Let's do a call. Okay, sounds good. Hi, Cal. My question today is very simple. Where can we find more real world examples of people living the deep life? I think the case studies are often really good at illustrating very abstract concepts like the deep life. After all, it's much easier to understand radical alignment with your values when you read the story of the triathlete who left New York and moved to Boulder to train and be close to his family.

I know you try to share as much cases as you can on the podcast, and I'm assuming your upcoming book will have several cases that illustrate these different moves. But even then, that's only a handful of examples. Some of them are also hard to relate. I mean, not everyone wants to move to the mountains to be a world-class triathlete or move to a cabin to be a writer.

I know from experience that sometimes all it takes to crack in your own deep life is seeing someone else's life that really resonates. So here's a final provocation. If there isn't such resource, should someone build one? Thanks for your tremendous generosity of spirit and sharing your work so broadly, Cal.

Thank you. Well, John, you're hitting on a couple of good points here. Let's start with your last point first. Should there be a better resource for encountering examples of the deep life so that you have a better chance of hitting one that resonates with you in particular? And I agree with your premise here that somehow or sometimes getting the specifics, this specific person did something that resonates exactly with me, is critical for making a vision for your own life.

Yes, I think there should be a resource like that. I actually have this idea. I'll have to figure out when and how I'll have the time to do this. But I've had this idea, and I've talked to Jesse about this before, of a podcast called The Deep Life. And all it is, is each week an interview with someone who lives a deep life.

And so you just get this real variety of it. Now, in a perfect world where time and money was not an issue, it would be really cool if you could edit a podcast like this NPR style. So it's not just straight, let's talk to you for 45 minutes, but there's different segments of conversation with musical interlude and moments of expository narration from me.

I think it'd be a really cool show. I mentioned something like that in my proposal for The Deep Life book, that maybe as I start working on that book, I might launch something like that. So I think that's a good idea. But let's talk about the broader point here about resonance and deep life case studies.

Here is the reality/issue with the deep life as a concept. We know it when we see it, right? So we all have this instinct, you read a book, you see something on a documentary, you see an Instagram something, I don't know the terminology, whatever they call it, an Instagram video bundle, whatever the terminology is, of someone doing triathlon training in Boulder, and it just hits a chord and it's boom.

That's what I, there's something about that life that's right and my life is not there. So we know it when we see it. And starting with the pandemic, I think a lot more people than ever before are noticing that reaction and are very interested in this idea about the deep life.

The issue is that it's hard to pin down. And then you look to your own life and you say, I just have this deep instinctual feeling that what I'm doing here is not everything it could be. And there's these other people I see and hear about, and that resonates, they're doing something that I crave, but I can't pin down exactly what it is.

Like I don't know why this guy who moved to Boulder to train for triathlons, this really resonates with me, but I don't do triathlons. I don't want to move to Boulder, but something about that still resonates. What is it that resonates with me? And what does that tell me for my own life and what type of changes I should make?

This is the real issue, the gap between instinct and pragmatism when it comes to this concept of the deep life. So part of what I've been trying to do on the show, but I'm doing much more carefully, I'll do much more formally when I eventually write the deep life book is to make the concept concrete.

What are the attributes that define a deep life? Generally speaking, I'm not talking about particular activities. You have to be in Boulder, you have to be running triathlon, but what is it specifically that separates what we would instinctually see as a deep life from a normal life? Once we have identified what those properties are, does that mean we can have a more systematic approach to acquiring those in our life if that's what we're interested in?

That's what I'm gonna be trying to do with my deep life book when I get to it. There's a systematic quest for more. Let's pin down the definition. These are the properties that separate what resonates as a deep life from others. Here is how you would actually go and acquire those properties.

So it's a deep question, John, and one I'm going to continue to work on. Let me give you a one only partially formed idea right now. Let's just give an appetizer for the larger banquet the one day come. I'm toying with this notion. This is my proposal for the deep life book.

