How to Get Things Done, Stay Focused, and Be More Productive

1. 0:00 – 2:04

   Meet the Guest

   1. MRMel Robbins0:00

      Let me guess, you can't focus. Your to-do list, endless. You don't even know where to begin. You feel unmotivated, burnt out, unproductive, tired. Here's the great news, you can do something about it. Today I'm handing you the answer to the overwhelm you feel, and his name is Dr. Cal Newport.

   2. CNCal Newport0:18

      We don't write to-do lists, we write wish lists.

   3. MRMel Robbins0:19

      Say that again.

   4. CNCal Newport0:20

      So, we think we're making a to-do list for the day-

   5. MRMel Robbins0:22

      Uh-huh.

   6. CNCal Newport0:22

      ... but it's a wish list. It's, "Wouldn't it be great if we got all of these things done today?"

   7. MRMel Robbins0:26

      (laughs) .

   8. CNCal Newport0:26

      And you fall in love with that story. You're like, "Man, if I got all of these errands done and all these calls, this would be great." And you feel so good about imagining that list being done, you don't realize that you just put three days worth of work onto your plan for the day.

   9. MRMel Robbins0:38

      I feel very called out right now.

   10. CNCal Newport0:40

       I want you to feel like you're doing stuff that you're proud of, you're producing work that matters, you're spending time with people that you care about, and you're not anxiously overloaded. That's where I'm trying to get people. The goal is to have intention for your time.

   11. MRMel Robbins0:52

       This would absolutely change the way that I live my life. Cal Newport, I have been waiting for this moment to meet you for a very, very long time. I'm thrilled you made the trip to Boston. Thank you for being here.

   12. CNCal Newport1:08

       Oh, thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this as well.

   13. MRMel Robbins1:10

       I would love to have you speak directly to the person who's listening and tell them what might change about the way that they live their life or that life feels if they take everything to heart that you're about to teach us today and they put it to use in their life.

   14. CNCal Newport1:25

       I don't like the feeling of busyness, right? What drives me is I really don't like that little bit of stress in the pit of your stomach. There's just too many things on my plate for me to get my arms around at work, at home, you know, with my family, with my friends, and that sense of, "I'm not gonna quite get this all done, but what else can I do?" I hate that feeling of busyness. I think that level of stress eats away at me. I wanna get rid of that. I want you to feel like you're doing stuff that you're proud of, you're producing work that matters, you're spending time with people that you care about, and you're not anxiously overloaded. That's where I'm trying to get people.

2. 2:04 – 6:23

   Why You’re Exhausted All the Time

   1. MRMel Robbins2:04

      Cal, I don't know that I've ever heard anybody talk about busyness that way. Here's what I would love to have you help me understand. It seems like everybody that I'm talking to in my life is having trouble focusing, has way too much work, is constantly overloaded, stressed out, and this sense of busyness, which I would say for me, the second you use that word, that is that sort of ticking clock in the back of my mind that time is running out, and it's also this to-do list that I feel like I'm constantly never able to get to, the emails I can't... This kind of constant hum that's going on that I'm just not getting to it. There's something that I'm forgetting. I don't have enough time. Why is this particular time so challenging for so many of us, Cal?

   2. CNCal Newport2:55

      Well, first of all, we have a lot more inputs-

   3. MRMel Robbins2:57

      Okay.

   4. CNCal Newport2:57

      ... than ever before.

   5. MRMel Robbins2:58

      Yeah.

   6. CNCal Newport2:58

      Right? Uh, digital technology has never made it easier from a friction perspective to ask someone to do something or to agree to do something. Emails, text messages, Slack notifications. It's very easy to ask people to do things. That friction is low. We're also more distracted than before, so those same digital tools that can deliver us requests for work are also distracting us, capturing our attention. And it's not like it used to be 30 years ago where I would sit down at the TV and I'm gonna watch TV for, you know, the next four hours. It's these little snippets of distraction.

   7. MRMel Robbins3:30

      Okay.

   8. CNCal Newport3:31

      A little social media, a little check in on a website right here, jumping over to this game right here. So our attention's fragmented. This makes it harder to do things. So we- h- we're saying yes to more things, and then our ability to actually complete things slows down because we're distracted all the time, and it's all digital technology that's sort of an undercurrent to- to all these issues. We have to reclaim our brains, right? We, we don't realize the degree to which looking down at these devices all the time, allowing companies that make a fortune, uh, figuring out how to get us to look at that screen-

   9. MRMel Robbins4:02

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CNCal Newport4:02

       ... to dominate our cognitive landscape, we don't realize the degree that that puts us out of mental shape. It would be like we're all professional athletes and we're smoking and drinking milkshakes. Like, well, we like the cigarettes. The milkshakes taste good. We're not realizing, well, this is making us perform much worse when we're out on the playing field. The same thing's happening with our brains. You're, you're gonna look at this stuff enough when it comes time to think hard, to come up with a new idea, to be creative, to push through that project to the finish line, we struggle. And I don't know if we realize the degree to which we're just out of cognitive shape.

