So what I want to do today the deep question I want to dive into today Based on this article as a starting point. It's going to be Why is it important to? read books I'm Cal Newport and this is deep questions the show about living and working deeply in an increasingly distracted world I'm Here my deep work HQ joined as always by my producer Jesse Jesse I'm gonna make an announcement about something that you in particular have been working on in recent months, which is our new ish website the deep life calm So we soft launched this a couple months ago just to get used to the interface and to start populating it in content with content But the deep life comm is the official home among other things of this podcast Every episode has its own page at the deep life comm where you can listen to the episode Find it in all the various players Also any videos related to that episode to be found right there on the episodes page as well So that is going to be the home for this podcast the site for this podcast It's also the home for all of the video that we produce.

So all of the video we produce Related to the podcast as well as the standalone videos that we produce Infrequently now, but probably more frequently in the future. All of those will be housed in addition to on YouTube at Cal Newport Meet YouTube slash California. They'll also be housed at The deep life comm so if you want to watch podcast episodes watch clips from episodes watch other videos We've done like our weekly update videos, but you're suspicious for example of the YouTube recommendation algorithms Watch them at the deep life comm nice clean interface in our Environment.

So if you want to understand the idea behind this I mentioned this briefly Sort of buried in a recent episode in my answer to one of my questions But the reason why I've launched this separate website the deep life comm is that I'm trying to get some clarity between my work as an academic and writer and public intellectual where I write books and academic Articles and public facing articles for the New Yorker and I explore a lot of topics all roughly within this general this general Frame of technology and its impact on culture and society.

I wanted there to be some clarity between that world and The direct engagement I do with you my listeners and readers with things like this podcast like my videos on the specific goal of trying to cultivate a deeper life Because unlike other I would say other personalities that are out there where their entire existence is tied up in their direct Engagement with their readers or listeners.

They're a a YouTube podcaster and that's it I have this whole other life in the world of idea So the way I see it is I'm a thinker who writes and thinks about a lot of things I spun off this separate move at the deep life comm with the very Specific goal of being as I say at the top of that website the online home for the deep life movement So right now it's where my podcast is right now.

It's where my videos are Conceivably in the future the deep life comm and the movement it represents could have some other voices on there as well Maybe another show on there other types of video series. So anyways, that is the deep life comm is the home for the podcast That's we're gonna find pages for every episode.

That's where you can watch videos without having to see YouTube Recommendations. Yes, that looks good. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm gonna have to just see kind of is the mastermind behind Keeping it humming But it seems like it's working great. Like we have all the episodes are in here now or something like this Yeah, pretty big archive.

We might in the future add Transcripts start adding transcripts to pages as we go forward as well. We haven't done that yet But when we do that's where to live. Mm-hmm. Each episode has its own has its own page We got start producing more video though. Yeah, I like video I get suspicious about YouTube sometimes So it's nice to have a place people can go To watch those videos if they don't want to actually be in the the YouTube universe Yeah, though.

We're always happy to have you at YouTube youtube.com slash counterpart media. That is the YouTube page for all these Videos of these episodes and our clips are housed All right, so you may have noticed or you may notice if I drag a little bit in today's episode. I was sick this week You know Jesse knows this because we actually had to reschedule this taping because I was Too sick to do it on our the original time That we were going to record but being sick and this way I want to bring this up at the top of the show The day when I was the sickest which was on Wednesday Of this past week.

I had an interesting epiphany. So I was really run down as nauseous my head hurt. I Couldn't read books. I Tried I couldn't concentrate. I just wanted I was like I can't follow this but I could read the internet on my phone and I believe and this is a Precise quantification.

I believe I read on that day and I'm looking up the number here all of the Internet And I said that's the right way of quantifying it, but it stuck with me for a second. My mind was run down I was sick. I was at a Fraction of my energy.

I was still able to do stuff online I could read stuff online, but I couldn't read books and it occurred to me There's something different going on in book reading Something much more demanding than when I'm scrolling on my phone and this is honestly what I was doing in The comment section on the talk NATS comm Web blog which has the the best online discussion community on the Internet for the Washington Nationals baseball team Those are interesting guys.

I could read that I could read Mark Zuckerman's articles on massin About you know, what was going on with Josiah Gray's delivery couldn't read even Relatively straightforward books. So then I came across this was on my mind. I'm starting a little bit better fortuitously one of you my listeners sent to my interesting account newport.com address an article that got right to the heart of this and I'm gonna bring this up on The screen so if you're watching at youtube.com Cal Newport media This is episode 238 or if you're watching at the deep life calm this article I have a here up on the screen is called success and circuit lies.

How do we cultivate deep reading? Processes in a digital age. It's from February and it's written by Marianne Wolfe Marianne Wolfe used to be at Tufts now. She's moved to a new center at UCLA She is an expert on the neuroscience of reading in particular. She's done a lot of breakthrough research on Dyslexia what actually happens in the brain with dyslexia?

She wrote a great public-facing book called Proust and the squid which I really recommend this article had in it a lot of great insights about why reading is a special or exceptional activity for human beings why it does something for us that other types of consumption and media doesn't and why we should be worried about losing it and Be eager to fight to get more of it.

These points were all embedded in this article So let's look at some quotes from this article There's a lot of different things going on here I pulled some quotes out of here not in their order that they appeared from the order that I think they're important To our discussion.

So let me grab the first quote. I want to start with here. All right, here is Marianne and again, I have this on the screen if you're at youtube.com slash Calum port media This is episode 238. All right, so let's start with this quote No human was born to read Literacy requires a new plastic brain circuit plasticity allows the circuit to adapt to any writing system and any medium that catches that Circuits reflect the mediums character characteristics, whatever they are.

So we'll start with this point It's a big point. It was made in Proust and the squid humans aren't meant to read. It's a highly unnatural activity. We hijack Significant portions of our brain that were originally evolved to do other things and we retrain them to do this reading This reading activity that humans invented.

It's a cultural innovation that's relatively recent in the history of our species, but what Marianne is saying here is We're reshaping our brain to this new activity. So specific the specifics of this activity matter So what we're reading how we're reading it what format we're reading in Actually can have an impact on how the brain is shaped.

