Regain Your Ability to Think (in 60 Minutes a Week)

00:00:00.440 | We often talk about the ways that digital devices undermine our ability to

00:00:06.000 | consume complicated and meaningful information.

00:00:09.920 | If you spend too much time scrolling TikTok,

00:00:13.060 | you'll eventually start struggling to read Holstoi.

00:00:16.960 | But what about our ability to produce complicated and meaningful information?

00:00:22.940 | I'm talking about original and creative thoughts or deep insight into yourself,

00:00:28.480 | or a new understanding of the wondrous complexity of the world,

00:00:31.600 | or exciting new visions for what's possible.

00:00:35.020 | This is what I want to get into today.

00:00:37.740 | I'm going to go in three parts here.

00:00:39.080 | In the first part of our discussion,

00:00:40.500 | I'm going to introduce an idea that I call long thinking.

00:00:44.580 | I'm going to explain why I think long thinking is critical to creating a

00:00:49.620 | flourishing life.

00:00:50.400 | In part two,

00:00:50.980 | I'll explore why specifically our modern technological environment is undermining

00:00:56.680 | our ability to perform long thinking.

00:01:00.300 | And then in part three,

00:01:01.160 | I'm going to present a simple but effective training plan for regaining this ability.

00:01:05.440 | Believe it or not,

00:01:06.940 | it's going to be based on an idea that I first wrote about in 2009 and have been

00:01:11.600 | practicing ever since.

00:01:13.880 | All right.

00:01:14.960 | So if you found yourself struggling to hold a line of thought or to make sense of complex

00:01:19.280 | ideas or material,

00:01:20.300 | if your world seems to have collapsed into shorter digital takes and cruder primal emotions,

00:01:25.740 | then this episode is for you as always.

00:01:29.600 | I'm Cal Newport,

00:01:31.380 | and this is deep questions.

00:01:33.640 | Today's episode,

00:01:45.600 | the lost start of long thinking.

00:01:48.660 | All right.

00:01:53.820 | So I want to start here with an example from my own life.

00:01:56.560 | I'm going to load on the screen here for people who are watching instead of just listening.

00:01:59.900 | An essay that I published on my blog and newsletter back in the fall of 2012.

00:02:04.360 | This was right at the start of my second year as a young professor.

00:02:10.440 | The title of this article was solutions beyond the screen,

00:02:14.120 | the adventure work method for producing creative insights.

00:02:17.800 | Now I've loaded this up because I have some original photos.

00:02:20.180 | I actually took here.

00:02:21.060 | Actually,

00:02:21.920 | this is not my photo,

00:02:22.700 | Jesse,

00:02:22.960 | but someone else took this photo.

00:02:24.540 | I did take photos.

00:02:26.400 | There's this was not one of them.

00:02:28.060 | So this is a foggy.

00:02:29.180 | It's a foggy street with trees and it's sort of desolate and romantic.

00:02:36.920 | This was taken in Berkeley.

00:02:38.600 | All right.

00:02:39.080 | Let me read a little bit what I wrote here below that picture.

00:02:42.300 | A couple of weeks ago,

00:02:44.200 | I made a brief visit to Berkeley,

00:02:45.620 | California for a wedding.

00:02:47.480 | My wife,

00:02:47.800 | Julie had to take a conference call the first morning after we arrived.

00:02:51.220 | So I decided to get some work done myself.

00:02:52.920 | I didn't bring a computer.

00:02:54.540 | So work couldn't mean email replying the standard instinct in this situation.

00:02:59.600 | Just as an aside,

00:03:00.400 | Jesse,

00:03:00.620 | there was no smartphones back then.

00:03:01.940 | So like if you didn't bring your computer,

00:03:03.060 | you weren't doing work.

00:03:04.900 | Instead,

00:03:05.860 | I decided to log some hard focus hours on what I like to call the beast,

00:03:10.600 | a particularly vexing theory problem that my collaborators and I have been battling for many months.

00:03:16.100 | Another aside,

00:03:16.780 | notice my use of the term hard focus.

00:03:18.380 | It was actually a year or two before I actually used to started using the phrase deep work.

00:03:23.300 | I got some coffee and headed toward the Berkeley campus on foot.

00:03:26.880 | It was early in the fog was just starting to march down the Berkeley Hills.

00:03:29.920 | I eventually wandered into a eucalyptus grove.

00:03:33.260 | Show that on the screen.

00:03:34.100 | Not my photo,

00:03:35.740 | but that's the same grove I wandered into.

00:03:37.420 | Once there,

00:03:38.520 | I sipped my coffee and thought.

00:03:40.040 | Our existing strategy for the beast included a complicated algorithm,

00:03:43.960 | which none of us looked forward to analyzing.

00:03:45.920 | Deploying a trick I learned while a grad student,

00:03:49.020 | I avoided needing to understand why the complicated algorithm work by instead turning my attention to understanding why simpler strategies failed.

00:03:58.760 | After only an hour,

00:03:59.800 | which included a strategic fill up at the free speech cafe,

00:04:02.440 | I had an idea for a more concise and easier to analyze algorithm that seemed to work.

00:04:07.500 | I realized,

00:04:08.280 | however,

00:04:08.620 | there's a limit to depth you can reach when keeping an idea only in your mind.

00:04:12.700 | Looking to get the most out of my new insights and inspired by my recent commitment to the textbook method,

00:04:17.220 | I trekked over to a nearby CVS and bought a six by nine stenographer's notebook.

00:04:22.280 | I then forced myself to write out my thoughts more formally.

00:04:25.160 | And there,

00:04:25.600 | I,

00:04:25.960 | here's a picture of my notes from that day,

00:04:28.420 | Jesse,

00:04:28.660 | that I did take that photo.

00:04:29.720 | I'm trying to remember from those diagrams.

00:04:32.700 | I can't really read the text,

00:04:34.780 | but I'm trying to remember from the diagrams exactly what problem this was.

00:04:37.440 | I was working on.

00:04:38.140 | It looks like it was in like the local model of,

00:04:40.440 | uh,

00:04:41.120 | distributed communication.

00:04:42.140 | But anyways,

00:04:43.440 | the combination of pen and paper notes with exotic content,

00:04:46.500 | which I was working,

00:04:47.180 | ushered in new layers of understanding,

00:04:48.600 | our battle with the beast continues.

00:04:49.900 | But in the latest draft of the solution in progress,

00:04:51.840 | those Berkeley simplifications play a useful role.

00:04:54.560 | All right.

00:04:55.140 | That's a real case study from earlier in my professional career.

00:04:58.940 | And it's a type of activity that for me had become second nature and continues to be second nature for me,

00:05:05.060 | but I think is,

00:05:05.700 | uh,

00:05:06.360 | more rare for other people.

00:05:08.180 | What I was trying to do in that story was extract from my mind and an original new thought,

00:05:14.540 | something that had actual value to me and others,

00:05:17.500 | not like a Eureka moment,

00:05:19.800 | just like an idea out of the blue.

00:05:22.040 | Oh,

00:05:22.480 | now what if we,

00:05:23.380 | what if we put ham on shoes or some sort of like a great brainstorm like that,

00:05:27.980 | but a persistent focus application of my brain to slowly,

00:05:31.260 | but systematically move towards something useful and new,

00:05:34.040 | and then captured in a form that I could share with others.

00:05:37.360 | There's a term for this type of cognitive activity that I was doing there in the hills of Berkeley.

00:05:41.440 | Long thinking.

00:05:43.560 | Now,

00:05:44.840 | I think the first place I actually heard this term was from a TEDx talk.

00:05:48.340 | It was given by the Italian professor Giovini Corazzi,

00:05:51.400 | Corazza,

00:05:52.320 | who works at the Marconi Institute for Creativity at the University of Bologna,

00:05:55.900 | where I've been,

00:05:56.520 | I think ironically,

00:05:57.860 | the same year that I wrote that,

00:05:59.080 | that essay,

00:06:00.420 | I gave a talk at the University of Bologna.

00:06:01.680 | It's a super old university.

00:06:02.780 | Very cool.

00:06:03.200 | I want to play a clip from Corazza's talk where he uses,

00:06:07.840 | introduces this term long thinking.

00:06:09.340 | We need to value long thinking.

00:06:14.200 | Normally we talk about brilliant thinking,

00:06:17.240 | fast thinking,

00:06:18.800 | deep thinking,

00:06:20.000 | but here we're talking about something different.

00:06:22.280 | Long thinking.

00:06:24.220 | What does that mean?

00:06:26.200 | It's some thought that takes us far.

00:06:29.260 | It's as if you were reading poetry or listening to music.

00:06:32.940 | You don't judge the single notes.

00:06:35.720 | You don't judge the single words.

00:06:38.380 | It's the ensemble that gives you a feeling and takes you far.

00:06:43.240 | We must do the same thing with our concepts.

00:06:46.860 | We need to go far.

00:06:48.620 | And so we can use association of ideas,

00:06:52.760 | combination of ideas,

00:06:54.700 | extraction of principles and application of those principles to areas where they were never applied.

00:07:01.420 | All right.

00:07:02.880 | So notice what he's talking about there.

00:07:04.740 | Again,

00:07:05.420 | long thinking is not about a sudden insight,

00:07:08.640 | right?

00:07:09.380 | It is not about practicing something again and again.

00:07:13.060 | It is about that persistent intentional application of your brain where you're trying to create something new.

00:07:20.060 | So you're taking existing ideas and information.

00:07:22.620 | You're pulling them out of the original context.

00:07:24.300 | You're reordering them.

00:07:25.080 | You're recombining them.

00:07:26.020 | You're finding new associations.

00:07:27.120 | These are all terms that Coroza used.

00:07:28.760 | Trying to come up with new principles or new structures of knowledge.

00:07:32.340 | So it's like you're in the workshop of your mind taking pieces that are in there and then experimenting with putting them together until you can build a new useful structure.

00:07:45.220 | Now,

00:07:45.660 | long thinking,

00:07:46.340 | I think is so important that I want to give it a slightly more formal definition.

00:07:51.440 | I'm going to put one up here on the screen.

00:07:53.240 | So just one of many we might use.

00:07:54.620 | All right.

00:07:54.820 | So here's the definition that I have up on the screen right now.

00:07:57.760 | Long thinking is the persistent and intentional application of thought toward a specific issue,

00:08:04.360 | problem,

00:08:04.920 | or idea with the goal of creating substantial and useful new insights.

00:08:10.660 | All right.

00:08:12.860 | So this is something that I want to talk about today.

00:08:15.500 | Now,

00:08:15.700 | a natural follow-up question before we get into the weeds about,

00:08:17.940 | you know,

00:08:18.220 | what this,

00:08:18.740 | why this is useful and how to be better at it.

00:08:22.020 | The immediate follow-up question that listeners of my podcast are going to have is like,

00:08:26.520 | whoa,

00:08:26.740 | whoa,

00:08:26.920 | whoa,

00:08:27.040 | whoa.

00:08:27.180 | This sounds a lot like deep work.

00:08:28.980 | Is this just a rebranding of deep work?

00:08:31.840 | What's going on here?

00:08:32.580 | How did these two,

00:08:33.160 | these two concepts relate?

00:08:34.980 | Well,

00:08:35.720 | they are related,

00:08:36.380 | but they're not exactly the same.

00:08:37.620 | And it's worth taking a moment to explain why before we move on.

00:08:41.360 | So I'm going to put another diagram up here on the screen.

00:08:43.620 | So for people who are listening,

00:08:45.320 | what I have up here is a Venn diagram.

00:08:47.160 | You have a circle labeled long thinking.

00:08:49.360 | You have a circle labeled deep work.

00:08:51.780 | they overlap,

00:08:52.420 | but not completely.

00:08:53.920 | And there's different activities that fall in different parts of this particular diagram.

00:08:59.780 | So certainly in the intersection of long thinking and deep work,

00:09:05.300 | we can find things,

00:09:06.680 | right?

00:09:06.920 | Like,

00:09:07.160 | so for example,

00:09:07.860 | this is where you might find,

00:09:09.500 | you know,

00:09:11.540 | I'm going to put the beast,

00:09:14.700 | right?

00:09:15.740 | That was the problem I talked about in my 2012 essay I just read from.

00:09:19.780 | It's a professional problem that required long,

00:09:23.180 | persistent thinking.

00:09:24.180 | They're like slowly make progress on.

00:09:25.700 | So yeah,

00:09:25.940 | there's a lot of stuff in the intersection of long thinking and deep work,

00:09:30.140 | but there's other things that are over here in the world of long thinking that are not

00:09:35.760 | not also deep work,

00:09:37.900 | right?

00:09:38.900 | So for example,

00:09:39.780 | over here,

00:09:40.320 | we might have,

00:09:41.180 | you know,

00:09:41.660 | um,

00:09:42.240 | you're making sense of your life that benefits from long thinking.

00:09:49.920 | You're trying to take information you have from your experiences and knowledge and rebuild a new structure that makes sense of your life,

00:09:55.520 | but it has nothing really to do with work.

00:09:57.240 | Deep work is about professional activity,

00:09:59.040 | focusing without distraction on,

00:10:00.580 | uh,

00:10:00.880 | professional activities,

00:10:01.680 | uh,

00:10:02.580 | your world.

00:10:03.220 | That's another element that's in long thinking,

00:10:07.060 | but not deep work trying to make sense of your world.

00:10:08.940 | Like I just,

00:10:09.560 | I want to understand a political concept.

00:10:11.380 | I want to understand a theoretical concept.

00:10:12.820 | Uh,

00:10:13.480 | I'm,

00:10:13.800 | you know,

00:10:14.040 | I'm in this like workplace seminar and people are throwing at me like all this,

00:10:16.760 | this terminology about like critical theory or whatever.

00:10:19.600 | I want to understand what that is.

00:10:21.320 | I want to make sense of the world.

00:10:22.400 | I want to know,

00:10:23.160 | uh,

00:10:23.900 | about specifically the trees in my yard.

