The Productivity System To Win At Anything - Achieve More By Doing Less

00:00:00.000 | So today, I want to tell you the story of the singer Jewel and how she became famous.

00:00:04.720 | Not because this story is fascinating, though it is, but because it highlights a key principle

00:00:10.320 | from my book, Slow Productivity, about how to move your professional life away from busyness

00:00:16.800 | and toward producing results that matter. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell Jewel's story

00:00:22.640 | and then I'm going to draw concrete lessons from her story that you can apply in your specific job.

00:00:27.440 | I'll give you specific examples about how you might put these lessons into practice. I'll end

00:00:31.280 | with a couple of common pitfalls that afflict a lot of people who attempt to escape busyness

00:00:37.200 | and fail to do so. All right, so let's start with Jewel. Jewel has an interesting origin story. I

00:00:45.680 | went deep on this when researching Slow Productivity just because I found it fascinating.

00:00:50.720 | She grew up in rural Alaska, Homer, Alaska, to be more precise, and she was part of a family

00:00:58.000 | that were traveling musicians. So she was part of a family traveling musician troupe.

00:01:04.000 | They have Swiss heritage, so she learned how to yodel at an early age, which actually gave her

00:01:08.560 | really interesting vocal control, which she really leveraged, I think, later on in her style.

00:01:15.360 | At some point, her mom leaves the family, so it's just her and her dad and her brother,

00:01:18.880 | and they're touring, and they're touring some pretty rough places. These are not

00:01:21.760 | the Von Trapp family singers. We're talking biker bars. We're talking rural interior Alaska

00:01:27.760 | doing shows. We're talking not so great hotels, right? So she sort of had this rough upbringing.

00:01:33.440 | There's a part in her story where she's living in Homer, Alaska, and commuting to her job in town.

00:01:38.800 | She lived in a cabin by a lake somewhere. She commuted to her job in town on a horse.

00:01:45.760 | She didn't have a driver's license, and a horse was an easier way to get over the rough terrain,

00:01:50.720 | right? So this is Jewel, this prodigious singer in this really unusual, rough childhood.

00:01:57.120 | So in the town of Homer, she comes across someone who is visiting from the Interlochen Academy. This

00:02:06.080 | is a really well-known arts academy in Michigan, and he recognizes her talent and says, "Look,

00:02:12.240 | we have scholarships. You should come formally study how to sing at this arts academy. I'll show

00:02:20.000 | you how to do it. I'll record your audition tape, and I'll walk you through the application process."

00:02:24.720 | This was all foreign to Jewel, and he walks her through, and she gets accepted. They raise money

00:02:30.400 | in the town. They don't give you money. You have to raise money just to get the plane tickets

00:02:33.280 | to get to Michigan to go. It's a beautiful academy. It's spread out over this big

00:02:39.840 | acreage. You sort of walk through the woods between buildings. It's a beautiful place.

00:02:43.280 | She shows up there, fish out of water. It's an understatement. Almost immediately, the dean calls

00:02:50.720 | her into his office and says, "Jewel, you can't walk around with a hunting knife strapped to your

00:02:56.480 | leg." See, to Jewel from rural Alaska, of course, you're going to have a knife with you. It's very

00:03:01.840 | useful. You wouldn't be anywhere without your knife, and he had to sort of kindly tell her,

00:03:05.280 | "All right, here in suburban Michigan, you don't walk around with a large knife strapped to your

00:03:10.160 | leg." Anyways, she gets formal training. She becomes a better singer. She becomes more exposed

00:03:16.560 | to music. She can't afford to go home during the breaks, so she begins hitchhiking, doing these

00:03:22.560 | long trips during the breaks with her guitar, and she begins songwriting. She begins to write

00:03:26.480 | some songs that become some of her best-known songs from her initial debut album that will

00:03:32.720 | come much later, right? So we have this interesting story. She makes her way to San Diego. Her mom's

00:03:37.520 | there. They're living together for a while. They lose the house. She moves into her car. She's not

00:03:42.400 | doing great, but she has this prodigious talent. It's rough, but this prodigious talent in singing,

00:03:49.360 | living out of her car in San Diego. She comes across a coffee house, the interchange coffee

00:03:55.440 | house. That coffee house is sort of struggling. She talks to the owner, Nancy, and says, "Look,

00:04:00.320 | let me make you a deal. I'm going to perform here, just here, me and my guitar, and just give me a

00:04:06.400 | cut of the proceeds. I think that could help me out, and I think it could help your store actually

00:04:13.360 | grow." So Jewel forms what's essentially a residency at this small coffee house, and she

00:04:19.440 | just goes to promote her shows. She busks on the San Diego beachfront. When people come up to hear

00:04:25.520 | a player to put a dollar in her guitar case, she says, "Hey, come to my show." The first show,

00:04:29.760 | her memory is somewhere between two to four people showed up. Two to four surfers she met

00:04:34.480 | who thought she was cute on the beach, and they showed up. That was it. But she played her heart

00:04:38.880 | out because she had all this pain. I mean, I talk about this in Slow Productivity that Jewel is

00:04:45.120 | defined by these intertwined forces of talent and pain. She can sing, but there's a real heart to

00:04:53.440 | it. So she begins doing these epic performances that are like hours long. It's a lot of original

00:04:58.880 | songs, some covers. She's really burying her soul. They're emotional. People are crying.

00:05:04.240 | So the word gets out, like, "What the hell? What's going on? There's something special.

00:05:08.160 | It's rough, but there's something special going on here." She recalls there being basically

00:05:12.080 | exponential growth. There's two people, then four people, then eight people, then 16 people.

00:05:15.920 | After a few months, people are spilling out onto the sidewalk outside of the interchange coffee

00:05:20.400 | house. They have to put up speakers outside just so you can hear the show if you can actually get

00:05:26.080 | in. Word gets out to the record executives, and they start showing up. They're like, "Okay,

00:05:32.000 | there's something special here." They begin flying her to meetings, like, "Okay, we want to talk to

00:05:36.640 | you about signing with us because, look, clearly you have talent, and we don't want you to go to

00:05:41.040 | another record label." Finally, the record executive sits her down. This is where the story is where

00:05:46.160 | we're going to start to intersect with Slow Productivity here. Sits her down and says,

00:05:49.920 | "Okay, I'm putting this on the table right now, a million-dollar signing bonus." Remember,

00:05:56.000 | this is the '90s, early '90s, a million dollars is a lot of money. Still is today, but even then,

00:06:00.080 | a lot of money. Jewel's living in her car, a million dollars on the table. She's like, "All

00:06:05.680 | right, let me go think about this." She's a fighter. She's incredibly self-reliant, right?

00:06:11.360 | She's like, "Hold on. Let me think about this." She goes to the library and gets out a book from

00:06:17.040 | the library about how to succeed. Not even how to succeed. I think it was just how the music

00:06:21.680 | industry works. With the help of the fact checker with my book, we tracked down the actual title of

00:06:26.400 | the book. She got it wrong in the interviews, but we found the real book she was talking about.

00:06:29.440 | It's like a guidebook to the music industry. She looks into this and she says, "Okay,

00:06:36.320 | how do these signing bonuses work?" "Oh, they're in advance. They're in advance on the royalties

00:06:41.760 | you're going to make, so they give you a million dollars up front. The first million dollars you

00:06:45.360 | make goes to paying that back. Then after you pay it back, you get to keep any royalties beyond

00:06:50.640 | there. It's a standard advance set up. It's how books work as well, by the way. You get an advance

00:06:54.320 | on royalties and only after you pay back your advance do you actually earn any further royalties."

00:07:00.400 | She looks this up. She thinks about it. She goes back to the record executive

00:07:04.160 | and she says, "No, thank you." She turns down a million dollars. She's living in her car. She

00:07:09.920 | turns down a million dollars. So what's going on here? Well, Jewel, we really have to give her

00:07:17.040 | credit for this. She recognized that she had real talent, but also she was rough. Her only performance

00:07:25.680 | experience as a solo singer songwriter, not as playing Yodeling with her family or whatever,

00:07:31.840 | but as a solo singer songwriter, her only experience was really playing in the Interchange

00:07:36.640 | Coffeehouse and a few other shows that she had done with friends. She knew if she'd accepted

00:07:40.960 | a million dollar signing bonus, the record label is going to say, "We have to go all in right away.

