Cal Newport: Deep Work, Focus, Productivity, Email, and Social Media | Lex Fridman Podcast #166

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Cal Newport. He's a friend and someone whose writing, like his book Deep Work, for example, has guided how I strive to approach productivity and life in general. He doesn't use social media, and in his book, Digital Minimalism, he encourages people to find the right amount of social media usage that provides value and joy. He has a new book out called A World Without Email, where he argues brilliantly, I would say, that email is destroying productivity in companies and in our lives. And, very importantly, he offers solutions. He is a computer scientist at Georgetown University who practices what he preaches. To do theoretical computer science at the level that he does it, you really have to live a focused life that minimizes distractions and maximizes hours of deep work. Lastly, he's a host of an amazing podcast called Deep Questions that I highly recommend for anyone who wants to improve their productive life. Quick mention of our sponsors: ExpressVPN, Linode Linux Virtual Machines, Sun Basket meal delivery service, and SimpliSafe home security. Click the sponsor links to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that deep work or long periods of deep focused thinking have been something I've been chasing more and more over the past few years. Deep work is hard, but it's ultimately the thing that makes life so damn amazing. The ability to create things you're passionate about in a flow state where the distractions of the world just fade away. Social media, yes, reading the comments, yes, I still read the comments, is a source of joy for me in strict moderation. Too much takes away the focused mind, and too little, at least I think, takes away all of the fun. We need both, the focus and the fun. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter @lexfridman, if you can only figure out how to spell that. And now, here's my conversation with Cal Newport.

Lex Fridman 2:15 What is deep work? Let's start with the big question.

Cal Newport 2:19 So, I mean, it's, it's my term for when you're focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task, which is something we've all done, but we had never really given it a name necessarily that was separate from other type of work. And so I gave it a name and said, "Let's compare that to other types of efforts you might do while you're working and see that the deep work efforts actually have a huge benefit that we might be underestimating."

Lex Fridman 2:45 What does it mean to, to work deeply on something?

Cal Newport 2:49 I, you know, I had been calling it hard focus in my writing, uh, before that. Well, so the context you would understand, I was in the Theory Group in CSAIL at MIT, right? So I was surrounded, at the time when I was coming up with these ideas, by these professional theoreticians. And that's like a murderer's row of thinkers there, right? I mean, it's like Turing Award, Turing Award, MacArthur, Turing Award. I mean, y-y-you know the crew, right?

Lex Fridman 3:12 Theoretical computer science.

Cal Newport 3:13 Theoretical computer science. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, uh, I'm in the Theory Group, right? (laughs) Uh, doing theoretical computer science, uh, and I publish a book. So, you know, I... So, I was in this milieu where I was being exposed to people, uh, where focus was their tier one skill. Like, that's what you would talk about, right? Like, how, how intensely I can focus, that was the, the key skill. It was like your 4/40 time or something if you were a, an athlete, right? So-

Lex Fridman 3:37 So, this is something that people are actually... The, uh, the, the theory folks are thinking about?

Cal Newport 3:41 Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 3:42 Really?

Cal Newport 3:42 Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 3:43 Like, they're openly discussing, like, how do you focus? And...

Cal Newport 3:46 I mean, I don't know if they would, you know, quantify it, but, but focus was the tier one skill. So, you, you would come in-

Lex Fridman 3:52 I see.

Cal Newport 3:52 Here'd be a typical day. You'd come in, uh, and Eric Demaine would be sitting in front of a whiteboard-

Lex Fridman 3:57 Yeah.

Cal Newport 3:58 ... right? With a whole group of visitors who had come to work with him, and maybe they projected like a, a grid on there because they're working on some graph theory problem. You go to lunch, you go to the gym, you come back, they're sitting there staring at the same, same whiteboard, right? Like, that's the tier one skill. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 4:14 This is the difference between different disciplines. Like, I, I s- often feel, for many reasons, like a fraud, but I definitely feel like a fraud when I hang out with, like, either mathematicians or physicists. It's, like, it feels like they're doing the legit work. Because when you talk... Closer in computer science, you get to programming or, like, machine learning, like the, the, the experimental machine learning or, like, just the engineering version of it. It, it's, it feels like you're gone so far away from what's required to solve something fundamental about this universe. It feels like you're just, like, cheating your way into, like, some kind of trick to figure out how to solve a problem in this one particular case.

Cal Newport 4:56 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 4:56 That's how it feels. Like...

Cal Newport 4:57 Right.

Lex Fridman 4:58 And it's... Uh, I'd be interested to, to hear what you think about that, because, um, programming doesn't always feel like you need to think deeply to work deeply, but sometimes it does.

Cal Newport 5:12 Sometimes.

Lex Fridman 5:12 So it's a, it's a weird dance.

Cal Newport 5:14 Oh, for sure, code does, right? I mean, especially if you're coming up with original algorithmic designs. I think it's a great example of deep work. I mean, yeah, the the- the hardcore theoreticians, they, they push it to an extreme. I mean, I, I think it's like knowing that athletic endeavor is good, and then hanging out with a Olympic athlete. Like, "Oh, I see that's what it is."

Lex Fridman 5:35 Right.

Cal Newport 5:35 Uh, now for the grad students like me, we're not anywhere near that level, but the faculty, uh, the faculty in that group, these were the cognitive Olympic athletes. But coding, I think, is a classic example of deep work, because I got this problem I want to solve. I have all of these tools, and I have to combine them somehow creatively and on the fly. But, but so basically, I had been exposed to that. So I was used to this notion when I was in grad school and I was writing my blog, I'd write about hard focus. You know, that was the term I used.... then I published this book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, which came out in 2012, so, like, right as I began as a professor. And that book had this notion of skill being really important for career satisfaction, that, uh, it's not just following your passion. You have to actually really get good at something and then you use that skills as leverage. And there's this big follow-up question to that book of, "Okay, well, how do I get really good at this?"

Lex Fridman 6:26 (laughs) Yeah.

Cal Newport 6:27 And then I look back to my grad school experience. I was like, "Huh, there's this focus thing that we used to do. I wonder how generally applicable that is into the knowledge sector." And so as I started thinking about it, it became clear there's this interesting storyline that emerged that, okay, actually undistracted concentration is not just important for esoteric theoreticians, it's important here and it's important here and it's important here. And that evolved into the, uh, the deep work hypothesis, which is across the whole knowledge work sector, focus is very important and we've accidentally created circumstances where we just don't do a lot of it.

Lex Fridman 7:00 So focus is the sort of prerequisite for basically, uh, you say knowledge work, but basically any kind of skill acquisition, any kind of major effort in this world. Can we break that apart a little bit?

Cal Newport 7:11 Yeah. So, so a key, a key aspect of focus is not just that you're, you're concentrating hard on something, but you do it without distraction. So a, a big theme of my work is that context shifting kills the human capacity to think. So if, if I, if I change what I'm paying attention to to something different, really even if it's brief, and then try to bring it back to the main thing I'm doing, that causes a huge cognitive pileup that makes it very hard to think clearly. So even if you think, "Okay, look, I'm writing this code or I'm writing this essay and I'm not multitasking and, and all my windows are closed and I have no notifications on," but every five or six minutes you quickly check like an inbox or your phone, that initiates a contact shift in your brain, right? We're gonna start to suppress some neural networks, we're gonna try to amplify some others. It's a, it's a pretty complicated process, actually. There's a sort of neurological cascade that happens. You rip yourself away from that halfway through and go back to what you're doing, and now it's trying to switch back to the original thing, even though it's also your brain's in the process of switching to these emails and trying to understand those contexts. Uh, and as a result, your ability to think clearly just goes really down.

Lex Fridman 8:16 So-

Cal Newport 8:16 And it's fatiguing too. I mean, you do this long enough, you're, you get midday and you're like, "Okay, I can't, I can't think anymore."

Lex Fridman 8:21 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 8:22 You've exhausted yourself.

Lex Fridman 8:23 Is there some kind of, um, perfect number of minutes, would you say? So are we talking about focusing on a particular task for, you know, one minute, five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes? Is it possible to kind of context switch while maintaining deep focus, you know, every 20 minutes or so? So if you're thinking of, like, this, again, maybe it's a selfish kind of perspective, but if you're thinking about programming, you know, you're focused on a particular design of a little bit, maybe a small scale on a particular function or large scale o- on a, o- on a system, and then the shift of focus happens like this, which is like, "Wait a minute, is there a library that can achieve this little task?" Or something like that. And then you have to look it up. This is the danger zone.

Cal Newport 9:11 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 9:11 You go to the internets.

Cal Newport 9:12 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 9:13 And, and so you have to now, you... it is a kind of contact switch because as opposed to thinking about the particular problem, you now have switched thinking about, like, uh, consuming and integrating knowledge that's out there that can plug into your solution to a particular problem. It definitely feels like a contact switch, but is that, is that a really bad thing to do? So should you be setting it aside always and really trying to, as much as possible, go deep and stay there for, like, a really long period of time?

Cal Newport 9:46 Well, I mean, I think if you're looking up a library that's relevant to what you're doing, that's probably okay. And I don't know that I would count that as a full context shift because the semantic networks involved are relatively similar, right? You're, you're thinking about this type of solution, you're thinking about coding, you're thinking about this type of functions. Where you're really gonna get hit is if you switch your context to something that's different and if there's unresolved obligation. So really the worst possible thing you could do would be to look at, like, an email inbox.

Lex Fridman 10:13 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 10:14 Right? Because here's 20 emails. I can't answer most of these right now. They're completely different. Like, the context of these emails, like, okay, there's a grant funding issue or something like this is very different than the coding I'm doing. And I'm leaving it unresolved. (laughs) So it's like someone needs something from me, and I'm gonna try to pull my attention back. The second worst would be something that's emotionally arousing. So if you're like, "Let me just glance over at Twitter, I'm sure it's nice and calm and peaceful over there," right? That can be devastating because you're gonna expose yourself to something that's emotionally arousing. That's gonna completely mess up the cognitive plateau there, and then when you come back to, "Okay, let me try to code again," it's really difficult.