00:10:27.000 | It's not deep work because it's not a professional problem,

00:10:30.560 | but it benefits from long thinking.

00:10:33.140 | And then we also have things over in deep work that are not long thinking,

00:10:37.460 | right?

00:10:37.740 | So,

00:10:38.020 | you know,

00:10:38.400 | we would have under this category,

00:10:39.820 | for example,

00:10:40.520 | a big one would be,

00:10:42.080 | I'm going to put DP for deliberate practice,

00:10:43.860 | trying to systematically get better at something that's demanding.

00:10:48.040 | As I talk about about deep work and my book,

00:10:50.120 | so good,

00:10:50.360 | they can't ignore you.

00:10:51.040 | That requires deep work.

00:10:52.060 | You're practicing it.

00:10:52.880 | So you're focusing really intensely and trying to push yourself past your comfort level.

00:10:56.660 | It's not long thinking.

00:10:57.800 | You're not creating something new.

00:10:59.000 | You're not creating new thoughts.

00:11:00.020 | You're not reorganizing the information in your head and the new structures,

00:11:02.160 | but it does require a focus.

00:11:04.560 | And so it's deep work,

00:11:05.640 | but not long thinking,

00:11:06.560 | right?

00:11:07.240 | Um,

00:11:07.900 | so we have these things overlap,

00:11:09.940 | but they're not exactly the same.

00:11:11.620 | Long thinking can take you from your career into all sorts of other types of thoughts as

00:11:16.340 | pot as well.

00:11:17.560 | Deep work can benefit from long thinking,

00:11:19.900 | but there's other types of deep work activities that aren't long thinking at all.

00:11:23.140 | The thing that unifies long thinking is you are creating something new with your brain.

00:11:30.520 | You are creating something new,

00:11:32.120 | whether it's inside ideas,

00:11:33.120 | understanding or vision professional or personal doesn't matter as to the creation of new things

00:11:37.460 | from the information you already have.

00:11:38.800 | That is what Barraza was emphasizing in his definition of long thinking.

00:11:42.820 | That's what we're going to emphasize here.

00:11:45.560 | Okay.

00:11:46.040 | Uh,

00:11:47.080 | so why is long thinking important in the big picture?

00:11:51.520 | We can make big grandiose claims about it,

00:11:53.840 | right?

00:11:54.020 | It's what built the world as we know it,

00:11:58.660 | the world that emerged out of prehistory and everything about it that we think made life

00:12:04.480 | better than it was a hundred thousand years ago came out of long thinking.

00:12:08.400 | We're talking technology,

00:12:09.620 | science,

00:12:10.160 | philosophy,

00:12:10.720 | uh,

00:12:11.460 | theology that all required long thinking,

00:12:14.620 | the ability to put,

00:12:15.380 | uh,

00:12:15.880 | internally persistent thought on information you had to try to rebuild it into other

00:12:20.240 | structures that could be useful to you and others.

00:12:22.120 | We would still be in small bands of hunters and foragers fighting other bands to the death

00:12:26.160 | when our territories became too crowded,

00:12:27.640 | if not for humans developing the ability to do long thinking.

00:12:31.560 | But that's a sort of like cultural,

00:12:32.940 | historical,

00:12:33.460 | societal argument in favor for this particular ability.

00:12:36.100 | What we care about more today is how long thinking is going to help you as an individual

00:12:42.200 | flourish in your own life.

00:12:45.080 | And long thinking has three big advantages.

00:12:47.780 | Uh,

00:12:48.860 | all right,

00:12:49.140 | God help me,

00:12:49.700 | Jesse.

00:12:49.860 | I'm gonna draw a picture for each.

00:12:50.960 | I can put my arrows here.

00:12:52.300 | I'll put my arrows here first.

00:12:55.140 | I'm going to have three things that I'm going to,

00:12:59.580 | uh,

00:12:59.900 | I will draw a completely self-explanatory and fantastically rendered photo for each.

00:13:04.860 | Okay.

00:13:05.140 | There's three advantages that,

00:13:07.600 | uh,

00:13:08.040 | long thinking gives you as the individual.

00:13:10.480 | All right.

00:13:10.940 | So for the first,

00:13:11.740 | let me draw the picture as I like to do.

00:13:14.340 | I like to draw the picture first.

00:13:16.240 | And let's see if Jesse can guess what it is.

00:13:20.380 | Jesse,

00:13:21.960 | is that clear what that picture is?

00:13:23.160 | Somebody thinking.

00:13:24.720 | He's looking to a mirror.

00:13:26.080 | Oh,

00:13:26.700 | okay.

00:13:26.880 | Right.

00:13:27.160 | So we got someone looking into a mirror.

00:13:28.520 | All right.

00:13:29.200 | The first benefit of long thinking is that it helps you build over time a more nuanced and

00:13:35.440 | grounded understanding of yourself.

00:13:39.560 | Now,

00:13:39.880 | without such an understanding,

00:13:40.760 | you're going to be buffeted by the world,

00:13:42.140 | a conflicting ball of emotions and reactions.

00:13:43.940 | Like you're outraged.

00:13:44.700 | No,

00:13:44.840 | you're nihilistic.

00:13:45.360 | No,

00:13:45.540 | you're,

00:13:45.720 | you're,

00:13:45.920 | you're radical.

00:13:46.440 | No,

00:13:46.700 | you just,

00:13:47.000 | you just want to numb yourself and escape.

00:13:48.700 | Your journey through life by contrast is so much richer.

00:13:51.480 | if you can regularly take time to just be alone with your thoughts,

00:13:54.120 | then try to make sense of them,

00:13:55.180 | move them around,

00:13:56.020 | recombine,

00:13:56.540 | find associations,

00:13:57.260 | extract principles.

00:13:58.080 | Long thinking lets you do that.

00:14:00.600 | All right.

00:14:00.900 | Second advantage,

00:14:01.680 | which I will now also perfectly draw.

00:14:05.440 | All right.

00:14:05.780 | Let's see here.

00:14:06.420 | It's like a desk.

00:14:08.980 | I'm giving some,

00:14:10.100 | subtly giving some,

00:14:11.020 | Oh God.

00:14:11.480 | Oh God.

00:14:12.320 | Oh God,

00:14:14.840 | Jesse.

00:14:15.060 | I don't know what I'm doing.

00:14:17.900 | All right.

00:14:18.360 | Now that's a person at a desk.

00:14:21.660 | Yeah.

00:14:22.020 | That working.

00:14:22.500 | Yeah.

00:14:23.200 | All right.

00:14:23.600 | That is working again.

00:14:27.280 | Brilliant artwork.

00:14:29.060 | It helps you create useful things that impact the world and can provide economic

00:14:35.140 | value,

00:14:35.600 | right?

00:14:36.600 | All great innovation strategies and ideas come from long thinking.

00:14:40.020 | If you're adept at this,

00:14:41.800 | you will find a much clearer and more rewarding sense of purpose.

00:14:44.720 | So clearly this is what I was using long thinking for in the example from the

00:14:47.860 | beginning of the episode.

00:14:48.960 | It was helping me figure out how to make progress on a really complicated theory

00:14:53.720 | problem that me and my collaborators called the beast.

00:14:55.680 | I published a lot of papers in 2012.

00:14:58.420 | So I don't know what that was at the height of my theory career.

00:15:01.280 | Earlier when I was,

00:15:02.780 | you know,

00:15:02.980 | a new professor,

00:15:03.640 | I was posting a lot of papers back then.

00:15:05.100 | Um,

00:15:05.420 | so I don't know which of the papers that was,

00:15:07.420 | but I was doing a lot of long thinking back then.

00:15:10.820 | So that was the advantage I was getting,

00:15:12.580 | but there's a third as well.

00:15:15.060 | I have like a,

00:15:15.860 | uh,

00:15:16.760 | it's not an abstract artwork to do here,

00:15:18.760 | but it's,

00:15:20.420 | I'm doing artwork here.

00:15:21.240 | That's going to represent something.

00:15:22.920 | All right.

00:15:23.620 | So I'm drawing for people who are listening,

00:15:25.240 | not watching.

00:15:25.800 | I'm drawing what can only be described as like expertly rendered humans.

00:15:30.080 | and they're each holding signs.

00:15:31.800 | That's clear.

00:15:32.260 | Right,

00:15:32.460 | Jesse.

00:15:32.660 | Yeah.

00:15:33.460 | Right.

00:15:34.440 | So there's like a lot of people like holding up signs and then,

00:15:37.660 | oh,

00:15:37.820 | this is going to get profound.

00:15:38.700 | Jesse's going to wipe a tear away from his face when I'm done drawing this.

00:15:42.900 | There's some are someone over on the side.

00:15:45.080 | This is,

00:15:45.760 | this is not looking like a hope.

00:15:46.780 | It looks kind of bad.

00:15:50.220 | Jesse.

00:15:50.400 | He's helping up someone.

00:15:51.780 | You get that?

00:15:52.840 | That's yeah.

00:15:53.440 | Yeah.

00:15:53.680 | Yeah.

00:15:53.900 | Yeah.

00:15:54.200 | Yeah.

00:15:54.380 | He's doing something to someone.

00:15:55.260 | Yeah.

00:15:56.000 | So it's like,

00:15:56.880 | uh,

00:15:57.540 | there's a whole group of people like waving signs,

00:15:59.900 | but someone else is off to the side,

00:16:01.240 | actually like literally helping someone.

00:16:02.700 | So what is that supposed to represent?

00:16:04.600 | Uh,

00:16:05.040 | it helps you avoid fall into the trap of an easy tribalism with the out,

00:16:09.160 | the ability to apply long thinking to important issues,

00:16:12.100 | issues you care about issues that are important to the world.

00:16:14.720 | You will fall back on a more easy tribalism where you just choose a tribe to be

00:16:19.100 | yours.

00:16:19.480 | And you're like,

00:16:20.460 | all I care about is making sure that we keep calling all the other tribes

00:16:24.940 | blackhearted and scoundrels.

00:16:26.760 | And I just want to focus on hating them.

00:16:29.280 | Instead of having original thoughts or extracting my own principles for

00:16:32.360 | understanding the world.

00:16:33.700 | I will just consume short summaries of what the leaders of my tribe,

00:16:37.240 | uh,

00:16:37.920 | a spouse is being true.

00:16:39.040 | And then I'll just like parrot those.

00:16:40.840 | I,

00:16:41.040 | I have no real understanding of the world.

00:16:43.300 | I just want my tribe to succeed.

00:16:44.740 | I kind of pretend like I'm helping the world,

00:16:46.840 | but really,

00:16:47.400 | um,

00:16:48.200 | I'm just liking being part of a crowd.

00:16:50.520 | The result of that sort of easy tribalism is,

00:16:54.360 | you know,

00:16:54.580 | often a mixture of anger and despair that might help you feel sort of alive in

00:16:58.240 | the moment.

00:16:58.600 | Like it gives you some chemicals,

00:16:59.880 | but long thinkers instead find a real fascination and beauty.

00:17:03.660 | And challenge and confronting the issues of the day.

00:17:05.640 | They have clarity that comes not just from a desire to win over another

00:17:08.900 | tribe,

00:17:09.300 | but from putting in the time required to grapple with something difficult and

00:17:13.380 | find their way to its roots and really believe to their core.

00:17:16.400 | This is important to me and I'm willing to go and act on it.

00:17:20.700 | all of the great profits and activists of history from Jeremiah through MLK all

00:17:25.140 | depended on long thinking,

00:17:26.980 | not an easy tribalism.

00:17:29.200 | So for those three reasons,

00:17:30.720 | self-reflection production of things that really are valuable and,

00:17:35.800 | uh,

00:17:36.340 | the ability to escape tribalism and like really know what you believe in and really

00:17:39.420 | try to make a difference.

00:17:40.860 | All of that depends on long thinking.

00:17:42.300 | You take long thinking away,

00:17:43.400 | you have a much more impoverished life.

00:17:46.260 | And I think a lot of people today are suffering from exactly that type of

00:17:50.720 | impoverishment.

00:17:51.420 | All right.

00:17:52.940 | Brings me to the second part of this discussion.

00:17:57.220 | why are we losing our ability to do long thinking?

00:18:00.580 | Well,

00:18:01.700 | obviously the,

00:18:02.520 | the general cause,

00:18:03.680 | right?

00:18:03.980 | This is me.

00:18:04.540 | This is my show.

00:18:05.340 | This is a show about understanding and responding to technology in a way that

00:18:08.920 | helps human flourishing.

00:18:09.700 | Clearly the problems come back to our modern technological environment.

00:18:12.860 | They almost always do in this show,

00:18:14.140 | but I want to drill a little bit deeper.

00:18:15.720 | I think there are two particular reasons that come out of our modern technological

00:18:20.240 | environment that are more specifically making long thinking something that's

00:18:24.740 | becoming more and more difficult for the average person.

00:18:27.200 | The first thing is the way that digital distractions undermine our comfort with

00:18:32.680 | sustained attention,

00:18:34.260 | right?

00:18:34.600 | Long thinking requires sustained attention because you have to keep your thoughts

00:18:39.280 | intentionally and persistently on trying to work with the information you have

00:18:43.220 | and try out different structures.

00:18:44.260 | Your mind's eye has to be focused and unwavering that requires sustained attention.

00:18:48.940 | The digital distractions that are readily abundant in the modern digital

00:18:53.380 | environment as we know makes us worse at sustaining attention.

00:18:59.080 | That's because we have hyper palatable content.

00:19:01.760 | So we have algorithmically curated content that's selected for our own particular interest.

00:19:06.240 | It gives us a pure reward signal.

00:19:07.440 | We've talked about this for the last couple of months on this show that creates a bundle

00:19:11.880 | of neurons in your short-term motivation system that are super well-tuned to giving a

00:19:15.960 | super clear vote for pick up phone, pick up phone, pick up phone, because it's getting

00:19:20.840 | such a clear, consistent reward with the occasional intermittent, very big reward.

00:19:25.440 | That vote is powerful.

