Ep. 191: Working Seasonally, Fixing Twitter, and Curing Burnout

00:00:00.000 | I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, episode 191.

00:00:13.600 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ by myself.

00:00:21.440 | Jesse has abandoned me this week for a no good reason.

00:00:27.680 | The lacrosse team he helps coach is on the road.

00:00:31.240 | They're planning a tournament.

00:00:32.240 | I've told Jesse one thing, I've told him this a thousand times, the youth of this country

00:00:39.040 | are a distraction that get in the way of what matters, which is middle-aged men talking

00:00:46.280 | about productivity.

00:00:47.280 | I don't know when that lesson is going to sink in.

00:00:49.720 | Now, I warned everyone, I warned everyone last time Jesse was gone that if he was gone

00:00:57.720 | again, I was going to create a Jesse Scarecrow and put him, put that in his chair so that

00:01:02.840 | we could keep going in our old style.

00:01:06.160 | I have followed through on that threat.

00:01:09.680 | Say hi to everyone, Jesse Scarecrow.

00:01:11.960 | Hi Cal, it's me, me Jesse.

00:01:17.840 | Well Jesse, good to see you dressed up for the episode today.

00:01:22.080 | What's on your mind?

00:01:24.200 | Well I just wanted to say, compared to you, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa are garbage

00:01:35.520 | people.

00:01:36.520 | Oh Jesse, that is, I think that's too extreme.

00:01:39.040 | I try to do what I can, but you know, I'm not that great.

00:01:44.240 | Nope, nope, nope.

00:01:45.240 | Here's the thing, I am in my forties, you are only in your thirties, so I am clearly

00:01:50.240 | much older than you.

00:01:51.240 | So I speak from wisdom when I, when I would say they are garbage people compared to you

00:01:59.080 | because you give advice that's good about time management.

00:02:04.360 | Well Jesse, I think we're going too far here.

00:02:06.440 | No, no.

00:02:07.440 | And I also want to say to Brandon Sanderson, if Cal says you wrote "Name of the Wind,"

00:02:15.080 | and that's what you wrote, and I don't want to hear anything else about it.

00:02:18.800 | All right, well I appreciate that Jesse.

00:02:21.880 | Now for those of you who are listening and not watching the YouTube feed and therefore

00:02:26.100 | are missing these beautiful shots of Jesse Scarecrow, good for you.

00:02:33.320 | Good for you.

00:02:34.320 | Do not watch it.

00:02:35.320 | This is nonsense.

00:02:36.320 | This is shenanigans.

00:02:37.320 | All right, I'm here by myself.

00:02:38.320 | I have about a 50% chance of successfully recording this video properly.

00:02:41.800 | I keep looking to the side that YouTube viewers will notice because I keep checking to see

00:02:47.360 | if everything's working.

00:02:48.920 | I mean, there's a 50% chance that I will fail to record this episode properly.

00:02:53.520 | There's a 30% chance that there will be like a 20 minute period in which it's just showing

00:02:57.400 | Jesse Scarecrow because I forgot to change the camera.

00:03:01.240 | So that's what we're dealing with today, but I'll do my best.

00:03:03.080 | I want to try something different.

00:03:04.480 | Why not?

00:03:06.400 | I have a good segment, deep dive style segment.

00:03:09.000 | A cow reacts to the new segment where I'm going to react to John Heights, new article

00:03:13.560 | about social media, undermining democracy.

00:03:16.360 | But I figured why don't we try something different?

00:03:19.320 | Dave Ramsey style.

00:03:20.320 | I'm going to jump straight into the questions.

00:03:22.040 | We'll get to the segment in a little bit.

00:03:23.560 | So let's just get started rock and rolling with some questions.

00:03:26.120 | We'll get to the longer segment later.

00:03:28.640 | All right.

00:03:30.040 | Well, the honor of asking the first question in today's episode goes to Steve.

00:03:37.240 | Steve asks, how do I stick with just one organization system?

00:03:43.520 | How can I stick to a system, a paper digital?

00:03:45.800 | I go through different seasons where I'm into either digital organization or working with

00:03:49.360 | paper and pen.

00:03:51.480 | What's been working generally is time blocking in a notebook, keeping appointments on a calendar,

00:03:56.160 | but I would like to somehow settle.

00:03:57.160 | So I'm not expending so much effort on redoing my system.

00:04:04.480 | Steve, good question.

00:04:09.160 | Here's what I want you to keep in mind.

00:04:12.840 | Going from no organizational system to some sort of organizational system that you've

00:04:19.840 | thought about, you know, maybe it's built off of the principles I write about, is a

00:04:24.680 | big win.

00:04:25.680 | Now that will make a big difference in your life.

00:04:28.120 | On the other hand, going from an organizational system, a smart organizational system to a

00:04:32.720 | different smart organizational system that you've optimized or tweaked or changed is

00:04:38.800 | going to have a small impact on the quality and quantity of what you are able to produce.

00:04:47.080 | Now there is pleasure, of course, in coming up with new systems that is just isolated

00:04:52.000 | from the actual impact of the system.

00:04:53.840 | If you're like me, and I think you are, it feels good to think about the different ways

00:04:58.120 | the pieces of your new system are going to hook together.

00:05:00.600 | This notebook with this pen, and I'm going to hook it into a remarkable tablet.

00:05:04.440 | And then that remarkable tablet is going to be FedEx to a sky writer who's going to put

00:05:08.840 | my most important task of the day into the sky with smoke.

00:05:12.080 | It feels good to see all the pieces of the new system, all the pieces of the new system

00:05:16.680 | hooked together, but it's not going to make a big difference.

00:05:18.800 | And so I think you were right to be worried that if you are continually updating your

00:05:23.160 | system, you're actually getting in the way of getting the work done that that system

00:05:28.200 | is supposed to help.

00:05:29.240 | So I want to break you out of that cycle.

00:05:30.720 | I'm going to give you a bare bones vanilla, but will work just fine combination of tools

00:05:36.960 | to implement my system.

00:05:38.240 | And I'm going to ask for you to use it for six months without changing it.

00:05:41.880 | All right.

00:05:43.480 | So here's the bare bones version of my system I want you to use.

00:05:48.560 | Digital calendar.

00:05:49.560 | All right.

00:05:51.140 | So appointments can go on your calendar.

00:05:54.280 | Paper time blocking.

00:05:56.440 | You've been using a paper notebook.

00:05:58.040 | That's fine.

00:05:59.280 | You can use my time block planner at timeblockplanner.com to find out more about that.

00:06:05.440 | But a notebook you can bring with you for time blocking each day.

00:06:10.560 | Tasks and weekly plans, whatever system you want.

00:06:14.480 | So you can use Trello, you can use an online to do list.

00:06:17.000 | You can use a notebook if you want.

00:06:19.480 | I don't care.

00:06:21.140 | Weekly plans.

00:06:22.140 | Just use a text file or a Google doc.

00:06:23.480 | Do the same for quarterly plans.

00:06:25.520 | All right.

00:06:26.520 | So digital calendar, paper time blocking, weekly, quarterly plans, you know, whatever,

00:06:32.360 | Google docs, text files, and whatever task management system you want.

00:06:37.080 | I don't really care, but you're going to stick with what you choose for six months.

00:06:42.040 | Again, for those who don't know my system, go to the core ideas video on time management

00:06:48.480 | at the YouTube page, youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

00:06:53.220 | We avoid this episode so you can avoid seeing the terrifying Jesse Scarecrow.

00:06:56.840 | What do you mean terrifying?

00:06:58.520 | I'm not terrifying.

00:06:59.520 | Come on, Jesse Scarecrow.

00:07:01.400 | We're upsetting our viewing audience.

00:07:03.640 | Steve, so you have that system, use it for six months.

00:07:08.520 | We have that urge, like I want to fiddle with the system.

00:07:11.200 | Put that urge into creating something new.

00:07:12.740 | Put that urge into making the pieces of an idea fit together, a new business strategy

00:07:16.440 | fitted together, a new high quality leisure activity that requires complex fiddling.

00:07:23.280 | You're building things, you're making things.

00:07:25.540 | Find another outlet for that urge to get the pleasure that comes from pieces clicking together.

00:07:30.580 | And then after six months, if you want to change your system again, go ahead.

00:07:33.600 | But here's what I think you're going to find.

00:07:35.260 | Six months of not changing your system.

00:07:38.000 | I feel insecure that it's good enough because I told you it is.

00:07:40.440 | That's fine.

00:07:41.440 | It'll be fine.

00:07:42.440 | There's not some major benefit you're going to get compared to that vanilla system I just

00:07:45.340 | gave you.

00:07:46.380 | After six months, you're probably going to say, you know what?

