Ep. 230: How Well Are You Living?

00:00:00.000 | And he gets into it, um, later in this article, he gets into how this came about.

00:00:04.600 | He was collecting this stuff because if you know, GDT, he does these, these

00:00:07.820 | beautiful, fantastical movies that often have the macabre or terrifying in them.

00:00:11.900 | So he was collecting these somewhat disturbing objects.

00:00:14.420 | And at some point, his wife very reasonably said, this cannot be in our house.

00:00:19.200 | Like we have young kids.

00:00:20.820 | If you want to know what I'm talking about and you're watching on YouTube, I

00:00:24.060 | have an example on the page of something that's in his bleak house.

00:00:27.100 | It's, um, it's a man's face that has been ripped open and

00:00:31.640 | there's like jaws coming up.

00:00:32.900 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, episode 230.

00:00:44.940 | I'm here in my deep work HQ joined once again by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:55.440 | Jesse, welcome back from vacation.

00:00:57.160 | Thanks.

00:00:57.620 | It's good to be back.

00:00:58.700 | I was actually pretty impressed that I remembered how to do most of the stuff

00:01:03.640 | that happens on the computer screen.

00:01:05.520 | I, it was muscle memory.

00:01:06.780 | I was actually thinking about that.

00:01:08.260 | I mean, it's not overly complicated, but there are steps that I would.

00:01:12.100 | It's just a lot of little things.

00:01:13.640 | Yeah.

00:01:13.880 | But it's like riding a bike.

00:01:15.180 | So recording on garage band podcasting is like, uh, riding a bike.

00:01:20.840 | Um, all right.

00:01:21.860 | News, Jesse news to share.

00:01:24.840 | Uh, I think I can say officially that as of this morning, I am done with a complete

00:01:30.360 | first draft of my new book, slow productivity.

00:01:34.440 | That's pretty awesome.

00:01:36.040 | It's a little bit hazy to really put a line in the sand and say the draft is done.

00:01:41.580 | Um, because for example, I have, I have a couple examples I've come across

00:01:47.400 | recently that I want to go back and integrate into prior chapters.

00:01:50.160 | I also want to do a pass through and see if any of the major stories I want to

00:01:53.320 | change, uh, before I submit it.

00:01:55.440 | But my definition of being done is like, as of right before I came here this

00:01:58.820 | morning, every chapter of the book has been written and polished.

00:02:02.440 | So in theory, I have a complete version of the manuscript, maybe not the

00:02:05.720 | version I'm going to submit, but there's a complete version of it.

00:02:08.280 | There's nothing that's either not yet written or, uh, written

00:02:12.200 | still in a, in a rough draft.

00:02:13.720 | So I, I finalized the conclusion.

00:02:16.320 | So as you were walking us through, you know, the quarterly plans and stuff

00:02:20.600 | since last, when you started, did it all fall into place?

00:02:23.800 | It did.

00:02:24.440 | I, I laid my game plan for this manuscript.

00:02:28.160 | Well, let me think about that.

00:02:29.480 | Let me, let me be a little bit more careful about this.

00:02:30.840 | I started writing it in earnest late spring, early summer.

00:02:34.140 | Um, and so I had a plan through the summer that I think

00:02:38.120 | I was a little bit light on.

00:02:40.400 | So when I got to the end of the summer, I was a little behind schedule.

00:02:42.480 | Um, beginning of the fall, I laid out a plan from the beginning of the

00:02:46.360 | fall to completing the manuscript and my target was to be done basically now.

00:02:52.480 | Wow.

00:02:53.540 | Now it, it might sound like, wow, how did I predict that so well, but that's

00:02:56.880 | not how this works with quarterly planning.

00:02:58.680 | It's not that I made a prediction and I happened to hit it.

00:03:00.920 | It's having that, that plan in place, uh, gave me back pressure to,

00:03:05.920 | okay, I got to work harder now.

00:03:07.120 | I got to fill an extra time.

00:03:08.080 | Now it gave me milestones.

00:03:09.360 | So when I, when I could see I was going behind, I could

00:03:11.720 | put an extra effort to catch up.

00:03:13.160 | And when I got ahead, then I could pull back and put that effort elsewhere.

00:03:16.900 | So that's the way I like to think about these sort of quarterly scale plans

00:03:20.140 | is it's not, let's just see if I hit it.

00:03:22.320 | It's not a prognostication.

00:03:23.740 | It's actually a set of milestones you can use to govern

00:03:27.880 | your activity throughout the way.

00:03:29.160 | So it was the structure I used to govern my energy all fall long and it works.

00:03:33.600 | And so I ended up coming in for a landing right around, I mean, within.

00:03:38.440 | A week of, of when I was, that's so good.

00:03:41.880 | Hoping to do it.

00:03:42.380 | So you probably, how many hours a day did you average writing?

00:03:45.280 | Like, well, you know, six days.

00:03:46.760 | So the way I normally do is I'll have a milestone.

00:03:49.120 | So I'll go from just, this is multi-scale planning.

00:03:50.980 | So I'll go from my quarterly plan, uh, will influence my weekly plan.

00:03:55.280 | And then my weekly plan will influence what I do each day.

00:03:57.900 | Um, and so typically when I'm writing, I have a particular

00:04:01.140 | milestone I'm trying to hit.

00:04:02.460 | So it just depends how close I'm getting to it.

00:04:04.220 | So if I, if I'm getting close to it or I'm falling behind, I might put

00:04:08.060 | in a five or six hour writing day.

00:04:10.180 | My average writing day is going to be two hours, two and a half hours.

00:04:14.740 | So, and I would just write in the morning, most mornings, not

00:04:18.060 | Saturday, uh, was my typical schedule.

00:04:21.160 | Sometimes I'd miss a morning with a meeting and I would just try to

00:04:24.340 | write for about two hours, two and a half hours.

00:04:26.920 | I mean, this was really a, uh, to quote McPhee, John McPhee.

00:04:30.640 | And I know this quote because it's actually at the very final

00:04:33.440 | section of the conclusion of my book.

00:04:35.040 | It's from a 2010 interview McPhee did for the Paris Review.

00:04:39.580 | It was interviewed by his colleague at the New Yorker, Peter Hessler.

00:04:42.120 | And he has this book where he, he has this quote where he essentially.

00:04:44.880 | Marvels at this idea that people think he's very hardworking or prolific

00:04:49.960 | because it says from his point of view, he's just putting a little

00:04:52.860 | drop in the bucket every day.

00:04:54.360 | But he said, the thing is it's not hard.

00:04:56.480 | You know, it doesn't look that impressive to add a drop

00:04:58.440 | in the bucket on a given day.

00:04:59.760 | But if you do that 365 days, when you get to the end of the

00:05:02.820 | year, that bucket's pretty full.

00:05:04.240 | That's the approach I took with slow productivity.

00:05:06.480 | I wanted the writing to be good.

00:05:08.100 | So I really just kept my focus each day on what section am I working on?

00:05:12.460 | I want this to be really good.

00:05:13.860 | And then it's not overwhelming, right?

00:05:15.820 | Because then you're focusing on I'm writing a section where I'm telling

00:05:19.700 | the story of X to make this point.

00:05:21.560 | And over two days, I just want to do that really well.

00:05:23.700 | And I did that really well.

00:05:24.840 | Good.

00:05:25.240 | What's next.

00:05:26.260 | And then you just add that up over about six or seven months.

00:05:29.580 | And you hope what you end up with is a manuscript is pretty, pretty

00:05:32.420 | well-crafted that there's not a lot of flab in it.

00:05:35.200 | I mean, the thing I dislike in pragmatic nonfiction is where you clearly see

00:05:39.360 | evidence of writing for the sake of writing, I have 10,000 words.

00:05:43.400 | I got to finish.

00:05:44.280 | I have a week left to do it.

00:05:45.840 | Type, type, type as fast as I can.

00:05:48.060 | Lots of rhetorical questions, throwing in random examples.

00:05:50.740 | Like just, you can tell the author is like, my God, I

00:05:53.080 | got to get these words done.

00:05:54.260 | I never want that to come through in my writing.

00:05:56.440 | So it's always just today I'm writing a thousand words or whatever.

00:05:59.440 | And I want those thousand words to be great.

00:06:01.760 | And I think that's how you get density.

00:06:03.220 | So it really worked.

00:06:03.860 | I mean, we'll see how the book turns out.

00:06:06.120 | But I really feel good about this drop everyday method of.

00:06:09.800 | By the time I got to what I'm working on today, all I'm caring about is that

00:06:13.700 | and keeping the whole pressure of there's this whole book that needs to be finished.

00:06:17.460 | And I'm not that far into it.

00:06:18.840 | Keeping that at a higher scale of planning.

00:06:21.620 | I only have to confront that every once in a while, maybe once a month.

00:06:24.960 | And really what I want to be doing each day is just this one I'm working on this

00:06:28.520 | week, this is the part I'm doing today.

00:06:30.280 | And just focus.

00:06:31.820 | So anyways, I'm, I'm excited about that.

00:06:33.080 | It's kind of exhausting, Jesse.

00:06:34.500 | I mean, I find this with every book.

00:06:36.160 | Um, it's mentally exhausting.

00:06:39.320 | So I'm, I'm sort of happy to have a little bit of a break coming up because, you

00:06:43.720 | know, I'm, I'm doing New Yorker stuff at the same time.

00:06:45.660 | I'm doing academic stuff at the same time.

00:06:47.860 | It's a lot of thinking.

00:06:48.980 | And I think about my brain the same way athletes think about their.

00:06:51.840 | Yeah.

00:06:52.860 | Muscles, right?

00:06:53.540 | I mean, you have a hard season.

00:06:55.580 | You got to recharge a little bit.

00:06:58.980 | Yeah, I guess.

00:07:00.060 | I mean, we've heard a lot of examples too of people like authors who write

00:07:03.980 | five, six hours a day, every single day.

00:07:06.200 | It just seems like you also write pretty fast, you know, cause this

00:07:09.320 | thing got done pretty quickly.

00:07:11.100 | Yeah.

00:07:11.660 | Uh, yeah, I got done.

00:07:13.380 | I mean, this is about my pace.

00:07:14.760 | If I can give it daily attention.

00:07:17.440 | See, I don't need five hours a day, but I need most days to be able to give it to.

00:07:20.840 | And, and so for me, it's, if I can connect a summer term with a teaching

00:07:27.340 | release, I can make it happen.

00:07:29.220 | Right.

00:07:30.140 | So I really got going in May.

00:07:32.580 | Not surprising, right?

00:07:34.700 | Because May is when my courses end.

00:07:36.340 | I had a very busy spring semester because I was teaching two courses and was, uh,

00:07:40.860 | co-chairing a university level search committee in which we were

00:07:45.620 | trying to hire three people.

00:07:47.200 | Right.

00:07:47.760 | So it's very time consuming, lots of, um, being on campus, uh, meeting with

00:07:51.860 | candidates, going to talks and, and a lot of overhead.

00:07:54.460 | And so I didn't write basically at all.

00:07:56.580 | I knew I wasn't gonna be able to write, but once I got the May, it was like,

00:07:59.920 | let's turn it on because it's summer.

00:08:01.740 | Right, right, right, right, right.

00:08:02.860 | And off term, right, right, right, right, right.

00:08:04.740 | And so that's why I was able to get it done in about six months.

00:08:06.860 | If I was teaching this fall, I would have to, this

00:08:10.900 | is, will be a one year process.

00:08:12.260 | So probably May to back around again to May again, because if you think about

00:08:19.720 | it, it probably reduces the number of mornings you can write by about 40%.

00:08:24.720 | Yeah.

00:08:25.340 | And then you got to factor in loss of momentum because of that.

00:08:27.640 | And yeah.

00:08:29.060 | Yeah.

00:08:29.580 | And that, that, that makes about sense.

00:08:30.780 | It was, I have some, some big swings ideas for the New Yorker.

00:08:34.700 | I'm excited to get to, I have some, uh, cool academic paper I'm working on.

00:08:38.600 | So I'm really looking forward to the next few months going back to a, a non book

00:08:43.660 | schedule where I'm teaching and I have some articles I'm working on, but there's

00:08:48.200 | not this, I mean, I wake up every day for the six months, woken up every day.

00:08:52.260 | First thought is what am I writing today?

00:08:54.700 | Yeah.

00:08:55.240 | You know, let's get after what am I writing?

00:08:56.660 | What am I like?

00:08:57.260 | Not, I don't waste time.

00:08:58.220 | Don't waste time.

00:08:58.780 | We got to get into it.

00:08:59.480 | You know, that's been six months of that.

00:09:01.140 | So I'm looking forward to a slow start.

00:09:03.740 | Your, um, your recent New York article was in the New Yorker weekly summary email.

00:09:10.420 | I just got that.

00:09:11.260 | Yeah.

