How To Quickly Improve Focus & Productivity

00:00:00.000 | All right, today I want to talk about focus.

00:00:04.400 | First however, a quick logistical note.

00:00:06.780 | You may notice I am not dressed as normal.

00:00:09.520 | I am in a sweatshirt and producer Jesse is not dressed as normal either and that is because

00:00:14.600 | we are recording this right before Halloween and I decided to dress up as producer Jesse

00:00:18.480 | for Halloween and producer Jesse dressed up as me.

00:00:22.460 | If you are new to this channel and just stumbled across this clip and have no idea what we're

00:00:25.560 | talking about, good for you, it's all nonsense, you don't need to know.

00:00:30.040 | All right, let's get back to what we're going to talk about today which is focus.

00:00:33.680 | Clearly I talk about this a lot, I care about this a lot, I even wrote a whole book about

00:00:37.320 | this called Deep Work.

00:00:39.720 | Put simply, distraction-free concentration is just a powerful, powerful tool.

00:00:44.880 | It produces quality results quick.

00:00:48.320 | It's a source of real creativity.

00:00:50.400 | It's deeply human.

00:00:52.760 | Focusing however is hard, especially in our current moment of digital distraction.

00:00:57.560 | Now when I talk about becoming better at focus in my books and on this show, I have a standard

00:01:03.800 | what I would call long-term protocols, a standard set of long-term protocols for over time becoming

00:01:11.680 | better at focus and making it a part of your life.

00:01:14.760 | Over the years these protocols have coalesced around four in particular, brain training,

00:01:20.560 | workload limits, communication reform and distraction moderation, you've heard me talk

00:01:23.640 | about all these before.

00:01:25.600 | But someone asked me the other day what they could do to get better at focus quickly, like

00:01:31.560 | get some improvements right away, tomorrow, the day after.

00:01:35.560 | I think this is a great question.

00:01:37.760 | You can't become an expert focuser and have your whole life built around focus overnight,

00:01:43.120 | but you can get better at it overnight.

00:01:46.120 | And I think having improvements quickly could be an important source of motivation for people

00:01:51.740 | looking to make longer-term changes.

00:01:53.880 | So I love this idea of what can we do to get better at this key skill right away.

00:02:01.040 | So I came up with five protocols for short-term improvements to your focus, meaning these

00:02:06.200 | protocols work right away, you get immediate benefits from.

00:02:09.160 | All right, so let's get into this.

00:02:11.920 | Protocol number one, clearly differentiate your focus blocks.

00:02:16.480 | So when you are working, you have to imagine there's a bit, 01.

00:02:21.400 | When it's turned on, you're doing something that requires focus.

00:02:25.200 | When it's turned off, you're not.

00:02:28.040 | And you just have a simple set of rules for how you treat focus work.

00:02:31.040 | The key rules being no distraction, no email, no Slack, no phone, no web browser.

00:02:36.280 | Having a clear differentiation will right away make a big difference.

00:02:41.280 | When you try to integrate focused activities with other things you're doing, you're going

00:02:46.640 | to be more distracted.

00:02:49.080 | If you are saying, for example, yeah, I'll just check my email a certain amount of times

00:02:54.600 | today to keep up with it, and you're working on something kind of hard, you haven't clearly

00:03:00.080 | segregated that focused work from other things, you're going to have this constant fight with

00:03:03.840 | your own mind.

00:03:04.840 | Well, should we check email now?

00:03:05.840 | What about now?

00:03:07.080 | What about now?

00:03:08.080 | Shouldn't we check in to see what they're saying on John Boy about the Yankees loss

00:03:13.440 | last night?

00:03:14.440 | Well, this would be a good time to do that.

00:03:15.440 | Why not, right?

00:03:16.600 | When you have clearly differentiated focus blocks, you don't have to have these arguments.

00:03:19.400 | The only argument you have is, do I respect the focus block rule or not?

00:03:24.320 | So it's a simple thing, but just differentiating for this specific amount of time, which I

00:03:29.280 | have clearly specified, 9 to 1030, 11 to 1145, for this specific, clearly specified duration

00:03:37.560 | of time, I'm using my focus rules.

00:03:41.780 | That simple change really helps you get more out of those focus blocks.

00:03:48.200 | Protocol number two, focus less.

00:03:52.880 | Here's the thing, focus is great, but if you get too ambitious, like, yeah, I want my life

00:03:58.840 | to be like the writer Robert Caro, and I'm just going to spend eight hours a day slowly

00:04:05.520 | turning pages in an archive and writing on a typewriter.

00:04:08.520 | If you get overly ambitious, you're setting yourself up to fail.

00:04:12.400 | When you fail, your mind can give up on the whole project.

00:04:16.080 | Hey, we tried this focus thing.

00:04:18.160 | That's not for us.

00:04:20.160 | When you have an overly ambitious plan, you might also suffer from your mind realizing

00:04:24.560 | your plan is overly ambitious.

00:04:26.060 | This is not sustainable.

00:04:27.560 | We're not going to be able to focus for six hours today, and if we have six hours free

00:04:31.520 | today, we're not going to have that free tomorrow.

00:04:34.120 | So why begin?

00:04:37.440 | Your brain is a plan evaluation machine, and when it doesn't trust your plan, it withholds

00:04:42.840 | motivation.

00:04:44.160 | So it sounds counterintuitive, but for a lot of people who are new to focusing, being less

00:04:48.860 | ambitious is going to help you in the long term.

00:04:51.040 | Hey, I just want to do an hour.

00:04:53.080 | I want to get an hour done every day.

00:04:57.080 | That seems very tractable.

00:04:58.320 | Your mind says, I believe this can work.

00:05:00.440 | You're likely to succeed at it.

00:05:02.720 | It builds.

00:05:04.440 | I was looking at a book the other day, reading this book called Lost in Thought, and it had

00:05:12.160 | some quotes.

00:05:13.160 | The author, I think her name is Zena Hertz, had some quotes early on from two books I

00:05:16.760 | know well, but I forgot these calculations in the books.

00:05:21.520 | So she talked about, oh God, what's the book called?

00:05:24.640 | I think it's called The Intellectual Life, written by a Dominican friar, I'm saying his

00:05:33.480 | name wrong.

00:05:34.480 | Anyways, I quote this in Deep Work.

00:05:36.080 | It's a book from a while back about how to have an intellectual life, and maybe look

00:05:41.200 | that up just to see if it's The Intellectual Life.

00:05:44.160 | Supposedly according to Zena Hertz, in this book, I missed this part, the author says,

00:05:47.640 | yeah, your goal should be like an hour a day.

00:05:52.600 | You can dedicate an hour a day to really focusing on books and thinking, you'll have an intellectual

00:05:57.120 | life.

00:05:58.120 | The other book she mentions is How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett, a book

00:06:03.320 | of which I have a first edition from the early 20th century, a listener sent it to me.

00:06:08.000 | Supposedly in there, Bennett's argument for what you need to have an intellectual life

00:06:11.120 | is, he said, you should aim for 90 minutes a day.

00:06:14.220 | That should be enough, but three days a week, maybe a little more.

00:06:16.800 | Anyways, they had formulas for this, formulas for how much time you need to focus to build

00:06:21.800 | up an intellectual life.

00:06:23.640 | The key point being, these times weren't big.

00:06:27.200 | Is it The Intellectual Life?

00:06:28.200 | Yeah, by Sir Chalanges.

00:06:29.960 | Yeah, so I always pronounce that name wrong.

00:06:32.640 | It's a fantastic book.

00:06:33.640 | What does it say?

00:06:34.640 | It's hard to find what the original copy is from.

00:06:36.840 | I'll check it out.

00:06:37.840 | Yeah, it's new editions.

00:06:38.840 | It's a fantastic book.

00:06:40.520 | It was, not to go on an aside here, I'll do this briefly.

00:06:44.080 | 1992?

00:06:45.080 | That's a newer edition probably, I think.

00:06:49.360 | I had a cool version of it.

00:06:51.200 | I had stumbled across it early in my career at Georgetown in the library stacks, just

00:06:56.860 | like wandering through the stacks and I found it.

00:06:59.200 | I read it, for those who know Georgetown, there's like a patio outside of the Levy Center

00:07:04.840 | that overlooks, you have like the business school to your right and overlooks down to

00:07:08.520 | the football field.

00:07:09.520 | I remember reading this outside and taking notes on it and then it helped shape my thinking

00:07:13.900 | around Deep Work.

00:07:14.900 | It's a cool book.

00:07:15.900 | The Intellectual Life.

00:07:16.900 | 1921.

00:07:17.900 | 1921.

00:07:18.900 | 1921 edition of this book from the library.

00:07:20.900 | It was very inspirational to me at the time.

00:07:22.700 | I mean, I was like a first-year professor.

00:07:25.500 | Such a good book to find.

00:07:26.940 | It was all about the mechanics of how to be an intellectual, and sometimes Deep Work is

00:07:31.800 | inspired by that.

00:07:33.060 | Deep Work is not about how to become an intellectual, but how to become a deep worker, but it's

00:07:36.100 | very similar.

00:07:37.100 | Like how do you craft a life built around your mind?

00:07:40.100 | Yeah.

00:07:41.100 | Yeah.

00:07:42.100 | So that was a very influential find for me.

00:07:43.400 | All right, enough digression.

00:07:46.740 | Result number three, use a focus space.

00:07:50.780 | Have a different place to go to do focus work.

00:07:52.380 | I don't care what it is.

00:07:53.740 | Just make it different.

00:07:55.380 | Kitchen table if you're working from home.

00:07:58.100 | Conference room.

00:07:59.580 | Reserve a conference room at your office.

00:08:02.140 | You know, the ones you can reserve when you have to do Zoom meetings or whatever.

00:08:06.020 | Reserve those just like an hour at a time for a focus block every day.

00:08:11.120 | Going to a different space makes it much easier to focus.

00:08:13.900 | Now, if you really want this to work, don't bring your phone.

00:08:18.860 | Right now people are sort of getting the DTs a little bit.

00:08:21.020 | Don't bring your phone.

00:08:22.020 | And if you're working on your laptop, deactivate Wi-Fi when you go in there.

00:08:26.860 | Now we're really cooking.

00:08:28.300 | You're in like a conference room or you're outside on your patio or a kitchen table.

00:08:31.360 | You have no internet connection.

00:08:32.600 | It's just an hour.

00:08:34.260 | Right away you're going to get a big hit to your ability to focus.

00:08:38.720 | Protocol number four, produce artifacts.

00:08:42.900 | What I mean by this is especially if you're new to focus, you do not want to just say

00:08:47.780 | for this block, I'm going to think.

00:08:50.940 | There's going to be me alone with my thoughts.

00:08:53.300 | Like I'm used to doing that now, but I've been doing this professionally for a couple

00:08:56.660 | of decades.

00:08:57.660 | For most people, it's difficult to maintain focus.

00:09:01.860 | Your mind wanders.

00:09:03.140 | It could be frustrating.

00:09:04.980 | So I recommend you should be producing some sort of tangible artifact as you go of your

00:09:10.860 | focus section.

00:09:11.860 | Typically, this is something you're writing.

00:09:14.140 | You're writing and shaping notes about your thoughts and then refining those notes.

00:09:19.740 | When I would work on math proofs, for example, during deep work sessions, I had a notebook

00:09:24.800 | and I'd be working through my thoughts.

00:09:26.680 | What about this proof?

00:09:27.680 | This equation doesn't work.

00:09:28.680 | Let me label where this equation breaks.

00:09:31.260 | What about this?

00:09:32.260 | Let me analyze this.

00:09:33.260 | Okay, let me now, this proof strategy failed.

00:09:36.060 | Let me say where.

00:09:38.100 | When you're leaving an artifact like this, it focuses your thinking.

00:09:42.720 | It gives you a scaffolding for your thinking, which makes it much easier to proceed.

00:09:48.460 | It helps you sidestep a pernicious effect that we don't even know that's happening when

00:09:52.020 | we're trying to do intellectual work, which is our mind likes to save energy.

00:09:56.740 | So often, it'll be sort of near an intuition or insight and you begin to get that biochemical

00:10:04.300 | feeling of aha, like, "Oh, I'm kind of on to something."

00:10:07.980 | But your mind doesn't actually fully articulate that insight.

00:10:11.660 | It just gets close enough to it.

