Ep. 235: Is Productivity Overrated?

00:00:00.000 | Does Cal still think that productivity is overrated?

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

00:00:15.880 | the show about living and working deeply

00:00:17.680 | in an increasingly distracted world.

00:00:20.520 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ.

00:00:25.520 | I'm joined, as always, by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:29.680 | How's it going?

00:00:30.520 | You know, Jesse, there's something we did,

00:00:31.800 | actually something we failed to do last week

00:00:34.200 | that sent me down a rabbit hole in the days that followed.

00:00:38.040 | So I don't know if you remember this,

00:00:39.360 | but we had a website,

00:00:42.520 | I think it was like an archived version of my website

00:00:45.260 | we were gonna bring up onto the screen

00:00:48.760 | because I wanted to show how I used to have

00:00:50.480 | affiliate links on my website.

00:00:52.120 | And it didn't work because it was using

00:00:54.680 | the Wayback Machine, which has frames,

00:00:57.320 | and somehow it puts the old version within frames.

00:00:59.640 | It didn't really work with our tablets.

00:01:01.200 | We moved past it.

00:01:02.840 | Setting up for that, though,

00:01:03.920 | got me thinking about the old days of calnewport.com.

00:01:08.680 | You know, I started that website in 2007.

00:01:11.640 | It was a blog early on for a while.

00:01:13.600 | Now it's a blog/email newsletter

00:01:15.480 | that is still going on strong today.

00:01:17.160 | But I was going back through the archives,

00:01:19.720 | and it was kind of nice, actually,

00:01:21.480 | to re-encounter some of the early things I wrote

00:01:25.160 | that at the time hit a chord.

00:01:27.200 | So back in 2007 or 2008 hit a chord.

00:01:30.800 | And so here's one I came across.

00:01:32.000 | I'm gonna load it up.

00:01:32.840 | We'll go down memory lane here.

00:01:34.760 | Here's an article.

00:01:35.600 | For those who are watching at youtube.com/calnewportmedia,

00:01:39.600 | this is episode 235.

00:01:41.320 | So if you're watching, you'll see this.

00:01:42.640 | If you're not, I'll narrate what's going on.

00:01:44.760 | I have an article on the screen from calnewport.com

00:01:48.480 | from August 31st, 2007.

00:01:51.160 | This is early calnewport.com.

00:01:53.440 | I started it, I think, early that summer.

00:01:56.420 | The title of this piece was

00:01:59.040 | dangerous ideas colon productivity is overrated.

00:02:04.040 | Now I wanna actually just touch on a few points

00:02:07.520 | from this article because it's gonna lead us

00:02:09.160 | to the question I wanna dive deeply into in today's episode.

00:02:12.200 | But let me just touch on a few of these points.

00:02:15.040 | First of all, I just wanna say right off the bat,

00:02:16.800 | I say I should be careful here.

00:02:18.960 | Much of my livelihood as a writer

00:02:20.480 | depends on my good-natured efforts

00:02:21.840 | to help fellow students be more productive.

00:02:24.640 | So let's put ourselves in the context of 2007 Cal.

00:02:28.720 | I'm writing for students, I'm giving advice to students.

00:02:31.780 | It was much more narrow back then.

00:02:34.060 | All right, so here's the argument I make.

00:02:36.220 | Productivity is important for being successful,

00:02:39.300 | but its role in this endeavor

00:02:41.220 | is often blown out of proportion.

00:02:43.800 | Some of the most accomplished people I know

00:02:46.500 | are incredibly disorganized.

00:02:49.460 | They work at the last minute, they stay up all night,

00:02:51.840 | they constantly scramble to find what they're looking for,

00:02:53.780 | but they still get it done.

00:02:55.780 | Other accomplished people

00:02:56.620 | are incredibly organized what gives.

00:02:59.480 | Now I have to say, looking back at the time period

00:03:03.740 | in which I'm writing this, 2007,

00:03:06.020 | early in my academic career,

00:03:07.660 | I had just finished the course portion

00:03:10.460 | of my doctoral work at MIT.

00:03:11.860 | I was done with my courses and doing research full-time.

00:03:14.880 | I'm sure I was being influenced by the professors around me.

00:03:17.880 | MIT, Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Lab,

00:03:21.500 | in the theory group within that lab where I worked,

00:03:24.180 | had some straight up capital B brilliant professors,

00:03:28.260 | and they were all really disorganized.

00:03:30.380 | And so I'm sure that was influencing me

00:03:31.980 | 'cause I was looking around.

00:03:33.540 | My definition of accomplishment in 2007

00:03:36.700 | was these MacArthur Genius Grant

00:03:38.300 | Turing Award winning professors

00:03:39.800 | who were killing it in the research literature,

00:03:42.060 | whose desk looked as if there had been

00:03:44.680 | some sort of disaster at a paper factory,

00:03:47.300 | and the rescue crews were on the way to dig through it

00:03:49.480 | to try to find survivors in the rubble.

00:03:51.460 | And yet they were still winning all these major awards.

00:03:53.340 | So I was being surrounded by this idea

00:03:56.220 | that organization has very little to do

00:04:00.020 | with whether or not you end up being successful.

00:04:03.300 | So in this article, I said,

00:04:04.460 | "Let me distill this into two underlying truths.

00:04:09.460 | Number one, being productive does not make you accomplished,

00:04:13.420 | but number two, it does, however,

00:04:14.860 | make being accomplished less stressful."

00:04:19.340 | That was my best read on the quest

00:04:22.620 | to pursue productivity advice

00:04:24.460 | and put more productive habits into your professional life.

00:04:27.860 | My best read in 2007 is this is about

00:04:30.140 | making your work less stressful, organizing your efforts.

00:04:33.600 | It is, however, orthogonal to whether or not

00:04:36.300 | you end up accomplishing important things.

00:04:40.000 | As I go on to clarify, or let's say elaborate,

00:04:43.680 | is what you need to be successful

00:04:46.860 | is a drive to keep working with a laser-like intensity

00:04:51.360 | on something even after you've lost immediate interest,

00:04:54.160 | tenacity, a grating thirst to get it done.

00:04:56.980 | These are the precursors of accomplishments.

00:05:00.340 | Having good productivity habits

00:05:02.540 | complement this crucial skill.

00:05:04.520 | They take this intensity and place it in a schedule.

00:05:07.200 | They keep small things from crowding your mind.

00:05:08.980 | They eliminate the stress of what appointment

00:05:10.620 | you might be forgetting or what vital errand has to be done,

00:05:12.900 | but productivity is not a substitute for this work.

00:05:17.900 | I thought that was an interesting article.

00:05:21.180 | I mean, first of all, let me just say,

00:05:22.220 | and Jesse, if you'll allow a moment of me

00:05:25.700 | bragging on myself, I mean, I think even in 2007,

00:05:29.460 | I was throwing some fastballs, right?

00:05:30.900 | - Yeah, it's pretty good.

00:05:32.020 | - I mean, I remember being frustrated back then

00:05:35.180 | because there was a lot of big productivity blogs.

00:05:38.220 | I felt like I was delivering to goods.

00:05:40.180 | - That's like good info.

00:05:41.660 | - And no one knew it.

00:05:42.500 | I was just lost in the woods.

00:05:44.420 | And you know why I think that was?

00:05:46.380 | Is because students were my focus.

00:05:49.100 | That was probably why, because I would be so frustrated.

00:05:51.340 | I would remember very specifically when lifehacker.com,

00:05:56.340 | which was like the big productivity website in 2007,

00:05:59.340 | when they would feature someone else's student advice,

00:06:02.360 | I'd be like, guys, I am killing it in this topic.

00:06:05.320 | Like I'm throwing 103

00:06:07.700 | and you're covering the softball players.

00:06:09.540 | Come on, I'd be so frustrated.

00:06:10.860 | Like, don't you know what I'm doing over here?

00:06:13.260 | But I think it's because no one cared

00:06:15.020 | about student centric advice.

00:06:16.540 | And so I wasn't really on the radar.

00:06:18.420 | So anyways, self-bragging done.

00:06:21.040 | So let's step back and ask the question,

00:06:25.060 | do these ideas about productivity being unrelated from 2007,

00:06:30.060 | do they hold up today?

00:06:31.680 | Or has my thinking or perhaps the culture

00:06:35.140 | surrounding these issues shifted?

00:06:38.260 | I figured it was worth doing a nuanced update

00:06:41.260 | on this old take of mine,

00:06:42.980 | because these are still general ideas

00:06:45.280 | that people very much care about.

00:06:46.720 | So this is the deep question I wanna look at today.

00:06:49.820 | Does Cal still think that productivity is overrated?

00:06:54.620 | Now here's our plan of action.

00:06:57.120 | We will start with a deep dive.

00:06:58.900 | I'll go, we're gonna revisit this article.

00:07:00.940 | We're gonna pick it apart and talk about its relevance today.

00:07:04.160 | After the deep dive, we're then gonna go into questions.

00:07:06.580 | I have five questions from you.

00:07:08.140 | My listeners that are all relevant to this general theme

00:07:11.460 | of productivity, is it overrated?

00:07:14.000 | Productivity versus accomplishment.

00:07:15.720 | What's the difference?

00:07:16.560 | How do they compliment each other?

00:07:17.380 | We have five questions that's gonna get into that.

00:07:19.260 | And then for the final segment,

00:07:20.380 | we'll switch to do something interesting.

00:07:23.060 | A little word of hype for what's to come.

00:07:26.020 | The interesting thing I've chosen

00:07:28.540 | is relevant to this as well.

00:07:29.740 | So we have full unification today

00:07:32.040 | in the episode on this question of,

00:07:33.480 | is productivity overrated?

00:07:36.780 | All right, so let's deep dive into that.

00:07:38.540 | Here's what I thought would be a useful frame

00:07:41.460 | for this discussion.

00:07:43.220 | I went through the article the other day

00:07:45.340 | and I pulled out what I thought four of the main ideas were.

00:07:49.820 | And I wanna go through those one by one

00:07:52.060 | and answer the question, is this idea still right in 2023?

00:07:57.060 | So again, if you're watching this,

00:07:58.400 | episode 235 at youtube.com/calnewportmedia,

00:08:01.940 | you'll see I actually have these ideas on the screen

00:08:03.980 | and we'll go through them one by one.

00:08:05.380 | But I'll also obviously say them as well

00:08:08.220 | if you're just listening.

00:08:09.580 | So the first idea I extracted from this article

00:08:14.380 | was the notion that productivity equals organization.

00:08:18.960 | In 2007, I think that was certainly true.

00:08:23.580 | In common usage, especially online,

00:08:25.620 | productivity was most associated with the word advice.

00:08:28.780 | So if you're talking about productivity,

00:08:29.980 | you were typically talking about productivity advice.

00:08:33.460 | That's what people meant by it.

00:08:36.060 | And it was advice that was focused on

00:08:37.620 | how do you make sense of, keep up with,

00:08:39.420 | and prevent yourself from drowning

00:08:41.000 | in what seemed to be an increasingly intense deluge

00:08:45.500 | of tasks and communication and work.

00:08:48.980 | I've later written quite a lot about this topic

00:08:52.100 | in my last book, "World Without Email"

00:08:53.700 | and a lot of my New Yorker writing.

00:08:54.780 | I've gone deeper into this.

00:08:55.940 | What happened, of course,

00:08:57.180 | was the front office IT revolution

00:09:00.660 | when we brought personal computers

00:09:02.300 | to the desk of knowledge workers,

00:09:04.020 | when we connected those computers with networks,

00:09:05.660 | when we introduced, haphazardly speaking,

00:09:08.060 | email and then later tools like Instant Messenger,

00:09:10.780 | it created way more work than we were used to before,

00:09:14.020 | a faster velocity of work,

00:09:15.620 | way more interruptions and context shifting.

00:09:17.420 | So there was this explosion of interest

00:09:19.180 | in the first decade of the 2000s

00:09:20.860 | in what do we do about this?

