Don't Set Big Goals: The Common Trap Keeping You From A Life Of Purpose & Meaning | Cal Newport

1. 0:00 – 22:01

   How to create a deep life

   1. CNCal Newport0:00

      All right, so here's a key question, maybe the fundamental question for a lot of people these days. How do you create a deep life, a life that is lived on purpose, a life that the people who know you find to be, in a quite literal sense, remarkable? When we pursue this, and again, I think in the pandemic and post-pandemic period, more people are caring about this and explicitly pursuing this than we've seen in a long time. When you pursue this, there are some common traps. It's a grand thing to go after, and it's easy to get wrong. Today, I wanna talk about arguably the most common trap faced by people trying to cultivate a deep life. Um, I'll explain the trap and why it doesn't work, and then talk briefly about what works better. All right, so we've already defined the deep life. That's my term for something that has been around for a very long time. As we mentioned, a life that's intentional, a life that's lived on purpose, focused on the things you care about, reduces the things that you don't, a life that other people find remarkable. Now, when people get this idea that this is what they wanna do, that they look around and say, "What am I doing right now? This job I have is monotonous or nihilistic. I don't know why I live where I live. I'm on my phone all the time. I'm sort of just distracted and diverted. I don't feel like I have control over my life, but I wanna do something interesting with it. I only have one life. I wanna do something interesting with it." When people get this impulse, which I think is a fantastic impulse, they realize they're not quite sure how to do it, and they fall back on a common mistake, which I call the grand goal strategy. So the grand goal strategy says, if you wanna make your life more purposeful, come up with a really appealing grand goal to pursue with the idea that if you accomplish that goal, your life will be better, right? So it really focuses your attention. There are a few different, uh, there's a few different variations of the grand goal strategy that are common in terms of what it aims at. One has to do with the radical change in your life circumstance. So this variation of the grand goal strategy is, let's, uh, move to the woods. Let's move to the island in the South Pacific, right? Let's, uh, rebuild my life around triathlon runnings, right? Some sort of, like, major change to your life. Move to the big city is a common one. Move to the country is another common one. So it's often about setting, but not always. It can also be about just, um, something about the circumstance of how, how you live your life. If I could be... Uh, here's another example of this that's not setting related. Financially speaking, we have the FIRE movement, the, the financial independence retire early movement that picked up in the, uh, 2010s, and it had this idea that if you're very aggressive about saving money and living cheaper, you can reach financial independence after about 10 years. So, you know, maybe in your 30s you don't have to work anymore. You can live cheaply and live off of the returns of, you know, investments. That's another example of a grand goal that's gonna change everything. I don't have to, I don't have to work anymore, right? So a radical lifestyle change, common category. Another common category that the grand goal strategy applies to is the dream job. Hey, if I could follow my passion to the job I'm meant to do. You know, if I could just get the job as the television writer or the, the stand-up comedian or the college professor, right? Or whatever it is, but here's my passion. Here's my dream job. If I could just make my job my dream job, then my life would be better. Common application of the grand goal strategy. Um, another is just achievement focus. This is very familiar to the sort of Ivy League milieu in which I sort of came up in. I'm actually going to my 20-year anniversary, or not anniversary. What do they call it? Reunion.

   2. SPSpeaker4:15

      You're going?

   3. CNCal Newport4:16

      20-year college reunion at Dartmouth College in a couple weeks.

   4. SPSpeaker4:18

      We have ours too.

   5. CNCal Newport4:19

      Yeah.

   6. SPSpeaker4:20

      I, I'm not going.

   7. CNCal Newport4:21

      Yeah, we're going.

   8. SPSpeaker4:22

      I go to enough Tufts things like for lacrosse and stuff.

   9. CNCal Newport4:23

      They're there for lacrosse.

   10. SPSpeaker4:24

       Yeah.

   11. CNCal Newport4:25

       Yeah. I'm gonna go to mine. But anyways, that crowd, right? There is this sort of pre-professionalism often of, like, if you can just reach a certain level of achievement, that will fix everything, right? So now you have, like, a focusing grand goal to go after. It's if you can get into the good law school, and from the good law school, get into the big firm, and in the big firm, get partner, and from partner, get equity partner, boom. Life will be good. That's what... If you can just get there, life will get, be good. You get into medical school, and you get the good residency, and then you get the good attending position, then you get the good... It's this idea of, like, the achievement or if I can, uh, in banking make it up to this level, the MD level where I'm really pulling it in, that's, that's where it's gonna happen. Or in academia, um, you know, if I could just get to, like, be a full, full professor, that's it. That's when the happiness will come, right? So there's this sort of achievement version of the grand goal strategy where you focus on reaching a particular achievement. Um, and finally, and this, this is the one that comes and goes I think most dramatically throughout the last 150 years or so, is this, uh, idea of, okay, um, if I can just fully commit to a singular ideology that can structure my existence and understanding of value in the world, then that's gonna do it. Like, a cause-based ideology that I can just give myself over to, maybe that is gonna give me a life that feels like it's intentional. All right, so that's the grand goal approach. It's what most people do. Let's do something big. Uh, it makes sense, by the way, because, A, you get reward right away with the grand goal approach because there is the rewards of aspiration, the thinking about this. "I'm going after this. What's it gonna be like when I move to the country or don't have to work anymore?" Or, uh, you know, "I am lauded for my commitment to the cause or get that equity partner status," right? We, uh, we get enjoyment almost right away just thinking about the big change. Um, two, focus is simple. Focus is nice. I'm just, uh, I'm orienting around this one thing. We like focus. There's a, there's kind of a pleasing clarity to it, and often the things pursued aren't bad things. Like, it's fine to, to look for a job that seems interesting. It's fine to achieve in your job, right? To sort of move up the ranks, like, that's fine. Having some sort of ideology that plays an important part in your life might be a big structuring part of your life. Like, none of this stuff is necessarily bad, too, so it's not, not as if, you know, in the back of your head you're looking at these grand goals and saying like, "This really isn't good for me." They're fine. They're probably not bad for you. But it doesn't typically lead to people feeling like they have achieved a deep life. There's a few problems with this strategy. One, the grand goal strategy limits our options. We're not very creative when it comes to thinking about sweeping goals to change our life. There's only so many ideas that tend to be out there, and they're pretty common. It's moving to a radical place. It's, "Here are the typical jobs people in my situation make, and so take, and okay, I wanna do really well in one of those jobs." When it comes to ideology, there's only usually a couple of them that are swirling around as, uh, being, you know, interesting. There's usually, like, one left-wing one and one right-wing one and maybe a couple others. There's not that many options. So you're, you're actually leaving a lot of options for the, the nuanced cultivation of an interesting life get left on the table when you're looking for big, grand swings you can take. So it, it reduces our imagination. It puts people into sort of narrow buckets of possibilities. Uh, two, let's say you accomplish a grand goal. Typically, that only impacts a single area of your life. There's lots of different aspects that make up your subjective day-to-day experience and whether that is positive or negative. The grand goals typically just focus on one piece of that life, so at best they'll improve that piece of your life while leaving the other pieces of your life the same. At worst, they actually make other p- pieces of your life much worse. You know, in the pursuit of a particular achievement, all of these other things that matter to you in life get squashed or pushed out of the way as you have to drive for the really long hours to sort of make the achievement happen. In the pursuit of the radical change to move to the country, you get cut off from other people. You get cut off from the sort of life of the mind and energy of the city that you used to like before. The schools are weird. You don't get along. At worst, this is what happens, is by focusing on one thing, other things in your life, uh, also get worse. Three, it bypasses other sort of less sexy but critical steps to taking control of your life because you can just fixate on, "I'm just going after this thing." So one of the things we talk about a lot on this show is actually the importance of getting your act together, developing a sense of discipline, organizing your life and your time, right? This is really important for sustainable changes. The grand goal strategy has you just bypass this because it's just more exciting to, like, think about the big change or the big goal you're going for, and you bypass these sort of more tactical skills that are probably necessary for sustainable change, which means, and this is sort of the final nail in the coffin of the grand goal strategy, most people don't succeed with it. Then where are you? "I put all my eggs in this basket, and then I lost the basket, and I have nothing left to, to, to pursue or go after, so it's, you know, time to get out my phone or start playing the video games or get lost on Instagram." You know, you give up if your only conceivable path towards the deep life is, like, doing something major. When you're unable to succeed with something major, what are you then left with? Hey, it's Cal. I wanted to interrupt briefly to say that if you're enjoying this video, then you need to check out my new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. This is like the bible for most of the ideas we talk about here in these videos. You can get a free excerpt at calnewport.com/slow. I know you're gonna like it. Check it out. Now let's get back to the video. All right, so what works instead? Well, of course, I talk about on the show a lot my vision for how to more sustainably and reliably cultivate a deep life. Let me just go through a couple of the big ideas here quickly. We talk about this a lot, but let's go through the big ideas quickly. Um, step one, before you even come up with your big ideas and get the aspiration of thinking about living on Maui while living off of your investments and, you know, surfing all day, get organized, get disciplined. That's actually the better place to start. Discipline is an identity, not a trait. It's something you see yourself as someone who can make progress towards important but non-urgent things even though you don't want to or it's hard. This is something you get used to doing, starting small and pushing up, increasing the ambition of what you pursue. It changes your identity until you see yourself as a quote, unquote, "disciplined person," prerequisite for any interesting, sustainable change in your life. You gotta get organized, have some notion of control of your obligations and time on different scales so that you can direct your limited resource towards stuff that's important to you in your life. You know, there's this, this pushback right now against thinking about time management and organization. There's this pushback that says if you think about these topics, you're gonna be some weird Frederic Winslow Taylor time optimazing, optimizing science bro, hack-obsessed noob weirdo. Or it could be, you know, uh, I wanna have some structure to my time, so I can do cool things with it, and part of that structure might be reducing the amount of time I feel busy, de-optimizing, right? The, the right binary here is not optimization versus, you know, um, some sort of chill, relaxed, like aren't you intellectual and smart? That's... It's not optimization first versus chill. It's like control versus non-control. Non-control is not a great place, right? Non-control, you know, where it's like, "Yeah, I don't... My life is out of control. Things just sort of happen." Uh, that's not a great place. It's not a relaxed place. It's a stressed place. You're busier than before, and you tend not to make traction, uh, on the stuff that really matters. So, so you don't wanna become some sort of over-obsessed Frederick Winslow Taylor optimized nerd, but most people actually don't go there when they begin to embrace some notion of structure or organization. All right, so that's the first thing you have to do. Uh, next, you got to, instead of working forward towards grand goals, find a goal, work forward to that, everything will be fixed. Work backwards from the detailed vision of your ideal lifestyle. Directly address what are all the elements of what I want a day in my life to look like five years from now, 10 years from now, and let me directly, uh, reverse engineer these specific parts of my life. Now you're making progress towards, uh, specifically the things that matter, as opposed to hoping that a big goal will, as some sort of side effect, unintentionally im- improve these things. You work backwards from a rich featured vision of ideal lifestyle, as opposed to looking forward towards just a singular grand goal. Now, here's the thing. If you're doing this, it's the type, "I wanna have this sort of rhythm to my life, this type of place. This is the role I want work to have in my life and the type of impact it has. My community, uh, what do I want that to be in my life? How do I wanna think about, uh, my health and how I'm spending my time outside of sort of work?" And you have these sort of visions, and you're trying to build towards this, and it's very systematic, and it's very evidence-based. Given the opportunities and obstacles I have right now, how can I most make progress in the next six months? It's very systematic. Doing the seemingly incremental work towards the, the actual lifestyle you want, not only is it going to more reliably improve your life because you're just directly improving specific things you know resonate, cool opportunities will arise. But these are gonna be much more bespoke and sustainable than what you come up with from scratch. If I just grab a 23-year-old and say, "Come up with, like, how you're gonna change your life," again, they have like five things they're gonna choose. "I'm gonna, you know, become financially independent. I'm going to be an influencer. I'm gonna move to the woods," right? They have no... It's these, like, very common, not very creative options. But when you're instead really know what you're about, what you're trying to get towards, systematically moving your life towards these things that matter to you, that's where the really cool bespoke grand goals emerge. "Oh, I have an opportunity now to, to move here to do this work, and it connects over here." And you begin to actually... You know what you're trying to achieve. More often than not, when people are systematically pursuing the deep life by looking backwards from the lifestyles, they end up having these really cool radical opportunities emerge, and they're things that no one had ever thought about before. They're bespoke. They're com- They're specific to exactly what they care about. That's where the cool radical changes happen to make people say, uh, remark, "Ooh, you've got an interesting life going on." You don't start with them. It's, it's like you get rolling towards, "I know what I'm about. I'm in control. I'm systematically improving my life piece by piece. You know, if I'm married, I'm doing this with my partner as well." Then the really cool opportunities, that's when they emerge. You don't start there. They emerge. So in the end, you can end up doing pretty grand things, but it comes sort of naturally as you much more systematically get in touch with what you want and as you move towards it, all right? So be wary of the grand goal strategy. It's unlikely that a single goal, no matter how grand, is going to make your life sustainably better. This more incremental, systematic approach, not only is it gonna start delivering results more quickly, and more effective results at that, it probably will lead to some pretty radical things, right? Uh, I never pursued a single grand vision, but as I've systematically worked backwards from my evolving picture of ideal lifestyle, I've ended up in some pretty remarkable places. I mean, it's like where we are right now, Jesse. We're in this, like, cool HQ in this small town, you know, um, above the restaurant, down the street from the bookstore where I know the owners and the, the coffee shop where I spend sort of half of every morning. And, you know, it's a we- in the summers we spend in New England, and I get to write books, and it's all really cool. Um, and there's some really remarkable things that, that in my life right now. I didn't sit down when I was 22 and sketch that all out, but I did have an evolving understanding of my ideal lifestyle that my wife and I were always, "Okay, how do we move towards this in the current season of life we're in?" And as we did that over time, we ended up in some pretty cool places.

