Ep. 239: On Time And Stress

00:00:00.000 | you get at today's deep question, which is,

00:00:02.520 | is our relationship to time broken?

00:00:07.040 | I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions,

00:00:18.720 | the show about living and working deeply

00:00:21.060 | in an increasingly distracted world.

00:00:26.700 | I'm here in my deep work HQ,

00:00:30.300 | joined as always by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:32.900 | Jesse, I'm gonna describe to you

00:00:34.760 | as my world-famous producer, Jesse,

00:00:39.340 | now that you've made your international media debut.

00:00:43.380 | So for, we've mentioned this before on the show,

00:00:47.600 | but for a while last fall,

00:00:48.980 | there was a reporter from the Financial Times

00:00:51.260 | who was hanging out at the HQ at some of my events

00:00:54.220 | and doing some interviews for a profile they wrote,

00:00:57.780 | or they were writing about me for the Financial Times,

00:00:59.560 | and that came out last weekend.

00:01:01.360 | I'll load it on the screen here

00:01:03.940 | for those who are watching at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

00:01:07.500 | It's episode 239.

00:01:08.820 | Also, you can find this at thedeeplife.com.

00:01:11.240 | So here's me looking heroic for this magazine article,

00:01:16.300 | "How Cal Newport Rewrote the Productivity Gospel."

00:01:19.540 | Did you know, Jesse,

00:01:20.380 | this ended up being the cover of the magazine?

00:01:22.300 | - That's awesome.

00:01:23.140 | I mean, it's a sweet picture.

00:01:24.700 | - That's the parking lot behind the HQ.

00:01:27.060 | - Yeah, I mean, I was looking around the article

00:01:28.700 | and I noticed a lot of the...

00:01:30.380 | - Yeah, so I've only skimmed this

00:01:32.620 | 'cause I can't stand reading about myself,

00:01:34.880 | but what's important, what's important is if we,

00:01:38.100 | and this is a long article, which is a whole other issue.

00:01:42.540 | There's the magazine cover there.

00:01:43.820 | All right, so if we scroll down farther in this article,

00:01:46.620 | we see, ta-da, his producer, Jesse, was already there.

00:01:52.580 | I think that's a, a lot is packed into that phrase, Jesse.

00:01:56.260 | I think this is, with less, more is being conveyed.

00:02:00.580 | - Yeah, she was cool.

00:02:01.540 | - This is your international press debut.

00:02:03.420 | I mean, I gotta say it, I don't know if this is

00:02:06.500 | but self-deprecation or whatever.

00:02:08.820 | I really am baffled by the idea

00:02:11.420 | that anyone would wanna read 5,000 words about my story.

00:02:16.380 | Like, I get that my ideas are interesting.

00:02:18.100 | Like, that I get.

00:02:19.860 | I'm not that interesting of a person.

00:02:22.140 | - I disagree.

00:02:23.100 | I'd definitely read, I mean, I'd read it

00:02:25.100 | even if I didn't know you 'cause I was always a fan before.

00:02:27.860 | - Here's a short version of my autobiography.

00:02:30.420 | I sat and I thought a lot in between reading.

00:02:33.260 | - Yeah, but you took a lot of action.

00:02:35.680 | - The end, well, anyways, so Courtney was great

00:02:38.260 | and I'm sure the article is great, a very talented writer.

00:02:41.220 | I remain humbly baffled by the idea

00:02:43.420 | that people would wanna spend that much time

00:02:46.900 | learning about my story, but there you go.

00:02:48.180 | But it is the international press debut of Jesse.

00:02:50.740 | So for that, we reached a milestone.

00:02:53.540 | I think it's important.

00:02:54.700 | One other piece of logistical notes to work on

00:03:00.420 | before we get into it, a logistical note

00:03:01.780 | before we get into the meat of today's episode.

00:03:03.960 | So Jesse, you know I have this longtime partnership

00:03:06.920 | with the writer Scott Young.

00:03:08.940 | And we have these two online courses.

00:03:10.380 | You've taken at least one of them, right?

00:03:12.220 | - Yeah.

00:03:13.060 | - So we have this course, Top Performer,

00:03:14.460 | based off of So Good They Can't Ignore You.

00:03:16.340 | And we have this newer course, Life of Focus,

00:03:18.740 | which is based off of deep work, digital minimalism,

00:03:22.220 | and Scott's book, Ultra Learning.

00:03:24.300 | Well, this week, the week that this episode's coming out,

00:03:26.780 | Ultra Learning is open for registration.

00:03:29.540 | So maybe once or twice a year,

00:03:31.020 | we open it to register a new class.

00:03:33.080 | So it's open until Friday.

00:03:34.940 | The website is life-of-focus-course.com.

00:03:39.940 | So lifeoffocuscourse.com with dashes in between every word.

00:03:45.340 | Anyways, I figured instead of me trying to explain

00:03:48.660 | what's going on in this course,

00:03:49.700 | I would have Scott call in,

00:03:53.220 | join me briefly for a quick conversation

00:03:55.180 | about what's going on with this course, where it came from.

00:03:57.160 | Also, I make fun of him for that terrible URL.

00:03:59.900 | So here is Scott calling in to help explain this course.

00:04:04.900 | All right, Scott, thanks for calling in

00:04:08.180 | to help me talk about our online course, Life of Focus.

00:04:13.700 | Let me first of all, just make sure

00:04:15.340 | I'm getting the basic information out to you, my listeners.

00:04:19.300 | This course that Scott and I did is called Life of Focus.

00:04:22.060 | It's found at the website lifeoffocuscourse.com

00:04:27.060 | with dashes in between all those words.

00:04:29.180 | So life-of-focus-course.com.

00:04:34.180 | That's where you can sign up.

00:04:35.660 | It is open this week.

00:04:38.060 | So the week this episode came out,

00:04:40.000 | it is open for new registrations

00:04:41.940 | before we close it back down again on Friday.

00:04:45.300 | Now, Scott, when I tell people about this course,

00:04:47.100 | I say it's built around three books.

00:04:50.940 | So from my library,

00:04:52.260 | it's built around deep work and digital minimalism.

00:04:54.260 | And from your library, your fantastic book, Ultra Learning.

00:04:58.060 | So it's a course that has one month dedicated

00:05:01.260 | to ideas from each of those books.

00:05:03.820 | That's the high-level way I talk about it.

00:05:06.300 | You understand the details better.

00:05:08.380 | I feel like your hands have gotten more dirty

00:05:10.340 | with the underlying coding of this course.

00:05:12.340 | And I can tell you guys,

00:05:13.300 | it is not easy to build an online course.

00:05:15.520 | So I thought I would throw it to you just to explain,

00:05:17.100 | first of all, for the listeners who's curious,

00:05:19.380 | what happens during each of these months?

00:05:21.180 | So during the deep work month,

00:05:22.300 | the minimalism month, and the Ultra Learning month,

00:05:24.700 | what type of things are happening

00:05:26.620 | if you're a student who has signed up for this course?

00:05:29.780 | - Right, so we've divided the course

00:05:31.500 | into these three one-month challenges.

00:05:33.560 | So there's a focus work, focus life,

00:05:35.900 | and focus mind challenge.

00:05:37.700 | And you're right, they draw on the stuff

00:05:39.820 | that you've probably already read

00:05:41.260 | if you're in the Cal Newport idea space.

00:05:44.220 | The ideas are not going to be radically new.

00:05:47.620 | They're gonna be things that you're familiar with.

00:05:49.260 | But what's gonna be different about the course

00:05:51.420 | is we're gonna go into the real nitty-gritty

00:05:53.540 | of getting the details right

00:05:55.020 | and provide you with this sort of actionable template

00:05:57.940 | for actually making it a part of your life.

00:05:59.660 | Because of course, that's the big stumbling block.

00:06:01.900 | I mean, it's easy to say, yeah, I need to do more deep work.

00:06:04.540 | But how do you actually get that to happen?

00:06:06.460 | And what we found from working with students

00:06:08.980 | is that there's a lot of these little details

00:06:10.860 | that need to be gotten right.

00:06:12.220 | Needs to be about tracking how much time

00:06:14.340 | you're actually spending doing deep work.

00:06:16.140 | It's about figuring out what your rituals are

00:06:18.660 | for getting into the deep work,

00:06:20.100 | for getting out of the deep work.

00:06:21.820 | It's about communicating when you're gonna be deep working

00:06:24.260 | with other people.

00:06:25.180 | And so, this is easy to talk about,

00:06:27.700 | but it's something that we actually spend a lot of time

00:06:29.740 | implementing in the course.

00:06:31.140 | So if you work on the course,

00:06:32.900 | the first month is going to be a month entirely dedicated

00:06:36.740 | to improving the quality of your deep work.

00:06:39.500 | The second month is gonna be entirely dedicated

00:06:41.620 | to improving your digital online social media usage

00:06:46.620 | in your leisure time.

00:06:47.620 | So we'll begin with the digital declutter

00:06:49.360 | and we'll work on, not just, okay,

00:06:51.340 | I'm gonna just get rid of everything and then figure it out.

00:06:54.260 | We're gonna create a new system for you

00:06:56.460 | so that you can have something that not only gets you off

00:07:00.220 | of this sort of algorithmic spiral of content,

00:07:03.180 | but gives you something better

00:07:04.260 | so that you don't feel like you wanna go back to it

00:07:06.520 | after three months.

00:07:07.460 | And then finally, in the Focus Mind Challenge,

00:07:09.420 | we're going to tackle a project to learn

00:07:11.820 | or make something new so you can reclaim

00:07:13.980 | all of that useful time and have some more interesting

00:07:16.780 | hobbies, learn something important, really stretch yourself.

00:07:19.740 | So that's the idea of the course.

00:07:21.180 | And so if a three month deep dive experience

00:07:24.240 | into those kinds of self-improvement goals

00:07:26.520 | sounds like something for you,

00:07:27.520 | then maybe Life of Focus will be a good course.

00:07:30.740 | - And this was the big idea we had

00:07:33.700 | when we were working on designing this course

00:07:35.700 | was the clarity of having each month be built around

00:07:40.140 | a singular project or goal.

00:07:43.940 | So you have an objective each month that you're focusing on

00:07:47.280 | and in the pursuit of that project or that goal,

00:07:50.900 | you are mastering a lot of the ancillary skills

00:07:53.780 | that are related to it.

00:07:54.780 | So you're gonna be overhauling the way you schedule

00:07:58.060 | your time and deep work, et cetera,

00:07:59.560 | during the deep work month.

00:08:00.500 | You have a concrete goal, but in the pursuit of that goal,

00:08:02.800 | you get much better at integrating deep work in general.

00:08:05.580 | During the digital minimalism month,

00:08:07.940 | you are going through a declutter process,

00:08:10.180 | really systematically changing your relationship to tools.

00:08:12.820 | And as you do that, you pick up all these other ideas

00:08:15.280 | around minimalism and the deep mind.

00:08:17.520 | You're working on a particular building,

00:08:19.880 | this intellectual output, but by doing this,

00:08:22.780 | I'm learning what it feels like to actually take my mind

00:08:25.420 | now that it's uncluttered and actually put it to work.