All right second quote. I want to read here This is now about let's dive into how different mediums can affect how our brain is shaped around reading the medium of print Advantages slower more attention and time requiring processes the digital medium by contrast advantages fast processes and multitasking Both well suited for skimming information's daily bombardments Marianne has a little interesting piece here where she says stop for a moment and think about that sentence you just read Did you really read the whole sentence or did you skim and bounce around some words?

Because as she goes on to clarify that's really how we engage with Words on screens and web browsers on social media, etc. We skim we jump around There's things called Z patterns and F patterns will read the first line the middle section We our eyes jump around we feel like we're going fast, but we're missing a lot of information.

So different types of reading digital verse physical requires different types of processes So does this matter? Well, let's see Here's what Marianne says to skim to inform as we do when we read on digital Is the new norm for reading what goes missing? However, our deep reading processes Which require a quality of attention increasingly at risk in a culture and on a medium in which constant distraction?

bifurcates our attention these processes include Connecting background knowledge new information making analogies drawing inferences examining truth value passing over into the perspectives of other expanding our empathy and knowledge and integration and critical analysis Here is the the key quote about summarizing all these things we get from reading a physical book Deep reading is our species bridge to insight and novel thought All right So let's think about what they're saying what what Marianne is saying here We have to reshape our brain to read if we're reading on a screen we tend to do what she calls skim to inform we jump around and See ideas try to get the gist of what's going on when we instead read on a physical page We instead are prioritizing processes that give us all of these all of these Advanced human cognition behaviors as we get the analogies inferences truth value passing over perspectives empathetic putting ourselves into the shoes of others integration critical analysis the things that she describes as our bridge to insight and novel thought as Marianne wolf goes on to summarize those traits we get from physical books, but not digital to deploy these interactive processes requires nearly automatic decoding skills and purposeful attention that moves as William James once put it from flight to purchase for thought Imperceptible pauses and reading can lead to lightning speed leaps in our thoughts furthest reaches by contrast when we skim we literally physiologically don't have time to think or feel So this is a big a big idea that's being made here slowly reading full sentences one after a time as we do when we look at a physical page is Supporting and kicking off all of these incredibly advanced deep thinking processes that are at the key of what makes humans human and It's not just being able to think clear.

It's also being able to be more empathetic It's being able to integrate the ideas you're seeing into other ideas. What she's emphasizing here is just the ability to pause And just think for a moment about that sentence before you move on to the next allows you to integrate it Successfully to existing structures of thought therefore growing a much more sophisticated Understanding of the world all of this comes from the pace of reading the style of reading that happens on physical pages On a screen on a phone on an iPad.

We don't get that we're skimming around And we literally physiologically don't have time to think or feel So we're not able to integrate the thoughts for reading We're not able to examine them successfully for truth value or understand how they fit in or challenge existing schemas We do not have the physiological or psychological space for empathy for the other people.

So what we look for is Arousal Hey, this makes me mad. This makes me laugh. This makes me, you know excited about something. This makes me, you know scared Emotional arousal kind of captures our attention and we look for keywords about do I like this person or not? Is this on my team do I grew this idea or not?

It's a primitive engagement with information Does this affect other types of thinking so if we spend most of our time reading in a Digital screen instead of reading on a physical screen will that impact the way we think not just when we're engaging with text But when we're trying to do other type of thinking in other aspects of our life Here the article provides evidence that yes, the answer there is yes Marianne points towards a recent study that was published in JAMA Pediatrics By a group of researchers from Singapore McGill and Harvard.

It looked at over 500 young children what they found is increased screen time at a young age Was associated with weaker development of the brain regions responsible for the executive function skills that cover attention impulse inhibition and some aspects of memory So they're not getting the cognitive training That book reading in physical books gives you and without the training you're not developing those skills.

So it's not just The act of reading itself while you're reading allows you to do this deeper thinking it's cognitive strength training It's making those parts of your brains able to do that type of thinking better in the future When you're doing other cognitive activities Now is this just for young kids?

Well, no Marianne goes on to say The same sentence she's referencing a sentence that summarized what I just said Could as easily describe the experience of older children and indeed adults So to me These are important points Reading a physical book in a slow deliberative and careful manner Sharpens a type of innovative empathetic creative and critical thinking that is otherwise hard for humans to access It requires us to literally rewire our brain to do that type of thinking and without a concerted effort We will not develop those skills If we avoid the slow and deliberate reading of actual physical books if we mainly consume information on screens constantly keeping up With the news on Twitter looking at what's going on in Instagram jumping around highly engaging Websites or following links on social media even very highly educated people will do this and convince themselves.

I'm really up on things I know what's going on I'm jumping back and forth between these sub stack quotes that I saw quoted in other tweets You feel like you're really engaged, but you're not doing the type of reading that supports innovative empathetic creative and critical thinking so what happens is the sophistication with which you understand and Later make sense of information is decreased and your ability to apply sophisticated thinking in other contexts is also atrophied Avoiding books is like being in ancient Sparta and avoiding doing any physical training You're going to be bad at the main activity that your civilization prioritizes for the Spartans.

It was physical war for us as cognition You're making yourself much worse at that if you avoid physical books now if we think about this even more literally and We we go with this idea that wolf pushes That training our brain to do this type of innovative and empathetic and creative and critical thinking is something that's unnatural We have to hijack huge portions of our brain and doing this very difficult Unnatural activity that is sitting there and holding a codex and trying to decode the sentences that we have to do something incredibly unnatural again and again to train our brains to be this higher order of human if We're not doing that if we're substituting that time with screens We are in a literal sense evolving our brain backwards towards our pre literate tribal selves we're going backwards the type of brains we had before the advent of literacy and The impact that had on the plastic formation of how our brain actually functions.

I spent all day Last Wednesday sick on the internet and here was my just my conclusion. It's a terrible place Seriously, there's no empathy. The thinking is simplistic there is a Automatic knee-jerk meanness to any perceived outsiders. In other words if you're bouncing around Twitter and social media and sub stack fights going back and forth.

It's a digital paleolithic tribe It's exactly what wolf would predict if you don't do this effort that makes us more than our what we used to be we're gonna go right back to what we used to be and When I see Twitter today or what ten years ago would have been Tumblr fighting with 4chan And before that, you know, who knows?

