My Honest Advice For Someone Who Wants Freedom & Productivity In 2025

00:00:00.000 | So I've given a lot of advice on the show over the past three and a half years.

00:00:04.500 | I've given 329 episodes worth of advice.

00:00:09.000 | So I thought it might be fun to try to do something sort of crazy today

00:00:13.500 | to try to summarize most of the main ideas I talk about

00:00:18.500 | in five minutes or less.

00:00:20.500 | I'm gonna call this "The Tau of Cal."

00:00:25.000 | Okay, to be fair, I'm not gonna get into specific pieces of advice, right?

00:00:29.000 | Like, we're not gonna get into the details of particular ways of doing X and Y.

00:00:32.000 | It's gonna be the big ideas, the high-level ideas

00:00:34.500 | that almost all of the specific advice I give comes back to it.

00:00:38.000 | So I thought this would be fun.

00:00:39.500 | After I do the list, and I'm probably gonna have Jesse time me here,

00:00:42.500 | so be ready for that, Jesse.

00:00:44.000 | After I do the list of the main ideas I've talked about over the last three and a half years,

00:00:47.500 | I'm then gonna step back and try to provide some theoretical connective tissue

00:00:51.500 | that will pull them all together.

00:00:54.000 | So take this list that might seem pretty disparate,

00:00:56.000 | and I'm gonna try to give you a grand unified theory of Cal

00:00:58.500 | that makes sense of all of these ideas.

00:01:01.500 | But first, I want to get through them.

00:01:04.000 | Jesse, you got your watch ready?

00:01:05.500 | - I have my Casio.

00:01:06.500 | - Yeah, I was gonna say, I admire all the money you've invested in your watch.

00:01:09.500 | - Whenever the band breaks, I just get a new watch

00:01:11.500 | 'cause they're only $16.

00:01:13.000 | - I had that watch in 1987.

00:01:16.000 | - It's my fourth iteration.

00:01:17.500 | - Okay, well, well played.

00:01:19.000 | So we'll be accurately timed on Jesse's highly expensive watch.

00:01:22.000 | All right, here we go, Tau of Cal.

00:01:24.500 | All right, let's roll.

00:01:26.500 | First, I want to summarize my big ideas when it comes to advice about knowledge work.

00:01:32.500 | Number one, treat context shifts and overload,

00:01:36.500 | which I define to be working on too many things concurrently,

00:01:39.500 | as productivity poison.

00:01:42.500 | These are the main things you want to limit to keep your work sustainable

00:01:45.500 | and your results impressive.

00:01:48.000 | Number two, spending a good amount of time focusing without distraction

00:01:52.000 | is like a knowledge work superpower,

00:01:55.000 | but it will require you to both train your ability to concentrate

00:01:58.000 | and tame your schedule in ways that makes time

00:02:01.000 | to do this type of concentration, and neither of those things are easy.

00:02:04.000 | Number three, organize your obligations and time carefully with smart systems

00:02:09.000 | because the human brain cannot easily on its own

00:02:12.000 | handle the volume or velocity of tasks

00:02:15.000 | that are encountered in most modern knowledge work jobs.

00:02:18.000 | Number four, remote work requires more structure

00:02:21.000 | than in-person work to function sustainably.

00:02:24.000 | You need in particular to be careful about how you assign tasks

00:02:27.000 | and communicate about works in progress.

00:02:29.000 | Smaller workload, less unscheduled communication,

00:02:31.000 | and more accountability is key when it comes to remote work.

00:02:35.000 | And finally, when it comes to using your brain to create value,

00:02:38.000 | your spaces matter.

00:02:41.000 | If possible, your deepest work should be done in intentionally designed locations.

00:02:46.000 | All right, here's my advice related to the Internet.

00:02:49.000 | Small trumps big when it comes to online activity.

00:02:53.000 | Self-governing niche communities online function much better

00:02:56.000 | than massive global conversation platforms

00:02:59.000 | and have much fewer negative side effects on its users.

00:03:02.000 | Distributed news media such as podcasts and newsletters

00:03:05.000 | offer better ways to make a living doing creative work online

00:03:08.000 | than trying to become an influencer on a major platform.

00:03:13.000 | Internet advice number two, keep kids off smartphones.

00:03:16.000 | Their brains aren't ready for unrestricted access to the Internet.

00:03:20.000 | Internet advice number three, don't use social media if possible.

00:03:24.000 | Instead, prioritize things like reading books, spending time outside,

00:03:27.000 | becoming a leader in your relevant communities,

00:03:30.000 | and developing hard and interesting skills.

00:03:34.000 | And finally, your phone should not be a constant companion in your life.

00:03:39.000 | Final category here, advice related to living a deep life.

00:03:43.000 | Plan backwards from an ideal lifestyle instead of forward toward grand goals.

00:03:50.000 | Be wary in particular of the idea that just accomplishing one grand goal

00:03:53.000 | is going to make your life better.

00:03:54.000 | It's better to work backwards from the lifestyle that you have.

00:03:56.000 | More evidence will succeed.

00:03:58.000 | And my final piece of big picture advice, Jesse,

00:04:01.000 | in general, sticking with something over a long amount of time,

00:04:04.000 | working sustainably but steadily, wins out in the end

00:04:07.000 | in terms of both enjoyment and reward.

00:04:10.000 | How'd we do?

00:04:11.000 | 244.

00:04:12.000 | Look at that.

00:04:13.000 | Not even three minutes.

00:04:15.000 | Most of the main ideas I talk about on this show.

00:04:18.000 | I'm obviously missing things.

00:04:20.000 | Most notably, I'm not including on this list my older work on student-related advice.

00:04:24.000 | I have a lot of big ideas about how to be successful as a student.

00:04:28.000 | Beyond that, I don't know.

00:04:30.000 | What am I missing, Jesse?

00:04:31.000 | Is anything coming to mind, like a major idea we talk about a lot?

00:04:35.000 | Maybe just some thought but not a huge amount of thought.

00:04:37.000 | Yeah, because you just go deeper into the other things

00:04:40.000 | in terms of the specifics of each of the overall broad concepts.

00:04:44.000 | I thought it was good.

00:04:45.000 | I looked at a lot of old episodes.

00:04:46.000 | Really, almost everything fits under outside of tech explainer episodes,

00:04:51.000 | but that's not really advice.

00:04:52.000 | I'm glad you're going to go into a deeper conversation about them all

00:04:55.000 | because I was a little sad that the deep dive was only going to be five minutes.

00:04:59.000 | That'd be great.

00:05:00.000 | Five-minute deep dive.

00:05:01.000 | Do a couple of minutes.

00:05:02.000 | We could be out of here in a tight seven minutes.

00:05:04.000 | It's my favorite podcast.

00:05:05.000 | If I look at the time stamps and they're only like 37 minutes,

00:05:07.000 | I usually go an hour.

00:05:08.000 | I'm usually kind of sad.

00:05:10.000 | Well, don't worry.

00:05:11.000 | When it comes to padding, like just talking longer than we should,

00:05:15.000 | you don't have to worry about me.

00:05:16.000 | I'm an expert at that.

00:05:17.000 | All right.

00:05:18.000 | So let's see if we can do some deeper connections here.

00:05:21.000 | So I have these categories, knowledge work, internet,

00:05:26.000 | and sort of more general advice related to good living.

00:05:30.000 | Within these are a lot of different topics, productivity, phones, email,

00:05:33.000 | lifestyle, design, career issues, et cetera.

00:05:36.000 | All right.

00:05:37.000 | Are these all just disparate advice or is there a way to connect it?

00:05:41.000 | I'm going to argue that most of this advice, actually,

00:05:43.000 | we can find a connection to them.

00:05:45.000 | If we go back to my fundamental background as a technologist,

00:05:49.000 | obviously I'm trained as a computer science.

00:05:51.000 | I'm a full professor of computer science at Georgetown University.

00:05:54.000 | In addition to my many papers on distributed algorithm theory,

00:05:59.000 | I have increasingly become involved in thinking about technology

00:06:02.000 | and its impact on our world.

00:06:04.000 | I'm a founding faculty member of Georgetown Center for Digital Ethics.

00:06:08.000 | I also direct our new computer science ethics and society academic program.

00:06:14.000 | So I'm a technologist who thinks about technology's impact.

00:06:18.000 | Now you might be thrown, how is that connected to all of these issues?

00:06:21.000 | Because some of these issues are not explicitly technological,

00:06:24.000 | but I'm going to argue that they are almost all connected

00:06:29.000 | in a pretty direct way to technology-related issues.

00:06:33.000 | All right.

00:06:34.000 | So let me explain this.

00:06:35.000 | I mentioned some of this terminology briefly in last week's episode.

00:06:37.000 | I'm going to lay it out here a little bit more clearly

00:06:39.000 | and concisely in today's episode.

00:06:41.000 | Here is the way I think about the world and the source of a lot of my advice.

00:06:46.000 | We currently live in what I call the modern digital environment.

00:06:52.000 | It's an environment where we have many digital tools,

00:06:54.000 | mainly network-connected, that create a technology ecology

00:06:58.000 | that have a big impact on our day-to-day life.

00:07:01.000 | Many elements of this modern digital environment, which is very new,

00:07:05.000 | conflict with both our Paleolithic brains and our Neolithic culture.

00:07:09.000 | So what I mean by that, our Paleolithic brains,

00:07:11.000 | is our brains as wired over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

00:07:15.000 | When I say Neolithic culture, I mean the culture that evolved

00:07:18.000 | after the Neolithic revolution when we first began to live

00:07:21.000 | in larger groups connected by abstract concepts.

00:07:25.000 | So as we transition from small tribes of hunter-gatherers

00:07:28.000 | to living in cities and city-states connected by larger affiliations,

00:07:33.000 | cooperating at much greater scales, culturally speaking,

00:07:37.000 | the Neolithic revolution is sort of the foundation of life as we know it.

00:07:41.000 | It's a big difference, Neolithic living versus Paleolithic living.

00:07:44.000 | You can see Yuval Harari's book "Sapiens" for a really good discussion

00:07:49.000 | of what enabled Neolithic culture.

00:07:51.000 | So we've had more or less the slowly evolving Neolithic culture,

00:07:55.000 | where we have countries and cities and etc.

00:07:58.000 | That also conflicts with the modern digital environment.

00:08:00.000 | These mismatches create what I think of as disorders,

00:08:03.000 | mismatches between the modern digital environment and our brains and culture.

00:08:07.000 | Those disorders cause issues that need to be addressed,

00:08:11.000 | and they can be addressed by individual action.

00:08:13.000 | They can be addressed by community or organizational action,

00:08:16.000 | and sometimes they have to be addressed by larger sort of national,

00:08:20.000 | legislative, perhaps regulatory action.

00:08:22.000 | We have a lot of ways we have to react to those disorders.

00:08:26.000 | They also create sometimes opportunities to leverage new technologies

00:08:30.000 | and new ways that open up exciting new possibilities for thriving

00:08:34.000 | ones that did not exist even 20 or 25 years ago.

00:08:37.000 | So I see a lot of my program as understanding these mismatches

00:08:42.000 | between the modern digital environment and what our bodies and cultures are used to,

00:08:46.000 | figuring out where they create problems and trying to get around it,

00:08:48.000 | figuring out where they create opportunities and seeing what we can leverage

00:08:51.000 | and how we can do it.

00:08:53.000 | Now the reason why this can sometimes seem disconnected from technology

00:08:56.000 | is that I have learned over time that in particular when it comes to the disorders

00:09:00.000 | of the modern digital environment, the problems are caused by digital technology.

00:09:04.000 | The solutions are often analog.

00:09:07.000 | So it sounds like analog advice.

00:09:10.000 | We're going off and we're reading books

00:09:13.000 | or we're pen and paper planning of what we want our life to be like,

00:09:17.000 | but the underlying problems that led us to that actually are digital in origin.

00:09:21.000 | So digital problems don't always have digital solutions.

00:09:26.000 | So let's go back.

00:09:27.000 | I was going to go back to some of the advice I talked about

00:09:29.000 | and sort of walk through this exercise of tracing back the advice

00:09:32.000 | to one of these mismatches with the modern digital environment.

00:09:35.000 | Hey, it's Cal.

00:09:36.000 | I wanted to interrupt briefly to say that if you're enjoying this video,

00:09:40.000 | then you need to check out my new book, Slow Productivity,

00:09:44.000 | The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

00:09:48.000 | This is like the Bible for most of the ideas we talk about here in these videos.

00:09:53.000 | You can get a free excerpt at calnewport.com/slow.

00:09:59.000 | I know you're going to like it.

00:10:00.000 | Check it out.

00:10:02.000 | Now let's get back to the video.

00:10:04.000 | So let's think about some of my advice around knowledge work, for example.

00:10:08.000 | The core disorder back here is we have this Neolithic culture.

00:10:16.000 | Okay, we get together.

00:10:17.000 | We have organizations.

00:10:18.000 | In this context, we develop this idea of pseudoproductivity.

00:10:21.000 | So knowledge work emerges as a new type of work.

00:10:24.000 | We evolve this idea of pseudoproductivity,

00:10:26.000 | which I talk about in my book, Slow Productivity,

00:10:28.000 | as a way of coping with management of work that uses the mind

00:10:33.000 | because we didn't have widgets to count.

00:10:35.000 | Pseudoproductivity says let's use visible effort as our main proxy

00:10:38.000 | for you doing something useful.

00:10:40.000 | My argument is we kind of have this non-technological cultural adaptation.

