Ep. 186: CALLS: The Power of “Day Batching” | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, episode 186.

00:00:08.720 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ,

00:00:18.360 | joined by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:21.400 | Jesse, when this episode airs,

00:00:24.720 | so not right now, but when this airs,

00:00:27.120 | I will hopefully be a much more relaxed person.

00:00:31.120 | You know, as I've talked about on the show,

00:00:32.520 | and you know all too well,

00:00:34.200 | I have been in this busy period at Georgetown.

00:00:37.880 | All good things, we're recruiting,

00:00:40.000 | we're on campus again, we're meals and seeing people,

00:00:42.840 | but it's unusual for me,

00:00:45.320 | basically every day I'm on campus all day.

00:00:47.760 | It's a lot of moving parts,

00:00:49.620 | and that's not usually the way I operate best,

00:00:53.020 | and it's a lot stressful, it makes me anxious,

00:00:56.380 | I don't sleep very well,

00:00:57.400 | when I have a million moving parts going on in my schedule,

00:01:01.040 | and ambiguous logistics, my body just rejects that.

00:01:04.480 | It's like rejecting a transplanted organ or something,

00:01:07.560 | it's like, ah!

00:01:09.160 | But on Tuesday of this week this comes out,

00:01:12.040 | that winds down, so when this episode itself airs on

00:01:14.640 | Thursday, just imagine me joined like a nice cold beer

00:01:19.380 | somewhere with my feet up,

00:01:21.040 | and my laptop with my email inbox open,

00:01:25.720 | just smashed in a corner.

00:01:27.860 | Just straight up office space, beat it with bats,

00:01:30.540 | won't be needing you ever again.

00:01:33.040 | So I'm looking forward to that,

00:01:34.940 | I'm looking forward to the future version of me,

00:01:37.500 | that's listening to this episode.

00:01:40.780 | So last week we introduced a new segment,

00:01:44.300 | which was crazy or deep, people seem to like.

00:01:47.660 | So the idea was we introduce a idea,

00:01:51.540 | we try to figure out is this like a deep idea,

00:01:55.500 | it's embracing the deep life or is it just crazy?

00:01:58.000 | And so last week, just a quick update on last week's,

00:02:00.160 | last week's I talked about how I was reading,

00:02:02.480 | 'cause I felt like it was important for my work

00:02:05.440 | on the deep life, that I finally read

00:02:07.560 | Thomas Merton's Seven Story Mountain,

00:02:09.320 | and I had it on my Kindle and it just wasn't working,

00:02:11.960 | I wasn't getting into it, and so I bought a version,

00:02:14.400 | but not just any version, I bought a first edition,

00:02:16.560 | first print version of the book,

00:02:18.480 | I figured having the version that people who first

00:02:21.260 | encountered that book, read it on,

00:02:23.160 | would somehow help me read it,

00:02:25.780 | and it has by the way, it's been going well,

00:02:28.060 | it's a beast of a book, it's 400 something pages long,

00:02:32.000 | but 1948 hardcover books is not airport business book

00:02:37.000 | spacing, this is not the like, well,

00:02:40.840 | let's kind of double space it and make the margins

00:02:43.800 | and put some pictures, this is, these pages are wide,

00:02:46.520 | and the spacing is narrow, so it's 400,

00:02:49.080 | you earn those 400 pages,

00:02:50.440 | I'm about 200 something pages into it,

00:02:52.480 | and I think it's really helped to have a hard copy,

00:02:54.560 | but here's the update, so Jesse,

00:02:55.920 | someone wrote me after that episode,

00:02:57.800 | and said, they sent me a photo,

00:03:00.000 | they had the exact same issue,

00:03:02.400 | the Kindle wasn't doing it for them,

00:03:04.560 | and they went out and bought an old hardcover version,

00:03:06.480 | and they sent me a photo of it, they had it,

00:03:08.440 | they had done the exact same thing,

00:03:11.040 | so I think that really makes sure that deep,

00:03:13.560 | not crazy was the answer on that one.

00:03:16.140 | - Yes sir, that's good stuff.

00:03:18.060 | - All right, so let's do another crazy deep,

00:03:19.740 | now this one is about other people, maybe about me one day,

00:03:24.740 | this is something I've been hearing about a lot,

00:03:26.620 | so Jesse, you're the arbiter here, all right,

00:03:29.880 | writers opening up bookstores,

00:03:35.380 | I'm gonna give you some background on this, okay,

00:03:37.100 | so friend of the show, Ryan Holiday,

00:03:40.180 | has his bookstore in Boss Drop outside of Austin,

00:03:44.180 | what's it, the Painted Porch,

00:03:47.580 | other writers have done this, Anne Patchett has a bookstore

00:03:51.060 | in Tennessee, Anne Rice,

00:03:55.340 | who actually I think just recently died like this year,

00:03:57.620 | but she had a bookstore in New Orleans,

00:03:59.860 | the latest addition to this long list of people,

00:04:05.740 | authors doing bookstores is,

00:04:07.740 | remember we did Brandon Sanderson,

00:04:10.340 | who did that Kickstarter for the whatever million dollars,

00:04:13.500 | Brandon Sanderson, who wrote "The Name of the Wind",

00:04:17.700 | I just want Jesse to get a lot of mad emails

00:04:20.300 | by misappropriated, giving the wrong name for his book,

00:04:23.820 | no, no, of course, Brandon Sanderson,

00:04:26.460 | who wrote "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy,

00:04:28.680 | Brandon Sanderson, author of the "Harry Potter" trilogy,

00:04:34.540 | I just want Jesse to get emails from mad fantasy fans,

00:04:38.500 | but anyways, Brandon Sanderson,

00:04:40.700 | who I know who he is for sure,

00:04:42.580 | posted an FAQ and a reader sent this to me,

00:04:46.540 | it's really interesting,

00:04:47.380 | and actually I would recommend people Google this,

00:04:49.780 | because he actually gets into like,

00:04:51.340 | here's how many copies I sold of this book,

00:04:53.420 | and this is how many copies I sold of this book,

00:04:56.100 | and he's getting to the economics of the Kickstarter,

00:04:58.500 | and he just opens up the kimono,

00:04:59.820 | and was like, here's how much money I make,

00:05:01.220 | and here's how much money I think I'm gonna make

00:05:02.860 | on this Kickstarter, but in the FAQ,

00:05:06.620 | they're asking him, what are you gonna do with the money?

00:05:09.820 | And he goes, as we talked about, he goes to the math,

00:05:11.980 | and like, look, this money is going to pay for the books,

00:05:14.580 | so like, it's not like I get to keep all this money,

00:05:16.980 | but what it's gonna give me is maybe

00:05:18.700 | a slightly higher royalty rate, but whatever,

00:05:22.180 | he said, one of our ideas is we're gonna start

00:05:23.900 | a physical bookstore, so Brandon Sanderson

00:05:26.540 | is also gonna start a physical bookstore,

00:05:29.980 | so a lot of people do this, a lot of people do this,

00:05:32.260 | so before I go out and buy some Tacoma real estate,

00:05:35.640 | let me ask Jesse, crazy or deep,

00:05:38.700 | for a writer to own one of the least profitable,

00:05:43.740 | most precarious businesses you can buy today,

00:05:46.620 | your own bookstore?

00:05:48.420 | - Deep. - Deep?

00:05:50.740 | - Deep. - You support it?

00:05:52.500 | - I support it. - All right.

00:05:54.580 | How would we make that work?

00:05:56.300 | See, I think if we podcast out of it,

00:05:58.780 | that would help name recognition.

00:06:00.860 | - It'd kinda be like the version of Mr. Money Mustache's,

00:06:04.020 | you know, office that he has in Colorado.

00:06:07.140 | - That's true, Longmont, yeah.

00:06:09.060 | - You could have some cool things in there.

00:06:10.740 | - Yeah. - Put a little gym in the back.

00:06:12.700 | I think the key is, maybe Ryan told us to,

00:06:15.300 | but the key is you can't depend on the book sales

00:06:18.380 | to be what makes it work.

00:06:19.660 | - No. - That's the reality.

00:06:21.100 | But if you already have a name and you're known

00:06:23.900 | and there's other things going on there,

00:06:25.700 | I mean, okay, so right away I was thinking

00:06:28.060 | if we podcast out of there,

00:06:29.720 | just think about our overhead and lease payments

00:06:32.860 | for this HQ, you could just imagine that

00:06:35.340 | as money in the pocket of the bookstore, right?

00:06:39.860 | So like, okay, we could kinda pay the bookstore for that.

00:06:43.420 | So that's already gonna help a little bit.

00:06:46.380 | And co-working space,

00:06:47.860 | this is like the Mr. Money Mustache thing.

00:06:49.420 | Like some of the things that happens there

00:06:50.860 | is he has people come and work.

00:06:53.660 | You wouldn't need many,

00:06:54.500 | but like some really nice co-working spaces,

00:06:56.740 | I don't know, we could figure it out.

00:06:58.540 | Or just like lose a little bit of money on it

00:07:00.780 | because it's awesome.

00:07:02.580 | - Yeah, it's pretty cool.

00:07:03.980 | - You could just sit like in a nice chair

00:07:07.300 | and like read and sip coffee and be in the middle.

00:07:10.220 | It would have to be in the middle of Tacoma Park.

00:07:11.980 | I mean, I think--

00:07:12.820 | - Yes, 'cause you could walk there.

00:07:13.780 | - Yeah.

00:07:14.620 | - Or you're in between coffee shops.

00:07:16.900 | - Yeah, all right.

00:07:17.940 | All right, so Jesse gives that,

00:07:19.460 | audience, you can weigh in.

00:07:20.580 | Jesse gives that a deep, not crazy designation,

00:07:24.100 | writers starting their own physical bookshops.

00:07:28.140 | So--

00:07:28.980 | - What does Ryan say about his?

00:07:30.700 | - I think, I mean, Ryan's advice is

00:07:34.620 | don't buy property to start a bookstore

00:07:37.820 | two months before a pandemic hits.

00:07:39.540 | I would say that would probably be his main advice

00:07:41.220 | because that's pretty stressful,

00:07:43.020 | but I think it's rock and rolling now.

00:07:45.060 | Yeah, I think it's going well.

00:07:46.220 | But Ryan has that great reading list email newsletter.

00:07:49.500 | He has like 100,000 subscribers.

