How To Change Your Life In 30 Days With Reverse Goal Setting - Try This Before 2024

00:00:00.000 | So the question I want to dive into today is how do you follow through on transformative

00:00:06.640 | goals?

00:00:07.640 | Now, I mean something very specific by transformative goals.

00:00:10.920 | These aren't small goals, things you want to be better about.

00:00:13.880 | They're goals that if accomplished will have a remarkable change on your life.

00:00:18.960 | And I mean remarkable literally in the sense that people will remark on the accomplishment

00:00:23.160 | of this goal.

00:00:24.160 | Oh, wow.

00:00:25.160 | Isn't that interesting?

00:00:26.160 | Isn't that exciting?

00:00:27.160 | Isn't that impressive?

00:00:28.480 | So if you followed along our recent discussions on the deep life stack, this is what you do

00:00:33.400 | at that very top layer of the stack where you finally after setting down the basics

00:00:38.320 | and your values and your discipline is where you finally make those big radical changes

00:00:42.160 | that are so impressive.

00:00:43.160 | So I thought we'd talk about that today.

00:00:45.300 | How do you succeed with your transformative goals?

00:00:47.920 | I'm going to take a two-part approach to this discussion.

00:00:50.680 | First I want to focus on why most people don't succeed with these type of big goals.

00:00:55.640 | There are some common mistakes people make, we'll name them.

00:00:58.800 | Then I want to talk about a particular methodology for having a much higher hit rate with hard

00:01:03.600 | goals.

00:01:04.600 | I'm going to take the notion of reverse goal setting and I'm going to complicate it with

00:01:08.360 | my own secret sauce with a couple of examples along the way.

00:01:13.120 | After that, we got some questions from listeners on these type of topics.

00:01:16.200 | So stick around for that.

00:01:17.200 | So let's get started.

00:01:18.920 | People like the idea of having these transformative goals.

00:01:21.000 | Most people don't succeed with them.

00:01:22.360 | What's going on?

00:01:23.360 | There's three common mistakes that I want to point out to get started.

00:01:26.600 | The first common mistake is under estimating effort.

00:01:32.680 | So you underestimate how much effort is actually required to accomplish the goal that you're

00:01:38.360 | setting out to tackle.

00:01:40.520 | There's a couple of forms of this that's pretty popular.

00:01:43.100 | One is what I like to call checklist productivity.

00:01:46.240 | This was this concept that sort of emerged in the early 2000s and productivity circles

00:01:51.340 | and online productivity circles.

00:01:53.520 | And it was this idea that the main thing that differentiates people who accomplish hard

00:02:00.440 | interesting things and those who don't is information.

00:02:03.920 | So this checklist productivity idea leads people to believe if I just get the right

00:02:08.040 | system, that's a little more complicated, maybe uses technology in ways that other people

00:02:13.080 | don't know how to do.

00:02:14.400 | And I execute this system step by step, I will get the really cool, impressive thing.

00:02:19.800 | So this is checklist productivity.

00:02:21.480 | We see a lot of this even today.

00:02:23.840 | If you spend any time on Twitter, you've probably seen more and more people have these Twitter

00:02:28.160 | threads where they say, okay, I'm going to break down the key ideas from X.

00:02:31.180 | And it's like 15 tweets in a row.

00:02:33.680 | And at the bottom of it says, if you like what you saw here, please subscribe because

00:02:37.560 | I do lots of threads like this or something like that.

00:02:39.980 | Why is everyone suddenly doing these same threads?

00:02:42.160 | There's some checklist productivity idea out there that look, if you just do these things,

00:02:46.440 | do these Twitter threads, breaking down popular books, ask for subscriptions, your user base

00:02:50.400 | is going to grow and grow and you're going to be influential.

00:02:53.560 | So we see that checklist productivity idea a lot.

00:02:56.480 | It leads us to believe it's not that hard to accomplish hard goals.

00:03:00.000 | You just have to have the right system.

00:03:01.880 | The other thing that drives us to underestimate effort is the algorithmic lottery effect.

00:03:08.180 | So this is where we have goals that have a perceived low barrier of entry and a hard

00:03:13.940 | to predict outcome.

00:03:16.120 | So I call this the algorithmic lottery effect because we see this a lot with YouTube.

00:03:19.300 | We see this a lot with TikTok.

00:03:21.060 | It's why not me?

00:03:22.560 | You know, you never know.

00:03:23.960 | I could be doing some videos on TikTok and it could just take off and I could be famous.

00:03:30.880 | And you would never have this sort of delusion around being a star basketball player because

00:03:35.400 | you're like, okay, I know what it means to be really good at basketball.

00:03:38.160 | I know how good I am.

00:03:39.320 | Oh my God, I'm never going to get that good or I'm not practicing nearly enough.

00:03:42.920 | There's a very high perceived barrier to entry, but with the algorithmic lottery, especially

00:03:46.640 | with this online type activity, it often seems like, wow, this seems so plausible.

00:03:51.480 | It's why if you talk to a middle schooler or a high schooler today, I hear this from

00:03:55.560 | teachers all the time.

00:03:57.600 | So many of them now have career aspirations built around being an online influencer because

00:04:03.600 | why it seems so accessible.

00:04:05.200 | You never know.

00:04:06.920 | Start doing videos and something clicks.

00:04:09.520 | So because of checklist productivity, because of algorithmic lottery, it's easy to underestimate

00:04:13.920 | the effort required to accomplish the hard goal.

00:04:16.800 | So then you go and follow your checklist or put out your TikTok videos and wait to become

00:04:20.240 | famous.

00:04:21.240 | It doesn't work.

00:04:22.240 | And then you give up.

00:04:23.240 | The reality of course, is that cool things are desirable.

00:04:25.720 | If there's a straightforward way to get there, everyone would do it.

00:04:30.240 | It's like having a mythical traffic shortcut in a congested city like Washington, DC.

00:04:35.080 | It doesn't exist.

00:04:37.080 | If there was a way to get around the backup that happens when you're heading eastbound

00:04:41.800 | from 66 on 495 in the afternoon, where you lose that lane on the bridge, if there was

00:04:47.440 | a way around that, people would find it and it would be just as congested.

00:04:51.200 | No, you can't go on River Road and expect to get around that 30 minute backup.

00:04:55.560 | There is no magical shortcut that you were going to find because you have the right information.

00:04:59.160 | The same comes for almost any actual hard accomplishment.

00:05:02.440 | So you have to get used to the time or to the idea that your transformative goal is

00:05:08.640 | going to be hard and it's going to take a lot of time.

00:05:11.400 | There's not an internet based shortcut that's going to get you around.

00:05:16.840 | The second common mistake people make with transformative goals is writing a story.

00:05:22.680 | You write a story about what is required to succeed with the goal that speaks to what

00:05:27.520 | you want to be true.

00:05:29.520 | And it could be completely divorced from the reality of how people succeed with this goal,

00:05:33.200 | but you like the story.

00:05:34.360 | You like what it asks you to do.

00:05:35.800 | It's hard, but not too hard.

00:05:37.080 | It's flexible, but not too scary.

00:05:38.920 | It avoids the things that you don't really want to deal with.

00:05:41.340 | You write yourself a story about what is required to accomplish your goal.

00:05:44.200 | You fall in love with this story.

00:05:45.440 | You really want that story to be true.

00:05:47.600 | And so you follow that story.

00:05:50.120 | But it's not a true story and it doesn't get you to the goal and it fizzles out.

00:05:54.560 | I had a long back and forth with someone last year that reminded me of exactly this fallacy

00:05:59.680 | of someone who really wanted to write a successful nonfiction book.

00:06:04.800 | And he had a particular topic he wanted to write about.

00:06:07.000 | And he was like, "Oh, can I ask for your advice?"

00:06:08.800 | He's like, "Yeah, I can tell you how the nonfiction book world works.

00:06:11.600 | I've sold 10 books at this point, published seven with my eighth about to come out."

00:06:16.280 | And so we talked to him and he's like, "No, no, no, no, no.

00:06:18.560 | That's not what I'm going to do.

00:06:19.840 | Here is how I'm going to be successful as a nonfiction book writer.

00:06:22.600 | I'm going to write the book myself.

00:06:24.680 | I'm going to self-publish it.

00:06:26.360 | And then there's this firm I found that I can hire that's going to do all this publicity

00:06:31.000 | around my self-published book.

00:06:32.920 | And it's going to get a lot of people to buy the self-published book.

00:06:35.400 | And then we're going to come to the publishing houses and say, "Look at all these sales we

00:06:40.600 | have and they're going to give us this great deal and push the book wide."

00:06:44.800 | I said, "Well, that's just not going to work.

00:06:45.960 | People just don't buy self-published.

00:06:47.000 | They're not going to buy your self-published book.

00:06:48.320 | And it doesn't matter what this firm does.

00:06:49.920 | But also why do that?

00:06:51.240 | All of these big publishing houses are desperate for books they can publish.

00:06:55.520 | Pipeline is everything in the world of consolidated publishing.

00:06:57.760 | You need a big pipeline of feasible books.

00:07:01.060 | If your book had any chance of being a big book, people would be happy to publish it.

00:07:05.200 | They need books.

00:07:06.720 | So why would you not just go straight to the publisher with it?"

00:07:09.580 | But he liked this story and he wouldn't give up this story.

00:07:12.780 | And if you really pushed on it, I think he liked the story because going to the publisher

00:07:16.240 | would have this moment of clarity and rejection early on.

00:07:19.480 | You might get the feedback of, "You're not ready with this book yet.

00:07:23.120 | This idea is not here.

00:07:24.120 | Why are you writing about this?

00:07:26.520 | This is not a book that's at the level it needs to be to be a successful book."

00:07:30.040 | And I think he liked the story where, "No, what's really happening is the gatekeepers

00:07:33.360 | just don't understand me.

00:07:34.800 | And if I deploy systems and resources in clever ways, I can get around that.

00:07:38.640 | And then they'll have to see that the book is successful.

00:07:41.160 | You write the story you want to be true."

00:07:42.480 | The reality, of course, is that paths to hard thing are often very, very specific.

00:07:47.880 | You need to know exactly what matters and that's where you need to put your energy.

00:07:51.280 | Otherwise, you are going to dissipate energy out into the atmosphere and most of it won't

00:07:54.440 | actually lead towards forward progress.

00:07:58.240 | The third issue people have when trying to go after transformative goals is wandering

00:08:03.120 | randomly forward.

00:08:05.960 | So by this, I mean you choose a next thing to do that seems like it's vaguely relevant

00:08:12.360 | to your goal.

00:08:13.360 | Like, "Let me just do this.

00:08:15.760 | This feels like something will come out of this.

00:08:17.800 | This will move me closer to my goal.

00:08:19.440 | I just want to focus on what I can do next."

00:08:22.600 | The classic example of this that I'm always harping about on this show is, "Well, let

00:08:25.520 | me just go get a master's degree."

00:08:27.440 | It's vaguely in a field I'm interested in and maybe that's going to open up opportunities.

00:08:31.400 | I don't really want to tell you exactly what those opportunities are.

00:08:34.280 | Let me just go get the master's degree.

00:08:36.500 | Or half-hearted side hustles.

00:08:37.880 | "I'm going to do this thing in a field I'm interested in, kind of half-heartedly, but

00:08:43.800 | that might open something up.

00:08:45.640 | Maybe it'll hit a nerve.

00:08:46.640 | You never know.

00:08:47.640 | This could lead to something big."

00:08:50.120 | You're sort of just taking a random step forward.

00:08:53.080 | That's not part of a specific path.

00:08:57.400 | Random step forward.

00:08:58.400 | The problem with random steps forward is that your route becomes random itself and you wander

00:09:02.320 | all over this landscape and you're very unlikely to actually wander through the right twists

00:09:07.420 | and turns necessary to get to your destination of accomplishing the transformative goal.

00:09:10.880 | So you do these random things.

00:09:13.960 | They do not aggregate cleanly.

00:09:16.880 | The energy is dissipated.

00:09:18.880 | You never actually make it to the goal.

00:09:20.120 | So if we think about this like orienteering, it's like up on this mountain top is where

00:09:23.400 | you're trying to get.

00:09:24.660 | If you just randomly take turns in various trails, you'll walk a lot, but you're unlikely

00:09:29.360 | to stumble up the exact path needed to get to the peak.

00:09:33.680 | So these are the three main issues I think people have.

00:09:38.040 | Underestimating effort, writing the story they want to be true, and wandering randomly

00:09:41.600 | forward.

00:09:42.600 | None of these are very successful when it comes to accomplishing transformative goals.

00:09:46.160 | So what does work?

00:09:47.680 | Well, I want to make a pitch for reverse goal setting.

00:09:52.360 | Hey, quick interruption.

00:09:54.200 | If you want my free guide with my seven best ideas on how to cultivate the deep life, go

00:10:01.400 | to calnewport.com/ideas or click the link right below in the description.

00:10:07.580 | This is a great way to take action on the type of things we talk about here on this

00:10:12.280 | show.

00:10:13.280 | All right, let's get back to it.

00:10:15.040 | It's an idea that's been bouncing around the internet.

00:10:16.720 | I have my own flavor of it, and that's the flavor that I want to present to you today.

00:10:21.120 | So what is reverse goal setting?

00:10:22.720 | You start with a transformative goal and you work backwards step by step until you get

00:10:30.340 | to your current situation.

00:10:31.760 | So you're not trying to go forward like, well, what could I do next?

00:10:36.000 | And then after I did this, what else could I do?

00:10:37.920 | And then after that, what else can I do?

00:10:39.040 | It's actually very difficult if you're just trying to take forward steps to end up where

00:10:43.000 | you want to go.

00:10:44.220 | But when you work backwards, you can very directed get a relatively or the shortest

00:10:49.160 | possible path, at least to where you are today.

00:10:51.160 | Now, this is a tricky process because what does it mean to work backwards?

00:10:53.800 | And we'll do an example here in a second, but let me explain this to you in words first.

