Ep. 202: TikTok Dismisses Facebook, Good vs Deep, and Process-Centric Email

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

00:00:05.440 | episode 202.

00:00:12.120 | I'm here in my Deep Work HQ,

00:00:15.120 | joined by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:18.120 | Jesse, before I forget, I have a unsolicited plug

00:00:22.680 | I want to do.

00:00:24.040 | A friend of mine and a friend of the show,

00:00:26.640 | Steve Magnus, has a new book out.

00:00:31.360 | The name might sound familiar.

00:00:32.480 | He was on the show in an episode we did a while ago.

00:00:35.920 | Him and Brad Stolberg, they do a podcast together

00:00:39.400 | called The Growth Equation.

00:00:42.200 | They came on my show and we talked about Matt Crawford's

00:00:45.240 | book.

00:00:45.720 | So if that name sounds familiar, that's

00:00:47.400 | probably where you've heard it from.

00:00:49.000 | Anyways, he has a new book out with a title that I think

00:00:52.000 | everyone will quickly see why I like this book.

00:00:53.920 | It's a very Cal Newport approved title.

00:00:56.680 | It is called Do Hard Things.

00:01:01.240 | So sort of a cool title.

00:01:02.200 | Anyways, good book.

00:01:03.520 | Steve is a world class runner and a running coach.

00:01:06.960 | And so he brings an expertise from actually helping people

00:01:11.760 | do demonstrably hard things to this question of how do you

00:01:15.280 | actually tackle big challenges.

00:01:16.600 | And he pushes back on a lot of the sort

00:01:19.120 | of conventional wisdom of just be tough

00:01:22.560 | and show no weakness, just get after it.

00:01:24.960 | And he has a much more sort of nuanced, sophisticated view

00:01:27.400 | of how people get through hard things

00:01:29.400 | and accomplish hard things.

00:01:30.520 | So check out Steve's newest book.

00:01:34.280 | Have you worked out with him before?

00:01:36.120 | No.

00:01:37.440 | So I'm in a writers--

00:01:39.240 | I have a couple of writers groups I'm in.

00:01:40.960 | But I'm in a writers group with Steve.

00:01:43.360 | And there's five of us in the group.

00:01:46.200 | Three of them are serious runners.

00:01:48.080 | And they're always talking about their serious running.

00:01:50.360 | And three of them have run on a semi-regular basis

00:01:54.320 | with Gladwell, who's also a very serious runner.

00:01:58.000 | And having talked to them about what they do

00:02:01.080 | and about their runs with Gladwell,

00:02:02.560 | I'm convinced if I was ever invited

00:02:04.440 | to go on a run with Gladwell, I would be dead probably.

00:02:08.840 | You could take him down the rower, though.

00:02:10.880 | Take him down the rower.

00:02:11.480 | Yeah, I have more body mass.

00:02:12.640 | I can really get that wheel moving.

00:02:14.120 | So anyways, yeah, it's like a bunch

00:02:15.720 | of really serious, like, ex-college runners,

00:02:19.680 | and then me and Brad Stolberg, the meatheads who hop and pop

00:02:23.840 | if we try to run.

00:02:24.720 | Row and clean, CrossFit style.

00:02:26.440 | Exactly.

00:02:27.040 | I'm going to row clean, lift heavy weights.

00:02:29.920 | Oh, well.

00:02:30.640 | Here's the other milestone, Jesse.

00:02:32.100 | This is the last time I will be recording

00:02:34.040 | this podcast in my 30s.

00:02:37.280 | Yeah.

00:02:38.000 | Tomorrow is the day when I join Jesse

00:02:40.720 | as an old man in our 40s.

00:02:42.560 | Jesse crossed a milestone a month or two ago.

00:02:46.040 | And so there we are.

00:02:47.360 | So I talk about this on the show sometimes.

00:02:49.280 | I always have a set of goals for each birthday

00:02:52.680 | that I work on throughout the year, usually

00:02:54.600 | about halfway through the year, I start working towards.

00:02:57.960 | And it's project whatever year it is.

00:02:59.960 | Project 38, Project 39, Project 40.

00:03:03.400 | So I'm coming up to that deadline.

00:03:05.760 | It's tomorrow, the day after I'm recording this.

00:03:08.960 | I think it's gone pretty well.

00:03:11.600 | The big issue with my birthday project this year

00:03:14.360 | is the advantage of my actual birth date,

00:03:18.840 | which is June 23, is that as a professor on the semester

00:03:23.120 | system, I'm usually done with my semester by early May.

00:03:26.560 | And there's this nice, long six-week period

00:03:29.320 | where my kids are largely still in school

00:03:31.520 | and I have more free time.

00:03:33.040 | And it's really a period where I finalize the things on my goal

00:03:40.360 | list for my birthday.

00:03:41.840 | That all got disrupted this year.

00:03:43.240 | A, I had some travel in that period.

00:03:46.480 | So that disrupted it to some degree.

00:03:48.600 | And then we had COVID go through the family.

00:03:50.520 | That disrupted it as well.

00:03:52.360 | So I might actually extend--

00:03:55.200 | maybe I'll try to extend the deadline a little bit past

00:03:59.640 | my birthday.

00:04:01.920 | Because that's my beautiful period,

00:04:03.920 | to actually get things done.

00:04:05.120 | But I think it's gone pretty well.

00:04:07.240 | I won't go through all of my birthday project goals.

00:04:13.080 | But I'm looking at my list here.

00:04:16.200 | There are some fitness goals I had, including the rower

00:04:18.400 | goal we talked about.

00:04:19.400 | And there are some weightlifting goals.

00:04:20.480 | I hit them.

00:04:21.120 | I had a big list of sort of boring goals.

00:04:23.720 | These were just if you're going to be a grown-up in middle age,

00:04:27.120 | there are things--

00:04:27.880 | I just wanted to get worked out.

00:04:28.960 | This is boring stuff.

00:04:29.840 | But getting our estate and wills figured out,

00:04:32.800 | moving over to a financial planner

00:04:34.920 | that is going to automate a lot of the finances,

00:04:39.040 | hiring someone to just go through and throw out

00:04:41.680 | all my old clothes and just buy reasonable adult clothes for me

00:04:44.320 | so I don't have to worry about it.

00:04:45.720 | So there's a whole long list of things

00:04:47.280 | like that that I got through.

00:04:50.040 | There's some-- I can't get into specifics,

00:04:53.120 | but some professional disruptions and goals

00:04:56.920 | that emerged during this last year that you can't force it.

00:05:01.160 | But there are things lurking.

00:05:03.120 | There might be some interesting configuration

00:05:07.320 | shifts in my professional life that I'm looking forward to.

00:05:10.120 | I couldn't get them done by 40.

00:05:12.720 | Wheels are in motion.

00:05:14.040 | Things are complicated.

00:05:15.200 | I can't force it.

00:05:16.000 | But I'm pretty happy, I would say, Jesse.

00:05:17.720 | I'm pretty happy with hitting my goals

00:05:20.160 | or getting close to the goals I had for turning 40.

00:05:22.320 | Some made some big changes.

00:05:23.840 | Some big changes are coming.

00:05:27.520 | Look, I don't want to give away my professional goals.

00:05:29.720 | I'll just say it has something to do with professional HVAC

00:05:32.880 | installation.

00:05:34.680 | What's the matter with your current wardrobe?

00:05:37.840 | I just had random clothes that didn't fit well.

00:05:43.040 | And I can't deal with that.

00:05:45.880 | I don't have any skill or interest.

00:05:48.240 | But I'm more and more among camera.

00:05:51.880 | And I'm on stages and cameras and TV and video podcast.

00:05:57.520 | And I have to do publicity tours and stuff like this.

00:06:01.040 | And I realized I should probably wear clothes

00:06:03.960 | that fit or this or that.

00:06:05.480 | And so I just hired a guy.

00:06:07.680 | How's that going?

00:06:08.480 | I think I'm doing fine.

00:06:09.760 | Yeah.

00:06:11.320 | He flew out and he goes out and sets up the

00:06:16.040 | dressing rooms ahead of time the day before.

00:06:19.040 | And then you show up and it's just like all of

00:06:20.600 | these clothes and you just go through it.

00:06:21.560 | It doesn't do this, not this, not this, do this.

00:06:23.520 | The whole day was like an eight hour day.

00:06:25.080 | Eight hour day.

00:06:26.160 | Oh yeah.

00:06:27.600 | I'm talking, we're going from scratch here.

00:06:31.200 | Shorts, jeans, t-shirts, formal shirts, a new suit.

00:06:34.760 | Flip flops.

00:06:35.720 | Basically.

00:06:36.640 | Four new pairs of shoes.

00:06:38.880 | I was like, whatever you need to do,

00:06:42.440 | I don't want to think about it.

00:06:45.520 | Just make it happen.

00:06:47.240 | Did you talk to this guy about any of his other clients?

00:06:51.160 | I did.

00:06:51.720 | He must have some interesting ones.

00:06:52.960 | He does.

00:06:53.400 | Well, so he specializes in men, which is more rare.

00:06:59.040 | Most of the, if you look at "stylists" who work with men,

00:07:04.520 | 98% of that is corporate stuff.

00:07:09.640 | 98% of it, if you find like, I am a stylist that works with men,

00:07:13.000 | it is, OK, you just got promoted to CTO of your large Beltway

00:07:19.240 | Bandit whatever company.

00:07:20.920 | And you have to wear the right suits and the right shirts.

00:07:23.040 | And they're busy.

00:07:23.720 | And like, I don't want to think about it.

00:07:24.480 | I got to look.

00:07:25.400 | I'm going to these clients who are trying

00:07:26.720 | to sign these big deals.

00:07:27.880 | And I'm going overseas to sign a deal with a German whatever

00:07:31.440 | manufacturer.

00:07:31.960 | And that's what most male stylists are,

00:07:34.160 | is we will get you the right haircut and suit and tie

00:07:37.560 | so you don't have to worry about that.

00:07:39.160 | This guy is one of the few that deals with not just that.

00:07:44.320 | I talked to, honestly, like a lot of his clients are tech

00:07:47.480 | bros who like emerged from--

00:07:53.480 | I don't know what that says about me.

00:07:55.200 | But they emerged from the basement.

00:07:58.920 | They've been just coding their whole life.

00:08:01.520 | And they exited their company.

00:08:03.840 | And they're a deck of millionaires.

00:08:05.320 | And they're like, I should probably dress like a grown up.

00:08:07.760 | And I want to talk to girls, basically, or some of that.

00:08:11.160 | And then also, he said, some of their clients are just--

00:08:13.480 | again, people, they've worked hard careers.

00:08:16.720 | Maybe they're going through a transition later in life.

00:08:18.960 | They're downgrading their careers or whatever.

00:08:21.960 | And they're like, you know what?

00:08:23.320 | I never really thought about my clothes.

00:08:24.960 | I just worn the same business casual.

00:08:28.040 | So there's probably a lot of midlife crisis-y stuff

00:08:30.280 | in there, too.

00:08:30.920 | Yeah.

00:08:31.400 | Yeah, I guess I fit right in.

00:08:32.560 | I was honestly like, I don't care much.

00:08:34.240 | I just need to-- if I go on camera,

00:08:36.720 | I want to look reasonable.

00:08:37.760 | If I go on stage or I'm in a documentary

00:08:40.360 | or around more well-known people,

00:08:44.360 | I do a little more TV now, this type of stuff.

00:08:46.320 | I was like, I don't know how to do this.

00:08:47.920 | But I should have a blazer that fits,

00:08:49.520 | that's interesting with a shirt, whatever.

00:08:53.600 | Whatever, folks.

00:08:54.800 | You got it done.

00:08:55.840 | I got it done.

00:08:56.480 | Check it off.

00:08:56.960 | Checklist.

00:08:57.680 | Checklist.

00:08:59.320 | All right, well, we got a good show.

00:09:01.440 | We got a 20-minute fashion segment

00:09:03.360 | where I'm just going to come through the HQ

00:09:06.160 | and show off different t-shirts I bought.

00:09:09.600 | By the way, hey, the one thing we did not replace--

00:09:11.760 | I did not need anyone to help me with this--

00:09:13.600 | is the podcast shirt.

00:09:16.120 | This shirt is only used for the podcast

00:09:18.520 | because it's just the color is just right for the backdrop.

00:09:21.440 | And you don't notice the shadow of the microphone on it.

00:09:24.160 | This shirt is only used for that purpose.

00:09:26.640 | It was my podcast shirt.

00:09:29.680 | That I needed no help with.

00:09:32.360 | Did you show them that shirt?

00:09:33.680 | I showed them the podcast shirt.

00:09:35.040 | Are you approved?

00:09:36.280 | Yeah, I'm approved.

00:09:39.520 | I wore the podcast shirt on--

00:09:41.760 | I did a Netflix show in the podcast shirt as well.

00:09:44.080 | So the podcast shirt has been on Netflix and on here.

00:09:48.560 | I may have wore it to do Charlemagne, the God show

00:09:51.960 | on Comedy Central.

00:09:53.280 | So it's been on Comedy Central, on Netflix.

00:09:55.480 | Yeah, I'm getting my money's worth.

00:09:56.920 | It's funny, when I do the thumbnails for your YouTube

00:09:58.800 | channel, I'm always taking screenshots.

00:10:00.720 | And you always have the same shirt on.

00:10:02.760 | I'm telling you, man, you'd think it'd be easy.

00:10:04.800 | But when you have a black backdrop and the type

00:10:07.280 | of lighting we have, I don't know.

00:10:09.560 | We've tried different shirts.

00:10:11.880 | It doesn't work.

00:10:12.720 | I don't know.

00:10:14.120 | Secrets.

00:10:15.680 | It's like Lex.

00:10:17.320 | Same suit.

00:10:19.560 | It's the Lex move.

00:10:21.400 | All right, well, we have a good show.

