Three Principles for Cultivating a Deep Life | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | All right, let's end with a deeper question here.

00:00:01.500 | This comes from Kevin.

00:00:02.560 | Kevin said, I've recently been reading the classic seven habits, a highly

00:00:07.520 | effective people and are wondering what the seven or choose the appropriate

00:00:13.140 | number principles of deep life are of the deep life are a, what are the

00:00:17.180 | fundamental truths that have universal application to cultivating the deep life?

00:00:21.860 | Well, Kevin, I don't have a full, fully developed answer to that yet.

00:00:27.560 | I will, by the time I'm done writing my deep life book, but I'm writing

00:00:30.580 | my slow productivity book first.

00:00:31.960 | So for now, I'm just playing with ideas in the background, but let me give you

00:00:36.540 | three right now, extracted from some of the notes I've been taking as I, as I

00:00:41.360 | look ahead to the process of writing my deep life book in the future, right?

00:00:44.780 | Idea number one, this is my current tentative formulation for

00:00:49.040 | what the deep life requires.

00:00:50.420 | The deep life requires the radical alignment of your daily existence

00:00:56.120 | towards things you value and away from things you don't.

00:00:59.360 | All right.

00:01:00.940 | There's three pieces to that formulation.

00:01:02.700 | All right.

00:01:04.240 | One, you have to shift your life, where you live, what you do for work, how you

00:01:10.240 | work, how you fill your time, whatever.

00:01:12.440 | You have to shift major elements of your life towards

00:01:15.760 | things you really care about.

00:01:16.880 | So there's this intentional shaping of your life towards things you care about.

00:01:20.260 | Two, the shift should be radical.

00:01:22.840 | So there's something deep and meaning generating about making big shifts.

00:01:29.320 | So it's not just, I'm trying not to work on weekends.

00:01:33.240 | It's you radically changed your job so that you're working

00:01:37.040 | half days, four days a week.

00:01:38.340 | It's the radical shift.

00:01:39.460 | It's not just, I want to hike more.

00:01:41.340 | It's I moved the Vancouver Island where I live among the woods, right?

00:01:47.180 | The something about the radicality helps unlock depth.

00:01:50.240 | And the third piece of this formulation is to focus more on the things that

00:01:53.840 | value, you have to pretty severely reduce all the things that don't.

00:01:57.640 | So there's a simplification that seems to come with the deep life.

00:02:01.680 | The, the, the focus on one thing, you have to excise more of the other things and

00:02:05.960 | not just getting rid of the things that are bad, but also being willing to step

00:02:09.200 | away from the things that are fine.

00:02:10.400 | Just not as good as the things you really care about.

00:02:12.280 | So you can't have all the different things.

00:02:14.040 | All right.

00:02:15.640 | Idea two, that transformation requires practice.

00:02:20.200 | So it's hard to make big changes in your life.

00:02:23.840 | It's hard in two ways.

00:02:25.780 | One, just building up the muscle and the discipline of controlling.

00:02:30.160 | Being very efficacious about directing your life.

00:02:32.840 | That's why on this podcast, I often talk about the deep life bucket exercise.

00:02:37.620 | You identify the buckets of the deep life and you do the keystone habit in each.

00:02:41.000 | And then you spend six to eight weeks dedicated to each bucket, doing a

00:02:45.080 | transformation of that piece of your life.

00:02:46.480 | A big part of that is practice.

00:02:48.880 | Getting used to intentionality and discipline in the shaping of your life.

00:02:52.800 | That actually does take some work.

00:02:54.120 | The other thing that benefits from practice is insight.

00:02:58.600 | Insight on what matters to you and what doesn't and the nuances of how something

00:03:03.600 | matters is often extracted as a side effect of action in doing something,

00:03:10.880 | trying something, making this change, taking this month off, putting on this

00:03:15.380 | routine, praying five times a day, whatever it is to change you make it's in the

00:03:19.740 | actual friction generated by taking that action that you gain, oh, our timer went

00:03:23.680 | off, Jesse, that you actually gain insight.

00:03:28.060 | And by the way, for those who are watching at home, you hear me reference a timer.

00:03:32.700 | I'll hold it up to the camera here.

00:03:34.020 | A reader or a listener sent us this.

00:03:37.540 | Dave Z.

00:03:38.140 | Dave Z sent us this, what's it called, Jesse?

00:03:41.000 | A focus timer.

00:03:42.000 | Focus timer.

00:03:42.880 | So free plug.

00:03:43.600 | Uh, for those who are listening, it is a plastic hourglass.

00:03:49.960 | Yeah.

00:03:50.380 | It's basically to avoid using your phone for a timer.

00:03:52.560 | Yeah.

00:03:52.820 | And it has, I haven't quite figured it out.

00:03:54.440 | We just opened the box before the episode, but it has led lights to

00:03:57.520 | indicate how full it is or not full it is.

00:03:59.360 | And when you twist it, it does something and you turn it over and it anyways,

00:04:03.160 | once you learn how to use it, you can basically set a timer and run it and

00:04:06.720 | just watch led sand move down to a, to a hourglass so you can time yourself.

00:04:12.540 | Without having to look at digital numbers on a, on a phone.

00:04:15.420 | So was it Dave Z?

00:04:16.740 | Dave Z.

