How To Work From Home: The Productivity System To Get More Done In 2025

00:00:00.000 | So where I live in Washington, D.C., remote work is a hot topic at the moment because

00:00:06.140 | one of President Trump's new executive orders is demanding that federal workers return to

00:00:11.800 | the office.

00:00:12.800 | So this is causing a lot of chaos here for federal workers for any number of specific

00:00:16.960 | logistical and practical reasons.

00:00:19.760 | But I thought this timing might be good to talk to those of you who still have some sort

00:00:26.120 | of remote work set up in your job about the very general topic of how do you make the

00:00:32.200 | most of that?

00:00:33.760 | You see the trouble your government worker brethren are having with their remote work

00:00:39.240 | jobs.

00:00:40.240 | If you still have one now, this is a great time to say, "Hey, let me make sure that I

00:00:43.680 | am making the most of what I actually have."

00:00:46.160 | So here's my plan.

00:00:47.160 | I've written a lot about remote work, what makes it function well, what makes it function

00:00:50.760 | poorly.

00:00:51.760 | I've covered this extensively for The New Yorker.

00:00:53.280 | I've written about this in other publications like The Atlantic.

00:00:55.680 | I've written about this in my book, Slow Productivity.

00:00:59.240 | And what I want to do today is bridge the gap between big ideas and practical advice

00:01:04.840 | for remote workers.

00:01:06.400 | So I have three foundational ideas I'm going to review about remote work that come from

00:01:10.640 | my reporting from the last five years or so.

00:01:12.800 | For each of those foundational ideas, after I explain it, I have concrete things to suggest

00:01:17.640 | for how you can leverage that idea to make your own life as someone who does some virtual

00:01:24.820 | work better.

00:01:25.960 | And my goal here really is not just how do I make you as a remote worker more productive

00:01:30.960 | in some sort of vague sense.

00:01:32.400 | I really care about not only that, but how do you make your job awesome?

00:01:36.840 | How do you take full advantage of the possibilities that at first got everyone excited about this

00:01:42.920 | prospect?

00:01:43.920 | How to make remote work not just a grind, but something that could be even cooler, or

00:01:48.160 | more interesting, or more sustainable, or more varied than the old-fashioned way of

00:01:51.800 | working.

00:01:52.800 | So I have three foundational ideas, and I'm going to draw, spin off some concrete advice

00:01:56.160 | for each.

00:01:57.160 | All right, foundational idea number one.

00:02:01.640 | Successful remote work requires two things.

00:02:05.680 | Clear workload systems and structured communication.

00:02:10.560 | Let me unpack both of those things.

00:02:14.280 | Clear workload system means there is some clarity about what you're working on and what

00:02:20.680 | it means for something that you're working on to be done, and the load of what you're

00:02:26.480 | actively working on now that you're tracking it is kept manageable.

00:02:29.600 | That is what's meant by clear workload systems.

00:02:32.760 | And by structured communication, this involves how information flows, questions are asked,

00:02:37.720 | and status is checked on the work that is happening.

00:02:40.340 | If communication is structured, these type of interactions are consolidated into a smaller

00:02:45.580 | number of predictable periods or moved asynchronous, but unscheduled communication is minimized.

00:02:51.840 | That means something that comes in you weren't expecting that you need to reply to, like

00:02:54.960 | an email or a chat.

00:02:57.040 | Calendar clutter is also minimized in a structured communication regime, so you don't have a

00:03:00.680 | calendar that fills ever fuller with meetings to talk about work.

00:03:06.320 | So if your work is structured around clear workloads and structured communication, remote

00:03:11.720 | work can work really well.

00:03:14.820 | If it's not, remote work can be frustrating for all involved.

00:03:17.960 | I'll give you two examples, one broad, one specific, about workplaces that have these

00:03:25.280 | properties and therefore have found successful transitions to remote work.

00:03:31.040 | The first is in software dev, right?

00:03:33.560 | Software developers had many examples of large teams or organizations that were fully remote,

00:03:39.680 | even pre-pandemic.

00:03:40.680 | It was one of the only sectors of knowledge work that sort of consistently had success

00:03:45.120 | with remote work.

00:03:46.300 | Why is it?

00:03:47.300 | It's because these firms were using agile methodologies to organize their developers'

00:03:54.180 | efforts.

00:03:55.180 | So some of the core features of agile methodologies is clear workload management.

00:03:59.900 | You have a shared board.

00:04:01.700 | Everything that needs to be added, the features that need to be added, the bugs that need

00:04:04.500 | to be checked for the particular software product in question, those are all specified

00:04:09.980 | on a shared board.

00:04:10.980 | They don't exist on individuals' plates.

00:04:14.620 | And then what happens is individuals are assigned specific things to work on.

00:04:18.740 | So it's very clear who is working on what, and you have very clear workload limits, right?

00:04:22.500 | It might be you should be working on one thing at a time, and when you're done, we'll give

00:04:24.980 | you the new thing.

00:04:25.980 | Or you could be working on two things at a time, and when you're done with one of those,

00:04:28.740 | we'll bring you on a new thing.

00:04:29.740 | But it's very clear who's working on what.

00:04:32.940 | Workloads are managed.

00:04:33.940 | You don't work on too many things at the same time, and it is very clear when you're done.

00:04:38.700 | You say, okay, I have finished this feature.

00:04:40.380 | It's committed into the repository.

00:04:41.820 | We can move this card on the virtual board from me working on it to the done column.

00:04:47.100 | So it's very structured workload management.

00:04:50.100 | Agile methodologies also have very structured communication.

00:04:52.500 | They have a daily standup meeting, it's very quick.

00:04:54.680 | They call them standups because when these would be done in person, you would do them

00:04:57.780 | standing up, the discourage, loviation.

00:05:01.700 | And in these standup meetings, you go person, person, person.

00:05:03.700 | Here's the board.

00:05:04.860 | Here's the things you're working on.

00:05:06.020 | There's two.

00:05:07.260 | What's your progress?

00:05:08.260 | What have you done since yesterday?

00:05:09.260 | Why is this not done yet?

00:05:10.260 | What do you need from other people to get this done?

00:05:12.420 | Or, okay, you finished this yesterday.

00:05:14.700 | Let's decide as a group what you should work on next.

00:05:17.280 | Let us know right away what you need for it.

00:05:18.820 | So you're consolidating communication about how things are going and what you need to

00:05:22.620 | a 20-minute block in the same time every day, as opposed to allowing this to just unfold

00:05:27.460 | through unstructured emails and text messages throughout the day.

00:05:30.460 | So software dev already had workload management and structured communication.

00:05:34.900 | It was easy to move remote.

00:05:36.380 | That works well remote.

00:05:37.420 | The board can be virtual.

00:05:39.780 | Those status meetings can be virtual.

00:05:42.040 | Most of what you're doing then is just working solo anyway, so the fact that you are not

00:05:46.060 | in an office around other people or not didn't matter.

00:05:48.660 | It was easier to move that remote.

00:05:51.100 | Here's another example, more specific, of a workplace in which they had these properties

00:05:56.140 | and they've done well remote.

00:05:57.140 | I was talking to someone recently who had a position in the Veterans Affairs office,

00:06:02.820 | and he was saying the big team that he was working with, they actually measured productivity.

00:06:09.020 | They did a study, and it was clear that on all the metrics you might care about for their

00:06:15.480 | particular type of work, they all went up with remote work.

00:06:19.020 | So I said, "Well, what type of work is this team doing?"

00:06:21.740 | And he told me, "Oh, it's claims processing, processing claims from veterans largely for

00:06:28.700 | benefits or health care."

00:06:30.380 | I was like, "That is an example of work in which you can have a very clearly defined

00:06:35.140 | workload.

00:06:36.260 | Here is our queues of claims to be processed.

00:06:39.820 | Here are the ones that have currently been assigned to you.

00:06:43.200 | We can check in a system without even really having to have unscheduled communication at

00:06:47.620 | all, what have you processed today?

00:06:50.420 | What have you processed this week, right?

00:06:52.220 | We can have a system to flag issues or you need help or to move it up to someone else.

00:06:56.580 | It's a very structured workload without the need.

00:06:59.220 | It doesn't really rely on ad hoc communication or meetings that clutter your calendar.

00:07:03.500 | So yeah, that could move remote very well.

00:07:07.220 | I want to be where I want to be.

00:07:08.260 | I'm working on my claims.

00:07:09.260 | It doesn't really matter if I'm in the office.

00:07:11.340 | Where remote work struggles is where you're missing one or both of those.

00:07:14.700 | It's like an average, modern, generic, Scott Adams, Dilbert style office.

00:07:21.180 | It doesn't have either of these things.

00:07:23.500 | Work is assigned haphazardly, usually through emails and requests at meetings like, hey,

00:07:28.340 | can you work on this?

00:07:29.340 | What about this?

00:07:30.340 | Can you look into this?

00:07:31.340 | So everyone has this sort of haphazard workload.

00:07:32.700 | It's not clearly defined.

00:07:33.700 | I don't know who's working on what.

00:07:36.120 | There's no clear way for me to see what's done when something is finished or what the

00:07:40.380 | status of things are.

00:07:41.880 | The only way to check in is through more communication.

00:07:43.940 | So we have a ton of unstructured communication that just try to keep various plates moving.

00:07:47.980 | I'm constantly emailing people, people are emailing me, we're jumping in and off in Slack.

00:07:51.800 | We begin using meetings as a proxy for productivity, standing meetings to try to make progress

00:07:55.460 | on things.

00:07:56.460 | Calendars are cluttered.

00:07:57.460 | The overhead of workloads collapses in on its own weight.

00:08:01.800 | That type of workplace doesn't move remote as well.

00:08:06.840 | Because it's just dependent on all this like ad hoc back and forth interaction.

00:08:10.240 | And when you move remote that all that just gets harder.

00:08:12.200 | It's all just higher friction.

00:08:13.200 | I can't grab you in the hallway.

00:08:14.640 | I have to schedule Zoom meetings for everything.

00:08:16.960 | Calendars get even more cluttered.

00:08:18.400 | I have to send many more emails because I'm missing all the in-person quick grabs and

00:08:23.300 | quick conversations in the hallways.

00:08:25.700 | When you don't have workload structure or structured communication, remote work can

00:08:28.380 | actually just increase the frustration and friction work.

00:08:30.680 | A lot of people saw this in the pandemic where they got no benefit out of remote work from

00:08:34.720 | a subjective well-being perspective because their work became even more interruptive.

00:08:41.320 | More Zoom, more like talking about work or feeling interrupted from talking about work

00:08:46.160 | and it made things worse.

00:08:47.160 | All right, so once we have that idea, what's some like concrete advice we can give to make

00:08:51.160 | your own situation better?

00:08:52.520 | Well, if you work in a team and you have some control over how your team operates, take

00:08:56.680 | a page out of Agile.

00:08:58.360 | Track those tasks centrally.

00:08:59.360 | It should be clear, what does our team need to accomplish?

00:09:03.960 | New tasks should show up on the team's list, not on an individual's plate.

00:09:08.560 | And then you should have a clear way of saying who's working on what.

00:09:11.280 | And it's fine for most stuff.

00:09:12.840 | The answer is no one is working on this yet.

00:09:16.100 | You don't want anyone working on more than two things at a time.

00:09:18.760 | So the 20 things we've identified that our team needs to do, maybe most of them are just

00:09:23.920 | in this waiting to do column that no one owns.

00:09:26.200 | It's not generating any overhead tax, no emails or no meetings for anyone because no one's

00:09:29.880 | working on it yet.

00:09:31.200 | Over here we see, okay, Cal's working on these two things.

00:09:34.560 | And now I actually have to do those things.

00:09:35.920 | Well, hey, you've had these on your thing for two days.

00:09:38.600 | What else are you doing?

00:09:39.600 | You should be making progress, right?

00:09:41.160 | But we are saving ourselves from being completely overloaded with work.

00:09:47.100 | Daily synchronization meetings of the same style they use in Agile can work really well

00:09:50.140 | for teams.

00:09:51.140 | 20 minutes, we all look at the things that need to be done and the things you're working

00:09:54.660 | on.

00:09:56.660 | Batch all of your email conversations into a real-time conversation right here.

00:10:00.100 | Okay, everyone, here's what I'm working on today.

00:10:02.660 | See, let's look at the board.

00:10:03.660 | These are two things that have been assigned to me.

00:10:05.340 | I'm really working on this first thing today.

00:10:08.260 | Let me save you all the emails that would otherwise trickle out as this day unfolded.

00:10:11.840 | And I'll just tell you all now, I need this from you and this from you.

00:10:15.440 | Okay, when can you get that to me by?

00:10:17.600 | By noon?

00:10:18.600 | Let me write this down.

00:10:19.600 | Okay, so you're getting that to me by noon.

00:10:20.600 | Let's type this up.

00:10:22.080 | And you will talk to those clients.

00:10:24.040 | Actually, don't even email me those responses when you're done.

00:10:26.880 | You'll just put them in this shared folder.

00:10:28.360 | Great.

00:10:29.360 | We're typing up a summary of what everyone committed to in this meeting, and boom, it'll

00:10:31.880 | be right there under the board in a saved document.

00:10:34.240 | We can all see our commitments.

00:10:35.240 | Great, everyone.

00:10:36.240 | We all agree.

00:10:37.240 | We've just saved ourselves ad hoc emails that might get ignored for days.

00:10:40.620 | We're all on the same page.

00:10:41.620 | Let's go do our work.

00:10:42.620 | So if you have some control over how your team functions, do that.

00:10:46.220 | If you're an individual, build a task board for your own task and make it transparent

00:10:51.380 | for the people you work with.

00:10:52.500 | I talk about this a lot in my book, Slow Productivity.

00:10:55.580 | Make a clear distinction between I'm working on this right now, and I'm waiting to work

00:10:58.580 | on these things.

00:10:59.580 | And make sure that all the people who want you to do things can see this list.

00:11:03.580 | They see where their thing falls, and they're like, hey, let's have a meeting.

00:11:06.180 | Let's check in.

00:11:07.180 | Here's the link to my list.

00:11:08.180 | You're in position three.

00:11:09.180 | You're marching steadily towards my actively working it on status, but you're not there

00:11:13.460 | yet.

00:11:14.460 | Once it's there, I'll let you know, and then we can get into it.

