How To Change Your Life By Journaling - Escape Mediocrity & Improve Clarity | Cal Newport

1. 0:00 – 24:50

   Structured journaling

   1. CNCal Newport0:00

      So as I'm recording this episode, it's August, which means, if you ask me, this is the right time to start thinking about any major changes you wanna make in your life. Now, I know culturally speaking, January 1st is when people like to think about making changes. That's New Year resolution, uh, season. I think that's nonsense. Fall is the right time to make changes. Why? Because summer is a natural breakpoint. It is quieter for almost anyone. School is out. Offices are less crowded as people are on vacation. The intensity of work dies down. It's a perfect sort of break between one year and the next. So I always think late summer is when you begin to gear up for changes to make in fall, because fall really is, as far as I'm concerned, the functional start of the new year. All right, so here's the problem that I hear from a lot of you, uh, my listeners, is that even if you have this sense you are unhappy with your situation right now, you're mired in digital distraction, you're numbed with digital diversions, you know you want more out of your life, the hard part is figuring out, what is it that I want to get towards? What are the changes I actually want to do? I can't pursue a target that I can't see. So this is what I wanna talk about today. Uh, take a break from our typical discussions of technology and distraction and focus, and instead cover a key skill for clarifying what it is exactly that you really want in your life. Look, it's hard to fight back against high-tech distraction when you don't know what it is you're fighting for instead, when you don't know what it is you're losing, the vision of the life you want that this is getting in the way. So let's get in the weeds today and talk about how do you figure out what you want your life to actually be like. All right. First things first, we have to do some preliminaries here, cover some ground that we briefly covered before. Um, let's remind ourselves of my main strategy I pitch on this show, the main strategy I pitch for pursuing a deep life. The strategy says you should be wary of simply going after a singular grand goal. This is what most people's instinct is. They say, "Let me just have some romantic goal that I'm gonna pursue, and, and that will fix everything." So we're talking about like, "I will finally find quiet if I can just figure out how to move to the coast of Maine," or, "If I could just get ripped, like, everything else would be good," or, "If I could just get to the equity partner level at this law firm, then I would be made, then I would be happy." This is the grand goal approach to, to shaping your life. Um, it's popular because it's easy, right? You just kinda come across an idea. Typically, the ideas people pursue for their grand goals come from a relatively limited pool of, like, kinda obvious things you hear people talk about or hear about online. So it's easy just to pick up on one of these. They're good inspiration engines. You can daydream being on that coast of Maine. You can daydream having that promotion, and, and every time you daydream it, you get a little bit of inspiration. You feel good. Um, and it's simple in terms of technically how do I pursue this, 'cause you just have one thing you have to go over, so you're like, "Let me just get after this," right? Uh, so that's the grand goal approach. It's what most people do. As I've talked about before on the show, just pursuing a grand goal tends not to be too effective. Uh, they only impact one area of your life, whereas there's usually many aspects of your life that come together to form your subjective day-to-day experience. And so, um, just fixing this one aspect of your life doesn't change the other parts, uh, so it's not gonna deliver as much satisfaction as you think. Uh, if anything, you sometimes have the reverse problem, where in pursuing a goal that's relevant to one part of your life, it actually steps on other parts and makes those worse. To get the equity partner promotion, the time you're able to spend at home with your family, the connection you're able to have to your community, the, the, the time you're able to spend, uh, exposing yourselves to interesting ideas, like all of that gets trampled on, and you end up even worse than you were before. And of course, big accomplishments don't tend on their own to actually make your life better, as many people have found. I'm sure there are right now quite a few recent gold medal winners over there in the Paris Olympics that, talk to them in three months, and they're gonna be suffering from a bit of a letdown depression. All right. So what do we talk about on this show as the alternative? Lifestyle-centric planning. Work backwards from a more general master narrative of what you want your life to be like. This is something that should be more general than specific jobs accomplishments, but focus more on the properties of this ideal life. And so what we're gonna get into today is gonna be, how do you come up with these master narratives? First, however, by popular demand, I wrote up some examples. So people who hear the lifestyle-centric planning approach say, "What do you mean by master narratives?" I wrote up three examples. So let's actually start with that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna read through three sample master narratives. These are ideal lifestyle visions towards which you could imagine someone working backwards from to make their life deeper. I wanna give you a sense of what these sound like and the variety that's inherent, okay? Uh, all right, here's the first one. And notice, these are all gonna be in first person. Uh, I think writing these narratively first person is a good way to do it. All right, example number one. "I live somewhere quiet in the country, a pastoral view from my porch where I can see, read as the sun dips. I work from home in a renovated barn, which also features a work wood shop. I'm my own boss. I'm very good at what I do, but only work roughly three to four-hour days to earn enough to live comfortably where we are and travel somewhere interesting once a year. I'm done with work by the time kids are home from school. I spend copious time in the afternoons working on projects and reading. Maybe I have a more serious creative side hustle that I'm systematically nurturing. I'm thickly connected to the local community. It's rare f- that more than a few days go by without someone stopping by to visit." It's a master narrative of a lifestyle vision. There's... I'm not saying in this narrative, "I live in this town, and here is my job." But you get the sense, the, the rhythm of the days, what work is like, what your time is like, family, hobbies, uh, physically, aesthetically what you see. Okay, here's an example number two of one of these narratives. "I live in a major city in a loft. I'm an artist and living among other artists. I'm part of a cutting-edge scene. I go to interesting places. I know interesting people. Days are hectic but also inspired. We're all pushing each other to create ever more impressive art." Also a master narrative, first person, not super specific like I live in exactly this city, does exactly this type of art, but it gives you a sense, a different kind of rhythm to life. All right, example number three. "I'm living out my own childhood. Quaint house in a quaint town. My kids walk to the local school. In the summer, we send them outside to entertain themselves. They bike to the pool, where as teenagers they will have lifeguarding jobs. I work a lifestyle s- job, normal hours out of a home office, but plenty of time left for family and hobbies. The neighborhood social life is rich." Right, so these are all three evocative first-person narratives of a, a lifestyle you can imagine yourself in. That's why they're first person and descriptive. You, you place yourself in that described lifestyle and, uh, it resonates. Okay, these are kind of the properties I'm looking for in my lifestyle. Working towards a more general lifestyle vision gives you way more options than working towards a grand goal because it's-- there's, uh, a lot more flexibility. You have many more options on the table for how you take the career capital you have here, and let me change my job here, and I'll move here, we can do this, and you see the way these pieces all fit together, and opportunities, pursuits of these, uh, strategies for pursuit emerge that you may have never come up with before, and it really gives you so many different ways to navigate your obstacles and opportunities to get closer and closer to these lifestyles. Is this more effective way of finding depth than simply saying, "If I can make it to Maine, I'll be happy." Okay, so now we get to the today's topic. How do you figure out what to put in those narratives? I mean, I had this conversation just yesterday with a friend of mine. They were talking about the difficulty of what goes into this narrative. So I'm gonna give you a specific technique here. This is something that I've more or less been doing for twenty years. But only now as I'm working on my book about the deep life am I trying to actually work through the details and the motivations and the contours of the strategy. I call it structured journaling. All right, here's how it works. You keep with you at most times a small notebook, something that could be in your bag or maybe even in your pocket. Uh, there's two thing, two brands I recommend, though you can choose your own adventure. Um, some people like to use Field Notes notebooks. These are very skinny, so it's just a thick paper cover and maybe about thirty pages. These can fit in a pocket, so they can fit into like a normal shorts or jeans pocket. Uh, I use the small size Moleskine journals. I use the lined paper Moleskine journals. Uh, that brand I started using in two thousand and four, so we're at my twenty-year anniversary of using, uh, typically the, the black oil skin, black elastic closure, standard small size lined Moleskine notebooks. I've been using those for basically my entire adult life. A little big for a pocket, but easy to fit into a bag. Um, I clip my pen to the elastic enclosure. So the pen is just clipped on there, and then the pen is always with the Moleskine. Uh, so y-you wanna have with you some sort of small notebook at most times. All right, now here's what you do. Anytime something you encounter resonates with you. By resonates I mean, uh, there's something about what you're encountering where if you imagine yourself in a similar situation, that seems very appealing to you, so lifestyle resonance. You make a note about it in your notebook. Right, so this might be something you read about. It might be something you see in a movie or a TV show or a documentary. It might be something about someone you meet, uh, their setup, their lifestyle, or just the way they are. It could be a situation or a setup in like a novel you're reading, or maybe it's a place you visit on vacation or on a business trip, or maybe just a random thought that emerges. But these things that resonate, you write it down. "Hey, this thing really captured my attention. This seems really cool to me. I wonder if..." I have a lot of notes like these in my Moleskine, oftentimes poised as a question. "Why am I so attracted to this town that we just visited?" You know, "Something about this is really capturing my attention. Something about this guy I saw in this documentary," like, "What is it about their life that's really-- this has really captured my attention. Here's the things in particular that seem appealing. I don't even really know what to do with this." So you're capturing resonance in your notebook. 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. Next, roughly once a month, create a new list of values and properties that seem to matter to you based on the stuff you've been writing down. So you're distilling. About once a month, you're distilling. "Okay, so here's the things I think I care about, what I'm looking for in my work and life." Uh, so this is where you, you process what you've been writing down. You look for patterns. "Hey, these three examples all seem to involve quiet. They all seem to involve mastery. They all seem to involve people that are, uh, highly respected and doing creative output," or, "They all involve people who have, um, a lot of time outside and a lot of flexibility." You begin to sort of distill what you've been writing down and refine it to like, "I think these are the things I care about." Now, of course, if you're doing this every month, you'll have the prior list from about a month or so ago, and it-- your new list might not be that much different. But it's gonna take into account your reflection since the last month and the new things that have, that have caught your attention and have resonated with you. Now, this month-to-month rhythm is not necessarily something you're gonna do, uh, throughout your whole life, but certainly during periods of- Searching or transition, you should be pretty disciplined about this. I was very disciplined about this, um, both early in my grad school experience, like as soon as I was an adult for the first time living on my own, uh, and later in my grad school experience as I was trying to figure out, like, what was gonna happen to my life once I left schooling. I was very methodical with these things. I have a lot of sense memories of sitting in various places and look, working on, working on these lists. Right? So you keep doing this, right? Kind of in the background. Always writing down things that resonate on a regular basis, distilling it again and again. Here is the list of... And I call it values and properties. So I behave this way, I want these things in my life. You're distilling this again and again. When your notebook fills, you buy a new notebook, and all you copy into the new notebook is your very last list of values and properties, and you keep going from there. Making more notes about stuff that resonates and updating that list as, as you go on. Now, one thing you might do here is, as I mentioned, during some parts of your life, you might be doing this more regularly than other parts of your life. Uh, a good steady state discipline here. So like y- maybe you're not in a period of transition. Instead of, uh, completely abandoning this strategy, you might just maintain a certain time of year where you do this more frequently for a few months, and then other times of the year, maybe you're not. So like you have a period each year, even when you're relatively set in what you're doing, you're not looking for major changes, that you're still checking in on this, and maybe you're not doing it all the time, but you're doing it for a set time each year. You could tie this to your birthday. That's something I've talked about. Uh, I think the fall is good. You know who actually has a really good, uh, schedule and way of thinking about this, uh, is actually the Jewish religion. So, you know, this podcast is coming out on the ninth of Av, which is the beginning for, in the Jewish tradition, of this period of introspection and teshuva and, um, sort of self-development that lasts through what's called the Days of Awe. But from the ninth of Av through Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, and then ending this year somewhere in October with Sukkot. But it's like a dedicated period of like two months or so each year in which it's all about, um, re, getting acquainted with what's important with life. Life is short. Where are you falling short? Where can you get better? And it's like a, a set period where, like, Jews really think about this. And you, you reflect and make changes and try to come to grips and remember what's important, and then you have the rest of the year. So I kinda like that, to have like a, a few months each year, even when you're in a steady state, where you're really going through this exercise a lot to kind of refresh. And then during periods of big change, you might be doing this, you know, month after month while you're really trying to get a grips on things. All right? So structured journaling. Over time, you get a better and better understanding of what it is that matters to you. That can then become what you build your master narrative around. The only other key caveat I'm gonna give is this is supposed to change. I think people get paralyzed sometimes thinking, "How can I figure out now at 24 what I want my life to be like when I'm 54?" And the answer is, of course you can't. But you're not really doing that with your master narrative. You're figuring out at most the decade ahead of you. Like early in your 20s, you're figuring out your 20s. Early in your 30s, you're figuring out your 30s. Early in your 40s, you're figuring out your 40s. Of course, this will morph over time as your life circumstances change, as your opportunities and obstacles change. That's fine, so let's take the pressure off. What you want is to have a working understanding of what matters to you and have a master narrative you're working backwards from that reflects more or less where that is right now. And expect for that to change majorly as your life goes on. That's not a big deal. So don't be paralyzed by trying to get this perfect. But structured journaling i- is a great way in, um, because you're, you're leveraging your sort of internal mechanisms for discerning things of value. That, that sense of resonance is something deeper within you saying, "There's something here that matters to me." You're leveraging and clarifying these internal intimations of what matters to you. Over time, that vision's gonna get stronger and clearer. That master narrative is gonna get more and more compelling. Forget the grand goals or the radical impromptu changes that you lose your energy for. You are gonna have a target for your life that really is gonna sing, and those are the targets that it's easy to keep your eyes focused on. So there you go. Structured journaling. Buy those notebooks. Buy your Moleskine. M- Late summer's the right time to do this.

