New Year Course Correction: 4 Steps To Change Your Life In 2025

00:00:00.000 | So we've arrived at the new year season, as longtime listeners know, I'm not a big believer

00:00:06.480 | in making major changes in January.

00:00:09.040 | I actually think the beginning of fall is the right time to trigger big life transformations.

00:00:16.480 | But this is still a good break point in the middle of the active year to step back, take

00:00:21.600 | stock, tighten up, and improve some areas of your life that could use some improving.

00:00:26.840 | So here's what I want to do today.

00:00:28.520 | I have four simple ideas.

00:00:32.820 | We can call them mid-year course corrections that are all designed to do two things, one,

00:00:40.520 | help you reclaim some depth in areas where our currently distracted world might be robbing

00:00:45.120 | that depth, and two, be something that you can execute right away.

00:00:48.920 | So these are not massive multi-month changes, but small course corrections you can put into

00:00:53.800 | place right away.

00:00:55.400 | Half of these will deal with your life outside of work, half of these will deal with your

00:00:58.680 | life in work, and I'm trying to keep them a little bit novel.

00:01:01.520 | So I'm not going to want to give a little twist to these, it'll sound a little bit new

00:01:05.400 | even to our longtime listeners, all right?

00:01:08.600 | Idea number one of four, bring a book.

00:01:13.660 | So what I'm recommending here is that you get into the habit of bringing a physical

00:01:17.560 | book with you.

00:01:18.560 | When you go to work, when you go out, when you're around the house, and you get in the

00:01:24.560 | habit of when you're bored, temporarily bored, not I have three hours to kill, but I'm waiting

00:01:29.800 | in line or I'm eating lunch at my desk, turn to the book instead of your phone.

00:01:35.660 | Make this book fun, make it portable, you probably want to go paperback, maybe you want

00:01:40.000 | to get an old used mass market paperback of like a fun novel from the 1970s that's like

00:01:45.280 | exciting to go back and read, or a nonfiction book that's covering some topic you really

00:01:50.280 | care about, like how to get healthier, or maybe it's like narrative nonfiction, I want

00:01:54.420 | to go back and read some classic crack hour and it's just straight up fun, whatever it

00:01:58.000 | is.

00:01:59.000 | Portable, fun, it's just with you, read a book when you're bored.

00:02:03.240 | What's my explanation for why this idea makes sense?

00:02:06.600 | Well essentially this is a form of what's known as dopamine fasting.

00:02:11.040 | Our modern digital environment, which is in some sense the antagonist in almost everything

00:02:15.800 | we talk about here on this show, has helped create these very tight connections in our

00:02:22.360 | reward system in our brain where boredom activates this network in our brain as we've trained

00:02:30.680 | it, and we get this very strong dopamine hit that urges us to take the action of looking

00:02:35.500 | at a screen because we have made these strong neural connections that says that screen is

00:02:40.560 | going to bring us this really salient reward, right?

00:02:43.000 | It's going to be a really big emotional hit, outrage, hilarity, fascination, inside information

00:02:50.240 | inspiration, really strong hit.

00:02:53.360 | And so what happens is boredom triggers the dopamine cascade, which makes it really hard

00:02:58.920 | not to pick up your phone.

00:03:01.020 | So dopamine fasting is where you specifically practice essentially ignoring that cascade,

00:03:08.320 | at least the behavior that that cascade is pushing, and redirecting it towards a different

00:03:13.240 | behavior, in this case looking towards a book.

00:03:15.440 | And at first it's difficult, and then over time your mind sort of rewires and gets more

00:03:19.000 | used to this slower, more cognitively sophisticated response to boredom.

00:03:25.680 | And so that strong connection of screen, screen, screen when bored becomes a weaker connection,

00:03:32.480 | and you're more comfortable just slowing down your cognition and turning to something a

00:03:36.400 | little bit more systematic, it's going to feel like you're coming off of amphetamines

00:03:40.600 | after a multi-year binge.

00:03:43.040 | It really does.

00:03:44.040 | This type of dopamine fasting can really change your experience of the world.

00:03:47.160 | So that's my first piece of advice, bring a book.

00:03:51.320 | Second piece of advice, let's go from your life outside of work to your life in work,

00:03:56.320 | and I'm going to suggest deep clean your email inbox.

00:04:00.600 | Now this is going to take two, three, maybe four hours, depending on how big your inbox

00:04:07.280 | is.

00:04:08.280 | We're going to take our time here.

00:04:09.280 | It's not something you're going to dash off in 20 minutes.

00:04:11.480 | You're going to put aside, you know, a half day, maybe like right after the new year to

00:04:15.200 | do this.

00:04:16.920 | And here's the key of a deep clean of your inbox.

00:04:19.100 | You're actually going to spend time with every message that is in there.

00:04:25.020 | As opposed to what we normally do when we turn to an inbox, which is trying to scramble

00:04:30.360 | to get that thing empty as fast as possible to ignore, to defer, to play obligation hot

00:04:35.400 | potato where you send some incomplete, incoherent message to someone else because it temporarily

00:04:43.240 | takes the responsibility represented by that message off your plate.

00:04:46.700 | This is the thoughts with a Z at the end question mark send.

00:04:51.200 | You know this is not actually going to solve the problem.

00:04:53.760 | They're going to come back to you like you've saved yourself no time in the long run, but

00:04:56.920 | that message is out of your inbox and in the moment you just want that inbox empty.

00:05:00.520 | This is what we want to avoid with the inbox deep clean.

00:05:04.780 | Instead we want to actually seriously consider each message.

00:05:06.960 | Now what do we do when we seriously consider that message?

00:05:09.680 | We ask the question, what is the underlying project commitment or process that generated

00:05:15.920 | this message?

00:05:17.720 | And am I happy with the way I am currently engaging with that right now?

00:05:21.240 | All right.

00:05:22.240 | That sounds abstract.

00:05:23.240 | So let's get concrete.

00:05:24.480 | Here's an easy case.

00:05:26.120 | There's a message in there.

00:05:27.120 | It's just some mailing list from a product.

00:05:31.080 | Maybe you bought two years ago and now the company is spamming you or whatever.

00:05:34.520 | You sit there like, what is this message?

00:05:36.240 | Oh, it is generated by me being on a mailing list because I bought something from this

00:05:41.320 | company.

00:05:42.320 | What relationship do I want with that?

00:05:43.960 | None.

00:05:44.960 | I don't need to see what REI is up to right now.

00:05:47.120 | I'm going to take the time to unsubscribe.

00:05:50.000 | And so you deal with it.

00:05:51.000 | You change your relationship.

00:05:52.000 | Okay.

00:05:53.000 | Next message.

00:05:54.000 | Right.

00:05:55.000 | This is from a group at an organization that I'm a part of that I'm sort of loosely involved

00:06:00.240 | with this group.

00:06:01.240 | And they're going back and forth.

00:06:02.560 | And it's part of a discussion to try to figure out a date for the next time that group is

00:06:06.560 | going to meet.

00:06:08.000 | Let me step back and say, what is my relationship to that underlying system?

00:06:11.840 | And maybe you say, you know what?

00:06:13.160 | This is probably one too many things.

00:06:16.320 | I don't really have time to be doing this group right now.

00:06:18.680 | I like the idea.

00:06:19.680 | But really, I haven't been able to engage much.

00:06:21.500 | And I'm kind of doing this halfheartedly.

00:06:23.960 | Let me now change my relationship to this underlying processor system and say, hey,

00:06:28.920 | whatever.

00:06:29.920 | I'm going to have to step away for the rest of this year.

00:06:31.280 | I didn't have the time.

00:06:32.280 | I thought I would.

00:06:33.280 | So again, we're getting to the root causes of the messages instead of just the messages

00:06:37.360 | themselves.

00:06:39.240 | Now maybe what you see an email from is not something you can walk away from or unsubscribe

00:06:43.480 | from.

00:06:44.480 | Maybe it's a message, this will be common in the work context, that's part of a conversation

00:06:48.320 | about a project that you're working on that's important and you have to do.

00:06:51.400 | Yeah, you're right.

00:06:52.720 | I agreed to be on this search committee.

00:06:55.560 | This email is about this search committee.

00:06:57.080 | It's some question about, hey, what about this particular candidate?

00:07:00.280 | In this case, what you can do is step back and say, not do I want to step away from this

00:07:04.400 | commitment or not, but say, let me think through how I actually want to engage with it.

00:07:09.760 | What should be, in this case, our rules for collaboration?

00:07:13.980 | Let's put a little bit of structure in here because otherwise, I think this thing, this

00:07:20.200 | hiring committee in this example, is going to keep generating lots of messages that have

00:07:24.320 | to be responded and it's going to be a source of clutter and context shifting.

00:07:27.920 | So this is, I'm going to sit down and take the time to figure out, how should we deal

00:07:31.320 | with this?

00:07:32.320 | Well, OK, I'm just being hypothetical here.

00:07:36.020 | But in this example, it's like, OK, people are coming up with candidates, we probably

00:07:39.320 | should have a shared document somewhere where people add candidates onto it as they come

00:07:47.120 | up with ideas or they think of someone who might be good.

00:07:50.800 | We should probably have a meeting on the books for like a month from now.

00:07:55.520 | And the goal there should actually be to review all these candidates that people have found.

00:07:59.040 | And so we should be searching for these and putting them in this document.

00:08:01.400 | And then we have this meeting.

00:08:03.080 | And the point of this meeting is going to be to review these things, figure out who

00:08:05.840 | we want to follow up on.

00:08:06.920 | And at that point, we'll come up with like our process for doing that.

00:08:09.560 | OK, great.

00:08:10.560 | This will be much better.

00:08:11.560 | This will avoid a lot of random emails.

00:08:13.860 | Let me now do a process-centric message right now.

00:08:17.640 | That's a concept from Deep Work, where you preamble an email message with a description

00:08:21.200 | of the process you want people to follow in responding to that.

00:08:23.640 | So now you just send out this big message to everyone, hey, this is great.

00:08:26.680 | Here's what I propose.

00:08:27.680 | I set up this document.

00:08:28.680 | I moved the existing candidates into it.

00:08:30.840 | Let us all now actively fill this document over the next three weeks.

00:08:35.800 | Let's put a meeting on the books for Friday.

00:08:38.120 | I'm just going to book it for right after our faculty meeting.

00:08:41.200 | And if we need to change that, we'll change that.

00:08:42.880 | Let me know.

