Full Length Episode | #161 | January 3, 2022

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:05.280 | Our first question comes from Irfana, who asks,

00:00:10.080 | "How can a freelancer perform deep work?

00:00:13.840 | The freelancer has to create his personal brand on LinkedIn.

00:00:17.920 | You know, suppose he's a social media manager,

00:00:19.520 | he needs to have a social media presence."

00:00:24.200 | Well, Irfana, I think this is an example

00:00:26.080 | of an important phenomenon to discuss briefly,

00:00:28.960 | which is single drop social media use.

00:00:33.960 | And what I mean by single drop social media use

00:00:35.920 | is the mindset that if there is any social media use

00:00:40.920 | that is necessary in your life,

00:00:43.520 | so something professionally or what have you,

00:00:45.880 | there's, you know, job applicants

00:00:47.920 | and you have to check for questions on Facebook

00:00:51.400 | or something like that,

00:00:52.360 | that if there is any, a single drop of social media use

00:00:54.800 | in the pool that is your activity time,

00:00:56.680 | then you have to just unrestrictedly use social media

00:00:59.600 | from there on out.

00:01:01.120 | And that's what I'm sensing in this question,

00:01:03.800 | that as a freelancer,

00:01:04.880 | there's some stuff you might want to do on LinkedIn.

00:01:06.680 | Maybe you have a LinkedIn Pulse style newsletter

00:01:10.440 | and/or you have to keep up on inquiries from people

00:01:14.760 | or keep up with your network.

00:01:15.720 | I don't know exactly what it is,

00:01:17.280 | but in your mind that small amount of mandated use means,

00:01:20.880 | I guess I just have to be on social media all the time.

00:01:24.200 | And that's not the case.

00:01:25.560 | In fact, this would be the challenge I would give you.

00:01:28.480 | Let us say I said,

00:01:30.200 | here's the new law under a penalty of $100,000 fine.

00:01:34.260 | You are only allowed to be logged into LinkedIn

00:01:37.480 | for 20 minutes once a week.

00:01:40.500 | I bet you would be fine.

00:01:43.880 | I bet you would be fine.

00:01:45.160 | What would happen if that was the law?

00:01:47.020 | Well, first of all, if you were posting content on LinkedIn,

00:01:49.600 | you would just write it elsewhere.

00:01:51.880 | And during that 20 minutes, you would post,

00:01:54.040 | you would make it weekly.

00:01:56.320 | If there were requests coming in

00:01:58.680 | or you wanted to do some networking,

00:02:00.120 | just during that 20 minutes,

00:02:01.320 | you would answer the request

00:02:02.720 | and you would maybe do some pokes.

00:02:05.160 | Maybe you would update your profile to somehow say,

00:02:08.040 | I do LinkedIn messages on Fridays

00:02:09.920 | or whatever day you do it.

00:02:11.100 | Maybe you'd miss a couple things

00:02:12.400 | or a couple of people would be annoyed

00:02:13.660 | that you were slow getting back into them,

00:02:15.020 | but who cares, right?

00:02:16.000 | This is a numbers game.

00:02:17.140 | It's just over time being on there

00:02:18.640 | may be surfaces the occasional opportunity.

00:02:21.100 | So you would be absolutely fine in 20 minutes once a week,

00:02:24.920 | which is a negligible footprint.

00:02:26.600 | This is the type of exercise I want people to do

00:02:28.840 | when they think about unavoidable social media use.

00:02:32.840 | What if I was only doing this

00:02:34.200 | for a very small amount of time, quite infrequently?

00:02:38.520 | Could I really make that work?

00:02:39.840 | Would I get most of the value?

00:02:41.240 | And I think in most cases, the answer would be yes.

00:02:45.360 | So do not allow the single drop

00:02:47.800 | of social media requirement in your life

00:02:50.280 | be the instigating force that gets you

00:02:54.440 | to endlessly lose yourself into those distractions.

00:02:57.980 | All right, we have a question here from Career Opportunist

00:03:03.600 | who says, "Are there times where it is worthwhile

00:03:08.760 | to follow intimations of your career interest,

00:03:12.440 | even if you take non-trivial cuts in your career capital

00:03:15.040 | outside of the corner cases you've already mentioned

00:03:16.680 | in your book, so good they can't ignore you?

00:03:19.480 | Are there some elaboration here?"

00:03:20.720 | So we can get some context to this question.

00:03:23.320 | So Career Opportunist clarifies

00:03:25.360 | that he is a backend software engineer

00:03:27.920 | at a large well-known internet company

00:03:29.460 | who has built up quite a bit of career capital in that role.

00:03:33.640 | He then goes on to say, "My core interest in college,

00:03:36.920 | however, were in front-end client-facing work

00:03:40.140 | as opposed to backend software.

00:03:42.520 | I'm not tied to a particular job or passion.

00:03:44.360 | I just want to experience building user-facing software

00:03:47.240 | as opposed to just behind-the-scenes code."

00:03:52.160 | So he says, "I can either choose

00:03:53.720 | to become a more proficient backend engineer,

00:03:56.060 | but it does feel like a less interesting route for me,

00:04:00.560 | but I could do that and focus instead

00:04:02.100 | on the opportunities to negotiate lifestyle improvements."

00:04:04.400 | All right, so I don't have a definitive answer,

00:04:07.280 | but I'll tell you my instinct here.

00:04:09.040 | The grudging thing you put at the end,

00:04:13.320 | like I guess what I could do is even though

00:04:15.240 | maybe front-end stuff seems more interesting,

00:04:17.400 | I could get better at backend engineering

00:04:20.300 | and focus more on lifestyle improvements.

00:04:22.040 | I actually think that's probably the right answer.

00:04:25.120 | And it might not be the answer you want to hear from me,

00:04:27.820 | but I think at this stage of your career,

00:04:30.840 | the right thing to do, I'm going to guess,

00:04:33.320 | you haven't told me, but I'm going to guess

00:04:34.760 | you're at that critical stage,

00:04:36.860 | this roughly quarter-life stage

00:04:38.720 | in your late 20s, early 30s,

00:04:40.240 | where you're no longer starting out,

00:04:41.920 | you have skill, you have talent,

00:04:43.360 | you begin to have some options,

00:04:44.480 | but you're also not at that mid-life stage

00:04:46.000 | where there's other things going on in your life.

