Full Length Episode | #162 | January 6, 2022

00:00:05.000 | I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, Episode 162.

00:00:12.000 | Well, I'm here in the Deep Work HQ and I am a little bit nervous as we are trying for just the second time to do a full listeners call episode live.

00:00:27.000 | That is we're going to go from beginning to end with my intrepid producer Jesse playing the calls live as we get to them.

00:00:36.000 | They will be the first time I hear the calls when they're actually played.

00:00:40.000 | A video of the whole episode uncut should be available.

00:00:44.000 | So we will have to see how we can mess this up.

00:00:47.000 | Jesse, do you think we're going to actually make it through this time?

00:00:49.000 | We're going to do our best. I think we'll be okay.

00:00:52.000 | Yeah, it is a bit of a Rube Goldberg type setup required to actually run a live show, but hey, it gives us something to do.

00:01:01.000 | All right. So I think we have five good calls. Jesse, why don't you start us off? What is our first call about?

00:01:07.000 | Our first call is from Kobe. He's looking to be a hedge fund manager, but a big part of his job is convincing people, like selling his work.

00:01:18.000 | But he also wants to schedule his time more where he's like focusing on himself.

00:01:23.000 | So he has a question about that. So we'll see what he has to say.

00:01:25.000 | That sounds good.

00:01:28.000 | Hey, Kyle. My name is Kobe Amponso. First off, I want to say thank you for all the work you've been doing.

00:01:33.000 | It's been extremely powerful and impactful in my life. So I appreciate you for it.

00:01:37.000 | And I encourage you to keep going.

00:01:39.000 | My question is, I have a stock investing program and the goal of my program is to really educate beginners on how to use leverage stock investing to increase their income potential.

00:01:51.000 | And I'm finding that I'm getting to a point where I feel like I have to convince people to do something that would really benefit their lives.

00:02:00.000 | And normally it's people approaching me. And, you know, part of the problem is that maybe I'm not doing as good of a job as connecting their problem to my solution.

00:02:11.000 | That might be part of it. But the other side is that I'm spending all this time trying to convince people to join the program when I could be sharpening my sword and maybe even increasing my income potential.

00:02:24.000 | Right. Learning never stops. So I'm sure you know that as well.

00:02:28.000 | Right. So is it better for me to continue trying to find a way to get to these customers in a better way?

00:02:35.000 | Or do I just sharpen my sword, focus on myself and then have them follow me afterwards?

00:02:43.000 | I do have a goal of becoming a hedge fund manager and I'm working towards that. So that might be a route that I want to take.

00:02:49.000 | So I just wanted to know your thoughts on that.

00:02:52.000 | Well, Kobe, I am going to lean towards your instinct here of focusing more on yourself and your performance and being so good that you can't be ignored.

00:03:07.000 | That's almost always going to be the right approach in these situations.

00:03:12.000 | Selling is important, right? You do have to sell if you're in any type of industry where you need to get clients.

00:03:18.000 | But if you're spending too much time selling, especially in something like this, I would be worried that that is a signal that's telling you that you need to go back to the woodshed or back to the sword sharpening stone.

00:03:34.000 | So if what you're trying to sell here is stock lever stock investing, first of all, become richer.

00:03:41.000 | I mean, this is the irony of what you're selling.

00:03:44.000 | What's going to make this appealing to people to buy is going to be when you get to the situation where you don't need them to buy it.

00:03:51.000 | And I know that sounds kind of circular, but if you're saying there's all the success you can have financially by doing leveraged stock buying, then people need to see that you're having a lot of success doing it, which will lower the pressure for you to do the selling.

00:04:03.000 | Because you'll be doing fine financially anyways, that's going to add more authenticity to what you're selling because you're producing something you believe in.

00:04:11.000 | You're not trying to push a lot of different students into it. You'll gravitate more students towards you in that situation.

00:04:18.000 | And then more generally, what I would say is keep in mind the concept from my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, which is the law of financial viability.

00:04:29.000 | And this was an idea that I borrowed from the entrepreneur Derek Sivers, who said money and people's willingness to give it to you is a good neutral indicator of value.

00:04:43.000 | So how do you know, for example, if your course is good or not? How easily are people giving you money to take it?

00:04:50.000 | And if it's a real struggle, think about that as being a real honest return.