Lex Fridman 10:47 So it's both the information and the emotion?

Cal Newport 10:50 Yeah, both, both can be killers if what you're trying to do... So I would recommend at least an hour at a time. 'Cause it could take up to 20 minutes to completely clear out the residue from whatever it was you were thinking about before. So if you're coding for 30 minutes, you might only be getting 10 or 15 minutes of actual sort of peak Lex going on there, right?

Lex Fridman 11:08 Yeah.

Cal Newport 11:08 So an hour, at least you get a good 40, 45 minutes plus. I'm, I'm partial to 90 minutes as a really good, a really good chunk where you can get a lot done, but just before you get exhausted, you can sort of pull back a little bit.

Lex Fridman 11:21 Yeah. And, uh, one of the beautiful and, you know, p- people can read about in your, uh, book, Deep Work, but... and I know this has been out for a long time and people are probably familiar with many of the concepts, but it's still pretty profound and it has stayed with me for a long time. Uh, there's something about adding the terms to it-

Cal Newport 11:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 11:39 ... that actually solidifies the concepts, like words matter.

Cal Newport 11:43 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 11:43 It's pretty cool. And, uh, just for me sort of as a comment, there's, uh... it's a struggle and it's very difficult to, uh, maintain focus for prolonged period of time. But the days on which I'm able to accomplish several hours of that kind of work, I'm happy. So forget being productive and all that.

Cal Newport 12:05 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:05 I'm just satisfied with my life. I'm... I feel, I feel fulfilled.... it's, like, joyful. And then I, I can be... I'm less of a dick to other people in my life afterwards (laughs) . It's a, it's a beautiful thing. And the, the... I f- I find the opposite when I don't do that kind of thing, I'm much more irritable. Like, I feel like I didn't accomplish anything and there's this stress that then the negative emotion builds up to where you're no longer able to sort of, uh, enjoy the hell out of this amazing life. So, so in that sense, deep work has been a source of a lot of, uh, uh, uh, happiness. I'd love to ask you, how do you... Again, you cover this

Lex Fridman 12:43 in the book, but how do you integrate deep work into your life? What are different scheduling strategies that you would recommend, just at a high level?

Cal Newport 12:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:51 What are different ideas there?

Cal Newport 12:52 Well, I mean, I'm a big fan of time blocking. Right? So i- if you're facing your work day, don't allow, like, your inbox or to-do list to sort of drive you. Don't just come into your day and think, "What do I want to do next?"

Lex Fridman 13:05 Yes.

Cal Newport 13:05 I mean, I'm a big plan of saying, "Here's the time, here's the time available. Let me make a plan for it." Right? "So I have a meeting here, I have an appointment here. Here's what's left, what do I actually want to do with it? So in this half hour, I'm going to work on this. For this 90-minute block, I'm going to work on that. And during this hour, I'm going to try to fit this in and then actually, I have this half-hour gap between two meetings, so why don't I take advantage of that to go run five errands? I can kind of batch those together." But blocking out in advance, "This is what I want to do with the time available." I mean, I find that's much more effective. Now, once you're doing this, once you're in a discipline of time blocking, it's much easier to actually see, "This is where I want, for example, the deep work and I can get a handle on the other things that need to happen and find better places to, to fit them so I can prioritize this." And you're going to get a lot more of that done than if it's just going through your day and saying, "What's next?"

Lex Fridman 13:51 A schedule every single day kind of thing? So it's like try to, in the morning, to try to, uh, have a plan?

Cal Newport 13:57 Yeah. So, you know, I do a quarterly, weekly, daily planning. So at the semester or quarterly level, I have a, a big picture vision for what I'm trying to get done, you know, during the fall, let's say, or during the winter. Like, I want to... These are... There's a deadline coming up for academic papers at the end of the season. Here's what I'm working on. I want to have this many chapters done of a book, something like this. Like, you have the, the big picture vision of, of what you want to get done. Then weekly, you look at that and then you look at your week and you put together a plan for like, "Okay, what am I gonna... What's my week gonna look like? What do I need to do? How am I gonna make progress on these things? Maybe, maybe I need to do an hour every morning or I see that Monday is my only really empty day, so that's going to be the day that I really need to nail on writing or something like this." And then every day, you look at your weekly plan and say, "Let me block off the actual hours." So you, you do that, that three scales, the, the quarterly down to weekly down to daily.

Lex Fridman 14:47 And we're talking about actual times of day versus-

Cal Newport 14:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 14:50 So the alternative is... What I end up doing a lot, and I'm not sure it's the best way to do it, is, uh, uh, scheduling the duration of time. This is the, this is called the luxury when you don't have any meetings. I'm like religiously don't do meetings (laughs) .

Cal Newport 15:07 All, all other academics are jealous of you, by the way (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 15:09 Yeah, (laughs) I know. No Zoom meetings. Uh, I, I find those are... That's one of the worst strategies, uh, tragedies of the pandemic, is both the opportunity to... Well, okay. The positive thing is to have more time with your family, you know, sort of reconnect in many ways and that, that's really interesting. Uh, be able to remotely sort of not waste time on travel and all those kinds of things. The negative is the (laughs) ... Actually, both those things are also sources of the negative. Uh, but the negative is like, it seems like people have multiplied the number of meetings because they're so easy to schedule.

Cal Newport 15:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 15:46 And there's nothing more draining to me intellectually, philosophically. Just my spirit is destroyed by even a 10-minute Zoom meeting. Like, what are we doing here?

Cal Newport 15:59 What's the meaning of life? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 16:01 Yeah.

Cal Newport 16:01 What is this all about?

Lex Fridman 16:01 Yeah, I have... At every Zoom meeting is I have an existential crisis, so... (laughs)

Cal Newport 16:05 Kierkegaard with the internet connection.

Lex Fridman 16:08 Uh, (laughs) . So, uh, what the hell were we talking about? Oh, uh, so when you don't have meetings, there's a luxury to really allow for certain things if they need to, like the important things, like deep work sessions, to last way longer than you, uh, maybe planned for. I mean, that's my goal, is to try to schedule... The goal is to schedule to sit and focus for a particular task for an hour and hope I can keep going.

Cal Newport 16:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:40 And hope I can get lost in it.

Cal Newport 16:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:42 And, uh, do you, do you find that this is at all an okay way to go and, uh, the time blocking is just something you have to do to actually be an adult and operate in this real world? Or is there some magic to the time blocking?

Cal Newport 16:58 Well, I mean, uh, there's magic to the intention. Uh, there's magic to it if you have varied responsibilities, right? So I'm often juggling multiple jobs essentially. There's, there's academic stuff, there's teaching stuff, there's book stuff, there's the, the business surrounding, you know, surrounding my, my book stuff. But I'm of your same mindset. If a deep work session is going well, just rock and roll and let it, let it go on. So like, one of the, the big keys of time block, at least the way I do it, so I even, you know, sell this planner to help people time block. It has many columns because the discipline is, oh, if your initial schedule changes, you just move over one... Next time you get a chance, you move over one column and then you just fix it for the time that's remaining. So in other words, there's not ex- there's no bonus for, "I made a schedule and I stuck with it." Like there's actually, there's not like you get a prize for it, right?

Lex Fridman 17:48 Yeah.

Cal Newport 17:48 Like for me, the prize is I have an intentional plan for my time and if I have to change that plan, that's fine. Like, the state I want to be is basically at any point in the day, I've thought about what time remains and, and gave it some thought for what to do. Because I'll do the same thing even though I have a lot more meetings and other types of things I have to do in my, in my various jobs and I basically prioritize the deep work, uh, and then get yelled at a lot (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 18:11 Yeah. Got it.

Cal Newport 18:11 So that's kind of my strategy, is like, "Just be okay, just be okay getting yelled at a lot."

Lex Fridman 18:15 (laughs)

Cal Newport 18:15 Because I feel you, if you're rolling-... yeah. Well, that's what it is for me. Like, with writing, I think, it's h- writing is so hard in a certain way that it's- you don't really get on a roll, in some sense. Like, it's just difficult.

Lex Fridman 18:25 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 18:26 Uh, but working on proofs, it's very hard to pull yourself away from a proof if you start to get some traction. Just y- you've been at it for a couple of hours, and you feel the, uh, the pins and tumblers starting to click together, and progress is being made. It's really hard to c- pull away from that, so- so I'm willing to get yelled at by almost everyone.

Lex Fridman 18:45 Of course, there is also, uh, a positive effect to, uh, pulling yourself out of it when things are going great, because then you're kind of excited to resume-

Cal Newport 18:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 18:55 ... as opposed to stopping at a- at a dead end.

Cal Newport 18:58 That's true.

Lex Fridman 18:59 Th- th- there's an- uh, the, yeah, there's a (sighs) uh, there's an extra force of procrastination that comes with, if you stop at a dead end, to return to the task.

Cal Newport 19:08 Yeah, or- or a cold start.

Lex Fridman 19:10 Yeah.

Cal Newport 19:11 I get, uh, whenever I f- like, I'm in a stage now, I- I submitted a few papers recently, so now we're sort of-

Lex Fridman 19:16 Oh, no.

Cal Newport 19:16 ... starting something up from cold, and it- it takes way too long to get going, because it's very hard to- it's very hard to get the motivation to schedule a time when it's not, "Yeah, we're in it." Like-

Lex Fridman 19:26 Yeah.

Cal Newport 19:26 ... "Here's where we are. We feel like something's about to give here," when you're in the very early stages, where it's just, "I don't know. I'm gonna read hard papers, and it's gonna be hard to understand them, and I'm gonna have no idea how to make progress," is not- is not motivating.

Cal Newport 19:38 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 19:38 What about deadlines? Can we, um... Okay, so this is like a therapy session, um-

Cal Newport 19:43 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 19:44 Is, uh, why... I- it seems like I don't- I only get stuff done that has deadlines. And so, the- one of the implied powerful things about time blocking is there's a kind of deadline, or there's a artificial or real sense of urgency. Do you think it's possible to get anything done in this world without deadlines? Why- why do deadlines work so well?

