Most Self-Help Advice Is Wrong. Here's The Fastest Way To Transform Your Life

00:00:00.000 | So I got a lot of strong responses to my recent episode in which I interviewed Arthur Brooks about

00:00:06.320 | his book, Build the Life You Want. There clearly is a real hunger out there for transforming your

00:00:13.600 | life into something more intentional and more deep. I think this holds whether you're starting

00:00:19.280 | from a place of chaos and misery that you want to escape, or if you're a generally successful,

00:00:25.440 | happy person, but are craving something more noteworthy with your life. The key question for

00:00:30.960 | anyone who's interested in this path is what is the first step? So traditional advice here is real

00:00:36.000 | clear. Figure yourself out. Look down at that nasal, gaze at it, figure out your deepest passion,

00:00:42.640 | your values, and let that motivate everything that happens. On my show, I tend to argue,

00:00:48.720 | no, no, start with discipline first. Establish a self-identity as a disciplined person

00:00:56.480 | before you do any of the big thing or take any of the radical steps. So today I want to experiment

00:01:01.120 | with a closer, more specific look at this idea of starting the path to a deep life with discipline,

00:01:09.280 | because I want to get specific about this. I'm going to argue in particular for the notion that

00:01:15.760 | the very first thing you should do on this path to depth is organize your life outside of work.

00:01:22.640 | So get organized about your family life, your personal life, the stuff you do outside of your

00:01:29.280 | job, to be in control of your schedule, to feel on top of your obligations, to be able to consistently

00:01:34.240 | make time for the things that matter in your life outside of work. Of course, being organized in your

00:01:39.840 | job is important too, but that's a very complicated thing. We go into detail about that on the show.

00:01:44.720 | Knowledge work is confusing and overwhelming. You essentially need a doctorate in organizational

00:01:49.840 | psychology to stay on top of email and chat and meetings. And that's a whole other issue. And it's

00:01:54.560 | much more difficult in a longer term project. But what I want to argue is you start with your life

00:01:59.520 | outside of work, what you can completely control, get organized there. And this will be the first

00:02:05.040 | step towards constructing a more meaningful life. So here's, I want to do this today. I'll start by

00:02:10.720 | expanding on my case for why this should be your target for the first step. And then I'll give you

00:02:16.400 | a crash course. I got three ideas. Do one followed by two, followed by three. That can get you a lot

00:02:23.040 | closer to feeling on top of all the stuff that's going on in your life. So let's start with this

00:02:28.400 | why question. Why start with non-professional organization on your quest for depth?

00:02:33.680 | Well, as you've heard, if you've listened or seen my show before, I do think it's important to get

00:02:39.680 | a practice with discipline as one of the first things you do. And you're going to get that

00:02:46.480 | by organizing your life. So it's compatible with that idea. It is a particular discipline pursuit

00:02:53.600 | that you could follow. So everything I'm saying here is compatible with my old discussions. This

00:02:58.800 | is something to do to organize your life that is going to require discipline. But why this

00:03:03.040 | particular activity among all of the other experiments you could do to get more used to

00:03:07.840 | discipline? Why organization instead of exercise or fitness or reading more books or learning to

00:03:14.080 | play the guitar? Well, there's a few specific advantages I think this particular step towards

00:03:19.120 | discipline actually has. Number one, it reduces the background hum of stress that makes aspiration

00:03:27.520 | and ambition difficult to grow. So if in your life outside of work, you have this chaotic feeling of

00:03:36.240 | my car needs to go get its emissions inspection, and I know my gutters are in a terrible shape,

00:03:42.240 | and I haven't dealt with my flooded basement, and I haven't decorated the walls in this room,

00:03:48.720 | and I haven't called my sister in a while. You have all these things swirling around just in

00:03:53.760 | your head. You have this sense of stress and chaos and reactivity in this time that should otherwise

00:04:00.880 | be yours to control. That is not fertile soil for ambition to grow. That is not fertile soil

00:04:05.600 | for aspiration to grow. It's not fertile soil for you to develop a clear vision for what you

00:04:09.760 | want in your life. So it's a discipline pursuit that's also making your subjective context more

00:04:15.440 | hospitable that everything else for everything else that's going to follow in the quest for more

00:04:20.800 | depth. It's also going to give you more mental peace and free time for reflection. So once you're

00:04:28.160 | on control of your obligation, so you've reduced the background hum of stress, you then are able

00:04:34.880 | to take control of your time and now can regularly make time for the self-reflective activities,

00:04:43.440 | the regular long walks through the woods, the meditation, whatever it might be in which you're

00:04:48.880 | going to start to have insights about what matters to you. When you have control over your schedule,

00:04:53.040 | this is where you're going to start making time for things like reading good books or exposing

00:04:57.440 | yourselves to interesting movies or series that themselves are going to have moments of resonance.

00:05:02.960 | Ooh, wait a second. Something in this is really speaking to me. There's an insight. Let me pluck

00:05:07.440 | that out. My image of what I want in my life is now clicking a couple more degrees towards being

00:05:14.960 | in focus. So you're going to have more time and space for the type of activities. They're going

00:05:20.000 | to help you get clarity about how to move forward from here. It will support then. That's my third

00:05:26.240 | advantage. Any of the other discipline pursuits that you might later put into place as part of

00:05:33.920 | your quest for a deeper life. So as that vision comes into focus, if you have control of your

00:05:39.360 | obligations and your time, your free time, you're now much more easily able to enact the plans you

00:05:46.640 | might come up with as you get more specific about where you want your life to go. And finally,

00:05:52.000 | it's going to give you pragmatic insight into what's already going on in your life. And we'll

00:05:58.320 | see this as I get more specific in the second half of the deep dive here. But as you actually confront

00:06:03.600 | your schedule and your time and your obligations, you confront where are you spending your time?

00:06:07.680 | And when you confront how you're spending your time, you get a sense of do I like what I'm doing

00:06:12.880 | here or there? It gives you a really, I would say, objective snapshot of what's actually going on in

00:06:20.480 | my life right now. And it allows you to make some better decisions about, wow, I'm really spending a

00:06:24.320 | lot of time on my phone or watching dumb shows or getting blasted with my friends every night.

00:06:30.080 | You have to confront that reality if you're going to try to gain control of your time outside of

00:06:34.880 | work. So I really think in general, starting with discipline, yes, I still agree that's the first

00:06:40.560 | step towards the deep life, not with deep vision. But if you're going to choose something that's

00:06:44.320 | going to help you get more disciplined, do this one. It's going to be my argument. Organize your

00:06:48.480 | life, take control of your reigns because you're going to kill a lot of birds with the same stone.

00:06:52.880 | All right. So how do you do this? We talk a lot on this show about organizing your work life,

00:06:58.480 | as I mentioned before, and that's its own complicated beast. In some sense, the whole

00:07:02.640 | art of modern day digital enhanced knowledge work is figuring out your system that can

00:07:08.880 | ebb and flow with the influx and tainment. And it's like your job. You're a lion tamer,

00:07:14.800 | but instead of lions is emails. And it's a whole complicated thing. Your life outside of work is a

00:07:19.120 | lot different. You still have the same issues of overload and keeping track of things just in your

00:07:27.040 | head, the tension between reactivity and proactivity in terms of your schedule, the tendency to be

00:07:33.920 | pulled into the simple and the simple and passive as opposed to the rewarding, but difficult and

00:07:38.720 | active. All that's still there, but it's at a much slower pace and you have a lot more autonomy and

00:07:44.080 | flexibility about how you deal with your life outside of work. So it's an easier environment

00:07:48.560 | for organization. So I'm going to pitch you a much simpler to implement system here that is

00:07:54.640 | streamlined for exactly this context of life outside of work. So what I'm going to do is

00:07:59.520 | start by describing a dead simple system for life organization, right? Once I've explained that

00:08:08.000 | system, I have two additional steps about what comes next after this system is in place, right?

00:08:14.000 | So here's a basic system to get started. It's going to have three components, a calendar,

00:08:20.880 | file storage, and a mail sorter. See if I have that right. Mail sorter, calendar,

00:08:28.960 | file storage. All right. That's all you're going to need. It's much simpler than work.

00:08:32.640 | Let's go through this. The particular order I want to go through this in is let's start

00:08:35.520 | with file storage. And what I mean here is a dual solution, a physical and a digital

00:08:41.360 | place that you could store things. The physical is a filing cabinet. We're talking manila folders

00:08:49.280 | in a filing cabinet. If you don't want to buy a cabinet for your apartment, just get a file box,

00:08:53.680 | get on Amazon, $9. It's like a cardboard box with two metal rods where you can hang,

00:09:00.800 | hanging file folders in it, right? So you, no matter where you are, you can have one of these

00:09:04.080 | digital, whatever, Google drive, Dropbox, just a place where you can have digital files all stored.