00:07:51.460 | And that now points people towards

00:07:55.180 | buy the book through Painted Porch.

00:07:57.340 | So I think that helps, right?

00:07:58.620 | So like he just has this great relationship

00:08:02.220 | with a lot, big readership

00:08:03.540 | who takes his reading recommendations or whatever.

00:08:06.420 | But also I think, I'm sure if we talk to him,

00:08:10.780 | if we got him on the show to talk about it,

00:08:11.940 | it's like the way I would think about it too,

00:08:14.100 | which is, it's not just a,

00:08:16.260 | part of the value of this place

00:08:17.340 | is not just the dollars that come in from book sales,

00:08:19.140 | but it's like a place for him to work.

00:08:20.460 | It's a place for him to do his podcasting.

00:08:22.860 | It's a place for him to leave his ranch

00:08:25.300 | and do his interviews.

00:08:26.140 | Like that's pretty valuable too.

00:08:27.660 | Like there's that, I think it's that double dipping value

00:08:30.500 | of like, as a writer, this is a place for me to go

00:08:35.100 | and it can be at the center of my operations

00:08:36.980 | and my brand as a writer.

00:08:38.020 | So if you think about it more like reasonably priced,

00:08:41.660 | this is terrible economics.

00:08:43.260 | We're gonna get yelled at by so many like actual people

00:08:45.700 | who know about business,

00:08:46.540 | but here's, okay, let me try to justify myself, Jesse.

00:08:48.940 | You think about it like it's reasonably priced office space

00:08:52.620 | because it's subsidized by the book sales.

00:08:55.100 | So it's, you know,

00:08:56.460 | so if you had a bookstore that was losing you,

00:08:59.540 | you know, $2,000 a month,

00:09:01.940 | but you had your whole writer business out of it,

00:09:04.500 | you'd be like, this is a pretty nice space

00:09:06.260 | for $2,000 a month.

00:09:07.260 | Like you could think about it that way.

00:09:08.540 | I think that's probably terrible economics and is,

00:09:11.040 | but that's my justification.

00:09:13.740 | - What's the closest book store around here?

00:09:16.100 | - I mean, there's a Busboys and Poets here,

00:09:19.580 | which has limited book selection.

00:09:21.500 | That's in Tacoma.

00:09:22.980 | But otherwise I go to Politics and Prose.

00:09:25.660 | - Yeah, which is like two miles away.

00:09:27.340 | - Yeah, yeah, I go to Politics and Prose.

00:09:29.260 | There used to be some old timers were telling us

00:09:31.660 | there used to be a used bookstore here,

00:09:33.980 | long time ago.

00:09:34.820 | So there is precedent.

00:09:36.000 | And you know, Ryan does,

00:09:38.580 | he doesn't try to do the Politics and Prose thing,

00:09:40.980 | which is you try to have a fully fledged inventory.

00:09:44.940 | So it's 60,000 books,

00:09:46.580 | whatever is a fully fledged inventory.

00:09:48.900 | Ryan does only curated face out.

00:09:51.460 | So it's like their thing,

00:09:53.660 | because it's like the reading list email newsletter

00:09:55.700 | made physical.

00:09:57.820 | So you go into his store,

00:09:58.660 | it's not like, oh, I'm looking for this book.

00:10:01.340 | And so I'm gonna go to this bookstore

00:10:03.220 | that has 60,000 books and hopefully find it.

00:10:05.180 | It's more like, I wanna get a good book.

00:10:07.700 | And so if I go to Ryan's store, it's all curated.

00:10:10.460 | It's all books he likes, it's all face out,

00:10:12.740 | which is kind of an interesting model.

00:10:14.580 | I guess you're selling more of an experience

00:10:15.900 | or something like that.

00:10:17.100 | All right, so we'll have to start a bookstore, I guess.

00:10:20.340 | - Sounds good.

00:10:21.500 | I'll work the cash register.

00:10:22.980 | - Yeah.

00:10:24.500 | All right, but anyways, we have,

00:10:26.420 | we have calls, which I'm looking forward to.

00:10:28.620 | Briefly before we jump in the calls,

00:10:32.260 | let's talk for a moment about Magic Mind.

00:10:37.260 | Magic Mind sells this magic little elixir

00:10:41.460 | that comes in these small bottles

00:10:42.940 | that you take once in the morning

00:10:45.940 | to give yourself a smooth, non jittery, focused energy.

00:10:50.940 | So you can either replace your morning coffee with this

00:10:55.460 | or have it along with your morning coffee.

00:10:59.260 | I have found that if I take the Magic Mind shot

00:11:03.340 | with my first cup of coffee,

00:11:04.580 | I can avoid that feeling, that crash

00:11:07.740 | that makes me wanna have four, five,

00:11:09.220 | six more cups of coffee afterwards.

00:11:11.380 | One cup of coffee plus Magic Mind

00:11:13.260 | as my new optimal combination.

00:11:17.900 | Magic Mind comes with 12 functional ingredients

00:11:21.100 | that deliver that sustainable, productive energy.

00:11:25.980 | It's like bottling productivity.

00:11:28.900 | One of the ingredients is three drops of my blood.

00:11:31.220 | So it's just the essence of Cal Newport productivity.

00:11:34.100 | Now I make a matcha, nootropics, adaptogens.

00:11:36.740 | It's actually really good stuff.

00:11:37.860 | And they gave us a code, Deep20.

00:11:40.420 | So if you go to magicmind.co/deep,

00:11:45.420 | you go to that page and then type in the code Deep20

00:11:49.220 | at checkout, you'll get 25% off.

00:11:51.060 | You know, Jesse, something I didn't realize

00:11:53.700 | is that the founder of Magic Mind, James Bechara,

00:11:56.340 | I talked to him, right?

00:11:57.340 | I like to know who I'm in business with

00:11:59.340 | and selective about my sponsors

00:12:01.580 | and enjoy talking with him.

00:12:02.620 | But it turned out like this was his thing in Silicon Valley

00:12:05.260 | before he started this company.

00:12:07.060 | He was known as the nootropic focused substance.

00:12:12.060 | Like, you know, it matters what you intake in your body

00:12:15.420 | because your mind is your best instrument.

00:12:17.420 | Like this was his thing.

00:12:18.420 | So for Silicon Valley types, like,

00:12:20.340 | oh, it's James' company.

00:12:21.860 | Makes sense.

00:12:23.060 | So that's Magic Mind.

00:12:25.100 | And again, if you go to magicmind.co/deep

00:12:29.100 | and use that discount code, Deep20,

00:12:32.500 | you will get 25% off your purchase.

00:12:37.340 | Magic Mind is your best choice

00:12:38.500 | when it comes to getting more done in less time.

00:12:42.140 | I also wanna talk briefly about Monk Pack,

00:12:45.100 | Keto Nut and Seed Bars,

00:12:47.580 | a go-to snack when I need some food,

00:12:50.100 | but I don't want a sugar crash.

00:12:52.540 | The Monk Pack Keto Nut and Seed Bars taste really good.

00:12:55.980 | They have crunchy and sweet.

00:12:57.860 | You have the nuts on top and it's more soft underneath.

00:13:00.620 | They have fantastic flavors.

00:13:02.060 | Sea salt, dark chocolate, caramel sea salt

00:13:04.380 | and peanut butter, dark chocolate.

00:13:06.020 | Peanut butter is the best if you want my opinion,

00:13:07.820 | but here's the thing about them.

00:13:09.540 | One gram of sugar, only two to three grams of net carbs,

00:13:13.220 | only 150 calories.

00:13:14.500 | You grab this thing that you think is a sugar explosion

00:13:17.900 | and it's not.

00:13:19.060 | It's a keto-friendly bar, so you don't get that crash.

00:13:23.300 | So it's a fantastic snack when you feel that urge,

00:13:25.780 | but don't want to crash.

00:13:27.940 | In addition to the keto-friendliness,

00:13:29.380 | they're gluten-free, plant-based, non-GMO

00:13:32.300 | with no soy, trans fat, sugar, alcohols

00:13:34.340 | or artificial colors.

00:13:35.980 | So try it for yourself and you'll see,

00:13:38.140 | we even have a special deal for you, our listeners.

00:13:40.420 | You will get 25% off your first purchase

00:13:42.500 | of any Monk Pack product by visiting monkpack.com

00:13:46.220 | and entering the code DEEP at checkout.

00:13:49.540 | They are so confident in their product

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00:13:53.220 | So if you don't like it for any reason,

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00:13:59.100 | So to get started, go to monkpack.com.

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00:14:05.980 | and select any product and enter that code DEEP at checkout

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00:14:12.780 | All right.

00:14:15.020 | Jesse, I think it's time to do some calls.

00:14:16.460 | We have a brand new piece of equipment in the HQ here.

00:14:19.220 | Joe, the audio engineer extraordinaire

00:14:21.340 | gave us some sort of magic box

00:14:23.900 | that sits between Jesse's laptop and our soundboard

00:14:27.380 | to help do something with the questions

00:14:30.140 | that are coming in over it.

00:14:31.380 | I think it makes the question smarter.

00:14:32.860 | Is that what the box does?

00:14:34.780 | - Questions are pretty smart, but yeah, it makes it clearer.

00:14:36.860 | - Yeah, it makes it clearer.

00:14:37.740 | So, which means like almost certainly

00:14:39.820 | when we play this first question,

00:14:40.860 | you're just gonna see flames.

00:14:42.580 | It's like shoot out from the mixing board onto my head

00:14:44.580 | and then my hair is gonna catch on fire

00:14:46.860 | because that's about where we are technically speaking.

00:14:49.700 | That's my impression of like Joe here working our equipment

00:14:52.060 | and we're there.

00:14:53.060 | He's like doing all this complicated stuff

00:14:55.540 | and then I'm slowly reaching over to press something.

00:14:57.860 | He's like, "Don't touch that."

00:14:59.340 | And that's basically it.

00:15:00.940 | - You guys were having some good conversations.

00:15:02.500 | I was just kind of in the background

00:15:03.700 | just understanding maybe 20% of what you guys were saying.

00:15:07.780 | - I know.

00:15:09.140 | This is the skill of a nonfiction journalist and writer.

00:15:13.020 | I can sound confident about almost anything.

00:15:15.260 | So you probably picked up.

