Full Length Episode | #176 | February 24, 2022

00:00:00.000 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, episode 176.

00:00:11.480 | I'm here as always in my Deep Work HQ, joined by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:23.800 | We're going to do a good old fashioned listener calls episode, right, Jesse?

00:00:28.880 | We've got some calls that we're going to get through.

00:00:30.280 | Yep.

00:00:30.880 | Got five good calls.

00:00:32.160 | Take a listen.

00:00:33.160 | I'm still interested in this idea of doing some of these live.

00:00:36.200 | Have we figured out if that's technically possible or is this one of these things?

00:00:39.960 | If we try that, essentially the power grid in Maryland will go down.

00:00:43.920 | The two inches of snow already did that, but I think we can do it.

00:00:48.600 | Yeah, we should try it.

00:00:49.840 | We should try.

00:00:50.480 | I think that'd be cool.

00:00:51.240 | Yeah.

00:00:51.720 | Or, you know, I did, um, I did a thing for a charity and maybe

00:00:58.640 | this will give us some sense of what we would expect.

00:01:00.480 | I did a thing for a charity a few months ago where I auctioned

00:01:03.480 | off like a, basically like a call.

00:01:05.440 | You know, it was sort of like a private episode of Deep Questions, but it was

00:01:08.280 | just like a Zoom call for like a half hour.

00:01:10.200 | It was cool.

00:01:10.480 | So I got to just hear from, uh, and then I doubled it because it was pretty popular.

00:01:14.320 | So I was like, well, just I'll do two because there was two bidders

00:01:16.800 | that were real near each other.

00:01:18.640 | So I was like, well, let's double the money.

00:01:19.960 | And so like, I'll do two.

00:01:21.560 | And it was an interesting, um, preview, I guess, uh, about what, what that could be like.

00:01:27.080 | And I would say they were pretty, they were pretty excited.

00:01:28.760 | So I don't know that we'd have to, we'd have to, that's something to keep in mind.

00:01:32.680 | I think they were pretty excited to be talking.

00:01:34.320 | It was weird for them.

00:01:36.920 | So that's something we'd have to get over.

00:01:38.240 | We have to get people used to like the, the, like, yeah, so you just talk to me.

00:01:41.800 | It's like a thing.

00:01:42.440 | It's not an unusual thing.

00:01:43.640 | And then they can add counter questions to their initial questions.

00:01:48.600 | Yeah.

00:01:48.680 | And I could ask follow-ups, which I think would be cool.

00:01:50.600 | Yeah.

00:01:51.080 | Yeah.

00:01:51.440 | Um, yeah.

00:01:52.760 | And we would charge a huge amount of money.

00:01:54.600 | So only the richest people could get wisdom and everyone else will be screwed.

00:01:59.600 | That's the, that'd be the key to it.

00:02:01.400 | Uh, but no, we won't do that.

00:02:04.560 | All right, cool.

00:02:05.000 | So we're gonna try to figure that out.

00:02:05.880 | I think that'd be fun.

00:02:06.520 | A huge logistical headache.

00:02:07.720 | I'm sure.

00:02:08.160 | Because they have to be on zoom and waiting and we do the episodes live.

00:02:11.160 | So they'd have to kind of call in, but we could figure it out.

00:02:13.280 | Yeah.

00:02:13.960 | I think it'd be cool.

00:02:14.680 | All right.

00:02:15.760 | Well, uh, so we, we got some cool calls today.

00:02:18.040 | Uh, I wanted to first do something we haven't done in a little while, which

00:02:20.880 | is an old fashioned deep dive.

00:02:24.280 | We've been doing some core idea videos because I've been trying to populate

00:02:27.200 | our playlist of here are the main ideas that we do on this show, but I want to

00:02:30.880 | get into this a good old fashioned deep dive, just a random idea on my mind

00:02:34.760 | that I want to try to dig into more.

00:02:38.120 | So let's do a deep dive to start today's episode.

00:02:40.560 | And the question I want to tackle is the following is tech talk a good thing.

00:02:47.840 | No, it seems like an unusual question for me to be asking.

00:02:52.640 | There's a lot about this service tech talk that does not exactly seem to be

00:02:56.440 | right up my Cal Newport style alley.

00:03:00.040 | Right.

00:03:00.840 | I mean, I am not a huge fan of the fact that they are trying to basically cut

00:03:07.360 | out the middleman and just make a direct path to your brainstem.

00:03:10.960 | It takes addictive entertainment and says, well, can't we just pump that up to 11?

00:03:16.400 | Instead of making this accidentally addictive, we actually just get the

00:03:20.120 | absolute perfect format with the exact right music cues and just shoot these

00:03:23.560 | things that people want after another with an algorithm driving it.

00:03:26.040 | I don't love that.

00:03:26.720 | I don't love the fact that they manipulate.

00:03:29.000 | The content creators, emotional systems to get them to spend more time doing it.

00:03:33.560 | Tick-tock just says they admit it.

00:03:36.240 | We manipulate your views like a slot machine that gives you a few quarters

00:03:40.760 | every once in a while so that you'll keep pulling that proverbial handle.

00:03:43.640 | So if you're a new to tick-tock, they will early on show your video to a lot

00:03:48.040 | of people, so you feel like you're right on the cusp of breaking out that people

00:03:51.280 | really like what you have to do, that you have this audience out there and

00:03:54.240 | then they pull it back, they withhold.

00:03:55.760 | No views, no views.

00:03:57.520 | And they'll show it to a lot more people, another video and you're like,

00:03:59.600 | Oh, I'm almost there.

00:04:00.360 | I got to keep going.

00:04:01.200 | I'm, I almost had three cherries.

00:04:02.640 | And if I get three cherries, I'm going to be Kim Kardashian.

00:04:04.560 | I don't love all that.

00:04:05.560 | Wouldn't be my favorite thing to do, but I'm very interested in, I have a very

00:04:11.520 | optimistic view on tick-tock because I believe it represents an evolution.

00:04:18.760 | In the social media industry that ultimately is a very positive evolution.

00:04:22.720 | We've talked about this before in various question answers scattered

00:04:26.800 | throughout recent episodes.

00:04:28.000 | I wanted to consolidate these thoughts right here into this deep dive.

00:04:31.400 | Starting around 2012, 2013, we entered this period of monopoly social media

00:04:40.320 | platforms that brought with them, and this was the key part, an

00:04:43.600 | expectation of universal usage.

00:04:46.560 | So there was this era of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and a few other

00:04:51.880 | claimants to the throne that came and went, where not only did everyone use

00:04:56.560 | them, but it was weird if you didn't.

00:04:58.800 | And again, I talk about this a lot on this show, but I know that from

00:05:02.280 | firsthand experience because I was pilloried for not using these services.

00:05:07.000 | It was considered extreme.

00:05:08.880 | It was considered monastic and unusual.

00:05:14.000 | There is people that were driven to anger by the concept that I wasn't

00:05:17.640 | on these platforms that wanted to debate me publicly and couldn't imagine it.

00:05:21.680 | I was ambushed on national radio shows, the New York Times commissioned

00:05:25.800 | op-eds just about the weirdness of not taking social media

00:05:29.920 | serious and Cal not using it.

00:05:31.480 | I mean, it was a technology that was assumed you had to use.

00:05:36.000 | And this was the piece of the social media revolution that always

00:05:39.640 | made me really uncomfortable.

00:05:40.840 | I used to say this again and again.

00:05:43.680 | I think social media should be like Game of Thrones, something that a lot of

00:05:48.160 | people really like and enjoy, but there's also a ton of people that

00:05:51.120 | have nothing to do with it.

00:05:52.160 | And that's what it should be like.

00:05:53.760 | And it wasn't.

00:05:54.480 | It was like, if you didn't know what the dragon riders spells were in Game of

00:06:00.680 | Thrones, you were going to be yelled at.

00:06:01.920 | That's what it was like for a while.

00:06:03.200 | TikTok represents something different.

00:06:06.080 | TikTok is pure entertainment.

00:06:10.640 | And the way we got to TikTok, the way we got there is that the social media

00:06:14.280 | services that we've talked about before on the show, they used to be about

00:06:17.320 | connection, it used to be about everyone you know is on here.

00:06:20.200 | This is where everyone is.

00:06:21.680 | This will connect you to those people, people you know, you have to use our

00:06:24.840 | service because your cousin's not on this new service, your cousin's on Facebook.

00:06:28.320 | If you want to know what your cousin's up to, you have to be on Facebook.

00:06:30.360 | And then they shifted and said, how do we get these people to click on our app more?

00:06:34.080 | And they said, let's be about entertainment.

00:06:35.600 | We'll give you a newsfeed or infinite scroll timeline of

00:06:39.120 | interesting things to look at.

00:06:40.400 | So they shifted away from connecting you to people, you know, in towards

00:06:44.160 | let's give you a infinite scrolling torrent of algorithmically optimized

00:06:47.800 | content, and it was in that world that TikTok said, hold my beer.

