Tips For Doing Hard Things | DEEP DIVE

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:04.960 | All right, but let's do a deep dive.

00:00:06.240 | So I wanted to talk about this topic of tips for doing hard things.

00:00:14.040 | And what's going to be different about this deep dive versus past deep dives

00:00:19.360 | is I'm not giving my advice for doing hard things.

00:00:22.080 | I actually want to relay some advice that I saw in an interesting video that a

00:00:26.800 | reader sent to me from 2020 of an author giving a talk about this topic.

00:00:32.240 | And I recently wrote an essay about this talk and I published it in my email

00:00:36.160 | newsletter, which if you don't get, you probably should.

00:00:40.080 | You can sign up for that at calnewport.com.

00:00:41.760 | But I figured I just wrote that this morning before we started recording.

00:00:45.040 | I said, I want to talk about this on the show.

00:00:46.560 | So I brought in some of my notes from it.

00:00:48.240 | So here's the setup.

00:00:49.360 | The video is from 2020.

00:00:51.440 | It's from the fantasy novelist, Brandon Sanderson,

00:00:55.840 | who wrote a bunch of best-selling series.

00:00:59.120 | I've read some of his books.

00:01:00.560 | I read Name of the Wind and whatever the second book was in that particular trilogy.

00:01:06.560 | And it's really good.

00:01:07.680 | And I'm actually now one of the books I'm reading right now is I decided I wanted to

00:01:11.520 | read some Ursula K.

00:01:14.240 | Gwynne.

00:01:14.640 | And I was going back and reading some of her Earthsea Chronicles, which has,

00:01:18.880 | that's from the 60s, but it has some ideas about the true names of elements being

00:01:24.800 | critical to the magical system that Sanderson plays with.

00:01:28.000 | Anyways, think big, successful fantasy novelist.

00:01:32.800 | And he gives a talk in 2020 that was titled, let me have it here, The Common Lies Writers

00:01:39.760 | Tell You.

00:01:40.000 | But this was not really what the talk was about.

00:01:42.160 | The talk was about doing hard things.

00:01:46.080 | And Sanderson comes right out.

00:01:48.240 | And you know I'm going to appreciate this.

00:01:50.560 | He comes right out up front and says he dislikes the fact that the media keeps telling young

00:01:56.160 | people that you can do anything you want to and you should follow your dreams.

00:02:01.520 | And he said, look, that is way too simplistic.

00:02:05.200 | That's not the way it works.

00:02:06.400 | That's not going to help anyone to say that.

00:02:08.720 | It's definitely a perspective you would hear, for example, in my book, So Good They Can't

00:02:14.080 | Ignore You.

00:02:14.480 | And he says, OK, here is the more realistic claim.

00:02:17.360 | And I'm quoting him here.

00:02:20.000 | I can do hard things.

00:02:21.200 | Doing hard things has intrinsic value.

00:02:24.240 | And they will make me a better person, even if I end up failing.

00:02:27.040 | He said, that's the right way to talk about ambitious goals, is there's value in doing

00:02:33.920 | hard things.

00:02:34.480 | You are able to do hard things.

00:02:35.920 | And you're going to get value out of it, no matter what actually happens, whether it makes

00:02:39.600 | you a famous novelist or not, or whatever that dream happens to be.

00:02:44.160 | And that this is better than telling people, no, of course you'll succeed.

00:02:46.320 | You can do whatever you want.

00:02:48.400 | And then for the remainder of his talk, he said, so let's talk about doing hard things.

00:02:52.000 | And he gave three tips, three tips for the reality, reality-based tips for dealing with

00:02:59.120 | hard things.

00:02:59.920 | So I thought what I would do here is I want to go through these three tips.

00:03:03.600 | I'll tell you what he said, and then give a little bit of my own commentary on each.

00:03:08.400 | So the first tip he gave was make better goals.

00:03:15.360 | So when it comes to doing hard things, he thinks we are not good at setting the right

00:03:20.000 | goals.

00:03:20.320 | We don't help people set better goals.

00:03:22.480 | So he mentioned, for example, that in an AP literature class in high school, he won a

00:03:30.080 | minor contest for a story he wrote and decided, oh, my goal is to be a successful novelist.

00:03:38.000 | And he said that was not a good goal.

00:03:39.840 | It was way too long-term, vague, and grandiose.

00:03:44.720 | How do you make progress on that particular goal?

00:03:48.560 | In particular, what are you supposed to do tomorrow to make progress towards that goal

00:03:54.320 | and become a successful writer?

00:03:56.640 | He said what you should do instead is make goals that you have control over.

