Full Length Episode | #158 | December 23, 2021

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:05.280 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, episode 158.

00:00:11.720 | We're actually trying something new today that we're quite excited about.

00:00:17.400 | This is the first time we have had the technical capability to actually record

00:00:22.320 | and film an entire episode of this podcast live, as opposed to doing

00:00:28.600 | multiple cuts and takes, recording a question, stopping, bringing another

00:00:31.800 | question, doing another question, stopping.

00:00:33.720 | We're actually going to try to do this whole thing live, which includes the

00:00:38.200 | ability to actually cut to a camera that shows our intrepid producer.

00:00:43.160 | Jesse, how are you doing?

00:00:44.040 | I'm doing well, thank you.

00:00:46.000 | Thank you for, you know, wearing black for the black background today.

00:00:49.960 | I always appreciate that.

00:00:51.000 | I didn't think about what I should wear as thoroughly as I probably should have.

00:00:56.840 | Well, in fairness, I sort of surprised Jesse by bringing a whole bag full of

00:01:00.200 | cables to the HQ this morning, which actually makes this possible for the first

00:01:04.000 | time.

00:01:04.320 | So it turns out there's a lot involved.

00:01:06.120 | The other thing we're going to be able to do today is it's a listener calls episode.

00:01:10.000 | Jesse can play the calls live as if this was a live call-in show.

00:01:14.440 | We don't have to put those in, in post.

00:01:16.360 | So we really will be able to, in theory, roll through this whole episode.

00:01:19.680 | Now, of course, just to make things particularly well-suited for our first

00:01:22.920 | live episode, I'm getting over a pretty nasty cold.

00:01:26.320 | So my voice is definitely where you want to be for talking for an hour straight.

00:01:31.480 | So I think we, Jesse, we really timed this one out well.

00:01:33.560 | Good stuff.

00:01:35.360 | I'm excited about it.

00:01:36.280 | The cords are all set up and we're ready to rock here.

00:01:39.200 | So one quick bit of business before we get into the calls.

00:01:43.080 | Last week, I asked Jesse if we should decorate the Deep Work HQ and today he

00:01:49.000 | hasn't seen it yet, but I brought in a artificial garland that has built in

00:01:56.480 | Christmas lights that I am going to put on the desk in the main office of the HQ.

00:02:01.920 | So I, I believe that counts and we can with no exaggeration now describe the

00:02:07.240 | HQ as being a winter wonderland when it comes to the level of

00:02:11.240 | decorations I've just introduced.

00:02:12.600 | I'm excited about that.

00:02:14.560 | We'll see it all in action soon.

00:02:16.600 | All right.

00:02:17.960 | So with that out of the way, let's see what we can break.

00:02:20.960 | And we're going to take our swing at doing our first live listener call show.

00:02:24.840 | So let's jump into some calls.

00:02:26.600 | Jesse, what is our first call about?

00:02:28.160 | All right.

00:02:29.240 | So our first call, we have Nikola.

00:02:31.040 | He's going to ask you a question about the Serbian scientist Tesla.

00:02:34.240 | So here we go.

00:02:35.800 | All right.

00:02:36.400 | You regard Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla as the ultimate Deep Work thinker because

00:02:43.520 | he was 100% focused on his inventions and that led him to become the greatest

00:02:50.240 | inventor of all time.

00:02:51.880 | I don't know if I would say, so it's a good question.

00:02:56.080 | So if I'm hearing it correctly, the question is, do I personally consider

00:03:01.200 | Tesla Nikola Tesla to be the greater and greatest inventor of all time?

00:03:05.960 | I'm not sure if I would say that.

00:03:08.640 | I mean, it depends how we want to actually define what makes you the

00:03:12.240 | greater, greatest inventor of all time.

00:03:14.200 | I recently read a pretty dense Edison biography.

00:03:17.600 | And so something Edison had, for example, that Tesla didn't was the

00:03:23.040 | ability to commercialize, to take an idea, but then actually push that idea

00:03:28.520 | through into something that could be mass produced, sold at mass.

00:03:31.920 | Tesla was not interested in that.

00:03:33.160 | He was interested more in the technology.

00:03:35.080 | There's also some mythology around Tesla.

00:03:37.360 | I think the Tesla mythology has grown to the point where he's seen as basically

00:03:41.800 | inventing every technology ever in a 10 year period, like, well, Tesla thought

00:03:45.880 | about that and he thought about this.

00:03:47.080 | And I think that's a little exaggerated.

00:03:48.440 | All that being said, from what I know about Tesla, he was a good exemplar of deep work.

00:03:54.560 | He had social phobias.

00:03:56.240 | He did not like being around other people.

00:03:57.960 | He could focus intensely on a problem and made some really big breakthroughs

00:04:02.280 | and particular breakthroughs about how to actually make alternating current.

00:04:07.400 | Practical, how you could actually build devices to run an alternating current.

00:04:12.320 | I mean, this is maybe getting a little bit in the weeds, but the advantage of

00:04:17.040 | direct current is that you can directly drive a motor and driving a motor is one

00:04:21.200 | of the most important early applications of electricity because it replaced

00:04:25.640 | steam engines and factories.

00:04:27.320 | Alternating current, if you just hooked it up to a direct electromagnetic motor,

00:04:32.160 | would have the motor go back and forth, back and forth.

00:04:33.960 | So you actually had to invent a clever electrical apparatus that would allow

00:04:38.680 | the alternating current, current to still drive a continuous motor forward.

00:04:42.800 | And there's also some other work he did on transformers, et cetera.

00:04:45.760 | Anyways, great inventor, great example of someone who focused on being so good.

00:04:51.880 | They couldn't be ignored.

00:04:53.640 | Pushing the technology, pushing the technology.

00:04:57.000 | Clearly he played a big role in Westinghouse's rise, the downfall of Edison,

00:05:02.520 | the rise of AC over DC current.

00:05:04.120 | So I like the question, good example of deep work.

00:05:06.960 | Don't know if he is the greatest inventor of all time, but he does have a car

00:05:12.160 | named after him, so that's not so bad.

00:05:13.920 | All right, Jesse, what do we got next?

00:05:16.280 | All right.

00:05:17.520 | Next question.

00:05:18.160 | We got Andrew.

00:05:20.360 | He's got some ideas about writing for a technical audience and

00:05:25.400 | he wants your thoughts on that.

00:05:26.800 | So let's fire away with Andrew here.

00:05:29.000 | Hi Cal, long time listener, first time caller.

00:05:35.960 | My name is Andrew and I work as a virtual CFO who also builds

00:05:40.000 | data pipelines for my clients.

00:05:41.640 | I found some interesting topics when combining those two worlds

00:05:44.880 | that I'd like to write more about.

00:05:46.200 | I'm specifically writing more about timeless business management

00:05:51.240 | principles and combining those with the new data rich world that we're in.

00:05:55.280 | I've written for more of a general audience in the past, but I'm

00:05:58.280 | toying with the idea of writing for an academic or research journal type audience.

00:06:02.440 | My background is in finance and accounting, which did not have a lot of

00:06:05.840 | writing in school, so I feel like this is a blind spot for me.

00:06:08.880 | What advice do you have for a non-academic trying to write for this world?

00:06:13.480 | And are there any resources you'd recommend checking out?

00:06:16.120 | Thanks Cal.

00:06:17.200 | There definitely is a gap between general audience writing and academic writing.

00:06:25.000 | Probably as much as anyone else in the world I know about this gap is I'm someone

00:06:28.920 | who has done quite a bit of both.

00:06:30.880 | General audience writing in some sense is harder, right?

00:06:35.400 | Because you actually have to deploy more craft to do general audience writing well.

00:06:43.320 | So the actual writing itself is harder to do.

00:06:46.080 | The clarity of the ideas, the structure of the writing, the examples you give,

00:06:50.800 | the narrative momentum that brings people from one idea to the other, the

00:06:54.360 | introducing a lay audience to complicated ideas without overwhelming them, giving

00:06:58.880 | them enough to latch onto so they can keep figuring out what you're trying to talk

00:07:03.120 | about, that's all hard from a craft perspective.

00:07:05.320 | When it comes to technical writing for, let's say, a journal, an academic journal,

00:07:11.360 | you have to be clear, but no one really cares about the craft.

