Ep. 243: In The Weeds!

00:00:00.000 | If we want to invent a term for this, because hey, that's what I do, we can call this belief

00:00:06.240 | that the key to creative output is the careful maintenance and tracking of potential ideas,

00:00:11.280 | we can call this the "no book fallacy."

00:00:14.400 | Too much energy put on the organization of ideas, not enough energy put on the extraction

00:00:18.280 | of value from ideas.

00:00:19.680 | That's actually where all the action is.

00:00:28.760 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show about living and working deeply in

00:00:35.200 | an increasingly distracted world.

00:00:40.320 | I'm here at my Deep Work HQ, unlike normal.

00:00:44.440 | No Jesse today.

00:00:46.600 | I have a little trip coming up that is going to intersect with our normal recording time,

00:00:51.160 | so I actually jumped back into the studio on a Saturday night to knock this episode

00:00:54.920 | out so we would have it in the can even while I was away.

00:01:00.280 | Now, longtime listeners have noticed in recent months we switched to a new format for these

00:01:05.680 | episodes.

00:01:06.680 | They're now built around themes.

00:01:09.280 | So the deep dive will look at a deep question, and then I will take audience questions that

00:01:15.300 | are all roughly related to that same idea.

00:01:17.480 | So the whole episode, for the most part, can circulate around a common theme.

00:01:22.080 | Now, there's a reason why we did this.

00:01:24.840 | It makes the show more approachable.

00:01:26.600 | So if you're a longtime Cal Newport listener, there is some comfort to the old format of

00:01:31.560 | I'm jumping from topic to topic, and you're getting a tune-up or a touch-up or a homily

00:01:36.120 | of sorts in all of these different areas I talk about, and you put it on in the background,

00:01:40.160 | and it just helps keep you in the mindset of I want to be deep, I want to be intentional.

00:01:43.680 | But if you're new to this universe, you don't know the Cal Newport cosmology, it can be

00:01:48.440 | a little bit unapproachable.

00:01:49.440 | But I'm jumping from thing to thing.

00:01:51.600 | It also made it hard for people to share episodes with others, because you couldn't just say,

00:01:55.760 | "Oh, listen to episode 242.

00:01:58.160 | It's about the simple life.

00:01:59.160 | We were just talking about the simple life.

00:02:00.400 | Cal comes at it from a bunch of angles."

00:02:02.180 | It's hard to share when instead the episode is all over the place.

00:02:05.580 | It's hard to extract a single question from seven that you want someone to hear.

00:02:10.600 | So moving towards a more coherent episode format is something we've been experimenting

00:02:14.920 | with.

00:02:15.920 | Because Jesse's not here, I'm recording on my own, there are no rules.

00:02:22.520 | I figured for nostalgia's sake, why don't we go back and do an old school episode.

00:02:27.040 | I'm calling today's episode "In the Weeds," because we are just going to get into the

00:02:31.920 | weeds on all sorts of different questions, technical, philosophical, dangerous for me

00:02:37.920 | to answer.

00:02:38.920 | I have no actual coherent organization to these questions, no particular way I am ordering

00:02:43.840 | them.

00:02:44.840 | We're going to touch on time management software.

00:02:46.480 | We're going to touch on the deep life.

00:02:48.360 | We're going to touch on career decisions.

00:02:50.000 | There's a student in there with a question.

00:02:51.400 | There's a husband for some reason asking me to tell his wife that she's wrong.

00:02:55.560 | Good luck getting me to do that.

00:02:57.080 | All of the classic type of questions all thrown in here.

00:03:00.160 | So I think we should just jump right in and rock and roll.

00:03:04.360 | Question number one is from Andrew, who says, "You wrote a post back in 2011 about a mission

00:03:11.400 | directed closed loop research system.

00:03:15.960 | I'm curious, do you still use this system?"

00:03:19.560 | Well, Andrew, I think a clue to what my answer is going to be is the fact that I had to go

00:03:25.100 | and look up this post you referenced to see what is this mission directed closed looped

00:03:30.520 | research system of which you speak.

00:03:32.720 | I put a link to this article in the description of this episode, so you can load it up if

00:03:38.000 | you want to read along.

00:03:39.480 | So this article, I have it in front of me here.

00:03:42.120 | This article I wrote on my birthday in 2011, and I write about the research system I put

00:03:51.560 | together because, and I'm quoting the article now, "Now that I'm a month away from starting

00:03:56.720 | my new position at Georgetown, I've arrived at a relatively stable research strategy.

00:04:02.120 | I assume it will evolve as I gain more experience as a professor, and I'm somewhat nervous that

00:04:06.400 | the more experience among you will scoff at my naivete, but it's just starting point,

00:04:09.480 | a way to start my new position with a proactive, not reactive mindset."

00:04:12.800 | So this post was describing the research system I had put together in preparation for becoming

00:04:17.120 | a professor.

00:04:18.120 | I'm going to actually read some details of this, and then I'll tell you how I think about

00:04:22.360 | it now, looking at it through hindsight.

00:04:25.800 | So in this post, I talk about this research system as levels, the bottom level up to the

00:04:32.320 | middle level to the top level, and I even have a handy diagram I drew.

00:04:36.360 | So here's how I talk about the bottom level of this research system in my 2011 post.

00:04:42.080 | At the bottom level is background research.

00:04:44.560 | Every week I try to learn something new about my field.

00:04:47.200 | I either read a paper, attend a talk, or schedule a meeting to ensure that I'm really understanding

00:04:51.920 | the new idea.

00:04:52.920 | I require myself to add a summary in my own words to a growing document that I call my

00:04:56.200 | research Bible.

00:04:57.800 | There's a screenshot in this post of the table of contents on my research Bible.

00:05:01.940 | It's a LaTeX document, and it has all sorts of different topics in it where I'm collecting

00:05:06.880 | notes on all sorts of different things I'm thinking about.

00:05:10.100 | Middle level of this research system.

00:05:12.500 | I'm quoting now from the article again.

00:05:14.860 | My background reading and brainstorming generates concrete projects.

00:05:17.780 | Borrowing a nice concept from Peter Sims, I call these projects little bets.

00:05:21.020 | Each little bet has the following characteristics.

00:05:25.020 | I list some characteristics.

00:05:27.180 | I try to keep only two or three of these bets active at a time, and I attack them aggressively,

00:05:31.660 | tracking my hours using the tally I discussed in a previous post.

00:05:35.340 | Ooh, that might be one of the first early appearances of my deep work tally.

00:05:41.260 | That's interesting.

00:05:42.580 | This provides a simple metric I can aim to maximize.

00:05:45.540 | I also force myself to be specific about my timing for these little bets as I find I get

00:05:49.220 | better work done faster when I'm fighting to meet a specific deadline.

00:05:52.180 | All right, and I show a screenshot of a Google Doc where I have these active Google little

00:05:58.900 | bets with notes on timing.

00:06:01.220 | And at the top level, I'm reading from the article again, my little bets lead to publications

00:06:05.740 | and grants.

00:06:06.740 | In my recent experience, maybe one out of every three bets leads directly to something

00:06:09.460 | larger, but the system is too new for me to be confident.

00:06:12.500 | And all of this feeds into my mission.

00:06:16.020 | And I have a mission for my research, and I use the feedback on what's working and what's

00:06:20.520 | not to update that mission.

00:06:22.260 | All right.

00:06:23.260 | I have a nice diagram in this article as well.

00:06:26.020 | So Andrew's saying, do I still use that?

00:06:28.860 | And the answer is no.

00:06:30.700 | I did not remember that system.

00:06:33.580 | I do remember the conference when I started coming up with those ideas.

00:06:38.180 | I reference in here being at Terminal 2 at the Zurich Airport, having an espresso and

00:06:43.180 | working on these ideas in my notebook.

00:06:45.380 | I do remember going to that conference.

00:06:47.180 | This was right before I became a professor at Georgetown.

00:06:49.940 | I do remember presenting a paper there about this unreliable network model that I had helped

00:06:55.020 | develop.

00:06:56.020 | And I have this memory of the time of it being like a neat paper that no one cared about.

00:07:00.420 | Like the math was pretty, the results were nice, but I invented the model and no one

00:07:04.820 | else was buying it.

00:07:05.820 | Like, great, Cal.

00:07:06.820 | I got to get back to working on what I want to work on.