Cal Newport 20:06 Well, i- I- I mean, it's a clear motivational signal, but in the- in the short term, you do get an effect like that in time blocking. I think the- the strong effect you get by saying, "This is the exact time I'm gonna work on this," is that you don't have the debate with yourself every three minutes about-

Lex Fridman 20:21 Yeah.

Cal Newport 20:22 ... should I take a break now, right? Like, this is the big issue with just saying, "You know, I'm gonna go write. I'm gonna write for a while and that's it," because your mind is saying, "Well, obviously we're gonna take some breaks." Right? "We're not just gonna write forever, and so why not right now?" (laughs) And you have to be like, "Well, not right now. Let's go a little bit longer, five minutes." They're, "Why don't we just take a break now? Like, we should probably look at the internet."

Lex Fridman 20:38 Yeah.

Cal Newport 20:38 Now you have to constantly have this battle. On the other hand, if you're on a time block schedule, like, "I've got these two hours put aside for writing. That's what I'm supposed to be doing. I have a break scheduled over here. I don't have to fight with myself." Right? And maybe at a larger scale, deadlines give you a- a- a similar sort of effect. It's, "I know this is what I'm supposed to be working on, because it's- uh, it's due."

Lex Fridman 20:58 Perhaps, but what you're describing is a much healthier sort of, uh, giving yourself over, and you talk about this in- in The New Email Book, is the process. I mean, in general, you talk about it all over, is- is creating a process, and then giving yourself over to the process. The... But then you have to be strict with yourself.

Cal Newport 21:17 Yeah. But what are the deadlines you're talking about? It's like with papers? Like, what- what's the main type of deadline work?

Lex Fridman 21:23 Uh, well, so papers, definitely, but, you know, publications, like say this- this podcast. Uh, I have to publish this podcast next- early next week. One, because your book is coming out, I'd love to (laughs) sort of, uh, support this amazing book, but, the- uh, the other is I have to fly to Vegas on Thursday to run 40 miles with David Goggins, and so I want this podcast, this conversation we're doing now to be out of my life.

Cal Newport 21:54 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 21:55 Like, I don't wanna be in a hotel in Vegas-

Cal Newport 21:57 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 21:57 ... like, uh, editing the- like, freaking out while David Goggins is yelling.

Cal Newport 22:00 On hour- on hour 43-

Lex Fridman 22:02 Yeah. (laughs)

Cal Newport 22:02 ... of your- of your marathon thing-

Lex Fridman 22:05 Exactly.

Cal Newport 22:05 ... (laughs) that you're doing.

Lex Fridman 22:05 But actually, it's possible that I still, uh, will be doing that, you know, because it's- that's not a hard, that's a softer deadline, right? But those are sort of- life imposes these kinds of deadlines.

Cal Newport 22:15 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 22:15 Um, I'm not- so yeah, papers are nice, because there's an actual deadline.

Cal Newport 22:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 22:20 Uh, but I- I'm almost referring to, like, the pressure that people put on you, "Hey man, you said you were gonna get this done two months ago."

Cal Newport 22:28 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 22:28 "Why haven't you gotten it done?"

Cal Newport 22:30 I don't- see, I don't like that pressure.

Lex Fridman 22:31 Yeah.

Cal Newport 22:32 So maybe we- now, first of all, I think we can all-

Lex Fridman 22:33 I hate it too.

Cal Newport 22:34 ... we- we can agree, by the way, having David Goggins yell at you is probably the- a top productivity technique. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 22:40 (laughs)

Cal Newport 22:40 I mean, we would all get- I think we'd all get a lot more done if- if he was yelling. Uh, but see, I don't like that, so I- I will try to get things done early. I like- I like having flex. I also don't like the idea of, "This has to get done today." Right? Like, "It's due at midnight, and we've got a lot to do, and it's the night before," because then I get in my head about, "Well, what if I get sick?" Or, like, "What if, uh, you know, what if I- I don't- I get a bad night's sleep and I can't think clearly?" So I like to have the flex. So I'm all process. And that's like the philosophical aspect of that book, Deep Work, is that there's something very human and deep about just wrangling with the world of ideas. I mean, Aristotle talked about this. If you go back and- and read The Ethics, he- he- he's trying to understand the meaning of life, and he- he eventually ends up ultimately at the human capacity to contemplate deeply.

Lex Fridman 23:26 Yeah.

Cal Newport 23:26 Uh, it's kind of like a teleological argument. It's the things that only humans can do, and therefore it must be somehow connected to our ends. And he said ultimately that's where- that's where he found his meaning, but, you know, he's touching on some sort of intimation there that's correct, that- And so what I try to build my life around is regularly thinking hard about stuff that's interesting. Just like if you get a fitness habit going, it- you feel off when you don't do it.

Lex Fridman 23:50 Yeah.

Cal Newport 23:50 I try to get that cognitive habit. So it's like, "I gotta, (sighs) I got-" I mean, look, I have my bag here somewhere. I have my notebook in it, because (laughs) I was thinking on the Uber ride over, I was like, "You know, I could get some- I'm working on this new proof." And it just... So you train yourself. You train yourself to appreciate certain things, and then over time, the hope is that it accretes.

Lex Fridman 24:08 Well, let's talk about some demons, because I wonder... So, okay, there's like Deep Work, which, uh, and, uh, The- The World Without Email books, that to me symbolize the life I- I want to live.... okay? And then there is, I'm like, despite appearances, an adult at this point. And this is the life I actually live. And I, it's, I'm in constant chaos. You said you don't like that anxiety. I hate it too, but it seems like I'm always in it. It's a giant mess. It's, it's like, it, it, it's almost like whenever I establish, whenever I have successful processes for doing deep work, I'll add stuff on top of it, just to introduce the chaos.

Cal Newport 24:52 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 24:52 And, and like, I don't want to.

Cal Newport 24:54 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 24:54 But you know, at some... So you have to look in the mirror at a certain point, and you have to say, like, "Who the hell am I? Like, I keep doing this. Is this something that's fundamental to who I am, or do I really need to fix this?"

Cal Newport 25:06 What's the chaos right now? Like, I've seen your video about, like, your routine. It seemed very structured and deep.

Lex Fridman 25:12 Yeah.

Cal Newport 25:12 In fact, I was really envious of it. So, like, what's the chaos now that's not in that video?

Lex Fridman 25:17 Many of those sessions go way longer. I don't get enough sleep.

Cal Newport 25:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 25:20 And then I, the, the main introduction of chaos is it's taking on too many things on the to-do list.

Cal Newport 25:26 I see.

Lex Fridman 25:27 It's, I mean, I suppose it's a problem that everybody deals with, which is saying, not saying no. But it's not like I have trouble saying no. It's that there's so much cool shit in my life.

Cal Newport 25:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 25:39 Okay, listen. I've, there's nothing I love more in this world than the Boston Dynamics robots.

Cal Newport 25:45 Bot and-

Lex Fridman 25:45 Spot.

Cal Newport 25:46 ... and the other, yeah.

Lex Fridman 25:47 And they're giving me Spot, so there's a to-do. What am I gonna say? No?

Cal Newport 25:51 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 25:51 So they're giving me Spot, and I want to do some computer vision stuff for, for the hell of it. Okay? So that's now a to-do item.

Cal Newport 25:57 Yep. And then you go to Texas for a while, and there's-

Lex Fridman 25:59 Go to Texas, and then there's-

Cal Newport 26:00 And everything's happening, all the interesting people down there.

Lex Fridman 26:02 And then there's surprises, right? There are power outages in, in Texas. There's constant changes to plans, and all those kinds of things.

Cal Newport 26:08 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 26:08 And you sleep less. And then there's personal stuff, like just, you know, people in your life, sources of stress, all those kinds of things, and... But it does feel like, if I'm just being introspective, that I bring it onto myself. I suppose a lot of people who do this kind of thing-

Cal Newport 26:24 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 26:25 ... is, is they, they flourish under pressure.

Cal Newport 26:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 26:30 And I wonder if that, um, if that's just a hack I've developed as a habit early on in life that needs, you need to let go of, you need to fix.

Cal Newport 26:42 Yeah. But it's all interesting things.

Lex Fridman 26:44 Yeah. Potentially.

Cal Newport 26:44 Yeah, that's, that's, that's interesting. Yeah, because these, these are all interesting things.

Lex Fridman 26:47 Well, one of the things you talk about in, in Deep Work, which is, like, really important, is, like, having an end to the day.

Cal Newport 26:53 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 26:53 Like, putting it down.

Cal Newport 26:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 26:56 Like, that, I don't think I've ever done that in my life.

Cal Newport 26:59 Yeah. Well, see, I started doing that early, because, uh, I got married early. So, you know, I didn't have a real job. I was a grad student. But my wife had a real job. And so I just figured, I should do my work when she's at work, because, you know, hey, when, when work's over, she'll be home, and I don't want, I don't want to be, you know, on campus or whatever. And so real early on, I just got in that habit of this is when, you know, this is when you work. And then when I was a post-doc, which is kind of an easy job, right? Um, I put artificial... I was like, "I wanna train." (laughs) I was like, "When I'm a professor, it's gonna be busier, because there's, uh, demands that professors have beyond research." And so as a post-doc, I added artificial, large, time-consuming things into the middle of my day. I'd, I'd basically exercise for two hours in the middle of the day and do all this, this productive meditation and stuff like this, while still maintaining the 9:00 to 5:00.

Lex Fridman 27:46 Wow.

Cal Newport 27:46 So it's like, okay, I want to get really good at, uh, putting artificial constraints on so that I stay... I didn't want to get, uh, flabby when my job was easy. So then when I became a professor... And now all of that's paying off because I have a ton of kids.

Lex Fridman 27:59 Yeah.

