ChatGPT Is Making You Dumber? - Here's Why It Might Be...

01:00:24.320 | not what he wanted to be working on and so I think he just kind of got depressed he got paid for that though right they got paid for it but it was just to try to keep the lights on because this is not the same as having like a hit movie so it was like they had to fire a lot of people then they had to fire a lot of labor issues right there the animators had gone on strike this might have been pre-war that really disillusioned him like he had all this disillusionment happening for years and so I think he just when you're really driven like that and you're really driven like that and you're suddenly are taken out of your life the

01:00:24.320 | things you were working on and succeeding on.

01:00:26.680 | I think he just got depressed.

01:00:28.000 | Disneyland took him out of it.

01:00:29.900 | He's like, we're going to build this park.

01:00:31.580 | And everyone thought he was crazy.

01:00:33.020 | He's like, we're going to make it happen.

01:00:34.060 | And it was.

01:00:36.140 | It was very successful.

01:00:36.780 | And that was actually sort of saved Disney with these parks eventually.

01:00:39.740 | They generate a lot of money, Jesse.

01:00:41.080 | I don't know if you know this.

01:00:41.800 | When you go to Disneyland, they have abundant opportunities for you to spend money.

01:00:46.880 | Don't know if you know about it.

01:00:49.700 | It's almost as if they're trying to make money off of their guests.

01:00:54.680 | I always say, what are the two most powerful ways to make money off of people?

01:01:01.280 | A, convincing them that they might make a lot of money.

01:01:04.280 | So that's casinos.

01:01:04.920 | Or B, their kids.

01:01:07.540 | I want my kids to have the right experience.

01:01:09.880 | And so you write these checks.

01:01:12.300 | I had an aha moment.

01:01:13.500 | What else would you buy, though, other than a ticket and food and stuff?

01:01:16.680 | Souvenirs.

01:01:17.740 | So this was an aha moment I had.

01:01:20.300 | Not me, but actually the guy who does my hair had to figure this out, right?

01:01:23.580 | So we're in Star Wars World or whatever they call it at Disneyland.

01:01:26.740 | I don't know what it's called.

01:01:27.420 | They spent a billion dollars on just like this part of the park.

01:01:30.580 | And it's all like Star Wars-y.

01:01:32.000 | And we come across this thing where there's like a guy out there.

01:01:37.240 | They're promoting something.

01:01:38.120 | And we're like, what's going on here?

01:01:39.080 | And they're like, oh, it's a make-your-own-lightsaber experience, right?

01:01:42.940 | And they're like, oh, that sounds interesting.

01:01:45.420 | And he's like, yeah.

01:01:46.260 | And you know what?

01:01:47.200 | We have some spots.

01:01:48.000 | It's reservation.

01:01:48.740 | We have some spots.

01:01:49.480 | Like, oh, yeah.

01:01:50.020 | This is interesting.

01:01:50.680 | Like, this could be fun.

01:01:51.360 | You have spots right now.

01:01:52.020 | Great.

01:01:52.300 | He's like, great.

01:01:52.780 | So how much is it?

01:01:53.520 | He's like, it's $237 a person.

01:01:55.680 | Weird number.

01:01:57.020 | Yeah.

01:01:57.480 | So we're like, well, we're not doing that, right?

01:01:59.440 | Because you had five people.

01:02:01.480 | Yeah, we're not going to spend that money.

01:02:02.960 | My wife's like, we're not spending $1,000 on lightsabers.

01:02:06.760 | Yeah.

01:02:07.120 | He's like, well, he's like, I'll tell you.

01:02:09.400 | He's like, yeah, I get it.

01:02:10.660 | I get it.

01:02:10.920 | He's like, you know, at this gift shop though, you can build plastic ones and it's like $30

01:02:16.760 | a lightsaber.

01:02:18.200 | Like, oh yeah, that's much better.

01:02:19.320 | Okay, good.

01:02:19.780 | Here's the insight my hair guy had.

01:02:23.360 | There's no, there was nothing behind that wall.

01:02:25.800 | There was no $237 build a lightsaber thing.

01:02:29.000 | The entire point of that is to get you to buy the $30 lightsabers, right?

01:02:33.840 | Because that'd be brilliant.

01:02:34.700 | They're like, hey, your kids want to build lightsabers?

01:02:37.300 | Like, yeah, like it's going to be $250.

01:02:39.040 | Like, boo.

01:02:39.900 | And then they're like, well, I guess you could, I guess you could do this $30 experience.

01:02:44.240 | Well, some people must pay the $250.

01:02:46.120 | That's probably what's really happening.

01:02:47.240 | But I like this idea that it was like just for, because it's a very effective way to get

01:02:51.420 | you to spend $30 on a lightsaber.

01:02:52.980 | No, it seemed like it was, I don't want to say it.

01:02:57.340 | But some people wouldn't shake a stick.

01:02:58.740 | Some people were, I'm trying to say it nicely.

01:03:01.220 | I think there were plenty of people in the Star Wars portion of the park who seemed like

01:03:06.000 | they would spend the $237.

01:03:07.660 | Yeah.

01:03:09.100 | And I would say they were, they're in their 20s, probably live with their parents and don't

01:03:21.160 | spend a lot of time in the gym.

01:03:22.220 | That's like, that's probably how I describe it.

01:03:23.500 | There was a certain demographic.

01:03:24.560 | See, I think about it totally differently.

01:03:26.020 | I think I could see like people abroad, like flying private over there and be like, all right,

01:03:29.520 | no problem.

01:03:30.040 | Like whatever.

01:03:30.720 | Yeah.

01:03:31.740 | But are they that interested in a lightsaber?

01:03:33.300 | Probably.

01:03:34.220 | If they fly there from like Japan or something.

01:03:36.560 | Yeah.

01:03:37.000 | Okay.

01:03:37.420 | So you're like, this is nothing.

01:03:38.900 | We spent so much money.

01:03:40.140 | Yeah.

01:03:40.740 | Yeah.

01:03:40.940 | I get that.

01:03:41.520 | We spent so much money to come here.

01:03:43.400 | Like, why not just add that?

01:03:45.200 | Yeah.

01:03:45.880 | Yeah.

01:03:46.320 | Yeah.

01:03:47.120 | Because you can do like private tours there.

01:03:49.880 | It's $800 a day or something like that.

01:03:52.680 | I mean, think about if you fly private there.

01:03:54.480 | I mean, that's 50K right there.

01:03:56.380 | Yeah.

01:03:58.040 | And then you do the private tour where you spend like a thousand bucks for your party

01:04:02.200 | and you get to go to the front of every line.

01:04:03.580 | So it's like a private tour.

01:04:05.100 | But all it is, is they don't want to just say, if you're rich, you don't have to wait

01:04:08.540 | any lines.

01:04:09.060 | So it's like, oh, we have a private tour and our tour guides are able to bypass the lines.

01:04:13.600 | But all they do is just let you get on the rides right away.