00:11:16.600 | So even if you do not have control over the activities or organization of your team, you

00:11:21.420 | can organize yourself in a similar way.

00:11:25.060 | Use office hours to deal with impromptu back and forth conversations.

00:11:29.940 | You email me something that I can't respond to with a single message, grab me at my daily

00:11:33.100 | office hours.

00:11:34.100 | Call me.

00:11:35.100 | Jump by my office.

00:11:36.100 | Jump on an open Zoom thing I have.

00:11:37.100 | We can figure it out in real time.

00:11:38.860 | Teams can have docket clearing meetings twice a week.

00:11:41.500 | There's things the team needs to address.

00:11:43.940 | Put it on a shared document called the docket twice a week, everyone gets together.

00:11:47.660 | You go through that docket one by one, either dismiss the task, assign it to one individual,

00:11:53.580 | make a plan for it, do all again, this batching your communication in advance.

00:11:58.020 | This is another place to do that.

00:11:59.460 | Hey, what will I need from who by when to actually do this thing?

00:12:02.540 | While you're all here, let's all commit to that and write that down.

00:12:04.820 | So we save ourselves emails.

00:12:07.040 | So there's a lot you can do to make your workload management clear and your communication structured.

00:12:11.620 | If you do, the fact that you're not in the same office doesn't matter nearly as much

00:12:15.260 | anymore.

00:12:16.260 | Hey, it's Cal.

00:12:17.260 | I wanted to interrupt briefly to say that if you're enjoying this video, then you need

00:12:21.780 | to check out my new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

00:12:29.260 | This is like the Bible for most of the ideas we talk about here in these videos.

00:12:34.660 | You can get a free excerpt at calnewport.com/slow.

00:12:40.020 | I know you're going to like it.

00:12:41.840 | Check it out.

00:12:42.840 | Now let's get back to the video.

00:12:43.840 | All right, foundational idea number two, small scale seasonality is the ingredient that makes

00:12:53.260 | remote work awesome.

00:12:56.680 | Kind of mixing metaphors there.

00:12:57.680 | Should I say delicious?

00:12:58.680 | It's the ingredient that makes remote work delicious.

00:13:03.000 | What do I mean by small scale seasonality?

00:13:04.800 | That's an idea from my book, Slow Productivity, where seasonality writ large is this idea

00:13:09.440 | of variations in your work intensity at different timescales.

00:13:14.540 | So at the big time scale, it might be this season is slower than these other two seasons.

00:13:21.040 | At the smallest time scale, it might be I'm starting slow, I'm going to have a slow morning

00:13:28.280 | to kind of recharge, and then I have a busier afternoon.

00:13:30.820 | So it can go from the scale of the year down to the scale of the hours of a given day.

00:13:35.920 | Small scale seasonality is looking at this sort of variation in intensity at these smaller

00:13:40.360 | scales like of the day, hours within your day, or days of your week.

00:13:45.360 | And something that really makes remote work much more sustainable and cool is if you're

00:13:50.320 | able to embrace more of this variation in the intensity of your work.

00:13:56.440 | Why do you need remote work to more easily get this type of small scale seasonality?

00:14:01.500 | It's because of what you face when you're in the office.

00:14:04.000 | Again, this is sort of canon from my Slow Productivity book.

00:14:07.720 | But in the first part of that book, I talk about how in the second half of the 20th century,

00:14:12.640 | office work became gripped by this idea of pseudo productivity.

00:14:17.440 | The notion that visible effort is a useful proxy for valuable effort.

00:14:23.940 | The more stuff you're doing, the better.

00:14:26.460 | It became this rough heuristic we used to try to just manage knowledge workers because

00:14:30.080 | we didn't actually know what you were working on, and there was no pile of widgets or parking

00:14:34.440 | lot full of newly built Model Ts we could point to to say how productive you were.

00:14:38.440 | So we fell back as managers on this heuristic of, you're doing stuff is good.

00:14:43.960 | If you want to prove to me that you're even more productive, do more stuff.

00:14:46.440 | Like be here earlier, go home later.

00:14:49.880 | These seemed to be frantic moving papers around when I walked by your office.

00:14:55.220 | The side effect of pseudo productivity is it meant that you had to sort of constantly

00:14:59.860 | always be on.

00:15:00.860 | Now, in a pre-digital age, that was OK.

00:15:03.300 | We could sort of fake this.

00:15:05.160 | It really was a game of you're all talking football at the water cooler, and the boss

00:15:12.680 | walks in, and you immediately change.

00:15:16.380 | You're in the middle of saying quarterback, and you're like, yeah, the quarterly results

00:15:20.840 | are going to be good this year because of our new reporting system, right?

00:15:25.320 | I mean, it was stuff like that, or like you're kind of reading a magazine at your desk, but

00:15:28.580 | when the boss walked by you, you know, I'm typing, you do like typing motions.

00:15:32.500 | That's how they know you're being busy.

00:15:33.500 | You do vampire typing motions.

00:15:37.920 | Digital screwed that all up because now you can demonstrate activity at a very small granularity.

00:15:44.620 | Each email, or even more finer, each response to an instant message is a demonstration of

00:15:49.980 | your productivity in a pseudo productivity regime.

00:15:53.060 | You can do this at all times—in a meeting, in your office, at lunch, but also at home,

00:15:59.380 | while commuting, while at the dinner, while at a sporting event with your kid on the weekend.

00:16:03.740 | You can at any time be doing this really fine-grained demonstration of productivity.

00:16:08.540 | What we got then was like, oh, I actually have to be doing stuff all the time now.

00:16:12.260 | It's not just I need to physically be moving when my boss walks by.

00:16:15.700 | I have to be responding to these emails, staying up on these instant messages, hopping in and

00:16:19.500 | off of calls or what have you, and you get no variation in your work.

00:16:22.740 | It is just like expected.

00:16:23.860 | You're on all day because if there's any time of the day where you're not responding to

00:16:27.300 | emails, then I'm going to worry that you're slacking off and this is going to be a problem.

00:16:30.460 | So pseudo productivity made seasonality impossible.

00:16:35.580 | Remote work makes it possible again.

00:16:38.740 | No one is there directly observing you, and in particular, if you have followed the ideas

00:16:43.420 | from foundational idea number one, and it's more structured communication, not ad hoc

00:16:49.180 | communication, and it's more clearly managed workloads—I'm working on like one thing

00:16:53.820 | right now—you gain back a lot more capability of I'm going hard today, but I'm going to

00:17:00.980 | take tomorrow slow.

00:17:02.260 | Friday is going to be an easier day because you're not being monitored so fine-grained.

00:17:07.020 | More structured work maybe holds you more accountable, but it's not so fine-grained

00:17:11.740 | how it unfolds.

00:17:12.780 | There's not—with structured communication, there's not emails all day for people to answer.

00:17:16.740 | There's not meetings people are trying to schedule that they're judging you by how many

00:17:19.660 | you accept and how many you say no to.

00:17:22.460 | So remote work, if done right, allows for more small-scale seasonality.

00:17:27.540 | All right, so here's some advice built on this idea.

00:17:31.940 | One, to help try to inject more of the small-scale seasonality into your remote work setup, consider

00:17:38.060 | trading accountability for accessibility.

00:17:40.180 | It's a big move.

00:17:41.940 | You've got to have your act together.

00:17:43.660 | But in a lot of positions, especially when you're remote, there's an option that can

00:17:47.220 | become available where you're saying, "Look, hold me accountable for what I'm doing.

00:17:51.700 | I will show you my proverbial widgets at the end of the week or the end of the month or

00:17:55.140 | the end of the quarter.

00:17:56.140 | This is what I did, and if it doesn't hold up, fire me."

00:18:01.580 | But the flip side is, "I'm going to do this my own way.

00:18:04.860 | I'm not going to be in all your meetings.

00:18:07.860 | I'm not involved in these ad hoc projects that require lots of back-and-forth ad hoc

00:18:13.660 | communication.

00:18:14.780 | I'm going to go do my work and finish these projects, whatever they are, the things you

00:18:22.100 | can count, and you're just going to have to let me do it my own way."

00:18:25.020 | It's dangerous because you actually have to deliver, but if you gain that type of freedom,

00:18:32.500 | you can now inject small-scale seasonality into your job, and that's a lot of what makes

00:18:35.900 | remote work jobs potentially really cool.

00:18:38.860 | Time-block your days.

00:18:40.580 | If you time-block how you work, you get more enjoyment out of how you relax.

00:18:45.900 | Time-blocking is needed to free yourself from the pseudo-productivity mindset because now

00:18:49.620 | you can actually look at your day and say, "Here's what I'm working, and here's what

00:18:52.940 | I'm working on, and here's what I'm not working."

00:18:55.620 | I can see the plan, and it's not just me deciding on a whim, "I'm going to go relax now," and

00:19:00.780 | you're going to be nervous the entire time, like, "Oh my God, what am I missing?

00:19:05.780 | Is there something I'm supposed to be doing?

00:19:06.780 | Am I falling behind?"

00:19:08.780 | Time-blocking gives you control over your time.

00:19:10.580 | It's control not just over your work, but over your non-work.

00:19:12.780 | I'm going to fit this all in here so I can take this 90 minutes here and go for a long

00:19:18.180 | walk.

00:19:19.180 | People get better relaxation into their workday, so a great tool if you want more small-scale

00:19:24.340 | seasonality inserted.

00:19:27.500 | Consider doing things where particular days are lighter than others.

00:19:30.340 | No meeting Mondays or no meeting Fridays are great.

00:19:34.060 | You don't announce it, you just do it.

00:19:35.740 | "Hey, when can you meet?

00:19:37.140 | What about blah, blah, blah, and blah?"

00:19:38.300 | You say yes to the options not on Monday and no to the options on Monday.

00:19:42.060 | Now your Mondays are free of meetings, and it allows you to come out of the weekend in

00:19:45.380 | a way that's maybe less stressful.

00:19:48.380 | I roll in what's going on, I get started back up on projects, I clear the plates, I just

00:19:53.180 | have time to get back up to speed again.

00:19:56.680 | People worry.

00:19:57.680 | "Oh, my God, people will be upset if I don't take meetings on Mondays," but no one's tracking

00:20:00.700 | you that way.

00:20:01.700 | Again, there's not a control center where people have bar charts of your average email

00:20:06.180 | response time, and they're plotting your yes and no's to meeting requests and seeing if

00:20:10.980 | there's any patterns in there.

00:20:13.520 | There's not a supercomputer somewhere crunching, looking for patterns of, "I think he has a

00:20:17.080 | rule about not taking meetings on Monday.

00:20:19.680 | We got him.

00:20:20.680 | We got him, guys."

00:20:22.340 | Just keep some days different than others.

00:20:24.980 | I like the idea of balancing hard days with light days.

00:20:28.740 | You produce better work in a way that's more interesting and sustainable if you get after

00:20:33.540 | it one day and then you recover the next day, as opposed to taking the same number of hours

00:20:38.580 | and splitting them between the two days and putting the work in between meetings and other

00:20:42.540 | types of things going on.

00:20:44.120 | It's much more sustainable and you can produce cooler stuff if you just focus on something

00:20:48.900 | and produce it.

00:20:49.900 | Then the next day, you're just answering emails, doing some meetings, going for a long walk.

00:20:55.740 | That's more sustainable, and the work you do is going to be better.

00:20:59.380 | Also consider, again, if you have some control over how an organization runs, an idea I pitched

00:21:03.900 | in The Atlantic last spring, which was the hybrid attention model for hybrid work.

00:21:09.820 | Here the idea is I think many more offices should have a setup in which if you have some

00:21:15.640 | days that are remote and some days in office, so a hybrid schedule, synchronize the days

00:21:20.920 | where people are remote and make the rule no meetings on those days and probably no

00:21:27.440 | email response expectations either.

00:21:30.860 | The days you're at home, they just work on the stuff that's most valuable and just do

00:21:35.600 | that work.

00:21:36.600 | When you're in the office, you can have meetings and communicate as well.

00:21:40.240 | That's actually a better place to do that because one meeting in person can maybe knock

00:21:47.360 | off 50 emails that might be generated if you had that same meeting on Zoom while you're

00:21:53.480 | at home.

00:21:54.480 | Because when you're in person, now you're all in the place and the meeting's kind of

00:21:56.560 | over.

00:21:57.560 | You're like, "Hold on a second.

00:21:59.040 | What about this?

00:22:00.040 | What about that?"

00:22:02.040 | I've noticed this at Georgetown where I'm a professor.

00:22:06.720 | Our faculty meetings got moved virtual during COVID and now they're back entirely in person,

00:22:11.320 | which I like.

00:22:12.720 | I can notice a major improvement in emails and Zoom because we're all just in this room

00:22:22.640 | and the meeting ends and everyone is like, "I can take care of seven or eight hanging

00:22:29.360 | issues by just talking to people right here."

00:22:32.240 | Where before, if we're all in Zoom and just all logging out, that's seven or eight email

00:22:37.760 | threads I would have to initiate, each of which would now have any number of unscheduled

00:22:41.760 | messages that I have to see and reply to and all the clutter that comes with that.

00:22:44.920 | I like the hybrid attention model.

00:22:47.600 | Third and last foundational idea, when working, spaces impact your mind.

00:22:55.240 | Spaces matter.

00:22:57.200 | This is something I think we underestimated when we were initially extolling the potential

00:23:02.880 | virtuals of remote work in the pre-pandemic or early pandemic period.

00:23:08.000 | We underestimated the effect of which being at an office in an office building had a psychological

00:23:14.240 | benefit of our mind saying, "This is a place to work."

00:23:18.040 | I understand when I am at my building at the office, I'm not thinking about signing up

00:23:24.160 | for day camps in the summer for my kids.

00:23:26.160 | I'm not thinking about, "We need to repaint the house or there might be a roof issue."

00:23:31.440 | I'm not thinking about my fitness routine because my weights are over there.

00:23:36.160 | I'm like, "Oh, I'm at the office, so I'm just thinking about office stuff."

00:23:40.360 | That reduces cognitive drag.

00:23:43.600 | It takes these sort of metaphorical cognitive barnacles off of the boat hole here that are

00:23:47.860 | all adding up drag that slows down your progress through the waters.

00:23:52.400 | We underestimated that effect.