00:10:57.500 | What it means to work backwards is, okay, I'm starting, let's say with the goal.

00:11:00.980 | Now I want to move backwards to the step right before the goal.

00:11:05.580 | So a state I could get to where I'm now one step away from accomplishing my goal.

00:11:10.720 | And I want to actually specify the step and specify that link when I'm right here.

00:11:16.200 | What is the concrete activity that gets me over this link to the goal?

00:11:19.720 | And then you go one step back from that.

00:11:21.400 | All right.

00:11:22.400 | So what's the step before the goal?

00:11:24.000 | What's the one step before that?

00:11:25.920 | And what's the clear concrete way to get from that two steps back to the one step back?

00:11:29.760 | All right.

00:11:30.760 | Well, if I'm there, what's like one step back from this?

00:11:32.920 | So you're sort of peeling back progress and then very carefully saying, how would I actually

00:11:39.800 | add that back in?

00:11:41.640 | And when you create these links from step to step, you use evidence.

00:11:44.920 | What is true?

00:11:45.920 | How would I actually get from this specific state to that specific state?

00:11:48.920 | This type of effort?

00:11:49.920 | How do I know it's that type of effort?

00:11:50.920 | Because I looked into it.

00:11:51.920 | So you work backwards.

00:11:52.920 | That was a little bit confusing.

00:11:55.720 | So let's get concrete.

00:11:56.720 | I'm going to actually bring up, I'll bring up my tablet here.

00:12:00.520 | I'm going to write out a reverse goal, a reverse goal setting path for a sort of common type

00:12:07.800 | of goal someone could have.

00:12:09.000 | Right.

00:12:10.000 | So for those of you who are just listening, I can tell you what I'm actually doing here.

00:12:14.360 | I'm going to write, I never can figure this out.

00:12:20.000 | In theory, I'm going to write, how do I actually get to, there we go.

00:12:25.640 | All right.

00:12:27.080 | So I'm going to just draw out a reverse goal path.

00:12:29.320 | I'm going to start at the top of the screen with where we want to end up, right?

00:12:35.120 | Because we're working backwards.

00:12:37.600 | So at the top of the screen, we're going to start with, how about notably in shape?

00:12:43.480 | All right.

00:12:45.280 | Transformative goal.

00:12:46.560 | So what do I mean by notably in shape?

00:12:47.840 | Well, for this example, imagine what we mean by that is it's something people think about

00:12:54.360 | when they think about you.

00:12:55.360 | You're like in really good shape.

00:12:56.360 | Like when you're on the, at the beach, like people notice, like when people talk, your

00:13:00.000 | friends, like, oh, one of the things we know about, you know, one of the things we know

00:13:03.920 | about this guy is that like, he's, yeah, he's, he's like really in good shape.

00:13:06.880 | Right?

00:13:07.880 | So like a notable thing, like a part of your identity, that's a transformative goal to

00:13:10.320 | be someone who's really in shape could really change a lot about your life.

00:13:13.520 | All right, let's do reverse goal setting now.

00:13:16.280 | So we're going to work backwards step by step.

00:13:19.360 | So as you see, if again, if you're watching on the screen, you'll see that I'm putting

00:13:22.960 | an arrow up towards this goal.

00:13:27.140 | So now we're going to write right under it, the step that comes right before ending up

00:13:32.680 | at this place of being notably in shape.

00:13:36.040 | And let's say here, I was thinking about this earlier, I'm lean and strong.

00:13:41.920 | All right.

00:13:44.520 | So we can imagine this is the final place before you make that push to be in really

00:13:47.880 | notable shape is like, I'm, you know, I'm pretty lean, you know, my weight is where

00:13:51.680 | I want it to be and I'm strong.

00:13:53.200 | Like I lift stuff.

00:13:54.200 | I, I have a base on which I can do a pretty intense weightlifting routine.

00:13:58.880 | And so how would you get from I'm lean and strong to notably in shape?

00:14:02.040 | That is one reasonable link.

00:14:03.760 | And the way you would probably do that is, you know, you would hire a trainer at this

00:14:07.600 | point and the trainer would do the standard stuff you would see like a movie star do to

00:14:11.920 | prepare for a role.

00:14:13.120 | If you're already generally lean and strong, so you're, you're, you're comfortable with

00:14:17.720 | weights, the trainer is going to come in and say, great, here's what we're going to do.

00:14:19.920 | We're going to do this intense weightlifting routine.

00:14:22.000 | There's going to be bulking followed by cutting.

00:14:23.760 | There's like specific things you can do starting from that point.

00:14:26.080 | It would take about six months.

00:14:27.560 | Okay.

00:14:28.560 | So if you got to, I'm lean and strong, you could get to the, like, I'm notably in shape

00:14:31.800 | in four to six months and there's a, there's a specific way to do that.

00:14:35.320 | All right, let's go down to the layer below now.

00:14:38.240 | So then how do you, what comes before getting in this particular example here?

00:14:45.000 | So what would come before lean and strong say a reasonable, man, my handwriting, Jesse

00:14:53.960 | is fantastic.

00:14:54.960 | I know what you're thinking.

00:14:57.960 | You're thinking what professional font are you typing with Cal?

00:15:01.360 | I'm actually handwriting this.

00:15:03.280 | You're saying what master calligrapher is hiding in the studio, writing your text.

00:15:08.800 | That's me guys.

00:15:09.800 | That beautiful handwriting is me.

00:15:12.040 | All right.

00:15:13.040 | So the step before lean and strong is maybe a reasonable weight and active.

00:15:16.720 | So you're like, you know, I'm I'm at a reasonable weight.

00:15:21.600 | Like maybe if I was overweight before now, I'm at like a reasonable weight and I'm active,

00:15:24.680 | right?

00:15:25.680 | Like I'm I'm not just completely sedentary because if you were there, how would you get

00:15:29.840 | from there to the step above being lean and strong?

00:15:32.400 | Well, you could get there probably by starting to be careful about your diet and exercising

00:15:38.160 | every day.

00:15:39.160 | So from a foundation of like, I'm like in a reasonable place, weight rise, I'm sort

00:15:41.640 | of moving, I'm active, I'm I'm walking.

00:15:44.400 | I do a little bit of exercising.

00:15:46.440 | From there, you could get to lean and strong by now.

00:15:48.440 | So now let me be specific about my diet and I'm going to exercise every day.

00:15:51.960 | Right.

00:15:52.960 | So we're moving down.

00:15:53.960 | We're moving.

00:15:54.960 | We're moving backwards.

00:15:56.960 | Let's go one more layer down.

00:15:58.480 | All right.

00:15:59.480 | So then this layer will say consistent health disciplines.

00:16:13.080 | I'm going to draw an arrow pointing into that because this is where the first thing we're

00:16:19.440 | going to start.

00:16:20.440 | So let's say now you're in a place where, well, I have some daily discipline I do related

00:16:26.360 | to health.

00:16:27.360 | You know, like I walk every morning or I, you know, whatever.

00:16:32.560 | I don't drink on a weekday, like just some sort of consistent thing you're doing related

00:16:35.600 | to health, even if small, some sort of daily habit.

00:16:38.000 | So we're going to we've moved down the stack.

00:16:40.440 | So let's say this is the first place you start.

00:16:42.720 | If you're doing that now, you've added a little bit of discipline around health and fitness

00:16:46.160 | in your life.

00:16:47.240 | From there, it isn't too hard to get to reasonable weight and active, right?

00:16:52.280 | Because from, okay, I have some consistent health disciplines.

00:16:55.200 | Now you can get to a, let me just upcharge those.

00:16:58.920 | Let me just upgrade those to be a little bit more consistent about how I eat.

00:17:02.080 | Let me update the like daily thing.

00:17:03.440 | If I do a hundred pushups to like I walk or do something, that's an easy step for my,

00:17:07.800 | I've added some discipline related to health in my life too.

00:17:11.600 | I have a reasonable set of disciplines.

00:17:13.560 | And so you could get from this layer to the next.

00:17:16.360 | And we'll say this bottom layer is then the first thing you would do.

00:17:18.360 | So you start this whole process and I'm out of shape.

00:17:22.160 | I'm out of shape.

00:17:23.160 | I don't think much about it.

00:17:25.160 | Somehow I want in the future to be notably in shape and be known for it.

00:17:29.240 | By doing reverse goal setting, we have now given ourself a very believable concrete path

00:17:35.360 | forward where each linkage is evidence-based.

00:17:37.920 | You start, so now we're going to read this whole thing forward.

00:17:39.680 | So you start from, I'm just out of shape.

00:17:41.360 | I'm overweight.

00:17:42.360 | I'm not at all active.

00:17:43.600 | We go to number one, some sort of consistent health discipline, something you do every

00:17:48.000 | day.

00:17:49.000 | This is all just about changing your mindset.

00:17:50.400 | I am willing to do hard things in the moment for the future goals related to my health.

00:17:55.960 | Once you're doing that, you upgrade to, okay, I have some actual substantial disciplines

00:18:01.280 | surrounding.

00:18:02.280 | I'm going to clean up my diet.

00:18:03.440 | I'm going to have a much more notable daily activity.

00:18:06.720 | Once you're good with that, you move up to like, I'm actually exercising and have a specific

00:18:10.600 | diet that gets you lean and strong.

00:18:12.480 | Then you hire the trainer and it's a Hemsworth time.

00:18:18.200 | That is a very reasonable path forward because we work backwards to get there.

00:18:22.900 | We have much more chance of succeeding actually moving forward.

00:18:27.240 | Now compare this to the fallacies that most people would typically apply.

00:18:31.400 | So if you applied with the same goal, the underestimating effort fallacy, you would

00:18:35.480 | be like, oh, there's just something I need to do.

00:18:37.600 | I'm going to download some app on my phone and I'll just do that thing.

00:18:42.000 | And then I'll look like Thor, right?

00:18:43.800 | So you underestimate the effort and that's not going to fail.

00:18:46.200 | Think about writing the story.

00:18:47.200 | Okay.

00:18:48.200 | What really matters is some complicated, you know, bro-y, diet-y thing where if I take

00:18:53.400 | this supplement or do this, you think there's some shortcut to it.

00:18:55.880 | That's not going to work.

00:18:57.480 | Right?

00:18:58.640 | Same thing with our final one, which was wandering randomly, which is like, I don't know, I'm

00:19:02.720 | going to buy a Peloton.

00:19:05.200 | All right.

00:19:07.360 | Still don't look like Thor.

00:19:08.360 | All right.

00:19:09.360 | I'm going to get kettlebells.

00:19:12.360 | Still don't look like Thor.

00:19:13.760 | Right?

00:19:14.760 | So all of those common fallacies would not lead you to be notably in shape.

00:19:18.120 | Reverse goal setting, however, gave us a very specific path that because we work backwards,

00:19:22.080 | it's realistic.

00:19:23.840 | We don't get stuck.

00:19:25.280 | We don't wander off.

00:19:26.280 | All right.

00:19:27.280 | So we have a reasonable evidence-based plan.

00:19:32.080 | There's another thing about reverse goal setting that I think is often not discussed, but is

00:19:37.680 | important, which is not only does it help you create better paths to your goals when

00:19:44.080 | done in the way I'm talking about here, it can also help you improve your goals themselves.

00:19:50.440 | It's actually sometimes non-trivial to come up with the appropriate transformative goals.

00:19:55.880 | Not every transformative goal is possible, and some are possible, but maybe you don't

00:19:59.240 | actually want to do it.

00:20:01.240 | Reverse goal setting makes it easier to figure out when there are flaws in your goals.

00:20:06.400 | There are two particular things to look for when creating a reverse goal setting path

00:20:11.640 | that should give you some pause and make you rethink how you think about your goal.

00:20:16.720 | So to highlight these two things, I want to do another example, reverse goal setting exercise

00:20:21.000 | here.

00:20:22.000 | And what I want to do now is start with something, a goal that we just sort of intuitively think,

00:20:26.440 | this probably isn't going to work out.

00:20:29.960 | And so let's take an unreasonable, probably unreasonable goal.

00:20:33.860 | Let's reverse goal set and then point out, okay, where are the red flags in this path

00:20:37.680 | that would tell us we got to change what we're trying.

00:20:39.640 | All right.

00:20:40.640 | So here's my sort of unreasonable goal that I'm going to tackle with goal setting.

00:20:45.480 | 100 million YouTube subscribers, right?

00:20:51.960 | So maybe you listen to some Mr. Beast interviews or you watch Mr. Beast videos like, look at

00:20:57.400 | this guy, a hundred million subscribers.

00:20:59.600 | It's just fantastic.

00:21:00.640 | He owns like a movie studio in North Carolina.

00:21:02.600 | They have these warehouses full of things.

00:21:04.480 | This seems like the life.

00:21:05.480 | Let's say you're a 24 year old, like I want a hundred million YouTube subscribers.

00:21:10.240 | And I've listened to Cal, I'm not going to just write a story about this or wander randomly

00:21:14.280 | forward.

00:21:15.280 | Let's do some reverse goal setting.

00:21:16.280 | So let's apply the whole discipline to this goal, which is probably unreasonable.

00:21:20.440 | And then we'll see where we get in trouble.

00:21:21.880 | All right.

00:21:22.880 | So I worked this through the other day.

00:21:24.320 | I was thinking through how would I actually reverse goal set this.

00:21:27.360 | I would say the step before the a hundred million YouTube subs that's relevant is going

00:21:31.600 | to be a million subs.

00:21:35.600 | Because think about this.

00:21:38.500 | If you have a channel of that size, a million subscriber YouTube channel, which are rare,

00:21:45.080 | but not super rare.

00:21:48.380 | What you could do at that point to get to a hundred million is what Mr. Beast talks

00:21:51.720 | about if you ever heard him interviewed, which is okay.

00:21:54.220 | Now you have to invest a huge amount of money into doing what you're doing right, even better.

00:21:59.620 | So like this is what Mr. Beast did.

00:22:01.040 | He's like, okay, I have this formula for a video that's working.

