Full Length Episode | #175 | February 21, 2022

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:04.920 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, episode 175.

00:00:11.120 | [MUSIC]

00:00:16.000 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ, joined by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:22.120 | Jesse, we are fortunate you are able to make it in today.

00:00:27.000 | This is an early Sunday morning, and it is snowing outside.

00:00:31.120 | So I'm sure it was treacherous going for you to get here, but the truck made it.

00:00:36.160 | Truck made it.

00:00:36.840 | Yep, didn't have to use four-wheel drive.

00:00:38.800 | I don't want to alarm Deep Questions listeners, but as I walked over to the studio today,

00:00:43.080 | there was up to and including a quarter inch of snow on grassy surfaces.

00:00:47.120 | And that like shuts down the DC area because they're afraid of snow.

00:00:51.200 | A little bit, yeah.

00:00:52.000 | No, I believe the official, and I have the official rules here,

00:00:54.680 | is that if there's more than two inches of snow in the DC area,

00:00:58.440 | and I'm looking at the city rules here, they just declare a purge.

00:01:02.400 | There's just no law.

00:01:04.400 | You can just--

00:01:05.760 | Sounds reasonable.

00:01:06.720 | Eat your neighbors, use burning cars to barricade your neighborhood.

00:01:11.800 | That's two inches of snow.

00:01:13.760 | That's what happens.

00:01:14.760 | No, but we made it today.

00:01:16.480 | We made it in.

00:01:17.480 | We're recording this early, so I am going on a trip.

00:01:20.680 | So we're actually recording this quite a bit earlier than normal.

00:01:25.000 | This is actually just a peek behind a curtain,

00:01:28.440 | just a couple days after we were in the studio recording episodes 173, 174.

00:01:33.800 | So we're doing some back-to-back recording, get a couple into Cannes.

00:01:37.080 | So we're going to have to talk sort of generically about the Super Bowl winners.

00:01:41.960 | Man, that team really did well.

00:01:46.520 | I'll tell you what, if there's some places where there's good talent,

00:01:49.120 | there's talent in Ohio and California, both have a lot of talent.

00:01:52.440 | It was really impressive how the one guy was throwing the ball,

00:01:55.920 | and then that other guy caught it.

00:01:58.680 | And then that team got a commiserate number of points,

00:02:01.960 | and then that helped that team actually have the ultimate victory in the game.

00:02:05.560 | So that's my timely Super Bowl chatter.

00:02:07.600 | Sounds reasonable to me.

00:02:09.560 | That sounds good.

00:02:10.360 | Joe Burrow, go Joe Burrow.

00:02:12.440 | Yeah, Joe Burrow.

00:02:13.720 | I'm such a non-sports guy, I don't know who Joe Burrow is.

00:02:16.680 | Joe Burrow is the starting quarterback for the Bengals,

00:02:18.880 | and he's an absolute stud.

00:02:20.680 | Oh, this is the guy that they got with their...

00:02:24.080 | They went all in on like, "We just need to rebuild the quarterback

00:02:26.680 | with a high draft pick or something."

00:02:28.120 | Well...

00:02:28.600 | Or they traded for him or something.

00:02:30.000 | No, the Bengals got him with the number one pick.

00:02:32.000 | He went to LSU, won a national championship, and then...

00:02:36.160 | Yeah.

00:02:36.880 | He tore his ACL last year bad, but he's come back.

00:02:40.600 | He's back in it.

00:02:41.280 | Well, I mean, I think what this means is like,

00:02:42.960 | you and I should do terrible sports radio talk.

00:02:47.000 | Like, the whole premise is we go deep on sports

00:02:50.120 | that I know very little about.

00:02:51.560 | So it's just a lot of me asking, "Well, who is that?

00:02:54.000 | And what does that work?"

00:02:55.400 | And then we take in callers, and with every caller,

00:02:58.560 | I'll just say, "You know, I don't know what you're talking about.

00:03:01.600 | I'm sorry."

00:03:02.600 | And then we just go to the next caller.

00:03:04.040 | "I think this would be great.

00:03:05.520 | We figured it out.

00:03:06.160 | We've cracked it.

00:03:06.960 | We've cracked away."

00:03:08.080 | Because there's that...

00:03:08.600 | Who's that sports YouTuber guy that just...

00:03:10.320 | McAfee, who just got...

00:03:11.800 | Yeah, Pat McAfee.

00:03:13.000 | Like, all of the dollars in the world for his podcast.

00:03:15.680 | 33 million a year.

00:03:16.800 | 33 million a year.

00:03:17.800 | He's also on Sirius.

00:03:19.000 | All right.

00:03:19.280 | So we're going to use a Pat McAfee style approach here.

00:03:23.720 | Jesse and I are going to exclusively talk about sports.

00:03:28.000 | He's like shirtless and like stands up and yells and stuff, right?

00:03:31.560 | He wears a tank top.

00:03:32.400 | He's a funny guy.

00:03:33.160 | He's also on...

00:03:33.960 | Mad Dog comes on right after him.

00:03:35.400 | Mad Dog's like my hero.

00:03:37.920 | They're completely different, but they're compatible.

00:03:42.480 | All right.

00:03:42.840 | Well, I think it's going to be great, especially for our foreign listeners.

00:03:45.200 | I will be wearing a tank top, yelling about sports I do not understand,

00:03:50.240 | and telling callers that I have no idea what athlete they're talking about.

00:03:53.880 | Except for the Nats.

00:03:54.720 | You know what's going on.

00:03:55.160 | I'll talk Nats, man.

00:03:56.000 | I'll talk Nats all day.

00:03:56.960 | There is a Nats podcast in the area.

00:03:59.160 | Mark Zuckerman from Masson co-hosted.

00:04:01.440 | It's called Nats Chat.

00:04:02.920 | We got to do some synergy here.

00:04:05.920 | If they ever allow to play baseball again, we got to get some synergy.

00:04:08.480 | I'm going to have Zuckerman in here.

00:04:09.600 | We're going to do an hour-long episode.

00:04:10.920 | We're going to get deep on the Nats.

00:04:13.720 | I'm going to record a podcast once from inside Nats Park.

00:04:16.040 | We're going to figure that out.

00:04:17.000 | These worlds are going to come together.

00:04:18.720 | Yeah.

00:04:19.320 | All of our energy is going into that.

00:04:22.160 | But not this morning.

00:04:23.720 | This morning, I want to put some energy into doing yet another core idea video.

00:04:31.560 | Again, we've been racking these up, 10 to 15 minute videos,

00:04:35.360 | where I'm touching on the big ideas I come back to again and again.

00:04:38.680 | So you have something to reference, to save, and to share

00:04:41.760 | when you're interested in these ideas.

00:04:43.480 | So I wanted to do another one of those today.

00:04:47.280 | This is a core idea on a topic that actually

00:04:51.200 | was almost born on this podcast.

00:04:53.040 | It was born as roughly the same time as this podcast,

00:04:55.720 | and that is the deep life.

00:04:59.480 | So let's go deep about what we mean when we talk about the deep life.

00:05:05.640 | Now, I want to start with the background.

00:05:08.440 | Where did this come from, this terminology come from?

00:05:11.920 | It's all about the beginning of the pandemic.

00:05:14.400 | It's all about spring of 2020.

00:05:19.680 | This is when I began, first on my email newsletter,

00:05:23.320 | and then soon after on this podcast, coining the term the deep life

00:05:27.840 | and talking about it.

00:05:30.320 | Now, what was it about that period that made this general type of topic

00:05:33.400 | really relevant?

00:05:34.040 | There's three things that went on.

00:05:36.280 | So when the pandemic hit and there was those stay at home orders,

00:05:40.560 | there was definite disruption in people's routines,

00:05:42.720 | which is important.

00:05:43.440 | When you're in a routine, you're used to going from this to this to this.

00:05:46.160 | I'm in this job.

00:05:46.880 | I want to get this promotion.

00:05:48.320 | Where do we want to move?

00:05:49.520 | What's my next vacation going to be?

00:05:51.200 | It's very difficult to get some distance for critical self-reflection

00:05:54.880 | when you're just rolling all systems go.

00:05:59.080 | So a lot of people, myself included, got interested in notions

00:06:01.800 | like the deep life when those routines were disrupted.

00:06:04.880 | I think the early pandemic also did a good job for a lot of people

00:06:08.480 | of highlighting both the negative and the potential positive

00:06:12.120 | of their lives.

00:06:14.360 | It helped highlight, well, what is it that I don't really like

00:06:17.560 | but I've been avoiding?

00:06:19.600 | I don't really like this condo I live in, in this sort of annoying neighborhood

00:06:23.960 | in this city, and when I'm forced to have to spend all my time here.

00:06:28.760 | And I didn't have the normal escapes of let me go to the movies and a bar

00:06:32.920 | and weekend trips.

00:06:33.640 | It really made it clear, I don't really like where I live.

00:06:36.040 | Or having to spend all this time on Zoom with your colleagues,

00:06:39.120 | you're realizing there's excitement about commuting

00:06:41.680 | into my nice building downtown, but I don't really like these people.

00:06:45.000 | So there's negatives that were highlighted

00:06:46.720 | by the disruption of the pandemic.

00:06:48.120 | There was also positives.

00:06:49.880 | Being home a lot, being around your family more, being outside more,

00:06:53.600 | getting separation from having to drive into your office.

00:06:56.200 | So people also saw positives they weren't used to before.

00:06:59.480 | And I think most importantly, things got very disrupted,

00:07:03.600 | especially in the coastal places where we had mitigations that

00:07:06.720 | lasted for a very long time.

00:07:08.560 | Schools were closed, jobs had completely different configurations,

00:07:12.200 | people moved to completely different locations temporarily.

00:07:15.400 | Like, let me go live with my parents in Colorado

00:07:18.120 | instead of being in suburban DC.

00:07:20.600 | And it showed a lot of people that actually really different stuff

00:07:23.600 | is possible.

00:07:24.680 | You can do something different than what you have been doing

00:07:27.080 | and it's not going to fall apart.

00:07:28.680 | It's not as risky or scary as you once thought.

00:07:30.680 | So we had these forces come together and people

00:07:32.600 | were stepping back and saying, I don't know,

00:07:34.040 | I want to rethink my life.

00:07:35.360 | I don't know that I want to just get back

00:07:37.760 | to what I was doing before as quickly as possible

00:07:39.800 | and let's just keep rolling.

00:07:41.080 | So that was the context in which we began

00:07:42.840 | talking about the deep life.

00:07:46.280 | Now, the issue was, once we started talking about it,

00:07:48.840 | is that this is a timeless topic and one that is universal.

00:07:54.320 | Many, many people have these reflections

00:07:56.560 | on what a life well-lived is like and what they want out

00:07:59.040 | of their life.

00:07:59.600 | It's one of the oldest, most cliched topics that we have.

00:08:03.360 | But it's a difficult topic to actually get

00:08:05.680 | good pragmatic advice on.

00:08:07.520 | This is what we quickly realized as we

00:08:09.360 | scanned the landscape of pragmatic or aspirational

00:08:12.760 | literature on this topic, is that there's three things you

00:08:14.800 | would come across.

00:08:15.840 | One, purely inspirational information.

00:08:18.840 | Like, here is a story of a person who did something

00:08:21.680 | and just something about what they did hits me like,

00:08:23.880 | oh, that's cool, I want to do that.

00:08:26.360 | You read Will Finnegan's Barbarian Days.

00:08:29.280 | Like, man, there is something about him

00:08:31.760 | roaming the world surfing.

00:08:33.680 | And something about that feels interesting and resonant.

00:08:36.040 | We don't know what it is.

00:08:37.040 | It's just generic inspiration.

00:08:39.080 | The other type of literature that

00:08:40.400 | was common addressing this topic would

00:08:42.160 | be hyper-focused on one aspect of your life.

00:08:45.680 | So we've all seen this.

00:08:46.600 | You hyper-focus in on one aspect of your life.

00:08:50.000 | It's going to be self-acceptance,

00:08:53.040 | or it's going to be intense fitness health routine,

00:08:56.920 | or it's going to be a job.

00:08:59.520 | I'm going to get out of this job and run a company,

00:09:01.600 | and I want advice specifically about doing it.