00:07:10.060 | And I bet that was really the impetus for me really to get thinking harder about I need

00:07:14.660 | a more systematic way of tracking ideas because I need better ideas that'll lead to better

00:07:18.940 | publications, which will lead to a more clear research message.

00:07:21.500 | I mean, I just had this sense.

00:07:22.740 | I remember this palpably.

00:07:23.820 | I had this sense I need my work to be more noteworthy.

00:07:26.700 | I need it to have more impact and be more interesting to work on.

00:07:30.700 | And I felt like I was wandering.

00:07:32.380 | I was smart and I had skills.

00:07:34.100 | You know, I trained at the Theory of Distributed Systems group at MIT so I could write good

00:07:37.780 | papers, but they weren't gaining the traction I wanted at the time.

00:07:40.460 | And I thought a lot about how do I make my research more important?

00:07:43.940 | And that was the context in which I wrote and created this kind of complicated system.

00:07:48.060 | I don't use it anymore.

00:07:50.780 | An interesting thing that I have noticed reflecting on this issue is that other professional thinkers

00:07:57.900 | I know, established professors, established writers, the circles that I run in, when they

00:08:02.480 | get to the higher level of these fields, they're much less likely to have any sort of organized

00:08:07.540 | system for making sense of potential ideas to work on.

00:08:11.260 | They're unlikely to have systems like my research Bible here where they can systematically collect

00:08:15.300 | information so they don't forget it.

00:08:17.020 | They're unlikely to have some sort of Zettelkasten style setup where connections will be surfaced

00:08:21.380 | through the mechanisms of the system itself that will bring to their attention new insights

00:08:25.300 | they never had before.

00:08:27.600 | This miserly hoarding of potential insight that could be evolved into value into the

00:08:32.340 | world at some point is something that becomes increasingly rare, at least in my experience,

00:08:37.700 | as people move up the ranks of professional idea creation.

00:08:44.160 | And this is what I've learned through my own experience.

00:08:48.380 | Ideas are easy.

00:08:50.620 | Writing is hard.

00:08:53.220 | Having a good idea is not the hard part.

00:08:57.140 | It's not the crux, the bottleneck that prevents professional idea type people, writers, professors

00:09:03.300 | from succeeding.

00:09:04.740 | It's taking an idea with potential and realizing that potential.

00:09:08.940 | That is really difficult.

00:09:10.180 | Here is the typical, just reflecting on my own experience here, but here is the typical

00:09:15.440 | tempo in recent years for me when it comes to professional idea work.

00:09:19.740 | There's always a stream of ideas coming by me.

00:09:22.300 | A lot of them are bad.

00:09:23.380 | Some of them are interesting.

00:09:24.460 | Some are good.

00:09:26.460 | Every once in a while you get that JK Rowling on the train having the idea to write a story

00:09:31.880 | about a boy discovering he's a wizard type moment.

00:09:33.980 | Not that often, but sometimes you have those ideas.

00:09:35.860 | That's pretty exciting.

00:09:37.780 | Deep work was maybe like that for me.

00:09:40.020 | But these ideas are sort of coming by all the time.

00:09:41.980 | There's plenty of ideas.

00:09:42.980 | The more you read, the more you're exposed, the more you create ideas for a living, the

00:09:47.300 | more your brain is good at becoming a pattern recognition machine tuned to the particular

00:09:52.780 | pattern of potentially good ideas.

00:09:56.220 | Now once you're ready to do something, you've finished a book, an article, a paper, you're

00:10:00.820 | looking for something new, you just grab one of these high potential ideas.

00:10:03.940 | How about this one?

00:10:06.340 | It's not as random as I'm making that out.

00:10:07.780 | I mean your mind again at this point is a good pattern matching machine.

00:10:10.740 | So it's pretty good at saying this idea has got potential.

00:10:13.860 | Some more subtle decisions than you think, but you grab one.

00:10:17.140 | And then all the effort goes into how do we actually turn this into something good?

00:10:19.740 | And that's really, really hard.

00:10:21.460 | And now you have to research.

00:10:22.780 | So when you think about professional writers, professors with very detailed note taking

00:10:26.540 | systems, this is not about keeping track of potential ideas.

00:10:30.180 | This is for trying to get their arms around the particular idea that they want to develop.

00:10:35.820 | Just when I'm writing a New Yorker piece and my Scrivener project for that piece grows

00:10:40.220 | to 250 different article notes and citations that I've captured as I try to get my arms

00:10:44.700 | around this particular idea.

00:10:47.300 | It's the long sessions of writing, the thinking, the solving proofs.

00:10:50.300 | Now I'm using writing here with quotation marks.

00:10:52.340 | I don't typically like writing being used too generically as a verb.

00:10:55.740 | If you're a professor, solving proofs is not writing.

00:10:58.860 | Coming up with new experiments is not writing.

00:11:02.060 | Executing experiments is not writing.

00:11:03.220 | So I don't mean to be too generic on that term.

00:11:04.860 | But you know what I mean.

00:11:05.860 | It's the execution that takes that potential thought stuff and alchemizes it into something

00:11:11.820 | that actually has value to other minds in the world.

00:11:14.260 | That's really hard work.

00:11:15.380 | That's where all the skill goes into.

00:11:17.980 | That's what determines how successful ultimately something is.

00:11:21.060 | And then here's the interesting thing.

00:11:23.780 | When you succeed, okay, I've put in all of this work and I've produced something good.

00:11:28.100 | And in particular, when you produce something better than you've been able to produce before,

00:11:32.300 | you deliberately pressed your threshold of ability higher.

00:11:37.660 | That pattern matching mechanism that identifies the ideas in the stream and says this one

00:11:41.820 | looks good, gets better.

00:11:45.060 | And when you come up for air and say, "What do I want to do next?"

00:11:48.220 | The ideas that's catching the attention of your pattern matcher, they're more sophisticated,

00:11:53.100 | they're more nuanced, they have more potential.

00:11:56.380 | So in this loop, all of the effort is in executing.

00:11:59.620 | The ideas aren't so important.

00:12:04.260 | Professors at a high level aren't scared of someone scooping their ideas.

00:12:06.860 | You know, the hard work is actually solving it.

00:12:08.660 | Writers at a high level are not trying to hoard their book ideas.

00:12:12.180 | Ideas are cheap.

00:12:13.180 | Writing good books is incredibly difficult.

00:12:16.000 | And so this is what I've come to realize.

00:12:18.020 | Now I'm sure this is not universal.

00:12:21.500 | I'm sure there's a lot of professional thinkers who have complicated systems for tracking

00:12:25.960 | potential ideas.

00:12:26.960 | I'm just saying it's also not universal.

00:12:28.780 | I know a lot of people who don't and I don't.

00:12:30.860 | And the higher I move up the hierarchy of people who create ideas for a living and have

00:12:34.380 | some impact, the more my attention turns towards the execution and the more the coming up with

00:12:40.100 | the idea seems like the easy part.

00:12:41.500 | When it's time to come up with something like, "Yeah, this thing has caught my attention.

00:12:44.700 | I can't really ignore it.

00:12:45.700 | Let's do that."

00:12:46.700 | So anyways, those are my two cents.

00:12:48.700 | If we want to invent a term for this because, "Hey, that's what I do."

00:12:53.320 | We can call this belief that the key to creative output is the careful maintenance and tracking

00:12:59.240 | of potential ideas.

00:13:00.240 | We can call this the notebook fallacy.

00:13:03.040 | Too much energy put on the organization of ideas, not enough energy put on the extraction

00:13:06.920 | of value from ideas.

00:13:08.320 | That's actually where all the action is.

00:13:10.000 | All right, question number two.

00:13:13.600 | This is from Mac.

00:13:15.960 | Mac says, "In your video, a look inside Captain Newport's productivity system.

00:13:22.680 | You demonstrated how workflow-y was integral to your task management system.

00:13:27.520 | Do you still use this tool?

00:13:29.320 | If not, how has your task capture mechanisms changed?"

00:13:34.640 | Well, the video, I should say, first of all, in case you're looking for this video and

00:13:39.440 | can't find it, this video that Mac is referencing, "A Look Inside Cal Newport's Productivity

00:13:43.720 | System."

00:13:44.720 | I believe this was a video that was part of the pre-order promotion for my 2019 book,

00:13:51.560 | "Digital Minimalism."