00:10:45.000 | I guess we'll manage activity instead of results

00:10:47.000 | because it's too hard in knowledge work to actually point towards results.

00:10:50.000 | Then that mismatched with the arrival of digital computer networks.

00:10:55.000 | So once we had low-friction digital communication

00:10:57.000 | and it was very easy to communicate with people

00:10:59.000 | and then that communication became mobile, first on laptops, then on smartphones,

00:11:02.000 | so now I could communicate with basically zero cost or time cost

00:11:06.000 | at almost any time and almost any location,

00:11:10.000 | that combination with pseudoproductivity gave us the hyperactive hive mind,

00:11:14.000 | a new style of working in which you're constantly communicating,

00:11:17.000 | figure things out on the fly.

00:11:19.000 | This completely conflicts with our Neolithic brain,

00:11:21.000 | which can't shift its attention between so many things back and forth so quickly.

00:11:24.000 | It's just not capable of doing that.

00:11:26.000 | We get a big source of the over-distraction burnout problem

00:11:30.000 | that is afflicting modern knowledge workers.

00:11:33.000 | So you get a lot of my advice about taming the hyperactive hive mind

00:11:36.000 | and context switching and how to restructure work

00:11:39.000 | to have more structured communication rules.

00:11:42.000 | It all comes back to that fundamental disorder.

00:11:46.000 | Here's another example.

00:11:48.000 | We talk about leaving social media, so that's digital,

00:11:52.000 | but we can go to what is like an underlying disorder.

00:11:55.000 | Well, one of the underlying disorders that has been exposed

00:11:59.000 | in the modern digital environment with respect to social media

00:12:02.000 | is the issue of global conversation platforms

00:12:05.000 | tricking our Paleolithic brains.

00:12:09.000 | So our Paleolithic brains are used to organizing social units

00:12:12.000 | into like tribal communities.

00:12:15.000 | It's a group of people that I am around physically

00:12:19.000 | and in totality really affect my success as an individual.

00:12:25.000 | I need to be on the good side. I need to be respected.

00:12:28.000 | Osterization would be tantamount to death.

00:12:32.000 | I need to be in good with my tribe.

00:12:34.000 | It's 50 people. It's 20 people. It's 100 people.

00:12:36.000 | We live in the same cave.

00:12:38.000 | That's how we organize. We think about the main unit of group.

00:12:43.000 | Then you get global conversation platforms

00:12:45.000 | where you might have an example like TwitterX, 600 million users.

00:12:48.000 | Well, clearly this is a number that is so astronomical

00:12:51.000 | that we can't even approach dealing with

00:12:55.000 | sensical interactions with that many people.

00:12:57.000 | So what do these platforms do?

00:13:00.000 | Using various sort of curation that's algorithmic and cybernetic,

00:13:04.000 | they sort of pull from this massive collection of people

00:13:08.000 | all talking about various things,

00:13:10.000 | and it sort of pulls out for each user

00:13:13.000 | an interaction experience that feels like what we're used to.

00:13:18.000 | It's I'm talking to people in my tribe.

00:13:20.000 | I'm talking to people in my community.

00:13:22.000 | But they pull it out to be like the most interesting,

00:13:24.000 | engaging, emotional conversations possible so it's never boring.

00:13:28.000 | Again, our mind gets tricked by this.

00:13:31.000 | Like, okay, I'm talking to my tribe,

00:13:33.000 | and also my tribe is like fantastically angry with everyone and with me,

00:13:37.000 | and all the alarm bells go off.

00:13:39.000 | So it's a mismatch, a global conversation platform.

00:13:42.000 | It's a digital technology that mismatches with the way

00:13:44.000 | our paleolithic mind works, and that creates problems.

00:13:47.000 | Let's do a more abstract one, lifestyle-centric planning.

00:13:50.000 | This seems to be very non-digital,

00:13:53.000 | working backwards from a vision of an ideal lifestyle

00:13:56.000 | instead of forward towards a grand goal.

00:13:58.000 | But why is this such a problem?

00:14:00.000 | Why do we need advice about how to construct a life

00:14:04.000 | of meaning and satisfaction?

00:14:06.000 | Why do we need this advice?

00:14:08.000 | Well, I think it is digital knowledge work,

00:14:13.000 | digital knowledge work, so knowledge work that's done

00:14:15.000 | largely at computer screens,

00:14:18.000 | had a couple attributes that, again, are a real mismatch with us.

00:14:21.000 | One, work itself became highly abstract.

00:14:24.000 | It's moving bits around on networks,

00:14:26.000 | it's messages going back and forth,

00:14:28.000 | and files being attached to things.

00:14:30.000 | Work becomes very abstract, so we sort of lose that connection

00:14:33.000 | that our mind has between having an intention

00:14:36.000 | and seeing it be made manifest concretely in the world.

00:14:38.000 | I built this thing, and I can hold it,

00:14:40.000 | and it has mass and gravity.

00:14:42.000 | When we remove that from our efforts,

00:14:44.000 | it dislocates and disembodies us from our efforts,

00:14:47.000 | and that can be really alienating,

00:14:49.000 | to borrow a term from Marx in that context.

00:14:51.000 | It's very alienating to be like,

00:14:54.000 | work is like this abstract thing.

00:14:56.000 | It also homogenizes.

00:14:58.000 | Give me almost any knowledge work job.

00:15:01.000 | What are the key tools going to be?

00:15:03.000 | It's going to be an email client

00:15:05.000 | and some variation of Microsoft Office.

00:15:08.000 | Work is just now this homogenized—

00:15:10.000 | it doesn't really matter what the job is.

00:15:12.000 | You're moving messages and attachments back and forth

00:15:14.000 | and making slide decks and going on Zoom

00:15:17.000 | and seeing people in Windows.

00:15:19.000 | It's homogenized. All jobs are the same.

00:15:21.000 | The actual activities are sort of isolated now

00:15:23.000 | from the actual world.

00:15:25.000 | You don't see concrete results.

00:15:27.000 | You're kind of alienated from your effort.

00:15:29.000 | It's this sort of weird game you do.

00:15:31.000 | Apparently, because it's all digital,

00:15:33.000 | location matters less.

00:15:35.000 | We're less likely to go to a particular office.

00:15:37.000 | We're less likely to be—our work to be tied to a location.

00:15:41.000 | I make shoes, and the shoes are for people

00:15:43.000 | who live in this town.

00:15:45.000 | That type of concrete regionalization

00:15:47.000 | of our efforts has also dissipated.

00:15:50.000 | Well, this really upsets our ability

00:15:54.000 | in our Paleolithic mind or for our Neolithic culture,

00:15:57.000 | which is still built around building these communities

00:16:00.000 | and towns and being part of these larger communities.

00:16:03.000 | All of this is upset by this much more abstracted,

00:16:06.000 | digital, non-embodied style of work.

00:16:11.000 | And so people are adrift.

00:16:13.000 | They're living in this disembodied digital world,

00:16:17.000 | playing digital games,

00:16:19.000 | and not feeling as if they're a part of a place,

00:16:23.000 | a part of a group, or producing things they can even see.

00:16:25.000 | And their mind doesn't know what to do with this.

00:16:29.000 | And we become adrift.

00:16:31.000 | It makes us feel sort of numb and dislocated.

00:16:33.000 | And so we pursue grand goals because we think

00:16:35.000 | the chemical hit of pursuing that goal

00:16:37.000 | at least will make us feel alive.

00:16:39.000 | And so we make these kind of drastic moves

00:16:43.000 | to try to put some energy back into our lives.

00:16:47.000 | Or we get lost in the online,

00:16:49.000 | just like, "Let me just plug it in my veins.

00:16:51.000 | I'm just on the phone, and it's, 'Oh, my God.

00:16:53.000 | Look at the thing Elon just posted.'"

00:16:56.000 | And it's pressing primal buttons in a muted way,

00:16:59.000 | and we just kind of get lost in this.

00:17:01.000 | As long as our work is so abstract,

00:17:03.000 | we just get lost in an abstract world.

00:17:05.000 | And that also doesn't end up well.

00:17:07.000 | So we get something like lifestyle-centric planning.

00:17:09.000 | It's like taking back control of our life

00:17:11.000 | in a way that wasn't as automatic

00:17:13.000 | as it used to be in a pre-digital world.

00:17:15.000 | The modern digital environment made that a necessity

00:17:18.000 | that we now have to think much more

00:17:20.000 | about how we construct a life of meaning

00:17:23.000 | as opposed to just letting our location and work

00:17:25.000 | sort of do that for us.

00:17:27.000 | So we go through this again and again,

00:17:29.000 | but almost all of those ideas I talked about

00:17:31.000 | comes back to, fundamentally,

00:17:33.000 | to a mismatch between the modern digital environment

00:17:36.000 | and our brains and culture.

00:17:38.000 | All right?

00:17:39.000 | So that's kind of the tau of Cal.

00:17:43.000 | And really, the big idea—

00:17:45.000 | maybe this is the big idea of my style of advice—

00:17:47.000 | is you don't have to stay in the world of digital

00:17:50.000 | to deal with the issues that digital creates.

00:17:52.000 | You can be a technologist who's giving advice,

00:17:55.000 | and that advice doesn't have to be limited

00:17:57.000 | to parental controls and how you set up your iPhone

00:18:01.000 | and thinking about doomsday scenarios around AI.

00:18:05.000 | The modern digital environment touches many aspects

00:18:08.000 | of our day-to-day life.

00:18:10.000 | And so the advice we give from a place of technology

00:18:13.000 | criticism is advice that can go much broader

00:18:17.000 | than the world of technology.

00:18:18.000 | So there we go.

00:18:19.000 | Tau of Cal.

00:18:21.000 | I'm sure I missed some things.

00:18:22.000 | We'll hear about it, Jesse.

00:18:23.000 | But I think that covers a lot of the main things.

00:18:25.000 | I liked it.

00:18:26.000 | All right.

00:18:27.000 | So we got some questions coming.

00:18:28.000 | They're pretty broad.

00:18:29.000 | Since I covered—

00:18:30.000 | there's literally no question we can get, almost.

00:18:32.000 | It's not going to be relevant to this deep dive

00:18:34.000 | because I covered everything we ever talked about.

00:18:38.000 | But first, let's hear from a sponsor.

00:18:42.000 | This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

00:18:46.000 | So we're in the holiday season.

00:18:48.000 | For many, that's great.

00:18:50.000 | I do Thriller December in the holiday season

00:18:53.000 | where I read purposefully stupid books, often by a fire.

00:18:57.000 | I've already finished my first Thriller December books.

00:18:59.000 | Other people, it's about the family.

00:19:01.000 | It's about the holiday traditions.

00:19:03.000 | But it can also be a really hard time

00:19:06.000 | if you have a troubled relationship with your own mind.

00:19:09.000 | For a lot of people, the holidays can be really tough

00:19:11.000 | in this situation because it just emphasizes

00:19:14.000 | the pain you're feeling or the discontent you're feeling

00:19:18.000 | because you think about, "Remember when I used to just

00:19:22.000 | enjoy the holidays and now I have all these other things going on."

00:19:25.000 | So it is a great time, a great motivator

00:19:29.000 | to make sure that your relationship with your brain

00:19:32.000 | is in good shape.

00:19:34.000 | And of course, one of the best ways to get that relationship better

00:19:37.000 | is through therapy.

00:19:40.000 | If you're thinking of starting therapy,

00:19:42.000 | give BetterHelp a try.

00:19:44.000 | It's entirely online.

00:19:46.000 | It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule.

00:19:48.000 | You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist

00:19:51.000 | and switch therapist anytime for no additional charge.

00:19:55.000 | You can find comfort this December with BetterHelp.

00:19:58.000 | Visit betterhelp.com/deepquestions

00:20:04.000 | One word, and you will get 10% off your first month.

00:20:08.000 | That's betterhelp.com/deepquestions

00:20:15.000 | I also want to talk about our friends at ZocDoc.

00:20:21.000 | Look, as you get older, as Jessie and I are realizing,

00:20:24.000 | you need more doctors in your life,

00:20:27.000 | no matter how we try to avoid it.

00:20:29.000 | Jessie and I were actually just joking.

00:20:31.000 | We both have, oh my god, I won't get into the details, Jessie,

00:20:33.000 | for medical privacy reasons, but let's just say

00:20:36.000 | we're seriously considering podcasting from side-by-side beds in the hospital.

00:20:40.000 | We have different things we have to get taken care of.

00:20:42.000 | You need a lot of doctors.

00:20:44.000 | For stuff you don't even know you need doctors for,

00:20:46.000 | you know there's feet doctors?

00:20:48.000 | You don't know this until you get to your 40s, right?

00:20:51.000 | You don't know that I need an ear, nose, and throat specialist.

00:20:56.000 | I need a dermatologist.

00:20:57.000 | Oh my god, there's so many doctors.

00:20:59.000 | How do you find them?

00:21:01.000 | I suggest you use ZocDoc.

00:21:03.000 | ZocDoc is a free app and website

00:21:05.000 | where you can search and compare

00:21:07.000 | high-quality in-network doctors,

00:21:09.000 | choose the right one for your needs,

00:21:11.000 | and click instantly to book an appointment.

00:21:14.000 | We're talking about in-network appointments

00:21:16.000 | with more than 100,000 healthcare providers

00:21:18.000 | across every specialty from mental health to dental health,

00:21:20.000 | eye care to skin care, and much more.