00:09:12.340 | Well, yeah.

00:09:12.860 | So they do the New Yorker.

00:09:13.740 | Oh, it was in the weekly summary.

00:09:15.140 | Yeah.

00:09:15.700 | I only get, you can get, you can sign up for a bunch of different ones.

00:09:18.860 | I get the weekly one and like one of the one, I don't want the daily one.

00:09:21.140 | Can you control which ones you get?

00:09:22.740 | Oh yeah.

00:09:23.260 | I get too many.

00:09:24.340 | You can, I mean, I write for the magazine, but I was talking to my wife

00:09:27.620 | and I were talking about that because I get like the daily humor.

00:09:29.880 | Yeah, no, you can definitely.

00:09:31.080 | Which I don't need.

00:09:31.800 | Right.

00:09:32.120 | And I get, um, this week in the magazine, which I don't need

00:09:34.600 | because I have the magazine.

00:09:35.640 | I really just want the daily, but I don't get the weekly.

00:09:38.400 | Well, I guess it's this week in the magazine, what I was

00:09:41.360 | talking about, you came up.

00:09:42.360 | Oh, okay.

00:09:43.280 | But yeah, you can get all sorts of ones.

00:09:44.600 | I think that quiet quitting one did well.

00:09:45.720 | Interesting, uh, podcast shout out for that article.

00:09:49.320 | The quiet quitting article came out of our podcast.

00:09:52.320 | So my editor heard us talking about it and was like, you

00:09:55.760 | should write something about it.

00:09:56.600 | Yeah.

00:09:57.080 | So the podcast is providing a, a platform.

00:10:00.080 | Actually, it's one of the questions I'm going to tackle later in the show.

00:10:02.800 | Someone wrote in about, uh, coming up with these ideas,

00:10:06.080 | my process for researching.

00:10:07.440 | So actually we're going to get into that later in the show.

00:10:09.600 | Um, but before we do, I also have a request.

00:10:12.720 | I realized it's been, I don't know, six months since I've asked

00:10:17.120 | this and I realized I should, uh, leave a review of the podcast.

00:10:23.400 | If you get around to it, I want to go, I think it's a good way to

00:10:26.480 | get some new listeners it's confusing.

00:10:29.240 | If you just come across this show, you just see it on like the.

00:10:31.600 | Podcast technology charts, like what the hell is this?

00:10:34.360 | Uh, and reviews kind of help people figure it out.

00:10:36.640 | So if you like the show, consider leaving a review.

00:10:39.600 | Um, if you dislike the show, I just heard that the review feature

00:10:44.480 | will give you a computer virus.

00:10:45.680 | You don't want to do that.

00:10:46.600 | Right.

00:10:47.200 | So if you like it, leave a review.

00:10:48.480 | If you don't do not.

00:10:49.280 | All right.

00:10:50.600 | Just seeing things segments, three interesting things that people have

00:10:52.920 | emailed to my interesting account, new bar.com address, you know, I forgot

00:10:58.760 | Jesse to do the little tagline for the show and try and be better at

00:11:01.000 | identifying the show for people.

00:11:02.320 | So I'll do that now.

00:11:03.240 | This show is one in which I answer questions from my audience and give

00:11:09.600 | advice about the struggle to live deeply in a world beset by distractions.

00:11:13.400 | So I'd like to remind everyone.

00:11:14.920 | That's what we're doing here.

00:11:15.960 | Our deep dive will be about that.

00:11:17.280 | Our questions will be about that.

00:11:18.480 | All three of our interesting things we'll cover later.

00:11:21.200 | We'll all come back to that theme.

00:11:22.680 | How do we live deeper in a world that's trying to destroy us with distraction?

00:11:27.560 | All right.

00:11:29.040 | So let's get going with our deep dive.

00:11:30.560 | The title is how well are you living?

00:11:35.360 | This is a deep dive that is supposed to be well-suited to this current

00:11:40.200 | season of new year resolutions.

00:11:43.560 | Now, the inspiration for this deep dive is an email.

00:11:47.680 | I read actually this morning.

00:11:49.280 | It comes from a writer's group that I'm a part of, and it was an email that

00:11:53.200 | someone was sending to the writer's group.

00:11:54.600 | It was a well-known writer talking about a conversation he had

00:11:58.120 | with another well-known writer.

00:12:00.000 | I want to read an excerpt from this email.

00:12:02.040 | I'm going to get rid of any identifying information, of course,

00:12:05.800 | we'll obfuscate that, but I'm going to read the core of this

00:12:08.680 | message, what caught my attention.

00:12:09.960 | So the well-known writer who's sending this email says, "By far the

00:12:15.040 | most interesting topic to emerge," and he's referring to a lunch he had

00:12:20.400 | recently with another author, "was the question, how well are you living?

00:12:25.600 | It's not the type of question that comes up often in overachiever circles, and

00:12:30.560 | we took a long pause to consider it.

00:12:32.200 | I mean, if you were to grade yourself on how well you're living,

00:12:35.280 | what would the grade be?

00:12:37.600 | That's how we framed the question.

00:12:40.480 | Well, that gave us something to really think about and led to an incredible

00:12:43.280 | set of text exchange in the days, weeks, and months to come, some of the most

00:12:46.360 | meaningful exchanges I've had in years.

00:12:47.800 | So food for thought as this new year begins, how well are you living?"

00:12:52.480 | Now, I thought that was a provocative prompt because it gets at a core issue

00:13:01.120 | that I think people have when they think about improving their life, as so many

00:13:06.040 | are doing right now in the new year season.

00:13:08.000 | In particular, the tension I think this highlights is the tension between

00:13:11.760 | holistic and focused approaches to self-improvement.

00:13:18.400 | So the question, how well are you living?

00:13:20.840 | This is a holistic question.

00:13:23.360 | Looking at your life as it exists in its entirety.

00:13:27.880 | If someone was to write a short story about your life or film a documentary

00:13:32.160 | about your life, would it resonate with others as a life well lived?

00:13:36.840 | Would it resonate with you?

00:13:38.160 | I like hearing about this life.

00:13:41.600 | And as a question about the holistic properties of your day-to-day existence.

00:13:45.720 | Now it sounds obvious.

00:13:47.880 | Yeah, I want to live well, but when people tackle this goal, they tend instead to

00:13:52.800 | fall into focused approaches to self-improvement where you isolate specific

00:13:58.880 | elements of your life where you want to remove something bad or do something better.

00:14:03.440 | So for example, you might say, "I want to be in better shape.

00:14:07.040 | So I want to exercise more.

00:14:09.520 | I want to eat better.

00:14:10.120 | I want to go to the gym more."

00:14:10.840 | It's just classic New Year's resolution.

00:14:12.000 | You might say, "I want to be a better parent.

00:14:13.480 | I feel like I'm too disorganized.

00:14:15.080 | I'm not able to show up at enough of my kids' events or give them enough time.

00:14:18.800 | I want to be a better parent."

00:14:20.600 | Or you might say, for example, "I want to be better at this aspect of my job.

00:14:24.280 | I want my newsletter to double the amount of readers.

00:14:28.440 | I want to get promoted to be team lead at my programming job," et cetera.

00:14:33.080 | Now, the issue with this focused approach to self-improvement is that it is

00:14:40.400 | that it ignores the complex ways in which different aspects of your

00:14:43.760 | life interact with each other.

00:14:44.960 | So actually the problem a lot of overachievers in particular have, so

00:14:50.920 | this is the crowd that this email I read was really talking about.

00:14:54.160 | It's a bunch of overachieving writers.

00:14:55.440 | The problem that overachievers have with the self-improvement is not their

00:14:58.800 | failure to make progress on things.

00:15:00.760 | It's not their failure to follow through on their resolutions.

00:15:03.000 | It's actually what happens when they succeed.

00:15:05.080 | Because when you're doing focused self-improvement, you're messing with a

00:15:09.600 | complex mechanism by taking one aspect and maybe amplifying it that might then

00:15:14.040 | interact with or interfere with how the other aspects of your life unfold

00:15:17.800 | and things can get even worse.

00:15:20.160 | Because often the way to solve or improve parts of your life is

00:15:25.040 | to improve your life as a whole.

00:15:26.360 | The isolating of looking at one thing might throw everything else out of whack.

00:15:32.640 | So for example, maybe you say, "I want to be in better shape," and you come up

00:15:37.000 | with these, "I'm going to train and I'm going to train for a triathlon, or

00:15:39.720 | I'm going to run a marathon."

00:15:40.600 | I see this all the time.

00:15:41.480 | Like, "I'm an overachiever.

00:15:42.720 | I'm going to take on like a really serious training regimen and I'm going

00:15:46.560 | to get really careful about my eating.

00:15:48.480 | I have to run this much and lift these weights and do all of these things."

00:15:51.400 | And yeah, you maybe are succeeding in making that part of your life better,

00:15:54.920 | but now it's completely swapping, taking out time that you didn't really realize

00:15:58.440 | you needed before to recharge between work or home or taking away time from your

00:16:02.280 | family, or you have to wake up real early to do this.

00:16:04.360 | And now suddenly other aspects of your life just got worse.

00:16:07.480 | So the holistic system of your life is now actually worse off because you

00:16:10.840 | succeeded at the focus goal of, "I want to be in better shape."

00:16:14.320 | Now, sometimes the other issue that happens with focus versus holistic

00:16:18.200 | approach is that the solution requires other things to be involved.

00:16:22.600 | So maybe we're looking at this hypothetical issue of, "I want to be a better parent.

00:16:26.280 | I want to be in my kid's life more.

00:16:28.200 | I want to go to more, whatever, events at their school.

00:16:30.800 | I feel too harried."

00:16:31.680 | It might be that the solution to that has nothing to do with your commitments

00:16:36.200 | to parenting, but actually changing your work situation.

00:16:38.680 | Oh, it's actually, when we see the whole picture, it's the demands of your

00:16:43.200 | specific job that's making it impossible to do this other thing that matters to you.

00:16:46.960 | So we have these two issues of being focused.

00:16:49.160 | One, you might succeed and in doing so actually make other things worse.

00:16:53.120 | Two, you can't actually get to the real solutions because the problem, the

00:16:58.120 | problems you need to fix to improve this aspect of your life involve other

00:17:02.360 | unrelated, seemingly unrelated aspects.

00:17:05.840 | This is why I like the question, "How well are you living?"

00:17:08.200 | Because it demands that you look at the big picture.

00:17:10.200 | Not, "Are you in shape?

00:17:12.440 | How's your parenting?

00:17:13.080 | How's your work?

00:17:13.600 | How's your whole life?

00:17:14.560 | Is this a life well lived or not?"

00:17:16.200 | And what it asks you to do, if you're going to resolve to improve yourself this

00:17:20.640 | new year, it asks that you resolve to improve the entire picture of your life.

00:17:24.880 | Shift from this holistic picture to that holistic picture.

00:17:28.040 | This one's better than this.

00:17:29.080 | You think about all the aspects of your life, how they interact, how they

00:17:33.640 | push back and forth on each other.

00:17:35.960 | And you make changes that make sense for the whole picture.

00:17:38.800 | That's what I think.

00:17:41.480 | And I'm going to recommend that those who are thinking about

00:17:43.320 | doing new year's resolutions.

00:17:44.360 | This is how I think you should go about doing it.

00:17:46.320 | Do not write down a disparate collection of discrete and unrelated

00:17:51.560 | resolutions of things you want to improve.

00:17:53.360 | Instead, record an image of an improved lifestyle.

00:17:57.320 | When you get to the new year 2024, what do you want your life as a whole to look like?

00:18:04.680 | When you get to new year 2030, what do you want your life as a whole to look like?

00:18:09.840 | And think about then how do all of these pieces need to change?

00:18:15.160 | What's holding back this?

00:18:16.840 | Is it my job is the problem here?

00:18:19.320 | Is it I've taken on too many, I have seven hobbies and this is, they're eating each

00:18:23.920 | other's time and this isn't working.

00:18:25.320 | I need to simplify here.

00:18:26.560 | Is it what I really need to do is shift this leisure attention to something I can

00:18:31.080 | do with my kids, because now I'm able to use the same time to connect with my

00:18:35.520 | family and find an outlet with something that's completely unrelated to my work.

00:18:39.040 | You see the whole picture and you think about how you, what was

00:18:42.080 | your whole lifestyle look like?

00:18:43.200 | Do we need to move?

00:18:44.120 | Is this really the issue?

00:18:45.040 | Do we have to get out of the DC suburbs and, and move to a, you

00:18:48.840 | know, a farm in Southern Appalachia?

00:18:50.480 | I don't know, but you're not going to get to an answer unless you're seeing

00:18:53.160 | the whole picture, because if you're not seeing the whole picture, you're

00:18:55.880 | going to be picking at specific things.

00:18:57.480 | I guess I'll get up at 5am to run now.

