(upbeat music) All right, well, speaking of getting after it, let's do some listener calls. So who do we have here first? - All right, so our first call is from Jeff. Basically has a deep life question. He wants an example from you, so we'll take a listen, see what he has to say.

- Hi Cal, my name is Jeff and I am an IT consultant. I've been a big fan of yours ever since, so good they can't ignore you. And I've read similar books such as "Ultra Learning", "Peak Performance", "Grit" and "Atomic Habits". These books are full of practical advice on how to improve learning and skills and contribute to the deep life.

However, I find myself never implementing them. What kind of strategy would you suggest using to incorporate concepts found in books of this genre? How long should one try something new before deciding it doesn't work for them? And I think it would be great if you can give an example of a habit or advice you once read about and then incorporated into your daily life.

Thank you. - So Jeff, the systematic advice I give for laying the foundation for a deep life, integrating new ideas into the deep life is based on the deep life buckets. I think that's exactly what you need for what you're talking about here. You define the different areas that are important to you living a life well lived.

We call these the deep life buckets. The standard examples we give, for example, is craft, which is the things you produce, your work, the things you build. Constitution, which is your health and fitness. Community, your connection to people that are around you and that matter to you. And contemplation, theology, ethics and philosophy.

Just as a starting point, but you have your areas that are important to you. Then you wanna have a keystone habit in each of these areas, something you do every day. So this is where when you learn new things, could be integrated into what this keystone habit is. And that's a warmup.

So now you say, okay, I'm in the habit of doing optional activity in each of the areas of my life that are important on a regular basis, even though I don't have to. So you're signaling to yourself, I take these parts of my life seriously. Then you dedicate four to six weeks to each of these buckets, one by one, to say, now I'm gonna do a more systematic overhaul of that part of my life, where I might remove multiple things out of my life related to that bucket that are just in the way, that are cluttered, that are taking up time, streamline, and then I might add into it or refine the things I do in that part of my life so I get a maximum value return.

So it's all about focusing on things that are high return and avoiding the things that don't give you much return or get in the way. That is exactly where you can be integrating new advice. So just do this once a year. I suggest doing it in the lead up to your birthday.

That's the way I like to think about this. You're doing an overhaul in the months leading up to your birthday, and that's where you can look at what's working, what's not working in each of the areas of your life, integrate new ideas, integrate new systems, integrate new habits. That's what I would recommend.

All right, in terms of examples from my own life, things that I've integrated or not integrated. Let me think about that. I'm thinking in my mind, if you wanna know what's going on here, I'm thinking through my mind in different categories. You know, like I've had a pretty major constitution, so health and fitness overhaul, I do those, you know, every once in a while, and I've done, I put a lot of time into that, so I gave it its four to six week focus to overhaul somewhat recently.

And so there's a few things I do. So the keystone habit, the keystone habit I do now is there's a tracking habit where I track the, as I've done before, the exercise I do, like what did I do today, and the steps I take. I had been doing that.

I added to it weight every morning. You gotta look at it, look at the number, and that's, you know, you gotta face it. Best motivator is a very powerful keystone habit. You have to face it, and you know you have to face it, and it can really keep you away from, you know, I should not be eating this or drinking this as much, and so that was a keystone habit.

Then I've had a pretty radical overhaul in terms of my actual fitness. I'm going through a rowing program. I have a Concept2 Rower, and the stave off, the winter, can't be outside as much, blues, and not get as much sunshine, blues. I have a daily, it's a daily rowing program, where it's every day, here's the workout you're doing, here's the workout you're doing.

So that gives me flashbacks from my old college crew days. I've replaced, I always have a baseline of doing 1,000 pull-ups a month, but I've now added into it, I think I have that right, 1,000, yeah, 36. Am I doing that math right, Jesse? 36 a day. - That's all.

- Yeah, and I've always done that, but now I'm actually doing workout routines beyond that. But let me tell you, just to walk you through this, to me, that's all just breaking the seal. So this was what I was gonna be doing in January. I'm doing it now January through February because I hurt my back in January, so I got a slow start.

I'm just breaking the seal. I'm getting used to, like, I'm doing a rowing workout, I'm getting used to doing real workouts beyond just my pull-ups or whatever. All of that is just to get me used to that being a non-trivial part of my life so that then I can upgrade that when we get later in February.

And so now I wanna do some serious training. But I didn't wanna jump straight into serious training. I figured I had to overhaul my life to that that's a big part of my day, and I'm used to it, and I'm in that groove, and I'm doing hard work every day, somewhat randomly, but I'm doing it, right?

And then when I'm done doing that for a month or two, then I'm gonna say, "Now I can up my game." And actually, Jeff, my idea is I wanna train for something, and I don't know what yet, but that is an example of deep life thinking. That's me focusing on the Constitution bucket.

So I'm turning 40 this summer, and I figure I really gotta start caring about my health and fitness more because that's the age for men where a lot of things, a lot of things go downhill. And so there's a high leverage moment to be in really good shape. And so that's, I made that whole overhaul plan, and that's just for the Constitution bucket.

And now that plan's kinda operating, so now I can, there's other buckets I could think about. That's an example of what those overhauls look like. I should get your advice. So when the time comes, Jesse, I'll get your advice. Jesse knows about gyms and exercise, so he'll get me.

That's what we should do with the HQ. Should we just have it be essentially like a gym? That'd be weird. - We could put a pull-up bar in. - We should put a pull-up bar in. - That'd be cool. You could just put one right in the door. - Can I tell you something about pull-up bars, those ones you just put in the doors that are supposed to somehow like counter, just counter-lever in and you can use them?

I've never in my life got that to work. - Really? I have one at my house. I've had it forever. It works. - Where it just like, there's no screws or anything. It just, I must be doing it wrong. - Yeah, it works great. I've had it for years.

- I must be doing it wrong because I've had multiple of these because I've been doing pull-ups ever since I was, you know, left 22 and left college. It was a rowing thing, right? I've never got it to work. I'm like, there's no way this is going to work.

I put it up there and it just drops to the ground. Like, how am I supposed to do pull-ups on this thing? I'm doing something wrong. All right, we got to figure that out. We will start doing pull-ups here. All right, anyways, thanks for that question, Jeff. (upbeat music)