Ep. 242: Why Is "The Simple Life" So Appealing?

00:00:00.000 | This brings us to today's deep question.

00:00:02.400 | What do we really seek when we seek the simple life?

00:00:07.400 | I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions.

00:00:18.200 | The show about living and working deeply

00:00:20.380 | in an increasingly distracted world.

00:00:26.920 | I am here in my Deep Work HQ joined as always

00:00:30.920 | by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:33.160 | Jesse, as of today, you are now officially

00:00:35.520 | much older than me, isn't that true?

00:00:36.880 | Yeah.

00:00:38.060 | Jesse and I have very close together birthdays.

00:00:41.000 | We're separated by a few months.

00:00:42.320 | So there's a window of, let's see, what's it,

00:00:44.960 | March, April, what, three months each year

00:00:46.520 | where Jesse is a year older than me.

00:00:48.160 | So while I remain only 26 years old, Jesse is now 27.

00:00:54.080 | So you can chime in with your wisdom

00:00:57.060 | that is born only of age and experience,

00:00:59.080 | Jesse, throughout the show.

00:01:00.280 | Sounds good.

00:01:01.120 | As you see fit.

00:01:01.940 | I assume you're gonna celebrate by reading quietly

00:01:06.760 | and deeply for hours in the woods.

00:01:09.280 | That would be a pretty good celebration.

00:01:10.480 | I wouldn't mind that.

00:01:11.320 | Honestly, that's all I want these days.

00:01:13.400 | Yeah.

00:01:14.240 | That would be a great gift for me.

00:01:15.120 | Just going to the woods with a book you like.

00:01:17.360 | Like I have a plane ride coming up

00:01:18.720 | and I have, you know, like several New Yorkers

00:01:20.800 | and I'm wired and something else and a Sports Illustrated.

00:01:23.480 | So it's like, that's going to take a while.

00:01:24.760 | It's nice.

00:01:25.600 | You start working your way through them.

00:01:26.440 | Yeah.

00:01:27.260 | I have a plane ride coming up as well,

00:01:30.860 | but it involves also a 10 year old,

00:01:32.640 | an eight year old and a four year old.

00:01:34.280 | It will not be as deep.

00:01:35.560 | Let's put it that way.

00:01:37.680 | A lot of walking back to the bathrooms with toddlers though.

00:01:41.640 | So that'll be fun.

00:01:43.220 | All right.

00:01:44.060 | Well, anyways, exciting.

00:01:46.040 | Happy birthday.

00:01:46.880 | Let's get rolling with what I have in mind for today's show.

00:01:51.440 | Today's show is actually motivated by a book

00:01:53.680 | I read a couple of weeks ago.

00:01:55.340 | The book was called "Living the Good Life,

00:01:59.160 | How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World."

00:02:04.000 | This is an old book.

00:02:05.080 | It was written by Helen and Scott Nearing in the fifties.

00:02:09.720 | It came out in 1954.

00:02:12.880 | It was then reissued in 1973.

00:02:15.080 | And actually I think this reissue ended up being

00:02:17.600 | influential, especially in the back to land movement,

00:02:21.420 | which picked up speed in the seventies

00:02:23.640 | going on into the eighties.

00:02:25.520 | So I went back and found a used version of this book

00:02:29.800 | as I like to do.

00:02:31.040 | I don't want to be on Kindle.

00:02:32.200 | I don't want to be in a new paperback version.

00:02:33.840 | If there's a book that actually existed in a time period

00:02:37.800 | is of that time period intertwined with that time period.

00:02:40.200 | So I have the 1973 edition.

00:02:42.120 | I read it and it was interesting.

00:02:44.140 | It was about this couple who during the depression

00:02:48.920 | decided they wanted to remove themselves

00:02:52.500 | from being so intermeshed into the capitalist economy

00:02:57.500 | because they were seeing, of course, during the depression

00:03:00.140 | that these major changes could happen,

00:03:02.900 | that they had no control over and that weren't their fault.

00:03:05.900 | They could really affect their livelihood,

00:03:08.060 | really affect the quality of their life.

00:03:09.780 | So they said, you know what, enough of this.

00:03:11.500 | Let's leave New York city where we're living

00:03:13.980 | and we'll go to Vermont.

00:03:15.500 | And we're going to live simply and deliberately

00:03:18.340 | in part to free ourselves from all these forces

00:03:20.660 | that are out of our control,

00:03:22.060 | in part because of a Thoreau style

00:03:25.460 | wanting to not have taxes being paid

00:03:29.600 | towards efforts like wars,

00:03:31.380 | and in part to be a demonstration to others

00:03:35.060 | about the ability to live in different ways

00:03:37.160 | or more intentional ways.

00:03:38.040 | So they did this, started in the 30s,

00:03:40.420 | wrote a book about it in the 50s.

00:03:42.380 | I have some photos here.

00:03:43.380 | I'm going to bring them up on the screen.

00:03:44.860 | So if you're watching at youtube.com/CalNewportMedia

00:03:49.220 | or at thedeeplife.com, just look for episode 242.

00:03:53.640 | The pictures I have on the screen

00:03:54.860 | are actually not from their property in Vermont,

00:03:58.900 | but their later property in Maine.

00:04:00.780 | So basically they lived in this homestead in Vermont

00:04:03.280 | for a long time, including when they published this book.

00:04:05.200 | And then at some point they moved to Maine

00:04:06.820 | and did the same thing.

00:04:07.820 | They built up a new homestead there.

00:04:09.460 | So these pictures give you an idea of what their life is.

00:04:12.820 | Here is Scott Neering tending his organic garden.

00:04:17.400 | Here they are in 1931, Helen and Scott.

00:04:21.060 | So that's what they look like

00:04:21.900 | when they moved to this homestead.

00:04:22.940 | They weren't young when they did this, by the way.

00:04:24.500 | I mean, they were well into their middle age

00:04:26.580 | when they made this switch.

00:04:27.900 | Right here, they are building a wall.

00:04:31.300 | They were really into doing masonry

00:04:35.320 | with this very particular type called slip-form masonry,

00:04:38.320 | which is something that could build really durable,

00:04:41.200 | really useful structures without having to have

00:04:43.540 | a lot of materials or a lot of expert builders.

00:04:46.140 | So they built their house in Vermont with this.

00:04:48.180 | They built walls with this.

00:04:49.780 | They ate simply, they're vegetarian.

00:04:52.100 | They ate with a simple wooden bowl and spoon.

00:04:55.240 | I put that on here.

00:04:56.200 | Here's some of their stone buildings.

00:04:58.740 | So they built a house like this in Vermont as well.

00:05:01.180 | So he built out a stone, they built it from scratch.

00:05:03.980 | They've got these cool gardens, all very scenic,

00:05:07.660 | all very bucolic.

00:05:09.140 | Anyways, I'm reading this, right?

00:05:12.560 | I'm reading this book because I needed it for research

00:05:15.980 | for the deep life, the book I'm writing on the deep life.

00:05:18.740 | And there was an interesting dynamic that arose.

00:05:22.060 | So at first glance, at first encounter,

00:05:26.280 | when you read the story of the Neerings,

00:05:28.960 | what you think about is these are people escaping complexity.

00:05:33.120 | These are people escaping busyness.

00:05:35.140 | So what appeals at first when you read these stories

00:05:38.900 | is the perceived simplicity of their life.

00:05:42.620 | There is no running errands or traffic

00:05:45.380 | or whatever the 1930s equivalent was of answering email

00:05:49.220 | when you're building your slip-form masonry walls

00:05:52.100 | up in the wilds of Vermont.

00:05:53.980 | But when you read this book farther and pay attention,

00:05:57.500 | you see this assumption that they're living

00:05:59.540 | a very simple life is actually challenged.

00:06:03.880 | They were quite busy as reported in this book

00:06:07.220 | when they were in Vermont.

00:06:08.060 | They had a lot of projects going on.

00:06:09.420 | And in order to do these projects,

00:06:10.780 | they were having to experiment with

00:06:12.220 | and master all sorts of new technology.

00:06:14.180 | So they learned how to, for example, to do this masonry.

00:06:16.180 | They experimented and worked with greenhouse growing.

00:06:18.800 | They built complex terraced irrigated garden projects.

00:06:23.800 | They figured out how to do wide-scale composting.

00:06:28.420 | They built a sugar house

00:06:29.740 | and built a complex maple syrup production center.

00:06:33.800 | This is actually what generated

00:06:34.900 | the cash they needed to survive.

00:06:37.220 | They built it off of maple syrup.

00:06:39.940 | Constantly projects going on, long days,

00:06:43.380 | working throughout the days

00:06:44.580 | to the point where they would have visitors come.

00:06:47.500 | And they report in the book, this became an issue

00:06:49.380 | because the visitors expected,

00:06:51.020 | we're gonna be hanging out with the Neerings.

00:06:54.420 | You know, we're gonna sit out in their cabin

00:06:56.100 | and smoke a corncob pipe and talk about simple living.

00:06:59.720 | And the Neerings would say,

00:07:00.560 | "Look, if you're here, you gotta work.

00:07:02.340 | We're gonna be working all day long.

00:07:03.780 | We can't just sit around and entertain you."

00:07:06.060 | In addition to what they were doing on their homesteads,

00:07:07.700 | the Neerings also wrote books.

00:07:09.780 | This was not the only book they wrote.

00:07:11.900 | They traveled, they lectured.

00:07:14.120 | After a while, they began to host interns

00:07:16.840 | and other types of visitors at their properties

00:07:18.860 | to sort of teach them about this way of living,

00:07:20.500 | to disseminate the word throughout the culture.

00:07:23.680 | So they weren't living a simple life

00:07:26.020 | in the sense of they didn't have much to do.

00:07:27.880 | They weren't living a simple life

00:07:28.980 | in the sense there's no busyness,

00:07:30.300 | that they were just sort of going through their day

00:07:32.180 | and most of their time was free.

00:07:33.820 | So the things that we imagine

00:07:35.260 | when we first conjure moving to the wilds of Vermont

00:07:38.460 | were not actually the things

00:07:40.500 | that the Neerings were enjoying.

00:07:42.260 | So this brings us to today's deep question.

00:07:45.740 | What do we really seek when we seek the simple life?

00:07:50.740 | And so what I wanna do is start with a deep dive

00:07:54.380 | and deconstruct more carefully

00:07:56.140 | what is it about this story,

00:07:58.180 | stories like the Neerings going to Vermont

00:08:00.140 | that attracts our attention?

00:08:01.180 | Because I think if we really deconstruct this appeal,

00:08:03.660 | we find a more complicated set of answers,

00:08:07.060 | but also a set of answers that we can more easily act on

00:08:10.660 | in the near future,

00:08:11.540 | even without a radical change to our life.

00:08:14.140 | I then have a collection of five questions

00:08:15.900 | from you, my listeners.

00:08:18.260 | They will all roughly orbit this general topic

00:08:22.160 | of engineering a life that's less busy,

00:08:24.700 | engineering a life that's simple.

00:08:26.820 | I might've actually said that wrong.

00:08:28.060 | I think I did today four questions and one case study.

00:08:31.100 | We get four questions and we will get one case study.

00:08:33.340 | And then we'll shift gears as we normally do at the end

00:08:35.980 | and talk about something interesting.

00:08:38.100 | All right, so let's look deeper here at this question

00:08:40.980 | of what is it exactly about the Neerings moving to Vermont

00:08:43.420 | that attracts us if it's not just

00:08:44.700 | they have plenty of free time now,

00:08:45.980 | that their life is less crowded.

00:08:47.860 | And I think the right way to think about this

00:08:49.540 | is to divide our investigation into two categories.

00:08:54.540 | Category number one is the things we want to escape

00:08:59.060 | when we head towards the simple life.

00:09:02.260 | And category number two is the things we want to pursue

00:09:05.020 | when we head towards the simple life.

00:09:08.220 | So let's start with what we want to escape

00:09:10.980 | when we think about stories like the Neerings.

00:09:12.420 | I would say number one on that list

00:09:14.100 | is going to be overload.

00:09:16.280 | It's not, do you always have something to do?

00:09:20.180 | That's not an issue.

00:09:21.020 | The Neerings always had something to do.

00:09:22.220 | It's do you have too many things that you need to do?

00:09:25.380 | More things than you have time to actually implement.

00:09:29.660 | That is what overload is.

00:09:31.060 | And it's different than busyness.

00:09:33.060 | It's different than constant activity.

00:09:34.900 | It's not about how much of your day you're working.

00:09:37.640 | It's about how much stuff is on the list

00:09:39.780 | that you're trying to get through.

00:09:41.020 | And when that list gets larger

00:09:42.780 | than you actually have the time, resources,

00:09:45.500 | or capacity to execute, problems arise.

00:09:48.540 | And these problems are psychological in nature.

00:09:51.060 | So one of the arguments I make,

00:09:53.020 | I've made on this podcast before,

00:09:54.500 | it's also an argument that I'm elaborating

00:09:56.300 | in my new book on slow productivity,

00:09:58.060 | is that there is a tax, a psychological tax,

00:10:02.740 | on every obligation that you've committed to.

00:10:05.720 | You know it's there, you know you have to get it done.

00:10:07.620 | That psychological tax then expands

00:10:11.060 | beyond just being on your mind

00:10:12.500 | into actual taxes on your time.

00:10:15.380 | Most things that are on your list that you need to do

00:10:18.940 | have this regular background demand

00:10:21.060 | of your time and attention.

00:10:22.100 | And you gotta follow up with this person.

00:10:24.140 | You need to set up a meeting.

00:10:25.800 | There's some emails that have to go back and forth.

00:10:27.700 | You have to do a little bit of research.

00:10:28.900 | Where is that new pharmacy in the place that we're going

00:10:31.280 | that I can get my subscription sitting there?

00:10:32.560 | So these things don't just sit.

00:10:34.100 | Most things don't just sit idly on your task list.

00:10:37.680 | They have these little demands of your time and attention.

00:10:40.580 | And I call that an overhead tax.

00:10:42.080 | So if your task list gets too big,

00:10:45.940 | the sum of this overhead tax itself becomes larger.

00:10:50.940 | Until after a while you find yourself

00:10:53.440 | spending most of your time tending

00:10:55.380 | and worrying about all the things waiting on your list,

00:10:57.620 | which greatly reduces the time you have

00:11:00.380 | to actually make progress on things,

00:11:01.940 | which means you fall even farther behind,

00:11:03.660 | your list gets bigger,

00:11:04.740 | and the overhead tax grows even more intense,

00:11:07.300 | and your window to actually accomplish things

00:11:09.500 | gets even smaller.

00:11:10.520 | This is a terrible spiral.

00:11:11.780 | It's incredibly stressful.

00:11:14.140 | It's also an incredibly inefficient way

00:11:15.580 | to try to do important things in the world.