00:08:43.880 | But let's just make that the default.

00:08:44.920 | And by the way, I'll send some reminders about this.

00:08:47.400 | And then you put some notes on your calendar for two weeks from then and three weeks from

00:08:52.200 | then to, hey, email the group and say, no response required, just a reminder.

00:08:57.840 | Be looking for candidates.

00:08:58.840 | We're meeting after the faculty meeting.

00:09:00.480 | This all takes more time.

00:09:02.380 | But now you've changed your relationship to the underlying obligation processor system

00:09:05.760 | here in a way that, good, I'm comfortable with this.

00:09:08.480 | This thing is not going to generate a lot of non-scheduled urgent messages that require

00:09:12.560 | responses.

00:09:14.300 | Another thing that might happen as you're deep cleaning your inbox is you might come

00:09:16.840 | up with friction interventions, like someone's asking you to do something, asking you for

00:09:21.120 | help or assistance.

00:09:22.960 | It's not a case where you just want to say no, but a lot of these are coming in.

00:09:27.900 | Do a friction intervention.

00:09:30.160 | A friction intervention is where you essentially give some more work to the person on the other

00:09:34.200 | side.

00:09:35.200 | Hey, happy to help you.

00:09:36.200 | What you should do is your next steps.

00:09:38.960 | And 50% of the time, they're just not going to do it, which shows that this really wasn't

00:09:44.120 | that important for them.

00:09:45.120 | And in the 50% of the time where they do do those extra steps, you've designed them so

00:09:48.920 | that it makes your life a lot easier.

00:09:51.760 | I get this-- I'll give you a specific example in my role as a director of undergraduate

00:09:55.960 | studies for the computer science department at Georgetown.

00:09:58.960 | One of the things I do is I help advise students who are thinking about becoming a computer

00:10:03.560 | science major.

00:10:04.560 | Now, I'll get a lot of messages where people are like, hey, I'm thinking about becoming

00:10:08.680 | a major.

00:10:09.680 | What do you think?

00:10:10.680 | Or can I just swing by and we'll chat about it?

00:10:13.480 | And I always give a friction intervention, which makes life easier on both sides, where

00:10:16.880 | I say, here's what we need.

00:10:18.920 | I need a schedule.

00:10:21.000 | All your semesters left here at Georgetown.

00:10:24.000 | Your plan.

00:10:25.000 | Go through.

00:10:26.000 | Learn the curriculum.

00:10:27.880 | And put in a plan for which courses you're going to take when.

00:10:31.640 | And then I can look at that, and that will give me a real sense of, is it realistic?

00:10:36.600 | Do you have enough time left to finish the major?

00:10:38.880 | Is it going to be a stretch?

00:10:41.520 | Are you close, but maybe we need to think about one summer course to make this happen?

00:10:45.640 | Do that work first.

00:10:47.920 | There's a couple benefits to this.

00:10:50.680 | One, it sort of makes sure that you're actually serious about this.

00:10:54.160 | You're not just, hey, maybe I should be a computer science major, because it requires

00:10:56.880 | some work.

00:10:57.880 | Two, it forces the student to learn the curriculum.

00:11:01.000 | Otherwise, every student I was meeting with, I was just teaching them how the requirement

00:11:06.240 | structure works for our course, again and again and again.

00:11:09.960 | And that's kind of a waste of time.

00:11:12.020 | This is a way of making sure the student themselves figures out what's going on.

00:11:16.440 | And then three, it makes things more efficient.

00:11:18.820 | Now I know exactly what we're dealing with.

00:11:20.700 | If we don't have to work this out together, now we can talk and write down the brass tacks.

00:11:25.320 | Like, OK, yeah, perfect.

00:11:26.840 | This looks fine.

00:11:27.840 | You should have no problem.

00:11:28.840 | Let's go.

00:11:29.840 | We don't even have to talk about it.

00:11:30.840 | This is impossible.

00:11:31.840 | Right?

00:11:32.840 | Like, look at-- now that you've seen how many courses you'd have to take per semester, you

00:11:35.600 | can see this is impossible-- a friction intervention.

00:11:39.960 | And so again, that you're saying, what is the underlying source of this message?

00:11:44.040 | How do I make sure my relationship to that source is as effective as possible?

00:11:50.240 | So that's a deep clean of your inbox.

00:11:52.820 | It takes forever, because think about it.

00:11:54.280 | Each of these things might take a while to actually work through.

00:11:56.760 | But you do this refresh, this deep clean, once or twice a year.

00:12:00.480 | You pay.

00:12:01.480 | You receive these huge rewards.

00:12:02.680 | Like, for the next six months, you've taken yourself off of all of these mailing lists.

00:12:07.880 | You've cleaned shop on the obligations you stumbled into, and now you realize you shouldn't

00:12:11.560 | be doing.

00:12:12.920 | The things you are working on are now more structured.

00:12:15.640 | So it's much less unrestricted emails landing in your inbox.

00:12:18.960 | Now you don't have to check your inbox as much.

00:12:21.160 | And you've sort of gotten some friction interventions in place for stuff that you do want to help

00:12:24.920 | with.

00:12:25.920 | But it's being a little bit too urgent and ad hoc, and you want to make that a little

00:12:29.360 | bit more structured.

00:12:30.360 | If you do this type of deep clean twice a year, the whole rest of those other months

00:12:36.320 | are going to actually-- your relationship to your inbox is going to be much better.

00:12:39.720 | The frequency with which you check it is going to go down.

00:12:42.000 | The value of what's in there is going to go up.

00:12:44.160 | Your overall frustration with the cognitive experience of knowledge work is going to improve.

00:12:48.880 | Hey, it's Cal.

00:12:50.440 | I wanted to interrupt briefly to say that if you're enjoying this video, then you need

00:12:54.920 | to check out my new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

00:13:02.400 | This is like the Bible for most of the ideas we talk about here in these videos.

00:13:07.840 | You can get a free excerpt at calnewport.com/slow.

00:13:13.200 | I know you're going to like it.

00:13:15.000 | Check it out.

00:13:16.000 | Now let's get back to the video.

00:13:17.720 | All right.

00:13:19.640 | Story number three, shift back to life outside of work.

00:13:23.280 | Take a break from online news, especially if you're in the US.

00:13:28.920 | We had an election.

00:13:29.920 | That's a lot of pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft hitting you from the online world.

00:13:34.720 | There's an inauguration coming up.

00:13:36.900 | Really not much happens in January because everything has to kind of stop as you're waiting

00:13:40.680 | for the new president to come in, and then it takes a minute for that to all get kind

00:13:45.360 | of going again.

00:13:46.360 | So what you get is a lot of just invented concern and outrage and people in the attention

00:13:52.200 | economy trying to fight for and generate reasons to have attention.

00:13:56.400 | It's a perfect month to say, I think the republic will stand if they do not have my vigilant

00:14:02.520 | monitoring for the next four weeks.

00:14:05.240 | What this gives you is like coming out of the holidays and family time, an ability for

00:14:10.080 | that part of your brain to just take a breather.

00:14:14.960 | The innervation of all of this high urgency, world shaking, terror inducing news that just

00:14:22.560 | take that drip out of your proverbial arm for a month is going to allow the whole system

00:14:27.760 | to re-stabilize and to calm back down.

00:14:32.480 | The explanation for this, again, if we go back to the modern digital environment, I've

00:14:36.760 | talked about this before.

00:14:39.160 | Our paleolithic brain interprets, when the news is coming to us in like a social media

00:14:43.880 | feed or this or that, or on a podcast, like a news political podcast, we don't think about

00:14:49.760 | the degree to which this is delivered.

00:14:51.580 | It feels personal, right?

00:14:54.200 | On social media, it's individual people that you might follow talking about it.

00:14:57.800 | Your paleolithic brain is like, yeah, these are tribe members of ours.

00:15:01.060 | What it's missing is that these conversations are being curated out of 500 million active

00:15:06.480 | monthly users on one of these platforms and algorithms, cybernetic algorithms, half optimization,

00:15:13.560 | half human behavior with re-amplification, are sorting through these millions and millions

00:15:19.640 | and millions of huge cacophony and pulling out for you this curated thing that's very

00:15:24.120 | tractable and feels like a conversation outside the cave 150,000 years ago.

00:15:29.440 | Our mind interprets our relationship with online news because it's so personalized.

00:15:35.500 | It's this person I follow, it's a voice in my head on a podcast.

00:15:39.840 | It is as if like the tribe that you're a part of is having constant, massive, existentially

00:15:45.520 | threatening crises, and of course our brain's going to take that seriously.

00:15:50.960 | You're in a state of crisis all the time.

00:15:53.340 | This is an interesting, by the way, techno critique.

00:15:56.720 | Some of this is unique to the faux personalization of online or digital news delivery in the

00:16:02.440 | 21st century.

00:16:03.860 | If you were picking up a newspaper in 1985, like a big, thick Sunday New York Times, that

00:16:12.160 | does not come across to your paleolithic brain as people in your tribe are really worried

00:16:17.320 | and we should be worried.

00:16:19.040 | It's abstracted in a linguistic way.

00:16:21.920 | It's on paper.

00:16:23.740 | It's one of 500 articles in that paper written by different journalists.

00:16:28.000 | We have a different relationship to it.

00:16:30.080 | It's a lexicographic relationship.

00:16:31.840 | It's a relationship like you would have with a book.

00:16:33.880 | When you read a book, you don't feel like that person is right there in your tribe.

00:16:36.920 | You realize that this is someone distant, this is someone abstract.

00:16:41.400 | I'm reading this book.

00:16:42.400 | I don't know this author.

00:16:44.480 | It doesn't feel so personal.

00:16:47.080 | We had in what Neil Postman would have called the lexicographic culture, the pre-TV, pre-internet

00:16:52.920 | newspaper book-driven culture, this medium had a different psychosocial relationship

00:16:59.880 | with us than these modern mediums.

00:17:03.480 | I could read the world news and think in the broad world out there, there's things that

00:17:08.760 | are happening and it didn't feel as personally salient.

00:17:13.080 | Take a break from online news, social media, news websites, news podcasts.

00:17:18.120 | Just take a break from them for a month.

00:17:19.120 | You'll be okay.

00:17:20.840 | People will tell you what's going on.

00:17:23.400 | Let me summarize all the US news.

00:17:26.600 | I'll do a summary now of every news article for the next four weeks.

00:17:33.040 | Democrat does something, Republicans think it's the worst thing that ever happened.