00:22:03.680 | I upgrade it.

00:22:05.640 | If I before I was giving people a thousand dollars, now I'll give him a hundred thousand

00:22:09.120 | dollars.

00:22:10.120 | If it was, you know, here's an iPad.

00:22:12.080 | Now it's going to be a Lamborghini and a Tesla.

00:22:14.100 | So he has this whole philosophy of take what's working and put all of the money you're making

00:22:18.380 | in your videos into making the new videos and push what's working to an extreme that

00:22:23.160 | almost no one else is doing.

00:22:25.000 | That is how you get this extreme growth, right?

00:22:27.040 | So if you're already at a million subscribers, you're making money.

00:22:29.680 | You have the time at this point for this to be a full-time job or a part-time job.

00:22:33.400 | You have the time and the money to go all in and push what's working to try to have

00:22:37.440 | that final bit of explosive growth.

00:22:39.240 | So we'll make that the step before.

00:22:40.400 | All right.

00:22:41.400 | Well, what comes before that?

00:22:43.440 | Well, just sort of based off our experience with YouTube, probably the next relevant goal

00:22:49.320 | below that would be a 50,000 sub channel.

00:22:53.280 | All right.

00:22:56.680 | So if you have 50,000 subs, that means something's working, right?

00:23:01.980 | Your voice, your content is working.

00:23:03.500 | You have a non-trivial audience and it's not hard to imagine how do I get from 50,000 subscribers

00:23:09.960 | to a million subscriber channel?

00:23:11.360 | A lot of this, if you talk to YouTube people, is professionalization.

00:23:15.000 | Okay.

00:23:16.000 | What you're doing is working.

00:23:17.000 | You have to do this on a regular basis.

00:23:19.320 | It has to be at a consistent high level of quality.

00:23:21.500 | You probably need to hire an editor.

00:23:23.000 | You need to be careful about the details.

00:23:24.800 | You need to be careful about the thumbnails.

00:23:26.440 | You need to be careful about the timing.

00:23:28.000 | You need to be careful about the subtle things inside the video that makes a big difference

00:23:31.480 | to the YouTube algorithm that you might not think about, such as retention early on, how

00:23:36.280 | you recommend the next video.

00:23:37.680 | So you professionalize.

00:23:38.680 | If you have 50,000 subs, you start saying, "Look, I'm going to spend one day a week.

00:23:42.040 | This is what I'm doing on Sundays, and we're going to professionalize this operation."

00:23:45.880 | And that's how you grow from the 50,000 to the 1 million sub.

00:23:50.520 | We'll put one more level below that.

00:23:53.600 | I would say the level below that, which is going to be our starting place, the first

00:23:57.720 | thing you want to get to, would be regularly publish.

00:24:03.320 | Right?

00:24:05.040 | Because you talk to people, you say, "Okay, the first place you need to get," and I've

00:24:12.400 | seen this advice.

00:24:13.400 | I mean, I've seen Mr. Beast give this advice.

00:24:14.920 | The first place you need to get is just regularly publishing videos on your YouTube channel.

00:24:19.320 | Right?

00:24:20.320 | Because this means you have all the mechanics.

00:24:21.800 | It's a very accomplished goal from starting from, "I don't do anything with YouTube,"

00:24:25.240 | on your path to 100 million subscribers.

00:24:27.000 | It's a very reasonable first goal is, "I regularly post stuff on my channel."

00:24:30.440 | That means you've just figured out the mechanics of how YouTube works, the logistics of cameras

00:24:34.280 | and files and posting and descriptions.

00:24:37.280 | And so you could imagine, how do I get from regularly posting to 50,000 subs?

00:24:40.520 | It's like, "Well, I'm regularly posting stuff.

00:24:41.920 | I figured out YouTube.

00:24:42.920 | I'm figuring out my voice.

00:24:44.080 | I'm figuring out my topic.

00:24:45.080 | I see what works and I kind of turn towards what works.

00:24:49.720 | And over time, that's how I'm going to build up this initial audience to 50,000."

00:24:52.720 | All right.

00:24:53.720 | So we did reverse goal setting on what is probably an unreasonable goal.

00:24:56.160 | And we got what at first looks like a reasonable step-by-step path.

00:25:02.160 | Regularly publish, that gets you to 50,000.

00:25:04.760 | From there, you get professional, you get to a million.

00:25:06.760 | From a million, you give it, it becomes like a full-time job.

00:25:08.960 | You go all in, push everything into what's working in the videos, and you make your jump

00:25:14.160 | towards a hundred million.

00:25:15.680 | All right.

00:25:16.680 | Well, clearly it can't be that easy, so consistent to get to a hundred million because lots of

00:25:21.000 | people are trying.

00:25:22.000 | So what's wrong with this plan?

00:25:23.320 | So looking at this plan, where are the mistakes that we can find that we can look for in other

00:25:26.680 | plans that we might make?

00:25:28.000 | Well, there's two things, two common problems with reverse goal setting plans that are both

00:25:32.840 | highlighted in this example.

00:25:35.420 | The first is what I call choke points.

00:25:38.480 | So that's a step that if you really look at the evidence and are realistic about it, your

00:25:44.880 | chances of I am actually going to succeed getting from this step to the next, it's a

00:25:48.480 | particular link, are actually pretty low.

00:25:51.120 | And that you're hiding that difficulty.

00:25:52.800 | It's a choke point where most people aren't going to make it through, and you're hiding

00:25:56.360 | that in your plan.

00:25:57.360 | Just like, "I'll be the one who makes it through."

00:25:59.960 | So on this particular reverse plan, can anyone see where that choke point is going to be?

00:26:05.120 | It's actually this link right here, from regularly publishing videos to getting the 50,000 YouTube

00:26:12.080 | subscribers.

00:26:13.800 | That's actually a choke point.

00:26:16.280 | Learning the mechanics of YouTube, publishing things regularly, experimenting with voices,

00:26:21.760 | experimenting with topics, for the vast majority of people, that will never lead to a sizable

00:26:26.400 | audience.

00:26:28.360 | It's actually very difficult to get the right combination of things that gets to a sizable

00:26:32.120 | audience.

00:26:33.120 | Often, what's required is some other type of thing that's going on.

00:26:37.480 | And I'm on TV, I'm a writer like I am, there's something else that's going on.

00:26:42.520 | I'm an athlete.

00:26:43.520 | It's very difficult if you don't already have that.

00:26:46.280 | If you don't get lucky with, "I'm a first mover on a particular type of content," or

00:26:50.920 | there's something really special about the way you talk about things.

00:26:53.200 | Actually, most people will never make it over there.

00:26:55.040 | So the problem with this plan is we have a link early on that almost certainly you're

00:26:58.360 | not going to make it through.

00:27:00.640 | There's another flaw in this plan as well, and it's what I call a stochastic bridge link.

00:27:07.640 | And that's what we have up here at the top, from 1 million YouTube subscribers to 100

00:27:12.240 | million YouTube subscribers.

00:27:14.000 | The plan that we talked about here, okay, go all in, put all the money you're making

00:27:18.400 | the videos into the new videos, make this like your full-time job, ramp everything else

00:27:23.280 | up to the extreme.

00:27:24.860 | That is the proper thing you would need to do to have a chance of getting to 100 million

00:27:29.680 | YouTube subscribers.

00:27:31.160 | This is what MrBeast did.

00:27:32.820 | This is what Mark Rober did.

00:27:35.440 | All in, push the videos past what anyone else is doing.

00:27:39.120 | But here's the thing, the results of this particular link are random.

00:27:45.360 | So I'm using a more technical mathematic term, stochastic.

00:27:48.600 | It's a stochastic model.

00:27:49.800 | What this means is there's a range of different outcomes, each with different likelihoods.

00:27:54.440 | So yes, if we think of this as a distribution, at the very far end tail, there's a really

00:27:59.200 | rare chance that you might be the next MrBeast and this blows up and you get 100 million.

00:28:05.420 | But it's also probably right in the big fat part of this distribution.

00:28:08.640 | The most likely outcome is you do that and you go from a million to a million seven,

00:28:13.520 | and then you kind of find your equilibrium around there.

00:28:16.560 | And there's opportunities in between as well.

00:28:18.780 | Maybe like unlikely, but not as unlikely as 100 million as you're like a Mark Rober situation

00:28:23.480 | and you hit tens of millions, which is pretty rare.

00:28:25.860 | There's also outcomes where this is kind of the extent of your audience and putting more

00:28:30.220 | into these videos doesn't change it much at all.

00:28:32.540 | And there's no growth at all.

00:28:33.540 | So the problem about stochastic bridges is you you're hiding the fact that the outcomes

00:28:38.020 | of this effort are going to be hard to predict in random.

00:28:40.860 | They're coming from distribution.

00:28:41.940 | You're just picking what you want to happen from that distribution.

00:28:45.760 | But really, you have to acknowledge, I don't really know what's going to come out of this.

00:28:50.140 | It could be anywhere on this range.

00:28:51.460 | In fact, it's very unlikely to be at either extreme.

00:28:54.020 | It's very unlikely that putting all this effort will lead to no growth, but it's more unlikely

00:28:58.220 | that all this effort is going to lead you to be the one or two biggest subscribed YouTubers

00:29:03.460 | on the channel.

00:29:04.460 | So we have these two flaws in this plan, choke points and stochastic bridges.

00:29:09.220 | So how do we respond to these flaws in a plan?

00:29:11.900 | Well, if you find choke points in your in your plan, you either need to change your

00:29:16.880 | goal so that you can find a reverse path that avoids choke points.

00:29:22.540 | Or if the choke point is early on, like it is for us here, it's really right here on

00:29:25.740 | the second link as we go from regularly publishing to 50,000 YouTube subs, then you can just

00:29:30.460 | acknowledge that this is a milestone checkpoint.

00:29:33.780 | I'm going to go from this step to that step six months.

00:29:37.700 | If it doesn't work, then I say I didn't make it to the choke point.

00:29:40.500 | New goal.

00:29:41.500 | So you can either try to eliminate the choke points by a better plan or better goal or

00:29:45.900 | clearly identify them as a checkpoint.

00:29:48.980 | But when you get there, you're going to see how it goes.

00:29:51.260 | And if it's not going well, have clear evidence to pull the ripcord on it.

00:29:54.700 | What about stochastic bridges?

00:29:56.820 | These links that are stochastic bridges, you need to integrate that reality into your goal.

00:30:01.700 | So you need to come back and say, OK, let's say if I get past this choke point and I get

00:30:06.820 | to a million subs, I am going to do this final link.

00:30:09.180 | But I shouldn't say a million YouTube subs is my final goal I'm heading towards because

00:30:13.140 | I don't know that's where I'm going to end up.

00:30:14.660 | And I can't guarantee that's where I'm going to end up.

00:30:17.100 | So I need to change this to something that better matches the expected value of my stochastic

00:30:21.460 | bridge, like a range of outcomes that's likely from that stochastic bridge.

00:30:26.160 | So here that might be a multi-million subscriber YouTube channel.

00:30:31.060 | Probably I could get there if I did this.

00:30:32.820 | So you want to revise your goal for the expected value of that stochastic bridge link, not

00:30:37.100 | the maximum value.

00:30:38.100 | And so I said, yeah, actually, if I have a multi-million subscriber YouTube, this could

00:30:42.900 | be my full time job.

00:30:43.900 | And if I'm careful about my money, this could be like a really interesting way to live.

00:30:46.460 | And I could use this.

00:30:47.460 | You can have a really cool plan built around it.

00:30:50.300 | But it's much more realistic because you realize, OK, the maximum possible thing that could

00:30:55.620 | come out of this random step, planning for that is not smart planning.

00:30:59.380 | Let's go with the expected value.

00:31:00.780 | All right.

00:31:01.780 | So this will show up in many different types of plans.

00:31:04.100 | Oh, there's choke points.

00:31:06.220 | Oh, there's stochastic bridges.

00:31:07.700 | You recognize that it improves your plans.

00:31:09.340 | It improves your goals.

00:31:10.340 | And so then we get this recursive process with reverse goal setting.

00:31:13.500 | You choose a goal, you build a plan.

00:31:14.980 | You see some flaws.

00:31:15.980 | You revise the plan.

00:31:16.980 | There's another flaw.

00:31:17.980 | You revise your goal.

00:31:18.980 | And all of this works symbiotically to make it much more likely for you to make transformative

00:31:22.940 | change in your life.

00:31:24.020 | It just makes it makes us much smarter at pursuing goals.

00:31:27.380 | And we end up certainly much better.

00:31:31.140 | Then if you're instead just randomly wandering forward, writing stories or just assuming

00:31:34.900 | there's some like secret checklist productivity you found in an online course, it's going

00:31:38.460 | to turn this all around for you in the next six months.

00:31:41.940 | So we can call this like advanced reverse goal setting.

00:31:44.220 | I think it's the right way to think about the final layer of the deep life stack.

00:31:47.460 | That's the right way to think about making radically cool things happen in your life.

00:31:52.820 | What would be a choke point in the first example?

00:31:55.180 | Well, this was a pretty good plan.

00:31:57.140 | All right, so let me load this up.

00:31:59.020 | So this first plan was supposed to be an example that didn't have those flaws to a big degree.

00:32:07.020 | So it's better.

00:32:08.520 | I would say there's a little bit of a stochastic bridge in lean and strong to notably in shape.

00:32:12.860 | Like here you have to acknowledge notably in shape.

00:32:16.940 | It's probably not going to be because this depends on genes and other things, Thor.

00:32:21.140 | But it is good.

00:32:22.140 | It could be almost certainly could be if you work with a trainer in bulk and cut and do

00:32:25.940 | the type of stuff people will say, oh, you're in good shape.

00:32:29.020 | We know that about you.

00:32:30.020 | So like there's the place where stochastic bridge is where you'd want to be reasonable.

00:32:33.420 | Like I'm not going to look like the rock, but I could look like it's something that

00:32:37.340 | people notice about me.

