Why You’re Busy But NOT Productive—The Secret Formula For Explosive Output

00:00:00.000 | So I was recently listening to Tim Ferriss interview the prolific fantasy author

00:00:04.960 | Brandon Sanderson

00:00:07.520 | Now there's an exchange in this conversation. It was early on. It's right around the nine-minute mark of the podcast that caught my attention

00:00:14.360 | When I heard it it caught my attention because I think it actually says something profound

00:00:21.200 | About some of the deep problems in the way we organize work in our current moment. So here's what I want to do

00:00:29.600 | I'm going to first I'm going to play the clip. I'm going to detail what it is that that that lesson

00:00:34.560 | I think this clip is pointing towards then we're going to discuss a way

00:00:38.600 | to push back or try to correct for those issues and

00:00:43.280 | All this will really just be an excuse to geek out on Sanderson productivity chatter because all writers love to geek out on Sanderson productivity chatter

00:00:50.500 | All right. So anyways, let's get to the clip. Let me set the scene here

00:00:53.720 | This is Tim has traveled to Utah

00:00:57.520 | To talk to Sanderson at the headquarters of his publishing and merchandising company Dragonsteel books

00:01:03.200 | It's like a 70 person company that Sanderson started

00:01:06.440 | Kind of his empire built around his fantasy books

00:01:10.280 | Let's hear now this clip from the interview and I will all of that stuff

00:01:16.760 | I I joke that I've just got so much Ram and I've filled it all with story ideas

00:01:22.200 | And so everything else kind of just squeezed out the ears. It seems like where we're sitting and we're sitting at HQ. Mm-hmm. It seems like

00:01:29.560 | the design of

00:01:32.160 | Dragonsteel maybe the intention behind it is to allow you to do that on some level. Yeah. Yeah, I mean

00:01:39.200 | everything in our company is built around let Brandon cook and

00:01:45.600 | Take away from Brandon anything that he doesn't have to think about or you know

00:01:50.520 | It doesn't strictly need to I actually

00:01:52.760 | Alright, so that is the clip that caught my attention to let

00:01:56.000 | Brandon cook now as someone who writes a lot about knowledge work in the digital age. I'm fascinated by this idea of cooking

00:02:04.240 | Which in the work context I define to mean

00:02:07.320 | Letting someone who has a high return skill. So a skill that returns hot value at a high level

00:02:14.320 | Design a workflow that enables them to just basically spend all their time applying that skill

00:02:20.200 | minimizing other distractions

00:02:22.200 | So we can think about this idea of letting someone cook as a particular

00:02:27.680 | Strategy for workflow design now, it makes sense to me that in this particular example that dragon steel books goes out of its way to protect

00:02:36.520 | Sanderson's ability to think and write he produces roughly 300,000 words a year

00:02:41.760 | He'll geek out on the details of this some years. It's more he goes up to as much as 400,000. Sometimes it's less

00:02:49.200 | He does this on a pace of like roughly ten to twenty thousand words a week depending on whether he's revising or not

00:02:54.180 | Those words he produces is the raw material on which all revenue of dragon steel books is built

00:02:59.920 | You cut down those words

00:03:02.800 | It's like reducing the amount of steel that you're shipping to a Ford assembly line

00:03:07.500 | They're gonna produce less cars and if they produce less cars, they're gonna make less money

00:03:11.120 | So you you got to protect at the but what is the core raw material on which the value?

00:03:17.280 | That dragon steel sells or bases its business off of it is the words that Sanderson produces

00:03:23.300 | So, of course this idea of yeah, let's let Brandon cook

00:03:26.280 | Make sense. It's the same thing as saying your assembly line

00:03:29.620 | Let's make sure we have plenty of steel coming in so we can build a lot of cars. So that makes sense to me

00:03:34.640 | Here's what does it make sense to me?

00:03:37.360 | Why don't more?

00:03:40.040 | Companies have Sanderson figures

00:03:42.500 | Why is this model of cooking?

00:03:46.080 | Not more prevalent throughout the knowledge sector writ large where hey, we've set up our workflow so that this person can cook

00:03:53.120 | We've set up our workflows that that person can cook

00:03:54.840 | this person is producing the stuff that is at the core of our

00:03:57.400 | marketing company at the core of our technology company at the core of our research institute and we want them to produce that as much as

00:04:03.360 | Possible because that is going to help us be as successful as possible. Let's let them cook. You think you would see that more often

00:04:08.760 | But we don't

00:04:11.320 | To me that paradox is really interesting

00:04:13.840 | Now I need to put a clear caveat here

00:04:16.800 | Before we get the complaints. I am NOT arguing that

00:04:21.600 | All knowledge work jobs would benefit from the Sanderson model cooking

00:04:27.040 | Workflow

00:04:30.080 | Actually, probably most knowledge work jobs would not let me use myself as an example at the moment right as a full professor

00:04:37.240 | in Georgetown's computer science department we rotate

00:04:41.760 | Several key administrative roles among the full professors its faculty governance of departments. This is how academic institutions run

00:04:48.320 | I am currently the director of undergraduate studies for the computer science department at Georgetown. It's my turn

00:04:55.040 | So it came to me

00:04:57.520 | That is an example of a knowledge work role in

00:05:00.280 | Which there is not a single high return activity that I should be focusing on

00:05:06.080 | it's a much more varied role in terms of its its reactive it is it's taking in a lot of information and

00:05:12.000 | Processing it and coming up with answers. It's helping get people the information they need

00:05:16.840 | It's also a very interpersonal like counseling role like working with individual students

00:05:20.800 | So in that particular job, which is like one of seven I have in that particular job

00:05:25.900 | It would not make sense to say hey, let Cal cook

00:05:27.900 | There's nothing here for me to cook on so I'm not arguing that

00:05:33.000 | Most jobs should have this model. But what I am arguing is that most organizations should have some people who who are doing that

00:05:38.960 | Right that okay

00:05:41.400 | maybe not the director of undergraduate studies, but the the new professor who should just be doing research or the computer programmer or

00:05:49.160 | the the marketing ad writer or any number of a creative industry positions, right this just strategician the

00:05:58.040 | Economic analysis you should just be like there with the numbers trying to get the sort of the deepest most sophisticated analysis done

00:06:03.680 | There there should be a lot of positions in

00:06:07.800 | Which we would say yeah, of course, we want to let them cook

00:06:10.600 | This is what's going to produce the most value, but we don't so I think that's a paradox

00:06:13.760 | Let's explain this paradox

00:06:17.200 | So as I talked about at the opening of this show almost everything I talked about is motivated at the very top

00:06:23.680 | by the modern digital environment

00:06:26.960 | Everything I talked about is a reaction to that

00:06:28.960 | This is no different if you want to understand why it's so rare to see more Brandon Sanderson's in the world of knowledge work

00:06:34.720 | writ large it is because of digital

00:06:36.720 | business productivity software in particular

00:06:39.480 | digital communication tools

00:06:42.440 | So let's walk this through you introduce something like email

00:06:46.180 | Now you have an incredibly low friction way of reaching out and communicating with someone now. Why does this cause trouble?

00:06:54.800 | Well, this means now the social capital as well as just the strict time and effort cost of me

00:07:01.360 | Commanding some of your time and attention has just radically diminished

00:07:05.560 | if I want to ask you a question if I want to request that you jump on a call if I want to like

00:07:10.120 | Put a quick task onto your plate. I can do this at very low cost. So I'm gonna do this more

00:07:16.000 | Because every time I can command some of your time and attention what I am doing is reducing

00:07:21.080 | How much time and attention I have to expend?

00:07:23.560 | So now it becomes rational for me in a game theoretic way to try to command as much time and attention as possible from as

00:07:29.080 | Many people as possible because that will maximize

00:07:31.080 | What I can get out of my own time and attention

00:07:33.480 | so once you have this dynamic and

00:07:37.160 | You have this dynamic in a workplace where there are no hard structures or systems about here's how we figure out work

00:07:43.640 | Here's how we assign work. Here's how we talk about work in a workplace without those structures

00:07:47.600 | What's going to happen is we are going to all pull each other inexorably downwards towards this suboptimal equilibrium

00:07:53.760 | this degenerate equilibrium where no one can escape and

00:07:57.160 | Everyone finds themselves doing way too many things you find yourself in a state of almost constant distraction you find yourself with workload saturation

00:08:06.000 | I can't take anything more on my plate. I'm literally out of minutes to work on it

00:08:09.660 | this is what will happen in a world of

00:08:13.360 | Zero cost request of time and attention and every request gives you a personal benefit

00:08:18.420 | Everyone is going to drag everyone down until everyone is workload saturated and distracted

00:08:22.800 | So we don't have

00:08:26.240 | Sandersons of these companies cooking we have them checking email 150 times a day

00:08:31.660 | The technology I think is what created this if you're not in the mode of designing workflows or rules

00:08:40.160 | What will rule in your workplace is going to be something that emerges and unfortunately as I've captured in multiple books now in

00:08:46.600 | Digital knowledge work what's going to emerge?

00:08:49.560 | Bottom up is going to be this state this hyperactive hive mind state of saturation and distraction

00:08:55.120 | So let's talk about what a world would be like without this. So so what is

00:08:59.240 | What would a cooking model be if I said enough of this? I hate this like we're all saturated and distracted all the time

00:09:05.760 | No, no, no, we're gonna come in and these rules here in our company

00:09:08.480 | We want we want to let those people cook. What should a cooking model?

00:09:12.240 | Actually include well, we can go back to Sanderson here

00:09:16.160 | To help expand our understanding of what it means to let someone cook

00:09:21.000 | Hey, it's Cal. I wanted to interrupt briefly to say that if you're enjoying this video

00:09:26.020 | Then you need to check out my new book slow productivity the lost art of accomplishment without

00:09:33.560 | Burnout. This is like the Bible for most of the ideas we talked about here in these videos

00:09:39.680 | You can get a free excerpt at calnewport.com/slow

00:09:44.840 | I know you're gonna like it. Check it out. Now. Let's get back to the video

00:09:49.120 | There's two elements that come up when we hear Sanderson talk about his approaches to productivity. The first is reduction

00:09:55.440 | This is what was mentioned in that clip. We just listened to

00:09:57.880 | Where he said my company is set up to sort of take off my plate

00:10:03.080 | Everything I don't strictly need to do now. He goes on in that clip to give a like a somewhat facetious example

00:10:08.600 | He says there's someone who fills my water bottle for me, so I don't have to bother going to do it

00:10:13.040 | That is sort of a metaphor

00:10:14.320 | I mean, I'm sure that's probably true

00:10:15.440 | but that's sort of a metaphor for the broader things of all the

00:10:18.440 | decisions that have to be made the

00:10:20.560 | logistical steps that happen in producing merchandising and producing books and publishing books and marketing books and getting the rights from the Illustrator that you're

00:10:26.800 | Gonna use for the graphic on the self-published hardcover version of the book and the rights you need and all those type of things

00:10:31.720 | He gets himself out of those if I don't really have to be in those decisions

00:10:34.780 | Let's find a way for me not to be in them. So he reduces

00:10:37.960 | his cookie model reduces

00:10:41.280 | the amount of things that he's responsible for

00:10:44.080 | Now yes, this makes other people other people have to do more things

00:10:48.920 | But this is not an egalitarian commune. This is a business where we're trying to maximize the value produced and

00:10:57.000 | So it's not about trying to have an equal level of convenience or

00:11:01.320 | Disconvenience among all people in the organization. It's how do we get 300,000 words out of Brandon?