00:06:50.840 | That's what we're doing.

00:06:52.440 | Why don't we just do that?

00:06:53.280 | Well, forget like post from your cousin.

00:06:56.680 | Forget, you know, Ben Shapiro articles being retweeted.

00:07:00.120 | Let's just go straight to the jugular here, videos with music and they move

00:07:04.880 | really fast and they're short and it's one after another, one after another,

00:07:08.600 | one after another, and we aggressively use algorithms to find the video

00:07:13.000 | that you really want to watch.

00:07:13.880 | They just cut out the middleman and purified this infinite

00:07:16.120 | stream entertainment model.

00:07:17.920 | And the reason why this is a good thing is that it does not bring with it

00:07:22.680 | an expectation of universal usage.

00:07:24.720 | Yes, TikTok is very popular right now.

00:07:27.440 | There's over a billion users worldwide.

00:07:29.720 | That's a very popular service, but no one thinks it's weird if you don't use it.

00:07:37.480 | If I say I don't use TikTok, people say, I don't care.

00:07:40.000 | It's like saying, I don't watch Game of Thrones.

00:07:41.920 | People say, well, I mean, I'm a little surprised you do seem like a nerd,

00:07:44.600 | but like, I'm not mad at you.

00:07:46.360 | I'm not threatening to debate you.

00:07:48.720 | I'm not ambushing you on radio shows.

00:07:50.320 | I'm not commissioning New York times op-eds about why aren't you using it?

00:07:53.880 | Because it's just entertainment and it's good at it for now.

00:07:58.480 | And it has cultural relevance and then other things will come along.

00:08:01.040 | And I think this is a very positive movement because once we have shifted

00:08:05.440 | these platforms to pure diversion, we've gotten rid of the network effect

00:08:09.920 | advantage that everyone, you know, needs to be on these platforms.

00:08:12.680 | It opens the door for a lot of competition.

00:08:15.920 | It opens the door for a lot of varieties and it opens the door for a lot of

00:08:19.160 | different personal preferences about how they engage with these media.

00:08:22.080 | Seven years ago, it was incredibly difficult to be 21 and not using Facebook.

00:08:28.400 | Today, no one cares if you don't use TikTok and TikTok will come and it will go.

00:08:33.840 | And there will be three other things that come in its wake.

00:08:35.800 | And then there'll be 12 other things that come in those wakes.

00:08:37.720 | And some people will use those services and some people will use long

00:08:40.360 | tail social media services where you pay a little bit of money and it's a niche

00:08:43.800 | crowd and it's very niche information.

00:08:45.400 | And some people will ignore social media altogether and use

00:08:48.200 | podcasts and streaming services.

00:08:49.880 | And there's going to be a whole variety of different fragmented, varied

00:08:55.640 | approaches to diversion and entertainment.

00:08:57.600 | And I think that's fine.

00:08:58.480 | And that's a perfectly fine use of the internet.

00:09:00.080 | And once we're away from this, this expectation of universal usage,

00:09:03.280 | people now have breathing room.

00:09:04.560 | And they can start to say, what do I value?

00:09:07.120 | What do I want to spend my time on?

00:09:08.280 | And in digital minimalist fashion, construct lives that

00:09:10.800 | use technology in a useful way.

00:09:12.080 | That was impossible to do when you would be looked at like a

00:09:17.600 | leper, if you weren't on Instagram.

00:09:19.320 | It's very easy to do in a world that we're heading towards in which

00:09:24.280 | there's 17 TikTok clones and 50 other types of things that people use.

00:09:27.640 | And everyone uses their own combination of things for

00:09:30.080 | entertainment and diversion.

00:09:31.080 | In that world, you can create combinations that are good for

00:09:33.160 | you without raising an eyebrow.

00:09:35.320 | So yes, I don't love TikTok as a service in the sense that I'm not

00:09:39.200 | going to spend a lot of time on it.

00:09:40.400 | I don't know that I would say that it is a good thing if you were

00:09:43.760 | spending hours of your day on it.

00:09:45.280 | But as a indicator about where the industry is going, I think it's

00:09:50.040 | positive that it exists and is so popular because it is a death knell

00:09:54.520 | for that age of monopoly universal usage.

00:09:58.520 | It is a death knell for that age where if you weren't on one of these

00:10:01.280 | three platforms, you were somehow outcast from society.

00:10:04.840 | That was, as I always said, a weird temporary period.

00:10:08.760 | And I am thankful that I think now we are moving out of it.

00:10:13.840 | That's my thoughts on TikTok.

00:10:16.280 | Have you used it, Jesse?

00:10:17.960 | I've never used TikTok.

00:10:19.600 | Yeah.

00:10:20.040 | Um, I have some good buddies who use it in the lacrosse world.

00:10:23.720 | Yeah.

00:10:24.200 | But see, that's, that's, what's good about this.

00:10:25.920 | And like, it doesn't, it's not a surprising or weird thing that you haven't used TikTok.

00:10:29.720 | Whereas this was five years ago.

00:10:31.600 | If I was like, Hey, have you, uh, have you ever used Facebook?

00:10:34.480 | And you said, no, like, that'd be a weird thing.

00:10:37.320 | That would be unusual thing.

00:10:39.080 | Where here it's like, yeah, I have some buddies who use it and you probably

00:10:41.720 | have a bunch of buddies who don't.

00:10:42.600 | Exactly.

00:10:44.240 | Yeah.

00:10:44.560 | I think that's better.

00:10:45.360 | I think that's better.

00:10:46.040 | So I'm not, I'm not anti TikTok.

00:10:48.000 | Again, I'm not using it myself, but.

00:10:50.320 | Until you start doing your dancing video.

00:10:53.520 | Well, again, yeah, that's what we should do.

00:10:55.400 | We've talked about that before.

00:10:56.520 | That's that's really what's going to break open.

00:10:58.800 | This channel is going to be, we lean in heavy on TikTok and, um, wait, no, I

00:11:04.920 | thought the idea was that you would be dancing aggressively in the background

00:11:08.360 | while I was delivering the information.

00:11:09.760 | Yeah, that's right.

00:11:10.360 | Yeah.

00:11:10.680 | Yeah.

00:11:11.240 | Holding a lacrosse stick.

00:11:12.280 | That's going to do it.

00:11:15.400 | That will drive the very last, the very last listener off of our show.

00:11:20.120 | Oh my.

00:11:22.560 | All right.

00:11:22.960 | Uh, let's do a couple of sponsors here.

00:11:24.880 | Pay the bills.

00:11:25.480 | We got to get good sets for the TikTok video.

00:11:27.520 | So we gotta kind of pay the bills here.

00:11:29.320 | Um, so let's talk Headspace.

00:11:32.000 | Headspace.

00:11:33.640 | I am glad to have them as a sponsor.

00:11:35.480 | I think it makes a lot of sense that they are a sponsor of this show.

00:11:38.240 | If you haven't heard of Headspace, you probably have, but if you, if you

00:11:40.920 | haven't, uh, it is an app in which you can select from a large

00:11:44.800 | library of guided meditations.

00:11:47.120 | It is what we need in our current age of uncertainty and anxiety and those

00:11:51.920 | winter gray blazes that have these guided meditations to get your head, uh, where

00:11:57.440 | you want it to be, to get your thoughts where you want it to be.

00:12:00.200 | I mean, we all say the word "fine" when people ask us how we're doing.

00:12:06.160 | Say "fine."

00:12:07.040 | We never really ask, what does that mean?

00:12:09.400 | That's not an emotion.

00:12:10.400 | For a lot of, for a lot of us, a lot of times when we say "fine," we're

00:12:14.200 | really feeling anger or stress or anxiety, or we feel completely overloaded.

00:12:18.240 | That's why we need something like Headspace, which is scientifically

00:12:21.160 | proven to help you manage your feelings and mental health.

00:12:23.640 | There was one recent study that recently proved that in just two weeks, Headspace

00:12:29.200 | can reduce your stress by 14%.

00:12:32.280 | So whether you want to relieve stress and anxiety, sleep better, or improve

00:12:35.920 | your focus, Headspace is your everyday dose of mindfulness for real life.

00:12:39.560 | Jesse, I was telling you about this earlier.

00:12:41.680 | Uh, I was working with the Headspace app and found they have a whole section

00:12:45.400 | of focus-related guided meditations.

00:12:49.720 | So I want to work on something hard.

00:12:52.280 | I'm all over the place.

00:12:53.840 | I just saw the TikTok video of Jesse dancing aggressively with a lacrosse

00:12:58.920 | stick while Cal is trying to give advice.

00:13:00.520 | And I am just distracted and devastated with the state of humanity.

00:13:04.520 | And you want to get your focus.

00:13:05.680 | So because I need to work on something real, you can do a guided meditation on focus.

