Ep. 188: The 5 Books I Read in March, Embracing Boredom, and Deep Work vs. YouTube

00:00:00.000 | I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, episode 188.

00:00:07.000 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ joined by my much older producer, Jesse, who is in a completely

00:00:21.700 | different decade of life than I am.

00:00:25.080 | I am young and sprightly and in my 30s.

00:00:29.080 | Jesse is old and decrepit and in his 40s.

00:00:32.680 | I don't know how we even communicate with each other, Jesse.

00:00:34.240 | It's like completely different generations.

00:00:35.920 | I find it funny how you always call me professor on accident.

00:00:41.440 | You're my professor.

00:00:42.440 | Here's what type of day, by the way, for the viewing audience, is what type of day it's

00:00:45.440 | been.

00:00:46.440 | If you're not watching the YouTube version of our podcast, I'm holding up two different

00:00:51.720 | coffee cups.

00:00:52.720 | The first one is episode 187 coffee cup and I'm on the episode 188 coffee cup.

00:00:57.600 | I'm tired today so I got to power up.

00:01:01.240 | So hat tip to Bevco.

00:01:04.000 | I don't know, Jesse, how have we not figured out some sort of dumb waiter system with the

00:01:08.400 | restaurant below us?

00:01:10.280 | It could be coffee during the taping and then immediately afterward, drinks.

00:01:18.440 | Just completely have those things.

00:01:20.720 | Yes, you usually have coaching to do after we record, but it's just going to make you

00:01:25.320 | more energetic.

00:01:26.560 | We should have that worked out.

00:01:27.560 | It's just they know when it's coming.

00:01:30.080 | If we make them our sole sponsor.

00:01:31.720 | Deep work HQ happy hour.

00:01:34.640 | Exactly.

00:01:35.640 | Then the show would get lively.

00:01:36.640 | All right.

00:01:37.640 | Well, anyways, we've got a listener calls episode.

00:01:43.040 | Looking forward to it.

00:01:44.560 | But we're also now in April, which means we can do our tradition of reporting on the books

00:01:53.200 | I read the month before.

00:01:56.200 | So I want to report on the books I read in March.

00:02:01.360 | Twenty twenty two.

00:02:04.080 | As longtime listeners know, generally my goal is to aim for five books per month.

00:02:11.400 | And that's what I read in March of twenty twenty two.

00:02:14.040 | I mix genres.

00:02:15.040 | I mix difficulties.

00:02:16.040 | I want a variety of different books.

00:02:18.760 | So let's go through it.

00:02:19.760 | Here are the five books I read in March of twenty twenty two in order of completion.

00:02:25.120 | The first was Travels with George.

00:02:28.680 | This was written by the popular historian Nathaniel Philbrook.

00:02:35.160 | So Travels with George is a allusion to Steinbeck's Travels with Charlie.

00:02:40.720 | So if you're a Steinbeck person, you know, travels with Charlie Steinbeck is traveling

00:02:44.660 | with his dog, Charlie.

00:02:46.800 | Well, in Travels with George, Nathaniel Philbrook, who's written a series of books about the

00:02:52.360 | revolutionary era in America, went on a travel with his dog.

00:02:58.080 | And in particular, the dog was not named George.

00:03:01.080 | In this case, George is George Washington.

00:03:03.640 | And Philbrook and his wife and his dog trace the post inauguration tour of the newly formed

00:03:12.280 | country of America that George Washington went on.

00:03:14.600 | So he did a tour all the way through New England, and then he later did a tour all the way through

00:03:19.080 | the South.

00:03:20.640 | And Philbrook retraced the steps of that tour in modern times and then went to these went

00:03:26.040 | to the spots and then mixed it in like with Steinbeck ask anecdotes about the journeys

00:03:31.480 | and his dog being a pain, etc.

00:03:34.620 | So I mean, here's the thing.

00:03:35.920 | The book was fine.

00:03:36.920 | I think the the contemporary the contemporaneous pieces about the dog, I didn't care.

00:03:43.500 | I mean, it's like two to upper middle age people with a dog and the dog gets dirty and

00:03:51.180 | it's hard to find hotels for them to stay.

00:03:52.660 | Like it wasn't that interesting.

00:03:54.120 | But the history is great.

00:03:55.120 | I'm a big fan of Philbrook's history.

00:03:56.260 | I mean, I would have been fine if this book really was just about George Washington's

00:04:01.140 | post inauguration tours and just honed in right on that.

00:04:04.060 | I kind of read pretty quickly in the in-betweens.

00:04:06.300 | I'm a big Philbrook fan.

00:04:08.020 | Here's what I like about Philbrook.

00:04:09.860 | I love writers who live in cool places and write full time and Philbrook who came to

00:04:15.780 | writing late.

00:04:16.780 | When I mean late, I'm talking about like Jesse's current decade of life.

00:04:21.180 | I'm talking about someone in the fort in their 40s.

00:04:24.180 | Right.

00:04:25.180 | Jesse is all of one day being 40.

00:04:27.620 | So we're talking people who largely we would rightly say have very little productive life

00:04:32.660 | left.

00:04:33.660 | But somehow at that point, and it's you know, it's hard for someone like me in my 30s again

00:04:38.580 | to really understand what that's like.

00:04:39.940 | But somehow at that point, he began writing in his 40s and his first book was Heart of

00:04:45.900 | the Sea about the ship Essex.

00:04:49.140 | So this was the ship that was the model for Moby Dick.

00:04:51.620 | So it was a fishing, a whaling boat that was rammed and sunk by a whale.

00:04:57.180 | And I want a great book.

00:04:58.780 | And some people survived in a life raft, like a boat, a whaling boat, and they were at sea

00:05:03.940 | forever and they ended up on an island.

00:05:05.580 | It's all a true story.

00:05:06.820 | That's how he like burst onto the scene of doing historical fiction writing.

00:05:10.300 | But he lives in Nantucket and that's what I think is cool.

00:05:13.540 | He lives in Nantucket where he's just a writer on this windswept, you know, island.

00:05:19.540 | And I always found that very romantic.

00:05:21.140 | But he was a great writer because he's a good he's a good archive guy.

00:05:24.420 | And you get a little bit of insight in this book about his methods, because in the contemporaneous

00:05:28.500 | parts, he's often hanging out with librarians and historical society curators.

00:05:34.660 | And you get a sense into what life is like writing that it's all about finding primary

00:05:38.820 | sources going to historical archives, going to libraries, pulling out these books that

00:05:44.340 | no one has seen in 75 years to try to piece together the context in which history happened.

00:05:48.580 | So I thought that was cool.

00:05:49.580 | So there you go.

00:05:50.820 | Good book.

00:05:51.820 | Guy lives on Nantucket.

00:05:52.820 | If you're going to read any Philbrook, start with Heart of the Sea.

00:05:56.220 | I also thought Mayflower was very good.

00:05:59.340 | Valiant Ambition is very good as well.

00:06:01.020 | So there are some recommendations for you.

00:06:02.340 | All right.

00:06:03.340 | Now we get a little bit weird.

00:06:04.340 | Not weird.

00:06:05.340 | But fantasy.

00:06:06.340 | And so we got to be careful here, Jesse, that I get all the names right.

00:06:11.860 | So I don't know exactly what path led me to this.

00:06:15.180 | I think because I had heard this book was appropriate for younger audiences.

00:06:19.460 | I might have been testing this out for my oldest son.

00:06:23.580 | But I have never read Ursula K. Le Guin.

00:06:26.140 | And I read her first Earthsea book, A Wizard of Earthsea.

00:06:31.900 | So it's a fantasy book written in the 60s.

00:06:36.340 | It has a lot of prescience towards Harry Potter, right?

00:06:39.940 | I mean, there's a young boy who goes to a school for wizards.

00:06:45.220 | But it's much more psychologically astute and sophisticated.

00:06:50.820 | It's not the tale of a boy who's meant to be a hero and has to discover it.

00:06:57.620 | But actually, the whole metaphor of the book is that through his pride, he unleashes essentially

00:07:05.260 | like a demon force in the world that is hunting him.

00:07:08.100 | And in the end, he has to hunt it down.