00:10:12.940 | I think we're near to something good that you get that good feeling and you sort of

00:10:16.220 | move on feeling like, "I did good thinking," but you didn't actually finish that insight

00:10:22.100 | and pull it through to a completed thought, which can actually take a lot more work after

00:10:26.740 | the fact that you already feel like you're on to something.

00:10:29.180 | When you're taking notes, you have these physical artifacts, it forces you to write it all out.

00:10:34.180 | This would happen a lot with me when I was working on a proof or like an algorithm analysis.

00:10:37.220 | I'd be like, "Oh, I think that works," but then I'd have to force myself to write out

00:10:40.860 | why it works and do the math.

00:10:42.420 | And a lot of times I feel, I discover like, "Oh, I didn't really have that right."

00:10:45.780 | Or this insight, it seems good, but I actually don't know how to apply it yet and here's

00:10:51.180 | where I'm stuck.

00:10:52.820 | And there's always resistance to do that, but that's what actually helps you.

00:10:55.660 | I think of it as like the head of your thought is poked above the ground.

00:10:58.840 | You have to pull the whole thing out of the ground.

00:11:00.780 | You have to harvest the thought before you can, in this metaphor, I guess, cook it and

00:11:05.420 | eat it if this is like a vegetable or something.

00:11:08.460 | And create an artifact as you go along really helps you do that.

00:11:11.060 | So it gives you structure to your thinking and it helps you finish out your thoughts.

00:11:14.980 | Hey, it's Cal.

00:11:16.220 | I wanted to interrupt briefly to say that if you're enjoying this video, then you need

00:11:20.720 | to check out my new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

00:11:28.180 | This is like the Bible for most of the ideas we talk about here in these videos.

00:11:33.620 | You can get a free excerpt at calnewport.com/slow.

00:11:38.980 | I know you're going to like it.

00:11:40.780 | Check it out.

00:11:41.780 | Now let's get back to the video.

00:11:42.900 | All right, protocol number five, walk.

00:11:48.300 | We are good by we, I mean humans, at thinking while we walk.

00:11:53.580 | Now this might be because we have a long evolutionary history of covering great distances walking.

00:12:00.060 | We're bipedal.

00:12:01.440 | We can't, we're not meant to sprint for short distances and then rest like an antelope would.

00:12:08.620 | We're not meant to stay relatively stationary in one place and occasionally moving.

00:12:13.620 | We are made to be very efficiently to be able to walk.

00:12:16.820 | We can walk all day long.

00:12:18.560 | We can walk in the heat of the African savannas where our evolutionary past comes back from.

00:12:25.220 | We're not heavily furred.

00:12:26.380 | We can sweat to change our temperature.

00:12:28.420 | Our hips are set up in a way that has a very efficient bipedal locomotion.

00:12:33.060 | We're a walking animal, so I think it makes sense that we're very good at thinking while

00:12:36.960 | we're walking.

00:12:37.960 | I also think there's an argument to be made for walking suppresses certain circuits just

00:12:43.980 | because it gets your mind, automatic portions of your mind working on the taking the steps,

00:12:49.180 | which sort of suppresses some circuits in your brain and actually frees you from sort

00:12:53.940 | of random brain distraction.

00:12:56.060 | I can always think through a thought much more clearly walking than sitting still.

00:13:00.740 | There's also probably something about the sensory experience.

00:13:03.460 | When your brain is seeing novel sensory scenes, you're in the woods, it's a tree, look at

00:13:09.540 | this bush, it's really bright and it contrasts nicely with the stream over here.

00:13:15.460 | That novelty opens up brain circuits, which allows for more creative insight.

00:13:19.500 | Whereas if you're just at your same desk, you always work, there is nothing novel.

00:13:23.620 | You might entrench in sort of the same circuits and have a harder time being creative.

00:13:27.020 | So it's an easy thing to do.

00:13:28.660 | Say, okay, I'm going to work for an hour and a half on something focused, spend the first

00:13:32.940 | half hour thinking about it walking.

00:13:35.720 | Right away you're going to feel smarter, you're going to have better thoughts, you're going

00:13:38.940 | to enjoy the experience more.

00:13:40.300 | All right, so those are my five protocols.

00:13:43.140 | Let me go through them again.

00:13:45.340 | Clearly differentiate your focus blocks from non-focus blocks.

00:13:48.540 | Focus less.

00:13:50.620 | Use focus space.

00:13:52.700 | Use artifacts along the way.

00:13:55.500 | And spend more time walking.

00:13:57.740 | There we go, Jesse.

00:14:00.060 | I don't know why I call them protocols this time.

00:14:03.260 | I often use that term because I'm a computer scientist, but also Andrew Huberman uses that

00:14:07.380 | term.

00:14:08.580 | So maybe that means we'll get 2 million views on this video.

00:14:13.180 | When you were at MIT, you talked about how there were the all-star brains who just were

00:14:18.900 | like above and beyond everything.

00:14:20.100 | Do they do this type of stuff or do they just not need to as they're kind of like professional

00:14:23.300 | athletes who are just so elite can eat whatever they want and still be fine?

00:14:26.740 | No, it's a good question.

00:14:28.020 | They would do a lot of this stuff.

00:14:29.380 | I mean, they were sitting still thinking, there was a lot of that, but there was a lot

00:14:34.140 | of motion in thinking.

00:14:35.740 | So there's a mentor of mine, a professor from EPFL in Switzerland, shout out to Rashid.

00:14:43.540 | He was a visiting professor at MIT kind of early on in my career.

00:14:48.160 | He was really big on runs.

00:14:50.780 | So he did his best thinking running because the motion sort of just helped him think.

00:14:57.160 | The problem was he was in much better shape than I was.

00:15:00.140 | So he'd be like, yeah, let's go for a run and we can like work on this proof.

00:15:05.120 | But that'd be too far away.

00:15:08.260 | Seven miles, like a fast pace.

00:15:10.420 | He'd be like, yeah, the key is you should be running fast enough to talk but not sing.

00:15:17.660 | And I was like, I can't breathe.

00:15:19.420 | What about not being able to breathe?

00:15:22.780 | That's where I am right now.

00:15:23.780 | So that's the problem with running.

00:15:25.580 | So I think for him, for someone who's in really good shape, to them, a slow jog is like a

00:15:30.860 | walk to other people.

00:15:31.860 | Like, it's not really taxing you, but man, I don't know how many insights I got out of

00:15:35.500 | those runs.

00:15:36.500 | But yeah, no, I saw a lot of that.

00:15:38.620 | Definitely people had very specific ways they took notes on like how they built out notes

00:15:42.820 | on what they were working on.

00:15:43.820 | I think that was a big thing as well.

00:15:44.980 | Do your current students ask you about this a lot?

00:15:48.660 | No, but I am talking about it soon.

00:15:55.060 | So we have this new class at Georgetown for the graduate students called research methodologies.

00:15:59.660 | And it's a class where it's like just learning how to be like a researcher.

00:16:04.980 | And I'm giving a talk to this class and I'm gonna talk about these things.

00:16:07.500 | Yeah.

00:16:08.500 | So we should talk about these things more at MIT, it was just assumed it was so sink

00:16:13.380 | or swim.

00:16:14.380 | It was like, yeah, you better figure this stuff out because otherwise you're out.

00:16:17.640 | And so people were like highly and I would learn from mentors like the one I just talked

00:16:21.420 | about who these weren't students, these were professors.

00:16:23.340 | They taught me all these rules about, okay, here's how you work on a problem.

00:16:26.940 | Like I learned from Rashid, for example, in theory problems.

00:16:31.220 | You start with the simplest possible formulation of the problem.

00:16:36.860 | We will call it a toy version.

00:16:38.260 | So like you've simplified a lot of the complexities.

00:16:41.300 | You've made the model very simple and something that just gets to like the core of the thing

00:16:47.500 | that you're interested in.

00:16:48.500 | It's like solve the toy problem, understand the toy problem and then you can add back

00:16:54.300 | complexities.

00:16:55.300 | Okay.

00:16:56.300 | Now that I have this insight, what happens when we make the model more standard or we

00:16:58.240 | add other things to it and you end up with something that's kind of complicated and contingent,

00:17:02.820 | but it's like starting with the core problem.

00:17:07.140 | Like for example, I worked on this paper with him way back when, I think the title, if you

00:17:13.020 | want to look this up, theoretical computer scientists out there, I think the title of

00:17:17.020 | the paper was on malicious moats and suspicious sensors.

00:17:21.100 | And it was a paper about trying to communicate wirelessly in like an abstract model.

00:17:26.300 | When you had maybe like a malicious source nearby that could be trying to, it could like

00:17:32.020 | jam your signal or try to trick the receiver into thinking something else was going on.

00:17:36.860 | Like how do you communicate securely on a shared channel, right?

00:17:42.380 | And he simplified it.

00:17:43.380 | I remember this.

00:17:44.380 | We simplified it down to like, let's just start with time is in rounds.

00:17:49.420 | My entire goal is there's two, there's a sender and receiver, Alice and Bob, and Alice has

00:17:55.420 | a single bit.

00:17:56.420 | It's either zero or one.

00:17:57.900 | And Alice just wants Bob to figure out, is her bit zero or one?

00:18:02.980 | And we'll make time and like exact rounds.

00:18:05.780 | And in every round, like Alice can send something or not.

00:18:10.340 | And in every round, there's one adversary, we'll call it Charlie, can also send something

00:18:15.820 | or not.

00:18:16.820 | And if they both send something, it's, they kind of like collide.

00:18:19.820 | Like you just detect noise.

00:18:20.820 | Like we simplified it as much as possible.

00:18:23.100 | And this really like deep insight about the amount of communication required to jam communication,

00:18:31.300 | this jamming game, this like whole like really deep insight came out of looking at the simplest

00:18:35.340 | possible problem.

00:18:36.500 | And then like a lot of papers have been written on this or whatever.

00:18:38.700 | But yeah, I guess the point being, how you think matters.

00:18:44.460 | Not just like how you focus, but how you approach problems, how you approach articles, how you

00:18:48.740 | approach books.

00:18:49.740 | A lot of this information is often implicit and not made explicit and you kind of just

00:18:54.180 | have to figure it out and other people's don't.

00:18:55.980 | So I really love efforts to try to surface thinking.

00:19:00.340 | Like I have this idea for a short book I want to write at some point called In Defense of

00:19:03.580 | Thinking, like a manifesto.

00:19:06.460 | And really get into thinking as a skill and there's all of these like skills and different

00:19:11.140 | types of thinking.

00:19:12.140 | There's different ways to do it as this whole like lively, rich, actual activity.

00:19:16.260 | And not like we think about it now, it's just this like vague thing.

00:19:19.380 | Like I don't know, I'm just in my head thinking about things.

00:19:22.180 | So I've spent my life thinking for a living, so I think a lot about thinking.

00:19:26.820 | All right, well, we got some good questions coming up.

00:19:31.180 | I should say before we get there, Jesse, I don't know how you wear these sweatshirts

00:19:34.660 | all the time.

00:19:35.660 | They're warm.

00:19:36.660 | Well, you get really hot.

00:19:37.660 | I get really cold in the studio.

00:19:39.100 | Yeah, it's crazy.

00:19:40.100 | Like right now I'm cold, but you run hot when you, well, you're talking a lot.

00:19:43.980 | I do.

00:19:44.980 | I do run hot.

00:19:45.980 | Like to me, this is what I would wear outside.

00:19:50.140 | I would say like down to 25 degrees Fahrenheit.

00:19:53.740 | I hope you don't faint during this recording.

00:19:55.460 | I don't know if I'm going to make it.

00:19:58.020 | Nonsense.

00:19:59.020 | According to the Arctic, I have the air conditioning blasting too.

00:20:03.260 | That's why Jesse's cold.

00:20:04.840 | That's his punishment for making me wear a sweatshirt.

00:20:06.540 | All right, we got some questions coming up, but first let's hear from one of our sponsors.

00:20:11.220 | I want to talk about our friends at ZocDoc, an app that I just used the other day.

00:20:17.060 | Let me explain why.

00:20:18.580 | ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in-network

00:20:22.500 | doctors, choose the right one for your needs, and click instantly to book an appointment.

00:20:28.660 | We're talking about in-network appointments with more than 100,000 healthcare providers

00:20:32.420 | across every specialty, from mental health to dental health, eye care to skin care, and

00:20:37.740 | much more.