00:10:23.560 | Enough of that nonsense.

00:10:24.840 | We got written questions.

00:10:25.920 | We got calls.

00:10:27.640 | I have a habit tune-up I want to do a little later.

00:10:31.120 | But first, I want to do a quick news reaction,

00:10:35.400 | because I find this article to be a confirmation of something

00:10:40.440 | I've been talking about on this show, something

00:10:42.360 | that I have been predicting.

00:10:43.520 | And now we see experts who are confirming

00:10:47.920 | what I've been talking about.

00:10:49.280 | So here's the article.

00:10:50.840 | This came to me in my interesting account,

00:10:52.680 | a.com email address.

00:10:54.800 | It's from June 16, so a week or two ago.

00:10:59.280 | And it's TikTok, an executive from TikTok

00:11:03.720 | that is, to some degree, dunking on Facebook.

00:11:06.960 | And I won't get into details what they're saying here.

00:11:09.200 | And if you're watching this on YouTube,

00:11:10.440 | you'll be able to see the article.

00:11:11.560 | If you're listening, I'll tell you what's on the screen.

00:11:15.360 | All right, so they are quoting in this article

00:11:19.480 | a executive from TikTok, their president of Global Business

00:11:23.480 | Solutions.

00:11:25.360 | And he's making a clear distinction

00:11:27.760 | between TikTok and Facebook that I have made before.

00:11:30.600 | So this executive named Blake Chanley

00:11:33.520 | says, "Facebook is a social platform.

00:11:36.360 | They built all their algorithms based on the social graph.

00:11:39.160 | That is their core competency.

00:11:41.440 | Ours is not."

00:11:44.360 | All right, he goes on to clarify, what is TikTok?

00:11:46.960 | "We are an entertainment platform.

00:11:50.000 | The difference is significant.

00:11:52.360 | It's a massive difference."

00:11:55.640 | Now, this is something I've talked about multiple times

00:11:57.960 | before on this show, this idea that TikTok and its popularity

00:12:01.720 | actually represents an important transition

00:12:04.680 | in the landscape of these attention economy apps.

00:12:08.000 | And I actually think it is a positive transition.

00:12:10.080 | So it's easy instinctually, if you're a social media skeptic,

00:12:14.400 | to look at TikTok and everyone looking at this

00:12:16.360 | and the 600 million users and be like, oh, man,

00:12:18.160 | we're going down the same road.

00:12:19.120 | But I actually think it's positive.

00:12:20.560 | And this is why, what this executive is saying.

00:12:23.080 | TikTok is not playing the same game as Facebook.

00:12:26.560 | It is not a social company.

00:12:29.000 | Their revenue stream is not based off

00:12:31.160 | of monetizing a social graph.

00:12:33.640 | It provides entertainment, straight to the brainstem

00:12:37.160 | entertainment.

00:12:37.960 | If you are bored, if you are trying

00:12:40.440 | to escape a moment of existential despair,

00:12:43.840 | whatever the circumstance that wants you to get out

00:12:46.120 | of your current moment, you pull up TikTok's app.

00:12:48.920 | It's these short videos, algorithmically optimized

00:12:51.280 | and selected.

00:12:51.960 | Boom, boom, boom, one after another.

00:12:53.600 | They hit these buttons in your brainstem.

00:12:55.560 | Slack jaw, drool coming out of the side of your mouth,

00:12:58.640 | just locked in, distracted.

00:13:00.800 | They are just optimizing, distracting entertainment.

00:13:04.400 | No attempt to say, here's what your friend is up to.

00:13:07.840 | Here's an article that was shared by your cousin.

00:13:09.840 | Forget all that, just straight to the brainstem entertainment.

00:13:14.000 | What the executive is saying is that Facebook, that's

00:13:16.320 | not what they were, but they're trying to do this.

00:13:18.720 | This is the premise of this article,

00:13:21.400 | is that Facebook is trying to, as I previewed they were,

00:13:26.720 | increasingly shift over towards this TikTok model.

00:13:30.760 | Let me just put a quote here from the article.

00:13:33.200 | Facebook plans to modify its primary feed

00:13:35.640 | to look more like TikTok by recommending more content,

00:13:38.200 | regardless of whether it's shared by friends.

00:13:42.120 | And of course, why are they doing this?

00:13:43.720 | Because they are struggling.

00:13:45.040 | Here's the numbers from the article.

00:13:46.560 | The parent company of Facebook, Meta's stock price

00:13:48.880 | is down 52% this year, underperforming the Nasdaq,

00:13:52.440 | which only dropped 32%.

00:13:55.040 | In April, they said revenue in the second quarter

00:13:57.160 | could drop from a year earlier.

00:13:58.520 | That'd be the first time that's ever happened.

00:13:59.800 | So Facebook is struggling.

00:14:00.960 | They see TikTok being successful.

00:14:02.280 | Like, let's be more like TikTok.

00:14:04.080 | I think as I've said before, that is the beginning

00:14:07.400 | of the end for the social media platform monopolies.

00:14:12.880 | The one thing 2010 Facebook,

00:14:16.240 | when it was really starting to get humming,

00:14:18.080 | the one thing it had going for it was network effects.

00:14:20.960 | The people you know are on here.

00:14:24.880 | If the primary use of this network is to connect with

00:14:27.760 | and see what people you know are up to,

00:14:29.760 | you have to come to our network

00:14:31.240 | and no one can compete with us

00:14:32.560 | because no one is gonna be able to get everyone you know

00:14:34.640 | onto their network.

00:14:35.480 | That is very hard.

00:14:36.320 | Once we've locked in with our first mover advantage,

00:14:39.240 | your cousin, your roommate, your brother, your sister,

00:14:42.160 | they're all on here.

00:14:43.680 | We have this first mover advantage.

00:14:45.160 | You have to use our network

00:14:46.520 | because that's where the people you know are.

00:14:48.440 | As soon as you move out of the game

00:14:50.400 | of connecting the people you know,

00:14:52.120 | facilitating the sharing of information

00:14:55.000 | between people who already know each other.

00:14:56.440 | Once you move out of that game

00:14:57.860 | and move to the alternative game of brainstem manipulation,

00:15:01.680 | peer distraction, maximizing time on screen,

00:15:06.900 | we are the thing you wanna look at

00:15:08.440 | when you're trying to escape the current moment,

00:15:10.200 | you lose that advantage.

00:15:12.480 | It no longer matters that my cousin, my roommates,

00:15:16.720 | my brother, my sister are on your platform.

00:15:18.280 | If all I'm doing on that,

00:15:19.320 | as it says right here in this article,

00:15:21.660 | is seeing content recommended by an algorithm

00:15:26.000 | that has nothing to do with what's going on with my friends.

00:15:28.600 | So yes, maybe in the short term,

00:15:29.940 | it'll help Facebook stave off some of its numbers drops

00:15:32.720 | because they'll get more time on screen.

00:15:34.920 | But as I've said before, and I wanna emphasize again,

00:15:37.240 | the biggest conclusion of this shift among these players

00:15:39.840 | is that you are now in a competitive pool

00:15:42.000 | where you don't have the powerful network effects

00:15:44.600 | of people I specifically know need to be on there,

00:15:46.880 | and you are competing with anyone else

00:15:48.600 | who's trying to provide entertainment and distraction.

00:15:51.240 | That is a very competitive pool,

00:15:53.560 | and it is a pool in which I think it is gonna be impossible

00:15:56.380 | for any one company to dominate in the way that,

00:15:59.040 | let's say a Facebook or an Instagram or a Twitter

00:16:01.660 | dominated our attention five, six years ago.

00:16:03.860 | If you are just an app on my phone that can distract me,

00:16:08.000 | that app is next to my podcast player.

00:16:10.140 | That app is next to YouTube videos.

00:16:13.760 | That app is next to video streamers

00:16:16.560 | investing billions of dollars in high-end entertainment

00:16:20.280 | that can come at me and be like any,

00:16:22.640 | unlike anything else that we have seen before.

00:16:26.820 | $200 million episodic series is competing with that,

00:16:31.000 | is competing with video games.

00:16:32.420 | It's competing with books and audio books.

00:16:35.560 | It's competing with other activities you might do

00:16:38.800 | in the analog world.

00:16:40.080 | That is a much more competitive space.

00:16:41.800 | And I think once you're in that pool

00:16:43.320 | where all we're offering is distraction entertainment,

00:16:47.000 | all we're trying to do is to get eyes on screen,

00:16:49.680 | necessarily people's digital interactions

00:16:53.080 | are going to fragment and go more niche.

00:16:54.900 | There is no reason for there to be a dominant player.

00:16:57.520 | TikTok is having a moment,

00:16:58.860 | but there's no reason for it to have to be

00:17:00.980 | something that everyone uses.

00:17:02.280 | Most people don't.

00:17:03.160 | It's popular, but there's no big issue if you don't.

00:17:06.640 | In a world of just distraction,

00:17:08.080 | people are going to fragment or segment

00:17:09.760 | towards distractions that they like in particular.

00:17:13.140 | You're really into a certain type of sports.

00:17:15.640 | Well, you're listening to that type of sports radio

00:17:17.660 | and podcasts by athletes in that sports.

00:17:20.440 | Maybe you're a political conservative

00:17:23.200 | and you're over in like the Ben Shapiro ecosystem,

00:17:26.040 | which has its own videos and its own shows

00:17:28.120 | all about stuff that you're interested in.

00:17:30.320 | Maybe you're a board game enthusiast.

00:17:32.680 | There's a place for that.

00:17:34.640 | Maybe you're a Cal Newport type.

00:17:36.440 | You're interested in deep life

00:17:37.880 | and getting away from the more distracted living.

00:17:39.560 | So we have my videos, my podcast, my books.

00:17:42.000 | It necessarily fragments once you no longer

00:17:44.480 | have the binding glue of the activity you're doing

00:17:47.160 | requires people you know to be here.

00:17:49.400 | So I've been saying this, this article confirms it.

00:17:51.620 | Here it is, the head of TikTok saying,

00:17:53.560 | not the head, but an executive at TikTok saying,

00:17:55.560 | Facebook is trying to become more like us

00:17:57.660 | because they want their views to go up.

00:18:01.640 | But good luck.

00:18:03.560 | And I think he's right.

00:18:04.720 | You know, good luck.

00:18:05.640 | If you try to become an entertainment company,

00:18:07.120 | you compete with everyone else.

00:18:08.240 | So I see that as positive.

00:18:09.520 | I like TikTok, not actually using it,

00:18:12.340 | but I like what it's doing.

00:18:13.680 | TikTok is causing these other platforms

00:18:17.040 | that so had us captured and had such a capture on our culture

00:18:20.800 | is causing them to accidentally knock the legs

00:18:22.960 | out of their own proverbial table.

00:18:24.680 | Get a short-term gain at the,

00:18:28.000 | in exchange for their long-term downfall,

00:18:30.020 | which I think is good.

00:18:31.720 | Social media universalism,

00:18:33.320 | when there was three platforms everyone had to use,

00:18:35.300 | I think we've seen for now,

00:18:36.320 | it was bad for our civic culture.

00:18:37.960 | It was bad for our mental health.

00:18:39.480 | It was bad for our ability to do anything else.

00:18:41.580 | I don't like that moment

00:18:42.860 | where we all had to use three platforms.

00:18:44.920 | Too much control, too much power,

00:18:47.200 | too much negative externalities.

00:18:49.560 | So this is good.

00:18:50.840 | Beginning of the end for that era of monopolies.

00:18:55.640 | So we shall see.

00:18:59.760 | You know what they said in this article, Jesse,

00:19:02.420 | I thought it was a good analogy.

00:19:04.460 | They said, "Facebook," TikTok was saying,

00:19:06.440 | "Facebook will never succeed at being TikTok

00:19:09.140 | because you can't shift core competencies."

00:19:12.220 | And the analogy they gave

00:19:13.620 | is when Google tried to compete with Facebook.

00:19:16.020 | So remember Google Plus?

00:19:17.340 | - Vaguely now that you say that.

00:19:19.260 | - Yeah, they put, Google spent millions and millions.

00:19:22.380 | This was during Facebook's rise.

00:19:25.060 | Like, we want to do that.

00:19:25.900 | They spent all this money

00:19:26.740 | and they had a huge advantage too.

00:19:27.940 | Google had a huge advantage.

00:19:29.020 | If we can just make Google Plus native

00:19:31.660 | to all of these Google apps that everyone's already using,

00:19:34.460 | Gmail, the calendars, and they did, and it still failed.

00:19:38.060 | And the reason why it failed

00:19:39.060 | is because Facebook had been built from the ground up

00:19:42.100 | to be a social graph company.

00:19:43.380 | They just did it really well.

00:19:44.460 | Google had not, and they could never get over there.

00:19:46.500 | And so in this article,

00:19:47.380 | the TikTok executive is saying,

00:19:48.820 | "Good luck.

00:19:49.660 | You're gonna be the Google Plus of these short videos.

00:19:51.820 | We know how to do it.

00:19:52.780 | Our whole company's built around it.

00:19:54.400 | You don't, it'll never be as good.

00:19:55.940 | You're not gonna peel people off."

00:19:57.240 | But I like the fact that they're going to

00:19:59.460 | batter up their ship against the shore here

00:20:01.660 | trying to do it because, man,

00:20:04.120 | we need to get past this moment of two platforms.

00:20:08.640 | - Did you listen to Zuckerberg's interviews

00:20:11.460 | with your buddy Lex and Tim?

00:20:14.240 | - Yes.

00:20:15.080 | I listened to the Lex one.

00:20:16.780 | - He's on with Tim too.

00:20:18.060 | - Yeah.

00:20:18.900 | I think whichever one came out first,

00:20:19.980 | I listened to the Lex one.

00:20:20.980 | - Lex came out first.

00:20:21.820 | - It's the problem with doing a tour like this

00:20:23.260 | for someone like that.