   12. SPSpeaker17:13

       Yeah.

   13. CNCal Newport17:14

       So there you go. Be wary, be wary of grand goals. It's interesting. I kind of wrote about this 10 years ago in a very narrow way in So Good They Can't Ignore You, but specifically about the grand goal of following your passion and why that specific grand goal doesn't work the way you think it's gonna work. So I didn't really realize then I was pro- I was onto sort of a broader observation of skepticism surrounding grandness. All right, so we got some good questions coming up, but before we get there, first, let's hear from a sponsor. [whooshing sound] Uh, this podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp, right? So we're talking here about trying to cultivate a deep life. It's hard to build a life that is intentional and meaningful if you're really struggling with your own mind. Right? I mean, I think this is very common, of course, in today's world, frenetic, distracted, that you can struggle with thoughts, you can struggle with emotions, you can struggle with feelings. So as you think about constructing the ideal life, systematically improving the relationship with your brain absolutely needs to be on our proverbial menu here. And this is gonna mean professional help. This is probably gonna mean therapy. This is where BetterHelp enters the scene because it makes it so easy and convenient for you to start working with a professional on your mental health. So if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Do not let your vision of the deep life neglect a deep, sustainable relationship with your own mind. So take a moment and visit betterhelp.com/deepquestions to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P, .com/deepquestions. I also wanna talk about our longtime friends and sponsors at Zocdoc, a free app and website where you can search and compare highly rated in-network doctors near you and even instantly book appointments with them online. I said, and I'm gonna be on theme here, I said the first step in cultivating a deep life is, uh, getting your act together, getting your own life organized before you try to improve it. Well, having healthcare, getting the appointments you need, seeing the doctors you need for the things that are important to you, be it preventative or an acute problem, this is a big part of being organized. Uh, again, a problem that is difficult for a lot of people because how do I find a doctor? How do I know if they take my insurance? Are they taking new patients? Zocdoc solves all that. It makes it easy, right? You can search. "Okay, I need this type of doctor nearby. Okay, here they are. Let me filter. I wanna see if they take my insurance. Oh, these ones do. Okay, let me look at ratings from real patients to see, like, which of these doctors do people really like. Great. Which of these are taking on new patients? Oh, these three are. Oh, now I know exactly. Here's three doctors. You know, they take my insurance. They're nearby. They're, they have good reviews. They're taking on new patients. Let me book an appointment right here from the app," and you're rock and rolling. So Zocdoc makes this unavoidable part of life, needing to get healthcare for whatever, you know, is going on, it really makes it easy. Uh, I don't, I don't see why you would not [laughs] use it if this is something, like, almost people you need to do. Uh, so there you go. So the, a couple stats here. The wait time, the typical wait time to see a doctor booked on Zocdoc is only between 24 and 72 hours. That's it. Now, I'm gonna clarify this copy here, Jesse. This doesn't mean the typical waiting room time-

   14. SPSpeaker21:20

       Correct

   15. CNCal Newport21:21

       ... is 24 to 72 hours. That would not be as impressive.

   16. SPSpeaker21:24

       [laughs]

   17. CNCal Newport21:25

       You show up at the doctor, and 72 hours later you get in. No, no, they mean the time from when you make... you say, "I want a doctor," to when you're going to that doctor is within a day or two, um, often even same day. So you don't have to stress out about, "Oh, my foot, I need to see a podiatrist. How am I gonna do this? It's gonna take forever." Zocdoc's got you covered. Zocdoc's got you covered. All right? So go to zocdoc.com/deep and download the Zocdoc app for free, then find and book a top-rated doctor today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C .com/deep, zocdoc.com/deep. All right, let's do some questions.

2. 22:01 – 26:37

   Is it too late to start living deep at the age of 27?

   1. SPSpeaker22:01

      First question's from Ahmed: "I had some setbacks in my early 20s. Now I have regret for those wasted years. Do you believe it's too late for me to start living a deep life at the age of 27?"

   2. CNCal Newport22:12

      I think Ahmed read the, the hidden fourth principle of slow productivity.