00:23:53.400 | When we're working at home with the laundry basket right there and the home gym right

00:23:57.300 | there and the forms on the table that we need to fill out for the kids and all of those

00:24:01.240 | reminders of all this stuff that's unrelated to work, our mind has a little bit of attention

00:24:04.940 | moving between those, and that's taken away from our work, and we feel more distracted

00:24:08.840 | and unease and uncomfortable, and we run out of energy quicker, so spaces matter.

00:24:13.160 | We underestimated the value of commutes.

00:24:16.680 | We complained about them because it's a pain, especially if you live somewhere like in D.C.

00:24:20.680 | and there's a lot of traffic, but commutes had a psychological benefit in terms of moving

00:24:27.320 | through space transformed our mind from one mindset to the other.

00:24:30.340 | I need to leave this cognitive context of work, and I need to shift to a cognitive context

00:24:35.040 | of my kids and home and my friends and life outside of work.

00:24:37.960 | A 20-minute drive is not a bad way to do that.

00:24:41.240 | You're moving through space, literally from one space where the first context is housed

00:24:46.320 | to another space where the next context is housed, and in that movement, you're able

00:24:50.080 | to start clearing out what's in your mind from work, loading up what's relevant to home,

00:24:55.520 | taking a breather in between to make that transition.

00:24:57.560 | We lost that when it was just, "I'm at my kitchen table working, and next thing you

00:25:01.080 | know, I'm also making dinner at the same kitchen table."

00:25:05.640 | We underestimated the value of the commute.

00:25:07.960 | If you're working from home, you can recognize that idea and make some changes that is going

00:25:11.920 | to build on it and make your work-from-home experience much better.

00:25:14.920 | One, I'm a big believer in the phrase I coined in a New Yorker piece back in 2021, or maybe

00:25:21.720 | it was 2020, "Work from near home should be much more prevalent than it is right now."

00:25:28.480 | Work from near home means you have a remote work setup, but instead of doing your remote

00:25:31.640 | work in your home, you're doing it in a space near your home.

00:25:34.680 | You're not commuting to your office, but you're not working at your kitchen table either.

00:25:39.400 | The Deep Work HQ, where I am right now, this is work from near home.

00:25:44.040 | I can almost see my house from here.

00:25:45.760 | It's a few blocks.

00:25:46.760 | It's like a four or five-minute walk, but it's not my house.

00:25:51.160 | I can come here, even when I'm working from home, to work on writing a problem set for

00:25:58.080 | my discrete mathematics course or to work on an essay I'm writing for The New Yorker.

00:26:02.440 | I could do that at home if it's a day I happen to be at home, but coming here gives me a

00:26:07.080 | dedicated cognitive context that's different than the context that is my house.

00:26:11.600 | Working from near home matters.

00:26:12.600 | It is something you should consider investing in.

00:26:15.560 | Renting cheap office space.

00:26:17.560 | The HQ is inexpensive office space.

00:26:21.000 | It's the office space that's above commercial buildings on our small town main street.

00:26:25.920 | A lot of small town main streets have a lot of the sort of class B commercial space on

00:26:30.320 | top of the shops and the stores.

00:26:31.920 | We're on top of a restaurant.

00:26:34.760 | I don't work here as much at the evening because it's rock and rolling downstairs, but it's

00:26:39.680 | fine in the morning.

00:26:40.680 | It's not a fancy office building.

00:26:43.920 | There are shared workspaces that could work as well.

00:26:46.760 | My point is, if you can work from near home, it's a completely different experience than

00:26:50.240 | actually working from home.

00:26:51.280 | I've converted some people, Jesse.

00:26:52.560 | I've gotten at least a couple neighbors in the general area to have offices in the various

00:26:59.280 | office spaces.

00:27:00.280 | I don't know if they're doing this anymore, but during the pandemic, I knew some people

00:27:04.560 | who did this.

00:27:05.560 | There's a church down the street from where I live, an old church building.

00:27:10.200 | They had just like some extra office offices, you know, like church offices or whatever,

00:27:14.080 | and they were like leasing those out cheap, just like, yeah, you can have like a go to

00:27:17.560 | the church and there's like some offices in the back and people were doing their remote

00:27:21.260 | jobs from there.

00:27:22.260 | There's a lot of options like that.

00:27:23.960 | So anyways, I think that type of, that matters.

00:27:27.480 | You know, I think at first we're like, hey, this is cool.

00:27:29.680 | I'm at my house, but your house isn't great necessarily when it comes to actually getting

00:27:32.720 | things done.

00:27:33.720 | If you are working at your house, spend money on spaces to the extent possible.

00:27:38.320 | Prioritize investing in your spaces to make them better for work.

00:27:42.220 | That is not a triviality.

00:27:43.220 | It shouldn't be an afterthought.

00:27:45.040 | It should be as important as making sure that like you have the right laptop to work at

00:27:48.500 | home or the right lighting camera to do the zoom you have to do all day.

00:27:52.040 | We should spend more money to the extent possible on making our workspaces better for working.

00:27:58.520 | If you have a shed, consider transforming that into a workspace in your backyard.

00:28:03.360 | Will transform your experience of work.

00:28:05.560 | If you have a home office, consider transforming it to be a space you really like to be in.

00:28:12.200 | These type of things matter.

00:28:13.560 | Inside, if you're working at home, separate deep workspace from logistical space.

00:28:18.120 | Have a cool space you use just for depth.

00:28:21.200 | You don't do email there.

00:28:22.200 | You don't have a printer there.

00:28:23.200 | You don't fill out forms there.

00:28:24.720 | You go there to think, to do the hard stuff, the code, to write that memo, to figure out

00:28:28.840 | the strategy.

00:28:29.840 | And then you have a separate space where you do the logistical stuff.

00:28:33.080 | So maybe like wherever like the home office is in your house where you pay your taxes

00:28:37.080 | and bills and you have your printer and your filing cabinet, use that for your logistical

00:28:39.960 | space but build a deep workspace somewhere else.

00:28:43.560 | It could be, you know, a nice chair by your bookshelf somewhere.

00:28:46.440 | At my house, I have a library where I write and I read.

00:28:51.200 | And then upstairs in an alcove, we have the sort of home office where the filing cabinets

00:28:54.580 | and the printers and the scanners and I do my taxes and if I'm doing email or something,

00:28:58.280 | I'll do it up there.

00:28:59.280 | And if I'm writing at home, I'll do it in the other space.

00:29:01.240 | That can make a difference.

00:29:04.240 | Consider adventure work.

00:29:05.760 | It's an idea I first introduced when I was giving advice for students.

00:29:09.760 | We called it adventure studying.

00:29:11.280 | It is going to cool places to do work.

00:29:14.320 | You're working from home.

00:29:15.320 | You might say, okay, I have to read this like complicated report, summarize it or figure

00:29:21.040 | out our recommendations.

00:29:22.420 | I'm going to go somewhere interesting to do that.

00:29:24.720 | Like, well, why don't I go to downtown DC?

00:29:27.240 | I used to do this.

00:29:28.960 | Go to like a museum and I'm going to like read it in like an interesting part in one

00:29:33.560 | of the museums.

00:29:34.560 | I'm going to go like downstairs at the National Gallery near the waterfall where there's no

00:29:38.680 | cell phone reception at the cafeteria.

00:29:39.920 | I'm going to get a cup of coffee and read it there and then I'm going to walk through

00:29:43.560 | this gallery to see whatever it is.

00:29:45.440 | I want to look at Renaissance art to sort of get inspired and take a break and then

00:29:48.880 | I'm going to move over to the cafe in the other wing and there I'm going to sit down

00:29:53.360 | and make my recommendations.

00:29:54.360 | Like go to a cool place to do this type of work.

00:29:56.680 | It's more fun, it's less drag and you get more creativity.

00:29:59.480 | I'm a big fan of adventure working.

00:30:01.960 | And finally, simulate a commute even if you're at home and typically this will be a long

00:30:06.480 | walk.

00:30:07.480 | I am going to do a 20-minute walk to shut down my workday.

00:30:10.880 | So I'll do my shutdown routine and have a 20-minute walk to sort of get my headspace

00:30:14.400 | out of work, to start reflecting on other things, to clear my head, get some blood flowing.

00:30:18.640 | And then when I get back from that walk, it's like my commute is over and now I'm ready

00:30:21.680 | for home life.

00:30:23.840 | I'm a big believer in doing a workout as your simulated commute.

00:30:27.720 | Maybe go around the block and do like a workout and it's a hard physical effort that can just

00:30:33.160 | reset your body and your mind and then when you're done with that, you're like, "Oh, now

00:30:35.680 | I'm done with work."

00:30:38.120 | Don't just be like type, type, type, type, type, type, type, type, turn, I'm now at home.

00:30:43.120 | Simulate the commute, it makes a big difference.

00:30:44.360 | All right, so those are my three ideas.

00:30:47.080 | One, workload management and structured communication.

00:30:49.720 | You need that for remote work to be successful.

00:30:52.320 | Two, was about seasonality, variations in intensity is what makes remote work's full

00:31:00.480 | potential unfold.

00:31:01.760 | So really fight to get that into your remote work setup and three spaces matter, where

00:31:04.920 | you work, your commute.

00:31:06.400 | You need to care about that if you want remote work to be like a something you really like

00:31:11.360 | about your job and not something that you're like indifferent towards or maybe even makes

00:31:14.560 | it worse.

00:31:15.560 | So there you go.

00:31:18.960 | Remote work.

00:31:20.840 | The hardest thing writing about remote work, Jesse, is actually the different terminology

00:31:23.720 | because you can't just keep saying the word remote work and also you use work as a verb

00:31:27.920 | often and you get redundant works.

00:31:29.900 | So you have like virtual work and telework and remote work, but then you have to throw

00:31:33.400 | in telecommuting, even though that's an old term, because it allows you to reference the

00:31:36.680 | concept without repeating the word work.

00:31:38.600 | It's actually like a surprisingly tricky thing.

00:31:40.980 | It's hard to have the right references to write about this.

00:31:44.280 | Yeah, I've noticed that.

00:31:45.520 | You also use the word, did you use bloviation?

00:31:48.120 | Yes.

00:31:49.120 | What does that mean?

00:31:50.120 | Bloviation.

00:31:51.120 | That's the talk in a sort of like loudmouth or brash manner.

00:31:55.840 | As made famous by Bill O'Reilly.

00:31:59.640 | Remember his show on Fox News?

00:32:00.880 | Yeah.

00:32:01.880 | He would always say something.

00:32:02.880 | I forgot the exact context.

00:32:03.880 | This is like 90s, I don't know.

00:32:04.880 | It's like childhood.

00:32:05.880 | But he always would say, I don't know if he was doing like reader, I don't know the show

00:32:11.200 | well.

00:32:12.200 | Maybe it was like reader mail or something, but he would always say something, no bloviation

00:32:18.040 | or don't bloviate, I don't know.

00:32:20.360 | He liked to use that word.

00:32:21.360 | And it was like funny and ironic because he was a bloviator.

00:32:25.080 | Brash and loudmouth.

00:32:26.080 | It was like this ironic thing.

00:32:27.080 | It's a good term, bloviate.

00:32:28.840 | All right.

00:32:29.840 | Well, we got some good questions coming up.

00:32:31.960 | But first, let's hear briefly from a sponsor.

00:32:34.880 | I want to talk about our friends at Notion.

00:32:38.160 | You heard me talk about Notion.

00:32:39.160 | It's a tool that helps you combine your notes, docs, and projects into one space.

00:32:43.680 | That's simple and beautifully designed.

00:32:46.920 | What's cool is you can now leverage the power of AI right inside Notion across all of your

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00:33:10.040 | So we had a bunch of people write in about Notion.

00:33:13.200 | What episode was this, Jesse?

00:33:14.200 | 335.

00:33:15.200 | So that's not long ago.

00:33:16.200 | Yeah.

00:33:17.200 | I was talking about an issue I was having with calendars and trying to sync my calendar

00:33:21.520 | with my wife's calendar and then another calendar.

00:33:23.640 | It was kind of a complicated setup I had about how I wanted to track various commitments.

00:33:28.720 | Multiple people unsolicited wrote in and said, "Oh, you could build a system to do that

00:33:32.420 | easy in Notion.

00:33:35.160 | That would be your tool."

00:33:36.160 | So it's an example of the type of places people use Notion.

00:33:38.160 | "Oh, I'm going to build a little custom information system here to keep track of different events

00:33:41.640 | between various people with the relevant information."

00:33:44.600 | I mentioned our ad agency had this cool system they'd built before with Notion to keep track

00:33:48.840 | of our ads.

00:33:49.840 | "Show me what ads we need to read this week."

00:33:52.120 | "All right.

00:33:53.120 | Well, let me click on this ad.

00:33:54.120 | Now show me all of the reads we've done for this ad and how many reads are coming up.

00:33:57.760 | Show me the script for this ad.

00:33:59.520 | Now show me a calendar where I can see all the places where this shows up."

00:34:02.200 | These sort of complicated information systems, you can make them easy in Notion.

00:34:06.140 | But now that they have the AI support, all of this just becomes even better.

00:34:11.080 | The Notion AI will help you write.

00:34:12.880 | It can jumpstart a brainstorm and turn your messy notes into something polished.

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00:34:22.820 | It's no surprise that Notion is used by over half of Fortune 500 companies and teams that

00:34:27.200 | use Notion send less email, cancel more meetings, save time searching for their work, and reduce

00:34:32.800 | spending on tools, which helps keep everyone on the same page.

00:34:36.460 | I'm all about structured work.

00:34:37.960 | We just talked on the deep dive.

00:34:39.680 | Notion is a great tool for achieving that goal.

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00:34:56.720 | And when you use our link, you will be supporting our show.

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00:36:14.800 | That's oracle.com/deepquestions.

00:36:15.800 | All right, Jesse, let's move on to the questions.

00:36:21.200 | All right, first question is from Alex, and we have a video.

00:36:25.280 | Alex says, what are your views on focus and attention management compared to time management?

00:36:30.200 | All right, so I'm glad we have a video for this one because I'm not exactly sure how

00:36:34.200 | he's using these terms.

00:36:35.200 | So for those who are watching, instead of just listening, we're going to bring this

00:36:38.920 | video up here on the screen now, but everyone will be able to hear it.

00:36:43.980 | Is that of focus and attention management instead of time management?

00:36:50.680 | Now a lot of people are drawn to time management because they recognize a problem that they

00:36:54.760 | find it difficult to get stuff done throughout the day.