00:09:12.880 | Now, what are we going to do with the physical storage? This is where you store anything that

00:09:18.480 | is a physical piece of paper you need to hold onto. You have a place to put it. So we're talking

00:09:22.720 | receipts. We're talking, I don't know, tax forms, warranty cards, et cetera. This sounds obvious,

00:09:27.520 | but most people don't have this and it creates a lot of stress. So you need a place where

00:09:31.440 | I need to hold onto this piece of paper. I know where to put it. I know where to find it. It'll

00:09:36.160 | take you five minutes to set this up, but it is going to continually give you rewards in terms of

00:09:40.880 | less stress. Just knowing where that thing is. Your digital storage then is where you do the

00:09:47.280 | same thing for digital artifacts that you know you need to hold onto. Now, here's a tip. Often,

00:09:53.520 | the thing you need to hold onto might come to you in the form of an email or a webpage. You filled

00:10:00.800 | out your estimated tax payment for your state and online, and there's a page that says, "Hey,

00:10:05.680 | you've done that." You could print all of this stuff out and store it. Or a little known tip,

00:10:10.640 | but I think a useful one. When you go to print... Hey, quick interruption. If you want my free guide

00:10:17.200 | with my seven best ideas on how to cultivate the deep life, go to calnewport.com/ideas

00:10:25.840 | or click the link right below in the description. This is a great way to take action on the type of

00:10:31.760 | things we talk about here on the show. All right, let's get back to it. You can select, "Oh, what I

00:10:37.680 | want to print to is a PDF." And anything you could normally print to your printer, you can print to a

00:10:42.080 | PDF file, which you can then drop in your Google Drive, drop in your Dropbox. So digital things

00:10:49.280 | that you need. Here's a record. Here's the email saying that you're confirmed for this house

00:10:54.080 | reservation, digital, throw it in. So you got two places, digital, physical stuff goes in there that

00:11:00.080 | you know you need to keep track of. All right, that's going to be the easiest of our three

00:11:03.840 | components of the basic system. Now, let's move on to the second calendar. I'm going to suggest

00:11:11.200 | a digital calendar. And I'm going to suggest when it comes to your life outside of work,

00:11:15.280 | that you make your calendar the engine of your organization. You are going to run your life

00:11:23.520 | outside of work from your digital calendar. So this calendar is going to have, of course,

00:11:30.960 | meetings or appointments. I'm supposed to go to the doctor, or, you know, going over to the

00:11:36.000 | cousin's house for dinner. Sure. But you should also use it for one-time tasks and regular

00:11:43.680 | occurring activities. So where are your workouts? You have them on your calendar. This is when I do

00:11:48.560 | them. It's on the calendar. Let's say you have a one-time task. I got to change the tires on my car.

00:11:53.920 | I'm kind of sliding around a little bit. Don't put on a to-do list. I'm going to suggest calendar,

00:11:58.800 | specific day, specific time. This is when I am going to change the tires on my car. I got to

00:12:05.120 | fill out paperwork for my kid's summer camp, for example. If you don't want to choose a specific

00:12:10.240 | time for it, choose a specific day and add that as an all day event at the top of the column

00:12:15.760 | corresponding to that day in your digital calendar. So what I'm suggesting here is quite different

00:12:20.560 | than what I suggest in the world of work. I am not going to suggest when you're getting, when

00:12:24.720 | you're new to personal life organization, I'm not going to suggest complicated to-do list.

00:12:29.920 | Everything lives on your calendar, you live off your calendar. What's going on today? Or I'm at

00:12:35.200 | work, but outside of work, see on the way to work, I'm doing this. And during work at some point

00:12:39.680 | today, I got to fill out this paperwork. And then I'm leaving work early because I see from four to

00:12:43.600 | five, I'm stopping by whatever the party supply store, it's on your calendar. The things you need

00:12:49.920 | to do. Now here's the key. Everything's there. Anything you need to remember to do exist on a

00:12:55.600 | day. So it's not in your head. Now you're able to get a little bit of peace. You just trust your

00:13:02.480 | calendar. You see what you're supposed to do on a particular day. Things will get done. You don't

00:13:09.440 | have to remember it. You don't have to look in a personal inbox on your email and see someone

00:13:14.560 | bothering you about something. You know, it's being taken care of. Now, of course, if you have

00:13:18.160 | a very complicated life, you can move on and use a business style to-do list. But for a lot of

00:13:21.680 | people, this is enough. Now here's the secret advantage, the sort of beneficial side effect of

00:13:28.480 | using the calendar to drive your personal life, is you now have control over optional important

00:13:35.600 | things because you're just used to this idea of what's on my calendar for today outside of work.

00:13:39.360 | Okay, that's what I'm doing. Those things can be unmissable appointments like your dentist,

00:13:43.760 | but it can also be things that you have optionally decided are important.

00:13:48.000 | Yeah, I'm going to the gym and this is when I'm doing it. You know, I'm going for a long walk

00:13:53.680 | because I want to have a period each week to be more meditative. And I work from home and I do

00:13:59.120 | this in the afternoon on Friday because we don't usually have meetings then. It's something that's

00:14:03.760 | optional, but important. It's on your calendar. You treat it the same as the dentist appointment.

00:14:07.200 | So now you have the ability to mix and match optional high value activities into your day.

00:14:15.200 | So you've gained more control over how your time is being invested in a way that you wouldn't have

00:14:21.520 | if you do what the default chaotic approach is, which is you get home from work and say,

00:14:25.680 | "What do I want to do next? I'm not in the mood to walk. And oh my God, this thing is due. My

00:14:30.080 | kid's camp forms are late. I just got an email about it. So let me like stay up late and desperately

00:14:34.160 | do it." When you're just, "Hey, what do I want to do tonight?" You don't have a lot of control.

00:14:39.600 | When you have everything on your calendar in advance, you gain a lot more control.

00:14:43.920 | Now, what you want to do with details for these activities. So, you know, you're meeting someone

00:14:51.360 | and where are they going to be? And what's the instructions for getting to their building?

00:14:55.520 | Or, you know, you need to go to the mechanic and you have some notes about what the problem is and

00:15:00.720 | what, you know, you want to look for. On your digital calendar, you just add this to the event.

00:15:04.880 | You click on the event in any digital calendar, you have a big info thing,

00:15:09.760 | details as usually called, you just paste any information right in there.

00:15:13.200 | So not only do you know when I get to something on the calendar, when I need to do something,

00:15:16.640 | I'll get to it on my calendar. You also know that the details I need for doing that thing

00:15:20.240 | will be right there in the event. Getting clarity, we're getting peace here. Now,

00:15:25.760 | what if it's a lot of paperwork or something that's too voluminous to actually have connected

00:15:31.440 | to a calendar event? Well, then that thing will be in your file storage system that we talked

00:15:37.280 | about in part one, it'll be a PDF and a Google Drive, or it'll be printed papers in your filing

00:15:42.560 | cabinet. So you would just put a pointer to that in the event. Yes, all the paperwork for summer

00:15:47.360 | camp is in the filing cabinet under summer camp 2024, and the paperwork's there. So what we're

00:15:52.000 | going for here is you know where everything is, everything is taken care of, is accounted

00:15:56.880 | for in your schedule. You simply just run your day off of what's there on your calendar. This

00:16:02.640 | is how you're going to start to get mental peace. This is how you're going to start to escape the

00:16:06.320 | sense of chaos. All right. The final piece of the system is what I'm calling the mail sorter.

00:16:14.240 | And I'm going to get traditional here. And by traditional, I mean, straight out of our

00:16:20.560 | gospel of David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, have a physical mail sorter.

00:16:24.720 | A mail sorter is just an open box, three sides of the box, no top, no front,

00:16:31.360 | or sometimes it's just one big open box. It traditionally was where you would actually

00:16:34.880 | put mail into it before they came in before you would actually sort through it. We are going to

00:16:41.360 | use a physical mail sorter that is at your house. And I suppose if you work at a different office,

00:16:46.560 | you could have a mail sorter related to your personal life there as well.

00:16:50.880 | This is going to be the incoming filter for everything that shows up during your day,

00:16:56.400 | relevant to your life outside of work that you need to handle at some point. Now, this is straight

00:17:02.240 | up David Allen. Put it in the mail sorter and we'll deal with it at regular intervals.

00:17:08.560 | In my business productivity, my professional productivity advice,

00:17:12.240 | one of my core arguments is the mail sorter, as David Allen talks about in Getting Things Done,

00:17:17.040 | can't keep up with digital professional life. If I'm getting 150 emails a day, a mail sorter,

00:17:23.120 | this is not really relevant anymore, but it is still appropriate for most people's personal life

00:17:29.280 | where A, you're still dealing with a lot of physical paper. I got mailed something from the

00:17:34.000 | IRS or a bill from my doctor. I got mailed it. I need to deal with, put it in the mail sorter.

00:17:39.600 | My kid brought home some paperwork from school. I have to fill out, put it in the mail sorter,

00:17:44.880 | right? So you get more, you have more physical artifacts corresponding to your obligations

00:17:49.680 | in your personal life. So as things show up in the day, you put them in your mail sorter.

00:17:54.240 | What if something comes to mind that doesn't have a physical artifact?

00:17:58.480 | Maybe you notice something. I got to get a landscaping team to come and whatever.

00:18:04.800 | I just noticed it when I walked in and our bushes are crazy and I don't know how to trim them.

00:18:09.360 | Or someone tells you something on the street, like, "Hey, you know, it's like back to school

00:18:13.760 | nights coming up," or something like this. So you don't have a physical artifact.

00:18:16.480 | Well, next to your mail sorter, have a stack of paper or a stack of index cards and a pen,

00:18:21.840 | and this is pure David Allen, jot it on the thing, throw it in the mail sorter.

00:18:25.760 | It becomes a physical thing. Same thing with emails that come in in your personal email address. Oh,

00:18:31.200 | here's like the complicated instructions for your kid's spirit week or something like that.

00:18:36.160 | Print it, put it in the mail sorter or jot down a note. You can put that in your digital filing

00:18:41.040 | cabinet, jot down a note, make a plan for a spirit week. So everything that shows up of,

00:18:47.360 | "Oh my God, I got to take care of this in my life," goes into this one box.

00:18:52.720 | And then on a semi-regular basis, you process this box and you go through and you got to put

00:18:56.400 | aside time for this, but you go through. And I would suggest having enough time when you sort

00:19:02.720 | through this box that you can actually deal with the short duration obligations right there.