00:20:39.580 | You can filter for doctors who take your insurance, who are located nearby, who are a good fit

00:20:44.780 | for the needs you have, and look at ratings by real patients, verified real patients.

00:20:49.460 | Are they good?

00:20:50.460 | Are they bad?

00:20:51.460 | It really simplifies finding medical care.

00:20:54.900 | This is hard.

00:20:55.900 | This is one of these things they don't really teach adults how to do.

00:21:00.220 | I used ZocDoc the other day because I was looking for a dermatologist.

00:21:04.340 | Think about this problem.

00:21:06.660 | You're a new adult and someone says, "You need a dermatologist, go."

00:21:10.000 | What am I supposed to do?

00:21:11.340 | I guess I'll just Google dermatologist near me, and you get all these things, and most

00:21:15.780 | of them aren't taking patients, or if they're taking patients, it's because they're terrible

00:21:21.340 | and you have to call them and go through this whole thing on the phone and they don't answer.

00:21:25.860 | ZocDoc, you just search, nearby, takes my insurance, they have good reviews, great.

00:21:31.760 | You can often book the appointments right there using the same app.

00:21:35.100 | Great, let me get this appointment.

00:21:36.100 | Let me book it.

00:21:37.500 | It makes this aspect of being an adult much easier.

00:21:42.540 | Many of ZocDoc appointments you find doing this will happen fast, actually typically

00:21:46.300 | within 24 to 72 hours of booking.

00:21:48.980 | You can even sometimes score same-day appointments.

00:21:54.180 | Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to ZocDoc.com/deep to find and instantly

00:22:00.420 | book a top-rated doctor today.

00:22:02.020 | That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com/deep, ZocDoc.com/deep.

00:22:05.980 | You have to say ZocDoc.com three times fast for good luck.

00:22:14.320 | I'm trying to make that a thing.

00:22:15.660 | You think I can make that like a trend where people just say ZocDoc.com quickly?

00:22:19.120 | Probably.

00:22:20.120 | All right, what do we got here?

00:22:24.900 | Longtime sponsor of the show, our friends at Grammarly.

00:22:30.900 | I mean, for years, Grammarly has been this go-to tool which you can use basically anywhere

00:22:37.140 | you write.

00:22:38.140 | I have the number here.

00:22:39.360 | It currently works across more than 500,000 apps and websites to make your writing better.

00:22:47.460 | In recent years, as Grammarly has embraced AI, its ability to make your writing better

00:22:53.700 | has exponentially increased, right?

00:22:57.280 | So here's the type of things you can do now with Grammarly, prompts, "Hey, can you brainstorm

00:23:03.700 | some titles for me?

00:23:04.940 | Can you write an initial draft of like this request email that I have to send to a marketing

00:23:10.620 | executive?"

00:23:11.620 | It can help you with tone, "Hey, can we change the tone of this?

00:23:16.340 | Can you rewrite this more professional?

00:23:17.740 | What about more casual?"

00:23:19.800 | It can make word suggestions, and it does this in the apps you're already doing with

00:23:24.780 | enterprise-grade security and a business model that does not sell your data.

00:23:32.500 | So Grammarly really is your digital partner to make your writing better.

00:23:39.020 | Writing is critical to almost every knowledge work job.

00:23:42.140 | How well you write matters.

00:23:43.940 | Grammarly can help you write better.

00:23:44.940 | A couple of stats, 90% of professionals say Grammarly has saved them time in their writing

00:23:51.020 | and editing.

00:23:52.020 | Four out of five professionals say Grammarly helped them gain buy-in and action by improving

00:23:58.120 | their communication.

00:23:59.700 | So get more done with Grammarly, download Grammarly for free at grammarly.com/podcast.

00:24:07.540 | That's grammarly.com/podcast.

00:24:08.540 | All right, Jesse, let's do some questions.

00:24:13.180 | Who do we got first?

00:24:15.660 | First question is from Confused.

00:24:17.880 | You stated no time-blocking outside of work, but my life outside of work is more complex

00:24:22.080 | than work itself.

00:24:23.080 | It's where I'd like to be more productive.

00:24:26.000 | How should I manage family time, friends, volunteering, and varied commitments, and

00:24:30.080 | a side hustle?

00:24:31.840 | Well, first, I'll make a clarification in case this is helpful.

00:24:38.080 | The main thing I want people to avoid is time-blocking all their time.

00:24:42.120 | If you time-block all of your waking hours, it's too exhausting.

00:24:47.160 | It's too much to remain in the time-block mindset, and you're going to give up.

00:24:50.640 | You're also going to stress yourself out.

00:24:52.720 | Some people are in situations, however, where it's not like a traditional here's my job

00:24:56.120 | from 9 to 5, and then I have time off after my job.

00:24:59.120 | People have unusual situations.

00:25:00.520 | Maybe they have work that happens in the evening or split-shift work, or they're not working

00:25:05.000 | a traditional job, and actually the main thing they're doing is organizing what's going on

00:25:09.280 | in their house.

00:25:10.280 | And a lot of these efforts happen not during the day.

00:25:12.560 | That's the easy time.

00:25:13.560 | It's in the afternoons or evenings.

00:25:15.440 | This is where I think this more generalized rule helps.

00:25:17.920 | Your goal is not to time-block all of your time.

00:25:19.800 | So for some people, this might mean actually earlier in the day is un-time-blocked, but

00:25:25.200 | this complicated part of my day, like 3 to 7, I really time-block that because that's

00:25:29.760 | what gets complicated.

00:25:32.360 | The other thing you can do, so let's say you have a 9 to 5 job and you're time-blocking

00:25:35.520 | it because you need to do that to keep your job.

00:25:38.200 | Some other things you can do to help control your life outside of work is, one, make use

00:25:44.440 | of your calendar.

00:25:46.440 | So a lot of the things you mentioned, like doing things with friends, you're volunteering,

00:25:53.080 | some side hustle activities, these probably are happening at set times.

00:25:56.360 | So that's on your calendar.

00:25:58.240 | That's fine.

00:25:59.240 | You look at your calendar.

00:26:00.240 | What am I doing this evening?

00:26:01.240 | OK.

00:26:02.240 | Here's my events.

00:26:03.240 | I know when they happen.

00:26:04.240 | That's fine.

00:26:05.240 | That's just your calendar.

00:26:06.240 | That's not time-blocking every minute of your day.

00:26:09.040 | You can autopilot schedule, regular work, like on a side hustle or hobbies.

00:26:14.880 | I always do it in this place on these days at this time.

00:26:18.680 | That makes sure this work gets done, but it's not the same as building an ad hoc time-block

00:26:24.440 | plan on spec for every evening.

00:26:26.960 | Knowing that, like Tuesday and Thursdays, you leave work early and you work on your

00:26:32.440 | side hustle at the local coffee shop, and that's just your routine, is not the same

00:26:37.240 | as time-blocking.

00:26:38.240 | That's when you always work out, like right after work, before dinner starts.

00:26:42.440 | That's an autopilot routine.

00:26:44.400 | It's not the same as time-blocking because it's just something you do.

00:26:49.340 | It's not you saying, OK, I built this on spec schedule for the next few hours that I have

00:26:54.520 | to follow.

00:26:55.520 | That takes more work.

00:26:56.520 | Finally, it's OK to sketch a plan for your evening.

00:26:59.220 | Just don't be super minute-by-minute precise, like, OK, before I pick up the kids from baseball,

00:27:05.100 | I want to try to get this done, and tonight after dinner, remember to take out the garbage

00:27:09.240 | and recycle.

00:27:10.240 | You can just sketch out these plans to help guide you without having to have every minute

00:27:15.040 | spoken for.

00:27:17.240 | Really our principle here is do not time-block your whole day, every waking hour, but there's

00:27:22.480 | still a lot of structure you can have.

00:27:24.920 | You don't have to just have a big to-do list after your workday is over and just rock and

00:27:29.680 | roll.

00:27:30.680 | You can still have a lot more structure than that.

00:27:33.120 | When they do work on the side hustle and they go to the coffee shop, say, on Tuesdays, they

00:27:39.040 | should probably still time-block that, right?

00:27:42.800 | Yeah.

00:27:43.800 | So if it's an autopilot schedule, you just know that's when you do it.

00:27:46.960 | So I see that as different than time-blocking, but you're saying, like, within that block.

00:27:50.200 | Yeah, within that block.

00:27:51.200 | Yeah.

00:27:52.200 | I think that's fine because your side hustle is work.

00:27:54.320 | So I think that's fine.

00:27:55.320 | Yeah.

00:27:56.320 | If you're like, OK, I have 90 minutes in the coffee shop, what am I doing?

00:27:59.460 | If it helps to time-block that out some, I think that's fine.

00:28:01.780 | All right, what do we got next?

00:28:04.780 | Next question is from Anonymous.

00:28:06.620 | I'm 25 and live at home.

00:28:08.100 | I discovered you on YouTube.

00:28:09.820 | From your guidance, I now schedule times for gaming, no more YouTube browsing, and reading

00:28:13.660 | is my main form of entertainment.

00:28:15.140 | I just started taking some more classes online for my bachelors in computer information systems.

00:28:20.060 | I got your time-block planner, but I have trouble prioritizing what to do.

00:28:23.860 | There are so many things I want to get done.

00:28:26.740 | I like this idea that, for more people, we're the last YouTube channel they ever discovered

00:28:31.900 | because once they listen to us, they don't browse on YouTube anymore.

00:28:35.980 | My advice for YouTube is treat it like a library or a cable TV station, right?

00:28:39.780 | So look things up that you want to learn more about.

00:28:43.000 | Have a stable of shows like mine that are bookmarked that you watch the same way that

00:28:46.700 | you might have used to watch the Mythbusters on Discovery Channel.

00:28:49.340 | These are programs I like.

00:28:52.020 | It's funny, not to do an aside, Jesse, but last night we were watching a YouTube video,

00:28:58.140 | two different YouTube videos, maker YouTube videos, so a Mark Rober video and a Hacksmith

00:29:03.060 | video.

00:29:04.820 | My wife was watching with me and the boys, and what she remarked, which is absolutely

00:29:08.540 | right, is they are converging on exactly the production style of circa 2000s cable reality

00:29:17.660 | TV.

00:29:19.420 | So when you watch some of these videos now, it's just like watching one of these reality

00:29:24.860 | shows at 3 o'clock on the Discovery Channel.

00:29:28.900 | The cuts, the talking heads, the kind of forced zaniness, like we're all having fun.

00:29:35.240 | So it's interesting.

00:29:36.240 | It's like YouTube, the higher funded YouTube is now basically rediscovering classic cable

00:29:43.300 | TV, like reality competition program styles.

00:29:47.420 | Anyways, back to your question.

00:29:50.620 | All right.

00:29:51.620 | So here's why I usually recommend the people who are going from unstructured to structured

00:29:54.820 | for the first time.

00:29:55.820 | First of all, congratulations.

00:29:56.980 | The structured life is much better than the unstructured life.

00:29:59.820 | It's one of my preparation steps for the deep life more generally.

00:30:03.900 | We've talked about this before.

00:30:04.900 | If you want to cultivate a deep life, you have to get your act together first, and this

00:30:08.820 | requires practicing and cultivating discipline, organizing all the stuff you have to do in

00:30:13.700 | your time, and then I have a third one in there about taking back control of your brain.

00:30:18.580 | So you're sort of on track to what you need to do to cultivate a deep life.

00:30:22.420 | Here's what I recommend the people who are new to this, three things.

00:30:26.420 | Number one, autopilot the things that are most important.

00:30:29.520 | It sounds like you have a lot of flexibility in your schedule.

00:30:31.420 | That's great.

00:30:32.420 | You don't want to just come to each day and say, "What are the things I want to do today?

00:30:35.900 | What's important to me?"

00:30:36.900 | You want to autopilot the important.

00:30:38.580 | For you, that should mean autopiloting your time for your online classes.

00:30:41.700 | If you autopilot that time, you can attack these classes much more systematically and

00:30:46.340 | get through them much faster actually.

00:30:48.820 | You'd be surprised by how many classes you can complete when it's like every day for

00:30:51.940 | 90 minutes.

00:30:54.380 | Typically I tell people who are new to structure to also autopilot fitness or exercise in there

00:30:58.940 | and something community-oriented.

