Ep. 223: Could This Meeting Have Been An Email?

00:00:00.000 | time block planning for a lot of people just becomes a productivity Felix Felicitas potion.

00:00:04.880 | Where it's like, wouldn't this be great if this only took a half hour and then this 20 minutes

00:00:10.560 | between these two meetings I took this off my plate and then this hour I finished that memo.

00:00:15.280 | And you look at this plan you're like man that would be awesome and like nine minutes into your

00:00:19.360 | day your laptop's on fire, the company just went out of business, you know your child just gave

00:00:26.960 | lice to your pediatrician who's now left the left the industry altogether and you know seven new

00:00:35.120 | projects just fell on your plate and also you forgot you were supposed to be writing a book

00:00:39.200 | and it's due on Friday like it takes about nine minutes before this like miraculous plan you have

00:00:44.320 | where you're like this is great everything will take 20 minutes and I'll have all this energy.

00:00:47.200 | So be realistic don't make a wish list you'll feel better actually being able to get a reasonable

00:00:53.120 | plan done with time to spare in the end it's going to make you feel much better than that

00:00:57.120 | 10 minutes of like this would be great. I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions episode 223.

00:01:11.040 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ joined by my producer Jesse who just got back with me from what I think

00:01:21.200 | we can call our first live podcast event I think that's fair it wasn't really about us the event

00:01:29.200 | was for author David Sachs and his new book The Future is Analog and it was me moderating a

00:01:35.680 | conversation with him but that's like a podcast interview so I feel like it was like a live event

00:01:40.240 | we had a lot of our people there in the audience and so I don't know about you but I enjoyed that.

00:01:44.800 | I liked it a lot we had to bring a lot of equipment so it seemed like it was

00:01:47.680 | live I had like four bags. Yeah yeah Jesse had a lot of because cameras and mixers and

00:01:54.720 | Mike one of our fans thought that I was a homeless guy walking into the thing he said that to me

00:01:59.920 | when I saw you show up I thought you were homeless. Homeless or podcast producer that

00:02:05.600 | actually would be a pretty good game show homeless or 1990s I think a lot of podcast

00:02:10.800 | producers actually look more like like hipsters from the early 2000s a lot of strain of hipsterness

00:02:16.880 | anyway the event was good David was great my audience loves the type of stuff he writes about

00:02:23.280 | this was a natural fit so if the name sounds familiar he wrote in 2016 The Revenge of Analog

00:02:30.000 | which I talked about a lot in Digital Minimalism my book and then this new book The Future is

00:02:36.480 | Analog is a follow-up to a 2016 book essentially his argument is that the pandemic gave us a sneak

00:02:44.560 | peek of this easy access push button all digital future that Silicon Valley has been pitching and

00:02:51.520 | his argument is we saw that sneak peek and didn't like what we experienced and so he's predicting a

00:02:59.120 | future that's going to integrate more authentic higher quality analog experiences across many

00:03:04.160 | domains of life from schooling to work to even the nurturing of our souls. It's a very interesting

00:03:11.760 | book he's really the guy for talking about this tension between the analog and the digital and

00:03:16.400 | we had a great conversation I walked through some questions the audience had some questions for him

00:03:21.040 | however I couldn't help think while I was on stage asking about his book that we need to get him some

00:03:27.760 | deep questions style questions the type of stuff we talk about on this show so I don't want to

00:03:32.480 | spoil too much about what's coming up in this episode but I will say this later in the show

00:03:38.320 | David Sachs himself will be joining us in the studio and answering some of your questions

00:03:42.640 | type of questions we get to in deep questions so stay tuned some point later in the show David

00:03:47.440 | will join us here take Jesse seat and we will be able to get some wisdom from him on some of the

00:03:53.040 | type of issues we talk about here. Jesse who's the most interesting person you met at the event?

00:04:00.080 | Well I spent the most time with Mike. All right. He reads 10 books a month but he has a different

00:04:04.640 | formula than you. Is this Mike who gave me the Lincoln recommendation? Yes. Oh excellent. 10

00:04:09.440 | books a month. Mike Kelly. What's Mike's formula? Well like for instance I didn't see the formula

00:04:16.720 | we didn't talk that much about but that's what he talked about initially but I think if like a book's

00:04:23.440 | 1200 pages and he reads 400 of it that might consider more than one book according to his

00:04:27.920 | formula. I see. Right so he's normalizing he's an engineer. Yeah. He's normalizing. Well he's

00:04:32.560 | actually not an engineer but he deals with missiles and rockets. Excellent. So he's not

00:04:36.400 | an engineer by trade but he's an engineer by heart. So we also met did you meet the artist?

00:04:42.080 | We met an artist who works in sculpture. No I didn't that's cool. Yeah she listens to deep

00:04:47.120 | questions while she sculpts and then goes and tries to convince her standard zoom addled

00:04:52.800 | knowledge work husband that he too should listen to the show because he's on the computer all day.

00:04:57.280 | Some folks drove three hours. Yeah yeah they were great yeah yeah I had a good conversation with

00:05:03.120 | them. Good crowd. There's also a couple c-suite types who had good stories about using world

00:05:11.520 | without email type ideas implementing at their company including someone shout out to Mike who's

00:05:17.600 | the CTO of a company that he aggressively put in place a lot of my ideas about communication and

00:05:24.080 | protocols the company grew quite large quite fast in that period and they just sold it for 250

00:05:30.080 | million. So is he going to retire now? That's a good question. Go live a deep life. Yeah now he

00:05:35.200 | can now he can. Yeah this is the this is my issue people would agree is some of these ideas I have

00:05:42.000 | for the workplace I could be actually out there like in the workplace world helping people

00:05:46.400 | implement them and could also probably retire quite early but instead I choose to just create

00:05:51.360 | new ideas instead of cashing in I could be a high price consultant. Yeah you could but then you have

00:05:57.520 | to travel around a lot you want to be a right. My soul would die. Yeah but anyways that was fun.

00:06:02.000 | One other announcement before we get into the show today we forgot in last week's episode was when we

00:06:08.080 | would have normally done my summary of the books I had read in the previous month so the books are

00:06:12.960 | in October we forgot to do it so Jesse and I recorded a books I read in October segment and

00:06:20.000 | posted it on the YouTube channel so for October you can you can see the book segment on the YouTube

00:06:24.880 | channel calnewport.com slash no no that's not right youtube.com slash calnewportmedia. All right

00:06:33.440 | so later we have David Sachs joining us in the studio to answer some questions but first I wanted

00:06:38.640 | to do a deep dive on an interesting study that a tech company did about meeting so we haven't talked

00:06:46.800 | about meetings recently so let's do a deep dive on the question could this meeting have been an email

00:06:53.200 | is this article I have this up on the screen for those who are watching on YouTube

00:06:58.800 | the title of this article is we intentionally canceled every meeting for a week here's what

00:07:05.440 | happened and it is a recent article it's from the 6th of November the quest the company in question

00:07:13.600 | here is Zapier so I think hardcore sort of world without email fans will know that name

00:07:19.840 | Zapier is used for digital workflow automation one of these cool nerd productivity companies

00:07:27.280 | all right so let me point out a few things from this company first of all I enjoyed the opening

00:07:32.720 | sentence of this article it reads as follows I do my best work when I'm interrupted every 30 minutes

00:07:39.920 | for a meeting said no one ever that's just writing that's a funny way to open an article

00:07:46.640 | all right so the author of this article goes on to talk about the types of meetings so the

00:07:53.120 | the ontology of meetings that pulls at her attention this list includes project kickoffs

00:07:59.280 | syncs retrospectives recurring team meetings and one-on-ones I don't even know what most of those

00:08:04.480 | terms mean but it gives you some sense on the proliferation of meetings especially within

00:08:09.440 | these type of high-tech knowledge work firms so what they decided to try at this company is a

00:08:15.120 | peer was something they called get stuff done week gsd for short the quote here says the idea

00:08:25.360 | was that by moving from live calls to a synchronous communication people could spend more time on

00:08:30.400 | deep work you gotta love I love the references the commonplace references to deep work because

00:08:36.720 | that means it's it's pervaded the cultural lexicon and yes get stuff done all right so this was the

00:08:41.680 | idea they're gonna just say let's try this one week basically no meetings what are the logistics

00:08:48.240 | uh they just encourage everyone the leadership says everyone should cancel their internal meetings

00:08:52.880 | so yeah if you have client meetings you'll have to do those and move the conversations async instead

00:08:58.320 | it's engineer talk for asynchronous so instead of live back and forth documents email

00:09:05.520 | task systems etc all right they did this for one week here is some examples of

00:09:12.080 | what this particular person did to replace these meetings so let's get specific so she said instead

00:09:21.040 | of her weekly one-on-one which by the way I don't even know what that is again I've never had a real

00:09:25.680 | job so a lot of this is sometimes new to me but instead of her weekly one-on-one she consolidated

00:09:31.040 | questions for my manager and sent them to her in a direct message on slacks okay so I'm assuming a

00:09:36.480 | one-on-one is where you get together with your manager and say what are we doing this week

00:09:40.640 | Jesse's nodding his head so I have that right yep okay instead of a project check-in all team members

00:09:46.640 | shared their updates in the relevant asana tasks all right asana is a task board I talk about task

00:09:52.880 | boards a lot in a world without email a centralized transparent place where all ongoing tasks can be

00:09:58.960 | seen organized and have relevant information attached to them so asana is just a one of these

00:10:04.800 | task board systems that's liked by computer programmer types instead of a one-off strategy

00:10:11.120 | call stakeholders shared their thoughts in a coda doc all right I don't know what a coda doc is but

00:10:18.880 | I get what they're saying here is instead of like let's just get on the call and talk about this

00:10:22.800 | particular new thing we need a strategy for they instead wrote down their thoughts in some sort of

00:10:27.120 | shared document situation and finally instead of our project kickoff call our project manager sent

00:10:32.160 | a slack message that shared the project charter timeline and next steps that's probably the most

00:10:37.440 | relevant information from those kickoff meetings anyway so let's just get that information posted

00:10:41.920 | why do we have to spend 30 minutes talking about it all right so what was interesting here is this

00:10:48.800 | particular employee who is not a manager said hey this went well I normally spend between six and

00:10:55.440 | 10 hours in meetings so that's six or 10 hours she got back but look at this she says from what I can

00:11:01.920 | tell it was even more impactful for managers at Zapier who sometimes spend half their week or more

00:11:09.200 | in meetings so for the technical employees this is 10 hours back which you can get a lot done in

00:11:15.360 | especially when you think about the way that the meetings is not the total time that's not the only

00:11:19.920 | toll it's also the fragmentation of time so these meetings might be short 10 hours might be 20 half

00:11:26.960 | hour meetings and those are sprinkled throughout your week breaking up long stretches of time so

00:11:32.320 | they could eliminate almost any long stretches of time so the so the damage of 10 hours worth of

00:11:37.040 | meetings is bigger than just 10 hours of work but look at this managers at Zapier could spend 50%

00:11:43.440 | or more 20 plus hours in meetings so this particular employee talked to her manager

00:11:50.480 | and got some quotes so her manager Caitlin said things such as zoom calls tend to rule my calendar

