Signs You're Burnt Out, Not Lazy. (How To Escape Social Media & Overload) | Cal Newport
Chapters
0:0 Connect with Cal Newport:00:00:00.000 | there's an entire club, actually, on burnout.
00:00:04.120 | And I brought you up and I brought David Goggins
00:00:08.120 | as the process I go through, which is,
00:00:10.960 | my passion goes up and down.
00:00:13.600 | It dips.
00:00:14.920 | And I don't think I trust my own mind
00:00:17.720 | to tell me whether I'm getting close to burnout
00:00:22.600 | or exhaustion or not.
00:00:24.840 | I kind of go with the David Goggins model of,
00:00:28.280 | I mean, he's probably more applying it to running,
00:00:30.240 | but when it feels like your mind can't take any more,
00:00:35.120 | that you're just 40% at your capacity.
00:00:38.800 | I mean, it's just like an arbitrary level.
00:00:41.080 | - It's the Navy SEAL thing, right?
00:00:41.920 | - The Navy SEAL thing.
00:00:43.040 | I mean, you could put that at any percent,
00:00:44.600 | but it is remarkable that if you just take it
00:00:48.080 | one step at a time, just keep going,
00:00:49.960 | it's similar to this idea of a process.
00:00:53.360 | If you just trust the process and you just keep following,
00:00:55.840 | even if the passion goes up and down and so on,
00:00:58.440 | then ultimately, if you look in aggregate,
00:01:02.760 | the passion will increase.
00:01:04.440 | Your self-satisfaction will increase.
00:01:05.840 | - Yeah, I think, and if you have two things,
00:01:08.320 | this has been a big strategy of mine,
00:01:09.800 | so that you can, what you hope for is off-phase,
00:01:12.600 | off-phase alignment.
00:01:13.440 | Like that, sometimes it's in-phase and that's a problem,
00:01:16.760 | but off-phase alignment's good.
00:01:18.080 | So, okay, my research, I'm struggling,
00:01:20.720 | but my book stuff is going well, right?
00:01:22.720 | And so when you add those two waves together,
00:01:24.800 | it's like, "Oh, we're doing pretty well."
00:01:25.800 | And then in other periods, like on my writing,
00:01:28.480 | I feel like I'm just not getting anywhere,
00:01:29.960 | but oh, I've had some good papers,
00:01:31.200 | I'm feeling good over there.
00:01:32.440 | So having two things that can counteract each other.
00:01:36.000 | Now, sometimes they fall into sync and then it gets rough,
00:01:38.720 | then when everything, because everything for me is cyclical,
00:01:41.800 | good periods, bad periods with all this stuff.
00:01:43.320 | So typically they don't coincide, so it helps compensate.
00:01:47.640 | When they do coincide, you get really high highs,
00:01:50.440 | like where everything's clicking,
00:01:51.280 | and then you get these really low lows
00:01:52.840 | where like your research is not working,
00:01:54.760 | your program's not clicking,
00:01:56.440 | you feel like you're nowhere with your writing,
00:01:59.360 | and then it's a little rougher.
00:02:00.720 | - Is, do you think about the concept of burnout?
00:02:04.040 | 'Cause I personally have never experienced burnout
00:02:06.440 | in the way that folks talk about,
00:02:08.320 | which is like, it's not just the up and down,
00:02:11.760 | it's like, you don't wanna do anything ever again.
00:02:14.800 | - Yeah.
00:02:15.640 | - It's like, for some people it's like physical,
00:02:17.720 | like to the hospital kind of thing.
00:02:19.720 | - Yeah, so I do worry about it.
00:02:22.880 | So when I used to do student writing,
00:02:24.840 | like writing about students and student advice,
00:02:27.440 | it came up a lot with students at elite schools,
00:02:30.440 | and I used to call it deep procrastination,
00:02:32.440 | but it's a real, really vivid, very replicatable syndrome
00:02:37.440 | where they stop being able to do schoolwork.
00:02:39.680 | - Yeah.