00:07:16.640 | You don't have to have a lot of narrative momentum in your journal article.

00:07:20.840 | You don't have to have nice illustrative examples.

00:07:24.040 | You don't have to worry about redundancies.

00:07:26.360 | You don't have to worry about the issue of, you know, I mentioned this thing

00:07:31.240 | earlier and it needs to pay off here and I need the end to call back the beginning.

00:07:35.960 | You don't need a turn or a nut necessarily in academic writing.

00:07:39.040 | It's more workmanlike.

00:07:40.080 | You want to write clearly, you're conveying the information, but the real

00:07:44.720 | craft in academic writing is generating that information in the first place.

00:07:48.480 | Here's the theory, here's the experiment, here's the idea.

00:07:52.360 | So it's two very different worlds.

00:07:54.080 | Now, I will say as an aside, I sometimes bring the craft that I have worked on in

00:08:00.760 | the world of general purpose writing to my academic papers, I will sometimes, for

00:08:04.800 | example, as I'm known among my collaborators to do, obsess over

00:08:09.800 | introductions, wordsmith them so it flows really well and there's a storyline.

00:08:15.200 | Here's the thing, none of that really helps.

00:08:17.760 | I mean, I think the readers appreciate it.

00:08:19.640 | I have not seen a discernible impact on whether or not my papers get accepted or

00:08:24.440 | not into academic venues if I write at a, let's say a New Yorker style

00:08:28.800 | introduction to my academic paper.

00:08:30.400 | So I do it because I can't help it, but it doesn't really matter.

00:08:33.320 | If you're going to do academic writing, don't wing it.

00:08:38.120 | You have to understand for the venue that you're writing for, what is required for a

00:08:45.840 | paper to be accepted for publication?

00:08:48.840 | Who needs to be on that?

00:08:50.560 | Like, can you do this as a virtual CFO who specializes in building data pipelines

00:08:55.440 | for the journal you want to write for?

00:08:56.880 | Can you just write for them from that perspective or do you need an academic

00:09:00.240 | coauthor?

00:09:00.800 | So who needs to be on these paper?

00:09:02.520 | What is the level of original theory or ideas that needs to be in here?

00:09:07.680 | What sort of backing do you need?

00:09:09.200 | What type of literature reviewer understanding do you have to convey?

00:09:13.080 | This is a big piece of a lot of academic writing is showing a sophisticated

00:09:16.480 | understanding of the landscape.

00:09:19.000 | Of existing publications and showing that you understand where your work fits

00:09:24.040 | into the landscape.

00:09:24.840 | It's one of the big sins in academic writing that if a reviewer senses you don't

00:09:28.080 | know our field well, they're not going to publish your piece.

00:09:31.000 | Don't guess at all this.

00:09:32.760 | You really need to know the right answers because your papers will not get accepted

00:09:37.600 | if you try to wing it.

00:09:38.640 | There's very specific parameters for each different particular venue that you might

00:09:44.880 | try to publish in.

00:09:46.480 | So that would mean at the easiest deconstruct existing papers in the venues

00:09:52.120 | you want to publish.

00:09:52.920 | Perhaps more effective, though slightly harder, is to talk with people who are

00:09:58.320 | publishing in those venues already.

00:10:00.320 | People who are writing similar articles.

00:10:02.320 | Talk to them about their work and what's required for these things to get

00:10:06.000 | accepted.

00:10:06.600 | Even more effective and even more difficult would be get a coauthor who is

00:10:11.520 | experienced.

00:10:13.360 | Convince someone who is already publishing multiple times in a venue.

00:10:17.240 | The coauthor a paper with you.

00:10:19.680 | Learn on the job what is required.

00:10:22.520 | What do we need?

00:10:23.160 | What standard of evidence?

00:10:24.400 | What review?

00:10:25.080 | What is what does it really take?

00:10:26.360 | But all this comes back to the same idea.

00:10:29.000 | You need information.

00:10:31.320 | You need hard, realistic, on the ground information about how this type of

00:10:36.040 | publishing works before you try to do it.

00:10:38.120 | And I'm going to attempt to generalize this for lots of different issues because

00:10:41.960 | I think this comes up a lot when people are thinking about new projects or

00:10:44.880 | endeavors.

00:10:45.440 | It is very easy to come up with what you want to be the reality.

00:10:49.960 | Here's what I'm going to do.

00:10:51.880 | Here's what I want it to be.

00:10:53.200 | I want to be a novelist and that means I'll do National Novel Writing Month

00:10:58.360 | with a proper Scrivener configuration and that will make me a novelist.

00:11:03.240 | Right?

00:11:03.360 | We want the story to be what we want it to be, but the reality might be, no,

00:11:06.360 | there's a lot more training involved.

00:11:07.720 | There's a lot higher bar that you have to pass.

00:11:09.480 | Here's how you can tell if you're at the right level.

00:11:11.920 | And so in general, I like to push that advice.

00:11:13.880 | When doing something new, first do the work of figuring out about what is

00:11:18.360 | actually required to succeed.

00:11:20.200 | What is actually required to succeed?

00:11:22.240 | So there's a story I told in a podcast interview recently.

00:11:26.520 | It has not come out yet.

00:11:30.120 | I don't usually reveal interviews I've done until after they've come out.

00:11:34.000 | But I think Jesse knows who I'm talking about here.

00:11:36.880 | I did a podcast interview recently with a relatively large podcaster.

00:11:41.800 | You'll verify it was a pretty large podcaster.

00:11:43.720 | Yes, for sure.

00:11:45.080 | I'm a fan of his podcast as well.

00:11:46.920 | All right.

00:11:47.400 | That's all we'll say for now.

00:11:48.200 | And that's coming out in the new year at some point.

00:11:50.200 | But one of the things we got into in that interview was how did I get

00:11:54.120 | started in nonfiction book writing?

00:11:56.680 | And I got into detail about the path I took because I was 20.

00:12:01.000 | I was 20 years old when I got serious about writing books.

00:12:04.800 | And I signed my first book deal with Random House right after I turned 21.

00:12:08.000 | So we're getting into it on this podcast interview.

00:12:11.880 | How did I make that work?

00:12:13.240 | And what I did, I think this is the biggest differentiating factor between me and the

00:12:19.040 | other sort of weird, nerdish 20 year olds who might think about writing books is I

00:12:23.360 | said, I want to get the real answer about what would be required for someone my age

00:12:29.240 | to get a book deal.

00:12:30.000 | And so I used a family friend who was in journalism and said, can you connect me

00:12:36.560 | with a literary agent?

00:12:39.640 | And you can make it clear to this agent that I'm not going to try to sell them

00:12:42.480 | something.

00:12:42.760 | I'm not going to get her to sign me.

00:12:43.960 | I just want 30 minutes information.

00:12:46.200 | And so my memory is he hooked me up with a phone call with an agent.

00:12:51.480 | She was a fiction agent.

00:12:52.560 | So this was good.

00:12:53.680 | There was no, no chance I was going to try to sell her.

00:12:56.400 | She, she primarily focused on fiction, but she was very well established, knew the

00:12:59.520 | industry well.

00:13:00.120 | I said, look, I'm a 20 year old.

00:13:02.000 | I want to try to sign a book deal.

00:13:03.800 | What would really be required?

00:13:06.040 | And she gave me the reality.

00:13:07.840 | And honestly, it's probably not what you'd want to hear.

00:13:10.440 | I think what I wanted to hear was like, you're great.

00:13:12.440 | Your idea is great.

00:13:13.880 | Just start writing every day and you know, your book will be published.

00:13:18.000 | And it's not what she told me.

00:13:19.000 | It's like, look, there's going to be a huge bar for you to cross as a, someone that

00:13:22.480 | young trying to get a book deal.

00:13:24.400 | It's a risk.

00:13:24.960 | So here's the things you're going to have to do.

00:13:26.440 | I think what you need to do first of all, is get more publication credits.

00:13:30.680 | You have to start writing articles that are on the topic you want to sell the book

00:13:35.400 | on.

00:13:36.040 | They're going to want to see writing samples in this genre to see that you

00:13:39.960 | really know how to write.

00:13:41.040 | So you got to sell it.

00:13:41.760 | Also, you're going to want to do a lot of research in advance.

00:13:44.800 | They're not going to trust you to come up with the right idea.