00:13:09.720 | It walks you through it and you are, you're locked in.

00:13:13.760 | Gets you organized.

00:13:14.960 | It was pretty cool.

00:13:15.560 | Yeah.

00:13:16.120 | Uh, they didn't ask me to do that.

00:13:18.360 | They should have me, I don't know why they didn't ask

00:13:19.640 | me to narrate the focus one.

00:13:20.840 | They probably will.

00:13:21.960 | Yeah.

00:13:22.240 | It should be like focus, focus, focus, work deeper.

00:13:29.360 | Um, so no, the good news is they do not have me narrate

00:13:33.000 | the focus guided meditation.

00:13:34.120 | So you can be, you can, you can be, uh, rest assured you

00:13:37.280 | don't have to deal with that.

00:13:38.280 | Um, so anyways, Headspace makes a lot of sense, especially in our current

00:13:41.680 | uncertain anxiety producing times.

00:13:44.560 | So however you're feeling try Headspace at headspace.com/questions and you'll

00:13:49.120 | get one month free of their entire mindfulness library that is the

00:13:55.200 | best Headspace offer available.

00:13:57.160 | So go to headspace.com/questions today.

00:13:59.240 | That's headspace.com/questions.

00:14:02.840 | Let's also talk Blinkist.

00:14:05.160 | Blinkist was one of the first sponsors of the deep question podcast.

00:14:09.960 | And for good reason, because they offer something that our

00:14:12.920 | listeners really need.

00:14:14.720 | Blinkist is a subscription service that gives you these 10 to 15

00:14:18.560 | minutes summaries of some of the best and most important nonfiction

00:14:22.200 | books that are out there.

00:14:23.280 | These summaries are called Blinks.

00:14:25.400 | And in just 10 or 15 minutes, you get the core ideas of all of the

00:14:29.640 | biggest books currently published.

00:14:32.560 | So for example, and this is from my own life, I read Yuval Harari's

00:14:38.200 | Sapiens, I like a lot of people found it really insightful.

00:14:41.360 | And then he wrote Homo Deus as a follow-up.

00:14:44.080 | Like a lot of people, I was like, I don't really know what that's about.

00:14:46.880 | I like this guy, but I don't really understand what that's about.

00:14:48.720 | Should I read this book?

00:14:49.520 | You know how I figured that out?

00:14:50.520 | I read the Blink.

00:14:51.800 | 15 minutes later, like, Oh, I get what's going on here.

00:14:55.400 | And I can decide, do I need to go further and read this book?

00:14:58.200 | Another example I've been recommending to people is my friend, Adam Alter's

00:15:01.880 | book, Irresistible, which gets into the mechanics of how digitally

00:15:06.600 | engineered distraction works.

00:15:08.600 | This is a topic that's really relevant.

00:15:10.600 | You can get the big ideas from his book in 10 or 15 minutes and

00:15:13.560 | then make the decision, ah, do I want to buy and read the whole book?

00:15:16.800 | Or as I learned what I need for now.

00:15:18.200 | And that's how I recommend using Blinkist to survey the landscape of a subject

00:15:21.920 | matter you care about, learn the main terms, learn the main ideas and

00:15:25.120 | figure out which of the books you might want to dive in deeper and read in more.

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00:15:50.160 | Blinkist.com/deep.

00:15:53.080 | All right.

00:15:54.880 | There's some ads.

00:15:55.600 | Let us, uh, let's get into some calls.

00:15:58.400 | How many do we have today, Jesse?

00:15:59.360 | What's our collection look like?

00:16:00.440 | We have five calls.

00:16:01.600 | All right.

00:16:02.160 | I like it.

00:16:03.280 | So let's, who do we got for the first one?

00:16:05.720 | The first one is Thomas and he basically has a question about deep

00:16:10.200 | life and how that applies to sales.

00:16:12.520 | Nice.

00:16:13.040 | All right.

00:16:13.400 | Hey Cal, my name is Thomas.

00:16:17.840 | First, I wanted to say thank you for all that you do.

00:16:19.960 | And your work has really helped me live a better life.

00:16:22.080 | Uh, anyways, I work for a software development company and I'm starting

00:16:25.840 | my own recruiting agency as well.

00:16:27.520 | For both companies, my main focus is currently sales and business development.

00:16:31.480 | I'm usually focused on outbound sales work, like calling, emailing,

00:16:35.720 | and curating and sharing relevant articles with prospects.

00:16:38.840 | My question is how can I incorporate deep work into my role

00:16:42.800 | and how does it apply to sales?

00:16:44.360 | Also, how do you see outbound or inbound sales, uh, for that matter, evolving

00:16:49.560 | as buyers continue to be inundated with emails and calls, thanks for taking

00:16:54.320 | the time to answer my questions.

00:16:55.480 | Uh, well, Thomas, I mean, I think when it comes to any work activity,

00:17:02.360 | probably the relevant term, and I think you're, you're mixing two similar

00:17:06.960 | terms together, but I'm going to separate them, probably the relevant

00:17:10.600 | term here is deliberate practice.

00:17:12.360 | Maybe even more so than deep work.

00:17:15.360 | So deep work, and you can go back and watch my core idea video about this.

00:17:19.040 | It's an activity.

00:17:19.760 | It's an activity where you give something focus without distraction.

00:17:22.520 | And it's a mental state in which you produce at a high level

00:17:25.720 | for your cognitive capacities.

00:17:27.440 | I mean, clearly on a sales call, you know, this, you want to be doing just

00:17:30.960 | that and you don't want to be checking your email at the same time, but I

00:17:33.640 | think what's really relevant here is the related topic of deliberate practice.

00:17:37.560 | It's something I write about in my book.

00:17:40.440 | So good.

00:17:41.160 | They can't ignore you.

00:17:42.600 | How do you take this concept and apply it to the really varied and weird

00:17:47.040 | and kind of squishy to measure type activities that make up

00:17:49.880 | typical office style work?

00:17:51.400 | And my argument is we should be trying to do these efforts.

00:17:53.640 | We should be trying to deliberately improve in the office.

00:17:57.880 | We should be applying deliberate practice, which means we have to

00:18:00.160 | design activities specifically to stretch our ability beyond where we're

00:18:04.040 | comfortable using feedback to help keep us aimed in the right place.

00:18:08.920 | And in that stretch, we get better and better.

00:18:10.440 | That's probably the key thing for sales.

00:18:12.520 | It's continually saying.

00:18:14.480 | What are the key skills here?

00:18:17.400 | What makes a better sales call versus a worse one and designing

00:18:21.120 | activities to stretch your abilities, getting feedback to make sure that

00:18:24.720 | you're aimed in the right direction.

00:18:26.120 | And this might be something you do with mentors.

00:18:27.720 | This might be something you do with studies or courses, but there's a lot

00:18:31.160 | of improvement to be done here and what really works and what does it in

00:18:34.200 | the type of sales that you do, and you should have the mindset of, I want

00:18:37.040 | to get better at this in a month than I am right now, and I'm not going to

00:18:39.880 | be better in a month just by doing a lot more calls, I'm going to get better

00:18:42.480 | by doing a lot more deliberately structured activities that stretch me

00:18:45.920 | in the places where I am not yet good, or I could be better.

00:18:49.840 | So you've got to get in the information about what matters here to

00:18:53.000 | design activities, to stretch you.

00:18:54.520 | That's how you get better and better.

00:18:56.520 | Once you have that mindset, the issue of the mediums changing, people

00:19:00.960 | aren't listening to emails as much.

00:19:02.400 | People are more inundated with distractions.

00:19:04.320 | So how do we sell better?

00:19:05.280 | You're going to react to that naturally because you're already going to be in

00:19:08.520 | this mindset of trying to figure out what works and stretching yourself

00:19:11.280 | towards what's better, getting back metrics, seeing what works, what doesn't,

00:19:14.080 | moving towards the things that do.

00:19:15.360 | So you'll already be in that mindset.

00:19:16.760 | So you'll already be shifting away from the trouble areas and towards

00:19:20.000 | the new modalities that work better.

00:19:21.400 | So that's what I would suggest.

00:19:24.120 | This is a deliberate practice play.

00:19:26.360 | You want to train at sales calls, like an athlete training to pick up a new

00:19:30.320 | type of shot, like an athlete, trying to get an accuracy higher.

00:19:34.200 | You want to train like a chess player, trying to master a new type of opening

00:19:37.160 | deliberately structured work.

00:19:38.920 | And we do this not just for success for the sake of success.

00:19:42.480 | We do this because it makes you better than you were, which

00:19:46.520 | gives you more career capital.

00:19:47.760 | And with that career capital, you get more flexibility and

00:19:49.840 | autonomy over your working life, which is ultimately the whole game

00:19:53.400 | here is get that capital gain control.

00:19:54.960 | Your working life, move it towards what resonates in a way from what doesn't.