00:36:58.640 | They feel a lack of time to do things.

00:37:02.920 | But it's important to realize that that's not actually what it is.

00:37:06.960 | You see, we as humans don't have a great sense of time to begin with.

00:37:11.680 | So how is it that we can notice a lack of time?

00:37:15.040 | The thing is that what we're noticing isn't a lack of time.

00:37:17.200 | What we're noticing is a lack of result or a lack of the ability to do certain activities

00:37:23.640 | or get certain tasks done.

00:37:26.360 | So the question is, if I could extend out time infinitely, would that solve the problem?

00:37:32.560 | Naturally the answer seems to be yes.

00:37:34.400 | But actually no, because during that time we would end up just scheduling and wanting

00:37:39.080 | to do more things.

00:37:40.580 | So take this for example.

00:37:41.920 | Let's say that a day was only one hour long.

00:37:45.480 | Would we even try to do as much as we want to do in a normal day or a normal week?

00:37:50.920 | The answer is naturally no.

00:37:53.480 | So what we're noticing actually is a failure of our own behavior or action at fulfilling

00:38:01.760 | a certain set of tasks or activities that we wanted to do.

00:38:06.360 | All right.

00:38:07.360 | I think I get what he's saying.

00:38:09.520 | I was a little distracted.

00:38:10.880 | I don't know if you noticed this, Jesse, which is a new YouTube format I haven't seen before.

00:38:16.080 | Do you notice while he's talking, he's sort of drawing pictures.

00:38:21.480 | Actually the video is four years old.

00:38:22.840 | I notice it too.

00:38:23.840 | Yeah.

00:38:24.840 | He must be doing it.

00:38:25.840 | Yeah.

00:38:26.840 | But he's not doing it live.

00:38:27.840 | So he must be going back afterwards.

00:38:29.360 | And he's just as bad of an artist as I am.

00:38:31.160 | So that's interesting.

00:38:32.160 | But man, that's an interesting format.

00:38:34.920 | So imagine if you just had my bad drawings next to me this whole time.

00:38:37.800 | I think I get what he's saying.

00:38:39.200 | All right.

00:38:40.200 | Tell me if this seems like a fair summary, Jesse, because you listen to it as well.

00:38:43.560 | The point I'm trying to pull out of this from him is that he's saying it's not just about

00:38:50.340 | how much time you have to do things, which is what time management cares about.

00:38:56.200 | Your ability to focus or pay attention matters as well, because if that runs out, who cares

00:39:02.240 | if you have 10 more hours for you?

00:39:04.320 | Right.

00:39:05.320 | You're not going to do anything.

00:39:06.320 | Mm-hmm (affirmative).

00:39:07.320 | And it's like you need to care about your focus and attention management as much or

00:39:10.400 | maybe even more than time management.

00:39:11.680 | Does that seem fair?

00:39:12.680 | Yeah.

00:39:13.680 | There was a book back in the early days of my writing, Tony Schwartz wrote a book called

00:39:19.000 | The Power of Full Engagement, and it was about energy management.

00:39:23.880 | This was a big deal in the business space.

00:39:26.320 | This probably would have been an early 2000s-era style book.

00:39:28.560 | I actually met him once.

00:39:29.560 | We spoke at the same conference.

00:39:33.160 | I'm trying to remember.

00:39:36.560 | Back in the day when I did more of this stuff, so this would have been like the 2000s.

00:39:39.620 | His argument, I'll add it to the list, was like your energy is what matters.

00:39:42.280 | If your energy runs out, you can't do any work.

00:39:44.940 | So if you're a business person, his argument was, you should care a lot about how much

00:39:49.140 | energy can I maintain throughout the day, and that has to do with diet and sleep and

00:39:52.760 | variability, et cetera.

00:39:53.860 | So I'll throw that into this same sort of focus and attention management category.

00:39:59.260 | Here's how I think about these things.

00:40:01.380 | Time management is about making a reasonable plan for the time you have available, typically

00:40:04.940 | like on the scale of a day.

00:40:06.020 | I want to make a good plan for the time I have available today.

00:40:09.060 | I'm managing my time as opposed to just sort of reactively trying to execute tasks as I

00:40:16.060 | feel like I have time to do it.

00:40:17.780 | So time block planning is a classic time management move.

00:40:20.660 | You're saying, I want to manage the time I have available today to accomplish, I want

00:40:25.240 | a reasonable plan, whatever that is, to get a lot done or to get certain key things done

00:40:29.780 | or to relax.

00:40:30.780 | But you're managing your time towards a goal to accomplish a reasonable plan.

00:40:36.740 | I think of energy management, focus management, attention management, all of these sort of

00:40:41.820 | things.

00:40:43.740 | They all control what reasonable means.

00:40:49.660 | What are you capable of accomplishing with your time-managed plan?

00:40:55.540 | So let me make this a little bit more concrete.

00:40:57.660 | Let's say you have bad energy management.

00:41:01.980 | You're sleeping poorly.

00:41:03.820 | You're out of shape.

00:41:05.620 | You're eating poorly.

00:41:06.980 | Your morning is like doughnuts and energy drinks, and you just crash, right?

00:41:12.500 | You really crash by mid-morning, and then you have a terrible lunch, and you have an

00:41:17.220 | hour-long carb high, and then you crash again.

00:41:20.220 | It's hard for you to focus.

00:41:22.340 | What is reasonably possible for you to do when you're making your plan for the day is

00:41:26.960 | really limited by that, because you only have a certain number of windows where you can

00:41:30.220 | really be doing good work.

00:41:32.100 | So your space of reasonable plans when you're doing your time management is somewhat constrained

00:41:37.220 | here.

00:41:38.220 | You don't have a reasonable plan available, for example, where you get after something

00:41:44.480 | hard all afternoon because your energy is not there.

00:41:46.900 | Here's another concrete example.

00:41:48.260 | Let's say your attention management is very poor.

00:41:50.140 | You're like a typical young person.

00:41:52.480 | You are on your phone a lot.

00:41:54.520 | Even when you're working, you're constantly contact-shifting and quick-checking your phone

00:41:57.780 | and seeing what's going on on TikTok or seeing what's going on with text messages with your

00:42:01.220 | friends or et cetera.

00:42:03.780 | This also reduces the possibility of reasonable plans you can succeed with when you're managing

00:42:08.780 | your time for the day, because your attention is so divided that it's very high friction

00:42:13.000 | to focus on anything, and you're probably better suited.

00:42:16.100 | The plans that are reasonable are going to be those that are built around lots of small

00:42:18.660 | tasks that already have you divide your attention or assume a division of your attention.

00:42:21.980 | You can't really have long, deep sessions.

00:42:26.460 | So energy management, focus management, attention management, that type of stuff gives you your

00:42:32.380 | set of options for what is possible for a given day.

00:42:35.700 | And then time management is how you, once you've chosen one of those options, how you

00:42:39.420 | actually plan your time to execute it.

00:42:42.540 | The time management part of your brain is like, "Hey, let me know what's on the plate.

00:42:46.780 | You give me something we can actually do and I'll arrange the time to make sure it happens.

00:42:50.700 | But if you're really distracted or your energy is really low or what have you, all I do is

00:42:55.520 | move the time around.

00:42:56.740 | I can't control what you're actually able to do with it.

00:42:59.140 | So you can tell me to schedule a day where we're going to focus deeply on a book chapter

00:43:03.460 | for six hours, but that's not going to happen because of these other things.

00:43:07.420 | So you need both of these.

00:43:09.860 | Time management, you need some notion of how you control your time in the day so that you're

00:43:13.420 | in control and your time doesn't control you.

00:43:15.380 | Otherwise you're just going to get pushed around by the incoming and reactive.

00:43:18.500 | Managing your time critically does not mean optimizing your time.

00:43:21.780 | Managing your time critically does not mean trying to maximize the number of things you

00:43:25.140 | do.

00:43:26.500 | We talked about this in the deep dive.

00:43:28.300 | Time blocking is a fantastic tool for people who want to work less because you can have

00:43:31.740 | super clarity about, "This time I'm not working and I feel good about it because I know what

00:43:36.620 | I'm doing before and the key things are getting done."

00:43:40.180 | You also need to be working on long-term things like your energy, your focus, and your attention

00:43:44.260 | because that gives you more options when you manage your time.

00:43:46.940 | And so you have to work on reclaiming your brain and getting away from distractions.

00:43:50.220 | You got to get comfort with focusing on hard things.

00:43:52.300 | That's a skill you have to train with just like you might train to play the guitar.

00:43:56.140 | You be careful about energy and how you eat and how you sleep and how you exercise.

00:43:59.700 | All of this gives you more options.

00:44:02.580 | And then time management is just how you play with whatever of these options you choose.

00:44:06.300 | All right.

00:44:07.300 | So I don't know.

00:44:08.300 | That's my distinction.

00:44:09.300 | You need both.

00:44:10.300 | I think it's a good question because sometimes people have one but not the other.

00:44:12.260 | I know people who are really focused on, "I don't want to be distracted.

00:44:16.020 | I read hard books, I don't use my phone as a default source of distraction, I have hobbies

00:44:20.900 | that force me to focus.

00:44:21.900 | My mind is like a tool."

00:44:23.220 | I know some academics like this, but they have bad time management.

00:44:26.980 | So they don't actually apply that tool in a way that would really help them achieve

00:44:32.140 | their goals.

00:44:33.140 | And I have another people who are just so locked in on time management and I'm all time

00:44:37.060 | blocked and it's all multi-scaled and I really control my time.

00:44:41.020 | But their attention is just shot and nothing gets done.

00:44:45.260 | You really do have to have both.

00:44:46.300 | I think about that a lot.

00:44:49.580 | This is the big issue I have with the anti-productivity crowd.

00:44:51.660 | They think if you just don't do time management, somehow the work that you're expected to do

00:44:56.620 | goes away.

00:44:57.620 | It doesn't go away.

00:44:59.300 | You can be disorganized.

00:45:01.300 | The work you have to do is not generated as a side effect of managing your time.

00:45:07.860 | It just exists.

00:45:09.180 | This is the expectations for your job.

00:45:11.900 | You can manage your time or not.

00:45:14.740 | It's not what makes this happen.

00:45:17.060 | Tasks do not, like we used to think about eels, just sort of materialize out of the

00:45:23.140 | ether.

00:45:24.140 | They show up in the mud at some point.

00:45:27.140 | The tasks are here because your boss wants you to do these things.

00:45:31.560 | You can manage your time or not, but the management is not making those tasks less.

00:45:35.980 | The management of your time is not making the tasks appear.

00:45:39.340 | So, anyways, what do we got next?

00:45:42.300 | Next question is from Max.

00:45:43.460 | "I work as a technical journalist for F1 website.

00:45:47.060 | How can I self-study technical concepts to improve my articles so that they can be so

00:45:51.260 | good they can't be ignored?"

00:45:53.180 | I think when it comes to technical knowledge, you basically have to take yourself back to

00:45:56.940 | school, which means you need to be in some way simulated or otherwise tested on the new

00:46:03.580 | things you're trying to learn.

00:46:05.340 | All right, I'm trying to understand this complicated topic.

00:46:09.700 | I need some way of being tested on my understanding of that, that I'm studying for, and in studying

00:46:14.620 | for that test, I learn it.

00:46:16.460 | What you can't do is just read a bunch of stuff and hope it sticks.

00:46:19.500 | Some stuff will stick, but this is a very inefficient way of doing it.

00:46:23.500 | So you need to test.

00:46:24.820 | Now, there might not be an actual test.

00:46:26.820 | You have to sort of find some way of simulating that.

00:46:28.980 | I am going to write a full explanatory summary of this particular game theory topic that

00:46:34.500 | the F1 teams are now using, and I'm going to give it to one of our game theoreticians

00:46:40.060 | who works on the team.

00:46:41.060 | They're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:42.060 | I'll take a look at it, mate."

00:46:43.060 | You're like, "Okay."

00:46:44.060 | They're going to look at this and see if I really understand this or not.

00:46:45.420 | So now I have a test that I'm working towards that's forcing me to actually integrate the

00:46:50.060 | information and study it like I would study material if I was still a student.

00:46:54.500 | So when it comes to that type of technical stuff, it's just like I say for college kids.

00:47:00.700 | Active recall, producing information from scratch, being tested on your knowledge.

00:47:05.580 | That's how you learn it.

00:47:07.000 | And it's quick.

00:47:08.000 | It's actually a very...

00:47:09.000 | If you have a test coming up and you're doing active recall for that test, you'll learn

00:47:12.500 | the material quick.

00:47:13.500 | It's very hard, but you'll learn the material quick as compared to just reading it again

00:47:16.460 | and again and hoping that you understand it.

00:47:19.760 | So test yourself, even if that's just creating the test on your own.

00:47:25.100 | I'm assuming he means racing, right?

00:47:26.940 | Yeah.

00:47:27.940 | F1?

00:47:28.940 | Yeah.

00:47:29.940 | Yeah.

00:47:30.940 | I think it's a good combination for, you know...

00:47:31.940 | He's recently out of school too.

00:47:32.940 | So it's like his first job.

00:47:34.300 | I met some F1 people years back when I went to more computer science conferences.

00:47:40.660 | I went to a conference in Brazil, and at the computer science conference, they had someone

00:47:45.340 | from an F1 team and he was telling me all about the...

00:47:48.820 | I used this example in the question, he was a game theory expert.

00:47:51.780 | So like his whole thing with the mathematics of trying to figure out optimal pitting.

00:47:57.140 | And with game theory, you figure out like the equilibrium.

00:48:01.460 | So the mixed strategy for all the racers to do in terms of how often they're going to

00:48:06.180 | do pit stops, that gets you to a place where no one person can now improve their position

00:48:11.860 | anymore.

00:48:13.060 | And because they're so hyper-rational, these teams, the pit stop strategies would evolve

00:48:18.180 | towards these like Nash equilibriums because they would figure out like what is the absolute

00:48:22.220 | optimal...

00:48:23.220 | Like if we do this, but if you're pitting this way and we pit this way, it'll be an

00:48:26.780 | advantage.

00:48:27.780 | But if you know we're going to pit that way, you're going to pit a different way, and that's

00:48:29.940 | going to make this a disadvantage.

00:48:30.940 | And you eventually find this sort of true style, they call them a Nash equilibrium,

00:48:34.580 | but it's like a point in the fitness landscape where you can't unilaterally improve your

00:48:39.540 | position.

