How To Disappear To Transform Yourself

00:00:00.000 | So I'm recording this episode a few days after the American presidential election.

00:00:06.280 | For those of us like me who study technology and its impact on our lives, elections can

00:00:11.520 | be particularly relevant and particularly worrisome.

00:00:17.400 | Now why is that?

00:00:18.400 | It's because the dynamics of the lead up to elections, especially American presidential

00:00:22.760 | elections, have a way of heightening a lot of the specific dynamics that make modern

00:00:28.520 | technology problematic.

00:00:30.000 | Let me be very specific about this.

00:00:34.160 | First, the environment in the lead up to an election amplifies the interruptive nature

00:00:42.080 | of digital content.

00:00:43.940 | So what I mean by that is the interruptive nature of digital content is the idea that

00:00:47.820 | you feel compelled to check in on, say, a social media feed or an online news site or

00:00:53.600 | newsletter subscriptions.

00:00:54.940 | You feel a need to check in on it during the middle of other things.

00:00:58.160 | It thus interrupts whatever you're working on.

00:01:01.220 | During elections, this trend or this poll becomes much more heightened because there

00:01:06.480 | is this very strong sense that there could be at any moment highly salient breaking news.

00:01:12.880 | And it could be something that happened that could change the election, or it could be

00:01:15.760 | a particular hot take that you want to know about because it's going to make you happy

00:01:21.200 | or a take that's going to make you really upset about what's going on.

00:01:25.480 | Poll numbers is a classic example of these.

00:01:28.800 | It's intermittent reinforcement.

00:01:29.960 | They could drop at any moment and someone could be commenting on them.

00:01:33.680 | So during election seasons, this idea that I need to pull out that phone one more time,

00:01:38.480 | that becomes extra strong.

00:01:40.800 | Why is that a problem?

00:01:41.800 | Because context switching is an expensive neural operation.

00:01:45.700 | When you turn your attention from the conversation that you're having from the book you're trying

00:01:49.320 | to read, the memo you're trying to write, the meeting you're trying to pay attention

00:01:53.960 | to, when you switch your attention from that to a phone and you see something that's highly

00:01:57.680 | salient and emotionally arousing, it triggers an expensive cognitive context shift within

00:02:03.500 | your own head.

00:02:04.640 | These operations can take five, 10, up to 15 or 20 minutes for your mind to completely

00:02:08.560 | change its cognitive context, but you're not giving it time to do that.

00:02:12.320 | You're glancing, you're initiating, and then you're returning to what you're doing before.

00:02:18.400 | You've triggered this expensive change of where your mind is focused and you abort that

00:02:22.700 | change and try to bring it back to what you're doing before, and before your attention can

00:02:26.080 | fully settle on what you were actually trying to do, you check something else and initiate

00:02:29.040 | a new unrelated change.

00:02:30.760 | The result is an incoherent cognitive context.

00:02:34.620 | You feel mentally exhausted and drained.

00:02:37.240 | That feeling that people associate with the sort of pre-election period, a big part of

00:02:43.560 | that is actually an exhausted brain.

00:02:46.240 | It can't keep switching back cognitive context.

00:02:49.840 | The second issue that's amplified with technology during the pre-election season is that the

00:02:54.440 | emotional salience of the content you're looking at is amplified.

00:03:00.800 | That is, its ability to create a strong emotional reaction is much more heightened than a typical

00:03:08.220 | content cycle.

00:03:09.560 | You're much more likely to see something that is going to make you arouse in the sense of

00:03:14.880 | very happy, very upset, outraged, afraid, frustrated, panicky, dread.

00:03:24.800 | Why this happens is because there's always a competition going on to create the content

00:03:29.600 | that's going to move to the top of the curation wars.

00:03:32.960 | You have to remember, if you're running a platform like Twitter, there's hundreds of

00:03:37.240 | millions of tweets being generated a day.

00:03:39.900 | The average user is going to see a couple hundred.

00:03:42.900 | There's this intense informational Darwinian battle for what actually makes it to your

00:03:47.520 | attention.

00:03:48.840 | It's somewhat algorithmic.

00:03:49.840 | A lot of it actually has to do with more cybernetic dynamics, such as amplification through power

00:03:56.800 | law, expanding follower graphs.

00:03:58.440 | I actually wrote a whole New Yorker piece about this two years ago, where I got into

00:04:02.440 | how Twitter works and selects content.

00:04:04.520 | It's not just digital.

00:04:06.920 | It's people plus digital.

00:04:08.400 | The point is, it's an incredibly complex competition.

00:04:11.880 | The things that are most arousing tend to win.

00:04:14.800 | You have a lot of competition to win.

00:04:16.200 | A lot of people are trying to gain and win the attention game during the election, so

00:04:19.400 | they're really pushing and trying all sorts of different angles to get to the top of this

00:04:24.440 | catch-your-attention tournament.

00:04:27.440 | As a result, the stuff you see in election cycle just hits that nervous system and is

00:04:33.280 | very innervating.

00:04:35.600 | That itself is also very draining and exhausting.

00:04:41.040 | Now that the election is over and our minds are hopelessly scrambled and our nervous systems

00:04:46.720 | are strung out, what should we, listeners of this podcast, conscious users of technologies

00:04:54.120 | and seekers of the deep life, what do we do?

00:04:57.000 | Well, I wrote an essay about this for my newsletter at calnewport.com.

00:05:02.420 | It has a big proposal.

00:05:03.420 | I think it's the right proposal, and that's what I want to go through today in today's

00:05:08.200 | deep dive.

00:05:09.920 | If you're watching this episode instead of just listening, you'll see I have loaded that

00:05:14.240 | essay up on my screen here.

00:05:17.600 | This was on calnewport.com.

00:05:18.880 | It was also sent to people who subscribe to my email newsletter.

00:05:23.740 | The title of this piece is "After You Vote, Unplug."

00:05:30.800 | I want to start with the suggestion.

00:05:33.840 | Here's the meat of what I'm suggesting.

00:05:35.360 | I'm going to read here from the article.

00:05:38.360 | Here I have a suggestion that I think could be healing for all points of the political

00:05:42.880 | spectrum.

00:05:43.880 | "Use the stress of this election to be the final push needed to step away from the exhausting

00:05:48.760 | digital chatter that's been dominating your brain."

00:05:54.000 | What I'm suggesting in this article is in the post-election period, you take a substantial

00:06:01.400 | break from these digital content sources that have been so exhausting and draining over

00:06:07.520 | the past few months.

00:06:10.040 | Use the election as an excuse to at least temporarily reform your relationship with

00:06:16.480 | the digital.

00:06:18.480 | What does that mean, "step away"?

00:06:21.680 | I have four specific suggestions I give in the article.

00:06:25.800 | Number one, I say take a break from social media.

00:06:27.700 | I mean that.

00:06:28.880 | Stop looking at it.

00:06:29.880 | Stop posting.

00:06:31.880 | Just go right now, cold turkey, I mean, unless you are a political commentator who makes

00:06:40.160 | a living off of like Twitter commentary in your sub stack, so basically, unless you're

00:06:45.120 | like Matthew Yglesias, take a break from social media.

00:06:50.040 | Don't look at it.

00:06:51.040 | Take the apps off your phone, right, so they're just not there.

00:06:54.800 | Log out on your computer, so it's not easy on Safari on your phone just to go to the

00:06:58.200 | sites and look in it.

00:07:00.280 | Basically don't post anything on it.

00:07:02.680 | Don't seek out hot takes on it.

00:07:04.320 | As we'll soon cover, there's better places to get information right now, and you don't

00:07:08.800 | need information all the time.

00:07:11.060 | Social media, I think, is probably the worst of the offenders in terms of a negative physiological

00:07:17.040 | and psychological impact on you during the election season because of the dynamics we

00:07:21.040 | just discussed.

00:07:22.040 | Social media is sort of the worst offender, so I have the strongest suggestion there.

00:07:26.040 | Take a break.

00:07:27.040 | All right, suggestion number two, and I'm reading from the article here, stop listening

00:07:33.640 | to news podcasts.

00:07:34.640 | Jesse, we've got to be really clear.

00:07:37.800 | This is not a news podcast.

00:07:40.000 | This podcast is the anecdote, right?

00:07:41.640 | This will be the anecdote to an antidote, an anecdote, and we'll tell some anecdotes,

00:07:47.200 | but it's the antidote to the news podcast.

00:07:50.400 | I'm a fan of news podcasts, by the way.

00:07:53.040 | I think it's fantastic.

00:07:54.900 | It's like hearkening back to the days where you would listen to the radio news, but we've

00:08:00.240 | got to take a break from it now.

00:08:03.160 | You've been so immersed in this information, and what you want to take a break from is

00:08:08.600 | just people having just these conversations about what's happening and how they feel about

00:08:15.120 | it.

00:08:16.120 | You don't need to be immersed further in the trauma or celebration, depending on what side

00:08:21.760 | of the political spectrum you are right now, with strangers.

00:08:24.160 | We're going to take a temporary break from news podcasts.

00:08:26.440 | That's both news Roundup style podcasts, like The Daily, or if you're center right, like

00:08:31.560 | The Dispatch, but also like the News Analysis podcast or the Independent Media podcast,

00:08:36.240 | so Barry Weiss's Honestly podcast, or whatever she calls it now, where people are talking

00:08:42.060 | about the news.

00:08:43.060 | We're taking a temporary break from these.

00:08:44.360 | Not forever.

00:08:45.360 | We're taking a temporary break.

00:08:46.360 | All right.

00:08:47.360 | Third suggestion.

00:08:48.360 | Unsubscribe, at least for a while, from the political newsletters clogging your inbox

00:08:53.240 | with their hot takes and tired infighting.

00:08:55.360 | This might be more of a DC thing.

00:08:56.680 | I don't know, Jesse, this might be something that normal people don't do, but here in DC,

00:09:01.160 | people subscribe to email newsletters that have all these insider hot takes on political

00:09:05.880 | stuff.

00:09:06.880 | You know what I mean?

00:09:07.880 | I mean, there's so many of them around here because there's so many political experts

00:09:12.960 | here and this is a good business or job for them or whatever.

00:09:17.440 | If you subscribe to these, so you get like the Silver Bulletin or, you know, Jonah Goldberg

00:09:24.120 | or whatever it is, this is a good time to temporarily take a break.

00:09:27.800 | We're trying to, again, get away from this content and subject matter that we're associating

00:09:34.480 | with being burnt out, with being drained.

00:09:37.120 | Again, we're not, we're coming back to this.

00:09:39.040 | We're not putting these people out of business.

00:09:40.040 | We're taking a break.

00:09:41.040 | All right.

00:09:42.040 | Finally, this is the most either confusing or most controversial, so I'm going to read

00:09:48.000 | here specifically.

00:09:50.200 | I suggest you switch to a slower pace of media consumption with the formats that remain.

00:09:56.920 | Don't laugh at this suggestion because I'm actually serious.

00:09:59.680 | Consider picking up the occasional old-fashioned printed newspaper free from algorithmic optimization

00:10:03.920 | and clickbait curation at your local coffee shop or library to check in all at once on

00:10:09.000 | anything major going on in the world.

00:10:10.880 | I think I might set up a Sunday only paper subscription as my main source of news for

00:10:15.600 | the rest of the fall.

00:10:18.080 | So you want to get some news still, I think that's fine.

00:10:22.920 | It's also would be stressful to be cut off completely from the world during a time, especially

00:10:28.720 | in our country, of the turmoil of a post-election period, especially like a highly fraught election

00:10:33.680 | like we just went through.

00:10:34.920 | But I'm saying we are slowing down that consumption is what I'm suggesting.

00:10:39.160 | We're not on social media.

00:10:40.680 | We're not getting in newsletters.

00:10:41.680 | We're not getting in podcasts.

00:10:42.680 | I'm saying pick up a newspaper.

00:10:44.360 | I say coffee shop because, I don't know if you've seen this Jesse, Starbucks sells newspapers.

00:10:48.080 | It's interesting, they're there, right?

00:10:50.960 | Your library has the newspaper every day.

00:10:53.040 | So like any day you could walk by the library and sit down and read the front page of the

00:10:58.600 | newspaper.

00:10:59.600 | I am, I don't get any paper newspaper, but I am considering signing up for a Sunday only

00:11:04.360 | paper subscription for the near future.

00:11:08.200 | And for me, I will read section A of that paper on Sundays.

00:11:14.040 | This gives you the news.

00:11:15.400 | You will be up to date.