00:07:48.460 | I found other outlets for that energy.

00:07:50.460 | I have more interesting and important things to focus my energy on than fixing my system.

00:07:55.700 | Right now it's a hobby of yours.

00:07:58.500 | Find another hobby so that you can actually focus your energy when you're working on actually

00:08:03.160 | working and not trying to get these systems to function correctly.

00:08:07.140 | All right.

00:08:08.940 | So we got another question here.

00:08:14.380 | This one, I'm clicking.

00:08:18.040 | This is there we go.

00:08:20.860 | This is scintillating, by the way, for the viewing audience and the listening audience.

00:08:24.360 | These moments of silence.

00:08:25.360 | I'm actually clicking.

00:08:28.320 | I'm adjusting our recording software.

00:08:30.080 | Jesse does all this normally.

00:08:31.080 | So you got to you got to give me some rope.

00:08:33.360 | Why can't I do it now?

00:08:35.600 | Scarecrow, Jesse, you have no arms.

00:08:37.560 | So I have to do this.

00:08:39.260 | And so sometimes I have to go and click and change things because I'm not great at doing

00:08:42.640 | this on my own anymore.

00:08:44.400 | And so everyone will have to bear with me, but we're making progress.

00:08:47.520 | So let's move on now to our next question.

00:08:50.280 | It comes from Dan.

00:08:52.720 | Dan asks, how do I maintain a routine in a job that has wildly changing demands?

00:09:03.040 | So he goes on to say, I'm a professional landscape photographer and my job consists of periods

00:09:08.400 | of admin work from home mixed with multiple national international trips around the world,

00:09:14.480 | staying at a home for periods from two weeks to one to two months.

00:09:19.320 | Deep work and deep life are very important for my job and health.

00:09:21.840 | And I try to follow all the principles that you show us in your books and podcasts.

00:09:24.680 | However, when I get home after every trip, it takes me a long time until I'm back on

00:09:27.840 | track.

00:09:28.840 | I do yearly, quarterly, monthly and weekly plans.

00:09:32.420 | But even so, I'm not consistent.

00:09:33.420 | And it takes me at least two weeks until I'm fully immersed again.

00:09:39.480 | Two quick points, Dan, before we get into the meat of it.

00:09:41.520 | Number one, what goes on in landscape photography?

00:09:47.120 | Two months international trips for landscape photography?

00:09:50.240 | I have to say, I really do not understand what landscape photography means, but it sounds

00:09:56.460 | like it is arguably a much cooler job than I imagined, or more likely you are clearly

00:10:05.080 | a highly trained international spy and assassin and this is your cover.

00:10:09.840 | So you're just telling your friends and family, yeah, I have to go to Yemen for two months

00:10:18.640 | to do landscape photography.

00:10:21.720 | Yeah, well, I need that tuxedo and those two guns and the watch with the garrote wire that

00:10:30.040 | pulls out of it because of the demands of landscape photography.

00:10:35.360 | So clearly you're a spy, but it's a good question to ask.

00:10:39.980 | The other point I want to make before I get into it though, is yearly, quarterly, monthly,

00:10:43.160 | weekly a little excessive.

00:10:44.840 | I don't usually recommend doing monthly.

00:10:46.360 | If you're doing quarterly, I think daily, weekly, quarterly is good.

00:10:51.860 | So you're doing a lot of planning.

00:10:53.360 | But again, as an international spy assassin using landscape photography as your cover,

00:10:58.320 | maybe your life is more complicated.

00:10:59.920 | All right, let's get to your solution here though, your solution here, which is your

00:11:08.480 | job has a feature that is good that I like, that I want more people to have in their jobs.

00:11:13.200 | And when you recognize this feature, it's going to take off a lot of the stress you

00:11:18.280 | feel about managing your work.

00:11:20.360 | And that feature is seasonality.

00:11:22.360 | Now, seasonality to me, when I talk about seasonality in work, and I think I get into

00:11:28.760 | this, for example, in my video on slow productivity.

00:11:32.480 | So the core idea is slow productivity video on the YouTube channel is it's where you have

00:11:39.120 | different seasons of your work year and different seasons feel different and are treated differently.

00:11:47.280 | Now, as a professor, for example, my job is naturally seasonal.

00:11:54.000 | Okay.

00:11:55.040 | So there are, for example, low intensity periods like the summer.

00:11:59.240 | I mean, in the summer, I'm on 10 months salary.

00:12:00.960 | In the summer, I pay my own salary.

00:12:02.440 | As I've mentioned before, most R1 university professors are going to take a summer salary

00:12:08.160 | from grants, which is what I did when I was leading up to tenure.

00:12:11.600 | And you're just doing research in the summer.

00:12:13.440 | Now as a tenured professor and writer, I pay my own salary in the summer.

00:12:17.240 | So like I do, I'm kind of free from Georgetown in the summer.

00:12:20.960 | Now, compare that to like last month at the height of the spring semester, I'm co-chairing

00:12:26.320 | a cluster hire.

00:12:27.320 | I'm on another hiring committee, incredibly intense.

00:12:30.040 | It's a completely different season.

00:12:32.840 | You know, I think this is good.

00:12:34.960 | I think it's highly artificial, this idea that your work should be at exactly the same

00:12:39.240 | level of intensity and load all year round, with the exception of weekends, two weeks

00:12:44.400 | of vacation.

00:12:45.440 | That's not very natural.

00:12:46.440 | That's not the way we evolved.

00:12:47.440 | We evolved to have heavier periods and lighter periods.

00:12:50.200 | There's the fall when we're harvesting, and the summer where, and the winter where the

00:12:54.080 | fields are fallow.

00:12:55.080 | I mean, this is what we're used to.

00:12:56.280 | And I think we should have more of that back.

00:12:57.560 | So you have a seasonal job.

00:12:59.760 | And your job in particular has three seasons, which show up a lot in seasonal jobs.

00:13:03.840 | So I'm going to give them names.

00:13:06.080 | Season one, the at-home steady state.

00:13:10.200 | You're at home.

00:13:11.560 | You're not out on your assignments where you're traveling.

00:13:15.320 | You have a lot of logistical work to do.

00:13:17.120 | You have admin to do, contracts and your website up to date, processing whatever photos from

00:13:23.440 | another trip, whatever it is you do as a landscape photographer, marketing, drumming up new business,

00:13:29.800 | calls, quotes, you know, whatever, however that business works.

00:13:33.320 | Then you have the seasons where you're on the road.

00:13:36.300 | These are the periods where you're traveling.

00:13:37.300 | You're in the middle of an engagement.

00:13:39.440 | This is where you've told everyone you're landscape photography, doing landscape photography

00:13:43.560 | for two months overseas.

00:13:44.560 | Yeah, right.

00:13:45.560 | You're really assassinating people with grout wire, but whatever, you're on the road.

00:13:48.640 | And then the third common season or period for you is what I will call the post-trip

00:13:52.920 | recovery.

00:13:53.920 | You just got back from a trip.

00:13:58.800 | You have literally assassinated dozens of people.

00:14:01.320 | You're exhausted, it's mentally demanding, and you can't just, you find it difficult

00:14:04.880 | to fall right back into, let me be on email and Zoom and answering, you know, client inquiries

00:14:10.720 | all day.

00:14:11.800 | Treat each of those seasons differently.

00:14:13.400 | When I say treat it differently, have different routines and rules that you deploy.

00:14:21.320 | Routines and rules, and maybe we'll throw in their standards that you deploy for each

00:14:24.520 | of those seasons.

00:14:25.520 | So the way you handle the at-home admin period is going to be very sort of Cal Newport in

00:14:30.040 | the middle of the semester style.

00:14:32.480 | Your quarterly plan influences your weekly plan.

00:14:35.160 | You make a good weekly plan.

00:14:36.160 | The weekly plan influences your daily time block plan.

00:14:38.880 | You're working for set hours, maybe six to eight hours a day.

00:14:42.740 | You're using your time well.

00:14:44.600 | Schedule shutdown complete to differentiate between work and non-work.

00:14:47.280 | Just sort of standard steady state Cal Newport stuff.

00:14:49.480 | You're getting stuff done, but you're not overwhelmed.

00:14:51.720 | You're full capture, so you're not too stressed, but making progress on lots of things.

00:14:55.000 | Great.

00:14:56.000 | When you're on the road during those seasons, it's probably very different.

00:14:59.520 | You batten down the hatches.

00:15:00.920 | I mean, if this is demanding, which it seems like it is, you have procedures for this.

00:15:05.760 | People know that you can't be reached unless it's an emergency.

00:15:08.760 | You're bouncing back inquiries.

00:15:10.240 | There's not email inboxes that are picking up.

