What's the Difference Between Deep Work and Deep Life Buckets?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - All right, what do we got next?

00:00:06.920 | - All right, our next question,

00:00:07.880 | we got a question about the deep work buckets

00:00:11.760 | and then Keystone habits.

00:00:14.480 | So let's take a listen.

00:00:15.840 | - Hi Cal, it's Nevek here.

00:00:23.600 | I'm wondering if you could explain the difference

00:00:28.680 | between deep work and the roles that you play

00:00:33.680 | and your buckets and your Keystone habits in those.

00:00:39.920 | I'm assuming you have other things you do in the buckets

00:00:44.040 | and I'm just not clear how you see the relationship

00:00:47.720 | between the buckets and your roles

00:00:52.680 | and I suppose deep work.

00:00:54.160 | Thanks.

00:00:56.040 | - All right, this is a good question

00:00:58.240 | because we can clarify the relationship

00:01:01.840 | between the deep life,

00:01:04.360 | the philosophy that includes the buckets and deep work,

00:01:08.120 | which is a type of professional activity.

00:01:10.760 | Jesse, let me ask you though, right off the bat,

00:01:13.280 | I sort of stumbled into this terminology of buckets

00:01:16.640 | early in the pandemic when I was thinking

00:01:19.200 | through the deep life and now we're kind of stuck with them.

00:01:21.920 | You think this is a good thing or a bad thing?

00:01:24.600 | - You've talked about the buckets for a while

00:01:26.560 | 'cause I've been listening to your podcast

00:01:28.320 | since the very beginning.

00:01:29.160 | I like the terminology and I remember you mentioning it

00:01:32.240 | even before I started working with you,

00:01:34.640 | but I've always been a fan of the buckets.

00:01:36.720 | I use it when I explain it to certain people,

00:01:38.600 | so I think it's fine, but.

00:01:40.360 | - Yeah, all right, so we got what it is.

00:01:42.160 | Buckets, we're stuck with buckets.

00:01:43.920 | Let me do, by the way, let me do an update on the book

00:01:48.240 | and then I'll get to this answer.

00:01:49.840 | But I just finished my sixth version

00:01:55.020 | of the potential outline for this book.

00:01:57.100 | I've gone through six versions, had a hard time with it.

00:02:00.080 | This is the first version that I actually sent off

00:02:01.880 | to my literary agent and said, okay,

00:02:03.480 | I think I have this thing cracked.

00:02:06.700 | I think I might be ready to write a proposal.

00:02:08.600 | So Jesse, let me do an update.

00:02:10.800 | Let me give you the latest update on the potential book

00:02:13.920 | I will be writing about the deep life

00:02:17.100 | and then we'll get to the meat,

00:02:18.080 | we'll get the meat of this question.

00:02:20.200 | - Yeah, let's do it.

00:02:21.440 | So here's what was struggling with me before.

00:02:25.540 | I was struggling before when I was thinking about this book

00:02:28.660 | because it was important to me that for this subject matter,

00:02:33.660 | that the book was, for lack of a better word, smart.

00:02:37.800 | I didn't wanna tackle something as philosophically resonant

00:02:42.800 | as living a deep life.

00:02:45.720 | I didn't wanna tackle it with,

00:02:48.400 | and now here's the seven steps and here's bullet points

00:02:52.060 | and here's lazy writing, which in the nonfiction space,

00:02:56.220 | the pragmatic nonfiction space,

00:02:57.720 | you know you get lazy writing

00:02:58.740 | when a lot of rhetorical questions enter the scene.

00:03:00.820 | That's a little tip when you get a lot of,

00:03:02.660 | but would this really work?

00:03:04.180 | What about a duh, what about a buh?

00:03:05.940 | It's like, man, that's your notes

00:03:07.300 | for what you need to craft good writing about.

00:03:09.400 | You can't just put the rhetorical questions

00:03:10.900 | into the writing.

00:03:11.740 | So I thought this topic really needed,

00:03:13.720 | it needed to be smart.

00:03:15.700 | I mean, it's a complicated topic,

00:03:17.260 | but my issue was when all I was doing

00:03:20.520 | was trying to come up with a table of contents for the book,

00:03:24.400 | I was putting all of the necessity to make the book smart

00:03:28.700 | onto the table of contents.

00:03:30.060 | And so it was leading me down these unusual

00:03:33.800 | and contrived structures for the book

00:03:35.680 | because it's like, well, I want the structure itself

00:03:38.540 | to convey that this is something different.