00:19:08.320 | I'll just pay this doctor bill. Let me just fill out this paperwork. Now you can do the short

00:19:12.800 | things real quick. And some things you might come to and say, "This is actually not relevant,

00:19:15.840 | or let me just file this away." And for the bigger things that require more time,

00:19:21.120 | goes on your calendar. "Well, let me find a time when I am going to call the landscaping

00:19:27.520 | company to have them come out. I'll put this on my calendar over here. Let me find time when I'm

00:19:32.400 | going to do the camp paperwork. This is more complicated. All right, I'm going to add this

00:19:36.080 | to this sort of task block I have on my calendar for an upcoming Sunday." And you make your way

00:19:41.120 | through either doing it or scheduling it on your calendar. Now you may ask, "Well, how do I know to

00:19:47.520 | go through the mail sorter?" That too is scheduled on your calendar. See how everything kind of

00:19:52.000 | connects together here? So you're driving your life on your calendar. So one of the regular

00:19:55.360 | things you have on there once or twice a week, go through the mail sorter, and you give yourself 30

00:19:59.520 | to 45 minutes on your calendar. So all of these things connect together. And now you can handle

00:20:05.840 | stuff that's coming at you from all directions. It gets collected, it gets processed. It gets

00:20:11.040 | executed with all the information needed, clear where it is when it comes time to execute it.

00:20:16.240 | For most people's personal lives, this basic system is enough to keep up with what's going on,

00:20:24.320 | to give you the peace of mind of stuff that needs to get done, gets handled.

00:20:28.720 | I'm not feeling chaotic. I'm not forgetting or losing things.

00:20:31.680 | So start with that basic system if you don't already have any system in your personal life.

00:20:36.560 | All right, now I have two more steps about how to build on top of the foundation of the system.

00:20:44.560 | Step two, now we're gonna get a little more advanced, automate what's important. So now

00:20:49.840 | we're going to, now that we're living our life on this calendar, we're gonna take more advantage of

00:20:55.280 | this. So what you need to do is set up automatic schedules on your calendar for things that are

00:21:01.920 | important and happen more than once, right? So this might mean household stuff that happened

00:21:06.720 | semi-annually. This is when I need to clean my gutters. Let me have a note on my calendar

00:21:12.800 | recurring for those three times a year, two times a year I do it. So it'll just show up when I get

00:21:17.760 | there. Call and set up gutter cleaning. Put the information right there in the reminder. Okay,

00:21:23.200 | here it is. Here's the number for the gutter cleaning people that we like. Car maintenance,

00:21:28.960 | it just shows up. This is when I do it. This is when I go in to get my car looked at and my oil

00:21:33.520 | changed. Now, if you're doing something for the first time, I just bought a car,

00:21:39.600 | it's fine to just put the first car maintenance on there. And then when you get there, that task

00:21:44.560 | is gonna require you to find a mechanic and figure out what needs to be done. But then you can update

00:21:48.160 | that information for all future occurrences of that task. So the information in these recurring

00:21:52.320 | tasks can get richer as you learn more. Exercise, make this regular. It should just show up regularly

00:21:58.480 | on your calendar when you want to do it. Think about things like time outdoors. I need that time

00:22:03.920 | to help me unwind from the chaos of the digital urban world. Make that regular. Yeah, Friday

00:22:11.520 | morning, I go and do this. And after I drop off the kids, I start my work day a little late. I

00:22:15.920 | walk this path. It's on my calendar. It happens regularly. So you wanna spend more time with

00:22:21.840 | friends. So here's what I'm gonna do. Two evenings a week are always blocked off. So I don't schedule

00:22:26.480 | anything else during those evenings from like six to nine, maybe Thursday and Friday. And my plan is

00:22:32.640 | at the beginning of every week, just try to invite someone. Whoever I kind of run into early in the

00:22:37.440 | week, say, "Hey, do you wanna grab something Thursday night or Friday night?" 'Cause you

00:22:40.880 | know those days are always free. You always have time held aside for doing something with friends.

00:22:46.240 | And now you just have to have the heuristic of, "Okay, next friend I run into, if I don't yet

00:22:50.720 | have plans for this week, I say, let's just do X, Y, and Z. I have the time free." This time

00:22:56.400 | is being regularly protected. You're automating what's important to you. Don't worry about getting

00:23:01.600 | a perfect set of activities to automate. What's the complete set of things I need to remember to do?

00:23:06.880 | What's the complete set of things that I wanna do that's gonna make my life deeper? You'll get

00:23:10.560 | better at that as you advance through the process that follows of making your life deeper. All this

00:23:15.280 | will be refined. Just get in the habit now of automating what's important. If you're gonna

00:23:20.480 | live your life off the calendar, get all the stuff that you want or have to do on there.

00:23:27.360 | All right, step three, and this is sort of the secret sauce that is really gonna set you up for

00:23:32.080 | building a deep life. Reduce what's not important. One of the key side effects of living your

00:23:40.160 | personal life off your calendar is that you will get a very clear understanding of where your time

00:23:45.840 | goes. Because you are putting these things on your calendar. You are seeing what you don't have time

00:23:50.720 | for, or when you don't have time for something, what parts of the week, and why you don't have

00:23:55.040 | time for it. What is it that's getting in the way? Is there a particular activity that's eating up a

00:23:59.920 | lot of time and not leaving much left? Is it your work? You know, now that I'm being honest, like,

00:24:05.840 | I have to usually work a couple hours in the evening. I don't have enough time to do almost

00:24:09.200 | anything else. That's an incredibly important realization to have and confront if that's true.

00:24:15.440 | Maybe your energy is not there. You find, like, I scheduled this ambitious 90-minute CrossFit

00:24:23.200 | workout every evening at seven because in my mind on paper, that's an open time, but I never really

00:24:29.120 | have the energy to do it. That's clear feedback. That's not the right time of your day to be doing

00:24:32.960 | this. So you can now go through and reconfigure and reduce what's in your life based on your

00:24:38.960 | knowledge. So you should be doing this maybe a month into running this system. Give yourself a

00:24:44.320 | month to get a sense of what's going on. I come through and say no more of this. I'm gonna stop

00:24:49.760 | doing this activity. My plan here is not working, so I'm gonna reconfigure it. Yeah, fitness,

00:24:56.960 | actually, here's what I need to do. I need to do this first thing in the morning. Let me change

00:24:59.600 | how I do my work. Let me have no meetings before 10. Like, I'm gonna reconfigure and I'm gonna

00:25:04.800 | reduce. So this is where now you get in and start monkeying around with your life to make it work

00:25:10.160 | better. And this is where you begin to really get that exposure of crafting and cultivating

00:25:19.120 | intentionally what your life to be. None of this is possible if you don't yet have this foundation

00:25:23.840 | of the basic system where things are captured and scheduled. You run your life on your calendar. The

00:25:27.840 | important stuff shows up regularly. If you don't already have that foundation, it's hard to monkey

00:25:32.240 | with your life. I want to go to the gym more and let me know why is this not working? I signed up

00:25:36.880 | for this thing and it's sporadic and it's and it's haphazard and something stick and some things

00:25:42.720 | don't. You get to this step three about a month into what I'm suggesting here. It's going to be

00:25:47.280 | a completely different picture. You will feel like you're firmly at the wheel of the car that

00:25:52.640 | is your life and can actually aim it in different ways and have a good sense of what's happening on

00:25:58.080 | the road if we're going to stretch that metaphor. So all three steps of these together, that should

00:26:03.680 | get control. So yes, generally speaking, organizing your life in this way will give you exposure to

00:26:10.000 | discipline and you'll feel more efficacious. So anything else you want to take on, you'll have

00:26:14.560 | a more disciplined self-identity. Yeah, I can actually do stuff that's hard, but more importantly,

00:26:18.400 | you have the concrete tools in place that directly affect how you spend your time.

00:26:23.680 | And it's from there that almost everything else is going to seem possible. So anyways,

00:26:28.560 | this is experimental. I'm trying to get specific here. I'm toying with this idea

00:26:32.480 | of being specific about organization, getting control of your life as being the first step

00:26:40.400 | towards depth, the first layer details for the first layer of the deep life stack.

00:26:45.520 | But let me know what you think about it as well. I'm interested in feedback here in case studies.

00:26:49.920 | You can always send that to jesse@calnewport.com. But I think that I think we're on to something

00:26:54.800 | here, Jesse. I think someone feeling organized, how could you not then be better prepared to

00:27:00.720 | make changes? And on the flip side of that, if your life is chaotic, that's difficult.

00:27:06.880 | Almost, I mean, you can do things and fits of inspiration, but what's going to stick.

00:27:10.400 | Yeah. Do you find that you still use your physical

00:27:14.080 | filing system as much as you did in the past now that so much stuff is digital?

00:27:19.280 | We have, yeah, we do. We do. In fact, our problem is it's on my task list. So if I was using this

00:27:26.160 | basic system, it would be on my calendar. And I'm probably going to go back. I've merged too

00:27:30.960 | much of my task management in life outside of work with my work system, which is this like

00:27:35.360 | very complicated system. I might go back to the calendar system because like, for example,

00:27:39.120 | one of the things I need to do is I have to clean out our filing cabinets full and I have to go

00:27:43.760 | through and clean out stuff we don't need because now we're having a hard time. We mean my wife and

00:27:48.320 | I just being able to like fit the folder in because there's so many things in there. I

00:27:54.960 | definitely have learned this as we get older, as we've had a whole mess of kids, there's a lot of

00:28:00.400 | physical filing. Yeah, there's a lot of physical filing. I mean, a lot of it's financial, you know,

00:28:05.840 | too. It's just like taxes and receipts, but there's paperwork. The kids generate a lot of

00:28:10.480 | paperwork. Yeah, that makes sense. I don't use my physical one as much as I used to in the past.