00:15:12.120 | You're careful not to have ongoing unrelated projects that require tending while you're

00:15:15.880 | away.

00:15:16.880 | So you can really give your full attention to wink, wink landscape photography.

00:15:21.200 | And then I think you should have this post-trip recovery season where you say, "I'm done with

00:15:25.760 | the trip, but I need two weeks.

00:15:28.800 | I need two weeks."

00:15:29.800 | And you have a completely different standard for those two weeks.

00:15:32.760 | Maybe it's like you take two days completely off with your family.

00:15:35.920 | Then the next three days, it's like one hour every morning to start getting your arms around

00:15:42.120 | processing the photos or like some sort of admin that is generated as annoyance.

00:15:46.760 | You're kind of spreading it out.

00:15:48.520 | And like one hour of emergency email or beginning to like rebuild your recovery list.

00:15:54.920 | Maybe you just have like a couple hours of work you do a day.

00:15:57.120 | And then the next week it's like three hours, but no projects.

00:16:01.800 | You're recovering.

00:16:03.440 | And then the third week after that, that recovery has slowly gotten you up to the place where

00:16:08.200 | now you can jump back into your admin season.

00:16:11.320 | So I would say lean into the fact that your job feels different at different times and

00:16:14.440 | optimize your rules, rituals, and standards for each of those times.

00:16:17.800 | In general, everyone who is able to have this type of autonomy over the work should think

00:16:24.040 | about it this way.

00:16:25.960 | And I think steady state, intense period, recovery period, those are three pretty generally

00:16:29.960 | applicable seasons for like lots of people.

00:16:31.840 | If you're a freelancer or you run your own solopreneur business or you run a small company

00:16:37.080 | or you have a lot of autonomy on your team or you're a professor or a writer, think about

00:16:42.760 | steady state, intense periods, recovery periods.

00:16:45.360 | It's three different types, three different types of work and you treat each of them differently.

00:16:50.000 | I think it's much more interesting, much more sustainable, much more natural than just let

00:16:58.200 | me be at this 80% mark every single day.

00:17:01.200 | Eight hours, fully time blocked, day after day after day, week after week after week,

00:17:05.840 | month after month after month.

00:17:07.600 | All right.

00:17:08.600 | So as mentioned, I do want to do a deep dive segment here in particular, a CalReactsToTheNew

00:17:16.160 | segment.

00:17:17.840 | John Haidt has this big, splashy new Atlantic article titled, the online version is titled,

00:17:24.720 | Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Has Been Uniquely Stupid.

00:17:27.960 | It's a big anti-social media polemic.

00:17:29.840 | This is like put it in my veins type content and I want to get into it.

00:17:35.680 | But first let us hear from a couple of the sponsors that make the Deep Questions podcast

00:17:42.800 | possible.

00:17:43.800 | Let's start by talking about Blinkist, a long time sponsor of the show.

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00:18:02.000 | You can read the Blinks or you can listen to them.

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00:18:11.520 | I have a clear way I suggest using Blinkist, which is to help figure out what books to

00:18:16.160 | read or not read.

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00:18:42.000 | So for example, you want to know more about technology being addictive.

00:18:46.960 | Look at the Blink for my friend Adam Alter's book, Irresistible.

00:18:50.680 | Get the main ideas, figure out if you need to read it.

00:18:53.080 | In that case, I would say you probably do.

00:18:54.880 | Interested in Yuval Harari?

00:18:56.660 | Read the Blink for Homo Deus.

00:18:58.440 | Read the Blink for 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

00:19:00.440 | Say, is it worth actually diving into?

00:19:02.960 | So you can get the lay of the land, the conceptual lay of the land surrounding that idea.

00:19:07.840 | You can go find, or you want to find out more about an idea.

00:19:10.840 | So you know the vocabulary, you know the major points, and you can figure out if you need

00:19:14.480 | to read it.

00:19:15.480 | So for example, you want to know more about technology being addictive.

00:19:18.480 | Read the Blink for Homo Deus.

00:19:20.480 | Read the Blink for 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

00:19:23.480 | Say, is it worth actually diving into?

00:19:25.480 | Read the Blink for 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

00:19:28.480 | Say, is it worth actually diving into?

00:19:31.480 | You done any good Blinks recently, Scarecrow Jesse?

00:19:36.480 | It's not relevant.

00:19:38.480 | I just reread How to Become a High School Superstar by Cal Newport once a week.

00:19:47.480 | All wisdom needed for life can be found in that book.

00:19:51.480 | Well, I appreciate that, Scarecrow Jesse.

00:19:53.480 | I like that book too.

00:19:55.480 | One of my more underrated books.

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00:21:13.480 | I don't want to bother with supplements.

00:21:15.480 | I don't want to bother with vitamins.

00:21:16.480 | God forbid I don't want to go to GNC, so I take my Athletic Greens.

00:21:22.480 | So, right now it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient

00:21:26.480 | daily nutrition, especially as we are in flu and cold season.

00:21:31.480 | And can I just say this?

00:21:32.480 | I'm not making any claim here, but let me just say this.

00:21:35.480 | My schedule got uprooted recently, a few weeks ago, because I was doing this faculty hiring,

00:21:43.480 | and I got out of my Athletic Greens habit in the morning.

00:21:47.480 | I got a nasty cold.

00:21:49.480 | All right, now look, I'm not making a claim here.

00:21:51.480 | Correlation is not proof of causation, but I'm just saying.

00:21:55.480 | Messed up my Athletic Greens schedule, got a nasty cold because I wasn't taking it, got

00:21:58.480 | a nasty cold.

00:21:59.480 | I'm just going to say that.

00:22:00.480 | Two observations.

00:22:02.480 | Connect them if you will.

00:22:04.480 | So, Athletic Greens is just one scoop in a cup of water every day.

00:22:07.480 | That's it.

00:22:08.480 | No need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health.

00:22:11.480 | To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you free a one-year supply of immune

00:22:16.480 | supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase.

00:22:21.480 | All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/deep.

00:22:23.480 | Again, that is athleticgreens.com/deep to take ownership over your health and pick up

00:22:29.480 | the ultimate daily nutritional insurance.

00:22:35.480 | Athletic Greens.

00:22:36.480 | Scarecrow Jesse, what do you do for your nutrition every day?

00:22:42.480 | Well, I slaughter and eat a live rabbit once a day and I drink the yolks of half a dozen

00:22:54.480 | eggs with every meal.

00:22:55.480 | Scarecrow Jesse, I don't know.

00:22:57.480 | That doesn't seem very healthy.

00:23:00.480 | Maybe Athletic Greens would be easier for you.

00:23:03.480 | Don't tell me.

00:23:05.480 | Don't tell me what supplements I can use.

00:23:07.480 | Live rabbit devoured, half dozen egg yolks every meal.

00:23:12.480 | That is the solution.

00:23:13.480 | Well, to each their own.

00:23:15.480 | I will say, though, you have no arms or legs, so I'm not sure if I would take health advice

00:23:19.480 | from you.

00:23:20.480 | All right.

00:23:22.480 | So let's do a Cal Reacts to the News segment.

00:23:27.480 | As promised, I want to talk about this article from The Atlantic online.

00:23:33.480 | It's titled, "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Has Been Uniquely Stupid."

00:23:36.480 | In the magazine, it was called "After Babble" and is an epic article by, I'm going to say

00:23:45.480 | friend of the show.

00:23:46.480 | What I mean is someone that people who listen to this show enjoy, John Haidt.

00:23:50.480 | So I've talked to John Haidt once or twice.

00:23:53.480 | I don't know him well, but I really respect his work because he has psychology training.

00:23:58.480 | He can work with literatures in an academic way, but also has a real mind towards cultural

00:24:04.480 | criticism and public-facing work, which I think is great.

00:24:06.480 | So I'm a big John Haidt fan, so I was excited to see this article.

00:24:09.480 | I'm going to read just a few highlights, some highlighted sentences from this article, and

00:24:13.480 | then I'm going to give you some thoughts on it.

00:24:15.480 | All right.

00:24:16.480 | So one thing he says here is, "Something went terribly wrong very suddenly with America

00:24:24.480 | in the 2010s."

00:24:26.480 | As he clarifies, "In the first decade of the new century," so the 2000 to the late 2000,

00:24:34.480 | like 2009, 2010, "social media was widely believed to be a boon to democracy."

00:24:40.480 | Haidt argues, "The high point of techno-democratic optimism was arguably 2011, a year that began

00:24:48.480 | with the Arab Spring and ended with the global Occupy movement."

00:24:52.480 | He goes on, however, to say, okay, and he clarifies also, "In their early incarnations,

00:25:00.480 | platforms such as MySpace and Facebook were relatively harmless.