00:11:16.400 | In fact, you will be more up to date on the news of the country and the world doing that

00:11:21.960 | than someone who's on their phone all the time because the newspaper is not algorithmic.

00:11:28.520 | A newspaper has no way of customizing what you see on the front page to your particular

00:11:34.880 | interest and therefore keeping out of your sight stuff that you don't have a preexisting

00:11:38.320 | interest in.

00:11:39.320 | They just show you the articles.

00:11:41.660 | You are going to see what's happening in Turkey, for example, and Kurdistan and the missile

00:11:49.280 | barrages.

00:11:50.280 | You might not have ever heard about that because it's not big on social media.

00:11:52.400 | You're going to hear about it, right?

00:11:54.280 | You're going to hear more digested takes, okay?

00:11:56.800 | It's like this is covering, I don't need to be TikTok up to the beat on all the back and

00:12:01.600 | forth between the new administration and the old administration in America.

00:12:05.680 | Why don't I just read an article about what was the most important thing that happened?

00:12:09.280 | Oh, they had an argument about this.

00:12:10.400 | I see it.

00:12:11.400 | I hear their quotes.

00:12:12.400 | Now I'm done.

00:12:13.680 | You're taking in news.

00:12:15.640 | You're not less informed, but the footprint of this news on your day-to-day attentional

00:12:20.000 | landscape is now greatly reduced.

00:12:43.440 | All right, that's my suggestion about what to take out of your life.

00:12:56.320 | What should you then do with the newfound free attention?

00:12:59.680 | I don't even say free time so much as free attention.

00:13:02.600 | What you're freeing up here is attention autonomy when you're not constantly looking at the

00:13:08.120 | phone.

00:13:09.120 | What you do with this?

00:13:10.120 | Well, in the article I talk about, I'll read it here, equally important is how you redirect

00:13:16.920 | your newly liberated attention.

00:13:20.360 | Consider aiming it toward real community with real people who actually live near you to

00:13:26.440 | retrain your brain to stop thinking of the world as hopelessly fractured into vicious

00:13:31.160 | tribes.

00:13:33.760 | And I say in the article, and I guess I should say this right now on the podcast, but if

00:13:37.760 | right now you're scouring this post to seek evidence as to whether I'm friend or foe,

00:13:44.400 | then you're already severely suffering from this malady.

00:13:48.160 | When you're online, it's all about the bad and the good.

00:13:52.120 | And not just the bad and the good, but making sure that you're sufficiently signaling to

00:13:55.000 | your team that you're on their team.

00:13:56.520 | This becomes the most important thing.

00:13:59.080 | And to make your team's boundaries stronger, you have to make the other team be defined

00:14:04.140 | increasingly dire and irredeemable.

00:14:09.640 | That becomes your reality.

00:14:12.000 | When you're on that digital world, that becomes your reality.

00:14:15.120 | You have a hate in your heart for people you've never met.

00:14:20.120 | You see people, when you're on social media so much, you see people that are suspicious.

00:14:24.520 | What team are they on?

00:14:25.520 | And I'm looking for signs to try to signify it.

00:14:28.000 | You'd be surprised or maybe not by how much sort of upset I would say communication I

00:14:36.480 | get about why aren't you specifically signaling your allegiance to this particular issue I

00:14:42.800 | care about.

00:14:44.120 | You not signaling publicly allegiance to the thing I care about to me, to the people writing

00:14:48.300 | in is very difficult for them.

00:14:50.280 | That is a weird mindset.

00:14:53.240 | Until like 10 years ago, it is a weird way to go through the world.

00:14:58.880 | You wouldn't walk into the supermarket in 1985 and be like, "You better tell me whether

00:15:04.680 | or not you voted for Reagan, and if you didn't vote for Reagan, why aren't you going around

00:15:08.440 | talking about how much of a supporter of Jimmy Carter you are?"

00:15:11.820 | It's a weird thing that digital media created, and we don't realize it's overcoming our world.

00:15:16.280 | So go spend time with real people, people you can see, people that you live with, doing

00:15:21.440 | things with them that's unrelated to like whatever fights are going on online, it rewires

00:15:25.560 | your perception of the world.

00:15:28.720 | People who spend time with real people in real situations have a lot harder time seeing

00:15:32.640 | the world through a lens of hatred, because that's how we're wired to live, we're wired

00:15:39.400 | to cooperate.

00:15:40.400 | We talked about the Morris book "Tribal" when I did my roundup of books I read last month,

00:15:46.200 | he argues that the human tribal instinct is one of actual cooperation, that's what allowed

00:15:51.160 | Homo sapiens to succeed, is that we can cooperate and empathize with people that we don't know,

00:15:57.160 | they're not in our close family or kin, and that's what allowed Homo sapiens to succeed

00:16:00.660 | at a global level where other closely related hominid species did not, because they basically

00:16:07.480 | just treated everyone.

00:16:08.480 | They had no way of cooperating with people that wasn't direct kin, they would just kill

00:16:11.960 | them, and so like the Neanderthals could never actually grow large trade networks or cities

00:16:17.680 | or the types of things Homo sapiens do, lean into that human instinct, be around real people,

00:16:22.200 | it will really retrain, you'll just feel happier, you'll feel less upset.

00:16:26.080 | Another suggestion, consider reading books again.

00:16:31.040 | There's a pleasure in the conquest of deep ideas that's been lost as we thrashed in digital

00:16:35.320 | sea of churning distraction.

00:16:38.560 | Books slow down your mind, books give you a deeper understanding of issue than you'll

00:16:44.960 | get online, books challenge your perceptions or sharpen and sophisticate your understandings

00:16:51.000 | and beliefs in ways they couldn't before, books change the way you understand the world.

00:16:57.120 | So go back to reading more books, books about whatever, just as a principle, but also if

00:17:02.440 | you're having a strong reaction to the election, the right way in my opinion to try to make

00:17:09.720 | sense, you feel like you don't understand the world, you don't understand our country.

00:17:16.080 | The right way to make sense of things is not trying to sift through 50,000 hot takes or

00:17:23.880 | 500 different podcast interviews with people pontificating and hope that sort of out of

00:17:29.880 | that morass of like highly engaging, random attention seeking content, better understanding

00:17:37.480 | will come.

00:17:38.480 | It's, I think, the slow encounter with relevant ideas and books are the way to do it.

00:17:45.600 | Read books you think are going to help you better understand what's going on in your

00:17:48.600 | country and it's a slower, it feels meaningful.

00:17:54.360 | I went through this in 2016, I remember doing this very clearly, that simpler time, 2016

00:18:02.520 | Jesse.

00:18:03.520 | So remember we're coming out of eight years of Obama, you know, hope, red, blue.

00:18:09.000 | And if you were, you know, living in a coastal city and you're like an academic, like I was,

00:18:12.840 | like everything's great.

00:18:13.840 | Everyone's happy.

00:18:14.840 | Obama's awesome.

00:18:15.840 | There's like some weird tea party people, but I think they just like tri-corner hats

00:18:20.160 | and like that was just our world.

00:18:21.840 | And then so the 2016 Trump victory, much more so I think than the 2024 one was super surprising.

00:18:30.680 | And I remember having this feeling, it's just, you know, I've East coast intellectual my

00:18:35.640 | whole life of bafflement.

00:18:37.640 | I remember that like, I don't understand.

00:18:41.360 | I'm a Obama supporter, read the New York times.

00:18:44.240 | I don't understand how anyone could vote for Donald Trump.

00:18:46.280 | I remember having this bafflement, right?

00:18:48.220 | Because I just had never been exposed to, you know, whatever that part, what was going

00:18:53.000 | on.

00:18:54.000 | I had no empathy with the mindset.

00:18:58.840 | And so what I did, because I'm a nerd this way, is I got a bunch of books, I got a bunch

00:19:05.820 | of books.

00:19:06.820 | And I was like, I'm going to read.

00:19:07.820 | And I read on the left and the right, all like center left, center right stuff, right?

00:19:10.980 | Because I like reactionary far right stuff is not interesting to me.

00:19:13.900 | And I wasn't that interested in like far left type stuff or whatever, but I was reading.

00:19:18.820 | And I don't remember, I remember some of the books, but not like I remember reading.

00:19:24.420 | Like Thomas Franks had this book called Listen Liberal that was talking about the evolution

00:19:29.180 | of the Democratic Party from its working class coalition.

00:19:33.220 | And then in the post Nixon era, how it moved and realigned around more like salaried economic

00:19:39.540 | elites like lawyers and had, you know, financiers and how this happened sort of during the Clinton

00:19:44.540 | era.

00:19:46.140 | And this movement happened in part because the Democratic Party was upset with their

00:19:51.380 | working class base because of support for Vietnam and lack of support for civil rights.

00:19:56.620 | And it was like interesting.

00:19:57.620 | I was, I read some, Yuval Levin had a book coming from the center right.

00:20:01.140 | I remember reading that book.

00:20:02.260 | I was reading these books to try to understand like how did the modern right feel?

00:20:07.260 | What had happened?

00:20:08.260 | What's going on with the modern left?

00:20:09.260 | I remember it was very calming because reading is slow and it calms the nervous system and

00:20:15.980 | you feel like the structures of knowledge are complicating themselves and it feels productive,

00:20:23.860 | but it's sort of a emotional and in some sense for me it was very helpful.

00:20:28.740 | I remember it was like something to do and what I learned, it also changed, like it changed

00:20:35.380 | my perception of the world in ways that I think was useful for me.

00:20:40.540 | The world became a more complicated place in a way that I think was useful.

00:20:44.440 | So anyways, books, read, don't scroll, read, don't scroll, that's the right way.

00:20:50.540 | Same if you're on the right as well.

00:20:53.380 | Let's say like you're super celebratory or this or that.

00:20:56.500 | It's gratuitous to just say I'm going to just bathe in people dunking online.

00:21:08.260 | Understand what's going on with my party, what is the potential positive future, what

00:21:12.980 | are the traps to avoid, what's happening, read and get into the complexity of what's

00:21:20.740 | going on.

00:21:23.620 | Reading slows things down, it makes the world richer, it gets rid of the pot nerves.

00:21:33.100 | People in a library are not stressed, being around books is not stressful, so I suggest

00:21:37.260 | reading.

00:21:38.500 | Final suggestion from the book, spend more time in nature to discover that despite the

00:21:43.780 | apocalyptic tenor of the online world, its analog counterpart persists and is beautiful.

00:21:49.420 | We feel good when we're in nature, sunshine, walking a nature trail, it just resets our

00:21:58.460 | nervous systems which have been artificially put out of whack because of the digital.

00:22:03.580 | Go outside, go outside this fall, go outside this winter.

00:22:10.380 | That makes a big difference.

00:22:11.380 | All right, so there are my advice, right?

00:22:14.020 | So okay, quick summary, the suggestions of what to temporarily walk away from, social

00:22:18.740 | media, political podcasts, political newspapers, and to move to slower media consumption, things

00:22:24.940 | to do to fill this newly liberated attention, read books, meet real people, and spend more

00:22:30.420 | time outside.

00:22:33.500 | Now how long should we do this?

00:22:35.020 | Because again, I said I'm not talking about a permanent disconnect from like political

00:22:39.380 | news sources.

00:22:40.740 | Here is the good news about the American election schedule.

00:22:46.660 | We do these elections in November, but nothing changes till January, right?

00:22:51.620 | So there's no like to do in other countries.

00:22:54.860 | We have this election in November, next week, you know, the new person takes over.

00:22:59.860 | So like we, and whether we're like worried or celebrating this new person, we really

00:23:03.820 | want to be up to date on like what's happening, what they're doing, it really matters.

00:23:06.680 | We have in the American system this break.

00:23:09.200 | Nothing can really happen between November and January except for pontification.

00:23:15.220 | Nothing can really happen except for the search for clicks, except for the challenge online

00:23:20.940 | to win the attention curation tournament.

00:23:25.940 | So take a break till the new year.

00:23:27.380 | I think that's the right timing.

00:23:29.300 | You're not missing much.

00:23:30.600 | You got holidays that are centered on family.

00:23:33.460 | We got Thanksgiving.

00:23:34.900 | We got Christmas.

00:23:35.900 | I'm not sure if you know this, but Hanukkah is starting on the same, on Christmas day

00:23:41.020 | or Christmas Eve or Christmas day.

00:23:42.780 | Oh really?

00:23:43.780 | Yeah.

00:23:44.780 | So it's a rare, a rare confluence of those two things.

00:23:49.500 | We got that going on.

