Learn Any Hard Skill In 2024 - How To Eliminate Distraction & Master Productivity

00:00:00.000 | So it's the new year, which means today I want to talk about one of the most critical

00:00:05.360 | skills for improving your life in 2024.

00:00:10.120 | And that is learning hard things.

00:00:14.800 | So in work, this could be mastering that difficult, but valuable new system or methodology that's

00:00:20.620 | going to help you really gain control and write your own ticket in your personal life.

00:00:24.760 | It might be developing some sort of connoisseurship that gives you a, a lasting, deeper satisfaction

00:00:29.960 | that you're getting right now, just being distracted by the screens in your life.

00:00:33.480 | I want to teach you how to do this.

00:00:35.760 | I want to talk about how do you master not easy things, but really complicated things.

00:00:41.720 | And the way I'm going to do this is I'm going to start with what we get wrong.

00:00:45.520 | I think we have a commonly held, but mistaken mental model for how people learn complex

00:00:52.360 | things.

00:00:53.360 | So we're going to start by deconstructing that mental model, and then I'm going to replace

00:00:55.940 | it with one that works.

00:00:57.640 | And from here, we're going to get some concrete advice about how you actually become better

00:01:02.600 | at hard things.

00:01:04.200 | So we'll get into all of this.

00:01:07.000 | So let's start with what we get wrong.

00:01:08.620 | I'm going to load up a picture here.

00:01:10.540 | So for those who are watching, instead of just listening, you'll see on the screen,

00:01:14.640 | I'm going to draw the mental model that most people have.

00:01:16.920 | You'll see on the screen here that I've have a sort of hierarchy of things you might learn

00:01:22.120 | over on the right side.

00:01:23.600 | I kind of just threw this together, but from something that's perceived to be more complex

00:01:29.280 | towards things to be conceived to be less complex.

00:01:31.640 | So I put at the very top of this hierarchy, we have what is math, you know, math symbols

00:01:37.760 | like, okay, so learning complicated math equations, and then I have below it a Proust book.

00:01:42.640 | So I don't know, like mastering literature, some sort of complex literature right in the

00:01:46.840 | middle.

00:01:47.840 | Maybe we have like a deep appreciation for a particular type of music.

00:01:51.660 | You know, I'm a, whatever, a big Tom Waits fan.

00:01:53.760 | I can really get into that.

00:01:54.760 | I don't know, below that, maybe like I following a sport like baseball, like you have a pretty

00:02:00.440 | good understanding of what's happening with different teams.

00:02:03.040 | I put, you know, not to be self incriminating here, Jesse, but I put at the bottom like

00:02:07.240 | YouTube.

00:02:08.240 | Like, yeah, there's like, I'm really know a lot about YouTube and what's going on on

00:02:11.640 | YouTube.

00:02:12.640 | And so we have a hierarchy of complexity here.

00:02:16.280 | Now the way most people think about learning these type of master, getting mastered these

00:02:23.800 | type of different topics is that everyone has a fundamental limit determined by their

00:02:28.860 | brain.

00:02:29.860 | So the common mental model says for this one individual here, maybe when they are thinking

00:02:36.820 | about, you know, hey, I want to really master some element of music.

00:02:42.340 | They can do that, put some earphones on them in my picture here, like, this is great.

00:02:47.000 | I'm capable of doing it.

00:02:48.140 | But maybe this same person, when they say, okay, what I really want to master is mathematics.

00:02:53.820 | So I can do like mathematics proofs and our common mental model, we might say, oh, that's

00:02:59.320 | just beyond this person's brain.

00:03:00.840 | So they can't do that.

00:03:01.840 | Right.

00:03:02.840 | So we have this notion of the complexity of what you have mastered is just a direct reflection

00:03:07.800 | of how smart you are.

00:03:09.360 | Oh, this academic has a really, a PhD in literature has a really subtle understanding of these

00:03:16.200 | books that I don't even know how to approach.

00:03:18.700 | They're smarter than me.

00:03:20.400 | I understand music that makes me smarter than this 22 year old who's like main interest

00:03:25.920 | is YouTubers.

00:03:26.920 | Right.

00:03:27.920 | That's the way we think about it.

00:03:30.640 | This model is wrong.

00:03:32.900 | So this idea that your brain is determining the level of complexity of stuff that you're

00:03:40.160 | able to comfortably master completely misunderstands how learning happens.

00:03:45.860 | So what I want to do here is present to you the reality, and I'm going to present to you

00:03:48.860 | the reality here in two parts that we can think of as the good news and the bad news.

00:03:55.780 | The good news and the bad news about how people actually learn complicated things.

00:04:00.500 | Now, the good news is most people are cognitively capable of learning things that are pretty

00:04:05.500 | high up on that imagined hierarchy of complexity that you can learn complicated literature.

00:04:14.140 | You can learn mathematical things.

00:04:15.940 | You can learn an appreciation of a complicated sport or music.

00:04:20.780 | Most people can learn most things.

00:04:24.500 | Now, is there a brain power difference that comes into play here?

00:04:29.740 | There's stuff that shows up.

00:04:31.380 | I think certainly by adulthood, you get a sense people have different RPMs going on

00:04:35.980 | with their brains.

00:04:37.580 | I tend to believe that a lot of this is less genetic than it is just what you did as a

00:04:42.380 | child.

00:04:43.380 | If you're a heavy reader as a child, for example, your brain has just been trained to be stronger

00:04:47.940 | much in the same way.

00:04:48.940 | If you're Arnold Schwarzenegger and your dad made you do pushups and squats before you

00:04:53.260 | would be given a meal, you're going to be stronger by the age of 19 than someone else.

00:04:58.260 | So I tend to think the RPMs you have going is as much nurture as it is nature, but yeah,

00:05:03.580 | there are some differences.

00:05:04.580 | But that difference is where is this going to affect learning complicated things?

00:05:08.980 | The upper end, which is not going to be relevant to most people, it's like almost anyone can

00:05:13.980 | learn calculus.

00:05:15.300 | Yeah, maybe not everyone, however, is going to be a Fields Award winner, but most people

00:05:19.740 | don't care.

00:05:20.740 | They're not trying to become Fields Award winners.

00:05:21.740 | You might also see it in some speed differences and how fast you make progress towards learning

00:05:26.900 | things.

00:05:27.900 | So there are some epsilons there depending on how used to that your brain is.

00:05:32.780 | But again, for most people, no one knows exactly at what rate you mastered something, so it

00:05:36.980 | doesn't really matter.

00:05:37.980 | So I think for the most part, I'm going to argue most people can learn most things.

00:05:41.700 | So you can learn almost anything.

00:05:43.900 | Part two of the reality, and this is the bad news, you can learn almost anything, but you

00:05:48.380 | can't learn everything.

00:05:52.420 | So I think what is obscured when you encounter people who have a mastery of something really

00:05:57.060 | complicated, what is obscured is that it took them a really long time to get to that place.

00:06:04.220 | We jump ahead and just imagine them a month ago, just picked up the math textbook and

00:06:10.820 | was like, "Ooh, this just makes sense to me."

00:06:13.300 | And then everyone kind of applauds and they're really good at math and they're obviously

00:06:15.620 | smarter than you.

00:06:16.620 | Now, there's a long process that we're going to unfold here in a second of how they build

00:06:20.980 | up to that expert knowledge.

00:06:23.740 | The reason why this means you can't learn everything is that it takes time.

00:06:28.020 | Time is finite.

00:06:29.020 | So there's only going to be so many complicated things you can learn because you only have

00:06:33.900 | so much time to put into it and it takes a lot of time to actually get there.

00:06:38.860 | So this is the big mental model shift I want to start us making right now, is thinking

00:06:44.240 | about learning the complexity of what you learned, shifting this away from brain power

00:06:52.500 | and towards time investment.

00:06:56.020 | More time means more complexity can be learned.

00:06:58.460 | Less time means less complexity can be learned.

00:07:01.180 | Brain power is sort of orthogonal to all of this.

00:07:04.200 | So let's fill in this mental model.

00:07:06.060 | I'm going to draw another picture here that I think captures well what the process really

00:07:10.380 | looks like when you're trying to learn something hard.

00:07:13.500 | So for those who are listening instead of watching, what you'll see I'm drawing here

00:07:17.660 | is a bunch of stair steps and we can put some goal at the top.

00:07:22.740 | So I'll put a music note at the top.

00:07:25.620 | You're trying to master, have a good understanding of jazz music or something like this.

00:07:31.320 | The way you actually progress towards hard understanding is up stairs, level by level.

00:07:39.000 | Now here's what's important.

00:07:41.280 | When you're at a given level of understanding, so let's say you're right here, your brain

00:07:46.700 | is only capable when you're moving up your level understanding of making a relatively

00:07:51.560 | small step at a time.

00:07:54.220 | That's why these steps are small.

00:07:56.100 | There are multiple steps to get from down here where you know in this example nothing

00:08:00.240 | about jazz music, many steps until you get up here to being able to talk really intelligently

00:08:06.720 | about it.

00:08:08.020 | So it's from your current level, you move up to the next level.

00:08:12.300 | Now how these steps are actually made.

00:08:14.060 | So how does this actually happen here and here and here?

00:08:18.100 | Deliberate practice.

00:08:20.760 | Carefully designed exercises that push your understanding to the next level in a way that

00:08:27.620 | takes you out of what you're already comfortable with.

00:08:29.980 | There has to be some strain into that.

00:08:32.600 | So in order for this step to be successfully had at each of these levels, you have to stretch

00:08:37.740 | past where you're comfortable.

00:08:38.740 | Right?

00:08:39.740 | It's kind of the practice aspect of deliberate practice.

00:08:42.820 | It's not fun.

00:08:44.940 | I'm not comfortable, I don't really understand this thing, and I'm stretching myself to try

00:08:49.460 | to understand it.

00:08:51.000 | And the activity you're doing is carefully designed.

00:08:55.220 | This is the right next level to actually move up to.

00:08:59.180 | That's the deliberate piece of deliberate practice.

00:09:05.900 | So when you see someone like, wow, this person has a lot of expert knowledge of complicated

00:09:10.860 | things.

00:09:11.860 | In their past, they have done these stair steps.

00:09:15.540 | Now there's various cultural professional structures that help drive you through these

00:09:20.340 | stair steps.

00:09:21.340 | Right?

00:09:22.340 | So if you're an academic, I mean, I'm an academic.

00:09:23.820 | One of the things I do is theoretical computer science.

00:09:25.820 | I write mathematical proofs related to algorithms and computability and complexity.

00:09:31.900 | If you encounter a paper I wrote, you might say, I don't understand any of this.

00:09:35.540 | I can't imagine just like sitting down and learning all of this.

00:09:39.140 | But what you have to realize for me is that that process started when I was about 16 years

00:09:43.740 | old.

00:09:44.740 | And the education process as you move up the ranks, high school to advanced high school,

00:09:49.500 | to undergrad, to grad school, into young professoredom, is it's designed to push you step by step

00:09:55.900 | by step with literal tests.

00:09:58.300 | You know?

00:09:59.300 | Okay.

00:10:00.300 | You're now taking AP Computer Science.

00:10:01.300 | Right?

00:10:02.300 | I took that when I was young.

00:10:03.300 | And I realized that you're taking literal tests.

00:10:05.820 | In order to master that test, you had to gain new knowledge.

00:10:08.700 | It pushes you to the next level.

