(upbeat music) - All right, Jesse, I think we have time for one last question. So let's see what we have here. - All right, the last question is a new father and he's got some questions about managing that and doing some deep work. - Hi, Cal, my name is Judd and I'm a long time fan of your work.

In a recent podcast, you said nothing has negatively impacted your productivity as much as being a new parent. I'm a father of two children under the age of two and I'm experiencing the same thing. Do you have any tips for parents of babies to help navigate the challenges of being a new parent?

While I love being a father, the sleepless nights and near constant attention the girls require have seriously reduced my ability to do deep work. They've also killed my creativity and ability to come up with Greek mythological references, for which I apologize. Thanks so much. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

- Well, I mean, I think in order to reprioritize mythological references, toddler boarding school is what we need. Where you send off your daughters, they'll come back for the summers and for the holidays, and then you can really focus on good mythological references. No, Judd, I think it is, there are seasons.

And there's a big idea from slow productivity, seasonality at multiple scales, from the week to the month, to the years, to multiple years. Two young kids under two, this is a season in which you're not writing the great American novel. I think that's okay. Life is long. You have babies.

It's batting down the hatches time. Now I had seasons like that, obviously with young kids, I had a season, I think the pandemic caused some seasonality for me. Our schools were closed, there's chaos, and I had to pull back on a lot of things. And in the grand scheme of things, I think that's reasonable.

That was a slow season. Different seasons are different. I mean, when my kids finally all go off to college, I know exactly how old I'll be when that happens. We've done this math, trust me. I'm either going to explode into a frenzy of productive output. I'll be writing three books a year, or I'll just die.

It'll be one of the two. I'll either just be at the end of the finish line and die, or I'm gonna be writing three books a year or something. And I see different seasons are different. So first of all, I just wanna give you that, I wanna give you that reassurance.

I think it's fine to slow down. And this is a very important thing in your life. Give it some focus. Now, keep a handle on the other things. You don't want the work you have to do to become a major source of stress right now. So go watch my core ideas video on time management, for example, and make sure that you have a ship shape organizational system so that you have the breathing room necessary to not work so much and not have it be a crisis.

The only other advice I'll give, and I gotta be wary about giving parenting advice. I get yelled at a lot, but I gotta tell you, sleep training. And don't yell at me, anti-sleep training people, but you've got two kids, you guys both work, you gotta do sleep training, right?

I'm very trepidatious. Jesse can say I look very trepidatious because the parenting advice gets you in a lot of trouble. If your strategy is just, I think eventually the kid will figure it out and start sleeping, they will torture your soul. And they'll fake you out and they'll start sleeping more.

And then you'll all be high-fiving and telling your friends how good you are, like your kids are good sleepers. And then they'll just twist a knife and start getting up at four and getting up at two and getting up at nine. And so this was my wife and I's survival strategy is we're doing a lot for these kids, but these kids need to do one thing for us, and that is they're gonna have to go through some sleep training.

So don't put up with four years of not sleeping. A lot of people do. You could make that four months if you're willing to think about sleep training. Any complaints about that, that always upsets parents. So you can send all your complaints to jesse@calnewport.com and really, really let me have it, but send those to jesse@calnewport.com.

All right, Judd, well, good luck and congratulations. And yeah, go easy on yourself and look into sleep training. (upbeat music)