00:28:16.240 | Are you doing more digital? Do you have a set place you like to store your digital?

00:28:21.680 | Yeah, for the most part. Yeah. Yeah. I use an external hard drive and then some stuff in the

00:28:26.080 | cloud. Yeah. Okay, smart. So anyways, we got a bunch of questions coming up that all kind of

00:28:31.840 | roughly are going to orbit this general topic of constructing the first steps or the steps

00:28:37.840 | involved in constructing a deep life. But first, let's hear from some sponsors. So I want to talk

00:28:44.640 | about our friends at Cozy Earth. It's absolutely a true story, Jesse. So our house cleaner came

00:28:51.520 | yesterday. And as I went up to get in bed last night, yesterday night, I called out, oh, no.

00:28:59.280 | And my wife was like, what's going on? Thinking that, you know, like something broke or something

00:29:02.400 | like that. Here was the issue. We had forgot to put out the Cozy Earth sheets for her to switch

00:29:08.880 | onto the bed. And she put on normal sheets. And I said, and this is a this is a word for word quote,

00:29:15.680 | which shows how I'm certainly not pampered or privileged. I said, this feels like sleeping

00:29:20.720 | on sandpaper because comparative comparatively speaking, we love our Cozy Earth sheets so much

00:29:26.000 | that it was, you know, essentially a tragedy that we didn't have our Cozy Earth sheets on.

00:29:34.320 | That's how much I enjoy Cozy Earth sheets. For those who don't know, I guess I should probably

00:29:38.640 | tell you Cozy Earth was founded to transform lives by offering the softest, most luxurious

00:29:46.240 | and responsibly sourced bedding in the world. A brand that made Oprah's favorite things five

00:29:52.960 | years in a row. Their bedding is ethically sourced using premium viscous, which is extracted from

00:30:00.400 | highly sustainable bamboo. This fabric is naturally temperature regulating and breathable.

00:30:08.080 | It's also, and I'm just saying this directly, super comfortable. It is really, really comfortable.

00:30:13.040 | That is why our normal sheets to me now feel like sandpaper. If you don't believe me, try it out.

00:30:18.160 | They have 100 nights sleep trial, which means you have up to 100 nights to sleep on them,

00:30:22.400 | wash them, try them out. If you're not completely in love, you can return them within 100 days for

00:30:26.880 | a full refund. So I highly recommend Cozy Earth sheets. It's one of my favorite things. So if

00:30:34.240 | you've never tried Cozy Earth, I've got awesome news. Ooh, you can save up to 35% off Cozy Earth

00:30:41.680 | right now. You have to hurry because this offer won't last. Go to CozyEarth.com and enter the

00:30:48.320 | promo code CAL at checkout to get that up to 35% off on your first order. That's CozyEarth.com

00:30:56.400 | and use the promo code CAL, C-A-L at checkout, CozyEarth.com. Another product that I'm actually

00:31:06.000 | very happy to sponsor because it's something I use is Element, L-M-N-T, a zero sugar electrolyte

00:31:15.120 | drink born from the growing body of research revealing that optimal health outcomes occur

00:31:20.080 | at sodium levels two to three times government recommendations. So it's a powder and a little

00:31:25.440 | stick that you open up and add to your water bottle and then you shake up. Each stick delivers

00:31:32.080 | a meaningful dose of electrolytes free of sugar, artificial colors, or other dodgy ingredients.

00:31:36.320 | It's formulated for anyone on a mission to restore health through hydration and is perfectly suited

00:31:41.120 | for athletes, folks who are fasting or those following keto, low carb, whole food, or paleo

00:31:47.920 | diets. I'm actually reordering now. We just ran out, Jesse, because this time of year when my

00:31:54.480 | classes start back up again, this is actually a time that I need Element and here's why.

00:32:00.960 | So the people they talk about, and I don't need to mean to nerdify myself, but in the ad copy,

00:32:05.840 | they talk about the people who have endorsed and used Element, US Olympic athletes,

00:32:09.840 | professional athletes, Navy SEALs, FBI sniper teams. Here's why I use Element is because on

00:32:17.600 | a typical teaching day at Georgetown, what's going to happen? I'm up and I'm getting after

00:32:22.880 | it right away because I'm trying to get my writing in first thing in the morning.

00:32:26.560 | And then I'm jumping to campus and doing meetings and teaching. And it's a lot of

00:32:32.400 | talking, which is very dehydrating. And what am I doing? I'm just drinking a lot of coffee,

00:32:36.240 | a lot of coffee, a lot of water. So I'm just sort of flushing my system,

00:32:40.800 | hitting the head all the time because I'm drinking, and this is a conservative estimate,

00:32:46.320 | all the coffee and I'm dehydrated myself speaking all the time. When I get home from a day of

00:32:52.080 | teaching, I need to get those electrolytes back in my body and I use Element. So it's

00:32:56.800 | almost as cool as having to take some Element after your FBI sniper team mission,

00:33:01.840 | but it actually does help me. Also after my workouts, I'll even titrate, I'll do a half or

00:33:09.680 | a full depending on, you know, how dehydrated and how little salt I've been getting recently.

00:33:16.000 | So here's the good news. Members of our community here can receive a free Element sample pack with

00:33:22.560 | any order if they purchase through drinkelement.com/deep. It says drinkelement.com/deep.

00:33:34.000 | If you order through that URL, you get this free sample pack where you can try all sorts of

00:33:38.320 | different flavors. They also have this cool new product, which is great for the winter called

00:33:41.920 | Element Hot. So we have flavors like chocolate medley. Let's see, their chocolate medley flavors

00:33:48.880 | include chocolate mint, chocolate chai, and chocolate raspberry. It's an Element drink

00:33:52.320 | designed to be, have hot. So if you're out, like let's say exercising, running, it's cold,

00:33:57.280 | you want a hot drink, but you also want the Element Advantage that works really well.

00:34:01.120 | You can try it risk-free. If you don't like it, just give away what you have and Element will

00:34:06.160 | send you a money back refund. No questions asked. So go to drinkelement.com/deep. That's Element,

00:34:14.480 | Elemente, drinkelement.com/deep. They get a free Element sample pack with any order.

00:34:20.480 | All right, Jesse, let's get moving with some questions.

00:34:23.840 | All right, who do we have first today? First question's from Gonzalo. How can I maintain a

00:34:31.040 | deeper life when I'm about to experience major changes in my personal and professional life?

00:34:35.040 | I'm going back to school, changing countries with a different language and culture.

00:34:38.880 | How can I maintain a deep life without being overwhelmed?

00:34:42.160 | We got to talk about the definition of deep here. So I think if I'm reading your question properly,

00:34:52.160 | you're using a specific definition of deep that corresponds to maybe simplicity or corresponds to

00:35:00.400 | a very aggressive, carefully constructed leisure schedule. I've built out this life where I'm doing

00:35:08.400 | this reading and this exercising and have these important hobbies. So it's either simplicity or

00:35:13.600 | that. You think this is all going to get broken up. It's going to be chaotic. So how can I have

00:35:17.520 | this really carefully constructed set of activities or how can I enjoy a deep simplicity when I have

00:35:23.520 | all the chaos of moving and having the extra work of school and trying to learn a different language?

00:35:28.480 | But I want to step back and say, let's use a different definition for deep here

00:35:31.680 | and have it mean intentional. So to live a deep life means you're being very intentional about

00:35:38.000 | how you live. So during a period of transition, your intentions might be different than during

00:35:44.560 | a period of stability. So you have to ask, what am I trying to focus on or preserve or get out of

00:35:51.120 | this transitional period? And it might be about immersing myself in this new culture and in the

00:35:58.160 | academic program that I'm following and find meaning in that and not just have it be like

00:36:03.840 | a chore that I'm trying to overdo. Your intention might be trying to avoid a sense of overload or

00:36:09.040 | stress and be able to just have gratitude for where you are and not overdo it. You clarify

00:36:14.400 | your intentions and you figure out how to structure a life around those intentions.

00:36:17.760 | And it might then look very different during this period than it might otherwise look during

00:36:24.960 | another stage of life. So I think if you think about this, depth is intention. Intentions have

00:36:32.240 | to match what's going on in your life. You have a big thing happening. It's a cool thing happening.

00:36:36.640 | But what you have to worry about during this time might be very different than what you have

00:36:40.400 | to worry about before. So clarify your vision for this period, make it realistic, make it values

00:36:46.720 | aligned, but also go easy on yourself. Don't put too much on your plate. This is not the time to

00:36:52.320 | pick up seven extra hobbies and train for the triathlon. Make your intentional plan and then

00:36:58.640 | go after it. All right, what do we got next, Jesse? Next question is from Megan. I work full

00:37:05.600 | time as a teacher, but I find it hard to balance personal and work obligations. There's never

00:37:10.240 | enough time. I work all week and then spend Sundays trying to catch up on all the needs that

00:37:14.480 | need to be done at home. I want to relax, but often can't because I feel overwhelmed.

00:37:19.280 | Well, let's see here. You're overwhelmed. So if I'm reading this correctly,

00:37:26.720 | your work is taking up a lot of time, which is common for teachers. It's one of the only jobs

00:37:33.280 | where nowadays you still have a lot of the reactivity that a normal knowledge worker has,

00:37:38.000 | emails and things you have to do, but you're given no time to actually do it during the workday

00:37:42.800 | because you're in the classroom. Then you have to figure out how to get that done.