00:13:47.640 | So you need to do that all in advance.

00:13:49.160 | I would do as much of the research for the book as possible in advance that you can

00:13:52.280 | give the agent followed by the publisher.

00:13:55.480 | A really detailed table of contents.

00:13:57.720 | Here's what I'm thinking.

00:13:59.120 | So I can write on this topic.

00:14:00.600 | People have paid me to write on this topic.

00:14:02.480 | I've done all the research.

00:14:03.960 | Here's the content.

00:14:05.080 | You can see exactly what's going to be.

00:14:06.600 | She said, you're probably going to have to do some pretty extensive sample chapter

00:14:09.720 | writing.

00:14:09.960 | So I took that all to heart and it took me a while.

00:14:12.040 | I went out there and got commissions.

00:14:13.440 | There were small publications.

00:14:15.720 | My first books were aimed at college students.

00:14:17.840 | So these were student focused publications.

00:14:20.600 | Some of these were online only.

00:14:23.240 | Some of these were paper magazines that they would distribute for free on college

00:14:30.600 | campuses.

00:14:31.080 | There used to be a publication called Business Today.

00:14:33.240 | I'm sure if that still exists.

00:14:35.880 | Came out of Princeton University students would run it, but whatever.

00:14:38.520 | There's these publications.

00:14:39.480 | They weren't high bar publications, but they were publications.

00:14:41.680 | And I began pitching articles that were student advice oriented.

00:14:45.800 | And as part of that effort, I did all of the research for my first book.

00:14:50.600 | It was one article commission that required me to talk to a small number of Rhodes

00:14:57.320 | scholars for the article commission.

00:14:58.960 | And I took that commission and interviewed 25 people.

00:15:03.440 | Way more than I needed for that article, but it was all the research I needed for the

00:15:06.960 | first book I was going to pitch, How to Win a College.

00:15:08.880 | So I did that work and it was a pain and it's not what I wanted the answer to be.

00:15:11.920 | And it took me a year.

00:15:13.360 | But then when I was done, I could get an agent like that and she could turn around

00:15:18.480 | and sell that book like that.

00:15:19.600 | And we were off to the races.

00:15:20.800 | If I had done what I wanted the right answer to be, which is just people will recognize

00:15:24.480 | your brilliance when you give them a one page summary of your idea and they'll just give

00:15:28.480 | you a lot of money.

00:15:29.280 | I never would have started writing.

00:15:32.640 | So this is my broader interpretation here.

00:15:36.240 | If you want to do something new, regardless of what it is, face the hard truth by talking

00:15:40.880 | to experts about what's really required.

00:15:42.560 | It stinks in the moment because it's usually more than you want to do, but it is a huge

00:15:47.920 | competitive advantage in the long term.

00:15:49.600 | Because it means you're actually going to put your energy on the things that really

00:15:53.600 | matter.

00:15:53.920 | While all of your potential competitors trying to get started in the same world will be doing

00:15:58.240 | National Novel Writing Month and optimizing their Scrivener configurations and they're

00:16:04.480 | never going to get there.

00:16:05.280 | All right.

00:16:07.440 | I think that works.

00:16:08.320 | Jesse, would you be excited to read a book about virtual CFOs and rich data pipelines?

00:16:13.840 | Uh, possibly.

00:16:15.920 | That was a good answer, though.

00:16:16.960 | I mean, you gave Andrew a lot of content there.

00:16:19.520 | Andrew's going to be happy.

00:16:20.880 | I hope so.

00:16:21.440 | Yeah.

00:16:21.920 | It'd be funny if what Andrew was really wanting to write was a, like a thriller novel, but

00:16:27.440 | about virtual CFOs who through the construction of a rich data pipeline saves the world from

00:16:33.520 | a meteor strike and gets the girl in the end.

00:16:36.800 | I'd be there for that book.

00:16:39.120 | And he also throws like a mean fastball.

00:16:41.840 | Yeah.

00:16:42.080 | Because he plays baseball on the side.

00:16:43.520 | He plays baseball on the seat.

00:16:44.880 | Richard, we're giving you the secret here.

00:16:46.560 | That's the book you need to write.

00:16:49.040 | Forget what everyone tells you.

00:16:50.560 | Just start writing, man.

00:16:51.680 | 10 pages a day.

00:16:53.360 | Follow the muse.

00:16:55.760 | You're going to be Dan Brown this time next year, the baseball throwing virtual CFO who's

00:17:02.000 | rich data pipelining.

00:17:03.360 | He's been using just to attract women, but decides to put his skill to use and takes

00:17:08.880 | a break from his pitching responsibility slash data pipeline responsibilities to save the

00:17:13.360 | earth from meteor.

00:17:14.560 | I love it, man.

00:17:15.440 | You're set.

00:17:16.000 | All right.

00:17:16.720 | What do we got next?

00:17:17.440 | All right.

00:17:18.960 | Our next question.

00:17:19.680 | We got a question about the deep work buckets and then Keystone habits.

00:17:26.320 | So let's take a listen.

00:17:27.520 | Hi, Cal.

00:17:33.920 | It's an effect here.

00:17:34.880 | I'm wondering if you could explain the difference between.

00:17:41.120 | Deep work and the roles that you play and your buckets.

00:17:49.520 | And your Keystone habits in those, I'm assuming you have other things you do in the buckets.

00:17:55.840 | And I'm just not clear how you see the relationship between the buckets and your roles.

00:18:03.760 | And I suppose deep work.

00:18:05.680 | Thanks.

00:18:07.440 | All right.

00:18:09.040 | This is a good question because we can clarify the relationship between the deep life.

00:18:16.080 | The philosophy that includes the buckets and deep work, which is a type of professional

00:18:21.760 | activity.

00:18:22.560 | Jesse, let me ask you the right off the bat.

00:18:24.320 | I sort of stumbled into this terminology of buckets early in the pandemic when I was.

00:18:29.920 | Thinking through the deep life and now we're kind of stuck with them.

00:18:33.680 | You think this is a good thing or a bad thing?

00:18:35.200 | You've talked about the buckets for a while because I've been listening to your podcast

00:18:40.080 | since the very beginning.

00:18:40.880 | I like the terminology and I remember you mentioning it even before I.

00:18:45.600 | Started working with you, but I've always been a fan of the buckets.

00:18:48.560 | I use it when I explain it to certain people, so I think it's fine.

00:18:51.440 | But yeah, all right.

00:18:52.800 | So we got what it is.

00:18:54.000 | Buckets.

00:18:54.560 | We're stuck with buckets.

00:18:55.520 | Let me do, by the way, let me do an update on the book and then I'll get to this answer.

00:19:01.040 | But I just finished my sixth version of the potential outline for this book.

00:19:08.800 | I've gone through six versions.

00:19:10.480 | Had a hard time with it.

00:19:11.760 | I did the first version that I actually sent off to my literary agent and said, OK, I

00:19:15.280 | think I think I have this thing cracked.

00:19:18.480 | I think I might be ready to write a proposal.

00:19:20.400 | Jesse, let me do an update.

00:19:22.560 | Let me give you the latest update on the potential book I will be writing about the deep life

00:19:28.800 | and then we'll get to the meat.

00:19:29.840 | We'll get the meat of this question.

00:19:31.040 | Yeah, let's do it.

00:19:32.640 | So here's what was struggling with me before.

00:19:37.280 | I was struggling before when I was thinking about this book because it was important to

00:19:43.200 | me that for this subject matter that the book was, for lack of a better word, smart.

00:19:48.560 | I didn't want to tackle something as.

00:19:51.760 | Philosophically resonant as living a deep life.

00:19:57.520 | I didn't want to tackle it with.

00:19:58.960 | And now here's the seven steps and here's bullet points and here's.

00:20:04.640 | Lazy writing, which in the nonfiction space, the pragmatic nonfiction space, you know,

00:20:09.760 | you get lazy writing when a lot of rhetorical questions enter the scene.

00:20:12.560 | That's a little tip when you get a lot of.

00:20:13.920 | But would this really work?

00:20:16.000 | What about a what about a buzz like, man, that's your notes for like what you need to

00:20:20.160 | craft good writing about.

00:20:21.200 | You can't just put the rhetorical questions into the writing.

00:20:23.280 | So I thought this topic really needed it to be smart.