What I see there is the human brain going backwards That it's going back to where it's comfortable. Where's my tribe? How does this make me feel? Who's the bad guy? I want to feel something big right now And when we do that we get away from What characterizes and distinguishes?

Humans the modern human from any other any other animal or beast that's ever come before You know Aristotle identified in the Nicomachean ethics concentrated deep thought the ability to sit here and manipulate ideas just within our head as the essence of What it means to be human what separates humans are teleological endpoint So to voluntarily move backwards from that is something that we should be cautious of.

All right, so I'm being pretty philosophical here. Let's get more concrete What is my recommendation for you know, my listeners here to the show? I think we need to think about a serious reading habit as an exceptional activity one that you need to isolate and Support and really prioritize in your life no matter what else you think is important in your personal definition of a deep life I'm increasingly convinced the serious reading of good books needs to be in there So I have seven suggestions.

I want to give seven suggestions about integrating real reading into your life All right. Number one Always be reading Something challenging. I don't care if it's fiction or nonfiction, but something that's challenging ideas you have to grapple with characters whose psychological reality is Difficult or pushes you into new Psychological or emotional places like in fiction but challenging number two read real books Not on a phone not on an iPad Kindle, I think is okay We're going to get into this later with a question later in the the program with a good collection of questions coming up But for now, I'll just say Kindle's okay physical books are okay Don't read on your phone.

Don't read on your iPad wolf goes into this in this article. It's where the other distractions are And you're gonna read in those old ways if you're trying to read on those same devices You're gonna read in the skim style number three Read when possible and awesome awe-inspiring locations I don't like this mindset that reading is a take your cod liver oil Type of grin and bear it ice bath type self-flagellation behavior make it awesome It's sunny out I'm gonna go to a park and sit on a bench or hike into the woods for 20 minutes and bring a book by you Know Thoreau read at a coffee shop in the morning or as I would occasionally do when I lived in Beacon Hill for a while And I was at MIT Go to a pub.

That's it. We the British are great at this Americans are terrible at this The the art of being a grad student that has a book that's a little bit too hard but you have a Heffa wise in in a back corner of a pub It's great. It opens up your great.

I'm excited to read this feels like the right place to be doing it Take your time is number four Take your time when you read go slow seek to understand if you're reading a complicated book Use secondary sources to push yourself. So read books about the book you're reading It'll give you things to look forward to push your understanding and you'll come back to the book and be able to come at it more sophisticated Again, I'm not a big believer of just immerse yourself in a complicated thing and and you will just grow No, don't just grab Ulysses Read a book about Ulysses.

So you have some understanding of what was going on with modernist English literature in this point Why is this so important? What are you looking for? Number five the quantity of books finished in the reading life is less important than the time spent actually reading so reading regularly Slowly and deliberately is what matters the quantity of books that translates to will depend on two things one happenstance The length of the books you happen to be reading and to just has your skill increases as you get better at reading You might finish books faster six keep notes keep notes when you are Tackling an idea that's important.

Maybe you've read multiple books on it start a document somewhere keep notes This helps you practice puts you in the mindset of I'm not just reading the sentences I want to actually try to extract information from these sentences. You're gonna slow down You're going to allow those purchase for thought that William James talked about that pause in between that allows you to say, hmm What was said here reminds me of what was said there and it changes the way I think about what I wrote the other day That's where real interesting synthesis happens.

And finally The support all of this reading when it comes to your life with screens, especially phones and iPads try to reduce The use of screens as a default response to boredom That should be a plan thing. It's okay. If you say tonight, I'm gonna watch a show that I'm going to stream or there is a baseball game today and At breakfast I am going to check on this site that site in this site to get the analysis of what happened there That's perfectly fine.

What you want to avoid is when I'm bored whip this out. Hey Tick-tock algorithm or Twitter social dynamic show me some stuff that makes me feel big That you want to avoid you want your brain to not crave that so much You want your brain to be more comfortable with not having the big feelings at all moments So that when it comes time to do deep reading It doesn't complain All right, so that's my advice.

So here's my summary here The reading life is a deep life the screen life the screen filled life can be downright primitive Which one do you want? It's all about books Jesse So I like that deep dive because as you know, we like to do one theme on the show each week and So we have five questions coming up and they're all about reading.

Yeah, so I'm excited about I love reading questions Yeah, I like it too. It's popular topic to a lot of people watch those types of videos They're always interested in the books you read each month Yeah so we got five good reading questions that I want to dive into from you my listeners before I do I want to briefly first mention a One of our favorite sponsors of the show and that is our friends over at Blinkist You've heard me talk about Blinkist before the Blinkist app allows you to understand the big ideas from over five thousand five hundred nonfiction books and podcast in just 15 minutes You know, I'm realizing Jesse that's a little bit ambiguous as worded One potential reading of that is the Blinkist app will allow you to digest 5,000 books worth of ideas in 15 minutes.

See I think that's too much of a summary But that's not what it means what it means is you can select from over five thousand five hundred books and for any one of those books Get a 15 minute summary that you can either read or listen to while you do something else.

Those summaries are called blinks If you want to adopt a reading life like we just discussed There is no better sidekick than Blinkist because here's what it allows you to do Triage potential books to let into your life. You say I'm interested in this topic. Here's a few books on it.

Which one should I buy? You listen to or read the blinks on all three of them You get the big ideas and quickly you can kind of hone in. I don't this one seems like it's a blog post It's expanded. Oh, this one seems serious. Oh, that's the one I'm gonna buy.

That's the one I'm gonna read So if you're a serious reader Blinkist should be your sidekick They also have this new feature called Blinkist connect in Which you get two accounts for the price of one So you sign up for one and you can gift an account to a friend Jesse you and I both use Blinkist You have volunteered for me to actually bring up allow me to bring up your Blinkist app on the screen here Yeah, let's look at this real quick.

Let me just jump over to it So for those who are watching at youtube.com slash Cal Newport media I've logged into the Blinkist app here. The reason why I want to do this was just to show you one other thing which I Like about Blinkist is they have these things called collections So it will also help you discover new books.

