Quitting Social Media: How To Declutter Life & Discover Your True Self Again | Cal Newport

Cal Newport 0:00 So today I want to talk about a quiet revolt against social media that seems to be circulating mainly among artists. Uh, it's being documented and broadcast on YouTube. What I'm gonna do is I'll get into the theory behind this revolt. I'm gonna argue why it might be more sustainable than you might at first imagine, and then help you understand if you should be joining this revolt as well, even if you're not specifically an artist. Uh, but let's start by trying to understand what's going on. I want to look at some videos. I'm gonna load these on the screen. I'll turn off the audio and have the closed captioning on. Uh, but I want to look at some videos that are emblematic of this, this ongoing revolt. So I'm putting the video on here now. This is from Damon Dominique, which is really like a, a travel video channel. Um, but this video seems to be one of the sparks for the, the, the current revolt. Uh, I do got to say first, by the way, Damon has, uh, beautiful aesthetics on his video. I don't know if you see this, Jesse, but, but it's a-

Speaker 1:01 I can see it

Cal Newport 1:02 ... it's a very expensive camera, and he has a, I would say like a vintage vogue sort of visual aesthetic happening with his, uh, the, the light, the color balance or whatever. Anyway, it's a very nice looking channel. Um, let me put on his closed captioning because what he's talking about, what this video is called is Why do I not... Why am I not posting anymore? And basically, he is arguing, uh, he is tired of having to post on social media. He's tired of trying to get his content viral on social media. I appreciate the giant glass of wine he's pouring right now. This is a gag where he's kind of emphasizing his frustration with what's going on with social media. Um, but he catalogs, it's an hour-long video. He catalogs all these frustrations with the interaction of, of his content, which is very artistic, as you can tell by how it looks, and the demands of social media. This seemed to inspire a lot of other people, uh, more specifically artists, to post their own videos. Let me post another one here. All right. Here's one that one of, uh, a listener sent me. This is hi.imded, I-M-D-E-D, underscore art channel. This is a smaller channel. It's an artist who does really cool artwork, and this video is called Deleting Social Media and Making a Website. And the artist here, uh, who has, does videos of her art, which is, uh, I really appreciate, is basically saying in this video, "Uh, I'm done with social media. I'm creating a website. And I can put my art on my website, and I'm going to control it, and I don't want to post things anymore and have to see if they, how many likes they get or what have you. Um, I'm done." Right. So let's see. I'll, I'll read a little bit of what she's saying here. It's a, it's a good presentation, worth listening to. Let's see. All right. Um, I don't know how to fast-forward. I got to go out of full screen here. I want to read a little bit of what she's saying here. She has some interesting things she says. Here we go. All right. Let me expand that. Man, you can tell I use a lot of social media, Jesse. I don't even know how to use videos. You notice when people unfollow, people unsubscribe, and you see that, like, it's so noticeable, and it hurts. It does hurt. But at the same time, I'm like, "I would rather you know if I'm not for you, I'm not for you. So if you choose to unsubscribe or unfollow, it's like, well, I'm sad to see you go. Maybe I'll catch you on the flip side." Feeling like you can never keep up, and an addictive quality, of course, that is just social media in general. So she's going on about you just get really caught up in, like, how many followers, and you really notice when, like, numbers go up and down, et cetera. Um, a very good sort of honest video. Here's another one I want to load up. Uh, this is another artist. This is lrnjulie, one word. That's the name of the channel. This website is I deleted all social media and made a website. All right, so in this video, this artist is explaining, uh, why. Um, so she left social media. She has these outlines. Um, she also was tired of the demands of social media, and she, she built a website, and that's where she's putting her art now. All right? There's a lot more videos like this happening on the internet right now of people declaring, especially artists, "I'm leaving social media, and, uh, I'm just going to put stuff on a website that I control." So what are their reasons? Well, I mean, I actually went through and watched these videos, so I could summarize, like, the main reasons given by these artists, and let me give you the three main categories. Number one, they're leaving because social media is controlling and reducing the possibilities and quality of their art. They talk about the limited format. Oh, if I'm p-posting on Instagram, then my art now has to somehow fit into the physical format that's appropriate for Instagram. They talk about the algorithm that you are posting for rewards sameness and not uniqueness. This is a big point that Damon in particular has, is that social media used to reward people for doing something different. Now it really forces conformity, otherwise the algorithm will ignore you. It focuses on what's already working. Um, another big reason is people are, they're, these artists are saying social media is making them unhappy. They have to use it all the time. They don't like being addicted. They also don't like feeling as if they're trying to get other people addicted as well, that they're playing this game of trying to make their stuff as, as compelling as possible so people can't look away. The third reason they give is, uh, it seems to deny the reasons why they became artists in the first place. So I, I think in particular the lrnjulie video had a really good take on this where she was saying, "Look, we, we, we didn't get into art for social validation." That's not why artists become artists is to, to have social validation. They do it to create something new, to take raw materials and produce on the other hand something that's beautiful or engaging. Art, the production of art is what they got into art for. But having to integrate their art in social media meant that their focus became more on social validation, trying to build or appease crowds of people. All right? So that's why they're, that's why they're leaving social media. So here's the key question I wanna ask about this revolt. Is it narrow? Is what these artists doing essentially self-sacrifice? They're, they're, they're going to destroy their career because they're not on social media, but they're doing so to make a broader point and, and maybe that's important. Or is this different engagement with the internet to be a creative and to be engaging the internet without social media, is this actually sustainable? In fact, could this actually be better? Those are the questions I wanna explore here. Uh, not surprisingly, I'm gonna make an argument for the second, but to do that, let's get a little bit theoretical. All right, so what do we have when we think about the internet? At the base, all we have is a standard set of protocols and a standard scheme for addressing. This was the big innovation of the internet. Whatever computer network you have and whatever computers you have on it, if you use these same protocols and you use the standard way of referring to yourself, the standard addressing scheme, you can plug into the internet and anyone can talk to you and you can talk to anyone else. So anyone could connect to this network of networks, and any two machines connected to this network of networks could talk back and forth with each other because we all agree to speak a common language, a common protocol. We all agree to refer to ourselves with a, a common naming scheme. So the fundamental problem of the internet from the very beginning is how do people find other people or things to talk to? How do you find what machine to talk to? How do you find what information you wanna get? When you have this growing collection of networks and networks, anyone can connect to it, how do you figure out what to do? It is a hard problem. My younger audience probably doesn't remember this, but I remember this in the '90s when the web, which is a part of the internet, but when the web became a big thing, they would publish Internet Yellow Pages. Do you remember these, Jesse?

Speaker 8:15 Uh, kind of.

Cal Newport 8:16 Actual yellow pages, a paper book that looked like the Yellow Pages, and you would like flip through to a topic, and there would be like list of URLs. Like, here's a website, there's a website. That's actually, uh, early Yahoo!

Speaker 8:28 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 8:28 Yahoo! used to be, when it, when it started in the '90s, just a hierarchical list of, of websites by topic. Well, business, uh, entertainment business under this, movie companies, and then here's a list of like websites and movie companies.