00:11:17.660 | So one of the things we want to escape

00:11:18.820 | when we think about moving to the wilds of Vermont

00:11:21.900 | like the Neerians is overload.

00:11:23.980 | Not having things to do all the time,

00:11:26.980 | but having more things to do

00:11:28.860 | than we have time to actually accomplish.

00:11:31.160 | The other thing I would say we want to escape

00:11:34.060 | when we think of these scenarios is struggle.

00:11:37.220 | So the simple life, let's say,

00:11:41.180 | that the Neerians are living up there,

00:11:43.060 | reduced financial worries.

00:11:44.500 | They lived very cheaply.

00:11:47.260 | They were largely dependent on growing

00:11:49.940 | or producing their own food or bartering.

00:11:52.900 | The cash that they did need,

00:11:54.940 | they generated from their maple sugaring operation.

00:11:57.500 | And they just figured out exactly how many dollars

00:11:59.260 | they needed to handle the things

00:12:00.980 | or acquire the things that they couldn't barter for

00:12:02.700 | or grow themselves.

00:12:03.980 | So they had freedom from the struggle of financial worries.

00:12:06.100 | They had freedom from the struggle of stressful work.

00:12:08.660 | They worked all the time,

00:12:10.180 | but they weren't on tight deadlines.

00:12:12.720 | There was no boss who was bothering them

00:12:14.420 | about when is your slip form masonry wall

00:12:16.380 | going to be finished.

00:12:18.440 | There wasn't the stress of, oh my God,

00:12:20.580 | what if we lose this client?

00:12:21.740 | How are we going to be able to pay

00:12:23.300 | the lease on our office building?

00:12:25.620 | So the struggle of stressful work they were escaping.

00:12:28.460 | They were escaping the stressful environment of the city.

00:12:30.900 | It's crowded, there's noise, there's crime.

00:12:33.860 | There's, you're being jostled on the street.

00:12:36.380 | Your senses are being overwhelmed.

00:12:37.980 | So there's a simplicity to the quiet of the forest.

00:12:42.500 | They're also avoiding the struggles

00:12:43.900 | that you get with things like long commutes

00:12:46.860 | or other types of parts of your life

00:12:48.520 | that are not that subjectively nice.

00:12:53.000 | So there's this escape from struggle

00:12:54.620 | that's also part of the appeal of the simple life.

00:12:56.820 | There's a lot of things that are unpleasant,

00:13:01.480 | that if you go to this quote unquote simple life,

00:13:04.820 | you can reduce.

00:13:05.660 | All right, so those are things you escape,

00:13:09.140 | but part of the appeal of this life,

00:13:10.620 | these type of lifestyles is also what we want to pursue.

00:13:13.460 | What are you trying to gain

00:13:15.620 | by shifting to these simpler lives?

00:13:18.100 | Three things here.

00:13:18.940 | Number one is autonomy.

00:13:21.860 | The Neerings had complete autonomy

00:13:23.880 | over what they decided to do and how they spent their time.

00:13:26.380 | So again, they always had work to do.

00:13:27.780 | They worked hard, but it was on their own terms,

00:13:29.800 | on projects that they thought were important.

00:13:32.160 | They were also looking for meaning.

00:13:35.000 | So not only were they escaping a sort of lifestyle

00:13:38.600 | that they were critiquing,

00:13:39.440 | not only were they escaping being intermeshed

00:13:42.000 | into an economic system

00:13:43.000 | where they thought they had lack of control

00:13:45.240 | and could be pushed around because of world events,

00:13:47.480 | they were also trying to proactively demonstrate

00:13:49.920 | to the broader world alternative ways of living.

00:13:52.200 | This is why they wrote books.

00:13:53.460 | It's why they did lectures.

00:13:54.500 | It's why they brought visitors and interns out

00:13:56.420 | to their homestead in Vermont and later in Maine.

00:13:58.860 | They were trying to spread the word

00:14:00.180 | and they were successful at this.

00:14:01.580 | The 1973 edition of this book really did play a big role

00:14:05.780 | in driving a lot of people from the baby boom generation

00:14:09.740 | attracted to the counterculture as demonstrated

00:14:12.100 | in the most distilled form by the hippie movement

00:14:14.780 | to embrace back to land style movements.

00:14:16.720 | And for a while, this was quite a powerful social movement.

00:14:21.040 | The other things we try to pursue

00:14:23.300 | when we're thinking about the simple life is slowness.

00:14:26.420 | This is a property that I don't think we talk about enough,

00:14:30.700 | but it's a property that's of particular importance to me.

00:14:33.720 | And it's not the idea that you don't do things,

00:14:37.900 | but it's the idea that no one day,

00:14:41.940 | no one hour is critical.

00:14:45.800 | So if I'm Scott Neering, if I'm Helen Neering,

00:14:49.460 | most days, most hours, I am doing something.

00:14:52.180 | But I know if I didn't feel well,

00:14:54.140 | or if the weather was bad,

00:14:55.900 | or if a relative came to visit,

00:14:57.620 | if I didn't do my normal work tomorrow, it's okay.

00:15:01.920 | Nothing bad would happen.

00:15:03.220 | If I skipped working on this wall for the next hour,

00:15:05.940 | nothing bad would happen.

00:15:07.100 | There's no one who's gonna yell at me.

00:15:08.660 | There's no client who is gonna complain

00:15:11.040 | that their email didn't get responded to.

00:15:14.140 | So I'm gonna call that slowness.

00:15:16.060 | And I actually think this is a fundamental property

00:15:19.760 | that is well suited for the human condition.

00:15:22.160 | And it's something that we didn't even know we need

00:15:24.180 | until now we find ourselves missing it.

00:15:26.380 | I in particular am very wired for this type of slowness.

00:15:29.440 | I will do a ton of work if left to my own devices.

00:15:34.700 | If you tell me go write books and articles,

00:15:36.780 | I will write a lot of books.

00:15:38.080 | I will write a lot of articles and be happy about it.

00:15:40.560 | What makes me unhappy is if you say,

00:15:42.880 | tomorrow you need to come do this radio appearance

00:15:44.920 | and then you need to go to this meeting

00:15:46.320 | and then you need to go get this done in one hour.

00:15:49.600 | It's the notion of this has to get done on this day.

00:15:53.180 | This thing has to happen on this time.

00:15:54.960 | So that if you get sick, if you get tired,

00:15:56.880 | if your kids are sick for the 100th time,

00:15:58.680 | this is gonna be a problem.

00:15:59.900 | That causes me stress.

00:16:01.560 | Work is fine, but work in which I don't have to worry

00:16:05.040 | about any particular day being critical is even better.

00:16:08.840 | So this is the other type of thing that you are pursuing

00:16:10.940 | when you think about these visions of the slow life.

00:16:14.000 | All right, so we had two things you want to escape,

00:16:16.680 | overload and struggle.

00:16:17.520 | We had three things you want to get closer to,

00:16:19.060 | autonomy, meaning and slowness.

00:16:22.220 | So what's my goal here in talking about those?

00:16:25.040 | Well, when we can get this discerning

00:16:28.000 | about what it is actually deep down

00:16:30.060 | that's attracting us to stories like the nearings,

00:16:32.800 | we can isolate these components.

00:16:34.240 | We can begin to ask,

00:16:35.280 | well, is there anything I can do right now?

00:16:37.900 | Or in the next couple of months or in the next year or so,

00:16:39.920 | is there anything I can do right now

00:16:42.280 | that will help me get away

00:16:43.960 | from those things I want to escape,

00:16:45.160 | help me get towards those things I want to pursue,

00:16:46.840 | even if I'm not able to in the near future,

00:16:49.800 | leave everything and go move to Vermont.

00:16:52.560 | When we get past just the instinctual attraction

00:16:56.020 | to a big grand gesture and deconstruct it,

00:16:59.560 | we can identify these underlying components

00:17:02.180 | that we can do something with right now,

00:17:04.560 | even without that same degree of radicalness.

00:17:07.960 | So let's go through this experiment

00:17:09.400 | with these particular properties that I just delineated.

00:17:12.580 | What are the types of things that someone

00:17:14.880 | who reads this book and finds it really appealing,

00:17:17.020 | what are some things they could do

00:17:17.880 | in the next couple of weeks

00:17:19.520 | that would move them closer to these properties

00:17:21.440 | that they are attracted to?

00:17:23.560 | Well, financial simplification.

00:17:26.560 | You could do this next week.

00:17:28.720 | Overhaul your finances, reduce your expenses,

00:17:31.680 | get control of your spending,

00:17:33.840 | find yourself feeling like you have a buffer.

00:17:37.640 | Okay, we have way more money than we actually the need.

00:17:39.960 | So there's some flexibility here

00:17:41.320 | because of the way that we're living,

00:17:42.600 | we're living below our means.

00:17:43.720 | And so we can take that stress off right away.

00:17:46.880 | Think about new work quota systems.

00:17:50.220 | Okay, in my job, I'm gonna start to establish

00:17:52.760 | specific quotas on how many of projects of different types

00:17:55.360 | I actually do at any one time.

00:17:56.960 | And when someone tries to add another one to my plate,

00:17:58.900 | I say, I'm happy to help, but look,

00:18:00.640 | I've got this quota that I don't do

00:18:01.960 | more than three committees at the same time.

00:18:03.660 | And so I have three right now,

00:18:04.840 | so I can't do that right now.

00:18:05.840 | So you put in these quota systems,

00:18:07.300 | that right away could also help

00:18:09.480 | with something like overload, right?

00:18:11.240 | So financial simplification could help with struggle.

00:18:14.480 | Quota system at work could help with overload.

00:18:16.860 | Simplifying your extracurricular personal activities

00:18:20.300 | could help with struggle.

00:18:22.000 | You could put more seasonality

00:18:24.160 | into your work to help with overload.

00:18:26.720 | You know what, I'm gonna pull back in the summers.

00:18:29.360 | I'm not gonna make a big declaration about it,

00:18:31.240 | but I'm just gonna be pretty clever

00:18:32.800 | about how I take on projects

00:18:35.680 | to make sure that during these two months,

00:18:38.160 | I'm doing less, I have a phantom part-time job,

00:18:40.880 | I'm ending my work technically at like two

00:18:42.760 | and no one really notices it.

00:18:43.960 | That type of thing could help.

00:18:45.360 | You can rebuild your leisure time

00:18:46.720 | around a smaller number of much more meaningful activities

00:18:49.200 | to really get into.

00:18:50.480 | These are all things you could do right away.

00:18:54.560 | It's not as radical as moving to Vermont,

00:18:58.700 | but you're actually working with escaping the things

00:19:01.360 | that we really wanna escape in the stories

00:19:02.680 | and pursuing the things we really wanna pursue

00:19:04.660 | when we're attracted to those stories.

00:19:06.160 | Now let's move up to a broader timeframe.

00:19:07.800 | Let's say we're thinking about the next two years.

00:19:09.940 | And again, you wanna approximate as much of the benefits

00:19:12.540 | of a radical change like this as possible.

00:19:14.760 | Well, now we can start thinking about things

00:19:16.040 | like redesigning your career.

00:19:18.280 | Maybe not quitting your job

00:19:19.340 | to become a full-time homesteader,

00:19:22.240 | but maybe you're able to over the next year or two

00:19:24.080 | make the shift to say, okay, I'm gonna become fully remote.

00:19:27.680 | And the way I'm gonna justify that

00:19:29.360 | is by trading accountability for accessibility.

00:19:33.900 | And you set up a situation where you say,

00:19:35.320 | look at how many units I ship,

00:19:37.480 | how much code I produce, how many clients I bring on.

00:19:40.400 | But in exchange, I want this relationship to be one

00:19:42.800 | where we have a meeting on Monday to check in on everything.

00:19:45.480 | And you don't necessarily expect a lot of accessibility

00:19:47.760 | outside of it.

00:19:48.980 | You might imagine a pragmatic move

00:19:50.760 | on the one to two year timeframe.

00:19:52.240 | Maybe not again to a homestead in Vermont,

00:19:55.360 | but maybe you leave a crowded suburb

00:19:58.000 | to go an hour outside of the city

00:20:01.440 | to a quieter rural area where the schools are fine.

00:20:05.180 | You can still commute back in once a week

00:20:06.660 | when you need to see people,

00:20:07.500 | but now you can have a different rhythm to your life.

00:20:10.340 | You're away from the stress of say Northern Virginia

00:20:12.780 | or Montgomery County, Maryland,

00:20:14.340 | but you're not moving all the way up the coast.

00:20:17.260 | You're not moving into the deep countryside.

00:20:19.340 | That could all make sense

00:20:21.340 | in a short term one to two year timeframe.

00:20:24.300 | As could, for example, radical scheduling to work.

00:20:27.580 | Maybe you over a one to two year time period

00:20:30.860 | talk to your boss about,

00:20:31.960 | okay, I'm gonna go to reduced hours,

00:20:35.440 | say 20% less hours and we'll take a reduction in pay.

00:20:38.720 | Like, okay, that makes sense.

00:20:39.640 | You say, but here's how I'm gonna do it.

00:20:41.680 | And I work normally eight months,

00:20:43.760 | nine months out of the year, 10 months out of the year.

00:20:45.340 | And the other two months I'm not gonna work at all.

00:20:47.500 | So it's not, oh, I'm working less hours,

00:20:49.240 | but because of email and meetings,

00:20:50.400 | I end up working 40 hour weeks.

00:20:51.600 | Anyways, it's more radical reconfigurations

00:20:54.080 | about when you work or when you don't work.

00:20:55.780 | These types of things are all pragmatically proximate

00:20:59.800 | to where you are now.

00:21:00.920 | These are changes that you could imagine

00:21:02.820 | making in the next year or two.

00:21:04.580 | And even though it doesn't seem as radical as first,

00:21:07.460 | as making a complete overhaul of where you live

00:21:11.280 | and how you work, they are useful.

00:21:14.460 | And they're useful again,

00:21:15.540 | because we know what really appeals to us

00:21:18.260 | about these stories is not just,

00:21:19.540 | I want to build a composting heap in Vermont.

00:21:22.120 | It's the escaping overload, escaping struggle,

00:21:24.180 | pursuing autonomy, pursuing meaning, pursuing slowness.

00:21:28.120 | And this is the general approach I want to keep in mind

00:21:30.600 | when we think about the deep life writ large.

00:21:35.120 | When you encounter a story or a case study

00:21:39.580 | that appeals to you at a deep level,

00:21:41.900 | you pick up the Neering's book,

00:21:43.820 | you watch a documentary about Laird Hamilton in Hawaii,

00:21:47.060 | something about Simon Winchester's farm

00:21:49.580 | in Sanford, Central Massachusetts

00:21:51.980 | just captures your attention.

