Ep. 199: Fleeing Your Home Office, Ambition Overload, and Reading Limits

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:01.720 | I'm Cal Newport and this is "Eat Questions" episode 199.

00:00:06.720 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ.

00:00:15.600 | No Jesse today.

00:00:17.600 | That's my fault, not his.

00:00:20.780 | I missed our last recording session.

00:00:24.120 | I had some travel and then I had a touch of the COVID.

00:00:27.200 | I was thinking about waiting

00:00:28.400 | until our next recording session to record this episode

00:00:32.160 | in the next back to back,

00:00:33.560 | but I wanted to get this out as quickly as possible.

00:00:36.240 | So as soon as I could break free from isolation,

00:00:40.120 | I ran over here to try to knock out this episode.

00:00:43.960 | It'll be a little bit late this week,

00:00:45.620 | but hopefully not too late.

00:00:49.260 | So since it was just me,

00:00:50.700 | I figured what if we did a blast from the past?

00:00:56.040 | What if I actually structure today's episode

00:00:59.160 | the same way I used to structure the podcast

00:01:02.640 | back in the very early days

00:01:03.740 | when it was just me recording out of the study in my house.

00:01:06.680 | Back then as long time listeners might remember,

00:01:09.960 | I would do only written questions in the main episodes

00:01:12.560 | and I would divide them into three categories,

00:01:15.420 | work, technology, and the deep life.

00:01:18.740 | Over time that then became just deep work and deep life.

00:01:23.180 | And then over time we got rid of the categories

00:01:25.160 | for questions altogether.

00:01:26.600 | And now of course we have this much more,

00:01:29.560 | let's say vibrant structure where there's written questions

00:01:32.720 | and voice questions and segments

00:01:34.880 | where I'm talking about different things.

00:01:36.300 | And I use the Telestrator, we go through articles

00:01:40.040 | and there's a lot more that goes on in today,

00:01:41.500 | but let's go back to the past.

00:01:43.360 | Questions all written three categories,

00:01:45.600 | deep work, technology, and the deep life.

00:01:51.580 | Before we get into that though,

00:01:54.320 | let me give you a quick update on my book writing.

00:01:58.100 | So as you know, I'm working on a new book.

00:02:02.840 | Let's see, what book is this for me?

00:02:04.120 | One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

00:02:06.480 | This is my eighth book.

00:02:07.480 | Okay, so I'm working on my eighth book,

00:02:10.080 | slow productivity.

00:02:11.800 | And I wanna give you an update on how that's going.

00:02:13.720 | I have two observations I wanna make

00:02:15.280 | about the last week or two of working on this book.

00:02:17.840 | Observation number one,

00:02:21.000 | there was a period of roughly five days

00:02:23.840 | in which I was not on my game.

00:02:27.640 | So some combination of mild sickness symptoms

00:02:30.960 | plus disruption in the household,

00:02:33.000 | a little bit of travel disruption early on in that period.

00:02:35.240 | There's a period of five days where I was not on my game,

00:02:39.000 | where I was full energy writing in my normal routine.

00:02:41.520 | During those five days, I still wrote.

00:02:45.640 | Because it's what I do.

00:02:46.640 | I write every day except for Shabbat

00:02:48.560 | and I feel uncomfortable when I don't.

00:02:50.640 | So I still wrote, disrupted or not,

00:02:52.200 | I still wrote every day in these five days.

00:02:54.880 | And I spent all five days working on the same section

00:02:59.600 | of the new book.

00:03:00.560 | Now by section, let me give you quickly a survey

00:03:05.160 | of the hierarchy of sections in the book.

00:03:09.560 | Right now I'm doing a three level hierarchy.

00:03:11.520 | So you have numbered chapters.

00:03:13.240 | Numbered chapters are pretty long in this book.

00:03:15.080 | They could be 10,000 words plus.

00:03:18.320 | Numbered chapters are then broken down into named sections.

00:03:21.200 | So these are sections that each deal with a certain topic

00:03:23.600 | and have a title, sort of a bold headed title.

00:03:26.760 | And then sections themselves are broken down

00:03:28.920 | into subsections, which are broken up

00:03:31.440 | with just horizontal divider symbols.

00:03:35.240 | All right, so those are the three levels of hierarchy.

00:03:37.100 | So I was working on a section,

00:03:38.720 | which in other types of books might be roughly the length

00:03:41.280 | of what you might call it a chapter.

00:03:42.680 | But again, I call it section.

00:03:43.880 | Same section.

00:03:44.720 | And I'll tell you exactly what the section was.

00:03:47.080 | I chose it 'cause I thought it'd be pretty straightforward

00:03:48.720 | to write.

00:03:49.560 | It was talking about in the broader context

00:03:52.640 | of doing fewer things,

00:03:56.000 | I was pushing the notion of having a pull-based workflow

00:04:01.280 | instead of a push-based workflow.

00:04:04.560 | Where a push-based workflow is where anyone can put work

00:04:07.360 | onto anyone else's plate whenever they want

00:04:09.220 | by just sending out a message or grabbing them

00:04:11.080 | or saying, "Hey, can you do this?"

00:04:13.080 | So all of the work in this particular professional context

00:04:17.600 | exists spread out over different people's list.

00:04:20.720 | In a pull-based workflow, by contrast,

00:04:25.120 | you only work on a small number of things at a time.

00:04:26.760 | When you finish something,

00:04:27.580 | you can then pull something in to replace it.

00:04:30.320 | So actually in a pull-based context,

00:04:31.740 | most of the work exists in some sort of centralized,

00:04:34.480 | external place.

00:04:36.460 | And work is only pulled on the individual plates

00:04:38.480 | as they have the free cycles.

00:04:40.400 | The same amount of work gets done,

00:04:41.960 | but you get rid of the overload on people's plates.

00:04:43.760 | Anyways, I was getting into this idea

00:04:45.640 | and I had a really good case study

00:04:48.080 | I really wanted to get into from the MIT Management Review.

00:04:50.440 | And it felt like it should be easy to write.

00:04:51.880 | Five days I worked on this and was all over the place.

00:04:55.280 | This thing was getting long, it was rambling.

00:04:58.160 | And my instinct of, is this clicking,

00:05:01.960 | is this clear, is it aspirational, was all a fritz.

00:05:06.560 | Did it feel good about it?

00:05:07.380 | Five days, starting to make me nervous.

00:05:09.440 | All right, fast forward, feeling better,

00:05:12.260 | have my structure back, I can write in the morning again.

00:05:15.920 | In two sessions, I rewrite that whole section from scratch,

00:05:20.920 | complete confidence, boom, boom, boom.

00:05:23.600 | This is right, this is clear, great.

00:05:25.400 | Two sessions, I redid all of the effort

00:05:30.600 | I'd put into over five days

00:05:33.080 | and turned up with something much better.

00:05:34.880 | So the reason why I'm bringing this up

00:05:36.120 | is that I think it underscores the degree

00:05:38.880 | to which context matters for doing cognitive work.

00:05:43.180 | Having a good routine, your structure,

00:05:46.440 | this is when you write, your mind is used to it.

00:05:48.720 | Being at your full physical capacity

00:05:51.880 | when you're doing cognitive work,

00:05:53.120 | all of this stuff matters.

00:05:54.480 | Not all work is made equal when it comes to your brain.

00:05:57.880 | And so when I was working under duress,

00:05:59.720 | yeah, I could put down words, but they weren't very good.

00:06:02.040 | When I was on my game, I was a much better writer.

00:06:04.720 | So I thought that was an interesting observation.

00:06:06.280 | I think it's an observation that is relevant

00:06:08.480 | for anyone doing cognitive work.

00:06:10.880 | We don't think about the degree to which

00:06:12.400 | being in a disrupted or unusual

00:06:14.120 | or fragmented type of cognitive landscape

00:06:16.080 | can really draw down just the sheer ability

00:06:19.240 | that you are able to express.

00:06:20.760 | So I thought that was interesting.

00:06:22.400 | The other thing I would mention,

00:06:24.800 | just another update on writing slow productivity

00:06:26.920 | is so I'm working on this first big chapter

00:06:29.620 | about doing fewer things.

00:06:30.840 | First big chapter I'm writing,

00:06:32.280 | not the first chapter in the book.

00:06:34.120 | There's a whole first part to the book

00:06:36.120 | that motivates and explains the ideas.

00:06:38.080 | And the second part's a little bit more pragmatic.

00:06:40.560 | So it's this first big chapter I'm writing on,

00:06:42.560 | but it's from the second part of the book.

00:06:45.040 | Overall, it's taken me a long time.

00:06:47.100 | I've thrown out a lot.

00:06:48.400 | I'll write 5,000 words, cut that down to 2,000.

00:06:52.360 | I've changed the outline three or four times.

00:06:54.520 | And the point I wanted to make about that is

00:06:57.340 | that is expected as well,

00:06:59.900 | at least in my experience,

00:07:01.120 | when you're working on the first major chapter

00:07:03.240 | of a new book, it will be by far

00:07:06.060 | the slowest chapter that you write.

00:07:08.400 | And the reason is, is you're finding the voice of the book.

00:07:12.040 | It's something we don't talk about a lot,

00:07:13.720 | but I think is really important.

00:07:15.960 | What's the pacing?

00:07:16.840 | What's the tone?

00:07:18.620 | What's the type of information you pull in?

00:07:21.320 | What is the voice in which you present this information?

00:07:24.360 | Is it didactic?

00:07:25.520 | Is it journalistic?

00:07:26.960 | How tight are you breaking up sections

00:07:29.560 | or how rambling is it going on?

00:07:31.960 | Is this a clear transition book or let it hang?

00:07:35.120 | All this stuff has to be worked out and it's all feel-based.

00:07:37.880 | There's no way to get around it except for the right,

00:07:39.440 | throw it out, redo it, stare at it,

00:07:41.760 | say, is this really clicking?

00:07:43.200 | It's okay, but could it be better?

00:07:44.600 | And you do that until you love it.

00:07:46.080 | And it takes a long time, but you know what?

00:07:47.680 | At least I'm hoping this is true

00:07:49.060 | 'cause it's been my experience.

00:07:50.000 | The next chapter you write goes twice as fast.

00:07:52.160 | So that's my update on my book writing.

00:07:56.840 | One other quick point I wanted to make,

00:07:59.480 | one other quick announcement.

00:08:01.780 | In a recent episode, we talked about,

00:08:04.680 | Jessie and I talked about an article

00:08:06.180 | about someone running for,

00:08:07.240 | I believe it was the city council in Toronto

00:08:11.040 | and how she was not using any social media.

00:08:13.540 | She said, "I can use tech to connect to my constituents

00:08:16.600 | "without having to be on Twitter,

00:08:17.640 | "without having to be on Instagram."

00:08:19.240 | Anyways, I was pronouncing her name wrong

00:08:21.280 | and I'm not sure why.

00:08:22.120 | She sent me a note.