   11. MRMel Robbins4:34

       Well, I also think this, this has a huge implication too for anybody that's caring for little kids or caring for aging parents, and so you're getting it both at work and you're getting it at home too because you're a caregiver, that that being out of cognitive shape is also the reason why you have no time for yourself and you're exhausted and it never ends. I mean, are those connected?

   12. CNCal Newport4:55

       Uh, it really is. It also can give you a background current of anxiety. So if what you're distracting yourself with on your phone is going to be charged content, maybe coming through social media.

   13. MRMel Robbins5:04

       What does charged content mean?

   14. CNCal Newport5:05

       It's made to make you emotional, right? So you have an algorithm that is selecting things for you to see that's going to get a reaction, because if you have a reaction, you're going to scroll to the next thing.

   15. MRMel Robbins5:14

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CNCal Newport5:14

       Well, what's the biggest reactions we can make? You're gonna be really upset. You're gonna be really angry. You're gonna be really surprised or sad. That's gold if you're a company trying to get you to look at a phone. But it's terrible if it's your mind and you're trying to be present with your kids and it's bath time, and instead of being able to just be there and be with your kids, you're feeling anxious and you're feeling distracted and you don't feel good at all. That's the state we put ourselves in, and we just think of it now as this is what it feels like to be alive in the modern world. I don't think we realize that a lot of this is actually a, a self-imposed sense of negative feeling.

   17. MRMel Robbins5:52

       Wow. I- I'm sorry. I just wanted that to sink in for a minute because I think that for most of us, that's right. You don't even realize that there's a different way to live your life.We have been so sucked into this sense of busyness and, you just called it charge content, which I've never heard anybody say before, but it makes sense, of constantly needing stimulation, which is subsequently exhausting your mind and your body and your spirit.

3. 6:23 – 15:51

   What Everyone Gets Wrong About Productivity

   1. MRMel Robbins6:23

      What does slow productivity mean? Because when I hear the words "slow productivity," I have an aversion because I'm so used to busyness-

   2. CNCal Newport6:33

      Yeah.

   3. MRMel Robbins6:34

      ... that I feel scared to slow down. Is that normal?

   4. CNCal Newport6:39

      I think that reaction is why I wrote the book. Like-

   5. MRMel Robbins6:42

      Say more.

   6. CNCal Newport6:43

      ... the idea that putting the word "slow" in front of "productivity" makes people nervous-

   7. MRMel Robbins6:49

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CNCal Newport6:49

      ... told me that we have a problem. And where this book actually came out of, there's two things that are happening, one general, one personal. So the general thing is the pandemic hit. I have a podcast audience, a, a, a book reader audience, and they started to get really upset about the word "productivity."

   9. MRMel Robbins7:04

      Mm.

   10. CNCal Newport7:05

       And they're really pushing. They're like, "We're tired about this word. We're exhausted. We don't like this word." And I began to think, "What's going on here? Like, what do people think 'productivity' means and why is that broken?" Then I had this personal thread going on which is, you know, I have three boys.

   11. MRMel Robbins7:18

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CNCal Newport7:19

       And they were just entering this age, that elementary age, where a, a switch flipped where they needed basically every dad hour possible. And, uh, I guess it's a, a son and dad sort of thing. So then I was thinking in my own life, "How do I keep doing the things I need to do to be sorta successful in my job, but have way more time for them?" Because this- they're in this phase now. It's no longer toddler survival phase. It's, "We need to be around Dad. We need dad time." So I was thinking about it as well. So, so both these things came together, and I was figuring out, "Okay, what's going on with productivity? Why is it stressing us out? Is it possible to be productive without being stressed out? Is it possible to be productive without being super busy?" And I went down this rabbit hole of, "Where did our current notion of productivity come from? What is our current notion of productivity? And is there one that could be slower?" And this was where the book came out of.

   13. MRMel Robbins8:11

       Cal, what does everybody get wrong about productivity?

   14. CNCal Newport8:14

       This was the problem.

   15. MRMel Robbins8:15

       Okay.

   16. CNCal Newport8:16

       We, we had a definition, and by "we," I mean, you know, economist. We'd had a definition for hundreds of years, which was it's a, uh, a ratio. It's this much stuff went into the system, this much stuff came out. And if you can get more stuff out, you're more productive. It, it originated talking about agriculture. We have this many acres of land. If we can get this many bushels of wheat versus that many bushels, so then we have a more productive way of tending our crops. Then we got factories. It made a lot of sense. We have this many workers in the factories. How many Model Ts are we producing by, you know, per day? And when we switched to the way we built Model Ts, the number went up. That's more productive. That was the definition of productivity that we had established for a couple hundred years. Then office work became big, right? So this idea, I call it knowledge work in the book. Knowledge work is a, a term from the 1950s because that's when people working with their brains became a major thing in a way that it wasn't before. Those definitions of productivity didn't work anymore because there were no Model Ts to point to. If I'm working at an office job, I can't say at the end of the day, "Here's a pile of widgets. See, I produced 10 widgets today."