00:23:50.500 | We got more importantly than all three of those, baseball hot stove season.

00:23:55.780 | Juan Soto is meeting with Steve Cohen, everyone.

00:23:59.640 | This is something you could be paying attention to right now.

00:24:01.820 | I think that's good to pay attention to.

00:24:03.820 | Someone actually wrote me back, Jesse, when I posted this newsletter and they wrote me

00:24:07.420 | back of like, yeah, I've been doing this.

00:24:10.620 | And a lot of people actually, by the way, they wrote me back and said they started this

00:24:14.400 | like a few weeks before the election.

00:24:15.900 | They were just done.

00:24:16.900 | Right.

00:24:17.900 | And they're kind of in a happier place than any of us right now, probably.

00:24:20.340 | But someone wrote back and they were like, I've been doing it for two weeks, but one

00:24:23.020 | of the things I've been struggling with is sports news.

00:24:24.980 | And I was like, oh no, no, no, that's, that's good.

00:24:28.340 | Actually you want to spend time with sports news.

00:24:29.980 | That's the solution to healing because I need my baseball trade rumors.

00:24:33.260 | All right.

00:24:34.260 | So do it for the, do it for the fall.

00:24:35.860 | And then the new year you can reevaluate.

00:24:38.780 | If you want to reevaluate smartly, maybe reread my book, Digital Minimalism, and it'll talk

00:24:42.780 | about how to, how to reenter technology into your life after a break.

00:24:46.060 | But the main thing I want to suggest is just take this political break and then do this

00:24:49.220 | act of alternative activities.

00:24:50.580 | Do this pretty hardcore for the rest of November, for all December, just let your body reset,

00:24:56.740 | let your mind reset and revisit the world of politics in a more serious way in the new

00:25:01.740 | year.

00:25:02.740 | So let me end this deep dive by reading the paragraph that ended this article.

00:25:08.360 | The Republic will still stand without our constant digital vigilance, but it's unclear

00:25:14.480 | if our mental health can survive the status quo.

00:25:17.780 | And I really believe that.

00:25:20.060 | So let's all unplug.

00:25:21.060 | Time to take a break.

00:25:24.340 | I have a couple of follow-up questions.

00:25:26.220 | Yeah.

00:25:27.220 | What I think about the Met's chance of signing Juan Soto.

00:25:29.460 | It's a good question.

00:25:31.060 | Pretty strong actually.

00:25:32.140 | I think.

00:25:33.140 | I think you'll spend whatever.

00:25:34.140 | Yeah.

00:25:35.140 | Yeah.

00:25:36.140 | I agree.

00:25:37.140 | I think it's a good time though.

00:25:38.140 | And at least it's like we get to see Harper a lot still.

00:25:40.320 | So I guess that'd be fun.

00:25:41.320 | The thing that Mad Dog always says is how the free agency takes so long in baseball.

00:25:46.720 | It's so drawn out and it's like horrible.

00:25:49.200 | Yeah.

00:25:50.200 | But anyway, did you use chat GPT to make that image?

00:25:54.000 | Yeah.

00:25:55.000 | I could tell.

00:25:56.000 | I was just messing around with that.

00:25:57.000 | Isn't it creepy?

00:25:58.600 | They all look the same, but I could tell you probably put like, I want a voting sticker

00:26:01.720 | and then like.

00:26:02.720 | I just curious.

00:26:03.720 | Yeah.

00:26:04.720 | I was just curious.

00:26:05.760 | I don't think I'll be using chat GPT for most images in the world because here, let me load

00:26:09.380 | this on the screen.

00:26:10.380 | If people are watching, I'll make it big.

00:26:11.960 | It's so creepy.

00:26:13.160 | They all look the same.

00:26:14.160 | You can tell.

00:26:15.160 | But let me show you like the things that are creepy.

00:26:16.360 | Like yeah, there's an I voted sticker, but the font is weird, right?

00:26:21.560 | Like it's kind of weird and gothic and there's someone reading, but her face looks weird.

00:26:26.360 | Like when I look at this picture, so if you're just listening, there's a young woman reading

00:26:31.000 | a book by a Creek with an I voted sticker on conceptually.

00:26:35.500 | This is like a good image for this article.

00:26:37.200 | Like you, you, because the, the thing, the title was after you vote on plug.

00:26:40.520 | So it's like, I went from voting to I'm reading a book by a Creek.

00:26:44.680 | But everything about this picture screams that if that, that young woman turned slowly

00:26:50.200 | to look at the camera, she would like her mouth would be sewed shut and her eyes would

00:26:55.040 | be red.

00:26:56.040 | You know what I mean?

00:26:57.040 | Like just, you feel like this is the setup of a creepy scene in like a Blumhouse movie

00:27:07.140 | or that she's just like that, like she's just reading there and it zooms out and it's just

00:27:13.260 | corpses everywhere.

00:27:14.260 | Like, don't you get that sense?

00:27:15.820 | Yeah.

00:27:16.820 | Yeah.

00:27:17.820 | She's on a mountain of corpses.

00:27:18.820 | Um, she, she zooms out and like, uh, there's some sort of like dinosaur in the water.

00:27:24.700 | I don't know, man, AI makes creepy pictures.

00:27:27.900 | Uh, a couple other quick questions.

00:27:30.180 | I thought you did get the newspaper every day.

00:27:31.900 | I used to, we used to get the post.

00:27:33.820 | Okay.

00:27:34.820 | You stopped that.

00:27:35.820 | We weren't keeping up.

00:27:36.820 | Okay.

00:27:37.820 | It was too much news.

00:27:38.820 | And then it was, it was feeling wasteful.

00:27:39.820 | Um, next up when you do reconnect, what news podcast do you listen to?

00:27:44.220 | I feel like our audience would be curious.

00:27:46.340 | Well, I don't do news roundup podcasts because, um, we used to get the paper.

00:27:51.740 | I usually just read the paper online.

00:27:54.460 | Um, but I do like some of like the different news commentary podcast.

00:27:59.740 | Like what?

00:28:00.740 | Well, so the thing I do typically is I'm often chasing guests.

00:28:05.060 | So I'm interested in particular guests.

00:28:06.620 | Um, but I do like listening to center right, center left commentary podcast because I feel

00:28:12.620 | like those, you read a balance of those, you get a really good, like kind of a non-polemical

00:28:17.820 | understanding of what's going on and it's sort of good to try to balance those two.

00:28:21.420 | It's like a good center right podcast would be like listening to Andrew Sullivan, you

00:28:26.060 | know, he used to editor of the new Republic, used to write for New York magazine, has a

00:28:31.140 | British accent, which makes them like 25% smarter, which is like, it's true.

00:28:38.220 | I was just, you know, we've joking about it, but like Oliver Berkman on the show, that

00:28:41.900 | accent gave him 20 IQ points because he's like, Oh yes, profound, profound.

00:28:47.300 | Um, so, you know, things like that are interesting.

00:28:49.700 | Uh, I think, I think of Ezra Klein as center left, you know, very policy focused.

00:28:54.420 | So I'm brilliant guy, brilliant interviewer.

00:28:56.140 | So if you take like Sullivan and Klein and sort of like those are good, you're going

00:29:03.220 | to get kind of a, an interesting balance tank.

00:29:06.060 | Sometimes like Sam Harris will have on, um, interesting, especially when Sam Harris is

00:29:10.620 | doing like technology, I think is really interesting.

00:29:13.300 | He has that way of just slowly trying to break down and understand what's going on.

00:29:18.620 | And so, um, I'll listen to the, his sometimes, who else do I listen to?

00:29:22.820 | Yeah.

00:29:23.820 | That's a good question.

00:29:24.820 | I don't do a ton of political content, but I'm missing some, there's definitely more.

00:29:29.860 | There's definitely more.

00:29:30.860 | I listened to sometimes.

00:29:31.860 | Cool.

00:29:32.860 | And then lastly, with the newsletters, I remember when I was just started listening to your

00:29:37.820 | podcast, when you started, I used to have a lot of newsletters, but now I trimmed like

00:29:42.460 | a lot of them.

00:29:43.460 | So I'm very selective about my newsletters that come into my box inbox.

00:29:46.300 | Yeah.

00:29:47.300 | I think that's probably good.

00:29:48.300 | Yeah.

00:29:49.300 | You mainly need mine.

00:29:50.300 | Um, mine has been like very sporadic recently.

00:29:53.860 | Uh, I do, my plan is to go back.

00:29:57.100 | There should be a weekly, I want to write my, my newsletter weekly.

00:30:00.260 | So I'm, I'm working on some schedule template changes that's going to make that possible.

00:30:04.660 | I'm not quite there.

00:30:05.900 | Um, I would like to be there for the New Year's.

00:30:07.660 | I think more than once a week is like too much.

00:30:10.460 | Yeah.

00:30:11.820 | That's what I'm going for.

00:30:12.820 | I might have some sort of more synergy, but like we did today where I write a newsletter

00:30:17.500 | on something to really organize my thoughts and then I can use that as the foundation

00:30:20.540 | for a deep dive on the podcast.

00:30:21.820 | I'm thinking about doing something like that.

00:30:23.460 | Uh, but I'm not, I'm not quite there.

00:30:26.500 | Not quite there yet.

00:30:27.500 | I just have so much writing.

00:30:28.500 | I do.

00:30:29.500 | Yeah.

00:30:30.500 | And you know, I just have a lot more writing.

00:30:31.500 | I use the newsletter.

00:30:32.500 | I, what I probably need to go back to is I used to write the newsletter in the evening,

00:30:35.540 | but it's because my, I had babies before.

00:30:37.260 | So like they would go to bed at, you know, 630 and then I could just choose one night

00:30:42.140 | a week.

00:30:43.140 | I'd sit in the big leather chair.

00:30:44.140 | Long-time listeners know about the big leather chair and sit in the big leather chair, put

00:30:46.380 | on a record, write my newsletter is like nice and meditative.

00:30:49.260 | But now my kids are like staying up later than I am.

00:30:51.900 | Yeah.

00:30:52.900 | And it's just, I'm just like, that's not as much of an option anymore, so I got to figure

00:30:55.340 | this out.

00:30:56.340 | Uh, but yeah, be selective with newsletters.

00:30:58.300 | Uh, definitely like you subscribe to the newsletter for the election cycle.

00:31:02.140 | It's unsubscribed left and right, but Nate Silver was very clever.

00:31:05.880 | It's not super clever, but a smart move.

00:31:08.900 | You know, Nate Silver, the election forecaster, he turned off as we got to the fall, he turned

00:31:15.020 | off month, monthly subscriptions.

00:31:16.540 | Oh, he's like, I only have annual subscriptions because he knew like a lot of people, like

00:31:20.460 | all I really care about is your discussions of your model in the lead up to the election.

00:31:25.780 | So he's like, fine, but you still have to subscribe for a whole year, which is smart

00:31:29.060 | because then when you finally get around to, okay, now I can finally unsubscribe.

00:31:33.620 | He's like, there's like some other like midterm, like another election happening.

00:31:37.340 | So we'll see.

00:31:39.300 | All right.

00:31:40.420 | So that's it for the deep dive.

00:31:41.500 | We got some good questions coming up.

00:31:42.700 | We're covering a lot of topics in those questions.

00:31:44.400 | But first, let's hear from one of our sponsors.

00:31:47.540 | I want to talk in particular about our friends at Notion.

00:31:52.140 | Notion combines your notes, docs, and projects into one space that's simple and beautifully

00:31:56.020 | designed.

00:31:57.020 | And now we have the new Notion AI, which has the capabilities of multiple AI tools built

00:32:03.100 | in, which means you can search, generate, analyze, and chat all inside Notion.

00:32:09.700 | Now here's the thing, if you don't know Notion, you're not a sufficiently intense productivity

00:32:16.020 | information flow geek like I am.

00:32:17.700 | It's this fantastic, super flexible tool for organizing your information, accessing your

00:32:22.420 | information, seeing your information in sort of different types of views.

00:32:26.780 | You can organize tasks, track your habits, write beautiful docs, collaborate with your

00:32:29.940 | team.

00:32:30.940 | We used to have this system with one of our ad agencies before where, and I've mentioned

00:32:33.940 | this on the show, they built this great interface for us for dealing with ad reads where we

00:32:38.780 | could see the same data from many different forms.

00:32:41.440 | So I could say, for example, what are the ad reads we need to do on the show being recorded

00:32:45.780 | on this day?