00:08:23.500 | Her name is Siri, S-I-R-I,

00:08:25.920 | spelled like Siri, the voice assistant for Apple.

00:08:29.840 | So I really have no excuse

00:08:30.820 | for some weird pronunciation I made up.

00:08:33.160 | Maybe it was just, I was assuming,

00:08:34.280 | well, it can't be pronounced like the voice app.

00:08:36.400 | So Siri, my apologies,

00:08:38.580 | but I will wanna correct a record now

00:08:40.700 | about how to pronounce your name.

00:08:42.180 | If you haven't seen that clip, we put it on YouTube.

00:08:45.040 | It's called something like a novel solution

00:08:48.140 | to social media in politics.

00:08:50.340 | Go check that out, youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

00:08:54.260 | And you can see the article and just in your mind,

00:08:57.140 | correct that name to the correct pronunciation

00:08:59.140 | as you listen.

00:09:00.180 | All right, so we got three batches of questions here,

00:09:02.180 | all written old school style, work technology,

00:09:06.180 | and the deep life.

00:09:07.580 | I'm excited about that.

00:09:08.820 | Before we get rolling into that,

00:09:10.380 | let's quickly talk about a couple of sponsors

00:09:12.140 | to make this show possible.

00:09:13.740 | The first is a new sponsor,

00:09:16.020 | but one I am excited about, 8Sleep.

00:09:20.020 | Particular, I wanna talk about the Pod Pro Cover by 8Sleep.

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00:10:18.260 | I am particularly sensitive to this.

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00:10:27.220 | So for me, the Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover is fantastic

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00:10:40.300 | It really does help me sleep.

00:10:41.620 | Particularly important, let me just say,

00:10:43.780 | this is a non-theoretical observation.

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00:11:45.340 | All right, that's a new sponsor.

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00:13:56.320 | All right, let's do some work questions.

00:14:00.640 | Our first question comes from Bethany who writes,

00:14:07.280 | "I'm a private music teacher.

00:14:10.660 | So I teach voice and piano lessons online

00:14:12.920 | and from my house.

00:14:13.940 | I find that my friends and family

00:14:16.340 | don't take my profession very seriously

00:14:19.200 | and feel that they can ask me to do things

00:14:22.300 | like run errands for them or go for coffee

00:14:24.180 | or sometimes they just come over at any time

00:14:27.780 | because I quote, only work 20 hours a week, end quote.

00:14:31.820 | When in reality, I work more like 40

00:14:35.040 | because of admin work, prep time, product development,

00:14:38.100 | you know, small business stuff."

00:14:42.740 | Well, let me tell you, Bethany, the ultimate solution here.

00:14:46.420 | I don't know if this is possible for you right now,

00:14:48.440 | but I wanna throw it out there.

00:14:50.000 | Don't work from your house.

00:14:52.900 | I wrote a blog post just a couple of days ago

00:14:56.880 | where I went back and revisited an article I wrote a year ago

00:14:59.600 | for the New Yorker about this phenomenon

00:15:01.440 | I called work from near home.

00:15:04.840 | And the idea is if you are remote,

00:15:06.640 | that is you're a worker who does not need to go

00:15:08.440 | to a centralized office to get your efforts accomplished.

00:15:12.340 | There's a real value to having a space for your work

00:15:16.000 | that is not your house.

00:15:17.720 | It's not a home office in your house.

00:15:19.320 | It is not a table in your house you use for other things.

00:15:22.120 | It is somewhere else near your house.

00:15:24.120 | You don't have to commute.

00:15:25.440 | It could be a shed in your backyard,

00:15:26.960 | or like I do, leasing low cost office space

00:15:31.920 | in your nearby downtown.

00:15:37.080 | I have a relative who's a writer who leases an office space

00:15:40.680 | which is actually a basement.

00:15:42.920 | It's a basement in someone's house.

00:15:43.840 | So it could be like a simple basement apartment.

00:15:46.000 | He rents it as an office, whatever,

00:15:48.700 | but a separate place that you go to work.

00:15:51.480 | Now in that original article, in that New Yorker article,

00:15:55.680 | I focused to try to highlight this phenomenon.

00:15:58.920 | I focused on famous writers.

00:16:01.600 | And I said, look, if you go back and look

00:16:02.880 | at the work habits of a lot of famous writers,

00:16:04.840 | you'll see a lot of them that have very nice home offices,

00:16:09.840 | nice houses, nice home offices, don't work in them.

00:16:12.440 | They write near their home, but in eccentric locations,

00:16:15.280 | in locations that are often clearly less nice

00:16:20.280 | than their home offices.

00:16:21.960 | And I gave a bunch of examples.

00:16:23.520 | Maya Angelou used to do this.

00:16:26.680 | She would go and write in hotel rooms.

00:16:28.320 | She would write on the bed.

00:16:29.180 | She'd prop herself up on her elbow and work on legal pads.

00:16:32.180 | She would take the artwork off the wall.

00:16:34.720 | She wanted to be completely blank, zero distraction.

00:16:37.200 | She even developed a callus on her elbow

00:16:39.040 | from how much she would, or how long she would prop herself

00:16:42.440 | up on that elbow in the hotel room.

00:16:45.060 | It was different than her house.

00:16:47.380 | Peter Benchley, author of "Jaws."

00:16:50.360 | When he wrote "Jaws," he lived down the street

00:16:52.040 | from where I grew up.

00:16:53.160 | So I know the house well that he lived in

00:16:55.680 | during the time when "Jaws" was written.

00:16:57.000 | It's a beautiful carriage house on a half acre of quiet land.

00:17:00.760 | He didn't write there.

00:17:02.440 | He would write "Jaws" in the back room

00:17:03.920 | of a furnace supply company.

00:17:06.200 | I know from contemporary interviews that it was loud.

00:17:08.840 | Bang, bang, bang.

00:17:09.840 | They're working on furnaces.

00:17:11.460 | Much worse space, aesthetically speaking,

00:17:13.560 | functionally speaking, than his home office.

00:17:15.080 | But he went there.

00:17:15.920 | John Steinbeck would take a portable writing desk

00:17:19.320 | on a boat out into the middle of Sag Harbor.

00:17:21.320 | He lived near Sag Harbor during some parts of the year,

00:17:24.060 | right in the middle of the water.

00:17:25.880 | I found a new example.

00:17:26.920 | So the blog post I wrote a few days ago

00:17:29.280 | was about a new example I came across.

00:17:30.960 | Jack Carr, the adventure novelist,

00:17:34.640 | writes the James Reese novels.

00:17:38.680 | He lives in this beautiful house in Park City, Utah

00:17:41.280 | that overlooks the forest.

00:17:45.440 | I found photos of him online doing some work in this house

00:17:48.840 | with floor-to-ceiling glass.

00:17:50.480 | He also has a well-decorated home office

00:17:53.840 | that he records his podcast out of.

00:17:55.600 | When he was working on his new book, "In the Blood,"

00:17:58.760 | he rented an old beat-up cabin

00:18:00.240 | in the same town from Airbnb,

00:18:03.160 | an old beat-up cabin to go right.

00:18:04.800 | We had to chop his own wood to fire

00:18:06.240 | in the wood-burning stove.

00:18:07.280 | It had two rooms in it, basically.

00:18:09.760 | Again, much less nice than his house,

00:18:11.600 | but he would go there as well.

00:18:12.440 | So what's going on here?

00:18:13.280 | Well, home is where the familiar is,

00:18:15.960 | and the familiar lays a lot of cognitive traps.

00:18:19.680 | Our mind is semantic.

00:18:22.040 | Our mind is associative.

00:18:24.720 | It sees something

00:18:25.840 | for which there's salient mental connections.

00:18:28.760 | It's gonna fire up a lot of related networks in the brain.

00:18:32.200 | You see the laundry basket.

00:18:35.040 | There's a lot of networks to get fired up about chores

00:18:37.280 | and what needs to be done.

00:18:38.800 | Your kids run by, okay.

00:18:41.240 | There's all sorts of networks coming up

00:18:43.300 | about what they're doing,

00:18:44.300 | what needs to happen later in the day.

00:18:46.120 | It is a cognitively difficult environment to get work done.

00:18:48.760 | So writers would flee their homes.

00:18:50.160 | They could have an environment

00:18:51.000 | that was associated just with work.

00:18:52.320 | They could focus better.

00:18:54.040 | They could get more work done.

00:18:55.120 | So I am a big believer

00:18:57.680 | that remote work doesn't mean you have to be in your house

00:19:00.040 | because your house is probably a particularly bad place

00:19:02.280 | to actually get things done.

00:19:03.520 | So consider if possible,

00:19:05.440 | and this is not just to Bethany,

00:19:06.680 | this is for anyone listening.

00:19:08.280 | If you are remote,

00:19:09.760 | consider investing money in having a place to work

00:19:14.160 | that's not your home.

00:19:15.200 | I think we're too quick to dismiss this option.

00:19:19.680 | Some people can't afford this, but a lot of people can,

00:19:22.440 | but they think it's superfluous.

00:19:24.320 | Like I have a home office.

00:19:25.280 | Why would I do that?

00:19:27.080 | This is why.

00:19:28.160 | You will be able to focus much better.

00:19:31.360 | You'll be much more concentrated in your work.

00:19:33.000 | You will be much better at your job.

00:19:35.080 | All right, so Bethany,

00:19:35.920 | that's what I would recommend if you could.

00:19:38.360 | You have a place you go when you work

00:19:39.540 | and then you're home when you're home.

00:19:41.100 | Everyone in your family,

00:19:42.260 | your friends will get that conviction.

00:19:43.760 | Oh, Bethany's not at home.

00:19:45.280 | She's at work.

00:19:47.960 | Okay, so she can't run errands for us.

00:19:50.500 | When is she home?

00:19:51.340 | Oh, she'll be home at four.

00:19:52.560 | Great.

00:19:53.400 | Now we can stop by.

00:19:55.020 | Now we can see if she wants to come with us to the store.

00:19:58.860 | All right.

00:20:00.300 | So that's the ultimate solution there.

00:20:01.420 | Now, Bethany, you might not be able to do this

00:20:02.900 | because you're a music teacher.

00:20:04.060 | So if you're doing piano or something like this,

00:20:06.020 | well, you can't necessarily find another location

00:20:09.020 | that has a piano.

00:20:10.140 | So your fallback solution here

00:20:11.920 | is gonna be having a clear work schedule every day.

00:20:15.540 | In particular, I would have a block of time.

00:20:18.500 | It's like nine to 12 or nine to one,

00:20:21.560 | where you can just train everyone in your life.

00:20:24.340 | During that period when I'm not in lessons,

00:20:26.540 | I'm doing admin.

00:20:29.140 | I run a company, a music instructional company.

00:20:31.800 | There's a lot of things that come along with that.

00:20:34.020 | That's what I do in my mornings.

00:20:35.240 | I might have a lesson or two in there,

00:20:36.420 | but mainly that's what I do.

00:20:37.300 | I can never do things before 12.