Speaker 8:42 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 8:43 Google really solved the problem of finding specific information. It said, "Okay, we have a better way of actually, if I wanna find out about this thing," um, it does a really good job of finding where on the internet are there authoritative sources on this particular thing you're interested in. So that was... That kinda solved that original problem. But we still had the problem of what we could call serendipitous discovery and serendipitous exposure. This, this ability to say, "I'm not looking for something in particular. I'm not looking for the website for Warner Brothers. I wanna find something that I didn't know I was looking for. I want new ideas, new art, interesting people, um, new perspectives." Th- th- this is the, the bigger promise of the internet. It's not just that it's a more convenient way for companies to be accessible online, but that you can have this serendipitous discovery. And the flip side, how do you service the creatives so they can produce stuff and e- and even if people don't know them directly, people can find them? So as, uh, creatives can find audiences and audiences can find creative input. That became the second fundamental challenge of the internet, especially once we had the Web 2.0 revolution. This was happening roughly like 2004, 2005 is when this picked up, where it became really easy to put stuff on the internet. Hey there. I wanna take a quick moment to tell you about my new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. If you like the type of things I talk about on this channel, you're really gonna like this book. It distills all of my ideas into a clear philosophy combined with step-by-step instructions for putting it into action. So to find out more about the book, check out calnewport.com/slow. Everything you need you can find there. All right, thanks. Let's get back to it. Like the 1990s, if you wanted to put something on the internet, you had to get a server, you had to hand code a website in HTML. It was kinda difficult. By 2004, 2005, there was web-based software like blog software, for example, that made it easy to post information. You could have an easy interface and like type and drag in photos and it would, and it would, uh, the software would automatically produce a nice looking webpage for you. That was the Web 2.0 revolution. So now really like anyone could post stuff. It was much easier. The barrier to entry was lower, and we had this question of serendipitous creative discovery. How is that gonna happen? All right. The model that came to dominate, uh, is what we can call the algorithmic model. I'll draw this on the screen here. I'm putting a lot of dots on the screen. These are people creating stuff, uh, their own in- individual stuff. So in the algorithm model, we have a single platform, so I'll draw a big gray box here, and inside this platform, uh, is going to be algorithms. So I'll put a bunch of put little binary symbols here. Right. They have algorithms. Um, everyone is going to aim the stuff they're creating at the central platform. So we're all aiming what we're creating at this central platform that's running lots of algorithms. And then on this other side we'll have, uh, a single This will be us. This will represent us. I'm gonna put a dot for someone who's just trying to consume some information, so put that over here. And the, uh, the platform is going to decide, like, "Oh, okay, uh, here's what... Here's something cool for you to see. I'll make a stream of things for you to see." All right, so this is the algorithmic model I've drawn. Lots of creators. Everything goes into a box. That box then looks at it and decides for you, "Yeah, here's stuff you might like," and it, and it chooses stuff that you might like. All right? Um, that's basically what it is today if you're using TikTok or you're using Instagram or you're using, uh, Twitter/X. This is, uh, how your content, how you're finding serendipitously, so content you didn't know existed, how you're finding stuff you didn't know existed that might be interesting to you. And if you're a creative, so you're over here on the other side, you're just throwing your stuff in here, um, hoping that your stuff is assigned to people, right? And this is what's creating the problems that the artists are talking about, is now your art becomes about satisfying this gray box, trying to do whatever you can do to get it to select yours to show to other people and, and this, of course, has a, a real constricting effect. There are advantages to this model, though. The reason why this model is so popular is there's real advantages. First of all is its simplicity. If I'm a consumer, it's really easy. I have a stream on an app on my phone that's being populated by an algorithm. If I wanna serendipitously encounter information, I press an icon on my phone, and there I go, and it's just... I'm just being shown stuff that's been selected for me that might be interesting. For the creators who are feeding this algorithm, there's a sort of lottery ticket excitement to it. You never know. Your thing, right? And I'll, I'll highlight something over here. Your thing might be really favored, and you have a way if you could reach thousands of people, uh, all at once. Like, there's that lottery ticket excitement of virality of you just never know. You could be, like, one right choice of topic and look and timing away from being seen by, by, by an amount of people that would have in a traditional world required, like, a whole career of building up your success. There's also a huge aspect of attention manipulation here that affects creators. We don't talk about that that much anymore, but I talk about it in my 2016 book, Deep Work. One of the ways that when these algorithmic platforms took off, one of the ways that they convinced people to move their creative activities over to these platforms is they collectivized attention, and what I mean by that is that in a pre-algorithmic platform Web 2.0 world, one of the big problems if you were creating content is that it was very hard to get people to find the, the, to look at what you, what you produced, right? Um, it's hard, and so you would, you would write a blog or post some photos on your Flickr account or on your Tumblr, and, like, no one would show up, right? And, and this is, you know, uh, this is hard. You're like, "I, I, look, I want people to sh- show up." What these original platforms like Facebook offered is, "We'll make it seem like people are showing up." It collectivizes attention. These platforms make it easy for you to have something like a couple thousand of, I'm putting in air quotes here, "followers." Now, in reality, these are castles made in sand. This is not a couple thousand people who are waiting for what you're gonna produce next, and most of them are not seeing, really aren't seeing what you produce in any ways. The follow was a button they clicked at some point and forgot about it, and the algorithm's not even serving your content to them. But for you, the creator, you get this simulacrum of, like, "I'm in an arena. There's a few thousand people. They really care what I'm doing." That feels really good, and that was really powerful for content creators, this idea of, "We're gonna give you a sense that you have an audience, and not, like, a dozen people, but, like, hundreds or a th- a couple thousand people." And this was very powerful, so, so it, it was playing on the psychological needs. Again, it's not really a couple thousand people who are watching what you're doing, but they could give you that sense, and that really attracted a lot of people. Not even creatives, just everyday people who messed around with a GeoCities website or a Tumblr. They all moved over to Facebook because Facebook had this model where you will comment on what your friends are doing. They'll comment on what you are doing. Whether or not it's good or interesting, this is gonna happen, uh, and you get this sense of, like, "People care about what I'm doing," which is incredibly, incredibly powerful. So the algorithm model has some real attractions. So what happens when you quit this? Well, we get to what we can call the distributed trust model. So now what I'm drawing is a bunch of these blue creator dots again. But now there's no gray box that everyone is connecting into. What you, what you get in the distributed trust model where now wh- where are people producing? And let me, let me just label this. Like, they're producing... These are ugly dots, by the way, Jesse. Um, so now we can think of, like, email newsletters, podcast, websites, all independent content, stuff that's not going into a centralized platform that everyone's on. But everyone's kind of posting their own things, um, and it's all universally accessible over the internet, but it's not being curated by algorithms. And what we get in this world is these, like, individual links of trust, right? And a lot of times they're kind of... We see these little cliques of people that all know each other, uh, and they all talk to each other. So think about these orange lines. I'm drawing these orange lines are... Think of these as, like, connections, like people that know each other. The... It's a, it's an actual human trust relationship. I'm a person. You're a person. We have some sort of connection. We communicate with each other. And you get this web of these connections, and as you can see on here, um, if you're, if you're watching this online, there's clusters, like a, a bunch of people that Know each other. Over here is a bunch of people that know each other. And so, like they all know each other. And then you have these like longer distance links connecting them. It's like standard human social networking happening, uh, on the internet. Though how does information move through here? It moves over these links. It moves over these links. So I'm gonna... Let's trace a particular piece of information. You know, maybe someone over here produces something, and they send it to like their nearby people. They have, like interest. They like it, so it sort of spreads through this local group. Now it's gonna maybe make its way out of here because this person has some connection to that person. It kind of makes its way out of there and maybe makes its way into infecting another clique. Um, and, and, and the information begins to spread. Now, it's not all epidemic viral spread. Some of the stuff just goes, you know, a little distance, like over here. Hey, it kind of spreads in here, makes its way out, and stops. And some stuff goes farther, a-and some stuff has a more sort of serendipitous path, where it just kind of makes its way, you know, off random links and gets to a pretty far distance in the graph. But the information is being spread on individual trust-based links between people that have some sort of established relation, be it digital or physical. This turns out to be an actually very good way of curating serendipitously interesting information. In fact, the, the curation decisions that end up being made here implicitly tend to be much more interesting and higher quality than what you would get with a centralized algorithm. Because now the main incentive is, if I'm gonna send you something, I really care about what I'm sending you. I'm not gonna send you nonsense. I'm not gonna send you something that's not interesting. I'm not gonna send you something where the person is clearly unhinged, or it's really ha-hateful most likely, you know, unless one of these clusters is like a cluster of Nazis or something like that. Um, it works out to be really good curation. And so when something makes its way through this network and, and me as a receiver receives it, it's interesting stuff I'm receiving. It's carefully curated stuff. Like a really original idea that looks like nothing else but has a spark of something interesting, it's gonna spread probably pretty well. And I'm gonna... I'm not gonna get all these things, but I'm gonna get an interesting mix of these things. And maybe I'm primarily getting things that are local in this graph from places that aren't too far away, but that's okay. I'm getting an interesting mix of things, and occasionally long distance things make it into this region of the network graph, and then that spreads to me as well. From the point of view of any individual receiver here, you're gonna end up getting, um, a really interesting serendipitous mix of, of information that's gonna be much more original and diverse and, uh, I would say creative than what you're gonna get when we trust TikTok's algorithms or Instagram's algorithm to decide for us. It's also we're gonna have, um, community standards can implicitly be enforced. So instead of trying to figure out, for example, what are the rules for this billion person social network about what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, what you get in a distributed trust model is like, well, over here we have shared standards implicitly because we know each other and we have similar interests. So when stuff comes in here that we don't like, we don't like that tone. We think that is, you know, uh, over the top or conspiratorial, whatever it is, it's just not gonna spread in our group. Uh, a-and so you're, you're, you're getting implicitly these regionalized community standard type spread. Anyways, it's a really interesting way to have serendipitous information spread. It's a really interesting way if you're a creator to have your information spread. Now, there's one more twist here. So if you're a creator, your information is spreading somewhat serendipitously through these networks because of individual trust connections. But what happens is, is as your information... So, like, let's look at this, this orange, if you're watching, this like orange path here. As this creator's information sort, uh, begins to spread, you begin to attract new direct connections. So now more and more of these people might say, "Oh, well, I kinda wanna connect with you. I like this too. I wanna connect with you as well. I like this too. I wanna connect with this as well." And you begin to build around you this cluster of this clique, this cluster of shared connections of people that you can more, uh, directly communicate your information to. This is really the standard of the original vision for the internet. It's, it's a vision of these distributed connections. We're all speaking the same language. The curation decisions are human. Do I want me to send you or two people something? Did I like this thing that came to me? I did. I'm now gonna connect directly to this person. I'm gonna subscribe to their letter or listen to their podcast or, uh, their RSS feed, or go to their website. And you can, uh, as a receiver of information, receive a lot of interesting stuff and as a, as a producer of information, begin to grow as your content and art warrants it, a sort of larger sort of clique. It's a really good system, and it solves a lot of the problems that we get when we instead use this system of like let the gray box handle everything. Everyone will talk to the gray box, and we'll just sort of, uh, have a thousand people in, in Northern California to sit there tweaking it and try to make everyone happy. So when these artists are leaving social media to create their own websites, they're leaving the algorithm model of information spread and discovery to go to the distributed trust model of information spread and disco- uh, discovery, and I think that's not a bad model. The biggest problem with it is, uh, it's slow, right? I mean, um, you can build your true fans as a creator, but you gotta produce good stuff. It has to like make its way on a regular basis through this network and attract people one at a time. It's slow. There's no attention manipulation, so if you're not really producing something original or interesting that people really like, there is no pretending like there's a thousand people who care what you're doing, like TikTok can do for you. Um, you just won't succeed, so there's a, this sort of threshold for success, so it could be frustrating. Like, I want people to think I'm interesting, but what I'm doing is not and do have to deal with that. And even as a consumer of information, it's more work. Uh, you, you kind of have to like follow things and keep up with things and check out different websites, and you have email newsletters that come in that you read and sometimes you don't, and there's different podcasts, and you have to discover a podcast, and then you have to go try it and listen to some episodes. I mean, it's a lot more work than just having a continuous stream that s- that you just hit a button and there's stuff there that's really interesting. This way of, of, of consuming content's not good for in-the-moment distraction. You're trying to hide from something difficult in your life, TikTok is there to hold your hand. We can right away distract you whenever you need it. This distributed trust model, no, it's harder. Like, you have to wait for the email newsletter or the new podcast to come out or for someone to update their website. It doesn't offer you a solution to the problem of numb me right now, but I think you get better information, I think it's more interesting, I think it's more human, I think it solves a lot of problems of the algorithmic model, and if you're an artist, I think it's just more true to art. So should other people do this as well? I think it's completely on the table. All it takes is stop using social media, but lean into the Internet as a really cool place, and lean into it by independently produce things. Uh, newsletters, we'll talk about other newsletters, check those out. Podcasts, we'll talk about other podcasts, check out those other podcasts. Websites, this sounds old fashioned, have a folder of bookmarks. I like this artist's website. Like, I- one of the things I do, like I used to do in 2006, is, like, go check out what these artists are up to. Have an RSS reader if they're syndicating their content. Embrace the friction. Embrace the quirky weirdness of I'm not just getting these really polished streams. I think it's a, it's a cool version of the Internet, but the key thing is for these artists, it is a version of the Internet that is compatible with being a working artist. I would even wager that you have a better chance of making a full-time middle class creative living as an artist in the distributed trust model than you do in the algorithmic model. The algorithmic model gives you more hope, but again, these are castles in the sand. All these followers that you're trying to pursue aren't really doing much for you other than making you feel better, whereas the carefully built distributed trust model true fans, they'll join the subscription, they'll buy the artwork, they'll come to see you in person. You only need so many of those to actually make a living. So I don't- I'm a big believer in distributed trust model, and I think these artists who are revolting against social media aren't just making a sacrifice to prove a point. They're discovering a better way to be a creative in an online world.

