Ep. 229: Developing Discipline

00:00:00.000 | So let's start with craft.

00:00:02.000 | Without changing your job yet, because you're not ready to change your job.

00:00:05.000 | We're just beginning this process of instilling or developing discipline.

00:00:10.000 | So what I want you to do with your job is to see the following challenge.

00:00:15.000 | How do you build systems that are going to ensure that two things happen?

00:00:21.000 | A, work gets delivered consistently ahead of deadlines.

00:00:27.000 | And B, the quality of the work you turn in is slightly above expectations.

00:00:32.000 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, episode 229.

00:00:50.000 | This is the show where I answer questions and give advice to my audience about the quest to live and work deeply in an increasingly distracted world.

00:01:02.000 | I should start by saying happy holidays to everybody.

00:01:06.000 | So last episode, last week's episode came out the day after Christmas, but Jesse and I recorded it a week earlier.

00:01:14.000 | So we sort of forgot that that was going to be a holiday episode.

00:01:17.000 | So this episode here is coming out early in the new year, but we're recording it just a few days after Christmas.

00:01:23.000 | So as we're recording this, we are still in the middle of the holiday break.

00:01:28.000 | So last week I said, "Shoot, Jesse, we should have dressed up for the holiday episode."

00:01:33.000 | So I figured today we would rectify that.

00:01:35.000 | So if you're watching the YouTube version of this show, which you can find at youtube.com/calnewportmedia,

00:01:42.000 | you will see, for example, I am wearing a festive red shirt, not my normal blue shirt, but a festive red shirt in honor of Christmas.

00:01:51.000 | Jesse also dressed up once again, I would say, not unlike with his Halloween costume.

00:02:00.000 | I'm not fully pleased. I think Jesse maybe took it too far.

00:02:05.000 | But, you know, Jesse, why don't you explain your costume to us?

00:02:11.000 | Skeleton.

00:02:14.000 | Well, Jesse, I appreciate that. I mean, you have a Christmas hat on. That's kind of festive.

00:02:27.000 | I don't know why you're reprising your skeleton costume from Halloween.

00:02:31.000 | That seems a little bit out of sync with a little bit out of sync with the holiday.

00:02:37.000 | Can I tell you a Christmas joke? I don't think so. I'm really not interested in that.

00:02:44.000 | What do we call when Santa's elves have a dance party?

00:02:50.000 | Skeleton.

00:02:55.000 | Hold on one second.

00:03:06.000 | Yeah, look, we got to just burn the HQ to the ground.

00:03:11.000 | Yeah, just completely demolish it.

00:03:14.000 | I'm thinking maybe even salt the earth where the building once stood.

00:03:17.000 | OK, all right. See you in a bit.

00:03:19.000 | Oh, my. All right. That's enough nonsense.

00:03:22.000 | No, it is. Jesse's on vacation because it's just a few days after Christmas.

00:03:26.000 | He's somewhere warm. So I am solo casting today, which meant, yes, I did have to carry a skeleton across

00:03:34.000 | downtown Tacoma Park to bring it to my studio today.

00:03:37.000 | My son, my oldest son, is here with me as well in the studio.

00:03:40.000 | He's hanging out with me today. So he he walked over with me with the skeleton.

00:03:44.000 | Here's the best way to explain his reaction to to this morning.

00:03:49.000 | Watching me come to my man cave studio with the skeleton.

00:03:52.000 | You know that look you might see a little boy have like Tom Brady's son when they see their dad throw the

00:04:02.000 | the touchdown pass that wins the Super Bowl, that that look of just pure pride.

00:04:06.000 | I take that look in your mind. OK, you have in your mind's eye.

00:04:09.000 | Now, think about the exact opposite of that.

00:04:13.000 | That's the way my son was looking at me as I carried a skeleton in a Christmas hat to my quote unquote work.

00:04:21.000 | All right. Well, anyways, let's let's get rolling with today's episode.

00:04:25.000 | Here's what I was thinking. Like I did this summer because I'm by myself.

00:04:29.000 | I was thinking, why don't I do just straight up old fashioned question extravaganza question after question after question?

00:04:34.000 | No other segment. It's New Year's. This is the time when we're thinking about changing our lives.

00:04:39.000 | Let's just get into advice. My original idea was to do 23 questions for 2023.

00:04:46.000 | That turned out to be too many. So I took off 10. So what we're going to do today is 10, no, 13, 13.

00:04:52.000 | That's right. Twenty three minus 10 is 13, 13 questions for kicking off 2023.

00:05:00.000 | That's checking everything. My big fear here when I'm solo casting is that I accidentally leave it on Jesse Christmas skeleton for for the entire episode.

00:05:11.000 | And the people on YouTube are just going insane. But no, it's on me. The audio is working.

00:05:15.000 | So we've got 13 questions for 2023. You'll notice that at least half of these questions are about big picture.

00:05:21.000 | What should I do with my life type issues? Because I felt like that is an appropriate theme for the New Year period.

00:05:28.000 | When we step back and think big thoughts are going to have it. We have a high concentration of these questions around big think about changing their life.

00:05:36.000 | All right. We got a lot of questions to get through. Let's start. With question number one.

00:05:42.000 | This comes from Constructor K who's writing to us from Zambia of all places. Constructor K says the following.

00:05:51.000 | I'm a civil engineer who works on high end residential buildings, hotels and office complexes.

00:05:57.000 | Your piece on lifestyle such a career planning changed how I see work in my life.

00:06:01.000 | I am marrying my long term girlfriend next year and we're both looking forward to starting a family of our own.

00:06:06.000 | I currently have an ever busy job as an on site construction project manager, but my lifestyle vision includes a less intense job.

00:06:13.000 | Perhaps one that focuses on the client side of the project management team where I can start as an inspector who only needs to be on site once or twice a week.

00:06:20.000 | My question is how do I carve out a structured program to effectively study design and construction technology?

00:06:28.000 | So Constructor K, my main concern here is not so much how you find the time to do a program of self study designed to help you shift to a different job that better suits your lifestyle.

00:06:42.000 | My concern here is you doing the right self study for this shift.

00:06:49.000 | The biggest issue I see for people in this general situation, which again I'm going to summarize as a situation in which you're trying to change your career.

00:06:58.000 | You're building up the appropriate career capital to change your career to match a lifestyle.

00:07:02.000 | The biggest issue I come across with this is people inventing their own storyline about what they want to be important.

00:07:12.000 | They like the idea of self study. They like the idea of getting textbooks or taking online courses and putting aside an hour every day.

00:07:19.000 | Even though what they're learning may not be that relevant for the specific shift they want to make.

00:07:24.000 | So what I want you to focus on first is getting the right information.

00:07:27.000 | If you want to be an on site inspector instead of project manager, go spend some time with those inspectors.

00:07:34.000 | A, I want you to confirm is the reality of their work what I think? Don't paint a picture in your head. Get evidence.

00:07:41.000 | What is the actual reality of their work? How often are they on site? What are their other responsibilities?

00:07:45.000 | Do I have concrete evidence that this is going to be the right position? The right position to support my lifestyle?

00:07:52.000 | Once you've done that, then I want you to study very carefully what is important for obtaining this job?

00:08:00.000 | What is the number one criteria or credential?

00:08:03.000 | And you want to get real evidence here, not what you think should be important, what actually is important.

00:08:09.000 | And if you have those two things, evidence that this new position is what you're looking for.

00:08:14.000 | And a really specific understanding of X, Y, and Z.

00:08:18.000 | These are the three things I need in place in order to have a good chance of getting this position.

00:08:23.000 | Then you can put together a schedule of self-study. Here's I'm going to tell you, that will not be hard.

00:08:30.000 | When your mind really trusts, I know what I'm doing. I want to get this and I see how to get it.

00:08:35.000 | Then it's not so hard to put aside time for self-study. You have all sorts of options.

00:08:39.000 | You're a project manager, so you have a lot of work to do, but flexibility in how it's done.

00:08:43.000 | It's lunch hour. It's first thing in the morning. It's Saturday afternoon plus Tuesdays. You go in late.

00:08:48.000 | It's not that hard to figure out and stick with a plan once you trust what you're doing.

00:08:52.000 | So, Constructor K, that's where I'm going to have you put your energy.

00:08:57.000 | What really matters for this position? Do I really want this position?

00:09:01.000 | Figuring out how to get there then will become easier.

00:09:05.000 | Here's a related question. This comes from Matt, who's writing to us from Atlanta.

00:09:12.000 | Matt says, "We've often heard you talk about the importance of developing rare and valuable skills.

00:09:19.000 | How would you coach us to conduct an inventory of our skills in those we're developing?"

00:09:25.000 | I wanted to do this question right after that from Constructor K because it gets at the same point.

00:09:34.000 | Do not make up your own story about what skills you think should be important in your field.

00:09:41.000 | If you do that, you are going to find yourself falling back on whatever is going to be fun,

00:09:47.000 | a little bit challenging, not too challenging, tractable, entertaining, interesting to develop.

00:09:53.000 | You'll fall back on what you want to be true.

00:09:56.000 | You want to spend a half hour every morning before you go to work taking a Coursera course or whatever.

00:10:01.000 | You need to get to the reality of what skill actually matters in my industry.

00:10:06.000 | So, what I'm going to tell you to do, Matt, is exactly what I told Constructor K.

00:10:10.000 | Treat this career development process like you are an investigative journalist.

00:10:15.000 | Find specific people who have the specific job that resonates with you.

00:10:22.000 | This position resonates. The properties of this position, the autonomy, the mastery, the power, the compensation, the prestige, whatever it is.

00:10:29.000 | This is resonating with me. This is not something I've made up that I think should exist.

