The Cure To A Mediocre Life: 3 Unexpected Ideas To Reinvent Your Life | Cal Newport

Cal Newport 0:00 So what do I wanna do today? Well, last episode, in Episode 268, we looked at some ancient wisdom that we took out of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations that seemed relevant to the modern task of trying to build a deeper life. In today's Deep Dive, I wanna look at three unexpected ideas from my own writing over the last twenty years that turned out to be surprisingly effective for helping people escape the shallows and move their life somewhere deeper. So these are ideas that are unexpected, not the traditional things you would hear, but over the years, I've learned work really well. So we've shifted from ancient ideas from last video and episode to modern ideas today. All right, so the first idea I wanna start with is something I posted on my website in June of two thousand and eight. So I have this loaded up on the screen for those who are watching. And the title of this essay from June of two thousand and eight, back when I was young and baby-faced and a doctoral student at MIT, is titled Dangerous Ideas: Getting Started Is Overrated. And I start off by saying, "Look, attend any talk given by an entrepreneur, and you'll hear some variation of the following: 'The most important thing you can do is get started.'" A little bit later in the article, I say, "But here's the problem. I completely disagree with this common advice. I think an instinct for getting started cripples your chance at long-term success, and I suggest that on the contrary, you should develop a rigorous threshold that any pursuit must overcome before it can induce action." So I get into this a little bit, why should we be wary of getting started? And I nod towards survivor bias, noting that, hey, people who did something successful then look backwards are like, "Well, you know, I'm glad I didn't wait, so you should get started as well, because if you're also gonna end up doing something as successful as me, why wait? Let's just get started." So I argue that survivor bias or survivorship bias might be one of the reasons why we hear this advice. But when I looked at people, uh, in real life who seem to have been... done impressive things, here's what I noticed, and I'm reading from my article again. "I've noticed that people who succeed in an impressive pursuit are those who established over time a deep emotional conviction that they want to follow that pursuit and have built an exhaustive understanding of the relevant world, why some succeed and others don't, and exactly what type of action is required. This takes time. Often, it requires a long period of saturation in which the person returns again and again to the world, meeting people and reading about it and trying little experiments to get a feel for its reality. This period will be at least a month. It might last years." So this is what I had noticed when I got more serious about studying success and impressive accomplishment. I noticed that the key was not action, and if anything, action seemed to get in the way, because as you launch all these different initiatives, not really understanding the world, not really with a deep conviction of this is what I, I, I'm gonna do this, this is worth doing, those pursuits trail off. They trickle off, and they fall apart. You do that enough times, and what you get out of all this frenetic motion is, well, you get the smoke from the friction, but no actual noticeable forward progress. You're much more likely to get despondency than you are success because you begin to author this story that says, "I don't know. I've tried a bunch of stuff. Nothing seems to work out. I can't imagine myself succeeding." Those who do really impressive things often have instead those two other ingredients. They have a deep conviction that this is something that's worth doing and it's worth taking the time to do, and they really understand how it works and how people who do this actually succeed. They know the world. They've read about the world. They've met people in the world. They've taken little steps in the world. They're pretty locked in. "Okay, I understand what's gonna happen here." You need both of those things if you're gonna survive the ups and downs of getting really good. And as I argued there, that takes time. You have to really come back to something again and again. In my own practice, I think of this as the circling period, where I'm circling a particular pursuit. "Maybe I should be doing this. I'm not sure. Let me back off. Okay, let me come back at it again from another angle. Let me talk to someone else. Let me gather some information. No, let me wait three months. All right, let me come back to it again." And you circle and you circle, learning and encountering, until either one of two things happens. The potential pursuit becomes inevitable and unavoidable, and then you launch down that path with your eyes blinkered forward, your jaw set with conviction, or your ardor begins to dissipate, and you realize, "Yeah, this probably wasn't the right thing to do." This has happened to me again and again. It happened to me with book writing. Happened to me with academia. It happened to me with podcasting. This podcast was launched in twenty twenty. Twenty twenty was not the first year I had a thought about a podcast. I've been doing podcasts at a regular rate since roughly about two thousand and fourteen. I've probably been on a couple thousand different podcast episodes. I know the field well. I circled this for a long time until I really understood it, really understood why it would make sense for me, really understood what it would take to succeed, which direction I would have to go, and that all took time until finally it became inevitable, "I have to do this." There was no real doubt when the time came by the summer of twenty twenty, "Okay, this is something I definitely have to do." All of those pieces had come together. It took a long time. But that was important because I had that conviction in this particular case study, because I really understood the world. I've been interviewing podcasters I've known. I've seen the ups and downs up close. I knew the numbers cold. I was willing to put in the time required, and this does take a lot of time. I mean, Jesse will tell us because he's been here as well. He's seen this stuff takes time. And we were talking about the numbers the other day, the big initial milestone, and we crept up to this number. We first started signing with an ad agency. I could get 15,000 downloads on an episode, and that took a while. I think it was a whole year before we signed with an ad agency, so we could, we could do, uh, two episodes a week and maybe get up to 30,000 downloads. Um, we're now pitching 65,000 downloads. That took a long time. It took a long time to get to 15. It took a lot longer to get from 15 to 65. It doesn't jump, and in fact, it comes back down again. Jesse always hears me complain about our downloads graph-

Speaker 6:39 [laughs]

Cal Newport 6:39 ... 'cause to me, and Jesse, you'll, you'll a- admit this is true, whatever scale I look at these graphs, no matter when I look at these graphs, it looks like our downloads are going down.

Speaker 6:48 Yeah.

Cal Newport 6:48 I'm always like, I'm always like, "Our downloads are going down." And yet when we zoom out, they're up. And I don't know when this up is happening, but my point [laughs] is that it's hard, and if it wasn't locked in, I'm willing to spend five years, five years to make this thing into something really big and impressive. If I wasn't willing to do that, it probably wasn't gonna happen, and that's why it took five years for me to decide to pull the trigger. All right, so that was my first piece of contrarian advice, was be careful about getting started. Here's the issue, though, of course. Won't this lead to procrastination? Maybe you will never get started. And I do wanna acknowledge that this is an issue. Fear of success, perfectionism, procrastination becomes a much-heightened issue if you say, "I really have to be sure before I get going." And I think a lot of people have faced that issue. But my argument is the right solution to that issue is not just get started on everything right away, because that's gonna be just as unsuccessful. The place where we should be focusing if we care about the psychology of action, the place we wanna be focusing is on how to walk that tightrope, not getting started too early, and yet at the same time not, uh, avoiding starting altogether. That's a very difficult psychological tightrope to walk successfully, but it's hard and there's no way to avoid that. That's what we should be focusing on. That's the challenge, and we can't get rid of that challenge by saying, "Don't try," and we can't get rid of that challenge by saying, "Just start right away." Neither of those is gonna work. We can't avoid that psychological complexity. This stuff is hard. It's hard work. You shouldn't start right away, but you should start eventually, but maybe not on this thing. And how do you know when it's the right time? You don't really. You just learn and you think and you build that conviction, and it's complicated, and it's difficult, and we should just admit that. But just getting started on everything, uh, it's not gonna get you there. There's a famous Guy Kawasaki... Do you remember this book, Jesse? Guy Kawasaki book, The Art of the Start.

Speaker 8:39 No, I never read it.

Cal Newport 8:39 It's a good title.

Speaker 8:40 Yeah.