00:04:47.500 | I would say at this stage,

00:04:48.600 | this is an important time to do

00:04:50.560 | lifestyle-centric career planning.

00:04:52.760 | I'll explain what that is in a second,

00:04:56.040 | but what I think is going on instead

00:04:58.080 | is you're feeling a bit adrift,

00:05:00.780 | because again, you've got to that quarter-life stage

00:05:02.720 | where you found the job, you found the skill,

00:05:04.520 | you have some stability, you have some ability,

00:05:07.940 | and now you're thinking what's next.

00:05:10.480 | And in our culture, and especially American culture,

00:05:13.280 | I say our culture, we have this instinct

00:05:15.280 | that the content of our job

00:05:19.000 | is going to be the key driver of our satisfaction.

00:05:20.960 | So when you feel that initial tinge of malaise,

00:05:23.760 | because you've reached a plateau,

00:05:25.860 | your culturally trained mind immediately says,

00:05:30.920 | well, maybe if we shifted a little bit

00:05:32.880 | the content of our work, we would no longer be adrift,

00:05:36.280 | we would break through the malaise.

00:05:37.440 | So maybe it's back-end software is the issue,

00:05:40.220 | and the reason why I'm feeling this malaise

00:05:41.560 | is that I really should be doing front-end software.

00:05:43.600 | I think if you make that shift,

00:05:44.640 | it would be kind of interesting,

00:05:45.540 | but you'd be back in the same place in a couple of years.

00:05:47.280 | So now is the time to do lifestyle-centric career planning,

00:05:50.520 | which is what I think is the answer

00:05:53.120 | to that feeling that so many standard knowledge worker types

00:05:56.180 | feel around this part in their life.

00:05:57.620 | Now, I've talked about this before,

00:05:58.900 | but the basics of lifestyle-centric career planning

00:06:01.380 | is that you identify

00:06:04.000 | what do I want my day-to-day life to be like

00:06:08.320 | in all of its attributes,

00:06:10.000 | not what do I want my work to be like,

00:06:11.280 | what do I want my actual life to be like?

00:06:13.600 | And I want you to think about things like,

00:06:15.640 | where am I living?

00:06:16.940 | Am I in the countryside?

00:06:18.960 | Am I in a skyscraper?

00:06:20.240 | Am I in a small town?

00:06:21.720 | Am I helping my neighbors build a barn?

00:06:26.400 | Or is it I am having people over,

00:06:28.960 | commonly just shooting the breeze out on a front porch

00:06:32.840 | while people walk by?

00:06:34.160 | Or is it I'm at a underground bar scene

00:06:39.240 | where there's interesting new poetry being done, whatever.

00:06:42.320 | What is my day like?

00:06:43.200 | What am I doing?

00:06:44.020 | Where do I live?

00:06:44.860 | How much am I working?

00:06:47.080 | Am I getting after it?

00:06:48.240 | Or is work a small part of my job?

00:06:49.680 | Am I seasonal?

00:06:50.720 | Am I spending six months a year not even working at all

00:06:53.200 | and doing other types of things and traveling around?

00:06:56.440 | These type of questions.

00:06:57.520 | What am I doing with my time?

00:06:59.040 | What about my character?

00:07:00.080 | What is my role in the community?

00:07:01.560 | What is the philosophies by which I live?

00:07:04.760 | How deep is my existential grasp of my life?

00:07:09.760 | All of these type of questions.

00:07:11.360 | You fix this lifestyle.

00:07:13.760 | You feel it and you taste it

00:07:15.680 | and you imagine a typical week or day

00:07:18.160 | and something that really hits those intimations of,

00:07:20.420 | yes, this is right.

00:07:21.400 | And then you say, great, what are the paths to get there?

00:07:25.680 | And that's where you build your plan.

00:07:27.200 | And work then fits into that plan.

00:07:29.360 | And work then becomes a mechanism by which

00:07:31.680 | you make progress towards this lifestyle

00:07:34.160 | that pushes all of these right buttons and really resonates.

00:07:37.040 | And that is where as you enter this quarter-life period,

00:07:39.040 | your focus goes.

00:07:40.360 | Aiming the ship that is your life towards the port

00:07:43.480 | that is a lifestyle that is deeper, that resonates with you.

00:07:47.240 | Whatever those answers might be.

00:07:49.220 | And again, I keep emphasizing different people

00:07:50.920 | have different answers to these questions.

00:07:54.080 | It could look very different depending on the people.

00:07:56.580 | That's where I'd want you to put your energy.

00:07:58.320 | Now, if you do this exercise,

00:08:00.280 | eight times out of 10, you're gonna find,

00:08:02.080 | oh, if I have a lot of career capital

00:08:04.000 | in something like back-end software design,

00:08:06.320 | massively increasing that capital,

00:08:08.160 | because it's easy to take good capital and make it great

00:08:10.520 | than it is to go from no capital to good capital.

00:08:12.600 | Massively increasing that capital quickly

00:08:14.480 | and using that as a lever to take control

00:08:16.400 | of aspects of my life and career

00:08:18.040 | is almost always gonna be the right thing to do.

00:08:20.440 | An example comes to mind from my book,

00:08:23.560 | So Good They Can't Ignore You, which you mentioned.

00:08:25.600 | There was a very similar character in that book.

00:08:28.640 | Someone in a very similar situation to you.

00:08:31.760 | This was Lulu, and she was a back-end programmer.

00:08:35.540 | I believe she was databases,

00:08:38.120 | more like a database programmer designer, but similar idea.

00:08:41.760 | Not front-end facing, worked for financial sectors.

00:08:44.400 | As she got better and better at that,

00:08:47.240 | she said, "What did I want my life to be like?"

00:08:50.880 | And she used that as a lever to build

00:08:52.640 | a really cool lifestyle where she did

00:08:54.120 | six months on, six months off.

00:08:56.320 | So she left the company where she was.

00:08:58.120 | She went to a consulting role.

00:08:59.200 | She was heavily in demand because she was great on this.