So I'm looking at some collections on the screen here. Here's one Friend of the show friend of mine Adam Grant Adam grants book recommendations So I'm gonna click on that and what you get here is a collection of 14 books that Adam Grant is Recommending so you have like from strength the strength by Arthur Brooks Parenting by Jean Olin wing and so on obviously, this is a Nonsense list because none of my books are in it, but The point is you can also have books recommended and so there's 14 books in this list Click on any one of these things get the 15-minute summary to see if you want to buy it I'm telling you if the reading life is something that you think is important and you really should Blinkist is a great sidekick to have along to ride So right now Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience if you go to Blinkist comm slash deep To start your seven-day free trial.

You will get 25% off a Blinkist premium membership. That's Blinkist spelled blinkist Blinkist comm slash deep to get 25% off and a seven-day free trial. That's Blinkist comm slash deep Remember now for a limited time you can even use Blinkist connect to share your premium account. You'll get two premium subscriptions for the price of one we also want to mention our sponsor ExpressVPN in Many prior ad reads I've explained why you need a VPN so that your internet provider or people who are Sniffing your packets as they move through the air from your device to a Wi-Fi Access point can't tell who you were talking to on the internet with a VPN You have a secure connection to a VPN server that talks to the sites and services on your behalf There's a kind of fun extra bonus reason why you might want a VPN like ExpressVPN Is that if you choose to connect to a VPN server in another country?

The websites or services you talk to think you are in that country. I Was messing around with this recently, for example, I watched The Office by logging into a ExpressVPN server in the UK and Then log it into my Netflix account because Netflix UK has the rights to The Office whereas Netflix in the US does not it's on Peacock so you could fill that in for all all sorts of other regionalized shows Thinking about you know, the show Vikings on Canadian Netflix, for example or Korean dramas Go to a Korean server connecting the Netflix.

You can see suddenly Korean dramas that you wouldn't normally see in the US so that's that's a cool bonus feature you get in addition to the Security and the protection and the privacy is like hey, you can put yourself into different countries. Actually the way I use that most often I would say is when I am traveling overseas and I'm homesick and I want American Netflix.

I just want to watch a show. I'm in a hotel room somewhere in Berlin Connect to a VPN server in the US go Netflix and Netflix thinks you're back in the good old US of A so VPNs are vital They also let you do fun things like that ExpressVPN is the one I use because I think it has the most servers I love the available bandwidth and it's very easy to use click a switch.

It's on you don't even realize it's on So if you want all the benefits security privacy Benefits of VPNs as well as access to hundreds of new shows go to expressvpn.com Deep right now and you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free That's ExpressVPN.com slash deep ExpressVPN.com slash deep to learn more All right, Jesse.

We got now five questions from our listeners all Related to our central deep question about why we should read more books. These are all book related questions who is first My first question is from bookish. I Thought about buying used physical copies of all the books. I've read on Kindle that I found worthwhile, but it seems wasteful Would this be crazy?

The TLDR here is no and before I elaborate on that, let me Briefly detour to address the topic. I put a pin in earlier Which is Kindle used to read is that the same as reading physical books when it comes to the advantage talked about by? Marion Wolfe, I would say almost completely yes It's pretty close and the big issue.

This is what Wolf points out the big issue with reading on a phone or an iPad Is it's the same screen we do all this other distracting behavior on and that's what pushes us into these skim patterns Kindle we only used to read books And so it does not seem at least anecdotally to induce that same skimming mindset I mean the Kindle is not really even a screen in the traditional sense of let's say an iPad or a phone where you actually have Different color lights being projected from these very small pixels that form an image.

That's not exactly It's not how a Kindle works a Kindle. It's actually electromechanical It uses a technology called e-ink and all it is is a grid of very small disks laid out like a grid one side is essentially white the other side is essentially black and There is a little wires think about it Like there's wires to every little one of those things and if you put a little electrical pulse to one of the disk it flips over So what's happening with the Kindle is when you switch your page?

There's a pulse to all these disks which flips them over into a pattern and now what you're physically looking at these physical disks White on one side black on the others have all been flipped in a way that what it shows you is the page with your Text so there's no light behind it.

It's not shining pixels at you. It's actually physically a pattern of white and black Physical disks that's why you shine a book light on it like anything else. It's like you're reading paper It really is like you're reading paper electricity is only used to flip those. It's not steady-state supported by electricity That's a little bit In the weeds, but I think it helps explain why the experience arena Kindle really can be like reading a physical book in a way That reading on your eye your iPhone is not.

All right, let's go back to bookish this question Is it crazy that if you like have a library book in your Kindle and you love it that you go and buy a copy Of it. No, I don't even think it needs to be a used copy Collect books that are important to you or you think are important I think that makes a lot of sense what better thing to collect you have in a single codex That is still the wisdom that might have come from years of effort and it had a real impact This very narrow thing that cost you twenty two dollars or eighteen dollars on Amazon has the ability to permanently rewire your cognitive Configuration changed the way you understand the world and live your life.

I mean what's more powerful than that and you get it for $18 Yes Celebrate these things if they've made a big difference in your life Buy a copy of a book that you think is really good have a library in that way. You're also supporting The construction of this art you're supporting writers who put all these efforts into it I am I'm not one of these people that thinks we should minimize our books or that having books is somehow fetishistic I mean, I think it is a one of the most important artifacts for the reasons We talked about in the deep dive that began the show they alone among All sorts of different things human produced are responsible for literally evolving The human brain allowing us to move to a higher more sophisticated creative empathetic state of being I think that's something that we can celebrate So yeah, buy the books bookish buy the books you like All right.

What do got next Jesse? All right. Next question is from Patrick. I'm a theology grad student. I just signed my first nonfiction book contract I've been using your paper research database method, but I'm worried it won't be flexible enough for a full book What do you use to track notes for your books?

Well Patrick congratulations on the contract That's a call callback to early Cal Newport comm D deep what he called the paper research database method I remember writing this it was a an article for my blog years ago and if memory serves I Had read an article or watched documentary about how the Pulitzer Prize winning nonfiction writer Taylor branch Collected and organized the notes for his epic three-part biography of Martin Luther King and he used a paper research database if again This is me pulling back pretty deeply into my memory banks.

I did not refresh my memory of this article before the show I believe he used a Microsoft Access Database, that's how old this was and what he did is he immersed himself in Essentially every source about Kings life and when I say every source about Kings life I don't mean he read a lot of books about King.