   17. MRMel Robbins9:27

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CNCal Newport9:27

       "Aren't, aren't I being productive? That person only produced seven." Instead, in office jobs, people were working on many different things. What they were working on was somewhat unclear because it would shift from day to day. The person next to me would be working on different things than I'm working on. It all became way more vague and hazy. So we no longer had a good way of actually with numbers saying, "Here's how productive you are. Here's how productive that person is." And so my argument is what we did instead is we fell back on this rough rule that I call pseudo-productivity, which just said, "The more I see you doing, the better." So visible activity will become my proxy for your being useful. The busier you are, the more "productive" I'm gonna say you are. So we fell into this trap I call pseudo-productivity. And that's where we got our busyness epidemic, and I think that's what people got fed up with by the time we got to the pandemic.

   19. MRMel Robbins10:22

       It makes so much sense. As you were describing that, especially when you went from agriculture to Model T to factory work, I personally, and I'm sure as you were listening to Cal talk, I started to feel like I was getting squeezed.

   20. CNCal Newport10:37

       Yeah.

   21. MRMel Robbins10:38

       And I think we've all had those jobs in those days where you just feel this relentless sense that your work or school or your obligations are just squeezing every single ounce out of you. And it's just never enough. And we even did come up with things to measure, whether it's quotas or it's the number of hamburgers you can crank out as a short-order cook or the number of patients that you can see in an hour in a healthcare system or the efficiencies w- that a fire department r- Like, we're always measuring something.

   22. CNCal Newport11:10

       Yeah.

   23. MRMel Robbins11:11

       And, you know, I also think a lot, Cal, 'cause you mentioned the pandemic, and we both do a ton of speaking on the corporate circuit, that I started to notice the uptick in meetings and the number of meetings that people were obligated to attend-

   24. CNCal Newport11:28

       Yeah.

   25. MRMel Robbins11:28

       ... when everybody was at home and I feel as though coming out of that situation and into more hybrid work for a lot of people, we've never adjusted work back from reactive, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting-

   26. CNCal Newport11:43

       Yep.

   27. MRMel Robbins11:44

       ... to what's actually important and how do we carve out time for people to get things done? What is productivity? How do you define it? How do you think about it, Cal?

   28. CNCal Newport11:54

       Producing stuff that's valuable.And ultimately, whatever your business is, your organization, there's something that you produce that brings value to your clients, to your customers, or whatever it is. And we take our eye off of that because it's not actually as easy to measure as we would hope, especially when it's work where we're using our brain. Um, it's hard to measure. You produced 17 units of value this week, and last week, it was 12 units of value, so we fall back on busyness. But the thing that actually matters is results. And in, like, most jobs, you can point to, oh, this is the thing that matters, right? Like, if you're a professor like I am, you know, you wanna teach your classes well and you wanna produce research that makes an impact on the world in your particular field. And yet, so much of what we do is unrelated to that or gets in the way of that.

   29. MRMel Robbins12:40

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CNCal Newport12:41

       It's endless meetings and emails and jumping off and on these type of calls and handing in forms or this or that. And the same is for almost every job. Like, okay, I'm running marketing for a company. What really matters? Marketing campaigns that move the needle. That's what matters, not how many emails you answer, not how many meetings you jumped in and out of. It's like, did we get a campaign that actually move the needle? You can do this for almost any job. There's the things that produce value, and then there's busyness. But the busyness is what we judge people by in the moment because we had this rough rule, the pseudo-productivity rule that emerged in the '50s and '60s. So what I think has happened is this pseudo-productivity culture in work has made its way into our personal life. Whether you have one of these jobs or not, it gets into our general culture.
4. 15:51 – 31:26

   Principle #1: Do Fewer Things

   1. MRMel Robbins15:51

      And the first one, 'cause I really want you to break these down, is do fewer things. What does that mean?

   2. CNCal Newport15:58

      Well, the, the key word that's missing from that, that makes it less stressful to people-

   3. MRMel Robbins16:03

      (laughs)

   4. CNCal Newport16:04

      ... is do fewer things at once.

   5. MRMel Robbins16:07

      Okay.

   6. CNCal Newport16:07

      So I'm really wary of doing too many things at the same time. And my argument is, here's what happens. When you agree to do something, it brings with it administrative overhead, right? Emails that you have to answer, meetings you have to do, conversations you have to have, right? That's just natural. I'm working on something, I gotta collaborate with people-

   7. MRMel Robbins16:27

      Yep.

   8. CNCal Newport16:28

      ... on this work. What happens as you say yes to more things? Well, they each bring with them their own administrative overhead.