00:19:57.720 | All that's built on skill.

00:19:59.000 | The skill comes from practice.

00:20:01.160 | So that is the term Thomas.

00:20:02.680 | I want you to have in mind is deliberate practice, not necessarily deep work.

00:20:08.480 | All right.

00:20:10.600 | Who do we got next?

00:20:11.120 | Jesse.

00:20:11.360 | Next up we have Anthony.

00:20:13.360 | He has a question.

00:20:14.560 | You've been getting a lot of these questions lately about

00:20:16.560 | seeking counter-arguments.

00:20:18.080 | Hi, Cal, Anthony here.

00:20:23.640 | Thank you for your books, your articles, and this podcast.

00:20:27.120 | They truly inspire me to keep living the deep life.

00:20:30.880 | Keep up the great work.

00:20:32.560 | My question is about your advice to seek out the best counter-arguments when

00:20:39.440 | developing a philosophy or stance on an issue.

00:20:42.520 | I think the advice makes sense.

00:20:45.360 | I was just wondering if you could provide some tips on how to actually go about

00:20:51.480 | finding the best counter-arguments and engaging with them.

00:20:54.800 | What does this process look like?

00:20:57.440 | How do you go about doing it?

00:20:59.920 | Any details you could share would be helpful.

00:21:03.000 | Thank you.

00:21:04.040 | Well, Anthony, this question has come up a couple of times recently.

00:21:09.120 | And the answer I gave last week in responding to a similar question was find

00:21:17.120 | someone that you know or trust or respect that is on the other side of a topic and

00:21:23.640 | then ask them, what are the great sources here?

00:21:27.280 | Like what's the writing that inspires you?

00:21:29.680 | What's the writing that's the foundation of whatever it is you care about, right?

00:21:33.360 | So like, let's say your natural instinct is towards a sort of big

00:21:38.840 | government political theory.

00:21:40.760 | You're like, I should probably understand what these libertarians are about.

00:21:44.200 | So I kind of understand the opposite side of it.

00:21:46.280 | Find, you know, everyone has the libertarian friend, they kind of advertise.

00:21:49.320 | And be like, what's the thing you're reading, man?

00:21:51.200 | What got you into this?

00:21:52.080 | Like, who do you think the big books are here, the ones that made you into this?

00:21:56.280 | And then they tell you, like, great.

00:21:57.480 | Okay.

00:21:57.680 | So these were the books they read that were quite inspiring to them.

00:21:59.880 | And then you know what to go read.

00:22:00.880 | So that's what I'd recommend.

00:22:02.280 | Find someone that seems reasonable on that side of the argument and ask

00:22:06.200 | them, not for their arguments, not for their particular reasons, but what

00:22:11.480 | they read that was most inspiring.

00:22:12.880 | It's usually not that hard to find.

00:22:14.480 | Almost every stance and almost every position on almost every

00:22:17.800 | topic has some foundational text.

00:22:19.560 | So it's all about going and finding foundational text.

00:22:22.160 | Here's the added benefit of doing that, that I wasn't able to mention last time.

00:22:26.120 | Put aside the particular content that you are exploring when you do this exercise.

00:22:31.800 | You are being exposed when you do this on a regular basis to foundational text.

00:22:36.800 | Foundational texts in abstract are incredibly interesting and useful to

00:22:42.520 | encounter because what makes a text foundational, it means someone was

00:22:46.720 | able to come in on some topic and deliver such a well-organized and

00:22:51.720 | persuasive structuring of the world.

00:22:54.480 | That many people changed the way they lived their lives because of it.

00:22:58.480 | Those are cool books.

00:23:00.680 | I think Tyler Cowen calls these quake books.

00:23:03.120 | They cause an earthquake in your, in your personal intellectual life.

00:23:06.600 | Just being exposed to that type of writing, I think is exciting.

00:23:10.480 | And it also really sharpens your own rhetorical skills because you're

00:23:14.040 | being exposed to the very highest level of people trying to be persuasive

00:23:18.120 | about understanding the world.

00:23:19.040 | So even if you don't care about what they're saying, even if after you read

00:23:23.520 | what they're saying, it doesn't change your mind because you read a quake

00:23:25.800 | book on the other side and when they combined, you realize like that

00:23:28.280 | side's probably right, you're still picking up the raw craft tools.

00:23:31.520 | And it's a really interesting, fun reading experience.

00:23:34.880 | And it infuses in you the power of nonfiction done right.

00:23:38.520 | So that is a hidden benefit I wanted to point out here is that not only do you

00:23:42.560 | enrich in your own understanding of a topic by reading the best stuff on the

00:23:48.800 | other side, not only does that give you more authenticity, not only does that

00:23:51.280 | give you more deeper roots of understanding, not only does that give

00:23:53.560 | you the confidence to take actual action.

00:23:55.480 | It also exposes you to a really cool genre of writing, those types of books

00:24:00.400 | that can change the way that people live.

00:24:03.000 | And I got to say, I just have to, I continue to double down on this idea

00:24:07.120 | that it is not wrong to expose yourself to people that you worry you disagree with.

00:24:12.200 | Be very, very wary of anyone who says, I don't want you being exposed

00:24:18.480 | to that because you might be tricked.

00:24:20.280 | I won't be, I'm smart, I'm sophisticated, but you might be tricked

00:24:24.080 | into believing the wrong thing.

00:24:25.320 | So I don't want you to listen to that.

00:24:27.200 | And in fact, we should probably make that thing go away because people

00:24:30.080 | might hear that and be tricked.

00:24:31.280 | We need to be very careful about what you hear.

00:24:33.880 | That is always the character you don't want to be in the Orwell novel.

00:24:37.680 | That's always the character in the Huxley book that you're saying like,

00:24:40.600 | ooh, that's not the guy I like.

00:24:42.000 | All right.

00:24:42.320 | So just be very wary of that.

00:24:44.000 | I can think of no better way to build convictions than to expose those

00:24:47.800 | convictions to good arguments that disagree.

00:24:51.160 | It's going to nuance and sophisticate your, your understanding.

00:24:54.160 | And as I talked about last week, it means you're going to take more

00:24:57.360 | action, more action in the service of things you care about if you're exposed

00:25:01.640 | to the countervailing arguments, because you get more confidence in your stance.

00:25:06.080 | You get more nuance.

00:25:07.160 | You're not just online firing emojis at people.

00:25:10.600 | You actually say I get this and feel strong about this.

00:25:13.520 | And I have a sophisticated dialectically formed vision on this.

00:25:16.800 | So why don't we actually get out there and make some change?

00:25:18.840 | So a lot of great things come out of that strategy, Anthony.

00:25:21.440 | So seek out those books, read those books and you will be well off.

00:25:27.200 | All right.

00:25:31.240 | Moving right along here, Jesse, what do we got next?

00:25:32.920 | All right.

00:25:33.880 | Next up, we have a question from Joe and he's got a, he talks about little bets,

00:25:37.760 | a concept that you introduced in your book.

00:25:39.560 | Uh, so good.

00:25:40.320 | They can't ignore you.

00:25:41.040 | Hi Cal, this is Joe from the Midwest.

00:25:47.240 | I wanted to thank you for answering my previous questions, especially the one

00:25:50.360 | about, um, getting, recognizing that we're going through a year of a dumpster fire

00:25:55.440 | and to spend the summer really chiseling away at the deep work and get a Marine

00:26:00.960 | stove while I do it.

00:26:02.040 | Um, didn't get the Marine stove, but I did spend a summer working on the big

00:26:05.840 | project and it was, it helps keeps me, keep me sane.

00:26:09.160 | Um, my question is about little bets.

00:26:12.480 | You mentioned it so good.

00:26:13.800 | They can't ignore you that you allot time to pursue little bets and you test them

00:26:19.680 | out on your blog as short little blog posts, or you test them out in different

00:26:23.480 | ways.

00:26:24.120 | I'm wondering.

00:26:25.600 | As, as you get deeper into your career, do you still allot a significant amount

00:26:30.120 | of time for these little bets?

00:26:31.520 | For me, I'm very fortunate that I got my first book deal.

00:26:36.640 | I'm working really hard on that project and a couple of other really big rocks

00:26:41.640 | for my career, but I don't really see short of Athena bursting out of my skull,

00:26:47.360 | how I can allot specific time just to pursue little bets when these other

00:26:52.080 | looming deadlines and big projects need my attention now.

00:26:56.760 | So if you could spend some time talking about what role does little bets take as

00:27:00.640 | you get deeper into your career, I think it would really help.

00:27:03.600 | Thanks.

00:27:04.320 | Well, Joe, congratulations on the book deal.

00:27:08.680 | Uh, shame, however, for not buying a Marine pellet stove is that is critical.

00:27:14.880 | That is critical to any deep work shed space for people who don't remember this

00:27:19.760 | question.