Cal Newport 27:59 So, so now I don't really have a choice. Uh, that's what's probably keeping me away from cool things, is I just don't have time to do them. And then after a while, people, you know, stop bothering. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 28:10 Well, but that, you know, but that's how you have a successful life. Otherwise, you're going to, it's too easy to then go into the full Hunter S. Thompson.

Cal Newport 28:17 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:18 Like, to where no, nobody wants, nobody functional wants to be in your vicinity. (laughs) Like, you're driving, you attract the people that have a similar behavior pattern as you.

Cal Newport 28:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:33 So if you, if you live in chaos, you're going to attract chaotic people. And then, and it becomes like this, uh, self- uh, fulfilling prophecy.

Cal Newport 28:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:42 And it feels like... I'm not bothered by it. But I guess this is all coming around to exactly what you're saying, which is like, I think one of the big hacks for productive people that I've met is to get married (laughs) and have kids.

Cal Newport 28:57 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:57 Honestly. It's, it's, it's very perhaps counterintuitive.

Cal Newport 29:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 29:00 But it gets... It's like the ultimate timetable enforcer.

Cal Newport 29:05 Yeah. It enforces a lot of timetables, uh, though it has a huge, (laughs) kids have a huge productivity hit, those. You gotta weigh it.

Cal Newport 29:13 But here, okay, here's the complicated thing though. Like, you can think about in your own life, starting the podcast is one of these just cool opportunities that you put on yourself, right?

Lex Fridman 29:21 Yeah.

Cal Newport 29:22 Like, you know, I could have been talking to you at MIT four years ago-

Lex Fridman 29:24 Yeah.

Cal Newport 29:25 ... and been like, "Don't do that." Like, "Your research is going well," right?

Lex Fridman 29:27 Yeah.

Cal Newport 29:28 But then everyone who watches you is like, okay, this podcast is... The direction that it's taking you is like a couple years from now, it's gonna, it'll be something really monumental that you're prob- this is gonna probably lead to, right? There'll be some really... It just feels like your life is going somewhere-

Lex Fridman 29:41 It's going somewhere, it's interesting.

Cal Newport 29:43 ... really cool, yeah.

Lex Fridman 29:43 Unexpected, yeah.

Cal Newport 29:44 Yeah, so how do you balance those two things? And so what I try to throw at it is this, this motto of do less, do better, know why, right? So-

Lex Fridman 29:52 Do, what's that?

Cal Newport 29:52 Do less, do better, know why. It used to be the motto of my website years ago. Um, so do a few things, but like an interesting array, right? So I was doing, uh, MIT stuff, but I was also writing, you know. So a couple things were, you know, they were interesting. Like have, have a couple bets placed on a, on a couple different numbers on the roulette table. But not too many things. And then really try to do those things really well and, and see where it goes. Like with my writing, I just spent years and years and years just training. I was like, "I want to be a better writer, I want to be a better writer." I started writing student books when I was a student. Um, I really wanted to write hardcover idea books. I started training. I would, I would use like New Yorker articles to train myself. I'd break them down, and then I'd get commissions with much smaller magazines and practice the skills. And it took forever until, you know... But now today, like I actually get to write for The New Yorker. But it took-... like, a decade. So a small number of things, try doing them really well. And then the know why is have c- a connection to some sort of value. Like, in general, I think this is worth doing, uh, and then seeing where it leads.

Lex Fridman 30:50 And so, uh, the choice of the few things is grounded in what? Like, a little, like a, like a little flame of passion? Like, a love for the thing? Like, a sense that you say you wanted to write and get good at writing. You had that kind of introspective moment of thinking, "This actually brings me a lot of joy and fulfillment."

Cal Newport 31:10 Yeah. I mean, it gets complicated, 'cause I wrote a whole book about following your passion being bad advice, which is, like, the first thing I (laughs) kind of got infamous for.

Lex Fridman 31:18 (laughs)

Cal Newport 31:18 I wrote that back in 2012.

Lex Fridman 31:20 Yeah.

Cal Newport 31:20 But, but, uh, th- the argument there is, like, passion cultivates, right? So what I was pushing back on was the myth that the passion for what you do exists full intensity before you start, and then that's what propels you. Where actually the reality is, as you get better at something, as you gain more autonomy, more skill, and more impact, the passion grows along with it. So that when people look back later and say, "Oh, follow your passion," what they really mean is, "I'm very passionate about what I do, and that's a worthy goal."

Lex Fridman 31:46 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 31:47 But how you actually cultivate that is much more complicated than just introspection's gonna identify, like, for sure, you should be a writer or something like this.

Lex Fridman 31:54 Es- So I was actually quoting

Lex Fridman 31:55 you. I was, uh, on a social network last night, uh, in, c- Clubhouse.

Cal Newport 32:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:00 I don't know if you've heard of it. I was, uh-

Cal Newport 32:01 Wait, I have t- I have to ask you about this, uh, because I v- I was invi- I'm invited to do a Clubhouse. I don't know what that means.

Lex Fridman 32:07 (laughs)

Cal Newport 32:07 A, a tech reporter has invited me to do a Clubhouse about my new book.

Lex Fridman 32:10 Ah, that's awesome. Uh, well, let me know when, 'cause I'll show up if you ever do it.

Cal Newport 32:14 Wh- But it, well- Well, what is it?

Lex Fridman 32:15 Okay, so first of all, let me just mention that I was-

Cal Newport 32:17 Okay.

Lex Fridman 32:17 ... in a Clubhouse, uh, room last night, and I kept plugging your exactly wha- exactly what you said about, uh, passion. So we'll talk about it. It, it was a room that was focused on burnout.

Cal Newport 32:28 Okay.

Lex Fridman 32:29 Uh, but first, Clubhouse is a kind of fascinating place in terms of ... L- your mind would be very interesting to analyze this place, because, you know, we t- we talk about email, we talk about social networks, but Clubhouse is something very different. An- and I've encountered it in other places, Discord and so on, that it's voice-only communication.

Cal Newport 32:52 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:52 So it's a bunch of people in a room. They're just, you know, eyes closed. All you hear is their voices.

Cal Newport 32:57 Real time?

Lex Fridman 32:58 Real time.

Cal Newport 32:59 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:59 Live. It only happens live. You're technically not allowed to record, but some people still do, and, you know, especially when it's big, um, big conversations. But the whole point is it's there live. And there's different structures. Like, on Discord, it was so fascinating. I h- I have this Discord server w- that would have hundreds of people in a room together, right? We're all just little icons that can mute and unmute our mics.

Cal Newport 33:22 Okay.

Lex Fridman 33:23 And so you're sitting there not ... So it's, it's just voices, and you're able, with hundreds of people, to not interrupt each other. Well, first of all-

Cal Newport 33:35 Huh.

Lex Fridman 33:35 ... like, as a dynamic system-

Cal Newport 33:36 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 33:36 ... like-

Cal Newport 33:37 You see icons, just, like, mics muted or not muted, basically.

Lex Fridman 33:40 Yeah. Well, so everyone's muted-

Cal Newport 33:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 33:41 ... and they unmute, and they start ... it starts flashing.

Cal Newport 33:44 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 33:44 And-

Cal Newport 33:45 Oh, so you're like, "Okay, let me, uh, give precedence."

Lex Fridman 33:48 Yeah.

Cal Newport 33:48 So it's, it's the digital equivalent of when you're in a conversation, uh, like, at a faculty meeting, and you sort of, "Uh," like, kind of make some noises, like-

Lex Fridman 33:55 Yeah.

Cal Newport 33:55 ... while the other person's finishing, and it ... so people realize, like, "Okay, this person wants to talk next." But now it's purely digital. You see a flashing-

Lex Fridman 34:01 But in a faculty meeting-

Cal Newport 34:03 ... yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:03 ... which is very interesting, like, even as we're talking now, there's a visual element that seems to increase the probability of interruption.

Cal Newport 34:11 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:11 When it's just darkness, you actually listen better, and you don't interrupt.

Cal Newport 34:17 Oh, that's interes-

Lex Fridman 34:17 So, like, if you create a culture, there's, there's always gonna be assholes.

Cal Newport 34:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:20 But they're, they're actually exceptions, be the ... Everybody adjusts. They kind of evolve to the, the beat of the room. Okay, that's one fascinating aspect. It's like, "Okay, that's weird," 'cause it's different than, like, a Zoom call where there's video.

Cal Newport 34:35 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:36 Uh, it's just audio. You think video adds, but it actually seems like it subtracts. The second aspect of it that's fascinating is when it's no video, just audio, there's an intimacy. It's feel ... It's weird, because with strangers, it ... you f- you connect in a, in a much more real way. It's very s- It's similar to podcasts.

Cal Newport 34:59 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:59 But they met-

Cal Newport 35:01 With a lot of people.

Lex Fridman 35:01 With a lot of people-

Cal Newport 35:02 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:02 ... and new people.

Cal Newport 35:03 Huh.

Lex Fridman 35:04 And then you ... And, and they, they bring ... Okay, first of all, different voices, like low voices and, like, high voices, and, and y- so y- it's, it's more difficult to judge. In Discord, you couldn't even see, uh, the peop- it w- it was a culture where you do funny profile pictures as opposed to your actual face.

Cal Newport 35:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:23 In Clubhouse, it's your actual face, so you can tell, like, as an older person, younger person. In Discord, you couldn't. You just have to judge based on the voice. But there is a ... There's something about the listening and the intimacy of being surprised by different strangers that feels almost like, um, a party with friends, and friends of friends you haven't met yet, but you really like. Now, Clubhouse also has an interesting innovation where there's a large crowd that just listens, and there's a stage. And you can bring people up onto stage, so-

Cal Newport 35:56 I see.

Lex Fridman 35:56 ... only people on stage are talking. And you can have, like, five, six, seven, eight, sometimes 20, 30 people on stage-

Cal Newport 36:03 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:03 ... and then you can also have thousands of people just listening.

Cal Newport 36:06 I see.

Lex Fridman 36:06 So there's a ... I don't know.

Cal Newport 36:08 Huh.