00:31:01.380 | Every week I have this like volunteer thing I do.

00:31:03.340 | So you get the big rocks to use a Stephen Covey term automatically happening on your

00:31:07.500 | schedule.

00:31:08.500 | Next, you want to use multi-scale planning for everything else.

00:31:13.420 | This prevents you from having to grapple moment to moment with the full scope of your ambition.

00:31:19.480 | So once you realize like I can control my time, and as you say here, there are so many

00:31:24.580 | things I want to get done.

00:31:26.700 | It could be paralyzing when it's 10 o'clock on Tuesday, "Oh my God, which of these things

00:31:31.760 | should I do?

00:31:32.760 | I'll never get through them all."

00:31:34.340 | Multi-scale planning cures you of this paralyzation because you don't have to think about everything

00:31:41.060 | all the time.

00:31:43.220 | At the scale of the season or the quarter, you're figuring out your big goals like what

00:31:46.700 | do I want to do this fall?

00:31:49.260 | Then when you make your weekly plan, you're saying, "Okay, which of these things do I

00:31:53.020 | want to make sure are reflected in my weekly plan?"

00:31:54.860 | You're moving around appointments, scheduling some stuff on your calendar.

00:31:57.860 | Then when you get to your day, you have your autopilot schedule, you have the stuff you

00:32:01.260 | already had on there in a weekly plan, you're really just time blocking your day.

00:32:04.420 | You're looking at your task list.

00:32:05.420 | It's much less fraught.

00:32:07.060 | So use multi-scale planning to, I would say, confine your ambitions so that it's not constantly

00:32:15.060 | rattling your brain.

00:32:17.460 | The third thing, avoid overload.

00:32:20.980 | It is tempting as you gain more structure in your life to try to fit in a lot of things,

00:32:25.100 | to try to catch up all at once.

00:32:26.740 | You'll burn yourself out this way.

00:32:29.080 | Keep your schedule reasonable.

00:32:31.660 | Keep seeking out time for gratitude and awe and just straight up enjoyment of things.

00:32:37.140 | Going to see the sunset, the long walks, going to the concerts.

00:32:41.440 | That sense of appreciation of life is going to be the fuel to help you keep pushing on

00:32:48.100 | making your life more interesting because it's exactly this type of appreciation and

00:32:51.800 | gratitude for cool things you're doing that you want more of.

00:32:57.040 | So don't fill all your time with productive activity.

00:33:02.120 | Balance the productive activity with the enjoyment of the fruits of these efforts.

00:33:05.640 | All right, who we got next?

00:33:09.520 | Next question's from Seb.

00:33:11.120 | "I work in consulting where there are lots of shallow meetings.

00:33:14.520 | How can I do deep work to increase my job skills if my days are filled with meetings?"

00:33:19.200 | Seb reached out to me.

00:33:20.200 | He was actually in Asia before, and that's where there was a lot of meetings.

00:33:23.600 | Then he moved to Germany and the same problem occurred there.

00:33:27.440 | This was the guy who was saying, but in Asia there was overtime.

00:33:31.160 | Yes.

00:33:32.160 | Yeah.

00:33:33.160 | And in Germany there's not.

00:33:34.160 | Right.

00:33:35.160 | Yeah.

00:33:36.160 | So it's more structured.

00:33:37.160 | In Asia, it's more structured.

00:33:38.160 | Like, well, the meetings, you're being compensated for if this gets in the way of other work.

00:33:42.760 | And Germany's more Western where it's like, nah, hyperactive, I don't mind.

00:33:46.840 | So Seb, my short-term advice is schedule meetings with yourself.

00:33:50.200 | So if you're in a meeting-driven job, then just have some meetings on your calendar for

00:33:55.400 | deep work.

00:33:56.400 | Because you have to keep in mind, you're being bombarded with meetings.

00:34:01.520 | You say yes to a lot of them, you say no to others.

00:34:03.900 | Some days are more full than others, and you have to move meetings forward to try to find

00:34:07.040 | time for them.

00:34:09.040 | So it's not like you're going to notice a difference if you introduce some new meetings

00:34:12.980 | into this mix.

00:34:14.040 | It's all still going to be you trying to fit meetings into your days, and some days are

00:34:17.020 | more full than others.

00:34:18.380 | No one else is going to notice the difference either.

00:34:20.420 | But if your mindset is in one of meetings, if that is the fundamental structure of work

00:34:24.140 | at your company, you have meetings, we talk about things.

00:34:27.680 | Your calendar is your destiny.

00:34:29.880 | Then just put other cool stuff on your calendar.

00:34:31.320 | So I have this three days a week, 90-minute meeting.

00:34:35.000 | It's with myself, and it's when I work deeply on this project.

00:34:37.140 | But I treat it like any other-- it's on my calendar.

00:34:39.060 | I treat it like any other appointment.

00:34:41.180 | If we use a shared calendar in our company so that we can see when people are available,

00:34:44.460 | that just shows up as a time when I'm busy.

00:34:47.300 | Don't make a big deal about it.

00:34:48.420 | Don't preach about it.

00:34:49.780 | But we have this tendency in modern knowledge work to somehow value meetings with other

00:34:58.500 | people above the time we spend doing stuff with ourself.

00:35:03.820 | And this is an inversion of reality.

00:35:06.580 | Meetings are typically supporting the efforts that eventually have to be done on our own

00:35:12.220 | through focus.

00:35:13.860 | So the focus has to be very, very important.

00:35:15.820 | You can't just talk about the work.

00:35:17.000 | You have to do it as well.

00:35:19.100 | So it's this weird value we have about what matters is meeting with other people.

00:35:22.700 | So schedule meetings with yourself.

00:35:24.940 | Two, try to reduce meetings.

00:35:28.220 | I know that's scary in a meeting culture.

00:35:30.860 | But there's a few ways to do that.

00:35:32.660 | One, just say no to more meetings.

00:35:34.580 | You don't have to say yes just because it comes your way.

00:35:38.460 | People throw out meeting invites all the time at all sorts of things, especially if they're

00:35:42.020 | just like, hey, you might be interested in this.

00:35:43.780 | We thought you might be interested in this.

00:35:45.220 | Why don't you listen in?

00:35:46.220 | You're just like, no.

00:35:47.220 | My calendar's full.

00:35:48.220 | It's a busy week.

00:35:49.220 | I've hit my workload limit.

00:35:50.940 | I'm trying to cut back on it.

00:35:52.140 | People don't care.

00:35:53.380 | Two, use office hours.

00:35:56.700 | So if there's a one-off meeting, like, hey, let's discuss this thing because it's too

00:36:01.740 | complicated to do via email, for example, if you just have a set time twice a week,

00:36:05.380 | you can defer more of those to that set time so it has a much smaller footprint.

00:36:10.280 | And then use protocol and processes more.

00:36:12.420 | Don't let people, to the extent that this is possible, use standing meetings as a replacement

00:36:20.220 | for real process thinking and time management.

00:36:23.780 | Don't let people say, OK, we're going to work on this project.

00:36:25.620 | I worry we're not going to make progress.

00:36:26.620 | So here's what we're going to do.

00:36:27.620 | I'll put a standing meeting on our calendar so I know at least every week we'll talk about

00:36:30.700 | it.

00:36:31.700 | Now I don't feel stressed.

00:36:32.700 | The progress won't make progress.

00:36:35.820 | That is a weak way to organize work.

00:36:37.580 | Say, no, no, no.

00:36:38.580 | If we're going to work on this project, let's take a moment to figure out how we're going

00:36:41.260 | to do it.

00:36:42.500 | What are the steps?

00:36:43.500 | Who's going to do what?

00:36:44.500 | How do we find out who needs what from when?

00:36:47.540 | Where are we going to keep the information?

00:36:48.900 | What are our deadlines for different things to happen?

00:36:51.980 | How do we actually want this work to unfold?

00:36:55.180 | Not just let's just have a meeting and small talk for 20 minutes and then do five minutes

00:36:58.940 | of talking.

00:36:59.980 | Or if you need, say, look, if we just want to check in, come to my office hours once

00:37:05.360 | a week.

00:37:06.360 | Like, hey, how's it going?

00:37:08.420 | Or say, I'll stop by your office once a week just to poke my head in and be like, hey,

00:37:13.220 | how are we doing?

00:37:14.220 | Going okay?

00:37:15.220 | Okay.

00:37:16.220 | Any questions you have?

00:37:17.220 | Anything that prevents a meeting that takes 30 minutes to an hour squatting there on your

00:37:19.860 | schedule is probably going to be an advantage.

00:37:22.000 | You can cut down on meetings, but then ultimately just make what you do with yourself, your

00:37:26.580 | deep work, a meeting as well.

00:37:28.100 | I've got a lot of meetings in my life these days, Jesse.

00:37:32.500 | Do you like that?

00:37:33.500 | No.

00:37:34.500 | I want to write and be left alone.

00:37:38.940 | I use a lot of office hours, though.

00:37:40.380 | Yeah.

00:37:41.380 | All right.

00:37:42.380 | What do we got next?

00:37:44.020 | Next question is from Carson.

00:37:45.860 | What are your all-time favorite books?

00:37:47.820 | Oh, well, long-time listeners know I can't do favorites.

00:37:51.740 | Like in any category, movies, books, foods.

00:37:56.320 | I am incapable.

00:37:57.320 | It's not like an intentional choice.

00:37:59.860 | I'm incapable of rank ordering things I like.

00:38:01.740 | I don't know why.

00:38:02.740 | I think there's probably we could come up with a term about it, like ordinalphobia,

00:38:10.860 | something like that, anti-ordination, therianism, maybe ordinalism, ordinalphobia.

00:38:20.880 | I just can't do it.

00:38:22.140 | All right.

00:38:23.140 | I did, however, in preparation for answering this question, I took a bunch of categories.

00:38:27.500 | I just looked at my shelf.

00:38:28.500 | I took a bunch of categories and was like, what's a book that was influential to me in

00:38:33.060 | that category?

00:38:34.060 | All right.

00:38:35.060 | Now, this is not exhaustive because I was literally just looking at my bookshelf, but

00:38:40.260 | I'll give you some ideas.

00:38:41.260 | All right.

00:38:42.260 | In religion, a book that was very influential to me was Karen Armstrong's The Case for God.

00:38:47.620 | This sort of came out during the period of the New Atheist, Richard Dawkins, Christopher

00:38:52.020 | Hitchens, et cetera, and it gives a much more interesting, I guess, presentation of religion

00:39:00.080 | and the time in which religion emerged and how it was pre-Enlightenment time and the

00:39:05.260 | issues that happen when you begin to combine post-Enlightenment understandings of epistemology

00:39:11.380 | with the way religion operates.

00:39:14.020 | Really powerful book.

00:39:15.020 | Those ideas have affected me.

00:39:16.420 | They show up again and again in all sorts of theological and religious writing and apologia,

00:39:20.620 | but I thought this book was just deep ideas, well-written, very interesting.

00:39:25.500 | It starts with the cave paintings.

00:39:28.660 | The book opens with the earliest impulses towards religion.

00:39:32.020 | It's pretty cool.

00:39:33.020 | All right.

00:39:34.020 | When it comes to the arts, Cinema Speculation by Tarantino.

00:39:39.620 | Fantastic book.

00:39:40.620 | Just in the mind of a movie enthusiast and just how they think about movies and their

00:39:47.080 | pieces and their values, very well-written collection of essays.

00:39:50.700 | Sidney Lumet's Making Movies, fantastic book about filmmaking where he uses his own movies.

00:39:58.480 | He looks at the different aspects of filmmaking and uses his own movies for each to talk about

00:40:01.820 | his experience.

00:40:02.820 | History.

00:40:03.820 | I remember John Adams by David McCullough being very influential when I first read that

00:40:07.940 | just because it was the way the narrative momentum and the psychological realism.

00:40:13.100 | I don't know.

00:40:14.100 | It's a fantastic book.

00:40:15.100 | I just won the Pulitzer, so look, I'm not the first to say it.

00:40:17.740 | Lincoln's Virtues by William Lee Miller.

00:40:19.700 | Weird.

00:40:20.700 | I'd never read something like that before.

00:40:22.280 | It's like an ethical biography of Lincoln and it's written in this sort of interesting

00:40:25.320 | style.

00:40:27.260 | Very influential.

