Maximize Productivity With These Time Management Tools | Dr. Cal Newport & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | - Are you a list maker?

00:00:03.640 | Like do you wake up in the morning and make lists

00:00:05.160 | and cross things off and then decide

00:00:06.940 | what are the key items on that list?

00:00:08.620 | - No, I'm a time blocker.

00:00:09.900 | - Time blocker, okay.

00:00:11.580 | - Yeah, so I'm not a big believer in to-do list.

00:00:13.420 | I like to grapple with the actual available time.

00:00:16.260 | Like, okay, I have a meeting here.

00:00:17.660 | I have to like pick my kids up from school here.

00:00:19.500 | Here's the actual hours of the day that are free

00:00:22.220 | and where they fall.

00:00:23.460 | All right, what do I want to do with that time?

00:00:25.420 | Well, okay, now that I see that there's a lot of gaps

00:00:27.460 | in the middle of the day here, they're short.

00:00:29.140 | Maybe there I'm gonna do a lot of small,

00:00:30.540 | non-comically demanding thing.

00:00:31.780 | Oh, this first 90 minutes in the morning

00:00:33.460 | is like the main time I have uninterrupted.

00:00:35.460 | Okay, so this I'm gonna work on writing.

00:00:38.020 | So I've been a big believer of this since I was an undergrad.

00:00:40.980 | Like you give your time a job

00:00:43.540 | as opposed to having a list, which is somewhat orthogonal

00:00:45.920 | to what's actually happening in your day.

00:00:47.220 | And then just as you go through your day saying,

00:00:48.620 | what do I want to try to do next?

00:00:49.820 | Which I think is a lot less efficient.

00:00:52.340 | - I'm gonna try your method.

00:00:54.580 | I try and structure my days as much as I can,

00:00:56.360 | but it just never quite works.

00:00:58.900 | Do you work late into the night or are you, no?

00:01:02.180 | - No, I'm a 5.30 man.

00:01:04.240 | - Okay, so 5.30 PM, that's it?

00:01:06.900 | - Yeah, more or less, that's my cutoff.

00:01:08.140 | Now, the one exception is if I'm writing on deadline,

00:01:12.640 | I'll sometimes, like if I need to get more writing done,

00:01:15.280 | I can do an evening writing session,

00:01:17.720 | which I got used to through long experience.

00:01:19.840 | I used to write my blog post at night

00:01:21.380 | after like my kids went to bed.

00:01:22.800 | Now they're older and they don't go to bed as early.

00:01:24.560 | So it's like the one thing I have left

00:01:26.600 | that I'll do after 5.30 is like every once in a while,

00:01:28.680 | I'll do like a 90 minute evening writing block.

00:01:31.920 | But I call this, by the way, this whole philosophy,

00:01:33.880 | I call fixed schedule productivity.

00:01:35.480 | I've been doing it since I was a grad student.

00:01:37.540 | Fixed to work hour schedule.

00:01:39.480 | That's my commitment.

00:01:40.680 | I work in these hours.

00:01:42.480 | And then work downstream from that for everything else.

00:01:44.540 | So like this controls like even what you decide

00:01:47.080 | to bring into your life

00:01:47.920 | because you know I can't go past a schedule.

00:01:50.200 | And it drives you to be more innovative

00:01:51.840 | in how you deal with your time and schedule.

00:01:53.460 | You have to be efficient because you only have

00:01:54.960 | these hours here.

00:01:56.680 | That's been a signal for my life

00:02:00.120 | since I was in my early 20s.

00:02:01.520 | Fixed to schedule and don't work outside of that schedule.

00:02:04.700 | Now it's your move to figure out anything you wanna do,

00:02:07.040 | you have to make that work.

00:02:07.880 | You wanna become a professor,

00:02:08.720 | figure out how to make that work.

00:02:09.960 | You wanna write books while you're being a professor,

00:02:11.520 | figure out how to make that work.

00:02:12.640 | You don't have the option of just throwing hours at it.

00:02:14.880 | And you innovate a lot, I think,

00:02:16.200 | when you have the constraints.

00:02:17.940 | - Where do sleep and exercise fit into your schedule?

00:02:20.680 | What's your typical to bedtime, wake up time?

00:02:22.800 | What's your typical exercise routine?

00:02:25.480 | And the reason I ask about this is because

00:02:28.080 | I think nowadays we, hopefully people understand

00:02:31.260 | that exercise and cognitive function

00:02:33.560 | are inextricably linked.

00:02:36.160 | And we're all going to live longer lives

00:02:39.240 | and be sharper mentally by doing exercise.

00:02:42.760 | - Yeah, so I mean, my main, like actual working with weights,

00:02:45.600 | I do this pre-dinner, right?

00:02:47.280 | And this was an innovation in the last couple of years.

00:02:49.080 | It's fantastic psychologically for me.

00:02:52.200 | This is a transition from work

00:02:54.320 | to like family time after work.