00:20:39.220 | And then after that, you can still schedule lessons,

00:20:41.560 | but you're a little bit more flexible.

00:20:42.700 | After that, yeah, if I don't have lessons,

00:20:45.180 | I might be able to run an errand or to hang out with you.

00:20:48.140 | So I think that repeated clarity,

00:20:51.940 | these are work hours, these are work hours,

00:20:54.140 | you do that for a few weeks,

00:20:54.980 | they'll stop bothering you during those periods.

00:20:57.220 | So I have this bigger argument here that

00:21:00.020 | remote workers in general

00:21:03.180 | should heavily consider working from your home.

00:21:06.180 | And Bethany, what I'm saying for you in particular

00:21:07.860 | is if you need to work from your actual home,

00:21:10.100 | have this clear schedule that doesn't change day to day,

00:21:13.620 | that you're definitely not available during those hours

00:21:15.620 | and then just teach those around you well.

00:21:18.660 | All right, our next question comes from

00:21:23.500 | momtobee who says,

00:21:27.740 | my husband and I are expecting our first child in June.

00:21:30.980 | So congratulations, we're in June now.

00:21:33.540 | You submitted this question a while ago,

00:21:34.780 | so you may even have this child with you

00:21:36.420 | right as you hear this.

00:21:38.180 | We are both full-time knowledge workers.

00:21:40.740 | I am planning to take four months leave.

00:21:42.540 | Once I go back to work,

00:21:43.660 | my husband is planning to take 10 to 12 more weeks of leave.

00:21:47.860 | Once we are both back at work,

00:21:49.980 | the baby will be in daycare two days per week

00:21:52.220 | and with my mom three days per week.

00:21:53.540 | My husband works remotely full-time

00:21:55.540 | and I work in an office three days a week.

00:21:58.300 | I am curious if you have any advice for us

00:22:02.420 | on navigating parental leaves

00:22:04.460 | and a return to work afterwards

00:22:05.900 | in order to keep performing well at work.

00:22:08.720 | Enjoy having a new baby and keep our sanity.

00:22:11.220 | Many thanks.

00:22:12.500 | Well, first of all,

00:22:14.860 | I think it's cool that you're able to do sequential leaves.

00:22:18.460 | So you take a leave, then you go back to work,

00:22:20.380 | your husband takes a leave or he's a primary caregiver,

00:22:22.820 | then he goes back to work

00:22:23.820 | and that's when the baby goes into daycare.

00:22:27.860 | I think that's great.

00:22:29.080 | Both caregivers now get familiar early on

00:22:33.140 | with taking care of the baby.

00:22:34.620 | That's obviously critical.

00:22:36.180 | I mean, people don't turn to me

00:22:37.900 | that often for parenting advice,

00:22:39.220 | but I will say if you have one member of the partnership,

00:22:43.960 | not learn early on how to take care of the kid,

00:22:46.080 | it causes troubles down the line.

00:22:47.460 | So I think that's really cool.

00:22:48.660 | The people I know who did sequential leaves

00:22:50.380 | always say the same thing,

00:22:51.460 | which is I'm really glad that we did it.

00:22:54.300 | And Georgetown didn't have a policy.

00:22:56.440 | They don't really have a paternity leave policy.

00:22:59.660 | They do have a policy that if you are the primary caregiver,

00:23:03.420 | so let's say, so if you have the baby,

00:23:07.700 | you get a semester off paid, which is fantastic.

00:23:11.900 | Let's say that your wife had the baby and you didn't.

00:23:15.780 | You can argue that you were gonna be the primary caregiver.

00:23:18.260 | So like if your wife had to go back to work full time,

00:23:21.020 | you could as the partner take a full semester off,

00:23:24.060 | all paid, which is actually a pretty cool policy.

00:23:28.340 | But when we were having our first kids,

00:23:29.840 | my wife was working like four days a week

00:23:32.900 | instead of three or something like that.

00:23:34.460 | And so we could not argue that I was the primary caregiver.

00:23:38.580 | So I never got to take advantage of any leaves,

00:23:40.260 | but I was able to arrange for either sabbaticals

00:23:44.040 | or buyouts or research fellowships for all three kids.

00:23:46.740 | So I was able to do something kind of similar

00:23:48.020 | to really be around, really be around for a while

00:23:50.980 | when the kids are young, it's really cool.

00:23:53.100 | Okay, so what's the key here

00:23:54.140 | when you both are going back to work?

00:23:56.280 | My big argument about kids and work is clear separation.

00:23:59.700 | Have clear work hours, schedule shutdown complete,

00:24:03.900 | then family hours.

00:24:05.020 | When you work, you work, that's what you're doing.

00:24:06.820 | When you're not working, you're doing family stuff.

00:24:08.700 | That's what you're doing.

00:24:09.960 | This is why that early period of the pandemic

00:24:13.820 | where especially in the blue states,

00:24:15.360 | they kept schools closed forever

00:24:17.100 | was really a dumpster fire from a work perspective

00:24:20.660 | because we mix those two things together

00:24:23.940 | and pretended like we weren't.

00:24:25.380 | Like, well, your kids are, you know,

00:24:27.460 | they're doing Zoom school and you're kind of working.

00:24:29.620 | It'll all be fine.

00:24:30.460 | You have Zoom, what's the problem?

00:24:32.480 | Well, the problem is those are two different jobs

00:24:34.060 | you're trying to do at the same time.

00:24:35.240 | And it was chaotic and it was terrible

00:24:36.940 | and it burnt everybody out.

00:24:38.700 | And we pretended like it wasn't a huge problem,

00:24:40.580 | but it was a huge problem.

00:24:41.860 | And it underscores what I'm recommending,

00:24:43.980 | the importance of what I'm recommending to you now

00:24:45.840 | is the key to working with kids

00:24:47.340 | is you have work and you have non-work.

00:24:49.880 | When you're working, that's all you're doing.

00:24:51.160 | You're trying to do as well as possible.

00:24:52.160 | When you're not working, all you're doing is family

00:24:53.600 | and you're trying to do that as well as possible.

00:24:55.840 | So when you go to the office, that's really clear.

00:24:58.240 | You're at the office, you're working.

00:24:59.240 | When you're home, you're not.

00:25:00.400 | Your husband has to be really clear though,

00:25:01.960 | working from home.

00:25:03.240 | This is when my work starts.

00:25:05.560 | And then this is when it's over.

00:25:08.080 | Don't try to mix those two things.

00:25:09.580 | The kid is in daycare

00:25:10.640 | or the kid's being taken care of by your mom.

00:25:12.840 | They are not your responsibility

00:25:14.300 | until you're done with your work.

00:25:15.300 | I think that separation is key.

00:25:16.900 | By the way, in an earlier question,

00:25:19.660 | I talked about how we underestimate the value

00:25:22.580 | of having workspace near your home

00:25:26.020 | that's not actually in your home.

00:25:27.500 | This is a clear example where that would be very useful.

00:25:30.820 | If you at all have the financial resources,

00:25:32.780 | the lease is sort of, doesn't have to be fancy,

00:25:34.720 | just lease some office.

00:25:35.660 | And I got to tell you,

00:25:36.500 | there's nothing more available right now

00:25:37.620 | than commercial real estate.

00:25:39.320 | Your timing is good.

00:25:40.840 | Lease an office, spend 500 a month.

00:25:44.060 | If you can swing it, it's worth it.

00:25:46.720 | You can get to have this clarity,

00:25:49.300 | even on work from home days.

00:25:51.020 | When I'm there, I'm at the office.

00:25:52.060 | When I'm here, I'm home.

00:25:53.220 | I can't think of any more powerful cognitive snare

00:25:58.220 | than hearing the sound of your baby.

00:26:02.700 | So that's what I would recommend.

00:26:06.660 | You need to be on your game

00:26:09.780 | from a productivity perspective while you're at work,

00:26:12.960 | because you really cannot or don't want work

00:26:15.680 | to bleed out of the work hours,

00:26:16.960 | especially when you have a young baby at home.

00:26:18.980 | So this is a good time.

00:26:19.860 | And you mentioned in your elaboration,

00:26:21.060 | you guys are big believers in multi-scale planning.

00:26:23.860 | You have your quarterly plan, you have your weekly plan,

00:26:25.680 | you have your daily time block plans,

00:26:27.580 | you have full capture on your Trello boards.

00:26:29.340 | Just be on your game with that.

00:26:30.660 | You wanna be very organized,

00:26:32.340 | really clear in scheduling and setting expectations

00:26:35.140 | so that you can keep work constrained.

00:26:38.900 | I will also say, ramp down your ambitions for the next year.

00:26:43.280 | So for the second half of 2022 into the first half of 2023,

00:26:49.820 | you're not trying to be a superhero.

00:26:52.860 | You're not trying to crush it at work.

00:26:55.340 | You're trying to not be a pain for people,

00:26:57.260 | be organized, get stuff done,

00:26:59.500 | but you need to go easy on yourself.

00:27:00.820 | You have a long career ahead of you.

00:27:01.900 | This is not the year for you to try to make that move,

00:27:04.580 | to launch the new business,

00:27:05.700 | to try to get the new promotion.

00:27:06.940 | This is a time to go a little bit easy,

00:27:09.180 | to go a little bit easier on yourself

00:27:10.860 | and be okay with that.

00:27:11.820 | It's one year.

00:27:13.460 | One year, your career will be fine,

00:27:14.940 | but also there's things that are just as important.

00:27:16.740 | And then finally, the advice I always give new parents,

00:27:21.020 | if you both work, you have to sleep train the kid.

00:27:24.140 | All right, they're not gonna magically

00:27:25.200 | sleep train themselves.

00:27:26.840 | They'll get over it.

00:27:28.100 | Everyone in the family has to sacrifice.

00:27:30.300 | To keep the lights on, the food on the table,

00:27:31.820 | you have to get work done.

00:27:32.740 | If you're gonna get work done,

00:27:33.560 | you cannot have a baby waking up four times a night.

00:27:35.420 | So you're gonna have to sleep train that child.

00:27:39.060 | All right, let's move on.

00:27:42.180 | Now, I always worry when I give that advice

00:27:43.920 | that parents are gonna yell at me

00:27:46.460 | because it's kind of a fraught topic.

00:27:47.720 | Sleep training, it's controversial.

00:27:49.220 | No one ever actually yells at me.

00:27:51.460 | So maybe Deep Questions listeners

00:27:52.820 | are on board with sleep training.

00:27:56.300 | All right, our next question here comes from Freddie.

00:28:00.920 | Freddie says, "Is the following understanding

00:28:04.220 | of deep work durations correct?"

00:28:08.500 | All right, then he goes on to elaborate.

00:28:11.100 | "When deep work is geared towards deliberate practice,

00:28:13.500 | something like learning how to program,

00:28:15.140 | only four hours can be sustained per day

00:28:18.060 | since deliberate practice is inherently not fun

00:28:20.880 | when you're stretching your abilities.