00:20:24.140 | And then I was thinking,

00:20:25.580 | I don't know if I need to listen to...

00:20:28.000 | - It's like a book tour.

00:20:28.840 | - Yeah, I don't need to listen to him again

00:20:30.040 | on another show,

00:20:30.880 | though I'm sure Tim's interview was good as well.

00:20:32.480 | Yeah.

00:20:33.320 | Yeah, it was interesting.

00:20:35.900 | - He'll want to be on your show soon.

00:20:37.920 | - See, I'm not of this school of thought,

00:20:40.180 | this like Zuckerberg.

00:20:41.320 | I think I'm with Lex on this.

00:20:43.280 | Zuckerberg is not the devil, you know?

00:20:46.800 | And I don't like the narrative.

00:20:49.080 | So I've been a big opponent of some of these services.

00:20:53.800 | It's not because I think they're nefarious, right?

00:20:58.240 | I don't think Zuckerberg is the devil.

00:21:00.420 | I think it's too simplistic

00:21:01.960 | when we have to try to contrive these plot lines

00:21:04.460 | of like they're purposefully ignoring all this harm

00:21:06.940 | they're doing because they're so evil or this or that.

00:21:09.660 | I don't think that's the case.

00:21:10.580 | I just think social media universalism,

00:21:13.700 | which I can't blame them.

00:21:14.740 | I mean, hey, if everyone's using this,

00:21:15.820 | we want to grow as big as possible.

00:21:16.980 | I just think it was bad for our culture,

00:21:18.260 | this moment of universalism

00:21:19.460 | where everyone felt like they had to use the platforms.

00:21:23.020 | I think that is a problem.

00:21:25.100 | I think if you have a platform everyone is using,

00:21:26.820 | there's nothing you can do that's going to prevent that

00:21:28.540 | from probably having lots of negative externalities.

00:21:30.940 | I don't think a lot of those are planned.

00:21:32.280 | I mean, I think Facebook, they try to solve these problems.

00:21:34.980 | They spend a lot of money on it.

00:21:36.140 | Like, we'll do anything you say we should do.

00:21:38.020 | It's a losing battle

00:21:39.800 | because if you have 600 million daily active users

00:21:44.140 | from all sorts of walks of life all over the world,

00:21:46.060 | it's like an impossible challenge

00:21:47.460 | to make that into some sort of interesting.

00:21:49.260 | The only solution in that is segmentation.

00:21:52.220 | No problem having small groups of people

00:21:54.100 | figuring out how they want to interact,

00:21:55.760 | what their standards are, what their norms.

00:21:57.220 | That works out fine.

00:21:59.060 | 600 million people, it's not natural.

00:22:03.140 | Yeah.

00:22:03.960 | - Do you think he wants to work for the rest of his life?

00:22:06.420 | - I don't know.

00:22:07.260 | I mean, don't bet against him long-term.

00:22:09.780 | All I say is he's one of the only CEOs

00:22:12.900 | from that boom, that second internet boom period

00:22:16.380 | who's still CEO.

00:22:17.460 | But he's young.

00:22:19.380 | - Yeah.

00:22:20.460 | - You gotta be a bit of a killer.

00:22:22.540 | - Yeah.

00:22:23.380 | - Right?

00:22:24.220 | To be running that company at 22,

00:22:26.020 | how do you survive that?

00:22:27.460 | With the investor pressure to stay in charge?

00:22:29.900 | I mean, he's gotta be a ruthless guy.

00:22:33.040 | That is a hard Game of Thrones-style challenge.

00:22:37.100 | The Google guys didn't last.

00:22:39.700 | The Instagram guys didn't last.

00:22:41.780 | The Twitter founders didn't last.

00:22:43.980 | Dorsey was out of there.

00:22:45.380 | It's very difficult to run a company,

00:22:48.740 | start a company in your young 20s,

00:22:50.580 | have it become a $500 billion company

00:22:52.980 | and still be the CEO.

00:22:54.360 | That means you're cracking skulls

00:22:55.700 | and stabbing people in the ribs

00:22:57.100 | as they're in the back room of the castle throne room.

00:22:59.420 | That's not just you're a nice guy working hard.

00:23:01.780 | I think you have a business,

00:23:02.780 | there's some sort of business instinct there.

00:23:04.220 | That's very difficult to do.

00:23:05.460 | Steve Jobs got kicked out.

00:23:06.900 | No one makes it.

00:23:07.740 | Gates is the only other person I can think of.

00:23:09.860 | Bill Gates is the only person I can think,

00:23:11.580 | well, maybe Larry Ellison.

00:23:13.900 | There's other examples, but Gates is who comes to mind.

00:23:16.260 | Gates started Microsoft as a kid.

00:23:18.660 | And almost identical situation to Zuckerberg.

00:23:21.940 | Dropping out of Harvard after his sophomore year,

00:23:25.100 | it's exactly the same as Zuckerberg.

00:23:27.340 | And he held onto that company

00:23:30.300 | until he was ready to leave 30 years later.

00:23:33.060 | So Gates and Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg is Gatesian.

00:23:35.620 | - Amazon.

00:23:36.460 | - Yeah, Bezos was older when he, you know.

00:23:40.060 | He was youngish, but he was at D.E. Shaw

00:23:42.820 | sort of analyzing the industry

00:23:44.900 | and was trying to figure out

00:23:47.620 | how do we make a play for e-commerce and the internet?

00:23:50.860 | And he had no connection to books other than he just,

00:23:52.580 | so D.E. Shaw is this kind of weird, cool,

00:23:55.100 | quantitative investment fund.

00:23:56.780 | They give people free reign

00:24:00.420 | and they hire only the smartest people.

00:24:01.660 | But he was like very systematically,

00:24:03.500 | how do we make e-commerce a thing?

00:24:06.700 | And he worked all the numbers.

00:24:07.900 | It was like books.

00:24:09.580 | Books, the way it works,

00:24:10.980 | and the warehouses and the shipping,

00:24:12.940 | like we can make books work.

00:24:14.300 | But you're right, Bezos was another example

00:24:17.100 | of he held on.

00:24:19.940 | - It kind of goes along with Mark

00:24:21.460 | and him working all the time.

00:24:22.420 | It's kind of like what you were talking about

00:24:23.940 | when you answered that question in an earlier episode

00:24:25.820 | about just people always wanting to work

00:24:30.500 | and be doing stuff.

00:24:32.700 | It's kind of like that.

00:24:33.700 | - Yeah, yeah, they're driven guys.

00:24:35.820 | I mean, Zuckerberg does all these challenges.

00:24:37.820 | - Yeah.

00:24:38.660 | - You know, the personal challenges,

00:24:40.420 | like I'm going to learn a language

00:24:42.740 | or master this skill

00:24:44.260 | or only not eat meat for a year.

00:24:48.020 | It's like on top of his work,

00:24:49.380 | he's constantly giving himself

00:24:50.700 | other types of personal challenges.

00:24:51.940 | I mean, that's rare.

00:24:54.180 | Again, to stay in charge of a company like that,

00:24:56.500 | to have the extra energy to do what you do.

00:25:00.460 | Though I don't think Facebook is long for this world,

00:25:04.780 | but what can you do?

00:25:06.220 | I mean, they rode that moment as well as you could.

00:25:11.500 | And they did not successfully evolve beyond that.

00:25:16.020 | I think Google was better at that.

00:25:17.460 | Amazon was better at that.

00:25:18.460 | They evolved very aggressively.

00:25:19.940 | I think Facebook kind of doubled down

00:25:22.820 | on just being a social media platform monopoly.

00:25:26.660 | And we want to do that well.

00:25:28.060 | I don't know how long that'll last.

00:25:31.500 | - Mm-hmm.

00:25:32.540 | All right.

00:25:33.980 | Well, speaking of good companies,

00:25:36.580 | let me tell you about a couple of sponsors

00:25:37.780 | before we get into the meat of our questions.

00:25:40.620 | First sponsor is a longtime friend of the show, Blinkist.

00:25:44.260 | So as I like to say, ideas are power.

00:25:49.940 | Ideas are the major currency in our current world.

00:25:55.660 | And the best source of ideas is books.

00:25:57.740 | Where else can you get an encapsulation

00:25:59.620 | of someone spending years and years

00:26:01.140 | thinking about something really hard

00:26:02.980 | and capturing as carefully as possible

00:26:04.860 | all of their thoughts on this

00:26:05.820 | that you can then consume in a week?

00:26:07.420 | Books are the best place to get the best, most nuanced ideas.

00:26:10.700 | The problem is books take a while to read.

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00:26:43.660 | It is your filtering mechanism

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00:26:52.260 | If you are serious about the idea game,

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00:27:34.660 | Let me tell you about another sponsor.

00:27:36.260 | Jesse, this was a company that I did not know

00:27:38.260 | this technology existed.

00:27:39.740 | This is one of these situations

00:27:41.460 | where you imagine you wish this technology existed,

00:27:45.220 | you assume it doesn't,

00:27:46.260 | and then you find out that a company has done it.

00:27:48.900 | And that is exactly what happened

00:27:50.380 | when I first encountered 8sleep.

00:27:53.540 | So you know, good sleep is the ultimate game changer,

00:27:58.440 | but one of the issues that people have with sleep

00:28:01.820 | is temperature.

00:28:04.060 | More than 30% of Americans circle with sleep

00:28:06.460 | and temperature is one of the main reasons for this.

00:28:09.340 | I, for example, sleep hot.

00:28:12.140 | I need things cool to sleep.

00:28:14.040 | I have a hard time sleeping when it is hot.

00:28:16.580 | Ever since I was a kid,

00:28:17.840 | I would have a fan just blasting straight on me.

00:28:22.840 | So sleep temperature is important to me.

00:28:26.140 | That is why I was excited

00:28:27.980 | when I got the box arrived at my house

00:28:30.380 | with my own 8sleep pod cover.

00:28:34.220 | It's the most advanced solution on the market

00:28:36.120 | for thermoregulation.

00:28:37.540 | It pairs dynamic cooling and heating

00:28:39.160 | with biometric tracking.

00:28:40.320 | You can add the cover to any mattress

00:28:41.940 | and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees,

00:28:45.140 | or if you are a weird masochist,

00:28:48.200 | as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

00:28:51.660 | You can do each side of the bed differently.

00:28:54.320 | So you put this cover on,

00:28:55.740 | then you have this mechanism next to your bed,

00:28:58.140 | and there's these tubing that goes to the bed

00:29:00.060 | and it makes the temperature go up and down.

00:29:02.260 | Really cool technology.

00:29:03.980 | I'd never slept on a cooled mattress before,

00:29:06.960 | and I loved it.

00:29:08.180 | I'm not the only one.

00:29:09.620 | Clinical data shows that 8sleep users

00:29:11.540 | experience up to 19% increase in recovery,

00:29:15.180 | a 32% improvement in sleep quality,

00:29:18.260 | and a 34% more deep sleep.

00:29:21.660 | Jesse, we need some sort of 8sleep technology

00:29:24.660 | for the podcast studio.

00:29:26.420 | Like a cooled podcast.

00:29:27.500 | You know I run hot.

00:29:28.660 | Jesse thinks that I keep this place like an icebox.

00:29:31.740 | - They all do.

00:29:32.580 | Like all the studios keep it cold for when people talk.

00:29:35.300 | I always have to wear long sleeves.

00:29:37.020 | - I was doing a podcast once with a sports announcer,

00:29:40.740 | I guess would be the right word.

00:29:44.660 | And I was telling her about like, yeah, I overheat.

00:29:47.440 | And she's like, you know what they do for college football?

00:29:49.840 | Because you know, a lot of these college football games,

00:29:51.340 | they broadcast outside.

00:29:53.500 | And the games, if you're in Ohio in September,

00:29:57.200 | it can be, you know, really hot.

00:29:59.660 | She said some of these guys,

00:30:00.940 | because they have to wear the suits to look nice on camera,

00:30:02.620 | but it's hot outside.

00:30:03.460 | It's like, how do you do that?

00:30:04.280 | Because I overheat, I can imagine it being this real issue.

00:30:06.140 | She said they have these air conditioner vents

00:30:09.260 | that blast up their suit.

00:30:10.920 | And that's what allows them when it's, you know, 96 degrees

00:30:14.980 | and they're, you know, trying to cover the Gators game

00:30:17.900 | down in Miami or something like that.

00:30:19.740 | They have air conditioners like coming out up their suits

00:30:23.300 | so they can be doing the outside broadcast.

00:30:25.820 | So all I'm saying is-

00:30:27.540 | - You need an eight sleeve for the HQ.

00:30:29.980 | - I could just like wrap one around my shoulder.

00:30:32.380 | That'd be great.

00:30:33.700 | Not to go on a divergence here,

00:30:34.940 | but I like collecting other stories of people who overheat

00:30:37.820 | so I don't feel alone.

00:30:39.080 | I heard Rob Lowe talking about this.

00:30:41.180 | As he got more clout in his career,

00:30:46.180 | he's learned a lot of times you're filming shows,

00:30:48.460 | they're filming them outdoors in LA in the Valley

00:30:50.700 | and it's super hot and like you're dressed for winter

00:30:52.780 | because they're doing, you know, La Brea as stand in

00:30:56.980 | for some Christmas time in Vermont or something like that.

00:30:59.980 | He now demands, and I appreciate this,

00:31:03.040 | it's basically an air conditioned phone booth

00:31:06.320 | that's right there.

00:31:07.680 | So in between takes, he goes and stands,

00:31:10.480 | he can stand in like an air conditioned box

00:31:13.660 | and just come out to do his take

00:31:15.500 | so that he's not overheating

00:31:18.020 | just standing out there in the sun all day.

00:31:20.580 | I love that.

00:31:21.580 | I want one of those for my classroom at Georgetown.

