Productivity Toolkit: How To Achieve Any Goal, Focus & Enter Flow State On Command | Cal Newport

Cal Newport 0:00 The goal for today's Deep Dive is to go through four essential tools that you need to build your productivity toolkit. What I mean by this is tools that if you omit any one of these, there will probably be a notable issue in your attempts to organize your life. But if you have all four of these, you probably don't have to think another minute about productivity. That's what I mean by essential. So I will go through those. Um, stick with me here, because after I go through these four tools, I have a special guest who knows what he's talking about, who is gonna join me, and we're going to, uh, he's gonna help me with the questions, and we'll get into this a little bit deeper. All right, but let's roll. Four tools I think are essential for being organized. Number one, this is not exciting, but it is absolutely necessary, your calendar. Now, this seems obvious, but actually, you'd be surprised how often when I'm talking to someone who's having a hard time getting their arms around everything they have to do, that I discover that they are not taking their calendar seriously. They, they use it sometimes. Not everything is on there. They don't check it every day. So it doesn't sound sexy, but it's absolutely fundamental to being organized, is having a calendar that you trust. It needs to be digital, especially if you're in knowledge work. You have too many things happening in your life to try to keep track of just on paper. Digital also allows you to attach information to your appointments. Here is the details about where this meeting is. Here's the notes I need to keep in mind before I go on and do this interview. You can set up notifications to remind you of appointments that are coming up. You can, as I do, uh, have a separate calendar that is just for reminders, so it's not for actual appointments that are scheduled, but for reminders for that day. Don't forget this is due soon. Don't forget there's an event later at night. So you need to take your calendar seriously. There's no way to avoid that. Now, let me give you an advanced tip if you already use a calendar, a tool such as Calendly to control access to this calendar. Now, this is more important than you might imagine because there is a tension that occurs in most people's relationship with their calendar. There is a tension between their time and what is reasonable for their time and their social instincts. So what happens is, often, someone lets you know they wanna meet with you. "Hey, when can we get a call on the calendar?" Your social instincts kick in. This is someone I know. I wanna be personable and helpful to someone I know, and it becomes a game of, when can I find a spot anywhere on my calendar that works for this person? And if I can find that spot, we win the game. And what happens is this doesn't scale well, and soon you find your days are fragmented with appointments here and there, uh, and there's never any room left for you to actually get other things done. This is where having an access tool like Calendly works because it allows you in advance to specify to the tool, these are the times on these days that I wanna be open to meetings. And when it comes time then that the person you know or you care about or you work with says, "Hey, we should talk. We should get a call," whatever, when you point them towards this tool, you are saving yourself from having to transition into that social interaction mode. Uh, the tool is saving you from yourself. It is showing you times that you predetermined at a more sober moment are good times for meetings. The person on the other side just appreciates the clarity of, "Great, I can select something and be done with this." So that's my advanced tip there. Separate scheduling from your deepest social instincts. All right, tool number two out of the four, an obligation/status list. Now, I'm purposefully being careful with my language here. Typically, you would say for this thing I'm describing, you would say, "Oh yes, you're talking about a task list or a to-do list," but I don't wanna use that terminology. I wanna be more specific about this. So when I say an obligation status list, I'm capturing two things. One, what are the things that should be on this list? Well, I'm gonna say obligations. Anything that you have committed to do, you want that written down somewhere where you don't have to keep it in your head. Now, why is this different than a task list? Not everything that is on your list of commitments is an actual task yet or something that's just waiting for you to execute. It could be, for example, that you are waiting to hear back from someone else about the next step of a project, and this is a project that's on your mind because you've committed to do this project. But there's no actual task that you're writing down here for you to do. You're putting a stake in the ground, to use David Allen terminology, so that you don't have to-- you won't forget about this, and you don't wanna have to just keep track of it in your head. This is why I add on the other side of that, slash status. So in this list, you have all the obligations you've committed to, and you have a clear indication of their status. Again, this is something I think task miss, uh, task lists often miss. The status could be, do this as soon as possible, or the status could be back burner. We're not looking for time to do this right now, but we don't wanna forget about it because there might be a better time in the future when we are gonna do this. This status might be waiting to hear back from someone about this. So I think obligation/status list captures better the goal of this tool, which is to make sure that all the things you would otherwise be trying to keep track of in your head have a place where they can be. And these things are more expansive than simply, "Here's a task that I need to do." All right, let's get advanced here. I wanna give an advanced tweak on each of these four tools I talk about. So for the obligation status list, I'm going to give you two ideas. One, separate these lists by roles. We talk about this often on the show, but instead of having just one master list for everything on your plate, have a separate one for the different roles in your life. And I don't just mean professional and non-professional, though that is an important distinction. But within, for example, your professional life, if you have multiple roles, separate lists for each As I've talked about again, uh, again and again on this show, I separate out my role as a teacher, uh, so the professor teaching part from the research role in my life, from the writing role in my life. Those are all professional obligations, but I separate the roles. You might do something similar with your personal related obligation status list. There could be family household stuff might be different than the softball league that you're very serious about, and you're the commissioner of, and you keep that all separate. Why do we do that? Because cognitive context switching is expensive. You don't wanna be encountering obligations from completely unrelated cognitive contexts at the same time. Your brain has a hard time trying to switch back and forth between those contexts. It's better to be immersed in a single context and work on that till you're ready to switch completely to another context. The other advanced tip I would give here is go digital. I like to use Trello because I can have columns be my statuses, and the cards can take on them lots of other digital information. So if there's files related to this obligation, I can attach it to the card. If there's email correspondence that is relevant to this particular obligation, I can copy and paste it onto the back of the card. If there's a checklist of things related to this obligation, I can put it on the virtual card related to the obligation. So take advantage of that flexibility, use columns for statuses, and you could use distinct boards for roles. You can use advanced tools here to do your obligation status list correctly. All right, tool number three, multi-scale planning documents. Longtime listeners of this show know that I'm a big advocate of multi-scale planning. What is my plan for the quarter? What is my plan for the week? What is my plan for today? That is a sort of an optimal division of scales for trying to keep yourself moving towards the things you need to get done, uh, without getting too far off track. So one of the essential four tools is to actually just have those documents. Here's my quarterly plan. Here's my weekly plan. Here's my plan for what I am doing today. I mean, again, I am repetitive about pushing multi-scale planning, but it's one of the most important things that most people don't do. So if we're gonna talk about essential tools for feeling like you're in control of everything you have to do, something to keep track of your plan on those three scales is necessary. My advanced suggestion here is that when it comes to the daily plan, have a separate analog notebook or other type of capture device for that plan. I mean, obviously you could use my Time-Block Planner, or you could use another notebook of your choice. But having an analog notebook for your daily plan is an advanced tip because what does this allow you to do? Execute and reference your daily plan without having to necessarily be on a computer. There's a lot of times during your day where you probably are on a computer anyways, it's convenient, but there might be other times when you're not, where your plan says, "Go for a walk to think through this idea," followed by, "Go do this errand," and then come back and, you know, work on reading this book, and you might not wanna have anything to do with a glowing screen during that period. If your daily plan is analog, you have it with you. For your weekly and quarterly plan, who cares? You're looking at the weekly plan once a day. You're gonna look at your computer once a day anyways. Your quarterly plan you look at once a week. I don't care where that is. But your daily plan being analog is an advanced tip there. All right, our, our fourth and final tool here, a core systems document. This is psychology hacking at this point. Have a piece of paper somewhere where you write down, "These are the actual systems I'm implementing." So we talked about having multi-scale planning documents, but somewhere you wanna write down, "I do multi-scale planning." You might have a really good obligation status list, but somewhere you wanna write down, "I keep an obligation status list that I look at each day when I make my daily plan, and I look at at the end of the day before I shut down." Somewhere have written down, "These are the actual systems I follow to organize my life." The reason why this is important is because otherwise your mind interprets these as fluid. I experiment with this, I experiment with that. Well, why don't I set up some other sort of software here? Knowing instead, no, I-- this is my configuration right now. These are what I'm doing. Let me remind myself of what I'm doing. Just knowing that there is a root or core to the different organizational ideas or systems you have helps your mind commit to it. Now, my advanced tip here is to laminate it and put it where it is easily visible. You don't need a lamination machine. It's fine to buy a clear plastic sheeting. I used to do this. So it feels more protected than a sheet of paper, and just have it where you'll see it. Now, this is not really about remembering because it takes, what, three days before you say, "I know exactly what's on there." It's more about that psychological boost. Yes, these are my systems. This is what I've committed to. I have systems. And it really does keep you on those systems. It also allows experimentation to be much more clear and deliberate because when you wanna experiment with something different, you can go to that core system document. This is the experiment I'm running. I'm gonna try using this new approach, this new tool. Maybe after a month, then I'll go back and check and see how it's doing. It adds structure to this part of our professional lives that we often make implicit, that it's just a haphazard collection of things that we fall into the habit of doing and can fall right back out of the habit of doing just as easily. So a core systems document, a little thing, but it helps add a internal structure to your whole setup to try to keep control over what you have going on. All right, two things I wanna note about this. First of all, a common thread that unites all four of these tools is that they're relatively technology agnostic. Unlike a lot of YouTube productivity content, for example, or productivity, hardcore productivity podcasts, I am not that interested in hyper-tuning your custom software setup. I don't care about you having some hacked Microsoft Connect that allows you to do hand gestures that will then be interpreted through ChatGPT and then fed through a Zapier script to make sure that your Notion database of tasks for next week is automatically color-coded. That's a hobby. That's like being into knitting or fixing up your bicycle, and it's fine if you're into it, but it really is not necessary to be organized. So I don't care what technologies you use. Most of what I just described here you could probably do with a stack of legal pads and a 10-cent pen that you stole from the bank. I mean, I don't really care how you implement this. It's the systems that matter, not the technology or the details of the technology. Of course, the one exception is if you don't have my Timeblock Planner you'll go blind. But we all know that. So that's a thread that goes through this. I'm relatively technology agnostic. Uh, the second thing I wanna argue here is that I do think this is in some sense a complete set, and what I mean by a complete set is that, uh, if you neglect one of these four things, you will probably feel the, the effects of that. If you don't have a calendar in your life, there's a lot of stress that comes from that. There's a lot of lack of control or, or awareness of your time that comes with that. If you have no obligation status list, you're gonna be trying to keep track of things in your head is very stressful. Go read David Allen. That whole book is a psychology book. People say it's a productivity book. Getting Things Done is a psychology book. It's about reducing the stress of having too many things to do. So if you're missing one of these four you're gonna see a problem. On the other hand, the reason why I say it's a complete set, the other reason is if you do these four things and never again think about the word productivity or organization, never again consume any content on this topic, you'll probably be fine. Like, that's enough, and then you can move on with the stuff that really matters, you know, having a vision, executing, structuring out your life towards depth and away from shallows and distractions. It's not to say there's not other things you can do that could be helpful or interesting, and some people are more into this than others, but this, this is the essential. To be a Newportonian. I know Jessie and I always argue about the right term. A Newportonian, uh, you want those four things. You want those four things going on. All right, so let me bring in someone now. I wanna bring in a, uh, a guest to, to help us talk about these topics and then answer some questions about them. It's my friend and the author David Epstein. Uh, David's the number one New York Times bestselling author of Range. David, let me see if I get the subtitle right from memory. Why, uh, generalists-

David Epstein 14:54 So far so good

Cal Newport 14:55 ... why generalists, um, are the downfall of America. Did I get that right? No, that's not right.

David Epstein 15:01 That's, that was the working title.

Cal Newport 15:02 That was the working title.

David Epstein 15:02 We decided to replace it before it came out.

Cal Newport 15:04 Why, why generalists something something specialists.

David Epstein 15:06 Triumph in a Specialized World.

Cal Newport 15:08 Triumph.

David Epstein 15:08 Yeah.

Cal Newport 15:08 I was gonna say trump. But I was like, "You probably didn't say trump." Triumph in a Specialized World. Okay.

David Epstein 15:13 Triumph in a Specialized World.

Cal Newport 15:13 Um, also the author of The Sports Gene.

David Epstein 15:15 Yep.

Cal Newport 15:16 One of my, uh, favorite books. Both New York Times bestsellers. Um, friend of the show. He's been on the show before, uh, past episode. Anyways, was hanging out, so I said, "Why don't you, why don't you come on, why don't you come on mic?" All right, so David, let me get your take on this because, A, you are a productive person in the sense that you produce really good books, you produce your newsletter, which is fantastic.

David Epstein 15:36 O- once every six years though, I should add, so.

Cal Newport 15:38 Slow productivity, my friend.

David Epstein 15:39 [laughs]

Cal Newport 15:40 Uh, give us your newsletter name. I really like your newsletter.

David Epstein 15:42 Uh, Range Widely.

Cal Newport 15:42 Range Widely.

David Epstein 15:43 On Substack, yeah.

Cal Newport 15:44 Yeah. And you have studied, especially in that newsletter and in your book Range, a lot of people who have done a lot of interesting things.

David Epstein 15:49 Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 15:49 These generalists that have done really interesting things. So you've seen productivity from the standpoint of results.

David Epstein 15:55 Yeah.

Cal Newport 15:56 People who do cool things.

David Epstein 15:57 Yeah.

Cal Newport 15:57 Not from fiddling or whatever. Um, so what's your reaction here? What am I missing?

David Epstein 16:02 I don't, I don't know that I'd say you're missing anything, but I think to emphasize a few of your points, I mean, you mentioned having a, a document for your systems, right? So that you can do much more deliberate experimentation.

Cal Newport 16:12 Yeah.

David Epstein 16:12 And I think that is absolutely a theme with a lot of people that I researched, is that they have one way or another their experimentation is, is very deliberate, right?

Cal Newport 16:21 Yeah.

David Epstein 16:21 So, like, when I was writing about generalists, like, you can become someone who just pinballs around and is kind of trying things intuitively at all times.

Cal Newport 16:28 Sure.

David Epstein 16:28 But I think the people who became productive through those experiments had some system where it was like, "Here's the thing I'm going to try."

Cal Newport 16:35 Yes.

David Epstein 16:35 "I'm gonna come back and reflect on did that meet my expectations or not, and where do I pivot next from that?" So there's a whole literature about what's called self-regulatory learning that has to do with this, where, you know, you say... I- it basically, if I had to boil down this massive, uh, body of literature, it comes down to reflection, like having a deliberate system for reflection. So, like, when I was trying to write my first book I'd never written a piece of anything longer than, like, 7,000 words, and suddenly I have to do-

Cal Newport 17:01 Yeah

David Epstein 17:02 ... 90,000 or 100,000. And I actually talked to a researcher, this woman named Mariah Alfring Gemzer, who does self-regulatory learning research. And she said, "Start your journal. Say w- you know, 'What do I need to learn next? Why do I w- need to learn it? Am I sure I need to learn it?"