00:11:58.640 | especially doing check-ins the manager said the most surprising part of not having these weekly

00:12:03.920 | check-ins was that I actually didn't feel disconnected from my team at all you're still

00:12:08.960 | working and communicating just differently the manager also said instead of cramming task into

00:12:14.880 | my short stints between calls like usual I was able to focus on my responsibilities that require

00:12:19.520 | deeper thinking like long-term strategy team planning and cross-functional processes also

00:12:25.440 | the manager said a week without meetings gave us space for more curiosity and experimentation

00:12:29.920 | encouraging us to look at the problems we're trying to solve from a different angle for us

00:12:35.040 | a meeting less week was far from a meaningless week I feel like the manager maybe practiced

00:12:41.440 | that line before talking to her subordinate for this for this article I think that's just think

00:12:48.720 | about this though for a second I mean I think this is really important these managers if you're

00:12:52.400 | spending more than half of your hours on zoom this is not consolidated this is not man every day I

00:13:00.560 | have to do meetings from one to five no no no these hours are sprinkled throughout the days

00:13:06.000 | so that you probably have never more than about 30 minutes free maybe occasionally you'll have

00:13:11.680 | an hour free without another meeting showing up somewhere on your schedule so basically these

00:13:15.920 | managers were in a state of constant context shifting from one meeting to another with these

00:13:20.480 | small areas in between to try to do tasks but let's be honest tasks mean slack tasks means trying to

00:13:25.840 | keep up with the deluge in the inbox so you're you're wrenching your cognitive context away from

00:13:30.320 | this meeting which probably generated lots of open loops you don't have time to get to because

00:13:34.080 | you have to answer 15 urgent slack messages before the next meeting puts you into a different context

00:13:38.560 | from a psychological perspective that's an almost impossible demand the exhaustion that would

00:13:45.120 | engender is going to be pronounced and from a productivity perspective it's got to be a terrible

00:13:49.840 | way to take these high power highly trained minds and say help us organize all of these brains that

00:13:56.000 | are organization and create new original things what a terrible way to actually try to harness

00:14:00.240 | that energy so i think this is a fantastic insight of the impact meetings had been having

00:14:05.120 | all right so zapier didn't want to just rely on anecdotes they did an internal survey here's

00:14:10.720 | some statistics 80 of respondents want to do this again 80 of respondents achieved their goals for

00:14:17.840 | the week 89 respondents found communication to be as effective during that week as during a typical

00:14:25.280 | week there's some goals this writer gives okay if you want to succeed with something like this

00:14:32.000 | there are four goals or four pieces of advice we should say one set goals so having specific

00:14:40.000 | goals for what you'll achieve during these weeks these meeting free weeks makes it much more likely

00:14:44.560 | that you'll use those hours productively by the way that's super telling i think we're so used to

00:14:49.760 | this react to incoming in between meetings absurd structure of work that actually being given open

00:14:58.080 | time is something we don't necessarily know what to do with like i have meetings and i'm doing email

00:15:03.120 | so what am i supposed to do when i have two hours free i think that's interesting that that one of

00:15:06.320 | the the number one goal was plan what you're going to do with that time by the way we have some advice

00:15:12.240 | here on this podcast for you uh right about how to plan your time all right uh piece of advice

00:15:16.800 | number two go async so they're big on using asynchronous channels so that's you know where

00:15:22.400 | you write something that someone else can come read it later future proof your work is the third

00:15:27.280 | tip so she used extra hours to help put in place systems that in the future will make it easier to

00:15:34.400 | not have to use meetings more on that in a second and her fourth piece of advice is figure out which

00:15:38.720 | meetings matter so actually do reflection if you do one of these weeks look back and say

00:15:46.160 | what was really a problem that we missed and what did i not miss at all and so when you come out of

00:15:50.640 | it if you're still going to have meetings in your schedule you have some insight on which of those

00:15:54.240 | meetings to prioritize all right so i think that's an interesting insight into the reality of life

00:16:00.480 | and the sort of a modern high-tech knowledge work firm i think it's an interesting insight into

00:16:04.560 | what happens when you step away from meetings 90 of the employees at this company said nothing bad

00:16:10.560 | happened and yet i am sure zapier is back to what how things were before and this gets to the broader

00:16:19.680 | issue with the type of advice i talk about with the type of advice like a meeting free gsd week

00:16:27.520 | why if these ways of operating are universally beloved way more effective way less psychologically

00:16:34.400 | draining why don't we do this more often why aren't these the standards and i think the answer

00:16:39.440 | is because it's hard just rock and rolling with email slack and be able to throw a zoom invitation

00:16:46.080 | to anyone at any point is in the space of possible productivity configurations a low energy state

00:16:53.680 | it is very easy it does not take much energy it's very flexible the overhead of implementing that is

00:16:59.840 | very small because it's just on the fly let's go organizations will collapse towards this low

00:17:05.520 | energy state unless there is a huge amount of external energy continually pumped into the

00:17:09.680 | organization to try to maintain an alternative configuration the gsd week at zapier was

00:17:15.280 | complicated they used many more asynchronous tools more structures were needed they were talking about

00:17:22.720 | in this one one person's example they were talking about annotating a sonatas they were talking about

00:17:29.600 | these coda documents they're talking about an alternative kickoff procedure for

00:17:34.400 | new projects none of this is easy and it would require buy-in from the top down as well as from

00:17:41.200 | the bottom up and a lot of consistent energy being put into this is how we do it now we don't do these

00:17:46.000 | type of meetings so it is easier to just be ad hoc and i think we we underestimate the power of easy

00:17:51.680 | easy is often bad easy is often inefficient easy often exhaust people easy is often a terrible

00:17:59.200 | way to make the most of the assets that a knowledge where company has but it's also very

00:18:02.800 | very difficult to dislodge so to conclude this discussion i want to throw in three random pieces

00:18:09.040 | of advice about meetings we haven't talked about meetings a lot so let me throw in three random

00:18:12.720 | pieces of cal newport meeting advice i'll sort of throw this into the mix along with the advice

00:18:19.360 | given in this article we just reviewed number one to me the the overarching message of what they

00:18:27.280 | experienced at zapier is that all regular collaboration needs a structured process

00:18:32.480 | that everyone understands and all relevant stakeholders had a hand in crafting structured

00:18:38.720 | process that says here's how the collaboration happens here's the information here's how the

00:18:42.640 | information moves here's how decisions are made these can be a pain to construct but once constructed

00:18:49.920 | can be way more effective than just saying we'll throw in a zoom meeting an email or slack in

00:18:54.560 | between so we saw some structured processes arise in this zapier example for example the annotation

00:19:02.160 | of asana tasks that are reviewed every day as opposed to having check-in meetings the construction

00:19:09.760 | of a kickoff document with the project charter and goals etc that is uploaded to a particular

00:19:15.120 | tool called coda instead of having a kickoff meeting so these are structured collaboration

00:19:20.080 | processes all regular collaboration you should try to put in place a process like this that's

00:19:24.720 | very clear about here's how the interaction happens and to the extent possible the answer

00:19:29.920 | to that question should move away from unscheduled communication that requires you to check an inbox

00:19:34.960 | as much as possible this should move away from having large blanks of unstructured meeting time

00:19:39.280 | we'll just figure it out when we all get on zoom you want more structure than that my second piece

00:19:43.920 | of advice to make any of this type of structured collaboration philosophies work you need a catch

00:19:49.120 | all this is the biggest thing i saw missing from the discussion the zapier article and probably the

00:19:54.080 | biggest source of friction that would bring an end to this gsd experiment if they try to just

00:19:59.360 | extend it week after week is that there will be small things that pop up that require back and

00:20:05.040 | forth interaction that will probably be best dispatched if we could just talk and if we're

00:20:10.240 | in a remote environment we need to set up a meeting and because it's hard to set up meetings

00:20:14.320 | that are less than 30 minutes it's probably going to eat up 30 minutes of our time so you need

00:20:17.840 | catch-alls for the ad hoc discussion requiring issues that will inevitably arise outside of your

00:20:25.440 | structures and i think the best catch-all is office hours every day every person has a clearly posted

00:20:31.360 | time my door is open my phone is on i have a zoom room activated and i'm in it short discussions get

00:20:39.600 | deferred to office hours if someone tries to email you or hit you up on slack with something that's

00:20:44.640 | going to require more than just one message back and forth you say great come to my office hours

00:20:48.880 | we'll talk about it and if that doesn't work i'll come to your next office hours to talk about it

00:20:53.920 | if someone throws a zoom meeting invite at you you say why don't we just grab me at a nearby

00:20:58.640 | office hours let's really see what we're dealing with here and then if we need a longer meeting we

00:21:01.840 | can set it so you need these catch-alls the effect of these is significant and finally

00:21:09.520 | reverse meetings say a term i coined in an earlier episode reverse meetings often generate better

00:21:17.120 | insight than standard meetings so in a standard meeting i gather all of the people that are

00:21:24.080 | relevant to something that i'm working on into one place and we talk about it i want to know what you

00:21:29.680 | guys think about it let's make a plan in a reverse meeting me as the initiator instead of summoning

00:21:36.160 | five people to come meet with me i go and talk to each of those five people one-on-one

00:21:41.280 | and in an environment with catch-alls like office hours that means i'm going to go to each of your

00:21:45.360 | office hours one by one and talk to you about this issue much greater insight is extracted from

00:21:50.480 | reverse meetings because you get rid of the the crowd social dynamics of having a lot of people

00:21:54.560 | in the same room you're able to fully extract the thoughts the feelings and the expertise of each

00:21:59.760 | individual person you have more time to synthesize this information you'll probably come to a better

00:22:04.640 | decision having done a reverse meeting and your overall impact on people's schedule is greatly

00:22:10.080 | minimized if i go through five people's existing office hours i have added nothing to their

00:22:15.280 | calendar that wasn't already there if i instead make the five of them get together in a half hour

00:22:20.240 | meeting or an hour-long meeting outside of that that's five worker hours i've now sucked out of

00:22:26.240 | the system so it's not only more efficient but i also think they gain more insight so those are

00:22:30.400 | three random pieces of advice all regular collaboration has to be structured have a

00:22:34.880 | catch-all like office hours for what doesn't fit in those structures depend more on reverse meetings

00:22:39.200 | than standard meetings for complicated decisions where expertise is needed or nuanced political

00:22:44.560 | emotional issues are at play you're going to get much better results with the aggregate of

00:22:49.120 | one-on-ones instead of getting a lot of people into one room thoughts on meetings so with office

00:22:57.280 | hours so say you're waiting around and nobody's there is that just a good time to do like an

00:23:01.920 | admin block yeah yeah yeah just be like okay i'm gonna go through email or do something lightweight

00:23:07.920 | and waiting to see who actually shows up yeah i'm hearing from more people who are doing these by

00:23:11.840 | the way i've heard from more entrepreneurs who are working on these it used to be the big example

00:23:16.960 | was jason freed and base camp like they were big on the office hours and and you know when i did a

00:23:21.040 | kickoff event for a world without email it was me and jason in conversation and and we got into that

00:23:27.280 | but i've heard from other readers since then it really is effective you know it really is effective

00:23:33.440 | every day set time it can it can consume so many things that otherwise would have been an email or

