Cal Newport: Lifestyle Design, Slow Productivity and Contrarian Writing

1. 0:00 – 2:01

   Intro

   1. CNCal Newport0:00

      When I first started writing, it was like a side thing, but then I made this shift after Deep Work came out, and suddenly it became I'm a technologist.

   2. AAAli Abdaal0:08

      What you're about to hear is an interview between me and Cal Newport, who is a computer science professor and also the author of a bunch of books, including Deep Work, which has become ridiculously popular in the productivity niche, and also this fantastic book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, which I made a video about recently. It's done very well. Now, Cal is one of those interesting people because he straddles the world of, like, traditional academia as a computer science professor at Georgetown University, and he also straddles the world of, like, online creatory type people. He's been blogging on the Internet since way before it was cool. And so in the conversation, we talk about Cal's career and what it's like to balance these worlds of, like, the Old World prestige of academia and the New World vibes of content creation.

   3. CNCal Newport0:42

      I think when people ask me, "What do you do?" If I actually answered, "I'm a writer," I think it's actually probably higher prestige in that situation [laughs] than if I say, "I'm a professor." Like, people respect professors, but they often change it to teaching. They're like, "Oh, you teach. Yeah, I was thinking about teaching." It drives academic professors crazy because it's this, like, blood sport intellectual competition to publish incredibly hard stuff in really competitive venues.

   4. AAAli Abdaal1:03

      We talk about how to reverse engineer a career based on the lifestyle you want, and we talk about the concept of slow productivity.

   5. CNCal Newport1:08

      A lot of my work as I'm a computer scientist, it's productivity, but productivity seen through the lens of what's happening to our ability to produce things. It's a broad topic, and where I come at it is this techno social cultural convergence of trying to figure out how to take control of what you're doing in a world in which there's all these other forces that are trying to prevent you from exactly having that control.

   6. AAAli Abdaal1:32

      At the moment, according to YouTube analytics, 81% of you who are watching this on YouTube have not yet hit the subscribe button. And so if you're, for example, in the now 81% of people who are watching this on YouTube, but who are not subscribed to the channel, I would love it if you could do so, and it would be awesome to get that number down to 50%, and it would be cool to get, like, 50/50 sub/non-sub ratio, just, just for fun. Right. So Cal, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Um, this feels particularly surreal for me because I've been following your stuff for just... I, I can't re- I, I, I feel like I was

2. 2:01 – 5:24

   How do you approach the word productivity?

   1. AAAli Abdaal2:01

      reading your blog way back in, like, 2010 or 2011 when you were, uh, posting about, um, how to figure out what to do with your career and some of the slow productivity stuff and stuff around, like, treating your studies as if they're a bit more of an adventure. Um, and that was when I would've been in high school just before going to university. So it had an enormous impact on, on my life. So firstly, thank you so much for, uh, for that.

   2. CNCal Newport2:25

      Yeah. Wow. That... And that goes way back. Uh, it's... Th- there's, like, three phases of that blog newsletter. The early phase was all student stuff. This was after I first posted my first two books on, on student, uh, advice. And you joined that period, 2011, 2010. There was this big, for me, fraught transition where I said I have to move on from just doing student advice and career advice was the thing, and I did a, a strict 50/50 alternation for a while. And then it evolved from there into what it is today, but that's great. So you're an old-timer.

   3. AAAli Abdaal2:56

      [laughs]

   4. CNCal Newport2:56

      You're an old-timer on my blog-

   5. AAAli Abdaal2:57

      Absolutely

   6. CNCal Newport2:58

      ... and newsletter. Yeah, it's great.

   7. AAAli Abdaal2:59

      Absolutely. Yeah. And I think kind of my online career had a similar thing where when I started making YouTube videos in 2017, I was in my sort of final year of med school. And so I knew that, like, oh, hang on, I need to break out of this student market pretty soon and started erring towards, like, tech, and then somehow stumbled into the general genre of productivity. And now I'm this productivity YouTuber, um, which feels like a strange place to be because it's never where I set out to be. But I guess you're, like, particularly famous in the productivity world as well, uh, for, um, in particular for Deep Work. Um, I wonder, like, how, how do you approach the word productivity these days?

   8. CNCal Newport3:34

      Yeah. Well, first of all, let me say there's a, there's a interesting congruence between us, right? Because think about it, we both were trained... You're a doctor, right? I mean, you were on this very traditional path that's highly trained, and I'm sure you had very similar sideways glances and whispered conversations as like, "What, what's he doing? What's, what's going on, on, on YouTube?" And you know, I'm a professor, so a very similar sort of thing, being trained and, and trained to do something very specific, but also was writing and thinking about all these other issues that orbited my job and, and, and other types of issues. And so yeah, productivity, I am associated with that a lot and, and to some extent I think that's true. I, I, I think a lot about producing good work, producing meaningful work. But on the other hand, I don't really come at it exclusively from the angle of just how do you maximize what gets done. You know, a lot of my work, because I'm a computer scientist, is entangled in techno criticism. So it's, it's productivity, but productivity seen through the lens of what's happening to our ability to produce things because of email, because of social media, because of smartphones, because of Zoom invites that are flying back and forth faster than we can handle it. So it's, it's a broad topic, and where I come at it is this techno social cultural convergence of trying to figure out how to take control of what you're doing in a world in which there's all these other forces that are trying to prevent you from exactly having that control.

   9. AAAli Abdaal5:04

      Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's a, that's an interesting lens, lens to approach it with. I guess kind of basically all of Deep Work was essentially about that, and then obviously A World Without Email was specifically and explicitly about that. Um, I'd, I'd, uh, I'd love to get a bit of a, bit of an understa- uh, understanding, like, what does a, what does a normal week in your life look like

3. 5:24 – 13:43

   What does a week in your life look like?

   1. AAAli Abdaal5:24

      these days? And the reason I ask is because often when I think of, like, what do I want my life to look like in the future and think about vague long-term plan stuff, I often think of you as being like, yeah, I think, I think I'd quite like to have a career kind of like Cal Newport does, where it's like you're a professor of computer science, you're teaching people it seems, uh, but on the side you do, you do the blog, you do the books, you did the podcast recently, you go on other people's podcasts. You seem to be straddling the, the, the life of, like, a traditional academic along with the sort of being an Internet influencer in, like, a, a, a weird kind of way. So I'd love to know what that looks like for you these days.

   2. CNCal Newport6:03

      Well, it's very seasonal, whi- which I think is actually important because that's a model I think should be more broadly adopted, but only some professions have it. So my typical week right now, we're recording this in the summer, as a professor is gonna look a lot different than, let's say, next spring when I'm, when I'm teaching, uh, two classes, but I'll just talk about both. Like right now, it's the summertime. I'm on my own dime. So, so the way professorships work at research academies is you, you are paid for 10 months. Some places it's nine, but, but at Georgetown University where I am it's 10 months, and then you have two months of summer. Now, what a lot of professors do is, uh, in your research grants, part of the funding you ask for is summer salary, and that's actually where your salary comes in July and August. I don't do that because I have income as a writer, so I literally, in July and August, am not on Georgetown's dime. So there's essentially no work happening other than obviously my, my, uh, doctoral students, um, still talk to work with my students. But I, I, I, I do very little research and I do nothing on campus. I don't do meetings. So a typical day in the summer, like today, uh, get up, breakf- breakfast for the kids. I write. I go to my study. I have a, a custom-built library table that I had built from a, a, a company in Maine that produces library tables for universities. [laughs] That's like a big part of what their work is. So it's not a desk, it's actually the dimensions of a library table, which is, which is different. And I, and I sit there and I write. Today I wrote until, uh, 11:00 AM, so it was like 8:00, 8:00, 8:30 AM to about 11:00 AM, then I, I came to prepare this. Midday I do things like this. Uh, I'm doing an interview with you. I owe some stuff to a web designer, a little bit of business, some email, and then I'll shut that down by 4:00 and work is done. So my summer schedule, uh, is my ideal schedule. And the other layer I put on top of that, by the way, is I try when possible to have two days a week, usually Mondays and one other days, where I schedule nothing, so it's writing in the morning and then those afternoons, uh, is for walking and thinking. So really priming the pump on the, the ideas I'm working out in my writing, the ideas I'm trying to work out in my, my more academic thinking. That summer schedule, I love it. Uh, if we jump forward in the fall I'm on teaching leave, so it'll be somewhere in between, sort of like that, but more meetings in the afternoons and going to campus once a week. Go to the spring, and then it becomes much more bifurcated. Uh, I teach two days a week. Those days it's like for you would have been the days you're on call. I'm on campus all day. I tend to load meetings with students, administrative work, Zoom with administrators all into those days, and they're just let's just get after it and be exhausted, and then let the other three days be more open, like the schedule. So it's very seasonal. It really depends on the seasons. You, you get some intellectual challenge in the summer, but relaxation for administration, and in other parts of the years, maybe it's more administrative, but, uh, less of the intellectual challenges. So it's a, it's a mix.

   3. AAAli Abdaal9:02

      That sounds pretty, pretty fun. Are you-- Do you like this kind of variety that you have?

   4. CNCal Newport9:07

      I, you know, I think it's, I think it's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, honestly, the, the main issue professors have is administrative work, service work-

   5. AAAli Abdaal9:14

      Hmm

   6. CNCal Newport9:15

      ... obligations that go beyond just doing the academic work. So that's the, you know, it's... Here's what people who know me know. When I'm in the middle of the busiest parts of the year from an academic perspective, so for me, last spring, I was co-chairing a university-wide three-position search, which was a very time-consuming administrative thing. I'm walking around, "Man, I should just write full time. What am I doing here?" [laughs] Like, I should just go have a cabin and write. This is crazy. What a waste of my time. But you talk to me now in the summer when I have no responsibilities for the university, I'm, "Man, I love academia. There's all these cool people I work with," [laughs] you know, "All these ideas I'm constantly being challenged." So I, I'm a little bit Jekyll and Hyde in how I feel about that. It really depends on my workload.

   7. AAAli Abdaal9:58

      Interesting. So, um, I wa- I was working with this, um, executive coach a couple of years ago. Um, this was when I'd just taken a break from medicine, and I hadn't decided am I gonna leave completely or am I gonna do it as, like, a part-time gig. Uh, 'cause I kind of liked the idea, and again, I was thinking of what I... What does your, what does your life look like? I liked the idea of maybe, uh, practicing medicine like two days a week, maybe one day a week, something like that, and then I could spend the rest of the time doing the thing that I think I'm actually passionate about, which is writing and reading and learning and teaching and making videos on the internet and stuff. Um, and I was thinking about the idea of, hey, you know, it would be cool to be like a teacher at a university. Maybe I could teach at a medical school or something like that. And my coach challenged me on that. Th- he w- he was like, "Why, why do you need to be affiliated with an academic institution? Could you not just do the teaching? If you, if y- you know, you say you enjoy teaching in real life, why not just run your own lectures and just do it without being attached to a university?" And I was like, "Oh, that's a good, it, it's a good suggestion." It seems like you get all the benefits of the contact with students and teaching and stuff without any of the nightmare admin associated with being a ac- actually being involved with the university. Um, what's your, what's your take on that? Like, why not just go in your, in your cabin in the woods and then run seminars on the weekend, which loads of people would attend probably because you're famous and good at teaching, um-

   8. CNCal Newport11:22

      Yeah

   9. AAAli Abdaal11:22

      ... to avoid having the, all those obligations?