00:19:27.080 | And so you're constantly breaking up your attention and you get less comfortable sustaining it because

00:19:31.860 | you can't politically speaking in this metaphor, you can't win the vote against the pick up the

00:19:36.180 | phone neurons that long before you get exhausted.

00:19:39.300 | In the professional setting, then we also have the hyperactive hive mind collaboration

00:19:43.760 | scourge where too much work is happening with back and forth unsynchronized messaging, which

00:19:47.320 | means you constantly have to check email, you constantly have to check Slack, and that makes

00:19:52.500 | it impossible for you to let your attention actually do the slow focusing on a single topic.

00:19:56.620 | So we've got hyper palatable content, hyperactive hive mind.

00:19:59.700 | You put those two things together, we really lose our ability to sustain attention.

00:20:04.160 | One of the many casualties of that common problem that we talk about a lot is long thinking is

00:20:10.520 | something that's uncomfortable because you can't keep that mind's eye focused when it's

00:20:14.840 | phone, email, phone, email.

00:20:16.280 | All right.

00:20:16.740 | The second reason the modern technological environment is undermining long thinking is that the necessity

00:20:23.580 | for this activity, the things that drove us towards some sort of long thinking on a regular

00:20:29.660 | basis have been significantly reduced due to technological replacements in particular tools

00:20:36.040 | like Google, AI and social media.

00:20:39.040 | So for example, we used to do self-reflection style long thinking much more often because

00:20:46.580 | we had a lot of time alone with our thoughts.

00:20:48.640 | And those were often the thoughts we were having.

00:20:50.420 | Hey, something happened.

00:20:52.480 | I'm upset about it.

00:20:53.160 | I'm excited about it.

00:20:54.120 | I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, down on myself for like this day went really poorly at this like work

00:21:00.500 | offsite, like what's going on in my life, what's going on professionally.

00:21:03.140 | And then when we're alone with those thoughts, we have no, uh, nothing else to do, but to start

00:21:08.460 | moving them around and let me, uh, file them away and take this out.

00:21:11.920 | Let me try recombinations and new associations.

00:21:14.260 | Here's the structures I use for myself.

00:21:16.280 | Meaning now, maybe I need to do some renovations over here.

00:21:18.560 | We got used to that out of necessity because we had a lot of time with our thoughts.

00:21:21.920 | And those were a lot of thoughts we had, I mean, think about the like teenager alone

00:21:25.940 | in their room playing the, the Lisa Loeb songs, right?

00:21:30.660 | What are you doing up there?

00:21:31.940 | You're writing your diary and like trying to make sense of your thoughts today, when you

00:21:37.520 | have like smartphones that can deliver alternative programming that will distract you in any

00:21:41.880 | situation, we're not forced to do that anymore.

00:21:44.940 | We can numb away our thoughts or avoid the thoughts, the teenager who's upset, the

00:21:51.620 | business person upset after the bad meeting.

00:21:53.560 | We can let father tick tock, take that off our hands.

00:21:56.660 | And so we don't get that experience.

00:21:59.460 | We don't get that experience with a self-reflection.

00:22:01.860 | Okay.

00:22:02.020 | The other way, the other thing that we've lost necessity for long thinking that we've

00:22:06.540 | lost has to do with how we just understood ideas.

00:22:09.620 | It used to be if you didn't actually go pursue information about something, you were clearly

00:22:16.880 | ignorant about it.

00:22:17.600 | Like if, if you weren't reading the newspaper, you didn't know how to talk about what was

00:22:21.660 | happening in a political campaign.

00:22:23.660 | If like the, the day we're recording, this is the mayoral election in New York city.

00:22:29.860 | If this was like the mayoral elections when I was a kid, this is like the, the Giuliani

00:22:34.120 | Dinkins before that Dinkins like that type of years.

00:22:36.980 | If you weren't reading the newspaper, like you would have no idea.

00:22:41.440 | Like I have no idea what's going on today.

00:22:43.360 | I can, I can grab almost any kid and they'll have like something to say because like, they've

00:22:47.260 | seen some Mondani Tik Toks or you get these little quick summaries of things and you can

00:22:52.460 | kind of feel in the know, you can see what your tribe feels about something without having

00:22:56.520 | to like actually just read more raw information.

00:22:59.020 | And so you don't need that today.

00:23:00.640 | But back then for anything you want to know more about, you had to kind of take in raw information,

00:23:04.360 | but not raw, but like not takes.

00:23:07.540 | Not like, here's how you should feel how your tribe feels about it.

00:23:09.760 | It's like, it's a 2000 word article in like your local paper.

00:23:14.440 | It's a, it's a news report, but Dan rather, right?

00:23:18.220 | It's you, uh, uh, a special at PBS.

00:23:21.660 | It's a book.

00:23:22.180 | So you had to like engage with a lot more information that wasn't yet.

00:23:25.060 | I'm not gonna say wrong and say unrefined that you had the, didn't refine yourself to

00:23:29.020 | pull out of it, some understanding and compare it to other things, you know, and be like, okay,

00:23:31.880 | so how do I feel about this?

00:23:33.100 | Not today.

00:23:34.600 | Your phone can do this for you.

00:23:37.360 | Social media will just like, okay, I kind of follow people in my tribe.

00:23:40.300 | I get the quick takes.

00:23:41.140 | I like this guy.

00:23:42.120 | I don't like this guy.

00:23:43.040 | This guy is great.

00:23:44.380 | It's like young, sexy mayor.

00:23:46.040 | Like, no, no, he's scary.

00:23:46.980 | Socialist.

00:23:47.480 | Or like you get the answer right away.

00:23:49.100 | But in those old days, you had to like, I'm gonna have to read about this.

00:23:52.040 | And then on my own, figure out how I feel about that.

00:23:55.600 | Right.

00:23:57.380 | Because you weren't getting this information in a, in a way that was already partisanized.

00:24:05.620 | So you would read kind of boring, unrefined information and then say, how do I fit this

00:24:08.840 | into things?

00:24:09.240 | Oh, I guess I like this guy.

00:24:10.340 | I don't like this guy.

00:24:11.000 | I have reservations.

00:24:11.560 | We'll see.

00:24:12.000 | I want to see this or that.

00:24:13.720 | And that, that was, uh, that act of having to integrate less refined information to your

00:24:18.280 | existing understanding.

00:24:19.040 | So you didn't seem ignorant or dumb required long thinking.

00:24:22.560 | But again, we don't do it today because you don't have to, we can just tell you how you're

00:24:27.540 | supposed to feel.

00:24:28.280 | Everyone has an opinion on everything.

00:24:29.800 | People know very little about it.

00:24:31.420 | I know this Jesse, because I've been doing a lot of AI criticism.

00:24:34.600 | Everyone has an opinion about AI.

00:24:36.720 | Um, and so, so few people know anything about it.

00:24:40.240 | It's, it's, uh, it's crazy.

00:24:43.000 | I think I'm going to grow a beard like Eliezer Udowski, and then I'm going to seem more profound.

00:24:47.380 | And I'm going to do, here's what I'm going to do.

00:24:50.000 | I'm going to wear a wizard's hat, like a Harry Potter style wizard's hat.

00:24:54.400 | And I think that'll just make it seem when I'm going to have a long gray beard, um, like

00:24:59.240 | Rick Rubin.

00:24:59.980 | And then I think people that's it.

00:25:01.760 | And then I'll just, whatever I say about AI, people, that's probably right.

00:25:04.180 | That wizard knows what he's talking about.

00:25:05.400 | I'll talk real profoundly.

00:25:06.720 | Um, so, so that's, what's going on.

00:25:09.200 | So that's the second reason why technology undermined our ability to, to, to do long

00:25:13.400 | thinking.

00:25:13.620 | So, okay.

00:25:14.200 | Just to summarize issue number one, it fragmented, sustained attention.

00:25:18.540 | Now long thinking is hard issue.

00:25:20.700 | Number two, technology made information that's already refined that just to tell you exactly

00:25:26.460 | what you need to think and know, uh, gets rid of the like natural need to have to actually

00:25:31.200 | process less refined information into your own personal understanding structures.

00:25:34.420 | People don't have personal understanding structures anymore.

00:25:36.120 | They join teams and then they get a quick telegraph updates of how that team feels about

00:25:41.460 | things.

00:25:41.820 | Don't need long thinking in that world either.

00:25:44.000 | All right.

00:25:45.280 | So I've made my case now that long thinking is both important for flourishing life and due

00:25:52.320 | to the modern technological environment is diminishing.

00:25:55.280 | The next big question then is how do you get this skill back if you want it?

00:26:01.460 | That's what we're going to tackle next, right after we take a quick break to hear from the

00:26:06.840 | sponsors that make this show possible.

00:26:09.060 | All right.

00:26:11.260 | This is a true story.

00:26:11.860 | When I arrived at the deep work HQ this morning, they were in the process of hanging their traditional

00:26:17.480 | large Christmas wreath, uh, on the second floor of the building above the door.

00:26:20.960 | Do you see that coming in today, Jesse, with the flashing lights?

00:26:23.700 | I missed it, actually.

00:26:24.840 | How could you miss it?

00:26:25.680 | It's massive.

00:26:26.260 | It's flashing.

00:26:27.040 | But I was also like flusher because I forgot my keys.

00:26:29.580 | Yeah.

00:26:29.840 | Jesse was locked out of the HQ.

00:26:30.840 | But anyways, the point about the wreath being up there is the holiday seasons have now

00:26:35.480 | officially arrived.

00:26:36.800 | Now is the time to get your space ready for the season.

00:26:39.580 | And this is where Wayfair enters the scene.

00:26:42.860 | Whether you're talking about outdoor decorations or those like little decorative touches indoors,

00:26:47.040 | or maybe you're talking about you want some, uh, you need more seating because you're going

00:26:50.900 | to be hosting the big, like Christmas dinner this year, or maybe you need new cookware to

00:26:55.420 | cook that dinner, whatever it is you're looking for, for your home.

00:26:58.260 | Wayfair has you covered.

00:27:00.300 | It's the place to shop for all things home.

00:27:03.300 | Now, here's why I'm telling you about this.

00:27:04.480 | Now this is exciting all month long Wayfair is holding a massive black Friday sale where

00:27:12.620 | things you can get things for up to 70% off, right?

00:27:17.600 | These are can't miss sales and they're available all month long.

00:27:20.900 | And with Wayfair is fast and easy shipping.

00:27:23.720 | You can get what you need in time for the holidays.

00:27:26.980 | Now here's why I like Wayfair.

00:27:28.120 | The price is good.

00:27:29.680 | Yes.

00:27:30.160 | Uh, the shipping is easy.

00:27:31.800 | Yes.

00:27:32.100 | That's no small thing.

00:27:33.520 | Even for big things, you'll eat that you can, they'll even assemble it for you.

00:27:36.200 | But, and this is the key.

00:27:38.140 | They have great styles.

00:27:40.920 | You can get really interesting things from Wayfair that you're not going to find anywhere else.

00:27:45.100 | Like when we redid our back patio, we needed something furniture out there.

00:27:48.980 | That was interesting and functional.

00:27:50.520 | We went to one of those like outdoor stores.

00:27:52.480 | You can go to in like the fancy malls where like the price for, uh, an outdoor table was

00:27:58.820 | like roughly the price of a, uh, Boeing F 16 fighter jet.

00:28:03.340 | It's just crazy arbitrary prices, right?

00:28:05.340 | It's like, forget that wayfair prices that made sense, but like interesting things, things

00:28:09.600 | we put out there that we actually liked the way they looked a few clicks later, we were

00:28:12.440 | done.

00:28:12.760 | The wayfair should be your go-to destination for everything home, no matter your style or

00:28:16.800 | budget.

00:28:17.280 | Um, and they make spruce spruce, spruce in your, uh, spruce up your home easy and fast

00:28:20.820 | with free shipping, even on the big stuff.

00:28:23.040 | They'll even help you set it up.

00:28:25.440 | So don't miss out on early black Friday deals.

00:28:29.160 | Head to wayfair.com.

00:28:31.320 | Now to shop away fares, black Friday deals for up to 70% off.

00:28:36.360 | That's w a Y F a I R.com sale ends December 7th.

00:28:44.280 | All right, let's also talk Grammarly and the knowledge economy.

00:28:46.940 | The ability to communicate clearly is everything.

00:28:49.260 | Not only does it help you do your job, but if you communicate well, it's going to help you

00:28:53.600 | get promoted.

00:28:54.180 | So you really should care about your communication, but most people struggle because writing is

00:28:58.580 | hard and it's not obvious how to get better at it.

00:29:00.620 | This is where Grammarly can enter the scene.

00:29:02.900 | Grammarly is the essential AI communication assistant that boosts both the productivity and

00:29:07.920 | quality of your writing.

00:29:09.400 | I don't think people really realize how powerful this tool has gotten in recent years.

00:29:13.120 | I want to tell you about a particular feature that I've been enjoying, the proofreading agent.

00:29:18.240 | All right.

00:29:19.020 | So here's a real example.

00:29:19.840 | I had to write an email that was going out to like a somewhat large group of people.

00:29:23.500 | So I typed out a quick draft, but before sending, I had the proofreading agent take a look.

00:29:29.140 | Of course it found some straightforward mistakes.

00:29:31.620 | You know, Grammarly is good at that, which is great, but it can do a lot more.

00:29:35.360 | There's a whole list of functions you can apply.

00:29:37.100 | So like when I clicked on sharpen opening point, it suggested ways to be less wishy-washy in

00:29:43.900 | my language in the opening sentences, which actually made that a better email without me having

00:29:50.320 | to like sit there and pour over it.

00:29:51.640 | Like I was writing a New Yorker piece, right?

00:29:54.100 | So that was really useful.

00:29:55.560 | I'm not the only one to find Grammarly so helpful.

00:29:57.440 | 90% of professionals say Grammarly has saved them time writing and editing.

00:30:01.440 | 93% of professionals report that Grammarly helps them get more work done.

00:30:05.280 | It even has a new feature called AI chat.

