How To Read Books & Take Notes More Effectively (Cultivate A Deep Life)

00:00:00.000 | "Do you have any book recommendations aside from your own

00:00:04.160 | "that will compliment cultivating a deep life

00:00:06.340 | "outside of work?

00:00:07.480 | "So far from the past, I've heard you talk about Walden

00:00:10.420 | "and designing your life.

00:00:11.560 | "I'd love to hear more you consider good reading

00:00:13.900 | "before you release your next book,

00:00:15.460 | "which is the 'Deep Life' book."

00:00:17.100 | So Mark, I want you to read nothing

00:00:20.980 | until my book on the deep life comes out.

00:00:23.760 | Everything else compared to my book is garbage.

00:00:28.620 | No, there's a lot of good books.

00:00:30.300 | So I'm gonna zig here, right?

00:00:32.460 | There's two ways of thinking about books

00:00:34.460 | about the deep life.

00:00:35.640 | There's books you can imagine

00:00:37.620 | to be actually instructive, right?

00:00:39.700 | So like "Designing Your Life"

00:00:41.220 | or Tim Ferriss' like the four-hour work week, right?

00:00:45.120 | What's the Arthur Brooks book?

00:00:47.300 | We had Arthur on his book with Oprah,

00:00:49.540 | you know, building the life you want.

00:00:50.860 | So you have straight up instructive books.

00:00:53.020 | My book on the deep life will fall

00:00:54.540 | into that instructive bucket.

00:00:57.560 | Like here's the way to think about this.

00:00:59.020 | Here's what to do, try this out.

00:01:01.340 | But I'm gonna recommend something different for you now.

00:01:03.500 | So the other piece about reading about the deep life

00:01:06.820 | is not the instructions

00:01:07.860 | about how you construct a deep life,

00:01:09.260 | but instead your internal exploration

00:01:11.660 | to understand what the deep life means to you.

00:01:13.960 | Like what is depth?

00:01:16.260 | This is actually the big question that people have.

00:01:18.620 | Now, you know, on the show we say,

00:01:20.620 | first of all, life is too ambiguous of a term.

00:01:25.620 | Break your life into the different areas

00:01:27.460 | that are important to you.

00:01:28.300 | We sometimes call these buckets.

00:01:29.840 | So let's do that first.

00:01:31.360 | And, you know, so you might have craft and community

00:01:34.100 | and constitution and contemplation, celebration.

00:01:36.560 | At different ways we talk about this,

00:01:37.860 | but the areas of your life that's important to you.

00:01:39.940 | So now life is something more general.

00:01:42.860 | Then what you wanna do is seek out

00:01:46.160 | in each of these areas of your life,

00:01:48.440 | examples that resonate.

00:01:51.000 | So it could be something you read about.

00:01:53.920 | It could be something you hear on a podcast

00:01:56.720 | or something you see in a movie or a documentary

00:01:58.760 | or read in a magazine article,

00:02:00.440 | but you're trusting your own body's intuition.

00:02:03.240 | You're using your body as a depth detector.

00:02:07.520 | It knows.

00:02:08.360 | Like if it sees something that feels right

00:02:10.280 | in some way to me, I'm gonna feel that.

00:02:13.040 | And so you start to capture these examples.

00:02:15.560 | And then once you have these examples

00:02:18.040 | and you're categorizing them,

00:02:19.200 | like the different parts of your life.

00:02:21.080 | Once you have these examples,

00:02:22.420 | then you can distill them into properties.

00:02:24.960 | Oh, so what are the properties

00:02:26.480 | that these examples have?

00:02:27.720 | Let me distill those.

00:02:28.560 | These are the properties I'm looking for

00:02:30.060 | in the working part of my life.

00:02:32.000 | These are what resonate to me.

00:02:33.080 | I've distilled at the properties.

00:02:34.300 | Here's the properties I'm looking for

00:02:36.100 | in the community aspect of my life.

00:02:38.320 | I had these sort of examples of people and things

00:02:40.700 | and these books I read that really spoke to me.

00:02:43.440 | What are the properties they all shared

00:02:45.020 | that I want in the community part of my life?

00:02:47.820 | Once you have those properties,

00:02:49.120 | now you have a portrait of your own goal as a deep life

00:02:53.320 | that you can start working on pursuing.

00:02:56.080 | And that's gonna be sort of fundamental

00:02:57.360 | to the book I'm writing on the deep life,

00:02:59.160 | the sort of lifestyle-centric planning.

00:03:01.040 | So with this in mind, though,

00:03:02.120 | this means this is another way to think about books

00:03:04.240 | is you're looking for things that resonate.

