How To Achieve Focus, Find Meaning & Get Ahead Before 2024 Ends | Cal Newport
Chapters
0:0 0:00:00:00.000 | - "How can I balance robust routines and plans
00:00:02.540 | "with enjoying the present moment?
00:00:04.180 | "Is it possible to be an ambitious high achiever
00:00:06.680 | "without a baseline level of anxiety?"
00:00:10.020 | - You know, it's an interesting question
00:00:11.180 | because coincidentally, I listened to two different podcasts
00:00:14.940 | in the last few days that I think of as giving
00:00:18.980 | two different perspectives on this question,
00:00:21.540 | both podcasts by people I know and respect.
00:00:23.520 | So let's start with these two perspectives I heard,
00:00:27.380 | coincidentally, just in the last few days.
00:00:30.180 | So the first was from Oliver Berkman,
00:00:32.040 | who wrote "4,000 Weeks," "Friend of the Show,"
00:00:36.220 | he blurbs "Slow Productivity," I blurb "4,000 Weeks,"
00:00:39.860 | and he really has made a name for himself
00:00:42.000 | with this sort of much more like British,
00:00:44.960 | sort of relaxed re-appraisal
00:00:47.760 | of time management and productivity.
00:00:50.360 | I was listening to Oliver recently
00:00:52.140 | on Chris Williamson's podcast, "Modern Wisdom,"
00:00:55.580 | and Berkman was sort of giving this kind of ideal,
00:01:00.240 | he was like, here's his approach to personal productivity,
00:01:02.940 | how he thinks about these things right now,
00:01:04.380 | and I'm paraphrasing, but his system was like,
00:01:07.420 | have a few things you wanna get done,
00:01:09.920 | but also be willing to let your interests guide you.
00:01:13.780 | If you don't really have energy
00:01:14.820 | for this thing you wanna do,
00:01:16.240 | but there's something else you're kind of excited about,
00:01:17.860 | maybe work on that instead, and you'll be okay.
00:01:21.080 | That's a paraphrase, but that's sort of a classic,
00:01:24.660 | like "4,000 Weeks" approach.
00:01:26.060 | Let's call that the humanistic,
00:01:29.040 | call this humanistic personal productivity.
00:01:30.860 | It's sort of, what are we as humans,
00:01:33.580 | like what really kind of like fits the way we operate best?
00:01:38.580 | All right, then, soon after this,
00:01:41.700 | sort of coincidentally, I was listening to Scott Galloway,
00:01:44.220 | who we talked about earlier in the show,
00:01:45.620 | I was just on his Prof G podcast,
00:01:47.500 | and then I was listening to a bunch of Galloway,
00:01:49.460 | and I was listening to him on Dan Cenor's podcast,
00:01:52.460 | "Call Me Back,"
00:01:54.300 | and they were talking about, at the end,
00:01:56.180 | Galloway's new book,
00:01:57.540 | "The Algebra of Financial"-
00:02:00.940 | - Of Wealth. - Of Wealth, right.
00:02:02.820 | And he was sort of giving his take on life and advice,
00:02:05.780 | and he sort of, Galloway had this take,
00:02:07.980 | which is like, look, in your 20s in particular,
00:02:10.560 | your biggest resource is your time.
00:02:13.580 | Like, what you wanna be doing with this
00:02:15.740 | is really getting after getting good at something valuable.
00:02:19.260 | 'Cause he's like, here's the end game.
00:02:22.180 | He's like, look, this is a reality that's not good,
00:02:25.140 | but it's a reality, especially in America,
00:02:27.240 | we are not kind to poor people.
00:02:32.220 | And if you can build up a skill,
00:02:34.260 | whether it's like knowledge work or in trades,
00:02:36.660 | you can use this as a foundation of financial security,
00:02:39.420 | and that's what you want.
00:02:40.780 | You wanna be able to, when you're upper middle age,
00:02:43.100 | to be able to take care of your kids,
00:02:44.260 | to be able to help your parents
00:02:45.380 | when they get older and sick,
00:02:46.300 | to not have to worry about,
00:02:47.860 | to go pursue things you're interested in,
00:02:49.380 | to not be worried about money, it's like, that's the game,
00:02:51.740 | and it's hard, and you need to take all this free time
00:02:54.020 | you have in your 20s, and you need to focus on,
00:02:56.820 | I am gonna get good.
00:02:57.920 | So we'll call that sort of pragmatic personal productivity.
00:03:01.620 | And there's some tension between these two, right?