01:04:17.400 | So yeah, you're spending a thousand bucks a day on that anyways.

01:04:19.460 | Yeah, you're right.

01:04:20.400 | The 237 for the lightsaber.

01:04:22.660 | Whatever.

01:04:26.080 | Point is, who was the original question from?

01:04:28.440 | Duncan.

01:04:29.840 | Duncan.

01:04:30.640 | Point is, Duncan, beware of lightsaber scams.

01:04:34.520 | I think we handled that one perfectly, Jesse.

01:04:36.740 | All right.

01:04:37.560 | Who do we got next?

01:04:38.180 | Next up is Fred.

01:04:39.620 | I have an internship in mainframe development with a rare and valuable skill.

01:04:43.700 | Very few people have the skill set within my organization and many of them are nearing

01:04:47.400 | retirement.

01:04:47.880 | However, it's long hours and often overlooked by management.

01:04:50.560 | This fall, I have an opportunity to transition into a data analyst role for a third internship.

01:04:55.580 | However, there are drawbacks as well.

01:04:57.600 | How should I manage my internships?

01:04:59.280 | You know, I don't care as much about internships.

01:05:02.880 | Right.

01:05:04.220 | It's not your job.

01:05:05.040 | So the default there would be, yeah, do the data analyst one.

01:05:08.460 | You're just gathering data.

01:05:09.540 | Right.

01:05:10.600 | See what that's like.

01:05:12.060 | Maybe there's something about that you like.

01:05:13.280 | Like you're gathering information with these internships.

01:05:15.120 | I'm not going to overthink that.

01:05:16.560 | When it comes to actually choosing what you want to do for a job after the fact, especially

01:05:20.660 | if these internships open up, each thing you did internship in opens up a job opportunity.

01:05:26.060 | The question is always twofold when it comes to these career capital moves, right?

01:05:30.600 | The building up rare and valuable skills and using them to construct your career.

01:05:34.000 | Is there an opportunity in this job to build career capital?

01:05:37.600 | So are there rare and valuable skills that I could develop?

01:05:40.080 | For the mainframe job that your mainframe internship could lead to, the answer seems to be clearly

01:05:44.860 | yes.

01:05:45.340 | You describe it as a rare and valuable skill.

01:05:47.880 | Most people don't know how to still work with these mainframes, but you need to upkeep

01:05:52.420 | them.

01:05:52.720 | So yeah, yes.

01:05:54.440 | The second question you have to ask is, will there be an opportunity for me to cash in career

01:06:00.060 | capital if acquired to gain some autonomy or control over how my career unfolds?

01:06:05.660 | That's often the sticking point.

01:06:08.040 | And that's what you would really have to assess here.

01:06:10.340 | So if for whatever reason, this company is very rigid about people in their mainframe

01:06:17.200 | development group, no, this is just what that job is.

01:06:20.080 | And the salaries are here and that's it.

01:06:22.820 | And we don't really care.

01:06:23.720 | We feel like you're expendable.

01:06:24.840 | Then the answer to that second question is no.

01:06:26.860 | And you'd be wary about it.

01:06:27.980 | If on the other hand, you're like, look, yeah, they don't realize the value of this.

01:06:31.700 | But if I got really good at that and was like, hey, I'm keeping up 10 of these systems

01:06:38.000 | and now I want to change so that I'm doing this like remotely or I'm here once a week

01:06:41.300 | or whatever you want to do.

01:06:42.800 | And they're like, oh, OK, yeah, we don't want to lose you.

01:06:44.840 | If you think there would be a chance to apply your capital to get leverage, then I think it

01:06:49.000 | could be good whether or not they're recognizing the value right now.

01:06:52.160 | The classic place where the second question trips up people is law partners.

01:06:57.260 | There's an example from the book, So Good They Can't Ignore You.

01:07:01.240 | In law, especially like big law, so like working at the big law firms in the big cities, you

01:07:06.540 | for sure are building up a rare and valuable skill, right?

01:07:08.560 | Because you are mastering a specific part of the legal code that is literally very valuable

01:07:14.440 | to clients.

01:07:15.180 | And not a lot of people can do it.

01:07:17.060 | You're using your law degree in your brain and your ability to like really work hard to

01:07:20.640 | learn it.

01:07:20.980 | You build up a huge amount of career capital in law, but at big law firms, they give you

01:07:26.720 | a very limited number of options for investing that career capital, right?

01:07:30.700 | Really, the only option they give you is investing it into having more salary.

01:07:34.780 | If you get good at this, you can become a partner and then you can become a managing partner and

01:07:39.940 | what you're going to get in exchange for that is more money.

01:07:41.480 | And they are very rigid about that is it.

01:07:44.040 | If you're going to be at this firm, here is the path and here are the expectations.

01:07:48.860 | And the only thing you can open up by getting better is moving to the next step.

01:07:52.180 | And so it's a classic example of a place where, yeah, you can build up a lot of career

01:07:55.700 | capital, but they make it very hard for you to have flexibility in how you cash in that

01:08:00.180 | career capital to take control of your career.

01:08:01.900 | And that's a problem.

01:08:02.740 | And it's why a lot of lawyers end up with good bank accounts, but really unhappy because

01:08:07.160 | they got really good, but they have no choice with what to do with that except for just

01:08:10.280 | to make more money.

01:08:11.120 | And for a lot of people, other parts of their ideal lifestyle are then being trampled on because

01:08:16.840 | they don't have control over it.

01:08:17.800 | So you always have to get both of those questions.

01:08:19.460 | So that is how you should evaluate the career opportunities to come out of these internships.

01:08:24.400 | Can I build a rare and valuable skill?

01:08:26.540 | And will I have options if I do?

01:08:28.380 | And that's what you're looking for is whatever has the strongest affirmative answer to both

01:08:33.860 | of those.

01:08:34.180 | When it comes to your internships, yeah, do the other internship, right?

01:08:36.940 | Like might as well open up more opportunities, learn more things.

01:08:40.000 | That information is not going to hurt you.

01:08:42.500 | What's going to matter is the choice you make for what job you go after.

01:08:45.480 | And then once you do, once you have that job.

01:08:47.560 | So that would be, that would be my advice.

01:08:52.220 | I mean, there are some options for cashing out your law career capital, but they're hard.

01:08:56.280 | You have to leave the big firms.

01:08:58.080 | You have to try to do your own thing.

01:08:59.320 | You have to renegotiate your situation.

01:09:02.280 | I know someone, for example, who successfully renegotiated, I'm not going to, I'll leave

01:09:07.680 | the partner track and we can like keep my salary where it is.

01:09:11.360 | And I'm going to do this many hours because it's billable.

01:09:13.900 | So I'm going to do this many hours.

01:09:15.080 | So actually maybe the salary is going to be lower than I would be getting if I was doing

01:09:18.520 | 80 hours a week at billables or whatever, but I'm going to live remotely.

01:09:22.960 | I'm going to work remotely and live somewhere else.