00:27:20.240 | Uh, it was Michael Pollan when Michael Pollan built a writer shed in the woods

00:27:26.200 | behind his house in Kent, Connecticut.

00:27:28.320 | He heated it with a Marine pellet stove.

00:27:31.880 | So it's, it's a, like a pellet burning stove you put on a boat.

00:27:34.440 | So it generates heat, but it's like small, you know, because it's

00:27:38.400 | main just for heating a boat.

00:27:40.440 | And so you put a pellet Marine pellet stove in your teeny house and that's

00:27:44.840 | how you heat it while you look out over the snow strewn fields and the snow

00:27:50.320 | laden boughs of the birch trees and Kent, Connecticut, and have that warmth

00:27:55.360 | as you write in your, your, uh, cabin wood line cabin, that's the vision.

00:28:00.160 | So yeah, you still need to buy that stove.

00:28:02.520 | I actually went, uh, I went out to Kent, Connecticut a few years ago and was

00:28:07.440 | doing a speaking gig out there.

00:28:08.720 | And, and it was like at a conference, like one of these conferences they used

00:28:11.280 | to do for, uh, rich people basically.

00:28:14.720 | And the rich people come and then a bunch of speakers and writers

00:28:19.560 | come and give talks and stuff.

00:28:20.640 | And, and the speakers and writers come because they want to meet

00:28:22.840 | the other speakers and writers.

00:28:23.960 | And then the, uh, the rich people come because they want to, you know,

00:28:26.800 | hear from the speakers and writers.

00:28:28.440 | It's kind of a weird thing, but kind of a cool thing.

00:28:30.160 | And it was in Kent, Connecticut.

00:28:31.680 | So Michael Pollan was there because he still kept that house in Kent, Connecticut.

00:28:35.200 | And, uh, who else was there?

00:28:37.520 | Henry Kissinger was there.

00:28:38.680 | Cause he turns out to have a house in Kent, Connecticut.

00:28:42.080 | He's very old now, but he was there as well.

00:28:43.640 | Um, but that was interesting.

00:28:45.400 | So that's when I learned like, oh, Paul and has the house here.

00:28:48.320 | And I can tell you, it's like a beautiful town.

00:28:50.760 | It has like this kind of fancy main street and then it's all hills and trees.

00:28:54.120 | And I get why people flee New York to move to Kent.

00:28:57.200 | And so that's my, that's my Kent, Connecticut story.

00:29:00.080 | Um, all right, but let's get back to Little Bets.

00:29:02.560 | So Little Bets was a concept I talked about.

00:29:05.240 | And so good.

00:29:05.640 | They can't ignore you.

00:29:06.360 | It was coined by, I believe the author's name was Sims.

00:29:10.000 | Maybe Phil Sims.

00:29:12.160 | Yeah.

00:29:13.040 | I'm not quite sure.

00:29:13.800 | Do you have it, Jesse?

00:29:14.880 | You could look it up, right?

00:29:15.720 | Well, Phil Sims is definitely a NFL quarterback.

00:29:18.560 | So I was saying, well, he's an NFL quarterback who also writes about

00:29:22.400 | business strategy in his book, Little Bets.

00:29:24.960 | Is that all right.

00:29:25.520 | So probably not Phil Sims.

00:29:26.360 | Can you, can you do like a Joe Rogan, Jamie thing here and see if we can find out?

00:29:30.080 | No, I feel bad.

00:29:31.080 | I feel bad that I'm using the.

00:29:32.280 | The wrong name.

00:29:34.240 | Anyways, I think the guy's name was Sims.

00:29:35.880 | I mean, I, this is a decade ago I wrote this book.

00:29:38.440 | Uh, but it was a, uh, a self-explanatory concept of in your career, in your

00:29:45.040 | business, what you want to try to do is take steps for which you can get feedback.

00:29:51.600 | And then you can see, and that can direct it.

00:29:54.000 | Oh, I get feedback.

00:29:54.720 | Like this isn't resonating.

00:29:55.680 | This is, let me go that direction.

00:29:56.760 | Let me try a couple more bets.

00:29:57.760 | And by making a sequential bets and making your future actions based on

00:30:05.080 | the feedback from those bets, you can actually have like an evidence-based

00:30:07.680 | way of guiding what you do.

00:30:10.400 | And this is better than he would argue.

00:30:13.000 | Uh, coming up with a huge, big plan in abstract and then like, I'm gonna go

00:30:17.760 | execute this three-year plan, you know, and I hope it goes well.

00:30:20.600 | So Sims was saying, take bets and get feedback.

00:30:23.680 | John Sims.

00:30:24.600 | Is it John Sims?

00:30:25.840 | That doesn't sound right.

00:30:26.560 | Can you find, can you find the book little bets on?

00:30:30.120 | I'll look for it.

00:30:31.280 | Yeah.

00:30:31.680 | Like Amazon or something like that.

00:30:32.880 | If it is Phil Sims, that'd be awesome.

00:30:35.080 | If the, if the quarterback, if the quarterback was writing that book.

00:30:40.120 | Phil Sims is on Mad Dog every Friday.

00:30:42.040 | I love that spot.

00:30:43.680 | Okay.

00:30:44.000 | So Phil Sims is on Mad Dog every Friday talking like Harvard business

00:30:48.920 | review style, career strategy.

00:30:51.240 | Like Mad Dog, let me talk to you about getting feedback from the right market

00:30:55.800 | segments on your consulting firm.

00:30:57.880 | Um, so Joe, I mean, I think the key thing to take away from little bets is.

00:31:03.160 | Peter Sims.

00:31:04.560 | Peter Sims.

00:31:05.680 | I was close.

00:31:06.840 | Yeah.

00:31:07.200 | Yeah.

00:31:07.480 | Phil Peter.

00:31:08.040 | Peter Sims, little known fact, younger brother of NFL quarterback.

00:31:13.120 | I'm just going to, I'm just going to put that out there.

00:31:14.760 | It's good to clear that.

00:31:16.720 | Um, so the feedback's what's key.

00:31:19.800 | So Joe, the feedback's what's key.

00:31:21.480 | Right.

00:31:21.880 | And so I'm thinking about your situation.

00:31:25.560 | Yeah.

00:31:25.840 | At some point you're, as you get feedback and you move along, you get to the

00:31:29.520 | place where the steps are pretty big.

00:31:30.880 | But if you're thinking about a book, you're writing a book now, but how

00:31:33.160 | did you come to write that book?

00:31:34.280 | Hopefully there was a sequence of little bets where you were finding, uh, these

00:31:38.440 | ideas, what resonates, what seems to have an audience.

00:31:41.480 | And so you have this clear feedback before you actually go to the

00:31:44.320 | stage of writing a book about it.

00:31:45.680 | I think that's a clear example.

00:31:46.840 | I mean, take something like my most recent book, a world without email.

00:31:50.040 | How many years can you go back and hear me talking about these things?

00:31:53.320 | I mean, you can go back and like my first appearance on the

00:31:56.920 | Ezra Klein podcast years ago.

00:31:59.240 | I'm working through a bunch of the core ideas that became a world without email.

00:32:03.920 | Right.

00:32:04.200 | Years before how many articles that I write, there's actually an article I wrote

00:32:08.440 | for the Harvard business review to promote deep work, so all the way back

00:32:13.160 | in 2016, that was about getting rid of email and working through some concepts

00:32:19.280 | that made their way into the book.

00:32:20.320 | So I, years of why workout concepts and my little bets are I write about them

00:32:23.760 | or I talk about them on this podcast, or I talk about them on other podcasts,

00:32:26.800 | or I write articles about them and I see what the response is.

00:32:29.320 | So like, I'm thinking now I might write a book about slow productivity.

00:32:33.400 | I've been testing out this, this idea.

00:32:35.400 | I wrote a New Yorker piece about it.

00:32:37.480 | Got some pretty good feedback that was useful.

00:32:39.240 | I did a podcast video about this, a core idea video that was useful.

00:32:44.200 | I talked about on Tim Ferriss's podcast and I could see when he split up

00:32:48.840 | that interview into segments, he did a clip of the slow productivity discussion.

00:32:52.800 | And that's the most viewed clip of all the clips he did from the, the podcast.

00:32:56.680 | That's feedback on this.

00:32:58.400 | So there's a little bets that are helping me put together what I want to do.

00:33:01.280 | And at some point I'm going to write a book about it.

00:33:02.720 | So Joe, I would say that's the takeaway message is you want to get real feedback

00:33:06.640 | from people, not people like friends, but actual unbiased feedback.

00:33:10.640 | Are you buying this?

00:33:11.360 | Are you paying for this?

00:33:12.000 | Are you giving me money and allow that to help direct you

00:33:14.480 | towards which direction you go.

00:33:15.600 | But I think you're absolutely right to point out that a little bet strategy.

00:33:19.160 | We'll eventually lead you to really big things to take time.