00:25:03.480 | They allowed users to create pages on which to post photos, family updates, and link to

00:25:08.480 | mostly static pages of their friends and favorite bands.

00:25:12.480 | In this way, early social media can be seen as just another step in the long progression

00:25:16.480 | of technological improvements from the postal service through the telephone to email and

00:25:20.480 | texting, all of which helped people achieve the eternal goal of maintaining their social

00:25:24.480 | ties."

00:25:25.480 | All right?

00:25:26.480 | So John Haidt is setting things up where there's going to be this fall, the 2010s.

00:25:31.480 | And in the first decade of the 2000s, basically, we are in a more hedonic, hedonic time where

00:25:40.480 | social media was great.

00:25:42.480 | It was helping people connect to their friends and bands and get new information.

00:25:47.480 | It was helping to overthrow dictators, and everyone's really happy.

00:25:52.480 | And what he argues is there was a major change.

00:25:55.480 | So what was this major change that happened to social media that set up the fall that

00:26:01.480 | he talks about in this piece?

00:26:03.480 | Well, he goes on to give his theory.

00:26:05.480 | He says, okay, look, in 2009 and before, if you're on Facebook, you had a simple timeline,

00:26:12.480 | a never-ending stream of content generated by friends and connections with the newest

00:26:15.480 | post at the top and the oldest at the bottom.

00:26:17.480 | That began to change in 2009 when Facebook offered users a way to publicly like posts

00:26:23.480 | with the click of a button.

00:26:25.480 | That same year, Twitter introduced something even more powerful, the retweet button, which

00:26:29.480 | allowed users to publicly endorse a post while also sharing it with all their followers.

00:26:33.480 | Facebook soon copied that innovation with its own share button, which became available

00:26:37.480 | to smartphone users in 2012.

00:26:39.480 | Like and share buttons quickly became standard on most social media platforms.

00:26:48.480 | Shortly after its like button began to produce data about what best engaged its users, Facebook

00:26:52.480 | developed algorithms to bring each user the content most likely to generate a like or

00:26:56.480 | some other interaction, eventually including the share as well.

00:27:00.480 | By 2013, social media had become a new game with dynamics unlike those in 2008.

00:27:06.480 | If you were skillful or lucky, you might create a post that would go viral and make you internet

00:27:10.480 | famous for a few days.

00:27:11.480 | If you blundered, you could find yourself buried in hateful comments.

00:27:14.480 | This new game encouraged dishonesty and mob dynamics.

00:27:17.480 | Users were guided not just by their true preferences, but by their past experiences of reward and

00:27:21.480 | punishment and the prediction of how others would react to each new action.

00:27:28.480 | So that is the story that height tells for what is essentially the fall of social media,

00:27:38.480 | the fall from grace of social media.

00:27:40.480 | So this is a story, it's a tale of techno determinism.

00:27:43.480 | I talk about this in digital minimalism.

00:27:45.480 | I've talked about this in an article I wrote for the communications of the ACM.

00:27:50.480 | It's a point I've been making a lot recently, which is we have to be incredibly aware of

00:27:55.480 | unintentional techno social dynamics where a technology introduced for one period can

00:27:59.480 | have massive influences that we weren't expecting.

00:28:02.480 | We should be monitoring those and aware of those and reacting to those.

00:28:06.480 | We often don't.

00:28:07.480 | And as height says, this is what happened with the like and retweet button.

00:28:10.480 | It completely changed the character of social media.

00:28:14.480 | Where social media used to be about connecting to people, posting information, connecting,

00:28:18.480 | it became instead about viral dynamics.

00:28:21.480 | What's going to be a hit?

00:28:23.480 | What is going to avoid me being attacked?

00:28:26.480 | You don't have that without retweet.

00:28:28.480 | You don't have that without likes.

00:28:29.480 | But once it became this algorithmic stream with viral dynamics, it completely changed

00:28:33.480 | the character.

00:28:35.480 | It wasn't the intention.

00:28:37.480 | As I talk about in my book, Digital Minimalism, the intention of the like button originally

00:28:41.480 | was that engineers thought it was not elegant that someone would post a photo on Facebook

00:28:48.480 | and so many comments would say more or less the same thing.

00:28:51.480 | Awesome, cool, great, good.

00:28:54.480 | Like, well, let's just put a like button in so that if all you're going to say is like,

00:28:57.480 | that's great, just click that button and we'll count up how many people said that so that

00:29:01.480 | you don't have to waste time scrolling through comments that are all just simple positive

00:29:04.480 | affirmations.

00:29:05.480 | That was the point of the like button.

00:29:07.480 | But almost immediately, it completely changed the dynamics of Facebook because A, it made

00:29:11.480 | it more addictive because you began to care about how many likes your things got.

00:29:15.480 | And B, it gave them data that they could use to create algorithmically generated streams,

00:29:19.480 | which broke the whole model of I know you and Facebook is great because I can see what

00:29:24.480 | you're up to and made into this model of, oh my God, what am I seeing in my news feed?

00:29:29.480 | This is interesting, this is outrageous, this is emotionally engaged, and it completely

00:29:32.480 | changed the dynamic.

00:29:34.480 | So is that a bad thing?

00:29:35.480 | Well, Haidt says it's undermining democracy.

00:29:38.480 | It is like one of the worst things to happen is the social media platforms going towards

00:29:42.480 | this optimized streams that create, equipped with or augmented with viral dynamics.

00:29:48.480 | He gives three things he said went wrong once we switch to this.

00:29:52.480 | Number one, it gave more power to tools and provocateurs while silencing good citizens.

00:30:00.480 | Number two, this approach gave more power and voice to the political extremes while

00:30:07.480 | reducing the power and voice of the moderate majority.

00:30:11.480 | Because again, when you have viral dynamics in terms of both praise and attack, you migrate

00:30:17.480 | to the extremes.

00:30:18.480 | A, you're not going to get shared for saying things moderate, and two, the extremes are

00:30:22.480 | going to be motivated to pile on or try to attack people that seem like they're drifting

00:30:27.480 | from it.

00:30:28.480 | He cites the pro-democracy group More in Common, a very important survey.

00:30:34.480 | Back in 2017, they surveyed 8,000 Americans and they split the Americans up into seven

00:30:40.480 | groups that shared beliefs and behaviors.

00:30:42.480 | And they found that devoted conservatives comprised 6% of the US population and the

00:30:49.480 | group furthest to the left, what they called progressive activists, comprised just 8% of

00:30:54.480 | the population.

00:30:56.480 | And the progressive activists in particular were the most prolific group on social media.

00:31:01.480 | 70% had shared political content over the previous years and the devoted conservatives

00:31:05.480 | were also very active on social media.

00:31:07.480 | At least 56% had shared political content.

00:31:12.480 | And the irony, he points out, is that those two groups tend to be both richer than the

00:31:17.480 | average American and wider than the average American.

00:31:19.480 | So that we have, quote, two subsets of the elite who are not representative of the broader

00:31:23.480 | society that are completely driving sort of extreme conversation on social media.

00:31:30.480 | Finally, he says, social media in this new form deputize everyone to administer just

00:31:36.480 | as with no due process.

00:31:38.480 | Platforms like Twitter devolve into the wild west with no accountability for vigilantes.

00:31:43.480 | A successful attack attracts a barrage of likes and follow on strikes.

00:31:47.480 | Enhanced virality platforms thereby facilitate massive collective punishment for small or

00:31:51.480 | imagined offenses with real world consequences including innocent people losing their jobs

00:31:56.480 | and being shamed into suicide.

00:31:57.480 | When our public square is governed by mob dynamics unrestrained by due process, we don't

00:32:01.480 | get justice and inclusion.

00:32:03.480 | We get a society that ignores context, proportionality, mercy, and truth.

00:32:09.480 | So we get that happening as well.

00:32:11.480 | That is, again, another point I will just say, I hear this a lot in conversations about

00:32:17.480 | social media, content, content moderations.

00:32:21.480 | This came up, I think, in the context of last week's discussion of Elon Musk and Twitter

00:32:25.480 | where people say, no, I think it's good.

00:32:29.480 | Look, it's good that there's blowback.

00:32:31.480 | If you're worried about saying something, that means you should be worried about saying

00:32:36.480 | it.

00:32:37.480 | And you often hear the phrase, free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.

00:32:41.480 | You can say what you want, but you have to be ready for the consequences.

00:32:44.480 | And I think what Haidt is pointing out here is that on its own is a vacuous statement.

00:32:50.480 | You look at any example in history where there is a clearly, let's say, authoritarian regime

00:32:56.480 | dispensing arbitrary dictatorial justice.

00:33:01.480 | Let's look at Stalin throwing people into the gulag.