00:18:59.760 | I guess I'm going to work later so I can try to get this promotion.

00:19:02.680 | You need to see the whole picture.

00:19:03.880 | So that's what I'm going to recommend is a holistic approach to

00:19:06.720 | new year's resolutions this year.

00:19:08.080 | The question is how well are you living?

00:19:10.560 | And if you're not happy with the answer, you need to focus on how you upgrade

00:19:14.520 | your life as a whole, not little individual aspects of it.

00:19:18.320 | So anyways, that was a good question, Jesse.

00:19:21.880 | How well are you living?

00:19:22.880 | It's the right way to think about it.

00:19:23.800 | More and more.

00:19:25.400 | I'm realizing that in my life as I get new years after new years is.

00:19:29.520 | The whole game is crafting lifestyle and how things interact with each other.

00:19:35.000 | I mean, everything is so related.

00:19:36.640 | Uh, the thing that comes up most often, I think is how much your job, the details

00:19:41.680 | of your job interacts with like everything else, you know?

00:19:45.040 | And so it's the issue and overachievers, like I'm just going to like crush

00:19:47.880 | it even more at my job, I'm this successful.

00:19:49.960 | How would I be more successful?

00:19:51.120 | As they don't realize how much that is often crushing everything else.

00:19:53.760 | Or they'll try an isolation to say, I'm going to be, you know, the

00:19:58.040 | coach of the little league team and train for the triathlon and realize

00:20:01.200 | because of the reality of their job, there's no way to actually do that.

00:20:05.080 | And then it becomes a huge source of stress or anxiety, or the commute is the

00:20:08.560 | issue.

00:20:09.120 | And, you know, if we moved here, but we'd have to change the job.

00:20:12.120 | I mean, it's all about seeing this whole picture as a puzzle.

00:20:14.960 | How do I figure out if I move this piece, I can adjust that piece.

00:20:18.000 | This then allows this piece to move over here.

00:20:20.400 | Oh, the whole thing clicks together into a new hole.

00:20:23.280 | That's much better.

00:20:24.000 | It's a, it's a dynamic system.

00:20:26.280 | And then as you always talk about, I guess, distorted when people, you know,

00:20:29.400 | look at social media and stuff like that.

00:20:30.960 | Yeah.

00:20:31.280 | And that just makes it worse because again, social media, especially Instagram,

00:20:34.640 | it's going to isolate these individual features of people's lives and

00:20:40.000 | exaggerated and make it seem.

00:20:41.520 | That's what people want.

00:20:42.760 | Yeah.

00:20:43.280 | And you're like, oh, that's what I need.

00:20:44.600 | Like, why, why don't I look like, uh, this came up last night.

00:20:49.720 | We were watching, the family was watching a movie on Netflix.

00:20:54.520 | It's a kid's movie called finding a Wana.

00:20:57.880 | I mean, obviously that word, right.

00:20:59.560 | But it takes place in Hawaii and it's like a family from Brooklyn comes back

00:21:03.200 | to Hawaii because their grandfather had a heart attack and as happens.

00:21:07.840 | They find a lost pirate treasure map and, or, you know, sort of Goonie

00:21:11.880 | styles, like the kids are trying to whatever, but anyways, they're, it's

00:21:15.000 | kind of built around their dad had died and he comes back to spoiler alert,

00:21:18.360 | but he sort of comes back as a ghost.

00:21:20.360 | Um, and, uh, it turns out this guy is an Instagram fitness model because my, my

00:21:27.440 | son was like, where have I seen him before?

00:21:29.320 | And so you look at these pictures, gentlemen is in very good shape.

00:21:33.080 | He is, he's like, he's like the, it's like, um, you know, if you're a producer

00:21:39.960 | and you're like, get me the rock and like the rock is not available, you're like,

00:21:43.720 | then get me his like much cheaper non-union equivalent.

00:21:46.920 | Like you get this guy, right.

00:21:48.440 | He's like a really buff, uh, guy who the promise he's 10 inches shorter than the

00:21:54.680 | rock, but, uh, where I'm going with this is you see his Instagram photos.

00:21:58.760 | He's a Hawaiian cowboy.

00:22:00.040 | So he's shirtless with like 36 inch biceps with a cowboy

00:22:04.200 | hat on horses or whatever.

00:22:05.680 | You see that in isolation and you're like, ah, man, you know, I guess I should be

00:22:10.960 | spending two hours a day in the gym.

00:22:13.040 | Yeah.

00:22:13.400 | Like just like ripping at it to become like a buff Hawaiian cowboy.

00:22:17.720 | But you know, how does that fit with all the other aspects of your life?

00:22:21.840 | Like if you're going to play, um, Ghosts and movies or whatever of like Hawaiian

00:22:26.560 | warriors, like, yeah, that's what you should do.

00:22:27.960 | Uh, that's all you're doing.

00:22:29.480 | Like your job is to get in really good shape.

00:22:31.320 | Um, where I'm trying to go with this, Jesse is I'm going to move to Hawaii

00:22:34.560 | and just work out all the time, all the time.

00:22:37.720 | I'm not sure why I thought about the example.

00:22:41.080 | Um, all right.

00:22:41.960 | Anyways, uh, we got a whole good chunk of questions to get to.

00:22:45.160 | I want to briefly mention before we get there, one of the sponsors

00:22:48.040 | that makes this show possible.

00:22:49.840 | And that is our friends at Hinson shaving.

00:22:53.240 | I shaved with my Hinson razor just a couple hours before it is one

00:22:58.680 | of my favorite things I own.

00:23:01.160 | Like if I did like an Oprah's favorite things, uh, bit, you know, Oh, he's

00:23:07.440 | the five favorite things of this year.

00:23:08.880 | This razor would be on the, uh, would be on the list.

00:23:11.280 | So let me tell you what it does.

00:23:12.480 | Um, and why I like it.

00:23:13.960 | So a Hinson's razor is this precision built aluminum, precisely

00:23:19.600 | CNC routed metal razor.

00:23:23.120 | Um, you put into it standard safety blades, 10 cent blades.

00:23:28.400 | And because this thing is made so precisely, you can get a great shave.

00:23:33.880 | By just using a 10 cent blade within this beautifully milled razor.

00:23:39.080 | So here's the idea.

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00:23:39.720 | You pay more upfront to get this beautiful razor, but then going forward,

00:23:42.960 | you're just buying 10 cent blades and replacing them every week.

00:23:45.640 | So your cost, uh, your average cost of shave begins to plummet.

00:23:49.120 | And after a while, it's much cheaper than using a subscription service or

00:23:52.200 | buying the, uh, the drugstore brands.

00:23:54.840 | How do they make this thing so precise?

00:23:56.880 | Well, the company that makes Hinson's razors.

00:23:59.280 | Is a family owned aerospace parts manufacturer.

00:24:04.160 | So they have all of the equipment needed to do incredibly

00:24:07.320 | precise milling of parts.

00:24:10.080 | They've worked on the international space station.

00:24:11.800 | They've worked on parts for the Mars Rover.

00:24:13.320 | So they had all this equipment to make the razors precisely milled.

00:24:18.040 | This turns out to be the key to having a successful shave.

00:24:21.600 | You want just a very little bit of the blade protruding on either

00:24:27.800 | side of the safety razor body.

00:24:30.200 | Just enough to shave, but not so much that you get flex.

00:24:33.880 | You have too much of that blade coming out.

00:24:36.600 | You get flex is called the diving board effect.

00:24:38.440 | That's where you get nicks.

00:24:39.800 | So you want just a little bit coming out and they're able to build these

00:24:42.800 | things so precisely with their aerospace grade CNC machines that they have.

00:24:46.600 | A 0.0013 inches of blade.

00:24:50.760 | That's it extending out.

00:24:53.240 | So anyways, it's a beautifully manufactured piece of equipment.

00:24:57.040 | It gives you a great shave and it gives you the satisfaction of knowing that,

00:25:01.120 | uh, you're gonna be saving money in the longterm.

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00:25:28.080 | That's 100 free blades when you head to H E N S O N S H A V I N G.com/cal

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00:25:38.280 | Let's also talk about our longtime sponsors at Grammarly.

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00:26:15.480 | So, uh, for example, the Grammarly premium product has whole sentence rewrites.

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00:27:33.080 | more and more work is remote.

00:27:35.360 | If you can write clearly and concisely with the right tone, with not only

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00:28:17.160 | All right, Jesse, let's, uh, let's do some questions.

00:28:22.880 | All right.

00:28:23.120 | Sounds great.

00:28:23.720 | First question's from Chris.

00:28:25.120 | How do you keep track of all the other habits you develop

00:28:28.320 | besides your Keystone habit?

00:28:29.920 | All right.

00:28:31.280 | This is a good new year's question.

00:28:32.880 | Uh, so as long time listeners know, I have this procedure I pitch on this

00:28:39.120 | podcast for how to transform your life towards the goal of depth.

00:28:43.960 | So how to go towards what we call the deep life.

00:28:46.480 | And the procedure I talk about is to divide your life into different buckets

00:28:50.080 | that cover different aspects of your life.

00:28:52.280 | So you have craft for your work, community for your friends, family.

00:28:55.400 | Uh, you have constitution for your health and so on.

00:28:58.720 | And I have this procedure.

00:29:00.400 | I always come back to where I say, if you're going to overhaul your life

00:29:04.040 | towards depth, start by putting in place a Keystone habit in each of these, what

00:29:09.240 | we call buckets, something distractible, but non-trivial, and that's just about

00:29:15.040 | setting your mindset right.

00:29:16.120 | You know, when it comes to my health, when it comes to my work, when it comes

00:29:19.640 | to my relationships, when it comes to my sort of ethical or spiritual development,

00:29:23.200 | there's something I do every day.

00:29:25.040 | That's a, it's not trivial and I do it.

00:29:28.000 | And that signals to myself, I care about these L areas and I'm, and I'm willing

00:29:31.360 | to do work that's optional, but important.

00:29:33.480 | Once you've laid that psychological foundation, then I talk about going

00:29:37.160 | bucket by bucket and spending a month or two to really overhaul each.

00:29:41.360 | So what Chris is asking is where did the results of that bucket by

00:29:46.080 | bucket overhauls get written down?

00:29:49.160 | How do you remember, let's say when you overhaul constitution, what you've

00:29:53.080 | decided about your health and fitness.

00:29:55.520 | When you overhaul craft and you've made changes in how you approach your work,

00:29:59.120 | you have new visions, where does that go?

00:30:00.960 | That's a very good question.

00:30:02.520 | So, uh, Chris and I brought my computer here, Chris, because I'm going to

00:30:05.280 | actually look at my own documents and answering this question, but

00:30:09.920 | the basic answer is two part.

00:30:11.800 | So the first place, if I'm overhauling a bucket, the first place, those

00:30:17.240 | proposed changes are going to go is in my strategic plan, what we also call

00:30:22.320 | a quarterly plan or semester plan.

00:30:23.880 | That's where it lives at first.

00:30:25.720 | So that every week I see these changes and I'll give it a name off in, you know,

00:30:29.360 | I'll be like, okay, this is the project.

00:30:31.400 | Whatever.

00:30:31.800 | I like to do that, you know, project work 2.0 or something.

00:30:35.240 | And I'll often even put, I'm looking at it on my screen right now, like a, a

00:30:39.240 | table inside the Google doc I use.

00:30:41.240 | There's a border and put the name at bold and I'll have that right at the top of it.

00:30:45.080 | And it's a reminder of like, this is the, this is what we're trying right now.

00:30:47.800 | Uh, we're doing this every day.

00:30:50.200 | We're using this new system and we have, you know, we're trying to hit this

00:30:53.120 | milestone every month for the next three months, so it's right there, right in your

00:30:56.840 | face, I will leave it there, uh, for a while because not everything is going to

00:31:02.880 | stick and I'll, I'll change it maybe over time, like, let me get rid of this.

00:31:07.280 | Let me update this.

00:31:08.040 | So it's sort of a living document.

00:31:10.880 | After a while, if this overhaul has created changes that are going to stick,

00:31:15.480 | this is just going forward.

00:31:17.160 | What I always do with fitness.

00:31:19.320 | This is going forward.

00:31:20.200 | Something I always do with craft.

00:31:21.320 | I have another document where those changes will then get encoded and on my

00:31:27.200 | system here, and I'm looking in my core folder and my personal Google docs.

00:31:32.120 | And I have my, my, uh, my work strategic semester planning here.

00:31:36.920 | I have my, um, personal family life career strategic planning here.

00:31:40.920 | I have my values document here.

00:31:43.280 | And the fourth document is called core systems that run my life.

00:31:49.640 | This is where new habits or systems or rules to become a permanent part of my

00:31:56.280 | life, eventually migrate and find their permanent home.

00:32:00.040 | So I'm loading that up now.