00:09:03.520 | So there's a lot of very specific advice,

00:09:05.240 | but it just shoots like a laser beam on just one topic.

00:09:08.760 | Or we get that genre of book where

00:09:12.680 | you have someone who says, OK, I'm

00:09:14.880 | going to try to improve my life and write about it.

00:09:17.840 | And it's self-deprecating.

00:09:20.800 | And typically in the genre of books,

00:09:22.320 | the person has a child or a wife that's

00:09:26.120 | rolling their eyes at his efforts,

00:09:27.960 | and it's kind of bumbling.

00:09:29.040 | And in the end, he learned some good lessons

00:09:30.920 | and makes some small changes, but it's basically

00:09:32.520 | back to his same normal life he had before.

00:09:34.440 | So there's that genre, too.

00:09:35.720 | I'm going to go out there and change my life.

00:09:37.600 | And they try all these things.

00:09:38.760 | It's kind of kooky.

00:09:39.560 | And they meet kooky characters.

00:09:40.880 | And the main character's wife rolls their eyes

00:09:44.080 | at the bumbling guy.

00:09:44.960 | And in the end, they're like, well, I have a better--

00:09:47.200 | in the end, I'm now doing some meditation and am a vegan.

00:09:50.920 | And so some changes have been made,

00:09:52.560 | but they're basically back to where they were before.

00:09:54.480 | Because you don't want to stick your head out too much,

00:09:56.120 | because people might push back.

00:09:57.800 | So we didn't have a lot to draw on.

00:10:01.000 | And so the thought I had at this point early in the pandemic

00:10:04.840 | is, let's get specific.

00:10:07.320 | Let's give this aspiration a name.

00:10:09.200 | Let's give it a definition.

00:10:10.480 | Let's come up with specific steps

00:10:12.200 | you can do to try to achieve it.

00:10:13.960 | Let's be super specific.

00:10:15.160 | Let's not just be vaguely inspirational.

00:10:17.120 | Let's not just hyper-focus on one aspect of your life.

00:10:19.440 | And let's not do this sort of weak sauce, self-deprecating

00:10:21.800 | memoir type thing.

00:10:22.920 | Let's just get after it.

00:10:23.960 | Now, of course, this is quixotic.

00:10:25.440 | There's nothing more complex and ambiguous

00:10:27.600 | in trying to build a life of meeting.

00:10:29.360 | Philosophers and theology have tried

00:10:30.880 | to tackle this for centuries.

00:10:32.280 | So of course, what we're going to do

00:10:35.320 | is not going to be comprehensive.

00:10:36.720 | But I have found it's often useful to put

00:10:39.720 | a stake in the ground.

00:10:40.880 | Let's put a stake in the ground and get specific,

00:10:42.920 | something you can go towards, see what works,

00:10:45.200 | see what doesn't, and let that be a starting point for trying

00:10:47.880 | to get where you want to go.

00:10:49.560 | Specificity is useful even when it's not comprehensive.

00:10:54.000 | That is one of the big guiding lights of my advice.

00:10:56.560 | So we introduced this term, the deep life.

00:10:59.840 | Let's give a name to this generic aspiration

00:11:02.560 | a lot of people felt, especially during those early months

00:11:05.160 | of the pandemic.

00:11:06.560 | Then we gave it a definition.

00:11:07.840 | So what do we mean by the deep life?

00:11:09.800 | How about this for a definition?

00:11:11.480 | It is a life lived in radical alignment with your values.

00:11:19.000 | Let's be specific about it.

00:11:20.480 | Radical alignment with your values.

00:11:22.400 | All of the parts of this definition matter.

00:11:26.560 | So alignment with your values means

00:11:28.760 | you're focusing on things that are very important to you

00:11:31.240 | and not wasting too much time on things that aren't.

00:11:34.720 | Radical means in at least some of these areas,

00:11:37.320 | you have made really big head-turning shifts

00:11:41.520 | or transformation in your life to pursue those values.

00:11:43.520 | So not just small, but big.

00:11:44.880 | You have to have both parts of those

00:11:46.800 | if you want to capture that thing that we intuitively

00:11:49.200 | are attracted to, that intuitive notion of the deep life

00:11:51.480 | that we know it when we see it.

00:11:54.200 | If you just do the alignment with the values part

00:11:57.920 | without the radical, what do you end up with?

00:12:00.400 | Nothing bad, but also nothing phenomenal.

00:12:02.760 | What you end up with is, hey, I tuned up parts of my life.

00:12:06.120 | It's like the character at the end

00:12:08.080 | of those sort of weak sauce nonfiction memoirs.

00:12:10.840 | You have slightly better health habits,

00:12:12.720 | and you've joined a reading group,

00:12:14.960 | and you're trying to walk more regularly, and you meditate.

00:12:18.360 | And it's good, right?

00:12:19.200 | Like you've added things in your life

00:12:21.760 | to be more in line with your values.

00:12:23.640 | If you're not doing that as bad,

00:12:24.880 | it's better than doing nothing.

00:12:27.160 | But you're not going to watch a documentary

00:12:29.440 | about someone who has taken up a meditation habit

00:12:31.840 | and tries to walk more and be like, man, that's what I want.

00:12:35.360 | That guy's got it all figured out, right?

00:12:37.040 | It's not touching you deep.

00:12:38.880 | The radical piece is important too,

00:12:40.680 | because if you just do the radical

00:12:43.640 | without thinking about all the things that are important

00:12:46.480 | to you and aligning with things that are important to you,

00:12:48.400 | you get this burst of satisfaction

00:12:51.760 | because just making disruptive changes

00:12:53.840 | is exciting in itself, and then it dies off.

00:12:56.040 | Years ago, I read this book that had a great example of that.

00:13:00.640 | It was a book that was called "Made by Hand."

00:13:04.520 | The author was Mark Frohenfelder.

00:13:07.280 | Now, Mark Frohenfelder went on to become the editor

00:13:10.280 | or co-editor of "Make" magazine.

00:13:13.000 | So he became a big player in the DIY makerspace movement.

00:13:17.960 | But he wrote this memoir,

00:13:19.520 | and I remember reading it years ago,

00:13:20.720 | and for some reason, I remember being

00:13:22.040 | at San Francisco in the airport.

00:13:24.000 | So I don't know what trip this was.

00:13:26.120 | But they opened that book with him and his wife,

00:13:28.360 | and they had some young kids at the time,

00:13:30.240 | doing radical without the alignment of values.

00:13:32.760 | Like, we just need to do something different, right?

00:13:34.440 | We feel this urge to live a deep life.

00:13:36.320 | And what they did was they moved to an island

00:13:38.600 | in the South Pacific, just in the middle of nowhere.

00:13:42.200 | I think it was like Rotonga or somewhere like this.

00:13:45.080 | 'Cause they're like, "Let's just be bold

00:13:47.600 | and do something completely new."

00:13:50.040 | It was miserable.

00:13:51.640 | Like, it turns out you can't school your kids.

00:13:54.720 | There's all sorts of insects and things

00:13:57.360 | that are stinging you.

00:13:58.200 | There's very bad medical care.

00:13:59.680 | And they felt really weird and guilty

00:14:01.120 | about being there year-round

00:14:02.480 | because it's an impoverished place.

00:14:03.920 | And why were you guys coming here from San Francisco?

00:14:06.800 | And they just hated it, and they moved back.

00:14:10.160 | So that was a radical change that wasn't built

00:14:12.600 | upon a very clear understanding of promoting things

00:14:15.240 | that are very valuable to you.

00:14:17.720 | So you gotta have both the radical

00:14:19.160 | and the alignment with values.

00:14:20.880 | You do those two things,

00:14:23.000 | together you get something like the deep life.

00:14:26.160 | So let me give a concrete case study.

00:14:27.560 | This is someone I know.

00:14:29.240 | I didn't ask him if I could use him as an example.

00:14:31.600 | So I'm gonna try to be a little bit vague about details,

00:14:34.280 | and I'm actually changing a few of the details here.

00:14:37.240 | But this is roughly a true story, someone I actually know.

00:14:40.920 | All right, so I have a friend, longtime friends,

00:14:43.880 | who until recently, they were living in suburban DC,

00:14:48.840 | out in Virginia, sort of suburbs of DC,

00:14:51.600 | outside of the Beltway, right?

00:14:53.240 | So kind of relatively far out suburbs.

00:14:57.160 | Now, it's a husband and wife with two kids,

00:15:00.040 | and they had a third kid around this time.

00:15:02.440 | He did video production for hire

00:15:05.280 | and some of his own projects.

00:15:07.160 | And would do some freelance copywriting,

00:15:09.640 | he's a sort of overly educated guy, a good writer,

00:15:12.040 | would do freelance copywriting

00:15:13.240 | for corporate public relations firms.

00:15:16.720 | So writing press releases and stuff like that.

00:15:19.080 | And then she had a wellness business online,

00:15:23.920 | a pretty time consuming.

00:15:24.920 | This wasn't like goop,

00:15:26.040 | like it wasn't gonna be a hundred million dollar whatever,

00:15:29.200 | but it brought in good money,

00:15:30.600 | but it was also complicated and time consuming.

00:15:32.320 | And they lived in the suburb out in Virginia

00:15:35.040 | where it was like very expensive.

00:15:36.720 | They did not particularly like their neighbors,

00:15:39.600 | they didn't mind them,

00:15:41.600 | but these like creative type people

00:15:43.960 | and the neighbors were all just

00:15:45.000 | dual income government employees

00:15:46.400 | who were living in that neighborhood

00:15:47.440 | because it clipped like a good school district

00:15:50.120 | and just striving,

00:15:50.960 | like we just want our kids to like get good grades.

00:15:52.640 | And just like commuter suburb,

00:15:55.320 | everyone's commuting in and out,

00:15:56.880 | it wasn't that inspiring.

00:15:59.120 | He had a WeWork to do his film production.

00:16:02.040 | All you could afford was like a WeWork space

00:16:03.960 | that was shared and you kind of drive into the city to do it.

00:16:06.200 | Like this was their situation.

00:16:08.480 | And they were living in the suburb

00:16:09.560 | because one of their big interest was alternative education

00:16:13.880 | and there was a particular alternative school

00:16:15.800 | that was kind of around there

00:16:17.400 | so they could send their daughter there

00:16:18.840 | and he needed to be near a city

00:16:20.840 | and so they were kind of trying to figure this all out.

00:16:22.960 | Okay, pandemic hits, third kid comes along,

00:16:25.760 | they're like, all right, enough of this,

00:16:26.920 | we want the deep life.

00:16:27.760 | Like if not now, when?

00:16:30.200 | And here's what they did.

00:16:32.200 | They moved to a plot of land,

00:16:36.120 | it was 20 plus acres near the James River

00:16:40.080 | outside of Richmond, Virginia.

00:16:42.280 | So they bought land, it has fields, forest, and riverfront.

00:16:47.280 | Not nice land, right?

00:16:49.400 | This is not nice mansions or giant second homes,

00:16:53.120 | but there's a modest home there,

00:16:55.080 | fields, forest on the river,

00:16:57.280 | but also close to Richmond, 20 minute drive.

00:16:59.640 | Okay, so they go out there, they buy that land.

00:17:02.000 | It's cheap relative to anything in DC.

00:17:05.800 | It's cheaper than the starting house

00:17:07.520 | they could buy anywhere in DC,

00:17:08.600 | which they were also looking at.

00:17:09.560 | So this is not, oh, we have a lot of money.

00:17:11.120 | This is actually much cheaper to buy land

00:17:12.720 | outside of Virginia than to buy a house in the DC area.

00:17:16.280 | They just had their third kid.

00:17:17.880 | He stopped doing the copywriting.

00:17:19.560 | She put that company on hold

00:17:22.040 | because it was causing a lot of headaches.

00:17:24.200 | They're gonna put their energy into their kids.

00:17:25.560 | They're gonna homeschool their kids

00:17:27.080 | 'cause again, they're really interested

00:17:28.320 | in alternative education

00:17:29.400 | and they built this whole curriculum surrounding their land

00:17:32.400 | and a lot of their kids' experience

00:17:33.840 | was gonna be helping to clear this land

00:17:35.760 | and they're building these sort of cool

00:17:38.560 | yurt style buildings on the land.

00:17:41.080 | And she got very involved

00:17:43.200 | in starting up a homeschooling cooperative.