00:03:40.100 | And eventually what I realized was,

00:03:42.600 | no, keep the structure simple

00:03:44.060 | and let the writing do the work.

00:03:47.160 | And in fact, not only make it simple,

00:03:49.380 | why don't we distill down to its essence,

00:03:51.740 | like the very elements of a Cal Newport book

00:03:54.580 | and simplify them down to its purest form

00:03:57.000 | so the structure is there and it's there,

00:03:59.660 | but in a minimalist form,

00:04:01.740 | and then let your writing do all the work

00:04:03.380 | of showing the philosophical depth of this topic.

00:04:08.100 | And so that's what I ended up doing

00:04:09.300 | with my current outline in the prologue.

00:04:14.300 | Like right up there in the prologue,

00:04:15.900 | it's me, it's early pandemic, this topic arise,

00:04:18.120 | I coined the term buckets.

00:04:19.660 | And I just let this one short prologue

00:04:21.740 | is gonna do all the work of just motivating

00:04:23.560 | why this topic matters.

00:04:24.740 | It's been around forever, each, whatever,

00:04:27.140 | each generation comes at it differently.

00:04:28.600 | We have our own moment where we're kind of re-appraising

00:04:31.820 | this topic, but no, like multiple chapters

00:04:34.220 | with citing 70 things,

00:04:36.180 | a prologue that is just grounded in a place and a time

00:04:39.220 | and me, boom, right?

00:04:42.260 | Then we go to a next chapter, prepare.

00:04:45.540 | All of the stuff we've talked about,

00:04:47.300 | I mean, the buckets, in general,

00:04:50.260 | what makes a deep life deep?

00:04:51.580 | I mean, I've pretty much simplified it in my own thinking

00:04:54.300 | that the definition of a deep life

00:04:55.820 | is you radically align, radically aligning your life

00:05:00.820 | to be in alignment with things that you really value.

00:05:03.820 | So it's about not just aligning elements of your life,

00:05:06.560 | but being willing to make radical changes to your life

00:05:08.660 | to align it to things that you value.

00:05:09.940 | I think just, let's just give the definition.

00:05:13.560 | Let's talk about it.

00:05:14.820 | Like, what's the hard thing about it?

00:05:16.180 | Well, it's hard to figure out what changes to make.

00:05:17.660 | We have this bucket system we'll talk about in a second

00:05:19.260 | that can help, but like, there it is, just one chapter,

00:05:21.460 | call it prepare, out of the way,

00:05:24.020 | not dragging this out, not going whatever, just boom.

00:05:27.020 | And then the whole rest of the book, I have five chapters.

00:05:31.060 | Each is a different element of something

00:05:34.820 | you might radically align as part of building a deep life,

00:05:38.660 | naming them with one word verbs

00:05:40.420 | and let the writing do the work.

00:05:44.420 | So you have this prologue, you have this prepare chapter,

00:05:46.700 | and then it's right now, the terminology I have is move,

00:05:51.180 | quit, serve, train, wonder, it's the current list.

00:05:56.180 | And the list might change, but one word, one verb,

00:05:59.420 | like I'm trying to get down to the essence.

00:06:01.300 | Like let's get down to the essence of a Cal Newport book.

00:06:05.260 | Here's the problem, here's the solution.

00:06:08.500 | Let's look into how you implement the solution,

00:06:10.140 | just getting it down to the essence.

00:06:11.160 | And then I can let the writing do the work.

00:06:13.820 | And I'm gonna follow my own journey through these chapters.

00:06:15.780 | I'm a character in this, they're gonna be asymmetrical.

00:06:19.460 | So it's not like every chapter

00:06:20.620 | has the same structure as every other one.

00:06:22.460 | I really wanna get away from opening story,

00:06:24.900 | interpretation of the opening story,

00:06:26.540 | complicating story, four bullet points.

00:06:28.500 | It's gonna be, some chapters be different than others.

00:06:31.900 | I'm a character in it,

00:06:33.540 | let's be nuanced in tackling these issues.

00:06:36.340 | Take these different elements of building a deep life

00:06:38.540 | and really go try to understand why do they resonate?

00:06:41.260 | What's at the core of them?

00:06:42.700 | What do you have to think about

00:06:45.460 | if you're trying to do an alignment here?

00:06:47.220 | Give some respect to the reader

00:06:49.660 | to help put the pieces together.