00:21:22.000 | Oh yeah, my eye doctor just left too.

00:21:24.000 | Shut down his practice.

00:21:26.000 | Retired?

00:21:27.000 | Yeah, I guess.

00:21:28.000 | He was right down the street from the HQ.

00:21:30.000 | ZocDoc time.

00:21:31.000 | That's what, I want to make ZocDoc a verb.

00:21:34.000 | I think I work well.

00:21:35.000 | I'm not worried about my eye doctor leaving.

00:21:37.000 | I'm just going to ZocDoc that problem.

00:21:39.000 | I'm going to ZocDoc the hell out of that.

00:21:41.000 | Don't worry about it.

00:21:43.000 | You can filter for doctors who take your insurance,

00:21:45.000 | who are located nearby,

00:21:47.000 | who are a good fit for any medical needs you may have,

00:21:49.000 | and who are highly rated by verified patients.

00:21:51.000 | You can also see their actual appointment openings,

00:21:53.000 | choose a time that works for you,

00:21:55.000 | and click to instantly book a visit.

00:21:57.000 | ZocDoc appointments happen fast,

00:21:59.000 | typically within 24 to 72 hours of booking.

00:22:01.000 | You can even score same-day appointments.

00:22:06.000 | I have used ZocDoc to look for doctors.

00:22:09.000 | I also have various Medicare providers

00:22:12.000 | who use ZocDoc to handle paperwork ahead of time,

00:22:15.000 | so I'm familiar with the app, and I enjoy it.

00:22:18.000 | I think you will too.

00:22:20.000 | So stop putting off those doctor's appointments

00:22:22.000 | and go to ZocDoc.com/deep

00:22:24.000 | to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today.

00:22:27.000 | That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com/deep.

00:22:30.000 | ZocDoc.com/deep.

00:22:33.000 | All right, Jesse, let's do some questions.

00:22:36.000 | Who do we got first?

00:22:38.000 | First question is from Max.

00:22:40.000 | Can you provide an example of how time-blocking a workday

00:22:43.000 | is different than using a weekly template?

00:22:45.000 | Can you also explain why time-blocking is more demanding?

00:22:49.000 | Well, weekly templates don't specify

00:22:51.000 | every hour of your workday.

00:22:53.000 | So for those who listened to my weekly template episode

00:22:55.000 | from a few weeks ago,

00:22:57.000 | the idea of a weekly scheduling template

00:22:59.000 | is basically placing some either big rocks

00:23:01.000 | or big constraints on your schedule

00:23:03.000 | in a way that's going to apply week to week, right?

00:23:05.000 | So you might say, for example, no meetings in the morning,

00:23:08.000 | no meetings till 11, I'm always writing in the morning.

00:23:11.000 | That's a weekly scheduling template.

00:23:13.000 | Or you might say, okay, on Tuesday and Thursday,

00:23:15.000 | I'm on campus to teach in the morning.

00:23:18.000 | I have office hours midday.

00:23:20.000 | I'm leaving those afternoons free.

00:23:22.000 | This is when I want to do my meetings with people on campus.

00:23:25.000 | Those Tuesday and Thursdays, I'll keep those afternoons free.

00:23:28.000 | So it's these big rocks

00:23:31.000 | or consistent scheduling constraints

00:23:34.000 | that you want to put in place.

00:23:35.000 | And you can just write these in your weekly plan

00:23:37.000 | so you see them.

00:23:39.000 | They'll probably, I guess, would live in your strategic plans,

00:23:41.000 | your quarterly plans, and you see them each week

00:23:43.000 | when you make your weekly plan and apply them to your week.

00:23:46.000 | Then you remember them too as you're scheduling other things

00:23:49.000 | that you want to obey your weekly template.

00:23:51.000 | It's just a good way of adding some structure

00:23:53.000 | to each upcoming season in a way that respects

00:23:55.000 | what your goals are for that season.

00:23:58.000 | If you don't use weekly templates, the problem is

00:24:00.000 | if you're just tackling each week or even each day as it comes,

00:24:03.000 | stuff gets busy, stuff gets suboptimal.

00:24:06.000 | Time block planning, you're planning every hour of the day.

00:24:08.000 | So your weekly template will help you shape your day,

00:24:12.000 | but it's not telling you everything you need to do in the day.

00:24:14.000 | And knowing that you're writing in the morning, for example,

00:24:17.000 | still doesn't tell you how you're dealing,

00:24:19.000 | when you stop that and how you're dealing with the afternoon,

00:24:21.000 | when you have meetings, when you're doing to-dos,

00:24:23.000 | what you're doing with the time that's free,

00:24:25.000 | that's still going to require time block planning.

00:24:28.000 | All right, but let's connect this.

00:24:29.000 | Here's what I'm going to try to do today, Jesse.

00:24:31.000 | Connect every question back to the modern digital environment.

00:24:34.000 | So how does this connect back to what we talked about

00:24:36.000 | in the deep dive?

00:24:38.000 | Well, this very issue of having to do complicated scheduling

00:24:43.000 | I think comes back to the intersection

00:24:46.000 | of the digital with knowledge work.

00:24:48.000 | So we talked about briefly in the deep dive

00:24:50.000 | is digital and digital networks from knowledge work

00:24:53.000 | led to a lot more communication.

00:24:55.000 | It also has led to a much greater workload

00:24:59.000 | because it's so easy to A, assign work to someone,

00:25:03.000 | like anyone can just email anyone else

00:25:05.000 | and in like nine seconds have placed a major obligation on their plate.

00:25:09.000 | So it's like free assignment of work.

00:25:12.000 | The technology that we have to execute this work,

00:25:16.000 | so network computers is so powerful,

00:25:18.000 | the total number of things you could conceivably doing

00:25:21.000 | has also exploded.

00:25:22.000 | So this is a whole separate issue.

00:25:24.000 | This is sometimes called the curse of specialization

00:25:27.000 | or of de-specialization rather.

00:25:29.000 | And this is well documented.

00:25:30.000 | I talk about this in my book, A World Without Email,

00:25:33.000 | and a little bit in Slow Productivity.

00:25:35.000 | But basically when we gave people these productivity machines, computers,

00:25:40.000 | they made a lot of things that we used to divide the labor on.

00:25:44.000 | Here's people who type, here's people who schedule trips,

00:25:47.000 | here's people who work on presentations, the graphic department.

00:25:50.000 | The stuff we used to specialize all became easy enough

00:25:53.000 | we could put it on the plate of individuals just do everything.

00:25:57.000 | And so instead of having 30 employees,

00:26:01.000 | maybe 10 of which were the sort of trained frontline executives

00:26:06.000 | like working on the direct things to make value

00:26:08.000 | and 20 of which were sort of support,

00:26:11.000 | we went to like 20 of the frontline executives and no support.

00:26:16.000 | Because what it turns out, and there's a cool paper by this,

00:26:18.000 | I talk about it in A World Without Email,

00:26:20.000 | it turns out when you fire all the support,

00:26:23.000 | the number of non-support mainline people you need

00:26:26.000 | to get the same amount of work done increases.

00:26:28.000 | Because now they're having to do on their computers

00:26:31.000 | a lot of the work that the support staff was doing.

00:26:33.000 | So you need more of the non-support people

00:26:36.000 | to get the same amount of work done.

00:26:39.000 | Well, they typically are more expensive salaries

00:26:41.000 | than the support people.

00:26:42.000 | So now you're employing less total people

00:26:44.000 | but your salary costs are the same if not higher

00:26:46.000 | and everyone's more miserable.

00:26:49.000 | So the sort of overload that necessitates solutions

00:26:52.000 | like weekly scheduling templates

00:26:55.000 | and time block planning to make tractable

00:26:58.000 | were actually caused by these modern digital environment innovations

00:27:02.000 | like the putting of the productivity revolution

00:27:05.000 | with huge air quotes in the front office.

00:27:08.000 | So it sounds like an analog work thing, productivity thing,

00:27:11.000 | but it comes back in the end to digital.

00:27:13.000 | So when you're in your summer schedule

00:27:15.000 | and you do a writing block,

00:27:17.000 | that's the same though in terms of intensity

00:27:19.000 | as like when you're working during the year, right?

00:27:21.000 | Yeah, writing blocks are writing blocks.

00:27:23.000 | I mean, I'm always writing.

00:27:24.000 | Yeah, it's sitting down and working on whatever's next

00:27:26.000 | and what you're writing.

00:27:27.000 | Got it.

00:27:28.000 | All right, who do we got next?

00:27:29.000 | Next question's from Michael.

00:27:30.000 | Earlier this year, my wife, my six-month-old baby,

00:27:34.000 | and I moved across the country to a beautiful new rural house.

00:27:37.000 | In hindsight, it turned out to be a terrible idea.

00:27:39.000 | We got swept up in the idyllic vision

00:27:41.000 | of owning a big wooded property.

00:27:43.000 | We neglected to consider the other aspects of life

00:27:45.000 | that are important for a young family.

00:27:47.000 | It's been a lesson that focusing too much

00:27:49.000 | on one component of the deep life

00:27:50.000 | can sometimes push other important areas

00:27:52.000 | into the background, often without us even realizing it.

00:27:55.000 | Well, I think it's a great case study,

00:27:58.000 | like a little brief case study,

00:27:59.000 | and it comes back to the idea we talked about in the deep dive

00:28:02.000 | of lifestyle-centric planning versus grand goals, right?

00:28:08.000 | So the problem with the grand goal method,

00:28:12.000 | which is the idea that if I fixate on a grand romantic goal,

00:28:16.000 | its pursuit and accomplishment will fix my life

00:28:18.000 | and make my life better.

00:28:20.000 | The problem with the grand goal theory,

00:28:22.000 | and I actually have already written this chapter

00:28:25.000 | in my new book I'm working on about the deep life,

00:28:27.000 | so I've been thinking about this.

00:28:28.000 | There's two major problems with the grand goal approach.

00:28:31.000 | One, when you focus on a grand goal,

00:28:33.000 | you're typically focusing on just one aspect of your lifestyle

00:28:36.000 | that's important to you.

00:28:37.000 | So in this example, they're thinking about nature,

00:28:41.000 | quiet, the sort of slower stillness of being outside.

00:28:45.000 | It's like, this is a thing we want in our lifestyle, right?

00:28:47.000 | Like, this is important.

00:28:49.000 | By fixating on just one,

00:28:51.000 | the two bad things that could happen is, one,

00:28:53.000 | at best, you are ignoring other things

00:28:57.000 | that are important to a successful lifestyle,

00:29:00.000 | so they don't get better.

00:29:02.000 | So these other things you need

00:29:04.000 | to have a sustainable ideal lifestyle

00:29:06.000 | aren't being addressed.

00:29:08.000 | At worst, they can actually make those things worse.

00:29:11.000 | Like, you're actively hurting other things.

00:29:13.000 | So like, in this case,

00:29:15.000 | by focusing just on this environmental idea,

00:29:19.000 | I want to be in nature, I want it to be calming,

00:29:21.000 | you probably were like actively making worse

00:29:25.000 | connections to other people,

00:29:27.000 | like being a part of a community.

00:29:29.000 | I've known other people who've left the city

00:29:31.000 | to do something like this

00:29:32.000 | who didn't realize how much they valued

00:29:34.000 | intellectual life, you know, events.

00:29:37.000 | They're seeing interesting movies,

00:29:39.000 | being around interesting people

00:29:40.000 | who are working on interesting things.

00:29:42.000 | So maybe even if there is community

00:29:43.000 | where they're moving, it's not writers.

00:29:47.000 | It's not people who are whatever artist

00:29:50.000 | or whatever it is that you're interested in

00:29:51.000 | or high-tech entrepreneur types

00:29:54.000 | if you're in that world.

00:29:55.000 | And they didn't realize how much they valued that.

00:29:58.000 | You know, there's other like convenience things

00:30:00.000 | people really in their ideal lifestyle,

00:30:03.000 | maybe it's they want to be able to spend time,

00:30:06.000 | you know, reading and doing what they're interested in.

00:30:10.000 | Not realizing moving to the farm means

00:30:12.000 | they have to spend most of their time

00:30:13.000 | working on farm things

00:30:14.000 | and they don't really care about those,

00:30:15.000 | but that's going to get in the way

00:30:16.000 | of these other things

00:30:17.000 | and you can kind of create these big mismatches.

00:30:20.000 | Probably the most common one of these

00:30:22.000 | is pursuing income and professional respect.

00:30:26.000 | You say, well, this is very important to me.

00:30:28.000 | So then you go and take,

00:30:29.000 | the cliche is you go and take that job

00:30:32.000 | that's going to give you the big raise

00:30:33.000 | and more professional respect,

00:30:34.000 | but now you have like an hour-long commute,

00:30:37.000 | you don't see your kids as much,

00:30:38.000 | you don't like the town that you're in,

00:30:40.000 | like all these other things that are important

00:30:42.000 | get actively pushed down.

00:30:43.000 | So you really have to think about

00:30:45.000 | in lifestyle-centric planning,

00:30:46.000 | you're looking at all the things that matter

00:30:48.000 | and trying to do generally good on all of those.

00:30:51.000 | You're coming up with more bespoke,

00:30:53.000 | sometimes complicated ideas or plans

00:30:58.000 | that are really helping

00:30:59.000 | multiple different things you care about

00:31:01.000 | and for the ones these lifestyle-centric plans

00:31:04.000 | don't directly affect,

00:31:05.000 | at least they're doing no harm.