00:10:09.900 | And then after AP Computer Science, because I was good at this stuff, I started taking

00:10:13.620 | some college courses in computer science.

00:10:15.940 | That had, okay, that's pushing me a little bit farther.

00:10:17.980 | Now I go to college and I can take the more advanced courses.

00:10:21.300 | It's pushing you farther.

00:10:22.300 | I get to MIT and now these courses are much harder.

00:10:25.660 | But I've gone up 17 steps before I got to taking, you know, theory of computation with

00:10:30.080 | Mike Sipser, step by step by step.

00:10:33.220 | Hey, quick interruption.

00:10:35.060 | If you want my free guide with my seven best ideas on how to cultivate the deep life, go

00:10:42.240 | to calnewport.com/ideas or click the link right below in the description.

00:10:48.420 | This is a great way to take action on the type of things we talk about here on this

00:10:53.140 | show.

00:10:54.140 | All right, let's get back to it.

00:10:55.140 | And by the time you encounter me at the age of like 35, like, Oh, you know, all this stuff,

00:10:59.840 | like, yeah, it was a really long climb up the steps, really long climb up the staircase.

00:11:05.200 | Same thing when someone has this, how does this guy know so much about music?

00:11:08.440 | Well, probably he was exposed to it early on and his dad or mom really got him into

00:11:12.400 | it.

00:11:13.400 | And step by step they got knowledge.

00:11:14.400 | So if you want to cultivate expert knowledge now in your life, you have to replicate all

00:11:18.440 | of these steps.

00:11:19.720 | Your goal is on what is the next step of understanding I can take, not how far am I from the top,

00:11:27.840 | the consistent stair step upwards.

00:11:31.360 | This requires patience because the ladder up is long and it requires expert help because

00:11:39.180 | choosing the right activities that move you to a new level and are tractable but not trivial.

00:11:46.400 | This is the key dichotomy for deliberate practice to be effective, tractable, but not trivial.

00:11:51.300 | You can accomplish this next step, but it can't be super easy because you're not actually

00:11:55.720 | stretching.

00:11:56.720 | That could require expert help and that can be found by actually working with real experts

00:12:01.440 | that can be found in courses that can be learned, found in books.

00:12:05.560 | It can be found in choosing careful goals for what you want to do next and then seeking

00:12:09.640 | out help anywhere you can online in person courses to get to that next step and accomplish

00:12:14.700 | that goal.

00:12:15.700 | Just the careful choices of goals can get you there, but it's patience and this careful

00:12:22.120 | expert guided design of how you move.

00:12:26.200 | That's how people get smarter and smarter or seemingly smarter and smarter.

00:12:31.160 | It just takes time and it takes care.

00:12:35.120 | So is this worth it?

00:12:36.440 | Well, I think the answer is yes.

00:12:40.000 | The brain is what distinguishes humans.

00:12:42.120 | Our brains distinguish us from other animals.

00:12:45.560 | We have this ability that Aristotle talks about in the Nicomachean Ethics.

00:12:49.920 | We have this ability that no one else has to contemplate deeply, to aim our brain at

00:12:54.360 | abstract ends.

00:12:56.440 | Dogs don't do this.

00:12:57.440 | Cats don't do this.

00:12:58.440 | Parakeets don't do this.

00:12:59.440 | Humans can't.

00:13:00.440 | So Aristotle would say this is perhaps the ultimate teleology of the human experience.

00:13:07.700 | The thing that we are wired to do ultimately is to use our brain in these exalted ways

00:13:13.920 | because that's what defines us as human.

00:13:16.120 | So we want to push our humanness.

00:13:19.240 | It is a key element of life you're missing if there are not things in your life that

00:13:23.440 | you know that are hard, that are complicated, and you can do very well.

00:13:27.960 | To have that in your life in some sense, in the Aristotelian sense, is to be more human.

00:13:32.620 | So what I recommend, especially for younger people, is here's what you want almost to

00:13:36.400 | be aiming towards right away.

00:13:38.880 | Something in your professional life that's complicated that you do well, better than

00:13:41.680 | anyone else you know at your company or organization.

00:13:45.920 | Right out the bat, what is a complicated skill?

00:13:48.640 | Really good at programming these type of data systems.

00:13:51.080 | We're an SAP company, like being able to build advanced models using statistical analysis,

00:13:57.200 | a type of art, you know, you're a graphic designer for a video game company and pushing

00:14:02.160 | whatever the latest is and doing some sort of 3D modeling.

00:14:05.620 | Something that is really complicated and valuable that you know well.

00:14:08.920 | Just set that standard right away.

00:14:11.240 | In your personal life, you should have the same.

00:14:14.080 | Everyone should have one thing that they're working towards just being really good with.

00:14:17.960 | I really understand movies.

00:14:20.440 | I really understand wine.

00:14:23.280 | Not like a casual, I kind of read about this, but I got a sommelier certificate.

00:14:28.480 | Not just like I go to the theaters, but you know, I could write and I do sometimes contribute

00:14:33.000 | reviews to online publications about movies.

00:14:37.800 | There is something deeply satisfying in feeling the mastery of complicated things.

00:14:43.760 | It's uniquely human.

00:14:44.760 | I think a lot of people avoid it.

00:14:47.800 | A lot of people do not have this in their life, and it leads to this distinction as

00:14:52.600 | people who do that stuff, and I don't know how to do that stuff.

00:14:55.560 | And either that leads you to feel down on yourself unjustifiably, or it makes you real

00:15:00.760 | reactionary and angry as elites think they're so smart.

00:15:05.480 | Neither is great.

00:15:06.480 | It's not as healthy from a mental health perspective.

00:15:09.200 | We all should be trying to master at least some complicated things.

00:15:11.960 | Now this could take years.

00:15:15.080 | You're going to see progress along the way, but you want to get really good at something

00:15:18.480 | hard.

00:15:19.480 | It could take years.

00:15:20.480 | Start right now.

00:15:21.760 | You will get benefits along the way.

00:15:23.240 | You'll get better and better, but don't pull yourself up short.

00:15:27.400 | I know a little bit more about this than just the average person.

00:15:29.680 | That's great.

00:15:30.680 | Keep pushing.

00:15:31.680 | You want to push some knowledges to this connoisseur level.

00:15:34.880 | It really is, I think, a key part of the deep life because it unlocks in you an understanding

00:15:39.040 | of what your brain is capable of.

00:15:41.520 | The final question is where are you going to get the time?

00:15:44.760 | Where are you going to find the time to have one or two of these projects you're working

00:15:48.320 | on?

00:15:49.320 | And honestly, and look, this is a show about technology and how it impacts our lives.

00:15:52.940 | This might be non-surprising, but this is where you're going to find the time.

00:15:57.840 | Stop spending time on the phone.

00:16:01.200 | If you have nothing in your life that you feel like you're a real expert on, I'm going

00:16:04.900 | to guess without knowing for sure that your screen time statistics aren't great, that

00:16:10.200 | you're getting that dopamine push towards the screen where there's going to be something

00:16:15.240 | funny or outrageous or distracting or whatever on there, and this is eating up time after

00:16:21.080 | time after time.

00:16:23.440 | Put that phone into the foyer, phone foyer method.

00:16:26.400 | New Year is a great time to do this.

00:16:27.840 | The phone is plugged in in my kitchen or the foyer if I need it.

00:16:30.240 | I can go there to look something up, but it's not with me as a default.

00:16:33.160 | It's not with me at the couch.

00:16:34.420 | It's not with me at the dinner table.

00:16:36.480 | It's not with me, God forbid, in the bathroom.

00:16:38.680 | Now your brain gets some freedom.

00:16:39.920 | It wants something to do.

00:16:41.200 | Let's give it something to do.

00:16:43.000 | We're moving up the next stair level on this work skill.

00:16:45.440 | We're moving up the next stair level on this personal life skill.

00:16:49.520 | This really will, it's why I wish it for everyone in the New Year, is really going to change

00:16:53.840 | the way you feel about yourself, your efficacy, your ability to actually do important, useful

00:16:59.860 | things with your brain.

00:17:01.960 | So you can't, you can learn anything, you just can't learn everything.

00:17:05.160 | So choose a few things that are worth learning and trick a lot of people into thinking that

00:17:09.680 | you're smarter than you actually are, because the more complicated the stuff goes, the more

00:17:12.920 | they're going to just think that you're a big brain.

00:17:16.000 | And I think it's worth it.

00:17:17.000 | So there you go, Jesse.

00:17:19.000 | I think too many people think they're stupider than they are because of this image of, you

00:17:25.320 | know, for some people, this quote unquote comes easy.

00:17:27.720 | There is no coming easy.

00:17:28.720 | It's the exact same as muscles.

00:17:30.560 | Yeah.

00:17:31.560 | Yeah.

00:17:32.560 | Some people grow faster than others, but it takes a really long time.

00:17:35.600 | A lot of cycles of cutting and building, they look like a superhero.

00:17:40.120 | Just takes time.

00:17:41.120 | What's something you work on in your personal life?

00:17:43.000 | Movies.

00:17:44.000 | I've been, I'm working on movie knowledge.

00:17:47.920 | I want to get to, and I'm working on this systematically, I want to get to a level where

00:17:53.000 | I can contribute reviews.

00:17:54.000 | Oh, I feel like you'll be able to do that, don't you think?

00:17:56.920 | Like good reviews.

00:17:57.920 | Yeah.

00:17:58.920 | You know, like really understand, really understand the art and form of cinema, like what's going

00:18:05.080 | on.

00:18:06.080 | I also, another way of looking at it is I don't want to be surprised by the good reviews.

00:18:09.600 | Like in other words, I want to be able to predict, oh, I know kind of what Anthony Lane's

00:18:14.960 | probably going to say about this movie and not have to, and I'm getting closer at that.

00:18:19.320 | I know David Dimby, I know what David Dimby is going to write about this, like getting

00:18:22.600 | closer to that.

00:18:24.760 | As opposed to like, I don't know, is this a good movie?

00:18:26.520 | Let's read the reviews.

00:18:27.520 | Oh, I really love this movie.

00:18:29.200 | You know?

00:18:30.200 | So it's like, I want to be able to be non-surprised by the really good reviews.

00:18:34.920 | And I want to be capable of, hey, I could provide a review for, you know, an online

00:18:39.640 | site.

00:18:40.640 | And this is an insightful review.

00:18:42.320 | We should probably put a movie and show site on the deeplife.com.

00:18:47.440 | I think we should.

00:18:48.440 | Yeah.

00:18:49.440 | Because there's a lot of times I'm, I have like my own list, but.

00:18:51.560 | Well, we should keep track of all the books and we should keep track of like movie recommendations.

00:18:56.880 | Cause it'd be a good place for people to go if they wanted something good to watch because

00:19:01.000 | oftentimes I'm.

00:19:02.000 | Two movies I just watched was, I had never remembered seeing Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

00:19:08.680 | Also just watched Jeff, Tim Gunn, not Tim Gunn.

00:19:13.640 | What's the, not the guy from the movie maker Gunn, but I just forgot if it's James Gunn.

00:19:21.000 | I think it's James Gunn, the director who did guardians of the galaxy was temporarily

00:19:26.960 | canceled and now DC has brought him back to play the Kevin Feige role for the DC extended

00:19:33.560 | cinematic universe.

00:19:34.560 | I believe his name is James Gunn, whereas Tim Gunn was the fashion designer from project

00:19:39.480 | runway.