00:04:55.000 | It's not right. It's not there yet. I mean, maybe they're picking up like, why is Kobe not more successful himself?

00:05:00.000 | Or there's something about the quality of the course. And it's a really important signal.

00:05:04.000 | So that's what I would say. Sharpen your sword to use your terminology. Get better at what you're doing. Hone your system. Have demonstrable results.

00:05:12.000 | Keep polishing and improving that course. Put the word out there. I mean, you want people to know it's there, but don't push super hard to sell it.

00:05:19.000 | What you want to see is that relative signal of it's easier to get the people I'm getting. More people are coming.

00:05:26.000 | With less effort, I'm hitting a mark that I used to have to really push to before. And that'll be your signal that this is getting better.

00:05:32.000 | That the course is getting to a place that maybe is worth having even more energy pushed into.

00:05:38.000 | All right. So thanks for that question, Kobe. All right, Jesse, what do we have on the docket next?

00:05:44.000 | Our next question is from Pablo. He's got a two part question. His first is he wants your thoughts on how to persuade his girlfriend to minimize social media.

00:05:54.000 | Oh, man. And he should read your news article about the Twitter in January.

00:06:00.000 | And then part two is he actually has a question about his bodybuilding and if that counts as high quality leisure.

00:06:09.000 | Jesse, how many girlfriends you think are out there in the world right now who curse my name because their nerd boyfriend is pushing some Cal Newport idea and they finally just say enough.

00:06:25.000 | Enough. I don't want to hear about. I don't want to hear about Cal Newport. I think I've been cursed in apartment buildings and living rooms.

00:06:34.000 | More now that your Today Show appearance. So all those. That's right. There's a big audience there.

00:06:42.000 | That's right. Well, yeah, now that I'm world famous from being on the Today Show, it's only going to make this problem worse.

00:06:48.000 | Now that I wear suit jackets to work, I'm going to start wearing a suit jacket on air for this podcast.

00:06:54.000 | I think I think you should, too. I think it's just about showing people that we're pros. A suit jacket and tie.

00:07:00.000 | I never used my ties in my closet, so maybe it'd be good excuse to put them on.

00:07:05.000 | Yeah, we could do like the Lexford Mint thing, like wear the same suit every time.

00:07:10.000 | All right, here's Pablo. All right.

00:07:13.000 | Hi, Cal. First and foremost, thank you for drastically improving my quality of life.

00:07:19.000 | I wanted to ask two questions to start. I want to know your thoughts on how I can harmoniously persuade my girlfriend into minimizing her social media use.

00:07:28.000 | And lastly, would you count pain inducing bodybuilding workouts as high quality leisure?

00:07:34.000 | Greetings from Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

00:07:38.000 | All right, Pablo. So for the first question, minimizing social media use, how to encourage someone else in your life to do that.

00:07:46.000 | It's dangerous waters. Dangerous waters.

00:07:49.000 | When you're trying to tell someone else about an improvement you think they should make, regardless of what the topic is.

00:07:56.000 | I think anyone who's been in a relationship knows this experience. It's usually not going to go well.

00:08:01.000 | So you have to be very careful there.

00:08:04.000 | I usually recommend that what people do is be the change they want to see in the world, where you can replace world with spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend or kids or what have you.

00:08:16.000 | Be the change you want to see. So first of all, live your life in the way that you think is valuable.

00:08:22.000 | Use the phone for your method. Don't have your phone with you. Don't have social media accounts or the accounts you do use, you use on a schedule on a desktop for very specific purposes.

00:08:31.000 | Let the other person in your life see what that brings you. The concentration, the peace, the lack of anxiety. Let them see that.

00:08:41.000 | Then be clear when the topic comes up, why and how you're doing that.

00:08:46.000 | "Oh, well, I'm a digital minimalist and this is what digital minimalism is. I've built my life around using this in this way and not that. I'm getting a lot of benefits about it."

00:08:55.000 | So they know what's going on. They know why you're doing it and how you're doing it.

00:09:00.000 | At that point, then you have to let the seed germinate on its own.

00:09:05.000 | You have to let the other person see what you're doing, know that it's an option, know the philosophy behind it, and make that step of, "Kobe, I think I want to do this.

00:09:14.000 | Do you want to do it with me? Do you want to help me?"

00:09:17.000 | But you can't push it that hard.