He did more than that. I don't just mean he went and read Important academic papers written about King. He did more than that. I don't mean that he went and read Every newspaper article that mentioned King during Kings life. He did do that, but he did more than that He would actually go and say King was in this town on this day.

Let me see what's in the newspaper in that town in that day Just so I can see what's going on. What was it like in? Selma in 1954 on Tuesday April 17th, right and so to organize all these notes he put everything into a database that was all keyed by date Everything had a date and then he would summarize what's going on You would either transcribe relevant notes and what he observed from it and he just spent years and years doing this and the reason why He did is that when it came time to write his biographies he could say he had a timeline Okay, I'm at the point now where I'm talking about what happened in the summer of 1951 He could essentially have his database spit out everything basically at all relevant to King in those three months in Chronological order and then he could immerse himself in all of that and from that be able to pull out a very nuanced Contextualized narrative about what King was doing not just King specific actions, but what was happening in the country at this time What was happening around King?

So it's a really cool method Patrick I think that is too Probably too inflexible for your book unless you're writing historical nonfiction. You're gonna spend a lot of years on it But I can tell you what I do because I've evolved my paper note-taking Systems over the the books I've written, you know I've published seven of now in the middle of book number eight finished the first manuscript doing edits right now So I've done a lot of books.

I have to write my books much faster than Taylor Branch You know I might have five months to put out one of my books because I have to fit this between other things like being a professor Etc, right and so in my systems I can say what I tend to prioritize is speed and Reducing friction.

I want to be able to capture as much relevant information as possible and get to that relevant information as quickly As possible while minimizing obstacles the lower friction I have in collecting organizing and reviewing notes The more notes I can take and the more I can pull from when I'm trying to actually pull together my ideas So I can tell you for my most recent book the book I'm writing now on slow productivity I have moved to a system in which everything with one key exception about to tell you everything goes in the Scrivener So I write my my books in Scrivener, but I also keep all of my research notes in Scrivener A bunch of folders and documents within those folders.

I have PDFs. I've dragged in there I have a bunch of websites typically what I like to do is put the URL of the web page and then copy all the text and put that in the Scrivener - so I don't have to go to the website again. All the information is right there I just have random observations of my own It's all organized in folders and the folders have subfolders and those subfolders have subfolders because it's incredibly easy to just throw stuff in there And that's where I write.

So all the information is already where I write I write in Scrivener So everything I might need for a chapter when it comes time to write that chapter I've just been throwing random stuff in the folders for all sorts of chapters for months and when it comes time to write a particular Chapter I can just go to the folders relevant to that topic and review everything I have there.

It's all right there It's like Taylor Branch saying what's everything that anyone ever wrote about King in the summer of 1954, but in this case about slow productivity And I have all my notes and then if I'm working on a chapter, I'll start with that build an outline Say I need more information here.

I need a better story here I need to think more about that here and then I'll go get more research throw it on the Scrivener So I just take the notes and put them directly where they need to be When I'm actually going to write I don't want there to be Intermediaries, I don't want those notes going into other note-taking systems We're all done taken from those systems and pulling back into my book and that's because I write fast And I think the less friction I have The more notes I'll be able to take the deeper my writing will actually be able to be All right, so that's what I do it other systems could work too but again I don't think that Taylor Branch method is relevant unless you're Robert Caro or Taylor Branch or Robert Gross You know someone who's writing a book that they just spent the last decade on All right in the weeds Jesse I like this Are you impressed that I remembered?

That paper research database. Yeah, I I think I got that right. I almost want to look it up now I don't know how old that is I think I got that right. I remember writing that article So good for Patrick for he's an old-timer. That's good. It's been around for a while.

All right, what do we got next? All right next questions from Sam bit. I have a strange relationship with books I buy a lot of them, but I can't read them after the first 10 to 12 pages I feel bored and I stop reading I can't however listen to long podcasts with full attention.

How do I become a reader? Well Sam, but the key thing is you have an ambition to become a reader. So let's give that a checkmark The second thing I want to point out here is you have inadvertently provided us I think a really good case study of one of the big ideas from the deep dive earlier in this episode You can listen to long podcasts.

No problem But you're having trouble with books that just emphasizes in my mind the exceptional nature of book reading when it comes to all cognitive Consumption activities. I mean podcasts are complicated. It's not like you can't pay attention to something you're able to focus on a podcast You're able to listen to me and what I'm saying.

So it just goes to show you that there is a unique Complicated but ultimately essential cognitive dance that happens when you're grappling with sentences Written on the physical printed page. So it's a good case study that you're providing us here Alright, so what you need to do is train.

I Don't want you to despair. You're not there's no such thing as I'm not a reader. I am a reader There is I have trained to read or I have it and if you have it, how do you fix that you do the training? It's just like I wouldn't say I'm not a runner Because I just tried to run a 5k having never jogged in my life and then it go very well I would say I am NOT in shape to run a 5k But I'm sure if I trained within a few months I could run these on a regular basis So I'm gonna give you a training regime Sam Then I'm gonna suggest about how you become a better reader All right.

So we're gonna start with books that you are excited to read so we want to take out of the equation early on the boredom factor or the comfort with intellectual discomfort, so this could be Genre fiction. That's really exciting. You might even want to start with you know short stories.

I Recently read Ted Chiang's original short story collection of sci-fi short stories. It was excellent, right? But that they're 20 pages each. They're really gripping, you know, whatever So it could be genre fiction or could be nonfiction me pragmatic nonfiction like the type of books I write like yeah I'm gonna read digital minimalism because I'm really motivated to spend less time on my phone and and so you're motivated I'll read atomic habits or memoirs.

I'll read you know Goggins is memoir because I I want to get fired up or get some discipline So start with books you're excited to read forget about what they are right now It's just about time on page number two find a cool reading location or ritual. I talked about in the deep dive It's gonna help you here Go into the coffee shop 20 minutes while I finish this one cup of coffee.

I'm going to the pub Bringing the book with me If you go to a pub, it has to be an English style pub and you need to wear a scarf Or an ascot you gotta use your accent and you got to use it. Actually got to come in with an ascot Preferably a beret if you're gonna wear a shirt, it should be striped like a French sailor and you need to say Good day barkeep Pint of ale well, I peruse my book by David Goggins Talk like that and they're like look this is this is like a member of the lost generation Essentially essentially we we have Steinbeck here.

