This Celebrated Princeton Mathematician Works Only 3 Hours a Day

00:00:00.000 | But before we get into all of that, I want to do a quick

00:00:03.000 | deep life

00:00:05.480 | slow productivity themed

00:00:07.480 | reaction and

00:00:09.480 | In particular the the article I want to react to here is my own

00:00:12.500 | So I published this just on my my newsletter

00:00:16.560 | yesterday July 5th the day before we were

00:00:19.880 | recording this episode and this is based off of a

00:00:23.840 | Article that many different readers sent to my interesting at cal Newport comm email address

00:00:29.400 | All right, so the title of this of this article

00:00:31.720 | It's I wrote for my newsletter and if you don't subscribe to that newsletter cal Newport comm you should it's once a week

00:00:36.880 | I've been doing it since 2007. All right, so the title I had for the article was the three-hour

00:00:43.200 | Fields metal little Tim Ferriss nod

00:00:45.880 | Colon a slow productivity case study, but really what I'm doing here is reacting to this article and again if you're listening

00:00:53.000 | I'm showing this on the screen

00:00:54.920 | So if you watch the episode at youtube.com slash cal Newport media, you'll you'll see what I'm talking about, but I'll walk you through it

00:01:01.440 | This essay was in reaction to this profile from quantum magazine

00:01:05.820 | about

00:01:07.760 | June

00:01:09.000 | Huh? Huhu a June is 39 year old Princeton professor

00:01:14.080 | Why we care about him is that yesterday he was awarded the

00:01:18.720 | 2022

00:01:20.720 | Fields medal this is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of mathematics. It's given out once every four years, I believe

00:01:27.440 | it's given out to the

00:01:30.160 | mathematical professional

00:01:32.040 | 40 or younger whose work done to date and promise for future work is the let's say most impressive among all

00:01:40.400 | Working mathematicians. So it's really one of the highest honors you can win

00:01:44.240 | in

00:01:46.560 | Mathematics and he won it for work. He's doing on geometric combinatorics

00:01:51.080 | All right. So this profile which was quite long quantum magazine is great

00:01:54.660 | This profile is quite long had some interesting points in it. So for example, if you look at

00:01:59.880 | June's

00:02:02.000 | Trajectory, he did not get serious about mathematics until late in his undergraduate career. He went to

00:02:07.680 | College University in South Korea where it's a six-year system

00:02:11.520 | It wasn't till his sixth year that he even got serious about mathematics and that's because he took a class from a well-known

00:02:18.400 | Eccentric Fields Prize winning Fields medal winning mathematician Japanese mathematician. Hey, Suki

00:02:25.120 | Hironaka who was teaching a class where it wasn't

00:02:29.080 | Well established results. He was actually teaching stuff. He was working on June falls under his sway

00:02:36.400 | Applies to graduate school. He's applying to graduate school having only been serious about math for one year

00:02:41.760 | So he applies for around a dozen schools. Everyone rejects them except for one Urbana-Champaign lets him in

00:02:46.880 | They're glad they did because within a year or two he solved Reed's conjecture. So he immediately solves a 40 year

00:02:54.720 | 40 year open problem

00:02:58.200 | for the

00:03:00.520 | nerds out there

00:03:02.520 | You can you can bound the chromatic number of graphs with certain characteristic

00:03:07.400 | polynomials the chromatic number of

00:03:09.720 | Undirected graph being the minimum number of colors by which you can color the vertices such that no two adjacent vertices have the same color

00:03:16.400 | All of my hopefully all my algorithms and discrete mathematics students know what I'm talking about here

00:03:21.720 | You can bound the chromatic number with a polynomial the polynomial has coefficients the coefficients of these characteristic

00:03:28.160 | polynomials have certain properties that had long been observed such as their log concavity, but it had never been proved that that was

00:03:35.520 | unavoidable

00:03:37.760 | Reed's conjecture said it was June proved it

00:03:40.700 | All right. So there you go. There's a summary of the first thing he proved

00:03:44.080 | He then went on to generalize those results to something called matroids blah blah blah long story short

00:03:50.800 | It was it's a very innovative approach that showed that I mean again, I don't know how to summarize this

00:03:58.280 | Too succinctly but but essentially a technique that before

00:04:03.400 | people thought only applied to problems where there is a

00:04:08.160 | Geometric grounding like the chromatic number of a graph. He showed you could apply this technique to a much broader