00:28:22.040 | However, when deep work is geared towards work

00:28:25.820 | that can generate a flow state,

00:28:27.420 | something like writing computer programs,

00:28:29.580 | it can be extended to eight hours or maybe even 10."

00:28:34.240 | So Freddie, that's more or less correct.

00:28:37.960 | So that four hour limit that I mentioned in my book,

00:28:40.800 | "Deep Work," really came from a study

00:28:44.600 | of deliberate practice.

00:28:46.000 | It was actually an Anders Ericsson paper

00:28:47.720 | studying violin players.

00:28:49.560 | I've also seen anecdotally this four hour limit

00:28:53.840 | confirmed by other, in particular, professional musicians.

00:28:56.520 | So practicing a musical instrument

00:28:59.040 | at the professional level is a very intense act

00:29:02.080 | of deliberate practice.

00:29:03.200 | You're not just playing things,

00:29:05.280 | you know you're stretching your ability,

00:29:06.680 | you're trying to perfect.

00:29:07.880 | And the standard schedule that Anders found,

00:29:10.840 | and I've heard other people talk about as well,

00:29:12.880 | is two hours break two hours, adds up to four hours.

00:29:15.840 | So that's correct.

00:29:17.080 | Other type of deep work, yes, you can do much longer.

00:29:21.320 | So remember, for something to be counted as deep work,

00:29:24.560 | it needs two attributes.

00:29:25.840 | It has to be cognitively demanding,

00:29:27.040 | so it can't be trivial.

00:29:28.560 | And it has to be done without distraction,

00:29:30.160 | so no context shifting.

00:29:32.240 | You're giving your full attention to the effort,

00:29:33.760 | you're not also checking email,

00:29:34.920 | you're not also checking your phone.

00:29:38.120 | That covers a lot of activities,

00:29:39.600 | include a lot of activities though,

00:29:41.760 | that though not super simple,

00:29:43.280 | because it has to be cognitively demanding,

00:29:44.600 | are things you could do all day long.

00:29:46.440 | Right, a lot of deep work is not nearly as intense

00:29:50.400 | as a professional musician trying to push their skill

00:29:53.200 | to the next level.

00:29:55.280 | So yes, most deep work you can do much longer than four hours

00:29:58.600 | Even deliberate practice,

00:29:59.720 | most people can do longer than four hours

00:30:01.040 | 'cause they don't do it nearly as intensely

00:30:02.680 | as professional musicians.

00:30:03.760 | I think most people are just not familiar

00:30:05.680 | about how cognitively intense real practice actually is.

00:30:09.920 | In my book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You,"

00:30:11.480 | I try to capture this with an anecdote

00:30:13.160 | where I went and spent time

00:30:14.520 | with a professional guitar player.

00:30:16.240 | And I wrote about what it looks like

00:30:18.040 | to watch a professional guitar player practice.

00:30:21.240 | In this case, the player, Jordan,

00:30:24.120 | Jordan Tice is his name, actually he played at my wedding.

00:30:28.680 | Jordan was practicing with such intensity

00:30:31.480 | that he would forget to breathe.

00:30:33.880 | And then he would have a ragged gasp

00:30:35.560 | as he sucked in air, his body forcing to suck in air.

00:30:37.680 | That's what it looks like when you're deliberate practicing

00:30:39.680 | at your full extent.

00:30:40.960 | That you can't do more than four hours,

00:30:42.520 | but most people aren't anywhere near that level of intensity.

00:30:47.080 | So typically what I tell people is,

00:30:49.840 | don't fret too much about these limits for deep work,

00:30:53.440 | numbers or thresholds, you're fine.

00:30:57.560 | Just make sure you're doing deep work on a regular basis.

00:30:59.880 | Don't be distracted, focus on the hard things,

00:31:02.200 | do that regularly and good things will come.

00:31:06.100 | All right, we got one more work question here.

00:31:11.920 | This one comes from Ledbetts who says,

00:31:15.120 | "Hi Cal, I recently bought your time block planner.

00:31:20.120 | I am so overwhelmed with everything

00:31:22.000 | I wanna get accomplished, practice Java for work,

00:31:24.300 | pay off debt, exercise, lose weight,

00:31:27.160 | declutter my spare room, take a Spanish course.

00:31:30.160 | How do I utilize the planner to time block my workday

00:31:32.920 | and add in the additional goals?"

00:31:35.780 | So Ledbetts, when we're talking about goals,

00:31:39.720 | we need to divide these into two categories.

00:31:42.040 | Projects versus ongoing efforts.

00:31:47.160 | So exercise that you talk about here is an ongoing effort.

00:31:51.400 | I wanna exercise on a regular basis

00:31:53.120 | so I can be in better shape.

00:31:54.200 | That's an ongoing effort.

00:31:55.120 | It's not something you do once and then you're done.

00:31:57.120 | Whereas decluttering your spare room,

00:31:59.480 | by contrast, is a one-time project.

00:32:01.360 | It's something that you wanna do and then it's done.

00:32:04.440 | Let's deal with both of these types of goals separately.

00:32:07.680 | Let's start with ongoing efforts.

00:32:10.400 | Here you're gonna wanna do

00:32:12.400 | some sort of habit stacking methodology.

00:32:14.720 | Let me simplify this a little bit.

00:32:16.560 | Start with a keystone habit in the relevant area.

00:32:21.140 | So if you really wanna get in good shape,

00:32:23.700 | start with a keystone habit related to health and fitness.

00:32:26.400 | Now, keystone habits means it's something you do every day.

00:32:30.160 | It's tractable, so it's something you can actually

00:32:33.600 | probably do every day.

00:32:35.320 | You know, 10 pull-ups every morning, 5,000 step walk,

00:32:40.320 | but it's also non-trivial.

00:32:42.120 | Like it actually takes a little bit of effort.

00:32:44.040 | And you wanna do that every day.

00:32:45.640 | In each of these areas that's important to you

00:32:47.880 | that you have some goal, start with a keystone habit.

00:32:50.720 | This might not be enough to actually accomplish

00:32:53.680 | the particular goal you have in mind,

00:32:55.040 | but it gets you used to it.

00:32:56.680 | Where does the time block planner come into play here?

00:32:58.840 | Use the metric tracking space

00:33:01.880 | on the daily pages for every day.

00:33:03.080 | You can track, did I do my keystone habits every day?

00:33:07.000 | There's a real power to seeing that

00:33:08.400 | you don't wanna break the chain.

00:33:09.560 | There's a real power to actually be able to write down

00:33:11.280 | that you did it.

00:33:12.920 | There's a real urge to try to avoid

00:33:14.800 | not being able to write down that you did the keystone habit.

00:33:18.080 | So use the metric tracking space

00:33:19.600 | to keep up on those keystone habits.

00:33:21.840 | Once you're doing those regularly,

00:33:23.320 | you will have rewired your psychology

00:33:25.360 | into one that says for these areas of my life,

00:33:27.720 | I'm willing to do optional but important work

00:33:29.840 | again and again, even when it's not easy.

00:33:31.800 | That will change your self understanding.

00:33:34.640 | You are now someone who spends time on these things

00:33:36.880 | like in this case, fitness.

00:33:38.400 | And it's important to you and you're proud of it.

00:33:42.840 | Now you can upgrade the habit.

00:33:44.320 | All right, so I have that keystone habit.

00:33:46.320 | Now that I'm used to that,

00:33:47.200 | now let me get into the more intense workout routine.

00:33:52.800 | Then I'm gonna do three days a week

00:33:54.480 | or there's something I do every day.

00:33:55.840 | Now I have this 30 minute block before lunch every day.

00:33:59.240 | And I go back and forth between rows and exercise

00:34:03.280 | and whatever.

00:34:04.120 | Now you can put in the more intense habit

00:34:05.960 | because you've rewired your brain

00:34:07.320 | to be someone who makes,

00:34:09.120 | to see yourself as someone who makes progress

00:34:10.880 | on those areas of your life on a regular basis.

00:34:13.280 | So start with the tractable keystone,

00:34:14.960 | track it in your planner,

00:34:17.040 | upgrade once you're used to it.

00:34:21.280 | All right, what about projects

00:34:22.520 | like decluttering your spare room?

00:34:25.560 | Well, here's where you wanna actually leverage

00:34:27.720 | the full multi-scale planning stack quarterly, weekly, daily

00:34:30.920 | your quarterly or we sometimes call strategic plan

00:34:35.400 | is where whatever that goal is might first show up.

00:34:38.120 | You know, this quarter,

00:34:40.080 | I want to clean my room

00:34:44.480 | and I wanna take a Spanish class.

00:34:46.680 | So when you get your weekly plan for each week,

00:34:50.920 | you look at your quarterly plan,

00:34:52.960 | you know what you're trying to make progress on.

00:34:54.320 | You can say, well, is this a week

00:34:55.160 | that I have time to do that?

00:34:56.080 | And if it is, get that time into your weekly plan.

00:34:58.960 | And I would recommend at this point,

00:34:59.960 | putting it onto your actual calendar,

00:35:02.240 | the same calendar that you use to track your appointments

00:35:04.680 | and existing meetings.

00:35:05.960 | Because when you then do your daily time block plan,

00:35:08.080 | every day you look at your calendar to fill in stuff

00:35:10.280 | already on your calendar into your time block plan.

00:35:12.320 | And that project work time will get automatically moved

00:35:15.480 | right into your daily time block plan.

00:35:18.240 | So maybe you're doing your weekly plan for the week,

00:35:20.880 | you see decluttering your spare room is on there.

00:35:23.120 | The week seems kind of reasonable.

00:35:24.640 | You say, this is the week I do it.

00:35:27.160 | Tuesday, you're gonna stop work at four

00:35:30.360 | and work on the room for two hours.

00:35:31.720 | Let me put that on my calendar.

00:35:33.960 | Then I am going to Friday evening, finish it.

00:35:38.160 | And I'll put that on my calendar.

00:35:39.280 | And then when you get to Tuesday,

00:35:40.840 | you look at your calendar as part of making

00:35:42.320 | your daily time block plan, your time block plan,

00:35:44.000 | or you just block out that time.

00:35:45.040 | When you get the Friday,

00:35:46.840 | you're making your daily time block plan.

00:35:48.120 | You look at your calendar as part of that process.

00:35:49.680 | You see what's on there.

00:35:50.520 | You put it on your daily time block plan

00:35:52.280 | and you just execute your blocks each day.

00:35:54.640 | The work gets done.

00:35:55.640 | Same thing with something like a Spanish class.

00:35:58.760 | So when that's on your quarterly plan,

00:36:02.640 | I wanna take a Spanish class.

00:36:03.520 | You can come up with a persistent plan for doing that.

00:36:06.960 | Like for the next four weeks,

00:36:08.640 | I work on this during lunch hour

00:36:10.240 | on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

00:36:11.800 | And that's just sitting there in your quarterly plan.

00:36:13.840 | So when you make your weekly plan, you block off that time.

