How to Enhance Focus and Improve Productivity | Dr. Cal Newport

1. 0:00 – 2:52

   Dr. Cal Newport

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      (instrumental music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Cal Newport. Dr. Cal Newport is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. He did his training at MIT, and he is currently both a professor and the author of many best-selling books focused on productivity, focus, and how to access the specific states of mind to bring out your best in terms of cognitive performance and indeed, in terms of performance in all endeavors. One of his more notable books is entitled Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Deep Work is a book that has had tremendous positive influence on my work life and indeed, my life in general, because it spells out how exactly to go about doing one's best possible work. For me, that's in the context of science and podcasting, but it includes tools that I and many others have extended to other aspects of their life as well, and it's a book that I highly, highly recommend everybody read. Cal also has a new book out now, it's one that I'm currently reading, entitled Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. And as the title suggests, it gets into specific protocols to avoid burnout and to bring about one's highest quality work over the greatest amount of time. Today's discussion starts off with extremely practical steps that any and all of us can use in order to enhance our level of focus, productivity, and creativity. Cal shares much of his specific practices, and also offers some alternative practices for those of you that perhaps do not want to disengage with social media or with smartphones or with email to the extent that he does. I found the conversation to be extremely useful in the sense that I indeed am on social media, I use email, I use my phone and texting quite often, so I'm not somebody who's willing to completely disengage from those tools, but I share in the sentiment that those tools can often be an impediment to doing one's best work. So today's discussion gets into not hard and fast rules for enhancing focus and productivity, but a variety of different tools that you can select from in sort of a buffet to suit your particular needs. We also of course discuss the specific research studies around focus and distraction, task switching and context switching, all of which support the specific protocols that Cal offers. So whether you're somebody who has issues with attention and focus or whether you're somebody that's just feeling overly distracted by the number of things in your email inbox or the number of texts or what's happening out in the world, by the end of today's episode, I'm confident that you will be armed with the best science-supported tools, that is protocols, in order to access the states of mind that will enable you to do your best possible work.

2. 2:52 – 7:00

   Sponsors: Helix Sleep, Maui Nui & Joovv

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:52

      Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are of the absolute highest quality. And I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the fact that quality sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. And to get the best possible night's sleep, it's absolutely key that your sleeping surface, that is your mattress, suit your specific needs. Helix understands this, and they've developed a brief two-minute quiz in which you can match your body type and sleep preferences, that is whether or not you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach, whether or not you tend to run hot or cold in the middle of the night. Perhaps you don't know the answers to those questions. That's okay. You answer the questions in that brief two-minute quiz, and they match you to the specific mattress ideal for your sleep needs. In my case, that was the Dusk, D-U-S-K, mattress. I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress well over three years ago, and it has significantly improved my sleep. And as a consequence, I feel more focused and alert. I'm better able to do all the things that I need to cognitively, physically throughout the day. So if you're interested in upgrading your mattress, simply go to helixsleep.com/huberman. Take that brief two-minute quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress ideal for you. You'll get up to $350 off any mattress order and two free pillows. Again, go to helixsleep.com/huberman for up to $350 off and two free pillows. Today's episode is also brought to us by Maui Nui Venison. Maui Nui Venison is the most nutrient-dense and delicious red meat available. I've spoken before on this podcast, and there's general consensus that most people should strive to consume approximately one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Now, when one strives to do that, it's important to maximize the quality of that protein intake to the calorie ratio, because you don't want to consume an excess of calories when trying to get that one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Maui Nui Venison has an extremely high-quality protein-to-calorie ratio, so it makes getting that one gram of protein per pound of body weight extremely easy. It's also delicious. Personally, I like the ground venison. I also like the venison steaks. And then for convenience, when I'm on the road, I like the jerky. The jerky has a very high protein-to-calorie ratio, so it has as much as 10 grams of protein per jerky stick, and it has something like only, like, 55 calories. So again, making it very easy to get enough protein without consuming excess calories. If you would like to try Maui Nui Venison, you can go to mauinuivenison.com/huberman to get 20% off your first order. Again, that's mauinuivenison.com/huberman to get 20% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Joovv. Joovv makes medical-grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one theme that I've consistently put forward on this podcast, it's the powerful role that light has on our mental health, physical health, and performance. Joovv makes medical-grade devices that emit both red and near-infrared light. Red and near-infrared light is so-called long wavelength light, and it's able to penetrate deeper into tissues than shorter wavelength light, like blue and green lights. Those red and near-infrared long wavelength lights have been shown to be beneficial for everything from skin health, to wound healing, to eye health, and even for mitochondrial health. What sets Joovv apart from other red light and near-infrared light devices is that they are clinically proven to emit the specific wavelengths at the specific intensities required to achieve specific biological effects. Personally, I use the Joovv handheld light both at home and when I travel. It's only about the size of a sandwich. It's very convenient to use. I also have a Joovv whole body panel, and I use that about three or four times a week. If you would like to try Joovv, you can go to J-O-O-V-V.com/huberman. Joovv is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Joovv products. Again, that's Joovv, J-O-O-V-V.com/huberman to get $400 off select Joovv products. And now for my discussion with Dr. Cal Newport.

3. 7:00 – 13:08

   Smartphones, Office & Walking

   1. AHAndrew Huberman7:00

      Dr. Cal Newport, welcome.

   2. CNCal Newport7:02

      Dr. Huberman (laughs) , it's good to see you.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman7:05

      I'm a huge fan. I've been a huge fan ever since I read Deep Work. I can't say that I've adopted all the principles, but that's on me, not you. You provide incredible incentive for why one ought to pursue deep work and slow productivity in service to high quality, true productivity, et cetera. Um, some of the protocols, as we'll call them, are incredibly easy to implement, others take some discipline. So, I'd like to talk about both sets today. But the first question I have is, um, do you own a smartphone?

   4. CNCal Newport7:38

      I do have a smartphone. Yeah. Well, here's the thing, I don't use social media. So, it turns out smartphones aren't that interesting if you don't have any social media apps on it.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman7:46

      Yeah. What's that like?

   6. CNCal Newport7:48

      So there's, there's nothing... if you have nothing that is engineered to try to grab your attention, the smartphone actually goes back to 2007 Steve Jobs' Keynote Address Smartphone, which is, this is a really nice phone. And your music, you can listen to things on it and, uh, the phone interface is really good. And look, there's a maps app and you can, like, look at maps on it. Like, it's actually a useful piece of technology that you're happy to have, but, uh, you don't use it that much.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman8:15

      What about text messaging? Do you text message?

   8. CNCal Newport8:17

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman8:18

      And if so, do you get into conversations by text or is it more of a, a plan and meet type tool?

   10. CNCal Newport8:23

       Uh, I try, right? So, so I try. I do use text messaging. I mean, this is how, like, my wife gets in touch with me. Uh, but I'm notorious somewhat among my friends of my... the ability to capture my attention with text message is really hit or miss, because I'll go hours without looking at my phone. So, it's not this default appendage. I think for a lot of people, if you know someone, you can basically assume like, "Look, if I text them, they're going to get right back to me." Uh, my problem is I'll go two, three, four hours, you know, without looking at my phone and then there'll be text messages on there from conversations that people were trying to start, and I typically just have to declare text bankruptcy a few times a day. Like, look, if they really needed me, I guess they would have called. So I do text, but uh, I'm not considered to be very good at it.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman9:05

       A few other questions about your phone practices.

   12. CNCal Newport9:08

       This makes me nervous.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman9:09

       Um, is your phone in a drawer or on, on the desktop, um, while you're working? Is it face down, face up? Is the ringer on? Is it off?

   14. CNCal Newport9:17

       Oh, you mean if I'm writing or wh- uh, it's nowhere near me. Yeah. I mean, it could be anywhere, it's just not going to be anywhere near me. So I have in my house, uh, two different offices basically, right? So there's a home office, the printer's there, the filing cabinets are there, like the nice big monitor's there, you know, pay taxes, that type of thing. Then I have a library, uh, and there's no permanent technology in the library. No computer in there, no monitor, no printers, nothing like this. Uh, I have this sort of custom-built desk I had made by a company from Maine that makes desks for college libraries. Like, that's what they do. So I have this like custom fit desk to fit into a... it's not that big of a space. That's where I go to write. I'm surrounded by books that I've really carefully curated what's where, each shelf, like what type of book it has on it so I can look different ways for different inspirations. I got a fireplace, so I can just turn on a fire if I need it. I'll bring my laptop in there to write if I'm going to write on a computer. And my phone doesn't come in there. Yeah, you don't, you don't look at, you don't look at a phone in that room. And it just helps me. It's a ritual, right? If I'm in there, I'm thinking, I'm creating with the sort of same patterns of cogitation that we would have been using for hundreds of years when people have been thinking professionally. If I want to be near a printer and I want to go on to a web browser and pay my taxes or whatever, I have a different place for that.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman10:37

       I'm curious about the fireplace. I have this theory based on my understanding of visual neuroscience and the fact that when we're looking at visual scenes that have some degree of predictability to them-

   16. CNCal Newport10:48

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman10:48

       ... um, we get into a mode of anticipation. Our thinking is at least somewhat linear-

   18. CNCal Newport10:55

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman10:55

       ... um, and so forth. When we are looking at, say, ocean waves or, um, up in a skyscraper, we're staring down at the street of, say, New York City and the cars are moving in obviously not random-

   20. CNCal Newport11:11

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman11:11

       ... uh, fashion, but at least to our visual perception, pseudo-random, you're not tracking any one thing, that the mind goes into this sort of, um, state where our thoughts become non-linear, they're not anchored to any kind of if/then kind of what I call DPO, duration path outcome, kind of trajectory. There's not a lot of neuroscience on this, but there's a little bit. Same thing happens when you're looking at an aquarium, by the way. Um, so I wonder whether or not staring at the fire, which is something that humans have been doing for many, many, many thousands of years, um, because it has that, uh, random aspect to it, does it tend to spark creativity, linear thinking? At what point in your writing do you turn to the fire and, and stare at it?

