How Can I Help Myself Remember All of Your Best Advice?

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:03.360 | All right, moving on.

00:00:05.640 | We got a question from Don Quixote.

00:00:09.760 | Let's see what we have here.

00:00:11.640 | Hopefully this is appropriately literary,

00:00:13.920 | or I'll be disappointed.

00:00:15.560 | How can I help myself to remember

00:00:17.320 | all of your best advice?

00:00:19.960 | Now, that is not appropriately literary.

00:00:22.160 | There's no actual Don Quixote allusions in this question.

00:00:26.400 | I am disappointed.

00:00:28.160 | But let's go farther here.

00:00:29.280 | There's an elaboration.

00:00:31.000 | Hi, Cal.

00:00:31.500 | I'm making some small improvements to my office space.

00:00:34.280 | I'd like to include a nice print that

00:00:36.680 | summarizes maybe your top 10 or 20 best pieces of advice

00:00:40.520 | for living the deep life, which in my opinion

00:00:43.000 | should be possible given your proclivity for summarizing

00:00:45.640 | your advice in easy to remember catchphrases.

00:00:50.440 | He then gives us an example, that poster you've probably

00:00:52.760 | all seen of everything I really need to know

00:00:54.960 | I learned in kindergarten.

00:00:57.560 | And Jesse printed me out a copy of this poster,

00:00:59.600 | so we can look at it here.

00:01:01.480 | Share everything.

00:01:02.320 | Play fair.

00:01:02.920 | Don't hit people.

00:01:04.360 | Put things back where you found them.

00:01:05.920 | Clean up your own mess.

00:01:06.960 | Don't take things you're not yours.

00:01:09.480 | I don't know.

00:01:10.280 | Let me just say, by the way, this kindergarten poster,

00:01:12.080 | I mean, this seems like good advice,

00:01:13.620 | but is this really everything you need to know?

00:01:15.720 | I mean, what about how to manage your finances

00:01:19.320 | or how to deal with major health problems?

00:01:21.440 | I don't see anything in here about dealing

00:01:23.240 | with the inevitable tragedy of the death of those around you

00:01:26.120 | who you know and love.

00:01:27.280 | I am going to disagree that everything you need to know

00:01:31.440 | you learned in kindergarten.

00:01:32.840 | I call balderdash on that.

00:01:34.120 | But could there be an equivalent poster for me?

00:01:37.280 | Well, Don, I'm going to do your work for you

00:01:39.080 | and say that might be quixotic, because I

00:01:41.920 | do give a lot of advice.

00:01:43.920 | But to be honest, the summary I use

00:01:47.200 | when I try to capture everything is not 20 pieces of advice.

00:01:50.040 | It's three.

00:01:51.680 | The best summary I have for my deep life philosophy writ large

00:01:55.600 | would be do less, do better, know why.

00:02:01.160 | Those three categories capture everything

00:02:04.160 | I think is really important.

00:02:05.880 | So do less.

00:02:08.080 | Focus on the things that matter.

00:02:10.520 | Be worried, concerned about over-distraction.

00:02:13.200 | Be concerned by having too much on your plate.

00:02:15.920 | Be concerned by the death of 1,000 paper

00:02:17.880 | cuts of too much work foci, making it difficult to do

00:02:20.520 | any one thing better.

00:02:21.800 | Be worried about in your life outside of work,

00:02:23.760 | too many shining distractions taking your attention away

00:02:26.240 | from the smaller number of things that are really quality.

00:02:28.640 | These are themes that go through all of my books,

00:02:31.080 | including my student books, for sure,

00:02:32.880 | and so good they can't ignore you, for sure in deep work,

00:02:35.260 | for sure in digital minimalism, even in a world without email.

00:02:38.720 | Do better.

00:02:40.960 | Care about how you actually execute the things you execute.

00:02:43.680 | This is where deep work shows up.

00:02:45.640 | For certain things, deep work is much better than shallow work.

00:02:48.260 | Do it without distraction.

00:02:49.920 | There's also where productivity falls in.