00:21:53.140 | When something captures your attention and resonates,

00:21:55.780 | don't stop there.

00:21:57.260 | Because if you stop there,

00:21:58.780 | all you're going to get is a short burst of aspiration,

00:22:02.580 | plus a sobering reality that I can't move to Hawaii

00:22:05.620 | and be Laird Hamilton.

00:22:06.860 | I'm not a full-time writer who can live on a farm

00:22:08.820 | in Central Massachusetts.

00:22:09.780 | And then you just fall back

00:22:10.660 | into whatever you're doing before.

00:22:12.060 | The right approach here is to do what I just did

00:22:14.100 | with the Scott and Helen Neering story.

00:22:16.420 | Deconstruct that aspiration.

00:22:19.220 | What are the specific elements of these stories

00:22:22.380 | that are really touching you in a deep place?

00:22:25.100 | And once you have isolated those things,

00:22:26.660 | you can say, okay, even if I don't make that big move,

00:22:29.980 | what little moves put me in a better position

00:22:32.800 | with respect to these components?

00:22:33.980 | Sometimes a deep life is about changing everything,

00:22:37.380 | but sometimes a deep life is about learning

00:22:39.420 | from people who have changed everything

00:22:41.340 | to make a bunch of small changes

00:22:42.660 | that add up to make your situation

00:22:44.100 | much better than it was before.

00:22:46.400 | So those are my thoughts on the simple life.

00:22:50.420 | - I like it.

00:22:52.740 | We have a lot of different blank life terminology

00:22:54.960 | on this show.

00:22:55.800 | The deep life, the simple life, the good life.

00:22:59.060 | - So have you started writing the book?

00:23:01.020 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:23:03.740 | For so, well, oh wait, which book are we talking about?

00:23:05.660 | Okay, the deep life.

00:23:06.500 | - The deep life, 'cause you said you were researching it.

00:23:09.220 | - No, I'm not writing it yet.

00:23:10.540 | Where I am now is with slow productivity.

00:23:13.220 | I've written that whole book, and now I'm revising it.

00:23:16.660 | - Yeah.

00:23:17.500 | - And I just finished the revised version

00:23:19.460 | of the first half of the book, earlier today actually.

00:23:23.100 | And over the next few weeks,

00:23:24.640 | I'll be finishing my revisions

00:23:26.020 | of the second half of the book.

00:23:27.000 | I have it all mapped out, I just haven't done the writing yet.

00:23:29.300 | So by the end of April,

00:23:31.320 | we have a really pretty good version

00:23:33.060 | of that manuscript submitted.

00:23:36.180 | And then we're gonna go back and forth,

00:23:37.620 | but by June of this year is when it's locked.

00:23:40.620 | It has to go on in the production.

00:23:41.980 | So by June of this year,

00:23:43.600 | slow productivity will be locked in

00:23:47.620 | en route to a winter 2024 publication.

00:23:51.880 | And then at that point,

00:23:52.720 | I'm gonna start thinking about the deep life.

00:23:55.080 | But I'm already, you know, I just reached,

00:23:57.040 | right now I'm just reading and thinking.

00:23:58.600 | And I'm not trying to, I'm not,

00:24:00.040 | just to give a little bit of an insight

00:24:01.800 | into the process of writing these books.

00:24:04.120 | If I was to, at this point,

00:24:05.320 | start to actually translate ideas

00:24:08.040 | like I just read from the Neerings

00:24:09.960 | into outlines or potential chapters

00:24:12.160 | for the deep life book,

00:24:13.800 | that would create a cognitive issue

00:24:15.520 | because it's overlapping too much

00:24:16.840 | with the slow productivity, right?

00:24:19.120 | So alchemizing ideas into structured chapters

00:24:24.120 | begins to capture your mind around that project.

00:24:26.800 | So I'm not, right now all I'm doing

00:24:27.960 | is just exposing myself to a lot of interesting stuff.

00:24:30.720 | And it'll be this summer when I'm up in New Hampshire

00:24:33.440 | and doing my fellowship at Dartmouth,

00:24:34.640 | that I'll probably then be able to just

00:24:36.520 | go walk in the woods and begin massaging the ideas

00:24:39.520 | and the chapters to really begin thinking

00:24:41.120 | about how the book's gonna come together.

00:24:43.200 | - So when will you start writing it?

00:24:44.640 | Back in the fall of 2024?

00:24:46.920 | - I'm not sure.

00:24:47.760 | It's a good question.

00:24:48.580 | I'm a little burnt out.

00:24:49.420 | I mean, part of my issue is I'm a little burned out

00:24:50.520 | right now.

00:24:51.520 | - 'Cause like last summer you were writing

00:24:52.840 | every single day all through the summer,

00:24:53.960 | but you were on leave technically, right?

00:24:55.920 | - Yeah, so I'm not gonna be writing this summer.

00:24:58.040 | I mean, I've been working on a lot of things,

00:25:01.680 | writing Georgetown related, personal life related.

00:25:05.240 | I'm a little burnt out.

00:25:06.840 | So I'm not gonna write this summer.

00:25:08.680 | I am gonna think, which is my favorite thing.

00:25:11.520 | I'm gonna read and think,

00:25:12.880 | but I am not, I am gonna need some breathing room

00:25:17.280 | before I'm writing every day.

00:25:18.620 | - When you potentially write the deep life,

00:25:22.140 | you'll probably be teaching that.

00:25:23.900 | So you're not gonna have as much free time as you did

00:25:25.380 | when you were at Sulphur.

00:25:26.500 | - Yeah, I'm a little worried about it.

00:25:27.420 | Yeah.

00:25:28.300 | So I'm only teaching two-

00:25:29.140 | - You might just have to give yourself more time, right?

00:25:30.580 | 'Cause before you banged it out for seven weeks.

00:25:32.740 | - Well, yeah, and also like,

00:25:33.620 | I don't have the summer off this summer.

00:25:35.340 | I'm doing this fellowship at Dartmouth.

00:25:36.820 | So I'm gonna be teaching a course and et cetera.

00:25:41.000 | So I don't have the time I had.

00:25:42.460 | Now I'm only teaching two courses next year,

00:25:44.820 | which is good, but they're not combined.

00:25:47.260 | Like I was able to do

00:25:48.200 | when I was writing slow productivity.

00:25:49.620 | So each semester has a course.

00:25:51.500 | So it's gonna be not until the summer of 2024

00:25:54.620 | that I get any sort of notable break from

00:25:57.740 | where I'm not teaching.

00:25:59.740 | So we'll figure it out.

00:26:00.580 | I think I'm just gonna go slower.

00:26:01.540 | I think I'm just gonna slow productivity this thing.

00:26:03.860 | I don't have as much time as I per day.

00:26:06.640 | So I'll write less and just relentless.

00:26:10.580 | Little bit, little bit, little bit.

00:26:11.860 | Telling you a lot of little bits add up to a lot.

00:26:13.740 | But anyways, I know I need at least a summer

00:26:15.480 | of just a breather because man, my brain,

00:26:18.940 | I'm exhausted.

00:26:20.880 | I am exhausted.

00:26:22.080 | I mean, it didn't help that anyone who has kids

00:26:24.040 | knows that this year, because of the immunity debt

00:26:26.880 | that built up over the COVID years

00:26:28.400 | has been just like a disease artillery barrage.

00:26:31.700 | It's just sickness after sickness, after sickness.

00:26:33.960 | They're all bigger sicknesses

00:26:35.560 | than they would have been three years ago.

00:26:37.200 | And it's just relentless.

00:26:38.520 | And so you have that and all the extra work

00:26:40.440 | and yeah, I get my brain a bit of a breather, I suppose.

00:26:44.920 | All right, so we've got some questions.

00:26:46.040 | Before we get to the questions,

00:26:47.120 | I wanna briefly mention one of our long time sponsors

00:26:50.040 | here on the show, and that is our friends at Grammarly.

00:26:54.680 | What I wanna talk about in particular

00:26:57.080 | is their new advanced tone suggestion feature,

00:27:01.500 | which is integrated into Grammarly's premium service.

00:27:06.360 | So Grammarly premium can sit on the devices

00:27:08.680 | where you do your writing,

00:27:10.060 | working with the applications in which you do this writing

00:27:12.980 | to help that writing be better.

00:27:16.000 | The new advanced tone suggestions is a great example

00:27:19.420 | of how sophisticated this tool has become.

00:27:24.420 | So the tone suggestor can actually help you

00:27:26.300 | communicate confidently and reframe your words

00:27:29.700 | to be positive, more positive, but also more productive.

00:27:34.700 | So people understand what you're saying,

00:27:36.840 | you seem like you really know what you're talking about

00:27:39.120 | and better results are generated.

00:27:41.260 | All right, so here's a suggestion.

00:27:42.560 | An example, I mean, here's an example

00:27:44.280 | of Grammarly's tone suggestions

00:27:46.480 | helping you make your communication more confident.

00:27:48.840 | So this is a real example.

00:27:50.720 | So if I typed, we may want to consider providing an update,

00:27:55.260 | the advanced tone suggestion said, no, no, make that,

00:27:58.660 | we should consider providing an update.

00:28:01.720 | This is the type of feedback you would get from a boss

00:28:03.800 | who was really helpful or a mentor, an editor.

00:28:06.920 | You can get this now from the tone suggestor.

00:28:09.000 | All right, here's another example where the tone suggestor

00:28:11.120 | is helping to reframe overly negative language.

00:28:14.800 | So if I write, the marketing strategy isn't right,

00:28:18.600 | the tone suggestor might come back here and say,

00:28:20.400 | you should say, the marketing strategy needs to be different.

00:28:24.740 | These small differences in how you phrase things

00:28:29.140 | make a big difference in how you

00:28:30.640 | and your ideas are received.

00:28:33.040 | This is something I have learned in my life

00:28:34.880 | as a knowledge worker and a professional writer,

00:28:36.720 | and I'm very impressed by how human-like

00:28:39.400 | Grammarly Premium can be in making these suggestions to you.

00:28:42.960 | So look, in knowledge, work, ideas, or power,

00:28:45.120 | writing is how you convey ideas.

00:28:47.860 | The better the writer you are,

00:28:48.880 | the more successful you will be.

00:28:50.600 | Having Grammarly Premium is like having a copy editor

00:28:54.600 | or mentor sitting with you as you do all your writing,

00:28:57.080 | making it better.

00:28:57.920 | It is invaluable if you write a lot in your job.

00:29:02.340 | The right tone can move any project forward

00:29:03.960 | when you get it right with Grammarly.

00:29:05.080 | So go to grammarly.com/tone

00:29:08.280 | to download and learn more about

00:29:09.520 | Grammarly Premium's advanced tone suggestions.

00:29:12.040 | That's G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L-Y.com/tone.

00:29:17.040 | And as long as we're talking about ideas,

00:29:21.440 | which again, I really think in our current culture,

00:29:24.640 | ideas really are the best currency.

00:29:27.840 | Where do you find these ideas?

00:29:29.600 | Well, books.

00:29:31.760 | And who is gonna help you figure out

00:29:33.120 | which books you should or shouldn't read?

00:29:35.120 | Blinkist.

00:29:37.080 | Blinkist is another longtime sponsor of this show

00:29:39.400 | and for good reason,

00:29:41.600 | because they offer a service that is right in the sweet spot

00:29:44.360 | of what deep questions listeners are looking for.

00:29:48.000 | So the way it works is if you subscribe to Blinkist,

00:29:50.040 | you get access to short summaries

00:29:52.680 | of over 5,500 nonfiction books and podcasts.

00:29:57.680 | These summaries typically take around 15 minutes to read.

00:30:00.960 | They also have audio versions of these summaries

00:30:03.080 | that you can listen to in 15 minutes or less.

00:30:07.160 | Now, the reason why this is so useful

00:30:08.760 | is it lets you very quickly triage potential next things

00:30:12.360 | to add to your reading list.

00:30:13.920 | If there's a topic you're interested in

00:30:15.320 | or a book you've heard about,

00:30:17.240 | you jump on the Blinkist, you read or listen to the Blink.

00:30:20.320 | This is incredibly effective in helping you decide,

00:30:24.680 | do I need to buy this book

00:30:26.800 | or is it not exactly what I thought?

00:30:28.480 | And if it's not exactly what you thought,

00:30:30.000 | you still just got all the main ideas.

00:30:31.720 | So you could work that into your vocabulary.

00:30:34.320 | You could work that into your existing cognitive schema

00:30:36.920 | for understanding the world.

00:30:38.380 | I know, for example, Jesse,

00:30:40.400 | you keep a list of books you wanna read.

00:30:44.320 | You just keep that in Blinkist, right?

00:30:45.920 | Is that what your strategy is?

00:30:47.880 | - Well, I keep the list in Evernote,

00:30:49.880 | but then I go through it

00:30:51.680 | and look at all the Blinks for those potential books.

00:30:54.040 | - That's your triage process.

00:30:55.160 | You grow this list,

00:30:56.320 | and then when you wanna buy a new book, you Blink.

00:30:58.440 | You read the Blinks of what, like the first whatever,

00:31:00.520 | until you come across a Blink that makes you wanna buy it.

00:31:03.200 | What's your hit rate, do you think?

00:31:04.520 | Like what percentage, like how effective is this triaging?

00:31:08.540 | Is it like 10% of books you say I should read

00:31:10.760 | or is it 10% of books you take off the list?

00:31:13.200 | For you, what's it like?

00:31:14.120 | - Well, I also have Scribbid,

00:31:15.280 | so I can just grab those books.

00:31:17.360 | If they're in there,

00:31:18.200 | I can just get them essentially with my membership.

00:31:20.200 | So it's pretty high, like 30% probably.

00:31:23.080 | - 30% get cut or 30% you read?

00:31:25.280 | - I read.

00:31:26.480 | - Yeah, see, I mean, so think about that though.

00:31:28.760 | So even with that high percentage,

00:31:30.100 | if you didn't have Blinkist,

00:31:31.160 | you would just be seven out of 10 books

00:31:33.400 | you started reading, you'd be disappointed with.

00:31:35.800 | - Yeah.

00:31:36.640 | - Yeah, that's, yeah, well, so there you go.

00:31:38.620 | So if you're serious about the reading life,

00:31:40.080 | you do need Blinkist.

00:31:42.200 | They also have a special offer going on right now

00:31:44.000 | called Blinkist Connect that allows you

00:31:46.720 | to essentially get a free membership for the cost of one

00:31:49.420 | that you can then give to a friend

00:31:51.120 | who you think would like this.

00:31:52.200 | So right now, Blinkist has a special offer

00:31:54.480 | just for our audience.

00:31:55.520 | Go to Blinkist.com/steep to start your seven-day free trial

00:31:58.520 | and get 45% off a Blinkist premium membership.