00:09:19.000 | Now, if you want to be nudging, you can try to do a New Year thing.

00:09:25.000 | So I talked about in a recent episode that this January, when this episode is coming out, January 2022, I've announced on my newsletter an analog January challenge, which was built just around not using Twitter for the month.

00:09:39.000 | So you might do something like that, built around New Year's resolutions and say, "Hey, do you want to do this with me? I think it'd be fun."

00:09:45.000 | So you could try that, but for the most part, be the change you want to see in others and let the others come to you.

00:09:52.000 | The most extreme alternative to that I've heard is on one of my events I was doing on the digital minimalism tour, I met a parent who was worried about their teenage kids' social media use.

00:10:04.000 | So they took their devices on a long car trip so they had nothing to look at or listen to and then put digital minimalism audio book on in the car and basically forced them to listen to digital minimalism.

00:10:19.000 | So that would be the opposite extreme.

00:10:22.000 | And those kids went on to invent TikTok.

00:10:26.000 | So that backfired.

00:10:28.000 | Second question, bodybuilding as a high-quality leisure activity.

00:10:33.000 | Jesse, I'm going to throw this to you.

00:10:35.000 | You know a lot about that culture and maybe not bodybuilding, but exercise, etc, etc.

00:10:41.000 | That's a really intense, complicated, high-quality leisure activity, right?

00:10:46.000 | 100%.

00:10:47.000 | Yeah.

00:10:48.000 | I mean, even looking at, I was a big fan of Arnold's biography and some of the stuff that he's put out.

00:10:53.000 | And he said, you know, when he was training, like when he was in his 20s and stuff, like going in there was like doing deep work for you do five hours a day.

00:11:02.000 | He broke it up in the morning and the afternoon, but I would think 100% that would count.

00:11:06.000 | Yeah, no, that sounds good to me.

00:11:08.000 | I just watched that biography on, I think it was on Netflix, of Ronnie Coleman, who was the six or seven time Mr. Universe, a huge guy.

00:11:19.000 | Now his whole body's broken down.

00:11:21.000 | He can't walk and he's in constant pain because he's lifting such heavy weights.

00:11:24.000 | But that looked pretty deep to me.

00:11:26.000 | That looked pretty deep to me.

00:11:28.000 | So yeah, Pablo, I think that's great.

00:11:30.000 | Also, I like that it's different.

00:11:33.000 | So you're using different parts of your brain than like your normal work or your other types of life.

00:11:38.000 | And I think there's probably a clarity that comes to that.

00:11:41.000 | I mean, look, when people see me, they're like, this is a guy who knows about bodybuilding.

00:11:44.000 | So they're often coming to me for advice.

00:11:46.000 | When you look at me, you think super athlete, you think steroids, you think that's a guy who knows his way around the gym.

00:11:53.000 | So I'm not surprised you asked me, asked me this question.

00:11:56.000 | But yeah, that's deep.

00:11:58.000 | Go for it.

00:11:59.000 | Actually, I'm going to ask you another question to his part too.

00:12:03.000 | So a lot of these bodybuilders, a lot of people who lift and whatnot, what's your view on them having earphones in and listening and stuff while they're lifting?

00:12:11.000 | Because a lot like Arnold talks about like really thinking about the muscle and like feeling it and feeling it grow and stuff.

00:12:19.000 | But you could be distracted if you have other things in your ears.

00:12:22.000 | I was just wondering to know your thoughts on that.

00:12:24.000 | I've read about that somewhere.

00:12:26.000 | I mean, you might know more about it, but it seems to be true that because of the mind muscle connection that really concentrating on the muscle that you're trying to exhaust or contract to do the reps on makes a difference.

00:12:42.000 | So, I mean, is this the case you would know this, Jesse, more than me?

00:12:45.000 | Is this the case for serious weightlifters that the concentration on the muscle aspect of what they do is key?

00:12:52.000 | I think so.

00:12:53.000 | 100%.

00:12:54.000 | Arnold totally believes in that.

00:12:57.000 | And that was, I think, a big, because he was so disciplined, he could focus on that.

00:13:01.000 | And I think that helped him when he was training.

00:13:04.000 | And I said it in my personal life by just not wearing headphones anymore.

00:13:09.000 | I mean, sometimes you're at the gym, there might be music on and whatnot.