00:37:45.920 | So how do you find relaxation when you're always so busy? I'm going to move your focus away from

00:37:50.720 | time and I'm going to move it towards psychology. So having an organizational system really tuned

00:37:59.200 | up for your professional life with capture and obligation list and the way you keep track of

00:38:03.840 | things so nothing is in your head. You're multi-scale planning, you're in control of your

00:38:09.840 | time. Nothing's being held in your head. Having a tip-top organizational system is going to be

00:38:14.880 | important. Not because it's going to find a way to fit all of your work into less time and you're

00:38:20.640 | going to have all this more free time, but because of the psychological benefit of you not having to

00:38:26.240 | bring home the stress of your work. The sense of control over your job makes it much easier to

00:38:33.840 | step away from your job when you have the chance. The second thing that I'm going to add, and this

00:38:37.760 | is related, is lean into your shutdown ritual. When your work is done, and it might be later

00:38:42.880 | than you would hope it to be, you have a clear shutdown ritual, which when working in conjunction

00:38:48.640 | with your system during work, which means I actually trust that I'm on top of things,

00:38:53.120 | your mind can trust shutting down. So the shutdown ritual is basically going to train your mind it's

00:38:59.520 | okay to let go. The organizational system is going to make that even feasible. But just being

00:39:05.040 | organized and having your systems tip-top shape for your work is not enough by itself for you to

00:39:11.520 | be able to clear your mind because there's just a psychological nag of I don't trust myself. So

00:39:15.360 | that's where the shutdown ritual then helps. You put these two things together and you get the

00:39:19.040 | psychological benefit of separation. Regardless of what you do with that free time or how much

00:39:24.080 | free time you have, it's much more restorative because it's not being shared with work. And when

00:39:31.280 | those things remain blended throughout all of your waking hours, that's where the burnout

00:39:35.520 | enters the scene. Clear separation makes this a lot easier. At that point, then you might want to

00:39:42.880 | have a more careful approach about how you think of your life outside of work. Look at the system

00:39:50.880 | we talked about in the deep dive. My three component system, storage, calendar, sorter,

00:39:56.960 | get that going, do some automation. All that's going to be important. Just be completely honest

00:40:03.360 | with yourself that there's not much you might be able to fit in on a regular basis and be

00:40:07.120 | completely okay with that. Maybe really lean into that third step of reduction or

00:40:12.080 | taking things out of your life. And you're going to have to get a lot out of a little.

00:40:15.680 | A lot out of on Friday, you don't work on lesson plans. You go right from the school and go for

00:40:23.360 | this 45 minute hike. And that's how you reset your mind every week. Before you do the household tasks

00:40:29.920 | on Sunday, you go to the coffee shop with your book and spend an hour reading it. You have these

00:40:34.560 | really intentional things once you control your life. You might have to get a lot out of a little.

00:40:37.840 | The goal here is not to fit in a Herculean amount of things outside of work, but just to get your

00:40:44.080 | hands on the wheel. Okay, I can navigate this. I might not be able to drive as fast as I want,

00:40:49.440 | but I can navigate this. It's not just haphazard. You put those two things in the place. I think

00:40:53.680 | you're going to feel a lot better. All right, let's move on. What do we got next?

00:40:58.960 | Next question is from Alice. I like the concept of the deep life stack,

00:41:04.160 | but I did get a bit stuck on defining my rituals and routines. Could you elaborate

00:41:08.480 | on the differences between these two? All right, Jesse, I think I'm going to

00:41:13.120 | choose this question as this week's slow productivity corner.

00:41:18.720 | As long-time listeners know, each week we designate one question as the slow productivity

00:41:30.560 | corner question because it deals with a theme that will also be in my upcoming book,

00:41:34.960 | Slow Productivity, which is coming out on March 5th. If you want to get a free excerpt from that

00:41:42.560 | book, actually, it's the introduction of the books. You can read the whole summary of what

00:41:46.640 | slow productivity is and where it came from. Go to calnewport.com/slow to find out more.

00:41:53.840 | So why is this question about rituals and routines and how they fit into the quest for the deep life?

00:41:59.200 | Why is this my slow productivity corner? I talk about rituals and routines in the book.

00:42:03.200 | And in particular, I talk about them in the chapter that captures the second principle of

00:42:09.840 | slow productivity, which is work at a natural pace. The elaborated definition of that principle,

00:42:17.680 | so there's a sort of the call-out box, here is the second principle, where I give a more

00:42:23.360 | detailed definition of the principle, has a second component. Work at a natural pace

00:42:30.400 | in settings conducive to brilliance. So you got two parts going on to the second principle.

00:42:37.600 | The pace part says, don't just do full intensity eight hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a

00:42:42.400 | year. You want ups and downs at all sorts of different time scales. Take longer on things

00:42:47.200 | that are important. Don't rush things. Offset really intense periods with relaxing periods is

00:42:52.240 | what we're wired to do. But then the location piece matters as well. That's the settings

00:42:57.040 | conducive to brilliance. One of the things I talk about in the book is leveraging rituals and

00:43:03.360 | routines to extract more out of your work sessions, out of the settings where you work.

00:43:12.000 | I also talk about these in our discussion of the deep life stack here on the show. So let's

00:43:15.360 | dive into the difference. What is the difference between a ritual and routine? Well, rituals,

00:43:21.440 | roughly speaking, I think of them as activities you do with the specific goal of changing your

00:43:27.840 | mindset in the moment or reminding you of something that's important to you. So it's

00:43:33.360 | entirely self-reflective or psychology shifting. A routine, on the other hand,

00:43:38.480 | might be something about how you structure or spend your time that impacts how you actually

00:43:44.400 | do things that have real output, real outcome. So let me make this a little bit more specific.

00:43:50.080 | One of the contexts in which I talk about rituals and routines is when we talk about deep work.

00:43:55.920 | This is one of the main contexts in my book. I talk about rituals and routines around working

00:44:01.040 | on things that are important to you. So in the context of deep work, a ritual might be, for

00:44:05.440 | example, I walk around my property once before I sit down to do deep work because it helps put my

00:44:13.440 | mind into a state conducive for thinking. Or in my home office, I clear the desks and I turn off

00:44:22.720 | most of the lights, but just a bright desk spot, and it's a ritual that tells my mind

00:44:27.440 | it's time to concentrate. A routine relevant to deep work, by contrast, might be something like

00:44:34.480 | I do deep work the first two hours of every day. This is my routine I've built up to support deep

00:44:39.840 | work so I know when to expect the work to happen and it's a time that's going to be most effective

00:44:46.640 | for me. Or it's the writer who goes to their writing cabin on Friday mornings to write overnight

00:44:54.960 | and then come back on Saturday. It's a routine. It's shaping the schedule or structure of your

00:45:00.560 | work in an intentional way. Another place in the deep life stack where we talk about rituals and

00:45:06.960 | routines is in the context of the values layer where you're trying to build up some sort of

00:45:13.360 | deep foundation of values from which you can further direct your life. And I often talk

00:45:17.600 | about there briefly, use rituals and routines to support your values. So there, of course,

00:45:22.960 | rituals is going to be things you do just to sort of directly reconnect you with the things

00:45:29.360 | that you value. So for example, we might find these pretty commonly in the religious context.

00:45:35.200 | So if you're a Muslim, it might be the five daily prayers. It's something you do

00:45:41.760 | specifically to reconnect you to your conception of the divine. If you're Jewish, it might be

00:45:48.320 | wearing the tallit or you have the four-cornered garment that has the precise numbers of tassels

00:45:53.600 | with knots. This is meant to remind you of the divine. There's some complexity. I was reading

00:46:00.240 | about the tallit recently. I don't know all the details, but somehow the number of the fringes

00:46:05.840 | that hang off of this, if you multiply them or add them to the number of knots in some sort of

00:46:11.840 | complicated ways, it equals the total number of mitzvot in the Torah. So the total number of

00:46:17.760 | commandments in the Torah for how to live. So by seeing it, that you're wearing it, it keeps

00:46:22.080 | reminding you to, puts me in the mindset of follow Torah, right? In a secular context, this might be

00:46:30.240 | walking meditation outside. I'm just going to walk and observe the seasons and the weather

00:46:37.120 | around me. It's just a way to reconnect. I used to do this, actually. I don't know if I've told

00:46:42.720 | this story before, my nature walking meditation. I don't know if I've talked about this, Jesse,

00:46:46.720 | when I was a postdoc at MIT. So postdoc at MIT and was reading some Jon Kabat-Zinn.

00:46:54.640 | So Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote this famous book, Full Catastrophe Living. He was one of the

00:47:00.160 | early big supporters of using mindfulness meditation in medical context. So, okay,

00:47:07.920 | you have pain from an injury, you have extreme trauma or stress, let's bring in mindfulness

00:47:14.720 | meditation into psychological practices, medical practices. And I read this book,

00:47:18.560 | so I went through a phase where I was sort of really into it. And so I started doing,

00:47:22.160 | and this was actually really effective. I used to walk the campus from Beacon Hill to MIT. I'd walk

00:47:31.920 | across the Longfellow Bridge, which is the old stone bridge, it looks like big salt shakers,

00:47:37.440 | walk across that. And I just had this routine of, as I turned off of Charles Street onto the bridge

00:47:44.400 | until I got to across the bridge and turned a corner towards the status center at MIT,

00:47:50.800 | walking meditation. All I was allowed to do was notice. And the only thing to notice was

00:47:54.720 | the plants and the snow and the, okay, there's some buds coming now, or the snow is built up

00:48:00.080 | this high, or look what's happening with the ice. Because I was also reading Thoreau at this time,

00:48:03.440 | so all this stuff was coming together. Classic sort of New England transcendentalist sort of

00:48:09.040 | identity stuff. It was really great actually. It would be cold as sin basically, but you're just,

00:48:14.640 | this is like what you're done, I'm focusing on this and the seasons are changing. I was really

00:48:18.720 | connected to what was going on. That's a ritual. It's not directly structuring other stuff I do.