00:04:15.400 | Class of objects called matrix. Let's just

00:04:18.280 | Let's just leave it at that. Anyways, it won him a Fields Medal. It was a really good result

00:04:23.400 | I also found that interesting that after he solved Reed's conjecture the schools who had rejected him

00:04:28.520 | Came back and courted him. U Michigan actually convinced him to transfer from Urbana-Champaign to Michigan after he solved Reed's conjecture

00:04:35.400 | So they they sort of realized they made a mistake on that one

00:04:37.680 | anyways, the reason why I

00:04:40.360 | Wanted to talk about this profile of this young professor was the following quote

00:04:46.820 | That came from the profile on any given day. Poe does about

00:04:52.920 | three hours of focused work

00:04:54.920 | He might think about a math problem or prepare to lecture a classroom of students or schedule a doctor's appointment for his two sons

00:05:01.080 | Then I'm exhausted

00:05:02.720 | He says doing something that's valuable meaningful creative or a task that he doesn't particularly want to do like sketching those appointments

00:05:08.920 | Takes away a lot of your energy

00:05:11.520 | This guy's doing productive work about three hours a day

00:05:15.120 | Not even just three hours of deep work on math and I do the rest of the stuff later in the day

00:05:19.920 | He spends about three hours a day

00:05:22.680 | actually

00:05:24.000 | exhausting energy from his mind

00:05:26.000 | Now I thought that was really telling because it provides an extreme example of one of these principles

00:05:33.280 | That is a part of my emerging philosophy of slow productivity

00:05:39.120 | And that principle is that busyness and exhaustion that sense of overload and frenetic

00:05:44.680 | Movement is often quite unrelated

00:05:47.960 | to producing valuable work

00:05:52.160 | These are two unrelated things the the pace and effort required to do things of note

00:05:58.000 | to prove things about

00:06:00.840 | matroids or to solve Reed's conjecture

00:06:03.320 | Those efforts do not require and have very little to do with I am overloaded. I'm burnt out

00:06:10.000 | I'm burning the midnight oil. I am working all day long. I'm frantic. I'm frenetic

00:06:14.920 | to unrelated

00:06:17.560 | to unrelated states a

00:06:20.880 | little bit of intense work

00:06:22.880 | done at a natural pace

00:06:25.280 | Given the breathing room to aggregate over time can lead to really big results

00:06:29.360 | So that got me thinking

00:06:32.080 | Why are we then in so many roles, especially even specialized knowledge worker roles?

00:06:37.360 | We're producing complex things out of our minds is ultimately what moves the needle

00:06:41.320 | Why in so many of these roles are we so busy and why are we so overloaded?

00:06:45.040 | And I think there's two different things going on here

00:06:47.680 | One is I talk about a lot on the show and in my writing the way we organize work

00:06:53.440 | Especially knowledge work today is haphazard

00:06:56.480 | Anyone can grab anyone's attention at any time. We have no sort of systematic thinking about workload

00:07:02.680 | We have no systematic thinking about collaboration or communication how this should actually unfold

00:07:08.080 | It is a free-for-all of obligation hot potato where everyone's just shooting things off to everyone else

00:07:13.000 | You put something on my plate. I send you a clarifying question

00:07:15.840 | So I don't have to worry about it for a couple hours

00:07:17.840 | Something pops up. I say why don't you handle this?

00:07:20.400 | It's a world without specialization where we say why can't everyone just handle all of the various administrative logistical tasks that are relevant to them?

00:07:27.280 | Because then we don't have to hire support staff. It's a chaotic haphazard world

00:07:30.160 | And that creates overload that creates busyness the second reason why we feel that is uh, we don't have a good definition of productivity

00:07:38.580 | So we we create this new world of work

00:07:44.320 | Create this new world of work in which you're using your mind instead of building things

00:07:47.360 | With your hands. So we have to think what does productivity mean and i'm talking now mid 20th century

00:07:53.440 | What does productivity mean if we're not counting?

00:07:56.160 | The time required to produce a model t

00:07:59.600 | What does it mean? Well, we leaned into industrial metaphors. Why well, where were the first big?