00:13:12.000 | You can't really help that.

00:13:13.000 | But I don't know.

00:13:14.000 | I've kind of always thought about what your thoughts on that were.

00:13:18.000 | I suspect, I'm just thinking about this out loud, but I suspect doing that type of training.

00:13:23.000 | So you're doing muscle training, but you're giving full concentration to the contraction because it helps is probably fantastic, general, deep work calisthenics.

00:13:32.000 | Like, in other words, if you're doing that on a regular basis as part of a fitness routine, you're going to be able to concentrate on a book better.

00:13:41.000 | You're going to be able to concentrate when you're walking and trying to hold a thought in your head better.

00:13:45.000 | So it's a good point, Jesse, because I think Pablo, actually, I'm going to go beyond now and say not only does that count as high quality leisure, doing serious weight training might actually be a fantastic way of improving your general ability to concentrate.

00:14:03.000 | And you have all the other advantages that's different than the other type of thinking you do so that you get that relaxation and anxiety reduction.

00:14:11.000 | You know, look, I'm picking up my fitness this January as well. I don't like the dark. I don't like the dark weather.

00:14:18.000 | And so I'll see if that has a difference, but it's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good tool in the deep work toolkit.

00:14:27.000 | All right, what do we got?

00:14:30.000 | Next question. We have a question about time blocking tips on.

00:14:37.000 | Your tips on time blocking and how he can factor that into taking some time off of work and writing his dissertation.

00:14:49.000 | Hi, Cal, my name is Carson, longtime fan, first time caller. I've taken some time away from work to finish my dissertation after a long hiatus, and I'm using time blocking.

00:15:01.000 | My question is this. Do you have any tips for.

00:15:06.000 | Like when you have a tendency to not do what you schedule.

00:15:11.000 | Yourself to do, I basically have three buckets related to the dissertation work, research, writing and revision.

00:15:20.000 | And often, you know, when it's time to write, do more research or maybe even pay the bills.

00:15:30.000 | I have a feeling this may be I'm not alone here. Curious for your tips and thanks for all you do.

00:15:39.000 | All right, Carson. Well, first of all, I think we're going to now refer to time blocking as as seen on NBC's The Today Show.

00:15:47.000 | Time block planning. That's just a little bit of branding strategy there. Second of all, you have a fantastic voice.

00:15:54.000 | So you should sell things. You should team up with Kobe from earlier in this episode who is trying to sell the stock investing tip lessons.

00:16:06.000 | Because, Carson, if it was you reading these lessons, I think we'd all be all in.

00:16:11.000 | You know, you'd be like. I want you to mortgage your house, invest that money into crypto.

00:16:20.000 | And everybody like, yeah, makes sense. Man, man knows what he's talking about.

00:16:24.000 | I'm going to let me just mortgage that house over there. So great voice.

00:16:28.000 | Use that. Use that to your advantage. I have two things to suggest for what you're talking about here.

00:16:33.000 | Again, very common problem. Time blocking is hard. Blowing past blocks or ignoring blocks is something that happens all the time.

00:16:42.000 | A lot of it has to do with what's happening in your head, the pain of context shifting, etc.

00:16:46.000 | I think one. Schedule less. You're probably being too ambitious.

00:16:52.000 | You have multiple buckets of different type of work you want to be doing on your dissertation.

00:16:57.000 | It sounds like you're trying to do all this work every day. I think you're being too ambitious.

00:17:01.000 | Your brain might be just crying uncle when it switches to the bills or becomes more linguid in its pace on the research and lets it overlap into the other.

00:17:11.000 | So think about doing less. Be very regular. I'm going to work on this every day, but I'm going to be less ambitious about how much I'm going to work on.

00:17:19.000 | Maybe I'm doing one thing every day. So I just do that thing and I have some flexibility around it if it runs long.

00:17:25.000 | And that's it for the dissertation. Two, I'm going to say you want to ritualize this better.

00:17:30.000 | So this has to be when I say ritual, I mean in terms of timing, setting and activity.

00:17:37.000 | So for something like this, I am working on a hard long term project.

00:17:42.000 | You're going to want to use the same times if possible, probably first thing in the morning.

00:17:47.000 | In deep work, I have a couple examples, especially one in particular I'm thinking of a Brian who would did his dissertation at 5 a.m.