00:08:27.040 | So that I think is one of the cool aspects of this.

00:08:29.980 | So you're getting regular information.

00:08:32.420 | Every week, you're getting this regular information.

00:08:35.140 | Some of it directly related to helping you

00:08:37.180 | with the big projects you're working on.

00:08:38.580 | Some of it just more general

00:08:40.020 | about the general theme of that month.

00:08:41.740 | And I mean, Scott, I don't think people probably appreciate

00:08:44.300 | the amount of time you and I thought about this

00:08:46.140 | to get that balance exactly right.

00:08:48.920 | I mean, you and I have done another course together,

00:08:50.580 | Top Performer.

00:08:51.740 | You've done other online courses as well without me.

00:08:55.560 | And so there's this big base of experience

00:08:59.220 | that was being pulled from when we put this course together

00:09:01.500 | to try to get that perfect balance of concrete,

00:09:04.500 | regular information plus instruction.

00:09:07.580 | And I gotta say, I think we really hit it with this one.

00:09:09.680 | I'm really proud of this particular course.

00:09:11.980 | I think that's why it's been pretty popular

00:09:14.420 | ever since we first launched it back

00:09:15.920 | in those early pandemic days when it first went live.

00:09:19.580 | - Well, I think one of the things that is sort of underrated

00:09:22.080 | is you can read a book and you can get lots of ideas.

00:09:25.460 | You can listen to this podcast,

00:09:26.660 | but it doesn't always translate into action.

00:09:29.100 | It doesn't always just spontaneously generate this system

00:09:31.820 | that you actually use in your life.

00:09:33.260 | And so that's why we're really excited

00:09:35.100 | about this course format,

00:09:36.660 | because it is really trying to guide you

00:09:39.240 | through that process.

00:09:40.500 | And this is kind of like a masterclass.

00:09:42.260 | So if you have experimented with some of this stuff before,

00:09:45.500 | but you don't feel like you're exactly

00:09:47.980 | where you'd like to be,

00:09:49.260 | then this is something that could come in handy.

00:09:51.580 | And we really spend a lot of time focusing on the details.

00:09:55.060 | One of the things that you can see when you join the course

00:09:57.380 | is that we have these worksheet pages

00:09:59.340 | where we go through the step-by-step,

00:10:01.080 | how do you set up these routines?

00:10:03.140 | And then we have these really lengthy discussion pages

00:10:05.940 | where we have all these people

00:10:06.860 | who are weighing in their comments,

00:10:08.180 | like how do I make decisions

00:10:09.860 | about whether to count certain things as deep work or not?

00:10:13.060 | Or how do I make a decision

00:10:14.460 | about how to deal with this particular kind of challenge?

00:10:17.180 | And so it ends up becoming this library

00:10:19.440 | of dealing with that nitty gritty,

00:10:21.240 | because it is those details,

00:10:23.180 | which is whether you succeed or fail

00:10:26.180 | with these kinds of attempts.

00:10:27.660 | And so the big ideas you're already familiar with,

00:10:30.300 | you're probably already sold on the need

00:10:32.220 | to have more deep work and have a deeper, more focused life,

00:10:35.760 | but it's often the implementation where people get hung up.

00:10:38.340 | And that's what I think we're really proud of,

00:10:40.140 | of kind of putting together all these little pieces

00:10:43.140 | in this course.

00:10:44.820 | - And here's a little secret backstory to this course.

00:10:47.700 | We had a lot of time to get the ideas right,

00:10:51.160 | because actually a lot of the filming that happened

00:10:52.980 | for this course was deep in the early days of the pandemic.

00:10:56.680 | So while everyone was at home,

00:10:59.980 | Scott and I would be surreptitiously sneaking off

00:11:02.580 | to film studios with our crews, looking around,

00:11:06.860 | everything was empty and we could just sit

00:11:08.340 | and film and think.

00:11:09.180 | So we actually were able to take advantage

00:11:10.820 | of the whole world being shut down

00:11:13.380 | to put all of our energy into making this course successful.

00:11:17.200 | So let's make sure that you have all the right information.

00:11:19.120 | So again, as Scott said, if you're mastered the basics,

00:11:24.020 | you've heard me talk about this,

00:11:25.260 | you've heard Scott talk about this,

00:11:26.460 | you've read his books, you've read my books,

00:11:28.340 | and now you're ready to go to the next level,

00:11:30.100 | you should consider this course.

00:11:31.580 | This is for working deeper, living deeper,

00:11:35.140 | and thinking deeper.

00:11:36.060 | If you're ready to do those three things,

00:11:38.140 | then you might wanna check this out.

00:11:39.540 | So go to lifeoffocuscourse.com with dashes,

00:11:42.880 | life-of-focus-course.com.

00:11:46.800 | And there's a lot of information on there.

00:11:48.300 | You can learn a lot more about the course.

00:11:50.220 | There's testimonials from people.

00:11:51.780 | You can see how it's actually broken up

00:11:53.820 | and really consider, okay, is this for me or not?

00:11:57.540 | Because we have our students go through this course,

00:12:00.220 | roughly speaking as a cohort, it's timed registration.

00:12:04.860 | So it's this week, the week this podcast episode airs,

00:12:08.500 | Monday to Friday, is the week that the course is open.

00:12:12.700 | So if you're interested,

00:12:13.980 | go over to lifeoffocuscourse.com with dashes right now,

00:12:18.080 | because we only have a week

00:12:19.580 | in which we can actually sign people up.

00:12:23.300 | All right, so Scott, I'm excited about this.

00:12:24.660 | I hope you and I have some of our,

00:12:26.420 | more of our listeners and readers join.

00:12:28.180 | I always enjoy following the progress of our students

00:12:30.620 | when we have a new cohort coming through.

00:12:33.580 | So thanks for jumping on the show.

00:12:37.520 | And also thanks for keeping us with,

00:12:40.700 | I was gonna say, and I don't wanna self-deprecate us.

00:12:44.120 | Our URL game is not as good as it could be.

00:12:47.460 | We've got a lot of dashes.

00:12:50.540 | Now, I think we're stuck with this

00:12:52.060 | because we did the course that we've been running

00:12:54.440 | since 2014, Top Performer.

00:12:56.160 | I think we had the dashes in it.

00:12:57.740 | So now we're following that convention,

00:13:00.300 | but man, I bet there's someone out there who's-

00:13:02.980 | - Well, it's the magic of Google and websites

00:13:04.420 | that it's pretty easy to find on our website as well.

00:13:06.660 | So we did, we spared the expense on the URL

00:13:11.660 | so we could put it into film production.

00:13:14.460 | - Exactly, a legal, a legal surreptitious,

00:13:17.700 | early pandemic, anti-lockdown film production.

00:13:20.580 | No, the thing is we're writers, Scott.

00:13:21.980 | You and I are writers.

00:13:22.860 | So we don't think about reading the names of URLs.

00:13:26.280 | We figure on written out, things look really clear.

00:13:28.920 | We're not meant for the- - Too much hypertext.

00:13:30.560 | That's too much experience for us.

00:13:31.920 | We're not used to pitching it on-

00:13:33.040 | - No, exactly, exactly.

00:13:34.760 | But anyway, Scott, thanks for calling in

00:13:36.320 | and everyone check that out if it sounds interesting.

00:13:39.360 | - All right, so thank you, Scott,

00:13:40.600 | for calling in, check out that course.

00:13:43.180 | What I wanna talk about today in today's episode

00:13:47.880 | is motivated by an article from the New York Times

00:13:50.840 | that quite a few of you, my alert listeners sent to me.

00:13:55.840 | I'm gonna load this article on the screen here

00:13:57.760 | so we can mark it up.

00:13:58.600 | So again, this is at youtube.com/countedportmedia

00:14:01.520 | episode 239 or thedeeplife.com.

00:14:04.640 | I've loaded this up on my screen.

00:14:06.800 | The title of this article, which came out on March 4th,

00:14:10.200 | so this is recent, is "Time Has Been Codified,

00:14:15.200 | Has Been Codified and Commodified."

00:14:18.080 | Ooh, I mixed those together.

00:14:19.220 | Time has been codified and commodified.

00:14:22.820 | This is a mouthful, Jesse.

00:14:24.020 | They should do a zock dock ad, somehow this title

00:14:29.380 | Zach doc.com.com.com.

00:14:31.180 | I applaud O'Dell.

00:14:33.060 | Alright, let me try this again, guys.

00:14:34.380 | Time has been codified and commodified.

00:14:37.720 | Genie Odell wants to set it free.

00:14:39.400 | So this is an article.

00:14:40.580 | It's a profile of Jenny O'dell.

00:14:43.240 | Gini Odell is 36 years old.

00:14:45.300 | She's a, an artist who in long time had a digital art, I don't know what it was, I

00:14:50.680 | guess, professorship position at Stanford.

00:14:53.160 | She does sort of ecologically informed found object style art.

00:14:56.660 | She wears complicated glasses.

00:14:58.200 | She lives on the West coast.

00:14:59.200 | You know what we're talking about?

00:15:00.000 | Um, Odell and I's paths have intertwined before back in 2019.

00:15:05.420 | She released a book called how to do nothing resisting the attention economy.

00:15:09.900 | This came out the same week as my 2019 book, digital minimalism.

00:15:14.920 | There are some similarities in those two books.

00:15:16.380 | There's a lot of press.

00:15:17.200 | We ended up being combined together in.

00:15:20.960 | So there's a lot of coverage where our, our trajectories were

00:15:23.740 | temporarily thrown together.

00:15:25.380 | So for example, back then, uh, Gia Tolentino at the New Yorker published a big double

00:15:30.340 | review in the magazine of my book and Jenny's book and sort of contrasted them.

00:15:34.380 | The New York times book review did a big thing that talked about both of our books.

00:15:37.900 | I think the ringer did something.

00:15:39.500 | So we were sort of on a parallel path for a little while because our

00:15:42.800 | books came out at the same time.

00:15:44.560 | Anyway, she has a new book out called saving time, sort of a

00:15:48.460 | follow-up to how to do nothing.

00:15:50.980 | This article is about it.

00:15:52.840 | I think it generates some interesting, relatively deep points

00:15:56.940 | about our relationship with time.

00:15:58.460 | And so I wanted to go through in today's deep type, I was going to go through

00:16:02.580 | some big points from this article as a jumping off point to get at today's

00:16:07.460 | deep question, which is, is our relationship to time broken?

00:16:14.320 | So we're going to do a deep dive based off Jenny's article.

00:16:16.720 | Then I have a collection of questions and case studies that are all connected

00:16:20.240 | to the same theme about thinking through our relationship to time, work in time,

00:16:24.980 | time management, et cetera.

00:16:26.000 | So that do we have a broken relationship with time?

00:16:27.620 | We'll get into that with the questions.

00:16:28.760 | And then the final segment will be something interesting, an interesting

00:16:32.240 | article that people sent to me through my interesting account, newport.com email

00:16:35.800 | address, this something interesting article also loosely relates to this theme as well.