Cal Newport 8:41 Yeah. But I think, uh, at some point I wrote a book or a post called, like, The Art of Not Getting Started or something like that. [laughs] Because, I don't know, um, that was definitely in the, definitely in the air at the time. All right, let's do another unexpected idea that proved then surprisingly effective in helping people cultivate depth. This idea, I'm gonna... I wrote about this, I believe I ended up writing about this in Deep Work, but this is where this idea first emerged, 'cause this post is now from 2010, July 2010, so two years after the getting started post. Also in the summer. Maybe the summer is when I have my best ideas. The title of this article from 2010, Treat Your Mind as You Would a Private Garden. Hey, it's Cal here. I just wanted to mention, if you wanna have help taking action on the type of ideas we talk about in this show, sign up for my email newsletter. The link is right here below in the description. Two to four times a month, I send out detailed articles about the types of ideas we discuss here. It's the best way to stay connected to me and my audience's quest to live a deeper life. So sign up below. Well, this is interesting. Where did this notion come from? Uh, it's not mine. It comes from a book that I read around this time that was influential to me, and that was Winifred Gallagher's 2009 ode to focus, RAPT, R-A-P-T. Now, here's the thing about this book. Gallagher, who does fantastic science writing, begins her book talking about her own cancer diagnosis. To quote her here, "Not just cancer, but a particularly nasty, fairly advanced kind." Now, I'm gonna read from my post here for a second. She realizes that this disease wants to claim her attention, and that this was no way to live with what may be the last moments of her life. So she launches an experiment to reclaim her attention, relentlessly redirecting it towards the things that matter most, quote, "Big ones like family and friends, spiritual life and work, and smaller ones like movies, walks, and a 6:30 PM martini." Gallagher comes away from the experiment with a good prognosis for her disease and a visceral appreciation of a surprising fact. Quote, "Life is the sum total of what you focus on, yet most people expend little effort cultivating this focus." She goes on to suggest that you should treat your mind like you would a private garden, carefully tending what you allow to grow in there and keeping out things you don't want. This idea was very influential to me, and I think it is more relevant today to our culture writ large than it was back in 2010 when I was first writing this article. Let's start with why this idea is important. There's a, almost a epistemological, philosophical truth embedded in here where Gallagher is saying there is not just an objective world out there that you are observing and, and noticing things about. It's not, "Here's the world," and either you're seeing it or you're not. Your experience of the world is constructed inside your mind. It's based off of, in general, the types of things that you are paying attention to. Right? It's just like if you, uh, are the victim of a crime. Let's say you're, um, mugged on the subway. For a while, your view of the world is, uh, when you go on the subway again, is very much gonna be one of, of anxiety and tension and fear, and seeing everyone around you as someone who's, like, potentially gonna cause trouble, um, because h- it's the same people that you might have seen the day before you got mugged. But the way and what you pay attention to can really change the way you experience your world. And Gallagher's saying writ large this is true, that even with all this terrible, objectively terrible stuff happening in her life with a cancer diagnosis, by focusing relentlessly on stuff that was good and important and made her happy made the world she was in seem much better, even though these bad things were happening in it. What you pay attention to really affects your subjective experience of life. So why is this very relevant today more so than it was even when Gallagher's book came out? Because of phones and social media. So now we are seeing this effect significantly amplified. Because of our phones and social media, because of the, uh, engagement cues of algorithmic curation and the push towards trying to attract attention as long as possible on these devices, you can really be thrown, uh, into a world that is constructed algorithmically. Uh, every five or six minutes you're checking your phone and seeing news and social media posts and newsletters that are coming from, uh, this engagement ecosystem that can incredibly color your experience of the world. Think about people you know who are very online. They tend, for example, to be very cataclysmic. They think the world is, you know, a day or two away from a, a major civil war, and really the only thing that's gonna get in the way is before that can even happen, there's gonna be, um, a, a, a climate apocalypse that's gonna fuel an even worse strain of COVID that turn people into zombies that are going to steal election results as a way to try to keep certain books out of the libraries or something, right? I mean, if you're online all the time, you're like, "My God, the world is falling apart." It's what you pay attention to colors your experience of everything in the world. Anything you see, innocent conversation you're having with a parent at your kid's school, a pl- like, everything suddenly is colored by this. We should treat our minds like a private garden, and say, "I don't want to see the world as being a few days away from, you know, the, the civil war, climate, pandemic apocalypse, and we're all about to die." I would, like Winifred Gallagher, enjoy my 6:30 martini, friends, going to see the movies. So this is something I think that has proven to be really effective is care what you pay attention to. How much news do you read? When do you read it? Why do you read it? What engagement sites do you allow yourself to turn your attention towards? How much of your time and attention do you want Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk to monetize? I mean, at, at, at what gold do you say, "I think they have enough money. I have better things to do than to be involved with that"? Why are you watching sort of YouTube videos of, uh, people crashing into things when you could be reading a book like Winifred Gallagher's book or reading a classic, trying to, like, put yourself into the, the mindset of a great thinker from times past to push yourself, uh, instead of, again, watching, uh, though they're entertaining, you know, videos of people falling in the fountains because they're reading their phone. I mean, what if you were going back and watching great films and reading secondary sources on them so you're prepared, and let me try to pull this apart, understand why this movie's good. There's so much stuff you could be paying attention to that points out the good in the world, that gives you appreciation for quality, that makes the world seem like a place where the miraculous can happen and people are divine, and there's really interesting things that are always around each corner. What you pay attention to matters for how you think about your world, and never have we had to think about that more than in an age in which there are plenty of companies that can reach us through that little piece of glowing glass in our hand and control every ounce of what we focus on. So we need an independence from that. We need to treat our minds like a private garden. The effect can be phenomenal.

Speaker 16:09 You say it all the time, too, with, like, books and how long they take to curate those ideas and how long it takes them to write it.

Cal Newport 16:14 Yeah.

Speaker 16:15 As opposed to a post or something that may have taken somebody, you know, a few hours.

Cal Newport 16:20 Well, even a post is old-fashioned.

Speaker 16:22 Yeah.

Cal Newport 16:22 A tweet.

Speaker 16:23 A tweet.

Cal Newport 16:23 Yeah. Uh, or a comment on a tweet-

Speaker 16:26 Yeah

Cal Newport 16:26 ... that you then, uh, obsessively check to see if that got engagement.

Speaker 16:30 Yeah.