00:19:40.480 | I often mix up those two names.

00:19:42.000 | I think it's James Gunn.

00:19:43.800 | Yeah.

00:19:44.800 | The suicide squad 2021 fantastic.

00:19:48.120 | Like Tarantino.

00:19:49.120 | He's the CEO of DC studios.

00:19:51.160 | Yeah.

00:19:52.160 | Watch the suicide squad 2021 Tarantino ask comic book movie completely playing with the

00:19:58.240 | B movie format over the top violence, but also, um, visually completely novel, hyperactive

00:20:05.240 | camera throwing in actual deep themes and interesting characterization against this

00:20:09.720 | backdrop of craziness.

00:20:11.180 | It is, if as you had said, the Tarantino make a comic book movie completely off the wall.

00:20:16.480 | Fantastic movie.

00:20:17.480 | I really like that.

00:20:18.480 | Do you watch a lot of movies in the same like TV, et cetera, with like surround sound or

00:20:23.480 | yeah.

00:20:24.480 | I have a good TV.

00:20:25.480 | Yeah.

00:20:26.480 | Yeah.

00:20:27.480 | Surround sound.

00:20:28.480 | Yeah.

00:20:29.480 | We, we set that up during the, the subwoofers and everything too.

00:20:30.480 | We set that up during the pandemic.

00:20:31.480 | Um, and I see a lot of movies.

00:20:32.480 | I mean, we're recording, not the, not the pull back the curtain, but we're recording

00:20:35.720 | this before Christmas, uh, this week I'm seeing tonight I'm going to see maestro with a friend

00:20:40.760 | of mine.

00:20:41.840 | And then later in the week, another friend of mine, we're going to go see big screen

00:20:44.480 | diehard in honor of Christmas.

00:20:47.120 | And how many movies do you watch a week?

00:20:49.120 | That just depends too.

00:20:51.060 | It depends on what's going on with like the evenings and childcare and stuff like that.

00:20:55.160 | And my schedule.

00:20:56.160 | I like, if I have a light schedule, I like to take a day and do a lunchtime movie watching

00:20:59.540 | at home.

00:21:00.720 | But so if I have freedom in my schedule, I'll take a day and watch a movie over lunch.

00:21:05.020 | That helps.

00:21:06.020 | All right.

00:21:07.020 | Anyways.

00:21:08.020 | Um, I talk about this by the way, in the new book, slow productivity coming out in March,

00:21:12.760 | I talk about my growing interest in movies and how, uh, for anyone who does creative

00:21:18.600 | work, studying and building up a good appreciation for an unrelated creative field actually can

00:21:25.600 | really help what you're doing.

00:21:26.800 | And I write about a slow productivity about studying films as helping my writing.

00:21:30.880 | If you study, if I study good writers, it's too close to home and it's kind of a, more

00:21:36.000 | of a stressful work in like, it's not inspiring.

00:21:38.840 | It's more, uh, I should do more of that or it's more anxiety producing.

00:21:42.720 | So you study art in another format.

00:21:45.320 | You can come at that.

00:21:46.320 | It's like, I don't do that art.

00:21:47.320 | So you can just appreciate it with open eyes and it gives you an injection of creative

00:21:51.380 | energy for what you're doing.

00:21:52.600 | So I'm a big, I talk about this a lot.

00:21:54.560 | It's not a lot, but I do talk about it in slow productivity, studying an art.

00:21:59.240 | That's not what you do will make you more inspired for what you do actually do.

00:22:03.400 | All right.

00:22:05.040 | Speaking of which we got, uh, questions from you, the listeners on this topic before we

00:22:11.640 | get there, um, I want to mention one of the sponsors that makes this show possible.

00:22:16.680 | Oh, there we go.

00:22:18.960 | Add sound effect.

00:22:19.960 | I forgot, Jesse.

00:22:20.960 | Let's do that again.

00:22:21.960 | Let's do it.

00:22:22.960 | Clean.

00:22:23.960 | Yeah.

00:22:24.960 | Now we can talk sponsors.

00:22:25.960 | All right.

00:22:26.960 | I want to talk about Zock Doc.

00:22:30.440 | Little known story about Zock Doc, Jesse, the company was actually started first with

00:22:33.320 | just the name.

00:22:35.160 | People just like saying zockdoc.com and then they had to say, what's a really useful business

00:22:40.480 | we could do now that we have this awesome, easy to pronounce name zockdoc.com.

00:22:45.640 | And that's what they figured out.

00:22:46.640 | Wait a second.

00:22:47.640 | It is a huge pain to find schedule appointments with good doctors or other types of medical

00:22:54.240 | care providers.

00:22:55.320 | Why don't we use our awesome name zockdoc.com to help with that problem.

00:23:02.140 | And this is exactly what they did.

00:23:06.440 | So now if you're trying to find whatever type of medical care you need, you can go onto

00:23:10.680 | the Zock Doc app, find providers near you, find providers that take your insurance, find

00:23:16.640 | providers that are taking new clients, find providers that have good reviews from actual

00:23:21.280 | patients.

00:23:22.280 | You can hone in on exactly the right provider to work with and sign up right there.

00:23:29.080 | Once you're actually seeing a doctor you found through Zock Doc, a lot of these medical providers

00:23:33.800 | and doctors will use the Zock Doc package to handle things like paperwork ahead of time,

00:23:40.320 | appointment reminders.

00:23:42.440 | I have two different doctors in my life that use the Zock Doc systems and it just is much

00:23:47.400 | easier.

00:23:48.400 | A lot of stuff just happens through text messages.

00:23:51.680 | So it really is just one of these ideas that makes sense.

00:23:55.560 | How do I find a doctor that checks all the boxes I need?

00:23:59.560 | Why can't my phone help me with this?

00:24:01.120 | It can, ZockDoc.com is the app that is going to do this for you.

00:24:06.720 | It is a free app and website, let's emphasize that, a free app and website that allows you

00:24:11.320 | to search and compare highly rated in-network doctors near you and instantly book those

00:24:14.820 | appointments with them online.

00:24:17.280 | As mentioned, you can book them immediately.

00:24:19.240 | No wait and hold with a receptionist.

00:24:21.840 | We have doctors with reviews from actual verified patients, thousands of top-rated patient-reviewed

00:24:28.800 | doctors are in the system.

00:24:29.800 | It's just the right way to find a medical provider.

00:24:32.280 | So if you've been putting off something, you have that weird growth on your foot that you've

00:24:36.120 | been putting off taking care of, now it's the new year, it's the time to do it, ZockDoc

00:24:40.520 | is how you're going to get started.

00:24:44.040 | So go to ZockDoc.com/deep and download the ZockDoc app for free.

00:24:50.720 | You can use it to find and book top-rated doctors today.

00:24:52.880 | That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com/deep, ZockDoc.com/deep.

00:24:59.640 | Just before we start recording, Jesse, I got a text from my dentist who uses ZockDoc, a

00:25:05.280 | reminder about something so it works, makes my life easier right away.

00:25:11.200 | This show is also sponsored by BetterHelp.

00:25:15.840 | For some people, the holiday season that just passed was a time of joy and togetherness,

00:25:21.320 | but most of those people exist only in the world of hallmark movies.

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00:26:03.400 | they wanted to do, these aspirations to cultivate a deeper life.

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00:26:22.440 | This is awkward.

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00:27:09.900 | That's betterhelp.com/deepquestions.

00:27:17.000 | All right, speaking of questions, Jesse, let's do our questions.

00:27:20.340 | All right, first question's from Mark.

00:27:23.820 | What is note-taking for?

00:27:25.340 | I found note-taking most useful in the short term, grounding me in my current task or noting

00:27:29.860 | a few to-dos throughout the day.

00:27:33.500 | Almost all of them are immediately disposable.

00:27:35.620 | It seems like note-taking can become fairly navel-gazing and doing it excessively takes

00:27:40.180 | away from execution.

00:27:42.180 | It's a good question because we see this a lot in our discussions of organization.

00:27:47.140 | Notes and note-taking is an excessively broad term.

00:27:52.040 | It covers lots of different things, and for a lot of people, like Mark, these things get

00:27:57.360 | all mixed up, and they're thinking, "Well, I don't know.

00:28:00.060 | I'm sitting here journaling all day.

00:28:01.780 | Is this note-taking?

00:28:02.780 | What should I be doing?

00:28:03.780 | What should I not be doing?"

00:28:04.780 | So, what I want to do here is step back, and let's give a general definition for note-taking,

00:28:10.780 | and then I want to highlight what I think the three critical types of note-taking systems

00:28:15.820 | you need in your life if you work any sort of knowledge job, and then we can, from there,

00:28:21.380 | move on to talk about more advanced options.

00:28:23.380 | So, let's define note-taking more generally to mean recording information on a durable

00:28:30.560 | written medium.

00:28:32.300 | So, anywhere you're collecting information in a written medium that's durable, you have

00:28:37.380 | it outside of your head, so you can reference it later.

00:28:40.740 | Here are the three types of this note-taking that I think are critical, especially for

00:28:44.380 | most knowledge workers.

00:28:45.700 | One, some sort of working memory extender.

00:28:51.300 | This is where I use my text file on my desktop of my computer's workingmemory.txt.

00:28:56.820 | This is for strictly expanding the amount of information you can temporarily hold on

00:29:02.200 | to as you engage with the inflow of information throughout your workday.

00:29:07.060 | So, as things come in, you're in a meeting and people are suggesting next steps, you

00:29:11.380 | can just write this information down in whatever medium you use for your working memory extender,

00:29:17.940 | because it's probably more information you can keep in your head.

00:29:20.100 | So, there it is.

00:29:21.100 | I write it down right there.

00:29:22.100 | Or, I'm going through my email inbox and I need to remember different notes I need to

00:29:27.060 | act on, schedule this, get back to them.

00:29:28.980 | I can write it into my workingmemory.extender.

00:29:31.200 | These are notes that exist outside of your own brain, allows you to hold on and organize

00:29:35.500 | more information than you could do just strictly within the confines of your own neurons.

00:29:40.940 | Now, this is something that resets all the time.

00:29:44.620 | It's a durable form, but you reset it all the time.

00:29:47.300 | So, as I'm going through a meeting, I'm taking quick notes on here's the five things I need

00:29:51.180 | to do.

00:29:52.560 | After that meeting, those notes will then get processed out of my working memory file

00:29:57.700 | into calendar reminders, into my obligation system.

00:30:01.340 | So, it's a temporary storage, but it allows me in the moment to keep track of more things

00:30:06.780 | that my brain can do on its own.

00:30:08.220 | That's note taking, but of a very temporary type.

00:30:12.540 | Next comes what I just cited, which is your obligation tracker.

00:30:15.840 | Some system to maintain all of the relevant information for every obligation on your plate.

00:30:20.420 | This is also note taking, written durable information that you don't have to keep track

00:30:24.460 | of in your head.

00:30:26.780 | So somewhere, here are all the things I have to do, probably categorized.

00:30:30.040 | Here is all of the information related to each of these things all in this one place.

00:30:36.260 | You want that information accessible and captured somewhere, that's note taking.

00:30:41.980 | Then finally, we get to what most people think of when they think about note taking, and

00:30:46.020 | this is more where you're capturing key ideas about your work and your life.

00:30:49.740 | It could be interesting ideas, interesting articles, brainstorms, concerns that you have.

00:30:56.880 | This is the broad category that captures what people normally think about in note taking.