00:15:17.020 | I can pick up from like the things you're saying,

00:15:20.020 | like vocabulary and put them into a structure

00:15:22.220 | and then mimic them back in a way

00:15:23.740 | that sounds like I know what I'm talking about.

00:15:25.380 | It's all a parlor trick.

00:15:26.860 | Because like, that's what it is

00:15:27.820 | if you're writing like a big long form piece or a book,

00:15:29.980 | or like you have to bring in all this information

00:15:31.620 | and sound confident about it,

00:15:32.500 | but you know, like you can't master

00:15:34.660 | every single thing you're writing about.

00:15:35.900 | So I am a professionally trained BS artist.

00:15:39.700 | Like I had lunch the other day with a critical theorist

00:15:42.860 | and I know some critical theory,

00:15:43.900 | but like this guy was like cutting edge critical theorist,

00:15:46.820 | you know, and I was just able to pick up

00:15:50.420 | from the conversation.

00:15:51.260 | These are names of complex theories

00:15:53.100 | and be able to like, I bet I understand what that means

00:15:55.460 | and how this would relate to it.

00:15:56.900 | And kind of sound like I knew what I was talking about,

00:15:59.660 | like a little bit with, you know, post-humanism

00:16:03.300 | and right, anyways, right.

00:16:07.300 | It's complicated, irreducible, irreducible systems.

00:16:11.420 | But that's my thing.

00:16:12.260 | I can like very quickly get enough out of you

00:16:14.260 | to sound like I kind of know enough.

00:16:15.740 | But if we talk for five more minutes,

00:16:17.700 | you're gonna be like, wait a second.

00:16:19.780 | You don't know anything about this.

00:16:21.700 | So it's a skill that is useful in like a very narrow,

00:16:25.860 | very narrow applications.

00:16:27.580 | All right, so who do we have here?

00:16:29.140 | What do we got for our first call?

00:16:30.660 | - All right, the first question we have

00:16:32.380 | is about day batching.

00:16:34.020 | So we'll take a listen.

00:16:35.220 | - Hi, Kyle.

00:16:39.700 | I'm Giacomo, a UX designer

00:16:41.540 | with a background in adult education.

00:16:43.820 | I have two questions for you.

00:16:46.460 | First, what are your thoughts on day batching?

00:16:50.980 | Jeff Dorsey, ex-CEO of Twitter, uses this approach.

00:16:56.740 | Would you recommend day batching to someone that,

00:17:00.100 | like me, has several hats to wear?

00:17:02.620 | And second, how do you find balance

00:17:05.940 | between planning and spontaneity?

00:17:09.980 | One of my favorite thinkers, Massim Nicolas Taleb,

00:17:13.060 | discourages readers on planning their time.

00:17:16.100 | He suggests to let your curiosity, BS detector,

00:17:19.980 | and boredom avoidance guide your activities.

00:17:23.740 | Just make sure to set limits on things

00:17:25.820 | that do not help you focus, say social media.

00:17:28.700 | Since I know that you're familiar with his work,

00:17:32.220 | I've read your thoughts on his book "Antifragile."

00:17:35.260 | I wonder if you have any recommendations on this approach.

00:17:39.140 | Wish you and your family a merry, merry Christmas.

00:17:42.180 | - All right, well, first of all, Jesse,

00:17:44.700 | I think the cat's out of the bag

00:17:46.860 | that we build up these questions

00:17:48.900 | over a long period of time before we answer them.

00:17:51.900 | They might've heard the evergreen nature of this question,

00:17:54.340 | the hat, merry Christmas.

00:17:55.460 | - Yeah, it's funny.

00:17:56.300 | I mean, I have a big audience and it's,

00:17:57.620 | you know, I get a lot of questions that go through.

00:17:59.260 | - Yeah, yeah, but I'm glad we got to it.

00:18:01.140 | I think it's a good one

00:18:01.980 | because there's two pieces in there.

00:18:03.220 | First of all, day batching was a term I didn't,

00:18:06.980 | I hadn't been using, but I'm gonna use it now.

00:18:09.140 | So Giacomo, you've invented a term that I like, day batching.

00:18:14.140 | And so for people who don't know what he's talking about,

00:18:17.460 | day batching is essentially where you say,

00:18:20.420 | this day I work on this, this day I work on that, right?

00:18:23.580 | So you're dedicating whole days to one activity

00:18:27.300 | or one job or one type of role.

00:18:30.660 | And Jack Dorsey used to do that.

00:18:32.180 | I guess he probably still does, but he was doing that.

00:18:34.980 | I guess he's no longer the CEO of Twitter,

00:18:37.740 | but when he was the CEO of Twitter and Square,

00:18:39.620 | he had different days for the different companies.

00:18:42.580 | I'm a big believer in it.

00:18:43.940 | I'm a believer in it when that is applicable

00:18:47.180 | to your situation.

00:18:48.100 | And the reason why I am is because it does a great job

00:18:51.140 | at avoiding unnecessary context switching.

00:18:55.540 | This is the biggest issue when you wear multiple hats

00:18:58.980 | or like me have 17 jobs.

00:19:00.780 | It's not that the total amount of work

00:19:03.540 | of these different hats or jobs adds up to be too much.

00:19:06.660 | It's the context switching.

00:19:08.020 | I'm trying to work on this role,

00:19:10.900 | but also answering emails about that role.

00:19:13.460 | I'm trying to switch from this type of activity

00:19:16.140 | to a completely unrelated activity

00:19:17.860 | in the same day back to back.

00:19:19.380 | There's a real cost in terms of how long it takes

00:19:23.140 | for you to adjust your focus.

00:19:24.340 | It also just creates drag and you burn out easier.

00:19:27.380 | So when you have a full day dedicated to just one thing,

00:19:29.660 | that's all you're doing in your mind.

00:19:31.220 | Your mind is just in that context

00:19:32.700 | and it can completely forget,

00:19:34.340 | expend no energy on open obligations, questions,

00:19:38.300 | and work from the other context.

00:19:39.260 | You're gonna get a lot more done.

00:19:40.540 | You're gonna be a lot less burnt out.

00:19:42.100 | So when it is possible, when you have multiple clear roles,

00:19:44.700 | I like that configuration better than, for example,

00:19:48.140 | half day, half day, right?

00:19:50.340 | So if you want to compare this to,

00:19:51.980 | I work on this role in the morning

00:19:53.940 | and that role in the afternoon,

00:19:55.740 | that's worse than this day is for this role,

00:19:58.700 | that day is for that role, right?

00:20:00.300 | So I like the idea of day batching where possible.

00:20:03.540 | We do something like that here at the podcast.

00:20:07.660 | So, I mean, I've talked about this before.

00:20:09.260 | For now, while I'm in an academic semester,

00:20:13.660 | I give the podcast a half day, one half day per week.

00:20:18.660 | So it's not a full day.

00:20:19.940 | I can't afford a full day, but,

00:20:21.460 | what do you say, Jesse,

00:20:23.420 | like an extended half day probably, right?

00:20:25.260 | You know, sort of like today we're doing noon to five.

00:20:28.820 | Yeah.

00:20:30.020 | And then I say, that's all I do during that time.

00:20:33.100 | And I try to consolidate as much as possible to that time

00:20:36.380 | when I'm here and Jesse's here

00:20:37.420 | and let's get through the things,

00:20:38.260 | let's talk things through.

00:20:39.100 | I want to be just in that context while I'm here.

00:20:41.500 | And then I try to optimize it.

00:20:42.620 | Like, let's make as much progress as we can,

00:20:44.500 | but within that time.

00:20:45.580 | And actually that's a side effect of this

00:20:47.260 | is that this is an unrelated issue,

00:20:49.260 | but it's a fixed schedule productivity issue

00:20:51.340 | that when you give yourself these fixed limits,

00:20:52.860 | it still enables ambitious growth

00:20:55.460 | because you can say during this time,

00:20:57.300 | I want to do as much as we can,

00:20:59.140 | but it also puts limits on that time.

00:21:00.540 | So you're not just spending all of your time,

00:21:02.220 | you know, working on it

00:21:03.060 | and it takes over the rest of your life.

00:21:04.300 | So I like day batching.

00:21:06.180 | I like day batching when it is possible.

00:21:09.740 | And if you're going to do it, do it.

00:21:10.900 | Have separate email inboxes.

00:21:13.220 | Don't let any of the old world come into the new world,

00:21:16.380 | if at all possible.

00:21:17.740 | I think it's a great hack.

00:21:19.580 | All right, so what about this Tlaib question,

00:21:23.620 | planning versus spontaneity?

00:21:25.780 | You need to keep in mind that Tlaib

00:21:27.300 | is in a rarefied position

00:21:29.420 | in terms of the flexibility he has with his time.

00:21:31.980 | So we have to have some wariness

00:21:33.580 | generalizing a complete non-plan

00:21:36.980 | curiosity driven approach to your day.

00:21:39.980 | That's not going to be relevant

00:21:41.340 | to 99% of the working world,

00:21:43.260 | where it's, well, I have this job

00:21:44.540 | with all these obligations and there's deadlines

00:21:46.780 | and things have to get done.

00:21:48.260 | And in that situation, what is the binary?

00:21:52.820 | Organization or no organization?

00:21:56.140 | You're going to try to have an intentional way

00:21:57.580 | of making sense of the stuff on your plate,

00:21:59.540 | some sort of system and plan

00:22:00.860 | for trying to get things done

00:22:01.820 | at a reasonable level of quality and timeliness or not.

00:22:05.740 | And not means chaos.

00:22:06.980 | So once you have non-trivial amount of things on your plate,

00:22:09.860 | you have to do some sort of organizational system

00:22:13.100 | to avoid chaos.

00:22:13.980 | If you have nothing on your plate, then yeah,

00:22:16.260 | don't bother, I suppose.

00:22:17.540 | But once you do, you need some sort of system

00:22:19.260 | to avoid chaos.

00:22:21.180 | And these are the type of things I talk about.

00:22:22.980 | Now you want to have capture, configure, control, et cetera,

00:22:25.940 | or whatever it is you enjoy.

00:22:28.060 | I think there's a different issue here, however,

00:22:31.740 | and this might be what Tlaib is actually leaning towards,

00:22:36.740 | which is, do you want to map out

00:22:41.820 | like everything you're going to do with your time?