00:40:30.260 | Ideas.

00:40:31.260 | Idea books.

00:40:32.260 | You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier.

00:40:35.260 | That was very influential.

00:40:36.260 | I mean, just the idea of even the polemic and the single person and the exploring of

00:40:41.540 | ideas from different angles and trying to wrap your intellectual arms around the sort

00:40:46.500 | of complex emerging phenomenon.

00:40:47.620 | That was an influential book.

00:40:49.380 | I talk a lot, obviously, about Walden by Thoreau, one of the original big idea books.

00:40:54.140 | It should be read as an idea book.

00:40:56.580 | Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.

00:40:59.700 | It's like You Are Not a Gadget but without the insane parts.

00:41:02.940 | Postman's a more of a careful thinker than Jaron is, though Jaron's a very fun thinker.

00:41:08.140 | Top Class of Soulcraft by Matt Crawford, I think it was 2008, maybe 2009.

00:41:13.060 | That was very influential when I read it.

00:41:14.180 | It was like a really big idea and it was new and it changed the way you understood things

00:41:18.960 | and it was humanist.

00:41:19.960 | It was a cool book.

00:41:22.340 | Finally in philosophy, I was very influenced by All Things Shining by Herbert Dreyfus and

00:41:27.540 | Sean Dorrance Kelly.

00:41:28.540 | That's a cool book.

00:41:29.540 | I pull from it some in deep work, but it's worth a read on its own to sort of understand

00:41:36.020 | our current moment and how we see the world differently, for example, than someone living

00:41:42.300 | during the age of the heroic age of the ancient Greeks.

00:41:47.140 | I thought it was a very fascinating, thought-provoking book.

00:41:49.420 | So I don't know if those are my favorites, but those are all influential books to me

00:41:53.060 | in categories.

00:41:54.160 | So you could do worse than to read any one of those books.

00:41:59.620 | All right, what do we got next?

00:42:03.140 | We have our corner.

00:42:04.740 | Ah, Slow Productivity Corner.

00:42:06.100 | Let's hear some theme music.

00:42:07.100 | Jesse, I think we should sell sponsor space on my big white tea mug.

00:42:19.540 | I think you should.

00:42:20.540 | Kind of like the patches in MLB.

00:42:21.540 | Just have like an Element logo right here.

00:42:25.500 | And the logo on the helmet.

00:42:28.100 | Yes.

00:42:29.100 | The Yankees had this Strasse.

00:42:32.060 | Everyone had it.

00:42:33.060 | I don't know what Strasse is.

00:42:34.060 | I don't either.

00:42:35.060 | But every team had it in the MLB playoffs.

00:42:36.340 | So in some sense, that's been effective advertising, because we all know it.

00:42:40.020 | In some sense, it's not, because I have no idea what it is.

00:42:42.060 | All right, Slow Productivity Corner.

00:42:45.180 | For those who don't know, we like to have one question each week.

00:42:48.220 | That draws from my most recent book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment

00:42:51.900 | Without Burnout.

00:42:52.900 | If you like this show, you need to buy that book.

00:42:54.820 | About half of what we deal with is relevant to that book.

00:42:57.940 | So check that out wherever books are sold.

00:42:59.660 | All right, Jesse, what is today's Slow Productivity Corner question?

00:43:03.660 | It's from Tisha.

00:43:04.660 | I run a small, high-end consulting firm that experienced a lot of hires this past year.

00:43:09.360 | They went from four to 14 people.

00:43:11.380 | I read Slow Productivity and decided to incorporate its principles with the new hires.

00:43:15.740 | It all worked great.

00:43:16.740 | However, as a business owner, I'm still stressed and have tons of work.

00:43:19.660 | How can I apply the principles to myself to ease my burden?

00:43:22.700 | Yeah, sometimes it's harder for the owner of the business than the people that works

00:43:27.100 | for them.

00:43:28.100 | So as the owner, you can kind of control what's being given to the people below you.

00:43:33.980 | You can kind of give them processes and structures that helps.

00:43:37.260 | But you're the backstop.

00:43:39.100 | So everything that needs to get done that's not being handled by the other people at the

00:43:42.700 | company, like eventually you have to do it.

00:43:44.260 | You're also the intake.

00:43:46.400 | So much new things, business development issues that need to be solved, vendors that have

00:43:50.580 | solutions that come through you.

00:43:52.800 | So it's like the hardest position.

00:43:55.060 | The hardest position.

00:43:56.060 | The good news is you have plenty of autonomy.

00:43:58.780 | The bad news is you have a lot of work.

00:44:01.420 | A couple of things that I think help business owners, separate active projects from waiting

00:44:07.580 | projects.

00:44:08.580 | So workload management, you can't say no to most of these things because the things you're

00:44:13.780 | working on are just things the business has to do.

00:44:16.480 | But just be really clear about, I'm only actively working on these three things.

00:44:19.380 | And once I hit a milestone with one of these, I'll pull something else in.

00:44:22.180 | So it reduces the number of things around which you're doing active administrative overhead.

00:44:26.700 | That will help.

00:44:27.980 | You got to make sure that the people collaborating with you on the work that you're waiting on

00:44:31.540 | know that.

00:44:33.660 | So it could be a vendor.

00:44:35.820 | So you're the owner of a company.

00:44:37.760 | One of the things you have to do is upgrade your email service and whatever.

00:44:42.180 | Like, I got to talk to the rep from Google Workplace and see if they have a solution

00:44:47.320 | for us.

00:44:48.320 | It could be a pain.

00:44:49.320 | And they kind of reach down.

00:44:50.320 | You're like, yeah, I want to do this.

00:44:51.320 | But it's not active.

00:44:52.460 | It's on your list.

00:44:53.460 | It's like two things away from your active projects.

00:44:55.860 | Tell that vendor, we're going to work on this.

00:44:59.280 | It's in waiting status.

00:45:00.280 | I have two things ahead of it.

00:45:01.980 | I will email you as soon as this moves to active, and then we'll set up a time to chat.

00:45:06.060 | Right?

00:45:07.060 | So when people are trying to set up meetings, for example, or sending you emails about stuff

00:45:11.220 | you're waiting on, don't set up the meeting.

00:45:14.240 | Don't reply with the answers.

00:45:16.260 | Instead say, look, I'm on this.

00:45:18.740 | This is in my waiting queue.

00:45:20.460 | When it gets to my active queue, which I estimate will happen within this time frame, I will

00:45:25.380 | reach back out to you, and we'll set this up, and email, and I'll be giving this.

00:45:28.260 | A lot of my attention will make progress.

00:45:31.220 | So only working actively on a few number of things at a time is going to make your work

00:45:34.980 | seem much less overloaded because you're putting the overhead of everything in the waiting

00:45:39.140 | list on pause.

00:45:42.320 | To separate your job in the different roles and treat it like you have multiple part-time

00:45:46.260 | jobs, there's an administrator role of trying to run the company.

00:45:51.260 | There's a strategy role.

00:45:53.660 | I'm overseeing the teams and making the decisions about the products and what we're going to

00:45:57.860 | go with.

00:45:59.820 | And maybe there's a-- I don't know whatever role there'd be.

00:46:03.100 | There's a technical role, making sure that we have the best technology or whatever.

00:46:09.340 | Treat those as separate jobs with their own task list on their own board.

00:46:12.300 | You have different times, different days for working on these different roles.

00:46:16.460 | This will prevent the context switching that's going to make you feel more harried.

00:46:21.500 | When you're working on strategy, you're just working on strategy for that morning, and

00:46:24.380 | you don't think about anything else.

00:46:25.380 | When you're working on administrative stuff, that's all you're doing, and you can really

00:46:28.340 | pick up speed and start getting a lot done.

00:46:30.440 | This also will make delegation easier later because you've divided things into roles,

00:46:36.500 | and now it's much easier when you hire that COO to say, like, great, this role, I can

00:46:40.180 | just move over to you.

00:46:42.780 | It makes it easier to delegate what you're doing.

00:46:46.180 | Finally, create processes.

00:46:49.660 | Stuff that happens regularly should have a regular way it happens.

00:46:53.580 | This type of report we always produce, here is how it works.

00:46:56.800 | It's like clockwork.

00:46:57.800 | The draft goes here in this folder.

00:46:59.140 | I sign off of it digitally by this close of business on this day.

00:47:02.780 | You send it to the designer who has all the instructions she needs to post it to the client

00:47:06.300 | web page or whatever it is.

00:47:08.260 | Make processes for things that happen regularly so that their footprint on your life and time

00:47:12.900 | is very predictable, and they're not just another thing floating.

00:47:16.480 | You're trying to minimize the active floating things you're trying to juggle and have to

00:47:21.080 | trade emails and slack about.

00:47:23.860 | You're the owner, so you can push for as many processes as you want.

00:47:28.720 | The only caveat there is make sure that the people involved in the process are involved

00:47:32.020 | in the details of the process and feel like they have the ability to suggest changes.

00:47:35.540 | Without buy-in, people will resist the process.

00:47:38.820 | With buy-in, that can make your life a lot easier.

00:47:40.940 | Yes, I want to validate.

00:47:43.940 | It could be much harder to be slowly productive as the owner of a business than as an employee

00:47:47.900 | of a business or as a solo entrepreneur, but it's still possible.

00:47:51.420 | You've got plenty of autonomy.

00:47:53.060 | You got to just deploy that to implement the right sort of things.

00:47:58.620 | I think we have a call this week, right, Jesse?

00:48:00.220 | We do.

00:48:01.220 | All right.

00:48:02.220 | Let's hear what we got.

00:48:03.220 | Hey, Cal and Jesse.

00:48:05.380 | Just listened to the Tech Minute segment from this week's show, and I have to say, as someone

00:48:11.020 | working in ed tech and in analytics, my first inclination when I heard the direction that

00:48:18.580 | that was going was my first thought was, "Oh, my goodness, in a future with visual headsets

00:48:24.520 | as the three-window desktop of the future," my first thought was, "The eye tracking that's

00:48:30.940 | required to make that tech possible will really open up the floodgates for work from remote

00:48:37.700 | surveillance, and some of the mouse jigglers that we're seeing to give the proxy for useful

00:48:43.800 | effort will just essentially skyrocket."

00:48:46.740 | Anyway, I was just curious what your thoughts were on that.

00:48:49.620 | That was immediately where my brain went when you started in on the discussion, and I just

00:48:53.700 | wanted to see what your thoughts are.

00:48:55.700 | If we're living in a future with glasses on everywhere we go, especially at work, when

00:49:00.420 | we put on our headsets, what kind of future does that present for us as far as proxy for

00:49:05.580 | meaningful effort?

00:49:07.180 | Will eye tracking really be useful in that future of work, and what are your thoughts

00:49:11.180 | as it relates to that?

00:49:12.180 | Thanks for the pod, and thanks for all your work.

00:49:14.980 | Bye.

00:49:15.980 | All right.

00:49:16.980 | Well, great question, though.

00:49:17.980 | First of all, Tech Minute.

00:49:18.980 | No, no, no.

00:49:20.020 | Tech Corner.

00:49:21.220 | There's a huge difference.

00:49:22.420 | Tech Minute, that's a whole other thing.

00:49:25.100 | We call that segment the Tech Corner.

00:49:26.740 | All right.

00:49:27.740 | It's a good question.

00:49:30.700 | It is a concern, not a deep concern, and let me explain why.

00:49:34.740 | When we look at the current trajectory of the virtual screen apparatus, so the visors

00:49:42.500 | to put the virtual screens into your life, they're taking that screen from your laptop.

00:49:48.620 | As it stands now, if I'm using the immersed visor, which is still in testing, or I'm using

00:49:56.900 | Apple Vision Pro to put screens in my real world, or Quest 3 to put screens in my real

00:50:01.060 | world, the actual things I'm seeing on the screens are just my normal applications running

00:50:05.700 | on my laptop, so the applications don't know they're being viewed on a visor, right?

00:50:10.740 | The first iteration of this vision, you're not writing as a company that's writing the

00:50:16.100 | software that people are seeing in their virtual world.

00:50:19.940 | You're not writing this software for the virtual world.

00:50:23.620 | It's taking your laptop screen, right?

00:50:25.300 | So when these are virtual screens, it's the exact same as just plugging your laptop into

00:50:28.580 | an external monitor.