00:13:53.240 | So if you pre-ordered that book, one of the things you got was a video of me explaining

00:13:59.040 | my productivity system at that time.

00:14:01.680 | I don't know where that is.

00:14:03.460 | I did not have a YouTube account back then.

00:14:05.240 | It was probably my publisher posted an unlisted YouTube video, if I had to guess.

00:14:10.200 | So I don't remember that video, but Mac is saying I talked about workflow-y.

00:14:14.200 | Well, I do remember using workflow-y.

00:14:16.560 | I like that tool.

00:14:19.280 | It's simple.

00:14:20.720 | Tools that are simple and their simplicity can be leveraged in creative ways by the user

00:14:27.880 | are things that I really enjoy.

00:14:29.360 | So here's how workflow-y worked.

00:14:30.600 | It was a bullet point list software.

00:14:32.640 | It was web-based, so you didn't have to have it running as an app on your phone or on your

00:14:37.120 | computer.

00:14:38.120 | It was a URL you could go to from any browser on any device.

00:14:40.560 | And it was bullet points.

00:14:42.240 | You type, hit enter, the next line is a new bullet point.

00:14:45.640 | Hit tab, it indents the bullet points.

00:14:49.300 | Click next to a bullet point and it collapses or expands that level of indentation.

00:14:55.000 | So if I tab in and have five sub things on a particular bullet point, I can click next

00:14:59.800 | to the point and those will all collapse in, so I don't have to see them until I want to.

00:15:04.060 | The other feature this had was tags.

00:15:07.020 | Put a hashtag anywhere in your text.

00:15:10.280 | That's now clickable.

00:15:11.280 | And if you click that hashtag anywhere you see it, workflow-y will only show you bullet

00:15:16.440 | points that have that same hashtag written in there by you.

00:15:18.680 | I love the flexibility of that.

00:15:20.880 | I don't want, if possible, I don't want my software to force how I have to organize information.

00:15:28.080 | I don't want it to come and tell me here's the paradigm of how stuff works and you have

00:15:32.000 | to build up these views and you can carefully populate them.

00:15:35.080 | I love the flexibility of workflow.

00:15:37.200 | You could use hashtags for whatever you wanted.

00:15:39.120 | Type them wherever you wanted to type them.

00:15:40.480 | Change them whenever you wanted to type them.

00:15:42.120 | You could just throw information into there.

00:15:43.440 | So I used that for a while to keep track of tasks because it was very, very quick.

00:15:46.440 | And if I had a project or something, I could put some sub-tasks under it and I could collapse

00:15:50.480 | it.

00:15:51.480 | I also remember I would go through and add a hashtag that said "this week" and then I

00:15:56.120 | would click on that and be like, "Oh, what are the tasks I really need to do this week?"

00:15:58.480 | I liked it a lot.

00:15:59.480 | Eventually, I had to switch to Trello.

00:16:00.880 | And I switched to Trello because in my roles at Georgetown, these roles themselves got

00:16:06.880 | more numerous and sophisticated.

00:16:09.640 | So I began to have multiple different roles I had to keep track of, a professor advisor

00:16:14.680 | role, a teacher role.

00:16:16.340 | Maybe I was a chair of a conference and that's a whole separate role.

00:16:19.080 | There's various other service positions I had, search committees, director of graduate

00:16:23.240 | studies and each of these roles I wanted to keep separate.

00:16:25.920 | And then I learned after a while that the information relevant to what was going on

00:16:30.240 | with these roles, these tasks became bigger and more voluminous.

00:16:33.480 | And so the ability to have a separate board for each role, have a separate column for

00:16:37.480 | each type of task, process, inactive, needs to get done, to discuss next time you meet

00:16:44.560 | with this person associated with this particular subproject.

00:16:47.720 | I could have cards in each of those columns on which I could put tons of information.

00:16:51.160 | I could attach files.

00:16:52.160 | I could put checklists.

00:16:53.580 | And all of that just became more convenient as the amount of information got bigger and

00:16:58.780 | harder to organize and the roles got more and more.

00:17:02.320 | It just was too much information to have in a bullet list.

00:17:05.160 | And so I switched over to Trello.

00:17:06.160 | But I like Workflowy.

00:17:07.160 | If it's still around, I guess it is, I recommend it.

00:17:10.040 | I love its simplicity and its flexibility.

00:17:12.880 | All right, let's do a question here from Derek.

00:17:15.920 | Uh oh, a dangerous question from Derek.

00:17:20.320 | Derek says, "My wife seems to struggle with focus when she works her studies at home.

00:17:26.640 | And I often tell her she would get things done faster if she hit her phone or turned

00:17:30.760 | off Netflix in the background.

00:17:31.920 | She responds by saying that women are better at doing more than one thing at a time than

00:17:36.040 | men so she continues her errant ways working late into the night.

00:17:41.360 | Is this a myth?

00:17:43.840 | How would you respond?"

00:17:46.840 | I think my response would depend on who I am talking to here.

00:17:53.080 | So Derek, I would say, look, the answer you need to care about is she's right.

00:17:59.040 | Say sorry, dear.

00:18:00.040 | Of course, you're right.

00:18:02.840 | Trust me.

00:18:03.840 | Why get into this argument?

00:18:06.720 | My secret answer to the crowd when Derek's not listening is, well, no, I mean, of course

00:18:11.600 | she's not right.

00:18:13.400 | You cannot context switching back and forth from your phone to whatever you're doing,

00:18:17.640 | from TV to whatever you're doing, from text message conversation, whatever you're doing,

00:18:21.720 | induces a large cognitive task, a large cognitive tax rather.

00:18:27.940 | It does slow down your ability to think.

00:18:29.520 | It exhausts you.

00:18:30.520 | It burns you out faster and you produce worse stuff and you produce it slower.

00:18:34.980 | So yes, if you have your phone out while you're working on something, it will take you longer.

00:18:39.320 | And no, women do not have some special different, fundamentally different type of brain than

00:18:43.720 | men.

00:18:44.720 | This is a reality of the brain.

00:18:46.640 | Network switching takes time, a lot of time.

00:18:48.920 | It's not something you can train yourself out of.

00:18:50.700 | It's not something that some people are substantially better at than others.

00:18:54.560 | My third answer, which is going directly to Derek's wife, I'm making sure Derek's not

00:18:58.920 | around is I understand what you're really saying is Derek, leave me alone with this

00:19:05.720 | Cal Newport crap.

00:19:07.280 | I know, you know, that the multitasking does slow you down.

00:19:11.580 | I feel however, that your husband is annoying you and you're basically trying to brush him

00:19:16.120 | off.

00:19:17.120 | So I actually understand what you're saying.

00:19:19.040 | I know that at this, this is just your way of saying the last thing I want after a long

00:19:23.680 | day of dealing with a lot of crap is hearing my husband tell me about Cal Newport.

00:19:27.880 | So I feel your pain there.

00:19:28.880 | All right.

00:19:29.880 | So three answers, depending on who is listening.

00:19:32.800 | We've got a bunch more questions to go.

00:19:36.040 | First I want to take a brief moment to talk about a brand new sponsor of the podcast,

00:19:41.540 | and that is Field of Greens.

00:19:46.780 | I was looking at this CDC study the other day that was saying I should eat six cups

00:19:52.880 | of fruit and veggies a day.

00:19:55.200 | I imagine taking a glass shaker, glass pint glass, and just filling it with spinach when

00:20:01.440 | I hear that and just trying to chug dry spinach.

00:20:04.000 | And I think I am not going to meet this limit.

00:20:08.040 | And then I feel bad about myself.

00:20:09.860 | And then I remember I have Fields of Greens.

00:20:13.640 | Unlike other fruit and vegetable supplements, Field of Greens chooses eat specific fruit

00:20:18.800 | and vegetable for specific functions they're trying to support like heart health, liver

00:20:23.980 | and kidney health, immune system and metabolism.

00:20:26.740 | The supplement gets you what you would normally need from all those cups of dry fruits and

00:20:31.720 | vegetables in an easy powdered form.

00:20:35.960 | It helps you stay healthy.

00:20:38.560 | Now the reason why I like these type of things I've talked about it before is that I have

00:20:41.800 | a very simple health routine, which is until you get the dinner, automate your health and

00:20:47.720 | your food and nutrition automated so you don't have to think about it.