00:17:44.880 | So there's these other families

00:17:46.000 | that the kids would be doing things with.

00:17:48.720 | And so they were going all in on

00:17:51.040 | being able to build that lifestyle.

00:17:52.200 | And he rented, because everything's cheap in Richmond

00:17:55.000 | compared to DC, this really nice office space

00:17:57.600 | in downtown Richmond in the arts district.

00:18:00.640 | It has like a balcony

00:18:01.720 | and he brought someone with him from DC.

00:18:03.360 | And now he sort of can work

00:18:05.600 | in this new up and coming district of the city

00:18:07.680 | and he does his video production

00:18:09.000 | and they live much cheaper here in Richmond

00:18:10.760 | so they can kind of afford to not bring as much money.

00:18:13.000 | And they built this whole different life

00:18:14.360 | that's very intentional and it's deep.

00:18:16.120 | There's a radical component to it.

00:18:17.560 | They're living in the woods on land

00:18:19.960 | and homeschooling their kids,

00:18:21.840 | but it's all coming from alignment with things

00:18:24.280 | that are really important to them.

00:18:25.480 | Slowing down, alternative education,

00:18:27.600 | being around their family,

00:18:29.240 | outside of like normal rat race suburban type of living,

00:18:31.760 | but also connection to arts and the cities and creativity,

00:18:34.720 | which he has with what he's doing in the arts district.

00:18:38.920 | They shifted towards a deep life.

00:18:40.120 | That is that definition in action.

00:18:42.760 | So how do you do this yourself?

00:18:45.240 | Well, over the months,

00:18:46.320 | we worked out some specific strategies you could try.

00:18:50.000 | And most of the strategies that I talk about

00:18:51.880 | with the deep life start with,

00:18:54.440 | identify the different areas of your life

00:18:57.840 | that are important to you.

00:19:00.480 | The deep life does not work

00:19:03.040 | if you neglect parts of your own existence

00:19:06.400 | that are important.

00:19:07.240 | If you get too myopic, it's all about my work.

00:19:10.960 | It's all about my religion.

00:19:12.880 | It's all about my family.

00:19:15.560 | You get too myopic, it doesn't work.

00:19:17.400 | So you have to identify,

00:19:18.240 | let's start with just listing out

00:19:19.480 | what the different areas are.

00:19:21.040 | For whatever reason,

00:19:22.920 | when we began talking about this on the podcast,

00:19:25.240 | we began to use the terminology buckets

00:19:27.320 | to describe these areas.

00:19:28.480 | We say, what are the deep life buckets?

00:19:30.120 | What are the areas of your life that are important to you?

00:19:32.920 | This list should be personalized,

00:19:34.920 | but as a starting point,

00:19:37.340 | we often talk about, for sake of example,

00:19:40.440 | we'll talk about craft being one of these buckets.

00:19:42.820 | So that's the things you produce or your work,

00:19:45.080 | but also other types of high quality leisure type activities

00:19:48.400 | where you literally create things in the world.

00:19:50.160 | Community, it's your family, that's your friends,

00:19:52.240 | and that's the people that live around you,

00:19:54.520 | dedication to that.

00:19:55.660 | Constitution, that's your health, that's your fitness.

00:19:57.840 | Contemplation, that's philosophy, ethics, and theology.

00:20:00.600 | So the part of that Aristotelian deep thinking

00:20:04.500 | about what makes humans humans and the life well lived,

00:20:06.680 | that's a key part for most people.

00:20:09.000 | We sometimes add a fifth bucket in these discussions,

00:20:11.240 | which we, to be alliterative, we call celebration,

00:20:14.680 | which is that commitment to, with presence and gratitude,

00:20:17.500 | just enjoying things about the world.

00:20:19.720 | You're really into craft beer

00:20:22.360 | and being able to be at that craft brewery,

00:20:26.100 | overlooking the valley, enjoying like a new brew

00:20:28.560 | that you really understand why it's really good,

00:20:30.800 | and just having deep appreciation of that.

00:20:32.780 | You're really into music and being at that show

00:20:35.640 | and really just being able to appreciate that artist.

00:20:38.480 | So celebration is a big part of it

00:20:40.160 | for a lot of people as well.

00:20:41.100 | So you have your buckets, whatever they are.

00:20:43.720 | You have these different buckets,

00:20:44.560 | and the deep life has to respect all of them.

00:20:46.280 | That's step one.

00:20:47.940 | Step two is part of our deep life strategy

00:20:51.600 | is let's warm up by developing a keystone habit

00:20:56.600 | in each of the buckets.

00:20:59.040 | So something you do every day

00:21:00.420 | and you write down that you did it,

00:21:02.180 | that is relevant to that bucket and signals to yourself,

00:21:06.180 | I take this part of my life seriously,

00:21:07.860 | and I am willing to do non-required activity

00:21:12.500 | on a daily basis to support this piece of my life.

00:21:15.860 | These should not be completely onerous or complicated

00:21:19.260 | because you won't do them,

00:21:20.100 | but they should also not be trivial.

00:21:21.360 | You have to walk that line.

00:21:23.180 | It's tractable, but meaningful.

00:21:25.380 | They're simple, but you do them every day.

00:21:28.500 | Now this warmup is about teaching yourself

00:21:31.940 | that you care about different parts of your life,

00:21:35.980 | teaching yourself that you are the type of person

00:21:38.100 | who does optional activity on a regular basis

00:21:42.600 | in pursuit of a greater good in your life.

00:21:45.320 | A lot of people need that warmup,

00:21:46.580 | and it's something I think that is missed

00:21:47.780 | in a lot of self-help or advice type writing

00:21:49.860 | that we jump right into, just do this, this, and this.

00:21:51.880 | Most people don't even have the practice yet

00:21:54.300 | with what does it feel like to say,

00:21:55.420 | shoot, I gotta go do this, and it's kind of a pain,

00:21:58.680 | but then I get the satisfaction knowing

00:21:59.980 | that I did this thing anyways, even though it was a pain,

00:22:02.000 | and you say, wow, I'm willing to do things

00:22:03.180 | that are a pain if I think they're important to me,

00:22:04.720 | and I think that's a key first step.

00:22:06.900 | Next, once you have all those keystone habits going,

00:22:09.980 | pump is primed, you dedicate four to six weeks

00:22:13.300 | to each of your buckets,

00:22:14.500 | and when it's the turn of a particular bucket,

00:22:17.580 | you spend that time saying,

00:22:18.640 | now let me do a more significant overhaul

00:22:20.540 | of that part of my life,

00:22:21.660 | and this is an alignment overhaul,

00:22:23.020 | so what you're trying to do is clear out of your life

00:22:25.620 | stuff that's not that valuable that's related to that topic

00:22:28.060 | or that actively gets in the way

00:22:30.060 | of the things you care about in that topic

00:22:31.740 | while adding in place more things,

00:22:34.160 | a small number of things that are very important

00:22:35.900 | or valuable related to that,

00:22:37.620 | so when it comes to constitution,

00:22:39.120 | you're going through and really overhauling how you eat,

00:22:42.940 | integrating a fitness habit deeply into your daily routine,

00:22:46.540 | maybe you start training for something,

00:22:47.980 | so you take each element,

00:22:50.180 | so I'm gonna do a real overhaul there,

00:22:51.460 | clear out the distraction,

00:22:53.420 | pump up the thing that creates the value,

00:22:55.160 | pump up the things that creates the value,

00:22:57.140 | do this for each of the buckets.

00:22:58.740 | Now at this point, you're really humming

00:23:02.540 | because two things have happened,

00:23:03.940 | one, you do really think about yourself as someone

00:23:07.420 | who can take optional action

00:23:10.060 | towards things that are important,

00:23:12.620 | and two, you've been doing non-trivial action

00:23:14.880 | towards all of these areas of your life that matter,

00:23:16.740 | and it is in that action that you get the real self-insight,

00:23:19.460 | it's in the fact that you spent a month

00:23:21.740 | focusing on just this part of your life,

00:23:24.380 | and now have lived the next four months

00:23:26.020 | with that part of your life being emphasized

00:23:27.780 | that you begin to gain real insight

00:23:29.140 | about what's important to you and what's not in that area,

00:23:32.340 | what matters, what doesn't,

00:23:33.300 | what opportunities out there are lurking,

00:23:34.820 | you're not just staring blindly at,

00:23:36.820 | I don't know, maybe I should live on a farm,

00:23:38.820 | maybe I should move to Rotonga,

00:23:40.240 | you're starting to figure out what really matters,

00:23:42.500 | you get this nuanced understanding of yourself.

00:23:45.820 | Now we're ready for the final step

00:23:47.660 | of the transformation towards the deep life,

00:23:51.340 | which is engaging the radical.

00:23:53.380 | Now let's make some radical changes,

00:23:55.780 | we're leaving that suburb of DC

00:23:57.700 | and moving to the James River in Richmond,

00:23:59.700 | now you're primed for that,

00:24:01.100 | if you start with that,

00:24:02.180 | you end up on the island in the South Pacific

00:24:05.220 | picking lice out of your kid's hair,

00:24:07.200 | worried about there being no doctors,

00:24:08.900 | and say we made a big mistake,

00:24:10.820 | but you do the keystone followed by the overhauls,

00:24:13.420 | now you're coming from a place of confidence

00:24:16.740 | and self-awareness,

00:24:18.380 | and now you say, okay,

00:24:19.960 | what can we do that would be a radical shift

00:24:21.940 | that would further align us with these values

00:24:23.860 | I now much better understand?

00:24:25.580 | And here the best way to do it is lifestyle-centric,

00:24:28.980 | work backwards from various visions,

00:24:31.220 | you have to iterate through these,

00:24:32.300 | various visions of a lifestyle,

00:24:34.300 | lifestyles that are radically changed

00:24:37.100 | from where you are now,

00:24:38.580 | and you have to evaluate these potential new lifestyles

00:24:41.380 | in terms of their impact on all of the buckets,

00:24:43.220 | what you're looking for is a lifestyle

00:24:44.620 | that has some sort of radical change that gets you there,

00:24:46.940 | but it enhances all of your buckets,

00:24:49.260 | not just we're going to an island in the South Pacific

00:24:53.460 | 'cause it seems big,

00:24:54.820 | but what's it gonna do to community,

00:24:55.920 | what's it gonna do to constitution,

00:24:57.180 | what's it gonna do to contemplation,

00:24:59.140 | what's it gonna do to celebration,

00:25:00.100 | you think about this whole new lifestyle,

00:25:02.660 | and you try to find one that,

00:25:04.260 | okay, this is tractable,

00:25:05.300 | we can afford this,

00:25:06.820 | and if we do this right,

00:25:08.160 | this change is going to pump up some of these things

00:25:10.660 | we really care about very clearly into a big level,

00:25:12.900 | and it's not gonna get in the way of the other things,

00:25:14.580 | it's not gonna take one of these away,

00:25:16.860 | it's not when we move to the South Pacific,

00:25:18.340 | mean we never see our friends,

00:25:19.340 | we never see our family,

00:25:20.440 | we have no connection to our community,

00:25:21.660 | it's not gonna get in the way of any of these,

00:25:24.100 | and that is how you make the decision

00:25:25.860 | about doing something radical,

00:25:27.280 | so it's after a lot of work and practice and training,

00:25:29.980 | then you try to make that shift,

00:25:33.420 | and then you repeat,

00:25:35.180 | and then you do these overhauls again,

00:25:36.960 | this is an annual thing probably,

00:25:38.500 | you go through your buckets,

00:25:39.380 | how's it going,

00:25:40.220 | what do we need to tune up,

00:25:41.140 | every few years you might step back and say,

00:25:42.780 | do we need another type of radical shift here,

00:25:44.860 | you're not afraid of it

00:25:45.700 | because now you're not doing it randomly,

00:25:48.100 | now the radical is not reactionary,

00:25:50.500 | it comes from a place of informed self-awareness,

00:25:53.900 | it comes from a place of confidence and practice,

00:25:56.340 | and so that is my attempt to make this vague,

00:26:00.220 | but deeply aspirational idea

00:26:01.900 | that I want the type of life that when someone sees it,

00:26:03.880 | they say, whoa, I want that,

00:26:06.660 | I want that in my life,

00:26:07.780 | and I wanna get there in a way that's systematic,

00:26:09.420 | and this is the best strategy

00:26:11.540 | that at least on this podcast,

00:26:12.820 | we've been able to come up with so far,

00:26:15.140 | fix the word, fix the definition,

00:26:17.780 | fix the areas of your life,

00:26:18.860 | Keystone Habit Overhaul, lifestyle-centric,

00:26:22.140 | evaluation of different radical shifts

00:26:25.460 | to find one that might work,

00:26:26.540 | and then take that radical shift,

00:26:27.780 | that's how you get to the deep life,

00:26:29.060 | it doesn't happen tomorrow,

00:26:30.500 | but it doesn't take two years,

00:26:31.620 | so if you are feeling that yearning,

00:26:34.020 | at least consider setting down this particular path.