00:32:02.080 | I'm not going to, uh, I've talked about this before.

00:32:06.640 | I won't read the details, but let me give you the category.

00:32:08.560 | So, so right up top at the top of this document, I've written below

00:32:13.440 | our summaries of the three main categories that contain the

00:32:16.080 | elements of my core systems.

00:32:17.440 | Those categories are core documents, productivity, and discipline.

00:32:21.080 | So under core documents, this is where I discuss how my value document works,

00:32:26.880 | how my strategic plans works and maintenance.

00:32:31.120 | Like when do I check on these?

00:32:32.680 | How do I update these under productivity?

00:32:35.240 | This is where I capture, um, daily, weekly planning, uh, how that works,

00:32:40.760 | multi-scale planning, shutdowns, capture, like the different elements that are at

00:32:44.280 | the core of, of, of sort of how I organize that.

00:32:47.040 | And then under discipline is where I have, okay, these are just things I do on a

00:32:51.200 | regular basis and all these different buckets, you know, aspects of my life.

00:32:54.560 | So this is where, um, this is where permanent changes to different

00:33:01.640 | buckets of my life end up.

00:33:03.560 | They'll largely be in this, uh, core systems document exceptions abound.

00:33:08.520 | Okay.

00:33:10.080 | So some things become so core, I don't even bother writing them down.

00:33:13.000 | I just sort of get used to this is what I do.

00:33:14.640 | Um, other things like live pretty permanently in my strategic plans.

00:33:21.800 | Right.

00:33:22.960 | So, so for example, uh, there might be some vision I have and let me be specific.

00:33:29.400 | There is a vision I have for where I'm trying to get with my work.

00:33:33.280 | Like what I, the, the, the lifestyle vision of my working life.

00:33:36.440 | I want that's in my, at the top of my strategic plan for work that lives there.

00:33:40.840 | So like every time I'm up, you know, uh, overhauling that strategic plan or just

00:33:45.120 | looking at it to make my weekly plan, I just see again and again, this vision I

00:33:49.960 | have on my life.

00:33:50.640 | And so I don't forget that where I want to get.

00:33:52.760 | And on this list, it's five attributes that I have.

00:33:55.400 | Um, so some things just live in my strategic plans, these sort of like lifestyle

00:33:59.440 | visions and stuff, live in there.

00:34:00.760 | Some things I just do, I get used to it.

00:34:02.480 | I don't bother writing it down and other things make their way into my core systems.

00:34:05.640 | All right.

00:34:06.800 | So Chris, that's a good question.

00:34:08.000 | Um, that's how I, that's how I run it.

00:34:10.200 | I will say psychologically speaking, the point of that core systems document.

00:34:15.480 | So like, I don't worry about forgetting it.

00:34:17.160 | Practically speaking, I never read it because if you do, if you do these things

00:34:21.320 | again and again, after a year or two, you don't really need to be reminded, but it

00:34:25.400 | makes me feel good to know at least it's written down somewhere.

00:34:27.560 | All right.

00:34:29.240 | What do we got as our next question here?

00:34:30.400 | All right.

00:34:31.000 | Next question, Terry.

00:34:32.120 | A software developer from England.

00:34:33.960 | I'm currently 36.

00:34:35.840 | I spent a while neglecting all my deep life buckets.

00:34:38.960 | I had a minimum wage job, irregular exercise, no social life.

00:34:42.760 | Then I discovered deep work and so good.

00:34:44.640 | They can't ignore you around 2017.

00:34:47.560 | Thanks to those and Jocko Willink's podcast.

00:34:50.440 | I learned to code, landed a programming job.

00:34:53.000 | I enjoy a triple my previous salary and now exercise four or five times a week.

00:34:57.120 | So thank you for the assistance there.

00:34:59.520 | Your podcast also poached me away from Jocko's.

00:35:02.720 | The one bucket I still struggle with is community and simply just

00:35:06.800 | being social at the basic level.

00:35:08.560 | I really know what to say in a one-on-one conversation, even with

00:35:11.920 | people I've known for years, and I often fail to take advantage of social

00:35:15.480 | networking events because of it.

00:35:16.880 | All right.

00:35:19.440 | So first of all, Terry, um, you gotta be quieter about talking about me

00:35:25.880 | poaching you away from Jocko's podcast.

00:35:29.040 | I do not want Jocko Willink to snap me into three different pieces.

00:35:34.200 | He is one of the scariest human beings alive.

00:35:38.600 | And, uh, I don't want him to know or think of me as a competitor because

00:35:43.680 | he could, um, he could destroy me in a very literal, very literal sense.

00:35:48.720 | If you don't know who Jocko Willink by his way, just look at seven seconds.

00:35:52.600 | Of a Jocko YouTube video.

00:35:55.240 | And you know exactly what I talked about.

00:35:57.360 | In fact, Jesse, I think we should, we should try doing some

00:36:01.120 | Jocko style YouTube videos.

00:36:04.080 | It would get you on the rower.

00:36:05.160 | Have you seen, do you watch any Jocko videos?

00:36:07.560 | Yeah, I've seen them over the years.

00:36:08.920 | Black and white.

00:36:09.600 | And then he, he puts a mic, he, he eats the mic and they put up the base and

00:36:15.680 | he's just like, you know, I was, uh, you know, whatever, whatever he's saying.

00:36:21.160 | Right.

00:36:21.400 | Get after it.

00:36:22.360 | Get after it.

00:36:24.040 | It's like terrifying, you know?

00:36:26.520 | Um, so he's a terrifying man.

00:36:28.320 | And I think it'd be funny if we did our videos that way.

00:36:30.000 | Um, so first things first, Terry, uh, don't tell Jocko that you stopped

00:36:34.920 | listening to his podcast because of me.

00:36:36.400 | Uh, second thing, second, congratulations on the turnaround.

00:36:39.640 | We'll get to the one remaining issue you have about community bucket in a second.

00:36:44.240 | But I, this one, this one, I'm gonna make a quick aside because I hear from a lot

00:36:48.280 | of different people from a lot of different, uh, A lot of different

00:36:52.880 | situations in life, and, and I think there's, there's sort of an important

00:36:55.840 | internet culture point being made here.

00:36:59.320 | There is a lot of men for whom aspirational think of it as like manhood

00:37:06.880 | podcast, like Jocko's is a very important and positive force in their life.

00:37:13.160 | I mean, look at Terry went from minimum wage job, a regular exercise, no social

00:37:18.800 | life, um, to a really good programming job.

00:37:21.840 | And he's in very good shape and is actively working on trying to, in, in

00:37:25.520 | improve his social life.

00:37:26.760 | Like this is a real turnaround.

00:37:28.080 | Um, and I think the reason is as, as someone who gives advice, who's

00:37:31.920 | given advice my whole life, what I've learned is that different people have

00:37:35.200 | different, uh, there's different things that resonate with them.

00:37:38.920 | And you want to reach someone, you have to figure out what it is exactly that

00:37:41.560 | resonates with that particular person.

00:37:43.120 | And it's different for different people for a lot of men, but not all, but for a

00:37:47.600 | lot of men, there's something about a sort of traditional, you know, Jocko has

00:37:51.160 | giant arms and wakes up at four 30 and growls in his microphone and is like, you

00:37:55.160 | can do more than you think, you know, get after it, have discipline, um, Discipline.

00:38:00.320 | Was it disciplined as freedom?

00:38:01.680 | Is that right?

00:38:02.760 | For a lot of guys that really resonates, right.

00:38:05.360 | Just because of the way they're wired and biochemically and hormonally or whatever

00:38:08.960 | that resonates, and it can really lead to a lot of changes.

00:38:12.720 | Now for other people, it doesn't, but I think this is this pluralistic advice is,

00:38:18.400 | uh, pluralistic modes of advice is something that we, we need to embrace.

00:38:23.040 | And so I think there is a pushback against the, the Jockos of the world where other

00:38:28.080 | people that makes them uncomfortable.

00:38:29.520 | So having like a 250 pound, uh, silver star winning sort of war hero, Navy

00:38:35.840 | seal type growling at them makes them really uncomfortable, which completely

00:38:40.200 | makes sense because again, different people get advice different ways.

00:38:43.280 | Right.

00:38:43.600 | So like, I don't get that uncomfortable around Bernie or around Jocko, but, um,

00:38:47.560 | I was talking about this story recently.

00:38:49.560 | I remember years ago, I was on the same circuit as Brené Brown.

00:38:53.600 | And I remember back in like 2011, her and I spoke at the same event and she did her

00:38:59.960 | presentation and the crowd was on their feet and they were dancing.

00:39:04.400 | And I remember turning to the person next to me and being like, I don't

00:39:06.760 | understand the word she just said.

00:39:08.120 | Because she was speaking a language that really resonates with some

00:39:11.640 | people, but for me made no sense.

00:39:13.040 | So I think recognizing, uh, different.

00:39:16.120 | Tones of advice work for different people and we need a

00:39:20.480 | pluralistic approach to advice.

00:39:22.960 | I think this is really important sort of device, uh, advice diversity.

00:39:27.640 | So just like I shouldn't say.

00:39:29.800 | Brené Brown should go away because I don't understand why she has people

00:39:33.440 | dance, like what's going on here.

00:39:34.800 | Uh, you know, I feel the same thing when people are saying, I don't like Jocko.

00:39:38.120 | Like, I don't know, this makes me uncomfortable.

00:39:40.440 | He turned Terry's life around and there's a lot of other people like that.

00:39:43.760 | So I think there's two things.

00:39:46.040 | And again, I'm just going on a tangent here because I've been thinking

00:39:49.400 | about internet culture recently, and I'm going to get back to your question, Terry.

00:39:51.960 | But I think there's two different things going on.

00:39:54.000 | Uh, when we see something like a discomfort with Jocko, um, uh, the first

00:40:00.160 | is what I just talked about here.

00:40:01.320 | It's just like that particular tone doesn't resonate with me.

00:40:05.040 | So, uh, I think, you know, this person go away.

00:40:09.880 | Second, and I'm going to add a bonus here.

00:40:11.440 | So second, I think is the, the mixing of the universal with the existential.

00:40:18.280 | So I'm about to teach propositional logic to my, my undergraduate

00:40:22.560 | mathematics class starting next week.

00:40:23.920 | And that's the first topic we cover.

00:40:25.200 | So this is on my mind.

00:40:26.080 | I think this happens a lot where we go from a proper dislike of the universal

00:40:31.880 | leading to an improper rejection of the existential, what do I mean by that?

00:40:36.040 | Well, we might look at, uh, the trope of manhood promoted by someone like

00:40:40.520 | Jocko and correctly say, this should not be the only vision of manhood that we push.

00:40:46.320 | If this is the only thing that's available, if it's the only thing we

00:40:49.120 | promote or support, that's a problem because not all men, this is going to

00:40:52.760 | resonate with that's a completely appropriate rejection of the universal.

00:40:57.040 | It is easy for that to slip.

00:40:58.800 | However, into the fear of the existential, where you go from, this

00:41:03.240 | shouldn't be the only vision of manhood we push to, we should never

00:41:07.200 | push this version of manhood.

00:41:08.680 | The existence of anyone still pushing that is a problem.

00:41:11.440 | So it's very easy.

00:41:12.360 | I think in, when you're thinking about, uh, in a broad sense, like.

00:41:17.080 | Progressive.

00:41:19.080 | And I don't mean this in a political sense, but in the actual definition

00:41:21.720 | of the term evolution of culture, it's very easy to go from the rejection

00:41:25.840 | of the universal to the demonization of the existential, there shouldn't

00:41:29.520 | only be Jocko as our model for manhood, but we shouldn't.

00:41:33.200 | Say, uh, there should be no Jocko's because for some people that really

00:41:37.080 | resonates, the third thing I think that's happening here is also, um,

00:41:40.840 | there's some real, I don't know.

00:41:43.720 | I don't want to, I don't, this is a non-explicit podcast.

00:41:46.080 | I don't want to curse, but there's some like terrible toxic guys out there as well.

00:41:50.120 | And it's easy to start mixing it up.

00:41:51.960 | So it's easy to say, and I don't know much about this guy, but there's this guy.

00:41:55.840 | Have you heard this Andrew Tate guy, Jesse?

00:41:58.560 | No, I mean, I don't know.

00:42:00.480 | I, I only know about him because I don't, I'm not on social media because

00:42:03.680 | this is now crossed over into, it was on the front page of the Washington post.

00:42:06.520 | But I guess he's like one of these, um, it's like a toxic, like, uh, he got

00:42:12.760 | arrested for sex trafficking in Romania, but like, um, his whole thing is alpha

00:42:17.200 | male, like, but in like a caricature sort of, I'm going to be outrageous, sort of,

00:42:21.840 | uh, to get eyeballs type of thing and smoke cigars and stand in front of my jet.