00:50:30.620 | Microsoft Word doesn't know if you're looking at it on an external monitor or not and doesn't

00:50:34.180 | care.

00:50:36.220 | More broadly, however, going forward, I think this is a critical point.

00:50:40.700 | This is a privacy feature that has to be made crystal clear as physical privacy.

00:50:47.020 | If I am a manufacturer of a visor that can put screens in the world, I need to be very

00:50:53.400 | clear is what is my API?

00:50:55.620 | Am I exposing to applications things they can access?

00:51:00.140 | I think the easiest thing is to say no, just be a display.

00:51:03.980 | There's no API.

00:51:05.740 | There's nothing that Microsoft Word can access from the glasses themselves.

00:51:09.660 | There's no interaction between the software in your computer and the glasses except for

00:51:13.540 | display.

00:51:14.800 | This is not going to be the case for most software because what's going to happen eventually

00:51:17.900 | is that people are going to want to actually modify their software to take advantage of

00:51:22.780 | the fact that they exist in a virtual space.

00:51:24.720 | We see this in, for example, the Magic Leap demos.

00:51:28.260 | They seem to think that it's important that your Google messages are things you can swipe

00:51:33.500 | with your hand and sort around as opposed to there's just a screen floating in space

00:51:39.680 | and has a web browser on it.

00:51:41.500 | In the future, I guess, more apps might want to actually take advantage of the fact you're

00:51:46.500 | in virtual space.

00:51:47.500 | The privacy here has to be very clear.

00:51:50.100 | What information about my physical state does the applications accessing the device API

00:51:56.660 | have?

00:51:57.660 | Do they have any information about my eyes, eye tracking, location?

00:52:02.260 | That's going to have to be very clear.

00:52:03.460 | Maybe that even has to be regulatory.

00:52:05.260 | We have time until that's a problem because I think, and I've argued this before, the

00:52:08.660 | Magic Leap vision of we need special AR apps and it needs to look like Minority Report.

00:52:16.740 | We're throwing things around and it's all visually beautiful and I grab the email and

00:52:21.980 | I throw it over there and I swipe things around.

00:52:24.340 | That is not where we're going to go immediately because no one cares.

00:52:27.540 | They just want more screens.

00:52:29.820 | I want a bigger screen.

00:52:31.900 | I got an email on my phone.

00:52:33.420 | I want to type a response.

00:52:34.420 | I want a 16-inch screen to do that.

00:52:36.860 | I don't want to just look at my phone.

00:52:39.780 | That's going to be the first iteration of this type of lifestyle where we're looking

00:52:45.340 | at the virtual screens.

00:52:46.340 | So, yeah, down the road, that API privacy has to be clear, but it's not going to be

00:52:50.740 | the initial problem.

00:52:51.740 | Does that make sense, Jesse?

00:52:54.900 | If you think about the glasses, it's just a monitor.

00:52:57.740 | We're not worried about, our monitor doesn't talk to the application.

00:53:04.780 | The application doesn't care how it's being displayed.

00:53:07.640 | I think that's the way that this technology is going to be, at least for a while.

00:53:11.340 | All right.

00:53:13.620 | Let's see here.

00:53:16.120 | We have a case study, but actually, I'm going to jump past the case study because I'm looking

00:53:22.860 | at the final segment where we're going to read about the books I read.

00:53:27.980 | I have a sort of long digression on one of the books there, so I will save some time

00:53:34.620 | for that.

00:53:35.620 | So, let's jump through the books I read in October, but first, before we do, hear about

00:53:40.820 | another sponsor and this show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

00:53:47.420 | Now here's the thing.

00:53:48.420 | We talk a lot about cultivating a deep life on this show.

00:53:51.860 | One of the key properties of a deep life is you have a good relationship with your own

00:53:57.000 | brain.

00:53:58.000 | We talk about physical health a lot.

00:53:59.820 | We talk about organization a lot, but if you don't have a good relationship with your brain,

00:54:04.920 | if your brain, for example, is prone to rumination or anxiety or a hedonia, depression, this

00:54:14.700 | is a big deal in terms of your day-to-day experience of your life and a big obstacle

00:54:20.760 | to deep life.

00:54:22.240 | So if you are struggling with your relationship with your brain, who can help?

00:54:26.840 | Professional therapists.

00:54:28.740 | This is where BetterHelp enters the scene.

00:54:32.120 | If you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

00:54:35.120 | Here's why.

00:54:36.440 | It's entirely online.

00:54:38.400 | It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule.

00:54:42.400 | You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and

00:54:45.600 | switch therapists at any time for no additional charge.

00:54:51.720 | This is the easy way to get started with therapy, and if you are, again, have a relationship

00:54:58.240 | with your mind that you're not happy with, therapy is a great way to begin making progress

00:55:04.760 | on that.

00:55:05.760 | So give therapy a try with BetterHelp.

00:55:09.000 | Visit BetterHelp.com/deepquestions today to get 10% off your first month.

00:55:15.000 | That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com/deepquestions.

00:55:22.200 | I also want to talk about our friends at Shopify.

00:55:25.440 | Look, when you think about businesses who are making a splash, we're talking about like

00:55:31.800 | Thrive Cosmetics or Cotopaxi, you might be thinking about, oh, their products or their

00:55:37.960 | marketing, but an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business

00:55:44.640 | that make selling simple.

00:55:47.640 | For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify.

00:55:51.840 | Nobody does selling better than Shopify.

00:55:54.200 | It's the home of the number one checkout on the planet, as well as it's a not-so-secret

00:55:59.540 | secret, ShopPay, the feature that boosts conversions by up to 50%.

00:56:05.520 | This means way less carts are abandoned, more sales are actually completed.

00:56:10.920 | So if you're growing your business, if you're trying to sell something online, if you have

00:56:14.000 | a new store, Shopify should be a part of what you do.

00:56:20.580 | We don't currently sell something on this podcast, but if we did, it's a no-brainer.

00:56:25.400 | Shopify, beautiful checkout, beautiful interface, has ShopPay, which makes it much quicker and

00:56:31.660 | easier for people to check out.

00:56:33.340 | As soon as we figure out our fantastic product, our competitor, Cotopaxi, actually, someone

00:56:40.540 | said they might be able to--

00:56:41.620 | Zach.

00:56:42.620 | Zach said he could monogram, put some custom labels on some Cotopaxi stuff.

00:56:48.260 | Yeah.

00:56:49.260 | All right.

00:56:50.260 | All right.

00:56:51.260 | So when we start that business, Shopify will be our friend.

00:56:54.100 | So upgrade your business and get the same checkout that will one day be selling our

00:56:58.940 | must-have products.

00:57:01.940 | Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/deep.

00:57:06.140 | Type that in all lowercase.

00:57:08.500 | Go to shopify.com/deep to upgrade your selling today.

00:57:11.700 | That's shopify.com/deep.

00:57:12.700 | All right, Jesse, let's do our final segment.

00:57:18.500 | Oh, man, every time I drink, I think--

00:57:22.000 | Every time I drink, I think.

00:57:25.420 | Yeah.

00:57:26.420 | I think logo.

00:57:27.420 | I'm seeing it on the camera here.

00:57:28.780 | For people who don't know, who are watching, we use teleprompters.

00:57:32.620 | So I can see in front of me every time I raise my glass.

00:57:38.640 | You don't speak as a teleprompter, though.

00:57:40.500 | I don't have any notes on a teleprompter.

00:57:43.100 | That's clear.

00:57:44.260 | You talk off the cuff all the time.

00:57:45.780 | We talk off the cuff.

00:57:46.780 | We do live to tape.

00:57:47.780 | But a teleprompter lets me just see what is currently being recorded.

00:57:51.380 | So now I see myself.

00:57:52.620 | But if Jesse cuts the camera to himself, I can see what the current shot is.

00:57:56.860 | And if we're doing iPad drawing, I can see the iPad, what's up on the screen.

00:58:01.200 | So it's basically-- this is showing me the master shot that's actually being recorded.

00:58:05.740 | All right, so I want to talk about the five books I read in October.

00:58:10.260 | I got a little riff on the first one.

00:58:12.460 | Beware, I haven't done an intellectual academic riff in a while.

00:58:17.540 | So the first book I read, buckle in, On Settler Colonialism by Adam Kirsch.

00:58:24.940 | All right, so why this book?

00:58:29.600 | I got interested-- the thing that got me interested in this book was October 8th of last year.

00:58:37.060 | So the day after October 7th, 2023, well before there was, for example, the subsequent war.

00:58:45.140 | In academic circles, there was, in some circles, excitement and celebration of what had happened

00:58:53.500 | the day before.

00:58:54.600 | Now this is worrisome.

00:58:55.600 | It just is like a general heuristic.

00:59:00.380 | Whenever you are seeing a sort of dehumanization of the Jewish people in particular, whenever

00:59:06.100 | you hear people start saying about Jews, well, they had it coming, you've got to twitch your

00:59:12.220 | antennas a little bit, right?

00:59:14.740 | Historically, this has not gone well.

00:59:16.620 | So what is going on?

00:59:17.980 | What is this reaction coming out of academia?

00:59:21.820 | It was intertwined pretty quickly, it was pretty clear with rhetoric with specific terms,

00:59:26.500 | like settlers and settler colonialism, sort of a lot of Frantz Fanon sort of also being

00:59:32.060 | channeled as well, which as an aside is actually kind of ironic.

00:59:36.940 | Frantz Fanon was actually a supporter of the Zionist project, a supporter of Israel.

00:59:43.220 | It's interesting.

00:59:44.220 | He liked the socialist nature of what was going on over there, sort of like an interesting

00:59:49.460 | sort of contradiction.

00:59:50.460 | Anyways, a lot of this turned out to be coming from a lot of this rhetoric in that sort of

00:59:54.740 | immediate celebration of what happened October 7th was coming from an academic theory known

00:59:58.820 | as settler colonialism theory.

01:00:02.160 | So following my own dictates, which is read about the things you're hearing about, try

01:00:08.460 | to understand things by books where people have taken time to sit down and think about

01:00:12.580 | it.

01:00:13.580 | You know, I want to write, I want to read a book on this and a book came out this summer

01:00:16.460 | by Adam Kirsch and it was called On Settler Colonialism.

01:00:20.540 | Adam is a poet and literary critic.

01:00:22.420 | I believe he was the poetry editor, I think for Harper's, I might have that wrong.

01:00:26.660 | And he wrote this book.

01:00:28.500 | Let me say as an aside, I love the idea of this style or form of publishing where you

01:00:33.580 | write a short book that's dealing with something that's like very new, you know, as opposed

01:00:39.500 | to I'm going to spend four years and work on this book or whatever.

01:00:42.180 | We should have more of this like smart people that are like, I'm going to turn around a

01:00:46.020 | book on this quick.

01:00:47.060 | I've been thinking a lot about it.

01:00:48.100 | I know about it.

01:00:49.100 | Let me, so you can get books into the conversation faster.

01:00:52.060 | So bravo to the publisher and Adam, just in the general sense for doing it.

01:00:56.940 | So I read his book.

01:00:59.340 | Let me set this up.

01:01:00.900 | Kirsch is not a fan of settler colonialism theory, so you got to take that into account

01:01:04.200 | when you read this book.

01:01:06.020 | I do think he does a good job, however, of for most of the book, just trying to give

01:01:10.300 | a straightforward, here is what this is.

01:01:13.260 | Here are the ideas.

01:01:14.260 | Here's where it came from.

01:01:15.260 | Here's the key readings and writings.

01:01:16.500 | And then at the end of the book, he gives more of his own critiques.

01:01:20.060 | I think he was pretty fair, but you have to come from the point of view that the book

01:01:25.700 | is not positive about settler colonialism theory.

01:01:28.180 | Okay.

01:01:29.180 | So what did I learn?

01:01:31.460 | Settler colonialism theory rose out of the 90s and was developed in the 2000s.

01:01:38.300 | It emerged in Australia and then later in American circles.

01:01:43.940 | It was getting this bigger influence in academic and academic activist circles, but it was

01:01:48.780 | not as well known to the general public as other theoretical frameworks that picked up

01:01:55.620 | more prominence, especially in the 2010s.

01:02:00.220 | Racial and gender theories, I think, were getting more attention.

01:02:03.560 | People were more familiar with those as theories than they were settler colonialism theory,

01:02:08.320 | but it was growing in influence, even if it was quieter.