00:06:51.340 | So that's where I am now, a very simple structure.

00:06:54.220 | Now it then ends with an epilogue.

00:06:55.420 | Okay, here's how I've changed my own life.

00:06:57.160 | Very simple structure, one word chapter titles.

00:07:00.220 | Get down to the core of it

00:07:02.780 | and then we'll really let a journey unfold,

00:07:04.860 | let the writing do what the writing needs to do.

00:07:06.840 | I don't know, so what do you think, Jesse?

00:07:08.060 | Better or worse than where I was before?

00:07:11.060 | - I like it, so I have a question.

00:07:12.860 | When you were doing,

00:07:14.280 | when you were trying to make the book seem smart

00:07:17.600 | and you were developing the table of contents,

00:07:20.520 | how did you explain that to the agent

00:07:25.300 | or whoever you submitted it to

00:07:26.460 | that it was the writing that was gonna be the smart work?

00:07:29.260 | Or did you write the epilogue as well

00:07:30.860 | so they had an example?

00:07:33.620 | - So yeah, it's a good question.

00:07:36.140 | So what I was doing before

00:07:37.980 | is I was getting too cute with the structure.

00:07:40.260 | Well, I think the last time I talked about on the podcast,

00:07:42.860 | maybe at that point I was doing paths,

00:07:44.740 | like here are the four main paths that people follow.

00:07:48.100 | And that wasn't quite right.

00:07:50.460 | I wanted to get to the crux of the matter,

00:07:52.340 | like what are the actual changes

00:07:54.220 | that create the depth, the resonance?

00:07:55.860 | I wanted to be more concrete, so that seemed too complicated.

00:07:59.220 | And then I had a form where each chapter was a setting.

00:08:03.780 | So it was like, I'm at this farm,

00:08:06.560 | I'm at this like writer's retreat or something like this.

00:08:10.060 | And then I would build out from the setting.

00:08:11.540 | But I was like, this is again,

00:08:13.060 | it's not clear to the reader, why are we at this setting?

00:08:17.580 | And I don't want this to be

00:08:18.900 | just one of these reflection books

00:08:20.260 | where I just like, I have these kind of reflections

00:08:22.340 | and I prove that I'm smart with my writing.

00:08:24.620 | And that seemed too cute.

00:08:26.580 | And so really,

00:08:27.940 | and then I had more complicated traditional structures

00:08:30.700 | where here's like three, four chapters

00:08:34.020 | on like what's needed to prepare for the deep life.

00:08:37.420 | And I was like spending all this time on it,

00:08:39.180 | like that felt forced or whatever.

00:08:40.740 | So I just simplified it down to these one word chapters

00:08:43.380 | and I sent it off just for my agent to look at.

00:08:45.900 | But I was like, the structure should make a lot of sense.

00:08:48.740 | Here's my standards, I've just simplified it.

00:08:50.980 | But the writing is gonna do what the writing does.

00:08:54.360 | It's gonna follow my story,

00:08:55.300 | not every chapter is gonna be the same.

00:08:57.620 | And it was more for me, I just felt a clarity.

00:09:00.740 | And I felt like a book like this needed a lot of clarity.

00:09:02.660 | Just you look at the table of contents,

00:09:04.060 | like I know what you're up to, let's get into it,

00:09:06.300 | if that makes sense.

00:09:07.700 | - Got it.

00:09:08.540 | So this being the sixth version,

00:09:11.580 | how long is that process, like six months?

00:09:13.500 | Like you submit a version every month or is it?

00:09:15.940 | - So this is the first version I submitted.

00:09:19.580 | So the first five versions, I was like, no.

00:09:22.780 | So my whole thing, my whole process is

00:09:25.300 | I rely heavily on my sense of taste.

00:09:28.780 | To borrow the terminology from Ira Glass,

00:09:31.620 | that like the first step

00:09:33.260 | in trying to produce something good

00:09:35.000 | is you have to develop the taste to recognize good things.

00:09:38.360 | And it can be frustrating because then you know

00:09:40.260 | when you're doing stuff that's not hitting that level.

00:09:43.880 | So I know what I'm looking for and I'm very empathetic.

00:09:48.780 | So I put myself into the head of a potential reader

00:09:53.460 | and try to simulate what's that response?

00:09:56.460 | Is there an aspirational response or not?

00:09:59.100 | So I'm very empathetic.