00:09:22.080 | And that's what productivity meant.

00:09:23.740 | And so that comes through very clearly in my article.

00:09:26.500 | When I'm talking about productivity,

00:09:28.140 | I'm talking about productivity advice.

00:09:30.500 | And when I'm talking about productivity advice,

00:09:31.980 | I'm talking about keeping up with and organizing

00:09:34.900 | everything that's on your plate.

00:09:36.500 | In 2023, I think the culture around this term has shifted,

00:09:42.420 | especially in online or elite discourses.

00:09:46.180 | I would say productivity is now much more associated

00:09:48.860 | with culture today,

00:09:51.980 | whereas in 2007, it was much more associated with advice.

00:09:55.360 | So when people discuss productivity

00:09:57.800 | or refer to productivity today,

00:09:59.500 | they're talking more,

00:10:00.760 | or they're more likely to be talking about

00:10:03.020 | a culture of productivity,

00:10:05.300 | a value framework around what produces worth,

00:10:10.300 | what defines you as a worthwhile person,

00:10:13.020 | what is the meaning of work.

00:10:14.780 | So it's a much more philosophical, cultural discussion,

00:10:18.860 | much less a pragmatic, technical discussion.

00:10:22.020 | Interestingly, the connection between productivity

00:10:26.340 | and accomplishments, like accomplishment in general,

00:10:28.900 | is not discussed that much anymore.

00:10:31.320 | I think it gets in the way of the current

00:10:34.480 | in-fashion critiques of productivity.

00:10:36.400 | So if we wanna think about productivity as a culture

00:10:38.880 | or a mood that we can attack

00:10:41.280 | or destabilize with criticality,

00:10:43.600 | we don't wanna really focus too much on,

00:10:46.160 | could this be leading to real accomplishment?

00:10:48.160 | Are you doing things that's useful?

00:10:49.380 | Because humans are wired for that.

00:10:51.040 | We still admire people who accomplish things.

00:10:52.720 | So we've really disconnected discussions of productivity

00:10:57.480 | from accomplishment and see it more as a culture

00:10:59.540 | that we should discuss or critique.

00:11:02.260 | So on my checklist here for productivity equals organization

00:11:07.160 | I'm gonna give that a red X.

00:11:09.900 | I don't think that idea still holds up the same in 2023.

00:11:13.760 | All right, second big idea I extracted

00:11:16.700 | from my 2007 article,

00:11:19.540 | productivity is unrelated to accomplishment.

00:11:24.340 | This I think was one of the big ideas

00:11:27.340 | from that piece.

00:11:28.180 | And what I meant, if you'll remember my quotes there,

00:11:30.740 | is that you could be organized or not organized.

00:11:33.900 | It didn't really specify

00:11:36.360 | whether you were going to be accomplished,

00:11:38.140 | whether you're going to accomplish something noteworthy.

00:11:41.460 | If you were organized, you might be less stressed,

00:11:44.400 | but it wasn't going to,

00:11:45.620 | being organized doesn't make you more likely

00:11:47.220 | to do a big accomplishment.

00:11:48.740 | Being disorganized doesn't reduce your probability

00:11:51.620 | of having a big accomplish.

00:11:52.780 | So that was one of the core ideas from my 2007 article.

00:11:57.780 | But the other related piece here of course,

00:12:01.220 | is that productivity,

00:12:02.300 | at least when seen through this organizational frame,

00:12:04.140 | its main role is stress reduction,

00:12:07.560 | keep control of things,

00:12:09.020 | keep control of the obligations on your plate.

00:12:11.320 | I would say, yes, that's still true today.

00:12:15.120 | There is not a very strong correlation

00:12:18.360 | between the organizational notion of productivity

00:12:21.560 | and significant accomplishment.

00:12:23.640 | It still remains today, like it did in 2007,

00:12:26.460 | that some of the most accomplished people

00:12:28.320 | in all sorts of different fields are a mess

00:12:31.680 | when it comes to other aspects of their life,

00:12:33.820 | their organization, how they keep up with things,

00:12:35.700 | how they plan their time.

00:12:37.900 | So I'm going to give a green check for that idea.

00:12:42.400 | However, maybe I'll put a little star next to it.

00:12:46.180 | I have additional thoughts on that.

00:12:49.300 | So something I missed in 2007,

00:12:53.580 | which I think was true that I missed,

00:12:57.140 | is what those disorganized professors

00:12:59.540 | with the Turing Awards and MacArthur Genius Grants

00:13:02.300 | were doing, it wasn't just drive.

00:13:05.460 | What they were doing is that they were very good

00:13:08.340 | at workload management.

00:13:10.360 | They were very good at saying no,

00:13:14.260 | or in the case of these MIT professors,

00:13:16.020 | they would implicitly say no by just ignoring the request.

00:13:19.540 | I write about that in my book, "Deep Work."

00:13:22.340 | That was their way of dealing with email

00:13:24.420 | in the early 2000s was, I don't want to deal with this.

00:13:27.180 | This is a stupid request.

00:13:28.220 | You didn't specify it clearly enough.

00:13:29.580 | I'm just going to ignore you, try again.

00:13:32.060 | And maybe if you write it better

00:13:33.460 | or give me more information, then maybe I'll answer.

00:13:35.660 | They were very good at workload management.

00:13:37.660 | I think that's actually relatively universally true.

00:13:40.420 | People who do really large accomplishments,

00:13:42.780 | not people who are reliable at work

00:13:45.380 | and get good promotions,

00:13:46.820 | the people who do the things that turn heads

00:13:48.860 | are very good at workload management.

00:13:51.620 | The athlete that becomes a superstar is very good

00:13:54.020 | at blocking out everything in their life,

00:13:55.680 | but practicing that skills.

00:13:56.900 | The professors that win the Turing Award are very good

00:13:59.540 | at saying no or ignoring the other things coming in

00:14:02.260 | so they can work on solving that proof.

00:14:04.860 | The inventor that invents the light bulb is very good

00:14:08.100 | at saying, this is what I'm working on right now.

00:14:10.100 | All of my resources are going towards

00:14:11.860 | trying different filament materials,

00:14:13.460 | and no, I'm not going to go speak on your trade commission

00:14:17.380 | or something like this.

00:14:19.000 | Now, I think I missed that in 2007,

00:14:20.980 | but it was true then and it's true today,

00:14:22.840 | that that is a unifying skill of people

00:14:25.740 | who do go on to big accomplishments.

00:14:27.580 | It's yes, they're disorganized,

00:14:29.860 | but they really have their act together

00:14:31.340 | when it comes to workload management.

00:14:34.180 | As a graduate student in 2007,

00:14:36.140 | I didn't get that because my life was too easy.

00:14:39.180 | Here's how it works at a tier one doctoral program

00:14:43.100 | like MIT, it's all about research, right?

00:14:46.780 | I mean, it's all about producing the best possible work

00:14:50.100 | that turns heads in the world of ideas, right?

00:14:52.740 | You're here because of your brain, put your brain to use.

00:14:55.940 | It's all about research.

00:14:56.820 | Because of that, they get out of your way.

00:14:58.920 | So if you are getting a PhD at MIT in computer science,

00:15:02.460 | courses are not at all important.

00:15:04.980 | You take the courses in your first couple of years,

00:15:07.020 | you take, I don't know, six or seven courses,

00:15:08.940 | it's not that important.

00:15:10.460 | You get them out of the way.

00:15:11.660 | I think I got A, my memory is I got A's in all my courses,

00:15:14.260 | but it didn't really matter.

00:15:15.420 | You just couldn't get, I forgot exactly how it worked.

00:15:17.820 | I guess if you got two B's, it was a problem.

00:15:19.460 | I don't know, but I think they just gave everyone A's.

00:15:21.220 | It didn't really matter.

00:15:23.060 | After those two years, it's like, now do your work,

00:15:25.620 | publish something good.

00:15:27.420 | And so our workloads as grad students

00:15:29.760 | was as low as any job anywhere in the world.

00:15:32.540 | It was basically work on a paper,

00:15:35.500 | six months from now, publish it.

00:15:36.980 | So I don't think it was on my mind.

00:15:38.300 | Workload management as being a critical component

00:15:40.880 | of accomplishment was not on 2007 CAL's mind.

00:15:44.380 | 2023 tenured professor, father CAL, oh my, it's on my mind.

00:15:49.300 | So I put a little star here

00:15:50.700 | for those who are watching online

00:15:52.300 | because that idea is right, the one I had in 2007,

00:15:56.140 | but it's also, we need to expand it

00:15:58.900 | if we really want to capture the full picture here.

00:16:02.180 | All right, let's go to the third of four ideas

00:16:04.020 | from the original article.

00:16:06.140 | Number three, drive is underrated.

00:16:09.660 | So this came through in that piece, right?

00:16:11.460 | In the quote I read you, I said,

00:16:12.660 | here's the thing that really seems to matter.

00:16:14.640 | This weird, I don't know where it comes from,

00:16:16.080 | this weird, mysteriously sourced, tenacious drive

00:16:18.760 | of like, I want to do this well,

00:16:20.960 | and I'm going to keep shooting basketballs

00:16:24.040 | until my hands bleed.

00:16:25.980 | Like Jesse, you would like this article.

00:16:29.320 | I have to find it.

00:16:30.140 | Someone sent it to the interesting,

00:16:32.200 | at calnewport.com address, it was about Steph Curry,

00:16:34.920 | two of the basketball players.

00:16:36.680 | And it was saying a big part of understanding his success

00:16:40.500 | was he innovated practicing.

00:16:43.180 | Like he figured out how to not just practice more,

00:16:45.880 | but like make his practicing much more focused

00:16:48.280 | like a laser on exactly the skills

00:16:49.920 | that had the highest value.

00:16:51.480 | That type of drive, I don't know where that comes from,

00:16:55.480 | but every time you see a major accomplishment,

00:16:57.220 | that's very important.

00:16:58.800 | You don't see like, oh, what really mattered for Steph Curry

00:17:03.100 | was his inbox was clean, and his desk was clear.

00:17:08.100 | He had a tickler file.

00:17:10.440 | You better believe his tickler file was reviewed every month

00:17:13.740 | and he would move the scraps of papers.

00:17:15.500 | You know, it doesn't matter.

00:17:16.380 | What matters is he's obsessing about,

00:17:18.820 | how can I get more out of a four-hour practice session?

00:17:21.540 | And I saw that back then, right?

00:17:22.900 | I mean, these professors I was around were super focused.

00:17:27.700 | So I'm going to go ahead and give this one a green check.

00:17:31.220 | Drive is underrated because, you know,

00:17:33.220 | I don't think we understand it enough.

00:17:35.560 | What are the different forces that go into it?

00:17:38.700 | What are the social forces, what you're around,

00:17:40.860 | how you're raised, genetics.

00:17:42.660 | I have this pet theory that often a major source of drive

00:17:47.060 | is there's typically some sort of event that happens

00:17:49.420 | that puts a chip on your shoulder in some sense.

00:17:52.180 | You know, I certainly had this where you're like,

00:17:54.620 | I'm going to show them, I'm going to do this.

00:17:57.460 | Like there's some sort of thing that happens

00:17:59.500 | maybe early in life.

00:18:00.500 | So there's some sort of historical,

00:18:02.220 | personal historical event that occurs.

00:18:04.820 | We don't know enough about it,

00:18:06.500 | but it is at the absolute core

00:18:07.860 | of people doing really important things.

00:18:09.260 | And I noticed that back in 2007,

00:18:11.140 | why is this person different than that?

00:18:13.080 | We don't really know.

00:18:14.820 | And I think we still don't really know today.

00:18:16.640 | So it was interesting,

00:18:17.480 | like around the time this article came out,

00:18:19.780 | this is when Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" came out

00:18:22.660 | right around this same period.

00:18:25.660 | And he was trying to answer that question.