00:07:45.680 | We need that money back. Let's throw you out there and see if you can become a superstar right away

00:07:51.360 | and make back the money. If you don't, I'm sorry, you're gone." That would have been her chance.

00:07:55.680 | She thought, "I'm not ready for that yet. I need to learn how to get better at this,

00:08:02.560 | how to harness my craft." Her logic was absolutely right. If I don't cost the record label a lot of

00:08:08.720 | money, they won't care enough to kick me off the label if I'm not doing something right off the

00:08:16.400 | bat. They will let me stay as a signed musician performing and recording as long as I don't cost

00:08:23.200 | them a lot of money. I need that time. She had a phrase she had learned from her grandmother,

00:08:29.360 | "Hard wood grows slowly." She needed that time. She realized if she was going to be a real star,

00:08:36.080 | she needed time to get there. She said, "No million dollars."

00:08:41.120 | And then, oh, she's so clever. Such a shrewd sort of practicality in Jewel. She says, "But what we

00:08:48.400 | can do because I know they felt bad." She's turning down a million dollars. She said, "Well,

00:08:53.600 | why don't we just make my back end higher? So if I do sell a lot of records, I'm going to make more

00:09:01.120 | money." And they're thinking, "Oh, look, she's probably not going to happen. This is great.

00:09:05.280 | She's so cheap." So she gets a bigger back end than normal, which is going to pay her back

00:09:10.240 | handsomely in the future. Anyway, so now she's signed. Now she's signed, small advance, big back

00:09:16.480 | end, and she has to go record this album. And she was absolutely right. She wasn't ready to be a

00:09:21.520 | star. So she's thinking, and I love the details of this because it reminds me of what it's like and

00:09:27.040 | the complexities of ambition and actually living up to ambition. My whole life is defined by this

00:09:33.360 | at a much smaller scale, the ambition and the failures to fully reach that ambition and the

00:09:38.160 | glimpses of real success that are followed by the frustrations. So she wants to do something special

00:09:43.760 | and she turns down. They're giving her all these producers, the record labels, like, "Here's a

00:09:47.920 | hotshot pop producer. Here's another hotshot pop producer." She's like, "That's not what I want to

00:09:51.680 | do. Here's what I want to do. Neil Young's producer, whoever produced Harvest." Hey,

00:09:58.400 | quick interruption. If you want my free guide with my seven best ideas on how to cultivate

00:10:05.360 | the deep life, go to calnewport.com/ideas or click the link right below in the description.

00:10:12.880 | This is a great way to take action on the type of things we talk about here on the show.

00:10:18.160 | All right, let's get back to it. I love that sound. That's what I want to do.

00:10:21.280 | They're like, "Okay. I mean, this is weird. It's like the '90s. It's like Lisa Loeb.

00:10:26.320 | Pop punk is coming out of the grunge era at this point. You want to do a Neil Young? Okay."

00:10:32.560 | You know, they're like, "Okay, whatever. It's not costing us much money. Whatever you want to do."

00:10:35.920 | And she goes actually out to Neil Young's ranch, records her album with the Stray Gators,

00:10:41.600 | with Neil Young's band in Northern California and his ranch with his producer,

00:10:47.360 | and they record her first album. It's not great because the problem is, and she was right,

00:10:53.120 | she was nervous. All of her performance experience was her alone in a coffee shop,

00:10:57.680 | and now she's playing with the Stray Gators with Neil Young's backing band. She's nervous about

00:11:02.400 | this, and it shows. It's tentative, right? I mean, it's like, "Okay. The songs are okay."

00:11:09.200 | She had a good collection of songs from traveling and hitchhiking while she was at Interlochen,

00:11:13.200 | but it was nervous. They weren't great. The album comes out and not much happens. This thing is not

00:11:17.360 | selling. If she had done the million-dollar signing bonus, this is where they would have been

00:11:20.880 | like, "You're out of here." In fact, they wouldn't even let her have this experimentation. They would

00:11:26.240 | have made her done probably a real poppy type of album, like, "Let's get right after it." It

00:11:32.800 | wouldn't have worked, but she didn't cost them any money. It's like, "All right. We're not going to

00:11:37.200 | drop you. Why don't you go? I guess you can tour." She's like, "I'm going to tour really cheap. No

00:11:41.920 | van, no bus, a car, and I'll just drive along myself and tour really cheap." In fact, for a

00:11:50.800 | while, she was even performing with a group called Earth Jam that would perform, and I'm not kidding

00:11:56.720 | you here, environmentally-themed concerts for high schools during the day in exchange for them

00:12:03.520 | giving her transportation to her gigs at night. She was costing people nothing, performing,

00:12:10.640 | getting experience, starting a lot of college shows, a lot of live performances on college

00:12:15.440 | radio, playing at colleges. Really there, that vibe is where she began to pick up her confidence.

00:12:20.880 | She did this for like a year of this going on, finally getting the training she needs to figure

00:12:25.760 | out, "How do I do this? How do I perform? How do I be more of a star and not just a coffee shop

00:12:31.280 | crooner?" Then she goes back and says, "Okay, let me re-record what I think could be a really big

00:12:38.960 | song, 'You Were Meant For Me.' I was nervous. I was reporting this with the Stray Gators. I feel

00:12:42.960 | better now." She goes back and re-records it. She has her friend from California, Flea,

00:12:48.160 | the bassist from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, plays on that new re-recording.

00:12:52.640 | Now, this one's working. It's more confidence, more sultry. Finally, things start to happen.

00:12:58.400 | She begins with all her college touring to show up on the college charts. From there,

00:13:03.360 | "Who Will Save Your Soul" starts to kind of make a move. It's kind of peaking up and people are

00:13:07.360 | listening to it here and there. Then she records this great video for her newly re-recorded version

00:13:12.000 | of "You Were Meant For Me," and that just explodes on MTV. She's ready for it now. We're like a year

00:13:17.280 | and a half out from her turning down a million dollars. She's ready for it now. That album,

00:13:21.760 | "Pieces of You," just explodes. Remember, she's getting extra backend, so the money is flying at

00:13:29.680 | her. Anyway, that's what happens with Jewel. What's the lesson here? Well, there's a principle

00:13:37.680 | in slow productivity that is titled "obsess over quality." Jewel's story gets to why this is

00:13:49.040 | important. See, when you obsess over quality, "I want to do something really well," escaping

00:13:56.960 | busyness and moving towards something more slow and sustainable becomes inevitable. It becomes

00:14:05.520 | natural. It becomes what's attractive to you. When you're not obsessed over doing something

00:14:09.200 | really well, there's an appeal to the busy and the frenetic because it's something to do.

00:14:15.120 | You feel like, "I'm making moves. I'm jumping on calls. I have all these plans. I'm on Slack

00:14:20.240 | channels telling everyone things. I'm putting up videos of this over on TikTok." There is a

00:14:25.520 | warmth from the heat generated by the friction of freneticism,

00:14:29.440 | but that warmth doesn't turn into real fires. It's not hot enough, but on the other hand,

00:14:35.840 | when you say, "No, no, I want to do something really well. I want to produce an album that's

00:14:39.680 | going to explode," I have to slow down because I need to get better. I need to get really good.

00:14:46.480 | So I'm going to get a small record deal to have the record label leave me alone so I can just

00:14:50.400 | spend a year and a half touring and finding myself, finding my voice, getting advice,

00:14:54.880 | going back, re-recording, tinkering. She did a couple other versions of "You Were Meant for Me,"

00:14:58.720 | by the way, including a real poppy version with a top pop producer that was no good.

00:15:07.520 | I've heard it. It's no good. She needed time and she had to slow down.

00:15:13.280 | So when we try to parabolize this to our lives, not as singers, but as just knowledge workers

00:15:19.840 | doing whatever we do, accepting the million dollars is like the busyness, just like running

00:15:24.400 | around and doing everything. Turning down the million dollars and taking your time to figure

00:15:28.240 | out how to be a performer, that's slowing down. So that's the first lesson from Jewel's story.

00:15:33.440 | Once you begin prioritizing doing something really well, the only thing that feels natural

00:15:38.160 | then is being less busy. The focus of quality is the antithesis of freneticism.

00:15:51.520 | But there's a second lesson in here as well. So if we return to Jewel, what happens? Well,

00:15:56.560 | that album "Pieces of You" is just crazy. She makes a lot of money. How do we know she makes

00:16:02.640 | a lot of money? We know because for an unfortunate reason, there's this unfortunate side note to Jewel's

00:16:09.360 | story that her mom comes back into her life and basically takes over as her manager. We've heard

00:16:16.560 | this story before. This is the Colonel and Elvis. Look, there's nothing here that's that unusual.