00:03:05.960 | Then you're recording the things that resonate

00:03:08.420 | under the right categories,

00:03:09.840 | and then later you try to distill properties out of them.

00:03:12.640 | So you don't necessarily need

00:03:15.540 | to just be looking for instructions,

00:03:18.140 | but instead the raw material you'll later need

00:03:20.600 | to construct a deep life.

00:03:21.600 | So Mark, that's what I might recommend.

00:03:23.000 | Read things that speak to you.

00:03:24.920 | And when you get that feeling of like,

00:03:27.000 | whatever this person is doing,

00:03:28.360 | why I'm reading a book about Lincoln

00:03:30.240 | and something about Lincoln is resonating with me,

00:03:32.520 | what's happening with the way he's dealing with X,

00:03:34.280 | let me write that down.

00:03:35.880 | I'm watching a documentary about Laird Hamilton,

00:03:39.080 | big wave surfing on the North Shore of Maui.

00:03:41.420 | I don't know what about this is resonating,

00:03:43.180 | but something is, I'm gonna write this down.

00:03:45.380 | So think about books in that way

00:03:48.600 | as a source of intuition into what matters to you.

00:03:53.840 | And then of course we can later use that information

00:03:58.080 | to help construct a life that has those properties in it.

00:04:00.280 | And that's the whole lifestyle-centric planning,

00:04:02.200 | it's its own thing.

00:04:03.040 | But anyways, I wanted to make that distinction.

00:04:05.280 | Books and the deep life is not just about

00:04:09.120 | how do I build this, but it's what do I wanna build,

00:04:11.500 | discovering what it is you wanna build.

00:04:13.440 | All right, what do we got next?

00:04:16.700 | - Next question's from Scott.

00:04:18.680 | Do you think handwriting has a positive effect

00:04:21.080 | on cultivating a deep life?

00:04:22.720 | He provides a link that we'll take a look at.

00:04:25.240 | He also goes on to say, you use your remarkable tablet

00:04:28.120 | and that implies that you like writing by hand.

00:04:31.000 | Do you use it for reasons suggested in the article?

00:04:34.240 | - All right, Scott, so we loaded up

00:04:35.280 | the article you sent to us.

00:04:36.800 | I'll put it on the screen here for people who are watching

00:04:39.160 | instead of just listening.

00:04:40.640 | So the article that Scott sent us is titled

00:04:43.880 | Why Handwriting is Good for Your Brain.

00:04:48.360 | It's a picture of someone writing

00:04:50.840 | at some sort of colonial-looking desk.

00:04:53.240 | All right, analysis.

00:04:54.360 | Research over the years has pointed out

00:04:56.520 | that there are many advantages and benefits

00:04:58.920 | to writing by hand.

00:05:02.240 | All right, so there's some cool pictures in here.

00:05:04.600 | I'm just kind of scrolling through this thing.

00:05:06.200 | Look at that thing.

00:05:07.140 | This is like a writing device, Jesse,

00:05:10.520 | this weird thing here.

00:05:11.560 | It's a writing device that Nietzsche used.

00:05:13.280 | Okay.

00:05:14.120 | In a study carried out almost two decades ago,

00:05:18.320 | subjects were presented with words

00:05:19.920 | carrying a positive connotation,

00:05:22.160 | such as sweet, or negative, such as rubbish.

00:05:25.720 | Subjects had to indicate whether a word was good or bad

00:05:28.280 | by moving a joystick.

00:05:29.360 | Half the subjects were told to indicate

00:05:31.080 | that a word was good by pulling the joystick

00:05:32.960 | towards their body,

00:05:33.800 | and the other half were told to indicate good

00:05:35.400 | by pushing it away.

00:05:36.620 | To indicate that a word was bad,

00:05:39.680 | they made the opposite movement to good.

00:05:41.480 | A consistent correlation was observed

00:05:43.220 | between meaning and movement.

00:05:44.980 | The quickest responses were produced

00:05:46.580 | by the subjects who were told to indicate good

00:05:48.380 | by pulling the joystick towards themselves,

00:05:50.160 | and indicate bad by pushing it away.

00:05:52.760 | The direct involvement of the body and senses

00:05:54.880 | and mental processes can explain how writing by hand

00:05:58.160 | helps us learn letters and words.

00:05:59.940 | This is backed up by the results of various studies,

00:06:02.160 | which they then go on to summarize.

00:06:04.000 | All right, well, it's a good question.

00:06:07.220 | Do I use a remarkable notebook

00:06:09.200 | specifically to get benefits of handwriting?

00:06:12.560 | Not really.

00:06:13.540 | Not really.