00:18:27.900 | But I think his question,

00:18:29.420 | he answered it more from the perspective

00:18:32.460 | of the what than the why.

00:18:34.140 | So he answered it from the perspective

00:18:36.220 | of getting really good in these big accomplishments

00:18:38.240 | takes a huge amount of very hard practice.

00:18:40.180 | And so if you don't have the circumstances

00:18:42.560 | to be able to do this practice,

00:18:44.900 | you're sort of out of luck.

00:18:45.980 | The Beatles went to Hamburg

00:18:47.460 | and were able to work in these clubs,

00:18:49.500 | three or four shows a night,

00:18:51.140 | and in this melting pot of different musical styles

00:18:54.200 | and really figure out their style.

00:18:55.780 | And they could deliberate practice hundreds of hours a week

00:18:58.020 | and really emerge as a very tight group.

00:19:00.700 | That's like a classic Gladwellian analysis.

00:19:03.460 | But what was left out of it was the why.

00:19:05.460 | Why did they go to Hamburg?

00:19:06.620 | Why were they willing to play that much?

00:19:07.980 | Why were they so much more driven

00:19:09.260 | than all of these other bands

00:19:10.480 | that were coming out of Liverpool at the time?

00:19:12.020 | And I still don't think we really understand that.

00:19:13.780 | So I think that's a good point.

00:19:16.580 | However, I'm going to,

00:19:18.320 | I don't know, I'll draw a dotted little arrow

00:19:20.660 | for my star from before the disc one,

00:19:22.380 | because "Drive" is underrated,

00:19:24.260 | but that point we talked about with the last idea,

00:19:27.820 | that point we talked about

00:19:30.780 | workload management really mattering,

00:19:32.420 | that's also relevant here.

00:19:33.760 | So "Drive" is the secret sauce,

00:19:36.780 | but "Drive" coupled with workload management,

00:19:38.860 | because all the drive in the world

00:19:40.600 | is still going to get your metaphorical car stuck

00:19:43.620 | if it's overloaded.

00:19:45.120 | So I could be super driven,

00:19:46.820 | but say yes to too many things

00:19:48.460 | and not going to be able to actually live up to my potential.

00:19:51.020 | So again, there's some sort of weird interchange now

00:19:53.500 | that I didn't articulate super well back then.

00:19:57.180 | Maybe I can articulate it better today,

00:19:58.380 | but this weird interplay between "Drive"

00:20:00.460 | and developing this ability to say no

00:20:02.440 | and manage your workload,

00:20:03.460 | and these two things orbit each other,

00:20:04.980 | they orbit accomplishment somehow.

00:20:06.680 | All right, final idea from that 2007 article

00:20:11.620 | that I want to point out here is,

00:20:12.980 | "Cal is hungry to make a mark."

00:20:16.940 | I think that permeated that 2007 article.

00:20:20.900 | I think that permeated a lot of my writing early on

00:20:23.300 | is I was hungry for accomplishment.

00:20:25.900 | I felt potential, I felt I had ability,

00:20:31.060 | and I was frustrated that things took time.

00:20:33.960 | I just wanted, you know, man,

00:20:36.240 | and even though exactly what it was,

00:20:37.460 | in writing and research,

00:20:38.480 | I wasn't quite sure was I gonna start a business,

00:20:40.360 | but I just knew I wanted to do something.

00:20:43.140 | And I think that focus on like,

00:20:45.020 | what matters for this accomplishment,

00:20:47.020 | you can see it in there.

00:20:48.820 | Productivity is important

00:20:49.820 | because I don't want to be stressed,

00:20:51.180 | but man, it's these driven, messy professors

00:20:54.020 | who are winning these major awards,

00:20:55.380 | that's where it's at, and that's what matters.

00:20:59.140 | And that permeates a lot of my writing in 2007,

00:21:01.180 | I think it comes through clearly.

00:21:03.340 | I would say 2023 Cal is still hungry, but also tired.

00:21:08.340 | You know, I mean, this is the difference.

00:21:12.340 | Now I have a bunch of jobs and a bunch of kids.

00:21:14.500 | I've done some things,

00:21:15.780 | so maybe I don't have that same sense of urgency,

00:21:18.940 | but that accomplishment above all else mentality

00:21:22.540 | that I had then, I think is not there nearly as much

00:21:26.900 | in my writing today, I'm gonna give that a red X.

00:21:30.980 | Those who follow the show, for example,

00:21:32.340 | now see the slower philosophy I have about accomplishment

00:21:37.340 | that within the craft bucket of the deep life,

00:21:41.180 | you should be honing your craft,

00:21:42.940 | working on something important,

00:21:44.500 | what the Buddha would call right livelihood.

00:21:47.780 | Do that as much as possible

00:21:49.060 | with a good deep to shallow work ratio,

00:21:50.980 | that's personally important to me,

00:21:52.420 | working on something important with craft,

00:21:54.420 | keeping the deep to shallow work ratio really good,

00:21:57.460 | I don't react well to large amounts of shallow work,

00:22:00.180 | but that is then just one bucket among four.

00:22:03.340 | So when you're working, that's how you're working,

00:22:05.140 | but then you also have community,

00:22:06.580 | and then you also have contemplation,

00:22:08.480 | then you also have constitution,

00:22:10.260 | and this slows things down more,

00:22:13.860 | but this is my philosophy of slow productivity, that's okay.

00:22:17.860 | Because when you look back at the end,

00:22:20.340 | what did I do in the last 30 years?

00:22:21.780 | You wanna point to some really important things,

00:22:23.740 | that's more important that in the scale of this month,

00:22:26.860 | am I rock and rolling every single day?

00:22:29.100 | So, I mean, I'm still hungry,

00:22:31.060 | but I'm not as hungry as 2007 Cal,

00:22:33.920 | my philosophies of the deep life and slow productivity,

00:22:36.640 | I think have evolved and we're not there,

00:22:39.380 | we're not there yet in 2007.

00:22:41.980 | So that's my look back at that piece,

00:22:44.940 | so yes, do I agree today that productivity

00:22:47.700 | is still overrated, productivity in the 2007 sense

00:22:51.340 | of being organized on top of your work?

00:22:53.100 | And I would say, yes, we've changed what we mean

00:22:57.000 | by that term over time,

00:22:58.900 | but we still end up at the same place,

00:23:01.240 | which is the deep life, however you define that,

00:23:04.740 | is about much more than just how organized

00:23:06.660 | you are in your efforts.

00:23:08.060 | However, being organized in your efforts

00:23:10.460 | makes that life notably less stressful.

00:23:14.980 | So I think I was onto something back then,

00:23:16.980 | even if my ideas have changed.

00:23:20.020 | - Did you come across any other articles in your research?

00:23:22.340 | - Yeah, there's a bunch of interesting ones, yeah.

00:23:23.860 | I'm thinking I should maybe revisit some more

00:23:26.780 | in some future episodes.

00:23:28.380 | - Yeah.

00:23:29.220 | - It's interesting to see, it's a real mix.

00:23:31.200 | My memory was for like at least a year,

00:23:35.080 | that blog was straight up student tactics.

00:23:38.400 | Like here is how you should take notes

00:23:40.260 | on a multiple choice exam,

00:23:41.780 | here is how you should deal with choosing your courses

00:23:44.000 | for a semester.

00:23:44.840 | And there is a lot of that stuff.

00:23:46.380 | But what I forgot is I was writing three posts a week.

00:23:49.220 | - Wow.

00:23:50.060 | - Yeah, because I was hungry, right?

00:23:50.980 | And bored because I was like grad students,

00:23:53.500 | you know, there's not enough to do.

00:23:54.780 | It's an easy, easy job.

00:23:56.040 | So I didn't have much to do because I was a theoretician.

00:23:59.140 | So I didn't have any labs to go to or experiments to run.

00:24:01.060 | It just was solve proofs.

00:24:02.260 | So I was writing three posts a week.

00:24:03.460 | So yes, every Monday I was writing student advice.

00:24:06.380 | I called it Monday masterclass.

00:24:07.880 | I forgot about that.

00:24:09.380 | I called it Monday masterclass

00:24:10.900 | and it was hardcore tactical student advice.

00:24:14.280 | But then I had Wednesday and Thursday and Friday.

00:24:16.520 | I think that's the other days I would post.

00:24:18.460 | And man, I was doing this type of stuff a lot more.

00:24:21.060 | I was like thinking about accomplishment

00:24:22.860 | and productivity and philosophy.

00:24:24.920 | And it was a more interesting blog back then

00:24:28.800 | that I remember.

00:24:29.720 | - Yeah.

00:24:30.560 | - Yeah, also just a lot of ideas that are still here today.

00:24:32.920 | They're just, I've just evolved them,

00:24:34.080 | but they're still more or less there.

00:24:35.160 | I don't know, a lot of seeds were being planted back then.

00:24:37.840 | So basically everything you hear me talk about

00:24:39.640 | is like an outgrowth of the first decade, 2000s,

00:24:42.940 | like online productivity culture.

00:24:46.100 | - Your walks along the Charles with your dog.

00:24:48.440 | - Yeah, well that came later.

00:24:50.160 | We didn't get the dog until I was a postdoc.

00:24:52.320 | It's our apartment when I was in grad school

00:24:54.120 | didn't allow dogs.

00:24:55.400 | - Yeah.

00:24:56.240 | - Yeah, so that came later.

00:24:57.300 | Anyways, so what we're gonna do then

00:24:59.480 | is we'll do five questions that are real people,

00:25:01.840 | real listeners with issues around this tension

00:25:04.680 | of productivity versus organization.

00:25:08.180 | Is productivity overrated?

00:25:09.520 | First though, I wanna mention briefly

00:25:10.920 | one of the sponsors that makes this show possible.

00:25:14.620 | That is our friends at Blinkist.

00:25:17.640 | Let me tell you what Blinkist is

00:25:18.880 | and then I'll tell you why I think you should subscribe.

00:25:23.680 | So Blinkist is a subscription service

00:25:26.240 | that gives you access to short summaries

00:25:29.120 | of over 5,500 nonfiction books.

00:25:33.300 | These short summaries are called Blinks.

00:25:35.840 | You can either read them or you can listen to them.

00:25:38.280 | About 15 minutes to read them,

00:25:39.680 | about 15 minutes to listen to.

00:25:41.680 | It gets you the core ideas

00:25:44.420 | of all of these important nonfiction books

00:25:46.400 | that are coming out ever more each week and each month.

00:25:49.980 | The reason why they've been a longtime sponsor of the show

00:25:53.120 | is because I think reading is critical

00:25:55.220 | to living a life of ideas.

00:25:57.340 | A life of ideas is critical to stand out or succeed

00:25:59.760 | in our current knowledge economy.

00:26:01.860 | There are too many books, however,

00:26:03.240 | for you to successfully keep up

00:26:04.780 | with which ones you should buy and which ones you shouldn't.

00:26:06.680 | So you use Blinkist to help you make that determination.

00:26:10.960 | You come across a book, you say, "That could be interesting."

00:26:13.720 | You listen to the Blink, you read the Blink,

00:26:15.600 | 15 minutes later, you have the big idea.

00:26:17.280 | So now you know, either this is all I need,

00:26:20.400 | I can talk about this big idea, I'm not gonna buy the book,

00:26:22.620 | or you say, "Wow, I can't wait to buy it."

00:26:25.600 | So if you are someone who has books integrated

00:26:29.000 | into your life and you absolutely should,

00:26:31.720 | Blinkist should be your companion.

00:26:33.760 | Blinkist is a critical tool

00:26:35.980 | for anyone who embraces the reading life.

00:26:39.540 | Now they have this nice new feature I wanna mention.

00:26:42.760 | I think it's called Connect, Blinkist Connect.

00:26:46.200 | And it allows you to essentially give a Blinkist account

00:26:49.960 | to a friend for free.

00:26:50.980 | It's a two for the price of one promotion

00:26:53.060 | that I wanted to mention so that you can share with a friend

00:26:56.720 | that you also want to support their reading life.