00:16:39.940 | So it's a whole episode about our relationship to time, our

00:16:44.320 | troubled relationship to time.

00:16:45.580 | All right, before I jump into some quotes from this New York Times article, I'll

00:16:50.720 | give a bit of a warning here.

00:16:52.900 | Odell is a, an academic thinker.

00:16:55.640 | So the way she talks about things or the way people talk about her work may seem

00:17:00.880 | somewhat jargony or a little bit sort of elitist or aloof to sort of the standard

00:17:07.000 | person who's thinking about the relationship to time.

00:17:09.640 | The, I guess the response I want to give is Odell should be taken seriously.

00:17:15.340 | I would say of that sort of San Francisco, Brooklyn axis of the post-capitalist

00:17:19.960 | crowds, the people who are very much in the mood right now of writing about

00:17:24.300 | post-capitalism and, and the way that there's all these forces that are sort

00:17:28.680 | of disintegrating the American social fabric due to exploitative capitalists,

00:17:32.920 | extraction, et cetera, et cetera.

00:17:34.380 | Odell is by far, I think one of the more serious voices.

00:17:37.580 | So instead of just regurgitating Mad Libs styles, different reconfigurations

00:17:41.480 | of ideas she's seen on Twitter, they get re-likes.

00:17:43.320 | Odell's actually a deep thinker on this.

00:17:45.400 | She's heavily influenced in particular by the Italian communist

00:17:48.520 | philosopher, Franco Berardi.

00:17:50.180 | A good way of understanding her work is taking Berardi's work, his critique of

00:17:55.080 | this would have been like late 20th century capitalism, and she's moving it

00:17:59.220 | forward to 21st century digital attention, economy, capitalism,

00:18:02.820 | digital knowledge, work capitalism.

00:18:04.460 | So there's actually, I think a more serious intellectual foundation

00:18:07.300 | with Odell that's not found in a lot of other sort of very online

00:18:12.460 | type commentators on this issue.

00:18:14.220 | So she speaks in a different language than you or I, she's an academic, but

00:18:18.400 | let's take it seriously nonetheless.

00:18:21.460 | All right.

00:18:21.940 | So I'm going to load up the article again here.

00:18:23.360 | There's a couple of points I want to highlight, and then we're going to

00:18:26.260 | riff off this into my own takes on things.

00:18:28.420 | So early on in the article, we hear about her reaction, what happened after her

00:18:35.520 | book, How to Do Nothing became a bestseller back in 2019.

00:18:39.180 | So according to the article, Odell said that when she heard from readers,

00:18:43.460 | they often told her that they didn't have enough time in the day to reconsider

00:18:49.440 | how they approach productivity.

00:18:50.900 | So How to Do Nothing was a challenge to productivity culture.

00:18:55.020 | Readers came back to her and said, I like what you're saying,

00:18:58.380 | but I can't act on it.

00:18:59.460 | I'm too busy.

00:19:00.060 | So this is a, think of this as like an origin story of sorts.

00:19:05.180 | For her new book, Saving Time, where she said, I'm going to look closely

00:19:07.820 | then at our relationship with time.

00:19:10.120 | All right.

00:19:10.580 | So scrolling forward here more in the article is a couple of the

00:19:12.760 | quotes I wanted to highlight.

00:19:14.340 | All right.

00:19:15.980 | So later on, we see this kind of grounding is central to Odell's

00:19:22.220 | relationship with time, the one she forged while writing this book.

00:19:25.140 | So what precedes this in the article is Odell actually instructing the New

00:19:29.260 | York Times reporter who was going to profile her to go to a specific spot in

00:19:33.880 | Manhattan or in between two row houses.

00:19:37.420 | There's this massive ancient rock formation that's maintained.

00:19:41.200 | And she said, go there and just be there and marvel and how interesting and

00:19:45.420 | unusual this thing is in the middle of the city.

00:19:47.580 | So there's grounding that's being referenced here as Odell argued in her

00:19:50.860 | book, Saving Time, that we need to ground our experience of time and actual real

00:19:55.860 | things and experiences and noticing.

00:19:58.660 | She goes on to elaborate about this notion of grounding.

00:20:01.460 | This is Odell speaking here.

00:20:03.380 | This is probably something that a lot of people experienced

00:20:05.860 | during the pandemic, she said.

00:20:07.420 | There was some assurance and seeing ecologically speaking, big things like

00:20:11.660 | migratory birds, seeing the flowers come back and seeing that this goes on.

00:20:15.140 | I think that this was very therapeutic for people.

00:20:17.040 | It obviously was for me.

00:20:18.460 | Your body also has that kind of time.

00:20:21.700 | She continued, you are not, you are in that.

00:20:24.900 | You are not just in a calendar box.

00:20:28.020 | So this is a, this is a key point I want to come back to.

00:20:31.020 | Let me just do a little snide aside.

00:20:32.700 | I try not to do these things, but a little snide aside, this is probably

00:20:35.100 | something a lot of people experienced during the pandemic.

00:20:36.820 | Elite knowledge workers working from home experiences during the pandemic.

00:20:41.460 | That's about 30% of the population.

00:20:43.340 | The majority of the population still had to do their jobs, but let's put that aside.

00:20:46.380 | Like as with my writing, this is a, this discussion of the codification

00:20:50.460 | and commodification of time is not meant for the entire population writ large,

00:20:53.700 | but more for highly autonomous knowledge workers.

00:20:56.620 | All right.

00:20:57.320 | One other thing before we get into our discussion here, she said, ultimately

00:21:02.060 | her goal in writing this book was to find a relationship

00:21:04.700 | to time that wasn't painful.

00:21:06.700 | And while she wasn't, isn't living in bliss every moment of the day,

00:21:10.260 | she says, she thinks she succeeded.

00:21:11.580 | I feel better.

00:21:13.100 | She said, time feels thicker.

00:21:14.780 | It's made out of stuff.

00:21:16.260 | It's made out of people and things that are in it.

00:21:18.940 | It doesn't have as much of that empty grid a minute's kind of feeling.

00:21:23.420 | When you start to think of time in more collective ways, trying to leave

00:21:26.340 | behind the individual time banks, it opens up the horizon of what's

00:21:29.700 | possible in your and others time together.

00:21:33.620 | Okay.

00:21:35.300 | So let me decode Odell for you here.

00:21:38.260 | My take on what she is saying in part is that human beings are not naturally

00:21:44.140 | wired to think about time as an abstract substance to which we assign

00:21:49.460 | abstract knowledge work tasks.

00:21:52.620 | This, uh, almost mathematical optimization problem of we have X minutes of time.

00:21:59.340 | I have these different tasks and I can do an assignment of time to task.

00:22:02.500 | This one needs this much time.

00:22:03.420 | This means this much time.

00:22:04.300 | Can we, can we fit how many things can we fit in where all the

00:22:07.420 | activities are abstract or digital.

00:22:09.060 | They're occurring on a screen.

00:22:10.300 | You're just hitting keys.

00:22:11.340 | It's this, this, uh, being lost almost in this world, this world of the

00:22:16.220 | abstract signifier, not grounded in a concrete world of things around you.

00:22:20.420 | So in other words, an interpretation of Odell would be to, to live by a time

00:22:25.140 | block plan of the type I talk about often on the show is in some degrees to be

00:22:30.020 | living at odds with human nature.

00:22:34.220 | Time is somehow thicker and richer when you're instead able to focus your

00:22:37.380 | experience of time on interactions with people or experiences or a fierce

00:22:41.940 | attention to what's going on around you.

00:22:43.580 | The migratory birds, the leaves are now out on this tree, the thorough approach

00:22:48.220 | to noticing and appreciating that gives us a human experience of time.

00:22:54.420 | The, as she calls it, the empty grid of minutes.

00:22:56.780 | So the time block plan that you're filling in is in some sense, not human.

00:23:00.980 | It's something artificial that we've had to impose.

00:23:03.820 | All right.

00:23:05.220 | So here's my take on that.

00:23:06.300 | I think she's right about the unnatural nature of the relationship to time.

00:23:12.580 | That's required by modern knowledge work.

00:23:15.060 | I say this often time block planning, for example, is very demanding and stressful.

00:23:22.940 | It is why, for example, I'm really clear about only do it to the degree you have

00:23:27.300 | to do it once you shut down for the day.

00:23:28.820 | Don't do it at night.

00:23:30.020 | Don't do it on the weekends.

00:23:31.340 | In the new version of the time block planner that's coming out this summer,

00:23:34.540 | by the way, it's spiral bound.

00:23:36.380 | I'm very excited about this.

00:23:37.340 | I've gotten rid of time blocking grids for the weekends altogether and

00:23:40.700 | having much consolidated weekend.

00:23:42.340 | So called the weekend pages.

00:23:44.620 | And it's, it's much more consolidated for much less informal plans.

00:23:47.780 | That's because time block planning is hard and it's draining.

00:23:51.580 | However, it is the reality of most knowledge work jobs today that it's

00:23:55.900 | your best bet for trying to get your arms around everything being thrown at

00:23:59.660 | you without completely being overwhelmed, without having to eat up every minute

00:24:02.980 | of your day, even outside of normal work hours, trying to keep up with work.

00:24:06.540 | So it's the best defense we have against a difficult situation.

00:24:11.420 | Um, where I disagree with Odell is in the discussion of what is causing

00:24:20.660 | these problems, I think for the elite online types, even for the very, uh,

00:24:25.940 | you know, engaged and smarter than me types like Odell, uh, influenced by,

00:24:31.060 | you know, especially early critical theories and, and, uh, the

00:24:34.900 | modernist offshoots of Marxism.

00:24:37.420 | It's very tempting to try to understand everything through exploitative forces

00:24:42.780 | that are, if you're from a modern perspective, are exploitatively trying

00:24:49.340 | to extract value from your latent capital, uh, your latent capital value.

00:24:54.940 | So as capital is trying to, um, extract value from you and your labor, or if

00:24:58.740 | you're of the more post-modernist set, it's more about exploitative forces,

00:25:02.420 | trying to maintain power dynamics.

00:25:04.380 | Odell's more from that older school, um, modernist sort of

00:25:07.540 | Marxist type, uh, line of thinking.

00:25:11.100 | So a lot of what she would talk about pulls from sort of a gussied up version

00:25:15.740 | of base superstructure theory move from the early 20th century to the 20th.

00:25:19.220 | First, the basis capitalism, the superstructure here are cultural forces.

00:25:23.860 | Like, I don't know, she calls them the productivity bros, I guess in this,

00:25:28.420 | in this worldview, James clear and Tim Ferriss, and I suppose myself is secretly

00:25:33.500 | tricking people into, uh, working more so that the owners of capital can better

00:25:38.900 | exploit labor from the alienated masses, et cetera, et cetera.

00:25:41.860 | I think that's intellectually interesting.

00:25:45.300 | I think it's why these type of theories have resurged, even though they fell

00:25:50.580 | out of favor in the sixties, they've resurged again in the very online, uh,

00:25:53.580 | line types in the modern 21st century.