00:10:00.180 | I'm like this in person by the way too.

00:10:01.860 | I very strongly read and feel empathetically

00:10:05.660 | what's going on in a room.

00:10:06.940 | If I'm talking to someone, like every little nuance

00:10:09.120 | about their state of mind and how they're feeling,

00:10:10.920 | it hits me really big.

00:10:12.580 | And this has negatives and positives.

00:10:15.280 | It has some social implications that aren't great

00:10:16.920 | but it's good for writing because I can simulate the mind

00:10:21.160 | of the reader really well.

00:10:22.560 | And so I really began working on this in earnest in July,

00:10:26.520 | just trying to get an outline.

00:10:28.100 | And for the other five, I would finish it.

00:10:30.040 | I would sit with it and it was just a feeling.

00:10:33.000 | It's not right.

00:10:34.320 | It's hard to explain.

00:10:35.520 | It's like a little premonition of like,

00:10:36.720 | something's not right here.

00:10:39.200 | There's some grit in the gears.

00:10:41.080 | And I would sit on it and I'd just say, this is not right.

00:10:43.080 | And then I would try again.

00:10:44.960 | And I think it's not quite right.

00:10:46.520 | And I would try again, but it's not quite right.

00:10:48.180 | So it's really, for me, it's all this intuition.

00:10:50.240 | I just have an intuition when I finally feel

00:10:52.880 | like I think I'm honing in on something

00:10:57.440 | that the reader's it's gonna get.

00:10:59.080 | It's all about pressing the buttons I wanna press.

00:11:01.520 | I want the experience of reading the book

00:11:03.000 | to be exciting.

00:11:05.960 | Like you have the sense of I'm gonna change something

00:11:07.760 | in my life and I'm getting some revelation

00:11:09.960 | and there's a whole sense that I'm going for.

00:11:12.720 | And so I've been sitting with this one for a while

00:11:14.640 | and feel better about it.

00:11:15.800 | So I think I'm getting closer.

00:11:17.760 | - Were you influenced at all by your friend Ryan Holiday's

00:11:20.840 | new books with the one chapter titles

00:11:24.400 | that he's been doing?

00:11:25.400 | Did that influence at all with the one chapter?

00:11:27.880 | - Yeah, yes.

00:11:30.000 | Yeah, so Ryan, I think Ryan is a great example of this,

00:11:33.960 | of keeping the form simple and clear.

00:11:38.960 | And then letting the writing do the work

00:11:44.100 | of actually affecting the person.

00:11:45.280 | Yeah, I think he's a great example of that.

00:11:46.660 | If we're gonna be really highfaluting about this

00:11:51.180 | and self-important, as you know,

00:11:53.080 | I went through this phase of reading a lot about film,

00:11:56.220 | film studies, et cetera.

00:11:58.340 | And technically you could think about what I'm interested in

00:12:00.820 | is the pragmatic nonfiction equivalent

00:12:03.580 | of auteur theory in film.

00:12:06.540 | So in film, when you look at Fellini and auteur theory,

00:12:09.300 | there was this sense of like what the,

00:12:11.380 | especially in the 70s and 80s,

00:12:12.660 | that these auteur directors would take

00:12:14.260 | a well-established genre and then they would work

00:12:18.500 | within the constraints of that genre to create art.

00:12:21.400 | And it was actually in the tension of their work

00:12:23.560 | against the constraints that you would subvert this

00:12:25.940 | or what they would do with this,

00:12:27.180 | that you would actually create the value

00:12:30.660 | that somehow that there was something to this

00:12:32.860 | that was even more special or magical

00:12:34.580 | than just starting with a blank slate.

00:12:36.260 | So this would be the difference between Ford

00:12:40.260 | working within the constraints of the Western

00:12:42.260 | and visually and storytelling-wise working with it,

00:12:44.920 | or Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven,"

00:12:46.820 | which I recently re-watched,

00:12:48.300 | taking the constraints of the genre

00:12:50.620 | that he helped define earlier in his career

00:12:54.840 | and is in the subverting of the constraints

00:12:57.720 | that actually the power comes out.

00:12:59.440 | And then comparing that, for example, to Terry Malick,

00:13:03.120 | who was just like,

00:13:03.960 | "I'm gonna construct this thing from scratch.

00:13:06.280 | "This movie, it's gonna be whatever it's gonna be."

00:13:08.880 | The auteur theory, you work within the genre.

