A Pocket Notebook To Replace Your Phone - Be More Productive & Change Your Life | Cal Newport

Cal Newport 0:00 So my recent book tour, uh, I didn't have room in my bag, so I was packing for two weeks. I didn't have room to bring my normal remarkable digital notebook, but I knew there was a particular idea that I wanted to work on related to a new book that I'm just starting to ideate about. So at the last minute as I was running out the door, I grabbed the Field Notes notebook. It was a, a, a small pocket size notebook that I had lying around. The first 10 pages were already taken up with actually sketches from my kids. But I just grabbed this and I brought it with me to work on, and it worked remarkably well. I brought it with me in my pocket almost everywhere I went. I worked on this book idea in bars, at hotel breakfasts, waiting in recording studios to start recording interviews, in my hotel room, uh, on the beach in Santa Monica, as well as walking next to Lady Bird Lake in Austin. Um, I ended up capturing some really interesting thoughts in here. I thought it was very successful. So this idea of a small notebook dedicated to a single creative idea, what I'm calling a single-purpose notebook, is something that's now starting to fascinate me, so I wanna explore it in today's Deep Dive. What's going on with this idea? Why does it work? Where does it not work? And, and what should you take away? So I wanna start by noting I'm not the first to discover this. This idea of having single-purpose notebooks that you use to develop particular ideas is quite common. I have a couple visuals here for those who are watching. So I'm pulling up on the screen right now, these are notebooks from Picasso. He had these sketchbooks. I have one loaded on the screen right now. He's doing a, uh, an ink sketches of, uh, workers in the water with some annotation. Here's another Picasso sketch page. He would bring a Moleskine style notebook, Moleskine being a sort of... It's a brand now, but it was a general type of notebook that was, uh, especially in Paris, was available with an oil skin cover. He just had these notebooks with him to develop his artistic ideas, to work through sketches. Um, let me try this, let me try that, let me annotate this. All right? Now, he wasn't alone in that. Here's another example. Bruce Chatwin, the famous British travel writer, actually a very dashing... See if I got a picture of him here. Sort of like a dashing, adventurous guy. I wanna read some Bruce Chatwin. Um, but he famously carried around these style of notebooks as well. I have a picture of one loaded up here. Uh, he would get them from a particular notebook store in Paris, and he would buy them in bulk, and he would bring them on his, his adventure travels and just take notes on the trip, and then would convert these into his sort of famed books. So we see one of these notebooks here. Here's another picture of some, uh, Chatwin style notebooks, or these might be his exact notebooks. Some of these are in museums, you can see. So again, you have this idea, this romantic idea of the traveler. You know, his first book was on journeys through Patagonia. With his small notebook, just working on this one idea, what I am encountering and learning, a single-purpose notebook. Uh, perhaps the, the most famous example, Miles Finch from the movie Elf, the Will Ferrell movie Elf, as portrayed by Peter Dinklage. I'm showing here on the screen. He had this famous idea notebook. It's right there. I- You can kind of see it on the screen. Uh, I'll zoom in. This was the, the notebook that was... contained all of his ideas for children's book. So the Miles Finch character was this, uh, hired gun that you could bring in to write fantastic picture books. And so he had this notebook where all of his ideas were. I actually found, Jesse, an analysis of online from a notebook enthusiast website, where they actually went through and tried to understand from these still footages exactly what sort of notebook Peter Dinklage was using in the movie Elf. But then again, here's the point, though. Single purpose. It's just ideas for a children's book. I have a single purpose for the notebook. All right, so I didn't discover this idea. Um, it's also not the only type of way to take notes, obviously. We've, we've talked about this on the show before. Uh, it's one of multiple ways to take notes. So let... I'm gonna draw some. Let's draw these here. Throw caution to the wind here. All right, so we have this way we just talked about, which I'll illustrate on the screen by drawing a sort of field notes style notebook. Expertly drawn. Um, but there's other ways to take notes as well. So like in episode two eighty-seven, I'm just trying to put this single-purpose notebook in a larger context of note-taking. In episode two eighty-seven, I talked about how I take notes professionally, like the, the main way I take notes, and I'm drawing a laptop here because the, the key idea about how I take notes for articles, books, or academic, academic, uh, research as well, is my whole argument in episode two eighty-seven is you really should just go straight to the tool you use to do that work. So for books or New Yorker articles, like capture notes in the research folder in a Scrivener project that you're gonna eventually use to write that book or write that article. For an academic article, go straight to the LaTeX and mark it up and have it straight in the collaborative document you're gonna use to write the paper. For various reasons, that's, uh, what I recommended there. There's also this whole other approach, which is popular, the sort of Zettelkasten-based second brain approach. So I'll just kind of draw a brain here, where you have a sort of all-powerful system that captures all notes on all things and, and if, uh, the Zettelkasten-inspired versions of second brain systems, you can also have serendipitous discovery of new ideas from this, like, collection of notes. So there's, there's other dominant ways that people think about taking notes in our current digital world. Uh, Jesse, would you say that picture of a brain is something detailed enough that you could do, like, anatomy studies on?

Speaker 6:06 I think it's that.

Speaker 6:06 Pretty much.

Cal Newport 6:07 It's that accurate?

Speaker 6:08 I've seen you write a brain before, and that one is, um, average.

Cal Newport 6:11 Average, okay.

Speaker 6:11 I've seen you make a better one before.

Cal Newport 6:13 Yeah, it's not my best brain.

Speaker 6:14 [chuckles]