00:16:24.160 | Anyways, she steals a lot of Jewel's money. She steals a lot of her money. Eventually,

00:16:29.760 | there's a lawsuit. Jewel steals her mom. The only reason why that's relevant to us is in that

00:16:33.360 | lawsuit an amount is named. So we get a sense of how successful Jewel was with these initial albums.

00:16:39.440 | The specific number she cited that her mom stole from her was $200 million.

00:16:43.680 | So if it's possible for someone to steal $200 million for you, you're probably doing from a

00:16:51.120 | financial perspective. And again, I'm not an expert on this, but I would say pretty well.

00:16:55.760 | Okay. So she's getting very successful. There's this whole mechanism now that surrounds her.

00:17:00.720 | The better you get at doing something you love, the more the world conspires to try to prevent

00:17:06.240 | you from doing that thing. That's an axiom that all creatives know. This happens to Jewel.

00:17:11.600 | So they send her on an international tour, exhausting, a Taylor Swift type thing. She

00:17:17.520 | comes back from the tour and now her agents are saying, "Okay, you're young and attractive. You

00:17:25.680 | need to do movies too. So move to Hollywood. Get her in the Devil's Backbone and Ang Lee movie.

00:17:31.120 | Here's the plan. Move to LA. We're going to do international tour movies. International

00:17:35.040 | tour movies. You're going to be a multimedia mogul star." And Jewel says, "Well, wait a second. What

00:17:42.240 | do I want to do? I want to produce great music. I don't worry about money. I have plenty of money.

00:17:46.320 | I want to produce great music." "No, thank you." Never does an international tour again,

00:17:52.640 | leaves the movie business, does not settle in LA, goes to a ranch in Texas with her boyfriend,

00:17:58.400 | who was a rodeo rider, and just writes music. So there's another lesson in there. And again,

00:18:05.040 | I'm trying to parabolize this and the lessons are going to be relevant to us who are not

00:18:08.000 | really fancy and successful movie stars. The lesson here is that by getting really good at

00:18:15.360 | something, Jewel was able to gain autonomy over what her work was like. So getting good at

00:18:21.840 | something enables slowness. So as you quest to get good, lesson number one, you crave slowness.

00:18:28.400 | As you get better at things, lesson number two, you gain the autonomy to actually enforce more

00:18:33.760 | slowness in your life. Jewel is a very successful musician, so she could basically say, "No,

00:18:38.080 | I don't want to do this other stuff. I just want to write music. I have enough money. I have enough

00:18:43.520 | F.U. money to say, 'No, I'm going to shape what my life is like,' and I want it to be slow."

00:18:50.400 | So we've got these great two lessons in here. Quality makes slowness something that is necessary

00:18:57.520 | and appealing. The pursuit of quality also eventually makes slowness something that you

00:19:01.680 | can more easily enforce or maintain in your life. So we have a virtuous flywheel here. It's why I

00:19:07.440 | call this last principle, obsess over quality, the glue that holds all the other principles of

00:19:12.000 | slow productivity together, because it makes the other ideas possible. The other ideas are about

00:19:18.560 | doing fewer things and working at a more natural pace. The obsession over quality

00:19:22.240 | really makes that much more possible. All right, so let's try to apply this to a normal knowledge

00:19:28.720 | work job. What is the template we want to apply if you're a marketing director or a programmer and

00:19:35.200 | not a music superstar? Well, think about it this way. One, figure out what you do best

00:19:43.760 | or what you could do that's going to be the most valuable for your sector or organization.

00:19:50.400 | We often skip over this step, but it's really hard sometimes to figure out what really matters.

00:19:56.240 | What is our equivalent of Jewel's performance singing ability? It's not always obvious in

00:20:02.080 | non-specifically creative careers, so we have to go find it. And then once we find up, we have to

00:20:08.720 | create our equivalent of Jewel's training regime. She spent a year and a half on the road figuring

00:20:12.880 | out, "How do I perform? How do I find my voice? What is my voice? How do I translate what I was

00:20:19.840 | doing in the interchange coffeehouse into something that translates to a CD that's

00:20:23.440 | going to MTV? I'm going to work on that craft." Well, you have to have a similar training regime

00:20:28.560 | where you haven't just identified, "Here's what matters in my job," but you know how you're

00:20:32.880 | getting after that, how you're improving that. And then three, as you get more successful,

00:20:37.840 | cash that in to gain more autonomy over your work so that you can have whatever level or definition

00:20:42.880 | of slowness appeals to you. So you can step away from busyness and keep your work crafted

00:20:48.480 | around the things that really resonate. That's hard as well. That's hard as well because,

00:20:55.680 | well, as you get better, people aren't going to be offering you to do less.

00:21:00.000 | So you're going to have to actually make that call yourself. So let's look at some concrete

00:21:05.600 | examples here. Let's go back to I mentioned marketing director. What might this dual

00:21:10.480 | strategy look like, obsessing over quality, look like if you're a marketing director?

00:21:13.600 | Well, maybe what you realize is, okay, when you get measurement-based,

00:21:19.920 | you can really get fine-tuned about figuring out what marketing efforts work and what don't,

00:21:25.360 | how to lean in heavily on the things that work and away from the things that don't.

00:21:29.600 | And so maybe you decide, "I'm going to become ruthlessly measurement-based in designing of

00:21:33.360 | my marketing strategies, even if this is kind of scary because I'm not just doing here's a standard

00:21:37.760 | mix of things. You can't really get mad at me. I'm doing sort of the right things." Like, "No,

00:21:41.520 | I'm ruthlessly measurement-based. I'm learning these measurement tools.

00:21:45.600 | I'm trusting the data. I'm pushing the things that are working well beyond what is normal."

00:21:50.640 | And maybe as a result, by doing this, your campaigns are unusual and innovative and very

00:21:58.640 | successful. So you figured out what's important. My campaign's working and a training regime for

00:22:04.400 | getting there. I'm going to do this sort of leaning into evidence-based in this example.

00:22:07.280 | Now you have to use that success to gain autonomy. So now imagine you say, "Okay,

00:22:12.000 | I'm really desirable in this sector. I'm leaving my company to go freelance. You can hire me to

00:22:16.480 | run the marketing for your particular whatever it is, product or launch or whatever.

00:22:21.680 | And I'm going to charge a good amount of money because I'm really good at this.

00:22:26.800 | I can back it up and I'm going to do this eight months a year. Four months a year,

00:22:30.160 | I don't take contracts. That's just the deal. So if your contract overlaps those four months,

00:22:35.520 | I just can't do it." Imagine that now. Now you've created this really nice sort of slow rhythm where

00:22:42.720 | you're doing great work. You have four months a year, you're not working at all. I mean,

00:22:45.680 | you could just imagine in this daydream here how you've escaped just being like a lower-level

00:22:50.640 | marketing director that they don't really trust. They're bothering you with emails and you're

00:22:54.320 | working all the time and you're always worried about your job. All right, what about if you're

00:22:57.200 | a programmer? Let's give another concrete example here. Maybe you really look around and say, "Oh,

00:23:02.080 | this particular specialty is incredibly valuable right now." Maybe it's like API development for

00:23:09.840 | platforms, or maybe it's something in the AI space, like you're very comfortable

00:23:16.640 | working with the ML libraries for Google. I'm very comfortable working with

00:23:23.840 | doing efficient training code for neural nets or something like that. You figure out like,

00:23:30.880 | "This is the thing that's really valuable. We don't have a good person for this. These people

00:23:34.800 | are really desirable." And you just work an hour a day. You train yourself. You read and do sample

00:23:40.320 | projects. You're just doing this, forcing yourself to get better and better and better at this.

00:23:46.320 | And as you get better and better, you eventually be considered a 10X programmer.