00:32:01.880 | Ooh, 45% is good.

00:32:02.940 | It's been lower than that historically.

00:32:04.320 | So that's pretty good.

00:32:05.560 | That's Blinkist spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T,

00:32:08.880 | Blinkist.com/steep to get 45% off

00:32:11.200 | and a seven-day free trial, Blinkist.com/steep.

00:32:15.440 | This particularly good discount offer

00:32:17.480 | is only good through April 30.

00:32:19.620 | So you gotta get on this.

00:32:21.040 | And remember for a limited time now,

00:32:22.380 | you can use Blinkist Connect to share your premium account.

00:32:24.800 | So you'll get essentially two premium subscriptions

00:32:28.360 | for the price of one.

00:32:30.120 | All right, Jesse, let's do some questions from our listeners

00:32:32.600 | that are relevant to this general topic

00:32:35.560 | of pursuing a simpler, deeper life.

00:32:38.800 | - Sounds good.

00:32:39.640 | First question is from David, a 40-year-old from Australia.

00:32:42.880 | Is a weekly time horizon and deep life habits

00:32:46.560 | more effective than daily habits?

00:32:48.560 | For example, if I try to exercise every day,

00:32:51.720 | I might end up with 70 or seven 30-minute sessions,

00:32:55.180 | but lack those 90-minute sessions

00:32:57.240 | that might be better physically during the week.

00:32:59.800 | - Yeah, so I think what David's talking about here

00:33:02.360 | is when I talk about the deep life,

00:33:03.440 | one of the concepts I talk about is these keystone habits

00:33:06.800 | where in each of the big areas of your life,

00:33:08.560 | what we call the buckets,

00:33:09.380 | you have some habit you do every day

00:33:11.720 | and you track every day, did I do that habit?

00:33:14.160 | It's why my time block planner

00:33:16.160 | has a metric tracking space on every weekday.

00:33:20.520 | So he's saying, hey, some things

00:33:22.280 | aren't best done every day.

00:33:25.440 | Maybe they're best done twice a week

00:33:27.200 | and this was his example, if I'm reading this right,

00:33:30.000 | is he's saying maybe it's better

00:33:32.400 | to work out 90 minutes twice a week

00:33:35.020 | than to work out 30 minutes every day.

00:33:37.560 | Now, Jesse, when it comes to this specific example,

00:33:39.340 | you know more about this than me.

00:33:41.320 | Working out twice for 90 minutes

00:33:43.040 | does not sound like the right way to exercise, right?

00:33:45.040 | That's a pretty long workout session, isn't it?

00:33:47.400 | Or is that--

00:33:49.180 | - I think it depends on what you're doing.

00:33:50.200 | Like if you're playing tennis,

00:33:51.240 | that's gonna take at least 90 minutes to two hours.

00:33:54.000 | - That's true, so sports, yeah.

00:33:55.480 | But if you're doing weights or something,

00:33:57.480 | I'm assuming you probably want

00:33:59.240 | more than two sessions a week.

00:34:01.200 | - Probably, yeah.

00:34:02.880 | - Not that that's that important, David,

00:34:04.920 | I just was critiquing that particular example.

00:34:08.680 | All right, so here's my take on that.

00:34:10.440 | We need to separate keystone habits

00:34:12.080 | from other type of habits.

00:34:13.120 | So the whole point about having a keystone habit

00:34:15.560 | in each area of your life that you think is important

00:34:18.600 | is it indicates to yourself

00:34:20.560 | that you take that area of your life seriously

00:34:23.600 | and it builds a foundation of discipline

00:34:25.400 | bespoke to that area of life.

00:34:27.480 | So if you're doing a fitness something every day,

00:34:32.480 | then it helps indicate to yourself

00:34:33.960 | you take your health seriously.

00:34:35.360 | So if that constitution bucket of the deep life

00:34:37.840 | is important to you,

00:34:38.680 | now you have a foundation of discipline

00:34:39.880 | on which you can then build other types of pursuits

00:34:43.440 | or rituals or habits.

00:34:44.480 | So not everything has to be every day,

00:34:46.440 | but every bucket should have at least one thing

00:34:48.960 | that is every day.

00:34:50.640 | Now there's two ways we can nuance that.

00:34:52.200 | One way we can nuance that is a daily habit

00:34:56.080 | doesn't actually have to require

00:34:57.480 | the exact same activities every day.

00:34:59.600 | What's important here is that you're checking off every day

00:35:01.800 | that you did something.

00:35:03.600 | So you could imagine, for example,

00:35:05.680 | I have this daily exercise habit

00:35:08.320 | and every day I wanna write in the metric tracking space

00:35:11.360 | of my time block planner EX.

00:35:14.880 | That's the notation I use

00:35:16.560 | to indicate that I did my exercise today.

00:35:19.680 | However, what that means can depend on the day.

00:35:24.200 | Maybe every other day EX means you walked for an hour

00:35:29.080 | and on other days it means that you did

00:35:31.600 | a 30 minute weight workout.

00:35:33.800 | And so every day is not the same,

00:35:35.280 | but you're not going any day without doing something.

00:35:38.600 | So daily accountability doesn't necessarily mean

00:35:41.560 | daily similarity.

00:35:44.040 | You can have a habit that looks different from day to day.

00:35:46.760 | Now, when we move outside, however,

00:35:48.920 | of these keystone habits,

00:35:50.240 | then certainly you can have other types of things

00:35:52.120 | you do in your life that are not at all daily.

00:35:54.440 | And maybe for example, you do have like twice a week

00:35:56.520 | you play tennis, like Jesse was talking about.

00:35:58.920 | That's fine.

00:36:00.520 | It's not your keystone habit.

00:36:01.440 | It doesn't happen every day.

00:36:02.480 | This is not something you're using

00:36:03.560 | just to lay a foundation and discipline.

00:36:05.400 | What does help in those cases, however,

00:36:07.160 | is if you can autopilot that schedule.

00:36:09.320 | So if there's something you only do twice a week,

00:36:11.080 | if you know you always do that Tuesday and Thursday

00:36:14.200 | at five at the club,

00:36:16.560 | you're more likely to be consistent with it.

00:36:18.320 | So you can use autopilot philosophy

00:36:20.600 | to make non-daily habits still regular.

00:36:24.600 | So non-daily habits are fine

00:36:28.000 | and you're more likely to keep them consistent

00:36:29.560 | if you're doing autopilot scheduling.

00:36:31.160 | But when we look specifically at keystone habits,

00:36:33.240 | you do want something that happens every day,

00:36:34.800 | even if the activity can vary from day to day,

00:36:36.560 | because there's that not breaking the chain power

00:36:40.120 | and just knowing every day I do something

00:36:41.880 | towards this bucket I care about.

00:36:43.520 | All right, Jesse, what do we got next?

00:36:47.840 | - All right, next question's from Overwhelmed from Toronto.

00:36:51.440 | "I'm very thankful for your advice

00:36:52.720 | that podcasts should focus on research."

00:36:54.480 | - Postdocs. - Postdocs.

00:36:56.160 | - It changes the tenor of this question quite a bit.

00:36:59.360 | - "However, I find I am in the middle

00:37:01.120 | of too many non-primary author projects,

00:37:03.720 | leading me to work on my primary projects

00:37:06.120 | in the evenings and on weekends.

00:37:08.440 | I tried setting up autopilot, fixed schedule,

00:37:11.080 | but I have no time to do it all.

00:37:13.680 | How do prolific professors, you included,

00:37:17.040 | balance so many projects when I find

00:37:19.000 | I can't even handle four at a time?"

00:37:21.120 | - Well, four at a time's too many projects,

00:37:23.560 | and we don't do that many projects at a time.

00:37:26.200 | So I think what's going on here, Overwhelmed,

00:37:28.880 | is that you might be suffering from what I like to call

00:37:31.520 | the time compression fallacy,

00:37:33.920 | which is typical when you're surveying from a distance

00:37:39.440 | the resumes of someone who's very accomplished.

00:37:42.680 | What we tend to do when we do this

00:37:44.760 | is we see all in one place this list

00:37:47.880 | of all these different things that they have done,

00:37:50.480 | and then in our mind,

00:37:51.760 | when we imagine that person doing this work,

00:37:54.560 | we compress the time in which this work unfolded

00:37:58.180 | so that in our mind's eye,

00:37:59.360 | we imagine this person working on lots of these things

00:38:01.760 | all at the same time.

00:38:03.160 | This used to come up so common

00:38:05.360 | when I used to write about very successful students

00:38:07.560 | that I had a phrase I used to say.

00:38:10.200 | I called it the paradox of the relaxed road scholar.

00:38:13.120 | I did a study once where I interviewed

00:38:15.120 | a bunch of road scholars,

00:38:16.200 | and a lot of this got integrated into my first book,

00:38:18.160 | "How to Win at College," which came out back in 2005.

00:38:20.920 | What I learned from these road scholars

00:38:22.320 | is that from the perspective of other students,

00:38:24.140 | they had all these different things they had done,

00:38:26.200 | and so you would assume they'd be very, very busy,

00:38:28.600 | but when you interviewed them, they weren't.

00:38:30.680 | And the secret to this was, yeah, I did these six things

00:38:33.300 | which look incredibly impressive

00:38:34.640 | when you see the press release

00:38:35.800 | about me winning a road scholarship,

00:38:37.120 | but I didn't do them at the same time.

00:38:38.680 | This is over four years.

00:38:40.420 | It added up to a lot.

00:38:41.960 | At any one point, I wasn't doing all of these things.

00:38:44.640 | So that's the time compression fallacy in action,

00:38:47.280 | and we see it through all sorts of different stages

00:38:49.440 | of people's careers, all sorts of different career fields.

00:38:53.360 | So if you look at my own academic life, for example,

00:38:56.480 | I have published a lot

00:38:58.100 | of peer-reviewed computer science papers.

00:39:00.560 | I had to do all this math recently

00:39:02.560 | because I'm submitting my application for full professor.

00:39:06.080 | I published something like 80,

00:39:08.840 | 80 peer-reviewed computer science papers.

00:39:11.660 | This is, they've been cited something like 4,500 times.

00:39:15.200 | For those who know the lingo,

00:39:17.000 | it's a generated an H index of 31.

00:39:19.360 | You read that all at once, and you think, my God,

00:39:23.640 | you must be just writing all sorts of papers all the time.

00:39:27.100 | But if you actually go back through my timeline

00:39:29.320 | through the now almost 20 years

00:39:31.200 | that I've been a professional academic,

00:39:33.320 | what you see is that, no, no, what I learned,

00:39:35.200 | this is the method I learned at MIT,

00:39:37.120 | was just constant practical progress.

00:39:40.720 | Always be working on a paper or two.

00:39:42.520 | When you finish one, work on another.

00:39:43.920 | Just make that the background,

00:39:45.640 | that's the background hum of your life,

00:39:47.040 | is like you're always working on a paper.

00:39:48.960 | You're not working on five at once,

00:39:50.580 | you're working on one or two at once.

00:39:52.680 | But if you're always are working on things, it adds up.

00:39:54.840 | This comes out, that comes out, this one comes out.

00:39:57.080 | And over time, it adds up to the 80 or 90 papers

00:39:59.100 | or whatever it is that seems really impressive.

00:40:00.800 | But if you zoom in on, you know, Cal in 2007

00:40:05.800 | as a grad student at MIT,

00:40:07.560 | I didn't have that much else, much going on.

00:40:09.800 | Like I worked on this one paper for a couple hours today,

00:40:12.280 | now what am I gonna do?

00:40:13.880 | You just repeat that over enough years though,

00:40:15.480 | and a lot of things add up.

00:40:17.320 | So overwhelmed, people don't do as much work

00:40:19.560 | at the same time as you think.

00:40:22.120 | In fact, the paradox here is if you try to do too much

00:40:25.260 | at the same time, you sabotage those projects,

00:40:28.120 | they sabotage each other,

00:40:29.320 | because you're pulling from too scarce

00:40:30.860 | of a cognitive resource,

00:40:31.920 | and you end up producing less overall.

00:40:34.200 | Working on less things at a time

00:40:35.560 | can actually help you produce more.

00:40:37.340 | So you need to do less.

00:40:38.920 | And you have too many projects.

00:40:40.640 | Your issue here is not that you haven't properly

00:40:43.440 | autopilot scheduled,

00:40:44.880 | that you haven't properly fixed scheduled

00:40:47.240 | all of this work so that it works.

00:40:48.560 | Your issue is you have too much work to schedule.

00:40:51.320 | As a postdoc, you can't be doing four papers at once.

00:40:54.000 | You wanna cut that down to two,

00:40:55.800 | maybe one primary paper and one non-primary paper.

00:40:58.900 | You don't work on any more than one on a given day,

00:41:01.060 | and you stick with a paper until it's done,

00:41:03.300 | or at a milestone where there's gonna be

00:41:04.840 | a long period of time until you can return from it.

00:41:07.080 | So whatever, we have to now wait two months

00:41:09.640 | to get back results from a lab.

00:41:11.640 | And then you can switch to something else.

00:41:14.040 | The key here is not gonna be quantity at any one time,

00:41:17.400 | but just making sure that you're continually

00:41:19.240 | working on something,

00:41:20.320 | and as soon as something is done,

00:41:21.900 | you start working on something else.

00:41:23.360 | That's how real piles of impressive accomplishment build up.

00:41:27.440 | Very impressive people are actually less overloaded

00:41:31.460 | than you might imagine,

00:41:33.180 | unless like me, they for some reason have seven jobs.

00:41:35.440 | But that's a different problem.

00:41:36.760 | Don't do that.

00:41:37.600 | All right, what do we got?

00:41:40.600 | We got a lot of fake names here.

00:41:41.640 | I'm looking at this next one, Wendell B.

00:41:43.280 | - Yeah. - Yeah, that's probably not,

00:41:44.920 | unless Wendell Berry is writing us a message.

00:41:46.800 | I think we got another pseudonym coming in.

00:41:49.040 | Maybe it's this topic.

00:41:50.040 | - You think it's B for Berry or just?

00:41:51.680 | - It's Wendell Berry.

00:41:52.640 | - It is? - I think so.

00:41:53.560 | - Okay.

00:41:54.940 | I didn't even think of that.

00:41:56.600 | Well, anyway, next question from Wendell B.

00:41:59.280 | I currently serve as a minister in a full-time position,

00:42:01.840 | but wanna make the transition to teaching full-time

00:42:04.280 | in an online capacity.

00:42:06.000 | I believe this move would better suit my desires

00:42:08.000 | to stay in the academy, work from home and farm.

00:42:11.220 | What steps do I need to take in order to know

00:42:13.120 | when I can step away from my position

00:42:14.800 | and focus on teaching full-time online?