Cal Newport 6:14 Not my best brain. Um, so we have different approaches for taking notes. I wanna put this in context, right? And each of these approaches have their own, uh, they have their own context in which they make sense, right? So this, my professional note system, I'm gonna label it. You know, this is good for, uh, big projects. I'm working on a project. I'm writing an article or a paper or a book. I'm working on a project. I gotta have to collect a huge amount of information relevant to this project and then eventually make, uh, make sense of it. Professional note-taking is, uh, about organization, right? The actual thinking about this information's gonna occur in a very structured way. You're gonna have, like, long, deep work blocks put aside for you to work on this project. I'm gonna go for a long walk to do nothing but think about how to make sense of all this information. So it's note-taking as organizational system. The, uh, second brain, you know, I think this approach is-- there's two things it's good for. One is if you collect a lot of unstructured information, meaning stuff that's interesting but you don't know what to do with it yet, something like a second brain system could be beneficial because that's what it's really good at. Like, just put this in here. We'll find connections between information. Um, so if you're someone who sifts through a lot of information, wants to hold on to a lot of information, maybe wants to serendipitously surface ideas, something like a second brain system makes sense. Um, it's also good for people who like that technology. Like, some people really like building these sort of digital information management systems. It's a hobby, and it's a cool one. So it's good for that. So what is the single-purpose notebook method we're talking about today? What is it good for? And I'm gonna label this creative exploration. I'm gonna write that right here on the screen. As an aid for exploring a, uh, single idea that's gonna require extended thinking and creative insight to come together, this is where I think the single-purpose notebook can play a big role. So why is this method, just having one notebook dedicated to a single thing you're trying to understand better or think about or have creative insight, why does this method work so well? Well, there's a couple things you get working with a dedicated notebook. One is neuroscientific. It focuses your context, your cognitive context. Everything in this notebook will be related to the one thing you're trying to develop. So when you open this notebook and flip through it and start writing, all your brain associates with this notebook is that one topic you're working on. So I was working on a book idea in this notebook. That's what my brain associated it with. So when I pulled out this notebook, that's what I'm thinking about, this project, and I can slip into that cognitive context quicker, meaning I can get insights that are higher quality faster. This is different, for example, than pulling out your phone and talking to the Notes application. Your phone represents all sorts of cognitive context. There's email. There's games. There's social media on there. Your brain starts going all over the place, right? It's the dog salivating when the digital feed bowl is being brought in from the kitchen. Same thing when you go into a, a professional note-taking system. Um, you know, you associate this with work and all the different types of things you work on. It puts you in a work mode, but maybe that's not where you wanna be, where you're trying to develop an idea creatively. You're trying to be original. Same thing with the second brain system. It puts you in this sort of not just brainstorming mode, but a, a mode that's associated with everything. There's so much unstructured information. Single-purpose notebook, this is for this one thing. So it puts your brain into the, the right mindset for not just capturing thoughts but developing them. It's also extremely low friction. So when you're working on a new idea... Hey there. I wanna take a quick moment to tell you about my new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. If you like the type of things I talk about on this channel, you're really gonna like this book. It distills all of my ideas into a clear philosophy combined with step-by-step instructions for putting it into action. So to find out more about the book, check out calnewport.com/slow. Everything you need you can find there. All right. Thanks. Let's get back to it. That's nontrivial. Serendipity plays a big role. I'm walking. I'm in the car, and ooh, I just had a flash. The friction in getting that idea into this notebook is minimal. You take it out of your pocket. You open it. You write. Nothing's turned on. You're not opening any apps. You're not typing with your thumbs. And so it's very well suited for exactly the information flow that describes this type of creative development of a focused idea, which has these moments of serendipity and quick capture. The third reason why this method works well is ritualistic. There's a ritual around it, right? I mean, the, the shape of the notebook, the associations you have between this and Bruce Chatwin, you know, on an iceberg somewhere in Patagonia romantically writing his thoughts down. It, it, it's a ritual of pulling out a notebook you-- a well-worn notebook that you, you just like the shape and the feel of and a pen that you really like. That ritual also helps puts you in a mindset for, in this case, creative exploration in a way that just loading up your laptop does not, or taking out your phone does not, or looking into a, an interface for a unstructured information storage system does not, right? There is-- It's a ritualistic aspect to this that, uh, puts you into that mindset. So when you put these three things together, the focused cognitive context, the ritualistic aspect, the extremely low friction, um, it becomes a very effective tool for the creative exploration of a single topic. Something you deploy for a single topic, it works very well for that. All right, so what's the protocol here? Well, if you do creative work as part of, uh, your job or your leisure life, things that require extended thought and creative insight Buy a bunch of notebooks. Small, either like Moleskine or even I like these Field Notes ones even better because it's flexible, very thin, so it fits right in your pocket. Get a pen you like that writes really well on the paper. I still use my Uni-ball Micros .3 millimeters, but whatever you like. And start bringing them with you to tackle a particular problem. This is my notebook for this, uh, I, I wanna wrap my mind around this new idea and maybe write an article about it. I will carry this notebook with me until I have something smart to say about it. I need to figure out a product doesn't feel right, a product market fit here is not right. I'm gonna bring a notebook with me until I feel like I have my arms around it. There's something going... This not, might be non-professional. You know, there's something about my life that's not feeling, uh, good. I, I, it's, what, what, what's happening in my career. I, I feel this is something non-deep here. This is, I d- I'm not resonating here. Something is not right. I'm gonna bring this notebook with me till I have an idea about what is. Right? That's the protocol. You have a stack of these. When a problem comes up that requires extended thought and creative insight, you grab one, dedicate it to that, and when you're done, you're done with that notebook. Don't use it for multiple things. Don't say, "Well, I only used five pages, so now I wanna use the rest for another problem." S- say, "No, this notebook is for this idea." That's what it is. It is a, in the end will be an artifact reflecting my thinking on that particular idea. It is a, a hack for extracting more creative insight out of the human brain. We are by far not the first people to think of it, but this idea which used to be common, I think is being less common in an age of digital tools, and a lot of these digital tools just don't serve the same purpose. Picasso on an iPad or Bruce Chatwin, you know, typing into Obsidian would not be the same as just having the, the single-purpose notebook that you can romantically and creatively just pull out as needed and develop your thoughts. So I like this idea. I'm gonna do more of it. I'm gonna buy a bunch of Field Notes, and I'm gonna have a stack, and I'm just gonna grab them. Hey, this week I'm using this notebook for this idea one at a time. I'm excited about it. I've done this off and on before, but I'm excited to have an official protocol here to actually pull from.

Speaker 14:25 Actually, I was gonna ask you about that. So if you have multiple things you're thinking about, you'll just kind of think about one per week with that notebook?

Cal Newport 14:33 Yeah. Or I'd have two notebooks.

Speaker 14:35 In your pocket?

Cal Newport 14:36 Yeah. But maybe I'd only bring... I'd probably just bring one with me at a time. You know, "Hey, I'm gonna be gone all day doing X, this is the idea I'm gonna work on, so let me pull that notebook with me."

Speaker 14:45 Yeah.

Cal Newport 14:46 Yeah. That's what I would do. I wouldn't have two notebooks with me at the same time.

Speaker 14:49 I always carry around a notebook to, like, write down things I forget, and I have it in, like, in a little, like, golf holder. But it actually has a slot for, like, two.

Cal Newport 14:57 Yeah.

Speaker 14:57 So I can also put another one in there for, like, an idea for, like, a separate one.

Cal Newport 15:00 Yeah, I think a capture notebook's another good idea. Um, this is-

Speaker 15:04 I always carry that.

Cal Newport 15:04 That's a David Allen idea.

Speaker 15:06 Yeah.

Cal Newport 15:06 Right? Like, you, you wanna have something to capture stuff you have to do as soon as you think of it so that it's not just in your head. Uh, they're not as common now because most people spend so much of their day near a digital device where they can do that capture that it doesn't come up that often.

Speaker 15:22 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 15:22 But if you spend a lot of time away from such a device, I think, I think that's a great idea. So you could definitely have two of these things.

Speaker 15:27 Yeah.

Cal Newport 15:27 Capture and a idea notebook. The other question people often have is, "When do I read it?" And I would say weekly plan, right? So if you're using a single-purpose idea notebook, when you do your weekly plan each week, that's a good time to sort of go through this, take stock. Where am I? Did I reach some conclusion that I now wanna put into my strategic plan, or do I wanna put aside time now to actually, like, take the ideas and build a plan and start a new project? Just confront it every week. And it might just be, "Nope, still working on it. Uh, had some ideas, nothing great yet, and there's nothing else to do." But knowing that you will look at these active idea, single-purpose idea notebooks, knowing that you will look at them each week will also give you confidence to let these ideas leave your mind or they will otherwise be a source of stress. Like, "Don't forget. Don't forget. Don't forget. We had this great idea about this book. Don't forget. Don't forget." You really need a way to offload that into a notebook that you trust you will check. So I would say use your weekly plan as where you just check in on whatever notebooks you were actively using that week, and if you're ready to act on it, that's a great time to actually figure out what you're gonna do. This might be a task goes into your Trello board, time is put aside on your calendar, a project is started. But you really need the trust that the notebooks won't be forgotten, that the ones you're using will be checked, so I think the weekly scale is probably the right scale.

Speaker 16:45 In Isaacson's book about Da Vinci, he had a lot of notebooks.

Cal Newport 16:49 Yes. And that's all they had back then.

Speaker 16:51 Yeah.

Cal Newport 16:51 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I... It's interesting. As part of integrating the digital, like we're in this new digital age and we're trying to live deep lives. Half of this is... I, I'm not gonna do halves. Let me do thirds. Like, a third of this is, like, knowing what not to use. Don't get stuck using TikTok all the time. A third of it is knowing what to use, right? That, okay, I, I need to take advantage of the opportunities that new technologies make possible. This is like us with a podcast. This didn't exist 15 years ago, and now it could be, like, like, the cornerstone of me reaching an audience and making a living. Um, and, like, the other third is, like, knowing the analog stuff to really embrace to make sure that the digital isn't completely pushing you around. And this is, like, one of those cases. For ideating, this is much better than what we're doing digital. So, like, the intentional use of analog is, uh, really critical when you're trying to analyze the digital. We forget the analog when we think about what to do or don't do in the digital, but, you know, having the right analog bulwarks against the digital incursion is just as important as just focusing on the incursion itself and trying to pick and choose what you're getting involved with. Also, it's cool. Bruce Chatwin's a cooler writer than I am. That's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 18:04 Well, he probably did it longer than you.