   22. CNCal Newport11:52

       That's interesting, actually, that there's a, a neurological explanation. When I use the fire is actually when I read, right? So chairs by the fire, but I think for exactly this reason, right? Because when I'm reading, I'm looking to spark ideas, right? Like, okay, what am I, what's my takeaway from this? What's the connection you're making between this thing you're reading here and this idea over there? That type of connection-making's a lot of my brainstorming. I read by the fire when the weather allows it. Uh, I also walk a lot. So I wonder if there's something similar going on. Like, when I'm trying to work through an idea for an article or a math proof or something like this, almost always I'm going to do that on foot. And there might be something similar going on there where you're encountering... it's not entirely exotic stimuli, right? So it's not, oh my god, you know, my attention is being drawn. But it's, you know, you don't, you don't quite know what you're going to see and you also have that, that circuit quieting effect of the walking, so your motor neurons are going. You can tell me if I'm getting this right or not. (laughs)

   23. AHAndrew Huberman12:46

       You are. Yeah, absolutely.

   24. CNCal Newport12:46

       The motor neurons are going and you get some inhibition going on in some of these, these key networks which allows you to actually, um, maintain the, the f- the internal focus on a concept a little bit better. So I do a lot of my original focused ideating on foot, but a lot of my serendipitous ideating will be with the fire going, right? If it's the winter, I read by the fire. It's when I read that I get a lot of my original ideas.

4. 13:08 – 20:04

   Productive Meditation, Whiteboards

   1. CNCal Newport13:08

   2. AHAndrew Huberman13:08

      I have this theory that the two-... opposite states of mind that both facilitate creativity and productivity looks something like this, and you can tell me whether or not this maps to anything that-

   3. CNCal Newport13:20

      Like, um-

   4. AHAndrew Huberman13:20

      ... that you know. One is, just as you described, our body is in motion. Um, could be running, walking, m- might even be in the shower or something of that sort. Uh, but we aren't trying to direct our mind toward a specific linear trajectory or outcome. It's not, it's not like working out an equation or a theorem-

   5. CNCal Newport13:39

      Yeah.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman13:40

      ... um, the same way we would if we were at a piece of paper or writing out a sentence, a structured paragraph. So it's body in motion, mind not channeled toward one specific target. Um, the opposite extreme to me is body still, mind very active-

   7. CNCal Newport13:57

      Yeah.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman13:57

      ... um, which resembles rapid eye movement sleep when we learn a lot and neural rewiring occurs and dreaming, but, for which there's also a lot of examples of very accomplished, um, creatives, uh, using that sort of thing of meditative-like, um, approaches, you know, forcing oneself to be still and thinking.

   9. CNCal Newport14:16

      Yeah.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman14:16

       So it sounds like you incorporate both. Um, and I'm curious, as a computer scientist who writes code, does theorems, does a lot of math, where you can't just kind of wing it-

   11. CNCal Newport14:27

       Yeah. (laughs)

   12. AHAndrew Huberman14:27

       ... um, there's a right and wrong answer, uh, involved, what is your mode for sitting down and working through something that's linear and hard?

   13. CNCal Newport14:36

       Yeah. The... It's interesting the way you talk about it, right? Because when I'm walking, uh, and this is actually something you can train, you know, and I talked about this in one of my books once, that you can actually train yourself to, uh, maintain your internal eye of focus more stably while you're walking, right? So I called this productive meditation in Deep Work, actually, uh, and I, I practiced this in grad school, right? Okay, so I'm going to work on a particular problem while I walk, and then you actually practice bringing your attention back to the central problem. And it... Uh, I don't know exactly what's happening, but you get a little bit more, uh, facility working with your working memory, a little bit more efficiency with bringing stuff in and out of the working memory. And so I trained myself that I could actually write a couple paragraphs in my head, maybe not word for, but basically word for word, like figure out how I'm going to do it or, uh, figure out enough steps of a math proof to capture, like, a key insight. Like, "Okay, now I'm going to get around this." Then you have to sit down and actually formally capture that. A- yeah, for me, that's still working with notebooks. Though, when I was coming up in grad school, and I was just excavating these thoughts recently. We, we were talking before the, we recorded, that, you know, I just wrote this essay about what I learned as a grad student that impacted all my writing. As a grad student in the theory group at MIT, which was just purified concentration. This is where all the deep work ideas come from, right? I mean, it was just world-class concentrators. There, the method was very still, more than one person, whiteboard. So if you have two or three people staring at the same whiteboard, you're actually going to up the level of concentration you achieve, because if you let your attention wander, you disengage that attention, there's a social capital cost. 'Cause now I've fallen out of the, the whiteboard effect discussion. That's going to be a problem. So you actually maintain your focus at a higher level, and then when someone else is making their move, "Okay, you know, what about this?" And they're working math, it's all math on the board, you're giving that the highest attention you're capable of because you want to keep up, right? You don't want to fall behind. So it was like this hack that was figured out in the theory group that if you put two or three people at the same whiteboard to try to alchemize these insights into actual mathematically precise proofs, you get a 20%, 30% boost in your concentration level, and, and that could make all the difference, right? If you're working on a very hard proof, 20%, 30% boost could be the difference between solving it or not.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman16:56

       In one of these situations where you're at the whiteboard or chalkboard and there are two other individuals facing it-

   15. CNCal Newport17:01

       Yeah.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman17:01

       ... are they interrupting you, or, or is the, um, etiquette, uh, in that scenario to just let the person go until their natural-

   17. CNCal Newport17:08

       Yeah.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman17:08

       ... uh, inclination to raise a hand and, and scream, "Help"?

   19. CNCal Newport17:12

       Whoever has the marker on the board, they're the ones talking.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman17:15

       Hmm.

   21. CNCal Newport17:15

       So you go, "Okay, what about this you say?" And now you're working, you're writing down equations or drawing your diagram, and everyone is just watching, and then when they're done, then everyone steps back and looks at it. Then you can step forward. "Okay, but what if we did this?" And then y- and you still work on it. So, so when I got, uh, built some offices or worked out some offices near my house, like, one of the first things we put in there was a whiteboard so they could have computer science collaborators come, because we can't work on theory otherwise. Like, it is the thing we need is a whiteboard, right? When I started grad school, they had just built this new $300 million Frank Gehry-designed building for the Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Linguistics. B- half of it was computer science.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman17:57

       I know those buildings 'cause the Picower and the McGovern Neuroscience Center they're nearby.

   23. CNCal Newport18:01

       Yeah, they're right nearby.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman18:01

       They, and those buildings are very interesting. People should check them out if they're ever in Cambridge.

   25. CNCal Newport18:05

       Yeah, the sta-

   26. AHAndrew Huberman18:05

       Kendall Square stop.

   27. CNCal Newport18:06

       The Stata Center, yeah, right down the street from the Kendall Square stop, yeah. So the sixth floor was where the theoreticians were. This is where I was. Uh, so I, I... You know, they opened that building the year I started my, the doctoral program. And what did they want to show me when they, when they brought me into this $300 million building? "Look at our whiteboards." And that's what they were proud of. They had filled the common space on the sixth floor, the theory floor, with these, uh, freestanding, double-sided whiteboards. It was like a maze of whiteboards. And this is what everyone was so excited about was, "Yeah, look at our whiteboard coverage," you know, surrounded by a $300 million building. I tried, I was trying to explain this to someone recently. Uh, having good whiteboards, to us, is like an astronomer saying, "Look, we got this great radio telescope." Like, "This is going to allow us to get data to work on that we wouldn't otherwise have access to." I think, to a theoretician, uh, that's why you see a whiteboard, because, you know, if you want to think at the very highest level, you need two or three people staring at the same thing, taking turns with the marker, pushing each other past where they're comfortable.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman19:01

       Uh, I love this 'cause I often think about visual maps that represent our internal memory stores and plans, et cetera, for productivity. I've always relied heavily on the, on the whiteboard.