00:02:40.520 | - Like, this is due,
00:02:41.440 | and the professor gives you an extension,
00:02:43.000 | and the professor gives you an incomplete,
00:02:44.360 | and says, you got it, you were gonna fail the course,
00:02:46.200 | you have to hand this in, and they can't do it, right?
00:02:48.760 | It's like, it's a complete stop
00:02:50.680 | on the ability to actually do work.
00:02:52.480 | So I used to counsel students who had that issue,
00:02:54.160 | and often it was a combination of,
00:02:56.520 | this is my best analysis,
00:02:58.720 | is you have just the physical and cognitive difficulties,
00:03:01.800 | they're usually under a very hard load, right?
00:03:03.720 | They're doing too many majors, too many extracurriculars,
00:03:05.560 | just really pushing themselves,
00:03:07.520 | and the motivation is not sufficiently intrinsic.
00:03:11.520 | - Right.
00:03:12.360 | - So if you have a motivational center
00:03:13.360 | that's not completely on board,
00:03:14.480 | so a lot of these kids, like when I'm dealing with MIT kids,
00:03:16.760 | they would be, their whole town was shooting off fireworks
00:03:20.240 | that they got in,
00:03:21.080 | everyone's hoped that they were going there,
00:03:23.480 | and that they're in three majors,
00:03:24.600 | they don't wanna let people down,
00:03:25.600 | but they're not really interested
00:03:26.520 | in being a doctor or whatever.
00:03:28.160 | So your motivation's not in the right place,
00:03:30.060 | the motivational psychologist would say
00:03:31.560 | the locus of control was more towards
00:03:33.160 | the extrinsic end of the spectrum, and you have hardship.
00:03:36.600 | And you could just fritz out the whole system.
00:03:38.800 | And so I would always be very worried about that,
00:03:40.520 | so I think about that a lot.
00:03:41.880 | I do a lot of multi-phase or multi-scale seasonality.
00:03:45.360 | So I'll go hard on something for a while,
00:03:48.120 | and then for a few weeks, go easy.
00:03:50.280 | I'll have semesters that are hard
00:03:51.920 | and semesters that are easy,
00:03:53.080 | or I'll take the summer really low.
00:03:54.120 | So on multiple scales,
00:03:55.160 | and in the day, I'll go really hard on something,
00:03:56.640 | but then have a hard cutoff at five.
00:03:57.880 | So every scale, it's all about rest and recovery,
00:04:01.880 | because I really wanna avoid that.
00:04:02.920 | And I do burn out, I burnt out.
00:04:04.900 | Pretty recently, I get minor burnt outs.
00:04:06.600 | I got a couple papers that I was trying to work through
00:04:10.040 | for a deadline a few weeks ago,
00:04:12.720 | and I wasn't sleeping well,
00:04:14.640 | and there's some other things going on.
00:04:17.480 | And it knocks it out of me, I get sick usually,
00:04:20.280 | is how I know I've pushed myself too far.
00:04:22.360 | And so I kind of pulled it back.
00:04:23.440 | Now I'm doing this book launch,
00:04:24.440 | then after this book launch, I'm pulling it back again.
00:04:26.680 | So seasonality for rest and recovery I think is crucial,
00:04:30.120 | and at every scale, daily, monthly,
00:04:33.680 | and then at the annual scale.
00:04:34.880 | An easy summer, for example,
00:04:36.240 | I think is a great idea if that's possible.
00:04:38.880 | - Okay, you just made me realize
00:04:41.240 | that that's exactly what I do,
00:04:43.240 | 'cause I feel like I'm not even close
00:04:45.120 | to burning out on anything,
00:04:46.080 | even though I'm in chaos.
00:04:48.780 | I feel the right exact ways of seasonality
00:04:52.440 | is the, not even the seasonality,
00:04:55.160 | but you always have multiple seasons operating.
00:04:59.000 | It's like you said,
00:05:00.120 | 'cause when you have a lot of cool shit going on,
00:05:02.800 | there's always at least one thing that's a source of joy,
00:05:06.300 | that there's always a reason.