00:13:13.480 | I think it's an incredibly self-important way

00:13:15.280 | of describing how-to books that I write,

00:13:18.420 | but at least it gives me some sort of motivation.

00:13:20.920 | That, and Ryan does this too,

00:13:23.160 | work within the constraints of the genre.

00:13:25.240 | So I have a very clear constraint,

00:13:27.000 | motivation, idea.

00:13:30.840 | All right, so here's this issue.

00:13:33.300 | Here's my original idea about what to do about it.

00:13:35.240 | Digital minimalism, deep work,

00:13:37.220 | replacing the hyperactive hive mind.

00:13:39.920 | Then a journey to understand how to implement it,

00:13:43.400 | which is where you help the reader

00:13:45.520 | instantiate in their own mind

00:13:48.520 | how their life might actually change

00:13:50.880 | to act on that promise.

00:13:51.880 | That's my Western movie or detective novel,

00:13:55.880 | and I'm trying to work within it.

00:13:57.160 | So that's what I'm doing with this new one.

00:13:58.520 | Let's just distill it down to one word, incredibly simple.

00:14:01.520 | Get the motivation to a prologue.

00:14:03.120 | Get the whole, here's the idea down to just one chapter.

00:14:05.840 | Use all the new muscles I've been building

00:14:07.480 | at the New Yorker to be clear and well-crafted

00:14:09.880 | and balanced and momentum going,

00:14:11.920 | and then just see where it goes.

00:14:13.440 | So this is the self-important stuff I tell myself.

00:14:16.800 | So I don't get bored.

00:14:18.800 | I don't know, do you buy this?

00:14:21.200 | This is probably going too far, right?

00:14:22.400 | Talking about auteur theory.

00:14:23.840 | - No, I like it a lot.

00:14:24.920 | In fact, if it becomes a movie,

00:14:26.720 | we can get Andrew from the previous call to be a character

00:14:29.200 | and it's got all those other traits.

00:14:31.160 | - Yeah, I left that, yeah, I did leave that out,

00:14:33.360 | that that's gonna be a big part of the book

00:14:35.280 | is gonna be these big call-out boxes,

00:14:38.800 | and I'm gonna have a sketch of Andrew,

00:14:42.880 | really dramatic sketch of Andrew,

00:14:44.160 | and then a lot of details on rich data pipelines.

00:14:46.760 | Because you gotta subvert expectations.

00:14:48.800 | You're like, oh man, what's gonna happen?

00:14:50.600 | This guy's gonna quit his job,

00:14:51.840 | and then it's XML formats for maximum data portability.

00:14:55.920 | That's, I think that's where the magic's gonna be.

00:14:58.440 | - No, I love the explanation.

00:15:00.960 | I think it was great, so.

00:15:02.440 | - There's an actual question lurking in there, wasn't there?

00:15:04.160 | - Yeah, so the question was about deep work

00:15:07.600 | and working with the keystone habits.

00:15:09.520 | You get this type of question a decent amount,

00:15:11.240 | but I always love hearing the explanation

00:15:13.160 | 'cause I'm a big firm believer

00:15:14.600 | that people need to be continually coached, so.

00:15:17.880 | - Yeah, okay, so yeah.

00:15:18.840 | Now let's get back to the meat of it.

00:15:21.200 | All right, so we have the deep life.

00:15:23.560 | We have this growing definition of the deep life

00:15:25.840 | that I've been refining, where it's really about

00:15:28.420 | living your life in radical alignment

00:15:30.040 | with things you value.

00:15:31.240 | So you're aligning to things you value.

00:15:33.280 | You're willing to make radical changes

00:15:35.240 | to actually make that alignment,

00:15:36.920 | maybe radical changes to where you live and work

00:15:38.760 | or the structure of your day.

00:15:40.920 | Implicit in this definition is also

00:15:43.200 | you're comfortable missing out on other things

00:15:46.440 | to do this priority.

00:15:48.000 | So I'm gonna really focus on a few things

00:15:49.800 | that really matter and radically align my life with it.

00:15:52.600 | All right, so that's my vision of the deep life.

00:15:55.840 | The hard part about the deep life,

00:15:57.320 | and this is something I've been refining

00:15:58.480 | when I've been thinking about this potential book,

00:16:00.320 | the hard part is, well, figuring out what that is.

00:16:03.240 | Like what's really important?

00:16:04.520 | How do you align your life to it?