00:32:47.040 | Or we could click on one of those particular advertisers and say, actually, I want to see

00:32:51.180 | all of the ad reads that we have scheduled for that particular advertiser.

00:32:55.260 | When we were on the view for a particular show, we could click on a particular read

00:32:58.480 | and enter in the information about, hey, what's the timestamp?

00:33:01.740 | And all this information gets stored in a cool place.

00:33:03.860 | You can build these sort of custom information systems that could be enterprise level or

00:33:08.620 | just you dealing with some complicated project you have.

00:33:12.420 | But this key new feature in Notion that I'm talking about here is how they've integrated

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00:33:23.300 | You can search across Notion and other apps.

00:33:25.780 | You can generate text and docs in your own style.

00:33:28.700 | You can analyze PDFs and images.

00:33:30.700 | You can chat with the system about your own information or what you want to do.

00:33:36.020 | It just makes it so much simpler to use this tool and so much more flexible.

00:33:41.980 | A couple of things to emphasize.

00:33:43.860 | Notion AI is designed to protect your privacy.

00:33:47.780 | Notion's AI partners are contractually prohibited from using your data to train their models.

00:33:53.460 | Notion AI also respects the permissions of your content, so it will only reference content

00:33:56.780 | that you have access to.

00:33:59.780 | Second, it uses multiple models to give you the best results.

00:34:04.540 | Notion AI will draw from both GPT-4 and Cloud.

00:34:07.020 | It will chat with you about any topic.

00:34:08.900 | It can search across thousands of docs in seconds, answer questions about your own information.

00:34:14.420 | There's this new beta feature called AI Connectors, which allows it to search across other apps

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00:34:24.260 | So try Notion for free when you go to notion.com/cal.

00:34:28.500 | Do that in all lowercase letters—notion.com/cal—to try the powerful, easy-to-use Notion AI today.

00:34:36.460 | When you use our link, you're supporting our show.

00:34:40.620 | That's notion.com/cal.

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00:35:04.080 | We used to mourn when those sheets were being washed and we had to put just regular sheets

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00:36:33.780 | Earth from Deep Questions podcast.

00:36:35.920 | That really helps me because they know you came from me.

00:36:38.380 | All right, Jesse, I think we're ready for some questions.

00:36:41.340 | Who do we got first?

00:36:43.460 | First question comes from Rebecca.

00:36:45.420 | With several years' worth of emails, notes, and files spread across various formats and

00:36:49.820 | locations, how can I best approach consolidating this information without succumbing to overwhelm?

00:36:54.260 | I mean, you should use Notion.

00:36:57.420 | We should add it for Notion.

00:36:59.980 | Move it on there, but use my promo code.

00:37:02.380 | OK, so here's my typical thought for organizing information.

00:37:07.420 | You need a digital and physical filing cabinet.

00:37:11.060 | Physical filing cabinet's obvious.

00:37:12.300 | It's a literal thing.

00:37:13.300 | It's a filing cabinet.

00:37:14.300 | There's manila folders within bigger hanging folders, and you put actual pieces of paper

00:37:19.620 | in there.

00:37:21.180 | Digital filing cabinets is like a particular directory tree within your computer where

00:37:25.600 | you store information that you want to keep.

00:37:29.620 | So like on my computer, the folder is called administrative, and then underneath that,

00:37:34.140 | I have all sorts of subfolders for various things.

00:37:36.380 | Like here is stuff related, like digital files related to tax filings.

00:37:41.420 | There's stuff related to important Georgetown contracts or whatever, right?

00:37:47.100 | So digital, treat it like a physical filing cabinet.

00:37:50.260 | You have a particular digital filing cabinet.

00:37:52.580 | I believe in encrypted backup of digital filing cabinets.

00:37:55.420 | I use Dropbox, and so it's automatically synced and stored encrypted on the Dropbox server.

00:38:01.020 | So if my computer is destroyed or lost, I'm not losing those important files.

00:38:04.460 | I can access them online, and I can re-sync those files to a new computer when I get it.

00:38:10.580 | If something is important, it should go in one of those two things.

00:38:14.020 | So like you say here, like what do I do with a year's worth of emails?

00:38:16.380 | Well, nothing.

00:38:17.380 | Most emails, if you just have them stored in your inbox, they're just in your inbox.

00:38:21.700 | I don't treat that particularly special.

00:38:23.660 | If there's a particular piece of information that arrived in an email that's important,

00:38:28.460 | print it and put it in a proper folder in your physical filing cabinet, or export it

00:38:32.740 | as a PDF and put it in an appropriate file within your digital filing folders.

00:38:38.420 | What I mean by export it, well, technically speaking, the way I take things like emails

00:38:43.100 | and I store them, you just go to print, like you're printing it, and then when you select

00:38:49.380 | a printer, at least the way it works on Mac, you can say open in preview or print the PDF,

00:38:56.380 | and so it just takes like whatever would have printed and it puts it in a PDF file, and

00:38:59.180 | you can just save that and move it into the filing cabinet, right?

00:39:02.180 | So just have one digital, one physical.

00:39:04.580 | Notice you don't have to replicate between the two.

00:39:07.120 | Some stuff can be, that's fine, right?

00:39:09.660 | Like maybe someone sends you as a PDF a contract, and you throw it in your digital, but you

00:39:14.060 | printed it to sign it, and maybe you want to store the printed, but you don't have to

00:39:16.460 | duplicate between the two, but that's where important stuff goes.

00:39:19.860 | Nothing else is a trusted storage system to use the terminology from David Allen.

00:39:24.380 | So if something arrives in your email that's important, it is not stored until it's in

00:39:29.040 | one of those cabinets, digital or physical.

00:39:32.340 | Someone gives you a paper, it comes through the mailbox, you get mail to form a tax form

00:39:36.020 | or contract or whatever, it is not stored until you have it in a folder in your physical

00:39:39.860 | mailing cabinet or in your digital file storage, either one of those two things, all right?

00:39:45.620 | So just simplify where things can be stored physical and stored digital, and don't consider

00:39:49.940 | things stored until it's in one of those places.

00:39:52.580 | Everything else you don't have to stress about.

00:39:53.820 | Like if you have a bunch of emails archived in Gmail, who cares?

00:39:56.860 | The key stuff has been put in one of those folders.

00:39:58.780 | All right, what do we got next?

00:40:02.380 | First question is from Anonymous, "How can I go out on my own when my company has a strict

00:40:07.020 | confluence of interest policy preventing you from performing my craft on the side?

00:40:11.300 | I'm a high performer and objectively good at my craft, but would eventually like to

00:40:14.860 | start my own indie business.

00:40:16.700 | This goes directly against your advice to prove that you can make money doing something

00:40:20.220 | before quitting, leaving your day job to pursue your own venture."

00:40:24.420 | So the specific advice that Anonymous is talking about comes from my book, So Good They Can't

00:40:27.920 | Ignore You, where I said, "Use money as a neutral indicator of value," and the specific

00:40:33.980 | advice was to know if what you want to do, let's say it's like a new job, is valuable.

00:40:42.020 | See if you can get people to give you money for it.

00:40:44.940 | The key idea here is that people are happy to give you verbal praise or affirmation.

00:40:48.780 | It costs them nothing, and it seems like the pleasant, sociable thing to do.

00:40:52.620 | "Hey, that's a great idea.

00:40:54.700 | Your business idea is great.

00:40:55.780 | You should just go for it.

00:40:56.780 | I wish I could do that.

00:40:57.780 | You're definitely going to be successful."

00:40:58.940 | That means nothing, right?

00:40:59.940 | They might not know anything about it, or they're just trying to be nice.

00:41:02.420 | But people do not like to give you their money.

00:41:04.340 | So you're like, "Okay, can I sell enough of this thing to support myself, and then

00:41:09.700 | I no longer do my job?"

00:41:10.820 | Well, if you can't, people aren't willing to give you your money for the thing you're

00:41:13.720 | selling, then it's not good enough for you to make a living on it.

00:41:17.780 | "Can I get a big enough book?

00:41:21.980 | Can I get a big book advance on this book idea?

00:41:23.980 | If not, then maybe it's not the great book idea I thought it was," et cetera.

00:41:26.580 | So that's what we mean by money as a neutral indicator of value.

00:41:29.540 | So the person asking the question here is saying, "But I can't go and try my thing

00:41:33.100 | on the side because I signed a contract."

00:41:34.620 | Well, that's true.

00:41:35.620 | You can't.

00:41:36.620 | If you signed a contract that says, "Look, I am a writer for this magazine, and I'm not

00:41:41.260 | allowed to write for these other magazines while I'm here," then yeah, you can't go

00:41:45.300 | write for other magazines while you're here, right?

00:41:48.540 | Contract is a contract.

00:41:49.540 | "Can you still apply the advice, though?"

00:41:52.020 | Yes, in a couple of very specific ways.

00:41:54.540 | And the main way is a job offer.

00:41:57.580 | If you don't like your current job and you want to bring your skills somewhere else where

00:42:02.380 | the setup better fits your lifestyle-centric planning vision, you're allowed to go solicit

00:42:08.460 | job offers.

00:42:10.020 | If someone says, "We will pay you this much money for you to come work for us," that's

00:42:15.620 | a fantastic neutral indicator of value.

00:42:17.340 | "Oh, my skills are valued by them.

00:42:19.620 | Now I can quit my job and go take that other job."

00:42:22.980 | So you can actually just go out to the marketplace and see if in the other type of work you want

00:42:28.740 | to do with your skills that's better going to fit your lifestyle, can you get a job offer

00:42:34.020 | that is sufficiently large.

00:42:35.280 | That's also using money as a neutral indicator of value, right?

00:42:39.500 | And that'd probably be the main thing you could do in a situation like that.

00:42:42.100 | All right, what do we got next?

00:42:44.740 | Did I make you sign a conflict of interest?

00:42:46.780 | I think I did.

00:42:47.780 | I said, "You're not allowed to."

00:42:48.780 | What would you be doing on this side?

00:42:49.780 | "You're not allowed to."

00:42:50.780 | We need an enemy podcast.

00:42:51.780 | I was going to say, "You're not allowed to produce podcast for."

00:42:55.020 | We don't have an enemy podcast.

00:42:56.540 | We need a nemesis.

00:42:57.540 | I don't know who the nemesis would be of our podcast.

00:43:01.740 | Maybe we should just choose someone famous.

00:43:04.980 | Joe Rogan?

00:43:05.980 | Joe Rogan.

00:43:06.980 | His podcast is so big.

00:43:08.780 | You are not allowed to go produce Joe Rogan's podcast.

00:43:12.700 | I'm sorry.

00:43:13.700 | I put it in a contract.

00:43:15.260 | Although I was listening to him and Elon the other day, and I guess Jamie does play a lot

00:43:20.060 | of golf.

00:43:21.060 | That's a pretty good job.

00:43:22.460 | And you already have a similar name.

00:43:25.680 | If he just started saying Jesse instead of Jamie, how many people do you think would

00:43:29.180 | really notice?

00:43:30.180 | Casual listeners are like, "Yeah."

00:43:32.660 | You never see his face.

00:43:33.660 | You don't know what he looks like.

00:43:35.860 | He kind of looks like you.

00:43:37.860 | He's tall, and I think he has blonde hair.

00:43:40.820 | And he plays golf.

00:43:44.580 | If you've been wondering, it is true.

00:43:46.500 | Jesse is the same as Jamie from the Joe Rogan podcast.

00:43:48.300 | He probably makes a ton of money doing that because he makes like $30 million a year.

00:43:52.100 | I hope so.

00:43:53.100 | Yeah.

00:43:54.100 | I mean, I really do.

00:43:55.100 | Probably more than that.

00:43:56.100 | That's their whole...

00:43:57.100 | My main inspiration I derive from Joe Rogan, other than taking lots of human growth hormone,

00:44:04.060 | is he kept his operations small.

00:44:06.700 | His biggest staffing, the biggest staffing he has is actually security.

00:44:12.540 | It really is him and Jamie.

00:44:15.620 | Just knowing from, I know a lot of people who know him or have been on his show, it's

00:44:18.740 | like Jamie does the things and puts the files online and runs it, and that's it.

00:44:27.700 | And then Joe books, he kind of just texts guests specifically.

00:44:32.980 | So how you get on the Joe Rogan podcast, from what I understand, never been on the show,

00:44:35.700 | but I know lots of people who have, is typically someone you know in common will reach out

00:44:41.380 | and be like, "Can I give your phone number to Joe?"

00:44:44.140 | And then he'll just text you and be like, "Hey, man, can we chat?"