00:20:51.400 | Just do the same thing without wasting any time thinking about something that's going

00:20:53.920 | to support energy, something that's going to support health.

00:20:57.400 | So throw in a Field of Greens serving a Field of Greens, have the same type of lunch every

00:21:02.200 | day, have it be drink a bunch of water, have it be healthy, don't even worry about it.

00:21:05.560 | And then dinner, you can care about food and cook fresh stuff and enjoy life again.

00:21:09.400 | So Field of Greens is a big part of my automate food before dinner mindset of balancing health

00:21:15.500 | and worrying a lot about fitness.

00:21:17.120 | Now, here's the interesting thing.

00:21:18.320 | That's what I want to highlight here.

00:21:20.500 | They have this better health promise.

00:21:23.360 | Field of Greens has this better health promise.

00:21:25.720 | If you take Field of Greens and at your next doctor visit, your doctor doesn't say something

00:21:29.320 | like whatever you're doing, it's working, keep it up.

00:21:33.420 | You can return the product for a refund.

00:21:36.960 | I think it's pretty cool.

00:21:38.640 | All right.

00:21:39.640 | So to help you get started, I got you a 15% off your first order.

00:21:42.880 | Plus you'll get another 10% off if you subscribe for recurring orders.

00:21:45.960 | Visit Field of Greens dot com and use the promo code DEEP.

00:21:50.000 | It's Field of Greens dot com promo code DEEP.

00:21:53.600 | It's also talk about Stamps dot com.

00:21:56.180 | You do not want to go wait in line at the post office.

00:21:59.900 | You have too much going on in life to sit there while the one person behind the counter

00:22:05.140 | spends 25 minutes because the person in front of you has brought in a pallet full of irregular

00:22:14.200 | bags of chicken feathers that they need to ship with insurance media mail to Antarctica

00:22:22.880 | Research Station and they forgot to bring any boxes or packing tape.

00:22:26.920 | And 45 minutes goes by and then finally it's lunch break and you're going insane.

00:22:31.040 | You don't have to go to the post office.

00:22:33.040 | Just become a Stamps dot com subscriber.

00:22:37.080 | All you need is a computer and printer.

00:22:38.800 | They'll even send you a free scale so you'll have everything you need to get started.

00:22:42.420 | You print your postage right from home.

00:22:44.880 | You schedule a pickup of your package right from the Stamps dot com dashboard.

00:22:49.820 | No more going to the post office.

00:22:51.760 | They also give you huge carrier discounts on your USPS and UPS shipping so you get extra

00:22:57.400 | savings as well.

00:22:59.840 | For 25 years Stamps dot com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses.

00:23:03.980 | Get access to the USPS and UPS services you need right from your computer anytime day

00:23:07.780 | or night.

00:23:08.780 | No lines, no traffic, no waiting.

00:23:10.680 | So set yourself up for success when you get started with Stamps dot com today.

00:23:14.200 | Sign up with promo code "DEEP" for a special offer that includes a 4 week trial, free postage,

00:23:20.240 | and a free digital scale.

00:23:21.320 | No long term commitments or contracts.

00:23:22.920 | Just go to Stamps dot com, click the microphone at the top of the page and enter that code

00:23:28.120 | "DEEP".

00:23:29.120 | All right, we're doing well here.

00:23:31.560 | Let's do some more questions.

00:23:34.200 | This next one comes from Jesse.

00:23:36.400 | Spelled with an I not an E so it's not actually from our missing producer but from a different

00:23:40.660 | Jesse.

00:23:41.660 | Though it would be funny if this was actually just Jesse's pseudonym.

00:23:46.380 | He just changed one letter in his name so he could secretly bother me with questions.

00:23:51.440 | And the whole question is just a bunch of very narrow critiques about things they do

00:23:56.240 | during the podcast that make his life harder as a producer.

00:23:58.560 | That would be, that would be funny.

00:24:01.280 | Funny to me.

00:24:02.280 | Maybe not you.

00:24:03.280 | But I think this is a different Jesse.

00:24:04.280 | Let's see what this real Jesse has to say.

00:24:07.560 | You increasingly talk about the deep life including radical changes.

00:24:12.440 | How would you distinguish that from following your passion?

00:24:16.560 | Okay, we're getting to the distinction here between everyone's favorite acronym VBLCP

00:24:23.960 | and the passion hypothesis.

00:24:26.160 | VBLCP is values based lifestyle centric planning.

00:24:30.400 | It is my alternative to the passion hypothesis.

00:24:33.340 | The passion hypothesis says the number one determination if you're happy or not is whether

00:24:38.000 | or not the content of your job fits a pre-existing passion.

00:24:41.740 | If you get a job that fits your passion you will be happy.

00:24:44.040 | If you fail to do that you will be miserable.

00:24:46.220 | This was a simple story that was taught to us millennials in the 1990s when we were kids.

00:24:51.420 | Following your passion is what matters.

00:24:53.800 | This of course turned out not to be very useful advice because simply matching the content

00:24:57.760 | of your job to a pre-existing interest is not in any way capable all on its own of transforming

00:25:04.800 | you into a sustainable meaningful life.

00:25:09.100 | And most people don't even have work specific pre-existing interest to make this match on

00:25:15.760 | in the first place.

00:25:17.460 | Values based lifestyle centric planning is my alternative.

00:25:21.860 | That's where you build an image of a lifestyle that is resonant, not a career, a lifestyle.

00:25:28.980 | All the different aspects of your life, where you live, the rhythm of your day, who you're

00:25:33.100 | with, what you're doing, what type of climate you're in, what your activities are like.

00:25:38.120 | The feel of your work sure is in there but it's just one thing among many.

00:25:42.020 | How stressed or loaded you are, how famous you are, how much impact you're having, what

00:25:46.020 | is your day to day like.

00:25:47.020 | You build an image that gives you a resonance and then you work backwards from that image

00:25:51.440 | to say how do I move my life to be closer to that image.

00:25:57.340 | Now I call this value based lifestyle centric career planning because you start with your

00:26:00.260 | values and you build off those values towards these lifestyles.

00:26:04.140 | So it's a much more involved approach.

00:26:07.120 | Now is this a gussied up version of follow your passion?

00:26:09.420 | I mean maybe but it's something that's actually much more successful because it doesn't place

00:26:13.280 | all of the emphasis on job content.

00:26:17.140 | It recognizes all of the other things that really matter in that weird chemical process

00:26:22.260 | that leads to human happiness.

00:26:24.380 | Stress, location, climate, activities.

00:26:27.900 | People have different answers to this question of what lifestyle resonates.

00:26:31.580 | And so once you have that image you can work backwards and start constructing or moving

00:26:35.900 | your life towards that.

00:26:36.980 | And that's going to lead to decisions about your career, sure, but where you live and

00:26:41.180 | your hobbies, other things that are going on in your life.

00:26:44.020 | It really can be a directing force for many aspects of your life.

00:26:46.900 | And it's one of the key concepts of moving towards the deep life.

00:26:50.340 | So what's this radicalness that Jesse is talking about?

00:26:54.060 | Well as we talked about, once you understand the elements of these resonant lifestyles,

00:26:58.700 | you're reconfiguring your life to be closer to those elements.

00:27:03.020 | A advanced strategy, a pro tip is to take one of those elements and make a change that's

00:27:09.100 | somewhat radical.

00:27:10.300 | Now the idea here is by making a radical change you are signaling to yourself that this is

00:27:14.660 | something I really take important and I am making it a priority.

00:27:18.820 | That then boosts the value that you get out of it, A, because you perceive yourself as

00:27:22.580 | caring about it and B, because you do care about it and you're putting a really big

00:27:25.780 | emphasis on it.

00:27:27.060 | So being outdoors and outdoor sports in the mountains, and this is very, very important

00:27:32.100 | to you and in all of your visions of your ideal lifestyle what resonates is these people

00:27:35.260 | who are mountain biking and seeing these vistas, then making a move to a radical environment.

00:27:40.100 | I'm going to Moab.

00:27:42.700 | I'm moving myself to a place that is centered on this type of activity and on a regular

00:27:49.180 | basis I can build it into my life.

00:27:51.200 | That's a radical move but that's actually as part of a bigger lifestyle overhaul could

00:27:54.980 | be quite beneficial because it signals to yourself I really do care about this and you

00:27:59.340 | get a lot of value out of it.

00:28:01.820 | So I don't know, is that different than follow your passion?