00:11:06.040 | You will do more of this stuff so he can do more of that stuff

00:11:09.480 | right, that is just

00:11:12.320 | Economics one-on-one the second element that I think goes into his cooking model and I got this from some of his essays

00:11:18.200 | Not from this interview is

00:11:20.360 | consolidation

00:11:21.800 | He reduces

00:11:23.520 | What's on his plate and then he consolidates?

00:11:26.840 | What remains?

00:11:28.360 | To try to minimize its footprint now this requires everyone else being on board

00:11:31.720 | That's why this has to be part of like an agreed-upon workflow. I'm gonna read here a quote from a blog post

00:11:37.200 | He wrote about his habits here. I'm gonna read this here. So this is Brandon talking. I

00:11:41.760 | Also set aside one day a week for business matters answering email signing things from my store phone calls with my agent, etc

00:11:49.320 | I'm lucky to have I'm lucky enough to have assistance I can trust

00:11:53.120 | I don't have to get distracted by day-to-day interruptions because I know my assistants will deal with most of it and only ask me about

00:11:57.840 | Things that really need my input and most of them can wait until my business day

00:12:01.200 | So he has one day where the stuff he really does need to do he can do

00:12:06.920 | So the other days he knows I'm just writing

00:12:09.840 | That's the cooking model

00:12:13.520 | Again, this model doesn't apply to a lot of jobs

00:12:17.840 | Maybe most jobs but the jobs that it does apply to could make a really big difference

00:12:23.400 | So why then is my final point I want to make about this. Why should we care?

00:12:29.200 | I mean we should care if we're if we're a Brandon Sanderson type at our company. This would be great

00:12:35.760 | Yeah, I could just cook right I could just like rock and roll

00:12:38.360 | I could have one day where I have to like talk to people and then otherwise I'm writing or I'm programming or I'm doing strategy

00:12:44.200 | Or I'm crunching numbers or doing research, whatever it is. Yeah for the small percentage of people in supply

00:12:48.980 | So that'd be great

00:12:49.560 | But why should the rest of us care about this because again most people have jobs like my temporary director of undergraduate study job

00:12:55.000 | My final point is here's why we should all care about it

00:12:58.240 | Here's why it would be a good thing if more organizations had a small number of people with cooking models for their workflows

00:13:04.200 | it would represent a

00:13:07.080 | notable incursion

00:13:10.200 | Against our broader embrace of pseudo productivity in the world of knowledge work

00:13:13.760 | So pseudo productivity this core concept for my new book slow productivity is the idea that

00:13:20.520 | Visible effort is a reasonable proxy for useful effort. The more stuff you do the better

00:13:25.040 | Busyness is the goal

00:13:27.640 | This would be an incursion against that

00:13:29.840 | Right because when you say no, no, I'm gonna let this person just write

00:13:33.860 | You're saying busyness is not the goal

00:13:37.240 | The goal here is the number of words he produces because that's valuable. I don't care if

00:13:42.240 | They respond to slacks quickly or if they're jumping on a bunch of zooms or we see them around the office

00:13:47.840 | I want them producing words. That is a completely different mindset. That is an output focused

00:13:53.200 | productivity mindset a result focused productivity mindset and once you have

00:13:57.320 | Established that as a valid mindset, even if you've just established in your organization for four people

00:14:02.600 | You've established that that is an alternative way to think about productivity. It is a

00:14:06.440 | Alternative to pseudo productivity and once that alternative exists

00:14:10.040 | it can begin to spread and

00:14:13.120 | So like once you acknowledge, okay for this salesperson this programmer and this strategist

00:14:18.840 | They're gonna cook once you acknowledge. That's a very

00:14:22.280 | effective way of thinking about productive output

00:14:25.120 | you can use that knowledge for other positions and

00:14:29.480 | Now maybe for other positions is like okay. I don't have one thing

00:14:33.720 | I should just be doing all day, but we're recognizing busyness is not that important

00:14:37.400 | So maybe in this other position like my director of undergraduate studies position

00:14:41.420 | Well, we have like this one day where all the meetings happen and this gets automated

00:14:44.720 | It allows you to explore workflow configurations that aren't just built on demonstrating busyness

00:14:50.160 | And once you're no longer just demonstrating busyness a lot of the pain points of modern knowledge work can be dissipated

00:14:56.140 | So that's why I'm interested in this in the in the big picture, right?

00:14:59.360 | I got small picture interest for the Brandon Sanderson's of the of this sector

00:15:03.460 | Let them cook it's gonna be better for the company's a better for them big picture

00:15:07.120 | Once you're doing that for some people

00:15:09.840 | you have

00:15:12.000 | Acknowledged that pseudo productivity is not the only way

00:15:14.620 | You have an incursion against small

00:15:17.440 | But definitive incursion against that reality and I am convinced that it is the end of the pseudo productivity regime

00:15:23.820 | that will

00:15:27.000 | Spark the beginning of a new era of knowledge work in the digital age. We can't actually

00:15:30.920 | reap the potential benefits of

00:15:33.800 | Digital technology and office work the potential almost like utopian visions

00:15:39.420 | We have for what work could be we cannot reap those until we take down the pseudo productivity regime

00:15:44.780 | Until we have our equivalent of pulling down, you know, the Saddam Hussein statue in Iraq

00:15:51.300 | we need somewhere for there to be some sort of metaphorical statue that is going to be

00:15:56.720 | Like a gmail unread message count and we're gonna pull on those ropes and pull that thing down and indicate that regime is done

00:16:04.860 | We're moving on to a new way of thinking about productivity. All right, so

00:16:08.440 | Sanderson's cool. I

00:16:11.100 | Like his approach that they built the whole business around just laying them, right?

00:16:16.300 | more companies should do that for their Sanderson style characters and once we do that things could get better for everyone else and

00:16:22.340 | Just you'll be proud that I got that whole distance without doing

00:16:26.140 | The whole segment without doing a name of the wind joke

00:16:29.060 | He talks about his writing schedule as he wakes up late

00:16:33.940 | He writes somewhere from 2 to 5 or 6 and then hangs with his family. Then he writes again from 10 to

00:16:40.060 | 2 in the morning. Yeah, a lot of people do that like they get that Tim Ferriss writes that way

00:16:46.580 | He's got like two sessions a day for an Itali up to eight hours

00:16:49.700 | I mean a lot of people the people I know night right just do the night session, but Samson's is the beast

00:16:54.360 | Yeah, do you imagine writing for eight hours a day? No easy. They wrote four hours yesterday and they're the tear myself away

00:17:00.900 | Once you get going

00:17:03.740 | writing

00:17:05.060 | Right, like you just want to that's all you want to do. You probably average what three a day three

00:17:10.780 | I feel like three is a good session. Yeah, I wonder if he writes on the weekends

00:17:15.620 | That's a good question, I bet he does well, he's Mormon so I don't know if they

00:17:20.520 | Protect the Sabbath or not. They might they have a lot of rules

00:17:24.940 | So maybe not on I guess their Sabbath will be Sunday. I don't know about that

00:17:29.500 | But he probably does. I think that guy works a lot. He works a lot

00:17:34.540 | I say he has a quick commute. He just walks to his layer. I know we got to get to that layer Jesse

00:17:40.140 | We got to get to that layer

00:17:42.500 | We got to build a layer

00:17:44.500 | I watched the video with my son the other night where they took is like a boring

00:17:50.540 | Completely undecorated sort of home office room and they

00:17:55.580 | Renovated the whole thing into a dark academia

00:17:59.340 | Set so like old bookcases and leather-bound books and chairs and like a fake fireplace or whatever. I was like, oh man

00:18:07.380 | That's so awesome. Didn't you do that in your home office?

00:18:10.480 | Yeah, I guess so, but I want to do it more here. But here's the problem you watch this video and it takes them forever

00:18:16.800 | They worked on this that the channel is called nerdforge. It's like a Scandinavian maker DIY woman and it just must have been

00:18:24.920 | Three to four weeks of like all day work. Yeah, I would take away from writing. I keep telling my son

00:18:30.920 | I was like don't be

00:18:32.920 | You should not want to be a full-time youtuber this it's it's such hard work

00:18:37.920 | I guess I know the maker space best because I wrote that New Yorker article in that space

00:18:41.240 | I was like, it's such hard work. You got to do these projects and they're hard. It's full-time work for like months

00:18:48.520 | Yeah

00:18:48.880 | you get one video and that video better get the views because you're kind of screwed if it does it and you have to

00:18:54.080 | Constantly be like thinking about these over-the-top projects that are like really hard to do

00:18:59.120 | It seems like a stressful job. Mm-hmm, and the money's like, okay, but it's like

00:19:04.400 | Not there is no equivalent in that world of like Travis Kelsey's podcast contract

00:19:09.440 | Like if you want to look at independent media worlds like in podcasting there's paydays

00:19:13.960 | There's not really paydays like that in YouTube that the it's harder to squeeze dollars. It's all with these sponsorship deals. It's harder to squeeze

00:19:21.640 | Dollars you need like multi-million view videos that you can do like six times a year is kind of a sweet spot and then you're doing

00:19:28.960 | You're still nowhere near

00:19:32.520 | Really successful podcasters, but the same thing which Brandon was talking about in the interview with Ferris's

00:19:37.640 | He wanted to start his own ecosystem to get off of relying on Amazon if you're just a full-time youtuber

00:19:43.720 | Oh, it's been your channel gets canceled. What are you gonna do then?