   10. CNCal Newport11:25

       Well, it, you know, it's a complicated question. I've been surveying a lot of people I know in various different relationships to me, in various different professional situations to get their take on this question, and it's, it's very split, right? So, so for example, I had a conversation a couple years back with Jim Collins, who, who wrote Good to Great, sort of famous business writer. He was a business professor at Stanford in his late 30s, so kind of around the same age I was, quit just to write books full-time. And Jim's argument was, uh, you get just as much credit for having done the thing that you get for still doing the thing. In other words, he says, "I get the credit for having been a Stanford Business School professor." Like, okay, that's the credential and whatever that gives you is the same as he was a Stanford Business School professor. Uh, and now is no longer because, hey, it's-- if, if you were a, if you were an Olympic athlete, we trust you know about fitness and nutrition even if you're no longer, uh, on, on the team. Other people, however, when I ask them this exact same question, will say, "No, no, no," like the, if you're not a professor, it's not-- it's just if you're not actively a professor, it's not the same. You don't have the same authority. You'll lose your, uh, advantage within the space, who are writing. Uh, so that, you know, that comes up as well. So I have both of these things, both of these things going on. I had one person tell me, and I don't think this is a good take. I had one person tell me, uh, "No one will buy your productivity discussions if they don't see that, that you have this really demanding life of being a professor and doing these other things and managing the juggle." To which I was thinking, all of my writing on this for the last multiple years has all have been about not doing that, about simplifying and slowing down. Like, don't you think it's actually worse? Uh, I'm writing a book right now called Slow Productivity. Don't you think it's actually worse if I have more going on in my life? In some sense, it seems like, uh, you're not embracing your own ideas. So it-- I don't-- I wa- I'm curious how you made that final decision. Like for, for you, how did you deal with... Here, here's one of my questions. So, so part of, like, internet influence right now, but even just book writing, forget internet, like, like I do, it all feels, uh, a little bit ephemeral. Like the technology could change in two years, and it could go away. You have two books that don't hit,

4. 13:43 – 27:17

   Creator businesses vs academia

   1. CNCal Newport13:43

      and the publisher's not interested. Like that, to me, that's this interesting fear, the, the stability. Uh, how did you deal with that? Thinking about, I gotta trust that this is a thing that's also gonna be a thing 15 years from now.

   2. AAAli Abdaal13:56

      Yeah, honestly, this is, this is the thing that keeps me up at night still to this day. And those sort of three different perspectives that you shared were basically spot on, exactly the three perspective-

   3. CNCal Newport14:06

      [laughs]

   4. AAAli Abdaal14:06

      ... I, I, I had in my mind where I was like, you know, some people were saying, "Oh, once you've been a doctor, the fact that you now practice clinically one or two days a week," like no one actually cares beyond that point once you've got the doctor on the title. On the other hand, people are saying, "No, the fact that you're doing the thing and you're actually doing the thing is like a really, really important part of it." Um, and then other people-- And I, I think this was the story that I was telling myself a lot, was that when I was, uh, working full-time and making YouTube videos on the side and running a business on the side, my schedule was sufficiently demanding to warrant my productivity advice, and it made my productivity advice seem more legit because I was doing the thing. But now if I'm becoming a, a YouTuber and a writer writing about productivity, but like the examples I'm using are from my life as a person who writes about productivity, now we're in this weird like circular, uh, thing where, eh, what's, what's, what's gonna happen there? Um, I, I, I haven't, haven't yet figured this out. Um-

   5. CNCal Newport15:00

      Yeah

   6. AAAli Abdaal15:00

      ... I'd, I'd love to get your take on it. But the way I'm, I'm thinking of it is kind of like... And I don't know if this is legit, but I ask myself, you know, if I, if I had 100 million in the bank, how would I choose to spend my time? If like we completely removed money from the equation, how would I choose to spend my time? Um, and I think the answer to that is actually broadly the, the routine you've just described of like, hey, I'd wanna have breakfast with the family right in the morning for a few hours until like midday, kinda like the Ryan Holiday lifestyle. And then in the afternoon, I've got-- I can do a podcast, I can do a video, I can like hang out, have lunch with some friends, or just like roam around in nature. And I think, hmm, does any of that, does my ideal week in this world where I don't care about money, does any of it involve actually practicing medicine? And I think, well, maybe it in... some of it involves teaching medical students 'cause that's fun or teaching people, but I don't think any of it involves practicing medicine. And then I was thinking, well, i- if, if that's the case, then does the fact that I'm entertaining the decision to continue practicing clinical medicine, is it really only for the credential and only for the fact that I can then flex it on my YouTube channel and in my books and be like, "Oh, this guy's a doctor"? Um, and I felt like that was probably not the right reason to do it, but yeah. What's, what's, well, what's your take on this?

   7. CNCal Newport16:11

      Yeah, the interesting thing is when I'm looking at your case, even though it's very similar to mine, I can have so much more confidence because it's not me. [laughs] So, so I'm like, that makes complete... I like that. That makes complete sense. I mean, people don't realize-- I think people don't realize the, the overhead of these really highly skilled credential, uh, positions. There's, there's a lot of overhead: time overhead, emotional, psychological overhead. Uh, it-- there's a lot of frustrations in it. I mean, they're, they're, they're complicated jobs. I'm sure working for, uh, National Health Service has the same weird bureaucratic complications-

   8. AAAli Abdaal16:43

      Yeah. Of course it does. Yeah

   9. CNCal Newport16:43

      ... as working for, for a large, a, a large university. Um, so I think that-- See, s- see, for you, I think it makes complete sense because it's not like your clinical practice is closely related in any way to what you're doing otherwise. Whereas I have this complication of I've been shifting my work more towards basically just an academic take on similar stuff I work on, working on tech and culture, technosocio anthropology. So there's this, this argument to be made that there's these great thinkers about the impact of various things on cultures, these great social critics who are in, in academia where they were surrounded by and being challenged by all these complicated theoretical frameworks. So this is why I think your, your decision is maybe cleaner, is that there is such a difference between day-to-day clinical practice and the writing and videos that you produce. Whereas there's a play for me where they could be more integrated, so which is just a complication.

   10. AAAli Abdaal17:43

       Yeah.

   11. CNCal Newport17:43

       I think it would almost be easier if I was a biochemist.

   12. AAAli Abdaal17:47

       [laughs]

   13. CNCal Newport17:48

       And it was like, look, this is-- I just-- And by the way, this is the way that people... And it's a shift that happened, and not to get too insider baseball, but, but for when I first started writing, it was that strict separation. I was a grad student. Uh, well, uh, started as a, as an undergrad writing and then as a grad student, was writing student advice books. I was studying computer science. It was like a side thing. Like, oh, you write these advice books. It's how I help pay the bills as a, you know, on a, on a doctoral student stipend. Um, so they really were unrelated. But then I made this shift after Deep Work came out. So Deep Work came out I'm a, you know, professor. I got tenure around that time. I'm like, "Well, you know, that's really a book about technology. It's about how technology changed the workplace and why we have to be worried about those changes." And then, then the next two books I wrote were also about the impacts of technology on, on either our personal or professional lives. And suddenly it became I'm a technologist who also writes about the impact of technology on various aspects of our lives. And one... And then suddenly there was a congruence, which was very useful. I think once my writing fit into my academic career, it really opened up, let's say, the sort of mainstream or elite press I could get. I was just sort of accepted by the, the, the New York Times of the world, the New Yorkers of the world, um, the, the finan- over on your side, the, the Financial Times, The Times of London, uh, The Guardian, these have all been sort of big supporters of my work. So it, it, it, they meshed together. And so now I'm a little bit intertwined, uh, in a way that I wasn't before.

   14. AAAli Abdaal19:14

       Yeah. That's so interesting. So like, I j- I feel like... Hmm. Yeah, I appreciate that that's probably very complicated, because from where I'm sitting, it feels like, hey, once you've been a professor at Georgetown, it's like you've, you've, you've been a computer science professor. Uh, and therefore you... I would, I would agree with your friend who said that or, or with Jim Collins, unsurprisingly, [laughs] uh, who said that that credential is, uh, the, the current-ness of that credential is not particularly relevant, particularly relevant. But I guess this is the thing that I've often worried about as well. It's like, now that I've left medicine, will I actually have, uh, any chance at like mainstream, mainstream elite, uh, institution, like legitimacy, New York Times, Guardian and stuff? Will they actually care about some kid who used to be a doctor and now is a sort of self-help book author for a living or a self-help influencer for a living, compared to if I was still doing the thing? It ju- it's, it's that, like, credential, credentialism and, and then part of me is like, "Why, why do I care?" Part of me is like, "Oh, I know I shouldn't care about trying to hit the New York Times list. I know I shouldn't care about trying to do this kind of stuff." But another part of me is like, "Yeah, but I kinda do." And I guess you're in that position. So like, how do you, how do you dissociate things that you personally care about from the, uh, uh, accolades and recognition you get from elite institutions?

   15. CNCal Newport20:34

       Well, I mean, first, your concern is absolutely right. Like I, I have seen this again and again. There's, there's, um, the credentialing required to be covered by the sort of elite mainstream publications. It's a very real thing. I mean, think about, we, we mentioned Ryan earlier, right? Ryan Holiday, very influential author, very successful writer, uh, can't get the time of day from mainstream publications. The New York Times did a profile of him a few years ago, but it was snarky. It was like, "Yeah, look at this guy trying to repackage." Uh, you know, I, I was, a few years ago, Mark Manson, you know Mark Manson, The Subtle Art, uh, was out here giving a talk near where I live. So we, we were kind of killing some time here, and, and he was telling a similar tale. One of the best-selling nonfiction writers of this generation. I mean, the number of copies of books that guy has sold, very few nonfiction writers have come near that. I think it's, it's, it's up to 20 million copies now. It's hard to underscore just how successful his books are. He can't get the time of day. He can't get covered. No, no, [laughs] no one's writing about these books. And, and I definitely noticed when I leaned into my academic credentials when presenting myself in the publicity of my book, it made a big difference. I mean, I'm on, in the States, I do a... I'm on NPR all the time. You know? Uh, I do a lot of st- I used to do a lot of... My last, for Digital Minimalism, a book I wrote, we're the, the New York Times all the time, right? So that, that is... The concern there is true, but I think your follow-up question is also true. How much do you care about that? You know. Because it has very little to do with, with the, with book sales, uh, especially for you. You have a huge audience that y- that, that knows you and that you're speaking to, and you have channels for reaching this audience. They're gonna be way more effective. You're only dependent on being covered in the Financial Times if you're a CEO writing a business book that no one will, no one can know about it unless they actually read about it in a, in a paper. So that's the question of how much do you, how much do you, uh, how much do you care about that? And I think that's, that's probably the, the critical question. You could make a play. You could have made a play of leaning into your doctor. Like, uh, you know, NH- NHS doc is, uh, you know, rethinking the system of how we, how we manage our time and is like speaking out against the, the, the, uh, the, the grind of the sort of knowledge work machinery and, and you could have pulled these things together and written Guardian op-eds and made yourself into like a fixture. Like, I am a fixture of sort of like these standard, uh, you know, be on BBC Five all the time, et cetera. But I don't think you'd have a bigger audience. You know? It'd be, it'd be its own type of thing, and it's a little precarious because then you'd be thinking, "What if I have the wrong take on something?" [laughs] You know? And they... Because, like, you're much more susceptible to that, like, uh, being in favor and not in favor. So we're speaking the same language, and I think the problem you pointed out is like a real problem. Like it, it does matter. Like it, it is... What gets you covered is narrow. But I think that question of do you care, that's it. That's the whole ballgame.

   16. AAAli Abdaal23:30

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Once you've got some comfort with that, then it's super easy to deposit money into your Trading 212 account. You can use Apple Pay, like I do initially, or you can use a direct bank transfer. And then once the money's in your Trading 212 account, then you can invest it in basically whatever you want. The other really cool feature about Trading 212 is their Pies feature. So what you can do is you can follow people who've created investing pies. For example, someone might have a pie where, I don't know, 30% of it's Apple and 20% is Tesla and 10% is the S&P 500. And you can follow people on the app and see what pies they've created, and you can see the performance of those pies. And then you can just copy and paste a particular pie into your own account. And so that means, like, let's say you've got £100 to invest and you've put 50 of it into the S&P 500, but you wanna be a little bit more experimental with the other £50. You could invest it into a pie where someone else, who's generally a pro or someone in their bedroom who just loves the markets, has already done all the homework for you. The app also lets you auto-invest, which is a great thing, 'cause then you can automatically invest a percentage of your paycheck into the thing every month. And so if you haven't yet started with investing and you wanna give it a go, then you can download the app on the App Store. And if you use the coupon code ALI, A-L-I, at the checkout, that will give you a totally free share worth up to £100. It's available on iPhone and Android, and you can check it out by typing in Trading 212 into your respective app store. So thank you so much, Trading 212, for sponsoring this episode. And I guess part of... You know, if we, if we

5. 27:17 – 33:43

   The social status and complexities of careers

   1. AAAli Abdaal27:17

      zoom into this question of do you care, I guess we've talked about, well, does it actually translate to a tangible be- a, a tangible benefit like book sales or sales of a course or sales of a, a thing? Um, but then there's another, like, social status benefit [laughs] of that, um, where... You know, I st- I still have this conversation with my mum sometimes where, you know, she's a doctor as well, and, you know, that generation is very much about, um... You, you know, her whole thing was like, "Why, why would you leave medicine? It's, like, such a prestigious profession. It's like you're respected in society." Um, and I, I fully appreciate from her perspective the, the decision to leave medicine to become a YouTuber is just really freaking weird. Um, and, and so there's still this part of me that's, like, sort of wanting to try and hold onto the, the glory badge of honor of having been a Cambridge University student and sort of... Oh, but that was like four years ago. I n- I, I need a new badge of prestige, and The New York Times list seems like one of those, or becoming a Harvard MBA student seems like one of those. And it's like I, I, I find myself pulled in this, in this direction where it's like I could totally make a play for that. And I, I actually started an application to, uh, Stanford and Harvard Business School, so like about a year ago.

