I'm Cal Newport and this is deep questions episode 205 I'm here in my deep work HQ and by myself no, Jesse Jesse's on vacation down in Florida Quick public service announcement just about what to expect For the midsummer episodes of this show Jesse is gone today. So he's not going to be here on this taping Then I'm going on vacation once he returns So what you should expect if all goes well and I'm knocking on wood here in the HQ is Next week's episode will be recorded by me in an undisclosed location up in the Mountains of New England.

I'm bringing a microphone with me. I'm going to try to record Outside what's the painting expression plin d'air? French expression gonna record outside. Maybe I'll have some meditations on life in the woods or something similarly deep or More likely it'll be like a normal episode but with worse sound quality and a lot of annoying Animal sounds in the background then the week after that There is a an interview I recorded actually back in December.

It's a digital Minimalism case study. It's a two-part interview. I combined kind of an interesting experimental idea. I had for an episode Jesse's editing that up and and we're gonna release that two weeks from now and Going forward from there. It'll just be normal episodes Recorded back in the HQ with Jesse.

Sorry so this is one of three episodes will be a little bit different because of Vacations now what I like to do when Jesse is not here is try things different It's a time to experiment and what I thought I would do for today's episode is let's get back to basics I don't know how to operate all the fancy stuff.

Jesse does so no news reactions. No split screens. No calls. I gathered ten Questions ten questions one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine ten I just want to rock and roll through ten questions one after another and see if we can do some damage get back to our roots It's just seeing question answer question see question answer question.

So that is my challenge in today's episode Is to get through ten questions. All right, let me talk briefly about a sponsor That's going to make this cavalcade of question answering possible and that is our good friends at my body tutor My body tutor is a 100% online coaching program that solves the biggest problem in health and fitness which is the lack of consistency They do this by simplifying the process into practical sustainable behaviors and then giving you daily accountability and support So you stick with your plan when you use my body tutor?

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It is a great way to get in shape Now here's the thing. I've known Adam Gilbert the founder of my body tutor for a long time He used to be the fitness advice guy on my study hacks blog years ago So because of that he is going to give deep questions Listeners $50 off their first month if you mentioned a podcast when you join All right, so mention deep questions when you join and Adam will give you $50 off your first month Now, of course, what is the point of trying to get in shape if you're not sleeping?

Well, this is where our sponsor ate sleep is Something that can help More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep and temperature is one of their main concerns. It is certainly a concern of mine I have a hard time Sleeping when I'm hot on our vacation. We're leaving for in a couple days.

I will be bringing Many fans to help ensure that I am NOT too hot when I sleep If you like me are a hot sleeper, then I need to recommend the eight sleep pod pro cover It is the most advanced solution on the market for Regulation it pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking you can add the cover to any mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Or as hot as 100 and agree 10 degrees Fahrenheit you can even adjust Both sides of your bed differently in case your partner has different preferences than you with that sleep temperature It sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster Their sleep interruptions are reduced by 40% and they get overall more restful sleep I am a fan of eight sleep because I am a fan of sleeping cool So go to eight sleep comm slash deep to check out the pod pro cover and you will save $150 at checkout, but that's only if you go to eight sleep comm Deep eight sleep currently ships within the US Canada and the UK All right, let us get into it with some questions Question number one comes from Dan Dan says I'm currently pursuing a degree in computer science and I'm having trouble finding time to do a much-needed self-study in Parentheses Dan says what I learned in college is nowhere near enough in parentheses How much self-studying do you recommend and how do you fit in with all of the schoolwork?

without getting overwhelmed Okay. Well I'm Not exactly sure What self-study refers to here? Do you mean you're not learning enough in the classroom to actually? Succeed in your computer science classes or do you mean there is topics you want to learn in general and you're not able to satisfy That through your college curriculum either way Either way, we have a more general challenge here Which is you have an intellectual pursuit that is separate from your direct course responsibilities that you want to fit into your college life I am familiar with this.

I had my share of Independent intellectual pursuits when I was a college student. I wrote my first book how to become know how to win at college How to win at college. I wrote that during my senior year at Dartmouth I also edited a magazine and was a opinion columnist for a while While at school, so I'm used to this idea of having non class intellectual but non class related work to do while in college And so here's a few things to recommend to make that work one.

Keep your course load reasonable. I Used to do a lot of work on student stress and reducing student stress and I can tell you one of the biggest cause of student stress, especially at elite schools is students had Course loads that were too heavy Double majors major into minors trying to fit in an extra course three or four really hard courses push together This is a problem if Your schedule is too hard your entire semester is going to be difficult so you want to have the most reasonable possible schedule in terms of both the overall difficulty and the diversity of different course types not all quantitative not all Humanities focused balance types keep the course load reasonable If you have a lot of credits coming into college I did some of this Cash that in later in your career to maybe have an independent study or just to take a lighter course load one year Keep your course loads reasonable.

It is the most effective thing you can do to reduce stress. I think students get What I used to call heart attack semesters on my study hacks blog back in the day They would get into these hard scheduling situations either because they weren't paying attention When they're setting up their schedule there's trying to solve problems Well, I need this requirement and dad.

Why don't I get this out of my way? That sounds interesting there's not paying attention to the impact of their choices or They're laboring under the delusion that the harder their schedule somehow the more Impressive that will make them a lot of college students labor under this delusion that there is a College admission style committee in their future that's going to look at their schedule and say how many things did Dan do how hard was?

Dan scheduled to figure out whether or not to let them in that doesn't happen after college That's not the way job interviews work. That's not the way you move through the professional world. No one cares that your Sophomore fall semester was really difficult. No one will even notice you suffer that pain you get very few benefits for it So make your course load easier Dan if you want to do extra work If you're doing extra work treat it like a major extracurricular Meaning don't have many other major extracurricular pursuits.