00:25:55.620 | There's something there, but it doesn't match my on the ground observations of

00:26:02.020 | how we ended up in this place where time block planning is our only defense

00:26:05.500 | against these overwhelming onslaught of tasks.

00:26:08.460 | I think the, the actual problem is much more proximate.

00:26:11.420 | It's we have too much to do.

00:26:13.900 | And I think the reason we have too much to do is to some degree, maybe about

00:26:18.540 | exploitative relationships with capital, but a lot of it has to do with, uh,

00:26:22.900 | culture and technology shifted.

00:26:24.820 | And we did not shift along with it, any sort of meaningful, culturally accepted

00:26:30.420 | norms or boundaries for controlling workload.

00:26:32.980 | When knowledge work collided with email, digital networks, computer-based

00:26:41.220 | productivity tools that meant that the individual worker now became a jack of

00:26:45.300 | all trades that could basically do anything.

00:26:47.180 | We had no more specialization of labor.

00:26:48.860 | You just, anything could come to any department who needs you can throw

00:26:51.620 | something your way and you can fill out a form and go on the Microsoft

00:26:54.180 | PowerPoint and make it happen.

00:26:55.300 | I think this collision of knowledge work, which itself was quite new, only really

00:26:59.860 | emerging as a major sector in the 1950s or sixties, this collision in the nineties

00:27:03.540 | and early two thousands with technology was fast and we weren't prepared for it.

00:27:07.380 | And we have no culturally accepted or organizationally accepted ways of

00:27:10.780 | understanding, well, how much work should someone be doing?

00:27:13.060 | How specialized should they do?

00:27:14.380 | How do we control the incoming work loads to keep that reasonable and aligned with

00:27:19.700 | how people's brains can actually work?

00:27:21.460 | The physical, the physical version of this thinking is something we did go through

00:27:28.860 | in the industrial sector in the early 20th century.

00:27:31.220 | So the physical version of this thinking is, well, how much can a human body do?

00:27:35.260 | What's reasonable to ask a human body?

00:27:37.220 | How many, how safe, you know, how safe is the physical things you're doing in a

00:27:41.500 | factory?

00:27:41.780 | How many hours can we expect someone to actually work in a factory?

00:27:44.100 | How young should we tolerate someone actually being in one of these factories

00:27:47.380 | and the labor rights movements built around unions, as well as legislative

00:27:50.900 | action could come up with answers.

00:27:52.700 | The fair language, fair labor standards act of the 1930s said the workday should

00:27:57.660 | be eight hours, 40 hours a week.

00:28:00.420 | And if you want someone to work longer, you got to pay them a lot more.

00:28:02.460 | And by the way, 12 year olds should not be working in the factories, though, as we

00:28:07.060 | saw in a recent, some recent reporting.

00:28:08.860 | We've sort of slipped on that recently, but that's a whole other point.

00:28:12.500 | Safety standards OSHA.

00:28:14.860 | So we went through all this with physical, the physical activities of industrial

00:28:18.580 | labor.

00:28:18.860 | We haven't done it with the intellectual activities of knowledge work.

00:28:21.180 | What is a reasonable workload for a human brain to have to be juggling?

00:28:25.340 | What is a reasonable rate of switching back and forth between context that is

00:28:30.180 | compatible with a sustainable and not mentally deranging and fatiguing mode of

00:28:35.780 | work?

00:28:36.300 | How do we keep track of who's doing what?

00:28:38.980 | How do we assign, like when should be people working when it's this more highly

00:28:43.700 | autonomous energy-based knowledge work?

00:28:45.100 | Should it be based off workday hours?

00:28:46.500 | Should it be based on results?

00:28:47.540 | What's required to do that?

00:28:48.460 | All of this thinking basically has not yet been done in knowledge work.

00:28:53.020 | And as a result, the system as pushed towards inevitably and relentlessly

00:28:57.820 | without the need of a secret cabal of capitalist and Tim Ferriss, it has pushed

00:29:01.980 | towards, we have more and more to do and everyone is exhausted.

00:29:05.300 | And it happens in our life outside of work as well.

00:29:07.100 | We don't have newly emerged cultural standards for in the modern 21st century

00:29:13.260 | dual income knowledge work family with the, the specter of whatever competitive

00:29:17.940 | college admissions lurking six years in the future.

00:29:19.900 | Like what's the reasonable amount of activities for your kids to be doing or

00:29:22.420 | things for you to volunteer to, or different tasks to take on in your town.

00:29:25.340 | We've lost the standard.

00:29:26.780 | So we all do too much.

00:29:27.980 | And I think this is where a big source of the exhaustion is coming from.

00:29:33.460 | Now I think this is important because that's more tractable

00:29:36.020 | than the mustache twirlers.

00:29:38.220 | When our issue is the mustache twirlers are secretly trying to exploit us.

00:29:44.140 | And, you know, uh, through these base superstructure type forces, deploying

00:29:48.340 | their evil productivity, bro minions to try to trick us all into working too much

00:29:51.300 | more, what can we do Bolshevik revolution?

00:29:54.860 | All right.

00:29:55.340 | Short of that, what are we supposed to do?

00:29:57.860 | But when we say instead, no guys, we just got, we don't have any

00:30:00.780 | standards is out of control.

00:30:02.140 | Things change too fast.

00:30:03.260 | This is, this has a response.

00:30:05.100 | Let's catch up and let's start advocating for new ways of thinking about work and

00:30:10.460 | when work happens and how much work happens and how much work should be on

00:30:13.460 | someone's plate and how work is assigned and how we interact about it and what

00:30:16.940 | makes sense for individuals in their lives and how busy their kids need to be.

00:30:21.380 | And what's actually a reasonable load of, of, of activities of

00:30:25.140 | volunteering to be on your plate.

00:30:26.700 | How do we even define being a good citizen?

00:30:30.420 | How do we define being a good mother or father?

00:30:32.460 | How do we define being a good student?

00:30:35.060 | We need to catch up culturally.

00:30:37.460 | And I don't think we have to break through forces trying to hold us back.

00:30:41.700 | We just have to break through the inertia of this is difficult to do.

00:30:43.940 | So who has some good solutions here?

00:30:46.340 | I think Oliver Berkman, his book, 4,000 weeks has caught a lot of attention.

00:30:51.900 | I think he makes a really good case for how to change your own personal culture

00:30:55.100 | over how much work is a reasonable amount of work as an individual to take on.

00:30:59.580 | I think Greg McKeown with essentialism has a really good take on what it looks

00:31:04.300 | like in a workplace to begin to radically reduce the workloads.

00:31:08.820 | Laura Vanderkam, I think does really good work, especially thinking about a workload

00:31:13.420 | at home, the self-imposed workload you do in your roles, for example, as a parent

00:31:17.900 | or a friend or a community member.

00:31:19.540 | In addition to your work.

00:31:20.540 | I think my new book coming out next year, slow productivity is

00:31:25.020 | trying to get at this as well.

00:31:27.660 | These all have different solutions to this problem that I think Odell is

00:31:30.300 | correctly pointing out that we do have a broken relationship with time.

00:31:34.500 | So I think our reappraisal of our relationship with time is probably

00:31:37.980 | one of the more interesting things going on right now, especially in work culture.

00:31:41.820 | But also I think in our culture outside of work, I think the post-capitalist

00:31:46.220 | crowd is good at diagnosing this problem, but not necessarily great at solutions.

00:31:50.140 | If anything, they're very worried about offering solutions because they're worried

00:31:53.900 | that someone will then say you're trying to profit off of the, you are one of the

00:31:57.180 | exploiters, so they've kind of him themselves in a box there.

00:31:59.980 | They can point out the issues, but they joined the problem if they offer solutions.

00:32:03.540 | I do, however, think there is a growing chorus of us out there looking for more,

00:32:08.500 | a more human and humane relationship to workload, work, and time.

00:32:14.100 | So read Jenny's book when it comes out, read Oliver's book, read Laura's books,

00:32:17.580 | read my new book when it's out.

00:32:19.020 | I think a lot of interesting change is in the air.

00:32:24.940 | What I've learned Jesse is I think I just need more interesting glasses.

00:32:27.620 | I was just going to ask you that because you made the

00:32:29.940 | comment about complicated glasses.

00:32:31.780 | If you're in Brooklyn or San Francisco, sort of doing kind of art base, mixing

00:32:39.420 | art with a sort of like neo-Marxist type critique of labor forces, you

00:32:43.500 | have to wear complicated glasses.

00:32:44.980 | So they can be like completely round is like a big one, like

00:32:48.700 | completely round and thick framed.

00:32:50.300 | Or like Seth Godin has these good ones as a, as a man, you can wear these big,

00:32:55.620 | thick plastic frame glasses that are like an interesting color.

00:32:58.620 | Yellow.

00:32:59.780 | Uh, that was my note.

00:33:02.380 | I was going to bring that up.

00:33:03.220 | Complicated glasses.

00:33:04.300 | I need more complicated glasses.

00:33:05.820 | Then I can start talking about exploitative labor forces.

00:33:08.420 | I mean, whatever.

00:33:09.820 | And again, Odell actually comes by this honestly.

00:33:13.180 | It's just an actual academic.

00:33:14.540 | There's other people whose names I won't mention who I think are just borrowing

00:33:17.700 | this lingo because it gives them this like world weary resigned era

00:33:21.860 | sophistication and it seems frustrating.

00:33:24.380 | All right.

00:33:25.580 | Wait, so we have some questions from you.

00:33:27.420 | My listeners about this general topic of our broken relationship with time.

00:33:32.660 | Um, first I want to mention one of the sponsors, however, that

00:33:35.500 | makes this show possible.

00:33:36.700 | And that is our friends at 80,000 hours.

00:33:40.900 | So we just talked about Oliver Berkman's 4,000 weeks.

00:33:44.020 | Let's throw another number at you.

00:33:45.260 | 80,000 hours.

00:33:47.300 | Where does this number come from?

00:33:48.660 | It is roughly the number of hours you will work in your career.

00:33:52.660 | 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, 40 years, multiply those.

00:33:58.340 | You get the 80,000 hours.

00:34:00.380 | Now this is important, especially if you were thinking about how to have a

00:34:04.060 | positive impact on the world, because the time you spend in your career.

00:34:08.740 | Is the highest energy, one of the largest chunks of time you're gonna

00:34:11.940 | spend on anything in your life.

00:34:13.300 | So your job is probably the best tool you have to try to make a

00:34:18.180 | positive impact on the world.

00:34:20.380 | That's something I know because I've written a whole book about trying to

00:34:23.380 | make your way through the complicated path of figuring out your career.

00:34:28.260 | It can be really hard.

00:34:29.260 | If not quite frankly, pretty stressful to try to figure out what

00:34:32.140 | do I want to do with my life?

00:34:34.180 | This is where 80,000 hours enters the scene.

00:34:38.620 | It is a nonprofit co-founded by Will McCaskill, who is a philosopher

00:34:43.340 | at Oxford, it is a nonprofit that provides free research and support to

00:34:51.780 | help you find a career path for tackling one of the world's most pressing problems.

