All right, moving on. We got a question from Don Quixote. Let's see what we have here. Hopefully this is appropriately literary, or I'll be disappointed. How can I help myself to remember all of your best advice? Now, that is not appropriately literary. There's no actual Don Quixote allusions in this question.

I am disappointed. But let's go farther here. There's an elaboration. Hi, Cal. I'm making some small improvements to my office space. I'd like to include a nice print that summarizes maybe your top 10 or 20 best pieces of advice for living the deep life, which in my opinion should be possible given your proclivity for summarizing your advice in easy to remember catchphrases.

He then gives us an example, that poster you've probably all seen of everything I really need to know I learned in kindergarten. And Jesse printed me out a copy of this poster, so we can look at it here. Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess. Don't take things you're not yours. I don't know. Let me just say, by the way, this kindergarten poster, I mean, this seems like good advice, but is this really everything you need to know? I mean, what about how to manage your finances or how to deal with major health problems?

I don't see anything in here about dealing with the inevitable tragedy of the death of those around you who you know and love. I am going to disagree that everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten. I call balderdash on that. But could there be an equivalent poster for me?

Well, Don, I'm going to do your work for you and say that might be quixotic, because I do give a lot of advice. But to be honest, the summary I use when I try to capture everything is not 20 pieces of advice. It's three. The best summary I have for my deep life philosophy writ large would be do less, do better, know why.

Those three categories capture everything I think is really important. So do less. Focus on the things that matter. Be worried, concerned about over-distraction. Be concerned by having too much on your plate. Be concerned by the death of 1,000 paper cuts of too much work foci, making it difficult to do any one thing better.

Be worried about in your life outside of work, too many shining distractions taking your attention away from the smaller number of things that are really quality. These are themes that go through all of my books, including my student books, for sure, and so good they can't ignore you, for sure in deep work, for sure in digital minimalism, even in a world without email.

Do better. Care about how you actually execute the things you execute. This is where deep work shows up. For certain things, deep work is much better than shallow work. Do it without distraction. There's also where productivity falls in. If you have these obligations are part of your job, this is what you've decided to do, organize it.

Be smart about it. Don't be haphazard. Don't be reactive. Don't just stumble through your day. And then the know why is to connect this all to the underlying reasons. I am doing this for that. Here is my vision of my lifestyle. Here are my values. These things we talk about a lot when we talk about the deep life fall under that rubric of know why.

So if you're not doing too much, you have autonomy, time, margin. If the things you do, you do at a high level of quality, you're intentional and organized by the things that maybe are easier but have to happen, and you connect everything to your values, to a vision of a life well lived, that is basically the deep life.

That actually used to be the tagline of my blog of study hacks. So in the beginning-- quick digital history of Cal Newport-- in the beginning, I wrote my first two books, How to Win a College, How to Become a Straight A Student. How to Become a Straight A Student came out in 2006.

In 2007, I launched my website, calnewport.com, and it was built on a blog that I called Study Hacks, because the whole idea was continue the discussion that was started in those two student books. It was the missing chapters from those student books. And then once I made the transition around 2010, away from just student advice, I maintained the name Study Hacks.

But there was a tagline. There was a tagline. I'd gone through different taglines for the blog, back when that was the core of my digital world, a core that now-- the blog is more of my newsletter. People like email newsletter better, and there's the podcast, et cetera. For a while, it was do less, do better, know why.

It was how I was really summarizing the way I was thinking about student life. And in particular-- not to go on too much of a tangent here-- but in particular, after How to Become a Straight A Student, I got heavily involved in dealing with issues of student overload and student stress.

And that's really where that motto first emerged, do less, do better, know why. It's how I thought you should go through high school and college in a way that opened up opportunities, but was not overwhelming or stressful. It was the foundation for a life well-lived, not the foundation for getting a cardiac stint put in at an early age.

And so that's where that came from. And then over time, that influenced almost everything else I wrote about. That influenced my career advice, my advice for the deep life more generally. So that was my tagline for a while. It got replaced with decoding patterns of success or something, or maybe decoding patterns of success was before.

I had a bunch of different taglines, and then eventually I just got rid of the taglines. But anyways, do less, do better, know why has been with me for a long time. So that would be what should be on my poster. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)