00:36:16.080 | And again, when you get to every day,

00:36:17.280 | it goes on your time block plan and the work gets done.

00:36:20.320 | So the time block planner by itself cannot give you

00:36:24.120 | everything you need to accomplish goals,

00:36:25.680 | but it could be a big part of a goal accomplishing framework.

00:36:30.040 | For people who don't know about the planner,

00:36:33.040 | go to timeblockplanner.com.

00:36:34.400 | You can watch a video where I explain how it works.

00:36:38.420 | There is a version 2.0 coming out that is spiral bound.

00:36:41.060 | Again, we're just being delayed by supply chain issues.

00:36:43.920 | There's a lot of backups in the global publishing

00:36:46.780 | supply chain, but the whole thing is designed

00:36:48.440 | and we're ready to go to the new format.

00:36:49.900 | So I would say, don't bother waiting

00:36:52.880 | because you'll be done with your current time block planner

00:36:54.800 | in three months anyways.

00:36:56.520 | But just know if you're using a planner

00:36:58.640 | and want the lie flat, it is coming, we are working on it.

00:37:01.540 | All right, let's do some technology questions.

00:37:07.380 | Now I said questions,

00:37:10.560 | but it's probably more accurate to say question

00:37:12.660 | because I only have one technology question.

00:37:15.000 | I only selected one because it's big and open-ended.

00:37:17.600 | It comes from Miranda and she asked,

00:37:22.760 | what are your thoughts in general about AI,

00:37:26.500 | machine learning and where technology is headed?

00:37:30.860 | So we haven't done a good open-ended technology question

00:37:34.880 | in a while.

00:37:35.720 | Well, Miranda, I'll tell you where the focus seems to be,

00:37:43.120 | at least in popular online conversation in the media,

00:37:46.200 | there's a lot of focus on crypto, social media and AI.

00:37:51.200 | Those seem to be big topics.

00:37:56.360 | So let's go through those briefly one by one.

00:37:58.880 | All right, so let's talk about crypto.

00:38:02.320 | As you may have heard me talk about before,

00:38:05.120 | my personal belief is that the hype around crypto

00:38:08.660 | is a little bit excessive.

00:38:12.040 | So there's a political element to crypto

00:38:16.120 | that's based around trust and power and control.

00:38:21.000 | This idea that these distributed ledgers

00:38:23.200 | implemented by cryptographic protocols,

00:38:27.600 | that these distributed ledgers

00:38:29.080 | are not controlled by a single government

00:38:30.760 | or controlled by a single company.

00:38:32.380 | And therefore there can be coordination

00:38:34.320 | and information sharing on the internet

00:38:36.280 | that is not beholden to the censorious efforts

00:38:40.800 | of individual organizations or countries.

00:38:44.560 | So there's a crypto,

00:38:46.160 | a sort of techno libertarian political argument

00:38:49.200 | for what you gain from this decentralization.

00:38:51.400 | I don't think most people care about that.

00:38:53.800 | I don't think, I think it's important for certain people

00:38:56.480 | who think a lot about this, but for the average consumer,

00:38:59.560 | they don't care about that, right?

00:39:02.840 | So that by itself is not that strong,

00:39:04.280 | but if you take out the techno libertarian

00:39:06.160 | political justification

00:39:07.720 | for crypto based ledger technologies,

00:39:09.740 | there's not something else there

00:39:11.120 | that we don't already know how to do much better

00:39:12.680 | or much faster.

00:39:13.520 | We know how to have consistent distributed data stores.

00:39:17.520 | This is what distributed databases do.

00:39:19.720 | This is easy to implement.

00:39:21.880 | So it's not like there's a new technological capability

00:39:25.200 | that is introduced by crypto based blockchains.

00:39:28.000 | It's just, there's a decentralization that comes with it.

00:39:30.700 | And the value of that is largely political,

00:39:33.380 | not technological.

00:39:34.500 | So again, I think most consumers don't care.

00:39:37.980 | They don't really care whether the data

00:39:41.300 | for this app they're using is stored in the cloud somewhere

00:39:46.300 | in just a virtualized SQL database system,

00:39:50.460 | or if it's implemented by an Ethereum blockchain.

00:39:53.260 | It looks the same to them,

00:39:54.300 | and they don't really care about

00:39:55.660 | which way this is being implemented.

00:39:57.980 | Now for a while, there was an argument

00:39:59.200 | about the particular aspect of crypto

00:40:01.060 | that is the currency aspect.

00:40:02.460 | So all of these ledgers, or not all of them,

00:40:05.460 | but open ledgers are almost all based

00:40:07.340 | on there being some sort of underlying currency.

00:40:09.560 | And there's some thought that a currency

00:40:11.920 | not controlled by governments,

00:40:13.060 | it was critical and it was going to be a worldwide currency.

00:40:17.560 | That's sort of fallen flat.

00:40:20.260 | The currencies didn't really take over from fiat money.

00:40:23.180 | So you get rid of that.

00:40:24.280 | Again, there's nothing sexy about what's being,

00:40:28.180 | the functionality implemented by these crypto tools.

00:40:32.460 | It's really just the political reality

00:40:36.440 | that no one controls it.

00:40:37.620 | And I again, don't think enough people care about that

00:40:39.700 | for this to be a complete game changer.

00:40:42.020 | Could be wrong about this.

00:40:43.780 | And Jason Horowitz would probably say

00:40:45.500 | that Firm would not be happy with my interpretation,

00:40:47.820 | but there you go.

00:40:48.660 | All right, social media.

00:40:50.760 | That's the other thing that seems to be really

00:40:53.060 | the focus of a lot of techno criticism

00:40:55.500 | and conversation right now.

00:40:56.860 | Longtime listeners know that I believe

00:40:59.620 | that social media as we know it,

00:41:01.340 | that is this age of a small number

00:41:03.500 | of massive platform monopolies

00:41:05.540 | that everyone is culturally pressured into using.

00:41:08.300 | We are in the twilight of that moment.

00:41:10.400 | That moment is passing.

00:41:12.820 | This is the standard oil,

00:41:16.660 | Pennsylvania Central Railroad robber baron era

00:41:19.620 | of the social internet era.

00:41:22.180 | And I think it is passing.

00:41:24.180 | I've talked about this before,

00:41:26.060 | so I won't go into too much detail,

00:41:27.620 | but basically at the core of my thought is,

00:41:29.720 | one of the things that used to capture people

00:41:33.700 | in the social media was network effects.

00:41:35.260 | People were using social media platforms

00:41:37.220 | to connect to people they know.

00:41:38.920 | Therefore, for a platform to be useful,

00:41:40.820 | it has to include among its members,

00:41:42.820 | all the people that you know or might wanna connect to.

00:41:45.500 | That is a huge advantage once you get there first,

00:41:48.100 | because another social media platform

00:41:49.740 | will have a hard time competing,

00:41:51.460 | because until they can get your cousin and your aunt

00:41:53.260 | and your six friends from high school onto their service,

00:41:55.380 | it will be lesser than an existing service like Facebook.

00:41:58.340 | This is called network effects.

00:41:59.940 | There's a sort of trivial mathematical law here

00:42:04.580 | that says in a network,

00:42:05.780 | it's the value grows with the square of the number of users,

00:42:09.260 | because now you have a potential connection

00:42:10.500 | between every person in it.

00:42:11.900 | Forget that math.

00:42:12.960 | In general, this was a big justification

00:42:18.580 | for why you could not unseat,

00:42:20.180 | you could not unseat existing platform monopolies.

00:42:24.980 | Then they got out of the connection business.

00:42:28.060 | They thought there was more money in offering distraction,

00:42:31.840 | because people spend more time distracting themselves

00:42:34.100 | than they wanna spend talking to their aunt or their cousin

00:42:37.220 | or their six friends from high school.

00:42:39.460 | And so Facebook and Instagram and Twitter,

00:42:42.140 | in particular Twitter and Facebook,

00:42:43.540 | moved away from what's your friends up to.

00:42:46.860 | And towards, here's an algorithmically generated feed

00:42:51.860 | of content curated to press some buttons in your brain

00:42:54.380 | and keep you looking at your phone.

00:42:55.980 | You need a moment to get lost or distracted.

00:42:58.980 | Life is hard, you're stressed, you're anxious, you're bored.

00:43:01.700 | We will give you something

00:43:02.740 | that'll be palliative in the moment.

00:43:05.120 | They went towards that model,

00:43:06.740 | which did get their existing users using the phones more,

00:43:10.900 | looking at these apps more,

00:43:12.580 | but it has destabilized

00:43:14.460 | the originally motivating network effect,

00:43:16.260 | which is the people you know are on here.

00:43:18.420 | Once it is no longer giving you that advantage,

00:43:20.420 | social media is now competing

00:43:21.860 | with any other form of distraction.

00:43:24.880 | And there's a lot of them, and they're good.

00:43:30.180 | And now suddenly it's not so critical

00:43:32.860 | that my distraction is coming from Facebook

00:43:34.540 | versus coming from Spotify,

00:43:36.700 | versus coming from TikTok

00:43:38.420 | or coming from some sort of bespoke, small niche network.

00:43:42.940 | You're competing with any source of distraction.

00:43:45.280 | There's no reason to have a massive $500 billion monopoly

00:43:49.420 | in this type of context.

00:43:51.120 | I can be just as diverting with my podcast

00:43:55.300 | that is produced with a slightly smaller budget

00:44:00.300 | than $500 billion a year.

00:44:01.900 | With even just half that money,

00:44:05.420 | I could produce deep questions.

00:44:08.540 | All right, so I think that's what's happening

00:44:09.500 | with social media.

00:44:10.320 | I think TikTok is actually the harbinger of this transition.

00:44:13.140 | Yes, it's true that TikTok is widely, widely used.

00:44:15.820 | It has a lot of active users,

00:44:17.460 | but TikTok is different than Twitter.

00:44:19.340 | TikTok is different than Facebook from five years ago.

00:44:21.860 | Why?

00:44:22.700 | It's popular, but it's just pure distraction.

00:44:27.220 | They don't pretend like it's anything else.

00:44:28.940 | And because of that,

00:44:29.780 | it no longer has the situation of cultural valency

00:44:32.660 | where it feels like you have to use it.

00:44:35.120 | Lots of people use Facebook.

00:44:36.420 | No one thinks, I mean, TikTok,

00:44:38.220 | no one thinks it's weird if you don't.

00:44:40.460 | A lot of people like TikTok.

00:44:42.260 | No one says you're missing out on business opportunities

00:44:46.260 | or knowing what's going on in the world if you don't use it.

00:44:48.940 | And so from TikTok, we'll get multiple other,

00:44:52.360 | I think, increasingly niche, increasingly focused,

00:44:55.620 | increasingly much smaller and independent types of apps

00:44:59.780 | and sources of distraction that leverage

00:45:01.700 | social connections and groups, et cetera.

00:45:04.220 | And it'll be a fragmented marketplace

00:45:05.780 | in which there's no monopoly powers.