00:23:51.440 | Your salary jumps up. Maybe you begin to dictate more the terms of how your work happens. I do one

00:23:58.080 | project at a time. I take sabbaticals every three years. They're just happy to have you because they

00:24:02.320 | don't want the other team to have you. Completely different, less busy life. You can dictate the

00:24:06.320 | terms. Those are just some concrete examples of what I'm trying to show you here is that

00:24:10.480 | this dual strategy of figuring out what matters, systematically pursuing it, leveraging success to

00:24:17.440 | gain autonomy and to move away from busyness and towards something more meaningful really can apply

00:24:22.160 | to many different jobs. All right. So what are the pitfalls here that you want to avoid? I have

00:24:25.840 | three real quick I want to mention. This first one actually came up in my conversation with Ryan

00:24:31.760 | Holiday when I did his podcast recently to talk about slow productivity because it was actually

00:24:36.640 | an idea of his that we sort of riffed on. And this was this idea of you want to make sure that

00:24:41.440 | you're not playing the wrong game. So one of the biggest pitfalls is like, look, I want to do really

00:24:47.440 | well, but you're doing well at the wrong game. And the example he gave, which I think is a good one,

00:24:52.800 | is focusing on pleasing over impressing. And he said, OK, here's what I want to do

00:24:58.400 | is I'm going to be super responsive. Like I make everyone else's life easier. You need something,

00:25:04.160 | I'll do it. Even if I have to stay up late, I'll answer your emails right away.

00:25:07.840 | Like my job is to reduce stress in everybody else's life. And people will love you for that.

00:25:12.240 | But they won't respect you for that. You're not going to gain yourself autonomy or leverage doing

00:25:18.400 | that. You're going to you're going to gain yourself a lot more work. Now, consider the

00:25:22.720 | other game to play, which is I want to impress all these people. It's not impressive to be super

00:25:27.440 | responsive and to do what it takes to get these small things done. It's not impressive. It's

00:25:32.400 | useful to them. Impressive is I can program these transformer matrix manipulations for this AI thing

00:25:39.440 | better than anyone else, you know, and it gives us a 10x speed up in the training when I do it,

00:25:44.080 | when I'm on the team and I'm like fine with email. I'm kind of you know, I'm not like a jerk about

00:25:49.760 | it, but I'm I'm not like great at the small things you give me, but I can do this really

00:25:53.280 | well. And that's really impressive. That is much more valuable. Playing the game of being

00:25:57.760 | impressive instead of playing the game of pleasing people. Pitfall number two has to do with the

00:26:04.880 | training aspect. Right? So these pitfalls, by the way, correspond to the three part lessons of the

00:26:12.960 | first part was figure out what you do best. Playing the wrong game is a pitfall about getting that

00:26:16.720 | wrong. The second part of our three step system was create a training regime. So the pitfall here

00:26:21.200 | is what I call going on fun runs instead of interval training. Right? So like when people

00:26:26.160 | want to become a better runner, they're amateur runners, they want to just like go for 5k runs

00:26:32.320 | and blast music and kind of like go fast at the end and work up a sweat, but never really do

00:26:36.720 | anything that hard. Right? Whereas like serious runners like no, no, no, I'm either doing 10 mile

00:26:41.120 | runs to build up my aerobic base, or I'm doing vomit inducing intervals to get my speed up.

00:26:46.000 | It's not fun. Right? The professional runners are doing the stuff you really need to do to get

00:26:51.760 | better. The amateur runners are doing the stuff that they they want to do. So they kind of tell

00:26:55.600 | the story that that's what's important. Same thing happens with knowledge or professional skills all

00:26:59.920 | the time. We write a story about what we want to do, because we like the idea of like, I spent 30

00:27:05.200 | minutes doing this you to me course on programming every day, I can find time for it. It's not too

00:27:10.640 | hard, but it makes me feel productive. We write stories about what we want to be important.

00:27:15.280 | Instead of figuring out the things that actually matter. And almost always the things that

00:27:20.320 | actually matter aren't fun, you have to learn to actually get the pleasure out of doing the

00:27:23.600 | hard thing other people won't do. Athletes know this. You have to you have to alchemize

00:27:29.520 | intense discomfort of certain training, I can't understand this math, but I'm going to crack it.

00:27:35.120 | alchemize that into fulfillment. Yeah, other people are going to give up. I'm not.

00:27:39.360 | I'm not going to give up here. All right, the third pitfall here. So when it comes to using

00:27:46.000 | success to gain more autonomy, the pitfall here is what I call the control trap. This was in my

00:27:50.240 | book so good, they can't ignore you. The control trap. The control trap basically says, as you get

00:27:57.360 | good enough to gain control over your career, and the potentially use this to gain more autonomy

00:28:01.600 | to gain more slowness, that is exactly the time where you're going to be presented with all of

00:28:05.680 | these really flattering opportunities to get paid more and get more whatever respect, I guess,

00:28:12.720 | like more clout in your field, in exchange for having a busier, more frenetic job.

00:28:17.840 | Like as soon as you get good enough to be able to demand slowness,

00:28:21.280 | people will start offering you fastness on the most appealing platters you've seen.

00:28:25.040 | Hey, good news. You could be a managing partner at our law firm. Like, oh, man, that's hard.

00:28:30.880 | And that, you know, that pays a lot of money. Yeah, that's definitely what I want to do.

00:28:35.280 | By the way, it's twice to work, you know, so as you get really good at something,

00:28:41.520 | people don't come to you and say, hey, you're really good. You want to like chill?

00:28:45.280 | Like we'll pay you the same amount of money and you can work half the time if you want.

00:28:48.640 | They don't say that. They say, how about we double the money and double the amount of work you do?

00:28:52.080 | That's the control trap. So you're going to have to fight against the grain.

00:28:57.120 | No one is going to hold your hand, applying your hard won leverage in the market to try

00:29:03.680 | to make your life slower. No one wants you to be slower. You have to be the one to demand

00:29:08.480 | it and have faith in yourself. All right. So this is a pitfalls. All right. So anyways, there we go.

00:29:13.680 | That's the story of Jewel. I think it's a really cool story. I tell it in detail and slow productivity,

00:29:18.000 | but those are the lessons to pull from it. Obsessing over quality makes slowness seem

00:29:23.920 | absolutely necessary. Obsessing over quality eventually gives you more options than you

00:29:27.680 | thought you ever had to actually put slowness into pursuit. So quality and slowness are

00:29:33.200 | intertwined. If you want to escape overload and crushing busyness, paradoxically, focusing on

00:29:39.760 | what matters and sometimes working harder on what matters is going to make your life easier.

00:29:43.840 | All right. So we have some great questions to get to. First, however, I want to talk about one of

00:29:50.400 | the sponsors that makes this show possible. That is our good friends at Shopify, the global

00:29:57.840 | commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business from the launcher online

00:30:03.760 | shop stage to the first real life store stage, all the way to the, did we just hit a million dollars

00:30:08.560 | in order stage? Shopify is there to help you grow. You have an all-in-one e-commerce platform.

00:30:16.880 | You have an in-person point of sale system, whatever you're selling, they've got you covered.

00:30:22.160 | Look, if you're doing e-commerce, Shopify has one of the best converting checkout packages on the

00:30:29.200 | internet, 36% better on average and converting people in the buyers compared to other leading

00:30:34.240 | e-commerce platforms. Jess and I always talk about, we should start a store at some point,

00:30:41.280 | a deep question store. And then we have terrible idea for merchandise by which I mean, brilliant

00:30:46.320 | ideas for merchandise. My best idea, of course, being the shirt that has the VBLCPP, VBLCPP,

00:30:52.880 | VBLCBP slogan right across the front, values-based lifestyle center, career planning,

00:31:00.160 | and just assumes people know what that means because you can wear that shirt and be like,

00:31:05.280 | and then offer high fives to people. And then they're confused and they kind of walk by and

00:31:08.720 | that's the type of fun you could have. Anyways, when we open our store to sell that shirt,

00:31:12.000 | we would of course use Shopify. Basically everyone I know in this game who sells their own things,

00:31:19.360 | they use Shopify because it makes it easier and it works well. So you can sign up now for a $1

00:31:26.480 | per month trial period at shopify.com/deep, but just put that into your browser, all lowercase,

00:31:34.000 | go to shopify.com/deep, all lowercase to grow your business no matter what stage you're in,

00:31:40.320 | shopify.com/deep. I also want to talk about our good friends at Element. Look,

00:31:49.120 | healthy hydration isn't just about drinking water. It's about water and electrolytes.