01:09:25.060 | And where I'm living, what you're paying me for this like actual 40 hours of work I'm

01:09:29.660 | doing each week is way better than what most people are being paid here for working 40 hours

01:09:33.840 | a week.

01:09:34.200 | Sure.

01:09:34.540 | It's not as prestigious and it's not on the track and I'm not going to make a million five,

01:09:37.960 | but it's a good salary for a reasonable amount of work.

01:09:40.940 | And now I can live in this other part of the country.

01:09:42.300 | So I've seen that before.

01:09:43.320 | You've also seen people like try to put out their own shingles and then you can have some

01:09:48.320 | control.

01:09:48.620 | But law like famously is, I think it's a classic example is you build a lot of capital, but you

01:09:53.580 | only have one thing you're allowed to invest it in.

01:09:55.060 | It's like the company store back in the old days of mining companies.

01:09:58.740 | Like they would pay you a good wage to be a miner, but the only thing you could do with

01:10:02.820 | it is spend it at the company store.

01:10:04.100 | You had to live in the company town.

01:10:05.520 | You had to live in the company housing and you had to buy from the company store and they

01:10:08.220 | kind of just got all that money back.

01:10:09.560 | That's how I think about some of those partnership track sort of elite jobs sometimes.

01:10:14.300 | All right.

01:10:15.880 | Who else do we got?

01:10:16.400 | Next up is Joel.

01:10:17.780 | I've noticed that much of Cal's goal setting philosophy aligns with research on goal

01:10:23.420 | hierarchies, top level subordinate goals down to specific goals for the current day.

01:10:29.020 | Has Cal ever seen this research or explored similar evidence-based frameworks in shaping

01:10:33.040 | his approach to goal setting or behavior change?

01:10:35.220 | I mean, I don't know.

01:10:36.180 | I find goal research to be so boring.

01:10:38.100 | There is this research that often comes out of business schools and there's often long acronyms

01:10:43.660 | and like here is the whatever 17 letter long word type of goal setting paradigm and it's

01:10:50.080 | really not that interesting to me.

01:10:51.300 | I don't find the research interesting.

01:10:52.320 | Like you give someone a framework, you're giving them structure to their thinking and planning

01:10:56.660 | that they didn't have before and like it does better.

01:10:58.320 | And like, look, this is a good framework.

01:10:59.640 | So no, I, I kind of find that research boring, but I would say this, the type of things you're

01:11:05.940 | talking about, like multi-scale planning, et cetera.

01:11:07.820 | I don't see that as goal setting.

01:11:09.380 | I just see it as time management.

01:11:11.000 | Like what is time management in the end other than making intentional decisions about what

01:11:16.040 | should I do next?

01:11:17.560 | Like that's time management and there's a particular segment of people, sort of this

01:11:23.240 | modern, like educated knowledge worker, spend a lot of time on a computer screen type people

01:11:27.620 | where you have this tension between bigger picture things you want to work on that are going to

01:11:34.320 | be long-term important for you and maybe for your professional prospects and the dizzying

01:11:39.640 | whirlwind of digital distractions that just sort of like makes up your day to day.

01:11:42.760 | And so you have to be very intentional.

01:11:44.660 | Otherwise you're just in the whirlwind and nothing gets done.

01:11:47.380 | And you get stuck and you get stagnant and you're basically trying to prove your worth

01:11:50.620 | through your pseudo productivity, which is a young man's game and something that's not

01:11:53.560 | going to lead to like a sustainable life.

01:11:55.020 | And so you need some way of making a smarter decision in the moment about what to do next

01:11:59.080 | beyond just like who wants my attention right now.

01:12:01.540 | And so having multiple scales of thinking about what's important helps you trickle big picture

01:12:07.800 | ideas down to small picture decisions about what to come next.

01:12:10.160 | To me, this is just common sense and it works well in practice, but I don't really see it

01:12:14.120 | as goal setting so much as I see it as making smart time management.

01:12:17.280 | decisions in a current digital work culture where it is very hard on the fly without structure

01:12:24.480 | to make smart decisions about your time.

01:12:25.960 | Other people don't have this issue, right?

01:12:27.540 | I mean, if you're in a situation where you're not in a whirlwind of digital distraction workplace,

01:12:31.140 | it might be much easier.

01:12:32.520 | If you're working on one big project, you could run like Oliver Berkman's schedule, which is

01:12:37.080 | basically deep work for three hours on the thing you're doing that's important to you.

01:12:41.360 | And then just so like do your best with the rest of the day.

01:12:43.420 | See what you're in the mood for.

01:12:44.380 | Keep up with stuff that's urgent and just try not to work too much.

01:12:46.720 | Like that's fine.

01:12:48.360 | If like maybe you're a professional writer, for example, or a independent thinker or something

01:12:53.000 | like that.

01:12:53.820 | But if you are trying to build career capital and find meaning and move the needle in a

01:12:58.720 | sort of busy knowledge work job, I just, I think time management requires some care about

01:13:05.840 | what you want to work on next.

01:13:07.040 | It requires some care in terms of how do you make the decision about what's the right usage

01:13:11.940 | of my time and multiple scale seems to make sense.

01:13:14.340 | So I don't know if there's a lot of research on it, but there is a lot of good experience

01:13:17.820 | of real people who have tried this.

01:13:20.520 | All right.

01:13:20.960 | Do we have a call this week?

01:13:21.960 | We do.

01:13:22.680 | All right.

01:13:23.080 | Excellent.

01:13:23.320 | Let's hear it.

01:13:23.860 | Hello, Cal.

01:13:26.820 | My name is Jamie Chalmers, a long time listener, first time caller.

01:13:30.060 | I want to thank you for your books.

01:13:31.820 | They've been tremendously helpful in my creative career.

01:13:35.000 | I've got several different projects that run concurrently.

01:13:39.000 | And I was listening to your recent episode about Inbox Zero, which I thought was fascinating.

01:13:44.180 | In particular, the method that you use using Trello and your working memory text file

01:13:50.260 | to capture information out of email and plug it into your card system.

01:13:54.360 | Now, I've listened to that episode and you talking about that about half a dozen times

01:13:58.700 | around my head around it.

01:13:59.760 | And while I've had some success in using the working memory file to get emails out of my

01:14:05.480 | inbox, as it were, I've not had a lot of success in translating those into my Notion task system.

01:14:11.900 | And so I kind of wondered whether you could just dig back into that a little bit more,

01:14:15.520 | explain some of the mechanics, perhaps the head spaces that you get into when you're

01:14:19.320 | focusing on translating that information into action.

01:14:23.140 | That would be super helpful because I can see that it would be a really useful way to go

01:14:27.520 | about things.

01:14:28.160 | And yeah, I'd love to find out more.

01:14:31.100 | So thank you once again for everything that you do.

01:14:33.620 | Massively important in my life.

01:14:36.000 | I appreciate you.

01:14:36.840 | I look forward to hearing from you.

01:14:38.040 | Thanks.

01:14:38.520 | All right, Jamie.