00:23:40.400 | a meeting uh and it's an intermediate between this email meeting synchronous asynchronous

00:23:49.120 | dichotomy that we often see so the phrase is often this meeting could have been an email people

00:23:53.280 | really don't like i have to spend 30 minutes or an hour in a meeting for something that could have

00:23:57.680 | been dealt with an email but if everything goes to email you get the hyperactive hive mind there

00:24:02.720 | really is an efficiency to real time back and forth you and i can figure something out in five

00:24:07.120 | minutes that would otherwise take 5 to 15 messages each of which generates five inbox checks and

00:24:12.640 | there we have 50 to 75 context shifts created by this conversation or we could talk for five minutes

00:24:18.960 | office hours mediates between those two so you get all the advantage of real-time interaction

00:24:23.760 | all that efficiency without the schedule devouring overhead of having every conversation have to have

00:24:31.760 | its own meeting that that holds time on your calendar so it's like one of the number one

00:24:37.200 | strategies for an organizational environment that i think uh one of the most effective single pieces

00:24:42.720 | of advice i have for organizations is put office hours in place all right well we uh we have a

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00:28:38.960 | and a seven-day free trial blinkist.com/deep all right now replacing producer jesse in the

00:28:47.360 | producer's chair is our special guest host who's going to help me answer the next batch of listener

00:28:53.360 | questions that is friend of the show david sacks cal audience good to see you all right well david

00:29:00.800 | i've got a collection of questions from our listeners that i thought you would have some

00:29:04.800 | particular insight to shed as the listeners might remember from prior appearances of david on the

00:29:11.360 | show you might know him from his books the revenge of analog and the future is analog he is going to

00:29:17.520 | help us understand this uneasy tension we have between the digital and between the real all

00:29:24.640 | right david our first question comes from ara a 30 year old phd student from london ara says

00:29:32.320 | hey cal have you heard of the light phone is it worth the money or is dumbing down a regular

00:29:38.480 | smartphone a better option in your opinion so let's start first uh david with the meta question

00:29:45.840 | here what is the role of dumb down digital in this digital analog divide i think dumb down is kind of

00:29:53.920 | a good segue tool um to help wean people off digital addiction or digital overuse or maybe

00:30:02.960 | even sometimes just uh being stuck with digital being the standard sort of modernized digital

00:30:11.040 | being too effective right like some people like to work on an older version of software because it

00:30:16.320 | gives them fewer options um uh you know i i reluctantly accept the ms word updates every

00:30:23.840 | i use word star and i don't know there's a deep pull for you for it's word perfect for all you

00:30:29.600 | canadians out there like i read word perfect corral word perfect word perfect i remember

00:30:34.320 | ended in scandal that company the guy had a golden house the word perfect guy had a golden house this

00:30:40.240 | is a final corral it's a five-part podcast investigative series i think it actually was one

00:30:47.360 | but in the early days of podcasts but no one was listening yeah so so i think you know these these

00:30:54.080 | phones are are purpose-built right phones like the light phone or the punk phone or other sort of

00:31:00.560 | stripped down basic phones they're purpose-built for that reason or the the ones that national

00:31:07.040 | geographic sells to invade advanced stage jitterbugs exactly it's like it's a press help button

00:31:13.760 | yeah and that's it i have one of these by the way so someone sent me i have in my uh the supply

00:31:21.760 | closet behind you one of these and i think it was a sponsor at some point early on in the early on

00:31:26.800 | in the podcast and it wasn't a jitterbug i love the jitterbug with the like i've fallen and i can't

00:31:31.360 | get up yeah or i don't know where i am like there's these sort of simple buttons i think you shake it

00:31:35.600 | to call your grandkids i'm like my question how it works we could all use that um but i think for

00:31:40.560 | for asa's um purposes uh you know the the problem with a stripped down smartphone like you get your

00:31:48.800 | apple iphone and you know you don't install the programs on it's still very tempting it's it's

00:31:56.400 | design is built to engage you more and more and more so you're talking about like an iphone but

00:32:03.040 | you've stripped it down it's an older model iphone but it still has a browser yeah you can still get

00:32:08.000 | apps on it you're you're wary of just having the phone be older being effective in terms of changing

00:32:15.120 | behavior i think um i think so from what i've observed anecdotally from members of my own family

00:32:21.600 | um you know my wife is like my sister-in-law is like you know scrolling with their fingers bleeding

00:32:27.200 | because the glass is broken like serena just get a new phone this is this is this is getting show

00:32:32.000 | and tell time show and tell time all right here we go david zacks would you consider this to be a

00:32:36.800 | oh yeah this is uh this is an old this is an old phone right old small cracked screen does that

00:32:42.960 | but i mean it's but it's you know like hold it up for the user days of getting the new iphone and it

00:32:48.800 | being so amazing that that's done like it's each one is just like it's like another super outback i

00:32:53.840 | buy it's just like it's another level of like the same functionality in middle-aged dad mediocrity

00:33:00.240 | david owns four subaru subaru alpha i have fyi at the same time yeah he has a monday that's how i'm

00:33:05.840 | rolling with all of his public affairs publishing money this one's for driving the kids to hebrew

00:33:12.640 | school and this one's for swimming yeah um but i think it also depends on your own level of

00:33:18.880 | of self-control right and uh what we are talking about is you know digital addiction and distraction

00:33:27.120 | and how much self-control do you have if you need that extra tool to really bring you out of it and

00:33:32.880 | shift your mindset and rewire your neural pathway so that you're not entirely dependent on this

00:33:39.840 | thing for so much time and effort and thought and activity then yeah trying something out yeah

00:33:47.600 | is going to be more effective than the sort of dumbed down version of it so you're on board

00:33:52.560 | you know go all the way for the light phone if you're having this issue you want to shake things

00:33:55.680 | up don't just get an old iphone but but yeah like the jitterbug yeah i get something like the light

00:34:01.040 | phone i like the light phone i've talked to those guys the founders of that you know interestingly

00:34:04.640 | it the original model of the light phone light phone one was a tether model so it was you have

00:34:11.120 | your uh regular smartphone and you could leave it at home but the light phone was somehow tethering

00:34:17.600 | through that account so it was actually the calls coming to your normal phone was coming to the

00:34:20.960 | light phone and uh you could call from the light phone and it was actually going as far as people

00:34:26.480 | were concerned because they thought at first like people are going to want that um and they shifted

00:34:31.360 | because people said no like if i'm going to get something that's different than my phone i want

00:34:35.440 | to go all in well and i think this is what you and i were talking about uh earlier today was

00:34:40.720 | that once you're off these things you don't really miss them yeah no one's like oh man i really miss

00:34:46.960 | that iphone i really miss being on insta if only i could just like click a like on some

00:34:52.640 | surfing longboard video i think donald trump might miss twitter yeah well i don't think that's the

00:34:58.720 | metric for how we should measure ourselves in this world what what wwdg t wwdg djt d

00:35:07.520 | that's my motto i just saw that here driving up onto your house and watching it yeah

00:35:14.880 | yeah and by the way my life is in shambles um no but i i think that's that that is a good point

00:35:21.120 | we talked about it's almost an issue if you were the light phone guys is it works too well and if

00:35:27.440 | i used a light phone for six months if r uses the light phone for six months um they could just go

00:35:32.160 | back to their iphone after that probably have no problems which is different we were you know

00:35:35.840 | it's different than cigarettes it's different than alcohol like if you had trouble with alcohol and

00:35:39.760 | you kicked it don't go back to friday beers if you know you had the the meth problem don't go back

00:35:45.920 | to just whatever social math uses or whatever yeah you'll end up in the gas station parking lot

00:35:51.920 | exactly missing the teeth but but with with digital you're right like people

00:35:55.600 | it's a like a matrix type thing they take whatever pill we were talking about this the other day we

00:36:01.600 | couldn't get it straight which pills work once you leave the metaphor of either politics or

00:36:05.760 | literally being in a robot simulation yeah the red pill blue pill simulate metaphor is kind of hard

00:36:10.400 | to apply but it's a evolution people get off these things they don't get as tempted so it's bad news

00:36:15.840 | i guess for light phone very bad news for the social media companies yeah because as people

00:36:20.560 | get older and say what am i doing on this thing well you know what it's analogous to it's analogous

00:36:26.400 | to tvs in the bedroom right tvs in the bedroom or you know anyone who's a sleep consultant or

00:36:32.320 | doctor is like don't have tvs in the bedroom anyone is a sex consultant or sex expert i guess

00:36:39.440 | those other podcasts that people listen to is like yeah worst thing you can do tvs in the

00:36:43.360 | bedroom anyone with you know childhood rearing um expertise or just is like yeah you do not you know

00:36:50.160 | not a good thing to have um and so i know a lot of kids who grew up with tvs in the bedroom and

00:36:56.080 | it was just on constantly and and they're all in the gas station parking lot now exactly okay

00:37:00.800 | they're all in la trying to be stars that's how it works yeah

00:37:03.120 | but okay we'll follow this through so tv in the bedroom your friends are math addicts because

00:37:10.560 | they grow tvs in the bathroom and uh in the bedroom how does this how does this lead now

00:37:14.800 | to uh let's let's close the the analogy loop here the leaving social media is is um and it's not just

00:37:22.000 | social media it's it's all the things that we do you leave social media you look at more news

00:37:26.960 | online you read more articles in the new york times or or you know whatever you get rid of that

00:37:32.000 | or you cut that down and you're just texting more you're like i find myself sometimes just like

00:37:36.560 | googling random things because i'm like i have this device in my hand so it's it's separating

00:37:41.440 | you from the thing that's tempting you yeah you know whatever that is right yeah um and it's like

00:37:47.760 | okay i'm not gonna have sweets in the house because i'm on a diet uh you know if there's

00:37:52.160 | sweets in the house i'm gonna go sneak in those sweets it's it's it's regaining that sense of

00:37:56.880 | self-control and then judging whether you're able to sort of readmit you know the tempting

00:38:03.040 | technology back into your life in some way with limits yeah and that's the good news about

00:38:07.120 | technology addiction is that i've used that sweets analogy and i think it's a good one it's like if

00:38:13.600 | the donuts are out in the break room at the office if you have the halloween candy at home while

00:38:18.960 | you're working from home it is very hard not to eat it but if you take it out of the home you're

00:38:23.840 | not going to sneak out in the middle of the night to go buy donuts at an all-night bakery you're not

00:38:28.160 | going to sneak out like i'm going to go buy candy so it's a moderate behavioral addiction was the

00:38:32.560 | term i ended up using in digital minimalism it's the closest accurate term i could get to but that

00:38:37.360 | was the the cornerstone of it was if it is around you will use or partake in the activity more than

00:38:43.120 | you know is healthy but if it's not around you're largely okay which is which is different than

00:38:50.160 | other addictions i think that's the good news about about digital so all right we're on board

00:38:53.680 | light phone works uh for people who don't want to do a light phone but want to follow uh david's

00:38:58.640 | advice i always talk about the phone for your method so you you have the charger by your front

00:39:04.080 | door that's where the phone gets plugged in when you get home if you need to look something up

00:39:08.160 | you go to the front door and look it up while it's plugged in if someone's going to be calling you