   9. MRMel Robbins16:34

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CNCal Newport16:35

       Now, your time is limited per day, right? That's fixed. So, more and more of your day will now get spent on that administrative overhead, the meetings and the emails and the conversations, which leaves less time to actually do the work. And what paradoxically (laughs) begins to happen is you get way slower. So you think, "If I say yes to a lot more things, I'll get a lot more things done, and that'll make me more productive." But what really happens is, as you say yes to too many things, your day gets increasingly jammed up talking about those things, and the speed at which you actually finish things plummets. So if you work on fewer things at the same time, you're less stressed, more of your day is spent doing real work, but the overall pace at which you're accomplishing things, that actually goes up. So I make this argument to, to businesses that say, "Wait a second, do fewer things? We're gonna run outta money. We're gonna lose our competitive edge." I say, "No, no, no, no. Zoom out and measure how many things are you finishing per year if you're working on fewer things at once. It's gonna skyrocket because your day is actually gonna allow you to make progress on things. And over time, you're gonna get through things much faster." So I think doing fewer things at once is critical.

   11. MRMel Robbins17:42

       You know, it goes against that saying that everybody says, "If you want something done, ask a busy person."And how does this translate to your personal life? Because I think, uh, you know, when you hear that, you're like, "That sounds great, Cal." And? I got, I, I, like, w- who's gonna take care of mom? Who's gonna do this? So how do you tr- how do you translate that to your personal life? 'Cause I can see that for business, like, you can't be in 11 businesses at once.

   12. CNCal Newport18:04

       Yeah.

   13. MRMel Robbins18:04

       You actually know the two or three most important things that need to get done this week, this month, this year to be successful in business. And I made massive mistakes in the very beginning of just saying yes to everything out of survival.

   14. CNCal Newport18:18

       Well, I have this phrase on my podcast, it's called facing the productivity dragon. 'Cause I get Q&A, so people call in.

   15. MRMel Robbins18:24

       Yeah.

   16. CNCal Newport18:24

       And they often have this issue. They go, "Look, I have this going on, and this, and I need to do this."

   17. MRMel Robbins18:28

       Right.

   18. CNCal Newport18:28

       "And I'm trying to do this, and I'm training for the marathon and I'm taking care of my parent, and I'm also trying to learn how to shoot archery."

   19. MRMel Robbins18:35

       Right.

   20. CNCal Newport18:35

       And, well, you have these, these big long list of things. And facing the productivity dragon is actually listing out, here's all the things I want to do and how much time this is gonna take. And then realizing, I can't do all these things.

   21. MRMel Robbins18:47

       (laughs)

   22. CNCal Newport18:47

       We call it facing the dragon 'cause this is very scary for people.

   23. MRMel Robbins18:50

       Uh-huh.

   24. CNCal Newport18:50

       You, you don't want to confront the reality that maybe the things you really want to do aren't all going to fit. And then the response after you face the productivity dragon is like a reality check. It's like, well, what time do I have? And there's phases of life where it's not what you would want. You know, there's a phase of life when you have young kids, for example, where I can't also do this and that. I can't train for this, I can't get my cinema club up with my friends. Like, that's not gonna happen now.

   25. MRMel Robbins19:14

       Right.

   26. CNCal Newport19:14

       There's another season in life where maybe that, that will. Or I'm taking care of a parent who's aging. This is a huge time commitment. Let me face this.

   27. MRMel Robbins19:21

       Mm-hmm.

   28. CNCal Newport19:21

       This is a major thing I'm doing and this is eating up a huge amount of time. And when you face the productivity dragon, you reality check, then you can make better decisions about the time you do have. And you say, okay, these three things were too ambitious, their time demands were too static. I'm not gonna be able to fit this in, but I'm also really stressed out. So why don't I replace this with this other thing that is more flexible and it's gonna help me recharge? Like, maybe what I need to do is get outside in nature more, and that's just gonna be my thing.

   29. MRMel Robbins19:51

       Right.

   30. CNCal Newport19:51

       Or I want to just be able to read and get through a book a week. You know, read one novel a week, and I wanna spend, you know, two evenings a week if I can at the coffee shop reading.
5. 31:26 – 49:44

   Principle #2: Work at a Natural Pace

   1. MRMel Robbins31:26

      The second principle is work at a natural pace. What does that mean?

   2. CNCal Newport31:32

      Well, this goes back to slowing down how long you spend on things-

   3. MRMel Robbins31:35

      Okay.

   4. CNCal Newport31:35

      ... and being okay with it. Like, we-

   5. MRMel Robbins31:37

      (laughs)

   6. CNCal Newport31:37

      ... we set this standard-

   7. MRMel Robbins31:39

      Okay.

   8. CNCal Newport31:39

      ... where we're gonna, we write ourselves a fairy tale.