00:20:27.440 | I mean, it's a complicated topic, but my issue was.

00:20:30.160 | When all I was doing was trying to come up with a table of contents for the book.

00:20:35.280 | I was putting all of the necessity to make the book smart onto the table of contents.

00:20:42.640 | And so it was leading me down these unusual and contrived structures for the book, because

00:20:47.520 | it's like, well, I want the structure itself to convey that this is something different.

00:20:51.840 | And eventually what I realized was, no, keep the structure simple.

00:20:55.680 | And let the writing do the work.

00:20:57.920 | And in fact, not only make it simple, why don't we just still down to its essence, like

00:21:03.680 | the very elements of a Cal Newport book and simplify them down to its purest form.

00:21:08.720 | So the structure is there and it's there, but in a minimalist form, and then let your

00:21:14.160 | writing do all the work of showing the philosophical depth of this topic.

00:21:19.120 | And so that's what I ended up doing with my current outline in the prologue.

00:21:25.360 | Right up there in the prologue, it's me, it's early pandemic.

00:21:28.960 | This topic arise, I coined the term buckets.

00:21:31.600 | And I just let this one short prologue is going to do all the work of just motivating

00:21:35.360 | why this topic matters.

00:21:36.480 | It's been around forever.

00:21:38.160 | Each whatever, each generation comes at it differently.

00:21:40.400 | We have our own moment where we're kind of re-appraising this topic, but no, like multiple

00:21:45.440 | chapters with citing 70 things, a prologue that is just grounded in a place and a time

00:21:51.040 | and me, boom.

00:21:52.880 | Right?

00:21:53.120 | Then we go to a next chapter, prepare.

00:21:56.240 | All of the stuff we've talked about, I mean, the buckets, in general, what makes a deep

00:22:02.880 | life deep?

00:22:03.360 | I mean, I've pretty much simplified it in my own thinking that the definition of a deep

00:22:07.360 | life is you radically align, radically aligning your life to be in alignment with things that

00:22:15.040 | you really value.

00:22:15.760 | So it's about not just aligning elements of your life, but being willing to make radical

00:22:19.840 | changes to your life to align it to things that you value.

00:22:21.840 | I think just let's just give the definition.

00:22:24.640 | Let's talk about it.

00:22:26.640 | Like, what's the hard thing about it?

00:22:28.000 | Well, it's hard to figure out what changes to make.

00:22:29.520 | We have this bucket system we'll talk about in a second that can help, but like, there

00:22:32.160 | it is just one chapter, call it prepare out of the way.

00:22:35.920 | Not dragging this out, not going whatever, just boom.

00:22:38.640 | And then the whole rest of the book, I have five chapters.

00:22:42.640 | Each is a different element of something you might radically align as part of building

00:22:49.040 | a deep life, naming them with one word verbs and let the writing do the work.

00:22:55.600 | So you have this prologue, you have this prepare chapter, and then it's right now, the

00:23:00.080 | terminology I have is move, quit, serve, train, wonder.

00:23:07.520 | It's the current list and the list might change, but one word, one verb, like I'm trying to

00:23:12.240 | get down to the essence.

00:23:13.120 | Like, let's get down to the essence of a Cal Newport book.

00:23:17.120 | Here's the problem.

00:23:18.160 | Here's the solution.

00:23:19.440 | Let's look into how you implement the solution.

00:23:22.000 | Just getting it down to the essence.

00:23:23.040 | And then I can let the writing do the work.

00:23:25.680 | I'm going to follow my own journey through these chapters.

00:23:27.680 | I'm a character in this.

00:23:29.120 | They're going to be asymmetrical.

00:23:30.400 | So it's not like every chapter has the same structure as every other one.

00:23:34.320 | I really want to get away from opening story, interpretation of the opening story, complicating

00:23:39.120 | story, four bullet points.

00:23:40.400 | It's going to be some chapters be different than others.

00:23:43.200 | I'm a character in it.

00:23:44.800 | Let's be nuanced in tackling these issues.

00:23:47.600 | Take these different elements of building a deep life and really go try to understand

00:23:52.240 | why do they resonate?

00:23:53.120 | What's at the core of them?

00:23:54.240 | What do you have to think about if you're trying to do an alignment here?

00:23:59.200 | Give some respect to the reader to help put the pieces together.

00:24:03.120 | So that's where I am now.

00:24:04.240 | Very simple structure.

00:24:05.920 | Now it then ends with an epilogue.

00:24:07.200 | Okay, here's how I've changed my own life.

00:24:08.560 | Very simple structure.

00:24:10.000 | One word chapter titles.

00:24:11.200 | Get down to the core of it.

00:24:13.760 | And then we'll really let a journey unfold.

00:24:16.640 | Let the writing do what the writing needs to do.

00:24:18.560 | I don't know.

00:24:18.960 | So what do you think, Jesse?

00:24:20.000 | Better or worse than where I was before?

00:24:21.600 | I like it.

00:24:23.600 | So I have a question.

00:24:24.800 | When you were doing, when you were trying to make the book seem smart and you were

00:24:29.840 | developing the table of contents, how did you explain that to the agent or whoever you

00:24:37.760 | submitted it to that it was the writing that was going to be the smart work?

00:24:41.120 | Or did you write the epilogue as well so they had an example?

00:24:45.280 | You know, so yeah, it's a good question.

00:24:48.000 | So like what I was doing before is I was getting too cute with the structure.

00:24:52.080 | Well, I think the last time I talked about on the podcast, maybe at that point I was

00:24:55.760 | doing paths like here are the four main paths that people follow.

00:24:59.680 | And that wasn't quite right.

00:25:02.240 | I want to get to the crux of the matter.

00:25:04.160 | Like what are the actual changes that create the depth, the resonance?

00:25:07.680 | I want to be more concrete.

00:25:09.200 | So that seemed too complicated.

00:25:10.640 | And then I had a form where each chapter was a setting.

00:25:15.440 | So it was like, I'm at this farm.

00:25:18.080 | I'm at this like writer's retreat or something like this.

00:25:21.920 | And then I would build out from the setting.

00:25:23.280 | But I was like, this is again, it's not clear to the reader.

00:25:27.280 | Why are we at this setting?

00:25:29.360 | And I don't want this to be just one of these reflection books where I just like I have

00:25:33.200 | these kind of reflections and I prove that I'm smart with my writing.

00:25:35.920 | And that seemed too cute.

00:25:38.320 | And so really, and then I had more complicated traditional structures where, you know, here's

00:25:44.160 | like three, four chapters on like what's needed to prepare, you know, for the deep life.

00:25:49.200 | And it was like spending all this time on it.

00:25:51.040 | Like that felt forced or whatever.

00:25:52.480 | So I just simplified it down to these one word chapters.

00:25:55.200 | And I sent it off just for my agent to look at.

00:25:57.680 | But I was like, the structure should make a lot of sense here.

00:26:00.640 | It's my standard.

00:26:01.280 | I've just simplified it.

00:26:02.160 | But the writing is going to do what the writing does.

00:26:06.160 | It's going to follow my story.

00:26:07.120 | Not every chapter is going to be the same.

00:26:08.560 | And it was more for me.

00:26:11.360 | I just felt a clarity.

00:26:12.480 | And I felt like a book like this needed a lot of clarity.

00:26:14.480 | Just you look at the table of contents, like I know what you're up to.

00:26:16.880 | Let's get into it.

00:26:17.520 | If that makes sense.

00:26:18.880 | Got it.

00:26:20.080 | So this being the sixth version, how long is that process?

00:26:24.480 | Like six months?

00:26:25.360 | Like you submit a version every month or is it?

00:26:27.600 | So this is the first version I submitted.

00:26:30.560 | So it's like the first five versions, I was like, no.

00:26:33.920 | So my whole thing, my whole process is I rely heavily on my sense of taste.

00:26:40.320 | To borrow the terminology from Ira Glass, that like the first step in trying to produce

00:26:46.000 | something good is you have to develop the taste to recognize good things.

00:26:50.160 | And it can be frustrating because then you know when you're doing stuff that's not hitting that.

00:26:54.160 | That's not hitting that level.

00:26:55.440 | So I know what I'm looking for.

00:26:58.320 | And I'm very empathetic.

00:27:00.320 | So I can, I put myself into the head of a potential reader and try to simulate what's

00:27:07.040 | that response?