   2. CNCal Newport28:30

      Wow.

   3. AAAli Abdaal28:30

      Uh, until loads of people t- talked me out of it. They were like, "Look, what are you doing?" Like-

   4. CNCal Newport28:33

      Yeah

   5. AAAli Abdaal28:33

      ... this really looks like you're chasing a credential for, like, re- literally no reason. But it, I guess it's so hard to get out of that sort of status-seeking mindset. Um, yeah. What... Does that vibe with you at all?

   6. CNCal Newport28:44

      Oh, it's so hard. Yeah, it, I mean, it, it... That is really hard. The, like, the status stuff, yeah, it's interesting, 'cause people talk about it not mattering or people say like, "Ah, look, like, your accomplishment or your credential status or having done this, like, you know, you're excited for a moment, but then you're just back and frustrated with, uh, your toast burning the next morning, and it doesn't really matter just what..." But, but what, what's true about it is like, no, there is like a background, a background hum of satisfaction or of, like, a little bit of a trickle of pride. You're like, "You know, I graduated from Cambridge." Like, I'm, I'm... And I kinda have that and kinda feel good. Or like, "I'm a, you know, I'm, I'm a doctor." Like, it is a real thing. I, I mean, I think we, we, we try to underplay it. But I, I think we should face it. Because I, I find it really hard. Now, the interesting thing is- If you can say you're a writer, I have the sense that that, like in these days, is, uh, sort of in a bohemian way, really high status as well. Like, actually I, I... Because I've been thinking about this recently. Uh, I think when people ask me, "What do you do?" If I actually answered, "I'm a writer," I think it's actually probably higher prestige in that situation [laughs] than if I say, "I'm a professor." Like, people respect professors, but they often change it to teaching. They're like, "Oh, you teach." Yeah, I was thinking about teaching. And it drives, it drives, you know, academic professors crazy because it's this like blood sport intellectual competition to publish incredibly hard stuff in really competitive venues. Oh, and you do teach some courses. So when people say like, "Oh, you teach. I was thinking about teaching." You're like, "Oh, you don't understand. Like, all my time at MIT was figured out how to solve math problems other people couldn't." Um, but if you say, "Oh, I'm a writer," it's like actually there's some like interesting prestige in that. Like, well, wait, you can do that as you're living? Like, you must be doing something interesting. You must be artistic. You must be interesting. Uh, and so maybe that's the way to think about it. That's how I've been thinking about it recently, is finding, you know, hacking that system of my brain. So when thinking about these decisions, is there... If I change my situation, could I have a way of describing it? That, uh... And, and so I don't know what it would be. I mean, you're writing a book. I don't... How's that going by the way? I don't know if you, if you're liking that process or not. Yeah.

   7. AAAli Abdaal30:47

      Yeah, no. So just... So d- yeah, on this, on this writer point, um, this was, uh, huh, probably about two years into my YouTube career when things started going really well. So that was, uh, you know, I've been doing, been doing YouTube for five years now. So about two years in, um, I was still working as a doctor. I was sort of... YouTube channel was on like a quarter of a million subscribers. Revenue was starting to sort of 3X what I was making as a doctor, and I was like, "Oh my God, there's really something here." But then that thing in my mind was the question that you, that you mentioned earlier, was what does this look like 10 years from now, 15 years from now? And my solution to this was writer [laughs] because... And again, I was thinking of people like you, people like Ryan, people like Tim Ferriss even, uh, who like the... It, it, it feels like being a writer is something you can do when you're like 50 years old. Uh, but I think of when I'm 50 years old, I'm unlikely to be looking at a camera and being like, "What's up, guys? Welcome back to my YouTube channel," [laughs] or whatever that, or whatever that looks like.

   8. CNCal Newport31:40

      Yeah.

   9. AAAli Abdaal31:40

      Um, so I'd kind of had this vague plan of, okay, I think the evolution of the internet thought leader is to get the book [laughs] . The book, if it can hit a bestseller list, cool, whatevs. Um, that unlocks speaking opportunities, which unlocks the next book, and that felt to me like it could be a game that I could play. You know, the infinite game. Um, I'd be quite content living that lifestyle of just like, hey, I get to write books every, every few years. And as long as the system around it of like selling stuff or doing a podcast, getting sponsorships or, or if I kept my expenses low enough, that would be able to sustain a, a full-time lifestyle in theory.

   10. CNCal Newport32:19

       Well, so let-

   11. AAAli Abdaal32:19

       Yeah.

   12. CNCal Newport32:20

       So, so here's the... I'm gonna make another suggestion for you.

   13. AAAli Abdaal32:21

       Please.

   14. CNCal Newport32:22

       Like, if, if I'm thinking about describing you, well, first of all I would, I think to say YouTuber is super narrow.

   15. AAAli Abdaal32:29

       Mm.

   16. CNCal Newport32:30

       Like to me, I see a media entrepreneur, media mogul. Like, this is what Ryan Holiday is. This is what Tim Ferriss is, right? This is... It's what Bill Simmons did building out The Ringer, right? Uh, uh, so I'm looking around at people that have, let's say, a presence online. How many actually have teams that you meet, [laughs] you know, like you do in an office to like go over your schedule, whatever. It's a, a new media entrepreneur, new media mogul, media entrepreneur, that what you're really building is a, a new type of media company where there's, uh, video content, there's audio content, there's interactive digital content. Books might be, uh, a part of that. But that's something interesting. You're, you're, you... You have your finger on the pulse of an emerging new segments of the media market that I think are gonna be massive. You have a head start. You're in the top one half of 1% of people working on this. So I'm wondering if that's the answer to the question. It's like, yeah, I was a doctor-

   17. AAAli Abdaal33:27

       Yeah

   18. CNCal Newport33:27

       ... and I left to do a media startup. I'm a media entrepreneur because I think there's all of this disruption happening.

   19. AAAli Abdaal33:32

       Yeah.

   20. CNCal Newport33:32

       And, you know, we have this big audiences and all this innovation, and we're figuring things out.

   21. AAAli Abdaal33:36

       Yeah. You know, I think that's a good insight. Um, I've n- I've not quite thought of it in that way. Um, but one word I have been

6. 33:43 – 43:05

   The creatorpreneur lifestyle

   1. AAAli Abdaal33:43

      sort of, you know, me and my team have been floating it around is like instead of media entrepreneur, like creator entrepreneur or like creatorpreneur, which is a bit of a weird mash, mash of those things, where I think increasingly the world is moving more towards, uh, individuals... Well, you know, the, the creator economy. I would say that you're a, you know, would, would be fair to describe you as a creator as well, 'cause books and podcast and blogs and articles and, and, and all that kind of stuff. And there's this sort of new wave of creator entrepreneurs, the sort of creators like who ha- who then build a team around them and create like either a lifestyle business like mine broadly or a very performance heavy business like someone like MrBeast with a team of like 100 people and this whole like empire. Um, that feels like something kind of interesting, but it, it, it, it feels like we're sort of at the start of that, where creator economy's been around for several years now, but there's very few people doing it with this whole like building a business around, around the thing.

   2. CNCal Newport34:37

      Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of innovation's happening. I mean, something I'm thinking about right now, or actually I'm doing right now, is sort of spinning off... You know, a lot of my writing recently has been about various aspects of what I summarize with the phrase the deep life. So my recent books, my recent articles to things I'm writing now, a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it is really about ways to, to take back control of your life and how you spend your time and work, but also in your life outside of work and, and defeating distractions and being more intentional and building these more meaningful, interesting, whatever, work and professional lives, is, uh, I'm building a, uh, a home for this that is distinct from just me as Cal Newport the writer because I also do other things. I, I publish academic papers. I write about other topics. I do more, more hardcore techno criticism. And so this is something I'm trying to figure out right now, is that we, this portal, thedeeplife.com is, you know, a month or two away, but it's going to be the online home For that movement. And it's now suddenly I can... The various stuff, content I'm creating around that can have a home, but also other people can help provide content for that, and it can be its own standalone entity in some sort. And what I'm realizing is none, there's no playbook for any of this. You know? It's all, all this is up in the air. So that's why I keep coming back to, you're, you're running a successful media business, which, which I think is really interesting, um, because obviously something really interesting is happening now. This, this... When you distribute... I've been trying to work through this theories, but when you, when you distribute the means of production for media, so now many more people have access to means of production for a certain type of media, it generates a lot of innovation. It happened with text first with the web. Now suddenly almost anyone could produce text that could be universally consumed. It happened next for audio because the tech hurdle there, I think, was, was easier. So now we see, uh, the, the, the business model around podcasting blowing up because b- the combination of iPhone, uh, wireless internet plus, uh, podcast technology, meant like this is comparable to radio. So now suddenly you could have broad competition in the radio space, and then now it's happening with, with, with video. Uh, YouTube helped enable that. Better cameras, better, better production. And now that's just starting to figure out how do, what happens when we distribute the means of production for, uh, video media, which is gonna be the biggest of all, because that's the... In traditional media, that's the most successful medium of all is, is, is visual. And we have no idea where, where that's gonna unfold, other than there's gonna be a lot of innovation. The pie of available revenue's gonna grow and be more widely distributed. Uh, and no one really knows where, where that's gonna end up. I mean, I have to assume the YouTube aesthetic, what's emerged right now is just step one. Five or 10 years from now, I'm not quite sure what this, this world of, of distributed, uh, video's gonna look like, but I think it's gonna consolidate into the, sort of these small to medium-sized firms. I think the sort of $100 million, 40-person creation network is gonna be the key unit of the future of content production.

   3. AAAli Abdaal37:36

      Yeah.

   4. CNCal Newport37:36

      These sort of, these sort of, these, these minor production houses. I don't know if that's all gonna be true. All I know is there's a lot of churn and innovation happening right now.

   5. AAAli Abdaal37:42

      Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. Um, th- yeah, this is something I do, I do, I do think about a lot. Um, any time we're doing kind of quarterly planning or anything for the business and, and for the team, people keep on asking me, "Hey, where, where are we going? What's the vision and stuff?" And I'm like, partly have no idea, we're just making it up as we go along. But then I do think, huh, what does, what would it look like? Um, you know, a few, a few months ago I was thinking, okay, we, you know, we've got a team of, like, 20-ish people. It'll be good to get our revenues up to, like, 10 million and then expand out into, like, a space where we can rent out studios to other creators in London, and we can form this little London creators hub, and then maybe we'll go up to 40 people. And, and then, I don't know, I f- I found that... I mean, I, I probably did this wrong, but I found my calendar just being chock-a-block with management related stuff rather than, uh, creation and reading and writing, which is the thing that I actually care about. Um-

   6. CNCal Newport38:34

      Yep

   7. AAAli Abdaal38:34

      ... and then we kind of did a little bit of downsizing, moved to some freelancers, and now when I think of that model of, like, a team of 40 people and, like, a big company or big-ish company, I feel, oof, that sounds, like, pretty bad. I'd actually quite like the life where I've just got maybe 10 people on the team or, like, 12 people on the team, and we're all remote, and I get to travel around the world and do my writing for four hours a day or whate- whatever that looks like. So I feel like there's a little bit of this, um, this tension between I kind of want to live a sort of Ryan Holiday-esque lifestyle on a farm [laughs] versus I know that the world is moving towards building these media companies and I'm kind of resisting the lure of, oh, just-

   8. CNCal Newport39:12

      Yeah

   9. AAAli Abdaal39:13

      ... growth for the sake of growth.

   10. CNCal Newport39:14

       Well-

   11. AAAli Abdaal39:14

       Yeah.

   12. CNCal Newport39:14

       All right. So it's interesting. So here's the other... Yeah, so let's put that data point on the other end of the spectrum.

   13. AAAli Abdaal39:18

       Sure.

   14. CNCal Newport39:18

       Though Ryan's busier than all of us, so we won't... let's not use him as [laughs] ...

   15. AAAli Abdaal39:22

       Yeah. [laughs]

   16. CNCal Newport39:23

       He, he has the farm, but he also has the bookstore and, like, 90 other things.