00:09:01.640 | She would do six months on.

00:09:02.840 | That's roughly enough time to do one or two engagements.

00:09:05.940 | She lived relatively cheaply, right?

00:09:10.520 | With her wife in Jamaica Plain.

00:09:12.960 | It was a cool, it's a cool neighborhood outside of Boston.

00:09:15.320 | They had this cool old house that they were renovating.

00:09:18.280 | And they weren't living lavishly.

00:09:19.920 | They weren't living in, let's go buy

00:09:21.440 | a really large, expensive house.

00:09:22.400 | So then you could spend the other six months

00:09:23.580 | doing interesting things and scuba diving.

00:09:25.680 | She got a pilot's license.

00:09:26.920 | Her family was from Thailand.

00:09:28.160 | So she would go do extended visits there.

00:09:30.720 | And it was just a really interesting lifestyle.

00:09:33.720 | But she figured out what she wanted.

00:09:36.200 | And then she said, "What's the best way to get there?"

00:09:38.040 | "Oh, I'm a great database developer.

00:09:40.440 | I can wield that to get where I want to get."

00:09:42.720 | So that is what I'm going to suggest for opportunities

00:09:44.520 | is do the lifestyle-centric career planning thinking

00:09:47.320 | and work backwards to say, "How do I get there?"

00:09:52.080 | And then see where that takes you.

00:09:53.960 | So again, it's likely it might take you,

00:09:56.240 | will tell you almost certainly take the skill

00:09:59.080 | you have out for a spin and use it to build a cool life.

00:10:01.400 | It might tell you, however, when you do this,

00:10:02.880 | like you want to be running a small startup

00:10:04.560 | that's front-end facing and you live kind of cheap

00:10:06.600 | and you're living somewhere kind of cool.

00:10:07.760 | So maybe it would put you to front-end facing work,

00:10:09.760 | but it would be pushing you there for a reason.

00:10:13.400 | This is part of a big picture, not just an instinct

00:10:15.560 | that maybe this would make me happier.

00:10:17.440 | The final thing I will say,

00:10:19.760 | if you're interested in front-end design

00:10:21.320 | just as an intriguing intellectual challenge,

00:10:25.120 | even if this exercise has you stick with back-end programming

00:10:28.280 | and using that as your main leverage,

00:10:29.960 | your main career capital lever,

00:10:32.040 | do some front-end work as a hobby.

00:10:33.760 | Build a front-end facing website that you do

00:10:38.760 | as a side hustle or a side project

00:10:41.040 | that you build up and build up those skills,

00:10:43.760 | build it around something you're really interested in.

00:10:46.680 | Like you're some sort of super fan of "The Matrix"

00:10:51.600 | or something like this.

00:10:52.440 | I just watched that movie last night,

00:10:53.520 | that's why I'm thinking about it.

00:10:55.160 | Jesse's shaking his head.

00:10:56.840 | You're a super fan of "The Matrix" or something like this,

00:10:58.920 | and whatever, or you're really into some,

00:11:01.720 | I'm not good with this, "Dungeons and Dragons" or something.

00:11:04.880 | I don't know, but you know what I'm saying?

00:11:06.080 | Like, okay, build it about something interesting, fun,

00:11:08.040 | a community that you get some depth out of, whatever it is,

00:11:11.240 | and you could get that experience as well.

00:11:12.800 | All right, so that's a long answer to a short question

00:11:14.520 | because I really wanted to get to that bigger point,

00:11:16.600 | which is I'm increasingly a big believer in this idea

00:11:20.440 | that stage one of your career is figuring out

00:11:24.120 | how to be a adult in the world who's dependable

00:11:27.320 | and gets things done and starts to develop a real skill,

00:11:29.800 | to get real career capital.

00:11:31.320 | Stage two, deploy that capital

00:11:34.480 | towards a vision of the ideal lifestyle.

00:11:37.200 | And then stage three is actually probably gonna be

00:11:39.280 | much less career-focused.

00:11:40.680 | You're in this lifestyle,

00:11:41.800 | it's gonna be much more about yourself and self-discovery.

00:11:44.600 | I mean, I think it sets you up

00:11:46.360 | for the classic midlife crisis,

00:11:48.200 | for it not to be a crisis,

00:11:49.400 | but to be a time of actual discovery.

00:11:50.840 | So that's my advice, lifestyle-centered career planning,

00:11:54.080 | underrated, can't emphasize it enough.

00:11:56.800 | All right, we have a question here from Groupmate.

00:12:05.040 | Groupmate asks,

00:12:07.560 | "How do you effectively manage group projects in college?"

00:12:12.200 | You don't, you know, Groupmate,

00:12:16.920 | group projects in college are pretty hit or miss,

00:12:20.800 | usually pretty bad.

00:12:22.280 | You elaborate here that,

00:12:24.200 | 'cause you're a Cal Newport type, you are organized,

00:12:27.440 | and therefore you basically end up doing a lot more work

00:12:30.200 | because you're not on board

00:12:31.840 | with the typical college strategy of,

00:12:33.880 | hey, this is due tomorrow,

00:12:35.840 | why don't we stay up all night

00:12:37.120 | and do something kind of crappy?

00:12:38.520 | You actually wanna plan your work out in advance,

00:12:40.400 | and so you end up doing most of the work.

00:12:42.400 | That is the price you pay

00:12:44.600 | to have your act together in college.

00:12:47.000 | You're not gonna love group work.

00:12:48.680 | The only two pieces of advice I can give is,

00:12:51.600 | A, avoid it when you can,

00:12:53.680 | because it's not gonna go well for you.

00:12:56.840 | B, work with the very best people you can.

00:12:59.080 | I remember having this experience

00:13:02.120 | as an undergraduate computer science student

00:13:04.720 | with problem-set groups,

00:13:06.960 | and I was good at computer science.

00:13:11.040 | I'll put this the humble way.

00:13:12.040 | I was good at computer science,

00:13:13.160 | as you might've predicted

00:13:14.920 | based on my later career trajectory.

00:13:17.320 | I learned pretty quickly

00:13:19.200 | that there was a lot of people

00:13:20.080 | who wanted to be in problem-set groups with me

00:13:23.440 | because they would get all the right answers.

