The Delicate Art Of Mastering Work-Life Balance - Cal Newport

Chris Williamson 0:00 I was saying, I'm really impressed with what you've done with, uh, your podcast.

Cal Newport 0:03 Oh, yeah. Thank you.

Chris Williamson 0:04 Really cool. You know, for a one-stop shop for understanding productivity and where it's at, and-

Cal Newport 0:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:09 ... your history. I was hearing you try and use some example of the Cretaceous period-

Cal Newport 0:14 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:14 ... for how email got introduced or something.

Cal Newport 0:16 Oh, I was geeking out on that one. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:18 Yeah.

Cal Newport 0:18 Yeah, the KT boundary.

Chris Williamson 0:20 Yeah, that's it.

Cal Newport 0:20 And email.

Chris Williamson 0:21 Yes, y-

Cal Newport 0:21 Dinosaurs and email, yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:22 Dinosaurs and email as it-

Cal Newport 0:23 I was having some fun with that one.

Chris Williamson 0:24 As it always does. Talk to me about what the problem is with our current definition of productivity.

Cal Newport 0:31 Well, it's a bad one, right? I mean, I think that's what's going on is that in knowledge work, what happened is, now, I went back and dug up this history, right, to try to understand. You get the knowledge work as a major sector, begins to emerge roughly mid-20th century. When it emerges, there's this question of, okay, how are we going to measure the productivity of people? I mean, in other words, how are we gonna actually manage people? This is a harder question than you would think, right? Because before the knowledge sector arose as a major thing, what did you have as the major thing in the economy? It's the industrial sector, right? And product- uh, it's gonna be productivity in the industrial sector, it's quantitative. It's Model Ts produced per labor hour input, right? You had a number you could measure, you could change the way you did it, right? Let's move from the craft method to the assembly line and see that number go up and say, "This is better." You go to knowledge work, none of that works anymore, right? Because I'm working on seven different things, it's different than what you're working on. How I'm doing the work is kind of up to me. I have my own private sort of organizational system, so there's no clear thing that we can improve or mess around with. So we don't have a good old-fashioned definition of productivity. So what do we do in that space? We said, "Well, we'll just use visible activity as a proxy for useful effort." It's like if I see you doing stuff, that's better than you not doing stuff. And if we need to do better, let's do more stuff. Like, get there earlier, let's work later. Uh, I call that pseudo-productivity. That's implicitly been what has been driving knowledge work activity for at least 70 years.

Chris Williamson 2:01 You asked your readers or listeners, I think, to try and define-

Cal Newport 2:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:06 ... productivity. This is a community of people that have come together to watch a show specifically on productivity, and they failed to come up with a good synthesis for what they meant by the thing they're interested in.

Cal Newport 2:17 No, they couldn't do it. Here's what most people did when I asked them. They basically just summarized what their job was. It's like, "What is productivity?" And they're like, "Well, it's, you know, doing my DevOps responsibilities well." (laughs) You know, they would just, they would just parrot back what their job was and say, "I guess that's productivity." So that's the, that's the, the issue with pseudo-productivity is it's unnamed. So we don't actually recognize or admit this is what we're doing, which is just activities better than non-activity. Uh, so we can't fix it, because we don't know there is something to fix. But, you know, my big argument is that pseudo-productivity went off the rails once we had computers and networks and emails and laptop, and work could follow you anywhere, and you could demonstrate activity anywhere you were at any time. Uh, you see this in the productivity literature. We talk about productivity completely different in the '90s than we do in the early 2000s.

Chris Williamson 3:07 Oh, yeah, you...

Chris Williamson 3:08 Didn't you track productivity advice from the '50s through until the modern day or so-

Cal Newport 3:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:13 ... like an archeologist of, of productivity advice?

Cal Newport 3:17 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:17 So take me through what, what, what were we being told about how to be more productive in the '50s up to today?

Cal Newport 3:22 Yeah, I, I wrote this for The New Yorker recently, and this was all from my own shelf because I geek out on this stuff. So I have a historical collection of sort of vintage (laughs) productivity. Yeah, so you see, uh, you're gonna see a big change when we get to the 2000s, but starting in the '50, uh, the 1950s, the very first book... So in the very first book on what we would think of as modern time management, and it's called The Management of Time, right? It came out in the 1950s.

Chris Williamson 3:45 Good title.

Cal Newport 3:46 Yeah, it was a good t- title, right? But it's not at all what you would expect. It's almost entirely psychological, right? So knowledge work is a n- uh, it was new. These large organizations in which you are sitting at desks, a lot of this was new. So most of the management of time is actually just grappling psychologically with this new reality. It's, you know, how do you even, uh... What's the mindset to even have to deal with a world in which you're no longer turning a wrench on an assembly line, but there's all this stuff coming at you? All right, 1960s, definitive book, The Effective Executive, right? Peter Drucker.