01:14:40.060 | It's a good question.

01:14:40.860 | And I think part of like the hang up here might be that I go from inbox to working memory

01:14:47.220 | dot TXT.

01:14:47.860 | And then from there, there's a lot of directions where that information can go.

01:14:53.460 | Only one of which is a task system.

01:14:56.400 | So like, let's do this again real briefly.

01:14:58.080 | So the basic idea here is how do you clear an inbox, right?

01:15:02.800 | I don't recommend going message by message necessarily and trying to dispatch completely

01:15:09.220 | as each message before moving on to the next.

01:15:11.220 | The context switching there becomes a real cognitive load.

01:15:15.060 | It becomes very exhausting.

01:15:16.280 | It become, you know, the strain, everyone knows it of like, why can't I just keep going through

01:15:20.380 | these messages?

01:15:21.040 | Why am I so resistant to it?

01:15:22.300 | It's because your mind can't keep switching from one topic to another so quickly.

01:15:27.640 | It's mentally really dragging on it, right?

01:15:30.800 | And so what I do is I go through my inbox.

01:15:33.160 | I grab, I don't handle the message.

01:15:36.360 | I just put a summary of like what that message demands of me into a text file.

01:15:42.220 | Really just as fast as I can type, right?

01:15:45.060 | It doesn't have to be, you know, clean or interesting or something like that.

01:15:49.460 | And then I have all of those in my text file.

01:15:52.060 | I can organize them.

01:15:52.960 | In fact, I was thinking what I'm going to do, Jesse, is I'm going to load up an inbox right

01:15:57.680 | now while we're talking.

01:15:58.560 | So I can just give an example of how I'm going to read real messages from my inbox right now

01:16:05.880 | and talk about like what would be my summary in my working memory.txt file.

01:16:10.720 | Okay.

01:16:10.980 | So like I'm loading up, I have so many inboxes.

01:16:13.220 | This is crazy.

01:16:13.580 | This is my personal, this is a personal inbox, an inbox that we do kind of behind the scenes

01:16:19.440 | stuff for the podcast and for like my books or whatever.

01:16:23.540 | All right.

01:16:24.040 | So I'm looking through this now.

01:16:24.920 | First email is a newsletter.

01:16:27.240 | So it doesn't matter.

01:16:28.160 | Next one is a meeting scheduling for an appointment with a trainer.

01:16:36.040 | So what would I put there?

01:16:37.660 | I would just type down schedule training.

01:16:41.100 | All right.

01:16:42.260 | Next one, ironically, is from a PT I used to work with checking in.

01:16:47.400 | So I'd be like, get back to their name.

01:16:51.280 | There's something from you, Jesse.

01:16:53.380 | So I put that in ignore.

01:16:56.740 | That's immediately where that goes.

01:16:59.440 | Button I press there.

01:17:02.060 | I got a scheduling email about a club I helped run at my kid's school.

01:17:06.220 | So I just put, again, get back to blah, blah, blah about whatever.

01:17:10.300 | I have an invoice, pay, pay invoice.

01:17:13.040 | Do you delete these emails after you make the note?

01:17:16.580 | Yes.

01:17:17.980 | So then I would be.

01:17:19.440 | Do you delete, make the note?

01:17:20.680 | I don't delete.

01:17:21.300 | I archive.

01:17:22.120 | Okay.

01:17:22.940 | Yeah, you are.

01:17:23.440 | I archive, right?

01:17:24.560 | And so there's enough information.

01:17:26.520 | So when I say like, get back to blank, I put their name.

01:17:29.820 | So now I know I can just type that name to Gmail and that email will come back.

01:17:33.920 | Invoice to pay, pay invoice.

01:17:36.880 | Okay.

01:17:37.780 | Respond to.

01:17:40.720 | It's a note from actually a well-known podcaster who I sent a note to and he got back to me.

01:17:46.100 | Rogan?

01:17:47.800 | It's not Rogan.

01:17:49.180 | Yeah, he doesn't like you.

01:17:50.280 | He doesn't like me.

01:17:50.840 | He's like.

01:17:51.820 | I'm convinced he doesn't like you.

01:17:53.200 | He's like, why don't you tweet me?

01:17:54.440 | You're moved by tweet me.

01:17:58.660 | Mailing list, mailing list.

01:18:00.280 | Someone sending me a galley of something.

01:18:02.620 | North, South Korea publicity thing.

01:18:07.640 | Put on calendar, right?

01:18:09.420 | And something to schedule.

01:18:10.860 | It's a note to myself.

01:18:12.780 | Put such and such a schedule for two o'clock on Thursday.

01:18:16.040 | So that type, that's like what I'm writing.

01:18:17.960 | Hold on a minute.

01:18:18.400 | You emailed yourself?

01:18:19.380 | Because I was somewhere else.

01:18:21.000 | Okay.

01:18:21.420 | And then you're going to note that that's actually kind of funny.

01:18:23.640 | Yeah, because I was, I was out and about.

01:18:25.700 | Like if I'm getting my haircut and we're like, oh, let's schedule the next

01:18:28.600 | haircut while I'm here.

01:18:29.560 | You had a lot going on at this hair appointment.

01:18:31.420 | This is a Disneyland emailing yourself.

01:18:34.320 | Key of today's episode.

01:18:35.600 | You would like this guy actually.

01:18:37.580 | It's real.

01:18:40.040 | Anyways, I'll email myself on the fly because I know when I next leave my inbox,

01:18:45.440 | that'll move to working memory dot TXT and then I'll take care of it.

01:18:48.340 | All right.

01:18:48.540 | So those are the type of things I'd write.

01:18:49.580 | Then you sort them by type.

01:18:51.240 | Right.

01:18:52.620 | So like a bunch of these were schedule.

01:18:54.400 | I'm just going to like copy and paste.

01:18:56.240 | When I say sort, I mean, I'm just copying and pasting text within a text file, plain text

01:18:59.980 | file.

01:19:00.220 | I'm going to put like the scheduling things all in a row.

01:19:02.980 | So I just have a bunch of like scheduling things like in a row.

01:19:06.800 | There's like getting back to people things.

01:19:09.180 | I can be like, all right, getting back to people.

01:19:10.560 | And I'll put those like next to each other or whatever.

01:19:12.660 | So I'm kind of like grouping these things by, by type, by type of message.

01:19:16.620 | Or if there's a bunch of things on the same subject matter, like if I had multiple, I did

01:19:20.680 | a lot of foreign press this week for some reason.

01:19:22.420 | So like I would have like multiple things about foreign press.

01:19:25.220 | I'd put all those things together.

01:19:27.060 | I'm just kind of like sorting things.

01:19:29.080 | Then I will go through and tackle these things by group.

01:19:34.180 | And it's just easier when the groups are all the same type of thinking.

01:19:37.820 | So now I have like in that list there, four or five scheduling things.

01:19:41.140 | I'm going to open up my calendar, open up my inbox, like, all right, now we're doing

01:19:45.800 | scheduling and doing this all at once has like a lot of advantages, right?