00:07:09.300 | So it's much more literary, much more using language and scene to try to convey a deeper

00:07:12.900 | reality.

00:07:14.340 | Not so plot-focused or expository as like a J.K.

00:07:18.700 | Rowling or like a George R.R. Martin.

00:07:21.700 | So actually like a really well-crafted book in the fantasy genre.

00:07:26.620 | And I thought it was quite good.

00:07:28.700 | I saw echoes of it.

00:07:30.060 | You certainly see echoes of it.

00:07:31.300 | To me, it wasn't Harry Potter.

00:07:32.980 | I was thinking more of Love Grossman and the Magicians, which has a similar sort of literary

00:07:39.900 | metaphorical darkness where they sort of unleash this creature from the magical-- I don't know.

00:07:46.820 | I forgot, dimension or something that literally like kills one of the kids at the breakbeaks

00:07:51.900 | at the school for wizards.

00:07:54.500 | And so clearly, Grossman must have been channeling Ursula K. Le Guin.

00:07:59.060 | But anyways, I liked it.

00:08:00.340 | I'm not going to let my son read it.

00:08:01.580 | I think it's a little more too sophisticated and dark for him.

00:08:04.780 | He's reading Harry Potter instead.

00:08:06.940 | But it was a good change of pace.

00:08:09.660 | I did enjoy it.

00:08:11.860 | Lots of good old-fashioned wizard names.

00:08:14.460 | It's all like these weird, crazy Dungeons and Dragons names.

00:08:16.740 | All right, copy refill.

00:08:20.700 | All right, book number three.

00:08:22.540 | Let's zig in a different direction.

00:08:24.820 | Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller.

00:08:30.460 | So Timothy Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.

00:08:35.580 | And he's a public communicator, effective public communicator.

00:08:40.820 | He's written a bunch of books that have done pretty well.

00:08:43.820 | At some point, someone sent me a bunch of his books.

00:08:49.820 | So I have a stack of his books.

00:08:51.380 | I pulled this off of the stack.

00:08:52.820 | The reason why I read it is Every Good Endeavor is coming from a Christian perspective.

00:08:57.460 | But it is a biblical perspective on work, the point of work, finding work that's

00:09:05.220 | significant to you.

00:09:06.620 | And I thought this would be something I should probably know.

00:09:10.140 | I should probably have this club in my bag, understanding biblical perspectives on work

00:09:16.220 | and passion and vocation.

00:09:17.700 | Because obviously I've written about this in the past.

00:09:19.500 | I'm doing this work now on the deep life.

00:09:21.460 | And so I was like, let me get the Christian biblical perspective on work.

00:09:26.340 | And so that's why I dived in that book.

00:09:28.380 | There's some good things in there.

00:09:29.380 | I mean, it was the pick and choose.

00:09:31.900 | But I mean, I think there were some interesting threads of thought that I hadn't come across

00:09:36.180 | before.

00:09:37.220 | And here's the most interesting, here's the headline, like a headline idea that comes

00:09:42.740 | out of that book, which probably puts it at odds with a lot of sort of elite discourse

00:09:46.540 | around work right now, is Keller finds like a really strong biblical justification for

00:09:55.380 | work as an intrinsic good.

00:09:59.700 | This is quite different than I think a lot of the anti-ambition, anti-productivity type

00:10:06.300 | philosophy that's going on now, which sees work as mainly like an exploitative activity

00:10:13.540 | to be tolerated at best and in a utopian society to be minimized.

00:10:17.940 | Keller comes at it basically saying God worked in Genesis and that's an argument for work

00:10:25.980 | as important.

00:10:26.980 | He also has a reading of Genesis that says the seventh day of rest.

00:10:31.340 | So God worked and then he rest is basically a biblical mythological recipe for human satisfaction

00:10:37.780 | in which you have the seasonality you need to, you need to work, but then you need to

00:10:42.340 | not let work be all consuming.

00:10:43.460 | You need to step back and rest and it's in that dance.

00:10:45.500 | And that's what God did during the first seven days.

00:10:47.420 | And that's supposed to be an instruction manual for life.

00:10:49.500 | And you see what Adam and Eve and like basically Genesis is like a whole manual for work.

00:10:53.860 | I mean, I think, you know, Karl Marx's head would explode if he read this because it's,

00:10:59.220 | you know, it's, it seems really different than a lot of sort of economic materialistic

00:11:05.660 | analyses from today, but wait, cool.

00:11:07.900 | It's cool to see.

00:11:09.300 | I love people taking big, like big swing thoughts on things that are drawing from interesting

00:11:13.620 | sources.

00:11:14.620 | So that was an interesting one.

00:11:17.020 | Then I read the abolition of man by C.S. Lewis.

00:11:24.520 | It's arguable.

00:11:25.740 | This is a book.

00:11:27.900 | I thought it was a book.

00:11:28.900 | I read it on Kindle.

00:11:29.900 | It's really a collection of three lectures delivered during the world war II.

00:11:33.420 | So it's pretty short, but let's call it a book.

00:11:36.860 | And I forgot how I came across this.

00:11:38.420 | I came across it somewhere.

00:11:39.420 | I was like, I should just read it.

00:11:40.940 | I just bought it and read it.

00:11:41.940 | You know, it took me two days just sort of reading it.

00:11:44.180 | It's not a long thing.

00:11:46.020 | And it's interesting.

00:11:47.820 | So supposedly this is this book quotation marks collection of speeches is, was very

00:11:53.700 | influential in the 20th century.

00:11:56.220 | It's a, it's an argument for values, basically having rooted values on which you build cultural

00:12:03.460 | soul social systems.

00:12:05.060 | It's an argument against subjectivism.

00:12:08.380 | This notion of all value is constructed.

00:12:11.420 | So it's basically like a preemptive rejection of what 30 years later would emerge in French

00:12:17.220 | postmodernism before that even existed.

00:12:20.220 | So I'm sure this book is not well appreciated by the modern Academy, but I think that's

00:12:27.100 | what made it interesting to read.

00:12:29.220 | And it's, it's, it's jargon free and very approachable, but I mean, you can basically

00:12:33.860 | really crudely summarize the argument.

00:12:35.740 | I hate to summarize it crudely, but he's basically making an argument that we have to be careful

00:12:42.060 | of the heartless man.

00:12:45.220 | The, the, the, by the heartless man, what he means is, or no, the man, not the heartless

00:12:50.740 | man, that's not the right wording.

00:12:51.860 | No, the right wording was the man without chest.

00:12:55.340 | But what he means by that is heartless.

00:12:58.040 | He says without a foundation of values, which the heart you, so in other words, like the

00:13:05.380 | values that you have, these moral intimations about these moral intuitions, that this seems

00:13:09.100 | right.

00:13:10.100 | You're just trying to use your brain to think through ethics and mediate, like, and control

00:13:16.540 | your gut, which is like, let's go, I'm mad.

00:13:18.740 | Let's go kill this person.

00:13:19.820 | I want that to have your, your animal instincts.

00:13:22.620 | And if you try to just tame that with just your brain, let's just come up with what makes

00:13:27.060 | sense from scratch.

00:13:29.540 | Let's do the, let's be like Kant and just try to construct a moral system from scratch.

00:13:33.820 | He's arguing that's not going to work.

00:13:35.620 | You have to ground it all in what you feel in your heart, this sort of these underlying

00:13:38.700 | truths.

00:13:40.460 | Lewis is a real, obviously a Christian apologist, but he writes this book outside of the context

00:13:44.220 | of Christianity.

00:13:45.220 | So he's trying to be religion agnostic.

00:13:47.380 | I mean, it's interesting.

00:13:48.380 | I mean, it's something for sure.

00:13:51.260 | I'm surprised we don't read it like it in a sort of standard, heavily postmodern influence

00:13:55.420 | academic culture, be a nice thing to assign to people to is like, and here is like a,

00:13:59.260 | like a very straightforward standard critique.

00:14:00.940 | And this is the, this is the tension between those two, the tension between those two things.

00:14:04.620 | Because of course the postmodern view would say there is no underlying value system that

00:14:11.020 | you're picking up through your metaphorical heart.

00:14:13.500 | It's all just constructed.