00:48:24.560 | It's done just to put me in a particular mindset that in this case would keep me true to my values.

00:48:30.800 | A routine in this case would be something that you do regularly that reinforces or is informed

00:48:37.360 | by your values. So maybe you wear the tallit to remember the mitzvah of the Torah, but the routine

00:48:43.440 | might be I volunteer at the soup kitchen. So I'm going to do a thing regularly that is aligned with

00:48:50.800 | my values. So it's not just reconnecting me mentally with my values, but is now there's

00:48:56.640 | a specific activity I'm doing. So rituals and routines, it's a porous border. That's

00:49:02.160 | the best way I could break it up. All right. So that's our slow productivity corner.

00:49:05.920 | All right, let's keep rocking and rolling. Who do we got next?

00:49:17.840 | Next question is from Victor. Do you think playing video games can be part of a deep life?

00:49:22.400 | In another episode, you said that video games are fine as a distraction if they're not played online.

00:49:26.880 | Does that mean that you should focus on other activities instead in order to cultivate a deep

00:49:31.520 | life? Do you do video games, Jesse?

00:49:34.160 | No. I played like when I was like eight for like a year.

00:49:37.600 | Yeah. See, I think it's generational. Like you and I grew up with 8-bit Nintendo,

00:49:44.160 | which was like, this is kind of fun.

00:49:47.680 | People played it a lot though.

00:49:48.960 | People played it a lot, but a lot of people, the reaction was like certain people it caught,

00:49:53.600 | like I got to beat like speed run Mario. Like for most people like you or I were, you know,

00:49:59.440 | it's weird that the graphics aren't great. And it's these beeps and boops. And you're like,

00:50:03.280 | this is, you know, it's okay, but whatever.

00:50:05.600 | Madden football came out when we were young and that was big.

00:50:09.120 | Yeah. We're a little older though, right? Because that was more like Sega Genesis.

00:50:14.560 | Was there a Nintendo?

00:50:15.200 | Yeah, I had a Sega too.

00:50:16.640 | Yeah. But we were a little older by then. See, this is what, you know,

00:50:18.960 | we're a little older by then. It's like in our impressionable years, we had Super Tecmo

00:50:22.400 | and Tecmo Bowl, where my memory was, what was the player? I think it was Bo Jackson.

00:50:28.880 | The game was out of balance. Remember Tecmo Bowl? So if you just chose Bo Jackson,

00:50:33.120 | you could just score a touchdown like endlessly. But yeah, then I remember Madden. I had Joe

00:50:39.600 | Montana football with the Sega and the key there, it turned out was just to punt block.

00:50:45.440 | That's the only defensive scheme you had to do was just punt block because it just

00:50:49.760 | overwhelmed the quarterback almost every time. Anyways, our point is, I think our generation

00:50:54.080 | was exposed to video games and we're like, yeah, this is okay. So only people who had a real

00:50:57.920 | affinity got into it. Younger generations are being exposed to much better video games. I think

00:51:03.120 | that's part of the problem. Like their games are awesome, you know? And so I think especially

00:51:08.960 | young men are more likely to have a problem with these are better than my life. Like this is a lot

00:51:16.160 | of fun. It's hyper realistic. I feel that human instinct we all have for getting better at things

00:51:24.320 | and mastery that we have that wired into us to try to push us, evolutionarily speaking,

00:51:30.000 | to become leaders within our tribes so that we could spread our genes better.

00:51:34.160 | This just subverts that. You're like, yeah, man. And Redemption, I don't know what these

00:51:39.360 | games are called or whatever. Call of Duty, like I'm getting better and better. And so it kind of

00:51:43.120 | subverts those drives and the games are hyper realistic and they're really fun. No one in 1989

00:51:49.040 | was going to say the world of Super Mario Brothers is better than the real life. It's these little

00:51:54.400 | graphics and it's weird. And there's a plumber going down these tubes and this weird sound,

00:51:57.840 | right? It was like a, it was a very specific thing to be into, but now video games can be

00:52:02.240 | read in the life. So I think you and I, our generation doesn't really have a problem with

00:52:06.000 | that, but the generation before us, you know, we really do have an issue where you get exposed to

00:52:10.720 | these games as kids. And now you're 26, 27, 30 years old. You're playing a lot of video games

00:52:17.360 | and your energy and your self-worth is coming out of those instead of what you probably should

00:52:21.520 | be doing at that age, which is like getting your act together as a man and building up your

00:52:25.520 | economic autonomy, building up, you know, your, your, uh, your position of prominence inside your

00:52:32.880 | relevant tribes. It's like, none of this is happening because you're like, Hey, I'm, you know,

00:52:37.600 | level 37. Now I don't know the games, but whatever. I'm level 37 now in wizard quest

00:52:43.680 | or whatever, how it goes. So we have to be careful about video games.

00:52:46.960 | If they become an alternative world in which you're living now, is it a problem? Just abstractly. If

00:52:53.680 | there's a video game you like to play and it's just like one of your hobbies, one of the things

00:52:56.880 | you do know, I mean, a deep life, what is something that's lived with intention and

00:53:00.240 | aims towards something remarkable. There's nothing wrong with having leisure activities

00:53:04.480 | in there that are fun. You know, for some people it's fishing for other people. It might be,

00:53:08.000 | you know, playing a video game. That's fun. But the thing to be wary about again,

00:53:12.400 | is the game itself becoming an objective in your life, the game itself, notably crowding out other

00:53:19.200 | things that are important. And I think there's big portions of our audience, women, men over a

00:53:23.920 | certain age, et cetera. They're saying, what are you talking about? But for a particular group,

00:53:28.160 | this is a real fear that this is how I'm going to satisfy my urge to make something of myself to get

00:53:37.200 | better, to have standing because you know what I have standing in this game. I cast a bunch of

00:53:41.840 | spells and that was hard and I get respect in this world, but that's not a real friction.

00:53:46.960 | It's a simulation of the friction of getting better. It's not the same of actually dealing

00:53:53.680 | with things in the real world, with real actual competitive structures and building up prominence

00:53:58.720 | in measurably objectively difficult ways. It's not the same when you play in a video game,

00:54:02.800 | all the rough edges have been sanded off. When you play in a video game, it is set up to make

00:54:07.120 | sure that you keep making progress because it's pressing that button or in the real world,

00:54:11.120 | progress is not guaranteed. It requires that you actually go after something harder than

00:54:15.760 | other people, that you feel the dissatisfactions in the moment, the discomforts of deliberate

00:54:20.720 | practice. It's not the same thing. It's a simulation of the same thing. It's the difference

00:54:28.080 | between having a mate and pornography. It's the difference between a drug and actually feeling

00:54:35.440 | really good about something that you accomplished or a real compliment. It's a low fidelity

00:54:39.760 | simulation that satisfies that it's enough that if you're not careful, it keeps you completely

00:54:46.880 | away from the real thing. So Victor, I'm not against video games completely. I'm against

00:54:54.080 | video games becoming a totem or an idol in your life that brings a lot of your attention and

00:55:01.200 | subverts a lot of your potential energy. So just be really honest about it and what role it plays,

00:55:05.920 | especially if you're above a certain age, just be wary, right? No one's going to yell at a 37

00:55:12.800 | year old who plays Scrabble on their phone or something, but the 37 year old has spent seven

00:55:18.240 | hours in world of Warcraft. Those eyebrows are going to start raising pretty high. All right,

00:55:25.200 | let's do, we got more time. Let's do another question. Who else do we have here?

00:55:29.360 | - Next question is from Phil. Do you contemplate how each deep life bucket

00:55:34.240 | supports your strategic plans? For example, a well-functioning constitution bucket would

00:55:38.880 | support both professional and personal activities, or do the strategic plan support the deep life

00:55:44.160 | buckets? For example, maybe a personal strategic plan would be all those activities that are

00:55:48.800 | devoted to the constitution, community, and contemplation buckets, while the professional

00:55:53.360 | strategic plan contain exclusively craft related items. - Well, there's a key question here. Now,

00:55:59.360 | let's put aside for now the specific discussion of buckets and these particular names like craft

00:56:06.080 | and constitution, because I talk about the pursuit of the deep life with multiple different metaphors.

00:56:11.920 | I talk about it with buckets. I talk about it with stacks. So let's put aside the specific

00:56:15.680 | metaphors and just talk about these two general topics, which we often touch on the show. On one

00:56:22.800 | hand, the pursuit of a deep life. Now, on the other hand, systems for organizing what's going

00:56:29.760 | on in your life in a world of distraction. What is the relationship between these two things? This

00:56:35.680 | is the real question Phil has. Are they separated or are they related? The answer is they're

00:56:42.320 | completely related. The tools that we talk about for organizing your life professionally and

00:56:48.080 | personally, including the whole system I laid out during the deep dive portion of this episode,

00:56:53.600 | including the complex systems we've discussed for organizing your professional life in a world of

00:56:58.160 | knowledge work. These are deeply intertwined with your overall goal of living a deeper life.