00:08:06.000 | Offices, where were the first big collections of hundreds or thousands of people in the same place doing work with their mind and not their

00:08:13.600 | Hands, it was the front offices of large

00:08:16.080 | industrial corporations the early 20th century you get the rise of the mega corporation you get the

00:08:22.400 | Efficiencies of scale of acquiring competitors and building up very large companies this this this idea of the very large company

00:08:30.400 | Emerges in the early 20th century. We we see it

00:08:33.600 | Uh with the the robber barons the late 19th century early 20th century by the 1940s you have, you know

00:08:39.200 | General motors as this massive consolidated company that has all these different verticals

00:08:43.760 | Well that requires a huge amount of administrative support. They were all put into the same big buildings there

00:08:49.280 | You have the first big knowledge worker

00:08:51.280 | Setting so of course when the same ceo that is overlooking

00:08:55.540 | 700 clerical workers administrative workers and managers

00:08:59.280 | is also overlooking

00:09:02.000 | industrial assembly lines

00:09:04.160 | We're going to adopt by default

00:09:07.340 | industrial productivity metrics

00:09:09.340 | effort time spent working

00:09:11.740 | Uh minimizing idleness the things you would care about with an assembly line

00:09:16.140 | So we have adopted sort of by default these industrial metrics and then as we begin to get some separation

00:09:22.620 | We get the rise of knowledge work that's completely

00:09:25.260 | Disconnected from industrial production. We do have a chance to try to evolve our understanding of productivity

00:09:31.260 | But then we get the computer revolution and it completely shakes up the whole proverbial snow globe. Suddenly we have networks and email

00:09:38.140 | And everything gets thrown up into the air again

00:09:40.700 | All these revolutions sort of get in the way the disruption gets in the way of maturity and stabilization of work philosophy

00:09:46.060 | So we end up where we are today with this weird mix of industrial notions of productivity that's based around

00:09:51.260 | You're a worker on an assembly line. And uh, if you're idle that's wasted money

00:09:55.980 | I want you to be here for set hours and doing those hours

00:09:58.700 | I want to see activity that mixed in with the haphazard freneticism of uncontrolled digital communication and we get this weird world we have today

00:10:06.300 | So we have these notions of productivity around I can't see you're working. You're not

00:10:10.860 | Productive maybe you're you know, something's going on. You're screwing me, you know idleness

00:10:15.420 | And so we want you to be working for these hours

00:10:18.460 | we want to see that you're working if you're not going to be in the office and we want to see that you're responding to

00:10:22.540 | slack and email because

00:10:24.380 | Activity is value inactivity is wasted value very old notion. So we need new notions of

00:10:29.500 | How do you productively create value in a skilled cognitive environment?

00:10:34.220 | And that's where something like slow productivity is trying to fill a void. Let us evolve our notion of productivity

00:10:39.520 | Away from what you would want with factory workers and towards something that actually makes sense

00:10:44.700 | For people trying to add value to information using their mind

00:10:48.540 | So it's an extreme example three hours a day

00:10:52.620 | And you have a fields medal by 39

00:10:54.620 | But the extremes are often great for highlighting the underlying realities

00:10:59.040 | Busyness and overload is unrelated

00:11:02.720 | to producing things

00:11:05.500 | that actually matter

00:11:07.500 | Three-hour fields medal

00:11:10.220 | I saw something jesse. No, I forgot who it was. I think a reader sent it to me

00:11:14.460 | It was a writer

00:11:17.100 | who

00:11:18.300 | Has simplified their writing down to one day a week

00:11:21.420 | Really? Yeah, and they're a pretty productive writer

00:11:23.420 | It's a non-fiction

00:11:26.140 | I forgot exactly what space he's in but just one day a week. He writes I think it's thursdays

00:11:30.400 | And over time he's built up this like really nice collection of books that he's written

00:11:35.180 | I mean again overload busyness that sense of like I don't have enough time

00:11:40.060 | if anything gets in the way of

00:11:42.780 | Producing stuff that matters not that not the recipe for it

00:11:45.180 | You like writing every day though, don't you? I do i've been writing in the morning

00:11:50.140 | We we finally have all the different uh workmen out of our study

00:11:53.980 | And my desk isn't there yet, but there's a table in there

00:11:56.940 | And so I go in there each morning and that's where i've been writing. So like two hours a day

00:12:01.420 | I'm trying to two to three. Yeah, I mean i'm making progress on here's my quick writing update

00:12:07.740 | If you're interested i'm working now in my slow productivity book that i'm writing