00:33:05.480 | If you were to go there and see what was going on, he was not just saying, I have arbitrary

00:33:11.480 | power, and I'm putting you in the gulag because I don't like you, and what are you going to

00:33:15.480 | do about it?

00:33:16.480 | No, there'd be a trial.

00:33:17.480 | And he would say, look, he would say the similar sort of thing.

00:33:20.480 | What you say, things have consequences.

00:33:22.480 | You were a treasonous to the country.

00:33:24.480 | This treason is going to unsettle the communist utopia.

00:33:29.480 | Your actions have consequences, and you're doing something dangerous.

00:33:33.480 | You need to go to the gulag.

00:33:34.480 | I mean, that's true of any time, anywhere.

00:33:37.480 | So what you have to do, of course, is with some humanity and common sense, just look

00:33:41.480 | at the particular context and say, is this largely actually just or is it disproportionate?

00:33:47.480 | So if you're in Stalin's Russia, you would say this is very disproportionate.

00:33:49.480 | He's sending people to the gulag, clearly because he just doesn't like them, or they're

00:33:53.480 | not on his team, or he's trying to make sure that he can preserve power.

00:33:56.480 | And obviously, things aren't that bad now, but I think a lot of neutral observers looking

00:34:00.480 | at the swiftness and virality of pylons, both on the left and right, would say, this can't

00:34:06.480 | possibly be proportional and just.

00:34:08.480 | It just doesn't seem that way.

00:34:10.480 | Our common sense is saying that's not true.

00:34:12.480 | So I don't buy the argument of, hey, you can say what you want, consequences, but you

00:34:18.480 | can't be free from consequences.

00:34:20.480 | That applies in every context.

00:34:21.480 | What matters is, are the consequences we've seen, as Haidt would say, proportional, merciful,

00:34:27.480 | and truthful?

00:34:28.480 | And often they're not, and it's because, as Haidt points out, the viral dynamics of these

00:34:33.480 | platforms have pushed out most of the middle, pushed out most normal people.

00:34:39.480 | We have these two extremes on either side, completely disproportionate of the population

00:34:45.480 | that not only control the conversation but are doing so in an incredibly aggressive way

00:34:49.480 | because they're trying to play the dynamics of great viral reward while avoiding or participating

00:34:54.480 | in great viral punishment.

00:34:56.480 | And so it really is a wild west of a small number of disproportionate vigilantes running

00:35:00.480 | around.

00:35:01.480 | And he thinks that's very destabilizing, and I think he's probably true.

00:35:07.480 | All right.

00:35:08.480 | So what do we do about it?

00:35:09.480 | Well, I don't have a definitive answer, but there's a couple points I want to make.

00:35:15.480 | First of all, I think I am somewhat alone in my argument that I do not think Twitter

00:35:22.480 | is as fundamental as everyone else does.

00:35:24.480 | Haidt makes this point.

00:35:26.480 | Elon Musk has recently made this point.

00:35:28.480 | They're all saying this is the town square.

00:35:29.480 | It's critical to democracy.

00:35:30.480 | That's why we really have to care about it.

00:35:33.480 | I don't think it's critical to democracy.

00:35:34.480 | I don't think it's the town square.

00:35:37.480 | I think if Haidt is right that what Twitter is is 11% of the population segregated at

00:35:43.480 | all extremes, playing this weird viral vigilante game of viral reward and viral punishment,

00:35:50.480 | maybe being observed by a larger group of people who find the emotions of this kind

00:35:54.480 | of entertaining.

00:35:57.480 | This is not the public town square.

00:36:00.480 | This is the Coliseum.

00:36:02.480 | This is the gladiator to the fights to the death that people in Rome will wander over

00:36:07.480 | to watch because it's bloody and interesting and is better than doing something else.

00:36:12.480 | It's kind of exciting, but it's not at the core of democracy.

00:36:15.480 | How do we know that?

00:36:16.480 | Because what would happen if, for whatever reason, let's say Elon succeeds and his latest

00:36:21.480 | thing is he wants to buy Twitter, he made an offer.

00:36:23.480 | Let's say he just shuts it down.

00:36:25.480 | Nothing bad would happen.

00:36:28.480 | 85% of the country or 90% of the country wouldn't even notice because most people don't use

00:36:33.480 | Twitter.

00:36:35.480 | You don't need Twitter to report the news.

00:36:36.480 | You don't need Twitter to be a politician.

00:36:38.480 | You don't need Twitter to be entertaining.

00:36:40.480 | Nothing bad would happen.

00:36:42.480 | People would barely notice.

00:36:43.480 | It would have less of an impact than supply chain disruption for toilet paper.

00:36:51.480 | How could that be critical to the town square?

00:36:54.480 | It's a Coliseum.

00:36:56.480 | It's not the Roman Senate.

00:36:59.480 | That is my argument.

00:37:01.480 | Once we recognize that, then I would argue we need to downgrade the importance of Twitter.

00:37:06.480 | It's weird.

00:37:07.480 | It's this weird 240 characters or whatever it is now with these weird viral dynamics,

00:37:12.480 | these little boxes with these threads, and it's this weird bloody gladiator game.

00:37:15.480 | We say, "I'm leaving the Coliseum."

00:37:17.480 | Here's what I think we need instead.

00:37:20.480 | A, we replace the distraction that Twitter gives whoever it gives distraction to with

00:37:24.480 | better distraction.

00:37:25.480 | There's better things to do if you're bored.

00:37:27.480 | Yeah, it's exciting, but listen to a podcast, read a book, have a better hobby.

00:37:31.480 | There's all sorts of things you can do that are interesting and entertaining, more so

00:37:35.480 | than these weird short character threads of extreme people fighting each other.

00:37:42.480 | Two, I think social media itself needs to fragment much more and get back more

00:37:46.480 | towards that 2000 to 2009 period where it is about connecting to people that you

00:37:52.480 | find interesting and know, expressing yourself.

00:37:56.480 | Social media should be more niche.

00:37:58.480 | It should be more about like people felt MySpace was in the early days or Facebook

00:38:02.480 | was in the early days.

00:38:03.480 | Here is a group of amateur bicyclists, and we connect with each other, and we

00:38:09.480 | share photos of our rides, and encourage each other, and we have our own norms,

00:38:13.480 | and our own way of talking, and it's great, and I'm glad it exists because

00:38:17.480 | there's not enough amateur cyclists who live near me to actually meet that many

00:38:21.480 | people.

00:38:22.480 | And that's what social media should be.

00:38:23.480 | It should not try to be a virtual town square.

00:38:26.480 | There should not be a service that everyone feels like they have to use.

00:38:29.480 | That doesn't work.

00:38:31.480 | Finally, C, we need better ways for those who actually do have important, useful,

00:38:39.480 | or thought-provoking information to share to use the internet to share that.

00:38:43.480 | There is no reason why the best and brightest, the most interesting, the

00:38:47.480 | smartest, the most engaging thinkers and writers out there should be constrained

00:38:53.480 | to a small number of characters, retweets, and linking, and adding, and all of

00:38:58.480 | these weird, arbitrary rules that serve to do nothing but virality.

00:39:02.480 | Virality is not useful for giving you the ability to share and express yourself,

00:39:08.480 | and to hear what other people are saying.

00:39:10.480 | It's really not that useful for it.

00:39:11.480 | The internet existed before the retweet.

00:39:13.480 | Social media and the internet existed before the like button.

00:39:15.480 | So I think we need perhaps an earlier Web 2.0 type approach, podcasts, blogs,

00:39:22.480 | individual websites where you can express yourself at length and in detail.

00:39:26.480 | And yes, it's harder to find attention when you're kind of on your own,

00:39:31.480 | but that I think is a feature.

00:39:34.480 | That means you're going to gather a more focused crowd.

00:39:37.480 | The best will rise to the top.

00:39:40.480 | You know, yeah, most podcasts don't get listened to, but ones that are

00:39:43.480 | interesting get big audiences.

00:39:44.480 | It's harder, but it's longer form.

00:39:46.480 | It's more nuanced, and it doesn't have viral dynamics.

00:39:49.480 | It doesn't create these weird pushes to the extremes.

00:39:51.480 | I wrote an article about this for Wired magazine early in the pandemic,

00:39:55.480 | where I said the best thing we could do from a public health perspective

00:39:59.480 | during the pandemic would probably be shut down Twitter.

00:40:03.480 | It's just going to make people crazy.

00:40:04.480 | It's going to push people in weird directions.

00:40:06.480 | It's not going to help our psychological or physical health during a pandemic.

00:40:11.480 | And my argument in that Wired piece was we should go back to blogs for medical

00:40:15.480 | experts, and they should be hosted on institutional websites so we trust it.

00:40:19.480 | Oh, this doctor works for this medical network.

