7 Habits To Make 2025 Your Best Year Yet

00:00:00.000 | All right, Jesse, you're in control of the show for this holiday episode.

00:00:03.980 | You ask the questions you want to hear.

00:00:05.780 | What do you want to hear about first?

00:00:07.260 | All right.

00:00:08.260 | First question.

00:00:09.260 | Who are your must read writers, both authors, journalists, and reporters that are still

00:00:13.860 | alive?

00:00:14.860 | How do you get notified when they produce content and how quickly do you get around

00:00:17.620 | to reading it?

00:00:18.620 | On a similar note, who are your favorite writers of all time?

00:00:21.740 | I mean, at this point, what I mainly do is read and reread Jane Patterson's "Eruption."

00:00:29.980 | It's a continuation of the Michael Crichton concept about a volcano book.

00:00:33.780 | Now, serious question.

00:00:35.780 | I can't do must reads.

00:00:39.180 | I can't do favorites.

00:00:40.180 | I have a hard time rank ordering things I like.

00:00:44.300 | I think there might even be a word for this.

00:00:45.820 | I mean, I don't know what it is.

00:00:46.820 | I'm making up a word, ordophobia, from ordinal for ranking or ordering and phobia for fear

00:00:52.620 | of or dislike of.

00:00:53.620 | I just have a real block with things I like trying to order them.

00:00:59.700 | I've talked about this on the show before.

00:01:02.220 | It was one of the reasons why I did not sign up for Facebook when Facebook became the first

00:01:06.060 | social media platform to have wide scale adoption because early Facebook was built on lists.

00:01:10.860 | Your profile was favorite books, favorite movies, favorite quotes, and I have ordophobia.

00:01:14.860 | I can't do that, and so I don't want to bother with this.

00:01:18.540 | There is, however, I think something deeper in this question, which is deeply applicable,

00:01:23.540 | which is this idea of how do you figure out when and not you like have something to read?

00:01:29.780 | Are you on list?

00:01:30.780 | Did you get notifications?

00:01:33.140 | How do you know when there's something out that you might want to read?

00:01:36.300 | And here, I want to maybe offer a mindset shift for the listener.

00:01:41.500 | There's two ways to think about the reading life, the life where you read lots of books

00:01:45.940 | and articles, etc.

00:01:47.700 | One way is more of the negative avoidance approach, which is, I'm afraid of missing

00:01:52.460 | something good.

00:01:54.420 | There's something out there that's good that I would like or I should read, but I missed

00:01:58.220 | it.

00:01:59.220 | There's a fear of missing out approach to it.

00:02:01.140 | The flip side of that mindset is the joy and serendipity of, I found something good to

00:02:07.340 | read.

00:02:08.340 | Isn't that exciting?

00:02:09.340 | I think a long time ago, I realized in the world of nonfiction, which is primarily the

00:02:12.300 | world in which I do most of my reading, there's more good authors and more books I'm ever

00:02:16.060 | going to read.

00:02:17.860 | Instead of seeing that as a downside, I'm going to miss all this great stuff.

00:02:20.700 | I see it as this positive side.

00:02:22.080 | It's never going to be hard to find something that's going to delight me.

00:02:24.620 | There's so much stuff out there that's good.

00:02:27.300 | The joy or the benefit is in constantly finding stuff you like that's interesting, that challenges

00:02:32.140 | you.

00:02:33.140 | With that in mind, I'm not super specific in how I find what I'm going to read.

00:02:39.740 | I hear about things.

00:02:40.740 | I see things.

00:02:41.740 | I'll walk through bookstores.

00:02:42.740 | I was just at People's Book yesterday here in Tacoma Park, just looking at the new book

00:02:47.020 | tables.

00:02:48.020 | "Hey, who has something new out that I might want to hear about?"

00:02:50.500 | People mention things online.

00:02:51.500 | I read book reviews.

00:02:52.500 | I'll read the New York Times book review.

00:02:54.460 | I'll see what books the Wall Street Journal is reviewing, especially in the business space.

00:02:58.260 | They're pretty good on that.

00:02:59.860 | I'll see authors come up in podcasts.

00:03:03.060 | I've said this before.

00:03:04.060 | When it comes to interview podcasts, I follow guest, not host.

00:03:09.860 | There might be a huge number of interview podcasts that I might scroll through and see

00:03:13.100 | what's on, not because I will listen to whatever they do, but to see if they have someone on

00:03:16.940 | that I'm interested in.

00:03:18.460 | I might hear an interesting author come up on a friend of mine's show or something like

00:03:23.220 | this and then listen to it and say, "Oh, that sounds fascinating.

00:03:25.420 | Okay.

00:03:26.420 | Maybe I want to read that book."

00:03:27.580 | I have a pretty big library.

00:03:29.820 | I'll just wander through my library and say, "Oh, here's a book in here.

00:03:32.780 | I picked up at some point meaning to read.

00:03:34.940 | I didn't get around to it.

00:03:36.100 | Now it's really appealing to me.

00:03:38.060 | Let's rock and roll with it."

00:03:39.500 | I don't sweat missing stuff that's good.

00:03:42.260 | There's so much good stuff out there that I'm not worried about not having something

00:03:47.940 | to read.

00:03:49.580 | That being said, there's authors I really like.

00:03:51.260 | I'm often looking for a combination of an author I like and a topic I like.

00:03:55.340 | If it's not both, I might skip it.

00:03:57.500 | I don't know.

00:03:58.500 | To be specific, I've long liked Sebastian Junger.

00:04:02.700 | His adventure nonfiction, realistic nonfiction book was, of course, world class beginning

00:04:06.200 | with The Perfect Storm.

00:04:08.140 | Then he switched over in the last decade or so to more of these smaller cultural critique

00:04:12.740 | type books, which tend to be about mismatches in human wiring in modern society.

00:04:17.660 | I really like Tribe.

00:04:18.940 | I really like Freedom.

00:04:20.480 | If I see Junger has a book out and he has some sort of interesting cultural critique

00:04:24.460 | about these mismatches, I'm going to be on board.

00:04:27.500 | But he had a recent book out that was his Reflections on Mortality and Dying and I didn't

00:04:31.900 | pick that one up.

00:04:32.900 | I was like, "I like this author, but I'm not really into that topic right now, so that

00:04:36.260 | combination is not catching my attention."

00:04:38.860 | It was like this with David McCullough, who was one of my favorite historical nonfiction

00:04:42.900 | writers, if not my favorite historical nonfiction writer.

00:04:46.020 | His style is fantastic.

00:04:47.980 | He's the master of taking the archived written word, typically in correspondence, and using

00:04:52.820 | this to recreate in vivid detail realistic characters from history.

00:04:57.580 | So he brings people alive by using their own written words.

00:05:00.600 | So if I see him, plus a historical time or topic I'm interested in, I was all on board.

00:05:06.860 | But if it was him and not a topic or area I was interested in, I might skip it.

00:05:10.900 | Like I didn't read his book about Americans in Paris.

00:05:14.600 | It just wasn't as interesting to me as his sort of presidential books or colonial era

00:05:18.400 | books.

00:05:19.400 | So that's the way I do this.

00:05:20.400 | And sometimes I won't know anything about the author, but the idea seems so interesting,

00:05:23.840 | I'll say, "Let's give this a try."

00:05:25.640 | I'm reading right now this fantastic, crazy book.

00:05:28.760 | It might be the only book this guy ever wrote.

00:05:31.320 | And he's basically recreating mathematics—I've mentioned this before, Jesse—but he builds

00:05:37.480 | from scratch mathematics from first principles in a way that's more conversational but motivated.

00:05:43.840 | So he doesn't just say, "Here's how you take a derivative of a polynomial."

00:05:47.520 | He works from first principles.

00:05:49.520 | How would you take a derivative of a polynomial?

00:05:51.000 | He derives all the stuff you learn in math class all the way through multidimensional

00:05:53.920 | calculus, including trigonometry, all the major rules of algebra.

00:05:57.240 | It's a crazy book.

00:05:58.240 | It's fantastic.

00:05:59.240 | And it's weird and brilliant.

00:06:00.240 | I don't think anyone even knew about it.

00:06:01.240 | And it sort of disappeared.

00:06:02.600 | And that was just topic first, and I didn't know anything about this author.

00:06:05.440 | So I don't know.

00:06:06.440 | I love books.

00:06:07.440 | I love nonfiction books.

00:06:09.360 | There's no shortage of good books to read.

00:06:11.400 | You'll miss most of the good books.

00:06:13.680 | And the way I see it is that's OK.

00:06:15.840 | What's the name of that math book?

00:06:17.400 | Burn Math Class.

00:06:18.400 | Oh, OK.

00:06:19.400 | Yeah.

00:06:20.400 | Bad title, right?

00:06:22.720 | Burn Math Class, a weird—you know, it was on a smaller press.

00:06:26.120 | I'll talk about it.

00:06:27.120 | I'm not done with it yet, so I guess it'll end up on the January book list.

00:06:30.760 | So you have two copies of that, right?

00:06:32.520 | I lost the first one.

00:06:33.520 | I have it.

00:06:34.520 | Oh, you have it.

00:06:35.520 | I bought another one.

00:06:36.520 | Yeah, I've been reading it, and I forgot to return it.

00:06:39.040 | I looked for it.

00:06:40.040 | I was like, "Ah, whatever.

00:06:41.040 | I'll just buy another one."

00:06:42.040 | That's a cool book.

00:06:43.040 | Yeah.

00:06:44.040 | It's a cool book.

00:06:45.040 | I'm in Multivariable Calculus, which, you know, I took.

00:06:48.520 | I used to be good at, but I don't remember.

00:06:50.040 | But he derives it all from scratch.

00:06:53.640 | And it's all done in LaTeX.

00:06:54.640 | I mean, only, like, math and science people know this, but he clearly wrote the whole

00:06:57.600 | book using the layout software we use for scientific papers.

00:07:00.880 | So it's not even formatted—it wasn't reformatted for book format.

00:07:06.140 | He just wrote it with the same software you use to write a math paper.

00:07:09.600 | It's a cool book, though.

00:07:10.920 | I mean, crazy, but I wish more people would write crazy books like that.

00:07:14.160 | Needs a better title, needs a better cover.

00:07:15.720 | Maybe we should buy the rights for it and, like, re-release it.

00:07:18.440 | Remember, like, Ferris was doing that for—I don't know if you remember this.

00:07:22.200 | Years ago, Tim Ferris was doing this.

00:07:23.800 | He was like, "I'm going to buy the rights for books I really like."

00:07:27.520 | He would buy, like, the audio rights and re-record them and publish them and use his platform

00:07:32.520 | to help push them.

00:07:33.520 | And then he realized, "Okay, that's, like, a really low-margin business."

00:07:36.480 | But it was cool.

00:07:37.480 | He was buying rights for a while.

00:07:38.480 | Hey, it's Cal.

00:07:39.480 | I wanted to interrupt briefly to say that if you're enjoying this video, then you need

00:07:43.880 | to check out my new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

00:07:51.360 | This is, like, the Bible for most of the ideas we talk about here in these videos.

00:07:56.800 | You can get a free excerpt at calnewport.com/slow.

00:08:02.160 | I know you're going to like it.

00:08:03.960 | Check it out.

00:08:04.960 | Now let's get back to the video.

00:08:05.960 | All right.

00:08:06.960 | What's your second question?

00:08:07.960 | All right.

00:08:08.960 | Next question.

00:08:09.960 | "Writing is a big part of your life.

00:08:11.640 | When you compare your writing to your favorite writers, do you think their level is achievable?

00:08:15.800 | Or is it similar to your MIT experience with certain folks having extreme brain horsepower?"

00:08:22.080 | It's a good question and a tough question.

00:08:24.080 | To give context for the listener, I've talked about this with theoretical computer science,

00:08:29.500 | my primary academic field or my original academic field, that there were differences.

00:08:36.760 | It was very hard work to get better, but there was some point where I realized I'm not at

00:08:42.360 | my 100%, because to get to your 100% is very difficult just in terms of the sheer intensity

00:08:48.380 | of work required.

00:08:49.780 | But I realized my 100% was going to fall short of the greats in the field.

00:08:53.920 | And there's an epsilon between, you know—so if you can't be a great, the difference between

00:09:00.760 | being, like, very good and good was somewhat diminishing returns.

00:09:04.800 | I mean, I had a professorship at a good university, it's respected my field, easily got my promotions.

00:09:11.820 | And so I at some point was thinking to go all in on getting to my 100%, which basically

00:09:18.080 | in theoretical computer science means you've got to read a lot more papers.

00:09:21.480 | That sounds casual, but it's actually very hard to read and understand a theory paper,

00:09:26.680 | because it's complex math that's summarized, and you have to reconstruct complicated math

00:09:32.720 | from scratch.

00:09:33.720 | It just really is like an all-out intellectual effort.

00:09:35.560 | It can take days and days just to understand one paper, and you've got to do that all the

00:09:38.460 | time.

00:09:39.460 | And if you do that all the time, you can get yourself to 100%.

00:09:42.040 | I still think it would have been short of the very top people, and so I pulled back

00:09:46.360 | from trying to go 100%.

00:09:47.360 | Writing?

00:09:48.360 | That's a good question.

00:09:49.360 | I'm probably better at nonfiction writing, nationally speaking, I guess, than theoretical

00:09:56.760 | computer science.

00:09:58.760 | I guess.

00:09:59.760 | So maybe I'll start there.

00:10:02.040 | I mean, I'm a good theoretician, right?

00:10:03.880 | I mean, I trained at the top theory group.

00:10:05.560 | It was the MIT's theory group was a good group.

00:10:08.160 | I have a good professorship.

00:10:09.720 | I have a good H-index.

00:10:10.760 | I have a lot of citations.

00:10:13.840 | But it's a smaller group of people to compare yourself against.

00:10:17.500 | There's more nonfiction writers.

00:10:18.560 | I just guess the reason why I say that is my national reputation as a nonfiction writer

00:10:22.680 | is probably better.