00:45:07.180 | And that's gonna be, I think,

00:45:08.140 | a much healthier social internet.

00:45:09.620 | So social media is a focused lot of conversation.

00:45:12.260 | I think it's moment has passed.

00:45:14.140 | The final one I mentioned was AI.

00:45:16.020 | I don't know what to think about AI.

00:45:19.420 | I haven't got my arms around AI yet.

00:45:23.320 | I've been trying to.

00:45:24.580 | I mean, I understand a lot of the underlying technologies,

00:45:27.600 | but in terms of its cultural impact,

00:45:30.480 | I don't know where I fall.

00:45:31.880 | I don't have, for example,

00:45:34.200 | a natural fear of AI, general intelligence,

00:45:38.200 | sentience in AI and what that might cause.

00:45:40.620 | I just don't have that instinctual fear.

00:45:44.520 | Is that something that's even on a development pipeline

00:45:46.760 | that we need to worry about?

00:45:47.600 | I don't know either way.

00:45:49.320 | AI's role in disrupting industries,

00:45:51.800 | it's gonna be disruptive.

00:45:52.960 | It's complicated how, I think it's hard to predict.

00:45:56.280 | So AI, keep your eye on it,

00:45:58.920 | but I don't have a good sense.

00:46:02.280 | Let me tell you two things

00:46:03.120 | that I think are being overlooked

00:46:04.600 | that are gonna be super disruptive,

00:46:06.680 | but I think are being overlooked

00:46:07.720 | in a lot of conversations today about technological trends.

00:46:10.400 | The first is augmented reality.

00:46:13.000 | This came out of some reporting I've done for The New Yorker.

00:46:15.400 | I don't think people realize the economic disruption

00:46:18.080 | that is going to come from what I call

00:46:19.760 | the augmented reality singularity.

00:46:21.920 | This is gonna be the point where multiple technologies

00:46:25.480 | that exist today advance sufficiently

00:46:29.920 | to allow the following

00:46:32.960 | with a relatively unobtrusive piece of headgear,

00:46:38.320 | so some sort of pair of glasses

00:46:39.720 | that is socially appropriate to wear, comfortable.

00:46:43.480 | It's not like Google Glass

00:46:44.520 | where you walk around with a Google Glass on,

00:46:46.520 | and Google tried this experiment.

00:46:48.440 | They said, "Try walking around with Google Glasses on,"

00:46:50.480 | and people's instinct when they saw you with on it was,

00:46:53.320 | "I think I need to punch you."

00:46:54.880 | Like, when we get past that, with Google Glass,

00:46:58.640 | people were walking around with Google Glasses,

00:47:00.200 | and I'm not exaggerating here,

00:47:02.400 | nuns would walk out of the convent,

00:47:04.440 | say, "Forgive me, Father,"

00:47:07.200 | and then just punch you in the face

00:47:08.640 | because it was so annoying looking.

00:47:11.240 | That's what AR.1, version one looks like.

00:47:15.840 | That will get better.

00:47:16.920 | So when we get past that stage

00:47:18.440 | where AR devices make people wanna punch you,

00:47:20.640 | where you look so weird and pretentious wearing them,

00:47:22.960 | when we get past that stage,

00:47:24.480 | when nuns no longer walk out of their convents to punch you,

00:47:26.840 | and then two,

00:47:28.000 | two, we get sufficient power and field of view

00:47:33.680 | in these glasses that you can replicate

00:47:36.640 | with sufficient resolution,

00:47:39.000 | basically any type of screen,

00:47:41.320 | digital screen interface we use today,

00:47:44.120 | and three, we have sort of sufficient internet backbone

00:47:47.360 | that we can essentially stream screen surfaces

00:47:52.360 | without actually having to do the computation locally.

00:47:55.960 | And so what I mean by that is,

00:47:57.460 | if I want to play a video game,

00:48:01.760 | there's sufficient wireless internet backbone

00:48:04.520 | that that video game can run in a server somewhere,

00:48:07.880 | and the thing that's being streamed to my AR device

00:48:10.200 | is just what's on the screen.

00:48:11.600 | So there's this key point,

00:48:13.400 | there's this key speed point where a high res,

00:48:15.680 | the contents of a high resolution screen

00:48:18.260 | can be streamed over the internet to a device

00:48:20.600 | in which you no longer need

00:48:21.520 | to actually bring computation with you,

00:48:23.040 | just enough computation to get the screen of computation

00:48:25.280 | happening in the cloud.

00:48:26.200 | When those three things come together,

00:48:28.100 | again, to summarize,

00:48:30.760 | hardware that is unobtrusive and people are willing to wear,

00:48:34.240 | sufficient field of view and resolution

00:48:37.280 | that you can replicate most of the standard digital screens

00:48:40.400 | you look at in your day-to-day life,

00:48:41.520 | and three, sufficient internet wireless backbone,

00:48:43.840 | which by the way, we might already have,

00:48:45.440 | that you can stream high resolution screens to devices

00:48:47.920 | so we can now virtualize actual computation.

00:48:50.400 | It will be the end of consumer electronic,

00:48:55.360 | of the consumer electronic industry as we know it.

00:48:58.400 | Samsung, Apple, Sony,

00:49:03.280 | the companies that produce complicated electronics

00:49:09.220 | that they sell to people,

00:49:10.760 | and those people buy these devices and use them.

00:49:13.420 | Those companies will essentially have to go out of business

00:49:19.060 | or massively retool,

00:49:20.320 | because why would I buy a phone

00:49:22.760 | when my AR headset can put in front of me,

00:49:26.240 | in the space in front of me,

00:49:27.740 | the interface for whatever phone I want?

00:49:30.600 | Why would I buy a computer

00:49:32.040 | when I can make a computer monitor anywhere?

00:49:34.480 | Doesn't exist in the real world,

00:49:35.480 | it's being projected in my AR goggles,

00:49:37.120 | but I can make a nice monitor wherever I wanna go,

00:49:40.400 | and all the computation is happening in the cloud somewhere.

00:49:43.880 | So I have the most powerful computer computing,

00:49:46.080 | much more powerful than I can actually buy,

00:49:47.880 | and I can just see the screen right there.

00:49:49.680 | Why would I buy a TV

00:49:50.680 | when I could just stretch a 72 inch on my wall?

00:49:53.240 | It's all virtual,

00:49:54.200 | and everyone who's in that same room

00:49:55.360 | sees it in the same place.

00:49:56.520 | We literally cannot tell the difference

00:49:57.960 | between that and an actual TV.

00:49:59.360 | Why would I buy a TV,

00:50:00.800 | ship it to me, bring it into my house?

00:50:02.580 | I could just have that right up there on my wall.

00:50:05.900 | The end of the consumer electronics industry as we know it,

00:50:09.440 | it's gonna create some of the most powerful companies

00:50:11.640 | in the history of the world,

00:50:12.760 | it's gonna make Apple seem like a lemonade stand.

00:50:16.440 | If you are the company that owns

00:50:19.720 | the first mainstream, widely adopted,

00:50:22.720 | full function AR singularity goggles,

00:50:25.600 | with that backend doing all the computation,

00:50:27.800 | all of these companies like Sony, Samsung,

00:50:30.560 | will become essentially software companies.

00:50:32.600 | You're basically just running processes in the cloud

00:50:35.560 | that can then stream visuals to individuals.

00:50:39.320 | It's hard to underestimate how disruptive that's gonna be.

00:50:41.680 | I don't think we talk enough about it.

00:50:43.840 | I think it was perhaps a blind spot of Mark Zuckerberg

00:50:46.360 | to focus too much on virtual reality

00:50:48.040 | instead of augmented reality.

00:50:49.640 | Google has invested many, many billions of dollars into this.

00:50:52.840 | Apple is investing many, many billions of dollars into this.

00:50:55.700 | Amazon is investing many, many billions of dollars into this.

00:50:58.380 | Less about the hardware

00:50:59.400 | and more about being the backend cloud computation

00:51:01.760 | to virtualize all this hardware.

00:51:02.920 | It is gonna be huge,

00:51:04.080 | and I don't think we talk about it enough,

00:51:05.480 | we get too distracted.

00:51:06.760 | The other technological trend I think that's gonna be big

00:51:09.300 | is the continued decentralization of media production.

00:51:14.300 | This is the story of the internet,

00:51:16.920 | but I think it's just starting to get pretty interesting

00:51:19.920 | in recent years.

00:51:21.080 | So you get HTML in the 1990s,

00:51:24.520 | you get websites and then eventually web 2.0.

00:51:27.320 | So it's websites that are easy for people

00:51:29.080 | to update regularly like blogs.

00:51:30.860 | That had a big impact on decentralizing the ability

00:51:35.320 | to produce and sell text.

00:51:38.640 | We take it for granted now,

00:51:39.880 | but remember in 1996,

00:51:41.900 | text came from magazines and newspapers.

00:51:44.320 | You had to have giant warehouses with these big machines

00:51:47.440 | with ink and newspaper rolls moving really fast

00:51:50.440 | and fleets of trucks.

00:51:51.700 | And all the advertising dollars would come there,

00:51:54.160 | they had a ton of money.

00:51:55.360 | There's a lot of money in newspaper syndicates,

00:51:57.840 | a lot of money in magazine syndicates.

00:52:00.240 | That's where text was, available text.

00:52:03.400 | The internet changed that.

00:52:04.240 | Think about how many websites people go to now

00:52:06.520 | for information.

00:52:07.780 | How many independent little media companies,

00:52:09.800 | five person, six person shops.

00:52:11.740 | Ain't it cool news?

00:52:14.280 | Let's go back to those early days.

00:52:17.680 | These type of sites are blogs.

00:52:19.520 | Ezra Klein came out of blogging

00:52:22.480 | before moving over to the Post

00:52:23.720 | and over to New York Times.

00:52:25.880 | Nate Silver, just all of this text, Politico.

00:52:30.880 | I mean, Politico eventually printed a hardcover version,

00:52:34.960 | a newspaper version for a while of their thing.

00:52:37.040 | But there was so much innovation that happened

00:52:39.980 | in text media because of HTML.

00:52:42.740 | Now we're seeing this with audio, podcast.

00:52:46.140 | Incredibly disruptive.

00:52:48.300 | This industry is exploding

00:52:50.580 | because people like real time analog content.

00:52:54.300 | We can actually hear someone's voice.

00:52:55.620 | Radio is a pretty big industry.

00:52:56.900 | Podcasts will surpass radio soon.

00:52:59.900 | It will surpass it soon.

00:53:01.360 | Because again, you open up the ability

00:53:02.920 | to create audio to most people.

00:53:05.380 | The big change happening now is video.

00:53:07.340 | Video, the ability to produce video

00:53:12.780 | whose quality crosses that uncanny valley

00:53:15.280 | and is at least comparable to stuff

00:53:16.900 | that we maybe saw on cable.

00:53:18.540 | That's where we're getting now.

