PROFESSOR Explains Why & How You Should QUIT SOCIAL MEDIA | Cal Newport & Lewis Howes

Cal Newport 0:00 The things that actually we've evolved to crave, to feel sort of accepted and connected and impactful. And so it's this irony, that you're doing this because you're like, "Ah, I, I, I wanna feel accepted-

Lewis Howes 0:11 Mm

Cal Newport 0:11 ... and connected to people." But by doing this all the time, you're actually feeling less connected and less accepted. [upbeat music]

Lewis Howes 0:33 Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. We've got Cal Newport in the house. Good to see you, my man.

Cal Newport 0:38 Lewis, my pleasure.

Lewis Howes 0:39 Very excited about this. You had a book come out a few years ago. When did that come out?

Cal Newport 0:44 2016.

Lewis Howes 0:44 2016, called Deep Work. And it argues that focus is the new IQ in the modern workplace because we have so much social media distracting us, and focus is something that is kind of like a lost commodity, I guess. It's something that is a lost art.

Cal Newport 1:03 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:03 No one knows how to focus-

Cal Newport 1:04 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:05 ... for more than two seconds.

Cal Newport 1:06 Yeah. Well, there, there's two forces going on. So focus is becoming more valuable, sort of unrelated to this other tech, just because our economy is increasingly shifting towards high-level knowledge work.

Lewis Howes 1:16 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:17 Right? We sort of outsource or automate the low-level knowledge work, but the stuff that really requires some creativity or some thinking or original thought, that's getting more important in our economy, right? So if you can focus, it really helps you produce this type of value. But at the same time, sort of unrelated to that trend, we're getting worse at concentrating because we have this going on all the time.

Lewis Howes 1:36 Right.

Cal Newport 1:37 Right? We're looking at the screens and then also email culture within work. So it was this sort of supply and demand. Uh, focus is becoming more valuable at the exact same time that it's becoming more rare. And so the book was about, hey, if you're one of the few people that cultivates this thing, you're gonna have a huge advantage.

Lewis Howes 1:52 Mm.

Cal Newport 1:52 Sort of a, sort of disproportionate advantage.

Lewis Howes 1:55 Yeah, you're gonna be like the wealthy, uh, of-

Cal Newport 1:57 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:57 ... of value.

Cal Newport 1:59 Yeah, it's like a superpower.

Lewis Howes 1:59 Because there's only so many few people that are actually able to focus and, and write a book that's got deep work in it, and make a movie or, or do something that takes a year, two years, three years.

Cal Newport 2:10 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 2:10 The time and energy that go into something, one piece of work, to make it magical, is so much harder to do.

Cal Newport 2:17 Yeah, but it's very valuable.

Lewis Howes 2:19 Very valuable.

Cal Newport 2:19 But it's practiced as well. And so the book was sort of about, we've forgotten how valuable focus is, and we've forgotten what it takes to be good at it.

Lewis Howes 2:28 What's it take to be good at focus?

Cal Newport 2:29 Well, I mean, people think about it like a habit, right? Like flossing their teeth. Everyone thinks like, "I know how to focus. The problem is I'm just not doing it enough, so like I should try to make more time to do it." But it's really more like a skill.

Lewis Howes 2:40 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 2:40 Like e- if you practice, it's like playing the guitar, right? You practice it, you can be better at it. If you don't practice it, you're not gonna be very good at it. Even if you put aside the time and you lock away all your devices and you, "Here I am, I'm in the cave, I'm gonna write my book," if you haven't been practicing it, it's not gonna go very well.

Lewis Howes 2:54 Right.

Cal Newport 2:54 And so there's sort of essentially like cognitive athletics. You can actually go in there and, and train this capability. Uh, and you kinda have to. And there's a lot of different elements to how you do it, but-

Lewis Howes 3:04 Training focus.

Cal Newport 3:05 Training focus.

Lewis Howes 3:05 How do you, what's a, what's, for someone who's obsessed with social media-

Cal Newport 3:08 Yeah

Lewis Howes 3:08 ... who checks email 20 times a day, who always feels like they're behind-

Cal Newport 3:13 Yeah

Lewis Howes 3:14 ... and are working till 8:00, 9:00, 10:00 at night because they haven't done focused work during the day-

Cal Newport 3:19 Yeah

Lewis Howes 3:19 ... what are some steps that they could start with?

Cal Newport 3:21 Yeah. Well, it, it's sort of like with athletics, right? There's, there's general fitness and then the actual training that you do.

Lewis Howes 3:26 The skill.

Cal Newport 3:27 Skill.

Lewis Howes 3:28 Yeah.

Cal Newport 3:28 Yeah. So, so cognitive fitness means, among other things, your brain needs to be comfortable with being bored, right? I mean, if it's been trained that every time you get a little bit bored you get a, a shiny treat-

Lewis Howes 3:39 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 3:39 ... like the stimuli, you get this Pavlovian connection where it's boredom means stimuli, boredom means stimuli. So then when it comes time to actually focus, which is boring in the technical sense-

Lewis Howes 3:49 It is

Cal Newport 3:49 ... right? Because there's not a lot of different stimuli.

Lewis Howes 3:51 It's not exciting.

Cal Newport 3:52 It's not exciting. Your brain's gonna say, "No way." Like, "I've learned it," right? "When I'm bored, I get the treat, so I'm not gonna sit here and, and stare at the, the blank page for a couple hours." So, so in that sense, if you're constantly doing this, it's like junk food eating.

Lewis Howes 4:05 Mm.

Cal Newport 4:05 If you're an athlete, right, it's, your fitness is gonna be bad.

Lewis Howes 4:08 It tastes good in the moment.

Cal Newport 4:09 It tastes good in the moment, but then you, you get on the field, right [laughs] -

Lewis Howes 4:12 You feel like crap

Cal Newport 4:12 ... you feel like crap, right.

Lewis Howes 4:13 Yeah.

Cal Newport 4:14 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 4:15 Wow.

Cal Newport 4:15 Uh, and then there's the training, right? There- there's specific things you can do, the sort of, um, acute training. And it's like, one of the things I write about is something called productive meditation, which is essentially cognitive pull-ups.

Lewis Howes 4:25 Mm.

Cal Newport 4:25 Like, it's really hard, but it, it, it gives you big results.

Lewis Howes 4:28 Yeah.

Cal Newport 4:29 And the idea there is you go for a walk, and you try to hold one professional thought in your head, and you try to make progress on that thought while you're walking. And just like in mindfulness meditation, when you notice that, you know, your concentration drifts, which it will do-

Lewis Howes 4:44 You come back to the-

Cal Newport 4:44 ... come back to it, right?

Lewis Howes 4:45 Yeah.

Cal Newport 4:45 You bring it back, bring it back. It's really hard at first, but if you keep practicing this, like, I wanna just think about one thought, try to make progress on something in my head as I walk, you get better and better at it and, and the results can actually be-

Lewis Howes 4:58 Wow

Cal Newport 4:58 ... pretty radical. Like, do this for a month and you find your ability to sit down and go laser really improves.

Lewis Howes 5:03 So, so you do this a lot for yourself? You'll take walks-

Cal Newport 5:06 Yeah

Lewis Howes 5:06 ... and you'll start thinking about idea. Give me an example of like-

Cal Newport 5:08 Yeah

Lewis Howes 5:08 ... the last few days, what was a-

Cal Newport 5:10 Yeah. Well, well, so I write in my head.

Lewis Howes 5:12 Interesting.

Cal Newport 5:12 So like when I'm trying to figure out a chapter, an essay, or something like this, I really, I work out the structure and then I actually work out a lot of the wording.

Lewis Howes 5:19 Yeah.

Cal Newport 5:19 And that's mainly practiced. And in my day job, I'm a theoretical computer scientist, so I do proofs. So I do a lot of that in my head. So you roam. You, you-

Lewis Howes 5:26 Wow

Cal Newport 5:26 ... and that's literally moving the sort of variables of the equations. You know, in my hometown, I'm considered an eccentric because I'm always-

Lewis Howes 5:34 Walking around [laughs]

Cal Newport 5:34 ... walking the loops, yeah. And people are, people talk to my wife like, "Where was your husband going?" Like, "I saw him twice. He looped back, [laughs] he looped back around." But you know, I like wandering. And something about walking, it shuts off some non-cerebral parts of your mind that makes it easier to, to take the thinking aspect and really focus it.

Lewis Howes 5:54 Do you take your phone with you when you're walking?

Cal Newport 5:56 Sometimes.

Lewis Howes 5:57 Yeah.

Cal Newport 5:57 But often not.

Lewis Howes 5:57 You just don't have social media.

Cal Newport 5:59 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 5:59 What about, what about texting and email?

Cal Newport 6:01 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 6:02 Do you... 'Cause you don't have social media, you never had an account.

Cal Newport 6:04 Never had an account.

Lewis Howes 6:05 And you and I were born around the same time. You're a year older than me, and we were in college, you know, I guess your last year of college, my junior year, was when Facebook came out.

Cal Newport 6:15 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 6:15 I think.

Cal Newport 6:16 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 6:16 2004, 2003.

Cal Newport 6:17 2004.

Lewis Howes 6:17 Something around then.

Cal Newport 6:18 Yeah, yeah. I went back and looked at the timeline.

Lewis Howes 6:20 Yeah, 2004.

Cal Newport 6:21 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 6:21 And, uh, it was, like, a big deal when it came out in my college.

Cal Newport 6:23 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 6:24 And we were some of the first people to have it. I'm sure you were as well-

Cal Newport 6:26 Yeah

Lewis Howes 6:26 ... in your college, but you never signed up for an account, and you've never had-

Cal Newport 6:29 Yeah

Lewis Howes 6:30 ... social media.

Cal Newport 6:30 Never had it. I mean, I, I think what happened, it was sort of accidental, but yeah, Facebook was the first. Well, Friendster had been around, but it-

Lewis Howes 6:36 Myspace was big.

Cal Newport 6:37 Yeah, Myspace was kind of new then. Friendster was sort of about dating, I think, more.

Lewis Howes 6:41 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 6:42 So Facebook came around, people were excited about it, and I wasn't interested in signing up. And I, I don't quite know why. I think, in part-

Lewis Howes 6:48 [laughs]

Cal Newport 6:48 ... because, you know, I had had a, a, a failed tech company-

Lewis Howes 6:52 Ah

Cal Newport 6:52 ... in the first boom. And, you know, Zuckerberg's a contemporary of ours, and so it's just like, yeah, like, "Who's this, who's this other kid who's, who's-"

Lewis Howes 6:59 Right

Cal Newport 6:59 ... uh, whose website is so popular?"

Lewis Howes 7:01 [laughs]

Cal Newport 7:01 And also, my memory is, see, I've always hated listing things, right? If you tell me, "What's your, what's your three favorite books?" Or something like that, I just can't do it. I'm really bad at, like, listing favorites, and that's what Facebook was in 2004.

Lewis Howes 7:14 What's your favorite movies?

Cal Newport 7:15 Favorite movie-

Lewis Howes 7:16 Books

Cal Newport 7:16 ... favorite books-

Lewis Howes 7:17 TV shows

Cal Newport 7:17 ... favorite songs.

Lewis Howes 7:18 Yeah.