00:42:25.840 | And, and, you know, that like that type of thing, like really sort of over the

00:42:29.600 | top and annoying, um, and he just got arrested or whatever that exists.

00:42:34.480 | And so maybe what's happening is also people are somehow mixing, mixing

00:42:37.480 | that up because like, well, Jocko has muscles and like talks in a deep voice,

00:42:41.360 | but man, those are so different things.

00:42:42.960 | Jocko has like two silver stars, you know, for like heroic valor on the

00:42:49.040 | battlefield, like saving people's lives.

00:42:51.000 | I, he, he, he ran the brutal task force bruiser during the battle for

00:42:55.520 | Ramadi, um, has had to watch, you know, and he's cried about this on air, having

00:43:01.320 | to watch the death of people who were close to him that were just doing the

00:43:05.440 | mission, the suicides that came after.

00:43:07.320 | Um, and getting through this, he's like a leader to this community.

00:43:10.440 | So we have on one hand, an American hero, and on the other hand, a sex

00:43:13.680 | trafficker who, you know, smoke cigars and really, well, they're both

00:43:16.160 | kind of muscly or whatever.

00:43:17.040 | It's completely different.

00:43:18.040 | But again, if you're not really familiar with the world, maybe you mix it up.

00:43:20.680 | Um, so those are my, those are my three reasons why, you know,

00:43:24.640 | these are my three, please, uh, different type of advice resonates

00:43:27.960 | with different type of people.

00:43:29.160 | And be worried about proper rejection of the universal leading to fear of the

00:43:34.760 | existential and also don't mix up, uh, people that seem superficially similar.

00:43:40.680 | The real reason why I'm giving these three, these three explanations, Jesse,

00:43:44.280 | this is all about trying to prevent Jocko from killing me.

00:43:47.520 | I spent five minutes defending Jocko because I'm terrified of them.

00:43:54.160 | Actually, I hear he's a nice guy.

00:43:55.440 | I have friends in common.

00:43:56.360 | I hear he's a really nice guy.

00:43:57.440 | You guys would get along.

00:43:58.560 | I think so.

00:43:59.200 | I think there's guys who are like, know what they're about.

00:44:02.920 | Navy SEAL, black belt in jujitsu or whatever, or like the nice guys,

00:44:06.720 | because they have nothing to prove.

00:44:08.680 | They're like, I just, they just go through life kind of, you know.

00:44:10.960 | Yeah.

00:44:11.520 | Yeah.

00:44:11.920 | Um, you know, nice.

00:44:13.200 | He lives in San Diego because it's sunny, he surfs.

00:44:15.280 | He probably reads your books.

00:44:16.440 | He might, I should, I should meet him.

00:44:18.600 | And his podcast is mainly, uh, uh, military.

00:44:22.280 | So he has a lot of other military people.

00:44:24.320 | All right, Terry, as for your question about community, um, my, my concern here

00:44:31.160 | is you're, you're thinking about it too systematically, like how do I talk to

00:44:33.760 | people, how do I like optimize interaction?

00:44:35.960 | And I'm going to suggest change the name of this bucket in your mind.

00:44:40.440 | From community to service and say, what I want to do with this bucket is forget,

00:44:46.320 | like, am I having enough conversations with people?

00:44:48.440 | Am I, am I a good socializer is how do I serve other people?

00:44:52.920 | And let's just get that bucket going, start with a keystone habit

00:44:55.800 | and then build up to an overhaul.

00:44:57.040 | Ways that you can give non-trivial amounts of your time, attention, and

00:45:02.480 | energy towards improving other people's lives.

00:45:05.880 | And this could be straight up community service.

00:45:08.080 | Like I'm, I'm, you know, volunteering for my church and we're

00:45:11.160 | helping run this initiative.

00:45:12.360 | Or it could be, I'm a part of this group of other people who share an interest

00:45:16.800 | and we try to help each other out and encourage people.

00:45:18.640 | And I see what I'm trying to do here is like, they're giving me help,

00:45:20.960 | but I want to help other people.

00:45:22.400 | Um, you know, I want to just, how can you serve other people?

00:45:25.800 | And this is an idea that I argue in digital minimalism,

00:45:30.120 | my book, digital minimalism.

00:45:31.720 | This is really where the, the factor that causes our mind to think about a social

00:45:37.520 | connection with someone else being strong is not how well do we talk.

00:45:41.200 | It's, am I sacrificing non-trivial time and attention on behalf of this person?

00:45:45.520 | If you do that, your mind says, this is a member of my tribe.

00:45:48.440 | We're in the group together.

00:45:49.920 | They're an important person in my life.

00:45:51.760 | It's what makes you feel social.

00:45:53.120 | It's what makes you feel connected, not how much you talk to people, but

00:45:55.920 | how much you give for other people.

00:45:57.280 | So don't worry about the talking right now and think more

00:46:00.720 | about how to serve other people.

00:46:02.040 | You will feel more connected.

00:46:03.960 | The conversation will come after that.

00:46:06.080 | The friend, the other stuff will follow, but I would say, turn away from

00:46:10.680 | you and turn towards other people.

00:46:12.000 | That's probably the best way for you to tackle this community bucket.

00:46:14.520 | All right.

00:46:19.520 | Just looking at the door to see, I don't want to hear like the footsteps of Jocko.

00:46:24.040 | Um, all right.

00:46:26.760 | What do we got?

00:46:27.120 | Let's do another question.

00:46:27.800 | All right.

00:46:28.240 | Next question, Scott, a scientist from Boston.

00:46:30.880 | I write on the platform medium.

00:46:32.800 | My problem is whenever I get an idea for an article, I get stuck into a trap of

00:46:36.560 | being unable to stop going too deep and have trouble distilling the essential

00:46:41.000 | idea down to a 10 to 12 minute read.

00:46:43.560 | How do you distill complex idea into short form for the New Yorker articles

00:46:48.320 | without getting into the trap of trying to capture everything there

00:46:50.840 | is to say about a complex topic?

00:46:52.840 | Uh, well, Scott, I mean, the first thing to recognize is that distilling

00:46:58.040 | complex ideas to something that's essential, that hangs together, that

00:47:01.640 | captures people's attention and, uh, improves or augments the way they

00:47:06.120 | understand the world that is really hard to do.

00:47:08.720 | And so I want to lay that as a foundation.

00:47:10.920 | So you're not overly hard on yourself or disappointed that you're not just

00:47:14.720 | naturally able to accomplish that pretty easily.

00:47:18.200 | I think that type of idea writing is in a way like screenwriting in the sense

00:47:24.640 | that the finished product is so familiar and natural that we make the mistake of

00:47:29.360 | assuming, well, I should be able to do that easily as well.

00:47:31.840 | So when you, you see a lot of movies in your life, screenwriters

00:47:35.160 | talk about this all the time.

00:47:35.960 | People in their lives see a lot of movies.

00:47:37.960 | And when you see a movie, it's like, it comes, it's just natural.

00:47:40.680 | Like there, there people are talking and things are blowing up and you think

00:47:43.840 | like, well, yeah, I mean, I could do that.

00:47:45.720 | Like I have ideas and I have a plot ideas.

00:47:47.800 | And what if like the robot was actually, you know, um, secretly this guy's

00:47:52.240 | brother and, and his sister was dead the whole time, like we come with

00:47:55.520 | plots and kind of imagine it.

00:47:56.840 | And we say, yeah, we could do that too.

00:47:57.960 | But what you don't recognize is to actually make a screenplay work.

00:48:01.160 | The make a screenplay just seem natural.

00:48:03.480 | Like, yeah, there's this plot and it happened.

00:48:05.240 | It's incredibly hard because there's a million things that makes a screenplay

00:48:09.680 | break all of the MacGuffins, all the red herrings, like you gotta be very

00:48:13.320 | careful to get rid of all those things.

00:48:14.520 | All the pieces have to fit together.

00:48:16.000 | Everything that sets up has to be resolved.

00:48:18.280 | Motivations have to be here.

00:48:19.560 | There can't be any wasted beats to make a screenplay feel so natural.

00:48:22.720 | It's incredibly hard to do.

00:48:24.000 | Similar with, I think idea writing in the end, if you do it well, it's like, oh yeah.

00:48:29.320 | That's a good way of thinking about that.

00:48:31.560 | Yeah.

00:48:32.240 | Cool.

00:48:32.680 | Good idea.

00:48:33.240 | And you're like, I have good ideas all the time.

00:48:34.600 | Why can't I do that?

00:48:35.360 | But it's actually really hard to deliver that because the idea has to, everything

00:48:38.200 | has to work, no red herrings, no MacGuffins, the things you set up are resolved.

00:48:42.480 | At the end, the idea makes complete sense of exactly what you introduced.

00:48:45.640 | There's no loose threads.

00:48:46.760 | The whole thing moves.

00:48:48.320 | There's some slight of hand.

00:48:50.280 | You kind of navigate around the complexities as if they don't exist.

00:48:53.160 | That's really hard to do.

00:48:55.160 | But when you read it, you're like, oh yeah, this is natural.

00:48:58.040 | So I want to start with that.

00:48:59.760 | So you don't feel too bad about yourself.

00:49:01.240 | I do a lot of idea writing, but you have to remember.

00:49:04.200 | I I'm kind of an exceptional character in this.

00:49:07.120 | And in some sense, I was like bred in a lab like Drago and Rocky four.

00:49:13.080 | To be a, an idea writer.

00:49:15.760 | I was exposed to all this writing in my teenage years because

00:49:19.600 | I was a teenage entrepreneur.

00:49:21.200 | Um, so I read a lot.

00:49:22.720 | I read a lot of pragmatic nonfiction.

00:49:24.360 | I read a lot of idea nonfiction.

00:49:26.000 | I was sort of like obsessed with this as a kid.

00:49:27.680 | I was also a precocious writer.

00:49:29.880 | I was pulled into this gifted and talented writing program when I was eight years

00:49:33.600 | old, where instead of having to do normal English class, we'd read really hard books

00:49:36.680 | and write, write, write, write, write constantly writing these really long, uh,

00:49:40.440 | short stories and essays.

00:49:42.440 | And, and so like I was a precocious writer who happened through happenstance

00:49:46.760 | to be exposed to this style of writing really early in college.

00:49:50.080 | I became a serious writer, a editor of the humor magazine, a columnist for the

00:49:54.040 | newspaper and began writing idea books, signed my first book deal right

00:49:57.920 | after I turned 21 years old.

00:49:59.320 | So I've been doing this my entire life.

00:50:01.320 | This is why I say I've been bred in the lab to do idea writing.

00:50:04.480 | So now by the time I'm 40, uh, it's a little bit more natural for me.

00:50:09.680 | You know, I can pretty quickly assess like, here's an idea I can deliver pretty

00:50:14.720 | quickly, but that's all really hard.

00:50:16.760 | All right.

00:50:17.840 | So all of that's just to say, um, don't be down on yourself.

00:50:21.560 | Now I have some advice to give to you.

00:50:23.040 | So if you're doing a idea writing a, remember your goal is not to cover all of

00:50:29.120 | the details, all the possible caveats, all the alternative paths forward, you're

00:50:34.760 | trying to tell a coherent, cohesive story with narrative momentum that in the end

00:50:39.320 | will give the reader another tool to use in trying to build an understanding of

00:50:43.440 | the world, you're not writing a textbook.

00:50:46.000 | You're delivering one new take that people can add to their collective

00:50:51.200 | understanding of the world.

00:50:52.160 | The thing I think that often slows down new writers in this space and leads to

00:50:56.760 | the, um, excessive research issue that you talk about you having, where you

00:51:00.280 | spend so much time researching, you never get to the article, it's often

00:51:03.720 | fear of imagined critique.

00:51:07.200 | You get paralyzed by this idea that, you know, someone's going to come

00:51:09.960 | along and say, wait a second, Scott.

00:51:11.440 | You didn't talk about this.

00:51:14.400 | Like you, you told us that this is the way the world works, but you didn't

00:51:17.160 | talk about, you know, this effect or that study.

00:51:19.560 | I don't think you really understand what's going on here.

00:51:22.000 | That imagined critique, it can be really paralyzing, especially,

00:51:25.920 | especially for new writers.

00:51:27.080 | And I have a theory that the, the current moment because of the rise of social

00:51:33.320 | media and in particular, the hair trigger critique culture on, on Twitter.

00:51:37.680 | Where a lot of writers engage makes this problem even worse.

00:51:41.880 | You know, when I was writing as a 21 year old, maybe a letter would make its way to

00:51:47.120 | me, or there'd be a review in a newspaper that was mean, but that was about it.

00:51:50.800 | Like today, everything is going to get picked over.

00:51:53.080 | And so you're so worried about, uh, triggering critique

00:51:56.760 | because it's so accessible.

00:51:57.920 | I think it paralyzes writers more.