00:22:44.740 | Like here's my master plan, I have my work,

00:22:46.660 | but even outside of work,

00:22:47.660 | I'm working on this project and that project,

00:22:49.380 | and there's no room for spontaneity.

00:22:50.740 | And he's saying, that's a problem.

00:22:51.900 | That I would agree with.

00:22:53.420 | So the work you have to do,

00:22:55.420 | it's better to have an organizational system versus not.

00:22:58.740 | If you don't, then it's just chaos.

00:23:00.180 | And the work doesn't go away,

00:23:01.380 | it just gets done worse and you're more stressed.

00:23:04.180 | But in terms of where you have control,

00:23:08.020 | your time after work, your weekends,

00:23:09.820 | maybe you've pulled back your job,

00:23:11.300 | not to be a full-time job,

00:23:13.020 | Tlaib's warning probably is one worth heeding.

00:23:16.900 | Don't fill every minute of the time you have control over.

00:23:20.420 | Don't say, I'm going to figure out in advance,

00:23:21.940 | here's what I'm going to do

00:23:22.780 | with all the other aspects of my life.

00:23:23.980 | Give yourself some room there.

00:23:25.100 | I like that idea for spontaneity.

00:23:26.740 | I'm going to read, I'm going to see how I feel.

00:23:28.740 | I'm going to go to the woods

00:23:29.820 | and we'll just see what happens.

00:23:32.340 | I think there's some merit to that as well.

00:23:33.940 | I actually talked about that in my third book,

00:23:35.860 | "How to Become a High School Superstar."

00:23:37.740 | I had an idea I called under-scheduling.

00:23:40.420 | And I was pitching this idea to high school kids,

00:23:43.260 | American high school kids.

00:23:45.340 | Have less on your plate than you have time to accomplish.

00:23:48.180 | This is very scary for kids

00:23:50.660 | who are worried about college admissions.

00:23:51.740 | But in that extra time,

00:23:53.340 | you can be curious and explore

00:23:55.220 | and stumble and wander into things.

00:23:57.020 | That was the key to becoming interesting

00:23:58.500 | and you want to become interesting.

00:23:59.980 | And so I think we're on the same wavelength.

00:24:01.820 | But what I'm saying is, Giacomo,

00:24:04.420 | the stuff you have to do, organize the hell out of it.

00:24:07.100 | In fact, that'll probably leave you more time to wander,

00:24:09.580 | but then be cautious or conservative

00:24:12.820 | with how much you structure the time that remains.

00:24:16.300 | All right, Jesse, what do we got coming up next?

00:24:20.620 | - All right, next question.

00:24:22.300 | It's about burnout.

00:24:23.260 | He's a student, so did some time blocking.

00:24:26.180 | We'll take a listen.

00:24:27.180 | - Hi, Cal.

00:24:30.380 | First of all, thanks so much for your podcast.

00:24:32.260 | I think it's incredible

00:24:33.540 | and it's definitely changed my life for the better.

00:24:35.700 | And it seems many others were very grateful.

00:24:38.900 | So my question is about burning out

00:24:41.860 | and making sustainable work for long periods of time.

00:24:45.580 | I, after last semester, after time blocking,

00:24:49.380 | towards the end of my time block,

00:24:51.300 | blocking towards of the end of the semester,

00:24:54.060 | I overdid it to meet a bunch of paper deadlines

00:24:56.620 | as a computer scientist researcher, just like you.

00:24:59.580 | I definitely think I overdid it and worked too much

00:25:02.380 | and that burned me out.

00:25:04.140 | And that was a little bit mainly because,

00:25:06.260 | you know, I'm getting to be better at productivity planning,

00:25:08.820 | scheduling, et cetera.

00:25:10.140 | I think I fixed that.

00:25:11.380 | But now I need like two weeks of vacation,

00:25:14.220 | which is a week longer than I wish I needed.

00:25:17.020 | So my question is, how do you make it sustainable

00:25:20.540 | to do time blocking?

00:25:22.420 | Especially when, for example,

00:25:23.860 | when I see how you keep in the face of repetitive tasks,

00:25:27.380 | like you need to face the same thing again and again

00:25:30.860 | and again, like programming.

00:25:32.220 | And, you know, I need to program all the time.

00:25:33.820 | I need to do math all the time.

00:25:35.340 | And I don't know if it gets repetitive,

00:25:37.100 | but how do you manage to have to do the same thing

00:25:40.500 | many times without burning out?

00:25:42.180 | For example, your podcast,

00:25:43.500 | I'm sure you ask the same questions so many,

00:25:45.740 | answer the same questions so many times.

00:25:47.780 | Sometimes I marvel how you don't get bored at doing this.

00:25:50.820 | Thank God you don't, but tell us the secret.

00:25:54.540 | Thank you so much.

00:25:55.380 | You're wonderful.

00:25:56.220 | - Well, let's start with that last mini question first.

00:26:01.700 | So yes, I do come back to the same topics often.

00:26:06.260 | And I call that the Dave Ramsey strategy.

00:26:08.260 | I learned it from the Dave Ramsey Personal Finance

00:26:12.020 | radio show, which is very popular.

00:26:13.980 | I think it's like 8 million average daily listeners.

00:26:16.980 | And he comes back to the same things again and again

00:26:19.420 | and again, and it's actually at the core of the show,

00:26:21.620 | remembering that A, not everyone's listening

00:26:23.820 | to every episode, but B, people often want reinforcement

00:26:28.100 | for a lifestyle that is appealing

00:26:32.180 | and hearing it again and again is not negative.

00:26:35.140 | It's actually positive.

00:26:36.140 | That being said, I think you'll notice that

00:26:39.540 | Justin and I are pretty careful in our question selection

00:26:41.860 | that we evolve the set of questions that we work on.

00:26:45.660 | So like within a period of, I don't know, a month or so,

00:26:49.700 | you might hear the same question again and again.

00:26:52.860 | But if you go back to six months ago,

00:26:56.460 | you'll see the overlap is kind of less.

00:26:58.420 | You see as we change our focus, the questions change focus,

00:27:01.380 | we sort of drift around.

00:27:02.260 | So it's not like we're answering the exact same questions

00:27:04.540 | every time, but that's the philosophy there.

00:27:07.260 | And I don't mind it.

00:27:08.100 | I mean, I think everyone has their own take on it.

00:27:09.860 | I like refining my answer and I think it does some good.

00:27:12.900 | All right, let's talk about this burnout issue.

00:27:15.380 | 'Cause I think there's two things I wanna tell you.

00:27:17.660 | One, especially in academia, seasonality is fine.

00:27:22.660 | I work really hard for a deadline

00:27:25.500 | and then I do almost nothing for a week or two afterwards

00:27:27.860 | is actually I think not an unusual scheduling move

00:27:32.860 | for an academic.

00:27:35.540 | It's very seasonal job.

00:27:36.980 | Busy periods, unbusy periods.

00:27:38.900 | Summer is low, fall exam period is high.

00:27:42.380 | Paper deadline is a really busy period.

00:27:44.860 | A month after the paper deadline is where you're recharged.

00:27:47.100 | So I want you to lean into in the academic life being uneven

00:27:50.420 | and the key to that is leaning into the rest

00:27:53.940 | as hard as you lean into the peaks,

00:27:55.940 | leaning into those troughs as hard as you lean into the peak.

00:27:57.700 | So don't be worried about taking two weeks off.

00:28:00.420 | You can have months that are slow

00:28:01.700 | and months that are hard, yin yang, balance that out.

00:28:04.340 | And I don't want you to worry about that

00:28:06.420 | because there is necessarily in your chosen career

00:28:11.020 | intense busy periods surrounding deadlines, et cetera.

00:28:15.000 | Secondly though, and this is gonna be a different take

00:28:17.080 | on this issue.

00:28:17.920 | So you have two ways of tackling this burnout.

00:28:22.180 | One of the powers of time blocking,

00:28:27.080 | so getting really intentional about your time

00:28:28.840 | and in particular when you do time blocking

00:28:30.660 | with weekly planning and weekly planning

00:28:32.200 | with quarterly or semester planning

00:28:34.040 | is that it enables you to work less hours.

00:28:36.540 | So where a lot of people get in trouble

00:28:39.720 | and I've been here before is you get organized

00:28:44.520 | so you're doing time blocking with your day

00:28:46.480 | based off a smart weekly plan,

00:28:47.920 | based off of a semester plan.

00:28:49.360 | You're getting things done.

00:28:50.920 | You're getting a lot of bang for your time buck

00:28:53.680 | because you're choosing when you work,

00:28:55.600 | you're not distracting, you're not context switching

00:28:58.280 | and you're getting things done at a fast rate.

00:29:00.780 | The instinct a lot of high achievers have is great,

00:29:04.960 | now I can fit more into my day.

00:29:07.040 | And you're not compensating for the fact

00:29:08.880 | that it's higher energy, it's higher demand,

00:29:13.880 | it's intense what you're doing.

00:29:15.760 | And then you overdo it.

00:29:17.260 | And you're like, I always worked eight hours days.

00:29:20.080 | Why am I now so exhausted?

00:29:21.340 | Because before you were working eight hour days

00:29:23.560 | but you had email open

00:29:24.800 | and you would go down internet rabbit holes

00:29:26.640 | and you were at the coffee maker.

00:29:28.360 | Now that you're time blocking,

00:29:29.400 | it's this 90 minutes you didn't look up

00:29:31.200 | and then you had a 10 minute break

00:29:32.380 | and then you were, it's all so packed.

00:29:34.560 | And so what you need to do once you get organized

00:29:36.800 | and structured about your time

00:29:37.960 | is to use that newfound superpower to work less hours.

00:29:41.360 | It's what's gonna give you confidence to say,

00:29:43.080 | I'm not working on Friday this week

00:29:44.760 | 'cause I have a weekly plan

00:29:45.800 | that's in line with my semester plan

00:29:47.680 | and my time block plan makes sure

00:29:49.280 | that on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,

00:29:50.840 | I'm getting done what needs to get done.

00:29:52.400 | And so with complete confidence,

00:29:53.640 | I can take Friday completely off.

00:29:55.980 | It's what lets you say,

00:29:57.220 | I'm gonna stop working at three every day this week

00:29:59.620 | because I have some new crazy workout routine

00:30:02.260 | or I'm gonna start training for a triathlon

00:30:04.800 | and I have a group of runners

00:30:06.480 | and then we're gonna do the bike training

00:30:07.560 | or whatever you're gonna do.