Lex Fridman 36:08 Th- A lot of people are being surprised by this. Uh-

Cal Newport 36:10 Why is it called a social network? It seems like-

Lex Fridman 36:12 I don't kn-

Cal Newport 36:12 ... it doesn't ha- There's not social links, there's not a, a, a feed that's trying to harvest attention. It feels like a communication, uh ...

Lex Fridman 36:20 Y- Uh, so the, the social, uh, network aspect is you follow people.

Cal Newport 36:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:24 And the people you follow ... Now, this is, like, the first social network that it's actually correct use of follow, I think. Y- y- you're more likely to see the rooms they're in. So there's a ... Your feed is a bunch of rooms that are going on right now.

Cal Newport 36:38 Okay.

Lex Fridman 36:39 And the people you follow-... are, are the ones that will increase the likelihood that you'll see the room they're in. And so, the final result is like there's a list of really interesting rooms, like, um, I have all these... I've been speaking Russian quite a bit. There's practicing, uh, but also just like talking politics and philosophy in Russian. I've never done that before, but it allows me to connect with that community.

Cal Newport 37:03 Oh.

Lex Fridman 37:03 And then, uh, there's a community of pe- like, it's funny, but, like, I'll go in a community of all African American people talking about race, and I'll be welcomed.

Cal Newport 37:13 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:14 I've never had, like I've-

Cal Newport 37:15 Yes.

Lex Fridman 37:15 ... literally never been in a difficult conversation about race, like with people from all over the place... It's like fascinating. And then I, musicians, jazz musicians. I don't know. You could say that a lot of other places could have created that culture. I suppose, uh, Twitter and Facebook allow for that culture, but there's something about this network as it stands now, because no Android users. (laughs) It's probably just because it's iPhone people.

Cal Newport 37:42 (laughs) Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:42 Uh, if they're-

Cal Newport 37:43 Less conspiratorial or something. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 37:45 (laughs) Well, like less... Listen, I'm an Android person, so I, I got an iPhone just for this network.

Cal Newport 37:49 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:49 Which is funny.

Cal Newport 37:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:50 Uh, it is, uh, for now, it's all like there's very few trolls.

Cal Newport 37:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:55 There's very few people that are trying to manipulate the system and so on. So I don't know. It's, it's interesting. Now, the downside, the reason you're going to hate it, is because it's so intimate, because it pulls you in and pulls in very successful people like you-

Cal Newport 38:11 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:11 ... just every, like really successful, productive, very busy people. Uh, it, it, it's a huge time sink. It's very difficult to pull yourself out.

Cal Newport 38:23 Interesting. You mean once you're in a room?

Lex Fridman 38:25 Well, no. The, uh, leaving the room is actually easy. The beautiful thing about a stage with multiple people, there's actually a literal button that says leave quietly.

Cal Newport 38:33 Okay.

Lex Fridman 38:33 So cultural, uh, no, etiquette wise, it's okay to just leave.

Cal Newport 38:38 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:38 So, y- you and I in a room, when it's just you and I, it's a little awkward to leave.

Cal Newport 38:42 If you're asking questions and I'm just gone.

Lex Fridman 38:43 Yeah, yeah. But, and actually, if you're being interviewed for the book, that's weird, because you're now in the event and you're supposed to...

Cal Newport 38:52 Of course, yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:52 But usually, the person interviewing you would be like, "Okay, it's time for you to go." It's more normal. But the, the normal way to use the room was like you're just opening the app, and there'll be like, I don't know, Sam Harris, uh, Eric Weinstein, um, I think Joe Rogan showed up to the app, Bill Gates. These, these people on stage, just like randomly just plugged in, and then you'll step up on stage, listen, maybe you won't contribute at all, maybe you'll say something funny.

Cal Newport 39:21 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:22 And then you'll just leave.

Cal Newport 39:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:23 And there's, uh, the, the addicting aspect to it, the reason it's a time sink is you don't want to leave. What I've noticed about exceptionally busy people-

Cal Newport 39:32 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:33 ... that they love this. This, the, their... I think it might have to do with the pandemic because-

Cal Newport 39:37 It might be a little bit, yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:38 ... there's a, there's a loneliness. They're longing.

Cal Newport 39:39 They're all starved, yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:40 But also it's really cool people.

Cal Newport 39:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:42 Like, when was, when was the last time you talked to Sam Harris or whoever? Like, think of anybody, uh, Tyler Coo- like any-

Cal Newport 39:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:50 ... any faculty?

Cal Newport 39:52 This is like what universities strive to create, but it's taken-

Lex Fridman 39:56 Because you don't have to-

Cal Newport 39:56 ... 100 years of cultural evolution (laughs) to try to get a lot of interesting smart people together that run into each other.

Lex Fridman 40:00 We have really strong faculty in a room together-

Cal Newport 40:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 40:04 ... with no scheduling. This is the power of it.

Cal Newport 40:07 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 40:07 It's like you just show up. There's no, none of that baggage of scheduling and so on, and there's no pressure to leave, uh, sorry, no pressure to stay. It's very easy for you to leave. You realize that there's a lot of constraints on meetings and like faculty. There's the, uh, like even stopping by, you know, before the pandemic, a friend or faculty or colleague and so on, you know, there's a weirdness about leaving.

Cal Newport 40:30 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 40:30 Uh, but here there's not a weirdness about leaving. So they've discovered something interesting. The, but the final result when you observe it is, uh, it's very fulfilling, I think it's very beneficial, but it's very addicting. So you have to make sure you moderate.

Cal Newport 40:48 Yeah, that's interesting and okay. Well, so maybe I'll try it. I mean, look, there's no... the things that make me suspicious about other platforms aren't here. So the feed is not full of user generated content that is going through some sort of algorithmic rating process with all the weird incentives and nudging that does. Uh, and you're, you're not producing content that's being harvested to be monetized by another company. I mean, it, it seems like it's more, uh, ephemeral, right? You're, you're here, you're talking. The feed is just actually just showing you, here's interesting things happening, right? You're not jockeying in the feed for, look, I'm being clever or something and I'm going to get a like count that goes up and that's going to influence and-

Lex Fridman 41:26 Right.

Cal Newport 41:26 ... and there's more friction, there's more cognitive friction, I guess, involved in listening to smart people versus scrolling through. Yeah, there's something there.

Lex Fridman 41:34 So there's no-

Cal Newport 41:35 Why are people so... I, I see all... there's all these articles that seem... I haven't really read them, but it seem-

Lex Fridman 41:40 Negative?

Cal Newport 41:40 Why are report, why are reporters negative about this?

Lex Fridman 41:42 Competition. The New York Times wrote this article called Unfettered Conversations Happening on Clubhouse-

Cal Newport 41:47 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 41:47 ... is, uh-

Cal Newport 41:49 So I'm right in picking up a tone from, even from the headlines that there's some like negative vibes from the press towards this?

Lex Fridman 41:55 No. So I can say, let's say... Well, I'll tell you what the article was saying, which is, uh, they're having cancelable conversations like-

Cal Newport 42:05 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 42:06 ... the biggest people in the world almost trolling the press.

Cal Newport 42:09 Right.

Lex Fridman 42:09 And the press is desperately-

Cal Newport 42:10 Like 4Channing the press.

Lex Fridman 42:11 Yeah, 4Channing the press.

Cal Newport 42:12 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:13 By, by saying that you just, you guys are looking for-

Cal Newport 42:15 Interesting.

Lex Fridman 42:15 ... clickbait from our genuine human conversations. And so- so the, I think the, honestly, the press is just like, what do we do with this? We can't-

Cal Newport 42:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 42:26 Um, first of all, it's a lot of work for them. Okay. Uh, it's what Naval says, which is like, this is skipping the journalist. Like, the interview you, uh, if you go on Clubhouse, the interview you might do for the book would be with somebody who's like a journalist and interviewing you.

Cal Newport 42:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 42:42 That, that's more traditional.

Cal Newport 42:44 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 42:45 It'd be a good introduction for you to try it. But the, like, the way to use clubhouse be-... is you just show up, and it's like, again, like me, I'm s- I'm like bl- I'm s- (laughs) I ke- I keep mentioning Sam Harris as if it's like the only person I know, but like, a lot of these, uh, major faculty, I don't know, Max Tegmark-

Cal Newport 43:05 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 43:05 ... like, just, just-

Cal Newport 43:05 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 43:06 ... major faculty just sitting there, and then you show up, and then, uh, I'll ask like, "Oh, don't you have a book coming out or something?" And then y- you'll talk about the book, and then you'll leave five minutes later because you have to go get coffee and go to the bathroom.

Cal Newport 43:18 Interesting. Okay.

Lex Fridman 43:18 So like, that's the-

Cal Newport 43:19 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 43:19 ... it's not the journalistic... You're not gonna actually enjoy the, the interview as much because it'll be like the normal thing.

Cal Newport 43:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 43:26 Like, you're there for 40 minutes or an hour, and there'll be questions from the audience.

Cal Newport 43:30 Right. Like, I'm doing an event next week for the book launch where it's like Jason Fried and I are talking about email.

Lex Fridman 43:37 Yeah.

Cal Newport 43:37 But it's using some more, there'll be like 1,000 people who are there to watch virtually, but it's using some sort of traditional webinar. Clubhouse would be a situation where that could just happen informally, like I jump in, like Jason's there-

Lex Fridman 43:49 Yeah.

Cal Newport 43:49 ... and then someone else jumps in.

Lex Fridman 43:50 Yeah.

Cal Newport 43:50 And, and, yeah, that's interesting.

Lex Fridman 43:52 But for now, it's still closed.

Cal Newport 43:54 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 43:54 So even though there's a lot of excitement, and there'll be quite famous people just sitting there listening to you-

Cal Newport 44:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:02 ... but the numbers aren't exactly high, so you're talking about rooms, like even the huge rooms are like just a few thousand.

Cal Newport 44:09 Right. And this is, this is probably like Soho in the '50s or something too, just because of the exponential growth. Give it seven more months, and if you let one invite begets two invites, begets four invites, begets-

Lex Fridman 44:20 Then it just gets

Narrator 44:20 Yeah.