00:14:15.420 | It's all just systems that are constructed to support various supremacies and power relations.

00:14:20.060 | And C.S. Lewis, if he had been alive, would probably have an issue with that.

00:14:24.260 | So it was interesting to read, quick to read, no jargon, very approachable.

00:14:28.220 | All right, final book.

00:14:29.780 | And I mentioned this last week in last week's episodes.

00:14:33.540 | I actually drew some insights from this book was John McPhee's the fourth draft.

00:14:38.940 | So I'll point you towards last week's episodes.

00:14:41.140 | I think maybe one 85.

00:14:44.660 | I got in, I got into some details of some things I learned from the book.

00:14:47.400 | It's great.

00:14:48.400 | It's a John McPhee book about writing a little bit of memoir, a lot of craft, very interesting.

00:14:56.860 | You'll be impressed by McPhee.

00:14:58.260 | After you read it, you'll also be insanely jealous.

00:15:00.540 | Like, wait a second.

00:15:02.100 | You could have spent eight months just thinking about an article and then, you know, maybe

00:15:08.380 | at some point write it when it all feels right.

00:15:10.620 | Like it feels like a very, it feels like a very cool life.

00:15:12.780 | Like I can't be jealous.

00:15:13.780 | I can't complain.

00:15:14.780 | I write for the New Yorker.

00:15:15.780 | They're very generous in giving me flexibility and timing when I need it.

00:15:19.340 | And so I'm not, I'm not complaining.

00:15:21.740 | I'm saying this awesome.

00:15:23.720 | And John McPhee's awesome.

00:15:24.720 | It's a cool book.

00:15:25.720 | So if you're into nonfiction writing, you can get in a look inside the mind of a master.

00:15:29.860 | All right.

00:15:30.860 | So that's it for my five books.

00:15:32.860 | People like to know what you read.

00:15:33.980 | Give us one book, Jesse.

00:15:34.980 | What's one book you've read recently we should know about.

00:15:38.100 | I'm almost done with 4,000 weeks.

00:15:40.060 | Pulled it off your bookshelf actually.

00:15:41.700 | Oh yeah.

00:15:42.700 | All right.

00:15:43.700 | Well, what's your almost done with it review?

00:15:46.020 | I like it.

00:15:47.020 | I've been, you know, thinking about it.

00:15:49.100 | I think about time a lot anyway, but it's, it's good.

00:15:53.460 | I mean, you hear it mentioned all the time.

00:15:55.340 | Yeah.

00:15:56.340 | Ferris talks about it.

00:15:57.340 | You talk about it.

00:15:58.340 | Other podcasts talk about it.

00:15:59.340 | Yeah.

00:16:00.340 | Yeah.

00:16:01.340 | Yeah.

00:16:02.340 | I mean, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's great.

00:16:03.340 | Ferris always forgets his name.

00:16:04.340 | Do you notice that?

00:16:05.340 | What does he call him?

00:16:06.340 | He just always like 4,000 weeks and.

00:16:07.340 | Well, I messed up the book on Ferris's show, so I called it 4,000, like 40,000 days or

00:16:14.780 | something.

00:16:15.780 | So Oliver, we're all sorry.

00:16:16.780 | I don't, there's nothing particularly hard to remember about your name or the, actually

00:16:20.740 | a book title, that's a number can be difficult.

00:16:22.780 | Once you're like in the four digits, that can be difficult.

00:16:25.100 | So I'm going to give myself a, give myself a break.

00:16:28.460 | But yeah, that's a great book.

00:16:29.980 | It's blurbed by me.

00:16:30.980 | So, you know, it's good.

00:16:31.980 | Yup.

00:16:32.980 | That's how you can tell.

00:16:33.980 | All right.

00:16:34.980 | So we got some calls, right, Jesse?

00:16:35.980 | We sure do.

00:16:36.980 | All right.

00:16:37.980 | What do we got first?

00:16:38.980 | All right.

00:16:39.980 | First call.

00:16:40.980 | He actually, speaking of which, he came across you and your Ferris interview a couple of

00:16:44.460 | months ago.

00:16:45.460 | And he has a question about your frameworks.

00:16:47.660 | Hi Cal, this is Mike.

00:16:51.260 | I've been listening to your podcast ever since your interview with Tim Ferris.

00:16:56.380 | I'd be interesting knowing the origins or the frameworks and how they were built since

00:17:02.900 | some of them seem familiar based on my work with the seven habits of highly effective

00:17:09.260 | people from the nineties.

00:17:11.260 | Thanks.

00:17:12.260 | Well, Mike, it's a good question.

00:17:15.940 | Covey is very influential, I would say on my thinking.

00:17:21.020 | Seven habits of highly effective people, by the way, has sold, and I believe this is the

00:17:24.780 | official term, all the copies.

00:17:28.260 | It's like 20 million copies or something.

00:17:30.380 | It's a crazily good selling book.

00:17:34.680 | And one of my arguments is the reason why that book sold so well is not because it was

00:17:38.580 | the first book to talk about productivity or time management.

00:17:43.320 | Those books have been around.

00:17:44.320 | In fact, I have in my collection, I went back and tried to find the earliest business oriented

00:17:50.580 | time management book that I could.

00:17:52.220 | And I actually have, I don't know if it's a first edition, but it's a 1950s edition

00:17:56.740 | of a book that's called, I don't know, time, something time power or something like

00:18:02.740 | this, but it's like one of the very first books to introduce the idea that time is something

00:18:09.380 | you have to have a strategy for managing.

00:18:11.180 | So this idea had been around for a while, seven habits of highly effective people.

00:18:14.540 | This is the eighties, I think late eighties.

00:18:16.220 | I don't think it's early nineties.

00:18:17.220 | I think it's late eighties.

00:18:18.220 | I could be wrong on that, but somewhere around them.

00:18:20.260 | And it came in and sold all the copies.

00:18:21.860 | And I think it's because it was not that it was a big time management book, but because

00:18:25.860 | it was connecting productivity and time management to values and the life well lived.

00:18:31.800 | People miss this about Cubby.

00:18:33.220 | They're like, Oh, it's a big seven.

00:18:35.760 | So it must be like tips, you know, one of those type of books, 19 ways to maximize your

00:18:42.980 | effectiveness, right?

00:18:44.020 | So it's dismissed by people who don't know it well as a tip guide, something that got

00:18:49.540 | a really good title, just like people will dismiss Tim Ferriss by being like the four

00:18:54.140 | hour work week is just like this really catchy name as if like that name alone is going to

00:18:58.340 | sell 4 million books, you know, like as if Ferris wasn't touching on something deep and

00:19:02.340 | what Cubby gets to in that book.

00:19:03.660 | And which I think is Mike is pointing out is reflected in my deep life philosophy is

00:19:08.100 | he has one of his key ideas is start with the end in mind.

00:19:12.540 | He has you figure out what your values are, what matters to you in your life, and then

00:19:16.900 | use that trickle down from that to actually guide how you execute in your life.

00:19:23.620 | And if you read first things first, which is the followup book, which elaborates on

00:19:27.160 | some of these ideas, he gets really specific about like, what are the roles in your life?

00:19:31.740 | You're a father, you're an executive at this company, you're a leader at your church or

00:19:36.300 | like whatever they were.

00:19:38.120 | And for each of these, you're trying to figure out what are your values and what are your

00:19:40.780 | important and then you work backwards from that to make sure that those values are reflected

00:19:44.860 | in how you're spending your time.

00:19:46.260 | And this is a lot of Stephen Cubby.

00:19:48.340 | A lot of it is how do you allocate your time to support the things that you care most about

00:19:52.980 | so that your life is one that reflects your values.

00:19:56.180 | That's why that book sold all the copies.

00:19:58.540 | Because this landed in the eighties when we were in this weird interstitial period out

00:20:04.780 | of the post-war boom, just out of the Carter era malaise.

00:20:09.740 | It was very materialistic.

00:20:11.740 | This was the era of Wall Street.

00:20:13.120 | This was the era of high consumerism and people were adrift.

00:20:17.780 | And then he came in and said, we should care about what you want to do, what's important

00:20:20.820 | to you in your life.

00:20:21.820 | And that should percolate all the way down to what am I doing today?