00:27:08.240 | Is there an aspirational response or not?

00:27:10.640 | Right.

00:27:10.880 | So I'm very empathetic.

00:27:12.000 | I'm like this in person, by the way, too.

00:27:13.680 | I very strongly read and feel empathetically what's going on in a room.

00:27:18.720 | If I'm talking to someone, like every little nuance about their state of mind and how they're

00:27:22.320 | feeling, it hits me really big.

00:27:24.320 | Right.

00:27:24.560 | And this has negatives and positives.

00:27:27.040 | It has some social implications that aren't great, but it's good for writing because I can.

00:27:30.560 | I can simulate the mind of the reader really well.

00:27:34.400 | And so I really began working on this in earnest in July, just trying to get an outline.

00:27:39.280 | And for the other five, I would finish it.

00:27:41.840 | I would sit with it and it was just a feeling.

00:27:44.240 | It's not right.

00:27:45.680 | It's hard to explain.

00:27:47.360 | It's like a little premonition of like something's not right here.

00:27:51.040 | There's some grit in the gears and I would sit on it and I just say, this is not right.

00:27:54.960 | And then I would try again.

00:27:56.000 | And I think it's not quite right.

00:27:58.320 | And I would try again.

00:27:59.120 | But it's not quite right.

00:28:00.000 | So it's really for me, it's all this intuition.

00:28:02.080 | I just have an intuition when I finally feel like I think I'm honing in on.

00:28:06.800 | I think I'm honing in on something that the reader's it's going to get.

00:28:10.640 | It's good.

00:28:10.960 | It's all about pressing the buttons I want to press.

00:28:13.280 | I want the experience of reading the book to be exciting.

00:28:17.760 | Like you have the sense of I'm going to change something in my life and I'm getting some

00:28:21.040 | revelation and there's a whole sense that I'm going for.

00:28:23.760 | And so I've been sitting with this one for a while and feel better about it.

00:28:27.520 | So I think I'm getting closer.

00:28:28.640 | Did you influence at all by your friend Ryan Holiday's new books with the one chapter titles

00:28:35.600 | that he's been doing?

00:28:37.120 | Did that influence at all with the one chapter?

00:28:39.760 | Yeah, yes.

00:28:41.200 | Yeah.

00:28:42.000 | So Ryan, I think Ryan is a great example of this of keeping the form, keeping the form

00:28:49.600 | simple and clear and then letting the writing do the work of actually affecting the person.

00:28:57.040 | Yeah, I think he's a great example of that.

00:28:58.400 | If we're going to be really highfaluting about this and self-important, as you know, I went

00:29:05.120 | through this phase of reading a lot about film, film studies, et cetera.

00:29:09.120 | Technically, you could think about what I'm interested in is the pragmatic nonfiction

00:29:14.880 | equivalent of auteur theory in film.

00:29:17.520 | So in film, when you look at Fellini and auteur theory, there is this sense of like what the,

00:29:22.560 | especially in the 70s and 80s, that these auteur directors would take a well-established genre

00:29:27.760 | and then they would work within the constraints of that genre to create art.

00:29:33.120 | And it was actually in the tension of their work against the constraints that you would

00:29:36.880 | subvert this or what they would do with this, that you would actually create the value that

00:29:42.640 | somehow that there was something to this that was even more special or magical than just

00:29:46.640 | starting with a blank slate.

00:29:48.080 | So this would be the difference between Ford working within the constraints of the Western

00:29:54.080 | and visually and storytelling-wise working with it or Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, which

00:29:58.800 | I recently re-watched, taking the constraints of the genre that he helped define earlier

00:30:05.520 | in his career and is in the subverting of the constraints that actually the power comes

00:30:10.800 | out.

00:30:11.440 | And then comparing that, for example, to Terry Malick, who was just like, "I'm going to

00:30:15.600 | construct this thing from scratch.

00:30:16.800 | This movie is going to be whatever it's going to be."

00:30:20.080 | The auteur theory, you work within the genre.

00:30:25.200 | I think it's an incredibly self-important way of describing how-to books that I write.

00:30:30.320 | But at least it gives me some sort of motivation.

00:30:32.560 | And Ryan does this too, work within the constraints of the genre.

00:30:37.040 | So I have a very clear constraint, motivation, idea.

00:30:42.320 | All right, so here's this issue.

00:30:44.960 | Here's my original idea about what to do about it.

00:30:47.040 | Digital minimalism, deep work, replacing the hyperactive hive mind.

00:30:51.600 | Then a journey to understand how to implement it.

00:30:55.200 | Which is where you help the reader instantiate in their own mind how their life might actually

00:31:02.320 | change to act on that promise.

00:31:03.760 | That's my Western movie or detective novel.

00:31:07.120 | And I'm trying to work within it.

00:31:09.040 | So that's what I'm doing with this new one.

00:31:10.400 | Let's just distill it down to one word, incredibly simple.

00:31:12.720 | Get the motivation to a prologue.

00:31:15.040 | Get the whole, here's the idea down to just one chapter.

00:31:17.280 | Use all the new muscles I've been building at The New Yorker to be clear and well-crafted

00:31:21.760 | and balanced and momentum going.

00:31:24.080 | And then just see where it goes.

00:31:25.280 | So this is like the self-important stuff I tell myself.

00:31:28.560 | So I don't get bored.

00:31:30.480 | I don't know, would you buy this?

00:31:32.560 | It might, this is probably going too far, right?

00:31:34.240 | Talking about auteur theory.

00:31:35.680 | No, I like it a lot.

00:31:36.800 | In fact, if it becomes a movie, we can get Andrew from the previous call to be a character.

00:31:40.960 | And it's got all those other traits.

00:31:42.960 | Yeah, I left that.

00:31:44.320 | I did leave that out.

00:31:45.200 | That's going to be a big part of the book is going to be these big call-out boxes.

00:31:50.720 | And I'm going to have a sketch of Andrew, a really dramatic sketch of Andrew, and a lot

00:31:56.400 | of details on rich data pipelines.

00:31:58.640 | Because you've got to subvert expectations.

00:32:00.560 | You're like, oh man, what's going to happen?

00:32:02.400 | This guy's going to quit his job.

00:32:03.680 | And then it's XML formats for maximum data portability.

00:32:07.760 | That's, I think that's where the magic is going to be.

00:32:09.600 | I love the explanation.

00:32:12.800 | I think it was great.

00:32:13.520 | There's an actual question lurking in there, wasn't there?

00:32:16.000 | Yeah, so the question was about deep work and working with the keystone habits.

00:32:21.360 | You get this type of question a decent amount.

00:32:23.040 | But I always love hearing the explanation because I'm a big firm believer that people

00:32:27.440 | need to be continually coached.

00:32:29.280 | So yeah.

00:32:30.000 | OK, so yeah.

00:32:30.640 | Now let's get back to the meat of it.

00:32:32.960 | All right, so we have the deep life.

00:32:34.480 | We have this growing definition of the deep life that I've been refining, where it's really

00:32:39.440 | about living your life in radical alignment with things you value.

00:32:43.120 | So you're aligning the things you value.

00:32:45.120 | You're willing to make radical changes to actually make that alignment, maybe radical

00:32:49.360 | changes to where you live and work or the structure of your day.

00:32:51.680 | Implicit in this definition is also you're comfortable missing out on other things to

00:32:58.320 | do this priority.

00:32:59.200 | So I'm going to really focus on a few things that really matter and radically align my

00:33:03.120 | life with it.

00:33:04.320 | All right, so that's my vision of the deep life.

00:33:06.320 | The hard part about the deep life, and this is something I've been refining when I've

00:33:10.560 | been thinking about this potential book.

00:33:12.160 | The hard part is, well, figuring out what that is, like what's really important.

00:33:16.400 | How do you align your life to it?

00:33:17.760 | There's some preparation that's actually required to get better in tune with yourself

00:33:21.680 | and to get more comfortable with the idea that you have efficacy, that you can actually

00:33:26.640 | influence the way your life unfolds.

00:33:28.560 | A lot of us aren't really used to that, except for in very minor ways, like trying a new

00:33:32.640 | exercise routine.