Cal Newport 17:19 Yeah.

David Epstein 17:20 "Who do I need to help me learn it?"

Cal Newport 17:21 Yeah.

David Epstein 17:22 Then you make a hypothesis about how you're gonna learn about it.

Cal Newport 17:24 Yeah.

David Epstein 17:25 Run an experiment, come back, reflect on what worked, what didn't, and then make your next experiment. And that, that sort of system of-

Cal Newport 17:30 Yes

David Epstein 17:30 ... deliberate experimentation I think is, like, ubiquitous.

Cal Newport 17:33 Interesting. So that's what if we're thinking about generalists, which your book talks about the advantage of that approach, what makes generalism, if I can invent a term, successful, is it has to be coupled to structure.

David Epstein 17:44 Yeah.

Cal Newport 17:45 Otherwise, it could just become an, uh, I'm sure people use it as an excuse for, like, let me just bounce to what's interesting to me.

David Epstein 17:51 That's right. That's right.

Cal Newport 17:51 And if you don't have a structure to actually, uh, capture the, the feedback-

David Epstein 17:56 That's right

Cal Newport 17:56 ... what's working, what's not working. You know, in my old days when I would do student advice, uh, used to have this phrase we would use which was "study like Darwin".

David Epstein 18:04 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 18:04 And it particularly-

David Epstein 18:06 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 18:06 ... just looking at studying we would say, like, the number one thing you can do, forget any particular system. Is after you try a way for studying for a test, uh, after you try a, a particular method for writing a paper, uh, et cetera, um, go back and say, "How did this work? Did this work well? Could something work better?" And I guess I used the word Darwin because you could evolve.

David Epstein 18:29 Totally.

Cal Newport 18:30 Yeah, you pick up what's working.

David Epstein 18:31 Totally.

Cal Newport 18:31 So, so we're, we're applying this to our productivity systems in some sense, but it makes sense. Uh, don't just buy something because you wanna have software.

David Epstein 18:39 Yeah.

Cal Newport 18:39 Be really specific about what did this work, what could work better? Where is there-

David Epstein 18:43 Yeah

Cal Newport 18:43 ... where is there inefficiency?

David Epstein 18:43 And what aspect of it might have wor- I mean, th- this was like a trend in research I saw, whether it was people looking at how their own skills fit with certain lines of work or a project to invent some new kind of technology. It was here- here's what I think. I'm gonna find a way to test that, maybe this aspect of it worked and that didn't.

Cal Newport 18:59 Yeah.

David Epstein 18:59 And then how do I use that to, to do the next experiment, basically. So that, that kind of process of smart experiments and pivoting.

Cal Newport 19:06 Yeah, so we could call it Darwinian productivity or something like this.

David Epstein 19:09 Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 19:09 Like know what you're, uh, put out your systems into that competitive landscape, and then let the things that work survive, and the things that don't, don't.

David Epstein 19:17 Yeah.

Cal Newport 19:17 Uh, so knowing what you're doing is very important.

David Epstein 19:21 Absolutely.

Cal Newport 19:21 That's an interesting twist to it. What about you? Do you have sophisticated, complicated, connect-driven-

David Epstein 19:26 I-

Cal Newport 19:26 ... productivity systems?

David Epstein 19:27 I mean, I do keep, like, a self-regulatory notebook, like, so I have something I call my, my book of small experiments also, where, like, at least every other month, I force myself to come up with some hypothesis about something I think I'm interested in-

Cal Newport 19:36 Right

David Epstein 19:36 ... that usually has to do with expanding my own skill or knowledge base.

Cal Newport 19:39 Yep.

David Epstein 19:39 And can then come up with a way to test that. That can be as simple as interviewing somebody in a certain area or as complicated as, like, taking a class or something.

Cal Newport 19:47 So even if it's not connected to a particular project you're working on.

David Epstein 19:49 It's u- it's, it's, it's almost always growing out of something I'm interested in-

Cal Newport 19:52 Right

David Epstein 19:52 ... where I'm saying I need to know more about this, or I need some skill that I, that I don't have, right?

Cal Newport 19:56 Yeah.

David Epstein 19:56 Like, so for Range, I felt the, the structural challenges of the writing were getting complicated enough where I ended up taking, like, fiction writing classes 'cause I wanted to understand the more different types of structural work.

Cal Newport 20:07 Yes.

David Epstein 20:08 Um, so it was related. You know, it was related to what I was doing. Um, one, one other thing I do have, though-

Cal Newport 20:13 Yes

David Epstein 20:13 ... that might be a little different. I have something called a master thought list.

Cal Newport 20:16 Okay.

David Epstein 20:16 So obviously, one of the themes of what you were talking about was, like, getting stuff out of your head, right? 'Cause you don't want to be taking up brain space with trying to remember things.

Cal Newport 20:22 Yeah.

David Epstein 20:23 And this master thought list that initially developed kind of organically for me in my first book, and now I'm much more systematic about, is basically when I'm in sort of the wide net phase of a project, I start bringing stuff into this, like, you know, you can use Roam or whatever, but again, I think it's technology agnostic. Like, I-

Cal Newport 20:40 Yep

David Epstein 20:41 ... just use some simple text document. Um, and it can be a, a figure, a statistic, a quote, whatever. I put it on the list, keep track of where it's from, and as like things accumulate-

Cal Newport 20:51 Yeah

David Epstein 20:51 ... I move them physically toward one another. And then I put a tag over them that's like the name of, you know, whatever, cognitive bias tag, like whatever-

Cal Newport 20:57 Right

David Epstein 20:58 ... the, the theme is. And I type in a bunch of words I think I would, would come to my mind if I were looking for this topic.

Cal Newport 21:04 Sure.

David Epstein 21:04 And then I start-

Cal Newport 21:05 Type in a bunch of words as tags or descriptors.

David Epstein 21:07 As, exactly.

Cal Newport 21:08 Yeah.

David Epstein 21:08 Exactly. And I move sort of like topics near one another. And this, it becomes, like, sort of a wiki of my brain, right?

Cal Newport 21:14 Yeah.

David Epstein 21:14 Like, where I can find stuff that's associative. And so not only do I keep track of things, so I... Because I used to have this, "Oh, I came across something interesting," like, "Where the hell is it?"

Cal Newport 21:22 Yep.

David Epstein 21:23 And I would spend a lot of time refinding stuff that I knew I had found before.

Cal Newport 21:26 Yep.

David Epstein 21:27 So I can put in a lot less time to, like, keeping track of that on the front end, but also I find that I come across stuff constantly that I think is really interesting, I need to read this, and it sticks in my head unless I put it somewhere.

Cal Newport 21:37 Yeah.

David Epstein 21:37 And I found this is a place where I can actually put stuff that I probably will never look at again.

Cal Newport 21:41 Yeah.

David Epstein 21:41 But it's, like, out of my mind because it was, it was too-

Cal Newport 21:43 Your, your mind lets it go

David Epstein 21:44 ... it was too interesting to get rid of.

Cal Newport 21:45 Yeah.

David Epstein 21:46 But I filed it somewhere. Maybe I'll see it again sometime. Like, I've, maybe I put a few words next to it-

Cal Newport 21:50 Yeah

David Epstein 21:50 ... in case I wanna find it again, but it's, like, not burdening. It's not leaving, like, a residue in my brain anymore because I've put it somewhere.

Cal Newport 21:56 I hear that. And I like the idea we're being technology agnostic.

David Epstein 21:59 Yeah.

Cal Newport 21:59 In fact, I don't even wanna jump to what particular software. We, we hear there's-

David Epstein 22:03 Yeah

Cal Newport 22:03 ... tags or this or that, but you could be doing this with, you know-

David Epstein 22:05 Yeah

Cal Newport 22:05 ... index cards or folders.

David Epstein 22:06 Unless you're one of your sponsors. I, I think people should use whoever sponsors you that-

Cal Newport 22:10 Exactly

David Epstein 22:10 ... uh, that's the tech that I think-

Cal Newport 22:11 Yeah

David Epstein 22:11 ... must be used by all people.

Cal Newport 22:12 Does Grammarly have a... 'Cause I'm looking at my sponsors here. Do they have a knowledge management system? [laughs] Because if so, does Roam have a knowledge management system?

David Epstein 22:19 Yeah. Other than that, we're technology agnostic.

Cal Newport 22:20 Yeah.

David Epstein 22:20 But all those things.

Cal Newport 22:21 Except for, except for my sponsors.

David Epstein 22:22 Yeah.

Cal Newport 22:22 We, we agree with that. Yeah, so you could do this with folders. You could do this... I, I think Ryan Holiday does this with index cards.

David Epstein 22:28 Oh, yeah, literally. Oh my gosh. I, oh.

Cal Newport 22:30 You've, you've seen him?

David Epstein 22:30 Yeah, I visited his bookstore-

Cal Newport 22:31 Yeah

David Epstein 22:31 ... and I accidentally elbowed a stack of the cards, the famous cards, and they, like, spilled over, and I'm like, "Oh my God, I just, like-"

Cal Newport 22:37 This is why-

David Epstein 22:37 ... slapped me back. But they, fortunately, they kinda stayed in order.

Cal Newport 22:40 Oh, I was gonna say, because honest to God, I think you delayed his most recent book.

David Epstein 22:42 Yeah, I probably may have. [laughs]

Cal Newport 22:43 And I don't, look, I don't wanna blame you for that.

David Epstein 22:45 [laughs]

Cal Newport 22:45 But I'm just saying.

David Epstein 22:46 It's possible. [laughs]

Cal Newport 22:47 That, that seems kinda near. I mean, I do this with, with, uh, writing projects, Scrivener.

David Epstein 22:51 Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, I use Scrivener.

Cal Newport 22:52 But even, okay, here's articles I may or may not write for The New Yorker.

David Epstein 22:56 Yeah.

Cal Newport 22:56 Here's a book that's, like, two books in the future.

David Epstein 22:58 Yeah.

Cal Newport 22:58 Uh, I will create the Scrivener project in advance, so I have a place where there's a research place where I can start creating folders and putting things. Because again, my, uh, same type of situation, I'm thinking, you know, I have this book idea that I haven't even sold yet.

David Epstein 23:10 Yeah.

Cal Newport 23:11 But I just came across an interview, and man, that would be really useful for that book. Go to the Scrivener project, go to the Research tab, find a relevant folder, uh, you know, throw it in there. This is not an advanced technology for doing this. I'm only mentioning a technology here because all of the Zettlekasten-heads out there are like, "No, my God, you should be doing, you know-

David Epstein 23:28 Yeah

Cal Newport 23:28 ... some customized whatever." This is not a technology set up to do that, but it solves the problem.

David Epstein 23:33 Yeah, yeah, totally.

Cal Newport 23:33 It goes to a place. I know where it is. I know at some point, years in the future even, I'm like, "Oh, what did I think about this topic? I thought about writing a book." It's a bunch of links and articles, and-

David Epstein 23:42 Yeah

Cal Newport 23:42 ... they're all in there. They're all in folders.

David Epstein 23:44 And it's kinda crazy how many, like, m- tons of writers I admire is, like, if, if I get to know them, they have something like this.

Cal Newport 23:50 Yeah.

David Epstein 23:50 Something like this, right? Whether they call it, like, a spark list or, like, some idea receptacle, whatever it is.

Cal Newport 23:55 Yeah.

David Epstein 23:56 To move things that maybe they'll never look at again, or maybe it's associated with a project they're kinda thinking about, it's sorta gestating. But, like, we all seem to have something like this.

Cal Newport 24:04 All right, so then here's what... I'm gonna give a take.

David Epstein 24:06 Okay.

Cal Newport 24:06 All right? Then you tell me, tell me if we like this take.

David Epstein 24:07 Make it a hot take.

Cal Newport 24:08 Yeah. Here's, here's my take on spark lists.

David Epstein 24:10 Okay.

Cal Newport 24:12 S- if you don't have one, start with the simplest possible implementation. And make your frustrations with the current implementation be what drive you to a new implementation. So don't work backwards from what is the, the most fully featured advanced possible implementation, because you're gonna fall into the vortex of fiddling.

David Epstein 24:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 24:31 Like, "This, I'm gonna have this, and if I just do this, it's gonna happen," whatever. Start with paper. I don't care.

David Epstein 24:35 Yeah.

Cal Newport 24:35 Start with the simplest possible thing, and then when you get to a scale of ideas and use, you're like, "You know what? Here's my main problem, is that, like, I have to print it," or this or that. "All right, so let me just switch from this to, like, almost doing this, but with PDFs." And okay, now, you know, it'd be really nice if I could tag it. Well, let me just go from this to something that just lets me... So start as simple as possible, and let particular frustrations drive you to new tools, because those tools specifically solve those problems. You're much more likely to have a, a workable system, and much more likely... less likely to fall into the fiddling vortex.

David Epstein 25:04 Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that goes to your Darwinian approach, right?

Cal Newport 25:06 Yeah.

David Epstein 25:06 You're like, "What's working here? Let's keep that part."

Cal Newport 25:08 Yeah.

David Epstein 25:08 "And what's not working? We need to change that."

Cal Newport 25:10 All right. So we've added to the, uh... So, so Dave's addition to the essential staying organized toolkits are, we're gonna say the self-regulatory notebook.

David Epstein 25:17 Yeah.

Cal Newport 25:18 Which we can kinda integrate with the core systems idea, but, like, have a place where you keep track of, "This is what I am doing."

David Epstein 25:24 Yeah.

Cal Newport 25:24 Yeah.

David Epstein 25:24 Yeah. And, and learning. And, and by the way, sorry, I... This, this self-regulatory s- like, everyone should be doing this in everything.

Cal Newport 25:30 Yeah.

David Epstein 25:30 Like, it doesn't... Spending a little more time reflecting on the stuff they're doing. There's like, whether you're looking at athletes or, like, I was just reading a paper about surgical teams that-

Cal Newport 25:38 Yeah

David Epstein 25:38 ... one team spends 100% of its time doing procedures. The other, 80% of its time doing procedures, 20% doing this kind of reflection.

Cal Newport 25:45 Yeah.

David Epstein 25:45 What went well? What didn't? What can we try next time?

Cal Newport 25:47 Yeah.

David Epstein 25:47 And that, the 80/20 team, their complication rate goes down much faster, the 100% team, by taking this time to say-

Cal Newport 25:53 Interesting

David Epstein 25:54 ... "What, what worked? What's a smart experiment we can try to improve on the things that didn't work as well as they should?"

Cal Newport 25:58 What about stuff in your personal life? Uh, exercise, eating, parenting.

David Epstein 26:02 Oh, yeah.

Cal Newport 26:03 Like, you're saying everything.

David Epstein 26:04 I, I, I, I think ev- I mean, and again, I think everything, yes.

Cal Newport 26:09 Yeah.