00:10:32.000 | This person, this person has it, and they need to study that person.

00:10:36.000 | Now, if they're well-known, you can do this from afar.

00:10:40.000 | You can read profiles of them, read their resume.

00:10:42.000 | If they're not well-known, you take them out for coffee.

00:10:45.000 | Let me walk through how you got to this position.

00:10:47.000 | And when you do this, what you're looking for is what in the online course, Top Performer, that I design and run with my friend Scott Young.

00:10:56.000 | We talk about this. We call this differential analysis.

00:10:59.000 | You want to figure out, okay, of the multiple people in a similar space who also wanted a similar position,

00:11:05.000 | what did this person do differently than everyone else that allowed them to get it?

00:11:12.000 | Was this particular skill, they had exhibited a contract flow that was this high, they had this credential the other people didn't have.

00:11:19.000 | What is the difference? That's what you want to get at.

00:11:21.000 | What this person did that other people who did not get a similar position did not do.

00:11:28.000 | So it's a differential analysis.

00:11:29.000 | You don't want to just grab random things that seems appealing or useful about this person you're studying.

00:11:37.000 | You want to figure out the things that actually mattered.

00:11:40.000 | So it's concrete evidence is what I keep coming back to.

00:11:43.000 | It's the very best way to not only transition to a new job or new position.

00:11:48.000 | It also is what gives you the motivation to do it.

00:11:52.000 | Your mind is smart.

00:11:54.000 | If it knows you're making things up, you are going to find procrastination rearing its head.

00:11:59.000 | You're going to find motivation hard to muster.

00:12:02.000 | If on the other hand, you have ironclad evidence from investigative reporting of real people with real positions of what they did

00:12:08.000 | and what they did differently than other people who didn't get the job.

00:12:11.000 | And by the way, feel free to ask people exactly that question.

00:12:14.000 | As you step from here to here, what did you do that other people didn't?

00:12:18.000 | When you have that concrete evidence, your brain says, "I'm on board.

00:12:21.000 | I've evaluated this plan. I'm in my neocortex looking at reference frames.

00:12:25.000 | This sounds sound. I think this is going to work."

00:12:27.000 | Procrastination, non-factor. Motivation, easy to find.

00:12:32.000 | So that's the theme I'm going to come back to for some of these career questions.

00:12:35.000 | Treat the transition like an investigative journalist,

00:12:38.000 | not like a novelist wanting to write what you think is going to be a pleasing story.

00:12:43.000 | I do have to say, as I was answering that question, Skeleton Christmas Jesse shifted.

00:12:51.000 | His hand shifted off the table.

00:12:53.000 | So I actually saw him move out of the corner of my eyes.

00:12:56.000 | That was terrifying.

00:12:58.000 | Just so you know what's happening here in the very professional Deep Work HQ studio.

00:13:01.000 | All right, let's do another question here.

00:13:03.000 | This one comes from Lazy Engineer.

00:13:08.000 | Lazy Engineer says, "I'm an engineer who works remotely at a company

00:13:14.000 | where I have a lot of freedom and little pressure to complete work quickly.

00:13:18.000 | I basically wait until the pressure of missing a deadline kicks in

00:13:21.000 | to kick it into high gear and finish something.

00:13:23.000 | I just don't care to do work most days and end up having a ton of unearned leisure

00:13:27.000 | in the form of YouTube and web surfing.

00:13:30.000 | Do you have any advice on developing discipline and reining in procrastination

00:13:35.000 | when I have little external pressure to get things done?"

00:13:41.000 | All right, so what I'm going to recommend, Lazy Engineer,

00:13:44.000 | and this is a good time for my advice because it's the New Year's.

00:13:48.000 | We're thinking about transformation.

00:13:50.000 | So it's really good timing for this question.

00:13:53.000 | What I'm going to recommend first is an overhaul of all aspects of your life.

00:14:00.000 | This is not just a work problem.

00:14:03.000 | I want all aspects of your life to have intention and discipline baked into it.

00:14:09.000 | And I'm going to start by walking you through what I mean by this

00:14:13.000 | without making any major changes to your job.

00:14:15.000 | And it's only after you have done this to all aspects of your life.

00:14:18.000 | And this is going to take you, I would say, six months.

00:14:20.000 | So we're talking about summer 2023 before you're going to then come back

00:14:25.000 | and then think, "Do I want to make a change in my job?"

00:14:27.000 | So let's start with this discipline question.

00:14:30.000 | Let's work with the deep life buckets.

00:14:33.000 | So as longtime listeners of the show know,

00:14:35.000 | when I talk about this idea of living a deep life in a distracted world,

00:14:38.000 | I typically break your life up into different categories.

00:14:41.000 | We call these the deep life buckets.

00:14:42.000 | So we have craft. That's going to include your work. We'll start there.

00:14:46.000 | But it also includes things like community, constitution.

00:14:49.000 | Things like your health.

00:14:51.000 | It's also going to include things like contemplation.

00:14:54.000 | It's going to be ethics and theology and so on.

00:15:00.000 | So let's start with craft.

00:15:02.000 | Without changing your job yet, because you're not ready to change your job.

00:15:05.000 | We're just beginning this process of instilling or developing discipline.

00:15:10.000 | So what I want you to do with your job is to see the following challenge.

00:15:16.000 | How do you build systems that are going to ensure that two things happen?

00:15:21.000 | A, work gets delivered consistently ahead of deadlines.

00:15:27.000 | And B, the quality of the work you turn in is slightly above expectations.

00:15:33.000 | So there's the, "This would be good enough. I do 20% more."

00:15:38.000 | This is what I want your goal to be in work.

00:15:40.000 | Now, this is not going to be that hard to accomplish

00:15:43.000 | if you use, let's say, my multi-scale planning philosophy.

00:15:47.000 | Maybe do a little bit of autopilot systems.

00:15:49.000 | That'll be enough. Your job sounds easy.

00:15:51.000 | So I think if you're multi-scale planning, so you see what's coming up.

00:15:54.000 | You're planning out your weeks. Each day, your time block planning.

00:15:57.000 | You're taking control of your time.

00:15:59.000 | You're giving every minute of your day a job.

00:16:01.000 | So if you don't have work to do, you can clearly say, "I'm not working."

00:16:04.000 | If you do have work to do, you get after it early.

00:16:06.000 | You're not waiting until deadlines. I don't care about deadlines.

00:16:09.000 | You're figuring out what's the best use of the hours I have this week.

00:16:11.000 | Multi-scale planning, maybe a little autopilot scheduling.

00:16:14.000 | So there's certain things that happen again and again in your job.

00:16:17.000 | You do it at set times and set days.

00:16:20.000 | Maybe a little process engineering.

00:16:22.000 | I don't know the details of your job, but there might be some process engineering you do

00:16:26.000 | to also take out some of the sort of more reaction, back and forth,

00:16:30.000 | ad hoc coordination aspects of your work.

00:16:33.000 | This project comes in. It goes into this, you know, Notion workspace or shared directory.

00:16:39.000 | I send a report to the person so they know when to expect it back.

00:16:42.000 | I think a little bit of process engineering here,

00:16:44.000 | where you really think through how work enters your system, is tracked and executed,

00:16:47.000 | how people keep up to date on it.

00:16:49.000 | That's also going to help you get a little bit more discipline around this work.

00:16:52.000 | So do some combination of that.

00:16:54.000 | Multi-scale planning, autopilot scheduling, and process engineering.

00:16:59.000 | You can read my book, "A World Without Email," for more on that last piece.

00:17:03.000 | And you're going to have control of this job.

00:17:06.000 | Stuff done before deadline, above expectations.

00:17:12.000 | This alone is going to start changing your self-perception.

00:17:18.000 | In the professional sphere, this alone will change your perception as a "lazy engineer,"

00:17:24.000 | and into someone who has discipline.

00:17:26.000 | You are a disciplined person.

00:17:28.000 | You're intentional about how you organize your time. You get after it.

00:17:30.000 | People are impressed by how early you get things done.

00:17:32.000 | People are impressed by the quality of what you produce.

00:17:35.000 | This is going to, just by itself, have a profound impact on your self-perception.

00:17:38.000 | You're going to feel better. You're going to feel a sense of efficacy.

00:17:41.000 | You're going to feel a sense of self-esteem and possibility. It's critical.

00:17:45.000 | So that's what I want you to do with craft.

00:17:47.000 | But I don't want you just to stop with craft.

00:17:49.000 | The fact that you are using all of this free time because your job is easy on YouTube and on social media

00:17:54.000 | tells me the other aspects of your life need structure as well.

00:17:59.000 | And so I want you to start going through those.

00:18:01.000 | Let's start with constitution.

00:18:04.000 | Get healthy, man.

00:18:06.000 | You've got time. You're young. I know it from your elaboration.

00:18:09.000 | You're young. You have time. Let's get you in really good shape.

00:18:12.000 | We're talking about dialing in that diet, getting into a hardcore fitness routine,

00:18:17.000 | maybe building towards picking up some sort of hobby, some sort of endurance,

00:18:21.000 | racing or mountain biking or surfing, like picking up a new practical skill.

00:18:25.000 | You're going to join an ultimate Frisbee team that plays on the beach, Marxist in style.

00:18:30.000 | I don't know what it is, but I want that to become a major aspect of your life.

00:18:33.000 | The discipline of fitness is going to carry over into other aspects.

00:18:37.000 | I want you to start getting in good shape.

00:18:40.000 | I want you then to move the community.

00:18:42.000 | Get involved in communities with real people that you're sacrificing non-trivial time and attention on behalf of.

00:18:50.000 | If you have a religious background, re-engage in that right now.