00:30:07.260 | It can help you anytime, whether you want to like kick off your idea or just polish some

00:30:11.620 | things, you can just type right into it and it, it will help you right there.

00:30:14.940 | So Grammarly helps you produce better writing faster.

00:30:17.600 | And that is incredibly valuable.

00:30:19.640 | Sign up for free and experience how Grammarly can elevate your professional writing from

00:30:24.700 | start to finish.

00:30:25.460 | Visit grammarly.com slash podcast.

00:30:28.260 | That's grammarly.com slash podcast.

00:30:31.280 | All right, Jesse, let's get back to our deep dive.

00:30:35.200 | All right.

00:30:36.040 | As promised in our final section here, we are going to get into the ways that you can

00:30:39.560 | get better at long thinking now that you're convinced that it's worth it and you need some

00:30:45.360 | practice.

00:30:45.860 | So I'm going to suggest a concrete strategy and I'm actually going to get this strategy

00:30:51.700 | from an essay.

00:30:53.940 | I first published all the way back in 2009 is like the early days of my blog when my writing

00:31:00.040 | was still student facing.

00:31:01.800 | It describes a strategy that I started back then and I still do today.

00:31:07.600 | And I think it is the best training, the best single thing you can do to train your ability

00:31:11.500 | to do long thinking.

00:31:13.460 | All right.

00:31:14.200 | I'm going to load this on the screen here for people who are watching instead of just listening.

00:31:17.220 | You'll see here.

00:31:18.440 | The name of this method is the notebook method.

00:31:20.960 | Now the subtitle says, how can pen and paper transform you into a star student?

00:31:24.800 | Because again, I was, I was writing just for students back then, but stay with me because

00:31:29.420 | this advice is relevant to anyone.

00:31:31.620 | That's what I learned as I, uh, as I advanced in my career and kept using it.

00:31:35.980 | All right.

00:31:37.040 | So I'm going to, uh, scroll down here a little bit and I'm going to start at the paragraph

00:31:42.540 | that says the idea is simple.

00:31:45.880 | There's four steps here.

00:31:47.420 | I'm going to read each of them.

00:31:48.900 | Number one, buy a sturdy college ruled notebook dedicated to the relevant class, right?

00:31:56.100 | So that was for school, but we can just generalize that to say to the, the, the relevant problem

00:32:00.180 | that you want to make progress on.

00:32:02.180 | Number two, buy a good pen.

00:32:03.720 | Nothing beats a black uniball micro 0.5 millimeter.

00:32:06.620 | I keep talking.

00:32:07.340 | I've been talking about those.

00:32:08.240 | Jesse is literally holding one.

00:32:09.480 | Show us Jesse.

00:32:10.100 | I adopted it because I was, I was a fan.

00:32:12.500 | I've been, so you, this is proof.

00:32:14.020 | I've been using those for a long time.

00:32:15.360 | Number three, take your notebook and pen and go to the most relaxing, meditative, non-distracting

00:32:22.100 | place possible.

00:32:22.980 | The deep stacks of the library is okay.

00:32:25.420 | Hiking 30 minutes into the woods or onto the dunes, overlooking a windswept springtime beach

00:32:30.560 | is even better.

00:32:32.520 | Number four, spend one to three hours working out of your work, working out your thinking

00:32:38.760 | on the task at hand in your notebook.

00:32:41.680 | Spend the last 20 minutes, carefully summarizing your results on a clean page that you mark with

00:32:46.900 | the date and a title.

00:32:47.920 | For example, here's a snapshot from a page of my PhD thesis notebook.

00:32:52.100 | There we go, Jesse.

00:32:52.800 | Look at that.

00:32:53.300 | All right.

00:32:54.660 | So I recognize this.

00:32:57.240 | Uh, this was from my doctoral dissertation, which I defended later that year.

00:33:01.520 | The composition algorithm, you're probably right now, I know Jesse, you're seeing multiple mistakes,

00:33:07.540 | probably as, as you're looking at this, but I actually remembered it.

00:33:12.500 | It was, it was taking two, um, two randomized algorithms.

00:33:16.640 | One of which was simulating a channel and one of which is simulating an algorithm that uses

00:33:20.680 | that channel, um, treating them formally as, as, as formal IO automata.

00:33:25.920 | Uh, and then it's a, it's a systematic algorithm.

00:33:28.620 | So it's a, it's a conceptual algorithm, not something you actually run that just shows

00:33:31.980 | the existence of a combined composed algorithm in which the channel, the, the algorithm on

00:33:37.280 | this channel, uh, simulator behaves like the algorithm on the channel.

00:33:40.160 | It was a pain to work out these details.

00:33:42.200 | Um, but that was a big part of this thesis.

00:33:45.140 | This was actually, interestingly, the work I presented in Bologna and I'm, there we go full

00:33:51.460 | circle, right?

00:33:52.240 | This should look familiar because that's exactly what I was talking about in the article from

00:33:55.480 | the beginning of this, uh, podcast from 2012, when I was at Berkeley working on a problem

00:34:00.660 | as a professor that was three years later.

00:34:02.420 | So clearly this notebook method of, I'm going to take a notebook, I'm going to go somewhere

00:34:06.680 | scenic and I'm going to sit there and just work in the scenic environment on this problem.

00:34:13.440 | And then in the last 20 minutes, summarizing the best I can with a title and date to kind

00:34:17.420 | of make it all official.

00:34:18.180 | That's exactly 2012.

00:34:20.220 | I was still doing that.

00:34:21.160 | I still do it today.

00:34:22.680 | So this, this method has stuck with me.

00:34:25.140 | Why does it work?

00:34:26.940 | Well, I'm going to scroll down farther in this article because here was my best explanation

00:34:30.640 | for why the notebook method is so, uh, successful.

00:34:34.060 | I said, it's power sources from the following truths.

00:34:36.740 | Number one, writing down your thoughts forces you to clarify what you're thinking and confront

00:34:42.700 | ambiguities or inconsistencies.

00:34:44.700 | It's hard work.

00:34:46.620 | You'll probably feel painful resistance the first few times you try this method, but you

00:34:50.480 | must persevere.

00:34:51.760 | Eventually you gain familiarity with a novel sensation of deep thinking.

00:34:54.640 | Number two, you can't check email using a spiral bound notebook.

00:34:59.220 | You also can't update your Facebook profile or tweet about your YouTube channel.

00:35:03.200 | That's somewhat timely.

00:35:05.780 | It's that's from a while ago, 15 years ago, but it's those technologies still exist.

00:35:09.120 | If you're high up in the library stacks or better yet in the woods or at the beach, it's

00:35:12.800 | just you and your notebook.

00:35:13.660 | Eventually your urge towards distraction will give away and three paper facilitates creative

00:35:17.500 | thinking.

00:35:17.880 | You can draw arrows and circle concepts and sketch structure.

00:35:20.640 | Something about a good ballpoint scraping across a thick grain paper stock unlocks area

00:35:24.760 | of your mind that tend to hibernate when you're slumped over your laptop in a crowded

00:35:28.600 | study lounge.

00:35:29.900 | I think those explanations are exactly right.

00:35:32.220 | Writing down your thoughts as opposed to just keeping your head makes you be more organized.

00:35:38.240 | That's exactly right.

00:35:39.160 | Your thinking is clearer, but it makes your long thinking better.

00:35:42.220 | Being without technology in a very scenic place reduces distracting poles, helps you focus

00:35:50.740 | more.

00:35:51.240 | I kept pushing for inspiring places in this article.

00:35:54.420 | So yeah, library stack, sure.

00:35:56.100 | Beach better.

00:35:57.540 | So if you're in an inspiring place that gives you an extra bit of energy, it's so different.

00:36:03.440 | You feel chemicals, but they're not the standard chemicals.

00:36:05.680 | It really unlocks new things.

00:36:07.080 | And finally, you're in a paper form.

00:36:08.880 | You can draw pictures and squares and boxes and mathematical formulas and connect things

00:36:12.360 | together with arrows.

00:36:13.080 | And so it unlocks as sort of like a freer type of thinking than if you're just trying to

00:36:17.180 | hold something in your head or just typing.

00:36:18.680 | I think those reasons do a very good job.

00:36:21.460 | Whatever identified back then in 2009, there's a very good job of explaining why this method

00:36:26.000 | works.

00:36:26.360 | And so this is what I want you to do.

00:36:28.720 | If you want to become a better long thinker, implement the notebook method at least once

00:36:33.860 | a week, preferably in the most scenic places possible.

00:36:37.140 | It could be a work problem.

00:36:39.180 | It could be something about yourself, like a self-reflection thing you're working on.

00:36:43.380 | It could be visioning or planning for your future, like what your deeper life is missing.

00:36:47.980 | It could be about making sense of something in the world that's catching your attention.

00:36:51.000 | It could be about clarifying your personal principles, values, or beliefs.

00:36:53.580 | Whatever the target, take that good notebook, take that good pen, go somewhere scenic, one

00:36:58.760 | to three hours, last 20 minutes, write it down.

00:37:00.560 | This is calisthenics for your ability to produce thoughts.

00:37:03.980 | So if reading hard things like we talked about a couple episodes ago is like calisthenics for

00:37:10.100 | being able to understand hard things, for a mind that has new connections and can take

00:37:16.460 | in complicated thoughts.

00:37:17.780 | The notebook method is calisthenics for then how do you produce original complex thoughts

00:37:23.160 | of yourself?

00:37:24.060 | So it's a, you read, combine that with the notebook method, and now you have a brain

00:37:28.720 | that's internet proof.

00:37:29.480 | Now you have a brain that's algorithm proof.

00:37:31.340 | There's other things you can do to become a better long thinker, but I'm just saying notebook

00:37:35.780 | method once a week.

00:37:36.700 | Simple, but that really does make a big difference.

00:37:40.240 | I still do that to this day.

00:37:42.300 | The idea is not new.

00:37:43.420 | I'm not the only one who does this.

00:37:45.260 | There was a section in my 2019 book, Digital Minimalism, that I particularly liked, that

00:37:49.940 | I get into, where I go and visit the soldiers, the old soldiers' retirement home up now in

00:37:55.440 | like Petworth in DC, but it was sort of in the hills above where the White House is in

00:37:59.540 | DC.

00:37:59.880 | And Abraham Lincoln, I wrote about this, how Abraham Lincoln would go there.

00:38:03.260 | That was his like his weekend retreat up into the hills to this house they had up there.

00:38:07.260 | And he would go there to basically apply the notebook method.

00:38:11.260 | He would wander the grounds and think and try to make sense of whatever the issue is of

00:38:17.480 | the day.

00:38:17.800 | And he would write his ideas, not always in a notebook, but famously on scraps of paper,

00:38:22.840 | some of which he would hide in the lining or store in the lining of his sort of famous

00:38:28.540 | stove top style hat.

00:38:30.800 | It was up there wandering, trying to make sense of his thoughts that he reached like his decisions

00:38:36.240 | about the Emancipation Proclamation and some of his biggest military decisions.

00:38:39.900 | So I'm not the first to come up with the notebook method, but it is a great way of extracting

00:38:43.840 | long thinking from your day.

00:38:45.020 | All right.

00:38:46.520 | Jesse, let's do some takeaways from today's discussion.

00:39:01.120 | We like to imagine that our brain is a neutral observer of an objective world that surrounds

00:39:08.660 | us and that our daily experience is therefore determined by whatever we happen to encounter

00:39:13.720 | in the world that day.

00:39:14.720 | But this model isn't right.

00:39:16.680 | Our experience is determined by a combination of what we encounter and all of the relevant

00:39:22.900 | mental structures that we have built in our minds.

00:39:25.740 | It's the structures that help us explain ourselves and our beliefs and our understanding about

00:39:29.300 | how other people and the world functions.

00:39:31.140 | If you're comfortable with long thinking, you can create these structures in ways that are

00:39:36.820 | meaningful and important to you.

00:39:39.900 | This allows you in a literal sense to help shape the world you live in to be more rich.

00:39:46.640 | Now, if you allow instead the modern technological environment to degrade your long thinking ability,

00:39:52.200 | you'll end up encountering the world through impoverished mental structures that were implanted

00:39:56.020 | haphazardly in your mind through distracting content and random things you happen to come across.

00:40:02.600 | You are in that case, letting a bunch of random algorithms essentially shape your world into

00:40:06.420 | something that's most likely to be nihilistic, angry, random, or boring.

00:40:10.420 | So if you don't want your phone to determine your world, then you need to re-embrace the

00:40:14.680 | joys and power of long thinking, not that hard to do.

00:40:17.920 | You buy a notebook, you hike somewhere scenic, you work out a complicated thought on paper,

00:40:23.400 | you end with a clear summary, and you repeat.

00:40:26.320 | It's a simple habit, but over time, it will help you re-engage with long thinking.

00:40:32.760 | And as long thinking becomes more common and comfortable for you, you will be able to

00:40:36.620 | transform your world into something that is much more meaningful and satisfying.

00:40:40.260 | So give long thinking a try.

00:40:42.260 | All right, there you go.

00:40:44.500 | Uh, we still have a lot of great show ahead and they just pulled a collection of questions

00:40:48.640 | here that, that a lot of them are about like notebooks and trying to take notes and, and

00:40:52.400 | organizing your thoughts.

00:40:53.500 | And so like, we're going to get into the nitty gritty of, of sort of how you have notebook

00:40:57.800 | assisted long thinking.

00:40:59.680 | We have a case study, we've got a call.

00:41:01.520 | Uh, and because this is the first episode we're recording in November at the end, I'm going

00:41:05.780 | to tell you, I'll review briefly the five books I read during the

00:41:10.100 | last month, uh, before we do that though, let's see, let's do some, uh, housekeeping.

00:41:16.580 | All right, Jesse.

00:41:17.540 | So they can find these episodes.

00:41:18.880 | If you're listening on YouTube, just search for, uh, what's it Cal Newport media.

00:41:23.780 | You'll see the latest episode, uh, subscribe to the newsletter.