00:32:38.820 | If we're going to look for a potential choke point in this plan, it might be for a lot

00:32:44.660 | of people, honestly, this first link to reasonable weight and active is hard.

00:32:49.700 | But I'm not going to say that might be the hardest step for a lot of people, especially

00:32:52.500 | if you're really out of shape.

00:32:53.660 | It's really hard to get to like, oh, now I'm in like a reasonable weight and active and

00:32:57.940 | like I have a foundation from which I can start real training.

00:33:01.500 | That could take a lot of time, but it's not really a choke point because it's it's 100%

00:33:06.820 | possible.

00:33:07.820 | Right.

00:33:08.820 | Like there is, you can sit down like with our sponsor, my body tutor, who's a sponsor

00:33:12.700 | of today's episode.

00:33:13.700 | You can get a my body tutor trainer.

00:33:15.000 | And if you follow what they're saying and you give it enough time, you will get the

00:33:19.340 | result.

00:33:20.340 | Whereas 50,000 YouTube subs, I mean, there, there, there might be no way that you can

00:33:24.460 | force that to happen no matter what you do.

00:33:27.260 | So instead of a choke point, maybe we could call this like a long bridge.

00:33:31.980 | So you can have some of these links are long bridges and it's going to take like a lot.

00:33:37.380 | It might take a long March and we can't break it up into sub steps because you're just doing

00:33:41.660 | the same thing.

00:33:43.260 | It's you know, I'm changing how I eat and I'm, you know, doing pushups every day, no

00:33:47.860 | matter what, just to get in that mindset, it might take eight months of doing that,

00:33:52.700 | you know, so maybe we'll call that a long bridge.

00:33:54.260 | So we have a long bridge there.

00:33:56.060 | We have a mile, you know, we had a stochastic bridge, but I, but I feel like the stochastic

00:33:59.460 | bridge I took into account here.

00:34:00.700 | So instead of saying, look like Thor, I said, okay, be notably in shape.

00:34:04.060 | Yeah, like whatever that means for you.

00:34:05.500 | And a lot of that's going to be genetics.

00:34:07.540 | So like, this is why this was a pretty good reverse plan where this one had some real

00:34:11.580 | flaws and like, okay, we have to put in a checkpoint and really rewrite it.

00:34:16.020 | Yep.

00:34:17.020 | It's interesting.

00:34:18.020 | We don't think enough about the mechanics of goal setting, something maybe we don't

00:34:21.420 | talk enough about in general, in the pragmatic nonfiction space.

00:34:26.580 | There's a lot of like mindset, have the courage to follow goals, get out of your own way,

00:34:32.900 | get rid of the stuff, a lot of books with curse words in the title, get, get away from

00:34:36.020 | the stuff that's keeping you back from your goals and all that is fine.

00:34:38.660 | But the actual mechanics of doing goals can be complicated.

00:34:41.220 | I mean, there's like SWAT, there's particular acronyms for, you know, break things into

00:34:45.460 | achievable steps.

00:34:46.460 | That stuff is good, but it's something we should keep talking about more because there

00:34:50.060 | really is an art to the cool stuff.

00:34:53.340 | The boring stuff.

00:34:54.340 | Yeah.

00:34:55.340 | I need to reorganize my closet.

00:34:57.180 | Like we can break that down into steps and execute it.

00:34:59.380 | But the big stuff, like I'm notably in shape, I've completely transformed my work situation.

00:35:04.220 | I want to live in the woods somewhere and have a garden greenhouse, you know, in a field.

00:35:08.900 | How do I make that happen?

00:35:09.900 | These sort of transformative goals, there's a real art to how you make that happen.

00:35:13.900 | There's courage and effort, but also the sidestepping of traps and the avoiding of unreasonableness.

00:35:18.380 | And it's, it's not as easy as people make it out to be.

00:35:20.780 | So I'm glad we have a chance to talk about it.

00:35:23.180 | All right.

00:35:24.180 | So we have some questions coming up from you that are generally relevant to this and in

00:35:28.300 | general, the idea of improving your life and making it deeper.

00:35:30.900 | First, however, I want to mention one of the sponsors that makes this show possible.

00:35:36.580 | That is our friends at Shopify.

00:35:40.500 | Whether you're selling a little or a lot, Shopify helps you do your thing.

00:35:47.860 | Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business

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00:36:00.300 | Shopify is there to help you at every step of your way in growth, in growing.

00:36:06.300 | If you sell things online, Shopify is what you should use.

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00:36:19.700 | And for you as the seller, it makes your life simple as well.

00:36:24.140 | Especially when Jesse and I open our long awaited deep questions online shop, Shopify

00:36:28.460 | is what we would use.

00:36:29.660 | Jesse, every week I have a new idea about what should be in our store.

00:36:34.320 | Right now what I'm thinking about is Jesse skeleton t-shirts that have, I'm really interested

00:36:39.660 | this idea, catchphrases that seems like it's really meaningful.

00:36:44.140 | You're like, yeah, but don't actually make any sense.

00:36:47.660 | Cause I love that idea that someone is just thinking like, yeah, right, right.

00:36:52.420 | But never actually put the pieces together.

00:36:54.620 | So like, it'd be like a Jesse skeleton made up of bones and you're like, yeah, like skeletons

00:37:02.980 | are made up of bones and there's, it's a, cause he's like, there's some stoic, like

00:37:08.580 | so it may, it's like a stoic thing and you never really, you never really figure it out.

00:37:16.900 | Jesse skeleton.

00:37:17.900 | Oh, we'd use the Shopify store to sell that.

00:37:20.820 | We would use the Shopify store, Jesse skeleton.

00:37:24.380 | The wind is only what you believe it to be.

00:37:27.860 | Like a picture of Brandon Sanderson.

00:37:29.540 | Like it seems like it should make sense.

00:37:30.940 | You're like, yeah, yeah.

00:37:33.540 | Anyways, that's my dream.

00:37:35.940 | Shopify is how I would make that dream a reality.

00:37:39.480 | So sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/deep and make sure that is

00:37:46.140 | all lowercase.

00:37:47.140 | Go to Shopify.com/deep lowercase now to grow your business.

00:37:52.340 | No matter what stage you're in.

00:37:53.340 | Shopify.com/deep.

00:37:54.340 | I also want to talk about our good friends at Hinson shaving.

00:38:01.220 | Hinson sells the razor that I use to keep my baby smooth shave on my face.

00:38:07.100 | I like Hinson because they, they know how to build a beautiful, precisely milled tool.

00:38:14.460 | This is what they do.

00:38:15.940 | Hinson's manufactures parts for the aerospace industry.

00:38:19.620 | They have the tools to do this and they've turned all this expertise to make these beautiful

00:38:23.140 | razors, which are milled to this exact precision so that you can take a 10 cent safety razor

00:38:28.220 | blade, put it in a beautiful Hinson razor.

00:38:31.500 | And just the barest edge of that 10 cent blade goes beyond the body of the razor, getting

00:38:36.820 | rid of the up and down diving board effect and allowing you to get a really nice close

00:38:41.460 | shave without having to go to the drug store and buy those 70 blade vibrating monstrosities

00:38:47.300 | or to the spend countless dollars on the subscription services, 10 cent blades in this beautifully

00:38:52.740 | milled razor.

00:38:54.340 | You get a really good shave.

00:38:56.500 | Every time I use my Hinson shaver, I always feel like I'm in a Wendell Berry essay.

00:39:01.900 | You know, like I just came in from using my horses to plow the field and I get my Hinson

00:39:06.500 | shave.

00:39:07.540 | They should use Wendell Berry as their sponsor.

00:39:09.940 | I don't think Wendell Berry does a lot of podcasting.

00:39:12.620 | No, I think he's in his nineties.

00:39:15.340 | And he is a farms, his Kentucky farm with horses.

00:39:18.620 | Yeah.

00:39:19.620 | When you read his book last year about him, that introduced me to him.

00:39:22.260 | I just read another essay collection.

00:39:23.860 | I finished it this morning.

00:39:24.860 | So that's why I was thinking about it.

00:39:25.860 | Oh really?

00:39:26.860 | Yeah.

00:39:27.860 | Um, Wendell Berry probably does not podcast, but if he, if he did, I'm sure he would tell

00:39:31.940 | you about his love of Hinson razor.

00:39:33.860 | It just seems like something he would use.

00:39:35.380 | Anyways.

00:39:36.380 | I love my Hinson razor.

00:39:37.380 | It's what I use.

00:39:38.380 | They actually sent me this beautiful stand for it too.

00:39:39.380 | So it's almost like a piece of art, uh, in my bathroom.

00:39:42.380 | So it's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that will last you a lifetime.

00:39:47.380 | Visit Hinson shaving.com/cal to pick the razor for you and use that code Cal and you'll get

00:39:52.660 | two and a half years worth of blades for, or two years worth of blades for free with

00:39:56.660 | a razor.

00:39:57.660 | Just add the two year supply of blades to your cart.

00:39:59.620 | And then when you use that promo code Cal, it check out the price of the blades goes

00:40:02.580 | down to zero.

00:40:03.780 | That's 100 free blades when you head to H E N S O N S H A V I N G.com/cal and use the

00:40:13.060 | code Cal.

00:40:14.060 | All right, Jesse, I think it's time for us to do some questions.

00:40:18.020 | Who do we got first?

00:40:20.820 | Sounds good.

00:40:21.820 | First question's from Pedro.

00:40:22.820 | I work in a small fun tech company as a backend software engineer on the main contributor

00:40:28.900 | and the flagship project of the company.

00:40:31.140 | We're going through job cuts and it's likely that more tasks will spill over to me.

00:40:35.460 | This means more shall work.

00:40:37.220 | My long time goal is to become an independent developer and escape wage based labor.

00:40:42.020 | To this end, I recently started working on a side project and the first prototype is

00:40:46.300 | ready.

00:40:47.300 | I'm still far away from making any income with it though.

00:40:51.060 | It could take anywhere from one to four years before this happens.

00:40:54.040 | So the question is, how should I handle this imminent change to my personal, my professional

00:40:58.980 | life?

00:40:59.980 | All right, Pedro, it's a good question.

00:41:00.980 | A couple of things I want to mention.

00:41:03.500 | All right.

00:41:04.500 | So first, just some advice about building a side hustle that you eventually want to

00:41:10.140 | perhaps take over your main source of income.

00:41:13.560 | Follow the advice I quote in my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, which is to use money

00:41:19.740 | as a neutral indicator of value.

00:41:24.460 | So number one piece of accurate feedback you can get on the promise of this product you're

00:41:29.180 | working on is people paying for it.

00:41:32.460 | People are happy to tell you they love your idea.

00:41:34.140 | They're happy to tell you your idea is great.

00:41:35.900 | They're happy to tell you that, yeah, you should just quit your job and go for it.

00:41:38.820 | They're not happy to give you money.

00:41:40.600 | They will only do that if what you're working on actually works for them.

00:41:43.900 | So really use, sell this thing.

00:41:46.180 | Got the prototype, get to something you can sell.

00:41:48.860 | This is the feedback that matters when trying to make a decision about changing your financial

00:41:52.300 | situation.

00:41:53.300 | Will people pay for it?

00:41:54.300 | The second thing I want to suggest here is probably work harder on it.

00:41:58.460 | So if you have a side hustle you want to build to a particular place, do a reverse goal setting

00:42:03.900 | path towards that ambitious place you want to get to.

00:42:07.700 | Follow the advice that I went over in the deep dive in today's episode.

00:42:11.380 | Here is the clear step-by-step path, each link evidence-based to get from where I am

00:42:16.020 | to where I want to go.

00:42:17.540 | Check that path for choke points.

00:42:19.100 | Check that path for stochastic bridges.

00:42:21.700 | Adjust as needed.

00:42:23.260 | And once you have a path like that, most of those links are going to focus your energy

00:42:26.760 | and get you to work harder on making progress towards where you want to be.

00:42:32.140 | If you do not reverse goal set, if you do not have a verified evidence-based path, you're

00:42:36.220 | probably going to fall trap to a lot of the common goal setting mistakes we talked about

00:42:41.220 | earlier.

00:42:42.220 | You're going to do random wandering.

00:42:43.460 | Well, I built a prototype and then I tried this and then I tried that.

00:42:47.660 | You might underestimate effort like, "Hey, I took this online course about how to sell

00:42:50.780 | software and if I just do these 10 steps and set up these websites and it's going to be

00:42:55.540 | successful.

00:42:56.700 | Or you're going to write yourself a story about like you're just kind of working on

00:42:59.260 | this thing on the side when you have time and then one day there's a knock on your door

00:43:03.180 | and it's Bill Gates and he just hands you like a bag with a dollar sign on it.

00:43:06.340 | Like there's all of these flaws are waiting there.

00:43:08.420 | That's not the worst thing if you're just like, "This is fun.

00:43:11.180 | I like the daydream and I'm just doing this hobby."

00:43:13.100 | But it sounds like you want to get out of your job.

00:43:15.420 | You want this to succeed.

00:43:17.220 | So don't dissipate effort.

00:43:19.040 | So setting a good reverse goal setting based verified path is going to allow you to focus

00:43:23.340 | the energy you do expend in the most productive possible way forward.

00:43:28.900 | The final thing I'll say though is in the meantime, don't just say, "My current job

00:43:34.380 | is bad and there's nothing I can do about that."

00:43:37.580 | Work on making your current job better.

00:43:39.860 | Even if you do succeed with your plan, even if you do leave your current job in the future,

00:43:44.180 | why suffer unnecessarily between now and then?

00:43:49.100 | Also, you want to be building up as much career capital as possible because that capital might

00:43:53.340 | be a big part of how you make a change in the future.

00:43:56.140 | Being better and more valuable in your job might give you more options about how you

00:43:59.180 | transition away from purely wage-based labor.

00:44:03.980 | So if you're talking about your concern, I'm looking at your question here, your concern

00:44:06.880 | about getting swamped with more and more shallow work, fight the hyperactive hive mind.