Speaker 26:57 I like the castles in the sand metaphor.

Cal Newport 27:00 Yeah. I, we don't... Yeah, it's interesting. That was, when I first started talking about social media, that attention manipulation was the number one point because they weren't really... They had not yet fully invested in the engagement strategy, right? So, like, early Facebook, when I first started writing about this, they were just trying to get as many users as possible. They did not care about active user minutes, like trying to make it addictive. They wanted to make it something that you sh- you wanted to join, and they didn't really care how much you used it after you joined it. So the really, the big push of Facebook in 2004, 2005, 2006 was people are paying attention to you. It was entirely attention manipulation. Then once they went to their mobile strategy in the 2010s, then the game changed and it was, "Okay, we also need people to look at this all the time," and so the focus became on how do we keep you on the app once you're on the app? And it became a little bit less for the average user. It became a little bit less about I wanna be seen and more about I wanna be numbed, and that's what we talk about most now. When we critique social media, we talk most about the engineered addiction, but w- we shouldn't forget, especially when thinking about creatives, that this, like, original attraction was no one's coming to your blogger.com blog. But if you come over to Facebook, people will comment on your wall, and that was really, really compelling, and I, and I think that's how they, they got people to leave the quirky, interesting, old school distributed trust web and, and come into these walled gardens. That's how they got them to do it. That was what they were dangling. Um, and I think that, that point's often forgotten, but artists know it well because, man, it feels good if you create things for a living to make it seem like there's a lot of people who are caring about what you create, and it's this weird collectivized attention and algorithmic manipulation, and they're subscribed. What does that mean? Who are these followers? Do they ever actually see what you're doing? Like, who knows why they hit that button at some point and they haven't thought about you since. It's a weird game that's being played on there.

Speaker 28:59 Interesting, interesting as well because these creatives probably have some sort of validation through their friend group on Facebook that they're like, "Hey, I saw you do XYZ yesterday on Facebook."

Cal Newport 29:11 Yeah.

Speaker 29:11 So then they're like, "Oh, people must be on it, so I must have those 1,000 fans or whatever."

Cal Newport 29:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you get the, uh, you get the signals that keep you hooked. "Hey, I really..." Uh, comments do the same thing. "Hey, this is great. I really love that." Um, yeah. But I, I love the way they're talking about it, and this is a Jaron Lanier point, but I'm glad it's being picked up now by these artists. The, the impact on your art of the medium, that was another really cool point about this, is like when you're designing for Instagram, part of it's just the format of Instagram really constrains what your art is, and then you have that second order effect of you're trying to create art that Instagram will like. You're trying to please the algorithm. Um, art can't survive in that world. I, it would be the equivalent if... We, we... I guess we kinda did have this in the early Renaissance. So think about, like, there was a, a, a small number of great patrons, and the artist, if you wanted to succeed, if you're in Florence in the 1500s, you needed one of these great patrons to support you. So those patrons, you're... all you were doing was trying to design what they were gonna like. I mean, like, the Medici's taste completely shaped High Renaissance art 'cause they were funding Michelangelo. They were put... They were... And you were creating this art, you know, for them, right? Um, and then think about what happens. You go to, like, the, the first half of the 20th century where you have the, the, the New York City modernism scene. And what you got instead was these networks of independent galleries, and people began to produce really experimental, interesting things. They were- weren't serving, like, a small number of patrons. Like, "Okay, we need to paint whatever the, the epic art is of the day." And, and, and, you know, this is where you start to got the interesting things. It's where you get the, the Pollocks and the de Koonings, and you begin to get the, the abstract expressionism reaches its full, um, fl- flourishing, right? When you, when you get this, uh, things are more distributed, and you're pr- small groups of people producing for an independent production, like small galleries, and people are hearing about stuff through other people, and that's where all the excitement happens. That's when the innovation happens. So we'll see.

Speaker 31:15 I saw recently that Jonathan Haidt was on Rogan as well. I'll have to check that out.

Cal Newport 31:20 Yeah. Yeah, Jon, who I know, uh, one-upped our number two debut on New York Times best seller. He got number one.

Speaker 31:28 What's his book?

Cal Newport 31:29 The Anxious Generation.

Speaker 31:31 Oh, he's probably on the... promoting his book.