00:17:36.440 | A Republican does something, the Democrats think it's the worst thing to ever happen.

00:17:40.760 | People trade quotes, someone's nasty online.

00:17:43.920 | There you go.

00:17:44.920 | That is January 2025.

00:17:45.920 | I just summarized what you're going to miss.

00:17:48.960 | Take a break.

00:17:50.480 | Let your mind restabilize.

00:17:54.600 | Idea number four, back to the world of work, is simulate status meetings.

00:18:00.920 | I'm going to start here with the explanation, then I'll get to the solution.

00:18:06.680 | We have this big problem.

00:18:08.160 | This is at the core of my book, Slow Productivity, first part of the solution section.

00:18:12.860 | We have a real problem with the modern digital environment is the abstraction of work in

00:18:21.160 | the knowledge sector, where it's just people plugged into computers and phones and passing

00:18:25.760 | emails and Zoom and everything is digital and it's information and it's in this hyperactive

00:18:31.920 | hive mind of just back and forth communication where we're sort of all working together and

00:18:35.600 | we're kind of on our own.

00:18:37.040 | In that environment where work is non-tangible, overload becomes very easy.

00:18:43.920 | It is very easy just to have too many things you've committed to do because there's no

00:18:48.320 | barriers to asking someone to do something and there's no physical instantiation of the

00:18:55.160 | work itself.

00:18:57.020 | If I'm a cobbler in the 17th century, if I have too many shoes that I'm working on, there's

00:19:03.720 | a big pile of shoes next to me.

00:19:06.080 | If you're bringing in a new pair of shoes, you can see that big pile of shoes.

00:19:09.880 | If I say I have too many shoes to work on right now, you're like, "I get that.

00:19:13.420 | That's going to take a while."

00:19:14.880 | I see these physical things that I can directly translate into a time cost.

00:19:19.760 | You've got a week's worth of shoes to repair there.

00:19:21.720 | That makes sense.

00:19:22.720 | In the digital world, there's no shoes.

00:19:24.260 | It's just a bunch of emails that you've answered in an inbox that has 2,000 messages that if

00:19:28.400 | you really go through there actually work itself out to be 25 different ongoing commitments,

00:19:32.680 | each of which generating their own conversations and expectations, and of course you're drowning.

00:19:37.240 | You're the cobbler who the shoes are so crowded that they're falling out the door.

00:19:40.320 | All right, so we have to be more careful about workload management.

00:19:45.840 | That brings me to the idea, which is simulate status meetings.

00:19:48.840 | In a perfect world, and I write about this in Slow Productivity, in a perfect world,

00:19:52.340 | the team you work with would have a centralized place where they keep track of all the things

00:19:56.360 | that the team needs to do, and most of those things will be in a column that's waiting

00:20:00.280 | to work on these.

00:20:01.280 | Then over here, you would have a column for each of the people on the team, and you have

00:20:05.080 | the specific things they're working on in those columns.

00:20:08.120 | It would probably just be one or two things.

00:20:09.620 | You would have a very clear work-in-progress limit in Kanban, which uses these boards.

00:20:14.440 | They call it the WIP, the work-in-progress limit.

00:20:17.000 | You would also have very structured collaboration.

00:20:19.120 | Every day, 10-minute status meeting, who's working on what, and what do they need from

00:20:23.000 | other people.

00:20:24.000 | Great, now we can just go rock and roll.

00:20:26.200 | Make sure you get them that by this time, you get them this by this time.

00:20:28.360 | We all agree.

00:20:29.360 | Now just go work.

00:20:30.800 | In an imperfect world where you don't control your team, you can simulate something like

00:20:35.280 | this.

00:20:36.280 | What I recommend is on Monday mornings, you actually have your own board.

00:20:39.400 | You could do that digitally, of course.

00:20:40.960 | Here are all the different things I've committed to work on.

00:20:43.920 | I got to face that productivity drag, and I can't pretend like it's not true.

00:20:46.840 | Here's all the stuff I've committed to work on.

00:20:49.960 | What is the statuses of these things this week?

00:20:53.120 | I'm going to have a column of what I'm actively working on this week.

00:20:55.760 | I could only fit so many.

00:20:57.720 | Look at my calendar.

00:20:58.720 | I have all these meetings and stuff.

00:20:59.720 | I could probably make progress on three of these things, so I'll move those three things

00:21:02.880 | over.

00:21:03.880 | I'm going to update those people.

00:21:05.640 | Hey, I'm working to people related to the three things I'm actually working on.

00:21:08.520 | Hey, I'm working on this week.

00:21:11.200 | As if you were in the room with me for an old-fashioned, Agile-style status meeting,

00:21:17.080 | in that email on Monday, like, "Hey, I'm working on this this week.

00:21:20.020 | Here's what I need from you this week.

00:21:22.160 | This information by this time, put it in this place.

00:21:24.080 | This information by that time, put it in this place.

00:21:25.560 | If you can do that, I'll finish this."

00:21:28.880 | Now what you've basically done is you've simulated a status meeting.

00:21:32.120 | You know what you're working on.

00:21:34.520 | You're going to get the stuff you need without having just sort of like ad hoc bother people

00:21:38.100 | along the way, and the people you're working with are happy because they know exactly what

00:21:42.040 | you're doing and that you're working on their things.

00:21:43.720 | You can do the inverse for the things you choose not to work on.

00:21:48.080 | Update those people during your simulated status meeting.

00:21:49.600 | "Hey, I just wanted to let you know I have this.

00:21:52.360 | It's not one of the three or four things I'm actively working on this week, but I just

00:21:56.400 | want you to know I haven't forgotten about it, and it's here, and I keep track of this

00:22:00.840 | stuff very carefully."

00:22:03.280 | They're happy.

00:22:04.440 | You're on the ball.

00:22:05.440 | You're organized.

00:22:06.440 | They're not going to bother you with emails or meetings because they know you're not actually

00:22:09.000 | working on it.

00:22:10.300 | You've solved their problem of having to worry about this.

00:22:12.480 | They know you're on the ball.

00:22:14.240 | You're basically for—you're tricking—people don't realize this, but you've sort of secretly

00:22:18.700 | created status meetings and work-in-progress boards without other people knowing.

00:22:24.540 | These simulate status meetings can go a long way towards at least sanding the blunt edges

00:22:30.020 | off of the worst of overload and bad workload management.

00:22:35.380 | So those are my four easy course corrections.

00:22:38.400 | You can do all of these in the next couple of weeks.

00:22:40.520 | I'll just say them again real quick.

00:22:42.960 | Bring a book.

00:22:44.800 | Deep clean your inbox.

00:22:45.800 | That's a one-time thing.

00:22:47.640 | Take a break from online news and simulate status meetings.

00:22:51.080 | That's something you're going to do once a week.

00:22:53.280 | Lots of other things at work, but hey, there's a lot of mismatches between the modern digital

00:22:57.740 | environment and our Paleolithic brains and Neolithic culture, so here's a couple places

00:23:00.960 | where you can reduce that mismatch just a little bit.

00:23:06.080 | I've heard Ryan Holiday talk about his rule where he just buys any book that piques his

00:23:10.640 | interest.

00:23:11.640 | Do you have a similar rule?

00:23:12.640 | Yep.

00:23:13.640 | Yep.

00:23:14.640 | I just buy.

00:23:15.640 | I mean, I've got to say, throughout my career as a writer, there's been different milestones

00:23:20.180 | in terms of coolness, like, "Oh, I could do this now.

00:23:23.760 | I could do that now."

00:23:25.460 | I still think one of the best milestones in my writing career—it was early in—I'm

00:23:30.940 | on my blog.

00:23:31.940 | Before, it was a newsletter.

00:23:32.940 | It was just the studyhacksblog@calnewport.com, and I used to have—the only income source

00:23:37.440 | from that was Amazon Associates.

00:23:40.240 | I listed some things I liked, like the notebook I use and some books I liked, and you get

00:23:44.240 | a commission if people buy it through Amazon, and I was getting the commissions delivered

00:23:48.360 | to me monthly as Amazon gift certificates.

00:23:51.820 | I remember this point—this would have been like 2007, 2008—where I was getting $100

00:23:59.040 | a month or something in gift certificates, and I would just add them.

00:24:01.000 | You could just add them into your Amazon account, so that if you bought something, it would

00:24:05.040 | pull from your gift certificates first.

00:24:06.760 | I remembered at some point, I was like, "I can buy books with impunity.

00:24:11.320 | There's enough of this Amazon gift certificate money that I really don't have to worry

00:24:16.200 | about it," because it was outside of our normal budget that we had.

00:24:20.320 | I just was putting gift certificates into the Amazon account, and to me, that was the

00:24:24.320 | biggest thing.

00:24:25.700 | If I heard of a book that was interesting, I could just buy it and spend $50, $60, $70,

00:24:30.960 | $100 a month just buying books.

00:24:34.520 | That was a big deal for me at the time.

00:24:36.000 | Obviously, things have been more renumerative since then, but I still think that was one

00:24:39.400 | of the coolest things.

00:24:40.400 | I'm a big believer.

00:24:41.400 | If you can afford it, buy books.

00:24:44.560 | It helps authors.

00:24:45.760 | Books are awesome.

00:24:46.760 | It's the best deal for the money.

00:24:48.520 | $20, you're getting years of expertise distilled carefully with a team that has spent months

00:24:54.840 | and months just trying to get it as carefully crafted as possible, then you can simulate

00:24:58.680 | that mind and intake that into your own head, and you can do this all for $20.

00:25:04.320 | Get not only new wisdom, but 20 to 40 hours' worth of good, high-quality distraction out

00:25:09.880 | of it.

00:25:10.880 | It's the best deal, I think, in entertainment, so yeah, buy books, buy books, and who cares?

00:25:19.540 | You have too many of them?

00:25:20.540 | Give them away.

00:25:21.540 | I don't think it's a problem.

00:25:23.900 | They're very imminently recyclable, so I'm a big believer.

00:25:27.660 | Buy, buy, buy.

00:25:28.660 | And then second question, how many of the students actually do the follow-up work of

00:25:33.380 | the friction stuff that you discussed?

00:25:37.820 | In this case, it's pretty high because typically, if they are interested in majoring, they're

00:25:41.780 | interested in majoring.

00:25:43.780 | The interesting thing is the students, they'll try a few times to get out of it.

00:25:48.580 | They'll be like, "So, yeah, I don't know.