00:18:54.000 | If you don't, find another place where you can be useful to other people.

00:18:58.000 | You can be involved being around other people.

00:19:01.000 | And what you want to be looking for here is opportunities to serve on behalf of people.

00:19:04.000 | That's partially what I want you to be doing when you have free time.

00:19:08.000 | Hey, so-and-so from my group is sick.

00:19:11.000 | I'm going to organize to get him some meals.

00:19:13.000 | So you don't have to worry about that. See if he needs to go to the hospital.

00:19:16.000 | Start getting out of yourself, serving others.

00:19:18.000 | Now your time is beginning to be more structured, more filled.

00:19:22.000 | You're exercising, you're getting stronger, you're helping other people, you're organizing events,

00:19:26.000 | you're spending time with other people. Move on the contemplation.

00:19:29.000 | Let's get that reading habit going.

00:19:31.000 | Let's start studying philosophy or theology.

00:19:36.000 | Maybe if you have a Jewish background, you say, "I'm actually going to really read and study the Torah portion every week."

00:19:42.000 | Maybe you have a Christian background, like this, "I'm going to finally read Aquinas."

00:19:47.000 | "I'll get secondary sources to help me understand it, but we're going to go through it."

00:19:51.000 | Maybe you want to look at Nietzsche.

00:19:55.000 | You've heard so much, you've heard the critiques, you want to develop your own reaction to it,

00:19:58.000 | but you start feeding your mind, you start feeding your soul.

00:20:01.000 | What is your ethical framework?

00:20:03.000 | Lazy engineer, this is the time to start figuring that out.

00:20:06.000 | I want your values written down. I want your rules for how you live written down.

00:20:09.000 | Version 1.0, you can keep upgrading these versions as you learn more in life,

00:20:14.000 | but let's start getting that down.

00:20:16.000 | Let's start looking for examples of people who inspire us,

00:20:19.000 | seek out that resonance and try to extract pieces of character from them.

00:20:23.000 | Maybe read the Road to Character by David Brooks, etc.

00:20:28.000 | Documentaries, profiles, feed that part of your soul, feed the moral intuition.

00:20:33.000 | Now we're really starting to rock and roll. You're in shape, you're serving communities,

00:20:36.000 | you're starting to feed your mind, you're starting to build out a framework for your soul.

00:20:40.000 | Let's add in another bucket here, celebration, hobbies.

00:20:43.000 | Let's get in a real hobby that allows you to actually build enjoyment

00:20:47.000 | and appreciate some of the things in the world that have nothing to do with work or you,

00:20:51.000 | it's just that it's things you really love. Become a cinephile,

00:20:54.000 | become really good at appreciating the subtleties of beer,

00:20:57.000 | invest real energy into those hobbies.

00:21:04.000 | This is what I want you to do over the next six months.

00:21:07.000 | When we get to late summer, then you can step back.

00:21:10.000 | Not only is your life going to be richer, you're not going to have this problem

00:21:14.000 | of just sitting there doing YouTube and social media because you have so many things going on in your life

00:21:17.000 | and you're in such control of your time.

00:21:19.000 | I'm working here and as soon as this is done, I'm going to the gym.

00:21:22.000 | I'm starting work late because I'm meeting my, you know, whatever.

00:21:26.000 | My philosophy group is meeting this morning that I'm working for exactly these hours in time

00:21:30.000 | that I'm then heading over to a group meeting.

00:21:32.000 | You're going to be controlling your time and have more than enough to put into it.

00:21:36.000 | You're not just going to be going lazily along.

00:21:38.000 | This is the point when you can then say, I'm an intentional person, I'm a disciplined person.

00:21:43.000 | I'm in control of my life. I'm shaping it towards the depth.

00:21:45.000 | Then you can look at your job and say, do I want something different?

00:21:49.000 | Does this match my vision of a life well lived?

00:21:51.000 | Now I'm ready to change if I want to change.

00:21:53.000 | I've built up career capital by nailing this for the last six months.

00:21:56.000 | I can crush it wherever I go.

00:21:58.000 | Then you can decide if you want to make a change.

00:22:00.000 | But this is the time you're at the perfect stage in your life and the perfect time of the year

00:22:04.000 | for a transformation towards a disciplined depth.

00:22:08.000 | Tell you what, lazy engineer, I'm actually excited on your behalf

00:22:11.000 | because I think there's really exciting and cool things that's going to happen in your immediate future.

00:22:17.000 | The final thing I want to say is how do you structure something like that?

00:22:20.000 | That's a big order. I gave you five areas I want you to overhaul in your life.

00:22:25.000 | Well, we talk about this often on the show.

00:22:27.000 | You can't do five major overhauls at once. It's too many things.

00:22:30.000 | You're going to run out of energy or attention.

00:22:33.000 | So do what I always recommend.

00:22:35.000 | Start by placing a keystone habit in each of those buckets we talked about.

00:22:40.000 | Craft, constitution, community, and celebration, and contemplation.

00:22:44.000 | Is that five? Craft, community, constitution, celebration, contemplation.

00:22:52.000 | All right, five.

00:22:54.000 | Put a keystone habit right away in each of those.

00:22:56.000 | Something that's tractable but not trivial so that you signal to yourself you take each of those seriously.

00:23:02.000 | Then go one by one and give each three to five weeks of doing that overhaul,

00:23:07.000 | trying the new habits, tweaking things, getting a new enhanced way of life going before you move on to the next.

00:23:13.000 | I would start with craft and then maybe constitution.

00:23:17.000 | Then between community, celebration, and contemplation, whichever order you think is right.

00:23:23.000 | If you spend about a month with each of those, that gets you to about the summer.

00:23:28.000 | You're probably going to have to go back and tweak and change and update.

00:23:31.000 | But really, starting with a keystone habit, then giving three to five weeks for each of those areas

00:23:35.000 | to really put major changes in the place and to give yourself enough time to actually learn

00:23:40.000 | and get used to these new ways of working and living, to adjust when needed.

00:23:44.000 | Just give yourself the breathing room to really focus on each of these one by one.

00:23:47.000 | You will end up by the summer in a much better place.

00:23:53.000 | All right, well, Jesse Christmas Skeleton, how do you think things are going so far?

00:23:58.000 | Skeleton.

00:24:01.000 | Well said. Well said.

00:24:03.000 | Let's talk about a sponsor real quick before we keep going on.

00:24:05.000 | We have three questions done. We have 10 more to go.

00:24:09.000 | But I am excited to talk about a new sponsor of this show, and that is Notion.

00:24:17.000 | So let me tell you what Notion is, and then I want to tell you why I wanted Notion as one of our sponsors,

00:24:23.000 | how I use it, why I think it is good.

00:24:27.000 | So probably the best way to describe Notion, this is their official text here, is the following.

00:24:31.000 | Whether you are starting a new gym routine, organizing a trip with friends, or planning your company's goals,

00:24:36.000 | Notion is a flexible collaborative workspace that helps you make meaningful progress in every part of your life.

00:24:41.000 | Get started in seconds by choosing from thousands of templates for every task.

00:24:45.000 | Make it your own from to-do list to OKR trackers and so much more.

00:24:48.000 | Notion lets you build the exact system you want so you can work the way you work best.

00:24:52.000 | All right, that is their official copy.

00:24:54.000 | What you have to understand is Notion is an information and collaboration management system.

00:24:59.000 | It is online, you can do it in a browser or on an app, and it is incredibly flexible.

00:25:08.000 | So there are two major ways I encounter Notion in my life and the way I see people in my orbit use it.

00:25:14.000 | One is for organization of personal information.

00:25:18.000 | You can build these fantastic linked databases of information that you can then organize, display, and sort in really powerful ways.

00:25:27.000 | For example, we have a segment coming up in an upcoming episode where friend of the show Jenny Blake is going to walk me through

00:25:36.000 | exactly how she set up a Zettelkasten-style idea capture system in Notion.

00:25:41.000 | She's already showed this to me. I use Notion so I've seen it, but she's going to walk us through how to build one on the show.

00:25:48.000 | So stay tuned for that in an upcoming week, but it's fantastic for organizing information in your life.

00:25:53.000 | It is also great for collaboration.

00:25:57.000 | If you want to build those type of engineered processes I talk about all the time, like in my book, A World Without Email,

00:26:03.000 | to get away from ad hoc back and forth, unscheduled email or Slack interaction, Notion is the number one tool.

00:26:10.000 | It's incredibly flexible for building bespoke collaboration systems easily.

00:26:17.000 | So if you want to move away in your small business or team from the hyperactive hive mind, you got to be using Notion.

00:26:22.000 | So for example, with my ad agency, my podcast ad agency, they built a tool or a collaboration workspace in Notion for us dealing with advertisers.

00:26:33.000 | So now every ad read I'm going to do has its own element in this database that points to the copy for the ad and other details,

00:26:40.000 | like what timestamps did this ad show up in what episode.

00:26:43.000 | They then have a very powerful, easy to build display where I can see a calendar.

00:26:47.000 | And on each day where I have a podcast coming out, I can see exactly a link to the ads they're supposed to be read that day.

00:26:53.000 | And so I can click on that, get the information for the ad, update it with information about when it read.

00:26:58.000 | But then I can organize it in another way. Click on another link. They've set it up to show me, oh, here's all of the ad reads from this company.

00:27:04.000 | So you can see when they're showing up. Here's all the ad reads that happened.

00:27:08.000 | So it's these flexible ways of storing and displaying information. Notion makes that possible.

00:27:14.000 | So now me, Jesse and my whole ad agency can all share this tool and it makes it fantastically easy for us to work back and forth without a lot of emails,

00:27:25.000 | without a lot of slack on getting ads read, getting numbers put in place, getting download numbers, getting timestamps, getting copy, all of that.