Cal Newport 31:33 Yeah, yeah. So he has his new book out. Yeah, so I mean, we talk about Jon all the time on the show, but his book that lays out what he's been talking about for the last six years, the research on teenagers and social media and phones, his book with all that research just came out.

Speaker 31:46 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 31:46 And it's cool. It's, like, really, um, really crushing it because it's, it's one of those things where everyone's like, "Yeah, we're there. Just give us the, give us the numbers." So I, I think that's, um, he's killing it, and good for him. It's been... There's a cool... Man, also being attacked, I mean, it's hard to be number one in anything. There's, like, a really interesting... If you wanna hear an interesting Haidt interview, he went on Tyler Cowen's podcast.

Speaker 32:12 Okay.

Cal Newport 32:13 Right? Marginal Revolution. And Tyler, who I've met, and I really like Tyler as well, brilliant guy, economist at George Mason, um, he's very, he's very pro-technology, also very pro, uh... You know, there's different ways of thinking about technology. I have dif- uh, my philosophy is different than his. His is very much like we will adapt to new technologies. It's, it's, uh, it's... It could be, um, disruptive when they emerge, but we adapt to 'em. And ultimately, over time, we can't deny that, like, technological innovation pushes forward the human story, um, in, like, really positive ways. So you have to just deal with the, the tumult, tumult in the small scale. And so he had Haidt on, and it's a really contentious interview. It's interesting. Now, after the fact, here's what I love about it. After the fact, both Tyler and Jon were like, "Yeah, this got kinda contentious, but that's great. Like, we respect each other, and it was, like, a heated discussion. It's not gotcha. It's not like someone hating the other person. This is what heated debate should be like." So that was kinda cool. I haven't listened to it yet, but, like, they, uh, y- I guess Cowen's much more of, like, a libertarian on these issues and really pushing Haidt. And, and then there's, like... Anyways, I've heard it's really interesting and contentious, and a mo- but a model of what, like, a contentious conversation should be like when it's done in good faith and with respect for each other. Um, yeah, so we should check that out. I would say we should have Jon on, but he's just, like, in the stratosphere right now.

Speaker 33:30 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 33:30 He doesn't need to be coming on our show. He's, uh, he's on, like, every major show.

Speaker 33:35 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 33:36 Which I love because, God, his message is needed. All right. Um, we got questions coming up. Let's, uh, first hear from a sponsor. [whooshing sound] So I wanna talk about our friends at Maui Nui Venison. So that's Maui, M-A-U-I, Nui, N-U-I. It's a mission-based food company that's bringing the healthiest red meat on the planet directly to your door. Uh, I love this meat. We had the jerky, and we had the steaks, which we grilled. Both were fantastic. My kids loved the steaks, which they don't always do, so that's a good sign. Um, but here's the thing about this company. What is this meat? Where does it come from? Here's their, their big idea. There's an invasive deer species in Maui, the island of Maui in Hawaii, that's eating all the vegetation. So they have to cull these herds. And Maui Nui's whole idea was instead of just wasting all these deer, just culling them off, we should harvest the meat because it's incredibly nutritious 'cause they're eating a Hawaiian salad bar all day. Very nutritious meat, and so they figured out how they could, uh, harvest the meat from the invasive species they have to cull anyways and make it available as super nutritious meat, uh, for consumers to actually eat. So it's 100% wild harvested red meat. The only U.S. [chuckles] company that has wild harvested red meat. You can wild harvest fish. It's the only company that's wild harvesting, uh, red meat. So this is their invasive axis deer population. It tastes fantastic. It's very nutritious, and it's ecologically sound. It's, it's a, it's a species they have to cut back on anyways. And so Maui Nui Venison is definitely a, a favorite now in the Newport household. So the good news is, uh, you can get 20% off your first order if you go to mauinuivenison.com/deepquestion. So that's M-A-U-I-N-U-I venison.com/deepquestions, or use the discount code deepquestions at checkout. That's Maui Nui Venison, the healthiest red meat on the planet, delivered directly to your door. Also wanna talk about our friends at LMNT, L-M-N-T. So this is a, uh, what do you call it? A drink mix, like a powder you add to water that adds to the water the, uh, electrolytes, including sodium, that you need, especially if you've been sweating a lot or otherwise, um, have been exerting yourself. Uh, it's created by the former research biochemist Rob Wolf and KetoGains founder Lewis Vilasi Nor. It has enough sodium, potassium, and magnesium to move the needle and get you feeling and performing your best. But what I like about it is zero sugar, zero artificial colors, no dodgy ingredients. Um, I use it after I exercise. If I've been sweating a lot, I'll put a little bit of LMNT into my water to get back some of the electrolytes and not just the water. Uh, if I've been lecturing all day or giving talks all day, I also lose a lot of, uh, liquids. I'll put a little LMNT in my water. Um, I like having that hit of salt and other things in it. And I like that there's nothing bad. There's no sugar. It's not the sweet. I can just throw it in there. It tastes great. I know I'm not drinking, um, I know I'm not drinking stuff that's not good for me. They have a lot of different flavors, like citrus salt, which I really like, or raspberry salt. They also have spicy flavors like mango chili or chocolate salt, which here's a key. If you had a late night, mix that into your coffee the next morning. That actually goes really well with the coffee. Um, so anyways, I am a big fan of LMNT. So I'm gonna say, suggest you go to drinklmnt.com/deep, so that's drinklmnt.com/deep, uh, to get a sample pack with any purchase. All right. Jesse, let's do some questions.

Speaker 37:33 Sounds good. Before I read the first question, I think you gotta tell the audience about how you're wearing a new shirt.

Cal Newport 37:38 I'm trying a different shirt. Yeah. It's similar to my old shirt, but not quite the same. I don't know if it's gonna perform-

Speaker 37:43 I don't, I don't even recognize who you are anymore.

Cal Newport 37:45 I don't know if it's gonna perform as well, uh, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sampling different options I have for shirts. I mean, it does feel weird. It's like driving your car left-handed or something.

Speaker 37:55 [laughs]

Cal Newport 37:56 Uh, we'll see. I mean, I'm sure it's been distracting everyone who's watching

Cal Newport 37:59 it.

Speaker 37:59 Yeah.

Cal Newport 37:59 Yeah.

Speaker 38:00 They're like, "That's a different shade of blue."

Cal Newport 38:02 [laughs]

Speaker 38:03 All right, our first question is from Mate Utz. "I'm a student and devoted myself to deep work and digital minimalism. Thanks to this, I've become more aware and I'm doing much better in school. However, yesterday I was sick and it absolutely interrupted my core of a deep life. I was on my screen all day. Reflection made me think that, that my life was simply a routine loop of habits related to the same goals every day. For example, learn to constantly develop, read a book to become smarter and wiser. Is this extreme routine good?"

Cal Newport 38:31 Um, look, it's, it's not only fine, but it is good to have regular routines or rituals that emphasize the stuff that you find important because that signals to yourself that I find these things important. So of course, we've talked about that, like reading on a regular basis. It signals to your mind that you take the slow consumption of big ideas seriously, right? So routines to emphasize what's important is important. However, I think what you're seeing here is that you probably have, uh, these turned up, the dial of their intensity and frequency is probably turned up too much. This is easy to do, especially if you have a lot of discretionary time, like you're a student and, and you really have a lot of autonomy in your time. It is easy for you to begin to really just fill your day almost entirely with these highly structured activities. Then it becomes counterproductive. So you want regular, uh, we call them daily disciplines sometimes on this show. Those are fine, but they shouldn't be all-consuming of your day. Something you do on a semi-regular basis to signal something is important to you, but your day should not become a sort of monastic ritual of this service followed by this discipline followed by that service. That I think not only is non-sustainable, but sort of misses the point of life in the first place. Your day should be varied and exciting, suffused with gratitude and adventure, and they won't be that if they're all routine. Also, you should have more of these sick days. I'm doing a lot of air quotes today, Jesse, but I'm doing air quotes again. You should have more of these sick days even when you're not sick, days where you're not doing a normal routine. I'm going on a long hike, and then I'm watching a movie, and then I'm, like, hanging out with friends, right? So you want, you, you want, you want the daily disciplines routines to be regular and important to you, but not everything you're doing, and you can walk away with them for a while and be fine and then come back to them, and you can take days off, and you want that sort of variety. So it's not like you're doing something bad here. I think you just, again, have that dial of intensity and frequency on these daily disciplines probably just turned up a little bit. So turn it down a little bit and go throw a little bit more variety into your life, and I think you'll be fine. All right, who do we got next?