00:13:26.480 | It wasn't very useful to me though, right?

00:13:28.480 | I would basically just do the work,

00:13:30.000 | and eventually I found one or two students

00:13:32.320 | who were really smart,

00:13:34.120 | and these were the students I would come back to

00:13:36.040 | to work with again and again,

00:13:37.040 | and we complimented each other,

00:13:38.240 | and it made these problem-set groups really effective.

00:13:41.400 | I actually got a note like a year or two ago.

00:13:44.360 | It was actually pretty cool.

00:13:45.240 | I'd forgotten about it,

00:13:46.120 | but it was a group mate I worked with in a lot of courses

00:13:48.960 | who I really liked working with,

00:13:50.280 | and he came across on my writing or something recently.

00:13:53.440 | So this is 15, 16 years later,

00:13:56.520 | and he sent me a note about,

00:13:57.680 | "Hey, I remember working on problem-sets

00:13:59.120 | "with you back at college."

00:14:00.440 | So that was pretty cool,

00:14:01.800 | but that was really useful.

00:14:03.040 | So pick the smartest people,

00:14:04.960 | the most organized people you can when you can.

00:14:07.760 | Avoid group projects when you can't,

00:14:10.160 | and when all that else fails,

00:14:11.640 | I'm just gonna validate your frustration.

00:14:13.560 | I'm not a big fan of group projects in college,

00:14:16.240 | and so you're not doing anything wrong.

00:14:18.640 | It's just kind of the price you pay.

00:14:20.440 | All right, moving on here,

00:14:25.920 | we have a question from Rodrigo.

00:14:28.740 | Rodrigo asks, "Do you recommend listening to music

00:14:33.660 | "while doing deep work?"

00:14:36.760 | Well, it's up to you.

00:14:37.840 | Some people do, some people don't.

00:14:40.340 | What I always tell people when they ask about this

00:14:43.880 | is that music can help you drown out other distractions

00:14:48.840 | and get into the mood of deep work

00:14:50.820 | if you practice first doing deep work

00:14:53.640 | with that specific type of music.

00:14:55.480 | So it is a trainable thing.

00:14:58.800 | If you listen to the same Mozart sonatas

00:15:00.600 | every time you do deep work,

00:15:02.220 | the first few sessions,

00:15:03.360 | you might actually find it a little bit distracting,

00:15:05.640 | but after a while, your brain learns to filter it out

00:15:09.080 | and it can be effective.

00:15:10.400 | So that's the only caveat I would give.

00:15:12.240 | The people who use music have practiced

00:15:14.440 | working with that music.

00:15:16.240 | This can get pretty extreme.

00:15:18.480 | I do tell the story sometimes of a novelist

00:15:20.760 | I interviewed years ago who had four kids at home.

00:15:24.720 | It was a very noisy home, and he had to work there,

00:15:28.440 | and he wrote a lot.

00:15:29.280 | He was a self-published novelist

00:15:31.040 | who did a lot of word count.

00:15:32.640 | And what he did in the end was got NASCAR-style headphones.

00:15:37.520 | So they're heavily insulated,

00:15:38.880 | and you can also play audio through them.

00:15:41.240 | Because I guess at NASCAR, what you do

00:15:42.880 | is you wear these really insulated headset headphones,

00:15:47.080 | but you want the audio of the commentary playing.

00:15:50.120 | And he would put Metallica,

00:15:52.440 | would blast Metallica

00:15:53.720 | into these heavily insulated headphone speakers.

00:15:56.240 | So there was literally no sound from his kids.

00:15:58.080 | That's what it takes.

00:15:59.000 | And I have three kids, so I can attest to this.

00:16:00.840 | That is probably what it takes to actually

00:16:03.240 | eliminate the sound of your kids from your life

00:16:05.680 | if they're home and you are trying to work at home.

00:16:08.720 | That's what it really takes.

00:16:10.440 | He learned to write pretty productively

00:16:13.000 | with Metallica blasting in his ears.

00:16:15.840 | If I tried this now, it would be incredibly distracting.

00:16:20.280 | If I did this consistently for two weeks,

00:16:22.920 | my mind would easily tune it out.

00:16:24.280 | It would actually probably be pretty effective.

00:16:25.800 | So, Rodrigo, it's all about practice.

00:16:28.100 | All right, let's do one more question about deep work.

00:16:34.040 | This one comes from Mr. S.

00:16:36.720 | Mr. S asks, "What do you do when your boss

00:16:40.640 | has allocated you to a team half time?"

00:16:43.940 | All right, he elaborates,

00:16:46.420 | "I worked full-time on one team for my current employer.

00:16:50.360 | My boss has decided that we need to start on a new effort

00:16:53.480 | and has put me and one other person

00:16:54.760 | to work on this new effort.

00:16:55.600 | We were supposed to spend half our time on this new project

00:16:58.300 | and the other half on our old team,

00:16:59.480 | but I feel like I'm still allocated 100% to both teams now.

00:17:04.000 | It's exhausting."

00:17:06.120 | All right, Mr. S, here's my suggestion.

00:17:08.760 | Ask your boss specifically which half of my hours

00:17:12.440 | do you want me working on the new team?

00:17:14.280 | 50% as an abstract number means nothing.

00:17:18.360 | Should it be the mornings?

00:17:20.440 | Should it be the afternoons?

00:17:22.200 | Should it be two hours in the morning,

00:17:23.380 | two hours in the afternoon?

00:17:24.220 | I want the fix down, boss,

00:17:26.560 | the hours when I'm working on team A

00:17:28.520 | and the hours in which I'm working on team B,

00:17:30.400 | and I am going to completely segregate these two efforts.

00:17:35.420 | You can give a good reason for it.

00:17:36.600 | I'm a Cal Newport fan.

00:17:37.720 | Context switching is better to treat these

00:17:39.420 | like two separate jobs

00:17:40.540 | as opposed to mixing them together in one job,

00:17:42.540 | but then do that and then stick to that.

00:17:45.040 | If you want to have a meeting related to team A,

00:17:47.020 | it has to be scheduled in team A hours.

00:17:49.040 | If you want a meeting having to do with team B,

00:17:51.220 | it has to be scheduled in team B hours.