00:33:22.520 | You do a lot of bets on, on topics.

00:33:25.120 | You might then spend, end up spending two years writing a book, do a little

00:33:28.720 | bunch of little bets on a product.

00:33:30.200 | You might end up at some point taking on investment and going all in on a business.

00:33:33.600 | And that's a multi-year commitment one way or the other.

00:33:35.680 | So that's true.

00:33:36.320 | Little bets lead to big commitments, but the key is not to jump right

00:33:40.400 | into that big commitment just because you hope, or you have a reasonable

00:33:45.000 | story about why, what you're going to do would be useful that you

00:33:47.240 | actually have some evidence.

00:33:50.120 | And if you doubt that talk to NFL quarterback, Phil Sims, he will fill your

00:33:55.480 | ear, you will fill your ear with thoughts on, on little bets.

00:34:00.320 | All right.

00:34:02.080 | That's a blast for the past.

00:34:04.680 | So good.

00:34:05.080 | They can't ignore you as 2012.

00:34:07.240 | So yeah, we're at the 10 year, 10 year anniversary.

00:34:10.400 | Interesting.

00:34:11.840 | Like that's when I kick off.

00:34:13.520 | That's when I kicked off my writing career as a nonfiction idea book writer.

00:34:19.800 | I wrote these three books for students.

00:34:21.680 | That's how I got my sea legs.

00:34:23.400 | That's how I built up my craft.

00:34:24.560 | And so good.

00:34:24.960 | They can't ignore you was the vision I had all along.

00:34:27.640 | And I want to write idea books, nonfiction books, table at Barnes and

00:34:30.640 | Noble on NPR, you know, New York times articles, like that's what I wanted to do.

00:34:35.880 | And that's where I kicked off that transition.

00:34:38.000 | So it's like a really important book for me.

00:34:39.880 | It was the first time someone said, okay, you're, you're allowed to write

00:34:43.000 | a hardcover book about an idea.

00:34:45.240 | It's a crazy thing.

00:34:46.800 | Like just an idea you made up, you know, and we're going to, you can just put that

00:34:51.800 | in a book and we'll, we'll see what happens.

00:34:53.560 | So that was definitely a big, big transition for me.

00:34:56.800 | That's a cool story.

00:34:57.800 | Yeah.

00:34:59.120 | Um, and it was good.

00:34:59.840 | That book went to auction.

00:35:01.000 | And at the time it seemed like a lot of money.

00:35:02.840 | It's how we bought our first, you know, it was the down payment for our first

00:35:06.560 | house and how we bought our first car.

00:35:09.320 | As we came out to Georgetown was because that book was really, I wrote

00:35:13.520 | it right before I came out here and it came out like right after I got here.

00:35:16.640 | It's my memory.

00:35:17.760 | My memory is right after I got to Georgetown, it came out, but

00:35:20.720 | I wrote it as a postdoc.

00:35:21.960 | And so it was exciting.

00:35:23.040 | Like it was some money and not like life changing money, but like bigger, bigger

00:35:28.440 | by far, like factor of five bigger than I was getting for the student books or

00:35:31.360 | whatever, and then it didn't do well out of the gates, right?

00:35:35.960 | So there's a story in that, like we, we, uh, there's a big push.

00:35:40.040 | We, we hired a good PR company and, um, you know, it just kind of disappeared.

00:35:48.440 | We're like, oh man, I guess, you know, I didn't know how publicity,

00:35:52.200 | I had no idea how book sales work.

00:35:53.440 | I don't, I still don't know how that works.

00:35:54.680 | And it's like, okay, I guess, uh, do I get to keep doing this?

00:35:57.860 | I don't know.

00:35:58.360 | And so I pitched them deep work finally into like, yeah, but

00:36:00.800 | we're going to pay you less money.

00:36:01.760 | But if you want to write it, go ahead, you know, and it was just a funny thing.

00:36:04.760 | It's just, uh, good ideas are good ideas and it took years, but then it just.

00:36:08.520 | It picked up and, uh, sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but like it was,

00:36:14.000 | uh, it seemed like a dud out of the gate.

00:36:16.560 | And I'll say the two things that seemed to matter was podcasting came along

00:36:20.640 | about two years after I wrote that book.

00:36:23.040 | So I wrote that book.

00:36:24.680 | I did a thing for the New York times and like, uh, got a good, you know,

00:36:27.640 | there's a few things I did and kind of disappeared and it's some

00:36:30.380 | radio, but some stupid radio.

00:36:31.620 | Uh, and then starting around 2014, podcasting became a thing.

00:36:35.600 | And so I became, I was like a very early guest in podcasting circuits,

00:36:40.360 | doing a lot of these early podcasts.

00:36:41.900 | And, and I just did a lot of podcasts.

00:36:44.320 | Like, why not?

00:36:44.880 | I thought it was fun.

00:36:45.680 | And, um, I think that built the slow burn.

00:36:48.560 | If there's like 2014 to 2016, I was on a lot of shows and that's

00:36:52.320 | how I got kind of good at it because I was doing podcasting really early on.

00:36:55.740 | And I sort of learned a medium and I think that's what really two years

00:36:58.180 | after it came out, started that burn.

00:36:59.640 | And then deep work did something similar, but it's burn was much more intense.

00:37:03.780 | Like that, that book sold a lot of copies.

00:37:05.180 | And I think that also just pointed people back towards that original book.

00:37:08.580 | So that's how it all got started for me.

00:37:09.980 | I was, got real excited.

00:37:11.260 | I got this deal, got this book.

00:37:13.180 | It disappeared.

00:37:14.100 | Thought that I'd be done with publishing and then podcasting came

00:37:17.900 | along and deep work came along.

00:37:19.140 | And that's actually like a, it turned out to be a very successful book.

00:37:21.260 | The other thing too, that you talk about and others talk about is you have.

00:37:25.740 | You had another job too, so you weren't relying on that to survive.

00:37:29.020 | So, I mean, you could like give it some time.

00:37:30.700 | Yeah, exactly.

00:37:32.060 | I don't, it would have been harder if I was, well, what happened

00:37:34.100 | in the nonfiction space, and you have to become like a super speaker.

00:37:38.660 | That's what was happening back then.

00:37:40.580 | If you're trying to make a living off of nonfiction advice books, you had to be

00:37:44.520 | doing 30 to 50 speeches a year, you know, and like what a lot of writers would do

00:37:50.660 | in that space, and it's, it's very lucrative by the way, but it's, it's

00:37:55.060 | tough, but a lot of writers would just do year on year off.

00:37:58.500 | So like 50 speeches, killer.

00:38:01.300 | And then a year writing, then 50 speeches a year writing, and you always

00:38:04.740 | had to have the book came out and then your whole, then your, your whole

00:38:06.820 | life is built around the speaking.

00:38:07.900 | So fortunately I was a professor and so I didn't have to do that.

00:38:10.900 | You know, I could just say, I don't know, I guess this book didn't do well.

00:38:13.740 | And I waited a long time.

00:38:14.500 | That book came out in 2012 and then I didn't deep work came out four years later.

00:38:18.420 | So I was having kids and trying to get tenure, you know, and so

00:38:21.740 | that was kind of a fun time, actually.

00:38:22.900 | I mean, there's something innocent to it.

00:38:23.940 | I would do, it was entirely homegrown.

00:38:26.300 | This is the way I remember it is like I would do podcast, uh, in my basement.

00:38:30.980 | And that was it.

00:38:31.980 | And then at some point I started writing deep work, just sort of on my own.

00:38:34.940 | And that was it.

00:38:36.020 | Right.

00:38:36.340 | And then everything else was just organic.

00:38:38.060 | And so that's my view.

00:38:40.060 | If like, if, if a book is right, it will eventually sell a lot of copies.

00:38:43.620 | Um, regardless of what happens early on.

00:38:46.380 | I, I don't know how to make a book, sell a lot of copies right up front.

00:38:49.060 | I've never been able to do that.

00:38:52.860 | It's kind of like what the book says.

00:38:54.220 | It's so good.

00:38:55.060 | You can't ignore you.

00:38:55.660 | So like the book is good.

00:38:57.100 | They can't be ignored.

00:38:58.260 | Yeah.

00:38:58.580 | I don't think anyone knows.

00:38:59.380 | Like my editor, I love the editor on that book.

00:39:00.940 | He's like, this is a great idea.

00:39:02.020 | Like this.

00:39:02.340 | And he was right in the end, we sold a ton of copies of that book.

00:39:05.140 | And he, but he was like baffled.

00:39:06.260 | He's like, why aren't we early on?

00:39:07.940 | Why isn't, why is no one buying this?

00:39:10.020 | It's such, I just don't think people understand or they don't understand

00:39:12.780 | the degree to which like email lists, these other types of dynamics and

00:39:16.220 | cultural, your cultural awareness.