Speaker 40:36 Next question's from Ed. "In your books, you talk a lot about quitting social media. I don't have Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, but I do use LinkedIn. However, this pro- platform has become very toxic, and I find the whole promotion aspect untasty. I'm consider- considering quitting LinkedIn, but I'm unsure of its implications. My work does not really rely on it. What should I do?"

Cal Newport 40:57 Uh, you can go ahead and quit it. You know, this is classic digital minimalism. Tools have to earn their way into your limited time and attention. They use Thoreau terms 'cause Thoreau is a real inspiration for digital minimalism. Before you're willing to allocate some of your limited life force to a particular activity, it has to earn it. So it sounds like LinkedIn is not earning it for you. Now, if it is, like, "Oh, there's something that happens on LinkedIn that I find to be really important," um, then you can reconsider, is there a way to isolate that and get rid of the other aspects of this, or is it worth taking that hit, or is there another way to get a similar value? You can go down that whole process of figuring out, like, what value am I getting here? But if you don't have obvious value, it's not your job to figure out how these tools can be useful to you. It's, uh, the tool's job to convince you that they're, they're unmissable, right? And, uh, this is something I used to write a lot more about because there was a period, especially during the, the height of tech exuberance, when the, the attitude of the tech companies was, "This could be important. You don't wanna miss on something important, so please go use this and figure out how this might be important." And so people would just sign up for these things and use these things because it's like, "I don't know, it could be important." As if, like, it was, uh, their job to figure out why LinkedIn was important. It was their job to buy the first Apple Watch and figure out, "What am I gonna do with this?" You don't need to be a beta tester, Ed. If you don't have de- definitive value from LinkedIn, just walk away. Hey, if it's a problem, if you discover something you're missing, it will become apparent, and then you can make another decision. But I say it's completely fine to walk away from something that's not obviously earning its keep. I don't really know what happens on LinkedIn these days.

Speaker 42:40 I never go on LinkedIn.

Cal Newport 42:42 It, I mean, it was... When I first started talking about social media, LinkedIn was very much just, uh, business networks.

Speaker 42:49 Yeah.

Cal Newport 42:49 Like, it's, you would just kind of declare, "I know this person." And here's my job title. And like the main use of LinkedIn when it first started, Reid Hoffman actually blurbed So Good They Can't Ignore You back in 2012. Back then, the main use of LinkedIn was, uh, two degree of connection contacts.

Speaker 43:09 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 43:09 So like I wanna talk to someone who works at Google because I'm thinking about trying to work at Google. I don't know anyone who works at Google, but if I look at the people that the people I know know, probably someone in that much larger group, uh, works at Google, and that's a connection that could make sense because the person who works at Google is hearing from someone they know, uh, and, and I know that person as well, and so that's a connection that actually makes sense. That it's, you know, there's trust. It's a, a full train of trust.

Speaker 43:35 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 43:35 That was the main use of LinkedIn.

Speaker 43:37 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 43:37 Nowadays, I think you post a lot of stuff.

Speaker 43:40 I know they have a big ad network as well, 'cause I hear their ads on Ferris.

Cal Newport 43:43 Yeah. So they, they advertise job listings-

Speaker 43:45 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 43:46 ... help you find people to hire. Um, for the individuals, I think you more promote yourself. It's not just I wanna be on here, it's I gotta post things, like sort of a blog, medium type setup, I think. Um, I gotta post things and, uh, and people share it, and so I think there's more sort of social networking going on as well. All right, who do we got next?

Speaker 44:06 Next question's from Julius. "I've been able to wean off social media,

Speaker 44:10 media and replace those old habits with reading books, listening to audiobooks, and watching films. Where do I fit in online articles? You always mention your articles published in The New Yorker. I wanna save those to my Pocket app, but that would just add to my growing to-be-read list."

Cal Newport 44:24 So with articles, I mean, I typically recommend you have some times when you read articles, and, and it could be just regular. You know, a Sunday morning to go to a coffee shop, a Friday happy hour after, you know, the week, a lunch hour on Wednesday. Or it could be more, if your schedule's more flexible, a little more serendipitous, like, "What do I wanna do today? I wanna have a article reading block." And if you... But have a ritual around it. I go to this place to, like, read articles. I like to go to the park and sit there and read articles, right? Have some rituals around, like, when you do article reading. Have a place you gather articles. So some people use things like the Pocket app. They grab articles they see throughout the week and, and they can read it in a nice interface, like on a tablet. Other people like to print things. You know, "Okay, I wanna bring them with me somewhere." I don't care how you do it. During your regular article reading periods, just, like, read the ones that seem interesting. You know? And that's it. And like, yeah, you're not gonna read all the articles that are interesting. You'll read some interesting articles, and that's the goal. And maybe it's just I do it once a week and I read three articles, or maybe I really, you know, I do this three or four times a week and I get through a lot of articles. Doesn't really matter. The activity of value here is just encountering interesting ideas from interesting people, and doing that is interesting. Do not have a completist mindset about this.

Speaker 45:36 Mm.

Cal Newport 45:37 I have to read every interesting article. There's no prize you get for reading every interesting article. And by the way, you're not. You think you are, but there's 100 other publications and cool things. So your goal is not to somehow win at every interesting article I read. It was the experience of communing with a mind that has thought a lot about something and given an interesting thought. That's gonna be good for me. It's like eating a good meal or doing exercise. I wanna do that on a regular basis, but I don't have to eat all the good meals, and I don't have to do all the exercises. So I would just lower that. I mean, the only caveat I would give there is my articles you absolutely have to read. That, that is just a given. Uh, bad things will befall you if you don't. But beyond my articles, just reading some interesting stuff each week is a win.

Speaker 46:23 What I do with, like, New Yorker hard copy is if it gets too stacked, I just recycle and then just start f- fresh.

Cal Newport 46:31 I always try to read one article right away when the hard copy New Yorker comes.

Speaker 46:34 Yeah.

Cal Newport 46:35 And then if I have more time, I'll read more. Yeah. All right. But it's weird for me. It's weird when you actually write for these same mediums. Reading becomes different. It's like I have a hard time reading nonfiction books that are similar to my nonfiction books because it's sort of close to home. And so, like, we have, we have sort of weirder, uh, habits sometimes. Like, if you're, if you're a magazine writer, you might not read a lot of other magazine articles. It's kind of interesting. All right, who do we got next?

Speaker 47:01 We got our Slow Productivity.

Cal Newport 47:03 Ooh, Slow Productivity Corner. Let's get some theme music, Jesse. [gentle music] All right. So as longtime listeners know, we try to have one question per week that is inspired by or related to my new book, Slow Productivity. If you have not yet read Slow Productivity, but you do listen to this podcast, that's a problem. It's like the handbook for the digital knowledge work category that we tackle so much on here. So check that out, Slow Productivity. Find out more at calnewport.com/slow. All right. What's our question, Jesse?

Speaker 47:35 This question's from Matt. He actually emailed me over the weekend, so I had to include it because I was curious myself. "I just sat down in my garden on Easter S- Saturday weekend to read

Speaker 47:44 Slow Productivity in hardback. I noticed the following. The size, perfect size for a hardback, not so big that it's hold, hard to hold up. The weight, again, glorious. The paper choice, such a nice weight and color. The font, love it. I'm not 100% sure what it is, but I'm going to try to work it out. The page size, by this I mean the margins on the page, again, I like it a lot. Were all these factors deliberate?"

Cal Newport 48:08 Well, Matt, little-known fact, I hand bind every copy of Slow Productivity. I, I sit outside, uh, under a tree, and I sit and I knit, or whatever you do, you, I bind with thread every page. No, it's not quite true. Um, so a lot of that is deliberate, Matt. So I will say, uh, the, the thing that I really went back and forth a lot with, with the publisher was the interior design, the font, and how the interior design looks, because I had a very specific idea there. Th- this whole book has a lot of very specific aesthetic choices. I mean, pr- I think the, the first design they put together was what I would call, like, the standard sort of business space idea book design. Uh, th- similar maybe to, like, A World Without Email, and it was much more of, um, a, a sans serif adjacent font, a more modern look, a more sleek kind of digital type look. Like, there's this kind of like a standard look. That a lot of these types of books went. And I said, "No, no, no. This has to be old fashioned." We're, we're tapping into, like, this timeless attraction to slow production of things that matter. I'm drawing from the stories of traditional knowledge workers. I want this book to be more old fashioned. And then we, we iterated and found that font, which you can find the name for. It's in the, either the front or back of the book, you'll find the name of the font in there. Um, I fought for that font and, and, and the, the looks, this more old fashioned look. And they were really, once they realized what I was going for, I sent them a bunch of, um, existing books. Like, "See what they did with their font and layout. This is what I'm looking for." And then they got it right away. And then, and I really love the way that design looked. Uh, in terms of, like, the size and the weight, I also, you know, specifically made this book a certain length that lends itself to a little bit of a smaller trim size, a little bit of more portability. I didn't want... Sometimes I write tomes, you know, big thick books. Not super thick books. Like, A World Without Email, like, I cover a lot of ground. That's a pretty thick book. Um, I, I wanted this to be more talisman, uh, talismanic. Is that a word? That's not how you say that. How do you say that, Jesse?