Cal Newport 16:31 Yeah, I mean, here's the thing about a book as someone who's written eight of them now. You spend a long time thinking about those ideas, and a lot of people work on them with you and, like, "Are you saying this just right?" And, "That's not even a great sentence," and, "Let's go back and rethink the order of it." By the time you get to the book, you're seeing a sort of crystallized form of human thinking pushed to a, a level of consideration that you're not gonna see online. Yeah, so even that can just give you hope for the complexity of, of human thinking. All right, one more idea. Third idea. This is from 2014. So we're marching forward. We started in [laughs] 2008, went to 2010. We're up to 2014. This is September, so it's not the summer, so we'll break that trend. Now, the title of this p- uh, of this article doesn't give a lot away. It's called Should You Work Like Maya Angelou or Eric Schmidt? But the, uh, the quote I wanna use for the title of this idea is the following, and is buried in this article. "Think like an artist, but work like an accountant." All right, so this came from a David Brooks column that I had read back in 2014. And as I say here, uh, in the top of this article I wrote about Brooks's column, ultimately Brooks's column was about geopolitics, but he began it by riffing on Mason Currey's book, Daily Rituals, which really was a phenomenon. I've quoted that book quite a lot in a lot of my own work, and this was a book where Currey went through the lives of famous creatives, scoured their memoirs and biographies and letters, and just point... extracted everything he could find about their rituals for work. So people loved this book, and so Brooks was just looking for an excuse to, to write about it. Now, however, what, what was cool about his summary was a couple points he made. So let me, let me read from my article, which will in turn quote Brooks. "To summarize these observations, Brooks quotes Henry Miller, quote, 'I know that to sustain these true moments of insight, one has to be highly disciplined. Lead a disciplined life. He then offers his own more bluntly accurate summary, quote, "Great creative minds think like artist, but work like accountants," or to put it in study hacks lingo, deep insight requires a disciplined commitment to deep work. So what was I getting at here? Uh, an idea that I think has pervaded my thinking about what we do here on this podcast and in my writing in the years since, which is there is a paradox at the core of organizational productivity, right? So that's the term I'm gonna use here for productivity that is focused on organizing the obligations in your life so that you have more intentional control over how you spend your time. I'm trying to separate this from outcome-based productivity, which has more to do with maximizing output, uh, per each unit of input. All right, so for organizational productivity, there's this paradoxical observation that the better you are at that, the more free, creative, and relaxed you can be. And this goes contrary to a lot of people's instincts. People think, "Wait a second. To be organized is, in some sense, where creativity goes to die. I'm gonna have my planners and my systems, and it's so rigid, and there's no room for me to be creative. There's no room for me to just go on a flight of fancy and to follow an idea or to go into the field with my Field Note notebook and have that big insight. If I structure my life, I'm gonna be a boring executive. I'm a creative type. I don't do that." But what Brooks is pointing out here, his lesson from studying Mason Currey, his lesson that he, uh, quoted Henry Miller making, is that actually this organization supports creativity, relaxation, and freedom. To have your arms around, "Here's the things on my plate. Here's what needs to be done. Here's when I'm gonna do things on them. Here's what I need to take off because this is too much," that gives you the breathing room needed to relax. That gives you the breathing room needed to be creative. Because when you can trust, "Okay, I have things captured," one of the things you can do is like, "Great, I'm gonna spend all day today just working on this creative pursuit." And you can do so without distraction or guilt because you're not just randomly pushing stuff to the side and hoping nothing bad happens. When you can control your times and obligations, you can realize with precision the impact of everything you've said yes to and have the courage then to pull back. When you realize exactly what happens with your time and how long things take, you're much more realistic when you say yes and no. You say, "No, no, no. I, I know how this story ends if I say yes to this, this, and this. That's gonna put this many things on my schedule. I've seen that before because I have a pretty good sense of my time. That's gonna be too crowded. I know I need to pull that way back. I need to stop doing this, uh, no longer do these gigs, leave this position, rechange this." It gives you this type of autonomy over how your time actually unfolds. So I like the way Brooks put it, "Think like an artist but work like an accountant." So when you're thinking, be creative, be deep, be free. But when structuring your work, be much more structured like an accountant. And you'll be able then to get more out of your time. If you do things like, uh, multi-scale planning, you have a quarterly, weekly, daily plan, time block plan, makes a big difference, combined with full capture. When you're making a plan for your time as opposed to reacting, when you have sequentiality, when you have heuristics and quotas for how much, when you say yes and how much work of each type you let on, when you're able to see clearly how long things took and then go back and make decisions about what to do going forward, all this actually frees up more creativity and more relaxation. It leads you to the possibility of a freer life. And if you really wanna significantly simplify your life, there's really no better way to start on that path than to get control over everything, so that like a surgeon, you can start incising and scalpeling off all sorts of different things that have the biggest footprints and make sure the things that remain get done at the highest level. That's a unexpected idea, but it's one that has proven unexpectedly, I think, effective in thinking about living a deeper life. Think like an artist, but work like an accountant. All right, so obviously there's a lot of more classic ideas I talk a lot about on the show. But I thought it would be cool, again, to go back and get the surprising ones that seem to held the test of time. So let's just summarize all three. Getting started is overrated. Treat your mind like a private garden. Think like an artist, but work like an accountant. All of these are a decade old or more, but I think they hold up. So there you go, Jesse. That's old flame-throwing Cal in his blogging days, just throwing ideas out there.

Speaker 23:15 That book, um, that Brooks reference sounds pretty cool.

Cal Newport 23:18 Oh, yeah, Mason Currey, the Daily Rituals? Yeah, uh, that book was a phenomenon. It was so cool. It was just, "Here's a lot of famous creative minds from history. Here's how they work," and it just went through it. Everyone was writing about that at the time. I talked about it in Digital Minimalism. I think I cite some stuff from it in Slow Productivity as well. Yeah, Mason Currey. It was a cool idea for a book. It was actually a blog-

Speaker 23:41 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 23:41 ... like everything was back then. It was a blog that he turned into a book. Um, really cool project. All right, so I wanna move on and do some questions roughly on these, this general topic of sort of escaping the mediocre life and finding depth. Before we do, I wanna mention real quick a sponsor that helps make this show possible, and that is our friends at Mosh. Now, I gotta tell you this. So, so, so, uh, Mosh bars come in six delicious flavors. Let's give you the f- I'm gonna give you the foundation here before I tell you a story from my life about these. Mosh bars come in six delicious flavors. Each has 12 grams of protein and are made with ingredients that support brain health, [coughs] like ashwagandha, lion's mane, and collagen, and Omega-3s. At 160 calories and only one gram of sugar, Mosh protein bars are a guilt-free snack your brain and body will crave. I can tell you from experience, uh, they will. It was just a few days ago that I got a whole box of these That box is empty. Because they taste really good, they've got a great texture where it's soft but with crunchiness inside of them. They barely have any sugar in them. We're talking one gram of sugar. They have a lot of protein, so when you just need them a little, um, having a hard, long day, thing after thing after thing, you just want a little bit of energy input, they taste great, and they're gonna get that to you guilt-free. So I just ate the whole box. Ate the whole box. I love the flavors, interesting flavors. We're talking banana bread, that's very good. Chocolate peanut butter, I mean, come on, you're not gonna go wrong. And so, like, clearly I'm a mosh, I'm a Mosh Bar fan. You can just tell by looking at the rate at which I actually, uh, empty these boxes. Uh, Mosh was actually founded by Patrick Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. It's a mission-driven brain health and wellness company that donates a portion of all proteins to support women's brain research through the Women's Alzheimer's Movement at the Cleveland Clinic. It also has a new line of plant-powered protein bars in three delicious flavors for those who want all the protein and brain support in the original bar, but now made with plant-based ingredients. So don't settle for a mediocre snack when you can nourish your body and mind with the fuel it needs to succeed. So whether you're at the gym, on the go, or just living your best life, Mosh protein bars will keep your brain and body fit, fueled, and feeling good. Head to moshlife.com/deep to save 20% off and get free shipping on your first six-count trial pack. That's 20% off plus free shipping on your first six-count trial pack, which includes all six mouth-watering flavors. M-O-S-H-L-I-F-E.com/deep. Speaking about health, hard to find a doctor these days. How do you do it? You ask people for recommendations. You know people are like, "I don't know. How about this guy?" You go there, they have no appointments. You ask someone else, they're like, "I don't know, this, she's pretty good." You go there, they have an appointment, but then it turns out they don't take your insurance and you just wasted your time. It really is quite primitive how we find healthcare providers. That's why you need Zocdoc. Zocdoc is a free app where you can find amazing doctors and book appointments online. We're talking about booking appointments with thousands of top-rated, patient-reviewed doctors and specialists. You can filter specifically for ones who take your insurance and are located near you and treat almost any condition that you are searching for. It just makes sense, right? I need a doctor. Pull out the Zocdoc app. Go to zocdoc.com to get it. Let me search near here. I need this type of specialty, takes this insurance, look, has appointments, boom. Here's a list. Let me read the reviews. Hey, people really like this one. That seems good. This one over here, they say, "Look, he does pretty good treatments, but also has a tendency towards spontaneous cannibalism, so be careful about him." So maybe you don't go with him. All the information's right there. You avoid spontaneous cannibalism, you get the good doctor, you don't have to find, find out they don't take your insurance. It just makes sense. And once you find the doc you want, you can book them immediately with just a few taps. No more waiting awkwardly on hold with a receptionist. So anyways, go ahead. [laughs] Sorry, I was thinking, I was thinking, Jesse, about, speaking of cannibalism, I'm sure Zocdoc loves this. One of my kids was going on a field trip today. He does not get my sense of humor. Going on a field trip today to, uh, Skyline Caverns, the caves.

Speaker 28:10 Okay.

Cal Newport 28:10 And I told him, 'cause I thought this was good advice, so I said, "Look, if you notice something, uh, something seems amiss, like the, the, your tour guide looks nervous, like he might be lost, or like some of the lights are going off, your best bet is to start cannibalizing someone right away."