00:42:17.520 | - Well, the key here with anything like this,

00:42:20.800 | where you get a vision for an alternative career

00:42:24.440 | around to build your life.

00:42:26.120 | Whenever you get a vision like this,

00:42:28.060 | the key thing to do is to ground it in reality.

00:42:31.080 | And grounded in reality means you have to find people

00:42:33.800 | who are doing the thing you want to do.

00:42:36.400 | And you have to find out what is it really like?

00:42:40.040 | Like, does it generate enough income

00:42:41.600 | that they can live off of it?

00:42:42.760 | And then you have to find out how did they make this happen?

00:42:46.160 | What was the path or credentials or opportunities

00:42:48.820 | that were required for them to end up in this space?

00:42:50.860 | Real people, real case studies, real information.

00:42:54.160 | The reason why this is important is because human beings,

00:42:57.360 | especially dealing with this particular issue

00:43:00.640 | that we're sort of privileged to have this grapple with

00:43:02.960 | in the modern era of what do I want to do with my life?

00:43:05.600 | We have a tendency of falling into the trap

00:43:07.520 | of writing a story about what we want to be true.

00:43:12.040 | And we get really into this story

00:43:13.560 | because it has the elements that we hope actually exist,

00:43:16.960 | a little bit of challenge, but we overcome it.

00:43:18.880 | And we get pretty excited about this story.

00:43:21.520 | And it can be hard to let go of a story

00:43:23.300 | that's really appealing.

00:43:24.520 | But if that story doesn't actually match the reality

00:43:26.980 | of what you have in mind,

00:43:28.000 | it's only gonna lead you probably into a worse situation.

00:43:30.640 | So that's why I always say ground in reality.

00:43:32.960 | And you might not like what you find.

00:43:34.240 | You might find, you know what?

00:43:36.040 | This online teaching full-time position

00:43:38.400 | in the subject matter where you're an expert

00:43:39.960 | doesn't really exist, at least not in a way

00:43:42.000 | that it could support you full-time.

00:43:43.480 | You're gonna need another plan.

00:43:44.560 | That might be what you discover.

00:43:46.200 | You might also discover that, okay, this does exist

00:43:48.360 | because, and then you heard of someone who did it,

00:43:49.900 | but when you actually learn more, you discover,

00:43:51.620 | oh, they were able to do it

00:43:52.480 | because they were already a famous academic

00:43:55.600 | that had this big reputation

00:43:58.220 | and they were able to sort of create

00:43:59.800 | their own online thing.

00:44:00.720 | But that really required them being really well-known.

00:44:03.600 | You're not in that situation.

00:44:04.640 | You weren't gonna be able to do the same thing.

00:44:06.360 | You might discover something like that as well.

00:44:08.600 | And you gotta be ready for that and say,

00:44:09.960 | okay, I need a new plan.

00:44:11.400 | But if you are working backwards,

00:44:13.300 | like I talked about in the deep dive

00:44:15.040 | at the beginning of this episode,

00:44:16.460 | if you're working backwards from the elements

00:44:19.240 | of this vision that inspire you, you can pivot.

00:44:23.560 | If you're working backwards, not from,

00:44:25.460 | all that matters is I'm a full-time online teacher

00:44:27.440 | who farms, but instead you have these underlying elements

00:44:29.720 | of that lifestyle that really draw to you.

00:44:31.560 | If this doesn't work out when you ground it in reality,

00:44:35.440 | you have other options to look into.

00:44:37.520 | Well, how else could I use the career capital

00:44:39.760 | I've already acquired to make a lateral move

00:44:43.480 | into a situation in which I get more of these properties?

00:44:45.640 | This is why property-centric thinking,

00:44:47.960 | this sort of lifestyle, this value-based lifestyle,

00:44:51.240 | lifestyle design thinking is so powerful

00:44:55.000 | is because it gives you the freedom

00:44:57.640 | to experiment with ideas and approaches

00:45:00.000 | to find one that'll actually work.

00:45:01.840 | It doesn't require you to latch onto one particular story

00:45:04.640 | and hope it works.

00:45:06.220 | So I don't know what you're gonna find, Wendell.

00:45:10.520 | You might find it's impossible, you might find it's easy,

00:45:12.800 | or you might find it's possible,

00:45:13.880 | but you have to do more work than you thought

00:45:15.120 | to make it possible.

00:45:15.940 | But whatever you find, knowing why you like this story

00:45:19.200 | in the first place is going to be helpful.

00:45:22.100 | Now, I've been having this discussion

00:45:24.560 | with someone recently, reminds me of this, Jesse.

00:45:27.180 | There's a student I met, he has a cool idea for a book.

00:45:31.560 | And I was like, "This is great.

00:45:33.920 | "I love encouraging people to have cool ideas for books."

00:45:36.000 | And he was like, "What do you wanna do with this book?"

00:45:37.560 | He's like, "I wanna publish it,

00:45:39.200 | "have an impact on the conversation,

00:45:40.480 | "publish it with a real publisher."

00:45:42.200 | Like, that's great.

00:45:43.160 | And so I said, "Let me send you,"

00:45:46.120 | he's like, "I can talk to you about how to do this."

00:45:47.920 | Like, yeah, I was like, "You know,

00:45:48.740 | "I've written up an article about this

00:45:50.680 | "because I get asked this question a lot."

00:45:52.160 | And there's this article I wrote in 2008

00:45:54.720 | after I published my first two books.

00:45:56.080 | It was like, "Here is how you write and sell

00:45:59.040 | "a nonfiction book to a major publisher."

00:46:00.840 | And I put everything I learned in that article,

00:46:02.280 | there's five points in it.

00:46:03.120 | And it's what I send people when they're interested

00:46:06.200 | in becoming a nonfiction writer.

00:46:08.240 | It's like, "Let's ground your idea in reality

00:46:10.860 | "because nonfiction writing is a place

00:46:12.620 | "where you might otherwise write your own story."

00:46:15.640 | Well, he didn't like that.

00:46:17.280 | He had written his own story about how he wanted the world

00:46:21.960 | to exist, it was a story in which,

00:46:24.080 | and I hear this, especially from entrepreneurial people,

00:46:25.840 | they often write these own stories about,

00:46:27.280 | well, if I'm particularly clever about how I go about

00:46:30.800 | like writing this book and hiring this firm

00:46:33.080 | to help me in doing this and that,

00:46:34.160 | I can sort of make an end run around the normal process

00:46:37.400 | to get my book published without having to do

00:46:39.960 | the standard thing, just starting with an agent,

00:46:43.060 | convincing the agent, writing a proposal,

00:46:44.920 | selling a proposal to a publisher,

00:46:46.160 | working with the publisher to write the book.

00:46:48.100 | And I said, "Look, that's not really a great path.

00:46:51.320 | "Like I'm telling you, I've done this eight times."

00:46:53.200 | Like this is how nonfiction writing works

00:46:55.360 | if you wanna publish with a big publisher.

00:46:57.160 | And I haven't heard back.

00:46:58.880 | Because I think it's very tempting,

00:47:00.760 | and writing, I hear this all the time,

00:47:02.320 | writing is definitely a place where people

00:47:03.880 | write their own stories about how they're gonna

00:47:06.240 | become a writer.

00:47:07.480 | And usually their own stories involves,

00:47:09.640 | if you're diligent and clever and take advantage

00:47:13.780 | of new services that people might not know about yet,

00:47:16.360 | you can kind of greatly increase your chances

00:47:18.400 | of being published and sort of get around

00:47:19.720 | having to be judged by a gatekeeper early on.

00:47:22.820 | Their stories are very enticing, but they're not true.

00:47:27.800 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:47:28.640 | - I mean, maybe if he had like an in with some agent

00:47:30.760 | that was gonna pick up his call and read the transcript,

00:47:33.200 | be like, "Oh, this is great."

00:47:34.040 | But I mean, the chances of that are probably really slim.

00:47:36.000 | - Yeah, I mean, I don't wanna get too much of the details,

00:47:37.680 | but he, anyways, what he was proposing,

00:47:41.000 | let's just say there's companies and services out there

00:47:44.040 | that are happy to take your money.

00:47:45.680 | - Yeah, exactly.

00:47:46.520 | - En route to helping you get your book published.

00:47:48.960 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:47:50.240 | Spoiler alert, if that was like a back road

00:47:54.560 | into getting your book published,

00:47:56.040 | other people would do it.

00:47:57.240 | Book publishing actually has a pretty good model.

00:47:59.360 | I mean, basically the model is there's agents.

00:48:02.960 | So for nonfiction writing, you sell your idea to an agent.

00:48:06.800 | By sell your idea, I mean this metaphorically,

00:48:08.480 | you sign with an agent because they're convinced

00:48:10.400 | that you've got a great idea

00:48:11.760 | and you're the right person to write it.

00:48:13.780 | The agents then turn around

00:48:15.000 | and help you sell the idea to a publisher.

00:48:17.120 | And the agents are very well suited to do this

00:48:19.080 | because they have relationships with the relevant editors

00:48:22.280 | at the relevant publishers.

00:48:23.840 | There's not this over the transom type model

00:48:28.080 | of a pile of submissions arrive at the publisher

00:48:30.400 | and they look through them to decide what to publish.

00:48:32.480 | Most books are actually sold over lunch, right?

00:48:36.680 | My agent knows these editors.

00:48:38.280 | Like, "Hey, I have this new author.

00:48:40.240 | "Are you interested?

00:48:41.080 | "You think there's another editor who might be interested?"

00:48:42.520 | And they sort of match.

00:48:43.560 | There's this informal matching that goes on.

00:48:45.200 | Editors who have that same sensibility.

00:48:48.040 | And they say, "Yeah, let me see it.

00:48:49.640 | "I'm interested in it."

00:48:50.480 | And then the agent helps you write a proposal

00:48:52.680 | that covers the things the publishers need to know.

00:48:55.600 | I mean, I don't wanna go on a rant here,

00:48:57.480 | but even when I know people who get signed with agents,

00:48:59.960 | they follow the process,

00:49:01.640 | especially the entrepreneurial ones,

00:49:02.720 | all wanna in run around the proposal process.

00:49:04.640 | Like, "Okay, I have an agent,

00:49:05.480 | "but I shouldn't have to do this."

00:49:07.380 | But no, there's a reason why you write

00:49:08.940 | these lumbering big proposals

00:49:10.480 | is because the agents are all former editors

00:49:12.760 | and they know exactly what the editor needs

00:49:15.400 | to be able to sell their own acquisition editor

00:49:18.320 | on paying for this book.

00:49:19.360 | So when you're writing these proposals,

00:49:20.920 | what you're really doing

00:49:22.160 | is doing the homework for the editor

00:49:24.200 | so that if they love your idea,

00:49:25.720 | they can turn around and have a better chance

00:49:27.740 | of convincing their boss, "Let's pay for this."

00:49:30.560 | So again, you don't need to do it.

00:49:32.280 | There's not an in run here.

00:49:33.400 | It's like, "I don't need to do this.

00:49:35.400 | "Like, I've got a big audience, I've," you know, whatever.

00:49:38.120 | You gotta just do the proposal and it's a pain,

00:49:40.080 | but that's how it works.

00:49:41.040 | And then they can use this to try to sell it internally.

00:49:43.680 | Then you get your advance, then you write your book.

00:49:45.500 | It's actually a pretty good process

00:49:48.020 | because the agents are desperate for sellable books.

00:49:50.960 | The editors are desperate for books that can be published.

00:49:54.240 | They don't need every book

00:49:55.080 | to be a Malcolm Gladwell bestseller.

00:49:57.840 | They need a pipeline full of books that are coming out.

00:49:59.900 | Their whole model, especially as publishers consolidate,

00:50:02.080 | is you need a huge pipeline of books coming out.

00:50:04.280 | Everyone wants you to succeed.

00:50:06.800 | They want you to be good.

00:50:08.120 | They want your book to be sellable.

00:50:09.520 | They want to be able to publish your book

00:50:11.120 | because everyone along the way needs more books.

00:50:14.000 | That's how the whole system works.

00:50:15.760 | So the only thing that trips you up along these ways

00:50:18.320 | is not that you are being unfairly cast out

00:50:23.320 | because of an ossified system.

00:50:24.920 | It's that there's something that's not right yet.

00:50:27.200 | You're not the right person to write this book.

00:50:29.040 | The idea is not as sharp as you think it is.

00:50:31.640 | Your writing's not where it needs to be yet.

00:50:33.440 | You have to get to a new level.

00:50:34.440 | I mean, the reasons you get kicked out of this system

00:50:37.840 | are typically there is something that's not quite right yet

00:50:40.640 | for you to actually produce the book.

00:50:43.040 | And I think it's the avoiding of that feedback.

00:50:47.320 | People think, "I could just avoid that feedback

00:50:50.200 | "if I hired this service and did this and did all this."

00:50:52.280 | And then the publisher at some point will be like,

00:50:54.520 | "Oh, look at this thing over here.

00:50:56.720 | "We gotta publish that book."

00:50:57.760 | And it happens occasionally.

00:50:59.480 | I mean, The Martian was,

00:51:00.560 | that's what happened with The Martian.

00:51:02.200 | - Okay. - Right?

00:51:03.040 | And why am I forgetting the name?

00:51:05.680 | Andy Weir.

00:51:06.520 | Andy Weir.

00:51:07.840 | So he was actually writing The Martian

00:51:10.720 | in installments on the web.

00:51:12.640 | - Yeah, you wrote an article about that, right?

00:51:14.040 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:51:14.880 | - I was just publishing installments.

00:51:16.360 | He was just thinking, he just thought,

00:51:17.720 | he's an engineer.

00:51:18.560 | And he's like, "I wanna think through

00:51:20.560 | "how would you survive if you were left alone on Mars?

00:51:22.800 | "Let's get the science right."

00:51:23.800 | And so it was a fun project.

00:51:24.960 | He was writing about it on the web.

00:51:26.320 | But then that got really popular.

00:51:27.800 | And a publisher came in and was like, "This is great.

00:51:30.080 | "This could be a really good novel."

00:51:31.400 | That does happen.

00:51:33.180 | But it happens twice.

00:51:34.920 | You know what I mean?

00:51:35.880 | It's not a consistent route to follow.

00:51:40.400 | It's happened twice in the last five years

00:51:43.200 | or something like that.

00:51:44.040 | - Yeah, you've talked about the need

00:51:45.520 | of how these agents and these publishers

00:51:47.680 | just wanna keep on putting out books.

00:51:49.200 | And you've said this for a couple of years now.

00:51:51.040 | And it really dawns on me

00:51:52.520 | 'cause then I notice all the books.

00:51:53.600 | And then same with TV shows.

00:51:55.840 | You know, programming on Netflix and stuff like that.

00:51:58.120 | There's just always stuff.