Cal Newport 44:20 ... pretty soon it'll be everyone, and then they'll, the rooms in your feed are gonna be whatever, uh, marketing, performance-enhancing drugs or something like that (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 44:28 Exactly.

Cal Newport 44:28 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:28 But then a- and a bunch of competitors, there's already like 30 plus competitors-

Cal Newport 44:32 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:32 ... sprung up. Twitter Spaces-

Cal Newport 44:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:34 So Twitter is creating a competitor-

Cal Newport 44:36 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:36 ... that's going to likely destroy Clubhouse-

Cal Newport 44:38 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:38 ... because they just have a much larger user base and, and they already have a social network. So-

Cal Newport 44:43 Yeah, interesting. All right.

Lex Fridman 44:44 ... I, I, I, I would be very cautious, of course-

Cal Newport 44:46 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:46 ... with the addictive element, but it doesn't, just like you said, this particular implementation in its early stages doesn't have the like-

Cal Newport 44:53 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:53 ... the, the, uh, well, it doesn't have the context-switching problem.

Cal Newport 44:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:58 You'll, you'll just switch to it-

Cal Newport 44:59 I think it's fantastic, and you keep, uh-

Lex Fridman 45:00 ... and you'll be stuck.

Cal Newport 45:01 Yeah, to keep a context is great.

Lex Fridman 45:02 Yeah.

Cal Newport 45:03 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:04 And, and, but then I think the best way I've found to use it is, uh, to acknowledge that these things pull you in.

Cal Newport 45:13 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:13 So I've used it in the past, uh, like almost, you know, I'll go get a coffee and I'll tune into a conversation as if th- that's how I use podcasts sometimes, I'll just like play a little bit of a podcast, uh, and then, you know, I can just turn it off. The problem with these is it pulls you in. It's really interesting. And then the other problem that you will experience is like somebody will recognize you.

Cal Newport 45:38 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:38 And then they'll be like, "Oh, Lex, come on up."

Cal Newport 45:41 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 45:41 C- c- come on. "Oh, hey, I had a question for you," and, and then it takes a lot for you to go, like to, to ignore that, (laughs) .

Cal Newport 45:48 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:48 So-

Cal Newport 45:49 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:49 And then you're pulled in, and it's fascinating, and it's really cool people. So it's like a source-

Cal Newport 45:53 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:53 ... of a lot of joy, but it, uh, is you have to be very, very c- uh, very careful.

Lex Fridman 45:58 The reason I brought it up is we, uh, there's a room, there's an entire club actually on burnout, and I brought you up, and I brought David Goggins. This is the process I go through which is, you know, my passion goes up and down, it dips, and I don't think I trust my own mind to, uh, to tell me whether I'm getting close to burnout or exhaustion or not. I kind of go with the David Goggins model of, I mean, he's probably more applying it to running, but, uh, when it feels like your mind can't take anymore, that you're just 40%, uh, at your capacity.

Cal Newport 46:38 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 46:38 I mean, it's just like an arbitrary-

Cal Newport 46:40 Right.

Lex Fridman 46:40 ... level.

Cal Newport 46:41 It's the Navy SEAL thing, right?

Lex Fridman 46:41 The Navy SEAL thing.

Cal Newport 46:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 46:43 I mean, you could put that at any percent, but it is remarkable that if you just take it one step at a time, just keep going, is, it's, uh, similar to this idea of a process. If you just trust the process and you just keep following, even if the passion goes up and down and so on, then ultimately if you look in aggregate, uh, the passion will increase.

Cal Newport 47:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 47:04 Your self-satisfaction will increase.

Cal Newport 47:05 Yeah. I think, and if you have two things, this has been a big strategy of mine, so that you can, what you hope for is off-phase.

Lex Fridman 47:12 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 47:12 Off-phase alignment, like that, uh, sometimes it's in phase and that's a problem, uh, but off-phase alignment's good. So okay, my research, I'm struggling, uh, but my book stuff is going well, right? And so when you, when you add those two waves together, like, oh, we're doing pretty well, and then, uh, in other periods, like all my writing, you know, I feel like I'm just not getting anywhere, but oh, I've had some good papers and I'm feeling good over there.

Lex Fridman 47:32 Yeah.

Cal Newport 47:32 So having two things that, that can counteract each other. Now sometimes they fall into sync, and then it gets rough. Then when, (laughs) , you know, when everything, because everything for me is cyclical, you know, good periods, bad periods with all this stuff. So, uh, typically they don't coincide, so it helps compensate. When they do coincide, i- you get really high highs, like where everything is clicking, and then you get these really low lows where like your research is not working, your program is not clicking, you feel like you're nowhere with your writing, uh, and then it's a little rougher.

Lex Fridman 48:00 Is, do you, do you think about the concept of burnout? Because I've, so I personally have never experienced burnout in the way that folks talk about, which is like it's not just the up and down, it's like you don't want to do anything ever again.

Cal Newport 48:14 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 48:15 It like, it's, it's, and for some people it's like physical, like to the hospital kind of thing.

Cal Newport 48:19 Yeah. Uh, so I do worry about it. So when I used to do student writing, like writing about students, so student advice, it, there, it came up a lot with students at elite schools, and I used to call it deep procrastination, but it was a real, really vivid, very replicatable syndrome where they stop being able to do schoolwork.

Lex Fridman 48:39 Yeah.

Cal Newport 48:40 Like this is due, and the professor gives you an extension, and the professor gives you an incomplete and says, "You got it. You, you, (stuttering) you're gonna fail the course. You have to hand this in." And they can't do it, right? It's like a, it's a, a complete stop on the ability to actually do work.

Lex Fridman 48:52 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 48:52 So I used to counsel students who had that issue, and often it was a combination of, at least it was my-... best analysis is, you have just the- the physical and cognitive difficulties of, th-they're usually under a very hard load, right? They're doing too many majors, too many extracurriculars, just, you know, really pushing themselves. And the motivation is not sufficiently intrinsic.

Lex Fridman 49:11 Right.

Cal Newport 49:11 So if you have a motivational center that's not completely on board, so a lot of these kids, like, e- when I'm dealing with MIT kids, they would be, you know, their whole town was shooting off fireworks that they got in, they were everyone's hope that they were going there, uh, and that they're in three majors, they don't want to let people down, but they're not really interested in being a doctor or whatever. So your- your motivation is not in the right place. The motivational psychologist would say the locus of control was more towards the extrinsic end of the spectrum, and you have hardship.

Lex Fridman 49:36 Okay.

Cal Newport 49:36 And you could just fritz out the whole system. And so I got- I would always be very worried about that, so I think about that a lot. I do a lot of multiphase or multiscale seasonality. So I'll go hard on something for a while, and then, for a few weeks, go easy. I'll have semesters that are hard and semesters that are easy, or I'll take the summer really low. So on multiple scales. And in the day, I'll go really hard on something, but then have a hard cutoff at 5:00. So, like, every scale, it's all about rest and recovery.

Lex Fridman 50:01 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 50:01 Because I really want to avoid that. And I do burn out. I- I burnt out pretty recently, I get minor burnt-outs. Like, I had a paper, a couple papers that I was trying to work through for a deadline a few weeks ago, and I wasn't sleeping well, and- and, um, there's some other things going on, and it just, it knocks me out. I get sick usually. That's how I know I've pushed myself too far.

Lex Fridman 50:22 Yeah.

Cal Newport 50:22 And so I kind of pulled it back. Now, I'm doing this book launch, then after this book launch, I'm pulling it back again. So I like ... Seasonality for rest and recovery, I think, is crucial, and at every scale, daily, monthly, you know, and at the annual scale. An easy summer, for example, I think, is, like, a great idea, if that's possible.

Lex Fridman 50:38 Okay. You just made me realize that ex- that's exactly what I do, 'cause I- I feel like I'm not even close to burnout or anything. Even though I- I'm in chaos-

Cal Newport 50:48 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 50:49 ... I feel the right exact ways of seasonality is the ... Not- not even the seasonality, but, like, you always have multiple seasons operating. It's like you said, like ... 'Cause when you have a lot of cool shit going on-

Cal Newport 51:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 51:02 ... you ... There's always at least one thing that's a source of joy, uh, that ... There- there's always a reason. I suppose, the fundamental thing, and I've known people that suffer from depression too, the fundamental problem with de- like, the experience of depression and burnout, is like, "Why do ... Like, life is meaningless."

Cal Newport 51:21 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 51:21 And I always have an answer of, like, why. Why today could be cool.

Cal Newport 51:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 51:27 And-

Cal Newport 51:27 And you- and you have to contrive it, right? If you don't have it, you have to contrive it.

Lex Fridman 51:31 Yeah.

Cal Newport 51:31 That thing is really important. Like, "Okay, well, this is going bad, so now is the time to start thinking about ..." I mean, look, I started a podcast during the pandemic. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 51:39 (laughs)

Cal Newport 51:40 It's like, "This is going pretty bad, but you know what? This could be something really interesting."

Lex Fridman 51:46 Deep Questions with Kyle Newborn. (laughs)

Cal Newport 51:48 (laughs) And I do it all in that voice. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 51:52 (laughs) Uh, I love the podcast, by the way. But, uh, yeah, I think David Foster Wallace said, uh, "The key to life is to be unbearable." Uh, I've always kind of taken that to heart, which is, like, you should be able to, maybe artificially, generate anything. Like, uh, find something in your environment, in your surroundings that's a source of joy. Like, everything is fun.

Cal Newport 52:17 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:17 Like- (laughs)

Cal Newport 52:18 Did you read The Pale King? It goes deep on boredom. It means it's, like, uncomfortable. It's like an uncomfortable meditation on boredom.

Cal Newport 52:25 Like, the characters in that are just driven to the, like, extremes of ... I just bought three books on boredom the other day. Uh, so now I'm really interested in this topic, because I- I was anxious about my book launch happening this week. So I was like, "Okay, I need something else to ..." So I have this idea for a- a ... I might do it as an article first, but as a book. Like, "Okay, I need something cool to be thinking about." Because I was worried about, like, "I don't know."