00:44:11.500 | All right?

00:44:12.500 | So you start saying like, "I do not want unscheduled messages to be central to how things get done.

00:44:17.660 | I'm going to start creating processes for the things I do regularly and just follow

00:44:21.340 | those processes and other people will have to come along because otherwise they're just

00:44:24.220 | not going to be able to talk to me."

00:44:25.300 | Do multi-scale planning so you're not just jumping from thing to thing and putting out

00:44:29.420 | fires.

00:44:30.420 | Use the meeting buffer methodology we talked about.

00:44:33.500 | Every meeting that goes on your calendar is followed by 15 to 20 minutes of a buffer that's

00:44:37.140 | also scheduled on your calendar.

00:44:38.820 | So after every meeting, you can process everything, send out the follow-up messages, update your

00:44:42.760 | list and take a breather before moving on to the next things.

00:44:46.020 | Schedule your deep work time on your calendar like any other meeting and appointments.

00:44:49.460 | Use clear shutdown methodology so you close the open loops, close the open loops at the

00:44:53.100 | end of the day and allow your mind some psychological relief.

00:44:56.420 | Do the stuff that matters.

00:44:58.420 | Don't give up on that stuff because you're trying to just stay warm by the flames of

00:45:02.160 | your distance future daydream.

00:45:04.300 | Build a good house now.

00:45:06.940 | You can always move to a better one if and when the daydream comes true.

00:45:09.580 | So this is a rear guard, front guard action.

00:45:13.420 | If you're gonna try to go for something new, go for that well.

00:45:17.620 | Use a good plan.

00:45:18.620 | But at the same time, your rear guard action is keep improving the thing you're in right

00:45:22.380 | now.

00:45:23.380 | At the very least, it's just a discipline in life construction and discipline.

00:45:26.940 | So I see that a lot, Jesse, is people have an idea of where they want to go and because

00:45:31.780 | of that, they just let everything else be bad.

00:45:34.500 | Why even bother trying to fix my situation?

00:45:36.420 | In fact, there's a pathological behavior that's common where people actually want their current

00:45:42.700 | situation to stay as bad as possible to maintain their motivation to go after the goal, which

00:45:49.580 | I think is a big unforced error, right?

00:45:52.700 | It means that you're putting up with months, if not years of unnecessary discomfort as

00:45:58.420 | a motivational trick.

00:46:00.260 | If that's what you need to motivate yourself to go for the goal, then that goal is not

00:46:03.140 | well set.

00:46:04.520 | You don't need to emotionally blackmail yourself into making progress.

00:46:07.180 | If you have a clear goal and a good path, you've done like we talked about in episode

00:46:11.340 | 274, proper episodic future thinking about this.

00:46:15.140 | So you're projecting into the future what it would be like to accomplish this goal and

00:46:18.300 | aligns with your values.

00:46:19.420 | Your motivational system will be there for you.

00:46:21.600 | You shouldn't have to emotionally blackmail yourself into pursuing a long-term goal, much

00:46:25.900 | in the same way that for short-term goals, like students, for example, will often say,

00:46:29.580 | "Well, I need the stress of this is due in three hours to get started."

00:46:33.900 | Any place I see examples of this type of chemical or emotional motivation to force yourself

00:46:39.020 | to work tells me your systems for work, for setting goals, for pursuing things, for planning

00:46:43.460 | are broken.

00:46:44.460 | So don't make your current situation bad so that you'll put an effort towards something

00:46:48.540 | you think in the future that will be good.

00:46:51.500 | His situation is unique too in the fact that his company is making a lot of cuts.

00:46:56.020 | So he's going to get a lot more of that work thrown on him.

00:46:58.700 | Yeah.

00:46:59.700 | So he's got to be, he needs his game face on.

00:47:01.180 | Yeah.

00:47:02.180 | Like, "Okay, we got to..."

00:47:03.180 | And he elaborated a little bit more that this happened recently.

00:47:08.420 | It sounds like the company might be struggling, but...

00:47:11.140 | But if he woe is me's this change, like, "Oh my God, I have so much junk and I'm just going

00:47:15.060 | to complain about it."

00:47:16.260 | It's a lot of unnecessary negativity.

00:47:17.500 | Yeah.

00:47:18.500 | You should be like, "Okay, the flood is coming.

00:47:21.960 | So what we're going to do is put the sandbags around our house while we're still building

00:47:25.760 | a new house up on the hill.

00:47:27.400 | But in the meantime, we don't want to have water coming in the door.

00:47:30.180 | So we got to do what we can with what's in front of us while also thinking towards the

00:47:34.300 | future."

00:47:35.300 | Yep.

00:47:36.300 | All right.

00:47:37.300 | What do we got next?

00:47:38.300 | Hi, next question is from Evan.

00:47:39.300 | "I'm an eighth year faculty member at a large state university.

00:47:43.540 | I've just been approved for a semester long sabbatical.

00:47:46.780 | What is your recommendation for balancing my main goal of writing with my duties as

00:47:50.420 | a graduate student advisor?

00:47:52.660 | I've allocated 75% of my sabbatical to my backlog of papers, including 13 manuscripts

00:47:58.340 | for publication, some of which I just have to revise and resubmit.

00:48:02.100 | However, I have a PhD student in their final year, which I'll be required to be present."

00:48:06.660 | Okay.

00:48:07.660 | All right.

00:48:08.660 | Evan, I know this issue because I'm a professor too.

00:48:13.780 | It's not just sabbatical.

00:48:14.780 | So for me, for example, summers are like this.

00:48:16.620 | It's like, "Oh, I got a lot less responsibilities in the summer.

00:48:20.380 | I don't even take a paycheck from Georgetown in the summer.

00:48:23.180 | I don't take summer salary, but there are things I still need to do."

00:48:27.580 | This is a really good question because scheduling time off can actually be difficult.

00:48:35.100 | It's very difficult.

00:48:36.100 | We're like, "I have abundant free time in a period.

00:48:37.700 | I'm taking a month off.

00:48:39.460 | I'm in between jobs.

00:48:40.460 | I'm a summer as professor."

00:48:41.920 | It's very easy to have that all dissipate in the thing, meetings and email.

00:48:46.780 | Why am I not getting anything done?

00:48:48.020 | It's a really common thing.

00:48:49.340 | People come out of these periods like, "I didn't really get anything done."

00:48:52.540 | So what you actually have to do is build a good scheduling system for periods of abundant

00:49:00.260 | free time.

00:49:01.260 | So let me tell you what I do during my summer.

00:49:02.260 | I call this my summer scheduling system.

00:49:06.140 | No meetings Mondays, no appointments, no professional meetings Fridays.

00:49:11.540 | So that means Friday through Monday, professional calendar blank.

00:49:15.380 | Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, any sort of meetings or appointments or calls because

00:49:19.340 | it turns out these still happen in the afternoon, literally afternoon, so between noon and four.

00:49:25.980 | I'm willing to fill that time.

00:49:27.580 | Some days that time might be full completely with meetings.

00:49:29.700 | So I just know if like, "Well, I got to talk to my student.

00:49:32.220 | I have a committee thing I have to check in on with Georgetown.

00:49:34.740 | I got to talk to my publishing team."

00:49:36.060 | Yeah, great.

00:49:37.060 | Tuesday, Thursday afternoon, any time you want to do it.

00:49:40.220 | I used to think this is the summer.

00:49:43.560 | What I want is nothing to do.

00:49:44.560 | And then I get really frustrated because there is stuff to do and it'd be just enough stuff

00:49:48.080 | that days weren't clear.

00:49:49.260 | So I realized there is stuff to do.

00:49:50.380 | So let's control where we put it.

00:49:51.860 | All right.

00:49:52.860 | What do I do in the other time?

00:49:54.300 | Every morning's deep work.

00:49:55.920 | On Monday and Friday, that deep work session can go longer because I don't have appointments

00:49:59.300 | and I'll typically throw in some sort of brainstorming.

00:50:02.580 | Let me walk outside or in the woods, like really get into it.

00:50:05.900 | And I'll end my day earlier, maybe in my day by two or three, because I can do that in

00:50:09.980 | the summer on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

00:50:12.980 | It's deep work till like 11 to 1130.

00:50:17.100 | And then it's like emails and appointments and I end the day by five.

00:50:21.340 | That scheduling system, I call it my summer hours, works really well.

00:50:24.220 | I mean, it means I have these four days a week where I'm completely free from being

00:50:27.940 | on Zoom or calls.

00:50:29.300 | I'm getting deep work done five days a week, including a couple of days of like really

00:50:33.020 | long sessions with being outside.

00:50:35.420 | But I'm also on top of the stuff that has to happen.

00:50:37.420 | The phone calls that have to happen, the meetings that have to happen, the emails that have

00:50:40.220 | to happen, that still gets done.

00:50:42.220 | But instead of that just being spread all throughout my calendar and annoying me that

00:50:44.940 | I can't get it the free time I imagine, I'm corralling it.

00:50:49.540 | So abundant free time requires careful scheduling philosophies for you to feel like you're actually

00:50:55.100 | taking advantage of that abundant free time.

00:50:57.220 | So come up with your own system.

00:50:58.300 | You can use my Tuesday, Thursday meeting rule or whatever else you want to do.

00:51:03.900 | Lean into your flexibility, but you have to somewhat paradoxically have a lot of structure

00:51:08.700 | to get the most out of the flexibility.

00:51:12.380 | Through structure, you get relief.

00:51:13.740 | Through structure, you get free time.

00:51:15.280 | Through structure, you get this flexibility to spend full days walking and thinking and

00:51:18.500 | not worrying about it.

00:51:19.500 | So you have to sometimes structure things to get the most out of unstructured time.

00:51:24.340 | All right, let's see here.

00:51:26.460 | We've got some long questions.

00:51:27.460 | We forgot to cut these out.

00:51:28.460 | Maybe summarize them a little bit.

00:51:29.460 | Yeah, I got it.

00:51:30.460 | A little behind the scenes.

00:51:33.700 | People tend to send us very long versions of questions, which Jesse and I edit down,

00:51:36.960 | but there's a couple here we didn't edit.

00:51:38.260 | So we're going to do some on the fly editing.

00:51:40.380 | Yeah, I got it.

00:51:41.920 | First question is from Christie.

00:51:44.100 | Cal mentioned the book Company of One and that allowed me to reframe my business goals.

00:51:48.180 | Along with Cal's techniques, I'm able to work part-time four to six hours a day, Monday

00:51:52.500 | through Friday and bring home an excellent salary with my own law practice.

00:51:57.940 | And the extra hours I homeschool, garden, trail run, stuff like that.

00:52:02.020 | An unexpected side effect is this sense of guilt I feel and that I really don't have

00:52:07.220 | to only have to work a few hours a day.

00:52:09.620 | Growing up, my parents worked very long hours, so I feel bad when I talk to my dad who still

00:52:13.900 | works 60 to 70 hours a week.

00:52:16.360 | What are your thoughts on this aspect of success with deep work and productivity?

00:52:20.060 | Well, I mean, part of this should be a reminder for all of us who are in knowledge work.

00:52:27.480 | So generally, we work at a computer screen, some mixture of at an office and at home remotely.

00:52:34.240 | For all the complaining we do, you should remember relative to all of human history,

00:52:41.160 | it's a pretty sweet gig.

00:52:42.480 | I mean, throughout all of human history, if someone said, okay, here's what's going to

00:52:45.760 | happen.

00:52:46.760 | Like, uh, you're going to go to like an air conditioned building and sit around in a comfortable

00:52:52.380 | chair, like a Herman Miller chair that costs $600.

00:52:56.280 | And you're going to be like a computer screen and like send messages to people and like

00:52:59.680 | make PowerPoint and make slides and stuff like that.

00:53:02.120 | And you know, you can eat, there's coffee and, um, and like, oh, so like, but it's like

00:53:07.120 | hard.

00:53:08.120 | It's like, it's kind of up to you what you do.

00:53:09.120 | And there's a lot of flexibility.

00:53:10.120 | Oh, and by the way, we're going to pay you really well.

00:53:12.560 | You could get paid a lot of money for this actually.

00:53:15.240 | Even if you can't even exactly specify specifically what it is you do.

00:53:19.240 | Right.

00:53:20.240 | You, you, you tell this to a surf in, you know, 14th century, uh, England, like sign

00:53:28.240 | me up.

00:53:29.400 | You, you, you tell this to a factory labor in early 20th century Detroit, like what you

00:53:35.360 | just sit in the air conditioned box and kind of like figure out what you want to do.

00:53:38.200 | And there's like a, you just drink coffee all day.

00:53:40.280 | Sign.

00:53:41.280 | And how much you're going to pay me?

00:53:42.280 | Six figures.

00:53:43.280 | What?

00:53:44.280 | You know, they're like, sign me up, you know, sign me up.

00:53:46.120 | So we should remember knowledge work in some sense could be, it's a, it's a fantastic gig.

00:53:51.000 | Um, if you can control it and that's what the CP here has done.

00:53:57.720 | He's an aficionado of what I talk about of company of one that, that fantastic book.

00:54:02.080 | I, um, Paul Jarvis's book.

00:54:04.160 | I talked about a lot in the show about instead of growing your business, when you get better

00:54:08.080 | at it, just ask for more money and work less.

00:54:10.280 | Uh, so he's, he's put these philosophies to work to fully take advantage of knowledge

00:54:14.120 | work.

00:54:15.120 | I have a good salary.

00:54:16.120 | I don't have to work that much.

00:54:17.120 | I have a lot of autonomy and the work is creatively demanding.

00:54:20.660 | So partially I just want to say, look, when done right, knowledge work is a great gig.

00:54:26.000 | So this is why it's worth doing it right.

00:54:28.760 | It's really wasting the opportunity.

00:54:30.240 | Just imagine that 14th century medieval surf, how frustrated they would be to say, you have

00:54:33.760 | this opportunity to be like CP's life.