00:16:05.920 | There's some preparation that's actually required

00:16:08.080 | to get better in tune with yourself

00:16:10.400 | and to get more comfortable with the idea

00:16:12.640 | that you have efficacy, that you can actually influence

00:16:15.340 | the way your life unfolds.

00:16:16.720 | A lot of us aren't really used to that

00:16:18.400 | except for in very minor ways,

00:16:20.120 | like trying a new exercise routine.

00:16:22.160 | And so the bucket system I talk about

00:16:26.960 | on the podcast a lot is in some sense

00:16:28.680 | a way of doing that preparation,

00:16:31.760 | beginning to learn what's important to you,

00:16:33.960 | beginning to build that muscle of aligning your life

00:16:38.400 | with the things that are important,

00:16:39.840 | even if that requires sacrifices

00:16:41.280 | or deemphasizing other things.

00:16:42.760 | It's the preparation stage.

00:16:45.520 | And then once you're done with that preparation stage,

00:16:47.200 | then you might actually make some more radical steps.

00:16:50.000 | Now I'm ready to like with confidence,

00:16:52.760 | move across the country, go to the farm,

00:16:55.800 | radically change our work situation,

00:16:57.560 | whatever it's gonna be.

00:16:59.120 | So I see now the buckets as a preparatory step

00:17:04.120 | towards a more extreme push towards a deep life.

00:17:07.100 | The idea briefly is you identify

00:17:09.720 | the important areas of your life.

00:17:11.920 | I call these the deep life buckets.

00:17:14.640 | The examples I give often are alliterative

00:17:17.440 | and I'll start with C.

00:17:18.880 | So the original group I used to talk about

00:17:20.640 | was craft, community, constitution, and contemplation,

00:17:24.120 | but people have different lists

00:17:25.920 | of what's important to them.

00:17:28.160 | And what I would recommend in this system

00:17:29.920 | is that you start, step one,

00:17:32.000 | identifying a keystone habit for each of these buckets,

00:17:36.600 | something you do on a daily basis

00:17:38.120 | and track that you actually did it

00:17:41.200 | that's not trivial, but is also tractable.

00:17:43.960 | So it's not, you know, I clap my hands twice,

00:17:46.880 | but it's also not, I ran a half marathon every day.

00:17:50.360 | These keystone habits should be something

00:17:52.480 | that advances something you care about in that bucket.

00:17:56.200 | The idea here is not that this will radically transform

00:17:58.480 | your life, but that you begin to get used to this idea

00:18:02.640 | of I intentionally prioritize each of these things.

00:18:06.920 | Each of these things gets attention.

00:18:08.760 | So that's step one.

00:18:10.120 | Step two, then I recommend taking each of these buckets

00:18:14.080 | in turn and giving it four, six, maybe eight weeks.

00:18:17.800 | So I usually say average out four to six weeks

00:18:19.760 | where you focus just on that area of your life

00:18:22.960 | and overhaul it.

00:18:24.560 | Like what more permanent changes do I wanna make?

00:18:26.840 | What things do I wanna eliminate?

00:18:28.000 | What new things do I wanna do?

00:18:29.120 | What more permanent changes do I wanna make

00:18:30.760 | to make sure that that part of my life

00:18:33.000 | is getting a good amount of attention

00:18:35.720 | that I'm extracting from it a good amount of value

00:18:38.320 | in my day-to-day life?

00:18:39.160 | And that takes some time and experimentation.

00:18:41.000 | So that's why I say take at least four to six weeks

00:18:42.960 | for each.

00:18:44.300 | This is a concept that I stole

00:18:46.880 | from the medieval Jewish practice of Musar, M-U-S-S-A-R,

00:18:50.520 | which is a practice of virtue cultivation

00:18:53.320 | where you actually focus one month at a time

00:18:55.800 | on different virtues that you're trying to improve

00:18:57.840 | and then you cycle back again, very into that idea.

00:19:01.080 | I think it's a really cool idea

00:19:02.000 | that should be known more widely.

00:19:03.680 | So I'm sort of pulling from there.

00:19:06.080 | And then when you're done with those overhauls,

00:19:08.280 | you are gonna be in a state now

00:19:11.120 | where you know what's important to you

00:19:13.600 | because you have been experimenting with it

00:19:15.680 | and trying to amplify things

00:19:16.920 | and just getting in touch with those intimations

00:19:19.280 | for each of the areas of your life.

00:19:20.280 | You've just spent a month thinking nothing about that.