00:25:50.740 | I have a lot of courses to take," or whatever.

00:25:53.700 | It's an important obstacle.

00:25:54.700 | Like, "No, no, no.

00:25:55.700 | You've got to sit down.

00:25:56.700 | It's going to take you 20 minutes.

00:25:57.700 | You've got to do the 20 minutes of work."

00:26:00.260 | There's a lot of like, "Yeah, my schedule would be probably reasonable.

00:26:04.380 | I've taken this many courses so far."

00:26:05.940 | It's like, "I want to see the list."

00:26:08.820 | There's a lot of that in academic administration.

00:26:13.100 | I didn't do this, but an earlier director of undergraduate studies did this with applying

00:26:18.460 | for credit, like, "I'm going to take this course overseas when I'm studying abroad.

00:26:24.420 | Can I get approved for this to count towards the major?"

00:26:28.740 | That got very systematized at some point in a way that puts a little bit more work onto

00:26:33.720 | the seat of the student.

00:26:35.180 | But the thing about those type of things is a little bit more work for one student doesn't

00:26:40.020 | mean much to that student.

00:26:41.360 | It's another 10 minutes of their life.

00:26:43.620 | Putting that same work on the single person who has to process all those requests could

00:26:47.940 | be hours and hours and hours of extra time.

00:26:50.260 | So I do like friction interventions.

00:26:53.900 | Friction interventions are a good, they're a high-quality thing.

00:26:57.860 | I'm in favor.

00:26:59.900 | All right.

00:27:00.900 | So we got a bunch of cool questions coming up, but first, let's hear from a sponsor that

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00:28:19.620 | It's kind of a problem because we have trouble in hotels.

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00:30:56.040 | Hi Jesse, let's do some questions.

00:31:00.840 | First question's from Declan.

00:31:02.840 | Do you have advice on how to stop doom scrolling before bed?

00:31:06.360 | I find myself spending 30 to 45 minutes before bed on social media and I want to replace

00:31:10.840 | that time with reading books.

00:31:12.540 | I've never been a big reader so I find it tough to break the habit.

00:31:16.840 | Well the obvious advice is you keep your phone somewhere far from your room.

00:31:20.740 | So now the friction of scrolling is much higher.

00:31:22.880 | You have to get out of bed, go down to where your phone is, unplug it and bring it back

00:31:25.920 | to your room.

00:31:27.260 | Hopefully that friction is high enough that it's easier to resist.

00:31:30.200 | So that's part of it.

00:31:31.900 | If you worry about having a clock or phone in your room, just get a standalone phone

00:31:37.580 | or clock.

00:31:38.620 | You might consider, for example, one of our sponsors of this show is Lofty.

00:31:41.440 | L-O-F-T-I-E.

00:31:42.440 | They have these sort of beautiful alarm clocks you can put next to your bed.

00:31:46.240 | They have all sorts of cool features.

00:31:49.080 | You also want to make what you do when you're in bed without your phone, you want to make

00:31:54.080 | that as compelling as possible.

00:31:56.040 | So find books you're really excited to read.

00:31:58.660 | They're just fun.

00:32:00.360 | You don't need to read a tome at night.

00:32:03.220 | You don't need to read the latest great novel because people told you this is a smart novel

00:32:07.700 | that everyone is supposed to read but you find it kind of boring.

00:32:10.440 | This is for fun reading and it could be memoir nonfiction of just someone you think is really

00:32:16.940 | interesting or, you know, I like to read about movies, you could be reading about movies

00:32:21.420 | or movie making or whatever your interest is, adventure novels, romance novels, something

00:32:25.840 | that's just really fun to read.

00:32:27.120 | You can make that a fun habit.

00:32:30.080 | Something I sometimes suggest, which the phone, not anti-phone people, but the sort of digital

00:32:34.980 | hygiene people don't always agree with, is I don't think it's the worst thing to do a

00:32:41.740 | little bit of stimuli reduction here using something like an iPad.

00:32:46.140 | So hear me out.

00:32:47.140 | If you have an iPad that has no social apps on it, right, you don't use it to go on the

00:32:53.160 | internet but you have streaming services on it, I actually think it's not so bad if as

00:32:58.180 | part of your routine you say, "First I do is I read," and it's always one or two chapters,

00:33:04.100 | right?

00:33:05.100 | So you're just used to doing it, it kind of calms you down, but then you know that you're

00:33:08.700 | going to be able to, you have something you're going to watch a little bit after that in

00:33:11.820 | bed on your iPad that is completely comforting comfort food, that series you've watched a

00:33:19.140 | hundred times before.

00:33:20.140 | I'm just going to watch like 20 minutes of an episode.

00:33:23.180 | That's not the worst thing.

00:33:24.220 | For some people, what it does is it gives them this sort of stimulation matching that

00:33:28.180 | they need.

00:33:29.700 | What happens is when they're not used to reading books and all they're going to do is read

00:33:33.340 | a book, when they're so saturated in that dopamine-mediated digital experience, it's

00:33:38.700 | not enough stimulation and it's like you're trying to fast and they get antsy about it.

00:33:43.660 | It's like, "Oh man, I'm a little antsy, like I, this is, I'm used to this type of stimulation

00:33:48.500 | and all I'm doing is reading and they have a hard time falling asleep, so just do a little

00:33:51.500 | bit of this step-down."

00:33:54.220 | It's, I don't know, we could call it dopamine methadone or something.

00:33:56.740 | I read and then it's, you know, an episode of The Office that I've seen five times.

00:34:02.300 | It does work.

00:34:03.300 | People, their mind's like, "Okay, phew, I got that relief," but it's not doom scrolling,

00:34:07.780 | it's not social media, it's not so algorithmically salient, it's, you know, it's comfort food.

00:34:11.900 | So I'm, if you need that, I think that's perfectly fine, but make yourself earn it with books

00:34:16.620 | first and then the books will become much more appealing because of that.

00:34:20.060 | All right, who do we got next?

00:34:22.620 | Next question's from Nelson.

00:34:24.380 | Can you please dive further into the deep stack from your three small daily habits video?

00:34:29.560 | How can you do the craft part if you haven't figured out what you want to be good at because

00:34:33.500 | you don't even know what your values are?

00:34:35.580 | Or are you supposed to excel at one of the areas from the discipline box?

00:34:39.340 | All right, so I had to go back.

00:34:42.580 | It's a little complicated because the video that Nelson is referring to is not from that

00:34:48.380 | long ago.

00:34:49.380 | It's from a month ago, but it's a clip.

00:34:50.900 | It's a clip collection.

00:34:51.900 | So our YouTube guy will sometimes grab some clips from older episodes and put them on

00:34:57.540 | the feed.

00:34:58.540 | It's from a much older episode, actually, where this clip was taken.

00:35:02.300 | So I was giving a variation on my deep life stack, my sort of step-by-step approach for

00:35:11.300 | cultivating a deep life.

00:35:13.420 | In that video, so in that particular variation, I don't really remember where the original

00:35:17.820 | video was from, I first divided, I said, "We really need two stacks."

00:35:23.540 | The first stack is focused on what you need to do first, which is becoming like an eminently

00:35:27.580 | capable human being.

00:35:30.100 | The second stack, I said in this video, is cultivating depth.

00:35:32.860 | It's where you actually work to make specific changes in your life that are designed to

00:35:38.060 | make your life more intentional.

00:35:39.180 | It's where you get very systematic about reshaping your life.

00:35:42.180 | And my argument was you got to do the first thing first.

00:35:44.700 | You got to become just a capable person and get your act together before you can then

00:35:48.900 | make high-level, complicated, intentional changes to your life.

00:35:51.820 | That was basically the argument.

00:35:53.780 | Within each of those two sides of the screen, I then gave a stack, a sort of step-by-steps

00:35:58.100 | to go through, and on that become an eminently capable person side, one of the things in

00:36:03.660 | that stack was craft.

00:36:06.560 | This brings us back to Nelson's question, because the other side, where you had the

00:36:12.940 | now, you cultivate depth, that's where you figure out your values and come up with your

00:36:16.320 | lifestyle-centric plans and really get into what I want in my life.

00:36:19.740 | Nelson is saying, "How can I work on craft first if it's not till I get to the second

00:36:23.980 | side, the second stack, that I figure out what I even care about?

00:36:26.180 | How do I figure out," this is how I read his question, "How do I figure out what to do

00:36:30.380 | for craft if I don't even know what matters to me?"

00:36:35.280 | The answer, Nelson, is if you go back and watch that video, the craft that shows up

00:36:39.900 | on that first become an eminently human stack, the way I explained that was just get good

00:36:45.400 | at something.

00:36:47.480 | Choose something to get better at.

00:36:48.780 | It could be professional.

00:36:50.500 | It could be personal.

00:36:51.540 | Just learn a craft.

00:36:53.740 | And this was not figure out what your job is going to be or spend 10 years mastering

00:36:59.420 | something that you're going to build your career around.

00:37:01.360 | It was instead, just get used to the feeling of getting good at something.

00:37:06.180 | What does it feel like to get better at something?

00:37:07.860 | So this really could be, "I'm going to learn how to wire up an Arduino light controller.

00:37:15.420 | I'm just learning a thing."

00:37:17.500 | And for me, in that video, I was saying, "It doesn't matter what it is.

00:37:20.140 | I just want you as part of becoming an eminently capable person to get comfortable with the

00:37:23.620 | deliberate practice and improvement.

00:37:24.780 | Oh, if I give things attention, I get better at it."

00:37:27.380 | So then when you go to the second half and say, "Now I'm going to shape my life,"

00:37:31.120 | you have confidence and experience with how to, when I need to like master something as

00:37:34.980 | part of that much more sophisticated plan, I know how to do that.

00:37:39.740 | So that's what I meant by that.

00:37:42.140 | But I will say, let me fast forward to today.

00:37:44.940 | Let me revisit this topic because I'm writing a book about this, a book called "The Deep

00:37:49.620 | Life," which, by the way, will be a while until that comes out.

00:37:52.620 | I'm taking my time.

00:37:53.620 | So just FYI.

00:37:54.620 | This is the problem.

00:37:55.620 | I'll say this as an aside.

00:37:56.620 | My publisher noticed this.

00:37:58.660 | The problem with me writing "Slow Productivity" before I wrote "The Deep Life" is "Slow

00:38:04.660 | Productivity" is about slowing down.

00:38:06.460 | So now it's going to take me a long time to finish "The Deep Life."