   2. SPSpeaker16:28

      I have my right here.

   3. CNCal Newport16:30

      Let's see what we got. All right, so let's look. So Jesse has, uh, a leather-covered... Is that Moleskine? Which brand is this?

   4. SPSpeaker16:38

      Uh, the, the book is Moleskine, but the holder I got on Amazon.

   5. CNCal Newport16:42

      Oh, interesting. So you have more of like the field note style-

   6. SPSpeaker16:45

      Yeah

   7. CNCal Newport16:45

      ... Moleskine. I like those as well. The holder's fantastic.

   8. SPSpeaker16:47

      Yeah.

   9. CNCal Newport16:48

      Uh, a listener sent me... Man, I wish I remembered the name. They sent me a link to a company that sells exactly this, like a very nice leather cover plus a notebook inside, and they'll, they hand-stitch the le- Like it's a, everything is handmade. Each one looks different or whatever, and the notebooks, uh, everything is sort of hand-constructed.

   10. SPSpeaker17:09

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CNCal Newport17:09

       They're kind of ridiculously expensive, but there's this sense of like you're really signaling to yourself the importance. I like the cover because you can put your pen in there.

   12. SPSpeaker17:17

       Yeah, it was cheap, too. It was like under $10 on Amazon.

   13. CNCal Newport17:19

       Yeah. That's awesome. All right. So-

   14. SPSpeaker17:21

       So-

   15. CNCal Newport17:21

       Jesse and I have ours. You need yours

   16. SPSpeaker17:22

       ... with your values, is that what's also on your values document?