Cal Newport 7:18 I was like, "I don't," I was like, "I don't wanna think about that." And so it was a sort of accidental I didn't sign up for that, but then once you didn't enter that path, I had this sort of objective distance where then I could kind of observe as it changed, you know, how its role in people's lives-

Lewis Howes 7:31 Right

Cal Newport 7:31 ... changed over time.

Lewis Howes 7:32 Right.

Cal Newport 7:33 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 7:33 And the stress that people have. I think that stat is, like, almost 50 minutes a day, people are on Facebook or social media, or you might-

Cal Newport 7:40 50 minutes is, yeah, Facebook products.

Lewis Howes 7:42 Facebook products.

Cal Newport 7:43 So Instagram and Facebook-

Lewis Howes 7:45 Yeah

Cal Newport 7:45 ... mainly. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 7:46 Wow. Messenger.

Cal Newport 7:47 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 7:47 Do they own WhatsApp now too?

Cal Newport 7:48 I guess they own WhatsApp, yeah.

Lewis Howes 7:50 Crazy, isn't it?

Cal Newport 7:51 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 7:51 Almost an hour a day of your life.

Cal Newport 7:53 Yeah, just for those services.

Lewis Howes 7:56 Crazy.

Cal Newport 7:56 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 7:56 Okay. So you wander around. Do you do this every day, you take a walk?

Cal Newport 8:00 I mean, it depends on the day.

Lewis Howes 8:01 It's interesting, because when I was, what, 11, 10, 10, 11 years ago, I had a mentor. Every day he would take a walk for lunch-

Cal Newport 8:08 Yeah

Lewis Howes 8:09 ... and just brainstorm.

Cal Newport 8:10 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 8:10 He was, he was an inventor.

Cal Newport 8:11 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 8:12 And he always had creative ideas, and he said, "My best ideas come from walking."

Cal Newport 8:15 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 8:16 And I think we lose the art of getting out in nature and having space to be bored.

Cal Newport 8:22 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 8:22 And when we are bored, that's when some of our best ideas come to us.

Cal Newport 8:25 It's crucial.

Lewis Howes 8:26 It's crucial.

Cal Newport 8:26 It's crucial.

Lewis Howes 8:27 But very few of us have the courage to be alone.

Cal Newport 8:30 Well, it's scary for a lot of people.

Lewis Howes 8:32 Yeah.

Cal Newport 8:32 Yeah. But I mean, so being alone with your own thoughts, right, it's scary, but it does three things. One, it's self-insight. So if you wanna develop as a human, figure out what you're about, grow into, you know, a new phase of life, become an adult, any of these type of questions, you have to grapple with your own thoughts. You have to process your experiences. You have to try to make sense of it, right? That requires time.

Lewis Howes 8:53 Ask the tough questions.

Cal Newport 8:54 Ask the tough questions. You know, what are you upset about that you've done?

Lewis Howes 8:57 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 8:57 What are you happy about? Um, and that involves you. You can't be, you can't do this while you're in input processing mode. So if there's something in your ear or something in your hand, you can't be doing this type of reflection, and so, so you don't, you don't develop. Professional insight requires it, right? Creativity requires you to actually take in all this input that you've been receiving, and you gotta think about it.

Lewis Howes 9:18 Mm.

Cal Newport 9:18 So, like, someone listening to this podcast right now is in input processing mode, so their brain is in a very particular mode, which is, "I am now receiving input that comes from another human mind," which is a very special mode. Our brain takes that seriously. All hands on deck, right?

Lewis Howes 9:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 9:32 If you don't then take some time to just think about what you've heard, you're gonna get a fraction of the value out of it, 'cause it's two different things. And then finally, there's, like, a maintenance aspect to it. So, you know, it's a big deal to be processing input from another brain, because again, we, we take that very seriously. If you're doing it all the time, so every time you have a down moment, you're looking at social media, for example, which is, you know, all input from other brains, you don't get the downtime that your brain needs just to do all the things it, it, it expects to have time to do, and this causes issues. And so I think this sort of low-grade hum of anxiety that so many people feel today-

Lewis Howes 10:07 Yeah

Cal Newport 10:07 ... a lot of that is actually lack of solitude.

Lewis Howes 10:10 Really?

Cal Newport 10:11 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 10:11 So if more people were actually alone, they'd be more happy.

Cal Newport 10:14 Yeah. No, not all the time, right?

Lewis Howes 10:16 Right.

Cal Newport 10:16 So, so, so I give this quote from the book, uh, where I found it in Ben Franklin's journals when he did his first transatlantic crossing, when he went to London for the first time, and so he was really thinking about-

Lewis Howes 10:26 A lot of alone time

Cal Newport 10:26 ... solitude. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 10:27 Yeah.

Cal Newport 10:27 So he, so I found it in his journals, uh, and he was talking about how, like, while the great sages talk about the value of solitude, but I suspect that if you made the great sages be alone long enough, they would start to regret it, right?

Lewis Howes 10:39 Ah.

Cal Newport 10:39 Like, you can't be, you can't have too much solitude. That's, that's just as bad. I think he kinda hit that on the nose.

Lewis Howes 10:43 Yeah.

Cal Newport 10:43 And so if you're alone all the time, it's terrible. Like, the worst thing you can do to someone is put them in solitary confinement. But if you get rid of every moment of solitude, it can be sort of just as bad in some sense.

Lewis Howes 10:56 Yeah.

Cal Newport 10:56 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 10:56 So what do you recommend for someone who's, uh, on social media all day, email, text all day? They never have any downtime, because right when they get home, they turn the TV on. They're stimulating-

Cal Newport 11:07 Yeah

Lewis Howes 11:07 ... constantly.

Cal Newport 11:08 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 11:08 Do you recommend, hey, take a 30-minute walk?

Cal Newport 11:10 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 11:10 Just start with that.

Cal Newport 11:11 Do something without your phone once a day.

Lewis Howes 11:13 Yeah.

Cal Newport 11:13 That's the easiest way just to get comfortable. Like, when you walk the dog or you're, whatever, going to the drug store, just leave the phone at home.

Lewis Howes 11:19 Mm-hmm. You see so many people walking looking down at their phone.

Cal Newport 11:22 I know.

Lewis Howes 11:23 Everywhere you go.

Cal Newport 11:23 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 11:24 At the grocery store, at the gym.

Cal Newport 11:25 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 11:26 It's, it's funny because two years ago, maybe it was two and a half years ago, I had a realization that for 15 years I'd had my phone on me every single day for 15 years.

Cal Newport 11:36 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 11:37 Since I was 19, uh, or no, nine- the year 2000, I got a, my first cellphone.

Cal Newport 11:42 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 11:42 I was a junior in high school. And I realized there was not a day that had gone by that I didn't have my phone on me-

Cal Newport 11:48 Yeah

Lewis Howes 11:49 ... at some point in the day.

Cal Newport 11:50 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 11:51 And I thought to myself, that was wrong. I was like, this is horrible

Cal Newport 11:54 What a radical change too, in terms of all human history, right?

Lewis Howes 11:57 Before that, never had a device on me.

Cal Newport 11:59 Yeah

Lewis Howes 11:59 Maybe a Game Boy every once in a while or something, or whatever may it be. But now 15 years of my life, I had this on me. And so two years ago, I made the commitment. I said, "I'm going to Hawaii alone."

Cal Newport 12:10 Yeah

Lewis Howes 12:10 "And I'm leaving my phone at home." So I went to Hawaii for f- I think it was four or five days.

Cal Newport 12:15 Yeah

Lewis Howes 12:15 And the first day, it was terrifying because I, I rented a car, and I forgot, like, my confirmation number, and I forgot which car rental service I'd got it from.

Cal Newport 12:24 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 12:24 So I'm going to each rental service-

Cal Newport 12:26 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 12:26 ... saying, "Do you have my confirmation?" Right? And I finally get the car, and now I need directions. I'm like, how do I get to my hotel?

Cal Newport 12:32 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 12:33 I started asking people, "Where's this at?" I stop at a gas station like we used to do in 1995 or whatever.

Cal Newport 12:38 Yeah

Lewis Howes 12:39 And I was like, wow, this is actually really scary. But I remember on day two, I was at the beach, and I was thinking to myself, I was laying in the ocean and just, like, looking up at the sky and hearing, like, the birds and the nature, and I had zero anxiety 'cause I wasn't worried about where my phone was.

Cal Newport 12:56 Yep

Lewis Howes 12:56 It was just like, it's safe at my home.

Cal Newport 12:58 Yeah

Lewis Howes 12:58 It's not on the beach, like, no one's gonna ch- I don't need to check anything.

Cal Newport 13:01 Yeah

Lewis Howes 13:01 I don't need to post anything. And I remember at the end of this four or five days, I felt so much peace and calm-

Cal Newport 13:08 Yeah

Lewis Howes 13:08 ... and zero anxiety. It was almost like I didn't wanna go back home to the phone.

Cal Newport 13:12 And that, that's just getting back to our baseline

Lewis Howes 13:14 Baseline

Cal Newport 13:15 That's the baseline. And I, I, I, we, we underestimate how artificial it is to have a constant companion, a digital constant companion. I mean, it's incredibly artificial. Nowhere in our evolutionary past were we in a context where we had sort of this sort of constant connection to other people, and ideas, and thoughts, and, and so you faced all the worst case scenarios, right? The stuff that makes people worried about not, not having their phone with them. What if I need to look something up? What if I, what if I get lost? What if I-

Lewis Howes 13:42 If I get hurt-

Cal Newport 13:43 Yeah

Lewis Howes 13:43 ... or-

Cal Newport 13:43 Yeah

Lewis Howes 13:43 ... I gotta call someone. Yeah.

Cal Newport 13:45 Yeah. Except for this is the way we all lived our lives.

Lewis Howes 13:47 This is how we used to live.

Cal Newport 13:48 Yeah

Lewis Howes 13:48 And I was fine.

Cal Newport 13:49 Yeah. So, so in the book I talk about, I find these stories. It's a, it's a subgenre online of people who, like, lose their phones or have their phones stolen and then decide, I'm not gonna replace it right away.

Lewis Howes 13:59 Wow

Cal Newport 14:00 And then they write about the experience. You can find all these stories online, and, uh, they often have a very similar-

Lewis Howes 14:04 It transforms their life

Cal Newport 14:05 ... transform. And there's these inconveniences, but they're not as many as they thought. And maybe there'll be, like, one really bad thing that happens in a month, like they're late for a meeting with their boss and it is, is-

Lewis Howes 14:14 They couldn't check in or-

Cal Newport 14:14 She was talking, this one young woman was talking about she had her laptop out in the cab and was hoping that as it passed a Starbucks [laughs] she, she could get-

Lewis Howes 14:20 Wi-Fi

Cal Newport 14:20 ... enough Wi-Fi.

Lewis Howes 14:21 Oh my gosh

Cal Newport 14:22 Yeah. Right. Okay. So that's stressful, but, but that's one of the things I push back on is...

Cal Newport 14:26 So, I mean, you had your phone on you for, for 15 years. But actually more recently is when we shifted towards not just having a phone on us, but looking at it all the time. That's like six or seven years old.

Lewis Howes 14:36 Yeah, because the first, I don't know, eight years there was no smartphones.

Cal Newport 14:40 Yeah

Lewis Howes 14:40 Right. It was just, like, you're texting and you're calling.