00:44:47.580 | And then he'll talk to you on the phone and be like, "This could be cool.

00:44:50.460 | I think we should talk."

00:44:51.460 | And then that's that.

00:44:53.140 | I think they have someone who does travel booking or something, but...

00:44:55.460 | When you go on the show, can you use the gym?

00:44:56.940 | Don't they have a sick gym at their studio?

00:44:58.380 | Yeah.

00:44:59.380 | But my worry would be you use it before.

00:45:01.340 | I'd probably do it both.

00:45:03.140 | And then you're just like...

00:45:04.140 | Spend the whole day there?

00:45:05.140 | Pouring sweat.

00:45:06.140 | You're just in there.

00:45:07.140 | Yeah.

00:45:08.140 | You're just vomiting into a bucket, just pouring sweat.

00:45:13.180 | Ripped my pec muscle.

00:45:14.420 | I have an arrow through my shoulder because I was trying to like...

00:45:18.220 | He does a lot of like El Conti, and I have an arrow through my shoulder.

00:45:20.940 | Yeah.

00:45:21.940 | That's not going to go well.

00:45:24.180 | Not going to go well.

00:45:27.820 | But yes, Jesse is not allowed.

00:45:29.500 | I'm putting my foot down.

00:45:30.500 | He's not allowed to produce Joe Rogan's podcast and mine, right?

00:45:33.520 | You can't have two giants competing for the same attention.

00:45:38.600 | There's only room in American cultural life for one of these two shows where both be myths.

00:45:46.320 | I think between us, we do something like 5 million views a week between us and Joe Rogan's

00:45:52.800 | podcast.

00:45:53.800 | It's very powerful.

00:45:57.240 | Between our episode on time block planning and Joe's episode where he interviewed Donald

00:46:05.400 | Trump, 200 million views combined.

00:46:08.680 | All right?

00:46:09.680 | That's a lot of cultural power we have.

00:46:11.000 | We can't...

00:46:12.320 | You put two alphas in a rink, right?

00:46:16.880 | You put two bulls in the same paddock, it's not going to work.

00:46:19.800 | Sorry, Jesse.

00:46:20.800 | We got to...

00:46:21.800 | You got to choose your allegiance.

00:46:22.800 | You got to choose Joe Rogan.

00:46:23.800 | All right.

00:46:24.800 | Who do we got next?

00:46:25.800 | Next question is from Steven.

00:46:26.800 | I'm a new listener and just finished your episode about the eight productivity books

00:46:30.360 | that can change your life.

00:46:31.920 | What is humanist productivity?

00:46:33.440 | Oh, I like that episode.

00:46:35.360 | I don't remember what...

00:46:36.600 | I remember maybe like half of what those books were.

00:46:39.860 | That episode was from what, last year?

00:46:41.880 | I'll pull it up while you answer.

00:46:43.600 | Yeah.

00:46:44.600 | Okay.

00:46:45.600 | So humanist productivity, I've been using that term or variations of that term for a

00:46:47.880 | while.

00:46:48.880 | And I did a little interview about that on Brad Stolberg and Steve Magnus' and Clay Skipper's

00:46:53.800 | show.

00:46:54.800 | I think it was titled like humanist productivity.

00:46:58.600 | All right.

00:46:59.600 | So what's the deal here?

00:47:00.600 | Well, what do we mean by productivity?

00:47:03.600 | There's two big definitions that have both explicitly and implicitly dominated sort of

00:47:09.200 | economic life.

00:47:10.480 | And then there's humanist productivity, which is going to be a third option, which I think

00:47:15.480 | is better.

00:47:16.480 | So the first definition of productivity is the oldest definition of productivity.

00:47:20.080 | This emerges as an economic concept in the 18th century, comes out of agricultural production,

00:47:24.840 | and then moves on to industrial production.

00:47:27.120 | And it's a ratio, the ratio of output per unit input.

00:47:31.640 | So bushels of corn per acres of land cultivated.

00:47:35.680 | Number of Model Ts produced per paid worker hour, right?

00:47:41.280 | In classic economics, typically the goal for anything that produces things is to increase

00:47:45.820 | that ratio as much as possible.

00:47:47.960 | When you hear, for example, about a country's productivity or productivity growth, this

00:47:53.440 | is the style of productivity they're measuring.

00:47:55.320 | So typically they'll measure the economic output of a sector and they'll divide it by

00:47:58.920 | the number of people who work in the sector.

00:48:00.880 | So there it's like dollars generated per worker.

00:48:04.960 | When that number goes up, productivity is up.

00:48:06.880 | When that number goes down, productivity is down.

00:48:08.360 | All right.

00:48:09.360 | So ratio based productivity is the standard economic metric that's named productivity.

00:48:15.820 | It was at the core of most of the economic growth that funded what we think of as the

00:48:20.580 | Western world today.

00:48:23.100 | This is Peter Drucker's argument.

00:48:25.220 | This idea of we're measuring this carefully and we keep looking for innovations and technical

00:48:29.620 | processes that makes this ratio bigger.

00:48:32.540 | And it just led to sort of like massive explosions in economic growth.

00:48:36.980 | But it's really something that discusses, it's relevant to production processes.

00:48:40.580 | All right.

00:48:41.720 | So then knowledge work comes along, becomes a major sector in the 20th century.

00:48:47.380 | And this ratio based definition of productivity doesn't cleanly apply.

00:48:50.980 | Why?

00:48:51.980 | Because a knowledge worker, someone who's sitting and working at a desk, doesn't just

00:48:56.100 | produce wheat or doesn't just produce Model Ts.

00:48:59.060 | There's not a clean output to measure.

00:49:01.580 | They work on many different things.

00:49:04.740 | Many different projects, some internal, some external.

00:49:07.780 | Often these projects are collaborative.

00:49:09.540 | So their role within the project is actually hard to actually separate or isolate.

00:49:13.820 | And so you don't have a ratio to measure anymore.

00:49:15.940 | I can't give you a number that for most knowledge work positions, it says here's your productivity

00:49:20.300 | number.

00:49:21.300 | We want to go up and down.

00:49:22.300 | So what did we do?

00:49:23.300 | We invented the second major notion of productivity.

00:49:25.300 | And this was implicit.

00:49:26.300 | No one really said this out loud until I came along with my book, Slow Productivity, where

00:49:30.100 | I make this big argument.

00:49:31.300 | But we came up in the knowledge work space with what I call pseudo productivity.

00:49:34.820 | And it says, OK, if we can't explicitly manage or measure productivity because you're working

00:49:40.500 | on too many things, we will just use instead visible effort as a proxy for useful effort.

00:49:50.660 | The more you're doing, the better.

00:49:53.540 | We can't kind of figure out what you're doing or what you're doing, like how much it matters

00:49:56.860 | or its direct impact on the bottom line.

00:49:59.260 | But more visible activity is better than less.

00:50:01.380 | That's pseudo productivity.

00:50:03.100 | That has implicitly been how we managed knowledge work since, like, the 1950s.

00:50:10.060 | In an age of offices you came to and typewriters, it worked OK.

00:50:16.660 | It's not a great measure, but it didn't cause a lot of problems.

00:50:18.780 | It just meant, like, you had to be at the office.

00:50:20.220 | And when you're at the office, you know, try to hide the fact that you're on your third

00:50:24.840 | martini of lunch, right?

00:50:25.840 | You know, just kind of be there, be doing stuff.

00:50:28.340 | Don't spend too much time at the water cooler.

00:50:30.860 | Pseudo productivity went off the rails once we had the front office IT revolution, once

00:50:34.700 | we had email and then mobile computing.

00:50:37.380 | The problem was there was now no escape from opportunities to demonstrate activity because

00:50:43.740 | you could always be checking in on things, answering emails, working on work wherever

00:50:47.140 | you happen to be.

00:50:48.700 | And this is when knowledge work became exhausting.

00:50:51.740 | It's when knowledge work eventually became deranging because now you as the individual

00:50:55.300 | had to constantly fight this battle between work and other things that are important to

00:50:58.740 | you in your life.

00:50:59.740 | The boundary was gone.

00:51:02.580 | Inequities became amplified.

00:51:04.140 | The 23-year-old with nothing going on can very easily just demonstrate visible activity

00:51:09.260 | by doing nonsense Slack and email answering late into the night, whereas the people with

00:51:13.320 | families or caring for sick relatives or just other things going on that are important to

00:51:16.780 | them in their life couldn't do this as much.

00:51:19.140 | And now they're suffering under this measure, even though the 23-year-old doing Slack in

00:51:22.220 | the middle of the night is not actually producing more value if you had a way to really measure

00:51:26.140 | that.

00:51:28.340 | So we had the ratio-based productivity followed by pseudo-productivity.

00:51:31.860 | Humanist productivity says, "No, no, no.

00:51:33.020 | The thing we want to optimize is your flourishing as a person."

00:51:36.860 | It's the type of productivity I talk about here on the show.

00:51:39.380 | The reason why I want you to take control over what you have to do and control over

00:51:42.560 | your time and attention is so that you are in control of your life.

00:51:46.060 | Once you're in control of your life, aim it towards where you want it to go.

00:51:49.300 | Now part of that is being on top of your work, being able to accomplish the stuff that not

00:51:54.460 | only helps you keep your job, but helps you shape your career in the directions that are

00:51:58.140 | compatible with your vision of an ideal lifestyle.

00:52:01.020 | So this is a very important part of flourishing, but it allows you to do it on your own terms

00:52:05.420 | and to not have this take up all of your time, and to have other time to do other things

00:52:08.980 | and to make sure these other things are important to become a part of your life, to make sure

00:52:11.580 | your kids get what they need, that your soul gets what you need, that your community gets

00:52:14.940 | from you what it needs from a leadership perspective.

00:52:17.880 | So I'm a big believer for the individual to deploy the tools of productivity we discuss

00:52:25.260 | towards human flourishing.

00:52:27.340 | And that is different than ratio-based productivity, which is trying to optimize output.

00:52:31.100 | That's different than pseudo productivity, which is trying to optimize visible activity.

00:52:35.920 | And so that's what we talk about here.

00:52:38.020 | It is my response to the anti-productivity movement.

00:52:40.780 | I think the anti-productivity movement tends to argue that like any discussion of productivity

00:52:47.020 | is about trying to move humans back towards this industrial ratio-based version of productivity.

00:52:51.860 | And I say it doesn't have to be.

00:52:53.980 | The anti-productivity movement tries to make this sort of false binary choice.

00:52:59.940 | Either you become like the human equivalent of the Model T Assembly line where like we're

00:53:04.380 | trying to squeeze out as much production as possible, or your only other choice is to

00:53:09.420 | step away from productivity discourses and I guess write substacks about late stage capitalism.

00:53:15.940 | I said no, there's a third choice.

00:53:18.380 | Use the tools of productivity to build a life of human flourishing.

00:53:23.580 | Because here's the thing, pseudo productivity is extremely stressful.

00:53:29.120 | Stepping away from any type of organizational thinking is also very stressful.

00:53:33.420 | You're going to be working more, you're going to be more stressed, you're going to be more

00:53:35.820 | frazzled, more frustrated, more upset.

00:53:39.140 | So the solution here is to learn the tools you need to control your tasks and time and

00:53:42.980 | production, but then you be in control of what you want to aim towards, and you should

00:53:45.940 | aim towards human flourishing.

00:53:47.620 | That's what humanism is about.

00:53:48.620 | So we call it humanist productivity.

00:53:51.260 | I have the books.

00:53:52.260 | All right.

00:53:53.260 | What were the eight?

00:53:54.260 | Eight were "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," "Getting Things Done," "Four Hour

00:53:59.460 | Work Week," "Essentialism," "4,000 Weeks," "How to Do Nothing," "Make Time," 168 hours.

00:54:07.180 | And what was the episode number for that?

00:54:10.140 | 265.

00:54:11.140 | Okay.

00:54:12.140 | So we're at what?

00:54:13.140 | Like 326?

00:54:14.140 | Yeah.

00:54:15.140 | Yeah.

00:54:16.140 | So that was a while ago.

00:54:17.140 | I have one more book I would now add to that list, which I think will be no surprise to

00:54:22.340 | our listeners, "Eruption" by Michael Crichton and James Patterson.

00:54:26.980 | Oh, man, that's funny.

00:54:31.100 | Torah-esque in its wisdom for human living.

00:54:37.420 | I'm not happy about that book, folks.

00:54:40.540 | Michael Crichton is spinning in his grave.

00:54:42.060 | All right.