   17. AAAli Abdaal39:26

       Yeah, all of that stuff, yeah.

   18. CNCal Newport39:27

       But, but, but I think the right examples is, uh, Ferris and Rogan.

   19. AAAli Abdaal39:30

       Mm.

   20. CNCal Newport39:30

       So, like, Ferris and Rogan's model is this one thing I'm doing is very successful. Let's do it at a really high level. It generates a lot of money, and so let's just be and build a really interesting lifestyle about it. Like, think about, like, Tim has really stopped the other types of things. He's stopped the book writing. You know, I interviewed him about this, uh, and you can... The, he played the interview that I did of him on his feed, so if you want to find that, you find it on his feed, not mine. And I w- and he was really talking about how books burnt him out because he was, he was writing doorstops. He was writing 500-page books.

   21. AAAli Abdaal40:03

       Oh, yeah. [laughs] In a way.

   22. CNCal Newport40:04

       And the, and the podca- and investing was burning him out. He was doing a lot of angel investing, uh, seed stage. And he, he just stopped all of that and said, "I'm just gonna do the podcast as, as, like, an escape," because it, it was just one thing and it was more focused and it was more, more immediate. Um, and then they kill it with it because they get these massive CPMs and have a really big audience. And then Rogan, I guess, is the classic example of that, is he's like, "This thing is doing well. I'm just gonna do this." Like, I... And he's not interested in... And all the rest of his time is, as far as I can tell just by secondhand, right, is just very intentionally allocated to things that are optional, optional activities that he enjoys, um, that have, have no... So maybe we should put a... I like this. We're kind of, we're working out an ontology here. So we have Bill Simmons on one side of this. Build The Ringer, sell it for $200 million. Like, that's where the, the, that's where the capital is flowing. On the other side you have Ferris, you have Rogan, which is, uh, figure out the thing you do well, uh, taking advantage of new media opportunities to be able to build an empire in a place where you wouldn't have been able to 15 years ago. Get it, get it down to a science, really enjoy what you're doing, have, you know, do that really well, but also generate copious autonomy because, you know, hey, you're... I don't know. I, if you're doing 4 million a year on a podcast and that's the only thing you're doing, I guess there's a, there's an affluence argument here. Like, are you less happy than Bill Simmons with, uh, his, the 70 million cut he got from the sale of The Ringer, but who is now the head of content at- You know, audio content at Spotify and overseeing and all these things and documentaries. I think it's a real... That's actually, like, a really fair question, and maybe the answer is it depends who you are. Like, Bill Simmons is probably happy doing that, but Tim would be-

   23. AAAli Abdaal41:46

       Yeah

   24. CNCal Newport41:46

       ... miserable, and Simmons would be miserable if he was Tim. So I guess maybe that's the question is, where do we fall on that spectrum?

   25. AAAli Abdaal41:51

       No, exactly. Yeah, I think, um, uh, there's a, there's a bl- there's a blog post you wrote, uh, I can't remember, can't remember the timestamp. Probably, like, 2010 or something. And you said something like, uh, the, the advice that you give to students when they're trying to figure out what to do with their careers is to begin with the lifestyle in mind and reverse engineer the career from that, rather than, "Hey, I did an economics degree, therefore, uh, private equity, hedge funds, or investment banking are my three options," and you end up going down one of these, one of these routes. Um, and that, that post really vibed with me because I think it helped... It made me think, "Hmm, if I were to begin with a lifestyle in mind, does that, in fact, actually look like the big media company?" Um, the answer is probably not. But then another part of me was like, am I just feeling, uh, am I just bullshitting myself and just, like, setting my ambitions lower because I am afraid of the work that it would take to build said media company and try and, try and go big, and I'm just content to wallow in my own mediocrity of like, "Oh, I'll just write four hours a day and then I'm, I'm happy with life. I don't need to make that much money"? And you, do, do you get what I'm [laughs] getting at with that?

   26. CNCal Newport43:04

       Yeah.

   27. AAAli Abdaal43:04

       Yeah.

   28. CNCal Newport43:04

       I

7. 43:05 – 47:18

   How to design your lifestyle and career

   1. CNCal Newport43:05

      don't think you're delu- So, so first of all, I love that post. So yeah, lifestyle centric career planning I think is such a critical idea, um, especially for young people trying to figure out, like, in college. I wrote that while at a graduation ceremony for my sister, so I was thinking about graduat- graduation advice. Yeah, and you... And it, it, it has to be the right answer for how you figure out your career, which is you get the image of the lifestyle you want at a whatever point, you know, in the future, and you make it super tangible. Like, you can, you can feel it, you can smell it, you can see it, but not getting specific at all about what your work is. Like, are you in the countryside? Are you in a city? Is, is it, you know, you're, you're at the Bohemian bar in the, in the Lower East Side and, and around all these artists? Or are you in a field and you've been out in the sun and like, you know, whatever, working on your trails? Like, what is it? Are you... Is it very social? Are you in a small town? Are you... What... Are you up in the mountains? Like, get that really clear and then say, "Great. Let me work backwards now to, to figure out how do I get there with my work." Right? And, and I think that's such a critical way of thinking about things because, A, it's not just, hey, follow your passion or something like this, because the right answer might be, "I'm gonna go to medical school so that I can be, uh, sort of get these nightingale shifts where I work, uh, three times a week one week out of the month or something like that, or work for three months and it's, and it's the highest hourly rate I can get, and then I can spend the whole summer in the Canary Islands." Like, it, it, it can lead you to really interesting places, and I think it's the way to do it. And the reason why I think you in particular are not, you're not deluding yourself into, you know, avoiding the difficulties of ambition is that a lot of people when they do this exercise, it is 100% clear they want that. They really crave that activity and work, right? So I think it's a really clear personality type thing that, that, uh, if you are the type of person whose ideal lifestyle does involve I've got a team, I'm making moves, it's super really clear. If you talk to those people, and I have because, you know, this is my framework and I run that framework past... There's a lot of people who are like, "I love the idea of activity and I wanna be doing something. I want people, you know, uh, I wanna be at the center of attention. I want people that are on my team. I wanna be... I love that action, the sociality, the, the..." Some people love that, so if you don't feel it unambiguous, of course, that's what I wanna do, then I think that's really meaningful. And, and I'll tell you, I think I'm like you, which is why the way I am logistically handling the business aspect of all this career is right now I have a half day rule. One half day a week. It has to fit in that. If it can't, if something can't fit in that, then I can't do it, and my goal down the line is to make that one day a week. And that's it. And, and so, and that's how I've done my whole with the podcast, everything else. It's whatever fits in a half day a week that I put aside on my calendar, that's what I can do, and as I get good at something, we hire people to do something that frees up more time. I can try to add something else. But I'm constrained by that because I think, like you, I would have misery. I would find misery if every single day it was like rock and rolling, let's go. The s- the calendar you, you mentioned, your calendar chock-full of, ugh, I got heart palpitations. I hate that, right? So for me it's like, okay, one half day a week all in. What can we do with that? Get better, improve this, hire that, let's fix this, and outside of that, I don't wanna think about, think about the business.

   2. AAAli Abdaal46:27

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CNCal Newport46:27

      Um, because I think I'm with you, and that's the compromise I've come up with.

   4. AAAli Abdaal46:30

      Nice. Yeah. I've, uh, I've landed on, uh, one day a week where I just do my YouTube stuff. So every Thursday is YouTube day.

   5. CNCal Newport46:36

      Perfect.

   6. AAAli Abdaal46:37

      We start the Thursday with usually just a vague notion of, oh, maybe we'll film videos A, B, C. In the morning we're like, "All right, cool. [laughs] What are the videos gonna be?" And, uh, yesterday filmed I think three, three videos and we're like, "Yeah, cool. That's content for the next three weeks sorted." Um, and that, and that feels like a good place to be because to, to come back to the book thing, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this, um, that now unlocks basically every morning for three, four hours from 9:00 till 12:30, 9:00 till 1:00 is blocked out protected book, book writing time. Um, and then most afternoons are generally free-ish to, you know, either be in the studio and chat to the team and brainstorm some ideas if that's what I feel like doing, or just doing like a whole day on the book.

8. 47:18 – 55:59

   Book writing

   1. AAAli Abdaal47:18

      Um, and as of this morning, I handed in the really crappy first draft to our editors at Penguin and Macmillan, and now I'm-

   2. CNCal Newport47:26

      Well done

   3. AAAli Abdaal47:26

      ... and my agent. I'm just waiting [laughs] 'cause but, like, some of it is, like, fleshed out, some of it is still notes and bullet points. Some of it is still like, I don't... I, I was feeling so bad about this, but then my agent replied. She was like, "Don't worry. Handing in the first draft is always really, really, really messy. It does not need to look, look pretty. Uh, what, what's been your, um, your experience of the whole first draft t- and then, and then beyond?

   4. CNCal Newport47:47

      Yeah. Well, I just handed in, uh, a week ago the first 20,000 words of my newest book. So [laughs]

   5. AAAli Abdaal47:53

      Nice

   6. CNCal Newport47:53

      ... we're, we're in the same place. I haven't heard back yet. Now, like, I mean, I've been at it for a while because I did my first, uh... What's the math on this? My, my first book deal I signed right after I turned 21. So like, I've been, I've been through it a bunch of times, and it, so it's less, it's-

   7. AAAli Abdaal48:09

      Yeah

   8. CNCal Newport48:09

      ... it's, it's a little bit less fraught-

   9. AAAli Abdaal48:11

      How, how old are you now?

   10. CNCal Newport48:11

       What, what... Uh, 40.

   11. AAAli Abdaal48:13

       Oh, okay. Damn, you've been in this for 12, 20 years. Solid. [laughs]

   12. CNCal Newport48:17

       20 years. Yeah, I've been at, I've been at, I've been at the game for [laughs] yeah, yeah, for 20 years. Yeah, I wrote my first book my, my last year at, at university and then-

   13. AAAli Abdaal48:23

       Mm

   14. CNCal Newport48:23

       ... um, so I've been doing it for, yeah, I've been doing it for a little while. My method, everyone has a different method. What I tend to do is hand in, like, big chunks early on-

   15. AAAli Abdaal48:33

       Hmm

   16. CNCal Newport48:33

       ... so to see, because for me it's a hard... I have, uh, finding the voice for a book is usually takes me some time, and so I wanna make sure I have it right. So like, I handed in 18,000 words last Friday, um, a critical part of the book, and I was like, I wanna stop there and talk to my editor. And then if, if, if, if she's on board with, with that, and once we get that right, then I'm gonna have the confidence to, to go and, and write the next 60 or, or whatever, however many are, however many are going on. So, so that, that's been my, been my process now. I'm also right now writing the, the, one of the first chapters in the book is more idea-like, and, uh, I'm, I pitched the idea as a New Yorker article. So I'm, I'm writing it for The New Yorker now, then I can use it for the first draft of, of the book. So that's another one of my tricks. If something has to be, is subtle and it has to be really well-researched, I let the pressure of The New Yorker, like, force me to do the work [laughs] because it's like, you gotta get it right. It's really hard.

   17. AAAli Abdaal49:27

       Yeah.

   18. CNCal Newport49:27

       Um, so that's like, that's where I am now. I'm... and I'm... It's like today, this morning, um, like, finished the la- the last technical piece of that art. It's a big five to 6,000 word beast. Um, finished the last technical beast of that this morning, and so, like, by Monday I'll probably, probably have that thing, have that thing done. But that's what I do. Pieces. I do it in pieces.

   19. AAAli Abdaal49:47

       What is your... If, you know, let's say it's, uh, four hours in the morning and you've got your writing time. What does that, what does that look like, I guess? I-

   20. CNCal Newport49:55

       Yeah

   21. AAAli Abdaal49:55

       ... very as, as specifically as you can possibly be because I, I'm, I'm looking for any magic bullet [laughs] that, that will help solve my problems.

   22. CNCal Newport50:02

       Well, okay. So I, I, I spend a lot of time doing richly detailed annotated outlines, right? So, like, to me, that's really important. I, I gotta get... If I'm working on a big section, I gotta get that feel right, like this and that and this and these are the examples. And that I'll work on, not, on foot often. I, I find on foot's the right way to do that, and I'll spend hours and hours over many days just coming back to thinking about structure idea, structure idea. I can do this idea, this, then that and this. All right. So then when I'm writing, what I'm doing is implementing that plan. So when I'm writing in the morning, like this morning if, if you came into to my study and, and, like, watched me writing, it's, uh, I use Scrivener.

   23. AAAli Abdaal50:44

       Yep.