Cal Newport 14:43 Yeah

Lewis Howes 14:43 And then there was social media, then there was, you know, Wi-Fi, there was everything else.

Cal Newport 14:47 Social media is what changed it.

Lewis Howes 14:48 Social media changed the game.

Cal Newport 14:48 And not just social media, it was the Facebook IPO. Right? So, so if you go back to the, the beginning of the consumer facing smartphone era, so, like, the iPhone in 2007. You know, I went back and talked to the original development lead for the first iPhone.

Lewis Howes 15:02 Mm.

Cal Newport 15:03 And what he confirmed is, uh, there was nothing about this tech that meant for you to look at it all the time. Right? Steve Jobs was a minimalist.

Lewis Howes 15:11 Right

Cal Newport 15:12 His whole thing was, I wanna take something that's really important to you, and then I wanna make the experience beautiful. And so for him it was playing music. Music was incredibly-

Lewis Howes 15:21 Huge

Cal Newport 15:21 ... important

Lewis Howes 15:21 It was big

Cal Newport 15:22 Yeah. And everyone was listening to iPods, right?

Lewis Howes 15:24 Yeah

Cal Newport 15:24 And so the, the iPhone had a touch screen, and he was like, "Look, I can make the experience of playing music even more beautiful." And he was offended by the interfaces on cell phones at that time.

Lewis Howes 15:33 Wow

Cal Newport 15:33 He's like, "Phone calls are important. I wanna make that a beautiful experience. I wanna put them in one device, so you don't have to have an iPod and a phone both in your pocket." And that was from, like, 2007 to 2012, that was smartphones. It was this beautiful tool that you brought out occasionally to do specific things. Like, I wanna listen to a song, I wanna call my mom, I wanna look up directions, right? Around 2011, 2012, the social media companies were now past the stage of just we're trying to grow and saying, "We actually have to get our revenue up."

Lewis Howes 16:03 Mm.

Cal Newport 16:03 Because it was the Facebook IPO-

Lewis Howes 16:04 Make money

Cal Newport 16:04 ... in particular, right? How are we gonna get people to engage much more on our services? Because the facebook.com was pretty static, right? I mean, you would go check your friend's relationship status, but-

Lewis Howes 16:16 Mm

Cal Newport 16:16 ... if you checked it in the morning, that was probably not gonna change that day. It's not something you would, you would spend all day looking at, right? And so they completely re-engineered the experience to be not about posting and reading other people's posts, but instead about social approval indicators.

Lewis Howes 16:31 Wow

Cal Newport 16:32 And then we got the likes, and the retweets, and the favorites, and the photo auto tags. So now every time you hit this app, you could see some indications. Are people approving of me, or are people thinking of me? And that's what changed our relationship with the phones from this Jobsian vision of this is a beautiful object that does a few things really well, into I have to look at this when I'm walking the dog, I have to look at this, you know, when I'm in the bathroom, I have to look at this when I'm in the line. There was nothing fundamental about the tech that said we need to be looking at this all the time.

Lewis Howes 17:03 Wow.

Cal Newport 17:03 That was essentially a business model that was proved very effective

Lewis Howes 17:08 Very effective.

Cal Newport 17:09 Yeah

Lewis Howes 17:09 Very addictive

Cal Newport 17:10 Yeah

Lewis Howes 17:11 And this, you know, as that expands and grows, the, uh, the more likes you get, it's almost like you feel less worthy of yourself. It's like you have less self-worth-

Cal Newport 17:21 Yeah

Lewis Howes 17:21 ... because you constantly need to be reminded that you're liked, or what you posted was cool or interesting-

Cal Newport 17:26 Yeah

Lewis Howes 17:26 ... or, oh, you have cute kids or a cute dog. And so we have to constantly remind ourselves, like, "Yes, I am worthy. I am enough. Look, I, it keeps growing."

Cal Newport 17:35 Yeah

Lewis Howes 17:35 "Let me post more to remind myself that I am-"

Cal Newport 17:37 I need, I need the-

Lewis Howes 17:38 I need it

Cal Newport 17:38 ... the likes. Except for when you're hunting the likes, then what you're not doing is actually sacrificing your time and energy to be with a close friend or family-

Lewis Howes 17:47 Mm

Cal Newport 17:47 ... or community

Lewis Howes 17:48 Or create something meaningful for-

Cal Newport 17:49 Or create something meaningful. Like, the things that actually we've evolved to crave, to feel sort of accepted and connected and impactful. And so it's this irony. That you're doing this because you're like, "Ah, I, I, I wanna feel accepted-

Lewis Howes 18:01 Mm

Cal Newport 18:01 ... and connected to people." But by doing this all the time, you're actually feeling less connected and less accepted because our social brain, it doesn't really know what to make of like a number next to a thumbs up icon. It knows about this.

Lewis Howes 18:14 Right.

Cal Newport 18:14 It knows, like I'm sitting across from someone and I'm, I'm looking at someone and I'm seeing facial expressions, and, and I've made time to be here, and we're, we're interacting. It knows about that. That's connection. But without some sort of sacrifice, like I had to go and be and spend my time with someone, if you take all the friction out, you just hit happy birthday or like-

Lewis Howes 18:31 Right

Cal Newport 18:31 ... or something like that, it's not a strong connection.

Lewis Howes 18:35 So how do we build stronger connections?

Cal Newport 18:38 Well, I mean, when it comes to social life, we kind of know, right? We've known for a long time what makes people feel connected. It's strong relationships with sacrifice and time and attention for, taking on responsibility on behalf of family, close friends, and community.

Lewis Howes 18:53 Mm.

Cal Newport 18:54 I mean, there's no shortcut. I mean, if a friend has a baby, you could send them like, "Congrats," three exclamation points.

Lewis Howes 19:01 Yeah.

Cal Newport 19:01 What you really should do is go over there and say, "Here, I'm bringing you, I'm bringing you a box full of like-

Lewis Howes 19:05 Right

Cal Newport 19:05 ... this is, you know, it's, it's snacks and food and towels."

Lewis Howes 19:08 Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 19:08 It turns out towels are really [laughs] useful when you have babies.

Lewis Howes 19:10 Really.

Cal Newport 19:10 Yeah. This is something I've discovered, right? But and that, and that's hard, and it just took an hour of your time, right? But that leaves you feeling connected. That leaves that other person feeling like you're connected. The congrats with the three exclamation points, it's not bad, but it's not giving you what you need.

Lewis Howes 19:25 And it's not like a deep work of building relationship.

Cal Newport 19:27 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 19:28 It's the small attention that's not as meaningful-

Cal Newport 19:31 Yes

Lewis Howes 19:31 ... as showing up. Even a phone call is better than-

Cal Newport 19:34 It's a lot better

Lewis Howes 19:34 ... than just a like or congrats. It's taking the time. I try to go e- even a step further with people that I'm really connected to and send them just a video message.

Cal Newport 19:42 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 19:43 And they're always in shock 'cause they're like so used to someone just sending a quick text.

Cal Newport 19:46 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 19:47 And I'll send even a minute video message of just acknowledging them for what I appreciate about them or congratulating. They're just always like, "Wow."

Cal Newport 19:54 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 19:55 I'm so thankful. A video, you know?

Cal Newport 19:56 Yeah, it probably hits you instinctually. Something about it when you do it-

Lewis Howes 19:59 Yeah

Cal Newport 19:59 ... it probably feels, something about it feels more real.

Lewis Howes 20:01 Absolutely.

Cal Newport 20:02 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 20:02 It's more attention. It's more time. It's, it's, it's a more piece of quality, I guess, communication, right?

Cal Newport 20:08 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 20:08 But showing up is really the key, in person if you can, but if someone's not in your city, then it might be harder. Um,

Lewis Howes 20:15 so do you feel like our, our quality of our life is diminishing because of social media or because of the lack of our attention to deeper work in, in, in our work and our relationships?

Cal Newport 20:27 This is what I've been hearing, right? So I wrote Deep Work, which was really about tech and its impact on the professional world, and what I kept hearing when I was on the road was readers saying, "Yeah, but what about tech in our personal lives?"

Lewis Howes 20:39 Mm.

Cal Newport 20:39 Right? There's something going on here. So, so you start looking-

Lewis Howes 20:41 So tech in the work life, meaning?

Cal Newport 20:42 Like the distractions like email and Slack and how-

Lewis Howes 20:45 Mm

Cal Newport 20:45 ... that's keeping people away from doing highly concentrated work and how this is probably a mistake.

Lewis Howes 20:49 Yeah.

Cal Newport 20:50 Right? Yeah.

Lewis Howes 20:50 Just doing meetings all day and-

Cal Newport 20:51 Yeah

Lewis Howes 20:51 ... communicating, but not actually creating work.

Cal Newport 20:52 Yeah, we're really bad at knowledge work, right?

Lewis Howes 20:54 Right.

Cal Newport 20:54 So that, that was sort-

Lewis Howes 20:55 Okay

Cal Newport 20:55 ... that was Deep Work, right? So a lot of the readers say, "Yeah, but something is going on in our personal lives with tech that is sort of arguably more important."

Lewis Howes 21:02 Mm.

Cal Newport 21:03 And so you look into this and you see there is this unease. Maybe around two years ago, people really started to shift from this sort of self-deprecating mode to like, "Wait a second, there is a problem." But if you talk to people, it's not utility, right? So it's not that they say, "This is useless." Like I, I, I hate what I'm doing when I'm on my phone, right? It's not like cigarettes or something, where like most people who smoke would just say-

Lewis Howes 21:26 Right

Cal Newport 21:26 ... "I just wish I, I wish I wasn't smoking. There's nothing good that comes from it."

Lewis Howes 21:29 Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 21:29 There, there is, right? I mean, there, there's good things happening.

Lewis Howes 21:32 Yeah.

Cal Newport 21:33 Their issue is autonomy. So people were feeling like, "I am losing control over my life, and that's why I'm upset." Not that this is always bad, but it's that I'm doing this more than I should. I'm doing this more than is useful. I'm doing this more than is healthy. I'm doing this to the exclusion of things that I know are much more meaningful. I feel manipulated. Like how I feel, my emotions, that somehow these algorithms [laughs] are changing how I feel. And so the, the, the argument is, "I'm losing my autonomy as a human being." That's what was making people concerned. Now, the social media companies for a long time, 'cause I've been a long sort of public critic of some of social media.

Lewis Howes 22:10 Yeah.

Cal Newport 22:10 They would always push back with the utility argument, and they would say, "Wait a second. Here is something useful that someone is doing on Facebook. Stop criticizing me."

Lewis Howes 22:19 Right.

Cal Newport 22:19 Check, checkmate, right? Like we've, we've won, and, and what I was finding is that's not really the grounds on which this argument is occurring. It's not is this useless or useful, it is am I in control of this and using it for good means, or is it in control of me? And I think more people feel like, okay, it's shifted, and now it's in control of me.

Lewis Howes 22:37 Especially when you now on the iPhone, you can track to see how many hours you've spent on an app or-

Cal Newport 22:43 Yeah

Lewis Howes 22:43 ... social media account, and you're like, "Wow, I just spent 20 hours this week on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter."

Cal Newport 22:48 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 22:49 Just like what could you have done with all that time?

Cal Newport 22:52 Split that-

Lewis Howes 22:52 I'm guilty for this too, you know?