00:27:34.000 | Probably took Brielle, shout out to Brielle, 30 minutes to build this tool.

00:27:40.000 | So Notion is so powerful and so flexible. I'm just a user of it. I'm a believer in it.

00:27:45.000 | This is why I was excited to get them as a sponsor.

00:27:48.000 | So start your year off right and get organized now with a free Notion account at notion.com/cal.

00:27:56.000 | That's all lower case letters, notion.com/cal to learn more and to get started for free right now.

00:28:04.000 | Using that link slash cal supports the show. So go right now to notion.com/cal.

00:28:10.000 | I also want to briefly mention a another new sponsor I am excited about.

00:28:16.000 | Cozy Earth. Let me tell you what it is and then I'll tell you why I wanted them as one of our sponsors.

00:28:23.000 | Cozy Earth provides the softest, most luxurious and best temperature regulating sheets on the planet.

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00:29:06.000 | Wash it to try it out. If you're not completely in love, send it back. Full refund.

00:29:12.000 | So why did I want Cozy Earth as one of our sponsors? Because I talk about on the show all the time that I am a hot sleeper.

00:29:19.000 | I really care about temperature when I'm sleeping. These sheets are incredibly comfortable without being hot.

00:29:27.000 | They're the most comfortable sheets I own. We have the light gray. I like the light gray.

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00:29:40.000 | It feels really soft and it breathes. So these will be the best sheets you own. You owe it to yourself to sleep better.

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00:30:15.000 | That's CozyEarth.com. Use the promo code DEEP to save 35%.

00:30:22.000 | All right. Jesse Christmas Skeleton, I'm a little worried that we're only three questions in and the show has been going for a half hour.

00:30:30.000 | Skeleton. Again, well said. Very useful. So we're going to pick up the pace here.

00:30:36.000 | I thought we would start off this next segment with a case study.

00:30:40.000 | All right. So this is a listener, Danny, who's a postdoc in Texas, sent in a case study, which I will now read.

00:30:52.000 | A case study of putting the ideas we talked about here on the show into practice.

00:30:55.000 | All right. Here's Danny's case study. I just graduated with my Ph.D. a couple of months ago.

00:31:00.000 | I am married and have five young kids. Three of our kids were born while I was working on my Ph.D.

00:31:08.000 | When I started my graduate degree, all I heard was that it was so much work and that my wife should assume I would be gone a lot.

00:31:15.000 | When I started, I was at school from seven in the morning to about six at night each day.

00:31:21.000 | For research, I even traveled to the South Pacific for seven weeks. Simply stated, I was away from my family a lot.

00:31:27.000 | Many times I questioned whether it was worth it, but I knew what I wanted to do. So I worked harder and longer.

00:31:33.000 | When COVID-19 hit, I, along with many other people, struggled with all the disruption and didn't do anything school related for several months.

00:31:41.000 | However, during this time, I happened to find the book Atomic Habits.

00:31:45.000 | This was a cry for help, which eventually led me to your books, Deep Work and Digital Minimalism.

00:31:51.000 | These books and ideas eventually changed my life.

00:31:55.000 | It took me about a year of messing around with theories and practices such as time block planning, digital decluttering, and finding time for what was truly important to me.

00:32:05.000 | But when I worked, I was way smarter and it took about half as much time as it did during my first two years of the program.

00:32:14.000 | My last year and a half of my Ph.D., I submitted six manuscripts for publication.

00:32:18.000 | One has been published, two have been accepted, and three are currently under review.

00:32:21.000 | All of this was done by me getting to work at about 830 a.m. and leaving between 430 and 5 p.m. every day.

00:32:27.000 | And some days I even left earlier if I felt the need to go home.

00:32:30.000 | I have also read way more books in the past two years than I did in my earlier life.

00:32:33.000 | I have been a more present father and spouse, which has truly helped my marriage.

00:32:38.000 | Whether you use this or not is fine. I just want to say thank you for making me a better person, researcher, and teacher.

00:32:45.000 | Dandy, I appreciate the case study. For those who are listening, this is a common tale.

00:32:51.000 | When you actually get organized about the allocation of your time, when you actually get organized about how you are going to expend your energy,

00:33:02.000 | it can be astonishing how little time it actually takes to produce good, impressive, productive work.

00:33:12.000 | This is the biggest issue, I think, with our epidemic of overload and busyness right now.

00:33:17.000 | We take as a given that how we approach work is just what work means.

00:33:24.000 | This sort of frenzied, long-hour email slack back and forth on Zoom.

00:33:29.000 | And so when we think about productivity or producing, we think about just we have to do more and more of this.

00:33:33.000 | We think of it as a game of who can actually tolerate the pain of longer and longer hours of this frantic frenzy.

00:33:39.000 | What Dandy discovered is that do not assume the way most people work is what work means.

00:33:47.000 | If you're careful about what matters and what doesn't, if you focus on the important and either downplay the shallow or consolidate and relentlessly or ruthlessly batch it,

00:33:58.000 | so it gets done with the amount of energy, the total energy minutes it gets is shrunk.

00:34:03.000 | When we take the unnecessary out of our life, when we get more relentless but more patient in how we approach the important,

00:34:10.000 | not there's a deadline next week, I'll see you seven days from now,

00:34:14.000 | but I've been working a little bit towards this every day for the last seven months.

00:34:17.000 | When we get more patient, suddenly you find yourself in a situation like Danny where I'm not working from 6 to 6 or 730 to 6.

00:34:24.000 | I'm working 8 to 5, 830 to 430, and I'm killing it.

00:34:28.000 | And I have energy, I'm doing clean shutdowns, I'm home, I'm with my kids, I'm with my wife, I'm reading books.

00:34:33.000 | This I think is the key to a deep life is this slower productivity.

00:34:40.000 | It is not easy to achieve but it is absolutely achievable and is what you should have in your sights if it is at all possible for you.

00:34:47.000 | Throwing more energy at a problem, good luck, not sustainable.

00:34:52.000 | Throwing smarter approaches to your work, deeper approaches to your work really can make a difference.

00:34:58.000 | And this is why by the way, when people say, "I wish I could do deeper work, I wish I could prioritize depth more,

00:35:09.000 | but I can't because I don't have a staff supporting me, I don't have a spouse supporting me, so I just have to do it the way I'm doing it now."

00:35:19.000 | When we actually break it down, that doesn't make sense.

00:35:22.000 | Look at Danny. Danny not prioritizing depth, Danny not thinking about deep to shallow work ratios,

00:35:27.000 | Danny not being structured and organized in his work was a Danny who was a worst husband and a worst father.

00:35:32.000 | He was home a lot less and when he was home, he was more stressed out, he was more anxious, he needed more support, his spouse had to do more.

00:35:41.000 | Danny who actually started to care about depth over shallowness, intention over frenzy,

00:35:46.000 | was a Danny whose hours shrunk, whose work got more corralled, whose attention to the rest of his life expanded,

00:35:55.000 | whose need for support was reduced.

00:35:59.000 | A slower approach to productivity, a priority of depth actually helps you corral work in a way where you're in control of it.

00:36:07.000 | It makes you a better citizen of the world, a better family member, a better friend.

00:36:12.000 | I think that's a great case study, Danny, and I appreciate it.

00:36:16.000 | All right, moving on.

00:36:19.000 | We have another sort of deep, "What should I do with my life?" question.

00:36:22.000 | This comes from Valeria, a lawyer from Italy.

00:36:27.000 | Valeria says the following, "I'm a 43-year-old Italian lawyer who three years ago also became a mom.

00:36:35.000 | After my son's birth, I immediately understood I didn't want to go on working as a lawyer because this job absorbed all of my energies.

00:36:43.000 | I've thought about quitting the study of psychology, which I really enjoy,

00:36:46.000 | but at the end of the day, most of the time I should devote to studying is time I wouldn't be able to devote to my son.

00:36:51.000 | And this looks to me like an impossible choice.

00:36:54.000 | My son will never be three again.

00:36:56.000 | Is studying without a clear plan worthwhile?

00:36:59.000 | If I choose my son and choose to live fully with what I already have, if I choose psychology, I will choose to subtract some of my present time so as to get ready for a hypothetical future."

00:37:09.000 | All right, so let me try to just condense and clarify this question because there's three different things going on.

00:37:17.000 | There's multiple things going on here.

00:37:18.000 | So you don't want to be a lawyer, and you have this other idea.

00:37:22.000 | You're worried that idea is not very clearly thought through, that you like psychology, but just going to study psychology,

00:37:28.000 | that's not really a clear plan.

00:37:30.000 | And you're worried that any sort of work or any sort of study is time away from your son at a critical point, and you're worried about that as well.

00:37:36.000 | Like, you know, should I do anything that's going to take me away from my son?

00:37:39.000 | How do I choose between work and family?

00:37:41.000 | So there's a lot going on here, Valeria, but I appreciate the question because these are all real issues that people feel in different ways.

00:37:47.000 | And also, I think this is a good follow-up to the case study we just read,

00:37:52.000 | which really was about depth and organization and family life and how that all works together.

00:37:58.000 | So I had to think about this, Valeria, because, again, there's a lot going on.

00:38:01.000 | I wrote down three points.

00:38:04.000 | Here's three observations that seem clear to me from your story.

00:38:08.000 | Number one, you really dislike your corporate lawyer job.

00:38:12.000 | This comes through.

00:38:14.000 | I read an edited version of the question.

00:38:16.000 | Valeria sent me a lot more details.

00:38:18.000 | She's done with that job.

00:38:20.000 | This seems unambiguous.