   17. CNCal Newport17:27

       Um, yeah. So, so over time, you know, uh, your values document, the values piece of what you're reflecting on, that's what you're modifying, and then the properties go into your master narrative. Um, so we haven't talked about the values document as much recently, but it's part of my sort of core system philosophy of having your, um, what are your core documents for everything you're doing with your systems? And here are my values, like the things I care about, my code. That's really critical. My Moleskine structured journaling is how I worked on that.

   18. SPSpeaker17:55

       Okay.

   19. CNCal Newport17:55

       So that's why I say values and properties.

   20. SPSpeaker17:57

       Yeah.

   21. CNCal Newport17:58

       So the values, uh, help your values document. But you know what they also end up influencing, I've discovered? The properties. Like the stuff, like this is what I want in my, the properties I want for my life. They get really influenced by the things you value in your life. And so it's really useful to be keeping these things side by side.

   22. SPSpeaker18:17

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CNCal Newport18:17

       Um, it's what prevents, like, your properties from just being like, "I want to be able to swim in a vault full of money like Scrooge McDuck."

   24. SPSpeaker18:23

       [laughs]

   25. CNCal Newport18:25

       You know, and it's just like cocaine on hookers, like, "Let's roll," right? Like, it, it, it kind of grounds the, it grounds the properties basically in a way.

   26. SPSpeaker18:33

       So the properties are the, what you listed in the examples, right?

   27. CNCal Newport18:36

       Yeah.

   28. SPSpeaker18:37

       Okay.

   29. CNCal Newport18:37

       So those narratives are kind of built on the properties.

   30. SPSpeaker18:39

       Yeah.
2. 24:50 – 27:01

   What does Cal think of goal planning systems?

   1. SPSpeaker24:50

      first question's from Adam. "I'm curious about Cal's thoughts on goal planning notebooks and systems. I use the Best Jour- Best Self Journal. The premise is set thir- is to set 13-week goals because they're just enough of a stretch to be challenging and move the needle, but not so large as to be ambiguous. I always find myself super excited about getting a new one and setting my 13-week goal, but find myself tapering out after about three to four weeks. What do you think of this?"

   2. CNCal Newport25:17

      Well, I think of specific goal-setting systems, like Best Self Journal, I think of them like, uh, a particular exercise or a p- a particular piece of exercise equipment, right? They're useful. They're, they're a way to, to work on a particular muscle. They can also just help you enter into the mindset of now I'm someone who exercises, but we would rarely say this is the only exercise you ever need to do, this is the only piece of exercise equipment you ever need to use. So that's the way I think about these systems, is like they're great, uh, to get you motivated about goals. They're great for helping you pursue the specific type of goal that the system is curated for. But no one system like this on its own is probably gonna be enough to get you through the, the myriad variety of challenges and goals and difficulties you're gonna face as you go through life, right? Some goals are gonna require more time than these systems are tuned for. Some are gonna require less. Some of them, what you really need is to do a lot more work on the front end before you even pursue it in the first place. You need to better understand what you're pursuing. Um, other, uh, other goals, it's, the, the issue is not the plan, but you don't have the discipline for it, so what you really need to do is work on your discipline first or work up to it on a ladder. Pursuing goals is complicated. You know, I'm working on a whole book that's kind of about this, like all the goals and h- the goal of having a better life, what's involved in this, and it's complicated. So use these systems strategically. Use the systems that resonate with you. Do not think that any one of these systems is all you need to do to pursue goals in your life. Respect the complexity of actually trying to do things, right? So, uh, don't be... In other words, don't be upset if, "Hey, sometimes this work, but sometimes it's not working for me." That's great. None of these systems are supposed to cover everything. All right, who

3. 27:01 – 34:38

   How can college students cultivate a deep life?

   1. CNCal Newport27:01

      do we got next?

   2. SPSpeaker27:02

      Next question's from Alvin. "I heard you on the James Altucher's podcast. Can you elaborate if there are any additional things you've learned that aren't in your books on how students can cultivate a deep life?"

   3. CNCal Newport27:13

      Nice pronunciation. I always mess that up.

   4. SPSpeaker27:15

      Did I do it right?

   5. CNCal Newport27:15

      I think you did it right. Altucher.

   6. SPSpeaker27:16

      [laughs] I was like, "I did it." I thought for sure I did it wrong.

   7. CNCal Newport27:19

      I, I sometimes say Altuchler, which is wrong.

   8. SPSpeaker27:20

      [laughs]

   9. CNCal Newport27:21

      I think Altucher is right. I love James. I've been going on James'... God, I've been going on his... But we talked about it when I was on his show for The Slow Productivity. I've been going on his show for a long time. I mean, I think like 10 years or something like that, like early day podcasting.

   10. SPSpeaker27:36

       I need to listen to him more.

   11. CNCal Newport27:37

       Yeah, he's an interesting guy.

   12. SPSpeaker27:38

       Yeah.