Cal Newport 22:53 But you split the, take 20 hours, right? Split that between some like strong, you know, interaction with people, self-reflection-

Lewis Howes 23:00 Mm

Cal Newport 23:00 ... and let's say some like skill building or creation.

Lewis Howes 23:03 Yeah, or working out-

Cal Newport 23:04 Yeah

Lewis Howes 23:04 ... or nature. Yeah.

Cal Newport 23:05 And multiply that by what, like five or six weeks even, and y- it's a vastly different outcome. And then think about, now think about the compounding return, right? Now you take those 20 hours and you, you repurpose it week after week, and now you're growing off a bigger and bigger base, and you go three or four years down the line, and it's a completely different life.

Lewis Howes 23:22 Completely different. And people who complain about wanting to write a book but never have the time or wanting to learn a new language or a new skill-

Cal Newport 23:29 Yeah

Lewis Howes 23:29 ... just look at the amount of time you spend on social media-

Cal Newport 23:32 Yeah

Lewis Howes 23:32 ... or your email or on nonsense.

Cal Newport 23:34 But this is why people are getting upset about social media. Again, it's not that they think it's, um, what they're actually doing is evil or like what they do when they're on these screens is, you know, you're looking at baby pictures of your niece or something. It's not bad, but they're, what they're upset about is that it's keeping them from getting after it-

Lewis Howes 23:49 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 23:50 ... in these other aspects. So like this isn't bad, but not learning the language-

Lewis Howes 23:55 Yeah

Cal Newport 23:55 ... not learning the skill, not getting healthy, not- Taking res- taking on responsibility, right? Like becoming a, a, a, a figure in my community, right, that, that people respect. Like these things that we actually crave. That's what people are picking up on.

Lewis Howes 24:08 Yeah.

Cal Newport 24:08 Is that there's all of this stuff over here that instinctually I know, like if I'm doing this, is, is key to flourishing as a human, and I'm just distracting myself with this so much that there's nothing left over for me to do that. And the fact that why am I so distracted on this is because they, they tweaked it so that I would do this a lot. It's so that the real estate prices in northern California [laughs] can be really expensive.

Lewis Howes 24:26 Crazy.

Cal Newport 24:27 I mean, it's not like I'm curing cancer over here and I'm making sacrifices over there. It's, they tweaked this so that I would use it-

Lewis Howes 24:34 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 24:34 ... 20 hours a week.

Lewis Howes 24:35 And you said before we jumped on here about, uh, you know, the deeper conversation of what's the void we're trying to fill.

Cal Newport 24:42 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 24:43 What's the thing that people aren't willing to look at within themselves that makes them so distracted? You-

Cal Newport 24:49 Yeah

Lewis Howes 24:49 ... have you been having those conversations a lot lately or?

Cal Newport 24:51 Uh, this is a lot of what surprised me, right, uh, when I was working on the book, is that I did this experiment where I put out a call to my readers and said, "I'm experimenting with this idea of a digital declutter where you, 30 days you step away."

Lewis Howes 25:05 Wow.

Cal Newport 25:06 30 days you step away, and this is kind of the core sort of suggestion in the book. Like 30 days you step away.

Lewis Howes 25:11 From all social media?

Cal Newport 25:11 All social media. A- all-

Lewis Howes 25:13 Email too or no?

Cal Newport 25:13 No, all optional technologies in your personal life. So I can't get you out of answering your boss's email, but-

Lewis Howes 25:19 'Cause it's work

Cal Newport 25:19 ... but online news, social media, games, streaming media, YouTube, right? Um, almost everything you do in your personal life with tech for one month.

Lewis Howes 25:27 TV as well?

Cal Newport 25:28 It's a-

Lewis Howes 25:28 So like movies and TV?

Cal Newport 25:29 Well, yeah. So, so different, different people had different rules for that. Like one of the rules I liked is, is people said no streaming media by yourself.

Lewis Howes 25:36 Yeah.

Cal Newport 25:36 So like, yeah, I can watch a movie with, with like a friend or my wife or something.

Lewis Howes 25:39 Not just in bed streaming a movie.

Cal Newport 25:39 But I can't just, you know, watching The Office-

Lewis Howes 25:41 Got it

Cal Newport 25:41 ... or whatever, yeah, which is what everyone does. Um, and that's the idea, was that, that, uh, you do this 30 days, then when it's over you rebuild your digital life from scratch, right? So it's like Marie Kondo, you clear out the whole closet.

Lewis Howes 25:53 Yes.

Cal Newport 25:53 Right?

Lewis Howes 25:54 And what brings you joy and like what you need and get rid of.

Cal Newport 25:56 Yeah, you figure it out, and then you, and then you rebuild it from scratch, right? But, uh, I kept getting these reports from people, especially younger people, who did not have an adult life before social media-

Lewis Howes 26:06 Wow

Cal Newport 26:07 ... that it was terrifying. That it was, th- that taking this away that first day was really terrifying for them. And I had underestimated the degree to which for a lot of people that this is a serious escape. It's not just like this is dumb, I spend too much time on nonsense. Like, it's actually an escape from hard things they don't wanna deal with.

Lewis Howes 26:27 Like what?

Cal Newport 26:28 Well, it can be a lot of things, right? I mean, for some people, there's actually hard questions about their life, like what am I, what am I supposed to be doing? Is my-

Lewis Howes 26:35 What's my purpose

Cal Newport 26:36 ... am I really living up to my potential? Am I really happy with like the, the type of person, you know, I am?

Lewis Howes 26:41 Mm.

Cal Newport 26:41 Am I just w- going out partying too much, or this or that. And this stops them from having to confront that, and it's incredibly, you know, it's incredibly uncomfortable to confront. A- and for other people, just they don't have, uh, high quality analog leisure options in their life, which is another thing I learned about. It, it seems sort of, um, superficial, like, you know, your leisure activities, but it's actually really important to have things you do.

Lewis Howes 27:05 Like what? What type of examples?

Cal Newport 27:06 Like things you do in your time outside of work that is, requires skill, something you can get better at, something that maybe connects you to other people as you do it. Uh, so it, it could be like athletics for a lot of people.

Lewis Howes 27:16 Mm.

Cal Newport 27:16 Like even, even like a pickup basketball game or something like this.

Lewis Howes 27:19 Yeah.

Cal Newport 27:19 But also skilled hobbies, um, community or church group engagement. Like these type of things that we always used to fill our time with-

Lewis Howes 27:26 Yeah

Cal Newport 27:26 ... outside of work are really important, but it takes some practice and it's harder, right? And so getting back into that, if you've never been there before-

Lewis Howes 27:34 Yeah

Cal Newport 27:34 ... is difficult.

Lewis Howes 27:35 I think you said in your TED, TED video that you like read a book every night and you relax like on a rocking chair, and you're like-

Cal Newport 27:43 Yeah, I'm such an old man.

Lewis Howes 27:43 Yeah. [laughs]

Cal Newport 27:44 And I read a newspaper at the table-

Lewis Howes 27:45 Newspaper, yeah

Cal Newport 27:45 ... with my kids in the morning. Like that's how I, that's how I like to do this.

Lewis Howes 27:47 That was like my dad. My dad would read the newspaper-

Cal Newport 27:50 Yeah, yeah

Lewis Howes 27:50 ... after, uh, either in the morning, but after work he'd come home and just read the newspaper just sitting in the room with us. While we were watching TV or playing video games, he was reading the newspaper.

Cal Newport 27:59 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 27:59 And then I would s- he almost every night he would just like fall asleep in his, like, chair.

Cal Newport 28:03 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 28:03 Reading the newspaper or a book and just like pass out, and I'm like, "Man, he just looks so restful."

Cal Newport 28:08 Yeah. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 28:08 You know? It's like-

Cal Newport 28:08 Yeah, yeah. I know. I'd be a good f- farmer 100 years ago.

Lewis Howes 28:11 Right, exactly.

Cal Newport 28:11 If I could just sit on a porch-

Lewis Howes 28:13 [laughs]

Cal Newport 28:14 ... and whittle or something.

Lewis Howes 28:15 Exactly, yeah. [laughs]

Cal Newport 28:15 Which, but again, it sounds superficial but, but I get into it. Like we go all the way back to Aristotle, um, writing the Nicomachean Ethics, and you see that it's crucial to have activities you do just for the intrinsic quality.

Lewis Howes 28:25 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 28:26 That's crucial for making it through the inevitable ups and downs in life, right? That, that you have activities that you do that you do just because you appreciate-

Lewis Howes 28:33 Yeah

Cal Newport 28:33 ... quality, right? Um, and if, if you, if you have that, it's kind of a buffer against various ups and downs, right? If you're, if you're really good at cooking or playing music, if you're a musician, even amateur, you can really just appreciate a, a good piece of music, or if you're a knitter or something like that and just constructing something good. It, it all seems superficial, but it's actually a really important buffer.

Lewis Howes 28:55 Really?

Cal Newport 28:55 And we-

Lewis Howes 28:56 The in between times.

Cal Newport 28:56 The in between times. And, and so maybe you're having a hard time, you know, in life at the moment. Having this sort of anchor of but there's things I do that I just appreciate them for the, their intrinsic quality-

Lewis Howes 29:07 Mm

Cal Newport 29:07 ... is, like, deeply human. And we take it for granted, but having the screen, I mean, you can avoid all of this.

Lewis Howes 29:13 Avoid everything.

Cal Newport 29:13 'Cause it's, it's easier in the moment.

Lewis Howes 29:15 And more f- more rewarding, quickly.

Cal Newport 29:17 More rewarding. It's this algorithmically optimized content. You've been reduced to a, a, a, a, a data tuple of 19,000 data points statistical algorithms are processing. Uh, and they're feeding you. Like look at this nugget, look at that nugget. It's reduced you to a, a statistical gadget. It feeds you these, these isolated nuggets that... And, and it's just optimized so that you'll wanna keep... It's the same as processed food.

Lewis Howes 29:38 Yeah.

Cal Newport 29:39 Same idea.

Lewis Howes 29:39 You want more and more, but you're never satisfied.

Cal Newport 29:40 You want more. You're never satisfied, but if you move away from a real food culture to eat McDonald's, like you're, you're not gonna be happy in the long term.

Lewis Howes 29:47 Wow.

Cal Newport 29:48 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 29:49 So this void that we're trying to fill, you're saying that when we have hobbies or other things that we can do that add value to us, the buffer times, as opposed to going on the phone-

Cal Newport 29:59 Yeah

Lewis Howes 30:00 ... to try to fill the void, that, what will that do for us emotionally, uh, mentally? You also talked about how- A lot of professors, or maybe, what is it, the therapists on college campuses or professors in mental health-

Cal Newport 30:14 Yeah

Lewis Howes 30:14 ... are saying that mental health is rising-

Cal Newport 30:16 It's off the charts

Lewis Howes 30:17 ... because of social media anxiety.

Cal Newport 30:18 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 30:19 So do you think if we were able to eliminate some of that to do more arts and crafts, music, other buffer-type experiences, that anxiety would go down?

Cal Newport 30:28 Yes.

Lewis Howes 30:28 Really?

Cal Newport 30:29 Yeah. I, I think it, it would definitely go down.