00:10:25.560 | And some of the accolades of nonfiction writing, like writing for The New Yorker, maybe that's

00:10:30.080 | in academia.

00:10:31.240 | Maybe that's the equivalent of having a position at a top 10 CS program, right?

00:10:38.220 | The New York Times bestsellers, the award list, maybe that's the academic equivalent

00:10:42.400 | of—though I've won some awards for my academic work, but winning some more higher-level awards,

00:10:49.000 | being in the—your work showed up in science and not just in the journal that's specific

00:10:54.520 | to your field.

00:10:55.520 | So I think I'm a little better, nationally speaking, in nonfiction than I am in theory.

00:11:02.320 | But I'm not one of the best nonfiction writers, right?

00:11:04.120 | I'm not writing features for The New Yorker in the magazine.

00:11:08.360 | I'm not up for national book awards or Pulitzers, right?

00:11:12.480 | I mean, I'm not at that echelon of, from a craft perspective, just the very best writers.

00:11:18.760 | I make best-of-the-year lists, but typically places that are considering business books

00:11:23.800 | or considering pragmatic nonfiction, whereas The New York Times is top 100, that's not

00:11:28.960 | a place I'm going to show up.

00:11:30.080 | I'm not going to show up in The New Yorker's best books of the year.

00:11:32.880 | So in theory, there's higher craft I could get to.

00:11:36.320 | I don't know how high I would get if I pushed for 100% in writing.

00:11:41.100 | I think, just like in CS, I'm at that 75%, which took a decade to get here.

00:11:45.680 | It took really hard work, don't get me wrong.

00:11:47.960 | But to write the very best writing I could do, I would really need to do it full-time

00:11:50.720 | all out to get to that 100%, and I don't know where that would land.

00:11:55.600 | One of the reasons why I'm not doing that, as long as we're psychoanalyzing my career

00:11:59.600 | decisions here, which is interesting to me.

00:12:01.880 | One of the reasons I'm not doing that is that it might not be the most productive thing

00:12:07.080 | for me to do from a career success or impacts perspective, right?

00:12:11.480 | Like, really, my skill, the thing I think that I have that's more unique or my unique

00:12:18.080 | advantage is actually idea generation.

00:12:21.000 | I'm an idea generator.

00:12:22.520 | I can make sense of information and come up with interesting ways to think about things.

00:12:26.920 | I'm very good at consolidating things into interesting ideas and frameworks.

00:12:31.040 | I've always been good at this.

00:12:32.160 | I just sort of see the world this way.

00:12:35.160 | That's well-served by my current writing ability.

00:12:37.560 | Like, I'm a pretty good writer, which means when I write about idea stuff, it has a little

00:12:42.320 | bit of a gloss of it being maybe a little bit smarter than, like, a standard advice

00:12:48.160 | or self-help, but not off-the-charts, like, literary nonfiction.

00:12:53.520 | And that's probably, like, the right place, right, this sort of smart self-help balance

00:12:58.320 | I've found, where I have ideas that can give you specific action, but I'm writing about

00:13:05.080 | it more New Yorker-y style, like, smarter than you would get in just a standard advice

00:13:09.120 | book that you would pick up.

00:13:10.920 | That seems to be, like, a combination, that's a lane I've created, which I think is a good

00:13:14.720 | lane.

00:13:15.720 | So actually becoming better at nonfiction writing wouldn't help that lane.

00:13:18.120 | Personally, though, I'm interested in continuing to grow my craft.

00:13:21.240 | So man, this is an interesting question, Jesse.

00:13:23.480 | This is, like, an interesting discussion that you could have in general when talking about

00:13:27.360 | achievement, is that gap between 75% of your capacity and 100%, because there is a huge

00:13:32.880 | effort differential between 75% and 100%.

00:13:36.640 | And it's a calculus that in any sort of high-achieving field you have to do.

00:13:41.040 | Is my 100% going to justify that effort differential or not?

00:13:47.480 | And it's a complicated question, because your 100% is where you land on that hierarchy of

00:13:52.520 | skills, and, like, most people's 100% doesn't land at the top.

00:13:57.560 | And so often, like, your 75%, which again is very hard, you have to focus and it takes

00:14:01.360 | decades, but your 75% is often the right strategy with high achievement.

00:14:05.680 | You're getting the most bang for your buck.

00:14:07.960 | It's a complicated topic that I don't think we discuss with enough complexity in our culture

00:14:12.120 | in general.

00:14:13.120 | So I don't know.

00:14:14.120 | Maybe I-- let me summarize it.

00:14:15.400 | I could probably be a little bit better at writing, but I don't know how much better.

00:14:20.320 | Yeah.

00:14:21.320 | So in the time being, like, in the next 10 years, you'll hopefully be a better writer

00:14:25.040 | than you are now, right?

00:14:27.080 | Yeah.

00:14:28.080 | But I will get better.

00:14:29.240 | Yeah.

00:14:30.240 | The question is, like--

00:14:31.240 | Is it like baseball?

00:14:32.240 | Like, I keep on asking you this, is there-- eventually, you kind of go through your prime?

00:14:38.680 | I-- it's a-- yeah, it's a hard question.

00:14:42.840 | I don't know.

00:14:43.840 | Probably.

00:14:44.840 | See, the thing about baseball-- and my former late editor, who edited So Good They Can't

00:14:54.520 | Ignore You, and actually, tragically, died a couple of years ago, he used to tell me

00:15:01.520 | this because he was a professional baseball player.

00:15:04.360 | Didn't make it to the majors, but was in the professional minor league systems.

00:15:06.800 | And the thing is, he said, in baseball, everyone is gunning for their 100%, to use my analogy.

00:15:11.520 | So everyone is doing all the training you can possibly do to maximize your potential.

00:15:16.800 | So everything just eventually sorts out.

00:15:19.240 | And I'm a single A player, I'm an instructional league player, I'm a double A player, maybe

00:15:23.800 | I'm like a triple A or quadruple A style utility player, or I'm a major leaguer, or I'm an

00:15:29.440 | all-star.

00:15:30.440 | And you're going to fall somewhere on that scale, and you're going to know it by, like,

00:15:33.640 | 27.

00:15:34.640 | Because everyone is going all out.

00:15:36.600 | And so you're probably not going to have-- changes happen.

00:15:39.800 | Like, obviously, you'll get in the weeds, you'll get a sort of mid-career Daniel Murphy

00:15:45.600 | changes his swing to be more launch angle, and suddenly becomes one of the best hitters

00:15:48.800 | in baseball.

00:15:50.720 | But for the most part, it kind of shakes out.

00:15:53.200 | Most other non-athletic fields, people don't push it that far.

00:15:57.240 | And so what I'm trying to figure out is, is your 75% sort of indicate, hey, if my 75%

00:16:04.480 | is this good, then I just add this much to get what my 100% would be, or is it a completely

00:16:08.340 | different game?

00:16:09.340 | Like, maybe in writing, like nonfiction writing, if you're a pretty good writer and you go

00:16:13.140 | all out, you can get great.

00:16:15.400 | Maybe anyone can do it.

00:16:16.400 | I just don't know.

00:16:17.400 | You know?

00:16:18.840 | A lot of what makes great nonfiction writing great tends to be on the research side.

00:16:23.920 | And that's something that's pretty replicatable.

00:16:27.040 | It's just time, it's, you know, OK, what makes a David Graham long-form piece for The New

00:16:34.200 | Yorker good?

00:16:35.200 | So you have David Graham, who wrote Killers of the Flower Moon, and what makes his long-form

00:16:40.040 | pieces good?

00:16:41.040 | He spends a huge amount of time just immersing himself in the topic and the people, and he

00:16:47.640 | just follows them, and he gets all these notes, and he goes into the archives, and he spends

00:16:50.560 | all these times and reads all these things and just immerses himself in that world.

00:16:55.520 | Typically puts himself into some sort of adventure as well.

00:16:57.640 | He brings those two things together.

00:16:58.880 | That's just like a lot of time, right?

00:17:01.000 | Like often what differentiates like a great nonfiction writer from a good nonfiction writer

00:17:05.920 | is like they're willing to do the time.

00:17:07.760 | They're willing to use the Robert Caro term, turn every page in the archive.

00:17:11.880 | Like I'm going to read everything.

00:17:13.480 | I'm going to just sit and craft.

00:17:15.040 | Ronan Farrow was great at this.

00:17:16.480 | Like I'm just going to, like a bulldog, cultivate these sources and just get and go and get

00:17:22.640 | and go.

00:17:23.640 | And some of that is a time game.

00:17:25.680 | Some of that is an instinct game, but I don't know.

00:17:28.720 | That's what I think is different about athletics and writing is that like if you're willing

00:17:31.800 | to put in the time, yeah, it's like a pain tolerance thing.

00:17:35.640 | I am willing to spend five years on this.

00:17:38.240 | It's going to be a better book than if you spend two.

00:17:41.160 | But at some point, you're right, it's got to level out.

00:17:43.440 | Like just your instinct for the written word and rhythm, it's just, it's going to, your

00:17:47.440 | quality will land where it will land.

00:17:50.080 | But I mean, you can have huge successes like Walter Isaacson.

00:17:53.040 | He puts in the time.

00:17:54.840 | It's not that his writing style is, there's something magnificent about it.

00:17:59.200 | He just, it's, he's just super clear.

00:18:01.440 | He does the work, he goes to the archives, he gets the important information, he sees

00:18:05.400 | the through lines are important and he writes with a real clarity, which is like a little

00:18:08.920 | bit different than David McCullough, who had like a real skill for capturing the essence

00:18:15.640 | of a historical figure using the written word, quoting the right things.

00:18:19.840 | Like he had this super empathetic brain that could inhabit the brain of the subject by

00:18:25.560 | just reading everything that person had written and he kind of understands what gets to the

00:18:29.080 | core of that person and what they're thinking and then can pick out those examples.

00:18:32.280 | And like there's just like a real skill in there.

00:18:34.240 | So I don't know.

00:18:35.240 | It's a great question.

00:18:36.240 | I struggle with.

00:18:37.240 | All right, what do we got?

00:18:40.880 | Next question.

00:18:42.200 | When do you fit in your writing blocks for academic papers?

00:18:44.760 | Do these replace your morning blocks for book and article writing?

00:18:47.760 | I mean, nowadays, writing is writing, like that's my main intellectual activity is producing

00:18:53.840 | words on paper that other people are going to find interesting, important or impactful.

00:18:58.920 | And so whether it's a book or a New Yorker article or an academic article, I just want

00:19:03.040 | to write.

00:19:04.040 | I write every morning and then I schedule more writing blocks if I need it, depending

00:19:09.040 | on what's going on.

00:19:10.560 | And what happens in those blocks just depends on what I'm working on.

00:19:14.080 | So if I'm heavy in book mode, those will be book blocks.

00:19:16.480 | If I'm crunching a deadline for an academic paper, then those will be academic blocks.

00:19:20.840 | Sometimes I'll mix them.

00:19:21.840 | I try not to.

00:19:22.840 | I'm a big believer in milestones.

00:19:25.040 | So if I have a huge project like writing a book that I have like a New Yorker piece,

00:19:28.720 | I want to write.

00:19:29.720 | I just milestone things like, great, let me get to this milestone on the book, finishing

00:19:33.860 | a draft of this chapter, then I can put that aside and move to like this New Yorker piece.

00:19:39.480 | So what's my milestone there?

00:19:41.480 | Full rough draft.

00:19:42.480 | I get to my editor.

00:19:43.480 | So I'm all in on that till I get to that milestone.

00:19:44.560 | Now I'm going to hear back from my editor.

00:19:45.640 | I go back and say, my milestone for the book is going to be like a full editing pass to

00:19:49.280 | this chapter.

00:19:50.280 | And like, that's what I'll work on for four or five days.

00:19:52.360 | OK, now I'm going back.

00:19:53.760 | So I milestone my work and the things that can happen within like roughly a week.

00:19:58.800 | And so I'm not switching.

00:20:00.200 | I try not to switch back and forth within the same day.

00:20:02.400 | But I also just don't differentiate that much anymore like I used to.

00:20:05.400 | I mean, it used to be when I was struggling for computer science promotions, like that's

00:20:08.720 | what I was focused on.

00:20:10.100 | It was, I have to make sure I'm publishing this many academic papers.

00:20:14.640 | All right.

00:20:15.640 | Now I have like my book writing and I got to figure out like when I'm going to take

00:20:18.920 | on book contracts and like when I'm going to do that book writing.

00:20:21.920 | And these are two very separate things.

00:20:23.920 | Now it's all mixed together for me.

00:20:25.200 | I just think writing is writing is writing.

00:20:26.840 | I try to do as much as possible.

00:20:28.540 | Sometimes a year I'm doing more than others.

00:20:30.040 | I milestone so I can be monofocused on one thing at any given day.

00:20:34.000 | It probably, it feels slower in the moment.

00:20:36.400 | That's one of my ideas for my book, Slow Productivity.

00:20:38.460 | Over time it produces just as much.

00:20:41.840 | I didn't write today actually.

00:20:42.840 | So.

00:20:43.840 | Well, you had a doctor's appointment.

00:20:44.840 | I had a doctor's appointment.

00:20:45.840 | Yeah.

00:20:46.840 | So.

00:20:47.840 | So will you write this afternoon?

00:20:49.720 | I had to take, today is a nonwriting day because I have a meeting after this and a board meeting

00:20:54.160 | tonight.

00:20:55.160 | And so I had to mentally, I had to mentally prepare myself yesterday that just this is

00:20:59.120 | a nonwriting day because otherwise I get so frustrated that I'm not writing.

00:21:02.240 | A break, a Christmas break can be rough for me.

00:21:05.200 | I got to get writing in or I get really antsy.

00:21:09.560 | It's the, this might, someone took away my cigarettes type of thing.

00:21:13.120 | All right.

00:21:14.840 | Next question.