David Epstein 26:09 'Cause I think, I think this, this, again, this body of literature on self-regulatory learning suggests that we don't get all of the learning signal out of the things we do purely just by-

Cal Newport 26:20 Doing it

David Epstein 26:20 ... living through them and, and, and intuiting.

Cal Newport 26:22 Yeah.

David Epstein 26:22 Right? That reflection adds, like, a whole other layer to that.

Cal Newport 26:24 Right. So as a parent, uh, if you don't have coherently written down, like, "These are the, the, the things I'm working on right now. This is my working framework for how I deal with X, Y, and Z," if you don't have it written down, then, A, you're not directing your energy, but, B, you're not getting a feedback signal that allows you to figure out, like, "Oh, this strategy for dealing with picky eating really does not work."

David Epstein 26:44 That's right. I mean, it's like stealing, it's like stealing a mindset from the scientific method a little bit.

Cal Newport 26:47 Yeah.

David Epstein 26:48 Right? Um-

Cal Newport 26:49 Yeah

David Epstein 26:49 ... and, and, and I don't want it to sound like it has to be a burdensome thing.

Cal Newport 26:51 Yeah.

David Epstein 26:52 Uh, 'cause I actually think it can take less time because you'll actually learn from the things that you're trying.

Cal Newport 26:56 Yes.

David Epstein 26:57 Um, yeah.

Cal Newport 26:58 And it'll get better. I like this. Okay, so the self-regulatory notebook is all the different things you're doing on a regular basis in your life that matter to you, that you're doing with some intention, have it written down. "This is what I'm doing," and this is, uh, personal life, professional life. Also, as you're talking about, even just learning goals.

David Epstein 27:11 Yeah.

Cal Newport 27:11 "I'm trying to read these books. I'm trying to learn about this thing." Um, and then our second idea we're adding is the notion of, uh, spark lists, some sort of, some sort of place where it's not tasks.

David Epstein 27:21 Yeah.

Cal Newport 27:21 It's not obligations, but it's ideas-

David Epstein 27:23 Yeah, yeah

Cal Newport 27:23 ... that, that might be relevant to whatever aspects of your life you have ideas in.

David Epstein 27:26 Yeah.

Cal Newport 27:26 If you're a writer, it's books, but, you know, it, it, there's a lot of other areas.

David Epstein 27:30 And I think it should feel fine to put stuff that you're planning not to come back to-

Cal Newport 27:33 Yeah

David Epstein 27:33 ... on that list, right?

Cal Newport 27:34 Yeah.

David Epstein 27:34 Because it's super interesting, the headline grabbed you, you feel like you need to read it. Don't read it. Put it on that list, and probably you won't feel like you need to read it [laughs] , but if you do, it's there.

Cal Newport 27:43 But you know it's there.

David Epstein 27:43 Yeah.

Cal Newport 27:43 And you know, like, you look at it.

David Epstein 27:45 Yeah.

Cal Newport 27:45 Yeah. Okay, good. I like that. Two good additions. All right, so we have a bunch of questions I wanna get to from our listeners. Uh, before I do, um, wanna mention one of the sponsors that makes this show possible. That is our friends at Rhone, R-H-O-N-E, N-E. I said that weirdly. R-H-O-N-E.

David Epstein 28:03 That was weird, yeah.

Cal Newport 28:04 Rhone. Yeah, I know. I don't know. Thinking about spark lists. Um, I wanna talk in particular about their Commuter collection, the most comfortable, breathable, and flexible set of products known to man. Uh, they are here for every occasion. You can go from pants and dress shirts to fourth zips and polos. So whatever the occasion, there's something in the co- Commuter collection that can serve what you need. They're very comfortable four-way stretch fabric that is breathable and flexible. Uh, this is part of what I like about this collection is, look, I run hot, and if I'm gonna be at an event all day, I'm giving talks, I'm running around, I'm doing panels, maybe I'm in a, a publicity tour or something like this, really lightweight, flexible, breathable dress shirt type things is incredibly important to me. Uh, it also has a, a lack of hassle because of their wrinkle-free technology. Uh, as you wear it, the wrinkles disappear, so you can travel with this stuff. It's gonna look great. It is going to breathe. Uh, they also have gold fusion anti-odor technology, so again, you're doing one of these tough days, you're, uh, you're not gonna smell. It's much better than my old technique. Before I came across the, the Rhone Commuter collection, I was wearing thick woolen monk robes.

David Epstein 29:19 [laughs]

Cal Newport 29:20 Not as comfortable. You know, I real- I sh- I didn't think that through properly, so I'm very happy to have replaced my monk robes.

David Epstein 29:27 I thought you looked good in those, but...

Cal Newport 29:28 I think people might imagine I wear monk robes and just sort of, like, contemplate deep work. Uh, but they don't breathe.

David Epstein 29:35 [laughs]

Cal Newport 29:35 And no anti-odor technology.

David Epstein 29:37 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 29:37 Um, no, but very comfortable clothes. Also good for teaching. I do like these for teaching as well, because you really work up, you know, head of steam when you're in the class all day. So I, I, this is exactly the type of clothes you want. So the Commuter collection can get you through any workday and straight into whatever comes next. Head to rhone.com/cal and use the promo code "CAL" to save 20% off your entire order. That's 20% off your entire order when you head to R-H-O-N-E.com/cal and use the code "CAL." It's time to find your corner office comfort. Also talk about our longtime sponsor. That is our friends at Grammarly. When it comes to writing, Grammarly is there to support you from start to finish. For the last 10 years, Grammarly has been powered by AI technology that you can trust to help you, uh, write across all of the places, all of the devices and apps where you do your writing. This AI technology has taken some recent large leaps which have improved and increased the capability of Grammarly in ways that I think is really useful to help you, uh, get the most out of your writing. Let me give you some examples here. Let's say you're stuck with something you're trying to write, uh, you know, it's an email you're working on, for example. Grammarly can help you get started with ideas and outlines. You might say, for example, "Hey, can you give me 10 possible taglines for this thumbnail?" And it will give you some ideas to work with. Um, it can help you paraphrase what you're writing. Let's say you want it to be, uh, more concise. You can say to it, "Hey, can you shorten this? Can you make this clear?" So it just speeds up the process of communication when you're doing communications. Um, it can even do summaries, so you can say, just tell Grammarly, point it at a unnecessarily long email and say, "Hey, can you summarize this?" So Grammarly really has taken a leap forward. So, so in addition to just directly helping you improve what you wrote, it can now, uh, help you with the conception of the writing, with the tone of your writing, with the, the concision of your writing. So it's a, it's a really interesting tool. So you'll be amazed at what you can do with Grammarly, so go to grammarly.com/podcast to download it for free today. That's G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L-Y.com/podcast. All right, let's do some questions. Dave is gonna help me here, as long as we have him in studio. All right, so Dave, these, uh, these questions all come from podcast listeners. Let's see what we got here. Oh, here we go. All right, our first question

Cal Newport 32:15 is from Ben. Ben says, "What is one of the most underrated productivity superpowers people hear about but don't actually, uh, use enough or recognize its true effectiveness?" Um, I asked Dave about this before the show and he said, "Cocaine." So I mean, it-

David Epstein 32:35 Not wrong

Cal Newport 32:36 ... it helps you focus. It, it, it also makes you awesome.

David Epstein 32:38 People hear a lot about it.

Cal Newport 32:39 Makes you-

David Epstein 32:40 They don't implement

Cal Newport 32:41 ... makes you awesome. I mean, have you ever seen, like, a 1980s action film?

David Epstein 32:45 Yeah.

Cal Newport 32:46 All produced or written by people on cocaine.

David Epstein 32:48 [laughs]

Cal Newport 32:49 You don't get Commando.

David Epstein 32:51 You wouldn't be saying that unless cocaine were one of your sponsors.

Cal Newport 32:53 Well, that's true, but that's for the second half of the show.

David Epstein 32:56 Yeah. [laughs]

Cal Newport 32:56 Brought to you by cocaine.

David Epstein 32:58 [laughs]

Cal Newport 32:59 Have more thoughts and be awesome. Cocaine.

David Epstein 33:01 [laughs]

Cal Newport 33:02 Promo code Cal. Um, all right, productivity superpower. Are, I'm gonna give two. You think... Uh, so I guess the idea here is here's something that people don't do-

David Epstein 33:11 But they-

Cal Newport 33:11 ... that they should

David Epstein 33:12 ... but it's something that they do hear about was in the question, right?

Cal Newport 33:14 I guess it has to be something you hear about.

David Epstein 33:15 So it shouldn't be obscure, so it's-

Cal Newport 33:16 It could be obscure. And, and let's... Well, yeah, maybe they should hear about it. And let's use productivity real generally as just, like-

David Epstein 33:21 Okay

Cal Newport 33:21 ... something that helps you, um, do the stuff you wanna do, the important stuff better, or-

David Epstein 33:26 Sure

Cal Newport 33:26 ... it could mean be more better organized. We'll use one of those definitions. Um, I'm gonna say shutdown ritual, right?

David Epstein 33:35 Good one. Good one.

Cal Newport 33:36 And it's contrarian-y, because a shutdown ritual doesn't in the moment help you organize or execute work, but it does help you clear the mechanism of your brain when your workday is done so that it can actually rest and recharge so that you're not burnt out, and so you can re-attack your work the next day with freshness, but more importantly, also not have to have this insistent background, uh, drip of stress in your time outside of work. So I'm gonna, in a contrarian twist, I'm gonna throw having a good shutdown routine as a very unru- un- uh, what do they call it? Underrated productivity strategy. All right, can you think of one?

David Epstein 34:10 Yeah. Um, I'm thinking of a couple. I'm trying to decide. I think I'm gonna go with one that people I think have really heard of but don't actually do, is saying no to things that you want to do. Like, it's very easy. Everyone here is like, "You have to say no to more." It's almost, like, fetishized.

Cal Newport 34:26 Yeah.

David Epstein 34:26 You have to say no to stuff.

Cal Newport 34:27 Yeah.

David Epstein 34:27 But I think people primarily say no to stuff that they don't really wanna do anyway.

Cal Newport 34:31 Easy things.

David Epstein 34:31 I think you have to say no to some things that you do want to do.

Cal Newport 34:34 Yes.

David Epstein 34:34 Uh, and take note of that.

Cal Newport 34:36 Oh, interesting. Um, you say no a l- you say no a lot, right?

David Epstein 34:40 Yeah, I have a, I have a Henry Miller, the author, like, a handwritten postcard of his that I bought.

Cal Newport 34:45 Yeah.

David Epstein 34:45 That is him rejecting, uh, a writing assignment, and his excuse is, "I have a lot of stuff to do and I'm gonna have to just go to Europe. I'm sorry. I can't do it." So it- it's sort of he's, like, not actually giving... 'Cause I'm always thinking, like, "Do I have an excuse?" And you have to remind, you don't need one.

Cal Newport 35:00 Don't give one.

David Epstein 35:01 Like, you don't, you don't need...

Cal Newport 35:02 Yeah.

David Epstein 35:02 And so I'm better at it than I used to be.

Cal Newport 35:04 Yep.

David Epstein 35:04 Uh, still aspiring to, to be better.

Cal Newport 35:06 I like that. No to things that, that you should say yes to. 'Cause that does trap people, right? It's that there's the element of the thing that there's a cool element.

David Epstein 35:13 Yeah. Yeah.

Cal Newport 35:13 I mean, but for you and I, who do speaking and stuff like this, that's usually gonna be, like, a either a location-

David Epstein 35:18 Yeah

Cal Newport 35:19 ... or an audience that in the abstract is, like, "Oh, that'd be really cool."

David Epstein 35:23 Uh, I mean, there's so many interesting people out there. I would love to meet all of them.

Cal Newport 35:26 Yes.

David Epstein 35:26 But, like-

Cal Newport 35:27 And, like, cool places to go.

David Epstein 35:28 Yeah. And the better you do at stuff, the more of those opportunities to meet incredibly interesting people and go cool places-

Cal Newport 35:33 Yeah

David Epstein 35:33 ... you know, they happen.

Cal Newport 35:35 Yeah.

David Epstein 35:35 But then can prevent you from doing the things that gave you those opportunities in the first place.

Cal Newport 35:38 Yeah, this was a Ryan Holiday line, the, "The better you get at writing, the more the universe conspires to stop you from writing."

David Epstein 35:42 Totally.

Cal Newport 35:43 Yeah, yeah. All right, that's a good one. Uh, the other no, what's the, the other no technique is always you have to imagine yourself doing the thing tomorrow. So how would you feel if this thing you're about to say yes to was gonna happen tomorrow?

David Epstein 35:54 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 35:55 And would you be psyched about it? You know, like, "Oh, that'd be fun." Like, "Yeah, I'm gonna hang out with so-and-so or do whatever." Or you're like, "Oh my God, I gotta fly to Dubai tomorrow." Like, it's gonna be, like, such, like, a giant, like, schedule footprint, and I'm gonna stress out about it.

David Epstein 36:04 Oh, yeah. That's interesting. That's a good sort of technique. Yeah, like imagine yourself having said, like, yes to it, and it's right away.

Cal Newport 36:09 Yeah, and are you-

David Epstein 36:09 Do I feel good?

Cal Newport 36:10 Yeah

David Epstein 36:10 Yeah.

Cal Newport 36:10 Are you excited about it, like, "I'm glad it's right now," or...

David Epstein 36:12 Yeah.

Cal Newport 36:12 Yeah.

David Epstein 36:12 Yeah.

Cal Newport 36:12 Yeah.

David Epstein 36:12 That's an interesting one.

Cal Newport 36:13 Yeah. Um-

David Epstein 36:14 Now I'm thinking of others while we're... Yeah.

Cal Newport 36:16 Okay. So what else do we got?

David Epstein 36:17 I mean, you know Teresa Amabile's, like, progress principle-

Cal Newport 36:21 Sure

David Epstein 36:21 ... where it's like you get something done, write it down, because it builds momentum?

Cal Newport 36:24 Yeah.

David Epstein 36:25 I, I kinda like that.

Cal Newport 36:26 Yeah

David Epstein 36:26 Like, 'cause you do realize you're actually doing stuff, and you start to feel good.

Cal Newport 36:30 Yeah.

David Epstein 36:30 And like, positive emotions lead you to get more stuff done. But I think it, I think of that, and also planning fallacy, right? Like, people think they can get way more stuff done than they actually can.

Cal Newport 36:38 Yep.

David Epstein 36:38 So for me, when I write down things that are core things I need, I wanna get done today-

Cal Newport 36:42 Yeah

David Epstein 36:42 ... I frankly just list half as many things as I used to some years ago.

Cal Newport 36:46 Yep.

David Epstein 36:46 And that's way better, 'cause then I don't end the list. You know, otherwise, you have a list, then you carry things over to the next day-

Cal Newport 36:51 It gets worse

David Epstein 36:51 ... until the list gets so stupid that you just throw the whole thing out.