01:19:50.900 | So most of those, first of all, are not going to end up on my task list.

01:19:55.240 | I'm just going to go through one by one and do the scheduling.

01:19:57.660 | And some of these, there's a link to a calendar.

01:19:59.300 | I'll do it that way.

01:20:00.200 | And other ones I email back, like, here's the time I want to suggest.

01:20:03.020 | I'm just handling it right there.

01:20:05.000 | So I'll go back and find those again in my inbox and like respond to them as needed.

01:20:09.320 | I'm handling it right there.

01:20:11.040 | But because I'm doing all this scheduling together, it allows me to have some extra

01:20:15.760 | efficiencies as well, because I might be like, man, this is going to pepper my, I don't want

01:20:20.440 | to pepper my week with these things.

01:20:21.960 | All right.

01:20:22.200 | You know what I'm going to do?

01:20:23.000 | I'm going to make like Friday afternoon, my like appointment call time next week.

01:20:30.060 | And I'm just going to offer that time to everybody.

01:20:31.720 | And that way the rest of this week will stay clear, right?

01:20:34.600 | So seeing them all together, or I might say, I'm going to take these two things.

01:20:39.260 | I'm going to punt them and be like, you know what?

01:20:40.840 | I don't, let's, let's get at this later in the summer.

01:20:42.760 | I was like, this is feeling like there's too many things.

01:20:44.400 | When I see how many things I'm scheduling, I'm like, this is too much.

01:20:46.820 | This is my, I, I'm going to punt two of these things.

01:20:49.080 | Aren't that important.

01:20:49.740 | I see it all together.

01:20:50.460 | I can make that decision more clearly.

01:20:52.060 | Right.

01:20:52.940 | And then I'm like, let me get back to people.

01:20:54.440 | And now I'm like in that mindset.

01:20:56.200 | Again, those are things where I'm just responding.

01:20:57.880 | Then some of these things will require actual putting a task, right?

01:21:02.200 | Like the, the, the South Korean publicity thing.

01:21:04.240 | Oh, this is like a non-trivial amount of work I need to do here.

01:21:06.800 | I'm not going to do it right now.

01:21:08.540 | So I'm, maybe I'm going to add this to my, my Trello as a task card.

01:21:12.980 | Maybe I need to actually connect this to a deadline.

01:21:15.780 | So I'm going to put the deadline on the calendar.

01:21:17.860 | Like, this is like the drop dead deadline for getting these like answers back to this question.

01:21:22.760 | And I'll paste the questions into a Trello card and move on from there.

01:21:25.920 | So it's moving things from the inbox into hastily type lines and a working memory.txt.

01:21:31.420 | Sorting those things manually into like groups and then dealing with those groups where I'm

01:21:36.640 | either ignoring them or dealing with them right away, scheduling something on my calendar or

01:21:42.020 | creating a task where the information, I'll point to the information.

01:21:44.940 | And I still do it the old fashioned way where I just copy the subject line and put it in the

01:21:49.040 | Trello card.

01:21:49.740 | So I know what to search for when I get to that task.

01:21:52.660 | And I'll be able to find it right away.

01:21:54.440 | I know people have been telling me there's ways to link directly to the message in Gmail.

01:21:58.100 | People keep emailing me this and I, I keep ignoring it.

01:22:01.180 | But yeah, there are more advanced ways of doing it.

01:22:03.520 | So hopefully that's helpful.

01:22:04.300 | Does that make sense, Jesse?

01:22:05.200 | Like what I'm talking about here?

01:22:06.100 | It feels like an extra step, but I'm telling you, like, this is much easier mentally than

01:22:11.260 | if I just went from each email to each email and tried to answer it until I was done with

01:22:16.000 | it.

01:22:16.480 | Like I'm scheduling this appointment.

01:22:18.200 | Now I'm responding to someone about this.

01:22:20.560 | Now I'm trying to get back to this person about this.

01:22:23.040 | Now I'm scheduling an appointment.

01:22:24.200 | It just becomes overwhelming and it's surprising that it does.

01:22:28.320 | But underneath the covers, it's just a context switching.

01:22:31.260 | All right, we got a case study here.

01:22:32.800 | It comes from TAF.

01:22:35.400 | All right, TAF says, I was listening to you talk about the Thoreau schedule today and you

01:22:41.500 | essentially described the working schedule I've managed to carve out for myself over recent

01:22:45.520 | years.

01:22:46.260 | It resulted due to a variety of factors, including COVID and having a young family.

01:22:51.100 | I have a pretty mid-range marketing job for a CPG brand, managing a small team.

01:22:55.800 | And my current role of current role, the career capital I've developed enables me to take ownership

01:23:01.520 | on my schedule because the management team knows that I will deliver strong work regardless

01:23:05.620 | of where and when I work.

01:23:07.940 | I'll stop right there briefly to point out this is a common application of career capital.

01:23:13.280 | If you do, you have very valuable skills and you deliver, people trust you.

01:23:18.540 | You do the things you say you're going to say when you say you're going to do them.

01:23:21.680 | You are now a super rare commodity and there will be a lot of accommodations because, oh my

01:23:27.500 | God, here's someone who actually does what they say they're going to do when they're going

01:23:30.100 | to do it.

01:23:30.500 | Like we do not want to lose this person.

01:23:32.060 | You have a lot of control there.

01:23:33.080 | So here now is the schedule that TAF created.

01:23:37.020 | So that being said, my schedule borrows from many concepts you've discussed.

01:23:40.560 | All right, so here's the schedule.

01:23:42.440 | I wake at 6 a.m. and read, but not on my phone.

01:23:45.020 | I go to my office at 7 a.m. and start my day clearing emails and checking in on core project

01:23:50.280 | timelines to make sure there's nothing urgent on the cards.

01:23:52.620 | I find that staring, starting at 7 a.m. means I'm working before most of my colleagues are

01:23:57.220 | logged on, which means there are very few distractions or meetings booked during this time.

01:24:00.360 | And I can just focus on what I need to get done.

01:24:03.080 | Then I have time blocked my calendar from 7.30 a.m. to 10.30 a.m. for my highlight.

01:24:07.720 | This is a term that comes from the time dorks, where I focus on the one major priority deep

01:24:14.960 | work project that is most critical to my day.

01:24:17.480 | Then at 12 p.m., having completed five hours of work, I stop and work out.

01:24:21.380 | I'm outside and that allows me to think.

01:24:22.840 | And then once I come home, I cover off the last two to three hours of the day with any

01:24:28.180 | shallow work admin meetings and sign off at 4 p.m. to be with my family.

01:24:31.320 | In the evening after my daughter has gone to bed, my wife and I read for about one to two

01:24:35.140 | hours before bed.

01:24:36.060 | I always have a number of books on the go, a novel, something nonfiction, something

01:24:39.820 | theological, and a book of poetry so that I have plenty of choice for whatever mood I'm

01:24:43.100 | in.