Speaker 50:08 D- I have no idea. Your vocabulary is so robust.

Cal Newport 50:11 Talis- like, say talisman and then adding, like, a, like a talisman.

Speaker 50:16 [laughs]

Cal Newport 50:18 Talismanic, I'm gonna say. Uh, like a talisman. Like, this, this, like, this, this object is capturing this new philosophy that I wanna return to and, like, rethink what I mean by productivity. And so the size also mattered. Um, I was, I was the one who really pushed the cover. I said, "This cover needs to be, um, rich and artistic. It needs to capture a mood more than it needs to capture specific information about the book because it, it is a big psychological element to slow productivity." So I'm glad you appreciated it, Matt, because the, all aspects of the aesthetics of this book I really cared a lot about and I took some big swings on. You know, I did some things that were different than, than the sort of standard book in this space from my prior books, so I'm glad you appreciated that. Talismanic. There is a real word there, I'm just not getting it right. All right, what else have we got?

Speaker 51:04 All right, next question is from John. "When I come back from a declutter, I can't find a good solution to my reading inbox. Even after the most careful

Speaker 51:12 filters I, I employ, I still get 50, over 50 high quality think pieces pushed to me every week."

Cal Newport 51:18 Right. So again, so this is great. So now we can go back and reapply our advice from before. Collect everything interesting in a place that's easy to get to. Have regular rituals and time set aside for reading think pieces. Fit what you can in there. Be happy with that. Unless, like, your, your job is to stay on top of the cultural zeitgeist about a particular issue, you just want the, the benefit is from the interaction and grappling with the smart article, not from the collection of specific types of information. So, so just to, like, to reiterate that advice. I mean, I love the idea. Let's, let's elaborate this. I love the idea of reading rituals. Certain place, certain day, certain times you go to read. Like, I used to tell college students who were, like, seniors over 21 that my, my whole, like, Hefeweizen, Heidegger with Hefeweizen philosophy is, like, you need a, you need, like, a friendly pub style bar that you can bring st- your Heidegger, like the stuff that's sort of ambitious that you're reading. And you can sit there and read and it doesn't feel like work. Or this could be a spot in the woods as well. It could be... Like, you want interesting places you go to read and think and encounter really big ideas. I used to do a lot of reading when I was at MIT during the, the summer and the spring on the banks of the Charles. I would, I like to, would read, uh, on the running path or on one of the docks that was out there in the river, especially when, like, the first sunlight of the spring season would come. I have a lot of good memories of that. Like, location, location really matters. And so, like, reading wrapped around location, wrapped around with non-instrumentality, meaning you're reading just for the sake of encountering ideas, not because you're trying, you need it for your work or, or, or y- it's research for something else. It's really, there's few human pleasures that are greater. So, like, have a reading ritual. Regularly spend time with contemporary articles. Variety of them. But the goal, the, the goal is gonna be to fulfill that ritual, not to somehow capture, um, everything. And again, the big exception here is my articles. You have to read and share those.

Speaker 53:16 At The Tombs in Georgetown.

Cal Newport 53:18 At The Tombs. That'd be a great place. Because cell phones, so The Tombs is a bar near Georgetown University. Uh, it's a basement bar. Um, college bar. Cell phones don't work down there, or at least some providers don't work down there. So you go down to The Tombs, bring your book, and, like, you're not gonna be distracted. You can't even look at your phone. I like The Tombs.

Speaker 53:36 I was just there last week.

Cal Newport 53:37 Yeah?

Speaker 53:38 Yeah.

Cal Newport 53:38 I haven't been in a while.

Speaker 53:39 We had a game at Georgetown University, so-

Cal Newport 53:41 Mm-hmm

Speaker 53:41 ... we all went there afterwards. And we won in overtime, so it was exciting.

Cal Newport 53:44 This was, uh, lacrosse?

Speaker 53:46 Yeah.

Cal Newport 53:46 Yeah. Someone, a reader reached out. Someone reached out. Oh, no, someone else. It wasn't a reader, but I was talking to someone recently who's friends with the c- the new coach over there.

Speaker 53:54 Oh, okay.

Cal Newport 53:55 Yeah. So he just wanted to say hi to the coach. Um, yeah. The Tombs is cool. It's a rowing, it has a rowing theme.

Speaker 54:00 Yeah. Love that place.

Cal Newport 54:01 There's a Dartmouth r- oar down there. Yeah, The Tombs is cool. All right. Um, do we have a call?

Speaker 54:07 We do.

Cal Newport 54:07 All right, let's see what we got.

Speaker 54:10 Hi, Cal. I'm Giacomo, a product designer from Italy. Thank you for Slow Productivity and for the positive

Speaker 54:17 change that it has brought to my personal and professional life. I have a question for you, and it's related to the principle obsessing over quality. So the way I implement slow productivity is truly through the lens of quality because, as you say, obsessing over quality is the glue that brings all the different parts of this framework together. Now, the question is, do you think that this is the best way or, um, maybe there are other ways that we can find the object that we should focus on, obsess over its quality? Is enough to ask yourself what it is that only I bring to this organization and then obsess over its quality? Thank you so much for your work, and I'm really glad that you mentioned Slow Food in, in your book. I really hope that, uh, who knows, maybe they're gonna reach out to you. As an Italian, I, I must say that I'm proud that you, that you include it. Thank you so much again, and have a great one.

Cal Newport 55:32 Yeah, well, Giacomo, thank you for that question. Um, I... uh, coincidentally, I should say, I was just, right before we recorded, was talking with my, uh, Italian publisher. So we're gonna have an Italian version of Slow Productivity is coming out in June. So, so look out for that. He was actually telling me my books do well over there. Deep Work does well over there. Digital Minimalism does well in Italy. They more recently published So Good They Can't Ignore You, and they were a little bit worried because that's an o- I wrote that 12 years ago, and that's doing well over there as well. So I guess I'm, I'm connecting with the Italians, Jesse. I think-

Speaker 56:04 That's good.

Cal Newport 56:04 Yeah. So June, I think, 11th or something like that, an Italian version, an Italian translated version of Slow Productivity will come out. Um, all right, so it's a good question. I might actually draw a little bit in answering this question for people who are, who are watching instead of just listening. So what Giacomo was asking about is, "How do I figure out what I'm going... what craft I'm pursuing in my job?" Right? Because, again, it's this key idea in Slow Productivity is that when you turn your attention from activity and towards quality, producing something really well, all the other ideas become much more natural. So you wanna care about your craft. He was suggesting, "Should I just say, what can I do that no one else can do?" I don't actually think that's necessarily gonna be the most accurate way to do this, so let me draw a picture here. The Venn diagram, I'm gonna draw two circles with an overlap. So we're gonna do a Venn diagram here. All right. And we are gonna look at, uh, this intersection in the middle here. So how would I label these two circles that we're looking at the intersection in the middle of? All right. Here's how I'm gonna label them. I'm gonna label, um, what I can do. What I can do is gonna be the first circle. Notice I'm leaving off that no one else can't. Then over here, produces clear value. So for your organization or for your company, whatever you do, this red circle are the things that, uh, clearly produce value. So it's like, uh, these are what ultimately get us new business. It's what the products that are paid for. It's the strategy that we bring to clients. This intersection is what you should care about. The things you can do, where it intersects with the things that produce clear value. And there might be multiple things in here, and there might be multiple people that correspond to any of the things in here. That's fine. And what you do is you find something in this intersection. All right. Here's something I know how to do, preferably something that requires some sort of specialized training. Uh, let me get a big dot. This is messy. Here, I'll put blue around the two. [laughs] Jesse, I'm getting abstract here. All right, whatever. Um, here's something I can do. It's skilled. It produces value. You might have many options. Choose one of those, and then you run with it, and you get better and better and better at this thing. So the choice of what the... It's not trivial to choose what you're gonna get good at. It's not trivial, but it's also not impossibly hard. It shouldn't be too fraught. It's like there's like, there's some things I do that actually are non-trivial, and some of these things also, like I can tell matter in what I do for a living. Let me choose one of those and really focus on getting better and better at that. So that's how you figure that out, Giacomo. Um, and just to walk through, just to walk through the, the logic here. Again, once you start really focusing on craft, busyness becomes more and more unnatural to you, and it motivates you to go through the other principles of slow productivity to commit to those more strongly. I, I wanna be working on fewer things. I, I wanna have more of a natural pace. I wanna take longer on the stuff that matters because you're trying to get better at what you're doing. All that becomes natural. And then as you get better at what you're doing, you gain more control and leverage over your job, and then you're able to make even bigger demands about how many things you work on or the pace that you work on, and it becomes a flywheel, a flywheel of, uh, slowness and quality. So f- f... uh, don't look for this perfect thing only you can do, but just find something you can do that's valuable. Even if other people can do it, your goal is to do it better than them. I'm gonna get better at it than they are. I'm gonna focus on craft. So that's a good question. That was, uh, Giacomo, a good chance to, to qualify that. All right. I think we have a case study here as well. So let's see. We got a case study. This is where people send in their stories of