Lewis Howes 30:32 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 30:32 So, so for young people, so Generation Z, which is the, the first generation to have sort of ubiquitous access to smartphone social media as they enter their young adolescence, this generation, that's where anxiety, anxiety-related disorders were literally off the charts. So the demographers that measure different traits of generations and see how traits change from generation to generation had never seen something change-

Lewis Howes 30:56 Really?

Cal Newport 30:56 ... that severely. So it was off their charts.

Lewis Howes 30:58 Wow.

Cal Newport 30:58 And looking at anxiety and anxiety-related disorders and, and the, the turning point from this was if you were born just late enough to have social media and smartphones, like when you enter junior high-

Lewis Howes 31:09 When you were like 10

Cal Newport 31:10 ... when, yeah.

Lewis Howes 31:10 Yeah.

Cal Newport 31:10 And, and, and so this is off the charts. I, I had been hearing this informally from mental health experts on college campuses where they would tell me like it was crazy. It was overnight. They used to have the standard array of mental health issues, sort of a cross-section of what you would expect, like country as a whole, and then it just shifted overnight. It was all anxiety, anxiety-related disorders, and it was like 5X more students coming in than they ever used to got before.

Lewis Howes 31:34 Wow.

Cal Newport 31:35 And they would say it was the students who started [laughs] arriving on campus with smartphones. It was like that year. Because we're not wired for it, right? So what do we need to flourish as human beings? You take on responsibility for friends close, uh, family close friends, community. Take on responsibility. Commit to them. You know, I'm gonna sacrifice for you. You'll sacrifice for me. I'm gonna be involved.

Lewis Howes 31:52 Yeah.

Cal Newport 31:53 You do, uh, activity that, that has intrinsic quality, right? So you go out there to... I wanna do things with my time that itself is high quality, and there, there's value i- in just doing that. And then, and then in your professional life, you look to make impact. Like, you do these things, it's, it's, it's not a secret formula. This is what we've always needed is the nutriments of human flourish.

Lewis Howes 32:12 Right.

Cal Newport 32:12 And so this is the issue with the phone is they... And again, like the, the, the social media companies want it all to be about utility. It's not useless to be on Facebook, but it's not the issue. It's that this has become so compulsive that it's taken us away from these things that we absolutely need to flourish. So you take those all away, and you just do this instead, y- you're gonna be anxious.

Lewis Howes 32:35 Maybe you get dumber.

Cal Newport 32:36 You're gonna get dumber.

Lewis Howes 32:36 Yeah.

Cal Newport 32:37 You're gonna... It's gonna impede professional progress.

Lewis Howes 32:39 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 32:40 And, uh, and then life gets really hard, and then you need this more and more to escape. I mean, when things become dangerous in our life is, uh, when you start using them to escape harder things that you don't wanna confront, and so then it becomes a cycle. So then you know like I'm not, I'm probably not doing what I should be doing with my life.

Lewis Howes 32:57 And you feel guilty. You beat yourself up.

Cal Newport 32:58 You feel guilty.

Lewis Howes 32:58 Yeah.

Cal Newport 32:58 And so you escape the guilt by-

Lewis Howes 33:00 Wow

Cal Newport 33:00 ... like going back to this, and it's a cycle.

Lewis Howes 33:03 What's more addictive, social media or smoking?

Cal Newport 33:05 [laughs] Well, I mean, it's an interesting question. It's, I talked to psychologists about this. Um, it's a different type of addiction, right? So smoking is a, a substance addiction, so there's actually chemicals that can, that can... Nicotine can get through the blood-brain barrier.

Lewis Howes 33:20 Hmm.

Cal Newport 33:20 And it can mess around directly with your neurons. Um, so that's really strong. When you have a substance addiction, you can feel strong physical withdrawal symptoms, for example, if you stop using it. Phone addiction, psychologists tend to categorize as a moderate behavioral addiction.

Lewis Howes 33:35 Hmm.

Cal Newport 33:36 Which means, okay, uh, if I take away your phone, like it might be difficult, but you're not gonna have the same type of withdrawal you would have if you were like a, an alcoholic and you were being taken away from alcohol. But moderate behavioral addictions lead you to using s- something much more than you know is healthy if you have access to it.

Lewis Howes 33:52 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 33:53 So it's just like if I put the bowl of potato chips in front of you every day, you're gonna eat probably way too many potato chips.

Lewis Howes 34:00 Yeah.

Cal Newport 34:00 Right? But if I don't, you're not gonna sneak out in the middle of the night to-

Lewis Howes 34:02 Right

Cal Newport 34:03 ... to go buy it. So th- that's where we are with probably with the phones is that if we have it with us, we're gonna use it more than we think is healthy.

Lewis Howes 34:10 On the phone. Okay, so let's, let's make the scenario. There's a lot of entrepreneurs that listen, a lot of people that have products and services and companies and trying to build their brands and get exposure and build a following. What would you say to the people that their business is m- mostly online-

Cal Newport 34:27 Yeah

Lewis Howes 34:27 ... and is evolved around building communities-

Cal Newport 34:30 Yeah

Lewis Howes 34:30 ... on social networking platforms? How would you suggest they manage their time on social media? Can they eliminate social media all in all or let someone else run it for them?

Cal Newport 34:40 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 34:40 What's your recommendation?

Cal Newport 34:41 I mean, all those are possible, right? So, so I definitely recognized in the professional context, there's certain things that social media enables-

Lewis Howes 34:49 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 34:49 ... that's really powerful. I mean, there's a reason, for example, why Facebook is worth $500 billion because let's say you're trying to advertise. It's crazy. This thing can pinpoint exact human beings that you wanna try to sell to. I mean, I, I see why they're, they're, they're making lots of money, and I understand why people use it to advertise. I also understand having some sort of presence in social media is useful in certain industries. And so what I typically advise is, uh, if you think social media is very important for your business, treat it as something important. Like actually, actually get after it and understand where am I, where am I really getting value? What activities really matter? Do they really matter? Make sure you're not telling yourself a story, right?

Lewis Howes 35:27 Hmm.

Cal Newport 35:28 Uh, treat it like any other tool. Uh, then once you've really figured out, okay, these are the ways that social media is helping me professionally, then use it like a professional. So there's no reason for it to be on your phone.

Lewis Howes 35:39 Really?

Cal Newport 35:40 Yeah. Doesn't, don't-

Lewis Howes 35:41 Email's on your phone, right?

Cal Newport 35:42 I don't use email on my phone.

Lewis Howes 35:43 Really? Wow.

Cal Newport 35:44 Yeah. I deleted the app.

Lewis Howes 35:46 You just only open the computer to do the work-

Cal Newport 35:48 Yeah

Lewis Howes 35:48 ... on email.

Cal Newport 35:49 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 35:50 And on your phone you're not checking or being notified.

Cal Newport 35:52 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 35:52 Wow.

Cal Newport 35:52 So do the same with so- So, so once you've identified X, Y, and Z on social media's a big ROI, do it like the pros. So I, I interviewed some sort of social media brand managers for major companies in the book to be like, okay, how do the professionals use it? It's on their desktop. They've got tools. They've got schedules. They've got systems. They often have staff that helps them. Uh, and it's a completely different interaction than I'm in line at CVS.

Lewis Howes 36:17 Right, or on the toilet for an extra 20-

Cal Newport 36:18 And I'm looking at the... I'm on the toilet, yeah

Lewis Howes 36:19 ... more than 20-ish minutes, which I do all the time.

Cal Newport 36:21 Right.

Lewis Howes 36:21 So like I'll just sit here.

Cal Newport 36:21 So like a lot of people, a lot of people sort of tell themselves the story. They allow the sort of- ... professional use to completely change what's happening in life outside of work. And so those are the two things that happen. So sometimes people just generically see professional social media as like, I don't wanna think about it more than just in general, being on here and using it a lot is beneficial. I think we gotta think about it sharper than that. And then two, they let it infect over. But like if-

Lewis Howes 36:46 Mm

Cal Newport 36:46 ... if, if, you know, if, if a friend of mine was running a business and we were out to dinner and he's doing QuickBooks, [laughs] when-

Lewis Howes 36:52 It's live

Cal Newport 36:52 ... I was like, "Well, why are y- why are you, why are you making QuickBook invoices? Like, I don't doubt that maybe QuickBooks is useful for your business, but this is weird that you're using it on your phone all the time or something."

Lewis Howes 37:00 At dinner, yeah.

Cal Newport 37:01 Right, yeah. It's not just enough to... If he came back and said, "But my business needs QuickBooks, that's how I invoice my clients," or whatever, I'd say, that's true, but like, do you need to be writing up invoices on the toilet, right? [laughs] Like-

Lewis Howes 37:13 Yeah. And at dinner, and at the movies, and-

Cal Newport 37:14 At dinner, and at the movies. Yeah. So, so, so that's why when I talk to pr- professionals, I'm like, if you need social media, use it like a... If you're using it professionally, use it like a professional, and it should have very little to do with-

Lewis Howes 37:25 Yeah

Cal Newport 37:25 ... your personal life.

Lewis Howes 37:27 What are the nego- non-negotiables for you every day with, in terms of screen time and your phone?

Cal Newport 37:32 [clears throat] Um, that's a good question. Well, I, I don't really need that many non-negotiables because it, it-

Lewis Howes 37:43 'Cause it's never there. Yeah. [laughs]

Cal Newport 37:44 So I don't have social media accounts.

Lewis Howes 37:45 Yeah.

Cal Newport 37:45 So I'm, I'm free from that re-engineering. So when you don't have that re-engineering towards the compulsive use model, the phone just goes back to the way it was in 2007. So it's like, great, I need to look up, you know, I'm looking up like whatever the address of where I'm going-

Lewis Howes 37:58 Mm

Cal Newport 37:58 ... or something like this.

Lewis Howes 37:59 You use maps, you use, yeah.

Cal Newport 37:59 Yeah, I get maps. We're gonna call my wife-

Lewis Howes 38:01 Waze, yeah

Cal Newport 38:02 ... and see how the kids are doing or something like that. But because I've never been exposed to the constant companion model, it just, it's never something that, that I worry about. And then online, I've, I trained myself not to web surf.

Lewis Howes 38:12 Really?

Cal Newport 38:13 So I don't have a cycle of sites that, to go through. Now, in part, I can do this because I have a lot of autonomy in my job. So as a professor and a writer, it's not like... I, I, I never have to just be at an office to be there. Um, I can decide what I'm gonna work on.

Lewis Howes 38:28 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 38:28 And so because I have kids, I tend to tightly schedule my workday. And so I don't want time to web surf during my workday. [laughs] It's like, I'm doing this for two hours, and then this. Like, I wanna be trying to work every single minute.

Lewis Howes 38:39 Get done and go home.

Cal Newport 38:39 I'm working so I can be done, and then I can be home.

Lewis Howes 38:41 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 38:41 And then when I'm home, you know, I have three kids running around. So-

Lewis Howes 38:44 So you're just a present dad

Cal Newport 38:45 ... that's what I wanna do.

Lewis Howes 38:46 Wow.

Cal Newport 38:47 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 38:48 You're just hanging out, like throwing a baseball in the backyard-

Cal Newport 38:50 Yeah

Lewis Howes 38:50 ... or whatever, getting dirty, whatever it might be.

Cal Newport 38:52 Yeah, yeah. We literally do that, yeah.