This should be one of them don't be trying to edit a magazine and Writing for the paper and being a part of the dance team and do major self-study You actually have to treat it with respect if it's one of the things you're working on Don't put too many other extracurriculars onto your schedule and finally leverage autopilot schedules Big piece of advice I give the college students for every work that happens regularly.

I Always have this reading assignment in this English class. I always have a weekly problem set in this computer science class For work that happens regularly Figure out when and where each week that work gets done this day this time then this location That's when I do the first half of my reading this day this time this location.

That's when I do the second half My problem set I always do one hour right after the class when it's assigned I go to the library right next to the classroom and I prep it I go through the problems I see which ones I know how to solve which ones look hard Then I have a meeting with my problem set group.

We always do that the next night at 7 Here in the study room that we have a reservation for and then I have a two-hour block I always put together the next morning to clean up what we did and write it up Whatever. These are sample schedules, but it's the same time same day same places It's an autopilot schedule because it makes you not have to actually Think and make decisions about when and where you're going to work.

Should I work now? What should I work on today? It's all made automatic Automatic so autopilot schedule your schoolwork add the self-studying to the autopilot schedule That is how I wrote how to win a college my senior year 90 minutes first thing in the morning. Everyone was still asleep.

I Remember the Wheeler apartments for Dartmouth people. I was in a Wheeler apartments with a couple buddies of mine How it tipped to John? Who else was in that apartment Lee maybe hat tip to Lee? I don't quite remember everyone who was there, but I had a Room with a radiator that would spit hot water into the air because this was very old heating technology And there was one of those old-fashioned Overpolished varnish Indestructible college desks in the room.

I would get up go to the desk and I would write 90 minutes weekday mornings Repeat the book was written All right, Dan. So I used your question as an excuse to go broader To some of my more general thoughts about getting through college All right, we got next question here from Sam Sam who doesn't seem too happy with me says isn't it a bit too selfish and myopic To make it so difficult for others to reach you and make them work with you on your terms while disregarding others needs Sam I don't have time to answer your question right now.

What I need you to do is Engrave it if you could I'm talking about four by two by one inch pine Preferably engrave it in that and I want you to mail it to me And if you can mail it to me needs to get here on a Wednesday Then maybe I will answer your request.

The answer though is going to come three to six months later. It will be Via perrier-kitchen. I Just mix those up Carrier pigeon I said perrier-kitchen When Jesse's not here I get a little punchy. All right, Sam, I'm being facetious there. Your question has two interpretations So, I don't know if you're talking about it being selfish myopic to be hard to reach as let's say public facing media figure So thinking about the way people reach me as an author a podcaster, etc Or are you referring to some of the rules and things I talk about in books like?

Deep work and a world without email about being more careful about communication protocols. It's just an individual Someone who's more careful about how do they communicate with their colleagues or their friends, etc To prevent their life being constant context shifts and distractions. So these are two different areas You could be referring to being hard to reach as a media figure or as an individual both are interesting So let's cover both.

Let's start with media figure. I am hard to reach as a media figure. I'm not on Social media so you can't throw messages my way. I don't have general-purpose email addresses There's particular addresses for particular things with rules about what you should expect or not Expect a lot of requests go straight to publicist or agents, etc.

So I am kind of purposely hard to reach Now my motivation for why that's reasonable Really came from author Neil Stevenson's famous essay why I am a bad Correspondent now Sam if you will indulge me. I Want to read some excerpts? I'm gonna read some excerpts from this essay and then give you my my personal take on how I put this Into action in my own life.

So here's what Neil says and I'm skipping things. So these are just parts of his essay Writers who do not make themselves totally available to everyone all the time are frequently tagged with the recluse label Well, I do not consider myself a recluse. I have found it necessary to place some limits on my direct interactions with individual readers These limits most often come into play when people send me letters or email and also when I am invited to speak publicly This document is a sort of form letter explaining why I am the way I am like dot dot dot Stevenson goes on later to say Writing novels is hard and requires vast unbroken slabs of time For quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use Two slabs of time each two hours long might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken for men, sir Stevenson If I know that I'm going to be interrupted I can't concentrate and if I suspect that I might be interrupted I can't do anything at all likewise Several consecutive days with four hour time slabs in them gives me a stretch of time in which I can write a decent book chapter But the same number of hours spread across a few weeks with interruptions in between are nearly Useless the productivity equation is a nonlinear one.

In other words This accounts for why I'm a bad Correspondent and why I very rarely accept speaking engagements if I organize my life in such a way that I get Lots of long consecutive uninterrupted time chunks. I can write novels But as those chunks get separated and fragmented my productivity as a novelist drops Spectacularly what replaces it instead of a novel that will be around for a long time and that will with luck be read by many People there's a bunch of email messages that I have sent out to individual persons and a few speeches given at various conferences All right.

I mean I read that early on and my career as a writer is very influential You could definitely see ideas from that Showing up or being echoed in deep work. I quote this essay in deep work These ideas have also come up in my subsequent writing about distraction as well Stevenson I think is making the right point for public facing figures.

The productivity equation is nonlinear if I can just have time to think and write write my books write my articles and Talk to you folks here through the podcast microphone. I can reach lots of people I can do my best work if I instead am easier to reach I can talk to a lot of individual people That leaves me with a history of individual back-and-forth conversations as Stevenson goes on to say of mediocre value Reaching many fewer people than being able to actually put work out into the larger public sphere So I agree with Neil with that now.

I remember vividly when I had to make this transition. I Was a graduate student at MIT I had written three books Aimed at students. I was running the study hacks blog and newsletter, which at the time was very student focused. I Had really enjoyed during my time at MIT Having an open email address where students would send me questions about what I was writing about and I would answer the students questions and I really felt like it was Almost a philanthropic investment of my time.

I could help dozens of real students with real issues and it was very satisfying and There was a selfish component to it as well because I would learn from these questions What was really affecting people what was really going on? It was my intelligence networking to the life of students and it would evolve what I wrote about if you go back and look at my first books and Very early study hacks post you'll see they're very tactical How do you study?