00:27:00.720 | So just until February 28th, coming up,

00:27:03.580 | just until February 28th,

00:27:04.600 | Blinkist has a very special offer for our audience.

00:27:07.340 | If you go to blinkist.com/deep

00:27:09.080 | to start your seven-day free trial,

00:27:10.440 | you will get 40% off a Blinkist premium membership.

00:27:14.600 | So if you're gonna sign up anyways,

00:27:15.680 | do it now while that deal is still there.

00:27:17.860 | That's Blinkist spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T,

00:27:21.040 | blinkist.com/deep to get 40% off and a seven-day free trial,

00:27:24.720 | blinkist.com/deep.

00:27:26.400 | That offer is good only through February 28th.

00:27:30.560 | And for a limited time,

00:27:31.780 | we have that Blinkist Connect promotion as well

00:27:34.320 | that allows you to share your premium account.

00:27:36.960 | So you can get two premium subscriptions

00:27:38.560 | for the price of one.

00:27:41.100 | I also want to mention,

00:27:43.940 | these guys have known for a long time, 80,000 hours.

00:27:48.940 | Let me tell you what it is,

00:27:50.980 | and then I'll tell you why you should check them out.

00:27:54.480 | 80,000 hours, where's that number come from?

00:27:57.040 | How many hours you will work in your life.

00:27:59.520 | 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year,

00:28:01.600 | times 40 years gets you to 80,000 hours.

00:28:05.280 | The idea behind this organization is recognizing

00:28:08.840 | that the time you spend working is your biggest resource.

00:28:12.100 | It's your biggest opportunity

00:28:13.740 | to make a difference in the world.

00:28:16.360 | What career path you follow

00:28:18.220 | might be the most important decision you ever make,

00:28:20.280 | especially if you care about leaving this world

00:28:22.540 | better than how you came before.

00:28:25.140 | So 80,000 hours is an organization

00:28:28.820 | that has spent the last 10 years

00:28:31.320 | working alongside academics at Oxford University

00:28:33.880 | to conduct research on how to make the most

00:28:37.320 | out of your working life.

00:28:39.720 | They have three different things.

00:28:41.160 | If you go to 80,000hours.org,

00:28:43.020 | there's three different things you can find there.

00:28:44.520 | One is their website.

00:28:46.200 | The website has profiles answering,

00:28:49.840 | profiles of some of the biggest problems

00:28:51.280 | that you can face with your,

00:28:52.900 | you can try to help with your career.

00:28:56.020 | They have career reviews.

00:28:57.320 | There's even an eight week career planning course.

00:29:00.920 | Articles on there are really good too.

00:29:02.280 | There's one I read recently,

00:29:04.000 | how many lives does a doctor save?

00:29:05.500 | They did the math.

00:29:06.600 | If you become a doctor of a certain type,

00:29:08.400 | how many lives will you expect to save

00:29:10.000 | throughout your career?

00:29:11.200 | They're a kind of quantitative nerdy over there.

00:29:12.960 | That's why I love them.

00:29:13.960 | And so you get that type of stuff.

00:29:15.260 | They also have a podcast that has in-depth conversations

00:29:18.460 | with experts on the world's most pressing problems,

00:29:20.740 | the 80,000 hours podcast.

00:29:22.580 | Check out their somewhat recent episode

00:29:24.440 | with David Chalmers, the Australian philosopher

00:29:27.960 | who's a leading thinker on machine consciousness

00:29:31.080 | and intelligence.

00:29:31.960 | I actually just read a lot of David Chalmers

00:29:33.560 | for an article I'm writing,

00:29:34.600 | and that interview was a useful resource.

00:29:37.020 | Finally, 80,000 hours offers a job board

00:29:39.920 | where they have a curated and constantly updated list

00:29:42.040 | of hundreds of active job openings

00:29:44.200 | that they think might help you make an impact.

00:29:46.680 | All right, so I've known these guys for a long time

00:29:50.060 | because I was writing about careers

00:29:51.760 | and what to do with your careers

00:29:53.040 | around the same time they were starting up

00:29:54.760 | 80,000 hours at Oxford.

00:29:56.120 | So I've been in touch with these guys.

00:29:57.440 | We've been talking back and forth for over a decade now.

00:30:00.200 | So it's really top-notch.

00:30:01.800 | If you wanna make a difference with your career,

00:30:03.640 | you gotta check out 80,000hours.org.

00:30:07.720 | Now, if you're gonna go over there,

00:30:09.440 | go over to 80,000hours.org/deep.

00:30:13.160 | The slash deep lets you know that you came from here.

00:30:17.420 | So head over to 80,000hours.org/deep.

00:30:20.760 | Check out their articles, their podcast, their job board,

00:30:23.520 | sign up for their newsletter, 80,000hours.org/deep.

00:30:27.400 | Find out how you can make all those hours

00:30:31.240 | you'll be working your life make a difference in the world.

00:30:34.240 | All right, the time has come to do some questions

00:30:37.600 | sent in from you, my listeners.

00:30:39.080 | All in this episode will all be about our general question

00:30:42.280 | of productivity being overrated.

00:30:43.920 | Jesse, what do we got as our first question of the episode?

00:30:48.080 | - All right, first question's from Andy,

00:30:49.760 | a 39-year-old IT director.

00:30:52.160 | "Sometimes it takes me a couple hours

00:30:53.880 | "to feel my way into a task

00:30:55.480 | "before I start to make some proper progress.

00:30:58.160 | "At this point, I abandon the rest of my time block schedule

00:31:01.000 | "and just go with it.

00:31:02.240 | "Is this okay?"

00:31:03.420 | - Andy, it's a common question.

00:31:07.640 | Deep endeavors can be hard to start.

00:31:10.520 | Deep endeavors can get their grips on your mind

00:31:14.720 | once they get going and blow up your schedule.

00:31:16.820 | I have been there before.

00:31:17.960 | Anyone else who does deep work on a regular basis

00:31:20.040 | has been there as well.

00:31:22.800 | I have a small and big answer.

00:31:25.400 | So sort of a small tactical answer

00:31:27.160 | and a bigger picture strategic answer to this question.

00:31:30.340 | So the small tactical answer is,

00:31:32.880 | well, let's not make your deep work

00:31:34.440 | so hard to get started, right?

00:31:36.680 | I noticed that in your question.

00:31:37.880 | You said you have to feel your way into a task

00:31:41.240 | for a couple hours before you start to make proper progress.

00:31:45.680 | You can make that much smaller.

00:31:47.200 | That lead up time to you really getting on a roll,

00:31:50.200 | you can make that much smaller.

00:31:51.360 | And I think that's gonna help prevent deep work

00:31:53.800 | from blowing up your schedule as consistently.

00:31:56.760 | I've talked about this a lot on the show.

00:31:59.120 | You need better rituals.

00:32:00.520 | So when you do the work and where you do the work,

00:32:02.880 | have rituals, consistency.

00:32:05.340 | These are the times each week I do deep work.

00:32:07.640 | These are the locations I go to do the deep work.

00:32:10.060 | I have the location set up in an over the top way.

00:32:13.460 | All of this is about signaling to your brain,

00:32:15.940 | we are shifting modes.

00:32:18.340 | And once it's learned to trust that signal,

00:32:20.400 | it's gonna shift your mode faster

00:32:22.620 | than if you're just at your crowded desk,

00:32:24.840 | working on email and then just changing nothing else,

00:32:28.880 | attempt to wrench your attention away from Slack

00:32:31.680 | and over to Microsoft Word and say,

00:32:33.920 | I will now write brilliantly.

00:32:35.440 | That's really hard.

00:32:37.240 | But if you instead, no, no,

00:32:38.400 | I always do first thing in the morning,

00:32:39.920 | Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

00:32:42.000 | And I hike through the woods

00:32:43.520 | and I go to this outbuilding behind my house

00:32:45.600 | and it's a deep work chamber.

00:32:46.840 | And that's when I do my writing.

00:32:48.180 | You're gonna get started much faster.

00:32:50.080 | All right, so rituals will help you get that prefix

00:32:53.300 | of wind up time much shorter.

00:32:56.740 | The big picture answer though,

00:32:59.100 | comes back to the theme of today's episode,

00:33:01.140 | which is separating productivity

00:33:04.180 | in the let me be really organized

00:33:05.780 | and make sure I get through things efficiently,

00:33:07.260 | definition of the word and accomplishment

00:33:10.100 | that you actually care about.

00:33:13.300 | As we established in the deep dive,

00:33:15.780 | these are not the same thing.

00:33:18.900 | Making steady work on something important

00:33:21.480 | so that over time you produce important things

00:33:23.840 | that you care about.

00:33:25.700 | This is basically orthogonal from,

00:33:28.340 | I have a time block plan where I'm filling every minute

00:33:30.460 | with various things.

00:33:32.260 | Once you have that in mind,

00:33:33.740 | what you can do is give yourself more breathing room

00:33:37.380 | in your schedule.

00:33:39.060 | So for example, maybe what you do is you say,

00:33:42.420 | I don't know, I handle some small things in the morning

00:33:45.680 | and then switch over to deep work.

00:33:48.060 | And it takes what it takes.

00:33:49.340 | And if I'm done early, I'll go for a walk.

00:33:51.700 | And if it takes until dinner time,

00:33:53.060 | then it takes till dinner time,

00:33:54.060 | but I'm not blowing up a schedule.

00:33:56.540 | Like that would give you plenty of breathing room.

00:33:58.100 | You wouldn't worry about deep work exploding in time or not.

00:34:00.940 | It would require that you're doing less

00:34:02.860 | because now you are spending less work on shallow work.

00:34:05.880 | Your schedule has to have a lot more breathing room in it.

00:34:08.180 | But you know what?

00:34:09.020 | A lot of people are in a situation where that would be fine,

00:34:10.720 | but they're just used to thinking,

00:34:12.940 | I have to be productively feeling every minute

00:34:14.740 | or I'm somehow subverting my chances

00:34:17.340 | of actually being accomplished.

00:34:18.620 | Those are two different things.

00:34:21.260 | So if you are reducing what's on your plate by 20 to 30%,

00:34:24.260 | so that you have much more flexibility on your deep work,

00:34:26.540 | I don't think the outside world will even notice.

00:34:29.400 | I don't think your income's really gonna make a difference.

00:34:31.700 | But you psychologically will feel a great advantage

00:34:34.380 | if you just have breathing room.

00:34:36.460 | If this takes long, it takes long.

00:34:37.460 | I'll do this shallow work first,

00:34:38.740 | switch over to the deep work, go to my shed

00:34:41.140 | so that it doesn't take me two hours to get started.

00:34:42.780 | And I'll just see what it takes.

00:34:43.820 | If I'm not feeling it, I'll move the yard.

00:34:47.460 | If I am, I'll get more work done.

00:34:49.340 | So we're gonna see this come up,

00:34:51.240 | I think, in several answers today.

00:34:53.440 | Separating highly efficient organization

00:34:57.540 | from accomplishment now allows us to play

00:35:00.520 | with things like workload.

00:35:01.780 | Now allows us to imagine a life with accomplishment

00:35:04.540 | being something that really impresses us

00:35:06.300 | and impresses others and makes us feel fulfilled.

00:35:08.840 | And separating that from a vision of a life

00:35:10.740 | where if I don't get every minute

00:35:13.380 | of this time block plan done and every minute dedicated

00:35:16.260 | that I'm somehow going to,

00:35:17.260 | that there's gonna be a real problem.

00:35:18.860 | It allows, there's possible to be accomplished

00:35:22.380 | without being completely overwhelmed with work.

00:35:25.740 | So I don't know, Andy, if that's what you're expecting

00:35:27.420 | to hear, but do less and give yourself

00:35:29.820 | more breathing room for the deep.

00:35:32.260 | If you can pull that off,

00:35:33.420 | that's gonna be the most sustainable answer.