00:30:08.400 | It gives you confidence to do that

00:30:09.640 | because you can see the plan,

00:30:11.320 | you can see how it's gonna unfold.

00:30:13.560 | So you have a lot of flexibility

00:30:15.200 | as a computer science student, as a training academic.

00:30:18.700 | Let time blocking

00:30:19.920 | and the associated time management strategies

00:30:22.100 | give you much more interesting control over that time.

00:30:26.520 | I want your schedule to look decidedly different

00:30:30.080 | than all your friends who,

00:30:32.700 | instead of going into grad school with their training,

00:30:35.520 | went to finance jobs or went to developer jobs.

00:30:38.920 | I want you to have a schedule that feels very different.

00:30:42.040 | Whole weeks where you're not working,

00:30:43.880 | days you don't work, afternoons you don't work.

00:30:46.880 | Like where you're taking control of your schedule.

00:30:50.640 | You're taking advantage of that intense focus

00:30:54.900 | that you're able to get out of your time block

00:30:56.660 | to build a schedule that's very sustainable and interesting.

00:30:58.720 | So put those two together.

00:31:00.120 | Seasonality is fine, hard periods balance with easy,

00:31:02.520 | don't feel guilty.

00:31:03.360 | Two, don't work so much.

00:31:05.880 | You listen to my podcast, you're good at what you do,

00:31:08.280 | you're good at structuring your time,

00:31:09.880 | take advantage of that.

00:31:10.840 | And just keep in mind, when I was in your position,

00:31:13.560 | when I was a grad student at MIT studying computer science,

00:31:16.680 | I was doing multiple other things.

00:31:18.760 | I was writing books,

00:31:20.120 | I was running a three time a week essays

00:31:22.760 | on the Study Hacks blog.

00:31:25.240 | Once we had a dog, I was doing like long walks and exercise.

00:31:28.640 | I never worked outside of nine to five hours.

00:31:30.960 | I didn't work in the evenings

00:31:31.840 | except for before deadlines.

00:31:33.640 | I fit that all in.

00:31:35.400 | So the actual amount of computer science work I was doing

00:31:37.620 | was maybe halftime at best.

00:31:41.360 | And again, it's because time blocking,

00:31:43.360 | weekly planning, these things work.

00:31:44.960 | So Brando, lean into your flexibility

00:31:49.320 | and build a cool schedule.

00:31:51.040 | I've learned, Jesse, to stop telling PhD students

00:31:56.680 | that are stressed about their dissertation.

00:32:00.040 | To stop telling them that,

00:32:01.840 | A, when it came time to write my dissertation,

00:32:03.680 | instead of just generalizing work I'd already done,

00:32:06.320 | I started a new thing from scratch.

00:32:08.440 | And B, I wrote a book at the same time.

00:32:10.280 | Because I was bored.

00:32:11.280 | 'Cause we were writing your dissertation,

00:32:12.400 | they're like, this is all you should be doing,

00:32:14.440 | is writing your dissertation.

00:32:16.000 | And I was like, okay, I mean,

00:32:17.160 | I can spend a few hours on this a day.

00:32:19.520 | What else am I supposed to do?

00:32:21.120 | And I used to get, there's such a subculture back then

00:32:25.360 | of, I call it the dissertation hell subculture.

00:32:28.320 | Where it's all just self-flagellating grad students

00:32:30.440 | about like, no one has gone through a harder trial

00:32:35.440 | than I have gone through writing a dissertation.

00:32:39.160 | 'Cause I am not sure if this chapter is good

00:32:42.600 | or how long I have to research.

00:32:43.840 | And I was like, guys, this is a crazy easy job.

00:32:46.440 | You have a lot of time to write this one thing.

00:32:49.080 | I'd already written three,

00:32:50.120 | I was on my third book at the time.

00:32:52.360 | I was like, I've already written two books, unrelated.

00:32:54.360 | Like, it's not so bad.

00:32:56.000 | Most grad schools want you to get the PhD.

00:32:58.720 | It's not, we are going to, good luck,

00:33:03.720 | getting past our murder boards of investigations.

00:33:06.520 | They're like, yeah, we know you,

00:33:07.800 | you've published a bunch of, it's fine, good, yay.

00:33:10.240 | And so I never got that dissertation hell.

00:33:12.960 | I was like, this is an unforced error.

00:33:14.600 | This like, we have to self-flagellate

00:33:15.960 | and pretend like this is the hardest thing

00:33:17.040 | anyone's ever done.

00:33:17.960 | But I learned graduate students going through it

00:33:21.320 | don't appreciate me talking about writing my book

00:33:25.400 | concurrently with my dissertation.

00:33:27.000 | And it doesn't make them feel better.

00:33:29.600 | Just makes them kind of mad at me.

00:33:31.320 | - I can imagine.

00:33:33.760 | - Yeah.

00:33:34.600 | - All right, speaking of which, what do we got next?

00:33:37.400 | - Okay, next question.

00:33:39.960 | It's about basically earning money versus building things

00:33:44.640 | and discusses Andrew Yang's book,

00:33:46.760 | "Smart People Should Build Things."

00:33:49.080 | - Hi, Cal Newport.

00:33:50.240 | I am a huge fan of your work.

00:33:52.080 | I wanted to ask about advice in "So Good"

00:33:54.560 | that they can't ignore you.

00:33:56.080 | You quote Sivers suggesting that

00:33:57.960 | when making early career choices,

00:34:00.400 | people should consider money as a mutual indicator of value.

00:34:03.800 | I recently read the book,

00:34:05.800 | "Smart People Should Build Things" by Andrew Yang,

00:34:08.560 | which provides an example of where this mindset

00:34:11.200 | may be hurtful to society.

00:34:13.680 | He argues that a desire to maximize career

00:34:16.440 | and financial capital drive students from elite institutions

00:34:19.960 | to end up taking more specialized large city

00:34:23.200 | and company jobs that have dubious beneficial,

00:34:26.160 | if not outright negative real world impact.

00:34:29.520 | They might instead provide the most value for society

00:34:33.320 | and potentially feel more satisfied

00:34:35.240 | if they took harder jobs in less known cities.

00:34:38.880 | For example, a student graduating from an Ivy League

00:34:42.200 | might be doing leverage buyouts

00:34:44.040 | for a large investment banking firm in New York

00:34:46.640 | making $200,000 a year,

00:34:49.240 | as opposed to running financials

00:34:51.000 | for an energy startup in Detroit at 60K.

00:34:54.000 | While Andrew Yang focuses on jobs

00:34:57.520 | in the financial and consulting sector,

00:35:00.240 | his advice seems to be relevant across most industries.

00:35:04.240 | I'm curious how you would reconcile his perspective,

00:35:06.840 | your advice from "So Good" that they can't ignore you.

00:35:09.560 | - Well, I like this question

00:35:13.320 | and I'm gonna answer it in two parts.

00:35:14.880 | So first, I'm gonna clarify the Derek Sivers idea

00:35:20.280 | that I talked about in "So Good I Can't Ignore You"

00:35:21.840 | because I think you have a misinterpretation.

00:35:25.280 | And once we fix the interpretation,

00:35:26.720 | you'll see that it's not in contention with Yang's idea.

00:35:29.720 | And then let's talk about Yang's idea by itself.

00:35:32.560 | All right, so this is one of the most,

00:35:34.000 | this Derek Sivers quote I use in "So Good I Can't Ignore You"

00:35:36.560 | is one of the most, I would say,

00:35:39.040 | misunderstood ideas from my books.

00:35:43.240 | So I use this quote where Derek said,

00:35:46.080 | "Money is a good neutral indicator of value."

00:35:51.080 | And a lot of people interpreted that to mean

00:35:54.120 | money is a good neutral indicator value,

00:35:57.600 | indicator of how valuable or good a job is.

00:36:02.600 | So that if a job pays more money,

00:36:04.600 | that is a better or more valuable job

00:36:06.640 | than one that pays less.

00:36:08.240 | That's the interpretation I think

00:36:10.560 | that would run counter to Yang.

00:36:13.640 | Because that interpretation would say,

00:36:14.640 | yeah, an elite specialized job is gonna pay more

00:36:18.480 | than a more pragmatic, less specialized job.

00:36:21.560 | So the elite job would be better.

00:36:23.280 | So that would run contrary,

00:36:24.360 | but that's not the interpretation I meant.

00:36:26.040 | So what Derek meant with that quote

00:36:28.000 | and the way that I actually use that quote

00:36:30.160 | is when you are trying to evaluate

00:36:32.240 | if a particular product or idea is good,

00:36:36.080 | you see if people will pay for it.

00:36:37.760 | And the idea that's there is that

00:36:40.760 | the alternative is to ask people,

00:36:44.960 | is this idea good?

00:36:46.160 | Is this product good?

00:36:47.120 | And Derek's point, which I agree with,

00:36:48.880 | is that people will give you bad advice.

00:36:52.320 | They don't want you to feel bad.

00:36:53.600 | They'll be like, yeah,

00:36:55.520 | yeah, your idea to start a bookstore sounds great.

00:36:58.360 | You should definitely do that.

00:37:01.120 | That's definitely not crazy, right?

00:37:03.480 | Or yeah, yeah, your startup idea sounds good.

00:37:05.920 | You should quit your job and go do that startup.

00:37:07.560 | Follow your dreams.

00:37:08.400 | Let's do it.

00:37:09.240 | Let's get after it, right?

00:37:10.080 | It's easy to say that.

00:37:11.160 | And Derek's point was people don't care

00:37:14.760 | about giving you positive feedback,

00:37:16.160 | but people do not give up money easily.

00:37:18.600 | They won't give you money unless they actually value it.

00:37:21.520 | So you see, I do a pop-up bookstore.

00:37:24.160 | Did I sell any books?

00:37:25.840 | Oh, now I could see the people around here

00:37:27.840 | actually wanna buy books from me.

00:37:29.680 | Or here's my startup idea.

00:37:30.760 | Well, why don't I do it on the side in a limited way

00:37:32.800 | and see if we can get clients to give me a check?

00:37:35.000 | 'Cause if no one's writing me a check,

00:37:37.360 | then this service must not be that compelling

00:37:39.360 | or they must not trust me to do it.

00:37:41.080 | So that's what Sivers was doing.