00:31:23.620 | Some of the rooms don't have good air conditioning

00:31:25.420 | and when like September, man, it's brutal in there.

00:31:27.940 | I want an air conditioned booth.

00:31:29.220 | I can just go and stand in and just sort of shine through

00:31:31.420 | onto my slides with a laser pointer.

00:31:34.740 | - Blanket right in there too.

00:31:35.580 | - The Eight Sleep Blanket,

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00:31:39.460 | let me bring this all together.

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00:31:55.220 | That's eightsleep.com/deep.

00:31:57.520 | If you are like me or Rob Lowe

00:32:00.460 | or the announcers for college football,

00:32:04.520 | you need something to help you thermoregulate,

00:32:07.340 | Eight Sleep was made for us.

00:32:09.420 | All right, Jess, let's do some questions.

00:32:13.620 | We're kind of a long one here.

00:32:16.580 | This one comes from Steve.

00:32:19.280 | Steve says, "In the 90s,

00:32:21.860 | I had a plan to get my PhD in exercise physiology

00:32:26.140 | to teach and dive deep

00:32:27.460 | into human performance testing research.

00:32:29.840 | Unfortunately, I allowed my significant other at the time

00:32:32.940 | to convince me otherwise,

00:32:34.780 | which led me down a path of ever changing careers,

00:32:37.680 | always taking different jobs

00:32:39.140 | to maintain some sort of financial security.

00:32:42.080 | At the age of 53,

00:32:44.180 | and after listening to most of your Deep Questions episodes,

00:32:47.100 | I now have the confidence and motivation to go back to school

00:32:50.480 | to achieve my previously stated goals.

00:32:52.380 | However, after doing the math,

00:32:54.680 | I would be 60 by the time I graduate with a PhD,

00:32:59.080 | which would leave me maybe 10 to 15 years

00:33:01.580 | to work before retiring.

00:33:03.400 | One alternative is to start

00:33:06.360 | a small human performance testing lab as a side gig,

00:33:09.880 | slowly building up a strong client base

00:33:11.900 | while maintaining my day job as an office manager

00:33:15.320 | for a major Southern California university."

00:33:18.920 | All right, so that's the question.

00:33:21.220 | At the age of 53, do you go get your PhD

00:33:25.420 | because you have this idea

00:33:27.820 | for some sort of performance testing lab vision

00:33:32.820 | that you could run?

00:33:34.340 | Well, Steve, regardless of your age,

00:33:38.320 | my graduate school advice applies here.

00:33:41.820 | My graduate school advice says,

00:33:43.380 | "Never start a graduate program

00:33:46.180 | unless you have clear evidence

00:33:47.740 | that the specific degree you're gonna get

00:33:49.520 | at the specific school that you're gonna get it

00:33:51.340 | is needed to unlock a specific step in your career

00:33:54.540 | that is appealing to you."

00:33:57.240 | That you've gotten to a point where you say,

00:33:58.680 | "I see this thing I wanna do.

00:34:00.840 | This is why I wanna do that.

00:34:02.540 | But if I can get this degree here,

00:34:04.080 | I can do it, otherwise I can't."

00:34:05.780 | I am not a big believer in get the degree

00:34:09.520 | to see what options it opens up.

00:34:11.780 | Now, you have a bit of an idea

00:34:13.040 | about what you wanna do with this PhD,

00:34:14.240 | but I think it is too vague to qualify.

00:34:16.520 | I mean, just based off of your question wording,

00:34:18.780 | so I'm extrapolating here,

00:34:19.720 | but just based off your question wording,

00:34:21.420 | you have this idea that there's some startup

00:34:24.080 | with a human performance testing lab

00:34:26.180 | that could be interesting.

00:34:27.820 | That is super vague.

00:34:28.920 | I would not spend six or seven years getting a PhD

00:34:31.220 | with the idea that like maybe that will help me

00:34:32.820 | do this thing that's kind of vague.

00:34:34.580 | I think your side hustle exploration approach

00:34:39.280 | is probably the right one here.

00:34:42.740 | So keeping your good job,

00:34:45.040 | starting to explore what would this mean?

00:34:48.620 | What you even mean by human performance testing lab?

00:34:52.540 | What are the real opportunities here?

00:34:53.880 | What are the real demands here?

00:34:54.980 | And there's two things you'd wanna capture

00:34:56.480 | from this experimentation on your side.

00:34:58.540 | One, using money as a neutral indicator of value.

00:35:01.920 | Can you actually get clients?

00:35:03.280 | Can you actually get people to give you money

00:35:05.180 | for something along these lines?

00:35:06.520 | That's a great indicator about whether or not

00:35:08.220 | the idea has value or not.

00:35:10.120 | Everyone will tell you your idea is good,

00:35:11.780 | but they will only give you money if it actually is.

00:35:14.920 | Two, it allows you to actually explore the contours

00:35:17.780 | of this new territory.

00:35:19.620 | That what exactly do you mean

00:35:21.080 | by human performance testing lab?

00:35:22.420 | You probably aren't quite sure.

00:35:23.980 | What is the market opportunity here?

00:35:26.680 | Is it consulting?

00:35:27.580 | Is it content?

00:35:28.420 | Is it working with other companies?

00:35:29.440 | You need to figure that all out

00:35:30.720 | before you go get a degree for seven years.

00:35:32.580 | I want you to be at the point where you say,

00:35:34.780 | we're rocking and rolling and I'm being held back,

00:35:38.020 | just being held back by not having this degree.

00:35:40.180 | I could just see if I had it.

00:35:41.440 | I could do this.

00:35:42.440 | I'm so close, but I can't do this

00:35:43.920 | because I don't know how to do this.

00:35:45.240 | I want you to be at that point

00:35:46.520 | before you pull the trigger on any sort of higher education.

00:35:51.080 | So start exploring, Steve,

00:35:53.740 | and don't get that PhD until you have to have it.

00:35:57.080 | - What would be, outside of your own,

00:35:58.320 | what would be a good example of that,

00:36:01.180 | getting a PhD, like clearly elevating your career?

00:36:05.580 | - I mean, it's a good question

00:36:06.420 | 'cause PhDs are very specific.

00:36:07.580 | So obviously, academic, you wanna be a professor.

00:36:11.240 | Then you're gonna need a PhD.

00:36:12.640 | We have a question about this coming up.

00:36:14.080 | And so if you're gonna be a professor,

00:36:16.320 | you do need a PhD,

00:36:17.320 | but that's where the second part of this is,

00:36:18.880 | this degree from this program is what I need

00:36:21.320 | becomes important.

00:36:22.940 | 'Cause if you say, I would love to be an MIT professor,

00:36:25.340 | so I'm just gonna go get a PhD.

00:36:26.580 | It's like, well, wait a second,

00:36:27.420 | you better be getting a PhD from a top two program

00:36:29.920 | or it's not gonna be the right thing.

00:36:32.820 | I have this issue also with a lot of military

00:36:37.120 | and recent vets that I talked to who are using their GI bill.

00:36:40.520 | And I think there's a lot of predatory online degrees

00:36:43.200 | where they come in like, hey, get your online MBA

00:36:45.160 | and we'll suck out your GI bill benefits for it.

00:36:47.760 | And it's convenient and you kind of do it on the side.

00:36:50.500 | And it turns out that the employers down the road say,

00:36:52.460 | I don't know what this online MBA is.

00:36:54.520 | And you just wasted your money.

00:36:56.460 | So the specific degree matters.

00:36:58.920 | There's other fields that have specific PhD requirements.

00:37:02.920 | So in biomed, biomed research, working for a drug company,

00:37:08.120 | you wanna be on, I have a colleague whose wife

00:37:12.120 | works on respiratory virus vaccines at Moderna.

00:37:17.120 | So we always tell him, your job for the rest of our culture

00:37:22.960 | is to make sure your wife is completely unburdened

00:37:25.860 | because we need her working on that.

00:37:27.720 | You can help the culture.

00:37:29.600 | But if you want a job like that,

00:37:30.760 | that it's not an academic job, but you need a PhD for that,

00:37:34.660 | be very careful about PhDs

00:37:36.860 | is sort of the way I think about it.

00:37:38.800 | Like in computer science, this used to,

00:37:40.760 | I mean, this has shifted, but the traditional thinking

00:37:44.460 | in computer science, for example,

00:37:46.640 | is if you're just looking at going to industry

00:37:50.100 | and making salary, getting a master's degree,

00:37:53.960 | especially if you do a five-year program

00:37:55.500 | where you just, you start your master's classes

00:37:57.560 | as an undergrad and just add an extra year.

00:37:59.900 | So you do five years and you get an undergrad

00:38:01.540 | and a master's degree.

00:38:03.140 | From a pure economic perspective, it's probably worth it

00:38:06.040 | because with the master's degree,

00:38:08.700 | your starting salary is up here,

00:38:11.240 | with the undergrad, it's down here.

00:38:13.500 | And in the time it takes you to get that master's degree,

00:38:16.540 | you couldn't catch up.

00:38:17.660 | So you do start out ahead.

00:38:19.300 | The math often, or at least it didn't back in my day,

00:38:21.960 | work out for getting a PhD and going to industry.

00:38:24.300 | So if you spend five years to get a PhD

00:38:27.540 | and then you go to work at Google,

00:38:29.800 | you're gonna get paid more.

00:38:30.640 | Your starting salary will be more

00:38:32.260 | than someone coming in with a master's degree.

00:38:34.660 | But it took you five more years.

00:38:36.560 | And in those five more years,

00:38:38.160 | the person who started with the master's degree

00:38:39.800 | has been promoted enough that they're making a lot more

00:38:42.960 | than you are coming in.

00:38:44.100 | So you actually have to account for the time

00:38:46.460 | it takes to get the degree.

00:38:47.300 | So that was always the conventional wisdom.

00:38:49.160 | There is one exception right now

00:38:50.540 | that's AI and machine learning.

00:38:52.540 | If you are able to get a PhD from a real star in the field

00:38:59.260 | in a relevant artificial intelligence topic

00:39:03.440 | where you are doing,

00:39:04.840 | moving the avant-garde of the field forward type research,

00:39:09.360 | like I'm moving forward what's possible with deep learning.

00:39:13.600 | I'm working with Greg Hinton in Toronto

00:39:15.860 | and we're sort of innovating the field.

00:39:17.700 | Those, some of those PhD students are getting close to

00:39:20.800 | or exceeding seven figure salary offers.

00:39:24.460 | So in some fields like AI,

00:39:26.380 | where actually being able to produce original research

00:39:30.520 | is gonna be a huge competitive advantage,

00:39:32.540 | then a PhD might be different.

00:39:34.320 | But if you're gonna go into a development job

00:39:35.840 | or an executive job,

00:39:36.840 | then in computer science,

00:39:38.580 | it's not really worth getting a PhD.

00:39:40.280 | So just be wary about it.

00:39:41.980 | Just go in with your eyes open.

00:39:43.080 | You have to just, you need evidence.

00:39:46.040 | This is the type of thing I wanna do.

00:39:47.840 | I know for a fact it requires a PhD to do it.

00:39:50.220 | I know for a fact the quality and competitiveness

00:39:52.540 | of the program I'm gonna go to

00:39:53.620 | will satisfy what's necessary there.

00:39:55.740 | You just want clarity.

00:39:57.480 | Never use graduate degrees as a delaying function,

00:40:01.680 | as a generic option opening function.

00:40:05.680 | No, no, it should be very specific.

00:40:07.140 | It should be solving a very specific goal.

00:40:09.240 | All right, I got another question here.

00:40:13.580 | This one comes from Chad.

00:40:15.080 | We've talked about this one a lot, so I can go fast here.

00:40:18.440 | Chad says, "Do you have two shutdowns

00:40:19.980 | "if you split your day job and your side hustle

00:40:22.120 | "with family time in the middle?"

00:40:24.140 | No, you have a real shutdown after the first block of work.

00:40:29.140 | You close all the open loops

00:40:30.840 | and you set up the work you're gonna do

00:40:32.680 | during your second shift,

00:40:33.720 | your side hustle work you're gonna do in the evening.

00:40:36.200 | You get that all ready.

00:40:37.520 | And then you do a full shutdown,

00:40:38.720 | schedule shutdown complete,

00:40:39.840 | do the checkbox and then time block planner.

00:40:41.800 | Then when you get to your second shift,

00:40:44.140 | you know what you're doing,

00:40:45.120 | you turn on, you do it, you finish, you turn off.

00:40:47.960 | The only nuance I wanna add to this, Chad,

00:40:49.400 | the reason why I'm coming back to this question

00:40:50.960 | is I was talking about this issue.

00:40:53.560 | I was on someone else's podcast yesterday.

00:40:56.160 | I recorded an interview and we were talking about this.

00:40:58.000 | And there's a wrinkle that came up that I wanna add here,

00:41:01.600 | which is if you're doing this two shift style work,

00:41:04.360 | if you create new open loops in the second shift,

00:41:10.320 | it's a problem and you're gonna need another full shutdown.

00:41:12.680 | So for example, if you're working on your side hustle

00:41:14.940 | in the evening and you're doing emails

00:41:17.360 | and looking at an inbox and making plans,

00:41:20.460 | you could create a lot more open loops

00:41:22.680 | that are gonna require a new shutdown.

00:41:24.600 | So what I recommend for people

00:41:26.800 | who are mainly working on their day job during the day

00:41:29.160 | and doing work on a side hustle in the evening,

00:41:31.880 | so like the Steve's performance testing lab,

00:41:35.000 | or you're writing a novel or something like that,

00:41:36.980 | is any open loop generating activities.

00:41:40.600 | So email, scheduling, et cetera.

00:41:44.000 | Do that during the daytime.

00:41:46.200 | Purify what you do during the evening second shift

00:41:48.840 | just to be the pure putting the mental metal

00:41:53.800 | to the grindstone.

00:41:54.740 | I'm writing, I'm coding, I'm producing.