00:19:46.480 | Oh, yeah, you put something out that yeah happens to get banned or the algorithm changes

00:19:51.640 | Yeah, like we see this we put our we put our you might be watching this on YouTube

00:19:55.080 | We put our podcast on YouTube because a lot of people actually listen to podcasts using the YouTube app. So fine

00:20:02.160 | We'll put it up there or they'll watch it. They like to have it on or whatever

00:20:04.680 | but the the numbers like views is

00:20:07.680 | Incredibly fickle, right? Like if I overwrite our YouTube guys like change that word. It'll be like 10,000 less people will watch it

00:20:16.260 | It's crazy like podcast

00:20:18.680 | I'm used to podcasting books and email newsletter or like every person who is consuming your stuff is hard one

00:20:25.240 | But then they're just gonna consume your stuff

00:20:27.520 | It's like I have this many people who will read my newsletter and it took a long time to build them up and they'll read

00:20:33.520 | It every time I write it, you know

00:20:34.800 | Or I have like this many readers who will buy my new book

00:20:37.240 | When it comes out or we have our podcast numbers are very stable, you know, it's hard one

00:20:42.960 | There's no algorithms, but it's stable YouTube is man's Wild West. Mm-hmm

00:20:47.600 | You just be like we have videos that'll have 600,000 views, you know

00:20:52.640 | And then other ones like nothing and also you'll you'll look in this world

00:20:56.360 | I guess we have to give more credit to our YouTube guy because I'll look at

00:20:58.880 | really popular podcasters

00:21:01.680 | Like Mel Robbins and like yeah, we're putting just huge massive podcast number one podcast this week actually on the Apple charts

00:21:09.040 | I've never even heard of that podcast before I'm going on it

00:21:11.600 | I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about that before but I may or may not be going on it

00:21:15.580 | We can edit it out. Yeah, I guess I don't know if it's a secret or not

00:21:18.340 | but like her YouTube page her show is

00:21:22.120 | Very popular. She puts her episodes on YouTube like we do

00:21:25.120 | Maybe there's just like a little bit of thumbnail title stuff. That's different. It know it just almost no views

00:21:31.000 | Like we're crushing those videos even though her audience is probably 5x our audience. So YouTube is yeah

00:21:39.060 | Put stuff on it, but it's like posting ghost. It's a hard world to make to make your main world

00:21:45.520 | But it has that appeal of you never know. There's this algorithmic lottery, right?

00:21:52.080 | You know what podcast he's just brutal. It's like no one listened to my podcast now five people downloaded it now seven people download

00:21:58.440 | It's brutal right there and there's no way that that's gonna change fast YouTube. It's always like you never know

00:22:03.520 | There could be some virality thing

00:22:05.840 | I could get a million people could look at this and I think that keeps people locked in

00:22:09.360 | Mm-hmm. This is kind of a divergence. We've kind of

00:22:12.240 | We've gone off

00:22:14.760 | We've gone from our digital knowledge work category to our attention economy category

00:22:19.480 | But we'll bring it back. All right, we got some good questions to go through

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00:26:14.080 | $100. All right, Jesse. Let's move on to some questions

00:26:20.160 | The first questions from Joe, but before I said I have a quick question my own now that you don't wear the traditional podcast shirt

00:26:27.320 | Are you ever gonna wear that shirt again? I don't know why I've just been in a t-shirt mood

00:26:31.680 | recently

00:26:34.760 | I'll tell you what I I would like to

00:26:37.360 | Get a new set of podcast shirts

00:26:40.400 | But I don't know what they're gonna be something. I was gonna ask you offline

00:26:44.200 | But I was like, I'm the audience might be curious. Yeah, I mean

00:26:49.320 | I've been in a t-shirt mode

00:26:51.320 | but I do need

00:26:53.640 | We should have like a giant selection show about this. I

00:26:56.800 | Want to find some got around to it. I want I want a new podcast. I don't want to stick with t-shirts

00:27:02.920 | because I feel like

00:27:05.160 | It's such like a Silicon Valley cliche when like men in their 40s and 50s are like wearing

00:27:09.720 | Too many t-shirts and like formal settings, you know

00:27:12.320 | I couldn't wear a t-shirt in here because you run hot and I run cold. I'll just be freezing

00:27:17.320 | I know like I am

00:27:19.320 | Like slightly on the warm side of like normal right now, and I'm sure it's pretty cold in here. Yeah. Yeah, I run hot

00:27:24.540 | Yeah, so I don't I don't want to stick with the t-shirts, but I gotta find I don't know

00:27:29.160 | I want to I want to upgrade the look of the show. So I'm thinking about it. I don't know. Okay, probably I'm watching

00:27:35.160 | I'm doing a lot of PT right now and I've discovered like oh as everyone else knows you can watch

00:27:40.200 | Like dumb shows while you exercise especially like stretches or whatever and I'm watching like all the shows on Netflix

00:27:46.960 | I'm watching the Netflix documentary on the history of the TV show American Gladiators

00:27:52.220 | So I'm thinking is that any good? Well, I think what I should be wearing is an American Gladiator

00:27:57.360 | one of the deep-cut onesies

00:28:00.080 | Like Nitro or Malibu more on that show. I have to lift a few more weights. All right. What's our first question?

00:28:07.120 | All right first question from Joe

00:28:09.280 | You commented on Justin Sung's YouTube video last month

00:28:13.640 | He's big on mind mapping and how to become a straight-a student

00:28:17.120 | The intro says I promise you won't find any mention of the Cornell note-taking method mental map diagrams or any other optimal learning technique

00:28:25.040 | What is your opinion?

00:28:26.620 | Well, I mean that's an interesting quote you bring up there from the beginning of how to become a straight-a student that book came out

00:28:31.640 | in 2006 and I actually remember writing that introduction because at the time I

00:28:37.060 | Was looking at other not just student advice books, but sort of online

00:28:42.760 | Collections of student advice from university student resources websites or what-have-you and things were starting to get a little out of control

00:28:49.260 | like the

00:28:51.800 | number of systems and the complexity of systems were really expanding and my whole

00:28:56.880 | Unique selling proposition when I wrote that book is that I was a recent graduate like a graduate in 2004. I wrote that book

00:29:04.340 | Largely in 2005 and so I was grounded in the reality of college life when I was thinking about that

00:29:11.940 | And I was like, this is crazy

00:29:13.920 | This is gonna take way too long

00:29:15.920 | no one is gonna take notes with multiple columns and go back through and then write the

00:29:20.440 | Clarification and then go back through there and try to put this into some sort of structure

00:29:23.740 | there's all of this research, which I thought was kind of

00:29:26.540 | Silly or they said yes

00:29:29.560 | If you do this like incredibly time-consuming super structured note-taking you understand the material better

00:29:35.780 | Sure, but it takes forever and no one's going to do it

00:29:39.520 | And so no one does so my whole thing with that book is like let's get down to what actually works

00:29:44.920 | Let's get every unnecessary piece of friction out of the system so that you're spending as much time as possible

00:29:50.340 | Just on like the actual core

00:29:53.060 | Cognitive activity that is best preparing you for your goal, which is like doing well on this test

00:29:57.980 | Like we get in physical activity, you know

00:30:01.060 | What are the actual things that matter for the muscle development and like let's focus on that, you know

00:30:06.540 | And so that's what I thought the problem was with that world back then I was trying to simplify it

00:30:10.660 | So no, I was never a fan of these more advanced study techniques

00:30:15.260 | So because of that I've never been a fan of things like mental mapping. I mean, I don't I

00:30:18.460 | Don't mind it. Like if you like making mental maps, it's fine, right? You do you I don't think it's a bad thing

00:30:23.960 | But most professional thinkers I know don't use these sort of complicated thought organization techniques

00:30:31.100 | They don't use mental maps. They don't have zettelkasten systems. They take in a lot of information

00:30:35.820 | They trust their brain

00:30:38.300 | Their brain is the best mental map producer and zettelkasten organizer. There is

00:30:42.620 | ideas stick

00:30:44.700 | They keep recurring and they say okay, I'm gonna take that idea and I'm gonna work on it for professional thinkers

00:30:50.140 | I say this all the time on the show

00:30:51.860 | The hardest thing the thing that requires all the effort and help is not the ideas

00:30:56.300 | It's the transforming those ideas into something of sufficient quality that it is shareable and interesting to the world

00:31:02.340 | That's where all the time goes in. That's where the software matters. That's where the systems matters

00:31:06.640 | That's where like time management Maddox that takes forever. That's where it matters. If you're using Scrivener versus Microsoft Word

00:31:11.700 | That's where all of the the rubber is hitting the proverbial road is the taking the idea and turn it into something you can share

00:31:18.660 | And that people care about the ideas itself is like the easy part

00:31:22.620 | You know, I was thinking about this like when I write articles for the New Yorker

00:31:25.660 | Yeah, we come up with ideas, I don't know I'll have an idea an editor

00:31:30.380 | I'll write me what about this we dismiss both of them one kind of clicks like that makes sense

00:31:34.260 | Like that's not the hard part

00:31:36.020 | The hard part then is like how do we turn that into a 2000 word piece up to the caliber of New Yorker?

00:31:40.300 | Now that is you're gonna sweat bullets and that's where all the stuff matters. So no, I'm not

00:31:43.820 | Against these type of systems, but I I don't buy

00:31:47.980 | That these systems unlock more creativity or more efficiency or productivity when it comes to professional idea production

00:31:54.620 | Keep your system stupid. Keep your output great

00:31:57.900 | All right. Who do we have next next questions from Cara?

00:32:01.740 | How do you figure out the thing that really matters for developing career capital or maybe it's about optimizing from one to two qualities

00:32:08.980 | But still having satisfactory performance in many others. It's such such a key question and it's so hard. It's so hard

00:32:15.940 | All right. So let me give you a couple points about this

00:32:17.980 | one where you say

00:32:20.620 | Optimizing one or two qualities, but still have satisfactory performance in many others. This is really important

00:32:26.180 | the foundation

00:32:29.060 | to any career capital strategy

00:32:31.220 | So any strategy of using rare and valuable skills to as leverage to shape your career to be better for you?

00:32:36.820 | Any strategy like this you need a foundation

00:32:39.860 | Where you you're on the ball meaning?

00:32:44.660 | You do the things you say you're going to do and you do them at a reasonable level of quality

00:32:49.300 | That is the table stakes for any sort of interesting career capital strategy within a larger organization

00:32:55.880 | people trust if they ask you to do something that you are not going to forget it and it will get done and

00:33:01.780 | The quality will be good. You're not going to say like look

00:33:05.260 | I just want to get this off my plate and this is sort of

00:33:07.520 | Inappropriate quality, but I'm just gonna put it out there. Anyways, that's not my problem. You take responsibility

00:33:12.420 | You get it done. You get it done. Well, even if that means in the in the moment like oh shoot

00:33:17.540 | I really have to scramble here because I don't know how to do this, right?

00:33:20.300 | That's not about being fantastic at a single skill. That's just a foundational skill level. You have that foundational skill level

00:33:28.840 | Now they that organization wants you you are valuable

00:33:33.140 | You you are not a negative thing. You're a positive thing. So that has to be the table stakes and that's really much more about

00:33:40.460 | Organization, you know, you have full capture you do multi-scale planning

00:33:44.740 | You're just on the ball with what's going on what you need to do who you're waiting to hear back for all that sort of boring

00:33:51.140 | Organizational type strategy how to organize yourself in digital era knowledge work get that in place first

00:33:57.460 | Now you're invaluable and they don't want to lose you

00:34:01.280 | the next step is let me take a skill a

00:34:05.260 | singular skill or one or two skills like you say that has like really

00:34:09.780 | Unambiguous high value and let me start developing those and then that's where you really begin to become so good. They can't ignore you

00:34:16.460 | But you've got to do that on a foundation of being reliable

00:34:19.380 | You're not gonna drop the ball and produce quality work because if not

00:34:22.620 | Here's a mistake a lot of people get into is they say I'm gonna obsess about getting awesome at this skill

00:34:27.700 | But otherwise I'm dropping the ball left and right and I'm annoying and annoying people

00:34:31.820 | They're not going to give you dispensation to keep working on that skill. They're not gonna reward you for that skill

00:34:36.820 | They're gonna say stop working on that skill. What I need from you now is that if I email you about this thing

00:34:42.500 | I don't have to follow up 50 times. I don't want to hear the excuses, right?