   13. CNCal Newport27:38

       He's good at chess. Um, okay, so what's this? What should I add about how students can cultivate a deep life? All right, I used to write about this a lot, Alvin, on my blog, before it was even a newsletter, on my blog at calnewport.com/blog back in like 2007, 2008, into 2009. If you go back into the archives, if you go to calnewport.com, click on essays, see the archives link. I was talking a lot about how students can cultivate deep lives. I didn't use the terminology deep life, but I had these methodologies that I was developing for students to try to make the undergraduate experience meaningful and deep and interesting and sustainable, while also making sure that they were opening up really interesting o- uh, opportunities after graduation. Because this is the world I was in. I came from an Ivy League school right to MIT. I was surrounded by high-achieving elite students, and so many of them were burning out. And I was, I, I thought this was a waste. Like, college is cool. Grad school is cool. This should be a fantastic period of your life, especially if you're intellectually precocious. This is like a fantastic period of your life, and why waste it burning out? And they sort of just told themselves, like, "I don't know. If I grind, uh, it's just gonna maximize my opportunities, and I don't wanna waste this. I wanna make sure, like, whatever job or grad school I wanna do is available." But they didn't really understand even how, how the job market worked or how the grad school admissions process worked. They were just sort of generically trying to transmute pain and difficulty into accomplishment. It was, uh, sort of masochistic in some sense. Like, this is how, if I'm not hurting, I'm not living up to my potential. If I'm not hurting, I'm somehow wasting this opportunity that I was given by getting into this school. And that didn't sit well with me, so I wrote a lot about this. If you go back to those archives, you'll find first me talking about a methodology I called the Zen Valedictorian, and this is where I begin to write about, um, the, how to do really well academically in school, why this didn't meant you should grind. And in particular, I, I, I, I lasered in on what are the real sources of stress and overload and burnout for college students, and it's, it's not the, the hardness of the hardest courses they take. It's their schedules are too crowded typically, too many hard courses, too many students trying to do two or three majors, trying to say what's like the maximum number of courses that I can actually fit into a schedule at once. I call them heart attack semesters. Like, that was the problem. Too many activities, too many courses, and no one cares about this. There is no college admissions officer in your future when you're an undergrad who's gonna look at the difficulty of your transcript. There's no one who's gonna say, "Oh my God, you're in four clubs and double majoring, and you're taking three hard science courses at the same time. I'm so impressed." No one cares. The job recruiter says, "Where did you go to college? What'd you major? What's your GPA?" And then they're on to doing their specific interview test. They don't care how hard your semesters were. I have been on many grad school admissions committee. We do not go through and try to understand how much pain you went through to get through your schedule. We say, "Where'd you go to college?" What grades did you get in the classes we care about? Do your reference letters say you're sharp? Right? So a lot of the Zen Valedictorian was saying, "Look, you guys have all this unnecessary stress by making your schedules too hard and then having really bad study habits." That then evolved to a second methodology called the Romantic Scholar. Just google calnewport.com romantic scholar. You'll find these articles. Romantic Scholar then got into more of not just how to avoid burnout, but now how to seek meaning, uh, how to seek meaning in what you're doing in college, how to make it a positive thing. So the Zen Valedictorian, how to do well without burning out. Romantic Scholar, how to do well and, and, like, love the experience of being a, a student. And so here's where I begin talking about, okay, you, you simplify your schedule. You invest psychologically in what you're studying, which means you read books and go to talks related to your field of study that have no connection to any class or grades. Like, you begin telling yourself the story, intellect, academic computer science, academic philosophy, academic government. Like, I'm really interested in this, and the people, and I'm, I'm, uh, aspirationally hearing these scholars who are coming to give talks, and I'm reading books on the topic, and I really like this. Uh, I talk about in the Romantic Scholar about changing where you study. Make it more adventurous or aesthetic or interesting so studying itself becomes this, uh, something you look forward to. I, I, I was an uppercl- you know, I was in grad school, but I was like, if you're an upperclassman, I had this, this article called Heidegger and Hefeweizen. You, like, you go to, like, the pub where there's a fireplace, and that's where you read your philosophy textbook in the same way that the Oxford dons would've done 100 years earlier, uh, over in England. You go hiking into the woods. I posted these pictures of people studying philosophy by waterfalls or the astronomy student who would sneak onto the roof of the astronomy building so she, she could see the stars when she was reading it. So you, you, you try to make this. You slow down. You connect to the subject matter. You lean into the subject matter. Um, you, you get pretentious and interesting and annoying to everyone else around you who's not in college, and it's fantastic when you're young. And so anyways, there's a whole series about specifically how to live a deep life in college. Here's a little insider information, a little, like, Cal Newport trivia. I wanted to write a book about this back in, like, 2008, and I was gonna call it The Zen Valedictorian, and I wanted to write this book about the deep life at college. My publisher was like, "Eh, that's too narrow," and like, "We can't use the word zen. That's, like, really overplayed." And that's what actually morphed into my third book, which is sort of the least known in my catalog, but one of the more interesting books I've ever written. It's called How to Become a High School Superstar. We kinda turned all this attention instead to, like, okay, well, what about if you're in high school, how do you do this? Like, get into a good college without stressing out. This was a really big deal back then. Um, it's a big deal again right now, but it was a big deal back then. And, and, and that book kind of became more narrow and instructive, but I, I always had... And it's a cool book because you should read that book, by the way, even if you're not a high school student. It's like Malcolm Gladwell meets A for Admissions. It's a fantastic, weird, wonderful book. Uh, but that was my original idea that they talked me out of, was the deep life at college. So maybe I should go back and write that someday. But anyways, thanks, Albin. Uh, Google calnewport.com romantic scholar, calnewport.com zen valedictorian, and read, uh, basically all of that High School Superstar book because a lot of the DNA of these ideas that I formed thinking about college students made it into that book, so there's traces of these top, this topic all throughout my, my deep back catalog. That's cool stuff. Zen Valedictorian. I like that phrase. I used to give speeches about this at colleges. Yeah. Like, how not to stress out. Those were the days. I guess c- I mean, college students, I guess they're still stressed out. Um- Yeah ... you know, it became a big pro- it was a big problem back then. Like, our generation was, like, super stressed out- Yeah ... and it felt somewhat new. Yeah. They're probably still stressed out. They are. They're also on their phones a lot, too. Mm. It's a different, different type of thing. All right. Let's see. Who do we got next? All right. Next question's from

4. 34:38 – 40:38

   Can I live a deep life as a lawyer?

   1. CNCal Newport34:38

      Tucker. "I always thought I would go to law school after college. However, after looking at the demands of corporate lawyers, I shifted my undergrad focus to philosophy. The goal was to get my PhD and then an academic job. Next, I learned the slim chance of actually getting that type of job, so then I took the LSATs and did very well. How can I pursue a deep life with these two different paths?" All right. Great question because we gotta go back and do a little exercise in lifestyle-centric planning. Let's put aside now the paths. So I think what you're doing here, this is sort of grand goal thinking. It's very common. Like, do I wanna be a philosopher or do I wanna be a lawyer? Now, your goal is not a particular job. Your goal is to live as close as possible to your ideal lifestyle. Lifestyle-centric career plan is what you need to do. So what you need to figure out, and this would be a great time to do some structured journaling to help this, what you need to figure out is, what is my master narrative for what I want my life to be like in my 20s, especially, like, in my late 20s, if I can look ahead to after whatever training I do is actually, um, over? What attributes do I want of that life? You need a narrative like one of the ones I wrote before. Again, this is a narrative for your in, your 20s. It doesn't have to be the narrative that you have to stick to for the rest of your life. Then you look, work backwards and say, "Okay. What are my different options for getting there?" And this is where you can confront the reality of your opportunities and obstacles. This is where in this type of planning you can say, "Look, I did well on my LSAT, so there's an opportunity here where I could go to one of these good law schools on scholarship, and I could avoid getting too much debt, and it would open up these type of positions. Um, of the different positions this might open up, here's a particular type of position that I've sort of researched and knows exists that would actually be a fantastic, like, step towards this ideal lifestyle vision I have." Right? You're working backwards from the vision. Or maybe you're like, "Actually, this philosophy track, now I'm, I'm kinda figuring it out. This vision I have is really, really is gonna be best fulfilled if I could be, like, a philosophy professor," and okay, now I need to really figure out how, how reasonable is that. How hard is it to do this? Well, okay, I don't need to be a philosophy professor at Rutgers. Which a lot of people don't know, actually, Jesse, is like one of the number one programs.

   2. SPSpeaker36:50

      Really?

   3. CNCal Newport36:50

      You wanna guess it? Rutgers. Yes. If you hear someone say, "I'm a philosophy PhD from Rutgers," that's a little bit of swagger going on right there.

   4. SPSpeaker36:57

      [laughs]

   5. CNCal Newport36:58

      It's like someone saying, "I got my computer science doctorate from MIT." They're kind of like, you know-

   6. SPSpeaker37:01

      [laughs]

   7. CNCal Newport37:02

      ... doing a little s- doing a little swagger. Not that I've ever actually seen an MI- a computer science student from MIT actually swagger. I don't think we know how.

   8. SPSpeaker37:09

      [laughs]

   9. CNCal Newport37:10

      I think if we swaggered, we would accidentally crack our glasses and pull a muscle.

   10. SPSpeaker37:13

       [laughs] Like, ow. Oh, my goodness.