   24. CNCal Newport50:44

       So I, I have, you know, uh, dozens of notes where I've copied in notes or this or that on one pane and, and the, uh, and the, the main draft on the other. And then I'll have a stack of books that whatever books I'm pulling from for that, for that particular piece. And, and then it's just I'm clawing one sentence at a time, you know. Like look, look this up. And I'm all about pacing. This has been my big thing recently. Uh, in the last few years I'm trying to up my writing quality. It's, it's a lot of pacing. It's like, take your time, get it right, you know. Slow and steady. Definitely like a slow and steady wins the race type of, type of vibe. Get it right. Get... Because I think that density comes through. It, it comes through in the writing if it was a lot was trying to get done here in two hours, and it shows in the writing. [laughs] You know? You're kind of, you're, you're, you're working your way around the tricky points, and I try to, uh... And a lot of this came to me, writing for The New Yorker helped on this, is you gotta have consistent density. Like, you know what you're saying, everything is based on, it's been thought through, you're citing the right things. It's, you're taking your time. Um, and so it's just pulling sentence by sentence, let's go, let's go. I do, I do it all on this, you know, small MacBook, which is... This one is, you know, two years old, but there's no... You can't see any of the letters. Uh, most of the letters on the keyboard have been rubbed off-

   25. AAAli Abdaal51:59

       [laughs]

   26. CNCal Newport52:00

       ... from just writing, you know? [laughs] Like, just, just rock and rolling. Like, all the notes you take, all the writing, all the editing. Um, and then the other thing I'll say about my process is, uh, it's all gut for me. So I, I, I will often finish something and just, and my gut says it's not singing, and I will go back and do drastic surgery. I do this all the time. I, I really trust my gut where I'm like, uh, I, I, it's, it's, uh, I physically feel uncomfortable and, and about a draft. And to me the, it's the structure. It has nothing to do with the craft of the synthesis. The structure of the ideas is not right. Um, and that makes me physically uncomfortable, and then I will, I will go back and do drastic surgery on things, you know. And, and, uh, just to give you, like, an example of this, a couple weeks ago I, I published a New Yorker piece on TikTok and Facebook and what TikTok means about social media. After that article had been sent to copy editing, I was feeling so physically uncomfortable, and I was on vacation at the time. I was like, "This is just not right," and I, I just told my wife and kids, like, "Pretend I'm not here," and just put my head down and essentially, like, completely reworked the whole thing. And, and, and, and then suddenly it felt right, and that's, like, very common for me. I'm like, "Er, this isn't right."

   27. AAAli Abdaal53:15

       Mm.

   28. CNCal Newport53:16

       Uh, and then when it is, it, it, it feels it.

   29. AAAli Abdaal53:19

       Nice. Yeah. That, that, so that very much vibe, vibes with my experience, um, in that... So I've been working on mine for about 18 months now, and we're now at the point where, you know, handed in the first draft. But a lot of it, there was a lot of outlining initially, and then a lot of, like, just sort of, uh, trying to get, vomit any kind of words out onto the page.

   30. CNCal Newport53:39

       Yep.
9. 55:59 – 1:07:27

   Contrarian writing

   1. AAAli Abdaal55:59

      How do you think about this, uh, where we're going deep into sort of self-indulgent territory here on, on my part, but that's fine. Uh, how, how do you think about the balance of, let me say the things that are sufficiently counterintuitive and novel to get a dopamine hit from the audience versus let me say the things I need to say in order for my argument to make sense? Do those things ever clash in your mind?

   2. CNCal Newport56:20

      I mean, yeah, because we, we, we both are in this space. We're, we're, you know, I'm definitely known for contrarianism. I mean, I would say for me, what I'm always looking for is a, an understanding of something in the world that makes sense to me, explains things that otherwise didn't make sense before, and is generative. So I can then use this to, like, make decisions going forward or understand new things that arrive in the world, and there's, like, a real great feeling when you get there. Now, there's often a contrarianism to it because, uh, look, I grew up immersed of the, the sort of the, the great idea writers of the, of the '90s and 2000s. I was, you know, immersed in Gladwell and, uh, Johnson, and I, I really liked some of the stuff Clive Thompson was doing back then. Um, but the really great idea writers, and Gladwell was a master of this, it was... It wasn't contrarianism in the sense of you thought this, but it's the opposite. Instead, it's you don't know anything about this, but once you do, all of that makes sense in a new light. Like, that's what, that's what I love. So if I can convince myself, like, okay, I, I, I have a, a, a working model of, that explains whatever. That explains the dynamics in the social media space and, and why, what's going on with TikTok or this or that, or I have dynamics for understanding career satisfaction or, or what's going on in the workplace and why we're so distracted. Why would that persist? Why would we persist with something that was, w- was so low, low productivity? When I get a model that works and the pieces click together, that's what I love, and then it's like, it's contrarianism, but it's not... It's different than, I think, takeism, which you get a lot online, especially in click culture, which is look at, look at my take. You know? I've got my hot take. Where all you're trying to do is have a headline that, that grabs people's attention and, uh, and you're trying to make your hot take. That to me is a lot less interesting. Um, I mean, a lot of the hot take writing online right now that's trying to attract, uh, clicks, especially more in, like, the news and commentary space, often it's usually it's not even contrarian anymore. It's more just, like, "We all belong to the same tribe. Let me take my turn dunking on the, on the enemy." And then everyone will kind of applaud, like, "Ooh, that was a, that was a good... Like, you got a good punch in there. That was really kind of smart and snarky." And then someone else steps up and is like, "Well, look at my take, you know?"

   3. AAAli Abdaal58:32

      Yeah.

   4. CNCal Newport58:32

      "So and so is the worst since," you know, whatever. Ah, so not interesting. And so, so anyways, that's how, that's how I come at it. And, I, I mean, I don't know a lot of the details of your book, but it sounds like it's kind of in the same pace. You, you have your, your ideas. You're explaining various things. I mean, obviously, I think your thoughts on, on productivity have a lot of this too. It's like, "Here's my model. You know, this is the way I think about things." Uh, and, and I think that's really fulfilling.

   5. AAAli Abdaal58:56

      Yeah. No, it's really fun. Like, I get a, I get a big kick out of, like, yes, the framework makes sense. It's like coming, coming up with, like-

   6. CNCal Newport59:02

      Yeah

   7. AAAli Abdaal59:02

      ... how do I, how do I make the framework fit in three parts? Because two is not that satisfying. Like, three, oh, yes, it works, and it explains all these different things. And when I teach my YouTuber academy and teach people how to do content and stuff, I try my best to essentially frameworkify it like I would when back when I, back when I was teaching medical students around, like, "Hey, really there's only three different types of hemolytic malignancies that you, uh, like, that, that you need to know about. One, two, and three, and now we can break those into three more." And then there's something satisfying about connecting ideas or simplifying ideas like that in a way that is generative, as you said, like helps you actually make decisions moving forward.

   8. CNCal Newport59:39

      Yeah. And, and just to throw out one other thing that, like, non, non-professional idea writers also get wrong as well, is you as the writer don't have to handle all the caveats. So it's like another issue you have, like if, if it's a common misconception people have where they'll be like, "Well, but you didn't mention this, and what about people who are in this situation?" And the reason is, if you're in interpersonal conversation with another human, you're of course gonna caveat whatever advice you're giving to kind of match that person, right? Like, if you're, if you're, uh, a runner and giving running advice and someone has, like, a knee brace on because they had a knee injury, you're gonna sort of caveat it. Well, you know, like you're not gon- I'm not gonna tell you, like, "Go run six miles a day," or whatever. But in, in broad audience idea writing, you don't do that. Like, you have a framework that's interesting, it's compelling, it's gonna open up a lot of thinking, help people understand new things. They're gonna take that and integrate it into their own experience, and they're gonna have to caveat and modify it. And like, of course, the running advice isn't supposed to apply to the person who's in the knee brace. Like, they, they, they'll figure that all out. But it's like a, a, a cohesive, coherent intellectual schema that they can integrate into their life and that's exciting, and they build from it and integrate it to other things they know. So it's like in professional idea writing, you take your swing and you make it as exciting as possible and good and interesting and coherent, and you don't bother explaining, "But here's 10, here's 10 cases where, you know, it might not be this and these people might not be able to use and don't worry about that." And, uh, so I think idea writers get this critique from individuals a lot. "Well, you didn't talk about this situation." Because again, I think that's the gap. When you're dealing one-on-one with people, of course you're gonna caveat whatever you're saying to their situation. When you're writing one to a million, it makes the writing bog down and boring and weird and, uh, self-protective and, and, and muggy. You, you know? It's not good writing.

   9. AAAli Abdaal1:01:23

      Yeah.

   10. CNCal Newport1:01:24

       You know, take the swing, throw the... Take the big swing you can. Other people will, other people can modify it a little bit. So that's, that's like another thing that takes some getting used to is you have to s- it's like you're simplifying-

   11. AAAli Abdaal1:01:35

       Yeah

   12. CNCal Newport1:01:35

       ... a little bit.

   13. AAAli Abdaal1:01:36

       That's a really good tip. I th- th- this is something I'm definitely struggling with right now, and I think, um, sort of the, the YouTube videos that I put out. So, you know, the other day put out something around, um... Oh, I was, I w- I w- I was, uh, it was a, it was a collaboration with a friend of mine who was thinking of quitting their job, and I was like, "Okay, cool, you know, let's figure out, let's try and riff and come up with a framework for how to decide when to quit your job in terms of, like, how much income you have coming in, expenses, side hustle income, blah, all this opportunity cost, expected value, all of the things." And the video did really well. People really liked it. And there was one comment saying, "This video was extremely ableist. As a disabled person, uh, who struggles to focus, I couldn't possibly do any of this stuff." And part of me was like, "Yeah, you're kind of right." Like, I mean [chuckles] but also part of me was like, "Oh, you know, maybe I should have caveated a bit like, 'Hey, this relies on you actually having the time and the energy to...'" But then the whole video becomes a series of caveats. And I think I'm struggling with that in the book as well to think, "Oh, but I, I, I can think of, like, eight different objections to this idea here, uh, and I don't want to not have space to write [chuckles] a counter to all eight of them." So yeah.

   14. CNCal Newport1:02:40

       Yeah. And, uh, I mean, I, I, yeah, I, I, I call this, like, the, the, the blind caveat rule or something like this. It's like if, if you're, if you're writing a book about a painter or something like that and like, well, this is Cezanne was really working with color and doing this and that, you don't have to bother adding the caveat. Of course, if you're blind, uh, this, like, information about what these paintings look like is not gonna be as useful because people already know that. Like, they'll add that, they'll add that caveat. Or it's the broken leg, the broken leg principle, right? Like, if you're writing a book about running training, you don't have to caveat it. You know, if, if you're, if you have a broken leg, uh, you're not gonna be able to do this training. The people with the broken legs know they're not gonna be able to do, not gonna do this training.

   15. AAAli Abdaal1:03:20

       Yeah. Right.

   16. CNCal Newport1:03:20

       But again, I think what comes back to here, it's, it's actually well-intent- I mean, some of this stuff is cynical. It's, you know, I, whatever. Like, we're, we're in a world of the... There's a whole, there's a whole thing to talk about, about how the various critical theories in academia have pervaded culture, so there's a, there's a tone of, of critique in those theories that have now filtered into culture. So there's a lot of now social standing from critique, blah, blah, blah. Like, there's a whole self-indulgent, uh, rant, academic rant they give about that. But actually, like, a lot of that type of critique is well-intentioned, like what you're talking about there. Because again, if I'm not a writer or someone who does YouTube videos for hundreds of thousands of people, um, or millions of people, my frame of reference is talking to someone. And if I was talking to someone whose life was really not in... They're having a lot of difficulties and they, their life wasn't in order and I was giving them advice about like, "Yeah, and then you gotta, like, look at the expected value and do this and that," it would be weird and insulting and kind of mean, you know? Like, this is not someone who's, who's... They're in a situation where they can't take this advice. Why would you possibly be talking about this stuff when someone's not in a situation to take it? And so that's our frame. I think our frame as humans is one-on-one, and it's very different than one to a million. And so yeah, I th- I think the, the, it, it... When you shift to the broadcast frame, it's like, yeah, obviously a lot of people this is not for, but it, but there's a lot of people who can take this and, and work with it. And so, like, let's, let's put that, put that out there.

   17. AAAli Abdaal1:04:42

       Yeah.

   18. CNCal Newport1:04:42

       But I get the same thing all the time. Um, how can I do deep work if dot, dot, dot?