01:02:11.560 | So for example, land acknowledgments, right?

01:02:15.400 | You're probably used to this if you work in sort of any sort of large organizations or

01:02:18.760 | arts organizations where at the beginning of an event, you acknowledge the indigenous

01:02:24.520 | peoples on whose, which land you're currently doing the event or the play or the meeting

01:02:29.880 | or whatever.

01:02:30.880 | So it actually, as far as I can tell, came out of settler colonialism theory, so it came

01:02:34.120 | out of these academic circles.

01:02:35.120 | So it was having influence, it's just, its name as a theory was not as well known.

01:02:41.080 | And then it really took off, began taking off when A, they turned our attention from

01:02:47.880 | US and Australia.

01:02:49.180 | So the original writing was really focused on the settler project of the US, you know,

01:02:55.320 | in the 17th and 16th century and of Australia in the 19th century and 18th century.

01:03:00.440 | When they turned our attention more to Israel, it began to pick up more speed.

01:03:03.560 | And then of course, after October 7th, it came to more public prominence because you

01:03:08.680 | had people using terminology from the theory that people hadn't heard before.

01:03:13.600 | Okay.

01:03:14.960 | I came away not feeling very positive towards this theory.

01:03:19.880 | I have two reasons.

01:03:21.600 | Number one is very general.

01:03:23.080 | It's not specific to this theory, but I think it's an important point just worth emphasizing

01:03:28.860 | as you go through your own intellectual journeys and think about the world of knowledge.

01:03:33.960 | There are two different types of academic theory.

01:03:37.840 | I put them into these categories, predictive and radical.

01:03:42.840 | Predictive theory, this is like the traditional notion of a theory.

01:03:46.760 | There's some phenomenon you're trying to explain.

01:03:49.980 | You come up with a theory that has a mechanism that explains what has been observed, right?

01:03:55.680 | This is a plausible explanation for what we have observed.

01:03:59.120 | So you're trying to increase understanding of like how something works.

01:04:05.400 | What makes theory effective is it's predictive.

01:04:07.920 | Once you have this mechanism, there's other predictions you can draw from it.

01:04:12.120 | Well, if this was true, we would also see this or we wouldn't see that.

01:04:16.240 | And so you can then kind of test these predictions as a way to either strengthen your conviction

01:04:20.780 | in the theory's effectiveness or to discard the theory, oh, this doesn't work, or to modify

01:04:26.040 | the theory.

01:04:27.040 | Oh, let's modify the mechanism because these observations over here didn't match with what

01:04:34.920 | would be predicted.

01:04:36.920 | Now we're used to thinking about this for science, but the same predictive framework

01:04:41.880 | holds for theories in other fields as well.

01:04:44.300 | For example, sociologist Max Weber had this sort of well-known famous theory for the capital

01:04:50.720 | list energy in the U.S., he said, well, this is because it's the Protestant work ethic.

01:04:56.480 | The early U.S., the pilgrims, the early settlers, a lot of these were Protestants and there's

01:05:00.080 | like a very specific component to Protestant religion, especially with predetermination

01:05:05.480 | that would push like really hard work.

01:05:08.080 | And that explains the sort of economic dynamism of colonial America and onward, right?

01:05:14.880 | It's a good sounding theory.

01:05:15.880 | It kind of makes sense.

01:05:16.880 | It explains what's going on.

01:05:18.680 | But over time it made other predictions that didn't prove true.

01:05:22.040 | I'm not an expert on this, but then people started looking at other countries around

01:05:26.880 | that time that were primarily Protestant, that did not have anything near the same type

01:05:30.200 | of economic dynamics as the U.S., and then we saw similar dynamics where once we had

01:05:35.440 | a more religiously mixed population, we didn't see much difference in the dynamics.

01:05:41.520 | We had Catholic immigration wasn't causing these groups in the population were not acting

01:05:47.440 | notably different economically speaking.

01:05:49.560 | And so the theory is like largely been abandoned or at least heavily modified by sociologists,

01:05:53.360 | right?

01:05:54.360 | So that's predictive theory at work.

01:05:57.120 | Radical theory by context has some other elements.

01:06:01.640 | One they try to explain large swaths of human behavior with a single explanation.

01:06:06.280 | Sort of the wider the swath, the sort of more exciting the theory.

01:06:11.600 | Two, they tend to modify information they encounter to fit the desired conclusion as

01:06:17.800 | opposed to modifying their conclusions to fit the observed information.

01:06:23.320 | That's a radical theory does that.

01:06:26.040 | Three, they tend to propose radical solutions as cure-alls.

01:06:30.360 | They're often solutions that are kind of impossible, but like, hey, if we could just do this, everything

01:06:34.400 | would be solved.

01:06:35.400 | That's where the radicalism comes from, the name radical theory.

01:06:38.560 | Four, they tend to enforce purity.

01:06:43.880 | They tend to have structures to enforce purity among their adherents.

01:06:46.120 | So there's a lot of like careful self-observation and ostracization or punishment of insufficient

01:06:53.600 | purity, which is kind of needed because especially when you have these other factors like you

01:07:00.160 | having to bend information to fit the conclusion and sort of put some history away, that makes

01:07:05.840 | you sort of fragile as a theory.

01:07:07.800 | So you have to enforce purity.

01:07:11.320 | Typically radical theories include a theory for why people would critique them, a dismissive

01:07:15.680 | theory for why.

01:07:16.680 | So if someone critiques this theory, our theory explains they're doing so out of bad motivation.

01:07:22.080 | So we don't have to take it seriously.

01:07:24.000 | The classic radical theory of the 20th century, of course, was Marxism, which as it evolved,

01:07:30.880 | was explaining more and more, especially as you got into sort of the early critical theories

01:07:35.800 | of the modern period as well.

01:07:37.780 | So much was explained by these underlying mechanisms, these economic mechanisms that

01:07:41.360 | Marx put out.

01:07:42.960 | Everything had to be sort of explained and driven by these underlying mechanisms.

01:07:47.760 | All of sort of human behavior could be explained by these mechanisms.

01:07:54.080 | All sorts of information was ignored or modified or just outright suppressed, especially once

01:07:58.920 | you actually took this theory and made it the foundation of running countries.

01:08:02.640 | There's a lot of that going on.

01:08:04.340 | The solutions were radical, obviously, like running a Marxist communist government was

01:08:08.800 | a big radical solution.

01:08:09.800 | We had these big revolutions.

01:08:12.680 | And finally, of course, there was strict purity enforcement.

01:08:15.560 | So of course, in the political context, this was actually violent enforcement.

01:08:18.720 | But in the academic context for a while, it was seen as unsophisticated, did not follow

01:08:25.800 | these type of mechanisms.

01:08:26.800 | It's a classic radical theory versus predictive theory.

01:08:31.440 | As presented by Adam Kirsch, settler colonialism theory is a radical theory.

01:08:37.400 | It tries to explain basically everything bad through the ongoing impact of the original

01:08:46.520 | dispossession of the indigenous and a settler event.

01:08:48.960 | So like everything bad in America stems from the fact that America would dispossess the

01:08:57.080 | indigenous people of America with the settlers coming from England.

01:09:01.200 | It's not seen as a one time thing.

01:09:02.880 | It's seen as the classic phrase from settler colonialism theory is that settling is not

01:09:11.720 | a single event.

01:09:13.760 | It's an ongoing thing.

01:09:15.440 | So then they explain everything, everything, climate change, income inequality, all racial

01:09:20.680 | strife.

01:09:22.440 | Anything that is bad all has to come back to some sort of sustained and ongoing impact

01:09:29.280 | of this sort of single particular bad thing that happened so that there's that sort of

01:09:34.200 | grandiose large swath myth to it.

01:09:36.920 | As Adam points out, there's huge amounts of just bad history, ignoring information that's

01:09:43.400 | inconvenient.

01:09:44.400 | There's no rigorous scholarship.

01:09:45.400 | It's a radical theory.

01:09:46.400 | Just everything gets reshaped to fit this conclusion.

01:09:49.920 | So that's not a predictive theory.

01:09:51.320 | That's radical theory.

01:09:53.500 | The radical solutions, I mean, this is kind of the problem with it.

01:09:56.960 | Basically the radical solution is decolonization, which actually literally means like in the

01:10:01.160 | case of the U.S. or Australia, the 350 million people who live in the U.S. basically leaving,

01:10:08.120 | I suppose, and the remaining Native American population takes back over the country.

01:10:13.640 | Like, there's no other real solution, just this proposed other than decolonization, which

01:10:20.640 | that's literally where there's not, there's no other sort of solution predicted.

01:10:25.360 | And there's a lot of purity restrictions within it, right?

01:10:27.760 | So if you're within these circles, everyone has to one up each other with their purity

01:10:33.440 | to the decolonization mindset.

01:10:37.200 | Okay.

01:10:38.200 | So again, I'm separating right now, actually, even the particular, like the subject of the

01:10:42.520 | theory is very important.

01:10:44.200 | Like the colonial history of the world is a devastating history.

01:10:51.280 | So colonialism came out of the broader post-colonialism academic study project, which was like a really

01:10:56.640 | important ongoing project to understand when the age of empire was finally dismantled in

01:11:01.640 | the mid 20th century, to understand like what that had done and what was needed to enforce

01:11:07.960 | empire, right?

01:11:10.920 | After World War II, we realized, oh, empire is not a good thing.

01:11:15.720 | Before World War II, we're like, of course, you kind of take over countries or whatever

01:11:18.400 | and they make cotton for you.

01:11:20.440 | After World War II, we're like, whoops, maybe empire's not so great, right?

01:11:24.080 | This doesn't lead to good places.

01:11:25.280 | And so like post-colonial studies was necessary and there was a lot of really interesting

01:11:32.160 | thinking in there.

01:11:33.160 | This came out of that, but it's just gotten to like a radical direction.

01:11:35.280 | And now it's just, at least in my opinion, reading what I've read about it, it's a shoddy

01:11:42.200 | scholarship and people trying to one up each other with who can be more purely inherent

01:11:47.440 | and more radical.

01:11:49.360 | And I think that's dangerous in general.

01:11:51.040 | Radical theory, I think, is a dangerous direction for academia to go.

01:11:55.060 | So I don't like radical theory in general, right?

01:11:57.880 | Studying colonialism is important.

01:11:59.300 | Colonialism is bad.

01:12:00.300 | Confronting it is important.

01:12:02.780 | Radical theory is bad.

01:12:03.780 | We can have both of those things be true at the same time, all right?

01:12:06.140 | So I came away just thinking negatively about settler colonialism theory, divorced from

01:12:15.560 | the specific content of the theory, but because of its attributes as a radical theory.

01:12:20.600 | And I don't think radical theory is helpful for better understanding the world.

01:12:23.680 | And I don't think it's helpful for progressivism, meaning progressivism in not the political

01:12:27.720 | sense but in the philosophical sense of striving to improve the world, which I think people

01:12:32.600 | in academic institutions should be doing.

01:12:35.400 | All the support implicitly or explicitly from the state to be a professor, like, yes, you

01:12:39.240 | should be using your brain at least in part to improve the world.

01:12:43.960 | And radical theory gets in the way of that.

01:12:47.440 | The other reason, like, I'm specifically suspicious of this theory, and this goes back to what

01:12:51.800 | I said before.

01:12:54.720 | I just am suspicious of any theory for which one of the immediate consequences is violence

01:13:04.200 | towards Jews.

01:13:06.440 | Historically, this has never ended up well for that theory, right?

01:13:11.960 | I'm not talking about the war in the Middle East.

01:13:14.180 | I'm talking about the three to 500 percent increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes.

01:13:18.680 | I'm talking about Jewish day schools being shot at, Jews being randomly shot at.

01:13:24.880 | This happened in Chicago just a few days ago just for being visibly Jewish.

01:13:28.440 | This is not in Israel.

01:13:30.680 | This is not the war.

01:13:32.320 | This is just North American Jews.

01:13:34.400 | I'm talking about all of the students I hear about on college campuses who are saying,

01:13:39.120 | I feel like I have to hide visible signs of my religion.