00:21:16.200 | What steps do you take when completely stuck on a project?

00:21:19.120 | For example, if you optimize a project for many months and have seen only minimal improvement

00:21:23.960 | in minor metrics, but the overall goal isn't getting any closer.

00:21:27.520 | You know, I was just talking about this on an interview I was recording last night for

00:21:31.440 | someone else's podcast.

00:21:33.040 | They were asking about this, you know, sticking with a project for a long amount of time has

00:21:38.040 | all these advantages I write about in slow productivity, like stuff that's cool takes

00:21:41.600 | time and you got to stay focused on it for a long amount of time.

00:21:43.880 | And they were wondering about, but what if it's not going well?

00:21:47.200 | You know, if you're thinking it's going to take five years for me to get good at something,

00:21:50.880 | what happens if after four years, it turns out that's not your thing, right?

00:21:54.400 | If you wasted four years.

00:21:55.920 | So I was thinking about this problem and a book came to mind.

00:21:59.200 | I remember reading this book.

00:22:00.920 | This probably would have been, if I had to guess, 2007, maybe it was 2009, but I think

00:22:05.040 | this was 2007.

00:22:06.040 | I don't have a photographic memory, but I have a memory for books.

00:22:11.040 | Just for whatever reason, I can remember where I am when I've read most books.

00:22:14.240 | And I read this book in the airport.

00:22:17.120 | We were flying to a trip to Argentina and I was reading this book in, I think, George

00:22:24.040 | Bush International Airport in Texas where we were connecting for the flight.

00:22:27.320 | Seth Godin's book, The Dip, gets at this exact issue.

00:22:32.280 | He says, okay, here's the cool thing, or not cool thing, the critical question when you're

00:22:36.240 | working on a long-term important project.

00:22:38.800 | When things start to go poorly, like you stop making progress or opportunities are not emerging

00:22:43.680 | or you feel stuck, how do you tell the difference between being in what he calls a dip, which

00:22:48.280 | means you want to make it through this dip and on the other side, you're going to keep

00:22:50.960 | going up.

00:22:51.960 | How do you tell the difference between a dip and a cul-de-sac?

00:22:53.960 | Cul-de-sac means that you're just done, you're just stuck and what you need to do is quit

00:22:58.360 | and this is not working, you need to do something else.

00:23:01.200 | And I think he correctly points out differentiating between dips and cul-de-sacs is the key to

00:23:08.360 | tackling a type of long-term projects that ultimately you can build really cool lives

00:23:12.240 | on top of.

00:23:13.240 | The problem is, I don't remember that book giving really solid technical advice for how

00:23:19.120 | you make that differentiation.

00:23:20.120 | It was more like he was saying this matters, there's a difference, it was giving you vocabulary.

00:23:24.720 | Figuring out how to tell the difference is one of the key under-discussed elements of

00:23:29.440 | long-term performance.

00:23:31.040 | So what I said on this podcast interview I was doing last night is you want to look for

00:23:36.400 | indications of progress.

00:23:39.200 | Sometimes this is a skill, I'm trying to get better at something so I can just get the

00:23:42.040 | indication I'm getting better at this skill.

00:23:44.800 | Sometimes the indications have to come from the opportunities that are being afforded

00:23:47.720 | you on the other side.

00:23:48.720 | You're getting more offers or opportunities or more clients or more incoming.

00:23:53.120 | So it could be your internal skill that you can measure as getting better or your external

00:23:57.560 | value is being validated as getting better.

00:23:59.800 | But you're looking for these indicators of progress.

00:24:02.520 | If they're stuck for a non-trivial amount of time, you need to rethink process.

00:24:08.320 | All right, let me go back and rethink process.

00:24:10.800 | How am I trying to get better?

00:24:12.760 | So I'm a writer trying to get better, I'm kind of stuck, I'm just now, I'm writing this

00:24:17.960 | newsletter, the numbers are low, the numbers are stuck, nothing else is happening.

00:24:21.360 | I need to go back to the drawing board and rethink the process I'm using to try to get

00:24:24.520 | better.

00:24:25.520 | That's the first thing to do.

00:24:27.320 | Rethink your process has to happen from an evidence-based perspective.

00:24:30.280 | It is very tempting when working on long-term projects to write a story about what you want

00:24:37.160 | to be true, about what's important for getting better here.

00:24:41.040 | This is what I want to be true, that if I just keep writing this substack and I do it

00:24:45.200 | every week and I'm very careful about putting screenshots of the essay on Twitter in the

00:24:50.960 | optimized form after they come out and I do all the social media stuff right, that eventually

00:24:55.120 | something will click and this will take off and I'll make a full-time living off it.

00:24:58.040 | We tell ourselves stories about what we want to be true.

00:25:01.680 | But the reality could be very different, and you might get a completely different story

00:25:05.320 | from reality where it says, "Well, wait a second.

00:25:07.560 | Writing a substack where you don't already have a reputation in a subject is not going

00:25:11.800 | to do anything.

00:25:12.800 | All you need to do is try to build up a footprint in the journalistic world on way to getting

00:25:17.040 | a book, and this is difficult because you've got to make pitches and they're going to get

00:25:19.560 | rejected and it's going to be hard work, and you don't want it to be true, but it is."

00:25:22.880 | So you have to go back and get evidence.

00:25:25.520 | What really works in this pursuit I'm doing?

00:25:27.700 | Talk to people who know, and then upgrade your process or update your process to reflect

00:25:32.120 | this reality.

00:25:34.360 | If this still doesn't return results, like, "Okay, I'm doing the things that you're supposed

00:25:39.040 | to do, I was reality checked, here's how people make progress in this world," and you're still

00:25:43.920 | not getting indicators of progress, that's your sign you might be in a cul-de-sac and

00:25:48.080 | you need to change the map of where you're going.

00:25:50.800 | Maybe it's a small change or maybe it's a drastic change, like, "I'm just not going to

00:25:54.400 | go this way in general."

00:25:57.340 | So I have seen this a lot.

00:25:59.640 | I become more attuned to this in the things that I do that have been relatively successful.

00:26:04.320 | I have become attuned to the degree to which there's a survivorship bias, in which it's

00:26:09.680 | easy to say, "Okay, here's what I did, so if you just do that, you'll be fine."

00:26:12.720 | I've realized over time, no, no, some of these things are really hard, and you don't want

00:26:16.880 | to get stuck in a cul-de-sac because most people will.

00:26:19.520 | So let's consider book writing.

00:26:21.880 | I used to always tell people, "Yeah, write books.

00:26:25.740 | It's not so hard.

00:26:27.440 | It's not too hard to sell a book, and then you'll build up your audience, and it's really

00:26:31.920 | cool, and it wasn't that hard.

00:26:33.480 | Everyone should write books."

00:26:34.480 | Then over time, I realized, no, no, there's some survivorship bias there.

00:26:38.040 | It's hard to sell a book.

00:26:39.260 | It's really hard to get a book to actually sell to people.

00:26:42.420 | There's luck.

00:26:43.420 | There's timing.

00:26:44.420 | There's topic.

00:26:45.420 | There's skill.

00:26:46.420 | For most people who go down the writing path, you're going to get stuck pretty quickly.

00:26:51.720 | Same thing with podcasting.

00:26:54.440 | It's easy to say, "This is not technically that hard, what we do here.

00:26:57.680 | I could tell you what we do here, and here's what it requires, and technically here's what

00:27:02.360 | we do week to week."

00:27:04.360 | But I've realized, "Oh, it's really hard to have a podcast be successful," and it depends

00:27:08.700 | on lots of things, including, I've discovered, having a national reputation or brand outside

00:27:14.020 | of what you're doing with the podcast.

00:27:15.480 | You have a built-in audience.

00:27:17.920 | You have a built-in trust or social validation that you're someone that people should listen

00:27:22.480 | to.

00:27:23.480 | All this is really hard.

00:27:24.480 | Actually, like most people I know who have tried podcasts, it's just kind of dead-ended.

00:27:29.400 | They technically did all the right things.

00:27:31.480 | There's just no audience coming.

00:27:32.480 | There's no obvious thing to do to make that audience bigger.

00:27:34.640 | It's like, "Oh, this is a difficult path to thread," and actually, it's not going to work

00:27:39.480 | for most people, and you don't want to waste too many years trying to follow it.

00:27:43.000 | I've become more attuned to this recently, that you want to look for indicators of progress.

00:27:47.480 | You need evidence-based plans for this.

00:27:49.600 | You can update your plan with new evidence if it's not working.

00:27:52.500 | If it's still not working after that, then it might be a cul-de-sac, not a dip.

00:27:58.160 | You want to consider putting your efforts towards something that's more likely to succeed

00:28:01.160 | for you, where you're building off of, "I have this pre-existing ability or platform.

00:28:06.680 | I already have this credential that makes it much more likely I'll succeed going this

00:28:10.280 | path.

00:28:11.280 | You might need to reality check the path."

00:28:12.440 | I've become more curmudgeonly about this, Jesse, about general stuff.

00:28:15.200 | I used to be like, "Everyone should just do everything I'm doing.

00:28:17.320 | It's fine."

00:28:18.320 | But now I've been recognized, I've been very selective, and I've really leveraged pre-existing

00:28:24.860 | cultural assets to try to make other things successful.

00:28:27.900 | It's a lot more fragile and contingent than maybe I would have realized before.

00:28:33.020 | Okay, next question.

00:28:36.620 | What criteria do many high school students fail to consider when selecting a college?

00:28:41.940 | On a related note, do you think tuition costs for private schools will exceed $150,000 per

00:28:46.380 | year in, say, 15 years?

00:28:49.340 | I think students, in the American context, and this is very different than other countries

00:28:56.260 | where higher education is largely free.

00:28:59.420 | In the American context, I think students probably overemphasize fit.

00:29:04.500 | It's a uniquely American thing that, "I want this to feel of the college to be right,"

00:29:09.860 | which often means physically what it feels like, where it is in the country, what the

00:29:14.460 | buildings feel like, etc.

00:29:17.260 | It probably makes sense.

00:29:18.740 | The strategy that probably makes sense for most people is, go to your state school.

00:29:23.900 | That's going to be the best bang for your buck, unless you can get into a really elite

00:29:27.020 | school that can open up substantially more opportunities because of its eliteness.

00:29:31.160 | But avoid that big middle ground of non-elite schools that are very expensive that you're

00:29:35.260 | shopping on fit.

00:29:36.620 | It's probably not a great investment in money.

00:29:40.120 | That's probably the best strategy.

00:29:42.500 | Go to state school, unless you can get into a Georgetown or better or something like this.

00:29:48.760 | There are, of course, schools where fit really matters.

00:29:50.500 | If you're a super math whiz, try to go to MIT.

00:29:53.700 | It's great for that.

00:29:54.700 | If you're a music whiz, you really want to try to go to Juilliard.

00:29:58.380 | If you're film savant, you can get into USC, you should go to USC.

00:30:04.220 | But for the most part, we probably think too much about, "Is this a fit for me?"

00:30:08.380 | Because honestly, what does a 17-year-old know?

00:30:11.580 | What are they basing this decision off of?

00:30:13.020 | They had a good visit to a school, they met someone nice, like, "Great.

00:30:16.980 | That's where I want to go."

00:30:17.980 | The cost thing, I hope it doesn't get to $150,000.

00:30:21.540 | I hope tuition doesn't get there.

00:30:24.100 | I think there's going to be some emergent reverse pressure on tuition prices in schools

00:30:30.020 | as more alternatives.

00:30:32.060 | There's some alternatives that are emerging, independent schools like the University of

00:30:36.900 | Austin.

00:30:37.900 | Barry Weiss is set up down there in Texas.

00:30:40.220 | There's some of these other options that are emerging, which might start to put some pressure

00:30:44.340 | on runaway costs, because there's going to be these alternatives that emerge that have

00:30:49.420 | more constrained costs.

00:30:51.940 | There's a kind of a tragedy of the commons that goes on now, where just all schools increase

00:30:55.540 | their cost.

00:30:56.780 | All these private schools, like, "Well, as long as we all do it, it's fine because you

00:30:59.860 | have no other option.

00:31:00.860 | It's all very expensive."

00:31:01.860 | Hopefully, there's some sort of capped pressure that comes in to prevent it from getting bigger.

00:31:08.820 | I say this as a father of three kids who are going to have to go to college.

00:31:12.780 | The only advantage I have of private school getting more expensive is, as a professor,

00:31:18.380 | I have a tuition benefit, which is key to the cost of Georgetown's current tuition.

00:31:26.580 | They will pay a certain percentage of Georgetown's tuition towards any school that my kids go

00:31:31.380 | to.

00:31:33.180 | As it stands now, because private schools are so expensive, a third or whatever the

00:31:37.460 | percentages of Georgetown's tuition is all of the University of Maryland's tuition.

00:31:43.500 | The best case scenario is Maryland keeps its prices low, and then Georgetown gets really

00:31:49.900 | expensive.

00:31:50.900 | In fact, if Georgetown can get like five times more expensive than any other college, I'm

00:31:53.900 | set.

00:31:54.900 | It's my tuition benefit, because I'll be able to cover anything else.

00:31:58.020 | But yeah, it's big.

00:31:59.020 | The gap between state and private is getting big as well.

00:32:02.220 | States have done pretty well.

00:32:03.580 | Most places are keeping the cost kind of reasonable.

00:32:06.060 | But now you have this big gap that's opening, which we're noticing as we're doing college

00:32:09.980 | savings.

00:32:10.980 | Because if you save for a state university, but your kid, like in a 529, but your kid

00:32:17.060 | wants to go to a private university, you don't have nearly enough money.

00:32:19.520 | But if you're saving in a tax-advantaged account, like a 529 for a private university, and your

00:32:24.940 | kid goes to a state university, you've way over-saved, and you have too much money in

00:32:29.200 | that account, and you're going to have to pay penalties to get out.

00:32:31.140 | So that gap is kind of complicated when it comes to tuition saving.