Cal Newport 36:54 Yeah.

David Epstein 36:54 So I just take m- my intuition of how many things I'm gonna get done that day and cut it in half.

Cal Newport 36:58 Cut it in half. I've talked about that before. Well, okay, so then I will pile onto that.

David Epstein 37:02 Okay, pile on.

Cal Newport 37:02 Uh, and say, um, scheduling every minute of your workday-

David Epstein 37:06 Okay

Cal Newport 37:06 ... which is, like, at the core of time blocking. And of course, I talk about time blocking all the time, but I do think it is underrated, right? Because, uh, people don't do it-

David Epstein 37:13 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 37:13 ... in large part because they think it's gonna be restrictive. But one of the big advantages of it, like, here's my plan for the day, is you see how it went.

David Epstein 37:22 Yeah. Right.

Cal Newport 37:23 And that's a very strong feedback signal, right?

David Epstein 37:24 Right. This is going back to our, like, deliberate experimentation-

Cal Newport 37:27 Exactly

David Epstein 37:27 ... issue.

Cal Newport 37:28 This is just like with your self-regulatory notebook.

David Epstein 37:29 Yeah.

Cal Newport 37:29 This is a, a scheduling experiment you run every day, and it doesn't take long for you to realize, like, okay, this idea that, uh, A, checking my emails can take 10 minutes-

David Epstein 37:37 Yeah

Cal Newport 37:38 ... folly, right? This idea, B, that I was gonna write this type of report I have to write once a week, I wanted it to take a half hour-

David Epstein 37:45 Yeah

Cal Newport 37:45 ... 'cause it would be great if it took a half hour. [laughs]

David Epstein 37:47 Right, right.

Cal Newport 37:47 It could fit into all these other things.

David Epstein 37:49 That, that's-

Cal Newport 37:49 This is a-

David Epstein 37:49 I feel that it should take a half hour.

Cal Newport 37:50 It should.

David Epstein 37:50 But it doesn't. [laughs]

Cal Newport 37:51 I mean, people fall in love with the schedule that they create where they say, "Wouldn't this be great?"

David Epstein 37:56 Yeah.

Cal Newport 37:56 Like, all these things I'm getting done. Uh, then you get the feedback. If this takes 90 minutes-

David Epstein 38:00 Yeah

Cal Newport 38:00 ... this trashes my mind, and so I can't jump from this straight into this, and no, I can't spend an hour on my inbox at the end of the day because I'm exhausted and there's too much context shifting.

David Epstein 38:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Cal Newport 38:10 Uh, it's a feedback signal.

David Epstein 38:11 I mean, and that's another big point, too, right? Is when people do that, they don't budget in the transition time from, like, switching cognitive tasks, right?

Cal Newport 38:18 Yeah. Okay, so I'm gonna add that. Uh, we're gonna pile on here. Who is this? Uh, Ben. All right, Ben. We're piling on here [laughs] in our answer. Um, here's... That's not superpower. Now I'm gonna talk about productivity, sort of small tactics that have, uh, punch above their weight class-

David Epstein 38:32 Okay

Cal Newport 38:32 ... in terms of their positive impact.

David Epstein 38:33 Small tactics, punch above their weight class.

Cal Newport 38:34 Right.

David Epstein 38:34 Okay.

Cal Newport 38:35 All right.

David Epstein 38:35 So not cocaine, because that's a big tactic-

Cal Newport 38:37 Well, cocaine, uh-

David Epstein 38:37 ... that punches above all weight classes

Cal Newport 38:39 ... promo code Cal.

David Epstein 38:40 Okay.

Cal Newport 38:40 Yeah, yeah.

David Epstein 38:41 cocaine.com.

Cal Newport 38:41 Brought to you by our sponsor.

David Epstein 38:42 Brought to you by our sponsor, Cocaine.

Cal Newport 38:43 Yeah, that, that, that, uh, just lives up to its well-deserved reputation as being important. All right, here's something as small that I think punches above its weight class, is the meeting buffer. It's just a rule. If I schedule a meeting on my calendar, I add a 15-minute meeting immediately after it when I schedule it. And it's just a context shift. Um, take care of all the stuff that came up-

David Epstein 39:04 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 39:04 ... in the meeting.

David Epstein 39:05 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 39:05 Get that written down. Clear it out of your head. Like, read some baseball trade rumors for 10 minutes.

David Epstein 39:11 Sure.

Cal Newport 39:11 Just, like, let that all clear before you go onto the next thing.

David Epstein 39:15 Yeah.

Cal Newport 39:15 And if you just schedule that immediately, okay, how long? We're doing an hour for the Zoom call. Great, I'm gonna... hour, 15 minutes on my calendar.

David Epstein 39:21 Yeah. Yeah.

Cal Newport 39:21 And then that's just protected, so, like, nothing else can-

David Epstein 39:23 Totally

Cal Newport 39:23 ... uh, you're not taking up that much of your time. It makes a, just the, the cognitive experience of the day becomes, uh, significantly less frenetic and significantly less exhausting because you're not, um, trying to shift from one cognitive context full of open loops.

David Epstein 39:38 Yeah.

Cal Newport 39:38 Oh, my God, like, I'm supposed to do this and that, and this gave me all these ideas, and I'm jumping from this immediately onto another call. All of that is open in my head as I'm trying to deal with this new thing. That's exhausting.

David Epstein 39:49 Totally. I mean, I call this, like, used buffer. I call this transition time, right?

Cal Newport 39:52 Yep.

David Epstein 39:52 And I think this, this is making me think of, we're both a fan of Gloria Mark and her work, right?

Cal Newport 39:56 Sure.

David Epstein 39:56 And she talked about the big and little mind. I think she might have taken that language from Maya Angelou, who talked about, like, when she was really engaged in writing, then she'd have to sort of break and do something kind of mindless.

Cal Newport 40:05 Yep.

David Epstein 40:05 Like little puzzles or whatever it was, and so yeah, I think that's a big one.

Cal Newport 40:09 Yeah. And Maya Angelou also, uh, sherry was an important part of her writing process, which I think is cool. She would bring sherry to the hotel room.

David Epstein 40:16 Not cocaine, but okay.

Cal Newport 40:17 I mean, it's not as cool as cocaine.

David Epstein 40:18 Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 40:18 But, uh, [laughs] I, and I think they would, uh, like, at the end of the writing, she would have a little bit of sherry, and she would go to hotel rooms and take the pictures off the wall.

David Epstein 40:26 So there were, like, no distractions except for the ones that she had planned herself, right?

Cal Newport 40:29 Exactly. And she wrote on the bed, uh, propped up on one arm, and she had calluses because, like, that's just how she wrote.

David Epstein 40:35 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 40:35 Propped up, and it had to be, like, a d- she had to have the stuff off the wall. So there was no, like, cognitive cues, and she got used to it, and she would write on legal pads on the bed and then have some sherry, and then, like, go home. Uh, that's the schedule.

David Epstein 40:46 I, I wonder how much, like, Darwinian productivity went into that, because I doubt she one day was like, "I'm going to a hotel, taking, uh, the pictures off the wall, laying on one arm-

Cal Newport 40:53 Yeah

David Epstein 40:53 ... and having some sherry and some crossword puzzles."

Cal Newport 40:55 I bet she was traveling at some point for something, and it was in some, like, terrible hotel or motel somewhere, and she had an incredibly productive writing experience.

David Epstein 41:02 And was like, "This works."

Cal Newport 41:03 This is it.

David Epstein 41:03 So.

Cal Newport 41:04 Yeah. Yeah, this is it. I like that plan. Just drink more sherry. All right, another question. This one comes from Gabe. Uh, what are the benefits of journaling,

Cal Newport 41:13 and how would you suggest go about trying to do so? I mean, this really goes back to both of the things you added, I suppose. You have self-regulatory journaling-

David Epstein 41:22 Yeah

Cal Newport 41:22 ... which is about tracking things you're doing and how it went. It's about journal as a feedback mechanism. Then there's this sort of spark l- book type-

David Epstein 41:30 Yeah, yeah

Cal Newport 41:31 ... journaling, which is about capture, uh, getting ideas out of your head so that you don't have to hold onto them. Both of them have a cognitive advantage. Um, so what other type of journaling are there? So where would we put... People normally think about self-reflection not in the terms of a more experimental sense, but just where am I-

David Epstein 41:49 Like getting your emotions out

Cal Newport 41:50 ... how is my, how is my life unfolding? We put that in a third category, I suppose.

David Epstein 41:54 I think so. And there's the, I don't know to what degree that dovetails with, like, the morning words. Do you know that, that routine that a lot of writers have where-

Cal Newport 42:01 Yeah, you do, uh, 15 minutes

David Epstein 42:02 ... you wake up and you do, yeah.

Cal Newport 42:03 Yeah.

David Epstein 42:03 And without, like, thinking at all.

Cal Newport 42:05 Yeah.

David Epstein 42:05 And I think part of the idea there is it sort of gets you out of perfectionism, like you're just going and-

Cal Newport 42:09 Yep

David Epstein 42:09 ... letting your, letting your thoughts flow up, flow out. So there's also this core sort of warming up aspect to it.

Cal Newport 42:13 Yep.

David Epstein 42:14 Um, so yeah, I guess that is a different kind. I mean, yeah.

Cal Newport 42:17 So here's my contrarian take, Gabe, because this is what I'm doing today.

David Epstein 42:20 [laughs]

Cal Newport 42:21 Um, just as important as journaling is boredom. Now I'm gonna, I'm gonna connect this all. Like, this doesn't seem like it makes sense, but I'm gonna connect this all. Uh, I talk about this in Digital Minimalism, my book, Digital Minimalism, that one of the interesting scourges of our current moment that we're under-appreciating is that smartphones with ubiquitous high-speed wireless internet has created this incredibly novel environment in the history of the human species in which you can banish every single moment of being alone with your own thoughts. 'Cause no matter where you are, there's this thing that can algorithmically select highly salient distraction. That's a very new thing that everywhere you are, you have this, which means we get no time if we don't want it, we can get no time alone with our own thoughts. And I, I, I go through this research in the book about why time alone with your own thoughts is incredibly important. It's how you make sense of yourself. It's how you make sense of the things you've encountered or experienced, and you integrate them into your self, uh, perception. It's where you confront the things you're not happy about and emphasize the things you are. It's how you evolve as a human being. It's, it's the cognitive structure of your awareness of the world. So it's really a problem if you're not working on this structure. To work on this structure, you have to spend time alone with your own thoughts. So, so I, my contrarian take is, um, if you want the benefits of self-reflective journalis- journaling, like one of the simplest things you could do has nothing to do with a physical journal. It would be just making sure that on regular points of time, you don't have your phone with you, and so you're in line, and you're forced to be alone with your own thoughts. You do that on a regular basis, human instinct is wired to basically self-reflect and try to make sense of the world. So it's almost like getting rid of the thing that prevents self-reflection could be just as important as having the right tool to actually, uh, direct your self-reflection. I call it, I've a... My catchy name was solitude deprivation.

David Epstein 44:10 Solitude deprivation. I like that. And I, and I think that has a important sort of conceptual premise, which is that we often think about what things we can add to be better-

Cal Newport 44:19 Yeah

David Epstein 44:19 ... and stuff, but I think in many cases, the quicker way to get better at certain things is to take something away that's just in the way.

Cal Newport 44:27 Yeah.

David Epstein 44:27 Like obstacle removal instead of, like, building block addition.

Cal Newport 44:30 Yeah, it takes more time to get a journal and to try to put aside the time when I'm gonna do the words, where really it's like, "Don't take your phone when you walk your dog."

David Epstein 44:36 Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 44:37 You, you don't have to do anything new, but that could, that could lead to a, a much better place. My story in the book about this, I got really into Lincoln and the rest home that, that's here in, uh, where is it? I, I guess it's near, like, Petworth or Shaw here in the, in DC, where he would leave the White House to go to to just walk and think and, and, uh, how he grappled with ideas up there. He just needed time alone with his own thoughts to make sense of the, what was going on with the Civil War and, and his role and his m- uh, his moral development.

David Epstein 45:04 Yeah.

Cal Newport 45:05 Uh, time alone with his own thoughts.

David Epstein 45:06 Yeah.

Cal Newport 45:07 So if he, if he had had a phone, I don't know what would've happened.

David Epstein 45:11 Uh, we, America probably wouldn't be here.

Cal Newport 45:14 Yeah. Um, or they would think he's a wizard-

David Epstein 45:17 Right [laughs]

Cal Newport 45:17 ... because electricity hadn't been invented.

David Epstein 45:19 Right. [laughs]

Cal Newport 45:20 So he'd be the ruler of the world.

David Epstein 45:21 He would've been amazing, like, Twitter troll, if you think about it, though. He was like-

Cal Newport 45:25 He's really funny

David Epstein 45:25 ... you know, a gift for gab. Yeah.

Cal Newport 45:26 Yeah, he was really funny. Yeah, yeah. He might've been a, a different character. All right, let's keep rolling here. Um, next question, anonymous, no name, "I find myself very forgetful. What system could I set

Cal Newport 45:40 up to help me remember things when I need it?" Oh, that's interesting. Um, I mean, probably the best thing to do here, and, and Dave, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is, uh, like in Chris Nolan's movie, Memento-

David Epstein 45:55 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 45:55 ... tattoos.

David Epstein 45:56 Tattoos is, tattoos are good.

Cal Newport 45:57 Yeah, then you can just reference-

David Epstein 45:59 Yeah

Cal Newport 45:59 ... and if there's, like, an amnes- a amnesia situation-

David Epstein 46:01 Yeah

Cal Newport 46:01 ... like, you know, it's not, it's not going anywhere.

David Epstein 46:02 Tattoos are good. You got a lot of sp- if you don't have a lot already, then you've got a lot of space to work with. Um-

Cal Newport 46:06 You got a lot of space to work with, yeah, and you just sort of, like, g- get the things on there-

David Epstein 46:08 Yeah

Cal Newport 46:08 ... and remind yourself about-

David Epstein 46:09 Recommend getting them while on cocaine, ideally.

Cal Newport 46:11 Uh, yeah. Sponsored by cocaine.

David Epstein 46:13 Mm-hmm. Run them through Grammarly before you get them inked, though.