00:54:36.240 | And instead you're just on slack all day and, and tired and complaining about it.

00:54:40.000 | Like you're really not that it's pretty easy to get from there to an awesome life in a

00:54:43.000 | way that I'm never going to be able to, uh, you know, pulling potatoes out of the ground

00:54:46.840 | and Cornwall or whatever.

00:54:48.740 | So knowledge work can be a great gig.

00:54:51.320 | If you take full advantage of what it can offer using the type of things we talk about

00:54:54.480 | here.

00:54:55.480 | Now, what about the guilt aspect of it?

00:54:58.160 | Um, I would say don't feel guilty as long as you are living up to the gift you're given.

00:55:05.880 | So you know, you're in a situation to not only have a knowledge work job, but to be

00:55:10.040 | able to transform it into this, like four hours a day, I'm making good money at full

00:55:13.440 | autonomy.

00:55:14.760 | You should see that as a gift in some sense you were given that you need to live up to

00:55:19.480 | by living the deepest possible life all the round.

00:55:22.960 | So I got good money.

00:55:23.960 | I've good time.

00:55:24.960 | I'm doing great.

00:55:25.960 | Um, my community, you know, my, my kids, my, uh, things I'm involved in honing my mind,

00:55:33.480 | honing my body.

00:55:34.640 | Do not let that gift go to waste.

00:55:36.920 | If it's like, this is great.

00:55:38.200 | Now I can, you know, um, drink more and send more angry tweets than you should feel guilty

00:55:44.640 | because you were given a gift.

00:55:46.920 | You could almost think about this.

00:55:48.400 | It's not obviously not an exact analogy, but you could almost think about this.

00:55:51.480 | If we, if we look at, you know, monarchical Europe, uh, as being a, uh, landed gentry

00:55:59.000 | and they had this whole philosophy, not please, uh, uh, no bless a oblige.

00:56:05.400 | I seen that backwards.

00:56:06.400 | Jesse bless.

00:56:07.400 | Say it'll be at least it's the French term.

00:56:10.200 | Uh, this whole notion of like, Hey, look, you, you inherited this land.

00:56:14.720 | This is just the way we run our society.

00:56:16.480 | You need to like do stuff with your, the free time.

00:56:20.040 | This frees up.

00:56:21.040 | You need to like, get out there and try to give back and be useful.

00:56:26.640 | And you know how it was.

00:56:27.640 | We all saw down to the Abbey.

00:56:29.000 | You like owned a town.

00:56:30.000 | You're supposed to be like involved in the town.

00:56:32.680 | There's almost an echo of that with modern knowledge, working camp in a family that was

00:56:36.600 | like upper middle class.

00:56:37.600 | I got a good education and then I stumbled across Cal Newport stuff and I don't know,

00:56:40.880 | I'm getting $175,000 a year and I'm really only working like four hours a day.

00:56:46.040 | Uh, live up to that gift.

00:56:49.080 | And do cool stuff with the time that remains and you hone your body and you hone your mind

00:56:53.400 | and you, you become a leader in your community.

00:56:55.560 | You serve other people.

00:56:57.200 | You have real gratitude and appreciation for craftsmanship in the world.

00:57:00.680 | You hone your soul through philosophy and theology.

00:57:03.240 | I think that's the right way to think about it.

00:57:06.760 | There's a part of it's a gift part of it.

00:57:08.600 | You did it.

00:57:09.600 | However you got there.

00:57:11.000 | Let's run with that opportunity to live a even more enlightened, even more, uh, useful

00:57:18.000 | human life.

00:57:19.000 | That's the way I would think about that.

00:57:20.000 | And also I'm sure your dad is happy that you don't have to do the 70 hours in the factory.

00:57:23.600 | Just live up to that gift that you were given.

00:57:25.600 | Do you look up the phrase?

00:57:27.880 | Now please bless a, not bleached bless.

00:57:29.960 | Say, I can only think of you saying it in like your accent.

00:57:32.880 | Well, am I saying, I'll say, I'll say my accent if I have the right phrase.

00:57:35.760 | Is that the right phrase?

00:57:36.760 | I'm not even trying to spell it.

00:57:39.760 | O B L I G E.

00:57:42.760 | It's French.

00:57:43.760 | Yeah.

00:57:44.760 | No bless a.

00:57:49.080 | No bless a.

00:57:50.080 | No bless a.

00:57:51.080 | I think it's a, did you mean a bleached no bless a?

00:57:53.960 | Yes.

00:57:54.960 | A bleached no bless a.

00:57:55.960 | That's what I was forgetting.

00:57:56.960 | It's French.

00:57:57.960 | A bleached no bless a.

00:58:01.320 | The sense of I have to give back because I was born land of gentry.

00:58:04.960 | Oh, well.

00:58:05.960 | All right, let's do another one.

00:58:06.960 | What do we got?

00:58:07.960 | I thought I was in Spanish class there for a second.

00:58:10.200 | I didn't understand what you were saying.

00:58:13.200 | I think it's French.

00:58:14.200 | I don't know.

00:58:15.200 | I'm not an expert, expert pronunciation.

00:58:16.200 | I don't appreciate it.

00:58:17.200 | I have an expert pronunciation of all foreign words.

00:58:20.600 | All right.

00:58:22.160 | Next question is actually a follow-up from Christie and she's talking about how her three

00:58:26.240 | kids are back in school and she has a lot more time each day, but she's nervous about

00:58:30.440 | putting too much on her plate.

00:58:32.580 | She explained her other interests that she likes to pursue, but oftentimes she has a

00:58:36.160 | tendency to overdo things.

00:58:38.360 | Having her kids at home, especially with work, allowed her a convenient excuse to say no.

00:58:43.040 | So she wonders, how can I say no to working more than four hours a day when I no longer

00:58:47.320 | can say, well, I have my kids at home?

00:58:49.760 | How would you advise someone who doesn't want to be more productive in the sense of producing

00:58:54.320 | and providing more services?

00:58:55.920 | Well, I like this question.

00:58:57.840 | It's clearly an older, we have questions from a long array of time.

00:59:02.000 | Clearly this is an older question because Christie's talking about, oh, the pandemic's

00:59:05.520 | over and my kids are going back to school and how I'm going to transition to that.

00:59:08.800 | But we brought in this older question because it actually gets to a topic I've been thinking

00:59:12.160 | a lot about more recently, and that is slow productivity.

00:59:17.040 | Jesse, I think we need a sound effect for slow productivity because I like this idea

00:59:21.680 | as we get closer to my slow productivity book coming out in March that we have.

00:59:28.720 | We do need one.

00:59:29.720 | We do need one.

00:59:30.720 | Yeah.

00:59:31.720 | Yeah.

00:59:32.720 | And it needs some sort of musical cue.

00:59:33.720 | Actually, we have some solid fans who sent in some stuff, so they should send.

00:59:36.880 | We need a slow, okay.

00:59:37.880 | So we need a slow productivity theme song because what I want to try to do from now

00:59:40.440 | until my book comes out is have at least one slow productivity question each episode.

00:59:45.240 | You can call this slow productivity corner with slow Cal Newport.

00:59:52.000 | Slow Cal Newport's probably not great, but it's slow productivity corners where we can

00:59:55.120 | do a little bit of slow productivity thinking every episode.

00:59:58.160 | So my answer to Christie here is going to be to pull some ideas from slow productivity,

01:00:04.200 | two points in particular.

01:00:05.200 | All right.

01:00:06.200 | So remember, here's her problem.

01:00:08.140 | In the pandemic, there's a lot less stuff going on.

01:00:11.080 | Her kids were at home.

01:00:12.720 | She could say no to most things because people weren't doing things and she was worrying,

01:00:16.120 | I'm going to become overloaded again, but I can't just keep saying no to everything

01:00:19.200 | because I don't have the excuse anymore of things are shut down.

01:00:23.560 | So slow productivity is going to help us here.

01:00:27.000 | Point one, in both your work and non-work schedule, what you need to do is build what

01:00:34.080 | you believe, identify what you believe to be the reasonable workload in both, and then

01:00:41.080 | just don't exceed that workload.

01:00:43.280 | So it's not so much as saying yes or no to each thing in individual, it's keeping your

01:00:47.920 | workload and outside of work would be your activity load, your obligation load, keeping

01:00:53.000 | that at your predetermined limit.

01:00:55.180 | This is where I'm best.

01:00:56.920 | At this point, I don't want to go beyond it.

01:00:59.000 | So now when you're saying no, it's not random.

01:01:02.160 | It's because you already hit your load for the moment.

01:01:04.760 | Now you can break this down to be a little bit more specific.

01:01:07.680 | For example, using things like activity specific quotas.

01:01:12.380 | So instead of just saying I do five projects, but no more at work, you might be like this

01:01:16.240 | type of work.

01:01:17.240 | I only do one at a time.

01:01:18.960 | These type of events, okay.

01:01:20.880 | Once a quarter, I'll say yes to doing these networking events I'm always asked to do in

01:01:25.920 | terms of, I don't know, there's like white papers that your company produces.

01:01:29.920 | I can only work on two at a time.

01:01:31.400 | So you could have specific activity, specific quotas that add up to specifying what your

01:01:36.520 | desired workload is.

01:01:39.560 | And then the no's are informed by the quotas.

01:01:42.160 | Yes, I'm happy to do these.

01:01:43.960 | I do do these, but I typically do once a month and I've already have one on the books for

01:01:47.720 | this month.

01:01:48.720 | So I can't do this one.

01:01:49.720 | So you're not saying no, because in general, I'm busy.

01:01:52.400 | I don't want to do things, but because I have a very specific load and quota and I've hit

01:01:56.280 | that.

01:01:57.440 | Same thing with life outside of work.

01:01:59.600 | You can do something similar like, oh yeah, this sounds like a great group.

01:02:02.800 | You want me to join, but really my quota is like, I don't like to be involved in more

01:02:06.560 | than like three book club, uh, parents, sports, whatever it is like no more than two at a

01:02:12.560 | time.

01:02:13.560 | And I already have two going on this season.

01:02:14.560 | So, you know, great idea, but I've already kind of loaded my activity quota.

01:02:17.360 | Um, so I can't do that.

01:02:19.160 | I'm not gonna be able to do that.

01:02:20.160 | Or I go to this many events at my kids' schools.

01:02:22.800 | I'll, I'll do one a week, but not, not more than one.

01:02:25.840 | Right.

01:02:26.840 | So you have to have clarity because what you don't want to do is tackle the yes or no emotionally

01:02:31.920 | in the moment.

01:02:33.760 | That doesn't work out well.

01:02:35.000 | A it's hard because again, an emotional no is not very acceptable from other people.

01:02:39.320 | Like we're all busy.

01:02:40.800 | Come to the stupid activity, right?

01:02:42.360 | That doesn't work.

01:02:43.360 | Specificity is much better.

01:02:44.640 | And two, if you depend on emotions, I wrote a big article about this in the New Yorker

01:02:48.960 | a couple of years ago that was called it's time to embrace slow productivity.

01:02:53.040 | Or maybe it's an article I wrote called why we work so much.

01:02:55.480 | I wrote a couple of things about this, but the basic thesis of this article, I get into

01:02:59.080 | this in my, my book coming out in March as well, is that when you use the emotional,

01:03:02.880 | no, when do you actually feel that strong emotion of, oh, I need to say no.

01:03:06.760 | It's when you already have too much to do.

01:03:09.720 | So if you're just depending on like, I feel psychologically like I can't take on anymore.

01:03:14.280 | You've already taken on too much.

01:03:16.320 | So the emotional no leads you to always be about 20% too overloaded.

01:03:19.200 | So that's not good either.

01:03:20.200 | So figure out in advance your workloads for work and non-work.

01:03:23.960 | You can subdivide those workloads by activity specific quotas and then just stick to those

01:03:28.280 | use them as your explanation.

01:03:30.700 | Point number two, it's another huge point for my upcoming book seasonality.

01:03:37.380 | So what you might also do is say the fall is unusually busy because the kids go back

01:03:42.440 | to school and there's all these things that happen.

01:03:44.760 | I'm actually willing to be busier in the fall.

01:03:47.780 | And I go particularly unbusy in the summer.

01:03:50.600 | I have certain times of the year where I do more and other times where I do less and they

01:03:53.840 | help kind of balance out and help me get a breather.

01:03:57.000 | And so there can be periods where I'm really involved in things and there can be other

01:03:59.480 | periods where I'm kind of scarce.

01:04:00.640 | I'm not around as much.

01:04:02.640 | Seasonality is something we're wired for as humans and is often more effective than trying

01:04:06.200 | to just have a steady limit that's pretty low that you follow all the time.

01:04:10.600 | I mean, seasonality is what we experience as hunter gatherers.

01:04:15.040 | The winter we're doing a lot less than other types of seasons.

01:04:17.960 | It's certainly what we experienced acutely once the Neolithic era began.

01:04:23.240 | The harvest time is incredibly busy.

01:04:26.000 | We have almost nothing to do in January.

01:04:28.200 | So they're like really busy times and times where we're sitting around inventing art because

01:04:32.800 | we had nothing else to do while we're waiting for the next crops to come in.

01:04:36.120 | So also you see as an analogy and offset unusually busy with less busy.

01:04:40.260 | Sometimes it's also better satisfies people's demands for you because you're available when

01:04:43.600 | the times where people really need you, but you get that breather in times where people

01:04:48.040 | are scarce.

01:04:49.040 | All right.

01:04:50.040 | So that is slow productivity corner for this week.

01:04:54.640 | We should just have.

01:04:56.080 | Sound effect coming 276.

01:04:57.640 | Sound effect coming.

01:04:59.200 | I think it should be off putting and random like circus music.

01:05:03.400 | It's calliope music or something that just never explained.

01:05:06.280 | It was like slow productivity corner.

01:05:07.880 | It's like.

01:05:08.880 | Or we can make it the Shopify sale sound.

01:05:11.640 | Just again and again.

01:05:12.640 | We're going to do 45 seconds of Shopify sales sound effects.