00:57:04.560 | Your job, for example, plays a very big role in your life. So any conception of a deep life has

00:57:11.520 | to have a really clear understanding of your job. So whatever systems you're using to planning and

00:57:15.680 | direct your energy for your professional life needs to be completely aware of your big plans

00:57:21.360 | for your vision for your life, your vision for a path towards something deeper. So, for example,

00:57:27.440 | when we get to the technical side of things, I often talk about multi-scale planning where you

00:57:31.200 | have a strategic plan or a semester plan or a quarterly plan, whatever you want to call it,

00:57:35.600 | that informs a weekly plan that informs a daily time block plan. On my strategic plan for my work

00:57:41.120 | at the very top of that plan is the vision where I want my work to go as part of my conception of

00:57:48.000 | the deep life. And the way I do it is I break out five properties. So I'm saying here's what I want

00:57:55.920 | to get to in my world of work. I want these five properties and I have a little explanation about

00:58:00.080 | what I mean for each of them. That's at the top of my strategic plan that I update every semester.

00:58:05.680 | So when I'm updating, what do I want to focus on this semester as I'm at this higher level of

00:58:11.280 | altitude making plans for where I want to spend my energy, I have to confront my vision of the

00:58:18.080 | deep life and how it overlaps my job so that I can say in whatever plan I come up with for

00:58:22.160 | the semester, I want to make sure I'm making progress on that vision. The personal organizational

00:58:28.080 | type systems, like I talked about earlier in the show, I mean, that's directly controlling how you

00:58:33.360 | spend your time and attention in your life outside of work. That's completely informed by the efforts

00:58:39.120 | you have to understand what's important to you. So as you go through these different parts of

00:58:42.960 | your life and figure out how to make them deeper, it is in your personal organizational systems and

00:58:47.280 | the nitty gritties of your calendars and file storage systems and mail sorters that you actually

00:58:51.280 | put these ideas in the practice. So these two topics, these two magisteria of deep questions

00:58:58.400 | discourse are not as they might be, as Stephen Gould might say, they're not distinct. They should

00:59:08.640 | actually be mixed together. The highly technical organizational talk needs to be connected to the

00:59:14.400 | highly abstract philosophical thoughts about where your life should be. All this comes together

00:59:18.160 | in pursuing the central goal of the show, which is trying to live deeply in a world

00:59:22.960 | that is distracted. All right, let's do a call. Let's hear someone's voice. Do we have a call?

00:59:31.920 | Yeah. All right. Here we go. Let's listen. Hey, Cal and Jesse. First off, thanks for all

00:59:37.200 | that you guys do. I'm a big fan of your work. I recently quit my job as a product manager in tech

00:59:43.520 | to find more meaning in my work and really just become self-employed. I have a few main areas that

00:59:49.440 | I want to grow in and would like to know how you suggest balancing efforts on a macro and micro

00:59:56.160 | scale. Just for context, the three areas are first off, my main project is a website for runners,

01:00:02.960 | training plans and such. I have one business partner and we plan to launch it soon. I've been

01:00:06.960 | working on that for about a year. Secondly, I'm taking a course to build out a skillset as a UI

01:00:13.520 | designer. I want to do UI design for my own projects and perhaps freelance someday. And then

01:00:19.200 | thirdly, I just want to create more online blogging videos, using social to connect with others and

01:00:26.080 | really just make useful content around my interests. Speaking of my interests, I'm just a

01:00:31.200 | super curious person, have a lot of hobbies as it is. So guitar, action sports, music making,

01:00:36.880 | photo, video, and all of these interests pull for my time and attention as well.

01:00:41.040 | I have tried to do day theming and use systematic time blocking really to attack all these different

01:00:48.640 | areas and interests, but it just felt too rigid and formulaic to me. So yeah, my key question is,

01:00:54.240 | how do you suggest I focus on a macro and micro scale to have progress in these multiple areas,

01:01:00.880 | which all feel important to me? Thanks guys. Well, it's a good question. I like the framing

01:01:06.800 | you have, micro and macro. So on the micro scale, I'm going to suggest that you have

01:01:12.400 | what I would think about as a foundation of depth. Commitments that you do in track

01:01:18.480 | every day, every week, that make sure that for the key things in your life and your conception

01:01:26.320 | of the life well-lived are actually getting efforts, right? So this is different for different

01:01:32.960 | people, but it might be just to give you a case study here. It might be, okay, I have this

01:01:38.000 | aggressive fitness health routine. I'm reading a certain amount every day, which is like a lot more

01:01:44.320 | than I would do if I didn't actually have this plan. I call one person every single day. Maybe

01:01:51.520 | if you're religious or philosophical, there's some sort of prayer reflection or something else you're

01:01:55.520 | doing there. You have a foundation. Okay. This is stuff I just do. I never not do this. And this

01:01:59.920 | makes sure that I always have this foundation of depth that aligns with the things I care about.

01:02:03.840 | At the macro scale, you have the bigger projects. These are going to change over time. You can't

01:02:08.800 | necessarily work on a lot of these at the same time, right? So when we're thinking about your

01:02:12.880 | discretionary time, we have macro/micro. I want to suggest an idea here that coincidentally,

01:02:21.920 | I was just discussing on email earlier today, earlier the day that we're recording this. And

01:02:27.920 | I don't think he'll mind me discussing this, but I was emailing back and forth with the writer,

01:02:33.280 | Steven Johnson. And he mentioned, he said, you know, back in, I think the book was maybe where

01:02:40.160 | good ideas come from, which is this really important book that I talk about at length

01:02:44.880 | in my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. And if it's not this book, Steven, I apologize.

01:02:49.120 | But he said, hey, there's this concept from that book that reminds me of your new book,

01:02:52.960 | Slow Productivity. And I don't know if this is the exact words he used to call it. This might

01:02:57.040 | be the name I added, but I think he might've actually used these exact words. He called it

01:03:00.480 | slow multitasking, which he had identified studying people that produce cool ideas.

01:03:08.080 | He had identified as a really important strategy. And he said, what slow multitasking is about

01:03:13.600 | is multitasking, but at the scale of months. And what it means is I spend the next six weeks

01:03:23.600 | working on this big project. And then, so it's like the back and forth context switching we do

01:03:29.680 | to a normal day, slow down. And then I spend four weeks really focusing on this project.

01:03:36.400 | And then I go back to that other project, give it two months. So it's, you're tackling one big

01:03:42.480 | thing is getting your focus at a time, at the end of which it just maybe is doing a little bit of

01:03:47.440 | bookkeeping or background work to keep it running. So you're multitasking multiple things, but each

01:03:53.360 | thing gets your focus for a while before you switch to something else. Now there's a classic

01:03:58.080 | slow productivity type of move here. I talk about this a lot in my own book, slow productivity,

01:04:02.720 | less things at once. So you're slowing down the timeframe at which you're actually making

01:04:08.240 | progress on these projects, but you're always working on something important and you're able

01:04:12.800 | to give it a lot of time and attention and have gratitude for what it's giving to you and your

01:04:16.480 | life and what you're giving back. And when you zoom out to the 10 year period, you look back

01:04:20.320 | and you're like, Hey, my running website, the project thing I was working over here, like all

01:04:25.280 | these things ended up in interesting places where they're really useful. In the moment, it feels

01:04:29.840 | like, Oh my God, I'm letting this thing languish. But when you zoom out, they're all getting time.

01:04:33.760 | So the slow multitasking approach, I'm sort of going from one project to another and then back

01:04:38.640 | again in increments of multiple weeks, if not multiple months, it takes some realigning of

01:04:45.120 | your definition of productivity to be comfortable with this because it's not boom, boom, boom.

01:04:49.440 | I touched on everything today, but it's a more effective way to work on things and a more

01:04:53.520 | sustainable way. You don't feel so up against it. You really can get lost in something and

01:04:59.120 | really learn about it. It just requires that the scale at which you evaluate your productivity,

01:05:05.360 | it just needs to be expanded. So maybe give that a try. Foundation of the micro habits you do every

01:05:12.000 | day, things that remind you of what's important to you, slow multitasking on the big.

01:05:19.200 | Right before we get to our final segment, I also want to do a case study.

01:05:21.760 | It's where we read a account sent in by one of my listeners about them putting the things we

01:05:28.240 | talk about here on the show in the practice. We can see what this stuff looks like out in the wild.

01:05:31.600 | Today's case study comes from Alex. Alex says, I've been listening to the podcast since 2021.

01:05:38.320 | I used to be very disorganized, always late and overwhelmed. Over the past few years,

01:05:42.960 | I've listened to the podcast and done my best to implement the ideas and live

01:05:46.480 | deeply. As a spiritual leader, I'm always trying to do my best to live a meaningful life. I'm not

01:05:52.000 | always super consistent with everything and don't feel that I plan as well as I could.

01:05:55.360 | On the scale of days and weeks, it can be easy to feel like I'm not doing as well as I could be.

01:05:59.680 | But looking back on the scale of a few years, I realized that things are much better than the

01:06:03.360 | week before or they were before. I'm much more consistent now and people trust that I'll get

01:06:08.080 | back to them and deliver on my promises. Over this time, I've developed habits,

01:06:11.920 | kept a task list and started each day with intention. This year, I've read more than 30

01:06:16.880 | books. I don't use social media and have a deep and fulfilled life. Slow productivity works.