   11. CNCal Newport37:18

       We don't swagger. We don't swagger. Um, anyways, uh, so then maybe when you're doing this exercise, you're like, "No, no, no, if I could, I, what I want, I, I wanna be, um, like a tenure line philosophy professor, but it can be at like a, a tier two liberal arts school, but in a college town, and this makes this whole vision work." And, and then again, you can work the math there. All right, do I have the grades? What type of grad school could I get into? What would it take to sort of stand out enough in that grad school to get one of these positions? Like, now you have specificity that you can deploy on your side, and that's how you come to your answer to this question. If you don't do this, then what you're doing instead is just, like pursuing a grand goal and hoping it works out, right? And this is where you get into trouble, right? With law, man, so many people get in trouble this way. They say, "I don't know. I'm smart. Law school's kind of hard. I did well on my LSAT." It's kind of impressive to get into a hard law school, and I don't know what else to do. But they're not thinking through the ideal lifestyle they want. So then they get to law school, and like, well, what's the impressive thing to do here? Well, they make it on law review, and you make it on law review, and like, "That was impressive. I'm proud of myself." You're like, what's the next more impressive thing? "Well, hmm, these top firms in the big cities, these are, you know, I got one of the internships. Those are hard to get. I feel really good about myself. Oh, now this firm is offering me a position. These are hard to get. I'm getting paid well. This is great." And then six years later, they're like, "Oh, my God. I'm miserable. All I do is work all the time. I don't like working all the time. I, like, it's r- this is, what am I doing here?" Because you never had in your mind fixed, this is the lifestyle I'm heading towards. You're just working forwards towards what's interesting or impressive. Same thing happens with a lot of, uh, academics. Like, "I don't know. Maybe I want to be a professor. That's hard." And you don't take in the reality of what's life like a professor like, but also the type of professorship you want, how easy or hard is that to get? I mean, I mention Rutgers because I was, you know, um, on a hiring committee, we hired a philosopher. Uh, he's fantastic at Georgetown. He's, has his doctorate from Rutgers, is just like a superstar. And it's like, that's, just to like get a philosophy role at Georgetown, it was like you have to be a superstar. I think he was at Harvard and then Rutgers and is in like a hot area. You know, so like you, they don't, you don't confront that reality. You're just like, "I don't know. I'm going to grad school. It should be fine." And then, you know, that all fizzles. So work backwards. Get that lifestyle image really clear and then start saying, "Is there a path through law to this lifestyle? What would it be? Is there a path to this lifestyle through philosophy? What would that be?" Maybe, maybe you end up, like you really like philosophy, but you find this path through law where you're low debt and you take this, you're like an estate will lawyer on like, uh, Cape Ann, north of Boston. Um, and you have a shingle up, and you've kind of worked out, like I could do X amount of income pretty flexibly and it's not too stressful, and I could, um, foster this interest in philosophy and actually I'm gonna systematically build up my ability to write books on this. I'm gonna be like a popularizer of this. And you could, you might build this like fantastic life where you're, you know, you're living in Rockport and you jog on the beach and you, you have like this, you, this sort of like flexible work that like pays enough for you to get by while you work on these books, and it's this like really interesting lifestyle. But none of these solutions come up with grand goal thinking. They only come up when you do lifestyle-centric planning. So you're in a fantastic position to apply this. You're gonna come up with a lot of cool options, but I can't tell you what the right one is until you've actually done this exercise. All right. Who do we got next?

   12. SPSpeaker40:36

       Next question's from

5. 40:38 – 43:35

   How does Cal keep track of the books he wants to read?

   1. SPSpeaker40:38

      Suresh. "I've optimized my workflow to the point where I can complete all my weekly work tasks in a single day. Working remotely, this leaves me with a lot of free time, which no one seems to have noticed. Moreover, my bosses have been so impressed with my work that I've been promoted and received a raise. Is it unethical to pursue other creative ventures on the side while I'm still on the clock?"

   2. CNCal Newport40:58

      Oh, that's so cool. I mean, that is like the apotheosis of the stuff we talk about with digital knowledge work, is that there, in a lot of these jobs, there's so much nonsense and so much just like communication and meetings that if you're really organized, the actual work itself doesn't take that much time. And this is an extreme. I love this. One day a week, [laughs] she's done. One day a week.

   3. SPSpeaker41:21

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CNCal Newport41:21

      That's it, right? Uh, and no one notices. That's the thing I love. [laughs] No, no one notices that four days a week, uh, I'm not actually, I'm not actually working. Um, this is po- this is possible now in this age of remote work that it was, like, not as possible before. I mean, this is why Tim Ferriss' book, The 4-Hour Workweek, which was basically pitching this, like how do you get what Suresh has? Step one in that book was like, you have to figure out how to get a remote work agreement because, you know, if people see you not there, they know you're not working. All right. Is it unethical? I say no. If you do not have a contract that specifies the days and hours that you are supposed to be working, what matters is, are you, uh, satisfactorily producing the work that they expect you to produce? Are they happy with what you're producing? Right? If they are, you are sort of satisfying your implicit contract there. If they're unhappy with what you're producing, uh, then they'll let you know, and then if you have to work more time to do that, then you do. I am completely fine with this idea. Uh, knowledge work is very autonomous. It's not a time card job. It's like, we want you to be doing enough stuff and be useful enough to us in a sort of generic way, and if you are, you are. So for the sake of the rest of us who are jealous, please take full advantage of this situation, right? Do something cool with these other four days, and what that cool thing is depends on your master narrative for your lifestyle-centric planning. It could be something that is very non-professional, and it could be some fantastic project you're involved in or some really cool thing you do with, like, where you live or some hobby or you get into, like, some sort of, like, crazy shape, and I don't know. Like, that would be really cool. It could be a fantastic professional thing that, you know, like you become, uh, a genre novelist or start this side hustle business. I don't know why you would start another business, by the way, when you're making a good living working one day a week with no stress, but you know, whatever. Do something really cool with this opportunity, and the best way to figure out what that cool thing is is to have a great master narrative. You can make aggressive steps towards an ideal lifestyle vision When you're completely comfortable financially and have four days a week free. So that's really cool. Good for Suresh. And I guess I kinda do that to some degree. My problem is I just get other jobs. [laughs] Yeah. I just take one of these jobs and work one day a week, but instead I do other jobs. All right, what do we got next?

   5. SPSpeaker43:32

      I added an additional question, 'cause I was actually

6. 43:35 – 47:26

   I finish all my work in a single day. Is this unethical?

   1. SPSpeaker43:35

      curious about this too-

   2. CNCal Newport43:35

      Ooh

   3. SPSpeaker43:35

      ... so I logged it.

   4. CNCal Newport43:36

      All right. Um, an unpre- unprepared question. All right.

   5. SPSpeaker43:39

      Well, no, it, it's, um... We have six questions today. That's what I was getting at.

   6. CNCal Newport43:42

      Oh, I see.

   7. SPSpeaker43:43

      Not just five.

   8. CNCal Newport43:43

      Okay. Excellent.

   9. SPSpeaker43:44

      So this is from Morgan, and she says, "I was listening to your recap of July books in episode 312. How do you keep track to the books you wanna read? At five books a month, I would imagine your reading list is quite long."

   10. CNCal Newport43:54

       I don't overthink it. I don't overthink it. Uh, I'm exposed to a lot of books. I love books. I will often, like, randomly buy a book even if I'm not gonna read it right away. Like, "This book looks cool. Let me buy it," just off Amazon or at, you know, People's Books here or at Politics and Prose, wherever I am. So I'll just have kinda stacks of books like, "Oh, I think I wanna read these one day." But I have no formal list. I don't have some formal order. I don't overthink it, and it's because, uh, a big part of my method for reading five books is love what you're reading. It's like, what mood am I... I finished these, this book. I wanna add another book to my rotation. I don't know, what am I in the mood for right now? And I like... I ride that interest. I'm, I'm really thinking about this. Great, let me grab a book like this one I'm still excited about and read it over the next few days. So I have no list, and I have no system for how, how I do it, and books come into my life, and they leave my life, and they come back into my life. My, uh, my oldest, Jesse, stole the book you got me. So now I'm waiting.

   11. SPSpeaker44:51

       The baseball one?

   12. CNCal Newport44:51

       Yeah.

   13. SPSpeaker44:52

       Oh, that's cool.

   14. CNCal Newport44:53

       He's... Because he, you know, he likes baseball.