00:40:25.480 | The blog is posted on that network.

00:40:27.480 | Like, we're already validating, like, this is where this person comes from.

00:40:30.480 | Here's why I should trust them.

00:40:31.480 | And he's not doing tweet threads of screenshotted charts.

00:40:34.480 | He can write a real article.

00:40:36.480 | And, yeah, if you wanted to use social media to say I published a new article,

00:40:39.480 | you can find it here, fine.

00:40:42.480 | But that was the appropriate form because it allows us to do curation of who we

00:40:46.480 | should be listening to to get more information, to have context,

00:40:48.480 | to have nuance.

00:40:49.480 | Twitter was a terrible medium for that type of discussion.

00:40:52.480 | So I think we need to go back or forward, we could even say, to a way of

00:40:56.480 | communicating and expressing ourselves that doesn't constrain us to these weird,

00:40:59.480 | narrow platforms that are built around virality and active user minutes,

00:41:04.480 | not around the most effective ways to convey information.

00:41:08.480 | All right, so that's my thoughts on this general point.

00:41:12.480 | I think John Haidt is right and perceptive.

00:41:16.480 | I think he clarified better.

00:41:17.480 | I made this argument, he clarifies it a little bit better,

00:41:20.480 | that as you shifted from -- the way I usually put it is as you shifted from the

00:41:24.480 | wall to the news feed, as you shifted from looking at friends' posts to liking

00:41:31.480 | and retweeting, you got these weird viral dynamics that transformed the social

00:41:36.480 | media landscape into this weird group of extremes and vigilantes that's had a

00:41:41.480 | huge negative effect.

00:41:43.480 | And, again, most people don't use Twitter, but reporters use it,

00:41:45.480 | politicians use it, corporate executives look at it, and it has,

00:41:49.480 | so therefore, a huge outsized effect.

00:41:51.480 | And to me, again, it's not the town square, it's not the Roman Senate,

00:41:56.480 | it's the Coliseum.

00:41:57.480 | And we're letting the bloody combat in the Coliseum, as entertaining as it is to

00:42:01.480 | look at in the moment, we're letting that actually dictate the way the rest of us

00:42:04.480 | live their lives, how news is covered, how politicians act as legislatures,

00:42:11.480 | how companies set policy or change their directives or initiatives or even decide

00:42:17.480 | who to hire or fire.

00:42:19.480 | And this is crazy.

00:42:20.480 | The Coliseum should not have a major role.

00:42:22.480 | There is nothing fundamental about this technology.

00:42:24.480 | We can do better with the Internet, and I hope we actually do.

00:42:28.480 | So that's my thought on John Haidt's article on Twitter.

00:42:33.480 | So good job, John Haidt.

00:42:34.480 | And that would be what I add to it.

00:42:38.480 | I mean, the one exception where we do need Twitter, I think, is Baseball Trade

00:42:41.480 | Rumors, because I need that information fast.

00:42:44.480 | But, hey, look, that's an example, though.

00:42:46.480 | Yeah, Twitter is good for getting Baseball Trade Rumor information fast,

00:42:51.480 | but there's a website, mlbtraderumors.com, that works just as well,

00:42:55.480 | and it's focused on just that.

00:42:57.480 | And I'll tell you something, and then I'll let this go,

00:43:00.480 | but I'll tell you something.

00:43:02.480 | That is where I went to see what was going on in the highly compressed free

00:43:06.480 | agency that happened in March after the collective bargaining agreement was

00:43:10.480 | made, finalized for MLB, because specifically I did not want to go to

00:43:14.480 | Twitter to see what the baseball reporters were saying, because Twitter was

00:43:17.480 | going to push in my face terrible, terrifying news about Ukraine and

00:43:21.480 | nuclear war and about COVID.

00:43:23.480 | And I was like, I don't want to go to the Coliseum to find out about my

00:43:27.480 | team, and so I went to a special purpose website, got the news I wanted

00:43:31.480 | without the stress.

00:43:33.480 | So case in point, that's the future we need.

00:43:36.480 | All right, well, why don't we do a couple more questions here.

00:43:41.480 | 43 minutes.

00:43:43.480 | Jesse, I'm going to, as I always say, I'm going to try to bring this

00:43:46.480 | episode in for a landing fast.

00:43:49.480 | Yeah, right, I'll believe it when I see it.

00:43:51.480 | Well, I think without actual Jesse here, I'm going to feel more, more

00:43:56.480 | svelte, move a little bit quicker.

00:43:59.480 | I have said that literally every episode.

00:44:02.480 | So we've got a question here from Jeremy.

00:44:05.480 | Jeremy says, how do I apply your ideas to skilled labor?

00:44:09.480 | Can you discuss how you would implement practices of the deep work

00:44:12.480 | methodology to work in the trades and the skilled labor sector?

00:44:16.480 | I'm a home builder, general contractor, and find it difficult to attain

00:44:20.480 | a deep work practice because everything I do is dealing with uncontrolled

00:44:23.480 | variables, client needs, other trades, employee management, scheduling,

00:44:27.480 | that make it hard to stay focused on the actual building with my hands.

00:44:31.480 | Well, Jeremy, it's a good question.

00:44:34.480 | I'd be careful about the use of the word deep work there.

00:44:39.480 | I mean, again, deep work is a specific type of activity, but I get what

00:44:42.480 | you're going at.

00:44:44.480 | Like what you're going at here, I think, is you feel like you're in a

00:44:47.480 | hyperactive hive mind type setup.

00:44:49.480 | You're constantly reacting to all sorts of different uncontrolled,

00:44:52.480 | unpredictable variables, and it gets in the way of actually doing the core

00:44:55.480 | work, whether we want to call that deep or not, of doing the skilled labor.

00:44:59.480 | I think this is a common mistake that a lot of people make.

00:45:03.480 | They think that the type of anti-hyperactive hive mind organizational

00:45:08.480 | systems and philosophies I talk about is for knowledge work only, for people

00:45:12.480 | on Zoom meetings doing email all day.

00:45:14.480 | That's not true.

00:45:16.480 | Actually, in the trades, these ideas could be even more important and

00:45:22.480 | applicable.

00:45:24.480 | The key is in your situation, if you do skilled labor, is systems,

00:45:29.480 | systems, systems, systems.

00:45:31.480 | You have to get out of a state in which you are generally available to anyone

00:45:36.480 | who needs you whenever they need you.

00:45:38.480 | Yes, in the moment, that is easy.

00:45:40.480 | Systems are a pain, and people don't like them in the moment.

00:45:44.480 | But if you just make yourself available to anyone who needs you whenever they

00:45:48.480 | need you, it will be incredibly frustrating.

00:45:51.480 | You're not going to get a lot done.

00:45:53.480 | You're going to be miserable.

00:45:55.480 | So in the trades, you need someone managing the phone, someone who can do

00:46:00.480 | that for you.

00:46:02.480 | You probably need an office manager to help deal with scheduling and employee

00:46:06.480 | logistics and tax filings.

00:46:08.480 | You don't want to be doing all that stuff on your own.

00:46:10.480 | Yes, you're going to have to spend more money to do this, but it's going to

00:46:13.480 | allow your business to grow.

00:46:15.480 | Let me tell you what's going to grow businesses in the skilled trades.

00:46:18.480 | I've heard nothing grows a business in the skilled trades more than you're

00:46:24.480 | reliable.

00:46:27.480 | I can call and office manager answers.

00:46:29.480 | The person always gets back to them in a timely fashion.

00:46:32.480 | If something is scheduled, it happens, especially when you're dealing with

00:46:36.480 | annoying knowledge worker types like us, which are kind of used to calendars and

00:46:40.480 | Zoom meetings, and when things happen, they're supposed to happen.

00:46:42.480 | If you can play in that idiom, if you can basically be, I know how to reach

00:46:48.480 | this person.

00:46:49.480 | I know how it works.

00:46:50.480 | He shows up.

00:46:51.480 | He's reliable.

00:46:52.480 | You'll have all the customers in the world.

00:46:54.480 | Even if you're like, oh, I don't have time to do this person.

00:46:56.480 | Don't ghost them.

00:46:57.480 | You have a system.

00:46:58.480 | Like, hey, here's what, yeah, we don't have room.

00:47:00.480 | Here's the waiting list.

00:47:01.480 | Here's what's going on.

00:47:02.480 | Anyways, so yes, the stuff I'm going to talk about might require some more

00:47:04.480 | employees, might cost more money, but you're going to make more money in the

00:47:06.480 | end.

00:47:08.480 | So your office manager should then be equipped with good systems for payroll,

00:47:11.480 | invoicing, et cetera.

00:47:12.480 | Automate all that.

00:47:13.480 | Have set systems for that.