00:06:15.540 | There's two advantages I like to it.

00:06:17.320 | Portability.

00:06:18.160 | Handwriting is portable.

00:06:21.120 | You just need a surface, right?

00:06:23.920 | Keyboards take space,

00:06:25.640 | and I can type much faster than I can write.

00:06:29.200 | I mean, I take a lot of notes on my computer typing,

00:06:31.760 | so I can type much faster than I can write,

00:06:33.640 | but it's not portable.

00:06:34.560 | So I like portability of handwriting.

00:06:36.440 | I also like flexibility of formatting.

00:06:39.280 | So in my remarkable, I underline things,

00:06:41.480 | I draw boxes, I draw arrows.

00:06:43.580 | There's a lot of information

00:06:45.080 | that can be captured diagrammatically, right?

00:06:47.240 | Like I can draw things, captures information.

00:06:49.200 | I can underline things, box things,

00:06:51.560 | connect things with arrows.

00:06:52.880 | There's a lot of extra information you can add

00:06:55.080 | with drawing in addition to just pure text.

00:06:59.040 | So I like both those things about handwriting.

00:07:01.460 | I don't know that I understand

00:07:03.880 | or remember information better when I write.

00:07:05.760 | I'm frustrated that my writing is slow

00:07:07.980 | compared to my typing.

00:07:09.020 | My handwriting tends to get sloppy.

00:07:11.000 | Usually when I'm typing, just because my speed is better,

00:07:14.480 | I can get out more ideas.

00:07:15.840 | I can develop them better.

00:07:17.240 | I mean, I actually like typed thinking,

00:07:21.580 | I feel like is more flexible for me than writing speaking,

00:07:24.760 | but there's advantages to the handwriting,

00:07:26.400 | the portability and the ability to add diagrams.

00:07:28.920 | So I'm not a big booster of these notions

00:07:32.920 | that it will change my understanding

00:07:34.760 | if I write it as opposed to type it.

00:07:36.760 | In my book, I talked about this, I'm remembering this now.

00:07:40.560 | I talked about this in my straight A student book

00:07:43.280 | from years ago about how to be a student.

00:07:46.200 | And I argued in that book like,

00:07:47.440 | hey, if you're able to bring a laptop,

00:07:49.080 | if you have a laptop and are able to bring a laptop

00:07:51.600 | in the class to take notes,

00:07:52.800 | that's probably better because you can type faster.

00:07:55.920 | To me, it was all about keeping up,

00:07:57.840 | getting the information down

00:07:58.960 | that you can then later study from.

00:08:00.640 | And so I think from, if I'm thinking back,

00:08:03.280 | even from my early days, I was a big fan of speed,

00:08:08.200 | speed and efficiency.

00:08:09.200 | So I like typing, but I do handwrite

00:08:11.000 | because it has its advantages.

00:08:13.340 | If I had better handwriting, Jesse, I would do it more.

00:08:16.020 | Like some people have beautiful handwriting

00:08:18.340 | and there's like a draw, it's really nice.

00:08:20.620 | They have these bullet journals that look very artistic.

00:08:24.060 | My notebooks, if you looked at them,

00:08:26.380 | sort of look like you're capturing someone

00:08:29.180 | having a stroke in real time,

00:08:31.060 | just in terms of like the handwriting and the,

00:08:33.580 | so I get frustrated, like I wanna go faster.

00:08:35.860 | - Other than your $50 notebook back in the day.

00:08:38.220 | - That one I wrote carefully in, that one slowed me down.

00:08:40.900 | - That was in the book.

00:08:41.820 | - I get frustrated I can't type faster.

00:08:43.940 | I type myself off of my keyboard.

00:08:45.820 | I go so fast, I type myself off, I wanna go faster.

00:08:48.620 | My thoughts move so much quicker

00:08:50.700 | than I can get information down, but that's true.

00:08:52.800 | So in my high quality notebook,

00:08:54.100 | which I talk about in slow productivity,

00:08:56.380 | I spent a lot of money on this notebook

00:08:57.980 | when I was a postdoc.

00:08:59.020 | So I would take my thoughts more seriously.

00:09:00.660 | My handwriting is very neat in there.

00:09:02.260 | So I did go slower in that notebook

00:09:04.180 | and I did produce better ideas.

00:09:05.860 | So maybe there's something in that.

00:09:07.620 | - How's your keyboard holding up

00:09:09.420 | that you bought over the holiday season?

00:09:10.900 | - I like it, my Mechanical.

00:09:12.540 | - Yeah.

00:09:13.380 | - Yeah, so by bouncing up the fingers,

00:09:15.540 | I'm faster, I can type faster.