00:51:59.320 | - And books is that times 10

00:52:00.500 | because it's way less money to produce.

00:52:02.680 | Their pipelines are bigger.

00:52:03.920 | - Yeah. - It's way less risk.

00:52:05.400 | I mean, the way I think about

00:52:06.840 | the book publishing sales pipeline,

00:52:09.840 | the whole key if you wanna go into that world

00:52:11.800 | is not to be disqualified.

00:52:13.360 | It's less than you might think

00:52:16.080 | than really trying to convince someone

00:52:19.160 | to pay attention to something

00:52:21.720 | that they'll love once they see it.

00:52:23.360 | It's more about how do you avoid the things

00:52:25.960 | that could disqualify you around the way?

00:52:28.120 | And I don't know, I really preach this.

00:52:29.880 | I was like, just knowing the process,

00:52:31.880 | the little professionalism details

00:52:33.560 | that come out of knowing the process

00:52:35.200 | makes such a big difference as you go through it.

00:52:37.040 | - Yeah. - It just shows through

00:52:38.360 | at every stage.

00:52:39.360 | And so it's, here's what I've learned

00:52:42.120 | because I do recommend a lot of people.

00:52:43.560 | It's like, you should write a book, you should write a book.

00:52:44.880 | What I have found is like, okay,

00:52:46.480 | a lot of them don't end up being able to write the books.

00:52:50.000 | It's hard to avoid all those disqualifiers.

00:52:52.480 | And I maybe earlier in my career

00:52:54.480 | made it seem simpler than it was,

00:52:56.620 | like my own entrance into the publishing world.

00:52:58.660 | The hard thing is if you're not a professional journalist,

00:53:01.920 | you really have to have this hard to find combination

00:53:05.920 | of a topic that people are gonna feel like

00:53:08.840 | they have to read about.

00:53:10.040 | Plus you being the right person to write about the topic.

00:53:13.440 | So if you're a professional journalist,

00:53:14.820 | what makes you the right person to talk about a topic

00:53:16.840 | is typically I'm a professional writer.

00:53:18.400 | So it really opens up what you can write about.

00:53:20.160 | But if you're not a professional journalist or a historian,

00:53:23.480 | your personal experience has to make complete sense

00:53:27.320 | that you're the person writing this book.

00:53:29.000 | And then you have to combine that

00:53:30.120 | with having enough writing experience

00:53:31.680 | that they don't have to worry about amateurism.

00:53:34.000 | I mean, you don't have to be Gay Talese,

00:53:37.040 | but you can't have amateur tells in your writing

00:53:40.800 | because they can't publish that.

00:53:42.160 | Random House can't put out a book

00:53:44.000 | that has non-professional writing in it.

00:53:45.800 | So you have to be past some threshold,

00:53:47.640 | which is not hard to do,

00:53:48.680 | but you do have to have some experience.

00:53:50.080 | It's really hard to get those three things right.

00:53:52.360 | And what I found when people have,

00:53:54.840 | I know have had trouble in this process,

00:53:58.000 | it's just they usually have two out of three.

00:54:00.460 | So they'll have an idea maybe that's kind of killer,

00:54:02.240 | but it's why are you the person to write about this

00:54:04.880 | other than just you think it's interesting?

00:54:06.680 | Or they're the right person to write about a topic,

00:54:08.600 | but they can't, it's not killer yet.

00:54:10.720 | It's still a little bit vague.

00:54:12.680 | And I don't know if people realize

00:54:14.260 | like in a non-fiction book proposal often,

00:54:15.960 | like how razor sharp the idea is pitched in those proposals,

00:54:20.200 | even if they maybe balloon out a little bit.

00:54:23.720 | Anyways, I'm ranting about the publishing industry.

00:54:26.480 | - Well, writing a proposal too

00:54:27.640 | must help sharpen those ideas.

00:54:29.080 | - It does help sharpen it, yeah.

00:54:30.440 | And you have to do a lot of stuff that's annoying,

00:54:32.020 | but it's actually kind of good.

00:54:32.940 | You have to go find competitive titles.

00:54:35.180 | Here's similar books that aren't quite what I'm doing.

00:54:38.600 | 'Cause if there's something out there

00:54:39.480 | is exactly what you're doing,

00:54:40.360 | they don't wanna publish it.

00:54:41.200 | So here's similar books that are similar to what I'm doing.

00:54:43.200 | Here's exactly how many copies they sold.

00:54:45.240 | Like you have to make the case.

00:54:46.340 | You actually have to make the case.

00:54:47.880 | This book, this book, this book,

00:54:49.160 | they all did really well for these reasons.

00:54:51.220 | My book sits at the intersection of them.

00:54:53.000 | So this is why we think we could do something similar.

00:54:54.660 | You have to like exhaustively talk about,

00:54:56.680 | here's how I'm gonna publicize this book.

00:54:58.960 | You see, I know these people, I'm in this world.

00:55:01.720 | I'm gonna be on this podcast.

00:55:03.200 | I mean, all of this stuff seems annoying,

00:55:05.720 | but it's really, really important for them

00:55:07.280 | to try to conceive internally at the publisher.

00:55:09.880 | How many copies realistically are we gonna,

00:55:12.260 | is this book gonna end up selling?

00:55:13.680 | With this type of publicity,

00:55:14.820 | looking at what comparable books do.

00:55:17.320 | Anyways, so Wendell B,

00:55:20.760 | I know you didn't ask about publishing,

00:55:22.160 | but it all comes back to just grounding

00:55:26.160 | what you wanna do in reality.

00:55:28.160 | Though a big source of friction in the moment

00:55:30.360 | is really what's going to open up a much smoother path

00:55:33.920 | in the longterm.

00:55:34.760 | All right, let's do another question here.

00:55:38.280 | - Hi, Jenny, a 34 year old stay at home mom from Chicago.

00:55:43.280 | How can I convince my husband

00:55:45.040 | that the deep life doesn't mean

00:55:46.440 | he gets to ignore his spouse most of the time?

00:55:48.560 | He insists that he's unavailable during work hours

00:55:50.760 | to minimize distractions.

00:55:52.620 | - Well, as Jesse knows,

00:55:55.400 | one of my best purposes on this podcast

00:55:58.240 | is being a marriage counselor.

00:55:59.740 | I think it actually was before your time, Jesse.

00:56:02.040 | I used to get a lot more of these questions

00:56:03.520 | and it was like an ongoing joke.

00:56:04.740 | I don't know if you remember from the old days of the show,

00:56:06.720 | but it used to come up a lot where I was like,

00:56:08.640 | yeah, I'm glad you're asking me for relationship advice.

00:56:11.000 | - Yeah.

00:56:11.820 | - Like, this is gonna go really well for you.

00:56:13.040 | This is gonna go really well for me.

00:56:14.360 | We're all gonna end up better.

00:56:16.140 | - I listen to them all, yeah, for sure.

00:56:17.960 | - It used to come up more often.

00:56:19.560 | Well, okay, I have two things.

00:56:22.000 | I have a general thing to say, Jenny, and a specific thing.

00:56:24.400 | The general thing is, if that's what he's saying,

00:56:27.280 | he's using the term deep life incorrectly.

00:56:31.960 | The deep life is not just about avoiding distraction

00:56:34.840 | in work, I mean, there's a craft bucket to the deep life

00:56:37.720 | where you're trying to envision what's important to you

00:56:39.680 | in the world of work.

00:56:40.600 | And maybe under there, at some point you have,

00:56:43.700 | when working on things important,

00:56:45.080 | trying to avoid context switching is vital,

00:56:47.000 | but that's a sub point relevant to just one bucket

00:56:50.600 | of many different buckets that are relevant

00:56:52.280 | to living the deep life.

00:56:54.520 | And if you're married, as I've long said,

00:56:58.060 | these visions need to be collaborative and synchronized.

00:57:01.600 | It does not work if you have your own vision,

00:57:04.700 | separate from your spouse's,

00:57:06.440 | and you don't really talk about it,

00:57:08.040 | or if you do talk about it, it's just to tell them,

00:57:09.600 | here's what I'm doing, get out of my way.

00:57:12.080 | Competing visions of the deep life is incredibly corrosive

00:57:15.480 | to a long-term committed relationship.

00:57:17.800 | Married couples need to have a collaborative vision

00:57:22.280 | of this life that involves both of them.

00:57:23.880 | What do we care about as a family,

00:57:26.400 | as a unit in all of these areas?

00:57:28.560 | How are we collectively going to build our lives?

00:57:30.960 | So now when you're talking about craft, for example,

00:57:33.240 | it's not just about how can we each be as successful

00:57:35.280 | as possible in our jobs?

00:57:37.320 | It instead becomes, especially if you have kids,

00:57:40.080 | what configuration of work is going to best satisfy

00:57:45.080 | the various constraints we have?

00:57:47.340 | We want financial security,

00:57:49.160 | we want to keep our stress under control,

00:57:51.360 | we want to be able to deal with, let's say,

00:57:53.840 | like the issues of our kids that arise in a way

00:57:56.120 | that doesn't make it a constant source of anxiety,

00:57:58.440 | and make sure we have enough time.

00:57:59.280 | They're like, how do we find this balance?

00:58:01.200 | You're making a collective decision.

00:58:03.120 | What are our different jobs?

00:58:04.260 | What's our available flexibility?

00:58:06.080 | Should someone pull back and someone push forward?

00:58:08.000 | Should we both pull back?

00:58:08.840 | Should we do this for two years?

00:58:10.080 | It should be decided together.

00:58:12.000 | Same thing for constitution, same thing for community,

00:58:14.120 | certainly same thing for contemplation.

00:58:15.660 | Are you going to have a religion?

00:58:16.780 | What's that going to be?

00:58:17.620 | All of this has to be collaborative.

00:58:19.360 | So that's my general response here.

00:58:21.780 | Your husband having some vision of the quote unquote

00:58:24.120 | deep life that he's essentially just imposing on you

00:58:26.400 | and it annoys you is not the right way to do this

00:58:29.280 | in a married couple.

00:58:30.380 | All right, now I'm going to take your husband's side

00:58:34.120 | and say, let's talk about this very specific issue

00:58:36.640 | of just how accessible does he need to be during work?

00:58:41.640 | And I think you can work together

00:58:44.520 | and come up for this very narrow thing,

00:58:47.160 | a set of rules that's very reasonable

00:58:49.720 | that everyone agrees to.

00:58:50.700 | So for example, here's a common thing I've heard

00:58:52.800 | in these situations.

00:58:54.000 | Anything that's an emergency,

00:58:56.620 | like you actually have to have a quick response

00:58:59.220 | or like a kid is going to the pediatrician

00:59:03.120 | and so you need to come home

00:59:04.000 | and pick up the other kid from work.

00:59:06.020 | Hint, I'm speaking from experience here.

00:59:08.360 | Something like that, it's very time-sensitive.

00:59:09.860 | Okay, you can always call my cell phone

00:59:11.980 | and even if I have my cell phone and do not disturb,

00:59:14.460 | I just have it set up so that obviously your number

00:59:16.460 | is whitelisted to come through, that's very easy to do.

00:59:19.000 | All spouses should have their spouse's number set up

00:59:21.340 | to calls to come through

00:59:22.820 | no matter what focus mode they're in.

00:59:25.020 | All right, that's easy.

00:59:26.820 | Then you could have a simple rule about text messaging.

00:59:28.740 | And I think a completely reasonable rule

00:59:30.220 | about text messaging is I will check text messages

00:59:35.220 | at least two or three times throughout the day.

00:59:36.860 | But on the other hand, if I'm in the middle of a block,

00:59:39.580 | a deep work block, I'm not going to check text messages

00:59:42.640 | because if I do, it completely ruins the,

00:59:44.680 | and this is where I'm taking your husband's side,

00:59:46.580 | this idea that, hey, it would be very useful for me

00:59:49.140 | if you always just responded to my text messages right away.

00:59:52.180 | It could ruin a whole deep work block

00:59:53.980 | if you have to do that context switching throughout.

00:59:56.020 | So I think this notion

00:59:56.860 | of there's gonna be a two hour stretch here,

00:59:58.240 | an hour stretch here, where I'm not checking text messages,

01:00:01.920 | but a couple of times a day I am.

01:00:03.580 | So non-urgent things I'll see, urgent things you call me.

01:00:07.620 | And if we find we have to be doing a lot of coordinating

01:00:09.780 | throughout the day, then we probably need to work

01:00:11.400 | on our household admin system in general.

01:00:13.100 | It's probably too chaotic.

01:00:14.340 | I, in this case, I'm playing the role of your husband

01:00:16.700 | and probably not involved enough

01:00:18.200 | in actually sitting down and working out with you.

01:00:20.380 | What needs to be done this week?

01:00:21.580 | Who's working on what?

01:00:22.500 | We probably need a better weekly planning setup,

01:00:24.700 | a better shared calendar, a better shared task setup.

01:00:26.880 | There's a whole household admin solution here

01:00:29.500 | that probably would reduce the need

01:00:30.780 | to just have hyperactive hive mind back and forth

01:00:32.740 | throughout the day.

01:00:33.560 | But it's completely reasonable to say I'm accessible,

01:00:35.820 | but not always accessible unless it's an emergency.

01:00:38.380 | Now you can make your own rules here.

01:00:40.820 | I don't know what's gonna work.

01:00:41.900 | I don't know your situation.

01:00:42.940 | I don't know what your, like your husband does.

01:00:44.700 | I mean, maybe he's a Navy SEAL or something.

01:00:46.340 | And this, you know, he can't answer his phone

01:00:48.980 | because he's saving someone from pirates

01:00:51.840 | or something like that.

01:00:52.680 | But my point here being for this very narrow issue

01:00:55.020 | of accessibility between, you know, partners,

01:00:57.500 | you need rules, you need to agree on them.

01:00:59.500 | And there's a lot of reasonable options there.

01:01:01.140 | And then everyone's on the same page.

01:01:02.860 | Don't just wing it.

01:01:03.900 | And if you can't come up with a set of rules that works,

01:01:05.740 | then you have to fix something else

01:01:06.920 | until you have a set of rules to do.

01:01:08.700 | My bigger picture point here, however,

01:01:10.500 | is the deep life in general for couples

01:01:14.740 | is a collaborative effort.

01:01:16.420 | It does not work if you each have your own vision.

01:01:18.920 | I think they're gonna buy that

01:01:21.700 | or they both now just mad at me.

01:01:23.020 | (both laughing)

01:01:24.300 | It's usually safer just to take entirely one person's side

01:01:26.860 | because you know, at least one person won't be mad at you.

01:01:29.380 | - Yeah.

01:01:30.220 | - Yeah, husband's gonna show up at my door.

01:01:33.380 | He is gonna be a Navy SEAL.

01:01:37.340 | He's like, "I have come to get my revenge."