00:47:14.480 | Do not do that ad hoc.

00:47:16.480 | You should not be on the fly, sending emails or answering questions.

00:47:19.480 | You need pre-planned check-ins and planning sessions with all of the relevant

00:47:23.480 | people in your work.

00:47:25.480 | You check in with the people back at the home office three times during the day.

00:47:30.480 | That's when they tell you who called, what's going on.

00:47:32.480 | You can confer, answer quick questions, et cetera.

00:47:35.480 | Not just them calling you whenever they need you.

00:47:38.480 | When you're on a job site, you have set check-in times with the clients.

00:47:42.480 | You give them a full update and they can ask or answer their questions.

00:47:46.480 | Maybe you have an end of the day rule.

00:47:49.480 | You know, yeah, send me a message or call the person at the home office and I

00:47:55.480 | have an hour at the end of every day where I call people back.

00:47:57.480 | We'll see what's going on.

00:47:58.480 | Again, people want clarity, not just accessibility.

00:48:03.480 | You have specific times and days you do things like estimates or site visits.

00:48:08.480 | You really want to structure and automate all of this.

00:48:11.480 | You can use text and email.

00:48:12.480 | I learned this from a builder, actually.

00:48:14.480 | I talked about this in my book, A World Without Email, a commercial real

00:48:16.480 | estate builder.

00:48:18.480 | Make text and email be only for questions that can be answered with no back

00:48:22.480 | and forth.

00:48:23.480 | Questions you can answer with one sentence with no back and forth.

00:48:27.480 | Yeah, that's more efficient to have that just be sent on email.

00:48:29.480 | So when you get time to look through email, you can answer those.

00:48:32.480 | Anything that requires back and forth, get it out of email, wait until the

00:48:34.480 | preplanned check-in time.

00:48:36.480 | So, look, I don't want to be too specific here, Jeremy, because I don't know

00:48:38.480 | your exact business.

00:48:39.480 | But you should get the sense of what I'm going for.

00:48:42.480 | What I'm going for here is you structure your interactions, you have help, you

00:48:47.480 | have systems so that you know what you're supposed to be doing at any one

00:48:50.480 | time.

00:48:52.480 | You're not at any one time beholden to a huge number of unpredictable requests

00:48:58.480 | for your time and attention.

00:49:00.480 | It's a little bit more structured, you're going to have to hire some more

00:49:02.480 | people.

00:49:03.480 | But honestly, it's going to make you better at what you do.

00:49:05.480 | People are going to like working with you better.

00:49:07.480 | You're going to do better work.

00:49:09.480 | You'll triple the size of your business.

00:49:11.480 | So it is worth it.

00:49:13.480 | All right, we have a question here from Lira.

00:49:16.480 | Lira says, "How do you deal with unexpected overload and burnout that you

00:49:21.480 | can't really ease?

00:49:24.480 | I'm a 26-year-old Spanish ESL teacher and nutrition student from Spain.

00:49:28.480 | I've been working at an academy teaching English part-time for the last year

00:49:30.480 | and a half.

00:49:32.480 | I'm also finishing my degree project for university from home and working at a

00:49:35.480 | bookstore owned by family members.

00:49:38.480 | Due to the owner having an unexpected illness, my hours at the store have

00:49:41.480 | doubled and I have to work for another three months, blah, blah, blah.

00:49:46.480 | Now I get up very early to work on my project before working at the store all

00:49:49.480 | morning.

00:49:51.480 | I'm feeling burnt out, I'm not well rested, and I'm feeling stressed most of

00:49:53.480 | the time.

00:49:55.480 | I have a plan, keep to-do list that I assign specific days and times, plan my

00:49:58.480 | days so I can fit everything, and have started quarterly planning since

00:50:00.480 | September, which does help keep my eye on my goals and figure out the next

00:50:04.480 | steps, but this does not help with burnout.

00:50:06.480 | Could it be I'm simply adjusting to the increased workload, or what would you

00:50:09.480 | recommend?"

00:50:12.480 | Well, Lira, first of all, I understand the state you're in.

00:50:17.480 | I get there often myself where I have a lot of things on my plate.

00:50:22.480 | Because I'm very organized, I can make it fit.

00:50:25.480 | So it's not like things are being left behind or I'm scrambling to stay up all

00:50:29.480 | night long to try to get deadlines on.

00:50:31.480 | It's not that type of stress of I don't have enough time to get things done, but

00:50:34.480 | it's exhausting.

00:50:36.480 | Every minute is scheduled right up to a shutdown.

00:50:39.480 | You feel like there's no gaps in that time block schedule, your full intensity

00:50:43.480 | all day long.

00:50:45.480 | I find that exhausting, and that's exactly the situation you're in.

00:50:48.480 | And you're exhausting, A, because of just constant labor.

00:50:51.480 | That's just physically draining day after day after day to do that.

00:50:54.480 | It's just draining.

00:50:56.480 | It also, at least this is my theory, short circuits the planning centers of our

00:51:00.480 | brain, which aren't used to having so many things on our plate.

00:51:03.480 | Yes, with artificial help and tools like multiscale planning, we can make it

00:51:07.480 | work, but our brain doesn't really know about that.

00:51:09.480 | And so it can't wrap its mind about all the different stuff on your plate, and so

00:51:12.480 | it's freaked out about it.

00:51:14.480 | How are we going to get this all done?

00:51:16.480 | It's used to a slower pace of execution.

00:51:20.480 | So you're straight up exhausted, and you have the negative effect of this

00:51:24.480 | planning center short circuiting.

00:51:26.480 | That's why you feel burnout.

00:51:29.480 | So here's the cure.

00:51:31.480 | Do fewer things.

00:51:33.480 | Take more breaks.

00:51:35.480 | That means one of these things going on in your life you're going to have to

00:51:37.480 | pause or stop.

00:51:40.480 | Now, I think you know that this is the answer.

00:51:45.480 | And the reason why I think you know this is the answer is that in the full

00:51:48.480 | version of your question -- I condensed this -- but in the full version of your

00:51:51.480 | question, you were very careful around each of the things you introduced that

00:51:55.480 | was drawn from your time, to put these disclaimers that explained why there

00:51:59.480 | wasn't more blood to squeeze from that turnip.

00:52:04.480 | You didn't have options to make it easier.

00:52:07.480 | You didn't have options to make it more flexible, to spread it out more, like

00:52:10.480 | this is its demands, I can't change it.

00:52:13.480 | You said that for each of the things.

00:52:16.480 | So you were preemptively trying to sidestep an answer that was like, with a

00:52:21.480 | little bit more organization, with a little bit more savvy in how you lay

00:52:25.480 | things out, maybe things will feel better.

00:52:28.480 | Because I think you knew the answer was, that's not going to solve it.

00:52:31.480 | There's too much raw stuff on my plate, and it's exhausting me.

00:52:34.480 | And you were looking for permission from me to take things off your plate.

00:52:38.480 | And I'm giving you that permission right now.

00:52:42.480 | We have a hard time with this, taking things off our plate.

00:52:46.480 | Especially those of us like you, Lira, who are driven and ambitious and

00:52:50.480 | interesting and doing interesting stuff.

00:52:52.480 | All these things you're doing are either interesting or admirable.

00:52:55.480 | You're helping your family, you're getting a degree, you're working on a big

00:52:58.480 | project, and we feel bad about taking stuff away.

00:53:02.480 | But let me tell you, when you zoom out and look at these pictures, in the big

00:53:05.480 | scale, it's not a big deal.

00:53:07.480 | You're going through a period of, you said, three more months where you have to

00:53:10.480 | take extra shifts at a bookstore to help your family.

00:53:12.480 | Okay, that's nice.

00:53:13.480 | So maybe you need to delay the nutrition degree by a semester.

00:53:20.480 | Or not do your project yet.

00:53:22.480 | Say, look, we have this family thing going on, I have to help out.

00:53:25.480 | In the big picture, it's not going to matter.

00:53:27.480 | You're going to get your degree, you're going to finish your project, you

00:53:29.480 | helped your family, you spread this out by another six months, it's not a big deal.

00:53:32.480 | But in the moment, it feels like failure.

00:53:34.480 | Because stepping back, adding things makes us feel good.

00:53:37.480 | Hey, look how admirable and ambitious I am.

00:53:40.480 | I'm doing all these interesting things.

00:53:42.480 | Stepping back from things makes us feel bad, or like something bad is happening.

00:53:45.480 | Or like there was a failure.

00:53:47.480 | And we amplify in our mind how much other people are going to care when we do

00:53:51.480 | that reality check.

00:53:52.480 | They don't, they're thinking about themselves, they're barely going to notice.