00:26:40.060 | All right, and that's what we have for today's core idea.

00:26:44.800 | Now, I've got a good list of questions

00:26:47.700 | I wanna get into today,

00:26:48.740 | as normal, we have a group of questions on deep work

00:26:51.180 | and questions on the deep life,

00:26:52.780 | as always, before we jump into that,

00:26:56.600 | we should probably pay the bills,

00:26:59.940 | talk about a couple of the sponsors

00:27:01.300 | that make this show possible,

00:27:04.540 | so I'll start by talking about Headspace,

00:27:07.280 | you have probably heard about Headspace,

00:27:09.820 | this is a guided meditation app,

00:27:12.140 | so it's an app where you can select

00:27:13.440 | from a very large library of guided meditations,

00:27:17.700 | and then you hear them straight in your ears,

00:27:19.500 | and that meditation brings you through,

00:27:21.660 | you follow it right there to get those benefits,

00:27:24.420 | I mean, this is the time where this becomes relevant,

00:27:26.660 | I don't know about you,

00:27:27.500 | but the new year is over,

00:27:29.380 | we're in the depth of the winter,

00:27:32.100 | it's snowing outside,

00:27:34.340 | Jesse's truck barely made it

00:27:35.860 | through the quarter inch of snow

00:27:37.020 | on the grassy surfaces today,

00:27:38.340 | like, this is the type of time

00:27:39.460 | where you're in your head,

00:27:41.180 | and you're anxious,

00:27:42.020 | and things are bleak,

00:27:43.620 | it is when you need to take your mental health seriously,

00:27:46.400 | and Headspace can really help you there,

00:27:48.460 | look, we all say fine,

00:27:51.260 | when we don't mean it,

00:27:52.700 | people say, how are you?

00:27:53.540 | And we say, I don't know, I'm just fine,

00:27:54.940 | but that's not really an emotion,

00:27:57.260 | we just say that even if we feel anger,

00:27:58.780 | sadness, or nerves, or anxiety,

00:28:00.880 | this is where something like Headspace can help,

00:28:03.000 | it is scientifically proven

00:28:04.700 | to help you manage your feelings and mental health,

00:28:07.460 | there's one study that came out recently

00:28:09.180 | that showed that just two weeks of using Headspace

00:28:11.860 | can reduce your stress by 14%,

00:28:15.900 | you can use Headspace meditations

00:28:17.380 | to relieve stress and anxiety,

00:28:18.540 | to sleep better, to improve your focus,

00:28:21.040 | they call themselves an everyday dose

00:28:23.020 | of mindfulness for real life,

00:28:24.820 | Jesse, I'm not sure if you know this,

00:28:25.960 | but Headspace, I found this

00:28:27.140 | when I was working with the app recently,

00:28:29.660 | has guided meditations for focus,

00:28:32.420 | so like, I wanna get into a mode of concentration

00:28:36.960 | on something hard I have to do, right,

00:28:38.340 | like I have to write an article,

00:28:41.140 | you can do a guided meditation for focus,

00:28:42.900 | and there's the music there,

00:28:44.220 | and it gets you locked in,

00:28:45.900 | and I talk a lot about deep work rituals,

00:28:47.860 | so that's not a bad one to throw into your mix there,

00:28:50.500 | 'cause they know what they're doing.

00:28:51.420 | - Yeah, for sure.

00:28:53.260 | - So here's what we can offer,

00:28:55.180 | however you're feeling, if you try Headspace,

00:28:58.220 | we can get you, let's see what we,

00:29:00.040 | one month free, look at that, that's pretty good,

00:29:03.380 | one month free, all right,

00:29:04.260 | so however you're feeling,

00:29:05.100 | try Headspace at headspace.com/questions,

00:29:09.620 | it's that slash questions that's gonna get you

00:29:11.740 | one month free of their entire mindfulness library,

00:29:16.740 | this is the best Headspace offer available,

00:29:19.000 | so go to headspace.com/questions today,

00:29:21.660 | that's headspace.com/questions.

00:29:26.160 | Let's also talk about Blinkist,

00:29:29.620 | I am a Blinkist believer,

00:29:33.660 | this is another one of the long time advertisers

00:29:36.300 | for the Deep Work podcast,

00:29:39.220 | with Blinkist you get access to short summaries,

00:29:42.620 | so we're talking 10 to 15 minute summaries

00:29:45.580 | of thousands of bestselling and important nonfiction books,

00:29:50.580 | so if you wanna know the main idea

00:29:53.380 | from a bestselling nonfiction book,

00:29:54.980 | you can listen or read the Blink,

00:29:57.180 | if you're a Blinkist subscriber,

00:29:58.780 | and get right to the chase, what are the big ideas,

00:30:02.980 | it's a good time to be thinking about that,

00:30:04.900 | it's the new year, we wanna get off to a good start,

00:30:09.060 | we wanna infuse our life with inspiring

00:30:11.000 | or interesting or very useful ideas,

00:30:12.900 | Blinkist can help you get there.

00:30:14.500 | Now, Jesse, I've told you about this before,

00:30:17.380 | but the way I like to use Blinkist is to figure out

00:30:19.940 | what books do I wanna read or not,

00:30:23.220 | so if there's a topic I wanna know about,

00:30:24.540 | I'll read the Blinks of all the related books,

00:30:27.300 | learn the lay of the land, learn the main ideas,

00:30:29.780 | and decide, oh, is there one of those books

00:30:31.420 | I actually wanna buy and read in more detail,

00:30:33.740 | so you add Blinkist to a reading habit,

00:30:36.460 | and I think you supercharge your reading habit,

00:30:40.420 | so it works pretty well.

00:30:43.180 | For example, technology and future,

00:30:44.980 | that's a category they have that I spend a lot of time

00:30:47.340 | in my own work looking at,

00:30:50.340 | if you're interested in Yuval Harari,

00:30:53.060 | maybe you read Sapiens, you said,

00:30:54.300 | oh, I know he has this new book, "Homo Deus,"

00:30:56.060 | and this other book, "21 Lessons for the 21st Century,"

00:30:58.660 | Blinks of both of those books are right there,

00:31:00.700 | you could jump in right away and say,

00:31:02.220 | what exactly is going on in "Homo Deus?"

00:31:05.180 | Oh, I see, now should I buy this or not?

00:31:07.220 | Incredibly useful, I actually read the "Homo Deus" Blink,

00:31:09.340 | that was useful, "Irresistibles" on there.

00:31:11.840 | Good friend of mine, Adam Alter, author of "Irresistible,"

00:31:16.940 | it's a great book about the mechanics of digital addiction,

00:31:21.820 | so we hear about this all the time,

00:31:23.140 | read the Blink of "Irresistible," get the basics,

00:31:26.340 | oh, now I know what I'm talking about,

00:31:28.380 | and if it hits you right,

00:31:29.380 | like now I know I need to buy this book and read more of it.

00:31:31.940 | Anyways, if you're into the reading life,

00:31:33.980 | Blinkist is a good idea.

00:31:36.900 | Be a bad sign if the Blink for your book

00:31:41.340 | was somehow longer or more comprehensive

00:31:43.260 | than your book itself, or if it was just like,

00:31:45.940 | or if the Blink, this would be the thing

00:31:47.460 | I'd be worried about, the Blink for my book

00:31:49.260 | was like two sentences long.

00:31:51.060 | Like, we tried to condense this,

00:31:52.620 | and this is what this whole thing is about.

00:31:54.820 | So you want a long Blink,

00:31:56.060 | like you want your book to have a meaty Blink,

00:31:59.100 | because that means you wrote a meaty book.

00:32:01.420 | I think that's what it comes down to.

00:32:03.540 | I haven't looked at my Blinks.

00:32:05.020 | I think all my main books are Blinked.

00:32:07.220 | I haven't looked at my own Blinks, though.

00:32:09.180 | I probably should.

00:32:10.180 | - Yeah, you probably should, check 'em out.

00:32:11.420 | - Yeah, yeah, see what the people are thinking.

00:32:14.580 | Hopefully when you read the Blinks of my books,

00:32:16.140 | you will say, "I gotta own this thing."

00:32:18.460 | But not just own this thing, I need four copies.

00:32:20.420 | That's the right reaction when you read a Blink

00:32:22.140 | in one of my books,

00:32:22.980 | I need to buy multiple copies of this book.

00:32:25.380 | - You've actually been getting a lot of questions

00:32:26.940 | about like the counterargument to stuff,

00:32:28.740 | so Blinkist would be a good way to dive into that, too.

00:32:31.260 | - Yeah, because this is a discussion we've had on the show

00:32:33.420 | about expose yourself to alternative points of view

00:32:35.820 | to strengthen your understanding of a topic.

00:32:38.180 | Blinkist is perfect for that.

00:32:40.140 | Like, look, I'm not gonna go read six books

00:32:43.420 | just because my cousin was talking about something

00:32:45.660 | and I wanna understand it better,

00:32:46.620 | but I can do six Blinks, you know, no problem this week,

00:32:50.420 | and now I really understand something better.

00:32:52.380 | - Yeah, it's a good point.

00:32:53.740 | - Right now, Blinkist has a special offer

00:32:55.580 | just for our audience.

00:32:56.940 | If you go to blinkist.com/deep,

00:33:00.380 | you can start a free seven-day trial

00:33:02.500 | and then get 25% off a Blinkist premium membership.

00:33:07.500 | And that's Blinkist spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T,

00:33:12.340 | blinkist.com/deep to get 25% off and a seven-day free trial.

00:33:17.340 | That's blinkist.com/deep.

00:33:20.500 | All right, I think it's time that we do some questions.

00:33:26.060 | So I got some questions here and we'll start as always

00:33:28.220 | with some questions about deep work.

00:33:31.280 | Our first query comes from Jack.

00:33:35.820 | Jack asks, "Any tips for time blocking

00:33:39.380 | for those of us in ADHD land?"

00:33:43.160 | Well, Jack, I hear a lot from people with ADHD

00:33:47.980 | and they talk about the various habits I talk about,

00:33:50.940 | which ones work well, which ones don't,

00:33:52.580 | which ones need to be adjusted.

00:33:53.760 | And the thing I hear most consistently

00:33:55.460 | about time blocking is that it's a double-edged sword.

00:33:59.560 | So time blocking for those in ADHD land

00:34:02.780 | is actually really, really useful

00:34:04.700 | in the sense that having clarity about,

00:34:06.220 | I'm doing this, that I'm doing that,

00:34:07.380 | and then I'm doing this.

00:34:09.320 | I mean, committed to that habit

00:34:11.260 | can be a really good target aimer for your attention

00:34:15.580 | and make it less likely that you fall into a rabbit hole

00:34:19.500 | as compared to, let's say, a list reactive approach

00:34:21.620 | where after each task, you say,

00:34:22.900 | let me just look at my inboxes and calendars

00:34:24.620 | and think about what I wanna do next.

00:34:25.860 | If you're in that mode

00:34:27.180 | and you're combining that with ADHD,

00:34:28.820 | it's very difficult to make, let's say,

00:34:31.220 | a difficult, persistent progress

00:34:33.400 | on things that need to get done

00:34:34.460 | because there's so many shining objects pulling at you.

00:34:37.020 | The double-edged sword of time blocking in this context

00:34:39.520 | is you can't over block it.

00:34:41.920 | You can't overdo it.