Cal Newport 18:05 That's true.

Speaker 18:05 You're getting there.

Cal Newport 18:06 I need to wear a cool leather jacket more often.

Speaker 18:08 Yeah. Just gotta obsess over quality.

Cal Newport 18:09 Wear, wear aviator glasses and, like, a leather jacket. Just be eight kids. Sm- smoke, smoke Marlboro Reds.

Speaker 18:17 [laughs]

Cal Newport 18:17 I think that's what's gonna do it. Stay deep, stay deep, MF'ers.

Speaker 18:21 [laughs]

Cal Newport 18:21 Smoking my cigarette.

Speaker 18:23 French accent.

Cal Newport 18:24 Lot of French, a lot of berets. All right. So anyways, uh, we got a lot of questions coming up. It's gonna be a Slow Productivity Corner takeover. Uh, before we get there, let me first mention one of the sponsors that makes our show possible. [whooshing sound] Talk about our friends here at Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth, uh, their sheets, their best-selling bamboo sheets made from viscose bamboo is probably one of the favorite things I own. I 100% love these sheets. They originally sent me a set. We've bought more because we never wanted to have a time in which the, uh, sh- we did not have Cozy Earth sheets on our bed. They are that comfortable. They are that temperature-regulating. I had never thought about sheets before until we got these, and my God, they are fantastic. I mean, we have other stuff as well. I just got a, uh, shirt, which is great, um, like a crew, kinda like sweatshirt, crew cut sweatshirt i- that feels like the sheets and regulates the temperature. It's like cold. I love that. But the sheets, oh my God, I tell you, I have never, uh, thought about sheets, and now it's like the bane of my existence because when I travel, I'm like, "These aren't Cozy Earth sheets." [laughs] They're really good. Um, they come with a 100-night sleep trial, which means you have up to 100 nights to sleep on them, wash them, try them out. If you're not completely in love, you can return them for a full refund. They also have a 10-year warranty. It's a great gift. If you already have Cozy Earth sheets, give it as a gift to spread the love. Um, but man. And I'll tell you the secret about them, Jesse, is every time you wash them, more comfortable.

Speaker 19:55 Yeah.

Cal Newport 19:56 They are fantastic. So if you've never tried Cozy Earth, I've got awesome news. You can save up to 35% off Cozy Earth right now. Go to cozyearth.com and enter my promo code “Cal”, C-A-L, at checkout for up to 35% off. That's cozyearth.com, promo code “Cal”, cozyearth.com. Also wanna talk about our friends at Notion. If you have to manage information in your business or your job, Notion is the tool to use. It allows you to combine your notes, your documents, and your projects all together in one beautiful space. From just simple management of your ideas to complicated collaborative workflow systems of the type I talk about in my book, A World Without Email, Notion is how you build smart tools and access to your information. So you know that. We've talked about Notion. A lot of Deep Questions users use Notion. We've used Notion with our ad agency to keep track of our ads. Fantastic tool. They have this new feature I wanna mention though, which is Q&A, an AI assistant that can answer questions about your information in your Notion setup. We're talking questions about next quarter's roadmap, uh, finding the marketing campaign proposal you're working for, digging up a long-lost link. So as your Notion systems get fuller of more and more information, Notion Q&A's AI assistant makes it easier to find what you need. It's a really cool tool, and answers any question you have, making use of your entire database of knowledge to make sure your answers are actually helpful. So try Notion AI for free when you go to notion.com/cal. That's all lowercase letters, notion.com/cal, to try the powerful, easy-to-use Notion AI today. And when you use our link with that /cal, you are supporting our show. So check that out at notion.com/cal. All right, let's, uh, move

Cal Newport 22:04 on to some questions. [whooshing sound] Now my temptation, and Jesse, you, you talked me out of this, was that we should play the Slow Productivity theme song the entire time.

Speaker 22:14 [laughs]

Cal Newport 22:15 'Cause every question in today's Q&A is pro- Slow Productivity themed. All right, you talked me out of it, but could we at least get the theme song at the beginning of our, our Q&A segment for today?

Speaker 22:26 For sure.

Cal Newport 22:27 All right, here we go. [slow music] All right, every question today will be Slow Productivity themed. All right, Jesse, what's our first one?

Speaker 22:39 First question's from Sam. "You define pseudo-productivity as the use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort. With this being so common, what are your thoughts on how all these knowledge work businesses are still profitable with all these workers kind of pretending to work?"

Cal Newport 22:56 Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, this is the key argument of part one of my book, is that what happened in knowledge work is it emerges as a major economic sector in the mid-20th century. They have this problem of how do we measure productivity? In the industrial sector, it was quantitative, products produced per input hour. The agricultural sector was quantitative, how much bushels of crop that we produce per acre of land under cultivation. That ratio, quantitative ratio approach did not apply to knowledge work because now there's not a single thing you're producing. Individuals produce many different things, and those sets are dynamic and often incomparable. What I'm working on is different than what you're working on. And the systems by which I'm organizing to manage my work are internal, so there's no, uh, clear or consistent workflow system that you can even optimize to see its impact. So w- so we couldn't use traditional productivity. So what do we do instead? We fell back on this rough heuristic, pseudo-productivity, which says we will use visible activity as a crude proxy for useful effort. So I'm just gonna... Let's, let's all gather in the same office. I wanna see you working. Work while you're here, and at least something useful will be getting done. All right, and this worked okay until we got the front office IT revolution, until we got networks and mobile computing, um, and then suddenly pseudo-productivity plus the ability to demonstrate fine-tune work on your phone or laptop at any moment, that was a, a, uh, toxic combination that sparked the, the burnout crisis that we're all facing now. All right, so that's the whole setup. Sam is saying, "Well, if pseudo-productivity is such a crude heuristic, um, how are companies still- Surviving? Well, there's a couple, there's a couple answers here. One is this notion of managerial capitalism. It's a notion that I really came to understand from Alfred Chandler's, uh, Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Visible Hand, where he looks at the rise of large companies with managers, which is newer than we think. Huge companies with managers is not something that was really widespread until the 20th century. And one of the things that Chandler argues in this book is that once you have a, a manager-based company, a large company that does different things managed by managers, as opposed to a smaller shop just sort of run by the owner, you begin to get a separation between how it internally operates and market signals. So the managers inside these companies, uh, they optimize for things different than just what's gonna produce the highest value overall. They optimize for things like stability. They optimize for things like risk reduction. They optimize for things like convenience or efficiency or flexibility in, in sort of how they run their own jobs, how they manage their employees. 'Cause that's... Their incentive is not some vague bottom line that has a complicated dynamic connection between what their individual employees are doing and how much money the company makes. Their incentive is like, "Well, I, I wanna keep this job stable and understandable, and I can get my arms around it." So managerial capitalism, I believe, is what helps keep things like pseudo-productivity and its sort of, uh, terrifying stepchildren, like the hyperactive hive mind email workflow, the Zoom-all-day remote work, uh, strategies. Like, the things that would, that seem so absurd and terrible and distracting today, they can survive 'cause they're also simple, they're stable, it's, uh, easy to deploy. You're not gonna rock any boats by saying, "Everyone should have an email address. We all have a shared calendar. Let's just rock and roll." Right? So you can have, uh, operations within knowledge work companies, especially large ones, that are somewhat insulated from market signals. The second reason is, in these complicated knowledge work organizations, most people are not directly connected to the bottom line in the same way that you might have if it's just, "Here's an assembly line." And if, like, one person on the Model T assembly line is really slow, it directly affects the number of Model Ts we're producing. Like, you're really slow putting steering wheels on, and it's really slowing down the rate at which Model Ts are produced. Knowledge work is not like that. In fact, in a lot of knowledge work, what you find is a small number of people actually producing the, the bulk of the cognitive capital on which the, the money itself is actually made, right? So, so in the book, I would call this, like, the Anthony Zuiker effect from a, a story I tell in part one of the book about CBS, the television network, um, how they turned around their fortunes in the late '90s, early 2000s, right? So the, the story talks about how they were in third place among the major networks. They hire Les Moonves. "You gotta turn this ship around." And Les Moonves turns up, he's a pseudo-productivity guy, uh, and he says, "Here's the problem. I am here at, like, 3:00 on a Friday, and the offices are half empty. We need more visible activity." And he sends out this memo. "At ABC, you better believe they're probably still in their offices at 3:00 on a Friday. At s- uh, NBC, you better believe they're, you know, in their offices at 3:00 on a Friday. You better be as well." Like, that was his approach to turning around their fortunes, and within a few years, they were number one. But the argument I make is they, they were not number one because, uh, Zuiker told the employees at Television City to spend more hours in the office. Um, I mean, Moonves. They were number one because of this eccentric showrunner, Anthony Zuiker, who came up with the idea for CSI. And CSI plus, uh, Mark Burnett, this crazy Australian producer who came to them with an idea for a show called Survivor, those two ideas turned around the whole, the whole, uh, network. Huge ratings hits pushed them up to number one. So the reality here is, okay, the, the core cognitive capital on which the ultimate success of CBS depended was, like, the brains of two people. Those shows, executed well, produced, uh, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of value. Everyone else was sort of involved with just the logistics of how you actually in some sense gather that money. You know, we have to, we have to keep the budgets of the shows running and the advertiser serviced and have to make sure that the memo here goes there, right? So it's, it's a, a lot of what happens in knowledge work is support and administrative, even if it's not directly an administrative role. You're like, "No, I'm the assistant sales of West Coast, you know, marketing directing." But the marketing itself, the ad sales, this is all sort of supporting the core capitalization, the knowledge work equivalent of the Model T that's actually being sold in the end. So you have these huge asymmetries in knowledge work as well. The small number of 10X minds are producing the actual proverbial Model T, and everything else is, is around servicing, you know, um, making sure that then you're competently putting that thing to market and harvesting the money that comes back in its stead. So that also weakens the connection between how you're working and the ultimate bottom line. Like, it doesn't super matter if the West Coast ad team at CBS is super efficient in the ultimate question