   29. CNCal Newport19:10

       Yeah.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman19:11

       I...... getting one for home. I have one here in the podcast studio. All of my podcast notes for the, my solo episodes are distilled down to four 8-1/2 by 11 notes, which are photographs of the, the whiteboard.
5. 20:04 – 24:57

   Tool: Capturing Ideas, Notebooks

   1. AHAndrew Huberman20:04

      So, um, in the absence of colleagues to sit there and boost our attention by 25% to 30%, um, what could one do? Do you have a... You said you have a whiteboard at home. I certainly use the whiteboard. Do you, um, work on it the same way you would in those early days, just with... in the absence of, of colleagues looking on?

   2. CNCal Newport20:25

      Yeah, yeah. So you work on it just like someone's there. Uh, the other hack is using really good notebooks. That's always made a big difference for me.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman20:33

      Paper notebooks?

   4. CNCal Newport20:33

      Paper notebooks.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman20:34

      Okay.

   6. CNCal Newport20:34

      Yeah, yeah. Though, though recently I've been messing around with the reMarkable, which is one of these d- digital notebooks where it's E Ink technology. So it's like a Kindle, but you can write on it, uh, but you have endless pages on it. So I've been messing around with that recently, but I remembered when I was a postdoc, for example, I found it recently, I went and bought a lab notebook 'cause those are expensive, at least for a postdoc, right? They're like $70 because a lab notebook has to have archival quality paper.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman21:00

      It's bound.

   8. CNCal Newport21:01

      It's bound.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman21:01

      Yeah. People might not realize this, lab notebooks need to be kept for many years.

   10. CNCal Newport21:04

       Yes.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman21:05

       You, you, uh, you're not supposed to tear pages out of them, and so they tend to be bound.

   12. CNCal Newport21:09

       Yes.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman21:09

       So, uh, if you have terrible handwriting like I do, you just have to deal with it. Um-

   14. CNCal Newport21:12

       Yes, they're... You can't rip it out. And it's thick, thick paper, acid-free archival paper, uh, big sturdy covers. Uh, but I bought this 'cause I thought, "Okay, look, I'm going to take it more seriously." Because I think that's also part of what goes on with the whiteboard, is your mind thinks about writing on, uh, the big vertical space as a, a public crystallization of thoughts. I'm putting this up for people to see, even if there's no one actually there to see it. And so you take it more seriously, right? If I'm writing on a, a whiteboard in class, I'm not just going to put up nonsense. Like, I'm going to be very careful about what I'm writing because, uh, you imagine there's an audience, this is something for other people to see. And so you get a little bit of a similar effect. If you have a very nice notebook, you think, "Look, I don't want to waste pages." And somehow that helps with the thinking. So then I found this notebook, because I store my old notebooks, uh, in my closet. So I found it when I was working on a, a recent book. I found it, I went through it, right? And then I started ticking off, uh, this turned into a paper, this turned into a grant. This notebook, I used it for maybe two years, only used maybe about half the pages. It's all very careful, neat script and diagrams. I think I found seven different peer-reviewed papers or funded grants where the core ideas were in this notebook. So it's like that $70 was a, an incredible investment because when I, when I got to work in that notebook, it must have been pushing my thinking to a new level because it was an incredible concentration of actual publishable results were came, coming out of those pages.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman22:35

       Yeah, it seems like we would all do well regardless of our field, um, to have some very low bar method of capture where if we just have an idea that spontaneously comes to mind, that we can capture that in a voice memo or, um, dare I say, in a, a phone, uh, notes segment. But then something as you're suggesting, like a, a whiteboard, um, like a bound notebook where the moment we look at it, it brings about a level of seriousness-

   16. CNCal Newport23:03

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman23:03

       ... to our, to our thinking and to our actions. Sort of like, this is different than just, um, texting. Um, I mean, what we're really talking about are, are kind of layers of sophistication, um, but not in a snobby way in terms of, um, highest productivity and quality to kind of, um, I don't know, bubble gum wrapper on the, on the floor type levels of "productivity." (laughs)

   18. CNCal Newport23:26

       Well, I mean, I've become a fan of this idea of, of having specialized capture for specific type of work. So for example, I'm, I'm a big believer in pretty quickly you want to capture ideas in the tool you use to do that work. So when I have ideas for an article or a book, I'm going to go right to Scrivener, which is a specialty... This is a specialty software writers use to write, right? I'm going to go right to a Scrivener project and start putting these in the research section of that Scrivener project. When I'm working on a math or computer science thing, I might work out proof ideas on paper, but I pretty quickly want to get that into, uh, a LaTeX document. So, so the markup language that you use for doing sort of like applied math papers, right? The, the, the tool we use to actually write papers. I'm going to move an idea into there as soon as I can. I'm going to move proofs out of a notebook and into formally marked up like you would for a paper, you know, as soon as I would. So this idea, this is something I've been leaning into more, is capture the notes in the tool you're going to use, take out the middleman in some sense, right? So it's, it's, uh, reducing friction, but also puts you in the right mind space. Like, "Okay, this idea, I'm going to put it where I'm going to need it later," as opposed to a more elaborate third party system that you construct that you then later pull everything out of as needed. Uh, this is what I've been doing more recently. Let's just get straight to the tool I'm eventually going to use with maybe a high quality notebook intermediary if I'm actually literally working out thoughts. So math, you have to work out thoughts, but I'll get that into an actual paper format pretty quickly.

6. 24:57 – 30:02

   Tool: Active Recall & Remembering Information

   1. CNCal Newport24:57

   2. AHAndrew Huberman24:57

      Tell me what you think of, um, this, what I always call protocol. If I want to learn something from a manuscript I read or a book chapter-

   3. CNCal Newport25:05

      Yeah.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman25:06

      ... I used to highlight things and I had a very elaborate, um, extracted from my university days, system of stars and exclamation marks and underline that mean a lot to me that can-

   5. CNCal Newport25:15

      Yes.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman25:15

      ... yes, bring me back to a given segment within the chapter, but a few years ago, I was teaching a course in the biology department at Stanford, and for some reason we had them read a study about information retention.

   7. And, um, and I learned from that study that one of the best things we can do is r- read information-

   8. CNCal Newport25:34

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman25:35

      ... um, in whatever form, a magazine, research article, et cetera, book, um, and then to take some time away from that material, maybe walk, maybe close one of the eyes, maybe leave them open, doesn't matter, and just try and remember specific elements. How much does one remember? Then go back to the material and look at it.

   10. CNCal Newport25:51

       Yeah.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman25:51

       And I've just been, um, positively astonished at how much more information I can learn when I'm not simply going through motor commands of just underlining things and highlighting them, but stepping away and thinking, "Okay. Yeah, they... I don't... Oh, I don't remember how many subjects there were. I'll go back and check that, maybe make a note." And, "Okay, they did this, then they did that, and then, like..." And then it's crystallized.

   12. CNCal Newport26:11

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman26:11

       And it... And when it... As I say this, I realize, of course this should work.

   14. CNCal Newport26:14

       Yes.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman26:14

       Right? This is the way that the brain learns. Um, but somehow, that's not the way we are taught to learn.

   16. CNCal Newport26:22

       Yeah. Well, I- I'm smiling because I... When I was 22, uh, I wrote this book called How to Become a Straight A Student, right? A- and the whole premise of the book was, "I'm going to talk to actual college students who have straight As, uh, and who don't seem completely ground out," right? Like, not burnt out. "And I'm just going to interview them." Right? And the protocol was, uh, "How did you study for the last test that you studied for? How did you take notes for the last..." So, I was just asking them to walk through their methodology. The core idea of that book was active recall. That was the core idea, that replicating, uh, ideas... What I used to say is, "Replicating the information from scratch as if teaching a class without looking at your notes, that is the only way to learn." And, and the thing about it was, it's a trade-off. Uh, it doesn't take... It's efficient. Doesn't take much time. But it's incredibly mentally taxing, right? This is why students often avoid it. It is difficult to sit there and try to replicate and pull forth, "Okay, what did I read here? How did that work?" It's, it's mentally very taxing. But it's very time-efficient, right? If you're willing to essentially put up with that, with that pain, um, you learn very quickly. And not only do you learn very quickly, you don't forget. It's almost like you have a pseudo-photographic memory when you-

   17. AHAndrew Huberman27:30

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CNCal Newport27:30

       ... study this way. You sit down to do a test, and you're, you're replicating, like, whole lines (laughs) from, like, what you, what you studied. I, I... The ideas sort of come out fully formed 'cause it's such a fantastic way to, to actually learn. Um, it was my key. Like, the whole premise that got me writing that book is I went through this, this period as a college student where, where I came in freshman year, was, like, a fine student, not a great student, but a fine student, and, uh, I was rowing crew, and I was sort of, like, excited to do that. Um, and then I de- I developed a heart condition and had to stop... Uh, congenital wiring in the heart, a- atrial flutter thing. It meant I couldn't row crew anymore.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman28:07

       Is that a prolapse of some sort?

   20. CNCal Newport28:08

       It was a, uh, uh, circuitreen- a circuitry issue that would lead to a extremely rapid heartbeat.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman28:14

       Hm.