00:17:53.440 | If you're going to work on team A,

00:17:54.460 | it has to be in team A hours.

00:17:55.440 | If you're going to work on team B,

00:17:56.280 | it has to be in team B hours.

00:17:57.500 | It could be splitting the day in half.

00:17:58.780 | It could be splitting the week in half.

00:18:00.900 | Thursday, Friday is team B.

00:18:02.180 | Monday, Tuesday is team A,

00:18:03.980 | and we split Wednesday down the middle.

00:18:05.980 | But what you want here is specificity.

00:18:08.580 | When should this work happen?

00:18:10.180 | Now, there is a bigger point here

00:18:13.060 | I want to briefly emphasize,

00:18:14.660 | which is that in knowledge work writ large,

00:18:19.820 | a real issue we have is this push model of work allocation,

00:18:25.700 | where anyone can push work onto anyone else's plate

00:18:29.700 | where it's up to them to figure out

00:18:30.980 | what to do with the mess.

00:18:33.480 | This is a disaster for overload.

00:18:35.580 | We get way too much work on our plate

00:18:37.900 | because there's no one regulating this.

00:18:39.860 | There's no one looking at how much is on your plate.

00:18:41.580 | There's no one saying what is reasonable.

00:18:43.620 | So we end up with way too much work on our plate.

00:18:47.140 | Can't make progress on all of it at the same time.

00:18:49.060 | So that is stressful, but it's not just stressful.

00:18:51.460 | Each of these things that's now on your plate

00:18:53.780 | brings with it some amount of fixed overhead.

00:18:57.620 | Emails about that work with people checking in,

00:19:00.460 | weekly meetings, you've had to schedule

00:19:02.460 | to make sure that progress is being made.

00:19:04.220 | And so when your plate gets full enough,

00:19:06.140 | the fixed overhead itself can take over most of your hours,

00:19:09.420 | squeezing out almost any of the time

00:19:11.140 | to actually get work done.

00:19:12.380 | So it's a huge problem.

00:19:13.600 | I'm a big believer in having

00:19:16.860 | a much more explicit allocation of work

00:19:19.500 | where we think through how much can you do?

00:19:21.800 | How much are you doing?

00:19:24.500 | Does it make sense to give you something else?

00:19:27.500 | I call this a pull-based method

00:19:30.140 | because you're basically pulling work

00:19:31.760 | into time you have available.

00:19:33.220 | So you're never oversubscribed,

00:19:36.260 | as opposed to a push method

00:19:37.340 | where any amount of work can be pushed towards you.

00:19:39.700 | This is roughly what I'm getting at, Mr. S,

00:19:41.400 | when I suggest that you ask your boss,

00:19:43.380 | what hours, what days do you actually want

00:19:47.800 | this 50% work to be done?

00:19:50.060 | 'Cause what you're doing here is actually forcing work

00:19:54.460 | to account for when it's gonna get done.

00:19:57.300 | Well, where are the hours where this is gonna get done?

00:19:58.980 | That hour is already spoken for.

00:20:00.740 | You wanna have a meeting here,

00:20:01.760 | but that hours have already been put aside

00:20:03.180 | for this other work.

00:20:04.020 | So now there's no time for your meeting.

00:20:04.960 | You're making explicit, things take time.

00:20:07.660 | What time do you want me to give to this?

00:20:09.100 | And honestly, I think there should be a bigger effort

00:20:12.240 | to do this with more work.

00:20:14.460 | I wrote about this in "A World Without Email,"

00:20:17.440 | that when it comes to, for example,

00:20:19.580 | service work among professors,

00:20:21.500 | that there should be a specific budget.

00:20:24.700 | Here is how many hours of service work

00:20:26.740 | you are allowed to do max per week.

00:20:30.280 | And when things get assigned to you,

00:20:31.720 | you actually have to estimate

00:20:34.040 | how many hours you're gonna spend on it.

00:20:35.500 | In fact, put those hours aside.

00:20:37.200 | Here they are on my calendar when I'm working on this.

00:20:39.180 | If you wanna talk to me about this,

00:20:40.620 | it's on my public calendar.

00:20:42.820 | And when those hours are filled up,

00:20:44.540 | nothing else can come to you.

00:20:46.020 | Yes, this would create a problem at first

00:20:47.540 | because there's all these people that want you to do things.

00:20:49.460 | Like I know your hours are full, but this is important,

00:20:51.620 | but you know what?

00:20:52.460 | That back pressure reforms the system.

00:20:54.940 | And less of these requests are allowed to be generated.

00:20:57.560 | And more of these requests generating entities

00:21:00.380 | have to figure out other ways to get their work done.

00:21:02.420 | So I don't mean to go on a big rant here,

00:21:03.900 | but the unregulated allocation of work

00:21:06.540 | and knowledge work is a disaster.

00:21:08.360 | It's convenient, it's flexible,

00:21:13.060 | but it is a terrible way to get work done.

00:21:15.560 | It's like running a car factory where everyone comes in

00:21:20.300 | and you just say, "Guys, there's a bunch of parts

00:21:22.100 | "around here, you do you,

00:21:23.380 | "like we're just gonna kind of build cars."

00:21:25.140 | Yeah, it's convenient, it's flexible,

00:21:27.060 | but nothing's gonna get done.

00:21:29.820 | Or if it does, the cars are gonna get built terribly

00:21:31.660 | and it's gonna take a long time.

00:21:33.540 | So it's time to start pushing back

00:21:34.920 | against the unrestricted allocation of work.

00:21:37.700 | Mr. S, if your boss wants you to spend 50/50,

00:21:40.320 | make him tell you what that 50/50 is,

00:21:42.440 | make him live by that decision.

00:21:45.040 | They're now hours he cannot get you to do work for team A

00:21:47.800 | because it's team B hours, et cetera.

00:21:49.220 | And if he wants to put another thing on your plate,

00:21:51.100 | where are those hours coming from?

00:21:52.240 | It's time to get explicit.

00:21:53.560 | Don't just push stuff on my plate.

00:21:54.840 | I'll pull in what I actually have time for.