   19. AAAli Abdaal1:04:47

       Yeah.

   20. CNCal Newport1:04:47

       And there's a lot of things you can put on the other side of that dot, dot, dot. And, and, you know, I get that all, all day long. And it's like, it's true, but it would be the first 50 pages of my book if I had to go through. [laughs] So and it would be such boring, weird, self-indulgent writing if it's like, let me, let me talk about... Like, obviously, you know, how can I do deep work if I'm a telegraph operator and my job is to, at Western Union, to d- to take papers and do telegraph? I can't do deep work there. It's like, yeah, okay. You got me. I mean [laughs] the theory is not valid. Like, I don't know what you want me to say. But anyways, I feel you. I feel your pain.

   21. AAAli Abdaal1:05:24

       This episode is very kindly brought to you by WeWork. Now, this is particularly exciting for me because I have been a full paying customer of WeWork for the last two years now. I discovered it during, you know, when the pandemic was in, on the verge of being lifted, and I'd spent, like, the whole year just sort of sitting in my room making YouTube videos. But then I discovered WeWork, and I was a member, me and Angus, my team members, we were members of the WeWork in Cambridge, and they have, like, hundreds of other locations worldwide as well. And it was incredible because we had this fantastic, beautifully designed office space to go to to work, and we found ourselves, like, every day just at 9:00 in the morning just going to WeWork because it was a way nicer experience working from the co-working space than it was just sitting at home working. These days, what me and everyone on my team has is the all-access pass, which means you're not tied to a specific WeWork location, but it means you can use any of their several hundred co-working spaces around London, around the UK, and also around the world. And one of the things I really love about the co-working setup is that it's fantastic as a bit of a change of scenery. So these days I work from home, I've got the studio at home. But if I need to get some focused writing work done and I've been, I'm feeling a bit drained just sitting at my desk all day, I will just pop over to the local WeWork, which is about a 10-minute walk from where I am. I'll take my laptop with me. I'll get some free coffee from there. I'll get a few snacks. And it's just such a great vibe, and you get to meet cool people. I've made a few friends through meeting them at WeWork, and it's just really nice being in an environment almost like a library, but kind of nicer because there's, like, a little bit of soft music in the background and there's other kind of startup bros and creators and stuff in, in there as well. And it's just my absolute favorite co-working space of all time. It's super easy to book a desk or book a conference room using the app, and it's a great place to meet up with team members if you're gonna collaborate and you all live in different places. They've got unlimited tea and coffee and herbal teas and drinks on tap, and they've also got various kind of after-work events that happen, like happy hours and yoga and a few other exercise type things. And you can also take in guests. So often when guests will come over to visit, I'll say, "Hey, let's pop into WeWork," and we'll all just work from there for the whole day and then we'll go out for dinner some time in the evening. Anyway, if you're looking for a co-working space for you or your team, then I'd 100% recommend WeWork. Like I said, I've been a paying customer for theirs for the last two years, which is why it's particularly exciting that they're now sponsoring this episode. And if you want to get 50% off your first booking, then do head over to we.co/ali, and you can use the coupon code ALI at checkout, A-L-I, to get 50% off your first booking. So thank you so much, WeWork, for sponsoring this episode.

10. 1:07:27 – 1:11:59

    Do you get criticism about Deep Work?

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:07:27

       I'm, I'm just curious, what sort of criticism do you get, and how do you, how do you deal with it? Like, I, I've, I've heard lots of criticisms of Malcolm Gladwell of like, "Oh, but he's cherry-picking whatever story to suit his ends." And then when he, when he wrote Talking to, Talking to Strangers and had a whole thing about sexual assault in there, I was like, "Oh, hello. That's gonna get a lot of criticism from people who are like, 'Oh, cherry- ch- ch- they're cherry-picking of data, cherry-picking of stories. That's not how it actually happened. He's only saying that because it's interesting.'" Um, what sort of stuff do you get? And I'm, I'm, I'm just, I'm just very curious. Because I'm trying to sort of preempt what sort of criticism I'm gonna get, and I feel like my stuff is gonna be more in line with yours than in line with, with, uh, Gladwell's.

    2. CNCal Newport1:08:05

       I mean, it, it depends on the, on the content area. Because, because I, I, I write in a bunch of different content areas, but, uh, okay. So here's a few classics, and some of these have changed. Um, so like, you know, obviously in my techno criticism, I, I did a lot of thinking and writing about social media and its impact on, on, on human flourishing. Was what, sort of a, an early critic of social media. The only person in my generation not to have a social media account. Uh, I, I used to get... Before disliking social media became mainstream, I used to get a lot of like, "How can you possibly write about something that you don't heavily use?" So that was a big one, which I thought was weird, right? Because a lot of great journalists, for example, covered the various drug epidemics in the US without having to go heavily use all those [laughs] drugs to write about it. I mean, the people have written books about serial killing without having to actually go serial kill.

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:08:55

       Yeah.

    4. CNCal Newport1:08:56

       So I used to get that, but I don't get, I don't get that as, uh, I don't get that as much. With Deep Work, one I get a lot now, and it's taken me a while to try to, um, untangle this. I used to get, I, I get a lot like, "But how can I do deep work if, um, like I have kids or childcare?" Or, "Deep work is great if you have someone at home to take care of other things." And that's a very common one. And, and for a while it, it, it confused me because I was like, well, wait a second. This framework was about, you know, you're at the office for eight hours a day. During that time that you're there, uh, you should spend more of those hours i- in undistracted work versus more distracted work. So it, it was about like the ratio of what you spent your time on, like during the day when you're at work. I was like, I, I, I, it's not... And, and so I was, I used to be confused. I was like, well, what does this have to do? I'm not asking people to work more. I'm not asking... Like, I'm trying to understand what's going on here. And I think what's happening with that critique is there is, um, a leap, and I think this is telling and, and, and earnest, so it's not like I'm, this is crit- critical. I think there's a leap from deep work. Uh, deep work can produce like more impressive accomplishments. That gets associated with ambition, and that gets associated with the sort of all in, ambitious, like I'm working all day trying to crush it, you know, changing the world. Like, so th- there's this weird I, I think leap people are making in their minds between what I thought was a pretty dry argument, which is like when you're at your office, instead of like going back and forth to your inbox all day, you know, like do that first and then do this for a long time and then go back to your inbox instead of interspersing. Like it's a very dry technical argument about how you spend the time you're already spending working, right? Um, and it became... A- and, and I think it became wrapped up in people's minds about a life of ambition and going after really cool things and a frustration of like not everyone is, has the, like, the flexibility or autonomy or, or, or just energy left to do that. And so that's, that's an interesting critique, right? And, and I'm, I'm still trying to pull that, pull that one apart. Yeah. Deep work to people I think means like excessive, ambitious, self-oriented, Elon Musk change the world type work.

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:11:07

       Yeah.

    6. CNCal Newport1:11:07

       So I, I think, yeah, that's a common one that's out there too. I think I, I, I get that a lot. And then the, the third one I get, which is just accurate, is you're a dude, and especially like you don't really fully understand not being a dude. [laughs] And I'm like, fair enough.

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:11:24

       Okay.

    8. CNCal Newport1:11:24

       That's fair enough, right? Like, I mean, just the way like guys very s- You know, stereotypically speaking, process a lot of things, think about a lot of things. The things they, that, that they're concerned with. It's, it's specific, and I think it comes through. And, and I have a lot of women in my audience, but they also are like, "You talk about this a little differently than we do." And to which I tip my cap. I'm like, "That's true."

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:11:43

       Yeah. Definitely. Like, I guess, um, this, your, your second, uh, criticism, this sort of deep work becomes associated with ambition, hustle, and, and stuff. Um, how... Bro- broadly, what's your,

11. 1:11:59 – 1:17:09

    What's your take on toxic productivity?

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:11:59

       uh, what's your hot take on, uh, [laughs] on the phrase toxic productivity these days?

    2. CNCal Newport1:12:06

       Yeah. Well, and this is, and my work on slow productivity comes out of this, um, to some degree. Uh, yeah, so there, there's a, there's a real anti-productivity movement going on right now, but it's, it's a little bit confusing. I've wrote about it. I've wr- I wrote several articles about this for The New Yorker trying to figure out what's going on, like with, with the anti-productivity movement. Um, and I think there's a couple different things in there. Like one, there's this, there's a straw... I think what now has become a straw man, this like hustle culture. And maybe it's not a straw man because I'm not on social media, so maybe this still exists. You would know better. Um, but I think it's become a straw man, this idea of everyone is saying, "Work harder, do more things," and I'm the bold social critic who says, you know, "Maybe not." Whereas I actually see the opposite. Everyone is saying, [laughs] like, "We're too overloaded."

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:12:58

       Yeah.

    4. CNCal Newport1:12:58

       "Like, we should do less stuff. Like, me time, find yourself." Like, I don't know where, maybe it's just Gary Vaynerchuk's like the last person left. I don't know where this is, but there's this notion of like there's this big culture that's pushing, um, even outside of the professional sphere, this like Instagram hustle culture of like you gotta... But, and, and that might exist. Again, I don't use social media, so maybe there's a lot of that going on still of, of, you know, Jocko, "I'm up at 4:00 AM," and you got to, uh, you have to as well. Though even Jocko says like, "I'm weird. I, I, I have low sleep demands, and I don't recommend this for other people." Um, so there's that, and then I think there's another thing going on which to me is more interesting, which is, I think, knowledge work in general is pretty broken. I think the way we run offices is very haphazard and unintentional, and it's, it's unnecessarily exhausting. I think we're terrible at organizing groups of people using their brains to add value to information, and people are exhausted because we run offices dumbly, and the pandemic made it much worse.

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:13:53

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CNCal Newport1:13:54

       So there's, there's a few things that happened with the pandemic that made the systemic issues we already had, which were productivity issues, like the way we assign, organize, and keep track of work is just bonkers in office work. It's just rock and roll on email and Slack. I don't know. Here's a meeting invite. Let's just hope it works out. And the pandemic made it worse because it generated a bunch of new work and reduced the effectiveness of collaboration 'cause it was all video. We couldn't grab people in the hallways, and it kind of pushed things over the edge. So I think the other half of... And this is probably the core engine of anti-productivity culture, is people in office jobs are exhausted by how stupidly we run offices, and so they kind of vaguely just like, "Eh, productivity. Like, stop asking me to do more work. Like, my work's exhausting me." And then there's a small sliver, this is my cynical thing. There's a small sliver of like very online people for which the productivity movement is like they're online, well-educated professional writers with Substacks who, um, who are usually, you know, quite left of center and want to... They love the idea of like being part of a labor movement themselves. They sort of look, look with some envy at the big sort of industrial labor movements, the union movements, these big, successful, uh, movements from the left. They g- have workers against the capitalist overlords, and I think there's some sense of like, "Oh, I want that too." So we kind of invent this notion of these mustache-twirling, uh, managers are like trying to force us to do too much work, and we're fighting back and we're Norma Rae. And so there's, there's a little bit of that going on too. So I think all three of those things are going. The sort of the, the straw man culture of like, "I wanna fight against the straw man." The fact at work we don't know what productivity means in the office. Our definition is stupid, and I think people get that, and that just gets simplified as enough of this productivity stuff. And then you have the sort of Substackers that are just, you know, wanna be, uh, Cesar Chavez and, and, and, and are trying to conflate and they're, they're trying to... You, you, you can tell this type because they, they make a living writing. But when they're talking about their issues and their exhaustion, will try to work in the Amazon Labor Union, uh, debates into their... Like try to mix those two together. Like, "Yeah, me and the Amazon workers in the warehouse, like we're all kind of fighting management." And there, so there's some of that type going on. We have to like pull all those threads apart to really understand-

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:16:00

       Yeah

    8. CNCal Newport1:16:00

       ... what's going on.

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:16:01

       Yeah. No, I, I definitely agree with you on the, the whole strawmanization of the hustle, hustle culture thing. Even Gary Vaynerchuk has stopped peddling that narrative many years ago. Uh, but it's still... He's been, become painted with that brush, and now is-

    10. CNCal Newport1:16:16

        Yeah

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:16:16

        ... sort of lab bastard is like, "Oh, but like Gary Vee says you should work all the time." Gary Vee's like, his whole thing is like, "Hey, look, man. You know, just do whatever makes you happy." [laughs] Um, uh, I think that, that, that was, that was a super interesting... There was this random Instagram reel that a friend of mine actually posted where the caption, where, where, which I just sort of chuckled at, where the, where the caption was, "Hey, it's Friday, so I'm gonna close my laptop at 4:00 rather than 5:00 just, uh, be- because my corporate overlord does not own my time." And like, it was like, okay, cool. [laughs] Fair enough. Um, but then part of me was, was just like a, a bit confused by that because it's like this person is choosing to work... well, has, has chosen to work in a job which is famously demanding, i.e., one of the management consulting firms, and is like saying that, "Yeah, it's an act of self-care to stick it to my corporate overlord

12. 1:17:09 – 1:21:58

    Personal productivity in corporate jobs doesn't work

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:17:09

       and quit work an hour early."