   22. CNCal Newport28:14

       It's like a really rapid, like, tachycardia, right? You get 200, 250 beats a minute, just... And it could be exercise-induced, right? Which is not optimal. Um, you could take beta blockers, which would moderate the electrical timing, but beta blockers reduce your max heart rate, and if you're a athlete where the entire thing that matters is your max heart rate, so you're doing something like, uh, 2,000-meter rows, your performance on beta blockers just goes down. It makes no sense. It's like being a basketball player that wears weighted shoes. It's too frustrating.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman28:42

       Right, and also makes you super mellow.

   24. CNCal Newport28:44

       I was pretty mellow guy. (laughs)

   25. AHAndrew Huberman28:46

       Right. (laughs) But I was the worst rower, so. Um, so I stopped that and I was like, "Okay, I want to get serious about my, my studies. I, I..." So I can get serious about my studies in writing, right? That's when I actually made the decisions that I'd been stuck with for the next 25 years after that. But one of the things I did to get serious about my studies is I said, "I'm gonna systematically experiment with how to study for tests and how to write papers." And I had... I would try this. "How did it go?" Deconstruct, experiment. Try this. "How'd it go?" Deconstruct, experiment. And active recall was the thing that turned me all around. And so I went from a pretty good student to 4.0 every single quarter. Sophomore year, junior year, senior year, I got one A-minus (laughs) between my sophomore year through my senior year. It was like this miraculous transformation. It was active recall. I rebuilt all of my studying, so if it was for a, a humanities class, I had a whole way of taking notes that was all built around doing active recall. For math classes, my main study tool was a stack of white paper. "All right. Do this proof." White piece of paper and just, "Can I do it from scratch? If I could, I know that technique. If I don't, all right, I'm going to come back and try it again later." Completely transformed. You know? I did so well academically, that's why I ended up writing that book to basically spread that message to other people. So, I'm a huge advocate for active recall. It's really hard, but it, it is the way to learn

7. 30:02 – 31:29

   Sponsor: AG1

   1. AHAndrew Huberman30:02

      new things. I'd like to take a brief moment and thank one of our sponsors, and that's AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012. The reason I started taking it and the reason I still take it every day is that it ensures that I meet all of my quotas for vitamins and minerals, and it ensures that I get enough prebiotic and probiotic to support gut health. Now, gut health is something that, over the last 10 years, we realized is not just important for the health of our gut, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain functioning. Now, of course, I strive to consume healthy whole foods for the majority of my nutritional intake every single day, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients that are hard to get from whole foods, or at least insufficient quantities. So AG1 allows me to get the vitamins and minerals that I need, probiotics, prebiotics, the adaptogens, and critical micronutrients. So anytime somebody asks me, if they were to take just one supplement, what that supplement should be, I tell them, "AG1," because AG1 supports so many different systems within the body that are involved in mental health, physical health, and performance. To try AG1, go to drinkag1.com/huberman, and you'll get a year's supply of vitamin D3K2 and five free travel packs of AG1. Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman.

8. 31:29 – 38:13

   Studying, Deliberate Practice

   1. AHAndrew Huberman31:30

      And as you pointed out, it is very time-efficient.

   2. CNCal Newport31:33

      Oh, yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman31:33

      Yeah.

   4. CNCal Newport31:34

      I mean, it was a problem... It was a social problem for me.... that I would have to pretend, (laughs) during finals period, that I was going to the library to study, because I would be done studying. This active recall, it's brutal, but it's incredibly efficient. You sit down there, I would have my cards, I would mark it, "Okay, I struggled with this," I'd put it in this pile. "I got it done," I'd put it in this pile. And so then you would just go back to the "I struggled with it" pile, uh, and work on that, and then make a new "I struggled with it" pile, and these would exponentially decay. And so in, like, a few hours, you could really master... You know, with a few other tricks that worked, you could really master the material pretty quickly. And then what am I supposed to do? I didn't do all-nighters. Like, it wouldn't make any sense. Like, active recall is how you prepare, and it's going to take four hours, and it's going to be tough, so do it in the morning when you have energy and then you're done.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman32:18

      I love it. I learned essentially all of neuroanatomy looking down the microscope at tissue samples-

   6. CNCal Newport32:25

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman32:26

      ... and then I would try and take photographs with my eyes. I do not have a photographic memory. But then I would l- get home in the evening, look through the neuroanatomy textbook, lie down, and try and fly through the different circuits in my mind. And then if I arrived at a structure in the brain that I couldn't identify, I would then go check my notes and go back, so-

   8. CNCal Newport32:44

      Oh, that's perfect.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman32:44

      So basically, I learned neuroanatomy, which I, you know, um... I'm poor at a great many things in life, but neuroanatomy, I'm, I'm, I'm s- solid at, um, w- and then some, if I may say so. And it's because there's a mental map-

   10. CNCal Newport32:56

       Yep.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman32:56

       ... and you've got to move through it, you know, fly through it dynamically, um, and that it's the same process. Um, not all things lend themselves to that approach, um, I'm guessing. Maybe we could think of a few that don't. Um, I guess if people were learning music-

   12. CNCal Newport33:11

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman33:11

       ... um, that might be tricky. Maybe they need the sheet music in front of them. I don't know, I'm not a musician.

   14. CNCal Newport33:16

       Yeah, I mean, I studied, uh, a professional guitar player at one point when I was-

   15. AHAndrew Huberman33:20

       You are a professional guitar player?

   16. CNCal Newport33:20

       No, I studied one.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman33:22

       Oh.

   18. CNCal Newport33:22

       So for, for a book... Everything's from some book, I've written a lot of books. So I wrote a book 10 years ago, um, where I was trying to figure out, as part of it, how do people get better at things. And so I spent time with a professional guitar player. This ha- I just wanted to see how he practiced, like, wha- what does this actually look like? And what I learned from them is, like, what they do is, yeah, they have the music in front of them, but for them, it's all speed. So they take a piece, uh, he was working on licks for... He was a new acoustic style player, and they had these kind of bluegrassy type licks, um, and he probably had it memorized, and he knew how fast he could comfortably play it. For them, it's all about adding 20% to what they're comfortably doing and then that, that, that push past where they're comfortable. And the thing I remember writing about him was he was concentrating so hard to try to hit this lick 20% faster than he was used to it, is he'd forget to breathe. So he'd be, like, going, going, going, and then just gasp, you know, like, 'cause his body would, you know, force him, force him to breathe. So yeah, there, it seemed to be all about, uh, deliberate practice. So, like, how do you... They don't waste any time. Professional musicians waste no time doing things they're comfortable doing.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman34:23

       Hm.

   20. CNCal Newport34:23

       B- every time they spend practicing, and this is also incredibly difficult, uh, but every time they spend practicing is almost entirely in a, a state of, "I'm not comfortable with this, but if I focus as hard as I can, maybe I'm going to pull this off. Like, I'll pull off the sonata at this new speed I'm trying to do. Maybe I'll pull it off." It's like the maximal growth stimulating state. Uh, and so I wrote in the, in this chapter, why was he so much better at guitar than I was at the same age? 'Cause I played a lot of guitar when I was younger and was in rock bands, right? And this kid was young, right? But really, really good. And I said, "Okay, now I realize it. I can recognize me," uh, when I look back at my time playing guitar at his age. I played stuff I knew how to play. Like, that's what was fun. Like, yeah, I want to, like, jam along with the songs I knew or, you know, rip some pentatonic scales, you know, to, like, a Jimi Hendrix album. Uh, it was fun, and he spent almost no time. The pro spent no time having fun. Practicing was... Your brain had to be, you know, uncomfortable. So I, I learned a lot from that, you know? Um, this actually led to a bit of a battle, because of my, my readers... There was this, uh, uh, this battle that emerged where people were trying to combine Anders Ericsson and deliberate practice with, uh, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and flow, and really, they were trying to make flow apply everywhere. Like, "It's all about flow. Uh, deliberate practice is flow. Everything is flow. The whole thing is to get into a state of flow." And I remember Anders talking about this at some point and saying like, "No, no, no, like, the state of practice that makes you better, it's the opposite of flow," right? In flow, you lose track of time. When you're practicing like that professional guitar player, you know every second (laughs) that passes by, because it's, like, incredibly difficult, like, what you're doing. Your mind is rebelling. It's not natural. You know, it's not fun. It's not the skier going down the, the hill and it's all instinct. It's you, it's all you thinking about exactly what you're trying to do. And so, you know, I began to push this point out here, is like, it's not all about flow. Like, actually getting better at things is really painful sometimes. Deliberate practice is not the same as flow. And there was a lot of fights about this for a while. I think there was a lot of flow advocates that just wanted life to be flow all the time. But I think, uh, Anders was right, because I watched these professionals practice. Like, that's what it is. It's not fun.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman36:37

       Well, everything we know about neuroplasticity, which of course is the nervous system's ability to change in response to experience, says that there needs to be some neurochemical or electrical condition that changes in the nervous system in order to cue up plasticity. And, um, to my knowledge, one of the most, um, robust of those is the release of the so-called catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine. Um, dopamine, because it's involved in so many things, uh, can be a little bit of a distractor. So let's just say epinephrine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, noradrenaline, i- create in the body and mind, to some extent, a state of alertness and often a state of agitation. But if you think about it, in the absence of some neuromodulators like those-

   22. CNCal Newport37:21

       Yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman37:22

       ... um, that change the conditions for wiring of neurons... You know, everyone loves "Fire together, wired together."