00:04:02.000 | And what Sanderson ended up doing was writing 13 manuscripts before he actually had a book

00:04:07.200 | he could sold.

00:04:07.920 | And he said his goal should have been focused on producing a certain number of manuscripts

00:04:12.240 | as an act of practice and having a commitment with each manuscript to be more ambitious

00:04:19.200 | than the last to push and develop his skills, because that's a goal he could make progress

00:04:24.560 | on.

00:04:24.800 | I could write another manuscript.

00:04:27.200 | I can for sure make this next manuscript be even more ambitious in this way, this way,

00:04:30.640 | that way.

00:04:30.960 | Those are achievable goals.

00:04:32.160 | Saying be a successful author, that was too vague.

00:04:34.960 | All right.

00:04:36.480 | Now, my take on this is I write about something similar in my book, Deep Work.

00:04:41.760 | In that book, Deep Work, I talk about this methodology, this business methodology called

00:04:47.200 | 4DX, the four disciplines of execution.

00:04:51.360 | And I talk about how this methodology, which was designed to help teams and companies do

00:04:55.120 | better, gives us some insight into accomplishment when we apply it to individuals.

00:05:00.240 | And one of the core ideas from that methodology is lead versus lag indicators.

00:05:07.120 | A lag indicator is the big goal you eventually want to accomplish.

00:05:12.400 | I want my next academic paper to get into a top tier journal.

00:05:17.200 | The problem with lag indicators, according to 4DX, is that it doesn't give you a clear

00:05:23.120 | action.

00:05:23.520 | So they said instead, you should focus on what they call lead indicators, which are

00:05:28.160 | things you can track and do in control.

00:05:29.680 | And they should be chosen such that if you do well with those lead indicators, you're

00:05:33.440 | likely to have success with the lag indicators, but it gives you something concrete to focus

00:05:37.040 | on.

00:05:37.440 | And so for that example, the right lead indicator might be, I'm going to do 15 hours of

00:05:42.720 | deep work per week on the paper I'm writing.

00:05:46.400 | Well, that I can track.

00:05:48.080 | That creates friction I can push back against.

00:05:51.280 | Now I can actually make real changes in the intentional application of my energy, cancel

00:05:56.400 | things, move things, wake up early, progress can happen.

00:06:00.240 | So I like Sanderson's idea there, and I've talked about variations of that.

00:06:03.840 | All right, his second tip.

00:06:05.040 | Learn how you work.

00:06:08.720 | So Sanderson, when it comes to writing, thinks it's a real disservice when he hears people

00:06:17.200 | say things like, "Real writers have an overwhelming compulsion to write."

00:06:21.840 | And that if you don't have that compulsion, you should do anything else.

00:06:26.160 | And only people who just can't help but write, and that's all they can do, should be people

00:06:29.760 | who should be writers.

00:06:30.800 | He thinks that's nonsense.

00:06:32.800 | He says, "Writing is hard, and it's hard work to figure out how to get yourself to do it."

00:06:36.320 | He is a professional writer, and I'm quoting him here.

00:06:39.520 | "I love writing, but I have a hard time sitting down and writing."

00:06:43.920 | So even for this very successful professional writer, he says, "Writing is hard."

00:06:50.320 | So his advice is, when it comes to doing hard things, you have to put in a lot of effort

00:06:55.280 | to figure out what works for you to basically get yourself to do that type of effort.

00:07:00.640 | And it could differ from person to person.

00:07:02.640 | Sanderson uses daily word count tracking in a spreadsheet.

00:07:07.040 | It's like a game for him.

00:07:08.080 | He likes that.

00:07:08.640 | But he says, "Other people thrive under the social pressure of a writer's group.

00:07:13.680 | Other people need a deadline."

00:07:15.120 | Now, I talk about this a lot in my own work.

00:07:18.880 | I talk a lot about how deep, cognitively demanding efforts are unnatural.

00:07:24.720 | It uses a lot of energy.

00:07:26.000 | More ancient parts of our brain cannot immediately see what benefit they're going to get from this

00:07:32.240 | energy.

00:07:32.720 | What's the threat we're escaping?

00:07:34.480 | Where's the food or mate source that this thinking is going to give us right away?

00:07:38.960 | And it doesn't have an answer for that.

00:07:40.480 | You try to convince your brain, for example, that your 460,000-word epic fantasy novel is

00:07:49.040 | going to help you in mate selection.

00:07:50.560 | Your brain's not going to buy it.

00:07:53.200 | It's going to see that you're talking a lot about wizards with names like Gargamel, who

00:07:58.240 | are passing wind spells on elves.