00:03:03.700 | Oliver's like, just have a few things to do,
00:03:05.960 | and also, it's okay if you don't do those,
00:03:07.900 | like if your interests take you somewhere else.
00:03:10.180 | And Galloway is basically like,
00:03:11.260 | look, if you don't sort of get after it,
00:03:13.700 | and work really hard to master some good stuff,
00:03:16.300 | your life's gonna be miserable.
00:03:18.580 | So we kind of have these two different approaches,
00:03:20.140 | idealistic, humanistic, and pragmatic.
00:03:23.480 | So I think what's going on here is that
00:03:26.580 | Berkman's approach, I think, matches the human brain.
00:03:29.700 | Like, this is ideally how humans are wired.
00:03:33.100 | Like, this is really what productivity is to humans,
00:03:35.580 | is this much looser, sort of,
00:03:39.720 | what am I gonna do right now?
00:03:40.940 | Well, I need to go hunt this thing,
00:03:42.540 | or we're gonna go forage.
00:03:43.380 | You're sort of doing one or two things,
00:03:46.060 | you don't have complicated plans,
00:03:47.900 | and those plans are also contingent.
00:03:50.500 | Well, I don't know, it's kind of raining,
00:03:51.460 | so I'm not gonna do this, I'm gonna do this,
00:03:52.540 | or there's a new urgent thing that came up,
00:03:53.900 | let me work on that before.
00:03:55.300 | Like, I do think you would be happier
00:03:58.540 | with the Berkman personal productivity.
00:04:03.500 | On the other hand, I think Galloway is right,
00:04:05.300 | that it is really hard to be financially secure,
00:04:08.280 | and like, you do have to build up skills,
00:04:10.220 | and it's hard, and especially when you have
00:04:11.700 | a lot of free time in your 20s,
00:04:12.900 | like, you probably have to do some grinding, right?
00:04:14.940 | I mean, because it's hard.
00:04:16.200 | It's hard to, in a modern economy,
00:04:18.840 | it's hard to convince other people to give you money.
00:04:21.580 | But you really want people to give you money,
00:04:23.100 | because without money, things are hard.
00:04:25.220 | And so, we have to construct a sort of
00:04:27.220 | artificial relationship with time,
00:04:29.580 | just for a sort of financial survival,
00:04:31.900 | for a sort of basic economic security.
00:04:34.120 | So, I don't know, maybe our goal
00:04:36.420 | is you wanna get to a place in life
00:04:38.020 | where you can have a Berkman-style personal productivity,
00:04:40.260 | and that's gonna require a Galloway-style
00:04:41.980 | pragmatic personal productivity along the way.
00:04:44.300 | Maybe Berkman's given us the goal,
00:04:45.780 | and Galloway's giving us the path you have to take
00:04:48.980 | to be able to get to something like that goal.
00:04:51.280 | But I think, back to the original question,
00:04:55.200 | the Galloway-style pragmatic personal productivity can be,
00:04:58.780 | it doesn't have to be super anxiety-provoking,
00:05:00.540 | but, you know, it's hard.
00:05:02.540 | And you have to care about, what am I doing?
00:05:04.660 | Am I making progress on what matters?
00:05:06.340 | You have to sort of fight back distractions.
00:05:08.620 | You have to make time for what's important.
00:05:11.340 | There's a sort of defensive time management in here.
00:05:13.700 | I can't let all these distractions encroach so much
00:05:16.340 | that nothing gets done.
00:05:17.660 | There's a sort of urgency of,
00:05:19.260 | I have to keep working deeply on the things that matter.
00:05:21.900 | This is my time to start to get good.
00:05:23.980 | And some of that's stressful,
00:05:25.460 | and some of that's sort of anxiety-producing.
00:05:28.340 | One thing I wanna suggest, not to bring this back to me,
00:05:32.040 | but that my new book, "Slow Productivity,"
00:05:34.300 | maybe gives us like a reasonable roadmap
00:05:36.340 | for walking this tightrope, right?
00:05:38.860 | For like, okay, we need to do something
00:05:40.260 | like Galloway-style personal productivity just to survive,
00:05:43.380 | but we're attracted to the Berkman-style
00:05:45.300 | personal productivity.
00:05:46.340 | Slow productivity sort of helps you split the difference.
00:05:49.460 | It says, we gotta do the work, we gotta get better.
00:05:52.660 | But let's make sure along the way
00:05:53.860 | that we're not doing too many things at the same time.
00:05:55.820 | That gets counterproductive,
00:05:56.860 | and it's particularly stressful.