00:32:36.340 | I guess it would somewhat vary, too, in terms of selection process if you're being recruited

00:32:41.020 | to play a sport.

00:32:42.540 | Yep.

00:32:43.540 | Sport's its own thing, obviously, right?

00:32:46.380 | You're deciding what team you want to play for.

00:32:48.780 | Yeah, same thing.

00:32:49.980 | This is mentioning specific things.

00:32:51.620 | I'm a violin whiz.

00:32:53.500 | You want to go to Juilliard, et cetera.

00:32:56.740 | So we'll see.

00:32:57.740 | I still got some time before I have to worry about it.

00:33:00.580 | I wrote a book about college admissions.

00:33:03.060 | My least known book.

00:33:04.740 | But it is out there.

00:33:05.740 | So I used to know a lot about this.

00:33:07.140 | Jesse, I figure we should do a quick ad break before we keep going with Jesse Takeover.

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00:34:06.740 | having to switch back and forth from like this program they're using over to the AI

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00:35:28.140 | Also want to talk about our longtime friends at Blinkist.

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00:35:51.260 | The way Jesse and I like to use Blinkist is to triage potential books to read.

00:35:55.220 | If we hear about a book we might be interested in, we'll add it to our queue and we get around

00:35:59.880 | to it.

00:36:00.880 | We'll either read the 15 minute summary, you know, right there on our phone or listen to

00:36:05.860 | the 15 minute summary like you would a podcast.

00:36:09.160 | It does a great job of letting you understand what a book is about and I find it really

00:36:12.780 | helps me decide whether I want to read the whole book or if I've got enough, I get it.

00:36:16.660 | I get the gist.

00:36:17.660 | Like I get where you're going here.

00:36:18.660 | I don't need to read a whole book about this.

00:36:20.380 | So it's a fantastic tool for triaging what books you read.

00:36:23.820 | Other people use it as just straight entertainment.

00:36:25.580 | It's like an interesting podcast to learn about different topics.

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00:36:39.960 | give another person unlimited access for free.

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00:36:45.640 | That's a cool thing that's going on now.

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00:36:51.560 | Go to Blinkist.com/deep to start your seven day free trial and you will get 40% off a

00:36:56.180 | Blinkist premium membership.

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00:37:15.240 | Jesse, maybe we should wear these blinking lights every time we do a Blinkist ad.

00:37:18.960 | I think that's a good idea.

00:37:21.080 | It could start a bad precedent though, that like every advertiser would now want us to

00:37:24.700 | have a physical prop, but hey, we're up for it.

00:37:27.680 | We're up for it.

00:37:28.680 | All right, let's get back to the questions.

00:37:30.680 | All right, next question.

00:37:33.320 | Can you walk us through your shutdown ritual?

00:37:36.700 | How long does it take?

00:37:37.700 | Has there ever been a workday where you missed it?

00:37:40.120 | Are there significant consequences if that happens?

00:37:43.440 | So okay, when I'm done with work for the day, I open my first of what will be several handles

00:37:49.400 | of whiskey and I just start pounding.

00:37:52.240 | I start pounding until the pain goes away.

00:37:54.720 | No, that's not my shutdown ritual.

00:37:58.320 | So what I do for my shutdown ritual is I, first of all, clean up open loops.

00:38:05.620 | So for me, these are going to be in two places.

00:38:08.480 | One will be my workingmemory.txt file on my computer.

00:38:12.260 | This is my expansion of my working memory.

00:38:15.520 | I use this non-formatted text edit text file.

00:38:20.020 | All throughout the day, I capture notes and ideas just to remember things temporarily

00:38:24.880 | or more long-term.

00:38:25.880 | Like, let's say I'm trying to schedule a meeting and someone emails me some options.

00:38:29.200 | I'll just copy that and paste it into that file and then I'll open up my calendar and

00:38:32.160 | I have the file open up next to me and I can see what time works.

00:38:34.840 | I keep impromptu to-do lists for admin blocks in here.

00:38:38.440 | Okay, here's what I'm working on.

00:38:39.800 | I take notes on things that occur to me.

00:38:42.420 | So I make sure at the end of the day, there's nothing loose in that file that needs to be

00:38:46.840 | captured, that needs to be moved into my task storage system, that needs to be moved as

00:38:50.360 | a reminder onto my calendar, that needs to generate an email that I send out.

00:38:54.580 | So I make sure those open loops are closed.

00:38:56.520 | I usually then do a survey of my inbox as well, just to make sure there's not something

00:39:00.880 | time-sensitive I missed.

00:39:02.760 | It's critical.

00:39:04.160 | Doing a final check of your inbox before you shut down will destabilize one of the biggest

00:39:11.720 | post-shutdown sources of distraction, which is this urge to just sort of check in just

00:39:16.080 | to be sure that you're not missing something in your inbox.

00:39:18.520 | So that final check is really important.

00:39:21.080 | Then I'm going to look at my weekly plan, see if I need to update it at all.

00:39:25.220 | What am I doing tomorrow?

00:39:26.220 | I look at my calendar, my weekly plan, what changes do I need to make about what I did

00:39:29.320 | or didn't get to today, so that I feel like my weekly plan is now at the end of this day

00:39:35.500 | in a good place.

00:39:36.500 | All right, it's up to speed where where it needs to be.

00:39:40.420 | At that point, I'm ready to do my shutdown ritual, which now is typically going to just

00:39:46.620 | be in my time block planner where I have a shutdown complete checkbox, and I just check

00:39:49.860 | that.

00:39:50.860 | Now I know I've done my shutdown ritual.

00:39:53.820 | If I've done that, I can get into my evening without work stress.

00:39:58.540 | I can get into my evening without feeling like there's something in the back of my mind,

00:40:02.340 | like what about this?

00:40:03.340 | What about that?

00:40:04.340 | So it really does make a difference.

00:40:06.420 | Sometimes as part of the shutdown ritual, I'll sketch out a plan for the evening.

00:40:09.760 | If it's kind of a complicated evening, I need to pick up this kid, we're going to this thing,

00:40:12.940 | I want to get this done.

00:40:13.940 | I'll sketch out a little plan, and I will look at the planner, I'll have it just so

00:40:18.380 | I can remember when I'm trying to get done that night after my shutdown.

00:40:22.520 | But once I do that checkmark in the checkbox, I'm not thinking about work until the next

00:40:26.580 | day.

00:40:27.580 | I do miss this sometimes.

00:40:29.220 | The times when I miss this, it's not due to a day being so busy that I just don't get

00:40:34.460 | time to do it.

00:40:36.180 | The times when I miss this is where the day is sort of hybrid, when the day is sort of

00:40:42.220 | kind of a workday, not really a workday.

00:40:44.060 | I know a lot of people who go to an office don't have this experience, but for someone

00:40:48.100 | like me, I'm a professor, I'm a writer, it can get kind of hazy.

00:40:52.340 | This time of year, it can get kind of hazy.

00:40:55.620 | Semester's over, Christmas break's about to start, maybe I have to go to a doctor's appointment

00:40:59.940 | that morning, and I'm kind of working, but we're also going to pick up gifts, and it's

00:41:06.620 | sort of a workday, and it's sort of not a workday.

00:41:09.460 | Those are the days where the shutdowns don't happen, and I suffer for it, and it's just

00:41:13.580 | this background hum of a little bit of destabilization and anxiety.

00:41:18.340 | So it's the days I can get my shutdown routine, which is, I really don't like to miss it,

00:41:22.340 | and I'm not going to miss it on a normal full workday, that really makes a big difference.

00:41:27.660 | So you pretty much work on the same computer all day, where your working memory is.

00:41:32.260 | Yeah, so I have two working memory.txt files.

00:41:35.740 | I have my laptop, that's the main computer I'll use, I have an external monitor at home

00:41:40.660 | that I'll plug it into, and then I have one here in the computers in the studio, in the

00:41:46.860 | maker lab here at the studio.

00:41:49.780 | That one I use only in the moment, I will empty that when I'm done using that computer,

00:41:55.420 | so I don't keep stuff on there.

00:41:58.780 | So if I'm writing on that computer, I'm using the big monitors, I'll usually have my laptop.

00:42:03.220 | I will copy stuff over to the working memory.txt on my laptop.

00:42:06.160 | So I will use the working memory.txt on the studio computers, really temporarily.

00:42:11.980 | Like I let me remember this while I go over to my calendar, let me type the five points

00:42:15.460 | I want to put in this thing I'm writing quotes, let me copy a quote, I'm going to move over

00:42:18.380 | here.

00:42:19.380 | And then I clean that out when I walk away from the computer.

00:42:21.120 | So it's really the file on my laptop that I treat as the sort of stable file.

00:42:25.820 | And that's the one I want to be checking at the end of the day.

00:42:29.900 | Okay.

00:42:30.900 | All right.

00:42:31.900 | Next question.

00:42:32.900 | Do you think about retirement?

00:42:33.900 | If so, is it dependent on financial or other factors?

00:42:37.180 | Would you still work some of your jobs past technical retirement?

00:42:41.480 | I mean, what does retirement mean for me?

00:42:45.860 | I have been thinking about this and my financial advisor asked me about this.

00:42:51.380 | But it's complicated because I have a lot of jobs, right?

00:42:55.940 | So what does retirement, like, what would it actually mean from a job perspective?

00:43:01.180 | Does it mean stop being a professor?

00:43:03.300 | Does it mean stop being a magazine journalist?

00:43:05.620 | Does it mean stop being a podcaster?

00:43:07.060 | Does it mean stop writing books?

00:43:08.880 | Is it some subset of those, some combination of those?

00:43:12.260 | It's unlikely to ever mean for me to do none of those things.

00:43:16.580 | Like why would I ever stop, for example, writing books if I could or, you know, magazine articles?

00:43:21.160 | So it's a very complicated thing for me.

00:43:23.540 | And even like saying stop being a professor, it's not always so cut and dry.

00:43:27.580 | Like there's professors have different setups, you know, it's, it's there.

00:43:32.420 | Some are just straightforward.

00:43:33.420 | I'm in a standard department with a full teaching load doing the normal thing, but there's also

00:43:37.740 | professors out there.

00:43:38.740 | You might not know it if you're not in academia, but like well-known professors where they

00:43:43.240 | have a title and they're associated with a center and they don't really draw much of

00:43:47.380 | a salary and maybe they have an office or not on campus, but they're, they're barely

00:43:51.540 | there.

00:43:52.540 | So the word professor can mean many different things.

00:43:54.620 | So it's all very complicated.

00:43:56.580 | So what I've been focusing in on instead is the financial aspect and really like keeping

00:44:01.780 | things simple, looking at straightforward financial independence so that we have a very

00:44:07.740 | clear number.

00:44:09.940 | This is how much we would need to sort of comfortably live per year.

00:44:16.820 | Like we know that number pretty well because we're pretty careful in tracking our expenses.

00:44:21.060 | And this is what that number is going to reduce to sort of post having kids at home, because

00:44:24.620 | that's a smaller number, but kids at home, you spend more money and you have to think

00:44:27.760 | about college, et cetera.

00:44:28.760 | So you have like, what would the number be tomorrow and what would the number be once

00:44:33.300 | the kids are gone, which is like a lower number.

00:44:35.740 | Both of those we can translate into how many, how much assets would you have to have to

00:44:39.700 | basically feel comfortable withdrawing that much money annually?

00:44:44.020 | That's a big number, not a crazy number, but a big number.

00:44:47.500 | That's a number I have in mind, right?

00:44:50.060 | If my next book does really well, there's some big influx of money.

00:44:56.180 | That's what I'm putting that money towards, because the way I see it is the closer you

00:45:00.180 | get to that sort of financial independence, the more breathing room you have to pursue

00:45:05.380 | whatever definition of retirement seems interesting.

00:45:08.580 | Because now you're not dependent on any of the things I'm doing as like an income source.

00:45:13.100 | Now you can just start thinking, what do I think the ideal combination of work would

00:45:16.700 | be?

00:45:17.980 | And you could explore that without having to worry about, yeah, but my health insurance,

00:45:22.260 | or are we going to be able to pay for this or that or these expenses or whatever?

00:45:27.160 | So that's the way I've been thinking about it, is not I want to stop working, but the

00:45:31.780 | more financial independence I gain, the more comfortable I can be reconfiguring what work

00:45:38.140 | means, because the fear is not there.

00:45:40.700 | And this is why I'd be a bad entrepreneur, I think, Jesse, is like I really have that

00:45:44.420 | mindset of I don't trust, I think of the worst case scenarios financially, I don't take risks.

00:45:51.700 | I like overlapping sources of income.

00:45:54.860 | I want stress reduction.

00:45:57.260 | I think other people we know are much more aggressive about, hey, this thing's going

00:46:01.660 | well and it's cool.

00:46:03.340 | Let's go all in on that.

00:46:05.060 | And we'll probably figure it out.

00:46:06.540 | Well, I don't like to just hope it works out.

00:46:08.780 | So I'm probably way more conservative than other people would be.

00:46:12.060 | And because of that, I have too many jobs and that's kind of a problem.

00:46:14.660 | What does overlapping sources of income mean?

00:46:17.340 | So OK, like someone else's situation might say, hey, this podcast is doing well, just

00:46:20.700 | be a podcaster or you're a successful writer.

00:46:24.460 | Just be a full time book writer.

00:46:26.220 | It's fine.

00:46:27.220 | You're doing well.

00:46:28.220 | Right.

00:46:29.220 | Or, you know, whatever, wherever it would be.

00:46:31.220 | Whereas I think of it as like, well, yeah, the podcast's doing well, but like, what if

00:46:35.100 | it stops doing well?

00:46:36.380 | Then you're screwed or like books is fickle.

00:46:38.900 | It's like being a successful actor.

00:46:40.380 | You're a successful actor until you're not, until you make two bad movies and then you're

00:46:44.580 | no longer a successful actor.

00:46:45.660 | It's like I'm always sort of catastrophizing.