00:28:03.940 | Yes, it's much more systematic.

00:28:07.340 | Now ironically if you're going through this systematic process, the thing you personally

00:28:12.360 | might end up deciding that you were going to make the radical change on could be a career

00:28:17.140 | shift, that you have this whole image point figured out and you realize hey this type

00:28:24.820 | of thing that's really important to me, I could shift my career to be centered on that

00:28:29.100 | and I'm going to make that radical change to my career.

00:28:32.180 | That could be the radical change you make and from the outside that is just following

00:28:35.380 | your passion and it is.

00:28:37.380 | But you got there as part of this much more systematic process.

00:28:41.460 | You didn't start there.

00:28:44.120 | So when you make your move to start becoming a novelist after you've sort of been building

00:28:49.220 | up your writing skills and have really figured out that you want to be able to live in two

00:28:52.660 | different locations and having a job that's not tied to an office is critical and the

00:28:56.780 | money kind of works now and you make that move to become a novelist, you are following

00:29:01.320 | your passion but it's at the end of a long values-based, lifestyle-based centric planning

00:29:05.940 | process, it's not the beginning.

00:29:07.540 | So I don't know if I'm obfuscating that or not, Jesse, but basically let's just be a

00:29:12.340 | little bit more structured in this thinking.

00:29:13.860 | Let's do another deep life question here, see if we can be clear.

00:29:16.980 | This one's from Amit.

00:29:17.980 | Amit asks, "Can you elaborate more on the contemplation and celebration buckets?

00:29:24.860 | Both are more elusive in your deep life framework."

00:29:30.300 | Alright, so as long time listeners know, when thinking about the deep life I like to divide

00:29:36.880 | the different areas of your life into their own separate buckets so that you can for each

00:29:42.180 | think about what's important to me, what lifestyle aspects related to this bucket resonate and

00:29:49.340 | how am I carefully cultivating this part of my life to serve these things I care about.

00:29:54.340 | And there's a bunch of different buckets I talk about.

00:29:56.820 | Two of them are contemplation and celebration.

00:30:00.020 | Contemplation captures enjoying quality, generating awe, and appreciation.

00:30:07.340 | So celebration is where you build up a real appreciation of cuisine.

00:30:14.800 | And you can really just enjoy a meal that you spent a long time cooking with some craft.

00:30:20.520 | Celebration includes awe.

00:30:22.080 | You hike out to see the sunset on top of the mountain once a month and just being able

00:30:26.560 | to appreciate that, appreciate these things of life.

00:30:30.000 | Celebration is you cultivate your cinephilic tendencies and can just really appreciate

00:30:36.440 | what makes this movie so original and interesting while you're watching it.

00:30:40.120 | It's that craftsmanship, understanding craft, understanding quality, having awe for the

00:30:45.280 | sublime, having awe for the impressively constructed.

00:30:49.120 | It's a really important part of the meaningful human experience.

00:30:53.760 | It requires effort not just to build up those skills but to take the mental space and time

00:30:59.240 | to actually revel in them and feel that gratitude.

00:31:01.400 | It's an important bucket.

00:31:02.400 | You should be thinking about what role does this play in my life?

00:31:05.720 | Contemplation is theology and philosophy.

00:31:08.680 | What is the foundation built on wisdom of those who came before you that you are going

00:31:12.560 | to use as your foundation to get through the hard parts of life?

00:31:16.120 | Very easy during the easy parts of life to say, "I'll just figure this out on my own.

00:31:21.920 | The rest of you guys, you have these superstitions, but I'm smart.

00:31:26.640 | I have a history degree from college.

00:31:28.240 | I'll figure out how I'm going to structure my whole life."

00:31:31.200 | That goes well until things don't go well.

00:31:34.240 | And then if you're not Siddhartha, you're probably not going to come up with something

00:31:37.840 | on your own that is going to be pretty profound.

00:31:41.280 | So having some sort of philosophical theological core where you can build on ancient wisdom

00:31:45.840 | so that it can act like an operating system for your soul, rituals, practices, beliefs

00:31:51.920 | that you put yourself into as a way of tapping into these deeper intimations that you feel

00:31:57.960 | and making sense of them in your experience of the world in a way that helps you tap into

00:32:02.000 | the divine, whatever you think that means, and in doing so, be able to actually find

00:32:07.720 | meaning and joy through all the other contingencies of messy human life.

00:32:13.840 | But you got to think about this.

00:32:15.520 | So you give it its own bucket.

00:32:17.640 | So what happened?

00:32:19.680 | What am I doing here?

00:32:21.560 | What's important to me here?

00:32:22.560 | Do I have a keystone habit?

00:32:23.840 | Have I added some part of this in my life?

00:32:25.160 | Let me come back to this and tend this part of my proverbial lifestyle guardian.

00:32:29.840 | So all of these different parts matter.

00:32:32.400 | Contemplation celebration, I think, are buckets that people often forget or push to the side.

00:32:39.200 | Craft they get.

00:32:40.200 | Yeah, I want to crush it at my job.

00:32:42.440 | Community they get.

00:32:43.440 | Family is important to me.

00:32:44.440 | I'm kind of worried.

00:32:45.440 | I'm crushing up my job.

00:32:46.440 | I don't have enough time with my kids.

00:32:47.440 | I understand that tension.

00:32:48.440 | I'm working on that.

00:32:49.440 | Constitution.

00:32:50.440 | Yeah, people get that.

00:32:51.440 | I should be in more shape.

00:32:52.440 | I'm going to work out more.

00:32:54.120 | But we often stop right there.

00:32:56.840 | And then you get to your 40s and you got your midlife crisis because you're like, well,

00:33:01.080 | what is this job?

00:33:02.080 | Am I going to keep doing this?

00:33:03.880 | And I'm not around as much.

00:33:05.440 | And OK, I got in shape, but I got out of shape.

00:33:07.600 | And what's it all about?

00:33:08.600 | And you're not getting that marrow out of the bones of life.

00:33:11.480 | And you need celebration and you need contemplation.

00:33:13.920 | We've got a question here from Joe.

00:33:17.560 | Old school.

00:33:18.560 | Joe says, I will be entering college soon and I'm interested in studying applied math.

00:33:23.160 | I often find myself reading a passage in a textbook and wondering if I understand it

00:33:27.160 | enough to move on to the problems.

00:33:28.680 | How can I do better?

00:33:29.680 | Joe, you got to read my book, How to Become a Straight A Student.

00:33:34.440 | Sold that book when I was still a high school senior.

00:33:37.120 | Wrote it during my first few months as a grad student.

00:33:40.000 | I get all into the proper way to study for technical classes.

00:33:45.320 | I'll give you the 30 second version.

00:33:49.120 | Point one of two.

00:33:50.800 | Go to lecture, try your hardest to understand what is being said.

00:33:53.960 | Copy the examples down that are given to you exactly.

00:33:57.040 | When you get confused at any particular step of any particular problem, mark it with a

00:34:01.120 | giant question mark near the margin with a circle around it.

00:34:04.380 | The clock starts ticking right then.

00:34:06.440 | You have 48 hours to get every question mark that you wrote down in your lecture notes

00:34:10.280 | filled in with your understanding.

00:34:12.020 | You cannot let these questions wait until you're studying for a midterm and realize

00:34:16.280 | that a quarter of the material you have no idea how it works.

00:34:19.280 | How do you fill in these question marks?

00:34:21.200 | You have different circles of opportunity depending on how much time you want to wait.

00:34:26.480 | Opportunity number one, raise your hand and ask right there in class.

00:34:29.080 | Opportunity number two, ask the professor right after class.

00:34:32.920 | Opportunity number three, talk to a classmate or a TA.

00:34:35.200 | Opportunity number four, go to office hours.

00:34:38.720 | Opportunity number five, take out your textbook and try to figure it out on your own.

00:34:42.560 | Somewhere in there you can get an answer to these questions.

00:34:44.640 | Fill in your understanding so that everything you're taught you know within 48 hours.

00:34:48.720 | Opportunity number two, when you study, do sample problems.

00:34:51.280 | That's all that matters.

00:34:52.860 | Sample problems, sample problems, sample problems.

00:34:55.400 | Can I solve this problem on a blank sheet of white paper from scratch without looking

00:34:59.440 | at my notes, narrating out loud what each step means?

00:35:03.240 | If you can do that, you know it.