00:05:58.760 | Let's make sure along the way
00:05:59.740 | that we're giving ourselves a reasonable amount of time.
00:06:01.540 | We can't procrastinate forever,
00:06:02.740 | but let's not try to squeeze everything
00:06:04.100 | into the smallest timeframes.
00:06:06.100 | Let's work consistently on getting better,
00:06:08.860 | but we can have variations in intensity,
00:06:11.040 | and we don't have to have super unrealistic timeframes.
00:06:13.700 | Slow productivity says, okay,
00:06:14.980 | if we really care about quality in a very specific way,
00:06:18.140 | what's the craft that matters?
00:06:19.580 | And let me actually work specifically
00:06:21.220 | on training that craft like I would train
00:06:22.940 | to get better at an instrument.
00:06:24.940 | We're gonna get to that Galloway goal of security
00:06:28.300 | much easier, we'll get there much faster.
00:06:30.300 | We're gonna gain much more control over our schedule,
00:06:32.420 | much more autonomy quicker,
00:06:33.940 | if we're not just working really hard,
00:06:36.140 | but working hard at the specific goal
00:06:38.020 | of getting better at something that matters.
00:06:40.660 | Slow productivity, we can think of, in other words,
00:06:43.060 | as a way to navigate Galloway-style personal,
00:06:46.440 | his pragmatic personal productivity
00:06:48.160 | in a way that minimizes the exhaustion and burnout.
00:06:50.780 | There's still probably gonna be some anxiety there.
00:06:53.940 | It's hard to do hard things, and the pressure is on.
00:06:57.880 | But slow productivity gives us a way to navigate that
00:07:00.520 | where not only are we more likely to be successful
00:07:02.720 | with getting to the Berkman promise land,
00:07:04.680 | but we are going to get there
00:07:06.460 | without it having to be an impossible or unsustainable slog.
00:07:11.020 | I don't believe that we have to grind it out
00:07:13.900 | in a miserable sort of way to get to a sort of security
00:07:18.660 | later in our professional career.
00:07:20.140 | I do think we have to be careful about our time.
00:07:22.380 | I do think we're gonna have to prioritize
00:07:24.260 | like the deep efforts to get better.
00:07:25.780 | I do think we have to have defensive time management
00:07:27.860 | to make sure that other things don't come in and take over
00:07:31.100 | and prevent us from making progress.
00:07:32.500 | And I do think all that's kind of hard,
00:07:33.980 | but it doesn't have to be miserable.
00:07:36.440 | So I'm gonna throw slow productivity in here
00:07:38.300 | as the way to follow the Galloway path
00:07:41.680 | as nicely and sustainably as possible
00:07:43.320 | on route to getting to the Berkman promise land.
00:07:47.020 | Both good interviews, actually.
00:07:50.300 | - Yeah, I'll check 'em out.
00:07:51.360 | - I did "Modern Wisdom" as well.
00:07:52.560 | If you're looking for another podcast interview with me,
00:07:54.840 | I did Chris's show.
00:07:55.720 | I recorded down in Austin,
00:07:56.840 | but that came out kind of recently,
00:07:57.960 | so check that out as well, my interview on "Modern Wisdom."
00:08:02.600 | All right, who do we have next?
00:08:03.760 | Next question's from Adita.
00:08:05.800 | I currently work in a startup with long hours.
00:08:08.080 | I struggle to find time to sharpen my problem-solving
00:08:10.720 | and programming skills.
00:08:12.800 | How do I plan weekly and daily sessions
00:08:14.960 | such that I can follow my interests pragmatically
00:08:17.500 | without hampering my performance at the company?
00:08:19.980 | So my best advice here is combine the two objectives.
00:08:25.000 | So you're in a startup, a big-hour startup.
00:08:27.240 | You're gonna exhaust yourself
00:08:28.500 | if you're trying to have a sort of non-trivial,
00:08:32.040 | deep work-requiring, skill-building sessions
00:08:34.640 | outside of all the hard work
00:08:35.760 | you're already doing for your startup.
00:08:37.920 | Again, going back to the Galloway vision,
00:08:39.520 | maybe if you're in your 20s,
00:08:40.760 | you kind of have the energy to do this,
00:08:42.080 | but I don't know, I'd rather spend the time you do have
00:08:44.920 | doing other things that are rewarding,
00:08:48.120 | servicing the other buckets of the deep life.