01:24:43.280 | I basically read until I fall asleep, and I like the idea of reading at the very start

01:24:46.720 | and end of each day.

01:24:47.780 | Some additional habits that help.

01:24:49.820 | I have no social media apps on my phone.

01:24:52.180 | I use Trello to organize my work and personal life.

01:24:55.140 | I have one central board with my priorities for today, which contains anything critical.

01:24:59.320 | The rest fall into priority two or backlog.

01:25:02.120 | Anything that sits in backlog for a long time eventually gets archived if nobody raises

01:25:05.960 | it as important.

01:25:07.120 | I treat my Outlook as if it's an actual mailbox, so I close it once I'm finished with it and

01:25:12.280 | then go back to check it at specific intervals in the day.

01:25:15.000 | I've found this reduces the impulse of reading emails as they arrive and constantly being distracted.

01:25:19.760 | I also have a two-folder system for my email.

01:25:22.780 | My inbox has incoming mail or emails I need to address, and then filed has everything else.

01:25:28.240 | My reason is that once I've read an email, it can be filed, and if I need again, I can search

01:25:31.920 | for it.

01:25:32.420 | This has reduced all email admin and a necessary folder assignment or rules.

01:25:36.840 | Finally, I time block my work days with recurring meetings so that I'm automatically blocked off

01:25:43.440 | every day for my morning highlight, my lunchtime 10K run, and my time with my family at 4 p.m.

01:25:50.520 | This means every day has the same structure, and my calendar availability is prescribed for

01:25:54.320 | anyone booking meetings.

01:25:55.260 | I've never had any issues or pushback from colleagues with this approach, and people rarely book meetings

01:25:59.740 | across my time blocks.

01:26:00.840 | So there we go.

01:26:02.640 | Someone that it's not a sexy story of, I became the only nuclear physicist in the world that

01:26:10.100 | could handle this, and therefore I have a job where I work one day a week and surf all day.

01:26:13.280 | It's not a sexy story like that.

01:26:14.940 | It's just someone who does their job very well.

01:26:16.760 | They deliver.

01:26:17.340 | They're reliable.

01:26:18.040 | They do high quality.

01:26:19.840 | They combine this with lifestyle-centric planning or lifestyle engineering or lifestyle architecting,

01:26:24.320 | whatever we want to call it, to work backwards from their ideal lifestyle, and it's not something

01:26:27.960 | that would catch your attention if you hear it described, but it is a really good lifestyle.

01:26:31.500 | Reading in the morning, done at work at 4, doing a long run and workout in the middle of the

01:26:36.700 | day, get stuff done, deep work every day, meetings are constrained, email checks are not all the

01:26:44.800 | time, people are okay with it because they deliver, and the life is really good.

01:26:49.460 | So I think that is a really good example.

01:26:52.740 | I appreciate to have you sending in that case study.

01:26:55.620 | All right, so we have a good final segment coming up here.

01:26:58.840 | We got some Cal Network artwork and a what I'm not reading segment to get into as well, but

01:27:04.780 | first let's take a quick break to hear from some sponsors.

01:27:07.220 | Jesse, I have a question for you.

01:27:10.120 | How many people do you think stopped me when I was at Disneyland recently to compliment how

01:27:17.040 | good my shave looked?

01:27:19.080 | Three.

01:27:19.560 | It was 1,700 people.

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01:27:41.420 | I really like them, but also shaving products and get like excellent shaving cream delivered

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01:27:47.960 | One I like is that you can also get a richly lathering skin softening body wash in scents

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01:27:58.020 | Interestingly, Jesse, richly lathering skin softening is how a lot of people describe

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01:28:42.380 | I also want to talk about our friends at ShipStation.

01:28:44.660 | If you ask Jesse where all of these packages he orders from e-commerce stores come from,

01:28:51.280 | he will say, and this is absolutely true, Jesse, you can back me up on this, a stork delivers

01:28:55.500 | them.

01:28:55.760 | He told me this just earlier today.

01:28:58.000 | He thinks that's how they come.

01:28:58.940 | But for those of you who actually run an e-commerce store, you know packages don't arrive

01:29:03.200 | by magic.

01:29:04.240 | For a lot of companies, it is a huge source of labor and stress.

01:29:08.220 | This is where ShipStation can make your life so much easier.

01:29:12.900 | Last year alone, over 700 million orders were fulfilled with ShipStation, half of which were

01:29:20.760 | creatine shipments going to Jesse.

01:29:22.520 | With ShipStation, you can sync orders from everywhere you sell into one dashboard.

01:29:26.900 | This is key.

01:29:27.720 | You have one dashboard and you can replace manual tasks with custom automations to reduce shipping

01:29:32.460 | errors.

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01:30:33.580 | All right, let's get back to our show.

01:30:36.100 | All right, so in our final segment, I want to do a twist on my what I'm reading segment that's called what I'm not reading.

01:30:43.560 | But first, Jesse, I wanted to quickly cover a new piece of Cal Network artwork that came in.

01:30:50.160 | I do have to sort of ding this person a little bit because a lot of people have been making sort of like custom artwork.

01:30:57.020 | In this case, they just took an existing photo of me and added to the existing photo a copy of a fake Cal Network book, but I still think it is interesting.

01:31:06.060 | So here we go.

01:31:06.720 | We'll put it on the screen here for people who are watching instead of just listening.

01:31:10.420 | And what we've got here is a – this is my author photo actually.

01:31:15.000 | I don't know if you've seen it.

01:31:15.780 | It's what's on my book jacket.

01:31:16.800 | Cal Network with his Georgetown tank top.

01:31:20.260 | That's what I wear to teach.

01:31:22.980 | Veining Out, as I constantly do, with Austin Aviator Sunglasses, holding Cal Network's hit bestselling book, I'm the Boss Now, which is his career advice book.

01:31:34.400 | So there we go.

01:31:34.880 | It's my author photo with a mocked-up book.

01:31:39.060 | So I always appreciate some good Cal Network artwork.

01:31:42.560 | All right.

01:31:43.520 | So to our final segment, I have been doing recently what I'm reading where I talk about like interesting articles and books that either cover interesting ideas you might like or I think are just good books or articles for those looking for some more depth.

01:31:54.240 | I want to rant briefly here today.

01:31:56.560 | I'm going to call this segment what I'm not reading.

01:31:58.620 | It's a particular type of article that's been common recently, and I want to give you permission to ignore every single one of them because they're nonsense and are going to cause unnecessary stress.

01:32:07.360 | I have loaded here a sample of one of these type of articles that I'm going to suggest you don't read.

01:32:13.260 | I'll put it on the screen here for those who are listening instead of – or watching instead of just listening.

01:32:17.620 | The article is from Fortune, and here's the headline.

01:32:22.680 | OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI can rival someone with a PhD just weeks after saying it's ready for entry-level jobs.

01:32:31.120 | So what's left for grads?

01:32:33.760 | This came out on June 20th.