    2. CNCal Newport1:17:11

       Yeah.

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:17:11

       And then, and I was, I was just like, what's, what's going on there? B- because I, I, I, I guess for me in, in this position of privilege, it's like my, my work is d- my life and I genuinely enjoy it, and it's like, would I want to leave, leave work early on a Friday? It's like prob- prob- probably not 'cause it's actually kind of fun and I... But, but, but that post got loads of likes and I, it's, it's, I, I, I've, I've been trying to figure out like what is the culture going on there where- It's like almost, almost us against them. Almost a sense of like I am, you know, I'm a poor employee and my manager is the one who's forcing me to work really hard and therefore I'm gonna, I'm gonna carve out this like self-care time for myself by [laughs] closing my laptop an hour early. Any-

    4. CNCal Newport1:17:50

       Right

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:17:50

       ... any idea there? Yeah.

    6. CNCal Newport1:17:52

       Well, so, so here's my one theory that we'll see if this one sticks. I wrote about this one last fall. Um, I was like, "Okay, here's one thing that might be going on with, with, with this particular type of backlash," which is in most... If you look in most economic sectors, uh, a lot of thought goes into how the work is actually organized and assigned. And so productivity is typically a systems issue. How do we run this factory in a productive way? If, if, if you're on the Ford assembly line, it's not just like, you know, "Hey, um, do what you can to get these cars out of here fast."

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:18:25

       [laughs]

    8. CNCal Newport1:18:25

       Like, they, it's, it's a systems issue, right? That you think through. With knowledge work, unique among all major economic sectors before that, the, the task of productivity was put onto the individual. It was made personal. It was like, "Okay, it's up to you to figure out how to organize stuff and get things done, so like, I don't know, like you should watch, you should read Getting Things Done or, or whatever. Like, that's kind of up to you. It's none of our business." And there's a whole reason why that was. It has to do with Peter Drucker and the autonomy culture surrounding knowledge work. Um, there's various reasons, but that's the case. The issue is when productivity, and here I mean like how you actually like organize and schedule and execute and assign task, is left to the individuals just to kind of figure out, that builds resentment. That's where you get this interesting resentment because now you as the individual are, are... You have to start making these choices between I could work more hours tonight, um, but now like my personal life is affecting and now my personal life is pitted against my professional life, and that's really different than when productivity is systemic. So when the system, "So here is how our company assigns work and how much work we think you should have on your plate and, and, and you know, how we collaborate or whatever."

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:19:34

       Yeah.

    10. CNCal Newport1:19:34

        Now you have a clear thing that you can, if it's demanding too much, you can push back against and you can say, "Here's our system and we think it should be two projects at a time, not three. We think it shouldn't be..." Like, you, you have a thing that you can argue about and debate and, and have a say in. It's such a interesting trick, and this wasn't done on purpose, I think this was accidental, but it's such an interesting devious trick that when that becomes completely personal, now you have to wage the battle against yourself. "Well, maybe I could work Saturday. Maybe I could work a little bit more because like I, I need to get these things done." And so I think the, the inefficiency and the, the, the personal internal battles created by in a corporate setting or organizational setting just letting everyone figure out their own personal productivity, it just doesn't work and it's making people resentful. And this is why like a lot of my solutions are if you work for a team or if there's an organization or a company, you can't just say, "It's none of our business how you organize your task." You gotta be like, "No, no, no. How do we figure out like where work comes from? Where are all the projects we're waiting on? How many are you working on right now? That looks like a full plate. Like, you shouldn't have to pull on more. When do we talk? Do we just send emails all day or do we have, uh, do we do docket clearing meetings and office hours?" And like there's all of this we need... When productivity is a, a thing that the system supports and you can see and debate and modify and improve and have a... You know, it's much better. And when you put it on the people's plates, it's... We can't handle it well and we have to... And I, so I kind of get why people are getting resentful. Uh, I also get, I agree with you too that it, it also doesn't seem to make sense from the outside where someone's like, "I'm closing my laptop at 4:00." You're like, "Well, I thought the agreement was you're gonna work, you know, eight hours a day [laughs] or something." Or I... This, this is happening a lot with the remote work thing. I think remote work, by the way, these fights about remote work, remote work has just become a proxy for these frustrations with how knowledge work comes out. So like all of this frustration and anger and issues of like, "It's emails all day long and I have way too much work on my plate and it's all up to me to figure it out and I'm kind of tired of this," it's all getting channeled now into like, "I should be able to work from home." 'Cause it's like the only thing people know to spec- It's like a specific tangible thing you can, you can fight for. It's like spoiler alert, I mean, you remember 2020 and early 2021, you're still not gonna like your work even if you're at home and your kids are running around. You know, it's like not that much better. But an- th- this is one of my working theories, is making productivity personal, we take it for granted, but it's a really weird step we took when the knowledge sector emerged. It's kind of a weird way of doing it.

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:21:54

        Hmm. Nice. I look forward to reading more about this. Um, c- what is

13. 1:21:58 – 1:37:12

    What is slow productivity?

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:21:58

       slow productivity broadly?

    2. CNCal Newport1:22:01

       So, yeah. So if we don't have... Like, here's the issue with knowledge work in general, the issue we've been grappling with in the last 20 minutes, like what does productivity even mean, right? And it, and so then it just becomes this weird catch-all or boogeyman. So I have this thought of like, "Why don't we actually positively come out and come up with a definition that we like, a definition that's human, a definition that, that melds well with our human instincts and the way our brain is actually wired, that's centered around producing meaningful and valuable things, but in a way that's very sustainable, in a way that's very satisfying?" So, so instead of just pushing back against the boogeyman productivity, like let's put in place an alternative. And, and the alternative I've been working on is called slow productivity. And like the slow food movement or these other movements, I've, I've, I've gone back and pulled from these sort of existing cultures of knowledge workers that have been around for centuries, in some cases millennia, that had the privilege and space to kind of figure out what's the best way to work with your mind. You know, what works, what doesn't? And figuring out can we have a widely applicable definition of productivity comes out of it. And so slow productivity has three principles to it. Do fewer things, working at a natural pace, obsessing over quality. Like those three things, approaching knowledge work with those three principles realigns the efforts with, uh, our humanity, the way we're wired. I can give you a, a neuroscience argument for it. I can give you a psychological argument for it. I can give you a philosophical argument for those three things. It all... On all three of those levels, orienting knowledge work around that is meaningful, satisfying. You can produce things of great value. It can be very productive for companies, and it can be very satisfying for individuals. So I'm, I'm sort of putting together my pitch of what What target of productivity should people who make a living using their brains, what i- what should they be going for beyond just, you know, get after it, have your to-dos organized?

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:23:49

       Yeah.

    4. CNCal Newport1:23:49

       I don't know.

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:23:50

       What's, what's the philosophical argument? [laughs]

    6. CNCal Newport1:23:52

       Well, I- there's, uh, like we can go back to Aristotle if we need to, right? There, there's this, the what, what is the, the theology of, of human existence? Well, what's the one thing we have that other creatures don't is we have these brains that can sit and think and create things. Um, a- and there's, there's a, there's a, there's an argument towards the, the, the production of things of value and meaning and, and sort of giving things the time they require, craftsmanship. That there's, there's a real philosophical foundation to the human value that's, that's extracted from actually like doing things of, of, of value of impact with your mind, and a lot of that gets sapped away when you're just answering emails all day, uh, or, or just hustling to get after it. You could go all the way back to neuro... I mean, this is the, the thing I'm working on now is I, I, I've gone back heavily to do a deep into the mainly social anthropological research to do a deep history of work. For 300,000 years, what was work for humans? Because that's a long enough time span that our brain evolved, right? To, to match this definition of work and, and, you know, surprise, surprise, when you go back and look through this deep literature, you see not doing too many things. Sees variation in pace and intensity. A lot of your time being the application of hard-won skills, like that's exactly what comes up. That's what we did for 300,000 years. So there, there's also this almost like psychology, anthropological, even neuroscientific argument for not being overloaded, varying your intensity in various ways and spending more of your time like applying hard-won skills, like what we expect work to be.

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:25:25

       Do you, have you stumbled across any kind of, um, Dunbar number for number of active projects that one should have at a given time? [laughs] Like when you say fewer things-

    8. CNCal Newport1:25:35

       I mean-

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:25:35

       How few are we talking?

    10. CNCal Newport1:25:37

        Well, yeah, I mean, I, uh, so there, there's two different timescales. I mean, at the scale of like what you're working on right now, it's one, right? So like in the, uh... What, what we cannot do, what our brain cannot do is concurrently during like the afternoon, go back and forth between three different things. It's just the way our planning motivation loop works. Like we have one thing in our working memory, we build this internal model that pulls episodic memories out of the hippocampus. We use that to try to predict what we should do next. That system cannot handle more than one thing. So we cannot be thinking about making decisions on or making progress on more than one thing at a time. And I don't mean like literally at the time, like over a couple hours even. Like work on one thing till you're done, move on to the other thing. Our brain cannot go back and forth. It's why email, like going back and forth between your email just crushes us psychologically. Uh, you know, a recent podcast episode I talked about task freeze, where you see like 15 things you need to do and you just stop. It's because you literally, the planning motivational center of your brain can't make plans for 15 things at the same time. It neurologically can't do that, so your motivation system just freezes up, right? So at a time, one thing. In terms of like ongoing projects, I'm a big believer in like pull-based methodology, where there's like two or three things you're, two or three things you're working on. When something finishes, you can pull something else in, you know? And I actually think this is how companies should organize work. Software developers already do this, but I think we should do this more broadly in knowledge work where, yeah, there's a lot of work the company needs to do. Don't just distribute that to everyone's plate, and everyone has 20 things that they have to kind of figure out what to do with. They should just be working on a couple things, and they can pull in new things once they, once it's ready. And the problem, why you need, why I think this is important and why I think it's killer to have a lot of things on your plate, even if you're not working on them at the exact same time, is that there's something called an overhead tax that every project that you have committed to generates. It, it's a overhead of administrative work that you have to do even if you're not actively working on the project. It's emails you have to send, uh, meetings, planning meetings, standing meetings you have to have, and, and just cognitive load of knowing it's there. So that builds up. So if you have 15 projects on your plate, you're paying overhead tax on 15 projects, and that tax takes up your time. And before you know it, most of your time and mental energy is going to the maintenance of the ongoing projects and almost nothing gets done. And then you fall farther behind and then the, the, you, more projects build up and the tax gets worse. I call it the overhead spiral. It's a terrible state to be in. So there, there's a real cost to having too many things on your plate, even if you're very careful about, "This morning I'm just working on this, and then in the afternoon I'm just working on that, and on Tuesdays I work on this." Once you get past a certain level, it's a problem. And I think again, it's something companies get wrong. They just say, "Let's distribute the task informally to everyone. We'll have everything live on people's individual plates, and they can just figure out what to work on and whatnot." Uh, and the overhead tax kills them. Like a much better system is this all sits in a holding tank, and when I'm ready for the next thing, I pull it in, but until it leaves that holding tank, I'm paying no overhead tax on it. It's not actually in, it's not actually in my view. So I honestly think like three active projects at a time is best and obviously when you're working on something, you're only working on that one thing.

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:28:48

        Yeah, this is actually something like as of last week we have now started doing in our, in our team and it's, I'm so surprised it's taken so long to get to this because we were in that model of, oh, there's all these things we could do. Let's just like distribute them. But now we're like, "Oh, actually, let's do the thing that software people do," and actually make a, I mean, we, we have like a bucket list of, we would love to, to have, have my website contain book summaries of every book I've ever read. We'd love to make, think about a Patreon. We'd love to think about making our own keyboard. We'd love to think about making our own bag. We'd love to think about this enormous list of things, but not right now. Like for the next six weeks [laughs] we're just focusing on these things. Good. And then six weeks later, we can reassess the bucket list and see, okay, whether we actually wanna put things onto it. And that model has, uh, basically is like within half an hour freed up a lot of cognitive ov- overload from people being like, "Oh, actually this is not a priority right now, so therefore I'm not gonna think about it until our next six-week sprint planning or whatever that looks like."