Lex Fridman 52:48 Oh, yeah.

Cal Newport 52:48 "Is the launch gonna work? The pandemic, what's going to happen? I don't know if it's going to get there." So I ... This is exactly what we're talking about. So I went out and I bought a bunch of books, and I'm beginning, like, a whole, uh, sort of intellectual exploration.

Lex Fridman 53:00 Well, I think that's one of the profound ideas in Deep Work that you don't expand on, uh, too much, is, uh, boredom.

Cal Newport 53:08 Yeah. Well, so the Deep Work had a- a superficial idea about boredom, which- which was ... I- I had this chapter called Embrace Boredom, and a very functionalist idea was basically you have to have some boredom in your regular schedule or your mind is going to form a Pavlovian connection between, "As soon as I feel boredom, I get stimuli," and once it forms that connection, it's never gonna tolerate deep work. So there's this very pragmatic treatment of boredom, of your mind better be used to the idea that sometimes you don't get stimuli, because otherwise, you can't write for three hours.

Lex Fridman 53:39 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 53:39 Like, it's- it's just not gonna tolerate it. But more- more recently, what I'm really interested in boredom is it as a fundamental human drive, right? Because it's incredibly uncomfortable.

Lex Fridman 53:49 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 53:49 And think about the other things that are incredibly uncomfortable, like hunger or thirst. They serve a really important purpose for our species, right? Like, if- if something is really distressing, there's a reason. Pain is really uncomfortable because we need to worry about getting injured. Thirst is really uncomfortable because we need water to survive. So what's boredom? Why is that uncomfortable? And- and I've been interested in this notion that boredom is about driving us towards productive action, like, as a species. I mean, think about it, like, what- what got us to actually take advantage of these brains? What got us to actually work with fire? What got us to start shaping stones and the hand axes and figuring out if we could actually sharpen a stick sharp enough that we could throw it as a melee weapon or a- a distance weapon for hunting mammoth, right? Boredom drives us towards action.

Lex Fridman 54:37 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 54:38 So now, I'm fascinated by this fundamental action instinct, uh, because I have this theory that I'm working on, that we're out of sync with it. Just like we got ... We have this drive for hunger, but then we introduce junk food and got out of sync with hunger and- and it makes us really unhealthy. We have this drive towards action, but then we- we overload ourselves and we have all of these distractions, and then that causes, uh ... It's like a cognitive action obesity type thing-

Lex Fridman 55:01 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 55:01 ... because it short circuits the system that wants us to do things, but we put more things on our plate than we can possibly do, and then we're really frustrated we can't do them, and we're- we're short-circuiting all of our wires. So it all comes back to this question, "Well, what would be the ideal?"... the ideal sort of amount of stuff to do and type of things to do.

Lex Fridman 55:18 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 55:18 Like, if we wanted to look back at our ancestral environment and say, "If I could just build from scratch, what type, how much work I do and what I work on," to be as in touch with that as, like, paleo people are trying to get their diets in touch with that. And so now I'm just, but see, this is, I'm just, it's something I made up.

Lex Fridman 55:33 Yeah.

Cal Newport 55:34 But now I'm going deep on it. And one of my podcast listeners, I was, I was talking about it on the show, and I was like, "Well, I, I keep trying to learn about animals and boredom." And she sent me this cool article from-

Lex Fridman 55:43 (laughs)

Cal Newport 55:43 ... an animal behaviorist journal about what we know about human boredom versus animal boredom. So trying to figure out that puzzle is, uh, the wave that's high, so I can get (laughs) through the wave that's low of, like, "I don't know about this pandemic book launch," and, you know? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 55:57 Yeah.

Cal Newport 55:57 And, and my research, I'm, my research is stumbling a little bit because of the pandemic, and so I needed a nice, you know, high. So there we go. There's a case study.

Lex Fridman 56:05 Well, the, it's both a case study and a very interesting set of concepts, 'cause I didn't even realize that it's so simple. I'm one of the people that, uh, has a interesting push-and-pull dynamic with hunger, trying to understand the hunger with myself. Like, I probably have an unhealthy relationship with food. I don't know. But there's proba- probably a perfect... That's a nice way to think about diet as action. Th- there's probably an optimal res- diet response to the, the experience that our body's telling us, the signal that our body's sending, which is hunger.

Cal Newport 56:43 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 56:43 And in that same way, boredom is sending a signal. And most of our intellectual activities in this world are creative activities, are essentially a response, uh, to that signal.

Cal Newport 56:56 Yeah. And, and think about this analogy that we have this hunger instinct that junk food short-circuits.

Lex Fridman 57:03 Yes.

Cal Newport 57:03 Right? It's like, "Oh, we'll, we'll satisfy that hyper-palatably," and it doesn't end up well. Now think about modern, attention-engineered, digitally-mediated entertainment. We have this boredom instinct. Oh, we can, we can take care of that with a hype- a hyper-palatable alternative. Is that gonna lead to a similar problem?

Lex Fridman 57:22 So I've been fasting a lot lately, like, uh, I'm doing, um, eating once a day. I've been doing that for over a month. Just e- eating one meal a day, and primarily meat. But it's very, uh, fasting has been incredible for me, for focus, for well-being, for feel... I don't, I don't know, just for feeling good, okay? We'll put on a chart what makes me feel good. And, uh, that fasting and eating primarily a meat-based diet makes me feel really good.

Cal Newport 57:51 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 57:52 And so... But that ultimately, what fasting did, I haven't fasted super long yet, like a seven-day diet, which I really would like to do. But even just fasting for a day or for 24 hours gets you in touch with your, with the signal. It's fascinating. Like, you get to listen to your, learn to listen to your body that like, you know, it okay to be hungry. It's like a little signal that sends you stuff.

Cal Newport 58:19 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 58:19 And then, and then, uh, I get to listen to how it responds when I put food in my body. Like, and I get to like, "Okay, cool." So like food is a thing that pacifies the signal. Like, it sounds ridiculous, okay? You could do that with-

Cal Newport 58:36 No, and, and do different types of food, it feels different. So you learn about what your body wants.

Lex Fridman 58:41 It feels very different. Yeah. For some reason, fasting, it's similar to the (...) boredom. Fasting allowed me to go into mode of listening, of trying to understand the signal, that I could say, "I have an unhealthy appreciation of fruit." Okay? I love apples and cherries. Like, I don't know how to moderate them. So if you take just same amount of calories, I don't know calories matter, but let's say calories, 2,000 calories of cherries versus 2,000 calories of steak. If I eat 2,000 calories of steak, maybe with just a little bit of like green beans or cauliflower, I'm going to feel really good, fulfilled, focused, and happy.

Cal Newport 59:22 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:22 If I eat cherries, I'm going to be, I'm gonna wake up behind a dumpster crying with like-

Cal Newport 59:27 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:27 ... naked, and like it's just-

Cal Newport 59:29 Pits all around. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:30 (laughs) Yeah, with everything-

Cal Newport 59:31 All over your face, yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:32 And it's just like bloated, just not, and unhappy, and also the, the mood swings up and down. I don't know. Uh, and I'll be much hungrier the next day. Uh, sometimes it takes a couple days.

Cal Newport 59:46 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:46 But when I introduce carbs into the system, too many carbs, I, it starts, it's just unhealthy. It's a, it, I go into this roller coaster as opposed to a calm boat ride along the river in the Amazon or something like that.

Cal Newport 59:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:58 And so fasting was the mechanism of, for me to start listening to the body. I wonder if you can do that same kind of, I guess that's what meditation a little bit is?

Cal Newport 1:00:07 A little bit, but yeah, listen to boredom.

Cal Newport 1:00:10 But so two years ago, I had a book out called Digital Minimalism. And one of the things I was recommending that people do is basically a 30-day fast, but from digital personal entertainment, social media, online videos, anything that captures, uh, your attention and dispels boredom. And people were thinking like, "Oh, this is a detox." Like, I just want to teach your body not to need the distraction of this or that, but it really wasn't what I was interested in. I, I wanted there to be space that you could listen to your boredom. Like, okay, I can't just dispel it. I can't just look at the screen, and revel in it a little bit and start to listen to it and say, "What is this really pushing me towards?"

Lex Fridman 1:00:47 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:00:48 And you take the new stuff, the new technology off the table and sort of ask, "What is this? What am I craving?" Like, what's the activity equivalent of 2,000 calories of meat with a little bit of green beans on the side? And I had 1,700 people go through this experiment, like spend 30 days doing this. And it's hard at first, but then they get used to listening to themselves and sort of seeking out, "What is this really pushing me towards?" And it was pushing people towards connection. It was pushing people towards, "I just want to...... go be around other people. It was pushing people towards high-quality leisure activities. Like, "I want to go do something that's complicated." And it took weeks sometimes for them to get in touch with their boredom. But then it completely rewired how they thought about, "What do I want to do with my time outside of work?" And then the idea is, when you're done with that, then it was much easier to go back and completely change your digital life because you have alternatives, right? You're not just trying to abstain from things you don't like. But that's basically a listening-to-boredom experiment, like, just be there with the boredom and see where it drives you when you don't have, you know, the digital Cheez-Its. Okay, so if I can't do that, where is it going to drive me? Well, I guess I kind of want to go to the library, (laughs) which came up a lot by the way. A lot of people rediscovered the library, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:01:57 With physical books?

Cal Newport 1:01:58 Physical books. So, like, you can just go borrow 'em, and, like, it... there's, like, low pressure, and you can explore, and you bring 'em home, and then you read 'em, and you can, like, sit by the window and read 'em. And it's nice weather outside, and I used to do that 20 years ago. They're listening to boredom.

Lex Fridman 1:02:11 So, can you maybe elaborate a little bit on the different experiences that people had when they quit social media for 30 days? Like, is that... if you were to recommend that process, what is ultimately the goal?