Cal Newport 46:16 They're gonna let you get, like, a really cool, really cool grammatically correct-

David Epstein 46:19 Exactly

Cal Newport 46:20 ... phrase. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I don't know. Systems that can help me remember things when I need it. I mean, if you're using the type of systems we talked about earlier in the show, I mean, you have some sort of full capture on your obligations, and you're doing some sort of multi-scale planning. So you, you look at this. You know? You're like, "Okay, I have my big ideas. My big initiatives are my quarterly plan, and when I do my weekly plan, I'm looking at my obligation list and, and my strategic, uh, my larger quarterly plan, and that all... I look at that weekly plan. Then when I make my daily plan, and I look at my daily plan when I'm trying to figure out what I should be doing, and on my calendar to backstop me on things that are tied to a particular time." I mean, you remember things. And when it comes to big ideas, you have the type of systems that, that, uh, Dave talked about, your sort of spark list. I mean, I think if you are org- if you've organized what's going on in your life, you don't need a specific system different than all those things we talked about for trying not to forget things, um, that might be important.

David Epstein 47:17 Yeah.

Cal Newport 47:17 I mean...

David Epstein 47:18 Yeah. I mean, I, I also think it depends what are you trying... Like, if you're forgetting your car keys a lot or something, then having a hook where you put them every time-

Cal Newport 47:27 Yeah

David Epstein 47:27 ... makes a big difference.

Cal Newport 47:28 Yeah. Fair enough.

David Epstein 47:28 Same place every time, right?

Cal Newport 47:29 Yeah.

David Epstein 47:29 If there's something that you need to encounter every day, like, put it in your path, so when you walk past it, you see it. I think, so I think it depends what we're talking about remembering. In terms of information I consume, I really try hard to work it into my semantic network, you know, the spider web of connected ideas in my brains.

Cal Newport 47:44 Yeah.

David Epstein 47:44 When I read something, I think it's important, I stop and think about, how does this connect to all this other stuff I know? Because that turns out to make it, like, much easier to, to bring back.

Cal Newport 47:51 If, if there's an idea you wanna hold onto.

David Epstein 47:53 Totally.

Cal Newport 47:53 Yeah.

David Epstein 47:53 I was, I remember I was interviewing this neuroscientist named Ogi Ogas, who, who had done some research on memory, and he, um, was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Cal Newport 48:03 Sure.

David Epstein 48:03 And because he had studied semantic network and memory, he knew that, like, if you picture a spider web, if memories are sort of attached by different threads of the web, if you can bring up one-

Cal Newport 48:13 Yeah

David Epstein 48:13 ... that's related, it'll shake the web, and you m- it might bring up the others that are connected. So he said when you go on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, what they don't show you is that you can, like, talk to the host as long as you want before you have to guess-

Cal Newport 48:22 Right

David Epstein 48:22 ... and they just edit that out. So he would just keep talking, talking, talking, talking in the hope that the conversation would trigger-

Cal Newport 48:28 Would actually trigger something

David Epstein 48:28 ... some semantic association and you'd remember it. And he He won the half million dollars, then he got the million dollar question correct but had already decided to walk with the half million. But his whole strategy was to talk about as much different crap as he could-

Cal Newport 48:38 And it would come up

David Epstein 48:38 ... and hope that it would trigger his own semantic network.

Cal Newport 48:40 Oh, interesting.

David Epstein 48:40 So when you learn new information, try to connect it to stuff you already know to build that, that spiderweb in your head.

Cal Newport 48:45 I like it. It's better than my Millionaire strategy, which is just to hope that every question is related to a traumatic event from my past as in Slumdog Millionaire.

David Epstein 48:53 [laughs]

Cal Newport 48:53 Like, I, like, I watched the movie, like, "This is it. I'm just gonna hope that, like, everything is gonna be related to, like, something that happened to me in my..."

David Epstein 48:59 Yeah.

Cal Newport 48:59 Yeah, didn't go well. Didn't go well.

David Epstein 49:01 [laughs]

Cal Newport 49:01 Uh, all right, I got a couple questions here that are, uh, more case study type questions. So these are people giving a detailed scenario about their lives and then-

David Epstein 49:07 Oh, okay

Cal Newport 49:07 ... has a question about it. First one comes from Sam. Sam says, "I'm a solicitor, lawyer,

Cal Newport 49:13 practicing in the UK. My practice is very busy, and I oftentimes struggle, struggled with time management. In the last three months, I've adopted time blocking, and I purchased your second edition Time Block Planner. I'm finding that I'm achieving the results you promise, but my job requires me to be reactionary. My question is, do you think there is any merit in time blocking the first half of the day, ending with a time block for planning the second half of the day, at which point it may be clearer as to what the demands of the rest of the day are?" Ooh, it's a technical question. I love technical time block questions. Um, I mean, Sam, my first instinct is yes, because of the principle when it comes to planning at any scale. The point of planning is to help to make sure that your energy, uh, has some intentional direction. Planning, however, is not a game show where you get a higher and higher prize the closer you're able to happen to stick to the plan you made in advance. We talk about this, it's very clear with daily time block planning, where people get in the mindset of, um, "My goal here is to figure out a plan that I hit exactly, and if I don't, I've lost, and I get really upset if my plan has to change." Where the reality is, depending on the nature of your job, there's probably, uh, quite a bit of changes that will happen in your plan. So what you're doing in the morning is, like, your best bet. "Okay, knowing what I know now, what's my plan for directing my energy?" And then when your day changes in ways you didn't anticipate, you update the plan next time you get a chance. Then say, "Knowing what I know now, what's the best way to do with my time that's left?" So it's the intentionality. At any one point, I wanna have some intention on what I do with my time going forward. That's the win, not, "Hey, I was able to hit my plan, you know, exactly without having to change it." So I think this is a great plan. You know, plan the morning, step back, make a plan for the next part of the day based on what you know then. The goal is, like, you want to attack each thing that's coming up with some intention to it, not that you wanna try to actually, uh, not that you actually wanna try to win the day. I mean, I wish I had a job that never changed my plan.

David Epstein 51:19 Yeah. Right? I mean, this sounds like a great experiment.

Cal Newport 51:21 Yeah.

David Epstein 51:21 I'd say run this experiment exactly as it was articulated for a week, and-

Cal Newport 51:25 Keep track of it in your self-regulatory notebook.

David Epstein 51:27 Yeah.

Cal Newport 51:27 Uh, and if it doesn't work, then adjust something.

David Epstein 51:29 Yeah.

Cal Newport 51:29 Maybe it should be-

David Epstein 51:30 And implement

Cal Newport 51:30 ... half a day, or maybe... The other thing, Sam, I've heard people do is they have protected block time. "Hey, these three hours, it's all very intentionally used," um, and the rest of the day, if you have an incredibly reaction job, reactive job, that's probably a better term than reactionary. You have a very reactive job, then you're like, "Okay, then I'm just rock and rolling with what's come, what comes in." All right. Let's, uh, we got one more here. This is from Agent 30.

Cal Newport 51:54 Oh, I see where the, I see the 30 reference here in the very first line of your question here. "I recently turned 30, and like many people, I experienced some stress associated with that milestone." Um, Dave and I haven't turned 30 yet.

David Epstein 52:06 Not yet.

Cal Newport 52:07 But, but I assume-

David Epstein 52:08 Yet, but it's looming

Cal Newport 52:08 ... you know, that'll be stressful.

David Epstein 52:09 I'm worried.

Cal Newport 52:09 Yeah. I mean, clearly we're not there yet, but, like, it will be stressful.

David Epstein 52:12 Very concerned.

Cal Newport 52:12 "I graduated with a Master's of Arts degree about five years ago, but despite some good interviews, I wasn't able to land a job in my field after school and have spent the last five years consistently underemployed. I'm also passionate about art and creative writing, but my attempts at these have only resulted in a small amount of local success. I'm worried that I'm running out of time to experience professional success as well as being able to start a family with my partner. Since discovering the ideas associated with the deep life, I've been trying to pursue my goal in a more disciplined way, focusing on methodical progress and skill building. However, I feel like my mind doesn't fully trust the approach based on slow productivity because in the back of my mind, I feel like it's going to come too little too late, and I should have adopted these strategies five to 10 years ago. I still have high ambitions for my professional and creative life, but deep down I worry that I'm still not good enough at what I do to realize my ambitions and that I'll be in the same place where I am now in five to 10 years." All right. Big question here. Um, I'm gonna throw this to you, Dave, in the following way because y- you're a professional writer. This sort of is in the same realm. You know, this is someone who's talking about, uh, being passionate about art and creative writing and, and having only a small amount of local success.

David Epstein 53:22 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 53:23 Um, so writing is in that world. Your whole career has been professional writing, basically post-grad school.

David Epstein 53:29 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 53:30 Right? Um, so you know what it's like to build a life around one of these, I guess we could call it idealized occupations. It's, uh, idealized-

David Epstein 53:40 Right, right

Cal Newport 53:41 ... very specific.

David Epstein 53:41 I mean, my, my first stable job in writing was as an overnight crime reporter in New York tabloid, so perhaps not ideal, but-

Cal Newport 53:47 Yeah

David Epstein 53:47 ... your point is, is taken.

Cal Newport 53:48 But the profession is idealized, right?

David Epstein 53:50 Yes.

Cal Newport 53:50 Like, oh, I mean, it's romantic. Let's say it's a romantic-

David Epstein 53:52 Yeah, yeah

Cal Newport 53:52 ... it's a romantic pr- a romantic profession.

David Epstein 53:54 No, totally.

Cal Newport 53:55 Um, so what do you tell to someone who's like, "Yeah, I, I think I wanna be an artist or a creative writer," and they feel like they're doing a little bit of stuff and it's, uh, things aren't really clicking and, like-

David Epstein 54:03 Yeah

Cal Newport 54:03 ... it's a fair question. I don't feel like things are gonna change. So how do you... What's the right way to approach from your experience what, uh, the pursuit of a romantic profession?

David Epstein 54:10 Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of stuff in that question, by the way. Personal, professional-

Cal Newport 54:14 Yes

David Epstein 54:14 ... like, lots of things, and also the, "I feel like I should have started."

Cal Newport 54:17 Right.

David Epstein 54:17 For that it's like the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.

Cal Newport 54:21 Yep.

David Epstein 54:22 So don't, don't worry that you didn't start at the right time-

Cal Newport 54:25 Yeah

David Epstein 54:25 ... and let that get in the way of starting things that you should be doing now.

Cal Newport 54:28 30 seems very young to us is what we're saying.

David Epstein 54:30 Yeah.

Cal Newport 54:30 Yeah.

David Epstein 54:30 Totally. I mean, I, I like... Yeah. So just, just to share with this person, I'd like to share this research that MIT and Northwestern and the Census Bureau did a few years ago that showed that the average age of a founder of fast-growing tech startup on the day of... Fast-growing was top 0.1%. On the day of founding was 45, right? And people don't, like they just think of Mark Zuckerberg when he said-

Cal Newport 54:50 Yeah

David Epstein 54:50 ... young people are smarter. He was 22 when he said that, right?

Cal Newport 54:53 Yeah.

David Epstein 54:53 You don't hear him saying that anymore.

Cal Newport 54:54 Yeah.

David Epstein 54:55 Um, but anyway, I don't think people's intuition is always right about the timescale at which, uh, development and success occurs. But I think when you're going into these kinds of fields, the good thing about them are you get like a lot of signal quickly about how difficult it is-

Cal Newport 55:09 Yep

David Epstein 55:09 ... and how competitive it is. Um, but that's also the challenge, right? And I think it's, um, I think it, it behooves people to sort of try to work on one piece at a time instead of like trying to get their arms around the whole thing.

Cal Newport 55:26 Right.

David Epstein 55:26 Right? Like mo- most people that wanna go into writing view writing as a form of self-expression, which is why it's like so romantic.

Cal Newport 55:31 Yeah.

David Epstein 55:31 I, I kind of don't. I view it as a very compelling thing to do.

Cal Newport 55:33 Yeah.

David Epstein 55:33 But not self-expression.

Cal Newport 55:34 An interesting job.

David Epstein 55:35 An interesting job.

Cal Newport 55:36 But not about I, I wanna make my, my artistic self whole or some such.

David Epstein 55:40 Correct.

Cal Newport 55:40 Yeah.

David Epstein 55:40 Correct. And so if that's your take on it, I think you look at, well, how does this thing work as a job? What are like-

Cal Newport 55:45 Yeah

David Epstein 55:45 ... the skills and tools that I need? So especially early in my career, but a- I mean, early in my career, but again, I was five, si- uh, when I left the track where I was training to be an environmental scientist and I was at Sports Illustrated as a temp fact checker, like five y- I was five years older than the people I was doing like remedial kind of work for.

Cal Newport 56:03 Yeah.

David Epstein 56:03 You know? But looking at what are, what's the toolbox that I need?

Cal Newport 56:08 Yeah.

David Epstein 56:08 And instead of just like trying to do another project and assuming I would get different results, it was like, "What skill set do I need, and how do I get around those people so that I can start getting it?"

Cal Newport 56:17 So you, you, you had kinda done some research on this.

David Epstein 56:19 Yeah, I mean-

Cal Newport 56:19 You said, okay, a fact-checking, you know, uh, at Sports Illustrated, like this is an actual known path. Uh, this is, this is what it would look like to be taking the next step. Like within a couple years I should be able to get here, and here's what I should be working on to get here.

David Epstein 56:33 And, and being around the people, right? I-

Cal Newport 56:35 What was, what was the step after fact-checking?

David Epstein 56:37 Uh, well, so I had, I had gotten ... I mean, there were some other winding steps. Like again, I d- my first job in journalism was overnight crime reporter at the New York Daily News, right?

Cal Newport 56:44 Yeah.

David Epstein 56:44 Like nothing happy that's going in the New York Daily News happens between midnight and 10:00 AM-

Cal Newport 56:47 Yeah

David Epstein 56:47 ... as you can imagine. But that gave me this great ability to do street reporting, right? No phone, no computer. You're going and finding people in the street.

Cal Newport 56:53 Yeah.

David Epstein 56:54 Then I went to a startup where there was covering higher education that was no street reporting, all phone and email.

Cal Newport 56:58 Yeah.

David Epstein 56:59 So now I'm getting that skill.

Cal Newport 57:00 Yeah.

David Epstein 57:00 Right? Then I leave that just to get my foot in the door at Sports Illustrated. Now I'm around people who do longform writing who are way better than me.

Cal Newport 57:07 Yeah.

David Epstein 57:08 So I'm, every day I'm around people who are way, way better than me. So now I'm getting this, these skills of even though I'm not doing the writing-

Cal Newport 57:14 Yeah

David Epstein 57:14 ... I'm having to go through their writing in fine detail and sort of understanding how that works.

Cal Newport 57:19 How did you figure out that's the way in?

David Epstein 57:21 Uh, I had w- I had wanted to get into Sports Illustrated. I had this specific interest in writing about sudden cardiac death in athletes, basically.

Cal Newport 57:28 Yeah.

David Epstein 57:28 And whenever I did something good, I would, I would send it over to them-

Cal Newport 57:33 Yeah

David Epstein 57:33 ... basically.

Cal Newport 57:34 Yeah.