00:04:17.460 | Dave Z.

00:04:17.880 | Thank you very much.

00:04:18.500 | That's what went off for those who are listening, uh, just

00:04:20.900 | went off during our recording here.

00:04:22.060 | Uh, but the point I was making before the, the focus timer went

00:04:25.620 | off is through action, you gain insight.

00:04:28.740 | In fact, action is often a better route to insight than mere reflection.

00:04:33.100 | It's why a lot of the great wisdom traditions of the world

00:04:36.200 | have so much ritual involved.

00:04:37.840 | You can't just sit, you can't just sit and think about Torah.

00:04:42.320 | You actually have to do the five time daily or whatever it's three

00:04:45.680 | time daily prayer, you have to go through the rituals of the days of

00:04:50.440 | awe that do ritual through activity, through commitment, you gain insight.

00:04:53.960 | That applies to life transformation too.

00:04:56.500 | So you're not just going to sit here and watch documentaries and read books

00:04:59.180 | and get inspired and figure out, you actually have to take action at a

00:05:01.900 | smaller scale to get the insight needed to take successful action at the larger.

00:05:05.740 | Third idea, Kevin, uh, career capital theory is often the fuel of the deep life.

00:05:13.360 | So the universe doesn't care about your values and dreams.

00:05:17.240 | And so if your radical change is not practical or sustainable, the stress

00:05:23.320 | and uncertainty that it creates, let's say financially or otherwise is going

00:05:26.840 | to counteract the potential benefits.

00:05:30.320 | So deep life transitions are most successful when they're made with a.

00:05:33.920 | Foundation of confidence, financially speaking, I don't healthcare, education,

00:05:39.780 | connection, whatever the things are you worry about that you're able to make

00:05:41.900 | this with confidence, career capital is going to be your buddy in this mission.

00:05:46.140 | Becoming so good.

00:05:46.900 | You can't be ignored at skills gives you leverage.

00:05:49.520 | You can use that leverage to shape your career towards things that

00:05:51.900 | resonate and away from things that don't.

00:05:53.620 | Shifting towards a deep life is the ultimate example of shifting your

00:05:57.860 | life towards things that resonate.

00:05:59.460 | You might need to build up a pretty big pool of career capital to make that ha ha

00:06:03.700 | happen.

00:06:04.260 | So this goes contrary.

00:06:05.880 | A lot of times when people think about something like the deep life, it's all

00:06:08.140 | about the inspiration and the boldness, but it's actually often the, the, the

00:06:12.620 | focus of getting really good at something valuable, that's most important.

00:06:15.740 | That's what opens up the options for you to sustainably try something different.

00:06:20.380 | All right, Kevin, that's tentative, but that's some of my recent thoughts on.

00:06:27.060 | Successfully identifying and transitioning to a deep life.

00:06:30.500 | Now, if only my book will sell as many as Stephen Covey, seven habits, I

00:06:35.180 | think we will all be happy.

00:06:37.300 | That might be one of the best selling advice books of all time.

00:06:41.100 | Yeah, probably.

00:06:42.380 | I think so.

00:06:42.820 | It's like 30 million copies or something.

00:06:44.540 | Yeah, it's crazy.

00:06:45.940 | I mean, look, I don't want to be greedy.

00:06:48.580 | I'd be okay with a half that.

00:06:50.340 | It's a good title.

00:06:51.380 | Yeah, it's a good title, but I think people give too much credit to titles.

00:06:55.860 | It sells more books, right?

00:06:57.060 | Yeah.

00:06:57.260 | But if the book is not, I've been in the business long enough to know books sell a

00:07:02.460 | lot of copies because they, they hit a chord with people.

00:07:05.420 | They just hit the right chord and they, people pass them on to other

00:07:09.500 | people, pass them on to other people.

00:07:10.540 | The titles can help, but this idea that, you know, Mark Manson sold 18 million

00:07:16.900 | copies of the subtle art of not giving an F word because the F word was in it.

00:07:20.820 | It's crazy.

00:07:21.620 | It's because the book was the perfect tone on the perfect topic to

00:07:25.820 | reach a perfectly large audience.

00:07:27.780 | Seven habits is great, but everyone wrote books with

00:07:30.620 | seven in the title after that.

00:07:31.900 | It's not the title.

00:07:33.220 | It was a values driven approach to productivity, which is as

00:07:37.380 | relevant today as it was back then.

00:07:38.780 | And it's, it's, it's a really good book.

00:07:41.580 | Deep work sold a lot of copies.

00:07:43.900 | I mean, I think the phrase deep work is good, but it's also just hit the

00:07:47.300 | zeitgeist at a time where people were intuiting something negative about the

00:07:52.140 | distraction and the freneticism of their, of their working life, and they couldn't

00:07:55.300 | quite put their finger on it and the book put their finger on it in a way they could

00:07:58.180 | then articulate to others and, you know, million copies later that thing spread.

00:08:03.460 | So I'm a believer titles kind of matter, but a title cannot make

00:08:08.060 | a book into a massive seller.

00:08:09.420 | That makes sense.

00:08:10.060 | Yeah.

00:08:10.260 | That's my theory.

00:08:12.180 | [music]

Three Principles for Cultivating a Deep Life | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

Chapters