00:31:07.000 | You're not taking something that's important to you

00:31:09.000 | and making it much worse.

00:31:10.000 | Or if there is a trade-off,

00:31:12.000 | it's being made really clear.

00:31:14.000 | And when you see it's a trade-off,

00:31:15.000 | you can say, okay,

00:31:16.000 | we're going to do some weird

00:31:17.000 | or over-the-top interventions

00:31:19.000 | to try to go to this thing that's getting worse

00:31:23.000 | when we make this lifestyle shift

00:31:24.000 | and try to bring that back.

00:31:25.000 | We might have to do that in unusual or weird ways.

00:31:28.000 | This is like the classic moving to the city,

00:31:31.000 | but like really going out of your way

00:31:33.000 | to set things up

00:31:34.000 | so that you can spend three months

00:31:35.000 | in the summer in the country

00:31:36.000 | because there's certain compromises

00:31:38.000 | about being in the city

00:31:39.000 | that you're worried about

00:31:40.000 | and that's how you balance that out.

00:31:42.000 | So guys, it's a great example

00:31:43.000 | of lifestyle-centric career planning

00:31:45.000 | being the way to do things

00:31:46.000 | as opposed to grand goal theory.

00:31:48.000 | We talked about connecting back to digital.

00:31:51.000 | We talked about this in the deep dive,

00:31:52.000 | so I won't repeat it in detail.

00:31:55.000 | But the weird abstract nature of work

00:31:57.000 | in the digital age

00:31:59.000 | leaves us sort of bewildered

00:32:01.000 | about finding meaning in our life.

00:32:04.000 | A lot more of that is placed on our plates.

00:32:07.000 | And because of that,

00:32:08.000 | we tend to fall into easy patterns

00:32:10.000 | like grand goals.

00:32:11.000 | Let me just drastically change where I live

00:32:13.000 | as a way to try to change our life.

00:32:15.000 | But the whole idea

00:32:16.000 | that we have to grapple with all of this

00:32:17.000 | I think is really amplified by the digital.

00:32:20.000 | All right, what do we got next?

00:32:22.000 | - Next question's from Elliot.

00:32:24.000 | "I'm working to reduce four email accounts

00:32:26.000 | "to one personal and one business email account.

00:32:28.000 | "Each consolidation step

00:32:29.000 | "often leads to an additional task

00:32:31.000 | "and complications.

00:32:32.000 | "Do you have strategies

00:32:33.000 | "for simplifying this transition

00:32:35.000 | "or managing the incremental steps

00:32:36.000 | "without feeling constantly bogged down?"

00:32:39.000 | - I mean, it sounds like to me, Elliot,

00:32:40.000 | you're making this too complicated.

00:32:43.000 | If you're gonna make a change

00:32:45.000 | with your email setup like this,

00:32:47.000 | be okay with for a while

00:32:51.000 | you're gonna miss some things

00:32:52.000 | and upset some people.

00:32:53.000 | And then just do it

00:32:54.000 | in the easiest possible way.

00:32:55.000 | I mean, I think that's the way to do it.

00:32:57.000 | I think we blow up in our head too much.

00:32:59.000 | I have to be super incremental

00:33:00.000 | and careful about this

00:33:01.000 | because what if someone

00:33:04.000 | that I sometimes talk to

00:33:06.000 | doesn't get the note?

00:33:07.000 | And then I might fall out of touch with them

00:33:09.000 | or it might take them some work

00:33:10.000 | to find me again.

00:33:11.000 | That's okay.

00:33:12.000 | Be okay with upsetting some people.

00:33:15.000 | Be okay with you miss some things.

00:33:18.000 | It'll pass in a few months.

00:33:20.000 | You know what?

00:33:21.000 | Maybe it'll actually lessen your loads.

00:33:22.000 | Like, "Oh yeah, some people

00:33:23.000 | "didn't find me on the new email address.

00:33:24.000 | "Maybe that's not the worst thing."

00:33:25.000 | If it really was important,

00:33:27.000 | they really would find me.

00:33:29.000 | So I would simplify how you're doing this.

00:33:32.000 | Put an autoresponder on for a month

00:33:34.000 | and then just be like,

00:33:36.000 | "I'm assuming the bad stuff that happens

00:33:39.000 | "when I turn off these other two accounts

00:33:40.000 | "will be survivable

00:33:42.000 | "because it almost certainly will be."

00:33:44.000 | I'm not even gonna bother connecting that to digital

00:33:46.000 | because it's just a digital question.

00:33:48.000 | Email.

00:33:49.000 | How do we deal with email?

00:33:50.000 | That's obviously a modern digital environment question.

00:33:53.000 | All right, what do we got?

00:33:54.000 | - Next question's from Matt.

00:33:56.000 | "When reading to improve your general knowledge,

00:33:58.000 | "is it better to read a few books

00:34:00.000 | "and take lots of notes on them

00:34:01.000 | "and revise the notes,

00:34:02.000 | "quiz yourself on the book,

00:34:03.000 | "or read more books and take fewer notes?

00:34:05.000 | "How do you strike a balance?"

00:34:07.000 | - I mean, I think in general, just read more.

00:34:10.000 | If you're gonna take notes,

00:34:11.000 | you can just do my page marking method.

00:34:13.000 | Mark the corner if there's something

00:34:15.000 | that looks interesting

00:34:16.000 | and then just sort of bracket out

00:34:17.000 | those sentences or paragraphs

00:34:20.000 | that have really caught your attention.

00:34:22.000 | That way, if you ever wanna go back to that book,

00:34:23.000 | you just flip to the pages

00:34:24.000 | that are marked in the corners

00:34:25.000 | and then read the sentences

00:34:26.000 | that are marked in the brackets.

00:34:27.000 | And you can typically grok the big ideas

00:34:29.000 | of a nonfiction book in like five minutes that way.

00:34:32.000 | That's usually how I read.

00:34:34.000 | Now, there's two exceptions

00:34:35.000 | where you're gonna wanna actually

00:34:36.000 | take notes outside of the book itself.

00:34:38.000 | One is, of course,

00:34:39.000 | if you're working on a specific project

00:34:41.000 | that requires that information,

00:34:43.000 | an article, a report, or what have you,

00:34:46.000 | a podcast episode, then that's fine.

00:34:48.000 | If you have a specific project

00:34:50.000 | that needs the information from a book,

00:34:52.000 | it might be worth slowing down

00:34:53.000 | or moving notes from that book

00:34:54.000 | out of the book

00:34:56.000 | and into another medium.

00:34:58.000 | If you're someone who needs to draw

00:35:00.000 | from a lot of books for projects,

00:35:01.000 | I'm thinking about Ryan Holiday here

00:35:03.000 | because he talks about his method.

00:35:05.000 | He's constantly copying notes

00:35:07.000 | from most of the,

00:35:08.000 | especially biographies

00:35:09.000 | and history books he reads.

00:35:11.000 | He's constantly copying notes

00:35:12.000 | onto physical note cards.

00:35:14.000 | Then he files these note cards.

00:35:15.000 | I've seen them, these like giant boxes.

00:35:18.000 | But that's because like almost every book he reads

00:35:21.000 | is producing information

00:35:22.000 | that he will at least potentially use

00:35:25.000 | for a future book.

00:35:27.000 | But for most people

00:35:28.000 | who don't have a particular project

00:35:29.000 | or a plausible particular project

00:35:31.000 | that needs the information, just read.

00:35:32.000 | Read more is better than less.

00:35:34.000 | The other exception is going to be

00:35:36.000 | if there's a particular topic

00:35:37.000 | you care a lot about.

00:35:40.000 | And it doesn't have to be professional.

00:35:42.000 | Maybe it's just,

00:35:43.000 | "Here's something happening

00:35:44.000 | in our culture right now.

00:35:47.000 | I really want to know more about it.

00:35:49.000 | It impacts me.

00:35:50.000 | I want to be informed on it."

00:35:51.000 | You can consider creating

00:35:53.000 | an ID or information document.

00:35:55.000 | You just create like a text file.

00:35:57.000 | I use Google Docs

00:35:59.000 | where you actually say,

00:36:00.000 | "I'm going to go through.

00:36:01.000 | I'm going to read four or five books

00:36:02.000 | on this topic.

00:36:03.000 | Maybe I'm going to take an online course,

00:36:05.000 | like a Great Courses course on this.

00:36:07.000 | And I'm going to pretty painstakingly

00:36:09.000 | copy the main ideas from all these

00:36:11.000 | into a big document

00:36:12.000 | then make sense of them."

00:36:13.000 | Because when I can see all the ideas

00:36:15.000 | in one big document

00:36:16.000 | from four or five books,

00:36:17.000 | I can sort these around

00:36:19.000 | and sort of get a sense

00:36:20.000 | of a deeper understanding of that idea

00:36:22.000 | just because I want a deeper understanding

00:36:24.000 | of that idea.

00:36:26.000 | Like I'm doing that now.

00:36:27.000 | I began reading some books

00:36:28.000 | that have to do post-election.

00:36:31.000 | I'm just more interested in the idea,

00:36:33.000 | and I'm putting air quotes around it,

00:36:34.000 | of "wokeness,"

00:36:35.000 | like where it came from,

00:36:36.000 | its impact on American culture

00:36:37.000 | and American elections.

00:36:40.000 | And I am creating a document

00:36:41.000 | I think is relevant to my life

00:36:42.000 | as an academic.

00:36:43.000 | I think it's relevant to my life

00:36:44.000 | as someone who does cultural commentary.

00:36:46.000 | I want to know more about it

00:36:47.000 | because it seems to be having

00:36:48.000 | a big impact on all of our lives.

00:36:52.000 | So I'm reading books.

00:36:53.000 | I just finished a great book

00:36:55.000 | we'll talk about

00:36:56.000 | in the November book summary,

00:36:59.000 | "We Have Never Been Woke."

00:37:00.000 | That was a very good book.

00:37:01.000 | Sociologist from Stony Brook wrote it.

00:37:03.000 | Anyways, that's an idea

00:37:04.000 | where I have four or five books

00:37:05.000 | I've chosen.

00:37:06.000 | It's going to take me a while

00:37:07.000 | to make my way through

00:37:08.000 | because I'm working on other stuff.

00:37:09.000 | I'm taking notes,

00:37:10.000 | and then I'll sort that document around,

00:37:12.000 | and out of that's going to come

00:37:13.000 | like a more refined knowledge

00:37:14.000 | about that idea.

00:37:15.000 | Now that'll be something

00:37:16.000 | I have like a "take on,"

00:37:18.000 | like an intellectual foundation

00:37:19.000 | that I can use

00:37:20.000 | when talking about something else

00:37:21.000 | or build on

00:37:22.000 | or have some confidence.

00:37:23.000 | So you could do that as well,

00:37:25.000 | like basically create a project

00:37:26.000 | for yourself

00:37:27.000 | and capture notes

00:37:28.000 | into a shared document.

00:37:30.000 | Otherwise, just read.

00:37:31.000 | Mark it in case you want

00:37:32.000 | to come back years later,

00:37:33.000 | but more books in general

00:37:34.000 | is better than less.

00:37:36.000 | - Do you ever use active recall

00:37:37.000 | for general personal stuff?

00:37:39.000 | - No.

00:37:40.000 | No, but for me,

00:37:43.000 | I mean,

00:37:44.000 | I say no in the sense of

00:37:46.000 | I don't test myself.

00:37:47.000 | Like when I think of active recall,

00:37:49.000 | I think of like my book,

00:37:50.000 | "How to Become a Straight-A Student,"

00:37:51.000 | and I think about note cards,

00:37:53.000 | and I'm testing my knowledge

00:37:55.000 | on certain things.

00:37:56.000 | What I do do, however,

00:37:57.000 | when I'm like creating

00:37:58.000 | an idea document for a topic

00:37:59.000 | is I'm thinking it through

00:38:01.000 | in my head

00:38:02.000 | as if I was writing

00:38:03.000 | an essay about it

00:38:04.000 | or doing a podcast monologue on it,

00:38:06.000 | and I'm trying to make sense

00:38:08.000 | and fit things together.

00:38:09.000 | So in a sense,

00:38:10.000 | that is sort of like active recall.

00:38:12.000 | I'll try out my ideas

00:38:13.000 | in conversations,

00:38:14.000 | or I'll test them

00:38:15.000 | in some writing.

00:38:16.000 | That, in a sense,

00:38:17.000 | is also active recall.

00:38:18.000 | So the more I play with the ideas

00:38:20.000 | and try to make sense of them

00:38:21.000 | in my own mind,

00:38:22.000 | the more it's becoming ingrained.

00:38:24.000 | And there's this idea I have

00:38:25.000 | where if you've worked

00:38:27.000 | with connected ideas long enough,

00:38:29.000 | they eventually just get added

00:38:31.000 | to the internal infrastructure of ideas,

00:38:33.000 | your intellectual infrastructure.

00:38:34.000 | It's just part of that scaffolding

00:38:36.000 | for the knowledge in your head,

00:38:37.000 | and now it's something

00:38:38.000 | you can forevermore draw on.

00:38:39.000 | Just like now,

00:38:40.000 | I can draw very fluently

00:38:42.000 | thinking about the neuroscience

00:38:44.000 | and psychology of context shifting

00:38:46.000 | and distraction

00:38:47.000 | and its role in cognitive processing.

00:38:48.000 | I've just worked

00:38:49.000 | with this information enough

00:38:50.000 | that it's just a part

00:38:51.000 | of how I understand the world.