   3. SPSpeaker22:16

      [laughs]

   4. CNCal Newport22:17

      Drink heavily. He really lived the fourth principle and now-

   5. SPSpeaker22:19

      [laughs] In his college years

   6. CNCal Newport22:21

      ... now has regrets. Jesse, we're old now. Because you probably have the same reaction I do. He's like, "Is it too late at the age of 27?" We're like, "You're just getting started, man." I mean, that's like, that's like the starting line. Uh, so no, of course not. Of course not. And I would not think about your years in your early 20s as wasted, right? You learned. You grew. You lived. You sort of figured out what you're about and what you're not about. You got things out of your system. You had experiences. "Okay, this is not making me happy," uh, or, "I got caught in some grand goal to, you know, follow my passion to be, like, a professional dog sledder, and it didn't work out." That's not wasted. That's you learning and developing as a human, learning about yourself, developing your sense of self at a time where you have the flexibility to do that without much consequences. That's a great use of your 20s. Not everyone was so sort of, you know, bow tie and blazer locked in as I was in my 20s. Like, that's one way to do it, but let's be honest, most people don't do it that way, right? Now, one of the ideas I'm having around the deep life, and you know, I'm, I'm working on, like, an annotated outline for a book about this. Like, one of the ideas is a chapter I'm tentatively calling Grow, and a big idea from that chapter is your conception of the deep life, that is, the ideal lifestyle that you're working backwards from, changes through the different seasons of your life. It might be one thing in your 20s, a different thing in your 30s, a different thing in your fir- first half of your 40s, a second thing in the second half of your 40s. Your 50s are gonna look different than your 40s. This is gonna grow with different, and change with different seasons of your life. Probably the vision that is the least important in terms of, like, your long-term experience of life is the vision you have in your 20s, so I don't mind that, you know, you weren't thinking about that in your 20s. Now is the time to think about it. Think about this period, like age 27 to, like, let's say 32 is, like, the next season of your life. You've learned, you've grown. Now it's time to get serious. Let's build that lifestyle vision. Where do you wanna be in the first half of your 30s? What does your day look like, not just work, but all parts of your life? What are the obstacles and opportunities for moving closer to that vision? And let's start getting systematic about it. It's a perfect time to start. So I'm excited for you, Ahmed. You're ready to, you're ready to, to start getting after that, that lifestyle vision. So put that together and get rolling. Were you... What are your... What were you like in your 20s? Were you locked in or were you, uh, Ahmeding it?

   7. SPSpeaker24:54

      Um, I was a little of both. I went to grad school, then I was figuring out where I wanted to live, and then I settled on DC.

   8. CNCal Newport25:02

      Yeah.

   9. SPSpeaker25:02

      Started coaching, kinda like, you know, piecing together stuff that I wanted to do for a long term.

   10. CNCal Newport25:08

       Yeah, like gra-

   11. SPSpeaker25:09

       So that's how I ended up in DC

   12. CNCal Newport25:10

       ... grad school stretches out that period. Like a lot of people, I was in grad school in my 20s too. Like, Ahmed is not behind the eight ball here. So, like, if you're doing graduate education, you're kinda just extending your college experience. Like, you're thinking about your studies, and it's really not until you're done with education often that you're like, "Okay, now what am I trying to do here?"

   13. SPSpeaker25:28

       I knew I wanted to move somewhere where I could establish my life.

   14. CNCal Newport25:32

       Yeah. Um, man, our 20s... Well, I was in grad school, but, like, the, the situation at MIT was you're here, it's like you're at a NFL training camp. You are here to become a professor. So it was kind of a focused grad school. You're like, "This is what you're here for. This is the lofty goal. If you fall short of this goal, uh, not great." So we were very focused, you know, on, like, developing this very narrow set of skills, which was interesting.

   15. SPSpeaker26:00

       A lot of people drop out?

   16. CNCal Newport26:01

       Yeah. The, the... I mean, it's not, they don't call it dropping out, but yeah.

   17. SPSpeaker26:05

       They don't get their PhD-

   18. CNCal Newport26:05

       Don't get their PhD

   19. SPSpeaker26:06

       ... but their-

   20. CNCal Newport26:06

       Yeah

   21. SPSpeaker26:06

       ... master's.

   22. CNCal Newport26:08

       Yeah. There's a lot of that. Or they'll, they'll get it, but then go to, you know, industry.

   23. SPSpeaker26:14

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CNCal Newport26:15

       Which, which again, people get wrong. People think about, oh, the, the best thing to do would be to go to, like, Google and get a lot of money, but not in that environment. Like, Google hires hundreds of people every year. You're gonna have to program if you go there. No, no, no. Tenure track professorship, like, that was, that was the vision. So I had an unusually locked in 20s. All right, what do we got next?

   25. SPSpeaker26:36

       Next question's

3. 26:37 – 29:34

   Is it possible to cultivate a deep life at a job that requires full attention?

   1. SPSpeaker26:37

      from Joe: "I've consumed most of your content, which includes reading some of the comments on your YouTube videos. I see a b- bunch of comments of people talking about how to create a deep life while at work. For example, a truck driver commented that it's difficult to do anything but listen to music while driving as everything else is a distraction. Is this related?"

   2. CNCal Newport26:56

      All right. It's an interesting question, Joe. Um, I think this probably is coming down to a definition issue. So you're seem to be relating or conflating the deep life with, I guess, like the structured consumption of information, the sort of exposure to books and big ideas and, and not spending as much time with just narrow distractions, which could be a part of it. But let's, let's expand our terminology here so we can deal with this issue better, right? Um, the deep life is a life that's intentional, lived on purpose, the type that sort of seems remarkable to you and people around you. There's a lot of aspects to the deep life, including your work. And what, in the deep life you, you, you have all the different things you're doing, you hopefully are moving towards your ideal lifestyle vision as opposed to moving away it or being sort of unrelated to it. Work can play a lot of different roles in that, right? So, you know, there's jobs, for example, that, yes, are very, uh, attention demanding. So maybe truck driving is like that if, if you need to be focused on what you're doing. Clearly, if you're like an emergency room doctor, it's gonna be like that. Like, I'm focused on what I'm doing for the work, and that's fine, right? Uh, that could be very much a part of your ideal lifestyle vision. It, it, uh, this job helps, uh, give us the f- right flexibility about where we live. I support my family on this job. It's like, it's, it's important work I do well, right? I am building towards owning my own sort of company here, which is gonna help us then do X, Y, and Z. Like the, the, there's no specific type of job that you need for the deep life. There's no specific experience of work that you have to have to achieve the deep life. What you need is intention and working from a qu- a, a clear lifestyle vision. So yes, there's this other aspect of the deep life where we talk about where people are, "Yeah, yeah, I'm reading interesting books and I'm being exposed to interesting sort of podcasts and ideas." I think that's also a key part of it as well. Um, but that can be a separate part of it. And maybe that's not what you're doing during your job, but you have, like, a really nice library or reading nook you've built at your house. And when you're not out there driving the truck or what have you, you have, like, systematic reading time. I mean, whatever. There's lots of ways to think about it. So let's, let's expand, let's expand our definition of, like, what goes into the deep life. Many, many different types of jobs are part of building towards whatever lifestyle vision you might have fixed as being ideal. All right, who do we have next?

   3. SPSpeaker29:28

      Next question is from Argeon: "I watched your video on how to reinvent your life in four

4. 29:34 – 37:12

   How come there are different Deep Life Stacks?

   1. SPSpeaker29:34

      months where you talk about the Deep Life Stack 1.0. Then shortly after, I watched another video that talked about the Deep Life Stack 2.0. What are the differences?"