00:38:22.000 | It's not surprising to me.

00:38:24.000 | Those jobs are huge.

00:38:25.000 | Energy sucks.

00:38:27.000 | It sounds like from your letter also that you're a single mom.

00:38:29.000 | It's very difficult to do.

00:38:31.000 | If you're not one of the few for which the engagement, you know, you're Julianne Margulies from The Good Wife,

00:38:39.000 | where, like, it really hits a button for you being involved in corporate law, and it's really engaging and energizing.

00:38:47.000 | If it's not hitting that button, you're not going to be able to force it.

00:38:51.000 | If it feels like a drag now, based on my experience talking to a lot of corporate lawyers, it will continue to feel like a drag.

00:38:57.000 | So I think this is unambiguous.

00:38:58.000 | We want to get you away from law.

00:39:00.000 | All right, number two.

00:39:02.000 | The other thing clear to me, number two thing that's clear to me, the idea that any moment you're away from your son is somehow a problem,

00:39:10.000 | I think that is exaggerated.

00:39:14.000 | Your son needs a loving presence in his life.

00:39:17.000 | He doesn't need you in every minute of his life, though, to develop in a normal, full, fulfilled way.

00:39:25.000 | Most kids do not get full one-on-one attention from their parents for their entire sort of toddlerdom.

00:39:32.000 | You know, either that parent is working or that parent has many multiple kids.

00:39:36.000 | So you're sort of sharing that tension with other things going on.

00:39:40.000 | So I think you've set a standard too high.

00:39:44.000 | Your son needs to know that you're in his life.

00:39:47.000 | You need to be a big part of his life.

00:39:48.000 | You need to be a loving, stable presence in his life.

00:39:51.000 | He doesn't need to see you every hour.

00:39:52.000 | So I don't want you to be so worried about that.

00:39:55.000 | You're not the first parent to think about studying or having a job.

00:39:58.000 | Your son will be fine.

00:40:00.000 | All right, number three.

00:40:01.000 | Here's the third clear point that occurred to me as I read your question.

00:40:06.000 | Your lifestyle vision right now is haphazard and unclear.

00:40:12.000 | This is OK.

00:40:13.000 | I understand why this is the case because there is a lot of frenzy going on right now.

00:40:20.000 | You're dealing with a complicated situation.

00:40:22.000 | You have this corporate job that was fulfilling these ideas you had about productive employment,

00:40:27.000 | and you don't like it, and you have a kid, and your kid's at this important age,

00:40:31.000 | and you don't know what to do.

00:40:32.000 | And that's a hard, complicated time.

00:40:35.000 | And I understand that.

00:40:37.000 | And I think as a result of it being hard and complicated,

00:40:40.000 | you don't have a lot of clarity on your lifestyle-centric career planning vision.

00:40:45.000 | And it comes through in the question where you're kind of taking some psychology courses,

00:40:48.000 | then you stop, and you're thinking, "Should I just go do that?"

00:40:52.000 | You are going to get, I believe, a lot of relief and clarity in how to move forward

00:40:59.000 | if you take the time to do some systematic lifestyle-centric career planning.

00:41:05.000 | We need to fix, Valeria, this image of your lifestyle a year from now, five years from now,

00:41:09.000 | 10 years from now, something that has all the different attributes, not just professional,

00:41:13.000 | where you live, what your day is like, what is your sun, what type of school is your sun at,

00:41:18.000 | are you home when he comes home from school, are you living in the countryside on the weekends.

00:41:22.000 | You have this palpable image of your lifestyle that you can see, feel, and touch.

00:41:27.000 | It's palpable. It resonates.

00:41:30.000 | Is it an "under the Tuscan sun" image, or is it you're in Rome,

00:41:35.000 | and he's on the Vespa with you as you go to the market?

00:41:38.000 | As you are now realizing, Valeria, all of my thoughts about Italian lifestyles come from movies.

00:41:45.000 | I'm going to get this image really clear.

00:41:48.000 | And then you can work backwards and say, "Okay, what is the most efficient, practical path to this lifestyle?"

00:41:56.000 | Once we start thinking through work opportunities, are you leaving law, where are you going,

00:42:01.000 | can you bring your career capital with you, how much money do you actually need for this lifestyle to be supported,

00:42:06.000 | if you're living here, you start to work through these details and find a pragmatic path forward.

00:42:11.000 | That's the way you want to do it.

00:42:13.000 | So what you're doing here is just working forward from activities and hoping that it leads to a lifestyle.

00:42:18.000 | Just studying psychology. Why are you studying psychology?

00:42:22.000 | Is it because you want to be a counselor or a therapist, and maybe you see a vision of life or therapy

00:42:28.000 | because of the flexibility and the type of work matches things you're looking for?

00:42:32.000 | Maybe, but is getting an undergraduate, a college psychology degree the right way to do that?

00:42:38.000 | Or is there other types of training you do? You don't have this information right now.

00:42:42.000 | So you want to get that lifestyle fixed clearly, and then very clear-eyed work backwards and say,

00:42:47.000 | "Here's my path to achieving this. Here's a practical, pragmatic path. It'll take two years.

00:42:53.000 | I have the evidence. I have the plan. I'm on board. Let's roll."

00:42:57.000 | So I think you're going to find, Valeria, that lifestyle career planning done right is going to be a savior.

00:43:04.000 | It's going to give you the clarity you seek.

00:43:07.000 | And I'm just guessing that once you do this, that law job is gone,

00:43:10.000 | and I'm trying to give you a little bit of reassurance here that your son is going to be fine,

00:43:18.000 | even if you're not there 24 hours a day.

00:43:22.000 | All right. Let's do some strategic. We've been doing some big-picture questions.

00:43:27.000 | I have a pair of questions here that are a little bit more in the weeds.

00:43:30.000 | Let's kind of catch our breath here with some strategic questions.

00:43:33.000 | I'm not quite sure how far we've gone. We have one, two, three, four, five, six.

00:43:39.000 | Quite a few questions left, but some of them are short.

00:43:41.000 | All right. So let's get rolling here with some more strategic questions.

00:43:44.000 | This next one comes from Kevin, an attorney in Philadelphia.

00:43:49.000 | Kevin says, "I'm a litigator. My big projects often come in the form of motions or briefs,

00:43:56.000 | which can take several days to finish and sometimes arrive unpredictably, causing deadline pileups.

00:44:01.000 | How do you manage a strategic plan when your work consists of a large number of somewhat

00:44:05.000 | unpredictable, medium-ish sized projects with deadlines?"

00:44:12.000 | Well, so, Kevin, just a quick reminder for everyone, strategic plans are what we sometimes also call quarterly plans.

00:44:18.000 | It's what we sometimes also call semester plans. Jesse, what do you call them?

00:44:25.000 | Skeleton plans.

00:44:31.000 | But it's a key aspect of our multiscale planning philosophy that we talk about here on the show.

00:44:36.000 | So you have these plans that cover three to four months.

00:44:39.000 | You use those to inform your weekly plan each week. Your weekly plan informs then your daily time block plan.

00:44:46.000 | So Kevin is saying, "I have a hard time. Most of the work I do, I have a hard time accounting for it in a plan that covers three or four months

00:44:54.000 | because the work arrives often unpredictably. It requires three or four days to complete.

00:44:59.000 | I'm not quite sure. Sometimes it piles up. It's just hard to predict. I'm a litigator."

00:45:03.000 | Kevin, my response is that type of work doesn't need to be specified in your strategic plan.

00:45:07.000 | Your strategic plan should recognize most of my cycles will be handling these briefs that are going to show up.

00:45:16.000 | OK, so I want to recognize that in my strategic plan and not have a huge load of other things you're thinking you're somehow going to get done.

00:45:24.000 | What should be your strategic plan, though, is anything that you do want to make progress on that is not part of this sort of ongoing flow of briefs.

00:45:31.000 | That's going to be well served by a strategic plan.

00:45:34.000 | So you're like, "Maybe I'm working on this initiative. I'm trying to master this new whatever, this new piece of the some sort of penal code or whatever that will then help my practice."

00:45:44.000 | And so your strategic plan says, "OK, this fall, this winter, I want to master this information.

00:45:49.000 | That means I'm going to have to read these things, then take this course, and then go spend the day, sign up to do a day-long training."

00:45:57.000 | And your strategic plan might say, "Let's evaluate each week as we get to it to see if it's a busy week or non-busy week."

00:46:05.000 | The busy weeks are where we have more than four briefs that have piled up. We do nothing on those weeks.

00:46:09.000 | The non-busy weeks, I want to do Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings, 90 minutes in the law library at the office.

00:46:15.000 | That's a great use of the strategic plan. You have a strategy laid out for how to make progress over a longer period of time on a non-urgent but ultimately important project.

00:46:25.000 | "Kevin, that's what should be in your strategic plan."

00:46:28.000 | These type of work that you're not just going to do in the moment, you don't have your briefs in the strategic plan, but your plan recognizes that those exist.

00:46:37.000 | I have another question here. This one's from Bartholomew, who says, "I'm involved in the establishment of a new academic research society, which involves creating a website, starting a bulletin, and hosting a conference.

00:46:53.000 | I'm trying to get my team to adopt a Newportian strategy with role-based rather than person-based communication. I need some help getting started."

00:47:02.000 | Good use of Newportian. I do like the idea of that becoming a term of art.

00:47:10.000 | All right, role-based communication. For those who don't know, this is an idea from my book, "A World Without Email."

00:47:17.000 | The idea is if you have a team or an organization, instead of having all communication be associated with individuals, you know, jesseskeleton@calnewport.com,

00:47:30.000 | you have communication channels associated with roles or different types of work.