00:38:52.000 | So creating a document,

00:38:54.000 | playing with the ideas,

00:38:55.000 | trying to summarize the ideas.

00:38:57.000 | So when you play

00:38:58.000 | with these documents,

00:38:59.000 | you write summaries of the ideas

00:39:00.000 | above the notes.

00:39:01.000 | That's kind of like active recall.

00:39:02.000 | So maybe I'll say

00:39:03.000 | playing with the ideas

00:39:04.000 | is like a lightweight active recall

00:39:07.000 | that does help you

00:39:08.000 | not only understand them better

00:39:09.000 | but integrate them

00:39:10.000 | into that sort

00:39:11.000 | of intellectual scaffolding.

00:39:15.000 | This would also have to go

00:39:16.000 | in my book idea

00:39:17.000 | in defense of thinking.

00:39:19.000 | We don't talk enough

00:39:20.000 | about just the mechanics of thinking.

00:39:24.000 | We don't do enough of that.

00:39:25.000 | We look at our phones

00:39:26.000 | but the mechanics of thinking

00:39:27.000 | and the joy to come from thinking,

00:39:29.000 | working with ideas,

00:39:30.000 | increasing your understanding

00:39:31.000 | of the world.

00:39:32.000 | This is like a really rewarding

00:39:34.000 | human activity.

00:39:35.000 | We know this all the way

00:39:36.000 | since Aristotle talked about

00:39:38.000 | in the ethics

00:39:39.000 | but we don't talk

00:39:40.000 | about that much anymore.

00:39:41.000 | We talk about content

00:39:42.000 | like what you're learning

00:39:44.000 | and also we just don't spend

00:39:45.000 | that much time.

00:39:46.000 | We're not that familiar

00:39:47.000 | with our brain.

00:39:48.000 | It's a weird thing

00:39:49.000 | how the brain works

00:39:50.000 | and how it takes information

00:39:51.000 | but we don't talk much about that.

00:39:53.000 | We know a lot more.

00:39:54.000 | The lay public knows a lot more

00:39:55.000 | about how muscles work

00:39:57.000 | than they do about

00:39:58.000 | how the brain works.

00:39:59.000 | Anyone who's an amateur weightlifter

00:40:03.000 | knows a lot about roughly

00:40:04.000 | how muscles work

00:40:05.000 | and how they grow

00:40:06.000 | and progressive resistance.

00:40:08.000 | We know very little

00:40:09.000 | about the brain

00:40:10.000 | but it's at the key

00:40:11.000 | not just of many of our jobs

00:40:12.000 | but of a fulfilling human life

00:40:13.000 | so I'm very interested

00:40:14.000 | in that topic.

00:40:16.000 | What do we have next?

00:40:17.000 | We have our corner.

00:40:19.000 | Slow productivity corner.

00:40:20.000 | Let's hear some theme music.

00:40:22.000 | So the slow productivity corner

00:40:29.000 | is where we designate

00:40:31.000 | one question per week

00:40:33.000 | to be specifically

00:40:34.000 | about my new book

00:40:35.000 | Slow Productivity

00:40:36.000 | The Lost Art of Accomplishment

00:40:37.000 | Without Burnout.

00:40:38.000 | I now can refer to it

00:40:39.000 | as one of the Economist's

00:40:42.000 | best books of 2024.

00:40:44.000 | Check it out

00:40:45.000 | if you have not already.

00:40:46.000 | All right, Jesse.

00:40:47.000 | What is our slow productivity

00:40:48.000 | corner question of the week?

00:40:50.000 | It's from Eric.

00:40:52.000 | I've worked in a fast-paced environment

00:40:53.000 | for the past seven years

00:40:54.000 | and I'm tired of running.

00:40:56.000 | I recently read Slow Productivity.

00:40:58.000 | My company and industry

00:40:59.000 | for that matter

00:41:00.000 | does not work at a natural place

00:41:01.000 | and focus on quality.

00:41:03.000 | There's less people

00:41:04.000 | willing to do this work

00:41:05.000 | and it's simultaneously

00:41:06.000 | becoming more complex

00:41:07.000 | and time-consuming.

00:41:08.000 | Therefore, I'm considering

00:41:09.000 | a career shift

00:41:10.000 | to better align with my values.

00:41:12.000 | How do I apply

00:41:13.000 | slow productivity

00:41:14.000 | without losing career capital?

00:41:17.000 | Well, it's a good question.

00:41:18.000 | It helps to know

00:41:19.000 | what you're looking for

00:41:21.000 | when you're looking for a shift.

00:41:23.000 | So you're looking

00:41:24.000 | to make a career change.

00:41:26.000 | You don't want to throw out

00:41:28.000 | excessive amounts of career capital,

00:41:29.000 | which, again,

00:41:30.000 | is just my terminology

00:41:31.000 | for your rare and valuable skills

00:41:32.000 | that you've already developed.

00:41:35.000 | What I would look for,

00:41:36.000 | typically the best way

00:41:39.000 | to leverage your capital

00:41:40.000 | to get more slow productivity

00:41:42.000 | is to find ways

00:41:43.000 | to trade accountability

00:41:45.000 | for accessibility,

00:41:47.000 | to try to change your situation

00:41:48.000 | in such a way

00:41:49.000 | where you're being held accountable

00:41:50.000 | for what you produce

00:41:52.000 | but are given

00:41:53.000 | extreme freedom and latitude

00:41:54.000 | for how you do it.

00:41:56.000 | So sometimes this means,

00:41:57.000 | for example,

00:41:58.000 | moving out of an organizational role

00:42:00.000 | where there's a lot of people

00:42:01.000 | that you work with

00:42:02.000 | and, therefore,

00:42:03.000 | lots of expectations

00:42:04.000 | about communication

00:42:05.000 | and how work unfolds.

00:42:06.000 | Moving out of one of those roles

00:42:07.000 | into more of a freelance

00:42:08.000 | or consulting role

00:42:11.000 | where it's,

00:42:12.000 | "Hey, I've signed a contract

00:42:13.000 | "to do this.

00:42:14.000 | "We'll check in once a week

00:42:15.000 | "at this time on a phone call,

00:42:17.000 | "and, otherwise,

00:42:18.000 | "I'm just rock and rolling."

00:42:20.000 | So now I no longer have

00:42:22.000 | accessibility understandings

00:42:25.000 | or expectations about,

00:42:26.000 | "Hey, I'm always going to answer

00:42:27.000 | "emails and be on Slack,"

00:42:28.000 | but I got a lot of accountability

00:42:30.000 | because if I don't bring it,

00:42:32.000 | I don't get a new contract.

00:42:34.000 | I'm going to eat what I hunt,

00:42:35.000 | eat what I kill.

00:42:37.000 | That's probably

00:42:38.000 | what you should be looking for.

00:42:39.000 | I'm going to eat what I kill now.

00:42:41.000 | How can I leverage this

00:42:44.000 | so that it's going to be quality

00:42:47.000 | that I live on?

00:42:48.000 | It's quality to make my reputation.

00:42:50.000 | I'll be accountable for what I do,

00:42:52.000 | but how I do it,

00:42:53.000 | I'm going to have a lot more freedom.

00:42:55.000 | You're probably in a good position

00:42:56.000 | to start thinking about

00:42:57.000 | taking those trade-offs.

00:42:58.000 | When successful,

00:42:59.000 | they really can be life-changing

00:43:00.000 | because it allows you

00:43:01.000 | to embrace so much more

00:43:03.000 | slow productivity

00:43:04.000 | in your professional life.

00:43:06.000 | All right.

00:43:07.000 | What do we got next?

00:43:08.000 | We have a call.

00:43:09.000 | Ooh, let's hear it.

00:43:10.000 | "I'm a big fan of your music.

00:43:11.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:12.000 | for a long time.

00:43:13.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:14.000 | for a long time.

00:43:15.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:16.000 | for a long time.

00:43:17.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:18.000 | for a long time.

00:43:19.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:20.000 | for a long time.

00:43:21.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:22.000 | for a long time.

00:43:23.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:24.000 | for a long time.

00:43:25.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:26.000 | for a long time.

00:43:27.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:28.000 | for a long time.

00:43:29.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:30.000 | for a long time.

00:43:31.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:32.000 | for a long time.

00:43:33.000 | I've been listening to your music

00:43:34.000 | for a long time.

00:43:35.000 | Let's hear it.

00:43:36.000 | Let's hear it.

00:43:37.000 | Hey, Cal.

00:43:38.000 | Long-time reader and listener.

00:43:39.000 | I'm a 28-year-old software engineer

00:43:40.000 | working remotely from western Colorado.

00:43:41.000 | I grew up here, moved away

00:43:42.000 | for a couple of years,

00:43:43.000 | and developed the career capital

00:43:44.000 | to move back with the purpose

00:43:45.000 | of lifestyle-centric career planning.

00:43:46.000 | While I love the outdoor opportunities

00:43:47.000 | and ability to participate

00:43:48.000 | in my small town,

00:43:49.000 | I'm lonely working from home,

00:43:50.000 | especially as a single person.

00:43:51.000 | I visit the office once every couple months,

00:43:52.000 | which re-energizes me

00:43:53.000 | and gives me a sense of home.

00:43:54.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:43:55.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:43:56.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:43:57.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:43:58.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:43:59.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:00.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:01.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:02.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:03.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:04.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:05.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:06.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:07.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:08.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:09.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:10.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:11.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:12.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:13.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:14.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:15.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:16.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:17.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:18.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:19.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:20.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:21.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:22.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:23.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:24.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:25.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:26.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:27.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:28.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:29.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:30.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:31.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:32.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:33.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:34.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:35.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:36.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:37.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:38.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:39.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:40.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:41.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:42.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:43.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:44.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:45.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:46.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:47.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:48.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:49.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:50.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:51.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:52.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:53.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:54.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:55.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:56.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:57.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:44:58.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:44:59.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:45:00.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:45:01.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:45:02.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:45:03.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:45:04.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:45:05.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:45:06.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:45:07.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:45:08.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:45:09.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:45:10.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:45:11.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:45:12.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:45:13.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:45:14.000 | I'm a single parent,

00:45:15.000 | and I'm a single parent.

00:45:16.000 | - All right, well, Josh,

00:45:17.000 | it's a good chance

00:45:18.000 | to practice lifestyle-centric planning.

00:45:20.000 | So the key with lifestyle-centric planning

00:45:22.000 | is you have multiple different things

00:45:24.000 | is you have multiple different things

00:45:25.000 | that go into your ideal lifestyle.

00:45:26.000 | We have to be careful

00:45:27.000 | about this terminology, for example,

00:45:29.000 | because I see you, for example,

00:45:31.000 | referring to a subset of things

00:45:35.000 | that matter in your lifestyle

00:45:37.000 | as your "lifestyle."

00:45:39.000 | So living in Western Colorado

00:45:41.000 | in a more remote place

00:45:43.000 | connected more closely

00:45:45.000 | to outdoor activities,

00:45:47.000 | you're calling that your "lifestyle."

00:45:49.000 | I was like, "No, that's part

00:45:51.000 | of the attributes of your ideal lifestyle."

00:45:54.000 | You're also mentioning

00:45:55.000 | many other attributes

00:45:56.000 | of an ideal lifestyle

00:45:57.000 | that are incompatible

00:45:59.000 | where you currently live.

00:46:00.000 | So you talked about

00:46:01.000 | feeling more energy

00:46:02.000 | when you work in your office,

00:46:04.000 | the dating pool,

00:46:06.000 | family proximity,

00:46:07.000 | like being around family

00:46:08.000 | because they live in the front range,

00:46:10.000 | more things going on.

00:46:12.000 | These are other attributes.

00:46:14.000 | You've mentioned those things

00:46:15.000 | and you mentioned liking the communities

00:46:18.000 | because I guess you said

00:46:19.000 | you grew up there

00:46:20.000 | in Western Colorado,

00:46:21.000 | liking that kind of quiet vibe

00:46:22.000 | and the easier access

00:46:24.000 | to outdoor activity,

00:46:25.000 | avoidance of sort of outdoor traffic.

00:46:27.000 | So we have multiple attributes

00:46:30.000 | and there's not an obvious winner

00:46:32.000 | in terms of location.

00:46:33.000 | This is a very classic setup

00:46:34.000 | for lifestyle-centric planning.

00:46:36.000 | There's not like a location

00:46:38.000 | that satisfies that all.

00:46:40.000 | So now what we're looking to do

00:46:42.000 | is come up with a plan

00:46:44.000 | that is going to improve

00:46:47.000 | as many of those as possible

00:46:49.000 | and then maybe look for compensation

00:46:52.000 | for those that are

00:46:54.000 | neglected by the plan.

00:46:55.000 | So often a situation like this place,

00:46:57.000 | this idea is going to help more,

00:47:00.000 | as many of my lifestyle things

00:47:02.000 | directly as possible,

00:47:03.000 | and I'm going to come up with,

00:47:05.000 | perhaps even outside the box planning,

00:47:09.000 | for how to deal with the

00:47:11.000 | remaining important things

00:47:12.000 | that this plan doesn't actually satisfy.

00:47:15.000 | So for example,

00:47:17.000 | I'll go both directions.

00:47:19.000 | You might say, you know what,

00:47:20.000 | Denver is,

00:47:23.000 | if I do Denver right,

00:47:24.000 | move to Denver,

00:47:25.000 | there's so many of these lifestyle things

00:47:27.000 | that are going to affect me

00:47:28.000 | day to day and long term.