00:51:59.920 | It's not your goal to write a textbook on the topic.

00:52:03.040 | Tell a story that hangs together.

00:52:04.440 | That's going to help me understand the world.

00:52:06.000 | If I'm the reader, I'm smart.

00:52:07.760 | I recognize that, you know, Cal's story about quiet quitting and generational

00:52:13.960 | relationships with work is not the full story.

00:52:16.640 | And there's three other things going on here and it doesn't apply to this group.

00:52:19.120 | And he didn't talk about generation X.

00:52:20.400 | I know all of that as the reader, but I'm just going to pull out here.

00:52:24.680 | Here's a new tool to add to my toolbox.

00:52:26.760 | So that's, that's your goal.

00:52:27.760 | So that, that should help, uh, be.

00:52:30.400 | Work backwards from the insight and then find support.

00:52:33.240 | So if your approach and in your elaboration, Scott, you talked about this more.

00:52:37.520 | If your approach is I'm going to learn everything I can about this topic, and

00:52:40.880 | then hopefully, uh, I'll be able to emerge a cohesive story about how

00:52:46.160 | this part of the world works.

00:52:47.160 | There's no end to how much you can learn.

00:52:49.080 | And, and so typically in advice writing, you sort of have the insight first, and

00:52:54.680 | then you're working backwards from that.

00:52:55.960 | Like, how do I make this argument?

00:52:57.280 | How do I fill it in?

00:52:59.000 | And we're going to get into those details in the next question.

00:53:00.800 | So stay tuned.

00:53:01.520 | Um, and then three or C a B C, um, the pieces you present all have to fit.

00:53:08.760 | So the story has to, it's like a screenplay.

00:53:10.640 | The story has to be cohesive.

00:53:12.600 | If you introduce something early, that has to, there has to be a reason for it.

00:53:16.320 | That has to be, uh, made sense of later or be responded to later.

00:53:21.440 | If you bring in an example, that example has to be just what

00:53:24.040 | you need to fill in a point.

00:53:25.360 | No red herrings, no McGuffins, right?

00:53:27.960 | So you can't have things that you put in there that end up not being so important

00:53:32.040 | or you end up just leaving hanging.

00:53:33.760 | Uh, so you have to think of yourself as I'm going to open up these ports and I

00:53:37.400 | have to close them again before the article ends.

00:53:40.040 | So that type of consistency is actually more important to comprehensiveness.

00:53:45.560 | A consistent, cohesive story is more important than I've

00:53:49.360 | covered every possible angle.

00:53:50.680 | All right, Scott, those are my, that's my advice.

00:53:55.200 | I think we got, I purposely scheduled this, this next question, Jesse, because

00:53:59.280 | it, uh, follows up directly on what Scott was asking about.

00:54:02.840 | Okay.

00:54:03.480 | Next question's from Enzo.

00:54:05.840 | In a previous episode, you discussed quiet quitting and described how you

00:54:10.240 | researched the origins of the phrase in a TikTok video.

00:54:13.000 | Can you, uh, can Cal talk through his article research methods in more detail?

00:54:18.360 | Right.

00:54:19.920 | So this is a elaboration of what I was talking to about Scott.

00:54:23.480 | Let me get into how I typically work on idea articles.

00:54:27.640 | I sort of broke down my process here.

00:54:30.000 | So I'll go through it.

00:54:31.520 | I have a bunch of steps on here.

00:54:32.520 | Um, so I start with having a foundation of just broadly consuming

00:54:36.680 | potentially relevant information.

00:54:38.480 | That's key.

00:54:39.560 | You got to have grist to the mill of creative insight.

00:54:42.760 | So this includes the five books I read, you know, my five book a month.

00:54:46.040 | Reading pace.

00:54:47.400 | I read a lot of articles.

00:54:48.520 | I listened to a lot of podcasts.

00:54:50.000 | I do research to answer questions on this podcast.

00:54:53.280 | That sometimes is a source of ideas.

00:54:55.360 | And I read a bunch of the stuff you guys send me.

00:54:57.120 | Interesting account, newport.com.

00:54:59.560 | You guys send me really interesting.

00:55:00.560 | So I'm, I'm reading a lot and I'm creating this sort of broad base of just

00:55:06.120 | generally potentially useful information.

00:55:08.960 | All right, too.

00:55:10.320 | I constantly riff off these things, especially when I'm walking, trying to

00:55:14.680 | come up with different ideas or theories.

00:55:16.120 | Now, sometimes I'm responding to something I just heard like, Oh, I just

00:55:19.440 | listened to Mark Manson's interview on Tim Ferriss's show, they were talking

00:55:24.280 | about the, uh, the death of blogs and the rise of YouTube, let me see, you know,

00:55:30.880 | as I'm walking to pick up my kids from school, is there like an interesting

00:55:34.040 | coherent story to talk about evolution of.

00:55:37.240 | Internet content.

00:55:38.840 | And maybe there's not, but let me just try it out.

00:55:41.560 | And I'm doing this all the time.

00:55:42.680 | Now, again, I talked about in my answer to Scott, I was bred

00:55:46.160 | in a lab to be an idea writer.

00:55:47.640 | So this is just how my mind works, but I'm constantly riffing off ideas.

00:55:50.520 | Eventually an idea will click and this is pure instinct, just through experience.

00:55:54.960 | Boom.

00:55:55.320 | Oh, there's something there.

00:55:56.280 | I have the storyline about, uh, the, there's a parallel between the

00:56:02.280 | transition from blogs to YouTube videos.

00:56:06.360 | There's a parallel between the transitions from the, the penny, the penny

00:56:10.520 | daily newspaper, the penny press newspaper to radio, because maybe

00:56:14.600 | I've read something about that.

00:56:15.920 | I read Tim Wu's book of, uh, the master switch or something.

00:56:18.960 | And I kind of learned about that.

00:56:20.480 | I read his attention merchants book and I bet there's a parallel there.

00:56:23.920 | Oh, that's interesting.

00:56:24.760 | And it clicks.

00:56:26.200 | I'm like, okay, now I have something that could actually be a complete

00:56:29.320 | beginning, middle of end story where everything pulls together.

00:56:31.840 | At least it has that potential.

00:56:33.680 | At that point, if I want to work with that, I'll do a little bit more basic research.

00:56:38.480 | Let me see if this rough story I just outlined actually holds up.

00:56:42.880 | Let me go back and reread, uh, my marked notes in that Tim Wu book

00:56:48.000 | about the attention merchants.

00:56:49.360 | Let me go back and actually read, listen to that piece of the

00:56:51.960 | interview with Mark and Tim.

00:56:53.680 | Do I really remember that right?

00:56:54.720 | Like what exactly did he say?

00:56:55.840 | So I'm doing some sanity checking, some basic research, like does the

00:56:59.240 | storyline I wrote in my head actually match my remembering properly these sources.

00:57:04.040 | And I'll tell you.

00:57:04.720 | 40% of the time, that's not going to be the case.

00:57:08.560 | I'll go back and read the thing or re-listen to the thing.

00:57:12.000 | But like, oh, they're actually kind of saying the opposite.

00:57:13.560 | Like my mind, my mind is so desperate for.

00:57:16.880 | Find such pleasure in cohesive stories that will sometimes change things.

00:57:20.840 | And when I go back, I'm like, oh my God, it was actually the opposite.

00:57:23.280 | But if my basic research kind of confirms, yeah, we have the pieces here for a story.

00:57:27.680 | Um, at this point I'm ready to pitch it.

00:57:30.080 | So it's a pitchable story.

00:57:32.080 | And at some point I might pitch it.

00:57:33.200 | If I'm going to write it for a magazine, I'll, you know, I'll pitch it to my editor.

00:57:35.800 | If it's going to be a book chapter or a podcast segment, it's just, you know,

00:57:39.880 | there's no one to actually pitch it to.

00:57:41.280 | I just, it's in my list of like, let's go for this.

00:57:43.800 | Once greenlit, then I will go back and more thoroughly fill in the details.

00:57:49.440 | I get the depth of research needed to actually write about it in a confident way.

00:57:53.640 | For something like a 2000 word New Yorker piece, this might only take a couple of days.

00:57:59.360 | It's like, okay, let me go.

00:58:00.840 | I have like, let me get the transcript of this interview.

00:58:03.960 | Let me get, uh, this chapter.

00:58:06.160 | Let me write down my notes from this chapter of this relevant book.

00:58:08.920 | Let me find three articles and pull out the relevant notes.

00:58:11.400 | Okay.

00:58:11.600 | Now I have enough to actually, uh, support this story.

00:58:15.040 | If it's a longer piece, you know, like the, uh, New Yorker piece I wrote on natural

00:58:19.400 | productivity, that was five or 6,000 words, or if it's a long book chapter, this could

00:58:23.760 | take longer, maybe even a couple of months.

00:58:26.440 | I'm working on an article right now.

00:58:28.400 | I won't give any details because it's, I don't give details on things in progress.

00:58:32.880 | If it's being done for other publications, but just speaking in generalities, I'm

00:58:36.600 | working on a, in the early stages of a, a potential bigger article now, where I've

00:58:41.360 | read five books on it already.

00:58:44.080 | And I have probably two or three interviews I need to set up before this

00:58:49.320 | rough storyline I have in my mind.

00:58:51.320 | I'll really be able to flesh it out.

00:58:52.720 | So, you know, it could take a long time or it could take a couple of days.

00:58:54.800 | It depends on how big of a thing you're writing.

00:58:56.480 | Then I will rework my storyline with this more detailed research.

00:59:01.360 | And sometimes it's just tweaking it like, okay, actually here's the best beat.

00:59:04.680 | Forget it's not about the penny far, the pending, it's not pending far.

00:59:08.720 | These are bicycle, the penny press.

00:59:11.000 | So it's not about like the penny press going to the radio.

00:59:14.280 | Actually, the really good story here is, you know, about televisions rise versus

00:59:20.240 | um, paperback mass market paperback, nonfiction or fiction books or something.

00:59:25.080 | Right.

00:59:25.280 | Like you, you might realize like the story is more or less true, but there's

00:59:27.920 | better examples to make this, make this true.

00:59:30.640 | Or there's another angle to it.

00:59:31.760 | I want to add.

00:59:32.480 | So I evolved the story.

00:59:34.200 | Now I have the fully evolved story and I'm ready to write.

00:59:36.920 | So that's my process.

00:59:39.560 | Uh, on, so that's how I get from, uh, nothing, just a general foundation of

00:59:45.920 | having lots of interesting thoughts to a finished piece.

00:59:48.080 | All right.

00:59:52.240 | Let's, um, let's move on.

00:59:54.240 | Jesse.

00:59:54.560 | All right.

00:59:55.040 | It's time for one more.

00:59:55.800 | Another question here, Nicholas from Tucson.

00:59:58.560 | I haven't heard you talk about much of the symbolism of, for value expression

01:00:02.680 | in the pursuit of the deep life.

01:00:05.000 | If you've held a core value for 10 plus years, then would it be appropriate

01:00:08.280 | to celebrate that with a tattoo?

01:00:09.880 | A good question.

01:00:12.840 | You gotta be wary about tattoos.

01:00:14.920 | Um, Nicholas, I regret Jesse's seen it.

01:00:19.120 | I have a full back tattoo of it's a Brandon Sanderson's face and like right

01:00:28.360 | under it, you know, like you would have mom with a chair of angel holding it up.

01:00:31.520 | It says never forget the name of the wind.

01:00:34.240 | I regret that tattoo.

01:00:35.400 | You know, like I probably should have done like a little bit more research.

01:00:40.520 | And it was expensive.

01:00:41.360 | It was expensive.

01:00:42.080 | Yeah.

01:00:42.320 | Yeah.

01:00:42.760 | Expensive.

01:00:43.760 | Um, and Brandon, it's really sent a lot of cease and desist letters about, you

01:00:48.640 | know, because I go there a lot and try to show them the, show them the tattoo.

01:00:51.640 | Yeah.

01:00:52.160 | It's show up shirtless outside of his underground layer.

01:00:55.280 | And then the wind, Brandon, the wind.

01:01:00.240 | Um, no, Nicholas.

01:01:01.840 | Okay.

01:01:02.120 | Broad answer, specific answer, broad answer.

01:01:04.920 | You're absolutely right.

01:01:06.440 | That we, we underestimate.

01:01:07.960 | We often underestimate the value of symbolism, capturing things that are

01:01:12.920 | important to us symbolically in objects and the way we set up an office, the

01:01:18.360 | things we buy, the things we collect.

01:01:20.440 | It's really easy to see that through this sort of miserably pragmatic

01:01:24.720 | economical ends of why are you wasting money on that?

01:01:27.120 | Isn't that an extravagance?

01:01:28.320 | But it's actually really important.