All right Then I'm gonna say so that's the setup Scheduled interval training five days a week. You're gonna read ten minutes at a time do that for at least two weeks Then up at the 15 minutes do that for at least two weeks up at the 20 minutes. You're giving your mind Support I'm excited about the book.

I have an awesome accent in a bar somewhere. Everyone just thinks I'm awesome You're fighting You're fighting, you know the the secretly beautiful but kind of nerdish women because they have the glasses on when you take off the glasses are actually models that are Just so attracted to the fact that you're clearly like a serious intellectual because you're ascot and you're reading in the pub You're fighting off women as you're trying to read So you've given yourself you've set it all up and now you're doing a very reasonable amount of time Ten minutes at a time you did for two weeks.

You can go up to 15 minutes You're just you're pushing your mind's comfort actually reading beyond a few pages and then once you get to 40 minutes Stop upping your time Fix that as the time you're going to read four to five days a week And what you're gonna start upping is the complexity of your books So you get really comfortable at reading most days for 40 minutes and then you start upping the complexity Slightly harder books slightly more challenging books and you sort of push yourself up the up the ladder It may be a year or two of this you can get to the point where you're ready to actually tackle Classic books really complicated books books that require secondary sources I'm gonna read the secondary source first then I'm gonna read that I'm gonna read the book.

I'm telling you one year Sam bit You can be a reader He's got trained now why you have to do training more training than other people as other people just inadvertently or through whatever Circumstance or through inclination or how they were raised just got more of this training already So they've already done the training They grew up with a family of athletes They ran every day Arnold Schwarzenegger's dad in Austria made him do push-ups before he could get a meal He had an advantage by the time he got to the military and started bodybuilding.

He was around it Okay, you didn't have Arnold Schwarzenegger's dad Making you do push-ups in the cognitive realms. You got a little more training to do. It'll take you a year. You'll catch up Actually, you don't want Arnold Schwarzenegger's dad Actually his by his autobiography good fantastic you got a I listened to it, but I love that it's such a great autobiography, but his dad was from a generation of Austrian men who post-world war two were just depressed alcoholics.

Yeah, just trying to grapple with you know it's not like he was a member of the Nazi Party or something, but they were all sort of Complicit and what was going on and it just was so that there's just a destroyed generation of men. So advantage of Arnold Schwarzenegger Extra push-ups Disadvantaged depressed alcoholic sort of Nazi collaborator dad.

So I I would say you could probably figure out a push-up routine on your own All right, that's kind of going to Safari it is a really cool, but you know, I like about that book is I love his the fact that Schwarzenegger comes over here and weightlifting and basically becomes a millionaire before he really gets in the movies by just He builds he does these businesses other people don't want to do like brick Lane and stuff like this.

Yeah and invest money in real estate and Not Santa Monica. Where was he investing? Speech I think yeah. Yeah investing in real estate by the beach Just doing hard for a mail order business. Yeah, he like built up a fortune and then was like, oh, I'm gonna get in the movies That um, so your answer to Sam, but reminded me a couple of things About location.

I went to the Library of Congress a couple weeks ago. My friend gave me a tour and that was like pretty inspiring Yeah, I I have it's expired. I told Jesse I have a researcher card there just because I like to go and work You know where I would work when I go to the Library Congress was not the big room with the spot like the desks They're all in a circle.

Mm-hmm, but in the like the Arts and Industry Library It's pretty cool because it has these like 1920s art deco like light fixtures and it's a cool place Yeah, I told Jesse that my I gotta find a way to write a book At some point soon that requires me to access the collection at the Library of Congress Just so I can spend days in that massive reading room and have people like bring me because if you're an academic You can get a researcher card and they'll just have these awesome collection and it takes them a couple hours But you can basically get any book you want and they'll bring them all to you in a cart to your desk and you can work On it all day.

And so I I need a reason to do that. The other thing I do Thanks to you is I put on my weekly plan every week just Some of the stuff I want to get through because I get a lot of magazines and I have different books I was you look at it reading on your weekly plan Yeah specific and then I like if I have like a pile of New Yorkers.

I'll just yeah, I get through a couple of them so you might put like Thursday Thursday afternoon. I'm gonna like do some New Yorker reading. Yeah Yeah, I put like what I want on then when I do my daily plan. I just put it in there I'm gonna read this that's nice.

You have you have a queue of what you want to read that week Yeah, when you have when you're doing a plan keep track of it and I'd forget about certain things So now I just kind of I like that strategy So it's like here's my reading queue for the week and when you're doing a daily plan You're used to putting aside time for reading But now you could actually pull something from that queue and say this specifically is what I'm gonna read Yeah, it's been working out Yeah and the other thing that I do too is especially after going to Library Congress and you know, Looking online stuff.

It's like he's got to be comfortable knowing that you're never gonna read everything like there's so much stuff And just get through what you can just kind of what you talk about. It's slow and I'm surprised by how often I'm a big library guy. We're gonna personal library person and the next question is gonna get at this I'm surprised by how often I'll get a book Like I just finished a book last night that I originally bought Five years ago But I kept it in my library like this It's like it's a book I want to read You know, but sometimes you have to wait till you're in the right mood and it took five years Mm-hmm.

I read it. I finished it last night. Yeah, you know, and I'm surprised by how often that this way I love libraries how often that'll happen, you know, sometimes I'll buy a book like I'm not gonna read this right now But I want to own this I think I'm gonna read this I think it's important thing to have I get to these things and it can take me years, but I cycle back to things All right, speaking of libraries, we have a good library question.

Let's do this next one. All right. Next question is from Quran I'm becoming more of an avid reader. Thanks to gal. How should I build my library? All right. Well, I'm a big fan of as I just talked about libraries My current library setup just so we can calibrate So now we're down to we have we have one full bookshelf here in the HQ Then in my study at home, the whole room is built in bookshelves now on one one half of the room It's all kids book.

We have a really great collection of kids books of various readers age and then all the other shelves are Adult books and then in our living room. We also have a full wall of built-in bookshelves I sort of have you know, kind of three major libraries. So a big fan of personal libraries.