Cal Newport 1:02:23 Yeah. Digital minimalism, that's, that's my philosophy for all this tech. Um, and it's working backwards from what's important. So, it's... you figure out what you're actually all about, like, what you want to do, what you want to spend your time doing, and then you can ask, "Okay, is there a place that tech could amplify or support some of these things?" And that's how you decide what tech to use. And so the, the process is, let's actually get away from everything. Let's be bored for a while. Let's, let's really spend a month getting... really figuring out, what do I actually want to do? What do I want to spend my time doing? What's important to me? You know, what makes me feel good? And then when you're done, you can bring back in tech very strategically to help those things, right? And that was the goal. That turns out to be much more successful than when people take a abstention-only approach. So, if you come at your tech life and say, you know, whatever, "I look at Instagram too much."

Lex Fridman 1:03:10 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:03:10 Like, "I don't like how much I am on Instagram. That's a bad thing. I wanna reduce this bad thing. So, so here's my new thing. I'm going to spend less time looking at Instagram," much less likely to succeed in the long term. So, we're much less likely at trying to reduce this sort of amorphous negative because, you know, in the moment, you are like, "Yeah, but it's not that bad, and it would be-"

Lex Fridman 1:03:27 Right.

Cal Newport 1:03:27 "... kind of interesting to look at it now." When you're instead controlling behavior because you have a positive that you're aiming towards, it's very powerful for people. Like, "I want my life to be like this. Here's the role that tech plays in that life." The connection to wanting your life to be like that is very, very strong. And then it's much, much easier to say, "Yeah, like, using Instagram is not part of my plan for how I have that life, and I really want to have that life. So, of course, I'm not going to use Instagram." So, it turns out to be a much more sustainable way to tame what's going on.

Lex Fridman 1:03:53 So, if you quit social media for 30 days, you kind of have to do the work-

Cal Newport 1:03:58 You have to do the work.

Lex Fridman 1:03:59 ... of thinking, like, "What am I actually..."

Cal Newport 1:04:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:04:01 "What makes me happy in terms of, uh, these tools that I've previously used?" And when you try to integrate them back, "How can I integrate them to maximize the thing that actually makes me happy?"

Cal Newport 1:04:11 Yeah. Or, "What makes me happy unrelated to technology?"

Lex Fridman 1:04:14 Right.

Cal Newport 1:04:14 Like, "What do I actually... what do I want my life to be like? Well, maybe what I want to do is be out, you know, like, outside in nature two hours a day, and spend a lot more time, like, helping my community, and sacrificing on behalf of my connections, and then have some sort of intellectually engaging leisure activity, like I'm reading or trying to read the great books, and having more calm, and seeing the sunset." Like, you, you, you create this picture, and then you go back and say, "Well, I still need my Facebook group because that's how I, I keep up with my cycling group. But Twitter is just, you know, toxic. It's not helping any of these things." And, "Well, I'm an artist, so I kind of need Instagram to get inspiration. But if I know that's why I'm using Instagram, I don't need it on my phone, it's just on my computer, and I just follow 10 artists and check it once a week." Like, you really can start to plan-... It was the number one thing that differentiated in that experiment, the people who ended up sustainably making changes and getting through the 30 days and those who didn't, was the people who did the experimentation and the reflection. Like, "Let me try to figure out what's positive," they were much more successful than the people that just said, "I'm sick of using my phone so much, so I'm just gonna white-knuckle it. Just 30 days will be good for me. I just gotta... I just gotta get away from it or something." That doesn't last.

Lex Fridman 1:05:17 So, you don't use social media currently?

Cal Newport 1:05:19 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:20 Of... Do you find that a lot of people going through this process will, uh, will seek to basically arrive at a similar place, to not use social media primarily?

Cal Newport 1:05:30 About half. Right. So, so about half when they went through this exercise... And these aren't quantified numbers, you know, this is just... they sent me reports and-

Lex Fridman 1:05:39 Right.

Cal Newport 1:05:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:40 That's pretty good though. So, 1,700?

Cal Newport 1:05:42 Yeah, yeah. So, so, so roughly half probably got rid of social media altogether. Once they did this exercise, they realized, "These things I care about, I don't... uh, social media is not the tools that's really helping."

Lex Fridman 1:05:52 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:05:53 The other half kept some... There were some things in their life where some social media was, uh, useful.

Lex Fridman 1:05:58 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:05:59 But the key thing is, if they knew why they were deploying social media, they could put fences around it. So, for example, of those half that kept some social media, almost none of them kept it on their phone.

Lex Fridman 1:06:09 Oh, interesting.

Cal Newport 1:06:10 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:06:10 So, I-

Cal Newport 1:06:10 You can't optimize if you... if you don't know what it i- the function you're trying to optimize. So, it's like this huge hack. It's like, once you know, "This is why I'm using Twitter," then you can have a lot of rules about how you use Twitter. And, and suddenly, you take this cost-benefit ratio, and it goes, like, way from the company's advantage and then way over towards your advantage.

Lex Fridman 1:06:25 It's, it's kind of fascinating 'cause I've been torn with social media. But I did this kind of process. I haven't actually done it for 30 days, which I probably should. I'll, I'll do it for, like, a week at a time, and regularly, and thinking what, uh, what kind of approach to Twitter works for me. Uh, what I... I'm distinctly aware of the fact that I really enjoy posting once or twice a day, and at that time checking from the previous post. It... like, it makes me feel... Even when there's, like, negative comments, they go right past me. And when there's positive comments, it makes me smile. I feel, like, love and connection with people, especially if... people I, I know. But even just in general, it's like, it makes me feel like the world is full of awesome people. Okay. When you increase that from checking from two to, like... I, I don't know what the threshold is for me, but probably, like, five or six per day, it starts going to anxiety world, like, where negative comments will actually stick.... to, to me m-mentally. Uh, and, and positive comments will feel more shallow. (laughs)

Cal Newport 1:07:32 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:33 It's, it's, it's kind of fascinating. So I, uh, I've, I've been trying to... there's been long stretches of time, I think December and January, where I did just post and check, post and check. That was... that makes me gr- uh, really happy. Most of 2020, I did that. It made me really happy. Recently, I started ch- like, I'll, I'll go, you know, you go right back in, like a drug addict, where you check it like, "I don't know what that number is, but that number is high."

Cal Newport 1:08:01 Not good. You don't come out happy.

Lex Fridman 1:08:03 (laughs) N- no, you do not-

Cal Newport 1:08:03 No one comes out of a day full of Twitter celebrating humanity.

Lex Fridman 1:08:07 And, and it's not even... 'cause I'm very fortunate to have a lot of just the positivity in my... the Twitter. But I... there's just a general anxiety. I wouldn't even say, I wouldn't even say it's a... it's a probably the thing that you're talking about with the context switching. It's almost like an exhaustion. I, I wouldn't even say it's like a negative feeling. It's almost just an exhaustion, to where I'm not creating anything beautiful in my-

Cal Newport 1:08:32 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:08:32 ... life. Just exhausted.

Cal Newport 1:08:33 Like an existential exhaustion.

Lex Fridman 1:08:35 Existential exhaustion.

Cal Newport 1:08:36 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:08:36 But I wonder, do you think it's possible to use... from the people you've seen, from yourself, to, to use social media in the way I'm describing moderation?

Cal Newport 1:08:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:08:45 Or is it always going to become...

Cal Newport 1:08:47 I when, when people do this exercise, you get lots of, lots of configurations. So, uh, for people that have a public presence, for example, like what you're doing is not that, not that unusual. Okay. I, I post one thing a day, and my audience likes it, and, and that's kind of it.

Lex Fridman 1:09:03 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:09:03 Which... but you've thought through, like, okay, this supports something I value, which is like having a sort of informal connection with my audience, and being exposed to some sort of, uh, positive randomness, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:09:16 Yes.

Cal Newport 1:09:16 Okay. That's po- then you can say, "If that's my goal, what's the right way to do it?" Well, I don't need to be on Twitter on my phone all day. Maybe what I do is every day at 5:00, I, I do my post and check on the day. So I, I have a writer friend, um, Ryan Holiday-

Lex Fridman 1:09:29 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:09:29 ... who writes about the Stoics a lot. And he has this similar strategy. He posts one quote every day from, usually from a famous Stoic, and sometimes from a contemporary figure, and that's just what he does. He just posts it, and it's a very positive thing. Like his readers really love it, because it's just like a dose of inspiration. He doesn't spend time... he's never interacting with anyone on social media, right? But that's an example of, "I figured out what's important to me, what's the best way to use tools to amplify it," uh, and then you get advantages out of the tools. So like, I like what you're doing. I looked you up bef- I looked up your Twitter feed before I came, came over here. I was curious. You're, you're not on there a lot.

Lex Fridman 1:10:03 No.

Cal Newport 1:10:03 I don't see you yelling at

Cal Newport 1:10:04 people. Now, do you think social media as a medium changed the cultural standards? And, and, and I mean it in a... d- have you read Neil Postman at all? Have you read like, uh, Amusing Ourselves to Death? He was a social critic, technology critic, um, and wrote a lot about sort of technological determinism. So it... the ways... which is a, a really influential idea to a lot of my work, which is a, actually a little out of fashion right now in academia. But, uh, the ways that the, the properties and presence of technologies change things about humans in a way that's not really intended or planned by the humans themselves. And he's... that book is all about how different communication medium like fundamentally just changed the way the human brain understands and operates. And so, he sort of gets into the what happened when the printed word was widespread, and how television changed it. And this was all pre-social media. But this is one of these ideas I'm having, is like, what... the degree to which... and I, I get into it sometimes on, on my show. I get into a little bit. Like, the degree to which like Twitter, in particular, just changed the way that people conceptualized what, for example, debate and discussion was. Like, it introduced a rhetorical dunk culture-

Lex Fridman 1:11:06 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:11:06 ... where it's sort of more about tribes not giving ground to other tribes, and, and it's like, it's a complete... uh, there's different places and times when that type of discussion was thought of differently,