00:41:59.000 | Make that more focused.

00:42:00.480 | So any type of open loop generating interaction

00:42:02.800 | do during your day job,

00:42:04.560 | so that when you do your shutdown at the end of the day,

00:42:07.080 | it also is closing down your second side hustle job.

00:42:11.880 | You're looking at your plan for the rest of the week.

00:42:13.600 | What am I doing tonight?

00:42:14.520 | That's okay.

00:42:15.760 | Do I have any emails I need to answer?

00:42:17.220 | So that when you do evening work,

00:42:18.440 | if you can keep the evening work just pure work

00:42:20.800 | without the interaction open loops,

00:42:22.040 | it's going to be a lot better.

00:42:22.880 | So you only need one shutdown,

00:42:24.000 | but that's the caveat I'll give you, Chad.

00:42:26.760 | Don't create new open loops in the second shift.

00:42:29.160 | - And for new listeners,

00:42:31.800 | you don't do shutdowns on the weekends, right?

00:42:34.480 | - No, no, you shut down hard at the end of the week.

00:42:37.400 | Here's where I'm gonna pick up again on Monday,

00:42:39.560 | and you don't have to worry about that type of thing

00:42:42.320 | during the weekend.

00:42:43.320 | And if you do weekend work,

00:42:44.380 | like I often write on Sunday mornings, it's purified.

00:42:47.720 | I'm not looking at email.

00:42:48.920 | I'm not on my calendar.

00:42:49.840 | I'm not generating new open loops.

00:42:51.040 | It's, you know, I'm at Bevco.

00:42:54.160 | Here's my calendar.

00:42:55.720 | I know my calendar.

00:42:56.560 | Here's my Scrivener.

00:42:57.400 | Here's my writing.

00:42:58.220 | And you just purify it.

00:42:59.160 | Speaking of Bevco, by the way,

00:43:02.080 | the coffee shop down the road,

00:43:03.560 | because we have a workman in our house this whole week

00:43:07.640 | because they're working on the study,

00:43:09.560 | which is looking awesome, by the way.

00:43:11.400 | I'm at Bevco every day.

00:43:14.040 | It's too much.

00:43:15.160 | I think they're worried about me.

00:43:16.480 | I'm eating breakfast and writing at Bevco

00:43:20.120 | every single day this week so far.

00:43:21.820 | I don't know. - That's good.

00:43:23.760 | - I guess it's good.

00:43:24.580 | I worry I'm there too much.

00:43:25.420 | - There's a lot of different places to sit in there.

00:43:26.760 | You probably sit inside, outside.

00:43:28.080 | - I sit inside.

00:43:29.400 | - All the time?

00:43:30.240 | - Yeah, I sit in, because the inside's not as,

00:43:32.960 | I mean, it gets kind of crowded.

00:43:34.740 | I don't know, people are pretty COVID-y around here.

00:43:36.400 | So like the outside's all crammed, you know,

00:43:39.480 | so it's a little bit quieter in the inside.

00:43:41.580 | But every day, it feels like a lot.

00:43:44.200 | But you know, it's just, our house is full of people.

00:43:46.840 | We have three unrelated teams that we just,

00:43:49.200 | it's just so many people in our house.

00:43:50.720 | - Some of these coffee shops

00:43:52.320 | have monthly memberships you can buy.

00:43:54.880 | - Yeah.

00:43:56.360 | - If Bevco had one of those, you could get in on that.

00:43:59.040 | - I would say, and I would conservatively estimate

00:44:01.640 | my monthly spending at Bevco, and this is just ballpark,

00:44:04.920 | is $17,000 a month.

00:44:06.880 | Just conservatively, if I had to guess.

00:44:12.420 | I think in the business plan, there's like a pie chart

00:44:16.160 | and like 2/3 of the pie chart

00:44:18.080 | is just labeled with a picture of me.

00:44:20.280 | Like it's at the core, at the core of their business plan.

00:44:23.800 | But I need a place to go, and it's nearby,

00:44:25.720 | and I know everyone there.

00:44:27.280 | - Yeah, it's fun. - You can refill your coffee

00:44:29.040 | and it's good.

00:44:30.040 | All right, let's do a call.

00:44:32.040 | I think we have a good call here.

00:44:34.240 | - All right, sounds good.

00:44:35.060 | This is about the good life versus the deep life.

00:44:37.920 | - Could you elaborate more on the differences

00:44:39.720 | between the good life versus the deep life?

00:44:42.400 | In episode 200, you touched on it,

00:44:44.320 | saying that the good life is virtuous,

00:44:46.000 | ethical, and meaningful,

00:44:47.880 | while the deep life is notable and remarkable.

00:44:51.000 | I'm particularly interested in the notion

00:44:52.800 | that the latter is a subset of the former.

00:44:55.240 | Thanks so much.

00:44:56.080 | - Oh yeah, it's a good question.

00:44:59.120 | The distinction is not absolute.

00:45:03.080 | So I often get letters about this.

00:45:05.600 | But the last thing you said is a useful way, I think,

00:45:10.600 | of comparing and contrasting the good life

00:45:13.360 | versus the deep life is this idea

00:45:14.840 | that the deep life is a subset

00:45:18.400 | of the possibilities for a good life.

00:45:22.680 | And so just to take another swing

00:45:26.520 | at defining these distinctions,

00:45:28.000 | when I'm thinking about the good life,

00:45:29.480 | I'm thinking Aristotle, I'm thinking eudaimonia,

00:45:33.800 | I'm thinking the attempts in antiquity

00:45:36.600 | to try to understand human flourishing.

00:45:41.040 | And usually these concepts had something to do,

00:45:43.040 | obviously virtue was a big part of it, living life virtuously.

00:45:48.040 | Aristotle cared a lot about,

00:45:50.920 | I guess you could call it temperance or moderation.

00:45:53.120 | So in the Nicomachean Ethics,

00:45:54.480 | he often talks about on many of these character traits,

00:45:57.640 | there's extremes and where you wanna be is in the middle.

00:46:01.600 | So you don't wanna be incredibly stingy,

00:46:06.120 | but you also don't wanna be debt piling, spending freely.

00:46:11.120 | You wanna be somewhere in the middle.

00:46:12.640 | So there's some notion of temperance or moderation

00:46:14.720 | that came up in these notions.

00:46:16.280 | And then some notion of flourishing, eudaimonic flourishing,

00:46:19.080 | which is taking the talents or abilities you have

00:46:23.120 | and pushing them to actually see them,

00:46:27.240 | their potential expressed in the world.

00:46:30.400 | You're athletic, you wanna harness that skill

00:46:33.280 | and push your athletic abilities to a limit.

00:46:37.800 | You have a sharp mind,

00:46:39.680 | you wanna actually take in ideas

00:46:41.080 | and produce things of value.

00:46:43.360 | So those are the elements of the good life

00:46:44.720 | in the sort of the ancient Greek definition of it.

00:46:49.440 | The deep life is a good life,

00:46:52.400 | but it has other components to it.

00:46:54.160 | So there's good lives

00:46:55.000 | that don't have these components to it.

00:46:56.080 | So it's a good life where you also have

00:46:58.640 | this other component of remarkability.

00:47:00.920 | So like we can think about the deep life

00:47:03.760 | where we wanna use this framework as a good life

00:47:06.600 | that is augmented with some notion of remarkability.

00:47:11.600 | It's notable, people look at it and say,

00:47:14.200 | "That's really interesting."

00:47:16.120 | That is not someone who is gonna go to their deathbed

00:47:18.400 | and say, "Man, I wasted this time."

00:47:20.920 | It is a remarkable life in the literal sense

00:47:23.480 | of that people remark like, "That's very interesting."

00:47:25.760 | And the core of doing that,

00:47:28.120 | at least provisionally I argue that the core of doing that

00:47:31.120 | is radical shifts to align to your value.

00:47:33.920 | So a deep life is a good life

00:47:35.160 | where you also make some sort of radical shift

00:47:37.440 | to the way your life actually unfolds,

00:47:39.960 | where you live, what type of work you do,

00:47:43.280 | your commitment to community,

00:47:45.280 | your commitment to theology or philosophy.

00:47:47.040 | There's some aspects of your life

00:47:48.800 | that you have pushed radically

00:47:51.200 | towards fulfilling something that you really value.

00:47:54.960 | There's something in that radicality

00:47:56.640 | in pursuit of your values that makes a good life,

00:47:58.440 | not just good, but also deep.

00:48:01.400 | That's why we're attracted to not just presence,

00:48:04.960 | but the monks.

00:48:06.840 | And we read the seven-story mountain

00:48:09.040 | and going to the monastery.

00:48:11.600 | It's radical alignment in pursuit of this thing

00:48:14.320 | that really matters.

00:48:15.280 | It's why we get attracted to the person

00:48:17.960 | who leaves the stressful soul-deadening job

00:48:22.560 | and they have the craftsman workshop that they're in.

00:48:27.320 | It's a radical move to align their values.

00:48:30.200 | That moving to the small town

00:48:32.920 | and enmeshing yourself with the community

00:48:35.000 | and living a simpler life.

00:48:36.560 | Barbara Kingsolver in "Animal Vegetable Miracle"

00:48:39.000 | saying we're gonna move to a farm for a year

00:48:41.000 | and only eat what we can grow ourselves or buy from nearby.

00:48:45.520 | That type of thing resonates

00:48:47.080 | because it's a radical shift in pursuit of what you value.

00:48:52.040 | So a deep life is not necessary to have a good life.

00:48:54.600 | It's just a particular approach,

00:48:56.240 | but it's an approach that right now in our current moment,

00:48:58.520 | I think has a lot of momentum behind it.

00:49:02.600 | This was one of the impacts of the pandemic

00:49:05.680 | was people being very reflective of their lives,

00:49:09.720 | realizing they have a lot more agency

00:49:11.760 | than they before realized,

00:49:14.000 | realizing that you can make major shifts

00:49:16.480 | and life still goes on, that it's possible,

00:49:20.880 | and starting to care about what do I really care about?

00:49:23.320 | And so I think the post-pandemic moment

00:49:25.520 | is one in which this particular configuration

00:49:27.760 | of the good life, one that's built around radical shifts,

00:49:31.120 | is one that is catching more and more attention

00:49:33.080 | it's having this moment.

00:49:34.200 | So that's why I'm thinking about it.

00:49:35.680 | And that's why in theory, I'll be writing a book about it

00:49:38.400 | at some point in the next couple of years.

00:49:40.800 | So there we go.

00:49:41.640 | That's my second attempt to differentiate the good life

00:49:44.920 | from the deep life.

00:49:45.880 | All right, well, why don't we get technical?

00:49:51.280 | We haven't done a good old-fashioned habit tune-up

00:49:54.160 | in a while.

00:49:55.040 | For those who don't remember,

00:49:57.360 | the habit tune-up segment is one where I take a piece

00:49:59.800 | of advice that I have given before,

00:50:01.880 | and we just get into the weeds a little bit.

00:50:03.360 | So let's get into the weeds, get a little bit technical

00:50:06.480 | about some specific productivity advice.

00:50:08.600 | I have an email-related habit to talk about

00:50:13.600 | in today's segment.

00:50:15.760 | It's an idea that I first introduced in my book,

00:50:18.400 | "Deep Work," where I gave it the incredibly compelling

00:50:23.400 | and sexy name of process-centric email.

00:50:29.360 | So what is process-centric email?

00:50:31.240 | Let me step back first.

00:50:32.560 | My preamble to getting to the tactic here

00:50:35.760 | is pushing for a little bit more clarity on the question

00:50:39.600 | of what is it about email that we dislike?

00:50:43.700 | This is something I think a lot of people get wrong.

00:50:46.000 | I get a lot of messages from people that say,

00:50:47.440 | "Yeah, I love this idea of digital minimalism

00:50:49.680 | "because I hate how when I go into my email inbox,

00:50:54.120 | "there's all of these newsletters.

00:50:56.720 | "And I'm gonna simplify and unsubscribe

00:50:58.640 | "from a lot of newsletters."

00:51:00.040 | All right, that's fine if you wanna do it.

00:51:02.880 | Too many newsletters is not your problem with email.

00:51:04.960 | Other people say, "Yeah, I have all of these announcements

00:51:08.500 | "and notices and promotional emails from every company

00:51:12.220 | "that I've ever bought something for.

00:51:14.420 | "My employer sends out 17 announcements a day,

00:51:19.340 | "new parking things, new programs.

00:51:21.220 | "There's all these announcement emails

00:51:23.000 | "they clutter up my inbox."

00:51:24.520 | Yeah, it's annoying.

00:51:25.520 | It's not the problem with email.

00:51:27.720 | Some people say, "Yeah, everyone is always shooting me

00:51:30.200 | "these questions.

00:51:31.840 | "Hey, what time is that meeting tomorrow?

00:51:32.940 | "What about this?"

00:51:34.120 | And that's annoying.

00:51:35.480 | Like, can't we just talk next time we see each other?

00:51:38.560 | But short questions that can be answered,

00:51:40.600 | two o'clock, the client's name is this, here's the link.

00:51:45.680 | That's also not the problem with email.

00:51:48.300 | If all of email was a combination of newsletters,

00:51:51.140 | announcements and promotions,

00:51:52.360 | and short questions that could be answered,

00:51:54.200 | we would have no problem with our inboxes.

00:51:57.800 | It really doesn't stress us out that much

00:51:59.840 | to see too many newsletters.

00:52:01.000 | You can just archive.

00:52:02.240 | It doesn't stress us out that much

00:52:04.560 | to see too many promotional announcements,

00:52:06.120 | just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right?

00:52:08.200 | You just delete and archive them.

00:52:09.400 | It's actually kind of fulfilling.

00:52:10.760 | It's easy to do.

00:52:12.120 | It feels like you're making progress.

00:52:13.440 | We don't get stressed out by questions we can answer

00:52:15.960 | immediately with a short response.