00:39:12.560 | you put the ringer on this is 1980 style the phone is ringing i have to go to where the phone is and

00:39:17.520 | i have to hold it and talk to them there if you're waiting for a text you have to go check it uh get

00:39:22.480 | the uh the proverbial tv out of the bedroom and the phone out of the bedroom oh yeah for sure yeah

00:39:27.680 | i mean if the tv's been in the bedroom the phone's got to be all right we got gabriel here gabriel

00:39:32.960 | says i am convinced by your argument in digital minimalism to significantly reduce my phone use

00:39:38.400 | all right relevant um but i'm worried about being able to identify enough high quality leisure to

00:39:44.800 | make up for it how do i get started so as you may or may not know david and that part of digital

00:39:50.080 | minimalism where i argue that people need to have high quality substitutes for what they were doing

00:39:56.240 | on the phone don't just white knuckle it i talked a lot about examples from your book the revenge of

00:40:00.560 | analog you spent time touring the the continent uh going to different pockets of analog be it record

00:40:08.640 | manufacturing the board games snakes and ladders i talk about in the book these different resurgences

00:40:13.760 | of analog activity so what is your game plan for gabriel he's been digitized for so long

00:40:19.920 | he wants more analog he doesn't know where to start gabriel there is a wonderful world out there

00:40:25.120 | full of interesting things to do that are going to be a hell of a lot more exciting

00:40:29.600 | than whatever your phone can deliver so that's good and i think it's just a question of identifying

00:40:34.960 | what that is trying those things out um i think the easiest way to start is thinking about the

00:40:41.840 | thing that you love or that occupies your time on a phone and then looking for the analog non-digital

00:40:51.200 | real world equivalent so let's say you love watching sports clips on your phone right of

00:40:58.960 | football all right so like go find a football team to watch um and even you know i'm not saying

00:41:07.600 | like sit in front of a big screen tv on a giant couch and that's that's a replacement for it's a

00:41:11.840 | pretty bad thing like is there a local league or like a high school team or a high school thing

00:41:16.800 | that you can go and and watch you know them play once a week or something like that um if you're

00:41:23.280 | into video games are there activities that you can do that's going to get you you know give you

00:41:30.320 | that same thing but actually give you so much more the camaraderie the the socialization the

00:41:34.880 | competition the competition right structured so it's like okay you like playing playing call of

00:41:39.840 | duty like there's got to be somewhere near you that does paintball you like playing you know

00:41:44.560 | strategy game world of warcraft well why don't you get together with some friends or go find a

00:41:49.520 | place where people are doing settlers of katan yeah um you know if you like words with friends

00:41:55.040 | you're gonna love this game called scrabble um uh you know if you love listening to music on

00:42:00.320 | spotify and streaming you know go check out a record store right right so like if you like

00:42:07.120 | if you love twitter yeah stand on a street corner and just berate passerbys is that if we're looking

00:42:12.640 | for analogs no go to a bar with your friends and actually like talk about things in the world but

00:42:19.280 | that's not twitter twitter would be going into the bar and immediately looking at someone and be like

00:42:24.080 | hey you know what i think about you your shirt is stupid do better go to a bar and get beat up yeah

00:42:31.840 | i think that's if you like twitter go to a bar and get beat up if you like facebook go to a family

00:42:37.120 | reunion and annoy everyone exactly if you like instagram go to a forever 21 and just kind of

00:42:42.800 | preen in front of the mirrors yeah um yeah and then go to a bakery and like you know take um

00:42:50.640 | film photos of a croissant yeah uh and if you like tiktok i really don't know what to do take

00:42:56.240 | a bunch of speed um do a bunch of speed and be like look at me look at me go to a go to a like

00:43:02.000 | a random kids bar mitzvah like it's just like loud music lots of dancing lots of tweens you don't

00:43:06.640 | really know what's going on try to get people to look at you it's kind of confusing but they can't

00:43:10.160 | look away yeah like why is this reporter whose book i read at the dershowitz bar mitzvah doing

00:43:17.440 | a weird dance i don't know him i can't look away you know what i gotta say they still play house

00:43:22.080 | of pains jump around at bar mitzvahs so what could be better than that show me the residuals it's

00:43:27.920 | funny i mean you joke about being beat up at the bar but uh you know a friend of mine who's been on

00:43:32.240 | the show before the comedian jamie kilstein who he's on the show off and on we talk about his

00:43:36.640 | ups and downs with social media and when he was going through a really hard time with twitter

00:43:41.360 | he said it was the exact same physiological response when he would walk out on the street

00:43:45.360 | he had the physiological response of i am about to be attacked because the brain has a hard time

00:43:51.200 | it's so artificial it's it's people that are being very aggressive and almost violent towards you in

00:43:56.160 | this textual medium the brain doesn't know about pseudo anonymity and large-scale distributed

00:44:00.560 | networks that's how he described it it's like he would walk on the streets and feel the physiology

00:44:04.720 | of uh the punch is coming and i think you know when we say we're joking obviously uh gabriel like

00:44:11.600 | if you're engaged with twitter you're not engaged in it i mean unless you're a real troll and if

00:44:15.600 | you're a real troll you're not going to be coming writing to cal and saying how do i get off this

00:44:18.880 | you're like this is the greatest thing in the world yeah starting to fight right you get some

00:44:23.600 | pretty good troll questions to me yeah like yeah true yeah um but i think i think it's people who

00:44:30.080 | go into twitter they want to go because they want to find out about something or engage in the

00:44:34.480 | quote unquote conversation yeah so you got to seek out what those conversations are if it's politics

00:44:39.680 | there's gonna be a group of people or a way to get involved in it actually maybe getting involved

00:44:45.920 | in politics in your politics by definition there's politics near where you are and and it is because

00:44:51.760 | we have in this show david the small town where i live today small town politics are really local

00:44:57.360 | yeah it's not twitter it's not this is voldemort and you know uh i don't know who the good guy is

00:45:03.760 | this is harry potter well no no i was thinking of like yeah okay i'm a daughter dumbledore there

00:45:09.520 | we go it's not dumbledore and and and voldemort right it's like well you know this person knows

00:45:14.000 | these people and these people uh they're i don't really like their positions on development but

00:45:18.880 | like i also know them from the market it's like a very interesting thing yeah and i disagree with

00:45:22.960 | people but it's you know the people it's social you're you're you learn about yourself you're

00:45:27.760 | challenging yourself you're building relationships um so yeah what is the real world equivalent

00:45:33.520 | because all these things are doing is kind of you know simplifying and simulating and condensing

00:45:41.280 | activities that are in the real world and um by definition if they're appealing there's got to be

00:45:48.560 | some underlying long adapted human desire that they're pulling on it's not creating new human

00:45:56.000 | desires from scratch it's got to be playing with the piano it's given exactly yeah um and you know

00:46:01.120 | listen there's certain things there's no equivalent for like my kids just got into you know my brother

00:46:06.640 | has and um whatever it is uh not switch nintendo switch yeah we're like we were spent a good hour

00:46:14.240 | a week ago you know crushing some mario kart like there's no real world equivalent of mario

00:46:19.520 | kart we're taking my oldest to a go-kart right there is you can go and you're like and you're

00:46:24.720 | like and here's eight turtle shells yeah we're arming them yeah but you know that's what he's

00:46:29.120 | used yeah go-karting or biking like because here's the thing when you're doing anything

00:46:33.760 | outside of the house outside of the screen that's an enjoyable pursuit if you're reading a great

00:46:40.800 | book if you're going to a concert if you're eating at a restaurant if you're you know having a good

00:46:47.840 | conversation with a friend even in their podcast studio you're not missing i'm not like oh man but

00:46:54.080 | i wonder what's going on twitter right now like this is this is fun being in cal studio yeah it's

00:46:59.360 | freezing cold it got so i i tried to cool it down folks but i set that too cold and it all right

00:47:05.760 | tangent time but quick tangent we were uh the a reporter the reporter you met um the other night

00:47:12.160 | uh there's a reporter who was here while we justin ever recording and she was observing blah blah

00:47:16.560 | blah and it was actually cold so i was like oh let me go uh turn off the or it's like i was turning

00:47:23.440 | off the h back just so the sound would be off it was already cold um and i accidentally went too

00:47:27.600 | far and turned it to cold and it got so cold but we were doing live calls and so like i couldn't

00:47:34.800 | stop what i was doing and i just watched her getting colder and colder and i felt bad about it

00:47:39.120 | you're like oh do you miss the office exactly do you miss exactly what it's like being a woman in

00:47:42.960 | the office i run so hot i don't care it could be we could we could be outside in 40 degree weather

00:47:47.360 | and rain i'd be happy and caliente caliente newport you know the brain puts off a lot of

00:47:53.360 | heat okay that's that's your next book heat yeah um all right well this is great because this is

00:47:59.200 | actually a different take on this than i've ever had before so i like it uh consider i'm just

00:48:04.240 | paraphrase you consider starting with what you're actually doing digitally already find a high

00:48:09.600 | quality analog alternative so something that gets out the same underlying yeah pleasure uh but is

00:48:15.360 | analog and is high quality let that be a starting point yeah like you know the final thing is like

00:48:19.680 | if you're like oh i really want to get into this vr metaverse like just take a whole bunch of

00:48:22.960 | mushrooms uh that's how you do it all right honestly though if that was if my first mushroom

00:48:31.440 | experience was similar to a mark zuckerberg promotional video for the metaverse i would

00:48:37.040 | never touch them again i mean i think it would be terrifying you're like oh there's some nerd

00:48:41.760 | without legs in here i know i wrote about this in the new yorker and i kind of feel bad about

00:48:46.480 | it i was being a little bit i don't like being caddy but i feel like towards mark it's okay and

00:48:50.000 | i don't think he's as much of the anti-crisis of the people i may have described in this article

00:48:54.080 | as it was something like uh his delivery was like an android where there are still some bugs in the

00:48:59.440 | code because he has kind of a weird stilted like they programmed him to be human but haven't quite

00:49:05.120 | cracked the code it's like an episode of star trek next generation where like like data data but it's

00:49:10.560 | like it's kind of taken over by the boy it's data going to the holodeck yeah but i do remember

00:49:14.240 | writing this article about is like that this was what he chose to show off the potential of the

00:49:19.440 | metaverse was and i the whole humor in the piece was literally just describing without exaggeration

00:49:25.760 | or embellishment or commentary what was going on in the scene of this promotional video and this

00:49:29.920 | is where there's no legs they had no legs um someone was floating upside down for some reason

00:49:34.640 | and there was a bear and they're playing cards i i would be done with if that was my trip

00:49:40.480 | straight as an arrow for the rest of my life this was terrifying i had nothing to do with the legless

00:49:45.920 | guy the upside down guy in the bear um all right so i got a question from me as long as i have you

00:49:51.600 | in the studio from me on behalf of my listeners so you've spent most of your career as a journalist

00:49:57.520 | and freelance journalist writer of books you're on this is four or five five five okay five books

00:50:07.040 | you've got cool stories right i mean you reported from talked about earlier you were stationed in

00:50:10.720 | argentina earlier in your career you did a book about jewish delis where you were traveling the