How do you start one from scratch? Well, all right. I have a method Here's my here is my method you start with a single bookshelf and you start filling that bookshelf somewhat haphazardly You know you buy books that are interesting you go to use book sales. Let me try this books You want to read right away books you want to get to at some other point if you live in a town like I do With a lot of little free libraries.

Hey, this book looks interesting. I'm gonna Grab it from there, right? So you're kind of filling this bookshelf with books you bought books you've read books. You might want to read some Really good and some you're like, I don't know so much about this Once the book is the bookshelf is full Then for a while what you do is to replacement rule When you get a new book you say I have to make room for this on the bookshelf So let me take off whatever sort of very low on my ranking of books on here.

What's a book? This is probably my least favorite book that's on here. This is kind of dumb Replace the replace that with the new books. You're replacing sort of worst book with new book You do this for a while. So now you're kind of cycling through the same bookshelf that bookshelves quality on Average begins to increase and after a while most of this books on these bookshelves are pretty good I mean they've survived this calling for a long time most of the stuff that was you know Here's this random book on quilting that I you know Got at a yard sale and I never really did that stuff is gone and now your bookshelf is pretty good Then you can buy a second bookshelf And you can start kind of doing that same process over there and you do that until you have the number of shelves you think Is appropriate for where you live and your interest and how you feel about books?

I'm a big fan of that bill then replace for a while to get the average quality up and wait till a shelf is of high quality before you actually Move on to get a new shelf. I mean, there's a whole art to Library tending and I would say Jesse of the personal libraries we've seen or looked at at the show Probably our man Ryan holiday wins.

He's got a lot of books. He's got a lot of books He's got a lot it helps to be so Ryan and I have the advantages of writers we get sent a lot of books Which is great And I buy a lot of books because I feel like it's important for my job.

Yeah, but still he has a lot of books I have a lot of books. He has a lot of books. So I had a bookstore Yeah, eventually had to get a to get a bookstore. Hey Bookstore is supposedly coming to come to park. Really? Yeah, are you involved? I don't I don't they're they're new to the town Having coffee with him.

Oh, he's gonna or he or she is gonna love you. Yeah, it's a family Yeah, if kids so, I don't know I just was like look I want to I want to meet these people Yeah, just like give us just give a sustained round of applause And I'm excited about the idea of having you'll be a good customer.

Yeah Yeah, I'll be there all the time what I'm gonna tell them is I'm gonna do like three or four days a week multi-hour long signings Like just usually not going to be people there coming to see me because I'm gonna be there something like 15 20 hours a week I'm just gonna show up a lot randomly and just like have a have a book.

It's gonna be like and this is sad, that's not sad, but there's one of our favorite museums is the the air and space museum out by Dulles and It's I think it's cool that they allow people who have published books about their experience and usually like military Deviation come and like sign books or whatever, but they don't really promote anything They just like have them on a table sort of over by the bar And they so they're always just sort of there and I always feel sort of bad about it because as an author you really are Empathetic to unpromoted book signings.

It's the worst. It's nothing worse We've all had it you're on book tour and like three people show up or whatever But anyways, I'm gonna lean into that just unsolicited. That's good news. Yeah. Yeah, so I hope that works out Real and we'll be able to around the corner from here You great All right libraries, all right, let's do a let's do one more question we got time it sounds good next questions from Sarah Would Cal like to comment on this quote from saying Sam Bank been freed.

I'm very skeptical of books I don't want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that I think that if you wrote a book you f'd up and it should not have been a sick and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post well If you don't know who Sam Bankman freed is look it up and I think this question will make more sense Sarah here's my answer.

Let's look at the state of my life today in the state of Sam Bankman Freed's life today someone who prioritizes the creativity innovation empathy and critical thinking that is Developed by reading and someone who prefers six-paragraph blog post Where would you rather be? Whose life would you rather have right now?

I'll leave it there and rest my case Have you seen pictures of Sam Bankman freed Recently or yeah, I want to look at him for book advice. I want to look at him for fashion advice either I'm doing a panel in San Francisco later this spring and we were talking with some of the other panel members and We were joking of like so we so it's a dress code Sam Bankman freed because you do these panels with There's a picture of him doing a panel with former president Bill Clinton and he's wearing shorts Cargo shorts flip-flops and a t-shirt.

He was like that in the commercials, too Yeah, but his parents professors, right? Yeah lawyers law professors. So you think you must have read at some point? Yeah, I mean, he's obviously a Intelligent person. I mean went to MIT and everything. I just think his Yeah, got a little that brain got shook up somewhere Something done broke.

I think it's because he didn't read enough He's a PSA. This is your brain. It's a PSA This is your brain not on books and then there's like a quick montage of Sam Bankman free And then like this is your brain on books and it's me at a table All by myself in the new bookstore in Tacoma Park with an ascot and a striped shirt Drinking a beer use your English and your French accent mixed together.

Yeah. Yeah flexing furiously. He's got him both got him both Well, they're both intellectual people. All right enough of that nonsense All right So what I like to do in the third Act of the show is shift away from our main question and talk about some interesting things that readers have sent me Before we do let me mention a another sponsor that made this show possible This may be our very first sponsor I got to go back and confirm that like from way back in the pre Jesse days, but that is our good friends at grammarly The feature I have been messing around with with grammarly that I am most impressed by is grammarly premiums advanced tone Suggestions.

This is why this is so important in a knowledge work world and especially in an increasingly remote knowledge work world where more communication is textual emails chat under the zoom window slack communication The quality clarity of your writing plays a big difference Now I actually think there's an opportunity embedded in this evolution of our office landscape There's a lot of issues I have with the shift towards everything being textual communication But there is one opportunity for you the lister of the show Which means if you get really good at clear textual communication you get the sudden competitive advantage over everyone else You come across as more confident and smarter and more on the ball just because you're writing better So there's no other time in the history of the world of business where clear communication clear written communication is more important And grammarly premium and a particular grammarly premiums advanced tone detector can help you get there faster So I have a couple examples.

I want to tell you here Jesse of the tone detector in Work. All right. So some real sentences here real corrections from the tone detector. So one thing it can do is Help you with confidence in your communication. So here's a real sentence We may want to consider providing an update Here's the suggestion from the tone detector for increasing confidence.