   24. CNCal Newport37:27

       Yeah.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman37:28

       A beautiful statement by Carla Shatz, not Donald Hebb. Dr. Carla Shatz said that, not Donald Hebb. Um, but why would neurons need to change their patterns of connectivity, uh...... if you can complete the operation. The nervous system needs to, um, it doesn't feel discomfort, it creates discomfort, but the nervous system needs a cue-

   26. CNCal Newport37:48

       Yeah.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman37:48

       ... to like, okay, this is different, I'm failing. And it's the failures that actually trigger the plasticity, it's the discomfort that cues-

   28. CNCal Newport37:55

       Yep.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman37:55

       ... that conditions are different now. Otherwise, there's simply no reason to devote energetic resources to rewiring neurons. And I feel like we don't learn this when we're kids. We, um, and I think as kids we can learn so much without that feeling of agitation-

   30. CNCal Newport38:09

       Yeah.
9. 38:13 – 41:39

   Flow States vs. Deep Work

   1. AHAndrew Huberman38:13

      I have respect for the, the research on flow and the people who are involved, but I'd like to talk about flow a little bit. The only thing I really know about flow for sure is that backwards, it spells wolf. So, um, what of flow?

   2. CNCal Newport38:24

      (laughs)

   3. AHAndrew Huberman38:24

      It's such an attractive idea, right?

   4. CNCal Newport38:25

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman38:25

      It's like Star Wars. It's like you have the force. Zzzhoo, zhhoo.

   6. CNCal Newport38:28

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman38:28

      And you're kind of... You're doing things without thinking and-

   8. CNCal Newport38:30

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman38:32

      Awesome, but I can't flow myself through a paper-

   10. CNCal Newport38:36

       Yep.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman38:36

       ... and extract the critical data. I can't create a podcast in flow. But when it's done, it feels great, especially if you nail the, the key metrics. So, what do you think about flow? Let's... I'm not trying to beat up on it. I just want to understand how, how you place it in the framework of learning and, and deep work, if it belongs there at all.

   12. CNCal Newport38:54

       It doesn't have a big place in it, in the deep work framework. And, and this was what the controversy was for a while. And, and I, I knew Mihaly a little bit, like we, we corresponded some. And I knew Anders a little bit, like we corresponded some, so I sort of felt like I was-

   13. AHAndrew Huberman39:06

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CNCal Newport39:07

       ... um, you know... And b- and both of them, actually, sort of tragically have died in the last three or four years, I think.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman39:12

       Oh, that's very sad.

   16. CNCal Newport39:14

       Yeah. Yeah, I think both recently. Um, flow doesn't play a big role in the deep, the deep work framework, right? So, so when I was trying to justify deep work, so like why focusing without distraction was important, I was drawing a lot more from Anders' work, right? Because, uh, why is focusing without distraction important? Well, you have to quiet the neural circuitry so you can isolate the circuit that's actually relevant to the thing that you're doing, right? You're not going to get better at something if you have noisy circuitry. This is... And that requires a really intense concentration. So, like it was one of the big advantages of deep work, was if you're used to that cognitive state, you're going to learn things faster. And I think it was all Anders to understand why. So if you're not distracted, I'm really focusing hard on what I'm doing, trying to learn this new thing, you're given the right mental conditions. Uh, but it's not a flow state. I always used to say, "Okay, when you're, when you're... Deep work is not flow," because of this. Like, a lot of deep work is you're trying to do something that is beyond your comfort zone, and that's going to be difficult. That's a state of deliberate practice. And there's a famous paper about this where Anders actually explicitly says deliberate practice and flow are very different. And, and I wrote an essay years ago called The Father of Deliberate Practice Disowns Flow. And again, people are really flow partisans out there. It's interesting. I think people just like the idea 'cause it feels good. But I mean, flow is the feeling of performance, is the way I think about it. Like, it's really hard to train for certain sports, but then when you're actually performing, you're in the game, you can fall in the flow, right? Because then everything is I'm doing... And it's really hard to train guitar, but like when you're performing in front of a big crowd, you probably... Maybe you fall in the flow. Maybe you don't, but you could, right? But it's the performance state, not the practicing, getting better state. So, you know, to me, flow has like very little role in how I think about what I do as a cognitive professional. It's just not something that comes up that often.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman41:03

       I agree, um, that we learn through focused work and that, uh, flow does, um, manifest itself during performance. And sometimes, um, so much so that people exhibit virtuosity. There's a... They're surprising themselves even-

   18. CNCal Newport41:19

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman41:19

       ... at wha- what, what's in there.

   20. CNCal Newport41:21

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman41:21

       And that's kind of... I always think of it... It's a, what is it? Unskilled, skilled mastery virtuosity. Virtuosity seems to incorporate some sort of random elements of maybe even the performer has not done that before and they surprise themselves or something like that.

   22. CNCal Newport41:33

       Yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman41:33

       Who knows? These are, these are words for, um, for something that, uh, isn't easily quantified in

10. 41:39 – 45:27

    Social Media, Emergencies

    1. AHAndrew Huberman41:39

       the first place. But in terms of deep work and getting, um, a little bit back to kind of practical steps towards deep work-

    2. CNCal Newport41:45

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman41:45

       ... I also have to ask you, 'cause I didn't earlier, when you are on your laptop in your library with your fireplace and these books, it's a beautiful image actually that you've drawn for us in our minds, um, is the Wi-Fi connection to your computer activated or are you offline?

    4. CNCal Newport42:00

       Uh, it's connected-

    5. AHAndrew Huberman42:01

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CNCal Newport42:02

       ... um, because it doesn't really matter to me, you know? Because what i- what is... what's drawing my attention? Um, I mean, the most important decision I think I made, technically speaking, to be (laughs) a cognitive worker is I... The lack of social media. Like I, I, I think we underestimate the degree to which our problem with digital distraction is not the internet and it's not our phones. It is specific products and services that are engineered at great expense to pull you back to them. When you take that away, the internet's not that interesting. Like, I don't have a cycle of sites to go to. You know, I can check my email, but I don't really know where else to go. I mean, I could go to the New York Times, I guess (laughs) , but then you've seen the articles, right? They, they change it once a day. Uh, there's just not much... I've set things up so there's not much that's that interesting to me.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman42:49

       We've all heard of FoMO, fear of missing out. I feel like there's the other thing, which is, um, fear of missing something bad, right? Sort of like an anxiety, a more primitive anxiety within us, that if we are not engaged on social media or looking at our phone often or texting often, that... It's not that we'll miss the party. Um, we'll miss the emergency. Um, you don't seem to suffer from those kind of everyday ills.

    8. CNCal Newport43:15

       Yeah, I mean, it doesn't happen that much. I mean, I have a phone, you know? Uh-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman43:18

       A standard phone?

    10. CNCal Newport43:20

        No, I mean, I have my phone. I guess if I'm working away from it, yeah, I guess it's true, if there was an emergency. Uh, but this was the case for a very long time.Right? We didn't have smartphones till really relatively recently. This is, you know, 15 years ago. Um, so we were just used to this until yesterday, essentially, that there's just periods of time where you're, you're outta touch. Like, uh, you're at a restaurant with someone, you're outta touch until you get back to your office. Like, we were okay. You know, we weren't plagued by emergencies that, that, uh, led to disastrous results because we couldn't hear about it, right? Then you go to the movies, like, you're outta touch, right? And it'd be a couple hours till you're in touch again. And so I don't... Uh, you know, it's not something that's affected me as much. I- i- so maybe I'm working without my phone nearby. Uh, a lot of people have this response. They begin sort of catastrophizing, like, "What if this happens," or this or that. And I'm thinking, you know, uh, I survived before that. My parents survived without that. My, my, my grandparents (laughs) survived without that. Um, I don't worry about it as much, you know? And, and some of this maybe is just... This doesn't upset people as, uh, as much as it used to, the fact I don't use a lot of these apps or have my phone. Um, but it really does upset people, right? Uh, there's, "Well, what about this? What about that? What about this?" And I don't know how much of this is just maybe I'm oblivious and how much of this is people backsliding explanation for why they do need their phone, why they do need to look at it all the time, but I, I get a lot of it.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman44:35

        Yeah, well, maybe they're upset and you don't know because (laughs) you're not looking at your phone.

    12. CNCal Newport44:37

        That's right.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman44:38

        (laughs)

    14. CNCal Newport44:38

        Uh, hey, I'll tell you what, that's a blessing-

    15. AHAndrew Huberman44:40

        Yeah.

    16. CNCal Newport44:40

        ... not knowing how upset people are at you. Yeah, it's a blessing-

    17. AHAndrew Huberman44:43

        Yeah.