David Epstein 57:34 Uh, and say like, "Hey, just," you know, and keep in touch. And it took me like two years of doing that-

Cal Newport 57:38 Yeah

David Epstein 57:38 ... before they said, "Somebody's going on maternity leave. We have a temp opening for a fact checker. Would you like to leave your-"

Cal Newport 57:43 Yeah

David Epstein 57:43 ... "real job and come do this?"

Cal Newport 57:44 So you were saying, "Great, I'm just looking for a way to get in that door."

David Epstein 57:46 Yeah, absolutely.

Cal Newport 57:47 Yeah.

David Epstein 57:47 Because I was looking for a way to get around the people that were doing the kind of things that I wanted to learn how to do.

Cal Newport 57:51 Yeah.

David Epstein 57:52 Yeah.

Cal Newport 57:52 And-

David Epstein 57:52 And then, and then once I got that skill set and I felt like my learning curve was tapering off, I left to become an i- when I w- I had like a office on the 32nd floor of a building above Sixth Avenue, big window, door and everything at Sports Illustrated when I became a senior writer, and then I left to be an intern at then startup ProPublica doing investigative stuff 'cause I said, "How do I learn how-"

Cal Newport 58:10 Yeah

David Epstein 58:10 ... "how do I get around people who know how to do this thing that I don't know how to do?" So I just looked at it as what are, instead of this whole big insurmountable how do I just get to that place-

Cal Newport 58:17 Yeah

David Epstein 58:18 ... what are like the tools I need to put in the toolbox, and how do I start going about that?

Cal Newport 58:23 What was the jump from fact-checking to writing within Sports Illustrated? I mean, I guess I'm assuming once you're, once you're there and you know people and you're fact-checking-

David Epstein 58:29 Yeah

Cal Newport 58:29 ... you've been sending them stuff for years, it's a much, uh, smaller leap to say, "Hey, can, can I pitch this or pitch that?"

David Epstein 58:36 I mean, you're in the building, but I got ... When I s- started pitching stuff, I was getting shot down. I mean, I was like, you know, just a temp.

Cal Newport 58:41 Yeah.

David Epstein 58:41 But then-

Cal Newport 58:42 But they would hear it.

David Epstein 58:43 They would hear it, and it turned out I had this oddball background, right? I came in with a science background.

Cal Newport 58:48 Yeah.

David Epstein 58:48 I had a crime reporting background.

Cal Newport 58:50 Yeah.

David Epstein 58:50 And so all of a sudden I realized that those were huge assets-

Cal Newport 58:53 Yeah

David Epstein 58:53 ... because I was different than the other people I was around.

Cal Newport 58:55 Yeah.

David Epstein 58:55 So whereas I was like shaping up to be, I would say, like a pretty normal scientist-

Cal Newport 58:59 Yeah

David Epstein 58:59 ... you take those like typical science skills and you put them in a sports magazine-

Cal Newport 59:02 Yeah

David Epstein 59:02 ... it's like pew.

Cal Newport 59:03 So now you're like a Nobel Laureate, right? [laughs]

David Epstein 59:05 Yeah.

Cal Newport 59:05 Okay, so you had to figure out also-

David Epstein 59:06 Yeah

Cal Newport 59:06 ... how can I fit in what I can do to what they're looking for.

David Epstein 59:09 Yeah.

Cal Newport 59:10 And that's where they were like, "Oh, okay."

David Epstein 59:11 Yeah.

Cal Newport 59:11 "You can try this art-" What was the first article that they accepted from you to go write?

David Epstein 59:15 Uh, the first article I ever wrote was, um, and really I was just sent out to r- to report on it, give that reporting to someone else for the magazine-

Cal Newport 59:25 Yeah

David Epstein 59:25 ... but I then wrote my own version on the website. And it was where the backup kicker at the University of Northern Colorado had stabbed the starter in his kicking leg to try to take his job, being driven crazy by his like football-obsessed mom.

Cal Newport 59:38 Yeah.

David Epstein 59:38 And they're like, "Don't you have some crime reporting experience? Get out there." And so I'm like, it was very New York scene. I give like a cabbie 100 bucks, like, "Take me to the airport," you know, right away.

Cal Newport 59:46 Take a cab, yeah.

David Epstein 59:47 So, and, and so I was just supposed to give that reporting to one of the more senior writers so he could write his like essay on it.

Cal Newport 59:52 Yeah.

David Epstein 59:52 But then I did like sort of the more normal version online, and they were like, "Huh," like, "I guess if crime stuff comes up, like you're pretty useful, huh?"

Cal Newport 59:58 Yeah, because you've been doing it. So they're like, "Oh, we'll just post the, like the facts thing." Uh-

David Epstein 1:00:02 Yeah, yeah

Cal Newport 1:00:02 ... yeah. And the reason why they, they were say, uh, "We, we need that research for our senior writer to do a longform piece, but as long as you're doing that-

David Epstein 1:00:09 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:00:09 ... let's get a, just an article online."

David Epstein 1:00:10 Well, that's what I said.

Cal Newport 1:00:11 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:00:11 I said let me do ... 'Cause he, 'cause he was a, he was like an essay writer.

Cal Newport 1:00:13 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:00:14 So he did this essay version.

Cal Newport 1:00:15 Right.

David Epstein 1:00:15 And I did like the feature story online.

Cal Newport 1:00:16 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:00:17 Right? And then I would look for other things where there were whole ... So I had fact-checking, so I had a, I had a job, like a day job-

Cal Newport 1:00:22 Yeah

David Epstein 1:00:22 ... uh, so I could pay rent or whatever. But then I would use any of my extra time to look for things that I could pitch or that other things that people weren't, weren't covering.

Cal Newport 1:00:29 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:00:29 And I th- I think that can be really helpful, like getting something that's kind of in the industry but is not nearly your dream job, but it, it gives you the flexibility to sort of broadens your network.

Cal Newport 1:00:40 Yep.

David Epstein 1:00:40 Right? And, and so you can start to look for opportunities and not like be hinging everything on like one project where I'm like, "Did I get the dream or did I not?" Like step, step, step, step forward.

Cal Newport 1:00:49 Yeah. Right, right. So it's not just you sending like massive longform pieces to Sports Illustrated, like-

David Epstein 1:00:53 Oh, I did try that. I did try that.

Cal Newport 1:00:54 Yeah, but it doesn't work.

David Epstein 1:00:54 Didn't work. [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:00:55 Yeah. At, at some point they're like, "This is great." I mean, it, it's, it's like, you know, The New Yorker gets a lot of this, of like-

David Epstein 1:00:59 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:01:00 ... John McPhee- The bees.

David Epstein 1:01:02 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:01:02 Like, like we have a John McPhee.

David Epstein 1:01:03 I total- I totally tried that.

Cal Newport 1:01:05 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:01:05 Yeah, just didn't-

Cal Newport 1:01:06 Yeah

David Epstein 1:01:06 ... didn't work. [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:01:07 Yeah, yeah. Uh, that's interesting. Okay, so, so if I'm gonna summarize this as it's like a, it's an evidence-based concrete plan.

David Epstein 1:01:12 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:01:13 Okay. Like, it's evidence-based, like I'm, I'm, I'm learning about this industry, and I want a concrete, let's say evidence-based concrete feasible plan.

David Epstein 1:01:20 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:01:20 Like this is pragmatic that I could, um, maybe get a foot in the door job, and then, you know, I'm gonna find my... It should take me a year or two, but I'm gonna find my advantage, and here's how I'm gonna try to like get my first things published. And so it's, it's very pragmatic. It's very evidence-based. There's, there's a flip to this though too, right? Which is, um, when the evidence-based concrete plan doesn't work-

David Epstein 1:01:41 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:01:41 ... then it's probably easier to rip cord. And it might not be rip cord on the entire dream, but it might be, "Okay, this is not working."

David Epstein 1:01:48 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:01:48 "I'm not getting the fact-checking job," or, "I have the fact-checking job, and I'm just, I'm not finding an angle to actually get something-

David Epstein 1:01:54 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:01:54 ... published." The clarity of the plan maybe gives you the clarity of this is not working.

David Epstein 1:01:58 Yeah, I totally... I mean, again, this has, this has been like a theme I think in our conversation today, which is-

Cal Newport 1:02:03 Yeah

David Epstein 1:02:03 ... if you have a something, a plan-

Cal Newport 1:02:05 Yeah

David Epstein 1:02:05 ... whatever it is, the plan doesn't have to be right.

Cal Newport 1:02:07 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:02:07 The experiment doesn't have to be right.

Cal Newport 1:02:08 Yep.

David Epstein 1:02:09 But it gives you something to evaluate your learning and your model of the world against-

Cal Newport 1:02:13 Yeah

David Epstein 1:02:13 ... and to learn, to get the max amount of learning signal you can-

Cal Newport 1:02:16 Yeah

David Epstein 1:02:16 ... to make your next move.

Cal Newport 1:02:16 And it could become clear, like this vision I had or this plan I had for breaking into magazine writing didn't work.

David Epstein 1:02:21 Right. Like I did. I tried sending in the like-

Cal Newport 1:02:22 Yeah

David Epstein 1:02:23 ... I did this masterpiece, thousands of words thing.

Cal Newport 1:02:25 Yeah, that was the first plan.

David Epstein 1:02:25 I'm sending it in, and I'm like-

Cal Newport 1:02:26 Yeah

David Epstein 1:02:26 ... uh, uh, okay, that didn't... And in retrospect I'm like, "Well, obviously that plan wasn't gonna work," but I had to learn that [laughs] by trying it.

Cal Newport 1:02:32 Yeah. So then you get a more detailed plan, and yeah.

David Epstein 1:02:34 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:02:34 So, so that's good. So the, the flip side then is it also teaches you like, "Okay, this is not working, so maybe I need to try something different." Um-

David Epstein 1:02:39 It may also teach you that that field is just not the dream that you thought it was in a lot of ways. I think that's-

Cal Newport 1:02:45 Yep

David Epstein 1:02:45 ... oftentimes what a lot of people learn, that it's not what they thought, and maybe there's some aspect of it they like, and the dream can be transposed to some other milieu that's like sort of more amenable to the life they wanna lead.

Cal Newport 1:02:55 Yeah, and you end up, you know, doing a podcast instead or something, and it's a better fit for what you're doing or, or something like that. I mean, don't do a podcast 'cause that's kind of depressing, but you know what I mean-

David Epstein 1:03:03 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:03:03 ... as an example. Um, I'm gonna throw one other thing in there as well. I love this advice. The other thing I'm gonna throw in is, uh, so you can be, be a- aggressive about your vision and concrete about your action. So what I mean by this is the, the phrase we use all the time on the show, lifestyle-centric career planning. So Agent Three Zero, uh, you don't want everything to collapse onto just, you know, your work. Like, this is what defines my life, and am I happy or not is like I just have this vision that if I have this job in creative writing or whatever, uh, I'm successful, and if I don't, I don't, and this is everything. You wanna have this clear vision of your lifestyle. What do I want my life to be like in five years? Not just professionally, but in all aspects. Like, where do I live? Who am I around? What's the rhythm of my day? Uh, what's my relationship to my community and to other, the world of ideas? You, you build this really concrete, uh, really aspirational vision, and then you can work backwards and say, "Okay, now let's get super practical and concrete. What are the things I can do starting where, where I am now to make s- uh, the biggest possible steps towards this vision?" And it's not all gonna be professional things, and it's gonna give you different possible configurations of steps that get you closer to that vision. And so maybe the vision in which you're Norman Mailer, uh, that's not really coming together, but there's other aspects of your l- ideal lifestyle you can get to with a com- a different type of job coupled with this over here, and it gives you, uh, it allows you to put your am- aspiration to work, but th- transmute it into very concrete type steps so that you don't just get fixated on one particular thing. It's not always just jobs either, like the, uh, especially like during the pandemic. I think a lot of people put a lot of, um, energy onto location shifts as the savior.

David Epstein 1:04:38 Mm, mm.

Cal Newport 1:04:39 You know? Like, okay, everything, all the things I'm unhappy about, all of it will be solved-

David Epstein 1:04:44 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:04:44 ... when I, like, buy this farm.

David Epstein 1:04:47 I mean, that-

Cal Newport 1:04:47 You know, this, whatever

David Epstein 1:04:47 ... that's like a whole w- right, with work, with location, whatever it is, I think the thing that people often mistake is that n- wherever you go, whatever success you have, you're still there.

Cal Newport 1:04:56 You're there.

David Epstein 1:04:56 Right?

Cal Newport 1:04:56 Yep.

David Epstein 1:04:56 You're, you're, you're still you. And so-

Cal Newport 1:04:57 You still have to pay taxes.

David Epstein 1:04:58 Right.

Cal Newport 1:04:59 Your car still breaks down.

David Epstein 1:05:00 [laughs] And you, so you still have to work on sort of your stuff or the idea of, yeah, with regard to the arts, like that dream of that it's like the only thing you'll ever be do- I mean, that, that wasn't really true for most breakthrough artists in any era until like after they did the things-

Cal Newport 1:05:14 Yeah

David Epstein 1:05:14 ... that made them successful, right? It's like they were cobbling together-

Cal Newport 1:05:17 Yeah

David Epstein 1:05:17 ... uh, the space to, to do these kinds of things.

Cal Newport 1:05:19 Yeah. And, and a lot of people were cobbling together stuff, and nothing particularly interesting came out of it.

David Epstein 1:05:23 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:05:24 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:05:24 Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 1:05:24 All right. I like it. I think we're making progress.

David Epstein 1:05:26 I will say I do think it's, it... One thing I worry about for, for people that wanna get into these kind of fields is I learned so much from being physically around pe- like being in the office at Sports Illustrated, it was almost like I was getting coached without knowing it every hour of the day.

Cal Newport 1:05:42 Sure.

David Epstein 1:05:42 And I do worry as people are sort of more remote-

Cal Newport 1:05:45 You're gonna lose that

David Epstein 1:05:46 ... like thinking about t- if I had to, had to attempt to recreate that amount of learning-

Cal Newport 1:05:51 Yep

David Epstein 1:05:51 ... on my own-

Cal Newport 1:05:52 Yep

David Epstein 1:05:52 ... remotely, I just don't know how I would do it.

Cal Newport 1:05:54 It's hard.

David Epstein 1:05:55 It would take a lot longer.

Cal Newport 1:05:55 Yeah. And you could try to use YouTube to recreate it, but YouTube is so driven by algorithms-

David Epstein 1:06:00 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:06:00 ... that the, the content is more often about like what makes for a good video. Well, this was a big element in the writers' strike.

David Epstein 1:06:07 Mm.

Cal Newport 1:06:07 Like, one of the arguments they were making is that the, the structure of streamers is set up such that you no longer have these long seasons where writers are just around.

David Epstein 1:06:16 Mm.

Cal Newport 1:06:17 And they said, "How is anyone..." That's one of the big, the big arguments is how is anyone gonna learn to be a showrunner?