00:34:46.740 | So you have to lay that foundation before you build the singular rare and valuable skill

00:34:51.760 | Second part of your questions. How do you find that skill? It's so hard

00:34:54.980 | We don't talk about this enough

00:34:57.580 | Because knowledge work is so messy and ambiguous and we sort of just like jump on laptops and give each other slack

00:35:02.660 | Handles and begin sending out zoom invites and no one really ever talks about like what is your job and how do we measure it?

00:35:07.820 | And what are you trying to do? And what does success look like? It's so ambiguous and messy so much

00:35:12.220 | It's so we have so many different roles

00:35:14.220 | There's so many different things were expected to do and it's so informal how we pass this around that it is not easy in many

00:35:20.660 | Knowledge work jobs to figure out what would make me invaluable. What is the most important skill here? It is hard to figure that out

00:35:26.340 | but it is really worth doing so and

00:35:29.900 | I suggest you actually treat your own job as if you're a business journalist writing about your your particular

00:35:35.380 | industry sector

00:35:37.700 | You got a look you got talk you got talk to people you got take people out for coffee people who are more successful

00:35:42.580 | What is it that made you successful walk them through their career transitions for every promotion they got up?

00:35:49.020 | What was at the core of it? What did they do that made them valuable look for examples?

00:35:53.500 | Here's someone from this other company that we really want to hire

00:35:55.740 | Why are we talking about them that way who is really favored within my team?

00:35:59.420 | Why are they really favored? What is it that they do that is valuable? You have to be doing research on your own job

00:36:05.380 | to begin to build hypotheses about what you think is really valuable and

00:36:09.940 | That is really important because if you don't do that

00:36:13.580 | Here's what ambitious people do who don't do the work of actually studying their own job. They write their own stories

00:36:19.900 | You will write your own story ambitious people do this all the time

00:36:23.740 | You will write your own story about what you want to be important

00:36:26.740 | And then you'll go spend two years doing that and discover at the end

00:36:31.020 | No one cares

00:36:33.540 | Right. You gotta figure out the reality. We call this evidence-based planning is the term we use

00:36:38.860 | You've got to figure out the reality of what matters you might not like what you discover

00:36:42.580 | But you've got to figure out the reality of what matters and it can be hard to figure it out

00:36:45.620 | But if you do it's like a superpower

00:36:47.620 | There's now other people are trying to distinguish themselves through pseudo productivity or answering emails

00:36:54.180 | Faster or just trying to do more things or pursuing random projects or kissing up to the boss. You're over here

00:37:01.060 | mastering linear algebra

00:37:04.420 | because you're realizing if you could do some sort of

00:37:07.340 | Customization of language models, it could make you a hundred X more valuable to this team

00:37:12.940 | They could stop hiring etc, etc, and you have evidence that this is what matters and when you pull that trigger

00:37:18.300 | They're like, okay, you are now like very important to us. Sure. You can go live

00:37:22.420 | you know in

00:37:24.420 | By the ocean and come in once a week and we have this weird setup and like yes

00:37:29.340 | Like you're making you're doing the steps actually matter

00:37:31.820 | All right

00:37:32.660 | So carry me says - that's a long answer to a short question

00:37:35.380 | but

00:37:35.880 | build the foundation of being responsible and delivering quality then do a lot of research on your own job like a journalist to figure out what

00:37:42.100 | Matters and then build that skill and then the final step is take that out for a ride

00:37:46.220 | Customize and shape your experience to be what resonates for you. That is how great jobs are formed

00:37:52.660 | All right, what do we got next next questions from Lisa

00:37:55.980 | What's your view on Daniel Immer Wars review of multiple books on the supposed attention crisis?

00:38:02.980 | The author seems to base this conclusion largely in the claim that people who fret over ruined attention are elitist members of the knowledge class

00:38:10.060 | Well, I like Daniel. So this this was a

00:38:13.260 | Big article in The New Yorker recently. So a fellow New Yorker writer. I like Daniel. He's a very good writer. I

00:38:18.820 | didn't

00:38:20.540 | Love this particular piece

00:38:22.540 | Felt a little bit like contrarianism for the sake of contrarianism. Here's the problem

00:38:27.300 | Here's the problem

00:38:28.940 | I think with the core argument there and I should say I'm biased because I think I was flagged in that article one of my

00:38:33.700 | Books was flagged just like an example of this class of books. So clearly I'm coming from a place of bias, but his main claim is

00:38:40.700 | The concerns about attention and diminishing attention are being

00:38:48.580 | engineered by elitists like me

00:38:50.580 | Because we're upset that people are paying less attention to our stuff and paying attention to like the new stuff on new media. I

00:38:57.020 | Think that's a bit of a nonsensical claim because here's the problem

00:39:00.900 | Everyone is feeling it

00:39:04.500 | Right if this was something where the average person is like, I don't I haven't really thought about this

00:39:11.900 | But oh, you're telling me this is a problem. That's interesting. Like are we losing our attention?

00:39:16.140 | You know if it was something where most people did not have direct experience of this

00:39:19.300 | Sure, like yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's a problem. Maybe it's not right but the attention issue this idea that I have a hard time

00:39:25.900 | paying attention

00:39:27.660 | Everybody is feeling it. That's the problem with this argument. Everyone is already feeling it. Everyone is already feeling it at their work

00:39:33.020 | I can't keep my focus on this memo I'm writing for more than a couple minutes. They see it with their kids

00:39:38.900 | I mean their kids can't get their eyes off of their phones for more than six seconds. Of course, it's a problem

00:39:44.620 | I see it right here

00:39:46.100 | The teacher is like this is what I'm seeing in the classroom

00:39:49.080 | It's like every moment of your life. I feel increasingly

00:39:53.580 | Drawn from it. I went back recently. I wrote this thing for my book that got cut

00:39:59.460 | but I have all this like research I did and I was going back and tracing the

00:40:03.660 | Reaction to

00:40:06.620 | The Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows, right?

00:40:09.460 | So this is this is kind of called out in Daniel's article as one of the core or text of the attention problem movement

00:40:16.420 | so Nicholas Carr writes this book The Shallows, which and this is in oh

00:40:20.940 | God, I should know

00:40:23.940 | 2009 probably 2009 I think so

00:40:27.720 | He writes this book the subtitles like what the Internet is doing to our brain and this was like the first book to really

00:40:31.980 | Call out a major journalist writing and saying I think the Internet is changing our attention. I'm struggling to read books

00:40:39.220 | I think something is going on here and it gets a little bit to the neuroscience of why that might be

00:40:42.940 | the book was a surprise finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and

00:40:46.260 | not general nonfiction writing losing out only to

00:40:50.020 | Siddhartha's

00:40:52.060 | Mudeji's I think to his book on the gene or maybe the Emperor of All Maladies one of his books

00:40:57.060 | But it was it was like this big success. I went and cataloged the elite

00:41:02.320 | contrarian pushback Dakar

00:41:06.180 | Which there was like right when that right when that book came out we had this sort of similar style pushback

00:41:12.420 | There's review in The Guardian. I called out where they were being very sarcastic

00:41:17.980 | Like well, I'm looking at all the footnotes in cars book

00:41:21.500 | And he doesn't seem to be having that much trouble reading because look at all these books

00:41:25.980 | He's citing and then it was like what we should do is

00:41:28.500 | Chop up the pages in his book and shuffle them around and read them out of order like the Internet is right now

00:41:33.820 | He's honestly that would probably be better

00:41:35.820 | Steven Pinker in The New York Times

00:41:38.300 | Had like a real negative review of it. He's like Twitter is making me a better scientist, you know

00:41:42.980 | And he's like if you're having a problem, it was very quaint you're having a problem

00:41:46.620 | That's on you check Twitter less often. All right, like he was like really dismissive of the book Clay Shirky, you know

00:41:52.660 | Had that same year one of his books

00:41:56.140 | He had this whole series of books in that early 2000s late 90s about the Internet

00:42:00.540 | is this like utopian techno solutionist take on the Internet and Shirky is like

00:42:04.580 | The

00:42:07.380 | Internet is at the core of like the Arab Spring which was happening concurrently with this is bringing democracy to the world

00:42:12.980 | Like this is it's like this utopian force like all this pushback happened the cars book

00:42:16.820 | Then you trace this out. You pull this thread out a little bit longer

00:42:20.780 | by

00:42:23.420 | 2014

00:42:24.580 | You have Clay Shirky talking about oh my god

00:42:27.340 | I have to ban phones and laptops from my classroom because my kids can't they can't even

00:42:31.700 | Keep your attention on more than a thought. It's like completely

00:42:35.220 | Tapping their brains the idea that this was like a utopian force for changing the world that had gone away by this point

00:42:43.100 | There was like this almost universal acceptance at that point. Actually, you're right

00:42:47.460 | I'm really distracted. I think this is a problem and what had changed between 2009 and 2014 was the mobile revolution

00:42:55.340 | So it was social media moving on the smartphones and then attention engineering really took off

00:42:59.800 | His attention engineering was not as big of a thing when it was on the web-based browser, right?

00:43:04.540 | But once was on the phone was how do we get people to look at these things and everyone was feeling it?

00:43:09.140 | So there's this contrarian pushback to that idea that then dissipated based on people's lived experience with the phone and then it became kind of

00:43:15.820 | Accepted so it's kind of interesting now

00:43:17.820 | Another ten years after that that we're trying to go back to contrarianism, but it's too late. Everyone is feeling it now

00:43:24.620 | everyone is feeling it there are there other types of things for this type of contrarianism makes sense because again

00:43:30.040 | Typically it is things where it's not you have to be told there's a problem or the problem is narrow, right?

00:43:35.700 | You have to be told

00:43:37.660 | the meat you're eating is

00:43:39.660 | Leading to heart disease like I kind of have to be told that someone has to be looking at the data. Like I can't directly

00:43:46.060 | feel

00:43:48.620 | Arthrosclerosis like growing in my heart while you eat meat

00:43:50.940 | Someone has to kind of like tell that to me and then maybe like someone else could come in and say that's overblown and looking

00:43:55.180 | at the data, but not with

00:43:57.180 | Attention reduction in the digital era because everyone directly and clearly feels it

00:44:01.420 | It's why when for example, you survey teenagers increasingly and this is international

00:44:05.960 | You're increasingly getting these surveys where teenagers saying I really don't like my phone and social media

00:44:09.820 | It's making me anxious and distracted and I hate it

00:44:12.000 | huge super majorities of the

00:44:14.780 | Teenagers who are surveying these surveys are saying that you can't find a single person who works in like an office environment who won't tell you

00:44:21.220 | I hate how distracted I am or I'm struggling to keep my concentration. So I think we're past the point of saying

00:44:27.940 | no, no, there's this is just like a

00:44:30.660 | Small group of people are complaining because people are looking at social media instead of their books. I

00:44:35.260 | I can't flatter myself

00:44:38.660 | Not that many people know who I am most people who will tell you I look at my phone too much

00:44:43.700 | And I feel distracted all the time. Don't read elite people. They don't read me and Daniel in The New Yorker

00:44:49.060 | They don't listen to my pod. They're not in part of some like elite conversation

00:44:52.620 | They were never reading my stuff anyways, but they'll still tell you. Yeah, I'm distracted all the time. Mm-hmm. So I

00:44:57.860 | Don't know. I mean a good article sparks good debate and I think this one did but I didn't agree with this one

00:45:02.620 | I actually have a question about that. So when I checked out the article online

00:45:05.500 | How can you tell if a New York article online is in the magazine?