00:08:01.760 | And it's going to say, "This is not going to get us children.

00:08:05.120 | This is not going to get us food.

00:08:06.640 | Why are we doing this?"

00:08:08.400 | And this is generally true when it comes to doing cognitively demanding work.

00:08:11.760 | It's unnatural.

00:08:12.560 | So a lot of effort is required to trick yourself into doing it.

00:08:16.480 | So I like what Sanderson talked about.

00:08:18.080 | I would also add scheduling philosophy and ritual.

00:08:21.520 | That's why this plays such a big role.

00:08:23.120 | Get rid of any decision your mind has about when you're going to do this work.

00:08:27.360 | Instead, you have a philosophy.

00:08:29.120 | It's always these days at these times.

00:08:30.960 | Or at the beginning of the week, I put it on my calendar, and it's right there in the

00:08:34.560 | same color as meetings I know I can't skip.

00:08:37.680 | That time is protected.

00:08:38.800 | I don't always feel like I want to go to a meeting, but if it's on my calendar, I'd go.

00:08:42.480 | I don't always feel like I want to write, but it's there on my calendar.

00:08:46.160 | That's what I'm doing next.

00:08:47.280 | And this is also why ritual matters.

00:08:51.120 | Writers will build out these spaces that seem over the top or go to weird places, like I

00:08:56.720 | wrote about in my New Yorker piece last summer about working from near home, where writers

00:09:02.560 | will leave perfectly nice and good homes to go to weird, eccentric locations to write

00:09:07.840 | just because they associate that transit.

00:09:10.320 | They associate that new environment just with writing.

00:09:13.040 | That's why Peter Benchley left his bucolic carriage home on East Welland Avenue there.

00:09:20.400 | Actually, no, he's on Curliss Avenue.

00:09:22.320 | Curliss Avenue there in Pennington, New Jersey, to work in the back room of a furnace factory.

00:09:26.880 | That's why Steinbeck would balance a legal pad on a boat in Sag Harbor.

00:09:33.280 | It's why Maya Angelou would go to hotel rooms and take everything off the walls.

00:09:38.800 | So there is zero distraction.

00:09:40.160 | And Wright laying down on the bed, propped up on an arm, doing this so often that she

00:09:44.400 | built up deep calluses on that arm that she was supporting herself.

00:09:46.960 | Because it's hard to do this work.

00:09:48.640 | You've got to figure out how to get your mind into there.

00:09:51.280 | So scheduling philosophies and rituals, especially over-the-top rituals, play a big role.

00:09:57.120 | And I'll say when it comes to writing, there's a quote I've said a few times, has bounced

00:10:02.800 | around a few times, which is basically what some people call writer's block.

00:10:07.360 | By some people, I mean amateurs.

00:10:08.880 | It's actually just the physiological feeling of what writing, the writing experience is.

00:10:14.400 | That feeling of, I don't know what to say.

00:10:15.680 | I don't feel inspired.

00:10:17.680 | I don't know what to say.

00:10:18.960 | I'm stuck.

00:10:20.080 | It's like, great, now you've started writing.

00:10:21.920 | That's what it feels like.

00:10:22.800 | All right, Sanderson's third tip, break it down.

00:10:25.600 | Maybe his most prosaic tip out of the three.

00:10:28.960 | But basically, if you have a big goal, break it into manageable pieces so you have something

00:10:32.720 | to go after.

00:10:33.440 | He noted that the book he was writing at that time was longer than the entire Hunger Games

00:10:40.160 | series put together.

00:10:42.400 | So he's saying that's such a big, hairy, epic goal because he'll write 400,000 word plus

00:10:49.600 | books, which is crazy.

00:10:50.960 | By comparison, my books are usually 70,000 to 90,000.

00:10:55.760 | So it's like five deep works.

00:10:58.800 | He's like, you've got to break that down.

00:11:00.880 | That can't be your goal.

00:11:02.960 | I'm writing this book.

00:11:04.000 | It's no, no, I'm trying to finish the chapter cycle that establishes the backstory for

00:11:11.440 | the wizard Gargamel that passes the wind spells on the elves, or whatever it is.

00:11:16.160 | I obviously know a lot about fantasy books.

00:11:17.760 | So I think that's good work.

00:11:19.520 | I think the key part about this final tip is that he says in figuring out what those

00:11:25.600 | goals are, that's where all the magic happens, is that we don't give people enough training,

00:11:33.280 | especially in creative fields, to figure out what those smaller goals are.

00:11:36.400 | He said this is a particular problem in writing, where if you talk to a professional writer

00:11:41.120 | and say, look, I really want to do what you do, what's your advice?