00:47:34.000 | This is where you get support, for example, at calnewport.com. You can extend that idea to all sorts of different types of roles.

00:47:42.000 | You know, client queries could be an email address. You could have, and I've seen this before, an email address set up for each of your clients where the address is specific to them.

00:47:54.000 | So if you have a skeleton polish company as one of your clients, instead of them just having the email address of someone who works at your company,

00:48:03.000 | they have a skeleton polish@client.companyname.com, and they send to that address. That address is just for their communication.

00:48:12.000 | This allows you to break the connection of communication with individuals.

00:48:19.000 | And it's not just email addresses, by the way. You can use other types of tools. We talked about our sponsor, Notion.

00:48:24.000 | So you could have like a Notion workspace they communicate in. You could have a shared document. You could have a ticketing system.

00:48:29.000 | You could have a chat bot. I don't really care about the technology.

00:48:33.000 | But the point here is that you have incoming channels tied with roles or specific type of work, not with individuals in your company.

00:48:38.000 | Why is that important? Because when a communication channel is associated with an individual,

00:48:43.000 | we implicitly associate with that channel the conventions that we're hardwired for when it comes to interpersonal interaction.

00:48:53.000 | We're a social species. So we're wired to be social. We have a lot of expectations, a lot of instincts around sociality.

00:49:04.000 | One of those instincts, for example, is if like I ask you something, you answer me.

00:49:08.000 | We're wired to think if someone in my tribe 70,000 years ago ignores me when I'm asking them a question, this is a problem.

00:49:16.000 | Maybe we have a beef going here. Maybe I'm going to get a mastodon thigh to the back of the head if I'm not careful.

00:49:24.000 | We really worry about it. We expect really quick communication. That carries over to our current world.

00:49:29.000 | We have Paleolithic brains in a modern world. So then I send an email as a client. I kind of want a response right away.

00:49:35.000 | I'm like, why is this specific person not responding to me? I read in the responses.

00:49:39.000 | Why is this person always have this tone with me? When you're instead sending using a role or work specific channel, all that goes away.

00:49:49.000 | When I'm sending a query to like my client name at client.CalNewport.com, I have completely different expectations that if I'm sending that to Cal,

00:49:57.000 | if I'm sending that to Jesse. And on the flip side, you at your organization can have a different.

00:50:02.000 | You can now very clear rules for how this happens. You cover this on this day. You covered it on that day.

00:50:07.000 | We take shifts. Multiple people look at it. We have a daily. This is an example from my book.

00:50:12.000 | I wrote with that email. This is daily quick client stand up where we look at all the incoming communication from the last day and we translate it into task.

00:50:19.000 | And we answer the quick things and we figure out our responses for the other things.

00:50:23.000 | And we farm out that work to specific individuals. This means that in between those daily stand ups,

00:50:29.000 | there's no incoming messages you have to monitor and respond to.

00:50:33.000 | So I'm a big fan of role based communication as opposed to person based communication, if you can.

00:50:38.000 | So Bartholomew, I gave a lot of examples there. Email addresses at a domain that aren't tied to people.

00:50:43.000 | That's a big one. Non email based, non email based channels is another big one.

00:50:50.000 | Again, they can be simple. Here is a shared Google Doc.

00:50:54.000 | We have our upcoming client check in meeting dates in bold. Just write in here.

00:50:59.000 | You know, anything you want to talk about, any questions, put in notes, whatever.

00:51:03.000 | And we'll get to that at the upcoming meeting. I think that's really good. Office hours is really good.

00:51:07.000 | We have a client, you know, office hours for these issues and different people might be there,

00:51:11.000 | but you know when that time is and you come to those office hours.

00:51:14.000 | Anything that depersonalizes interaction between you and the outside world, I think is a good way forward, if at all possible.

00:51:22.000 | Right. We got one more strategic question here.

00:51:29.000 | And then we got another big picture query. So here's another more strategic question.

00:51:33.000 | This comes from Local Optimizer, an AI researcher from New York City.

00:51:40.000 | Local Optimizer asks, how do you plan for research projects that have a large variance in how long they could take when you're building out your strategic plan?

00:51:49.000 | Again, strategic plan, quarterly plan, semester plan, all the same.

00:51:52.000 | It covers roughly a three to four month period of your life.

00:51:59.000 | So here's the thing. In your quarterly plan, you might be identifying this is a big project I'm working on.

00:52:06.000 | But you're not being super specific about exactly how much time you're dedicating to this and when.

00:52:11.000 | That really happens more at the weekly plan scale if you're doing multi-scale planning.

00:52:16.000 | So you might say, I'm working on this research project this semester.

00:52:20.000 | I want to try to get to a result by whatever, February.

00:52:24.000 | It's in your weekly plan that you say, where am I on this project? How much time do we need? Oh, man, I'm really behind.

00:52:29.000 | Like I'm going to put aside the first half of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, all day Friday.

00:52:35.000 | I'm dedicating to this. We really got to make progress. Or on the flip side, it's in your weekly plan where you might say,

00:52:40.000 | you know, we're waiting to hear back on something. So I'm not going to spend any time on it this week.

00:52:43.000 | Or, hey, this is done. Let's just clean it up on Monday and this project is done. Great.

00:52:49.000 | I'll use the rest of my week for other things. So it's really in the weekly plan where big picture endeavors gets translated to actual effort plans for the extension of actual effort.

00:52:59.000 | And so when you make the weekly plan, you assess where am I? And you allocate time appropriately.

00:53:06.000 | So you will naturally titrate back and forth how much time you need based on how the project unfolds.

00:53:11.000 | And if it finishes early, great. You either have breathing room or you can say there's two months left.

00:53:18.000 | Let's go back and update our quarterly plan and add another project into it. So no big deal.

00:53:24.000 | I have a question here from Brian Mark. Brian Mark says, I am a high school art teacher, an adjunct professor of digital media and an MFA candidate in animation from a top program.

00:53:38.000 | I've had multiple interviews with major animation studios in Los Angeles, but I live in Florida.

00:53:43.000 | My wife and I just had a baby and bought a new house in a nice neighborhood.

00:53:48.000 | Our support system is here, but working in animation is a long standing goal of mine. Should I stay or should I go?

00:53:58.000 | Brian Mark, lifestyle such as career planning works here, but here's the caveat I want to give.

00:54:07.000 | Be very wary about the concept of a dream job skewing your planning process.

00:54:17.000 | This is a real issue, I think, especially in American culture, especially for millennials.

00:54:23.000 | Millennials, we were really the generation that was raised with this idea that matching your job to a pre-existing passion is the right path towards self-actualization.

00:54:33.000 | I actually have an article out where I talk about this generational shift in how we think about careers.

00:54:41.000 | There's a New Yorker piece that came out on, I don't know when this was, like December 29th.

00:54:47.000 | It's about quiet quitting. It's a search for Cal Newport New Yorker quiet quitting. I actually talk about this.

00:54:52.000 | It's just a little bit of a plug for that piece.

00:54:57.000 | We have this issue where we put too much power into the notion of a dream job and it skews our otherwise systematic lifestyle, center, career planning.

00:55:05.000 | What I want you to do is put aside the notion of dream job and get much more specific about the properties that that specific job has that makes it attractive.

00:55:14.000 | When you're doing your lifestyle center, career planning, this is going to include many different aspects of your life where you live, the neighborhood, family, what your pace is like, what the environment is like, what you're involved is.

00:55:24.000 | But it's also, of course, going to involve your career. And I want you to have attributes of that career that are appealing to you.

00:55:31.000 | So forget the label of dream job. What is it about animation in L.A. that was appealing to you?

00:55:38.000 | Let's pull that out in the attributes and maybe it's prestige. Maybe there's an excitement or a magic to be working on something in the film industry and movie stars come in to do the voice recording.

00:55:49.000 | Maybe there's just there's something about the artistic expression and that type of animation. I don't know.

00:55:54.000 | But get rid of the dream job label and let's just get clear about attributes. You do your lifestyle center, career planning.

00:55:59.000 | Here's all the different things in my my my lifestyle vision, including the attributes of your job, ideally.

00:56:06.000 | And then you do the standard calculus. What are my different paths forward to try to acquire as many of these properties as possible?

00:56:16.000 | And there might not be an option that gives you all of them. So you're sort of weighing. I could see a path here that gets me all of these things, but not that this path gets me those, but not this.

00:56:23.000 | And then you're making judgments about different combinations of different lifestyle attributes to figure out which of these packages I think is the is the highest or most appealing.

00:56:33.000 | And then you execute that plan. So your job gets reduced in this vision to appealing properties that are there being judged right along other appealing properties like the type of house I can live in, proximity to friends and family, the lifestyle pace, etc.

00:56:48.000 | So it puts everything on the playing field. When you do that, I don't know what you'll find.

00:56:54.000 | Right, like maybe you'll find, for example, I'm just this is just hypothesizing just to give you a sense of how this type of planning goes.

00:57:01.000 | Maybe you find, OK, there's no movie studio animation jobs in Florida, but I can I can have a career vision. It'll take me a few years to get there where I have 75 percent of those attributes.

00:57:14.000 | So maybe I'm more seriously teaching animation and on the side in doing these sort of like creative animation projects, especially in the summer. And that really scratches the itch of creative expression.

00:57:28.000 | And maybe even I want to put things on the the awards circuit. I don't have some of the prestige of the L.A. animation studio, but hey, I got two out of three things I care about.

00:57:36.000 | Or maybe you find, you know, if I move to L.A., it's not as bad as I thought. Yeah, my my friends aren't there, but I'm you know, I'm looking instead about the job, the DreamWorks job in L.A.