Chris Williamson 4:19 Still read today.

Cal Newport 4:20 Fantastic book, right? And Peter Drucker, by the way, coined the term knowledge work. So he was really a, a, a key figure in understanding knowledge work, why it's different. That book is all space age optimism, right? It's all like, "Okay, we can optimize the... We can optimize the hell out of this." It's, you know, "Okay, executives, you need to keep a log of, like, what you're doing every minute of the day. And then we're gonna go back and we're gonna study this log, and we're gonna find the inefficiencies, and we're gonna remove those, and you're gonna figure out, like, the optimal set of act-" So it's very space age, you know, we're just gonna throw a lot of engineering at work and we're gonna make it optimal. The '70s, everything gets depressed, right? Because the American economy in the '70s is, it's stagflation, it's, it's Jimmy Carter and the great malaise, right? Uh, so everyone is in a bad mood. And so the, the '70s book I have is just A, B, C, through Z. So it's alphabetical. And for every letter, it just has some things relevant to the office that start with that letter, and then they give you a couple paragraphs. Like B, briefcases. Well, this is what you should look for-

Chris Williamson 5:22 (laughs)

Cal Newport 5:22 ... in your briefcases. A, alcohol, 'cause they-

Chris Williamson 5:26 Pro, anti.

Cal Newport 5:27 Well, it's clear from that entry that they were drinking a lot at work (laughs) when you see the advice. It was, you know-

Chris Williamson 5:33 Hell yeah.

Cal Newport 5:34 It was like, you know, "I don't know, maybe not have that third martini at lunch."

Chris Williamson 5:38 That was the advice?

Cal Newport 5:39 Yeah, something like that.

Chris Williamson 5:40 Wow.

Cal Newport 5:41 W, this is not... I'm not making this up. Waste basketry. Waste basketry. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 5:46 Waste basketry?

Cal Newport 5:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:48 Right, like the art of building waste baskets and where they should be positioned.

Cal Newport 5:52 How many waste baskets to have, like what... Yeah, so anyways, there was no, there was no, uh, ambition in the '70s.

Chris Williamson 5:57 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 5:57 So it was just like, let's just, all right, how do you, how do you keep your-

Chris Williamson 5:59 Procedural.

Cal Newport 6:00 Procedural, yeah. Uh, then you get to the '80s and '90s, now it's Stephen Covey.Right? So '80s and '90s, right now we're thinking Wall Street, right? We're thinking the American, uh, consumer boom, the economy starts booming, right? And so now you get, uh, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. That's in the '80s. First Things First in the '90s. These are all about work as self-actualization, right? And so Covey is like, "Here's what we're going to do." It's incredibly optimistic. "You're going to figure out what matters to you in life and all your different roles, you're going to write those down. And then we're going to, we're going to optimize everything you do in the day, all aimed towards, like, actualizing your biggest goals in life, right? When we're going to figure out these complicated systems for selecting and tracking your time, all aimed at, like, accomplishing your deepest ambitions. And not just in work, but, like, at home and in, and in, like, your religious communities." Covey was a religious Mormon, et cetera. Then we get to the 2000s, and this is where the shift happens. So the, the big book of the early 2000s is David Allen, Getting Things Done.

Chris Williamson 7:01 Been on the show. He's a Modern Wisdom alumni. He's a legend.

Cal Newport 7:04 Exactly. Now, if you go back and you read Getting Things Done, this is not an ambitious, optimistic book.

Chris Williamson 7:09 (laughs)

Cal Newport 7:10 Like, his goal in this book is like, "How can we basically find some moments of zen peace among this untamable onslaught," right? The whole thing is like, "We can't..." It's very nihilistic almost, right? There's this huge incoming onslaught, and what we're going to do is keep this onslaught from colonizing our mind and making us stress. So everything is going to get reduced to next actions. And then with Mind Like Water... So I profiled Allen for The New Yorker, so like he comes from a background in zen and karate, so he really likes Mind Like Water. You're just going to execute these actions, uh, without even having to... You're not going to... You can be almost mindless about it. Let's just execute, execute. What context am I going to execute? So it was about just trying to find peace among an onslaught. That's really different.

Chris Williamson 7:56 He's a very peaceful man.

Cal Newport 7:57 And a peaceful guy.

Chris Williamson 7:58 Yeah.

Cal Newport 7:58 Lives in Ojai. He's nice.

Chris Williamson 7:59 It seems like it works for him. Okay, 2010s.

Cal Newport 8:02 Yeah, but, but, so now this is a big change though, right? Because what happened between the '90s and 2000s is going to be the front office IT revolution. Computers, it's going to be email later, it's going to be smartphones, it's going to be Slack. So we get this huge uptick in the amount of work people felt like they had to be doing all the time, and that's when we get this change in tone. Now when we get to the 2010s, all of the books are on this other side of it, right? Where we are being essentially overwhelmed by this work, how do we survive? And so the big sellers are like Essentialism, my book Deep Work, you have, uh, Keller's One Thing. Like these are all books about trying to combat overload. So you get this big shift.