00:35:04.880 | If you can't do that, you don't.

00:35:06.220 | It's everything that matters.

00:35:08.200 | Get sample problems, use your problems at problems.

00:35:10.720 | Use examples given in class.

00:35:12.160 | Use examples from the textbook.

00:35:13.600 | Get them from wherever you can, but make sample problems the key to your study.

00:35:18.320 | In my book, How to Become a Straight-A Student, I go into more detail about how to structure

00:35:22.080 | those efforts, how to construct what I call mega problem sets, how to go through those

00:35:27.080 | mega problem sets and start reviewing the problems and returning to the ones that give

00:35:31.120 | you problems.

00:35:32.120 | That book gets into all those details.

00:35:33.880 | Read that book, Joe.

00:35:34.880 | You'll get better grades.

00:35:35.880 | All right, let's do a question here from Alice.

00:35:41.120 | Alice says, "I'm doing a master's degree in a small R1 school.

00:35:44.360 | I'd like to jump to a prestigious university after I finish this degree to complete a PhD.

00:35:51.520 | Is this jump possible?

00:35:53.240 | And if so, how?"

00:35:58.200 | Well, it is.

00:36:01.280 | There's two things that would make that possible.

00:36:03.520 | Ace your courses.

00:36:05.840 | That's how you demonstrate to the admission committee of the PhD program that you can

00:36:09.840 | keep up with this material, you understand it.

00:36:12.360 | Number two, do research, be a co-author on peer-reviewed research that will indicate

00:36:19.040 | to a potential advisor at the prestigious PhD program that you will be useful to them.

00:36:25.640 | That Alice co-authored a paper, this is kind of a good conference on a hard topic, similar

00:36:32.000 | to what I work on.

00:36:33.720 | If she came onto my research group, almost right away, she probably could be helping

00:36:36.960 | writing papers.

00:36:37.960 | So that's what I care about.

00:36:39.360 | Very good grades.

00:36:40.360 | One or two papers published at a prestigious place.

00:36:43.240 | That's what you need to catch the attention of the admission committee.

00:36:45.460 | It's all that matters.

00:36:47.140 | I emphasize this point again and again, having sat on many of these committees myself.

00:36:52.120 | This is not like college admissions.

00:36:54.600 | There is no admissions officer poring over your CV to get a sense of your potential and

00:36:59.920 | what interesting activities you're involved in.

00:37:01.960 | It's professors who are overworked, stressed out, who are trying to identify students who

00:37:07.720 | can come and be contributors to high-end research programs.

00:37:12.320 | So they quickly say, "Where did you go?

00:37:14.280 | What grades did you get?

00:37:15.280 | That's what we qualify, just baseline that you got the right brain stuff to handle the

00:37:18.520 | material."

00:37:19.520 | And then they say, "Can they do your research?"

00:37:20.520 | And that's just publications.

00:37:21.960 | So good news is it's easy to list what matters.

00:37:25.940 | Bad news is those things aren't necessarily easy.

00:37:28.240 | We've got a question here from JJ.

00:37:31.120 | JJ says, "How can I know when I have successfully cultivated a deep life?

00:37:38.760 | Are there particular metrics or things or feelings I will have when I'm getting closer

00:37:43.200 | to living a deep life?"

00:37:45.200 | JJ, it's not a goal you accomplish.

00:37:48.440 | It's an approach to engaging with your life.

00:37:51.960 | It is a approach that you will continue to refine throughout your life.

00:37:58.240 | Your vision of the deep life, the buckets that matter, what you're doing in those buckets

00:38:02.720 | to pursue the things that matter, that vision will look very different 10 years from now

00:38:06.680 | as it looks today.

00:38:07.960 | And that is good and that is expected.

00:38:11.600 | Your priorities change, you gain more experience, your circumstances change, your opportunities

00:38:15.400 | change.

00:38:16.400 | All of this is going to evolve how you engage with life.

00:38:19.760 | The key is coming at life with the sense of, "I want to work backwards from what matters,

00:38:24.360 | and with intention I want to integrate those things to the best of my ability into my life."

00:38:28.640 | That is the ongoing process of the deep life.

00:38:32.240 | There is a trap in here that I want to warn you about.

00:38:35.600 | And that's the trap of moving too fast to refine and update these visions.

00:38:42.720 | It's a common tendency because there is an actual joy in hatching the new plan.

00:38:48.720 | There's an actual joy in saying, "I have this new vision for this part of my life, a new

00:38:52.280 | workout plan, a new engagement with philosophy, a new commitment to read every morning by

00:38:56.320 | the stream."

00:38:57.320 | And you get this benefit of imagining all the good things this is going to create.

00:39:03.040 | And it allows you to think about the things right now that are hard in your life and say

00:39:05.720 | in this imagined future where I'm doing this new thing, they're not going to be there.

00:39:08.720 | I'm going to feel better.

00:39:09.720 | And you get to essentially borrow against that future perceived happiness right now

00:39:13.960 | and you can get some great joy out of it.

00:39:15.080 | And that's fine, but it can also lead to an addiction to refinement and change where you're

00:39:18.680 | constantly overhauling your system.

00:39:21.920 | It's the change itself, the hatching of a new plan itself that becomes what you're pursuing.

00:39:27.120 | That will eventually devolve into anxiety because your brain gets burnt out by this.

00:39:31.360 | You need to be refining your vision of the deep life, but not all the time.

00:39:36.680 | You want to be living your version of the deep life all the time.

00:39:40.640 | Refine it occasionally.

00:39:41.640 | But when you're not refining it, be able to sit in it and enjoy it and have gratitude

00:39:46.300 | for the things that are good.

00:39:48.400 | I know this will change over time, but right now I'm really enjoying how this is going.

00:39:51.960 | I'm proud of how this is happening.

00:39:54.120 | These things I'm doing with my kids and my job right now and how that's working and this

00:39:58.560 | routine with me mountain biking every morning.

00:40:01.080 | This is great and I enjoy it and I have gratitude for it.

00:40:04.480 | And then over time it will refine, but you sit with it for a while.

00:40:07.360 | So being able to figure out that balance of pace.

00:40:10.520 | You don't ossify and just get stuck, but you also aren't changing constantly.

00:40:14.780 | That balance is often key to a sustainable deep life practice throughout your life.

00:40:23.500 | So one thing I can suggest here that could help is the birthday plan.

00:40:27.080 | Use your birthday as an opportunity to really check in deeply and say, "Where do I need

00:40:31.400 | some changes?"

00:40:33.340 | And then you're executing those changes often in the next few months, but after your three

00:40:37.480 | or four months past your birthday, you're steady state again and enjoying the new updated

00:40:42.200 | version of your life.

00:40:43.840 | That's useful.

00:40:44.840 | Every once in a while at your birthday, you'll trigger a really big overhaul that might take

00:40:48.160 | a year or two to completely unfold.

00:40:50.280 | But a lot of times you're just replacing something, tweaking something.

00:40:53.780 | So it keeps you evolving without you having to think about it constantly.

00:40:56.680 | So that's a good way to get some balance.

00:40:58.680 | All right, we got more questions to go in our question extravaganza.

00:41:06.280 | I'd be remiss, however, if I didn't talk about our good friends at Hinson Shaving, the razor

00:41:11.600 | I use every day.

00:41:14.400 | You've heard me talk about them before.

00:41:15.600 | What I like about this company is that they also produce precision aerospace parts.

00:41:20.440 | So they have these precision CNC routers they can use to make products at incredibly precise

00:41:27.600 | specifications.

00:41:29.480 | This turns out to be critical for shaving.

00:41:31.200 | So the Hinson razor is this beautifully made aluminum razor, and you put a 10-cent safety

00:41:37.280 | razor blade in it.

00:41:39.540 | And the reason why you get a great shave out of this is that when you put the top and screw

00:41:42.880 | it on top of that 10-cent blade, it allows only a .0013 inch of the blade edge to extend

00:41:51.000 | beyond the metal top of the razor.

00:41:55.640 | So it's just enough edge to cut, but not enough edge to create the diving board effect that

00:42:00.480 | leads to razor burn or nicks.

00:42:03.300 | Not enough give to clog as things get in between the blade and the razor.

00:42:08.440 | And so this is really cool.

00:42:09.440 | You get this really nice razor itself, this beautifully manufactured piece of metal, and

00:42:14.160 | you pay a little bit for that up front.