That perhaps at the core of what separates a deep life from another life is the radical alignment of your existence to things that you value. So there's two aspects, and this is a preliminary definition, but there's two aspects to this definition. One that you are making changes to align your life closer with certain things that you really value and two that those realignment is radical.

So it's not just, I think I really value being outdoors and exercise. So I'm going to start training every morning before I go to my standard 45 minute away commute government job from the DC suburbs. That's an alignment of your life towards something that you value, but it's not a radical alignment.

The radical alignment is like, okay, I'm going to, it's going to be rich role. Yes, I'm going to make training a big part of my life. I'm going to leave my law firm and be a full time ultra athlete. I'm going to move the boulder to be a triathlon.

Why does that resonate? Because they're not just making a change to align their life with something they care about. It is a radical change. They significantly change their job setup, their location, where they live, how they actually spend their days. I'm increasingly convinced those are the two things you need.

If you miss any one of those two things, you run into trouble. So if you make a radical change, but it's not aligned with something that's really important or that you really value, you end up, which we saw a lot of during the pandemic, making changes for the sake of change, trying to extract some sense of excitement or interesting this just because you did something radical, but then you get to the small farm that you just bought in the Hudson river Valley and realize, uh, I don't like farming.

It's weird and quiet out here. I can't get good coffee. This is, this is terrible. This is actually not nothing here aligns with something I deeply value. That's a problem. Similarly, I think is if you're really clear on what you care about, but your change is too small, it's not radical.

It's nice. It's better than not doing it, but it's not going to give you that deep residence of the deep life. It's the, the difference between, you know, Bill McKibben leaving the New Yorker to move to that small house up in the Adirondacks, the rightful time about nature and Bill McKibben saying, uh, on the side with my New Yorker job, I want to be working on a book about nature and go to a retreat once a year.

So the radicalness matters too. So that's one of the ideas I'm working on, John. I think maybe you need both those things. The radicalness unlock some sense of, I really do care about this. It's a real engine of motivation, but figuring out what you care about and making the right choice.

Like this is, this actually is important in believing it's important to you. That's important too. So probably those two pieces, those two pieces have to come together, but I think we're going to see a lot more of that in the near future. And for a while going forward, people's willing to make radical changes to do radical realignments.

I think we're, we've woken up a little bit that we have more options than we think. And there's more things we could be doing with our lives to make it interesting. What about in cases where somebody like a case study where somebody already kind of has a deep life, do you think it needs to be as radical or do you think it just needs, there's like different tiers?

I just think there's usually, there's usually an aspect of radicalness to it. By which I mean, there's just a, a part of their life that is unusually constructed or oriented to promote something that they care about. I think the good life is different than the deep life. I think you could have a good life.

Like I'm, I'm plugged into my community. I appreciate my work. I'm in good shape. I enjoy, you know, uh, fine wine and like, and have a good life, capital G, good life, virtuous, ethical, uh, meaningful. The deep life is a subset of that. And it's not like everyone needs to do that, but some people really have this craving of, of, I want something about my life to be notable or remarkable in the literal sense where people are like, wow, do you know what Jesse's up to?

Yeah. That's really interesting. Like living on a boat or something. Yeah. You live in on a boat. Yeah. So do you, is that something you strive for or do you think you have that or do you think you're just living a good life? I'm like halfway there. So do you want to do something radical?

Maybe I do. We're going to podcast from a boat. I'm going to train for triathlons in Boulder. Um, no, I, I do. Um, I have ideas about specifically your life. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I figure I'm going to be writing a book about the deep life. Uh, it would be cool if that book could be structured around me doing some things.

I don't know. I even put that on my proposal. Like, I don't know what these would be, but I would like the book to have a pretty good degree of, of self discovery and reporting. For sure. The book is going to be very journalistic. So in maybe a Michael Pollan style, it's me on the road doing things with people.

That's a different style than my norm. My books up to now, including slow productivity is less first-person journalistic. So good. They can't ignore you had some first-person journalism in it for sure. But since then I have, I've, uh, my, my, my structure is usually non first-person journalistic. It's more reporting on ideas and laying out frameworks.