01:05:21.520 | Because we are awesome at audio engineering.

01:05:22.840 | All right.

01:05:23.840 | Let's do let's do one more question.

01:05:24.840 | All right.

01:05:25.840 | Next question is from can't start won't stop.

01:05:29.360 | I really want to try time block planning.

01:05:32.200 | I have a typical hive mind slack fueled tech job.

01:05:36.940 | I think I could tame that pretty well.

01:05:38.800 | The part I frankly dread about time block planning is switching to the next task while

01:05:43.520 | in progress on the first.

01:05:44.960 | How do you do it?

01:05:45.960 | I'm a pretty pessimistic person.

01:05:48.360 | And if I'm in the middle of a problem or a piece of writing, for example, I don't see

01:05:51.600 | how I'm going to get it done.

01:05:53.200 | Stopping the middle because the timer went off is a worse kind of mental focus.

01:05:56.560 | Interrupts me because I fear I may not get to the end.

01:05:59.520 | How do you do it?

01:06:00.520 | Well, there's two different cases here to cover.

01:06:04.720 | There's two different cases when it comes to I'm working on something and the time I

01:06:09.640 | put aside for it is up and I'm not done.

01:06:13.360 | Two cases to consider.

01:06:14.960 | Case one is I have to finish this.

01:06:17.280 | I mean, it's unfortunate that I did not accurately estimate how long this is going to take.

01:06:22.120 | But this is due at the end of the day.

01:06:23.520 | Like this is the report my boss needs and I'm not done yet.

01:06:26.680 | The second case is just this is a big thing I'm working on.

01:06:29.600 | It's a computer program that's going to take me a month.

01:06:31.700 | It's a book manuscript.

01:06:32.700 | And it's just like, look, I'm in it.

01:06:34.440 | The block ended and I'm just in the middle of it.

01:06:36.680 | I really don't want to stop.

01:06:38.000 | We need different responses to both of these different cases.

01:06:43.120 | So for the case of this has to finish, I just thought it was going to take less time than

01:06:47.560 | it did.

01:06:48.560 | But I do have to get this done.

01:06:50.040 | Don't sweat it.

01:06:52.240 | Remember with time blocking, the goal is not perfectly predicting how long everything is

01:06:57.160 | going to take.

01:06:58.160 | And if you do, you win.

01:06:59.160 | And if you don't, you lose.

01:07:00.160 | The goal of time blocking is intention.

01:07:01.880 | At any one point, you want to have some intention behind what you're doing next.

01:07:07.320 | So if there's something that's urgent and it's taking you longer, you can keep going

01:07:11.300 | until you're done.

01:07:12.440 | And then what do you do when you're done?

01:07:13.960 | You adjust your plan for the time that remains the day.

01:07:17.020 | That's time blocking 101.

01:07:18.680 | Next time you get a chance, you move over to that next column in your time block planner

01:07:22.040 | and you build a new plan for the time that remains.

01:07:24.480 | The key is you're never without intention.

01:07:26.480 | So when you're done finishing this thing, you say, what's the best I can do with my

01:07:29.640 | time left?

01:07:30.640 | You're avoiding random wandering.

01:07:31.640 | That's fine.

01:07:32.640 | That's time blocking 101.

01:07:33.880 | Intention is winning, not accuracy and prediction.

01:07:38.800 | But what about the second issue?

01:07:41.020 | You work on these big projects and you never want to stop.

01:07:44.920 | It's always like I'm in the flow.

01:07:45.920 | I don't want to stop now.

01:07:46.920 | This is psychologically very difficult, but you're finding this is a problem because you're

01:07:50.600 | constantly blowing over other things you need to get done, other things that are important.

01:07:55.440 | Here I want to push back on this idea, and you use a term here that this is the worst

01:07:59.760 | kind of focus interruption.

01:08:02.360 | It's not.

01:08:04.200 | It's not.

01:08:05.200 | I want to give a name to something I talked about in a recent episode.

01:08:09.840 | I didn't give it that name then.

01:08:10.840 | I'm going to invent the name right now.

01:08:12.960 | The Hemingway principle.

01:08:15.320 | The Hemingway principle says it is not a bad thing to stop working on something deep in

01:08:22.840 | the middle of you being in the flow of working on something deep.

01:08:26.160 | I call this the Hemingway principle because when I brought this up in a recent episode,

01:08:29.960 | I talked about Hemingway's specific practice of always stopping writing in the middle of

01:08:34.880 | something that he was on the flow about so that the next day he was picking up from something

01:08:40.320 | that was really working and you could get right into it and get moving again, as opposed

01:08:44.160 | to writing until you're completely done and having to start fresh the next day.

01:08:47.400 | It actually can be better to return to something that you were in the flow of.

01:08:51.520 | First of all, you get a faster start.

01:08:54.660 | Second of all, you give your mind chance to do some unconscious processing about what

01:08:57.660 | you're working on.

01:08:58.660 | And when you come back to it, it might be a lot better than if you had kept going.

01:09:02.280 | There is some mental discomfort in these pauses, but the right way to deal with that mental

01:09:07.340 | discomfort is, okay, my block is about to end five minutes till it ends.

01:09:12.160 | Stop what I'm working on and let's give ourselves a fully encapsulated checkpoint here.

01:09:17.440 | All right, here's where I am.

01:09:19.280 | Let me take a quick note to myself.

01:09:20.680 | Here's what the work on tomorrow.

01:09:21.680 | I stopped right here.

01:09:22.800 | Here's what I was thinking about.

01:09:24.060 | Go back and check that algorithm.

01:09:26.720 | Make sure you do the smoke testing over on that module.

01:09:30.160 | I was about to look up this technique I heard about, see if that applies here.

01:09:34.660 | Save that, check in my code.

01:09:36.160 | Okay, good.

01:09:37.160 | This is fully encapsulated.

01:09:38.160 | There's nothing I'm just keeping in my head.

01:09:39.480 | I have a good snapshot of where I was and what I was about to do.

01:09:42.920 | Move on to the next block.

01:09:44.200 | Give it 10 minutes, your mind will move on.

01:09:46.620 | So the Hemingway principle says it's not a problem to stop in the middle of something

01:09:50.620 | deep so long as you capture well exactly where you were.

01:09:54.640 | So you can close open loops and pick up from where you started the next day.

01:09:58.220 | Over time, this is probably actually more efficient.

01:10:01.340 | There was a chapter, not a chapter, but a section of a chapter that was originally in

01:10:07.980 | my slow productivity book that's coming out that got cut just because a lot, you know,

01:10:11.780 | you cut a lot of stuff when you're working on the book.

01:10:13.340 | But I like this idea.

01:10:14.340 | It was this idea about cold starts that actually taking something hard and working on it for

01:10:20.420 | a long period of time versus breaking it up into a couple independent sessions.

01:10:25.580 | The couple independent sessions might in the end take less total hours because every time

01:10:29.700 | you come back to it fresh, you have new energy.

01:10:33.140 | You can leverage unconscious processing that's happened since the last time you stopped it.

01:10:38.780 | And so you come at it with more ammunition.

01:10:43.180 | And so the overall quality of your work per minute is much higher if you break it up into

01:10:47.140 | a few big sessions as opposed to trying to drag it out on one large section.

01:10:51.300 | You get better, more creative work.

01:10:53.220 | So in this chapter I cut from slow productivity, I gave this detailed account of how this math

01:10:58.380 | proof that won the Fields Medal was proven because there was a book about this.

01:11:02.100 | The mathematicians wrote a whole book about how they solved this math theorem.

01:11:05.820 | And they had their emails and their back and forth correspondence.

01:11:08.340 | It's a great book.

01:11:09.340 | I think I talked about on the show a couple of years ago.

01:11:11.540 | Anyways, I went beat by beat and it was like all of the big insights came from cold starts.

01:11:16.780 | Your mind was working on it.

01:11:17.900 | Then they came back to it the next day like, oh, wait, this is even better.

01:11:21.100 | That's the Hemingway principle.

01:11:23.220 | Don't fear stopping even when things are going well.

01:11:25.940 | It's not necessarily a problem.

01:11:29.580 | All right.

01:11:30.580 | So I think we have a call, right?

01:11:31.580 | Yeah.

01:11:32.580 | All right.

01:11:33.580 | Let's do a call.

01:11:34.580 | Remember, if you want to leave a call for us, you just go to the deep life dot com slash

01:11:37.540 | listen.

01:11:38.540 | There's a link at the top there.

01:11:39.540 | You can record the call straight from your browser.

01:11:41.620 | All right.

01:11:42.620 | Let's see who we have here, Jesse.

01:11:43.620 | OK.

01:11:44.620 | Hi, Cal.

01:11:47.780 | My name is Rachel and I work in a role where I have two different parts of my job.

01:11:52.180 | One is clinical and one is research.

01:11:55.860 | And what I've realized as I'm looking at my career is that my two halves of my job are

01:12:00.180 | in two different market types.

01:12:02.980 | The clinical work is very much an auction market, whereas the research is very much

01:12:06.780 | a winner take all market.

01:12:08.700 | And yet oftentimes, like my hiring, my firing, my job security is going to depend a little

01:12:14.740 | bit on both.

01:12:15.740 | And I'm reaching out because I'm wondering if you have any advice for how to approach

01:12:19.800 | this kind of split market career.

01:12:22.460 | Does one take precedence over the other?

01:12:26.960 | How do you figure out which where to put priorities and how to negotiate that?

01:12:30.940 | I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

01:12:32.900 | Thank you.

01:12:33.900 | Well, I'm familiar with this issue because, I mean, essentially you have multiple jobs,

01:12:40.260 | not on paper.

01:12:41.260 | This is all the same academic position.

01:12:42.900 | I'm assuming you're probably is a academic medical school position, but you have these

01:12:47.300 | different jobs with different objectives and different paths towards success.

01:12:51.060 | I mean, this is my life, right?

01:12:52.300 | I mean, I have, I used to joke, 17 jobs.

01:12:54.940 | But if we're going to be really clear about it, I have like a research job, a teaching

01:13:00.540 | job, a writing job, and a sort of a media company job.

01:13:05.100 | Some of these are winner take all, like the research position.

01:13:07.660 | Some of these are more auction market, like the media company.

01:13:10.500 | I think it's helpful to have mental separation.

01:13:13.340 | You treat it like I have two jobs and I deal with these jobs separately.

01:13:17.660 | Now there's the complexity about how you schedule both, but fine.

01:13:20.020 | That's just a challenge.

01:13:21.020 | I do that all the time.

01:13:22.020 | I have these two jobs.

01:13:23.020 | You should have a separate strategic planning document for both of these roles.

01:13:27.340 | Your weekly plan should be bifurcated.

01:13:30.540 | Like this is what I'm doing for this job.

01:13:31.540 | This is what I'm doing for that job.

01:13:33.100 | And you should keep that in mind when you build your daily time block plans.

01:13:36.780 | You have to be, to succeed with two jobs, you of course have to be organized and efficient.

01:13:42.000 | This has always been my secret.

01:13:45.860 | If you let any one job, sort of like most people do, if they have one job, just kind

01:13:48.900 | of take over all your time.

01:13:50.020 | You can't fit two.

01:13:51.020 | So you got to be very organized, very efficient.

01:13:53.020 | Here's what I'm doing with this job.

01:13:54.020 | Here's what I'm making progress.

01:13:55.020 | Here's what I'm doing with that job.

01:13:56.020 | Here's what I'm making progress.

01:13:57.020 | And with daily time block plans, you're also going to want some bifurcation.

01:13:59.500 | Let's not mix these things together.

01:14:01.180 | Now it could be this day is mainly clinical.

01:14:03.700 | This day is mainly research or the mornings is research.

01:14:05.980 | The afternoons is clinical, but keep some separation there as well.

01:14:09.980 | So again, to have this sort of logical separation between these two roles, you're going to have

01:14:13.700 | separate strategic plans, separate parts of your weekly plan.

01:14:16.380 | You're going to try to divide your week when you're doing your actual planning day to day,

01:14:20.380 | to try to get some separation there as well.

01:14:23.300 | Do something similar with whatever task organizational system you are using.

01:14:27.780 | These are two different roles, have two different collections.

01:14:29.820 | If you're using Trello, have a separate Trello board for the one role and the other.

01:14:33.160 | You really want to keep these as in a logical sense, very separate.

01:14:36.620 | And then it's okay that they operate in different markets because you're tackling them each

01:14:41.660 | differently, different goals, different strategies, different mental context, and you're not mixing

01:14:46.160 | the two things together.

01:14:48.220 | So you can be very by research, I'm just working on progress, good papers and in clinical work,

01:14:54.580 | I'm exploring and trying to find whatever my niche is going to be there and putting

01:14:58.860 | together some unique skills.

01:15:00.140 | They're completely separated logically and mentally, you're going to be able to have

01:15:03.700 | divergent approaches and goals and strategies for different parts of your life.

01:15:07.260 | I've been doing this for a few years now.

01:15:08.540 | It works fine.

01:15:09.540 | I mean, it gets complicated.

01:15:10.540 | You got to be on the ball and it does slow down.

01:15:13.700 | If you have two roles, it's hard to fully excel in one versus the other, but it's completely

01:15:17.860 | possible, completely possible to have two roles.

01:15:22.060 | Just keep them separate and your approach to each can be distinct.

01:15:26.460 | All right.

01:15:28.140 | So we're going to move here in a second to our final segment where I react to something

01:15:31.820 | that I've seen in the news.

01:15:33.140 | But first we want to hear from another sponsor.

01:15:35.980 | In particular, I want to talk about our friends at My Body Tutor.

01:15:41.020 | I've known Adam Gilbert, My Body Tutor's founder for many years.

01:15:44.940 | He used to be the fitness advice guy on my study hack blogs.

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01:16:25.100 | It sounds simple, but knowing there's someone that is going to hear what you did today gives

01:16:29.900 | you motivation that you otherwise would not have.