00:34:55.060 | So McCaskill has a connection to the effect of altruism movement.

00:34:58.140 | He sort of helped create it.

00:34:59.820 | So he definitely has a mindset of where can you get the most bang for your

00:35:04.420 | buck in terms of getting positive change in the world.

00:35:07.900 | And so it's one of the reasons why he helped found this nonprofit organization.

00:35:11.020 | If we can help individuals find careers that are meaningful to the world, each

00:35:15.060 | of those individuals will then generate 80,000 hours of meaningful work.

00:35:18.660 | Oh, and by the way, that individual is going to have a more meaningful life.

00:35:22.060 | So this is a high leverage idea for improving the world.

00:35:26.020 | So this is 80,000 hours.

00:35:28.500 | So if you're looking to make a big change to the direction of your career, so maybe

00:35:32.580 | your mid career, or if you're just starting out, or if you want to just change what

00:35:36.780 | you're doing in your current job to better address global problems, 80,000 hours can help.

00:35:43.660 | There's a couple of ways they can.

00:35:44.900 | You can join their free newsletter and they will send you an in-depth guide.

00:35:48.540 | They'll help you identify what problems are pressing and where you can

00:35:51.700 | have the biggest personal impact.

00:35:53.820 | They also have a job board where you can find hundreds of opportunities listed

00:35:58.500 | for going that will help you jobs that help go after some of the biggest,

00:36:01.500 | highest need global issues.

00:36:05.180 | They have an excellent 80,000 hours podcast.

00:36:08.660 | You get in-depth conversations with experts about how best to tackle

00:36:12.260 | global pressing global problems.

00:36:14.620 | Episode 94 with our good friend Ezra Klein is a particularly good one.

00:36:19.460 | He's always a very careful thinker.

00:36:21.100 | And that's all at 80,000 hours.org/deep.

00:36:28.940 | Let's see if I get these number of zeros, right, Jesse.

00:36:30.780 | 8-0-0-0-0-0-4 zeros.

00:36:38.820 | Yeah.

00:36:39.740 | Yeah.

00:36:40.020 | 8-0-0-0-0-hours.

00:36:43.580 | H-O-U-R-S.org/deep.

00:36:47.020 | I really suggest you check out that site.

00:36:48.900 | If you're interested in making the most out of your career, using your career

00:36:53.780 | to help make the world a better place.

00:36:55.180 | I also want to briefly mention our good friends at Hinson shaving.

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00:37:15.060 | I'm talking about parts on the Mars rover parts on the international space station.

00:37:18.700 | And in order to build these precision parts, they have incredibly precise machinery.

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00:37:26.100 | Well, they realized they could use the same machinery that they use to make

00:37:30.300 | these high precision space age parts to build a shaving razor that gives you a

00:37:36.300 | much better shave than anything on the market.

00:37:39.260 | So it is a beautifully constructed aluminum.

00:37:42.100 | Razor.

00:37:43.700 | You put a standard 10 cent safety razor blade into this razor.

00:37:48.300 | You screw it in.

00:37:49.020 | And because of the precision manufacturing, you have just a hair

00:37:52.620 | breadth width of blade sticking out on either side of the housing.

00:37:56.740 | Now, this is the key to getting a good shave.

00:37:58.980 | You obviously need some blades sticking out the scrape the, the hair, but if

00:38:02.380 | it's too much blade sticking out, you get the diving board effect.

00:38:05.180 | It goes up and down that gives you nicks.

00:38:07.420 | That's more likely to get clogged.

00:38:08.860 | So they use their precision manufacturing to build a razor that only needs a single

00:38:12.900 | 10 cent blade to give you a great shave.

00:38:15.260 | So you pay a little bit more up front to buy this beautifully

00:38:17.660 | engineered aluminum razor.

00:38:18.980 | But then year after year, you're just spending a dime.

00:38:23.100 | On the blades.

00:38:23.820 | It does not take long until the cost of your Hinson razor is much cheaper than

00:38:29.820 | it would have cost if you were continually buying the new disposables

00:38:33.220 | at the pharmacy or getting the subscription boxes sent to you.

00:38:36.660 | So I love really well-made things that does a job well and

00:38:40.060 | over time saves money.

00:38:41.940 | And that is Hinson.

00:38:43.500 | So it's time to say no to subscriptions and those expensive drug store razors

00:38:48.140 | and say yes to a razor that will last you a lifetime.

00:38:51.700 | Visit hinsonshaving.com/cal to pick the razor for you and use the code CAL and

00:38:56.700 | you'll get two years of blades free with your razor.

00:39:00.020 | Just make sure you add those two years worth of blades to your cart.

00:39:02.740 | Type in that promo code CAL when you check out and that price will go down to zero.

00:39:06.700 | That's 100 free blades when you head to H E N S O N S H A V I N G.com/cal

00:39:14.980 | and use the code CAL.

00:39:18.780 | All right, Jesse, I resisted the urge to continue my trend of increasingly

00:39:22.700 | outlandish stories about people making their way towards me to compliment my shave.

00:39:27.540 | I figured that was going to get, that was going to get worse before it got better.

00:39:32.180 | We're going to be doing 20 minute action sequences.

00:39:35.660 | So I pulled back.

00:39:37.500 | I pulled back.

00:39:38.700 | Let's just say it's a good shave.

00:39:39.820 | All right, let's do some questions.

00:39:41.100 | What do we got?

00:39:41.860 | All right.

00:39:42.740 | First question from Sam.

00:39:45.220 | There's a time management popular app that insists that people should automate their

00:39:49.660 | time, time blocking using AI driven apps.

00:39:53.260 | They think that it's too hard for people to manually replan and prioritize work.

00:39:57.180 | What's your response?

00:39:58.700 | Negative.

00:39:59.780 | I do not believe we need AI driven time blocking because we have to shave off the

00:40:07.060 | moments required to figure out what should be on our plan or to fix our plan when it

00:40:14.180 | actually drifts away.

00:40:15.580 | Now, Silicon Valley is desperate for knowledge worker productivity, which is

00:40:22.500 | this sort of trillion dollar a year business opportunity to be something that

00:40:25.820 | can only be fixed by proprietary high-tech tools that only they know how to make.

00:40:29.140 | There's huge money on the table there.

00:40:31.380 | The unfortunate reality for Silicon Valley, however, is that this is not an

00:40:37.420 | issue that needs complicated high technology to solve.

00:40:40.900 | Now there's a, there's a backstory here.

00:40:43.460 | This is a theory I have.

00:40:45.420 | I'll share it with you.

00:40:46.060 | It's my theory about how Silicon Valley accidentally polluted our understanding

00:40:52.060 | of productivity in a way that I think was, was very detrimental that we're only sort

00:40:56.060 | of pulling our way out of now in the last few years.

00:40:58.180 | Here's what I think happened in the early 19 or in the early nineties, in the 1990s,

00:41:02.780 | let's say in the 1990s, that whole decade when Silicon Valley was exploding into

00:41:06.580 | prominence and into its sort of economic relevance, this was the same time when the

00:41:12.860 | computer processor wars were unfolding.

00:41:15.860 | So you remember this, this March from the 286 to the 386 to the 486 to the Pentium,

00:41:20.700 | you actually knew how many megahertz your processor was.

00:41:25.380 | And this processor has more megahertz than that processor.

00:41:28.380 | So there's this age of the processor war during that age, as Silicon Valley was

00:41:32.980 | coming to cultural relevance and economic relevance, I believe they adopted

00:41:39.420 | implicitly this computer processor metaphor for understanding human productivity.

00:41:44.420 | So when you're, when you're trying to make your computer processor better, what

00:41:49.740 | does it mean for a computer processor to be more productive?

00:41:52.060 | It goes through instructions faster, as fast as possible.

00:41:56.900 | Let's reduce the time and friction in between each next instruction that we execute.

00:42:02.420 | The other key component to making a computer processor very productive was to make

00:42:06.340 | sure that it always has something to do.

00:42:09.340 | And so there's a technology called predictive pipelining, where essentially

00:42:13.020 | what would happen is you're, you're looking ahead to try to queue up instructions

00:42:17.780 | you think are going to come next, because you don't want there to be too much

00:42:20.900 | downtime after the processor completes the instruction to go figure out what it

00:42:25.380 | should do next.

00:42:26.020 | That's all cycles that could have been doing something productive.

00:42:29.220 | So there's this mindset of you want to queue always full of things to do.

00:42:32.100 | So it always has something to pull in so that it's always executing something and

00:42:35.700 | every single cycle is executing something.

00:42:37.620 | We want the speed between those cycles to be as fast as possible.

00:42:40.700 | That's productivity for a computer processor.

00:42:42.660 | Silicon Valley adopted a similar model for their human employees.

00:42:46.780 | The notion of human productivity that was built around, how do we reduce the friction

00:42:52.460 | and time in between actual tasks or things being completed?

00:42:57.180 | So the focus went into how do we make networks faster?

00:43:00.620 | How do we make email more seamless?

00:43:02.740 | So you can get to the thing quicker, fewer keystrokes to send that email and have

00:43:06.140 | another one come in.

00:43:07.420 | How can we build information management systems to make sure that every bit of

00:43:10.620 | information you need is right there at your fingertips?

00:43:13.180 | The notion of computer inboxes, email inboxes overflowing was not an issue because

00:43:18.340 | like a predictive pipeline, you would want more than enough stuff always ready to go

00:43:23.300 | so that that human always has something they can do, an email they can respond to,

00:43:26.340 | something they can attach, something they can drag over into this program and then

00:43:29.620 | send that through email to that program that gets loaded here and it gets put on

00:43:32.660 | the screen and people can see it.

00:43:33.740 | It's all about reducing friction, increasing the velocity of information,

00:43:36.940 | increasing the velocity of task execution.

00:43:39.340 | It's a very computer processor type metaphor.

00:43:42.060 | And because Silicon Valley became so powerful and economically relevant in the

00:43:45.820 | 1990s, what they were doing spread.

00:43:47.900 | And we know that happens.

00:43:50.300 | I think that the clearest example of Silicon Valley nonsense spreading nationwide,

00:43:57.220 | the one that we all know is open offices.

00:43:58.980 | Silicon Valley started doing these open office plans because in their highly

00:44:03.860 | rarefied world, it really mattered to them that they could signal the potential

00:44:08.660 | employees and potential investors that they were disruptive and they were doing

00:44:11.860 | business in a new way.

00:44:12.900 | It didn't really matter how they signaled this.

00:44:14.980 | They just had the signal that they were disruptive because they would get better

00:44:17.220 | talent and they would get more investment.

00:44:18.540 | And that was critical to their survival.

00:44:19.940 | I mean, they could have done almost anything here.

00:44:22.420 | They could have all worn weird, silly hats, whatever, but they just had the

00:44:26.700 | signal like we're being disruptive.

00:44:27.940 | And then you fast forward 10 years later and, you know, I gave a talk at a major

00:44:32.700 | drug manufacturing a few years ago, and they were all shaking their heads about

00:44:36.100 | their giant open office.