00:12:12.140 | On the the principle about doing fewer things

00:12:16.060 | Looking like this is going to come in at a 15

00:12:19.420 | 15 to 20k word section

00:12:22.140 | So there's these three big sections one for each of the principles and they're going to be pretty big maybe about 15 000 words each

00:12:26.860 | and

00:12:28.620 | I've been stuck for a little while on this

00:12:30.860 | Particular section and I feel like I have some traction going and so that's what i've been working on

00:12:36.780 | When I was on my trip, I was getting unstuck which means

00:12:40.380 | figuring out

00:12:42.620 | What is my path through this particular section? What are the examples? How do I want to streamline this?

00:12:47.900 | I did not I was trying to force what I had before to work and I had cognitive friction

00:12:52.060 | I knew it wasn't working the the examples I wanted to use when I dive deeper into the source material weren't what I wanted

00:12:57.420 | Didn't seem like it's what I needed

00:12:59.740 | And over this trip to Tennessee, I I reworked it. I streamlined and now it's rolling now it's rolling

00:13:06.140 | So i'm not far into the section i'm writing, but I have forward momentum

00:13:10.300 | So so hopefully i'll finish that up this week when you do your weekly plan

00:13:14.460 | When you do your weekly plan, do you map out like

00:13:16.860 | What you're going to write about each day like for instance because you have your new yorker stuff you have your books you have

00:13:22.220 | Yeah, I have to figure that out. Yeah, I mean that's that's what happened

00:13:25.260 | I'm in a confusing writing landscape right now because I was I've been working on this big principle of the book

00:13:31.660 | Then I shifted over

00:13:34.620 | to a magazine piece new yorker piece that was going to serve double duty as a

00:13:41.660 | Piece for the new yorker, but also for a chapter earlier in the book

00:13:45.820 | Then something else came along

00:13:49.100 | And it was sort of more of a topical article. I said, yeah, I want to short. Let me write that

00:13:53.980 | So like all of that got put on pause so I could I wanted to write a shorter sort of topical piece

00:13:59.020 | um

00:14:00.540 | And that was like the week before my trip

00:14:02.540 | So everything got put on pause for that finish that that's an editing and when I came back

00:14:06.780 | Now i'm close enough to finishing this principle

00:14:11.100 | That i'm i'm going to do that and then turn back to finishing

00:14:14.380 | The original piece i'm working on the details here

00:14:18.140 | Not that important the bigger point being uh, jesse's right to ask about that. It's a complicated picture i'm sort of concurrent

00:14:26.320 | Writing things and moving around what am I going to work on now put this on side put this on hold now?

00:14:32.060 | So I write this it's not always an obvious formula how you make those decisions

00:14:36.000 | And and it's something that requires some thought like right now the way i'm thinking about it is because i'm in

00:14:40.140 | Editing with this one

00:14:41.980 | Uh magazine piece. I don't want to work on another magazine piece while i'm editing a current one

00:14:47.180 | It's it too close to home. We're going to cross the circuit

00:14:49.900 | So that's why I while i'm editing this piece. I want to write

00:14:52.540 | It's essentially more of an advice-y type section of my book, which is quite different

00:14:56.060 | So these are the type of chess pieces you move around

00:14:58.060 | Um, yeah, but at the weekly planning stage i'm thinking what am I writing this week?

00:15:01.980 | Where am I going to try to get and then and what I like to?

00:15:04.380 | I like to get to the point where I can see a milestone

00:15:08.380 | Coming up because then you can go after it like oh

00:15:10.940 | I want to get there by this weekend

00:15:12.060 | Then you'll add extra hours and really push and and when you're in the stages where you're

00:15:15.580 | Planning and trying to make something work. You can feel like days are going by

00:15:18.780 | And not much progress is happening

00:15:20.780 | But then when you start to see you have 5 000 words away from wrapping this whole thing up

00:15:24.780 | You see that finish line, then you can really lock in

00:15:27.820 | And it can be pretty you get these really productive locked in sessions

00:15:32.060 | But anyways, that's all just to give the impression of the writing life can be more complicated

00:15:36.620 | It seems simple, but it can be complicated figuring out

00:15:39.020 | What I should be writing now

00:15:41.820 | Is is not always obvious

00:15:44.060 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:15:47.420 | (upbeat music)

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