Cal Newport 59:41 putting some of the ideas we talk about here into action. All right. This case study... Actually, we don't have a name on this one, but so we'll, we'll just call it, uh, anonymous. "I read Digital Minimalism and started applying its lessons. Since then, I have drastically increased how much I read, drastically increased how much I exercise, incrementally increased how much I sleep, significantly increased the amount of movies and video games I have actively and consciously consumed in contrast to passive or regretful consumption. My case study is one of very slow and steady progress. Here are some stats I compiled with my nerd spreadsheets comparing twenty twenty-two to twenty twenty-three. I doubled the amount of hours I read books, paper or e-book, while listening to the same amount of audiobooks. I did two point five times the amount of strength training exercises and three times the amount of cardio workouts. I increased the average sleep per night by about twenty to thirty minutes. I increased the amount of video game hours put in by thirty percent and hours of shows and movies watched by eighty percent. There are also some fuzzy or subjective improvements, but still worth noticing. Subjective improvement in mood may be ten to twenty-five percent. Increased attention span as measured by being able to read for more than an hour in a single sitting, which was unheard of for me two years ago. Uh, now I can do that. Increased attention to kids due to lack of phone usage when spending time with them. I used the phone foyer method. And mood and attention span improvements. Screen time seems to be reduced. Vaguely remember four to five hours daily previously. That's down to one to two hours, and that's mainly maps, podcast, reading time trackers, um, and leaving my screen on after making a call or text. I forget to charge my phone overnight and it's never a problem. I have saved a few hundred dollars because I no longer feel any need to replace the phone I've had for three-plus years. Well, I like the quantitativeness there. I know most people don't like to track things so closely, and I think that's fine. That's a personality decision. Um, but I appreciate us being able to benefit from seeing the quantitative benefits of getting more intentional about your relationship with technology. There's a lot of cool things in here. Let me highlight a couple things. The phone usage, phone foyer method is massive. I put my phone in the same place in my house when I'm home. If I need my phone, I go to that place to look something up or to make a call or to receive or send text messages, and then I leave the phone there and go back to what I'm doing. That makes a big difference. Your phone is no longer a constant companion. It becomes instead an oracle, something you consult usefully as needed, not something that's always with you. I also like this idea of attention span returning. Like, when you start to read on a regular basis, you get more comfortable reading, and reading is a good proxy for basically any sustained concentration demanding activity. The anonymous writer here says two, two years ago or more, the idea that he could read for a single hour, just do nothing but read for an hour, was unheard of, and now he does it regularly. The time, more time spent with kids, big i- big deal. More time spent exercising, right? I mean, when you get more intentional about your time and your technology, it really opens up a lot of things. So we hear about all these things this person was doing that they weren't doing before, and probably if we talked to this person before, they would just say, "How would I ever have time to read? How would I ever have time to exercise?" And it turns out like, oh, you had more time than you thought, but the technology was stealing and monetizing it. So these moments that could have, you could have spent making your life and your family's life better was instead being spent implicitly toiling in the salt mines of these attention economy companies, looking at their content to make them more money. So you sort of regained that. So anyways, that's a cool case study. Um, he says this is digital minimalism in action. Yeah, it is digital minimalism, but it's like the whole program here in action. So that was cool to see. All right, so we have a final segment coming up, but first, Jesse, let's, uh, hear from another sponsor. [whooshing sound] I wanna talk about our friends at Shopify. Right? Uh, Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business, from the launch your online shop stage to the first real life store stage, all the way to the did we just hit a million order stage. Shopify is here to help you grow. They have an all-in-one e-commerce platform. Uh, you could be selling things in, in, in a store. They have, uh, the point of sale systems that make that easy. You can be selling things online. Best e-commerce setup, makes it easy for you to sell things online, gives the users this, like, fantastic checkout, shopping cart experience. If you're selling things, Shopify is who you should be using. Um, it is definitely what Jess and I will use, uh, when we, and I don't say if, I say when we launch our long-rumored Deep Questions store with confusing T-shirt slogans, Shopify is absolutely what we're gonna use to rack up our... And I, I, I wanna be conservative here, Jesse, but, um, I'm talking like tens of orders-

Speaker 1:04:48 [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:04:49 ... that we'll probably get. But here's the thing, as we go from tens of orders to a million orders, Shopify can be there for you. Whether you're selling a little or a lot, Shopify helps you do your thing however you cha-ching. So sign up for a one dollar per month trial period at shopify.com/deep. Just be sure you type that all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/deep now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. That's shopify.com/deep. [ding] I also wanna talk about our friends at My Body Tutor. I've known Adam Gilbert, My Body Tutor's founder, for many years. He used to be the, uh, fitness advice guy for my, my, uh, Study Hacks blog, and I've kept in touch with him ever since. My Body Tutor is a brilliant company 'cause it solves a real problem in a smart way. It's a 100% online coaching program that solves the biggest problem in health and fitness, which is consistency. It's not too hard to figure out what you should be doing with your diet and exercise. It's hard to keep doing it. It's hard to adapt that when the situation temporarily changes, like you're traveling or it's the holidays. My Body Tutor solves this by giving you an online coach, a coach that's dedicated to you. They help you make your plan for nutrition. They help you make your plan for fitness, and you check in every day. Here's how it went. If you have a question, they give you feedback. If you need encouragement, they give you encouragement. You need to modify your plan for whatever, business travel, they help you do that exactly for you. So you get all the power of having, you know, a, a trainer that's working straight with you without the expense of having to have someone come to your actual house. Because it's done online, it becomes a lot more affordable. 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 the Deep Questions podcast when you join. So go to My Body Tutor, that's T-U-T-O-R dot com, and mention Deep Questions when you sign up and you'll get $50 off your first month. All right, let's do our final segment. [whooshing sound] Uh, there's a thing we used to do, longtime listeners know it,

Cal Newport 1:06:54 called Deep or Crazy, where I would talk about some sort of scheme I had, some sort of dubious thing I've invested money in, and Jesse would be our arbiter-

Speaker 1:07:04 [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:07:05 ... to determine was this decision a bid for living a deeper life or is it crazy? You, you remember this game, Jesse. We've been doing this one for a little while.