00:39:19.100 | Like this stuff plays a huge role in things like taking off right out of the back.

00:39:23.060 | Um, but it's almost like that's orthogonal from whether or not the book is going to be.

00:39:27.780 | So we'll see.

00:39:29.180 | We'll see.

00:39:29.980 | But it was a cool story.

00:39:30.900 | So that, that started that whole chapter of my life, which was,

00:39:33.340 | that was an interesting one.

00:39:35.220 | All right.

00:39:37.260 | What do we got here?

00:39:37.780 | Who's our next question?

00:39:38.580 | Next question's from Greg and it's about information overload.

00:39:43.300 | Hi Cal.

00:39:44.380 | I struggle with information overload.

00:39:46.700 | Basically.

00:39:47.420 | I think I read too much.

00:39:49.060 | All the amazing articles, books, papers, newsletters, and blogs that are available

00:39:53.420 | by the thousands, no matter how narrow a person's interest is.

00:39:57.100 | I mean, I'm interested in programming Haskell and just for that, I have a dozen

00:40:02.100 | papers, three books, and about 50 bookmarks.

00:40:05.180 | Even if I try to drive my reading backwards from goals and have a philosophy of just

00:40:09.820 | in time, not just in case there are other reasons to read widely, like the

00:40:14.140 | responsibility of being a good citizen, the steward of family wealth, or even

00:40:19.820 | being the head of the household.

00:40:20.980 | This all means keeping up is important.

00:40:22.860 | And that involves a lot of general reading.

00:40:25.100 | Have you thought about this much?

00:40:26.660 | It seems like FOMO, but is less frivolous.

00:40:30.340 | Thank you.

00:40:31.300 | Yeah, Greg, it's a good point.

00:40:34.700 | Um, it sounds like you are, you probably are reading too much, but more

00:40:40.660 | importantly, you're probably putting too much pressure on yourself about all

00:40:43.660 | these different things that you need to master.

00:40:47.580 | And so I'll give you a couple of practical suggestions for structuring

00:40:52.260 | what I think is like a reasonable, aggressive, but reasonable life of reading.

00:40:57.460 | So you have your books and you want to read a fair number of books each month.

00:41:02.740 | That's fine.

00:41:03.300 | So you have some sort of goal like that.

00:41:04.420 | I read five, whatever you want your goal to be.

00:41:06.060 | Don't care too much about what they are diverse, diverse, different, uh, types

00:41:10.780 | of books, different genres, examples.

00:41:12.180 | You're kind of keeping that intellectual life going when it comes to mastering a

00:41:18.140 | topic, so you have a personality type, which is common, but not everyone has it.

00:41:22.660 | Where you really like mastering a topic, reading a lot about a topic and mastering

00:41:25.620 | it, I think that's fine.

00:41:26.620 | And you want to lean into that, but do it sequentially, sequentially.

00:41:30.060 | It's a hard word.

00:41:31.420 | So what's the thing I'm trying to master now?

00:41:33.820 | Okay.

00:41:34.140 | I'm doing Haskell now, or there's a personal finance thing I'm going to

00:41:36.780 | obsess about now, or I want to learn about, you know, whatever, some

00:41:40.420 | new hobby or, or something like that.

00:41:41.860 | I think that's fine, but just do it one at a time.

00:41:43.420 | Like here's my obsession of the moment.

00:41:44.980 | And if that's your personality type, it's fine to have an obsession,

00:41:47.300 | but just do one at a time and maybe have a nice place for actually

00:41:50.620 | keeping notes on that.

00:41:51.620 | If you want, you can use some sort of system where you, you type up a lot

00:41:55.020 | of notes and keep track of them and do your research that you're not losing

00:41:58.100 | that information and that's fine.

00:41:59.420 | But you just do one of those things at a time.

00:42:01.340 | So you don't feel this pressure if I have to keep up with everything.

00:42:04.420 | So now, so we have books.

00:42:06.100 | I want to keep reading books, wide variety.

00:42:09.660 | You're a singular obsession.

00:42:11.900 | Only one at a time.

00:42:12.940 | Now that obsession might include books that will influence what some of your

00:42:16.460 | books are, but don't let your obsession take over your monthly book quota.

00:42:19.020 | The final thing to add in there is serendipitous, entertaining,

00:42:22.700 | or shorter form reading.

00:42:24.940 | So you have newsletters and magazines and there's these types of things.

00:42:27.860 | And you find some benefit to this.

00:42:30.460 | I, I, you know, a Cal Newport article that I get might get me thinking about

00:42:35.380 | this and maybe I subscribe to like Ben Thompson's strategy and that gives me

00:42:38.700 | some like interesting insight into the world of, of, of, uh, business.

00:42:42.580 | And maybe like you subscribe to the New Yorker and there's like a.

00:42:46.420 | YouTube channel of someone you like to watch, but it's more funny.

00:42:49.940 | Like you have all this type of stuff too.

00:42:51.380 | So what do we do with that?

00:42:52.340 | And I would say for that third category, work backwards from time slots.

00:42:57.380 | So you see that all as programming, like on a TV channel, like HBO or something,

00:43:03.460 | and you put aside time you watch HBO.

00:43:06.380 | Like, okay, it's Saturday mornings and I like to take a long lunch break on

00:43:11.460 | Fridays, right in my day, early on Fridays or whatever, like you have it figured out.

00:43:15.420 | There's certain times where I just want to expose myself.

00:43:17.260 | I don't want to overthink it to the interesting, the random, the

00:43:20.020 | serendipitous, the funny, all what the internet has to offer.

00:43:23.180 | And maybe this is where social media comes into play too.

00:43:25.100 | I just, this platform I like to go on.

00:43:26.740 | I follow these people.

00:43:27.500 | I want to see what they're up to set the times.

00:43:29.620 | And then work backwards to what am I drawing from in those times?

00:43:34.260 | So when I'm out of time, I'm out of time.

00:43:35.340 | So that leads to a natural curation.

00:43:36.740 | Like, okay, well, I don't usually pull from these four podcasts.

00:43:40.420 | I'm going to stop, you know, listening to those.

00:43:42.100 | And these email newsletters I don't read, but I usually like

00:43:43.900 | this guy's email newsletter.

00:43:45.060 | So I'll keep subscribed to this guy.

00:43:46.380 | I'm not going to subscribe to those.

00:43:47.460 | You can use tools like Flipboard, et cetera.

00:43:51.740 | There's a lot of tools like this where you go to Instapaper, where you can kind

00:43:54.980 | of pull information from the web and various places into like a clean, easy

00:43:59.340 | format, you can put on your tablet and bring that tablet to the coffee shop.

00:44:02.460 | And that's where you sit and read.

00:44:03.660 | I'm a big fan of that.

00:44:04.940 | So pull it out of context, but you have a set amount of time and

00:44:07.980 | that puts back a natural curation.

00:44:09.540 | For someone like you, Greg, that's interested in information, likes

00:44:13.180 | information, likes having obsessions, like understanding things.

00:44:16.460 | That's my three prong suggestion.

00:44:18.060 | Have a fixed number of books you read, have an obsession, but you

00:44:22.300 | only do one obsession at a time.

00:44:24.060 | And for the serendipitous, random and funny, have set times you do that.

00:44:29.820 | And if it doesn't fit in that time, you don't get to it.

00:44:32.180 | And that will naturally curate what you actually pull from.

00:44:34.020 | Do those things.

00:44:34.660 | I think you have, you're keeping up with your responsibilities.

00:44:37.020 | You're keeping life interesting.

00:44:38.100 | You're going to be exposed to a lot of interesting things, but you're

00:44:40.180 | not going to have that stress of, I can't keep up with everything.

00:44:43.420 | And you're not going to have the accidental side effect of, let's say

00:44:47.580 | the frivolous or serendipitous takes over all your time from, you know, the

00:44:51.260 | deeper book you wanted to read or the obsession gets in the way of

00:44:54.740 | anything interesting in your life.

00:44:56.020 | This gives you a nice balance.

00:44:58.260 | All right.

00:44:59.860 | So thanks for that, Greg.

00:45:00.660 | Now we do have one more question, but we want to take a quick break

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00:48:41.860 | All right, Jesse, that's what we got for sponsors.

00:48:45.580 | I think we have time for one more caller.

00:48:47.780 | Who do we have here for our final caller?

00:48:49.300 | All right, final call.

00:48:50.460 | We have Walker.

00:48:51.380 | It's basically about your tagline, do better, do less, know why.

00:48:55.620 | And he's also has a question about the journey of his medical student career.

00:49:00.340 | Okay.

00:49:00.700 | Hi, Cal.

00:49:04.620 | My name's Walker and I've actually had the privilege of you answering a few of

00:49:08.420 | my questions on the podcast before.

00:49:10.060 | They were extremely helpful.

00:49:11.660 | So thanks for that.

00:49:13.620 | My questions today arise as a bit of a related set of questions to that.