01:01:30.120 | I think to have totems of things that you really care in the three interesting

01:01:33.960 | segments, uh, three interesting things segment that follows, I have a really

01:01:37.440 | cool example of this, where I'm going to show you something involving

01:01:39.920 | the director, Gail, model Toro.

01:01:42.000 | So stay tuned for that.

01:01:43.360 | But let me just say more broadly, I think it's.

01:01:45.560 | Makes complete sense to invest in things that do nothing else, but remind you

01:01:51.000 | or solidify values that you hold important.

01:01:54.440 | So if you're a writer and you, you invest in expensive first editions

01:02:01.680 | of influential books to you, I don't think that's a waste of money.

01:02:04.080 | I think that's your capturing the written word is important to me,

01:02:07.800 | you know, and I really value it.

01:02:09.640 | I'm thinking about for the HQ, for example.

01:02:12.080 | Um, I want to get a, uh, pre microprocessor arcade cabinet.

01:02:19.440 | And I actually don't care if the cabinet itself is rebuilt, but I

01:02:22.360 | want it to be original circuitry.

01:02:24.960 | For a game from before there was actually microprocessors.

01:02:28.040 | I just love this idea of, of analog circuitry being wired up in such a way

01:02:32.600 | that you can have it come together and create something like a video game.

01:02:36.920 | Right.

01:02:37.440 | And so like, that's nonsense to almost anyone else.

01:02:40.800 | Like, are you really going to spend that money on asteroids or whatever?

01:02:45.680 | But to me, there's something symbolic about things I care about with technology

01:02:50.000 | and culture and the way technology can, uh, um, alchemize into sort of cultural

01:02:55.760 | influence or something bigger than the sum of its parts and as a computer

01:02:59.040 | scientist, I really love the history of, of digital electronics before we get to

01:03:03.520 | the sort of bloodless reality of today of these sort of just processors where

01:03:07.440 | one piece of Silicon does everything.

01:03:09.200 | And the idea of Steve jobs and was the ax sitting there in Atari in the, the

01:03:14.280 | mid 1970s, trying to just get together a breakout clone before there was something

01:03:18.600 | like a microprocessor to use as just timing circuits and the puzzle of it.

01:03:22.800 | Like it's symbolic to me.

01:03:23.840 | And so it's something that I would, I would, you know, invest, invest money in.

01:03:28.120 | So I'm a big believer in exactly what you suggest here.

01:03:31.040 | Capturing values in symbolic objects, tattoos, like sure.

01:03:35.200 | I mean, my, my, my real thing about tattoos is my rule of thumb.

01:03:39.400 | Uh, wait till you're in your thirties.

01:03:41.920 | Cause when you're getting the tattoo in your twenties, you haven't really

01:03:46.320 | developed that full value system yet.

01:03:48.200 | So then the tattoo might play more of the, the role of like, I'm just so

01:03:52.360 | desperate to sort of in the, in the, uh, to individually, that's not the right

01:03:57.000 | word, individuate, is that a word to, to, to, to sort of define myself as a unique

01:04:04.200 | individual and I like what it signals to other 20 year olds of like, I look like,

01:04:09.160 | I don't care, I have this, like I'm really unique and interesting or whatever.

01:04:12.160 | Uh, but in your twenties are an idiot.

01:04:13.960 | And, you know, you're going to look back and say, I thought at the

01:04:17.120 | time it was really cool to get, uh, deep work forever in a face tattoo.

01:04:21.960 | But like actually, you know, cows kind of a door.

01:04:24.560 | Can I regret that?

01:04:25.160 | Right.

01:04:25.360 | And by the time you get to your thirties, then it's like, okay, now I kind of have

01:04:28.480 | a handle on, I'm not so interested in, you know, Looking cool to the, uh, the,

01:04:32.880 | the 24 year old at the bar.

01:04:34.240 | I have a bigger sense of my values.

01:04:36.800 | I know a lot of writers who do this.

01:04:38.200 | Ryan Ryan holiday has, um, multiple forearm tattoos from his books.

01:04:44.920 | I think he has an ego as the enemy, the obstacle is the way.

01:04:48.640 | Um, you know, he said a four book deal.

01:04:51.000 | So I guess he's going to have to, I don't know.

01:04:53.720 | He's going to run out of body parts, you know, at some point, uh, my friend,

01:04:56.720 | Brian Johnson, I think did he, he's done.

01:05:00.040 | So I think I've seen a lot of like forearm tattoos, like writers have done.

01:05:03.040 | So I'm for it, man.

01:05:05.040 | I'm for taking big swings and I'm not a tattoo guy myself, but whatever

01:05:08.800 | your equivalent is of a tattoo.

01:05:10.520 | I think taking big swings, the signal to yourself that you take, you care about

01:05:14.600 | something or take something, think something's important, I think it's cool.

01:05:17.800 | There's a real psychology behind it.

01:05:19.560 | And it's makes life boring.

01:05:21.720 | If we see that all through the lens of like, is that really strictly necessary?

01:05:25.480 | Is that a, is that an indulgence?

01:05:27.360 | Is that a contrivance?

01:05:28.200 | I mean, life is short and if you're involved in it, it's

01:05:32.360 | something that matters to you.

01:05:33.560 | You know, lean into it.

01:05:35.080 | I would say by far the most consistent group in my life who

01:05:38.640 | has tattoos is actually mom's.

01:05:40.040 | Really?

01:05:41.640 | The kid's names.

01:05:44.520 | Very common, which makes sense.

01:05:46.600 | Right.

01:05:46.840 | I mean, they're unlike my Brandon Sanderson name of the wind tattoo.

01:05:50.720 | There's one thing you could probably be pretty sure that you're not

01:05:54.040 | going to like 10 years later, be like, I'm not really that into this anymore.

01:05:56.800 | We are kids.

01:05:58.400 | Right.

01:05:58.840 | And it's such like a huge life altering your whole life is

01:06:01.480 | like reorienting around this thing.

01:06:02.960 | A lot of moms have their, it'll be like the initial, it's just subtle.

01:06:05.680 | The initial somewhere, the name somewhere.

01:06:08.160 | It was, um, the best tattoo humor.

01:06:12.640 | So I just got to recommend a clip.

01:06:15.080 | The, the TV show superstore of, if you saw it or if you've seen the show or not,

01:06:20.560 | it's from a few years ago, but there's a whole scene there where he wants to get

01:06:23.760 | his mom's, one of the characters wants to get his mom's face tattooed on his back.

01:06:29.560 | And she's been learning how to do it, but she's been practicing on melon.

01:06:33.320 | So it's not going well.

01:06:34.480 | You know what she does on his actual back.

01:06:35.840 | So it's a really funny sequence.

01:06:37.000 | Um, she, she gives him like a top hat and keep it growing the top

01:06:41.240 | hat, like cover over the mistake.

01:06:42.520 | He says really funny.

01:06:44.000 | So in the end, there's like this giant top hat and it's humor guys.

01:06:47.840 | It's great.

01:06:48.600 | I recommend that clip.

01:06:49.960 | All right.

01:06:50.400 | Um, that's enough questions.

01:06:52.560 | I want to get the three interesting things.

01:06:54.440 | I have a couple of cool things I want to show everyone.

01:06:55.960 | First, let me mention another sponsor that makes this show possible.

01:07:02.640 | It's a tattoo parlor.

01:07:03.920 | See, that would be synergy.

01:07:06.400 | That's how you get the real CPMs.

01:07:08.160 | Jesse is you rebuild your whole show around, uh, the thing

01:07:13.200 | you're about to talk to you.

01:07:14.040 | So our, our tattoo parlor that we're opening downstairs in the old

01:07:17.320 | Republic restaurant, we really successful.

01:07:20.280 | It's all Brandon Sanderson.

01:07:23.080 | Okay.

01:07:23.480 | Uh, no, no.

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01:11:26.520 | Me and the boys, Jesse had been watching a limitless on Disney plus, which is a

01:11:35.680 | Darren Arfnesky directed, uh, documentary series that follows Chris Hemsworth.

01:11:41.200 | Thor as he's like, does all as beautifully shot.

01:11:44.040 | Yeah.

01:11:44.140 | Darren Arnesky is a, a great film director did black Swan and he's, uh, but he's

01:11:48.560 | been doing these beautifully shot sort of documentary series for national

01:11:54.160 | geographic, which Disney owns, cause it's through Fox.

01:11:57.480 | He did one with Will Smith a couple of years ago.

01:12:00.560 | Uh, but anyway, so it's a lot of, a lot of Chris, a lot of Chris Hemsworth

01:12:04.000 | that made us think about our discussions before about how do these guys, like,

01:12:07.160 | how did he get in the shape to be Thor?

01:12:09.960 | And, um, let's just say he wasn't doing on his own.

01:12:13.400 | He had a coach.

01:12:14.920 | He had a coach.

01:12:17.400 | I heard some, I heard a whole discussion about Hemsworth about, uh, on the show,

01:12:21.480 | but not on this show, but on another podcast about there's, uh, some

01:12:26.720 | needles that are probably involved.

01:12:28.040 | I don't want to cast dispersions, but like, supposedly it's a whole dark

01:12:31.840 | underside, not dark, but it's just like an underside of these superhero movies.

01:12:36.160 | Is there's really no way for these guys to get as strong as they do as quick as

01:12:39.360 | they do without some aids, which are probably not that healthy, but you got

01:12:43.440 | to inject this and check that.

01:12:44.680 | And the whole agreement in the media is just like, don't ask about it.

01:12:48.080 | Yeah.

01:12:48.560 | It's not like they're, it's not like the rock is saying, I don't use this or

01:12:52.640 | Chris Hemsworth to say, I don't use this.

01:12:53.880 | They just, just no one talks about it.

01:12:55.560 | It's just kind of like the price you pay to do these, do these movies.

01:12:58.880 | So if I show up looking like Chris Hemsworth, be suspicious.

01:13:03.080 | Within the next three months, be suspicious.

01:13:05.760 | All right.

01:13:07.000 | Final, uh, final segment of the show.

01:13:09.560 | Three interesting things.

01:13:12.840 | This is where we take three things that I found interesting that you have sent to me.

01:13:16.520 | Am I interesting that calnewport.com email address that all relate to the

01:13:20.360 | general theme here of trying to live a deep life and I take three, I like, and we look at them.

01:13:25.400 | So if you are listening to this show, you might want to jump over to the YouTube

01:13:31.560 | version of the episode because the three things are visual that's

01:13:35.720 | youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

01:13:38.200 | We launch a video of the full episode of each podcast, usually the

01:13:41.720 | same day that it comes out.

01:13:43.040 | I'll explain in words what's on the screen here, but it's, it's better than

01:13:46.320 | Watts, so it's a, it's a good chance to jump over to YouTube.

01:13:48.280 | All right.

01:13:49.000 | The first interesting thing I want to talk about is the director, Guillermo

01:13:53.960 | del Toro, or as I've discovered his fans, call him GDT.

01:13:57.640 | His, uh, so-called bleak house.

01:14:01.400 | All right.

01:14:02.680 | So I've loaded on the screen now.

01:14:04.360 | Uh, an article, there's a lot of articles about this.

01:14:07.160 | This happens to come from a Southern California radio station.

01:14:11.320 | And the headline here is bleak house, a tour inside Guillermo

01:14:14.120 | del Toro's creative man cave.

01:14:16.600 | There is a, a picture of him in a Victorian decorated room

01:14:21.600 | with a terrifying monster statue.

01:14:24.160 | So here's the subhead.

01:14:26.520 | I'll read this on the screen right now.

01:14:27.880 | The director behind Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy owns a house filled with

01:14:33.520 | artifacts he has collected throughout his life.

01:14:36.360 | Now, the reason why we're hearing about this is there's a exhibit they're now

01:14:40.120 | doing where you can come and, uh, a museum exhibit, where you

01:14:42.960 | can see a lot of these things.

01:14:44.000 | But the key thing is before this exhibit, he has a two story house

01:14:48.720 | filled with more than 10,000 items.

01:14:51.360 | Artworks, sculptures, artifacts, books, movies collected over a lifetime.

01:14:56.400 | But he insists he's not collecting for collecting sake.

01:15:00.280 | So let's dive a little deeper.

01:15:02.760 | Here's a Guillermo quote.

01:15:04.200 | This is a religious place for me.

01:15:06.680 | See, to me, everything that surrounds us is not a collection.

01:15:08.960 | It's a relics.

01:15:10.080 | It's relics or it's talismans, whatever you want to call them.

01:15:13.400 | They have a spiritual hold of who I am.

01:15:15.360 | Essentially.

01:15:15.800 | This goes right back to the question we talked about before the break.

01:15:18.720 | About the value of having symbolic, symbolic objects to capture your values.

01:15:23.960 | GDT is getting right to the core of this.

01:15:26.560 | He sees these things he collects as relics.