Speaker 1:07:12 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:07:13 Yeah. All right. I have- Uh, I have three things that get, uh, maybe increasingly outlandish. Recent... Th- either decisions I've made or I'm thinking about making. Yep. All right. Number one, I have, uh, tricked out the studio here at the Deep Work HQ with, like, a really nice teleprompter system. So like I'm, I'm actually looking right now into a teleprompter. I can see my own face reflected up on the screen. So I'm looking at my own eyes, but actually I'm staring down the barrel of the camera. When I'm doing interviews, uh, remote interviews, I can have the, the interviewer's face, like, right in front of me, so I could be making direct eye contact but, but staring down the barrel. Um, this is an Elgato teleprompter. I just set it up. Uh, so I thought this would be good, 'cause I spend a lot of time in here. This is where maybe it gets a little bit more outlandish, Jesse. I, I also was thinking, "Hey, when I just do normal Zoom calls, like for work, you know, with my publishing team, with, with, you know, uh, faculty meetings at Georgetown," like it's a waste not to use this nice studio I have. And so I also bought, uh, a pretty good RODE condenser shotgun microphone that I can put, uh, off camera aimed at me. So now I can do a Zoom meeting. I can have... I can be looking down the barrel of Zoom, but really be looking into my pretty nice Sony, uh, a6400, and have no mics because y- when you're on a Zoom meeting for work, you don't wanna have a broadcast mic and, uh, headphones on. Um, so I'll... completely mic-free but well lit with three-point lighting, looking down the barrel, really good audio, but with, like, an off-camera microphone. All right, so the question. This, uh, upgrade of the, the, the lab, of the ma- of the studio, Jesse, deep or crazy? Definitely deep. All right. The only thing you're gonna have to figure out is, you know, the shirt you're gonna wear for these new things. I'm thinking, uh, no shirt. [laughs] Is that- You put a pull-up bar, like, get a pump going, and then just, like, do every meeting in, like, a... Like they do in the Marvel movies where, like, they're holding a- Or the new Ro- ... really hard ... the new Road House with, uh, Connor McGregor. Yeah. When they're... And they're always, like, holding, like, a flex because they want to look good. That's gonna be my flex, is, um, in a very sort of unsettling way, just sort of be shirtless in Zoom meetings. All right, second thing. Uh, I'm upgrading the maker space part. So the, so the, the Deep Work HQ has a studio, it has a maker space slash production office, and then has, like, a conference room. And so I'm upgrading the maker space because I've a, a, a lot of making I wanna do, and I wanna I, I, I wanna clean it up and get stuff stored better. And, and me and my sons are working on various things. I wanna make the maker space more, um, usable and to put up a pegboard and get a lot of the stuff off the desk and- Just get her organized. Get organized because I, I'm learning CAD design, um, because I wanna be able to build sort of custom 3D print components and cases for the microelectronics I'm building, et cetera. So I'm, I'm excited about that. I felt compelled as part of doing this to really upgrade the computer system in there. And I, a, a, of, and I... Th- all this stuff arrived, by the way, Jesse. I haven't brought it over here yet. [laughs] But, um, we have a nice external monitor in there. I bought another one. And I got the, uh, the dual Jarvis Herman Miller sort of monitor, free-floating dual monitor stand. So you'll be able to position those two monitors, like, however you want them. And then I, I invested in, like, a pretty good mid-range Mac computer, a Mac Studio, which is, like, a step above an iMac or a, a Mac Mini, but a step below the, the Mac Pro. It's a pretty powerful computer. It's got a good amount of RAM. It's got a, a, a big multi-core GPU in there. Um, you know, it's something you would use for, like, pretty serious 3D design or video editing. So I'm, I'm telling myself, "Well, Jesse, you do some video editing in there." So this, you're gonna have dual screens and, like, a beast of a computer for video processing that can, like, really... It can do 4K, even 8K, like, whatever you need to do. And I do 3D design, and my son does 3D design. And so we're like, "Yeah, we can do rendering, and we can do slices for our 3D printer, and everything's gonna be really fast." It's probably, like, 5X more powerful than it needs to be. But I just like the idea of my maker lab of just... This was, like, my, my gift to myself for the book launch, of just having, like, a beastly computer system set up in there. 100% deep. Deep or- 'Cause also you gotta consider back in the day when [laughs] remember you had the, the noise that was bothering you and you were thinking about moving studios to maybe- Yeah ... a potentially more expensive studio? Yeah. But now, I mean, we stayed, and you're probably, you know, got a decent deal, so you're saving, you know, funds on that as well. You're right. Like, we, we could've been spending a lot more money. Yeah. Yeah. So like- I don't know, I don't know how we got rid of that hum. Oh, I, I fixed it eventually by just, like, changing cert- turning down certain gains and turning up other gains. Um, I solved that problem with a time-old honored of, like, turn knobs. But yeah, you're definitely, you're definitely allowed to, like, beef up the, uh, maker computer room now because of that. Yeah, I wanna, like, be, like, writing my program, doing, like, my CAD designs on, like, the big monitor and, like, dragging things over and put into the 3D printer. And I have my desk where I'm doing whatever and, uh... Okay. I, I, I like big computers, too. I just- Hang some of those pictures up there. Gonna hang some pictures. I'm buying a cool... I have a cool piece of artwork I'm buying for in there as well. That's awesome. Yeah. So we're... The... Everything is gonna be covered, and there's gonna be a cool space. All right, so I got two deeps. The final thing is in the maker lab, and this... I mean, I think this one is, is just, like, from a professional perspective, probably very necessary. I wanna move the fridge. Well, we'll move that somewhere else. We have plenty of room for the fridge. And I wanna replace that with, uh, a Street Fighter video game cabinet. [laughs] Oh, crazy. Crazy. Uh-oh. That one might be crazy. I might do that, though. I like the idea. I mean, I was looking at these video game cabinets. Um, and I didn't want a game that is, uh, of the style of, like, you try to play as long as you can, like a standard video game. I wanted something like if I was here, I'm here with, like, my sons, like, you're like, "Okay, we gotta, like, clear our head for five minutes or two minutes." You can, like, jump on and play one fight, and then, like, that's done, and then you can get back to whatever else you're doing. Like I w- And I remember Street File- Street Fighter very well from my childhood, so I'm, I'm eyeing a Street Fighter video game cabinet. Not vintage

Speaker 1:13:23 That's so good.

Cal Newport 1:13:24 Vintage. Yeah. Um, I went down the track of i- of vintage. Vintage is hard. They're, they're, they break. Um, they're big. They're gonna be hard to get up here. Um-

Speaker 1:13:35 Are you talking like an arcade thing?

Cal Newport 1:13:36 Yeah.

Speaker 1:13:37 [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:13:38 Yeah, like you stand at it with the, like-

Speaker 1:13:40 Oh

Cal Newport 1:13:40 ... yeah, the controllers. Um, so I looked into vintage. What I really wanted was pre-microprocessor electronics, like the original Pong and Breakouts. That's like impossible to find. Um, I did find a really good company in the DC area that could refurbish like an actual like vintage cabinet, but I worry about them being too big to get up here.

Speaker 1:13:58 Uh-huh.

Cal Newport 1:13:58 And it might take up like more space than we think, and they-

Speaker 1:14:00 'Cause the stairs are narrow, and it's, for the audience, it's a, uh, mini fridge.

Cal Newport 1:14:05 Yeah. So, so it's... Yeah, right.

Speaker 1:14:06 It's not like a-

Cal Newport 1:14:06 Right, right, right

Speaker 1:14:06 ... not like we're moving a huge fridge anywhere

Cal Newport 1:14:07 Yeah, we're replacing... Like it's not a big space we're putting this in. Um, so I worried about that, and they break easily, and then you have to have like the team come out or whatever. So there, there's a compromise, is there, there are a couple companies that just, they, they build these things new. Um, and they come, you, you... They come in pieces, and you reconstruct them. It's not vintage electronics. It's actually like a nice new screen and just running off of a, a emulator. Um, so i- but it's a smaller footprint.

Speaker 1:14:31 Uh-huh.

Cal Newport 1:14:32 So like it, it would fit in there without taking... And it would still solve the problem. Um, it would still solve the problem of like I like the idea in there just like having something like from my childhood that you could go over there for five minutes and like clear your head and then get back to like whatever you're working on. So I'm writing at my major monitors, like working on a project, whatever. You can just like roll over there and like do a couple fights.

Speaker 1:14:52 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:14:53 And then like get back to what you're doing.

Speaker 1:14:54 [laughs] Oh, that's so good.

Cal Newport 1:14:57 All right. So we got two deeps and a crazy. I'm gonna do all three of them I think.

Speaker 1:15:01 Yeah, great.

Cal Newport 1:15:01 All right. All right. Well, we haven't done that in a while, but I'm glad to have a chance to do it. Um, I guess that's all the time we have. So we'll be back next week. Uh, the episode, again, if all goes well, we'll be releasing the episode that we're gonna tape on Thursday at People's Book. Maybe we'll delay when we release that, but I kinda wanna release that as the next week's episode so it's timely so we can talk about stuff that's actually happening. So that'll be fun. So we'll have a lot of like in-person questions, so stay tuned. You'll like that episode next week. Um, and whether we see you then or you encounter us at our next episode, uh, stay deep. Hey, so if you liked today's discussion about social media technology and the deep life, you might also like the discussion from episode 293, where we got into how technology could help us do administrative tasks, in particular what will be required for AI to clean your inbox. That was a really fun discussion. I think you might like it. Check it out. For this large group of people, a big part of our audience, perhaps the even more pressing question about AI is the following: When will it be able to empty my email inbox on my behalf?