How do you manage your time? My whole focus shifted to be much more emphasizing of stress student stress and overload and burnout Where did that shift come from? Hundreds of these emails just hearing. Oh, what is really affecting people what these elite schools? It's not just that there's time management system Needs a tune-up.

They're overwhelmed. They're stressed. They don't know why they're there. So it was very important to me the problem is dozens became hundreds and They're long messages I mean people are pouring out their life story and their issues and their caveats and their parents and what's happening with their Boyfriends or girlfriends?

I mean these long life stories and I ran out of time and I and I Remember thinking I can't do this halfway I can't answer a few people's questions and let the let rest just go by Because they were putting so much effort into these questions I couldn't get to him and it made me feel bad I remember that vividly feeling bad and at some point realizing my audience is too big for this one-on-one interaction it's taking up all of my time a Well crafted article can get to thousands a well-crafted email helps one person and at some point I don't know the exact year but somewhere in this Graduate student period I had to change and I had to change my contact page get rid of the general-use email address and No longer be accessible for just over the transom questions and it was traumatic.

I thought that was difficult I remember having a hard having a hard time with that Maybe did a series around that point called college chronicles where I helped four or five Individual students and I popped and I wrote about it on the blog just that I was so used to helping Individuals and I wanted to still do it.

So I figured if I helped people publicly Maybe their lessons would help other people and it was an interesting time. There's a difficult time So the decision to go Neil Stevenson and become a bad correspondent, it's not easy public facing figures often Have a hard time like I did with it It really is necessary though once your audience and reach grows past a certain place All right.

So if you're in that situation The only thing I would recommend is just be very clear about your expectations if readers know I Can't just reach and get a question answered. But here's a here's a address where I can Send you something interesting that you'll probably see but you probably won't respond if I have a media request.

Here's the person I talked to Clarity Trump's accessibility 95% of the time people get upset when they expect some sort of interaction that they don't end up Getting all right. Now, what about? individual limits on communication Not being accessible all the time by text Not being good about answering emails right away for your work colleagues This is a another Area in which Sam could be referring to when he talks about being myopic and selfish by making people communicate on your terms All right, when it comes to the individual level scales be it for your work colleagues or family Honestly my advice here and I articulate this more clearly in a world without email a book world without email Shut up about it Do it Think through communication.

Don't just be accessible all the time Don't constantly be on text on email have other protocols have other other approaches to how you manage this communication But don't tell everyone about it Don't tell everyone about it. This is the the Tim Ferriss autoresponder issue Tim had this great idea in 2007.

Don't check email all the time novel at the time But then he added this very engineering type addition, which logically made all the sense in the world You should have an autoresponder that announces this intention to whoever writes you you write someone Like Tim at the time you get an autoresponder and it said something like his suggested autoresponder to serve you better I'm only checking email at twice a day at 11 and 3 if you need me in between there call my number To an engineer's mind that makes complete sense So why not explain to people so they know oh, I won't hear back from Tim till 3 The audience at South by Southwest 2007 who heard him give that example thought it made complete sense.

They're a bunch of engineers Here's the problem in the real world when you get that autoresponder you say that guy is Annoying and you can't even really put your finger on it, but it's violating some sort of dyadic tribal paleolithic evolved communication standard But it just annoyed people and it turned out it's better just check your email twice a day You don't have to make a thing about it Yet tell someone what you're doing You're giving a location for friction to be generated Well, why are you doing that twice a day?

I don't know about twice a day. What if I need that's not good That's not gonna fly. What if I need you at noon? I don't like this at all Don't announce what you're doing at the individual scale. It just gives the sites for friction to generate just do it Apologize if you need to same thing with your family and text messaging I don't think you should be responding to text messages all day You have to have set times you do that.

You need to accompany that with office hours. Don't call them office hours You're you're your family will think you're a weirdo or a fink but you know say hey, by the way I'm always available at 5 to 6 when I'm commuting home So like just you can always call me then I'll see what's going on or I always have my phone open on You know lunch at 12, whatever like they have set times They know or when I'm coming back, I drop the kids off at the bus stop.

So that's very consistent and So from 8 to 8 20, I'm walking back. Just call me then So you have these implicit office hours and in our explicit Office hours and implicit times you check and then just do that and like people might complain some I couldn't hear from you But you're like, I'm sorry.

I just saw this now. What are they gonna say? Unacceptable, you should have saw this earlier. They don't care. They saw. Okay, great. Here's my question So on the individual scale you do not announce what you're up to you just do it and apologize if you have to You know this happened with my a contractor is working with recently The emails were coming, you know I don't I check emails once a day at most in summer and so that we kept getting in situations where Maybe she would send an email at 4 p.m And I'd already checked email for that day Maybe at 3 and then the next day at 11 a.m.

She sent another email. Hey, did you get this? What's going on? And I hadn't checked email yet that day because I write in the morning and you know what? I finally just apologized. I sent a letter like, you know, my summer schedule as a professor is I'm usually checking things once a day So don't expect more than it could be 24 hours right just depending on when I do the check It doesn't mean I don't see it.

This is how I do it. But if it's more urgent Like a time sensitive thing you can text me and if there's something that really needs a lot of back-and-forth Because I'm not on email all day. Let's not do back-and-forth on email We can set up if we need a couple standing sort of office hour times You can always call me if we think there's gonna be a lot of work It needs four or five back and forth because that you can't spread out four or five back and forth over four or five days Do you like yeah, great And the problem solved right?

I didn't have to make a big lecture about it up front But when it became an issue, I gave a little explanation. Everyone was happy All right, so that's all I would say if you're a public-facing media figure eventually You can't be very accessible be very clear about that people understand or if they don't understand There's others who do to replace them and it comes to your individual life Don't make a big deal about it.

Just do what's best for you and apologize only if pushed into it All right doing well here, you know what I didn't do I didn't number my questions I know we have ten But I should have numbered them because now I don't know where we are. Oh, well, let's just roll on Larry has the next one Larry says hi professor Newport.