00:05:08.720 | I suppose the fundamental thing,
00:05:10.880 | and I've known people that suffer from depression too,
00:05:13.760 | the fundamental problem with the experience of depression
00:05:16.760 | and burnout is why do, life is meaningless.
00:05:21.760 | And I always have an answer of why today could be cool.
00:05:26.860 | - And you have to contrive it.
00:05:29.920 | If you don't have it, you have to contrive it.
00:05:31.760 | I think it's really important.
00:05:33.160 | Like, okay, well, this is going bad,
00:05:34.840 | so now is the time to start thinking about,
00:05:37.240 | I mean, look, I started a podcast during the pandemic.
00:05:39.840 | It's like, this is going pretty bad,
00:05:42.260 | but you know what, this could be something
00:05:45.240 | really interesting.
00:05:46.320 | - Deep questions with Kyle Newport.
00:05:48.120 | - I do it all in that voice.
00:05:50.520 | - I love the podcast by the way.
00:05:53.480 | But yeah, I think David Foster Wallace said,
00:05:56.720 | "The key to life is to be unboreable."
00:05:59.080 | I've always kind of taken that to heart,
00:06:01.820 | which is like, you should be able to,
00:06:04.640 | maybe artificially generate anything,
00:06:08.700 | like find something in your environment,
00:06:13.700 | in your surroundings, that's a source of joy.
00:06:16.080 | Like everything is fun.
00:06:17.400 | - Yeah, did you read "The Pale King"?
00:06:20.140 | It goes deep on boredom.
00:06:21.540 | It's like uncomfortable.
00:06:22.980 | It's like an uncomfortable meditation on boredom.
00:06:25.680 | Like the characters in that are just driven
00:06:27.700 | to the extremes of,
00:06:30.000 | I just bought three books on boredom the other day.
00:06:33.360 | So now I'm really interested in this topic
00:06:35.200 | because I was anxious about my book launch
00:06:37.200 | happening this week.
00:06:38.040 | I was like, okay, I need something else.
00:06:39.560 | So I have this idea for a,
00:06:41.080 | I might do it as an article first, but as a book.
00:06:43.560 | Like, okay, I need something cool to be thinking about
00:06:46.760 | because I was worried about like,
00:06:48.120 | I don't know if the launch gonna work,
00:06:49.800 | the pandemic, what's gonna happen.
00:06:51.200 | I don't know if it's gonna get there.
00:06:52.160 | So this is exactly what we're talking about.
00:06:54.140 | So I went out and I bought a bunch of books
00:06:56.040 | and I'm beginning like a whole
00:06:58.160 | sort of intellectual exploration.
00:07:00.200 | - Well, I think that's one of the profound ideas
00:07:03.000 | in deep work that you don't expand on too much is boredom.
00:07:08.360 | - Yeah, well, so deep work had a superficial idea
00:07:12.520 | about boredom, which was,
00:07:13.800 | I had this chapter called "Embrace Boredom"
00:07:16.040 | and a very functionalist idea was basically,
00:07:19.720 | you have to have some boredom in your regular schedule
00:07:21.700 | or your mind is gonna form a Pavlovian connection
00:07:24.960 | between as soon as I feel boredom, I get stimuli.
00:07:28.440 | And once it forms that connection,
00:07:29.600 | it's never gonna tolerate deep work.
00:07:30.800 | So there's this very pragmatic treatment of boredom
00:07:34.240 | of your mind better be used to the idea
00:07:36.640 | that sometimes you don't get stimuli
00:07:37.880 | because otherwise you can't write for three hours.
00:07:39.760 | Like it's just not gonna tolerate it.
00:07:41.780 | But more recently, what I'm really interested in boredom
00:07:44.080 | is it as a fundamental human drive, right?
00:07:47.200 | Because it's incredibly uncomfortable.
00:07:49.720 | And think about the other things
00:07:50.960 | that are incredibly uncomfortable, like hunger or thirst,
00:07:53.240 | they serve a really important purpose for our species, right?