00:37:42.240 | It was when you're trying to get feedback

00:37:43.480 | on an idea or product,

00:37:44.800 | put it into a situation where people have to pay for it.

00:37:48.000 | And if they do, then you say,

00:37:49.200 | okay, this must be useful to people.

00:37:51.720 | And if they don't, they don't.

00:37:52.640 | And the way that Derek deployed this concept

00:37:55.560 | in his own career is that he had a lot of shifts

00:37:58.280 | where he transitioned from one type of job to another.

00:38:01.440 | And he used this principle to help figure out

00:38:05.760 | whether or not he should make the shift.

00:38:07.280 | So he left the desk job to be a full-time musician,

00:38:10.600 | for example.

00:38:11.440 | And he waited until he was making a sizable fraction

00:38:16.120 | of his income at a desk job,

00:38:18.600 | a sizable fraction of that income

00:38:19.840 | as a performing musician on the side.

00:38:23.560 | He's like, okay, that's my indication

00:38:25.040 | that I must be good at this.

00:38:25.880 | And then he quit and did that.

00:38:27.240 | And then he started a music company called CD Baby

00:38:30.480 | as a pre iTunes custom CD company.

00:38:33.560 | And he ran it on the side until it was making

00:38:35.600 | a certain amount of money.

00:38:36.440 | And he said, okay, that's how I know this is a good idea

00:38:38.520 | 'cause it's making a certain amount of money.

00:38:40.120 | Now I will quit music and do this full-time.

00:38:42.960 | So he used money, not people's opinions

00:38:45.400 | as the best indicator whether an idea was good or viable.

00:38:49.320 | That's very different than trying to rank order things.

00:38:51.880 | So he wouldn't say, how much money would you get

00:38:55.000 | for various things that tells you what's better?

00:38:56.720 | No, no, he's like, you come up with the idea

00:38:58.040 | that I love this idea because I love what it stands for.

00:39:00.320 | I think it's gonna impact the world.

00:39:01.680 | I like the lifestyle.

00:39:03.200 | I think it's important, but I need the sanity check

00:39:06.080 | that it's actually viable.

00:39:07.440 | And the way I do that is to see

00:39:08.440 | if people will pay money for it.

00:39:09.520 | So it's not a ranking thing.

00:39:10.560 | It's a sanity check for an idea.

00:39:12.320 | Is that idea sufficiently valuable

00:39:13.880 | that you can actually run with it?

00:39:16.360 | Now let's talk about Andrew Yang's book,

00:39:17.800 | "Smart People Should Build Things."

00:39:20.840 | Yes, Yang is right.

00:39:24.000 | I like that argument.

00:39:25.360 | I think he's right in it.

00:39:27.440 | And it's something that we should emphasize more.

00:39:30.000 | I saw this upfront.

00:39:32.560 | I went to an Ivy League school, okay?

00:39:35.740 | And I know these are stories,

00:39:37.680 | just gonna get myself in trouble with people.

00:39:39.720 | So let's hope no one I know is listening to this.

00:39:41.600 | I'm gonna tell some, literally some stories out of school.

00:39:43.960 | But so I went to an Ivy League college

00:39:46.280 | and I guess I was naive, right?

00:39:48.960 | Because I came out of public school,

00:39:52.680 | a handful of people went to Ivy League schools

00:39:54.400 | from the public school.

00:39:55.280 | I was like, okay, you know, this should be good.

00:39:57.760 | Whatever, I come in there all naive.

00:40:00.880 | A lot of really smart, interesting people,

00:40:02.680 | as you'd imagine at one of these schools.

00:40:04.840 | I just assumed that we were all gonna go off

00:40:08.600 | and do like really interesting things.

00:40:10.720 | Like I was writing books

00:40:11.880 | and I was gonna go to grad school at MIT and write books

00:40:14.640 | and become a professor.

00:40:17.520 | And my wife who I met there,

00:40:18.880 | who was also from a public school

00:40:20.280 | and sort of similarly naive about this,

00:40:22.000 | went into, she had studied,

00:40:24.480 | she went to like a educational nonprofits

00:40:26.960 | and there's something she had studied.

00:40:28.840 | And we had another friend,

00:40:30.200 | so our third friend who was our third sort of like

00:40:32.200 | just stumbled into Ivy League school

00:40:34.640 | from some public school, went into journalism.

00:40:38.360 | And I just felt like everyone was gonna do that.

00:40:39.760 | Like you're gonna write books

00:40:40.680 | and become journalists and professors and thinkers.

00:40:43.880 | And outside of that small group,

00:40:45.920 | everyone went to Harvard Law School.

00:40:47.720 | And I remember being surprised by it.

00:40:49.840 | I was like, you're all just going to Harvard Law School?

00:40:51.760 | Like you all just are, everyone's just becoming a lawyer

00:40:55.280 | and the ones who didn't went to finance or consulting.

00:40:57.240 | But I remember so many of my friends

00:40:58.840 | went to Harvard Law School.

00:41:00.280 | I was like, you don't,

00:41:01.560 | do you guys really want to be lawyers?

00:41:02.960 | Like, I've never heard you talk about this.

00:41:04.720 | Like, this isn't your,

00:41:06.520 | like some thing that you're into.

00:41:08.560 | And this is why I was naive,

00:41:10.480 | is that there's just a whole culture that like,

00:41:14.400 | you grow up, if you grew up like upper middle class

00:41:16.680 | and go to a private school

00:41:18.200 | and your parents are like high paid professionals,

00:41:20.240 | it's like, this is the whole point.

00:41:21.600 | You go to these prestigious schools

00:41:24.440 | so that you can get the elite specialized jobs

00:41:27.720 | at the lawyers, at the big firms or in finance

00:41:31.600 | or in consulting.

00:41:33.640 | And I didn't know that, no one told me that part

00:41:36.000 | because I kind of just stumbled into this Ivy League school

00:41:38.560 | and was like, this means I get to write books

00:41:40.480 | and go to grad school.

00:41:41.320 | And everyone else was like,

00:41:42.160 | this means I get to go to Harvard Law School.

00:41:44.360 | So this is why Andrew Yang's book resonated

00:41:47.720 | because I don't know how many,

00:41:52.200 | how many like high price specialized law partners we need.

00:41:54.840 | I don't know how many people we need

00:41:56.840 | using their intelligence to make financial instruments

00:41:58.960 | that are so complicated that no one can understand them

00:42:01.000 | so Goldman can make it unprecedented profit margin

00:42:04.120 | off of them.

00:42:04.960 | I had a friend from school

00:42:07.920 | who went to work for a prop trading desk

00:42:09.480 | at one of these firms.

00:42:10.960 | And he was assigned one CEO, like one company.

00:42:15.440 | And like his whole job was to just learn everything possible

00:42:18.600 | about this guy, listen to every public statement he did,

00:42:21.560 | every investor call he did,

00:42:23.360 | and even learn the tone of his voice.

00:42:26.000 | Like I think he's worried just so they could make

00:42:27.920 | like the best decision on trading this particular stock.

00:42:30.600 | I don't know, this guy wrote for the humor magazine with me.

00:42:32.880 | Smart, funny, interesting guy.

00:42:34.480 | Is that really what the society needed

00:42:36.920 | was making sure that the, you know,

00:42:38.840 | Goldman prop trading desk was gonna get a little bit

00:42:42.400 | of an edge on trading Radio Shack or whatever.

00:42:45.280 | So I actually am one of these sort of, you know,

00:42:48.880 | I don't know, hypocritical Ivy League populist

00:42:51.080 | on these types of things.

00:42:51.920 | Is I think people should go do interesting things.

00:42:53.760 | These smart people who go to these schools

00:42:55.560 | and probably they do now, this was a while ago.

00:42:58.560 | Don't go to Wall Street, don't go to law school.

00:43:01.400 | You're not gonna like being a lawyer.

00:43:03.200 | Let me just cut to the chase.

00:43:05.720 | You're not gonna like it.

00:43:06.760 | If you're good and go to a good law school,

00:43:09.040 | they're gonna give you a job that's gonna be terrible.

00:43:11.320 | You're gonna have to work so much and it's terrible.

00:43:13.160 | And you're gonna have to go to a country club

00:43:14.280 | at some point, it's not good.

00:43:16.600 | And let me tell you about Wall Street.

00:43:17.720 | Like, yeah, you're gonna make a lot of money,

00:43:19.120 | but like you're gonna be kind of a little bit

00:43:22.120 | douchey broey probably.

00:43:23.380 | And they're gonna make you do spreadsheets

00:43:25.120 | until three in the morning and you're gonna be depressed.

00:43:27.760 | Like I can just cut to the chase.

00:43:30.520 | Like go do something interesting,

00:43:31.960 | write books, become an academic, start companies.

00:43:34.180 | More people should start companies.

00:43:35.880 | Do the Elon Musk thing.

00:43:37.600 | He was like, I'm just gonna go invent cool things

00:43:39.520 | 'cause it should exist.

00:43:40.560 | It also makes life more interesting.

00:43:43.240 | So yeah, I'm not the preacher to teach you,

00:43:45.720 | but I'm in the Andrew Yang school that you should,

00:43:50.160 | if you're smart and you go to one of these

00:43:51.700 | really good schools is go do interesting things,

00:43:53.800 | go build things or produce things that are useful.

00:43:56.320 | I mean, I will say I think Georgetown

00:43:57.680 | where I am now is good about this.

00:43:59.920 | We get more civic minded people.

00:44:02.800 | We send a lot of people in the public service.

00:44:04.600 | They come here to go in the public service.

00:44:06.600 | And so I think we get more of that to Jesuit ethos

00:44:09.640 | pervades the institution.

00:44:11.960 | Like you're getting educated so you can improve the world.

00:44:14.000 | I think that's fantastic.

00:44:15.520 | But I think that memo needs to spread.

00:44:19.200 | So I'm in favor of what Yang says,

00:44:22.440 | go build cool things, go write books,

00:44:24.840 | don't go to Harvard Law School.

00:44:26.400 | Jesse, is this where I say, okay, now time to talk to,

00:44:31.720 | let's go to our sponsors.

00:44:32.720 | We have a new sponsor here, Harvard Law School.

00:44:35.360 | Oh no.

00:44:36.200 | Again, thwarted, thwarted.

00:44:41.240 | Goldman, the Goldman Sachs proprietary trading desk.