00:53:19.420 | Where more and more people at a fraction of the cost

00:53:21.900 | can produce video at a quality that you would say,

00:53:25.980 | I could have seen this 10 years ago on Bravo.

00:53:28.580 | And now you've decentralized video,

00:53:31.420 | which was the most powerful media forms of all, right?

00:53:34.300 | Television and movies is a huge dominant source of media

00:53:39.300 | and that is being decentralized now as well.

00:53:41.480 | These trends I think are critical.

00:53:43.260 | I think the shift from audio as the stepping stone

00:53:45.940 | in the video is gonna be much bigger

00:53:48.180 | than even the decentralization of text

00:53:50.060 | that happened with the early HTML based web.

00:53:54.220 | All of this I think is really excited.

00:53:55.580 | I don't know where it's going,

00:53:56.400 | but I think it's really exciting.

00:53:58.020 | The main critique people give,

00:53:59.620 | and I think this is so short sighted,

00:54:00.900 | is every time one of these media technologies

00:54:03.300 | is decentralized, there's always this pushback

00:54:07.500 | that emerges where people set up this straw man

00:54:11.360 | of everyone now will be able to make a living

00:54:15.920 | off of this new decentralized media.

00:54:18.180 | And then when they don't, and most stuff is bad,

00:54:22.620 | they say the revolution is a failure.

00:54:24.460 | Oh, so blogs arise.

00:54:27.860 | People looked around and said, well, most blogs are bad.

00:54:31.240 | This idea that everyone's gonna make a living

00:54:32.440 | off a blog isn't true.

00:54:34.020 | But that was never the point.

00:54:35.620 | Yeah, most people are bad at producing stuff.

00:54:37.620 | Most people are not meant to be media figures.

00:54:40.100 | Most people don't have the insight or the training

00:54:42.780 | to produce really interesting audio or words or video.

00:54:46.080 | The point is when you open it up to everyone,

00:54:47.740 | you get this extreme Darwinian competition.

00:54:49.980 | And what is the point of Darwinian competition?

00:54:52.060 | Not that all the different types of proverbial species

00:54:54.520 | are gonna survive, but that it's going to drive innovation

00:54:57.020 | into new species, new configurations

00:54:58.860 | that wouldn't have existed before.

00:55:00.620 | That is what is important about decentralization.

00:55:02.840 | There's 850,000 active podcasts right now.

00:55:05.700 | Most of them do not do very well,

00:55:07.680 | but that is a huge amount of selective pressure.

00:55:10.560 | There's gonna produce a couple thousand

00:55:12.460 | that do really well and are really innovative

00:55:14.480 | and will change the media landscape altogether.

00:55:16.520 | Most of YouTube is dreck,

00:55:17.960 | but there's millions and millions of hours of footage

00:55:21.280 | being uploaded every minute.

00:55:23.480 | That is a huge amount of selective pressure.

00:55:25.240 | It's gonna change and evolve and mutate

00:55:27.760 | the visual media landscape.

00:55:29.120 | So I don't know where all this decentralization is going.

00:55:31.720 | I just think it's important.

00:55:33.100 | That's why I'm doing audio.

00:55:34.240 | This is why Jesse and I were quick to get video

00:55:37.120 | going on the show as well.

00:55:38.480 | We think all of this is very important,

00:55:40.100 | even if we can't tell where it's going.

00:55:42.600 | All right, Miranda, that was a long answer.

00:55:45.140 | That was a long answer to a short question,

00:55:48.240 | but I'm glad you asked it.

00:55:49.340 | So really quick summary.

00:55:51.120 | Crypto I think is overhyped.

00:55:54.120 | We're in the twilight of the massive

00:55:55.520 | social media monopoly era.

00:55:57.960 | AI, I don't know, keep an eye on it.

00:55:59.880 | I don't want to tell you about it.

00:56:01.720 | Two biggest trends that are being missed.

00:56:03.520 | AR for sure.

00:56:04.760 | I think people don't understand the impact.

00:56:06.760 | Decentralized media, people know it's gonna be big,

00:56:09.360 | but maybe they don't realize how disruptive it's gonna be.

00:56:12.700 | I think the audio video,

00:56:14.360 | internet audio video revolution in particular

00:56:16.120 | is gonna be the biggest change to media since television.

00:56:19.340 | All right, that's technology.

00:56:22.020 | Do a couple of quick ads,

00:56:23.000 | and then we'll do a couple of deep life questions,

00:56:24.540 | and then we will wrap things up.

00:56:27.880 | Let's talk about another longtime sponsor of this show,

00:56:30.920 | and that is Grammarly.

00:56:33.220 | We are busy now, and we're working from home.

00:56:38.360 | We're on Zoom all the time.

00:56:40.000 | We're involved in more products and initiatives

00:56:41.840 | than we ever have been before.

00:56:44.080 | This is not when you wanna have unclear communication.

00:56:49.080 | You want your emails, your Slack chats,

00:56:51.800 | your text messages,

00:56:52.960 | your reports that you're sending the clients.

00:56:54.880 | You need that writing to be professional

00:56:57.520 | and effective.

00:56:58.360 | If you can write concise, professional, effective writing,

00:57:02.440 | it is a huge competitive advantage.

00:57:05.400 | This is where Grammarly enters the scene.

00:57:10.440 | Grammarly is a free to download desktop app

00:57:14.160 | that works wherever you do your writing on your computer.

00:57:18.160 | It has features that blow my mind.

00:57:22.240 | I am used to the old grammar checkers

00:57:25.400 | from the word perfect days in the early 90s.

00:57:28.480 | Compare that to what Grammarly can do today.

00:57:30.720 | It is night and day.

00:57:33.600 | So let's say you're writing a pitch.

00:57:35.320 | Grammarly has a tone detector

00:57:38.560 | that can make sure that the tone you're giving

00:57:41.200 | is just right.

00:57:42.480 | Tone detector can look at your writing

00:57:43.720 | and tell you about your tone.

00:57:45.640 | It can help you in the premium version of the product,

00:57:48.860 | rewrite your synthesis to be more clear.

00:57:51.920 | So the premium version of Grammarly can say,

00:57:54.520 | look, here's a different way to write that same sentence.

00:57:56.800 | It's gonna be more clear to the reader.

00:57:58.560 | Clarity impresses.

00:58:00.760 | It even will help you do tone transformations.

00:58:03.920 | So again, this is why Grammarly premium

00:58:05.360 | has this feature as well.

00:58:06.640 | Why don't you rewrite it this way?

00:58:10.200 | And the tone will be more colloquial.

00:58:11.560 | These are powerful, cool tools.

00:58:13.760 | It's like having a professional editor

00:58:14.900 | looking over your shoulder,

00:58:15.920 | helping your writing be clear, professional and effective.

00:58:20.380 | So get to the point faster and accomplish more

00:58:23.000 | using Grammarly.

00:58:24.760 | Go to grammarly.com/deep to sign up for a free account.

00:58:28.760 | And when you're ready to upgrade to Grammarly premium,

00:58:30.720 | you will get 20% off just for being my listener.

00:58:34.880 | So to get that 20% off,

00:58:36.800 | you have to sign up at grammarly.com/deep.

00:58:39.320 | That's G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L-Y.com/deep.

00:58:44.320 | I also wanna talk about my body tutor.

00:58:53.300 | I've known Adam Gilbert,

00:58:54.440 | the founder of My Body Tutor for many years.

00:58:56.300 | He used to be the fitness advice guy

00:58:58.820 | back on my old study hacks blog.

00:59:02.940 | His company, My Body Tutor,

00:59:04.220 | is a 100% online coaching program

00:59:06.500 | that solves the biggest problem in health and fitness,

00:59:08.940 | which is lack of consistency.

00:59:12.240 | It does this by simplifying the process

00:59:15.100 | into practical sustainable behaviors.

00:59:17.200 | Do this exercise at this time,

00:59:18.580 | eat this food, not those foods.

00:59:20.500 | And then, and here is the secret sauce to My Body Tutor,

00:59:23.820 | giving you daily accountability

00:59:26.340 | with a dedicated online coach

00:59:28.420 | who you will get to know and appreciate,

00:59:30.420 | and will get to know you to help you stick with your plan.

00:59:34.580 | That is the key.

00:59:35.980 | Here is my coach, I talk to him every day.

00:59:39.060 | Sustainability, consistency,

00:59:42.140 | that's what makes these programs work.

00:59:44.060 | Adam and his coaches at My Body Tutor

00:59:46.540 | are the best in the world

00:59:47.380 | at delivering highly personal accountability and coaching.

00:59:51.360 | And because Adam has known me for so long,

00:59:54.220 | if you're serious about getting fit

00:59:56.500 | and you wanna sign up for My Body Tutor,

00:59:58.900 | mention that you heard about them from Deep Questions

01:00:01.420 | when you sign up and you will get $50 off your first month.

01:00:04.660 | Just mention you came from Deep Questions,

01:00:06.220 | they will give you that $50 right off your first month's cost.

01:00:11.220 | You wanna get in shape, summer, wanna look good,

01:00:16.260 | wanna get healthier, want more energy, mybodytutor.com.

01:00:21.260 | All right, woo, look at this.

01:00:23.620 | I was trying to knock out a quick episode,

01:00:27.560 | my diseased adult body here by myself,

01:00:32.020 | but I'm already over an hour, I can't help it, I get bored.

01:00:35.700 | Must've missed everyone.

01:00:37.900 | I'll move quick, I got a few deep life questions,

01:00:39.620 | let's move quick, but let's get them done.

01:00:41.720 | The first deep life question comes from Kim.

01:00:46.040 | Kim says, "Does your focus on the quantity of books

01:00:48.900 | "that you read dilute their impact?

01:00:51.540 | "Can you remember the content of that many books

01:00:53.340 | "or does it even matter?"

01:00:55.420 | Kim, I don't think I read that many books.

01:00:57.580 | I read five books a month, I don't think that's that many.

01:01:00.780 | I think in June, I'm gonna read six

01:01:03.180 | because I had a couple of days where I was being COVID-y,

01:01:08.180 | so I took advantage of that to read an extra book.

01:01:11.020 | I don't think that's a lot of books,

01:01:12.100 | I think our standards are too low.

01:01:14.260 | I think our standards for intellectual engagement

01:01:16.360 | have got so low that that seems like

01:01:17.680 | some impossibly large amount,

01:01:19.120 | but I think historically speaking,

01:01:20.500 | or looking at the life of any sort of serious intellectual,

01:01:22.840 | especially pre-internet intellectual,

01:01:25.000 | five books a month is nothing.

01:01:26.600 | That's nothing.

01:01:29.480 | And so no, I don't think I read too much

01:01:31.720 | to dilute their impact.

01:01:32.880 | Again, here's the thing, I don't skim,

01:01:36.900 | I'm not staying up late in the night

01:01:38.680 | to try to make some numbers.

01:01:40.460 | You have more time than you think to do things like reading

01:01:43.640 | if you get rid of other things that are taking its place,

01:01:46.020 | namely looking at your phone.