00:17:56.000 | It's like 5 a.m. to 6.30 a.m. heavily ritualized every morning. He had a full time job.

00:18:00.000 | 5 a.m. to 6.30 a.m. dissertation. And that just the same time, same day was heavily ritualized.

00:18:06.000 | And then setting. So where do you do this work? Same time, same place.

00:18:10.000 | Brian had this dank office in the basement that he used, but it was perfect because he only used it for that.

00:18:16.000 | And then activity. Again, using that same example of Brian from deep work,

00:18:21.000 | he was down to a specific time he would make coffee and how he would make the coffee and when he would drink the coffee.

00:18:27.000 | I believe he even had like the bathroom break programmed in. So it's very ritualized activity.

00:18:32.000 | All of this, all of this, what it does is break down the context switching cost in your brain.

00:18:38.000 | It makes it much easier for your brain to a not have to negotiate with itself.

00:18:42.000 | Should we work now? It's a hard argument, waste energy, you might lose it.

00:18:46.000 | So just take that off the table and be the rituals, get you into that mode quicker.

00:18:50.000 | So you don't have as much of an expensive context shift operation happening.

00:18:54.000 | So you waste less energy on that. You get into it quicker, you get into it easier.

00:18:58.000 | So do less. And to be much more ritualized about the work you do.

00:19:03.000 | It's a core principle of slow productivity is. Change the scale at which you're looking for accomplishment to be longer.

00:19:12.000 | So it's not what did I get done today? It's am I happy with the chapter I produced this month?

00:19:18.000 | You're going to a larger time scale and then it's just about clean, deep, reasonable, sustainable work again and again.

00:19:26.000 | Head down, the wheel is grinding. You look up three months later and say, hey, this first part of my dissertation looks pretty good.

00:19:34.000 | All right. What do we have for our fourth call, Jesse?

00:19:39.000 | Before we get to the fourth call, I loved how Carson was first time caller.

00:19:45.000 | You get that a lot in sports talk radio.

00:19:48.000 | I know. Well, once again, we should do we should do live calls at some point.

00:19:53.000 | I mean, I maybe we would regret that.

00:19:56.000 | I just love the first time caller, first time, long time. You hear it all the time.

00:20:00.000 | I feel I've heard a few times, like listen to some of your listener calls.

00:20:04.000 | I do enjoy it. I do enjoy it. And also the thing I want to do is we should do a we should do one of these live, do it actually live.

00:20:10.000 | And we should do it like the morning after an important Nationals game and like just let it devolve into sports talk radio.

00:20:18.000 | We would be swimming in fans if it just became calls, long discussions, long discussions about the Nationals.

00:20:26.000 | Yeah. The next question is about balancing and balancing ambitious with everyday life.

00:20:36.000 | Hey, Cal, this is Sam from India. Thanks for your podcast. And I really enjoy it.

00:20:42.000 | My question to you is that how do you balance ambition with life?

00:20:46.000 | I see many entrepreneurs and leaders say that they are overly ambitious and have very little time available for life and health related tasks.

00:20:56.000 | On the other side of the spectrum, I see more people having regrets about not meeting their potential.

00:21:03.000 | So how should we find this ambition life balance? Thank you.

00:21:09.000 | Well, it's a it's a critical question, and I think it's one that we're not necessarily dealing with in a sophisticated manner right now in our in our cultural moment.

00:21:22.000 | The way I read our current moment is that in the first decade of the 2000s, we had a emphasis on crushing it.

00:21:35.000 | Right. I mean, this was a time where we were, especially in American culture, lionizing the new wave of tech entrepreneurs and the that burst of the whole like Zuckerberg, Musk, that whole world, Bezos, etc.

00:21:50.000 | Right. So we were like into like these people who got after it up all night, moving fast, breaking things, building fortunes, changing the world.

00:21:59.000 | This is also the period of like Sheryl Sandberg and lean in. And so there's definitely an emphasis of we were pretty activity oriented.

00:22:09.000 | And then we whipsawed. So now, more recently, we have the anti productivity movement.

00:22:16.000 | So we've gone hard the other direction and we can look at things like Jenny Odell's book or which was I always miss it up, mix it up.

00:22:25.000 | It's how to do nothing or I think it's how to do nothing or the art of doing. I think it's the how to do nothing.