Cal Newport 29:56 of are they number one in the ratings. It could be annoying if they're really inefficient, but if they're efficient enough, which you can get with pseudo-productivity, it's like you're not a problem. That's fine. So I think those are two of the reasons why this, uh, this, uh, non-optimal way of work has persisted. Knowledge work is complicated. That's, like, the theme of my, the... Almost a decade now I've spent studying digital age knowledge work is knowledge work is a complicated system.

Speaker 30:22 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 30:23 Um, we underestimate how complicated it is. We look for simple stories, but it's a complicated system. All right, who do we have next?

Speaker 30:31 All right. Next question is from Carol. Can you please elaborate on the connection between limit missions, limit projects, and limit daily goals from your new book? Specifically for limit daily goals, how do you determine what to focus on each day? Do you only work on a specific project each day?

Cal Newport 30:48 So this comes from, uh, part two of the book in the chapter dedicated to the principle Do Fewer Things. And one of the propositions in that chapter... So I have these things called propositions, which each has a, an idea related to the principle that I then discuss all sorts of concrete tactics for putting into action. And so one of these propositions is about limit what you work on, and, uh, I get more specific about that and said, "Think about your work at three scales." So you have at the, the, the high scale your mission. Like, what, what's the thing I'm trying to do? I'm Lin-Manuel Miranda, I wanna be a, a celebrated playwright, you know. I'm the West Coast ad director for CBS, I want to have, you know, the highest ad rate sales of, uh, each of the regions. I, I'm trying to, whatever, make a modernized shop here. You have m- missions at the top. That then leads to projects. Okay, here's the specific projects I'm working on now that advance my mission, and then the, underneath the projects you have daily goals. Here's what I'm doing today that is advancing the projects which themselves are advancing my higher level mission. So we have these three levels. And what I argue is, um, you wanna limit each of these levels. Now, the problem is, and this was the point of this section of the book, the problem is when we feel like we're too crowded, we wanna solve overload. We tend to focus only at the bottom level. We say, "I'm working on too much each day, so let me just cut back and work on fewer things each day. I'm too busy. I need more breathing room. I need more time in my schedule." But the problem I point out is that that will prove difficult if you don't also limit the levels above. So if you have a ton of ongoing projects, it's very difficult to limit how many goals you're making, uh, progress on each day because you have all these projects that you need to make progress on. I have six things I'm doing, these six big projects, and if I only work on one per day, that's too slow because then I'm, I'm only... I'm not even touching on every project each week. Of course I have to work on multiple ones each day. So you have to reduce your projects before you can reduce your daily goals. But if you have a ton of missions, like here's my four things I'm trying to do, well, any mission's gonna have at least some projects going on if it's really one of your missions. And so if you have too many missions, you'll have a hard time limiting your projects. So you have to start at the top. Focus your missions down to, like, this is the one or two things I'm trying to do. That'll then allow you to reduce the number of active projects you're working on, because there's less missions to service. And with fewer projects, now you can be more selective each day and not be running around so frenetically. So Carol, when it comes, you're asking about limiting daily goals, make sure that's the final thing you do. Start with the mission, then reduce the projects. How do you know you've done enough? That when you then say, "I'm only gonna work on one major goal per day," that's not hard. You don't say, "Oh man, this is not gonna work." That's how you know you've limited things enough. How do you choose which daily goal to work on? Uh, your weekly plan'll help this, right? Because where are these projects, where are these missions captured? In your, your semester or strategic or quarterly plan, whatever you wanna call it. So when you do your weekly plan and you review that, like, what am I gonna make progress on this week? Like, these two things. All right, so maybe the first half of the week I'll work on this, the second half I'll work on that. So you can kind of figure this out during your weekly plan when you're able to take in the whole landscape of, uh, the week ahead of you and your big picture vision for the current, the current quarter. Um, and beyond that, don't sweat it too much, right? There's no perfect choice, like this is the exact right project to work on. You just wanna be making progress on one serious

Cal Newport 34:17 thing per day. So what then happens with the rest of your day? Well, that's all the administrative overhead stuff, right? So you, you make one deep progress on one thing is pretty good. The rest of your day is gonna be meetings and emails, and then talking about projects that are going to generate daily goals in the future. But, like, one substantial deep work per day is, is good. Sometimes maybe two. And you should be happy with that. If you're not happy with that, you need to move up the chain of limiting, uh, because all these things connect together. So yeah, that's a cool part in the book. Um, so Carol, thanks for asking that question. All right, what do we got next?

Speaker 34:53 Uh, I have Thomas. In Slow Productivity you discussed your $50 notebook and how it provided inspiration. Can you elaborate on investing in tools and how that can help but also be taken too far?

Cal Newport 35:05 I found that notebook too. I should have brought that in, my $50 lab notebook.

Speaker 35:08 Yeah.

Cal Newport 35:09 I talked about it in some, one of the many podcast [laughs] interviews I did recently. We got into it. Uh, I can't remember who it was now, though. I've been doing too many of these, Jesse.

Speaker 35:18 Yeah.

Cal Newport 35:18 Uh-

Speaker 35:18 When I was reading the book, I-

Cal Newport 35:20 Yeah

Speaker 35:20 ... read through that.