00:44:44.120 | Man, I gotta vet these things.

00:44:46.400 | I gotta vet these things.

00:44:47.240 | They're actually, speaking of sponsors though,

00:44:49.000 | let's talk about a real one we have, which is stamps.com.

00:44:53.080 | So let's say you do follow Andrew Yang's advice.

00:44:55.760 | You do go start a business.

00:44:57.200 | You're employing real people.

00:44:58.520 | You're building interesting things.

00:44:59.920 | You're not just doing financial derivatives.

00:45:03.920 | If you were doing that,

00:45:05.280 | and I think Jesse, you will appreciate this transition.

00:45:09.160 | You don't wanna waste your time

00:45:10.480 | with repeated trips to the post office, right?

00:45:13.400 | I think that's chapter three of Andrew Yang's book.

00:45:15.920 | So with stamps.com, you can skip that trip

00:45:18.720 | and focus on what it takes to bring your business

00:45:20.840 | to the next level.

00:45:22.160 | As I talked about in Monday's episode,

00:45:23.760 | stamps.com allows you to print official postage

00:45:26.920 | right from your computer.

00:45:28.000 | So you don't have to go to the post office to send it.

00:45:32.280 | In addition to giving you access

00:45:33.560 | to the post office shipping services,

00:45:35.040 | you also give access to UPS shipping services

00:45:38.680 | right there from your computer.

00:45:40.120 | And they give you big discounts.

00:45:42.200 | 40% off the UPS rates, the postal service rates,

00:45:45.680 | 76% off the UPS rates.

00:45:48.560 | So whether you're an office and the invoices,

00:45:50.440 | a side hustle Etsy shop,

00:45:53.360 | or a full blown warehouse shipping out order,

00:45:55.240 | stamps.com will make your life easier.

00:45:57.200 | You just need a computer and a printer.

00:45:59.520 | So stop overpaying for shipping.

00:46:01.760 | So you can put your attention

00:46:02.720 | to making the world a better place

00:46:04.320 | and showing those Harvard Law School lawyers who's boss

00:46:07.240 | by going to stamps.com.

00:46:09.040 | Sign up with promo code DEEP for a special offer

00:46:12.360 | that includes a four week trial,

00:46:14.120 | free postage in a digital scale,

00:46:15.640 | no long-term commitments or contracts.

00:46:17.240 | Just go to stamps.com, click that microphone at the top

00:46:20.400 | and enter the code DEEP.

00:46:23.560 | Now, if you did end up ignoring Andrew Yang

00:46:26.760 | and going to Goldman and Harvard Law School,

00:46:28.840 | and now you're anxious because your life

00:46:33.000 | is devoid of useful meaning,

00:46:35.400 | no matter, you're gonna get in trouble for this.

00:46:37.120 | You need Headspace.

00:46:38.120 | You need Headspace's guided meditation app

00:46:41.360 | to help you refine your center

00:46:45.280 | and calm down that anxious mind.

00:46:48.440 | I am a Headspace fan.

00:46:49.480 | I talked about on Monday that I was using Headspace

00:46:52.420 | during this recent busy period

00:46:54.040 | that just calmed down my sympathetic nervous system.

00:46:56.600 | I was using their breathing related guided meditations.

00:47:00.280 | They walk you through how to breathe and how to think,

00:47:03.500 | very calm voice, and it was quite effective.

00:47:08.500 | Headspace has meditations for many different types of uses,

00:47:12.920 | including focus, it's relevant for Deep Questions listeners,

00:47:17.120 | guided meditations to help you get ready to focus,

00:47:19.280 | guided meditations to help you sleep,

00:47:22.300 | guided meditations to help you breathe better

00:47:25.000 | or fight anxiety.

00:47:26.300 | It's something I think we all could probably use

00:47:28.360 | a little bit of now.

00:47:30.320 | Headspace is scientifically proven

00:47:33.160 | to help you manage your feelings and mental health.

00:47:35.480 | Recent study proved that in just two weeks,

00:47:37.320 | it reduces stress by 14%.

00:47:39.560 | So this actually does work.

00:47:42.200 | So however you're feeling,

00:47:43.160 | try Headspace at headspace.com/questions

00:47:47.600 | and get one month free of their entire Mindfulness Library.

00:47:52.600 | This is the best Headspace offer available,

00:47:54.680 | but you have to go to headspace.com/questions today.

00:47:57.760 | That's headspace.com/questions.

00:48:01.320 | All right, speaking of questions, Jesse,

00:48:02.680 | I think we've got time to fit in one or two more.

00:48:05.080 | So who do we have next?

00:48:06.280 | - All right, next question is a 35 year old

00:48:10.440 | looking to change careers and potentially abandon

00:48:13.320 | some of the career capital that he's accumulated.

00:48:15.760 | - Hey, Kyle, hope you're doing great.

00:48:22.600 | My name is Sebastian.

00:48:23.800 | I am a 35 year old man from Uruguay.

00:48:27.120 | And my question was regarding switching careers

00:48:31.960 | as a 35 year old.

00:48:33.900 | I work as a location sound recordist for film

00:48:40.000 | and I was thinking of changing careers because of money.

00:48:44.120 | I didn't know what the job offerings would be like

00:48:51.640 | in my field when I first started.

00:48:58.240 | So as I got deeper into the field,

00:49:02.320 | I realized that there's a lot that I don't control.

00:49:08.960 | And you end up being a freelancer

00:49:12.280 | and you don't know where you're going to be offered a job.

00:49:16.200 | And all you can do is network

00:49:17.800 | and well, that's all the control you have.

00:49:20.240 | So I'm trying to switch over to web development

00:49:24.400 | and start from scratch.

00:49:26.880 | I think, well, I can use the wisdom of

00:49:29.480 | I have accumulated over time to make the best of it.

00:49:32.900 | But I was wondering about your thoughts

00:49:35.760 | about switching careers and abandoning

00:49:38.360 | all this career capital I have accumulated.

00:49:41.920 | So thank you and goodbye.

00:49:44.440 | - Well, Sebastian, I'm always a little bit nervous

00:49:48.860 | about starting from scratch with career capital

00:49:51.200 | because it's an ironclad law of the market

00:49:54.560 | is that skills acquired quickly

00:49:58.520 | produce modest amounts of income at most.

00:50:02.400 | So if there was just some web development course

00:50:04.520 | you could take for a few months

00:50:05.760 | and then be making a really good steady living,

00:50:08.280 | lots of people would take that course

00:50:09.860 | and it would price the market down again.

00:50:12.280 | So there's this supply and demand tension

00:50:16.160 | in most marketplaces, which means you have to have

00:50:19.160 | a pretty hard one skill

00:50:20.960 | if you want a nice sustainable income from it.

00:50:24.080 | It's not always true, but it typically is true.

00:50:26.120 | So I would be wary about just saying

00:50:27.680 | enough of the sound stuff.

00:50:29.640 | I'm now gonna go become a web developer.

00:50:31.640 | Now this doesn't mean you can't start picking up

00:50:33.440 | that new skill, but I would do it on the side

00:50:36.000 | as I am trying to build a larger

00:50:39.400 | and more stable business in sound.

00:50:41.680 | I would see if it's possible to build

00:50:44.160 | on your existing career capital

00:50:45.440 | to perhaps get out of this mode of just,

00:50:48.000 | I'm a freelancer that does just this type of thing

00:50:50.080 | and hope people pick me and to build out a business

00:50:52.440 | that's a little bit more aggressive,

00:50:54.360 | a business that maybe is a little bit more niche,

00:50:56.640 | a business that has a good clear presence,

00:51:00.400 | a business that you are somewhat aggressively marketing.

00:51:05.320 | This is what I would do at the same time.

00:51:07.640 | And so I don't know your field very well,

00:51:09.520 | but you know sound very well.

00:51:11.080 | You're doing location sound for films,

00:51:14.280 | but like for example,

00:51:16.420 | you could probably be a podcast sound engineer as well,

00:51:21.320 | which is something you can do remotely

00:51:22.860 | for people all over the world.

00:51:24.320 | This is what I do.

00:51:25.560 | You send me your files.

00:51:26.800 | I master them, get them ready.

00:51:28.560 | I edit them, whatever.

00:51:29.960 | That could be really useful.

00:51:31.000 | You could be an in-person engineer

00:51:32.400 | to set up studios for people like podcast studios,

00:51:35.660 | like Joe is doing for us here or what have you.

00:51:38.560 | But in other words, like finding niches

00:51:40.680 | that you could build into quickly

00:51:42.680 | 'cause you know about sound and sound equipment,

00:51:44.640 | building out clear businesses around it,

00:51:46.760 | being aggressive in your marketing

00:51:48.000 | and very good in your execution.

00:51:49.560 | You get back to people, you have processes.

00:51:51.320 | I mean, I would be doing that as a foundational piece

00:51:55.340 | to try to get that income more stable,

00:51:57.000 | to control your life a little bit more

00:51:58.720 | than just being a freelancer.

00:52:00.400 | And then if you wanna pick up a skill on the side,

00:52:03.280 | do it at the same time concurrently

00:52:04.880 | and pull the Derek Sivers thing here

00:52:06.560 | that we talked about earlier in the episode.

00:52:08.200 | Don't switch over to web development

00:52:09.680 | until you're making the money already.

00:52:11.760 | I'm doing this on the side

00:52:12.960 | and I'm making a living off of it.

00:52:14.280 | Okay, if I really wanna do that instead,

00:52:15.680 | now I'm happy to make that switch.

00:52:17.160 | And if I'm not,

00:52:18.000 | I know I shouldn't be making that switch yet.

00:52:19.680 | And then the final thing I would advise is combine.

00:52:22.320 | If you're gonna build up a new skill,

00:52:24.160 | find ways to bring that skill

00:52:26.960 | into the orbit of skills you already have

00:52:29.120 | to find a new hybrid combination.

00:52:30.720 | Because then you are using the fact

00:52:32.160 | that you have a preexisting skill

00:52:33.480 | to raise that barrier to entry.

00:52:36.360 | So if you're doing web,

00:52:38.160 | maybe what you master is how to do web-based apps

00:52:42.040 | or projects for people in the sound space.

00:52:44.640 | Something that requires your existing network

00:52:47.240 | and connections to the sound space,

00:52:48.800 | your existing expertise.