00:44:37.260 | It made no sense why they had open office, right?

00:44:39.060 | So stuff comes out of Silicon Valley.

00:44:40.620 | So I think this notion of productivity as computer processor style, picking up the

00:44:45.140 | speed and reducing the friction required to execute small things that just spread.

00:44:49.020 | And work and productivity in the knowledge sector became, are we on it?

00:44:54.460 | Are we quick?

00:44:55.020 | Are you here?

00:44:55.620 | Are you responding?

00:44:56.380 | Email's not fast enough.

00:44:57.900 | Let's do Slack.

00:45:00.060 | Let's do meetings and video because we can get onto those faster.

00:45:03.260 | How about you just directly have access to my calendar and can just start

00:45:06.260 | throwing things on there.

00:45:07.060 | So it's a speed.

00:45:08.060 | Now, of course, this didn't work at all because human beings are not computer

00:45:13.140 | processors.

00:45:13.820 | We can only focus on one thing at a time.

00:45:16.620 | It takes us a while to actually get going on something.

00:45:18.820 | And once we're done with something, we need time to wind that back down to rest

00:45:22.100 | and recharge and then move our mind into a new context to work on something else.

00:45:26.020 | I think there's probably like four different things we could productively

00:45:28.580 | give time to in a typical eight hour day with sufficient rest.

00:45:31.700 | Our brain can't jump back and forth like a computer processor.

00:45:34.780 | It's not agnostic to op codes.

00:45:36.620 | The thing we just operated makes a big difference on the thing that comes next.

00:45:40.180 | We're not just circuits being driven by a crystal oscillator at a constant speed.

00:45:45.420 | So this computer processor notion of productivity, I think was devastating.

00:45:49.260 | It's a lot of the exhaustion that people like we talked about earlier in the show,

00:45:53.860 | Ginny Odell, Berkman, McEwen, me, we're picking up on the exhaustion of this

00:46:00.540 | overload, this overload is in part a direct effect of this broken model of

00:46:04.940 | productivity that, again, it's not it's not mustache twirling exploit exploitation.

00:46:10.180 | It's hey, the cool kids are doing this.

00:46:12.500 | Jim Clark just built this giant Hyperion yacht.

00:46:18.260 | If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Michael Lewis's book, The New New

00:46:22.820 | Thing, about the excesses of Silicon Valley in the 1990s.

00:46:26.420 | They say, so whatever they're doing must make sense.

00:46:28.380 | Let's be more like them.

00:46:29.300 | And they built the tools that we used.

00:46:31.060 | We use their tools.

00:46:32.420 | We tried to emulate how they work.

00:46:33.980 | That's what I think is broken.

00:46:35.220 | And so, no, we're not going to fix our way out of this by making those tools faster.

00:46:39.300 | Using AI to manage our time block schedule is perpetuating the computer

00:46:46.900 | processor metaphor of increasing speed and reducing friction of task

00:46:50.220 | executions to key to productivity.

00:46:51.780 | That's an entirely broken metaphor.

00:46:53.260 | Our issue is not that it takes us too much time to build our plan or that it

00:46:58.020 | takes us too much time to change our plan.

00:47:00.300 | The issue is that we have 5x too many things in that plan.

00:47:03.100 | It takes me five minutes to really think through how to build my plan.

00:47:07.340 | It takes me three minutes to fix it.

00:47:08.580 | That's not the problem.

00:47:09.700 | The problem is checking the inbox once every one minute.

00:47:12.380 | The problem is having seven meetings per day where you're trying to scramble in

00:47:16.140 | between these meetings to try to answer Slack messages.

00:47:18.460 | That's where the real problem is.

00:47:19.940 | And the problem for Silicon Valley is that the solutions to that problem have

00:47:23.420 | more to do with getting away from their ideas and getting away from their tools

00:47:27.540 | than they do about embracing even more.

00:47:29.700 | So, nope, I'm not a big believer in an AI driven time blocking app.

00:47:35.060 | I think my paper planner probably works just fine.

00:47:37.420 | Not that I have a rant or anything, Jesse.

00:47:40.940 | That was a good rant.

00:47:42.140 | Not that I'm, not that I've thought about that.

00:47:44.220 | Just a couple of thoughts.

00:47:46.060 | All right, let's keep rolling here.

00:47:46.900 | What do we got next?

00:47:48.060 | Okay.

00:47:48.540 | Next question's from Amit, a 27 year old PhD student.

00:47:53.140 | Is slow productivity a good approach for getting world-class performance in

00:47:57.820 | competitive fields, such as being a top professor or chess player?

00:48:01.540 | Well, I mean, let's think about this, Amit.

00:48:04.140 | I mean, I get your concern is, and I'm going to reword your question, but your

00:48:06.980 | concern is, wait, slow productivity means I can't be world-class.

00:48:10.860 | Well, let's think through.

00:48:11.780 | World-class performers, world-class mathematician, world-class chess player.

00:48:18.660 | What do they have to do to get there?

00:48:19.900 | Number one, they tend to focus on a very small number of things.

00:48:25.300 | For really world-class people, they typically focus to the almost pathological

00:48:30.020 | exclusion of anything else in their life.

00:48:31.900 | They are returning to it again and again, uh, with busy periods where they're

00:48:38.900 | really locked in and periods of recovery.

00:48:40.780 | So there's this sort of these seasonal uneven rhythms to how that work goes.

00:48:46.180 | Um, and they're obsessed with getting better and better, increasing

00:48:48.820 | the quality of what they do.

00:48:50.020 | I mean, those are basically reworded versions of the three

00:48:54.300 | principles of slow productivity.

00:48:55.660 | Do fewer things, working at a natural pace, obsessing over quality.

00:48:59.900 | The people who are best at what they do in the world are slow

00:49:04.980 | productivity enthusiasts.

00:49:05.980 | They just don't know that term.

00:49:06.980 | And I think what's happening here is there's a semantic shift where you,

00:49:10.940 | where you, you're thinking about slow as slowing down your progress and fast as

00:49:17.340 | being moving quicker towards your goals.

00:49:19.940 | And you have that exactly backwards.

00:49:22.260 | Fast productivity is defined by frenetic busyness, more

00:49:27.460 | things switching more often.

00:49:29.100 | You will produce less work and make less progress at the higher levels of quality

00:49:34.860 | in a fast productivity environment than in a slow productivity environment,

00:49:38.220 | which means stick to fewer things.

00:49:40.740 | Really obsessed over doing those things.

00:49:42.100 | Well, allow your pace to move up and down as dictated by your natural rhythm.

00:49:45.540 | So slow productivity is basically the only way towards world class performance.

00:49:49.380 | They've already figured that out.

00:49:50.740 | The argument in the book I'm writing now is that we need to bring those

00:49:54.060 | ideas to more people and more context, not just for the Magnus Carlson's of the

00:49:59.260 | world, but for the vice director of HR, for the computer developer, for the

00:50:05.620 | person who works in marketing, copywriting, trying to take this idea that we already

00:50:09.540 | know in these rarefied fields and make it more generally applicable.

00:50:12.780 | All right, let's keep rolling, Jesse.

00:50:17.180 | All right.

00:50:18.260 | Next question is from Joseph.

00:50:19.740 | Dear Cal and Jesse, here's my question for you both.

00:50:23.260 | When it comes to constructing a deep life, what are you most

00:50:26.220 | proud of having accomplished?

00:50:27.540 | Where do you still find yourselves struggling?

00:50:29.820 | You know, Jesse, is that one catch you off guard or do you have, do you have a thought?

00:50:35.020 | They want to know.

00:50:36.100 | I have a thought.

00:50:38.060 | Well, it doesn't really catch me off guard because I saw the

00:50:39.980 | question when I was prepping the show.

00:50:41.180 | You're not supposed to tell them that.

00:50:42.700 | You're supposed to say, oh, that's an interesting question.

00:50:45.180 | Well, off the top of my head.

00:50:46.500 | And then you put on your reading glasses and start.

00:50:48.340 | Put on my complicated glasses.

00:50:50.260 | Put on your complicated glasses and start talking about the exploitative

00:50:52.900 | mechanics of labor alienation.

00:50:54.540 | All right.

00:50:55.420 | What, so what's your answer, Jesse?

00:50:56.660 | Um, I think I do a decent job of, you know, balance, you know, I'd have work

00:51:04.420 | and then I coach and, um, got my personal life and then I work out too.

00:51:11.460 | So I do that, you know, pretty much every day.

00:51:13.860 | So I'm happy with that in some regards.

00:51:17.300 | Sometimes, you know, working out and stuff does take a lot of time and then

00:51:22.620 | that limits some other things, but I kind of just look at what you've been talking

00:51:27.260 | about and just take the slow approach for that type of stuff.

00:51:30.340 | I mean, I would say that about you.

00:51:33.260 | I would say you're, you're very intentional in lifestyle design.

00:51:37.260 | Yeah.

00:51:37.980 | I think you're right.

00:51:39.020 | Like, I mean, you kind of have it figured out.

00:51:40.620 | I think you're good at noting like, this is important to me.

00:51:43.340 | Like the, like the social, the social aspect of my life is important to me.

00:51:47.780 | And this physical aspect is important to me.

00:51:49.700 | And you, you figure out configurations and then you, uh, tweak

00:51:52.740 | the configurations as needed.

00:51:54.580 | Um, and you know what, what I like about your story, by the way, is, you know,

00:51:57.820 | I talk a lot about when you work backwards from the vision of the lifestyle and

00:52:01.380 | then figure out, Oh, like, what are my ways to it, you end up sometimes with

00:52:04.940 | interesting approaches that you wouldn't come across if you were just starting

00:52:08.860 | from going the other direction and just be like, Oh, what should I do?

00:52:12.020 | Um, when you're instead trying to solve for a cool or complicated lifestyle

00:52:15.900 | picture, you end up innovating more.

00:52:17.740 | And so I think for example, like you figuring out about the, the country club.

00:52:21.900 | That was working backward because it solves a bunch of things for you.

00:52:26.180 | It gives you different types of outdoor sports and social connection

00:52:30.900 | different people, um, golf and tennis, and you can practice and know people and be

00:52:36.700 | involved in the clubhouse and all these types of things, but you probably, you

00:52:39.060 | would never have gotten there if you were just doing the normal thing of just working

00:52:41.620 | forward from what do I want to do with my time?

00:52:44.260 | Yeah.

00:52:44.500 | Because typically a country club, you might think it's, it's, you know, uh, upper

00:52:47.940 | middle-aged lawyers that are networking on the golf course or something like that.

00:52:51.060 | But you realize like, actually there's a way to make this reasonable.

00:52:54.140 | There's a way, you know, anyways, I think that's like an example of.

00:52:56.700 | Yeah, no, I agree.

00:52:57.540 | Yeah.

00:52:57.820 | There's also really cool places to read at like country clubs.

00:53:00.300 | There's like different places you can sit and stuff.

00:53:02.100 | I know you like that.