00:02:52.800 | If you have these obligations are part of your job,

00:02:56.200 | this is what you've decided to do, organize it.

00:02:59.440 | Be smart about it.

00:03:00.920 | Don't be haphazard.

00:03:01.800 | Don't be reactive.

00:03:02.560 | Don't just stumble through your day.

00:03:04.400 | And then the know why is to connect this all

00:03:06.360 | to the underlying reasons.

00:03:08.880 | I am doing this for that.

00:03:11.640 | Here is my vision of my lifestyle.

00:03:13.200 | Here are my values.

00:03:14.500 | These things we talk about a lot when

00:03:16.200 | we talk about the deep life fall under that rubric of know why.

00:03:20.320 | So if you're not doing too much, you have autonomy, time,

00:03:22.720 | margin.

00:03:23.220 | If the things you do, you do at a high level of quality,

00:03:26.080 | you're intentional and organized by the things that maybe

00:03:28.500 | are easier but have to happen, and you connect everything

00:03:30.920 | to your values, to a vision of a life well lived,

00:03:32.960 | that is basically the deep life.

00:03:35.240 | That actually used to be the tagline

00:03:39.360 | of my blog of study hacks.

00:03:41.360 | So in the beginning--

00:03:43.720 | quick digital history of Cal Newport--

00:03:46.160 | in the beginning, I wrote my first two books,

00:03:48.880 | How to Win a College, How to Become a Straight A Student.

00:03:50.720 | How to Become a Straight A Student came out in 2006.

00:03:53.040 | In 2007, I launched my website, calnewport.com,

00:03:58.440 | and it was built on a blog that I called Study Hacks,

00:04:01.880 | because the whole idea was continue the discussion that

00:04:04.720 | was started in those two student books.

00:04:06.800 | It was the missing chapters from those student books.

00:04:10.580 | And then once I made the transition around 2010,

00:04:14.600 | away from just student advice, I maintained the name Study Hacks.

00:04:18.120 | But there was a tagline.

00:04:20.160 | There was a tagline.

00:04:21.240 | I'd gone through different taglines for the blog,

00:04:23.280 | back when that was the core of my digital world,

00:04:27.600 | a core that now--

00:04:28.840 | the blog is more of my newsletter.

00:04:30.600 | People like email newsletter better,

00:04:32.140 | and there's the podcast, et cetera.

00:04:34.240 | For a while, it was do less, do better, know why.

00:04:37.200 | It was how I was really summarizing the way I was

00:04:39.760 | thinking about student life.

00:04:41.120 | And in particular-- not to go on too much of a tangent here--

00:04:44.240 | but in particular, after How to Become a Straight A Student,

00:04:47.280 | I got heavily involved in dealing

00:04:48.940 | with issues of student overload and student stress.

00:04:52.480 | And that's really where that motto first emerged,

00:04:54.560 | do less, do better, know why.

00:04:55.760 | It's how I thought you should go through high school

00:04:59.740 | and college in a way that opened up opportunities,

00:05:02.140 | but was not overwhelming or stressful.

00:05:03.960 | It was the foundation for a life well-lived,

00:05:05.800 | not the foundation for getting a cardiac stint put in

00:05:08.720 | at an early age.

00:05:10.520 | And so that's where that came from.

00:05:11.940 | And then over time, that influenced almost everything

00:05:14.180 | else I wrote about.

00:05:15.400 | That influenced my career advice,

00:05:17.840 | my advice for the deep life more generally.

00:05:19.640 | So that was my tagline for a while.

00:05:21.100 | It got replaced with decoding patterns of success or something,

00:05:25.520 | or maybe decoding patterns of success was before.

00:05:27.640 | I had a bunch of different taglines,

00:05:29.200 | and then eventually I just got rid of the taglines.

00:05:31.320 | But anyways, do less, do better, know why

00:05:33.360 | has been with me for a long time.

00:05:35.280 | So that would be what should be on my poster.

00:05:39.200 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:05:42.560 | (upbeat music)

00:05:45.140 | (upbeat music)

How Can I Help Myself Remember All of Your Best Advice?

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