   9. MRMel Robbins31:41

      Okay.

   10. CNCal Newport31:41

       All right, here's these things we want to do. I want to get my MBA, I want to renovate the house-

   11. MRMel Robbins31:45

       Uh-huh.

   12. CNCal Newport31:45

       ... I want to learn this programming language so I can get ahead at work. We write a fairy tale about, "Wouldn't it be great if I got all of these things done in six months?" And then we begin to fall in love with the ending of that tale. "Man, I'd be in such a good place six months from now. Wouldn't that be so great? Great. This is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do all these things right now." And it's impossible, because these things take a lot of time and we stress ourselves out and we, we fall apart trying to do it. So working at a natural pace says don't write a fairy tale.

   13. MRMel Robbins32:10

       Okay.

   14. CNCal Newport32:11

       Take the time things need, and maybe do one thing at a time. And know that if it takes you this many years to do the MBA, you don't get to the house until two years from now, and that you'll, you'll later, maybe you'll pick up this programming language, you're gonna wait till next summer when things are quieter and then you can actually take time to take a course. All of it will get done, but you don't have to do it at the fastest possible pace. The other thing that work at natural pace means is in the context of even, like, a given day, you don't have to be all out all day.

   15. MRMel Robbins32:39

       Okay, well, let's talk about this, because I feel that the, uh, there's a lot of us that I think because of pseudo-productivity and this obsession with busyness and the fact that we're very used to feeling this overwhelm and this stress and this constant buzzing, that I have, for example, Cal, the most unrealistic expectation about what I could get done in 10 minutes, and I, I, I, I, I'm seeing this expression on your face that I've seen on my husband Chris' face, so I would imagine maybe your wife is a little bit more like me-

   16. CNCal Newport33:15

       (laughs)

   17. MRMel Robbins33:15

       ... (laughs) where you're in the car waiting and she's still running around the house trying to get some things done and make a phone call and then, like, she can squeeze 25 things into about nine minutes.

   18. CNCal Newport33:27

       Yeah, and it takes me 90 minutes to do the same amount of things. (laughs)

   19. MRMel Robbins33:30

       Yes, but you know that.

   20. CNCal Newport33:31

       I know that, yeah.

   21. MRMel Robbins33:32

       But I still wake up every day and it's like I impose this insanity on myself-

   22. CNCal Newport33:38

       Yeah.

   23. MRMel Robbins33:38

       ... that I can get all this stuff done in a matter of 11 minutes when I know that it's gonna take me 23 minutes to even drive to the place, and I should've been in the car 17 minutes ago.

   24. CNCal Newport33:47

       Oh, yeah.

   25. MRMel Robbins33:48

       So how is this a function of this pseudo-productivity?

   26. CNCal Newport33:51

       Well, yeah, we don't write to-do lists, we write wish list.

   27. MRMel Robbins33:54

       Say that again.

   28. CNCal Newport33:55

       So, we think we're making a to-do list for the day-

   29. MRMel Robbins33:57

       Uh-huh.

   30. CNCal Newport33:57

       ... but it's a wish list. It's, "Wouldn't it be great if we got all of these things done today?"
6. 49:44 – 53:18

   Principle #3: Obsess Over Quality

   1. MRMel Robbins49:44

      The third principle for slow productivity is obsess over quality, which sounds a lot like perfectionism to me. What does it actually mean?

   2. CNCal Newport49:55

      We do have to be careful about perfectionism here.

   3. MRMel Robbins49:57

      Okay.

   4. CNCal Newport49:58

      But the idea is, if you really care a lot about how good the stuff is you're producing-

   5. MRMel Robbins50:02

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CNCal Newport50:03

      ... there's two things that happen that compliment each other.

   7. MRMel Robbins50:05

      Okay.

   8. CNCal Newport50:06

      Right? So, one, as you begin to care more about, "How good is this thing I'm producing?" the busyness that has been afflicting you will seem less appealing. So, as people get more obsessed with quality, the value of busyness diminishes. So, if you wanna become more slowly productive, this is a, a, a great first mental step. The second thing that happens is, as you get better at things, you get more autonomy. You get more leverage. It is easier for you to actually take busyness out of your life because you can say, "I'm delivering."

   9. MRMel Robbins50:36

      (laughs) Yeah.

   10. CNCal Newport50:36

       Like, "I'm really good at this. You want me doing this really good work, client, or boss," or whoever is your, whoever it is you're dealing with. Um, so yeah, "I'm gonna... I'm not doing these meetings." Or, "I'm taking these three things off my plate." Or, you know, "My books are doing well enough now, I'm not doing corporate speaking anymore." Or whatever it is. So, you get this nice compliment of you begin to care less about busyness. At the same time, you get more ability to minimize busyness and it becomes this self-reinforcing loop. But perfectionism is the sort of boogeyman floating around. I had to really get into this in the book, because obsessing over quality can lead to a perfectionism where actually now you never ship anything-

   11. MRMel Robbins51:14

       Right.