00:35:35.620 | All right, what do we got for question number two?

00:35:38.820 | All right, next question's from Avi.

00:35:41.340 | Some weeks I'm very motivated to do work

00:35:43.220 | and I feel so good.

00:35:44.380 | On others, I just don't feel like it.

00:35:46.140 | This leads to negative emotions

00:35:47.620 | and I completely lose the motivation to do work

00:35:49.760 | and indulge in pointless social media.

00:35:52.180 | Do you have some advice on how I can keep doing

00:35:54.300 | the good work every day in slow but steady manner?

00:35:57.460 | - Well, this is another prime example

00:36:00.440 | of why just focusing on productivity

00:36:04.180 | is not in itself a sustainable strategy.

00:36:06.900 | So if all you're working on is,

00:36:09.100 | I'm doing the right organizational things.

00:36:12.540 | I have my multi-scale plan, I'm time blocking every day,

00:36:16.540 | strategic to weekly to daily.

00:36:18.700 | You could be doing all the things.

00:36:20.640 | Have all the tools, have all the rules.

00:36:22.640 | That alone is not gonna make you fulfilled

00:36:26.420 | and feel like you're accomplishing things

00:36:27.680 | and being excited about work every day.

00:36:29.180 | And that's what's happening with Avi here.

00:36:31.300 | In his extended answer, or his extended version

00:36:33.980 | of the question, he talked about,

00:36:34.820 | hey, I do all your things.

00:36:36.700 | All your productivity things.

00:36:38.820 | But he still will just like fall out of like,

00:36:40.660 | I don't really wanna work on this

00:36:41.860 | and lose whole weeks in the spirals of self-valid

00:36:45.020 | as he spends more and more time on social media, et cetera.

00:36:48.700 | So again, this is the sort of necessary

00:36:51.340 | but not sufficient precondition type situation.

00:36:53.740 | Productivity, these tactics are gonna really be

00:36:55.700 | a nice precondition for a sustainable,

00:36:59.660 | accomplished deep life,

00:37:01.700 | but they're not sufficient on their own.

00:37:03.380 | So Avi, let's fix, let's try to go forward

00:37:05.300 | and fix your problem here.

00:37:06.740 | I think the issue is either your mind

00:37:08.420 | doesn't trust your plan or your mind doesn't like your plan.

00:37:11.620 | I mean, this is what causes people to just stop working

00:37:15.540 | and get lost for three days on social media.

00:37:18.660 | Either the thing you're working on,

00:37:20.860 | your mind says, this is not gonna work.

00:37:24.420 | We're spending all this time on whatever,

00:37:26.420 | like our influencer YouTube channel, and it's not good.

00:37:29.780 | We're not gonna become famous

00:37:31.020 | and it's not gonna pay our bill.

00:37:32.100 | Or we're writing this novel or this business ideas.

00:37:34.200 | I don't even know what this is.

00:37:35.100 | We're just jumping on calls all the time

00:37:37.060 | and it's like a simulacrum of business.

00:37:39.540 | We're not actually like doing something

00:37:41.180 | or producing something.

00:37:42.020 | So your mind might say, I just, this work,

00:37:43.820 | I'm not gonna do it.

00:37:45.260 | This isn't gonna lead us anywhere.

00:37:46.340 | You know that, you're just spinning your wheels

00:37:49.020 | in a highly performative way.

00:37:50.340 | Or your mind says, okay, maybe this will work.

00:37:52.220 | I just don't like the plan.

00:37:54.540 | What we're working on, what this job is,

00:37:57.820 | is grinding and boring or against my values.

00:38:00.420 | I just don't wanna do it.

00:38:01.900 | So it is your mind against whatever plan

00:38:05.060 | your productivity system is saying it should be doing.

00:38:07.760 | So if we're gonna fix that, there's two things we can do.

00:38:11.780 | The first thing we wanna do, of course,

00:38:13.260 | is focus on the craft portion,

00:38:16.580 | the craft bucket and your overall deep life buckets.

00:38:20.320 | That requires some work here.

00:38:22.260 | It requires some work to sort of think through

00:38:24.140 | what am I working on and why?

00:38:26.820 | What are the projects I'm taking on?

00:38:28.280 | What is my workload?

00:38:30.020 | Is there something in here I just really hate?

00:38:32.060 | How do I re-engineer around that?

00:38:33.700 | Is there something in here I think is really important?

00:38:35.500 | All right, so how am I gonna do that work?

00:38:37.380 | Like, let's start thinking that through.

00:38:38.700 | Let's not be so haphazard

00:38:40.300 | and just see if we're in the mood for it

00:38:41.740 | and what our mind says.

00:38:42.560 | Let's take that a little bit out of the picture

00:38:44.300 | like we talked about with Andy in the first question.

00:38:47.020 | Maybe we'll set up a location for this work

00:38:48.820 | and it's different than what we do that.

00:38:50.300 | Maybe my workload is out of whack.

00:38:51.700 | I need to take things off of my plate.

00:38:53.240 | Maybe I need to more radically shift what I'm doing,

00:38:55.180 | but we wanna get the craft bucket in order.

00:38:57.620 | So you gotta know what you're working on,

00:38:59.020 | why you're working on, how you're working on it.

00:39:00.740 | You want all of those pieces to come together.

00:39:02.860 | And that might take you about six weeks

00:39:04.700 | of really thinking and tinkering

00:39:06.100 | and trying to optimize that part of your life.

00:39:10.260 | The second key then, maybe a little bit more surprising,

00:39:13.980 | is looking at the other buckets of your life

00:39:16.940 | after that as well,

00:39:17.780 | the other areas that make a deep life deep

00:39:20.500 | and start systematically getting your house in order

00:39:22.840 | in each of those other areas as well.

00:39:24.700 | Constitution, your health, community,

00:39:26.780 | how you're serving or leading on behalf of others

00:39:28.780 | that are important to you.

00:39:29.980 | Contemplation, how you're making ethical, philosophical,

00:39:33.380 | and theological concerns,

00:39:34.560 | something that you're engaged with and at the core

00:39:36.220 | about how you structure and live your life.

00:39:38.540 | You get these houses in order,

00:39:40.580 | and even then when you're in a hard part

00:39:44.120 | or a hard phase in work,

00:39:46.160 | you're much less likely to fall into,

00:39:48.540 | let's go on YouTube all day.

00:39:50.040 | Let's go on TikTok all day.

00:39:52.380 | That spiral of activity, the self-recrimination

00:39:55.540 | that comes out of the spiral of self-recrimination

00:39:57.580 | that comes out of you falling deeper into activities

00:39:59.220 | that you know are ultimately shallow

00:40:01.140 | and not useful to you or your vision on earth.

00:40:03.700 | When you have the other buckets tuned up,

00:40:05.940 | even when work is hard, they're gonna support you.

00:40:10.060 | Even when, okay, I have this whatever,

00:40:12.220 | I'm in year four of med school, my residency,

00:40:15.860 | and I think this is important,

00:40:17.380 | but it's just so hard and it's exhausting,

00:40:20.460 | they support you.

00:40:21.940 | And you say, I wanna lead other people.

00:40:24.000 | I wanna be, I'm exercising, I'm outside,

00:40:27.080 | I have the celebration bucket, I have this hobby,

00:40:30.340 | I'm really into film, or I have these other things

00:40:33.380 | that are more meaningful and quality,

00:40:34.820 | and they're there to fill my time.

00:40:36.220 | And even if I have to take a break from work for a few days,

00:40:38.380 | what I'm going into is something else that's important,

00:40:41.020 | something else that I think is useful.

00:40:42.540 | So these are the two aspects

00:40:44.620 | of what's pushing to the spiral.

00:40:45.820 | One is that your relationship to work itself

00:40:48.620 | needs some work, the craft bucket has to be overhauled.

00:40:50.820 | But the second piece is you don't have other options

00:40:54.140 | for when work is getting you down.

00:40:57.060 | So it's, I'm being pushed towards, I need a break,

00:40:59.620 | and I have nothing else quality to do with that break.

00:41:02.540 | So I end up on TikTok looking at ASMR videos,

00:41:07.540 | which I think is what people do on TikTok.

00:41:12.220 | So those are your two options, okay?

00:41:13.900 | So you gotta get the whole deep life in order,

00:41:17.040 | and it's not gonna get rid of hard things,

00:41:18.340 | it's not gonna make your job feel good every day,

00:41:20.020 | it's not gonna solve all your problems,

00:41:21.280 | but I think that's what's gonna be your best bet

00:41:23.060 | for getting out of this cycle of self-doubt

00:41:26.580 | and self-recrimination.

00:41:28.060 | All right, Andy and Avi, oh, look at this.

00:41:33.580 | So what we need now is someone whose name starts with a B,

00:41:36.940 | it's exactly what we have.

00:41:38.460 | - Ben. - Yes.

00:41:39.420 | - 24 year old software engineer.

00:41:41.700 | - I alphabetize all of my questions now.

00:41:43.500 | I think that's very important.

00:41:45.220 | I think people have high expectations.

00:41:47.060 | All right, what we got from Ben here?

00:41:48.700 | - All right, as a sophomore developer,

00:41:50.780 | I sometimes have to wait up to 30 minutes

00:41:52.580 | to merge a new bug fix or feature

00:41:54.580 | into the main branch of a program.

00:41:57.900 | These durations are unpredictable.

00:41:59.940 | What should I do to be productive in this time?

00:42:02.980 | - Ben, you have to figure out

00:42:04.080 | in these 10 to 30 minute breaks

00:42:05.780 | how you can both be exercising, reading,

00:42:08.180 | and cleaning out your inbox at the same time,

00:42:10.660 | because not a single moment can be wasted.

00:42:14.480 | Now, I picked this question because again,

00:42:17.060 | I think it gets to the distinction

00:42:19.340 | between productivity and accomplishment.

00:42:20.580 | It's good to be organized to take stress off your plate,

00:42:23.060 | but that doesn't mean that you need to deploy

00:42:25.340 | those skills of organization to fill every minute with work.

00:42:28.980 | So one solution here, Ben, is to just chill.

00:42:31.340 | And this is nice.

00:42:33.220 | Like there's periods during my day

00:42:34.040 | where I submit a merge of my program branch

00:42:37.740 | and I have to wait for my manager to approve it.

00:42:39.860 | And I'm just gonna like go see what people are up to,

00:42:42.660 | you know, or kick back a little bit.

00:42:44.220 | It's nice outside.

00:42:45.100 | I'm gonna go sit outside and go for a walk

00:42:46.620 | while I wait to hear back from them.

00:42:47.540 | Like, I don't know, I don't have to have something planned.

00:42:50.900 | And this is something I both appreciate

00:42:54.220 | and have to work on.

00:42:55.620 | Because I do too many roles in my life,

00:42:59.140 | in my professional life I have too many roles,

00:43:00.580 | and especially since I have my nine to five job,

00:43:02.260 | you know, my nine to five framework where I work nine to five

00:43:04.820 | so like my work has to fit in there.

00:43:06.740 | I often enter these areas or these spans

00:43:09.500 | where I have to use every minute of the time

00:43:11.140 | because, you know, three different jobs need things.

00:43:14.380 | And because I have these 2007 style productivity skills,

00:43:18.840 | I can do that.

00:43:20.380 | I can control everything and interleave

00:43:21.940 | and make it all work.

00:43:22.900 | But I don't wanna do that all the time.

00:43:24.860 | And this is the situation, Ben,

00:43:27.380 | is you should have the ability to do that, sure,

00:43:29.940 | but don't do it all the time.

00:43:30.780 | And what I constantly seek and when I'm happiest

00:43:32.940 | is when I'm not in those modes.

00:43:34.380 | And what my productivity skills then gain me

00:43:36.380 | is that like I'm working four hours out of the day

00:43:39.420 | and I can end early and go do something else.

00:43:41.880 | Go hang out with my kids or prepare a project for them

00:43:43.840 | for when they get home from school.