00:48:40.540 | So you figure out these strategies eventually where, okay, this is kind of the best we can

00:48:45.300 | do.

00:48:46.300 | And that's what they would do.

00:48:47.300 | It's just like straight up math guy hanging out with all these cool like F1 people.

00:48:51.740 | They spend so much money on those teams.

00:48:54.580 | It's crazy.

00:48:55.580 | How much do they spend?

00:48:56.580 | Have you seen the show on Netflix?

00:48:58.340 | I saw some of it.

00:48:59.460 | You see those centers?

00:49:00.460 | It'll be for like one race car will have like what looks to be essentially like the headquarters

00:49:06.900 | for Stark Industries, like one race car and like whole team.

00:49:10.700 | I do not understand how that spawns.

00:49:13.780 | There must be so much money in that because they spend so much money, just billions.

00:49:17.740 | I don't know if it's billions, but like hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:49:20.460 | It must be worth it because it's such an international sport.

00:49:23.060 | Yeah.

00:49:24.060 | And it's marketing.

00:49:25.060 | Yeah, I guess.

00:49:26.060 | It's marketing and brand recognition, but man, they spend and like I'm not afraid to

00:49:32.420 | say it.

00:49:33.420 | They spend more than we spend on our show here at Team Questions.

00:49:37.300 | I don't want to shock people.

00:49:40.460 | They spend more.

00:49:41.460 | All right.

00:49:42.460 | What do we got next?

00:49:43.460 | Next question is from Jacob.

00:49:44.460 | I'm a PhD student in aerospace engineering at UCLA and I'm considering dropping out after

00:49:49.380 | three and a half years.

00:49:51.020 | My goal was to be an astronaut.

00:49:53.180 | My PhD topic is okay.

00:49:55.140 | I'm overwhelmed and I have financial troubles.

00:49:57.540 | It'll probably take me another three years to finish it if I stick with the program.

00:50:01.220 | Should I enter the space industry now, which is a master's?

00:50:04.820 | Look, Jacob, I think this is a situation where evidence-based career planning is probably

00:50:11.860 | lacking and is now needed to be pretty aggressively inserted.

00:50:17.420 | So evidence-based career planning is, think of it as the complement to my concept of lifestyle

00:50:23.500 | centric planning, which also I don't know that you're doing.

00:50:26.620 | I think I want to be an astronaut is often the epitome of grand goal planning, right?

00:50:33.180 | This one goal is going to make my life better as opposed to lifestyle centric planning,

00:50:36.460 | but I'll put my lifestyle centric planning tirade to the side here and focus on, again,

00:50:41.380 | its complement is evidence-based career planning because once you're actually going towards

00:50:46.180 | a plan, be it a lifestyle centric plan or a grand goal plan, you need to figure out

00:50:50.740 | the right way to make progress and here you have to ground your decisions and evidence

00:50:54.840 | from real people who understand how that part of the world works, who are telling you clearly

00:51:00.040 | what you're doing makes sense and it's the right way to get there.

00:51:04.540 | People skip this.

00:51:05.540 | It sounds obvious, like of course you would do that, but people don't.

00:51:10.380 | They write themselves stories where the moral of the story is whatever move that is sort

00:51:16.780 | of available or feels emotionally interesting is like the right thing to do.

00:51:21.700 | You go off to get your doctorate, not because you sat down and we're like talking to people

00:51:26.380 | from the NASA program and like this is how this works and if you go here and get this

00:51:31.340 | degree plus this type of training, you've got this pretty good chance of actually making

00:51:35.180 | it to the program and here's how you can part of evidence career planning, by the way, is

00:51:38.700 | learning what the milestones are along the way you can use to assess that you're making

00:51:41.900 | progress.

00:51:42.900 | Like look, if you're here by your third year, then you are still on track, but if you're

00:51:46.340 | not then this is probably not going to be for you.

00:51:48.660 | That's evidence-based career planning, but what people do instead is like I don't know,

00:51:52.420 | I want to be an astronaut.

00:51:53.420 | I also kind of grad school, this seems I can apply to this now, there's something kind

00:51:56.860 | of romantic about being at UCLA.

00:51:58.500 | Let's just do that.

00:51:59.500 | Like I know astronauts have these degrees often and you kind of go off and after a while

00:52:04.340 | you're like I don't know, I don't have any money and I don't know if this really matters

00:52:06.880 | and maybe I should stop it.

00:52:08.460 | Those answers, if you did evidence-based career planning, should be crystal clear.

00:52:12.260 | So what you need to do now is once you identify what you're looking for, and I do think you

00:52:17.140 | need the lifestyle plan here, right?

00:52:20.420 | You got to talk to people who are going to sanity check your plan and you got to hear

00:52:23.180 | things you don't want to hear necessarily.

00:52:24.740 | They might say this doesn't matter.

00:52:27.140 | I don't care about that degree or this degree does matter, this other thing doesn't, right?

00:52:32.500 | But you want, if you're especially if you're making a move like getting various types of

00:52:36.460 | graduate degrees, you need crystal clear evidence from people who know this degree will get

00:52:41.060 | you this opportunity.

00:52:42.580 | Without this degree you can't.

00:52:43.780 | It has to be crystal clear.

00:52:45.500 | This is exactly why I'm doing this.

00:52:48.380 | You cannot get job X at space industry company Y without master's degree Z.

00:52:56.100 | So go get that degree from this place.

00:52:57.660 | This is a sufficiently good place that if you get the degree here, it will open up this

00:53:00.940 | pool of jobs.

00:53:01.940 | You'll probably get one of those jobs and here's what this job is really like.

00:53:04.580 | You need that type of information.

00:53:06.300 | Otherwise you're sort of just wandering through the landscape of possibilities, accruing credentials

00:53:10.320 | you think are interesting and hoping it leads to interesting things.

00:53:13.660 | So this is a time to do serious evidence-based planning.

00:53:16.300 | Now you could stick with your grand goal of being an astronaut, sure.

00:53:19.940 | Get a sanity check.

00:53:22.020 | Is this possible for me?

00:53:23.980 | If so, exactly what would I need to do from here and what would be my milestones along

00:53:28.620 | the way I would have to hit on this path so I know if I'm failing on one of these milestones

00:53:32.140 | I can eject off that path before I go too much farther?

00:53:37.120 | Or you could do lifestyle-centric planning.

00:53:38.120 | I'm probably not going to be an astronaut, but what do I want to do?

00:53:41.900 | What do I want my life to be like?

00:53:42.900 | Where do I want to live in the country?

00:53:44.740 | What do I want my daily work to be like?

00:53:47.940 | What's resonating?

00:53:48.940 | Is seeing early videos of Mark Rober when he still worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

00:53:54.660 | on the Mars Rover, is that like, hey, this lifestyle looks cool.

00:53:58.660 | He's working with cool people in a clean suit and you're building things and it's complicated

00:54:02.380 | engineering and you get to see your work actually up there and it's challenging, but the hours

00:54:05.900 | are usually reasonable and you can live in this cool place and mountain bike all the

00:54:08.940 | time.

00:54:09.940 | Actually, if I work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I can live in Alameda and you build this whole

00:54:14.980 | picture out of this would be a great lifestyle.

00:54:17.700 | That's the other way to do this here.

00:54:18.700 | You build out this vision of a lifestyle that takes advantage of capital you have and say,

00:54:22.820 | okay, how do I get there as closely as possible?

00:54:25.340 | And then you're getting your evidence from, if I want this job at this place, what degree

00:54:28.380 | do I need?

00:54:29.380 | What milestones can I look at to see if my degree or grades or program is sufficient

00:54:32.540 | to get it?

00:54:33.540 | What else are they looking for?

00:54:34.660 | So you got to choose what you're looking for and then you got to get the evidence.

00:54:38.700 | Pretend like you're writing a book about whatever you decide you're trying to do, like you're

00:54:41.800 | writing a short book called "How to Do X."

00:54:46.140 | Like I'm doing research to write a how-to book about how to succeed in this thing.

00:54:50.720 | Gather that evidence, gird your loins because you might not like what you hear.

00:54:55.020 | And in fact, you might hear for your plan, no, you're off the path.

00:54:59.340 | That's just not possible.

00:55:00.340 | You got to change.

00:55:01.340 | Like, okay, great.

00:55:02.340 | Let me change now before it's too late.

00:55:05.580 | So clarity about what you're looking for, whether that's grand goal or lifestyle centric,

00:55:08.900 | and then you got to do evidence-based planning.

00:55:10.220 | You got to talk to real people and get real evidence about these specific steps I'm doing

00:55:13.900 | specifically will help me and get those milestones figured out.

00:55:17.820 | Here's how I will know before I get to the very end of this plan, if things are not going

00:55:22.460 | well.

00:55:23.460 | So those would be the things I would put in there.

00:55:27.180 | People leave out the milestones are good.

00:55:28.500 | I think it's important.

00:55:31.700 | Technical programs in particular, you can milestone this very clearly.

00:55:36.540 | If you want to be a professor, for example, which honestly is outside of some exceptions,

00:55:41.820 | some fields, that is the primary reason to get a PhD is to be in academia.

00:55:49.140 | There are really clear milestones you can get.

00:55:51.780 | Am I really going to like, so let's say you have a dream of you want a job like mine.

00:55:55.940 | Like I want to be a tenured professor at a top 20 university with, you know, grad students

00:56:02.660 | and working on like have a relatively limited teaching load and great kids that I'm teaching

00:56:07.420 | and like work in cool research and travel.

00:56:08.820 | Like, you know, I want to be like a, what we think about when we think about professors.

00:56:12.660 | There are crystal clear milestones you can have in your graduate program for if I have

00:56:17.740 | not hit this milestone at this point, maybe I want to report, right?

00:56:23.740 | Like because you need milestone number one for a job like that.

00:56:28.440 | Are you at an absolute top program?

00:56:31.460 | For undergrad, right?

00:56:32.460 | Well, yeah, but yes, for undergrad and then for grad school.

00:56:35.700 | So like if we're going to look at the grad school milestones, it's like, okay, are you

00:56:38.780 | at a top five program?

00:56:39.900 | If not, like, ooh, already you want to start questioning this, right?

00:56:43.700 | Two, you figure out along the way, are these courses pretty easy for me, right?

00:56:50.700 | You know, I aced all my courses at MIT.

00:56:53.580 | If you're not acing them, they're not, they're not trying to make them super hard.

00:56:56.140 | I mean, they're hard because it's at MIT, but they're not trying to trip you up.

00:56:59.460 | It's like, you should be able to, these should not be hard for you.

00:57:02.460 | If they are, you'll figure this out in your first two years.

00:57:04.700 | You're like, okay, maybe this is not for me because you have to just own this stuff, right?

00:57:10.500 | Next research, like once you're like three years in, am I publishing good stuff?

00:57:16.500 | And if you're not, right, you're being helped along by your advisor, they're putting you

00:57:20.940 | on things, you know, you got to ripcord it because you have to be a standout researcher

00:57:27.260 | in your graduate program to have a shot of getting, yeah, and publishing papers in hard

00:57:31.940 | places, unambiguously.

00:57:33.440 | This paper was published here, it's hard to publish a paper here, it's getting cited.

00:57:37.020 | You're not doing that by three years in, again, you should ripcord.

00:57:40.780 | Now, some places kind of do this for you.

00:57:42.860 | It's like MIT has a, at least they did, I don't know now.

00:57:47.860 | They had a very ambiguously defined qualification as part of your doctoral qualifications that

00:57:54.100 | was called the research qualifier.

00:57:56.100 | And it was basically ambiguous on purpose.

00:57:59.380 | It was a way for them to basically move you out if you couldn't deliver research.

00:58:05.740 | And you have to have done it at some point by the end of your third year, I think.

00:58:09.460 | And what it was was, like on paper, it was you have a panel of professors and you present

00:58:16.120 | some of your research.

00:58:18.020 | So what happened is, if you're not really doing good research, this is where you would

00:58:22.260 | have nothing to present.

00:58:24.020 | And then they would say you failed your research qualifier.

00:58:26.220 | Cornell, or maybe this was Carnegie Mellon, I think Carnegie Mellon, they had a day called

00:58:30.940 | Black Friday, where they would call, I don't know if a second or third year grad students,

00:58:35.420 | or it's just like, we're just going to make this easier for you.

00:58:40.180 | You're not going to be a very successful graduate out of here.

00:58:42.540 | So leave the program now.

00:58:44.220 | And it's not necessarily a bad thing.

00:58:46.040 | Like at MIT, you can't apply to get a master's in computer science.

00:58:50.520 | You can only get one along the way on the way to a PhD.

00:58:54.720 | Like I have a master's in computer science from MIT as well.

00:58:56.840 | You just get it along the way to your PhD.

00:58:59.720 | So they're nice about it.

00:59:01.400 | If it's not coming together, they're going to let you get that master's, so you'll leave

00:59:05.600 | with the master's degree.

00:59:07.160 | And you didn't pay for it, because you were in a doctoral program where you took these

00:59:10.120 | classes.

00:59:11.120 | So you're getting paid.

00:59:12.120 | You're not paying for it.

00:59:13.120 | So it's like you got a free master's.

00:59:14.120 | There's several of the people I know who have left at that stage have just made bank, because

00:59:20.080 | they're like, I've got my master's from MIT.

00:59:22.040 | Google, here I come.

00:59:23.160 | And 10 years later, you're at your whiteboard and the professor and they're in their yacht.

00:59:30.120 | But anyways.

00:59:31.120 | But those people weren't that top of students.

00:59:33.720 | They can still make all that money in the private sector?

00:59:36.480 | They are top students, because they're at the MIT doctoral program, which meant that

00:59:42.840 | they were like the top student in their undergrad class.

00:59:45.720 | It's just the stakes keep getting higher.

00:59:48.140 | Like if you're there, if you have a master's in computer science from MIT, meant you were

00:59:53.400 | top one or two in your undergrad program, and it was probably a top undergrad program.

00:59:57.420 | And then you have professors saying like, this is one of my best students.

01:00:00.960 | It's just so-- what it means if you leave there in a master's program, really what it

01:00:04.760 | means is like, I couldn't-- research didn't work for me.

01:00:07.400 | And it's not that you're not smart.

01:00:08.800 | It's just there's also like an entrepreneurship to it.

01:00:10.760 | And I don't know.