00:21:57.980 | And what we don't have time for

00:22:00.840 | is more questions about deep work.

00:22:02.860 | So let's move on now to some questions about the deep life.

00:22:06.540 | Our first question comes from Clarissa.

00:22:10.240 | Clarissa asks, "I do a daily schedule,

00:22:14.240 | "but how do I avoid feeling like it's redundant?

00:22:18.060 | "Sometimes I don't need to change things around

00:22:21.040 | "and I skip scheduling my time block

00:22:22.800 | "and then it snowballs into one day

00:22:24.340 | "and then two days, the next thing you know, it's a week."

00:22:27.960 | Well, Clarissa, let's focus in on this issue

00:22:31.360 | of falling off the habit of daily time block planning

00:22:36.360 | and how that can snowball to many days without it.

00:22:39.860 | Typically, it's a sign that you're overworked.

00:22:43.160 | There's too much going on, your mind is exhausted.

00:22:47.020 | So I think it's actually an important signal.

00:22:48.480 | It's not a failing, it's an important signal

00:22:50.800 | that maybe we need to pull back on commitments

00:22:53.440 | so that the amount we're doing each day is less

00:22:55.620 | and try to get more time off.

00:22:57.660 | Your mind needs time off and it's getting it informally

00:23:02.380 | by just refusing, mentally speaking, to do any planning.

00:23:06.140 | The thing I'm gonna recommend that you do persist with,

00:23:11.680 | even during these periods,

00:23:12.660 | is some sort of bare bones tracking.

00:23:16.420 | So for me, it's the metric tracking space

00:23:19.820 | in my time block planner.

00:23:20.900 | There's certain key metrics I write in there every day.

00:23:24.460 | I never skip that, that's sacrosanct.

00:23:26.900 | Now, this takes 20 seconds

00:23:28.380 | and you just do it at the end of the day, right?

00:23:31.140 | But it keeps you at least in a mindset

00:23:33.840 | of I am being intentional, I'm keeping track of my life.

00:23:38.080 | I have not just given up on intentionality

00:23:40.060 | in my living altogether, even though it only takes 20 seconds

00:23:42.120 | and even if what you're writing down is really bad.

00:23:44.900 | So if there's things you track, like, did I read today?

00:23:47.620 | Did I eat well today?

00:23:48.580 | Did I exercise today?

00:23:49.420 | And you're not doing all of it,

00:23:50.700 | you're writing that down saying that you didn't do it.

00:23:53.300 | Bad or not bad, that is like a bare bones fallback plan

00:23:56.500 | that I'm always doing that,

00:23:57.580 | even if I'm not getting around to my time block planning.

00:24:00.740 | And then it makes it much easier to say,

00:24:01.660 | okay, well now let me actually go back

00:24:03.340 | to doing my time block plans.

00:24:04.920 | So do the fallback mode,

00:24:06.940 | so I have the very basic behavior, the metric tracking,

00:24:09.820 | you never stop doing,

00:24:10.780 | so you never leave the mindset of I control my life

00:24:13.160 | and I care about what's happening in my life,

00:24:14.940 | even if it takes 20 seconds.

00:24:16.100 | And then two, if you're consistently skipping time blocking,

00:24:19.220 | take that as a signal that you have too much going on.

00:24:22.020 | That's okay, it's an important signal.

00:24:24.380 | You need a day off, you need earlier shutdowns,

00:24:26.620 | you need to take three things off your plate.

00:24:29.060 | It's useful information,

00:24:31.340 | not a sign that you're doing something wrong.

00:24:33.620 | We have a question here from Patrick.

00:24:37.660 | Patrick asks, how would you approach including

00:24:42.540 | non-work activities into my workday?

00:24:48.420 | Well, if it's during the actual hours of your workday,

00:24:51.860 | so after your time block plan begins,

00:24:54.500 | but before you do your shutdown ritual for the day,

00:24:57.140 | you just time block it.

00:24:59.020 | You just time block it like any other thing you would do.

00:25:02.220 | In fact, time blocking it allows you to find the best times

00:25:05.060 | for scheduling this non-work related activity.

00:25:08.940 | You have some control over where that's gonna fall,

00:25:10.940 | so it's not just happening randomly.

00:25:12.220 | You're more likely to get more of it done.

00:25:14.320 | I do this, for example, with exercising,

00:25:17.900 | and for sure with book reading,

00:25:18.940 | where I'll just block off a time for book reading.

00:25:22.000 | The other thing you can do is to shut your days down

00:25:23.940 | earlier on some days.

00:25:26.180 | So I can end my day at 3.30, full schedule shutdown complete,

00:25:28.880 | 3.30 to 5.30, I'm doing my leisure activity I'm really into.

00:25:32.700 | That's a great period.

00:25:33.540 | I love that end of the day period

00:25:34.980 | where other people are working, but you're done

00:25:37.540 | because you're organized and you're in control,

00:25:40.500 | and you can end that day early without it being a crisis

00:25:42.740 | because you've controlled all of your time,

00:25:43.980 | you've controlled your weeks,

00:25:44.860 | you've controlled your semester plans,

00:25:46.420 | and so you might try doing that as well.

00:25:48.820 | But just time block that like anything else.

00:25:51.540 | All right, so we have another question here.

00:25:54.980 | This is also from Patrick.

00:25:57.640 | Patrick says, "How do you structure your time

00:26:00.980 | "if you love what you do?"

00:26:03.500 | I wonder if this is the same Patrick as before.

00:26:06.220 | It probably is, actually.

00:26:07.620 | Here's a little bit of an elaboration.

00:26:08.900 | Patrick says he's a PhD student,

00:26:11.300 | and that he enjoys my work.

00:26:13.220 | Thank you, Patrick.

00:26:15.100 | He really loves what he's doing,

00:26:16.580 | but some of his leisure activities are related to his work.

00:26:19.420 | So Patrick says he's researching AI,

00:26:21.780 | but is also interested in the epistemology

00:26:24.940 | of knowledge discovery from data.

00:26:26.380 | So he's reading philosophy and trying to write

00:26:28.740 | some epistemological short papers.

00:26:31.260 | He's also taking some MOOCs, massively online courses,

00:26:35.220 | to improve his science writing skills.