00:31:01.380 | I might be journaling my thoughts about things.

00:31:03.260 | I might be writing down my plans for how I want to improve my life.

00:31:06.100 | I might be capturing articles that are relevant to the newsletter that I run and things I

00:31:11.220 | want to remember.

00:31:13.740 | And this is where you're going to use whatever type of system you like to capture things

00:31:18.060 | in.

00:31:19.060 | You have a lot of different choices here.

00:31:20.500 | All three of these things are note taking.

00:31:22.220 | You need some sort of system for each.

00:31:25.980 | So in my own life, I use a plain text file for working memory.

00:31:31.520 | I use Trello for obligation tracking notes, one board per role, one column per type of

00:31:37.900 | obligation, one card per obligation, all of the relevant information for that obligation

00:31:44.800 | on the card.

00:31:46.620 | And I use my Remarkable 2 digital notebook for everything else.

00:31:50.940 | Inside my Remarkable 2, I have dozens of different individual virtual notebooks for keeping track

00:31:55.580 | of ideas, reflections, concerns, etc.

00:31:58.780 | So those are the three categories, Mark.

00:32:00.320 | Do those three categories, different tools for each, different rates of refresh and reset

00:32:06.420 | for each working memory, you're resetting this every 10 minutes or so.

00:32:10.040 | Your obligation list you're working with every day.

00:32:12.660 | Your bigger idea capture is something you maybe go over in detail much less often.

00:32:17.500 | Hey, I'm going to have a summit now to rethink this part of my business.

00:32:20.420 | Let me go back and look through my notes.

00:32:21.700 | Maybe that's just once every few months or so.

00:32:24.500 | So that's really it.

00:32:27.040 | There are more complicated systems and methodologies.

00:32:30.980 | You know, we have a lot of fans here of Zettelkasten type systems.

00:32:35.100 | We also have a lot of fans here of interesting note-taking software that really gets into

00:32:41.500 | the details of how you store notes, how you connect notes, the format in which the notes

00:32:47.100 | are stored.

00:32:48.860 | That is optional.

00:32:51.300 | It's more about your interest.

00:32:52.760 | If you like information management as a hobby, you can build more complicated systems around

00:32:58.500 | it, but you don't need complicated systems to successfully take notes.

00:33:02.380 | Those are the three areas you have to take notes.

00:33:04.060 | Just make sure those are all three covered with some sort of reasonable techno system,

00:33:09.060 | and then you're doing a fine job.

00:33:11.060 | I think that separation is key.

00:33:12.900 | Don't mix all this stuff together.

00:33:14.480 | Don't have a moleskin somewhere in which you're trying to keep your tasks next to your vision

00:33:20.460 | for living on a cabin in 20 years next to a grocery list you want to remember when you

00:33:25.460 | go to the store.

00:33:26.460 | We need some separation for note-taking to keep up with the complexity of modern life.

00:33:30.660 | All right.

00:33:31.660 | What do we got next, Jesse?

00:33:34.780 | Next question is from Reshab.

00:33:36.980 | As a 26-year-old software developer who has recently landed a well-paying job, I'm looking

00:33:42.140 | to pursue my interest in learning to play the guitar, drawing, and some days gardening.

00:33:47.100 | However, I'm concerned about whether it's feasible to schedule all these activities

00:33:50.580 | into a single week while maintaining a focus on deep life core fundamentals.

00:33:55.300 | In your expert opinion, would it be possible to balance all these pursuits effectively

00:33:59.780 | within a given week without compromising on essential life habits?

00:34:03.700 | Well, I think this is a objective question for which you can get an objective answer

00:34:09.340 | by becoming quantitative.

00:34:13.020 | So let's just work with your calendar.

00:34:15.140 | I'm assuming you're professionally speaking, you're organized, you time block your days,

00:34:19.780 | you have a clear shutdown.

00:34:20.780 | So there's some clarity about your time outside of work.

00:34:25.340 | Play with that time.

00:34:27.700 | So start autopilot scheduling some of these hobbies.

00:34:31.740 | Maybe you garden on weekday mornings.

00:34:34.180 | Maybe you alternate a guitar practice session and what was the other thing, drawing practice

00:34:40.140 | session on different days.

00:34:41.480 | You do it an hour before dinner.

00:34:44.780 | Autopilot this out.

00:34:46.940 | See if it fits.

00:34:47.940 | And if the stuff does fit, execute this autopilot schedule for a while and say, "Does this feel

00:34:53.420 | sustainable or do I feel like I'm constantly running from one thing to another or it's

00:34:58.020 | overfilling my time?"

00:35:00.820 | I used to run this exercise with undergraduates who are trying to figure out their academic

00:35:05.300 | programs and their extracurricular programs.

00:35:07.220 | And I would say, "We got to sit down and just build a plan for your proposal here.

00:35:11.420 | You want to do these five extracurriculars in double major?

00:35:14.060 | Show me the time."

00:35:15.060 | Then they would go through and block off the time for studying and how long is this going

00:35:18.820 | to take and put on their meetings and the time to work on their activities.

00:35:22.060 | And it either fit or it didn't.

00:35:23.900 | And sometimes if it just barely fit, they would come back a week later and say, "This

00:35:27.100 | is crazy.

00:35:29.100 | Every minute of my life is scheduled."

00:35:31.420 | So if it doesn't fit or it fits and your life feels too crowded, then you just pull back.

00:35:34.820 | You're getting an objective feedback here.

00:35:37.700 | You pull back.

00:35:38.700 | And it doesn't matter if you're pulling back.

00:35:40.300 | These are hobbies.

00:35:41.700 | The thing is you want to be spending quality time outside of work on things that matter.

00:35:45.660 | The quantity isn't important.

00:35:48.100 | So if it doesn't fit or it barely fits, maybe you do seasonal pursuits.

00:35:54.260 | In the spring, I'm working a lot on my garden and in the winter, I'm spending a lot more

00:35:58.380 | time on guitar because that's sort of inside.

00:36:01.640 | And I do drawing in the fall.

00:36:03.100 | You could have seasonal pursuits.

00:36:04.260 | You could stack these one over another.

00:36:06.420 | Or maybe what you need to do is just slow down your ambition for these pursuits.

00:36:12.760 | And instead of saying, "Look, I'm going to do four hours of guitar a day and I want to

00:36:15.900 | be shredding in like six months," you say, "I'm going to spend less time."

00:36:20.540 | Good hard practice, like we talked about at the deep dive, trying to move up the stair

00:36:23.380 | steps towards expert knowledge, but I'm just willing for this to take longer.

00:36:27.300 | A few years from now, I'll be a pretty good guitar player, but I'm playing just an hour

00:36:32.020 | every other day.

00:36:33.020 | That doesn't take up as much time.

00:36:34.260 | I have a drawing class I take once a week.

00:36:37.260 | And on Fridays, I get out of work early and go to a park to work on the drawing.

00:36:40.480 | This is maybe I'm going to learn these skills slower, but that makes their footprint on

00:36:43.300 | my schedule smaller and I have more give and more flexibility and don't feel like I'm overscheduled.

00:36:48.900 | So treat this like a quantitative question.

00:36:51.580 | Get clear feedback.

00:36:53.180 | If it's too much, reduce or slow down.

00:36:56.420 | It doesn't really matter for your goal here, which is just to make sure that you're engaged

00:37:00.980 | in deeper pursuits.

00:37:02.900 | That's what matters, not the speed at which you're getting better at things, not the quantity

00:37:07.220 | of things that you're actually going after.

00:37:08.980 | All right, who do we got next?

00:37:13.260 | Next question's from Craig.

00:37:14.820 | I'm a college student trying to be more smart about how I study and organize my learning.

00:37:19.380 | I'm relatively new to this stuff.

00:37:21.380 | Strangely, most productivity tips on YouTube are about the top 10 to-do lists and note

00:37:26.020 | taking apps.

00:37:27.020 | Will I be less effective if I don't use one of those apps?

00:37:30.260 | It seems like a lot of work and setup to learn all those apps to be efficient, and I dread

00:37:33.940 | thinking about the heavy lifting prep those apps require.

00:37:37.360 | What should I do?

00:37:38.360 | Well, I think my answer here at first is going to be ironic because you may be listening

00:37:43.920 | to this answer on YouTube, but I'm going to tell you in a second why what I'm about to

00:37:48.920 | say here is not oxymoronic.

00:37:52.380 | Don't use YouTube to get advice on studying.

00:37:55.880 | When you're getting information, especially information on improving your life, you have

00:38:01.400 | to understand the incentive structures in place.

00:38:05.700 | For people who are purely doing YouTube, so if you're a pure study habits YouTuber, the

00:38:13.200 | incentive structure is for views.

00:38:16.320 | That's what you look about.

00:38:17.320 | That's what you care about.

00:38:18.320 | I want more views on my videos.

00:38:19.800 | To get more views on your videos on YouTube, you have to work with the idiosyncratic properties

00:38:27.260 | of the recommendation algorithm, and you get into this feedback loop where your content

00:38:34.880 | morphs more and more towards what's giving you this better feedback from the algorithm.

00:38:40.280 | After a while, it's the algorithm specifying your content.

00:38:42.960 | You may be started out as a YouTuber saying, "I want to help students study better because

00:38:47.440 | this is an audience out there that cares about this."

00:38:51.760 | After six months of interacting with the algorithm, it's the top 10 to-do list apps or whatever

00:38:58.160 | because this is what's giving them the best view numbers.

00:39:01.660 | The advice might have very little to do, however, with the nuts and bolts of becoming a better

00:39:06.180 | student.

00:39:07.720 | The incentive structure matters.

00:39:08.940 | If you want to become a better student, and this is going to sound very self-serving,

00:39:11.480 | but I'm going to say, "Read my book, 'How to Become a Straight-A Student.'"

00:39:17.020 | Why is that better?

00:39:18.100 | What is the incentive structure of books?

00:39:20.800 | When you write a book like, "How to Become a Straight-A Student," let me tell you this

00:39:23.820 | from experience.

00:39:25.540 | This is not a, "We're going to go hard out of the gate.

00:39:28.740 | This is going to be a number one New York Times bestseller.

00:39:31.020 | I'm going to be on the Today Show talking about this book, and every major podcaster

00:39:35.500 | wants to have me on."

00:39:36.780 | That is not the play when you write a book on student advice.

00:39:40.000 | The play is, "This better work."

00:39:44.020 | Some people will buy this because they heard about it from me or saw it on a table.

00:39:49.140 | I'm embarrassed to admit this, Jesse, but when that book came out, it was during my

00:39:52.140 | first year of grad school at MIT, I would sometimes go to the Harvard co-op, as they

00:39:57.820 | call it, the coop, and it was on tables, and I'd kind of hang around.

00:40:03.620 | People would pick up the book and look at it, but that's how people discovered it at

00:40:07.140 | first.

00:40:08.140 | I didn't have a social...

00:40:09.140 | There was no social media back then.

00:40:10.140 | I wasn't on a big podcast.

00:40:12.900 | People would find it on tables, and then it's all word of mouth.

00:40:16.900 | What is going to make someone recommend a book to someone else?

00:40:19.940 | This worked.

00:40:21.820 | This made me get better grades.

00:40:23.820 | You should read it.

00:40:24.820 | My kids' grades got better after they read this.

00:40:27.140 | What you want to look for, if you want to align incentive structures with advice here,

00:40:30.220 | is where you want to find a book on student study habit advice that just had a quiet entry

00:40:36.900 | into the marketplace, and over time, sell, sell, sell, sells.

