How Can I Focus on Deep Work with so Much Suffering Around Me?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:04.700 | Our next question comes from Steven. Steven says, "I'm very interested in the

00:00:11.720 | deep life, but sometimes sitting down to do it is tough while wildfires, social

00:00:18.260 | and political turmoil, and a deadly virus are ever-present and overwhelming. Is it

00:00:22.800 | wrong to shut off the outside world when the outside world needs so much help?" So

00:00:29.520 | Steven, I think it's a good question. I think when you when you're using the

00:00:32.160 | phrase "deep life," you actually mean something more specific. I think you're

00:00:35.280 | talking about, in general, doing one thing at a time, having a small number of

00:00:40.080 | things you really focus on, and getting lost in those activities, versus an

00:00:44.520 | approach to life where you're more constantly plugged into the hive mind of

00:00:48.400 | what's going on, what's the latest news, what's happening in the world. You

00:00:52.240 | see someone like me who maybe doesn't use social media and just reads an

00:00:55.400 | old-fashioned newspaper, and you think, "Okay, you're not fully up to speed

00:00:59.200 | with what's going on, and this somehow seems worrisome," or it just seems very

00:01:05.120 | difficult to do because all this stuff going on out there in the world really

00:01:08.280 | pulls at your attention. It's a very timely question. There's a lot going on

00:01:12.640 | in the world right now that can be constantly pulling at your attention. The

00:01:17.800 | media, of course, does us no favors. It is in their interest to pull our attention

00:01:22.920 | as much as possible, and so they will push everything. I'm using "they." It doesn't

00:01:28.800 | matter who we're talking about here. They will push everything in a way that's

00:01:31.520 | alarm bells going. It is constant emergency alarm all the day. Omicron is

00:01:38.280 | going to set a forest fire that's going to steal your identity before pushing

00:01:42.400 | your democracy into an authoritarian dictatorship. It all is just going

00:01:45.800 | together, and it's all just terrible. Here's the reality, Stephen.

00:01:49.880 | You cannot function if you're bathing in that. I mean, I have serious, empathetic

00:01:55.480 | concerns for professional journalists right now that have to be marinated in

00:01:59.360 | that world because it's their job. I think we should be thinking about

00:02:03.520 | post-traumatic stress-style benefits for these journalists right now because the

00:02:08.600 | drumbeat, the negativity, and the alarmism, and everything that's out there, it

00:02:12.760 | overloads the brain. Our brain can't handle that much, and so you do have to

00:02:18.080 | be, I think, quite careful in how you let this into your

00:02:23.520 | life. If you are constantly consuming information, especially coming from the

00:02:29.000 | internet, especially information that has gone through the attention-centric

00:02:33.000 | filters of tools like social media, you will fry your brain. If you are, God

00:02:39.000 | forbid, receiving coronavirus news through Twitter all day long, you are

00:02:45.560 | going to be digging out a bunker, and you're never going to leave it. If you

00:02:50.040 | are, God forbid, looking at conversations on social media to be your barometer of

00:02:56.760 | what the political discussion is like in this country, you are going to be, again,

00:03:02.520 | digging that bunker even deeper because civilization is about to end. It's going

00:03:06.680 | to fry your brain. You've got to be way more careful about this. You have to be way more

00:03:11.440 | selective about it. So what I would argue is that as part of going through your

00:03:16.400 | process of trying to intentionally cultivate a deep life, part of that

00:03:20.720 | should be figuring out, "How do I want to consume information about the world? Let's

00:03:24.640 | get specific about it, and let's do it with intention." You can put this, if you

00:03:30.440 | want, if you're using my bucket system where you figure out the buckets that

00:03:33.120 | are important to your life and then go over each of them, this could go in

00:03:36.480 | various places. The community bucket, I think, makes sense because you want to

00:03:39.400 | know what's going on in the community writ large to be a citizen of the world.

00:03:42.720 | Be incredibly specific and careful about how this information

00:03:47.680 | comes in. I'm very, very careful about it. So I look at the paper, newspaper, every

00:03:52.200 | day, so it's not like I'm going to miss a very important world-changing event. I

00:03:56.200 | can see it. But on almost everything else, I have to be very careful to titrate the

00:04:02.160 | information that comes into my world. Like if it comes to coronavirus, for

00:04:06.240 | example, you know, as listeners know, I spent about a year or so doing a daily

00:04:11.120 | newsletter for my family and friends where I filtered through a lot of

00:04:14.960 | information and tried to give them a less alarmist, more fact-based

00:04:18.080 | presentation of what's going on. After the vaccines came out, I stopped that

00:04:22.440 | newsletter because, honestly, I thought it was more healthy for the people I know

00:04:26.200 | now that they weren't facing immediate potential grave harm to focus on living

00:04:32.040 | other parts of their life. But in doing that, I became really closely acquainted

00:04:35.300 | with the various sources of news, what doctors really got it, what experts were

00:04:39.680 | non-alarmist but very accurate, really knew what they were talking about. I've

00:04:43.360 | interviewed some of these or some articles I've written as well. And so now

00:04:46.560 | for coronavirus news, for example, there's a small number of people that a couple

00:04:51.320 | times a week I check in to get their take. And you know what that's done to my

00:04:55.600 | stress level? Dropped it all the way down, right? I know probably more about this

00:05:02.000 | still than most people I know because it's kind of ironic if you just bathe in

00:05:05.480 | Twitter, you're all over the place and other types of things come in and affect

00:05:09.000 | you and political biases or where you happen to live or your anxiety, natural

00:05:13.520 | anxiety levels, and you end up in random places and how you think about what's

00:05:16.680 | going on. But I'm very specific. A couple days a week, a couple experts, good, I know

00:05:20.160 | what's going on, I'm out. You can do this about almost any area of domestic or

00:05:26.160 | international news, and Stephen, that's what I'm going to recommend for you. Make

00:05:30.080 | this part of your plan to live a deep life is to be incredibly intentional

00:05:33.240 | about how you bring in information. You can know what's going on in the world

00:05:37.080 | without having to marinate in a frenetic stew of anxiety. And it's not only

00:05:43.360 | possible, I think it is critical because we can't keep living this way. It's not

00:05:48.920 | good for you. It's not going to make you a better citizen. There is never going to

00:05:53.560 | be a case, Stephen, where you know a tweet will come through that says if Stephen

00:05:58.120 | can get this tweet in the next 15 minutes, this forest fire can get put out.

00:06:01.640 | And you missed it and you screwed that whole part of Australia that burned.

00:06:05.560 | Never going to happen. You'll be fine. The news on Tuesday will be fine even if

00:06:10.640 | you missed it on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Hearing from one non-alarmist

00:06:14.960 | expert, here's my take on what's going on, will bring you as up to speed as if you

00:06:20.640 | followed 50 Twitter feeds five times a day, right? So cut back, be

00:06:25.800 | intentional. I think that is the only way to live deeply in a world of so much

00:06:30.960 | anxiety-producing information.

00:06:35.320 | [Music]

How Can I Focus on Deep Work with so Much Suffering Around Me?

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