Cal Newport 35:21 I will bring it in. So for people who don't know, I, I talk about how at MIT during my postdoc I bought a lab notebook. Um, lab notebooks are very expensive because, uh... Maybe I talked about this with Adam Grant. Well, whatever. Um, lab notebooks are very expensive because they're archival, right? So for like patent disputes, et cetera, um, this is how you, you, uh, record this was the day when I had this idea, right? So like you end up inventing the telephone. You have your lab notebook will actually be how you establish priority. So it's, um, very, this thick paper. They're all stamped with numbers, uniquely stamped. Very thick covers, because these are meant to be stored for potentially decades. Really good spiral binding. They're very high quality notebooks. And so I had this experiment at MIT where I bought one of those, and I, I think it was $50. It might have been $70, I don't remember. But I bought one because my thought was, "I'm gonna take this notebook more seriously so when I'm working on proofs, um, I'm gonna... It's gonna make me be more careful because I don't wanna just scribble in something that costs so much money." And in the book I talk about how I, I went back recently and I went through that $50 notebook and counted up every idea in that notebook that either became a peer-reviewed published paper or an NSF grant. And it was a really big number. I forgot exactly what it was. I think it was like seven or eight different papers and grants came out of this one notebook. And it's all very... All my handwriting's very n- uh, uncharacteristically neat, and the diagrams are careful. So the idea here, the bigger idea is when it comes to the most important thing you do, if you're a knowledge worker, so the, the, the most value-producing, skilled, cognitive labor that you do, invest in your tools. Spend money on your tools. 'Cause this signals to yourself, "I take this really seriously." And then your mind is like, "This is for real. Let's go. Let's rock and roll." Like, we're doing something really serious here, right? It's like, uh, radio people, I, uh, used to hear radio people had a hard time at first when they shifted to the podcast format, even when they were getting bigger audiences on their podcast, because when they were doing radio, it was a much more expensive studio setup. And here's the, the soundproof room and the engineer and the big soundboard, and the, just the seriousness of the s- context made it seem like a more serious endeavor than when they just had, you know, an SM7 in their, uh, attic. It's the tools can really matter. Um, so this means, for example, don't use free software. Pay for the full version of whatever you're using. Get the best tool. If you're, if, if screenwriting's what you do, you should have the final, whatever the... What do they call... What do they use? Final Draft? I don't know what the big screenwriting software is.

Speaker 38:07 F- uh, Final Cut.

Cal Newport 38:09 Is Final Cut-

Speaker 38:10 Or is that-

Cal Newport 38:10 ... isn't that editing?

Speaker 38:11 Yeah, it's like an editing.

Cal Newport 38:12 Yeah. Well, whatever. You know, like, have the good software, right? Use Scrivener if you're doing nonfiction or novel writing, like, and pay for it, you know. Uh, if you're a scientist, have a really good La- you know, LaTeX or L- editor, like markup editor that you use, really good notebooks. If you're podcasting, once your audience starts to grow, get a really good... You know, invest that money back into your sound equipment to make it better. Um, it's psychological as much as it is practical. So Thomas is asking, you know, "How do you know if you're taking this too far?" Um, invest in por- I was gonna say invest in proportion to the value you're creating, but I actually wanna edit that. Invest in proportion to the value you could credibly be creating in the near future, right? So, uh, I wouldn't, for example, if I was just starting a podcast, buy a $700 microphone. 'Cause you're like, "I'm probably not gonna be generating, you know, enough value, enough ad revenue, et cetera, to really justify that yet." But maybe I will buy, uh, the new Shure product that has the built-in D to A converter. The thing I use, you know, when I'm on the road. It's like 130 bucks and, like, I don't know, I think the audience I might grow over the next six months is big enough that it's, like, worth having spent, you know, 150 bucks on the mic and, and 50 bucks on good headphones and because it signals I'm taking this seriously. But it's kind of in proportion to what I'm doing. But I'm not gonna spend $2,000 a month on a studio lease and have, uh, you know, $5,000 worth of equipment yet. Now, on the other hand, if your show is starting to produce $1,000 a month, $500 a month in ad revenue, you're like, "This is in proportion, actually. Let me, like, make this investment. It'll be six months' worth of the ad revenue. That's in proportion to what I'm doing." So you wanna keep it, the investment into proportion to the value you are creating or conceivably will be creating in the near future. And it's not always a, a clear-cut number. Of course, you could be working for a large organization, um, investing in a new tool. You might not have a specific revenue number they say you generated, but you're like, "This, this thing I'm doing in this company is really important, and it's moving my, my stock, my proverbial stock higher in this company, so I'm gonna invest in getting a better version of this tool. I'm gonna get a better whatever it is," right? Um, so yeah, you don't wanna just go crazy. "What's the most expensive thing I can get?" But you also don't wanna go free. So stay in proportion, whatever that means to you, with the value you could credibly be creating now or in the near future. I think office space is a tool, you know?

Speaker 40:43 Yeah.

Cal Newport 40:43 Like having s- a studio for podcasting, but also if you're a knowledge worker, like you're a writer or something like this, and, and you're, you know, you're doing well at it, like investing in, "I have a place to go to write," I think that's like investing in a tool that makes sense.

Speaker 41:00 You and Huberman were talking about that a lot on your podcast. He was... Where you were mentioning, like, your working, writing space and-

Cal Newport 41:05 Yeah

Speaker 41:06 ... he was asking you a lot of questions about that.

Cal Newport 41:07 Yeah, he loves the details. Right, and I was saying, like, this is a, a reasonable... If you can afford it, it's a reasonable investment, and afford it means... I mean, I sometimes use the 5% number. Like if you're a, especially if you're a creative, like you, all you do is creatively produce stuff that is then sold for money, you should be in- reinvesting 5% at least of your take-home pay in your tools and context.

Speaker 41:31 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 41:31 You know? Like, uh, when I see someone who has, like, a pretty successful podcast or they're, they're a successful writer, and they're still, like, working in difficult circumstances, I was like, "No, this is part of the business of what you're doing." Yes, it's true, you can p- you can, in theory, do all of your writing at the kitchen table or do your podcasting in the closet. It's fine, right? And you're just, "I just want every dollar to come..." But you have to think the spend money to make money [laughs] type of mentality. You know, take 5 to 10% of what you're earning and say, "How can I use this to make my situation, my tools and situations better?" And if a lot of people did that, they would have co-working spaces. They would have, you know, "I write here, not just here. I have better tools. I'm gonna, um, podcast. I'm gonna rent the studio for my podcast each week at, for, as opposed to doing it in my house." Like, it, it, it, it will lead you ultimately to producing better stuff and also just enjoying the process of doing it better. So maybe that's another rule. 5 to 10% of your take-home income, uh, if you're a high-level creative producer, should be reinvested in all the tools and context you use to produce that work. I think Brandon Sanderson followed that rule, right? Because he makes a lot of money, his books are very successful, and he built the underground lair that we've talked about.

Speaker 42:46 Yeah.

Cal Newport 42:46 Like, the hidden underground Victorian Gothic lair where he goes to write.

Speaker 42:49 Might have been more than 5%. Well, it depends.

Cal Newport 42:50 I don't know, man.

Speaker 42:50 He's making millions.

Cal Newport 42:52 I think he might be making millions.

Speaker 42:53 Yeah.

Cal Newport 42:54 I mean, how much do you think it would cost to make... It's completely underground. It's gotta be expensive, right? Uh, and it's completely, looked like custom furnished with woodwork. You think a million do- I, I was gonna say, like, half

Cal Newport 43:05 a million dollars.

Speaker 43:05 I was gonna say 300K at first, depending on where it was, but then when you said those numbers, then maybe a little bit more than 300.

Cal Newport 43:11 Yeah. Yeah. So maybe like h- yeah

Speaker 43:12 If it was in New York.