00:22:31.000 | And then Chelsea Headley had do nothing. There's Berkman's book, which I really enjoy. Four thousand weeks.

00:22:40.000 | But there's there's a pushback in the other direction, which was we shouldn't really be doing things like productivity in general is constructed.

00:22:50.000 | And depending on who you talk to, you get different extremes on this. So like I think Berkman has a much more milder.

00:22:57.000 | Set up to this, which is just like, hey, in general, we're excited about doing two things, but we set our aspirations too high.

00:23:03.000 | And on the other extreme, you have the commentators to think like all of productivity is basically exploitative mythology created by capitalists to oppress the new digital age proletariat.

00:23:16.000 | Right. So it gets pretty extreme, but it's more of let's normalize this idea that.

00:23:22.000 | The drive to do action is all kind of fake anyways, and just you should be OK, just chilling.

00:23:28.000 | Do nothing, how to do nothing, et cetera. So we've kind of gone too far the other direction.

00:23:33.000 | That's not really working either, because humans like to do things and we like accomplishment and we'd like to make long term plans and execute them.

00:23:40.000 | You can actually point to the specific sectors of the brain that evolved in humans that we don't share with our primate ancestors that actually help us make those plans and reward them.

00:23:49.000 | It's what helped our species differentiate. So there's a deeply human aspect of having goals that you then make a plan for and execute and see your manifest your intentions being manifest concretely in the world.

00:24:00.000 | So just telling people like, let's just chill. It's important that we normalize that you don't have to be a superhero, but that doesn't do it either.

00:24:09.000 | And I think this question gets right at that tension. So my answer here, this is where I become a bigger believer in this term I've been trying to popularize, slow productivity.

00:24:22.000 | And this is a concept that still is in development. It's embryonic. I change what it means each time I talk about it. So you're seeing this in real time.

00:24:31.000 | But critical to slow productivity is this idea of yes, seeking out accomplishment, but on larger timescales.

00:24:39.000 | Over the next few years, I care about what I produce over the next few years that I've produced some things of real value.

00:24:46.000 | When you're focused on execution at that slower timescale, it gives you a lot of breathing room and flexibility on the small timescales.

00:24:54.000 | When you're trying over the next two year period to produce something that you're proud of, a product or a piece of writing, that allows you next Tuesday to just be with your kids and do nothing.

00:25:07.000 | Because on the larger timescale, that one day is not that important. It allows you to have a month where you're really pushing it.

00:25:14.000 | And then a month where you're taking a breather. Three months where you're just doing research.

00:25:17.000 | And a summer where you're at a cabin and writing six hours a day. It's seasonal. It's varied. It's diverse. It fits the rhythms of the human condition. Slow productivity feeds into all of that.

00:25:26.000 | I think this is probably the ideal setup for satisfying the human desire to accomplish is that you are working on a small number of important things.

00:25:35.000 | You return to it and you hone your craft and you try to be so good they can't ignore you. But this is work that is diligently applied over long periods of time.

00:25:42.000 | When you look back five years later, you're proud of what you produced and you don't care so much about what happened in the last five hours.

00:25:49.000 | That I think is where you get that balance where most people are going to be happy.

00:25:54.000 | So how do you introduce this all into your life? Well, again, this is where doing the multiscale planning is important.

00:25:59.000 | Have your semester plan that feeds into a weekly plan, which feeds into a daily time block plan.

00:26:04.000 | That semester or quarterly plan, whatever you want to call it, helps you see what you're working on in this big picture for the next three or four months.

00:26:13.000 | And then that can filter into your week where you say, what days we want to work on this, if any.

00:26:16.000 | And then that filters into your day and it allows you to have clarity, but adapt your execution of that clarity over the realities of what's really going on in your life and the busy times, not busy times, et cetera.

00:26:30.000 | So basically my advice here is be ambitious, but slow down your execution of those ambitions.

00:26:38.000 | Be proud of what you produce five years from now, which again is going to require your planning at multiscale.

00:26:43.000 | So you don't just do nothing for months, but be really easy on yourself about what you do this week.

00:26:48.000 | Because it's a hard week because your kid's home sick and there's a deadline for another work-related project that's annoying you.

00:26:53.000 | And it's okay to be annoyed. It's okay not to get much done that week.