01:32:36.480 | This is an article – I saw this because like Google Notification just showed it to me on my phone.

01:32:42.460 | There are a lot of articles like this where there is some sort of over-the-top alarmist headline which makes anyone who's just loosely following AI be like, oh, my God, we're so screwed.

01:32:51.740 | But I want to look a little bit deeper at this article to try to explain why you can ignore this type of thing.

01:32:58.140 | All right.

01:32:59.060 | So if we read this article, I have a couple quotes here.

01:33:02.380 | Here's the first paragraph.

01:33:04.200 | Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that the technology can already perform the task equal to that of an entry-level employee.

01:33:13.120 | Now on a podcast posted just last week, the chat GPD mastermind went even further saying AI can even perform tasks typically expected of the smartest grads with a doctorate.

01:33:23.680 | Soon after, it says, as companies like Amazon have admitted, they will soon cut their corporate ranks thanks to AI and Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei warning that the technology could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs.

01:33:36.860 | It begs the question, what jobs will be left for those tossing their graduation caps into the air in the coming years?

01:33:43.580 | There are a lot of articles like this where tech CEOs are saying pearl-clutching, groin-tightening, scary type of things like this.

01:33:52.640 | This is all nonsense.

01:33:55.120 | And let me try to explain to you why.

01:33:57.400 | Okay.

01:33:58.340 | First of all, let's start with the claim here that, and I'm going to read this, AI can perform tasks typically expected to the smartest grads with a doctorate.

01:34:07.580 | What are they actually talking about here?

01:34:09.640 | What they're actually talking about here is the fact that OpenAI carefully tuned one of their foundational models to work on a specific type of math competition question.

01:34:20.060 | So they hired, we got some correction on this from a listener.

01:34:25.060 | They used a data set from a company that hired math PhDs and paid them $100 an hour to write math problems of this type with step-by-step solutions.

01:34:35.940 | And then they could use reinforcement learning techniques to try to tune one of these foundation models to do well on this very specific type of math problem.

01:34:43.300 | A professor involved in this project said, oh, these are hard math problems, not the type you would assign an undergrad, but the type you might assign a graduate student.

01:34:52.340 | From there, we get AI can now do PhD-level workers' jobs.

01:34:59.420 | That is a nonsense leap from a very specific type of math competition problem that is like of the type that might get assigned in a graduate student problem set to AI is doing graduate-level jobs.

01:35:15.420 | And not only is it a huge exaggeration, but as we went over in the What I'm Reading segment a few weeks ago,

01:35:22.800 | even those results are highly contested because OpenAI was like, look, these are hard problems and we can do them.

01:35:29.660 | And independent research firms said, great, let's take these models and we'll put them on other similar math competitions that happened recently.

01:35:37.020 | And they did terribly, leading to the idea that they had been very, very fit to this very specific type of problem that happened to be really well suited for the reinforcement learning techniques that we know how to use now on AI.

01:35:48.880 | So that is a massive exaggeration.

01:35:50.840 | Another massive exaggeration that's happening with a lot of this reporting is conflating of the post-pandemic tech downturn, which is leading to lots of layoffs.

01:36:01.640 | It's getting a little bit better now, but it's leading to lots of layoffs because there was a huge boom in the tech industry during the pandemic.

01:36:07.280 | And post-pandemic, we're cyclical.

01:36:09.100 | It's a hard job market there.

01:36:11.340 | Companies are cutting back.

01:36:13.280 | We put a lot of money into a lot of these areas.

01:36:15.900 | We need to cut back because we need our profit ratios to be higher for the stock market.

01:36:21.680 | And just what happens?

01:36:22.780 | Companies are cyclical.

01:36:23.640 | So there's a cutback.

01:36:25.360 | And there's a lot of this sort of disingenuous conflating by these reporters that make it seem like, without maybe necessarily 100% claiming it, that these job losses are because AI is automating the jobs.

01:36:39.580 | This is nonsense.

01:36:40.780 | It is not what is happening.

01:36:43.400 | Yes, Amazon is cutting.

01:36:46.500 | Meta cut a bunch of people.

01:36:48.020 | Microsoft is cutting a bunch of people.

01:36:49.760 | Why?

01:36:50.560 | Because they're bloated.

01:36:52.720 | They cut those revenue numbers.

01:36:55.240 | They cut those employment.

01:36:56.380 | Those are expenditure numbers go down.

01:36:58.120 | Their profitability goes up.

01:36:59.200 | They got too big.

01:37:00.320 | They are not replacing hundreds of thousands of people or tens of thousands of people with AI that's automating them.

01:37:07.220 | AI cannot do that yet.

01:37:09.780 | So I think that is very disingenuous.

01:37:11.440 | I saw an article the other day that said, look, CS majors are cratering.

01:37:15.960 | They're going down.

01:37:16.720 | And it's because AI is taking all the jobs.

01:37:19.160 | It's like, hold on a second.

01:37:20.540 | CS majors are down because the tech industry is down.

01:37:25.100 | The same thing happens every time the tech industry goes down.

01:37:28.700 | When I was a computer science undergraduate, we had the same issue.

01:37:33.720 | Post .com bust in early 2001, the tech industry contracted.

01:37:39.380 | Majors went down because there was less jobs.

01:37:43.280 | And then majors went back up again when there was the Web 2 boom, brought a lot more investment in.

01:37:48.520 | There's more jobs again.

01:37:49.400 | There's a contraction post-pandemic.

01:37:51.580 | Jobs, it made jobs for, except for, you know, specialized AI jobs, like if you're a machine learning person, are contracting some.

01:37:58.280 | So majors go down.

01:37:59.200 | And yet people will conflate it and say, oh, it's because AI is taking the jobs.

01:38:03.160 | AI is not replacing software developers.

01:38:07.440 | Most of the cuts at these companies are not software developer jobs.

01:38:10.780 | So I think it's really disingenuous reporting, but there's a lot of this going on.

01:38:14.640 | Later in the article, we see some of this evidence.

01:38:18.560 | So here they say, for example, they do note, well, okay, however, I'm reading from the article now later in the article.

01:38:26.100 | However, in the tech industry in particular, volatility in the jobs market is nothing new, said Art Zale, CEO of the tech career platform DICE.

01:38:32.700 | After all, nearly 600,000 tech employees lost their jobs between 2022 and 2024, according to layoffs at FOII.

01:38:39.740 | Yes, the tech industry has really post-pandemic contracted.

01:38:43.320 | So yes, there's a lot of job cuts.

01:38:45.500 | That's not because in 2022, before ChatGPT was out, AI was taking those jobs.

01:38:51.320 | It contracted, and then it will grow again once more investment capital comes back in.

01:38:57.180 | Look at like Dario Amadei saying technology could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within like two years, whatever he said.

01:39:03.800 | All right, here's the reality.

01:39:05.120 | It's not going to do it, and he's just blowing hot air.

01:39:07.640 | And Sam Altman knows that AI is not taking PhD-level jobs because it's not really taking any jobs right now.