David Epstein 1:06:22 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:06:22 The way this used to happen is writers are just, it's a long season, and they're on set, and they're seeing how things happen, and they go to set to help punch things up, and they learn. And with the smaller season format for the streamers, one of the things they were worried about, you bring in contract writers, they like write for a few days, and like y- they go away. How is anyone gonna learn how the television industry works?

David Epstein 1:06:41 Yeah. I mean-

Cal Newport 1:06:42 And so it's a similar sort of thing

David Epstein 1:06:42 ... I think this is like a huge challenge.

Cal Newport 1:06:44 It's a big thing in academia. I've written about this before. It's, uh, why do, um, star young professors typically come from programs where they studied with star senior professors? Uh, the obvious answer is like, well, because that's the, they're the smarter professors or they're harder to get into, but most of these like really good grad students could... You know, there's a lot of really good grad students, right, that could get into these programs. Um, I often said being around star professors exposes you to how star professors operate. And so outside of the intellectual content of just, oh, they have really smart ideas, it's like, what's it like if you run a biology lab that wants to be on the cover of Nature?

David Epstein 1:07:21 Right, right.

Cal Newport 1:07:21 There's a lot of really specific things that goes into, like, how you run that lab.

David Epstein 1:07:25 Right.

Cal Newport 1:07:25 How you think about your problems, how you, like, evaluate and rep- and it looks very different than if you're, uh, at a non-R1 university and it's just, look, I need to have this minimal level of NIH funding to sort of get tenure or something. You're gonna learn something very different there.

David Epstein 1:07:39 Totally different culture, yeah.

Cal Newport 1:07:40 And, and you could be brilliant coming out of the other place, but you haven't been exposed to this entire culture of, like, what does it look like if I'm trying to run a ... And I saw that at MIT all the time. It's like, they, it was very good at teaching people how to be stars.

David Epstein 1:07:53 Mm. Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:07:54 Not that, like, their brain is ... Not just about the, especially in a lot of the physical sciences. Like, there's intuition and smartness, but everyone's really smart. It's not they're just solving Fermat's Last Theorem in their head.

David Epstein 1:08:04 [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:08:04 It's like they have an approach to work, uh, and how do you actually, how do you make good of that ambition? Like, what does even that work look like? You know, how is it different if you really want it to be at the caliber that's gonna be on the cover of Nature? Your, it's different the way you, like, approach that work and, and, and run your lab and triage your ideas, and there's like three more levels of sharpening it that you might not have seen at another school.

David Epstein 1:08:26 That, that, that really jives, too, I think, with what you're saying with research done, I think it was by Brian Uzzi at Northwestern and some of his colleagues about mentoring, where-

Cal Newport 1:08:33 Yeah

David Epstein 1:08:33 ... basically, their conclusion was that most of the value of mentoring was implicit knowledge. Like, not the things that the mentor is telling the mentee-

Cal Newport 1:08:39 Oh, that's interesting

David Epstein 1:08:40 ... but the mentee being able to just, like, observe how the mentor behaves.

Cal Newport 1:08:42 So being around the mentor-

David Epstein 1:08:43 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:08:43 ... actually doing what they do.

David Epstein 1:08:44 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:08:44 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:08:44 So again, which I think is a little concerning for, like, the remote, uh-

Cal Newport 1:08:48 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:08:48 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:08:49 I, I, I heard one of my editors at The New Yorker was telling me stories about how the cool old building before they moved, I guess they moved from downtown to midtown or midtown to downtown or whatever, wherever happened, uh, but it was a scene. And there's good and bad of it, but the scene sounded very interesting.

David Epstein 1:09:02 Mm.

Cal Newport 1:09:02 The, the writers would just hang around. Um, even if you're just, like, someone like me who's like, I, I write on a regular basis, but, you know, have other things going on-

David Epstein 1:09:09 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:09:09 ... you would just hang around.

David Epstein 1:09:10 Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 1:09:10 You're like, "I'm just gonna be there, like, see what's going on." And there was researchers, and you could just, like, grab a researcher and be like, "Hey, can you, like, go to the archive and bring clips?" And then people would just be, like, yelling at each other in the hallways and stuff like that. And there, you know, there's probably something to that.

David Epstein 1:09:24 I met, uh, Jimmy Breslin, the famous columnist, when I was in my early ... when I was a tabloid reporter, and he was, like, way late into his career, and he, he [laughs] I remember I, I must have asked him for some advice or something about that writing-

Cal Newport 1:09:34 Yeah

David Epstein 1:09:34 ... and he said, "Well, you know, reporters are in a lot better shape right now because they go to the gym instead of the bar after work, but they're a lot worse at writing." [laughs] I was like, "Okay."

Cal Newport 1:09:42 I believe it. I believe it. They should do more cocaine.

David Epstein 1:09:44 Yeah. [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:09:44 All right.

David Epstein 1:09:45 Solution to everything.

Cal Newport 1:09:46 We got a final segment coming on.

David Epstein 1:09:47 Brought to you by cocaine.

Cal Newport 1:09:47 Brought to you by cocaine. Speaking of sponsors, before we get to our final segment, I wanna mention another sponsor that makes this show possible. Uh, that is our friends at Policygenius. So speaking about, you know, figuring out your vision for life, part of that vision should be, if your people who rely on you, having enough life insurance so that they will be protected if the, uh, the unthinkable happens. Why then don't more people have life insurance? Don't they put that on their obligation status list and it gets worked into their quarterly down, into their weekly down, into their daily plan? Why does it still not happen? It's because a lot of people don't know how to get started. Where do you go? Who do you talk to? Do you have to, like, do a feats of strength? Or how does that even work? This is where Policygenius enters the scene. It helps you compare your options from top companies, and their team of licensed experts are on hand to help you get through it. They know how valuable your time is, so their technology makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from America's top insurers in just a few clicks to find your lowest price. With Policygenius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for a million dollars of coverage. Some options offer same-day approval and can even help you avoid unnecessary medical exams. So the whole point here is if this is on your obligation status list, "I need more life insurance," now you have a simple way of taking care of that. Policygenius makes it easy. So your family deserves peace of mind, a life insurance policy through Policygenius can give it to them. Head to policygenius.com/deepquestions, or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and to see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com/deepquestions. I also wanna talk about my friend at My Body Tutor. This was started by Adam Gilbert, who I've known for a long time. He used to be the fitness guru on the very earliest versions of my Study Hacks blog. His company, My B- Body Tutor, is really killing it out there because it's a brilliant idea. It is a 100% online coaching program that solves the biggest problem in health and fitness, which is lack of consistency. So when you sign up with them, you are assigned a coach that works with you to develop your plan around nutrition and around fitness that's going to fit exactly what your goals are, what your constraints are, and then you check in with this coach every day. And they make it real easy. They have an app where you can just very quickly, "Hey, here's how it went, here's what I ate," or what have you, and you get feedback every day, "Hey, going great." Um, you can ask quick questions like, "You know, I'm really having a hard time with this," whatever the, that we planned, and the coach can get back to you. So you have someone that's not only keeping you accountable, but helping you react to the unexpected in your life and adapt your fitness and nutrition plan to fit exactly what you're looking for and exactly what your needs are. And because it's online, you don't have to have this person come to your house. You can get that type of accountability and help at a fraction of the price that it would cost to have, you know, a nutritionist and fitness trainer that, that comes to your house every day. So if you're serious about getting fit, Adam is giving Deep Questions listeners $50 off their first month. All you have to do is mention this podcast when you join. Just go to mybodytutor, T-U-T-O-R, .com, mention Deep Questions, and they will give you $50 off your first month. All right, so we made it to our third and final segment. This is where I like

Cal Newport 1:13:16 to react to something that's been going on, uh, in the news recently. So Dave, here's an interesting one. It's a talk that TED just released. I guess TED drips these out-

David Epstein 1:13:25 Okay

Cal Newport 1:13:26 ... after the conference. Um, and some people have been talking to me about it, 'cause they think it's an, an interesting concept. I'll show a little bit of the video here on the screen, uh, for those who are watching. So who you're seeing on the screen here, this is, uh, Luis von Ahn, A-H-N, uh, from Guatemala, who is talking about, I believe he's the founder of Duolingo, which is software that helps you learn foreign languages. I don't know if you've used it before.

David Epstein 1:13:55 A little bit.

Cal Newport 1:13:55 A little bit. And, and so the point of this talk, here's his title, How to Make Learning as Addictive as Social Media. All right, so what's going on here is he's saying, "Look, I designed Duolingo in a way to use some of the same mechanisms that attention economy platforms use to try to keep you using their apps all the time. We should use these same ideas when it comes to productive learning, like learning a new language. People will use it more, and you will, uh, net increase the amount of learning that there exists in the world." So it's an interesting idea that is sparking debate both, uh, in favor of this, and both people who have some concerns about it. So I thought it would be worth talking a little bit here on the show. Um, so I'll give you my thought, and then Dave, you can give me your reaction.

David Epstein 1:14:42 Okay.

Cal Newport 1:14:43 The, the, how you're, how you're thinking about it. To me, I think we're talking about two different motivational centers. And I don't necessarily mean literally in terms of these are distinct in the brain, but just from a cognitive science abstraction point of view. There's two different motivational centers that are relevant here. So there's the motivational center that's gonna offer you in the moment, in response to, I'm gonna be offered in the moment some sort of, uh, immediately gratifying stimulus. So that's the motivational center that's like, I'm gonna grab these potato chips, or I'm gonna just, uh, load up Twitter, because immediately it's gonna show me people yelling about things that I kinda care about, and I'm gonna feel good or righteous or upset and, you know, I'm just gonna get that treat right away. There's another type of motivational center, though. And this is the motivational center I was thinking about when I was recently watching the new Netflix documentary on the football player, I'm using the British terms, David Beckham. And in the first ser- episode of the series, they were talking about how David Beckham became such a good, uh, football player, and it was this obsessive practicing, just all the time. All he was doing was practicing. Uh, he had grown up in a household where his, his dad was obsessed with Manchester United, obsessed with the, the English national World Cup team. They would get the new kit each year for Christmas to wear. And, and, and he kind of internalized this, recognized also he had some sort of gifts, and just would, uh, sort of practice obsessively. That's a different motivational center. Because in the moment, when you're in the back garden of your house in Manchester just, uh, repetitively trying to bounce a ball on your foot or whatever you're doing, that doesn't have that immediate gratifying stimuli that looking at, let's say, Twitter does. It's a different type of motivational center that's built on some sort of longer term motivation towards a goal that has a long-term meaning. So it's a deeper satisfaction style of goal. So one point I would put out here is that when it comes to learning, the sustainable approach here might be to figure out how do we connect out to that latter type of motivational center. That how do we, we inculcate an idea that, uh, being exposed to ideas, to learning things, to building up a more complicated view of the world is a motivating part of a picture of a deeper life, a life that's gonna be, uh, more rich and interesting. A life that is, from a teleological perspective, taking more advantage of what it is that the hum- humankind is available of. This is Aristotle and the Nicomachean Ethics talking about deep thought as the most human of human activities. How do we ta- ti- uh, tap into this more sort of philosophical motivation, this more sustainable motivation? And it may have very little to do with the shininess or the in-the-moment impulsivity of the actual tools. There have been people who have been, uh, deeply drawn to learning throughout all of sort of written human history, and for the most of that time period, they didn't have shiny apps. I'm being a little curmudgeonly about this, Dave, but you know a lot about the brain, you know a lot about these motivational centers. Where do you come down on this?

David Epstein 1:17:42 Well, I haven't watched this particular TED Talk, but, um, I think if the idea of it is that a language learning app is going to become as or more entertaining than Instagram-

Cal Newport 1:17:54 Yeah

David Epstein 1:17:54 ... or TikTok-

Cal Newport 1:17:55 Yeah

David Epstein 1:17:55 ... I think that is a non-starter.

Cal Newport 1:17:57 You're gonna have to spend $2 to $3 billion a year-

David Epstein 1:18:01 I, I just, I-

Cal Newport 1:18:01 ... trying to compete with them

David Epstein 1:18:03 ... I just don't see, unless you're layering the language learning on top of the TikToks-

Cal Newport 1:18:07 Yeah

David Epstein 1:18:07 ... people are making for maximum entertainment or maximum enragement or whatever it is. I just, that just doesn't seem possible to me.

Cal Newport 1:18:13 Can I make a suggestion though?

David Epstein 1:18:14 Sure.

Cal Newport 1:18:14 Cocaine drip.

David Epstein 1:18:15 Uh, that's, yeah, coca- I didn't wanna like, you know, go so heavy-handed on our sponsor, but yes.

Cal Newport 1:18:20 Every time you get a, every time you get a verb correct. I, but being facetious, but that probably w- is what would be required to make a language learning app-

David Epstein 1:18:28 Well-

Cal Newport 1:18:28 ... as desirable as TikTok with-

David Epstein 1:18:29 Yeah, because that's basically what's happening, right?

Cal Newport 1:18:31 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:18:31 It's like activating that same part of your brain that-

Cal Newport 1:18:33 Yeah

David Epstein 1:18:33 ... that makes you addicted. Um, and so I think that's kind of a non-starter.

Cal Newport 1:18:37 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:18:37 So I think never mind that. Like, yes, you can make a language learning app more interesting. The, the most interesting way to make language learning interesting is, like, to drop somebody in Paris or what or wherever.

Cal Newport 1:18:50 Yeah, or to make it effective.

David Epstein 1:18:51 Yeah, right.

Cal Newport 1:18:51 I mean, maybe it's not interesting. It could be terrifying.

David Epstein 1:18:53 Oh, I think it's very interesting.

Cal Newport 1:18:54 But it works, yeah.

David Epstein 1:18:55 Yeah, but I think, I think this larger structural issue you're talking about, I think about it in two ways. Let's say to use the, the Beckham analogy or into sports, right? I was a 800 meter runner in college-

Cal Newport 1:19:04 Yeah

David Epstein 1:19:04 ... which is useful because people normally think of it as, like, the most miserable, uh, event that you can possibly run, 'cause there's lots of puking and stuff like that.

Cal Newport 1:19:11 Yeah, I agree.

David Epstein 1:19:11 And, and that's true. And training, uh, was even more miserable in that way than, than racing.

Cal Newport 1:19:18 Yeah, 'cause you do repeats.

David Epstein 1:19:19 So why do you... Like, why would you do this stuff? Why would you do this stuff? Because it is incom- incredibly compelling when you have this goal of getting, like, a little bit better at this thing.

Cal Newport 1:19:28 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:19:29 And it's so comp- it's not because you would never do that stuff otherwise. You, you, like, cannot even bring yourself to do that stuff-

Cal Newport 1:19:35 Yeah

David Epstein 1:19:35 ... unless you have this larger strategic goal in mind, which makes that an incredibly interesting thing to be doing.