00:54:43.060 | What do we got next?

00:54:44.420 | Next question is from Joel.

00:54:45.940 | I'm a software student and very distracted by my phone.

00:54:48.860 | I have an iPhone, an Apple Watch Ultra, and a flip phone.

00:54:52.460 | What's your view on Apple Watches, and should I just use a flip phone in college?

00:54:55.860 | Look, here's what I'm going to suggest to you in college, and this is a general thing

00:54:59.340 | I often suggest to people, is when it comes to technology and its negative impact on certain

00:55:05.800 | things you're doing, the problem might be caused by technology, but you don't solve

00:55:11.400 | the problem solely with technology as well.

00:55:14.280 | We kind of have this implicit techno-determinist narrative out there that the tools you own

00:55:20.980 | specify what the rhythms of your life is like.

00:55:24.180 | So if you want to change something you dislike about the rhythms of your life, like I'm very

00:55:26.960 | distracted when I'm studying, you have to change the tools you own.

00:55:31.340 | I argue no, no, change your behaviors, change your processes, change how you approach things.

00:55:38.160 | Then the tools themselves probably won't matter that much.

00:55:41.920 | If it's helpful, because of like a really strong addiction to a smartphone, to replace

00:55:47.400 | it with a non, if that's the only way to replace with a non-smartphone, it's like the only

00:55:50.520 | way you think you can break that addiction, okay, go ahead.

00:55:53.440 | But keep in mind, I'm someone who is very non-distracted by the digital world, and I

00:55:57.080 | own a perfectly normal smartphone.

00:55:58.440 | It's not the technology that matters, it's my rules and systems.

00:56:01.620 | So when it comes particularly to college, I've been arguing this now for almost two

00:56:05.680 | decades.

00:56:06.680 | It's hard to believe it's been almost two decades since I published my first book.

00:56:10.120 | Focus is a superpower.

00:56:12.280 | If you are comfortable with and frequently deployed academic sessions with no context

00:56:17.640 | switching, so no quick checks of phone in any ways, text messages, social media, web,

00:56:22.360 | you just can focus without distraction, compared to your peers who are context shifting back

00:56:27.760 | and forth.

00:56:28.760 | It's like 50 IQ points.

00:56:30.160 | It really will be like a superpower.

00:56:32.400 | You'll finish your assignments like 2x faster, and your performance will be like 2x better.

00:56:38.360 | So how you do that, it's not so much what technology owns, it's about what your rules

00:56:41.400 | are.

00:56:42.400 | So let me give you a few.

00:56:44.560 | When you do studying, whether it's reading, working on problem sets, or writing, do it

00:56:49.760 | with zero connectivity.

00:56:52.600 | Do not bring your phone.

00:56:53.640 | You're in college, right?

00:56:56.120 | You're not the FEMA director.

00:56:57.800 | It'll be okay if you are unreachable for 90 minutes, all right?

00:57:00.960 | You got to get over yourself a little bit.

00:57:03.340 | Don't bring your phone.

00:57:04.680 | Turn off the Wi-Fi on your computer.

00:57:06.360 | Don't give me the whole thing about, "I need to use the internet to get the sources, and

00:57:09.400 | so therefore I have to look at TikTok on my phone while I study."

00:57:11.800 | If you need to use the internet, that's a separate session.

00:57:13.480 | Go gather everything you need on a separate session.

00:57:15.760 | Bring your computer, turn off the Wi-Fi.

00:57:17.680 | If it's something you could do without a computer, even better.

00:57:20.000 | Don't bring your phone with you.

00:57:21.000 | Go to an out-of-the-way library.

00:57:23.640 | Practice studying without connectivity.

00:57:25.280 | It'll be very hard at first.

00:57:26.600 | As you get used to it, it's like taking the limitless pill.

00:57:29.120 | You'll be like, "Wow, this is so much easier than it used to be."

00:57:32.200 | You need to regularly practice being disconnected, even outside of these sessions, so that you're

00:57:36.040 | more comfortable with it.

00:57:37.480 | Do something every day without your phone.

00:57:40.160 | Go have a meal.

00:57:41.160 | Go drop off a book at the library.

00:57:42.480 | It doesn't have to be long, like 10, 15 minutes, but just get used to this idea that sometimes

00:57:46.760 | you do things without highly salient, algorithmically curated distraction.

00:57:51.000 | It just gets your brain used to the idea of like, "That's fine," and then you'll have

00:57:55.200 | more success with those study sessions.

00:57:57.640 | If you're really struggling in those study sessions, use timers.

00:57:59.920 | I can do 50 minutes, and then I can go back to my dorm room and look at my computer or

00:58:04.240 | phone, and then I'll come back and set another timer.

00:58:06.560 | When you're aiming towards a time-limited goal, like, "I just want to survive 50 minutes

00:58:11.280 | without looking at my phone," it's much easier to succeed than if you're just generally saying,

00:58:15.440 | "I'm going to study for hours.

00:58:16.440 | I don't want to look at my phone."

00:58:17.440 | Your mind will convince you, like, "Well, we have to look at it at some point.

00:58:19.800 | Why not now?

00:58:20.800 | Why not now?"

00:58:21.800 | Timing makes that much simpler.

00:58:22.800 | Like, "I can last 50 minutes.

00:58:24.360 | Come on.

00:58:25.360 | It'd be embarrassing if I couldn't."

00:58:26.360 | All right, so outside of those two things—okay, I only had two—outside of those two things,

00:58:32.960 | the tech doesn't really matter.

00:58:35.460 | You practice studying and writing and doing schoolwork without connectivity, and you practice

00:58:40.000 | that in other parts of your life, and that's just how you do it.

00:58:42.520 | Superpower.

00:58:43.520 | I don't care if back in your room you have an iPhone 19 that's plugged into one of those

00:58:49.840 | like Apple Vision Pros, and you're wearing a Nintendo Power Glove.

00:58:54.160 | Whatever you want to do with your technology outside of the studying, whatever, get used

00:58:59.960 | to that, and you're really, really going to do well.

00:59:03.280 | All right, what do we got next?

00:59:05.680 | We have our corner.

00:59:06.680 | All right, let's hear some theme music.

00:59:16.440 | So as regular listeners know, every week we like to have one question that deals with

00:59:19.760 | an issue from my latest book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

00:59:25.720 | If you have not read that book, you need to.

00:59:28.520 | It is probably at the core of at least 50% of what we talk about on this show.

00:59:32.640 | Go find that book, Slow Productivity, wherever books are sold.

00:59:35.040 | All right, Jesse, what is our slow productivity corner question of the week?

00:59:38.640 | It's from Angel.

00:59:40.680 | My workday consists of coding a new feature or fixing a bug.

00:59:44.320 | Our company works on three-week sprints, and many of my coworkers crush it.

00:59:48.240 | How can I work at a natural pace when it's out of my hands?

00:59:52.080 | I actually think sprints can be quite compatible with working at a natural pace.

00:59:56.680 | Let's quickly define those two terms.

00:59:59.480 | Sprint is an idea that comes out of agile software development methodologies, where

01:00:02.720 | you have a particular bug you're fixing or feature you're working on, and you just do

01:00:08.520 | that.

01:00:09.520 | Right?

01:00:10.520 | So it's like just sprint working on this one thing until it's done, and then we'll change

01:00:14.520 | its status, and then we can figure out what you should work on next.

01:00:18.560 | It's a methodology I really like because it recognizes the reality of instead trying to

01:00:23.360 | work on multiple things concurrently slows down the actual time per thing to get done.

01:00:28.480 | Right?

01:00:29.480 | So if I work on three features concurrently, and then once I finish all three features,

01:00:34.480 | you know, divide that time by three, like what was the average time it took me to finish

01:00:38.520 | each of these three features?

01:00:40.200 | That average time tends to be much longer than if you did a sprint on the first feature,

01:00:44.720 | stopped, did a sprint on the second feature, stopped, did a sprint on the third feature,

01:00:48.680 | and stopped.

01:00:49.680 | It's just because of the administrative overhead of working on something, and when you have

01:00:52.240 | to keep switching your context, it slows you down.

01:00:54.440 | So sprints are a great idea.

01:00:55.840 | I think they can be compatible with working at a natural pace.

01:00:58.240 | Now that's the second principle from my book, Slow Productivity, which says humans are not

01:01:02.520 | meant to be working all out, all day, all week, all year.

01:01:06.740 | We need variations in our intensity on multiple different time scales, otherwise it's really

01:01:11.520 | artificial and stressful.

01:01:14.280 | Sprints can help you here in two ways.

01:01:16.360 | One, at the macro scale, it gives you a natural down cycle period.

01:01:23.440 | You finish a hard sprint, that sprint is over, you can now explicitly take a break until

01:01:29.680 | the next sprint begins.

01:01:30.680 | Right?

01:01:31.680 | You have a natural place to down cycle.

01:01:34.280 | Some software companies do this explicitly, Basecamp does this explicitly.

01:01:37.900 | You can read about down cycles in their employee handbook online, where after you finish a

01:01:41.980 | sprint on something big, they want you to take a sufficiently long down cycle where

01:01:46.300 | all you're doing is reflecting on what you just did, thinking about what you want to

01:01:49.020 | do next, and closing up loose ends.

01:01:50.740 | They say you can't skip this.

01:01:53.140 | They said it might be natural, you feel more productive to jump into a next sprint right

01:01:57.140 | away, but don't, because if you don't restore overall, you're going to burn out and your

01:02:01.700 | effectiveness will go down.

01:02:04.140 | So consider adding a similar methodology like this.

01:02:06.700 | Just ask for it.

01:02:07.700 | Just be like, yeah, this sprint was really hard.

01:02:10.060 | I want to take two days to just close up the loose ends and recharge, and then we'll start

01:02:14.420 | the next sprint.

01:02:16.220 | If you're doing good work, you know, it's fine.

01:02:18.900 | Like, whatever.

01:02:19.900 | Just, this sounds like a good idea, sounds like Cal Newport stuff, like go for it, right?

01:02:24.420 | Sprints can also be useful for varying up your intensity at the smaller scale as well.

01:02:30.140 | Because you're just working on one thing, you have a lot more autonomy moment to moment.

01:02:35.460 | If the main thing I'm doing is working on this feature, I can, for example, do like

01:02:39.100 | a three hour, like really intense working on it, and then maybe like take two hours

01:02:43.680 | where I'm like going for a walk and just like recharging and thinking or like exercising

01:02:47.940 | or something like that.

01:02:49.140 | You have more flexibility to do this because you just have one thing to work on.

01:02:53.220 | So there's not as much of a public trace of your efforts.

01:02:58.380 | Compare this to a typical pseudo productivity shop where you're just working on lots of

01:03:02.420 | stuff at the same time.

01:03:04.100 | Now you have a lot more hard edges on which downcycling your intensity could hit.

01:03:08.180 | You have a lot of meetings everywhere that like it's hard to get away from.

01:03:11.860 | You have all these emails going back and forth about 10 or 15 different things where it's

01:03:15.580 | notable if you don't answer an email for two hours, right?

01:03:19.260 | When you have a lot of things going on simultaneously, it's hard to downcycle for a few hours or

01:03:25.580 | take a day lighter than others.

01:03:27.240 | When you're working on one thing you can, maybe like really get after it Monday and

01:03:31.660 | don't do much Tuesday, but then give it a big push on Wednesday, it all kind of adds

01:03:36.340 | up to the same.

01:03:37.340 | If you're working really hard when you work, we tend to do better with variations anyway,

01:03:41.100 | so it's not going to take you longer.

01:03:42.740 | And because you're sprinting, I think you have a lot more flexibility, at least in shops

01:03:47.620 | that don't have this maddingly self-destructive habit of you should be slacking with people

01:03:53.020 | while you sprint, which makes no sense to me.

01:03:55.740 | I think that's like owning an NBA team and making your players smoke a bunch of cigarettes.

01:04:01.880 | It's counterproductive.

01:04:02.880 | To make your programmers have to be on slack all day makes them significantly dumber in

01:04:07.680 | the moment.

01:04:08.680 | You can't do that context shift.

01:04:09.680 | You can't code that way.

01:04:10.680 | So I think sprints can be on multiple scales compatible with working at a natural pace.

01:04:18.800 | I guess you made it, when I was reading the question too, I was under the impression that

01:04:22.960 | the sprints were like right after the others, but you answered that by saying she should

01:04:27.440 | ask for it.

01:04:28.440 | Yeah.

01:04:29.440 | Just ask for it.