00:09:18.180 | But I still type myself off that keyboard.

00:09:20.740 | I go faster than I can actually keep up.

00:09:22.820 | - So you still use it all the time?

00:09:24.060 | - All the time.

00:09:24.900 | - Yeah.

00:09:25.820 | - Even in the HQ, when I use our new

00:09:28.940 | sort of beastly studio computer setup,

00:09:32.060 | I'll bring my Mechanical and plug it in.

00:09:34.780 | Yeah, I really do like writing on it.

00:09:36.540 | - That's cool.

00:09:37.380 | All right, next question's from Josh.

00:09:40.940 | I have struggled with learning in school

00:09:42.740 | and work my whole life.

00:09:44.500 | I struggle with comprehension

00:09:45.780 | and my analytical and communication skills are terrible.

00:09:49.700 | I'm 33 and this inability to move up in life

00:09:52.900 | and grow is affecting every aspect of my life.

00:09:55.580 | I feel like I'm always working hard to no avail.

00:09:57.940 | Should I get a brain scan to prove I have a low IQ?

00:10:01.300 | - No, I don't think you need to measure your IQ.

00:10:06.580 | I don't think you need a brain scan.

00:10:10.820 | You know, I think what we need to do here

00:10:13.340 | is lifestyle-centric planning, all right?

00:10:17.860 | So this is like my key idea about the deep life

00:10:20.380 | is instead of fixating on particular specific goals

00:10:25.100 | that are appealing to you

00:10:28.180 | and hoping that those goals, if accomplished,

00:10:30.220 | will bring in their wake and appealing lifestyle,

00:10:32.500 | focus directly on the lifestyle that's appealing to you

00:10:34.780 | and see how do I engineer it.

00:10:37.540 | When you focus on the aspects of your lifestyle

00:10:39.860 | that are appealing to you first and work backwards,

00:10:42.260 | it opens up many more ways forward.

00:10:44.540 | You have a huge diversity of ways forward

00:10:47.980 | and most importantly, you can mix and match

00:10:50.340 | your ways forward towards this desirable lifestyle

00:10:53.580 | to actually conform to your opportunities and obstacles

00:10:58.580 | which are very specific to you.

00:11:00.140 | So I think lifestyle-centric plans

00:11:03.100 | is what's gonna be good here

00:11:03.940 | because I think in your mind,

00:11:05.220 | it sounds like you probably have these particular goals.

00:11:07.140 | I don't know, I wanna be higher up in this job

00:11:09.020 | or I wanna make this much money in this role

00:11:11.820 | and there's obstacles to it.

00:11:13.460 | You're like, I'm having a hard time getting there.

00:11:16.140 | Whereas in lifestyle-centric planning,

00:11:17.900 | you say, well, what do I want?

00:11:19.780 | What do I actually want in the different parts of my life?

00:11:22.060 | It's not the specific job.

00:11:23.300 | It's that I wanna have this type of security

00:11:25.980 | and live in this type of place

00:11:26.900 | and have this sort of engagement with the community

00:11:29.220 | and spend this type of time.

00:11:30.540 | You build this image of your life.

00:11:32.660 | And now you can say, what are my best ways to get there?

00:11:34.900 | So if like this particular type of work you're in,

00:11:36.980 | maybe it's involving certain types

00:11:39.580 | of like very stylized business communication

00:11:42.380 | and lots of like fast analytical thinking

00:11:44.740 | about analyzing things.

00:11:46.180 | And if that is not fitting well with your skills,

00:11:50.220 | okay, let's find a different way

00:11:52.180 | to get towards what you're looking for.

00:11:54.100 | The other thing you'll get out of lifestyle-centric planning

00:11:57.860 | is now you're working with your opportunities and obstacles.

00:12:00.740 | You can sort of work systematically

00:12:02.420 | to expand opportunities and reduce the obstacles.

00:12:05.660 | So if you're having difficulty with, you know,

00:12:07.100 | reading comprehension, for example,

00:12:08.660 | there are things you can do to make that better.

00:12:11.780 | Typically reading, building up a reading habit,

00:12:15.060 | starting with books that are incredibly appealing and easy

00:12:17.860 | and then sort of slowly pushing yourself on the complexity.

00:12:20.660 | That changes your mind.

00:12:22.380 | As your mind becomes a reading mind, it changes it.

00:12:25.180 | Spending a lot less time with really high distraction,

00:12:29.660 | high salient attention economy tools,

00:12:31.860 | like things on your phone.

00:12:33.420 | Spend a lot less time with that

00:12:34.780 | and more times with slow information

00:12:36.500 | and slow entertainment like books,

00:12:38.260 | like watching full movies.