00:38:09.740 | If it had gone the other way, they would have got that book much faster.

00:38:13.100 | But excuse me, I learned writing "Slow Productivity" like, "Oh, you can take your time.

00:38:17.420 | It's okay.

00:38:18.460 | Take an extra year.

00:38:20.220 | No one is going to notice in the grand scheme of things, but like the next three years are

00:38:22.820 | going to be much nicer."

00:38:23.820 | Anyways, in that book, as I'm thinking about the book, I've simplified this even more.

00:38:30.180 | I mean, I've kept that same structure, become a capable human, get your act together.

00:38:37.340 | Then start caring about what you want to do with that.

00:38:39.940 | I've kept that structure.

00:38:41.100 | I'm not as rigid within that structure anymore.

00:38:44.620 | Within that structure, how do you become a more capable person?

00:38:48.620 | I'm not going to give you seven steps to go through that are too ordered.

00:38:51.780 | I want to give you a little bit more breathing room in there.

00:38:54.700 | So like right now, the part of the book that's about preparing, I talk about discipline.

00:39:00.220 | I talk about getting organized.

00:39:02.660 | I talk about reclaiming your brain from distractions, learn how to think again, but it's not presented

00:39:08.580 | as like A, B, and C. It's like these are these three things you have to grapple with before

00:39:13.520 | you're ready to make change.

00:39:14.820 | All right, what do we got next?

00:39:17.620 | Next question is from Timmy.

00:39:19.020 | "After listening to your most recent episode on money, I have an overall question about

00:39:23.380 | budgeting as I'm in my 20s.

00:39:25.540 | I want to save for a house, but I also want to have enough for unexpected expenses."

00:39:29.260 | All right, excuse me.

00:39:32.940 | All right, let's think about this.

00:39:35.380 | How do you save money when you're in your 20s?

00:39:36.860 | It can be pretty daunting to think about saving for a house when you're that early on.

00:39:42.540 | All right, so I have three books, well, two books and one article to recommend, and then

00:39:49.160 | I'll talk a little bit about what I did, which I actually don't think is the right, I would

00:39:52.560 | recommend it.

00:39:53.560 | I don't think I'd recommend it.

00:39:54.560 | All right, the first book I would recommend relevant to this topic was written by my friend

00:39:58.840 | Ramit Sethi.

00:39:59.840 | It's called I Will Teach You to Be Rich.

00:40:02.160 | I've known Ramit forever.

00:40:03.160 | We're the same age.

00:40:05.400 | He was graduating Stanford at the same time I was graduating Dartmouth, and we've known

00:40:10.200 | each other off and on for a long time.

00:40:11.880 | That book is great because he wrote it in his 20s.

00:40:15.460 | I remember when he was working on it.

00:40:17.480 | So it is actually very well geared, Timmy, for exactly the stage of life that you're

00:40:21.640 | in right now.

00:40:23.140 | The cool thing about it, I'll just give you the main idea.

00:40:26.040 | A big part of his idea is automate the savings, and then you don't have to be as obsessive

00:40:31.360 | about what you do with the money that's left, because the money that's left is the money

00:40:34.440 | that's left.

00:40:35.440 | So his whole system is not hard, is you're automatically pulling money out of your paycheck

00:40:40.900 | and saving it.

00:40:42.500 | You set it up to do it automatically.

00:40:44.520 | Then hey, don't overspend what remains, because your bank account, whatever it is, it'll empty

00:40:52.960 | out.

00:40:53.960 | There's no tricking yourself here.

00:40:55.400 | This is the money that remains.

00:40:56.560 | But the automatic saving is his key thing, and then don't oversweat it.

00:41:00.280 | Don't spend more than you have, but if you're 20 and single, you don't have to have a complicated

00:41:04.840 | household budget.

00:41:05.840 | You can figure out how much can I afford before my debit card says you have no money.

00:41:11.780 | The key thing about this is then as your income goes up, you already have the framework in

00:41:15.620 | place for automatic savings, so you're just increasing the amount you're automatically

00:41:18.740 | saving.

00:41:19.740 | He's basically saying that's your best bet from a financial engineering perspective.

00:41:24.220 | All right, if you want to consider more extreme options of that, the classic article is Mr.

00:41:30.540 | Money Mustache's article "The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement."

00:41:34.720 | This is one of the articles that sort of helped make the FIRE, Financial Independence Retire

00:41:40.580 | Early community, go mainstream.

00:41:43.740 | And basically the idea there is if you live on a very small fraction of your income, so

00:41:50.900 | like you really push your expenses down, and you have a good income, so like this was typically

00:41:55.980 | thinking about people in their 20s but who were computer programmers, for example.

00:42:01.540 | If you could live on 25% of your income and save 75%, the math works out so that after

00:42:07.900 | I forgot what it was like 10 years or 15 years, you'll have saved enough money that that 25%

00:42:14.980 | you were living on, you can now just withdraw that from your savings into perpetuity.

00:42:18.260 | So in theory, you could retire.

00:42:19.660 | Obviously, it doesn't quite work out because your cost of living goes up, and also you

00:42:24.500 | don't want to live on a fraction of your income or whatever.

00:42:27.580 | But the cool thing about the FIRE community and that article in particular is it'll just

00:42:31.120 | expand your mind a little bit in terms of what it means to save, right?

00:42:37.100 | That saving could mean I'm putting 30% of my income away, like you don't have to spend

00:42:42.600 | every dollar, that it could be very aggressive, or that maybe at first you do a savings ladder,

00:42:49.120 | or at first my income's not great, so I just symbolically I'm saving 5%.

00:42:54.480 | But then after I get to a certain place, like okay, I'm getting raises, but I don't really

00:42:59.840 | need to change much about my quality of life right now, I'm just going to put the whole

00:43:02.780 | raise into the automatic saving, or I'm going to do a 50/50 thing.

00:43:06.200 | Every raise, 50% of that is going to be automatically saved, and the other 50% brings up my quality

00:43:10.840 | of living.

00:43:11.840 | So my quality of life goes up, but I'm actually over time as my income raises, soon the percentage

00:43:16.020 | of my income that I'm saving is really high, but I'm still getting the benefit of making

00:43:20.280 | more money because I'm still raising my quality of life.

00:43:22.180 | It opens up all of this sort of creative thinking about how aggressively one could save, and

00:43:27.280 | how cheaply one could potentially live.

00:43:30.440 | The final knob to turn here is make more money as quickly as possible, especially in your

00:43:35.480 | 20s, where I know we talk a lot about hustle culture being bad right now, but the one time

00:43:41.880 | of your life where actually hustling might make sense is you have nothing else to do

00:43:44.240 | in your 24.

00:43:45.240 | I mean, that's probably not the worst thing.

00:43:48.360 | Is it really better if you've escaped hustle culture so that you can play three hours of

00:43:52.260 | Call of Duty a night?

00:43:53.260 | I don't know, maybe hustling more and making more money in your 20s is a better use of

00:43:57.400 | that time.

00:43:58.400 | So I put that out there.

00:44:01.040 | So if you want to make more money, check out my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You.

00:44:04.960 | The central idea in there is get good at stuff that matters.

00:44:08.000 | No one cares about how valuable you think you are.

00:44:11.300 | No one cares about your scheme that you want to work.

00:44:13.960 | No one cares that you read the four-hour work week and are convinced that if you could just

00:44:17.080 | set up a drop shifter to send striped French sailor shirts to people around the world and

00:44:21.440 | you put the right Google AdSense ads, you're going to be making a fortune automatically.

00:44:25.720 | No one cares that that's what you want to do.

00:44:27.760 | Get unambiguously good at things that matter by training like an athlete trains to get

00:44:31.320 | better at their sport.

00:44:33.500 | And that's the quickest way to raise your value in the marketplace.

00:44:37.320 | And having more money allows you to save more, right?

00:44:40.360 | So those are the books I would have-- I mean, that was my thinking in the 20s.

00:44:44.240 | Those are my influences, and that's what I would recommend.

00:44:47.920 | What I did-- I don't know if I'd recommend this.

00:44:50.360 | So I put all of my eggs, my financial eggs, in the writing basket.

00:44:54.240 | I said, OK, after college, I had a fair amount of student debt, right?

00:45:00.320 | And I went to grads to get my doctorate.

00:45:03.500 | So if you're going to grad school, you can defer paying your student debt back.

00:45:09.480 | But it still accrues interest.

00:45:12.440 | So every year, you spend-- if you're getting your doctorate in the sciences, it's not like

00:45:15.760 | you have to pay money to go to school.

00:45:17.200 | They pay you a stipend, but it's small.

00:45:19.920 | That debt raises every year.

00:45:22.880 | It doubled for me, basically, in the time I was in grad school.

00:45:26.860 | But here was my gamble, right, because I turned down lucrative-- I was a star computer science

00:45:32.200 | student.

00:45:33.200 | I turned down lucrative tech jobs.

00:45:35.800 | My gamble was, as a grad student, and then if I succeed in this and become a professor,

00:45:40.520 | I will still be able to write.

00:45:42.680 | It's a world in which people write books, right?

00:45:46.040 | I want to become a successful writer.

00:45:48.800 | Writing scales.

00:45:50.260 | The same amount of effort goes into writing a book that sells few copies that went into

00:45:55.640 | writing Atomic Habits.

00:45:57.240 | So you have this sort of uncapped up end.

00:46:00.000 | It's not trading your hours for money.

00:46:02.560 | You have this untapped sort of upper end.

00:46:04.880 | I said, OK, I'm going to take this risk that I will accrue this debt as I'm making, like,

00:46:11.920 | no money as a grad student onwards to a professorship job that's also not going to be super lucrative.

00:46:17.680 | I mean, it's going to take a long time to pay back this debt, you know, starting as,

00:46:23.160 | like, an assistant professor.

00:46:24.560 | But I am going to guess that the flexibility-- this gives me the ability to write.

00:46:27.880 | I'm going to put all my eggs in that writing basket that this is going to-- I will become

00:46:31.200 | successful enough that this will all be moot.

00:46:34.040 | That happened.

00:46:35.040 | But, man, that was a risky gamble.

00:46:36.760 | That was probably a risky gamble.

00:46:39.420 | I remember it happened-- my fourth book, like, right as I was leaving my postdoc, the deal

00:46:45.680 | for my fourth book was, like, my first real book deal.

00:46:49.480 | And that allowed us to, like, buy a car, spent $18,000 on a Honda Fit Sport, which we just

00:46:55.760 | sold this year.