01:06:22.240 | I would encourage everyone to commit to a deep life for the long haul and not focus on hacks

01:06:28.240 | and tricks. It may not always be perfect, but you will look back in three years and realize

01:06:32.080 | how far you've come. Well, Alex, I appreciate that case study. That is

01:06:40.000 | perfectly distilled slow productivity. It's not about trying to get everything done all the time,

01:06:45.760 | being busy all the time, trying to alchemize freneticism into impressiveness. Instead,

01:06:53.760 | it's a slowdown. First things first, take care of the things that are important,

01:06:58.080 | make progress on the big optional things that are going to leave your legacy,

01:07:02.480 | and trust that even if you don't feel super busy or exhausted today, you will look back in a couple

01:07:08.640 | years and say, "Hey, I'm pretty proud of what I did." It really is just a fundamental rewiring

01:07:15.600 | of how we think about accomplishment. I think it's a great case study. I wish I had heard this

01:07:20.480 | before I wrote my book. I could have put it in there. If you want to read another case study

01:07:25.520 | of this mindset in action, the excerpt you can get at calnewport.com/slow tells the story of

01:07:33.120 | John McPhee. It gives a fantastic case study of slow productivity in action from the life of John

01:07:40.800 | McPhee. If you want to read that, grab that excerpt over at calnewport.com/slow. We're moving

01:07:49.520 | on now to a final segment where we react to the news, but first, let's hear from another sponsor.

01:07:55.120 | I want to talk about our friends at Mint Mobile. On average, it takes about 30 days for a person to

01:08:01.840 | break their New Year's resolution. So if saving money was on your 2024 list, your odds aren't

01:08:09.440 | looking great already. Luckily, I have a 100% guaranteed way to save you money this year.

01:08:14.960 | Just switch to Mint Mobile. For a limited time, wireless plans for Mint Mobile are only $15 a

01:08:22.640 | month when you purchase a three-month plan. That's unlimited talk, text, and data for $15 a month.

01:08:32.000 | Think about how much money you could be saving this year if you took your existing bloated

01:08:37.200 | wireless bill and reduced that to only $15 a month. The way Mint Mobile makes this happen is

01:08:45.760 | that they are an online business. They don't waste a lot of money on expensive storefronts that you

01:08:51.840 | have to go into, and there's never anyone there to actually help you. They keep it simple. They

01:08:57.040 | keep it digital. They can just send you these SIM cards right through the mail, and they can pass

01:09:01.200 | those savings on to you. You get great performance because their unlimited talk, text, and high-speed

01:09:06.160 | data is delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. They just got rid of all the overhead

01:09:10.560 | that the traditional wireless carriers have, allowing them to give you these much more

01:09:14.240 | streamlined and focused plans. So to get this new customer offer and your new three-month

01:09:20.480 | unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month, you have to go to mintmobile.com/deep. That's

01:09:29.520 | mintmobile.com/deep. Don't forget the /deep if you want this offer. Cut your wireless bill to

01:09:38.560 | $15 a month at mintmobile.com/deep. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint

01:09:45.600 | Mobile for details. I also want to talk about our friends at MyBodyTutor. An equally as common

01:09:54.320 | New Year's resolution to saving money is getting in shape. This is where MyBodyTutor enters the

01:10:02.960 | scene. It's a 100% online coaching program that solves the biggest problem in health and fitness,

01:10:07.520 | lack of consistency. They do this by simplifying the process of getting healthier into practical,

01:10:14.720 | sustainable behaviors, and then give you daily accountability and support to help you make this

01:10:22.000 | happen. The way MyBodyTutor works is that they actually assign you to a coach and you interact

01:10:27.040 | with this coach digitally, allowing you to get the benefits of a trainer and nutritionist without

01:10:33.040 | actually having to have the expense of going to a specialty gym or have them come to your house.

01:10:37.680 | They help you figure out what your eating plan should be. They help you figure out what your

01:10:41.600 | exercise plan should be shaped completely to your circumstances, to your goals, to your particular

01:10:46.800 | setup. And then you check in each day with the MyBodyTutor app on how things went. That daily

01:10:51.840 | accountability gets you to actually do the work. The support of the coach there also helps you

01:10:57.920 | adapt as needed. Hey, I got to travel next week. What do I do? I worry about going to a holiday

01:11:03.440 | dinner. They're there. Support and accountability. That's how you get in much better shape.

01:11:10.080 | So if you're serious about getting fit, go to MyBodyTutor, T-U-T-O-R, and mention deep questions

01:11:16.240 | when you sign up. If you do, they will give you $50 off. That's MyBodyTutor.com, T-U-T-O-R.

01:11:24.160 | Mention deep questions when you sign up to get $50 off your first month. All right, Jesse,

01:11:30.800 | let's go to our final segment. This is where I react to something going on in the world that I

01:11:38.640 | think is interesting. Today, I want to talk about an article from the Washington Post.

01:11:42.480 | For those who were watching instead of listening, you'll see this on the screen here.

01:11:46.720 | This article is titled, "How many books did you read in 2023? Are you in the top 1%?"

01:11:56.080 | This was written by Andrew Von Daum. So this is based off of survey research of 1,500 Americans

01:12:06.800 | that was asking, among other things, about reading habits. In particular,

01:12:11.680 | how many books did you read in the last year? There's a chart here I'm going to load up

01:12:15.200 | that connects your answer to this question to what percentile of Americans that puts you in.

01:12:22.080 | If you read two books a year, you are already in the 51st percentile. If you read just one book a

01:12:29.600 | year, you're in the 46th percentile. That means 46% of respondents had read zero books over the

01:12:37.840 | entire preceding year. This is the type of number that gives nightmares to professional writers by

01:12:42.720 | me. By the time you get to somewhere between 20 or 30 books, you're going to hit the 90th percentile.

01:12:50.640 | I read five books a month, so that puts me over 50 plus books, so in the 99th percentile.

01:12:59.200 | Here's what I want to point out here. You should read. Reading is like a superpower.

01:13:05.760 | If you're in that 46% that doesn't read any books, change that and start reading.

01:13:11.920 | Why is it like a superpower? Well, there's two things you're going to get out of it. One is

01:13:17.680 | mind reading. To read a nonfiction book is to be able to read the mind of an expert on a topic

01:13:24.080 | who spent years thinking about and shaping their thoughts on the topic, and you get to take that

01:13:28.160 | complicated hard-won structure and transplant it to your own mind. It's a mind meld that gets you

01:13:34.320 | fantastic knowledge. If you're reading fiction, you get to bring the complicated experience of

01:13:39.040 | a different person in different circumstances and understand it. No better source of empathy

01:13:45.360 | than reading novels. So books can give you that superpower. The second thing books give you is

01:13:53.360 | sharper thinking. When you're exposed to structured information, your own thinking

01:14:00.560 | becomes more structured. You get used to organizing information in a stronger, more intentional

01:14:12.800 | manner. So if you read a lot, you become a better thinker. So books really are one of the best

01:14:19.200 | cognitive medicines you can take in the 21st century. It gives you this huge advantage.

01:14:23.680 | So how do you read more if you're not a big reader? Well, there's some simple things you can do.

01:14:28.000 | One, select books, especially early on in a reading habit. Select books that you just are

01:14:35.760 | super excited about. Don't worry about being smart. Don't worry about I want to cover the

01:14:40.480 | most complicated nonfiction topics or I want to read the fiction that's winning all the awards.

01:14:46.480 | Get things that you are excited to read and are easy to read.

01:14:49.760 | Next, put in some reading habits into your day. So the easiest thing you can do

01:14:55.280 | is lunch and breakfast. You read instead of using your phone.

01:14:59.280 | Second, have a regular reading block every afternoon or evening. Okay, I spend 20 minutes

01:15:05.920 | and I sit and I read. Just do those two things. A little bit of breakfast, read a little bit of

01:15:10.720 | lunch, read instead of going on your phone and one reading block per night. You will start getting

01:15:16.080 | through books. If they're books you really love, you'll probably start reading about

01:15:19.680 | one book per week or two. So if I'm looking at this chart here, that will already get you to the

01:15:26.400 | 80 plus percentile. So you're getting more of the reading advantages than 80 percent of your peers

01:15:33.200 | if you just start with books you love, breakfast, lunch, one reading block. So if you're not a

01:15:38.880 | reader, if you're in that 46 percent, don't even think twice about it. This is not a major lift.

01:15:43.920 | This is not going to be unpleasant. This is not going to require huge amounts of time out of your

01:15:47.520 | day, but the benefits will add up. Transition towards a reading habit. And if you're already

01:15:53.760 | a reader, think about how do I join that 99 percent? How do I make reading a much more

01:16:00.000 | regular part of my life? How do I get an hour plus per day aggregate reading? That'll get you that

01:16:06.640 | 99 percent place. The higher you go up this chart, the more of those benefits in terms of the mind

01:16:12.080 | reading, the empathy and the clear thinking, the more of those benefits you're going to get.

01:16:15.760 | So basically I'm using this article to be a PSA. It's an entirely biased PSA because I make a living

01:16:22.320 | off people buying books. But hey, who are you going to trust when it comes to reading? Who are

01:16:27.200 | you going to trust more than someone who makes a living trying to get other people to read?

01:16:31.680 | All right, Jesse, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you, everyone who watched or listened.

01:16:36.960 | If you're listening and want to see today's episode, this is episode 283. Go to the deeplife.com/listen.

01:16:42.560 | Look for episode 283. The video will be at the bottom. We'll be back next week with a new episode,

01:16:47.600 | an interview episode with a guest you've probably heard of. It's going to be a cool one.

01:16:51.760 | So definitely come back. And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:16:55.520 | Hey, so if you like today's discussion of organizing your personal life, you might also

01:17:01.600 | like episode 252, where I first introduced my concept of the deep life stack. I think you'll

01:17:09.600 | like it. Check it out. So we'll call today's deep question. How do I rebuild my life into something

Most Self-Help Advice Is Wrong. Here's The Fastest Way To Transform Your Life | Cal Newport

Chapters