I loved your book So good. They can't ignore you But it seems to me that only a small minority of people can possess rare and valuable skills at any given time Does this mean only a minority of people can succeed in achieving the ideal laid out in your book?

If not, what would a world where most people are so good. They can't be ignored look like Thank you very much for your time Good question Larry. It allows me to clarify something. Yes, the big idea in my 2012 book Be so good. They can't ignore you is That you should build what I called rare and valuable skills Use those as leverage then to take control over your career move it towards things that resonate and away from things that don't More more recently.

I might talk about that as use that leverage to get closer to your ideal lifestyle Same idea. So Larry is saying well, who's how many people can really have rare and valuable skills? How many people are going to be a world-class writer or mathematician or something like this and this is an important clarification Your definition Larry what you're thinking of when you think of rare and valuable skills is too broad Too strict I should say when you're thinking rare and valuable skills.

You're thinking at large scales of Competition rather that you're the best That's way too strict and ambitious when I say rare and valuable skills. I mean you can do something for your employer that is valuable to your employer and They don't have a lot of other people who can do that for them right now So the scope for rare and valuable skills is your employment situation?

So everyone can have rare and valuable skills that give them leverage. I mean, let's get concrete Let's say you went to college you have an entry-level job You're working at a communications nonprofit outside of Boston. You have your fancy degree, but you're starting at an entry-level job. You're basically They'll call you an associate but you're kind of like an assistant to someone who's higher up You're helping organize projects and trips that they work on something like this right a very standard sort of entry-level job What would rare and valuable skills mean right there?

well, you are Reliable you accomplish the things you say you're going to accomplish you're organized You you learn and understand Whatever it is that the people you assist do So you can make their life easier Maybe they work with a particular in this and I'm thinking about an actual person actual job here This is actually a job.

My wife had out of college. So I'm using this as an example But let's say they work with a particular tour provider They would take teachers on tours getting to learn how that tour operator works and the people over there. That's all valuable That's very valuable to this employer and they don't have other people who can do this for him They could try to hire someone else, but they don't know if they're gonna be good or not that gives you leverage now You're able to move up you have leverage over what you want to do and what you don't want to do and you can start Moving up in that job you move up to the next level you do that next level.

Well You get good at it. You master elements of it. They're specific to the job Other people don't do it as well as you and you move up So what I'm trying to say Larry is rare and valuable is relative to the employer Or if you're self-employed relevant to your specific clients Everyone can build rare and valuable skills in their particular context that career capital is leverage Use that leverage just keep moving your job closer and closer to supporting the lifestyle that you desire All right, what do we got here Matt Matt says you've argued about not basing your career decisions on passions But what about one's temperament specifically under the big five personality model if one is low in conscientiousness or particularly high in openness How should that be considered to avoid getting into an ill-suited role?

All right So I put this back-to-back with Larry's question because they're both dealing with careers And they're both dealing with ideas for my book so good. They can't ignore you Now I think what's happening here again is Too strict of an interpretation of what I am talking about. So in so good.

They can't ignore you. I reject what I called up the passion hypothesis, which is this idea that the primary factor in Generate a feeling of fulfillment or passion in your career is matching the type of work you do to the pre-existing passion If you can match your work successfully to what you're meant to do you will find your work fulfilling And if you get this match wrong, you won't That was a dominant hypothesis When I was writing so good, they can't ignore you.

It is a dominant hypothesis today, though I would say not as strong now as it was back then. It's often summarized with the axiom follow your passion They argued that's wrong Now Matt, I think you're taking that argument and you're pushing it farther to say, okay, nothing nothing really matters Nothing intrinsic at all matters for whether or not you're gonna like your job and that's actually not true I'm pushing back against a strong form of the matching hypothesis that a match to a pre-existing passion is all that matters And I'm saying no.

No, it's more complicated than that. The choice of job is not trivial But it is not the single determinant factor of whether or not you end up passionate about your work The real important stuff happens after you choose your job Do you build rare and valuable skills like we talked about with the last?

question Are you applying those rare and valuable skills as leverage to move your career towards things that resonate and away from things that don't? Towards your ideal lifestyle and away from traps that you want to avoid. Are you crafting your career in a way that is? Consistent and complements your vision of a deep life if you're doing this that's very hard work It takes time and strategy over many years That is where real passion grows the actual initial choice of the job is just the first small step in that long journey That's really what I'm arguing However making that first small step choosing what job you want to do.

That's not throwing a dart at A job listing board and say it doesn't matter at all. What job I have you still want to think about it So your temperament? Yes, it matters pick a job that's better suited for your temperament Do you like to be around people do you like to be alone?

Sure You see your personality matters skills You already have matters if you're coming out of school with a math degree and you're pretty good at it Well, that's going to get you some career capital much faster than if you become a yoga instructor So pre-existing skills matter a general interest in the field.

Sure that matters You know like I'm interested in academia seems romantic to me So, you know that is a mark in favor of going to graduate school all that stuff matters So use what you have when making your choice, but keep in mind that there may be many different jobs that make sense for you to pursue and Once you make the choices what happens next is ultimately decide whether or not you get Fulfilling out of it.

So Matt you can take your temperament into account take your skills into account interest into account I'm a big believer in Looking at what would the opportunities be if and when I get really good at this job? and do I see down the line opportunities that are really going to give me a lot of Control over my life or open up the things that are really important to my ideal lifestyle.

That's all critical Don't just throw a dart but don't think that the choice by itself is all that it takes to love your work and Don't over sweat that choice. There's usually many right answers. The issue is not I'm going to choose the wrong job The real issue for most people is I'm going to do the wrong things Once I have a job All right, I think we've had a bunch of men in a row so I have some women here There's three in a row.

I did this by accident, but actually we had a run of men They'll have a run of Women asking questions. So let's actually get to some reasonable questions then All right, Sarah says how can schools implement a deep work approach? to learning All right. So let's think elementary High school level so like secondary elementary school level at that at that level of education Can we be doing things to prepare students for cognitive work and in particular deep work type efforts I think so.