00:40:40.900 | I just looked it up before the show.

00:40:42.500 | I think the sales on "How to Become a Straight A Student" is approaching 250,000 copies.

00:40:48.940 | A book that has never had any major promotion, has never been talked about on a single major

00:40:53.220 | podcast show, or had any footprint on social media.

00:40:56.980 | That's all word of mouth.

00:40:59.540 | There you verify the incentive there.

00:41:01.220 | For me to make that book sell that many copies, I was obsessed about this better work.

00:41:06.540 | What really works?

00:41:08.700 | Books have a better incentive structure surrounding their information than YouTube does.

00:41:14.780 | You buy my book or any other book that has sold a lot of copies that focus on this topic,

00:41:18.740 | you're much more likely to get advice that works, and you're not going to hear anything

00:41:22.300 | about note-taking apps or to-do lists in that book.

00:41:25.420 | My book gets right down to the brass tacks of what are the different academic tasks you

00:41:29.060 | have to do, what is the right way to do these?

00:41:31.860 | How do you take information from a textbook and learn it efficiently to the point that

00:41:35.700 | you can do well on a test?

00:41:37.100 | How do you write a paper?

00:41:38.260 | How do you break that down into multiple steps so that it's a good paper that you're going

00:41:41.780 | to get good grades on?

00:41:42.980 | How do you learn mathematics to the level that you can sit down for a mathematics exam

00:41:46.900 | and get a really good score on it?

00:41:48.340 | Well, here's exactly how you want to organize your notes.

00:41:50.740 | Here's how you should study.

00:41:52.680 | These would make excessively boring YouTube videos from the perspective of the algorithm,

00:41:58.340 | but they also lead to notably high GPAs.

00:42:01.340 | All right, so now let's come back to the oxymoronic fallacy early on.

00:42:06.940 | Aren't you hearing advice now on YouTube?

00:42:09.300 | Well, here's how I exempt what we're doing here, is that if you're watching this on YouTube,

00:42:15.060 | what you are seeing is the video of a podcast.

00:42:18.300 | The podcast is the game here.

00:42:20.540 | We put the video of the podcast on YouTube.

00:42:23.820 | Podcasting has a good incentive structure.

00:42:26.500 | It's similar to books.

00:42:28.340 | There is not an algorithm to please.

00:42:31.100 | In other words, there's not a hard, inscrutable, complex feedback mechanism that drives your

00:42:37.820 | content in podcasting.

00:42:39.280 | It is just like books.

00:42:41.060 | If someone likes your show, they will tell someone else about it, and your audience grows

00:42:46.300 | a little bit.

00:42:47.820 | And that's how podcasts grow, is people find what you're talking about to be effective

00:42:53.260 | enough that they will then go on to tell someone else about it.

00:42:57.420 | So that's what I think saves us here, if you're watching this on YouTube, is that what we're

00:43:01.140 | trying to do is get more podcast listeners.

00:43:03.340 | And I see that the exact same way as trying to get more book readers.

00:43:06.340 | The stuff's got to work.

00:43:08.900 | We play some tricks with the thumbnails and the titles to try to get some algorithmic

00:43:14.700 | juice, our YouTube guy does that, but the content comes out of the podcast.

00:43:21.340 | So I think incentive structures matter, so keep that in mind.

00:43:25.180 | So pure YouTubers are not necessarily a great source of advice on a lot of topics.

00:43:31.460 | You want to find sources of advice where the incentive structure is for the advice to work.

00:43:35.500 | That's what's going to make it actually do better.

00:43:37.820 | All right, let's keep rolling, Jesse.

00:43:40.860 | What do we got next?

00:43:42.460 | Next question's from Emile, "I've reached a point in my career where I'm at the top

00:43:46.660 | level for my discipline.

00:43:48.180 | I'm trying to figure out what to do next.

00:43:49.900 | I want to learn something new, but I also don't want it to be random.

00:43:53.140 | Any thoughts?"

00:43:54.760 | Start a YouTube channel, that'd be ironic.

00:43:59.420 | You got to start a YouTube channel and crush that algorithm.

00:44:04.620 | The key is, and Emile, I can't emphasize this enough, is to be really emphatic about asking

00:44:09.700 | people to crush that subscribe button, hit the bell notification button so that you can

00:44:14.180 | get your 5% bump in YouTube subscribers.

00:44:16.220 | No, Emile, it's a good question.

00:44:18.180 | It's a very hard question, and that's what I want to emphasize.

00:44:22.100 | Figuring out what to get good at next, especially in a professional field, is a question that

00:44:26.180 | you should treat with a lot of respect because the answers aren't obvious.

00:44:30.880 | This is actually good news.

00:44:33.060 | Most people do not spend enough time trying to understand what is worth getting better

00:44:37.540 | at.

00:44:38.540 | They learn things randomly, and some people randomly choose a skill that ends up to be

00:44:42.380 | really valuable and it really helps their career, and most people don't.

00:44:45.980 | You can game this system by actually thinking about this question.

00:44:51.660 | You're absolutely right to say, "I don't want to just learn something random."

00:44:54.420 | Don't.

00:44:57.420 | Deconstruct your field.

00:45:00.180 | Look at people who are farther ahead of you in your field, whose current position is set

00:45:04.140 | up you admire, and try to understand how they got there.

00:45:07.040 | What were the key things they did that allowed them to move ahead?

00:45:09.520 | Was it particular numbers, knowledge of a new system?

00:45:12.340 | Did they take over a different niche?

00:45:14.700 | Get hard evidence about what matters in your field, and use that to make a really good

00:45:19.420 | educated bet on what's going to pay off well, and then put your energy on there.

00:45:24.780 | Most people wander in their jobs through the landscape of possible skills, some of which

00:45:30.420 | have higher value in a sort of metaphorical fitness landscape here than others, and people

00:45:34.820 | just randomly walk around here and some people wander up the high hills.

00:45:38.420 | If you're being systematic, you can just go straight uphill and get a bigger return for

00:45:43.760 | your efforts.

00:45:44.760 | So I'm glad you asked that question in the middle because I'm going to say that's the

00:45:46.840 | right question to ask.

00:45:48.400 | Don't be thrown by the fact that it's hard to answer.

00:45:51.020 | That's what makes it important.

00:45:52.700 | All right, let's see what we got next here.

00:45:57.260 | Jesse, I am going to label this next question as this week's slow productivity corner question.

00:46:05.260 | Let's get some slow productivity theme music, please.

00:46:11.300 | For those who don't know, in honor of my book, Slow Productivity, which comes out in March,

00:46:19.020 | we like to have one question every episode that is relevant to my philosophy of slow

00:46:24.380 | productivity.

00:46:26.140 | If you want to find out more about that book and get an excerpt so you can dive into these

00:46:31.140 | ideas right away, go to calnewport.com/slow.

00:46:33.500 | All right, Jesse, what is our slow productivity corner question of the day?

00:46:38.500 | All right, this question is from Gabrielle.

00:46:41.260 | I'm 15 years old in school and learning app development for two months so I can launch

00:46:45.360 | a business I've been planning.

00:46:47.580 | Exams are coming up and I have a paper to write.

00:46:49.320 | My deadline is to be able to code a high quality app by the start of the year.

00:46:54.020 | Usually I wake up, do my routine, then code every day for two hours in the morning.

00:46:58.220 | On days where I don't have school, I work for sessions of two hours and I take breaks

00:47:02.700 | in between.

00:47:03.700 | On an ideal non-school day, I get in eight hours, but occasionally I'll only get six

00:47:09.680 | hours of coding done.

00:47:11.220 | For people in situations similar to mine, what's the best way to focus on rapidly learning

00:47:15.620 | the skills necessary to do well in the industry/job you're trying to get into, even if you have

00:47:21.300 | large obligations that might take up most of the days of the year?

00:47:25.740 | Okay, so I'm already burnt out just listening to the question.

00:47:29.740 | I mean, even with the freneticism of this question, I do this, but also this and sometimes

00:47:33.660 | these hours and how to get more hours.

00:47:36.680 | What I'm going to suggest here is slowing down.

00:47:39.860 | All right, now here's the model I want you to think about is the model we talked about

00:47:44.580 | during the deep dive earlier in this episode.

00:47:47.860 | I gave this model for how do people learn complicated things.

00:47:51.860 | It's this slow process of step, step, step, and each step requires time invested into

00:47:58.580 | a deliberate activity that pushes you to a new level of skill.

00:48:03.740 | If you want to get really good at app development to the level where you could actually sustain

00:48:09.180 | a serious business, you've got a lot of steps in your future.

00:48:14.280 | This is not the way that you're thinking about it, which I think aligns with the false model

00:48:20.940 | of skill acquisition we talked about in that deep dive.

00:48:23.460 | This is not a situation where if you just get after it for a few months, you're going

00:48:28.300 | to be programming the next roadblocks.

00:48:31.840 | You have a lot of these little steps you have to do and each one takes some time and there's

00:48:35.500 | a refractory period of recharging.

00:48:37.860 | It's just not something you're going to be able to force.

00:48:40.740 | So I'm going to suggest you slow down the rate at which you learn how to do this.

00:48:47.020 | You're a student.

00:48:48.020 | You're in school.

00:48:49.020 | You have exams coming up.

00:48:50.020 | You should be doing very little of this during exam time and then you have a little bit more

00:48:52.860 | come in during the after exams and then it slows back down again when it's back to another

00:48:57.640 | busy period during school.

00:48:59.340 | Now here's the thing.

00:49:00.340 | In the short term, you will feel like you're making less progress and that's true.

00:49:04.300 | If you take a slower approach, natural pace, so less at once, taking longer with ups and

00:49:11.100 | downs to your intensity, in the period of let's say the next three months, the slower

00:49:15.940 | approach will get you a lot less far than just getting after it like you're talking

00:49:21.220 | about here.

00:49:22.220 | I want to get eight hours in, you know, each week and where can I find more time to code?

00:49:25.540 | So after three months, you will feel like you're going unnaturally slow and you'll be

00:49:28.940 | worse off.

00:49:30.720 | Fast forward out to a year or two years, you will be in a much higher level of skill with

00:49:35.380 | the slower approach than the fast approach.

00:49:37.380 | Why?

00:49:38.380 | Because the fast approach, you'll burn out after a few months trying to fit every hour

00:49:42.000 | doing coding.

00:49:43.140 | You're realizing you can't jump from here to be an expert app developer anyways.

00:49:46.360 | It's going to be frustrating.

00:49:47.600 | You only have so much time.

00:49:48.880 | You're 15 and so you'll build up some basic skills and burn out and go back to like, can

00:49:53.240 | I just play video games or do one of these things where I can just like make easy progress

00:49:57.480 | and I don't want to bother with it.

00:49:59.880 | Whereas the slow approach is sustainable.

00:50:03.080 | Step step step, a year goes by, step, step, step, slow periods, faster periods, but always

00:50:10.020 | making over time progress up this ladder.

00:50:12.160 | A year goes by, you're higher up these staircases, much higher than you were when you began.

00:50:17.200 | Another year goes by.

00:50:18.760 | Now you're at the top of a flight of metaphorical stairs where you're really able to program

00:50:23.800 | very professionally.

00:50:25.600 | And as you're approaching college, you have a lot of options that's helping you get into

00:50:29.720 | technical schools.