   2. CNCal Newport29:44

      Uh, the value of one. So like to go from 1.0 to 2.0, the difference is one. Um, no, okay, here's what's going on. I've been... You know, we talk about the deep life on the show a lot. You know, I coined the term, God, it might have been in the very first episode of this show. We'd have to go back and check. But in the summer of 2020, four years ago. I've been experimenting over those times with different ways of thinking about, you know, how do you actually pursue this goal, including lots of analogies like stacks or like hardware versus software. Let's put aside for the second those specific analogies and touch base with the broader program here. There's, the broader program here is that I got this sense from my listeners and from my readers that this is a very important question. The pandemic really put this question to the forefront of a lot of people. They felt like they weren't controlling their lives. They were just sort of bouncing around, like, "What am I doing here? I wanna be in control of, like, what my life is like. I want to be remarkable." Like, "Look at this life I've designed that's, like, really cool, focused on what I care about, minimizes what I don't," right? So it became clear during the pandemic that lots of people were grappling with this issue. Now, what's my approach to it, right? I'm not a philosopher. I'm not a theologian. Uh, I'm not, like, a social psychologist who studies happiness. Like, so what is my approach here? Well, my, my, my approach to this topic is we focus a lot on the what. But what sort of things does a life well-lived have in it? We don't focus enough on the how, the mechanics, the nuts and bolts of actually engineering or re-engineering what your day-to-day existence is like. We sort of take that for granted and focus on the here's what you need in it, and it's important that you have, you know, whatever, like community or that you have this or that. We list these different attributes, or we get inspired by these stories of my God, like look at David Goggins, just grinding after it. Uh, but we don't often get into the nuts and bolts mechanics of like, okay, but how do I get from here to something that's different? How do I get from the current life I have right now to a vision of the life that, that feels much better? And so everything I do about this topic is sort of centered on like, let's get into the nuts and bolts. That's why I play with very specific analogies to try to put structure around the, the beha- the behaviors and the strategies and the frameworks you need to actually get, uh, to make change. So those stacks were something I was experimenting with. There's other things I experimented with as well. Um, where I am now is I'm sort of working on an annotated outline for a book on this sort of focus on the how instead of the what when it comes to engineering a more intentional life. I've sort of simplified it more. I've, I've moved away from having too kind of cutesy of analogies. You know, like I kinda trust the reader. Like, let me give you the ideas, and here's, here's kind of like the sequence, but I don't need to, I don't need to use, you know, metaphors to, uh, c- computational structures, et cetera. So like in my current form, I kinda have this breaking down into five parts. You sort of have to go through these five parts in order. I, I don't say it's a stack anymore. It's like these are the things that kinda matter for doing this. Uh, I start with... And again, this is... I'm working on this, so don't, don't, don't lock this in either. But starting with preparation. So this idea of before you get too caught up into the fun part of thinking through what your life could be like, get organized, get disciplined, right? You know, like, again, we always, we often look past this or sort of like, uh, my, my elite brethren are used to being disciplined and organized, and they think it's unnecessary. But people really, you need to start here. Okay, two, the getting your vision. This is like my big idea we just talked about in the Deep Dive. Working forward to a singular grand goal is unlikely to sustainably change your life for the better. Working backwards from a broad and detailed ideal lifestyle vision, that's gonna make changes that are going to directly impact the stuff you care about. Like, that's what's gonna allow your life six months from now to be better than it was six months, uh, before, all right? Um, implementation is like, so how do you actually do this? How do you make progress towards a lifestyle vision? It's not trivial. You gotta deal with rituals. You gotta deal with projects, one-time projects that you pursue. You have to deal with changes. Let me change where I live. Let me change, uh, the nature of my job. How do you do rituals, projects, and changes? How do you navigate those properly? Well, you know, you can't just take wild swings at it. You have to do evidence-based planning. You have to sort of, um, slowly build up to things. There, there's a creativity to this to try to find, well, if I do this, it can affect three different parts of my vision in a positive way. There's a real art to the actual mechanical, like here's what I'm now doing to make progress towards the vision. It's not so simple. So we gotta get into that thinking about rituals, projects, and changes and the, the, the, the subtle art of pursuing those. Um, then comes amplification. This is this idea that we talked about again during the Deep Dive that once you're systematically moving towards your lifestyle vision, opportunities for the remarkable will arise, and they will not be things you could have predicted in advance, and they will be bespoke to your current situation and the current things you care about. This is where things get interesting. How do you seek out those opportunities? How do you vet them? How do you pull the trigger on them? Like, this is where the really cool stuff happens, but it happens kinda late in the progress. And then finally, growth. This is this idea that you're, you need to keep maturing your vision of the ideal, what your ideal lifestyle is. This will mature over time, but you need to fuel this maturing process. Uh, you getting older will help, but you also have to systematically try to just mature your understanding of the world. Like when we talk about building a vision of the ideal lifestyle, I talk a lot about seeing what resonates with you. Well, you can mature over time even your mechanisms for resonance, like the, the sophistication with what, uh, with which you detect things that appeal to you or not or what's important or not, and we get philosophy here, and we get theology here. Um, we get, you know, hard-won wisdom here. So there's this whole sort of process of growth over time. It's just sort of becoming a, um, a more mature person, a more value-driven person. You get better at that. So you don't have to be there full form when you start this process. So that's, that's how I think about it now. We could put this, we could call this a stack, but I don't bother with that anymore. So again, to summarize, you prepare, then you build your vision, then you implement with care. You look for opportunities to amplify, and you grow over time. This seems to be more of what, putting aside the specific things you end up pursuing, this really gets to the how of how to pursue that in a way that's sustainable. So I don't know. That's where I am now. That could change. Maybe I'll go back to being like super, uh, cutesy analogies again. Depends, [chuckles] depends what mood I am, uh, as I'm, as I'm writing my book. Maybe I'll have like a pyramid that's on a circle, so you have to have the pyramid of values that rotates on the wheels of lifestyle. Um, and then on, on top of that, you have the flavor of remarkability, and then as you combine these into a matrix, that gives you a probability that you put into a machine learning model that then spits out a graphical representation of your spirit animal.

   3. SPSpeaker37:03

      [laughs]

   4. CNCal Newport37:04

      That might be where I end up instead. We'll see.

   5. SPSpeaker37:06

      [laughs] Uh-

   6. CNCal Newport37:08

      Simplifying. All right. What do we got next?

   7. SPSpeaker37:11

      Next question's from

5. 37:12 – 45:12

   How to cultivate a deep life with small children?

   1. SPSpeaker37:12

      Marie. "How do my husband and I design a deep life with four children at or under the age of kindergarten?"

   2. CNCal Newport37:18

      Four children at kindergarten age or below. All right, Jesse, this brings me back again to the loss principle for slow productivity.

   3. SPSpeaker37:26

      [laughs]

   4. CNCal Newport37:26

      Drink heavily. That's the... That's your solution right there. Um, this is an absolutely critical time to be thinking about the deep life, but this question is also critical because it really, again, helps us clarify what the deep life really can mean. So I'm assuming the tension in your question is that the vision of the deep life matches some of the things we talked about, where, uh, there's all of these aspects of your life in which you're sort of doing interesting, very intentional things, and you're in very good shape and reading all these books, and your job is in this interesting way, and you're connect- and you have these interesting hobbies, and you're like, "How is this possible with four kids at kindergarten or below?" And of course, like that stuff isn't. That's a fire alarm type of situation. That's an all-hands-on-deck situation. But let's just back up a little bit. What, what really do we mean by the deep life? Well, intentional lived on purpose. So you can apply... You're in a hard, interesting, wonderful, but difficult period of family life. You can absolutely and should absolutely be living on purpose during this period. It's just what your purpose is, the intention, like what's our intentional vision for what these years should be like, um, is gonna look very different than how a 27-year-old will answer that question. It's gonna look very different than how like a 47-year-old whose kids are older is gonna answer that question. Right now, it's gonna be focused a lot on, okay, we want to, um, develop these like little things into like reasonable humans. We want to, um, do this without sort of being completely exhausted. We wanna be able to find joy in this young age the kids will never be at again. We wanna be able to have space to find joy in that, to avoid like complete stress. Um, you get really clear about like what do we want this sort of young kid period to look like, and then you work backwards from that vision, and then that could lead, that intention can lead to lots of interesting things. It might be little things in terms of just how you're thinking about like activities for the kids or how you're bal- how the, the, the format of childcare, what you're doing with, uh, what type of preschool the kids are going to. Like c- these things you begin to get intentional about that match the vision you have. Now, this could lead to even larger changes, like we're gonna change something about our work setups here, right? It's a, it's a absolutely like fantastic application of the deep life methodology that you can imagine the role of work during this period of life is gonna be very different than it was and what it's gonna be six years from now. There may be like a holding pattern thing we wanna do here. I'm gonna reduce to this. You're gonna do this. Yeah, we're not like getting ahead, but we, we wanna make sure we keep these jobs, but this is gonna allow us to then, uh, have much more intentional about how we deal with where the kids are and when we pick them up or how this happens, right? This is the time you have to be intentional, and when you're intentional here, you have to see the full picture, all of the aspects of your life you care about. This is a dangerous period. Like what happens sometimes during these kid period is that when people are not intentional about the full vision of like what is our ideal lifestyle through this season of our life, they don't, they ignore that. They, they focus then sort of randomly on other things. Like, "Well, what matters to me is just like I want to advance my career as fast as possible." Uh, and then like your partner says the same thing, and then everyone is just resentful of each other and stressed all the time, and it's not working out well, right? You just focus on like one random thing. Or one person is focusing on something about the kids, and the other person's focusing on something else, and you're, you know, you're not on the same page, and it's not working out. Like this is the time you have to be on the same page and say, "What does this five-year period?" And I would, I would say this period ends once all of your kids basically are in elementary school. That's the next period. I remember this period well. I'm in the next period now. How do, what do we wanna do in this period? Like what, what do we want this to be like? All parts of your life really matters. It might change the communities you get involved in. Uh, it changes... Maybe it changes something more drastically. Like now it is time, this is the time we're going to move. We wanna be closer to family. We wanna move to a place where we can be more deeply enmeshed in these communities that matter because we're gonna need the support. We wanna live cheaper so we don't have to be working so much because we have four kids, and they're young, and they're similar ages, and that's just gonna require a lot of time. So let's reconceive our conception not around, uh, particular career trajectories but around a full lifestyle trajectory that's more interesting. This is also a good time to think ahead. Where do we wanna be in the next phase, like when all of our kids are in elementary school, so that we can be making the moves right now with that in mind as well. We don't wanna get caught off guard when we get there. Uh, my wife and I thought a lot about this, A, like how we wanted life to be when our three kids were young, but also we really early on, I mean, I remember these discussions. We're really clearly articulating the properties of the, the family lifestyle we wanted during the elementary school age that we're in now, and all, all of our kids are sort of of that age. You know, my, my oldest is starting middle school next year, sixth grade, but I came from New Jersey where we had junior high that starts in seventh grade, so I don't really count sixth grade as not elementary school. But they're all, they're all... It's a completely different phase, but you know what? This thinking we did- And I remember doing this thinking when the third kid hadn't even been born yet, and the other two were like an infant and like a kid just starting preschool. I remember like where we were doing this thinking, really checking in on this. Not how, not specifically, like here's specifically what we'll be doing in 2024. But just thinking about where we wanted to be like made a big difference, and it shaped a lot of decisions. And, uh, I really... we're, we're like reaping that benefit now. Like we've been working backwards from that, not working forwards towards a ground goal, not working forwards from like all that matters is like this happens in my career. So this is like the critical time to be thinking about the deep life. But you just have to be super expansive and flexible about what that means. It's intention. It's not any particular mix of things. So yeah, do this planning. Do it often. This is what's gonna make the difference between the sort of sustainable, tight, sort of wonderful family life going forward and one where it's stressful and resentful and random. Like you have to be thinking through what our lifestyle wants to be like, not this is what I'm doing and sort of the other stuff is a burden or an obstacle that I'm sort of annoyed exists. That's a good question. Four, four kids at or under kindergarten. That's tough.