Lewis Howes 38:53 Wow.

Cal Newport 38:54 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 38:54 Just like the old days. I remember after work, my dad would come home. He would be in his suit. He'd roll his sleeves up. He'd get to two mitts, and we'd go play catch in the backyard-

Cal Newport 39:02 Yeah

Lewis Howes 39:03 ... for 20, 30 minutes. It was so powerful.

Cal Newport 39:05 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 39:05 In the summer in Ohio, just like the smell of the grass, just like throw and catch, you know?

Cal Newport 39:11 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 39:11 Simple little things that build connection-

Cal Newport 39:14 It did

Lewis Howes 39:14 ... and it's a memory.

Cal Newport 39:15 It's a memory.

Lewis Howes 39:15 Yeah.

Cal Newport 39:15 And it's physical, and it's tangible, and you're taking responsibility for a relationship.

Lewis Howes 39:19 Yeah.

Cal Newport 39:19 My oldest is only six, but, uh, we're working on swings.

Lewis Howes 39:23 Wow.

Cal Newport 39:23 Yeah, he's getting better.

Lewis Howes 39:24 All right. Is he gonna be doing T-ball soon?

Cal Newport 39:25 He, he did T-ball last summer.

Lewis Howes 39:27 Really?

Cal Newport 39:27 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 39:27 Are you coaching him?

Cal Newport 39:28 I'm not the coach. I'm not the coach. Maybe I should be. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 39:30 But you go. Now, it's interesting. When you go as a parent to see, I guess, T-ball, um, and I'm sure you'll be doing more activities with your kids as they get older-

Cal Newport 39:38 Yeah

Lewis Howes 39:38 ... do you see all of the parents just on their phone the whole time?

Cal Newport 39:41 There's a lot of that.

Lewis Howes 39:42 Really?

Cal Newport 39:43 Yeah. And playgrounds, too.

Lewis Howes 39:45 Really?

Cal Newport 39:46 I mean, this, this is one of the sources, I think, of the pushback that I've been picking up on in the last couple of years on our digital lives, is that our generation, like, so, so people like us who were-

Lewis Howes 39:58 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 39:58 ... exposed, the, the social media generation, right? We got it when we were, like in college.

Lewis Howes 40:02 20s, yeah.

Cal Newport 40:02 The first adopters, basically, right?

Lewis Howes 40:04 Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 40:04 Is we're starting to have families. And so it's interesting. A lot of the, the unease is coming from, like, new moms and dads.

Lewis Howes 40:12 Wow.

Cal Newport 40:13 Right? Because now suddenly you have to confront... Like, it's pretty clear that this thing in front of me here is very important and something that I want to dedicate to and take responsibility, and then they're like, "Then why am I looking at this?"

Lewis Howes 40:23 Right.

Cal Newport 40:23 You know?

Lewis Howes 40:23 Well, my kids are the most important thing.

Cal Newport 40:25 Yeah. And so that's, it's one of the source of the growing unease, is that the social media generation, the first adopters, is now getting old enough that it's not just, you know, you know, we're in our 20s, and we're, we're going out and hanging out with friends, and who cares, you know? And so I think that's, that's part of the pushback.

Lewis Howes 40:41 So for people who are entrepreneurs that use social media to, to build their business, what do you recommend? Do you recommend them deleting for 30 days? Do you recommend them saying, "Okay, you're only gonna be scheduled online for these hours a day-"

Cal Newport 40:53 Yeah

Lewis Howes 40:53 ... like a working professional would?

Cal Newport 40:55 Yeah. Put, put, put fences around it.

Lewis Howes 40:57 Okay.

Cal Newport 40:57 Yeah. So take it off your phone and put fences around how and when.

Lewis Howes 41:01 Man, that's scary.

Cal Newport 41:02 Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

Lewis Howes 41:04 Take it off your phone.

Cal Newport 41:05 And then, and have how and when.

Lewis Howes 41:06 Fences.

Cal Newport 41:06 How and when.

Lewis Howes 41:07 Wow.

Cal Newport 41:07 Yeah. Which is a lot... So a lot of the digital minimalists, right? Like a lot of the people-

Lewis Howes 41:11 Right

Cal Newport 41:11 ... who go through this process, um, like of that 1,600, probably 50% added some social media back into their life after the 30 days.

Lewis Howes 41:20 So you had 1,600 people go through this process?

Cal Newport 41:22 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 41:22 Okay.

Cal Newport 41:23 And they would send in reports. Of the reports I got, about 50% were said, "Okay, I, I can't think of any huge wins on being out of social media." 'Cause the whole minimalism game is just about focus on the big wins and ignore the rest.

Lewis Howes 41:33 Mm, yeah.

Cal Newport 41:34 And so the whole idea is you go through all this tech after the 30 days and say, "If it's a big win, I'll bring it back in, and if it's not, I'm happy to miss out." So about 50%, when they did this calculus for social media, were like, "I'm not getting a big win, and I'm a minimalist. I'm gonna focus my attention on the, the things that really matter, so that's okay." 50% had big wins, right?

Lewis Howes 41:51 Mm.

Cal Newport 41:51 Um-

Lewis Howes 41:52 What do you mean they had big wins?

Cal Newport 41:53 There was s- a value, something they really valued for which, let's say, a particular social media tool was a big boost, right? So like the-

Lewis Howes 41:59 For what?

Cal Newport 41:59 Well, like a, like-

Lewis Howes 42:00 Their business or their career or their-

Cal Newport 42:01 Either, right? So there, there might be, it might be a personal thing, right? Like, this is the way, the only way I connect with these people who are very important in my life. Um, a lot of, like, soldiers deployed overseas have a very different relationship with some of these social media platforms-

Lewis Howes 42:14 Interesting

Cal Newport 42:14 ... because, because of the, the time changes and the difficulty of the synchronous communication.

Lewis Howes 42:18 Interesting.

Cal Newport 42:19 That's really important for them.

Lewis Howes 42:20 Yeah.

Cal Newport 42:20 Um, a lot of visual artists told me that Instagram is crucial.

Lewis Howes 42:23 For their business or for their awareness and exposure?

Cal Newport 42:25 For, for their creativity.

Lewis Howes 42:26 Oh.

Cal Newport 42:26 They have to be ex- if you're a visual artist-

Lewis Howes 42:28 To see something new

Cal Newport 42:29 ... you have to see other, other people's work. That's why they all used to live in Greenwich Village, because that's where the galleries were.

Lewis Howes 42:33 Wow, interesting.

Cal Newport 42:34 Right? And, and now-

Lewis Howes 42:35 It's the online gallery.

Cal Newport 42:36 Yeah, so Instagram has been fantastic. ... for visual artists, because you don't have to live in one of three cities anymore. Um, so about 50% had some value that social media really helped. But of that 50%, probably 95 took it off their phone and transformed it into a use it like Sundays on my desktop to do X.

Lewis Howes 42:55 Wow.

Cal Newport 42:55 Right? The visual artists were like, I, I, I took my Instagram followers, I went down to 10 artists I really admire. Sunday night, I go on my desktop. Uh, the password's not saved. I have to, you know, it's on a Post-It note or whatever.

Lewis Howes 43:07 Wow.

Cal Newport 43:07 It takes about 20 minutes. I look at the things they posted that week. I'm getting all the value I need out of this tool without letting it turn me into a widget.

Lewis Howes 43:17 Amazing.

Cal Newport 43:17 So the, the how and when is sort of the secret sauce to minimalism. So it's not just the what. So they really cut down, right? It's like taking the junk out of your house, but then they, they have this extra element which is unique to the digital world, which is how and when am I gonna use the things that I kept in the closet?

Lewis Howes 43:31 Interesting.

Cal Newport 43:32 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 43:32 So in the book, Digital Minimalism, do you have a, a guideline for how people can do this for 30 days? Is there a process or...?

Cal Newport 43:39 Yeah. So, so the process is you, you, you figure out, okay, what am I gonna step away from, and from the things that I do need to keep, you actually write down the rules, right? So you see it. Uh, here's my, my tech rules. And you have 30 days. So what are you supposed to do during those 30 days? Like, why is this not just like a Marie Kondo-

Lewis Howes 43:54 Right

Cal Newport 43:55 ... weekend type thing, right?

Lewis Howes 43:56 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Cal Newport 43:56 Yeah, like what, why-

Lewis Howes 43:57 The five-hour declutter. Yeah.

Cal Newport 43:58 Yeah. Yeah, well, there's two reasons. So, so one, it takes about seven to 10 days just to sort of detox from the-

Lewis Howes 44:04 Wow

Cal Newport 44:05 ... the need to compulsively use the phone. Until you get rid of that feeling of compulsive use, it's very hard to, to make decisions about what's important or not. So the first week or two is you're just kind of getting away from it. But more importantly is 30 days is enough time to actually do the hard self-reflection on these key questions. Like, what am I all about? What do I care about? What do I wanna do with my time? You can experiment and try things out. You can talk to mentors. You can go for walks. You read inspiring books. I mean, it, it takes quite a bit of self work to figure out, what do I really care about? And then once you know that, when you get to the end of the 30 days, now you have a foundation to make your decisions.

Lewis Howes 44:43 Mm.

Cal Newport 44:43 So now when you're like, "Should I come back, or maybe should I put Instagram back into my life?" You can now run that against, here's the things identified I really cared about. If it really helps one of these things, yes, I'm using it for a huge win. If it doesn't, I'm really secure missing out on it because this is what I really care about.

Lewis Howes 45:01 Right.

Cal Newport 45:01 I really care about these five things, that this is what I wanna do with my time. This is what's important to my life. I want my energy to go to that. And now you can just make these tools back into tools, and not this sort of constant companion escape.

Lewis Howes 45:12 Addiction.

Cal Newport 45:13 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 45:13 Yeah.

Cal Newport 45:13 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 45:13 Wow, man. This is powerful. Powerful stuff. How many people do you think actually, uh, after reading this book, will take on the 30-day challenge?

Cal Newport 45:23 They seem to be doing it.

Lewis Howes 45:24 Really?

Cal Newport 45:24 Yeah. I mean, the whole idea of a 30-day challenge is a little bit more self-helpy than I normally am.

Lewis Howes 45:30 Mm.

Cal Newport 45:30 I mean, right? I mean, I was a little bit uncomfortable.

Lewis Howes 45:32 [laughs]

Cal Newport 45:32 My books tend to be more, a little bit more like idea books.

Lewis Howes 45:36 Yeah.

Cal Newport 45:36 That, that has practical things, but like, I'm an academic, right?

Lewis Howes 45:38 Right, right.

Cal Newport 45:38 You know, we, we don't do 30 days.

Lewis Howes 45:39 You're a researcher. Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 45:40 Yeah, we don't do 30 days, but it's what works.

Lewis Howes 45:43 Wow.

Cal Newport 45:43 And, and, you know, people want there to be... I get asked the question a lot like, "But can you give me instead like some tips, like five things I can do or whatever?"

Lewis Howes 45:51 Yeah.

Cal Newport 45:51 And I was like, "I can, but-

Lewis Howes 45:52 Just, just delete your accounts

Cal Newport 45:54 ... but you gotta do the 30."

Lewis Howes 45:55 Yeah.