00:43:45.400 | So this again, gets to this core distinction

00:43:47.900 | between productivity and accomplishment.

00:43:49.620 | You can be a very good programmer and produce great code

00:43:52.180 | and be respected for it and hone your craft

00:43:55.160 | and take breaks when you're waiting for, you know,

00:43:58.100 | compiles or features to be merged in.

00:44:01.340 | And so I might suggest that, Ben.

00:44:03.140 | Like don't overplan that time.

00:44:05.060 | Just like see what you're in the mood for.

00:44:06.260 | Maybe you just need to like rest

00:44:08.420 | or you're reading something

00:44:10.780 | or you're doing something that's vitally important.

00:44:13.460 | Like trying to follow up on the last minute

00:44:15.940 | minor league signings with invites to spring training camp

00:44:18.740 | that the nationals are doing.

00:44:19.620 | Like that's the type of thing

00:44:20.820 | you should probably be spending those breaks doing.

00:44:24.180 | But you don't have to necessarily fill every minute

00:44:25.740 | of that time with what could I do that's productive?

00:44:29.060 | So I'm using you as an example, Ben,

00:44:30.300 | to try to make that distinction.

00:44:31.820 | You can be honing your craft

00:44:33.460 | and doing things that are important

00:44:34.580 | and enjoy your accomplishments.

00:44:35.700 | You can be organized and you can be productive.

00:44:37.420 | All of that can be true

00:44:38.320 | and you don't have to be filling every minute with work.

00:44:41.420 | And Jesse, when I, because you know,

00:44:45.620 | these systems are useful.

00:44:46.900 | I'm good at them 'cause I invented a lot of them.

00:44:49.180 | I can squeeze a lot into a day.

00:44:51.420 | But it's exhausting.

00:44:52.860 | It's not a sustainable way to live.

00:44:54.700 | I mean, it's this weird balance.

00:44:56.420 | If you don't have these 2007 style productivity skills,

00:45:01.020 | it's really stressful if you have anything

00:45:02.780 | but like the easiest job.

00:45:04.500 | It's just, ugh, right?

00:45:06.700 | I'm behind, I'm stressed.

00:45:08.540 | There's this meeting and I'm staying up late

00:45:09.940 | because I didn't even remember this until it's seven

00:45:11.860 | and it's due at seven the next morning.

00:45:13.260 | Like it's no fun, no fun.

00:45:15.360 | When you have these skills, you can avoid that.

00:45:17.980 | But it's this temptation that once you have them

00:45:19.940 | is like, I could get another thing interleaved here.

00:45:23.100 | - You get another job.

00:45:23.940 | - I could add this project, get another job.

00:45:25.260 | Why not one more job?

00:45:26.340 | You know, because you can do it.

00:45:28.740 | It's possible, but you don't want

00:45:31.860 | to necessarily unlock that power.

00:45:35.180 | So that's the way I, I'm getting better at that, I think.

00:45:37.860 | But this is what I'm trying to gain towards

00:45:39.500 | is I've over-provisioned my productivity toolkit.

00:45:42.740 | So when I get into temporary moments of overload,

00:45:47.120 | I can handle it, but the steady state,

00:45:49.400 | I have more time than I know what to do with.

00:45:50.840 | To me, that's the sweet spot.

00:45:52.940 | So we'll see.

00:45:54.180 | - You pick up your books, that's when you read your books.

00:45:55.940 | - I do read a lot of books, yeah.

00:45:57.940 | I just finished a monster, 450 pages

00:46:01.380 | on the history of the NFL.

00:46:02.920 | - Really?

00:46:03.760 | - Yeah, for my sports book group.

00:46:05.900 | - Wow.

00:46:07.800 | - Yeah, I know a lot about the NFL now.

00:46:09.560 | - A lot of Lombardi in there.

00:46:10.800 | - A lot of Lombardi, yeah.

00:46:12.820 | Lombardi, yeah, I'm not, you know what?

00:46:14.160 | I was just about to start going on a long tangent

00:46:16.060 | about the '60s and the NFL and the low-hanging fruit

00:46:19.320 | of these major innovations in the sport

00:46:21.960 | that were all still happening.

00:46:24.220 | So there was this period where if you were Paul Brown

00:46:26.620 | or Vince Lombardi, even as late as maybe Walsh in the '90s,

00:46:30.560 | there are still areas where you could figure out

00:46:32.420 | something new and your team would win for four years

00:46:34.480 | before like the rest of the league caught up

00:46:36.120 | and figured out how to do those same things.

00:46:38.000 | But I'm not gonna go down that road.

00:46:40.160 | I could, but I'm not, I choose not to.

00:46:42.480 | Just like I could add another job, but I don't

00:46:45.040 | 'cause I recognize the power.

00:46:46.200 | All right, let's keep going.

00:46:47.040 | What do we got here?

00:46:47.860 | - And this episode's gonna come out

00:46:48.960 | right after the Super Bowl.

00:46:50.540 | - Yes, yes, we should edit in,

00:46:53.600 | like they did in the Simpsons,

00:46:55.280 | Cruddy Sunday was the name of the season 11 episode

00:46:59.720 | where they go to the Super Bowl.

00:47:01.080 | But they obviously have to film,

00:47:02.960 | do the animation before the Super Bowl,

00:47:04.480 | even though it aired after it.

00:47:05.400 | So they just edited in the names of the teams.

00:47:07.280 | So I think we could do that.

00:47:09.480 | - Yeah, we'll show you a bet slip.

00:47:10.680 | - Yeah, Jesse, that was a very good game

00:47:13.000 | by the Philadelphia Eagles.

00:47:16.640 | I really appreciated how they won by a score of 21-7.

00:47:21.040 | I felt bad that Mahomes had to leave the field

00:47:28.400 | when his ankle broke off.

00:47:30.360 | - All right, enough nonsense.

00:47:33.960 | All right, next question from Michael,

00:47:37.040 | a 32-year-old marketer.

00:47:39.720 | I run my own business.

00:47:40.720 | Sometimes I can let deep work take center stage,

00:47:42.880 | which I love.

00:47:43.960 | Other weeks, the most important thing requires

00:47:46.340 | that I sift through dozens of websites

00:47:47.960 | and send dozens of emails.

00:47:49.780 | This leaves me feeling frustrated.

00:47:51.760 | Now that I've learned to love deep work,

00:47:53.960 | how do I survive the shallow work?

00:47:56.600 | - So Michael, I'm gonna give you a more exaggerated version

00:47:59.280 | of the answer I gave to the original question

00:48:03.680 | we tackled in this segment.

00:48:04.720 | Because you're self-employed,

00:48:06.520 | you have flexibility here.

00:48:07.960 | Let's take advantage of it.

00:48:09.920 | What I'm gonna suggest is consider this schedule.

00:48:12.360 | Deep work every morning until lunchtime,

00:48:16.520 | followed by like an hour of core, like email,

00:48:19.500 | just keep the lights on business work.

00:48:21.400 | On weeks where you have larger, shallow projects

00:48:26.320 | demanding your time, like you talked about in your question,

00:48:28.400 | where like I have to like send a dozen email

00:48:29.960 | and I have to go to a dozen websites,

00:48:31.680 | then you can do that work in the afternoons.

00:48:33.880 | Weeks where you don't have that,

00:48:35.880 | then you can go to the movies.

00:48:37.320 | Now to make this possible,

00:48:39.640 | you're gonna have to reduce to some degree,

00:48:42.320 | not as much as you might think,

00:48:43.400 | but you might have to reduce to some degree

00:48:44.720 | the amount of work, the number of projects on your plate.

00:48:47.140 | But if you're doing deep work every day,

00:48:48.760 | every week until lunchtime,

00:48:50.400 | you're gonna be able to produce a lot of really good stuff.

00:48:53.200 | And then some weeks you have necessary,

00:48:55.800 | shallow, rich projects you have to work as well.

00:48:58.240 | Working every afternoon on that,

00:49:00.320 | you can be on point, use some of my organizational skills

00:49:03.320 | so that you're being pretty effective in those times.

00:49:05.160 | That'll work as well.

00:49:06.160 | So I'm thinking maybe like a 20% reduction

00:49:08.280 | in the projects on your plate

00:49:09.320 | would make that schedule possible.

00:49:11.240 | That is a schedule in which you are never gonna be

00:49:13.160 | so frustrated or disappointed

00:49:14.520 | because you're always doing deep work.

00:49:16.400 | Also, it's gonna be a schedule

00:49:18.760 | where it's gonna be sustainable and quite enjoyable

00:49:21.460 | because you will often have weeks

00:49:22.920 | where you're whatever, going to the movies.

00:49:24.920 | I did my deep work, checked in on my email, it's two.

00:49:28.200 | I don't have a big shallow project going on right now.

00:49:30.840 | I'm gonna go, you know, train for my triathlon.

00:49:34.120 | I'm gonna go work in my woodshed.

00:49:36.000 | I'm gonna go watch a movie or whatever.

00:49:37.900 | That's actually, I think,

00:49:38.920 | a really enjoyable, sustainable lifestyle.

00:49:41.660 | It sounds shocking when you first say something like that,

00:49:45.400 | but I bet, Michael, if you did that right,

00:49:48.280 | the difference in your income as a business would be minor.

00:49:51.760 | Like an amount of money that you would pay

00:49:53.960 | to be able to have a schedule like that.

00:49:56.520 | But again, this comes back to

00:49:57.560 | what's really holding us back there

00:49:59.000 | is probably not a fear

00:50:01.040 | that your company is gonna go out of business.

00:50:03.040 | It is, like we've been talking about,

00:50:05.520 | this intermingling between productivity and accomplishment.

00:50:10.280 | This idea that if I have the ability with productivity tools

00:50:13.980 | to fill every minute of my day, and I'm not doing that,

00:50:17.660 | then I'm diminishing my accomplishment.

00:50:19.320 | So that's the trade-off I'm making.

00:50:21.000 | When we recognize they're relatively orthogonal,

00:50:23.120 | hey, if you do deep work every morning most weeks,

00:50:25.200 | you're gonna do really good projects

00:50:26.880 | and build stuff you're proud of.

00:50:27.920 | Your business is gonna be fine.

00:50:30.280 | That's what matters.

00:50:31.120 | Oh, and then, you know, for the other stuff

00:50:32.280 | do it in the afternoons

00:50:33.120 | and some weeks will be busier than others,

00:50:34.320 | but have a workload such that that's always enough time.

00:50:36.560 | So you have to cancel a couple of projects,

00:50:38.000 | cancel a couple of projects.

00:50:39.600 | That is completely a reasonable approach

00:50:42.080 | if you believe that my accomplishment requires this,

00:50:44.600 | my productivity can serve that.

00:50:46.420 | So that's what I think, Mike.

00:50:48.480 | I think you should try something like that.

00:50:49.680 | It could be a different schedule,

00:50:50.640 | but I think you should try something like that

00:50:51.880 | where you're never far away from deep work

00:50:54.320 | and your shallow demands,

00:50:56.000 | your provision so that like the worst shallow demands

00:50:58.320 | you can handle in a schedule that still has deep work,

00:51:00.600 | and on the good days,

00:51:01.440 | your schedule is something that like,

00:51:02.680 | you won't even tell people about

00:51:03.920 | because they'll be too jealous that three days in a row,

00:51:07.260 | you were able to just kick back and do something else.

00:51:11.200 | So give that a try.

00:51:14.480 | All right, let's do one more.

00:51:16.680 | - All right, sounds good.

00:51:17.520 | Next question's from Marie.

00:51:19.440 | How do you balance the desire to optimize systems

00:51:21.880 | and maximize productivity

00:51:23.240 | with the value of making genuine human connections?

00:51:26.500 | - Yeah, again, this comes back to the same theme.

00:51:29.720 | That's why I put this in here.

00:51:31.680 | When I'm in super time block mode,

00:51:34.560 | because all three of my jobs are humming at the same time,

00:51:38.320 | it does hurt human connection.