00:47:29.000 | Day to day,

00:47:30.000 | like what my work experience is like,

00:47:31.000 | long term,

00:47:32.000 | like finding a mate,

00:47:33.000 | someone to marry down the line,

00:47:35.000 | being around family during this period

00:47:37.000 | where like before there's these things

00:47:39.000 | that's going to affect so often

00:47:41.000 | that are going to be,

00:47:42.000 | these are very important to me.

00:47:43.000 | So going to Denver is going to affect those.

00:47:45.000 | All right,

00:47:46.000 | so now how can I compensate

00:47:48.000 | for the small number of attributes

00:47:49.000 | that will be negatively impacted,

00:47:51.000 | which is like the quiet,

00:47:53.000 | the outdoor activity without all the traffic,

00:47:56.000 | that sort of aspects of life I like.

00:47:58.000 | You start thinking out of the box

00:48:00.000 | and be like, okay,

00:48:02.000 | here's what I'm going to do.

00:48:03.000 | I'm younger.

00:48:05.000 | I am going to find a way

00:48:07.000 | to have some sort of simple property.

00:48:10.000 | I might have to save up for a year,

00:48:11.000 | but some sort of simple property,

00:48:13.000 | you know,

00:48:14.000 | out in Western Colorado.

00:48:15.000 | It's going to be like a cabin

00:48:16.000 | that I'm going to work on and make better.

00:48:19.000 | And I'm going to set up my work in Denver

00:48:22.000 | because they don't seem to care

00:48:24.000 | in office or remote.

00:48:25.000 | So maybe I'm going to set it up

00:48:27.000 | so it's like three days in office or two remote

00:48:29.000 | or like Fridays I do remote

00:48:31.000 | or Mondays I do remote

00:48:33.000 | or something like this.

00:48:34.000 | And what I'm going to do is like

00:48:35.000 | on a lot of weekends,

00:48:37.000 | I'm going to head out to that property,

00:48:39.000 | kind of make that drive,

00:48:40.000 | work from there

00:48:42.000 | and be in the countryside

00:48:44.000 | for the whole weekend.

00:48:46.000 | Okay, so I get that quiet.

00:48:48.000 | I get that outdoor activities.

00:48:50.000 | I'm connected to that community

00:48:52.000 | because a lot of weekends I'm out there

00:48:54.000 | and I'm fixing up this kind of cool cabin I go to

00:48:57.000 | and it's my center for mountain biking in the summer

00:48:59.000 | and for skiing in the winter.

00:49:01.000 | And it's this sort of like cool project

00:49:02.000 | I have going on.

00:49:04.000 | But I'm spending most of my days in the city

00:49:06.000 | and I'm in the office most days,

00:49:08.000 | like most weeks.

00:49:09.000 | I'm getting that advantage.

00:49:10.000 | I'm seeing my family

00:49:11.000 | and I could go out and like hang out with people,

00:49:14.000 | especially on like weekday nights

00:49:15.000 | or if there's like a date,

00:49:16.000 | maybe I don't go out to the cabin that weekend.

00:49:18.000 | But I also have a place like for my friends

00:49:20.000 | I meet in the city to go out to.

00:49:21.000 | And now what you're doing with this lifestyle planning,

00:49:23.000 | this is not like an obvious off-the-shelf solution.

00:49:25.000 | Like, oh, like the standard solution

00:49:27.000 | of working four days a week in Denver

00:49:28.000 | with a cabin in Western Colorado

00:49:30.000 | that you work on most weekends.

00:49:31.000 | It's not an off-the-shelf solution.

00:49:32.000 | It's a solution that's bespoke

00:49:33.000 | to your particular list of lifestyle attributes

00:49:35.000 | you care about.

00:49:37.000 | And now you know that's what you're doing.

00:49:38.000 | Then you begin looking for opportunities

00:49:40.000 | and this is where you find out like,

00:49:41.000 | okay, here's what I want to do.

00:49:43.000 | And it's where you find out like,

00:49:44.000 | actually, this friend of my family,

00:49:47.000 | we used to live there,

00:49:48.000 | you know, he's always mentioned

00:49:49.000 | they have this big property

00:49:50.000 | and they have a cabin on it

00:49:51.000 | and they would probably rent that to me

00:49:53.000 | because they'd like it to be fixed up.

00:49:54.000 | And this is really not going to be that expensive.

00:49:55.000 | And my other buddy lives out there still

00:49:57.000 | and does custom home building

00:49:59.000 | and maybe he could,

00:50:01.000 | suddenly these like super bespoke plans

00:50:03.000 | begin to emerge.

00:50:05.000 | And there might be another way.

00:50:06.000 | You could go the opposite way.

00:50:07.000 | I could imagine a way where you go all in

00:50:09.000 | on where you're currently living.

00:50:12.000 | And the way you would probably do that

00:50:14.000 | is figure out how to much more aggressively

00:50:16.000 | invest in non-professional community.

00:50:19.000 | Maybe there's a co-working space you go to,

00:50:21.000 | but also maybe you just get really on the ball

00:50:23.000 | with your work using my type of techniques

00:50:25.000 | to free up much more time

00:50:27.000 | so that you're sort of technically done

00:50:29.000 | without people knowing by work by two

00:50:31.000 | and so you can be involved

00:50:32.000 | in all these like really aggressive

00:50:33.000 | outdoor activities and communities.

00:50:37.000 | My brother used to be very good at this

00:50:38.000 | when he worked for the government

00:50:39.000 | would shift,

00:50:41.000 | his schedule would start,

00:50:42.000 | you know, at 5 a.m.

00:50:43.000 | and that freed up the afternoons

00:50:45.000 | for outdoor activities.

00:50:47.000 | So you had big community

00:50:48.000 | that was sort of unrelated to work.

00:50:49.000 | So like there's shifts

00:50:50.000 | you can start to make there.

00:50:52.000 | And then maybe you say,

00:50:53.000 | I come into Denver

00:50:54.000 | for three days every other week.

00:50:56.000 | You know, I have like a place,

00:50:58.000 | like an Airbnb I like that I rent

00:51:01.000 | and I'm there half a week

00:51:04.000 | every other week

00:51:05.000 | or you do the thing where like,

00:51:06.000 | yeah, I go into the city

00:51:08.000 | for Monday and Tuesday

00:51:11.000 | and then I'm back for Wednesday

00:51:12.000 | through Sunday in the country, right?

00:51:14.000 | You figure out a way to do that.

00:51:15.000 | Maybe you buy a cheap apartment

00:51:17.000 | that you sort of fix up

00:51:18.000 | and I don't know, right?

00:51:19.000 | But you start thinking about these

00:51:22.000 | non-off-the-shelf

00:51:24.000 | sort of bespoke solutions

00:51:25.000 | once you know the game.

00:51:26.000 | These are the attributes

00:51:28.000 | that I want to try to help them all

00:51:29.000 | and some I can help directly

00:51:31.000 | and some I have to do something

00:51:32.000 | unexpected to.

00:51:34.000 | This is what lifestyle-centric planning

00:51:36.000 | looks like

00:51:37.000 | and it's very different

00:51:38.000 | than grand goal thinking

00:51:39.000 | which would be like

00:51:40.000 | if I just make one big change

00:51:41.000 | everything else is going to be better.

00:51:43.000 | So that's like what I want

00:51:44.000 | to emphasize here

00:51:46.000 | is that when you have this list

00:51:47.000 | of attributes you're working on

00:51:49.000 | that can't just all be helped

00:51:50.000 | by one decision.

00:51:52.000 | You get creative

00:51:53.000 | and it's why the deepest lives

00:51:54.000 | often have a relatively

00:51:56.000 | complicated structure

00:51:58.000 | because that's what happens

00:52:00.000 | when you're working

00:52:01.000 | to satisfy multiple attributes

00:52:02.000 | at the same time.

00:52:03.000 | It's actually kind of a fun game

00:52:04.000 | and you have way more opportunities

00:52:05.000 | to do things

00:52:06.000 | you would never even think of

00:52:07.000 | until you know exactly

00:52:08.000 | what you're trying to do.

00:52:10.000 | So you got a couple cool options here, Josh,

00:52:12.000 | but I think the key is

00:52:14.000 | do real lifestyle-centric planning.

00:52:16.000 | All of this, Jesse, is what I'm,

00:52:17.000 | I haven't got to this part of my book yet,

00:52:19.000 | but that's why I'm kind of looking forward

00:52:21.000 | to this deep life book

00:52:22.000 | and just having like a manual

00:52:23.000 | for this type of lifestyle thinking.

00:52:25.000 | It'll be like the least technology

00:52:26.000 | seemingly related book I've written,

00:52:27.000 | though again it's motivated by technology

00:52:29.000 | because the very fact

00:52:30.000 | that we have to think so explicitly

00:52:32.000 | about how to shape our lives

00:52:34.000 | is something that came

00:52:35.000 | from the digitization of work

00:52:36.000 | that's like one of the side effects of it,

00:52:38.000 | but I'm going to be glad

00:52:39.000 | when I can actually sort of

00:52:40.000 | just hand this book to people.

00:52:42.000 | I'm still in part one

00:52:44.000 | which is preparation.

00:52:46.000 | The hard work of preparing

00:52:48.000 | to change your life

00:52:49.000 | because that's my other argument,

00:52:50.000 | and Josh, I guess I'll throw this to you as well.

00:52:52.000 | The first big idea in my book

00:52:54.000 | is sometimes it's hard

00:52:55.000 | to jump straight into transforming your life.

00:52:57.000 | You have to prepare for it first,

00:52:59.000 | and then part two is

00:53:01.000 | lifestyle-centric planning

00:53:02.000 | and how you actually do this type of planning.

00:53:04.000 | So I'm in the final chapter

00:53:05.000 | of part one right now in my writing.

00:53:07.000 | When it's finished,

00:53:08.000 | we'll fall in the same category

00:53:10.000 | as social productivity?

00:53:12.000 | You mean in terms of like how a

00:53:15.000 | publisher would think about it?

00:53:17.000 | I guess it's going to be considered

00:53:18.000 | more traditional self-help.

00:53:20.000 | It is not really about business

00:53:23.000 | or the world of work

00:53:24.000 | or technology as directly.

00:53:25.000 | So I guess it'll be seen

00:53:27.000 | as a more traditional self-help book, I suppose.

00:53:30.000 | - And then do we know any of the books

00:53:32.000 | in 2024 on that list this year?

00:53:34.000 | I should look.

00:53:35.000 | - It's often not its own category.

00:53:37.000 | Yeah, I mean,

00:53:38.000 | so where I have been on lists like that

00:53:41.000 | was Goodreads did

00:53:42.000 | their nine most popular self-help books

00:53:44.000 | which covered like all advice books.

00:53:46.000 | And I was on that list.

00:53:47.000 | But like if you look at the Economist list,

00:53:49.000 | they don't have a category for that.

00:53:51.000 | I guess it could be under cultural and the arts.

00:53:54.000 | It's probably not going to,

00:53:55.000 | I guess it could be under business,

00:53:56.000 | technology, economics,

00:53:57.000 | but probably not.

00:53:58.000 | And it's not going to be under history or memoir.

00:54:00.000 | So like that area is a little bit less,

00:54:03.000 | less represented in some of these lists.

00:54:06.000 | So we'll see.

00:54:07.000 | It's been a fun book to write though.

00:54:09.000 | - Yeah.

00:54:10.000 | - Taking my time.

00:54:12.000 | All right, so we got next a case study

00:54:14.000 | where people send in their accounts

00:54:16.000 | of putting into practice the type of advice

00:54:18.000 | we talked about on the show

00:54:19.000 | so you can see what it looks like in the real world.

00:54:21.000 | If you have a case study,

00:54:22.000 | send it to jesse@jesse@calnewport.com.

00:54:26.000 | Today's case study comes from Brooke.

00:54:29.000 | Brooke says,

00:54:30.000 | "Prior to reading Slow Productivity,

00:54:32.000 | "I had honestly been just scared

00:54:34.000 | "to start the creative pursuits I was interested in.

00:54:37.000 | "Everyone else seems to be able

00:54:39.000 | "to crank out a book in six months

00:54:40.000 | "or produce a work of art

00:54:41.000 | "with a seemingly minimal natural effort.

00:54:44.000 | "Since I was just a beginner in everything,

00:54:46.000 | "my art would take forever and suck.

00:54:48.000 | "And wouldn't that be the worst thing to ever happen?

00:54:51.000 | "Then I read Slow Productivity,

00:54:53.000 | "and immediately after I read Deep Work,

00:54:55.000 | "the framework of Slow Productivity

00:54:57.000 | "and concepts of Deep Work really resonated with me,

00:54:59.000 | "and I decided it was finally time

00:55:01.000 | "to start writing the book I'd been thinking about.

00:55:03.000 | "If it took forever, who cares?

00:55:05.000 | "I would create something I was happy with,

00:55:06.000 | "and that's all that matters.

00:55:08.000 | "To keep going past the initial spark of inspiration,

00:55:10.000 | "I built my writing schedule around the idea

00:55:12.000 | "that Deep Work is a muscle you cultivate.

00:55:14.000 | "Since my Deep Work muscle was probably

00:55:16.000 | "weaker than a newborn kitten,

00:55:18.000 | "I set aside only one hour on weekdays

00:55:20.000 | "to work on my book.