00:20:25.440 | And so I think that's why that book is effective.

00:20:27.680 | Clearly that influenced me.

00:20:29.880 | The deep life owes its foundations to that Cubby-like perspective.

00:20:35.880 | Start with the end in mind and then use that to work backwards to engineer your life.

00:20:39.680 | Of course, all the details that matter, I'm much more systems oriented.

00:20:42.800 | I've sort of merged some Covey value-based thinking with some David Allen systems-based

00:20:49.080 | thinking.

00:20:50.080 | I'm kind of merging those two worlds and then thrown in some neuroscience and psychology

00:20:55.080 | to boot.

00:20:56.080 | So I've created my own brew, but I do give Covey a lot of credit.

00:20:58.440 | So Mike, that's a good point you noticed because I think that's accurate.

00:21:04.960 | Certainly Covey played a role.

00:21:07.280 | All right, before we go to the next question, I figure we should probably take a moment

00:21:13.800 | to thank one or two of the sponsors that allows us to keep talking about these things.

00:21:19.440 | I have a stack of sponsor reads on the ground.

00:21:26.680 | That's how you know we're a high class production here.

00:21:29.040 | Okay.

00:21:30.040 | I had thrown them on the ground in a fit of anger.

00:21:34.040 | I threw my sponsor reads on the ground, but I now have them back.

00:21:36.400 | But I'll tell you what's one sponsor I'm not angry about, but actually quite excited about.

00:21:40.840 | And that is Workable.

00:21:43.060 | As we talked about in Monday's episode, there are a few things more important in running

00:21:49.040 | your company or business than hiring the right people.

00:21:53.360 | I know this from experience.

00:21:56.560 | There has been nothing worse for our company than when I hired Jesse.

00:22:00.920 | It's all been downhill.

00:22:02.720 | You know why?

00:22:03.720 | Because I didn't use Workable.

00:22:04.720 | This is what happens.

00:22:06.280 | I end up with an old man, 40 plus years old, the fourth decade of his life, not a young

00:22:15.280 | go-getter with energy.

00:22:18.280 | And that's because I didn't use Workable.

00:22:20.160 | So that's the-

00:22:21.160 | You used the net.

00:22:22.160 | I put a net in the bookstore next to business advice books.

00:22:25.960 | If someone picked up a Stephen Covey book, it was like a snare release.

00:22:31.040 | And then the net caught you.

00:22:32.720 | The first two people that sprung on, I ended up accidentally strangling with the net.

00:22:37.720 | So then, but I perfected it by the time I got Jesse.

00:22:41.480 | No, Jesse is not, he is a valued part of the team, but he would have been even easier to

00:22:45.720 | hire if I had had Workable.

00:22:48.400 | Workable makes it easy to hire.

00:22:50.720 | They do a lot of things to make the process go smoothly.

00:22:53.960 | So you get your job posting out to all the top job boards with a 200 with just one click.

00:22:58.240 | But then, and this is the key to Workable, they have all these tools to make what happens

00:23:02.480 | next more efficient.

00:23:03.960 | They have video interview tools.

00:23:06.440 | You can schedule interviews automatically with tools, e-signature tools, like all the

00:23:11.240 | stuff that's annoying.

00:23:12.240 | The 100 back and forth emails Workable makes faster.

00:23:16.320 | So you don't have to waste time on the details.

00:23:18.640 | You can focus on just finding the right people.

00:23:20.520 | So you can start hiring today with a risk-free 15 day trial.

00:23:24.400 | And if you hire during the trial, it won't cost you a thing.

00:23:28.040 | Just go to workable.com/podcast to start hiring.

00:23:32.760 | Speaking of hiring, if you are worried about potentially being, let's say, accidentally

00:23:37.320 | strangled in my net at the bookstore, you probably need some life insurance.

00:23:42.360 | And even if you're not worried about that, you definitely need life insurance.

00:23:45.600 | Okay?

00:23:46.600 | If someone is relying on you for financial support, whether it's a child, aging parent

00:23:49.840 | or business partner, you need life insurance.

00:23:52.360 | This is stressful for people because they know it, but they're not quite sure how to

00:23:56.280 | start.

00:23:57.280 | Where do you even go to find life insurance?

00:23:58.780 | How do I know how much I should pay?

00:24:01.360 | Your answer is PolicyGenius.

00:24:05.080 | You go to policygenius.com.

00:24:08.020 | You answer a few questions.

00:24:11.040 | And in minutes, you will get quotes personalized just to you from multiple different companies.

00:24:17.240 | You can compare the prices and get a good price.

00:24:20.400 | The savings here are non-trivial.

00:24:22.280 | You could save up to 50% or more on your life insurance by comparing quotes using PolicyGenius.

00:24:28.600 | They also have licensed experts to help you to answer your questions to make sure that

00:24:33.440 | you are getting unbiased advice from these independent advocates.

00:24:37.480 | So this has solved your problem.

00:24:38.680 | You're stressed out about life insurance, policygenius.com, you're set.

00:24:44.820 | Independent advice, compare quotes, save 50%, takes a few minutes, and you're good.

00:24:49.940 | No extra fees, thousands of five-star reviews.

00:24:53.080 | They don't sell your info.

00:24:54.620 | They're the people you should use for life insurance.

00:24:56.520 | So head to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you

00:25:01.720 | could save.

00:25:02.720 | All right.

00:25:03.720 | So I don't know, Jesse, maybe we should make a note.

00:25:10.800 | Warning people about being strangled in a net.

00:25:12.760 | Maybe that's not how we should start our ad reads.

00:25:14.640 | I'm learning on the fly here, but this is my guess.

00:25:20.200 | We're working on it.

00:25:21.200 | I didn't actually strangle people in a net, and PolicyGenius is great.

00:25:24.840 | All right, so now what I have is a giant, this is a giant pile of papers.

00:25:29.760 | We're so old-fashioned here.

00:25:30.760 | So people who are watching the video just see that I am swamped in paper, essentially.

00:25:38.160 | Everything here is run on paper.

00:25:39.760 | I guess that's what you'd expect, perhaps, from someone like me, a digital minimalist.

00:25:45.800 | But I think we're good.

00:25:48.240 | All papers have been organized.

00:25:49.240 | Jesse, let's do another question.

00:25:50.240 | What do we have here?

00:25:51.240 | - Hi, this is exciting.

00:25:52.240 | We have a pro golfer who's a fan of you, and he's been time blocking during his work and

00:25:57.280 | training sessions, but he has a question of whether he should time block outside of that.

00:26:02.440 | - Hi, Cal.

00:26:03.440 | My name is Naveed Kaur.

00:26:05.440 | I'm a professional golfer.

00:26:08.240 | I have started using time blocking after reading your book, Deep Work.

00:26:14.800 | And I just wanted to ask, do I use time blocking only for my work, or can I use it for the

00:26:28.000 | other small things throughout the day?

00:26:30.600 | For example, when I'm practicing or training, during that time, I don't have a problem with

00:26:42.360 | focusing on the target hand, but otherwise, like if I'm on the way to the shower, let's

00:26:50.040 | say, and I'll just stop, pick up the phone, and start scrolling.

00:26:56.200 | So do I use time blocking to schedule, like I'm going to shower from this time to this

00:27:04.720 | time that I'm going to like work out from this time to this time?

00:27:14.480 | I hope that's good.

00:27:18.960 | - All right.

00:27:22.360 | Naveed Kaur.

00:27:23.360 | Jesse, we should look him up.

00:27:25.480 | - I did, yeah.

00:27:26.920 | - Yeah.

00:27:27.920 | - He's on tour.

00:27:28.920 | - Yeah?

00:27:29.920 | - Yeah.

00:27:30.920 | - PGA?

00:27:31.920 | - Yeah.

00:27:32.920 | - So Jesse knows all of his success, the time blocking?

00:27:37.560 | Is that a fair read of the question?

00:27:40.440 | - Probably.

00:27:41.440 | - I think we can count that.

00:27:43.680 | - I mean, what you do talk about does apply to training.

00:27:47.000 | - Yeah.

00:27:48.000 | Well, I think I'm popular in golf after Mickelson was preaching digital minimalism at the Masters

00:27:56.120 | a few years ago.