00:19:22.840 | And you feel a lot more efficacious

00:19:25.200 | because you've now done non-trivial rewiring

00:19:28.460 | of elements of your life to make sure

00:19:30.160 | that each of these buckets is being satisfied.

00:19:34.240 | That by itself is gonna put you

00:19:36.320 | on a much more stable foundation.

00:19:38.000 | If you did nothing else,

00:19:40.040 | I think your life is gonna be deeper.

00:19:41.480 | It also puts you into the right place

00:19:43.720 | if you wanna make the radical changes

00:19:45.760 | 'cause now you really know what you're all about

00:19:47.360 | and you're confident you can make changes.

00:19:48.640 | So that's the deep life bucket system.

00:19:51.160 | Deep work, by contrast,

00:19:54.240 | is a particular type of professional effort.

00:19:57.340 | It is when you're working on something

00:19:59.600 | that is cognitively demanding and you don't context switch.

00:20:02.080 | So you give it your full attention.

00:20:04.660 | Much more minor in the grand scheme of things.

00:20:06.740 | So where might that show up in here?

00:20:08.560 | Well, the craft, what I call the craft bucket

00:20:10.940 | is the bucket that's dedicated

00:20:12.220 | to what you produce professionally.

00:20:14.740 | It also, by the way, can cover other things you produce

00:20:17.080 | that maybe is not at the core of your job,

00:20:18.680 | but any type of producing of things that are valuable.

00:20:22.180 | If you're the actor, Nick Offerman, for example,

00:20:24.920 | from "Parks and Recreation,"

00:20:26.820 | he has this fantastic woodshed warehouse

00:20:30.300 | in the suburb of Los Angeles somewhere

00:20:32.340 | where he builds these great wood creations.

00:20:35.780 | It's not a business for him, but it's craft

00:20:38.180 | and that's important to him.

00:20:39.020 | So it's building things,

00:20:39.860 | but definitely your professional life is covered there.

00:20:42.580 | When you're considering craft, deep work matters.

00:20:45.460 | Because as we talk about,

00:20:46.980 | you wanna produce things of value.

00:20:48.300 | That means you wanna make sure

00:20:49.140 | that you have good time protected for deep work.

00:20:51.820 | And you wanna work on the load of work in your life,

00:20:55.860 | probably so that you have enough ratio

00:20:58.300 | of deep to shallow work.

00:20:59.140 | Yeah, that's all considerations

00:21:01.380 | that apply narrowly when you're trying

00:21:02.700 | to figure out your craft bucket.

00:21:03.940 | So to get to the definitive answer

00:21:05.860 | to the original question,

00:21:07.860 | the deep life is this big idea.

00:21:10.980 | If you're going through my preparatory

00:21:13.060 | deep life bucket system,

00:21:15.380 | during the time you're focused on a craft

00:21:18.660 | or whatever your equivalent is of the craft bucket,

00:21:21.860 | that's where you'll care about deep work.

00:21:24.500 | And I like to make this point

00:21:25.540 | because I think deep work as a concept

00:21:28.940 | has inflated for some people

00:21:31.180 | to cover a lot of things.

00:21:33.020 | And I'm trying to keep these separations more clear.

00:21:36.500 | So this is why I like to talk about,

00:21:38.460 | let's get deep work narrow to what it is,

00:21:40.980 | focusing on something hard without distraction.

00:21:43.500 | And let's use the term deep life

00:21:44.940 | to capture this broader goal of living a life

00:21:47.180 | that's radically aligned with your values.

00:21:49.940 | All right, so I don't know, do you think,

00:21:52.460 | I think Jesse asked probably the breaking,

00:21:55.460 | I'm breaking records here for length of answers

00:21:59.140 | before we actually get to any information

00:22:01.420 | relevant to the original question.

00:22:03.860 | - That was a good one.

00:22:04.700 | That one was 21 minutes probably, pretty close.

00:22:08.020 | - Oh dear Lord.

00:22:08.860 | - It was solid.

00:22:09.700 | - All right, all right.

00:22:10.540 | You know what, I'm going fast.

00:22:12.180 | I'm going fast.

00:22:13.020 | This is my challenge.

00:22:15.420 | Fast answer on this next one.

00:22:16.580 | Be ready for it.

00:22:17.460 | (upbeat music)

00:22:20.060 | [Music]

What's the Difference Between Deep Work and Deep Life Buckets?

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