I think there's at least three things that we could specifically integrate into curriculums One is just the mental model teaching the students the mental model that talks about concentration as a skill. That is a trainable It's like running The more you train the faster you can do it and be incredibly valuable This is what allows okay great Andrew Wiles is all formats less theorem sure But it's also what allows your your favorite musician or songwriter?

To do something really innovative with the music or to learn the instrument that they then play it away That is so impressive what allows this athlete to be so great that allows this writer to write this book that you love or That allows this public thinker to really shape the public conversation.

You've got to teach them this mental model concentration especially in today's knowledge style economy knowledge style economy of ideas as well as actual economic output Concentration deep thinking careful thinking it's everything It's like being good with the sword in ancient Sparta, and it's something that has to be trained Just giving them that model very important to Practice this in the classroom And we're gonna sit here and do this.

It's gonna be 20 minutes and Then you know what by October we're gonna do 30 minute sessions and by November. We're gonna do 40 minute sessions Just working on whatever these hard visualization problems or math problems are gonna do writing prompts You just write write write and don't let your concentration wander But then when it's over everyone can jump up and and you know run around and and get all their wiggles out and then we're gonna Sit down and do it again.

You can actually practice concentration do interval training on concentration in the classroom A this will make them better at concentrating B. It reinforces that aspect of the mental model I reference that concentration can be trained let your students see they get better at it Let them see they get better at it That's more critical than how good you make them knowing that they can always get better at it And the three I would have detailed notes for parents About how homework should go and about this mental model and how homework is is an aspect for them to practice Sustained and focus concentration at home and how they should set up homework and it should be these set times They know when it's going to be and it should be Disconnected and there should be no phone there and you should say your students will 100% I will put $1,000 on the table wagering that the first thing your student will say to you is I need the computer I need internet to do research and there's Google Classroom has my notes in it Call BS on that great Let's sit down at the computer together and get everything you need and then you can go do the work with it Don't let them use that or here's the other one You will see you know, and I'll bet a lot of money on this because I've been doing this for a while.

I Need my phone Because I have to I have to text my group mates if I have questions So you get detailed notes from teachers to say call BS You know homework should be a time for them to practice it by the way There is an extra mental health benefit to making work at home Especially for high school age students or junior high age students with pretty intense homework If you actually work structured without distraction the amount of time it takes to get that work done.

Well cuts by a factor of two or three That's not nothing If three hours that goes kind of late into the night gets replaced with one hour done right before dinner It is a much smaller footprint that homework is a much smaller footprint on the student schedule So yes, I think we should be training deep work There are some ideas off the top of my head All right quick question Christine asks, when do you listen to podcast?

For me chores is a big one cleaning dishes cleaning the house mowing the yard Great time to listen to either podcast or books on tape. I go back and forth. I treat those interchangeably driving So driving will be another time. I'll do that the walk home from my kids bus stop So I take my older two boys to the bus stop in the morning about 15 minutes away So that walk home I would consistently listen to things and then sometimes I would add on to that walk So I'd make it a little bit longer than 15 minutes on the way home So that's when I'm listening the podcast not all the time But during times when my mind would otherwise be bored the exception of that of course is listening to deep questions That you want to listen to as soon as it comes out as many times as you can fit into your week All right, let's do a Who here's another podcasting question, okay Got a podcasting question here pontificate a little bit.

So caveat emptor Before we do a couple more sponsors. Okay, this question comes from Paula Paula says I really enjoy your episodes on The business of podcasting and its trends when I was looking for information on starting my own podcast It seemed like a lot of the materials out there were focused on podcast as marketing tools Ways to do quick easy production with lots of episodes as a content-rich way to show off your expertise I'm more interested in podcasting as the audio equivalent of long-form nonfiction narrative writing like a planet money or Freakonomics Paula notes in parentheses that she is a economist herself So that's why she was using Freakonomics as an example Paula goes on to say I see the value in all these formats But if the low barrier to start promotional style podcast fill the directories Does that turn off the potential audience to other styles?

Do they step into the podcast world get overwhelmed see a lot of styles? They don't like and that feel very amateur and leave For amateurs interested in other styles does their entryway become working with an established production company like in traditional publishing thoughts. All right, Paula I love pontificating on podcasting as a Business, I have a few thoughts here number one No, I don't think the proliferation of these sort of low quality checklist productivity style Marketing podcast is going to hurt other more serious attempts at podcasting by checklist productivity.

By the way, that's my That's my reference to the genre of productivity that says If you just have the right insider information the right steps and Just go through and execute these steps. You can accomplish these big really interesting things like you want to just work You want to triple your income and work a fraction of your time?

Just have the right checklist to go through and at the other end of that you'll accomplish that goal. You want a podcast? It's going to be a great marketing tool for your company. The key is going through these checklists. That's checklist productivity for anything. That is Desirable for any type of outcome that a lot of people would want checklist or never enough.

They're really appealing Because it's tractable. I put in a little bit of effort. I make my way through the list You feel like you're making progress but things that are hard or hard and checklist aren't enough Anyways, there's a lot of checklist productivity out there for marketing podcasts. You get a bunch of these podcasts that no one ever listens to Because it's people just Talking about whatever their industry is in a way that no one would care about I don't think that hurts other people making a more serious run Podcasting is developed enough.

There's enough podcast out there. People aren't just perusing directories to see what they want to listen to It's more like radio shows or TV shows on streamers Now people hear about things through trusted sources a friend recommends it. They hear someone on another show a Show is spotlighted on one of these top charts or spotlights That let's say like an Apple or Spotify does that's how people find podcasts now So the fact that a lot of crap is out there.