00:45:10.780 | It'll say they'll put a byline usually at like the bottom. I think it'll say like appeared in the

00:45:17.500 | February bullet whatever issue with the title and it'll give like the the print title. Okay. Yeah, that's usually can tell

00:45:23.980 | All right. We've got next next questions from Alan. I

00:45:27.780 | Personally benefited a lot from mentoring in my professional career career whether formally or informally

00:45:33.660 | I even consider podcasts such as yours some form of coaching or mentoring in your view

00:45:38.500 | Where does mentoring or coaching fit in the professional development of knowledge workers?

00:45:42.880 | I think there should be a lot more coaching and knowledge work, right? I mean

00:45:46.860 | There's a lot of ambiguity

00:45:49.500 | Which means there is a huge inefficiencies that can be

00:45:54.640 | Exploited or taken, you know leverage. I don't say exploited seems negative

00:45:59.460 | But like there's huge inefficiencies where if you're more on the ball, you know, the stuff that matters the techniques that matters

00:46:05.240 | There's huge room for you to grow and succeed

00:46:08.360 | Right different than in an existing field that has like a really clear competitive structure like chess

00:46:14.280 | It's just hard and everyone is like training and more or less the same way and it's just really hard

00:46:20.800 | There's not you can only get better really slowly or whatever in knowledge work

00:46:24.400 | It's such the Wild West of cognitive activity and everyone's like on email all day and all this wasted cognitive resources

00:46:30.640 | There is a lot of benefit to coaching but there's not there's not a ton that happens. I think there should be more

00:46:37.880 | So the way I see it and there is some that exist

00:46:40.040 | so let me let me kind of walk through this the way I see it is there's sort of a

00:46:42.620 | hierarchy of

00:46:44.720 | Coaches from like as you move up the levels here things get more effective and more expensive and more rare

00:46:51.280 | All right. So like the base level of knowledge. We're coaching as it exists today

00:46:54.600 | I think of things like this podcaster books

00:46:57.120 | So it's not actually someone talking one-on-one to you

00:47:00.160 | But is giving specific advice about I think about how this world works and here's how it works and here's what matters and here's what?

00:47:06.760 | Doesn't so like this podcast as we talked about the beginning of today's episode

00:47:10.200 | one of the three big issues we talked about under the umbrella of

00:47:13.600 | Conflicts and mismatches with the modern digital environment is work in the age of digital communication and technology, right?

00:47:20.520 | So like this is a form of coaching so you should start at least at this level read books. Listen to podcast

00:47:27.360 | the next level and this is kind of new that this exists is this idea of

00:47:34.040 | It's like one-on-one coaching but the price is reduced from high-end one-on-one coaching because it's delivered through the internet

00:47:39.040 | So this is like I've been talking about done daily

00:47:41.040 | Because I know this is the guys over at my body tutor who longtime friends of the show

00:47:44.640 | They have this service done daily comm where you have a coach who checks in with you daily

00:47:50.500 | They use my sort of methodologies roughly speaking a multi-scale planning and full capture

00:47:55.900 | But you're checking in with a coach to help you on those plans and give you some accountability each day

00:48:00.600 | That is this sort of next level up now. You are you actually have a coach

00:48:04.720 | But because it's delivered online, it's like cheaper than traditionally what it takes to have like a dedicated coach

00:48:11.540 | All right

00:48:12.400 | So that's kind of like a new thing and I'm kind of excited about that space because I think it's more accessible

00:48:16.320 | the level above that is

00:48:18.680 | There are a lot of people out there a lot of knowledge or don't know this

00:48:22.380 | there's a lot of people out there that have dedicated coaches that they like weekly have sessions with that are

00:48:28.080 | Business coaches and they're just helping you

00:48:31.000 | Be better at your job or be better in your business like this is very common

00:48:36.260 | It's like friend of the show Brad Stolberg like he does this. He's like he's like a very well-known

00:48:40.140 | Executive coach and

00:48:43.620 | Don't try to sign up because I think his waiting list is you know a mile long

00:48:48.500 | Very popular, but if you're one of his clients once a week, you're talking to him and you're getting like expert level

00:48:56.000 | So that's like the next level up because Brad's like a very well-known thinker in the space or whatever

00:49:00.180 | so that's going to be more expensive than something like done daily and

00:49:03.080 | Then you have at the final level is like the high-end executive coaches where you know

00:49:09.340 | I have a fortune 500 company. I'm paying my CEO

00:49:12.580 | Fifty million dollars a year and salary and stock options. You better believe I want that person

00:49:18.140 | Operate on full cylinders and we're gonna have these high-end executive coaches are you know?

00:49:23.700 | 100 $20,000 a year, you know that are gonna but if you're paying 50 million dollars for a CEO like yeah

00:49:28.520 | I want someone who all they do is think about how do you succeed running a company so that we have no inefficiencies there?

00:49:33.880 | You don't have to learn these things from scratch

00:49:35.920 | There's even like this super high level

00:49:39.500 | Super high level executive coach like Tony Robbins used to coach Bill Clinton. Really? Yeah

00:49:44.240 | So there used to be like these super high level, you know, like money is no object. I think all of that is great and

00:49:52.040 | More people should avail themselves of this coaching pyramid

00:49:56.120 | You know, I think everyone in my audience who likes my digital productivity advice like you're already on this pyramid

00:50:02.560 | You're getting coaching and if you know people who are talented but are like overwhelmed or struggling in their job

00:50:08.980 | Like get them on the bottom of this period then where things get interesting is where more people move up and say, okay

00:50:14.100 | I'm now in a position where

00:50:16.940 | My business success is on the line or I I just got a promotion. That is, you know a six-figure promotion. I

00:50:24.240 | Really got to succeed here

00:50:26.540 | I'm gonna move up a level and maybe I'm gonna go to like the done daily level and

00:50:30.820 | Have like an online coach to make sure I'm just like keeping things well organized because I do not want to let this slip up

00:50:37.060 | This is like a six-figure proposition or maybe I'm gonna go up a level over that and hire like a Brad Stolberg in my life

00:50:42.260 | Because like this is the difference between this multi-million dollar company succeeding or going bankrupt. This is the difference between

00:50:48.460 | Me keeping this new like $350,000 a year job or like having my salary cut in half

00:50:55.180 | Yeah, I'm gonna pay the 500 or the 2,000 or whatever it is a month to keep that

00:50:58.800 | so this is something that we should think about more because knowledge work is

00:51:02.580 | complicated and ambiguous which means there's a lot of opportunity for you to make big strides and

00:51:08.860 | Separate yourself from the pack if you have wisdom and guidance

00:51:12.420 | But also without that wisdom and guidance you can drown. So I'm a big believer in coaching

00:51:18.420 | There's a cool article that Sanjay not Sanjay Gupta. This was

00:51:22.160 | Who wrote the he's another New Yorker writer

00:51:26.260 | He wrote the checklist manifesto

00:51:29.580 | I'll look it up. Do you have a coach? I

00:51:32.580 | Yeah, I do. I have a coach who specializes in the business side of creative work

00:51:38.380 | She helps me with

00:51:40.180 | Thinking through like deep media and the stuff we do and how to try to make that fit a little go on

00:51:45.480 | Oh, I told one day man. I can't believe I forgot a tool's name another New Yorker writer

00:51:49.100 | He had this cool, New Yorker piece years ago about in surgery

00:51:52.420 | Then discovering like for doctors like having a coach

00:51:57.140 | That's like I'm gonna coach you like on this particular procedure makes people much better. So anyways, I'm a big I'm a big believer in coach

00:52:04.060 | And coaching. Yeah, so I got a coach that helps me once a month

00:52:09.060 | It's like all she does

00:52:10.900 | it'll be for example, like a movie director she works with right or

00:52:14.900 | Screenwriters like creatives who have

00:52:19.340 | These like organizational business challenges as well

00:52:22.820 | Like I have to figure out how to not just do the creative work

00:52:25.420 | But like keep the business around it or how do I make this fit?

00:52:28.220 | This thing's taking up too much time. Can I cut this off?

00:52:30.980 | And so I'm always running scenarios by her trying to figure out how do I get from seven jobs?

00:52:35.860 | to less and like what are the right places to cut and what's working and what's not is a sounding board and to me that's

00:52:41.180 | Like absolutely worth the money. Mm-hmm because like this is this is a big business. There's like a lot on the line

00:52:45.780 | There's a lot that matters, you know, and this is like a line item. It's not in the scheme of things

00:52:50.220 | Not that big of an expense

00:52:52.060 | All right. What do we got next? We have our corner slow productivity corner. Let's hear that theme music

00:53:04.260 | So once a week we have a question that relates to my last book I

00:53:08.300 | Shouldn't say last book people think I'm done. Right most recent my most recent book slow productivity the lost art of accomplishment

00:53:15.260 | Without burnout. I always get that wrong these days

00:53:18.320 | So we do a question about that each week and we call it a slow productivity corner. All right

00:53:22.740 | What's our slow productivity corner question of the week? It's from Sterling but real quick some fans have been requesting a for the year-end

00:53:31.780 | Anniversary a slow productivity themed episode. Can we play the music for every question?

00:53:37.660 | If so, I'm on board

00:53:41.460 | Hi, Sterling says an episode 336. You mentioned that starting up companies isn't compatible with slow productivity

00:53:48.780 | I was wondering could it be possible to reconcile the two or is it just not feasible?