01:01:47.800 | Just leisurely reading in your spare time

01:01:51.320 | can generate more books completed than you would imagine.

01:01:55.080 | So I actually uploaded a video a couple of weeks ago.

01:01:58.460 | I recorded it just for YouTube,

01:02:00.740 | it was just an inspiration I had.

01:02:02.000 | So you can only find it at the

01:02:03.000 | youtube.com/calnewportmedia,

01:02:05.480 | but it was called something like

01:02:07.840 | how I read five books a month.

01:02:09.580 | And so Kim, you might wanna watch that.

01:02:12.440 | And I get into what I do in my life

01:02:15.040 | to get through that many books.

01:02:15.960 | If you watch that video, you'll see

01:02:17.760 | not that much reading.

01:02:19.780 | All right, Thomas.

01:02:22.180 | Thomas says, "As I become more efficient

01:02:25.000 | and ambitious with my time,

01:02:26.700 | I find it is psychologically harder

01:02:29.680 | for me to take vacation and disengage.

01:02:32.520 | I think extended breaks are valuable,

01:02:33.880 | but as my mind workflows and priorities

01:02:35.520 | become more fine-tuned,

01:02:36.880 | it feels harder to turn them off for a few days.

01:02:38.900 | I feel like productivity is a high inertia machine

01:02:40.900 | that isn't easily slowed down."

01:02:44.120 | Thomas, you are right.

01:02:45.560 | Welcome to the club.

01:02:46.760 | If you really get going,

01:02:50.920 | you're in a cognitively demanding field,

01:02:53.080 | you're structured in your time,

01:02:55.340 | you're focused diligently on

01:02:57.320 | ambitious intellectual goals.

01:02:59.080 | We come back to something again and again.

01:03:00.840 | You're seeing results, it's exciting, it's interesting.

01:03:03.960 | You're podcasting, you're writing,

01:03:05.400 | you're solving proofs, you're whatever you're doing.

01:03:08.360 | Yeah, it is a high inertia machine

01:03:09.960 | that you cannot just turn off.

01:03:11.400 | I learned that lesson the hard way,

01:03:13.100 | trying to go on vacation for a week and say,

01:03:15.880 | "I'm not gonna do any work."

01:03:17.320 | And you get to day three,

01:03:20.000 | and I have delirium tremors,

01:03:23.840 | like a recovering alcohol addict,

01:03:25.720 | like shaking and frustrated and upset,

01:03:28.200 | and scratching math equations in the size of palm trees.

01:03:32.320 | So I learned early on,

01:03:33.580 | you can't really shut that machine down very easily.

01:03:37.520 | So if you're going on a trip,

01:03:39.520 | bring something to do.

01:03:41.520 | It shouldn't be something that is going to be high stakes.

01:03:45.640 | It shouldn't be something that involves you

01:03:46.760 | having to do work communication or email,

01:03:50.640 | but bring some sort of project.

01:03:52.760 | I would often bring, especially pre-tenure,

01:03:55.760 | a math problem I'm trying to solve.

01:03:58.080 | Or I would say,

01:03:59.840 | "I think I wanna write a paper on this topic.

01:04:02.600 | "Let me really start thinking through a little bit each day.

01:04:05.000 | "Let me walk the beach,

01:04:07.720 | "walk through town and think and take notes.

01:04:09.640 | "At least have one session every day

01:04:10.760 | "where I'm working on some sort of long-term,

01:04:12.400 | "non-urgent, but intellectually demanding project."

01:04:14.800 | You just have to do it.

01:04:16.040 | Once you get up that intellectual motor turning

01:04:19.760 | and cranking, it doesn't stop.

01:04:21.720 | So give yourself stuff to do

01:04:23.120 | that's going to be minimally distracting.

01:04:25.920 | I can actually connect various intellectual output

01:04:30.360 | to various trips.

01:04:31.720 | Like I know exactly the beach.

01:04:35.800 | Where was it? In the Bahamas.

01:04:37.920 | And I forgot the name of the island.

01:04:42.000 | But I can picture the beach so clearly

01:04:44.160 | on which I figured out the whole structure

01:04:45.800 | for digital minimalism and made the decision of,

01:04:47.640 | "Wait a second, I need to write this book."

01:04:50.240 | There's just an arbitrary, I remember the paper.

01:04:52.680 | It's not a very interesting paper,

01:04:53.680 | but I remember the beach in Lewis, Delaware,

01:04:56.680 | where I solved the main results for a particular paper.

01:04:59.840 | Blah, blah, blah.

01:05:01.080 | Stuff gets done on trips.

01:05:02.280 | I think that's fine.

01:05:03.160 | The only thing I'll say, Thomas,

01:05:04.160 | is also have good schedule shutdown rituals.

01:05:07.760 | If you have a high inertia mind, you need them.

01:05:10.120 | Otherwise your mind will spiral off

01:05:13.360 | into work-related thoughts at night,

01:05:15.280 | and you'll never be able to enjoy anything,

01:05:16.960 | and you're going to have a hard time sleeping.

01:05:18.360 | So you have to be able to shut down

01:05:19.720 | sort of back and forth communication

01:05:22.680 | and decision-making about work.

01:05:23.880 | You really got to trust those schedule shutdown

01:05:25.680 | complete rituals, but don't expect you can go five,

01:05:28.360 | six days without doing any work.

01:05:30.320 | Once your mind gets going, you got to feed it.

01:05:32.960 | All right, let's do one more question here.

01:05:35.160 | This one comes from Joe.

01:05:37.960 | Joe says, "How do I get over discouragement

01:05:40.600 | from inconsistency on progress for developing a vision,

01:05:44.280 | having a quarterly plan, spending time on weekly planning

01:05:46.400 | and daily time block planning with my shutdown ritual?

01:05:49.280 | How do I get back on the horse after I fall off my attempts

01:05:52.200 | to put this process in the place?

01:05:54.640 | I used to enjoy your podcast so much.

01:05:57.200 | Now I've got a sense of discomfort in listening to the podcast

01:05:59.600 | and realizing how little progress I've made

01:06:01.280 | on the whole process.

01:06:03.800 | Joe, you might be trying to bite off more

01:06:05.960 | than you can chew all at once.

01:06:07.720 | There's a lot of ideas I talk about on the show.

01:06:11.080 | It might be tempting to put them all into place at first.

01:06:13.920 | You talk about all these different multi-scale

01:06:16.560 | planning things where you have your vision

01:06:18.520 | and your quarterly plan, your weekly plan,

01:06:20.160 | your daily plans with shutdown complete.

01:06:22.960 | We talk about deep life stuff.

01:06:24.560 | We talk about reading.

01:06:25.640 | We talk about training your mind.

01:06:27.120 | We talk about, there's so much we talk about.

01:06:29.360 | And it's all appealing to you,

01:06:31.720 | which is good.

01:06:32.760 | That means you're aiming down the right path,

01:06:34.440 | but you're trying to take too big of a leap all at once.

01:06:36.440 | So one thing I might recommend is,

01:06:38.800 | let's go through the deep work bucket overhaul exercise

01:06:41.880 | first as a way of just grounding your life,

01:06:45.400 | rewriting your self narrative as someone

01:06:47.480 | who can take changes towards things that matter,

01:06:50.200 | and then worry about making bigger changes.

01:06:54.040 | So as you know, the deep life overhaul strategy says,

01:06:57.160 | you break down your life into the buckets,

01:06:58.760 | the areas that are most important to you.

01:07:00.480 | Let's say craft, constitution, community,

01:07:03.360 | contemplation, et cetera.

01:07:05.040 | And then for each of those,

01:07:07.160 | you put a keystone habit in the place,

01:07:08.320 | something that is not trivial,

01:07:09.960 | but not super, super hard.

01:07:11.720 | Something that you can probably do every day

01:07:13.080 | that signals to yourself,

01:07:14.000 | you take each of these areas of your life seriously

01:07:17.760 | and are willing to do non-necessary,

01:07:21.000 | non-mandatory action to make progress on

01:07:24.320 | or support these different areas

01:07:26.320 | that are important to you.

01:07:27.280 | And you track that every day.

01:07:28.600 | That's what you're tracking.

01:07:29.440 | Keystone habits, four or five buckets.

01:07:32.240 | Just do that for a while.

01:07:34.120 | That might be harder than you think.

01:07:35.920 | You might have false starts.

01:07:38.840 | This keystone habit wasn't really consistent.

01:07:42.440 | This was too ambitious.

01:07:44.160 | You might spend months until you get to that collection

01:07:46.360 | of keystone habits and buckets that you feel good about.

01:07:49.960 | Once you're consistently hitting those habits,

01:07:51.520 | then you take one bucket at a time,

01:07:53.040 | give it four to six weeks,

01:07:55.000 | and do some sort of significant overhaul

01:07:56.720 | of that part of your life.

01:07:58.720 | Then and only then is where I would do something

01:08:01.280 | like introducing multiscale planning in your case.

01:08:03.400 | So maybe when you're doing the craft overhaul,

01:08:05.160 | you're rethinking your work,

01:08:06.720 | you're taking projects off your plate that aren't important.

01:08:08.840 | You're focusing on a smaller number of initiatives

01:08:10.720 | you think are important.

01:08:12.240 | You bring in something like multiscale planning.

01:08:15.240 | Like when it's part of this bigger, more gradual,

01:08:18.080 | more structured overhaul of your life,

01:08:21.000 | I think you are able to more consistently make progress

01:08:27.080 | and not have everything fall apart

01:08:28.600 | when one thing doesn't work.

01:08:30.000 | So Joe, you're aimed in the right direction.

01:08:33.320 | I think you have the right ambitions.

01:08:35.160 | What you're missing is I would say

01:08:39.720 | a more sustainable process towards depth.

01:08:42.840 | So do the buckets, do the keystones,

01:08:45.480 | keep working on the keystones till you have them,

01:08:47.400 | then do a round of overhaul.

01:08:49.000 | Enjoy that life for six months,

01:08:51.240 | do another round of overhaul, repeat.

01:08:52.960 | You will gradually bit by bit get deeper and deeper.

01:08:55.720 | The hardest part is deciding that's what you wanna do.

01:08:57.640 | Everything else is just execution.

01:08:59.840 | So congratulations, you've already done the hard part.

01:09:02.480 | Now get after it.

01:09:04.160 | All right, that's all the time we have for today's episode.

01:09:07.680 | Thank you for listening.

01:09:09.000 | If you like what you heard,

01:09:09.880 | you will like what you see

01:09:12.080 | at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

01:09:15.520 | Get video of the full episodes

01:09:18.000 | as well as clips of selected segments.

01:09:21.360 | I'll be back next week with the next episode of the show.

01:09:26.600 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:09:29.320 | (upbeat music)

01:09:32.040 | (upbeat music)

01:09:34.680 | (upbeat music)

01:09:37.280 | (upbeat music)

01:09:39.860 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 199: Fleeing Your Home Office, Ambition Overload, and Reading Limits

Chapters