    18. CNCal Newport44:43

        ... as a semi-public figure. I'll tell you that.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman44:45

        Uh, yeah, I can comment on that, but I won't. Um, I am on social media, and, um, I do enjoy it. I sort of got started posting on Instagram and then expanded to other platforms, including the, the podcast. But there's a threshold beyond which it becomes counterproductive, for sure.

    20. CNCal Newport45:00

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman45:01

        Um, I think there's information there, um, that, like, like, questions that people ask are often informative. It's sort of like ending a class and asking, "Are there any questions?" Sometimes the comments that people bring back are truly informative towards both where they might have some misunderstanding, but also sometimes some really terrific ideas.

    22. CNCal Newport45:19

        Yeah.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman45:19

        Um, so there's that. But I, I completely agree that this is a, a very, uh, precarious space. Um,

11. 45:27 – 53:20

    Phone & Addiction; Task Switching

    1. AHAndrew Huberman45:27

       and I'll just relay a quick anecdote. Years ago, I gave a quick lecture, um, down at Santa Clara University, south of Stanford, and I was talking about this issue. I recommended your book, and a student came up afterwards, and he said, "You don't get it." At that time, I was in my early 40s. He said, "You don't get it. You know, you grew up without social media-

    2. CNCal Newport45:44

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman45:45

       ... and the phone, and so you've adopted it into your life. But we grew up with it, and when my phone..." He's speaking for himself in the first person. "When my phone loses power, I feel a physical drain within my body. And when it comes back on, I feel a lift within my body." So I'd, I'd love your thoughts on whether or not you think the phone, and perhaps social media as well, are, in some ways, an extension of our brain? It's almost like another cortical area that contains all this information. It's sort- it's a version of us. This gets into notions of AI that we can talk about as well. I know you're involved in, in AI and writing about AI. But, you know, to me, the pho- when the phone is used in that way, um, it really is a... almost like a, uh, a piece of neural machinery of sorts.

    4. CNCal Newport46:29

       Yeah, I mean, there's two ways of looking at it. Yeah, so, so there is the, the sort of cyborg image, I suppose, right? Like, you, you are... You're extending, you're, you're plugging into this, uh, noosphere. Like, you have this sort of digital network extension of information and what's going on. There's also the much more pessimistic view, which is, no, no, that feeling is the feeling of a moderate behavioral addiction, right? So you'll, you'll, you'll hear the same thing from a, a gambler. "I really... When, when I'm away from being able to... the play, right? To make my bets or do whatever, like, I feel really... I, I feel not myself. And then when I'm... when I'm around it, and I can play and make some bets, play some poker, whatever it is-"

    5. AHAndrew Huberman47:04

       The feeling of the chips.

    6. CNCal Newport47:05

       "... I feel, I feel myself."

    7. AHAndrew Huberman47:06

       Yeah, yep, yep.

    8. CNCal Newport47:06

       That chips, right? Like, they would say... So there... It could be... Both of these things could be true. I think the moderate behavioral addiction side is, is more true than, than a lot of us want to admit, actually. Like, it, it does feel bad because moderate behavioral addictions build these, these feedback response loops, and then you get the dopamine system going when... the anticipation. Because what's on there is things that have been engineered that you're going to get this sort of highly engaging stimuli, and then you see the deliverance of that stimuli, right? This really nice g- piece of glass on a piece of metal. I'm going to press this sort of carefully. Uh, this icon whose colors have been chosen because we know it's going to hit various parts of our neural alert systems to be as engaging as possible. Um, and I'm going to see something in there that's going to generate some sort of emotional response. So, of course, when you see that thing sitting there, you want to use it. And when you can't, it's a, a, a stymied dopamine response. You're like, "This... This is not good. I'm uncomfortable." And I, I think that's a big part of it as well. Um, because I've had this... you know, I've had this argument with, with some people, and I... By the way, I see both sides of this. Like, there, there are great advantages to what people are doing with these tools. It's just that it's all mixed up with all these disadvantages, and it becomes very difficult. It's like the alcohol in the neighborhood bar is too potent, you know? And, and people are going there to socialize, and they're coming home at 3:00 in the morning, you know, uh, passing out, you know? It's like the balance is off. Not that there's not something good there, but the balance is off, so it becomes pretty difficult to navigate. So I think some of that's what's going on, especially with the younger generation that was raised on it. Which is why, by the way, I think the cultural norms are going to change around this. I think we're going to think about unrestricted internet usage not as something that we just sort of bequeath on youth as they become 10 years old, but something that we're actually much more careful about. Uh, probably something that's going to be post-pubescent is going to make a lot more sense, once you've had more brain development, once you've had more, uh, social entrenchment and you sort of understand your identity, et cetera. Because we recognize, you know, the, the flip side of plugging this thing into your brain is, yeah, you have access to more information, but it also pumps that into your brain. So, I don't know. I, I lean a little bit heavier towards (laughs) the pessimistic read because I know too many people, because of my books, um, who've really reduced the impact of these things in their lives. And they don't... On the far side of that transformation, they don't typically report a great impoverishment and experience- experience. They don't report, um, "I'm less mentally agile. The information at my fingertips is less. I, I'm, I'm missing out on life." It... There's typically this coming out of the fog on the other side of it where they're like, "Oh, this is fine."... so, you know, I'm a little bit suspicious about exactly what this mechanism is.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman49:40

       Yeah, I think you're right about the, um, moderate behavioral addiction piece. Years ago when I was starting my lab, I had grants to write, and I found the phone to be pretty intrusive for that process. So, I used to give the phone to somebody in my lab and announce to everyone in my lab that if I asked for it back prior to 5:00 PM that day, I would give everyone in the lab, I think it was $100 bill. My lab was pretty big at the time.

    10. CNCal Newport50:01

        Yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman50:01

        I was a junior professor. They did not do... Not, sorry, uh, academic institutions not to be named, um, pay us very much despite what people might think. And, um, and it was difficult.

    12. CNCal Newport50:12

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman50:12

        Several times throughout the day or more I was like, "Ah, I really want to look at that thing." But at the end of the day, um, I'll tell you, n- no one got paid. I got my phone back. But it's wonderful the amount of work that you can get done when that thing is out of the room.

    14. CNCal Newport50:24

        I mean, it's my s- it's my superpower, right? Uh, I don't work that hard in the sense that I don't do long hours. Like, I'm not constitutionally suited for long hours. This was never my thing. Uh, my brain tires, right? I mean, I'm good for four, four and a half good hours a day of actually producing good stuff with my brain, probably max. But, you know, I don't use my phone that much. I don't use the internet that much, and I prioritize it, and a lot just gets done. It just sort of piles up over time, you know? And there's this sense of like, "You must be burning the midnight oil, and you have all these things going on." Uh, but again, people, I think, underestimate, and it's not the, uh... They underestimate the impact of this. It's not just the, the accumulation of time you spend looking on your phone. It's also this network switching cost, right? Because, like, the phone is very good at inducing a network switch, and that's a expensive, time-consuming, energy-consuming neuronal operation.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman51:17

        Task switching.

    16. CNCal Newport51:18

        Yeah. I'm gonna switch my focus of attention from this to that. Like, we can't do that in two seconds, right? That's a hard process. It takes a while. It's why when you sit down to work on something really hard, you have that feeling of, for the first 15 minutes, "This is terrible." You know? And then after, like, 15 or 20 minutes, you sort of get into the groove. I always assumed part of what's going on is it takes a while for your brain to really start marshaling, "Okay, so what semantic networks do we need to start activating here? Oh, we don't need this. Let's inhibit this. We're not doing that anymore." It takes a while. Um, so what happens then when you have a lot of these quick checks to social media, you're jumping in and out of email back and forth, is you have this disaster, catastrophic pileup of aborted task switches happening, right? And so it's not just the total time you're looking at, let's say, email or social media. It's the 15-minute window you have to add around each of those checks in which you have this cognitive disorder. That really adds up. And then you realize, "Oh, there was no time during my day in which I was more than 15 minutes away from looking at something that induced a network switch." The, the data I like to cite, which was looking at email and Slack checks and knowledge workers. This came from RescueTime, the software company. The median average interval between checks was five minutes. So, the median and the mode was one minute in this data set. So, it was like, "We are, we are checking all the time." That means you were never in a state then in your day where you don't have a confused cognitive space, where you don't have... Partially you were switching to this task, but then you switch back to this task before that finished. Be- before you could fully lock in on this task, you look back over here, and so you're spending your entire day in this state of cognitive disorder, which is going to be reduced cognitive output, right? So, you get rid of that. I mean, I, I always say, like, one of my advantages is not that I'm doing anything smarter. I'm just avoiding sometimes the dumb thing, just holding (laughs) , slowing other people down. You get rid of that, and you feel like you're on the world's best, uh, nootropic or something like this. You're like, "Oh, I'm just doing this thing, and I'm doing it pretty well. Now I'm done. And it wa- This didn't even take that long." So, I mean, I don't... I think people underestimate what's going on here.