00:41:27.700 | If you haven't already that Cal newport.com.

00:41:30.460 | So the, the newsletter discussion, it often compliments the podcast.

00:41:35.580 | It'll take it in a different direction or add something that wasn't in the episode or vice

00:41:40.740 | versa.

00:41:41.140 | So if you like the podcast, you really got to have that newsletter.

00:41:43.300 | It's also where I announce things and talk about things and Hey, here's a book I recommend,

00:41:47.320 | or, you know, I'm going to be showing up in your town to talk.

00:41:49.260 | So it comes out the same time every week.

00:41:51.420 | Yeah.

00:41:51.620 | It's the same time.

00:41:52.180 | It's, it's a, they come out together.

00:41:53.660 | You'll get it in your inbox and the newsletter will tell you what's in the podcast.

00:41:57.420 | And so you got to subscribe to that.

00:41:58.740 | I bet that's been around for a long time, 2007.

00:42:01.180 | Yeah.

00:42:02.060 | You could subscribe Cal newport.com's around for a while.

00:42:04.060 | Um, and we love your questions.

00:42:05.580 | Jesse, tell us about, uh, how to submit questions, what type of questions you're looking for.

00:42:09.260 | You can go to the deep life.com slash listen.

00:42:11.980 | There's two links there where you can submit audio questions or written questions.

00:42:16.220 | So just go there and check it out.

00:42:18.300 | Make them short and sweet.

00:42:19.980 | Um, preferably questions about different ways of either understanding technology or responding

00:42:25.740 | to different technologies, whether in your work or your personal life, um, are preferred.

00:42:30.220 | All right.

00:42:31.260 | So speaking of questions, I think Jesse, it's time for us now to hear some questions from our listeners.

00:42:38.140 | All right.

00:42:38.460 | First questions from Tara.

00:42:39.660 | How do you organize your notebooks physical or remarkable for your books and New Yorker articles?

00:42:44.940 | Um, well, I'll still say I'm still using, by the way, people have asked me about this.

00:42:49.580 | I'm still using my remarkable.

00:42:50.940 | I'm now upgraded to a remarkable paper pro.

00:42:53.900 | Um, and I still really liked that product.

00:42:56.060 | Usually I kind of fall out of favor of products that aren't just like notebooks and

00:42:59.020 | 0.5 millimeter ballpoint pens, but I've stuck with it.

00:43:02.140 | All right.

00:43:02.380 | So here's how I, uh, use my different technologies.

00:43:06.140 | I still have physical single purpose notebooks.

00:43:08.220 | I use field note notebooks or, uh, particular issues that I want to come back to again and again.

00:43:12.940 | So if I'm like working on a book or I'm going through like an important, uh,

00:43:16.300 | life decision, or I'm trying to do like an overhaul or I want to like do something like

00:43:22.620 | specific that I want to come back to again and again, I like to have a single purpose.

00:43:26.460 | Practical notebook that I can bring with me and just let those thoughts begin to collect.

00:43:31.340 | I use notebooks on my remarkable.

00:43:33.820 | So virtual notebooks on my remarkable e-ink notebook for a lot of ongoing projects where

00:43:38.860 | I need to like organize, especially notes that are taken over time.

00:43:41.740 | Like if I'm having a series of meetings, like, uh, I'm on the board of trustees for my kids'

00:43:46.300 | schools, I want to like have a notebook to keep track of those notes from like the different

00:43:50.780 | meetings and they're dated like that type of notebook.

00:43:52.860 | I just keep as a virtual notebook within my remarkable, my like Halloween design planning.

00:43:58.060 | Uh, I do, uh, in the remarkable, I actually got a lot of, I was happy Jesse, like, uh, on Halloween.

00:44:04.620 | I didn't know if people would appreciate what went into my, my, uh, custom built light sound

00:44:08.700 | controller.

00:44:09.100 | I was going to ask you about that.

00:44:10.220 | Oh, I was like, people are just gonna be like, oh, because it's not like it's a super

00:44:12.940 | impressive.

00:44:13.420 | It's not a super impressive big thing to see.

00:44:16.300 | It was just like a synchronized laser battle.

00:44:19.740 | A lot of people came up and appreciated the technology, like the complexity of actually

00:44:24.300 | the circuits for that.

00:44:25.180 | So I really appreciated that.

00:44:26.460 | I don't know if people would get it, but they did.

00:44:27.820 | I have ideas for next year, by the way, there's gonna be movement.

00:44:31.340 | What'd you put in your remarkable notebook?

00:44:33.660 | I, you, I do use my remark.

00:44:35.100 | I have a Halloween notebook in there.

00:44:36.700 | Yeah.

00:44:37.100 | I decided that goes in there as well.

00:44:39.500 | Um, okay.

00:44:40.460 | Then for, for my, like the specific things I do again and again for my professional career,

00:44:44.780 | so the things that are at the core of what I do for my job, I have more customized tools.

00:44:49.260 | I've talked about this before, but books and, um, non mathematical articles.

00:44:54.700 | I use Scrivener and it's in the Scrivener project for each of those that I collect all

00:44:59.900 | the notes and clippings and thoughts and articles and links.

00:45:02.620 | They're all in the various research folders I keep within the Scrivener project.

00:45:06.380 | more mathematical articles of the type.

00:45:08.700 | Like I've been talking about in this episode that I don't write as many of those right now

00:45:11.820 | anymore, but my old theory articles, I would use, um, Overleaf, which is like a, a web-based

00:45:17.100 | collaborative editor for the markup language you use for mathematical articles.

00:45:20.140 | And I would just start putting ideas in the actual tool I'm using to do the writing.

00:45:24.300 | So I've got a lot of tools too.

00:45:25.580 | Um, those are the ones I mainly use.

00:45:27.660 | So you use your remarkable pretty much every day.

00:45:29.420 | Yeah.

00:45:30.140 | I use it a lot.

00:45:30.700 | Yeah.

00:45:31.180 | Yeah.

00:45:31.420 | I use a lot.

00:45:31.820 | I like it.

00:45:32.140 | I think it's a really good product.

00:45:33.020 | They're not even a sponsor.

00:45:33.900 | They just, you know, they sent me one, but I appreciate that.

00:45:36.700 | They did.

00:45:37.020 | Um, all right.

00:45:38.540 | Who do we got next?

00:45:39.260 | Next up is Megan.

00:45:40.860 | How do I get better at reading?

00:45:42.940 | I'm an 18 year old student and my reading has dropped in recent years.

00:45:46.140 | How do I reverse this?

00:45:47.340 | Should I just read more or all books or articles fair game?

00:45:50.460 | Uh, yes.

00:45:51.740 | And right.

00:45:52.300 | Yes.

00:45:52.460 | You need to read more, uh, for now, just whatever you're most excited to read.

00:45:57.500 | Great.

00:45:57.820 | The key is actually, uh, minutes of eyes on page because you're reactivating those reading

00:46:04.300 | circuits.

00:46:04.780 | You're re sort of myelinating them.

00:46:07.580 | You're trying to get, uh, you're trying to get that, the friction reduced for the active

00:46:12.300 | reading.

00:46:12.540 | So if you can get involved in like a reading fandom, I'm going to read, uh, whatever, like

00:46:18.060 | dark academia books, which as far as I can tell, or tend to be, it's always like young

00:46:22.700 | women and these like always like some sort of weird secret society cult.

00:46:26.380 | And then at some point, like a ghost is beating them up.

00:46:28.460 | Like, so whatever, if that's your thing or fairy romance or whatever it is, um, whatever,

00:46:35.100 | I don't care what it is, minutes, eyes, and minutes on page.

00:46:37.900 | But I said, yes.

00:46:38.620 | And because the other thing you need to do is make attention, sustained attention, be less

00:46:45.180 | foreign and scary.

00:46:46.380 | You're an 18 year old student.

00:46:47.500 | So I'm going to assume that the very best way to do that is you have to stop using your phone

00:46:51.180 | so much.

00:46:51.580 | You got to stop having your phone as a constant companion.

00:46:55.500 | It's not normal or healthy.

00:46:56.460 | And I don't care if everyone does it.

00:46:58.060 | You're noticing the beginning of those side effects.

00:47:00.540 | Now reading is like the basic activation of advanced symbolic thinking.

00:47:06.700 | If you're struggling reading, your whole brain is struggling because of that stupid piece of glass.

00:47:10.860 | So I take social media off of it.

00:47:14.380 | They're not going to miss you.

00:47:15.420 | Take social media off of it.

00:47:16.700 | Keep it in one room when you're at home, not with you.

00:47:21.020 | Just be used to having long periods of your day where the phone is not there.

00:47:24.860 | You cannot be interrupted.

00:47:26.140 | Your mind has nothing to check.

00:47:28.380 | You have to drastically reduce the footprint of your phone in your life.

00:47:31.500 | I don't know how else to tell you this.

00:47:32.860 | If you want your brain to get re-comfortable again with sustained attention, which you'll

00:47:36.140 | need to do reading, the reading will build the circuits.

00:47:38.620 | That sustained attention will then help you do long thinking.

00:47:40.540 | All this is going to make your life better.

00:47:41.740 | The phone wants to make it worse.

00:47:43.820 | You've got to renegotiate.

00:47:46.220 | Now that you're an adult, renegotiate your relationship with your phone so that you can

00:47:50.300 | build a life on your own terms.

00:47:51.980 | All right, who do we got next?

00:47:53.420 | Next up is Francis.

00:47:55.820 | "My father was an English teacher who passed away a couple of years ago.

00:47:59.500 | While clearing out his house, I was reminded how I used to enjoy creative writing.

00:48:03.340 | I'm currently a university professor that writes for my work, but not creatively.

00:48:07.820 | I don't want to write on computer, so I was wondering if you had any suggestions.

00:48:10.860 | I own and use it remarkable."

00:48:13.500 | Yeah, it's interesting.

00:48:14.460 | I mean, speaking of professors, like I always thought this was an interesting observation.

00:48:21.580 | So my dad was a professor for a while.

00:48:24.700 | My grandfather was a professor and my grandfather was a very prolific professor.

00:48:28.620 | So I'm from a line of, you know, scholars.

00:48:31.180 | My grandfather wrote a lot of books.

00:48:33.500 | I don't remember how many, but like at least a dozen.

00:48:37.500 | You know, academic-y books.

00:48:38.780 | He was a Baptist Christian apologist.

00:48:40.940 | Was at Rice for a long time as an endowed chair and then the provost of the

00:48:45.740 | Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary right before the fundamentalist takeover.

00:48:49.580 | So he was like in that world of religious scholarship.

00:48:51.580 | Wrote a ton of books.

00:48:53.180 | Never had a computer.

00:48:54.620 | Bought his first computer after he retired.

00:48:57.260 | He would hand write those books on yellow legal pads.

00:48:59.980 | And then a typist would type it up and he would look at the type drafts and he would mark up those type

00:49:04.220 | drafts and then someone that would type it up again and he would look at those.

00:49:07.500 | Through modern eyes, we have this, this efficiency thinking.

00:49:11.820 | We've taken the idea that comes out of like industrial manufacturing in which like

00:49:17.820 | all that matters, right?

00:49:19.500 | Because it's a set process.

00:49:20.540 | So all that matters is the speed at which things happen.

00:49:23.180 | We look at that and we say, oh, that's so slow.

00:49:25.660 | Writing on a tablet is slow.

00:49:27.420 | Having it typed and you have to hand market and hand it back.

00:49:30.780 | That's slow.

00:49:31.500 | But he wrote way more books than most professors.

00:49:34.060 | He wrote more books than I've written because with cognitive activities is interesting.

00:49:38.780 | Efficiency and slowness isn't the same thing as an industrial manufacturing.

00:49:42.060 | In fact, going slower probably made the books better.

00:49:45.660 | And also like the raw hours that you're actually writing when you write a book

00:49:49.180 | is like a fraction of the time involved in like creating that book.

00:49:52.780 | So anyways, I always thought that was interesting.

00:49:53.900 | So you have a lot more flexibility than you think when it comes to writing.

00:49:56.780 | I have a friend who does a short story writing on typewriters.

00:49:59.420 | He really likes it.

00:49:59.980 | So if you're looking for an alternative, there's several things you can do.

00:50:03.500 | There's a product I'm interested in called the FreeWrite, W-R-I-T-E.

00:50:08.860 | It's an e-ink product.

00:50:10.460 | So it's like the same type of screen as a Kindle.

00:50:12.140 | It's a keyboard with like an e-ink screen.

00:50:13.820 | They have a couple of different models.

00:50:14.860 | And basically it's a drafting tool.

00:50:17.420 | So you can see what you're typing in the little screen as you're writing.

00:50:20.300 | All you can do is like write and you can have different folders with different files in it.

00:50:23.900 | And you can select one through a pretty slow interface and then just start writing.

00:50:29.580 | You do basic editing.

00:50:31.740 | There's like a backspace key or you can move to your recent text.

00:50:35.100 | And, but you can't do, you don't have a mouse.

00:50:36.860 | You're not cutting and pasting and spell checking and doing this.

00:50:39.980 | The whole idea is you're supposed to, as for creative writers, like,

00:50:42.860 | I just want to get a draft of this done.

00:50:44.780 | And I have a really good mechanical keyboard.

00:50:46.700 | And I see the words there and I can fix my typos in the moment, but I'm just writing until I'm done.

00:50:51.500 | Then you can export them off of the free, right into like Google docs or word or something.

00:50:55.740 | And, and, uh, do like a better editing pass and work from there.

00:50:59.100 | But it's like mint is a drafting tool that you could just carry.

00:51:01.580 | And it's portable.

00:51:02.540 | I think that's really interesting.

00:51:03.820 | Another thing that some people do.

00:51:05.100 | I believe I first heard about this from, I think it was, I think it was Dave Eggers.

00:51:09.580 | It might've been Michael.

00:51:11.900 | I don't think it's Michael Shabon.

00:51:12.860 | I think this was Dave Eggers.

00:51:15.340 | He had an old laptop where it had no, he had disabled the internet.