Speaker 28:26 [laughs]

Cal Newport 28:27 So that, like, you keep your nutrients up. You know, you can get to, like, probably the person. You just, just get right to the cannibalizing right away before, you know, uh, there's competition or whatever. And he thought about it for a second and was like, "Dad, I think it's unlikely we're gonna get lost in the cave." So I guess you could probably say the same about if you're worried about your, uh, about your doctor [laughs] um, being a cannibal. Zocdoc will help you avoid that. All right. Forget cannibalism. Good doctors, take your insurance, nearby, reviews. Zocdoc will get you there. Go to zocdoc.com/deep and download the Zocdoc app for free, then find and book a top-rated doctor today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C .com/deep. Zocdoc.com/deep. All right, Jess, let's do some questions.

Speaker 29:18 That kind of got me reminded of, uh, a side rant that Mad Dog had last week about, uh, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. [laughs]

Cal Newport 29:27 Were they, is Taylor Swift involved in a cannibal scandal with Taylor, with, uh-

Speaker 29:32 The-

Cal Newport 29:32 The football player?

Speaker 29:32 It was just like [laughs] it was just this big rant that he went on that was hilarious, and it kind of reminded me of the same.

Cal Newport 29:38 Speaking of Mad Dog, I was listening to Bill Simmons being interviewed on The Smartless Podcast, and they were talking about why he got into podcasting, and he said his biggest influence was Mike and the Mad Dog.

Speaker 29:49 Oh, yeah.

Cal Newport 29:49 Yeah.

Speaker 29:50 They were big.

Cal Newport 29:50 Yeah.

Speaker 29:50 They were real big. And he's, um... Where's Bill Simmons based? Is he based in New... Connecticut?

Cal Newport 29:55 Uh, he, I mean, he was from Boston.

Speaker 29:57 Okay.

Cal Newport 29:57 Then he moved to Connecticut after his parents got divorced in high school.

Speaker 30:02 Okay.

Cal Newport 30:02 And now he's, um, based in LA.

Speaker 30:04 Oh, okay.

Cal Newport 30:04 Yeah. But he said what he liked about Mike and the Mad Dog was when they would veer from sports to talk about, like, culture issues.

Speaker 30:12 Yeah, they'd have authors on and stuff.

Cal Newport 30:13 Yeah, so that-

Speaker 30:13 Mad Dog still does

Cal Newport 30:14 ... and that's where Bill Simmons, you know, really adopted this idea, which is his MO of bringing pop culture and intersecting that with sports. So it's not just pure sports. It's, the pop culture stuff is just as important.

Speaker 30:25 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 30:25 So there you go.

Speaker 30:27 That dog. All right. First question is from Tanya,

Speaker 30:31 "I'm struggling to be social and confident. What can I do to speak more articulately and gain confidence and impress more people?"

Cal Newport 30:39 Well, Tanya, it's a good question, and I can tell you a lot of this is practice Right? The more you're around people in different situations, the more comfortable you get in those situations. The more you spend talking about things or explaining yourself or talking to people, the more comfortable and articulate you get in those types of conversations. I mean, I talk pretty, you know, here on this podcast, but in part because I've been professionally speaking since I was in my young 20s, so I'm sort of used to it, the cadences of speaking, the pacing, the coming up in your head with what you're gonna say next. It all just sort of comes with practice. So social stuff really can be practiced. You can start with very low-key social stuff early on, stuff that you're already pretty comfortable with. I know this person. I don't mind hanging out with them, so we go to, you know, a restaurant or a bar together or go to, uh, movies together on a fairly regular basis, so I'm just used to, in a comfortable situation, being out in the world with people and talking to them and interacting, but the stakes are low. Then you can build that up to bigger things. Okay, I'm gonna go to bigger social events or parties. At first, you know, small ones. Here's my friend. It's their birthday party. And you get more confident with that. So a lot of this is just practice. Now, one of the things I think that is often left out of this conversation is the role of anxiety. Anxiety gets really intertwined with socializing in ways that I think it's hard for people who don't feel that same anxiety to understand. They don't understand how, uh, these really get mixed in together. You really can start to build up a sort of dread or anxiety around different situations. It's why one of the outcomes of pretty severe anxiety disorders would be an agoraphobia, where you don't leave your house anymore. It's because often those two things can, uh, go together. The same circuits that are related to sociality are often the same circuits that are short-circuiting when you're suffering from anxiety. So if anxiety is a real issue here, Tanya, it's not just, "Oh, I'm out of practice. What do I do?" It's, "I really feel physically dread and concern and, and panic when I'm in these situations." I would look towards A-C-T, ACT, ACT-based techniques. They're very good for exactly this situation. So ACT, otherwise known as third wave psychotherapy, stands for acceptance commitment therapy. Uh, it's a very effective evidence-based type of ty- psychotherapy that does really well with anxiety, social anxiety, panic-type anxiety around other people. Um, it's really based upon separating feelings from your actual actions. It really helps train you to recognize the physical symptoms of something like anxiety and say, "Yes, but I'm still gonna commit to do this thing that I think is valuable, and I can still do that even if this feeling comes and goes." Uh, it, uh, helps you avoid labeling that feeling as, "This is really important. Something really bad is happening. It's really bad to be feeling this way." It breaks that loop of you labeling your feelings and just seeing them as feelings themselves. We talked about this a little bit in last week's episode. We read Marcus Aurelius's meditation. He had some actually stoic ideas that are connected to modern acceptance commitment therapy. But I just wanna point that out there, Tanya, that there's a more serious training you can do with the tools of ACT that are there and available. And so if the anxiety is really holding you back, that's not permanent. You have to think about that like knee pain. You had knee pain. The doctor's gonna help you fix it, though it might take some PT and a little bit of time. Same thing here. Look into acceptance commitment therapy. There's some good books on it. I think it's, uh, The Happiness Trap is one of the famous sort of public-facing books on ACT. That's a good entry place into it. Harris, Russ Harris maybe. Well, you can look that up, Jesse, see if The Happiness Trap.

Speaker 34:28 Yeah.

Cal Newport 34:28 Um, but I just wanna throw that out there because it can be frustrating if you're on the anxiety spectrum. I'm on that spectrum. It manifests for myself in interesting ways. I have to do a lot of training on it. Depending if you're on that spectrum, it, uh, can be frustrating to just be around someone really social. It's like, "What's the problem? Just, like, come to the thing. Like, what could go wrong?" And they don't realize that you're feeling, um, immense dread. So there's a lot of things you can do there, Tanya, to train. Do the work. It is worth it. Sociality is very important.

Speaker 34:57 Yeah, you got it right. It was Russ Harris.

Cal Newport 34:58 Russ Harris, okay. The Happiness Trap.

Speaker 35:00 Yep.

Cal Newport 35:01 Yeah, it's a good book. All right, what do we got next?

Speaker 35:04 All right, next question is from Ben: In what ways can being ordinary be good

Speaker 35:09 in life?