01:16:32.900 | You're much more likely to take consistent progress.

01:16:35.220 | Also the coach is there to help you adapt.

01:16:37.700 | It's winter vacation.

01:16:39.060 | We're going to like my parents' house for Christmas.

01:16:40.780 | I'm really worried.

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01:16:42.780 | I eat too much.

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01:16:47.660 | It makes a really big difference to have someone there.

01:16:50.100 | But because this is online, it can be affordable in a way that having a trainer in your home

01:16:56.100 | or a personal chef in your home would be out of reach for most people.

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01:17:12.380 | All you have to do is mention this podcast when you join.

01:17:14.980 | This is interesting.

01:17:16.620 | If you have questions, Adam wants you to call him or text him.

01:17:19.980 | You can find his personal cell phone number at the top of every page of MyBodyTutor.com.

01:17:25.000 | This is personal service that gets you results.

01:17:29.180 | Also want to talk about our longtime sponsor at Blinkist.

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01:17:57.340 | The way Jesse and I use Blinkist is as a triage service for the books in our lives.

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01:19:29.660 | All right, Jesse, let's move on to our final segment where I react to the news.

01:19:35.540 | So in particular, what I want to react to is an interview I was listening to recently.

01:19:40.300 | I'll even load this up on the screen for those who are watching.

01:19:43.940 | An interview between Joe Rogan and The Rock, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

01:19:52.060 | The Rock is an interesting character, so this interview caught my attention.

01:19:57.080 | One of the reasons why I'm interested in The Rock, and Jesse, this probably won't surprise

01:20:00.300 | you, is that I'm often confused for The Rock.

01:20:06.540 | This happens a lot.

01:20:07.780 | People will be like, "Oh yeah, I saw you interviewed on The Rock's podcast."

01:20:12.540 | They're like, "No, no, no, no, no.

01:20:13.700 | I was on a Cal Newport show."

01:20:16.100 | It's a physical stature thing.

01:20:18.060 | Yeah.

01:20:19.060 | He's probably been to your garage gym.

01:20:21.500 | Yeah.

01:20:22.500 | People will come by and be like, "Oh, cool, man.

01:20:23.980 | The Newports have The Rock working out in the garage gym."

01:20:25.860 | They're like, "No, no, it's me.

01:20:28.220 | It's Cal."

01:20:29.220 | Like, "Oh, we were thrown because of the similarities in your physical stature."

01:20:33.460 | It's your Hemsworth workout.

01:20:34.460 | My Hemsworth.

01:20:35.460 | Also, I'm interested in Chris Hemsworth because this happens a lot.

01:20:38.780 | I'll be picking my kids up from school and people will be like, "Thor!"

01:20:41.740 | I'm like, "No, no, no.

01:20:43.580 | That's Chris Hemsworth."

01:20:44.580 | Anyways, so I was listening to this interview with Joe Rogan and The Rock, and they had

01:20:49.900 | a discussion early on that I wanted to bring up.

01:20:54.420 | Early on, they were talking about the importance of having some sort of passion that you pursue.

01:21:03.700 | This was in the context of a discussion of some people have it hard, and you're kind

01:21:07.700 | of grinding day to day.

01:21:09.020 | They're saying, "In this situation, you need something you're going after, something you're

01:21:13.900 | getting after, that you have this passion that you're pursuing that you can focus your

01:21:17.140 | energy on, otherwise you just get stuck with you're on social media all day, you're eating

01:21:22.180 | crap, you're drinking all the time."

01:21:24.740 | Having some sort of passion to pursue, they were presenting this in the context of life,

01:21:29.860 | not just in the context of work, as a necessary component to avoiding all the traps that can

01:21:37.580 | really trap a lot of people these days into a life of resentment or disappointment.

01:21:43.940 | So I wanted to tackle this a little bit, because you could see this idea as maybe contradicting

01:21:50.060 | my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, which was arguing against the common maxim, "Follow

01:21:57.540 | your passion."

01:21:59.380 | So let's put these two next to each other.

01:22:01.680 | So Good They Can't Ignore You, and the idea, as spoken by my doppelganger, Dwayne "The

01:22:06.340 | Rock" Johnson, that passion is the key to actually escaping a shallow life.

01:22:15.260 | Well here's the thing, I believe, after listening to this interview, and I want to clarify this,

01:22:19.660 | we're highly aligned on this.

01:22:22.340 | Because what The Rock and Joe Rogan were talking about, what they did not say, if you listen

01:22:26.220 | to this interview, what they did not say was, "Right now, I want you to think really hard

01:22:32.380 | today and figure out your one true passion, and then go after it."

01:22:37.600 | That's not what they said.

01:22:39.480 | What The Rock was saying instead is, "The pursuit of something you're passionate about

01:22:44.700 | is going to free you."

01:22:46.260 | But he did not say where that pursuit actually came from.

01:22:49.400 | He did not say that you identify that passion easily and from the very beginning.

01:22:53.560 | And we know that in part because we can look at the life of Dwayne Johnson himself, and

01:22:57.420 | he gets into this in this interview.

01:23:00.360 | The haphazardness, or should we say the randomness with which the early stages of his path to

01:23:06.920 | where he is today actually unfolded.

01:23:10.080 | He talked about football, that was going to be his thing.

01:23:13.120 | Not everyone knows this about Dwayne Johnson, but he was a relatively successful college

01:23:17.240 | football player.

01:23:18.240 | He's a big guy.

01:23:19.560 | But he knew at some point, he realized that wasn't going to be his ticket.

01:23:24.120 | He wasn't quite good enough.

01:23:25.120 | And when you play at the high level, you get that sense.

01:23:27.080 | He didn't have what it would take to succeed at the NFL level.

01:23:30.360 | So then he gets into wrestling.

01:23:31.860 | But this for a while is really not a great situation.

01:23:36.000 | He talked about wrestling at bars and selling his headshot for $5 a piece just to sort of

01:23:42.600 | make enough money that he could buy a sandwich.

01:23:44.720 | It was a random unfolding of things that got him to eventually a point where he pursues

01:23:51.780 | his life with a lot of passion.

01:23:54.840 | So he didn't identify a passion in advance, but lives his life with a lot of passion.

01:23:58.120 | So what lesson do we extrapolate that from for the rest of us?

01:24:00.920 | Well, the idea that I uncover in my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, is that passion

01:24:05.120 | is something that you cultivate, not something that you discover.

01:24:11.480 | Passion is not, I do some reflection and I figure out this is what I'm passionate about.

01:24:14.620 | It's something you cultivate.

01:24:16.140 | And how do you cultivate it?

01:24:17.720 | Well, you cultivate it with discipline.

01:24:20.740 | You cultivate it with curiosity.

01:24:23.520 | It's a combination of those two things.

01:24:25.040 | You're curious, you're engaged in the world and options and what's possible.

01:24:29.360 | Through this curiosity, you find something like this could be interesting.

01:24:31.960 | Let me pursue it with discipline.

01:24:33.800 | And through the discipline pursuit is where you learn, is this thing building momentum

01:24:38.520 | or is it a dead end?

01:24:41.120 | Curiosity plus discipline.

01:24:42.700 | And when something starts to click, you up the discipline, you up the intensity.

01:24:48.200 | And over time that blossoms into passion.

01:24:51.760 | And so we see this in The Rock's path, right?

01:24:53.560 | I mean, he goes from football into wrestling, the wrestling is not going well.

01:24:56.640 | He makes some changes, gets involved with WWE and suddenly things are really starting

01:25:01.160 | to click and he gives that full intense discipline.

01:25:05.460 | Really develops his body, develops himself as someone able to play characters.

01:25:10.120 | And he begins to pursue his life with this particular goal with a real passion.

01:25:15.680 | That passion then is what carried him from that and the movies and all the other things

01:25:19.020 | he's involved with today.

01:25:20.020 | It was a passion that was cultivated from discipline and curiosity.

01:25:24.360 | That I think is the lesson probably if we sat them down here.

01:25:28.640 | If we got Joe and The Rock, I don't know if they'd accept an invitation, but we should

01:25:32.020 | send it out.

01:25:33.020 | Hey, Joe and The Rock, come on by the Deep Work HQ.

01:25:35.600 | Come on into the studio.

01:25:36.600 | We'll talk to you.

01:25:37.600 | I think they would agree with this.

01:25:38.760 | And certainly I think Dwayne Johnson would probably agree with this.

01:25:41.920 | Yeah, it's not about I know in advance what I'm supposed to do.

01:25:45.480 | It's about approaching the things that you think might be worth doing with enough discipline

01:25:51.000 | that you have the opportunity for that to cultivate and blossom into passion.

01:25:55.960 | If that's a possibility.

01:25:57.980 | We discover and develop passion over time.

01:26:01.780 | We don't find it through a short moment of self-reflection.

01:26:05.820 | So I really like this idea that this discipline, passionate pursuit of things is critical for

01:26:10.820 | the deep life.

01:26:12.300 | But nuancing that with you don't get there by starting with the passion.

01:26:15.820 | You actually start with the discipline and the curiosity.

01:26:17.420 | And if you're doing that right, the passion, the passion will come later.

01:26:22.820 | I'm not done with that interview yet, but.

01:26:24.220 | Yeah, I'm going to check it out.

01:26:25.500 | I started listening to it yesterday while I was exercising.

01:26:29.420 | And that caught my attention.

01:26:30.660 | Yeah.

01:26:31.660 | I don't know what happens later in the interview.

01:26:33.940 | When he talked about Rogan and The Rock coming to the HQ for guests, it reminded me of how

01:26:39.740 | Mad Dog always talks about.

01:26:41.060 | I mean, he gets a lot of guests, but he's been, he puts in calls like Kyle Shannon and

01:26:46.060 | Dave Campbell, like some big time NFL coaches.

01:26:47.660 | He just calls us to see.

01:26:48.660 | Well, I mean, he has his guys do it, but a lot of them just say no.

01:26:52.580 | I mean, he's got a lot of good guests on, but he always makes jokes about how, "Yeah,

01:26:57.420 | we're got the call into Kyle."

01:26:59.500 | Got the call.

01:27:00.500 | I bet we would get a 10% of the big time.

01:27:03.340 | If we regularly invited big time guests, I think we'd be surprised.

01:27:08.220 | I think like 10% of the people we invited might come, but we just don't ask because

01:27:12.300 | we don't do a lot of interviews.

01:27:13.300 | I don't think The Rock would come, but you never know.

01:27:15.620 | That's like the weird thing about it.

01:27:16.620 | You never know like, oh, this particular celebrity turns out to secretly be a fan.

01:27:24.380 | I forgot about this, my agent, because we were doing publicity stuff for the new book.

01:27:28.780 | I forgot about this, but it turns out like Michelle Pfeiffer is a fan of Deep Work.

01:27:34.020 | Oh really?

01:27:35.020 | It's like a random thing.

01:27:36.260 | Somebody posted a photo of it years ago or something I'd forgotten about it.

01:27:38.860 | So you never know.

01:27:39.860 | So like Michelle Pfeiffer likes Deep Work.

01:27:41.540 | We know Rory McIlroy, McIlroy, whatever his name is.

01:27:45.420 | He's a big digital minimalism guy, right?

01:27:47.860 | The golfer, right?

01:27:48.860 | He plays the golfs.

01:27:49.860 | So you never know.

01:27:52.140 | So we could have Michelle and Rory.

01:27:54.500 | Yep.

01:27:55.500 | They could both come on the show.

01:27:56.500 | I was thinking we should invite Schwarzenegger because he has the book out.

01:27:59.660 | I bet we have like a 20% chance he would come.

01:28:02.380 | Plus I think he's kind of bored.

01:28:03.380 | Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

01:28:05.260 | He did Ryan's show.

01:28:06.260 | He's done a lot.

01:28:07.260 | He's done a lot of shows.

01:28:08.260 | He was on Ferris again.

01:28:09.260 | I read his book the other day.

01:28:11.460 | How was it?

01:28:12.460 | I mean, it was fine.

01:28:14.660 | I would recommend his autobiography.

01:28:15.660 | Yeah, I've read that.

01:28:16.660 | Yeah, his autobiography, you're going to get the same.

01:28:18.740 | I mean, it's longer, but it's way more.

01:28:20.140 | I think you're going to get the same lessons and it's like a better book.

01:28:24.180 | But wait, if we're going to invite him, I shouldn't say that.

01:28:25.660 | I loved his new book.

01:28:27.220 | Let's get him on.

01:28:28.220 | Let's get him on the show.

01:28:29.220 | Oh, well, in the meantime.

01:28:31.060 | He smokes Stogies.

01:28:32.500 | He smokes Stogies.

01:28:33.500 | Yeah, exactly.

01:28:34.500 | Yeah.

01:28:35.500 | Yeah.

01:28:36.500 | What's Zoe going to think if we have Arnold in here smoking Stogies?

01:28:38.500 | We probably have to go outside.

01:28:40.900 | But you know what?

01:28:42.220 | The Chinese healer across the hall does those weird oils that like they have a pretty distinct

01:28:47.100 | smell that the whole floor sounds like.

01:28:48.420 | So why can't we have Arnold Schwarzenegger smoking Stogies in our HQ?

01:28:54.340 | Zoe's are the super, if people are wondering, for the built-in.

01:28:57.300 | All right.

01:28:58.300 | That's going to be our thing.

01:28:59.300 | Nonsense.

01:29:00.300 | All right.

01:29:01.300 | Well, anyways, thank you everyone for listening up to this nonsense.

01:29:04.500 | Thank you for listening.

01:29:05.500 | We'll be back next week as always with another episode and until then stay deep.

01:29:11.300 | Hey, so if you like today's episode about reverse goal setting, I think you'll also

01:29:16.260 | really like episode two 63, which gives a step-by-step system for overhauling your life.

01:29:24.540 | Check it out.

01:29:26.020 | So today's deep question, how can I reinvent my life in four months?

How To Change Your Life In 30 Days With Reverse Goal Setting - Try This Before 2024 | Cal Newport

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