00:08:51.000 | So I think the right thing to do here
00:08:52.460 | is start to find ways that you can take on
00:08:56.120 | professional challenges that are useful
00:08:58.180 | for the startup in your career
00:09:00.760 | that require, in order for you to succeed with them,
00:09:03.060 | for your skills and strategic ways to get better.
00:09:05.520 | This is almost always the optimal way to do this.
00:09:08.760 | When you're trying to develop a professional skill,
00:09:10.880 | if you can integrate that
00:09:12.120 | into your existing professional life,
00:09:13.800 | that's almost always gonna be better,
00:09:15.280 | as opposed to I'm studying to do this on my own,
00:09:19.000 | and then over here I have my job.
00:09:20.560 | And there's two reasons why it's better,
00:09:22.240 | typically, to integrate them.
00:09:24.160 | One is it's just more manageable.
00:09:25.800 | You're not requiring extra time.
00:09:28.840 | It's what you're already doing for your job.
00:09:30.880 | Your work to get better at this
00:09:32.180 | is directly helping something you're supposed to be doing.
00:09:35.400 | Getting better at the skill
00:09:36.480 | will give you immediate rewards.
00:09:39.400 | There's a course, an online course I do with Scott Young
00:09:43.720 | called Top Performer about getting better in your career,
00:09:46.720 | and this is one of the key ideas in the course,
00:09:48.520 | is we have you design a professional activity
00:09:52.560 | that is straight up useful for you
00:09:54.720 | and your boss and your job,
00:09:56.720 | but also is gonna make you get better
00:09:57.940 | at something that's useful to your job.
00:09:59.600 | So when you combine it, it's much more manageable.
00:10:02.360 | You're not having to find extra time.
00:10:04.640 | And two, it's much more effective, right?
00:10:08.080 | There's a general rule of learning new skills
00:10:11.160 | that is the more close you can get your practice
00:10:15.260 | to the actual application of the skill you're learning,
00:10:17.620 | the better.
00:10:18.460 | I had this conversation on a podcast the other day
00:10:22.600 | where they were saying, hey, should I meditate
00:10:25.440 | to improve my ability to focus on hard work problems?
00:10:28.440 | And I said, well, if you wanna improve your ability
00:10:30.440 | to focus on hard work problems,
00:10:31.760 | practice focusing on hard work problems.
00:10:33.960 | Don't do something similar
00:10:35.280 | and hope that some of these skills transfer over
00:10:37.440 | 'cause this transference can often be low fidelity
00:10:40.480 | and not that useful.
00:10:41.440 | Practice the thing you wanna get better at.
00:10:44.080 | So if you wanna learn how to program or whatever,
00:10:47.440 | program-specific things that are useful for your company
00:10:49.980 | don't take abstract programming classes, right?
00:10:51.960 | So you wanna try to connect what you're doing
00:10:55.440 | the training to the actual application.
00:10:58.640 | So that's my advice there is make what you're doing
00:11:02.600 | an implicit training session.
00:11:03.860 | And I think that'll solve a lot of your problems
00:11:05.680 | and give you the goal of as you build these new skills,
00:11:08.360 | giving you more leverage and control.
00:11:09.800 | You know, it's what we always talk about.
00:11:11.120 | You get more control and leverage over your working life
00:11:13.240 | and you can really take that out for a spin.
00:11:15.820 | - For those interested in the course,
00:11:17.360 | it's through your newsletter
00:11:18.960 | and it opens twice a year, right?
00:11:20.680 | - Yeah, I announce it in my newsletters twice a year.
00:11:23.000 | Scott actually has a new book coming out in May
00:11:27.060 | all about how to learn things,
00:11:28.680 | like how to learn hard things.
00:11:30.320 | And I'm setting up for him to come on the show.
00:11:33.400 | One of the ideas I have is to have Scott
00:11:36.500 | be a sort of like a guest question answerer with me.
00:11:39.080 | We could do a bunch of questions about learning skills
00:11:40.740 | and him and I can try to answer them together.
00:11:43.000 | So I'm having Scott, I've known Scott forever.
00:11:45.320 | I do two courses with him.
00:11:46.880 | This new book is awesome.
00:11:47.760 | So anyways, we'll get more on that with Scott soon
00:11:50.160 | on the podcast.
00:11:52.120 | - All right, who we got next?
00:11:53.240 | - Next question is from Lily.
00:11:55.200 | I have lived under a controlling family environment
00:11:57.680 | for most of my life where I wasn't allowed
00:11:59.360 | to have any hobbies or many friends.