Cal Newport 1:19:41 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:19:41 You know? And I think, I think when I think about that in sort of the larger world of learning things, like when I think about if, if I'm, like, looking at Instagram or something like that, uh, and then I switch to, say, reading something that's difficult to read. Like, I spent a bunch of time last year reading James Joyce's Ulysses.

Cal Newport 1:20:00 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:20:00 Very difficult. And because I was coming from things that were so much simpler, at first I'm like, "What the heck is this cra-" You're not even in, like, the mental mode of reading slowly enough to be able to grapple with it.

Cal Newport 1:20:10 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:20:11 But once I was able to transition into that mode-

Cal Newport 1:20:13 Yeah

David Epstein 1:20:13 ... it's like one of those reading experiences that changes your mind and changes your life.

Cal Newport 1:20:16 So you were swiping the pages at first.

David Epstein 1:20:18 Yeah, right. [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:20:18 Like, where are the more interesting pages?

David Epstein 1:20:20 Exactly.

Cal Newport 1:20:20 Yeah. And then you sort of evolved over time. Yeah.

David Epstein 1:20:22 And you're, and then, and then the point you realize is not to get through this thing as quickly as possible.

Cal Newport 1:20:25 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:20:25 Right? 'Cause it took me, like, I had to start over once I got maybe 200 pages in, because only then did I realize that there were two different omniscient narrators operating at the same time, one who was like the creative one and one was sort of the normal one.

Cal Newport 1:20:37 Yep.

David Epstein 1:20:37 And there was no signal that they were switching until you picked up on their voices, basically.

Cal Newport 1:20:41 So you had to pay attention. Yeah.

David Epstein 1:20:42 And so then you gotta go back and say-

Cal Newport 1:20:43 Yeah

David Epstein 1:20:43 ... "Oh, this is something I've never seen before."

Cal Newport 1:20:46 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:20:46 But until, until you get into that space of I wanna grapple with this and I want it to change me and I want it to connect to these other things that I know-

Cal Newport 1:20:54 Yeah

David Epstein 1:20:54 ... 'cause I had gotten interested in experimental literature and modernism and stuff. Outside of that, if somebody was like, "Here's James Joyce's Ulysses, like, it's important. Go learn it," no, I needed, like, this wider framework-

Cal Newport 1:21:03 So you were, you were driven by-

David Epstein 1:21:05 ... to analyze this thing

Cal Newport 1:21:05 ... I, I, I have a, an interest and a aspiration to, to be better versed in experimental modern literature.

David Epstein 1:21:11 In artistic innova-

Cal Newport 1:21:12 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:21:12 Really, I was interested, I'm interested in innovation generally.

Cal Newport 1:21:14 Yeah. And you know this was an important work of sort of early modernism.

David Epstein 1:21:17 In, in particularly 1922 in particular, there was this flood-

Cal Newport 1:21:20 Yeah

David Epstein 1:21:21 ... at the same time of things that, like, completely changed art forever. And I was like, "What the heck was going on in 1922?"

Cal Newport 1:21:25 So you being able to have read and understood that book is sort of also like you being able to be, hey, selected on the, the track team, like, you're gonna be in our first position. Like, all that training was worth it because, like, imagine me actually being, like, one of the top runners.

David Epstein 1:21:37 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:21:37 There's a goal. There's a longer term goal.

David Epstein 1:21:38 And, and there were, there was cur- I mean, being curious about innovation, I was curious about what was going on in that year, right?

Cal Newport 1:21:43 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:21:43 So first I was curious just about innovation in general, then I'm curious about artistic innovation, then I zoom in on this particular period and what the heck is going on there.

Cal Newport 1:21:51 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:21:51 And so there's all these layers of why do I want to understand this, why is it worth it for me to grapple with this?

Cal Newport 1:21:56 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:21:56 Because it's informing all these other interests-

Cal Newport 1:21:58 Yeah

David Epstein 1:21:58 ... I've developed.

Cal Newport 1:21:59 Well, well, two points on that. One, uh, that, that approach that Joyce used of having a, a difference between an omniscient and non-omniscient narrator that, that switched in a sort of non-signaled way, exact same mechanism I used in How to Become a Straight A Student.

David Epstein 1:22:12 [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:22:13 I don't think most readers picked up on it-

David Epstein 1:22:15 Did

Cal Newport 1:22:15 ... but, but I was really influenced by Joyce when I was trying to, trying to formulate the, whatever. [laughs] Second, and perhaps more serious, is this is one of the things that's lost. I got po- I, I keep putting my curmudgeon hat on. But it's one of the things that's lost when, uh, you take a 12-year-old and say, "We're now giving you the, the digital cocaine."

David Epstein 1:22:34 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:22:34 "We're just giving you the, the thing that can, uh, cir- circumvent any of the sense of, like, boredom or drive."

David Epstein 1:22:42 Right.

Cal Newport 1:22:42 "Can immediately solve that. Here's your phone."

David Epstein 1:22:44 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:22:44 And, and you've got, you know, Roblox on there and social media and YouTube and all this type of stuff. You are, um, perhaps stunting the ability to I'm going to develop these type of, um, deeper aspirations that power up that second motivational system-

David Epstein 1:22:59 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:22:59 ... and get me doing things. It was, you know, obsessively playing my guitar and trying to learn the whole catalog of this particular type of music, getting, um, really into, you know, whatever type of, uh, novels and then I wanna go through, like, a whole, um, phase of this writer or that and, like, developing that part of your identity or whatever it is, right? Because you're, uh, short-circuiting the, you're short-circuiting.

David Epstein 1:23:25 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:23:25 You need some motivation, right? We don't like doing nothing.

David Epstein 1:23:28 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:23:28 But if you can always short-circuit it-

David Epstein 1:23:30 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:23:30 ... then maybe you never get that experience of, like, well, I'm bored.

David Epstein 1:23:34 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:23:34 And so I really want the, the... You know, like for Beckham, all that work was worth it for when at the age of 13 the owner of Man United called and said, "Hey, we want you on our dev team."

David Epstein 1:23:45 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:23:46 Right? Like that. Uh, but you're not gonna, you don't necessarily need that if you're like, "No, I'm making progress in my, um, whatever online video game-

David Epstein 1:23:52 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:23:52 ... plan is, like, i- is, is doing better." I mean, our distraction... This is so cr- I hate this. I sound like such a we didn't have rock and roll music when I was a kid-

David Epstein 1:24:01 [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:24:01 ... type of thing. [laughs] I was just, but I was gonna say, like, our distractions as kids were not very good.

David Epstein 1:24:06 Yeah. Well-

Cal Newport 1:24:06 There was, like, two good television shows.

David Epstein 1:24:09 I mean, and Nintendo came along and stuff like that, you know, it was-

Cal Newport 1:24:10 But Nintendo wasn't good. Like, I had a Nintendo, and we had all the games. My mom didn't worry about screen time because, like, they weren't very interesting. Like-

David Epstein 1:24:18 I, I don't know. I think it was good, but I don't think it was, like, engineered to, like, keep you hooked on it at all times.

Cal Newport 1:24:23 I could play for about an hour, and it would be bor- I don't know. Like, how much can you duck hunt?

David Epstein 1:24:27 But even, even that feels to me like more legitimate problem-solving than a lot of the stuff that's going on in technology today.

Cal Newport 1:24:32 I agree. Well-

David Epstein 1:24:33 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:24:33 ... okay, here's my, this is an important rant. This is an important rant.

David Epstein 1:24:35 Maybe not duck hunt, but...

Cal Newport 1:24:37 Arcades. So if you play a game in an arcade today, so like if I take my kids to Dave & Buster's or something like this-

David Epstein 1:24:42 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:24:42 ... and, like, you're playing at the arcade games. They've engineered out, like, any type of complicated, like, decis- you can't even move your guy around anymore. It's all like it'll move you through a space. Um, you can't move and all, you're given, like, one thing to do. It's like I can c- they'll, they'll pop up these, like, dinosaurs I can kinda aim my gun at and shoot.

David Epstein 1:25:00 Hmm.

Cal Newport 1:25:01 Like, there's no degrees of freedom in it anymore. They've tried to just make it into this, like, directly engaging experience of just sort of like lights are going on. They've minimized what you actually try to do. There's, there's no friction into it or-

David Epstein 1:25:12 Interesting

Cal Newport 1:25:12 ... like, I was into computers as a kid. There was so much friction being into computers in, like, 1991. Like you were, you know, basically taking the cover off and writing code and working with the memory or this or that, and now consumer-facing electronics, the whole thing is like, it's just delightful. You just sort of like-

David Epstein 1:25:28 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:25:28 ... touch the screen and it pops open, and it like shows you what you wanna show and, um-

David Epstein 1:25:33 Is there like, I don't know, do your kids do like Minecraft or anything? I don't really know anything about Minecraft.

Cal Newport 1:25:37 You know what I let them do?

David Epstein 1:25:38 What?

Cal Newport 1:25:38 Nintendo.

David Epstein 1:25:39 Oh, okay.

Cal Newport 1:25:40 'Cause I have this, uh, this is my theory, and I think it's been borne out, is like you can, games that cost a lot of money are typically games that are designed for a closed gameplay experience.

David Epstein 1:25:49 Okay.

Cal Newport 1:25:49 It's, it's a certain number of hours, and then you're done, like Zelda or something like this, and they're hard. And so you play for a little while and it's fun, and then it's tough and you get kinda bored with it. It's very dif- if a game is cheap, then their entire business model, if it's free or costs a dollar, the entire business model is we want you to play this as long as possible.

David Epstein 1:26:06 Right, right.

Cal Newport 1:26:06 It's like if I give my kid a Nintendo Switch, like they'll play for a while, Zelda or whatever, a World War II simulation aviation game-

David Epstein 1:26:14 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 1:26:14 ... and you get kinda bored, it's kinda hard. But if one of my kids gets their hands, we learned this the hard way, on an iPad with games, they'll just like obsessively just switch from thing to thing. It's this weird sort of, uh, s- stimulation trance because most of the iPad games are designed around engagement.

David Epstein 1:26:31 Interesting.

Cal Newport 1:26:32 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:26:32 That's really interesting. You made me think of, to bring like some of this full circle to when we were talking about like my career progression earlier, is when I was trying to build my tool set and I was first at this like New York tabloid in journalism-

Cal Newport 1:26:44 Yeah

David Epstein 1:26:44 ... I never had to come up with ideas because someone was always just killed or something blew up or was lit on fire or whatever-

Cal Newport 1:26:50 Right

David Epstein 1:26:50 ... and so you're just running out to whatever that thing is.

Cal Newport 1:26:53 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:26:53 And then I go to a job that's totally different from that, and I'm like, "Oh, gosh, I have to like generate ideas."

Cal Newport 1:26:59 Yes.

David Epstein 1:26:59 And that like forced you to do, you know, you have to go just like talk to strangers or figure out how to even, I generate ideas out of nowhere-

Cal Newport 1:27:08 Yeah, yeah

David Epstein 1:27:08 ... right? Whereas when I was in the environment where there was like always something happening-

Cal Newport 1:27:11 Yeah

David Epstein 1:27:12 ... I never had to come up with ideas, ever.

Cal Newport 1:27:13 You never think about it.

David Epstein 1:27:13 So I didn't.

Cal Newport 1:27:13 Yeah. Yeah. So, so we, a similar effect could be going on now with people where I never have to actually like think of what I want to do to get-

David Epstein 1:27:20 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:27:20 ... rid of my boredom.

David Epstein 1:27:21 Yeah. I mean, the one important thing I want to add to the Beckham point, by the way, too-

Cal Newport 1:27:24 Yeah

David Epstein 1:27:24 ... is that I think once you have that sort of larger se- other interests or larger interests, the stuff that could otherwise seem very much like drudgery and probably does to people from the outside actually becomes a super compelling thing to do.

Cal Newport 1:27:37 Yes.

David Epstein 1:27:37 Right? Um, it's not like, like when I was doing the like torture of 800 meter training, it wasn't like, "Oh, I hate this." I mean, I was, I didn't like like throwing up and stuff-

Cal Newport 1:27:46 Yeah

David Epstein 1:27:46 ... but it was like, "I love this."

Cal Newport 1:27:48 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:27:48 Like, it sucks, but I love it.

Cal Newport 1:27:50 Yeah. I'm getting better at it.

David Epstein 1:27:51 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:27:51 Like, I'm pretty good at this.

David Epstein 1:27:52 It's just like-

Cal Newport 1:27:52 Yeah

David Epstein 1:27:52 ... so engaging.

Cal Newport 1:27:54 Yeah.

David Epstein 1:27:54 So incredibly engaging.

Cal Newport 1:27:55 Yeah. There's a level of engagement from working towards a highly aspirational, deep motivation goal that is really different than the engagement of like the dopamine system going in the short term-

David Epstein 1:28:05 Right, right

Cal Newport 1:28:05 ... maybe that little motivation of like-

David Epstein 1:28:07 Right

Cal Newport 1:28:07 ... "Ah, I just wanna turn this thing on"-

David Epstein 1:28:08 Right

Cal Newport 1:28:08 ... "or I just wanna eat this thing." It's, it's a completely different type of engagement.

David Epstein 1:28:12 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:28:12 So yeah, so maybe the game is figuring that out. And so the game with learning is trying to connect the things that you want to learn to a vision of life or a, a s- a goal that is, you know-

David Epstein 1:28:21 Yeah, yeah

Cal Newport 1:28:22 ... highly-

David Epstein 1:28:22 Yeah, yeah

Cal Newport 1:28:22 ... developing.

David Epstein 1:28:23 And I, and I don't think, like I think a little bit of like scrolling here and there is okay-

Cal Newport 1:28:25 Yeah, it's fine

David Epstein 1:28:26 ... right, because you have to like sorta do mindless stuff once in a while, but-

Cal Newport 1:28:30 Yeah, yeah

David Epstein 1:28:31 ... I think-

Cal Newport 1:28:31 There's no problem with that.

David Epstein 1:28:32 But it's, but it's, um-

Cal Newport 1:28:33 It takes over

David Epstein 1:28:33 ... that shouldn't be the model for everything.

Cal Newport 1:28:35 Yeah, yeah.

David Epstein 1:28:35 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:28:36 Okay. So good. We've been, we've been sufficiently curmudgeonly. All right, Dave Epstein, thank you for, uh, joining me as my special secret guest on the show today. I apologize again for the Jesse Skeleton interview and apologize to anyone who saw it. Uh, again, you'll never get those moments of your life back again.

David Epstein 1:28:52 [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:28:53 Uh, we'll be back next week with another episode of the show, and until then, as always, stay deep. So if you enjoyed today's episode about essential productivity tools, I think you'll also enjoy episode 261 about controlling your time. Check it out. Actually, I wanna shift towards the more practical world of controlling your time.