00:33:33.520 | And so the bucket, the bucket system I talk about on the podcast a lot is in some sense

00:33:40.560 | a way of doing that preparation, beginning to learn what's important to you, beginning

00:33:46.400 | to build that muscle of aligning your life with the things that are important, even if

00:33:51.920 | that requires sacrifices or deemphasizing other things.

00:33:54.640 | It's the preparation stage.

00:33:56.640 | And then once you're done with that preparation stage, then you might actually make some more

00:34:01.120 | radical steps.

00:34:01.920 | Now I'm ready to like with confidence move across the country, go to the farm, radically

00:34:08.080 | change our work situation, whatever it's going to be.

00:34:10.320 | So I see now the buckets as a preparatory step towards a more extreme push towards a

00:34:17.600 | deep life.

00:34:18.100 | The idea briefly is you identify the important areas of your life.

00:34:23.760 | I call these the deep life buckets.

00:34:25.520 | The examples I give often are alliterative, and I'll start with C.

00:34:30.080 | So the original group I used to talk about was craft, community, constitution, and

00:34:34.800 | contemplation, but people have different lists of what's important to them.

00:34:38.720 | And what I would recommend in this system is that you start, step one, identifying a

00:34:45.760 | keystone habit for each of these buckets, something you do on a daily basis and track

00:34:50.720 | that you actually did it that's not trivial, but is also tractable.

00:34:54.880 | So it's not, you know, I clap my hands twice, but it's also not I ran a half marathon

00:35:01.120 | every day.

00:35:02.240 | These keystone habits should be something that advances something you care about in

00:35:07.520 | that bucket.

00:35:08.080 | The idea here is not that this will radically transform your life, but that you begin to

00:35:12.480 | get used to this idea of I intentionally prioritize each of these things.

00:35:18.800 | Each of these things gets attention.

00:35:20.560 | So that's step one.

00:35:21.360 | Step two, then I recommend taking each of these buckets in turn and giving it four,

00:35:28.560 | six, maybe eight weeks.

00:35:29.680 | So I usually say average out four to six weeks where you focus just on that area of your

00:35:33.440 | life and overhaul it.

00:35:35.680 | Like what more permanent changes do I want to make?

00:35:38.720 | What things do I want to eliminate?

00:35:39.840 | What new things do I want to do?

00:35:41.040 | What more permanent changes do I want to make to make sure that that part of my life is

00:35:45.200 | getting a good amount of attention and I'm extracting from it a good amount of value

00:35:50.160 | in my day-to-day life?

00:35:51.040 | That takes some time and experimentation.

00:35:52.800 | So that's why I say take at least four to six weeks for each.

00:35:56.080 | This is a concept that I stole from the medieval Jewish practice of Musar, M-U-S-S-A-R, which

00:36:02.560 | is a practice of virtue cultivation where you actually focus one month at a time on

00:36:07.760 | different virtues that you're trying to improve and then you cycle back again.

00:36:10.800 | Very into that idea.

00:36:12.880 | I think it's a really cool idea that should be known more widely.

00:36:15.520 | So I'm sort of pulling from there.

00:36:16.960 | And then when you're done with those overhauls, you are going to be in a state now where you

00:36:24.400 | know what's important to you because you have been experimenting with it and trying to amplify

00:36:28.480 | things and just getting in touch with those intimations for each of the areas of your

00:36:31.920 | life.

00:36:32.080 | You've just spent a month thinking nothing about that.

00:36:34.720 | And you feel a lot more efficacious because you've now done non-trivial rewiring of elements

00:36:40.800 | of your life to make sure that each of these buckets is being satisfied.

00:36:45.200 | That by itself is going to put you on a much more stable foundation.

00:36:49.600 | If you did nothing else, I think your life is going to be deeper.

00:36:53.360 | It also puts you into the right place if you want to make the radical changes.

00:36:57.520 | Because now you really know what you're all about and you're confident you can make changes.

00:37:00.480 | So that's the deep life bucket system.

00:37:02.400 | Deep work, by contrast, is a particular type of professional effort.

00:37:09.040 | It is when you're working on something that is cognitively demanding and you don't context

00:37:13.360 | switch.

00:37:13.840 | So you give it your full attention.

00:37:14.960 | Much more minor in the grand scheme of things.

00:37:18.560 | So where might that show up in here?

00:37:20.400 | Well, what I call the craft bucket is the bucket that's dedicated to what you produce

00:37:25.760 | professionally.

00:37:26.560 | It also, by the way, can cover other things you produce that maybe is not at the core

00:37:29.920 | of your job.

00:37:30.480 | But any type of producing of things that are valuable.

00:37:33.280 | If you're the actor Nick Offerman, for example, from Parks and Recreation, he has this fantastic

00:37:39.840 | woodshed warehouse in the suburb of Los Angeles somewhere where he builds these great wood

00:37:46.240 | creations.

00:37:47.280 | Yeah, it's not a business for him, but it's craft and that's important to him.

00:37:50.720 | So it's building things, but definitely a professional life is covered there.

00:37:53.520 | When you're considering craft, deep work matters.

00:37:56.240 | Because as we talk about, you want to produce things of value.

00:38:00.080 | That means you want to make sure that you have good time protected for deep work.

00:38:03.360 | And you want to work on the load of work in your life, probably so that you have enough

00:38:09.760 | ratio of deep to shallow work.

00:38:10.880 | Yeah, that's all considerations that apply narrowly when you're trying to figure out

00:38:14.880 | your craft bucket.

00:38:15.760 | So to get to the definitive answer to the original question, the deep life is this big

00:38:21.600 | idea.

00:38:22.080 | If you're going through my preparatory deep life bucket system during the time you're

00:38:28.320 | focused on a craft or whatever your equivalent is of the craft bucket, that's real care

00:38:34.240 | about deep work.

00:38:34.960 | And I like to make this point because I think deep work as a concept has inflated for some

00:38:42.720 | people to cover a lot of things.

00:38:44.880 | And I'm trying to keep these separations more clear.

00:38:47.680 | So this is why I like to talk about, let's get deep work narrow to what it is, focusing

00:38:53.200 | on something hard without distraction.

00:38:54.480 | And let's use the term deep life to capture this broader goal of living a life that's

00:38:59.120 | radically aligned with your values.

00:39:01.600 | All right, so I don't know.

00:39:03.840 | Do you think-- I think, Jesse, that's probably the-- I'm breaking records here for length

00:39:09.280 | of answers before we actually get to any information relevant to the original question.

00:39:15.600 | That was a good one.

00:39:16.480 | That one was 21 minutes, probably?

00:39:19.200 | Pretty close.

00:39:19.760 | Oh, dear Lord.

00:39:20.320 | We're rolling.

00:39:20.800 | It was solid.

00:39:21.360 | All right.

00:39:21.920 | All right.

00:39:22.320 | You know, I'm going fast.

00:39:23.360 | I'm going fast.

00:39:24.640 | This is my challenge.

00:39:27.280 | Fast answer on this next one.

00:39:28.400 | Be ready for it.

00:39:29.040 | All right, so here we go.

00:39:31.600 | The next question we have, a question about your dislike of the words content and content

00:39:40.480 | creator.

00:39:41.440 | She explains more.

00:39:42.400 | Hi, Cal.

00:39:47.360 | My name is Tina, and I'm in academic medicine.

00:39:50.160 | You've mentioned on the show several times about how you hate the word content and content

00:39:56.480 | creator.

00:39:56.960 | I find that I don't like these terms either, but I can't quite articulate why.

00:40:02.640 | Can you explain further as to why these words just don't sound right, considering your deep

00:40:09.760 | life and deep work philosophies?

00:40:12.000 | Thank you very much.

00:40:12.960 | I'm a huge fan of the show.

00:40:14.080 | All right.

00:40:16.320 | I'll be quick on this answer.

00:40:18.320 | I think the content and content creator terminology, the context in which it is often used,

00:40:25.600 | is in a very sterile business technique optimization type context, right?

00:40:33.120 | So when you hear content creator, you're imagining that you're going to be watching a YouTube

00:40:38.720 | video about optimizing your subscription numbers for your YouTube channel or something like

00:40:44.160 | this.

00:40:44.320 | When you think of content or content creator, you think of people saying, "I want you to

00:40:48.560 | smash that subscribe button and hit the bell."