01:39:15.860 | They're blowing hot air.

01:39:17.300 | Why are they blowing hot air?

01:39:18.960 | Because it requires a massive amount of investment capital, ongoing investment capital, to keep these places afloat.

01:39:25.620 | OpenAI is desperately in need of this massive loan from SoftBank, this huge, many, many billion-dollar loan, which is happening in tranches, to go through.

01:39:35.720 | And they need excitement around their tools.

01:39:38.680 | And the more you feel like these tools are going to, in the future, be immensely disruptive, the more you overlook right now that they're losing $3 to $4 billion a year.

01:39:47.480 | So it is in the interest of the CEOs of tech companies to push any possible narrative of very large world-shaking disruption because you will overlook any issues with their business right now if you think where they're going is going to be the biggest disruption that we've had sort of like in the history of humanity.

01:40:07.880 | So they are now just spewing anything they can get attention for because they know they will get articles like this.

01:40:13.900 | They know they can look at a model fine-tuned to do well on math problems, but not really because when other people tested it, it didn't, and say, well, now even PhD-level jobs are gone.

01:40:24.320 | That is a nonsense leap, just like it was a nonsense leap when Sam Altman talked about how AI was going to help us build Dyson spheres around the sun, the power, the growth of the universe.

01:40:35.580 | Just like it was a massive leap when Scott Alexander very confidently says in Project 2027 of like, well, yeah, I mean, pretty soon the AI is not only going to be able to program its own super intelligences, it's going to build self-replicating robots that will build the data centers, and this will all happen in the next three years.

01:40:52.440 | So anyways, I wanted to do a little bit of a rant and say, you can feel confident right now when you see like these like super alarmist headlines that don't reflect anything you've seen in your own life or your own industry, your own career.

01:41:06.700 | All these jobs are gone, and it's quoting some sort of tech CEO.

01:41:10.120 | You can essentially ignore those for now.

01:41:12.800 | Follow the more like tech reporting, tech journalism, but also just wait to actually see major changes in your own world.

01:41:20.260 | I think the hype coming out of these CEOs is becoming almost like parody, and this has now entered my list of what I'm not reading, is alarmist articles about whatever the latest chaos, crazy, nonsensical hot air thing that Sam Altman has said, and will be widely repeated by outlets looking to get people to click.

01:41:39.580 | All right, there we go.

01:41:40.300 | That's my rant, Jesse.

01:41:42.020 | Wait, so do you have notifications on your phone?

01:41:44.160 | I don't know what I, okay, let me rant about this.

01:41:48.060 | So you have to have this Google app on your phone.

01:41:52.340 | They force you to have it for, I had to get it because I can't, couldn't like consistently log in the Gmail.

01:42:02.240 | You have to have this Google app.

01:42:04.220 | It's this, so you have an Android.

01:42:05.520 | No, I have, it's iPhone.

01:42:07.140 | Oh, you have an iPhone.

01:42:07.880 | Yeah.

01:42:08.140 | So something about like the two-factor authentication.

01:42:10.020 | You have to have the Google app, the use like Google things.

01:42:14.360 | And so that app just like shows me, I don't know, notifications, I guess.

01:42:19.280 | Like it just will pop up, like these articles will pop up in like little bars on my iPhone.

01:42:23.160 | But I can't get rid of the Google app because then I can't use my email.

01:42:27.300 | Can you turn off the notifications?

01:42:28.740 | I don't know.

01:42:29.440 | Is that something I can do?

01:42:31.020 | I don't.

01:42:33.420 | It cracks me up.

01:42:34.800 | I have no idea.

01:42:35.580 | Let's see here.

01:42:36.320 | I don't know, probably.

01:42:37.080 | But anyways, because I read a lot of AI content in my job as like a tech, when I do tech journalism, it's always showing me these nonsense articles.

01:42:45.360 | It's always like Dario Amadei says, you have 17 minutes left to live before AI driven robots harvest your brains for their, to lubricate their self-replicating robot machines.

01:42:58.640 | It's just like these type of headlines again and again and again.

01:43:00.920 | So I see a lot of this nonsense and it's what I am not reading.

01:43:04.220 | Because again, every time you look at it, it's like some super exaggerated claim like here, or they just make it up.

01:43:10.320 | Amadei is just like half the jobs will be gone next year.

01:43:14.140 | And the reporter's like, oh, that sounds bad.

01:43:15.520 | Let me get a headline about that.

01:43:16.500 | That would be really bad, right?

01:43:17.480 | It's great.

01:43:19.140 | It's crazy.

01:43:19.620 | And you're like, well, how is that going to happen?

01:43:21.320 | I don't know.

01:43:21.860 | Key unlocks.

01:43:23.200 | It's going to happen.

01:43:23.920 | I don't know.

01:43:24.760 | I could write these articles.

01:43:25.700 | I should just do reports like as the deep media LLC head and be like, we're going to be able to fly robotic pterodactyls next month.

01:43:35.280 | All right.

01:43:36.560 | Why not?

01:43:37.020 | Like that would be a big deal.

01:43:38.560 | Bees with lasers are going to start murdering our dogs within by 2028.

01:43:45.580 | Sure.

01:43:47.060 | Right.

01:43:47.500 | I mean, I don't know.

01:43:48.140 | It's possible.

01:43:49.400 | Lasers exist.

01:43:51.380 | Bees exist.

01:43:53.840 | There's someone, there's the RoboBee project that, you know, happened at Harvard 20 years ago.

01:43:59.760 | It's possible.

01:44:00.600 | I sometimes feel like this is what, there's so much interesting stuff happening with AI and so much particular impacts and good stuff and bad stuff.

01:44:08.160 | There's so much serious reporting happening that I hate that all this junk is getting out there.

01:44:12.120 | I mean, the robot bee thing is true, so be careful about that.

01:44:15.540 | All right.

01:44:16.160 | That's all the time we have for today.

01:44:17.340 | We'll be back next week with another episode of the podcast.

01:44:20.380 | And until then, as always, stay tuned.

01:44:23.100 | All right.

01:44:24.200 | Well, if you're looking for a counterbalance to my rant against Sam Altman's claims about AI, check out episode 349, where I actually look at an earlier in his career, Sam Altman's productivity techniques, where I think there's actually a lot of good ideas there.

01:44:40.580 | So, you can't deny this guy was successful, even if we don't trust what he's saying now.

01:44:44.000 | Check out that episode about how he got there.

01:44:46.040 | I think you might like it.

01:44:47.840 | So, as someone who writes and talks a lot about producing meaningful stuff in a distracted world, I always get excited when prominent individuals give us insight into their own processes for achieving this goal.

01:45:01.000 | So, you can imagine how happy I was when I saw Tim Ferriss recently linked to a blog post that was titled simply Productivity that was published in 2018 by OpenAI's Sam Altman.

ChatGPT Is Making You Dumber? - Here's Why It Might Be... | Cal Newport

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