There's a little bit of first-person, I guess, in, in digital minimalism too, but the deep life is no, no, it's Michael Pollan goes to polyphase farms and is there with Salitan working on the mobile chicken coops. You know, he goes to the places and does the things. And so deep life is going to have that personal thread.

And I would like to have a prologue and epilogue is built around, um, some sort of deep change. So we'll see, you know what I should, here's, here's what it is. I'll, I'll, I'll give the preview. This is actually, it's a joke, but, um, I was watching on my, uh, iPad the other day, the North men.

Have you heard of this movie? Yeah. I just read about it. It's like, uh, the directors it's like, it's really detailed and it's a, it's a Viking movie, but like real Viking, New Yorker, I think. Oh, I missed that. Well anyways, um, so I finally watched it or I'm watching it.

It's Viking. It's like a Viking myth. So it, it did the witch movie too. Yeah. Oh, it's the same guy. Yeah. Oh yeah. There was an article in the New Yorker, but I just read it. Oh, maybe I did read that. Did he do that? Uh, yes. I like that guy.

Have you seen the witch? I, I was reading it. I was like, I don't know if I saw, I don't think I did. I need to watch it. Yeah. I love those movies. I love those type of movies. The wit because it's like low budget. It just says it's a, here's this little village.

It's like three houses in 1600s, you know? So it's just one place. It's not a $50 million budget. That's a cool movie. I mean, it's just like, what if like, you know, the witch that period with the witch trials and everything, like what if there was actually witches in colonial New England?

Yeah. Uh, my wife was watching it at some point they're grinding up babies to make this so their broom can fly or something. And she was done with that. Anyways, this is all, all to say, this is a very roundabout way that they get to. So this is a Viking movie that stars Alex or Alexander Skarsgard.

People might know from true blood and some other things. He's six, four, right? He's a six, four kind of Viking guy. He got stacked for this movie, right? Like because he's plays a Viking berserker and he's 45. So he's five years older and got, uh, just, you know, they, they had to make them sort of kind of superhero.

They didn't cut them as much because they're trying to be pretty accurate. So it wasn't marvel-y right. Because a Viking wouldn't be super cut, but just like what he did with his traps or whatever. So I was joking with my wife. I was like that, this is what I'm going to focus all my time on.

If he could do that at 45, I'm just going to dedicate all of my time to becoming stacked like a Viking, just sort of apropos of nothing. It took him six, uh, six months. That would take a lot of time. That would take away from your writing. He did it.

So I went down this rabbit hole hour a day, six days a week. It would take more than that. It got real, real jacked. It would take at least two hours a day. Yeah. Well, here's the, here's the curve ball in 2019. He was in Tarzan. Right. So I just probably, which he had to get cut for.

So there's probably some, he wasn't, let's just say he wasn't starting. Well, you already work out for at least 25 to 30 minutes a day, right? Yeah. I thought it was interesting. It was an hour a day. I think it was an Icelandic, might've been an Icelandic trainer. And they had the philosophy, but Sarsgar is a beast, like laser focus method type guy.

So it was an intense hour. They do just one muscle group per day until it's just basically destroyed. And then, uh, a different muscle group, the next day, different muscle group the next day. Um, but you know how much he had to eat? 4,000 calories, 7,000 calories a day.

It's a lot of muscle, right? He put on 20 pounds of muscle. 7,000 calories a day. And from what I understand, it's not like, yay, let's go get some burgers. No, no, that's 7,000 calories. Chicken, broccoli, and rice. But anyways, uh, that's all to say, John, that this is my deep life goal is that I'm just going to spend years becoming like a, like a inappropriately stacked looking Viking.

Yeah. That would be pretty cool. You'd be able to hit those rowing times very easily. Yeah. I wish I didn't just row. I just be stacked like a Viking and row, uh, and dress like a Viking all the time.