01:00:11.760 | Just like you're like, this isn't working for me.

01:00:12.760 | I'm not able to sort of write a bunch of papers.

01:00:15.320 | This is not coming together, which if you're at Google, you might not care.

01:00:18.560 | Yeah.

01:00:19.560 | Yeah.

01:00:20.560 | I mean, I remember being-- and I don't mean to go off too much of a tangent here.

01:00:23.720 | I remember someone from our field early on going off to Google.

01:00:28.000 | They're a grad student.

01:00:29.000 | And they're like, I don't think it's going to come together as a-- I'm not killing it

01:00:32.440 | enough to be a professor.

01:00:33.440 | I'm going to go to Google.

01:00:34.440 | And they came back to one of our conferences to present research they had started before

01:00:37.760 | they went.

01:00:38.760 | And I remember how horrified me and my fellow theoreticians were when they talked about

01:00:41.640 | that he had the program now, he had to write computer code.

01:00:45.000 | We're like, oh, my god.

01:00:46.560 | Because for like a theoretician who's training to be a professor, to have to write computer

01:00:51.360 | code is like you are training for the MBA and you're running the locker room.

01:00:57.840 | It was just like-- I remember that.

01:01:00.200 | Oh, you have to code?

01:01:01.200 | By the way, he's killing it, killed it.

01:01:04.040 | He's going to Google in the early 2000s like he's killing it.

01:01:07.840 | But anyway, it just gets so, so rarified.

01:01:11.240 | And then out of that class, only the top x percent go off to the tier one, R1 schools

01:01:16.880 | for professorships.

01:01:18.080 | So then in terms of the courses, when you were doing well, were a lot of people not

01:01:22.040 | doing well?

01:01:23.040 | I don't know.

01:01:24.040 | Because it seems to me that everybody would be doing well if they got a master's.

01:01:27.640 | Yeah.

01:01:28.640 | I think they made those courses-- Like, did anybody struggle?

01:01:32.240 | Yeah.

01:01:33.240 | They're just very quiet about it.

01:01:34.640 | Yeah.

01:01:35.640 | Well, you have to.

01:01:36.640 | At MIT-- and I'm just using them as an example because I know them well-- you had to get

01:01:42.320 | really good grades or you're out too.

01:01:44.240 | Yeah.

01:01:45.240 | I think you had to get A's or A minuses and everything.

01:01:48.560 | So everybody's pretty much doing good?

01:01:50.040 | Everyone's doing good, but they're kicked out of the program.

01:01:51.960 | There is no like, oh, yeah.

01:01:53.320 | And they wouldn't get a master's.

01:01:54.880 | They would have got-- yeah, you have to.

01:01:56.440 | So right.

01:01:57.440 | So you would not-- you had to have gotten A's or A minuses in-- it was called a technical

01:02:03.960 | qualifying exam.

01:02:04.960 | And they split the courses into buckets, theory and systems or whatever.

01:02:09.200 | And you had to pick a course from each of the buckets and do really well in it.

01:02:11.920 | So if you didn't do that, you didn't pass your technical qualifier, you couldn't get

01:02:15.360 | your master's.

01:02:16.360 | OK.

01:02:17.360 | So you're right.

01:02:18.360 | You're right.

01:02:19.360 | But you really didn't hear about those kids because they're--

01:02:20.880 | So that particular kid wouldn't be going to Google and crushing it, most likely?

01:02:25.240 | They-- well, yeah.

01:02:27.400 | But they still got into MIT.

01:02:28.800 | That's good point.

01:02:29.800 | So they were still like, we're-- it might just be they just didn't have their act together.

01:02:32.440 | I mean, the classes, I guess, were hard.

01:02:34.920 | God, I don't remember.

01:02:37.400 | I remember-- all I remember is taking theory with Mike Sipser.

01:02:40.120 | Is it similar classes that you teach now for your grad students?

01:02:42.880 | I did.

01:02:43.880 | Yeah, it was interesting.

01:02:44.880 | Like, I took theory of computation, graduate theory of computation with Michael Sipser,

01:02:48.640 | who was the head of the math department at MIT at the time.

01:02:50.840 | But he wrote the definitive textbook on it, the Sipser textbook on complexity and computability

01:02:55.680 | theory.

01:02:56.680 | And then when I got to Georgetown, like, that's what I taught was doctoral student-- the doctoral

01:03:01.720 | level theory of computation using Mike Sipser's textbook.

01:03:04.320 | Do you still talk to him?

01:03:06.120 | No, I didn't.

01:03:07.120 | These classes are huge.

01:03:08.120 | Oh.

01:03:09.120 | It's like Goodwill Hunting over there.

01:03:10.120 | You're in these old auditoriums where you have the little flip-over desk thing that

01:03:14.600 | comes next to you.

01:03:15.600 | And Sipser taught exactly out of that scene in Goodwill Hunting with the professor and

01:03:19.920 | the chalkboard.

01:03:20.920 | He has the three-level chalkboards where you pull them up and down, and he'd move them

01:03:24.480 | up and down.

01:03:25.480 | And he had teaching assistants.

01:03:26.480 | I mean, it was exactly out of Goodwill Hunting.

01:03:28.680 | And then when you would take your exams, it was in the gym.

01:03:31.120 | And they would just have like 500 seats because it would be all these classes taking them

01:03:34.640 | at the same time.

01:03:35.640 | And there'd be flags that would have the course number.

01:03:37.960 | So you'd go sit by your flag for your course number.

01:03:40.480 | And there would just be TAs wandering this giant gym full of people taking their final

01:03:45.720 | exams.

01:03:46.720 | It was really old school.

01:03:47.720 | Yeah.

01:03:48.720 | Yeah.

01:03:49.720 | I mean, it was really like, you just got to perform.

01:03:50.720 | Like, do well on this exam.

01:03:51.720 | Yeah, interesting times.

01:03:52.720 | There you go, Jacob.

01:03:53.720 | You got a good answer there.

01:03:56.720 | All right.

01:03:58.320 | You're now prepared to get your computer science degree at MIT.

01:04:02.320 | All right.

01:04:03.320 | We got to speed this up, Jesse.

01:04:04.320 | What do we got next?

01:04:05.320 | Next question is from Ahmed.

01:04:06.320 | I'm a college student in Tunisia.

01:04:08.640 | Can I use the principles of slow productivity for my coursework?

01:04:11.280 | Sorry, that was Slow Productivity Corner, too, so we have to play the music.

01:04:13.560 | Oh, let's hear some music, yeah.

01:04:14.560 | All right, Slow Productivity Corner, questions related to my book, Slow Productivity, which

01:04:24.520 | you should buy.

01:04:25.520 | All right.

01:04:26.520 | So, Ahmed's question, "Slow productivity, does it relate to learning things?"

01:04:33.960 | That's a good question.

01:04:36.960 | Yes, but I wouldn't say it the way you said it, Ahmed.

01:04:42.360 | Right?

01:04:43.360 | So, you're saying, "Should I apply the principles of slow productivity?"

01:04:45.880 | I would say this another way.

01:04:48.300 | If you treat your studies as a college student, like a job, like you use best practices, like

01:04:54.680 | do it well, it will match the principles of slow productivity, right?

01:05:01.080 | It's not that hard of a job.

01:05:03.480 | And if you're doing it right, it should match the principles of slow productivity without

01:05:07.920 | you having to start with the principles and figure out how to apply them to your student

01:05:11.880 | job.

01:05:12.880 | Because, I mean, I think there's just some best practices for being a student which are

01:05:16.000 | congruent with the principles of slow productivity, right?

01:05:18.360 | So, like, here's the things I always talk about.

01:05:22.160 | Treat your studies like a job, right?

01:05:25.040 | Don't just, like, study in some sort of ambiguous way, like, "How do I actually do this as my

01:05:29.040 | job?"

01:05:30.040 | You should auto-pilot schedule the stuff that happens regularly.

01:05:32.160 | If you know you have a problem set due every week, pick the same time on the same days

01:05:35.480 | and the same place to work on that problem set.

01:05:36.920 | If you're going to have a lab report due every other week, have on your calendar exactly

01:05:40.640 | when and where you work on that lab report, same place, same time, same days, every week.

01:05:45.240 | So you automate all the stuff you know you have to do so you don't have to make those

01:05:48.120 | decisions on the fly.

01:05:50.800 | You need to use specific study strategies.

01:05:54.520 | How are you studying for this exam?

01:05:57.200 | How are you working on your problem set?

01:05:59.040 | How are you writing a paper?

01:06:00.380 | You need specific strategies that you think are going to be very effective.

01:06:06.240 | And then you need to evaluate those strategies.

01:06:08.060 | How did this go?

01:06:09.060 | Did I do well on the test?

01:06:10.880 | Did I do well, but there was a lot of wasted time?

01:06:12.760 | Like, you go back and you evolve your study.

01:06:15.040 | What's the better way to study?

01:06:16.120 | What's a better way to write papers?

01:06:17.280 | You've got to evolve it towards what works best.

01:06:20.920 | Because a tested study strategy that you've worked on can be 3x more time efficient than

01:06:26.160 | just quote-unquote studying at the library.

01:06:28.160 | Really makes a difference.

01:06:29.160 | You want to be very specific about how you study, and you want to evolve or improve those

01:06:34.620 | based on evidence.

01:06:35.960 | There's a lot of key principles for how to build these things.

01:06:39.360 | The most relevant book here would really be my book, How to Become a Straight-A Student,

01:06:42.360 | where I talk about how actual straight-A college students who are not grinds would study.

01:06:47.240 | And you'll see principles in there like active recall rules.

01:06:49.760 | Don't just read things quietly.

01:06:50.920 | Always generate things from scratch without looking at your notes to see if you can do

01:06:54.280 | it.

01:06:55.280 | That's how you learn things.

01:06:56.280 | I talk about math classes.

01:06:57.280 | It's all about sample problems.

01:06:59.000 | Finding sample problems everywhere.

01:07:00.760 | From your book.

01:07:02.480 | From the lectures.

01:07:03.480 | From the problem sets.

01:07:04.480 | You're just like a sponge for sample problems to see if you can actually solve them.

01:07:07.800 | I have methods in there, best practices for writing papers.

01:07:10.440 | I have a sort of three-phase method for writing papers.

01:07:13.080 | I have a very specific method that's pretty analog.

01:07:16.080 | For how you manage your research for working on a college paper.

01:07:20.240 | You have to have specificity.

01:07:22.040 | So use something like my book to jumpstart those strategies, but then evolve them based

01:07:26.480 | on your own experience.

01:07:27.480 | And then finally, you just want to be careful about your time in general outside of autopilot

01:07:32.160 | scheduling.

01:07:33.400 | Time block to some degree your days.

01:07:34.800 | You don't need to time block every minute of your days as a student, but figure out

01:07:37.680 | in advance, "Hey, what studying do I need to do today?

01:07:42.040 | When am I going to do it?"

01:07:43.040 | So you don't have to time block all eight hours of a work day, but you do need to time

01:07:48.000 | block the stuff you have to do that day or is on your plan.

01:07:51.680 | You want to time block when that actually happens instead of just waiting until you

01:07:54.400 | feel like you have a bunch of time.

01:07:56.800 | The only other hack I would throw your way is at the beginning of the semester, take

01:08:00.480 | the big things, exams and big papers.

01:08:04.240 | Put them on your calendar and then work backwards.

01:08:09.440 | Work backwards a certain number of weeks and put on your calendar.

01:08:12.600 | Make plan for upcoming exam or paper.

01:08:14.920 | Typically, three to four weeks is a good scale here, but you know you have a paper due at

01:08:21.520 | the end of December.

01:08:22.520 | You should have at the beginning of December, make plan for paper due at the end of December.

01:08:26.080 | And then when you get there on your calendar, you say, "Great, now I'm going to put aside

01:08:28.720 | time for the next month for when and how I'm going to work on this paper."

01:08:34.120 | And in that way, you never have deadlines creep up.

01:08:36.240 | Anyways, do these type of things.

01:08:39.440 | Your life as a student should more or less correspond with slow productivity.

01:08:43.040 | Let's check it out.

01:08:44.840 | Do fewer things.

01:08:45.840 | I mean, okay, your workload is your workload in college.

01:08:48.280 | You just want to make sure that you're not too overloaded on any one given day.

01:08:52.000 | Work at a natural pace.

01:08:53.040 | This really gives you control over your time.

01:08:55.480 | So it's not panic before deadline and then sloth.

01:08:59.600 | It allows you to have sort of a more smoothed-out variability.

01:09:03.920 | And you can plan, "I don't want to work on Friday, but I got started on my paper a month

01:09:08.400 | early, so I'm not stuck having to work on this thing all out for three days right before

01:09:13.640 | it's due."

01:09:14.640 | That will help.

01:09:15.640 | And then obsess over quality.

01:09:16.640 | Well, that's what you're doing when you care about your study, actual study tactics.

01:09:18.880 | I care about doing well in terms of the grade I get.

01:09:23.120 | So in some sense, this book I published in 2006, How to Become a Straight-A Student,

01:09:26.920 | is like a handbook for a slow, productive lifestyle as a student.

01:09:32.400 | So maybe check that book out to help prime you, and you will see the principles of slow

01:09:38.040 | productivity will show up in your student life.

01:09:40.280 | The do fewer things you talk about a lot in that book, too, like not doing too many clubs

01:09:44.320 | and stuff like that.

01:09:45.320 | That's true.

01:09:46.320 | That's a big deal.

01:09:47.320 | Yeah, that is a big deal.

01:09:48.320 | I don't know what the culture is like in Tunisia, but there's like an American culture of doing

01:09:51.960 | a lot of extracurriculars.

01:09:52.960 | I was like, "Don't do that."

01:09:54.720 | There's an American culture of, "If I have a really hard course load, I'm going to impress

01:09:57.800 | people."

01:09:58.800 | Don't do that.

01:09:59.800 | It's going to impress maybe like your cardiologist because of like the heart attack you're going

01:10:03.880 | to have.

01:10:04.880 | But no one else notices.

01:10:06.480 | Employers don't care.

01:10:07.480 | They don't have the time to look at your schedule and understand that it was really hard that

01:10:11.320 | you were taking three computer science courses in the spring of your junior year.

01:10:14.200 | They don't know.

01:10:15.200 | Like, "What did you major in?

01:10:16.200 | Where'd you go?