00:50:16.080 | seaboard trying out different delis for revenge of analog you went to all these cool places it

00:50:21.360 | was first person journalistic a lot of the article this is i think romantic to a certain subset of my

00:50:27.840 | listeners the idea the autonomy and the adventure of being a writer traveling going to interesting

00:50:35.920 | places being able to write books about it then to be able to travel and like you're seeing me now

00:50:39.440 | because you're traveling talking about the book right this is romantic um and we know that this

00:50:44.080 | is romantic it's well yeah we've been talking about the sex spurts and now we're going to talk

00:50:50.160 | about the romance of david and i being in the same room um so what i'm wondering here is like let's

00:50:55.120 | let's say two answers what's the reality checks like what's the elements that okay it's not as

00:51:02.400 | romantic as you think but so that we're not too dour maybe give us a taste of what actually is

00:51:07.360 | as cool as you might think about this sort of full-time autonomous writer's lifestyle yeah

00:51:13.680 | so the the the negative side because you know i get this a lot i'm i'm a mentor at my old university

00:51:18.560 | so i have all these students and they don't have a writing program or journalism so they send them

00:51:22.480 | to me right the wayward souls um it's look it's it's it's a difficult way to make a consistent

00:51:31.040 | living uh financially speaking um you know the financial rewards are not steady and and consistent

00:51:38.720 | and i'm someone who's successful at it relatively speaking um but you know it took me a while to

00:51:43.680 | get where i am and that happened as the sort of industry especially the magazine and newspaper

00:51:48.880 | industry has has imploded as the sort of ad sales it's the reality now you really need is books and

00:51:55.680 | speaking what's going to be the the primary income source is the is the freelance writing fee small

00:52:01.520 | enough now if you're going to make a go at this you can't imagine it's just going to be from the

00:52:05.760 | magazine piece of what's no yeah that that those days are done yeah i think there are people who

00:52:10.080 | who still manage to eke that out but they're doing other things um books are relatively consistent

00:52:15.920 | and steady yeah um and the speaking you know relates to the success of the books or or the

00:52:21.280 | topics of them and that's always that's always sort of good um so that's that's the downside

00:52:26.720 | and then there's of course all the downsides of being a writer um the roller coaster of emotions

00:52:32.160 | and you know self-hatred and you know my book came out today and last night was amazing we did a great

00:52:36.640 | event you you the the the the the sun god of cal newportness just brought all these wonderful

00:52:43.360 | people from dc who were friends of yours fans of yours listeners ears hometown crowd hometown

00:52:48.880 | crowd yeah you you brought it you brought it and uh and it was a wonderful way to kick off this book

00:52:53.760 | tour and then it was today was like oh someone isn't responding to my email about an op-ed and

00:52:59.600 | when like you know i'm like well maybe i'll just click on the amazon it's like you don't click on

00:53:04.240 | the amazon ranking on your first day i'm like well my book's 124 000 so that's oh no forget it um

00:53:11.360 | but it was 126 000 so i think that's what's important it's on the up and up yeah it's a

00:53:15.600 | mover it's a mover and shaker so that's you can get infinitely discerning by the way that with

00:53:20.960 | your amazon like well it moving in shakers in this category on tuesdays was actually in the top 1000

00:53:26.800 | there you go there's always a one uh a number one thing right but up and down up and down yeah but

00:53:30.880 | i think you know that the the thing that i always tell people is like when you if you're able to do

00:53:37.600 | it in a way that you're able to support yourself and like i'm not advocating that like you should

00:53:40.880 | do it and lose all your money that's ridiculous but like you gain the ultimate freedom and access

00:53:47.360 | you've never had a normal job is that right i've never had a normal you've never gone into an

00:53:51.440 | office building on a regular basis i had one job when i was in my first summer of university

00:53:57.200 | um that was a regular job i got a job at a office that made newsletters for dentists in toronto

00:54:06.720 | so you've had two different dream careers yeah what you're saying my job i went the first day

00:54:10.960 | i'm like okay like i want to be a journalist i'm going to write these stories about dentists you're

00:54:14.080 | like nope you're going to go in this room here's a stack of the newsletters here's a printout of like

00:54:20.000 | um the addresses you're going to tape the address onto the newsletter here where it says or the name

00:54:27.040 | of the dentist dr calvin newport you know 606 whatever way um you're going to place this on

00:54:33.040 | this canon image runner copier and you're going to make 200 copies of that one and you make 300

00:54:37.280 | copies of that one and you can do this all day eight hours a day seven days a week in this

00:54:41.440 | windowless room until the day when you notice smoke coming from the cam and gin runner because

00:54:47.760 | you've been running it so hot and so much you've been slamming those copies that it catches on fire

00:54:54.720 | and the guy from canon comes in he's like i have never seen anything like it and then you're moved

00:54:59.200 | to data entry by the way i love your dream denied in this story is writing articles about dentist

00:55:05.680 | i would probably still be at that company this is what was taken from you so anyway that yeah yes

00:55:11.600 | so i've never had that right so so what have i gotten out of out of my career when you know other

00:55:18.080 | friends of mine have had more steady jobs or even steadier careers in journalism like my friend mike

00:55:23.440 | came out to the bar last night he works for reuters he's like a beat reporter on defense right and

00:55:28.240 | he's like i he was like you know i i loved i would love to do what you do it's i have the freedom to

00:55:33.440 | go anywhere and do what i want and as long as someone is willing to let me go there and say

00:55:38.720 | yeah you can come to my restaurant interview me yeah you can come to the the record pressing

00:55:43.600 | plant in nashville and walk around with us yeah you know you can you can come to jack white's

00:55:47.280 | recording studio and and talk to his people and and see how he does all that stuff um then i'm

00:55:53.760 | good to go and no one's telling me what to do i can ask whatever questions i want i get to have

00:55:58.400 | conversations with anyone i want anywhere in the world um and without limitations on them so so

00:56:06.800 | so what's the game plan then if let's say game plan undergraduate yeah i'm invite i do advice

00:56:11.840 | here you get specific let's say you're not a college student and the goal is i want to write

00:56:18.400 | non-fiction books that allow me to go to interesting places and report an interesting thing so so like

00:56:22.800 | the books you write um how do you maximize the chance you're like okay i want to give you a game

00:56:27.360 | plan no guarantees but let me build from pull from david my david sacks wisdom and like this

00:56:33.200 | is what you should this is the steps here's what you should focus on what are you telling that

00:56:36.800 | student this is what i tell um the students that i mentor so the same thing right is uh there's

00:56:42.240 | many different paths to it so there's no one way um don't go to journalism school uh because you're

00:56:48.320 | just going to spend a lot of money sort of doing stuff that you could learn as a trade um right

00:56:54.480 | wherever and however you can so if you can get an internship or you can sell stories to your

00:57:01.040 | local hometown paper or website or you know some other thing do it right the more you write start

00:57:09.840 | a blog start a sub stack thing um right right right because first you're going to just have

00:57:17.280 | to learn how to do that and learn how to pitch your ideas to people which is the most important

00:57:21.840 | part and then you're going to have to figure out what you're actually interested in writing about

00:57:27.120 | and what you're good at it like you're going to have to develop some sort of niche or expertise

00:57:32.080 | and that doesn't mean you have to spend like 20 years studying you know etruscan ruins um but

00:57:37.520 | you're going to have to develop a knowledge around a certain area so that you see an idea that's big

00:57:43.600 | enough for a book when it comes to it right so when you're when you're selling that book if you

00:57:47.200 | can point to your journalism profile and even if it's a lot of small things and maybe a bigger

00:57:51.600 | thing here and there if there's a a clear thread through it you know i'm writing about outdoor

00:57:57.440 | adventure sports a lot like i'm yeah i'm in these places then when you pitch the book on that like

00:58:02.000 | okay this makes sense this tracks it makes sense that this person is but you you have to give them

00:58:06.320 | that thread why does it make sense that this person is writing this book exactly yeah and

00:58:14.160 | sometimes you know you have to convince them right like i my first book was about um it's called save

00:58:19.040 | the deli and it was about you know why were jewish deli disappearing and and why why did that matter

00:58:24.560 | and what were the cultural forces i mean i i came up with the idea when i was in university and it

00:58:29.440 | was a paper i wrote for a class um and when i pitched it i was i don't know 25 26 years old

00:58:36.560 | and it was like well why is this guy doing it well i'm like look i'm interested in food here's a few

00:58:41.360 | things i've written but it was like okay well he understands this idea enough we can see in his

00:58:45.680 | writing that he knows how to write this or we're going to take a chance on it um it actually gets

00:58:49.360 | harder as you get more successful because you have a track record and they're like oh cal newport

00:58:55.520 | you're the digital minimalism digital work guy what do you mean you want to write a book about

00:58:59.600 | like 19th century ballet look man like that's yeah we'll give you a flyer or whatever but um you know

00:59:06.000 | this is the goods like you're you this is the industry one right yeah no it's hard i mean i

00:59:10.560 | remember when ryan holiday years ago i first heard that he was going to write a book on stoicism

00:59:17.360 | i was like come on this why you write a book on stoicism your last book was about marketing you're

00:59:21.600 | in the marketing world you just growth hacking ebook like that is your world this is a crazy idea

00:59:27.760 | and this is why i'm terrible at giving advice to people but he had a hard time i asked about that

00:59:31.440 | on the show exactly what you're talking about his publisher's like i guess we'll publish this we're

00:59:34.960 | not going to pay you much for it kind of annoyed about it because we want to get back to what

00:59:40.240 | you're no quantity for but i think and that's the thing about the freelance writer like just as soon

00:59:44.880 | as you get that sort of success around and people like oh good you're the analog guy i'm like yeah

00:59:49.600 | but i'm gonna throw your curveball now because like i don't want to be put in some sort of

00:59:53.920 | hole where i'm writing the same book over and over and over and over and over again yeah right um and

01:00:00.320 | and you see that and there's people who are successful at kind of weaving through that like

01:00:04.000 | you know rich cohen uh name sounds familiar rich cohen's written many books um he's also written

01:00:09.600 | for vanity fair whenever and he's always just like something that interests him and something

01:00:12.880 | different and he's like some stuff sells more and some stuff sells less he's like but i'm following

01:00:17.120 | the thing that i want to write about and that's the that's that has to be the definition of success

01:00:22.160 | because the commercial success is so out of your control it's very hard it's very hard and then try

01:00:28.240 | to like consistently have high commercial so that's like a whole different that's a whole different

01:00:32.480 | type of career i'm like half in that world and it's a it's a lot of baby it's a lot of hard but

01:00:38.080 | i mean it's a lot of managing uh it reminds me of film film directing yeah it's like a kind of a

01:00:43.840 | complicated thing for the film director so you know like this movie was very successful and

01:00:48.000 | having to navigate the projects and if this movie doesn't do well i have one more i can do to try to

01:00:52.960 | prove it it's a complicated and it's not a straight linear thing right and i think the expectation

01:00:58.560 | that it should be that success is this straight linear thing of like this thing's going to do

01:01:03.600 | this and then the next one's going to do better and the next one's going to do better it doesn't

01:01:06.960 | work like that and so you know there is an element of like artistry to it and i don't mean we're

01:01:12.720 | artists but it is this type of thing where it's where it's like at the end of the day that the

