How an I Do Deep Work As A New Parent?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - All right, Jesse, I think we have time

00:00:07.600 | for one last question.

00:00:08.840 | So let's see what we have here.

00:00:10.480 | - All right, the last question is a new father

00:00:13.120 | and he's got some questions about managing that

00:00:15.600 | and doing some deep work.

00:00:17.000 | - Hi, Cal, my name is Judd

00:00:21.520 | and I'm a long time fan of your work.

00:00:23.520 | In a recent podcast, you said nothing has negatively impacted

00:00:26.460 | your productivity as much as being a new parent.

00:00:29.520 | I'm a father of two children under the age of two

00:00:31.760 | and I'm experiencing the same thing.

00:00:33.840 | Do you have any tips for parents of babies

00:00:35.600 | to help navigate the challenges of being a new parent?

00:00:38.440 | While I love being a father,

00:00:39.960 | the sleepless nights and near constant attention

00:00:42.320 | the girls require have seriously reduced my ability

00:00:45.080 | to do deep work.

00:00:46.280 | They've also killed my creativity and ability

00:00:48.280 | to come up with Greek mythological references,

00:00:50.540 | for which I apologize.

00:00:52.040 | Thanks so much.

00:00:52.880 | I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

00:00:55.460 | - Well, I mean, I think in order to reprioritize

00:00:58.960 | mythological references,

00:01:00.880 | toddler boarding school is what we need.

00:01:03.280 | Where you send off your daughters,

00:01:05.280 | they'll come back for the summers and for the holidays,

00:01:08.100 | and then you can really focus

00:01:09.480 | on good mythological references.

00:01:12.320 | No, Judd, I think it is, there are seasons.

00:01:16.380 | And there's a big idea from slow productivity,

00:01:19.380 | seasonality at multiple scales,

00:01:21.560 | from the week to the month,

00:01:22.640 | to the years, to multiple years.

00:01:25.480 | Two young kids under two,

00:01:26.680 | this is a season in which you're not

00:01:28.960 | writing the great American novel.

00:01:30.360 | I think that's okay.

00:01:31.760 | Life is long.

00:01:33.500 | You have babies.

00:01:34.360 | It's batting down the hatches time.

00:01:37.600 | Now I had seasons like that,

00:01:38.880 | obviously with young kids,

00:01:39.720 | I had a season, I think the pandemic

00:01:41.480 | caused some seasonality for me.

00:01:43.160 | Our schools were closed, there's chaos,

00:01:46.800 | and I had to pull back on a lot of things.

00:01:49.240 | And in the grand scheme of things,

00:01:51.320 | I think that's reasonable.

00:01:52.900 | That was a slow season.

00:01:54.060 | Different seasons are different.

00:01:55.360 | I mean, when my kids finally all go off to college,

00:01:59.840 | I know exactly how old I'll be when that happens.

00:02:01.680 | We've done this math, trust me.

00:02:03.760 | I'm either going to explode into a frenzy

00:02:06.360 | of productive output.

00:02:07.480 | I'll be writing three books a year,

00:02:08.960 | or I'll just die.

00:02:09.960 | It'll be one of the two.

00:02:10.780 | I'll either just be at the end of the finish line and die,

00:02:12.680 | or I'm gonna be writing three books a year or something.

00:02:16.400 | And I see different seasons are different.

00:02:17.720 | So first of all, I just wanna give you that,

00:02:19.980 | I wanna give you that reassurance.

00:02:21.560 | I think it's fine to slow down.

00:02:22.980 | And this is a very important thing in your life.

00:02:24.620 | Give it some focus.

00:02:26.080 | Now, keep a handle on the other things.

00:02:28.800 | You don't want the work you have to do

00:02:30.080 | to become a major source of stress right now.

00:02:31.640 | So go watch my core ideas video on time management,

00:02:34.460 | for example, and make sure that you have

00:02:38.040 | a ship shape organizational system

00:02:39.720 | so that you have the breathing room necessary

00:02:41.520 | to not work so much and not have it be a crisis.

00:02:44.120 | The only other advice I'll give,

00:02:45.540 | and I gotta be wary about giving parenting advice.

00:02:48.400 | I get yelled at a lot, but I gotta tell you, sleep training.

00:02:52.480 | And don't yell at me, anti-sleep training people,

00:02:55.340 | but you've got two kids, you guys both work,

00:02:59.780 | you gotta do sleep training, right?

00:03:02.340 | I'm very trepidatious.

00:03:04.940 | Jesse can say I look very trepidatious

00:03:06.220 | because the parenting advice gets you in a lot of trouble.

00:03:08.740 | If your strategy is just, I think eventually

00:03:11.260 | the kid will figure it out and start sleeping,

00:03:13.540 | they will torture your soul.

00:03:15.620 | And they'll fake you out and they'll start sleeping more.

00:03:19.460 | And then you'll all be high-fiving

00:03:20.980 | and telling your friends how good you are,

00:03:23.300 | like your kids are good sleepers.

00:03:24.780 | And then they'll just twist a knife

00:03:26.700 | and start getting up at four and getting up at two

00:03:29.480 | and getting up at nine.

00:03:30.500 | And so this was my wife and I's survival strategy

00:03:33.820 | is we're doing a lot for these kids,

00:03:36.700 | but these kids need to do one thing for us,

00:03:38.380 | and that is they're gonna have to go

00:03:39.540 | through some sleep training.

00:03:40.420 | So don't put up with four years of not sleeping.

00:03:43.380 | A lot of people do.

00:03:45.140 | You could make that four months

00:03:46.820 | if you're willing to think about sleep training.

00:03:50.260 | Any complaints about that, that always upsets parents.

00:03:52.420 | So you can send all your complaints

00:03:54.260 | to jesse@calnewport.com and really, really let me have it,

00:03:59.260 | but send those to jesse@calnewport.com.

00:04:03.580 | All right, Judd, well, good luck and congratulations.

00:04:05.580 | And yeah, go easy on yourself

00:04:06.980 | and look into sleep training.

00:04:08.580 | (upbeat music)

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How an I Do Deep Work As A New Parent?

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