I don't think it's a problem. All right number two You ask Should you work with a production company? That's not really going to be that's not an entryway So there's not There's not production companies out there that will say, you know Paula like you seem like you're smart and interesting will build this podcast around you and like you'll find a big audience there are production companies, but who they tend to work with is either established podcast or established figures So like an established well-known writer and they will say you have a big audience We will will help you build the podcast around it.

But often what they're really offering there is technical expertise So there's not There's not an entryway in the podcasting like you would have in publishing where if you have the right idea the right publisher Might get behind it and you can just focus on the writing and it could take off Podcasting requires a lot more from the you know, the actual podcaster has to build a show that builds an audience All right, so that's my second Third I Don't quite know how to develop this theory, but see I see a direct line I think blogging and podcasting are connected Social media which emerged between blogging and podcasting is a very different beast and it warped It's my pontification everyone should be aware.

It warped our understanding of democratized digital content production. Here's what I mean about that when blogging came along and blogging as at the as the the rearguard action of the web in general web 2.0 the ability for the average person to be able to publish text that's accessible around The world without having to have access to a magazine or to a newspaper or to a book press this revolution This democratizing of text in the digital in the digital setting that sort of reached its apotheosis with the blog This was an important revolution But most blogs did terribly because it turns out here's what happens when you use digital tools to democratize different media channels it allows many more people to get in and take a swing, but what it doesn't do is lower the bar of quality of originality for success So it's a good thing for the culture writ large because there's lots of diverse voices or interesting voices or or styles or ideas that That never really would have got a shot to get above that bar if they had to write for life Magazine and try to get in there blogging minute was possible that you you could take your shot No one's going to hold you back So it's good for the culture writ large because you get a more interesting more innovation more interesting set of writers but for the individual it can seem frustrating because 99.9% of individuals aren't producing stuff at the bar that it matters.

So when you this is the key mistake of the democratization of digital media that people often make democratizing access to the media does not Reduce the quality bar relate required to succeed So we get this standard pushback around blogging when that happens like well, most blogs are bad So this isn't changing publishing but it did yes, of course most blogs are bad But there was a lot of good ones and it brought a lot of people to the into the industry that might have otherwise Not and innovated the form and you know, you have the whole like just even in politics even the whole Wonk approach to understanding politics and wonk blog and yet as our client and Nate Silver and all this came out of blogging these voices That you know would have otherwise had to have worked their way up through newsrooms and the traditional political reporting Podcasting is very similar.

It's democratizing digital audio Now almost anyone like me can put together a show and have it out there and it can leap across the uncanny valley between the internet and terrestrial radio that we're used to and and you can Be in the same ecosystem and almost anyone can do this now and this is all great for the whole culture because you have a lot Of innovation happening but for the individual is still hard because the quality bar is still really high to produce an audio program that a lot of people want To listen to is really hard.

It's like why most radio shows failed It's why the people who were great at it the Howard Stearns of the world the Dave Ramsey of the world make a lot of Money, it's really hard to do Now why I talked about social media being a divergence is because social media warped our understanding of this democratization of digital media because it didn't just democratize Access to various media they played these weird algorithmic games with attention and I talked about this some in Deep work a little bit in digital minimalism as well But I had more of a for lack of a better word Collectivist model of attention where it not just gave everyone access to publish we had that before But it gave everyone access to some attention now.

It used to be in the early days of Social media back when it was really based on the social graph the way this unfolded was You would post things and your friends would look at what you posted and they would give you comments on it and you would do The same for them and now you can kind of post stuff and have and you could have Attention.

Yeah. Hey, look, here's a picture. I went to the farm or here's what I was up to today Here's a little quip and people give you attention. Hey, good work. That looks beautiful or whatever And if you had tried to post any of that on a blog Like no one would have come there wasn't a collectivization of attention there That wasn't gonna attract an audience I've God forbid you had a newspaper column where you were just posting these observations You know the paper would have fired you on day two, but social media added this new artificial Attention redistribution, which is really what people want is the attention So it used to just be this Implicit contract between friends.

I'll post stuff. Let's be honest garbage. You'll post kind of garbage We'll all talk about each other's garbage and we'll all feel like we have an audience then things got more sophisticated and By the time you get to something like tick-tock Now you have just direct manipulation of attention redistribution where they will take something you post Occasionally and show it to a lot of people so that from your perspective you were getting these Intermittent hard to predict giant burst of reinforcement that make you feel like my god like that really took off Maybe I'm really close to breaking out When I was a writing at Bevco yesterday at the coffee shop near where I?

Record this podcast. There was a two gen Z years on I might have been a date I don't know sound like a date like a first date and they were just going back and forth about tick-tock and like well I had this one video and you know, it had these views and that's just pure manipulation of attention So now it used to be an implicit contract between friends on sharing a network and now just the algorithms do it itself I think that warped people's understanding of success and media and made it feel like more just your personal expression and observations of the world are Always just you know one Mr.

Beast breakthrough away from you suddenly having a big audience that everyone has the potential Potentially having a big audience and you get just enough reinforcement you this trickle of online reinforcement that you're used to it and then you go back to the Non-manipulated pitiless media world of podcasting just like blogs were before it and just like traditional media was before that and it's crickets So Paul I've wandered way off your original question I just think this is interesting that that we have these two points going on here if we're gonna just pontificate again about media democratization of digital media democratized access to publishing your voice It did not lower the bar of quality required to succeed with an audience but social media collectivized or redistributed attention in a manipulative manner to keep people using it and retrain people to expect and think You know if you're just out there and you're interesting you never know So that all goes to say Paul back to your plan to start a podcast It's just hard.

You know, it's just a very competitive pitiless landscape You have to have something that's going to have a large audience say this I have to listen to is it is a hard world out there. This show does pretty well It's not a super successful show. It does pretty well and is really hard work to get there We put a lot of effort into this and look I have a large audience.

I've been writing books for a long time I'm published all around the world I I've been around I've been known I've been thinking and talking professionally about these things for well over a decade and we work really hard Jesse and I to try to make this show tighter and tighter.