12. 53:20 – 54:23

    Sponsor: LMNT

    1. CNCal Newport53:20

    2. AHAndrew Huberman53:20

       I'd like to take a quick break to acknowledge our sponsor, LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means zero sugar and the appropriate ratios of the electrolytes sodium, magnesium, and potassium. And that correct ratio of electrolytes is extremely important because every cell in your body, but especially your nerve cells, your neurons, relies on electrolytes in order to function properly. So, when you're well-hydrated and you have the appropriate amount of electrolytes in your system, your mental functioning and your physical functioning is improved. I drink one packet of LMNT dissolved in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning as well as while I exercise, and if I've sweat a lot during that exercise, I often will drink a third LMNT packet dissolved in about 32 ounces of water after I exercise. LMNT comes in a variety of different flavors, all of which I find really tasty. I like the citrus, I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry. Frankly, I can't pick just one. It also comes in chocolate and chocolate mint, which I find tastes best if they are put into water dissolved and then heated up. I tend to do that in the winter months

13. 54:23 – 1:02:40

    “Neuro-Semantic Coherence” vs. Flow; Concentration

    1. AHAndrew Huberman54:23

       because, of course, you don't just need hydration on hot days and in the summer and spring months, but also in the winter when the temperatures are cold, and the environment tends to be dry. If you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to DrinkLMNT, spelled L-M-N-T, .com/huberman to try a free sample pack. Again, that's DrinkLMNT.com/huberman. Yeah. Would like to drill into the concept of context and task switching a bit more. Uh, I do think that the brain has something akin to a transmission system, where, uh, you know, for people that drive and have driven, you know, the, the amount of energy that needs to be used in order to accelerate a vehicle to get up to a, you know, higher gear-

    2. CNCal Newport55:05

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman55:06

       ... is very different than the, um, equal amount of increase in speed at a given gear, right? So, it's sort of the, this is, you hear this if you're not familiar with transmissions, is it sounds like (imitates engine revving) . It sounds as if there's, uh, it's more facile at, at higher speeds. Well, how could it be that you're burning less fuel at a higher speed? It's not exactly that way, but, but I think the brain has these sort of transmission systems, and what you're describing with, um, people switching back and forth and checking email and phone, et cetera, and back to the work, um, uh, that should be at hand, is sort of akin to going up and down the, the gear system constantly-

    4. CNCal Newport55:38

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman55:39

       ... trying to arrive at a given destination. And sure, you might arrive, but you're gonna burn far more fuel. It's the least efficient way to go about it. You want to get into that deep groove, and I think when we hear about flow, I feel like, at least for me, that's the sort of notion of flow that I'm looking for, dropping into that deep groove, even if there's some friction within that groove of the, the challenge of the work that I'm doing. It's about not thinking about anything else. It's really about focus.

    6. CNCal Newport56:03

       Yep.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman56:03

       Right? And the word flow is just a wonderfully attractive word.

    8. ... um, that I think gives us the, the false impression that we can just drop into things like a square wave function, sit down, pen and paper-

    9. CNCal Newport56:16

       Yeah.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman56:16

        ... go. And there's no possible way that neural circuits could work that way.

    11. CNCal Newport56:20

        No, we c- let's, let's invent a term, and I'm... (laughs) You tell me if the term makes sense. I'm inventing this on the fly, but, uh, neuro-semantic coherence.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman56:27

        Mm-hmm.

    13. CNCal Newport56:27

        This is going to be my alternative term for flow, when you're working on something hard. Um, it's not that you're in an actual flow state where you lose track of what you're doing. You're concentrating really hard, but I'm, I'm, why I'm saying neuro-semantic coherence is you get to this place where the sort of relevant semantic neural networks are all, um, those that are activated are all relevant to what you're doing, and you've, uh, over time inhibited most of the unrelated networks that were fired up before, and so you get in this sense of, it's hard. Maybe I'm not losing track of time, but, like, I'm all focused on this.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman56:59

        Mm-hmm.

    15. CNCal Newport56:59

        You know, I'm grappling with the, the, the bear here, the, the math equation, the, the book chapter, whatever it is. Um, and so it's something different than flow, but it's also different than... Linda Stone had the term partial continuous attention, which is what you're, that cognitive disaster of I'm constantly network switching back and forth. So, we'll call it neuro-semantic coherence. (laughs) I got to coin that term, um, because it's, uh, you have this coherence of the semantic neural networks on what you're doing, and that's the feeling of, "I'm getting after this hard problem," and it might be really hard to do. I mean, I know the feeling of trying to solve a math proof for me, for example, it could be so difficult 'cause, I mean, what does it actually feel like in your head when you're solving a math proof? It's a lot of you hold this here, and then you try to get to the next step by doing this, and it doesn't work, but you have to keep holding this here, which takes a lot of concentration. Okay, let me try this. That didn't work either, but this looked promising. Okay, so now I need to go back, and in my mind's eye, update the setup, and now let me try this. So, it's a lot of holding things in your working memory, um, and keeping them loaded while you try an extension and then evaluating how that worked without... And so it, it requires, um, uh, you just internal concentration, which isn't pleasant. But in neuro-semantic coherence, it's all this happening in your world, you know, is that in that proof? So, maybe that's what we should be pitching, what people should be looking for is, yeah, forget flow, but also remember, like, there's a default where you're, like, the rescue time dataset participants checking email once every five minutes. That's cognitive nonsense. That's crazy. That's like you're trying to, you know, play football and you're covering over one of your eyes and wearing, like, a 50-pound rucksack on. You're just, like, handicapping your abilities here for no reason, right? So, what's in between is this idea, and that requires focus, you know? It requires deep work.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman58:41

        Yeah, or playing football and then, um, every three downs or so, running into the stands and having a conversation, trying to work out something challenging with your spouse or whatever, and then going back-

    17. CNCal Newport58:49

        (laughs) Exactly.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman58:50

        ... and trying to... It's a totally different play set, right?

    19. CNCal Newport58:52

        Yeah.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman58:52

        Um, at risk of throwing in two diff- too many analogies and, and stories, I'll just briefly say, I went and saw the, the play in New York with my sister this year, uh, I think it was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child or something like that. Um, I didn't really enjoy the play that much, but the set stuff was amazing, and they had this magic library that I think is very, uh, very relevant here, where essentially, um, the book that you open, um, has a certain topic. I don't know, maybe it's spells or something. It's Harry Potter. Again, uh, fun show, but great set stuff, didn't, didn't really resonate with me too much in any event. And then the books around it change their topic that, but are related to that central book.

    21. CNCal Newport59:28

        Oh. Interesting.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman59:29

        And then if you look at one particular thing, like maybe it's potions or something... I'm making this up. And then all of a sudden, the, the, the books, the books around it change. They become either more specific. There might be a, a distant but related idea-

    23. CNCal Newport59:40

        Right.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman59:40

        ... that could lend itself to creativity, so sort of a... That's the way the brain works in cognition is that we get into a frame of, of a certain discussion or a certain theme, and, and the, and the, the books on the shelf change according to their relatedness based on memory of past, what's going on now, and plans for the future.

    25. CNCal Newport59:55

        Yeah.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman59:55

        And I think anytime we look at, uh, we change context and we look at, you know, a raccoon video on Instagram or, uh, our, our calendar and, "Oh, there's that thing," the books become very scattered. So, when we return to it, there's a lot more friction, uh, a lot more work or neural, neural energy required to get back into that, um, this, uh, narrow states of cognition.

    27. CNCal Newport1:00:15

        This, that exactly explains sort of my experience and the way I think about it. Yeah. Yeah, because y- you're... It takes time, uh, to, to load up the, the sort of relevant, the secondary and tertiary semantic ideas. And now they're there, so, like, you can pull from them, and then as you shift, you have to sort of shift this whole thing around. That takes a lot of concentration. I mean, I, I wrote this, this article once that got me in a little bit of trouble. (laughs) Uh, mi- not, not trouble, but mild trouble. Uh, but it was, it was called... It was for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Um, and the title they gave it was, "Is Email Making Professors Stupid?" Which wasn't my title.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:46

        You basically called every, every one of your colleagues stupid-

    29. CNCal Newport1:00:48

        I got-

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:48

        ... 'cause we all check email. The dean at the time did call me in for lunch, but actually he was... Here's the thing. He was like, "Hey, this is real. I agree with this." Um, but what I was arguing actually in that article, uh, essentially was, what do we do at a university is, is... Uh, partially what we're supposed to be doing is trying to teach what the life of the mind is and how that works, and we've kind of forgotten that. So, like, why... We should maybe think about, like, at universities, we need to be explicitly not just teaching how to think, but also modeling the life of the mind at the, at the highest level. And so this idea that we just allow the, the professosariat to, to be drowned in, um, emails and, and, uh, tasks and be as distracted... You know, it's the main war that every research professor has is, "How do I, how do I fight the admin overload until I become famous enough to get an assistant," right? Like, this is the big problem. And I was making this proposal of universities should be these citadels of concentration. I said, "If you want to get the, the best academics in the world to your university, just tell them, uh, 'Here's at the top of our contract. You will not be assigned an email address.'" Like, you're going to get Nobel laureates coming from (laughs) , you know, all over the country to come to this place. And so I was making this argument. Um, we should think a lot more about thinking. We should talk more about it. We should model it. Exactly the type of things you're talking about. Um, but we don't. It's much more contents-focused. But really, this should be something more that we, we get into specifically. Like, this is how you actually use the mind to produce innovative, uh, interesting, high value, new cognitive artifacts. This is a very hard thing we're asking you to do, um, but you can apprentice here because this is what we do and we've mastered and we're going to teach you how to do it. Uh, but we never have that sort of meta conversation, that sort of metacognition conversation. I've always thought that'd be important. I think you'd have much better outcomes if that's part of what you learned at the university was how to take the thing in your head and really put it to work, you know, really extract out of it its capabilities.
14. 1:02:40 – 1:08:15

    Internet Use & Kids; Video Games; Audiobooks

    1. CNCal Newport1:02:40

       I agree.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:40

       Yeah. Uh, you have kids.