   12. CNCal Newport51:14

       ... because you're thinking, "This isn't quite right. This could be better, this could be better." And so the, the goal to this is more the process of, "I wanna keep getting better. I care about how good things are, but I have to keep shipping things. So, I'm gonna try to make this the best thing I can, but also I only have a month to do it. Okay, the next thing I do can be better though. Okay, this next thing, I gotta make this the best thing I can given two months to work on it." But turning your focus to quality I really think can unlock levels of slow productivity that are otherwise unattainable.

   13. MRMel Robbins51:46

       Well, what I love about this is that at the end of the day what you're forcing us to do through the lens of the way that we view work and time and productivity is to slow down long enough and truly understand what's valuable and meaningful to you in this chapter of your life or work. Because if you're talking about obsessing over quality and work and the value to the marketplace, in my words I would say, "What is the impact I'm making?" Right? And that's worth obsessing over. But I love that you translate it to the personal by saying, "Really in your personal life think about what is the quality of the time that you're spending, not the quantity of the time that you're spending doing it." And in order to make that determination you have to slow down and it's one of the reasons then that if you are looking at your wish list and you've got a bazillion things going on but you can say to yourself, "Look, in this chapter of my life, my parents are aging, one of the things that I wanna have more quality and, like, in terms of obsessing over the quality of the time that I have with my parents now-

   14. CNCal Newport52:52

       Yeah.

   15. MRMel Robbins52:52

       ... which means learning to play guitar or traveling the world right now is not a priority.

   16. CNCal Newport52:58

       Yeah.

   17. MRMel Robbins52:58

       This type of quality is because of my values." I love that. So, how do you get back on track, Cal, when life happens? You know, the, a, a kid is sick, uh, and you gotta go pick them up and be home with them all day. There's a thunderstorm. Their... And all of a sudden the wifi goes out. The rainstorm hits and traffic backs up for

7. 53:18 – 1:03:02

   The Time Management Hack That Doubles Your Productivity

   1. MRMel Robbins53:18

      two hours. What do you do to get back on track when life throws you off?

   2. CNCal Newport53:22

      Well, I update my plan at the scale that's required. So, so I mean something very specific by that.

   3. MRMel Robbins53:29

      Okay.

   4. CNCal Newport53:29

      Right? So, at the, at the smallest scale is just a daily scale, so I make a plan for my day every workday.

   5. MRMel Robbins53:35

      Do you do it the night before? Or do you do it the morning of?

   6. CNCal Newport53:37

      I do it the morning.

   7. MRMel Robbins53:38

      Okay.

   8. CNCal Newport53:38

      I-

   9. MRMel Robbins53:38

      And h- so walk me through that process.

   10. CNCal Newport53:40

       So, I actually block off my hours, so it's like filling in a calendar for the whole day. So, I have meetings and appointments but then I take all the time in between-

   11. MRMel Robbins53:47

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CNCal Newport53:47

       ... and I say, "What am I actually doing with this?" So, I don't run my day off of a to-do list. I run it off a schedule. So, I'll say from 9:00 to 10:00 this is what I'm doing and from like 10:00 to 10:30 I'm on this call, and from 10:30 to noon this is what I'm doing. So, I actually assign work to time as opposed to just having a list of things I hope to get done.

   13. MRMel Robbins54:07

       I wanna make sure the person heard that.

   14. CNCal Newport54:09

       Yeah.

   15. MRMel Robbins54:10

       'Cause that right there will change your life.

   16. CNCal Newport54:12

       Oh, it does. It k-

   17. MRMel Robbins54:13

       I think most of us run our, our lives off a to-do list or a wish list thinking we can plug and play.... throughout the day, which never actually happens. And so you're saying take your wish list or to-do list of all the things, and then take a look at your day and assign a time to the task that you're going to get done.

   18. CNCal Newport54:35

       Yes.

   19. MRMel Robbins54:35

       Why is that important?

   20. CNCal Newport54:37

       W- there's two things you get. Uh, one, you get more done in that time because, A, you're figuring out in advance what's the right time to work on things.

   21. MRMel Robbins54:44

       Hmm.