00:52:50.080 | So not just anyone who does a web development course

00:52:53.400 | can come in and compete for your same business.

00:52:56.320 | All right, so get more focused and ambitious

00:52:59.760 | about your work right now with your current capital.

00:53:02.800 | Two, if you're gonna build up a secondary skill,

00:53:04.680 | do it on the side.

00:53:05.880 | Definitely don't switch to that

00:53:06.920 | until you have evidence that it's making a lot,

00:53:09.080 | enough money for you for that switch to be safe.

00:53:11.680 | And three, try to combine the new skill

00:53:13.440 | with your existing skills to get a unique hybrid

00:53:15.960 | that very few people have.

00:53:17.520 | That's often the best route to something

00:53:19.200 | that is very sustainable and lucrative

00:53:21.560 | and relatively non-competitive.

00:53:26.240 | All right, I think we have time for one more, Jesse.

00:53:27.880 | Do we have one more?

00:53:29.560 | - Yep, we go.

00:53:30.400 | Another question here, it's about reading,

00:53:32.040 | which is a popular topic among your listeners.

00:53:34.040 | And she's reading quickly,

00:53:36.320 | but she also wants to be able to read deeply.

00:53:39.080 | - Not a fan of reading, not a fan.

00:53:42.040 | - You have your March books coming to an end.

00:53:44.400 | - My, wait, what's coming to an end?

00:53:47.040 | - March books.

00:53:47.880 | - Oh, March books.

00:53:48.720 | Oh yeah, I finished the March books.

00:53:49.960 | - Oh, you're already, even with the busy time,

00:53:51.800 | like you've pressed read.

00:53:52.640 | - I finished, okay.

00:53:53.760 | I finished the five books in March, around mid-March,

00:53:57.440 | but I'm a little off the month boundary.

00:54:01.760 | So like the, I was almost done with the book

00:54:04.400 | before March began.

00:54:05.520 | So like I got a freebie pretty quickly.

00:54:08.040 | But anyway, so I finished early

00:54:09.080 | because the Thomas Merton book's a beast.

00:54:11.640 | Because that 450 page book,

00:54:13.080 | I think in like standard modern print

00:54:14.800 | would be more like a 550, 600 page book.

00:54:18.720 | So I'm throwing, and I'm busy.

00:54:20.440 | So I'm throwing two weeks at it in the second half of March.

00:54:23.440 | So I can finish that beast in April with time.

00:54:27.560 | I'm reading another book simultaneously,

00:54:28.880 | but so I have time in April to get the other four.

00:54:31.560 | So I'm reading that and another one simultaneously

00:54:34.240 | with the hopes that pretty early in the April,

00:54:37.040 | I can bring those to a close

00:54:38.680 | and then be off the ground running

00:54:40.660 | with only three books to go.

00:54:42.280 | So.

00:54:43.120 | - Nice.

00:54:43.940 | - But still, my answer to this question

00:54:45.360 | is I'm not a fan of reading.

00:54:47.160 | That's time you could be TikToking.

00:54:48.920 | You could be refining your TikToks.

00:54:52.320 | You could be quitting your job

00:54:53.920 | to make a full-time living on TikTok.

00:54:55.960 | Just trust that that's gonna work.

00:54:58.240 | So it's not a good idea in general.

00:55:00.280 | It could strain your eyes.

00:55:01.240 | If you strain your eyes,

00:55:02.080 | how are you gonna be able to see TikToks?

00:55:05.100 | Oh my, all right, we should get to the question.

00:55:09.000 | Here we go.

00:55:09.840 | - Hi, Cal.

00:55:10.660 | My name is Renee and I'm calling in from Melbourne, Australia.

00:55:13.500 | I have a three week vacation

00:55:15.880 | before starting my job as a junior lawyer.

00:55:18.720 | I'm investing this time into my hobby,

00:55:20.560 | which is reading books.

00:55:22.040 | And I just picked up

00:55:22.880 | the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy for the first time.

00:55:25.380 | I read books quickly and widely,

00:55:28.520 | but often not very deeply.

00:55:30.720 | So I get the gist of the book

00:55:32.800 | or the author's main argument,

00:55:34.960 | but do not always appreciate

00:55:36.440 | their particular intricacies or nuances.

00:55:38.660 | Do you find it hard to read deeply

00:55:41.360 | when you're also reading quickly?

00:55:43.600 | I know you aim for five books a month.

00:55:46.340 | Could you please provide some tips on how to do both

00:55:49.120 | for various benefits like memory retention,

00:55:51.680 | synthesis, and the generation of new unique ideas?

00:55:55.280 | Thanks very much.

00:55:56.280 | - Well, Renee, you can't do deep and quick at the same time.

00:56:01.480 | So I think that's true.

00:56:03.280 | But what I would say is,

00:56:04.780 | and this is how I do the five books a month,

00:56:07.400 | different books require different levels of depth.

00:56:11.800 | And so some books are gonna be much faster to read

00:56:15.320 | than others, which is why I do a pretty careful balance.

00:56:18.080 | So like right now, we just talked about it

00:56:19.360 | in the last question,

00:56:20.200 | I'm reading Thomas Merton's "Seven Story Mountain."

00:56:22.560 | It's a beast of a book in terms of length,

00:56:25.420 | but it's not a book that requires really slow reading

00:56:28.080 | because it's not conceptual, it's memoir.

00:56:30.320 | He's a very good writer

00:56:31.200 | and you could just get lost into his world

00:56:33.320 | and he can move very fast through that.

00:56:35.480 | On the other hand, if you read a book that's more,

00:56:38.040 | it's given an argument,

00:56:41.560 | even like an intellectual argument,

00:56:43.840 | that might take longer.

00:56:45.560 | And I'll slow down with a book like that.

00:56:47.840 | Or what's often happens is

00:56:49.280 | if I'm reading a modern nonfiction idea book,

00:56:51.640 | I'm putting the accelerator off and on.

00:56:55.400 | So there'll be a section where I'm like,

00:56:56.680 | I don't really care, I get your gist,

00:56:57.760 | I don't care about this and I go fast.

00:56:59.600 | Then I'm like, ooh, now you're treading water

00:57:01.920 | that is interesting to me.

00:57:03.400 | There's real depth underneath your legs here.

00:57:04.840 | And then I'm gonna slow way down

00:57:06.640 | and try to get that just right.

00:57:07.560 | Then speed back up again

00:57:08.600 | when it gets back to something really interesting.

00:57:11.220 | So again, some books require depth,

00:57:13.280 | some passages of books require depth, others don't.

00:57:16.480 | And so I'll mix all them together

00:57:18.960 | to give my mind a variety of different things.

00:57:21.880 | So the fastest books,

00:57:23.220 | the fastest books are either fun novels

00:57:27.380 | or lightweight idea books,

00:57:30.120 | sort of nonfiction books that you might buy in the airport.

00:57:33.560 | I like reading those occasionally.

00:57:34.960 | And you can read those fast, just shoot through.

00:57:37.480 | On the other end of the spectrum,

00:57:38.320 | I think it's like academic books

00:57:39.520 | where someone's really making an argument.

00:57:41.360 | And I'm more careful about how often I read those

00:57:43.960 | 'cause I know they're gonna take time.

00:57:45.800 | And then in between you have like really well-written

00:57:48.040 | literary novels, well-written memoir,

00:57:51.680 | nonfiction that has some good ideas and some filler.

00:57:54.240 | And so you go the speed that the book demands.

00:57:57.400 | But in the end, what you really care about

00:57:59.200 | is not so much the count, not so much the pages,

00:58:01.700 | not so much the number of books.

00:58:02.720 | I mean, we like to joke around about the five books.

00:58:05.200 | And I think it's nice to have that particular number.

00:58:07.100 | But what really matters is the experience itself,

00:58:10.440 | that you're giving the book in front of you

00:58:12.040 | the attention the book in front of you actually demands.

00:58:15.440 | So some take more, some take less.

00:58:18.360 | If you're reading one of my books,

00:58:20.320 | I would recommend six months

00:58:22.440 | because what you wanna do is savor,

00:58:24.720 | savor the language like a fine wine,

00:58:27.560 | the carefully crafted sentences,

00:58:29.840 | go show them to people,

00:58:31.880 | tell people about sentences you liked.

00:58:33.680 | I mean, so my books, I would say six months,

00:58:36.420 | six months per book.

00:58:37.260 | I'm talking six months of a sabbatical.

00:58:38.680 | So you're giving this full time,

00:58:39.760 | six months full time attention.

00:58:41.960 | But for other books, you could probably go,

00:58:43.640 | you could probably go a little bit quicker.

00:58:46.280 | All right, so speaking about going quick,

00:58:47.920 | Jesse, we're at the hour mark.

00:58:49.000 | So we should probably wrap this up.

00:58:50.980 | Thank you everyone who sent in your questions.

00:58:53.880 | I should probably remind people how to do that.

00:58:57.280 | It's go to calnewport.com/podcast for the instructions.

00:59:00.960 | That'll tell you how to do the voice questions.

00:59:02.520 | That'll tell you how to do the written questions.

00:59:05.460 | We're pretty international today, Jesse.

00:59:07.680 | I don't know if this is the voice messages in general,

00:59:09.520 | 10 more international,

00:59:11.540 | or I just don't realize that the written questions

00:59:13.560 | are international, but this was a pretty,

00:59:15.160 | like a United Nations of deep life advice today.

00:59:18.600 | - Yeah, the audience is from all over.

00:59:20.060 | - Yeah, that's always good to see.

00:59:21.600 | It's always good to see.

00:59:22.800 | So anyways, thanks for sending those questions,

00:59:25.360 | calnewport.com/podcast to find out

00:59:27.340 | how to submit on your own.

00:59:29.600 | If you like what you heard, you will like what you see.

00:59:32.000 | YouTube.com/calnewportmedia for YouTube videos

00:59:35.120 | of full episodes that every individual question

00:59:37.580 | that I do has its own clip.

00:59:40.240 | You'll also like what you read at my newsletter,

00:59:42.040 | calnewport.com to subscribe to my usually weekly newsletter,

00:59:47.040 | though I've been a little bit tardy during this busy period.

00:59:49.200 | We'll be back Monday.

00:59:50.360 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

00:59:52.660 | (upbeat music)

00:59:56.620 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 186: CALLS: The Power of “Day Batching” | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport

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