01:01:39.500 | All right, I wanna do a case study

01:01:41.900 | before we move on to something interesting.

01:01:43.980 | I like to do these occasionally where someone sends in

01:01:46.300 | a example of the type of ideas we write about on the show

01:01:50.580 | playing out in the real world.

01:01:52.740 | So this particular case study was sent to me from Julie,

01:01:56.940 | a 51-year-old writer from Maine.

01:02:01.480 | So I'm already on board.

01:02:04.160 | Love the idea of a writer in Maine.

01:02:06.060 | All right, so here's what Julie says.

01:02:07.140 | "Last year, I took your advice

01:02:08.580 | and converted the utility shed in my backyard

01:02:11.940 | into an office space.

01:02:14.180 | I have worked in every corner of my house

01:02:15.900 | and it was finally time for a dedicated space

01:02:18.600 | for me to write in.

01:02:20.340 | I knew it would help me with focus and uninterrupted time,

01:02:22.700 | but I was not prepared for the mindset shift

01:02:24.940 | that went along with it.

01:02:27.020 | Once the writing shed was up

01:02:28.820 | with everything just like I wanted it,

01:02:30.340 | I felt a lot more like a professional writer.

01:02:34.100 | And if I'm a professional writer

01:02:35.700 | with this really cool writing shed,

01:02:36.940 | shouldn't I spend my time in here writing?

01:02:39.140 | What would be the point of doing all of this work

01:02:40.900 | of building this thing

01:02:41.820 | if I just sit out there and scroll Twitter?

01:02:44.220 | I've gotten so much more writing done

01:02:45.700 | just being in the space we built

01:02:47.020 | specifically for this purpose.

01:02:49.700 | Also, I've never had a space for a place near my desk

01:02:52.620 | to sit and read.

01:02:54.300 | When we renovated the shed,

01:02:55.300 | we built in a storage bench

01:02:56.660 | and put a cushion and pillows on top to make a couch.

01:02:59.620 | When I feel my focus shifting,

01:03:01.020 | I get up from my desk and move to the couch

01:03:03.040 | away from my computer

01:03:04.180 | and either read or write in a notebook.

01:03:06.260 | I'm less likely to want to check for an important email

01:03:09.660 | if I'm working comfortably on the couch

01:03:11.620 | with my dog snoring next to me.

01:03:13.860 | There's definitely a slow productivity aspect

01:03:15.900 | to building a dedicated writing space as well.

01:03:18.260 | Since I'm not in the house,

01:03:19.340 | facing laundry and dishes and interruptions from my family,

01:03:21.820 | I don't feel nearly as frantic about the work I'm doing.

01:03:25.140 | Because it's easier for me to take control

01:03:26.700 | of my deep work sessions,

01:03:27.660 | I'm getting more writing done

01:03:29.180 | and embracing the time it takes to get the books done.

01:03:31.740 | It may not be a Sanderson layer, but it's pretty great.

01:03:36.480 | Julie, I love that.

01:03:40.220 | And of course, I talk about all the time in the show,

01:03:42.460 | I wrote that New Yorker piece

01:03:44.140 | where I introduced the acronym work from near home

01:03:46.500 | to capture this concept.

01:03:48.380 | But it all comes down to the degree to which we ignore

01:03:52.100 | the cognitive aspects or the psychological aspects

01:03:55.100 | of doing cognitively demanding work.

01:03:57.220 | Having a dedicated space just for that work

01:04:01.260 | doesn't necessarily make sense on paper.

01:04:03.420 | It doesn't necessarily make sense

01:04:04.540 | when you're sitting there trying to make a plan.

01:04:06.340 | It doesn't make sense when you say,

01:04:07.540 | look, we just bought this house that has a home office,

01:04:09.760 | so why in the world would I go build a shed in the backyard?

01:04:12.460 | But it makes all the sense in the world

01:04:13.900 | when you realize the psychological demands

01:04:16.200 | of trying to actually concentrate on something complicated.

01:04:19.020 | This is hard for humans to do,

01:04:20.460 | and your brain needs every ounce of help you can give it.

01:04:23.500 | So if you have the capability of doing something like this,

01:04:26.060 | and it doesn't have to be fancy,

01:04:27.660 | but getting some sort of dedicated space

01:04:30.620 | where you just do some type of work,

01:04:32.340 | as you learn from Julie's case study,

01:04:34.900 | there is a cascade of advantages

01:04:37.920 | in terms of productivity, in terms of sustainability,

01:04:40.300 | in terms of your happiness, in terms of clarity.

01:04:43.540 | There is a cascade of advantages that follow.

01:04:45.940 | So Julie, I do appreciate that case study.

01:04:48.660 | - Yeah, it's a good case study.

01:04:50.940 | - I'm always trying to encourage people to build,

01:04:53.220 | who have yards of sufficient size, build a deep work shed.

01:04:57.580 | Always encouraging people.

01:04:58.420 | - How's your library working out?

01:05:00.120 | - That's working well.

01:05:01.100 | - Have you been?

01:05:01.940 | - I've been writing in there.

01:05:02.780 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:05:03.620 | I mean, I think the key to the,

01:05:05.380 | and I've been writing here as well.

01:05:06.740 | So I've been coming to HQ to write as well,

01:05:09.140 | but writing in the library has worked well.

01:05:11.380 | There's no permanent screens in there.

01:05:13.380 | You bring in a laptop to write,

01:05:14.960 | you bring it out when you're done.

01:05:16.700 | So if you're reading in there, there's no screens,

01:05:19.500 | which I appreciate.

01:05:20.340 | - How often do you go in there and read?

01:05:22.180 | - I mean, that's the main place I read

01:05:23.400 | if I'm reading at home.

01:05:24.260 | I mean, now that it's getting warmer,

01:05:25.820 | I like to read outside, but in the winter,

01:05:27.300 | that's where I've been reading.

01:05:28.580 | 'Cause we have the fireplace,

01:05:30.080 | you can like turn on the gas fireplace.

01:05:32.560 | So writing in there has been good.

01:05:34.240 | And again, it's like a unnecessary thing

01:05:36.880 | to build this whole library out

01:05:38.880 | and build the bookcases and get these library lights

01:05:44.200 | and do all this stuff.

01:05:45.040 | It's like, there's probably better uses for that money.

01:05:47.880 | But on the other hand, it's there

01:05:49.240 | because I make a living thinking.

01:05:50.760 | - Yeah.

01:05:51.600 | - And so I see that library the same way

01:05:53.360 | that Chris Hemsworth sees the big expansive gym

01:05:57.240 | he built in his house in Australia.

01:05:58.780 | He plays Thor.

01:06:00.100 | It's like really important that he's able to,

01:06:02.520 | as easily as possible, lift heavy things.

01:06:04.340 | And so I was like, okay,

01:06:05.560 | if I'm gonna be an intellectual Thor, I need a library.

01:06:09.220 | - Yeah.

01:06:10.060 | - So that's been nice.

01:06:12.260 | I've been liking the library.

01:06:13.900 | And I've been liking coming here too.

01:06:15.420 | It's good to have spaces, big believer in spaces.

01:06:17.740 | We don't give ourselves a big enough break

01:06:20.620 | when it comes to doing hard work with our brains.

01:06:23.260 | It's all these knowledge work jobs

01:06:24.660 | where it's like, what's the big deal?

01:06:25.720 | Just be on email all day and jump in Zoom

01:06:27.900 | and just work from your kitchen

01:06:28.940 | while your kids are in the background.

01:06:30.060 | What's the big deal?

01:06:31.060 | Just turn on your brain and execute.

01:06:33.260 | And no one ever thinks about it's really, really hard.

01:06:35.420 | - Yeah.

01:06:36.500 | Your dedicated space advice for doing different works

01:06:39.740 | has been really helpful to me over the years.

01:06:42.180 | - What's your favorite space of the moment?

01:06:43.980 | - Well, I have different spaces for different works.

01:06:47.200 | - Even just within your apartment or around town?

01:06:51.140 | - Both.

01:06:51.980 | - Yeah.

01:06:52.980 | - I have two places in my condo.

01:06:55.060 | I can come here, I can go to like,

01:06:57.280 | there's like a coaching area, like a Gonzaga.

01:07:00.800 | - What about, does the club have any interesting spaces?

01:07:03.700 | Like outdoor?

01:07:04.880 | - Outdoors, I got some great spots.

01:07:06.420 | - Yeah, like if you're reading, like you could probably-

01:07:08.160 | - Yeah, outdoors is like real good,

01:07:09.500 | but that's obviously weather dependent.

01:07:11.440 | Like sometimes I take my Spanish class out there.

01:07:13.800 | And then indoor, I wish there was a little bit more.

01:07:18.320 | - You know what the coolest space

01:07:19.800 | I ever sort of was in proximity of?

01:07:22.360 | When I lived on Beacon Hill in Boston,

01:07:24.480 | when I was a postdoc, right there is a private library.

01:07:29.480 | It's a subscription library that, this is Boston,

01:07:33.520 | so it's probably been around since, you know, 1694

01:07:37.280 | or something like that.

01:07:38.580 | And they had, it was cheap if you were a student,

01:07:42.880 | like a grad student or whatever.

01:07:44.480 | That was so cool.

01:07:46.960 | I just discovered it right before we moved

01:07:49.160 | and came to Georgetown, so I never was able

01:07:50.440 | to actually make that a big part of my life.

01:07:52.120 | But I was thinking, I was like, that thing was so cool.

01:07:53.960 | They had this reading room where they would bring in

01:07:56.280 | all of the papers from all around the country or whatever.

01:07:59.080 | And you'd go in there and there would just be

01:08:01.040 | like a bunch of upper middle-aged dudes, you know,

01:08:03.720 | reading their newspaper and drinking their coffee.

01:08:05.400 | And then they just had these long tables and these statues.

01:08:08.280 | And I was like, that's cool.

01:08:09.680 | - Yeah.

01:08:10.520 | - That's cool.

01:08:11.340 | If you're gonna have like a superfluous

01:08:12.380 | sort of elitist space, why not dedicate it to like thinking

01:08:16.640 | as opposed to, I don't know.

01:08:18.100 | - TikTok videos.

01:08:20.160 | - Duck hunting, I don't know what rich people do.

01:08:22.200 | I don't think this place was that expensive.

01:08:23.520 | I think it had like a big historical pedigree.

01:08:26.340 | Can't remember what it was called though.

01:08:28.720 | It started with the anathema, I think.

01:08:31.560 | Anathema.

01:08:32.600 | Yeah, I just thought that was always cool.

01:08:34.600 | All right, I wanna do something interesting,

01:08:35.560 | but firstly, briefly mention another longtime sponsor

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01:09:23.920 | So having that dedicated coach you talk to every day

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01:10:01.880 | - Yeah. - It's a great company.

01:10:03.380 | I also wanna talk about our friends at ExpressVPN.

01:10:05.940 | If you use the internet, which I assume you probably do,

01:10:12.040 | you need to have a VPN or virtual private network.

01:10:15.460 | So here's the problem with the way

01:10:16.620 | that most people use the internet

01:10:18.100 | is that people can see what you're doing.

01:10:22.180 | So if you're connecting through a public wifi access point,

01:10:25.980 | people can sniff your packets off of the wire

01:10:28.740 | and see what site or service are you talking to.

01:10:31.220 | Even if the contents of your message maybe are encrypted,

01:10:34.140 | the destination is not.

01:10:36.840 | So people can see which site or service you're talking to.

01:10:39.820 | Let's say you're at home,

01:10:40.900 | you're like, "No one's sniffing my packets."

01:10:42.340 | Your internet service provider sees who you're talking to.

01:10:46.020 | And you know what?

01:10:46.880 | They can collect that data.

01:10:48.180 | And you know what?

01:10:49.020 | They can sell that data.

01:10:50.300 | And you know what?

01:10:51.220 | They probably do.

01:10:53.460 | This is where a virtual private network comes into play.

01:10:55.540 | It works as follows.

01:10:56.420 | Instead of connecting to the site

01:10:58.180 | or service you wanna talk to,

01:10:59.580 | you instead connect to a virtual private network server,

01:11:02.740 | a VPN server.

01:11:04.220 | And you send an encrypted message to that server saying,

01:11:06.820 | "Here's who I really wanna talk to."

01:11:08.800 | The server talks to that site or service on your behalf,

01:11:11.300 | encrypts the response and sends it back to you.

01:11:13.460 | What does this mean?

01:11:14.300 | This means your internet service provider

01:11:15.920 | or people sitting next to you in Starbucks,

01:11:17.740 | all they know is that you're talking to a VPN server.

01:11:21.260 | They gain no information about the actual site

01:11:23.640 | or the actual service that you're using.

01:11:25.500 | So this is internet privacy and security 101.

01:11:28.780 | So if you're gonna use a VPN,

01:11:30.540 | the one I recommend is ExpressVPN.

01:11:34.500 | They have servers all over the world.

01:11:36.640 | They have a lot of bandwidth for these servers.

01:11:38.700 | So you can have a fast, high bandwidth connection.

01:11:41.820 | So you'll notice no lag in your internet connection.

01:11:44.540 | And their software is very easy to use.

01:11:46.700 | You click a button once it's installed to turn it on

01:11:49.740 | and you just use all of your apps and browsers

01:11:52.240 | like you normally would.

01:11:53.340 | And in the background,

01:11:54.180 | it's shunting off your information through a local server.

01:11:57.060 | So you need a VPN.

01:11:58.600 | And I think ExpressVPN is the one you need.

01:12:00.900 | It's also rated number one by CNET, Wired, TechRadar

01:12:03.840 | and countless others.

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01:12:41.600 | All right, so what I wanna do with our last segment is,

01:12:45.780 | as I often do, talk about something interesting.

01:12:50.420 | So as you know, I maintain this address,

01:12:53.020 | interesting@calnewport.com,

01:12:56.660 | in which anyone can send me any article or link or video

01:12:59.580 | they think I might like.

01:13:00.540 | And even though I can't respond to most of these messages,

01:13:02.320 | I do read most of them

01:13:03.380 | and it's a real cool source of interesting material.

01:13:06.420 | So today I wanna talk about something that you sent me

01:13:09.940 | in this address.

01:13:12.180 | This is an article, the version I have here is from ABC,

01:13:16.220 | though this was widely covered,

01:13:18.080 | that is discussing a interesting piece of recent news.

01:13:22.840 | Here's the headline of this article.

01:13:25.140 | Oh man, there is a,

01:13:26.900 | I don't know if this shows up on the screen, Jesse,

01:13:28.500 | but it's interesting.

01:13:29.340 | So I'm on the ABC News.

01:13:30.700 | - Yeah, it's coming up.

01:13:31.580 | - That's interesting too.