00:46:56.760 | Really?

00:46:57.760 | Yeah.

00:46:58.760 | Just sold it this year.

00:46:59.760 | It's a great car.

00:47:00.760 | We have three kids, and we need to use both of our cars for transporting.

00:47:06.160 | So we finally-- we sold it and got a-- we have a plug-in hybrid.

00:47:11.080 | And in DC, like, you can't drive distance.

00:47:14.840 | Like, you're just in-- you could drive a long time, but you can't drive distance, so it's

00:47:17.520 | all electric, basically, and it's bigger, and we can fit the kids or whatever.

00:47:20.600 | It was end of an era, though.

00:47:21.880 | Sold that.

00:47:22.880 | So I could-- we bought-- this is true.

00:47:23.880 | We bought that car for $18,000.

00:47:25.480 | We bought a Tempur-Pedic mattress for $2,000.

00:47:28.600 | We're like, whoa, this is the big thing.

00:47:31.540 | And then, more importantly, it was the down payment for our first house, right?

00:47:34.080 | But I still had the debt, which I had to start paying, but, like, it allowed me to sort of

00:47:39.480 | get on my feet in a way that-- I don't know how I would have done any of those things

00:47:42.280 | coming out of grad school.

00:47:43.280 | You know, I just wouldn't have had the money.

00:47:46.380 | And then when deep work started doing well, then it was-- it wasn't until then that I

00:47:53.000 | was able to actually pay off the student loan debt, and we could move to a new house and

00:47:58.400 | pay that largely off.

00:47:59.400 | And it worked out finally, but not till 2000, probably like six years out of grad school.

00:48:07.320 | So that was a risk.

00:48:09.040 | So I would not recommend, Timmy, just write a book that sells a couple million copies.

00:48:14.760 | And then that does simplify things, but that was my gamble.

00:48:18.720 | The advice I'm giving you here, I think, is probably more replicatable.

00:48:21.240 | All right, what do we got next?

00:48:25.800 | Next question's from Lauren.

00:48:27.680 | I'm a lawyer with expertise in legal writing.

00:48:30.260 | I'm interested in writing a nonfiction book that's relevant to my field.

00:48:33.600 | I took your advice and met with a book agent who delivered some news I didn't want to hear.

00:48:37.880 | For debut nonfiction authors nowadays, agents and publishers want an existing social media

00:48:43.200 | audience of 10,000 to 20,000 followers.

00:48:45.680 | I don't have any desire to engage online.

00:48:50.040 | That's not a hard and fast rule.

00:48:51.720 | So here's what you need.

00:48:54.640 | You need a book idea that there's a sizable audience that's going to feel like, I have

00:48:58.880 | to read this.

00:49:00.680 | You have to be the right person to be writing that book.

00:49:02.760 | It makes sense that you're writing it.

00:49:04.800 | And you have to be a non-bad writer.

00:49:06.680 | So you have to be able to write well enough that it's not going to be a liability.

00:49:10.560 | It'll be publishable.

00:49:12.240 | If you have those three things, there is a place for your book.

00:49:16.680 | Remember, agents are desperate to sell books.

00:49:19.540 | Publishers are desperate to buy and publish books.

00:49:20.920 | They have to keep their pipeline full.

00:49:23.900 | They want good stuff.

00:49:24.900 | And if there's something that really meets that criteria, they want it.

00:49:29.000 | They do not want to be the ones who are like, I missed out on that because you didn't have

00:49:32.040 | 10,000 social media followers.

00:49:33.800 | 10,000 social media followers aren't going to do anything.

00:49:36.200 | It's not going to sell a lot of books.

00:49:38.720 | Conversion rates on social media is very low.

00:49:41.080 | If you have a sizable email list following, that matters.

00:49:44.280 | Sure.

00:49:45.280 | That does matter.

00:49:46.280 | If you have a large YouTube following, that can help as well, though not necessarily.

00:49:51.040 | But that can be pretty useful as well.

00:49:52.820 | Those are two very hard things to get.

00:49:55.500 | You're not, probably not as a, you're a lawyer?

00:49:58.640 | What is this?

00:49:59.640 | Yeah.

00:50:00.640 | Yeah.

00:50:01.640 | I mean, good luck.

00:50:02.640 | You would have to have a very specific angle and point of view with an original idea that

00:50:06.120 | like build up that audience.

00:50:07.840 | So I don't think that's realistic.

00:50:09.440 | So you basically just have to find an agent that doesn't think you need that.

00:50:14.280 | And again, the way you convince the agent you don't really need that is the quality

00:50:17.340 | of the idea.

00:50:18.340 | So probably what's happening here is you have an idea that's like, yeah, like this makes

00:50:22.080 | sense for a book.

00:50:24.120 | You know, some people will buy this.

00:50:27.160 | It's not going to be a big bestseller.

00:50:28.660 | It doesn't have this like energy of like, this is going to be a big thing.

00:50:33.760 | Books are in that sort of meh territory.

00:50:36.160 | Sometimes publishers, I guess, are thinking, well, at the very least, we want you to sell

00:50:39.480 | this to your own audience.

00:50:40.920 | Like, we want to know at least you're going to sell 500 copies to like your 20,000, whatever,

00:50:45.920 | so that we can like make back minimal money.

00:50:47.880 | But you don't want to be playing that game anyways.

00:50:49.480 | If that's the game you're playing with your book, it's not worth taking the time to write

00:50:52.200 | the book.

00:50:54.080 | So if the idea is good enough, people will want to publish it.

00:50:57.520 | And they don't care.

00:50:58.520 | I mean, have a good marketing plan.

00:50:59.520 | You should be like, here's all the podcasts I'm going to go on.

00:51:02.200 | Here's all the people I'm going to reach out to who I think would like this book, whose

00:51:05.440 | audience...

00:51:06.440 | Talk about all the audiences that exist that you are going to engage with, even if they're

00:51:11.680 | not yours.

00:51:12.680 | But if the idea is good, you shouldn't need that minor audience.

00:51:16.560 | And if the idea is good, and an agent says you do, talk to some other agents.

00:51:21.120 | I mean, I don't have social media.

00:51:22.120 | That's not really fair, because I do have a lot of email followers.

00:51:26.940 | But man, I have not...

00:51:28.920 | The most successful books sell because something about the idea hits the timing right.

00:51:32.980 | The most useful thing that social media can offer your book is other people's channels

00:51:36.000 | talking about it.

00:51:38.400 | Your own audience converting to book sales is...

00:51:40.200 | Look, if you want to make money off your own audience, sell them a product.

00:51:44.980 | Good books spread, bad books don't.

00:51:48.440 | Mediocre books go somewhere in the middle.

00:51:50.400 | That's just how that works.

00:51:51.400 | All right, who do we got next?

00:51:53.760 | We have our Slow Productivity Corner.

00:51:55.120 | All right.

00:51:56.120 | Let's hear some theme music.

00:51:58.760 | All right, so people don't know.

00:52:03.360 | We have one question each week that is based on my new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost

00:52:07.960 | Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

00:52:09.880 | All right, what's our Slow Productivity Corner question of the week, Jesse?

00:52:14.040 | It's from Don.

00:52:15.040 | "I will return to the office five days a week in 2025 and will have about 90 minutes total

00:52:20.080 | commute time.

00:52:21.080 | I want to start the year off with your audio books.

00:52:23.560 | Do you recommend reading your books in chronological order or some other way?"

00:52:28.520 | I see them...

00:52:29.520 | Well, it's more of a series plus one-offs.

00:52:32.200 | So assuming you're not interested in the student books, I think of Deep Work, A World Without

00:52:36.600 | Email and Slow Productivity as a coherent trilogy that is confronting knowledge work

00:52:42.800 | in the age of digital technology.

00:52:44.360 | So that's like my work, tech and culture work trilogy.

00:52:49.600 | Digital minimalism is standalone.

00:52:52.000 | Technology in your own life, your personal life, your phone.

00:52:54.800 | So good they can't ignore you, sort of standalone.

00:52:57.080 | It's about thinking, rethinking how one cultivates a career that they really like.

00:53:01.000 | So the order in which you read or where you read those two books doesn't matter.

00:53:05.520 | But Deep Work, Too Email, Too Slow Productivity, that is a coherent sequence and they're all

00:53:10.720 | dealing with the same topic.

00:53:12.920 | A couple other pieces of advice I want to give you though, because you have like a semi-sizeable

00:53:16.200 | commute here.

00:53:17.200 | I mean, not by DC standards, but 45 minutes each way.

00:53:20.920 | Consider also audio courses.

00:53:23.520 | You get like masterclass or great courses where you can listen to them.

00:53:27.120 | You can get through quite a few courses over the course of a year if you're systematically

00:53:31.680 | using your commute.

00:53:33.200 | One hack there is use dictation.

00:53:36.920 | So like voice dictation, like on your phone, for example, to sort of take notes or summarize

00:53:40.960 | what you just learned on the fly.

00:53:42.320 | Like I listened for 20 minutes and I'm going to dictate a summary notes of this and then

00:53:47.120 | collect those notes when you get to your office and put them in like some sort of shared document.

00:53:50.720 | You want to summarize in your own words what you're learning immediately and then have

00:53:54.960 | a place you hold that all.

00:53:56.220 | That's how you actually learn from these courses.

00:53:58.360 | The other thing I would recommend you consider if you have a commute of this length is using

00:54:02.360 | the afternoon commute as office hours.

00:54:05.440 | Consider it's when I am in the car from 5 to 545, five days a week.

00:54:11.440 | Leverage that to minimize to the degree possible unscheduled back and forth messaging both

00:54:16.400 | within work and home.

00:54:18.780 | So if there's like something, hey, it's like a work colleague who wants to like catch up

00:54:21.720 | or has a question to run by me, you just say, "Great.

00:54:25.360 | Call me.

00:54:26.360 | I'm always in my car from 5 to 545 whenever you want.

00:54:28.940 | Just call me.

00:54:29.940 | It's a great time to reach me.

00:54:30.940 | We'll chat.

00:54:31.940 | We'll figure it out."

00:54:32.940 | Same thing like text messages are coming in during the day.

00:54:34.100 | It's like your cousin wants to work out like some plan for an upcoming reunion or whatever.

00:54:39.040 | Like, "Yeah.

00:54:40.040 | 5 to 545.

00:54:41.040 | Just call me any day you want.

00:54:42.040 | I'm here."

00:54:43.040 | Right?