00:27:57.120 | Mickelson was named, he talked about me and Holiday, right?

00:28:02.400 | He's like, "Newport and Holiday's books have been really useful to me."

00:28:05.320 | And he was having a resurgence then.

00:28:06.560 | So I think that seeded some of my work among professional golfers.

00:28:13.520 | That's a hard, man, can you imagine a harder sport?

00:28:15.800 | Because if you are a professional basketball player or baseball player, like you have to

00:28:20.560 | be, of course, just freakishly athletic.

00:28:23.440 | And like most people can't get there.

00:28:24.600 | But if you're at, let's just say, what is the hardest sport once you have normalized

00:28:29.280 | for you have the right genetics and training that you're playing it, right?

00:28:33.040 | So not what's the hardest sport to get into, but like the hardest sport once you're there

00:28:37.520 | to perform.

00:28:38.520 | And if you're doing football and basketball, it's very hard, but it's not like if you lose

00:28:47.600 | your concentration for five seconds, like the game has been lost.

00:28:51.600 | You know, like you'd be like, "You know what?

00:28:54.000 | I ran a bad route.

00:28:55.240 | I'm a cornerback and I lost a step."

00:28:57.960 | But it's fine.

00:28:58.960 | They didn't even throw it to them.

00:28:59.960 | Or worst case, like they threw it to them and the secondary had to tackle them and they

00:29:02.080 | gained some yards.

00:29:03.160 | But if you're a golfer, that's your game.

00:29:06.640 | You lose your concentration, you hit into the water, you're not winning the tournament.

00:29:10.360 | You know?

00:29:11.360 | Or if you're a basketball player, it's like, "I missed a shot."

00:29:13.480 | It's fine.

00:29:14.480 | You get 50 more attempts.

00:29:15.480 | Baseball is somewhere in between because now it's like these at-bats, but you can have

00:29:19.400 | a bad swing.

00:29:20.400 | But anyways, it just seems like the hardest sport of professional sports to actually do

00:29:25.040 | once you're good enough to do it.

00:29:27.080 | It's like the one I would least like to be in.

00:29:28.520 | >> Well, one of the things that happens with these guys that are so good is they get so

00:29:33.040 | many birdies.

00:29:34.120 | So the birdies can make up for a mishap, like a bogey on a certain hole and things.

00:29:38.960 | >> Like a bogey, but you can, you see these guys melt.

00:29:41.680 | >> Oh, yeah.

00:29:42.680 | >> Yeah.

00:29:43.680 | Triple bogey.

00:29:44.680 | That's right.

00:29:45.680 | So I mean, I guess they have some leeway.

00:29:46.680 | You know, my uncle wrote a cool book about this.

00:29:49.600 | John Paul Newport wrote a book when I was a kid called The Fine Green Line.

00:29:54.600 | So he was a very good golfer, and he made a go at trying to get on the tournament and

00:29:59.600 | wrote a book about it.

00:30:00.600 | So he was like doing the, what they call it, Q school or the qualification tournaments.

00:30:05.760 | Because he was like a really, really good golfer.

00:30:09.200 | And the fine green line that he talks about in that book, it's mental.

00:30:13.840 | So it's like, yeah, he's a very athletic guy.

00:30:16.080 | He was a star quarterback at Harvard, you know, like athletic guy.

00:30:19.880 | And he complains, like, I have the physical ability to do the shots that a top golfer

00:30:27.000 | has.

00:30:28.000 | I can, I mean, not like winning the tournament, but like of a PGA player, like I could have

00:30:32.800 | a PGA caliber round.

00:30:35.040 | But the biggest, there's a lot of people that that's true of, like very athletic people

00:30:39.040 | who train really hard.

00:30:40.040 | It was the mental.

00:30:41.780 | Because you can't make a mistake.

00:30:43.320 | It's like, I know I can do it, but I have the next four hours, like I can't make a mistake,

00:30:47.680 | you know?

00:30:48.680 | And it was just so then that was what the book was about.

00:30:50.720 | That's the fine green line.

00:30:51.720 | Who can, who can put up with that mental pressure?

00:30:55.880 | Who can Tiger Woods it and just be like lasers?

00:30:58.400 | Well, actually, when this episode airs, the Masters will begin and a lot of times you're

00:31:04.360 | going to see the storyline of the people competing.

00:31:07.880 | So that's where you see like, you know, where those errors make extreme, you know, difference

00:31:13.040 | in the thing.

00:31:14.040 | But in terms of qualifying and earning some money and stuff like that, like getting on

00:31:18.160 | tour, like these guys just did so many birdies and sometimes that can make up for the birdies

00:31:23.360 | can make up for the bogeys.

00:31:24.360 | But like even the hit the birdies like just consistently and like to read every green.

00:31:29.280 | And I mean, you see it in the top players.

00:31:30.920 | They're just, you know, I'm going to destroy this hole and I'm going to destroy you and

00:31:35.840 | I'm going to make it was like Woods in his prime.

00:31:38.520 | I'm going to make this putt and like from over here, like I just, this is mine.

00:31:42.760 | I own it.

00:31:43.760 | This green is mine.

00:31:44.760 | Just like that, that energy.

00:31:45.760 | All right.

00:31:46.760 | But Navid's question.

00:31:47.760 | So here's the thing.

00:31:49.720 | Professional athletes, Navid, you're a professional athlete.

00:31:51.480 | You're in it.

00:31:52.480 | You're in an unusual situation because like a lot of what you do is training, which is

00:31:56.200 | structured for you.

00:31:57.520 | I mean, it's effectively time blocked, but time blocked by your coaching and training

00:32:00.880 | regimes I'm assuming.

00:32:02.800 | And so in that type of job, really kind of my job is I have this like really prescribed

00:32:08.880 | training.

00:32:10.240 | I would say you have to basically invent what I would call a pseudo job.

00:32:15.360 | And I would divide my life into now three things.

00:32:17.800 | So most people it's like I'm at work or I'm not at work, but for you, it's like I'm training.

00:32:21.560 | I'm in my pseudo job, which is like administrative stuff that needs to get done for your life

00:32:26.280 | to function.

00:32:27.280 | And then I'm in leisure.

00:32:28.280 | And I would differentiate between those three things.

00:32:31.280 | Your training is already highly structured.

00:32:32.840 | I assume the pseudo jobs, you're like, technically I'm not training.

00:32:36.840 | I'm not on the course.

00:32:37.840 | I'm not in the gym.

00:32:38.840 | I'm not going to work.

00:32:39.840 | I need to pay these bills and get this information to my sponsor and go by the bank.

00:32:42.960 | Time block that because you don't want to waste too much time on the pseudo job.

00:32:47.880 | Time blocking is great for this.

00:32:48.920 | How do I make the most out of the time I have?

00:32:50.480 | So yes, time block your pseudo, your pseudo job, and then have a clear distinction between

00:32:55.160 | that time and leisure time and don't time block the leisure time because you have to

00:33:00.200 | have unblocked time or you're going to burn out.

00:33:04.180 | But if you don't block the administrative kind of work stuff you need to get done for

00:33:07.640 | your life to function, it's going to eat up all your time.

00:33:09.720 | And it's going to be a source of distraction.

00:33:12.200 | It's going to maybe even hurt you on the course.

00:33:15.220 | So you need a tri part type definition of your life, training, pseudo job and leisure.

00:33:23.640 | Time block to pseudo be much more flexible in the leisure.

00:33:28.840 | All right, that's cool.

00:33:31.360 | Professional athletes.

00:33:32.360 | Who do we got next?

00:33:34.800 | Okay, next up we have a question about full time studying, but basically that's his job

00:33:40.840 | is studying and he does it eight hours a day and he's got a question about that.

00:33:44.640 | Hi Tom, I'm a second time software developer intern.

00:33:51.640 | My job now is to basically study full time and I'm working from home so I can decide

00:33:59.040 | how to structure my schedule.

00:34:04.960 | So my question is, do you think studying is considered a deep work?

00:34:11.200 | Because I know that the maximum deep work hours per day is around three to four, but

00:34:17.120 | now I have to study around eight hours.