00:26:37.800 | He's doing that in his free time

00:26:39.140 | after he does schedule shutdown and complete.

00:26:41.700 | He also reviews academic papers

00:26:43.660 | and tries to eat healthy foods and reads a lot.

00:26:47.020 | And he's trying to figure out, here's what he says.

00:26:49.900 | "As you can see, some of these leisure activities

00:26:51.320 | "are also work-related, although not that closely.

00:26:54.680 | "I emphasize that I enjoy doing these activities.

00:26:57.060 | "Do you think this is a sustainable approach,

00:26:58.380 | "or do I need to focus more on another bucket of my life?"

00:27:01.340 | All right, so basically, Patrick, you have a cool job,

00:27:05.200 | and you have a lot of things you're interested in,

00:27:07.260 | and there's a lot of overlap

00:27:08.420 | between the things you're interested in and your job.

00:27:10.340 | And I think that's all great.

00:27:12.260 | And I'm not going to advocate

00:27:14.060 | for significantly reducing this energy

00:27:18.020 | and just leaving more time free in your schedule.

00:27:20.220 | You're doing nothing because you're being energized by this.

00:27:22.380 | What I would, I think what I would moderate here

00:27:25.820 | is commitment activities.

00:27:29.260 | See, I'm gonna draw a clear distinction.

00:27:31.820 | Here are things I have to do

00:27:33.220 | as part of a long-term commitment,

00:27:35.820 | versus here is something I'm going to do right now

00:27:38.940 | because it's interesting.

00:27:41.140 | But it would be no problem if I didn't do it.

00:27:43.860 | I'm interested in it.

00:27:45.220 | I'm taking this online course at my own pace

00:27:47.860 | because I want to be a better science writer.

00:27:49.140 | I'm reading this book because I'm interested in the topic.

00:27:51.980 | I have a hobby AI project I'm monkeying around with

00:27:54.840 | because it seems like it's interesting.

00:27:58.120 | I think it's fine to have a bunch of stuff like that,

00:28:01.300 | that you're using to free up, to fill up your leisure time,

00:28:04.700 | because it's not gonna cause stress if it's not commitments.

00:28:08.380 | It's not gonna cause stress

00:28:10.260 | if you know that you can put the break down as needed.

00:28:14.020 | If something in work comes up that's urgent,

00:28:15.800 | you can not take that course for two weeks.

00:28:19.140 | If there's a family emergency,

00:28:20.600 | it's not a big deal if you stop reading the book.

00:28:22.700 | So make that distinction.

00:28:24.380 | Keep the stuff that you are committed to,

00:28:26.180 | what you're doing in work,

00:28:27.620 | the academic projects you're working on, the mentoring,

00:28:29.620 | the stuff that you have to come back to

00:28:30.900 | and you have no options, keep that reasonable.

00:28:32.940 | Control that, keep that footprint small.

00:28:36.940 | And then if you want to explore whatever

00:28:40.900 | in the time that remains, that's great.

00:28:42.660 | I think that is good.

00:28:43.820 | So just make that clear distinction,

00:28:45.540 | filling your time with things that you can pause as needed

00:28:49.820 | is I think completely fine if you find that energizing.

00:28:53.480 | All right, we have a question here from Jenny.

00:28:58.360 | Jenny says, "How do you suspect that you're thinking

00:29:00.300 | "about living a deep life will change in retirement?"

00:29:05.940 | Well, I don't think it will change at all.

00:29:09.320 | And what I mean by that is I don't think

00:29:12.820 | my general framework for thinking about the deep life

00:29:16.100 | has to change in any substantial way

00:29:20.160 | as you shift from full-time work to retirement.

00:29:22.500 | The decisions and activities that this framework generates

00:29:27.060 | will of course change

00:29:28.740 | as you shift from full-time work to retirement.

00:29:31.020 | So just as a reminder, my framework for the deep life says

00:29:34.580 | you identify the buckets that are important to you

00:29:37.260 | and your life and your vision of a life well-lived

00:29:39.220 | and you give each of these buckets independent attention.

00:29:43.380 | You start with keystone habits

00:29:45.060 | and then you overhaul that part of your life.

00:29:46.820 | And so you make sure that you're seeing holistically

00:29:49.380 | all the elements of your life that are important

00:29:50.940 | and that you're giving intention to each of those

00:29:52.660 | and making sure that they have a expression in your life

00:29:56.900 | and they're an important part of your life.

00:29:58.700 | So what happens when you retire?

00:30:00.940 | It just changes what you're doing in some of those buckets.

00:30:04.700 | In particular, you have what I call the craft bucket,

00:30:07.580 | the bucket that's dedicated to work.

00:30:09.500 | That's gonna look a lot different after retirement.

00:30:12.020 | Craft is still important,

00:30:13.740 | producing things of value, skill is still important,

00:30:16.380 | but you'll probably then be pushing that part of your life

00:30:19.700 | towards more non-professional type craft.

00:30:23.020 | And the other buckets of your life remain unchanged,

00:30:25.700 | just as important as they ever were before.

00:30:27.140 | Probably most of the stuff you were doing

00:30:28.940 | the day before you retired in those other buckets,

00:30:31.020 | you'll be doing the day after.

00:30:32.860 | Your constitution bucket for your health and wellbeing,

00:30:35.220 | that's still important, obviously.

00:30:36.740 | Community, what you're doing with your friends and family

00:30:39.300 | and those who live around you,

00:30:41.380 | gonna be just as important,

00:30:42.500 | doesn't change when you retire.

00:30:44.080 | Contemplation, thinking through philosophical

00:30:46.260 | or theological issues is just as important before and after.

00:30:49.100 | So I think if you're living with this bucket-based approach

00:30:52.420 | to the deep life,

00:30:53.540 | it will be a seamless transition to retirement.

00:30:56.200 | When you do your normal introspection

00:30:59.420 | on each of those buckets,

00:31:01.220 | your craft bucket will change,

00:31:02.980 | the other ones won't,

00:31:04.420 | and you keep going, you keep living deeply.

00:31:06.800 | All right, I think we have time for one more question.