00:46:47.340 | Yeah.

00:46:48.340 | Whereas my full time writer friends, for example, are like, you're crazy.

00:46:51.020 | Like you're very, very successful as a writer, you know, way over the threshold that someone

00:46:56.300 | just like, great, I can just now write books.

00:46:59.260 | Or other things where I'll be conservative would be a lot of people in my situation like,

00:47:03.620 | yeah, whatever.

00:47:04.620 | I bought a farm up in, you know, Vermont or I have a cabin up in West Virginia.

00:47:09.740 | Yeah.

00:47:10.740 | They don't overthink it.

00:47:11.740 | That'd be cool.

00:47:12.740 | It's a cool place to go.

00:47:13.740 | And we spend the summers there and we write or whatever.

00:47:14.740 | I'm in my head, the math doesn't cost this much.

00:47:17.660 | What about this?

00:47:18.660 | And the stress of this and this and this.

00:47:19.660 | And so I'm, I, I, I've always had this mindset of like, no one's going to save me.

00:47:24.300 | I got it.

00:47:25.300 | I'm supporting a family.

00:47:26.660 | I want security.

00:47:27.660 | I want, you know, I want to be able to weather multiple points of failure.

00:47:31.420 | It's very sort of non-entrepreneurial.

00:47:35.260 | Also the problem is I like all these things, right?

00:47:38.220 | Like Georgetown can be a pain in terms of work, you know, especially when I feel like

00:47:43.180 | I'm at the height of my abilities with certain things and I'm doing forms, but I really love

00:47:47.380 | academia and professors and being on campuses and that life and my whole life.

00:47:51.220 | I've lived my entire adult life in academic institutions and it's really cool and rare

00:47:55.140 | and most people don't get to do it.

00:47:57.240 | And I would hate to give that up.

00:47:58.420 | Yeah.

00:47:59.420 | Cause I bet once you left it, you would be like, oh, I miss it.

00:48:01.180 | I want to go back.

00:48:02.180 | It's the problem.

00:48:03.180 | And I like, I like writing books.

00:48:04.900 | Like why would I want to start that?

00:48:05.900 | Like, that's really fun.

00:48:06.900 | I've been doing that since I'm, you know, 20 years old.

00:48:08.920 | Like why would I want to stop doing that?

00:48:10.460 | And this podcasting thing we're having, this is cool as well.

00:48:13.860 | It's the modern, this is like the, what the equivalent of having a radio show that was

00:48:17.960 | pretty successful 25 years ago.

00:48:19.780 | And like, this is really interesting.

00:48:20.980 | I just like too many of these things.

00:48:22.180 | I love all the people at the New Yorker.

00:48:23.700 | It's like really cool to write for them.

00:48:25.140 | Right.

00:48:26.140 | So the problem is I can do, I like all these things and like often it works and then sometimes

00:48:31.620 | it doesn't.

00:48:32.620 | I mean, Jesse knows every September I say, that's it, I'm quitting.

00:48:35.820 | I'm just going to live in the woods and be a writer.

00:48:37.940 | But then every June I'm like, ah, these jobs are awesome.

00:48:40.060 | I love all this stuff.

00:48:41.220 | Why would I ever want to not do any of these things?

00:48:44.120 | So yeah, back to retirement.

00:48:45.120 | I don't even know what that means.

00:48:46.160 | So I'm just squirreling away money.

00:48:47.420 | I see like money is options, optionality, I don't know if that's a word, optionality.

00:48:56.260 | You'll get some emails about it.

00:48:58.080 | It's a real insidious process, real insidious process we have here.

00:49:02.660 | All right, next question, we have a little bit of an interactive here, but the overall

00:49:07.620 | question is, do you think Elon Musk's purchase of X had this intended effect and are that

00:49:15.680 | many people really on X?

00:49:17.220 | And I have a article here from the Washington Post that's like an interactive that you can

00:49:21.540 | scroll through.

00:49:22.540 | All right.

00:49:23.540 | So we can put, this is up on the screen for people who are watching, up on the screen,

00:49:27.700 | full screen.

00:49:28.700 | Our YouTube guy is yelling right now.

00:49:30.860 | He's convinced that like any moment I'm not on the screen, people are going to immediately

00:49:33.940 | turn away.

00:49:34.940 | All right.

00:49:35.940 | All right.

00:49:36.940 | I'll read this out loud for those who are listening instead of just writing.

00:49:38.700 | I guess Elon on November 6th, he tweeted, they have the tweet up here, it's morning

00:49:43.620 | in America again.

00:49:44.620 | All right.

00:49:45.620 | Then here's the text.

00:49:46.620 | At 1039 AM on the day Donald Trump declared victory for a second term, Elon Musk wrote

00:49:49.940 | six words on X.

00:49:51.460 | This post instantly caught fire.

00:49:54.220 | About an hour and a half, it had been seen more than 10 million times and was still reaching

00:49:59.140 | 120,000 new viewers every minute.

00:50:01.380 | Oh, there's a cool graph.

00:50:03.740 | Oh, interesting.

00:50:04.740 | This is the graph we've used over time.

00:50:06.980 | It's trending down.

00:50:08.540 | With over 200 million followers, can you see this?

00:50:12.300 | The arrow on the graph is like sparking.

00:50:14.620 | Yeah.

00:50:15.620 | Cool graphics.

00:50:16.620 | With over 200 million followers, Musk has the biggest account on X and increasingly

00:50:19.780 | uses it to wield political power.

00:50:21.620 | Look at this thing.

00:50:23.540 | Within 26 days around the election, Musk fired off 3,870 posts that received more than 33

00:50:30.540 | billion views.

00:50:31.540 | My God, if I was a shareholder in one of these companies, I'd be like, what are you doing?

00:50:36.340 | Come on.

00:50:37.340 | Like this is a give those 3,000 worst, almost 4,000 posts could have been like you thinking

00:50:44.360 | about our company.

00:50:46.260 | Musk reach transcends Trump's with each of his X posts typically seen by twice as many

00:50:50.540 | users as opposed to the president elect the other post returned to Twitter.

00:50:56.180 | Trump's influence is smaller on there.

00:50:59.540 | As most prepares for a central role in the U.S. government, the billionaire has a political

00:51:02.880 | megaphone unmatched in modern society.

00:51:04.860 | All right.

00:51:05.860 | So what do you wonder about it, Jesse?

00:51:07.420 | You're wondering like, is this true?

00:51:10.880 | How many people are really on?

00:51:12.060 | I don't think that many people are really on X.

00:51:14.140 | Yeah.

00:51:15.140 | I think the assumption is largely correct, right?

00:51:21.180 | X slash Twitter, whatever you, you know, Twitter now X really is a playpen of elites in a very

00:51:30.020 | broad sense.

00:51:31.020 | But it was a place that this is where like intellectual, academic, technocratic and political

00:51:36.460 | elites gathered.

00:51:39.260 | And this is why there was a lot of energy in this place is where they gathered.

00:51:43.020 | They hashed out ideas, they sought status and they sort of collaboratively warred with

00:51:51.820 | each other to try to establish cultural Overton windows.

00:51:55.720 | So it was a, a, an important place for various elites.

00:52:02.520 | Most people in the country could care less.

00:52:05.000 | It's not a heavily used platform.

00:52:07.040 | It doesn't have a large number of active users.

00:52:09.480 | It doesn't play a large role in most people's day to day life.

00:52:13.320 | It's the smallest of the platforms in terms of, you know, it's dwarfed by something like

00:52:17.400 | Facebook.

00:52:18.940 | That's why it was like valued so little, right?

00:52:21.120 | Yeah.

00:52:22.120 | That's why, that's why it was like a $40 billion company where Meta is, you know, honing in

00:52:28.000 | on a trillion billion dollar valuation.

00:52:29.640 | It's whatever it is, $800 million, $800 billion valuation.

00:52:32.500 | It's pretty small company.

00:52:34.360 | But the people who write about it are part of that category of cultural elites to which

00:52:39.200 | it made a really big deal.

00:52:40.600 | So if you're covering technology, it's a really big deal.

00:52:45.040 | It's like, this was the clubhouse where we all were.

00:52:48.440 | And there was a, there was a change in fortune as the ownership of that clubhouse changed.

00:52:54.760 | The clubhouse became different.

00:52:56.760 | It was like a bigger kid took over the tree house and put up a, like a no girls allowed

00:53:00.280 | sign like you would have had, you know, back when you were in fourth grade.

00:53:03.200 | But it was like the, the cultural political equivalent of that, that the composition changed.

00:53:06.960 | So there was, there was a period in the lead up, so in the last Donald Trump presidency

00:53:13.480 | and through the Biden presidency, there was up through, you know, Elon taking over Twitter.

00:53:18.360 | There was a period where certain groups sort of had control within these elites, certain

00:53:22.800 | subset of the elite sort of had control of this platform.

00:53:24.720 | And then it switched to like the other team got control of it.

00:53:28.160 | And this is very traumatic if you're someone who was hanging out in this clubhouse.

00:53:32.800 | But for the rest of the country, I don't think it mattered much.

00:53:35.980 | But it did like, it set the agenda for what elites wrote about, what other elites talked

00:53:40.720 | about.

00:53:41.720 | Elite politicians would look at what was happening on here and this would set their agenda about

00:53:44.320 | how they thought about things or how they were reacting to things.

00:53:47.420 | And so it mattered to this small group of people, but I don't think it matters to most

00:53:51.080 | normal people.

00:53:52.080 | I actually, and I've said this from the beginning, I think it was good for our culture writ large

00:53:59.960 | that Elon Musk bought and semi broke this platform because it reduces its influence

00:54:06.680 | on those cultural elites.

00:54:08.400 | Great, fracture it, make it more partisan.

00:54:11.520 | So it's less influential.

00:54:13.200 | If it's more nakedly like this team has it, this team doesn't like it.

00:54:17.280 | Its impact on how a politician thinks about what matters, doesn't matter, goes down.

00:54:21.340 | Its impact on how a journalist thinks about what am I going to write about or not write

00:54:24.760 | about goes down.

00:54:26.280 | Its impact on an academic trying to think about what they want to say or not say or

00:54:30.400 | pursue goes down.

00:54:32.360 | And that's for the good because it's entirely non-representative.

00:54:35.440 | It doesn't represent any sort of coherent understanding of the world.

00:54:39.960 | It's status seeking elites from different sides all fighting with each other.

00:54:42.920 | So I think the more Twitter X broke, the better for our culture writ large.

00:54:48.680 | I think Twitter capture of cultural elite conversations was a real problem.

00:54:52.620 | It's not a major platform, but it was punching way above its weight class.

00:54:57.720 | So yes, I think for the people who used to be really powerful on that platform who are

00:55:00.800 | no longer are really worried that someone they doesn't like is powerful on that platform.

00:55:03.880 | But I think the bigger picture is most people don't care who has a lot of users on that

00:55:08.280 | platform or not.

00:55:10.020 | Most people have real jobs and kids to take care of and aren't going to look at memes

00:55:16.040 | that Elon Musk is posting that he had his grok AI produce.

00:55:21.320 | I'm working on an article right now, Jesse, that's requiring me to go deep on a few social

00:55:28.240 | platforms I'd never use and actually use them for a little bit.

00:55:31.800 | That's brain rot stuff.

00:55:33.560 | It's brain rot stuff.

00:55:35.000 | So I think this article is histrionic.

00:55:37.360 | I think, yes, to that reporter, it seemed if this is your whole world, it's like, yeah,

00:55:40.960 | it's a big deal.

00:55:41.960 | The other guy took over.

00:55:43.380 | But I'm like, great, break it, rip the rope ladder off the metaphorical clubhouse so people

00:55:49.560 | stop paying so much attention to it because I don't think it's good.

00:55:52.240 | I don't think it's good for our culture.

00:55:53.880 | I don't think it's good for our politics, not good for media, it's not good for anything.

00:55:56.960 | The elites stop hanging out among each other and creating these sort of interior super

00:56:02.160 | bubble meme filled worlds and giving it so much significance.

00:56:06.560 | Because I guess if you do a little bit of math, 33 billion with 3,870 posts would be

00:56:12.760 | about 8.5 million views per post, which I guess if you compare it to 335 million people

00:56:20.440 | in the U.S., it's only like it's less than 3%.

00:56:23.080 | And it's the same people.

00:56:24.080 | Yeah, it's the same people.

00:56:25.080 | Yeah.

00:56:26.080 | That's the problem with these.

00:56:27.080 | It's the same.

00:56:28.080 | Yes, his influence graph looks big because he sort of set it up so that everyone who

00:56:33.200 | has a Twitter timeline just sees his latest thing.

00:56:37.640 | Yeah, I've written about this for New Yorker a bunch of times, and I've written this article

00:56:45.600 | several times.

00:56:46.600 | Like, look at my article, "We Don't Need a New Twitter," for example.

00:56:48.880 | I've written a couple more about this.

00:56:52.200 | It's an idea that doesn't make sense.

00:56:53.440 | Our culture doesn't need it.

00:56:54.440 | It's not as important as the people who think it's important think it is.

00:56:59.160 | The problem is it didn't fall apart.

00:57:01.880 | So early on, there was this accusation of like, look, when Musk took this over and started

00:57:06.480 | firing all these people, the platform itself technically was going to fall apart.

00:57:10.240 | And I'd be like, that would be great, from my perspective as a cultural critic, because

00:57:14.720 | this is not a useful contribution to our culture.

00:57:16.640 | The problem is Elon Musk is good at running tech companies.

00:57:19.440 | He fired a ton of people, brought in some 10xers, drastically cut down the expenses

00:57:25.880 | of running it.

00:57:26.880 | And you know what?

00:57:27.880 | It's like perfectly stable again.

00:57:29.460 | And he's building.

00:57:30.460 | So that's the problem.

00:57:31.460 | He's too good at running companies to accidentally break it.

00:57:34.660 | But now it's just become like a smaller playhouse.