00:34:21.020 | So do you think this is deep work and this is possible to do?

00:34:25.880 | And how will you structure full time studying?

00:34:32.960 | You know, this is the thing that's going around now.

00:34:35.580 | I'm not very internet savvy, but when I talk to people who are more YouTube-y and kind

00:34:42.080 | of know what's going on, there's this whole culture meme out there, especially on YouTube

00:34:47.960 | of these super studiers that like, look, I'm going to study for 12 hours.

00:34:51.960 | They have like a time lapse camera on them doing it.

00:34:54.920 | And there's a lot of this out there.

00:34:56.080 | I guess it's hustle porn, which again is a whole thing I don't know much about.

00:35:00.720 | But suppose on Instagram and on YouTube, there's a bunch of this like, you got a inspirational,

00:35:06.680 | over the top hustle type affirmations or videos or whatever.

00:35:10.800 | And this is one of them.

00:35:11.800 | Like I study for 12 hours.

00:35:12.800 | People are like, my God, that's awesome.

00:35:13.960 | Could you imagine?

00:35:15.160 | And I think that whole thing is nonsense.

00:35:17.800 | You should not be studying eight hours a day.

00:35:20.620 | And you're probably not doing productive work for eight hours a day.

00:35:24.120 | There's nothing that requires that much studying.

00:35:26.240 | I think it's, and I don't mean to be accusatory here, but I think it's often like oddly performative

00:35:33.920 | and I don't quite understand it.

00:35:36.640 | So yes, studying done right is deep work.

00:35:38.080 | It's cognitively demanding.

00:35:39.080 | Three or four hours in a day is probably a good limit.

00:35:42.580 | What you should do with studying is make sure that you're doing the actions that actually

00:35:47.400 | matter.

00:35:48.400 | What do you need to learn?

00:35:49.400 | What's the best way to actually learn it?

00:35:51.400 | So you want your energy to go where it actually matters.

00:35:54.040 | Usually for studying that's active recall.

00:35:56.120 | So you're trying to recall the information from scratch without looking at notes.

00:35:59.200 | That's what helps stick it in your head.

00:36:01.540 | Be wary of transfer theory, study the actual things you need to know.

00:36:05.520 | The specific knowledge you need, not kind of knowledge in general.

00:36:08.620 | So in the specific form you're going to be doing it.

00:36:11.400 | Sample tests are always better than just reading textbooks.

00:36:13.480 | Like yeah, these types of things matter.

00:36:15.300 | You can read like my book, How to Become a Straight A Student for more details about

00:36:18.560 | study tactics that really matter for multiple different types of courses.

00:36:22.480 | You can look at the first two years of my blog at calnewport.com.

00:36:26.440 | The first two years I really focused on advanced study tactics.

00:36:30.440 | So there's a lot you can do, but you should be doing two, three, maybe four hours in two

00:36:33.800 | sessions.

00:36:34.800 | That's it.

00:36:35.800 | And then do other stuff with the rest of your time.

00:36:37.000 | I mean, I really think when you see a lot of this, I study eight hours a day, I study

00:36:40.440 | 10 hours a day.

00:36:41.980 | Part of it's performative.

00:36:42.980 | Part of it is guilt.

00:36:45.160 | Like I'm somehow not properly putting in the effort to live up to my potential.

00:36:50.720 | If I'm not just doing this all day, this should be like a normal job.

00:36:53.660 | But I'm saying put that aside.

00:36:56.160 | You're not going to effectively study that long.

00:36:58.300 | Use good techniques, a reasonable amount of time each day, and then use the rest of your

00:37:02.520 | time for something else that's important, that's meaningful, that's values driven.

00:37:06.800 | Don't be one of those hustle porn guys on YouTube that's like, look, I'm an hour 12

00:37:10.080 | of studying and everyone's like, wow, how do you do it?

00:37:12.480 | That's not impressive.

00:37:13.480 | It's weird.

00:37:14.480 | It's a David Blaine stunt.

00:37:15.480 | That's not the right way to learn things.

00:37:16.840 | All right.

00:37:18.440 | So hopefully that's a relief for this person asking the question and not like an accusation,

00:37:25.000 | but I've seen these things.

00:37:26.080 | It's a whole thing.

00:37:27.080 | Like it's time-lapse videos of people just studying like ridiculous hours.

00:37:31.600 | And I guess it's supposed to be impressive or something like that.

00:37:34.360 | But the video is getting a lot of views.

00:37:36.000 | Yeah, maybe we should do it.

00:37:37.920 | Yeah, we should do.

00:37:40.360 | I would be, I can't see, look, I'm lazy.

00:37:42.440 | That's why I do all this like focus and be organized because I can't just like grind

00:37:45.880 | it out or whatever.

00:37:46.880 | So it'd be a pretty, pretty boring video.

00:37:49.440 | Well, you have 17 jobs.

00:37:50.440 | I don't think you're lazy, but you just have a lot of those things.

00:37:52.760 | I just, I'm not a good grinder.

00:37:54.560 | Yeah.

00:37:55.560 | All right.

00:37:56.560 | What do we got here?

00:37:58.720 | Next question.

00:37:59.720 | The next question is about embracing boredom.

00:38:01.920 | Howdy, Cal.

00:38:04.080 | Erica here.

00:38:06.120 | I've been listening to some of your older episodes again, and you would talk about boredom

00:38:15.200 | at times.

00:38:16.480 | I'm curious how you are bored.

00:38:20.280 | You read a phone book, watch clouds in the sky.

00:38:24.280 | I'm kidding.

00:38:25.400 | But I am curious about what you do to be bored so that way you can embrace the boredom as

00:38:33.920 | opposed to feel like you want to climb up walls and escape.

00:38:41.600 | Love your work.

00:38:42.600 | Thanks a lot.

00:38:43.600 | Take care.

00:38:44.600 | Bye.

00:38:45.720 | I'm curious about this, but have you heard of these podcasts, Jesse, where it's people

00:38:49.200 | reading the phone book?

00:38:50.640 | No.

00:38:51.640 | They're popular.

00:38:52.640 | They're popular.

00:38:53.640 | So my wife and I were listening to an NPR thing that was talking about these podcasts.

00:38:58.640 | Like this is a real thing.

00:38:59.640 | You could probably find one if you search.

00:39:01.160 | Like it'll read from a phone book for like a couple hours.

00:39:06.800 | And with like a nice voice, a good mic.

00:39:09.600 | And NPR was trying to argue this long, complicated argument about like overstimulation and blah,

00:39:15.400 | blah, blah.

00:39:16.400 | And no, it's people trying to fall asleep.

00:39:19.800 | So some people like to hear just a voice just kind of reading.

00:39:25.080 | There's no actual, the content triggers nothing in your brain, but you're just kind of like

00:39:29.680 | hearing it.

00:39:30.680 | And for some people find it relaxing.

00:39:31.680 | So there's like a lot of these podcasts.

00:39:32.920 | I mean, some of it might be ASMR too, but there's a lot of these podcasts and it's really just

00:39:36.840 | people reading.

00:39:37.840 | Which, by the way, would be much easier for us to produce.

00:39:41.040 | All this nonsense.

00:39:43.040 | I mean, I'd still have you in the studio.

00:39:46.440 | So we would just cut to you.

00:39:47.440 | I would just be reading names.

00:39:49.480 | Like I could still make my 200K a month.

00:39:51.880 | Exactly.

00:39:52.880 | I'd be like Erica, Alex, Donald, Jesse.

00:39:59.440 | What do you think?

00:40:00.440 | You'd be like, good names, good names.

00:40:03.440 | Then I would just go back and keep reading names.

00:40:06.240 | It'd be easier.

00:40:08.240 | But what was the question?

00:40:11.260 | How do I embrace boredom?

00:40:12.260 | Okay.

00:40:13.260 | So here's the thing about boredom.

00:40:15.400 | I'm not a boredom booster.

00:40:19.220 | So I argue in deep work embrace boredom, but I don't argue like, let's go seek out staring

00:40:25.080 | at the wall and that like we're going to get inside or whatever.

00:40:28.600 | As Erica was hinting at here, the reason why I think you should become comfortable and

00:40:33.040 | familiar with boredom is that otherwise your mind is going to demand stimuli.