00:02:56.920 | So I'll do like 45, 50 minutes garage gym,

00:03:00.520 | you know, that we built during COVID.

00:03:02.240 | After I'm done working, before dinner.

00:03:04.200 | And once you get used to that,

00:03:05.320 | like it also forces you like, I gotta finish work

00:03:07.560 | 'cause I gotta get this in before dinner.

00:03:09.240 | But then I'll do also quite a bit of walking

00:03:10.920 | if it's not a teaching day, so I'm not on campus.

00:03:13.280 | I do a lot of thinking on foot, you know,

00:03:15.720 | walking my kids to the bus stop,

00:03:17.000 | which isn't particularly close and back.

00:03:18.340 | So I'll do a lot of walking,

00:03:20.240 | but that's when I, my serious exercise now

00:03:22.360 | is always pre-dinner.

00:03:24.160 | Then I wanna be up, you know, in our room by 10.

00:03:27.720 | And then at that point I don't track.

00:03:30.200 | So I have insomnia issues,

00:03:32.480 | which actually has been like key driver

00:03:34.680 | of a lot of the things I think about,

00:03:36.200 | especially with slow productivity,

00:03:37.980 | is I'm very wary because I can,

00:03:40.720 | without any control on my own,

00:03:43.020 | just find myself unable to sleep sometimes.

00:03:44.920 | - Fall asleep or stay asleep?

00:03:46.160 | - Fall asleep, yeah.

00:03:47.320 | I mean, I used to get it really bad.

00:03:49.440 | Not so bad now, but you know, it comes and goes.

00:03:51.900 | That really affected the way I thought about productivity

00:03:54.640 | because it seemed like to me,

00:03:56.320 | the definition of just,

00:03:58.120 | I get after it with a bunch of stuff

00:04:00.460 | wasn't really on the table

00:04:02.000 | because if my notion of productivity depended on me,

00:04:04.860 | like every day being able to just like hammer on

00:04:07.200 | a bunch of stuff, I'm very busy,

00:04:08.680 | I have lots of commitments,

00:04:09.980 | what would happen if I couldn't sleep?

00:04:12.080 | I wouldn't be able to do that.

00:04:13.120 | So I drifted naturally

00:04:14.880 | towards a definition of productivity,

00:04:16.520 | which was it doesn't really matter if you work tomorrow,

00:04:20.160 | but it is important that like this month you work,

00:04:22.120 | like writing a book.

00:04:22.960 | It doesn't matter if you work on your book chapter

00:04:24.840 | tomorrow in particular,

00:04:26.320 | but like this month you have to spend

00:04:27.440 | a lot of time working on it.

00:04:28.400 | So it was like an insomnia compatible

00:04:31.360 | definition of productivity

00:04:32.480 | was sort of morphed into this idea of slow productivity,

00:04:34.580 | taking your time with it.

00:04:36.240 | So it's interesting.

00:04:37.080 | So like sleep issues really shaped the way

00:04:39.680 | I thought about work

00:04:40.520 | and put me on these much longer timescales of productivity.

00:04:43.200 | Try not to be dependent on any particular day

00:04:46.480 | being critical to what you do.

00:04:47.480 | I don't want the high stress situation.

00:04:49.360 | I don't want the, like, I'm just gonna 10 hours a day

00:04:51.800 | for the next 10 days, we're gonna make this deal happen.

00:04:54.840 | Like I can't operate in that space

00:04:56.480 | 'cause I worry about it anytime my brain could betray me

00:04:59.480 | and I could like lose sleep for a couple of days.

00:05:01.820 | - I think it's really important that you're sharing this

00:05:03.840 | because while people's challenges differ,

00:05:06.600 | I think oftentimes people hear the content of my podcast

00:05:09.920 | or other podcasts and think,

00:05:11.400 | oh gosh, I have to have everything dialed in just right.

00:05:14.060 | When in fact, most all of the tools and protocols

00:05:16.680 | that have been discussed on the Huberman Lab podcast

00:05:20.160 | are in response to a particular challenge that I've had

00:05:23.680 | or that others close to me have had.

00:05:25.520 | And I love this.

00:05:27.960 | Well, I'm sorry that you suffer from insomnia.

00:05:30.640 | We have a series on sleep with Matt Walker

00:05:32.760 | in which he lays out some great tools

00:05:35.000 | that we haven't yet discussed on the podcast.

00:05:36.560 | I'll just send you, I'll text you,

00:05:39.240 | I'll call you with a short list of those

00:05:41.920 | and hopefully they'll help.

00:05:42.760 | But as we do cover insomnia in some depth,

00:05:45.240 | but I think it's important that people realize

00:05:48.080 | that they can be very productive

00:05:49.560 | with the hours that they have

00:05:50.840 | and the moments or hours of high focus clarity

00:05:55.240 | that they have, even if they're not sleeping great,

00:05:58.700 | even if they're raising small children

00:06:01.320 | because that's the real world.