01:01:18.560 | goal the goal is not to lose money you still want to make enough money to like afford the subaru and

01:01:23.840 | its gas um uh but you know you you you don't want to give up that independence because that's the

01:01:31.840 | thing that got you into it in the first place yeah um so it's like the non-fiction action i say

01:01:36.960 | non-fiction like selling seven figure copies of a book is like hitting a major league fastball

01:01:43.440 | it's like one of the most difficult things to do and no one can do it all the time yeah there is a

01:01:49.200 | handful of writers out there you know non-fiction like malcolm gladwell michael lewis but you know

01:01:55.760 | they're not moving seven figures okay then no yeah how about it's hard well but then some people do

01:02:01.440 | it's this one's so hard like it's it's very feast or family like a james clear will move four million

01:02:05.680 | copies see i don't even know who that is atomic habits okay yeah right mark man 18 million copies

01:02:11.600 | the business book yeah but like no one can consistently celebrities don't count yeah

01:02:15.280 | that's right but celebrities don't consistently write books so like it's very in fiction you can

01:02:19.760 | do it you can be grisham in the 90s and you're gonna move a lot but he wasn't yeah i guess he

01:02:25.200 | was moving seven figures pretty consistently uh units units units skews skews of skews of southern

01:02:34.960 | lawyers yeah so you can go crazy you can go crazy chasing that like it but it's out of your control

01:02:40.320 | right i don't think stephen king's like things like that yeah and i'm sure his books are up and

01:02:44.480 | down i mean they also a lot of copies but like i think some kill it and some sadaris so they're

01:02:49.440 | probably the same way no i think sadaris just gets out there tells some crazy stories about

01:02:53.440 | his family and then goes on tour and you know charges like 50 bucks a ticket to go see him

01:02:58.480 | and that's why he doesn't care about like the books have to do well and they do well

01:03:02.240 | yeah but like he loves touring and he makes a lot of money yeah and what does he have to spend his

01:03:04.960 | money on but like a new stick to pick up garbage with in england like it's i mean don't they have

01:03:08.880 | doesn't him and you have like a they have many french countryside house and an english house

01:03:13.200 | all day here yeah i've been trying to get him on the show i can't imagine what no i'm joking

01:03:18.800 | it's like huh productivity digital culture this is right i'm sure he he does write about how he works

01:03:26.480 | and uh he has a very specific way about it yeah yeah great yeah but you wouldn't get him

01:03:32.080 | all right so that's good advice so um the summarize then i always paraphrase so you're saying

01:03:37.040 | uh the book writing it's hard financially hard but you can make a living at it it has its pluses

01:03:42.720 | and minuses if you want to get into it write journalistically write articles anywhere you can

01:03:47.920 | develop a niche then have to be super tight but i will say the other thing there's the other path

01:03:56.640 | to it too yes go live your life go have another career and then write on the side right for you

01:04:03.600 | know a magazine for a hobby you have or a blog or something like that and then later on when you feel

01:04:09.920 | like you have an experience or something to tell you're going to have that lived experience that's

01:04:14.960 | that is it so it's not just writers who get to do that yeah that's true yeah or and if you want to

01:04:20.160 | write pragmatic non-fiction then do something that's useful and then you can write about it

01:04:24.000 | that's easier yeah if i want to give advice on something uh go do that thing well it's like a

01:04:28.240 | much easier formula than if you want to report on jewish delis like what can this person write

01:04:32.960 | and this you know as it makes sense he'll be right on that yeah yeah exactly all right well david this

01:04:38.000 | is uh this has been great this has been useful thanks for stopping by the studio and help me

01:04:41.360 | tackle some of these questions and um i think we have to go find a deli i think we do it's a pleasure

01:04:46.480 | great to be here i'm freezing turn the heat up the brain puts off 80 of the body's heat my brain

01:04:54.160 | is like a heater november 2024 heat by calumny all right thanks david all right well that was great

01:05:00.800 | uh while we get jesse back in his producer's chair so that we can do uh the next segment which is

01:05:07.040 | where i will one-on-one answer more of your questions let me just briefly take this transition

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01:06:41.600 | speaking of health i also want to mention our good friends at my body tutor i've known adam

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01:08:30.320 | body tutor.com mention deep questions and get 50 off all right well i enjoyed having david here for

01:08:37.920 | the last segment i want to get in a few more questions uh just me and jesse here before we

01:08:42.880 | end the show so jesse what do we have here on the question docket to kick things off

01:08:47.360 | all right first question is from aaron a 21 year old software developer i've started writing a

01:08:54.560 | technical blog where it's about programming concepts however i found writing about technical

01:08:59.840 | stuff is completely different than writing a normal blog i want my blog structured like a

01:09:04.880 | lesson but can't figure out how to make it work how would you approach writing a technical blog

01:09:11.760 | well so aaron what you're seeing here is a writer challenge you have a particular topic

01:09:17.600 | and audience you don't know how to make it work you're not sure what format is actually going to

01:09:21.760 | work you have this idea which i think is interesting that there's some way to make the technical

01:09:26.880 | writing you want to do compelling now in the elaboration to this question aaron gives some

01:09:32.640 | more ideas about thinking about introducing common errors and walking them through but

01:09:37.280 | that wasn't quite working he's trying to figure out how do i make this interesting

01:09:40.720 | my answer is i don't know but i want you to work really hard at finding the finding the what works

01:09:46.560 | this is a challenge it's a big challenge to figure out a new style of writing to figure

01:09:51.680 | out a new voice that hasn't been done before but the fact that this is a challenge that's not

01:09:55.680 | obvious to you is the good news that means there is a a large first mover obstacle that if you can

01:10:03.440 | get over you're going to have a few advantage you're going to have a big advantage if you put

01:10:06.720 | in the effort the experimentation the thinking the reading lots of stuff what's working what's not

01:10:10.720 | does this voice work not quite what if i do it this way if you put in that effort and if it's

01:10:14.320 | hard and if it takes you six months to really figure out a new style a technical blog in your

01:10:19.040 | space that seems to really sing you will have this giant gap of a competitive advantage

01:10:23.600 | you did all that work that most people aren't willing to do so i would say take this obstacle

01:10:29.440 | and say what a great opportunity i have no idea how to do this but i believe it's possible

01:10:35.040 | so i'm going to work on this really hard i'm going to experiment until i find a really cool voice that

01:10:40.160 | actually works here that happens all the time in writing people put in the effort to do something

01:10:45.280 | new to find a new way of doing something that really sings and they are greatly rewarded for

01:10:51.280 | being the first person into that new space so how do you actually figure out if you found the right

01:10:55.200 | format partially experiment put stuff out there see what works but i think mostly what this is

01:11:00.800 | going to come down to is trusting your gut when you write something you're reading it you have to

01:11:05.600 | think is this interesting to me is this catching my attention or is it just writing for the sake

01:11:10.640 | of writing it's just yeah technically all the information is here is it's conversational in

01:11:15.120 | some sort of faux way is there rhetorical questions and filler you know your gut will tell

01:11:20.560 | you is this really interesting to me or is it just i completed the assignment this is technically an

01:11:26.240 | article on this topic and has information trust that gut and let that help guide you get to a

01:11:33.280 | place where your your visceral reaction to the essay is like oh this is interesting i like this

01:11:38.400 | here and that's probably going to be your best way of knowing that you're on to something new so do

01:11:42.480 | that work can you take a step further and elaborate how how that goes about like finding people to

01:11:49.920 | like professionally critique the work because if you're just writing for the blog and nobody

01:11:55.200 | yeah well this is why i mean it's a good question so it's why i think uh aaron in this case is going

01:11:59.600 | to need to rely heavily on his gut because it's a chicken and the egg problem if you put out writing

01:12:04.480 | onto a blog that no one's reading you're not going to get the feedback needed to make it better so

01:12:08.800 | you're going to have to rely pretty heavily on your gut and when you really think something is

01:12:12.480 | working then commit to it and give it the 30 40 posts that it might take before you actually begin

01:12:19.040 | to find begin to find some traction and i went through this with my own blog back in the days

01:12:24.560 | like finding finding my voice you know like one of the big things i figured out the early days of

01:12:29.920 | study hacks was um i had to have a movement like whatever whatever the main topic i was talking

01:12:36.400 | about i had to have a movement that had clearly defined elements to it that was somewhat contrarian

01:12:41.600 | and then i had to be proselytizing for that movement this is kind of what i figured out

01:12:47.840 | so even in my early student advice days i had this movement based on my early books it was all about

01:12:54.480 | we don't take seriously enough the mechanics of how you actually translate information from

01:12:58.720 | textbooks and lectures into problem sets papers and tests that do really well and we need to be

01:13:04.000 | more technical about this and see this like a like a business advice writer would think about

01:13:08.000 | the right systems for marketing or tracking hr and so i had this um this this philosophy a very

01:13:13.600 | clear philosophy that was aspirational because it sold this promise of like hey if you get more

01:13:19.760 | thoughtful about how you approach your school work you could do better and and spend a lot less time

01:13:24.080 | like your your student life could be transformed so there's a philosophy that made sense and then

01:13:28.640 | everything i was writing was pushing this philosophy and then what happens is if i'm a

01:13:33.520 | reader what do i want well i bought into this philosophy and i want uh i want you to to juice

01:13:39.760 | this every week i know i'm on board with you and now i want to just hear you preaching that's how

01:13:45.120 | you build a community often with this type of writing and as the topics of my blog and then

01:13:49.360 | eventually as it transformed into a newsletter as they evolved over time so at first it was

01:13:55.200 | technical student advice then it was more about uh student stress and engineering a student career

01:14:01.040 | that was meaningful and not overwhelmed get away from grind culture and overwhelming stress

01:14:04.800 | and then it was about careers and how to build a career that was meaningful and the the trap of

01:14:10.240 | follow your passion as a too simplistic piece of advice and then from there is where i moved into

01:14:14.880 | the world of technology and uh all the different ways that technology impacts our our our stretch

01:14:21.440 | to try to live more meaningful lives and social media and distraction in the workplace and our

01:14:25.360 | smartphones all along the way what i learned was develop a philosophy that's clear and aspirational

01:14:31.680 | and then preach that philosophy every week because that is what an audience wants is i'm a convert

01:14:36.240 | and now i want to hear the sermon and i think it's probably the biggest issue with people in the

01:14:40.560 | blogging space is that if there's not a point a philosophy that you're preaching that people can

01:14:46.000 | be on board with if you're just delivering information it's very hard to build an audience

01:14:50.560 | you know because i don't care unless it's very specific information but anyways erin that's one

01:14:57.600 | thing i discovered in the technical blogging space it might be a different thing but the point is

01:15:01.120 | that is a i discovered that through experimentation that type of writing hit me viscerally it was what

01:15:07.200 | i like to read the first decade of the 2000s was this web 2.0 blogging boom and i was thinking about

01:15:14.640 | the blogs i like to read and they were all hitting me in that deep aspirational place like they were

01:15:19.040 | they had a philosophy it's like the early minimalism blogs had a philosophy and it was

01:15:23.120 | aspirational and it was good just to hear it flogged week after week so that is an example of

01:15:27.760 | my advice being put into action again it might look different in technical blogging what hits