00:40:51.840 | And so it's sterile and business focused, where I tend to focus more on the craft itself,

00:41:00.000 | the Steve Martin advice of be so good they can't ignore you, that you're not a content

00:41:06.400 | creator who's trying to meet a content schedule.

00:41:08.960 | You're trying to instead craft a book that hundreds of thousands of people are going

00:41:16.160 | to feel like changed their life.

00:41:17.280 | You're not trying to optimize readership numbers.

00:41:20.880 | You're trying to write an article that is going to change the way a whole segment of

00:41:24.960 | the population understands an important issue.

00:41:27.120 | So I like to put the focus concretely on the actual artistic thing you're trying to create

00:41:33.280 | and put as much energy as possible into making that as good as possible.

00:41:38.160 | And then all the other stuff, it comes along, but it's kind of on the side.

00:41:43.600 | I don't know.

00:41:44.000 | I mean, yeah, there's some stuff you have to do, but that's not the focus.

00:41:46.400 | The focus is producing the good stuff.

00:41:48.960 | Now, Jesse, you've been teaching me about some of this stuff, right?

00:41:52.880 | So you're helping me get videos online.

00:41:55.280 | You will admit to the audience that I know very little about YouTube or videos, and I

00:42:04.160 | practice what I preach.

00:42:05.120 | I do not know any content creator information.

00:42:07.440 | I'm not.

00:42:09.860 | I'm okay with YouTube and stuff.

00:42:12.480 | I have a channel on another field that's decent.

00:42:17.600 | But all in all, yeah, I mean, I can attest to that.

00:42:21.920 | See, I guess that--

00:42:23.680 | Okay, one other-- I don't wanna go long, because I promised to be short, so I'll be short here.

00:42:27.360 | But I think there's also a "there but for the grace of God go I" type fear I have, which

00:42:35.040 | is there's a very specific job in the world of people who work in written or visual mediums,

00:42:40.800 | which is being a YouTube personality.

00:42:43.680 | And they are really beholden to these algorithms.

00:42:48.480 | I guess if you make money off of YouTube advertisements, it really matters if your videos get recommended,

00:42:57.280 | right?

00:42:57.440 | I guess that's where a lot of views come from.

00:42:59.200 | And there's all of these little things that matter for the algorithm to get your video

00:43:03.280 | shown more.

00:43:04.080 | And obsessing about these things really probably makes a very practical difference to how much

00:43:08.720 | money you make.

00:43:09.600 | And so to me, when I see my son watching Minecraft YouTubers, I'm like, "What?

00:43:18.400 | What a hard job.

00:43:19.200 | Man, this is a smart guy.

00:43:21.520 | I'm wondering if he should go to med school."

00:43:23.600 | [laughs]

00:43:24.160 | I mean, because they have to do this all day long and get subscribers and this and this

00:43:28.400 | bell.

00:43:28.640 | I don't know what the bell does, but if they don't do this, it's not gonna get recommended.

00:43:32.320 | If it doesn't get recommended, they're not gonna be able to pay their heating bill,

00:43:35.040 | and they have to render videos all night long.

00:43:37.120 | And I don't wanna do any of that.

00:43:39.360 | So for me, I'm also, I think, just in a self-protective way.

00:43:41.840 | I say, "I don't want anything to do with that world."

00:43:44.400 | I care about my books.

00:43:46.160 | Like when it comes to metrics of success, how many copies my books sell and podcast

00:43:52.480 | listeners.

00:43:52.800 | I think downloads of the podcast is very important.

00:43:55.200 | I like this medium.

00:43:56.240 | It's distributed.

00:43:56.880 | We control it.

00:43:57.600 | I think it's given us a great relationship with the audience.

00:44:00.400 | And if YouTube videos help those things, that's great.

00:44:03.120 | But I really, I think once you go down that line of trying to serve the YouTube algorithm,

00:44:09.200 | it's a Faustian bargain.

00:44:12.640 | - 100%.

00:44:14.000 | I think the gamers, they have a tough lifestyle.

00:44:17.600 | I mean, they probably don't have the best diet in the world.

00:44:19.360 | They're probably not exercising that much.

00:44:20.720 | Their backs probably hurt all the time.

00:44:22.400 | But some of them make bank.

00:44:24.160 | So I mean, as long as they're not blowing all the money, maybe they're okay.

00:44:28.320 | But who knows?

00:44:28.960 | I mean, I completely agree with you though.

00:44:30.480 | - Here's my counterfactual though.

00:44:31.680 | Let's say we take, let's say everyone who in the last five years made a serious run,

00:44:38.640 | and let's just focus on one game at a Minecraft YouTube video, right?

00:44:43.280 | Like where they're doing it almost full-time.

00:44:45.920 | Now, if we took all those people and said almost anything else, like try writing books,

00:44:50.880 | try starting a software company, like just get your college degree and try to go into banking,

00:44:56.320 | I bet we'd have the same income distribution.

00:44:58.000 | There'd be like a small number of people who made a lot of money.

00:45:00.080 | And like some other people, most other people,

00:45:01.840 | actually would probably be a better distribution.

00:45:04.160 | You'd have a few people that made a lot of money, but a lot of money would be more

00:45:07.440 | than the best YouTubers make.

00:45:09.200 | And then almost everyone else would have at least a stable middle-class lifestyle,

00:45:12.480 | where with the YouTubers, probably the curve is much more brutal,

00:45:15.520 | that like 80% can't even pay their bills with it.

00:45:18.800 | But it would be the time demands of, I don't know, I ran a software company

00:45:22.400 | or a banker would probably be better than the work.

00:45:25.200 | I guess my counterfactual is like, is this actually opening up?

00:45:28.400 | Because I don't think it's a better lifestyle.

00:45:30.080 | It's a really hard job.

00:45:31.600 | Is it really opening up like more income-making opportunities?

00:45:36.480 | Then these are smart kids than other stuff they could do.

00:45:39.120 | That's probably more rational thinking than they went into.

00:45:42.000 | They probably first started doing it and then realized they might be able to make some money

00:45:46.800 | with it.

00:45:47.280 | And then all of a sudden, it was like a snowball effect.

00:45:50.640 | So like people were doing it.

00:45:52.000 | And there's a tension.

00:45:52.800 | And I don't think that they would ever even want to begin,

00:45:58.560 | you know, starting an accounting firm or doing some sort of thing like that,

00:46:02.240 | where they have to report to work and do whatever.

00:46:04.720 | Yeah, but you could be, they're all tech savvy.

00:46:07.840 | They could, most of these guys, I bet could build up pretty good computer programming skills

00:46:14.480 | and work, I don't know, half the year on contract.

00:46:20.400 | And have the other half the year completely free and probably have as,

00:46:23.680 | maybe it's just not as much fun.

00:46:24.800 | Maybe I'm not a romantic.

00:46:25.920 | Some of them might be.

00:46:26.720 | I think a lot of them might be.

00:46:27.840 | Like my good buddy who has like an online business plays games all the time.

00:46:30.800 | He doesn't do videos, but yeah, I mean, yeah.

00:46:34.720 | Well, this is just me justifying myself, but okay.

00:46:36.720 | Good question.

00:46:37.200 | That's semi-fast.

00:46:38.480 | That's semi-fast.

00:46:39.280 | Do we have another one?

00:46:40.880 | How are we doing with time?

00:46:41.680 | Yeah, we have one more question.

00:46:43.680 | This is a question about studying for the GMAT.

00:46:47.280 | And then at the tail end, she's also juggling job hunting.

00:46:52.320 | So we'll take a listen to what Lindsay has to say.

00:46:54.720 | All right.

00:46:55.040 | Hi, Cal.

00:46:57.120 | This is Lindsay.

00:46:58.160 | I'm a huge fan of your work.

00:47:02.000 | I am wondering if you could speak to two things.

00:47:07.840 | The first is most effective way to study for the GMAT test.

00:47:18.080 | I took it back in 2011.

00:47:24.000 | I have to retake it now that I'm applying to school again for something else.

00:47:32.560 | And because they have changed the test and there's so many guides and books in online

00:47:40.880 | courses out there that I do not, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.

00:47:46.240 | So if you could speak to that or like generally standardized, like higher education.

00:47:54.000 | Just a quick pause here right there.

00:47:56.320 | Secondly,

00:47:58.640 | so let me answer her first part and then we'll get her second part if that works,

00:48:01.760 | because GMAT, I have a simple answer for any of those standardized tests.