00:57:37.760 | It's just there's these two sides we're fighting on there.

00:57:40.720 | Now it's like mainly just this side, and you know, I don't think it's culturally important.

00:57:46.560 | OK, next question.

00:57:49.640 | Many fans have reached out asking me for an update on your Remarkable.

00:57:53.480 | Are you still regularly using it?

00:57:55.080 | If so, has anything changed since your last update?

00:57:57.800 | I am.

00:57:58.880 | I am still regularly using it.

00:58:00.580 | It is my primary notebook.

00:58:02.760 | I use that and single purpose notebooks, small field notes that I use for very specific single

00:58:08.200 | purpose uses, which I've talked about before on the show.

00:58:10.760 | Single use notebooks.

00:58:11.760 | I either have my single purpose notebooks I can fit in my pocket, and then I have my

00:58:15.880 | Remarkable.

00:58:16.880 | I don't have any other full size notebooks I use.

00:58:19.880 | So I've been using it regularly.

00:58:21.960 | I still enjoy it.

00:58:22.960 | I cracked the screen a little bit, but it's in the corner.

00:58:25.880 | So I think it's OK.

00:58:26.880 | I was actually, the doctor's appointment today, I had a surgery and I was seeing the surgeon

00:58:31.520 | for the post-op, whatever.

00:58:33.720 | And you know, when you see a surgeon, you get six minutes max.

00:58:39.400 | Three of those six minutes was him just wanting to know about my Remarkable.

00:58:42.520 | Because you had it in your hand?

00:58:43.520 | I had it out.

00:58:44.520 | Yeah.

00:58:45.520 | That's the magic of it.

00:58:46.520 | I can just grab it and like, yeah.

00:58:47.520 | In fact, so Remarkable users know you can create as many notebooks as you want within

00:58:51.720 | it.

00:58:52.720 | And I was even seeing, actually I didn't bring it with me here.

00:58:55.320 | You can have as many notebooks as you want within it, but there's also something called

00:58:57.960 | Quick Sheets, which is just like a generic notebook where you can just jot down notes.

00:59:01.640 | So like for something like a surgeon's appointment, I just opened up a Quick Sheet and Dr. Blah

00:59:07.720 | Blah Blah, this date, took notes on what he said, because like I need to capture this

00:59:10.560 | information just temporarily so I don't forget it, but I don't need like a whole notebook

00:59:15.320 | for this surgery.

00:59:16.440 | Like this is, I got some information before the surgery, I got some information here and

00:59:19.720 | let me just jot it down so I don't forget it.

00:59:21.500 | But for other things, I, you know, I have full, I have full notebooks.

00:59:24.920 | And there's probably now 30 notebooks on there.

00:59:28.320 | And so yeah, I use it for everything.

00:59:29.320 | I use it for, certainly all of my, all of my sort of work I've been doing on my new

00:59:36.120 | quarterly plan, which we're going to talk about in the final segment.

00:59:38.360 | I've been working a lot of that out within the Remarkable.

00:59:42.000 | I teach, I run a robotics club at my kid's school and that's where I keep track of.

00:59:46.480 | I have a notebook for that, where this is just like in the weeds.

00:59:50.160 | Who was using what computer?

00:59:51.600 | What were the teams?

00:59:52.720 | Who like, here's the bracket for the competition, the robot competition.

00:59:58.240 | So just, you know, I'm just using it straight up for that.

01:00:01.320 | When I'm working on a particular article, I might have a article notebook where I'm,

01:00:05.040 | you know, taking notes on that.

01:00:06.320 | So I love my Remarkable.

01:00:07.800 | I continue to think it's a great application.

01:00:10.080 | They've made a couple updates to the software I like.

01:00:12.400 | I think notably now, you know, you have to select what type of pen or pencil you're using.

01:00:19.240 | Like, you have a stylus, but you select like how thick you want the line to be and whether

01:00:23.480 | you want it to be a pencil line or a pen line or a highlighter.

01:00:26.600 | They added a second pencil or like selector next to it, so you could have two different

01:00:31.640 | things selected that you use commonly and just sort of tap on which one you want to

01:00:35.200 | use.

01:00:36.200 | So I think that's cool.

01:00:37.200 | Yeah.

01:00:38.200 | So I continue to be a big Remarkable fan.

01:00:39.200 | Let me tell you the thing I paid for that I've never used or have barely used.

01:00:43.240 | I got the fancy case that has a built-in keyboard, so I can open it up, turn it around, and I

01:00:51.360 | have a keyboard and it's mounted up.

01:00:53.440 | I don't use it.

01:00:54.440 | I don't use the keyboard.

01:00:55.680 | The typing is not well supported.

01:00:58.760 | It's not.

01:00:59.760 | It's like weird where you can type and it's hard to edit, and I just don't use that.

01:01:03.480 | So if you're thinking about getting a Remarkable, it's very expensive, but don't make it even

01:01:07.920 | more expensive by getting the keyboard case for now.

01:01:12.160 | I've just been doing the writing.

01:01:13.520 | Do you ever check the notebooks on another computer?

01:01:15.400 | Can you do that?

01:01:16.720 | So it automatically syncs.

01:01:17.720 | Yeah.

01:01:18.720 | So can you do that if you're on your laptop?

01:01:19.720 | Yeah.

01:01:20.720 | So I have the app on my laptop, and whenever I'm on Wi-Fi that the Remarkable knows about,

01:01:29.080 | it'll just in the background sync things up.

01:01:32.360 | And then if I go over to that app, it just has all the notebooks replicated in there.

01:01:38.240 | So I can, if I needed to, I don't use this very often, but I just like knowing it's there.

01:01:42.880 | And I actually have, where I've used it before is I've printed stuff before, or I'd be like,

01:01:46.800 | you know what, I want to print this, these notes I took.

01:01:49.880 | It's easy to do.

01:01:50.880 | You go to the app, you go to the notebook, you navigate over to the page and you can

01:01:53.200 | just print them.

01:01:54.200 | So I like it.

01:01:55.200 | I think it's a cool product.

01:01:56.200 | All right.

01:01:57.200 | What do we got?

01:01:58.200 | All right.

01:01:59.200 | So this one's our corner, Slow Productivity Corner.

01:02:01.680 | Oh, let's get some theme music.

01:02:04.280 | All right, so this is your Slow Productivity Corner question.

01:02:13.640 | For people who don't know, we have one question every week.

01:02:16.640 | That's relevant to my new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Burnout, The Lost Art of Accomplishment

01:02:21.200 | Without Burnout.

01:02:22.200 | That'd be a different book, The Lost Art of Burnout.

01:02:26.440 | Let me tell you how to do it.

01:02:28.000 | Be a professor and a podcaster and a magazine journalist and a writer and on a couple boards

01:02:33.180 | at the same time.

01:02:34.180 | And have three kids.

01:02:35.180 | And have three kids.

01:02:36.180 | That's how you burn out and get surgery in the middle of all that.

01:02:39.240 | All right.

01:02:40.240 | What's your Slow Productivity Corner question?

01:02:41.840 | All right.

01:02:42.840 | What's your postmortem analysis of slow productivity?

01:02:46.240 | Please consider the actual writing, marketing, and sales.

01:02:49.240 | Are there clear things you'll do differently for your deep life book?

01:02:52.800 | Look, I think the whole project was worth it just for that theme music.

01:02:58.160 | It's given us an excuse to play the Slow Productivity Corner music.

01:03:02.400 | It's been an interesting ride with slow productivity.

01:03:06.080 | I'm very positive about it.

01:03:08.160 | But it's been an up and down ride.

01:03:12.360 | It opened up really well because I'm relatively well known right now.

01:03:20.480 | If I have a book coming out, I can do major appearances surrounding it.

01:03:25.640 | I did Andrew Huberman's show on the day the book came out.

01:03:29.920 | That type of stuff matters.

01:03:31.520 | I have a great audience on this podcast.

01:03:33.760 | I have a great audience for my newsletter.

01:03:35.800 | So the book came out stronger than any book I've ever written before, which makes sense

01:03:39.080 | given my growing audience size and reputation.

01:03:43.080 | Debuted as number two on the New York Times bestseller list, which was sort of good news,

01:03:46.560 | bad news.

01:03:47.560 | It could almost be better because you weren't so close to number one.

01:03:51.320 | I was thwarted by James Clear having a big bulk order for Atomic Habits that week.

01:03:56.800 | It made the UK bestseller list for the first time.

01:03:58.880 | It made the indie bestseller list for the first time.

01:04:00.720 | The book is actually doing very well in the UK, which has been interesting to see.

01:04:06.040 | So I think that's all great.

01:04:07.700 | It's been selling well.

01:04:09.360 | It's been at probably a faster selling trajectory than any past books.

01:04:14.000 | I keep convincing myself like, "Well, that's about to stop, and now it's going to fall

01:04:18.760 | off and fall well below other books," but I think it's doing well.

01:04:23.240 | It got into six-figure sales as quick as any book that I have done before, which is great,

01:04:31.600 | which means now of my eight books, there's only two of my eight books that have not made

01:04:36.400 | it comfortably into six-figure book sales, so that I'm proud of.

01:04:41.760 | The downside was the initial reaction to the book.

01:04:46.720 | When it first came out, there was some negative reaction from traditional elite media.

01:04:53.420 | As I've talked about on the show, it makes sense because I had become in this weird in-between

01:04:59.000 | position.

01:05:00.000 | I do what I call smart self-help.

01:05:02.160 | I like to write stuff that has practical advice, but I also think about things in a way that

01:05:07.760 | you might have in a more traditional cultural commentary, more sophisticated type nonfiction.

01:05:11.600 | I kind of put those two things together.

01:05:13.720 | I think there's a group of just sort of the standard media that my name came to their

01:05:18.080 | attention doing much more traditional nonfiction journalism stuff like during the pandemic.

01:05:25.760 | I spent a lot of time on NPR, for example, as a sort of resident expert on remote work

01:05:30.440 | and knowledge work, the technology of knowledge work and knowledge work in this sort of remote

01:05:35.440 | work era.

01:05:37.040 | People came to know my New Yorker work, my New Yorker journalism on technology.

01:05:41.800 | I got some book reviews early on from reviewers who would never review a book like Slow Productivity.

01:05:47.340 | Never have before in their life.

01:05:48.340 | I've never read a book that has advice in it.

01:05:50.920 | The New York Times, it was their main literary nonfiction book reviewers.

01:05:54.080 | I'll review this, and they were like, "What the hell is this?

01:05:59.160 | This guy is giving advice?"

01:06:02.240 | Pearls being clutched, people swooning on fainting chairs.

01:06:05.720 | They had just never seen a book like this before.

01:06:07.640 | They don't review these types of books.

01:06:09.240 | If a book like this typically was going to get reviewed at something like the Times,

01:06:12.880 | typically you would shop it out to someone from that field.

01:06:16.600 | You would say, "Great.

01:06:17.600 | We'll have a freelancer, like someone who writes about business, review it."

01:06:21.040 | It's like when Adam Grant gets a book reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, they'll

01:06:24.200 | have a psychologist review it.

01:06:25.600 | But no, it was like the literary book reviewer who was like, "What the hell is this?

01:06:28.840 | There's advice in here."

01:06:29.840 | That threw me off my game early on.

01:06:32.480 | I was like, "What if I wrote a bad book?"

01:06:34.920 | I was getting good reviews too.

01:06:37.360 | Big publications that were more used to the world of business and business advice, like

01:06:41.960 | the Financial Times, for example, in the UK, the Wall Street Journal here in the US, were

01:06:45.880 | like, "Yeah.

01:06:46.880 | This is a good book.

01:06:47.880 | Da-da-da.

01:06:48.880 | Here's the points."

01:06:49.880 | But I was thrown by the New York Times and the Times of London putting their literary

01:06:52.880 | book reviewers on it and being like, "This is crazy that someone's giving advice.

01:06:56.320 | I couldn't imagine doing that in a book."

01:06:59.000 | It was thrown.

01:07:00.000 | It's this, "What if the book was—what if the writing is just—what if it's bad?

01:07:03.040 | What if it's off?"

01:07:04.580 | So I sort of stopped following coverage of it, stopped following sales.

01:07:08.440 | Then the end of the year came, and it was all—everything switched, because at the

01:07:12.920 | end of the year, it's when book awards are given out.

01:07:15.520 | It's when best books of the year lists are given out.

01:07:18.000 | The book did better on those than anything I've ever written before.

01:07:21.800 | People are talking about it and passing it along, and this best book of the year, best

01:07:25.520 | book of the year here and there, and business book awards, multiple different selections

01:07:28.840 | and awards.

01:07:30.040 | I was like, "Oh, okay.

01:07:31.040 | Yeah.

01:07:32.040 | Maybe it was a good book.

01:07:33.040 | Okay."

01:07:34.040 | So I waited until the end of the year to get that.

01:07:35.840 | So it's this interesting up and down.

01:07:38.640 | It's doing well.

01:07:39.640 | I think it is having a cultural impact, which is what I wanted it to have, and I'm continuing

01:07:46.800 | to draw from it on this podcast because there are so many good ideas in it.

01:07:50.640 | The new book I'm working on, The Deep Life, it's similar.

01:07:55.520 | I see The Deep Life as sort of a one—it's not a one-off book, but it's a step out of

01:08:01.240 | the main trajectory of my books, which is all technology and its impact in one way or

01:08:07.000 | the other.

01:08:08.000 | Slow productivity is about knowledge work broke because of computers and networks and

01:08:11.560 | email.

01:08:12.880 | How do we fix it?

01:08:14.600 | It's within that trajectory.

01:08:15.600 | The Deep Life is about how do you—it's a pandemic idea.

01:08:18.960 | How do you engineer your life?

01:08:20.560 | The whole premise of that book is we spend so much time talking about what should be

01:08:26.280 | in a life well-lived.

01:08:27.280 | We don't talk nearly enough about the mechanics of how one actually changes their life.