00:53:53.220 | I tend to think of Paul Jarvis and his company of one model where a more minimalist approach can be successful

00:53:59.860 | Well, we got to get Sterling a copy of the book because I talk in depth about Paul Jarvis in slow productivity

00:54:06.500 | So for those who don't know who haven't read the book or heard me talk about him before

00:54:10.820 | Paul Jarvis wrote this cool book called company of one and his whole premise

00:54:15.680 | Was if you build like a company around your skill

00:54:20.380 | So actually this can be an interesting comparison to our Brandon Sanderson discussion from before because Brandon did not read this book

00:54:26.820 | that's for sure he says if you've kind of built the business around your skill like Paul was a

00:54:30.780 | web developer programmer as you get better

00:54:34.340 | The the pressures in the world of business will be to grow. There's a demand for your services. You only have so much time

00:54:42.740 | Hire more people and grow because if you can grow a business of a certain size

00:54:47.720 | Maybe 10-15 years down the line you can sell that business and get a nice payday out of it

00:54:52.940 | Jarvis's company of one model is no. No, no, if you're getting better and there's demand for your work

00:54:57.980 | Raise your prices

00:55:00.500 | Don't hire more people

00:55:02.260 | just become more expensive raise your prices and double your income or as he would recommend raise your prices and

00:55:08.420 | Have your working time and he's saying that actually could be

00:55:12.140 | Directly more valuable than this like potential payday 15 years from now

00:55:16.940 | Like this was his model of like I'm becoming really good at web development

00:55:20.220 | so why don't I double my prices and cut my hours in half and only work a couple days a week and

00:55:24.740 | He moved to Vancouver Island over by Tolfino. His wife was a surfer. There's a surf break there. They have greenhouses

00:55:30.060 | I talked about in the book. It's all sort of

00:55:32.060 | Rural and pastoral and his life is pretty cool because that's what he wanted to do

00:55:37.740 | So he said, okay, you can cash in your skill to make your life more flexible or to try to make more money down the line

00:55:42.740 | That's the company of one model

00:55:45.220 | This is a model that I then extrapolate in slow productivity, right?

00:55:48.740 | Because it comes in the chapter on the principle of obsessing over quality

00:55:54.180 | so there's three principles of slow productivity do fewer things work at a natural pace and

00:55:59.860 | Obsess over quality. So in that obsess over quality chapter, I was like, okay. Why is this important?

00:56:05.620 | Why is important to obsess over quality?

00:56:07.940 | And I said there's two effects that happen when you obsess over the quality of doing the things you do best

00:56:13.780 | The first thing that's going to happen if you obsess over quality busyness is going to seem superfluous

00:56:18.180 | The world of pseudo productivity will become increasingly intolerable when what you care about is doing something really well

00:56:24.100 | you begin to look at your inbox with

00:56:27.020 | Wrath in your eyes you begin to look at like a busy calendar full of zoom meetings as a tragic waste

00:56:33.780 | So the obsession over quality makes all the stuff I talked about in the first two principles

00:56:39.580 | Seem logical inevitable, like I don't need that's not how I'm about I'm not valuable through activity

00:56:45.100 | I'm valuable through doing this and this is getting in the way of this the second thing that made obsessing over quality

00:56:49.980 | Useful though I argue is that it then can give you

00:56:54.500 | The leverage required to actually start removing that other stuff from your life

00:56:59.180 | So it makes you begin to feel dismayed towards busyness while simultaneously giving you the leverage needed to actually reduce busyness

00:57:05.860 | And that's where I talked about Paul Jarvis that as you get better at something you get more options

00:57:10.500 | You can say I'm just going to do this because it's valuable to you. I don't want to do these other things anymore

00:57:16.100 | You can double your rates and reduce your hours in the big organization

00:57:20.220 | You can say I want to trade accessibility for accountability hold me accountable. I'm going to produce this stuff

00:57:25.100 | Look at the dollars. I bring in the door, but I'm not doing meetings

00:57:27.380 | And like all right, we'll make that fair trade so as you get good you get more leverage

00:57:33.940 | To actually simplify your life at the same time that getting good makes you want to simplify your life. I

00:57:38.700 | Talked to someone at a tech company not long ago

00:57:41.620 | Maybe I mentioned this in the book or he said yeah, we drown in meetings

00:57:45.340 | Except the sales staff

00:57:47.540 | They're exempt from meetings

00:57:49.460 | Is the sales staff has a big number that follows each of them around I brought this much money into the company and the sales

00:57:56.060 | staff is able to say

00:57:57.660 | This is what is

00:58:00.060 | Unambiguously valuable to our company just hold me accountable to that if I'm not bringing the money then you can fire me

00:58:05.300 | But if I am to let me do that and these meetings bring that number down so you guys have your meetings

00:58:09.700 | I'm gonna go bring in the money and the tech company allows them to do that because it brings in a lot more money

00:58:14.660 | If they have these people on zoom calls and teams meetings on slack all day those numbers would go down

00:58:20.060 | And so that's more important

00:58:22.060 | So as you obsess over quality

00:58:24.180 | You gain more freedom

00:58:27.220 | To simplify or slow down your life. So yes Paul Jarvis's book is great

00:58:30.700 | I recommend company of one and I recommend that general model, you know as you get better you could grow

00:58:36.820 | or you could slow and

00:58:39.340 | Sometimes the slow option is going to be the good one

00:58:41.420 | We should have Paul on the show at some point. Yeah, we can find him in the woods up there

00:58:46.680 | the woods up in

00:58:49.420 | so his book was edited by the editor who

00:58:53.220 | Edited so good. They can't ignore you and who?

00:58:56.140 | Acquired deep work. Okay same editor

00:58:59.340 | All right. What do we got next? We have a call. Oh, let's hear this

00:59:03.500 | Hey cow, my name is Antonio and I'm calling from my reading spot up in Griffith Park in the hills above Los Angeles I

00:59:13.540 | Have a 15 year old son and I did not give him a cell phone until ninth grade and the cell phone that he got

00:59:21.220 | Is it is a dumb phone where he can text and get music and browse maps, but he can't do anything else on it

00:59:27.540 | It has been great. And it has also ruined his life. He has said all of his friends have iPhones

00:59:34.740 | I feel like it's part of a fashion accessory as well as a device and

00:59:38.220 | He is definitely gonna get one when he's 16, and I'm wondering do you have any advice for this transition?

00:59:43.500 | For a kid whose life I've ruined

00:59:46.860 | To when he gets his cell phone for the first time a smartphone for the first time

00:59:50.900 | And I'm also wondering how you have navigated that with your own children as they get into I think they're probably middle school by now

00:59:57.660 | Any advice you or Jesse skeleton have for me and my son would be greatly appreciated

01:00:03.360 | Well, I think Jesse skeleton would just make

01:00:07.300 | bones puns

01:00:09.860 | If you were to ask Jesse skeleton for your advice

01:00:11.980 | so he would say

01:00:16.100 | 16 is the right age for a phone

01:00:18.220 | There's no make no bones about it

01:00:21.660 | Then he would just stare at the camera. So we should be lucky that Jesse skeleton's not here

01:00:26.940 | Alright, so first of all, you're doing the right thing

01:00:29.180 | the the research

01:00:31.860 | Indicates that a I call it the John Height model. This is what height proposes

01:00:35.740 | but the height model is

01:00:38.700 | No smartphone till high school

01:00:40.620 | No social media till 16 those are often separated by a little bit like you get the high school before that

01:00:45.280 | So so smartphone

01:00:47.280 | Wait till high school social media wait till 16

01:00:50.200 | Really what you're trying to go for here is to make sure that they get through certain developmental

01:00:54.580 | Milestones before they get this big influence of attention economy apps on their social development and their attention

01:01:01.900 | So if you're waiting till 16, this is going to be like a post puberty most likely also post

01:01:06.540 | social identity formation and

01:01:09.580 | It's just going to have much less of an effect than getting this at like 12 or 13

01:01:14.120 | And I think the research is pretty clear on that. He curses it now. He'll thank you in a few years

01:01:18.800 | I mean I hear this again and again from my undergrads the undergrads. I work with now whose parents did something similar

01:01:24.440 | They thank me now in college separated from a few years like man

01:01:27.680 | I'm so glad I didn't have to get stuck in that world and tell I was X years old

01:01:31.020 | So he will thank you later

01:01:32.800 | even if he's cursing now big picture the solution of this is just a collective action problem and I really feel like we're at

01:01:38.740 | The cusp of this change. We're really at this cusp of like your situation now where it feels

01:01:44.240 | unusual

01:01:46.480 | the decision you're making among the peers of your kid to the place where that's going to be a

01:01:51.480 | Common behavior if not, the majority like the plurality of behavior that like yeah a large percent of the kids at your school

01:01:58.880 | Are getting a phone in high school social me at 16

01:02:02.240 | I mean this this is just starting to become more culturally accepted once it's more widespread

01:02:08.440 | then you don't have the collective action problem and it's not going to be as much of a a

01:02:12.840 | Pull or lift from you as the parent if you're a parent right now and your kids are younger

01:02:18.120 | But you're thinking they're coming up to this age now or they're in an age where some kids are getting this

01:02:22.120 | Try to find if people locally are doing something like the wait to eight pledge

01:02:26.040 | Which says we will wait until after eighth grade to give phones to our kids

01:02:29.480 | It helps if you have a group of people and you can say to your kid

01:02:32.320 | I signed a pledge and I'm one of 20 families that has made the same pledge and that's what we're doing

01:02:36.600 | So no, you can't just argue like I made this situation individually and you're going to convince me. It's wrong. You're arguing against this whole

01:02:43.000 | Community of people who've made a similar pledge in terms of my own kids. Yeah, my oldest is 12

01:02:49.600 | so, you know, he is as likely to get a smartphone this year as he is to get a

01:02:57.640 | Commercial grade crossbow. I would say those are about equally likely. He is as likely to be

01:03:05.600 | Chatting on his Android by the end of this school year as he is to be driving a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle

01:03:13.880 | He's going to get a phone in high school. He'll get social media at 16

01:03:18.320 | And again, that's going to become more and more standard. It is becoming more and more standard and

01:03:23.440 | Your kid I'm telling you he's going to thank you in a couple years. So, you know what actually that was great

01:03:28.320 | I'm kind of glad you did that

01:03:30.320 | All right, what we got here Oh case study

01:03:33.640 | Where people write in the Jesse at Cal Newport comm with their own stories of putting the type of advice we talked about on the show

01:03:38.680 | into action in their own life

01:03:40.680 | Today's case study comes from Kyle

01:03:43.000 | Kyle says I'm a master student in biology

01:03:46.120 | Studying how monarch butterflies respond to strong winds during their over wintering period

01:03:52.380 | My research involves analyzing thousands of butterfly photos taken at regular intervals

01:03:57.020 | paired with wind condition data

01:04:01.320 | Boy, that's that's funny when people think about being like a graduate student biology

01:04:05.440 | They think about like Alan Grant in Jurassic Park like out in the Badlands digging up

01:04:10.840 | Velociraptors and now you're looking at pictures of butterflies all day long

01:04:14.280 | Alright back to the story

01:04:16.640 | I've reached a stage where I need to convert these photos into quantitative data to draw meaningful conclusions about their behavior

01:04:22.320 | After an unsuccessful search for both free and paid software to process my massive image collection

01:04:27.720 | I decided to take on the challenge of building my own tool

01:04:31.040 | With some background in Python and our programming and a passion for AI. I discovered coding tools like windsurf cursor and

01:04:38.440 | Klein for VS code that go beyond simple chatbots

01:04:42.600 | These tools can read your entire code base make targeted edits and help create new files when needed

01:04:47.580 | Using just natural language prompting. I was able to build exactly what I needed in about a week

01:04:53.120 | It feels like I've created a custom woodworking jig a specialized tool that makes the real work more efficient and elegant