00:07:56.640 | Like if something is really distressing, there's a reason.
00:07:58.740 | Pain is really uncomfortable
00:07:59.960 | because we need to worry about getting injured.
00:08:02.400 | Thirst is really uncomfortable
00:08:03.660 | because we need water to survive.
00:08:05.580 | So what's boredom?
00:08:07.000 | Why is that uncomfortable?
00:08:08.680 | And I've been interested in this notion
00:08:11.480 | that boredom is about driving us towards productive action.
00:08:16.480 | Like as a species, I mean, think about it.
00:08:19.160 | Like what got us to actually take advantage of these brains?
00:08:22.320 | What got us to actually work with fire?
00:08:24.400 | What got us to start shaping stones and the hand axes
00:08:27.680 | and figuring out if we could actually sharpen a stick
00:08:29.680 | sharp enough that we could throw it as a melee weapon
00:08:32.340 | or a distance weapon for hunting mammoth, right?
00:08:35.240 | Boredom drives us towards action.
00:08:37.920 | So now I'm fascinated by this fundamental action instinct
00:08:41.460 | because I have this theory that I'm working on
00:08:43.520 | that we're out of sync with it.
00:08:45.760 | Just like we have this drive for hunger,
00:08:47.920 | but then we introduced junk food
00:08:49.080 | and got out of sync with hunger
00:08:50.280 | and it makes us really unhealthy.
00:08:52.040 | We have this drive towards action,
00:08:53.400 | but then we overload ourselves
00:08:55.400 | and we have all of these distractions.
00:08:56.780 | And then that causes,
00:08:58.560 | it's like a cognitive action obesity type things
00:09:01.440 | because it short circuits the system
00:09:02.800 | that wants us to do things,
00:09:03.760 | but we put more things on our plate
00:09:04.840 | than we can possibly do.
00:09:05.700 | And then we're really frustrated we can't do them.
00:09:07.480 | And we're short circuiting all of our wires.
00:09:09.200 | So it all comes back to this question,
00:09:11.520 | well, what would be the ideal amount of stuff to do
00:09:16.520 | and type of things to do?
00:09:18.360 | Like if we wanted to look back
00:09:19.320 | at our ancestral environment and say,
00:09:21.680 | if I could just build from scratch,
00:09:23.960 | how much work I do and what I work on
00:09:26.480 | to be as in touch with that as like paleo people
00:09:28.600 | are trying to get their diets in touch with that.
00:09:30.120 | And so now I'm just,
00:09:31.280 | but see, it's something I made up.
00:09:34.000 | But now I'm going deep on it.
00:09:36.140 | And one of my podcast listeners,
00:09:37.560 | I was talking about on the show and I was like,
00:09:39.320 | well, I keep trying to learn about animals and boredom.
00:09:41.400 | And she sent me this cool article
00:09:42.840 | from an animal behaviorist journal
00:09:44.560 | about what we know about human boredom versus animal boredom.
00:09:48.080 | So trying to figure out that puzzle
00:09:49.960 | is the wave that's high.
00:09:52.260 | So I can get through the wave that's low of like,
00:09:54.120 | I don't know about this pandemic book launch.
00:09:55.660 | And my research is stumbling a little bit
00:09:59.760 | because of the pandemic.
00:10:00.600 | And so I needed a nice high.
00:10:03.640 | So there we go, there's a case study.
00:10:05.320 | - Well, it's both a case study
00:10:07.480 | and a very interesting set of concepts
00:10:09.280 | 'cause I didn't even realize that it's so simple.
00:10:12.240 | I'm one of the people that has a interesting
00:10:17.240 | push and pull dynamic with hunger,
00:10:18.920 | trying to understand the hunger with myself.
00:10:21.120 | Like I probably have an unhealthy relationship with food.
00:10:24.600 | I don't know, but there's probably a perfect,
00:10:28.400 | that's a nice way to think about diet as action.
00:10:32.720 | There's probably an optimal diet response
00:10:36.480 | to the experience that our body's telling us,
00:10:40.320 | the signal that our body's sending, which is hunger.