01:08:31.320 | We don't give that nearly enough attention, the mechanics of figuring out what to do,

01:08:36.400 | making the changes, making the changes stick.

01:08:38.680 | That's what we ignore, and instead we focus on what your life should have.

01:08:42.240 | It should have passion.

01:08:43.240 | It should have friendship.

01:08:44.240 | It should have whatever, but not how do you actually change your life.

01:08:46.240 | That's pretty hard.

01:08:47.240 | How does that happen in our current world of high-technology work with the opportunities

01:08:50.900 | that gives us?

01:08:53.040 | This book is a little bit of a step out of the main trajectory, and I'm just leaning

01:08:56.080 | into that.

01:08:57.080 | I'm writing a practical guide.

01:08:59.360 | The chapters have numbered sections, and it's really—I'm writing this book for my gut.

01:09:04.760 | It's just unapologetic.

01:09:05.760 | Here's the ideas.

01:09:06.760 | Do this.

01:09:07.760 | This is why I think it's important.

01:09:08.760 | That's important.

01:09:09.760 | Here's a story.

01:09:10.760 | Here's a finding.

01:09:12.960 | It really is really unfiltered, purified, like the way I talk on this podcast, I guess.

01:09:18.920 | I don't know.

01:09:19.920 | I feel good about it, but it's its own thing.

01:09:22.760 | It's not carefully crafted, like we have to have this very special—a lot of these books

01:09:26.340 | are really well-crafted.

01:09:27.340 | Everything has to start with a story, and then the story has to have ideas extracted

01:09:32.640 | from it.

01:09:33.680 | It's more free-flowing.

01:09:34.680 | It's sections, and some sections are smaller than others.

01:09:37.800 | It's as dense as anything I've ever written.

01:09:40.760 | I only want super-solid ideas that I think are interesting.

01:09:44.240 | I'm cutting out everything else.

01:09:45.480 | It covers a huge wider range.

01:09:46.800 | I don't know.

01:09:47.800 | I'm really enjoying writing it, and I'm sort of just saying, "I don't know what you're

01:09:51.200 | going to categorize this book as."

01:09:53.920 | I don't know what I would compare it to.

01:09:58.020 | I find it awesome.

01:09:59.600 | I'm just really enjoying it, and it'll do what it's going to do, but I'm going to be

01:10:03.200 | happy that it exists out there in the world, so I'm having fun with it.

01:10:06.720 | That's a lot of things to say, Jesse, but I have a lot I've been thinking about with

01:10:10.320 | slow productivity, but generally, I'm happy.

01:10:13.720 | I think this book is out there.

01:10:15.760 | It's selling.

01:10:16.760 | It's helping.

01:10:17.760 | I think it was good.

01:10:19.240 | I wasn't sure.

01:10:20.740 | Some feedback that it's good, so I think all that's positive.

01:10:23.720 | Are there principles for the deep life?

01:10:26.380 | The deep life right now is broken into two parts, each part around a big idea connected

01:10:32.680 | to our general theme here, which is the mechanics of how you actually transform your life to

01:10:36.880 | be more intentional.

01:10:38.720 | Part one right now is tentatively called preparation.

01:10:41.640 | The big idea there is that we think too much about—we want to jump right into making

01:10:47.000 | big changes in our life, but if you don't have your act together—we talked about this

01:10:50.680 | on the show, but if you don't have your act together first, you're unlikely to succeed

01:10:54.480 | in trying to make big changes.

01:10:56.120 | The whole first part of the book, preparation, is how do you get your act together to the

01:11:02.200 | point where making really cool, intentional changes to your life is going to be likely

01:11:06.840 | to succeed.

01:11:07.840 | This is where I talk about discipline.

01:11:09.640 | It's where I talk about being organized.

01:11:11.280 | It's where I talk about reclaiming your mind, so it's like in the weeds.

01:11:14.680 | Part two, transformation, is about the mechanics of how you actually reliably figure out the

01:11:19.440 | changes you want to make and successfully execute them.

01:11:22.000 | They're the big ideas, lifestyle-centric planning.

01:11:24.480 | Most people, when they think about trying to overhaul their life, they fixate on a singular

01:11:28.360 | goal that they hope will change everything.

01:11:30.480 | If I can just succeed with this big, bold, singular goal I like to talk about and tell

01:11:33.680 | friends about, everything in my life will be better.

01:11:36.480 | That rarely works for a lot of reasons.

01:11:38.100 | It's much better to establish a rich vision of an ideal lifestyle and then work backwards

01:11:42.500 | from that to figure out, with your current opportunities and obstacles, how do I move

01:11:45.600 | towards it.

01:11:46.600 | It becomes much more strategic and tactical and in the weeds, and you're much more likely

01:11:49.940 | to succeed.

01:11:50.940 | It really gets into those ideas and step-by-step, how you actually do those things.

01:11:58.400 | Preparation and transformation.

01:11:59.400 | Even if you just read part one, it's just my guide to being an eminently capable human.

01:12:06.920 | You're going to build up your capacity for discipline.

01:12:09.680 | You are going to get yourself organized.

01:12:13.040 | My latest thinking on what matters and doesn't matter in personal productivity, this is the

01:12:17.720 | only book you're going to find that all in.

01:12:20.520 | Reclaiming your brain.

01:12:21.520 | How to teach yourself to think again.

01:12:23.080 | Not just not being a slave to devices, like I talk about it, but how to actually actively

01:12:27.080 | build up contemplative abilities.

01:12:30.120 | The ability to sit there with a book, to self-reflect.

01:12:32.840 | You come out of part one just like you're in control of your life.

01:12:36.840 | Anything's possible.

01:12:38.360 | Part two is like, let's take that out for a spin and now start figuring out how to transform

01:12:42.440 | your life into something really cool.

01:12:44.000 | I'm enjoying writing this.

01:12:45.000 | I'm taking my time.

01:12:47.120 | When you take your time as a writer in nonfiction, what you get is density.

01:12:53.520 | I really thought about this chapter, and I really thought about this section in this

01:12:57.600 | chapter, and I thought about it for a while, and I wrote it, and I rewrote it, and what's

01:13:00.200 | there is exactly what I want to say and nothing else.

01:13:03.860 | You get this real density of arguments, and justifications, and stories, and evidence,

01:13:09.200 | because if you just take the book one section at a time, and I just want to make this section

01:13:14.200 | like a New Yorker piece as good as possible.

01:13:16.400 | In the end, the book is very dense, and you don't have that.

01:13:18.600 | You want to avoid that sensation you get when books are written quicker of they're kind

01:13:23.220 | of stretching.

01:13:24.220 | I just want to try to finish this chapter to get my word count up for the month.

01:13:27.160 | This book is very dense.

01:13:29.800 | The people I'm talking to, the things I'm reading, and I have no consistency to stories.

01:13:34.520 | It's not slow productivity.

01:13:35.520 | I had a particular thing I wanted to do, which was stories of traditional knowledge workers

01:13:39.640 | as the anchors.

01:13:41.240 | Here there's like stories, but some things are not stories.

01:13:45.440 | It's intellectual stories.

01:13:47.040 | It's an event that happened in the world of ideas.

01:13:49.720 | It's something that happened in the – there's no set story format.

01:13:53.800 | It's just like what gets me to what I want to say here?

01:13:57.300 | What makes this interesting and clear?

01:13:59.520 | So some of it is like I'm talking to really interesting people, but I'm also coming up

01:14:03.680 | with like here's like a really interesting history of how this thing changed.

01:14:06.800 | The reception of this book teaches us like an important lesson about this.

01:14:10.280 | Here's this thing from – I'm all over the place with this, and I think it's – I don't

01:14:14.520 | know.

01:14:15.520 | I'm liking it.

01:14:16.960 | The key question is what I'm going to do next, Jesse.

01:14:18.880 | That's the question that's up in the air.

01:14:22.640 | I'm wondering what the book cover is going to be for Deep Life too.

01:14:25.600 | I like the full bleed image concept that came up with Slow Productivity.

01:14:29.960 | This was by – I'm proud of this innovation.

01:14:32.140 | I told my publisher, I said, "I just think we need to break out of the visual vocabulary

01:14:37.220 | that these idea books and business books are all in," which was vocabulary invented by

01:14:41.400 | Gladwell.

01:14:42.400 | White cover, a single image, big text.

01:14:47.700 | We got to break out of that.

01:14:48.920 | I think that limits your audience.

01:14:50.920 | I want my cover to induce in the reader a physiological state that is congruent with

01:14:57.520 | the goal of the book.

01:14:59.680 | Full bleed, aspirational, relaxing imagery, that I think was useful for the book and opened

01:15:05.880 | it up to audiences that would not pick up that book if it was a turtle at the computer

01:15:10.840 | screen in the middle or a single matte stick with a weird color flame and big teleport

01:15:16.960 | or whatever.

01:15:17.960 | So I'm sure I'm going to probably pitch something like that for this book too, The

01:15:22.600 | Deep Life.

01:15:23.600 | All right.

01:15:24.600 | That was our corner.

01:15:25.600 | Oh, let's get our final segment where I am going to talk about where I am with my quarterly

01:15:33.200 | planning for the upcoming new year.

01:15:36.640 | But first, hear from another one of our sponsors.

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01:16:52.720 | So now it's, hey, we got, I mean, I'm a fan around the holidays.

01:16:56.440 | I like the holiday beers, the spiced heavy, like Belgian strong style beers.

01:17:04.120 | You only get them one time a year.

01:17:05.200 | I associate that with the holidays.

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01:18:04.320 | I know that some holiday companies have given those to their holiday parties.

01:18:08.360 | Oh, that's a smart idea.

01:18:09.360 | Before the parties.

01:18:10.360 | Maybe that's what we should have done for our holiday episode, is just both had like

01:18:13.080 | a really strong Christmas beer.

01:18:14.920 | And as the episode went on, it gets more fun.

01:18:19.760 | We're just ranting about Brandon Sanderson by the end of it.

01:18:23.440 | All right.

01:18:24.440 | I also want to talk to you, speaking of fun liquids, I want to talk to you about our longtime

01:18:29.040 | friends at Element.

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01:18:31.040 | Element is a zero sugar electrolyte drink and sparkling electrolyte water born from

01:18:36.740 | the growing body of research revealing that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels

01:18:40.580 | that are two to three times government recommendation.

01:18:45.020 | So there's two ways to get Element.

01:18:46.680 | The way I do it is I have the mix packets, the drink mix packets.

01:18:50.200 | You just put it into your water bottle, you shake it up and you have the extra electrolytes

01:18:55.460 | in your water.

01:18:56.460 | They also now sell a premixed sparkling water you can have in your fridge and grab it cold.

01:19:02.060 | The reason why I use Element for getting my sort of extra electrolytes in water is they

01:19:06.920 | don't have junk in it.

01:19:08.600 | No sugar, no artificial colors, free of other dodgy ingredients that you might find in these

01:19:15.940 | other mixes.

01:19:16.940 | That's why I like them.

01:19:17.940 | I have a big bin of these in my kitchen, right where the water bottles and my protein is.

01:19:22.240 | I use it if I've had a hard workout to help hydrate.

01:19:24.840 | I use it in the morning if maybe I wasn't hydrating enough the night before.

01:19:29.200 | When do I figure that out?

01:19:30.320 | When I wake up cotton mouth the next morning, I'll use it then.

01:19:33.280 | I'll use it if I have a long day of talking, lecturing, podcasting, doing interviews, that's

01:19:37.960 | very dehydrating.

01:19:38.960 | You're constantly expelling moisture.

01:19:42.160 | As you talk, I will go and throw some Element electrolyte mix into my water bottle.

01:19:46.760 | I use it all the time.

01:19:48.800 | So I can really endorse that from personal experience.

01:19:51.980 | One thing to keep in mind is they now have this chocolate medley that includes flavors

01:19:56.440 | like chocolate mint, chocolate chai, and chocolate raspberry, which are meant to be enjoyed hot.

01:20:01.080 | You're out there in the cold shoveling snow and you want to both rehydrate and warm up.

01:20:07.040 | Mix this in with hot water and it tastes great.

01:20:09.640 | So it's a good winter thing to keep in mind.

01:20:12.600 | You can try Element totally risk-free and if you don't like it, just give it away to

01:20:16.220 | a salty friend and they will give you your money back.

01:20:18.960 | No questions asked.

01:20:20.480 | Now, here's the good news.

01:20:22.520 | Members of my community can receive a free Element sample pack with any order they make

01:20:27.400 | if they go to drinkelement.com/deep, that's drinkelementlment.com/deep, and they will

01:20:34.960 | send you a free sample pack with whatever you order.

01:20:37.920 | All right, Jesse, let's move on to our final segment.

01:20:41.000 | All right, so if I have this right, and tell me if I have this right, Jesse, you want me

01:20:44.960 | to talk about how I've updated my quarterly plan format and what is on my quarterly plan

01:20:52.000 | for the quarter that's going to begin here in the new year.

01:20:55.040 | Yeah, you mentioned in last week's episode about how you were making some changes to

01:20:58.600 | it.

01:20:59.600 | I had some inquiries about the specifics.

01:21:02.960 | Okay, so, well, I have, and a lot of this reflection has come out of writing my book,

01:21:08.000 | The Deep Life, because I'm thinking about generalizing advice around this type of thing

01:21:14.160 | and when I was thinking about it, I was realizing some changes that might be beneficial.

01:21:19.480 | So as you know, I like to keep the big picture plan, the anchor plan of my multiscale planning,

01:21:25.360 | I update it roughly once a semester.

01:21:27.840 | So business people call these quarterly plans because they think about quarters.

01:21:30.640 | I'm a professor.

01:21:31.640 | I think about them as semester plans.

01:21:33.080 | So my sort of winter/spring plan is what I'm working on now, and this will kind of kick

01:21:37.800 | in in the new year.

01:21:40.920 | I used to have two of these for each semester, one for my personal life, one for my professional

01:21:46.540 | life.