   15. SPSpeaker44:55

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CNCal Newport44:55

       And, uh, on vacation, he was, whatever it was, uh, he, he... Having trouble sleeping or something, uh, or he was reading... I guess he was reading a book. So he's, he's reading the James Corey Expanse sci-fi novels, which get kind of, um, scary, I guess, right? It's like this solar system-devouring virus, and it's like... I don't know. I don't really understand it, but it's kind of apocalyptic or whatever. And it was, like, getting him fired up before bed, reading it before bed, and I was like, "No, no, you gotta read something that is interesting, right, but doesn't, like, get you worked up about anything. That's what you have to read right before bed." And so I had brought the baseball book to read. He, he stole that from me because, like, the history of New York City and baseball, like, sports journalism is, like, fantastic for that. Like, it's really interesting.

   17. SPSpeaker45:39

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CNCal Newport45:40

       Uh, but it's historical, and, you know, baseball is like, it's calming-

   19. SPSpeaker45:45

       Yeah

   20. CNCal Newport45:45

       ... as soon as he's working through it.

   21. SPSpeaker45:46

       Yeah.

   22. CNCal Newport45:46

       So I, I have to wait for him to finish, because like me, he'll read two or three books at a time, so I have to steal it back from him.

   23. SPSpeaker45:52

       That was a suggestion from Mad Dog, so we can thank him.

   24. CNCal Newport45:55

       I recommended it to someone the other day, by the way, and they're exci- they're excited about it. Longtime Mets fan, longtime New York baseball fan. Uh, anyway, so ba- [laughs] back to the list though. Um, so don't overthink it, right? Reading should be... Non-professional reading, you should be reading for the joy of it, you know? And so I've just... That's why my reading lists are so weird. I read ran- It's like I'm just in the mood for something, and I'll read it, or I'll go on, like, a long riff of, like, I'm reading a bunch of, like, rabbis' books now, or now I'm reading, like, a fantasy science fiction book, and now I'm reading a book about the ocean. Um, if you don't love what you're reading, it's hard to keep up with it, and I'm just a big believer is, like, reading is better than non-reading. It's... You get more familiar with your mind. Your mind gets more familiar with you. Your mind gets exercise. So, uh, I don't do formal systems. Um, I don't do... Uh, like, I'm not, I'm not really part of, like, book club culture where it's like, "Okay, like, what's the next, like, good book, like, everyone is supposed to read?" I don't do... I just... I'm all over the place, you know? I have not yet read Kristen Hannah and also Lincoln in the Bardo. Instead I'm, you know, I don't know, reading pretty random stuff. I'm reading, like, an intellectual biography of Thoreau. Uh, but I also just finished the latest Lincoln Child thriller that I found in a supermarket in Upstate New York. I'm, I'm all over the place. So don't overthink it, Morgan. Just read what looks wonderful to you in the moment. Uh, and Cal Newport books. I don't care how you feel about those. My philosophy there is it's good to buy fresh copies too.

   25. SPSpeaker47:19

       [laughs]

   26. CNCal Newport47:20

       You know, once a month or so. You gotta buy some fresh copies just to kinda, to keep it going. But other than that, just read what you love.

7. 47:26 – 51:20

   How do I cultivate a deep life in a busy career?

   1. CNCal Newport47:27

      All right, what do we got next?

   2. SPSpeaker47:28

      We have our Slow Productivity-

   3. CNCal Newport47:30

      Ooh

   4. SPSpeaker47:30

      ... Corner.

   5. CNCal Newport47:31

      So for those who are unfamiliar, once a week we have a question that ties to my new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. If you haven't bought that book, you should. It's sort of the bible for, like, a lot of what we talk about here on this show. But mainly it is an excuse to play our Slow Productivity Corner theme music. Jesse, let's hear that music. [slow music] All right, what's our question?

   6. SPSpeaker47:57

      Question is from Dr. V. "I'm a professor with a packed teaching schedule. When school isn't in session, I go to conferences. I also have multiple other jobs like you. I'm having a hard time cultivating a deep life that balances everything. I do not know whether I have a case of elite laziness, if my time management is flawed, or if I'm simply burned out. I suspect a lack of seasonality in my work is partly responsible. How do I cultivate a deep life in such a busy career?"

   7. CNCal Newport48:25

      Well, I'll tell you my instinct here is to say do less. All right? Uh, don't mimic me in this. I, I do not mean the fact that I have these multiple jobs. That should not be an example you follow. The right example to follow is how I treat any one of those jobs. So you isolate, like, how I treat my job, like, just specifically as a professor, and I keep that, like, relatively constrained. I focus on deep work, protected on the things that matter. I have systems around the shallow work. I'm very careful about, like, workload. I'm very careful about communication patterns, and it keeps that job, like, relatively well, uh, constrained, and that's what allows me to then have, like, other jobs added on. Um, but for most people, the right answer is just take one of those jobs and make it more reasonable. You know, part of the reason why I get away with, like, doing the multiple jobs is I have some flexibility because the, the, the multiple jobs I do are sort of all- ... tied to sort of like elite institutions, right? It's, you know, a professor, but a professor at like an R1 well-known university. My books are New York Times bestsellers. My dr- magazine writings for The New Yorker. Um, that gives me a little bit more flexibility than a normal person would have. The elite institutions tend to give you more like flexibility around things. Um, I'm, I'm drawing from probably like a well of talent that helps me like kind of pull these things off. But I would recommend like the right thing to do here is, uh, simplification driven by lifestyle centric planning. Like even I'm not gonna keep up these three jobs much longer. I gotta simplify things. So like, what do you want in your ideal lifestyle? How do you get there? How do you use like this career capital you've already built up as a professor to get there? You know, that's the way I would think about it. So you're probably gonna end up taking some things off your plate. Simplifying what you do do, doing that in a more interesting way, simplifying other parts of your life. Uh, that, that's what I recommend. All right. Let's, uh, play us out. [gentle music] I tell people sometimes, Jesse, part one or principle one of my Slow Productivity book, Do Fewer Things, is, uh, written for myself. So it really, like the original name of the chapter was Cal, comma, Do Fewer Things. Like just-

   8. SPSpeaker50:43

      So you're gonna stop writing books?

   9. CNCal Newport50:45

      I don't know what I'm gonna do. I think, yeah, I think I'm gonna full time just work on my a- my accent impersonation work.

   10. SPSpeaker50:51

       Yeah.

   11. CNCal Newport50:51

       Just be like a-

   12. SPSpeaker50:52

       The Paris one?

   13. CNCal Newport50:53

       Just do like a lot of French accents.

   14. SPSpeaker50:54

       That would do well over there in the Olympics.

   15. CNCal Newport50:56

       I'm sure I'd be very popular.

   16. SPSpeaker50:57

       [laughs]

   17. CNCal Newport50:58

       Yeah. They'd be like, "Productivity guru and computer scientist Cal Newport found dead, baguette through his orbital socket in Paris earlier this week." All right. Do we have a call?

   18. SPSpeaker51:13

       We do.

   19. CNCal Newport51:13

       I love the calls. Let's hear it.

   20. SPSpeaker51:18

       Hey, Cal. Hey, Jesse.

8. 51:20 – 56:57

   Should I leave a perfect job?