00:31:12.380 | This one is from Nicholas,

00:31:14.420 | who prefaces the question by saying,

00:31:15.780 | "Not sure if you wanna answer this."

00:31:18.220 | Well, Nicholas, I will try to answer this.

00:31:19.980 | You ask, "Which habits are needed to be an MVP

00:31:25.700 | "in the academic world?"

00:31:28.200 | That's a good question, Nicholas.

00:31:30.920 | Adderall and Lyon?

00:31:33.320 | Is that what I wasn't supposed to say?

00:31:36.720 | No, it's okay.

00:31:38.800 | The formula is not super complicated.

00:31:41.720 | If you wanna be a star academic,

00:31:43.760 | there's three things that are preconditions.

00:31:47.800 | They're not sufficient.

00:31:48.680 | This won't necessarily get you there, but they're necessary.

00:31:50.680 | So at the very least, you'll have to do these three things.

00:31:53.000 | And typically, it's A, read,

00:31:55.640 | and by read, I mean you do the work to keep up

00:31:58.380 | with the latest literature in your particular specialty.

00:32:03.180 | If you're a theoretician,

00:32:04.860 | you are reading what people are doing

00:32:06.740 | in the topics you study and mastering their techniques.

00:32:09.260 | If you're a lab scientist,

00:32:10.500 | you're looking at the innovations

00:32:11.860 | in lab scientist techniques,

00:32:13.260 | and you're learning from it.

00:32:14.580 | This is really hard work.

00:32:16.040 | Reading academic papers is hard.

00:32:17.820 | Trying to figure out what academics is doing is hard.

00:32:19.780 | The top people spend a lot of time on this.

00:32:22.100 | Two, you're working relentlessly.

00:32:24.400 | You're always working on research,

00:32:26.160 | carefully chosen projects.

00:32:28.280 | You're always working on it

00:32:29.320 | at a faster pace than other people.

00:32:30.720 | And when you finish one thing, you move on to the next.

00:32:33.040 | The total number of hours top academics

00:32:36.360 | put into their research is typically much bigger

00:32:38.100 | than their peers, where it's more seasonal.

00:32:40.840 | They're working on something.

00:32:41.860 | They kind of do other things for a while,

00:32:43.680 | and then they work on it.

00:32:44.640 | Star academics are relentless about it.

00:32:46.440 | It's priority one.

00:32:47.440 | They try to fit in the other stuff,

00:32:48.640 | the teaching, the whatever, when they can.

00:32:51.880 | But the time is gonna be on the research.

00:32:54.100 | And then three, you attach yourselves to stars.

00:32:56.600 | If you wanna produce MVP caliber work,

00:32:59.940 | you have to be training under MVP caliber people.

00:33:02.400 | It's very consistent.

00:33:04.940 | It's very difficult to break up to a higher level

00:33:08.800 | than you studied under.

00:33:10.580 | It typically goes the other way.

00:33:11.740 | There's a reason why star academics are stars.

00:33:13.860 | You have to learn from them how they do it,

00:33:15.940 | how they work, what they focus on,

00:33:17.340 | their techniques, their work ethic.

00:33:19.260 | So you have to work with the very best people.

00:33:22.240 | Now, you could do those three things

00:33:23.080 | and not end up a star.

00:33:25.200 | There's raw brain power and luck play a big role in this.

00:33:28.920 | I mean, especially in mathematical fields

00:33:31.440 | or other types of fields,

00:33:32.440 | there's just horsepower that matters.

00:33:35.800 | And I don't know how you develop it

00:33:38.160 | and how much of it you're born with

00:33:39.300 | and how much of it is the training you've done

00:33:41.880 | throughout your whole life or whatever,

00:33:43.440 | but there's a certain just type of ability

00:33:45.920 | to do spatial reasoning

00:33:47.240 | or internal numerical manipulations.

00:33:49.720 | And that's just, you probably have to have,

00:33:52.180 | and some people don't.

00:33:53.100 | And then there's this luck.

00:33:54.460 | The topic you're working on works.

00:33:57.620 | You can't always predict that.

00:33:59.700 | But you're working on, let's say it's 2018,

00:34:04.700 | you're starting a postdoc.

00:34:07.620 | Like I'm gonna do a postdoc at the, wherever.

00:34:12.540 | And what I'm gonna focus on

00:34:14.220 | is the phenotypic expressions

00:34:17.060 | of coronavirus genotype point mutations.

00:34:20.660 | And then the coronavirus pandemic comes.

00:34:24.220 | Wow, you're gonna get a lot of grant money.

00:34:25.980 | You're gonna get a lot of demand.

00:34:27.140 | Like what you're doing is really, really useful.

00:34:30.820 | That this would be a really good time.

00:34:33.300 | Whereas at the same time, if in 2019,

00:34:35.380 | you were an epi professor at Johns Hopkins

00:34:38.240 | that had just published your first book,

00:34:40.900 | which was "A World Without Viruses,

00:34:44.620 | Why We Will Never Again Face a Big Pandemic

00:34:49.100 | Because of the Miracles of Modern Technology

00:34:54.580 | and the Ability for Populations

00:34:56.380 | to React Nimbly and Quickly."

00:34:58.460 | Now you're in a bad place.

00:35:00.460 | You're not gonna do as well.

00:35:02.820 | So there is luck involved as well.

00:35:04.580 | But those are the necessary.

00:35:05.540 | Like at the very least, you have to be

00:35:07.740 | mastering the literature,

00:35:09.700 | working relentlessly and working with stars.

00:35:11.340 | And it's a focused, intense, deep work effort every day,

00:35:16.340 | reasonable amount.

00:35:19.540 | You could probably only do four hours of this a day

00:35:21.060 | and just repeat, repeat, repeat.

00:35:22.860 | All right, well, speaking of repeating,

00:35:26.460 | I think I'll have to repeat the idea

00:35:28.340 | that we are out of time for today's episode,

00:35:31.060 | but it is good to be back after my break

00:35:33.340 | to be back in the studio.

00:35:34.660 | And we will wrap up today's episode there.

00:35:38.900 | (upbeat music)

00:35:41.500 | (upbeat music)

00:35:44.080 | (upbeat music)

Full Length Episode | #161 | January 3, 2022

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