00:06:03.360 | And certainly that's the real world of deadlines

00:06:05.520 | and academia, but family and colds and flus

00:06:10.520 | and travel and jet lag and arguments

00:06:13.840 | and all the happy stuff too, vacations.

00:06:16.360 | So sounds like you're very good at adapting your day

00:06:20.040 | to what's going on around it,

00:06:21.720 | but that you have certain sort of committed time.

00:06:24.640 | Am I correct in assuming that you have

00:06:27.680 | at least one period of say 60 to 90 minutes of real,

00:06:32.680 | what you would call deep work,

00:06:34.720 | let's say at least five days a week.

00:06:36.320 | I know that might be an underestimate,

00:06:37.760 | but it seems like that's what I'm extracting from this.

00:06:41.580 | - That's the goal, right?

00:06:42.420 | So to me, depending on the season

00:06:45.040 | is how extreme that can get.

00:06:46.580 | So the busiest season would be like a teaching semester,

00:06:49.880 | right, but even then I'm gonna make sure

00:06:51.920 | that five days a week, I'm starting with deep work

00:06:53.800 | and the non-teaching days are more than the teaching days.

00:06:56.720 | Compare that to the summer, for example,

00:06:58.560 | where like all I do for the most part is deep work,

00:07:00.840 | no meetings on Mondays and Fridays,

00:07:02.720 | all admin stuff is midday to early afternoon,

00:07:06.320 | Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

00:07:08.000 | Everything else is deep work,

00:07:09.680 | just locked in hours at a time.

00:07:11.840 | But I want, if I'm not getting five days,

00:07:14.680 | five days of starting the day with deep work,

00:07:17.600 | I'm unhappy, right?

00:07:19.420 | Because I mean, I keep coming back to this is,

00:07:21.360 | okay, because I'm not gonna be able to,

00:07:23.480 | I mean, fortunately the insomnia doesn't bother,

00:07:24.960 | it hasn't bothered me in years,

00:07:25.800 | but the threat of it like completely shaped

00:07:28.280 | the way I think about things.

00:07:29.560 | And because I know I'm never gonna be,

00:07:32.000 | I have sort of like an Elon Musk style energy

00:07:34.240 | of like, I can just take on seven companies

00:07:36.080 | and make it happen, right?

00:07:37.000 | I just don't have that ability.

00:07:39.040 | I've always focused on the long game.

00:07:40.680 | And to me, the long game plays out with

00:07:42.760 | get your deep work time in.

00:07:44.640 | You know, just keep working on the stuff you do best

00:07:47.880 | and get better at it.

00:07:48.960 | You know, tomorrow doesn't matter.

00:07:50.520 | But if you're doing this most days for the next four months,

00:07:53.040 | like that's gonna matter, you know?

00:07:54.440 | And so I often think about productivity in my own life

00:07:56.880 | at the scale of decades.

00:07:58.400 | Like what do I wanna do in my 20s?

00:08:00.040 | You know, okay, what do I wanna do in my 30s?

00:08:01.680 | You know, what do I wanna do in my 40s?

00:08:03.080 | You know, and that helps.

00:08:04.720 | Like in my 30s, I had a lot of young kids.

00:08:06.120 | Like it's, yeah.

00:08:06.960 | I mean, the amount of time I could spend total working

00:08:10.160 | is like much less, right?

00:08:11.640 | But I could still think about

00:08:12.560 | what do I wanna do in my 30s?

00:08:14.320 | How do I make that happen?

00:08:15.600 | Let me make sure I'm pushing like on those things.

00:08:18.560 | Then everything else I can adapt to,

00:08:19.920 | I can give here and there.

00:08:21.000 | You know, it allows you to be very adaptable

00:08:23.120 | when you're thinking about what do I wanna do,

00:08:24.760 | you know, for the next 10 years.

00:08:25.880 | It also means you're not on a random Tuesday

00:08:29.160 | chiding yourself because like,

00:08:30.720 | why didn't I get three more hours of work?

00:08:32.520 | That becomes sort of a nonsensical question.

00:08:34.800 | And what you care about is like

00:08:35.800 | what happens in the next decade,

00:08:37.120 | which is, that's the long game.

00:08:38.440 | It's not about, you know, hustling today.

00:08:41.720 | It's about I came back to deep work day after day after day

00:08:45.200 | when other people got distracted by TikTok.

00:08:48.000 | You know, like I gotta, you know, whatever.

00:08:49.360 | It's that coming back to what matters again and again.

00:08:51.960 | - Thank you for tuning in

00:08:52.800 | to the Huberman Lab Clips channel.

00:08:54.640 | If you enjoyed the clip that you just viewed,

00:08:56.760 | please check out the full length episode by clicking here.

00:08:59.800 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Maximize Productivity With These Time Management Tools | Dr. Cal Newport & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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