00:12:02.080 | I'm now living on my own
00:12:03.220 | and I'm struggling to create my own routine.
00:12:05.320 | I want to live a deeper life, but I feel that it's empty.
00:12:08.120 | How can I begin to build a deeper life
00:12:10.080 | after years of neglect?
00:12:12.120 | - Lily, it's a great question
00:12:13.440 | and I love your thinking about this.
00:12:15.880 | You know, I love the self-awareness of
00:12:18.880 | this might be hard for me, but it's important.
00:12:21.080 | And I think it's, before we get to the details,
00:12:23.920 | the reason why that self-awareness is important
00:12:26.600 | is because when and if it's hard, and it will be hard,
00:12:29.100 | because again, you were not used to the sort of
00:12:31.920 | more expansive vision of the deep life growing up.
00:12:35.360 | When you struggle at first with it,
00:12:37.240 | you'll know the struggle is expected and you'll persist.
00:12:41.000 | Like you'll know this is going to be hard.
00:12:42.880 | You're more likely to persist in pursuing depth
00:12:45.360 | as opposed to when the first obstacle's coming up,
00:12:47.280 | just saying maybe I'm not worthy of this
00:12:49.160 | or maybe this is not something that's going to work for me.
00:12:50.980 | So I love the self-awareness.
00:12:52.440 | I'm going to give a preamble to my advice here.
00:12:56.080 | My general preamble to this advice is
00:12:59.920 | probably the biggest danger
00:13:02.640 | throughout this process of finding more depth,
00:13:04.460 | the biggest danger I want you to be wary of is your phone.
00:13:07.360 | 'Cause what you're trying to do here
00:13:10.800 | in building a more expansive depth into your life
00:13:13.520 | is you're going to try to be servicing more of these areas
00:13:16.820 | that make life meaningful and important,
00:13:18.880 | the contemplation, craft, community,
00:13:21.220 | celebration, constitution.
00:13:22.780 | There's gonna be these broad areas,
00:13:24.300 | these elements that make the human life
00:13:28.460 | interesting and important.
00:13:29.820 | The phone can offer you a sort of low,
00:13:34.940 | a high-sugar, low-quality simulacrum of satisfaction
00:13:39.000 | for a lot of these areas, right?
00:13:41.460 | But like, oh, you really like desire community.
00:13:43.340 | You don't have a lot of experience having friends.
00:13:45.320 | We can just kind of simulate having friends on the phone.
00:13:48.320 | Like there's people in social media
00:13:49.880 | and they're commenting and they're clicking on things
00:13:51.780 | and like that's close enough and it's easy, you know?
00:13:55.320 | You wanna seek out beauty and interesting things.
00:13:59.620 | You wanna like get engaged in like the world
00:14:01.520 | of like what humanity can create.
00:14:02.680 | The phone's like, we got interesting stuff on here.
00:14:04.660 | Just like scroll this thing and like it'll just,
00:14:06.720 | it'll look interesting and binge on these shows.
00:14:09.980 | You know, like what you're looking for,
00:14:11.440 | the phone can give you a cheap version of.
00:14:13.280 | You wanna be, you have a call to a moral intuition.
00:14:18.500 | I wanna be involved, have a moral intuition.
00:14:20.060 | The phone's like, we can just like punch outrage buttons.
00:14:22.700 | Just like look at these tweets.
00:14:24.380 | So the phone is gonna subvert every human instinct you have
00:14:27.500 | as you try to build a more expansive depth.
00:14:29.260 | So now is the time you need to be super wary of the phone.
00:14:32.140 | Right?
00:14:34.020 | Be very careful what's on there.
00:14:35.140 | Be very careful what services you're doing.
00:14:37.360 | You might consider temporarily taking social media
00:14:39.940 | off your phone.
00:14:40.860 | You should consider using something like the phone
00:14:42.700 | for your method when you're at home.
00:14:44.260 | You have it plugged in in a set place in your house
00:14:47.060 | and that's where it stays or in your apartment
00:14:48.820 | and you can go there to reference it,
00:14:50.180 | but it doesn't stick with you as a constant companion.
00:14:52.720 | Do things on a regular basis without your phone,
00:14:54.940 | just so you become comfortable being alone
00:14:56.680 | with your own thoughts.
00:14:57.760 | You have a lot of actual introspection
00:14:59.620 | you're gonna have to do here, Lily.
00:15:02.020 | A lot of sort of building out your schema
00:15:04.020 | and your understanding of the world
00:15:05.220 | and how you fit into it.