We have a good audience But it's not massive. I'm just saying it's hard work. It's hard work. You got to think about it like a large FM radio station or cable news Channel hired you to put together a show and how hard you would have to work to try to make that show a success That's the way to think about it.

Don't let the artificial redistribution of attention that's been leveraged by social media Warp your understanding of what actually goes into success here All right, well speaking about succeeding with a podcast Let me talk about a sponsor See Paula, that's the type of professional transition. You will have to learn to do If you want to get an audience and make some money off of it So I want to talk about one of our new sponsors is Z biotics So I like to say there are a few sponsors that I was more eager for to go rigorously test their product This is definitely a product.

I gave many rigorous tests So what is Z biotics? It is a pre alcohol probiotic Indeed, it is the world's first Genetically engineered probiotic it was invented by scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking So here's how it worked When you drink alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in your gut it is this byproduct Not as people often say dehydration does the blame for your rough next day?

By the way, I believe that claim I remember back in college We tested it. I would drink two now genes of water that's 64 ounces of water after a You would say boisterous night Yes still have a rough day. The next day is not just dehydration. So as they found out the z-byte X team There's other byproducts produced by alcohol that can create those rough days Z-biotics has an enzyme that breaks down the specific byproduct that they have pinpointed as causing issues the day after a celebratory evening All right So it does stuff your liver would otherwise do but it takes care of this breaking down in your gut before it causes more issues So you drink z-biotics before drinking alcohol?

You drink responsibly get a good night's sleep and you will feel your best the next day very clever idea Very clever idea. I just read Jurassic Park. We reread that with our kids. We had it. We listened to it on tape a road trip recently and I think this is a much better use of genetic engineering and Instead of putting all that know-how know-how about genetic engineering to bring back dinosaurs from extinction leading to many gruesome deaths instead and we can Thank the heavens for this we put that attention instead into something much cooler and much safer Which is helping to prevent rough days after alcohol consumption So give z-biotics a try for yourself go to zbiotics.com Slash Cal to get 15% off your first order when you use Cal at checkout Zbiotics is backed with 100% money-back guarantee.

So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money No questions asked remember to head to zbiotics.com Slash Cal and use that code Cal at checkout for 15% off Also, I'll talk about our longtime friends at Blinkist as I always say ideas are power in our current moment and the best source of quality ideas are Books, the problem is figuring out which books to read Which books you just need to know the big ideas from this is where Blinkist enters the picture.

It's a subscription service That gives you 15 minute text or audio summaries called blinks of Thousands of best-selling non-fiction books. In fact, they have condensed over 5,000 titles in 27 categories They even now have a new product called short cast which are blinks for podcast So the way I recommend Using Blinkist is if there's a topic that you're interested in find a bunch of relevant books listen to the blinks learn to main ideas learn the landscape of that of that general area of knowledge Now you have a foundation to think and talk about intelligently and you figured out which of these books if any are worth actually diving Into a more detail and you can buy and read just the books that are really going to matter This is not just for business this can be for growth Personal growth self-help.

There's a large number of categories over 27 categories covered by Blinkist You can even download these blinks to listen to offline So for example, maybe you read Stapiens by Yuval Harari and you said is his follow-up homo deus worth reading? What's it about? Boom? 50-minute blink? You know the big deal, you know whether or not you want to read it So right now Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience Go to blinkist.com/deep to start your free seven-day trial and get 25% off a Blinkist premium membership That's Blinkist Spelled B L I N K I S T Blinkist.com/deep to get 25% off any seven-day free trial Blinkist.com slash deep All right 56 minutes in no Jesse no breaks Pure professionalism.

Let's do three more quick questions. I want to get the ten. We're going to do ten Even if I lose my voice trying. All right, so this would be question number eight Do a little mental math here question number eight comes from Matt Matt says it seems to me that a lot of your views that are your most famous for are contrarian This seems to have served you pretty well Do you often reflexively adopt these contrarian views if so, does it ever end up backfiring?

And if you are selective and adopting certain country and blues views what factors you weigh when deciding to go against a grain? Well two points Matt one Not all of my views are contrarian You know, I would say there's really three large categories the type of stuff I write about So I do have some well-known Contrarian views in particular my pushback against the idea that you should follow your passion and my pushback against using social media Those at least in the moments in which I articulated those were quite contrarian not so much anymore a Lot of my other popular ideas.

However, I would put in a different category. I would say it is Structuring and articulating clearly things people already believe they just need someone to to help them Organize their pre-existing Feeling so with contrarian ideas. You're often trying to convince someone To change their mind about something You think following your passion is the right thing to do.

I want to convince you of something different. Here is a secret It's hard to have a really successful nonfiction book convincing people to change their mind. What's much more effective is Giving structure and voice to something they already believe so a lot of my popular ideas fall under that category Deep work is an example It's not contrarian that book didn't do well because people picked it up and said no way You mean deep work?

I want more email. What are you talking about? And then they read it and they were convinced No, that's not how that book was successful people were overwhelmed They knew something was wrong with the way work was unfolding and this gave voice to it. That's why that book was successful Slow productivity is like that People feel this discomfort with burnout They feel the ambiguity and lack of specification around our notions of what we even mean to be productive and when they hear slow Productivity just that term when they hear the three principles do fewer things working at a natural pace Obsessing over quality it sounds right from moment one Structure articulating things people already believe same with a lot of my work on the deep life I'm convincing people the deep life is Worthwhile, they know that trying to give some structure to that already existing impulse and then the final category of stuff I write about It's like a lot of my New Yorker writing.

It's more just observing and explaining trends. It's an expository So I would say most my stuff actually is not contrarian I do like contrary an idea so Matt and I think it comes from my appreciation of the Socratic dialectic a Lot of people think this you think that two opposing views collide truth a burges big believer on hitting one view against another Taking something you believe in and getting the best articulation to get someone to believe something different in that collision of opposition The roots of deeper understanding are grown.