00:53:03.660 | I think I would like that.

00:53:05.340 | The problem is I don't like golf or tennis.

00:53:07.420 | Yeah.

00:53:07.780 | I wasn't saying that.

00:53:08.460 | I was, I was saying you'd like, no, but I, I, yeah, yeah.

00:53:10.860 | I've always, I always noted that I always enjoyed that in curb your enthusiasm.

00:53:14.860 | I was like, you know, Larry gets a lot of value out of the club because they have

00:53:18.220 | lunch there, like they do other things.

00:53:19.780 | Yeah.

00:53:20.020 | Um, that's very, that's very intentional.

00:53:22.140 | The, the, here's my observation about this is if I just am looking at my

00:53:26.860 | professional life and you know, the deep aspects of my professional life, the list

00:53:32.380 | of things are like, yeah, this is, um, you know, I'm proud of this is very deep and

00:53:36.900 | important.

00:53:37.500 | It's not super long.

00:53:39.180 | I mean, it's my books.

00:53:40.100 | There's a subset of my academic and public facing articles.

00:53:44.060 | And I'm very proud of, they're hard to predict in advance, but like, this was a

00:53:47.540 | really great mathematical idea that did not exist in the world.

00:53:50.500 | And now it does.

00:53:51.140 | And it's beautiful.

00:53:51.700 | I like it.

00:53:52.220 | Or, you know, this article I think hit a nerve and it's like helping the culture

00:53:55.180 | understand some particular thing that's going on.

00:53:57.420 | Um, you know, I'm, I'm proud of that.

00:53:59.900 | And then the individual case studies of either students at Georgetown's or readers

00:54:04.460 | of mine, I meet who've actually made significant changes to their life because

00:54:08.700 | of in part interactions we've had on my information.

00:54:11.260 | I'm very proud of that.

00:54:11.980 | Uh, and yet I would say most of my activity on most days doesn't directly

00:54:18.220 | actually feed to one of those three types of things.

00:54:20.020 | And I think that's interesting.

00:54:22.380 | And I think that's just a reality of the inevitable creeping busyness of

00:54:27.340 | modernity or something like this.

00:54:28.980 | But, but it's, it's, I was just noticing that when I was thinking about this

00:54:31.940 | question earlier today, that I might go through a whole day where, you know,

00:54:36.860 | I'm like, I did so much activity today.

00:54:38.580 | And so little of it was actually just trying to write that book or article

00:54:43.100 | that's going to change someone's mind or just spending some time with

00:54:45.700 | someone whose life was changed.

00:54:46.820 | It's no, it's, it's, you know, I'm working on a teaching statement for a

00:54:52.220 | promotion packet that probably is not going to be read or I'm in the weeds on

00:54:56.860 | technical issues of the website migration as we move to a different, uh, as we move

00:55:02.220 | to a different provider, then the email whitelist is not quite working right.

00:55:05.740 | Or getting on zooms to talk about whatever.

00:55:08.140 | And anyways, I don't know.

00:55:09.660 | I got reflective, Jesse.

00:55:10.660 | Yeah.

00:55:11.100 | Ferris had a recent episode about this too.

00:55:13.460 | And he was kinda, he had a coach on and they were like going through this same

00:55:16.780 | sort of thing that you were talking about.

00:55:17.940 | And which episode, I need to listen to this.

00:55:19.180 | Which episode was this?

00:55:20.060 | It was the one right before, right after Mobison.

00:55:23.100 | It was like two ago or one ago.

00:55:24.780 | Okay.

00:55:25.260 | All right.

00:55:25.820 | I'm going to look that, I'm going to look that up.

00:55:27.500 | Yeah.

00:55:27.700 | I, I, I don't want to give, this was a, I won't give identifying details here.

00:55:31.820 | Cause this was not an email for public consumption, though.

00:55:34.660 | This is someone maybe we're going to have to have on the show

00:55:36.220 | later when our book comes out.

00:55:37.420 | But I was talking to someone who had crossed paths with us.

00:55:40.340 | We were both at MIT at the same time doing our PhDs, different fields.

00:55:45.460 | Um, and then she has a new book coming out, which, um, I'm sure we'll cover on

00:55:50.420 | the show, a really cool book idea.

00:55:52.020 | Uh, but I was talking to her and she went a different way than me.

00:55:56.660 | She moved to an Island, like a remote Island off of the Pacific Northwest

00:56:02.540 | coast, uh, rebuild a cabin and to just.

00:56:06.580 | She was doing consulting work.

00:56:08.940 | It was, you know, using her MIT brain, but wanted to counterbalance that with,

00:56:12.860 | uh, the physicality of trying to refurbish and bring back a cabin and

00:56:17.300 | kind of live in the middle of nowhere.

00:56:18.420 | And she has this very cool book coming out.

00:56:19.700 | I mean, I haven't read it yet.

00:56:20.380 | She's sending me a copy, but it's one of these ideas where I'm thinking like,

00:56:23.100 | man, that's like right up my alley.

00:56:25.140 | Yeah.

00:56:25.500 | But I was thinking kind of cold up there.

00:56:26.900 | Right.

00:56:27.100 | It's probably cold and wet, but still I'm just thinking like, I bet

00:56:29.940 | she's incredibly less busy than I am.

00:56:32.060 | And so it's, you know, a different.

00:56:34.060 | Uh, a fork in the road, Dante, right.

00:56:37.420 | You go different ways with this.

00:56:38.620 | Like we, we started from the same place.

00:56:39.980 | Like, oh, we've got these technical brains that, you know, we

00:56:43.340 | have a few abilities and can.

00:56:44.980 | Well, you also have three young kids.

00:56:46.700 | Yeah.

00:56:47.180 | I don't, that's true.

00:56:47.780 | That's like a huge thing.

00:56:49.780 | But think about it.

00:56:50.860 | They could be repairing my cabin in the Pacific Northwest.

00:56:53.100 | If, if, if I had gone that route anyway, so I'm going to have her, I'm going to read

00:56:56.620 | her book and maybe when that book comes out, I'll have her on and we can talk.

00:56:59.500 | Yeah.

00:56:59.700 | That'd be cool.

00:57:00.220 | Talk about our two, uh, varying paths.

00:57:02.180 | Um, and I should warn everyone though.

00:57:05.380 | I was talking to my coach about this the other day, March and April.

00:57:09.980 | Every year are my worst months.

00:57:12.260 | It's, it's just some quirk of the academic calendar and whatever.

00:57:16.780 | It's always my, they're always super busy.

00:57:18.500 | And always during this period, I go through a phase of just like,

00:57:22.740 | I should live on a damn Island.

00:57:24.660 | I have too much.

00:57:25.740 | This is crazy.

00:57:26.540 | This, this I've too much going on and what am I doing?

00:57:30.340 | And then usually by June, I'm like, what an awesome life.

00:57:33.660 | Like, look at this like cool academic job.

00:57:35.300 | I could just like think all summer and this is so cool.

00:57:37.660 | And I love being around the students.

00:57:39.020 | But in March and April, I'm always so close to, you know, I need

00:57:43.020 | to go become a wood carver every year.

00:57:46.580 | My coach pointed this out every year.

00:57:48.140 | I think everybody in some capacity has.

00:57:50.900 | Has their time of year.

00:57:51.660 | Has those sort of feelings of, you know, like one thing I always think about

00:57:55.260 | too is like, yeah, I'm always running out of time and I don't, I could

00:57:58.340 | have done something longer, but then I do like the shutdown, like you talk

00:58:01.460 | about and just be like, I'll do it tomorrow as long as I like worked

00:58:05.180 | out and did some other things.

00:58:06.140 | That's fine.

00:58:06.460 | I'm doing the worst type of work right now.

00:58:08.380 | No, you only have to do this a couple of times in your career, but I'm

00:58:11.020 | working on a statements for a promotion package at Georgetown.

00:58:14.780 | You have like research statement, teaching statements.

00:58:16.780 | I don't know why it is, but this type of writing, like a research statement,

00:58:20.260 | let me explain like what I've been doing as a researcher, it takes

00:58:24.260 | me all the time in the world.

00:58:25.460 | I do a lot of writing.

00:58:26.940 | Like I'm a, I'm a, I'm a adept writer that writes, I wear

00:58:30.500 | away the keys on my keyboard.

00:58:32.380 | I finished, it took me seven days of making it mainly the only thing I was

00:58:36.860 | working on to write this 11 page research statement, it's, it just

00:58:40.220 | takes all of my time.

00:58:41.260 | I don't know why this type of writing does.

00:58:43.260 | It just really does.

00:58:44.180 | And it's exhausting.

00:58:44.860 | That's why I'm exhausted right now.

00:58:46.060 | And it's just a two week period where I'm writing these things

00:58:48.380 | and I'll be done with it.

00:58:49.140 | But I'm writing books, writing New Yorker pieces, writing academic papers.

00:58:54.260 | No problem compared.

00:58:56.220 | I don't know what it is about this specific type of writing,

00:58:58.780 | but it just takes me forever.

00:59:01.100 | Yeah.

00:59:02.300 | I hate it.

00:59:02.620 | I can't wait.

00:59:04.580 | I can't wait to do something easy, like return to my like incredibly technical

00:59:08.420 | 6,000 word New Yorker piece that we're editing right now, where we have to like

00:59:11.900 | fact check everything with another, with computer scientists, walk in the park.

00:59:15.820 | Yeah.

00:59:16.060 | Compared to like talking, yeah.

00:59:17.820 | Compared to talking about the courses I developed.

00:59:21.220 | I don't know why that writing gets to me.

00:59:22.500 | It's like this weird block I have.

00:59:24.220 | Um, well, in a way it's kind of like bureaucracy, like, you know, setting up

00:59:28.700 | yourself.

00:59:29.220 | Yeah.

00:59:29.780 | I don't like talking about myself.

00:59:31.340 | It's it's, and yet it's super precise and it's like a lot of citations and

00:59:34.940 | you have to be very careful.

00:59:35.980 | And when I say 11 pages, it's 11 pages, but it's like, it's small font and, and,

00:59:40.140 | and single spaced and it's, you know, it's, it's a lot of words.

00:59:42.900 | All right.

00:59:43.540 | Let me do one more thing here.

00:59:44.340 | I have a case study before we go to the something interesting.

00:59:47.260 | I wanted to share a case study here.

00:59:48.740 | This was sent in by Marcus, a 32 year old composer from Detroit.

00:59:54.580 | So here's what Marcus sent me.

00:59:55.580 | I am a musician and composer living in Detroit, Michigan.

01:00:00.580 | In May of 2022, I was asked to write a large work for a seven piece ensemble.

01:00:05.460 | I took your advice of doing less at a higher quality, and I gave them a quote

01:00:10.540 | that reflected what it would cost for me to solely work on the composition and

01:00:15.060 | not take on any other work, no performances, no private students, no other

01:00:19.780 | commissions, um, for three months.

01:00:22.100 | My promise to them was that I was, I would not take on any other projects in

01:00:25.660 | that time that I was working on the composition and that by doing this, I

01:00:28.300 | would deliver something of very high quality, they agreed, and I got the work.