00:12:39.700 | That'll rewire your brain in a way that will help.

00:12:42.260 | If there's particular analytical skills,

00:12:45.500 | practicing those skills will help.

00:12:47.860 | I wanna actually practice doing this type of analysis,

00:12:52.740 | getting feedback, doing it better next time.

00:12:54.380 | So you can actually reduce obstacles

00:12:56.060 | and increase opportunities.

00:12:57.740 | But all of this, I think, should be in the context

00:12:59.980 | of what do I want out of my life?

00:13:02.220 | Okay, what do I have available?

00:13:05.460 | What opportunities do I have available?

00:13:06.580 | What are my obstacles?

00:13:07.500 | How can I expand those, reduce those?

00:13:09.100 | Fine, but let me work with what I can do well

00:13:12.500 | and figure out how to get closer and closer

00:13:15.620 | to these properties in the various parts of my life

00:13:17.340 | that appeal to me.

00:13:18.180 | So I think the flexibility of lifestyle-centric planning

00:13:21.020 | is critical here because otherwise you might lock in

00:13:24.340 | on this is what I need to do,

00:13:25.780 | this job and this position and this job.

00:13:28.620 | And if that's not working for you,

00:13:30.220 | all you're gonna feel is frustration.

00:13:32.100 | So that's what I would suggest there.

00:13:34.580 | Lifestyle-centric planning, LCP.

00:13:37.140 | You know me, LCP.

00:13:39.220 | That's a good question.

00:13:42.060 | All right, what else do we got?

00:13:43.180 | - All right, next question's from Esteban.

00:13:45.420 | Do you recommend using ChatGPT for reading recommendations?

00:13:49.620 | - No.

00:13:50.460 | I mean, ChatGPT has just digested a lot of information

00:13:55.260 | from people and then it is going to be remixing that

00:14:00.260 | in sort of arbitrary ways, unpredictable ways

00:14:05.220 | to try to produce a simulation

00:14:07.620 | of how real people it encountered online

00:14:10.580 | would be recommending books.

00:14:11.860 | I think it's better just to go straight

00:14:13.180 | to the source material that ChatGPT trained on.

00:14:15.660 | People whose taste you find interesting or congruent,

00:14:19.740 | what type of books are they recommending?

00:14:21.580 | Trusting your own intuition, right?

00:14:24.260 | Like what am I interested in right now?

00:14:26.020 | What are the parts of my life I want to understand better?

00:14:28.660 | What are the parts of the world that seem interesting to me

00:14:30.860 | that I want to know more about?

00:14:32.180 | What are good books there?

00:14:33.460 | I feel like choosing nonfiction books,

00:14:35.340 | it's like this, especially nonfiction,

00:14:36.780 | it's this really subtle act.

00:14:38.500 | You know, I'm constantly, it's a very subtle act

00:14:42.780 | when I'm choosing what I want to read next.

00:14:45.660 | And a lot of different things in my life come together

00:14:47.860 | to choose this book versus that book

00:14:49.660 | and it's really enriching to me

00:14:51.220 | and even the selection process itself is an act

00:14:54.300 | of self-development, self-definition.

00:14:56.500 | So there's certain things like, yeah, this is great.

00:14:59.500 | We can use a language model to make faster.

00:15:01.420 | This is not something we need to make faster.

00:15:03.660 | The more you have to find and understand

00:15:08.060 | what you want to read and why you want to read it,

00:15:09.780 | as you get better at finding and making these selections,

00:15:12.500 | you are going to improve your own understanding of yourself.

00:15:15.020 | So do not fall back on ChatGPT for this,

00:15:17.220 | because again, you're just getting, right,

00:15:19.460 | it's a token generator.

00:15:20.460 | So it's like, what would people

00:15:21.940 | that I've seen talking about books,

00:15:23.620 | what are the types of things they would say here?

00:15:25.980 | That's not going to be better

00:15:27.060 | than just actually going to people who talk about books

00:15:29.420 | and seeing what they're saying.

00:15:31.340 | 'Cause there you have a real mind

00:15:33.020 | with coherent agency on the other end of it

00:15:34.980 | that you can actually relate to as a human being

00:15:36.900 | and figure out how to place the recommendations

00:15:39.220 | into some sort of larger sociocultural context.

00:15:42.020 | It's a very human thing.

00:15:43.300 | I think it's something that's worth keeping more human.

00:15:47.020 | Hey, if you liked this video,

00:15:48.100 | I think you'll really like this one as well. Check it out

How To Read Books & Take Notes More Effectively (Cultivate A Deep Life) | Cal Newport

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