00:57:45.000 | where I'd have to live in the valley somewhere. I'm looking at the Emeryville Pixar headquarters and I have an offer there.

00:57:51.000 | And there's this quirky, you know, I can live in Marin and this sort of quirky, this quirky community.

00:57:58.000 | And, you know, you've worked this through and we could we could build a really cool lifestyle there and be a cool place for the for the kids to grow up.

00:58:05.000 | We'd be outside and there's a bunch of the animators families live there. You know, I can I can get 80 percent of what I like about the lifestyle location and communication arc of Florida.

00:58:14.000 | I can actually get that in California and get all the job attributes. So let me do that. Right.

00:58:18.000 | Like so these are the type of decisions you might make once you start. Comparing apples to apples, packages of possible lifestyle attributes to other packages of possible lifestyle attributes.

00:58:30.000 | So that's the way I want you to think about it, where people get tripped up again as they just give too much energy to no, no.

00:58:37.000 | My dream job is like bonus plus 10. And you see that somehow is different than just this job has these attributes, which I like, which I can compare to these other.

00:58:47.000 | This job has some of those attributes. It's like this is dream job. This isn't.

00:58:50.000 | And that has a way of pulling people in the situations where all of these other aspects of their life you lose that they like you lose from your lifestyle and net net.

00:59:00.000 | Everyone's unhappy. So forget about the dream job. Change things to properties, lifestyle properties and start making some objective comparisons.

00:59:12.000 | All right. A couple of short questions here. Brian Mark had another question. How do you make time for quality time with your life with such a busy schedule?

00:59:20.000 | Well, Brian Mark, I don't know why you assume I have such a busy schedule. I work during the busiest parts of my life.

00:59:26.000 | Standard 40 hour work week hours. There's long periods of my life where I work. I'm home much more such as the summer semesters when I'm teaching release are extensive breaks that we have.

00:59:37.000 | This, I think, is a common misnomer that comes up. And often when you see practitioners, what I now call slow productivity.

00:59:46.000 | Those who do slow productivity where we're always working at a reasonable pace, but constantly sort of patiently putting in time towards things that are important to us.

00:59:55.000 | Over time, a lot of different types of accomplishments pile up. Here's these books. Here's these New Yorker articles. Here's these academic articles. Here's this show you do.

01:00:04.000 | The human instinct. Is to take all of the supporting effort for all of these different accomplishments that were patiently developed over time, flexibly, slowly.

01:00:15.000 | And collapse them and imagine someone working on all those things at the same time. Man, you must be writing books at the same time you write New Yorker articles at the same time that you're doing academic articles, the same time you're doing this show.

01:00:23.000 | You must work all the time. This is the illusion that slow productivity creates, because if you zoom out to larger timescales, even a very reasonable, flexible pace can aggregate a lot of interesting work.

01:00:38.000 | And to the outside world, it'll seem like you must be really busy. I am not a very busy person. So I'm done work by five. I don't work on weekends, except for I sometimes do Sunday morning writing sessions.

01:00:49.000 | I'm not a particularly busy person compared to just about any other job out there. So Brian Mark, that's not an issue. But I do appreciate this moment to talk about a theme that's gone through this episode. One of the themes that's gone through this episode.

01:01:03.000 | We saw this in the case study. We saw this other places.

01:01:07.000 | Working intentionally, slowly, the natural pace, but obsessing over quality on stuff that really matters. Being wary about the distraction.

01:01:16.000 | Batching that or dismiss it when possible allows you to live a very reasonable, very flexible, very sustainable lifestyle that if you add up the years looks like to the outside world to be very impressive.

01:01:28.000 | So I'd say that's one thing we've talked about today. The other thing that comes up again and again is lifestyle centric career planning, lifestyle centric career planning, lifestyle centric career planning. That's the second theme.

01:01:38.000 | The third theme. I think has to do with skeletons.

01:01:46.000 | All right, let's do one more short question here.

01:01:48.000 | Ahmed says, I heard you mentioned once that you write book reports on the book you read in order to conceptualize the information better. Can you talk a little bit more about this process? Ahmed, I do not do that.

01:01:58.000 | I don't write book reports. I mark books.

01:02:02.000 | I think there's a video of me doing this. I've talked about on the show. I mark books as I go. My whole thing is I don't want the friction to be too high because that'll slow down the pace at which I read books.

01:02:12.000 | A well marked book you can go back to in about five or 10 minutes, replicate most of the main points by just skimming to the pages that are marked and reading the highlighted lines.

01:02:21.000 | I'm not a big believer in really high friction systems for consuming books because I just don't have enough time.

01:02:27.000 | I want that to seem easy. Pick it up, rock and roll.

01:02:30.000 | All right, let me talk briefly about a another longtime sponsor of this show. That is our friends at Blinkist.

01:02:39.000 | You know, I'm a big Blinkist fan. Let me tell you what it does and then I'll tell you why I'm proud to have them as a sponsor.

01:02:46.000 | I'm also going to mention a new feature they have, which I think is cool.

01:02:51.000 | Blinkist is an app that provides you short, roughly 15 minute summaries, both text or audio form, your choice, on over 5,500 nonfiction books and many different long form podcasts.

01:03:10.000 | So you can say, I heard about this book by Cal Newport. What's it about? Click the app. You could be listening to a 15 minute summary or reading a quick summary.

01:03:19.000 | Get all of the main points or you see, hey, this podcast interview, it's a long episode. Let me get the summary.

01:03:25.000 | They call those shortcasts and figure out what was actually said here. Is it worth me listening?

01:03:30.000 | The way I recommend using Blinkist as as your sidekick in trying to figure out what books to buy or not or which podcast to listen to or not.

01:03:39.000 | If you're interested in a book, read or listen to the Blink, the 15 minute summary.

01:03:43.000 | You may say, you know what? That's enough. I got the main ideas is not really what I thought. Good.

01:03:49.000 | Or you might say, oh, my God, this is exactly what I was looking for. And then you go and buy and read the book.

01:03:53.000 | So it is like your personal book buying assistant. If you're serious about the reading life, which is a key component of deep life, you should be a Blinkist subscriber.

01:04:03.000 | For example, I just got the Blink for Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. I've always meant to read that book.

01:04:10.000 | I'd read The War of Art, but I don't know if I want to buy it or not. Boom. 15 minute Blink.

01:04:14.000 | I'll know by the end of the day if I'm going to buy it or if I have all the information I need.

01:04:17.000 | Here's the new feature I want to briefly mention. Blinkist Connect.

01:04:22.000 | This allows you to get two premium subscriptions for the price as one.

01:04:28.000 | So it allows premium users to share your account with another person of your choice.

01:04:33.000 | So this is effectively two premium accounts for the price of one.

01:04:35.000 | So if you're already a Blinkist user or you become a Blinkist user and you know someone else who might like this, you can use Blinkist Connect to share a Blinkist account with that other person.

01:04:44.000 | I think that's a great feature. So right now, Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience.

01:04:49.000 | Go to Blinkist.com/deep to start your seven day free trial and get 25 percent off a Blinkist premium membership.

01:04:56.000 | That's Blinkist spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T.

01:05:00.000 | Blinkist.com/deep to get 25 percent off any seven day free trial.

01:05:04.000 | Blinkist.com/deep.

01:05:07.000 | And remember that now for a limited time, you can use Blinkist Connect to share your premium account.

01:05:11.000 | You will get two premium subscriptions for the price of one.

01:05:15.000 | Let's also talk about ExpressVPN.

01:05:19.000 | A VPN is a way for you to gain privacy and security in your Internet usage.

01:05:27.000 | Here is how a VPN works.

01:05:30.000 | Instead of directly connecting to a service like Netflix or a website, you instead create a encrypted secure connection to a VPN server.

01:05:41.000 | So anyone who's watching your traffic, so looking at your wireless packets in the coffee shop or your Internet service provider,

01:05:49.000 | which, by the way, watches what websites you're talking to and services you're talking to and is allowed to and probably does sell that data to advertisers.

01:05:58.000 | All they see if you use VPN is that Cal is connected to a VPN server. His connection is encrypted. I have no idea what they're saying.

01:06:06.000 | You then tell that server, hey, what I really want to do is go to a website about how do I fire my assistant for dressing like a skeleton in a way that doesn't expose me to lawsuits?

01:06:20.000 | All right. If your assistant is sniffing your packets or talking to your web provider, they have no idea that's what you're doing.

01:06:26.000 | Your VPN talks to that website on your behalf.

01:06:29.000 | The website then talks to your VPN. It packages up that response and encrypted packets and sends it back to you or your machine.

01:06:36.000 | No one knows who you're talking to. It's privacy and it is security.

01:06:41.000 | So you need a VPN, especially if you're using the Internet away from home.

01:06:46.000 | ExpressVPN is the best service to use.

01:06:49.000 | Here's a here's a three key things it has and what makes a good VPN service good and why I use ExpressVPN.

01:06:54.000 | A lot of bandwidth to get quick connections, servers all over the world.

01:06:59.000 | There's almost always going to be a server near where you are to connect to.

01:07:03.000 | So you want a nearby VPN service. You get that really fast back and forth latency.

01:07:07.000 | And three, the software is simple. When you install the VPN software, you just turn it on. Boom.

01:07:13.000 | And you use everything on your phone or on your tablet or on your laptop, just like normal.

01:07:17.000 | You don't even realize you're going to through a VPN, but you are.

01:07:20.000 | So you need really easy software. ExpressVPN has all three of those things.

01:07:24.000 | So you should have a VPN. ExpressVPN is a service you should use.

01:07:29.000 | Here's the good news. You can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN free at ExpressVPN.com/deep.