00:26:56.000 | So be ambitious, but slow down the execution of that ambition.

00:27:01.000 | For most people, I think that's going to be the sweet spot.

00:27:04.000 | All right. The next question, we got advice on setting up the ideal desk.

00:27:13.000 | I'd like to get your advice on an ideal desk set up to do deep work.

00:27:20.000 | I have a standing desk that I vary at different heights as well as different chairs, but nothing seems to make me very comfortable.

00:27:29.000 | I have chronic back issues, but they're aggravated depending on how I'm sitting and standing.

00:27:35.000 | I can't seem to find something that works, and I've toyed with getting a different desk or chair.

00:27:40.000 | It really is important that I'm somewhat comfortable for the deep work I'm trying to do.

00:27:46.000 | Is there anything that you suggest or that you've used so that you can sit and do deep work or stand? Thank you.

00:27:53.000 | Well, okay. There's a couple different issues here.

00:27:58.000 | There's the desk issue, and then there's the nature of deep work efforts themselves.

00:28:05.000 | Now, in your situation, what I might recommend is moving away from the model of, "Here is my work location.

00:28:15.000 | This room, this desk, and this is where I am, and this is where I do my work."

00:28:19.000 | There was a period—I don't remember what year it was, but there was a period where I was doing a lot of posts on my newsletter and blog,

00:28:27.000 | so at calnewport.com/blog, about—I think I called it "adventure work."

00:28:34.000 | And I had a photo documentation of this, and what I would do is identify a series of locations around the Georgetown campus.

00:28:45.000 | I would rotate between these different locations to do different types of work, and I had this whole theory about, like, it's nice.

00:28:51.000 | It changes the context. You go somewhere just to do one type of work.

00:28:54.000 | That's all you're focusing on, as opposed to being at the same desk where you also do emails or you also do Zoom calls.

00:29:00.000 | And I documented, you know, here is a picnic table in the woods. That was literally one of them.

00:29:06.000 | Here is a library, the bioethical library. That's another one.

00:29:10.000 | Here is a overlook of the Potomac where you can sit on a bench and get work done.

00:29:15.000 | I took photos of these, and if you Google "study hacks adventure work," you'll probably find it.

00:29:22.000 | That might be more what you should be looking for here, a more peripatetic—so you're moving more—

00:29:29.000 | diverse location-style work.

00:29:32.000 | I walk and think, then sit down in this location and do work.

00:29:35.000 | Then I get up and walk and think, go somewhere else. I'm in that location. I do work.

00:29:39.000 | I'm never in one place for a long period of time.

00:29:41.000 | I like that style of work. I do a lot of that.

00:29:44.000 | And if you have back issues, it could really be a good option.

00:29:49.000 | Now, you also mentioned ideal desk, so that gives me an excuse to talk about something I'm really excited about.

00:29:57.000 | It's a desk nerd geek out that I do want to have briefly.

00:30:04.000 | Look, I'm not someone who spends a lot of money. I don't drive fancy cars.

00:30:10.000 | I don't have multiple houses.

00:30:13.000 | But the one thing that we are investing some book money in, my wife and I, is we're taking my study—

00:30:23.000 | it's not my study, it's the study—we do schoolwork in there, we do reading time in there,

00:30:29.000 | and we're doing a really cool renovation of that study, which is built around these custom four-wall built-in bookcases

00:30:38.000 | that are going to be full of books.

00:30:41.000 | And there's a fireplace with a leather Chesterfield couch and a game table.

00:30:47.000 | It's cool, right?

00:30:50.000 | The centerpiece of this, and it's the one indulgence I would say I've had with some of the success for my books,

00:30:57.000 | is I'm having custom-built a desk, being custom-built by a company in Maine

00:31:04.000 | that hand-builds primarily reading tables for university libraries.

00:31:11.000 | So they pick out the trees and the wood, and they build these very durable, beautiful, American-made reading tables

00:31:18.000 | for university libraries, and they're custom-building me a deep work desk

00:31:24.000 | that's going to fit three sides around it built-in bookcases.

00:31:28.000 | And then the middle is going to be this custom-built desk where I gave all the specifications,

00:31:34.000 | chose the wood and all the features.

00:31:36.000 | It won't be done until July, right? I mean, this stuff takes time.

00:31:39.000 | And it's a ridiculous thing in some sense, right?