00:34:44.120 | If you try to build

00:34:44.960 | one of these heroic time block schedules

00:34:46.860 | that's 10 hours long with 15 different precision blocks,

00:34:50.900 | it's really asking a lot from anybody

00:34:53.820 | to stay so on task and so focused

00:34:56.180 | and deny the lack, the cognitive energy draining,

00:34:59.940 | the distractions pulling us.

00:35:00.900 | That's hard for anybody,

00:35:01.740 | but if you have ADHD, that becomes almost impossible.

00:35:04.460 | So you need to rely on blocks

00:35:05.860 | while at the same time not blocking too much.

00:35:08.740 | Bigger blocks, break blocks,

00:35:11.080 | and not trying to squeeze too much precision work

00:35:13.420 | into any one day.

00:35:14.420 | So that's why it seems to be a double-edged sword.

00:35:16.920 | You're kind of screwed if you don't do anything like that,

00:35:20.380 | but you're also setting yourself up for failure

00:35:22.260 | if you go overboard with the method.

00:35:25.560 | So hope you find that useful.

00:35:28.160 | All right, moving on, we got a question here from Andrew.

00:35:32.260 | Andrew says, "I'm starting a PhD.

00:35:34.820 | "How would you approach a PhD knowing what you know now

00:35:38.260 | "regarding deep work, et cetera?"

00:35:40.140 | Andrew, assuming you're looking for an academic job,

00:35:45.900 | assuming that's why you're doing a PhD,

00:35:49.820 | care a lot more about the research topic right now.

00:35:53.260 | When you're very new, you've got to think,

00:35:56.980 | where is there heat right now

00:35:58.820 | just beginning to emerge in my field?

00:36:01.900 | And I want to be working on something like that

00:36:03.500 | with the best possible people

00:36:04.880 | who are helping develop that field.

00:36:07.100 | I underestimated this, I would say, in my PhD program.

00:36:09.500 | I didn't think about it.

00:36:10.340 | I just said, I'll deal with the job market

00:36:11.820 | when I deal with the job market.

00:36:13.020 | But really what you want to be doing,

00:36:14.340 | if your goal is to get an academic job,

00:36:16.180 | is to say, I want to align myself with someone

00:36:18.160 | who's doing something very hot right now.

00:36:20.100 | 'Cause here's what's gonna happen

00:36:21.160 | when I enter the job market.

00:36:22.980 | They're gonna say, we want,

00:36:25.420 | whatever your advisor's name is.

00:36:27.480 | And then the response will be, well, she's not available.

00:36:30.180 | She already has a job.

00:36:31.260 | They'll say, all right, well, can we get basically

00:36:32.860 | like a clone of this person

00:36:34.220 | who also knows how to do that work?

00:36:35.540 | Like, great, who is her student?

00:36:37.060 | Let's get that person instead.

00:36:38.500 | That's where the really good job offers come from.

00:36:41.140 | That's what opens up options.

00:36:42.260 | So care a lot about what research you're working on

00:36:45.380 | and then get in the habit of working on research

00:36:47.340 | every single day.

00:36:48.400 | I'm gonna suggest the first three hours of every day.

00:36:50.840 | The first three hours of every day,

00:36:52.520 | you're reading stuff relevant to a paper or article

00:36:55.800 | or essay you want to write,

00:36:56.840 | or you're directly writing a paper, article, or essay.

00:37:01.520 | So three hours a day, every day, you're always doing work.

00:37:04.200 | That adds up.

00:37:05.560 | Produce, produce, produce, okay?

00:37:08.400 | So align yourself with the hottest topic you can.

00:37:12.360 | Someone who's doing great work on a field that's emerging

00:37:15.800 | really makes such a difference.

00:37:17.000 | We really underplay topic.

00:37:18.540 | Research topic is so important on the job market.

00:37:23.140 | It's not just, here's a generic talent.

00:37:25.640 | It's like, we're hiring for this topic.

00:37:27.000 | And then B, three hours, three hours every day.

00:37:30.220 | And also in your writing, don't do what I just did,

00:37:32.320 | which was enumerated one, followed by B.

00:37:35.760 | That's the type of stuff that's not gonna go well

00:37:38.280 | in your article for whatever academic journal.

00:37:41.720 | - All right, he's getting his PhD in film studies.

00:37:45.760 | - Yeah.

00:37:46.600 | - I was wondering what your thoughts on,

00:37:48.760 | even on that film study kick with books and stuff.

00:37:52.440 | - Yeah.

00:37:53.260 | - A lot of people have PhDs in film studies?

00:37:55.200 | - No, but it's a department at a lot of universities,

00:38:00.320 | but not every university, right?

00:38:01.440 | So it's not as widespread as like English or something.

00:38:05.040 | But film studies is a great example.

00:38:06.480 | I mean, basically in film studies,

00:38:07.840 | you need to be aligning yourself with an emerging

00:38:10.560 | framework of critique that seems to have a lot of heat

00:38:13.680 | around it, is what I would say.

00:38:15.440 | And then you need to start reading all that

00:38:16.880 | and writing in that as early as possible.

00:38:19.400 | Align yourself with someone who's doing really great work

00:38:21.940 | with that new framework or type of critique and master it.

00:38:26.060 | And you gotta be doing reviews and essays

00:38:30.540 | like pretty early on, is what I would say.

00:38:33.980 | - Yeah, film studies would be cool.

00:38:35.800 | - Yeah, I read that textbook.

00:38:36.640 | It's a complicated field, man.

00:38:38.200 | - Yeah, that's why I was curious.

00:38:39.200 | - Yeah, it's all complicated.

00:38:41.440 | I mean, it's like any other field, I think right now.

00:38:45.000 | So like whatever the, there's like theoretical frameworks

00:38:48.200 | that get popular and then they infuse lots

00:38:51.640 | of different fields.

00:38:52.480 | Like film studies is very susceptible to that.

00:38:54.280 | So whatever is big at the time.

00:38:57.320 | So if we were talking 15 years ago,

00:38:59.060 | you're gonna get a lot of sort of post-colonial theory

00:39:01.840 | or queer theory.

00:39:02.680 | And now there's like a lot more specifically

00:39:05.360 | post-modern critical theory subsets

00:39:07.480 | that are like really injecting themselves

00:39:09.120 | through film studies.

00:39:10.240 | So like probably what you should do in film studies

00:39:12.560 | is look to an emerging theoretical framework

00:39:16.300 | that's generating a lot of heat in another major field

00:39:19.840 | that hasn't yet made it to film studies

00:39:21.440 | or is just making it there.

00:39:22.860 | And then be one of the people that helps usher it in.

00:39:24.840 | That's like a pretty sure path to academic jobs.

00:39:28.840 | All right, Andrew, let's move on here.

00:39:32.560 | Alex, Alex asks, what's the best way

00:39:35.960 | to meet other deep workers?

00:39:38.180 | I'm a freelance writer.

00:39:40.600 | I make a living doing deep work.

00:39:42.640 | I love to meet regularly with other people

00:39:44.200 | who prioritize deep work to compare notes,

00:39:46.200 | discuss goals, et cetera.

00:39:48.040 | But I do not know where to find other people like this.

00:39:50.240 | Alex, that's a good question.

00:39:51.680 | I don't, I mean, I've been thinking about it.

00:39:54.640 | I don't have an answer, first of all.

00:39:56.420 | I don't have a great answer for you,

00:39:58.840 | but it gets me brainstorming.

00:40:01.300 | Maybe we should be involved in finding a better way

00:40:04.680 | of helping people do this.

00:40:06.000 | Like, I don't know, Jesse, what do you think about,

00:40:10.380 | what would be good here?

00:40:11.400 | Like, let me tell you like a model

00:40:12.920 | that's interesting to me.

00:40:14.160 | Mr. Money Mustache, Pete Adney, yeah?

00:40:17.800 | - I was thinking exactly--

00:40:18.640 | - Are you thinking about it?

00:40:19.480 | Right. - Yeah, you're gonna,

00:40:20.300 | I had a feeling you were gonna mention that.

00:40:21.480 | - Yeah, so Justin and I have talked about this.

00:40:23.240 | But so, Mr. Money Mustache, who blurbed digital minimalism,

00:40:28.240 | so I met him when I was working on that book.

00:40:29.640 | He's a personal finance guy.

00:40:31.720 | Made a bunch of money with his personal finance website.

00:40:34.120 | He lives in Longmont, Colorado,

00:40:35.560 | and he bought just a building downtown in Longmont,

00:40:39.540 | and they renovated it,

00:40:41.420 | and it's basically like a coworking space.

00:40:43.340 | But it's like a coworking space, but it's also a gym.

00:40:46.820 | They have like an outdoor gym,

00:40:48.220 | and they have a lot of kegs there

00:40:51.380 | for these like evening talks.

00:40:53.460 | So they bring in people to talk about,

00:40:55.940 | I guess, business and stuff like this,

00:40:57.820 | and they have talks, and craft brewers in the neighborhood

00:41:00.980 | bring in kegs of beer.

00:41:02.260 | It's just created this whole physically located,

00:41:05.780 | physically cited community about, in this case,

00:41:07.820 | people who believe in his sort of,

00:41:11.020 | whatever it says, financial advice type philosophy.

00:41:16.020 | But like, should there be something like this for deep work?

00:41:21.260 | - I think people pay a small fee to go to this thing,

00:41:23.300 | like $50 a month or something like that,

00:41:24.700 | and you submit some small application.

00:41:27.820 | You gotta live in the area.

00:41:29.060 | - Yeah.

00:41:30.460 | - Yeah.

00:41:31.280 | - But like, coworking space that's like deep work focused,

00:41:34.540 | not a bad idea, actually.

00:41:36.380 | - And if we had a building here in Tacoma Park

00:41:38.300 | where you could come in,

00:41:39.220 | and I don't know what would make it deep work focused.

00:41:40.980 | I think I would probably,

00:41:42.220 | pulling from the Utimotia machine,

00:41:44.000 | there'd be the common space and then pods.

00:41:47.140 | Like you go into these pods to do deep work.

00:41:48.940 | It's not even like, oh, here's my office.

00:41:50.180 | No, that stuff can be out in the common space.

00:41:52.260 | You can go into these pods to do deep work,

00:41:54.180 | and then there's like kind of a more social space.

00:41:55.540 | And then like another space is just for, I don't know.

00:41:57.780 | I don't know exactly how it would work,

00:41:59.060 | but that would be cool.

00:42:01.820 | That'd be cool.

00:42:02.660 | It's something you could see happening more commonly

00:42:04.780 | across the country.

00:42:05.600 | So Alex, I'm just using this as a chance to brainstorm,

00:42:07.860 | but I think there's like a deep work

00:42:11.220 | meets we work play here that could be cool.

00:42:13.860 | At a smaller scale, Jesse,

00:42:16.500 | like should we do an event you think at some point?

00:42:18.940 | - You had mentioned this early on in your podcast.

00:42:22.500 | - Yeah, I got lazy.

00:42:23.580 | - I was like, oh, I'll definitely go to that.

00:42:25.300 | This is before I even started working here.

00:42:28.460 | So I was definitely gonna go whenever you announced it.

00:42:32.220 | - Yeah, like that could be fun.

00:42:33.420 | I mean, it seems like a pain.

00:42:34.420 | That's why I didn't do it,

00:42:35.340 | because I had no time.

00:42:36.540 | But if we had some help, it could be interesting.

00:42:39.660 | We have some, I don't know where we would do it.

00:42:41.820 | If we would do it here in Tacoma Park

00:42:43.100 | or do it somewhere where we had more room.

00:42:44.980 | It just had a lot of people in the DC area

00:42:46.500 | who are into this stuff.

00:42:47.340 | Like let's all get together and just like-

00:42:48.380 | - Go down near a Nats game.

00:42:49.820 | - Go down near a Nats game, yeah.

00:42:51.580 | Yeah, do it in the dugout.

00:42:54.540 | It'd be awesome.

00:42:56.420 | But yeah, we could do it down there.

00:42:58.140 | We could do it here at the restaurant

00:42:59.900 | that the Deep Work HQ is over.

00:43:01.920 | I mean, I don't know how much space we have here.

00:43:03.540 | I don't even know how many people would come.

00:43:05.780 | That's my question. - Probably a lot.

00:43:07.260 | - My only, I'm trying to think,

00:43:08.900 | my only benchmarks,

00:43:11.940 | I've done some book signings here in DC

00:43:15.020 | that were pretty popular.