00:51:20.300 | So it had, it had no workable wifi and it's old or something else on it, but like word.

00:51:26.220 | And he would use that laptop to write.

00:51:27.900 | So now like you can edit like a little bet, right?

00:51:32.140 | You can do all your editing on the copy and paste and move things around.

00:51:35.340 | And like, it's not just like I'm writing a draft, but you can't do anything else on this computer.

00:51:38.940 | There's no, there's no internet.

00:51:40.220 | And then when he's done, you, uh, USB key.

00:51:43.020 | All right.

00:51:43.260 | I'll move the file over there and I can move it to my, my other computer.

00:51:45.900 | And then I can, if I want to email it to someone or do something like that, that to me is a cool idea.

00:51:50.380 | So you just get like a simple computer and just never activate, um, never activate the internet.

00:51:54.700 | I'd go so far as like break that wireless chip and have someone do that for you.

00:51:59.180 | Like, I really can't use this on the internet.

00:52:00.940 | So this is just like a nice writing machine.

00:52:02.620 | I spent $300 on it.

00:52:03.900 | So you have options from paper to something like free, right?

00:52:07.500 | The remarkable has a keyboard.

00:52:08.860 | I bought a remarkable with a keyboard.

00:52:09.980 | I don't, I'm not going to recommend that.

00:52:12.460 | It's too clunky.

00:52:15.820 | When you try and type with the keyboard, the keyboard's fine, but it's, um, you have no control.

00:52:21.660 | I feel like I don't have enough control of where that text goes.

00:52:23.980 | It's too hard to edit.

00:52:24.780 | It's not really, it's meant for like adding some annotations to notes.

00:52:27.900 | So I want to use a remarkable for it, but I think the free, right might be an interesting tool.

00:52:31.740 | Uh, and then really the best solution is cheap laptop, no wifi, nothing else on it.

00:52:36.860 | All right.

00:52:38.300 | Let's see here.

00:52:39.740 | All right.

00:52:39.980 | So we have some more questions coming up, including a call that's on these topics.

00:52:46.700 | And we'll review the books I read last month.

00:52:48.140 | So you're going to want to keep sticking around for the show.

00:52:50.540 | We're going to take just a brief break to hear from a couple of the sponsors.

00:52:54.060 | Then we're gonna get right back in it.

00:52:57.180 | All right.

00:52:57.420 | So as I mentioned, the holiday season is here.

00:52:59.100 | We know it because the wreath is up at the deep work HQ, and this brings with it a lot

00:53:02.300 | of excitement and joy, but also a lot of chaos and busyness.

00:53:05.340 | So I want to make a suggestion, give yourself the gift of turning your home into a sanctuary,

00:53:11.260 | a place where you can slow down with your family, get comfortable, read a book by the fire,

00:53:14.700 | hopefully with some snow falling outside and just enjoy the quiet.

00:53:18.460 | You want to fully realize that vision.

00:53:21.500 | You need cozy earth.

00:53:23.260 | Let me tell you about the cozy earth products that I use regularly and really do feel like

00:53:28.380 | help me create a sanctuary in my home.

00:53:30.780 | I have their famous sheets.

00:53:31.820 | Talked about this a lot on the show.

00:53:34.300 | I've never slept with a more comfortable pair of sheets.

00:53:36.380 | It honestly makes it a pleasure to get in bed each night.

00:53:39.020 | I love those sheets.

00:53:39.900 | I'm very sad when we're somewhere else.

00:53:41.980 | I stayed at the Algonquin hotel recently, Jesse, New York, famous hotel, famous hotel,

00:53:46.620 | but man, that bed was way worse.

00:53:48.540 | Both my wife and I were like, this is way worse.

00:53:51.500 | We miss our bed.

00:53:52.300 | All right.

00:53:52.620 | The second thing I have from cozy earth is their PJs.

00:53:55.020 | My wife has long had a pair, but I just got the men's variety.

00:53:57.580 | It's the long pants and long shirt.

00:53:59.340 | I actually had them on last night.

00:54:00.540 | It was a little chilly in the house, similar material to the sheets.

00:54:02.940 | Comfortable.

00:54:04.380 | It's what I went to.

00:54:05.340 | I was like, I am changing.

00:54:06.300 | I always say I'm changing out this monkey suit, like old slang for a suit.

00:54:10.620 | I'm usually in like jeans, but whatever.

00:54:12.060 | And I put on those PJs.

00:54:13.500 | Finally, the bubble cuddle blanket.

00:54:15.180 | We had so popped in our house that we have to have rules about who gets to use it and when.

00:54:18.940 | So to prepare for the holidays, you too should give yourself the gift of cozy earth.

00:54:24.220 | And with their 100 night sleep trial, you can try out their sheets.

00:54:27.340 | And if you don't love them, you can return them hassle free, but you won't.

00:54:29.980 | They also have a 10 year warranty because look, once you feel this level of comfort,

00:54:33.180 | you'll want it to last at least a decade.

00:54:34.540 | A cozy earth will make your house a sanctuary this holidays.

00:54:39.580 | Now here's the good news.

00:54:41.180 | Black Friday has come early at cozy earth right now.

00:54:44.860 | You can stack my code deep on top of their site wide sale, giving you up to 40% off in savings.

00:54:52.860 | That's cozy earth.com code deep for up to 40% off in savings.

00:54:58.620 | These deals won't last.

00:54:59.580 | So start your holiday shopping today.

00:55:01.500 | If you get a post purchase survey, be sure to mention you heard about cozy earth right here.

00:55:06.620 | Wrap the ones you love in luxury with cozy earth.

00:55:10.140 | Jesse, I want to tell you something that I'm not very good at.

00:55:13.100 | That's hiring.

00:55:14.700 | As I mentioned on the show before, we recently hired a creative director to help run the newsletter.

00:55:20.060 | And you know, it made a big difference.

00:55:21.660 | I was really neglecting that newsletter and now it is going out regularly.

00:55:24.700 | What mattered was he was the right person with the right skills.

00:55:28.620 | That makes all the difference in your business.

00:55:31.580 | And this is where indeed enters the picture.

00:55:33.340 | It took me like over a year to find the right person.

00:55:36.060 | And in the end it was because I just happened someone else.

00:55:39.100 | I knew knew this person or whatever.

00:55:40.940 | What I should have done is used indeed.

00:55:43.260 | It would have made this process much easier.

00:55:45.660 | If you need to hire indeed is all you need.

00:55:48.140 | You can give your jobs the best chance to be seen with indeed sponsored jobs.

00:55:52.140 | They help you stand out and hire quality candidates who can drive the results.

00:55:55.420 | You need sponsored jobs boost your post for quality candidates.

00:55:59.340 | So you can reach the exact people you want faster.

00:56:01.660 | This all makes a big difference.

00:56:03.260 | According to indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report

00:56:08.540 | a higher than non-sponsored jobs because you reach a bigger pool of quality candidates.

00:56:13.180 | You can join 1.6 million companies that sponsor their jobs with indeed.

00:56:18.060 | So spend less time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes,

00:56:22.300 | less stress, less time, more results now with indeed sponsored jobs.

00:56:27.420 | And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility.

00:56:35.180 | If you go to indeed.com/deep, just go to indeed.com/deep right now and support our show by saying

00:56:42.460 | you heard about indeed on this podcast indeed.com/deep terms and conditions apply hiring indeed is all you need.

00:56:51.420 | All right, Jesse, let's get back to those questions.

00:56:53.020 | Who we got?

00:56:54.460 | Next question is from CD.

00:56:56.780 | You have discussed Teddy Roosevelt's astounding productivity and his ability to read at least

00:57:01.660 | one book per day.

00:57:02.940 | When I read, I don't get the most out of the book unless I write reflections or spend time thinking

00:57:07.260 | about the concepts presented.

00:57:08.940 | And reading one book per day would not allow me to maximize benefit from each book.

00:57:12.540 | I'm still not completely sure how Roosevelt did that while in the White House, mind you.

00:57:17.820 | While in the White House, he supposedly read a book a day.

00:57:19.980 | I think he was a very good skimmer.

00:57:21.580 | I think he was very good at getting to exactly the points that were in,

00:57:23.980 | because he had read so many books.

00:57:25.660 | He'd be like, interesting, interesting, skip, skip, skip, interesting, skip, interesting, got it.

00:57:29.100 | Like, I think that's what was happening.

00:57:31.100 | When it comes to your own reading practice,

00:57:33.180 | read at the pace that allows you to get the most value.

00:57:37.820 | And for a book where you're really trying to extract new ideas, like, so a book that's going to

00:57:41.980 | trigger a lot of long thinking could take a long time to read. And that's fine.

00:57:44.620 | Annotate it. I often do that with those books, with my pencil marking method.

00:57:49.180 | Do summary notes. So for big idea books, I really want to understand. I'll start a document where I

00:57:55.660 | write summaries of each chapter that really helps me like long think through like what the ideas are.

00:58:00.220 | Go for long walks to try to integrate ideas in your life. That's all great.

00:58:03.180 | The only thing I would add to that is having some diversity of books. You don't want every book that

00:58:07.900 | you're reading to be such a heavy lift. You're going to burn out.

00:58:10.060 | So mix those in with other types of books that you can read fast, maybe even in a day.

00:58:14.220 | And go back and forth between these. But let each book get the time that it needs for you to get the

00:58:20.300 | most out of it. It's not a race. And so you don't have to do the Teddy's pace on everything.

00:58:26.060 | I was recently listening to Tim Ferriss' interview with David Senra, who runs the Founders Podcast.

00:58:31.980 | Right.

00:58:32.540 | And he reads a ton of books, but he was saying he reads really slowly. He only reads like 25 pages an hour.

00:58:37.340 | Yeah. So it's like I like this idea of like minutes of eyes on page is important because it's all a

00:58:44.620 | stage where your brain is making connections and you're building up your knowledge. And speed depends

00:58:48.780 | on like the book and the person. I'm not a particularly fast reader. It takes me the full month to do my

00:58:54.540 | five books for sure. All right. Who we got next?

00:58:57.580 | Next up is Bridget. Can you revisit your explanation of single purpose notebooks and reflection walks?

00:59:03.420 | Is this something that you do every day or just sporadically?

00:59:05.740 | So now we have terminology for this. That's basically the notebook method. What we just

00:59:11.340 | talked about in our deep dive. So going for a walk somewhere scenic with a single purpose notebook that

00:59:17.260 | can do nothing but hold notes on this one topic. It forces you to do exactly long thinking. Persistent

00:59:23.820 | thought towards one problem that you're trying to make useful progress on. You have to reorganize,

00:59:27.980 | build new source association, extract principles, write it down, think about that's not quite right.

00:59:31.980 | But the single purpose notebook in the short term acts as like an extension of your working memory.

00:59:36.060 | It's a way, okay, let me write this down. Let me think about that. Let me reorder it. Okay,

00:59:39.100 | now this is what I really mean. It allows you to hold more pieces together and rearrange them.

00:59:43.740 | Over time it also becomes a repository for how your thinking has evolved. So you might have like a few

00:59:49.740 | pages of kind of scratch pages as you're working through thoughts on your walk. And then the final

00:59:54.060 | page you maybe have like a star or a box around like, okay, that's kind of the work product of this walk.

00:59:59.180 | That's the key observation. And then the next time you do a walk or go somewhere scenic, whatever,

01:00:03.820 | you start from that like, okay, I can get up to speed on where I was. Now you're doing more.

01:00:08.140 | So the short term is like a working memory. Long term is like a record of your thoughts is that

01:00:11.740 | notebook fills you're capturing an artifact of the human brain, seeing what only human brains can do.

01:00:16.780 | So I love the practice of single purpose notebooks on, on thinking walks and that a given problem

01:00:21.820 | that is purified long thinking. And once you've started doing it, it really can be addicting. Like

01:00:27.100 | I really always look forward to my, my long thinking. I have a stack. I have a like 50 single

01:00:32.300 | purpose notebooks just waiting for me and a hundred of my pins. So I, I, I love the idea that I

01:00:37.900 | no matter what comes up, I can grab a clean notebook and a fresh pin and head out the door.

01:00:42.620 | I keep like a big stock of those in my library at home. All right. We got a case study this week

01:00:47.420 | where people, uh, they send in their examples of their stories of using that type of advice we

01:00:55.660 | talked about on the show in their own life. We have case cutting. Yeah. We have music. We have music.

01:00:59.740 | Let's hear some music. Now we're in the mood for a case study. All right. Today's case study comes from

01:01:13.340 | Mason. Mason says, I struggled for a long period after college. Then I discovered your concept of deep

01:01:20.220 | work and was immediately a convert. I consumed your content. I made my phone as dumb as possible

01:01:25.740 | and have long been off social media. I wrote out my key documents, drafted a quarterly plan. I set up a

01:01:30.620 | working memory.txt file. I ordered the time block planner. I made a Trello board and assessed what kind

01:01:36.700 | of deep to shallow ratio was possible given my weekly responsibilities. I put my phone in the kitchen

01:01:42.300 | and tried though often failed to meditate productively. I embraced boredom. I enrolled in you and Scott

01:01:47.020 | Young's course on the focus life. And then I started evangelizing through all of this. I got promoted.

01:01:52.620 | I got married. I started visiting immigration detention centers. I'm working through be funny.

01:01:58.220 | Like you think that's like for a positive thing, like to help the people who are detained to be funny if he's

01:02:02.620 | like to rob them. Turns out you could steal the wallets of people in detention centers if you think

01:02:10.700 | deeply enough about the security lapses. No, you're doing something very noble, Mason. I'm sorry to joke

01:02:15.580 | about it. I'm working through Tolstoy and spent a lot of time practicing photography. I go to therapy

01:02:20.300 | and I coach at a local CrossFit gym. I massively reduced my anxiety and I've created systems that are

01:02:25.420 | a ballast when things feel out of control. But these systems aren't perfect and I'm still vulnerable to

01:02:29.820 | slipping back into the old ways, which include YouTube rabbit holes and hours on my phone.