   1. SPSpeaker51:20

      I hope you're very well. I'm currently working a job in finance and accounting, and I love it. It is fully remote, and perhaps more importantly, it is fully results driven. I have not had a single team meeting ever since I started this job, and it's incredible. Everyone just checks on what everyone else is doing and their progress on shared spreadsheets to make sure all the accounting and finance work's getting done, and it's great. Here's the issue. I might have, in order to get a professional certification, I might have to find another job, maybe in addition to this one or to replace this one. Hopefully not, but let's see. The way I found this perfect job was very lucky. For my next job, I don't wanna rely on luck. So how can I filter out, uh, or select for jobs that have this ideal results driven culture that allows me to work deeply and focus and not waste time on, well, time wasting, uh, activities? Any advice would help a lot, and thank you for all you do. I love all your books, and they've been life-changing. Take care.

   2. CNCal Newport52:30

      All right. Good question. I, I, I think there's three things I wanna point out here. One, I think the job you have now is what many more jobs should be like, right? Like this is the right way for knowledge work, uh, in a modern digital economy. This is the way I think it really should function. Uh, very results oriented, very clear, very structured collaboration. "This is what you're doing for us. You're doing this work. This is how we collaborate. Like make sure that we have the information we need, then you just get after it and do the work. And when and how you do it is kind of up to you. Uh, we don't care." Like that really is, for so many jobs, it's what it should be. I think that job is way more compatible with like a, a more sustainable lifestyle. It's, uh, it gets rid of a lot of the time wasting. The deep to shallow ratio is really high. You have a lot more flexibility. It's much more mentally engaging. There's a lot more options here too, right? Because now this gives you a knob you can turn. So like, "I wanna do about this much work." "Great. That's a job that we pay you this much for." "I wanna do this much work." "That's a job we pay you this much for." You can see this sort of knob turning where now you have this capability which doesn't really exist in the job market now, where in the knowledge work job market is really about just saturating your time. But now you have this opportunity where like, "I can do this thing this really well, and I can do this at sort of like 50% time, and that money is fine for where I live." It's just all these options would be fantastic. More jobs should be like that. My second point is be sure that you need the certification that you need to change your job. Like make sure that you have thought this through, you have your lifestyle centric plan, and you s- there's some clear vision for why getting the certification in a different type of job is necessary for getting closer to what's in this plan, and that it's not something just because it's there, it's harder, it's what comes next. Like make sure there's not a vision of your ideal lifestyle where you can really just build it around, uh, what you're doing now. I'm not saying that there is a problem with your plan, I just wanna make sure that you've really thought that plan through. All right, and the third point is the answer to your actual question. How do you filter a new job to make sure that it's not gonna be a hyperactive hive mind sweatshop? I would ask them. I would ask them like h- what is your philosophies around workload management, communication, collaboration? And what you're looking for here is not even a specific answer, but the ability for them to give an answer. If they don't really have a specific answer to this question, it's a hyperactive hive mind shop. It's, "I don't know. We rock and roll. Like we just... Can you do this? What about this? Let's jump on a call. Let's just Zoom. I'll Slack over what's going on with this." Uh, and there be dragons, be wary. If they have an answer like, "Okay. Well, like in your current job, well, we use Spread... Here's how it happens. There's these spreadsheets where we keep track of what's been accomplished and who's working on what, and we kind of check in on that each day. We have these sort of status meetings we use." If they use terms like Agile or Kanban, "We use a sort of Scrum based methodology," now your ears can perk up. Because it's a place that actually thinks systematically about workload communication and collaboration And the cool thing about that is even if you don't love their exact system or you, you just have never seen it before, you don't know if it works well or not, a place that has a system is much more open to systems. Now it's much more open to like, "You know what? Here's what I'm doing. I just read Slow Productivity, and I'm doing an active waiting list to... in... to have a sort of personalized pull versus pile workload management system like I talk about in my book." This is a place you're like, "Cool. Tell me how that works. I'm curious about it," right? Places that have systems are more open to new systems. So I think it's a fantastic thing to filter for. Um, I have long said this, like this comes out of my book, A World Without Email. A, a place that is like a full hyperactive hive mind shop where it's just like everything's worked out on the fly with like back and forth messages, a place that embraces what I call in Slow Productivity pseudo productivity, visible effort is what we care about. Activity is our proxy for useful effort. You should see that as negative as them saying like, "This place is gonna have a 90-minute commute." You should think about that just as much you think about as like, "What... This place is in an industry that I don't even... uh, that, you know, conflicts with my values," right? Like, that should be one of the tier one things you think about because it has some of the biggest impact on your day-to-day satisfaction in the work, so it's smart to filter for it. So I always say it's not the details of the specific idea that matters when you ask about these things, it's the fact that they have a specific answer that indicates that like, they're, they're are Deep Questions brethren here. We're on the same page, and you'll have the opportunity to do something cool. We're gonna move on now to a case study. This is

9. 56:57 – 1:04:19

   Career capital theory in action

   1. CNCal Newport56:57

      where people send in an accounts of putting the type of things we talk about on this show into action. Remember, if you have a case study to share, the easiest way to do so is send it to jesse@calnewport.com. We're always looking for more case studies. Are we getting some more, Jesse, now?

   2. SPSpeaker57:10

      Yeah. Yeah.

   3. CNCal Newport57:10

      Okay. Now that we put out the word, people are sending them in.