Cal Newport 45:55 Like it, something about this 30 days, this declutter, it does work. And coming up short of that, trying to kind of do it piecemeal, it doesn't seem to be as effective. And so I was like, all right, I'm putting it in. I'm gonna Marie Kondo it.

Lewis Howes 46:08 Yeah.

Cal Newport 46:08 I'm gonna have a process, you know? And-

Lewis Howes 46:09 I love it

Cal Newport 46:10 ... uh, but that's the feedback I'm getting. So that's why I tell people, it's like you can do things to get in shape to prepare for the 30 days, but rip the Band-Aid off.

Lewis Howes 46:18 Yeah. I really feel like when you do this 30-day challenge, I had another friend, Baratunde Thurston, uh, Thurston, who did this a couple years ago, and he wrote a whole article, I think in like Fast Company, about like what he learned about himself in 30 days.

Cal Newport 46:30 I wrote, I wrote about him in Deep Work.

Lewis Howes 46:32 You did?

Cal Newport 46:32 Yeah, 'cause he, he, he stepped away from Twitter. He s-

Lewis Howes 46:35 I think he stepped away from like every-

Cal Newport 46:37 Yeah

Lewis Howes 46:37 ... was it just Twitter?

Cal Newport 46:37 Yeah, maybe everything. But then, uh, he went back to it all.

Lewis Howes 46:42 A- and now is he back like this?

Cal Newport 46:43 Well, I don't know. I just remember at the time I wrote the article, I went and, and, and looked at how much he was-

Lewis Howes 46:47 Yeah

Cal Newport 46:47 ... using afterwards.

Lewis Howes 46:48 He stepped away for 30 days.

Cal Newport 46:49 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 46:50 Or may- a month or something, yeah. And then he did like a whole article about what he learned about himself or what he-

Cal Newport 46:54 Yeah

Lewis Howes 46:54 ... I think he, he was able to do the deep work finally-

Cal Newport 46:56 Yeah

Lewis Howes 46:56 ... on certain projects or-

Cal Newport 46:58 Yeah

Lewis Howes 46:58 ... connect with friends more or-

Cal Newport 47:00 Yeah, you, you have to have the time, right? That, it can't be a weekend closet clean. That's the interesting thing about it. If it's just like, okay-

Lewis Howes 47:06 Yeah

Cal Newport 47:06 ... this weekend I'm gonna just step back and figure out, you know, what do I want on my phone. Like, I'm gonna delete apps and stuff like that. It doesn't, it doesn't get it done. Like you, you, you have to have that space.

Lewis Howes 47:16 Yeah.

Cal Newport 47:18 I mean, I, it's the same, honestly, I think what's going on here, we've seen in health and fitness.

Lewis Howes 47:23 Uh-huh.

Cal Newport 47:24 Right? We got highly palatable processed foods.

Lewis Howes 47:27 Yeah, get it out of your system.

Cal Newport 47:28 Yeah, and everyone got, you know, the, the obesity epidemic.

Lewis Howes 47:30 Take the grains out of this. Yeah.

Cal Newport 47:31 Yeah. And we, we tried tips, just, you know, the, the banal stuff, right? Like eat less, move more.

Lewis Howes 47:37 Right.

Cal Newport 47:37 Like it's-

Lewis Howes 47:38 Gotta get, gotta get rid of it, though

Cal Newport 47:38 ... the food pyramid. Yeah, and what works is the people who have like a whole philosophy.

Lewis Howes 47:41 Yeah.

Cal Newport 47:42 Right? They're vegan, they're paleo, they're whatever, but they've got a whole philosophy based in something they care about. Uh, and so that's why this book is not about tips. It was like, what's veganism for digital life, right? [laughs] Like, what's the philosophy? What's the philosophy that can be based in values that allows you to make like consistent decisions about what you do?

Lewis Howes 48:00 Hm. It's interesting, my, uh, COO who manages my business, he doesn't have social media. He has a Facebook account 'cause he got on in 2004 when we were in college.

Cal Newport 48:10 Sure.

Lewis Howes 48:11 Uh, but he never uses it. I don't even know if he knows his password. He's not on Instagram, Twitter, nothing. And he's probably the most productive person I know.

Cal Newport 48:18 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 48:19 He's got a daughter, you know, a year and a half daughter. And, uh, he's not anxious a lot.

Cal Newport 48:24 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 48:24 He's calm, and he can think clearly.

Cal Newport 48:27 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 48:27 And it just ki- He's my inspiration, because I'm probably on it too much promoting, you know, my show or whatever it may be.

Cal Newport 48:33 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 48:34 And but I realized after this conversation, like I could just be on the desktop for an hour a day-

Cal Newport 48:39 Yeah

Lewis Howes 48:39 ... doing what I need to do on social media.

Cal Newport 48:41 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 48:41 Not on my phone.

Cal Newport 48:41 With, with some professional help probably too.

Lewis Howes 48:43 Yeah. With, with some s- systems, some software, some team, you know. Around that. You know, I've been doing that more and more, but I still feel like there's a couple things I hold onto.

Cal Newport 48:52 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 48:52 For whatever reason.

Cal Newport 48:53 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 48:53 And maybe I get to reflect more of, like, what's the void I'm trying to, to fill.

Cal Newport 48:57 Yeah. Well, the, the, there's value-

Lewis Howes 48:58 Or is it just an addiction now, that it's just like, maybe there's no void, but it's just like you're just so used to it.

Cal Newport 49:03 That's the complicated thing, right.

Lewis Howes 49:05 You know?

Cal Newport 49:05 But you can't figure out the void unless you do the whole Nietzsche thing, right? You s- you have to confront it.

Lewis Howes 49:10 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 49:11 Right? It w- okay. I feel really uneasy because I don't have the thing I normally look at. That uneasiness is good, because now you have to figure out, "Why do I feel uneasy, and how do I make this go away?"

Lewis Howes 49:21 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 49:22 And, and that's where actual development comes out of.

Lewis Howes 49:25 Yeah.

Cal Newport 49:26 You gotta be uncomfortable sometimes.

Lewis Howes 49:27 I love this. You know, my, my mom, who lives a few blocks away, she has been knitting her whole life, and she still knits, I don't know, two, three hours a day.

Cal Newport 49:35 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 49:35 There's a blanket, a huge blanket, a scarf, a sweatshirt every week-

Cal Newport 49:39 Yeah

Lewis Howes 49:40 ... that she finishes, and she always shows me, like, her masterpiece.

Cal Newport 49:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 49:43 I'm like, "That's so cool that she focuses so much on her craft," and she has that as her buffer time.

Cal Newport 49:50 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 49:50 She's always knitting. In the car, when someone else is driving, she's knitting in, in the car. When there's a movie, she's knitting. She's always knitting.

Cal Newport 49:58 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 49:58 And it brings her a lot of peace.

Cal Newport 50:00 Yep.

Lewis Howes 50:01 It helps, like, her mind. I'm sure she's probably thinking a lot during those times.

Cal Newport 50:05 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 50:05 But it's just, like, reflection time. And I just continue to think about, what are all the things that we could be mastering with this buffer time?

Cal Newport 50:13 And it's primal, right? There's something primal-

Lewis Howes 50:16 Yeah

Cal Newport 50:16 ... let's say, about knitting or-

Lewis Howes 50:17 Using your hands and-

Cal Newport 50:17 ... woodworking.

Lewis Howes 50:18 Yeah.

Cal Newport 50:18 'Cause what differentiates, there's maybe three species, let's say, like chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans. Like, what, one of the things that differentiates us is that we can plan.

Lewis Howes 50:26 Mm.

Cal Newport 50:26 So we can have an intention, and we can manifest it in the world.

Lewis Howes 50:30 It's crazy.

Cal Newport 50:30 Right? So I can think about, you know, a spear, and I can take the rocks, and I can do the different things-

Lewis Howes 50:34 Create it

Cal Newport 50:34 ... and create it, right? And that really helps us succeed, so we're wired to be very fulfilled when we can take an idea and manifest it in the physical, concrete world, which is why there's a type of, of fulfillment we get when you knit something, or you carve something-

Lewis Howes 50:49 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 50:49 ... or whatever it is, that y- you don't get on a screen, because seeing our intention manifested in the concrete world is something that's primal. It's something that we're wired to crave because that's what allowed us to stop being tiger food.

Lewis Howes 51:01 Right.

Cal Newport 51:01 Right? [laughs]

Lewis Howes 51:01 Exactly.

Cal Newport 51:01 'Cause once we could start, once we could start doing that. And so, like, someone I really admire is, I don't know if you've, if you've, if you've met Nick Offerman, who, who-

Lewis Howes 51:08 Haven't met him, no

Cal Newport 51:09 ... he plays Ron Swanson on Parks and Rec.

Lewis Howes 51:11 Yeah, I've met him.

Cal Newport 51:11 Yeah, but he's got this, somewhere around here in LA-

Lewis Howes 51:12 He's a woodworker, right? Doesn't he have a sh- or sh-

Cal Newport 51:14 He's got this shop around here.

Lewis Howes 51:15 Yeah, yeah.

Cal Newport 51:15 Yeah, and he spends... It's gotta be the most healthy way, probably, to, to be in Hollywood.

Lewis Howes 51:20 Amazing.

Cal Newport 51:21 Screen star. But he's there all the time, and it's a serious shop. You know? Like a, like a light industrial-

Lewis Howes 51:25 Right

Cal Newport 51:26 ... warehouse-type thing, so he's a really serious-

Lewis Howes 51:27 I also look at, like, Jim Carrey. I don't know if you've seen his work.

Cal Newport 51:30 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 51:30 He had a video last year that was, like, the most viewed video on Vimeo.

Cal Newport 51:34 Okay.

Lewis Howes 51:35 He's a master artist.

Cal Newport 51:37 Interesting.

Lewis Howes 51:38 He has this huge warehouse in, I think, New York City and in LA-

Cal Newport 51:42 Yeah

Lewis Howes 51:42 ... where he just goes and paints something new every single day.

Cal Newport 51:44 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 51:44 And he's unbelievable painter.

Cal Newport 51:46 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 51:47 And he just has all these colors, and he's just painting whatever he wants, and I actually have one of his paintings 'cause I was so inspired by it. But here's a guy who's probably, he's been wrapped up in the Hollywood scene for a long time, but to have, like, a craft that you can keep-

Cal Newport 52:00 Yeah

Lewis Howes 52:00 ... focusing on-

Cal Newport 52:01 Yeah

Lewis Howes 52:01 ... probably gives him a sense of peace as well.

Cal Newport 52:03 Yeah, because we're, we're wired for that.

Lewis Howes 52:04 Yeah.

Cal Newport 52:05 Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to do that more in my own life.

Lewis Howes 52:07 Really?

Cal Newport 52:07 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 52:07 Like what?

Cal Newport 52:08 Well, so I'm getting back into my guitar playing.

Lewis Howes 52:10 Really?

Cal Newport 52:10 Same thing, right? You, it's, you have inflexible metal strings and a piece of wood-

Lewis Howes 52:14 Yeah

Cal Newport 52:14 ... and you're, you're sort of trying to manipulate this real world thing to make it somehow-

Lewis Howes 52:18 Sound good, yeah

Cal Newport 52:19 ... sound good. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 52:19 That's good, man.

Cal Newport 52:20 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 52:20 Yeah, I, a big thing I like to do is salsa dance.