00:43:15.860 | I did one for Digital Minimalism at Politics and Prose,

00:43:18.980 | and we definitely standy-roomed only that place.

00:43:22.420 | And then when Scott Young was here,

00:43:23.940 | we did a joint one down on 8th Street

00:43:26.380 | at a bookstore down there.

00:43:27.980 | And we definitely standy-roomed only that place.

00:43:31.020 | So I don't know, we might get a good crowd.

00:43:34.020 | It's kind of hard to tell.

00:43:35.260 | All right, let's think about that.

00:43:38.500 | Yeah, 'cause I haven't seen people.

00:43:39.380 | I mean, I see people now.

00:43:40.200 | I do speak in events again and stuff like that.

00:43:41.700 | So I do see people, but that might be kind of cool.

00:43:43.180 | We get together like a lot of deep life, deep work,

00:43:45.580 | deep questions type people.

00:43:46.840 | We all get together and just meet.

00:43:48.900 | People can meet each other.

00:43:49.740 | Like, hey, here's some other people that, you know.

00:43:52.740 | - People meeple. - People meeple.

00:43:54.340 | Yeah, deeple meeple with some people meeple.

00:43:56.100 | The problem is I'm like an introverted curmudgeon

00:43:58.260 | who is a mythanthrope and say,

00:43:59.700 | I don't wanna bother talking to people.

00:44:01.740 | Sometimes I'm in that mood.

00:44:02.660 | And then other times, like, I wanna meet all my listeners

00:44:04.660 | and readers and it just depends on like my mood for the day.

00:44:07.580 | Oh, well, so Alex, we're working on it.

00:44:10.900 | All right, that's the long and the short of it.

00:44:13.860 | All right, let's move on here.

00:44:14.700 | Shane asks about effective and speedy Zoom meetings.

00:44:19.700 | Contradiction in terms, I don't know if that's possible.

00:44:23.580 | Let's get some more details here.

00:44:25.500 | He's in some group.

00:44:28.540 | They had their first meeting with 12 members.

00:44:31.340 | And while the agenda was set

00:44:33.140 | and the reports were sent out prior to the meeting,

00:44:34.500 | it still took nearly two hours.

00:44:35.820 | And so Shane is frustrated with Zoom meetings.

00:44:40.580 | Yeah, look, here's the thing about meetings like that.

00:44:44.020 | First of all, meetings with 12 people

00:44:47.580 | where everyone gets to just talk are a huge waste of time.

00:44:51.420 | So the idea is we have like a 12 person board

00:44:54.500 | and let's all just get together and kind of discuss things

00:44:56.180 | and figure things out.

00:44:57.020 | That's a huge waste of time.

00:44:58.580 | It's better to say, okay,

00:44:59.940 | there's one person gonna present this thing

00:45:01.900 | and here's our proposal.

00:45:03.020 | And then we have like a 15 minute Q&A period

00:45:05.300 | and then a suggestion is gonna be made.

00:45:06.940 | So more structure there really matters.

00:45:09.660 | In general, having more processes for work

00:45:11.660 | before the meetings make a big deal.

00:45:13.900 | So the more you're trying to accomplish ad hoc

00:45:15.940 | and on the fly in the meeting itself,

00:45:17.460 | the more the meeting is gonna be dragged out

00:45:19.300 | and frustrating.

00:45:20.700 | And the more you say,

00:45:21.540 | this is our mechanisms for making decisions,

00:45:24.100 | the more that's in place ahead of time,

00:45:25.620 | the more focused and effective your meetings can be.

00:45:28.940 | So if there's some process ahead of time

00:45:30.580 | for here are the motions being proposed

00:45:33.860 | and there will be a 10 minute discussion

00:45:38.500 | of the motion at like at one meeting.

00:45:41.220 | Then there's gonna be a period of, I don't know,

00:45:43.100 | I'm just making this up,

00:45:44.300 | of like back and forth, whatever,

00:45:47.180 | people are marking up with emails or thoughts

00:45:49.300 | in like a shared doc, how they feel about it.

00:45:51.740 | And then a concrete proposal is brought up

00:45:53.540 | for a vote at the next meeting.

00:45:55.860 | There's a 10 minute Q&A portion

00:45:59.460 | and then the vote happens on something specific.

00:46:01.300 | Right, what I'm talking about here

00:46:02.140 | like really clear processes for how things happen.

00:46:03.860 | We're part of the process is like,

00:46:05.420 | here's where discussion happens,

00:46:07.180 | this type of discussion on this piece for this long.

00:46:09.920 | That gives you a lot more control

00:46:12.180 | as opposed to let's just figure this all out in the meeting.

00:46:14.940 | Once you have more than three people,

00:46:16.540 | that's not gonna go very well.

00:46:19.540 | The other thing that's really useful

00:46:20.560 | is to make everything concrete.

00:46:21.780 | Okay, we're talking about this topic in this meeting.

00:46:23.700 | Here's a shared screen where I'm taking notes,

00:46:25.740 | this conversation is going to conclude

00:46:28.020 | with a clear action item assigned to someone.

00:46:29.900 | So when people know that like this is live ammo

00:46:31.860 | they're playing with,

00:46:33.420 | they're usually a lot more circumspect and careful

00:46:35.540 | about just let me just chime in and bloviate.

00:46:37.180 | When it's like, here's the thing we're trying to get to,

00:46:39.340 | like this person is gonna do this thing,

00:46:41.920 | makes it more serious than if they think like,

00:46:43.580 | we're just time wasting, like let's all just talk about it

00:46:45.540 | and hopefully this dies away

00:46:46.460 | without me having to do more work.

00:46:47.860 | So it's like, okay, here's our goal.

00:46:49.660 | I'm gonna take notes on what people are saying,

00:46:51.020 | we're gonna clarify, okay, let me clarify

00:46:52.540 | then let me propose that these will be the next steps.

00:46:54.140 | What do we think about it?

00:46:54.960 | We changed it, great, Jack is gonna do it, move on.

00:46:57.460 | So be really clear.

00:46:59.740 | Everything you're discussing is wrapped up.

00:47:01.940 | It's written down, wrapped up, summarized and assigned.

00:47:04.700 | All right, Zoom effective and speedy Zoom meetings,

00:47:08.660 | not a lot of those.

00:47:09.620 | All right, let's do one more deep work question.

00:47:13.320 | We have one here from Heather.

00:47:14.820 | Heather asks, how do I make a better transition

00:47:19.820 | from working from home to afterschool with the kids?

00:47:24.380 | So Heather says, pre-COVID,

00:47:26.940 | my transition from a working mindset to mom mindset

00:47:29.840 | was easy since there was a 30 minute commute

00:47:32.120 | from the office to aftercare.

00:47:34.700 | Now I permanently work from home and there is no transition.

00:47:38.040 | They get off the bus when school is out.

00:47:40.040 | She says in parentheses, we nixed aftercare since I am here

00:47:44.280 | but is that a bad idea?

00:47:45.800 | In parentheses.

00:47:47.160 | But I'm still getting a few things done

00:47:48.480 | during that hour, thoughts.

00:47:49.980 | All right, well, Heather, my specific thought

00:47:53.740 | for your situation is you should not have nixed

00:47:56.000 | the aftercare.

00:47:56.920 | Work is work.

00:47:59.520 | Don't let the fact that the work is happening at your home

00:48:03.360 | make you change the status of that work to be half work.

00:48:06.380 | Work slash I'm also doing another job

00:48:09.560 | which is taking care of my kids

00:48:10.840 | after they get home from school.

00:48:12.580 | I mean, that's sort of equivalent of being like,

00:48:15.360 | I work at this office job,

00:48:17.500 | but for like two hours in the afternoon,

00:48:19.400 | I'm also serving food in the cafeteria.

00:48:22.320 | Your bosses will be like, well, you can't have both those

00:48:24.220 | jobs at the same time, right?

00:48:25.580 | Like, you know, when you're here in the office,

00:48:27.540 | you can't also be serving food in the cafeteria.

00:48:29.780 | Like this is your job here.

00:48:31.500 | But when we work from home, we blur those lines a lot more.

00:48:34.100 | And we say, yeah, but I could do like childcare too.

00:48:38.340 | And can I just mix that all together?

00:48:39.740 | And it's very hard to do.

00:48:40.940 | This is why during the heat of the pandemic,

00:48:43.580 | when schools were closed and offices were closed,

00:48:46.320 | I kept describing the situation as a dumpster fire

00:48:48.900 | because it was impossible when you ask people,

00:48:51.180 | do all your work and do all the childcare

00:48:52.680 | and do that at the same time.

00:48:54.200 | It's like being the cafeteria worker at the same time

00:48:56.560 | that you're trying to be an accountant.

00:48:57.640 | It's impossible and we pretended like it's not.

00:48:59.760 | So my specific answer for you, Heather,

00:49:01.880 | is if at all possible financially,

00:49:04.080 | go back to exactly the same care setup you had pre-pandemic.

00:49:07.460 | And it sounds like the setup you had was after school,

00:49:10.160 | your kids went to aftercare,

00:49:11.680 | which brought them to the normal end

00:49:13.840 | of a standard nine to five workday.

00:49:15.200 | And then you would pick them up.

00:49:16.800 | Go back to that aftercare.

00:49:18.840 | Yes, you're working at home, but who cares?

00:49:20.220 | You're working till work is over

00:49:22.000 | and then you're shifting over to the mom mindset,

00:49:24.160 | not trying to mix the two.

00:49:25.220 | So if that's possible, that's what I would suggest.

00:49:28.240 | Let me give a more general answer here

00:49:30.960 | about I think a very good point, more generally,

00:49:34.980 | shutting down when you have a hazy boundary

00:49:39.720 | between work and non-work, which again, is pretty common,

00:49:42.400 | especially in these work from home days.

00:49:44.640 | So you might have this hazy period.

00:49:46.280 | So let's say the aftercare thing doesn't work out.

00:49:48.880 | You have this hazy period where you're kind of working

00:49:51.500 | and you're kind of doing something else

00:49:52.740 | and you recognize this, you don't schedule meetings

00:49:55.060 | and you know you're just gonna get a little bit done

00:49:56.500 | because you're also doing childcare.

00:49:58.200 | You have to find how to have a definitive shutdown

00:50:01.340 | that still works.

00:50:02.220 | So even if you're in this hazy period,

00:50:04.420 | have a definitive into the hazy period.

00:50:06.880 | All right, now I'm doing my shutdown complete.

00:50:08.820 | Even though the last 90 minutes I've been half shut down,

00:50:11.620 | I have to get my kids going with their homework

00:50:14.300 | but then I have to return and answer emails

00:50:15.620 | and I have to get snacks

00:50:16.480 | and then I'm going back and sending out these reports.

00:50:19.600 | Even though that's back and forth and hazy,

00:50:21.040 | have a clear shutdown at the end of that

00:50:22.580 | where you're like, now work is completely done.

00:50:24.780 | Now, if possible, if you can have one

00:50:27.260 | that gets you out of your house

00:50:28.340 | and completely changes your state,

00:50:29.620 | I think that would be good.

00:50:31.120 | I don't know your marital situation,

00:50:32.480 | but if you have, let's say a partner that's working,

00:50:34.540 | sounds like here, maybe they're working at an office,

00:50:37.140 | when they come back,

00:50:38.500 | that spells you to do a 30 minute transition

00:50:41.100 | to really fully change your mindset.

00:50:43.780 | I think exercise is a good one here.

00:50:46.100 | I've been doing this some more,

00:50:47.180 | especially on my teaching days

00:50:48.260 | when I can't get exercise in earlier in the day.

00:50:52.140 | I'll do this when I'm with the kids in the afternoon,

00:50:55.180 | I'll set it up so maybe one's working on their homework

00:50:59.300 | and one's playing Minecraft and I'll let my youngest,

00:51:01.380 | I'll bring them down to the basement

00:51:02.300 | to where my exercise equipment is.

00:51:03.720 | Like, okay, you can watch this video here

00:51:05.820 | and then I'm gonna go in the garage

00:51:07.800 | and do evil things to a rowing machine.

00:51:11.500 | And it's a transition,

00:51:12.980 | even though I'm kind of watching the kids,

00:51:14.460 | the exercise is very different.