00:42:16.160 | But then going forward, it gives you great shaves with 10-cent blades.

00:42:22.040 | None of this subscription service that's eating big chunks out of your wallet every month.

00:42:27.240 | None of this going to the drugstore and trying to find the person who's going to unlock the

00:42:30.580 | cabinet to give you the super expensive plastic wrap blades where you have 19 blades with

00:42:35.680 | laser vibrations on them or whatever.

00:42:37.800 | Just get a 10-cent blade, put it into this beautiful aluminum razor, you get a great

00:42:43.760 | shave.

00:42:44.920 | So it's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that will last you a lifetime.

00:42:48.680 | Visit hensonshaving.com/cal to pick the razor for you and use that code CAL and you will

00:42:54.080 | get two years worth of blades free with your razor.

00:42:56.440 | Just make sure to add them to your cart and then you type in the promo code and the price

00:43:00.040 | becomes free.

00:43:01.160 | That's 100 free blades when you head to hensonshaving.com/cal and use that code CAL.

00:43:09.800 | I just want to talk to you about life insurance.

00:43:13.840 | If that just gave you a flush of anxiety, I get it.

00:43:18.080 | You are probably like a lot of people in my audience.

00:43:20.720 | You know you need life insurance.

00:43:22.920 | You maybe vaguely know you have a little bit for your job and you know it's not nearly

00:43:26.160 | enough to take care of the people that you love and you have no idea how to get started.

00:43:30.200 | Do you have to go to a doctor's office?

00:43:33.640 | Do they have to take your blood and run you through a bunch of tests and physical trials

00:43:38.560 | to see if you're worthy of insurance?

00:43:41.680 | Is this going to be something that's going to take weeks of your time?

00:43:45.760 | I mean it's like how do you get started?

00:43:47.640 | And so you don't and then you feel really bad about it because you're not protecting

00:43:50.480 | the people you love and you get anxious when you hear me mention the word.

00:43:53.760 | Well I have the solution for you.

00:43:57.000 | Policy genius.

00:43:59.840 | So it is policy genius.

00:44:03.120 | This is a website that was built to modernize the life insurance industry.

00:44:07.280 | Their technology makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from America's top insurers

00:44:11.480 | in just a few clicks.

00:44:14.120 | You click just a few things put a little bit information and you will find your lowest

00:44:17.680 | price.

00:44:20.260 | With policy genius you can find life insurance policies that start at just $25 per month

00:44:25.360 | for $1 million of coverage.

00:44:27.880 | Some options offer coverage in as little as a week and avoid unnecessary medical exams.

00:44:34.240 | All right so your loved ones deserve a financial safety net.

00:44:37.440 | You deserve a smarter way to find and buy it.

00:44:39.440 | Head to policygenius.com or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance

00:44:45.160 | quotes and see how much you could save.

00:44:46.840 | That's policygenius.com.

00:44:47.840 | All right.

00:44:48.840 | Let's a couple more questions in here.

00:44:55.400 | I got one here from Mark.

00:44:58.080 | Mark says I am a high school student interested in becoming a political nonfiction author.

00:45:05.000 | What can I do now to improve my writing skills and determine if this is a good path for me?

00:45:11.960 | Well Mark all that matters and I think my audience knows I'm going to recommend to you

00:45:16.560 | is that you focus on your Twitter game.

00:45:20.840 | Most of success in writing is about your Twitter follower count.

00:45:25.800 | If you're more sophisticated then maybe your TikTok follower count.

00:45:28.560 | So I want you to put all of your attention into having particularly clever tweets.

00:45:34.560 | Maybe what you want to do is get yourself involved in a Twitter war with someone who

00:45:39.040 | is more famous than you.

00:45:40.400 | Maybe you can instigate a pile on and people will just be like Mark you are so clever we

00:45:45.120 | love you.

00:45:46.120 | And then if you have a lot of Twitter followers they'll buy whatever you write.

00:45:48.280 | So that's what matters.

00:45:50.720 | I am of course joking because that is the opposite of the reality though it is what

00:45:53.760 | a lot of people do think these days.

00:45:55.280 | All right Mark you're still young you want to become a professional writer.

00:45:58.480 | Let me tell you how I did it because I got started young.

00:46:03.040 | So I was a voracious reader.

00:46:05.200 | I will recommend that to you.

00:46:06.860 | That is how as the grist you need to eventually mill good words.

00:46:13.680 | And that's the type of metaphor you get from a professional writer there Mark.

00:46:17.640 | Grist being milled.

00:46:20.480 | I was a voracious reader.

00:46:21.680 | You should be a voracious reader.

00:46:23.400 | When I got to college I started writing for whatever the most competitive on campus writing

00:46:28.480 | things I could find.

00:46:30.320 | I worked my way up auditioned to become a regular op-ed columnist for the Daily Dartmouth

00:46:35.080 | newspaper.

00:46:36.080 | I started at the bottom at the Dartmouth Jack-o-lantern humor magazine.

00:46:41.160 | Eventually worked my way up to be the editor of that magazine and I just wrote wrote wrote

00:46:44.640 | wrote wrote.

00:46:45.640 | I'm going to push myself up I'm going to improve my skill I'm going to submit on time and just

00:46:49.840 | bit multiple things.

00:46:50.840 | I just wrote as much as I could while continuing to read as much as I could.

00:46:55.880 | In my junior year I decided I wanted to write a book.

00:46:59.480 | So and I've told the story a lot of times I'll be very quick but I found an agent a

00:47:04.200 | fiction agent.

00:47:05.360 | So there's no worry that I was trying to pitch her to be my agent and just had a conversation

00:47:11.080 | to learn about the industry and I learned from her how it works about how you have to

00:47:14.680 | sign an agent first what that agent is going to look for and the agent's going to sell

00:47:17.880 | you to the publisher and the publisher is going to give you an advance and then you're

00:47:21.240 | going to write the book.

00:47:22.400 | She laid out what all the stumbling blocks would be for me as a young writer from her

00:47:26.420 | advice is where I learned okay before I have a chance of selling this idea to an agent.

00:47:30.720 | I need to do some writing for non-college publications.

00:47:34.140 | So I spent six months writing for student focused publications as my idea was a student

00:47:39.280 | focused advice book.

00:47:42.000 | I use some of these article commissions for these small student focused publications to

00:47:46.920 | actually get the research done for my book and when it came time to pitch my agent I

00:47:51.160 | selected very carefully the agent I pitched.

00:47:54.120 | Here's why I am choosing you.

00:47:55.560 | Here's my idea.

00:47:56.880 | Here's why I'm the right person to write it.

00:47:58.400 | Yes I know I'm young but this is about young people so it's good that I'm young.

00:48:01.360 | I've done all the research I can show you exactly what the chapters are going to be

00:48:04.640 | and here's a bunch of writing samples I know how to write.

00:48:08.560 | Once I wrote that book How to Win at College I really wasn't yet at a position of having

00:48:17.740 | differentiated myself.

00:48:20.240 | There's thousands of college kids who could have written that book.

00:48:22.280 | It's not particularly good writing.

00:48:23.760 | I purposely made it into very short chapters so that it would be easier for me to write.

00:48:27.680 | So what I think was important is then what happened next.

00:48:30.240 | I said now that my foot is in the door I did everything I could like trying to fit picks

00:48:36.680 | into a lock to open up the publishing industry to me as a 21 year old.

00:48:40.880 | Now that my foot is in the door and I have a book coming out how do I build on that to

00:48:45.560 | actually become a legitimate writer known to people outside of small niches maybe someone

00:48:51.960 | who can even make a living on it.

00:48:53.120 | And that's when I began really I don't want to say scheming but planning what to do.

00:48:59.160 | And so for my next book which I sold right away even before How to Win at College came

00:49:02.880 | out I was like I'm going to sell the next one.

00:49:04.880 | Whatever advance I'll do the same advance don't worry about it.

00:49:07.480 | Let's keep moving.

00:49:08.480 | My next book moved to a more complicated chapter structure so I could push my skills.

00:49:13.040 | And after that book came out I went and started writing for some other online publications.

00:49:18.080 | I started my blog as well.

00:49:19.640 | I started trying to push my writing towards idea writing.

00:49:21.920 | I sold a third student book and this time I wrote it like the type of general audience

00:49:26.840 | idea nonfiction book I one day wanted to write.