Cal Newport 43:13 Yeah. So that's probably more than 5%. I'm trying to think about that. If he spent $500,000, I don't think he makes $10 million a year. All right. So he's spending a little bit more, but, you know, he might make-

Speaker 43:25 The other thing that you got me thinking of-

Cal Newport 43:26 ... five million

Speaker 43:26 ... was, um, in last week's episode, or last week's episode, you were talking about how much money Jewel had because her mom was, uh-

Cal Newport 43:32 Yeah

Speaker 43:32 ... stole $200 million from her.

Cal Newport 43:34 Yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 43:34 Yeah. That popped in my mind.

Cal Newport 43:37 I hope she has an awesome workspace. [laughs] She followed this rule. All right, who do we got next?

Speaker 43:44 Next question's from Sula. "I've been reading your new book, Slow Productivity. I also read something about mental models and first principles. I think I heard you mention these concepts before. How does slow productivity relate to these concepts?"

Cal Newport 43:57 Well, Sula, you can think about it both in terms of a new mental model. You can also think about it in terms of a collection of new first principles. So mental model, for those who don't know, at least the way I use the term, is a cognitive structure you use for understanding a concept. So when you shift your mental models, it can give you, uh, a whole new understanding of how some part of the world or your life actually works, which can completely change the way you approach it. Principles or first principles I think of as core ideas that are generative. From these ideas, you can generate new, uh, decisions about what to do and what not to do. So it's, it's a core principle from which I can then derive action. I should stop doing this. I should do more of that. So you use it to judge or evaluate potential actions. So I, I think of that as like a generative idea, I sometimes call those. So the mental model shift embedded in slow productivity, um, is this idea that pseudo-productivity, the thing that we have been implicitly referring to when we talk about being productive in knowledge work, is not actually that productive if we really mean by productive production of stuff that matters, right? That's a big mental model shift. Um, the prior mental model shift, I think the mental model we have for knowledge work, is we try to, without realizing it, adapt the industrial agricultural ideas of productivity to knowledge work, even though they don't fit. Now remember, the agricultural and industrial notions of productivity are all about output per input, so to be more productive is to more efficiently transform inputs into outputs. The assembly line increased the Model Ts per labor hour by a factor of 10, for example. So then when we thought about being productive in knowledge work, we, we had this model of trying to squeeze more Model Ts out, which meant that, uh, in a, an assembly line's a more efficient way of putting together a Model T. So it was a mental model of productivity based on efficiency and speed. It's why when we, we, we hear, you know, critiques of hustle culture from magazine writers, they're always talking about Frederick Winslow Taylor, the creator of scientific management, which is the, the epitome of industrial productivity. How do we get the, the movements that are producing the thing that this foundry or factory produces as efficient as possible? And so we just assume, well, that's what productivity is, and so if we say, "I wanna be productive in knowledge work," it's about efficiency and optimization and hacks and all these type of things. But it's not really, right? So my book, Slow Productivity, shifts the mental model. That's not actually what we've been doing because we don't have, we, we, we can't bring Frederick Winslow Taylor into a knowledge work office. What is he measuring with his stopwatch? How fast you type when you answer emails? You know? Like, how you put stuff on your calen- There's no clear thing you're doing. And so this mental model shifts. It's like, no, what we w- what we've been doing instead is pseudo-productivity, which is just activity. You just need to demonstrate that you're here and doing things, which in the modern world means sending emails, replying to Slack, jumping on calls, and going to meetings. Um, this is how, what we mean by productivity. It's, it has very little to do with, like, efficiency or, um, squeezing the s- increasing the speed at which we do things. And it has n- it's not good, right? So that's the mental model shift. We're not doing Winslow Taylor. We're doing pseudo-productivity. Pseudo-productivity doesn't actually opt, produce a lot of valuable stuff in the end anyways. Actually, a slower approach to work with more careful workload management and variation and a real care for quality, that'll produce in the end more stuff that matters. That'll push CBS from number three to number one, not how active we are. So that's the key mental model shift. What are the key first principles for achieving that shift? Well, that's my three principles of slow productivity. Do fewer things, work at a natural pace, obsess over quality. These are generative first principles. Uh, I introduce the concepts in the chapter dedicated

Cal Newport 47:50 to each, and then from that principle, we, we move to, uh, a wide variety of practical advice. They're generative principles from which actionable specific ideas, suggestions, and filters can be derived. All right, so good terminology, Sula. I appreciated that. It's a good way of trying to capture what's new and what's interesting about this concept. All right. Um, let's do one more question here. Oh, this looks like a long one.

Speaker 48:15 Yeah.

Cal Newport 48:15 All right, here we go. All right, what do we got?

Speaker 48:16 Next question's from Peter. "I'm wondering if you have any tips on how to approach reading and applying the lessons. I know the temptation will be to devour it like Cerberus on a bacon-flavored Twinkie while furiously taking notes in hopes of sifting through and acting on all of it someday. However, I've sometimes had more success when I limit myself to one chapter per week, which allows me to slow down and make sure I understood and applied the information to each chapter before moving on. Do you think that the information in Slow Productivity needs to be understood and applied in order-"

Cal Newport 48:49 In which it is presented, or would it work to read the whole thing and then go back and try to piece it together? That's a good question, Peter. Good Greek mythology reference. That's like old school. Old school deep questions. I appreciate that. Um, all right, so here's how I would recommend reading Slow Productivity. The, there's part one, part two. Part one is the, this whole concept of pseudo-productivity. How do we get here? What's the real problem? The mental model shift. Part two, here's the three principles. Let's explain each and break them down into concrete action. I would read both parts all the way through first. Uh, don't, I don't particularly care on the speed, uh, but the, I would read the whole thing first. Why? The principles relate to each other. Like, when we get to principle three, obsess over quality, I sort of end up revealing this is actually the glue that holds the first two together, and, like, without this, the first two are not gonna do well in isolation. So I would just read the whole thing, completely shift your mental model, and then you can go back through more carefully and say, "Okay, so where do I wanna start?" And you actually might start with principle three, and you might go back to that. Let me s- let me go back to it this week and look through the advice and, like, where do I wanna start? What do I wanna actually try here? And, and maybe get that going for a few weeks, and then say, "Okay, now I'm gonna work on the workload, the doing fewer things. Now I'm gonna go back to that chapter. Let me give it a few weeks to experiment with it." So I would read the whole thing, and then I would go through principle by principle in the order that makes most sense to what resonates with you. And I... You could spend a month per principle really, because a lot of it's experimental. Let me

Cal Newport 50:20 try this. Let me get some feedback. Let me adjust this. Um, you're, you're sort of experimenting with each of these principles. Once you've done that for all three, so now we're like three months out from you first getting the book, that's when you're gonna start to feel the synergy of the stuff starting to click. Like, my obsession over quality is helping me do fewer things, and the natural pace now feels inevitable as opposed to contrived. You... And everything starts to work together, and you're gonna begin to get that, that feeling of relief, that slow productivity advantage. So that's a good question, Peter. Um, that's how I would do it. All right. Uh, we have a call.

Speaker 50:58 Yep.

Cal Newport 50:58 All right. Let's hear that.

Speaker 50:59 Okay.

Speaker 51:03 Hi, Cal. This is Kyle. I run a large nonprofit mindfulness center, and I've been a big fan of your work for many years. I've read all your books, listened to all your podcasts, and use your principles in classes, workshops, and executive coaching. So thank you so much for putting so much good content out into the world. I love your ideas, but as a busy CEO, a father of several kids, and a mere mortal, I struggle to implement them consistently, and I find myself intimidated by the degree to which you seem to have everything so perfectly dialed in in your life and your seven jobs. [chuckles] One of my favorite moments in your podcast was an episode when you admitted how long it takes you to get ready for evening events compared to your wife, Julie. It was such a wonderful humanizing moment to learn that for all his erudition and success, Cal Newport may have areas of his own life that stubbornly resist submitting to his systems. So my question is whether you might be able to share any stories about the pain and failure points in your life where you really struggle, uh, to implement your best practices, maybe where you feel like a hypocrite, where you fall down and have to keep trying. It would be such a relief to know that even you can't perfectly engineer things or execute your plans as well as you'd like. Thanks so much.

