Our first question about the deep life comes from Joyce. Joyce asks, "What do you do or read to inspire and remind yourself of the importance of living a deep life?" Well, Joyce, for me, I love encountering case studies. Be it in magazine profiles, books, or videos, documentaries, etc. Whatever the format, I love encountering case studies of people who are living deeply.

Seeing actual people doing this never fails to give me that hint of inspiration. So, for example, my oldest boys and I like to watch videos of people that are in the maker community, people who build things. And in particular, we like watching these videos. I've mentioned this before on the podcast of Adam Savage, former host of The Mythbusters.

He has this massive—he calls it cave—it's actually a warehouse in the Mission District of San Francisco that's just full of tools and supplies, and in there he can build these elaborate things. And there's a focus and craftsmanship to that that I think is really inspiring. You can get this with athletic examples.

You know, I really like seeing people or examples of people whose life have been crafted around mastering a particular physical pursuit. I like what Steve Ranella does on his Netflix show, Meat Eater, because it's very philosophical. Ranella, in some sense, is an heir to the stylish show that Anthony Bourdain was doing.

It's not coincidental that Bourdain has been on or was on Ranella's show. They go out there and do these long hunts. Sometimes they are successful, sometimes they're not. But they are shot elegiacally, beautiful, long form, long focus shots. There is a very smart voiceover that Ranella does. Ranella is a hunter, but he also writes for The New Yorker.

This is someone who knows how to think and write, so there's these really interesting, insightful voiceovers with these beautiful shots. And the whole thing is done in a world of depth. Just them alone, the mountains, in the plains, wherever they happen to be. And there's something that's calming about that.

I wrote in Deep Work about being affected by watching the video of Rick Furrer, who is a old-time metalsmith. So he does blacksmithing using old-time tools. And he works out of a barn that's up there in Door County, near one of the Great Lakes. And he throws the barn doors open and it overlooks a field.

And I watched a video of him building a Viking sword. It was a Nova episode I came across it. And again, something about that. It's someone who's working deeply with great focus, mastery. They're just doing one thing. They're doing that thing well and deeply. And just something about that hits a chord.

I actually heard from Rick after Deep Work came out. We've had an interesting back-and-forth conversation, which I enjoyed. Great pleasure of actually having some of this work out there in the public. So that's what I would say. I love to encounter real people living deeply. You know it when you see it.

It gives you that feel of inspiration or aspiration. And that's a feel that we should take seriously. What is it that I'm feeling? What is it that is causing the sense of aspiration or inspiration in what I'm watching? How can I isolate that? How can I identify what it is that's causing that feeling?

And then once I've isolated those elements, I can then answer the question of, how can I get more of that in my life? This is the type of investigation, question, asking, and answering I think more of us probably should be doing right now. But in the meantime, though, it's an excuse to watch some of those fun, inspiring videos online.