00:50:31.000 | It's opening up side hustle capabilities that are really cool.

00:50:34.720 | Maybe it allows you to work part-time and pay all your college bills.

00:50:37.560 | Like all these things are open up, but it took two years of step, step, step.

00:50:42.160 | There's a key slow productivity principle, take longer, vary your pace.

00:50:46.720 | And it comes up again and again.

00:50:48.260 | In my book, I talk about example after example, there's a whole part of the book, work at

00:50:54.320 | a natural pace, or I get into this.

00:50:56.520 | People who do cool things work this way.

00:50:59.480 | They don't just decide, I'm going to write Hamilton.

00:51:03.240 | I'm going to become a great novelist.

00:51:04.920 | I'm going to become a great artist.

00:51:06.560 | Let's get after it for three months and then I'm there.

00:51:09.880 | Some of that idea that this is how people get really good at things.

00:51:13.360 | And I think this is made, I think this is true.

00:51:15.920 | People might think it's an exaggeration.

00:51:17.000 | I think for young people, it comes from video games.

00:51:20.760 | Video games are expertly calibrated to require like a month or two of, you get better each

00:51:25.920 | day you play it.

00:51:27.040 | And after a month or two, you've mastered it.

00:51:28.720 | Like the cycle of a big video game is one to three months to finish the game, playing

00:51:35.120 | fairly regularly, but not all the time.

00:51:36.720 | So we're used to this cycle of, you know, I first started playing whatever the game

00:51:41.480 | is, Call of Duty, Black Ops, and I was really bad at it.

00:51:44.040 | Then after three months, I do pretty well when I'm playing online.

00:51:47.320 | And then we sort of build this mental model about how long it takes to get good at things.

00:51:51.200 | But most things that are valuable take a lot longer.

00:51:54.060 | If you could get good at them in three months, a lot of people would do that to extract a

00:51:57.560 | value and then the value of it would plummet.

00:52:01.280 | So things take time, take longer, vary your pace.

00:52:05.180 | This is a patience game.

00:52:06.800 | But sustainability over time is going to aggregate more skill than having these temporary bursts

00:52:12.640 | that then fizzle out.

00:52:13.840 | All right, so that's why I'm going to call this my slow productivity question of the

00:52:17.520 | day, because slowing down, though frustrating right now, is going to get you to a much cooler

00:52:22.320 | place one to two years from now.

00:52:24.360 | All right, there we go, Jesse, the slow productivity corner.

00:52:28.680 | I feel good.

00:52:30.320 | All right, let's do a call.

00:52:33.960 | Do we have a call?

00:52:37.040 | Yes, we do.

00:52:39.040 | All right, let's see what we have here.

00:52:42.520 | Hey, Cal, this is Karan, and I am back in the cabin doing my annual tradition where

00:52:49.920 | I find a place, submerge myself in solitude and read books and just think deeply about

00:52:59.040 | how I want to live my life.

00:53:01.480 | And I am reading currently, one of the books that I'm reading in my rotation is So Good

00:53:07.080 | They Can't Ignore You.

00:53:08.360 | It's one of the last two books in your canon that I have not read fully.

00:53:14.600 | So as I'm reading the book, it hit me, and you've said this in a previous episode, where

00:53:21.160 | all of the books that you have written address an exigence that you are currently conflicted

00:53:26.960 | with.

00:53:27.960 | So I'm using that term kind of loosely from bitter rhetorical situation where there is

00:53:33.360 | a problem that the mass culture is dealing with, and you're the speaker that has the

00:53:41.240 | "solution" for that, and then you're dealing with certain constraints.

00:53:46.000 | And so So Good They Can't Ignore You, you're fighting against the past and hypothesis.

00:53:50.600 | Deep work, how do I get now the skills I need to build up that career capital?

00:53:56.920 | And I can go so on and so on with digital minimalism and a world without email.

00:54:03.200 | But to not belabor the point and to get to my question, I'm wondering, how does slow

00:54:09.320 | productivity address the exigence you're currently dealing with?

00:54:14.520 | And so I see it in So Good They Can't Ignore You, you've always in the back of your mind

00:54:19.640 | been thinking about this slow productivity, like, how do I see myself in five years and

00:54:23.600 | 10 years building this thing I need now, instead of thinking of the immediate moment.

00:54:28.620 | So you've always been kind of building up to this, but I'm curious, how does slow productivity

00:54:34.040 | address the exigence you are trying to work with now?

00:54:38.240 | Thanks, Kal.

00:54:39.240 | Well, Karan, that's a great question.

00:54:42.960 | I can tell you exactly where that came from, where slow productivity comes from as a book.

00:54:49.480 | So what we get before is let's combine So Good They Can't Ignore You, deep work, and

00:54:53.840 | a world without email.

00:54:55.020 | Let's combine those into a trilogy of sorts, right?

00:54:59.320 | Because as you mentioned, So Good They Can't Ignore You was me confronting the passion

00:55:03.500 | hypothesis as part of, in my own life, answering the question as a postdoc at MIT, how do you

00:55:11.580 | cultivate a career that's going to be a source of passion?

00:55:14.240 | That was a really important question to me at the time, because I was about to make a

00:55:18.260 | career decision, which might be the last career decision I ever made, setting myself on the

00:55:23.680 | tenure track, and so I really wanted to understand how do you cultivate a working life that you

00:55:28.700 | really love, and So Good They Can't Ignore You came out of that quest.

00:55:34.500 | One of the big answers from So Good They Can't Ignore You was get really good at things that

00:55:37.500 | are rare and valuable, and then you get autonomy over your working life.

00:55:40.780 | That led to deep work.

00:55:43.100 | How do I get really good at things that are rare and valuable?

00:55:45.420 | Oh, in the type of stuff I do, in the sort of elite knowledge economy, unbroken concentration

00:55:50.420 | is the only thing that's producing the real value.

00:55:53.080 | Nothing else just gets in the way.

00:55:54.720 | So I have to really cultivate concentration as a tier one skill if I'm going to get really

00:55:59.180 | good at things so I can leverage the effects I talked about in So Good They Can't Ignore

00:56:02.700 | You and gain autonomy over my career and steer it towards something that's really satisfying.

00:56:07.220 | Well, it's frustrating to try to cultivate concentration.

00:56:12.140 | There's a lot you can do on your own that I talk about in deep work, but it seems like

00:56:15.140 | I was in the working world now, I'm a professor.

00:56:18.160 | The whole knowledge work apparatus is built around distracting you with all these emails

00:56:22.080 | and meetings and chats.

00:56:23.460 | And so a world without email was like, let's get deep on where did that come from?

00:56:27.960 | Is it really damaging?

00:56:29.200 | Yes.

00:56:30.200 | Is this way of working fundamental?

00:56:32.920 | No.

00:56:34.520 | Is it possible to do something different?

00:56:35.880 | Yes.

00:56:36.880 | So there's a primal scream of frustration with email and meetings.

00:56:40.080 | That's where that book came from.

00:56:41.080 | All right.

00:56:42.080 | So we have that trilogy.

00:56:43.080 | That takes me from, that's basically my thirties.

00:56:47.340 | So Good They Can't Ignore You came out right around the time I turned 30 and A World Without

00:56:53.360 | Email came out right before I turned 40.

00:56:56.440 | So that kind of covered my thirties.

00:56:58.080 | How do I enter into a world of work, get after it, succeed, gain control, build something

00:57:05.280 | that could be a real source of passion?

00:57:07.680 | And I succeeded in this.

00:57:08.680 | I got tenure early.

00:57:09.840 | I've got this great professorship at Georgetown.

00:57:11.840 | My books are doing well.

00:57:12.840 | I'm a pretty successful writer.

00:57:15.400 | Now where am I in life?

00:57:16.400 | Well, now I'm in my young forties and I have kids that are no longer babies or toddlers

00:57:20.640 | where we're just sort of in survival mode of like, how do we just make sure they're

00:57:23.480 | fed and like take them so they're distracted?

00:57:25.800 | Now I have elementary age school kids.

00:57:28.240 | I have all boys.

00:57:30.200 | I'm beginning to notice that like the thing they need at this age more than anything else

00:57:34.040 | is time with their dad.

00:57:35.560 | Like it's really, really important.

00:57:37.200 | Like this is, you know, especially for dads, like where parenting really takes off.

00:57:41.460 | And the next question that comes up is, okay, so now what's next?

00:57:45.280 | How do I continue to do work that I'm really proud of?

00:57:49.740 | How do I take advantage of whatever skills I have cultivated or been bestowed to continue

00:57:55.220 | to produce stuff that improves the world that makes my time here worthwhile, but in a way

00:58:00.420 | where I also am able to invest a lot of time into my kids and community?

00:58:05.180 | This is a middle age is the time where this is so critical.

00:58:09.480 | Slow productivity emerged out of that question.

00:58:12.820 | I needed to switch my mindset away from the mindset that got me tenure early, away from

00:58:19.340 | the mindset that has produced whatever I have, 70 or 80 peer reviewed papers, 5,000 citations,

00:58:26.860 | three best paper awards in my field.

00:58:29.580 | My eighth book is about to come out, right?

00:58:32.340 | How do I find a sustainable pace now going forward, where I continue to produce stuff

00:58:38.300 | I'm proud of, but I'm not having to produce at, you know, what I'm doing here is doing

00:58:42.380 | it at a really high rate.

00:58:44.460 | What I'm doing here is just impressing you with the sort of sheer volume of what I'm

00:58:48.300 | doing.

00:58:49.300 | Slow productivity, you can think of Quran as the answer to that question, a reconfiguration

00:58:55.900 | of productivity that is based around producing stuff that really makes you proud as part

00:59:00.980 | of a life that is really deep and interesting and varied.

00:59:04.340 | So that was my personal motivation for the book.

00:59:06.660 | There is also, just like with all my other books, it's not just what I'm going through.

00:59:11.300 | It is also what the culture writ large is going through.

00:59:15.380 | And this also, of course, informs slow productivity.

00:59:18.700 | And I get into this in the book.

00:59:20.420 | In fact, I get into this in the introduction to the book, which is what we've just made

00:59:24.180 | available as the excerpt I was talking about earlier.

00:59:27.040 | So if you go to, what was the URL, calnewport.com/slow, the excerpts you'll download is of the introduction

00:59:32.860 | where I make this case clear, like the cultural case for slow productivity.

00:59:36.660 | But essentially what happened is in the pandemic, people realized we have no good definition

00:59:42.220 | for productivity in knowledge work.

00:59:44.420 | We're not measuring metrics and seeing like, does this way of working make us more effective?

00:59:49.500 | We have this nonsense heuristic we call pseudo productivity, which just says more work is

00:59:54.220 | better than less.

00:59:55.580 | This is making us miserable.

00:59:57.420 | This is not sustainable.

00:59:58.940 | We need a new definition of productivity as the knowledge sector writ large that's much

01:00:04.080 | more sustainable than just do as much as you can, more is better than less.

01:00:07.700 | So there's a cultural question I'm answering with this book.

01:00:10.660 | What is a sustainable definition of productivity for knowledge work in general?

01:00:15.220 | But there's also a personal question I'm answering, which is, what do I do now in my forties?

01:00:21.780 | How do I keep producing good work without having to work all the time, without having

01:00:27.100 | to be so hard, without having, like I talk about in the final chapters of deep work,

01:00:32.260 | I talk about the exhaustion of writing deep work at the same time I was trying to get

01:00:36.380 | tenure at the same time that my second kid was born.