00:51:16.300 | It's very different than looking at a screen.

00:51:18.420 | And it really is a way of, okay, now I come out of that

00:51:21.020 | and I've physically changed my state.

00:51:22.940 | And I come out of that not doing other types of work.

00:51:24.940 | So have a clear shutdown,

00:51:26.660 | even if that shutdown happens after a period

00:51:29.180 | of sort of hazy boundaries.

00:51:31.940 | All right, so let's wrap up questions about deep work.

00:51:38.100 | I wanna do a few quick questions about the deep life.

00:51:43.580 | But before we get into it,

00:51:44.660 | I wanna talk about two more sponsors

00:51:46.260 | that makes this show possible.

00:51:47.500 | Jesse, these are both food related sponsors.

00:51:49.740 | So you can tell I'm getting hungry.

00:51:52.420 | Both food related sponsors that I actually really enjoy.

00:51:55.860 | So the first one is MonkPak and that's M-U-N-K.

00:52:00.460 | And I wanna talk in particular about MonkPak

00:52:04.220 | Keto Nut and Seed Bars.

00:52:06.660 | So these are granola bar style snack bars,

00:52:11.440 | but instead of just being full of sugar and junk,

00:52:14.020 | they have one gram of sugar or less,

00:52:16.900 | two to three grams of net carbs,

00:52:18.380 | and they're only 150 calories.

00:52:21.140 | Now they have that name keto in the title

00:52:23.640 | because they were originally designed

00:52:25.000 | for anyone following a keto lifestyle

00:52:26.540 | because they're so low on carbs.

00:52:28.280 | But they're a perfect snack for anyone

00:52:30.460 | who's trying to eat better,

00:52:31.300 | cut back on sugar and carbs without sacrificing taste.

00:52:35.940 | These are really good tasting bars.

00:52:38.140 | The key to me with granola bars is they can't be too hard.

00:52:40.820 | So these are soft, but they have nuts on them.

00:52:43.000 | So you get a bit of a crunch.

00:52:43.960 | I think they taste great.

00:52:45.520 | They have a lot of flavors, sea salt, dark chocolate,

00:52:47.960 | caramel, sea salt, and peanut butter, dark chocolate.

00:52:51.260 | I'm a big sea salt, dark chocolate fan.

00:52:53.760 | I mean, you eat that thing, at least in my case,

00:52:56.880 | you're hungry, it's in the afternoon,

00:52:59.260 | you don't wanna eat junk, but you need something.

00:53:02.180 | You've been podcasting all day.

00:53:04.340 | You've been stuck in the studio with Jesse.

00:53:06.160 | You're like, I gotta get some food.

00:53:08.420 | Jesse insists on everything being keto friendly.

00:53:11.860 | Actually, Jesse just doesn't eat.

00:53:13.240 | Do I have that right?

00:53:14.400 | Here's Jesse's diet plan if I have this right.

00:53:17.360 | Like eat one meal every three days.

00:53:20.620 | Is that how it goes?

00:53:22.200 | - I just eat dinner.

00:53:23.360 | - He just eats dinner.

00:53:24.200 | Okay, so you're around Jesse all day.

00:53:26.160 | You're like, he makes me hungry just seeing him.

00:53:29.280 | But you don't wanna eat junk.

00:53:30.960 | You grab one of these keto nut and seed bars.

00:53:32.800 | It tastes great.

00:53:33.640 | You feel like you're having a treat,

00:53:34.460 | but it doesn't have the junk in it.

00:53:36.960 | So I'm a fan of those.

00:53:38.600 | I ate them all.

00:53:39.440 | So they sent me some and I went through them really quick.

00:53:41.300 | That's how I judge their Leica products.

00:53:42.760 | Like, okay, I am eating these things good.

00:53:44.720 | In addition to being keto friendly,

00:53:46.960 | they are gluten-free, plant-based and non-GMO,

00:53:49.600 | no soy, no trans fat, sugar, alcohols, or artificial colors.

00:53:54.600 | So try it for yourself and you'll see.

00:53:57.460 | And we have a special deal for our listeners

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00:54:04.420 | Just visit munkpak.com and enter the code DEEP at checkout.

00:54:09.420 | MunkPak is so confident in their product

00:54:11.180 | is backed with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

00:54:13.660 | So if you don't like it for any reason,

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00:54:18.480 | So to get started, just go to munkpak.com.

00:54:21.180 | Remember that's M-U-N-K-P-A-C-K.com.

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00:54:32.220 | MunkPak, delicious, nutritious food.

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00:54:35.580 | We thank them for sponsoring the podcast.

00:54:38.420 | Another thing I wanna talk about food-wise

00:54:39.700 | on the sponsor is Just Egg.

00:54:42.700 | I am an egg guy.

00:54:45.260 | I have eggs almost every day for breakfast.

00:54:49.900 | That's my thing, but that's also a lot of eggs.

00:54:54.900 | This is why I was excited to learn about Just Egg.

00:55:00.540 | Now this is a cholesterol-free plant-based egg

00:55:03.980 | that will give you the most decadent quiches of your life,

00:55:06.640 | the fluffiest scrambles,

00:55:08.100 | and the easiest egg sandwiches of all times.

00:55:11.480 | It has about the same protein as a chicken egg,

00:55:13.360 | but less saturated fat.

00:55:14.740 | And plus, Just Egg is packed with cholesterol-lowering,

00:55:17.080 | polyunsaturated fat.

00:55:19.200 | Chicken eggs wish they were this healthy, right?

00:55:23.120 | So because Just Eggs comes from plants,

00:55:24.980 | you're also helping to save our planets.

00:55:26.600 | And that's nice if you're into the whole

00:55:28.560 | saving the environment thing.

00:55:30.940 | So Just Eggs allows me, for example,

00:55:33.720 | to still have my routinized habit of eating eggs

00:55:37.600 | every morning without actually going through

00:55:39.820 | that many actual chicken eggs every week.

00:55:41.980 | I can throw Just Eggs into the mix

00:55:44.200 | and have a cholesterol-lowering plant-based alternative

00:55:47.600 | that still tastes roughly the same.

00:55:51.460 | Just Eggs are so good,

00:55:53.440 | they might even convince Jesse to eat food

00:55:58.160 | more than once a week and before 6 p.m. or whatever.

00:56:02.240 | So what happens, this is Super Bowl Sunday.

00:56:04.740 | So do you go nuts on a night like tonight?

00:56:07.480 | - Today I'm definitely gonna eat wings

00:56:10.360 | and then some other good stuff, yeah.

00:56:12.120 | - But no food until then?

00:56:14.160 | - I mean, the game's on at 6.30 anyway.

00:56:16.160 | - Okay, all right, yeah.

00:56:17.640 | So you're gonna destroy some wings tonight.

00:56:21.000 | - Yeah, I'm gonna have wings, eat whatever I want, and then--

00:56:23.400 | - And then not eat again for seven days.

00:56:24.960 | - Yeah, I might not eat tomorrow.

00:56:27.200 | Tomorrow might be no eat.

00:56:29.120 | - All right, so don't be like Jesse.

00:56:31.040 | Eat more regularly, substitute in some Just Eggs,

00:56:35.640 | show off the new cholesterol-free you

00:56:37.440 | by buying a bottle of Just Eggs today

00:56:39.680 | and doing the planet a solid at the same time.

00:56:41.680 | Just Eggs, really good eggs.

00:56:45.540 | All right, let's do some really good questions now.

00:56:48.140 | I wanna do a few here about the deep life.

00:56:52.960 | Let me find my questions, my goodness.

00:56:56.020 | You see how the sausage is made, guys?

00:56:58.940 | Oh, here we go, here we go, I see.

00:57:02.460 | All right, we got ourselves some questions here.

00:57:05.180 | First one comes from Agnes McGyver, awesome name.

00:57:11.160 | McGyver, do you watch McGyver?

00:57:14.180 | We're the generation.

00:57:15.700 | - I've seen it in the past, yeah, for sure.

00:57:17.580 | - Yeah, McGyver's awesome.

00:57:19.180 | So Agnes McGyver, which is, I believe, McGyver's aunt.

00:57:23.700 | It's just basically the name,

00:57:25.140 | like the aunt that sends him a birthday card.

00:57:29.100 | All right, Agnes McGyver says,

00:57:30.780 | "I've been applying deep work concepts and time blocking

00:57:34.060 | "to both my personal and professional life.

00:57:36.380 | "I'm ambitious in both.

00:57:38.040 | "Do you recommend creating a clearly defined separation

00:57:40.120 | "between the two?

00:57:40.960 | "Do I use two time block planners?

00:57:42.240 | "I catch myself wanting to open a time block planner

00:57:44.240 | "and plan out my personal life."

00:57:46.340 | Agnes, I usually recommend do not fully time block

00:57:49.460 | your personal life if you're also time blocking

00:57:52.220 | your professional life because it's too much structure.

00:57:55.860 | You will eventually burn out.

00:57:58.220 | Time blocking is very artificial.

00:57:59.900 | All right, so when you're time blocking,

00:58:02.020 | it's not like you are rolling with our natural instincts

00:58:05.540 | of humans about how we approach our time.

00:58:07.380 | It is an artificial solution to the artificial load

00:58:10.180 | of diverse work tasks that we get poured on our plate.

00:58:12.980 | So it's not easy to do, but it works.

00:58:15.860 | It gets a lot done, it keeps things in control,

00:58:18.180 | it allows us to survive the deluge of tasks

00:58:20.620 | that's thrown at us in the modern work situation.

00:58:23.700 | In a perfect, slow productivity enriched world,

00:58:25.820 | you might not need time blocking at all,

00:58:27.460 | but we need it today.

00:58:28.660 | But you don't wanna do something so difficult

00:58:30.580 | and so unnatural in every waking hour,

00:58:32.440 | you are gonna burn out.

00:58:33.740 | So go lighter in your personal time.

00:58:37.160 | I often just recommend sketching a plan.

00:58:39.420 | End of the day, it's the evening, what's going on?

00:58:42.060 | Well, is there any time specific things we need to remember?

00:58:45.500 | Let me jot that down.

00:58:46.340 | We're going to dinner,

00:58:47.540 | I have to pick something up from the store,

00:58:49.820 | and then you sketch out other things you wanna get done.

00:58:52.100 | Here's my plan for tonight,

00:58:53.140 | I wanna get some reading in later,

00:58:54.340 | I wanna watch this show.

00:58:56.040 | You kind of figure out a reasonable plan,

00:58:57.540 | you kind of jot it down.

00:58:58.480 | It's not planning out every minute.

00:59:00.420 | Here's the things that have to happen,

00:59:01.620 | here's some things I wanna get done.

00:59:02.820 | Rough plan, do your best.

00:59:04.820 | Same thing for weekends.

00:59:06.140 | Well, I'm gonna go, we're going on this trip

00:59:07.860 | for most of Saturday, but I wanna get a walk in before.

00:59:10.700 | You're just sketching out a plan.

00:59:13.140 | So it's not a full-time block plan,

00:59:15.060 | but it's not just winging it, it's somewhere in between.

00:59:17.580 | I think that's probably the right balance between the two.

00:59:20.580 | All right, Samantha asks,

00:59:23.420 | how do I pick a college major

00:59:25.460 | if I shouldn't follow my passion/interest?

00:59:29.000 | Well, so Samantha, this is where I can point again

00:59:33.120 | to my core idea videos.

00:59:34.440 | There is now a core idea video live on the YouTube page

00:59:37.220 | about my idea of not following your passion.

00:59:40.460 | So the background for this discussion

00:59:42.160 | can be found on that video.

00:59:43.960 | Everyone can go reference it

00:59:45.060 | to get the specific thoughts behind my ideas about passion

00:59:48.460 | and its role in career selection.

00:59:50.800 | And the thing you will notice

00:59:53.500 | if you go back and re-watch that video

00:59:55.940 | is that passions/interest

00:59:59.340 | is a problematic conjunction there, not the same thing.

01:00:05.040 | So the issue here

01:00:07.380 | is you're joining those two things together.

01:00:09.740 | Passion is the idea that you are wired

01:00:12.180 | for a particular pursuit or direction,

01:00:15.460 | and that if you align yourself with that pursuit,

01:00:17.100 | you will be happy and fulfilled,

01:00:18.180 | and if you don't, you won't.