00:31:54.800 | It makes sense. You lose both water and sodium when you sweat. Both need to be replaced to

00:31:59.280 | prevent muscle cramps, headaches, and energy dips. But most people only replace the water

00:32:03.920 | because we keep being told, "Hey, just drink a lot of water." But drinking water beyond just

00:32:09.360 | your thirst is a bad idea. It could dilute blood electrolyte levels, especially sodium levels,

00:32:13.600 | which leads to headaches, low energy, cramps, confusion, or more. The solution is not to stop

00:32:17.840 | drinking water. It's to add more electrolytes to your water. This is where Element, L-M-N-T,

00:32:23.360 | enters the scene. Created by former research biochemist, Rob Wolfe, and KetoGains founder,

00:32:30.160 | Louis Valseigneur, Element has enough sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you feeling and

00:32:34.880 | performing your best, plus zero sugar, zero artificial colors, and no dodgy ingredients

00:32:41.840 | in it. You've got a lot of great flavors you can love, including citrus salt or raspberry salt. I

00:32:48.640 | like citrus salt. They also have spicy flavors like mango chili or chocolate salt, which you

00:32:54.480 | can mix into your morning coffee for a mean mocha. I was actually just out, as I mentioned, at Andrew

00:33:00.240 | Huberman's studio. And I can tell you, Huberman and I mixed up some Element to stay hydrated for,

00:33:08.320 | I believe our episode was, and I'm checking this here in the notes, 17 hours long.

00:33:12.720 | Look, I get dehydrated not just from exercise, but from talking all the time.

00:33:18.480 | Element is absolutely what I drink to get those electrolytes up without having to have sugar and

00:33:23.200 | all the other weird stuff. So anyways, Element has a fantastic offer just for us. Go to

00:33:28.000 | drinkelement.com/deep to get a free sample pack with any purchase. That's drinkelement, L-M-N-T.com/deep.

00:33:36.720 | All right, let's get back to our show and do some questions.

00:33:44.880 | Our first question comes from Claire. Look, I always, for those who are watching on the video,

00:33:50.080 | by the way, you see, I keep checking over here. There's no Jesse. So it's up to me to make sure

00:33:54.640 | that we're actually still recording. I believe we still are. All right. Our first question comes

00:33:58.240 | from Claire. Claire says the following, "I am judged based on productive output, where I have

00:34:05.840 | to complete seven or eight reports per day that take an hour each. So instead of being able to do

00:34:11.360 | a few hours of deep work and take a break, I am working eight hours and a half deep work state.

00:34:17.280 | I need to focus, but not that intensely. I have a number of side projects I want to work on in

00:34:21.360 | my off time, but I'm tired. Should I try to find a job that's not too hard?" Well, Claire, maybe,

00:34:27.120 | but let's talk first about what you could do with this current job. And then maybe that will help

00:34:31.600 | you think through a little bit more critically about whether it's worth trying to change this

00:34:35.440 | job or not. First, I want to just point out seven or eight hours of semi-deep work on reports is

00:34:45.440 | actually still a lot better than what a lot of people have, which is zero deep work hours,

00:34:50.160 | plus about 10 hours of partial continuous attention, non-deep context switching,

00:34:55.440 | overload nonsense. A day full of meetings and email and Slack, which is all administrative

00:35:00.800 | overhead generated by the too many tasks that they've agreed to and are on their task list,

00:35:05.600 | leading them to a nihilistic sense of absurdity that all I ever do is talk about work and almost

00:35:09.360 | never, nothing actually gets done. Few exhaustions are more deranging than that of having to switch

00:35:14.720 | your attention every few minutes and yet never feeling like you're making progress. All this to

00:35:18.880 | say, "Hey, this kind of sounds nice that you could work on one thing at a time and aren't have to be

00:35:25.440 | on email and chat." So look, there's some silver lining here, but here would be my first suggestion.

00:35:29.840 | Why can't we change this to five to six reports per day?

00:35:32.160 | Wouldn't that make your life a lot easier? Now, look, I don't know the setup of your job. Maybe

00:35:38.240 | that would mean having to take less money. That might be worth it, by the way, but I wouldn't

00:35:42.480 | offer that right away, less money. Just do the reports better and just say, "Look, this seven

00:35:47.360 | to eight is too many. My quality is flagging. I want to do five or six. Hey, but check my quality.

00:35:52.080 | These are going to be great. They're going to be better. And I think this is better." And just do

00:35:54.960 | it. And they might end up being like, "Okay, fine. These are better." Maybe you didn't need to be

00:35:59.920 | doing seven to eight. You just set that arbitrary standard. Now, maybe they say, "No, no, no. Even

00:36:04.560 | if they're better, we're going to pay you less." That still might be worth it. That still might be

00:36:10.480 | worth it because even if they're paying you less, five to six reports a day means five hours of work

00:36:17.120 | maybe, and you could be done. I like the sound of that. All right. So let's think about this some

00:36:23.520 | more. Instead of doing one hour per report at a half state of deep work, I want you to consider

00:36:29.680 | doing 30 to 40 minutes of really intense deep work supported by rituals and a structured process for

00:36:35.840 | how you go through these reports. So it's not just haphazard thinking that gives you 30 to 20 minutes

00:36:41.600 | of rest in between each report, or allows you to do two reports, take an hour off, two reports,

00:36:46.000 | and an hour off. I want to find a way that you're not going constantly, but you have more of a

00:36:49.920 | rhythm of intensity and non-intensity. Now, if you're working 30 to 40 minutes and then taking

00:36:54.480 | a break, you're going to want to make those breaks. You have to be careful with those breaks.

00:37:00.800 | You have to take what I call deep breaks, which means you need to be careful not to have this

00:37:05.360 | break be a hard context shift. You don't want to look at email or unrelated, highly emotionally

00:37:11.600 | salient information. You're going to want these other breaks to focus on things that don't really

00:37:17.600 | change your context too much so that you can 20 minutes later, get back into the next report

00:37:21.120 | without having to start from scratch. So try those two things. And I think this could be better.

00:37:28.960 | Okay. Those who are watching the video see I keep looking around because I have a mysterious buzzing

00:37:36.080 | happening in my ear here. Hold on a second. I'm doing some live debugging. I don't think

00:37:41.040 | this is showing up on the recording. It's driving me crazy. Hold on one second.

00:37:48.800 | All right. Well, that's exciting. Podcasting right there is what you get for solo podcasting.

00:38:00.640 | By the way, we're pretty svelte with one producer here. Some shows are like that. A lot of other

00:38:06.400 | shows I've noticed where really they have a lot of pretty large teams. So I think we're pretty

00:38:10.800 | svelte here. All right. Our next question comes from Evan. Evan says, I'm in the early stages of

00:38:16.240 | my career and realized that a disproportionate amount of success in the corporate world depends

00:38:22.000 | on your ability to sell yourself. I've seen competent, quiet managers get fired while

00:38:28.160 | talking heads get steadily promoted. How do I sell my skills better? And if needed interview better.

00:38:35.760 | Well, Evan, this is a key place where I want to bring up one of the pitfalls that we discussed

00:38:41.680 | when talking about the story of Jewel in the deep dive, which was the fun run versus interval

00:38:46.640 | training pitfall, which says the key here is to not to write your own story about what matters,

00:38:54.880 | but to learn what actually does matter. All right. So it's very tempting in this type of situation

00:39:00.640 | to come up with what you want to be important. This is what I want to work on. And if I do

00:39:05.680 | this, then I'm going to get more notice. I'm going to be more successful because I like the sound of

00:39:09.840 | it. I like the sound of it. It's tractable. It's not too hard, but it sounds good. No,

00:39:17.440 | you need to go figure out for the people who are good at what you see as being needed for success

00:39:21.680 | to people who are good, who are getting steadily promoted. What specifically are they doing that

00:39:25.760 | matters? This might mean actually talking to them. I want to learn from you. How did you get this

00:39:30.640 | promotion? What about this one? What was key? What were you doing that other people who are up for

00:39:34.400 | that promotion didn't do? Learn what really matters. You might discover, for example,

00:39:40.560 | that actually it's not about them selling themselves. Like maybe it turns out, and I've

00:39:45.840 | been down this road before in my own life, where I thought it was a marketing thing mattered.

00:39:49.280 | And it turned out like, no, actually the thing they were doing was just better than what I'm

00:39:52.000 | doing. So it might turn out, oh, this is the skill that really matters. It's very hard. I'm doing

00:39:56.560 | that. Okay. They're doing it better. This is not about them selling themselves, or maybe it is

00:40:00.000 | about selling themselves, but you learn out what that means. What aspect of selling themselves

00:40:06.000 | is it that in the end really matters? So you've got to get to the bottom of what matters. Don't

00:40:10.800 | write your own story. And then you can decide, do I want to do that or not? And if so, what's

00:40:14.800 | my training regime? And let's get after it systematically head down relentlessly. And if

00:40:18.400 | not, at least, you know, why not? Oh, this is harder or requires sacrifices that I'm not right

00:40:22.560 | now willing to make. And by the way, that second answer is fine as well. So there's a technological

00:40:28.400 | piece to this because a lot of people have this sense about social media promotion.