01:04:59.600 | I was inspired to share this story after hearing your recent episode about AI you predicted that non computer scientists

01:05:05.880 | Would soon have expanded abilities to create software and my experience confirms this

01:05:10.480 | While I'm more technically inclined than many of my biology peers

01:05:14.000 | I'm not a software engineer

01:05:15.680 | my image labeling tool feels like a glimpse into the future AI has dramatically boosted my confidence to tackle technical challenges and

01:05:21.900 | I expect this effect will only grow stronger. I have attached a screenshot of the software to give you a sense of what I built

01:05:29.520 | Well, let's take a look at this. Alright, so for those who are

01:05:31.600 | Watching instead of just listening. We'll bring this up on the screen here

01:05:35.720 | That's interesting

01:05:38.280 | Yeah, that's better. I'll see that there it is full screen for those who are watching. Okay, it's cool

01:05:41.560 | So there's a picture of trees and black and white and then some of the it's gridded and some of the squares are colored

01:05:47.820 | God, I see I didn't find butterflies in there

01:05:50.400 | Yeah, Wow, or his program is there's that's like a non-trivial piece of software

01:05:57.160 | That he produced without coding ability. Yeah, that is this is my

01:06:01.080 | my argument about AI is

01:06:03.760 | There is

01:06:07.080 | One strain of discourse that's it's hype oriented in the sense of oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god

01:06:13.280 | Like look at this thing

01:06:15.240 | This massive model is going to like do everything for you and make 10% of the workforce obsolete by tomorrow

01:06:21.840 | And it's a good attention-grabbing headline

01:06:25.680 | Every prediction that has been made from that strain of discourse though has been like slow or not to come to fruition or non-existent

01:06:32.200 | At all. I mean right from the beginning of chat GPT. It was like we're months away from X

01:06:36.960 | We're months away from Y and like the X and Y

01:06:39.280 | Impacts didn't happen. So there's this weird gap that's happening in AI development where AI

01:06:45.660 | Capabilities keeps hitting every every optimistic prediction that people make it's hitting it

01:06:50.600 | Well soon, it'll be able to do this hits it, but it can't do this

01:06:53.520 | But it will be soon hits it but the predictions about impacts

01:06:56.600 | Have not been panning out. It's these jobs are all going to go away. Have it

01:07:02.040 | Homework apocalypse in the homework as we know it not really the case

01:07:06.080 | It's going to make it obsolete to teach like intro computer

01:07:10.880 | Like so these type of impact product predictions those have been way less accurate than the capability

01:07:16.480 | so there's a a gap between AI capability and AI impact and

01:07:21.040 | the reason is like my argument about this is because there is a

01:07:24.720 | time consuming complicated step that actually

01:07:28.060 | bridges this gap between

01:07:30.840 | Capabilities and impact which is the product market fit

01:07:34.240 | actually developing the tools

01:07:37.320 | that work

01:07:38.880 | That actually solve a real problem for a real group of people and this is sort of painstaking and distributed

01:07:43.720 | So you have a couple big companies building massive models

01:07:47.120 | but then you have to have a lot of companies trying to build these tools that use them that are much more specialized and

01:07:52.200 | 90% of them are going to fail and

01:07:54.440 | 10% are going to work and 1% is going to catch us off guard and be a killer app

01:07:59.200 | Like there's gonna be that 1% that is the email to AI world and suddenly it spreads like really far

01:08:03.920 | but that takes time because you have to spin up companies and build products and adjust the products and get

01:08:08.400 | Market feedback and then try to spread that product through the market the hope of companies like open AI was that?

01:08:14.640 | That their their model with just a raw chat interface would be enough to have high impact, but it's not

01:08:20.160 | It's the type of thing. We're seeing here where Kyle

01:08:24.200 | Was able to build a custom butterfly tool and he otherwise wouldn't be able to do it

01:08:28.760 | Like it's these type of impacts and he was using tools that are built for VS codes over Visual Studio

01:08:34.840 | These were bespoke programming related tools built on the big models

01:08:38.540 | That's what it actually is going to take to get the impact and that just takes more time

01:08:42.080 | so the impact is coming from AI, but it's not going to be delivered through a single tool and

01:08:47.960 | It's going to be the aggregation in my opinion

01:08:51.760 | It's going to be the aggregation of many dozens of much more narrow impacts and over time that's going to add up

01:08:57.440 | It was similar to the Internet that there was like all of these

01:09:00.320 | Little things and innovations to begin to add it up. These companies are doing this those companies are doing this over here

01:09:06.360 | They're doing this and all that sort of added up until you look back and said wow

01:09:09.480 | The way like our economy executes has transformed pretty fundamentally

01:09:13.720 | but it was a

01:09:16.320 | Hundred different more niche products and applications that went and spread that made that happen

01:09:21.160 | It wasn't just here's Netflix or here's Netscape and the world was changed

01:09:25.160 | That's what I think is happening here. And one of the the the form factor of the tools. I think we're going to see first having

01:09:31.240 | Notable impacts over niches is like what Kyle talked about. I've talked about this in some talks

01:09:38.040 | I've been giving recently and on the show that that one of the early places. We're gonna see impact is

01:09:42.160 | Raising the capabilities within specific software packages of the average user

01:09:48.160 | So now like the average user of a software can get their skill ability with that software closer to like an expert level

01:09:55.000 | Without actually having to go through the long cycle training and becoming an expert that's going to unlock a lot of productivity

01:10:01.080 | Right like an expert in Microsoft Excel

01:10:05.120 | Can do a lot more with that than I can if you give me a tool

01:10:09.120 | That's AI natural language base that allows me to approximate a lot of what an expert can do

01:10:14.440 | I'm unlocking a lot of productivity and you multiply that across lots of people using lots of tools

01:10:19.920 | This is going to be the place

01:10:21.280 | I think at first we're gonna see the the productivity gains much more so than here's a robot that is going to take over these

01:10:27.480 | people's desks

01:10:29.160 | Coding is one of the big places I hear from more and more people who are able to build bespoke useful applications

01:10:34.960 | You couldn't release this thing. I'm sure it's buggy and

01:10:37.480 | The options are limited and it's probably not that elegant but building bespoke applications for things you need to do

01:10:45.120 | Like that is an example of where we're gonna get this like initial productivity boost from AI. So yeah, I think it's a good example

01:10:51.000 | I'm thinking about doing an in-depth episode Jesse with a AI expert do it

01:10:56.040 | I like I don't I guess our audience cares about this. Yeah on YouTube

01:11:01.360 | Well, I don't bonus. Anyway, that's bonus. Anyways YouTube. They do not like AI content. Really? Yeah, or when we talk AI

01:11:07.920 | It gets destroyed

01:11:10.400 | No one cares because all the YouTube AI content is like the Terminator is literally at your house right now

01:11:16.560 | Like it is we here is how?

01:11:18.880 | You can protect yourself from the Terminator that is at your house right now

01:11:23.200 | It is about to start shooting through the windows

01:11:26.680 | Here is how to use the mattress as a bulletproof shield, but the Terminator was back in the 90s as way before you I well

01:11:33.140 | Yes, but he traveled back in time. It took place. He used a neural link to Skynet neural link chip

01:11:38.940 | remember Terminator 2 they they had to go and

01:11:41.700 | Find the chip and destroy it before they go. Yeah, but that's like the content right now

01:11:46.800 | you can't compete with that on YouTube if I'm like, excuse me, but um

01:11:51.200 | There are Excel macro features that you will now have access to in your data

01:11:56.440 | analysis if you use AI and that's going to give you a 15% bump in your

01:12:01.320 | analysis productivity and over here

01:12:03.980 | You've got some like Jack guy in his cold plunge like the Terminator is coming for you now

01:12:10.580 | How do you do jiu-jitsu?

01:12:13.320 | against the AI power terminators

01:12:16.560 | Stay tuned can't compete with that on YouTube. But I guess our podcast listeners care, I guess

01:12:22.080 | Anyways, there's someone in mind a specific well-known expert that I that wants to come to show I want to come to show

01:12:27.880 | So we'll work that out. All right, so stay tuned make him sit in a cold place in a cold plunge and we're gonna flex I

01:12:33.520 | Don't know what else people talk about on and we're gonna how do you bow hunt the AI?

01:12:40.560 | Terminator how to use your bow hunt arrow and drive a side track from your cyber truck

01:12:46.280 | The AI Terminator can't puncture the bulletproof glass on your cyber truck

01:12:50.880 | We could have so many more viewers Jesse. All right

01:12:54.080 | Let's get to our we have a tech corner coming up speaking of tech. But first I want to talk about another sponsor

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01:16:44.760 | Should write my own taglines for all of our sponsors. Yeah, I think they would be pretty terrible but

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01:17:06.280 | pretty

01:17:08.280 | Good. All right, let's get to our final segment

01:17:10.800 | By popular demand we want to do a tech corner

01:17:15.540 | That's where I put on my computer science hat a little bit

01:17:19.600 | We geek out about things are happening the world technology and sometimes try to draw some lessons from that for the rest of us

01:17:24.660 | Today, I want to talk about an article from the I triple-e spectrum about our friend Alan Turing

01:17:33.080 | You know load this up here on the screen for those who are watching in addition to just listening

01:17:38.040 | All right, so and explain this to you and then I'm going to connect it back to our initial deep dive

01:17:43.440 | So be some professional podcasting here. Here's the article

01:17:47.520 | The lost art the lost story of Alan Turing secret

01:17:51.520 | Delilah project

01:17:54.400 | so the the set here and I have a picture of his Delilah machine right here the setting here is there was just an auction of

01:18:00.840 | These papers of Turing that have brought the light in a way that we didn't know much about before

01:18:07.340 | his efforts sort of contemporaneously with his work at Bletchley Park on breaking the

01:18:13.520 | German codes and the enigma machine, but also

01:18:16.040 | They have another code. I think it's like SK for R

01:18:20.320 | But basically his code breaking work around that same time and as that kind of wound down

01:18:24.840 | he was also working on another top-secret project in the middle the countryside and

01:18:30.760 | England where I think now is like the

01:18:32.760 | Their British equivalent of the NSA is out there. He worked on this thing

01:18:37.480 | I have on the screen here the Delilah, which is a voice encryptor

01:18:40.780 | So I can talk this encrypts my voice and on the other end is decrypted

01:18:45.340 | So we didn't know much about this

01:18:47.480 | But now we do

01:18:48.400 | Because of these papers and the author of this article had been called in by the auction house to study the paper

01:18:53.680 | So he knows all about it. This is picture. I have up here of a room with

01:18:59.340 | 50,000 kilograms worth of equipment

01:19:01.900 | This was the state-of-the-art from that time for doing voice encryption

01:19:06.220 | this was a setup for the Sig Solly system that Bell Labs did and so what was amazing about Turing's work is

01:19:12.240 | Right around that same time. He came up with a similar tool that was this big and if you could see it on the screen

01:19:17.800 | It's like a big briefcase

01:19:19.360 | You could put it in a big backpack and carry it. So it's a cool story