01:10:17.200 | What grades did you get?"

01:10:18.200 | So make those things easier.

01:10:19.200 | Yeah, don't overload yourself.

01:10:20.800 | I was talking to a student the other day.

01:10:23.680 | I failed to convince him to change, but he had three different relatively significant

01:10:27.880 | extracurriculars going on at the same time.

01:10:30.900 | Is one of them a sport?

01:10:32.680 | No.

01:10:33.680 | Sports are killer, man.

01:10:34.680 | Man, that's what I remember.

01:10:35.960 | From my one-year experience as an NCAA athlete.

01:10:39.840 | It's time-consuming because you're traveling.

01:10:43.680 | It's not just that you're training all the time.

01:10:46.000 | But also, because I was going to school in New Hampshire, this meant even when you're

01:10:50.040 | training, you have to travel to train because the river is iced over.

01:10:53.840 | So we have to go down to Georgia.

01:10:55.800 | And then when it gets later in the season, let's go to Boston because the Charles has

01:10:59.880 | melted before the Connecticut.

01:11:01.040 | So you're traveling just to train.

01:11:02.400 | And then when you're in season, and a lot of sports, like rowing has a fall and a spring

01:11:06.600 | season, you're in hotels all the time.

01:11:08.960 | So now you're doing homework in the hotel lobbies.

01:11:15.320 | You got good at that.

01:11:16.320 | Like going down to the hotel lobby where they have a coffee and that's where you would work

01:11:18.800 | on your homework.

01:11:19.800 | It's like impossible.

01:11:20.800 | I remember that research, by the way, back when I was working on those study books 20

01:11:24.280 | years ago.

01:11:26.600 | This was clear research.

01:11:27.600 | I have no idea where this came from now.

01:11:28.640 | But I remember clearly the research was saying some things you can still get good grades

01:11:35.000 | with, right?

01:11:37.160 | Other commitments, not.

01:11:39.240 | The commitment that had like the clearest negative correlation with grades was athletics.

01:11:45.440 | It's just so time consuming.

01:11:48.520 | That's why they invent these fake majors and stuff like this.

01:11:52.380 | Problem is when you're majoring in computer science, I needed to be in like the LSU major

01:11:57.760 | for their star offensive line, you know, we're going to sort blocks by colors, whatever they

01:12:06.160 | could.

01:12:07.160 | We just don't want you worried about this.

01:12:08.160 | We need you to be focused on the game.

01:12:11.180 | So we hear the music again.

01:12:12.180 | Let's hear it one more time.

01:12:15.180 | All right, that put me back in a good mood.

01:12:23.080 | We have a call this week, Jesse.

01:12:24.900 | We do.

01:12:25.900 | All right, let's hear it.

01:12:26.900 | Hi, Cal.

01:12:27.900 | My name is Meg and I'm an academic librarian currently recovering from my stint as department

01:12:33.480 | chair, but blissfully embarking on a 10 month sabbatical.

01:12:37.940 | During this time, I'm committed to pursuing a creative project that I've long wished to

01:12:41.860 | complete a murder mystery set on a college campus.

01:12:45.260 | I've been a longtime fan of your work, especially your insights on deep work and time management

01:12:50.780 | that I've tried to use at work.

01:12:53.460 | But with 10 months of unstructured time laying ahead of me, I need some new process.

01:13:00.620 | I'm curious to know how you use your own time management practices to organize your writing

01:13:04.560 | sabbaticals in the past.

01:13:06.900 | As I navigate this creative process, I found myself grappling with how to break down such

01:13:11.340 | an expansive project across such an expansive period of time.

01:13:16.140 | I'm curious, when you're writing a book, do you rely on specific systems of projects and

01:13:21.460 | project lists, subprojects or some other structured framework to keep your writing momentum up?

01:13:28.820 | How do you balance staying flexible with ensuring consistent progress on your writing?

01:13:33.860 | And do you find that a weekly review is necessary when you're able to tackle just a single large

01:13:37.660 | project at a time?

01:13:38.660 | Thanks for your insights, Cal, and I promise to put your advice to good use solving fictional

01:13:43.860 | murders.

01:13:44.860 | All right, so I'm going to give two answers here.

01:13:49.260 | The first answer is going to be like what I think you should do during your 10-month

01:13:52.100 | writing sabbatical.

01:13:53.100 | And then I'll answer your second question about how I tackle unstructured book projects.

01:13:57.400 | These aren't necessarily going to be the same answer.

01:13:59.700 | In terms of what you should do, I would suggest in your 10-month sabbatical, having a five-day-a-week

01:14:05.780 | writing habit.

01:14:07.380 | It should be the first thing you do probably every day.

01:14:13.140 | Then be relatively uncommitted after that.

01:14:16.340 | You want to take advantage of the fact it's a sabbatical.

01:14:18.480 | You might want to do, like I do in the summers, is if there's still going to be some meetings

01:14:22.700 | and calls and work stuff in your life, make those Tuesday through Thursday in the afternoon

01:14:27.060 | so that Monday and Friday is after you're done writing, you're just done.

01:14:30.900 | So I'd write, quick email, only middle of the week do I have things that are scheduled,

01:14:35.700 | and really just lean into the rest of the time doing non-work-related stuff.

01:14:39.060 | So write five days a week.

01:14:40.540 | You need a community for this.

01:14:43.900 | You haven't written one of these mysteries before, I'm assuming, so you need to join

01:14:46.400 | a writers' group, a mystery writers' group.

01:14:48.820 | You can find these online.

01:14:49.820 | There's probably a convention you can go to as well.

01:14:51.340 | There'll probably be one that is held at some point, hopefully not too late into your sabbatical,

01:14:55.660 | but don't wait for that convention to get going.

01:14:57.500 | You need to join a writers' group and right away get feedback on the plot.

01:15:04.340 | Start writing chapters.

01:15:05.340 | We're going to read chapters.

01:15:06.340 | You got to just get going.

01:15:07.340 | This is your first book, and it's your first novel, potentially, so it might be what you're

01:15:11.300 | really going to end up with at the end of 10 months is a draft of a novel that's not

01:15:16.380 | there, but now you've broken the seal, and you've learned a lot of things.

01:15:19.460 | You've picked up a lot of skills by talking to the other writers, and now you're well-suited

01:15:23.940 | to sort of more systematically transform this thing even once you're back to work.

01:15:27.380 | So join a group, commit to producing things, work every day, two to four hours, and let

01:15:35.660 | that just start to add up.

01:15:38.220 | That's what I would do.

01:15:39.420 | The other thing I would add, find a way to make the writing fun.

01:15:42.620 | It doesn't have to be every day, but go to cool places to write, do adventure writing.

01:15:50.140 | I'm just always going to sit down dreary-like, punish myself in my basement next to the dripping

01:15:55.100 | pipe, and that's just where I'm going to write.

01:15:56.740 | Make the writing actually fun.

01:15:57.940 | If you're trying to crack a plot point, this is great.

01:16:00.220 | I'm going to go on an early morning hike through this trail I like, and I'm going to bring

01:16:03.220 | a notebook.

01:16:04.220 | What am I doing this morning?

01:16:05.220 | I'm cracking this plot point.

01:16:08.340 | Or I'm going to go to this museum, and I'm going to work there.

01:16:10.380 | I'm going to have a whole morning, a whole half day, where I'm going to have breakfast

01:16:14.940 | here and lunch here, and I'm going to bring a mystery book to read during lunch, and I'm

01:16:18.060 | going to work at this public library, and I'm going to go for this walk, and then go

01:16:21.860 | to the cafe at this museum.

01:16:23.760 | Make the writing fun.

01:16:24.760 | Not every day.

01:16:25.760 | Some days I can be just sitting there, but you have a sabbatical.

01:16:28.140 | You want to associate with your mind, "This is fun.

01:16:30.580 | I like working on this.

01:16:31.580 | This is better than being department chair.

01:16:34.940 | This is different."

01:16:36.220 | There is a tendency a lot of people have when they're writing.

01:16:38.180 | They feel bad about it, that this doesn't feel bad enough, so they try to make their

01:16:41.780 | experience be harder.

01:16:43.220 | Somehow that justifies it to themselves or the rest of the world.

01:16:45.880 | You earned a sabbatical.

01:16:47.900 | Make the writing fun.

01:16:49.060 | Make it restorative.

01:16:50.780 | You earned it.

01:16:51.780 | This is not you being lazy.

01:16:53.980 | It's six years worth of semesters, I'm sure you had to do to earn this 10 months off.

01:16:59.660 | In terms of my own writing projects, I have a long period of working on the idea and working

01:17:07.300 | on the annotated outline for the idea when I'm leading up to selling it.

01:17:10.940 | Since I write nonfiction, you sell it first.

01:17:13.780 | Once I'm happy with it, I sell it.

01:17:15.580 | Then I go through a long period where I change what I want it to be.

01:17:18.980 | I often do a lot of this work on foot.

01:17:20.780 | I'm working in single-purpose notebooks, trying to crack what I think the book should be.

01:17:24.740 | Then I just start writing chapter by chapter.

01:17:26.980 | I typically write books sequentially, starting with the first chapter, the introduction I

01:17:30.460 | come back and do at the end.

01:17:32.580 | That's how I start to get a feel for the book.

01:17:35.040 | Maybe at some point, three or four chapters in, it might lead to some relatively significant

01:17:38.300 | changes to the structure after I really feel like, "What do I have access to?

01:17:41.660 | How is this unfolding?

01:17:42.660 | How are the ideas unfolding?"

01:17:43.660 | I'll go back and radically change the structure again.

01:17:48.260 | Once I have thought a long time about what I want to write, I just start writing and

01:17:52.060 | just doing the work.

01:17:53.100 | I want to write this many days a week.

01:17:54.420 | I want to make progress on this chapter.

01:17:56.060 | Some days, that's a lot of typing.

01:17:57.860 | Some days, that's just a lot of tracking down sources.

01:18:00.140 | Some days, it's completely reworking things, but I want to just keep going.

01:18:04.660 | I stop and I rework as needed to integrate the lessons I'm obtaining as I actually try

01:18:10.020 | to make progress.

01:18:11.020 | It's just in my life.

01:18:12.020 | It's one of the things I do.

01:18:13.020 | I'm a professor, so it's what I do.

01:18:15.660 | If it's not working on a book, it's working on academic articles, it would be working

01:18:19.080 | on trade publication articles.

01:18:21.300 | My job is built around this idea that you are spending regular time writing.

01:18:27.260 | This just sort of fits.

01:18:28.580 | This is what I have done my entire life.

01:18:31.900 | I started writing regularly my senior year of college.

01:18:35.640 | That's when I was writing How to Win a College.

01:18:37.660 | Ever since then, I'm always just writing.

01:18:39.840 | As a grad student, it's academic papers, and it was books, and as a professor, it's the

01:18:43.660 | same idea.

01:18:44.660 | That's how I go about it.

01:18:45.660 | I think a lot about the idea, and then I just get going, and I update as I needed.

01:18:49.540 | I'm jealous about your sabbatical.

01:18:52.380 | I think your plan is awesome.

01:18:53.500 | Have fun with it.

01:18:54.500 | Have fun with it, for sure.

01:18:55.500 | But you need a community.

01:18:56.500 | Don't just do this on your own.

01:18:58.620 | Two quick follow-up questions.

01:18:59.860 | I thought you started writing earlier than that, like your sophomore year.

01:19:02.460 | Yeah, but in terms of a daily practice, because I remember I woke up every morning, and I

01:19:08.420 | would write before my first class.

01:19:09.860 | That was the first time.

01:19:11.260 | I wrote for The Jack-o'-Lantern, the humor magazine, before that.

01:19:15.660 | But it would be like, oh, there's an issue coming out, and then I would write a bunch

01:19:18.460 | of pieces.

01:19:19.460 | But there might be other times where I wasn't writing, because it's a regular thing I'm

01:19:22.900 | always doing.

01:19:23.900 | That really got started my senior year.

01:19:25.260 | And that's when you started the book, or you started the book before that?

01:19:26.900 | That's when I started the first book, yeah.

01:19:29.420 | So I wrote the first book the fall of my senior year.

01:19:33.340 | And then one asks, so fiction books is different?

01:19:35.580 | You write the book first, and then you sell it?

01:19:37.660 | Yeah.

01:19:38.660 | So fiction, well, it's yes and, right?

01:19:41.100 | So your first, in general, in fiction books, if you're an unknown author, they're buying

01:19:47.120 | the manuscript.

01:19:48.180 | You write the whole book first.

01:19:49.180 | Yeah.

01:19:50.180 | Interesting.

01:19:51.180 | Nonfiction, you don't do that, and it's a problem if you do that.

01:19:52.420 | And everyone always ignores me when I say that, because they want to just get right

01:19:54.780 | to the writing.

01:19:56.500 | They're worried about rejection, and they think they can somehow get around rejection

01:20:00.180 | by writing the book first.

01:20:01.380 | But it's not the way it works.

01:20:03.520 | Why is it different?

01:20:04.700 | Because they want to be able to-- well, partially, they want to be able to help shape the book.

01:20:09.540 | But also, just like the idea in nonfiction is your advance is supposed to help pay for

01:20:12.820 | you to go do the research to write the book.

01:20:14.860 | I guess more the other way.

01:20:15.860 | Why is it different for fiction?

01:20:17.220 | Because they have no way of knowing if the book's going to be good.

01:20:19.620 | So for nonfiction, it's not going to be-- if you're a good writer, you know how to write.

01:20:24.180 | You're an expert on this.

01:20:25.180 | You're going to write a book on this.

01:20:26.180 | I'm going to help you shape it.

01:20:27.220 | It's going to be fine.

01:20:28.460 | But a novel-- like, I just come to you, like, I've got a great idea for a mystery novel

01:20:32.420 | set in academia.

01:20:33.420 | Like, it could be terrible.

01:20:34.420 | That's a good point.

01:20:35.420 | You know what I mean?

01:20:36.420 | Like, novel writing's harder, right?

01:20:38.380 | So it could just be terrible.

01:20:39.740 | The exception is multi-book deals, right?

01:20:42.180 | So typically, like, let's say you have a book that's successful, especially in genre writing.

01:20:46.780 | They'll then sign you to be like, OK, give us three more.

01:20:50.260 | And you haven't written those yet.

01:20:51.500 | Now you owe them those books.

01:20:52.820 | So like, in fiction, when you're new, you have to write the book first.