Cal Newport 35:10 This was an interesting question. Ben, I had to think about it a little bit. It resonated a little bit because I think what you're getting at here is this interesting trade-off when you're thinking about the deep life and how you wanna shape it, 'cause one way you can go, of course, is towards exceptionalness. I wanna do something exceptional. I wanna be noted for it. I wanna do something noteworthy, have some fame for this thing that I'm doing that's important. That's one particular path for the deep life. The other path for the deep life is I wanna build a life around my values. You know, start with discipline, figure out my values, organize my stuff, sacrifice and be a leader on behalf of others, and then find areas of my life to be remarkable. And you could sort of have this quiet, deep life where you really matter to a lot of people, and you find and extract out of life a lot of joy and appreciation of stuff that's fantastic or great, uh, or remarkable, all without having to be, "I am an exceptional X, and people recognize it." You have sort of two paths towards depth here. There's kind of pros and cons of each, especially when we look at that exceptionality path, right? Because there's good there, and we shouldn't turn down the good. Why do people wanna try to be great at things? Well, first of all, you do gain more autonomy, right? You do something really well. There's more demand for it. You often gain more financial reward and/or more control over how you live your life. There's several things I do at a pretty high level, and I do have a lot of flexibility in my life. We get to mess around in this playhouse, Deep Work HQ. Uh, you know, I go away in the summers. I have very high control over my schedule. I don't worry about money really. That's not really an issue. So there's, like, great autonomy that comes from doing some things really well. Um, also it feels good to be respected in the moment. We're wired for that. This is the whole tribal leadership thing. We tell ourselves it doesn't matter, but there is ego. And it's, and, and it... You do feel... If something goes really well, you'll feel good about that for a while. There's a reason why people chase it. That is the stimulus that is, uh, perverted when we see workaholism, right? So with a addiction, there's usually some sort of very powerful stimulus that becomes the driver for the addiction. The, the feeling of intoxication, right? Workaholism is really that feeling of, "Wow, I did this thing well and, and, and people recognized that, and my boss rewarded me." That's a very strong stimulus. That's why you can build a whole addiction around it. On the flip side, though, it can be very stressful and anxiety [laughs] producing to try to do something exceptionally well. It's hard to do, and it puts you into bigger, more, you know, stressful circumstances you have to navigate. You get more people perhaps who, like, want your time than you have nearly enough time to actually give, and you have to start saying no to people, and people think that you're being, you know, snobby or elitist. Uh, high-stake things are just anxiety producing, and you have to figure, "Is this worth the anxiety? Is this one not?" Things can fall apart. It's hard to do things at a high level, so there's negatives that come with it. I mean, I constantly have to make these decisions. There's things I, you know, television things I've turned down, for example, that maybe in isolation you say, "Well, that's cool. Like, I know that show. That would be really cool to go on." And it's like, I can't do all of these things, and if I did, it's gonna overwhelm me with time c- constraints and anxiety. I have to be careful about how I, I make my path, so it's tricky. So I think it's a really good question, Ben. If you're going the route of, "Let me just be exceptional," you can build depth around that, and there are some real positives you're gonna get, but there's also negatives. And I say that because I think that then when you get the scale between the quiet remarkability approach versus the exceptional, notable, famous remarkability approach, when you put the cons with the pros on this ladder, the scales become about balance. And so you really, if you're going the quiet remarkability approach, a life that, you know, it's Lorelai Gilmore in the Gilmore Girls, not famous outside of Stars Hollow, not, like, exceptional at anything, but in that world, you know, is really well known and has built this really interesting life, and people really know her and appreciate her, and she's involved in people's lives and is having a positive impact on that town. But she's not famous outside of that small little town. That's quiet remarkability. Not so bad of a path. And again, I don't wanna say the other path, the sort of exceptional remarkability, is bad. I'm just saying when you have the pros and the cons, it's no longer like, "Well, this is clearly better if you have the skill. You know, you have the whatever. I can shoot a really good jump shot. I could go that way." You know, if you have the possibility to go that way, it's not bad, but it's also not a no-brainer. And if you don't see an obvious way to get to the exceptional remarkability, you shouldn't feel bad about it because, again, these things balance out. Steph Curry versus Lorelai Gilmore, that old famous [laughs] comparison, like there, th- there's... I don't know. There's plus and minuses to both, so, uh, neither should be dismissive of the other. That's a weird compa- uh, I might be the first person in history to make that particular comparison.

Speaker 40:04 Probably.

Cal Newport 40:04 I mean, I can't imagine it's come up in the locker room, [laughs] you know, the NBA finals. "Steph, man, this is your, this is your Lorelai moment, buddy. This is it. You gotta just get out there. I want you to man up and Lorelai this, all right? I mean, you gotta, uh..." "Your dribbling should be like the f- fast speech cadence of Lorelai Gilmore, confusing people with as you move back and forth verbally through various things, and this is the Kirk of your town, but you need to get the ball to Luke." Like, just probably some basketball strategy metaphor.

Speaker 40:38 [laughs]

Cal Newport 40:40 The end of that speech would be like, "Yeah, hold on one second. Someone's handing me a piece of paper," and, "Oh, yeah, I'm fired."

Speaker 40:43 [laughs]

Cal Newport 40:43 And then the co- and then the coach just walks out. That's how that story ends. [laughs] It's like, yeah, that makes sense. And then he was fired. All right, nonsense. Stop the nonsense. Let's move on. What do we got next?

Speaker 40:53 All right, great. Next question's from Samantha: "How important are having friends in life? If it is important, how would you recommend

Speaker 41:00 an introvert go about finding some? Also, can you pr- provide some advice on moving on from certain friendships that could be holding someone back?"

Cal Newport 41:08 So this is a good, uh, complement to Tanya's questions about being more social and confident. Friends, as I mentioned there, are critically important. And for a friendship to be real, it has to involve nontrivial sacrifice of time and attention, otherwise your brain doesn't treat it as real. So just texting someone all the time doesn't count. Commenting on their social media doesn't count. Being active in a WhatsApp channel with them also does not count. As far as your brain is concerned, they're not a friend until you're going places and doing things with them, doing things you might not otherwise wanna do, but you're doing it because they're your friend. That's when your brain begins to take the relationship seriously. So this should be a regular part of your weekly planning, especially if you're trying to build up friendships as something that's more important, that a regular part of your weekly planning should be, "What am I doing this week to strengthen or develop friendships?" You have to be pretty systematic about it, especially if you're sort of getting back in the saddle, so to speak. So fortunately, I can point you towards a resource here. There was a segment we did a few episodes back on this notion of the friendship recession, this idea that Americans in particular have less friends than ever before. It was a segment where I had my friend Jamie Kilstein come on and talk about what he went through to gain a new group of friends in his 40s as a male, where this is kind of difficult. So we got into the weeds in that episode about specific things you can do to actually find and cultivate friends. So I won't repeat that all, but I will say, uh, find that segment on the friendship recession. That was a final segment on a relatively recent episode. Maybe Jamie, you can lo- or Jesse.

Speaker 42:47 Yep.

Cal Newport 42:47 Jesse knows whenever Jamie's on, I begin just furiously messing up their names. Because, and, and as Jesse has pointed out, is maybe it's because Joe Rogan's podcast producer is named Jamie, so it's just in the collective conscious of, like, Jamie is what you call the other person on a microphone when you're podcasting. So it's, doesn't take much to tip me into that. Uh, he'll look that up. But anyways, I think-

Speaker 43:10 It was 266.

Cal Newport 43:11 266.

Speaker 43:12 Take Control of Your Technology Habits.

Cal Newport 43:14 Right, episode 266, uh, deeplife.com/listen. You'll find that, and then the video for it's there as well. So look at that discussion with Jamie, because I think this is critically important, especially if you do not have a robust group of friends. Think about that like getting in shape. It's gonna require a lot of work on a regular basis with some tried and true tactics, but it is absolutely, absolutely worth doing. All right, Jesse. See, I almost said Jamie there. I'm telling you, it's, like, very difficult once you start thinking about that. Jesse, what is our next question?

Speaker 43:48 All right, next question's from Evelyn. "I had been a high school teacher for over a decade and then moved into a non-classroom role still in education. Now

Speaker 43:57 a couple years in, I can confidently say it makes me miserable. The work environment suffers from all the symptoms you describe about knowledge work and from lack of management. Ultimately, I decided to return back to the classroom, taking a pay cut, but I wanted to radically shift, uh, radically shift how I approached the job. I'm curious if you have any advice for reapproaching this type of work in a way that guards against burnout and prioritizes craft, deep work, and slow productivity."