00:40:31.760 | I think what matters is that professor, that manager, that writer, it's what they're doing

00:40:37.120 | on social media that matters. So maybe I need to do more of that. If I just did more of that,

00:40:42.080 | I'd be more successful, right? It's a common story that we tell ourselves when we're looking

00:40:47.040 | at self-promotion and success. But when you dig deep in a lot of these cases, it turns out

00:40:50.960 | it's not the key. The key is what they're doing is good. They're doing something different. They

00:40:54.880 | got lucky, you know? So anyways, reality is more complicated. You got to actually confront the

00:41:01.120 | reality. Let's move on here. We got Mike. Mike says, I'm an animator and I have good productivity

00:41:08.560 | and focus in the office. However, I struggle to work on my personal projects at home. I only do

00:41:14.320 | tasks that have the least resistance, such as organizing files instead of doing the actual work.

00:41:19.920 | How can I do the hard tasks for my personal projects? Well, Mike, first of all,

00:41:26.560 | the stuff you're mentioning as least resistant, such as organizing files, maybe this is not so

00:41:32.720 | unimportant. A lot of what's important in household labor is actually pretty organizational.

00:41:37.440 | It's keeping the household as basically a pseudo business running well, which is often less about

00:41:44.880 | big leaps of deep work or Bravo performance and more about actually keeping a lot of balls very

00:41:50.480 | carefully moving in the air so none of them fall. Also, you might consider just doing fewer projects

00:41:57.520 | and making the projects you do better. So when it comes to personal projects,

00:42:00.720 | there's a couple of reasons why you might not be coming back to them. There's a couple of reasons

00:42:07.040 | why you might be looking to lesser resistant alternatives. One could be you don't really

00:42:12.240 | love the project. It was just like, I want to do this. I want to learn Spanish. And you don't

00:42:15.360 | really love the idea. You're not that excited about it. And you're tired because you have a

00:42:18.160 | hard job and you're trying to take care of your house and maybe your family and that limited

00:42:22.400 | time and energy. If it's a project you don't love, your mind might say no moss.

00:42:25.680 | See what I did there? That was Spanish. Here's the other problem. Maybe you do love the project,

00:42:31.760 | but your plan stinks. Like I want to be a novelist. And so like, why don't,

00:42:37.440 | why am I just not going down to my writing room and writing? Because your mind says that's just

00:42:40.960 | not, that's not enough. You go into that room and writing is not going to produce a novel.

00:42:44.880 | That's going to sell. We need to learn more about this. We've got to get better at writing. We need

00:42:47.840 | an editor. You know, this is not a good plan. Your brain knows it's not a good plan. And so when

00:42:52.880 | you're saying maybe I should go spend some hours writing at the library, whatever your brain says,

00:42:56.240 | let's organize the files. Come on, let's get real. It's a good future plan evaluator.

00:43:00.720 | All right. So maybe you need fewer projects and the projects you choose need to be better,

00:43:06.480 | but also just ease up. You know, I came across like several in recent weeks meeting impressive

00:43:13.120 | people while working on book promotion who had the same thing. They told me the same thing.

00:43:19.360 | They don't really have a lot of hobbies right now. They're trying to do something professionally.

00:43:22.960 | It's really important. They have families. They're trying to keep their health up because they're

00:43:25.600 | reaching middle age and it matters. A lot of people, my age and my situation, for example,

00:43:29.440 | just don't have a lot of personal projects. That's fine too. You don't have to have a lot

00:43:33.120 | of personal projects. Having a good job, staying, like keeping your body running,

00:43:39.360 | being a leader for your family, like that's a lot, that's a hard job. So if you're not feeling it

00:43:44.640 | right now in your current stage of life, you're not out there doing the complicated hobbies or

00:43:49.120 | whatever, you can ease up on yourself a little bit. I think that's okay. We don't always have

00:43:53.280 | to be doing that, especially if our setup is not one that makes that easy to do. If we don't have

00:43:59.920 | a highly autonomous setup with a lot of time or it's an activity that we've done for a long time

00:44:03.680 | and really love. All right, we've got a question here from Elena. Elena says, "My day consists of

00:44:10.240 | waking up at 5 a.m., getting ready for the gym, reading for 15 to 20 minutes, returning from the

00:44:15.680 | gym by 7.30, finishing showering, having breakfast by almost 9. Currently, I can't say that I have

00:44:21.360 | rare and valuable skills to offer and I have a job from 9 to 6 that doesn't offer that many

00:44:25.440 | opportunities to develop those skills either, although it pays very well. In this scenario,

00:44:30.240 | how can I do less at a natural pace but at least include a chunk of deliberate practice into my day

00:44:35.440 | to learn rare and valuable skills that allow me to build a remarkable life without falling into

00:44:39.120 | busyness?" Oh, Elena, you got a lot going on. I mean, look, I'm very impressed by your drive here,

00:44:47.440 | but let's slow down a little bit because I worry that you're approaching the problem

00:44:55.600 | of wanting a slower work life by pushing more fast activity into it.

00:45:01.440 | And that might not be the right way to solve this. Let me be specific here. This is hypothetical. I

00:45:06.880 | don't know the exact details of your situation, but let me give you a sense about this.

00:45:11.600 | What if we instead said we're going to make these changes? Your goal is to end your day at 4.30,

00:45:17.120 | instead of 6, you're going to go to the gym at 4.30 instead. Hold on to the complaint for now.

00:45:23.760 | I'll never get my work done if I finish at 6. People will notice that's too early. Hold that

00:45:27.840 | aside for now. It's going to be our goal to finish work by 4.30, go to the gym then.

00:45:34.400 | Now, this means you don't have to wake up at 5. Now, you can actually sleep, get more sleep,

00:45:39.680 | sleep to a more reasonable hour. Using that extra time, even sleeping later,

00:45:45.360 | you're going to be able to start your workday earlier. Because we've gotten rid of this time

00:45:50.080 | in the gym and the morning reading. So you can start your work earlier and do it in a very

00:45:54.240 | demonstrable way. The key idea from slow productivity is that we use a lot of pseudo

00:46:01.760 | productivity right now. This idea of using visible activity as a proxy for useful effort. So lean

00:46:06.960 | into that a little bit, take advantage of that, be visibly starting your workday a little bit earlier,

00:46:10.720 | but spend the first hour of that workday doing deliberate practice on a skill that you want to

00:46:14.560 | get really good at. So going back to the JUUL example, you've isolated a rare and valuable

00:46:19.840 | skill you do want to develop. You have the first hour of every day you're doing deliberate practice.

00:46:23.440 | Your bosses don't necessarily know that's what you're doing. They just know that like, "Hey,

00:46:26.160 | Elena's here. It's 8 or it's 8.30 and she's getting after it." And they don't know what

00:46:30.880 | you're really doing is training more than answering emails or doing something else.

00:46:36.160 | Now, because you're starting work earlier, it's not as big of a deal that you're ending earlier.

00:46:42.480 | Now you also still have to get better at your work itself. Like if you're working from nine to six,

00:46:46.720 | like probably I'm going to guess this is a pretty haphazard day. So you know the stuff

00:46:51.040 | we talk about on here. You need a multi-scale planning. You probably need to reduce, this is

00:46:57.840 | a key idea from slow productivity, reduce the number of things you're actively working on at

00:47:01.600 | once. It's like, here's the three things I'm working on right now actively. These five things

00:47:06.160 | I'm waiting to work on as I finish one of these, I'll pull one of those in. This reduces the

00:47:11.200 | administrative overhead you're facing at any one moment, which allows you to actually move faster

00:47:14.720 | with completion. There's a whole chapter in slow productivity that gives you specific step-by-step

00:47:19.680 | tactics for how to do this in your job in a way that people will tolerate and will really work

00:47:23.680 | really well. You do these things so that you're able to get more work done, the right work done

00:47:28.640 | more effectively. And you'll be producing more by 4.30 than you were by six. And your bosses

00:47:34.720 | think you're starting work early anyways. And you know, they're like, "Oh, Elena's really into

00:47:37.920 | exercise and she comes in early. She leaves a little early. She does really good work. This

00:47:41.440 | is great." But you've transformed your life in this plan. Now you're not waking up at five,

00:47:45.920 | you're getting an hour of deliberate practice in, you're ending your workday with an exercise,

00:47:50.480 | which I do. I think it's a great way to transition from work mode into after work mode.