01:15:32.880 | you viscerally might not be what i'm talking about here aspirational philosophy that you're preaching

01:15:37.280 | to but this general method is what i want you to think about do the hard work of figuring out what

01:15:42.080 | works it's worth doing that work up front because that's how you're going to get the biggest return

01:15:45.520 | on your efforts down the line all right let's keep rolling here what do we have next jesse

01:15:50.800 | all right next question is from elinor a 35 year old professor i've developed a habit of listening

01:15:58.080 | to podcasts in the background as i work i'm aware that this is a distraction i would like to break

01:16:02.480 | the habit however if i go without it i've noticed that i take much longer to get started with the

01:16:07.440 | real research work and tend to get more easily and quickly distracted so the issue here is that

01:16:13.120 | elinor is used to now podcast playing and she has a hard time starting work without them but then of

01:16:19.040 | course having a podcast playing while you work makes it hard to do your work at a sufficient

01:16:24.720 | level of depth so elinor you've accidentally created a deep work ritual as i talk about in

01:16:32.800 | the book deep work getting into a mode of concentration so you're going to do symbolic

01:16:39.040 | reasoning on a cognitively demanding task is unnatural our brain doesn't like it it burns a

01:16:45.600 | lot of energy and there's not an obvious reward that it's going to generate in the moment i'll

01:16:50.080 | burn energy if we're chasing down this impala that we're trying to hunt and kill i have a harder time

01:16:56.640 | burning energy if you are writing a related work section in a academic anthropology paper your

01:17:02.080 | brain doesn't understand that as being connected to your survival so deep work is hard to initiate

01:17:07.040 | a lot of people who do this regularly therefore build rituals if you have a ritual where you do

01:17:13.360 | the same type of thing before you start deep work every time your brain eventually begins to uh

01:17:20.640 | connect that ritual with the state of concentration and you can bypass a lot of that resistance and

01:17:25.840 | slip more easily into the that mode of concentration so elinor you've accidentally created a ritual

01:17:31.840 | around the podcast listening and the point i want to make to you is that the fact that as podcast

01:17:36.560 | doesn't really matter it's arbitrary it's just the hook this is the hook that your brain has learned

01:17:42.160 | to associate with concentration this is why when you remove this ritual you have a harder time

01:17:46.080 | getting in the concentration so if you don't like this particular hook you have two options

01:17:51.760 | one you can just modify this existing ritual to minimize its impact so maybe you modify this

01:17:57.600 | ritual so it's like put on a podcast as i i load up all of my tools and i get my notes for my last

01:18:04.560 | session and i i write a quick outline of what i want to do first and then at that point i turn

01:18:10.480 | off the podcast and go right so that's modification of the existing ritual so you still let the

01:18:16.480 | podcast get you into the work mode and get you over the threshold and then once you have a little

01:18:21.520 | momentum you turn it off or you could spend three weeks and build a new ritual i mean the reason

01:18:27.520 | why podcast is working here is just it's a a clearly defined hook it's a audio hook audio

01:18:34.640 | visual taste all of these are great things to build deep ritual hooks around but you could

01:18:39.440 | have just as easily built this around going for a long walk or brewing a particular type of coffee

01:18:45.200 | that you then bring back to your desk you could honestly could have just like a certain song you

01:18:50.480 | play you know i i play the song it could be the adjustment of your location could be the adjustment

01:18:55.760 | of your lights i clear my desk i turn off all the lights except for one bright desk lamp anything

01:19:00.080 | that has some sort of pronounced visual audio or even uh smell based olfactory based elements

01:19:08.560 | can be a great hook for building a deep work ritual you just have to do it for two or three

01:19:11.760 | weeks so that your brain gets the idea so i think it's a great example of deep work rituals in action

01:19:16.720 | either make this existing ritual a little less negatively impactful or take three weeks and

01:19:22.320 | build up a new one all right what do we got next next question is from marathon sprinter

01:19:32.240 | my company does a two-week sprint starting in the middle of the week thursday should i switch

01:19:37.520 | my weekly plan to a two-week long sprintly plan probably yes so in my multi-play multi-scale

01:19:47.040 | planning philosophy where you do quarterly semester plans weekly plans and then daily plans

01:19:52.480 | the weekly has a little bit of give you know it is important to have a scale of planning where you

01:19:59.920 | can see multiple days in a row that's what allows you to figure out how to move these bigger chess

01:20:06.080 | pieces around that's what gives you the insight to move things to open up bigger time that's what

01:20:10.720 | allows you to see oh early in the week i need to really push on this because later in the week is

01:20:14.880 | is worse you need some sort of planning scale that looks at multiple days at a time if you go all the

01:20:20.160 | way to just say what do i want to do today you're missing some of this bigger structure to your

01:20:24.720 | available time and your available opportunities to get things done exactly one week isn't so critical

01:20:29.840 | so if your company has a two-week cycle i think two weeks would be fine build it around the sprints

01:20:35.280 | in fact you should probably put some specific structure into your weekly plans to take into

01:20:38.800 | account this is sprint work and then this is the non-sprint administrative work and i keep track of

01:20:44.400 | okay you know these days i do the administrative work and then here's the sprint and you could

01:20:47.840 | even have like a special format built around it if you went much longer than two weeks you're going

01:20:52.720 | to start to get into trouble i do know people who do monthly plans monthly plans aren't that useful

01:20:57.120 | it's not enough time to do the big picture quarterly semester planning it's too much time

01:21:03.040 | to meaningfully like move around appointments or think about when you're going to work is this too

01:21:07.200 | many days two weeks fine three weeks iffy one month too much one week fine if you're doing just

01:21:15.040 | a couple days at a time not enough so let's give like a one to two ish week window that window of

01:21:21.120 | scales i think i think that would all be fine but jesse you were telling me before the show you had a

01:21:27.520 | a recent breakthrough in your weekly plans yeah so i think everything is iterative and the more

01:21:33.920 | you know you're just talking about you know once you're a convert then you just hear the preaches

01:21:37.840 | so i hear you talk about weekly plans a lot and i was looking at mine and it was getting jumbled

01:21:44.480 | and there was a lot of stuff in there that should have been over in trello for instance just because

01:21:49.840 | there were stuff that i wasn't actually going to get to that particular week so then when i went

01:21:53.680 | to the plan i see all this stuff and i like for whatever you're talking like uh tasks related or

01:21:59.120 | objectives related to a bigger project yeah for like a certain job that i have were you were you

01:22:03.520 | carrying these over yeah so you put a you know here's the six things this project needs done

01:22:09.600 | onto your weekly plan yeah and maybe just one of those gets done you just carry over

01:22:14.080 | yeah and rewrite or copy and paste as opposed to just sticking it over in trello and then pulling

01:22:20.640 | it and then be like all right this week i'm just going to do this and then because then that kind

01:22:23.920 | of gets along with the slow productivity stuff that you're doing and then you're actually making

01:22:29.200 | some progress on like a certain job or a task or whatever it is that you have in that plan do you

01:22:34.000 | focus now each week on the i'm going to do one project or two projects like you hone in on exactly

01:22:40.000 | which projects you're going to make progress on yeah well i have it divided into different jobs

01:22:45.360 | so then yeah for like those whatever specific job then it would be this one thing yeah that i wanted

01:22:50.880 | to like make progress on as opposed to like for instance to say job a i didn't want to like i

01:22:56.400 | would have three things in there and then wouldn't necessarily make great progress but now like with

01:23:01.600 | one thing in there doing a few things it's like the slow productivity mindset and like getting some

01:23:05.600 | stuff done and do you pull over so you've identified a particular job you're working on this week

01:23:10.080 | do you pull in from trello this is the one or two tasks i want to get done or is it you're

01:23:15.040 | identifying this is the job i want to do as you work on it in the week keep pulling stuff from

01:23:19.360 | trello so what do you i pulled in one in the beginning of the week and then if that gets

01:23:23.360 | done early you might update the weekly plan yeah um usually it's something that's going to take

01:23:28.240 | it hasn't gotten done early yet so usually it'll take the whole week based on my other schedule

01:23:34.400 | it's like a common experience people have let's see if you had the same experience a common

01:23:37.520 | experience people have is let's say they have three or four major projects going on they're

01:23:42.800 | really worried about the idea of just working on one per week because they think i can't look i'm

01:23:48.240 | not going to get to this other project for another three weeks like it's impossible i need to make

01:23:51.280 | progress but what they realize if they do that they end up getting things done just as quickly

01:23:55.760 | as if they instead try to sort of quixotically do a little bit of every project every week that

01:24:01.760 | when you slow down and do one thing at a time it doesn't actually necessarily slow down completion

01:24:08.000 | times for each of these projects on average and it tends to raise quality so was it was it

01:24:12.160 | stressful at first or a little anxiety producing to say let me just choose one thing because when

01:24:17.600 | you're making that plan like i'm only putting one project on this and it feels was that anxiety

01:24:22.640 | producing at first um it was it reduced like anxiety actually after i looked at the weekly

01:24:31.840 | plan and had less stuff on there i was like oh this is very doable interesting yeah so and you've

01:24:36.480 | had no problem getting these things done um because it's not like because it's not like you

01:24:41.920 | were actually getting all these things done each week you were just writing them down yeah and it

01:24:45.120 | was carrying over and i was like making my weekly plan jumbled yeah so that's good i like that

01:24:50.080 | they're concise and better be realistic in your weekly plan yeah don't use your weekly plan to

01:24:56.000 | store things it's actually exactly store things store things of elsewhere weekly plans what you

01:25:01.600 | actually want to get done um and don't use it as a wish list because there is that little burst you

01:25:07.600 | get this is like the such a devilish little burst of pleasure you get when you're making a weekly

01:25:13.200 | plan if you put a bunch of stuff on it for 10 minutes you get the little pleasure that comes

01:25:18.800 | from imagining man if i got all of these things done this week wouldn't that be great yeah and

01:25:24.800 | then you trade that like 10 minutes of like enjoying this fantasy you created for five days

01:25:30.080 | of stressfully coming nowhere near close to actually getting it done yeah it's so well said

01:25:34.480 | so much planning don't make it a wish list don't make it a wish list yeah the same with time block

01:25:38.400 | planning early time block planners do this when they're planning their day they first they plan

01:25:43.120 | the day you know the perfect day it's um if you'll excuse a nerdy reference it's harry potter

01:25:50.800 | in harry potter and the half-blood prince when he takes the felix felicious potion jesse's looking at

01:26:00.880 | me like what the hell are you talking about it's a it's a potion that uh it gives you good luck like

01:26:05.840 | everything goes just the best way possible when you take this potion so if you take this potion

01:26:10.000 | and i think time block planning for a lot of people and this is the type of like really cool

01:26:14.400 | gritty analogy that gets us like a really cool fan base time block planning for a lot of people

01:26:19.920 | just becomes a productivity felix felicity's potion where it's like wouldn't this be great

01:26:25.600 | if this only took a half hour and then this 20 minutes between these two meetings i i took this

01:26:30.400 | off my plate and then this hour i finished that memo and you look at this plan you're like man

01:26:34.400 | that would be awesome and like nine minutes into your day your laptop's on fire the the company