01:19:24.140 | Now if you get into it, here's what I want to point out

01:19:26.900 | I don't know how much one gets a technical details. So there was a

01:19:31.260 | Let me geek out briefly. It's a tech corner

01:19:34.320 | so he had been involved with

01:19:36.960 | Not just cracking the German Enigma text code. So by text code, I mean an encrypted text

01:19:43.260 | He also broke another German system or was involved in it called the sz-42

01:19:47.500 | Again, it was a text based system. So you you had text that you're encrypting

01:19:53.200 | The architecture of that German system is how we do most sort of digital encryption today

01:19:59.000 | so, you know the way this German system worked is

01:20:02.720 | The I'm talking about the sz-42 here is you had a sequence of letters

01:20:07.440 | You wanted to send to someone else and what you had was a box that generated

01:20:13.060 | Pseudorandom

01:20:16.600 | Characters, right? So like really what's happening here is like each letters change into a number and then you have this

01:20:21.960 | Mechanical thing that was creating

01:20:23.960 | Random numbers. I say pseudorandom though, because if you start with the same settings

01:20:29.200 | It will always produce the same stream of numbers that seem pretty random

01:20:31.920 | And then what you do is it's called a stream cipher you add these together. So like I'm trying to send, you know

01:20:37.260 | Activate Jesse skeleton as like my key command. Those are those letters

01:20:42.500 | If I was using a sz-42

01:20:45.600 | I'm generating random numbers and I'm adding a random number to each of those letters from activate Jesse skeleton

01:20:50.840 | If you know on the other end

01:20:53.020 | how I configured my

01:20:55.960 | Thing that spit out the random numbers you can figure yours the same way

01:20:58.960 | It spits out the same random numbers you subtract them away and you get the original message. That's actually how most

01:21:04.360 | Cryptography works now on the Internet like if you're communicating securely with a website

01:21:09.740 | you have just a digital version of one of these things that spits out a bunch of

01:21:13.720 | Random seeming numbers and as long as the person on the other ends like Amazon has the same key you have

01:21:20.600 | It can then create the same stream and take it off again, right? So these stream ciphers are very fast

01:21:25.560 | And it's how it's what we use to encrypt most things

01:21:28.240 | the problem of course is how do you share the key because you and I have to have this we have to set up our

01:21:34.320 | Generator of random seeming numbers the exact same but if I tell you that value and someone else could see me telling you that value

01:21:41.560 | I can't send it over the same channel

01:21:43.560 | The way they had to do this back in World War two was like literally

01:21:46.840 | Put these in pouches and send them to people right you would have a booklet to look up like on this day at this time

01:21:51.920 | Here's the thing we use the big breakthrough in internet based

01:21:55.640 | Cryptography is a public key encryption. So this was like the the key breakthrough. This is like RSA technologies to RSA algorithm

01:22:05.280 | Public key encryption is a way that I can encrypt something for you to read

01:22:10.880 | Send it to you

01:22:13.020 | No one can decrypt it except for you

01:22:15.580 | No, it's not very efficient. So I don't want to use this for my big message

01:22:20.240 | I want to send you so the big breakthrough in like internet cryptography was we use this very expensive method

01:22:25.500 | Asymmetric encryption public encryption just to trade our initial key to each other and then we can set up our very fast stream ciphers

01:22:32.340 | the same and then we can use that the

01:22:34.340 | communicate really fast

01:22:36.260 | So with like public key encryption you have a private key in a public key that are related

01:22:39.860 | You can publish your public key

01:22:41.720 | I can use your public key to encrypt something and send it to you and only someone who knows your private key can unencrypt it

01:22:47.300 | That's public key encryption. So

01:22:49.300 | That's that's in depth my geekage

01:22:51.700 | Anyways, the way that Turing's design worked is he said great

01:22:55.780 | We're going to take voice which is sound waves and we're going to break it up into little

01:23:00.300 | Discrete time stamps like a thousand times a second and we're going to measure like what's the height of the sound wave at each of?

01:23:07.820 | These points we'll make that a number. We'll add a random number to that

01:23:11.760 | Then we will this will give us like a random looking sound wave

01:23:16.440 | We'll send that like weird sounding sound wave across the radio channel or whatever

01:23:21.700 | And on the other end you subtract away those numbers from what you receive and then generate a new sound wave

01:23:26.800 | It'll be the original talking back. So like that's what he's doing. Okay

01:23:29.740 | What was cool about this is if you read this article, so here's the lesson. I want to draw all of this

01:23:34.840 | I'm not just geeking out

01:23:36.720 | Turing didn't know a lot about

01:23:38.720 | electrical engineering and

01:23:41.080 | If you read this article

01:23:43.080 | He was able to here's like part of his lab notebook on the screen here. He just went out to this place

01:23:48.740 | countryside

01:23:50.800 | There's like an army barracks there and like a mess hall to eat at and he could just spend months

01:23:55.520 | Figuring out electrical engineering and doing these experiments like this experiment. I have on the

01:24:02.320 | Screen here is just taking a particular component and just taking data

01:24:06.800 | Let me run it like this and this and how's this thing work and was just teaching himself

01:24:10.260 | Engineering just spending months doing that after about six months someone else joined the project

01:24:16.040 | Bailey b-a-y-l-e-y who was an accomplished engineer and he he began to give lessons to Turing like let me get you better up to speed

01:24:24.320 | about electrical engineering

01:24:26.600 | principles and like how to solder things correctly and and Turing got better at that and then Turing was able after about a year of

01:24:33.120 | this to mix his really innovative mathematical capability with this sort of

01:24:36.880 | Now reasonable engineering ability and they built this really cool thing

01:24:40.840 | I'm gonna connect this back to the beginning of the show

01:24:44.400 | Because what was the British government doing here during World War two and the immediate aftermath?

01:24:48.920 | They're letting Turing cook

01:24:51.680 | Go spend six months in the woods

01:24:55.520 | Just doing experiments on these components and teaching yourself how to build machines because you're brilliant and you have these other skills

01:25:01.720 | Right you had all these mathematical skills that were relevant

01:25:05.480 | He had encountered Claude Shannon during his time at Bell Labs and was able to use some of the mathematics that Shannon had innovated

01:25:11.960 | About sampling theory and he was able to bring that back over here

01:25:14.360 | Like you have the mathematics skills to do something cool. It's been a year figuring out the engineering

01:25:18.560 | Take your time

01:25:20.840 | Don't jump on zoom meetings. Don't do email. Don't be busy. We don't know what you're doing over there

01:25:25.240 | And come away of building this really cool thing. And then after he built this Delilah box now

01:25:31.000 | We had all this electrical engineering know-how in addition to his abstract mathematical and logic know-how. What did he do post-war?

01:25:37.360 | He built some of the very first electronic computers

01:25:39.720 | So he was able to put that skill to use

01:25:42.120 | building

01:25:43.680 | Britain Britain's contributions to the world of early electronic computers, right and he wasn't the first to build those, you know

01:25:49.440 | It's not accurate to say he invented the computer, but he was in the mix

01:25:53.440 | Because he had learned these skills. So anyways, the the nerd details about encryption are cool

01:25:57.960 | but I love this bigger notion of like why don't we people who have skills just let them cook and

01:26:03.600 | The return is so much bigger. You're getting so much more out of Alan Turing just let him cook than if he had to be

01:26:09.560 | Responding to memos and going to meetings at the the war HQ during the war. We need more

01:26:16.400 | Need more of this of just letting people cook because they can produce stuff. That is so high-value

01:26:23.200 | That any inconvenience of them not being very accessible. I think it's washed away

01:26:26.920 | Two quick things when you're talking about the crypto it reminded me of Neal Stevenson's book crypt Omicron. Yeah that sure

01:26:34.160 | I have yeah, Turing's in that book. Yeah. Yeah, I actually so

01:26:38.220 | the public key encryption algorithm that like made all of like internet encryption possible is RSA and

01:26:44.280 | The R in that is Ron Rivest

01:26:46.560 | And so when I was getting my doctorate MIT ITA for Ron in his like network security class

01:26:52.440 | So he's a cool guy because he he left and started a company RSA the

01:26:56.880 | Commercialized this thing and they sold it for

01:26:59.800 | Well over a billion dollars. Mm-hmm, then he came back

01:27:03.440 | But he was loaded

01:27:06.080 | He came back

01:27:08.520 | Because he loved being a professor, but he had really good Red Sox tickets. That's why I remember they had seized

01:27:13.920 | That's what you would do in Boston. If you make a billion dollars like I'm gonna get some get some Sox tickets

01:27:19.760 | He was a brilliant guy. I think it's still I think it's still active it then it turned out

01:27:24.320 | So, you know, they made bank, but then it turned out that a researcher in the NSA had solved the same problem in

01:27:31.200 | The 70s, but it was classified

01:27:34.180 | He solved it like so we were using it with within like the NSA and stuff like that

01:27:38.320 | But he couldn't talk about it. So then these academics came along and

01:27:41.880 | Solved it later and then made bank. So and now it's known like at least the other guy gets credit for

01:27:48.640 | Discovering it but and then the other thing with cooking is a lot of people say in basketball like let Steph cook

01:27:54.180 | You know Steph Curry was like cooking and hitting Bill Simmons always uses this terminology. Yeah. Yeah, I from like a physical standpoint

01:28:01.720 | I can't think of

01:28:03.120 | from like a physical discipline standpoint

01:28:05.120 | These define two ends of the wide spectrum would be like Steph Curry over here and Brandon Sanderson over here

01:28:11.680 | Like I wouldn't trust

01:28:15.280 | Sanderson to get the breakaway three, let's put it that way

01:28:18.080 | but and I wouldn't trust Steph Curry to write 300,000 words about yeah, you know the Kingkiller Chronicles or whatever, but

01:28:23.360 | wait a second, I

01:28:26.280 | think Kingkiller might be

01:28:28.480 | Patrick Rufus have I done it again? Oh

01:28:30.760 | It starts again

01:28:33.600 | It starts again. I

01:28:35.600 | didn't want to do too many of our

01:28:37.960 | Like super insider name of the wind jokes

01:28:41.160 | yeah, I was like for the audience you like I'll get so many emails like the I actually see this on YouTube is gonna be like

01:28:46.320 | for shame for shame

01:28:48.960 | And like that'll be the they'll be so upset and that'll be the end of us on YouTube. So I was trying to be respectful

01:28:54.600 | All right. That's all the time we have for today. Thanks for listening or watching

01:28:58.040 | We'll be back next week with another episode and until then as always stay deep

01:29:02.360 | Hey, if you like today's discussion about the power of just letting someone cook you might also like episode

01:29:10.920 | 37 where we get into how to hack remote work to make yourself much more happy and much more productive check it out

01:29:18.720 | But I thought this timing might be good

01:29:21.640 | To talk to those of you who still have some sort of remote work

01:29:27.200 | Set up in your job about the very general topic of how do you make the most of that?

Why You’re Busy But NOT Productive—The Secret Formula For Explosive Output | Cal Newport

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