    3. CNCal Newport1:02:42

       Yeah.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:42

       And, um, do they have smartphones?

    5. CNCal Newport1:02:44

       No.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:45

       Hmm.

    7. CNCal Newport1:02:45

       Yeah.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:46

       How do they feel about that?

    9. CNCal Newport1:02:47

       Well, I mean, they're not... (sighs) They're not old enough yet that it's a, it's a real problem. Um, but they're, they're not going to be happy with me pr- probably soon. (laughs) Actually-

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:56

        "Hate, hate me now, love me later," as my mother used to say.

    11. CNCal Newport1:02:59

        Basically-

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:59

        Yeah. Yeah.

    13. CNCal Newport1:02:59

        ... because I'm... You know, I'm, I'm convinced, having spent some time thinking about this, writing about this, doing some journalism on this, talking to a lot of the experts, that, like, I think where we're going to end up, where all the, the arrows from the, the relevant social psych research... Which, um, I've been following this research since, you know, 2017. This is... 2017 is roughly when you see the first warning signs going up that we need to worry about the potential mental health impacts of these tools, especially social media and smartphones, on young people. Uh, and I... You can track this, right? I have a talk I, I actually gave at my kids' school, they're not happy about this, where (sighs) I tracked how this research evolved. And, you know, uh, like any literatures, it's contentious at first, and then you see, um, you s- we begin to see, uh, consilience between different lines of evidence. And I think we're, we're... Everything now, in the last couple years, is starting to come together. This idea of we don't really know if this is bad or not, I think that's just an old take. The research has moved past that. And I think where we're, we're, we're landing on is unrestricted internet use pre-puberty is risky. And, like, the new standard is going to be, uh, post-puberty is probably the right time to be given a, a device that gives you unrestricted access. We're talking, like, 16 is probably the appropriate age. So this does not make me popular at the middle school (laughs) where my son's- my oldest son's about to go. Um, I think in two or three years, that's just going to be common sense. That's- this is the direction I see the research literature and the advocacy going, and I think there's a solid ground for this.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:25

        Because you're a computer scientist, I can ask this question. What about video games? I'm not a, a big consumer of video games, it's been years since I've played one, in fact. Um, but video games are so very different than smartphones and, um, and other technologies, because they, uh, seem to put, at least the kids I've observed playing them, and adults, um, into a very narrow, uh, trench of attention.

    15. CNCal Newport1:04:47

        Yeah. Uh, I mean, there, there are definitely issues with it. I mean, look, I'm not a social psychologist, I just sort of play one in my articles, but, but I've, I've looked into this literature a lot. Um, there's a bit of a, uh, gendered breakdown that has a lot of overlaps, where, when they're looking at, uh, potential harms of these technologies, uh, young adolescents, right? Pre-adolescent, young adolescents. You tend to see social media to be more a signal for cognitive distress for young women and girls, and the video games to actually be the bigger culprit for, uh, young men and boys, right? There is a bit of a difference here, because with the, the social media impact, the, the content of what's happening matters in this picture, right? So, so, um, what I'm seeing, the engagement I'm having, how this impacts my social life, this is part of the mental distress. With video games, it seems to be more, uh, an impact of just disharmonious passionate obsession, just the time it takes, right? Because the games can be incredibly addictive. So the problem that young men are having are just they're playing it all the time, that, "I'm staying up late because I have a, an iPad in my room, and I'm 14, and I am going to play Fortnite until 3:00 in the morning, because my brain cannot handle, like, what you're, what you're giving me here." Right? Um, so it's less of a, a content concern than it is just a time concern, right? That seems more solvable to me. You know? Like, my solution with my own kids... I don't mind video games, I'm a computer scientist, but I say nothing that's online, right, nothing that was free, 'cause if it was free, that means, uh, their business model involves getting you to play it all the time so you can upcharge or whatever. Uh, they have Nintendo Switches. Like, I like Nintendo. Okay, Nintendo Switch, here's a $60 Zelda game that someone spent five years making or whatever. You can only play those games so long at a time before, you know, you're tired, you come back to it. Um, they don't have an addictive response to it. If they get an iPad with a, a game on it, they'll just, like, play that till their eyes bleed, because those are meant to be as- to be addictive. So I'm wary about video games, but there, it's all just a usage game. So you stick away from the more addictive games. It's- it's a much easier problem to solve, I think, than the social media, the social media issue.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:50

        Earlier, you talked about books. Um, I still read, um, hardcover and paperback books. Um, what are your thoughts on audiobooks and learning by way of, um, audiobook, uh, versus paper in front of you, flipping a physical device, or Kindles? I don't know if there's any, uh, real research on this. I've seen a little bit-

    17. CNCal Newport1:07:09

        Yeah.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:09

        ... but I'm curious what, what you've encountered and what your thoughts are as well. You could speculate.

    19. CNCal Newport1:07:13

        Yeah. I mean, I'll, I'll tell you, personally, I can only do fiction in audiobooks. Right? Because when I'm in a nonfiction experience, I'm just very used to constantly looking for connections and ideas, you know? And so I have to be able to slow down and then speed up and then go back to something I just read. Um, so I really have a distressing experience trying to listen to nonfiction audiobooks. Fiction's fine. That's great. Let me put a thriller on a, a, you know, Audible. Great. I'll... You know, I'll listen through it. And I think some of this might be particular to my, my engagement with books, which is, um, you know, I'm a writer and a thinker, so I'm constantly looking for ideas. And so I might have a different engagement with a nonfiction book than someone, you know, just listening to one of my books, but I can only do fiction on audio.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:53

        That makes sense. Thinking about what works for me, what doesn't, I agree. I, I love stories and, uh, fiction by, by audiobook. Um, ideally consumed on a long drive or a hike.

    21. CNCal Newport1:08:06

        Yup.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:06

        Um, but nonfiction requires that I take notes and see things in their kind of, um, respective spatial layout. And... Yeah.

15. 1:08:15 – 1:12:34

    Pseudo-Productivity, Burnout

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:15

       Um, in your most recent book, um, you described this concept of pseudo-productivity. Is pseudo-productivity a general term to refer to some of the things we've already talked about, this task-switching, context-switching? Or is pseudo-productivity something that, uh, includes other categories of, of limiting ourselves as well?

    2. CNCal Newport1:08:36

       I mean, I think it's more specific than that, right? So it- it... To me, pseudo-productivity was the answer that we came up with in knowledge work-... to a real dilemma, which is, that's a sector, you know, using your brain primarily to create value, but that's a sector that emerged as a major s- part of the economy in roughly the mid-20th century. Um, when that emerged, all the definitions of productivity that we had were inspired from agriculture and industry, right? So, so in agriculture, we can have ratios, um, bushels of corn per, whatever, acres of land under cultivation. In industrial manufacturing, we have ratios, um, Model-Ts per input labor hour. Um, so you could just measure these things. Uh, we also had clearly defined systems of production, so you could then say, "If I change this about the system of production, what happens to this number?" And you could do gradient descent, right? "Okay, uh, I do this, that number goes down. Let's not do that. If I make this change and it goes up, that's a better way of building it." Like, this was the dominant way of thinking about productivity since basically Adam Smith. Then knowledge work arises. That doesn't work, right? Because I'm working on, whatever, five different things. It's different than what you are working on. Um, how I'm managing my work is entirely obfuscated, right? In knowledge work, uh, organizational ideas is entirely left up to the individual. How you manage your work and your workload and collaboration, that's like up to you. That's all obfuscated. Um, so there's no number to measure. There's no system to improve. So, I think it was a real quandary. My argument is what, uh, essentially the management class came up with is pseudo-productivity, which is, "Okay, in the absence of being able to be quantitative about this, we will use visible activity as a proxy for useful effort." So that's it. Like, if we see you doing things, that's better than not. The more we see you doing, the better. I call that pseudo-productivity, and I think that's implicitly how we've been organizing the management of knowledge work and labor since the 1950s.

Episode duration: 2:56:58