01:00:39.620 | So slow productivity answered that personal question as well.

01:00:42.220 | So if you're thinking about, I run a business and how do I rethink productivity?

01:00:46.460 | So I'm not stressed.

01:00:47.460 | The book would be for you, but also if you're thinking about how do I think about my life

01:00:52.620 | in the longterm where I'm using my gifts, but also enjoying the gifts of life that go

01:00:57.380 | beyond just what you're doing in work.

01:00:59.300 | The book is deeply personal in that way as well.

01:01:02.540 | So we kind of got like an extra slow productivity corner, Jesse.

01:01:05.060 | We did.

01:01:06.060 | Do we get, I think we, I think we get the music one more time because of that is what

01:01:09.340 | I'm saying.

01:01:10.340 | Any excuse to play it.

01:01:18.860 | All right.

01:01:19.860 | Let's do a case study.

01:01:20.860 | This is where you and my listeners send in examples of you putting the type of things

01:01:25.420 | we talked about on this show into practice, and you give us a sort of report from the

01:01:28.860 | trenches as it were about what actually happened in your life.

01:01:33.700 | This case study comes from Andrew and you said, I thought you might possibly be interested

01:01:39.020 | in hearing a bit about the slow productivity affinity group that I formed at my university

01:01:45.860 | in January of 2023, I put out a call for those interested in joining the group, which I described

01:01:51.340 | fairly briefly as a group designed to bring together Butler faculty and staff who wish

01:01:55.300 | to develop an approach to work that is sustainable so that we can produce output that is of high

01:02:00.020 | quality, but also of humane quantity.

01:02:02.940 | Our goals include providing members with resources, opening up discussions and exchanging ideas

01:02:07.160 | for sustainable, productive work.

01:02:09.740 | The impetus for the group was my appreciation of your books and your podcast, 30 people

01:02:13.620 | from across the university and in various roles expressed interest, which is very good

01:02:17.980 | for a university of our size.

01:02:19.620 | I added all these people to a page I created through our learning management system so

01:02:23.420 | they could access the resources I put there, which included among other things, a description

01:02:27.580 | of the basic idea, links to articles, book recommendations, videos, and podcasts, a bit

01:02:32.340 | about writing accountability groups, a module for the exchange of ideas, suggestions for

01:02:36.620 | good places to work often on campus and an open discussion forum.

01:02:41.280 | As one might expect from any academic group, participation varied widely.

01:02:44.420 | Some people never really engaged, but some appear to check in on the online resources

01:02:48.860 | periodically and others regularly attended a monthly Zoom meeting where we commiserated,

01:02:56.420 | shared challenges and successes.

01:02:58.060 | I was even given a small budget, $500 with which several of us met for lunch on more

01:03:02.300 | than one occasion.

01:03:03.300 | And I purchased about $250 in books for our lending library.

01:03:07.180 | Three of us formed a writing accountability group and all three of us found it helped

01:03:11.140 | increase writing productivity during the semester.

01:03:14.980 | Going forward, I'd love to get more interest and engagement.

01:03:18.100 | That said, it's clear that some people are loathe to commit to anything that suggests

01:03:21.420 | that you'll have to do activities.

01:03:23.980 | These people I would describe as being more interested in the slow aspect of the group

01:03:27.180 | and in particular, they seemed more interested in discussing burnout, work-life balance and

01:03:31.020 | related ideas.

01:03:32.460 | But if you were interested in learning more about the writing group, even if they didn't

01:03:35.620 | participate this time, I'd like to put together some workshops where folks could attend and

01:03:40.060 | perhaps do a few exercises here and there with the idea that they might gradually embrace

01:03:43.820 | more ideas of slow productivity.

01:03:46.500 | Well, first of all, I love that idea and maybe this is something I should encourage more

01:03:52.340 | once the book comes out, creating your own groups in your place of work to discuss the

01:03:59.020 | ideas behind slow productivity.

01:04:01.400 | So Andrew, I'm hoping when the book actually comes out, it will really help this working

01:04:05.020 | group go forward because it's going to be a much clearer framework than trying to piece

01:04:09.660 | together ideas from things I've talked about on the podcast and in articles.

01:04:14.340 | But I think it's important that you're talking to each other and I know you're noticing with

01:04:19.380 | maybe a little bit of frustration this divide between the people who focus on the slow aspect

01:04:25.100 | of slow productivity and the people who focus on the productivity aspect, but both are really

01:04:30.260 | important.

01:04:31.260 | And actually, what I've found working on this topic is that for a lot of people, just to

01:04:36.020 | get out the slow piece, just to express their frustration about not being able to slow down

01:04:42.820 | or the difficulties of not being able to slow down is a really important first step.

01:04:48.740 | Work can really be somewhat deranging, this arrangement we have, which is more is better

01:04:53.940 | than less, and it's up to you to figure out how much to do, go.

01:04:57.580 | It just puts people in this impossible situation where they have to constantly be arguing against

01:05:02.860 | themselves, more work or more other things in my life.

01:05:06.740 | You have to wage war between the other parts of your life and work.

01:05:09.580 | This is one of the real negative outcomes of making productivity almost entirely personal.

01:05:14.980 | This is something I document in detail in the book, how this happened and why it's a

01:05:19.260 | problem.

01:05:20.260 | So there's a lot of real frustration there, and some people have more of this than others.

01:05:23.580 | If you have a family, it's worse than if you don't.

01:05:27.180 | It's often worse for women than it is for men.

01:05:29.700 | So some people are dealing with a lot more of this than other people.

01:05:33.060 | So being able to just express that frustration first, I think is really important.

01:05:37.780 | And then moving on to, so what can we do systematically to make this better?

01:05:42.300 | That then becomes the next step.

01:05:43.820 | So anyways, this is cool.

01:05:45.220 | Hopefully my book will help.

01:05:46.820 | It would be funny if the end of this case study was, "And all 30 of these people have

01:05:52.260 | since been fired."

01:05:53.260 | It would be less successful, but I'm sure this will be useful.

01:05:58.060 | You know, I used to run these groups way back when, when I wrote student advice books.

01:06:01.620 | I had this program called Study Hacks on Campus, and we had like 30 college campuses.

01:06:08.420 | Students would start up student groups following my curriculum, where they would just get together

01:06:11.300 | regularly to talk through studying and how to study and what they're having issues with

01:06:15.460 | and their frustrations with it.

01:06:20.340 | And it helped.

01:06:21.780 | And a lot of what they did was strategic, but a lot of what they did was just support,

01:06:24.300 | and a lot of what they did is venting.

01:06:25.580 | So I like this idea.

01:06:26.580 | I might steal it.

01:06:27.580 | Maybe when Slow Productivity comes out, we'll put out some guides for how to run your own

01:06:32.340 | Slow Productivity group.

01:06:33.820 | I think step number one, there's going to be two key steps, definitely going to be two

01:06:38.460 | key steps in my advice for starting Slow Productivity groups.

01:06:43.120 | Step number one is important, regardless of the size of the group, that you spend at least

01:06:48.860 | $3,000 on copies of Slow Productivity.

01:06:50.780 | That's going to be step number one.

01:06:52.740 | I think that's important.

01:06:53.740 | Step number two, and Jesse agrees with this, you need to spend at least 15 to 20 minutes

01:07:00.060 | per group meeting listening to the Slow Productivity music.

01:07:04.140 | Come on, Jesse.

01:07:05.140 | Hit me.

01:07:06.140 | Hit me.

01:07:07.140 | There we go.

01:07:08.140 | There we go.

01:07:09.140 | All right.

01:07:10.140 | Enough of that nonsense.

01:07:11.140 | Thanks for the case study, Andrew.

01:07:15.900 | I really appreciated it.

01:07:16.900 | I want to take a brief moment to talk about another sponsor that helps make this show

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01:10:38.900 | All right, let's get back to the show.

01:10:41.140 | All right.

01:10:42.140 | So this brings us to our third and final segment of the show today.

01:10:45.860 | Like I do every month, the beginning of a new month, I want to talk about the books

01:10:49.060 | I read during the month preceding.

01:10:52.500 | So because it's January, we'll be talking about December, 2023 books that I read.

01:10:57.980 | All right.

01:10:59.340 | Book number one, Home Economics by Wendell Berry.

01:11:06.020 | This is an essay collection from Wendell Berry.

01:11:08.580 | I found this in a little free library around Tacoma park.

01:11:11.820 | It's one of his most famous, I think, essay collections because it includes some of his

01:11:17.340 | most famous essays in particular.

01:11:19.140 | It has his really well-known two economies essays in this particular collection.

01:11:24.820 | I'm a big Wendell Berry fan.

01:11:26.300 | I think Wendell Berry has influenced now two generations, the generation older than me

01:11:31.900 | and my generation, two generations of people who think somewhat radically about reconfiguring

01:11:37.660 | our relationship with the world, with work, with the environment.

01:11:42.780 | He's had influence on a lot of people.

01:11:44.900 | You see a lot of Wendell Berry, for example, in Bill McKibben, you see a lot of Wendell

01:11:48.620 | Berry, for example, in Michael Pollan, very influential writer left his NYU, we've talked

01:11:55.980 | about on the show before, but left his NYU professorship to move back to Kentucky to

01:12:01.820 | farm on this land near where he grew up farming without gas power, using horses and really

01:12:08.820 | gets into old school agriculture.

01:12:10.540 | So he is the OG of thinking about intentional living and minimalism.

01:12:15.720 | So great collection of essays.

01:12:17.140 | I enjoyed it.

01:12:18.140 | I hope you have it as well.

01:12:19.140 | All right.

01:12:20.140 | Next, I went to the opposite direction.

01:12:23.900 | So if Wendell Berry is plowing fields with horses, let's go the opposite direction and

01:12:29.500 | read a book about streaming media.

01:12:32.420 | In particular, I read Peter Biskin's book, Pandora's Box.

01:12:38.340 | And this is a history, sort of a TikTok history, you know, like step-by-step, they hired this

01:12:42.380 | person, this happened of the prestige TV era.

01:12:46.580 | So starting with HBO's emergence as a producer of prestige, original content, following what

01:12:54.180 | happened with the basic cable channels like FX and AMC that also followed to start doing

01:13:00.480 | prestige TV leading up through the rise of the digital steamer.

01:13:04.580 | So Netflix, et cetera, taking on this mantle, I think it's a good, a good TikTok history.

01:13:12.300 | If you want to know who are the people involved, what was the timeline involved with these

01:13:15.780 | coming up and down?

01:13:17.140 | What were the shows?

01:13:18.140 | When did they put out?

01:13:19.380 | How do we sequence this?

01:13:20.500 | When did Mad Men come out versus The Sopranos versus The Shield?

01:13:25.220 | Like when did this stuff all time out?

01:13:28.100 | And some of the characters are interesting as well.

01:13:30.500 | So it's not one of these books that's really brings you to some like new insider understanding

01:13:35.700 | with really cool access to sources, but it accomplishes the goal.

01:13:39.980 | It's like a competent journalist who brings you into this world and explains how it unfolds.

01:13:47.220 | So it was a cool book.

01:13:48.220 | I'm glad I read it.

01:13:49.220 | I have a lot of thoughts.

01:13:50.220 | I won't bore you with them now, but I'm building this theory on the future of independent media.

01:13:54.920 | That is stuff like we're doing here.