We should consider providing an update Seems like a small change, but you come across more confident in that email in that slack makes a big difference All right. Here's another thing the advanced tone detector does reframe Negativity. So here's something you might write. Yeah, this marketing strategy isn't right Just throw that in a slack message, but that's going to come across as negative people might feel attacked Here's an actual suggested correction from the tone detector for that sentence.

The marketing strategy needs to be different Small change makes a huge difference in the impact on the reader There's obviously a lot of other things you get with the grammarly product from even just the basic fixing your broken grammar To these much more advanced tone suggestions and sentence rewrites But anyway, it's it's like having a personal editor who sits there and helps you be a better communicator The right tone can move any project forward when you get it just right with grammarly So go to grammarly.com slash tone t o n e to download and learn about grammarly premiums advanced tone suggestions.

That's g r a M m a r l y dot com slash tone. Let's also talk about our friends at my body tutor If you want to get in better shape if you want to get healthier, the problem is not information You know how to do it The problem is actually accountability.

How do you actually get motivated? To continually take that action. This is where my body tutor enters the picture It's a 100% online coaching program. It connects you with a Dedicated online coach they work with you the specific circumstances of your life right Are you and I'm just being hypothetical here a 40 year old male with three three kids ten or under who are sick all the Time and have seven jobs.

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It's real easy You say here's what I did. So I ate here's I worked out. Here's any questions I have they give you feedback And that's where you get the consistency. That's what makes it work It's like having the dedicated dietitian and trainers that the actors get to train for Marvel superhero movies But without having that huge expense of having to pay people to come to your house because it's all on line Adam and his coaches at my body tutor are the best in the world at delivering highly personal accountability and coaching So if you're serious about getting fit Adam will give you $50 off your first month if you mention deep questions when you sign up So when you sign up you just mention deep questions, and they'll give you $50 off So my body tutor tutor comm mentioned deep questions and get $50 off All right final segment of the show something interesting.

I usually just talk about one interesting thing that listeners sent me today Jesse I'm gonna do three Going crazy today like it. Yeah Number one, this is visual. Hold on. I'm gonna grab something here from the ground So if you're not watching youtube.com slash calendar port media or at the deep life comm You're missing out here.

It's the end of an era Jesse. I have has been made fun of for months now After I revealed on one of our weekly update videos the state of my computer keyboard Because you may not know this about me. I write a whole bunch I had worn away all of the keys on my keyboard from just hitting them too much only the like Q and the Z keys actually Still remained All right.

Here we go. Jesse. Oh, wow end of an era Completely clean keys that comes off real easily, right? So what it is is just a little just a little silicon thing. So let's show them the ones. Yeah. Look at that So I can actually see the keys I'm off the touch type all the time Advantage and I do like Apple products, but the new MacBook airs is the 2018-19 models.

The keys were too low. I Really care about the tactile feel of keys I write for a living and they got too low like your keys are a little on that dealt. They're a little bit higher Yeah, that's a much better experience Adding the silicon cover to my keys gives me an extra little eighth of an inch and you have a little bit more Carry on each press.

I like it better. So your next computer is it gonna be a Mac or is it gonna be? Yeah, I like the Mac ecosystem, but I this is whoever's in charge of this now You got to work with writers when you build your keys on the keyboard the they can't be too low We got it.

We need some spring. You need the fingers to do a little effort and the pound up a little bit So I'm simulating that with the gives you momentum gives you momentum I'm a fast writer when I get I mean I fast hyper as you might imagine so I need momentum All right.

So the second thing is a quote That was sent to me the interesting that Cal Newport comm email address This is from a TI L reddit forum in a previous episode readers told me that stands for today. I learned so TI L What TI L means is that recursive?

Anyways, here was a quote from that forum Napoleon Bonaparte Refused to open his mail for three weeks By that time most of the issues raised in letters had resolved themselves and no longer retired his attention. I Like this strategy Just ignore your email until people Yeah moved on in anger.

The only issue is it helps not it necessary But if you can arrange this it helps for the strategy to be the Emperor of Europe It's a little bit harder if you are not the Emperor of Europe to do the strategy, but still a good one Alright, the third interesting thing I want to talk about is an article that was sent in from a product management website now this article is This is a technical I'm not going to get lost in the technical details What I care about here is a big picture idea that I think is relevant to slow productivity So if you're watching this on the screen You will see the title of this article.

I have up here right now is called Stop obsessing over development velocity focus on this instead and so if you read this whole article It's talking about software development and it says there is an issue of software development to focus on the velocity of features getting completed How many features do we complete and add to the product this month or this week and it's this?

Endless hurry up cycle to push more and more of those features This article makes the argument that that's not necessarily the way to maximize the value you produce so here's a few points this is actually the summary that the listener sent me along with this article and Software most new features don't make a positive impact for users because of that Increasing the velocity that is the number of features you ship per unit of time can create more waste If you obsess instead over making a positive impact You deliver more value with fewer features and Because existing features good or bad slow down the development of new features due to code complexity and the maintenance requirements and supporting them the positive effect Of building fewer but better features compounds as time goes on.

I think there's a cool idea there It is relevant well beyond just software development focusing on a Smaller number of things that are clearly very important and high impact and doing them very well in Many different areas can end up producing more value and therefore more success economically Then just trying to do as many things This approach of course falls out of the three big principles of slow productivity do fewer things working at a natural pace Obsessing over quality.

So looking at impact over velocity is exactly the type of strategy You might adopt if you are a believer in those three principles and I can imagine this in so many different areas. I mean think about academic service Instead of saying like how many different issues can we get through as a faculty during this semester in our faculty meetings?

It might be let's really take our time to figure out. What's the biggest thing we could do Let's do that. Well and take our time and do it really well, you know, you're probably gonna end up better You imagine working on client service Let's try to do this one thing really well really change that clients business as opposed to like look at how many things we responded To and and got back to him on I could imagine this impact verse velocity trade-off happening in a lot of different areas I love that mindset And so I love this way of thinking so I wanted to highlight that this article is by Itamar Gillad, so good for you smart ideas if you're software developer Follow the link in the show notes so you can get lost in the weeds here.

But for everyone else, let's just like this idea Velocity is not always the key to producing more value All right, everyone so that's all the time we have for today You can now shut down your podcast player and go read a real book We will be back next week with another episode of the deep questions podcast and until then as always stay deep *outro music* (upbeat music) (upbeat music)