00:40:38.400 | When you're doing something like deep work, which is devoid of a lot of diverse stimuli,

00:40:43.560 | just doing the same thing, it'll be comfortable with it.

00:40:46.660 | And if you're not, if you always look at your phone when you're bored, your mind won't tolerate

00:40:50.240 | the lack of stimuli and doing something like deep work.

00:40:52.760 | But here's the thing.

00:40:53.760 | My answer is hidden in like my solution is hidden in that answer.

00:40:57.620 | Like the reason why I say embrace boredom is so that when you're doing deep work, which

00:41:00.600 | is boring, you won't feel that urge to look at something else.

00:41:04.720 | So that means the type of quote unquote boredom I seek is actually just doing monofocus things

00:41:10.320 | that can be of value and have interest, but just aren't super stimuli that don't have

00:41:15.240 | a lot of stimuli.

00:41:16.240 | Right.

00:41:17.240 | So just reading for a long time, it can be really interesting, but then there's also

00:41:19.840 | parts of your mind's like, can we look at something else?

00:41:22.040 | Can we look at our phone?

00:41:23.800 | And you're like, you don't, you know, so reading can do it.

00:41:27.320 | Walking is another big one for me.

00:41:29.560 | Don't put on the headphones when I do the walk.

00:41:32.360 | Now I'm not, again, I'm not trying to induce boredom.

00:41:34.520 | I'm not meditating.

00:41:35.520 | I'm not staring at the sidewalk.

00:41:37.320 | I'm thinking about things.

00:41:38.600 | I'm reflecting, I'm trying to have ideas, but I'm avoiding the really highly super palatable

00:41:44.920 | digital distractions.

00:41:47.000 | Going into a store, you know, just going to the store and see what's going on.

00:41:50.580 | So for me, this is how I'm defining boredom is absence of highly palatable digital distraction.

00:41:59.340 | So it doesn't mean you have to be doing nothing.

00:42:02.560 | To me, it just means you have to be doing something that you could have done 25 years

00:42:06.040 | ago.

00:42:07.040 | It's like you're trying to simulate whatever, 1995, or I'm not reading from the phone book,

00:42:12.360 | but I can't look at my phone while I'm waiting in line, you know, or I'm on a walk.

00:42:17.080 | I don't want my walk, man.

00:42:18.720 | And so that's what I'd recommend for everyone is that on a regular basis, you want to do

00:42:21.680 | things where you've not, you have no highly stimulating digital distractions, even though

00:42:26.280 | you feel the urge for them.

00:42:28.200 | Like, can't I just take this out?

00:42:30.840 | Even watching TV can accomplish this.

00:42:33.760 | I'm watching TV and my instinct is, can I look at my phone at the same time?

00:42:39.320 | I'm not getting enough stimuli and you don't.

00:42:42.580 | So you know, again, I'm not staring at clouds.

00:42:44.600 | I'm not reading a phone book.

00:42:45.600 | I'm watching TV.

00:42:47.480 | But by removing highly palatable digital distractions from many different points of your life, you

00:42:52.520 | get used to being in situations where you don't have access to those highly palatable

00:42:57.180 | digital distractions.

00:42:58.180 | So maybe I need a different word.

00:42:59.400 | Instead of boredom, it's like stimuli freedom or 1995 mode.

00:43:05.760 | It's getting away from that and being okay with getting away from that, where that is

00:43:09.440 | for listeners, me holding up a fake phone.

00:43:12.120 | That is the key.

00:43:13.920 | All right.

00:43:14.920 | Let me talk for a second here about the key to understanding books, which is our sponsor

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00:44:47.040 | I also want to talk about Athletic Greens.

00:44:51.800 | So we worry like, are we getting the right nutrients?

00:44:53.920 | Do I have the right minerals?

00:44:55.800 | Am I getting enough vitamin, whatever, right?

00:44:57.960 | I mean, these are things we worry about, especially as we get older.

00:45:02.120 | I worry about this a little bit, but I'm still in my thirties.

00:45:04.640 | Jesse is in his forties.

00:45:05.800 | So this is all he thinks about because his body is falling apart on him.

00:45:10.600 | How are you going to get the right things you need?

00:45:13.200 | Well, as I've always said, you have two choices and only two choices.

00:45:16.480 | Number one, you can go into a GNC and get lost among all of those shelves of all this

00:45:21.200 | random stuff where you have a 50% chance that a roided up bodybuilder will beat you mercilessly

00:45:28.120 | for walking into the store.

00:45:29.360 | That happens 50% of the time, or you can do Athletic Greens.

00:45:33.200 | You have to choose.

00:45:34.600 | Let me tell you why I think you should choose Athletic Greens.

00:45:36.640 | In addition to you not getting beaten mercilessly by a steroided bodybuilder, it is the top,

00:45:44.440 | in my opinion, the top supplement source on the market, because what they do is say, we

00:45:49.520 | will figure out for you what you need, but also where the very best sources of these

00:45:54.880 | different things are.

00:45:56.240 | We will put it together in just one product, this powder.

00:45:58.960 | It's all we do is this powder.

00:46:01.180 | We're always improving it.

00:46:02.960 | They have different versions.

00:46:03.960 | They upgrade it every year.

00:46:05.240 | Can we get a better mineral?

00:46:06.480 | Can we get a better adaptogen?

00:46:07.960 | And all you have to worry about as the consumer is one scoop once a day, put it in water in

00:46:12.720 | the morning, drink it, you're done.

00:46:14.520 | They obsess about getting the right ingredients in here.

00:46:16.920 | They obsess about getting the right form that's going to be the most effective so that you

00:46:20.680 | don't have to.

00:46:22.340 | You don't have to go to the GNC.

00:46:24.000 | You don't have to get punched by a bodybuilder.

00:46:26.200 | You just take the Athletic Greens powder every morning and you can trust it's done.

00:46:31.000 | So I take Athletic Greens.

00:46:32.840 | Jesse will attest to this.

00:46:34.400 | I have told him about it.

00:46:35.880 | I have sold him on it.

00:46:37.840 | I take it each morning so I don't have to worry about anything else.

00:46:42.000 | And I recommend you do too.

00:46:45.080 | So right now it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient

00:46:48.200 | daily nutrition, especially now that we're in flu and cold season.

00:46:52.640 | It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day.

00:46:54.840 | That's it.

00:46:55.840 | No need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health.

00:46:58.960 | To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you free a one year supply of immune

00:47:03.640 | supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase.

00:47:08.200 | All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/deep.

00:47:10.240 | Again, that is athleticgreens.com/deep to take ownership over your health.

00:47:17.720 | All right, Jesse, I think we have time.

00:47:20.800 | All right, we have time for one more.

00:47:23.920 | So the viewing audience doesn't know is I'm running a big search committee meeting imminently.

00:47:32.120 | And so we're sort of podcasting under the wire here.

00:47:35.920 | One of my 17 jobs is running the faculty search committee.

00:47:39.400 | So we've got to switch from Athletic Greens to a question to faculty recruiting.

00:47:46.480 | This is why I have two cups of coffee.

00:47:47.760 | So let's fit in one more, Jesse.

00:47:48.980 | We can fit in one more.

00:47:49.980 | All right, sounds good.

00:47:50.980 | This is a fitting one.

00:47:52.520 | We got a question about deep work in YouTube.

00:47:55.600 | Hi, I'm Daniel, a high school student from Toronto.

00:48:02.160 | My question for you was, how do I ensure I'm doing deep work when I need to be connected

00:48:06.880 | to a distracting source like the internet?

00:48:09.440 | I'm trying to learn web development, so HTML, CSS, and soon JavaScript.

00:48:14.320 | And the best way I found to do so, and from talking to other people, the best way to do

00:48:18.400 | so is through YouTube and the internet, which is also an incredibly distracting source that

00:48:23.800 | you've mentioned as a killer of deep work.

00:48:25.800 | So I'd love to hear your thoughts on how I can reconcile those two things.

00:48:30.520 | Thanks.

00:48:31.520 | Well, Daniel, first of all, don't trust anyone who puts content on YouTube.