00:49:29.000 | I wrote my third student book like that.

00:49:30.600 | So each book in a row was becoming more complicated becoming more ambitious.

00:49:35.600 | But each one made sense given the book I had written before and it was very systematic.

00:49:40.080 | This very systematic march to the point where when I wrote finally So Good They Can't Ignore

00:49:45.200 | You my first general audience hardcover book the industry was ready to have that from me.

00:49:51.100 | My skills were ready to deliver that.

00:49:53.520 | I was ready to take that step.

00:49:56.240 | I was ready for that swing and I sold that book in my later 20s.

00:49:59.920 | So Mark if I'm going to try to generalize everything I said there read all the time

00:50:02.800 | write all the time especially in college by the time you leave college you want to have

00:50:06.280 | already done some writing for non-college publications.

00:50:09.760 | Then you want to get your foot in the book publishing industry any way you can.

00:50:13.200 | You want to fit yourself like a key into a lock for a book project where you are the

00:50:17.420 | only person who could write that book.

00:50:19.640 | There's an audience for it.

00:50:21.380 | You clearly are a good enough writer to do it and you don't care if it's a giant book.

00:50:25.240 | You don't care about a big advance.

00:50:26.400 | You're just trying to unlock the publishing industry and you want that unlocked as soon

00:50:29.680 | as you can.

00:50:30.680 | If your vision is to be a political nonfiction writer I want that lock to be open for you

00:50:34.040 | by the time you're 22 years old.

00:50:37.480 | Once you have your foot in the door then you start planning.

00:50:40.720 | All right I have an editor.

00:50:42.320 | I have a publisher.

00:50:43.320 | I've written a book.

00:50:45.000 | Let's start laddering up more sophisticated more interesting books.

00:50:47.880 | Let me start carving out my niche.

00:50:49.040 | Let me start building my audience and that's where things start to get interesting.

00:50:54.360 | All right let's do one more question.

00:50:55.600 | This one's from Jackio.

00:50:58.440 | He says to what extent are you aware of deep work success being affected by survivorship

00:51:04.320 | bias?

00:51:05.620 | For example are you aware of consistent deep workers who are not successful?

00:51:12.120 | Well Jackio the deep work hypothesis which talks about the way that we undervalue deep

00:51:20.920 | work so unbroken concentration in the current knowledge work environment and therefore this

00:51:24.220 | probably creates opportunities niches for those who systematically develop this skill

00:51:30.580 | to move ahead.

00:51:32.200 | That hypothesis was more inductive than it was deductive.

00:51:37.800 | This was not a hypothesis that was formed by starting by studying successful people

00:51:42.680 | and saying what do they have in common.

00:51:44.520 | Oh they're very good at concentration.

00:51:46.880 | Therefore concentration is important.

00:51:49.920 | That is not actually how the hypothesis was formed.

00:51:52.560 | That type of deductive reasoning is of course very vulnerable to survivorship bias because

00:51:58.600 | it could be the case that yes successful people all concentrate but lots of other people concentrate

00:52:03.420 | too and don't succeed.

00:52:04.420 | In fact it's maybe orthogonal to whether they succeed or not or maybe it is important.

00:52:08.480 | It is a precondition for success but it doesn't success is still really really hard.

00:52:12.660 | So just doing that's probably not going to get you there anyways.

00:52:14.540 | There's other factors that matter more.

00:52:16.440 | So deductive reason is vulnerable to that type of bias but the deep work hypothesis

00:52:19.840 | was much more inductive was much more bottom up in its formation.

00:52:23.380 | It starts by understanding the basic building blocks of how the human brain works.

00:52:27.520 | This is neuroscience and psychology network switching context switching.

00:52:32.640 | What do we know about what happens when we have to switch our attention back and forth

00:52:35.260 | from different things.

00:52:36.360 | What do we know through self reflection about our own psychology when we have to see an

00:52:39.400 | inbox with 15 unrelated messages and that gridlock that cognitive gridlock that it creates.

00:52:44.640 | How does it feel when we're trying to write something but we have to keep checking our

00:52:48.020 | email inbox versus when we were at the cabin and there was no distractions.

00:52:51.280 | We have our own psychology that we can plumb there and we're getting these bottom up realities

00:52:55.900 | about how the human brain actually does that dark alchemy of taking thought stuff and creating

00:53:01.080 | something that other people objectively value.

00:53:04.720 | Build that up to okay well how did jobs function today what's happening in jobs.

00:53:08.660 | Why are we doing all this email and meetings.

00:53:10.980 | What is our actual function.

00:53:12.520 | Is this getting in the way or is this helping and we're again we're building up this hypothesis

00:53:16.000 | you know these serve this purpose about coordination with low friction but based on what we've

00:53:22.960 | now learned about how the brain functions it's probably getting in the way of that.

00:53:28.020 | And only then do you start looking for examples natural experiments of where there are people

00:53:31.960 | who differ from other people mainly in the variables they've constructed their setup

00:53:36.800 | so they can have more concentration.

00:53:38.400 | This is like Adam Grant specifically building a bimodal schedule and you see whoa big jumps

00:53:43.600 | when they do that.

00:53:45.120 | So now you're really starting to get multiple lines of evidence that all come together to

00:53:48.360 | say of course concentration is important if you use your brain to make a living.

00:53:55.120 | Of course concentration is very hard because of the way we communicate and collaborate.

00:53:58.720 | We all see that.

00:54:00.640 | This now becomes supply and demand.

00:54:02.760 | This is valuable it's rare.

00:54:05.240 | It's probably good if you're one of the few people to do it.

00:54:07.000 | So I think of the deep work hypothesis as being more bottom up.

00:54:10.480 | It's this inductive gathering of evidence from different strains the building up towards

00:54:15.640 | this image of maybe there's a better way to do work.

00:54:19.680 | Now I think the key issue here however is that it's not necessarily the clear cut dependent

00:54:26.880 | variable in this experiment it's not necessarily career success.

00:54:31.200 | There are many many jobs in which it's actually rewarded that you just have the stamina to

00:54:37.480 | put up with constant frenetic context shifting more than everyone else.

00:54:41.080 | I'll work later at night I'll answer emails faster I'll work my way up to management ranks.

00:54:46.240 | There's a lot of jobs where if you're resisting that it's actually a liability.

00:54:50.520 | And so I don't even think about career success as necessarily the dependent variable like

00:54:55.360 | oh successful people this is what they do.

00:54:57.720 | Most people who are quote unquote successful in the fields probably don't do deep work

00:55:00.800 | at all.

00:55:01.840 | What I do think is important is that if you cultivate this skill you're going to find

00:55:07.320 | sustainability you're going to find meaning you're going to find satisfaction you're going

00:55:09.880 | to equip yourself with the ability to produce value at such a level that if leveraged properly

00:55:15.040 | you can use that as the foundation of a good lifestyle career planning to make your working

00:55:19.800 | life into something that's great.

00:55:21.960 | If you're trying to produce something that's very elite then okay almost certainly you're

00:55:24.320 | going to have to do a lot of deep work too.

00:55:26.240 | So it's a more complicated picture than these guys with the fancy car in the parking lot

00:55:31.800 | at the office park must all be working deeply.

00:55:34.680 | They probably don't.

00:55:35.680 | But the guy who's not in the parking lot because he's in his cabin in Vermont where he's finishing

00:55:41.800 | up the manuscript for his book that's going to make a big enough splash that he can continue

00:55:46.040 | to stay at that cabin throughout Vermont without having to go to the office park.

00:55:49.000 | That's where you're going to find the deep work much more consistently.

00:55:51.560 | So a good question Jacko.

00:55:52.560 | Survivorship bias is important to talk about.

00:55:55.080 | I don't know how much comes into play here.

00:55:59.280 | All right.

00:56:00.280 | Anyways I think that is enough of me talking by myself in this room.

00:56:03.880 | Hopefully people enjoyed this flashback to the old fashioned format of just question

00:56:08.240 | question question.

00:56:09.240 | I had fun doing it.

00:56:11.400 | We'll be back next week with a normal episode me and Jesse etc.

00:56:14.400 | But this was fun.

00:56:15.400 | So thanks for joining.

00:56:17.440 | Until next week as always stay deep.

00:56:19.720 | [MUSIC]

Ep. 243: In The Weeds!

Chapters