   5. SPSpeaker43:53

      So do you do a lot of post-analysis after they're out of elementary school?

   6. CNCal Newport43:57

      Well, we just keep thinking about the next.

   7. SPSpeaker43:59

      Okay.

   8. CNCal Newport43:59

      Yeah. It's like, what do we wanna-- what's working, not working now? Where do we wanna be in the next, like the next phase?

   9. SPSpeaker44:06

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CNCal Newport44:06

       Um, and they're each different. And then we have to revise a lot because you learn things, like you don't, you don't know that, oh, this is what this is really gonna be like. But the key is, and this is like a key part of the deep life methodology in general, lifestyle focus. Like the properties of life is what you're focusing on. Not specific, like where I wanna be is this position and this job, or like we have to live in this place. Um, when you're thinking about properties of lifestyle, you get flexibility and options.

   11. SPSpeaker44:36

       Oh, okay.

   12. CNCal Newport44:36

       There's a lot of different ways we could get there. And then these, as I talked about, these interesting opportunities for the remarkable come up. You're like, "Oh, I, I, I never even knew that opportunity existed, but you know what? If we did that, we could get these three things working pretty well, and you could do this," and it, it, it, there's a flexibility to it. You know. And then this is how you're able to sort of construct these bespoke intentional lives. All right. Ooh, it looks like our next question, is this our Slow Productivity Corner?

   13. SPSpeaker45:02

       It is.

   14. CNCal Newport45:02

       Let's get that music. [slow music]

6. 45:12 – 49:47

   Do I need to “limit my missions” if I have a standard day job?

   1. CNCal Newport45:12

      Now, as longtime listeners know, we try to have one question per episode that's related to my new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. You can find that wherever books are sold or at calnewport.com/slow. All right, Jesse, what's our Slow Productivity Corner question of the week?

   2. SPSpeaker45:30

      This question's from Sean. "In Slow Productivity, you discuff, discuss limit your missions. If I only have a single j- day job, do I have a exactly one mission, and the advice is just for super hustlers out there?"

   3. CNCal Newport45:43

      Uh, it's a good question, right? So in the principle do fewer things, I talk about you need to reduce, to accomplish this, you often have to reduce what you're working on at various levels of abstraction. So if you just come to like your day and it's like, "I wanna do fewer things today," that might be impossible because you have a lot of things that need to be done, right? Because maybe you have many projects you're working on, and each of the projects has a lot of things they need you to do. So you have to also limit your projects so you don't have too many things being generated that have to be done. But it might be hard to limit your projects if you have a lot of bigger missions or initiatives you're working on, each of which have to generate projects. You can't limit projects, so you have to move up even higher and limit the pr- uh, the missions or initiatives you're working on. So you have to sort of limit from the top to have this reduction carry through all the way to like what you're actually doing on the day-to-day where it makes a difference. So that's what limit your missions means. Um, a single day job can have multiple missions, right? All this is is just major initiatives that you're pursuing. Like this is something I'm pursuing and trying to do well and wanna be known for. In some day jobs, it's really clear, like this is just what you're doing. You're in sales. You're trying to move sales numbers. That's all that matters. But a lot of jobs, there's a lot of opportunities to take on multiple big initiatives. Maybe some are internal facing reform in your organization. This is like a product strategy. This is like a technology strategy. Limit those. Like this is what I'm doing in this job, if at all possible. Like this is the thing I'm really working on. Hold me to it. I'm trying to get this product line big. I'm trying to overhaul the way we do digital marketing plans. Whatever it is, try to keep that simplified. That will generate fewer total projects, which means there's fewer total tasks that you have to work on. Your days can give you more breathing room, and then you can focus on doing that work really, really well. Now, of course, the double-edged sword of limiting your missions is you actually have to deliver. You're basically saying, "This is what I'm doing, but hold me to it." The appeal of having many missions is you can be like, "I'm really busy and I have, I'm doing a lot of things. I just seem, in a pseudo productive sense, as like I'm a useful person here." Uh, you lose that comfort of freneticism standing in for actual value production when you say, "No, no, look, this is what I do. I wanna focus on this. Hold me to it, but I wanna focus on this." That's the double-edged sword. You are gonna be accountable. But on the other hand, it gives you breathing room. And when you have breathing room and don't have the administrative overhead of 20 tasks at the same time, you can actually get work done at a high level of quality and do so in a way that's much more sustainable, much less frenetic and stressful. Yeah, so good question. Doesn't matter. Knowledge work is so flexible, like day job, non-day job, entrepreneurial, big organization. We can get overloaded in all of those situations. And in all those situations, limiting missions can really matter. All right, that's our Slow Productivity Corner. All right. Do we have a call today, Jesse?

   4. SPSpeaker48:52

      We do have a call.

   5. CNCal Newport48:53

      Excellent. Let's hear this.

   6. SPSpeaker48:54

      Here we go.

   7. SPSpeaker48:55

      Hi, Cal. My name is Christina and I work in finance. I took five years off to have children and keep them at home, and I'm just now back at work full time this year. I've noticed that my ability to focus has, um, really taken a hit since having young children. I don't do any social media or anything like that, but I really am struggling with, um, keeping focused for long periods of time, not just on, uh, complex concepts, but also on those little detail things that you have to keep track of. Um, you know, whether it's like data validation, th- things like that, that are, um, just really hard to concentrate on. So any, any tips would be very much appreciated. I really would like to get very, very good at my job and make up for some of that lost time. Thanks so much.

7. 49:47 – 1:02:47

   Keeping focus after having children

   1. CNCal Newport49:47

      Well, Christina, this is hard.

   2. SPSpeaker49:48

      Hi, Cal.

   3. CNCal Newport49:49

      Uh, this is hard. It is a common problem. Um, yeah, we had an interview about this, a professor from Brown who worked on like psychology and work, Yael, forgot her last name right now. Um, anyways, we had this really interesting interview and Christina, this reminds me of what you're talking about here because I had this question. I said, you know, I asked her, I said, "You know, uh, I get a... I don't know if it's pushback, but just like frustration, especially from, uh, listeners who are moms who are like frustrated about the idea of deep work and well, you know, how c- who's taking care of the kids while this person's doing deep work?" And I, I w- I was like, "I don't understand this," like deep work, this is like a very abstract thing. Very like sort of computer science sy- systemic way of non-emotional way of thinking about this. When working on knowledge work, you can do it with uninterrupted focus or with context switching, and if you're context switching, your brain doesn't work as well, uh, and you don't produce good stuff and it takes longer, so we should in knowledge work in general, recognize that uninterrupted focus is important and try to protect that, et cetera. It's like, what is this? I don't understand what, what could you be upset about this, this like abstract concept of focus produces more than uninterrupted focus. I'm not saying, not making any prescriptions of like how much of this you should have or how you should find this, whatever. And the, the, the guest, the, the psychologist from Brown, she was like, "Yeah, but there's a, the frustration is like, especially if like you're a m- a, a mom, but in this context is like you just have a much harder time finding unbroken focus. Even if it's not, uh, you have the, you can literally block off the time, you're thinking about the kids. You're thinking about the school. You're thinking about..." And whether this is like cultural or whether this is, you know, just it's genetic, it's in our species, who knows? But it's like you have a much harder time just putting your focus on something and it's frustrating. It's frustrating that you can't focus as much and the focus really matters and now, uh, people that you're probably smarter than and more capable than are gonna be moving ahead just because it's, they just don't care as much. The, the men don't, it's just not grabbing their attention as much and it's frustrating. That's why they're frustrated. It's not a fundamental, it's not a mistake in the idea, just the abstract idea of how cognitive processes unfold, this idea that context switching produces less capacity than focus. It's a, it's a, it's a frustration about particular, uh, group of people that are like, "I can't do that as much." And yet no one is acknowledging enough that like, this is different. This is hard. Which is all to say, Christina, like what you're going through is very common. Something I've learned. If you have young kids at home, yeah, it's harder to focus. That's probably evolution. It's probably a good thing for the history of our species, uh, that you're... I mean, it's bad for you, but probably a good thing for our history of our species that I just, having a hard time focused on data analysis right now because, you know, human kids are hard to keep alive. It grabs our attention. Okay. So I mean, that's validating, but it's not solving your problem. But I just wanted to start with that because it took me a long time, again with my s- my approach to the world, which is very non-emotional, very private, talking about abstractions and this is the way things unfold can hit up against other ways and other things going on in the world. All right, so what, what can you do about this? First, you can go easier on yourself. It's just, you know, look, I'm a different person. I have young kids and I really care about and I have to keep them alive. That is a very hard job. I'm not talking physically, I'm talking cognitively, so you can just kinda, you, there, there's, there's a sort of going easier on yourself here of like, yeah, this is, this is a different me than it was pre-kids and just being okay with that. It's not 29-year-old me where I could just go at it eight hours a day concentrated on spreadsheets. Like I can't do that anymore and it's for good reason, so it's not a bad thing. It's just a new reality. You know? It's like when, uh, the baseball pitcher... Women are gonna love this analogy, Jesse.