   4. SPSpeaker57:13

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CNCal Newport57:13

      All right. Keep those coming. Uh, we love the case studies. All right. So today's case study comes from Patrick. Patrick says, "I am 35 and have an associate's degree in engineering. I have worked repairing lab instruments for 10 years. With this job, I was able to afford a small apartment with my wife. A decision point came when we recently had our first child. I was considering getting my bachelor's degree or changing my career for a job that would pay more since I was concerned about how much it would cost to raise a child. It was during this time that I read your book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. The idea about career capital stood out to me. Instead of leaving my current job for a new field or going back to school, I decided to focus on learning the parts of my job that other technicians avoided. One example was a software system we used to bill for our repairs. Coworkers felt it was a waste of time to learn this and only focused on how quickly they could repair instruments. But after spending two weeks learning the software, I became the go-to person to fix issues with it. I was then able to use my expertise in this to get a promotion. This allows me to reduce the time I spend repairing instruments and have dedicated time to work on learning new software or improving processes at work. A couple years later, and my family hasn't had issues with affording our necessities. That work capital idea ended up saving me a lot of time and money, and my family is all the better for it." All right, Patrick, I love this story. This is music to my ears. Career capital theory in action. Again, we fall back. This goes back to the deep dive. We fall back to our instinct. It's a very American instinct. I wanna fix something about my situation. Like, this job is fine, but it seems like it has a cap. I have a new child on the way. I worry about affording it. Our instinct is to say, "I gotta throw some big change or goal at it. I'll go back to school. I'll take on the debt, but like, somehow this will probably make things better." Like, we just wanna kinda do something. We wanna take action. It feels good. But career capital theory says, "Well, wait a second. All that matters is how valuable are the things you can do, and let's get like really specific about it. What's valuable in your field? What's valuable in your job? If you can get better at something that's valuable, you will have more options. That is your main thing you can hand in." That might mean going back to school if you can identify this specific skill has huge value, and I can build a career on it that's gonna give me lots of options. But sometimes, like we see in Patrick's case, those opportunities are right in front of you. If I master this software, I become the most valuable person on my team. I can write my own ticket. Less time in the field, my income goes up just as much, and now this makes, uh, our financial burden like very salua- like very, uh, tractable. That's career capital theory in action. You have to keep that in mind when you're doing lifestyle centric planning. Like, once you have your master narrative, your vision of your ideal lifestyle, one of the big tools you have to work with when figuring out how to get there is just career capital. I already know how to do this. If I could leverage that to learn this and this, that would give me these capabilities, which would move me closer to this part of my vision. Like, often, career capital theory plays a big role in pursuing your master narrative. It's not as sexy as like, "Let me make this big change and hope it shakes out into something cool," um, but it tends to be very effective in a sort of concrete, on the ground, tactical type of way. All right. So that's all we have for questions. We've got a, a final segment coming up. I wanna react to some audio I heard recently, but first, take a brief break, hear from another one of our sponsors. I wanna talk about our friends at MyBodyTutor. I've known Adam Gilbert, MyBodyTutor's founder, for many years. I actually just talked to him the other day. Known Adam for a long time. Anyways, his company, MyBodyTutor, is, uh, incredibly successful because it's built on a really good idea. Adam knows that the biggest problem when you're trying to get healthier is not information. It's not what's good food, bad food, how to exercise. It's consistency. How do I actually stick with the things that really matter? The best way to stick with things that matter is to collaborate with a coach. MyBodyTutor gets you hooked up with a coach 100% online that allows you now to do this at a fraction of the cost of actually having to have a nutritionist or a physical trainer come to your house. So when you sign up with MyBodyTutor, you get connected with one of their, uh, on staff trainers, and they figure out your goals. They help you come up with a plan. Here's what we're doing with diet. Here's what we're doing with exercise. Custom fit to exactly what's going on in your life, your challenges, your obstacles, your opportunities. And then, and here's key, you check in with this tutor every day. They have a simple app. I've, I've tried it out. You can do it right from the app at the end of each day. The trainer sends you back, like, a note. If you have, like, a question, "Oh my God, we're traveling, like, what should I do with this workout? I'm gonna be... You- We're- I'm gonna be away from my gym for a week," they, they give you custom information. But mainly you have this consistency of someone is doing this journey with you, you're reporting to every day. It's that consistency that works. It's why people get results from MyBodyTutor. If you wanna get healthier, I think this is the investment you should make. Now here's the good news. Uh, when you go to mybodytutor.com, that's T-U-T-O-R, mybodytutor.com, mention Deep Questions when you sign up and you'll get $50 off your first month. The time to get healthy is now. Do it at mybodytutor.com and mention Deep Questions sent you to get $50 off. I also wanna talk about our friends at Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot, Shopify helps you do your thing however you cha-ching. Look, Shopify is the global commerce platform that can help you at every stage of your business, from the launch your online shop stage, to the first real life store stage, all the way to the did we just hit a million dollar stage. Shopify is there to help you grow. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, it is there. They sell everywhere. They have e-commerce. They have point of sale s- systems you can have right there in your actual physical store. And this is, like, the big company in this space. If you're selling things, they make it so much easier. Uh, they even have now Shopify Magic, an AI-powered assistant to help you convert to even more sales. When we start our long-awaited Deep Questions store, there's no question we're using Shopify. We still don't know what we're gonna sell, though, Jesse, don't we have some hats coming from someone?

   6. SPSpeaker1:03:24

      We do.

   7. CNCal Newport1:03:25

      I'm excited about those.

   8. SPSpeaker1:03:26

      Zach.

   9. CNCal Newport1:03:26

      Zach is sending Jesse and I some VBLCPP hats, which I'm psyched about.

   10. SPSpeaker1:03:32

       I think they actually were delivered yesterday, but I wasn't home, so I'll get them today.

   11. CNCal Newport1:03:35

       Oh, okay, I gotta get those before we go on vacation. I wanna wear mine on vacation. But anyways, uh, the demand clearly will raise for these hats once people see how awesome they are. And then when we end up having to set up a store to sell them, Shopify will make this easy for us. Uh, so Shopify is who you should be using if you are selling. They're already powering 10% of all e-commerce in the US, so you know they get the job done. You can sign up for a $1 per month trial period if you go to shopify.com/deep. You have to type that all in lowercase for this to work. Go to shopify.com/deep now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com/deep. [bell dings] All right, Jesse,

10. 1:04:19 – 1:08:53

    Jon M. Chu on Creativity and Hard Work

    1. CNCal Newport1:04:19

       let's get to our final segment. So I wanna bring up, uh, on the screen here for people who are listening instead of... Or watching instead of just listening, an article that someone sent me, one of you sent me, from NPR. This is an article about the director Jon M. Chu, the director of the new WICKED movie. Uh, there was an interview he did on Fresh Air. So the headline for this interview, which I have up right here, is WICKED Director Jon M. Chu Says Creativity Isn't Magic, It's Hard Work. So there's a particular segment from this interview I wanna react to. Let's see if we can load that up. Jesse, can we play that audio here?

    2. SPSpeaker1:04:59

       Yeah. Here we go.

    3. CNCal Newport1:05:00

       All right, so let's load this up.

    4. SPSpeaker1:05:03

       About it's not about red carpets, it's not about this press tour, it's not about any of that. It's about doing the work, and it's hard. And creativity, even though some people are, "Oh, you... Creativity is... You're a creative genius. It comes out of the air." No, it's, like, hard. I gotta schedule my time. I gotta put time into when I ruminate and when I come up with something, and it's a routine. It's not the, the, the... The secret is it's, it's not magic. It's, it's, it's work.

    5. SPSpeaker1:05:32

       Jon Chu, it's really just been such a pleasure to-

    6. CNCal Newport1:05:34

       All right. Uh, fantastic quote from someone who knows what he's talking about, revered director. Um, I wanted to play it because I think it, it gets to a common mistake that people make, and I wanna correct that mistake. So you will often hear from people, especially, like, the, the current chorus of cultural critics who talk a lot about, um, the problem with productivity. They will set up this dichotomy between, uh, organization and creativity. You can be this, like, structured automaton trying to optimize everything, or, you know, you can spend more time watching birds and be open to things and be creative and bohemian, and the... You have this sort of dichotomy between structure and organization and creativity. This is not right. If you talk to any sort of professional creatives, like Jon M. Chu in this interview, you realize, no, no, the real dichotomy is between creativity and distraction. That's what you should care about if you care about creativity, is, uh, distraction, diversion, fighting against your ability to actually give focused thought, focused creative thought to the, the things that you're actually trying to create. Focused internal thought to get those intimations of the sparks of the new idea. The focused constructive thought required to take that spark and actually build it into the screenplay, to build it into the novel, to build it into the original piece of art. It's distraction versus creativity that matters. How do you keep distraction at bay? That's organization. That's productivity. This is why Jon M. Chu was talking about, "I structure my time. I have to schedule my time carefully. I have to put aside time just to ruminate and have open thoughts." The type of structure we talk about, the planning, the time blocking, et cetera, is a bulwark against chaos and distraction. It's what enables creativity. It's what enables ex nihilo creation. All right? So that is the right dichotomy. Uh, it seems natural to feel like, "No, no, I don't wanna be super structured. I'm gonna... I wanna be free." But the people who are free are not free. Those who don't control their time are enslaved by the things that are out of their control. So I think this is a great example of it. Jon M. Chu is very structured and careful in his time because he has to be to be very unstructured and creative in what he actually produces. So I thought that was a cool example of a point that I like to come back to, uh, again and again. All right, so anyways, that's all the time we have for today. Uh, thank you everyone for listening. We'll be, you know, back again next week. We, we, we might actually be soon, look out for this, we might be airing a few classic episodes of the show, so keep your eyes open for that, especially when Jess and I are on vacation. Might be an excuse to hear the best episodes you never heard in the first place. Um, but we'll be back after that with new episodes, and until then, as always, stay deep. Hey, so if you liked today's discussion about structured journaling, I think you'll also like Episode 303, which talks about the problem of making grand goals your main strategy for building a deeper life. It's a great complement to today's discussion. Check it out. 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

Episode duration: 1:08:53