00:51:39.960 | I'm not on text threads.

00:51:43.160 | I'm not, I don't know what my family's texting about.

00:51:45.840 | I might not see email for a couple of days,

00:51:48.200 | on the inboxes that aren't directly related

00:51:51.140 | to what I'm working on.

00:51:52.860 | I'm not having sort of long phone calls

00:51:54.920 | with people I know.

00:51:55.800 | I become sort of hard to reach.

00:51:58.240 | And that is a reality of very productive days.

00:52:02.600 | We can put quotation marks around productive,

00:52:04.200 | but if you're gonna use my techniques to their full extent

00:52:06.800 | and time block every minute of your day,

00:52:08.560 | you're not gonna be chiming in on casual text threads.

00:52:10.860 | In fact, I form an antagonistic relationship

00:52:13.500 | with text messaging, non-professional text messaging

00:52:16.340 | during my busy periods,

00:52:18.020 | because I'll just see out of the corner of my eyes,

00:52:19.680 | like various people are,

00:52:20.760 | hey, what about this and texting me things?

00:52:22.600 | And I'm thinking, A, I can't deal with this right now.

00:52:25.200 | I'm in the middle of a 30 minute block

00:52:26.480 | and I know what it needs to be.

00:52:27.360 | But B, now you put something in my head

00:52:29.120 | that I have to remember.

00:52:30.320 | Now there's an open loop and I'm almost be antagonistic,

00:52:34.080 | which is not the relationship you want

00:52:35.560 | with your family and friends.

00:52:37.640 | So what you're pointing out here, Marie, I think is true.

00:52:42.300 | And I think the solution to it is to work less.

00:52:46.280 | So don't be in those super tightly timed,

00:52:48.880 | super tightly time block days all the time.

00:52:51.880 | That have a steady state, a sort of normal state

00:52:54.000 | where you have breathing room in your schedule.

00:52:55.800 | And you can actually put aside time.

00:52:57.240 | I'm gonna take a whole hour for lunch

00:52:58.680 | and I might call someone and check in on some text messages.

00:53:01.880 | I will unsolicited just send someone something,

00:53:04.320 | a friend of mine, like, hey, I read this

00:53:06.300 | and I thought about you.

00:53:07.400 | Have the breathing room to actually proactively service

00:53:12.400 | your social connections.

00:53:15.160 | I think that's the right way to do it.

00:53:17.080 | The other thing that people do,

00:53:19.300 | which I think works just as bad

00:53:20.800 | as always having every minute time block, by the way,

00:53:22.840 | is saying, well, because I don't want to ignore people,

00:53:27.000 | because I want to be friendly,

00:53:28.200 | what I'll do is just do my work bad all the time.

00:53:30.340 | So I'll just always sort of have this here.

00:53:32.680 | And if anyone texts, I will stop whatever I'm doing,

00:53:35.480 | I'll answer that text.

00:53:36.440 | And I'll just sort of always be involved

00:53:38.080 | in back and forth throughout the day.

00:53:39.320 | I think a lot of people fall back on that default.

00:53:41.800 | They don't want to ignore people.

00:53:43.420 | And so that's what I'm gonna do.

00:53:44.440 | But then all your work is bad.

00:53:45.880 | You're constantly context shifting

00:53:48.200 | and you're reducing your ability throughout the entire day.

00:53:50.080 | So that's why I think the right middle ground here

00:53:51.800 | is I will schedule time.

00:53:53.940 | I have enough breathing room in my schedule

00:53:55.400 | that I can schedule time to check in

00:53:57.680 | on these other things in my life that are important to me.

00:53:59.600 | And when I'm doing that, I'm gonna do that.

00:54:01.000 | I'm gonna do it well.

00:54:02.200 | And when I'm not doing that, I'm doing something else.

00:54:03.880 | I'm not gonna mix them.

00:54:05.800 | So we don't want to completely mix work with socializing.

00:54:09.600 | We don't completely want work to push socializing

00:54:11.740 | out of the way all the time.

00:54:13.200 | So what we want to do is have a reasonable enough

00:54:16.960 | work schedule that there is time in it

00:54:19.540 | dedicated to social activity.

00:54:23.320 | Now you couple that with a clear schedule shutdown,

00:54:25.620 | complete rituals that when you're not working,

00:54:27.720 | you're not working.

00:54:28.560 | And of course you are open to people

00:54:29.720 | and you can be incredibly social.

00:54:31.360 | I mean, the one thing,

00:54:33.600 | I don't know if this is where Marie is trying to get.

00:54:34.800 | A lot of people try to get there with me where they say,

00:54:37.120 | I just want you to end up in a place where the answer

00:54:39.240 | is just, it's fine that I'm on my text all day.

00:54:41.920 | And I'm not gonna end up there.

00:54:43.640 | What's the point of having a job

00:54:44.980 | if you're just gonna do it poorly?

00:54:46.040 | Like you're putting yourself in a cognitive state

00:54:48.520 | that makes it very difficult to do whatever you do.

00:54:50.320 | So that's what I think we should be aiming for

00:54:52.160 | is when you're working, you're working.

00:54:53.640 | So put breaks during your work

00:54:54.840 | to actually connect to other people.

00:54:56.640 | That's the sweet spot.

00:54:59.720 | I gotta do more of that.

00:55:00.680 | I mean, Jesse, when I'm time blocked up to the hilt,

00:55:03.240 | I'm just off the radar.

00:55:05.760 | I am off the radar.

00:55:07.560 | You know, people are saying, you've seen this.

00:55:08.860 | Like if I'm in a reasonable day,

00:55:10.840 | I'll answer your text messages.

00:55:12.440 | And if I'm not, you're just not gonna hear from me.

00:55:15.280 | - Yeah.

00:55:16.120 | - And it's not like I'm looking at my phone and saying,

00:55:18.280 | forget you, Jesse.

00:55:19.200 | It's like, I haven't seen my phone in three hours.

00:55:21.240 | - Yeah.

00:55:22.080 | - I'm just like, I'm, you know, rock, rock, rock,

00:55:23.320 | rock and rolling.

00:55:24.160 | Yeah.

00:55:25.440 | You don't wanna live that way all the time.

00:55:27.720 | I feel like that's the theme that's emerging

00:55:28.960 | from these questions is,

00:55:30.560 | you need to know how to organize yourself.

00:55:32.640 | It's stressful if you're not.

00:55:34.400 | You can still be very accomplished if you're disorganized,

00:55:36.280 | but why have the stress?

00:55:38.060 | But don't take those skills for granted.

00:55:41.020 | Don't push them to an extreme.

00:55:42.520 | Don't use them to fill every minute,

00:55:44.920 | every minute of your day constantly working.

00:55:46.600 | Because if you always are in that state,

00:55:48.280 | it's unsustainable and it creates

00:55:49.520 | all these other negative externalities.

00:55:50.840 | I feel like all of my answers today have been about

00:55:53.920 | finding this smart balance.

00:55:56.640 | How do I deploy these skills,

00:55:58.400 | but still have intention about what I want my day

00:56:01.600 | to be like.

00:56:03.160 | - Back in 2007, when you wrote that article

00:56:06.420 | and you were talking about the drive,

00:56:07.760 | did you think about money a lot?

00:56:10.120 | Was that a factor?

00:56:10.960 | - No, because I had gone to grad school

00:56:14.200 | instead of industry.

00:56:15.880 | So psychologically, I'd already walked away from money.

00:56:19.280 | So I had a job offer on the table from Microsoft,

00:56:21.800 | which back then, so that was in 2004 when I had that offer.

00:56:25.080 | So this was Google wasn't a thing yet.

00:56:26.840 | Facebook wasn't a thing yet.

00:56:28.000 | Microsoft was the, Amazon was small.

00:56:31.120 | So I had this big offer from Microsoft.

00:56:33.160 | They're gonna send me to business school.

00:56:35.140 | It was, what was his name?

00:56:37.140 | Not Bill Gates, but--

00:56:39.120 | - Ballmer?

00:56:39.960 | - Ballmer had this pet program where he's like,

00:56:42.360 | we're gonna hire engineers and we're gonna send them

00:56:46.760 | to graduate school at Northeastern,

00:56:48.360 | or Northwestern at Kellogg.

00:56:50.400 | And we're gonna send them to graduate school.

00:56:51.680 | It's easier to train talented engineers to be businessmen

00:56:55.280 | than it is to train business people to be engineers.

00:56:58.360 | And we're gonna send them for free to business school

00:57:01.000 | to be project managers.

00:57:02.560 | And there was this whole program.

00:57:04.240 | And I remember for the time, it felt like a lot of money.

00:57:06.800 | And then I was, I'm gonna go to grad school instead.

00:57:08.840 | So I'd already made that decision.

00:57:10.900 | So psychologically, money was not on the table.

00:57:13.920 | So what was on the table, why you go to grad school,

00:57:15.960 | what's on the table if you're at a school like MIT

00:57:18.000 | is citations, impact, publications.

00:57:20.800 | That was what accomplishments was.

00:57:23.080 | Was you produced, and this is why I'm so obsessed

00:57:25.740 | about ideas, 'cause this was the entire atmosphere

00:57:28.080 | I was in.

00:57:28.920 | You produce an idea that was influential, it was smart.

00:57:32.340 | Everyone's citing it.

00:57:33.480 | Everyone's using that to do their own work.

00:57:35.120 | You wrote this book that everyone's reading.

00:57:36.880 | It was all an ideas economy.

00:57:38.980 | And everyone just sort of had enough money.

00:57:41.560 | Like, I don't know, I'm a professor, I'm bad with money,

00:57:44.780 | but I have, I live, I haven't thought much about it.

00:57:47.880 | I live in Boston, it's fine.

00:57:49.280 | It was like, everyone had enough money.

00:57:52.480 | No one really cared about money.

00:57:54.200 | It was all an idea economy.

00:57:55.620 | And everyone wanted to be rich at that economy.

00:57:57.260 | So all that stuff is so influential

00:57:59.680 | to the way I think about things now.

00:58:01.520 | Interesting times.

00:58:04.400 | All right, so I wanna switch over to something interesting.

00:58:06.080 | Before I do, I wanna mention another one of our sponsors,

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00:58:42.140 | as this family was on the ground

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00:59:03.340 | because it is not a plastic thing that you throw away

00:59:09.060 | you know, every week.

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00:59:21.300 | precisely manufactured, beautiful old school capital T tool.

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00:59:31.140 | little razor blade,

00:59:32.260 | and you put it onto this piece of aluminum

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00:59:35.380 | And it's so precisely engineered

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00:59:54.900 | So with one 10 cent razor,

00:59:57.140 | which you use this beautiful,

00:59:58.900 | beautifully engineered aluminum razor,

01:00:02.620 | you get a great shave that you would otherwise need

01:00:04.900 | with one of those plastic subscription bands.

01:00:07.300 | And I might be exaggerating,

01:00:08.220 | but I think they have 17 blades in them now.

01:00:10.620 | It's how it works.

01:00:11.460 | So if you wanna get a good shave with a cheaper made razor,

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01:00:18.740 | And I think now the subscription service,

01:00:21.020 | it's a wall of blades that you just,

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01:00:26.540 | With a Henson's, one 10 cent safety razor blade

01:00:31.540 | put into this beautifully engineered piece

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01:00:34.480 | you get a shave that can literally cause traffic pileups.

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01:02:43.720 | All right, so to wrap up the show,

01:02:47.020 | I like to pull at least one thing interesting

01:02:49.500 | that listeners have sent to Jesse and I

01:02:52.120 | at the interesting@calnewport.com email address.

01:02:55.660 | This is where people send me things

01:02:56.920 | they think I might be interested about

01:02:58.680 | from the world of the internet.

01:03:01.560 | And I like to feature some of these on the show.

01:03:04.420 | So today, I'm gonna switch over to it now.