00:52:17.820 | It's very productive.

00:52:19.420 | Let me give you the answer to this,

00:52:20.260 | let me give you the answer to this,

00:52:21.080 | let me give you the answer to this.

00:52:21.920 | If all email was 20 minutes twice a day,

00:52:24.880 | would be on top of it,

00:52:25.920 | there'd be a little burst of productivity,

00:52:27.560 | it would be something that'd be positive.

00:52:29.640 | The real productivity poison

00:52:32.560 | that's frothing around in that email inbox

00:52:35.700 | is messages that initiate back and forth interaction.

00:52:40.640 | That is above all else,

00:52:45.640 | the source of almost every piece of cognitive distress

00:52:50.920 | that we feel from email.

00:52:52.880 | Not a newsletter, not an announcement,

00:52:54.320 | not what time is the meeting tomorrow.

00:52:56.440 | It's the email that says,

00:52:58.160 | we should probably make a plan

00:53:00.600 | for the client coming tomorrow.

00:53:02.540 | Or what are we gonna do to get this thing ready

00:53:07.200 | for next Monday?

00:53:08.640 | The message that is gonna begin back and forth,

00:53:12.200 | back and forth, like, well, when should we do that?

00:53:14.880 | And what about next week?

00:53:15.720 | Oh, next week doesn't work.

00:53:16.900 | Let me CC in Jesse and ask him

00:53:19.120 | if he remembers when this has back and forth,

00:53:21.640 | back and forth, unscheduled ad hoc,

00:53:23.560 | back and forth interactive conversation

00:53:26.180 | delivered through emails,

00:53:27.540 | working towards trying to figure out something

00:53:29.320 | or achieve some goal.

00:53:30.360 | That is the main productivity poison in our inboxes.

00:53:33.900 | Why?

00:53:34.980 | It brings with it two demands.

00:53:36.760 | One, that's more than anything else

00:53:39.800 | what keeps you coming back to your inbox

00:53:41.200 | again and again and again,

00:53:42.320 | because you have to service

00:53:43.640 | these back and forth conversations.

00:53:45.620 | If five messages have to get back and forth

00:53:47.680 | before we can get a resolution,

00:53:48.980 | and we need that resolution by the end of the day,

00:53:52.060 | I can't wait three hours for message number two,

00:53:54.500 | 'cause we have to fit in all five messages.

00:53:56.900 | So back and forth conversations

00:53:58.300 | require much more frequent inbox checking.

00:54:01.440 | 'Cause I gotta see when the latest message comes in

00:54:03.420 | so I can bounce it back.

00:54:04.760 | And you gotta see when that comes in

00:54:05.840 | so you can bounce it back to me.

00:54:06.740 | And I have to see that pretty soon after and bounce it back.

00:54:08.840 | We check our inboxes all the time,

00:54:10.160 | not because we know there's new newsletters in there,

00:54:13.120 | not because there's promotions from Levi's we wanna see.

00:54:15.880 | It's because we have back and forth conversations

00:54:17.600 | we have to service.

00:54:18.740 | The second reason why these are productivity poison

00:54:21.140 | is that these are the conversations

00:54:22.640 | that bring with it the dreaded ambiguity.

00:54:25.200 | I don't know how to answer this.

00:54:27.200 | It's where you get the,

00:54:30.080 | can you figure out how to, you know,

00:54:33.080 | fix this issue we have with the budget?

00:54:35.620 | And you're like, I don't know how to do that.

00:54:37.520 | And now I guess I can afford this as someone else

00:54:40.240 | or I'll do obligation hot potato

00:54:42.160 | and shoot off a question to someone else

00:54:44.060 | just to get it off my plate and wait for it to come back.

00:54:46.100 | I have to like talk to different people

00:54:47.760 | and see what they tell me.

00:54:48.760 | You've created a, they create these major open loops

00:54:51.760 | in terms of our obligation storage systems.

00:54:53.980 | And it's a real source of stress and distress.

00:54:55.960 | If you feel anxious checking your inbox,

00:54:58.560 | going through your inbox,

00:54:59.560 | these are the type of messages that create that anxiety.

00:55:02.000 | They're like, oh my God, I don't know.

00:55:04.280 | I don't know how to fix the budget.

00:55:05.440 | I don't really know how this works.

00:55:06.280 | I don't even really know who I should talk to about this.

00:55:08.920 | I guess I'm gonna have to start sending messages

00:55:10.600 | and like kind of letting this thing unfold

00:55:12.240 | and keep checking this throughout the day.

00:55:14.080 | So those are the productivity poison.

00:55:17.180 | So if you wanna make your experience with your inbox better,

00:55:20.120 | it is these back and forth interactive

00:55:22.440 | ambiguous conversations that you have to tame.

00:55:25.000 | That is what process centric emailing is all about.

00:55:28.960 | The idea is simple.

00:55:30.720 | When you see a message arrive

00:55:32.600 | that is initiating one of these long back and forths,

00:55:35.700 | your first entrance into this conversation,

00:55:39.740 | your first message into this conversation

00:55:41.480 | should include in it a proposal

00:55:46.840 | for the process by which this whole collaboration

00:55:49.400 | ending in the goal being achieved

00:55:50.760 | of this conversation is going to happen.

00:55:53.020 | You say how it's gonna happen

00:55:54.860 | so it doesn't just default to like,

00:55:56.420 | let's just keep going back and forth.

00:55:58.120 | You declare, this is how I think this should happen.

00:56:00.600 | Oh, we have to figure out what to do about this client.

00:56:03.640 | Okay, well, here's what I suggest.

00:56:06.280 | We have this meeting coming up on Wednesday.

00:56:08.920 | Let's add time to talk to that.

00:56:10.680 | I'm gonna, before we get to that meeting,

00:56:13.520 | talk to Susan to make sure that we understand

00:56:15.960 | the full whatever, the full process

00:56:19.520 | for what we need to do to onboard the client.

00:56:22.240 | We'll talk about this in the last five minutes

00:56:24.320 | of the meeting and make a plan going forward.

00:56:27.160 | Or you say, okay, here's what we need to do.

00:56:28.800 | You're right, we do have to figure out

00:56:31.320 | when we're gonna meet.

00:56:32.280 | Here's what we'll do.

00:56:33.760 | I have listed here, whatever, 15 times.

00:56:37.880 | Jesse, you then highlight the times that work for you

00:56:41.640 | and then you forward it onto the third person

00:56:43.940 | and you select one of those that works

00:56:46.000 | and put that just into an invite and send it to all of us

00:56:49.360 | and we don't even have to discuss anymore.

00:56:50.880 | What I'm talking about here is processes

00:56:52.360 | that gets the thing done.

00:56:54.360 | The thing that this conversation is gonna lead towards

00:56:57.080 | gets you to done without ambiguity

00:57:00.280 | and without having to just wait for messages to arrive

00:57:02.760 | and respond to them and go back and forth.

00:57:04.860 | Process-centric emailing is a little bit stilted.

00:57:08.800 | It's not very casual.

00:57:11.900 | So typically the people who use this

00:57:13.520 | will have a casual message with emoticons

00:57:16.600 | and all the other stuff,

00:57:17.760 | but then have the pretty detailed thing below.

00:57:20.600 | You can blame it on me.

00:57:22.360 | So sorry for the formality,

00:57:23.440 | I've been listening too much Cal Newport, but it works.

00:57:27.360 | And it takes a little bit more time up front

00:57:29.120 | because you have to figure out,

00:57:30.200 | whoa, what's the right way to get to done?

00:57:33.200 | What's the right way to get the done here?

00:57:35.980 | And you gotta think it through

00:57:37.440 | and you gotta explain it to people

00:57:38.800 | and you might have some extra work to do to set it up.

00:57:40.800 | Here's the Google Doc, here's the Doodle.

00:57:43.040 | Here's how it's gonna unfold.

00:57:44.600 | I've set up an office hours.

00:57:46.640 | It takes more work,

00:57:47.840 | but it is almost always worth spending 10 or 15 more minutes

00:57:51.000 | at the beginning of an exchange

00:57:52.660 | than it is to have 10 or 15 messages you have to respond to.

00:57:55.720 | 10 or 15 minutes right now

00:57:57.280 | takes away 10 or 15 minutes from your day,

00:58:00.040 | but 10 to 15 messages,

00:58:01.840 | each of which is requiring five inbox checks

00:58:04.320 | while you wait for it,

00:58:06.280 | that's gonna be 50 to 75 inbox checks over the next few days

00:58:10.600 | which is way more damaging

00:58:11.920 | than you adding 10 minutes right now to what you're doing.

00:58:15.200 | So I'm a big believer in process-centric emailing.

00:58:17.520 | And of course, if you find yourself,

00:58:20.080 | it's a bonus,

00:58:20.960 | proposing the same process again and again

00:58:23.600 | because the same type of work happens again and again,

00:58:26.400 | then you can just codify that.

00:58:27.860 | You know what?

00:58:28.880 | We do this client onboarding all the time.

00:58:31.120 | Why don't we all just agree this is how we do it?

00:58:33.440 | And so you don't even have to write out

00:58:34.680 | the whole process every time.

00:58:35.680 | So it's also a good way to unearth

00:58:38.020 | or make legible repeated work

00:58:40.180 | and get good processes in place.

00:58:41.920 | So just remember that.

00:58:42.760 | Ongoing interactive conversations,

00:58:44.720 | that is the thing that kills us in our inbox.

00:58:46.520 | That's the thing you should care about.

00:58:48.160 | That is the thing you should be willing to do

00:58:50.400 | almost anything to vanquish.

00:58:53.740 | It really is productivity poison.

00:58:55.480 | All right, well, let's talk real quickly.

00:59:02.360 | I have two sponsors I wanna mention

00:59:03.520 | before we get to a couple more questions I enjoy.

00:59:06.420 | This first sponsor is My Body Tutor, T-U-T-O-R,

00:59:11.420 | founded by Adam Gilbert, Adam Gilbert.

00:59:16.560 | Why is that Gil-Bort?

00:59:17.820 | Gilbert, who I've known for many years

00:59:21.840 | used to be the fitness advice guy

00:59:24.280 | on the early days of the study hack blogs.

00:59:27.360 | His company, My Body Tutor,

00:59:28.520 | is a 100% online coaching program

00:59:30.960 | that solves the biggest problem in health and fitness,

00:59:33.480 | lack of consistency.

00:59:35.920 | And they do this by simplifying the process

00:59:37.640 | into practical, sustainable behaviors.

00:59:39.280 | And then, and this is key,

00:59:40.960 | giving you daily accountability and support

00:59:43.960 | to stick to your plan.

00:59:45.040 | So when you use My Body Tutor,

00:59:46.360 | you have this app where you check in every day.

00:59:48.840 | Here's what I ate, here's what I did.

00:59:51.600 | And there is a coach that is assigned to you

00:59:53.840 | that sees that and then comes back to you

00:59:55.720 | at the end of the day and says,

00:59:57.040 | "I read your report, here's my feedback.

00:59:59.880 | "Looking good, don't worry about this,

01:00:01.680 | "worry about this, here's some suggestions."

01:00:04.080 | So the coach builds the plan for you

01:00:06.480 | and then checks in with you every day

01:00:09.200 | about whether or not you are achieving it.

01:00:11.540 | So in my case, for example,

01:00:14.320 | you call up the My Body Tutor coach

01:00:16.800 | and you say, "I need the Skarsgård Viking body.

01:00:20.880 | "I have six months to get there,

01:00:23.000 | "but it is very important to me

01:00:25.220 | "that I look like a Viking with crazy trapezius muscles."

01:00:29.680 | - 45 minutes a day.

01:00:30.900 | - That's what it is.

01:00:31.740 | I went back, I finished watching that movie, by the way,

01:00:34.100 | and it's not that they made his,

01:00:35.860 | they weren't doing superhero body,

01:00:37.580 | but something about him was like really eye-catching.

01:00:39.940 | What it was is, what's this muscle

01:00:41.880 | that goes up to your neck, trapezius?

01:00:43.420 | - Yeah.

01:00:44.260 | - Yeah, they gave him a beast trapezius

01:00:46.740 | so that he would walk with his sword or whatever

01:00:49.700 | with just like this,

01:00:51.060 | looks like he's wearing a backpack on his back.

01:00:54.620 | That's the type of thing My Body Tutor can help you with

01:00:57.100 | or whatever else your goal is.

01:00:59.000 | You have a coach, you talk to the coach

01:01:01.700 | every day, they make a plan, the accountability,

01:01:04.460 | it's all online, it's a brilliant idea.

01:01:06.820 | I know Adam's crushing it with this company

01:01:08.860 | and I'm not surprised.

01:01:11.180 | So here's the thing, if you sign up for My Body Tutor,

01:01:13.980 | tell them that you came from deep questions,

01:01:17.420 | tell them that Cal Newport sent you,

01:01:19.380 | they'll know what that means

01:01:20.620 | and they will give you $50 off your first month.

01:01:24.780 | Just mention me when you sign up.

01:01:30.280 | We were at a dinner last night with someone

01:01:33.320 | who didn't realize Chris Pratt had a whole movie career

01:01:39.160 | after "Parks and Recreation"

01:01:41.120 | and she didn't know that he had gotten

01:01:44.520 | to this super good shape to do superhero movies

01:01:46.480 | and "Jurassic World" movies.

01:01:47.400 | She just remembered, she's like,

01:01:48.440 | "Isn't he the like kind of overweight,

01:01:50.320 | "like fun guy on 'Parks and Rec'?"

01:01:52.920 | And so I loaded up a photo to show her

01:01:56.120 | and it was a kind of a glass drop, a glass drop moment.

01:02:00.400 | I went down the rabbit hole, Chris Pratt's my,

01:02:01.960 | if I looked over, he was my height

01:02:04.060 | and at his peak in "Parks and Rec"

01:02:05.720 | he was weighing in 80 pounds more than I weigh in right now.