01:00:32.860 | A week after I agreed to this, my father who was put in hospice from a major

01:00:36.820 | stroke was put in the hospice for a major stroke.

01:00:39.420 | It was devastating and it made it very hard to stay motivated to do anything.

01:00:42.460 | Fortunately, I had been practicing some of the things out of your book, Deep Work,

01:00:46.980 | and I applied it to this composition.

01:00:49.300 | I knew from previous projects that I can get everything I need done in two to

01:00:54.140 | four hours of non-distracted work.

01:00:55.740 | So I would wake up early in the morning and work for two hours and then some days

01:00:59.260 | knock out another two hours in the early afternoon, and I would do this five days

01:01:02.300 | a week, this allowed me to spend the afternoons and evenings with my father

01:01:05.740 | and his final days, the things I learned from your podcast and books, not only

01:01:09.500 | helped me compose one of my greatest works yet, it also allowed me to spend as

01:01:13.500 | much time as I could with my father and his final days for that I am forever

01:01:18.260 | grateful.

01:01:18.980 | Well, you know what I love about this, Marcus, is it's a, it's a case study of

01:01:24.420 | slow productivity that gets at, I think the human core of this philosophy that

01:01:28.700 | this notion of slow productivity, as opposed to fast productivity allows for

01:01:35.260 | a world in which you produce great things that you're proud of, like this work that

01:01:41.180 | you produce, the seven piece on composition for seven piece ensemble that you

01:01:44.780 | described as one of your greatest works you've ever composed, while at the same

01:01:48.220 | time, having a life that is rich and present in all the other things that are

01:01:54.540 | key to the human experience, that in the same time that you could have this very

01:01:59.260 | difficult, but touching final weeks with your father, also, we're still producing

01:02:05.180 | something of great value.

01:02:06.940 | Now extrapolate this forward to other people in all sorts of situations.

01:02:10.940 | That's time that would be maybe your relationship with your kids, time that

01:02:16.300 | you're getting involved with your community, time in which you are going

01:02:19.900 | on a spiritual journey, imagine having the ability, not when you're on vacation,

01:02:26.020 | not during a sabbatical or during a brief break in between jobs, but at all

01:02:30.580 | points, to be able to be investing such richness into what makes humanity and

01:02:36.460 | the human experience so complicated and special and interesting, at the same

01:02:40.140 | time that you're also producing stuff of great value to yourself and to the world.

01:02:43.260 | I think that's the promise of slow productivity.

01:02:45.380 | And my hope is the principles will be able to spread beyond specific, highly

01:02:51.060 | autonomous fields, like I'm a music composer and into other fields as well.

01:02:55.420 | I think much more work could have this rich mix of the "productive" and the

01:03:00.980 | human, it's just a matter of rethinking productivity.

01:03:03.660 | So that's a great case study, Marcus, and it's a very moving story.

01:03:05.860 | And I'm glad you shared that with me.

01:03:06.940 | Yeah, it's really powerful stuff because you've been talking about it for a long

01:03:11.940 | time since you started your podcast, but identifying the beginning of the week

01:03:15.100 | where, you know, he was going to need those two hour blocks, he found it, did

01:03:19.620 | it, non-distracted work and did the stuff.

01:03:22.460 | I mean, the same thing applies, you know, I took your advice, you know,

01:03:26.300 | for a while too, and it works.

01:03:28.180 | I mean, I get the sense that for most people in most jobs, two hours every

01:03:32.460 | morning, occasionally another two hour block in the afternoon, five days a week.

01:03:36.540 | That's 80% of like everything important you do.

01:03:40.300 | Everything else is overhead.

01:03:44.260 | Overhead and overload and make work.

01:03:46.780 | I think that's most jobs.

01:03:48.340 | I think you're right.

01:03:49.380 | Yeah.

01:03:49.820 | I mean, you could take, well, don't get me started.

01:03:52.540 | I could rant about almost any field.

01:03:55.260 | So my book has to come out.

01:03:56.460 | Books take too long, Jesse.

01:03:57.700 | You know, we're editing my book now.

01:03:58.980 | It's going to be next March before this beast comes out.

01:04:02.460 | It feels like it's too long from now.

01:04:04.220 | Another stressful period next March.

01:04:06.980 | Uh-oh.

01:04:07.340 | Oh yeah, I know.

01:04:09.020 | That's right.

01:04:09.660 | I'll be doing book publicity during the part of my year.

01:04:13.180 | That's the most, I guess I'll write those things for seven days.

01:04:16.340 | I'm going to become a street musician next March.

01:04:19.860 | I'm going to surf.

01:04:21.540 | That's what I'm going to do.

01:04:22.460 | I'm going to move the, I'm going to move to the North shore of Maui

01:04:27.860 | and just become a surfer.

01:04:28.700 | It's just going to break me.

01:04:29.460 | All right.

01:04:30.460 | I got something interesting.

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01:08:20.060 | All right, Jesse, let's wrap up today's episode with something

01:08:24.820 | interesting. Sounds good.

01:08:26.420 | So what I like to do here is go through my inbox at

01:08:29.660 | interesting@cowlnewport.com and pick something that I thought was

01:08:34.420 | interesting that you, my listeners have sent in.

01:08:37.420 | So what I have to talk about here is an article from Nature.

01:08:41.980 | So the journal Nature has these various career columns, which I think are

01:08:45.860 | actually quite interesting, especially for an academic.

01:08:47.700 | Here's one that is from, let me look at it here.

01:08:50.580 | It's on the screen, March 3rd.

01:08:52.180 | So I have this up on the screen, youtube.com/cowlnewportmediaepisode239

01:08:56.940 | or thedeeplife.com.

01:08:58.220 | Here's the title of the article.

01:09:00.220 | Fed up and burnt out, quiet quitting hits academia.

01:09:06.060 | Here's the subhead.

01:09:07.700 | Many researchers dislike the term, but the practice of dialing back

01:09:11.660 | unrewarded duties is gaining traction.

01:09:14.980 | I don't even need to scroll in this article.

01:09:19.620 | I'm just going to riff right off of this sub head because the academics who are

01:09:26.060 | disliking the term are a hundred percent correct.

01:09:30.300 | What this is talking about is not quiet quitting.

01:09:34.460 | What this is talking about is the fact that in academia, there's something

01:09:39.660 | known as service obligations.

01:09:41.060 | So these are things you do to help either your department or the

01:09:43.620 | university or your research community.

01:09:45.580 | They're non-academic in the sense they're not research and they're not teaching.

01:09:49.380 | So it's not the activities that you're directly paid or evaluated on for

01:09:52.460 | promotion, but it's, you need to give back for service, run committees

01:09:55.500 | and do reviews, et cetera.

01:09:56.660 | There is no agreed upon standards for how you triage these type of requests.

01:10:04.060 | There's no quotas of here's how many I do per year.

01:10:07.340 | And here's where my quota is.

01:10:08.900 | It's instead just all ad hoc psychological negotiation.

01:10:13.580 | This person is asking you to do something.

01:10:15.540 | Do you want to say no to this person?

01:10:17.100 | And it creates overload very easily because it's hard to say no to people.

01:10:21.140 | It also creates personality based inequities where people who are weird,

01:10:25.460 | unshaven physicist who scrawl equations on windows, like John Nash from a beautiful

01:10:32.300 | mind, it's easy for them to be like me, no do committee, me math now.

01:10:36.580 | And people like, oh, you know, he's, he's, he's unshaven and draws

01:10:38.940 | on the window and it's fine.

01:10:39.780 | But if you're a nice social scientist, they're like, oh man, she's icy.

01:10:45.020 | You see, she does not get along with people.

01:10:47.100 | I just ask her if she would just sort of join this commission and spend 50 hours

01:10:50.700 | the next few weeks helping me work on this report that no one's going to read.

01:10:53.740 | I don't know why she's not.

01:10:54.580 | So it creates all sorts of weird, like personality based inequities.

01:10:57.340 | Figuring out a sensical system for how you say yes or no to those.

01:11:04.100 | What's a reasonable load is not quiet quitting.

01:11:06.940 | It's actually doing your job.

01:11:08.900 | It's reinserting into your job as an academic, what was already missing.

01:11:13.540 | Saying yes, not dialing back on unrewarded duties is being bad at your job.

01:11:19.020 | It means you're producing less research.

01:11:21.500 | It means you're doing less time mentoring the next generation of researchers.

01:11:24.460 | It means you're doing less time teaching the next generation of people in the

01:11:27.460 | classroom for expertise on this, not dialing back on these secondary

01:11:31.740 | duties means you're a bad professor.

01:11:33.620 | So this idea that it's somehow quitting quiet, quitting to dial back, I think

01:11:39.340 | gets at our broken notions of productivity.

01:11:42.260 | So I'm tying together everything we've been talking about in today's episode.

01:11:45.500 | It's only this sort of Silicon Valley commodified time.

01:11:49.540 | More is better than less activity means usefulness.

01:11:52.380 | Less activity means no low friction, high velocity information

01:11:55.100 | is somehow what's valuable.

01:11:56.060 | It's only in that notion of productivity.

01:11:58.740 | Would you say doing less unrewarded activity in academia is somehow quiet quitting.

01:12:04.180 | I see it to be the exact opposite.

01:12:06.780 | Giving in to just the deluge of nonstop incoming service requests is a way to

01:12:12.420 | sort of let yourself off the intellectual hook for the work that really matters.

01:12:15.380 | The work you train for the work that they hired you for.

01:12:18.260 | It is hard work to try to build those systems and push back.

01:12:21.100 | But in some sense right now that's on the individual to do and it's our jobs.

01:12:24.540 | And hopefully going forward, it won't just be our jobs.

01:12:26.660 | We'll have organization wide recognitions and solutions for these problems.

01:12:30.460 | But I just think this headline plus sub headline.

01:12:34.500 | Three sentences neatly captures this issue we have, this misunderstanding

01:12:39.260 | we have about productivity.

01:12:40.860 | Doing stuff is often irrelevant to doing your job well.

01:12:45.820 | And so these academics who are dialing back are actually dialing up.

01:12:51.020 | The core functions of their job and should be lauded for their extra effort, for their

01:12:57.580 | extra focus on being as useful as possible, not derided as quiet quitters.

01:13:02.820 | So there we go.

01:13:04.100 | Jesse, I tied it all together.

01:13:05.380 | I think we kept our thread going about our broken relationship through time

01:13:08.620 | throughout the entire episode.

01:13:11.420 | I'm now going to go work on my teaching statement some more until my eyeballs bleed.

01:13:16.860 | I am miserable.

01:13:18.100 | I got to get out of March.

01:13:19.100 | We're almost there.

01:13:19.980 | We're almost out of March when I can be happy again.

01:13:21.980 | But I better get back to that.

01:13:23.300 | So thank you everyone who sent in your questions.

01:13:27.020 | We'll be back next week with another episode of the show.

01:13:29.620 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:13:32.380 | [outro music]

Ep. 239: On Time And Stress

Chapters