00:48:05.440 | Doing sample test under the real time conditions is by far the actual best practice.

00:48:13.680 | I can do real sample test and get this score under those conditions.

00:48:18.480 | Then you will get that score in the real test.

00:48:20.400 | If you can't, you won't.

00:48:21.840 | The only thing you do is use books.

00:48:24.800 | I don't think you need the online courses.

00:48:26.560 | Get books to learn the techniques they recommend for each of the different types of sections.

00:48:32.560 | So, okay, I'm going to study these type of questions and look at the techniques.

00:48:36.240 | Now I'm going to try it under time conditions.

00:48:38.000 | Then I'll go back and deconstruct the answers I got wrong,

00:48:40.560 | figure out how to answer them right.

00:48:41.920 | See if I'm missing any techniques.

00:48:44.000 | Why did I get that wrong?

00:48:44.960 | Was it a mistake or I didn't know how to do it and then do it again under time conditions.

00:48:48.800 | And that's it.

00:48:49.360 | I mean, this is how I did, for example, the GRE when I was applying to graduate school

00:48:55.120 | in computer science, most of these schools cared only about your math section.

00:48:59.520 | I knew you needed a high 700s in the math to be in contention for any of these schools.

00:49:04.640 | They preferred 800, but I gamed it out and was like, okay, high 700s would be enough.

00:49:09.520 | And that's all I did.

00:49:11.520 | Like, okay, let me read a book about the different types of questions and the techniques they

00:49:15.680 | recommend, sample test, how'd I do?

00:49:17.840 | Try again, try again.

00:49:19.680 | Okay, I'm in the high 700s, go took the test and we're done.

00:49:22.240 | So that's the way to prepare.

00:49:24.320 | Nothing else fancy, get in real conditions, do the test, figure out what you got wrong.

00:49:28.880 | Look at one book on techniques, but it's really, it's really a game of practicing.

00:49:33.040 | All right, let's see what your second part of the question is.

00:49:35.280 | - Job hunting, organization, best way to practice answers, things like that,

00:49:50.240 | interviews.

00:49:51.200 | So I'm kind of doing both at the same time.

00:49:55.520 | Thank you so much.

00:49:57.920 | Okay, bye.

00:49:58.480 | - All right, well, first of all, tangentially, Jesse, was that the first call we've had where

00:50:07.200 | someone seems to actually be walking?

00:50:08.640 | - There seemed to be a lot of talk in the background.

00:50:11.520 | - I heard footsteps.

00:50:12.560 | Yeah, so I don't, can the technology we use for people to call in, I guess that must work

00:50:19.040 | on your phone, right?

00:50:19.840 | - I think so.

00:50:21.280 | - Okay, so now we know, now we know.

00:50:23.440 | We've never heard someone actually walking.

00:50:25.040 | I think it'd be funny if the reality was Lindsey had a really large media cart and like on

00:50:31.120 | the media cart, she had a desktop computer with a monitor and like a keyboard.

00:50:35.760 | And then there was another wagon that had a generator in it.

00:50:38.880 | And there was like someone pulling the cart and someone pushing the generator.

00:50:42.320 | And she had like a headset on connected to the computer as she walked,

00:50:45.520 | trying to answer the question.

00:50:48.240 | It's either that or SpeakPipe works on your phone.

00:50:51.840 | We'll see, but anyways, that's cool.

00:50:55.120 | So, all right, everyone, now we know you can answer these questions from the phone.

00:50:57.760 | And if you want to know how to do this, by the way, calnewport.com/podcast, there's a

00:51:02.000 | link, but it's just a service called SpeakPipe and you like record right from your web browser.

00:51:06.320 | Okay, so for job interviews, so for corporate job interviews, if you're going to be doing

00:51:11.680 | corporate recruiting in particular, you got to practice that too.

00:51:15.840 | And the way you practice that is it has to be practice specific to those types of interviews.

00:51:20.880 | Just to give you a little insight or look, if you're at an elite college, for example,

00:51:27.360 | and watching people interviewing for banking jobs or consulting jobs, there's practice

00:51:35.760 | sessions that they do again and again with sample types of questions.

00:51:39.600 | How do you answer case questions?

00:51:41.120 | How do you answer brainstorming questions?

00:51:43.520 | Coders, so let's say you're trying to get a job as a computer programmer at Google,

00:51:47.520 | tell you just based on our grad students here at Georgetown, they practice a lot.

00:51:51.840 | And there's various tools like LeetCode, I think it's called, where you can practice

00:51:56.480 | the types of coding puzzles that they will give you to do on the whiteboards.

00:52:00.000 | But it's a very specific skill.

00:52:02.080 | You have to think about corporate recruiting, like you're going to juggle.

00:52:05.760 | I got to practice how to do this.

00:52:08.320 | Quick personal story, when I was at Dartmouth, I signed up for one of these interviews for

00:52:13.760 | a consulting firm.

00:52:14.640 | They were doing the first pass on campus.

00:52:17.440 | And I was like, I don't need to practice.

00:52:19.600 | I'm a smart guy, a four-O's.

00:52:21.440 | And just got destroyed because it was so specific.

00:52:25.040 | I was like, what the hell are you talking about?

00:52:27.280 | Because I did not practice.

00:52:28.240 | They're like, all right, well, I forgot the question was.

00:52:30.160 | It was something like, help us walk you through how you think through this question.

00:52:33.680 | Like how many windows?

00:52:35.040 | I think the question was like, how many windows are there in Manhattan?

00:52:38.480 | Now to me, I was like, what the hell are you talking about?

00:52:40.320 | I don't know.

00:52:40.880 | But it turns out, oh, that's a very specific type of question that corporate recruiters

00:52:44.640 | ask.

00:52:44.880 | And there's a method for how you practice it.

00:52:46.640 | And I hadn't practiced it.

00:52:48.320 | Right.

00:52:48.640 | And so that interview went disastrously.

00:52:50.800 | So that's all I want to say is that these type of jobs, especially for elite companies,

00:52:56.000 | people practice a lot, specifically a type of interview questions they're going to do.

00:52:59.040 | So that is worth finding a course for.

00:53:01.440 | There's online training tools for different types of interviews.

00:53:05.040 | There's online courses for doing different types of interviews.

00:53:07.840 | It is highly specific.

00:53:09.200 | So you do want to practice that.

00:53:10.640 | So get that practice in.

00:53:13.120 | And it's just like with the GMAT.

00:53:15.120 | Once you know, I've done 100 of these type of questions.

00:53:18.320 | I know how to do these questions.

00:53:19.520 | I know how to figure out the number of windows in Manhattan.

00:53:21.920 | I know how to come up with a binary search algorithm on the whiteboard that, you know,

00:53:26.880 | uses a single array pointer, whatever the challenge is.

00:53:31.040 | Like I've done it 100 times.

00:53:32.720 | Then you'll be confident.

00:53:34.000 | You'll be confident for the interview.

00:53:35.280 | All right, Jesse, I think we made it.

00:53:39.120 | I think we made it through a whole episode live of questions.

00:53:43.440 | And the tech seems to be holding up.

00:53:47.360 | So, I mean, I think the only thing we're missing now is we have to figure out,

00:53:49.760 | do you think actual live calls might be possible one day?

00:53:53.680 | If people have generators and, you know, wheelbarrows that they can, you know, take over.

00:53:58.400 | They can move their cars.

00:53:59.360 | Yeah.

00:54:00.000 | We will demand that.

00:54:01.280 | We will demand that you are in the wilderness on a generator with a media cart.

00:54:05.440 | That's the only thing that stands in our way.

00:54:08.640 | Actually, I see why not.

00:54:09.680 | I mean, they could zoom into your computer or something like that.

00:54:13.680 | And because your computer is hooked up to our mixing board now.

00:54:16.160 | So, all right, stay tuned, everyone.

00:54:17.360 | But the technology is advancing.

00:54:19.200 | This was a big step.

00:54:21.200 | We'll put the full video of this online as soon as that YouTube stuff gets rolling.

00:54:26.640 | So you can actually see a full episode video if you're curious what it looks like in here.

00:54:31.200 | But until then, I believe that's a full episode, Jesse.

00:54:33.920 | So let's call this a wrap.

Full Length Episode | #158 | December 23, 2021

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