01:13:33.020 | So what I wanna talk about is this article from ABC News

01:13:36.300 | and the headline is Utah social media law

01:13:40.060 | means kids need approval from parents.

01:13:43.140 | But if you're watching online at youtube.com/calnewportmedia

01:13:48.020 | episode 242 or at thedeeplife.com,

01:13:50.300 | you'll see that ABC is dominating the screen

01:13:53.500 | by a picture of an impossibly fit old lady

01:13:57.620 | next to a bear who I'm assuming she's married to.

01:14:04.860 | I mean, it's not exactly clear from this context,

01:14:07.140 | but that's what I'm going to assume.

01:14:08.400 | They seem like they know each other very well.

01:14:10.740 | And what is the headline for this?

01:14:12.140 | Intermittent fasting for seniors.

01:14:13.460 | I don't know, Jesse,

01:14:14.300 | maybe this is what we should be reading.

01:14:16.540 | This like super jacked lady who's married to a bear.

01:14:19.460 | She gonna eat the bear?

01:14:22.180 | This is about fasting.

01:14:23.620 | Well, all right, so you gotta see this.

01:14:25.660 | You gotta go to youtube.com/calnewportmedia

01:14:27.620 | to see this picture.

01:14:28.460 | Otherwise I sound like a crazy person.

01:14:30.540 | But let's talk about this actual article.

01:14:33.500 | All right, with great regret, I'm gonna shut this ad.

01:14:36.180 | All right, let's talk about this actual article.

01:14:38.860 | Utah is passing a new law

01:14:42.300 | to help restrict kids' social media usage.

01:14:48.540 | So there's a couple of things this law includes.

01:14:51.140 | And I'm reading here from the article.

01:14:52.940 | Children and teens in Utah would lose access

01:14:55.420 | to social media apps such as TikTok

01:14:57.060 | if they don't have parental consent.

01:14:59.160 | They face other restrictions as well,

01:15:02.280 | such as, for example, a prohibition on kids under 18

01:15:06.260 | from using social media between the hours

01:15:09.260 | of 10.30 p.m. and 6.30 a.m.,

01:15:11.620 | as well as age verification

01:15:14.080 | of anyone who wants to use social media,

01:15:16.180 | and a few other things as well.

01:15:18.780 | I think one of the more controversial parts of this bill

01:15:21.860 | is if you're a minor using social media,

01:15:25.040 | your parents have to have access to your account.

01:15:27.440 | There's a lot of these laws percolating up

01:15:31.140 | at the state level right now.

01:15:32.640 | The coverage and reaction to these laws is very complicated

01:15:37.440 | because they keep crossing back and forth

01:15:41.240 | over our standard political partisan lines.

01:15:43.800 | So it's a Republican governor,

01:15:45.660 | Governor Spencer Cox in Utah, who's suggesting this law.

01:15:49.300 | Blue State, Massachusetts has a similar law.

01:15:52.140 | You look at people lining up to talk about these,

01:15:54.480 | you can see the confusion because most organizations know,

01:15:57.360 | here's the way it works.

01:15:58.580 | We belong to one particular ideological team,

01:16:01.260 | and we wanna see if something,

01:16:02.500 | our teams or the other team's thing,

01:16:04.100 | and if it's the other team's thing,

01:16:05.040 | our job is to make sure it looks bad.

01:16:06.500 | And if it's our team's thing,

01:16:07.420 | it's our job to make it look right.

01:16:09.060 | But for this particular issue, the teams are all scrambled.

01:16:12.780 | The Surgeon General of the Joe Biden administration

01:16:16.900 | is in favor of 16 as a minimum age for using social media.

01:16:21.640 | Josh Hawley, Senator Josh Hawley,

01:16:24.580 | is also in favor of 16 being a minimum age

01:16:28.220 | for social media.

01:16:29.060 | You could not have two people that were farther away

01:16:30.980 | on the political spectrum.

01:16:32.460 | So even in this article itself, you see this confusion.

01:16:35.420 | Electronic Freedom Foundation is coming out strong.

01:16:37.660 | We don't like this.

01:16:38.480 | This is no good.

01:16:39.320 | Common Sense Media is coming in and say,

01:16:40.620 | but actually, wait, maybe this is good.

01:16:41.900 | Kids are getting pretty addicted to these things.

01:16:43.580 | No one really knows where to stand on this.

01:16:45.800 | So it's amusing to watch

01:16:46.960 | as well as a source of consternation

01:16:49.100 | because of the partisanship

01:16:50.940 | that especially dictates so much online discussion.

01:16:54.380 | Self-referential discussion

01:16:55.620 | on how people should use online services

01:16:57.700 | are confused and complicated.

01:17:00.080 | So I got to cut through to what my emerging thoughts on this.

01:17:05.460 | I think simplicity is key here.

01:17:08.320 | There is an existing job, COPA.

01:17:11.980 | That is an abbreviation.

01:17:13.260 | I always get the actual acronym,

01:17:15.540 | the details of the acronym wrong.

01:17:16.660 | It's in this article, so I'm scrolling here.

01:17:18.980 | But there's an existing law on the books

01:17:20.500 | that's abbreviated as COPA,

01:17:22.620 | Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

01:17:26.460 | This is a law that's federal,

01:17:28.940 | and it implicitly establishes 13

01:17:32.260 | as the minimum age to use social media.

01:17:34.940 | I say implicitly

01:17:35.780 | because the way the law is actually worded

01:17:37.760 | is it's talking about the minimum age

01:17:39.940 | at which an individual can consent

01:17:42.020 | to give up their data or privacy to another company.

01:17:44.740 | Because social media by definition does this,

01:17:46.900 | it's implicitly a de facto age limit on social media.

01:17:50.500 | An interesting side note about this law,

01:17:53.140 | which I learned from a social psychologist, John Haidt,

01:17:56.500 | who's done a lot of good work on this issue,

01:17:58.580 | is that the original draft of COPA had this age at 16.

01:18:02.940 | It got changed because of intense lobbying

01:18:06.840 | from the tech industry.

01:18:08.060 | They brought it back to 13.

01:18:09.900 | So I think we should simplify things.

01:18:12.420 | This Utah law, honestly, it's too complicated.

01:18:14.740 | A time limit on when people of certain ages

01:18:18.680 | can use different types of technologies.

01:18:20.900 | I don't even know if this is a legitimate proposal

01:18:23.020 | or it's just trying to motion towards you,

01:18:25.980 | signal that you care about this issue,

01:18:27.340 | but this is way too complicated.

01:18:29.100 | If you wanna do something legislatively here,

01:18:31.380 | take the law that already exists,

01:18:33.220 | go back to the original age.

01:18:35.180 | It's 16, not 13.

01:18:36.300 | We don't have to invent new mechanisms.

01:18:38.700 | We don't have to do things at the state level.

01:18:41.540 | In general, I'm wary of legislative solutions

01:18:44.140 | to a lot of these issues

01:18:44.960 | because not that I don't think they're issues

01:18:47.140 | that need to be solved,

01:18:47.980 | but I've never seen progress made.

01:18:49.300 | They're very difficult issues to actually legislate.

01:18:51.260 | But this is a case where there's something simple

01:18:53.300 | that could be done.

01:18:54.300 | Change the age net law to 16.

01:18:57.020 | Now, one of the pushbacks about doing that,

01:18:59.860 | and it shows up in this article I have here,

01:19:02.500 | one of the pushbacks is, yeah, but you can't enforce that.

01:19:05.180 | You know, kids under the age of 13

01:19:07.700 | still sign up for social media accounts.

01:19:09.380 | My argument to that is that's not a problem right now.

01:19:13.180 | What do we wanna do?

01:19:14.100 | Why would we want a law that says you need to be 16

01:19:17.420 | to sign up for a social media account?

01:19:18.740 | Why would we want that law?

01:19:19.580 | To prevent anyone from under the age of 16

01:19:21.340 | ever getting on that account?

01:19:22.180 | No, what we wanna do is give some help and protection

01:19:26.460 | to these poor parents who had the misfortune

01:19:29.620 | of having kids in the '90s in such a way that these,

01:19:33.060 | or in the 2000s, such that these kids are coming of age

01:19:36.220 | just as this new technology,

01:19:37.780 | social media and smartphones just arose.

01:19:40.100 | So they have full access to these technologies,

01:19:41.780 | but we haven't had enough time yet to digest culturally

01:19:44.220 | how we actually wanna deal with these

01:19:45.740 | and figure out how kids could use it.

01:19:47.300 | So we have this 10 year gap, this 10 year window

01:19:49.940 | where people are being subject to a giant public experiment

01:19:52.340 | of just good luck.

01:19:54.820 | Here's a phone, like 12 year old, I hope you do okay.

01:19:58.100 | And of course I think in the future, this is gonna change.

01:20:00.140 | We're learning more about this, but right now,

01:20:01.980 | the parents of these kids need all the help they can get.

01:20:04.460 | It is very difficult to turn to your 14 year old and say,

01:20:07.100 | "I don't want you on a smartphone doing social media."

01:20:09.500 | And they say, "All my friends have it.

01:20:11.300 | You are gonna make me be socially outcast."

01:20:13.700 | These parents need support.

01:20:15.260 | And what better way to push back when your kid says,

01:20:17.700 | "But all my friends are doing it,"

01:20:19.500 | than to say, "It's illegal."

01:20:21.700 | This is why you can't have TikTok 14 year old daughter,

01:20:25.260 | 'cause it's illegal.

01:20:26.500 | And now the teens are in a place where they have to say,

01:20:29.700 | "I know, but we should break the law."

01:20:31.940 | And they know that's not gonna go over well.

01:20:33.260 | Now, here's what happens.

01:20:34.900 | This allows a lot of parents to hold the line.

01:20:37.620 | If a lot of parents hold the line,

01:20:38.940 | then when you get to your middle school classroom,

01:20:41.980 | there is a large contingent of kids

01:20:43.500 | who don't have phones and access to social media.

01:20:45.500 | No, it's not 100%, forget 100%.

01:20:47.420 | What we need is just enough of those kids in the classroom,

01:20:49.900 | not on social media,

01:20:50.740 | that if you are feeling particularly harmed by this,

01:20:54.500 | if seeing all the sort of mean performative demonstration

01:20:57.580 | of the things that you're missing out on,

01:20:59.940 | the things where the teenage girls you know,

01:21:02.500 | know that you weren't invited to this party

01:21:04.380 | and find a nonsense reason

01:21:06.220 | to send you an Instagram story about it.

01:21:09.420 | And they have some nonsense reason like,

01:21:10.820 | "Hey, look, there's that dress you were talking about.

01:21:12.380 | Someone is wearing it."

01:21:13.220 | And the real reason they're doing it

01:21:14.060 | is so you can see that you weren't invited to this party.

01:21:16.060 | When you can opt out of that,

01:21:17.860 | you have covered up out of that because some people do.

01:21:21.220 | Not everyone, but there's a sizable contingent that does.

01:21:24.020 | And now you can join that contingent if you really need it.

01:21:27.140 | The people who are having the most trouble with this

01:21:29.060 | have social cover to walk away from these technologies.

01:21:32.420 | That makes a huge difference.

01:21:33.980 | And so I think right now,

01:21:35.820 | we need to give ammunition to parents

01:21:37.580 | to be able to enforce certain restrictions

01:21:41.420 | that they are seeing everyday evidence

01:21:43.740 | of what helped the mental wellbeing of their kids.

01:21:46.340 | And so if we made this official federal age 16,

01:21:49.660 | no, we're not going to eliminate all social media use

01:21:52.420 | from all kids, but that's okay.

01:21:54.700 | It's gonna give cover to the parents

01:21:56.020 | who see this as a problem.

01:21:57.340 | It's gonna give cover to the kids

01:21:58.420 | who are exhausted of this,

01:21:59.580 | but can't be the only person who's not on the services.

01:22:03.300 | So I'm increasingly coming around to this idea

01:22:05.500 | of let's start with what's simple.

01:22:07.580 | There's a couple simple changes we can make right now

01:22:09.540 | that would probably go a long way

01:22:10.740 | in the helping the mental health of teens.

01:22:12.300 | But I am glad that a lot of people are thinking about this.

01:22:14.340 | And I do find it amusing

01:22:15.700 | that this issue crosses the partisan lines.

01:22:17.660 | I find it amusing to watch the online commentators

01:22:20.180 | have their head start spinning around

01:22:21.780 | and then the cartoon steam comes out of their ears

01:22:23.540 | 'cause they're not sure who they're supposed to be mad at.

01:22:25.820 | So that's also entertaining,

01:22:26.820 | but there's a serious problem here

01:22:28.700 | and I'm glad other people

01:22:29.580 | are finally starting to recognize that.

01:22:31.500 | So there you go, Jesse.

01:22:34.540 | Kids and social media.

01:22:36.460 | I have to give a whole talk about this

01:22:37.540 | at my kids' school soon.

01:22:38.500 | - Yeah, you were saying that we'll do a video on it.

01:22:40.820 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:22:41.740 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:22:42.780 | So it's coming up.

01:22:43.780 | It got postponed for various reasons,

01:22:45.220 | but after I give that talk, I'll record a video version

01:22:48.980 | unless it goes terribly.

01:22:50.940 | So we'll see how it goes first.

01:22:52.660 | If my kids are kicked out of that school

01:22:55.780 | due to the general intellectual and moral degeneracy

01:22:59.100 | of their father as based on his talk,

01:23:01.140 | then I won't record a version of it.

01:23:02.580 | (Jesse laughs)

01:23:05.260 | Me and my idea of the first 20 minutes of the talk

01:23:07.300 | is let me show you all the worst things

01:23:09.460 | I was able to find on social media.

01:23:11.020 | I just show like picture after picture

01:23:12.580 | of just terrible things.

01:23:14.220 | Now, if the talk goes well,

01:23:15.180 | I'll record a version for everyone else.

01:23:16.500 | All right, speaking of things going well,

01:23:18.260 | I think this was a good episode,

01:23:19.260 | but we got to wrap things up.

01:23:20.740 | Thank you everyone who sent in their questions.

01:23:22.340 | If you want to submit your own questions,

01:23:23.740 | the link is right there in the show notes.

01:23:27.100 | You can also go to thedeeplife.com/listen

01:23:30.900 | and the link is there as well.

01:23:32.700 | If you like what you heard, you'll like what you see.

01:23:34.380 | You can watch full videos of these podcasts

01:23:36.860 | at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

01:23:39.660 | We'll be back next week.

01:23:40.740 | Actually, I'll be back next week, special vacation episode.

01:23:43.220 | So it'll probably just be me.

01:23:45.020 | So I'll be back next week with another episode of the show.

01:23:47.900 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:23:50.700 | (upbeat music)

01:23:53.280 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 242: Why Is "The Simple Life" So Appealing?

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