00:48:38.360 | Because I can't.

00:48:39.640 | Someone who...

00:48:40.640 | It's all garbage.

00:48:41.760 | And anything that's on YouTube, I would not trust if I was you.

00:48:46.400 | Hold on, Jesse's handing me a memo here.

00:48:49.160 | We're on YouTube.

00:48:50.160 | Uh-oh.

00:48:51.160 | No.

00:48:52.160 | But you know what, Jesse?

00:48:53.160 | But we're not very popular on YouTube.

00:48:54.940 | So I think that means that we are not being distracting.

00:48:59.280 | So we can...

00:49:02.280 | Keep the YouTube channel alive.

00:49:03.840 | Yeah, keep the YouTube channel alive.

00:49:05.840 | Yeah.

00:49:06.840 | No, Daniel, you need to watch our channel.

00:49:09.280 | And you need to ring that bell and smash the subscribe button.

00:49:13.320 | And once we start giving away briefcases full of money to our guests to try to get people

00:49:18.240 | to watch YouTube...

00:49:19.240 | Oh, man.

00:49:20.240 | Okay, Daniel, it's a good question.

00:49:22.480 | So I hear this a lot, this general point a lot, especially from high school students,

00:49:27.720 | which is like, "I have to use...

00:49:30.640 | There's something I need from the internet that's part of this bigger work I'm doing.

00:49:35.220 | How could I possibly not just be endlessly distracted on the internet?"

00:49:38.120 | And I think you can separate the two things.

00:49:41.280 | You can separate the two things.

00:49:43.000 | So you're learning how to code.

00:49:48.160 | And you're getting information from the internet.

00:49:50.000 | Makes sense.

00:49:51.000 | A lot of good information on there.

00:49:52.560 | You can Google commands that you don't understand.

00:49:56.260 | You can watch a YouTube tutorial.

00:49:57.960 | And you're saying the problem is when you look for those other things on the internet,

00:50:03.920 | you also end up doing other types of distracting things.

00:50:06.720 | You go to look up a YouTube video about CSS, and you see like recommended a Cal Newport

00:50:12.400 | video where I'm giving briefcases of money to professional golfers.

00:50:15.920 | And there you go.

00:50:16.920 | You have to click on that, and then you have to watch that.

00:50:20.080 | My advice is don't click on the other things.

00:50:25.440 | I think there's this helplessness a little bit of like if I'm on the internet and I see

00:50:31.660 | things that are appealing, like I have to click on it.

00:50:34.460 | And I don't think we're so helpless.

00:50:37.000 | I mean, at least if we're talking about very specific context, you're like, "This is a

00:50:41.080 | specific thing I'm doing.

00:50:42.240 | I'm trying to learn how to code, and I'm spending the next hour working on it."

00:50:48.040 | Just say, "I'm not going to look at non-coding related things, even if I see a link."

00:50:54.740 | So I know in general, it's very difficult if I say, "I'm just going to try not to use

00:50:57.740 | the internet."

00:50:58.740 | Like, come on, you have all these different times in your life, you're bored, you're watching

00:51:01.080 | TV.

00:51:02.080 | Fine, that's very difficult.

00:51:03.500 | But in the specific context of I am doing this activity, I don't think that's a hard

00:51:08.880 | rule to follow because it's very clear and it makes sense.

00:51:12.680 | Like I'm trying to learn something right now.

00:51:14.320 | I'm not going to go on the internet, right?

00:51:17.760 | Like I think just being clear and tough lovey about that might be all you need.

00:51:22.880 | If you're serious about learning how to code, don't click video recommendations.

00:51:26.560 | And yeah, you can do plugins and do a distraction-free tube plugin that gets rid of the recommendations

00:51:33.360 | when you're on YouTube.

00:51:34.760 | I can tell you, treat YouTube like a library, not a television channel.

00:51:38.420 | So you search for the specific things you need.

00:51:40.740 | You don't surf serendipitously to see what's interesting.

00:51:44.600 | I could tell you all those rules.

00:51:45.720 | I could talk about putting on blockers on your internet that you can configure so you

00:51:50.000 | can't go to other types of things.

00:51:51.580 | But I think it's just simpler to say when you're programming, don't click on anything

00:51:54.440 | else.

00:51:55.440 | You know, have a little...and that act of individual discipline, I think is actually

00:52:00.440 | going to empower you.

00:52:01.440 | Because you're like, you know what?

00:52:03.400 | I don't have to click on this nonsense when I don't want to.

00:52:05.680 | And I'm learning something because it's important to me and I see these links and I don't click

00:52:09.000 | on it.

00:52:10.000 | I have power over that.

00:52:11.000 | I mean, I think feeling that power, feeling that efficacy, I'm in charge of what I look

00:52:17.320 | at.

00:52:18.960 | This algorithm doesn't run me.

00:52:20.720 | These links don't run me.

00:52:22.220 | I'm constructing my world.

00:52:24.380 | Is a very important thing to have.

00:52:26.420 | And this might be a place as a high school student, so you're new to this, to say, yeah,

00:52:29.220 | I might be a teenager.

00:52:31.600 | You know, I'm not an old man like Jesse.

00:52:34.200 | I'm much closer to like a young in his 30s type personality like Cal.

00:52:40.340 | But so you're a young man.

00:52:42.180 | This is the time to say, I'm an adult.

00:52:44.300 | I'm about to become an adult.

00:52:45.540 | I can use the internet without losing control.

00:52:47.180 | And I know a lot of adults can't do that, but I think you can, Daniel.

00:52:50.360 | So that's my tough love thing.

00:52:52.300 | Just don't click.

00:52:53.300 | Just don't do it.

00:52:54.560 | See the recommendations.

00:52:55.560 | Don't click.

00:52:56.560 | It's a simple rule.

00:52:57.560 | I'm not saying your whole life, but when you're doing programming, just do programming, block

00:53:00.100 | off that time, look up what you need to look up.

00:53:02.500 | Don't follow links.

00:53:03.500 | You're going to come out on the other side of that invigorated like, oh, I guess I am

00:53:05.880 | kind of in control of this.

00:53:06.880 | And that could snowball to more and more feeling of efficacy, more and more discipline with

00:53:10.340 | digital distraction.

00:53:11.340 | So it actually could be the entry point, the entry point to a much better relationship to

00:53:15.900 | these technologies.

00:53:17.980 | So we'll skip all of the plugins.

00:53:19.860 | We'll skip all of the blockers.

00:53:21.300 | We'll skip all of the rhetoric and just say, don't buy into that narrative of helplessness

00:53:27.580 | that you have to follow distractions because you're young and young people are out of control

00:53:33.500 | on the internet and they can't help themselves and they live on YouTube.

00:53:38.220 | You can do what you want to do.

00:53:39.460 | And I think what you're doing is cool.

00:53:40.900 | Learn hard school, learn hard skills, build cool things, connect to people who are interesting,

00:53:48.500 | expose yourself to ideas.

00:53:49.660 | You know, all the interesting stuff to make a good life, go to your age, do those things.

00:53:53.620 | And you can, you can leave the going down YouTube rabbit holes for a time when you have

00:53:58.700 | nothing else to do.

00:54:00.580 | All right.

00:54:01.980 | Well, I think that's all the time we have.

00:54:04.180 | I have to go run a meeting.

00:54:05.180 | Thank you everyone who sent in their listener calls.

00:54:10.300 | If you like what you heard, you'll like what you see on our YouTube channel.

00:54:13.540 | I feel weird saying that after just telling Daniel not to click on YouTube links.

00:54:16.520 | So if you go to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/CalNewportMedia, ignore the recommendations, treat it like a library.

00:54:22.540 | Go there just because you're, you specifically are coming to listen to some Cal, not because

00:54:27.460 | you are web surfing.

00:54:29.640 | If you like what you heard, you'll also like what you read at my newsletter, sign up at

00:54:32.340 | calnewport.com.

00:54:33.340 | We'll be back next week on Monday with our next episode of the Deep Questions podcast.

00:54:38.180 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

00:54:40.420 | [MUSIC]

Ep. 188: The 5 Books I Read in March, Embracing Boredom, and Deep Work vs. YouTube | Deep Questions

Chapters