00:54:44.040 | "Love to catch up.

00:54:45.040 | Call me."

00:54:46.040 | You'd be surprised how car commute office hours, how much otherwise distracting unscheduled

00:54:51.360 | messaging gets deferred and also how much more you talk to people because now you could

00:54:56.240 | actually like say, "Hey, I'd love to catch up.

00:54:58.000 | Call me," in a way that you wouldn't do if you actually had to schedule that call into

00:55:01.280 | a specific slot.

00:55:02.880 | This is an idea.

00:55:03.880 | I gave it to Chris Yeh.

00:55:05.420 | This was his idea from years back, and I think it's a great idea.

00:55:08.320 | So take advantage.

00:55:09.840 | If you have the commute, let's take advantage of it.

00:55:12.760 | Also make sure you do a, if you're in the office five days a week, make sure you do

00:55:17.280 | a really great shutdown ritual at the end of each day.

00:55:20.120 | Put aside 15 minutes to do a good shutdown ritual so that that car ride home is not just

00:55:25.200 | a physical transformation location but a psychological transformation as well.

00:55:30.440 | I've closed the loops and in that drive as I'm taking my calls or listening to my audiobook,

00:55:35.240 | my mind transitions away from work and then you're going to get home and there's a refreshed

00:55:40.520 | like at-home mindset you can lean into there.

00:55:43.160 | All right.

00:55:44.160 | Do we have a call this week?

00:55:46.240 | We do.

00:55:47.240 | All right.

00:55:48.240 | Let's hear it.

00:55:49.240 | Hi.

00:55:50.240 | My name is Jeff Amon.

00:55:51.240 | I'm a lawyer in the Tampa Bay area in Lutz, Florida, and I'm a big fan of the podcast

00:56:00.800 | and all of your work, Kyle.

00:56:03.080 | I've been reading your books.

00:56:05.600 | I think I've read all of them but the college book at this point, but one of the references

00:56:13.760 | you made in the podcast was to a book called The Intellectual Life that you stumbled across

00:56:20.320 | in the library in the stacks.

00:56:22.320 | I think it was as an undergrad but I've been reading that book and I'm also trying to transition.

00:56:31.440 | I'm 65 and going to wind down my law practice.

00:56:37.120 | What am I going to focus on in terms of retirement, interested in writing and a few other things

00:56:44.280 | but he says, "Do not be ashamed not to know what you could only know at the cost of scattering

00:56:55.280 | your attention."

00:56:57.560 | And then later in that chapter, "Know what you have resolved to know, cast a glance at

00:57:04.960 | the rest."

00:57:06.880 | And so, given the call to the deep life, which is really what you're asking of us, which

00:57:15.280 | is a great call, for someone like me who's transitioning away from a career in the law,

00:57:26.960 | what should I be doing to think about what area that I want to focus in and cast a glance

00:57:36.160 | at the other stuff?

00:57:37.840 | Thanks.

00:57:38.840 | Appreciate it.

00:57:40.320 | Well, I think the argument in The Intellectual Life is that there is deeply human value in

00:57:49.400 | the focused intellectual pursuit itself and this is to some degree agnostic from content.

00:57:54.920 | So, I think that the argument there would be what he's trying to say there is pick something

00:58:01.000 | that seems interesting and meaningful and get into that intellectually and don't sweat

00:58:06.720 | all the other stuff that you're missing.

00:58:09.440 | Don't sweat, "But I don't know about this or that or this," because there is an endless

00:58:14.360 | universe of ideas that you could be exposing yourself and learning and you don't have enough

00:58:18.840 | time to do all of them.

00:58:20.280 | So, get the enjoyment out of, "I am intellectually engaged with something," and that's a cool

00:58:26.360 | book.

00:58:27.360 | I talk about that book in Deep Work.

00:58:28.360 | I found that in the stacks at Georgetown, actually, because I think it's a Catholic

00:58:31.200 | thinker.

00:58:32.200 | He might even be a Dominican.

00:58:38.200 | I'll look it up.

00:58:39.200 | Yeah, look it up.

00:58:40.200 | Stern Tillingsy.

00:58:41.200 | I always say his name wrong.

00:58:42.200 | But anyways, I found that in the stacks at Georgetown.

00:58:44.560 | What's cool about that book is that he talks about The Intellectual Life as just an aspirational

00:58:48.560 | goal and he gets really practical about it.

00:58:50.760 | How do you build a life of the mind?

00:58:52.880 | He gets into details, like what's it like reading?

00:58:54.840 | What's it like reading hard things?

00:58:56.160 | How do you figure out what it is that you want to read?

00:58:59.000 | It's a cool...

00:59:00.000 | There's not enough books like that, so I highly recommend it.

00:59:03.240 | But again, I think the point there is, use your mind in deep ways and you will be happier.

00:59:11.760 | This matches the type of advice I give.

00:59:14.680 | Think about my reading advice.

00:59:16.440 | I read a lot, but I don't sweat too much what I read.

00:59:19.440 | What am I in the mood for?

00:59:20.780 | What's interesting?

00:59:21.780 | I follow weird flights of fancy.

00:59:23.400 | I don't have a concern of I got to read the right things, the new things, or the things

00:59:26.840 | that everyone else is reading, because the enjoyment is out of the intellectual engagement

00:59:31.820 | as much as it is any particular thing that you're engaging with.

00:59:37.760 | That's cool.

00:59:38.760 | The Intellectual Life.

00:59:39.760 | I like that book.

00:59:40.760 | I always say the guy's name wrong.

00:59:41.760 | Sir Talanges.

00:59:42.760 | Sir Talanges, which can't be how you pronounce that.

00:59:45.560 | Sir Talanges, Sir Talanges.

00:59:47.880 | Insidious?

00:59:48.880 | It's an insidious name.

00:59:52.320 | I said insidious right there, I guess.

00:59:55.060 | You said it right.

00:59:56.060 | Insidious.

00:59:57.060 | Yeah.

00:59:58.060 | You actually said it right there.

00:59:59.060 | I'm sure we'll look it up and our readers will tell us that you pronounce that name

01:00:01.880 | Smith.

01:00:04.880 | Just the pronunciation is wrong.

01:00:06.580 | We got a case study here.

01:00:08.480 | That's where people write in to talk about their personal experience applying the type

01:00:11.980 | of advice that we talked about on the show.

01:00:14.880 | Today's case study comes from Jonathan.

01:00:17.400 | Jonathan says, "I was feeling very cognitively overloaded last month.

01:00:21.560 | I took inspiration from slow productivity and deep work and decided to detox digitally

01:00:26.040 | for the last two months of 2024.

01:00:28.820 | I deleted all social media apps from my phone and resolved not to check social media at

01:00:32.320 | all until 2025, a vow I have maintained.

01:00:36.800 | It's so much easier to do it with the apps deleted.

01:00:40.280 | Since doing so, I'm no longer viewing my phone as a source of entertainment.

01:00:43.520 | A number of things have happened.

01:00:45.160 | I'm much more focused when working.

01:00:46.680 | I started a major project to revise and relaunch part of my business in January.

01:00:50.640 | I've been finishing books at a rapid pace.

01:00:52.800 | I started studying Dutch.

01:00:54.760 | Physically, I do not feel tired and overloaded anymore.

01:00:58.340 | My sleep has improved, my mind is clearer, and I'm much happier without constant reminders

01:01:02.720 | about the state of the world.

01:01:05.160 | But here's the problem.

01:01:06.520 | I depend on LinkedIn, the prospect for new clients for my business.

01:01:10.200 | It is without question the best method I've found to market my business.

01:01:13.280 | I cannot stay off LinkedIn forever and need to get back in on January.

01:01:16.980 | My relaunch requires it.

01:01:18.440 | However, given the peace of mind and productivity I've experienced in the last month, I'm absolutely

01:01:21.800 | dreading going back on LinkedIn, even though I will not download the apps to my phone again

01:01:25.280 | and have decided to limit social media use to my computer in the future.

01:01:29.540 | What advice do you have for going back on social media, a necessary evil, without sacrificing

01:01:33.320 | the happiness and productivity I've gained by eliminating social media from my life over

01:01:36.640 | the last two months?

01:01:37.640 | Well, first of all, Jonathan, I love that example, that testimony about how much is

01:01:43.400 | gained when you're not using social media on your phone is a default response to boredom.

01:01:50.280 | We tell ourselves it's not that big of a problem.

01:01:52.200 | It's important to stay up on the news and you meet interesting people and it's kind

01:01:55.100 | of cool to be connected.

01:01:56.640 | But it's like the problem drinker who doesn't really realize till she or he stops how much

01:02:01.200 | you're actually losing with his behavior.

01:02:03.400 | So see all the positive stuff that happened when Jonathan took these apps off of his phone.

01:02:08.880 | He is reading, he's exercising, he's doing projects on the side, he's reading books faster

01:02:14.840 | than he ever has before.

01:02:15.840 | I think it's all fantastic.

01:02:16.840 | So Jonathan, what do you do about LinkedIn?

01:02:19.200 | You're basically all the way there, access it on your computer, have a schedule three

01:02:25.400 | times a week, twice a week, 15 minutes at a time.

01:02:27.920 | This is what you do.

01:02:28.920 | You like, I don't know what you do on LinkedIn, but like you have to post an article three

01:02:32.200 | times a week so people are keeping up with you or check in on messages that are people

01:02:35.400 | saying to you.

01:02:36.400 | You got to treat it like taking out the garbage.

01:02:37.960 | I do it 15 minutes, I do it on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I do it right after lunch.

01:02:42.240 | It's not going to push you back to where you were before because the thing that kills us

01:02:45.560 | about social media is when it begins to mediate our life, like when it's constantly there,

01:02:51.400 | when we never go more than a few minutes without seeing it.

01:02:54.800 | That's where our life begins to blend with the digital.

01:02:57.880 | That's when our ability to do other things begins to degrade.

01:03:01.920 | Going onto your computer three times a week for 10 minutes to check for LinkedIn DMs is

01:03:05.840 | not going to bring that all back.

01:03:08.080 | Just keep the fences around that super, super high.

01:03:11.240 | That's a key idea for my book, Digital Minimalism.

01:03:14.100 | When you know why you're using a technology, you could put really high fences around it

01:03:17.280 | and the damage is minimized.

01:03:19.400 | So if you know I'm using LinkedIn to do exactly this, you could put up these high fences.

01:03:23.720 | It's three times a week, it's 10 minutes and that's it.