00:10:43.260 | And in that same way, boredom is sending a signal.
00:10:46.800 | And most of our intellectual activities in this world,
00:10:49.920 | our creative activities,
00:10:51.760 | are essentially a response to that signal.
00:10:56.600 | - Yeah, and think about this analogy
00:10:59.600 | that we have this hunger instinct
00:11:01.040 | that junk food short circuits, right?
00:11:03.920 | It's like, oh, we'll satisfy that hyper-palatably
00:11:06.720 | and it doesn't end up well.
00:11:08.240 | Now think about modern attention engineered,
00:11:11.760 | digitally mediated entertainment.
00:11:14.520 | We have this boredom instinct.
00:11:16.000 | Oh, we can take care of that
00:11:17.760 | with a hyper-palatable alternative.
00:11:20.480 | Is that gonna lead to a similar problem?
00:11:22.240 | - So I've been fasting a lot lately.
00:11:23.720 | Like I'm doing eating once a day.
00:11:27.640 | I've been doing that for over a month.
00:11:29.600 | Just eating one meal a day and primarily meat.
00:11:33.760 | But it's very, fasting has been incredible for me,
00:11:38.240 | for focus, for well-being, for a few,
00:11:40.840 | I don't know, just for feeling good.
00:11:42.640 | Okay, we'll put on a chart what makes me feel good.
00:11:45.640 | And that fasting and eating primarily a meat-based diet
00:11:50.640 | makes me feel really good.
00:11:52.480 | And so, but that ultimately, what fasting did,
00:11:57.480 | I haven't fasted super long yet,
00:11:59.220 | like a seven-day diet, which I really like to do.
00:12:02.120 | But even just fasting for a day, for 24 hours,
00:12:05.080 | gets you in touch with the signal.
00:12:09.960 | It's fascinating.
00:12:10.800 | Like you get to listen to your,
00:12:12.320 | learn to listen to your body that like,
00:12:15.000 | you know, it's okay to be hungry.
00:12:17.700 | It's like a little signal that sends you stuff.
00:12:19.760 | And then I get to listen to how it responds
00:12:24.120 | when I put food in my body.
00:12:27.480 | Like, and I get to like, okay, cool.
00:12:30.460 | So like food is a thing that pacifies the signal.
00:12:33.740 | Like, it sounds ridiculous, okay?
00:12:35.700 | You could do that with--
00:12:36.540 | - And do different types of food.
00:12:38.300 | It feels different.
00:12:39.140 | So you learn about what your body wants.
00:12:41.660 | - For some reason, fasting,
00:12:44.140 | it's similar to the deep work, embrace boredom.
00:12:47.340 | Fasting allowed me to go into mode of listening,
00:12:50.380 | of trying to understand the signal,
00:12:52.080 | that I could say I have an unhealthy appreciation of fruit.
00:12:56.920 | - Okay.
00:12:57.860 | - I love apples and cherries.
00:12:59.540 | Like, I don't know how to moderate them.
00:13:01.420 | So if you take just same amount of calories,
00:13:03.500 | I don't know, calories matter, but they say calories,
00:13:05.960 | 2000 calories of cherries versus 2000 calories of steak.
00:13:10.960 | If I eat 2000 calories of steak,
00:13:13.300 | maybe with just a little bit of like green beans
00:13:15.660 | or cauliflower, I'm going to feel really good,
00:13:19.680 | fulfilled, focused, and happy.
00:13:22.380 | If I eat cherries, I'm going to be,
00:13:24.460 | I'm going to wake up behind a dumpster,
00:13:26.360 | crying with like naked, and like, it's just--
00:13:29.760 | - Shit's all around.
00:13:30.600 | - Yeah, with everything, and just like bloated,
00:13:34.080 | just not, and unhappy, and also the mood swings up and down.
00:13:39.080 | I don't know.
00:13:41.320 | And I'll be much hungrier the next day.