Cal Newport 44:24 Well, Evelyn, first of all, I like your intention here. You're trying to actually craft your life to match the vision, your, your vision of your ideal lifestyle. Let me briefly mention the pay cut piece as well, because I think this is something that often leads people astray. People often do a style of budgeting with their income, where they just think about any reduction in that income as having stuff taken away from them. When you're doing lifestyle-centric career planning, you gotta go the other way, and you have to do zero-based budgeting, which is implicitly what Evelyn is doing here. What are the things that are important for us to live our life in the way we wanna live it? How much do those cost? Good, that's how much money we need. And so if this pay cut for Evelyn still keeps them able to, you know, we can live where we wanna live and do these things and it, and not have undue stress, then they're golden. The money becomes just one of the other tools you have to craft your ideal lifestyle. It doesn't become the primary metric by which you measure the success of your lifestyle. So this is a, a critical point to make for those who are cultivating a deep life. Money has to become a tool. It can no longer become the object. And this opens up this type of flexibility. Evelyn did not like her job. And so she, uh, this job might be better for me. Oh, I'm gonna have to lose some money. Who cares? I don't see it as losing money. I, I see, what is the configuration of my life in this new job? Do we have enough money to afford what we need? Yes. What else matters about this job? And you can see the money as one part among others. There's a nice little tidbit hidden in this bigger question. All right, let's get into the details though. Evelyn is saying, "Now I'm returning to the classroom. How do I keep this deep? How do I keep slow productivity at play here? How do I avoid burnout in the classroom?" I have a few things to recommend just based off the many teachers I've spoken with over the years and my own experience as a academic teacher myself. But first of all, organization systems really matter when fighting off burnout. Multi-scale planning, control over your time matters. If you are semester, weekly, then daily time block planning, you're making use of the full 40 hours you have every week. And when you're making use of the full 40 hours, you can avoid the pile-ups. You can avoid the, "Oh my God, I gotta work late tonight 'cause I have to prepare for parent-teacher conferences and get all these tests graded, and all this has to happen by tomorrow." That's the, the scheduled deadline collision, long work hour days is a real source of fuel for burnout. Multi-scale planning helps you avoid that. Because now you see, oh, I'm gonna start working on the parent-teacher conferencing a week early, and this Tuesday, th- this block, I'm gonna finish it, and the test prep can start this day. You see the time you have, and you can move the proverbial chess pieces around there much easier. So you have to care more about organizational productivity. Second, tailor your curriculum more to minimize negative impact. And by curriculum here, I don't mean the content, I mean the way in which you, uh, deliver and assess material. Do we have the students do quizzes every single day? Do they bring things home and I check 'em and then they go back and they work on them? Uh, anything involved in how you actually deliver the content, so the, the logistical curriculum, look at this, among other things, through the lens of what's gonna make my life easier. And what you do here, what you do here is you keep the floor being, well, what's, first of all, what's gonna work well for the students? But within the realm of the equivalence class of many different ways that you could actually implement the details of your class, if you lean towards the things that are gonna make your life easier versus harder, there is no difference to the students or the parents. They don't know. But for your life, it can make a difference. This is a real endemic issue with junior professors. They come into planning their class and really don't wanna think about easiness for themselves, what's gonna be tractable or not. Like, "No, no, no, it's all has to be about what idea do I think is best, and so we're gonna do these interactive, uh, exams every single day, and, and then they're gonna comment on the class blog, and I'm gonna come in and comment on their comments. And then we'll have a scribe, and the scribe is gonna take notes each week on the comments on the comments, and then the scribe is gonna give it to me to review so we can post it. But I'm gonna do a video wrap where I gotta, I gotta give the best highlights there, uh, but I gotta film each one on a different high point from a different US state because there's a metaphor there." And you have all these ideas, you're like, "I just gotta do the best ideas," and your life is incredibly difficult. Where actually the students would get the same pedagogical effect if it was We have these problems, uh, that's posted on the board when you come in, and you, you do each of these reaction problems for the first 10 minutes, and there's an hour every day on Friday where you go through them and use check, check plus grading because you don't wanna get into the weeds and, and it, it solves the problem, but it's much easier for you. I learned this the hard way as a teaching assistant at MIT. Oh, my God, the details of how I run this class makes a huge difference on my life, and the students could care less. They don't know the difference between this or this or that. But for me, it can make a big difference. So I think teachers don't do that enough. They don't consider the impact on their own time and schedule enough. But i- if anything, it is negligent as a teacher to design things that overwhelms you because your time and attention, you only have a limited supply, and it's sort of part of your responsibility to make better use of that. So care about how you tailor the logistics of your curriculum. Communication systems matter, especially with parents. And one of my kids has a teacher, for example, that runs parent office hours, which is such a good idea. "These two hours on this day, you can always just call me. Any question about the, you, you know, your kid or what's going on, just call me. I'll tell you about it." You know how much back and forth email that solves? The parents don't care. They just want clarity. "Oh, my God, I, I worry about this thing with my kid. What do I do about it? Oh, Tuesday. Great. I'll call him then." Parents just want clarity. But by having that good system, this teacher has re- uh, this context switching footprint has been reduced. Um, and then finally, I've heard this from a lot of teachers, especially at, like, the secondary level. Uh, be very wary about the extras. Be very wary, especially at first, to say yes to things that you don't necessarily have to. "Hey, will you help run this thing at the school or do this extra initiative or, or be the assistant advisor for this new club?" Just be really wary about that. Like, those things have a huge cost, and you wanna be really wary about making those costs. You might even, at first, you're like, "I'm not really taking on new things for the whole first year. I'm getting the lay of the land here, and then I'm gonna choose something I really wanna put my energy into extra." Okay, the theater production, and that's kind of my thing, and I don't, I don't do other things. And I'm not particularly apologetic about it, and the people who ask me and I say, "No," just move on to the next person to ask right away. I'm not trying to become, I don't know, the teacher rep to the union or the principal. I'm just trying to do my job, and don't be apologetic about it. All of those ideas, by the way, can adjust to many different knowledge worker jobs. Being organized, tailoring how you design the work you do to minimize the footprint, being careful about your communication systems, and being wary about taking on extras. I think that applies to almost any knowledge worker job and can really help reduce overload. If I'm gonna summarize these ideas, I'd use the term slow productivity, like my new book coming out in March. This is a slow productivity mindset. All right, let's do one more quick question here, Jesse.

Speaker 51:40 All right. Next question is from Samir. "I like the idea

Speaker 51:44 of a deep life, and I've replaced passive internet use with activities that I really care about, such as mathematics, botany, and playing guitar. My problem is that I discovered these hobbies," and he's actually, uh, in med school, his medical pursuit through YouTube. "I follow Andrew Huberman and other math channels. Is it okay to still use YouTube to get innovative ideas?"

Cal Newport 52:05 Always a good chance to review my thoughts on YouTube because it's a complicated platform. Video and independent produced video, I do strongly believe is the future of independent content. For whatever reason, video has a stronger hold over the human psyche than either audio or text, and yet it can also be a source of major distraction because of recommendation rabbit holes. So my advice is always YouTube is fine if you use it in the right ways, and I say you should use it like a television and a library. What I mean about that when I say use it like a television, I mean, there's particular shows you like that you might turn on on the TV to watch. "Seinfeld's on tonight. I wanna watch it." That's fine to use YouTube that way. Andrew Huberman could be your Seinfeld. I like Andrew Huberman. It's very high quality content. It's interesting. It's better than anything I watch on cable. He posts the video on... I don't know when he does it, but let's just say for the sake of example, on Monday. So to, to load up the YouTube app on your TV on Monday night and saying, "I'm gonna watch Huberman," or, "I'm gonna watch him as I eat lunch on Tuesdays," is an absolutely fine use of YouTube. It's like a television where you have very niche channels that have shows on that you really like. Using it like a library is also fine. I have this hobby now, botany, like you mentioned, and I wanna look up how to take care of a particular type of orchid. Look up a video of that on YouTube. Could be a fantastic way to learn how to do it. Visual is better than text. There's a lot of great how-to stuff on YouTube. Use it like a library. What you don't wanna do is use it as a default source of distraction. So you don't wanna use it as, "I'm bored. Let me go to YouTube to be entertained." That's where the danger is, and you start following these weird videos until eventually it's like someone in a weird costume opening a box as they fall into a fountain that gets full of money from MrBeast or something. I don't know. Things get weird when you go down the just maximizing engagement rabbit hole. So use it to watch particular things you like. Maybe you like my show, you like Huberman's show, great. Think of it like you're watching a show on CNN or NBC. It's just an internet delivered channel. Fine. Looking up stuff, do you-- how do I do this? How do I do that? Use YouTube. Fine. Just don't use it as a default source of distraction. That's not so hard if it's on your TV, if you're using the app on your TV, because there you're just searching for a particular thing. You don't-- the recommendations, what's next is not as-- that UI is not as powerful on TV. If you use it on your computer to look something up, just get one of those common plugins that can wipe the recommendations off the side so you can look something up in the search bar, click on something to watch, and that's all you see. You don't see those rabbit hole recommendations. Do that, and YouTube can actually be a plus to your life, uh, and not a negative. So it's this weird thing that could go either way depending on how you use it. TV and a library. All right. Well, we got a final segment we wanna get to. I wanna read some of my own readers' reactions to my ideas First, however, I wanna mention another sponsor that makes this show possible. That is our friends at Henson Shaving. Henson makes this beautiful precision-milled aluminum razor. Henson's other business, the other thing they do [chuckles] is they make precise parts for the aerospace industry. So they have these mills that can, uh, exactly mill metal to exactly precise precision. So you get this beautiful piece of precisely milled aluminum, and because it's so precise, you can put a 50 cent, 10 cent, whatever these cost, they're cheap, little safety blade in there. Screw it in, and it has just the width of a human hair edge of the blade extend beyond the edge of the razor body, which gives you a very stable platform to shave. There's no diving board effects with nicks and cuts, and you get a very smooth shave from a cheap blade using this beautifully manufactured razor. This is a true story, and I don't wanna speak ill of other, other, uh, competitors. I won't use particular names, Jesse, but this is true. I was traveling recently, had a disposable with me. I don't even know if it was a disposable. I think it was from a subscription service. I don't know where, but it's a, you know, plastic with 70 different blades in it. And, uh, because this was... I threw it in the bag to travel because my, my Henson's on this beautiful stand in my bathroom or whatever. Nicked me right off the bat. Nicked me.