   22. CNCal Newport54:45

       So you notice, like, you know, I have this open time in the morning, that's the right time to work on this hard thing. Not to just start doing my emails and waiting til I kinda get warmed up in the afternoon, you're like, "Oh, my afternoon's very fragmented. This is the right time." So you're doing work in the right time. Or you say, "I have 45 minutes between these two meetings midday, I could take a bunch of small errands, and I could batch those all together and get them done." The other thing that happens is when you're actually working on something, if you've assigned that time, you can give it your full focus. So you say, "I, I put aside an hour to work on this. That's all I'm doing during this hour. My email checks, I put that on my schedule for later." If you, if you just start going through your day more loose, you're constantly having to debate with yourself, you know we're gonna have to check email at some point, why not now? You know, while I'm working on this. And your mind's like, "Well, why not now? Why not now?" And you're constantly fighting-

   23. MRMel Robbins55:37

       (laughs)

   24. CNCal Newport55:37

       ... with your brain. With a schedule you say, "Why not now? Because it's f- we're doing it at 2:00." And it's easier to win that argument. But the, the subtle thing that happens is you learn how long things actually take. So when you build these plans at first, and this is very consistent, you're gonna be wildly off. You are gonna probably be cutting the time required to do things in half. So you'll be very ambitious with these schedules at first, like, "I'll write this whole report then, and in 15 minutes I'll clear my email inbox." And then, and you're gonna constantly fail at these plans at first, but you're getting feedback about it. And then over time, you begin to learn, "Oh, this is how long this really takes. Writing these reports really takes three hours, not one. Cleaning my inbox, that's like 90 minutes, it's not 20 minutes." And you learn how long things really take, which is you begin to pace yourself accurately. And so that's how I do it. Um, but the key thing here is your plan's not gonna work, you're gonna get knocked off it by midday-

   25. MRMel Robbins56:36

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CNCal Newport56:36

       ... uh, that's completely fine. You just fix the plan for the remainder of the day next time you get a chance. The, the, the goal here is not, "I get a medal if I can come up with a plan at 9:00 AM that I stick to throughout the whole day." The goal is to have intention for your time. And it's okay if that intention has to change two or three times because this meeting took too long or I had to pick a kid up from school. That's fine, it's not a problem. The key is next time you get a chance, like let me remake a plan for the time that remains. And it might look very different now.

   27. MRMel Robbins57:07

       Yeah.

   28. CNCal Newport57:07

       Now it might be like, "I'm canceling this, I'm canceling that, and in this 20 minutes I'll make this emergency call." And so on the daily scale, that's how I recover, is I expect to get knocked off my plan. And then I just fix it next time you have enough time to sit down and, and I do it on paper and just sketch out next to it.

   29. MRMel Robbins57:24

       Um, you just explained the reason why I have struggled with time management my entire life. I have managed my entire life from a to-do list instead of taking that list first thing in the morning and assigning a particular task to a particular time. And I can give an example that I think a tremendous number of people could relate to, and I'm sure as you're listening you'll relate to this. Which is, let's just say it's one of those days where, um, one of my kids has a soccer match that is starting at 4:00 in the afternoon, and I know the commute is 45 minutes. And I leave work on time, and then I remember on my to-do list there was the need to stop at the grocery store.

   30. CNCal Newport58:10

       Yep.
8. 1:03:02 – 1:06:03

   Why You Should Put Your Phone Down

   1. CNCal Newport1:03:02

      technology. I talk to people about not being on their phones too much. And one of the issues I had with young people in particular is they're on their phones all the time, but they said, "I can't just follow your advice to use the phone less because I don't have something on the other side to do more of. I don't have the thing on the other side that I'm... that is being, uh, taken away from me 'cause I'm too much on my phone. This is all I have." And so that's one of the other reasons I started talking about this is I realized I can't tell people to be less distracted-

   2. MRMel Robbins1:03:34

      Hmm.

   3. CNCal Newport1:03:34

      ... if, if they don't have something on the other side to see real clearly once that distraction is gone. The more they enjoy their life outside of distraction, the more likely they are to actually take steps to be less distracted. So i- it was funny how those two worlds came together.

   4. MRMel Robbins1:03:48

      For somebody who that statement really resonates with, that I don't have something on the other side, what is the advice that you're giving to the students that you're seeing or the graduate students that, you know, you're doing research with when that's the pushback for why they can't get off the phones or they can't do deeper work?

   5. CNCal Newport1:04:13

      Yeah. Well, one of the things I tell them is, "You have to get comfortable with your own mind again." I, I believe this really strongly that one of the more important things that humans do is they spend times alone with their own thoughts.

   6. MRMel Robbins1:04:25

      Hmm.

   7. CNCal Newport1:04:25

      Especially when you're young, this is where you make sense of your experience. It's where you update your knowledge of yourself, that mental scaffolding, your, your understanding of who you are and what you're going through in the world. It's where you also figure out your values, so like, what matters to you, what doesn't. Like, "Why did I feel this way? I was at this party and I was around these people, and I felt kind of off. Let me think about that. You know why? Because I think there's something they were doing that... I don't like that. Maybe that's a value of mine, that I don't like that type of lifestyle." It's how you discover yourself and figure out what matters. One of the biggest, I think, unspoken disasters of the distracted smartphone age is that it eliminates your ability to do that reflection.

   8. MRMel Robbins1:05:06

      Hmm.