00:49:19.260 | Namely that philosophically, how do you square the maximum of doing better, doing

00:49:29.780 | less, and knowing why with the journey of a premedical student?

00:49:34.700 | I ask this because if you ask any premed students, traditional or not, they can

00:49:41.060 | attest to the slew of expectations proposed by admissions committees, advisors, et

00:49:47.300 | cetera, that require you to excel in the classroom and work, research, clinical

00:49:52.140 | and non-clinical volunteering, and perhaps curing cancer and winning an

00:49:56.020 | Olympic gold medal on the side.

00:49:57.260 | How does that square with your maximum?

00:50:00.100 | Is it a contradiction?

00:50:01.380 | Does it hold up as an exception to the rule?

00:50:04.740 | Curious to your thoughts on this.

00:50:07.820 | And then specifically, how might you advise someone in my situation working

00:50:11.980 | full-time and trying to fit in all of these goals and accomplish them and achieve them?

00:50:18.100 | Thanks.

00:50:18.940 | Well, Walker, it's a good question.

00:50:22.340 | We're talking about admissions here.

00:50:24.580 | We're talking about academic admissions and how that fits with the old motto of my

00:50:30.940 | website, and I would say sort of the new motto of the deep life writ large, which

00:50:35.020 | is to do less, do better, know why.

00:50:38.020 | Two points about pre-med.

00:50:39.220 | Number one, in the vast majority of cases, the thing that is vastly most

00:50:44.660 | important is your grades and MCATs.

00:50:46.180 | So get good grades, get good MCATs.

00:50:49.220 | That's what's going to matter for almost any medical school, especially for you.

00:50:53.900 | You're working full-time and you want to go back to med school.

00:50:56.860 | That's basically what you have, the knobs you have to turn.

00:51:00.340 | You have your grades, those are probably already set.

00:51:02.300 | You want to get good MCAT scores and you get good MCAT scores by practicing on

00:51:05.580 | actual tests, deliberately improving your skills until you can get the score

00:51:08.580 | you want under time conditions.

00:51:09.900 | There's no shortcut for actually practice, get better, practice, get

00:51:14.420 | better until you can consistently hit the score you want.

00:51:16.420 | So that's probably what you need to do.

00:51:18.860 | Does that take a small number of med schools off the table?

00:51:22.980 | Probably.

00:51:23.540 | There are a small number of med schools where there is such selective admissions

00:51:28.460 | that everyone might be, you could fill a whole class with people who have

00:51:32.620 | pegged their grades and MCATs.

00:51:33.580 | So they have to use other factors to differentiate.

00:51:35.340 | Well, that's probably not going to be the med school where you're going to go.

00:51:38.180 | That's fine.

00:51:38.700 | Go to a good med school, pick up the skills, create a good career as a doctor.

00:51:43.860 | Now let's, let's step back and say you're in a situation where you want to try to

00:51:47.700 | get into one of those top med schools and you think stuff beyond just your

00:51:50.580 | grades and MCATs are going to matter.

00:51:51.900 | Well, I wrote a whole book about this for college admissions, but the same ideas

00:51:56.020 | apply to let's say medical school admissions.

00:51:59.820 | That book was called How to Become a High School Superstar or How to

00:52:03.860 | Be a High School Superstar.

00:52:04.860 | I forgot which verb it was.

00:52:05.980 | And it got into what makes people impressive.

00:52:08.620 | And it was looking at it from the standpoint of college admissions.

00:52:11.860 | But again, I think this is similar to these types of highly

00:52:14.260 | competitive med school admissions.

00:52:15.460 | And it said, again, put aside grades and test scores are 99% of the battle.

00:52:19.500 | So that's destiny, but beyond that, what can you do?

00:52:22.380 | And the answer came down to guess what?

00:52:24.660 | Do less, do better, know why.

00:52:26.540 | This idea, we write these storylines that somehow the quantity of things we do is

00:52:33.780 | impressive because, wow, it's so hard to do a lot of things, but that does not

00:52:36.940 | correctly characterize how we assess impressiveness, you're going to be

00:52:41.460 | assessed more on the thing you do best and how interesting or unexplainable it is.

00:52:45.660 | Do less things, do the things you do at a really high level and have a really

00:52:50.020 | good reason for doing it is what's going to play, that's what's going to impress

00:52:53.460 | people, not that I did seven different things.

00:52:56.220 | And so there's a lot of ideas in that book about how to do this.

00:53:00.220 | At first of all, it tells you to become interesting.

00:53:02.420 | You have to be an actual interesting person, which means you probably have to

00:53:05.260 | do less because you need time to read and explore and go to talks and have thoughts

00:53:08.780 | and develop interests that are non-artificial and that's hard for a lot

00:53:12.260 | of people, but doing less is the foundation for becoming more interesting,

00:53:15.180 | which allows you to get some attention.

00:53:18.300 | When it comes time to do better, the book talks about when you have an interest,

00:53:22.620 | you follow that particular interest to interesting places and you can't plan it

00:53:26.540 | all out in advance, but you do it really well, that opens up opportunities.

00:53:29.940 | You take one of those opportunities that you do that really well, that opens up new

00:53:33.020 | opportunities and what you really want to try to do according to that book is trigger

00:53:36.700 | what is called the failed simulation effect, eventually get to a place where people say,

00:53:40.540 | I can't even understand how Walker did this.

00:53:44.180 | Like I wouldn't even know how to go about doing that.

00:53:46.740 | And that triggers a much more bigger burst of impressiveness than instead

00:53:50.620 | trying to go into a direction with an incredibly well-defined competitive

00:53:54.540 | instructor structure, like being an athlete and saying, okay, my goal is to be a win

00:53:59.020 | that structure and be an Olympic athlete.

00:54:00.620 | Yeah.

00:54:01.140 | One person succeeds at that.

00:54:02.540 | So good luck.

00:54:03.100 | It's much better to go this failed simulation route where instead you say,

00:54:06.660 | yeah, you know, I wrote a book and like have a, this podcast and wrote a book.

00:54:12.060 | Like, I don't even know how a young guy writes a book.

00:54:14.100 | That's really impressive.

00:54:15.020 | Even if it was actually in terms of net effort, way easier

00:54:18.100 | than becoming an Olympic athlete.

00:54:19.220 | So that book gets into a lot of these type of, a lot of these type of ideas.

00:54:22.700 | So don't just assume, you know, really what makes people impressive

00:54:28.420 | beyond their test scores and grades in these contexts.

00:54:30.580 | Usually people construct these stories as a self-defense mechanism.

00:54:34.300 | I mean, Walker, what you were saying there, the way you listed what you

00:54:37.900 | have to do to med school, to me just felt a little bit like self-defense.

00:54:40.500 | Let me just list things I know, like it would be implausible for me to do.

00:54:43.580 | So there's some protection there.

00:54:44.660 | Impressiveness is a squirrelly subject, my friend.

00:54:47.740 | That's not as cut and dry as in clearly defined competitive

00:54:53.140 | structures, how high are you?

00:54:54.140 | Or in terms of sheer difficulty of number of things you did, how

00:54:58.060 | many did you do and there's room there for creativity and unusual and

00:55:01.580 | uniqueness, and that's the path that most people need to go to get your

00:55:04.780 | grades and test scores that'll determine your score.

00:55:06.900 | If you're one of the few number of people where you actually have to add

00:55:09.740 | activities, it's better to be an interesting person who did less, but

00:55:13.300 | did the things they did really well and took them to interesting places.

00:55:15.780 | It's a more interesting life and it's more refreshing and interesting

00:55:20.340 | to those admissions officers.

00:55:21.700 | So a lot of thoughts to say about those types of admission processes, but we

00:55:25.700 | have a lot of learning to do on it.

00:55:26.900 | So that book is a good place to start.

00:55:28.580 | But for you Walker, if you're working full time, don't worry about it.

00:55:32.060 | Get your MCAT scores.

00:55:33.100 | Good.

00:55:33.380 | Go to a good school.

00:55:34.260 | Try not to take on too much debt.

00:55:36.260 | You know, do very well in that med school.

00:55:39.100 | So you get matched into a good residency.

00:55:40.540 | Good things will happen from there.

00:55:43.540 | But from here, we are out of time.

00:55:47.460 | So thank you everyone who submitted their calls to today's episode.

00:55:52.020 | Go to calnewport.com/podcast for instructions on how you too can submit

00:55:56.180 | a call, remember videos of all these calls and the full episodes are

00:56:00.300 | available on our YouTube channel.

00:56:01.780 | See the link in the show notes.

00:56:03.100 | And if you like what you heard, you will like what you read on my weekly

00:56:05.900 | newsletter, you can sign up at calnewport.com.

00:56:09.260 | We'll be back next week.

00:56:10.660 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

00:56:13.620 | [Music]

Full Length Episode | #176 | February 24, 2022

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