Cal Newport 52:23 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 52:23 I love salsa dancing. I play a little guitar as well, and I just started singing lessons couple months ago.

Cal Newport 52:29 Oh, that's great. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 52:30 So I'm trying to just use more of my body-

Cal Newport 52:33 Yeah. Yep

Lewis Howes 52:33 ... to manifest, like, my skills.

Cal Newport 52:35 Yes.

Lewis Howes 52:36 And, and things that I'm not that good at, you know?

Cal Newport 52:38 Yes.

Lewis Howes 52:38 Things that I'm trying to get better at.

Cal Newport 52:39 But you can get better at, and this seems to be, it, it's skilled, and you can get better at it, and it's, uh, demonstrable that you're getting better.

Lewis Howes 52:46 Mm-hmm. It's rewarding.

Cal Newport 52:47 You know, like, I'm better at this now than I was.

Lewis Howes 52:49 And I think when we do these things, like guitar or whatever it may be, and we get better, that's when we build true confidence.

Cal Newport 52:56 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 52:56 We don't build confidence by getting more likes on social media.

Cal Newport 52:59 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 52:59 It might be a false sense of confidence for a moment, but we haven't really built a skill-

Cal Newport 53:03 Yeah

Lewis Howes 53:03 ... that's valuable.

Cal Newport 53:05 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 53:05 And I think that's the thing. There's, like, fake confidence when we're, like, growing online, but when we actually do something that we know is hard, deep work, and we see the growth, that's when we have that intrinsic confidence-

Cal Newport 53:17 Yeah

Lewis Howes 53:17 ... that supports us for a longer time.

Cal Newport 53:19 Well, you know, I, my Uber driver yesterday was telling me that he used to do music lessons, professional musician.

Lewis Howes 53:25 Wow.

Cal Newport 53:25 And he said this was one of the shifts he saw that kinda got him out of, out of that industry, was that sort of younger people now aren't willing to practice. And he'd been doing this for a long time, right? I mean, it's, it's not a random sample. It's people who are coming to get lessons, and just a, a, a discomfort with the discomfort of practicing. But, but when you're doing something like this, like learning how to play guitar, you probably remember when you first learned. The guitar is, like, completely unyielding at first.

Lewis Howes 53:49 Oh, it's so hard, man.

Cal Newport 53:50 But just-

Lewis Howes 53:50 Took me like a year and a half-

Cal Newport 53:51 Yeah

Lewis Howes 53:51 ... to figure out, like, three songs.

Cal Newport 53:52 Just for, like, your fingers to get comfortable.

Lewis Howes 53:55 It's hard and painful.

Cal Newport 53:56 Yeah. But we used to be more comfortable doing these things, 'cause what else were you gonna do?

Lewis Howes 53:59 There was no other t-

Cal Newport 53:59 Yeah

Lewis Howes 53:59 ... yeah, we had all this free time.

Cal Newport 54:00 We had this free time. What are you gonna do? Like, I, I want to play in a rock band, right? You know, girls like guys in rock bands-

Lewis Howes 54:05 Yeah

Cal Newport 54:05 ... is what I was told, right?

Lewis Howes 54:06 Practice all afternoon, yeah.

Cal Newport 54:07 So I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna practice all afternoon. I'm gonna put on the Hendrix and, and do, you know, pentatonic scales or whatever. But, you know, we c- if you're used to that, it's confidence.

Lewis Howes 54:14 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 54:15 You know what skill is. You don't have to be world-class at something, but you know about, I was bad at this, and then I did this deliberate effort, and now I'm not bad.

Lewis Howes 54:22 Better, yeah.

Cal Newport 54:23 And now you know what that is, right?

Lewis Howes 54:25 [clears throat]

Cal Newport 54:25 Like, the competent person is, uh, this was Matthew Crawford said something like the, the competent person who has a skill is sort of quiet and easy-

Lewis Howes 54:34 Mm

Cal Newport 54:34 ... with themselves.

Lewis Howes 54:35 Mm.

Cal Newport 54:35 The non-competent person is out there yelling into the void online, desperate to get, you know, will someone validate?

Lewis Howes 54:42 Wow.

Cal Newport 54:42 Will someone validate me? But when you know how to do something really well, you're quiet and easy.

Lewis Howes 54:47 What do you recommend as a parent to other parents on how they can train or teach or educate their kids to Do the hard work growing up-

Cal Newport 54:57 Yeah

Lewis Howes 54:57 ... on certain skills or activities, as opposed to take your iPad, iPhone and watch a movie and play games.

Cal Newport 55:04 Yeah. Well, well modeling's important.

Lewis Howes 55:05 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 55:06 So they see.

Lewis Howes 55:07 Wow.

Cal Newport 55:07 They gotta see what you're doing.

Lewis Howes 55:08 They see you reading a book and-

Cal Newport 55:09 See you reading a book, see you doing-

Lewis Howes 55:11 Playing guitar

Cal Newport 55:11 ... see you doing hard things, yeah. See you doing hard things, seeing you respecting other people who do hard things.

Lewis Howes 55:16 Mm.

Cal Newport 55:17 That was important to me growing up, for sure. Just being exposed to that and seeing that. It's just having that message. And then when I was growing up, the other rule was, uh, you always have to be doing an instrument, you always have to be doing a sport.

Lewis Howes 55:27 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 55:29 And I was like, "Okay, that's pretty good, actually."

Lewis Howes 55:30 Yeah.

Cal Newport 55:30 'Cause those are both things that are, what's more, two things are very unyielding. Like trying to get a guitar to do something, uh, or trying to get a bat to hit a fastball.

Lewis Howes 55:39 Fastball.

Cal Newport 55:39 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 55:40 So hard.

Cal Newport 55:40 So hard.

Lewis Howes 55:41 That's right.

Cal Newport 55:42 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 55:42 My dad tried to get me to do piano when I was a kid, and I went to one lesson and I just like screamed and cried about it, and he, he was like, "Okay. You don't have to go anymore."

Cal Newport 55:52 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 55:52 But I was in every sport.

Cal Newport 55:53 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 55:54 So I was like obsessed with sports and all in.

Cal Newport 55:57 Sports is great. I mean, this is part of why it's so great, is because, I mean, it's hard. Um, and you wanna get better. It's demonstrable when you get better.

Lewis Howes 56:05 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 56:05 Like it's clear that you're better, and you're connected to other people.

Lewis Howes 56:08 So you're, you're learning with a group, you're getting coached.

Cal Newport 56:11 You're helping the team as, as you get better.

Lewis Howes 56:14 Yeah.

Cal Newport 56:14 It's, I mean, that's, having that, that model. Like skills matter, we respect people who do something well, it's worthwhile learning how to do something hard. Hard things is what moves life forward. Hard things is the foundation of, of fulfillment.

Lewis Howes 56:27 Mm.

Cal Newport 56:28 The more I think that that is sort of modeled and talked about, the better.

Lewis Howes 56:32 Yeah. This is great, man. I love this. Uh, make sure you guys get the book, Digital Minimalism. I've got a couple questions left for you, but, uh, Digital Minimalism is out now: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Um, you can't find him on social media, but you can go to your website, calnewport.com.

Cal Newport 56:49 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 56:49 Is that right?

Cal Newport 56:50 That's right, yeah.

Lewis Howes 56:50 You can subscribe to your newsletter there.

Cal Newport 56:52 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 56:52 You can learn more about you. Uh, not on social media, but on, on there, and in your new- Do you have a newsletter once a week?

Cal Newport 56:59 Yeah, well, I blog.

Lewis Howes 56:59 Blog.

Cal Newport 57:00 And it goes out to the newsletter, yeah.

Lewis Howes 57:01 Okay.

Cal Newport 57:01 Yeah, I'm a blog nerd. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 57:02 Blog nerd, love it.

Cal Newport 57:03 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 57:03 Okay. This is, this question's called the three truths. So I want you to imagine it's your final day on Earth, whenever you want it to be. Could be hundreds of years from now, could be whenever. But at some point, you gotta go.

Cal Newport 57:15 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 57:15 And, uh, you've gotta take all of your work with you. So all of your writing, your material, the content you've created, it's gotta go with you when you die.

Cal Newport 57:23 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 57:25 But you get to write down, uh, on a piece of paper, three things you know to be true about all of your experiences, and leave that with the world. Your three lessons that you've learned that you would wanna share back with the world. What would you say are your three truths?

Cal Newport 57:40 That's an interesting question. So this won't be worded elegantly, 'cause I'm just-

Lewis Howes 57:46 That's all good

Cal Newport 57:46 ... I'm thinking about this on the fly. Um, probably something about responsibility.

Lewis Howes 57:51 Mm.

Cal Newport 57:52 So taking on, taking on responsibility, like for other people, uh, to do things of value is, in the end, gonna be more important than worrying about the happiness in the moment.

Lewis Howes 58:03 Mm.

Cal Newport 58:04 Uh, what else would I say? Doing hard things is sort of the foundation for a good life.

Lewis Howes 58:13 Yeah.

Cal Newport 58:13 Hard things are good. Like push yourself, push yourself to do hard things. Um, serve other people. Family, close friends, community, I talk about these things.

Lewis Howes 58:25 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 58:27 Um, yeah. S- serve other people. I mean, I guess all of these, if I'm thinking about it, all three of these things is, and this is probably common to a lot of wisdom traditions, so I'm not coming up with anything new. But all three of these things I guess are really about taking the focus away from, like yourself, uh, what's happening to yourself, what do people think about you, how do you feel. Sort of shifting the focus away from that.

Lewis Howes 58:48 Yeah.

Cal Newport 58:48 Take on responsibility, take on hard things. Try to rise to it. Do hard things, produce things that are valuable. Uh, serve other people-

Lewis Howes 58:56 Yeah

Cal Newport 58:56 ... as opposed to worrying too much about are other people properly serving you, right?

Lewis Howes 59:01 Right.

Cal Newport 59:01 Are they liking the right things or saying the right things to you?

Lewis Howes 59:03 Sure.

Cal Newport 59:04 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 59:04 Those are great, man. I love those. Uh, I wanna acknowledge you for a moment, Cal, for, man, you set the example for what is really hard for a lot of people right now. People are so focused on likes and being on social media, and doing the easy things, and you constantly do the hard things and set that example. So I wanna acknowledge you for going against the grain.

Cal Newport 59:25 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 59:25 Because it's not easy to do that, and a lot of people are seduced, uh, with the easy out, and filling the void by getting likes and all these things. So I appreciate and acknowledge you for creating this type of work, because it is the most rewarding things when we do the hard work, and when we eliminate distractions and really connect to other people and other human beings. So I acknowledge you for that, my man. Um, my final question is what is your definition of greatness?

Cal Newport 59:54 Rising to your potential. You know, we all have a potential, uh, like what we could be doing. And so fighting the rise for that, like that's greatness.

Lewis Howes 1:00:04 Mm.

Cal Newport 1:00:05 Versus throwing in the towel early.

Lewis Howes 1:00:07 Right.

Cal Newport 1:00:08 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:00:08 So there you go. I love it, man.

Cal Newport 1:00:10 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:00:10 Thank you, man.

Cal Newport 1:00:10 Thank you.

Lewis Howes 1:00:11 Appreciate it, brother.

Cal Newport 1:00:11 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:00:11 Appreciate it. [outro music]