Cal Newport 52:13 Uh, there's nothing I can say. I'm perfect. All right, so what do we got next? [laughs] Uh, no, it's a good, it's a good question. Uh, I think people often get me backwards. So they think, like, I have all of these perfected systems, and this goes back to my, our mental model discussion, that I have these, like, perfected systems that, like, optimize what I produce. It is the exact opposite. The, the philosophies I deploy in my life are trying to deal with all of the sort of imperfections and stubborn inefficiencies that are intrinsic to me as a person. So I'm not just, um, slow to get ready, though that's definitely a big thing. Um, I don't... I'm not fast with stuff. I really deal poorly with having a lot to do, like a crowded calendar day. I talked about this some on Andrew Huberman's podcast, that in grad school I developed this acute insomnia that would... Episodic. It would come and go. Right. Uh, and it was a real... It really shook me up because it was, oh, I don't control this. So it, like, something else can just come in and, like, take away my ability to, you know, do work, because I'll just be, like, really tired or something like this. And a lot of my ideas and strategies, for example, like case in point, is dealing with that reality. Like, a lot of my, my slow productivity approach, it was, was dealing with this idea of, well, I can't be someone that just gets after it every day, because what if I'm really tired or I'm not sleeping? And so, like, I reoriented my whole creative life around, uh, pursuits where it doesn't really matter what you do tomorrow, but it does matter that over the next few months you do make a lot of progress. So I, I began to get this allergy to crowded schedules 'cause, uh, uh, if I have crowded schedules every day, what happens when I'm tired or I'm sick? It's a problem. But if I'm writing a book over, like, a four-month period, uh, I could have periods in there where I'm not, uh, I, I didn't write for two days. It's fine, and I can come back on the other days when I'm doing better, right? Why do I, why do I have a shutdown routine? Because the anxiety of thinking about my doctoral dissertation was keeping me, uh, distracting me in the evening. I had to invent the shutdown routine to try to trai- the, the, tame that. Why do I have fixed schedule productivity? To make sure that I don't work too much, like, uh, the, and to keep things, to keep things reasonable, right? Um, why do I limit the number of projects I work on? I know we joke I have seven jobs, but what do I do? I'm a professor and I write, and I even made those the same thing now because now I write about the things that I study as a professor. I, I, I don't use social media. It took me 10 years to start a podcast. I only give it a half day a week, and even that stresses me out. Um, so, like, my whole life is dealing with I'm not someone that can work 15-hour days. I'm not the smartest person in the room. Stuff takes time. I'm not always the best visionary. I come to insight slow, and so my whole idea is like, don't do too many things, give yourself flexibility, and just try to work very steadily on the things that matter. This is Steve Martin's advice. You know, "Be, be so good they can't ignore you, eventually good things will come." That's my whole motto. So all of my systems are really trying to deal with an imperfect reality,

Cal Newport 55:20 you know, because I can't sit there and crank on math equations all day or write 15 hours a day. So you shouldn't think about things that way. It should be about there's only so much I can do. Let me like... And, and we're imperfect and we're variable. So how do I make sure, given all that reality and all that chaos, how do I make sure that I'm still making forward progress on the things that matter so that even if last week was a disaster, last year will be something that I'm proud of? And all of these ideas, which I've been working on for 20 years now, is all sort of consolidated in Slow Productivity. That's where that philosophy came from. It's like how to produce cool stuff if you're a human. So I appreciate the, appreciate the call. Um, let's do a quick case study. Let's see. All right, so the, the case study's not Slow Productivity themed, so let's, let's call this the end of the Slow Productivity takeover and get that theme music one more time, Jesse. [outro music] All right. That was great. Slow Productivity case over. Buy the book if you haven't read it. Review the book if you read it and liked it. All right, case study's from M. "Hi Cal, I'm a diplomat with the US Department of State, currently stationed overseas. I use your ideas to plan my next career move within my organization. In the Foreign Service, we rotate assignments every two to three years, and I had been feeling a bit burnt out with my current position and not motivated to start looking for my next job. Using your lifestyle-centric career planning, I set criteria for the types of positions I would target. I wanted to move back to DC and avoid positions involving emergency or after-hours duties. I had accepted that this could be a career detour and not great for promotion, but to my surprise, I found many intriguing positions that matched my criteria. Last month, I happily accepted an offer at the State Department's Diplomatic Training Institute. I will be leading a medium-sized team, so it will still be a substantive role, but it offers an element of seasonality, flexibility, and hopefully no after-hours emergencies. I think this position will be a great fit as I transition back to the US with my family." What I like about this case study is that it really does highlight the power of lifestyle-centric career planning. Uh, too often, especially if you're high achieving, you just let the criteria of like what is objectively the most impressive job of my options be what drives you. So you imagine it's gonna sound great when I say, "Well, I'm now the senior diplomat in the such and such consulate." But it turns out the, the opportunities you have to say that and receive praise, you know, it's like seven times in the year, and then you're stuck with the reality of that job, and it might have elements to it that you hate. So by far the, the more sane thing to do if you're trying to build a sustainable career is to say, "What do I want in my lifestyle in general? What type of place do I wanna live in? What is the rhythm of my day like? What's the feel of my work like? What else is going on in my life?" And work backwards from that to figure out your career. This is a great example of that. So our, our, uh, correspondent here has a good sense from the State Department Foreign Service what it's like to have these after-hours or emergency duties, and he knows he doesn't want that. He wants seasonal- seasonality, flexibility, the type of stuff I like, more of a slow, productive, uh, compatible role. Knowing that, working backwards from that lifestyle led him to choices that wouldn't just be the obvious next thing to choose, and I think this is a really cool choice he made. You know, I became a professor in part because of lifestyle-centric career planning. I wanted the flexibility, the ability to write and have seasonality. There's less money in this than going to the tech jobs I had offers for out of college, but I wasn't trying to do the most impressive thing. I was trying to do the thing that fit my lifestyle vision better. So I think it was a great case study of lifestyle-centric career planning in action. Um, if you're new and you wanna know more about that, probably the best book of mine to read is So Good They Can't Ignore You from 2012. That's my contrarian take on building a career that you love. All right, we have a final segment coming up where we're gonna react to something interesting, but first, let's hear from another sponsor. [whooshing sound] I wanna talk in particular about our friends at Policygenius. You need to make life insurance part of your financial planning. If there's anyone who depends on you, you need to have enough life insurance to take care of them in the case of the tragic. Now, the thing is, most people who know this, what's holding them back is the ambiguity about, "How do I get life insurance? Where do I go? Who do I talk to? Do I have to have a doctor do something? This sounds complicated. I'll put it off." But putting it off is a problem because the older you get, the more expensive the life insurance becomes. The right time to get a term life insurance policy is always right now. It's never gonna be cheaper. This is why I like Policygenius, because it takes all the ambiguity out of this process. It makes it easy. Policygenius has licensed award-winning agents and technology that simplifies the process of comparing life insurance quotes from America's top insurers. You can be just a few clicks away from getting your lowest price. With Policygenius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for a million dollars of coverage. Some of the options have same-day approval and avoid unnecessary medical exams. Remember, Policygenius is a, a broker. It works for you, not the insurance companies. Their incentive is to make you happy, to get you the best price, to get you the best policy. The thousands of five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot show, uh, they have succeeded in this goal. So save time and money and provide your family with a financial safety net using Policygenius. Head to policygenius.com/deepquestions or click the link in the show notes to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com/deepquestions. Also want to talk about our friends at Mint Mobile. After years of fine print contracts and getting ripped off by overpriced wireless providers, if you've learned anything, it should be that there's always a catch. So when I heard that for a limited time, all Mint Mobile wireless plans are $15 a month when you purchase a three-month plan, I thought, "What's the catch?" What I've discovered is there is no catch. Mint Mobile's secret sauce is that they sell wireless service online. They cut out the cost of retail stores and pass those sweet savings directly to you, allowing you to get a premium wireless plan for just $15 a month. We're talking high-speed data, unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with your Mint Mobile plan, bring your phone number along, bring along all your existing contacts. All you're cutting out is the price. Um, I've been talking a lot about Mint Mobile recently i-in my interviews when people are asking me about kids and smartphones. I'm a believer, I'm in John Hites' camp, that really unlimited internet access through a smartphone is something you should be probably 15 or 16 before you get. So parents are saying, "How do I stay in touch with my kid if I don't want to just give them an iPhone or add a phone to my expensive wireless plan?" I say, "Here's how you do it. You buy them a cheap dumb phone on Amazon. You go to Mint Mobile, $15 a month, get that eSIM card, plug it in, boom, they can text you and call you." Now you've solved the logistical problems without also giving them access to, you know, Fortnite, pornography, or whatever kids are doing on their phones these days. So Mint Mobile gets it done. To get this new customer offer and your new three-month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com/deep. That's mintmobile.com/deep. Cut your wireless bill to $15, 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/deep. $45 upfront payment required. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower by 40 gi- gi- gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional tax, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. You know, Jesse, I think Mint Mobile's going deep on Georgetown spokespeople.