01:20:56.220 | And that's what you're selling.

01:20:57.260 | But if you're in a genre, they will probably sign you to a multi-book deal.

01:21:03.260 | And now they're paying you.

01:21:04.460 | But you've proven yourself already.

01:21:05.860 | Like, you've given them a book that's, like, done well already.

01:21:08.540 | All right, we've got a case study here.

01:21:12.220 | This is where people send in their accounts of using the type of advice we talk about

01:21:15.620 | on this show.

01:21:16.620 | Today's case study comes from Sean.

01:21:20.100 | I'm a 33-year-old software engineer.

01:21:22.120 | I've worked to remove social platforms from my life.

01:21:24.380 | I left all the big social media platforms since 2016.

01:21:28.300 | This helped me reduce digital clutter to the minimum.

01:21:30.860 | YouTube was more challenging, but I disabled the history collection setting.

01:21:34.660 | The benefit is there are no recommendation algorithms on the landing page.

01:21:37.580 | I've reduced my YouTube subscriptions.

01:21:39.220 | I also created a new account that only has tech content.

01:21:42.660 | For Reddit, an ad block plug-in has helped doom scrolling.

01:21:45.920 | For LinkedIn, I only follow folks in my field.

01:21:48.700 | Since I have made the lucrative platforms boring, I have more time for myself.

01:21:52.620 | I have time in the evening, which I can invest back into my career and learn new things.

01:21:58.020 | I have also found more time to exercise every other day.

01:22:01.980 | Since saving time, I have retrained my brain to not rely on a lot of platforms.

01:22:05.940 | And I'm hitting the gym for a couple hours every alternate day.

01:22:08.260 | In a nutshell, win-win in career, win-win in health, and win-win in fulfillment.

01:22:11.940 | All right, I like this case study.

01:22:14.760 | There is a particular thing I want to point out from it.

01:22:17.580 | So in my book, "Digital Minimalism," I talk about these type of de-interestifications

01:22:22.620 | you're doing to social media platforms as joining the attention resistance.

01:22:27.260 | And it's strategies where you have some valuable thing you need to get out of a social platform,

01:22:31.460 | but you don't want the social platform to extract hours of your time in return, so you

01:22:35.280 | use tools like blocking plug-ins or turning off history collection settings, et cetera,

01:22:43.400 | that makes the platform less interesting.

01:22:45.060 | You can still get the thing out of it you want to get out of it, but you pay less of

01:22:48.880 | that ancillary price.

01:22:50.620 | So we call that joining the attention resistance.

01:22:52.740 | It's an alternative to just quitting these platforms, and it's what you deploy when there

01:22:56.200 | are some legitimate reasons you need to use them.

01:22:59.140 | What's useful or enlightening about this case study is, look what happens.

01:23:03.980 | He's using a bunch of platforms, but he made them non-interesting.

01:23:07.560 | So he's just using them for the actual reasons people give when you say, "Hey, why are you

01:23:11.460 | still on YouTube?

01:23:12.460 | Why are you still on LinkedIn?"

01:23:13.460 | You know, those reasons people give?

01:23:14.860 | He's only using his platforms for those reasons and turning off the other things, the things

01:23:18.980 | we don't really care about, but it captures our attention, and their impact on him is

01:23:22.780 | minimal.

01:23:24.240 | His hours of time is free, he's going to the gym, like they don't really have a big footprint

01:23:28.340 | in his life.

01:23:30.420 | So it just goes to belie this idea that you can leap immediately from, "I need to be on

01:23:35.640 | Instagram to keep up with these artists who are in my field," that you have to jump from

01:23:40.180 | that to, "I need to be on Instagram for hours every day."

01:23:43.740 | Or, "I use YouTube because I like to watch the Deep Questions podcast, therefore, I need

01:23:49.980 | to be spending hours on YouTube every day."

01:23:52.740 | This belies that connection.

01:23:54.340 | It says, "No, no, no, you can, if you actually use these platforms just for the specific

01:23:58.620 | reasons you have to use them, they don't play a big role in your life."

01:24:03.340 | This idea that you have to be on your phone all the time, like looking at these things

01:24:06.300 | all the time, that is new.

01:24:08.500 | That is invented by these platforms.

01:24:09.980 | That is a business model that you are just a line item in a big spreadsheet for, and

01:24:13.180 | that is completely optional.

01:24:15.540 | You can engage with the internet without the internet capturing your full mind.

01:24:19.620 | So I think that's a great reminder of the power of joining the attention resistance.

01:24:23.620 | All right, so speaking of which, we've got a good final segment coming up where we'll

01:24:28.140 | talk about a tech corner on social media and legal standards for bands.

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01:28:33.120 | All right, Jesse, move on to our final segment.

01:28:40.400 | So we're going to do another tech corner here.

01:28:42.520 | Because I have been writing a series of columns for the New Yorker this month, we have a lot

01:28:47.100 | of my own material to draw from.

01:28:49.260 | We have yet again, another New Yorker column of mine that was just published.

01:28:53.880 | The title, and I'll have this on the screen here for people who are watching instead of

01:28:57.840 | listening.

01:28:58.840 | The title is, "Is Social Media More Like Cigarettes or Junk Food?"

01:29:03.640 | The deck here is, "Lawmakers Attempting to Regulate Children's Access to Social Media

01:29:07.360 | Must Decide Whether Bans or Warning Labels Are the Optimal Route for Keeping Kids Safe."

01:29:13.420 | And here there's a picture of a cop.

01:29:15.600 | This is so much more friendly than the article, was it last week?

01:29:18.720 | Oh, man, where it was a picture of a phone melting someone's face.

01:29:23.480 | We've gone from that to like a fun cartoon kid.

01:29:25.640 | This is better, makes you less stressed.

01:29:28.720 | Here's the premise.

01:29:29.720 | Here's the question in this article.

01:29:32.760 | We worry about social media.

01:29:33.960 | It has some harms.

01:29:34.960 | How much?

01:29:35.960 | We're debating.

01:29:36.960 | Right?

01:29:37.960 | We want to take action.

01:29:38.960 | We all kind of agree we should do something.

01:29:39.960 | There's lots of laws, et cetera.

01:29:41.680 | But what should they be?

01:29:43.200 | To help make sense of all this, I said, "Okay, let's look at two past examples historically

01:29:48.800 | where there have been a product that presented harm for kids, and we had to react to."

01:29:56.720 | The first product was cigarette smoking.

01:29:59.120 | We worried about kids smoking, and we reacted.

01:30:01.800 | How did we react?

01:30:02.800 | We passed laws that said you can't buy cigarettes if you're a kid.

01:30:04.720 | We passed a cigarette ban based on age.

01:30:08.080 | The other example was junk food.

01:30:09.920 | We worried about kids and junk food as junk food became more prevalent after the mid-century

01:30:14.400 | point.

01:30:15.400 | We were especially worried about all of the kid-targeted advertising that was happening

01:30:19.960 | during kids' programming, which really pushed kids to eat a huge amount of this food, and

01:30:23.080 | it was bad for them.

01:30:24.280 | We worried about kids' junk food as well.

01:30:26.040 | What do we do in response to that?

01:30:28.640 | We didn't ban junk food from kids.

01:30:31.040 | We didn't even ban advertising to kids, but we took more of a, "Let's give parents tools

01:30:36.500 | to help them manage this for their kids on their own."

01:30:38.800 | So here is nutritional labeling, here's the food pyramid.

01:30:42.720 | We're going to give you information, but then you're going to manage this risk on your kids

01:30:47.560 | on your own.

01:30:48.640 | So the question of the article then is, when it comes to social media, if we're thinking

01:30:52.600 | about this as a potentially harmful-to-kids product, is it more like cigarettes or is

01:30:59.760 | it more like junk food?

01:31:01.000 | Then once we had that clear question, because the answer will give us some sense of how

01:31:05.000 | we should react, I looked at the historical context of both of those past reactions and

01:31:10.720 | the legal standards for both of those past reactions.

01:31:14.720 | They were historically contingent.

01:31:18.200 | Cigarettes were actually banned from kids in the 19th century.

01:31:20.720 | It was a more moralistic time, so the context matters, whereas junk food became a big deal

01:31:24.840 | in the 1970s.

01:31:27.080 | This is Vietnam.

01:31:28.080 | This is Watergate.

01:31:29.080 | We weren't really looking as Americans for a lot of government intervention in our lives

01:31:31.980 | at that point, so the context does matter.

01:31:34.240 | But there are also legal standards.

01:31:36.480 | So let me quote here what I learned from Meg Jones, a colleague of mine at Georgetown who

01:31:41.280 | specializes in technology and law.

01:31:43.880 | She said, "We imposed outright bans for kids when activities involved permanent or hard

01:31:48.040 | to reverse consequences, like tattoos or contracts; addiction, like tobacco and gambling; activities

01:31:55.160 | with high potential for exploitation, such as hazardous entertainment jobs; and parents

01:31:59.720 | unable to assess or manage risks."

01:32:02.500 | So by those standards, cigarettes, we had a fear of addiction and hard to reverse consequences,

01:32:10.040 | whereas for junk food, we don't.

01:32:11.560 | We figure, like, parents can sort of manage the junk food that's in their house, and with

01:32:15.760 | the right information, it's okay to have birthday cake on birthdays.

01:32:18.720 | We wouldn't want to ban it, and it's not going to have impossible to reverse or addictive

01:32:23.160 | consequences if you're having some junk food, and so we shouldn't ban it.

01:32:26.840 | We'll do something like information.

01:32:29.120 | How does social media fare by both these standards?

01:32:30.880 | Well, by the legal standards, Jones told me it's not doing well.

01:32:35.540 | It really is leaning more towards the Marlboros than the Big Macs right now.

01:32:39.640 | There is a real fear of addictive use that is addictive once it's in your life, and there's

01:32:44.440 | also a clear signal, an increasingly strong signal from parents saying, "We are having

01:32:47.820 | a hard time managing this on our own.

01:32:50.080 | This is as much a social problem as it is a technological problem.

01:32:52.960 | It's hard for an individual parent to make these choices.

01:32:56.240 | We can't control what our kids are doing on here."

01:32:59.200 | So increasingly, from the legal standard perspective, social media for kids is looking a little

01:33:04.760 | bit more like the case that we applied to cigarettes.

01:33:07.480 | From a contextual perspective, there is also an argument to be made that the vibes are

01:33:12.320 | shifting more pro-ban right now than say they were during the junk food era.

01:33:17.580 | We're going through actively right now the TikTok fallout.

01:33:22.000 | They had to shut down or divest, and they didn't, and they turned off, and they turned

01:33:25.140 | back on, but the app is back on, but Google and Apple are still not letting you buy the

01:33:29.520 | app in the app store because the law says they shouldn't, and Trump is saying you can,

01:33:34.280 | but they said you can't overwrite the law in the Supreme Court with an executive order.

01:33:38.840 | What matters about all of that, because that has nothing to do with kids, that's about

01:33:41.600 | national security, is that it expanded our civic imagination potentially.

01:33:45.680 | We can imagine now passing laws or banning some of this technology, and life still goes

01:33:50.800 | on, right?

01:33:51.800 | So that's like, it's an option that we might be more comfortable with.

01:33:54.040 | We see more of this going on right now anyways, the FDA just banned red food dye number three,

01:33:59.240 | in part thinking about health concerns for kids.

01:34:01.440 | So we're kind of in a mood right now, we're like, okay, maybe we're a little bit open.

01:34:05.240 | Pass some laws, take some things off the table, it's okay, we can do this type of thing.

01:34:10.260 | So you put these two things together, and maybe we see a future in which something like

01:34:15.040 | Australia's response to social media, where they just simply said last fall, "Under 16

01:34:20.000 | you can't use it."

01:34:21.440 | Maybe something like that is going to become more ubiquitous, maybe that will even make

01:34:24.700 | it here to the US.

01:34:26.440 | Here's Jones, I'm quoting her in my article, "I think age verification is going to pass

01:34:30.120 | constitutional scrutiny this year, and we're going to see a wave of state laws restricting

01:34:33.680 | social media for kids."

01:34:35.680 | Then she adds, "Or maybe that's just my wishful thinking."

01:34:38.120 | Well, we'll see.

01:34:39.120 | But I think it's more of a possibility than it has been at any point in the past 10 year

01:34:42.540 | history of ubiquitous social media use.

01:34:45.720 | We care about kids and harm, we have very specific ways we figure out how to react to

01:34:50.240 | it, and when we apply those specific ways, we realize the answer we accepted a few years

01:34:55.860 | ago of just, "Kids these days use their phones, what you're going to do," is actually no longer

01:34:59.760 | sufficient.

01:35:01.560 | There's a real debate to be had here, and once we start having those debates, a lot

01:35:06.140 | of interesting options come on the table.

01:35:07.680 | There we go.

01:35:08.680 | I have one column left, Jesse.

01:35:10.500 | It's my third of four that I'm writing in a four-week period.

01:35:12.840 | Beast mode.

01:35:13.840 | All I'm going to say about the last one is that it will involve Michael Crichton.

01:35:17.560 | Nice.

01:35:18.560 | And it is not just a long review of "Eruption," though I might try to find a way to work in

01:35:24.240 | a reference to "Eruption."

01:35:27.480 | It's just 2,000 words in "The New Yorker" picking apart how I don't know who the characters

01:35:32.400 | are, even after reading 300 pages.

01:35:34.160 | I don't know their names.

01:35:35.840 | That's a sign of bad writing.

01:35:36.840 | That's not Crichton, though.

01:35:37.840 | Crichton, that's James Harrison's fault.

01:35:38.840 | All right.

01:35:39.840 | That's all the time we have for today.

01:35:40.840 | Thanks for listening.

01:35:41.840 | We'll be back next week with another episode, and until then, as always, stay deep.

01:35:48.400 | If you like today's discussion of remote work, you might also like episode 320, which was

01:35:53.480 | about jobs and the deep life.

01:35:56.380 | Check it out.

01:35:57.380 | You'll enjoy it.

01:35:58.380 | I'll start by sharing four common traps that people fall into when it comes to thinking

01:36:03.440 | about their jobs.

01:36:04.440 | Then I'll offer an alternative model that will help you put your work to work on making

01:36:10.520 | in your own life deeper.

How To Work From Home: The Productivity System To Get More Done In 2025 | Cal Newport

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