01:03:06.580 | Today I chose something someone sent me just the other day

01:03:09.360 | that was really relevant actually to our conversation.

01:03:12.460 | So I thought it would be good to focus on.

01:03:14.820 | So this is a, it was a article, I suppose.

01:03:19.300 | Let me see if they say where this is from.

01:03:21.660 | I have it on the screen now.

01:03:22.500 | So if you're watching again, episode 235,

01:03:24.500 | if you're watching on YouTube, Cal Newport Media,

01:03:26.920 | it's from a magazine called Change.

01:03:28.480 | It's from their January, February, 2023 issue.

01:03:32.920 | The title of the article is "The Productivity Trap,

01:03:37.840 | Why We Need a New Model of Faculty Writing Support."

01:03:42.520 | So I won't read the whole article,

01:03:44.600 | but there's a nice abstract.

01:03:45.720 | So we can go over a couple of points from the abstract here

01:03:48.560 | because I think it's interesting and it gets to,

01:03:51.020 | gets exactly to the point of our episode today

01:03:53.440 | about thinking about the complicated relationship

01:03:56.800 | between productivity and meaningful accomplishment.

01:03:59.220 | So here's a couple bits of summary from this article.

01:04:04.220 | One, productivity is so entrenched in our visions

01:04:06.960 | of good work and a successful academic career

01:04:08.740 | that has become normalized and thus very hard to question.

01:04:13.740 | Valorizing exceptional productivity

01:04:15.860 | normalizes escalating standards.

01:04:17.940 | It is hard to know how much is enough,

01:04:19.740 | especially when more always seems better.

01:04:23.160 | The myopic focus on productivity feeds the illusion

01:04:26.520 | that we can and should live up to its demands.

01:04:30.980 | So let's just stop there for now.

01:04:33.600 | This is an interesting critique of academia,

01:04:35.980 | which at least based on my experience of computer science,

01:04:39.580 | that's my field, so I don't wanna speak for other fields,

01:04:41.500 | but at least based for my field,

01:04:42.700 | there is a lot of truth to this.

01:04:45.240 | There is a notion of productivity that has taken hold

01:04:48.600 | a long time ago in my particular field

01:04:50.640 | that's based on quantity.

01:04:53.120 | How many papers have you published?

01:04:55.320 | Papers in top venues.

01:04:57.120 | What I learned coming up is more is better than less,

01:04:59.740 | and I got really good at that.

01:05:00.920 | I was trained to do that.

01:05:02.420 | How do you publish five plus papers a year in good venues?

01:05:07.420 | And when I got to Georgetown,

01:05:09.200 | I had been trained up right at MIT,

01:05:12.040 | and I could fire up that engine,

01:05:14.200 | and because I was very organized,

01:05:15.440 | I could find a way to do it

01:05:16.440 | that it wasn't gonna completely dominate all my time,

01:05:18.760 | and I could go up and get tenure early.

01:05:20.360 | But it does feel like a trap

01:05:21.720 | because if five, why not six?

01:05:24.160 | If six, why not seven?

01:05:25.120 | It really does push you towards quantity.

01:05:27.520 | And everyone you talk to in my field would say,

01:05:32.360 | that doesn't seem that important.

01:05:33.760 | It's kinda crazy that this is what we have to fixate on.

01:05:36.720 | So what would be the alternative?

01:05:37.840 | Well, in computer science, the alternative is quality.

01:05:40.080 | Have you produced something that's important

01:05:41.840 | that's really changed the field?

01:05:43.160 | Like that's actually, literally speaking,

01:05:44.900 | what's gonna matter.

01:05:45.800 | I produced a new idea.

01:05:47.420 | It took me a long time, but I produced a new idea

01:05:50.840 | that changed the way we solve things,

01:05:52.440 | it increased our understanding in a non-trivial way.

01:05:54.720 | It's hard to have those breakthrough ideas

01:05:56.800 | when you're publishing five papers, six papers,

01:05:59.440 | seven papers a year.

01:06:01.980 | So I think this point here is interesting.

01:06:04.560 | Now, what do we do about it?

01:06:06.060 | Well, in computer science,

01:06:07.360 | there was an interesting proposal.

01:06:09.000 | So there's a trade group called CRA,

01:06:11.480 | and they had a, I guess it was a task force

01:06:15.380 | to look into this question,

01:06:16.540 | and they came back with a recommendation,

01:06:18.240 | which I thought was simple, but brilliant.

01:06:20.200 | And they said, here's what we should do.

01:06:21.480 | We should say, when you are being hired for an academic job,

01:06:26.400 | you send us your three best papers

01:06:27.960 | you published as a grad student.

01:06:29.160 | And that's all we'll look at.

01:06:30.840 | How good are your three best papers?

01:06:33.120 | I don't care if you publish 50 others,

01:06:34.700 | how good are your three best papers?

01:06:35.800 | And when you later, so you get hired, go up for tenure,

01:06:38.860 | you send us five papers.

01:06:40.600 | These are the five papers I think are my best work.

01:06:43.560 | And we say, how good are these papers?

01:06:45.200 | What is the, what's your highest quality work?

01:06:47.800 | How quality was it?

01:06:50.080 | And everyone who hears this idea says, that would be great.

01:06:53.000 | If I could spend two years trying to make an idea right,

01:06:55.940 | I would not feel like I was on this treadmill.

01:06:58.360 | I would produce much more important work.

01:06:59.800 | I think my accomplishments in the long run

01:07:01.560 | would be more meaningful.

01:07:03.280 | But it's very difficult to shift over to a model like that

01:07:06.720 | because everyone has to shift over together

01:07:09.320 | or it doesn't work.

01:07:10.780 | How do you get tenure, for example?

01:07:12.360 | It all comes down to, for the most part,

01:07:14.400 | letters from other academics in your particular field

01:07:17.000 | from around the world.

01:07:17.960 | And they look at your resume,

01:07:19.400 | they look at your publications,

01:07:20.640 | they should know you at this point.

01:07:22.320 | And they write letters

01:07:23.160 | for the university rank and tenure committee that says,

01:07:25.360 | here's how we think about this person.

01:07:27.860 | What is their reputation in the field?

01:07:29.380 | How good are they?

01:07:30.480 | Not a bad way to do it, right?

01:07:31.760 | Let's just get people who know the field to say,

01:07:34.000 | is this a serious researcher?

01:07:35.460 | Let's get rid of the games.

01:07:36.880 | What's their reputation?

01:07:38.300 | The problem is, if everyone else out there

01:07:41.000 | is still thinking about quantity as being the main metric,

01:07:43.960 | when those letters come back in,

01:07:45.800 | if your institution says, oh no,

01:07:47.440 | we just care about your three best papers,

01:07:49.200 | and that's all we sent out,

01:07:50.480 | those letters are still judging you

01:07:51.720 | on whatever the cultural convention is.

01:07:54.000 | Which is, Cal only published seven papers

01:07:56.800 | since he's been an assistant professor.

01:07:58.440 | Like, that's not great.

01:08:00.040 | So if we can't switch over everyone,

01:08:01.800 | it's hard to make changes incrementally.

01:08:03.200 | So this is why I think trap is probably a good word.

01:08:06.240 | It's hard to get away from that.

01:08:08.180 | So this article,

01:08:10.240 | I'm looking at a couple other points here.

01:08:12.760 | They say, academia will not be inclusive

01:08:15.160 | as long as we fixate on productivity.

01:08:17.520 | That is absolutely true as well.

01:08:19.760 | I think when quantity is what matters,

01:08:22.680 | then you really begin to sort out

01:08:25.360 | who is gonna be able to really excel

01:08:27.160 | based in large part about available time they have for work.

01:08:31.140 | The most successful grad student I know, for example,

01:08:36.000 | due to visa issues, could never travel,

01:08:37.840 | could never go home, was basically stuck here,

01:08:39.640 | and just worked 12 hours a day every day,

01:08:41.480 | except for three hours on the weekend,

01:08:42.920 | on Sundays for exercise, right?

01:08:44.560 | So it really makes a difference.

01:08:46.960 | And then you begin to shift.

01:08:48.400 | And now you're not shifting based on underlying brilliance,

01:08:53.040 | impact of ideas.

01:08:54.280 | You're beginning to sort academic implicit ranking

01:08:57.920 | based on how much time do you have available to work,

01:09:00.400 | which is that really what we wanna do?

01:09:02.320 | You're probably leaving a lot of potential Einsteins

01:09:04.360 | on the table if you require anyone

01:09:07.280 | who wants to try to be the next Einstein

01:09:09.080 | to also have the ability to work as many hours as he does.

01:09:12.280 | They also say, when we shift the primary goal of writing

01:09:16.000 | support to sustainability,

01:09:17.480 | we acknowledge that faculty writers

01:09:19.680 | are valuable resources worth protecting.

01:09:22.080 | From this perspective,

01:09:22.920 | valorizing peak productivity is extractive and exploitative

01:09:25.840 | of individual writers, one another,

01:09:27.560 | and the larger scholarly ecosystem.

01:09:29.120 | So, I think this is an interesting case study

01:09:33.120 | of the issues with completely melding

01:09:36.160 | more tactical quantitative notions of productivity

01:09:39.720 | with more subjective long-term impactful notions

01:09:42.800 | of accomplishment.

01:09:44.080 | And there's some interesting ideas

01:09:45.480 | about what can we do to get away from that.

01:09:47.480 | It's a hard problem,

01:09:49.200 | but I'm glad people are thinking about it.

01:09:51.120 | I do have one bone to pick.

01:09:52.760 | I've been picking this bone

01:09:53.800 | ever since I first started speaking

01:09:55.480 | on doctoral bootcamp committees as a young professor.

01:09:58.920 | Writing is not the right verb.

01:10:02.480 | This is my one complaint

01:10:03.600 | about people talking about academia.

01:10:06.480 | Writing is not synonymous with productive,

01:10:10.240 | useful, accomplished academic work

01:10:12.520 | for mathematicians or computer scientists or physicists.

01:10:15.800 | Most of the work we do is thinking and proof solving.

01:10:18.920 | Writing is just what you do at the end

01:10:20.440 | to put it into a paper.

01:10:22.000 | This is a big bugaboo of mine

01:10:23.400 | that literally no one else cares about.

01:10:25.800 | But in a lot of other academic fields,

01:10:27.560 | they use the verb writing to mean research.

01:10:29.920 | And in computer science, I'm on a whiteboard.

01:10:32.800 | I'm in a notebook.

01:10:34.040 | Writing is like when you put it all together

01:10:35.760 | at the end into a paper that you submit,

01:10:37.160 | that takes four days.

01:10:38.880 | So, I used to terrorize doctoral bootcamps

01:10:41.280 | back when I still had time to talk at doctoral bootcamps.

01:10:43.560 | And I would say, stop using the word writing.

01:10:45.880 | It's thinking, it's reading, it's trying to solve things.

01:10:49.680 | It's deep work.

01:10:51.640 | Some of that actually involves putting words on paper,

01:10:53.840 | but not most of it.

01:10:54.680 | So, that's my one bone to pick

01:10:56.800 | that no one else cares about.

01:10:59.040 | But there's a few other mathematicians out there

01:11:01.720 | that are clapping right now.

01:11:03.560 | They're clapping really loudly.

01:11:05.280 | Yes, Cal's got it.

01:11:07.320 | So, anyways, I thought that was interesting, Jesse.

01:11:09.400 | Here is real world evidence of how other people

01:11:12.600 | are identifying and grappling with the same type of issues

01:11:14.600 | we talked about today.

01:11:16.520 | All right, so I think that's all the time we have.

01:11:20.240 | Thank you for whoever sent in

01:11:21.840 | this productivity trap article.

01:11:23.120 | Thank you for whoever sent in their questions as well.

01:11:26.280 | We'll be back next week with another episode of the show.

01:11:30.280 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:11:33.280 | (upbeat music)

01:11:35.880 | [Music]

Ep. 235: Is Productivity Overrated?

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