01:02:33.900 | I'm not expecting this to be easy and maybe I just need to keep practicing. But when it comes

01:02:37.340 | to cultivating the deep life, I feel like something is missing. Maybe your new books get into whatever

01:02:42.060 | that something is. Do you ever get tired? All right. It's a great case study followed by a great

01:02:48.540 | question. So what I like about the case study is it indicates like a lot of the things I talk about,

01:02:53.500 | I talk about a lot of things are all like loosely responding to either understanding technology or

01:02:57.740 | responding to the culture or problems that technology creates. One of the categories of

01:03:03.020 | these things I talk about is like about the type of things he talks about there. They try to like

01:03:07.260 | organize your life, be less distracted, but also be more intentional and have plans at different levels

01:03:13.660 | and deep to shallow work ratios and like be super intentional. Because a lot of what makes life today

01:03:19.900 | seem like busy or boring or nihilistic or exhausting is that these different forces,

01:03:25.660 | a lot of them technological can always like push you into this sort of unintentional artificial,

01:03:29.580 | like frenetic state where you're bouncing off the walls. You're like, what's even going on?

01:03:32.780 | When you get intentional about all this stuff, look at, look what all this, the good stuff that

01:03:38.060 | happens, promotion, marriage, helping people, reading hard things in good shape, anxiety lower,

01:03:43.820 | talking to a therapy therapist, like his life is under control. And that's why, by the way,

01:03:50.380 | I would always get frustrated. Well, first of all, I don't like being described as a productivity

01:03:53.420 | guru because like, these are one column of like a massive structure of things that all come back to

01:03:58.780 | technology. Right. But I get even more frustrated when people who don't know my work assume you, they, they, they, they think

01:04:06.860 | they're the first person that discover Frederick Winslow Taylor, who they completely miss site

01:04:11.100 | and completely inflate his importance, which really wasn't that much. His main importance

01:04:14.540 | was for later writers to look back and try to feel like they're smart. And like, you're just trying to,

01:04:19.260 | you're just trying to squeeze more work. Basically, this is like warmed over Marx's critical theory.

01:04:25.420 | It's just, you're creating this sort of false consciousness so that you can squeeze more labor

01:04:29.420 | out of the, out of the sort of brainwashed bourgeoisie it's, it's work for work's sake and hustle

01:04:34.060 | culture and all this type of thing. No, it's about gaining control of your life from the technological

01:04:38.940 | forces to want to make it chaotic, frenetic and seemingly meaningless. These things work. Think

01:04:45.660 | about time smartly. You think about attention smartly. Think about workload smartly. It matters. You can get

01:04:53.660 | your arms around this current world that has so much that's being thrown at you with so little controls,

01:05:01.420 | but it's for making your life better, not making you faster and more efficient or more hustly.

01:05:05.660 | But Mason brings up a good point here. Is that enough? And there, the answer is no as well.

01:05:11.100 | This is so you can get control over stuff, but you still, it's up to you to cultivate a deep life.

01:05:17.100 | This is the major turn that my thinking and writing made around the beginning of the pandemic,

01:05:21.580 | especially the first months of the pandemic, when I coined the term, the deep life,

01:05:25.820 | because I was at peak form then of I, uh, you know, I was worried about technology and distraction

01:05:32.540 | and email and I was working on my email book, but I was in peak form of like, I understand information

01:05:37.660 | flows. I understand human psychology and I understand neuroscience. I understand modern work culture and

01:05:41.980 | technology culture and like how to, the problems, all these things are created and how to be intentional

01:05:47.740 | and push these problems back. But the pandemic began, I said, yeah, but then what push them back to do

01:05:52.460 | what? And that's when we can talk about the deep life, which was about being systematic about what

01:05:57.180 | your life is about, reducing the stuff you don't, you don't like amplify the stuff you do make a life of

01:06:03.340 | median satisfaction on your own terms. And I've, I've become, you know, increasingly convinced the deep

01:06:08.860 | life is really, really important, especially if you're trying to deal with technology. It's the bigger,

01:06:14.860 | better offer you make so that tick tock and Sora and, you know, Reddit wars with your tribal compatriots,

01:06:21.340 | it's not so interesting anymore. You have nothing else going on in your life. Your life is super

01:06:25.020 | stressful. You're like, well, that's better. But if your life is built on your own terms,

01:06:29.580 | like, I don't want to watch Bob Ross breakdancing on a piece of glass. I'm living life here. This is

01:06:37.500 | like more important. So like the deep life ultimately is the, the anecdote, the antidote rather, the antidote

01:06:46.460 | to like a lot of the poisons of the modern technological world. So how do you do that?

01:06:50.380 | Well, that's the new book I'm writing now. And I'll, you know, I'm in the middle of it.

01:06:53.980 | It's still, we're more than a year out from this book coming out. So, you know, there's a lot more

01:06:58.460 | to go, but the approach I'm taking on this book is Mason, you will like this. The whole point of this

01:07:03.660 | book is I don't want to tell you what you need in a deep life. I, this is not like Oprah and, um,

01:07:10.700 | Arthur Brooks book, where it's like, let me tell you the five things you need to care about in your life,

01:07:15.740 | uh, for your life to be better, right? It is a book that on the topic that not enough people talk

01:07:21.100 | about, which is just the straight up pragmatic technical processes that'll let you succeed in

01:07:28.700 | directing your life to something more meaningful, whatever that is. And in fact, I've given you the

01:07:34.860 | technical processes for how do you figure out what meaning even means for you. And then once you know

01:07:39.260 | that, how do you actually make progress towards that? How do you avoid just like having

01:07:43.980 | this sort of sporadic burst of inspiration where you're like, uh, we're going to move. I'm going to

01:07:49.340 | like buy a dumbbell or whatever. Like, how do you actually like systematically, um, and more consistently

01:07:53.980 | succeed in, you know, making your life more meaningful. So it's, it's all about just the

01:07:58.620 | practical details of chapters or the sections are all numbered in it. There's a huge amount of like

01:08:02.460 | diagrams and all right, then you might format it this way and be like purposefully technical in it.

01:08:07.500 | But to answer that final question, but here's the thing, all that stuff you did, Mason, you

01:08:13.180 | kind of have to be able to do that before this deep life sort of instructions, you're gonna be able to

01:08:17.100 | follow through with them anyways. Like what you did, I now think about is like the preparation for

01:08:22.540 | cultivating a deep life. I call it becoming a more capable human. You became a more capable human who's

01:08:27.100 | in charge of like your time and your workload and your life around you. Then you need to know what

01:08:31.340 | to do with that. And that's where like deep life cultivation methods come in. And you're like,

01:08:34.940 | okay, now I'm going to start figuring out what really matters. I'm going to start

01:08:37.180 | making my life really cool and radical and remarkable. So that's the book I'm working on,

01:08:40.380 | but you're pointing out a good thing. A lot of this stuff that people call my productivity advice

01:08:44.700 | is like how to become more capable human. What you do with it is also where the really cool stuff

01:08:48.860 | happens and that's its own type of topic. So stay tuned on that Mason. I'm thinking about this stuff

01:08:53.420 | all day. There'll be a lot more of this to come as I get closer to finishing that book.

01:08:57.340 | All right. Do we have a call this week, Jesse?

01:08:59.500 | Yes, we do. All right. Let's hear this.

01:09:00.700 | Hi, Cal. My name's Juan. And I wanted to ask you some advice on some extended adventure working.

01:09:08.460 | I'm currently hiking the Continental Divide Trail. I'm taking a pit stop in Santa Fe, New Mexico,

01:09:15.820 | before continuing on through the snowy mountains of Southern Colorado. And yeah, for the next five months,

01:09:22.700 | my only real priority is to make it through this next adventure. However, I don't completely want to pause

01:09:29.420 | my creative life. I draw graphic novels for fun and I'd love for my next project to be about this hike

01:09:35.740 | I'm doing right now. So this brought to mind your idea of adventure work where you make progress on work

01:09:42.300 | by engaging with ideas while immersed in a totally unrelated environment. How would you recommend

01:09:49.660 | that I use my time on this hike towards that goal? I have some pocket notebooks that I could use as

01:09:55.500 | sketchbooks or single purpose notebooks. And I also have a journal. However, the vast majority of my time

01:10:02.540 | needs to be spent on the trail so that I can cover the 20 or 25 miles that I need to do each day.

01:10:07.500 | Um, okay. So this is a long thinking push to the extreme type of case study. You have all day long,

01:10:18.700 | you're just in scenic environments alone with your own thoughts. It's a perfect environment for long

01:10:23.420 | thinking. The real issue is you're doing too much. You're going to burn out your brain. I would choose

01:10:28.380 | sessions throughout the day where like for the next hour, I'll be working on the following thing in my brain,

01:10:33.740 | long thinking target, making sense of a new creative idea, making sense of yourself,

01:10:37.100 | trying to make sense of the, the insights that you're gaining on the trail. Now, I know you can't

01:10:41.340 | stop that often, but you're going to get really good at working with these things in your head.

01:10:45.500 | And then during like a brief water break, adding those notes pretty refined to your page, or if it's

01:10:51.900 | a graphic novel thing you're working on, maybe you have a sketch that really, you're probably working

01:10:55.420 | more on ideas and styles and plots and innovations like in your mind, because you don't have much time

01:11:01.980 | to draw that maybe at night, you can do a little bit of drawing, but yeah, have long, if you do long

01:11:06.060 | thinking sessions that have multiple long thinking sessions every day, you can figure out a lot of

01:11:10.140 | stuff, be more ambitious than just, I want to think about my novel. Think about like your whole creative

01:11:13.820 | career, the future of graphic novels, build a whole intricate universe, Brandon Sanderson level of

01:11:19.100 | complexity type of, uh, uh, you know, creative universe of ideas that all hook together in which

01:11:24.300 | you're going to build 20 graphic novels that all intricately in connect. You kind of have all these

01:11:27.660 | notes in your notebooks that is you have the raw number of brain cycles. You can now deploy towards

01:11:33.580 | whatever you want on this continental divide trip is massive and you can come out of it with some like

01:11:38.380 | really fun, creative output. So, uh, fill those notebooks, do most of your thinking while you're

01:11:42.940 | walking. It's the best way to think anyways, and raise your ambitions about the type of things that you

01:11:47.580 | think about. All right. That brings us to our final part of the show. Uh, because this is the first,

01:11:57.260 | uh, first podcast we're recording November, not the first one to come out in November. The first

01:12:01.020 | one we're recording November. I want to talk about the books I read in the preceding month. As you know,

01:12:05.260 | my goal is to read five books every month helps keep my mind connected and sharp. When I produce ideas,

01:12:13.100 | I have a better tool to work with. All right. So here's the five books. I've wrote down some notes

01:12:18.140 | for each. Interesting. October was an interesting collection. All right. So here we go. Book number one,

01:12:23.100 | the gift of the Jews by Thomas Cahill. So Thomas Cahill, this is book two of a series called

01:12:31.340 | hinges of history where every book in the series is about like a small group of people in a historical

01:12:38.380 | moment that ended up having an outsized impact of history. So I know Cahill because I read his first

01:12:43.340 | book years back from the series, which was called how the Irish saved civilization. I read this right

01:12:48.940 | before my first trip, the Ireland, you know, a long time ago. And the, the small group of people here

01:12:55.340 | were the Irish monks. And it was about how during like the dark ages, these monks were keeping alive

01:13:03.900 | all these manuscripts and recopying them over and maintaining them off on like kind of the corner

01:13:08.300 | of the world. And then those were the manuscripts that like helped spur the Renaissance because they

01:13:13.900 | kept them alive, even as like the rest of Europe was sort of, uh, burning up in the fall of the Roman

01:13:19.180 | empire in the dark ages of fall. So like, that was like a really cool history because it was a history,

01:13:23.260 | but it was about a small group had this outsized impact. So the gift of the Jews is his second book.

01:13:27.740 | The premise is interesting, right? It's about how this like this small, small group of, uh, you know,

01:13:34.460 | herdsmen and Canaan, um, ended up coming up with these ideas that shaped like all of the modern world

01:13:42.220 | stuff that we just think now are like self-evident or came out of philosophy, but they didn't things like the

01:13:47.020 | worth of the individual or progressive notions of justice. Um, even the idea of non-cyclical hit,

01:13:53.820 | just history as a thing. Cahill does a really good job of talking about like the, the context of like

01:14:00.220 | at the time of when like Avram left Haran, like in the, the Sumerian culture and the Egyptian culture

01:14:05.820 | of that period, there was no history. Time was cyclical. Like they're, they're all of the people of these

01:14:11.500 | first, uh, the first great civilizations as well as like all, uh, not like indigenous peoples all

01:14:17.580 | around the world. They kind of looked at like the stars and said, they're repeating and everything's

01:14:21.660 | a cycle and the same things happen again and again, and no individuals that important and everything's

01:14:25.900 | just going to repeat. And what's going to happen is going to happen. The Greeks thought the same thing.

01:14:28.780 | And the Jews like, no, there's an actual history. Look, this person was this person's son and this

01:14:32.860 | person, this person and history as a linear thing matters. Like these were like big ideas. So I came

01:14:37.580 | to this book like, oh, this is great. Uh, he's setting the context, which I love of like this,

01:14:42.380 | the ancient world, roughly like second, third millennium BC and like how this, a small group

01:14:47.500 | of people had a completely different way of thinking about things that was going to explode and change the

01:14:51.340 | world. But then I think the book fell off a little bit in my opinion. I don't know if this was filler,

01:14:56.700 | but like long parts of the book is just sort of retelling the stories from the Hebrew Bible.