01:04:30.440 | Yeah.

01:04:31.440 | It's interesting.

01:04:32.440 | When you're doing good work, and this is why the third principle of slow productivity is

01:04:34.860 | obsess over quality.

01:04:36.840 | When you're doing good work, the biggest fear of your employer is losing you.

01:04:41.480 | And it's a mindset shift you have to make as you get organized, using the type of stuff

01:04:45.880 | I talk about, and get good using the stuff I talk about.

01:04:49.960 | You have to leave the mindset which fits earlier in your career, which is my employer is looking

01:04:55.800 | for reasons not to keep me on.

01:04:58.580 | My employer is looking for reasons to fire me.

01:05:01.060 | My employment here is contingent.

01:05:02.780 | They're not sure about me.

01:05:04.300 | At some point you change from that to we don't want to lose them.

01:05:09.460 | And if you're doing great work, and they know you're super on the ball, and that you listen

01:05:12.420 | to my podcast, and that you're super organized, and you're really focused, and you say, here,

01:05:17.020 | I want to take these two-day down cycles, here's why.

01:05:20.460 | They don't want to lose you.

01:05:21.860 | I mean, worst thing, they might say no, but they're not going to get mad.

01:05:25.540 | Speaking of basketball, I saw the other night Steph Curry playing the Wizards.

01:05:29.940 | Oh, you went to the game?

01:05:31.340 | Yeah, but he had a luxury box.

01:05:32.940 | Nice.

01:05:33.940 | Yeah.

01:05:34.940 | He's a lawyer, so we just needed one of us to have a legitimate reason, connection to

01:05:43.180 | the law firm, or something like that.

01:05:44.900 | Right?

01:05:45.900 | It wasn't me.

01:05:47.180 | Look, I want to go out on a limb here with a hot take.

01:05:50.740 | Steph Curry's good at basketball.

01:05:53.100 | He's very good at basketball.

01:05:54.100 | He's been doing it for a long time, too.

01:05:56.580 | He has.

01:05:57.580 | But not that much taller than me.

01:05:58.580 | He's really good at golf, too.

01:05:59.580 | I believe it.

01:06:00.580 | All right.

01:06:01.580 | So that was our question.

01:06:02.580 | Let's get some theme music to end the corner.

01:06:06.580 | All right, Jesse, we have a call this week.

01:06:12.660 | We do.

01:06:13.660 | All right.

01:06:14.660 | Let's hear it.

01:06:15.660 | Hi, Cal.

01:06:16.660 | My name is Amy, and I'm a PhD candidate in nursing living in Canada.

01:06:20.780 | My question for you focuses on imperfectionism versus doing really good work that gets noticed

01:06:27.140 | or being so good they can't ignore you.

01:06:30.080 | How do you know when your work is good enough to ship?

01:06:33.420 | Does it matter whether the work is like the type of work you're doing?

01:06:39.980 | And I'm just thinking about your recent conversation with Oliver Berkman on imperfectionism.

01:06:44.300 | Thank you.

01:06:47.300 | You want tangible evidence about the value of your work, at least when it comes to your

01:06:52.900 | career and career shaping.

01:06:54.740 | You want to be working on things where the value is more unambiguous.

01:06:59.500 | This ship, this many units, this sold this many units, this got this much praise from

01:07:03.900 | the client.

01:07:04.900 | I brought in this much work.

01:07:06.700 | We have this much demand.

01:07:09.040 | And why does this matter?

01:07:10.100 | Because it's the main trading chip you have for shaping your career.

01:07:16.220 | Demonstration of unambiguously valuable capability or skills, that is your leverage for shaping

01:07:23.520 | the reality of your professional life.

01:07:25.900 | And if you can shape the reality of your professional life, you can shape it into really cool configurations

01:07:29.860 | that resonate with what's important to you.

01:07:31.900 | This is my whole bit about lifestyle-centric planning.

01:07:34.760 | You figure out your vision of the ideal lifestyle, and then you try to work backwards from that.

01:07:38.700 | Your profession is a big piece of that.

01:07:41.100 | Getting good at what you do in an unambiguous way is how you take control of your profession,

01:07:46.820 | and you're going to be much more likely to be able to shape your ideal lifestyle that

01:07:49.920 | way.

01:07:50.920 | I mean, this is what Oliver did, right?

01:07:53.260 | He has his life right now as he's just like a full-time writer.

01:07:57.740 | He's not even a columnist anymore, he just writes books.

01:08:00.820 | And so what he talks about, this lifestyle of do deep work for like three hours a day,

01:08:06.900 | go write, do your best with the time that remains to kind of just have a to-do list

01:08:11.900 | and like do some useful stuff and then kind of be okay, and then go enjoy yourself and

01:08:18.140 | just be okay.

01:08:19.940 | That is a particular vision, which resonates with me as well, by the way, a very particular

01:08:25.400 | vision of a lifestyle that Oliver was able to engineer in part because he was a successful

01:08:31.780 | writer.

01:08:32.780 | He became a journalist, his column was very successful, it gave him a name in this particular

01:08:37.140 | area.

01:08:38.580 | He began writing books.

01:08:39.580 | I think his first book didn't hit as big, but 4,000 Weeks really did.

01:08:43.620 | It was a culmination of this training and that really opened up this ability for him

01:08:47.020 | to then reduce the urgency and load of the things he has so that this particular lifestyle

01:08:52.180 | of write, do a little bit of admin, and then enjoy is possible.

01:08:56.420 | So he's like a great example of lifestyle center career planning.

01:08:59.900 | So this is why, like in Slow Productivity, I say obsess over quality is this critical

01:09:03.540 | principle is because it enables everything else.

01:09:06.820 | But again, to get to the specifics of your question, don't shy away from unambiguous

01:09:13.540 | evaluation.

01:09:16.020 | That's where lifestyle-centric planning really can play.

01:09:20.820 | It's scary because unambiguous evaluation can be unambiguous negative evaluation.

01:09:26.620 | I'm being attacked by a fly.

01:09:28.980 | I noticed that in here actually.

01:09:30.260 | I think I just grabbed it.

01:09:31.260 | Hold on.

01:09:32.260 | I did not.

01:09:33.260 | I did not.

01:09:34.260 | I thought I was like Mr. Miyagi.

01:09:36.660 | I did not.

01:09:40.380 | It's tempting to steer away from things that is going to be unambiguous about how valuable

01:09:46.700 | it is.

01:09:47.700 | Like this sold this many units.

01:09:49.580 | We will or will not give you the deal for this book.

01:09:52.380 | Like the clients bought this or not.

01:09:54.860 | Because it makes failure clear.

01:09:57.060 | But the flip side of things that have an unambiguous downside that you're afraid of is that the

01:10:01.980 | upside is going to be unambiguously useful.

01:10:05.200 | And so that's the territory you swim towards.

01:10:07.340 | Not everyone has to do this.

01:10:09.380 | Some people's vision of an ideal lifestyle doesn't require this.

01:10:12.700 | They're like, "Look, I have this particular job.

01:10:15.780 | It's not so hard to do it well.

01:10:18.020 | It pays well as we live in the place I want to live.

01:10:20.820 | I like the people that are there.

01:10:22.500 | And building on top of this, I can make the rest of my life what I want it to be."

01:10:25.820 | That's fine.

01:10:26.820 | But if there's something more radical you want to do with your life, that's where you're

01:10:29.980 | going to have to do something where you have a big chance of notable failure.

01:10:33.620 | Because the flip side of that's what's going to give you the big leverage you need to make

01:10:36.220 | radical changes.

01:10:37.220 | So maybe that's the way I would put it is care about stuff that is too good to be ignored

01:10:45.340 | if you have visions in your lifestyle that are too desirable to be easily obtained.

01:10:51.500 | And that's a good way to think about it.

01:10:53.900 | All right, I think we have a case study here.

01:11:00.220 | So I like to do these now and again where we read tales that people talk about the specific

01:11:05.540 | ways in which they put the type of advice we talk about on the show, how they put into

01:11:09.500 | practice in their own life.

01:11:10.820 | So do we have a name?

01:11:14.500 | Susan.

01:11:15.500 | All right, Susan says, "I am a new manager with one direct report that is outsourced.

01:11:21.460 | I was very confused at first on what to include him in and when I should involve him in stuff.

01:11:26.580 | He's new to the business, so I just CC them on everything, inviting him to every meeting.

01:11:31.000 | Maybe some of the emails would be educational, like my notes from various meetings or client

01:11:34.780 | responses.

01:11:35.780 | Maybe he would learn the business at the various meetings.

01:11:38.020 | We met once a week, but I was very unclear on what he was working on.

01:11:41.260 | I would send one-off tasks his way, but I was unclear if he had enough work to do or

01:11:45.460 | too much."

01:11:46.460 | Well, thanks to slow productivity, my clarity is drastically better.

01:11:53.060 | When I was whittling down the non-pseudo-productive work for him to do, I had to get very clear

01:11:58.260 | on what was important.

01:12:00.140 | Now we meet more often for short updates, and he's got max three projects in a shared

01:12:03.580 | list.

01:12:04.580 | Since I know exactly what he is working on, I can stop spamming him with vaguely relevant

01:12:08.340 | emails and I can just update the list when I need the shared details or additional work

01:12:13.220 | or projects for him to do.

01:12:14.980 | Further, I started sharing my project list as well.

01:12:19.000 | At first it was uncomfortable to have him see what I was working on.

01:12:22.740 | I was holding myself accountable to his judgment.

01:12:25.240 | What would he think?

01:12:26.240 | But having another human see what my projects are and having the frequent update meetings

01:12:29.980 | to show my incremental work has been rewarding.

01:12:32.780 | I look forward to one day having a larger team where we can all cross-collaborate in

01:12:37.000 | this way.

01:12:38.000 | All right, so Susan is demonstrating an important concept.

01:12:42.660 | This is from principle one of my book, Slow Productivity.

01:12:46.860 | Manage your workloads better.

01:12:49.620 | It's like the key thing.

01:12:52.180 | The key thing that we don't think about at all in knowledge work is workload management,

01:12:56.940 | and this is what causes so many problems.

01:12:58.780 | So what did Susan do?

01:13:00.300 | Following my advice, she said, "Let's be explicit.

01:13:03.320 | What are you working on and how many things should you work on?

01:13:06.140 | Oh, you probably shouldn't be working on more than three things at once, so let's be clear

01:13:09.820 | about what those are.

01:13:10.820 | We'll put them in a list.

01:13:12.300 | If other things come up, we could put them in a waiting queue right next to us.

01:13:16.180 | We won't forget about them, but I'm not going to ask you to work on them concurrently.

01:13:19.820 | When you finish one of these three, we can figure out together what's the right thing

01:13:24.260 | to put into your active list to replace it.

01:13:27.340 | Two, you put in place a particular communication protocol for collaboration.

01:13:32.100 | Three-day-a-week meetings is great when you have a one-on-one like this because this means

01:13:35.900 | you don't have to send a one-off email.

01:13:39.000 | You're never more than a day away from having a conversation.

01:13:42.940 | So now he can just keep track of, "Oh, what questions do I have?"

01:13:47.460 | When you next meet, you guys can efficiently go through them.

01:13:49.940 | You can keep track of questions you have and go through them.

01:13:53.260 | You know you're going to get an update on exactly where he is within a day.

01:13:58.220 | Thirty minutes, three days a week could take the place of thirty emails a day, five days

01:14:03.620 | a week, which is going to cause a constant state of having to go back and forth and check

01:14:07.860 | inboxes and stress.

01:14:09.180 | So Susan, I love the way that you made workload explicit, and by doing that, everyone got

01:14:13.660 | more effective.

01:14:15.800 | You structure effort.

01:14:17.100 | Effort gets more sustainable.

01:14:19.060 | Effort gets easier.

01:14:20.060 | All right, so we got a final segment coming up where I promise I'm going to talk about

01:14:24.980 | Martha Stewart, but first, hear from a sponsor.

01:14:29.900 | Again, Jesse, as I drink from this big white mug, we need a sponsor.

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01:14:43.820 | They gave me a mug.

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01:14:47.740 | It was interesting.

01:14:48.740 | Yeah, they gave me an MRI for free.

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01:14:54.540 | And a blood transfusion, which felt a little excessive, but they just wanted—it's what

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01:19:00.160 | All right, Jesse, let's get to our final segment.

01:19:06.880 | All right.

01:19:07.880 | So we load on the screen here for people who are watching instead of just listening.

01:19:15.640 | This is the trailer for the new Netflix documentary Martha about Martha Stewart.