01:02:08.780 | And I'm not like a super slim guy.

01:02:11.960 | And now he is stronger than that, he is lighter than that.

01:02:16.660 | If you sign up for a superhero movie,

01:02:19.920 | I went down a rabbit hole in Chris Pratt, it turned out--

01:02:22.560 | - At the dinner?

01:02:24.000 | - No, this was before.

01:02:25.600 | I had gone down this rabbit hole before,

01:02:26.800 | so I had this queued up.

01:02:28.400 | I don't know why I went down this rabbit hole,

01:02:31.120 | but the first time he had to cut all the weight

01:02:32.800 | was to be in "Zero Dark Thirty"

01:02:34.840 | where he played a member of SEAL Team Six.

01:02:36.600 | - Good movie.

01:02:37.440 | - Yeah, but he did it on his own.

01:02:39.280 | So he was like, "I'm just gonna do it on my own."

01:02:41.520 | He's like, "I'm just gonna stop eating

01:02:42.520 | "and do 500 pushups a day and like just do crazy stuff."

01:02:47.520 | Destroyed his body,

01:02:49.040 | ended up having to get shoulder surgery.

01:02:50.740 | - Really? - Yeah.

01:02:51.580 | Because he was just like, "I'll just stop eating

01:02:53.280 | "and then just go like wild mode every day,"

01:02:56.360 | and destroyed his body.

01:02:58.260 | So then when it came time, he got the Marvel movie,

01:03:00.600 | he's like, "Oh, I should hire somebody."

01:03:03.320 | And like, they have ways of doing this,

01:03:04.800 | like professional trainers, like,

01:03:06.080 | "Here's what you should eat."

01:03:07.040 | And they make it so you don't wanna blow out.

01:03:09.280 | It turns out this is one of the really major concerns

01:03:13.340 | when they're doing this training for these movies

01:03:15.040 | is if you get injured,

01:03:16.320 | this could be a $20 million mistake.

01:03:18.320 | If you get injured and you have to push filming

01:03:21.080 | of a $200 million movie for six weeks

01:03:24.400 | because you tore your rotator cuff,

01:03:26.040 | it's like a really big deal.

01:03:27.260 | So now it's like, if you have to get in shape

01:03:29.320 | for one of these movies,

01:03:30.160 | it's like we are gonna handhold you every step of the way

01:03:33.560 | 'cause we want you to get strong, yes,

01:03:35.240 | but we also can't have you ripping a pack or something

01:03:39.120 | and we can't film because they have to pick things up

01:03:41.240 | and throw things.

01:03:42.080 | So let that all be,

01:03:44.600 | this is why you need something like My Body Tutor.

01:03:46.520 | Like whether you're trying to get in shape

01:03:47.520 | for a Marvel movie or whatever,

01:03:48.600 | or a wedding or whatever you're trying to do,

01:03:50.640 | this all comes back to you want a pro helping you.

01:03:53.800 | Don't just stop.

01:03:54.640 | - 40th birthday party.

01:03:55.720 | - Yeah, just don't, yeah, 40th birthday party

01:03:58.300 | where I come bursting out in the Viking outfit

01:04:00.920 | from the beginning of the Northmen.

01:04:02.520 | - On the rower.

01:04:03.480 | - On the rower with a giant trapezius muscle.

01:04:06.080 | Don't do that on your own, you need help.

01:04:08.840 | So either get Chris Pratt,

01:04:10.340 | the "Scars Guard" guy or My Body Tutor.

01:04:13.660 | Those are your three choices,

01:04:14.560 | but only one of those choices will give you $50

01:04:16.520 | off your first month if you mention my podcast.

01:04:19.800 | I also wanna talk about another sponsor,

01:04:21.520 | Wren,

01:04:22.360 | W-R-E-N,

01:04:26.080 | which is a startup that's making it easy

01:04:28.600 | for everyone to make a meaningful difference

01:04:31.000 | in the climates crisis.

01:04:33.800 | So right now, Wren is focused on monthly subscriptions

01:04:36.120 | where you calculate your carbon footprint,

01:04:38.480 | then offset it by supporting awesome climate projects

01:04:41.240 | that plant trees, protect forest,

01:04:42.840 | and remove CO2 from the sky.

01:04:44.480 | So you can be offsetting the carbon you're putting out,

01:04:47.200 | investing some of the money you're making

01:04:49.400 | as you generate all this carbon

01:04:50.600 | and trying to offset it somewhere else.

01:04:53.380 | Their goal is to unlock the collective action

01:04:56.400 | of millions of individuals to drive the systemic change

01:04:58.720 | needed to end the climate crisis.

01:05:00.920 | It says here, Jesse,

01:05:02.060 | the inspiration, I don't know if you know this,

01:05:05.200 | the inspiration for this company,

01:05:06.640 | what motivated the founders to start it was,

01:05:09.280 | I'm reading here,

01:05:11.040 | watching Jesse drive by

01:05:13.560 | in his 1978 Ford pickup truck.

01:05:18.820 | And a tear fell from their eyes

01:05:21.920 | as they watched the birds fall from the trees dead,

01:05:25.760 | the squirrels paralyzed in the smog

01:05:28.920 | coming out of the back of that car,

01:05:30.640 | and it catalyzed them.

01:05:32.160 | They said, we have to solve the climate crisis.

01:05:35.000 | So little known fact,

01:05:36.800 | Jesse's pickup truck motivated Wren's fight

01:05:40.560 | against climate change.

01:05:41.640 | - Go ahead and count out.

01:05:43.560 | - Yeah, they don't have enough digits

01:05:45.240 | in their online carbon footprint calculator for you.

01:05:50.240 | There's not enough digits, it's the problem.

01:05:51.780 | It's like the odometer rolls over.

01:05:53.980 | Yeah, when you upload a picture of your truck,

01:05:55.660 | it just gives up, the server crashes.

01:06:00.120 | Right, so Wren, anyways, that nonsense.

01:06:04.040 | Signing up for Wren is an easy way

01:06:05.780 | to do something meaningful about the climate crisis,

01:06:08.320 | much of which has been caused by Jesse.

01:06:10.740 | So you go to their website,

01:06:11.780 | you calculate your personal carbon footprint,

01:06:14.420 | and you choose the projects right there.

01:06:16.380 | It shows you how much carbon that's offsetting.

01:06:18.860 | You can pay a monthly subscription.

01:06:21.180 | It makes it simple for you to actually take some action.

01:06:25.940 | So it's gonna take all of us to end the climate crisis.

01:06:28.460 | It's gonna take all of us to prevent the damage

01:06:30.500 | or push back on the damage caused by Jesse's truck.

01:06:32.340 | So do your part today by signing up for Wren,

01:06:34.860 | that's W-R-E-N.

01:06:36.800 | Go to wren.co/deep to sign up.

01:06:42.860 | And if you do that slash deep,

01:06:44.380 | they will plant an extra 10 trees in your name.

01:06:48.460 | So that's W-R-E-N.co/deep, start making a difference.

01:06:53.460 | I think a Wren's a type of bird, right?

01:07:01.380 | - Think so. - W-R, yeah.

01:07:02.700 | Also a couple more questions here.

01:07:06.940 | I got one from Lucy, who writes in to say,

01:07:11.340 | "Hi Cal, I'm about to finish my PhD

01:07:13.540 | "and decided to try to build a career in academia.

01:07:18.100 | "Now you've emphasized a couple of times

01:07:20.780 | "that choosing a great lab and famous/knowledgeable/

01:07:24.380 | "connected supervisor was an important step.

01:07:27.060 | "Unfortunately, it was not the case for me.

01:07:29.140 | "Even though I had high grades and a good profile,

01:07:30.700 | "my choice of graduate programs were limited

01:07:32.380 | "by my unstable temporary residency situation.

01:07:35.380 | "I ended up doing a PhD with a professor

01:07:37.040 | "who barely helped me.

01:07:39.260 | "He is a nice guy, but not very knowledgeable

01:07:41.040 | "and did not improve or increase my publications

01:07:43.180 | "or contributed to my growth as a researcher.

01:07:45.620 | "Regardless of the situation,

01:07:48.340 | "I managed to publish a few papers of uncertain quality

01:07:51.060 | "and learned quite a deal through my own efforts.

01:07:53.400 | "My question is, do you think I still can succeed

01:07:57.660 | "in an academic world, even if my start was not the best?

01:08:01.520 | "Where would you recommend to focus my efforts?"

01:08:06.300 | Well, Lucy, academic world can mean a lot of things.

01:08:10.880 | So if what we're talking about is a tenure-track position

01:08:16.640 | at a well-known university,

01:08:18.660 | sort of the classic image we have of a professor,

01:08:21.040 | you have some graduate students,

01:08:22.640 | you have the patches on your tweed jacket,

01:08:26.260 | you lecture to the big lecture halls

01:08:27.680 | at a selective university,

01:08:29.860 | the issue is you're starting from a very hard position.

01:08:35.240 | The reason why I push,

01:08:38.000 | get the most famous professor at the best school possible

01:08:41.940 | is that these are incredibly competitive jobs to get.

01:08:45.200 | And the thing that matters more than anything else

01:08:47.280 | is your research.

01:08:48.400 | Are you producing great work in great places

01:08:50.760 | that's generating attention and citations?

01:08:52.700 | That's what they're hiring you to do at your school.

01:08:55.440 | The reason why a famous advisor is useful

01:08:57.580 | is not because the advisor is famous,

01:08:59.360 | but because they're famous

01:09:00.840 | because they know how to publish really impactful papers

01:09:04.140 | and they will teach you how to do that.

01:09:06.040 | Learn from the people who are already doing

01:09:10.560 | what it is you wanna do.

01:09:11.920 | This competitiveness is so much

01:09:14.040 | that I got a private message recently from a student

01:09:17.120 | who said, "Look, I wanna go to grad school in CS,

01:09:20.640 | "I wanna be a professor.

01:09:22.420 | "I have a grad school offer from Princeton,

01:09:23.920 | "I have a grad school offer from MIT."

01:09:25.960 | And he's like, "I'm kind of leaning towards Princeton."

01:09:28.440 | He was giving his reasons.

01:09:29.740 | And I could empathize.

01:09:32.240 | When I applied to grad school,

01:09:33.300 | I also got into Princeton and MIT.

01:09:35.660 | Those were both on my choices.

01:09:38.580 | And he was trying to nudge me towards

01:09:40.620 | saying go to Princeton.

01:09:43.500 | And honestly, I came back to him, I was like,

01:09:45.620 | "Look, man, this is not your coming of age.

01:09:48.260 | "I'm 18 going off to undergrad year experience.

01:09:50.920 | "For what you wanna study, MIT is tops.

01:09:53.420 | "Go to the best school."

01:09:54.620 | And he was going on about,

01:09:57.120 | "I like the atmosphere,

01:09:58.340 | "the more intellectual literary atmosphere of Princeton."

01:10:00.580 | Like live in Harvard Square, that's what I did.

01:10:02.800 | Go to MIT, live in Harvard Square, buy books,

01:10:06.700 | but just go to the best possible school

01:10:08.320 | and get the best possible advisor

01:10:09.540 | 'cause it is so competitive out there.

01:10:10.760 | You gotta study at the best place you can.

01:10:12.740 | You gotta study with the very best people you can.

01:10:14.840 | You gotta produce the best papers you can.

01:10:17.180 | It's like training for a professional athletic job.

01:10:20.240 | I don't care what town you like better

01:10:22.260 | or what campus fits your mood better.

01:10:24.040 | You go to the best trainer you possibly can

01:10:25.740 | because it's so competitive.

01:10:28.360 | Hundreds of people applying

01:10:29.720 | for every one of these positions.

01:10:31.760 | So I don't know if this is like a downer

01:10:34.040 | or a tough love pipe response,

01:10:37.280 | but those types of jobs are very difficult

01:10:39.480 | if you're not already coming out of a top place.

01:10:41.880 | Something that might help here is a postdoc.

01:10:47.100 | If you could get a postdoc at a good place

01:10:48.760 | and kill it on the research in that first year as a postdoc,

01:10:53.220 | that could open up opportunities.

01:10:55.400 | There's two things here, though,

01:10:56.660 | I wanna warn you against.

01:10:58.880 | One is the idea of,

01:11:01.320 | I will go to a school that I don't wanna go to, right?

01:11:04.800 | So it's a non-tenure track or it's tenure track,

01:11:07.640 | but they don't care at all about research,

01:11:09.920 | it's super heavy load,

01:11:11.000 | and I will earn my way into a better position.

01:11:14.240 | That is very, very difficult.

01:11:16.700 | It is hard to make that type of jump.

01:11:18.960 | If you go to a heavy teaching load school

01:11:21.680 | where they don't really care much about research,

01:11:24.120 | it's gonna be very hard to distinguish yourself there

01:11:26.440 | and jump up into a better school.

01:11:29.220 | Because remember, the better schools have their pick

01:11:31.140 | of the very best people coming out of programs.

01:11:33.840 | Often when better schools are hiring stars,

01:11:37.380 | they're hiring away from other good schools

01:11:39.700 | and leveraging things like that person

01:11:41.780 | wants to come to your location.

01:11:43.340 | It is just real, it happens, but it's really rare.

01:11:46.620 | And the one exception is the very top schools

01:11:48.860 | in some fields basically use an all-star methods,

01:11:53.140 | like MIT will do this in computer science or mathematics.

01:11:56.680 | They won't hire from within,

01:11:59.640 | their students have to go off

01:12:00.880 | and they'll watch really good schools

01:12:02.400 | that are right below them

01:12:03.520 | and just wait to see who pops off as a star

01:12:05.600 | and they'll say, "All right, come back."

01:12:07.120 | So MIT will do that.