01:15:02.780 | Like we're just going to, and then this is what happened in like the book of Joshua and it felt

01:15:08.060 | filler. Like, well, wait, you had these like great, there's these, these ideas about their impact are

01:15:12.140 | great with a small group having a big impact, but I don't need like the entire Hebrew Bible just

01:15:17.740 | summarized. So probably the Irish saved America was a stronger book, but like the, I, the, the first,

01:15:23.420 | it's like 50 pages of this book were really like a tour de force of popular history making in a way,

01:15:29.420 | my favorite type of popular history maker, like, oh, I didn't know this. Like, this is a really smart

01:15:33.420 | explanation of what the world was like and you're making it very accessible, but it's actually pretty

01:15:37.980 | complicated what you're pulling from. So great beginning. But then I think it was too much of like,

01:15:42.780 | like, and then David did this and then I was like, okay, I've heard those stories before, but interesting

01:15:47.740 | read nonetheless. All right. The next book I read was, uh, this was actually from a listener recommended

01:15:53.100 | this. The, the new Lin-Manuel Miranda biography by Daniel Pollack Pelsner, who's a New Yorker writer.

01:16:00.060 | So this is, I think the first like biography, actual biography of him, uh, written with cooperation,

01:16:05.340 | um, with Lin-Manuel. Um, so it's interesting, like, you know, first biographies of contemporary

01:16:11.500 | figures. It's really like a big part of the goal is just getting the timelines, right? Because you're

01:16:16.700 | working with the person and various resources and people, there's been profiles and stuff. And I wrote

01:16:22.380 | about them in my, in my most recent book. And there's all these like pieces out there that are kind

01:16:26.700 | of right and stuff that's not right. And like, it's just a tick tock of like, I want to get this

01:16:31.580 | happened. Then he went here, then he went here. And so like, you know, it's, it's, it establishes

01:16:36.060 | that. So it's really interesting to like, if you want to just get what is the beat by beat actual story

01:16:41.900 | of Lin-Manuel up to this point, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a bit hegiographic, but you kind of expect

01:16:46.300 | first biographies to be, especially because you have the participation of the person for first

01:16:50.860 | biography. So you're not going to be like, this guy sucked, you know, because he's,

01:16:55.500 | that was the first sentence of the biography actually. It's kind of interesting.

01:16:58.540 | Like Hamilton can blow me. He's Miranda sucked. There's one very, no, that's not how it started.

01:17:05.100 | It was a good biography. A couple of things I noticed that I learned that were interesting.

01:17:10.140 | The thing that, uh, first sort of vaulted Lin-Manuel Miranda, like, uh, got the attention of producers

01:17:16.700 | coming out of college and got him on the route to his first Broadway musical. It was the hip hop

01:17:21.820 | freestyle narration. So he had put that into, in the Heights, the version that he produced and wrote

01:17:28.460 | as a college student had a lot of issues, but it had that hip hop narration that like, you're probably

01:17:33.900 | more familiar with from Hamilton, but he was a really good freestyle hip hop, freestyle artist,

01:17:38.940 | because he was in a freestyle improv group that would, it was like an improv group, but they would

01:17:45.020 | do, it was like, you know, you do rap battles, but it would be, they would rap about like things the

01:17:49.260 | audience would talk about and they got really, really good. So he's a super fluent and he was

01:17:54.060 | really inspired by nineties era. You know, he's roughly our age, like nineties era hip hop or the,

01:17:58.460 | where you had these like super talented, uh, wordsmiths and rhymers. And you know, you had

01:18:05.660 | the notorious big, you know, you had, um, whatever. Right. Okay. That's what they, the producers that

01:18:13.020 | were like, we're going to bankroll you, like working on your first play for eight years. That's what they

01:18:17.020 | saw. Like, that is what's new. It then turned out later that he was like a melody prodigy as well,

01:18:23.420 | that like, he could just make, he could just play with melody and make really catchier, interesting,

01:18:28.300 | or like melodic songs. So like he had these other skills as well, but that was the thing that caught

01:18:32.620 | him out. He was not a great musician. Um, so he had to hire, you know, it's when he started working

01:18:36.540 | with great musicians that it really made a difference, um, in his career. Um, he wasn't a great storyteller

01:18:41.740 | in the Heights. They had to hire, they brought on a, a storyteller to write the book. Um, that's not his,

01:18:47.100 | his skill, but he was an unmet songwriter and Hamilton, you know, when he got to Hamilton,

01:18:52.460 | he could really just put to his melodies and his hip hop skills. It was just, no one was in his same

01:18:57.100 | league. The other thing I learned was, uh, Hamilton is like a significantly more important piece of

01:19:02.540 | artistic work than in the Heights. It's just a much, much better play, even though in the Heights one,

01:19:06.380 | the Tony, like barely won the Tony for best show. Whereas Hamilton was like the other

01:19:10.780 | Broadway other shows. Like, I guess we should just shut down. Like, this is just like significantly.

01:19:15.340 | It's just significantly better than anything we're doing. So I thought that was interesting as well.

01:19:19.500 | Um, and everything it did took forever. I tell this story in my book, slow productivity

01:19:23.260 | in the Heights is like years and years and years of work to get it there. And Hamilton took years and

01:19:28.940 | years and years of work before that came out, um, as well. So it's a, it's a good slow productivity

01:19:34.380 | case study. So if you like Lin-Manuel Miranda, this biography will just give you right down the middle.

01:19:38.140 | here's what happened. Here's what happened next. Um, here's a weird one. So someone gave this to me

01:19:43.980 | as a gift, uh, inspired by Rachel held Evans, who I, who I think died. Um, she's not one that old.

01:19:52.940 | I don't know. Maybe I don't know what the circumstances were. She's a Christian writer.

01:19:56.780 | Um, so she wrote, she's like a progressive Christian who writes about the Bible. And I think your most famous

01:20:02.860 | book was about the women in the Bible. There was a more catchier name for it. Um, but actually

01:20:10.460 | someone I know who's Jewish said, oh, you would like this book. It's a, so she's Christian, but it's

01:20:14.860 | really mainly about the Hebrew Bible, the old Testament stories. Right. Um, I got started in

01:20:19.340 | the Bible. I'll read this, right. Someone gives us a gift. I get, I get started going and I'm like,

01:20:23.820 | oh, is this going to be like a cheesy Christian book? You know, like these like very, very accessible

01:20:28.620 | books where it's like, uh, my emotions and this, and it's bubbly. And I was like, oh,

01:20:32.220 | but then I was actually like really impressed. Evans just takes like a lot of like really complicated

01:20:39.500 | biblical scholarship and then, um, makes it incredibly accessible. And it like really getting in the weeds

01:20:45.980 | about how people understand, like how the Bible is written and what it means and how different people

01:20:49.660 | thought about it over time and how not to think about or think about it, both theological and historical

01:20:54.460 | critiques of the Bible and, uh, apologia and makes it like super accessible. I'm like, wait a second.

01:20:59.820 | I've read some of these sources. This is like really deep stuff and she's making it like seem

01:21:04.140 | really interesting and accessible. So I was actually very impressed by that book. So if you're interested

01:21:07.500 | in like biblical stuff like I am, um, it was much better than I thought it would be. Uh, so I guess

01:21:12.860 | that person knew me well. Next book I wrote, I read was actually written by a friend of mine.

01:21:17.820 | The book is called the future of tutoring. It was written by Liz Cohen. Uh, this is,

01:21:23.500 | it's an academic press book. This is Harvard education press. So it's a book about high impact

01:21:28.140 | tutoring, which is this idea that got a huge amount of resources during COVID this idea that if like a

01:21:33.660 | school is struggling and students are struggling, actually the thing that works best is high impact

01:21:39.660 | tutoring. One-on-one a tutor is going to sit with you and work with you. It seems like an obvious idea,

01:21:44.780 | but there's this movement now that's like, yeah, obvious, but why don't we do more of this?

01:21:49.420 | Like let's not try to be fancy with complicated educational philosophies. How do we just get more

01:21:53.980 | of someone's going to work with you three days a week for 90 minutes until your math gets better.

01:21:59.660 | Like just go directly to the problem. So this is a book that it's, it's exhaustively researched

01:22:04.460 | and it just goes in. There was so much money that got thrown into this. Liz makes sense of all of

01:22:09.740 | these different types of programs, how they were structured, what happened, what they learned,

01:22:13.340 | what worked, what didn't work. So really it's a book that if you're like an organization or a school

01:22:16.860 | or a researcher who's interested in this approach, this is like the definitive book on what we learned

01:22:22.140 | in the COVID years, what happened, what tried different models, what's working and what's not

01:22:25.500 | working. But very well researched. So I appreciated that. Final book I read was Society of the Spectacle

01:22:32.620 | by Guy DeBoer, the 1967 book. It's a collection of 221 short essays. DeBoer is a Marxist critical

01:22:41.580 | theorist. And this was kind of back in the heyday, like kind of the, the very end of that, like Marxist

01:22:46.140 | critical period, that period, you get the like early 20th century of Ardorno and others who are beginning

01:22:53.980 | to do critical theory. And this is like right before the postmoderns came in and we're like, you guys are all

01:22:58.860 | nerds. Right? So this is kind of like the end of it. I'm not a Marxist expert, but like roughly the

01:23:04.060 | way I think about Marxist critical theory is it's when Marxists begin saying, uh, we want to study,

01:23:10.700 | not just like the economic stuff that Marx wrote about, but the ways of these subtle things in

01:23:15.340 | society that are constructed implicitly to help reinforce or support or protect the economic stuff

01:23:23.660 | that Marx originally wrote about. So this is where it's, it's just like, Hey, the, these cultural

01:23:28.460 | artifacts, these, the culture around us is actually like a tool that helps keep, you know, the proletariat

01:23:35.420 | oppressed and the owners of capital, you know, rich and whatever. Right. So critical theory was like,

01:23:40.220 | we're going to go beyond economic analysis to like cultural analysis. Right. And then the postmodernist

01:23:44.780 | came along and they were French and they were cool. And, um, and Foucault had a shaved head and they

01:23:49.980 | smoked and they were like, you all are nerds. Meaning is for wimps, you know, your student, you know,

01:23:56.460 | whatever. And they made the whole thing seem like you're also self-serious and have these little

01:24:00.860 | details and you guys wear berets and you're all nerds. And that was kind of like the end and that, and

01:24:05.660 | you know, we got reports from the Soviet union that like, oh, actually socialism is not that

01:24:09.580 | great necessarily. Like they're sitting over in the gulags, those two things, the postmoderns

01:24:13.100 | and Solzhenitsyn basically came together. And that was kind of like the end of, um,

01:24:17.740 | the heyday of Marxism. So this is kind of at the heyday. Uh, so there's a lot of stuff in this book,

01:24:22.380 | the, the part, so the person who recommended it to me, I think this was the part they had in mind.

01:24:25.820 | Um, there's a part of this that I think is relevant to some of our technological analysis today.

01:24:30.940 | So I like getting these type of smart analysis. Um, it says the boars idea of the spectacular

01:24:36.380 | society. Um, I think it connects to social media culture. Let me read a quick summary. I'm taking

01:24:42.140 | this from Wikipedia of what he means by the spectacle society. The spectacle is the inverted image of

01:24:49.260 | society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people in which

01:24:54.220 | passive identification with the spectacle supplants, genuine activity. The spectacle is not a collection of

01:24:59.340 | images. The boar rights rather it is a social relation among people mediated by images. All right.

01:25:04.700 | So that's of course how like French Marxist critical theorist wrote, but like the idea here is he's

01:25:10.700 | talking about, you have this sort of like, um, this new falsely the society that exists between it's

01:25:16.780 | like the relationships between these over the top, like images and commodities to relate to each other.

01:25:21.100 | It's not actual society of humans interacting with humans. That's kind of the social media internet age.

01:25:26.220 | I mean, he argues that that helps, uh, you know, keep the capitalist imperatives in place and

01:25:32.460 | hoodwink the bourgeoisie to thinking that they're happy when they're really just allowing the proletariat

01:25:37.340 | to be stepped on. We can give other analyses for it, but, uh, I think there's something there. I think

01:25:42.620 | it's really interesting, right? Like society is mediated between like images and memes and ideas that are

01:25:48.300 | floating around is not people talking to people anymore. And I don't think now it's because of like some sort of

01:25:54.380 | capitalist imperative. I think it's, you know, there's a profit making imperative for these companies,

01:25:59.740 | but a lot of the harm it causes, I think like the harm caused by like the modern social media spectacle

01:26:04.860 | society, um, is not harmed. It's directed directly at it. Then loops back and helps the owners of those

01:26:11.020 | companies make more money. It just has a lot of harmless side effects. So like replacing a society

01:26:17.260 | with a special society is good for stockholders in those companies. But a lot of the harms that are

01:26:21.260 | created are just also just as like the side effects of doing that, of making life virtual

01:26:25.660 | and disembodied and digital. So I don't know, he was probably onto something a smarter analyst than me

01:26:30.220 | should go, right? This would be like a Harper's essay. Someone should write like a Harper's essay

01:26:36.700 | about revisiting DeBoer. It'd be, you'd be a lot, you'd be doing a lot of like intellectual flexing in that

01:26:40.620 | essay. I can imagine it now. Um, and you smoke a cigarette and shave your head and just be like,

01:26:46.140 | these guys are wimps. That's my impression of the postmodernist. You know, all right, nerd.

01:26:53.660 | Yeah, I get it. It's the, the, the wheels of history, right? Nerd.

01:26:59.740 | Why don't you go write your little red book, nerd. Meaning's an illusion. Like those old

01:27:05.580 | postmodernist smart guys. All right. That's all the time we have for today. I know you'd like to hear

01:27:10.940 | more postmodernist impressions, but once we get to those impressions is when Jesse gives you the high

01:27:15.580 | sign that we got to shut this down. So thanks for listening. We'll be back next week with another

01:27:18.780 | episode and until then, as always stay deep. Hey, if you liked today's discussion about how

01:27:24.460 | technology has undermined long thinking, you might also like episode three 70,

01:27:29.500 | which is about deep work, a related concept in the age of AI, check it out. I think you'll like it.

01:27:37.100 | But what about the more practical promise? The one that AI tools are going to make knowledge workers more productive.

Regain Your Ability to Think (in 60 Minutes a Week) | Cal Newport

Chapters