01:21:47.540 | The change I mentioned in the last episode is I've consolidated them.

01:21:51.300 | It makes more sense to have just one plan because, I don't know, these are all mixed

01:21:55.680 | together to me, my life and my work, and these things mixed together in such a way that I

01:22:00.040 | wanted to deal with the whole thing holistically.

01:22:02.520 | What had held me back from doing that before is that in my professional quarterly plan,

01:22:08.120 | I would sometimes get pretty detailed notes, especially if it's working through with writing

01:22:13.880 | or the podcast.

01:22:14.880 | It might be pretty detailed notes about, we're going to work on this sequence of articles

01:22:19.080 | and interleave with these articles, research for this book chapter here.

01:22:23.040 | And actually, these bigger picture notes for the next months could get pretty complicated,

01:22:27.760 | and so that's why I had my professional plan in a separate document.

01:22:30.680 | I realized I could just put those specific notes in a separate document and link to it

01:22:35.560 | from the main one.

01:22:37.580 | So when I talk about craft in my singular semester plan, I can just link to a separate

01:22:45.240 | document that says, OK, for this thing I'm working on really heavily this semester, over

01:22:49.620 | here I'm getting to the weeds about how I want to sequence that.

01:22:53.120 | So once I figured that out, I was like, great, I can have one document that I actually review.

01:22:57.240 | I've been experimenting with the structure of this document as well, and what I've been

01:23:03.360 | working with for the plan that's about to go live is, and this comes from my thinking

01:23:09.220 | from the new book, is a foundation pillar approach.

01:23:12.280 | So you have a foundation on which you have a few pillars.

01:23:17.840 | These are what we would have used to call buckets.

01:23:20.960 | The pillars are capturing important parts of your life, what you're trying to achieve

01:23:24.960 | there in the long term and in the current planning semester or quarter, and the foundation

01:23:31.160 | supports them all.

01:23:33.300 | So right now in the plan I'm working on, I've simplified this thumb, because this has gotten

01:23:36.700 | out of control for me before.

01:23:37.700 | I've simplified this thumb.

01:23:39.440 | The foundation typically is something that's going to be some mix of spiritual, philosophical,

01:23:43.380 | and ethical.

01:23:44.980 | It's the foundation.

01:23:46.780 | It's working on your base, your code, and base operating system, if you want to use

01:23:50.820 | sort of nerdy terminology, that helps you figure out how you just go about your life

01:23:56.260 | day to day, like your code, how you actually operate.

01:24:00.180 | That's what you use to navigate hard things that are going to happen in your plan for

01:24:03.860 | doing that, and it influences the pillars you build on top of it, like what those pillars

01:24:08.540 | focus on and what you're trying to do.

01:24:10.220 | So I've increasingly come to believe you need this sort of philosophical, spiritual, ethical

01:24:13.940 | foundation that's like your OS for life, for navigating life, and you need to keep working

01:24:20.940 | on that and evolving that, and that has to be clearly specified.

01:24:25.280 | On top of that then come the pillars.

01:24:26.860 | Right now, there's four pillars in particular that I'm focusing on.

01:24:30.900 | One that is what are called constitution in our classic bucket language, but this is your

01:24:36.820 | health, health and fitness.

01:24:39.140 | I've mentioned often on the show I've had to have a surgery recently.

01:24:41.880 | This has sort of really knocked me off my physical game.

01:24:44.980 | Recovery has been what it's been, but as part of this, you get lots of tests and blood tests,

01:24:50.060 | and it's sort of kicking off for me like my middle age renewed focus in health and fitness

01:24:55.980 | is a common thing you go through.

01:24:57.380 | You get to a certain age, and now health and fitness become less about wouldn't it be great

01:25:02.340 | to be good at this sport and more about I don't want to bypass.

01:25:05.740 | So this is a major focus going forward.

01:25:09.420 | There's then a leadership pillar, being a leader in my family, being a leader among

01:25:13.540 | sort of like friend circles, and being a leader in the community in which I'm a part of.

01:25:16.700 | This has become a bigger focus for me as I get older as well.

01:25:21.060 | How to be a good father, how to be a good friend, how to be a leader within, I'm more

01:25:25.500 | leadership positions in my life now in various communities I'm involved in.

01:25:29.900 | So that is a pillar I'm focusing on.

01:25:33.300 | I guess I'll call celebration, they used the old bucket terminology, but basically a pillar

01:25:36.780 | focused on loving life, so like stuff that you do just because life is cool and it helps

01:25:45.340 | you acknowledge that.

01:25:47.180 | It's like the maker projects I do, the adventures I go on, my movie hobby of like really getting

01:25:53.020 | into movies and like making that a priority.

01:25:56.220 | That's like an important pillar for me is, you know, this is it.

01:26:01.260 | I strive a lot, but I need to be enjoying where I am now.

01:26:06.700 | So that's a pillar.

01:26:07.700 | And then probably the thickest pillar in terms of complexity is craft, my work, the things

01:26:12.780 | I build with my hands and my mind and the things I'm known for and where I'm trying

01:26:17.380 | to go with that craft and what's my goal long term and what am I trying to do in the semester

01:26:21.940 | ahead.

01:26:22.940 | That's what's complicated of the pillars.

01:26:24.180 | So I have foundation and I have those four pillars.

01:26:27.860 | The method I'm applying for navigating these in the semester ahead is one of rotating focus.

01:26:35.700 | So choose one of these pillars and make it like a big focus and try to transform that

01:26:42.900 | part of your life.

01:26:44.020 | The other pillars, like know what you're working on, right?

01:26:47.140 | Make sure you're not neglecting them, but you're not trying to make major changes in

01:26:50.860 | them.

01:26:51.860 | And then when you finish overhauling one of those pillars, then you can say, OK, now here's

01:26:54.940 | the next pillar.

01:26:55.940 | I'm going to overhaul this part of my life.

01:26:57.580 | This is not something you're necessarily doing all the time.

01:26:59.700 | But for me, it's a sort of midlife course correction that's been building up over the

01:27:05.060 | last couple of years.

01:27:06.060 | So like I'm starting with that constitution, physical health pillar, that's getting a huge

01:27:11.340 | amount of my attention and it will probably for the next six months or so.

01:27:15.020 | I will come out of that transformation with a completely different relationship to physical

01:27:20.340 | health and routine.

01:27:21.340 | So there's all sorts of stuff happening here in terms of doctors and fitness and trainers

01:27:28.620 | and the amount of time and the role like exercise and diet and a lot of changes and things are

01:27:35.100 | having to happen in my life.

01:27:36.100 | And I'm giving it focus.

01:27:37.100 | I want to come out of this semester having really put a lot of focus on that and my new

01:27:43.180 | steady state being really different than it was before.

01:27:46.740 | The other pillars, again, it's like know what you're working on, but don't try to get crazy

01:27:51.160 | on multiple things at once.

01:27:52.860 | Then I'll choose another one of these pillars.

01:27:54.540 | Like now I really want to overhaul this part of my life and really think about it and put

01:27:58.020 | effort and energy into it and really make those changes.

01:28:00.300 | So I'm going pillar by pillar.

01:28:02.180 | This might be a year or multi-year process to really get through all of them.

01:28:05.820 | But this is one way you can tame the complexity of having all these different things that

01:28:09.580 | matter to you.

01:28:10.580 | And it's overwhelming to think about optimizing all of those at the same time.

01:28:14.060 | You're just going to collapse under too many changes at once.

01:28:17.580 | So I've really become more of a fan of, you know, it's important you have your plan that's

01:28:21.660 | reasonable for each of those.

01:28:23.340 | And if you're going to do a major change, only work on one pillar at a time.

01:28:26.680 | So that is what I'm really kicking off now during my surgery recovery.

01:28:29.900 | I'm using that, all the stuff you have to do for that anyways, the physical therapy,

01:28:34.680 | the doctor's test, like use that as the just run with that momentum.

01:28:38.700 | And let's overhaul the whole thing, which is my way of saying by the time we get to

01:28:43.620 | the summer, I'm going to be looking like scars guard in the Northman.

01:28:50.500 | And it's a lot of shirtless podcasting guys.

01:28:52.060 | I just want to just, I'm just going to put it out there right now.

01:28:54.020 | There'll be a lot of like shirtless podcasting as I look like scars with the holiday lights,

01:28:58.780 | holiday lights, and killer delts.

01:29:02.420 | Which one's delts?

01:29:03.420 | The back.

01:29:04.420 | Oh, well, isn't these what's the like, what's shoulders?

01:29:12.020 | Shoulders, shoulders, shoulder traps, traps, traps is kind of these.

01:29:16.300 | Yeah.

01:29:17.300 | All right.

01:29:18.300 | You know, that's what scars guard did for the movie.

01:29:19.300 | The Northman.

01:29:20.300 | That's a movie.

01:29:21.300 | More people should see, by the way, uh, of two movie recommendations, Northman came out

01:29:25.740 | during COVID.

01:29:26.740 | So it wasn't widely seen a fantastic director, the director I really like, um, it's a Viking

01:29:32.140 | saga and Alex, Alexander scars guards, the star of it.

01:29:35.580 | And it's, uh, it's mythological, right?

01:29:37.900 | So it's not done in a completely realistic frame, but it's a realistic treatment of Viking

01:29:42.980 | sagas and Viking mythology.

01:29:45.860 | But the key thing is Alexander scars guard is my age, the character, they built up his

01:29:50.740 | body.

01:29:51.740 | So he has massive traps.

01:29:52.740 | He has, he's like huge traps.

01:29:53.940 | Like they didn't want them to look, you can't get a 42 year old to look too crazy.

01:29:58.300 | They don't want them to be like super inflated with muscles because a Viking wouldn't be.

01:30:01.260 | So they chose this one muscle.

01:30:03.300 | He's just like, so anyways, I'm going to be doing trap style.

01:30:06.300 | The other movie I finally got around the scene, by the way, and I'll recommend Fritz

01:30:09.140 | Leng's classic M it's 1931.

01:30:13.340 | One of the, uh, early in the sound movie era, he like innovated the use of sound completely.

01:30:20.660 | It's also just brilliantly shot in other ways.

01:30:23.380 | It's a great movie.

01:30:24.380 | I really enjoyed it.

01:30:25.500 | It's on HBO max, whatever it's called.

01:30:28.820 | It's on max right now.

01:30:29.820 | So you can find it Fritz Leng's 1931 German semi-expressionistic classic M it's hard to,

01:30:37.140 | here's why it's hard to find.

01:30:38.900 | If you search for M it doesn't know what to do with that.

01:30:43.260 | So how do you search for it?

01:30:44.500 | I actually ended up typing in Fritz Leng into the search bar and HBO max, and then it started

01:30:49.420 | bringing up Fritz Leng movies.

01:30:51.220 | And then that's how I found it.

01:30:52.780 | Same thing when I use the Apple TV search over all of the different streaming services.

01:30:56.460 | If you just give it the letter M it's like, no, you're clearly trying to write out a word

01:31:01.540 | that starts with M it's like, what are the most popular movies that start with M it'll

01:31:04.340 | never actually show it to you.

01:31:05.980 | So, so there you go.

01:31:07.940 | Um, serious.

01:31:08.940 | That's what I'm, that's what I'm up to.

01:31:09.940 | I've simplified these four pillars, a reasonable plan for each, but one that I'm going all

01:31:15.100 | in on trying to overhaul and it's getting a lot of my attention.

01:31:18.020 | So just started going, um, and the other pillars, I'm still doing stuff.

01:31:21.220 | It's just like taking the foot off the accelerator, like have a reasonable steady state.

01:31:25.500 | This thing is important to me and I'm working on it and being intentional about it.

01:31:30.660 | But the big changes are happening in this one pillar.

01:31:32.500 | Then I'll move to the next pillar and having that foundation all the way, um, that you

01:31:36.500 | can keep falling back on, even if the pillar is faltered, that is what guides you day to

01:31:40.300 | day.

01:31:41.300 | That's a, that's a key, a key thing to have.

01:31:42.780 | There you go.

01:31:43.780 | That's what's going on in my semester plan.

01:31:48.660 | And uh, that's my plan for my traps, which I think is what's most important here.

01:31:52.820 | All right, Jesse, I think that's it.

01:31:55.460 | Good episode.

01:31:56.460 | All right.

01:31:57.460 | Jesse, take over.

01:31:58.460 | You learned everything you were wondering about.

01:31:59.860 | Yep.

01:32:00.860 | I sure did.

01:32:01.860 | There we go.

01:32:02.860 | Uh, can we do like 30 minutes on the Washington nationals off season to date?

01:32:06.940 | Is that because I'm getting worried, I'm getting worried about the lack of significant action.

01:32:12.740 | I am hoping that Bellinger going to the Yankees clears Christian Walker to make his way to

01:32:17.820 | the Nats, but I'm worried there's not going to be a major acquisition.

01:32:20.740 | And for this season, I don't know what that would mean for my fandom.

01:32:24.180 | So this is very important.

01:32:26.980 | That'll be our next episode.

01:32:27.980 | Just 95 minutes on the Washington nationals.

01:32:30.980 | All right.

01:32:31.980 | But until then, enjoy your holidays as vacation for most people, hopefully you're hearing

01:32:36.620 | this episode.

01:32:37.620 | A lot of people miss it, but you know, if you're listening, you should check out our

01:32:39.860 | outfits online because I think they're pretty sharp and otherwise we'll be back New Year's

01:32:44.860 | week with a new episode of the podcast.

01:32:47.260 | And until then, as always stay deep.

01:32:49.540 | Hey, if you enjoyed watching today's holiday episode and are in the mindset of relaxing,

01:32:55.860 | check out episode 326, which is called Time to Unplug.

01:33:00.420 | I think you'll like that one as well.

01:33:01.700 | Check it out.

01:33:02.700 | The title of this piece is After You Vote, Unplug.

7 Habits To Make 2025 Your Best Year Yet | Cal Newport

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