00:47:56.640 | By six now, when you used to finish work, you're done with your exercise and you're done with your

00:48:02.000 | work. You got some sleep, you did your deliberate practice, and you can read at night. That could

00:48:06.400 | be like a really good activity is that you read instead of watching TV show. You have a lot of,

00:48:10.480 | you have this evening free now. You don't have to go to bed at nine because you're waking up so early.

00:48:14.720 | So, you know, I don't know if for your particular situation, that particular reconfiguration works,

00:48:20.000 | but it's a good sample reconfiguration because it highlights the possibilities here.

00:48:24.160 | It highlights the possibilities that you have when you think about slowness, that

00:48:29.360 | structuring your time, being more careful about when you do things. You can produce a lot and be

00:48:34.240 | very successful. You have more options than you think about how you produce a lot, how you're

00:48:37.360 | successful. You can take the reins a little bit more to make your life more sustainable.

00:48:41.680 | All right, let's do one last question here. This one's from Cameron. Cameron says,

00:48:46.800 | I have a hard job and I'm trying to use the deep life stack 2.0 to balance everything.

00:48:51.280 | For my discipline stack, I take daily walks, go to the gym and read. How is this different

00:48:55.760 | than the value stack where I create rituals and routines for hard work? Well, Cameron,

00:49:02.720 | I wanted to end with a little bit of deep life pontificating, I guess I would say. The bigger

00:49:09.840 | picture here of living a deep life, which encompasses a lot more than just work.

00:49:14.000 | We talked a lot in today's episode specifically about knowledge work and using quality to slow

00:49:20.080 | down and getting away from busyness and strategies to get there. But I like to bring it back in the

00:49:24.080 | end to the broader goal here, which is work is one part of an overall deep life. And that's really

00:49:28.240 | our goal in the show is in this world that's increasingly defined by technological forces,

00:49:32.800 | by email, by social media, by artificial intelligence, all these forces that are

00:49:37.600 | shaping our lives and reshaping our lives and destabilizing things that we know and making

00:49:41.280 | things harder or weirder or newer. How do we build a life that's deep and rooted, that's really human,

00:49:45.840 | that we like, that's meaningful, that's sustainable. And this has a lot more to do than just

00:49:50.080 | work. So I want to end on that question. Now, Cameron, I think the issue here is you're mixing

00:49:55.520 | things up. So when we talk about values in the context of the deep life, when we talk about

00:50:00.080 | rituals and routines for values, these are not rituals and routines for hard work, as you write

00:50:04.400 | here. They're rituals and routines for reinforcing your values and your values have nothing to do

00:50:09.040 | with work. Your values are the underlying things that you think are critical to a life well lived.

00:50:15.040 | These are the things that if there was an apocalypse and you were starting over

00:50:20.560 | and you're escaping from the vampire cannibals, the things that you would rebuild from,

00:50:25.360 | the respect for other individuals, the being of infinite worth, leadership and character,

00:50:31.680 | integrity, that are trying to be someone who produces things of impact, showing up when people

00:50:37.600 | need to be there. I mean, these are values. Routines and rituals are about reinforcing

00:50:42.880 | these, these most fundamental atoms of what actually comprises the human life well lived.

00:50:49.040 | Nothing to do with hard work. So what are routines and rituals that reinforce these values? I mean,

00:50:54.400 | rituals are things that you do on a regular basis that helps reconnect you to these things you care

00:50:59.040 | about. And it could be the gratitude walk you do through the woods to reconnect to the wonders of

00:51:05.760 | the world. It could be a ritual built instead around prayer that connects you to the divine

00:51:14.640 | as a source of strength to go through the hardships of life. Routines here could be things you just do

00:51:21.840 | on the regular to help make sure that you're connected to your values. Things that actually

00:51:28.880 | have practical values. Rituals have no practical values other than just to reinforce a value.

00:51:33.840 | Routines are things you do to put those values regularly into your life. I volunteer two days

00:51:38.640 | a week because that pragmatically puts one of these things I value into my life on a regular basis.

00:51:44.400 | For example, I read five books a month because the life of the mind as like this Aristotelian

00:51:50.560 | theological goal of the human existence is important to me, but this routine of reading

00:51:55.840 | every day. So I read five books so I can get to five books a month because that puts my value

00:52:00.160 | into action. So rituals is just about reinforcing psychologically the importance of a value to you.

00:52:05.120 | Routines are about pragmatically putting values into actions on a regular basis into your life.

00:52:09.440 | And this is not about hard work. It's not about going to the gym. It's really about the things

00:52:15.680 | that make humans, humans. And why this is so important in the context of a deep life is that

00:52:20.000 | work comes and goes and it goes well and it goes bad. And sometimes it's in your control and

00:52:23.840 | sometimes that's not. And sometimes you get sick and you can't work the way you used to work before

00:52:28.160 | or you thought you're going to be really good at this. And people come along and say, no, you're

00:52:31.120 | not, or you have the big plan and it fails and you lose all the money and you have to start over.

00:52:34.720 | And it's kind of humiliating. So it can't just be work that you're trying to build this whole

00:52:39.280 | edifice on. It's got to be something deeper, more fundamental, more human. And that is,

00:52:43.520 | that's what I mean by values. But Cameron, I appreciate the question

00:52:46.560 | because it allowed us to talk deeper about the deep life. All right. So speaking about the deep

00:52:53.920 | life, I mentioned reading as part of it, which means I want to talk about the books I read in

00:52:57.600 | February. First, I want to briefly mention another sponsor that makes this show possible.

00:53:03.280 | That's our friends at My Body Tutor. I've known Adam Gilbert, My Body Tutor's founders for many

00:53:09.360 | years. He's my go-to guy for fitness advice. His company, My Body Tutor is a fantastically

00:53:15.440 | smart idea because it is a 100% online coaching program. So you can get a coach like the Hollywood

00:53:23.440 | stars have when they prepare for a role in a movie. But instead of having to have someone

00:53:27.680 | come to your house at great expense, you can interact with them online. So you get that

00:53:31.360 | consistency and tailored help, the accountability that comes with it without the expense of having

00:53:37.680 | to have someone in your home gym telling you to use the combat ropes. So the way it works is you

00:53:43.520 | get assigned this coach. You tell them what you care about with your health journey. They help

00:53:48.640 | you figure out like, what are we gonna do with your diet? And let's come up with a plan here

00:53:52.160 | that makes sense for you and your circumstances. What are we gonna do with your exercises that

00:53:55.200 | makes sense for you and your circumstances? And then every day you check in with that coach using

00:53:59.280 | the easy online app and they see and they respond every day. And if you have questions like, hey,

00:54:04.000 | this isn't working for me, like let's tailor that so it does. You have a one-off situation. The

00:54:08.160 | holidays are coming up. What do I do about this? They give you one-off specific advice for your

00:54:12.560 | particular situation. And you build a relationship with your coach. It's not just tailored advice,

00:54:17.040 | but it's the accountability of knowing they're looking at what you did and didn't do. It's

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00:54:26.000 | You go to MyBodyTutor, T-U-T-O-R. Go to MyBodyTutor.com. And when you do mention deep

00:54:33.120 | questions when you sign up and Adam will give you $50 off your first month, just mention that

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00:54:43.920 | I also wanna talk about our longtime friends at Blinkist. Blinkist is an app that gives you

00:54:52.000 | more than 6,500 book summaries and expert-led audio guides to read and listen to in just

00:54:57.360 | 15 minutes per title. You can access best-in-class actionable knowledge from 27 categories such as

00:55:03.440 | productivity, psychology, and more, and also get entertained at the same time.

00:55:08.640 | The way Jesse and I use Blinkist is as a triage tool for the books we read. If there's a book

00:55:16.080 | that we think might be important, we will put it on a list. And to help make the decision about

00:55:21.440 | whether or not we buy that book, we will read the Blink, which is what they call the 15-minute

00:55:26.160 | summary of the book. I'll sometimes listen to them. Jesse likes to read them. This gives you

00:55:31.600 | a really good sense about the book. Sometimes once you get that 15-minute summary, you're like,

00:55:35.920 | "Okay, this isn't quite for me. I get the gist of it. I don't wanna spend a week with this book."