00:53:55.480 | I used to encounter this in a dramatic way when I was a grad student at MIT.

00:54:00.480 | And I was writing student books, and I was advising, informally advising

00:54:04.480 | undergraduates to help them apply my advice to their lives.

00:54:07.480 | And the tradeoff was I would then write about them on my blog,

00:54:11.480 | anonymously, or student anonymously.

00:54:14.480 | But I would like, let me help you get your life in order as a student,

00:54:17.480 | and then let me write about it.

00:54:19.480 | I had a series on my blog called College Chronicles back then,

00:54:22.480 | where I'd write about it.

00:54:24.480 | And I remember I would come across students, and there was one in particular.

00:54:27.480 | I remember this one student, and I called her Lena.

00:54:30.480 | It's not a real name, but I called her Lena.

00:54:32.480 | She was at MIT, and she was an undergraduate.

00:54:34.480 | And she had all this stuff on her plate because she was so ambitious.

00:54:37.480 | Her family and her school back home were so proud.

00:54:40.480 | She got to MIT, and she didn't want to let them down.

00:54:42.480 | So she had three majors in all these clubs.

00:54:44.480 | And she was the person everyone was always impressed by.

00:54:47.480 | And the only lever she knew how to pull to increase impressiveness was quantity,

00:54:53.480 | quantity of activities.

00:54:55.480 | But she was having trouble.

00:54:57.480 | And so I worked with her.

00:54:59.480 | I said, let's look at all of your obligations and figure out how much time

00:55:01.480 | they need each week.

00:55:02.480 | And let's try to figure out a schedule, a student autopilot schedule.

00:55:06.480 | We can make time for each of these things so it's automatic.

00:55:08.480 | Tuesday at this time, I work on my problem set.

00:55:11.480 | Wednesday after dinner, I'm at this club meeting.

00:55:13.480 | And we did this exercise, and we ran out of time.

00:55:17.480 | Even if she worked every hour of the day from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.,

00:55:22.480 | she still couldn't get all the work done, even in a normal week where there

00:55:25.480 | wasn't like extra exams or projects due.

00:55:28.480 | I said, this is black and white, Lena.

00:55:30.480 | You have to quit things.

00:55:31.480 | You have to stop doing three majors.

00:55:32.480 | You can't do all these clubs.

00:55:33.480 | You literally don't have time.

00:55:35.480 | Black and white.

00:55:37.480 | She couldn't do it.

00:55:39.480 | She couldn't do it because to quit something or walk away from something would

00:55:43.480 | be her stepping away from accomplishment, stepping away from ambition.

00:55:46.480 | It would be letting people down.

00:55:48.480 | And I've told this story before, but what happened to Lena was she burnt out

00:55:52.480 | and had to take a leave of absence, a medical leave of absence for mental

00:55:55.480 | health issues.

00:55:57.480 | Fried her brain.

00:55:59.480 | So I understand the difficulty here.

00:56:02.480 | But this is me telling you and giving you the permission I think that you want

00:56:05.480 | from me.

00:56:07.480 | Do less.

00:56:09.480 | Spread it out.

00:56:10.480 | Give yourself a break.

00:56:11.480 | Give yourself breathing room.

00:56:13.480 | You're young.

00:56:14.480 | None of this is incredibly time sensitive.

00:56:17.480 | When you look back 10 years from now, you're not even going to know the

00:56:19.480 | difference between getting all this done in the next three months and spending

00:56:22.480 | eight months instead.

00:56:24.480 | But in the moment, it's going to be night and day.

00:56:26.480 | It's going to be the difference between physical breakdown and exhaustion and

00:56:30.480 | all of the things that can lead to depression, deep procrastination, health

00:56:37.480 | issues.

00:56:39.480 | It's going to be the difference between that and like actually having some

00:56:42.480 | autonomy, control, gratitude, and depth in life.

00:56:46.480 | So that's what I'm going to say, Lyra.

00:56:47.480 | Do less.

00:56:48.480 | I give you permission.

00:56:49.480 | Quit the lay.

00:56:51.480 | It's not retreating from your ambition.

00:56:54.480 | It's tackling it in a way that's going to be sustainable in the long term.

00:57:02.480 | I got another question.

00:57:03.480 | I got one last question I want to get to.

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00:58:56.480 | Speaking of life insurance, Scarecrow Jesse, as you know,

00:59:00.480 | we do have a $20 million life insurance policy on your head.

00:59:05.480 | On an unrelated note, I think it's important that you go do some reporting

00:59:14.480 | for me off the coast of South Africa in the water there,

00:59:20.480 | what's known for the great whites.

00:59:22.480 | I need you to do some reporting for me from that water covered in blood.

00:59:26.480 | I can explain later why, but I want you to surround yourself with chum,

00:59:31.480 | go into those waters, and it's just a really important reporting thing I need

00:59:34.480 | to do. This has nothing to do with the $20 million life insurance.

00:59:37.480 | This is key to the show that you're swimming in chum in shark infested

00:59:41.480 | South African waters.

00:59:42.480 | All right. Speaking of, let me put this another way,

00:59:47.480 | completely changing subjects.

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01:01:15.480 | So Headspace is a useful app to have in your mental health arsenal.

01:01:21.480 | So however you're feeling try Headspace at headspace.com/questions and get one

01:01:28.480 | month free of their entire mindfulness library.

01:01:30.480 | This is the best Headspace offer available.

01:01:33.480 | So go to headspace.com/questions today. That's headspace.com/questions.

01:01:38.480 | All right. Speaking of questions, I got one more. I want to get to Alex asks,

01:01:42.480 | should I focus on process or results oriented goals?

01:01:48.480 | There are two kinds of goals, input based goals,

01:01:51.480 | such as hours spent reading or hours working on a project and outputs based

01:01:55.480 | goals, such as number of books read per month or certain project milestones,

01:01:59.480 | which is better. Neither is better. Alex, they both serve purposes,

01:02:03.480 | but at different relevant timescales.

01:02:07.480 | So in deep work, I borrow some terminology from the 40 X methodology,

01:02:13.480 | which is the lead versus lag indicator.

01:02:17.480 | So what you called process focused, like how many hours you spent reading,

01:02:21.480 | they call that a lead indicator, something you can directly track.

01:02:24.480 | And what you called results focused,

01:02:26.480 | like how many books I read or project milestones,

01:02:29.480 | they would call lag indicators is what you ultimately want to accomplish.

01:02:32.480 | And what they talked about in that book,

01:02:35.480 | which I think is a good idea even beyond their context is lead indicators are

01:02:39.480 | what on the short timescale you should focus on and track.

01:02:42.480 | If you do daily metric planning,

01:02:44.480 | you should be tracking your lead indicators.

01:02:47.480 | Those lead indicators should then be pushing you towards accomplishing the lag

01:02:52.480 | indicators, the bigger goals.

01:02:54.480 | So at the timescale of quarters or months,

01:02:57.480 | you might have lag indicator goals.

01:02:59.480 | I want to get through this series of books.

01:03:02.480 | I want to double my client count. And you know, that's important.

01:03:06.480 | You got to track it. Like if you don't know where you're aiming,

01:03:08.480 | you're not going to get anywhere.

01:03:09.480 | You got to identify these things you want to do and why they're important and

01:03:11.480 | they should be there in your quarterly plan.

01:03:13.480 | But what do you do on Monday? What do you do on Tuesday at 10 a.m.?

01:03:16.480 | That's where the lead indicators come into play. I'm reading 20 pages.

01:03:20.480 | I'm making three client calls.

01:03:22.480 | So both of these things have to be in your arsenal.

01:03:25.480 | They just exist at different scales.

01:03:27.480 | At the quarterly plan scale,

01:03:29.480 | you have your results oriented lag indicators at the daily weekly scale.

01:03:34.480 | You have your lead indicators,

01:03:35.480 | which are the actual actions you're doing and tracking at a fine grain way.

01:03:38.480 | That's going to help you accumulate the effort and work required to get to

01:03:42.480 | those bigger goals. All right.

01:03:47.480 | Well, speaking of goals, I think we went a little over an hour yet.

01:03:52.480 | No, thanks to you, Scarecrow Jesse, which didn't have much to add.

01:03:55.480 | Hey man, don't blame me. I do blame you.

01:03:58.480 | But for all of you who watch this on YouTube,

01:04:01.480 | my apologies for the nonsense of the Jesse Scarecrow for all of you who are

01:04:07.480 | listening again, congratulations. You skipped that nonsense.

01:04:10.480 | I'll be back on Thursday with another episode of the Deep Questions podcast.

01:04:15.480 | And until then, as always stay deep.

01:04:18.480 | [MUSIC]

Ep. 191: Working Seasonally, Fixing Twitter, and Curing Burnout

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