01:13:44.760 | Every time in the last 120 years where a theoretical framework led to that, random violence against

01:13:50.840 | Jews, Jews trying to hide their identity, every single time, the adherence to that theory

01:13:57.160 | said, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know what, kind of, you know, look, you've got to break

01:14:00.640 | some eggs to make omelets, and they kind of have it coming, and there's this really bad

01:14:03.820 | thing that we're attributing to them, or at least some Jews somewhere, and so that's kind

01:14:06.960 | of just like an unfortunate consequence.

01:14:08.920 | Every single time we've gone down that road, it's ended up bad.

01:14:11.040 | So I just see that as like the alarm system with any theory, the alarm system with any

01:14:15.680 | theory, that if that is happening, your theory is probably a problem.

01:14:22.440 | So that is a general alarm system I have.

01:14:25.240 | Okay.

01:14:26.240 | Final key point, because if there's anything you come to listen to my podcast for is to

01:14:29.080 | hear about the Middle East, is I do want to make very clear when it comes to specifically

01:14:35.200 | what's happening in the Middle East, most people engaged in debate and protest and discussion

01:14:41.300 | about the wars in the Middle East could care less about settler colonialism theory.

01:14:47.320 | They don't know what it is.

01:14:49.440 | It's not at the source of what they're thinking.

01:14:52.140 | So it would be intellectually dishonest to try to use the problematic nature of this

01:14:58.560 | theory, which I think is very clear, to try to, for example, dismiss everyone who is protesting,

01:15:06.080 | debating, or arguing against what's happening with Israel and Gaza.

01:15:08.960 | This is sort of unrelated from that, in that sense.

01:15:12.340 | You cannot paint everyone on one side with this broad brush any more than, for example,

01:15:18.480 | you can look at every Israeli and say they all would be comfortable in Netanyahu's right

01:15:22.980 | wing cabinet.

01:15:23.980 | Right?

01:15:24.980 | We're talking about this particular theory, not talking about this much larger conflict

01:15:30.940 | that's happening.

01:15:32.540 | But I do think if you are engaged, this is a serious issue that requires serious people

01:15:36.480 | making serious arguments and throwing radical theory into the mix doesn't help.

01:15:41.580 | If you are serious about this issue, do not use this particular theoretical framework

01:15:47.960 | as your guide.

01:15:48.960 | If you're a college student and you want to think hard about these issues, that's fantastic.

01:15:54.020 | Be wary of this theoretical framework.

01:15:56.400 | This particular theoretical framework is not helping any side of this conflict.

01:16:00.300 | This particular theoretical framework, I think, is only going to gum up the works, only going

01:16:04.620 | to get in the way of serious people trying to do serious work on this serious issue.

01:16:08.820 | I do not like radical theory in general.

01:16:12.080 | And so that is kind of my, this is my PSA against radical theory.

01:16:16.780 | And again, the book I read and the things I've read about it are somewhat biased.

01:16:22.260 | But it's pretty easy to identify the tenets of radical theories when you see them.

01:16:26.040 | So as a scientist, academic, and not somebody who's in the social science, it's easier for

01:16:29.340 | me to say this.

01:16:30.340 | I'm just going to say I don't like radical theory.

01:16:31.820 | I don't like that radical theory.

01:16:34.500 | It's a specific thing I'm saying, but there we go.

01:16:36.500 | There is my, there's my lecture, Jesse.

01:16:39.380 | Detailed.

01:16:40.380 | Detailed.

01:16:41.380 | It was a good book.

01:16:44.300 | You should do like a detailed description like that on Creighton's eruption that you

01:16:47.660 | read a couple months ago.

01:16:49.780 | I now want to spend 30 minutes, and I actually am equally passionate about this, on how James

01:16:56.380 | Patterson messed up Michael Creighton's eruption.

01:17:02.580 | I don't know who the characters were.

01:17:04.400 | I'm 200 pages in this book and they're like, so-and-so, Susan walks in the door.

01:17:11.860 | I don't know who Susan is.

01:17:13.180 | 200 pages in, I don't know who this character is.

01:17:15.940 | I can't tell you right now the name of a single person from that book.

01:17:21.460 | You tell me Jurassic Park.

01:17:22.460 | It's like, oh, you got Dr. Grant.

01:17:23.820 | You got Sattler.

01:17:24.820 | You got Malcolm.

01:17:26.260 | We know these things.

01:17:28.440 | As soon as I finished that book, I couldn't tell you.

01:17:30.260 | It's bad writing.

01:17:31.260 | It's bad writing.

01:17:32.260 | All right.

01:17:33.260 | What are the books that I read?

01:17:37.380 | That breaks the record for the longest I've ever talked about a book.

01:17:39.580 | I also read The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon.

01:17:45.660 | So Sharon McMahon has a huge social media presence.

01:17:48.300 | She's a government history scholar.

01:17:51.340 | So it's surprising and it's fantastic.

01:17:53.740 | She has this huge Instagram.

01:17:55.260 | It's about interesting people from history.

01:17:58.100 | She wrote this book called The Small and the Mighty.

01:18:00.140 | My publisher sent it to me.

01:18:01.420 | I really enjoyed it.

01:18:03.220 | It's vignettes of historical figures that you don't know, but who lived consequential

01:18:09.180 | lives and inspiring lives.

01:18:12.020 | It's divided into sections, divided by kind of categories, and then it follows these figures.

01:18:17.180 | And this is what I think Sharon does, if I understand it properly, on her social channels

01:18:22.100 | as well.

01:18:23.100 | This is like a drawn out version of it.

01:18:25.000 | So I like that book.

01:18:26.000 | I saw Ryan Holiday mention it as a reading list as well.

01:18:28.900 | You guys have the same publisher.

01:18:30.400 | I think it's what it is.

01:18:32.220 | It must be a portfolio book.

01:18:33.780 | Then I read Chasing Dreams by Bob Weiss, former head of the Imagineers at Disney.

01:18:42.220 | It wasn't what I was hoping.

01:18:43.220 | You know I have this weird Disney book obsession.

01:18:47.100 | And so this book came out by the former head of Disney Imagineering.

01:18:52.260 | I think what I was hoping, it's not a knock on the book, but I think what I was hoping

01:18:56.580 | was a lot more about the technical details of how they built these theme parks.

01:19:03.860 | Like what goes into the technical innovations in the building, like the next generation

01:19:07.740 | of rides or whatever.

01:19:09.180 | But it was more of a traditional business memoir.

01:19:10.900 | So it's much more like Bob and where he was going and the people he met and the stresses

01:19:15.540 | of the job, which is fine.

01:19:17.540 | But I kind of wanted to get into how the Pirates of the Caribbean works, mainly because I was

01:19:21.900 | doing my Halloween decorations.

01:19:22.900 | I was like, yeah, I want to get some techniques.

01:19:26.620 | I want to build some animatronics.

01:19:27.620 | So it was fine.

01:19:28.620 | If you're into Disney, it was fine.

01:19:29.620 | Good business memoir.

01:19:30.620 | Had an interesting wife, Bob Weiss.

01:19:33.420 | Then I read The Wave by Susan Casey, huge Susan Casey fan.

01:19:36.140 | I'd read The Wave a long time ago.

01:19:37.340 | I went back and re-read it.

01:19:39.620 | Great book.

01:19:40.980 | It's about big waves.

01:19:42.020 | So half of the book is her hanging out with Laird Hamilton and other big wave surfers.

01:19:46.260 | That's fantastic, sort of like outside magazine adventure writing.

01:19:50.700 | And the other half is like hanging out with wave scientists and they're kind of interleaved

01:19:53.900 | together.

01:19:54.900 | But it was, I love that book.

01:19:55.900 | And then I read Tribal by Michael Morris.

01:20:00.820 | This was an interesting book.

01:20:02.140 | So he studies tribalism, but not in the sort of, not like a sociological perspective of

01:20:12.800 | like the way we talk about tribalism now, but like how our brain is evolved, right?

01:20:17.500 | Like how does like the Homo sapien brain deal with tribes and how is that different than

01:20:22.380 | other species of humans and how does that affect us today?

01:20:26.820 | And his big argument, which I thought was nicely contrarian, is that tribalism gets

01:20:32.620 | a bad rap.

01:20:33.620 | He says, no, no, no, the thing that allowed Homo sapiens to succeed over all of these

01:20:40.140 | other human style, humanid, whatever they call them, a humanid species like Neanderthals,

01:20:47.500 | Homo erectus, like Homo florensis, he's like, what allowed Homo sapiens to succeed is that

01:20:52.700 | actually we have this capacity to connect with and work with other people at a much

01:20:57.240 | broader scale.

01:20:59.340 | Like we can, Yuval Harari talks about this in sapiens to some degree.

01:21:03.560 | We can come up with a way to feel like our state, like a million people are all our brothers.

01:21:09.540 | Like we can, we can connect to and work with people at a much larger scale than other species.

01:21:15.540 | Neanderthal is like, I have my band and if someone else comes in, like we're just going

01:21:20.860 | to eat them.

01:21:21.860 | Like we're going to kill them.

01:21:22.860 | I have no ability, chimpanzees are the same way.

01:21:26.140 | You're not in my band, like, yeah, what, what do we care?

01:21:30.060 | Like, we'll just kill you.

01:21:31.620 | Right.

01:21:32.620 | But, but Homo sapiens could cooperate with people from far away, huge groups of people.

01:21:39.380 | This allowed us to do things like trading and that allowed knowledge to move and we

01:21:42.700 | could build up giant cities.

01:21:43.820 | So he's actually saying the Homo sapien tribal instinct is one of compassionate cooperation.

01:21:51.460 | And so what we should do is leverage that to try to build, get over divides.

01:21:54.820 | And actually like our, our built-in mechanisms, tribal mechanisms are things to leverage to

01:21:59.940 | overcome divides.

01:22:01.460 | That this idea that our instinct is to quickly draw a line between us and others and to be

01:22:06.500 | very suspicious of people who are not in our immediate group.

01:22:08.780 | He's like, that's not actually Homo sapiens instinct.

01:22:10.700 | We have a huge capacity for greatly expanding who counts as our group.

01:22:15.860 | And that it actually, he documents to build what we call tribalism now, like a in group,

01:22:20.820 | out group.

01:22:21.820 | It takes a lot of work to try to put up those divides and you have to do a lot of work to

01:22:25.620 | try to demonize another side, to, to carefully set them up as being very different.

01:22:32.620 | Like it's more of the, it takes effort to keep people apart.

01:22:35.820 | And our default is like, we're much better at connecting.

01:22:38.980 | So I thought it was a cool contrarian thesis.

01:22:40.220 | And he's like, so we should leverage in like business and life and politics, leverage this

01:22:45.340 | fundamental mechanisms of Homo sapiens to like cooperate better, to have teams operate

01:22:50.580 | better, to overcome like political divides and hatreds, contrarian.

01:22:56.180 | This is one of these cases where it's like the topic the professor has been studying

01:22:59.700 | forever.

01:23:00.820 | So these are always good books when a professor writes their like big book on the thing that

01:23:06.340 | they've been studying forever.

01:23:07.500 | So it has that type of energy of like, I've done all of these studies and I'm putting

01:23:12.580 | to a book for the first time.

01:23:13.580 | So that's a pretty good book, Tribal by Michael Morris.

01:23:16.660 | All right.

01:23:17.660 | I think that's it.

01:23:18.660 | Five books.

01:23:19.660 | Maybe this will, this will be our new standard, Jesse.

01:23:21.740 | I'll give a 30 minute speech on one book every week.

01:23:26.580 | I have to put on my professor hat occasionally because I always say, please send all hate

01:23:32.600 | mail on this to jessie@counselingbird.com, it'll definitely get to me, I'll definitely

01:23:37.620 | read it.

01:23:38.620 | All right, everyone.

01:23:39.620 | Thanks for listening.

01:23:40.620 | We'll be back next week with another episode and until then, as always, stay green.

01:23:46.360 | Hey, if you liked today's discussion about protocols for focusing better, you might also

01:23:51.020 | like episode three 11, which is about finding focus in distracting times, given that this

01:23:58.200 | video is being released, I think the day before the U S election day, probably a good one

01:24:02.300 | to watch right now.

01:24:03.300 | So check that out.

01:24:04.300 | I think you'll like it.

01:24:05.300 | So I thought this was a good excuse to talk about a topic that a lot of you have actually

01:24:08.760 | written me about in recent days, which is how do you focus during distracting times?

How To Quickly Improve Focus & Productivity | Cal Newport

Chapters