Speaker 56:20 Just before you were about to go on stage?

Cal Newport 56:21 Basically. It wasn't, but might as well have been.

Speaker 56:23 Yeah.

Cal Newport 56:24 Nicked me. Not gonna have that with a Henson because it's precisely milled so you have no diving board effect, no nicks. Anyways, I love really well-made technology that's durable, and you can just use it forever, and it's just a much more, I don't know, reasonable way to engage with tools. And so what'll happen with the Henson is you pay more up front for the beautiful razor, but because you're using these 10 cent blades, it does not take long before the upkeep cost of this thing is so much cheaper than a subscription service, so much cheaper than going to the drugstore to get the disposable, disposable razors. It's just a nice, beautifully crafted way to get a good shave. So it's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that will last you a lifetime. Visit hensonshaving.com/cal to pick the razor for you, and use code CAL, and you will get two years' worth of blades for free with your razor. Just make sure you add them to the cart, the two-year supply, and then when you enter the code CAL later, the price will drop to zero. That's 100 free blades when you head to H-E-N-S-O-N-S-H-A-V-I-N-G.com/cal and use the code CAL. I also wanna talk about our friends at My Body Tutor, run by Adam Gilbert, who I've known forever. Used to be the fitness advice guy on my Study Hacks blog. His company, My Body Tutor, is a 100% online coaching program that solves the biggest problem in health and fitness, which is lack of consistency. The way this works is that you're matched up with an online coach who helps you come up with a plan. "Here's what we're doing with your nutrition. Here's what you're doing with your physical activity and training," and then you check in with this coach online every single day. "Here's what I ate. Here's my ex- exercise. Here's what's going well. Here's what's not going well." If there's a problem, they say, "Great, let's rethink this. Let's change this. Oh, you're going on a trip? Here's what you're gonna do in the hotel." So you have someone following you every day, every step of the way. Now, because it's done online, you're communicating through, uh, the internet and not in person, you're getting this trainer experience without the expense of having a sort of live-in Hemsworth Becoming Thor style personal trainer. But you can get that same benefit, but using the, uh, efficiencies of the internet to do it more affordable. It's just a fantastic idea. My Body Tutor's been around forever. It's, uh, been going like gangbusters because it just works. I've got a coach, they help me, and I can afford it. So I'm a big believer. You're trying to turn around your health, trying to turn around your health and fitness, don't just go out doing things randomly. Sign up for My Body Tutor. When you do, mention Deep Questions, and they will give you $50 off your first month. So you just say, "Hey, I heard about this on Cal's podcast," and Adam and his team over there will give you $50 off. Just go to mybodytutor.com. That's mybodytutor, T-U-T-O-R, .com and mention Deep Questions to get $50 off. All right, we're on our, on our way now to the final segment. I wanna try something kind of new.

Cal Newport 59:20 I call it Readers React. So I'm gonna load up on my screen here a recent essay I wrote for my newsletter, um, which you can sign up for at calnewport.com. You can also read all my essays at calnewport.com. Just click on the essays link. So on September 29th, I published a short essay called On Tire Pressure and Productivity. It was based off of a small but important event or encounter that I had with my car. So earlier that day, I had these low tire pressure warning lights on in my car, and I knew my tires weren't flat because I, you know, I checked them out. It was probably a cold snap. You know, you lose pressure somehow. The air compresses. I don't know how that works, but, you know, this happens as the fall goes on. Your pressure drops down. You get that indicator light on. And it stresses me out because, you know, when I see that low pressure indicator, I now start imagining every time I turn that the car is, you know, slipping and sliding and that I'm losing whatever traction on the road. So I don't like it. And I was late. I was going to see a movie. Uh, I went to see The Creator, actually.

Speaker 1:00:25 Hmm.

Cal Newport 1:00:26 AI dystopian movie. I have thoughts. Mixed review. But a story for another day. Uh, by the way, I was going to a movie in the middle of the day because I told my wife, um, I write about AI sometimes, so I have to go see this movie because it's about AI. I don't know if she bought it or not, but-

Speaker 1:00:44 But you do that normally, like schedule time to see movies, like, throughout the month, right?

Cal Newport 1:00:47 I try to, yeah.