Speaker 1:03:45 How so?

Cal Newport 1:03:45 Well, another, uh, prominent Mint Mobile spokesperson,

Cal Newport 1:03:50 some might even say more prominent than me, that's debatable, is Bradley Cooper, who is a Georgetown alum.

Speaker 1:03:56 Mm.

Cal Newport 1:03:57 So Bradley Cooper and I are representing Georgetown on the Mint Mobile team. He might get paid a little bit more than me to do the spots. I don't know for sure, but...

Speaker 1:04:06 You should have your agent, uh, negotiate a new deal for you.

Cal Newport 1:04:09 Let me say, between Bradley Cooper and me, so, like, the, the, uh, the Georgetown spokespeople for Mint Mobile, between us, we earned three Academy Award nominations this year.

Speaker 1:04:19 [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:04:20 So that's pretty good. Look, I mean, that's three more than a lot of people. All right, enough of that nonsense. Uh, let's do our final segment. So for our final segment, I like to react to something interesting I've encountered recently, and today I want to talk about an article that many of you sent me from The Wall Street Journal. I'll bring the headline up here on the screen. Cool graphic here of the TikTok logo with a cage below it and someone walking out of the cage. Uh, the article is written by a reporter who has an awesome name for writing tech articles, Julie Jargon. It's an awesome name. Uh, the article is titled Why Some 20-Somethings Are Saying No to TikTok. I also wrote about this article in my newsletter, so if you don't subscribe, you should at calnewport.com. Um, so here's the thing they're talking about. The, the news hook for this article is that TikTok reported a near 10% drop in users between 18 and 24. Uh, that's a lot for one year to lose 10% of a user group, especially when you're a, a service that is advertising yourself to investors as being, uh, on the rise. So Julie Jargon went to talk to some of these users, some of these young 20-something users of TikTok, and say, "Why did you quit?" And what she found was they were getting uneasy with their addictive relationship to the tool. She profiled one reader in particular who couldn't put it down. So he would hold it... He could only take garbage bags to the outside, to the can, one at a time because he had to hold TikTok while he was putting out the garbage. The cook, he would hold the phone with one hand and chop with the other. Like, he literally couldn't have it out and be watching it, and at some point he realized, like, "This is probably not great. Like, this is probably not maximizing my chances of a full and healthy life." And, and he got off of it, and it's hard, and a lot of them say, like, the addictive thing meant they had to try multiple times. It was very much reminiscent of the way you hear people talking about quitting smoking. The fourth time it stuck. The sixth time it stuck. So it was interesting. There was definitely the terminology of addiction when people are talking about leaving the service. But what I thought was relevant about this was, uh, it is a demonstration of the idea that I talked about in this article. Ooh, look, in The New Yorker from 2022. Jesse, it's a similar graphic. I'm looking at this.

Speaker 1:06:43 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:06:44 Interesting. My article was first, ladies and gentlemen. So this article also has a graphic of people leaving curved cages. Um, so I wrote this article in the summer of 2022 called TikTok and the Fall of the Social Media Giants, and I'm gonna argue that in this New Yorker piece, uh, I predicted a dynamic that we are now seeing reported on in this more recent Wall Street Journal piece. What I said in this New Yorker piece is TikTok is making a bit of a Faustian bargain. They're going all in on being as addictive as possible, which means the straight up algorithmic curation of the most addictive possible content they can give for each possible user. As a result, they got very fast user growth, and their users use it a lot. But in doing so, they abandoned the model of the legacy social media giants in which their value proposition depends on a hard-won social graph. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, a big part of their value proposition was, over the years, their users have painstakingly built up these social graphs of who their friends are and who they follow. Uh, there is a huge first-mover advantage here. No other company will ever get users to spend so much time creating these graphs, so only they have these giant social graphs. No one else will have them again. So the legacy social media players have these social, these social graphs that are a, a first-mover advantage that they can entrench on. Now, TikTok said, "Those are great, but, but depending just on a social graph doesn't give you the most addictive possible experience, so we're gonna give you the most addictive possible experience." Here's the Faustian bargain. The social graph might not give you the most addictive possible experience, but I have a hard time leaving that service, 'cause it's not just providing me an abstract stream of distraction. It has all my friends on there that I've said. It has these follower networks I've clicked. I don't wanna leave that behind. There's something there of value that doesn't exist elsewhere. TikTok doesn't have that. So what it's saying is people can walk away without losing anything. Now, it's hard because it's addictive, but once they break the addiction, they have not left behind a social graph, a collection of followers, people, friends that they've indicated. It's just an abstract stream of brain stream stim- stimulation, um, which they could replace with any other stream of brain stream stimulation. They could with, uh, video games or with podcasts or with high, high-end streaming things or drug use, right? I mean, it's all kinda doing the same... It's all interchangeable. This is the direction that the, the social media market's going in because you get more engagement with addiction, but it makes it more dynamic. It makes it more tenuous, and that's what I argued in this 2022 article. I said, "We're gonna start to see a more tumultuous attention economy, digital attention economy landscape with services coming to go and, and, and big sweeps and as people jump around the various things." And I think with this, uh, migration of 20-somethings away from TikTok all at once, we're seeing that thesis start to play out. So I think those are the key dynamics to understand. Social graph is a, a entrenched advantage that produced content that was more addictive than just straight news, straight production. Uh, pure algorithmic distraction is even more addicting and, and compelling but doesn't have the entrenchment of the social graph. And so we're seeing the, the sort of endgame, I think, of the long-standing legacy players, and we're gonna get lots more dynamic shifting in the market. Ultimately, I think that's good, 'cause when you don't have a small number of things that everyone feels compelled to use, you, as a pursuant of the deep life, have a lot more social flexibility to construct the online life that you want. The more variety there is out there, the more, uh, easy and acceptable it is for you to create something that you really like. So I think ultimately it's good news, and it's cool to see the, the theories I predicted starting to actually play out in reality. All right, Jesse, that's it. [upbeat music] I think that's our episode for today. Thank you everyone for listening and/or watching. We'll be back next week with another normal episode of the Deep Questions podcast. Remember to send your ideas for topics you like or wanna hear about to jesse@calnewport.com, and otherwise I'll see you next week. And until then, as always, stay deep. Hey, so if you enjoyed today's episode about single-purpose notebooks, I think you'll also like episode 287, which is about my professional note-taking systems. You can compare the two. I think you'll like it. Check it out. We live in a distracted world. We're bombarded by information, so we need some way to efficiently keep track of the information that matters.