00:55:41.120 | But I got the main ideas. That's useful. And sometimes the Blink, it's like, "Oh, that's

00:55:44.640 | exactly what I wanted. That's what I was looking for. Great. Let me definitely buy this book."

00:55:48.080 | And it makes your success rate with nonfiction book buying, the rate at which you actually love

00:55:52.480 | and get something out of the books you buy, go from what would normally be for most people like

00:55:56.800 | 50/50 to more like 90 to 95% success rate. Now, there's other reasons why I'd use Blinkist,

00:56:02.720 | sort of to learn about a whole new field without having to read all the books or just because

00:56:06.320 | they're entertaining. A lot of ways to use it. People blink in different ways, but I like to use

00:56:11.840 | it as a triage tool for the reading life. However you use it, it is a really useful tool. They also

00:56:17.760 | have a new feature called Blinkist Connect, which will allow you to give another person unlimited

00:56:22.720 | access for free. It's basically a two-for-one deal. So that's cool as well. So right now,

00:56:30.080 | Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience. Go to blinkist.com/deep to start

00:56:35.520 | your seven-day free trial, and you will get 40% off a Blinkist premium membership if you sign up.

00:56:41.920 | That's Blinkist spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T. Blinkist.com/deep to get 40% off any seven-day

00:56:48.320 | free trial. Blinkist.com/deep. And now for a limited time, you can even use Blinkist Connect

00:56:54.880 | to share your premium account. You will get two premium subscriptions for the price of one

00:56:59.440 | at Blinkist.com/deep. All right, final segment of the episode.

00:57:03.520 | At the beginning of each month, I like to review the books I read in the previous month.

00:57:09.040 | So we're in March, so I need to summarize the books I read in February, 2024.

00:57:13.040 | As usual, my goal is to read five books a month. So here's what I read in February.

00:57:18.400 | Number one, The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel. I wrote a newsletter post about this.

00:57:25.840 | You can find it at calnewport.com/blog from a month or two ago from February when I finished

00:57:31.760 | it. Worth reading because I think it's an interesting, fantastic book. There's a secular

00:57:38.400 | message in this. It's not just Jewish theology. There's a secular message in this about work

00:57:43.040 | and what there is outside of work. It's not just about like the day of rest captures not just

00:57:50.160 | preparation to work better, but ancient Jewish scripture tells you the day of rest is about

00:57:55.040 | actually anticipating the kingdom of God to come, which is a way we can secularize that as thinking

00:57:59.360 | about rest sometimes is about rest itself, about admiring and having gratitude for the other parts

00:58:03.920 | of life that are unrelated to work. It's a short book, beautifully written from the fifties.

00:58:08.480 | I really enjoyed it. I also really enjoyed the second book I read, which was Making Movies by

00:58:14.560 | Sidney Lumet. Fantastic, just nuts and bolts book about how you make a major motion picture.

00:58:21.120 | Sidney Lumet, of course, being this fantastic director. I went back and watched several of

00:58:26.880 | his movies after reading this book. I watched Murder on the Orient Express, the Kenneth Branagh

00:58:33.680 | version, not the Kenneth Branagh version. That's the new version. His version, Sidney Lumet's

00:58:38.640 | version is from the 1970s as Sean Connery is in it. I also went back and I'd never seen before

00:58:44.560 | Dog Day Afternoon, which I really enjoyed. It's a fantastic movie, but cool book because basically

00:58:49.920 | each chapter is a different part of the movie production process and he gets into it. But a

00:58:54.560 | lot of examples from his own experiences and you really get a sense of what it's like to make a

00:58:58.960 | movie. If you're a cinephile or you like movies, you sort of have to read this book. I kind of

00:59:04.240 | embarrassed it took me this long, but I'm glad I got to it. Speaking of being embarrassed it took

00:59:08.880 | so long, I went ahead and read Killers of the Flower Moon by David Gran. So each year I try,

00:59:16.960 | my wife and I try to watch all of the movies nominated for best picture. There's 10 of them

00:59:22.000 | now, so it could be hard, but this year we succeeded. We saw all 10. After we watched

00:59:26.000 | Killers of the Flower Moon, I wanted to read the book because I had some questions about what

00:59:30.480 | happened in the movie. And it's classic David Gran. David Gran's a great New Yorker writer.

00:59:34.960 | He's very good at these types of books where he goes to the archives for a couple of years and

00:59:39.360 | pulls out these narratives with interesting, weird, flawed characters, and then lets them

00:59:44.160 | unfold with the pace of a mystery novel. It's a bravo performance in writing. Great book,

00:59:50.960 | great movie too. Very epic. I read Orthodoxy by J.K. Chesterton. I didn't like it as much

00:59:57.600 | as I thought. I was thinking that in his argument for the power of orthodoxy, so this is sort of

01:00:04.960 | Christian apologia, there would be something interesting in there about ritual and routines.

01:00:10.160 | It was okay. It wasn't as powerful of an apology as I expected. It was fine. It's a short book.

01:00:16.400 | Smart writer, but it's not punching the gut apology, so maybe worth passing on.

01:00:22.320 | Finally, I read The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forrester, 1950s book about a convoy crossing

01:00:31.440 | the North Atlantic in World War II. It takes place entirely, entirely follows in real time

01:00:40.000 | the commander of a destroyer that's helping to protect this convoy. They made a movie about this

01:00:44.320 | recently, Greyhound, starring Tom Hanks. Fantastic movie. I recommend it. This is the book it's based

01:00:48.320 | on. I love this book. This has to be one of the original techno thrillers because what Forrester

01:00:54.000 | does here is he just throws you into this world. You never leave. It's third party, third person

01:01:00.480 | omniscient, right? The narrator. So you get access to the thoughts of this captain, but it's the only

01:01:07.040 | character that it follows. So he's always in the scene. You see nothing where the command, the

01:01:11.600 | captain is, it's a commander, I guess, as a destroyer. Nothing where the commander is not

01:01:15.840 | there. And the only thoughts you get access to is the commanders. The third person omniscient,

01:01:20.160 | but focused on a single character. And it just throws you into this like technical world. All

01:01:25.040 | the lingo, no explanation. You just sort of piece it together as it goes along, like what's going

01:01:29.680 | on. And it's nail biting. And he really does capture the sort of the physical stress, the

01:01:35.280 | psychological fatigue of what it was like to be under attack by a U-boat wolf pack as you're

01:01:40.720 | trying to direct these convoys across. And you begin to learn and the rhythms of like how this

01:01:45.920 | works. But it's techno thriller at its finest. It's a proto techno thriller. I'm probably going

01:01:51.440 | to buy a first edition of this. I think it'd be a cool thing to have in my collection because I

01:01:54.480 | love techno thrillers. And this is like a prime example of it. Fast paced in the world, surrounded

01:02:02.160 | by it. You begin to learn and the feeling of being in that world is transmitted. And then you make it

01:02:08.000 | through the other side, you get a sigh of relief. The Tom Hanks movie, by the way, does a fantastic

01:02:12.080 | job of capturing the feel of this book. I recommend watching Greyhound. I think it's on Apple TV plus.

01:02:17.440 | Probably my favorite. That and The Sabbath were my two favorites. Making movies, killers. They

01:02:22.720 | were all, except for Orthodoxy, which was fine. The other four books I read, this was a good month,

01:02:27.200 | were really fantastic. So I'd recommend all of them. All right. Well, speaking of fantastic,

01:02:32.160 | what is more fantastic than me being back at my Deep Work HQ? Next week, Jesse will rejoin me.

01:02:38.000 | We'll be back to our normal type of episodes and our normal type of topics, et cetera. I'm just

01:02:44.240 | really happy to be back. Check out Slow Productivity, my new book. If you like the type of

01:02:51.040 | things you hear about at the show, you can find it anywhere that books are sold. I'll be back next

01:02:55.360 | week. Until then, as always, stay deep. Hey, so if you enjoyed our discussion today, I think you

01:03:02.080 | might also like episode 275, which gives a general system for achieving hard goals. So check that out.

01:03:11.360 | So the question I want to dive into today is, how do you follow through on transformative goals?

The Productivity System To Win At Anything - Achieve More By Doing Less | Cal Newport

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