   4. SPSpeaker53:52

      [laughs]

   5. CNCal Newport53:54

      When the baseball pitcher gets, uh, older in their career and they can't throw 95 miles per hour anymore and it's like Trevor Williams for the Nationals, uh, you change the way you pitch. It's like, okay, so I can't do that anymore, um, but I'm, I've been doing this for a long time. I'm kinda like a, a, I'm, I'm more mature and I'm wiser, so now I'm gonna, uh, I'm gonna throw good, um, you know, 89 fastball's gonna play up because I've got my, my splitter is really working. Yeah. I've learned, by the way, like what, um, women who are frustrated about men, what they really love is to have this explained in terms of analogies to Trevor Williams.

   6. SPSpeaker54:33

      Somebody else-

   7. CNCal Newport54:34

      Sports analogies

   8. SPSpeaker54:34

      ... made an analogy about it earlier too for the love of the game with Kevin Costner when he's on the mound, like-

   9. CNCal Newport54:38

      Clear the mechanism.

   10. SPSpeaker54:39

       [laughs]

   11. CNCal Newport54:40

       Is that that movie?

   12. SPSpeaker54:41

       I, I... It was either you talking about or somebody else within like the last-

   13. CNCal Newport54:45

       Clear the mechanism

   14. SPSpeaker54:46

       ... couple days. Uh-

   15. CNCal Newport54:47

       For Love of the G- I think it was For Love of the Game.

   16. SPSpeaker54:48

       Yeah.

   17. CNCal Newport54:49

       Yeah. Clear the mechanism. Clear the mechanism, Christina. All right. Um, so yeah, you're different than you were before. And we all are. Like, here's an interesting... Like, I'm different than I was before. It's weird, uh, uh, uh, you know, I'm super generalizing, but as, like, a dad of young boys, all my kids are boys, like, for me, the, like, real change in sort of my ability to just lock into work actually came when they got a little bit older, like closer to elementary school age, because the boys needed this sort of dad time all the time. Like, they needed specifically dad time as part of their development as humans. That was a huge sap on cognitive energy that would have otherwise, you know, um, gone into work. So a- again, like, babies were more survival mode for me. Like, how do I just, like, help keep these alive and, like, keep my wife from going crazy? Like, young boys, it's like, ooh, they need this. Why am I at work? So we, we... Different people get these different things at different times, but families can change who you are and how you actually approach the energy, uh, of your work. So I, I, I think that's good. So what we have to do, it's like what I'm trying to do, is what you have to do, is the knowledge work equivalent of the older pitcher learning to use obfuscation and deception to keep his ERA low. And there's a term for this, and I wrote a whole book about it, Slow Productivity, right? Slow productivity is my way of thinking about how do you still, like, produce stuff that moves the needle and matters when you can't just get after it and just be locked in, busy, and outwork everyone, out-energy everyone, out-focus everyone. That's kind of what that book is about. I've talked about it. Like, my three boys getting to this age where they needed all my time, that sort of shift in my, um, understanding of the world, like, that was a big inspire- inspiration for working on the ideas that became Slow Productivity. I needed it for myself, right? It was partially why I worked on that book. And so what are these ideas in Slow Productivity? Well, okay, we need to work on fewer things at the same time. This doesn't mean accomplish fewer things, but acknowledging we already have a lot of things on our heads. We need to minimize administrative overhead. We need to minimize multitasking and context switching. So let's be more sequential. Let me do this, do this really well. Now let me work on this, let me work on this well. There's a lot of things on my plate. Let me divide between the small number of things I'm actively working on and the things I'm waiting to work on. And the things I'm waiting to work on, I'm not entertaining administrative overhead on. Emails and meetings I'm not doing on these things yet. They're here. You can see their status. You can see it marching down the line, and when it gets to active, then I'll work on it. So we need to work on fewer things. We need to work at a more natural pace. Be much more realistic about how long things are actually gonna take, and be okay with that. Be okay with the idea that, you know, I might not be super frenetic on Tuesday, but at the end of this quarter, I can point to I did these three things, and these three things really matter. That brings us to the third principle, which is what all of us sort of family addled knowledge workers have to super embrace, is obsess over quality. We are going to earn flexibility. We're going to earn freedom from frenetic, frenetic accessibility. Uh, we're gonna gain autonomy by getting really good at the things that matter. This is, I'm specializing on this, hold me to it, I do this really well. So we have to break our relationship to our jobs out of the grips of pseudo productivity, which just says activity is what matters. Like, it's you doing a bunch of stuff that I know that at the very least you're not not productive. We want to escape that and be measured instead on output, outcomes over time. Really valuable stuff that other people can't do. When you're seeing... And again, you're not new to the job. You were in this job before you took time off, right? You're more mature. You understand what matters, what doesn't matter. So you're not sort of, you know, um, just young and energetic anymore. You can begin to carve out what we're all trying to do. I do this thing really well. I do it better than these people. Um, I deliver. I can do that by working on fewer things at the same time, more natural pace. Like, all of this matters. Slow productivity is, if anything, a game plan for parents to rebuild their relevance, be a useful pitcher, even when they can't do the young man or young woman's game anymore of just throwing a lot of pseudo productivity at it. All right, so there's, like, a lot of things we're talking about here, Christina, but I think it's a good discussion. So one, we have the validation of the frustration, mothers in general in knowledge work, that frustration of I can't do the focus I used to be able to do, and, you know, like the new dads can, and that's frustrating. We're not talking about that's frustrating. Um, two, so yeah, we are different. Families, other types of things can change us. It's not, it's not bad. It's just this is, we're now a different person. How do we still build a good game? And that brings us to number three, slow productivity. We gotta figure out how to shift ourselves and how other people see us from activity-based notions of productivity to outcome-based notions of productivity. If your field makes that impossible, if your employer makes that impossible, that's just not the way they operate, but you know what you want. You, you have this vision of, like, what working life, the slow productive version of working life, it's not a bad motivation to look for changes. So how do I shift over to a change that does make that happen? This part of finance, not here, but here. My own thing or here. Or the lawyer, I know a lawyer who did this, um, really good at the type of law she does, saying, "I, I'm not interested in the partner track. Uh, so we're gonna, I'm, I'm gonna leave the partner track, and now I can actually control my hours. And, and so instead of trying to bill a maximum number of hours, I'm gonna bill 35 hours. Okay, yes, I've lost the, like, I'm on my track to be an equity partner, but I make a lot per hour, and we moved over here to the mountains where it's much cheaper because this, this work can be done remotely. And this works out really well. I'm doing really hard and super skilled work that's very valuable to my clients. I'm just doing half as much as I would have to do to be on the partner track, um, but I'm not thinking about maximizing, like, salary. I'm thinking about having a good salary for those hours. This is a great salary for those hours, and we can live like kings over here," right? So there's, there's, it- Once you know what you're trying to do, I'm a different person, I need a slow productivity as opposed to a pseudo-productivity approach to my work, there's a huge number of options there where you can still be doing stuff that matters, supporting your family, being engaged, but these other parts of your vision of the ideal lifestyle can also be preserved. So this is like a good approach to these questions as opposed to just drastic changes. Jobs are bad. I don't wanna, uh, I don't wanna work anymore. Or I shouldn't have to change anything than from what I was when I was 26 or whatever, so like whatever. I'm just gonna, you know, grind it out and we're gonna make this happen. We have like subtlety here. We understand the problem. We're working towards a broader vision of the ideal lifestyle. We have a sense of what craft can be post kids, the slower productivity notion of craft and saying, "Can I get that in my job? And if not, what's the closest thing that preserves as much of my career capital as possible where I can get that?" I mean, all of this is about clarity and specificity and what's going on, why it's going on, what we want, how we can change it, how we can get there. The more s- clear and systematic we are, the better decisions we make, the better changes we make. We avoid the drastic grand gestures. We avoid the regrets of making the big change that didn't really fix things. So Christina, there's a lot packed into this simple question. I think it was, it was good to unfold, but I think the main point is, and again, I can't emphasize this enough, for the women in your life, try to analogize all their problems to like obscure baseball things. That is, that is always a winner, Jesse.

   18. SPSpeaker1:02:19

       It was, uh, Yael Shonbrun.

   19. CNCal Newport1:02:20

       Yael Shonbrun. Ooh, I like that interview. What episode was that?

   20. SPSpeaker1:02:24

       I found... I was searching. It was a while ago.

   21. CNCal Newport1:02:27

       It was a while ago.

   22. SPSpeaker1:02:28

       Yeah.

   23. CNCal Newport1:02:28

       That was a cool, that was a cool episode because if I remember correctly, she studied, she's a Brown professor psychologist who studies psychology and work.

   24. SPSpeaker1:02:37

       Yeah.

   25. CNCal Newport1:02:37

       And, and among other things, um, the psychology of gender and work. And it was a fascinating interview. All right, uh, we got a case study.

8. 1:02:47 – 1:13:09

   Finding books to help cultivate a deep life

   1. CNCal Newport1:02:47

      Case studies are where people send in like a, a report on how things are going with applying the type of advice we talk here about this show to their own life. Uh, we like these. Please send them in. How do they do that, Jesse? Just go to the question submission form and one of the options is case study?