00:11:43.840 | They'll just look at you and say, well, you got to write.

00:11:45.840 | He says, that's too vague.

00:11:48.320 | No, no, what you need to tell me is it's going to take about six manuscripts before you get

00:11:53.520 | your chops down.

00:11:54.160 | And those manuscripts have to be successively harder in this way.

00:11:57.040 | And here is the level, type, and source of feedback you need on each to make sure that

00:12:00.720 | you're gaining particular skills.

00:12:02.000 | You do one on your own, you do one with two with a writing group, for the fourth, maybe

00:12:06.640 | you want to hire an editor a day of their time to come back and give you a harsher,

00:12:11.200 | the fifth you want to submit and get notes from the publisher that you submit to.

00:12:15.280 | We need that type of detailed roadmap.

00:12:17.280 | It's non-trivial and it's non-obvious.

00:12:18.960 | You don't just tell people, if you want to write, write.

00:12:20.720 | If you want to be a musician, play music.

00:12:22.720 | You want to be an artist, paint.

00:12:24.080 | No, these are big, hairy goals that you need to break down, and it's not obvious how they

00:12:27.600 | break down.

00:12:28.880 | And the thing I talk about a lot on this show in particular is that if you're going to get

00:12:35.280 | this information, you have to go get it.

00:12:37.760 | And by what I mean by that is you have to go to people who know what they're doing.

00:12:41.600 | And don't just say, what's your advice?

00:12:43.120 | Because they'll just say, write.

00:12:44.560 | They'll just say, paint.

00:12:45.520 | Say, I want to hear your story.

00:12:48.160 | How did you get there?

00:12:50.880 | What was the first thing?

00:12:51.600 | Then what was the next thing?

00:12:52.480 | Oh, oh, Sanderson, you wrote 13 manuscripts?

00:12:55.360 | Oh, I didn't realize that.

00:12:56.400 | So you mean I can't just do National Novel Writing Month and have the name of the win

00:13:01.200 | be the book that comes out of it?

00:13:02.320 | Oh, OK, now I get that.

00:13:03.680 | I don't like that that's reality, but that's reality.

00:13:05.200 | OK, I have to write 13 manuscripts.

00:13:06.320 | How long is that going to take?

00:13:07.520 | You know, maybe I'm going to need much more time on this than I think.

00:13:10.000 | You get the reality, not what you want to be true.

00:13:12.240 | You get the reality of what actually matters for the endeavor you want to do.

00:13:15.360 | You get that reality from people who came before, not by asking for advice, but asking

00:13:19.600 | for their story.

00:13:21.440 | You look at that, and you find out what really matters.

00:13:25.040 | I talked about this.

00:13:25.920 | If you want to see a more extensive conversation about this, when I was on the Tim Ferriss

00:13:30.560 | podcast earlier in-- whenever this was, January, I guess I was on his podcast-- we get into

00:13:36.720 | how I got started in writing.

00:13:38.240 | They go into detail of the story about how, through connections with my family, I got

00:13:44.000 | in touch with an agent, a literary agent, who I promised, I'm not going to try to sell

00:13:48.400 | you a book.

00:13:48.880 | And I had that agent walk me through step by step what exactly would a 20-year-old need

00:13:54.480 | to do to get a book deal with a major publisher.

00:13:56.560 | And she walked me through, here's what matters, here's what doesn't, here's the process,

00:13:59.600 | here's the steps.

00:14:00.320 | And it was not at all what I would have guessed, and it's not at all what most young people

00:14:04.320 | I've met who say, I want to write a book do, but it was the reality.

00:14:07.840 | And it took me two years, but I followed that plan and sold that book and wrote that book

00:14:14.000 | as a senior, and everything else unfolded from there.

00:14:16.240 | So that's my advice there is, yes, you need to break down your goals, the more manageable

00:14:20.000 | goals.

00:14:20.400 | It's not always obvious how to do that.

00:14:23.440 | Ask the experts, but not for their advice, but for their story, and you can extract from

00:14:27.120 | their story the reality of what matters.

00:14:30.160 | All right, so Sanderson, thank you for giving that talk.

00:14:34.880 | Excuse me for my wizard elf jokes.

00:14:39.440 | Obviously, you're very good at what you do, and I am of great awe, but that's good advice.

00:14:44.800 | Don't just follow your dreams.

00:14:47.200 | Focus on doing hard things for the meaning of doing hard things, and treat doing hard

00:14:52.160 | things like a complicated endeavor that requires a lot of nuanced feedback.

Tips For Doing Hard Things | DEEP DIVE | Episode 178

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