01:26:41.200 | just went out of business you know your child just gave lice to your pediatrician who's now left the

01:26:47.520 | left the industry all together and um you know seven new projects just fell on your plate and

01:26:55.200 | also you forgot you were supposed to be writing a book and it's due on friday like it takes about

01:26:58.480 | nine minutes before this like miraculous plan you have where you're like this is great everything

01:27:03.360 | will take 20 minutes and i'll have all this energy um so be realistic don't make a wish list

01:27:07.440 | you'll feel better actually being able to get a reasonable plan done with time to spare in the

01:27:12.560 | end it's going to make you feel much better than that 10 minutes of like oh this would be great

01:27:16.560 | all right i think we have time for one more question what do we got here jesse

01:27:20.800 | all right sweet so one more question from anonymous my wife and i recently had our first

01:27:26.960 | child and this is really lit a fire under me i currently work at a large corporation as a senior

01:27:31.680 | data engineer when i actually have work to do it's trivial bet it's trivial at best i have so much

01:27:37.680 | free time i thought to create my own side business or taking on a second fully remote data related

01:27:42.800 | role in the model of of the over-employed community do you think this is a fool do you

01:27:48.320 | think this is foolhardy so i'll be honest i had to look up over employed so this engineer is saying

01:27:55.840 | like a lot of jobs at big old corporations he doesn't have a lot of work to do and he's like

01:28:00.400 | i don't know should i start another should i start a company on the side should i follow the

01:28:06.320 | over-employed community and get another job or maybe should i just spend more time at home

01:28:11.200 | so he gave me a link this the person anonymous who sent me this question gave me a link to a reddit

01:28:19.040 | for the over-employed community i don't know anything about this so i figured we should find

01:28:23.360 | out more before i answer this question so i've loaded up here on the tablet for those who are

01:28:27.360 | watching this on the youtube channel this episode 223 i've loaded up here now uh the reddit

01:28:34.240 | over employed one word i'm just actually looking at this this is i'm learning about this

01:28:39.040 | uh i'm learning about this as along with you so let's just see here's the opening message comes

01:28:44.960 | from isaac let's see hello from isaac founder of over employed hello over employed nation

01:28:52.800 | uh this is details we invite you to uh to go on a discord we invite you to go to the subreddit oh

01:28:58.640 | but there's a there's an faq so here we go we're leaving reddit to go to the over employed faq

01:29:03.760 | at overemployed.com all right here's the type of questions are on here job hunting what do i put

01:29:11.120 | on my resume is working multiple jobs even legal what about non-compete clauses do i work for look

01:29:18.160 | for a larger or smaller company can i look for a second job in another country what counts as

01:29:23.520 | potential conflicts of interest so all right i'm getting the i'm getting the impression here that

01:29:28.000 | the over employed movement is about getting a second job without maybe letting your primary

01:29:33.920 | employer know that you have let's look at a couple posts on here just to get a feel of the atmosphere

01:29:39.200 | of this movement so here's a post back on the reddit from uh alex a software engineer at google

01:29:46.880 | who said whether it's amazon meta or twitter in 2022 we learned you don't keep your job by

01:29:53.200 | working late nights leading a team staying loyal to a company going above and beyond

01:29:57.040 | dot dot dot it seems like the most critical important factor is working on a critical

01:30:01.520 | business need it's depressing to remember that companies will always put business

01:30:06.080 | first this means you should never put the company first all right so we're seeing some uh

01:30:11.760 | anti-company rhetoric here this is interesting they're saying look they'll these companies can

01:30:17.120 | just fire you whenever you don't worry about being loyal to them another post here says

01:30:21.920 | y'all need to keep your mouth shut as the title says i'm starting to see more and more videos

01:30:27.760 | and posts on social media about people boasting they are over employed followed by some trending

01:30:32.320 | news sites picking it up and blasting it all over the front page for boomers to see i get it i really

01:30:37.920 | do living this lifestyle making the most out of it is an incredible thing but you really have to

01:30:42.400 | keep your mouth shut about it elsewhere boomer employers will catch on and either start investigating

01:30:47.040 | those who are practicing over employment or even worse stop allowing remote work in general

01:30:51.520 | oh jesse we're helping the boomers find out about this this is by the way is a bugaboo of mine

01:31:00.000 | we have precise demographic terms for different generations i'm tired of like millennial meaning

01:31:05.760 | young people and boomers meaning middle-aged people boomers is a very specific thing the

01:31:11.360 | older boomers now are close to 80 years old okay the youngest millennials are well into their 30s

01:31:17.440 | 25 year olds are not millennials that's gen z we got to get this all straight but that's a side

01:31:22.720 | issue uh let's see what else we have here some more anti-work stuff the hypocrisy of the modern ceo

01:31:28.480 | that's one post here uh there's some dissections of employee handbooks can i legally work another

01:31:34.960 | job here's an interesting one jesse sees it on here expletive deleted exploit deleted wants a

01:31:43.280 | list of my daily tasks so okay uh oh j1 wants a list of my daily tasks i guess that means job one

01:31:49.040 | anyways uh success with oe when you have an in-office role so here's what i'm getting by

01:31:55.520 | looking at this over employment and uh okay and here's a summary of it on the side work

01:32:01.360 | two remote jobs earn extra income reach financial freedom all right so it seems like the over

01:32:06.080 | employment movement says take advantage of remote work and the fact that you have a job that doesn't

01:32:11.360 | really have that much for you to do to get a second remote job don't tell each other about it

01:32:16.000 | now you're getting twice the income for the standard work day and if you leverage this right

01:32:20.640 | i guess you can get the financial independence quicker all right interesting deep dive jesse

01:32:24.400 | i didn't know much about that so let's get back to this question his job is trivial he wants to know

01:32:32.000 | if he should start another company or if he should get another job well i would say anonymous

01:32:38.640 | second jobs uh starting a company or let's say just spending a hell of a lot more time with

01:32:47.040 | your family because you're remote and you have a new kid and your job is trivial and so you could

01:32:51.360 | spend four or five hours a day like going on trips with your family and just doing a couple emails

01:32:55.360 | from your phone all of these are tools in a toolbox you can use to build your professional

01:33:01.200 | life the key is getting the blueprint for what you want to build and that's where you need something

01:33:06.320 | like everyone's favorite roll off the tongue acronym vblccp value space lifestyle centric

01:33:13.200 | career planning jesse there's at least one person at our live event who came up and said vblccp

01:33:19.520 | forever i think i heard that yeah we're spreading it's spreading but just to expand on this briefly

01:33:27.200 | anonymous figure out your values which probably have shifted a little bit recently you just had

01:33:31.520 | a kid figure out an ideal vision for your lifestyle what are the things that are important to you

01:33:37.360 | the role of work and impact community activity nature family character leadership i'll just you

01:33:43.200 | you build this image of like what lifestyle do i want in the near future where do i want to be in

01:33:46.960 | 10 years from now let's say when my kids about to go to middle school get this clear image that

01:33:52.560 | resonates you can feel it in your bones this is this is what i want out of the general character

01:33:57.200 | of my life and then look at this whole tool of professional options you have and say which ones

01:34:02.640 | do i want to pull out what's going to most effectively get me towards this lifestyle

01:34:06.400 | the thing i want you to avoid and i i want people in general to avoid is haphazard deployment of

01:34:15.600 | these sort of mega shifts or changes in their career this idea of i vaguely know i'm not happy

01:34:21.760 | with this so let me just do something demonstrative something radical and then maybe i'll be happier

01:34:27.040 | it's a it's a sort of scattershot random deployment of things let me start a company

01:34:31.360 | let me just get another job you know i i was reading this reddit and it felt kind of cool

01:34:37.040 | when i do this this sort of random haphazard radical shifts to your lifestyle situation are

01:34:42.800 | very unlikely to lead you to a configuration that maximizes your personal definition of depth

01:34:47.440 | you need to be more structured in this pursuit so if you do this visioning and what you really end

01:34:53.440 | up thinking about is uh you're with your family and maybe you're like homeschooling this kid and

01:34:59.360 | you have land and you're reading by the lake and you're there's like a a local community that you

01:35:05.120 | you take your you go into uh where the you're really plugged into the church and it's you know

01:35:10.240 | in vermont somewhere like if this is this image strikes you as like really resonant then you

01:35:15.040 | would think here like this is great let me make sure my job is permanently remote uh let's move

01:35:20.160 | to like one of these locations it's a cheaper location let me be very careful about corralling

01:35:23.760 | my work and leverage all of this free time i have to pursue these other parts of my lifestyle that

01:35:28.240 | are important maybe you have another image where uh you've built something big it's more vibrant

01:35:33.280 | energetic you you you have a team that's this with you and you're building up something large

01:35:37.680 | and you sell it for a lot of money and you're able to you know uh take care of your family for

01:35:42.640 | generations to follow maybe that's what you're missing in your trivial job you're missing the

01:35:47.280 | energy of actually putting your skills in some sort of more aggressive use that's going to be

01:35:52.000 | a completely different plan and then maybe you are going to start something on the side once your kid

01:35:55.280 | gets to this age and and you're going to systematically try to build that and shift to

01:35:58.480 | that position once it gets to this type of growth there's all sorts of options the over-employed

01:36:04.320 | you know maybe you're you're doing a financial independence calculation and you realize if you

01:36:09.760 | can make this much money at this spend rate for this many years you could maybe move to vermont

01:36:14.960 | and actually not work at all or something like this and that might be a situation where the

01:36:18.240 | over-employment makes sense all right this job cuts to years and a half we can do this in four

01:36:23.360 | years instead of seven but it's in this scenario you're deploying it for a reason and that's what

01:36:29.680 | i'm coming back to now there is a lot of tools out there especially in this current moment of

01:36:34.080 | disruption this current moment of remoteness this current moment where we are more accepting of more

01:36:40.160 | radical work reconfigurations there are a lot of options out here for those who are looking to

01:36:44.720 | adjust craft or re-aim their working life but you got to know what you're aiming for and that's where

01:36:49.920 | you need values-based lifestyle-centric career planning so now it's the time to do that anonymous

01:36:54.160 | rethink what what resonates you might be surprised you might be surprised by what actually hits you

01:37:00.160 | post first kid what resonates might be very different than it was three years ago do that

01:37:05.760 | exercise make a plan and then say what tools do i have to best implement best implement this plan

01:37:11.840 | over employment well there's a reddit for everything jesse

01:37:19.040 | though i guess this is over now you and i boomer jesse and boomer cal have revealed to the world

01:37:25.920 | the over employment underground is no longer secret and we are going to uh quickly put it

01:37:33.040 | into this us and our boomer friends are going to quickly put it into this because um we don't

01:37:38.480 | understand you kids but we know like and we you have to do what what we do so there we go another

01:37:45.280 | movement ruined all right jesse well i think we've had a pretty good show here i think we should wrap

01:37:50.800 | it up thank you everyone who sent in your questions thank you david sacks for coming in to sit in and

01:37:55.440 | help me answer some of those queries remember to read his book the future is analog available

01:38:00.160 | everywhere we'll be back next week with a new episode of the podcast and until then as always

01:38:06.800 | stay deep

Ep. 223: Could This Meeting Have Been An Email?

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