   9. CNCal Newport1:05:07

      Because we used to, until about 15 years ago, have to be alone with our own thoughts all the time. You would just be in line somewhere, you would be, you know, waiting for your order to come at the restaurant or your friend to get there. And we were very used to just being with our thoughts and thinking. And then this distraction machine came along-

   10. MRMel Robbins1:05:24

       Right.

   11. CNCal Newport1:05:24

       ... and we could banish every possible moment of reflection or solitude. And because of that, there's a generation, one of their big problems we don't talk about is without that time alone with their own thoughts, they don't understand themselves. And that's why they're having a particularly hard time turning off TikTok. It's not just that TikTok is addictive. It's that they... where is those hundreds of hours of self-reflection where you figure out here's who I am and here's what I wanna do? So I often start with, "Let's just practice being alone with your own thoughts 15 minutes at a time, one walk at a time. Do one errand without your phone." It's g- it feels terrible at first. They, they really are uncomfortable with it.

   12. MRMel Robbins1:06:01

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CNCal Newport1:06:01

       But that's how I think we become human.

9. 1:06:03 – 1:10:14

   How to Catch Up When You Feel Behind

   1. CNCal Newport1:06:04

   2. MRMel Robbins1:06:04

      What would you say to somebody that feels like, "It's too late, that I'm behind"?

   3. CNCal Newport1:06:10

      Well, I think process over outcome.

   4. MRMel Robbins1:06:13

      What does that mean?

   5. CNCal Newport1:06:14

      Well, we tell ourselves stories about where other people are.

   6. MRMel Robbins1:06:17

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CNCal Newport1:06:17

      Often the stories are wrong, by the way, right? We, we think this is what this person has done because I see it on Instagram. The real stories are often very different, you don't realize what they're going through or how hard it was or what they regret, or maybe this victory is more, uh, show than it is actual reality. So, uh, don't focus so much on..."I need this exact outcome. Like, I need to be a writer, and my book needs to be number one on the New York Times bestseller," or this or that. Focus on the process of, "I'm working on things that matter, I'm getting better at it, and I think it's important and it's meaningful to me." Right? That's the deep life. I wanna write, so what matters is, let's write. Let's figure out a way I can start writing in a way that's meaningful, and I can join a writers' group, and I can hone this craft. And in that process is where all the fulfillment comes out. I mean, if you look at professional thinkers, like mathematicians who win major awards and get Fields Medals or what have you, what do they do right after they win the biggest award they can in their field? They go back to working on new- new work, because that's what's interesting. Einstein solves general relativity, spends the rest of his career working on new physics problems. The most important result of the last 200 years, but the fulfillment was, "Yeah, that's great this was successful, but I like working on-"

   8. MRMel Robbins1:07:33

      Hmm.

   9. CNCal Newport1:07:34

      "... math. Like, this is important, and I wanna work." And so process can be more important than outcomes.

   10. MRMel Robbins1:07:39

       Y- you have shared so much with us. And I cannot wait to put so much of what you've just advised as the specific tactics to use in my own life, and here in the office. What are your parting words?

   11. CNCal Newport1:07:54

       I tell people, doing fewer things but doing them better seems like a scary jump in our current world. But I think the way that we think about productivity value in our current world is broken. And it's scary at first, but once you do it, you're gonna have more control over your work, you're gonna be less stressed. It's gonna change the way you think about your life at home as well. Doing fewer things but doing those things well, that has to be the recipe for a deeper life. And it's- I've studied knowledge work (laughs) for a long time. I've studied where distraction comes from, where productivity comes from, and I've never been more convinced that's the way to approach life.

   12. MRMel Robbins1:08:31

       Well, now I'm convinced too, Cal. So thank you, thank you, thank you for making the time to come to Boston. Thank you for being here, for teaching us everything that you taught us today. Everybody, get out there and get this incredible best-selling book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. And more importantly, I think what it delivers on is it's a roadmap for reclaiming your time, which is gonna help you reclaim your life. And it's gonna help you build a more meaningful life, and we all deserve that. So thank you, thank you, thank you for your work, Cal, and thank you for being here with us.

   13. CNCal Newport1:09:08

       Thank you, Mel. I loved it.

   14. MRMel Robbins1:09:10

       I loved it too, Cal. And I know you loved it too. And- and I wanna also take a moment and thank you. Thank you for making the time to learn about slow productivity and how to stop being so busy and reclaim your life. I love the tools that Cal shared with you and me. I'm going to be implementing them. I know you are too. I cannot wait to hear what happens when you start to take control of your time and you implement all of this research into your life and into your work. I know it's gonna get better. And thank you for sharing this with people. And one more thing, in case nobody else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life, and there's no doubt in my mind that everything that we learned today from Professor Cal Newport is gonna help you do that. All righty. I will see you in the very next episode. I'll be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play. And speaking of play, I'm sure you're like, "Mel, what's the next video I should watch?" Well, here's what I would recommend that you spend your time watching next. I'll see you there.

Episode duration: 1:10:14