00:55:21.000 | "I started a ritual to get in the writing zone,

00:55:23.000 | "then one to finish out my Deep Writing session,

00:55:26.000 | "which broke down writing a whole book

00:55:27.000 | "into easily achievable chunks.

00:55:29.000 | "I also got a small field notebook

00:55:31.000 | "to record other random ideas

00:55:32.000 | "that came to me outside of my Deep Work sessions.

00:55:35.000 | "I don't think this notebook would be all that helpful,

00:55:37.000 | "but it turned out to be pivotal in developing the plot.

00:55:41.000 | "While I haven't written oodles of chapters as a beginner,

00:55:46.000 | "this is a pace that is natural and sustainable to me.

00:55:48.000 | "My ability to work deeply has improved,

00:55:51.000 | "along with my writing sessions to get longer.

00:55:54.000 | "Critically, I'm so happy with what I've written,

00:55:56.000 | "which provides major motivation to keep going."

00:55:59.000 | All right, well, Brooke, I appreciate that case study.

00:56:02.000 | A couple ideas to underline for people.

00:56:04.000 | One, the idea of Deep Work as being cultivated.

00:56:08.000 | The more you train it, the better you get.

00:56:11.000 | So if you haven't really been spending a lot of time

00:56:13.000 | focusing intensely without distraction,

00:56:15.000 | don't be upset that when you go out to that writing cabin

00:56:19.000 | you rented for a month,

00:56:20.000 | you have struggled to produce anything useful.

00:56:23.000 | This is not some flaw in your wiring.

00:56:25.000 | It just means you're out of practice.

00:56:26.000 | Just like if you went to run a 5K,

00:56:29.000 | having not done any running in a while,

00:56:31.000 | it's not going to go well.

00:56:33.000 | You'll be winded, your lungs will hurt, your legs will hurt.

00:56:35.000 | You wouldn't say, "I don't have a running body.

00:56:37.000 | "I'm just not meant to run."

00:56:38.000 | You'd say, "Yeah, I haven't been training.

00:56:39.000 | "If I did some more training, I'd be better at this."

00:56:41.000 | So you have to think about Deep Work that way.

00:56:42.000 | I appreciate that.

00:56:43.000 | I also appreciate you embracing the idea

00:56:45.000 | of working at a natural pace.

00:56:48.000 | From my book, Slow Productivity,

00:56:49.000 | yeah, take your time, no one cares.

00:56:51.000 | A lot of great stuff took a really long time

00:56:53.000 | and no one knows that.

00:56:54.000 | No one knows how long things take.

00:56:56.000 | We invent these timelines in our head

00:56:58.000 | about how long we want something to take.

00:57:01.000 | And then we convince ourselves of two things.

00:57:03.000 | One, this is how long it takes for other people.

00:57:07.000 | And two, wouldn't it be great if this was true?

00:57:10.000 | And we fall in love with that story.

00:57:12.000 | We tell ourselves everyone writes books in six months

00:57:15.000 | and we imagine what it would be like

00:57:17.000 | to be done in six months.

00:57:18.000 | And then that becomes a story

00:57:19.000 | that we want so much to be true

00:57:21.000 | that we try to force it to be true.

00:57:23.000 | But if you spend three years instead,

00:57:25.000 | what might have been impossible

00:57:26.000 | might become very tractable.

00:57:29.000 | Slow and steady.

00:57:30.000 | I talk about this a lot

00:57:31.000 | as the compound interest of productive effort.

00:57:35.000 | You work on something,

00:57:36.000 | not randomly, but productively.

00:57:38.000 | When I work, I have a structure,

00:57:40.000 | I'm working deep, I'm trying to make progress,

00:57:43.000 | but only a little bit of work at a time

00:57:45.000 | on a regular basis,

00:57:46.000 | but maybe not a crazy pace.

00:57:48.000 | That adds up.

00:57:50.000 | Over time, that adds up.

00:57:51.000 | At first, you're not seeing the benefits.

00:57:53.000 | You're adding up pages,

00:57:54.000 | but you can't really tell the difference.

00:57:56.000 | You've written a bunch of stuff.

00:57:58.000 | But eventually, that turns into a manuscript,

00:58:01.000 | if we're going to use the book example.

00:58:03.000 | Now you have a thing that can get feedback on

00:58:05.000 | and ideas about that you can be revising.

00:58:08.000 | And then at some point,

00:58:10.000 | that leads to something that gets published.

00:58:12.000 | And now you're really getting rewards.

00:58:13.000 | Well, I'm a published author

00:58:14.000 | and I have the opportunity to publish other books,

00:58:16.000 | and the rewards begin to aggregate.

00:58:18.000 | And once you've published a few books

00:58:19.000 | and you've had one of them

00:58:20.000 | that has broken out and been successful,

00:58:21.000 | you look at the rewards per effort

00:58:23.000 | and you see it's flat, flat, flat,

00:58:24.000 | and it starts moving, moving, moving,

00:58:26.000 | faster, faster, faster.

00:58:27.000 | But you can't jump to the top of this curve from scratch.

00:58:29.000 | You have to sort of work your way on the slow curve

00:58:32.000 | before the exponential really begins to pick in.

00:58:35.000 | The compound interest of consistent, productive effort

00:58:39.000 | is a really important factor.

00:58:41.000 | So just take more time is fine.

00:58:45.000 | You're going to build up good work.

00:58:48.000 | Building up good work is building up good work.

00:58:50.000 | And who's to say three years is worse

00:58:52.000 | than two years is better than six months?

00:58:54.000 | So I love it, Brooke.

00:58:56.000 | Great case study.

00:58:57.000 | Keep going.

00:58:58.000 | Go slow.

00:58:59.000 | Keep obsessing over quality.

00:59:00.000 | Read the obsess over quality section of Slow Productivity.

00:59:04.000 | Work on your taste.

00:59:05.000 | I have all this advice in there

00:59:06.000 | for how to work on your taste,

00:59:08.000 | how to be around people who are doing it well,

00:59:10.000 | how to create your own inklings,

00:59:11.000 | how to get non-biased feedback.

00:59:13.000 | You want to be obsessing over quality here,

00:59:17.000 | but you can couple that with taking your time.

00:59:19.000 | So you can kind of read the story about Juul

00:59:21.000 | will be a good story for you here as well.

00:59:23.000 | So yeah, Slow Productivity is the Bible

00:59:25.000 | for what you're doing right now.

00:59:26.000 | Go slow.

00:59:27.000 | Take your time.

00:59:28.000 | Obsess over quality.

00:59:29.000 | Good stuff will likely come.

00:59:32.000 | All right, we have a final segment coming up here.

00:59:35.000 | But first, let's hear from another sponsor.

00:59:38.000 | I want to hear about our longtime sponsors at Grammarly.

00:59:42.000 | What's been cool about Grammarly

00:59:43.000 | is that in the time that they have been one of our sponsors,

00:59:45.000 | it's now been four years,

00:59:47.000 | we have seen their already great product

00:59:50.000 | grow in leaps and bounds in terms of its capabilities.

00:59:55.000 | And particularly, it has been their embrace

00:59:58.000 | and integration of AI that has really pushed forward

01:00:01.000 | what Grammarly can help you do.

01:00:04.000 | So Grammarly helps with any writing from brainstorming

01:00:06.000 | to sounding more confident and persuasive at your work.

01:00:10.000 | You can write and edit quickly

01:00:12.000 | with context-aware suggestions everywhere you write.

01:00:16.000 | It can help you change the tone.

01:00:18.000 | It can help you reword things.

01:00:20.000 | It'll help you, of course, with just grammar, as it always has.

01:00:23.000 | It can even help generate ideas

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01:00:35.000 | So, for example, maybe you're like,

01:00:37.000 | "Okay, I have to write up a marketing message

01:00:40.000 | because we're going to send out an email

01:00:42.000 | for some new product."

01:00:44.000 | You can now, with Grammarly, actually use its AI prompts

01:00:46.000 | to help you come up with some few ideas

01:00:49.000 | for what to say or a good metaphor to use.

01:00:52.000 | Then you can write that quickly and then use its tone detector.

01:00:54.000 | "Is this too professional? How do I make it?

01:00:56.000 | Can we rewrite this to be a little bit lighter?"

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01:01:00.000 | So it's like having a professional editor

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01:01:17.000 | so you do not have to worry about that.

01:01:21.000 | It works across, what is it now, 500,000 apps and websites.

01:01:24.000 | That's what's cool about it.

01:01:25.000 | You're not flipping over to a website

01:01:27.000 | where you're typing stuff into a text interface.

01:01:29.000 | It is there in the apps you're already using

01:01:31.000 | to do your writing.

01:01:33.000 | 93% of professionals report that Grammarly

01:01:35.000 | helps them get more work done.

01:01:38.000 | They've been at this for 15 years,

01:01:40.000 | and it keeps getting better and better.

01:01:42.000 | So get more done with Grammarly.

01:01:44.000 | Download Grammarly for free at grammarly.com/podcast.

01:01:49.000 | That's grammarly.com/podcast.

01:01:53.000 | I also want to talk about our friends at Shopify.

01:01:57.000 | Nobody does selling better than Shopify.

01:02:02.000 | This is the home of the number one checkout on the planet,

01:02:05.000 | including their Shop Pay feature

01:02:07.000 | that boosts conversions up to 50%,

01:02:09.000 | meaning way less carts get abandoned.

01:02:12.000 | You get way more sales going forward.

01:02:14.000 | I can't tell you how many different people I know

01:02:16.000 | who sell things who swear by Shopify.

01:02:19.000 | It makes it so easy for you to have

01:02:22.000 | an incredibly professional commerce experience,

01:02:25.000 | whether we're talking about e-commerce on a website

01:02:28.000 | or even point-to-sale solutions

01:02:30.000 | in actual bricks-and-mortar stores.

01:02:32.000 | You get this super easy checkout experience.

01:02:35.000 | People are much more likely to follow through

01:02:37.000 | and actually complete their purchase.

01:02:39.000 | And it's easy on your end as the business owner.

01:02:44.000 | So this is kind of like the poorly kept secret

01:02:47.000 | of the world of people who sell things.

01:02:49.000 | It's Shopify is what makes them seem

01:02:52.000 | so effective and so professional.

01:02:55.000 | So upgrade your business and get the same checkout

01:02:59.000 | that so many people I know use

01:03:02.000 | to sell things online or in person.

01:03:07.000 | You can sign up for a $1 per month trial period

01:03:10.000 | if you go to shopify.com/deep.

01:03:14.000 | It's important that you type that in all lowercase letters.

01:03:18.000 | Go to shopify.com/deep.

01:03:21.000 | The upgrade you're selling today,

01:03:23.000 | that's shopify.com/deep.

01:03:27.000 | All right, Jesse, let's move on to our final segment.

01:03:32.000 | So today I want to react to something that I saw online.

01:03:36.000 | I'm going to load it up on the screen here

01:03:38.000 | for those who are watching instead of just listening.

01:03:42.000 | This is actually someone reporting something

01:03:44.000 | they just encountered in their workplace.

01:03:48.000 | They're reporting about it on Reddit.

01:03:51.000 | So this is from the r/sysadmin Reddit thread

01:03:54.000 | from just a few days before.

01:03:56.000 | We are actually doing this recording.

01:03:58.000 | All right, I'm going to read some of this here.

01:04:01.000 | Had the pleasure of sitting through a sales pitch

01:04:04.000 | for a pretty big productivity monitoring,

01:04:07.000 | why can't I say this word, monitoring?

01:04:10.000 | It's not a hard word.

01:04:11.000 | I'm not trying to say like zocdoc.com,

01:04:14.000 | productivity monitoring software suite this morning.

01:04:17.000 | Here's the expected basics of what this application does.

01:04:21.000 | Full key logging and mouse movement tracking

01:04:25.000 | takes a screenshot of your desktop every interval

01:04:28.000 | between 10 seconds to five minutes.

01:04:30.000 | Also part of every RMM I know.

01:04:33.000 | Keeps track of the programs you open and how often.

01:04:35.000 | This is also standard.

01:04:37.000 | Creates real-time recordings and heat maps

01:04:39.000 | of where you click in any program.

01:04:43.000 | All right, then he says, here's where it gets fun.

01:04:46.000 | It allows your manager to group you into a work category

01:04:49.000 | along with your coworkers.

01:04:50.000 | It then uses AI to create a productivity graph

01:04:54.000 | from all your mouse movement data

01:04:56.000 | and where you click, how fast you type,

01:04:59.000 | how often you use Backspace, the sites you visit,

01:05:01.000 | the programs you open, how many emails you send

01:05:04.000 | and compares all this to your coworkers' data

01:05:07.000 | in the same work category.

01:05:10.000 | It goes on and on.

01:05:12.000 | All right, this represents like a natural trajectory

01:05:16.000 | of "productivity monitoring software"

01:05:20.000 | in the current world of knowledge work,

01:05:22.000 | all of which tends to be based on this idea

01:05:26.000 | that what matters is activity

01:05:28.000 | and the boogeyman that you have to chase down

01:05:30.000 | and get rid of is people doing nothing.

01:05:33.000 | This productivity monitoring software creates a world

01:05:36.000 | where if you're doing lots of stuff on your computer,

01:05:38.000 | it's great for the company

01:05:40.000 | and there's a lot of freeloaders

01:05:42.000 | who like sit there sipping Slurpees

01:05:44.000 | and you got to figure them out with this software.

01:05:45.000 | If you can just get rid of those,

01:05:46.000 | you're going to be productive.