   2. SPSpeaker1:03:03

      Yeah, go to thedeeplife.com/listen and then at top you can click on the survey link and then-

   3. CNCal Newport1:03:09

      Yeah, send these in

   4. SPSpeaker1:03:10

      ... there's an option for case studies.

   5. CNCal Newport1:03:12

      Especially 'cause-

   6. SPSpeaker1:03:12

      Or they can just email me.

   7. CNCal Newport1:03:13

      Or email jesse@calnewport.com. Um, especially Deep Life stuff, 'cause I'm thinking about a book on this. Send in those case studies about you systematically cultivating a deep life. I love those. All right. Today's case study comes from Mark. It has a hidden question inside of it, so it's a case study plus bonus question. Mark says, "Firstly, thanks for all your work that you have put into your books and podcasts. I discovered you very late at the end of 2023 and have implemented a lot of your ideas into my life since then, including the digital declutter en route to embracing digital minimalism, time block planning, deep work, intentional liv- living, reading as default entertainment. Uh, this has improved my life immensely both in and out of work. Since your work has had such an impact on my life outside of work, I'm always excited by the Deep Life segments on the podcast and learning more about it. On that note, do you have any book recommendations aside from your own that would c- complement cultivating a deep life outside of work? So far from past recommendations I have two books, Walden and Designing Your Life. I'd love to hear more you'd consider good reading before you release a Deep Life book in the future." Yeah, Walden's a good one. I increasingly think about Thoreau and Walden as like the original person in early modernity grappling with this question of how do I design my life, not within an existing structure of meaning, but having, feeling like you had to come up with that from scratch and systematically experiment with what do I wanna do with my life. Thoreau and Walden is sort of patient zero for that type of thinking. Um, here's the thing. Looking for books that are about the how to build a deep life, like specifically about a deep life, uh, will only get you so far. I mean, my book when I eventually write it of course will be must reading, but really what you should be focusing on much more than that, Mark, um, is books that give you intimations of what your own deep life should include, right? What you're looking for is resonance. I am reading about this person. I'm reading about this thing. It's not a book about specifically how to make your life better. It's a book about someone's life and it resonates. You wanna write that down. Then you watch this documentary. Something about that resonates. You write that down. You come across an article in a magazine. Why is this resonating? You write that down. A, an Instagram picture. Why is this particular Instagram story cap- capture my attention? You write that down. Have one notebook that you're writing all this down in. You're trying to capture these intimations of what's important to you, um, and then eventually you can take these observations of all these things that resonated and extract more general properties. Oh, the things that resonate tend to be like slow, slower living outdoors or craft, uh, or like energy and the freneticism of like the city and the tales of like people, uh, you know, living in brownstones in New York and going to the cl- whatever it is, right? You begin to extract the general properties from these specific examples of things that resonate. That's how you begin to craft your ideal lifestyle vision. So I would care more about that, Mark, than reading specifically about ch- how to think about your life or how to change your life. All right? So read broadly, look for what resonates, write it down, and then extract properties. And it can be surprising. Like I've mentioned before, like for myself, uh, there's like some Hawaii stuff that's resonated. Laird Hamilton's house in Malibu and sort of the, the how he lives out there and how his days structure while he's sort of waiting for the big waves to come. That resonated with me not because I wanna live on a pineapple plantation in Malibu or not because I wanna surf big waves or not because I wanna even live in Hawaii, but there's like deeper things in that about, um, seasonality Deep to shallow work ratio, the work to other parts of life, variation and, like, intensity followed by times with, like, intense focus and things that aren't work. There's subtler properties that resonate, right? Um, why did I come across that? Watching the documentary, a combination of, there's a Laird Hamilton documentary which is great, I recommend it, and the Susan Casey book, The Wave, which is, like, half of that book is a biography of Laird Hamilton, and the other half is about the science of big waves. Fantastic book, I recommend it, right? But anyways, I don't know why that resonated at the time, but I just made a note of that, and then over time I extracted, oh, there's some general properties in here that, that are important to me. So that's what I care about more, Mark, is finding things that resonate, then, uh, care more about that than finding a, a specific instruction about shaping your life. Just wait for my Deep Life book and that'll solve that for you. In the meantime, figure out, uh, what that vision involves. All right, we got... We're coming up to our final segment. We're gonna talk about the books I read, but first, hear from another sponsor. I wanna talk in particular about Notion, a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It's a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. So Notion allows you to combine your notes and documents into one space that's simple and beautifully designed, and now it increasingly has the power of AI built right into it. Not a separate AI tool or browser tab, but just AI functionality built right into Notion's tool. What I like about Notion is that it allows you to, uh, build these sort of custom workspaces or tools for the information that matters to you and your business. You can do it in ways that's, like, very bespoke and useful, right? I mean, in my book, A World Without Email, I talk a lot about having processes for how you manage repeated work, so it's not just free-for-alls with attachments and emails and frenetic Slack. Notion is one of these great tools for building them. Uh, our ad agency, for example, built a really cool way of tracking ad reads in Notion, where it connected information to these different views. So we could see, for example, here's the ad reads for this upcoming podcast episode. But then we could click on a particular ad read. Okay, here's the advertiser. Like, here's the script for it. We could go in there afterwards and say, "Here's the, uh, link and timestamps for exactly when we did these ads." But then we could have another view and say, "Why don't you show me all the ads we did for this advertiser?" And then a different view shows us all of that. Oh, here's everything we've done for that advertiser. You could change the view. You could manage this. It gave us a workflow that allowed us to have a very complicated, uh, advertising, uh, rhythm for our show without it having to just be, like, chaos of everyone just emailing things back and forth and getting things wrong. You know, so you can build these sort of custom data-driven things. Um, the AI power to this, though, just brings it up to the next level. Now, like, one of the things I like about the new AI tools is you can just type right into there, um, "Oh, I'm looking for," you know, in our case, like, uh, an ad read we did for this type of company. I forgot its name. I think we did it, like, a couple... Like, last year. And the AI's like, "Oh, here's where it is," and it, like, brings you over there. Or, "Where's our marketing reports from last quarter? I forgot where those are. Oh, here they are," right? So, like, AI is now being integrated to this, so not only can you create these custom ways of working with your data, you can find data conversationally. It just makes these tools all the more powerful. So whether you're a Fortune 500 company or a freelance designer, whether you're starting a new startup or a student juggling, like, some clubs you're running, Notion is for you. Can manage your work and your workflow. So try Notion for free when you go to notion.com/cal, but do that in all lowercase letters. That's notion.com/cal, and start turning your ideas into action. When you use our link, you'll be supporting our show, so make sure you go to notion.com/cal. I also wanna talk about our friends at ExpressVPN. Look, using the internet without ExpressVPN is like having a first aid kit, but not keeping it stocked up. You know, most of the time you'll probably be fine, but what happens when you get into that horrible accident and there's nothing there in that first aid kit to help you stem the bleeding? That's what it's like to use the internet without ExpressVPN, because every time you're connected to an unencrypted network, like at a cafe or a hotel or an airport, any hacker on the same network can gain access to your personal data. It doesn't take much technical knowledge to hack someone. A cheap piece of hardware that, like, any smart 12-year-old could use is all you need. And trust me, people are looking for this data. Hackers can make up to $1,000 per person selling your personal information on the dark web. ExpressVPN can protect you from that. And the way it works is ExpressVPN runs on your computer. And so instead of you, you know, connecting to that wireless access point at the airport, instead of just talking to that access point, "Okay, here's the website I'm going to, you know, here's my password," whatever, when you use a VPN like ExpressVPN, it encrypts what you're saying right there on your local machine, and it sends, in an encrypted, unbreakable message, it sends to a VPN server, "This is what this person really wanted to do." It unencrypts the message, and the VPN server talks on your behalf. So the, the hacker that's sitting there at the airport or at the hotel or at the coffee shop, all they can learn is that you have an encrypted connection, what they call an encrypted tunnel, to a VPN server. They can't steal your information. So maybe f- nine times out of 10, no one's trying to hack you, but it's that 10th time where really bad stuff can happen. ExpressVPN protects you. So secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com/deep. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S vpn.com/deep, and we... You, you will get an extra three months free, but only when you go to expressvpn.com/deep.