01:13:57.580 | And I have this theory is going to end up a lot more like linear TV than we realize.

01:14:01.440 | And it's going to be a lot less connected to recommendation algorithms than we realize,

01:14:04.820 | but I'll hold the details of that for another time.

01:14:08.260 | All right.

01:14:09.780 | Then I read Where the Deer and the Antelope Play.

01:14:12.740 | This is the latest book by Nick Offerman, the actor you probably know from Parks and

01:14:18.140 | Recreation is probably what he's most known for, Ron Swanson, but there's a bunch of other

01:14:21.580 | shows as well.

01:14:22.980 | Uneven is what I would say.

01:14:26.780 | I really like Nick Offerman's first book.

01:14:30.900 | I think it was called Paddle Your Own Canoe or something like this.

01:14:33.480 | This book was a little bit more uneven, where Nick is great and he has long sections of

01:14:38.600 | this book where he's great is where he's in this Mark Twain style of telling a story about

01:14:44.760 | something that happened to him.

01:14:46.600 | Like, let me walk through this story.

01:14:49.040 | And when he really gets into it, he's a fantastic storyteller and it's warm and it's human and

01:14:55.360 | it's funny and it's unexpected.

01:14:57.920 | I think he's as good at doing this type of storytelling as anyone doing it right now.

01:15:02.200 | The standout in this book is his long section on when him and his wife, Megan Malawi, Malini

01:15:11.280 | or Malawi, the actress from Will and Grace buying an RV during the pandemic and going

01:15:18.520 | on this long road trip.

01:15:19.520 | It's fantastic storytelling.

01:15:21.720 | So some of it's really good.

01:15:23.160 | Some of the stories seem like they just weren't that good of stories and weren't that interesting.

01:15:28.360 | The thing that was kind of annoying about this book is he keeps switching over to this

01:15:34.080 | mode of politics, but it's not interesting politics.

01:15:40.840 | It's like the most cringy cliche of a Hollywood bubble person who's read some things on left-wing

01:15:49.120 | Twitter and has given you the simplest, most completely un-nuanced, convinced, makes everyone

01:15:58.000 | else cringe, simplistic view of things.

01:16:02.040 | That part's not helping the book.

01:16:03.800 | And maybe this is just because I'm in Washington, DC, so everyone's politics here is pretty

01:16:08.160 | nuanced because they work and live in this world.

01:16:10.960 | But it was so simplistic.

01:16:11.960 | I don't care where you are on the spectrum.

01:16:14.120 | You could be very progressive.

01:16:15.120 | You're just going to find a way he talks about these things.

01:16:17.640 | It's so simplistic and he's so sure.

01:16:20.120 | It's like he just discovered, like someone just gave him a copy of Imbran Kendi's book

01:16:25.680 | and showed him some like, here's 20 tweets from progressive Twitter.

01:16:30.520 | And he's like, oh, it's just the simplest possible regurgitation of these things.

01:16:34.680 | And it comes across as, you know, it's a little cringy because it's just, I don't know.

01:16:40.040 | It's like, why is this here?

01:16:41.040 | You're such a great storyteller.

01:16:42.040 | You're not a great political thinker.

01:16:45.080 | This is going to, A, whatever half of your readers are Republican are going to just hate

01:16:50.480 | the book and then 80% of your left wing readers are going to be kind of like, this is pretty,

01:16:56.280 | this is like my seventh grader coming home.

01:16:58.800 | So I don't know.

01:16:59.800 | I didn't like the, I didn't think the, the politics were not done well and seemed out

01:17:03.480 | of place.

01:17:04.480 | And it kept taking you out of the storytelling.

01:17:06.920 | Who knows?

01:17:08.560 | We're so, what's the word here in DC, cynical on politics, right?

01:17:16.080 | You can't, you can't have simplistic politics here because the person you're talking to

01:17:19.080 | is probably the legislative director for the Senator that, you know, uh, oppose that bill.

01:17:24.540 | And so if it's just like, Oh, well, yeah.

01:17:27.680 | Read his first book though.

01:17:28.680 | First, if you haven't, if you're read, I think it's called paddle your own canoe.

01:17:32.480 | It tells his whole story.

01:17:33.480 | It's fantastic.

01:17:34.480 | I love Nick Offerman.

01:17:35.480 | His story is great.

01:17:36.480 | All right.

01:17:37.480 | Um, the next two books are by the same writer.

01:17:41.240 | The first book I really recommend, it's called who wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman.

01:17:48.000 | Let me tell you why I recommend this.

01:17:50.200 | This book is doing something that is incredibly hard to do well.

01:17:54.080 | And when I see it done well, I really appreciate it here.

01:17:57.280 | We have a scholar who is an expert on a very complicated scholarly topic, which is, uh,

01:18:06.060 | so it's, it's textual biblical criticism.

01:18:09.300 | This is a, the, a, uh, a secular study of the Bible that started in the 19th century

01:18:15.840 | for the most part, it's called the critical method.

01:18:18.280 | It came out of Germany that uses analysis of the words in the Bible to, uh, break it

01:18:24.460 | out into different authors.

01:18:25.460 | Right?

01:18:26.460 | So you can study various attributes of the words that are used.

01:18:31.080 | You can also study various attributes about, um, the Hebrew, how old is this version of

01:18:36.600 | Hebrew?

01:18:37.600 | And you can pretty clearly identify that when you're looking at the first five books of

01:18:41.400 | the Bible, so the, the Pentioch or the Torah, that there is five different authors involved

01:18:46.120 | and you can just get here from text analysis.

01:18:48.400 | This is a really complicated field with, because you're, you're debating over and it shifts

01:18:53.280 | around is this part of this author or not.

01:18:56.080 | And we're looking at a lot of, uh, ancient Hebrew etymology, really complicated.

01:19:01.040 | He makes it not only accessible, but it reads like a detective novel.

01:19:06.000 | He has somehow abled a Friedman here.

01:19:08.320 | This was a very, this book is old, but I think it came out in the eighties, huge bestseller

01:19:13.000 | because it's really well written.

01:19:15.160 | He's able to just get to the core threat.

01:19:17.040 | This is where we are now in the field, and I'm not going to get caught up in the minutiae.

01:19:20.360 | And then this happened and he, and he, he writes with, uh, rhetorical questions that

01:19:24.280 | he answers and the whole thing just moves.

01:19:26.360 | So anytime I see a scholar taking an incredibly complicated topic and without diluting the

01:19:33.180 | complexity of the topic, making it compelling to read for the lay reader, I tip my cap because

01:19:38.240 | I know how hard it is.

01:19:40.200 | So even if you're not interested in the topic, it's, it's a pretty cool book.

01:19:43.160 | Um, the topic itself is pretty cool.

01:19:44.880 | I didn't know much about this, this type of historical criticism.

01:19:48.080 | What they figured out basically is, uh, this is this new generation and new, I mean, he's

01:19:53.600 | old, but this generation of scholars from the seventies onwards figured out how to look

01:19:59.840 | at what historically, what was being said, the historical context of what was being said,

01:20:06.040 | and figure out where these authors were, were from.

01:20:09.680 | And it becomes kind of interesting because you say like, look, the way the words that

01:20:14.240 | the author of this part of the Bible is using to talk about X, Y, or Z makes it clear that

01:20:21.200 | they must be from the period, for example, before the, uh, the kingdom split in the two

01:20:26.680 | kingdoms of Israel and Judah, they must be from the North because the way they're talking

01:20:30.820 | about this is a subtle dig at what was happening in the South.

01:20:33.960 | Like it turns out, if you actually look at what's being said here, you can actually figure

01:20:38.800 | out, Oh, you were probably are from this period of time living in this part of, uh, this part

01:20:43.740 | of the near East.

01:20:44.740 | And so they can actually pretty closely figure out where these different writers were in

01:20:50.600 | time and where they were in location.

01:20:54.080 | In some cases you, you can even get to a particular in the visual, like the, the, the Deuteronomist

01:20:59.960 | maybe were, you know, um, the redacted Ezra's involved in redacting all of this.

01:21:05.000 | Like it's really cool as completely secular history, um, but complicated as such a complicated

01:21:11.480 | field in the book reads like, you know, the mystery novel.

01:21:14.680 | So I was really impressed.

01:21:15.920 | So the next book I wrote was a follow-up written by Richard Elliott Friedman called the Exodus.

01:21:22.160 | And it's about all the most recent scholarship using this method to try to understand what

01:21:26.920 | do we actually know about the book of Exodus?

01:21:30.880 | What really, um, what can we figure out about what really happened there by studying the

01:21:35.200 | text itself and why are there, there's a Egyptian names are used here, but not here.

01:21:41.480 | The song of the sea mentions, you know, mentions, uh, this, but doesn't mention that the, the,

01:21:47.640 | you know, so it's this complicated analysis of like, what is being said or not being said,

01:21:51.720 | trying to put in the historical context.

01:21:53.420 | And he has this whole theory, which I think is widely, but not universally subscribed

01:21:58.100 | that the book of Exodus is probably describing a, uh, a particular band of probably the Levites

01:22:06.860 | who so not the entire, uh, Jewish people, the all 12 tribes, but one group of people

01:22:14.380 | did leave Egypt led by someone named Moses.

01:22:19.020 | They then brought the, the, the Exodus story, um, to the broader Jewish people at the time,

01:22:27.300 | which then integrated into a national story.

01:22:29.260 | So it wasn't, you know, 2 million or whatever the number was, uh, the whole kingdom of Israel

01:22:33.660 | and Judah leaving Egypt, it might've been a smaller group than brought that story that

01:22:38.620 | was then adopted as the national story.

01:22:41.460 | So it's like this really interesting, you get down to the details of, uh, who mentions

01:22:45.500 | who where and how this time's up.

01:22:47.740 | It was really cool.

01:22:48.740 | I love historical historical scholarship presented as a mystery, figuring this out and this evidence

01:22:57.580 | accrued here.

01:22:58.580 | And it's not this.

01:22:59.580 | And again, his style has lots of rhetorical questions.

01:23:01.540 | So why not this?

01:23:02.540 | Well, this is why we don't think this, but what about this?

01:23:04.420 | Yeah, this is a pretty good piece of evidence.

01:23:06.260 | What about that?

01:23:07.260 | Well, this is kind of a problem, but it's what we think is going on.

01:23:08.900 | So you get like this insight into this really complicated bit of scholarship where you have

01:23:14.540 | to spend your whole life mastering archaic Hebrew to even get your shoes on and you can

01:23:19.780 | get a glimpse into this reading a 200 page book.

01:23:22.180 | So I, I love both those books who wrote the Bible and the Exodus, you gotta be an expert

01:23:29.140 | to write those books.

01:23:30.140 | All right, everyone.

01:23:31.220 | That's what we got.

01:23:32.220 | Those are my December books.

01:23:34.020 | First episode of the new year in the bag.

01:23:36.660 | Thank you for listening.

01:23:37.900 | We'll be back next week with another episode of the show.

01:23:40.980 | And until then, as always stay deep.

01:23:44.580 | Hey, so if you enjoyed our discussion today about learning hard things, I think you might

01:23:50.620 | also like episode 275, which gives a general system for achieving hard goals.

01:23:59.020 | So check that out.

01:24:00.880 | So the question I want to dive into today is how do you follow through on transformative

01:24:06.740 | goals?

Learn Any Hard Skill In 2024 - How To Eliminate Distraction & Master Productivity | Cal Newport

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