So when I do go towards the contrary and it's probably motivated by the dialectic Danielle says how can I stop my digital minimalism principles from going out the window after? having a baby So she talks about I'm gonna condense this some She's on her phone a lot more because she's taking pictures to send to her family and there's also useful Things for her baby that she uses on the phone like controlling the lights or the white noise in the room And reading she really emphasizes Reading when you're doing those feedings in the middle of the night You have your phone and she ends up I'm quoting here quoting her here doom scrolling the Guardian online at 5 a.m The check the latest kovat news etc Alright, she says the bad phone habits have now set back in like rot My phone seems like the most efficient way to stay occupied during this long feeds.

I Don't want to give myself too much of a hard time But I don't want my son pretty much ever to see me on my phone once he's old enough Be able to recognize it. You know, what do I do? Well, Danielle first you're right to go easy on yourself when you're in the infant stage.

I mean anything goes survival not a time to be really on yourself about Your phone habits on exercise and food on are you properly socializing with people? It's a little bit of an all-hands-on-deck at least until you sleep train And I do hope you sleep train Danielle because you got to balance the needs of the baby with your own One concrete thing I'll just offer from our own experience is when we had our first my wife had the same issue With the phone reading during the late night feeds.

So she bought a Kindle paperwhite That's when the pin Kindle paper whites first came into our lives So you could read a book during the feeds and the paperwhite has its own built-in backlight That is not disturbing It doesn't fill the room with light. It's not gonna bother the baby.

It doesn't change you into oh my god is daytime and so that the Kindle paperwhite is not a bad idea for Distraction during late-night feedings that is not going to send you down a doom scrolling rabbit hole The other thing she innovated In our household was also like the the go basket next to every place you might feed It had all sorts of various things like snacks water bottles.

I'd read I get you know Fresh ice water and good insulated things before the night towels, you know for the mess Yeah These go baskets next to all the places you would you would feed and see if your paper white all the stuff you need You just got to make that as easy as you can.

I Like your idea by the way of not having your kids see you on the phone all the time It doesn't matter with an infant. It doesn't matter even with a one-year-old or two-year-old. I do think it matters We should talk about this more as a culture when you're talking about a five-year-old seven-year-old a 12 year old They see you on your phone all the time.

You have a hard time convincing them. They shouldn't do the same All right, one last question family and friend related comes from event Who says how do you explain a shift to the deep life to friends and family? I am a law student from Norway and your books and ideas have really helped me in answering some big questions regarding my life and career My friends and family don't really seem to understand my shift in focus.

I Live with my three best friends and they still Enjoy the reckless responsibility free lifestyle the early 20s renowned for I did too But now me and my friends ambitions don't align anymore They plan a lot of activities during the day, which is when I want to work. I Still hang out with them almost every evening But when I now say no to their daytime activities or want to go read a book in the evening They bugged me about working too much.

I feel bad also, my father expects me to just kind of hang out in the living room when I am home for Christmas and gets annoyed when I want to Go for a walk on my own reflect or go to my room and create a small video for a couple of hours As you've explained the deep life is radical and demands that you are comfortable with missing out on other things However, I'm finding it hard to steer my life in a different direction than my friends and family and to miss out on some of their experiences well, I think you're going through a a well-known developmental phrase right now and And I believe the Latin the Latin description of this developmental phase is you're growing the hell up That's all that's happening here with your friends you're growing up They're still in that student mode You are transitioning to more of an adult mode Where your identity is now largely separated from a group dynamic and is much more individuated You have autonomy over your time as well as responsibility now.

It's kind of up to me to Take care of myself and make money and pay the bills or with responsibility, but you also have autonomy Socializing becomes more something that is compartmentalized. I want to spend time with you. Let's make a time to do this We're gonna work out together.

We're gonna go to a movie together, but it becomes a much more Scheduled it less of this sort of background ongoing home that you would see in a group dynamic You're becoming an adult And this happens at different times for different people Just watch any Judd Apatow movie from 15 years ago and you will see for some people it comes kind of late other people They get there earlier You basically are the knocked up character After Katherine Heigl has the baby not before that's sort of what's happening here And I think it's good.

Everyone goes through this. You're just starting to go through it. Now you got to focus on work Get a job with opportunities be so good. They can't ignore you build rare and valuable skills Build up a little bit more income have your own place some more responsibility gain some more sense of efficacy This is the standard stuff of growing up in your 20s Your relationship with your friends are going to change Some of those friends are going to go away as you find more adult friends Some of those friends will grow up and will remain your friends.

This is all natural Your relationship with your family is going to change as you become more of an adult It's not a father-son relationship. It becomes more of a peer relationship and then you realize, you know If I'm home for a few days for Christmas You know, I'm here to be around him and socialize with my family.

I can do my deep work structured Reflection on my own time and maybe I cut my trip a little bit shorter But what if I'm there maybe I want to be there for what does this guy need right now? Suddenly, it's a different relationship. You're interacting with peers. You're actually thinking what does this person need from me?

It's more maturity Anyways, it's all great. I love being an adult. I was I was an adult early I was impatient I was about halfway through college where I was ready to be on my own and doing this type of thing So it's good what you're going through Live on your own start building your own way in the world Let the ideas of the deep life structure this pursuit from day one that will keep you on the right track But as you move farther down this track with structure to your forward momentum life is going to get deeper and more interesting So you're just starting event and it's going to get deeper and deeper and yeah, it's painful at first your friends aren't there They'll get there But you're going to hell up and I think that's a good thing All right, everyone ten questions in one hour and six minutes.

I feel good about it One take Tony is what Jesse calls me and that's what we did here. Just went for it and got it done So thank you everyone who sent in their questions if you like what you heard you will like what you see at youtube.com slash Cal Newport media full episode and Clips from the show can be found there You'll also like what you read subscribe to my newsletter at Cal Newport comm for a weekly essay on these type of topics I'll be next week from the woods You don't hear from me.

I was probably eaten by a bear send help and until then as always Stay deep