9. 1:13:09 – 1:24:49

   The 5 Books Cal Read in May 2024

   1. CNCal Newport1:13:10

      All right, Jesse, let's get to our final segment. [swoosh] Because this is our first episode in June, as I try to do at the beginning of each month, is I want to review the five books I read in the month proceeding. So I wanna go over the five books I read in May 2024. The first book I read was Science and Human Values by j. Bronowski. But j. Bronowski, who wrote, uh, I believe he's most known for The Ascent of Man. Anyways, a 20th century philosopher of technology more than anything else, who was, like, one of the well-known thinkers and critics on technology and how it impacts, uh, society, how it, how it's shaped human civilization over the years. So, a really respected thinker in that social aspects of technology space. This is, uh, one of his well-known, a shorter book, dense book, uh, Science and Human Values. Interesting. This was really written, I, I believe this was, like, mid-20th century, and he's really talking about what was then a very central tension between science and the humanities. Uh, and was sort of getting at the value science broad and trying to address some of these concerns of thinking of these two things as being, um, either very separate or one being able to replace the other. So some of it's very of the times, but also there's some really deep ideas in there. So it's an interesting book. Then I read The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. Uh, The Hot Zone, this is a nonfiction book, huge bestseller written by Richard Preston about a strain, an airborne strain of Ebola that got loose in a primate holding facility in suburban Virginia. Reston, Virginia. So, you know, not far from where we are right now. Um, classic example of narrative nonfiction. Uh, Preston wrote this first for The New Yorker and then developed it into, um, a full book. Um, classic example of narrative nonfiction. So it goes back and forth between the history of Ebola, like, sort of when it, the first times it emerged and just sort of, like, destroyed people, with the narrative of what was happening in Reston, Virginia. It's kind of a cool book. I mean, so basically, like, what makes it scary is it was spreading through the air. It was a very, very dangerous virus, right? I mean, makes COVID seem like, uh, like a skinned knee. Like, this is, we're talking, at least where they were measuring Africa, like, 70%, 90% fatality rate, and it was spreading through the air. Fortunately, and I'm not gonna... This is not a spoiler because, you know, most of the eastern seaboard didn't die of Ebola in the [laughs] 1990s, so you kinda know the ending. Um, it wasn't really well adapted for humans. But anyways, it gets through. It's, it's, it's a cool book, and it gets through the characters. Classic narrative nonfiction writing. Richard Preston's great. Used to live, actually, until recently, near where I grew up in New Jersey. He had this cool big farm that he owned in Hopewell, New Jersey. Had some cool land, but he moved up to Maine more recently. All right. Anyways, great book if you haven't read it. Classic example of narrative nonfiction. Then I read, because I was on a Preston, uh, I guess I was on a Preston streak, Richard's brother, Douglas Preston, I read his new novel, Extinction. We went for, like, a long weekend to sort of, like, an off-season, uh, beach resort, and I wanted, like, a summery, fun book, and, um, so I read this book, Extinction. I don't know. I don't wanna spoil too much of it. Like, okay, I'm not gonna spoil it. It's kinda high concept. There's this sort of, uh, Ice Age Jurassic Park, right? So they've de-extincted not dinosaurs from 65 million years ago, but sort of Ice Age animals from 30,000 years ago, like woolly mammoths, right? These type of animals. And there's this sort of isolated park in Colorado in this sort of valley that's hard to get in and out of where they've de-extincted these animals. Grisly murders start happening, and it soon unfold, unfolds a sort of, like, shocking reality that they were doing more than just de-extincting animals, uh, you know, harmless animals. Stuff ensues. Kind of a cool book. Uh, it's kinda dark at the end, too. Anyways, it was fun. So Douglas Preston, uh, Douglas Preston's an interesting guy. An interesting guy. Uh, also writes for The New Yorker, like his brother Richard, occasionally. Also writes thriller novels. It's, like, the main thing he does, most of them with his co-author, Lincoln Child, but also solo nodal- novels like Extinction. Does also write some nonfiction. He's done a bunch of adventuring, like the, The Lost City of the Monkey Gods, as he, he almost died, like, getting these parasite infections going to explore this lost city in the Amazon. Really interesting guy. Um, Douglas Preston's story that's interesting to me is that he got a job out of school with the National History Museum. Is that what it's called? The big one in New York. The big, like, block, big national, like, h- where they have the dinosaurs and stuff like that.

   2. SPSpeaker1:18:20

      Yeah.

   3. CNCal Newport1:18:21

      Um, I don't know if it's called American Museum of Natural History, I think.

   4. SPSpeaker1:18:25

      I'll look it up.

   5. CNCal Newport1:18:25

      Yeah, American Museum of Natural History, which is, like, this huge complex funded in the 19th century. It's, it's like a full, like, multiple city blocks or whatever, and he was working there, and he wrote a book called Dinosaurs in the Attic. It was the American Museum of Natural History.

   6. SPSpeaker1:18:41

      Yeah.

   7. CNCal Newport1:18:41

      He wrote this book about, a nonfiction book about this, this, this cool, weird place where, you know, there's all this stuff from 200 years ago stored in nooks and crannies. And he was writing this book, I think for... I don't know who he was writing it for. N- maybe Simon & Schuster, maybe it was for St. Martin's. Anyways, his editor, Lincoln Child, like, came with him to see the museum and said, "You know what? We should write a thriller that takes place in this museum. It's, like, such a crazy cool setting." So him and his editor for his nonfiction book wrote The Relic, which is like this fantastic, uh, thriller about a sort of monster loose in the American Museum of Natural History, and they became a writing duo and started writing all of these, uh, thrillers together, these Lincoln Child thrillers. And then both Lincoln and Douglas write their own books at the same time. And anyways, I think he's a cool guy. He lived a cool life. Extinction was kind of a cool book. It was interesting. All right. Then I read When the Shooting Stops, dot, dot, dot, the Cutting Begins. So I am a, as you know, a sucker for these books about specific people in the movie industry where they talk about their career and all the movies they worked on. This is yet another book written by an editor. This is the second book I think I've read this year about a film editor, and this is Ralph Rosenblum. Had a real distinguished career, did some really famous stuff with Sidney Lumet, and then did a bunch of Woody Allen stuff, including Annie Hall. And so it's just really interesting. He's an older generation. I mean, you know, he was really working in like the '60s. He was working in the '70s. And again, it's cool to learn about the art of editing. It's interesting to hear these stories. His story on Annie Hall in particular is really interesting because that movie was filmed to be something completely different. The original name of Annie Hall was A Hedonia, and it was all of these different... It was supposed to be sort of inside the mind of the Woody Allen character and just showing all these different aspects of his life and all the different stuff going through his mind, and it was supposed to be like this sort of psychological realism. The Annie Hall relationship was like one of multiple plot lines that was gonna, this movie was weaving together to show the complex psychological life of this, this main character. And in the editing, they rebuilt it to be about Woody Allen's relationship with Diane Keaton, and it won Best Picture. So that was probably the coolest story in the book to hear, to hear about that. So if you love the sort of, if you're a movie cinephile type, this was a great one. All right, final book I read in May 2024, The Great Partnership by Jonathan Sacks. I referenced this in a recent episode. Um, you know, I really like Jonathan Sacks' writing. This is about the values of science and the values of religion, and it, it takes a sort of historical, theological look at it. There's this big distinction between what he calls the values of Athens and the values of Jerusalem. It's like two completely different ways of like processing the world and thinking about things. And, and he basically makes the argument that they're very complementary and you need both, right? Uh, he thinks this is... There's interesting points in it, right? Keep in mind, this book was written in the first decade of the 2000s. So this was a, or maybe like 2012, but it was a response to the, the new atheist, right? It was a response to Dawkins and Hitchens, etc., who, uh, were... He sets them up as trying to, um, have the mindset of Jerusalem take over the mindset of Athens. Like there was, they're like at odds and, and, and the new atheists were saying that the Athens mindset, the sort of left brain scientific mindset, that's what works and this other thing is mythological and fiction and doesn't work. And he, in, in the book, he's trying to show like they got that wrong. These are like two separate ways of seeing the world. Um, but he argues the reason why we mix this up is because starting with Pauline Christianity going forward, you had, uh, these Greek ideals, the sort of Athens left brain way of thinking was increasingly actually integrated into theological thinking. And, and for a while, Christianity tried to, to combine these two and that didn't work well, and that's what made them seem like they were somehow intention. Anyways, it's, it's classic Sacks where he somehow takes really complicated topics like the history of Western philosophy, the development of the Abrahamic faiths, and he can just talk clearly and simply about them. Like, "Oh, I get it. That, they're, they're, these mixed together." Real skill to do that type of intellectual, uh, intellectual survey with narrative momentum in a way that's very accessible to a non-specialist audience. He was the best at it. So I, I actually learned a lot. And again, I used the sort of Athens Jerusalem analogy in a, a deep dive a few weeks ago, so I already got some value out of it. Um, so I enjoyed that book.

   8. SPSpeaker1:23:31

      Real quick note, in the show notes, we have Bram's Notion directory link of all the books that you've read.

   9. CNCal Newport1:23:37

      Oh, yeah.

   10. SPSpeaker1:23:37

       Yes.

   11. CNCal Newport1:23:37

       Speaking of Notion, yeah, our sponsor. Okay. So, so Bram is the name of the listener, right?

   12. SPSpeaker1:23:42

       Yep.

   13. CNCal Newport1:23:42

       All right.

   14. SPSpeaker1:23:42

       Yeah.

   15. CNCal Newport1:23:42

       So a listener has created a, a... He's keeping track of all these books from the Books I Read segment, and he's using Notion to build up this sort of flexible data-driven view of what I've read. So, oh, right. So links in the show notes?

   16. SPSpeaker1:23:55

       Yep, it's in all the show notes.

   17. CNCal Newport1:23:56

       Perfect. All right. So you can always find that link in the show notes to keep up with the books I've read through many months past. So Bram, thank you for that. All right, Jesse, I think that's all the time we have. Thank you everyone who sent in their questions or case studies or called in with their calls. We'll be back next week with another episode of the show, and until then, as always, stay deep. Hey, so if you liked today's discussion of the deep life and the danger of grand goals, I think you might also like episode two ninety-seven called The Deep Life Hardware, where we give another way of thinking about cultivating a more intentional life. I think you'll like it. Check it out. So today I want to diagnose one of the major causes of this type of failure to get your ambitious plans off and running. We'll then use this new understanding to try to come up with some systematic advice for overcoming it and having more success introducing more intention into your life.

Episode duration: 1:24:49