01:19:23.160 | Good documentary.

01:19:24.160 | Have you seen it yet, Jesse?

01:19:25.160 | I have.

01:19:26.160 | Yeah.

01:19:27.160 | It was good, right?

01:19:28.160 | Let me tell you what caught my attention.

01:19:31.920 | Early on, especially when her career was taking off, I was remarking, she must be incredibly

01:19:39.880 | busy because she had this property, the Turkey Hill Farm, that she was sort of custom renovating

01:19:46.240 | as acres and acres of property into like all these like custom gardens.

01:19:50.920 | She had this catering company, this like really famous catering company would do these major

01:19:55.200 | catering jobs that were like very famous.

01:19:57.920 | It's just a complicated logistical battle with your clients, but also with the people

01:20:04.840 | who are working with you and the chefs and the servers.

01:20:09.200 | And she was writing.

01:20:10.200 | She was writing these books, which are on the screen right now, and she's writing these

01:20:13.120 | books like once a year.

01:20:14.120 | I mean, of course, as her empire grew into a big media publicly traded company, she was

01:20:17.320 | super busy.

01:20:18.320 | But we're kind of used to the idea of like CEOs of big companies being really busy and

01:20:22.160 | having big staffs.

01:20:23.160 | I was interested in this like earlier part of her life where she had so much different

01:20:27.160 | things going on.

01:20:28.160 | I mean, I still have skeletons in my yard, Jesse.

01:20:31.560 | And I'm not working on nearly as many stuff as she was.

01:20:36.360 | And she was landscaping by hand like 50 acres of a farm.

01:20:41.560 | So I started thinking.

01:20:42.560 | I was like, you know, the time management book I would be curious in is one written

01:20:46.600 | by Martha Stewart.

01:20:48.640 | Like how does she manage her time?

01:20:49.960 | Like how did that work?

01:20:51.100 | And it turns out she did.

01:20:54.500 | She did write a book.

01:20:56.360 | I didn't know this.

01:20:57.360 | And it was called like Martha Stewart's Organizing.

01:21:00.360 | I have a picture of it here on the screen.

01:21:04.440 | She did write a book about time management.

01:21:05.440 | So I was like, oh, I'm just fascinated.

01:21:06.720 | Like how does she do all this?

01:21:07.720 | And then I look at this book and I look at the tips in it and I said, this has nothing

01:21:13.040 | to do with how someone like Martha Stewart organizes her life.

01:21:16.700 | So here's the book.

01:21:18.120 | You can already see by the cover with like paper clips in a neat box and a well wrapped

01:21:24.140 | up USB cable that this is not about how Martha Stewart built her empire while writing books

01:21:29.200 | while also renovating all this land.

01:21:30.600 | Look at some of the tips that she highlighted from this book.

01:21:34.200 | Keep your kitchen drawers well organized.

01:21:37.160 | Maybe using her expandable in-drawer utensil tray.

01:21:40.920 | Have a ceramic tool crock on your kitchen countertop to keep those kitchen utensils

01:21:47.640 | neatly put away.

01:21:50.060 | Make sure in your home office that you have file folders with vine decals on them so that

01:21:56.760 | they're aesthetically pleasing.

01:21:59.580 | She has a planner.

01:22:02.340 | The Martha Stewart Spiral updated weekly calendar.

01:22:05.760 | It's very pretty.

01:22:07.420 | It has like roughly enough space on it for like seven things to write down.

01:22:13.060 | And that's all the advice she gives.

01:22:15.500 | I bring this up because it points to an important divide when we talk about time management

01:22:19.460 | productivity that we don't always elucidate.

01:22:23.700 | And that's the difference between aesthetic productivity and real productivity.

01:22:30.180 | So these products and what Martha Stewart has talked about in that book is what I call

01:22:33.980 | aesthetic productivity.

01:22:36.180 | It's typically based on organizing physical things in a pretty way and it uses that metaphor

01:22:41.340 | for organizing your life.

01:22:42.500 | You should have like a beautiful little notebook and draw these pictures in it and have stickers

01:22:46.060 | you put on it.

01:22:47.900 | And then there's real productivity, which is I have a huge amount of stuff in my life.

01:22:53.020 | My schedule is very crowded.

01:22:55.100 | My attention is being pulled in all sorts of directions.

01:22:58.380 | I need to take control of this shit, like what Martha Stewart did at the height of her

01:23:03.460 | early busyness to try to build this empire that she did.

01:23:08.260 | And none of that has to do with drawer organizers or pretty planners that have pictures of flowers

01:23:12.780 | on the cover.

01:23:14.580 | It's complicated, hard, super focused work.

01:23:19.940 | It is the equivalent to athletes for all the training they do in the gym.

01:23:23.860 | And like when it comes to athletes who are good at what they do, we don't downplay how

01:23:28.300 | hard that is and how important the training is.

01:23:30.620 | Well, I think for any sort of knowledge work, it is the continually adjusted fight to keep

01:23:38.260 | control of the chaos is this like very difficult thing we have to do to be able to succeed

01:23:42.980 | with our jobs and aesthetic productivity, I think downplays it, makes it seem more minor,

01:23:49.100 | makes it seem like, you know, it's a matter of taste or sort of owning the right tools.

01:23:55.580 | So I would be really interested in like an actual, an actual productivity book from Martha

01:24:00.200 | Stewart.

01:24:01.380 | I could tell you, I don't know what you think, Jesse, from that documentary would be pretty

01:24:03.740 | brutal.

01:24:04.740 | I would assume.

01:24:05.740 | It would say like only sleep four hours a night, which she did.

01:24:10.740 | Fire fools.

01:24:11.740 | She was firing people left and right.

01:24:14.500 | If you need something done, yell, not the nicest, not the nicest person.

01:24:18.980 | I bet she was super time blocked if I had to guess.

01:24:23.260 | Super time blocked, like exactly when I'm going to fit in these things to make it all

01:24:26.860 | work.

01:24:27.860 | I bet her information systems were locked in tight, like every order of food and who

01:24:32.060 | were hiring and where's the staff.

01:24:33.740 | I think she hired good people and fired anyone who wasn't great.

01:24:37.140 | Like I mean, I think, man, that, that the real Martha Stewart time management book would

01:24:43.380 | probably be like Sun Tzu's Art of War.

01:24:46.580 | It'd be a pretty brutal book if I had to guess.

01:24:49.580 | They don't, you know, I'm not suggesting most people need to do that level of extreme organization

01:24:53.940 | because she's way too stressed.

01:24:55.660 | What she does is way too stressful.

01:24:57.220 | But it is interesting that we don't, as like another aside, we don't often see a lot of

01:25:01.840 | windows into how like the, like the hyper busy organize themselves.

01:25:05.620 | I'm very curious about it.

01:25:06.620 | It's like a curiosity.

01:25:07.620 | I only know of one such book, which I think is actually called Hyper Productivity, and

01:25:12.860 | it literally was just like a very busy executive who sat on a lot of boards and said, here's

01:25:16.060 | how I organize my stuff.

01:25:17.060 | And yeah, it's hard and a lot of systems.

01:25:19.100 | I'm really fascinated by that type of stuff.

01:25:21.060 | Again, not that people need to do that because most people's ideal lifestyle does not involve

01:25:25.260 | like what Martha Stewart's ideal lifestyle involved.

01:25:27.620 | It doesn't involve juggling five boards and like two public companies or whatever.

01:25:32.460 | But it's a curiosity to me how they do it.

01:25:35.060 | But the one thing I know about how they do it, it's not to draw organizers or file folders

01:25:40.140 | with vines on them.

01:25:42.100 | The one thing that I looked at a lot in the documentary was just, you know, the stock

01:25:46.340 | price obviously went down a lot when she was in, had her legal troubles and stuff.

01:25:50.660 | So I just checked it.

01:25:51.660 | It's at 6.4 now.

01:25:54.060 | So she's probably still a billionaire, right?

01:25:55.820 | I don't know.

01:25:57.180 | That's a good question because when she was a billionaire, it was in the 20s, wasn't it?

01:26:02.940 | It was, the initial offering was at 18, which I guess in today's dollars is like 33.

01:26:07.720 | So not optimal.

01:26:10.220 | She sold it to like a brand management company or something.

01:26:13.420 | Oh, she did?

01:26:14.420 | Yeah.

01:26:15.420 | A licensing company.

01:26:16.420 | Like how long ago?

01:26:20.300 | After jail.

01:26:21.940 | Okay.

01:26:23.580 | Probably early 2010s.

01:26:25.700 | Yeah.

01:26:26.700 | So they just licensed the brand name.

01:26:30.420 | The thing that, okay.

01:26:31.420 | So here's, if we're going to talk about Martha.

01:26:32.420 | The other thing that caught my attention is the scoreboard aspect.

01:26:37.020 | Like the fact that she's like, I want to make, I want this to be a company that goes public.

01:26:43.220 | And I want to be like the richest self-made woman in the world at the time.

01:26:48.140 | There's no functional reason to do that, right?

01:26:50.300 | Because this is a, when you have a brand built around a person, like what we've learned in

01:26:53.560 | like today's economy is you can make a killing when it's built around you and you just have

01:26:59.380 | a real talent for it.

01:27:00.380 | You can make a killing and have all sorts of autonomy and flexibility.

01:27:03.340 | There's no reason to like build an omnimedia company that has like all these employees

01:27:07.160 | or this or that, right?

01:27:08.160 | There's no reason she could have been making a killing with like books and could have her

01:27:11.980 | magazine and a TV show and just be like, I'm really well known.

01:27:14.780 | I'm really good at this.

01:27:15.780 | And I get paid a lot of money to do this.

01:27:17.980 | There's no reason to have to start a major company.

01:27:20.660 | And then once you have that major company, they had to have like a 50 different magazines

01:27:24.180 | and like 20 different shows just to try to like justify whatever.

01:27:28.420 | So it's interesting.

01:27:29.420 | There's a scale to that where today is like the podcast economy.

01:27:33.180 | If you have that level of talent, so like she was exceptional enough that you could

01:27:36.200 | build this whole company around her.

01:27:38.100 | You can get $150 million podcast deal.

01:27:41.500 | Except for now, what are you doing for that $150 million?

01:27:44.300 | You're podcasting once a week or whatever, which is so much different than being the

01:27:47.520 | CEO of a public company.

01:27:48.660 | So it really caught my attention that she wanted to start a big company.

01:27:53.860 | I think she likes the limelight too.

01:27:55.380 | Obviously, I mean, she wanted to do the documentary.

01:27:57.580 | How old is she?

01:27:58.580 | We looked it up.

01:27:59.580 | 80.

01:28:00.580 | She's 80.

01:28:01.580 | 81 or 82.

01:28:02.580 | Good.

01:28:03.580 | Yeah.

01:28:04.580 | Yeah.

01:28:05.580 | Because she was 63 when she went to jail.

01:28:06.580 | Yeah.

01:28:07.580 | Yeah.

01:28:08.580 | She's older than you think.

01:28:09.580 | Yeah.

01:28:10.580 | She looks great.

01:28:11.580 | Yeah.

01:28:12.580 | I guess that's just me.

01:28:13.580 | It's lifestyle centric planning.

01:28:14.580 | I'm like, oh, if I had this big brand that could be built, and I kind of have a reasonable

01:28:17.860 | brand built around me.

01:28:19.540 | All of my instincts is not how do we build a huge media company?

01:28:22.680 | It's like, how do we build a very autonomous, flexible business off of that that doesn't

01:28:31.760 | require board meetings?

01:28:32.760 | Yeah.

01:28:33.760 | Interesting topic.

01:28:34.760 | All right.

01:28:35.760 | Anyway, that's all the time we have this week.

01:28:36.760 | We'll be back next week with another episode.

01:28:37.760 | If you listen to my advice from the beginning, maybe it'll be one of the few podcasts you'll

01:28:38.760 | be listening to next week.

01:28:39.760 | Until then, as always, stay deep.

01:28:40.760 | If you enjoyed today's discussion about unplugging after the election and you want some more

01:28:41.760 | advice about doing these types of digital declutters, check out Episode 318, which is

01:28:58.740 | called Take a Break.

01:29:00.480 | It also has a lot of good advice along these lines.

01:29:03.160 | Check it out.

01:29:05.080 | Want to boost your productivity?

01:29:07.380 | Hit the movies during work, expert says.

01:29:11.320 | A spoiler alert, that expert is me.

How To Disappear To Transform Yourself | Cal Newport

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