Our first question comes from Sajranalio, who asks, how do you apply deliberate practice and deep work to socializing? He goes on to elaborate, I'm currently a young architect working for a recognized construction firm. Although I enjoy my job and I'm good at it, I have plans to start my own firm in the near future.

I have some clients now, and I currently work some hours outside my main job. The biggest constraint that I have is that my network is very small. I have very few contacts, friends, or potential clients, and this isolation is aggravated by my Asperger syndrome. How would you apply deep work and deliberate practice to learn to socialize, create networks, and clients?

All right, it's a good question. I think networking/social life are two good topics that are related to cover. I just want to do a quick wording tweak here. So you say the phrase, how do I apply deep work to learning to socialize, create networks, and clients? Let's be very specific about how we actually use the term deep work.

All deep work means is that you're doing something in the absence of context switching. So you're giving something your full attention, trying to do it at a high cognitive level. So probably the right word here you also gave is deliberate practice. Maybe that's better. That's a verb. Deep work is a type of work without distraction with concentration.

Deliberate practice is what you're really talking about here is how do I systematically improve. That's the verb that's relevant here. How do I systematically improve at this? Well, when it comes to networking, professional networking, that's not my specialty. There's a lot of books that have been written about networking.

But the one thing I will say, the one Cal Newport take I'll give on networking is in almost every circumstance, the thing that matters more than anything else in finding new clients and attracting new opportunities is being really good. In a lot of fields, there's a lot of people with a lot of different personalities, some of whom are not very sociable at all, that you wouldn't really want to spend much time around.

But they do what they do really well. Everything opens up from that. You become so good you can't be ignored. Clients find you because they've seen the work you did. You get referred because you're so good. That snowballs on itself. I actually talk about this in my book, How to Become a High School Superstar.

It's known as the Matthew effect. So as you start doing things that are good, more good things follows. The whole thing snowballs. So those who have get more. That's the paraphrase of the Matthew effect. It definitely happens in the professional circumstance. I don't want you necessarily worrying too much that you're not a glad-handing, at-the-golf-club, shaking-hands, slapping-people-on-the-back type socializer.

It's probably not necessary for what you need to do. What's necessary for what you want to do is to crush the work. It's fantastic, incredibly high quality. You keep pushing your skills. Good things will follow from that. So I just want to take some burden off of you. Another related question-- you didn't ask, but a lot of people do-- how do I get better at socializing non-professionally?

And there, my advice typically is, do not approach your non-professional socializing with the same systematic fervor that we often approach professional issues on the show. It shows through. It shows through if you have a chalkboard somewhere in your apartment where you have different people's names on it and you're trying to add up your average active monthly user interaction minutes and trying to hit a median target.

That kind of shows through in the way you interact, and people don't like it. So when it comes to just socializing, I think the most important thing you can do is take to heart the chapter on conversation versus connection in my book, Digital Minimalism, which says real-world interaction, being with someone, sacrificing non-trivial time and attention on behalf of someone else that's important to you.

This is foundational for human flourishing, and you should just be trying to do that. And if you're not doing a lot of it, try to do more. It's like exercise. It's like eating healthy. It's almost like oxygen. So just have a general appreciation of real sacrifice requiring interaction and time spent with other people.

It's something you just feel you want to do and you feel uncomfortable when you don't. Everything else will work itself out. So that's how I would handle the personal side. (upbeat music)