00:13:44.720 | Sometimes it takes a couple of days,
00:13:46.240 | but when I introduce carbs into the system, too many carbs,
00:13:50.080 | it starts, it's just unhealthy.
00:13:53.040 | I go into this rollercoaster as opposed to a calm boat ride
00:13:56.020 | along the river in the Amazon or something like that.
00:13:58.540 | And so fasting was the mechanism for me
00:14:01.580 | to start listening to the body.
00:14:03.940 | I wonder if you can do that same kind of,
00:14:05.940 | I guess that's what meditation a little bit is.
00:14:07.860 | - A little bit, but yeah, listen to boredom.
00:14:10.100 | But so two years ago, I had a book out
00:14:11.780 | called "Digital Minimalism."
00:14:13.540 | And one of the things I was recommending that people do
00:14:16.100 | is basically a 30-day fast,
00:14:18.300 | but from digital personal entertainment,
00:14:20.420 | social media, online videos,
00:14:21.920 | anything that captures your attention and dispels boredom.
00:14:26.400 | And people were thinking like, oh, this is a detox.
00:14:29.520 | Like, I just wanna teach your body
00:14:30.720 | not to need the distraction or this or that,
00:14:32.760 | but it really wasn't what I was interested in.
00:14:34.320 | I wanted there to be space
00:14:37.640 | that you could listen to your boredom.
00:14:39.400 | Like, okay, I can't just dispel it.
00:14:41.120 | I can't just look at the screen.
00:14:42.540 | And revel in it a little bit and start to listen to it
00:14:45.140 | and say, what is this really pushing me towards?
00:14:48.000 | And you take the new stuff,
00:14:49.460 | the new technology off the table and sort of ask,
00:14:51.480 | what is this, what am I craving?
00:14:53.200 | Like, what's the activity equivalent of 2,000 calories
00:14:56.800 | of meat with a little bit of green beans on the side?
00:14:59.360 | And I had 1,700 people go through this experiment,
00:15:01.600 | like spend 30 days doing this.
00:15:03.400 | And it's hard at first,
00:15:04.280 | but then they get used to listening to themselves
00:15:06.960 | and sort of seeking out
00:15:07.800 | what is this really pushing me towards?
00:15:09.720 | And it was pushing people towards connection.
00:15:12.240 | It was pushing people towards,
00:15:13.420 | I just wanna go be around other people.
00:15:15.560 | It was pushing people towards high quality leisure activities
00:15:19.320 | like I wanna go do something that's complicated.
00:15:21.680 | And it took weeks sometimes
00:15:23.040 | for them to get in touch with their boredom,
00:15:25.100 | but then it completely rewired how they thought about,
00:15:28.740 | what do I wanna do with my time outside of work?
00:15:30.740 | And then the idea is when you're done with that,
00:15:32.020 | then it was much easier to go back
00:15:33.280 | and completely change your digital life
00:15:34.900 | because you have alternatives, right?
00:15:37.380 | You're not just trying to abstain from things you don't like
00:15:39.820 | but that's basically a listening to boredom experiment.
00:15:42.620 | And like, just be there with the boredom
00:15:45.140 | and see where it drives you
00:15:46.360 | when you don't have the digital cheez-its.
00:15:48.820 | Okay, so if I can't do that,
00:15:50.900 | where is it gonna drive me?
00:15:52.000 | Well, I guess I kinda wanna go to the library,
00:15:53.940 | which came up a lot, by the way.
00:15:55.020 | A lot of people rediscovered the library.
00:15:57.420 | - With physical books.
00:15:58.260 | - Physical books, so you can just go borrow 'em.
00:16:00.440 | And there's low pressure and you can explore
00:16:03.180 | and you bring 'em home and then you read 'em
00:16:04.860 | and you can sit by the window and read 'em
00:16:06.580 | and it's nice weather outside.
00:16:07.660 | And I used to do that 20 years ago.
00:16:09.700 | They're listening to boredom.
00:16:11.340 | Hey, if you like this video,
00:16:12.460 | I think you'll really like this one as well.