00:31:43.000 | It's a ridiculous thing to spend money on.

00:31:45.000 | It's definitely not necessary, but it's my one indulgence,

00:31:48.000 | is that my custom-built university-style reading desk.

00:31:53.000 | And I'll tell you this about it.

00:31:55.000 | There's not going to be a computer on that desk.

00:31:59.000 | There is going to be a really nice reading lamp.

00:32:02.000 | I will be willing to bring a laptop to that desk if I want to write at it,

00:32:07.000 | but then that laptop goes away.

00:32:09.000 | So it's going to be independent from any sort of permanent electronic productivity tool.

00:32:14.000 | I want to sit there and work with my notebooks, and I could write there if I want to write,

00:32:18.000 | but then move that laptop when I don't want to write, work longhand there when I want to work longhand there.

00:32:23.000 | I'm really looking forward to that.

00:32:26.000 | So I'm a big believer in desk.

00:32:28.000 | My bigger point here being, and I've had a series of newsletter essays about this recently.

00:32:35.000 | In November of 2021, I had a series of newsletter essays about interesting workspaces that people built.

00:32:41.000 | I talked about Ian Colfer, who wrote the Artemis Fowl series, super best-selling kids series,

00:32:48.000 | the writing shed he built in his backyard, and I wrote about George Lucas's writing tower,

00:32:53.000 | this tower he had built onto the first Victorian house he owned in Marin County.

00:32:59.000 | And he built this tower with a view of Mount Tam, and he wrote the first Star Wars in there.

00:33:04.000 | On a desk, by the way, made out of three desks, so it just goes to show a desk doesn't have to be fancy.

00:33:09.000 | And my point in that whole series was, it's not a crazy thing to invest money in if you have money to invest,

00:33:15.000 | is over-the-top workspaces.

00:33:20.000 | Because it gives you a huge return if you're in a line of work where there is a huge variety

00:33:27.000 | in the quality of intellectual output that can be produced, and better quality is going to give you better returns.

00:33:31.000 | If you write books for a living, if you write movies for a living, if you solve proofs for a living,

00:33:35.000 | if you have huge insights for a living, it's not a frivolous investment if you have the money to get a very nice desk

00:33:41.000 | or to built-in bookcases or convert a garden shed into a writing shed or in the rundown house you bought

00:33:48.000 | with your money from American Graffiti to put a tower on it so you can go up there and concentrate more on Star Wars.

00:33:53.000 | These are bets that could really pay off.

00:33:55.000 | And we don't talk enough about them because we don't care about the human brain enough when it comes to work.

00:33:59.000 | We just think about tools, do you have the right computer and the right software, but environment matters.

00:34:04.000 | And so I geek out about desks. I don't know. Is that crazy, Jesse?

00:34:10.000 | What do you think? To spend kind of stupid amounts of money on a piece of wood?

00:34:14.000 | Not at all. I mean, 100%. I think you said it best.

00:34:18.000 | I don't think you spend much money on other stuff.

00:34:20.000 | So at some point you got to spend money on some things.

00:34:23.000 | Like I spend a lot of money on golf.

00:34:25.000 | Yeah. And we have a pretty nice, our table here, it's not super nice, but we got a nice,

00:34:31.000 | you can't see it on camera, but Jesse and I are sitting at a, it's like a round,

00:34:36.000 | nice wood table with a sort of like metal pedestal, sort of like a, what's that guy's name?

00:34:43.000 | Charlie Rose style setup.

00:34:45.000 | It's got a good feel to it too. Like it's nice.

00:34:49.000 | Yeah. Solid. It's not in the, after all that work, it's not in any of the camera shots, but you know, we know it.

00:34:53.000 | We know it. We're happy about it. All right. So is that number five? Is that our last call?

00:34:57.000 | Yeah, that's our last question for the day. Some good ones today. So keep on submitting them.

00:35:04.000 | Yes. We made it through five questions. Good questions. Keep submitting them.

00:35:07.000 | Go to calnewport.com/podcasters. Instructions there about how to do it.

00:35:11.000 | You can do it straight from your browser and we appreciate all the calls that come in.

00:35:16.000 | So keep those coming. And with that, I think we will wrap up today's show.

00:35:21.000 | [Music]

Full Length Episode | #162 | January 6, 2022

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