01:05:48.000 | This is, in my opinion, ridiculous.

01:05:52.000 | And it is what happens

01:05:54.000 | when we let software companies dictate to us

01:05:57.000 | what productivity means.

01:05:59.000 | The definition of productivity that they're dictating to us

01:06:01.000 | is productivity that can be helped and monitored

01:06:04.000 | by their tools which cost money, by their SaaS tools.

01:06:07.000 | But if we step back

01:06:08.000 | with even just a little bit of objectivity,

01:06:11.000 | this shift towards digital productivity monitoring

01:06:13.000 | in most jobs is crazily misguided.

01:06:17.000 | It would be the equivalent of going to the Ford factory

01:06:21.000 | in the early 20th century

01:06:23.000 | and saying, "Okay, we want to be better

01:06:25.000 | "at producing Model Ts,

01:06:27.000 | "and here's how we're going to do it."

01:06:29.000 | We've created this apparatus

01:06:31.000 | that looks at the arm movements

01:06:33.000 | of the different people involved in building the cars.

01:06:37.000 | And here's how it works.

01:06:38.000 | We've put bells on people's arms

01:06:40.000 | and they have different tones

01:06:42.000 | and we've trained people

01:06:44.000 | to recognize the different bell tones.

01:06:46.000 | And if we hear a particular bell,

01:06:48.000 | is it ringing enough?

01:06:50.000 | Well, maybe that person's just not helping to build cars

01:06:52.000 | and we can identify them.

01:06:53.000 | So everyone's going to have to make sure

01:06:55.000 | their bells are ringing all the time.

01:06:58.000 | This would be a crazily indirect way

01:07:00.000 | of trying to increase Model T production.

01:07:05.000 | What works better?

01:07:07.000 | Why don't we measure how fast we're producing Model Ts

01:07:10.000 | and then let's have a process we use to produce Model Ts.

01:07:13.000 | And then if we change the process,

01:07:15.000 | let's see if that produces more Model Ts.

01:07:18.000 | That's what led to the continuous motion assembly line,

01:07:20.000 | which is 10x more effective than the methods we were using before.

01:07:22.000 | Not this vaguely indirect,

01:07:24.000 | "Let's make sure people are moving more."

01:07:27.000 | And this becomes crystal clear

01:07:29.000 | when we think about this analogy to car manufacturing.

01:07:33.000 | In car manufacturing, it becomes clear,

01:07:35.000 | "Oh, it's completely misguided.

01:07:37.000 | "What you're trying to do here

01:07:38.000 | "is not figure out a way to do something better.

01:07:40.000 | "You're trying to figure out a way

01:07:42.000 | "to eliminate some narrow negative case you're worried about.

01:07:44.000 | "You're worried about the person

01:07:46.000 | "who's on your car manufacturing floor

01:07:48.000 | "who's just sitting there taking a nap.

01:07:50.000 | "So you have this negative boogeyman

01:07:52.000 | "you're really worried about,

01:07:53.000 | "and you're putting all of your energy to track that down.

01:07:55.000 | "Hey, if you're just doing nothing,

01:07:56.000 | "I'm not going to hear your bell,

01:07:57.000 | "then you're going to be in trouble."

01:07:59.000 | But what it doesn't focus on

01:08:00.000 | is the positive of trying to produce more stuff,

01:08:02.000 | which is ultimately the thing that more directly matters.

01:08:04.000 | I don't care as much about, "Is someone taking a nap?"

01:08:06.000 | What I care about is,

01:08:07.000 | "Are we producing Model Ts at a fast rate?"

01:08:09.000 | That's what matters to me.

01:08:11.000 | I don't get paid by car purchasers for lack of naps.

01:08:15.000 | I get paid for Model Ts.

01:08:17.000 | But in knowledge work,

01:08:19.000 | we have this terribly indirect way of doing things

01:08:23.000 | where we say, "Well, visible activity

01:08:25.000 | "is going to be our proxy for useful effort,

01:08:27.000 | "so let's just make sure there's no one

01:08:29.000 | "doing very little visible activity."

01:08:31.000 | But as I argue in my book, Slow Productivity,

01:08:34.000 | this is a disastrous way to think about

01:08:36.000 | actually getting things done.

01:08:38.000 | In knowledge work, we have to figure out

01:08:40.000 | how to measure the stuff that matters

01:08:44.000 | and the processes we use to produce that stuff

01:08:47.000 | and see if those processes work well or not.

01:08:50.000 | It has nothing to do with

01:08:51.000 | putting the proverbial bells on people's elbows

01:08:53.000 | just to make sure that their body's moving.

01:08:55.000 | Now, what about that negative?

01:08:57.000 | What about the freeloader problem?

01:08:59.000 | Almost anything you come up with

01:09:01.000 | for actually directly improving

01:09:03.000 | the quality of what you produce,

01:09:05.000 | almost anything you come up with

01:09:07.000 | as soon as you get very systematic

01:09:09.000 | about what should the processes be

01:09:11.000 | for how we produce stuff,

01:09:13.000 | almost any of these solutions

01:09:15.000 | make freeloaders really obvious.

01:09:17.000 | Because once you actually think about process,

01:09:19.000 | like here's the stuff we do,

01:09:21.000 | we tend to do things like

01:09:23.000 | external tracking of workload.

01:09:25.000 | We tend to do things like

01:09:27.000 | clarity and communication.

01:09:29.000 | Every other day, we sit down,

01:09:31.000 | you are working on this,

01:09:32.000 | where are you, where are you stuck?

01:09:34.000 | As opposed to just receiving a bunch of emails

01:09:35.000 | about a bunch of stuff.

01:09:36.000 | I know what you're working on,

01:09:37.000 | I want to know what you need,

01:09:38.000 | what you did, what you need.

01:09:40.000 | Like that is a situation, for example,

01:09:42.000 | in which it's very hard to be

01:09:44.000 | the car worker not moving your arms.

01:09:46.000 | I don't need to be tracking your computer

01:09:48.000 | or seeing if your mouse is moving.

01:09:50.000 | It's where's the goods?

01:09:52.000 | You didn't do this.

01:09:53.000 | It's clear 10 minutes before this meeting

01:09:55.000 | you put some crap together.

01:09:57.000 | So when you get more systematic,

01:09:59.000 | the freeloader problem goes away.

01:10:01.000 | But you also free people

01:10:03.000 | from this counterproductive

01:10:05.000 | surveillance culture approach,

01:10:07.000 | which is more about managers being really mad

01:10:09.000 | and managing some negative

01:10:10.000 | than it is about trying to get more things done.

01:10:13.000 | So the equivalent of the assembly line

01:10:14.000 | in knowledge work is like,

01:10:15.000 | let's get more focused on what we produce,

01:10:18.000 | let's have external workload management,

01:10:21.000 | let's structure communication

01:10:22.000 | so people aren't context shifting,

01:10:23.000 | and let's trade accessibility for accountability.

01:10:26.000 | This is what the software industry did

01:10:27.000 | when they moved towards agile methodologies.

01:10:29.000 | They don't just email each other like,

01:10:30.000 | hey, could you work on this feature?

01:10:32.000 | What about that feature?

01:10:33.000 | And who's working on this?

01:10:34.000 | No, they track what features need to be done.

01:10:36.000 | Who's working on what?

01:10:37.000 | You're working on this.

01:10:38.000 | Only work on this.

01:10:40.000 | How long do you need, two days?

01:10:41.000 | Great, get it done in two days.

01:10:42.000 | We'll check back in and figure out

01:10:43.000 | what you should work on next.

01:10:45.000 | Huge flexibility in how work is executed.

01:10:47.000 | Very little surveillance.

01:10:48.000 | But on the other hand,

01:10:49.000 | very few freeloaders,

01:10:50.000 | because it becomes obvious pretty quick,

01:10:52.000 | you've been very nonproductive.

01:10:54.000 | You're not getting these things done for us.

01:10:57.000 | So what we need to care about

01:10:59.000 | is real processes

01:11:01.000 | that take into account

01:11:02.000 | how the human brain actually works

01:11:04.000 | and are more focused on results

01:11:06.000 | than they are these crude proxies

01:11:08.000 | for useful effort.

01:11:10.000 | So the type of productivity monitoring software

01:11:12.000 | talked about in this Reddit thread

01:11:14.000 | is exactly the wrong direction to go.

01:11:17.000 | It's putting the bells on the forward workers

01:11:19.000 | instead of innovating the assembly line.

01:11:22.000 | It is missing the forest for the trees.

01:11:25.000 | It is not going to make your company more productive.

01:11:27.000 | It's just going to make people more miserable.

01:11:29.000 | I'm not surprised that software companies

01:11:31.000 | are pitching this

01:11:32.000 | because this is something you can write software from

01:11:33.000 | and throw some AI at it

01:11:34.000 | so it seems like it's a value add

01:11:36.000 | and you can charge $12 a seat

01:11:38.000 | with your SaaS solution.

01:11:39.000 | The companies themselves say

01:11:40.000 | it's not the software.

01:11:41.000 | The software companies

01:11:42.000 | aren't going to tell them what productivity is.

01:11:43.000 | We know our business.

01:11:44.000 | Let's get serious about producing stuff that matters.

01:11:47.000 | Even if structuring work is going to be a pain,

01:11:49.000 | it's better than all this nonsense.

01:11:52.000 | So there you go.

01:11:53.000 | It's a little bit of a rant,

01:11:54.000 | but productivity monitoring software

01:11:55.000 | is going in the absolute wrong direction.

01:11:57.000 | And of course, let me connect this

01:11:58.000 | like we're doing all episode back to digital.

01:12:01.000 | This is all a problem

01:12:03.000 | of the digital environment around knowledge work

01:12:05.000 | where there's so many different things

01:12:07.000 | you could be working on

01:12:08.000 | and there's such ease

01:12:09.000 | in just passing stuff on along

01:12:10.000 | and we get into this sort of

01:12:11.000 | pseudo-productive, hyperactive, hive mind environment

01:12:13.000 | where everyone just rock and rolls

01:12:14.000 | and emails everyone.

01:12:15.000 | And in that world,

01:12:16.000 | what else can you do

01:12:17.000 | except for say like,

01:12:18.000 | "Well, let's just get rid of people not participating."

01:12:21.000 | But this is all a side effect

01:12:22.000 | of digital knowledge work.

01:12:24.000 | It caught us off guard.

01:12:26.000 | We didn't know how to handle it

01:12:27.000 | and we need better tools

01:12:29.000 | than something like monitoring software.

01:12:33.000 | All right.

01:12:34.000 | All right, there we go.

01:12:35.000 | That is our episode for today.

01:12:38.000 | We covered, I guess I could say,

01:12:39.000 | everything, Jesse.

01:12:41.000 | Because in theory,

01:12:42.000 | I've touched on almost every major topic

01:12:43.000 | I've talked about.

01:12:44.000 | I did leave out a whole section of advice

01:12:46.000 | about skeletons.

01:12:47.000 | I do have a lot of thoughts about that.

01:12:50.000 | I also had another whole section of advice

01:12:52.000 | about Brandon Sanderson

01:12:54.000 | and his book, "Name of the Wind."

01:12:57.000 | This is a good time to tell people, by the way,

01:12:58.000 | if you have corrections about things I've said,

01:13:00.000 | like misattributing authors to books,

01:13:02.000 | jesse@calnewport.com.

01:13:03.000 | He loves to hear about them.

01:13:04.000 | - I do.

01:13:05.000 | - I got a couple.

01:13:06.000 | I get those emails.

01:13:07.000 | We must have mentioned Brandon recently

01:13:09.000 | because I got another

01:13:10.000 | "Brandon didn't write 'Name of the Wind' email"

01:13:12.000 | kind of recently.

01:13:14.000 | It's my favorite type of emails.

01:13:16.000 | All right.

01:13:17.000 | That's all we have for today.

01:13:18.000 | We'll be back next week with another episode.

01:13:20.000 | I guess this is coming out early December, right?

01:13:23.000 | - Yes.

01:13:24.000 | - All right.

01:13:25.000 | So we'll do the November books.

01:13:26.000 | I forgot to bring them today.

01:13:27.000 | We're recording this

01:13:28.000 | pretty early in the week in November,

01:13:30.000 | so I didn't think about it.

01:13:31.000 | But I will do the books I read in November.

01:13:33.000 | We'll do those at the end of the next episode.

01:13:35.000 | Okay?

01:13:36.000 | Keep up with your thrillers

01:13:37.000 | if you're doing Thriller December,

01:13:38.000 | and we will see you next week.

01:13:39.000 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:13:41.000 | (upbeat music)

01:13:44.000 | Hey, if you enjoyed the questions today

01:13:46.000 | that involved your job

01:13:48.000 | and trying to figure out the deep life

01:13:49.000 | and how they fit into the deep life,

01:13:51.000 | I think you'll also like episode 320,

01:13:54.000 | which is titled Jobs and the Deep Life.

01:13:57.000 | Check it out.

01:13:58.000 | So there's this period.

01:13:59.000 | It was less than a week,

01:14:00.000 | but it was a period in which

01:14:01.000 | I was constantly using my phone.

01:14:02.000 | It punctuated everything

01:14:03.000 | that was going on in my life.

01:14:04.000 | And I'll tell you,

01:14:05.000 | here's my review of that period.

01:14:07.000 | It was terrible.

My Honest Advice For Someone Who Wants Freedom & Productivity In 2025 | Cal Newport

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