01:15:28.920 | It's, it's a power is being captured in there.

01:15:31.000 | Uh, where is the bleak house?

01:15:33.560 | It's a, in the suburbs.

01:15:35.880 | He just bought a house in the suburbs of LA near his existing house.

01:15:40.560 | And he gets into it.

01:15:41.800 | Um, later in this article, he gets into how this came about.

01:15:45.120 | He was collecting this stuff because if you know, GDT, he does these,

01:15:48.080 | these beautiful, fantastical movies that often have the

01:15:50.800 | macabre or terrifying in them.

01:15:52.480 | So he was collecting these somewhat disturbing objects.

01:15:55.000 | And at some point his wife very reasonably said, this cannot be in our house.

01:15:59.760 | Like we have young kids.

01:16:01.400 | If you want to know what I'm talking about and you're watching on YouTube, I

01:16:04.640 | have an example on the page of something that's in his bleak house.

01:16:07.640 | It's, um, it's a, a man's face that has been ripped open and

01:16:12.160 | there's like jaws coming out of it.

01:16:13.680 | It's not the type of stuff you want in your house.

01:16:15.760 | So he said, fine, I'll buy another house and that's where

01:16:17.880 | I'm going to store my collection.

01:16:20.000 | So he has the second house.

01:16:22.320 | Here's another big picture I put on the screen.

01:16:23.880 | It's it's cool, Jesse.

01:16:24.640 | Look at this.

01:16:25.040 | It's a, there's a monster, a giant Frankenstein head.

01:16:27.960 | The whole thing is done up Victorian red walls.

01:16:30.640 | All the pictures are covered in framed art, but it's like weird macabre, uh,

01:16:35.360 | sort of, uh, Hieronymus Bosch style artwork, like it's, it's, uh,

01:16:39.120 | old lamps and bookcases.

01:16:41.160 | So, um, oh, here's the quote by the way.

01:16:44.680 | Uh, his wife said that's too close to the kitchen.

01:16:48.440 | The kids are going to get freaked out.

01:16:49.520 | And he, GDT said inside of me, something cracked.

01:16:52.800 | And I said, I'm going to get my own place.

01:16:54.200 | He has a haunted mansion room based off the Disney thing.

01:16:56.800 | He has a room that simulates a rainstorm outside.

01:16:59.480 | He has 13 libraries.

01:17:02.440 | So each room has a different library.

01:17:04.120 | He used that as a research area.

01:17:05.680 | So like he, this one opens and you're in a room that's a haunted mansion.

01:17:09.080 | Uh, but the haunted mansion room has a library.

01:17:11.640 | That's all about mythology, folklore, fairy tales, and myths, et cetera.

01:17:15.600 | So he, he, he uses this house.

01:17:18.080 | Not just the capture things that are valuable to him, but also as a, uh,

01:17:24.960 | source of creative inspiration.

01:17:27.520 | So he's not just reading about fairies when he's working on pan's labyrinth.

01:17:31.120 | He's in a haunted mansion room, taking these old volumes off of the shelf.

01:17:35.360 | I think this stuff really matters.

01:17:36.720 | And I talk about this a lot on the show.

01:17:38.040 | If you do any sort of creative endeavor where you're trying to alchemize value

01:17:41.320 | out of the stuff in your mind, environment, metal rituals, matter, objects, matter.

01:17:44.960 | If you're an accountant, you might say this is crazy.

01:17:48.360 | You bought a second house just to store stuff, how indulgent or whatever.

01:17:51.720 | But this is at the core of what GDT does for a living.

01:17:56.000 | These fantastical, incredibly creative, inspired visual masterpiece style

01:18:00.360 | movies, this is just a completely pragmatic investment.

01:18:03.760 | And I think people might say something similar about the deep work HQ, but

01:18:08.640 | for what I do for a living, it's an investment that makes a huge amount of

01:18:12.280 | sense to have a place to come to that.

01:18:13.800 | I'm specifically decorating to celebrate what I care about in terms of cognitive

01:18:17.360 | work, to have the ritual of coming here versus somewhere else.

01:18:20.560 | Uh, the, the, the lab we're building in here.

01:18:23.640 | I mean, Jesse saw today when he came back from vacation, I bought in a lot

01:18:26.920 | more electronics equipment because, um, me and my, my oldest son are building

01:18:31.760 | things and that's really important to me and having that connection to.

01:18:35.440 | So it seems completely crazy to, you know, I don't know, like my brother,

01:18:40.120 | but the me, because of what I do, it's like, of course, I'm going to invest in

01:18:44.040 | this, you know, it matters.

01:18:46.480 | Symbolic value matters.

01:18:48.560 | Ritual matters, location matters.

01:18:50.440 | So anyways, I just think this is cool.

01:18:52.040 | Um, here's a, I like this picture.

01:18:54.800 | So for those who are watching, there's a picture of a, a, uh, incredibly scary

01:18:58.800 | looking doll on an old Victorian.

01:19:00.680 | Shay's lounge.

01:19:01.840 | And I just, I want to pull this up because of the photo caption, which just

01:19:05.400 | reads a couch piled with books and a demonic doll, an awesome photo caption.

01:19:11.120 | Here's the freak's room.

01:19:14.160 | That guy's there.

01:19:14.680 | I'm just sure if you're, if you're listening, I'm just showing like

01:19:17.000 | terrifying pictures on the screen.

01:19:18.240 | Here's the simulated rainstorm room.

01:19:19.880 | Anyways, I put the link to this article in the show notes.

01:19:23.080 | So, uh, there's Frankenstein drinking tea.

01:19:25.440 | No Frankenstein's monster.

01:19:26.800 | I should be precise here.

01:19:27.640 | Drinking tea film room.

01:19:29.960 | Anyways, I love that stuff.

01:19:31.200 | Jesse, who wins GDT's bleak house, Brandon

01:19:35.520 | Saracens underground layer.

01:19:37.840 | It seems like GDT had more stuff to look at.

01:19:42.880 | I think he has to, I think it's right.

01:19:44.840 | I think he has the cooler house.

01:19:46.080 | It's Oregon.

01:19:46.720 | It's bigger.

01:19:47.360 | I love the idea of having themed rooms for different libraries.

01:19:51.920 | Uh, Sanderson just wins on the coolness factor of being underground.

01:19:55.080 | Yeah, but it's, yeah.

01:19:56.800 | I'm going to give, I'll give this one that you also might just be upset.

01:19:59.960 | Cause he has an answer to your, you know, door knocking when you're outside his house.

01:20:02.560 | It's just me shirtless.

01:20:03.400 | So now you're just knocking his layer.

01:20:07.960 | Screw his layer.

01:20:09.080 | Screw his layer.

01:20:10.840 | All right.

01:20:11.720 | Uh, second, interesting thing.

01:20:13.240 | Let me load up.

01:20:14.960 | I'm switching over to a different aspect or a reader sent this in.

01:20:20.640 | This is the, uh, Nobel lecture.

01:20:24.480 | So the, the lecture given when you're awarded the Nobel prize, this is the

01:20:28.720 | transcript of the Nobel lecture given by Carrie Mollis, who won the Nobel prize

01:20:35.240 | in 1993 for his work on developing the polymerase chain reaction, PCR technology.

01:20:41.560 | That's at the core of a lot of the genetics explosion.

01:20:43.920 | So it's a cool, it's a cool lecture because he's like going through in detail.

01:20:50.520 | His whole story of how did he get his training, his ups and downs, how he left

01:20:55.760 | that, he left the academic track to try to become an author that didn't work.

01:20:59.880 | He worked in restaurants for a while.

01:21:01.400 | It came back to academia.

01:21:02.320 | It's like, he really gives more detail than I'm used to seeing about building up.

01:21:07.600 | To something like a Nobel caliber academic career.

01:21:11.280 | There's just one quote in particular one to point out and

01:21:14.440 | I've marked it in this document.

01:21:15.840 | So I'm just scrolling down to this now on the screen.

01:21:18.360 | I thought this was cool.

01:21:19.800 | So he talks about, about halfway through his lecture.

01:21:22.560 | One Friday night I was driving as was my custom from Berkeley up to

01:21:27.680 | Mendocino where I had a cabin far away from everything off in the woods.

01:21:34.000 | My girlfriend Jennifer Barnett was asleep.

01:21:36.400 | I was thinking since, uh, Ogleno nucleotides were not that hard to make

01:21:41.880 | anymore, wouldn't it be simple enough to put two of them into a reaction

01:21:44.280 | instead of only one, such that one of them would bind to the upper strand

01:21:47.680 | and the other to the lower strand with the three prime ends adjacent to the

01:21:50.200 | opposing base pair in question, this is the type of things we think, right.

01:21:53.840 | We all think when we're driving up to our cabins, we think about Ogleno nucleotides.

01:21:57.080 | Um, anyway, so he has some more thoughts and when he finished this thought, he

01:22:02.720 | realized he had everything he needed to do PCR, which he'd win the Nobel prize for.

01:22:07.000 | So I just love this idea that he just had the habit of going to

01:22:11.040 | a cabin in the woods to think.

01:22:12.400 | And it was going to this cabin in the woods to think that ritual of doing so

01:22:16.280 | that eventually led to the thought one thought on which his whole Nobel prize

01:22:20.880 | winning work was eventually based.

01:22:22.600 | So again, this goes back to like the bleak house that GDT has.

01:22:25.600 | The accountant or hypothetical accountant says, wait a second.

01:22:29.400 | You're like a young academic.

01:22:30.840 | Why do you have a cabin in the woods?

01:22:32.160 | What an indulgence, what a waste.

01:22:33.480 | This is what one of his Nobel prize thinking is hard.

01:22:36.960 | Creativity is hard.

01:22:38.040 | Coming up with things in your brain that has great value to

01:22:40.680 | the world outside is very hard.

01:22:42.440 | It needs, this process needs all the help it can get.

01:22:46.560 | So doing these things that seem kind of radical or unnecessary sometimes are

01:22:49.920 | exactly what you need to get radically impressive results.

01:22:52.800 | I'd have a third thing.

01:22:54.680 | This is a short, someone sent this to me.

01:22:56.880 | This was just a, an honor of the Christmas season that just ended.

01:23:00.360 | I didn't get this in in time last week, but here we go.

01:23:02.600 | I've written about this a long time ago.

01:23:04.560 | I wrote an essay about this, but it's a, um, I've loaded on the screen

01:23:07.840 | here was just a note from Reddit.

01:23:09.520 | Uh, TIL while writing a Christmas Carol.

01:23:14.320 | Charles Dickens was taking nighttime walks of 15 to 20 miles around London

01:23:20.640 | to build out the story in his head.

01:23:23.240 | What's TIL, Jesse.

01:23:25.920 | I kept on looking at it as TDL.

01:23:29.760 | Yours, TDL, yours, the deep life, but I don't know what TIL.

01:23:34.800 | It's okay.

01:23:35.320 | We just, I don't know anything about the internet, but anyways, I've heard

01:23:37.760 | this story before and I think it's cool.

01:23:39.120 | Um, Dickens did a lot.

01:23:41.720 | He did a lot of work on foot, which I always advocate.

01:23:44.440 | He's upping this to the next level.

01:23:46.680 | 15 to 20 miles is pretty impressive, but this idea that he worked through

01:23:50.720 | this masterpiece in his head, as he was moving through the night streets

01:23:53.840 | of London, I think is really cool.

01:23:56.240 | It might not quite be true.

01:23:58.480 | This might be mixing up, uh, an essay that Dickens wrote about his nighttime

01:24:04.840 | walks in London, where he was talking about how he used these long walks

01:24:08.800 | as a cure for an ins about of insomnia.

01:24:11.320 | So I, some of these stories might get mixed up, but let's just keep the

01:24:14.080 | pristine folklore in our minds for now.

01:24:17.360 | Him walking through the gas lit streets of London, conjuring up ghosts of the

01:24:21.600 | Christmas past, present, and future building out this classic story in his

01:24:26.240 | head, a great Victorian personification of depth and a good holiday story to

01:24:31.520 | kind of end the whole holiday season.

01:24:33.040 | So there we go.

01:24:33.560 | Jesse, that's all we got.

01:24:36.320 | I got to go send some more photos to Brandon.

01:24:39.040 | So we should probably wrap this up.

01:24:41.600 | Uh, thank you everyone who sent in your questions.

01:24:43.720 | We always want more.

01:24:44.760 | There's a link right in the show notes for how you can go online and send us as

01:24:48.480 | many questions as you want for us to potentially answer on the show.

01:24:51.280 | Uh, remember if you like what you heard, you will like what you see.

01:24:54.200 | Full episodes and clips are available at youtube.com/calendarportmedia.

01:24:57.440 | We'll be back next week with another episode of the podcast and until

01:25:01.640 | then, as always stay deep.

Ep. 230: How Well Are You Living?

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