Speaker 1:00:47 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:00:47 I mean, usually at home. It's more rare for me to actually... U- usually for me to go see a movie at a theater during the day, usually December I'll do that, so after the semester ends, but while my kids are still in school, and then in May I'll do that as well. When the semester ends, but, like, my kids are still in school, I'll always pick a day at the end of each semester. Uh, I'll go buy a book and then go Go see a movie. But I digress. The, the point of the story is, I was like, "You know what? I'm just gonna do this," and I got out my tire pump and I pumped up the tires, and one of them was pretty low. Drive off to see the movie, and the indicator light goes off. And I noticed, like I felt this really non-trivial sense of accomplishment. This thing was broken and I did something physical, and this thing here went away, and I'm... It's better, and it felt good. And I told that story to, to emphasize a fact that, that we forget, but I think it's important, that we are wired to get non-trivial satisfaction out of setting a plan for something, doing physical activity, making our intentions manifest concretely in the world, to quote Matthew Crawford, and to then see the result, we get satisfaction out of that. Well, this is known, right? This is, this is the, the planning execution loop in the human psychology. We know about this. It's, it's probably part of the drive that humans have to be more innovative. A lot of animals don't have this drive. A cat is perfectly happy, as I always say, to lay in the sun until hunger makes it get up to go get some food. But humans get antsy because we get that high out of, "You know what? I'm gonna change this rock into an, a hand axe, and I can use that hand axe to actually cure this caribou hide." Why would we bother doing that? What's the drive is we feel good when we do that. So we do have this drive towards actual accomplishment. So I was talking about slow productivity in this post a little bit and saying, you know, this... It's complicated. Productivity is complicated. So I'm gonna read here briefly. Um, let's go back here. Okay. I've been thinking a lot recently about how both the promises and perils of productivity. It's easy to dismiss interest in this topic as pure artifice propped up by an exploitative hustle culture orchestrated by the logics of late-stage capitalism. Such sentiments, of course, are not entirely unwarranted, as there are subtle but urgent truths buried within these general analytical broadsides. But my experience with my tire pressure complicates the discussion. Our brains find deep satisfaction in seeing a problem, devising a plan, then witnessing its sex- successful completion. We're wired, in other words, to enjoy getting things done. To flee this impulse is to alienate ourselves from our basic nature. So where does this leave us? The right question regarding productivity is not whether it's good or bad, as it's both a reflection of our humanity and a target for exploitation. The better query is how we can more fully reclaim it. All right. Let's see what the readers thought. There's a couple comments down here. All right. So Carl, in the comment I have up on the screen here, quotes where I said, "We're wired, in other words, to get things done." And he said, "I also am addicted to functioning and getting things done. But while I don't believe in the need to flee this impulse, I'm not so sure that this is our basic nature. Perhaps we're only hypnotized into believing this." I think there's a similar sentiment below. Close that. Sign up. I'm already signed up for this email. Uh, there's a response here from Adrian to Carl that says, "We have a tendency to rationalize anything we do and usually do it subconsciously. And the claim that this would be our basic nature may very well be one such attempt at revolt here." Brian says, "You raise a good point about what is basic to our nature. I would argue, however, that Cal would likely respond in two ways, uh, just based on his podcast. First, the notion of doing things is certainly drawn from a much richer philosophical account of agency, one that can be found in the work of the philosopher motorcycle mechanic, Matt Crawford." Ooh, Brian knows me well. I just quoted Matt Crawford. "Doing things puts us into a relationship with the world not our own making and that we should submit to as what'sness." Let me just skip here a little bit. "Second, there's the question posed by Joseph Pieper in his book, Leisure and the Basis of Culture, and the question is this: What will we do when all else is done? What happens when there's nothing left to do? Then what? Certainly Aristotle's notion of completion plays a significant role in Cal's response." All right, so what do we get here? We have two readers who right off the bat are suspicious of the idea that we have a sort of instinctual wiring to find satisfaction in accomplishment. And then we had a third reader come in and say, "I don't know. I think this point actually has some merit. Uh, it's complicated, but the whole discussion of agency and purpose requires or involves somehow actually doing things and, and this is a bigger discussion." All right. That's interesting. I think it's interesting, the skepticism, because I do encounter it quite a bit. Uh, and so here's the real question: What is the actual thing that's being constructed from discourse? It's one of two things here. Is it the idea that there's something natural in a attraction to productivity? Is that just entirely artifice? Or is it the idea that, uh, productivity is completely non-natural and that anything that is productivity is artifice, right? There's two ideas here, that, that the drive to do things is entirely constructed by discourses, um, and is fake, and then there's something else that says, no, no, it's, it's... there's something real to this. It just can get us out of control if we're not careful about it. So we kind of have these two... The readers are pointing out we have these two different alternative interpretations. I'm still leaning towards the first, and the reason why is because this idea that, no, I think, uh, the, the critical theory approach and the sort of classical, like new school, early 20th century critical theory approach that says any drive towards productivity is really just part of a sort of superstructure meant to help, um, reinforce the exploitative logics of capitalism. That's a really new idea, and a lot of ideas that came through this sort of brainiac post-Marxism, brainiac extension of Marxism. A lot of these ideas are very smart and intricate, and a lot of them don't work. Whereas this other notion, man, there's some satisfaction in a hard... you know, doing something hard, seeing it done. This has been with the human experience for a really long time, and it's been with the human experience well before we had sort of the modern industrialized capitalism. I mean, we see it God in the Book of Genesis. Uh, we see it in the way farmers think about things. We see it in the transcendentalist writing the, you know, the 19th century in rural Concord. I mean, this idea really seems to pervade the whole human experience. If I lean towards, there's probably something there. Also, I think the evolutionary story is strong. I mean, humans do need a drive towards having their complex ideas made manifest concretely in the world, otherwise we don't take advantage of our brain. We build all sorts of things and invent all sorts of things. Something has to drive that. Other animals don't do that. Whales have big brains, but they don't build complex mechanisms. So there's got to be some sort of drive there. So there is an interesting evolutionary story there as well, and it just matches our experience. I don't know. I don't know that I've been tricked into thinking the tire pressure indicator going off was good. It just feels that way. Why is it on camp outs? Okay, here's another piece of evidence. Getting the fire to work. Why is that like the most satisfying thing you can ever do in your life? Is it because, like, that's gonna help ExxonMobil or something? No, because it's like this primitive we made fire where there wasn't fire before. We're wired for it. That doesn't let us off the hook though, of course. So if I'm right about this, it does not let us off the hook because we have many examples of base human instincts that in the modern world get completely corrupted. Like, we don't doubt that hunger is real. That's not a, a artifice of cultural construction. We get hungry because our body needs food. That can also be exploited and make us very unhealthy to help benefit other people. Same thing can happen, of course, with this drive for I'd like the fire to be started. Hey, I made the fire happen. Yay. An employer can completely exploit that to try to create a culture that gets you working double the time your salary really says you should have to work, and say, "It's your passion. You should just do it." There's all sorts of, uh, uh, ex- opportunities here for exploitation, but we don't need the drive to accomplishment to be entirely artifice for us to be wary of and point out the exploitation of an instinct. I think if anything, recognizing that there's a deep human instinct here makes us more wary about how we think about work and production. Knowing that we're playing with a fundamental human instinct means we're playing with fire. You can do much more damage with fundamental human instincts than you can with stuff you have to construct from scratch. Why do you think the attention economy is delivered through our phones is so successful? Well, in part because boredom is an incredibly strong instinct. We don't like it, and the promise of we can get rid of boredom right away is in part why Meta is worth $800 billion in its market cap. That's really valuable. So I think these comments are great. There is a cool debate here, and I'm still falling on one side of this debate, but I like that my readers are also sticking up for the other side of the debate. This is the type of conversations we should be having about productivity. What are the instincts at play here? What is construction? What is biological? How is the biological being exploited? I think the more complex view of this we have, the better. We've ignored this too long. We've simplified productivity too long. So I'll keep writing and talking about it. I hope you, my readers and listeners, keep arguing about it, and we have a ongoing good debate. I always say, Jesse, I've got the smartest readers on the internet.

Speaker 1:10:23 Yeah, baby.

Cal Newport 1:10:23 I love the comments on my blog. We got a little world here. It's not huge. We don't got the trolls. We don't got the, the weirdos. We don't got the yes posters. It's people that have been with me for a long time. We got the smartest commenters on the internet over here at calnewport.com, so...

Speaker 1:10:37 That was cool how you responded to their, you know, comments.

Cal Newport 1:10:41 But I recognize these names too.

Speaker 1:10:42 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:10:43 They, they, they comment a lot.

Speaker 1:10:44 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:10:44 So it's cool. So, uh, I'm glad to, to be able to throw that in there. Hey, if you just listened to this podcast and you wanna be a part of that discussion, calnewport.com, you can sign up to get these essays sent to your inbox. What a lot of people do, like these commenters here, here's what I've learned. They wait till they get the essay in their inbox, and then they click over to the website to see the comments. And I know this because when we switched email providers a couple years ago, uh, the format of the messages changed, and it had the title of the essay at the top. But in the old email provider, that title was linked to the blog post, and in the new one, it was not automatically linked. And I heard it from a lot of readers because they said, "No, no, no. I love the comments. So after I read your essays in my inbox, I, I want to go to your website to see what people are saying. Where's the link? Where's the link?" So we had to change it.

Speaker 1:11:30 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:11:30 And figure out how to change the template so that the title was, uh, linked. And by the way, how we change the template, quote-unquote, is I just do it manually, [laughs] because it was that important. People wanted to see the comments. So, uh, you can sign up there at calnewport.com and become a part of this conversation. All right. Well, that's all the time we have. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with another episode of the show. And until then, as always, stay deep. Hey, so if you liked this discussion today about some modern ideas to cure your mediocre life, then I think you'll also like episode 268, in which we look at some ancient ideas taken from stoicism to help you accomplish the same goal. I want to go through the ideas from this classic stoic treatise and point out those that I think are most relevant to our goal here