

00:05:19.800 | Yeah, we were telling someone to put a second desk in the

00:05:22.900 | same room.

00:05:23.700 | It doesn't have to be dramatic.

00:05:25.900 | Yeah, you don't have to fly down to Mexico every Saturday

00:05:29.900 | to do your Spanish lessons.

00:05:31.300 | It's just this is the place I go to do my Spanish lessons,

00:05:34.000 | even if it's a different desk in my same house.

00:05:36.900 | Yeah, and then even listening to your interview with Ferris

00:05:42.600 | yesterday and you were talking about going down to DC,

00:05:45.500 | going to the Botanical Garden, stuff like that.

00:05:47.500 | I mean that type of stuff I've factored into to like the way

00:05:52.600 | I do things like going to like the local library or going

00:05:55.400 | to some other things that do going to different coffee

00:05:57.600 | shops to do something and then if you do that for an hour

00:06:00.500 | it adds up, keep on doing it.

00:06:02.200 | That's one of the, that's a slow productivity plug as well.

00:06:05.800 | It's one of the things that goes in my life when I get near

00:06:10.500 | that chronic overload threshold.

00:06:12.500 | Like right now I'm near that chronic overload threshold

00:06:15.000 | because I'm helping with a few university initiatives,

00:06:18.300 | which I think are very important.

00:06:19.400 | So I'm doing this by choice, but it's a lot of stuff

00:06:22.600 | I don't typically like involving Zoom and PDF files, right?

00:06:27.600 | It, the overhead of that gets to the point where you no longer

00:06:33.400 | have those half days free or those full days free where

00:06:36.900 | I would say I'm going to go down to DC and like think about

00:06:39.500 | one problem for most of the day and that's a real slow

00:06:42.600 | productivity thing that when you, when your load is reasonable,

00:06:46.100 | you can do things like I'm going to go down to a museum

00:06:50.200 | and work and then go walk through the galleries to get inspired

00:06:53.200 | and then go work some more and move around the city and

00:06:55.900 | make a whole day about it.

00:06:57.100 | You can't do that anymore when you're overloaded, but

00:06:58.900 | when you can do that, you're going to produce something

00:07:02.100 | cool at the end of that year.

00:07:03.500 | When you can't do that, you're going to get a lot of Zoom

00:07:06.400 | meetings done and get a lot of PDF files read, but it's

00:07:09.600 | like me right now, month whatever of working on my book

00:07:12.700 | proposals, they're still not done, which what I probably

00:07:15.100 | need is just a couple days at the botanical garden.

00:07:17.000 | So yeah, it's an argument for slow productivity.

00:07:19.200 | If you don't have the space to take a slow day to work

00:07:22.000 | on one project, you probably have too many projects.

00:07:24.900 | All right, so that's good.

00:07:27.800 | So there we go.

00:07:28.900 | That is, there is straight from, straight from the mouth

00:07:33.200 | of someone who's working with these ideas.

00:07:35.400 | These are some of the things that we have learned or people

00:07:37.600 | have learned about putting deep work into practice.

00:07:40.800 | [Music]

What Did Your Readers Learn From Deep Work?

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