01:12:08.440 | You'll be at a really good school

01:12:10.920 | and then MIT will call you essentially

01:12:12.760 | and be like, "Oh, you got a MacArthur,

01:12:14.640 | "you got a whatever, great."

01:12:16.540 | Now you can come back to MIT,

01:12:17.520 | we'll give you a professorship.

01:12:18.660 | But what you don't see is someone going

01:12:20.360 | to a non-research focused heavy teaching load school

01:12:23.960 | and have a Princeton or an MIT say,

01:12:26.020 | "You've been doing great work,"

01:12:26.900 | because there's no time to do it, it's crushing.

01:12:29.380 | And also be wary about letting your desire for academia

01:12:33.540 | pull you into a exploitative adjunct type situation.

01:12:38.060 | Again, it's also very rare that you're gonna jump

01:12:39.980 | from one of those situations

01:12:40.980 | into a classic tenure track type academic position.

01:12:44.300 | So I wanna warn you from traps

01:12:46.900 | and give you the reality check

01:12:48.140 | that for this very narrow definition of academia,

01:12:50.300 | and it might not be what you're talking about,

01:12:51.560 | but for this very narrow definition

01:12:53.180 | of the TV movie portrayal of academia,

01:12:56.060 | tenure track at a well-known university doing research,

01:12:59.660 | they're hard jobs to get.

01:13:01.200 | And you need to have produced really good research.

01:13:05.620 | So if you have a way to do that in a postdoc,

01:13:07.340 | if you're right on the precipice

01:13:08.460 | of doing something really important,

01:13:10.140 | writing the killer book, getting out those killer articles,

01:13:13.520 | that's what you should do.

01:13:14.540 | That's what they're gonna care about,

01:13:15.500 | articles, articles, articles.

01:13:16.700 | So if you can do that, do that.

01:13:18.660 | If that doesn't seem like it's in the cards,

01:13:21.020 | then I'm just saying be wary

01:13:22.340 | because there's a lot of traps out here

01:13:24.300 | where someone will tell you a story,

01:13:26.380 | will come do this,

01:13:27.940 | and then you can jump to what you wanna do

01:13:29.620 | a little bit later,

01:13:30.460 | and that jump can be pretty hard to make.

01:13:32.500 | I hope that wasn't too much of a downer, Jesse, but.

01:13:35.940 | - That was a good answer.

01:13:36.780 | With your break now, are you still writing papers?

01:13:39.940 | - Yeah.

01:13:41.060 | Yeah, thanks. - So you still have

01:13:41.900 | a break here? - I'm still writing

01:13:42.720 | some papers.

01:13:43.560 | Yeah, my doctoral student's presenting a paper next week.

01:13:46.660 | No, no, in, I'm mixing up trips,

01:13:49.140 | a little later in July at a conference.

01:13:53.100 | And yeah, so I'm still writing some papers.

01:13:55.340 | - So that's different writing time

01:13:56.420 | than your morning book writing,

01:13:59.300 | New Yorker writing time, right?

01:14:00.580 | - That's different, yeah.

01:14:01.620 | Like I'm not actively writing

01:14:03.020 | any research papers right now.

01:14:04.820 | - Got it.

01:14:05.660 | - But like my doctoral student's working on his dissertation,

01:14:07.820 | so we're doing, you know,

01:14:09.220 | I'm looking at drafts.

01:14:10.060 | In fact, I'm talking to him right after this,

01:14:11.900 | so some of that's going on.

01:14:13.260 | Yeah, so like this summer,

01:14:15.780 | I'm really kind of locked into non-academic writing.

01:14:19.740 | But I still do some of that.

01:14:21.140 | I used to do a lot of it.

01:14:23.780 | - Yeah. - Like that's how you get,

01:14:24.700 | when I was coming into Georgetown,

01:14:26.520 | I had a lot of papers.

01:14:28.420 | I don't know what my count is now,

01:14:29.420 | but I think I have something,

01:14:30.820 | academic peer-reviewed computer science papers,

01:14:33.120 | probably 75.

01:14:35.260 | - Wow.

01:14:36.080 | - Yeah, and then if you add up citations,

01:14:39.460 | four or 5,000 citations,

01:14:41.820 | I mean, it's just, it's a hard work.

01:14:43.660 | They're like, get the job and get tenure.

01:14:45.340 | And I did early tenure is, you know,

01:14:48.660 | a four to five paper a year pace in computer science.

01:14:50.900 | Like it was just, that's what I was doing.

01:14:53.060 | Yeah, that takes time.

01:14:55.120 | All right, let's do, where are we at?

01:14:58.620 | We have time, let's do a call.

01:14:59.620 | Let's do one more call,

01:15:01.180 | and then we can call it quits for today.

01:15:03.500 | - Sounds good, we got a call from a monk.

01:15:05.500 | - Cal, I'm inspired by your work, thank you.

01:15:09.100 | My name is Etienne,

01:15:10.860 | and I'm a Benedictine monk in the United States.

01:15:15.200 | The idea of deep work and the deep life

01:15:18.220 | is really resonant with me.

01:15:21.440 | Part of my work is educating and forming young men

01:15:26.300 | to become leaders in the Catholic church.

01:15:29.040 | I wish to model and teach them deep work,

01:15:33.020 | slow productivity, the deep life,

01:15:36.440 | digital minimalism, et cetera.

01:15:38.740 | Do you have thoughts on how I might be a good mentor

01:15:43.160 | and teacher for these principles to these young men?

01:15:47.500 | Again, thank you very much.

01:15:49.340 | - Well, it's a good question.

01:15:54.060 | I mean, certainly young men as a demographic

01:15:58.340 | are often in this day and age hungry for guidance.

01:16:02.620 | So it is a demographic group that is open

01:16:07.500 | to being inspired, open to being guided.

01:16:10.220 | And when they're not, when they're left adrift,

01:16:13.520 | negative things happen as a consequence.

01:16:16.000 | So I'm glad you're involved in being a guiding light

01:16:20.360 | to this particular group.

01:16:21.760 | I think one thing that's helpful,

01:16:25.000 | so I'm thinking about, I mean, I advise,

01:16:26.520 | when I get messages from a lot of people,

01:16:29.320 | but when I'm thinking about the advice I give

01:16:30.800 | to young men in particular,

01:16:32.800 | I think having the frame of the deep life

01:16:36.160 | is a helpful starting place.

01:16:39.480 | So saying, okay, you're committing to this goal

01:16:41.160 | that you want to live a deep life.

01:16:43.460 | You don't wanna live a life that is haphazard.

01:16:46.040 | You don't wanna live a life that is arbitrary

01:16:47.720 | or at the whims of distraction or the noise of our culture,

01:16:51.180 | that you instead wanna live a life that is intentional

01:16:53.180 | and considered and remarkable in the sense

01:16:55.180 | that it makes people turn their head

01:16:57.060 | and catch their attention.

01:16:58.020 | Oh, that's something, that's something.

01:17:00.580 | That is highly appealing to a lot of young men.

01:17:03.160 | And I think laying out that framework,

01:17:04.360 | okay, how do we do this?

01:17:05.400 | And making it clear that this is gonna require discipline

01:17:07.380 | and hard work, that is all fantastic.

01:17:10.340 | That is a charge we want.

01:17:12.880 | Give me a challenge.

01:17:15.460 | I wanna have to rise to a challenge.

01:17:17.780 | So that is all good.

01:17:19.100 | The other part of the deep life framework

01:17:21.100 | that I think is for good men, good for young men

01:17:23.660 | is that it has these multiple elements to it.

01:17:27.340 | We often get stuck on just one aspect of good living.

01:17:32.340 | We neglect the others.

01:17:33.780 | We get obsessed about career,

01:17:35.620 | but we fall behind on our philosophical

01:17:39.700 | or theological growth.

01:17:40.840 | We fall behind on leadership or community,

01:17:43.100 | or we get really obsessed about theology.

01:17:47.020 | We're going through the process of becoming a monk

01:17:49.280 | and forget the importance of community

01:17:51.500 | or the importance of craft.

01:17:52.580 | So this notion that we have various areas of life

01:17:55.160 | that all require service, I think that is very useful.

01:17:57.860 | And we know the areas I often talk about is craft.

01:18:01.000 | So what you actually do and create is community,

01:18:04.900 | being a leader and sacrificing non-trivial time

01:18:06.980 | and energy on behalf of other people,

01:18:09.500 | constitution, that is your health, that is your fitness,

01:18:12.020 | contemplation, that's gonna be philosophy,

01:18:13.820 | that's gonna be theology, really making that important,

01:18:17.300 | making that important part of your life.

01:18:18.660 | And then I often do throw in celebration,

01:18:20.740 | the ability to build up taste and kind of stewardship

01:18:23.940 | and just gratitude for things that are good in the world

01:18:26.300 | and in your life and things you can go

01:18:27.740 | and just get pure enjoyment out of.

01:18:29.260 | Breaking that down, here are five things.

01:18:30.900 | Each of these requires attention.

01:18:33.620 | Each of these requires cultivation,

01:18:35.420 | is a message that young people and young men in particular

01:18:40.180 | really resonate with.

01:18:41.420 | And then you work through,

01:18:42.260 | let's do keystone habits in each

01:18:43.700 | and let's go through each of these one by one

01:18:45.500 | and we can spend six weeks in each

01:18:47.100 | and do a preliminary overhaul of that part of your life.

01:18:49.420 | Let's overhaul your eating

01:18:51.100 | and get some real serious fitness going here,

01:18:53.260 | have some discipline there.

01:18:54.780 | How about your theological mind?

01:18:56.080 | How about your philosophical mind?

01:18:57.140 | You need to start reading books.

01:18:58.100 | You need to stop, you can get off that phone,

01:18:59.940 | you need to read, you need a half hour a day.

01:19:02.300 | Here's what you're gonna read.

01:19:03.780 | We're gonna talk about it.

01:19:04.860 | You have to expand your mind.

01:19:07.220 | You have to open, okay, there we go.

01:19:08.940 | We're working on that as well.

01:19:09.940 | Leadership and community.

01:19:10.800 | What are you doing to make the life

01:19:12.220 | of people around you better?

01:19:13.740 | Are you spending time thinking about it every day?

01:19:15.260 | Do you lead anything?

01:19:16.380 | Where are you leading other people

01:19:19.380 | towards somewhere better

01:19:20.380 | where you're sacrificing your own time and energy?

01:19:23.300 | These things are important

01:19:24.380 | and it's all different areas you're focusing on.

01:19:26.780 | When you focus on the craft piece,

01:19:28.220 | that's where deep work and concentration

01:19:30.340 | and focus and diligence

01:19:31.660 | and all of that comes into play, slow productivity.

01:19:33.940 | So as you move through these different buckets,

01:19:36.420 | these different areas,

01:19:37.300 | all sorts of different learning can happen.

01:19:39.420 | But it's that overall pursuit.

01:19:41.240 | I want with discipline and intention

01:19:44.580 | to make my life into something deep and remarkable.

01:19:46.460 | That pursuit is like water

01:19:50.620 | to the explorer lost in the desert

01:19:52.300 | when we're talking about young men in today's culture.

01:19:56.340 | So I think that's the way I would go about it.

01:19:59.160 | And I would really challenge them.

01:20:02.040 | In each of these areas,

01:20:03.720 | don't just do the easy, do the hard.

01:20:05.200 | And I'll tell you, there are so many positive side effects

01:20:08.440 | of systematically trying to cultivate this life,

01:20:11.520 | especially if you're young

01:20:12.720 | and especially if you're adrift.

01:20:14.320 | The excessive video game playing,

01:20:17.560 | the excessive phone scrolling,

01:20:20.520 | the pornography, the excessive drinking,

01:20:23.000 | all of these things that can afflict the 23 and adrift,

01:20:27.040 | they naturally just start to dissipate

01:20:30.280 | when you have these more important things

01:20:31.880 | that you're starting to work on,

01:20:33.320 | you're getting that feeling of success on them.

01:20:35.400 | You're getting that feeling of efficacy.

01:20:37.560 | You're getting that feeling of autonomy and meaning.

01:20:41.520 | And it transforms the whole way you think about the life.

01:20:44.160 | It transforms the troll on the Twitter

01:20:48.320 | who's just angry and looking for attention

01:20:52.200 | into a leader in their town,

01:20:54.660 | into a real deep thinker

01:20:55.880 | who ends up contributing something really interesting

01:20:57.900 | to the world of ideas.

01:20:58.840 | As someone who is in good shape

01:21:00.160 | so they can be there for their family, for their community

01:21:03.440 | through thick and thin into older age,

01:21:05.040 | there's so many things good to come out of it.

01:21:06.480 | So I'm glad you're thinking about this.

01:21:08.240 | That's how I would do it.

01:21:10.160 | Challenge, discipline, intention,

01:21:11.960 | all aimed towards the deep life,

01:21:13.440 | break into the categories, do my whole framework there.

01:21:16.800 | I think young men are hungry for it

01:21:19.280 | and I think they will be quite receptive.

01:21:22.620 | All right, Jessie, I think that's a good variety

01:21:27.440 | of questions here.

01:21:28.280 | We're coming up on the 120 mark.

01:21:29.600 | So that's as good a time of any to wrap things up.

01:21:33.320 | So thank you everyone who submitted questions.

01:21:35.520 | Go to calnewport.com/podcast for instructions

01:21:38.040 | on how to do so.

01:21:39.800 | If you like what you heard, you will like what you saw,

01:21:42.720 | what you see, I should say,

01:21:44.480 | videos of the full episodes and clips

01:21:46.960 | are available at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

01:21:51.960 | Go to calnewport.com to sign up for my weekly newsletter.

01:21:54.400 | We'll be back next week.

01:21:55.660 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:21:58.000 | (upbeat music)

01:22:00.580 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 202: TikTok Dismisses Facebook, Good vs Deep, and Process-Centric Email | Deep Questions Podcast

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