01:00:20.180 | It is a very high bar.

01:00:21.620 | There's one true thing you're supposed to be doing,

01:00:24.020 | get it right or you're screwed.

01:00:25.860 | Interest is, here's something that seems interesting to me.

01:00:30.420 | There can be many things that seem interesting to you,

01:00:34.340 | and many things that don't.

01:00:36.260 | I think interest is a perfectly fine criteria

01:00:39.380 | to help select, let's say, a major.

01:00:41.260 | This major seems interesting to me.

01:00:43.260 | I like the opportunities it would open up if I did it well.

01:00:46.000 | Good, go for that.

01:00:48.060 | And what if there's five majors that pass that criteria?

01:00:50.700 | Then it doesn't really matter which one you choose.

01:00:53.200 | Passion is not the same as interest.

01:00:55.480 | Passion says there's one true thing.

01:00:56.940 | If you get it wrong, you're screwed.

01:00:58.460 | Interest is just a useful piece of information

01:01:00.860 | you can use in making a choice.

01:01:02.540 | So what I'm trying to do here is lower the bar.

01:01:04.900 | Lower the bar when it comes to selecting something

01:01:07.820 | like a major or selecting a career,

01:01:09.900 | lowering the bar from there's one right answer,

01:01:13.060 | if you get it wrong, you're screwed,

01:01:14.700 | down to there's a lot of reasonable pursuits

01:01:17.540 | on which you can build a enjoyable academic career

01:01:20.100 | and which you can build an enjoyable professional career.

01:01:21.860 | There's a lot of them.

01:01:23.100 | So give it a little bit of thought,

01:01:24.140 | but once you find something that's reasonable,

01:01:25.580 | go with it and don't overthink it.

01:01:27.280 | I think the straw man that you're sitting up here, Samantha,

01:01:30.460 | is throwing the bar out and say,

01:01:32.820 | no, it doesn't matter what you do.

01:01:33.900 | Just choose completely randomly.

01:01:35.460 | Film studies or computer science,

01:01:36.940 | I'll just throw a dart, who cares?

01:01:38.500 | And I think that's nonsense, right?

01:01:39.720 | Like we have inclinations, we have interest,

01:01:41.620 | we have skills we've already built out

01:01:43.620 | in one area versus another.

01:01:44.780 | We like the lifestyles enabled by this path

01:01:47.400 | better than the lifestyles enabled by that path.

01:01:50.200 | Use all that information to make a selection,

01:01:52.100 | but just don't overthink it and be happy with the fact

01:01:55.580 | there might be a bunch of different choices

01:01:57.860 | that all satisfy those criteria.

01:01:59.780 | What really matters is what you do next,

01:02:01.780 | what you do once you actually made that choice.

01:02:05.500 | And the reason why this is important

01:02:07.180 | is that it was actually college majors

01:02:09.580 | was the original thing that got me interested

01:02:11.500 | in the topic of following your passion.

01:02:13.420 | It was the original thing that set me down the path

01:02:15.540 | to writing my book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You."

01:02:18.780 | Because what I was seeing when I was a graduate student

01:02:21.980 | writing advice for students

01:02:23.620 | is I kept hearing the same story again and again.

01:02:26.940 | Students at these elite schools like MIT

01:02:29.660 | would come time to choose their major

01:02:32.140 | and they'd been taught, follow your passion.

01:02:34.540 | So they believed there's one major I'm wired to do.

01:02:39.460 | The chorus of angels will start singing

01:02:41.580 | if I choose that right major.

01:02:42.700 | And if I get it wrong, it's gonna be bad.

01:02:44.620 | And here's what would happen.

01:02:46.260 | They would get to their junior year.

01:02:48.100 | The courses would get harder.

01:02:49.540 | Why did the courses get harder?

01:02:50.740 | Because they're in their junior year.

01:02:52.500 | This is where you have to take the upper level courses

01:02:54.260 | that depend on the intro courses as their prerequisites.

01:02:57.660 | Hard courses aren't super fun.

01:03:00.040 | The problem sets are difficult.

01:03:01.340 | It's frustrating, you can't get things right.

01:03:03.580 | They're difficult.

01:03:04.420 | You get worse grades on essays than you're used to.

01:03:06.740 | That's part of how this works.

01:03:08.420 | But because these students were taught,

01:03:10.740 | you have a one true passion in the course

01:03:12.300 | that angels will sing if you find it,

01:03:13.540 | they would take this hardness,

01:03:15.500 | this sense of, oh, I don't love this every day

01:03:17.620 | as an indication that I must not have chosen

01:03:19.500 | the one true passion.

01:03:21.100 | How could this possibly be my one true passion

01:03:22.740 | if it's frustrating me and I don't love it?

01:03:24.500 | And know what they would do?

01:03:26.300 | They would switch their majors late in the game.

01:03:29.780 | And it would be a problem

01:03:30.660 | because it's hard to start from scratch with a new major.

01:03:32.940 | And it was this epidemic of late stage major shifting

01:03:36.100 | that actually first got me interested

01:03:37.460 | in these topics of passion culture.

01:03:39.380 | I thought this was crazy.

01:03:40.340 | Like, what are you guys doing?

01:03:42.620 | You can't switch your major this late.

01:03:44.220 | Like you're gonna have to spend an extra year.

01:03:45.940 | You're gonna be scrambling.

01:03:46.780 | You're gonna be miserable.

01:03:47.600 | But they were so sure that passion was a thing

01:03:50.460 | and passion means you'll love it.

01:03:51.940 | And they weren't loving it because,

01:03:53.740 | you know, the differential equations you're doing

01:03:55.700 | in your junior year in your physics major are a pain.

01:03:59.340 | And they would switch and it would really be bad for them.

01:04:01.020 | It would really be negative.

01:04:01.860 | It would hurt their academic life.

01:04:03.780 | It would make them miserable in their personal life.

01:04:05.540 | And it didn't open up any new opportunities.

01:04:07.020 | And so that's what actually got me

01:04:08.420 | into this topic in the first place.

01:04:09.660 | So no, we're not wired to do one thing,

01:04:11.960 | but it doesn't mean we can do everything.

01:04:14.940 | So use reasonable criteria to make a choice.

01:04:17.540 | Have a reason why you choose something,

01:04:18.940 | but don't over sweat that reason.

01:04:20.180 | And don't be worried if more than one thing satisfies it.

01:04:22.540 | There's lots of path to a passionate, interesting life.

01:04:26.060 | You don't have to find the one true thing,

01:04:27.580 | but you do have to give it a little bit of thought.

01:04:30.140 | All right, let's put in one more question here.

01:04:35.900 | So final question here comes from Liata.

01:04:38.620 | Liata said, "Is there a place where I can find

01:04:41.220 | all of your insights from the podcast written down?"

01:04:45.000 | She says, "I often listen to your podcast

01:04:47.860 | when walking to work, but can't keep stopping,

01:04:49.920 | pulling out a notebook and writing your ideas down.

01:04:51.800 | I know that many of your ideas appear in your books,

01:04:53.820 | blog and New Yorker articles,

01:04:55.220 | but do they cover all of your ideas?

01:04:56.600 | If you espouse a new idea in the podcast,

01:04:57.980 | you always write it down somewhere for future prosperity.

01:05:00.780 | I'm thinking I might have to stop listening

01:05:02.020 | to your podcast when walking and instead treat it

01:05:03.920 | like listening to a lecture, i.e. sitting down at a desk

01:05:07.800 | and writing down notes."

01:05:10.000 | Well, no, there's not right now a place

01:05:12.800 | where every idea from the podcast is written down,

01:05:15.960 | but there's a few things I will suggest here.

01:05:18.360 | One, the big part of the YouTube page we launched,

01:05:23.360 | and I keep trying to make this point,

01:05:24.500 | is not about trying to build up a large YouTube audience.

01:05:28.520 | It's not about trying to be a YouTube influencer

01:05:31.940 | that is getting people to smash the subscribe button

01:05:34.920 | while doing giveaways on Minecraft videos.

01:05:37.720 | It's not the goal.

01:05:38.560 | The goal is to make the information

01:05:40.400 | from the podcast much more usable.

01:05:43.240 | So now the big ideas I talk about

01:05:47.580 | are gonna have a core idea video.

01:05:49.200 | You can go to the core idea playlist on YouTube

01:05:51.760 | and see in one place, me talking about each of the big ideas

01:05:55.480 | on which I base a lot of my answers.

01:05:57.800 | So if you hear a particular answer,

01:06:00.580 | like where's that coming from?

01:06:01.480 | There's probably gonna be a core idea video

01:06:03.320 | where the foundational ideas are.

01:06:04.980 | There's deep dives on there.

01:06:07.280 | Usually when I'm working out an idea,

01:06:09.720 | I might try it a few times in answers,

01:06:11.320 | and at some point I'll do a deep dive on that idea.

01:06:13.120 | There's a playlist of just those deep dives.

01:06:14.960 | You can go and see those.

01:06:16.260 | If there's a particular question, you say,

01:06:17.720 | "Man, I'm walking and I hear this question,

01:06:19.440 | and that seems like a big idea."

01:06:21.840 | Well, there's gonna be a video of just that question

01:06:24.120 | within a couple of days of that episode airing

01:06:25.720 | that you can find in Bookmark.

01:06:28.200 | And you could just go and look at the show notes,

01:06:32.160 | like, "Oh, what was that question called?"

01:06:34.160 | And you'll find it.

01:06:35.000 | It'll be posted pretty soon after it comes out.

01:06:36.880 | So I'm hoping the YouTube page will make it easy

01:06:38.800 | for people to begin pulling out.

01:06:40.440 | Like this will be the good archive of the information.

01:06:43.840 | Now, when the portal launches,

01:06:45.340 | the standalone portal launches

01:06:47.760 | from which you can access all of the videos

01:06:49.780 | and podcast episodes without even having to go to YouTube,

01:06:53.120 | it is gonna include a dedicated page

01:06:55.800 | for every episode of the podcast.

01:06:57.800 | You're gonna see the show notes,

01:06:59.640 | the description of every question

01:07:01.040 | in that episode on that page.

01:07:02.400 | You are gonna be able to play it straight from that place.

01:07:04.640 | You're gonna see every video taken from that episode

01:07:07.580 | accessible in a horizontal carousel

01:07:09.840 | right there from that page.

01:07:12.000 | Once we're doing that,

01:07:12.960 | we might start adding more information to our show notes.

01:07:15.360 | So that will become a pretty good record as well.

01:07:17.360 | But we really are hoping that people can remix

01:07:20.600 | and gather their favorite questions,

01:07:22.900 | their favorite videos, et cetera.

01:07:24.520 | Now that they're all accessible,

01:07:26.520 | people can find them, they can put them into their own pages,

01:07:29.040 | they can put them into their own playlist.

01:07:30.420 | So we're really thinking this through.

01:07:31.880 | But the YouTube page was a major step

01:07:33.960 | towards making the information in this podcast

01:07:36.040 | way more accessible and findable and saveable

01:07:39.320 | than it just being in the long form audio.

01:07:42.800 | So Liata, start there, get used to the YouTube page,

01:07:46.040 | bookmark or save videos that are important to you,

01:07:48.440 | create your own playlist.

01:07:49.520 | That's probably the right way to begin collecting

01:07:51.520 | the things we talk about on the podcast

01:07:53.280 | that are of particular interest to you.

01:07:57.040 | All right, well, what's of interest to me right now

01:07:59.320 | is wrapping this up.

01:08:00.160 | We are short on time.

01:08:02.640 | So thank you everyone who sent in your questions.

01:08:07.160 | Remember to check out that YouTube page,

01:08:09.720 | see videos of all the questions and segments

01:08:11.400 | we talked about today,

01:08:12.240 | as well as videos of the full episodes.

01:08:15.240 | If you like what you heard,

01:08:16.280 | you will like what you read

01:08:17.840 | on my longstanding email newsletter.

01:08:19.640 | You can sign up for that at calnewport.com.

01:08:23.560 | I'll be back on Thursday.

01:08:25.360 | The listener calls episode.

01:08:26.600 | And until then, as always stay deep.

01:08:29.400 | (upbeat music)

01:08:32.900 | [MUSIC]

Full Length Episode | #175 | February 21, 2022

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