    12. CNCal Newport1:29:39

        Yep. Yep, that's 100% right, by the way.

    13. AAAli Abdaal1:29:41

        Mm.

    14. CNCal Newport1:29:42

        That's what everyone should be doing. I, I have a chapter about this in the new book I, I wrote a couple weeks ago. Everyone should be doing that, but mainly only software people do. [laughs] And it's such a, uh, such a, it's, it's such a, such an unnecessary, unforced-

    15. AAAli Abdaal1:29:55

        Mm

    16. CNCal Newport1:29:55

        ... source of stress and overhead. I mean, just like this is what I think happened, by the way, with the Zoom apocalypse. So I don't know if you heard this from your listeners. I definitely was getting this feedback-

    17. AAAli Abdaal1:30:05

        Mm

    18. CNCal Newport1:30:05

        ... that during 2021 when everyone, we were, everyone was remote, knowledge workers were remote, people got to these sort of absurd states where, like, all they were doing was Zoom eight hours a day. They're like, "Wait, there's no work left?" Like, it became absurd. It was like a Kafka play or something like this, like some sort of like meta commentary on, on the absurdity of, of work and bureaucracy or something like that. But I, what this was I think was like a really clear example of the overhead tax spiraling out of control. Because when, when people went remote, it increased the amount of task on their plate by like 20% all of a sudden because you had to figure out how to run whatever you do remote, so it generated new work, right? To figure out how do we make the transition. And switching over to, uh, video is, there's e- efficiencies that's, that's lost. So there's a lot of efficiencies in person where, where I can grab you at the end of a meeting and be like, "Wait, wait, hold on," like, "What are we doing about this client coming tomorrow?" And we'd, we'd go back and forth for three minutes and figure it out. When I can't do that anymore, we're left saying like, "We should have a Zoom meeting-"

    19. AAAli Abdaal1:31:04

        Yeah

    20. CNCal Newport1:31:04

        ... "to talk about the client." But what's the smallest interval on your calendar? 30 minutes. And so now five minutes becomes 30 minutes. So I think the, the, the Zoom apocalypse that happened in like the summer of 2020 was making the phenomenon of overhead tax unavoidably visible. Like it, it's like, look, we, we, we up these things by about 20%, and soon all time went away for working. All time went away for working. And it showed how, how perilous, like how, how much we, we, we pushed that tax up almost to the limit. Like before the pandemic, we must have already been spending so much of our time just talking about work, because when it got 20% worse we couldn't ignore it anymore because people were writing me and saying, "I don't know when to go to the bathroom," because it's back to back to back to back to back for seven hours of, you know, Zoom. Like it got so absurd that people were like, "Okay, obviously this, this can't be right."

    21. AAAli Abdaal1:31:51

        Yeah.

    22. CNCal Newport1:31:51

        But we were like right below that for years and years.

    23. AAAli Abdaal1:31:53

        Yeah.

    24. CNCal Newport1:31:53

        So I think it's a huge phenomenon and, and we really should spend more time thinking about it.

    25. AAAli Abdaal1:31:57

        Yeah. Yeah, this is something that we're trying to figure out right now in terms of, um, you know, we're moving into this new like sort of office type thing, and I'm trying to figure out what's a good balance between, oh, having our team be somewhat remote and also somewhat in person, where in person just those conversations happen, the three-minute conversation that I just had about pricing for one of our courses. Which would've happened maybe never or, or in like a sort of one-hour long course debrief and stuff, and actually just, it just took a few, like bouncing a couple of ideas as I was refilling my water bottle-

    26. CNCal Newport1:32:29

        Mm

    27. AAAli Abdaal1:32:29

        ... um, to actually come up with a pretty solid idea. And we just don't get that in Zoom meetings, 'cause like who's gonna bother arranging a Zoom meeting? And then when some people are remote and some people are not, it's like you're having a conversation about a thing, but then it's just like a lot of effort to update the person who is also involved in that project 'cause you, you're never gonna be like, "Hey, let's hop on a Zoom meeting just so I can update you about this 30-second conversation I had." But then that person is out of the loop and it just ends up creating this, this mess. Um, have you in your thinking about this figured out a magic solution or is it still a like a, "Hmm, we've gotta kind of work through this and figure it out?"

    28. CNCal Newport1:33:01

        Well, like my take on remote, 'cause I did a bunch of pieces on this too, like this was like a big issue especially during the pandemic, is you have to, for remote to succeed it has to be accompanied by really rethinking and getting much more smart and structured about how just work happens in your organization in general, right? So like think about, for example, what economic sector in knowledge work already had successful widespread remote work before the pandemic hit? It was software. There's lots of software development firms that are remote. Um, how were they able to pull it off? Well, think, as we've just been talking about, software development is highly structured. Like we, we have, we're, we're using an agile methodology, we have this pull methodology with these, with these highly structured collaborative status meetings. We know the point of the status meetings. We then do the sprints. Everything was already really well structured, so we... They understood, okay, if we're gonna move you out of this location we know exactly how to integrate you into the workflow. When you don't have that, so most offices just run off what I call the hyperactive hive mind. Like we just rock and roll back and forth, grab people, messages, emails, Slack. Uh, when you go remote it just amplifies the issues. Which is why I keep saying like the, the, making the debate that's happening now just about can I be remote or not, like do you have to be in the office or not, is missing. Like you have to actually structure your work and then if you understand exactly how things are assigned, when things are discussed, then it's much easier to figure out who can be remote and who can't. And, and so I, I mean, I see a future in which hybrid work is gonna succeed when things are much more clear and segmented. Like you're not here, but because of that we don't think of you as the same that we think of the, like this core planning team that is here. Like probably what you're working on for us is it's much more clarified.

    29. AAAli Abdaal1:34:43

        Yeah.

    30. CNCal Newport1:34:44

        It's much more like you're taking this, uh, you're working on it and you're coming back and producing, giving us what you've produced. It's, it's, uh, you know, it's, it's much more segmented in that way. But then this other type of group we have here, we're all here, we're all in London because there's like a lot of planning and decisions that have to happen and there's huge efficiencies, uh, in the in-person interaction, right? There's all these e- efficiencies in it. You know, I wrote this thing once about, um, World War II talking about remote work. There is a reason why if you go back and look in World War II, Churchill and Roosevelt would go through literal risk to life and limb to travel and meet each other. Uh, they had telegraphs, they had telephones, but there's just, there's something in the in-person interaction that was, that was so important that, you know, they would actually, uh, take ships and fly from Greenland to whatever.
14. 1:37:12 – 1:42:50

    What's your note taking method?

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:37:12

       final thing I'd like to, I'd love to talk to you about, and um, it would be, it would be great to do a part two of this if you're ever in London in the near future. Um, that would be sick to, to meet up in person. But I guess one of the things I love about your work is that you pull in from all sorts of different sources. Um, and like even in this conversation, you know, talking about like Aristotle or talking about World War II and Churchill and Marshall and stuff, like what does your reading process look like? Are you kind of Ryan Holiday with the little note cards? Like what, what's your, what's your method for, I guess, ingesting information from stuff and then doing stuff with said information?

    2. CNCal Newport1:37:45

       Well, so, so yeah, I do, uh, I call it corner marking method. So it, it's much lower friction than Ryan's more Zettelkasten style, like capturing ideas on cards that you then, uh, that you then file. Um, so what I do is if, if I'm reading a nonfiction source that I think I will need for a book or article, if there's something on a page that seems relevant, you put a line across the corner at the upper, so you can find that real quickly, see there's like a little hash mark up in the corner, and then I'll, uh, bracket out the relevant sentences, and that's it, right? So mark the corner, bracket out the things you think are relevant. What I've found is that maybe you lose a little bit of information, but I... You can go back and take a book, and I was just doing this today, 500 page book, and in four minutes just flip through and find every page that is corner marked, read those bracketed, uh, sentences, and in about five minutes you can basically load back up like, oh yeah, I remember what was interesting in this book. I remember what this book was about. I did that the other day for a, a book I read probably in 2009, uh, Present Shock by, by Douglas Rushkoff, and there's something I wanted from it, and I went through and went through my markings. Five minutes, that whole book is swapped back in, like the stuff that, the stuff that really matters. So I love that method because it's incredibly low friction. It barely slows down your writing and there's almost... I mean, your reading, and there's no overhead. Like you don't have to go and then like laboriously, uh, like I think the Zettelkasten folks will spend a lot of time processing their thoughts from the books afterwards. But I go through a lot of books and, and I just am not gonna do that, and I don't want that overhead to stop me from actually reading. So that's why it's a pencil. Uh, that's it.

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:39:25

       Fair play. Um, Cal, thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Um, any final parting bits of advice, uh, having like, so, so you know what stage of the process I'm at, just somewhat handed in the first draft, but now we're in for probably six months worth of, or maybe more, of just this editing back and forth to try and make this absolute turd of 80,000 words that I currently have into something vaguely presentable. Any, any tips from a seasoned pro? [laughs]

    4. CNCal Newport1:39:47

       Well, I mean, first I'll say editing is always more fun than writing for the first time. So that's good news.

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:39:53

       That's good.

    6. CNCal Newport1:39:53

       Because y- you have the foundation, you're moving things around, you're cutting things down. And also it just, the stuff you come away with from the sessions is better because you're like, "Hey, I made this thing better." Um, cutting is usually the right answer. [laughs] It's like every other... You, when I'm, when I'm like wrangling with something, I'm, I'm, I cut and then I feel better. Like, oh, it's, it's, uh, it's simpler. Like let's get rid of that story. You know, kill, kill your s- your anecdotal babies. Like let's just cut that one and that one and just like form it around this one. Get right to the point. You know, hit it, hit it and get out. So, you know, editing is funner than writing, so that's good. And two, simplifying is always the right move. At, at least in my case, the, as I simplify it, things get tighter. Yeah, I, I get happier with the writing. So that's pretty exciting. So you're at 80,000 words. Where, what's your target? You think you're gonna do like 60,000, 75?

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:40:40

       60-ish. I, I, I feel like shorter, shorter is probably better. Um, but at the same time I still have this like, oh, but what if there's not enough material? Will people feel shortchanged if the book's not big enough? And I think no, obviously not. People prefer a shorter book anyway, so why don't I just like cut out the fluff and yeah. [laughs] How, how long was Digital Minimalism? 'Cause that was quite small in paperback.

    8. CNCal Newport1:41:02

       Oh, Minimalism, it was probably... Do I have it here?

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:41:06

       I have it here somewhere.

    10. CNCal Newport1:41:07

        It's 70, 80. 70 or 80 probably.

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:41:09

        Oh, wow, okay. What about Deep Work?

    12. CNCal Newport1:41:10

        Yeah.

    13. AAAli Abdaal1:41:10

        'Cause that one's pretty big, but I, I guess I'm just sort of thinking in terms of how thick the paperbacks are. [laughs]

    14. CNCal Newport1:41:15

        Yeah. So you're in the UK, I think, yeah, so it, it's complicated because, well, it's, it's tricky because I think the, the trim size for Digital Minimalism in the UK was bigger, so the pages are bigger, right? And Deep Work has a smaller trim size. Yeah, there's a lot... I, I don't know. It, it, I, I always mis- misjudge that, but I'm usually like 70 to 90,000 words.

    15. AAAli Abdaal1:41:34

        Fair play.

    16. CNCal Newport1:41:34

        Yeah. That's where I come from. My, hey, my final thing I'll say by the, about, uh, book writing is, um, I always think about the book I'm, I'm trying to finish up. I'm like, well, my goal here is just to make this reasonable. The next one will be great. And then like, so, so in other words, like, and then that, that helps me not get too worried about like, is this right? Are people gonna like it? And then as soon as I finish a book, I'll start thinking about the next one. You know, once it's out of your hands, you know, you move on to the next thing.

    17. AAAli Abdaal1:41:58

        That's incredible. Well, thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Uh, where can people learn more about you if they wanna, uh, check out more of your stuff?

    18. CNCal Newport1:42:04

        Uh, so I have a podcast, Deep Questions, which you can, you can listen to or watch the episodes on YouTube. And then my newsletter every week I write an essay on this stuff. You can sign up at calnewport.com.

    19. AAAli Abdaal1:42:16

        Brilliant. Cal, thank you so much for taking the time.

    20. CNCal Newport1:42:18

        Thanks for having me.

    21. AAAli Abdaal1:42:19

        All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Episode duration: 1:42:50