01:03:26.080 | And none of the other social apps get access back to you, none of the other apps get back

01:03:29.080 | on your phone.

01:03:30.080 | I think you'll be fine, Jonathan.

01:03:31.080 | Don't worry, you're not about to go back to a world of constant distraction and all the

01:03:36.880 | harm that causes by just having a carefully fenced LinkedIn habit.

01:03:41.040 | All right, so we've got a cool tech corner coming up next, but first I want to talk about

01:03:45.640 | another sponsor.

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01:05:55.960 | All right, let's go to our final segment.

01:05:58.480 | I'm going to do a tech corner here, take a kind of technology topic and get into it a

01:06:04.720 | little bit.

01:06:05.960 | There's a newsletter post from Ted Gioia's The Honest Broker sub-stack that's been going

01:06:12.700 | around the internet.

01:06:13.700 | It's been getting some discussion.

01:06:16.200 | It's been going a little bit viral.

01:06:19.000 | Here's the title of this post.

01:06:20.000 | I have it on the screen here for those who are watching instead of just listening.

01:06:23.120 | The title of this essay, which was posted December 12th, like a week ago when I'm recording

01:06:28.960 | this, "Are Social Media Platforms the Next Dying Malls?"

01:06:35.480 | What Ted does in this article is he argues that the trajectory of shopping malls is perhaps

01:06:42.840 | the trajectory that we're going to see or are seeing already unfold for social media.

01:06:49.280 | He gives these points, which I'm going to summarize real quickly, for the ways in which

01:06:53.840 | these social media platforms are like the ugly malls that expanded greatly in the '80s

01:06:59.640 | and have been closing down at a rapid clip in the 2000s.

01:07:03.280 | Reason number one, people go there because other people go there, but this is a fragile

01:07:08.160 | foundation for a community.

01:07:13.540 | This was the case about malls, like, "Oh, that's where people are, so I want to go to

01:07:16.720 | the malls because that's where my friends are."

01:07:18.700 | This is what seems to be happening with social media platforms as well.

01:07:21.540 | Their main argument for a lot of these platforms, Ted is saying, is just everyone is using this,

01:07:26.140 | so you should use it as well.

01:07:28.240 | That didn't work out so well for the malls, and he argues that might not work out so well

01:07:31.060 | for social media.

01:07:33.560 | Point number two, malls died because there are too many of them.

01:07:38.100 | Social media is now entering that same phase.

01:07:43.320 | He talks about how once malls over expanded, they began to close down.

01:07:47.940 | He says the same thing is now happening in social media, where "hundreds or thousands

01:07:52.540 | of platforms compete for community members and more get launched every month."

01:07:56.300 | Ted says, "People keep telling me that I need to move on the threads or Blue Sky or Twitch

01:08:00.300 | or TikTok or Discord or True Social or Snapchat or Rumble or YouTube Shorts or whatever.

01:08:05.860 | I've set up profiles on some of these platforms, but then sooner or later, I just walk away.

01:08:09.720 | Who has the time to post on all of these apps?"

01:08:13.840 | His next argument is malls started to look identical with the same merchandise, tenants,

01:08:17.360 | architecture, and ambiance.

01:08:18.360 | It's kind of made a little bit depressing and non-exciting to go to.

01:08:22.320 | He's saying now we're seeing this on social media as well.

01:08:25.680 | Ted writes, "In the last three years, social media platforms have started converging, imitating

01:08:29.120 | the endless scroll of TikTok."

01:08:32.560 | Number four, he says, "Many malls like social media platforms become magnets for lurkers,

01:08:35.960 | losers, and toxic behavior of all sorts, and this made community building impossible."

01:08:40.160 | Clearly, we see that in social media.

01:08:43.260 | And finally, he says, "These bunkers were never real communities and never will be.

01:08:46.680 | They're just businesses, often run with distrust or contempt for their users."

01:08:50.640 | And that's true.

01:08:52.320 | Social media is not a philanthropic community town square, virtual town hall, or whatever

01:08:58.680 | people call it.

01:08:59.680 | It's a moneymaking venture.

01:09:01.600 | And because of that, it's not really meant to be a true community.

01:09:04.040 | All right.

01:09:05.040 | So that was a cool argument.

01:09:06.780 | That went around a lot.

01:09:08.000 | There's like 186 comments on this and thousands of likes.

01:09:12.880 | On the other side, our friend Michael Easter, who was featured in an in-depth episode just

01:09:19.080 | a couple weeks ago, he wrote in his newsletter a response to this, right?

01:09:24.960 | And he says, "Gioia compares social media to shopping malls, arguing that social media

01:09:30.480 | will become like shopping malls, irrelevant and dead, but I respectfully disagree with

01:09:35.640 | him."

01:09:36.640 | And then he goes on to give his three reasons why.

01:09:40.240 | One, social media is on us 24/7, not a place we physically visit.

01:09:45.200 | Two, social media is engineered to give us what we individually respond to.

01:09:49.320 | Malls are not.

01:09:50.640 | Three, malls have fewer, slower, random, and unpredictable rewards, whereas social media

01:09:55.440 | is much better at triggering what Easter calls our scarcity loop, and it's much more sort

01:10:01.120 | of addictively appealing.

01:10:02.760 | All right.

01:10:03.880 | So Easter concludes, "For these reasons, I think the closest physical location comparison

01:10:07.280 | to social media is casinos, and casinos and gambling are here to stay."

01:10:12.720 | All right.

01:10:13.720 | So that's an interesting debate.

01:10:15.800 | For social media, is it more like malls, or is it more like casinos?

01:10:23.360 | So I'm thinking, I thought about this, I don't see why both of these aren't right.

01:10:30.720 | I think Ted Gioia's points are right.

01:10:34.760 | Like, these are things that make social media not nearly as important as it claims to be.

01:10:41.440 | His points, I think, argue why social media is not as central to our culture and experience

01:10:45.880 | as its proponents like to say, or how everyone believed 10 years ago, that it is more fragile

01:10:52.800 | and arbitrary, right?

01:10:55.240 | It's fake community, it has all these toxic elements, there's a lot of it, it's all starting

01:11:01.040 | to look the same, we don't have a good reason to be there other than it seems to be the

01:11:05.720 | place where everyone was, we're just there because everyone says it needs to be there.

01:11:09.880 | Where Easter's points come in, is I think this is what is keeping people from leaving

01:11:15.920 | even faster than they are, that you have this nice addictive reward element.

01:11:20.360 | So really, I think the right way to think about this is not, is it a casino or is it

01:11:24.960 | a mall, but it's like, it's a mall where they added slot machines, and there's people who

01:11:29.240 | are doing those slot machines as they're there, so even as the model is kind of dying, it's

01:11:35.120 | propping them up, or it's what's keeping them alive, or it's drawing out that death a little

01:11:38.600 | bit longer.

01:11:39.600 | So they do have a casino-like flavor, but I mean, I guess the difference is people go

01:11:45.280 | to casinos to go to a casino, I want to gamble, it's fun, I like the chance of winning money.

01:11:50.540 | People tell themselves they're going to social media for very different reasons, and it's

01:11:54.260 | the more implicit casino factor that keeps them there.

01:11:57.680 | And that's why I think both of these things are true, people are realizing the thing I

01:12:01.640 | think social media is, it's not, and I'm really just around because it's secretly a casino,

01:12:05.920 | but I didn't sign up to go to a casino, I wanted to go hang out at the community where

01:12:08.640 | my friends were.

01:12:10.560 | And so I think both are true.

01:12:12.940 | What Easter is talking about is slowing down the death of social media, but the flaws that

01:12:17.080 | you're going to talk about I think are there, and they're becoming more aware, and I do

01:12:20.160 | think I've written about this before in The New Yorker and elsewhere, I do think the age

01:12:23.860 | of the dominance of the major social media platforms is over, just people don't realize

01:12:27.440 | it yet, it's on the downslope, we just haven't realized it yet.

01:12:31.600 | Cool debate though.

01:12:33.400 | Do you, in terms of the casino, does that carry over to drafting apps and stuff like

01:12:38.200 | that?

01:12:39.200 | Hell yeah.

01:12:40.200 | I mean those are, that's like more explicitly that.

01:12:41.840 | It's like, I want to bet money to see if I can make more money.

01:12:43.920 | Well it is and it isn't because they're hearing it all the time now, like for instance, the

01:12:48.440 | ads are on sporting games all the time, like in-game betting.

01:12:52.280 | Yeah, you're right.

01:12:53.880 | It's like a casino.

01:12:54.880 | So it's kind of like, it's in the back of their brain and they're just hearing it, and

01:12:58.840 | then they just might, you know.

01:13:00.080 | It's like a casino that you're allowed to put on a phone.

01:13:02.720 | Like I think that's, I mean that's actually playing with a money scarcity loop where like,

01:13:07.160 | I want to make more money, I want to turn my money into more money.

01:13:10.280 | And sometimes it does and it's, yeah.

01:13:12.600 | I mean that, that's emerging by the way is, for techno critics, that's emerging as like,

01:13:17.040 | this might have been a mistake.

01:13:19.040 | Like giving everyone access to a casino on their phone, that's going to create a lot

01:13:23.240 | of problems.

01:13:24.240 | Like it's kind of the equivalent as if you built major casinos in every single town and

01:13:28.560 | just like constantly, like they're just everywhere, like set the gas, come by the casino, come

01:13:32.560 | by the casino.

01:13:33.560 | You're going to have a lot more problems when like everyone is around a casino all the time.

01:13:38.840 | So yeah, it's interesting what's going on out there.

01:13:40.640 | Anyways, cool discussion, cool tech corner.

01:13:42.920 | So we're back in it, New Year's.

01:13:44.880 | Back to our normal episode rhythm, we got some good in-depth we're working on as well,

01:13:48.840 | so we'll see some more of those Thursday episodes as well sporadically as the New Year unfolds.

01:13:52.920 | This is our last episode of 2024, so we will see you all in 2025, we'll do the books next

01:13:58.480 | week.

01:13:59.480 | So I'll see you then.

01:14:00.480 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:14:02.520 | Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode and maybe you want to think a little bit more about

01:14:06.440 | the deep life writ large, check out episode 314 about the elements of the deep life.

01:14:13.600 | I think you'll like it.

01:14:14.600 | Check it out.

01:14:15.240 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

New Year Course Correction: 4 Steps To Change Your Life In 2025 | Cal Newport

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