00:15:06.960 | This is gonna be a lot of just you with your own thoughts.
00:15:09.380 | So I'm talking about once or twice a week,
00:15:10.860 | long walks without your phones, errands without your phone.
00:15:13.500 | You have to be very wary of this thing
00:15:15.680 | in this very important but vulnerable moment
00:15:17.880 | you find yourself in.
00:15:18.940 | All right, with that in mind, how do we make progress here?
00:15:23.360 | Let's go back to the deep dive from earlier in the episode.
00:15:27.260 | Work on your hardware first
00:15:29.320 | before you get too caught up in the software, right?
00:15:32.880 | You've had a very limited, powerful,
00:15:35.080 | but very limited type of hardware you've been running on
00:15:37.320 | because of what it was like growing up.
00:15:40.080 | You now wanna build out this more expansive hardware.
00:15:42.380 | Let's focus on the boring hardware
00:15:44.380 | before we get into the sexy software.
00:15:46.240 | So this means you wanna get some control
00:15:48.840 | over your obligations and time, like we talked about.
00:15:51.440 | Here's what I'm working on, here's my planning.
00:15:53.760 | I know what I'm doing
00:15:55.700 | and I have control over what I do and when I do it.
00:15:58.820 | Work on your discipline instruction set.
00:16:01.120 | I have daily disciplines in these areas of my life,
00:16:03.280 | including areas that I've never given
00:16:04.680 | any attention to before, but now I am
00:16:06.480 | because I wanna tell myself I can do things
00:16:08.880 | that are non-urgent, but are important in the long-term.
00:16:13.200 | Simplify stuff that's clogging things up,
00:16:16.220 | get automation on the stuff.
00:16:17.420 | I don't think that's your big problem, that piece,
00:16:19.060 | because you're just getting started out,
00:16:20.620 | but get that hardware going.
00:16:21.780 | Trust yourself, I have discipline.
00:16:23.260 | I can do things in different areas in my life.
00:16:25.740 | I have control over my obligations.
00:16:27.440 | I have a pretty reasonable control over my schedule.
00:16:29.940 | Now you can start working on your software.
00:16:32.100 | And here, what I'm gonna suggest
00:16:34.420 | is take one processing unit at a time,
00:16:36.260 | by which I mean one area of your life at a time,
00:16:39.100 | and give it a few months to do an overhaul on it, right?
00:16:43.180 | All right, let's start with, maybe not community,
00:16:45.600 | maybe we'll start with something like contemplation.
00:16:48.280 | Okay, I wanna overhaul that part of my life,
00:16:51.800 | like regular reading habit, meditation habit,
00:16:54.800 | rediscovering a sort of religious connection
00:16:57.720 | and integrating that into my life.
00:16:59.120 | Let me spend a few months just working on that.
00:17:01.960 | Okay, now I'm sort of feeling like there's meaning in life
00:17:04.920 | and I can direct myself towards things that are important.
00:17:07.840 | All right, now I'm gonna focus
00:17:08.680 | on community for a few months.
00:17:10.520 | How do I start getting a service to my community,
00:17:13.700 | the friends I do have?
00:17:14.960 | How do I actually, how do I improve those relationships
00:17:17.060 | or meet new people?
00:17:17.900 | And you slowly go area by area
00:17:19.980 | and kind of build up beta versions
00:17:21.480 | of very basic software in each of these areas.
00:17:23.500 | And then after a year, go back and let's do version one.
00:17:26.380 | You know, now you're gonna iterate on this
00:17:27.600 | and make it better.
00:17:28.440 | And you can start building up really cool software.
00:17:30.260 | So beware of your phone, upgrade your hardware
00:17:33.100 | so it's ready to handle this full expanse
00:17:34.960 | of the human experience,
00:17:36.220 | and then start working on your software
00:17:38.380 | in one area of your life at a time.
00:17:41.200 | The stakes are low here at first.
00:17:42.800 | That's why I said beta software.
00:17:44.320 | I just want some sort of cool program
00:17:46.960 | after about a year of work,
00:17:48.440 | running each of the areas of my life.
00:17:49.820 | And now I'm ready to try to come up with the new version.
00:17:52.160 | And this is gonna take time,
00:17:53.600 | but I'm absolutely convinced that you will get there
00:17:55.960 | because you care about it, you know about it,
00:17:57.880 | you know it'll be hard,
00:17:59.080 | and you're committed to actually making change.
00:18:01.680 | Hey, if you like this video,
00:18:02.780 | I think you'll really like this one as well.