01:07:36.000 | Remember, you have to do the slash deep to get the extra months free.

01:07:40.000 | That's ExpressVPN.com/deep ExpressVPN.com/deep.

01:07:46.000 | All right, Skeleton Christmas Jesse, or is it Jesse Christmas Skeleton?

01:07:50.000 | What are we calling this year? Jesse Christmas Skeleton.

01:07:54.000 | All right, Jesse Christmas Skeleton. Let's do two more quick questions here.

01:07:57.000 | The first one comes from Alessandro, a professor from Brazil.

01:08:03.000 | Alessandro says, does slow productivity principles apply only to knowledge workers?

01:08:09.000 | That's a good question. Those principles are still being developed.

01:08:11.000 | I'm actually probably less than a week away of submitting my manuscript for my slow productivity book.

01:08:19.000 | So I'm kind of excited about that. That means my thinking on slow productivity has now evolved to its next phase.

01:08:26.000 | For those who are interested at this early point, we're looking now for probably a February 2024 release.

01:08:33.000 | So about a year from now, this book should be coming out.

01:08:37.000 | So the principles of slow productivity I discuss in that book, do fewer things, working at a natural pace,

01:08:44.000 | obsessing over quality, are targeted, roughly speaking, at knowledge workers.

01:08:50.000 | If I want to be a little bit more general, the philosophy that I'm developing applies to those who

01:08:57.000 | autonomously apply skill to create new artifacts that have enhanced value.

01:09:02.000 | So this covers what we could think of as traditional knowledge workers like artists or artisans or writers or scientists,

01:09:08.000 | as well as what we might think of as more modern knowledge workers.

01:09:11.000 | You're a computer programmer, you're a copywriter, you run a freelance business that sells an informational product.

01:09:18.000 | So we have this broad notion of people who have skill and some autonomy in how they apply that skill.

01:09:23.000 | This is who I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about slow productivity.

01:09:28.000 | This is the group for which I think doing fewer things, working at a natural pace, obsessing over quality is a path forward that is incredibly sustainable.

01:09:37.000 | It doesn't burn you out, but it also can produce really important, meaningful, high impact work.

01:09:43.000 | It's that sweet spot. It's how I think most knowledge works should actually be organized.

01:09:48.000 | This doesn't apply, for example, to those who work in highly rote or non-skilled jobs.

01:09:55.000 | It also doesn't work for those who have highly structured jobs.

01:09:58.000 | So you're an ER doctor. There's a very little autonomy in sense of how you manage your day or apply your skill.

01:10:04.000 | It's here's the board. Here's who's next. It's hair on fire. Go, go, go until your shift is over.

01:10:09.000 | So it doesn't apply to everybody. But those who have some autonomy and applying skill to create new artifacts with value,

01:10:14.000 | be them informational or physical, I think slow productivity can play a role.

01:10:19.000 | So I'll, of course, talk more about this book as we get closer, but basically part one of this book, I explain how the notion of productivity and knowledge work has just spiraled into out of control.

01:10:30.000 | It's not a sensical definition. It's not a definition that produces a lot of value.

01:10:35.000 | It it's almost accidental. I'm really getting that history.

01:10:39.000 | And then I argue what we need, then, is an alternative that's way more intentional.

01:10:43.000 | Slow productivity is that that alternative. It builds on some of the foundational ideas of other slow movements and applies it to the notion of slow productivity.

01:10:51.000 | And then we really get deep on those principles. It's going to be a cool book, but we still have a year.

01:10:55.000 | So let's we'll sort of temper our excitement for this book for now.

01:11:00.000 | There's a lot of time until it's really ready to come out.

01:11:04.000 | All right. One last question. This comes from Diamond Michael, a writer from Denver.

01:11:09.000 | So question 13, 13 questions for 2023. This is question 13.

01:11:15.000 | Diamond Michael says, over the years, I have had numerous situations where I've tried to launch a freelance business idea with little or no capital at the point in which the resulting financial scarcity becomes too much to bear.

01:11:27.000 | I resort to a regular full time or part time job in order to yield a steady income.

01:11:32.000 | The problem is, it seems like the more well paying my job, the greater the expectation in terms of work hours and energy investment.

01:11:37.000 | This in turn reduces my time and energy bandwidth to devote to the deep work tied to what I, quote unquote, want to be doing.

01:11:43.000 | So I'm curious as to whether what your advice is in resolving this dilemma, where my energy and attention are directed in two different directions.

01:11:51.000 | All right, so Diamond Michael, we have to get way more systematic about what you're doing here.

01:11:55.000 | Two pieces of advice to offer. First is going to be the piece of advice we've been saying throughout this entire episode.

01:12:01.000 | Lifestyle centric career planning.

01:12:04.000 | You are throwing energetic darts at the wall here.

01:12:09.000 | You're like, I don't like my job. Like, let me just quit and do the side hustle.

01:12:12.000 | Oh, the side hustle is not working. I need a job. What's the highest paying job?

01:12:15.000 | I guess I'll take that job. You're just bouncing back and forth.

01:12:19.000 | Sort of instinctual grabs from one thing to another.

01:12:23.000 | Let's get more systematic.

01:12:25.000 | Develop a clear vision of what you think a life well lived looks like. All the different aspects of your lifestyle, the properties of your work, but the properties of where you live, your community, the different types of things you're involved in.

01:12:36.000 | All of the attributes of a lifestyle vision that really resonates.

01:12:40.000 | Get this really clear. And then figure out pragmatic paths to get there.

01:12:45.000 | This will inform what you need out of your job.

01:12:50.000 | Where you're going to live, what your lifestyle is like, how much that cost, what type of properties you get out of your work.

01:12:55.000 | This will help inform what type of job you need.

01:12:58.000 | That's where you might figure out, wait a second, I can use my expertise to get a freelance position in the same industry.

01:13:04.000 | Allows me to move here, ski 50 days, you know, 50 weeks a year, not 50 weeks a year, 50 days a year.

01:13:10.000 | I don't know. 50 days a year.

01:13:13.000 | And have flexibility. Great. This is the right path forward to my lifestyle.

01:13:17.000 | Or like I need a whole other, I need to leave my industry altogether and start my own business.

01:13:21.000 | This is what's going to help you answer that question.

01:13:23.000 | Because I think what's happening now is you're just fetishizing the idea of a side hustle as being drastically different than what you don't like about your job.

01:13:29.000 | And if it's drastically different than what you don't like, then maybe you'll drastically like it.

01:13:34.000 | That syllogism is flawed.

01:13:37.000 | You need to be working backwards from a specific lifestyle.

01:13:40.000 | Detailed in terms of properties of your life, attributes of your life.

01:13:44.000 | And figure out a career strategy that matches that.

01:13:47.000 | If it turns out after you do this calculus that starting your own business.

01:13:51.000 | Or having a side hustle that allows you to really pull back on your current work.

01:13:57.000 | And it makes the ends meet.

01:13:59.000 | Oh, I could be freelance twice a week.

01:14:01.000 | That's not quite enough money, but if I had a side hustle generating $30,000 a year, now the numbers work fine.

01:14:05.000 | If you need some sort of side hustle or full-time business to make this vision work,

01:14:09.000 | then we're going to get to my second piece of advice, which comes from my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You.

01:14:14.000 | Which is the notion of using money as a neutral indicator of value.

01:14:20.000 | You don't quit your job until the new thing is making enough money that you don't have to worry about money when you quit your job.

01:14:28.000 | Now it can still grow more when you give it more attention, but it has to prove itself.

01:14:32.000 | Your side hustle or business idea has to prove itself by generating money.

01:14:36.000 | People will always tell you, "What a great idea, Diamond Michael."

01:14:40.000 | Great, do it. Follow your passion. You be you.

01:14:44.000 | It's easy to give compliments.

01:14:46.000 | What's hard is to get people to give you money.

01:14:49.000 | They will not give you money unless they actually like what you're offering.

01:14:51.000 | So use money as your neutral indicator of value.

01:14:54.000 | When your business or side hustle idea is generating sufficient money to support you,

01:14:59.000 | then you make the change in your other job.

01:15:02.000 | And if it's not, that means it's not a good business.

01:15:04.000 | It's not a successful side hustle.

01:15:07.000 | Don't flee that feedback.

01:15:10.000 | That's the most realistic feedback you're going to get on the viability of your option.

01:15:13.000 | All right, so those are my two pieces of advice.

01:15:16.000 | Do lifestyle-centered career planning instead of action-based career planning.

01:15:20.000 | Quitting will be exciting. Disruption will be exciting.

01:15:23.000 | My own job is better than one where I work. That's action-based career planning.

01:15:26.000 | That's just giving into your gut and fleeting emotions in the moment.

01:15:30.000 | Be more systematic.

01:15:31.000 | And if that plan does point towards the need for you doing something on the side or something on your own,

01:15:36.000 | let money be your neutral indicator of value.

01:15:38.000 | If people aren't paying you for it, it's not a good idea, no matter how much you think it is your dream.

01:15:44.000 | All right, Jesse Christmas Skeleton, I think that's all the time we have for today.

01:15:48.000 | Any closing words of wisdom?

01:15:51.000 | Skeleton.

01:15:53.000 | All right, I promise everyone before you not only delete this podcast from your phone,

01:15:58.000 | but actually smash your phone and have the pieces dissolved in a bat of acid.

01:16:02.000 | Jesse will be back next week. There will be no skeleton.

01:16:05.000 | We'll get away from this nonsense. We'll get back to a normal episode.

01:16:08.000 | But until then, as always, stay deep.

01:16:13.000 | [MUSIC]

Ep. 229: Developing Discipline

Chapters