Chris Williamson 8:41 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 8:41 From '90s into the 2000 and 2010s, everything becomes about work is overwhelming us. Uh, it's too much. We're burning out. Allen is like, "How do we just basically disconnect from the stress of this all and just execute like we're cranking widgets?" Me and, uh, uh, Essentialism and, you know, Keller's book, we're trying to like, "Okay, how do we fight back about this?" Focus still matters. Don't, don't get overwhelmed. There's almost like a rearguard action, you know?

Chris Williamson 9:05 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 9:05 Trying to protect the rear as, uh, the advancing army is routing you. Like, all this is going on. So it's a huge shift, and I think that's because pseudo-productivity was fine. Like you could talk about alco- alcohol and wastebaskets and self-actualization until you get computers and emails and laptops and smartphones, and then it began to overwhelm us. So you, it's a, it's like a night and day shift in tone once you get to about 2000.

Chris Williamson 9:28 Why is pseudo-productivity so sticky? What's caused that to be so prevalent?

Cal Newport 9:34 Simple. It was just simple, right? It was like, "I don't know, what are we going to do here?" Um, simulating like a manager in the 1950s. "What are we going to do here? I don't know. Uh, if I see you working, at least I know you're not not working." And so it was simple, right? So anything else is more difficult. So we just went with what was simple. The other thing that... So it's, it's not... So it's less that's sticky, it's simple. But the other thing that happened is that same Peter Drucker, who wrote The Effective Executive, he really hammered writing in the '60s all the way up until the late '90s. He was really hammering tr- uh, trying to explain, he's a management theorist, trying to explain knowledge work. He was really hammering autonomy. He said, "Productivity is not something for us to discuss." Like, managers shouldn't be discussing it. It's not our business. It's now personal. Individuals will figure out on their own how they want to manage their business. Knowledge work is not something more like in a factory we care about how the work is done. This is up to the individual. So productivity is not a topic of discussion. So Peter Drucker really pushed this idea. In knowledge work, we don't talk about productivity. So in lack of discussion, the simplest thing is going to stick. And the simplest thing was, "If I see you working, that's good. Why aren't you answering emails? You must..." Maybe you're... It's a defensive approach to it. Like, "If I don't hear from you or see you, how do I know you're not slacking off?"

Chris Williamson 10:53 So that's, uh, I guess organizationally how productivity has become, uh, detected by the people that are typically above you and also by your, uh, peers as well and your colleagues that you work with.

Cal Newport 11:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:09 But this is emergent. Like, we are our own task masters with regards to this. So, you know, like we're, we're building out our own pseudo-productivity desire and whipping ourselves with this.

Cal Newport 11:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:21 What's the reason? Is it just that this was the only measure of busyness, therefore we took that and turned it into our own internal state? Or is there something else going on when the individual is working for themselves?

Cal Newport 11:34 Well, yeah, so, so what happens within the non-working-for-yourself context, if pseudo-productivity reigns, right? So people are going to measure... Your activity is how you prove that you're valuable. Then all of your own work on being organized or productive is all going to be aimed at, "How am I more visibly active? How do I do more? How do I be seen more?" This just bakes into the culture eventually. So yeah, now I start my own company. I'm a freelancer. I have my own thing going on. It's the only definition of productivity I know, right? Is th- like this activity. And everything that we've been seeing since the, the early 2000s, it's, it's all in a world in which this is what really matters. Seeing work is what matters. Activity is what matters. Slack is a way you can always show that you're involved. And so we just internalized it, right? So even though there's a lot of flexibility if you run your own business...They actually are probably the worst- tend to be the worst offenders of pseudo-productivity mindsets, because they feel more pressure, like, "I have to be productive."

Chris Williamson 12:27 Yeah.

Cal Newport 12:27 Like, "It's all on me." And if all that we know is pseudo-productivity, then that's what you're going to do.

Chris Williamson 12:33 Well, when you are both the person who decides which tasks to work on and also the person who works on the tasks-

Cal Newport 12:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:39 ... you end up with this very bizarre, like, hari-kari immolating sort of-

Cal Newport 12:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:46 ... situation, where you... work never finishes. It- it's sort of a productivity purgatory scenario, where it just permeates everything that you do. And, uh... yeah,

Chris Williamson 12:58 I... how would you, uh, w- how do you frame, or what do you think about most people's relationship with productivity? Like, how do you think that they conceive of that?

Cal Newport 13:08 Well, it's shifting a lot, right? Because what seems to be happening is, uh, pseudo-productivity's been around. It begins to become increasingly unbearable, uh, in the 2000s. Um, what we then get, starting maybe five or six years ago, is an emergent anti-productivity movement, right? Because a- and again, this is coming out of a place that makes sense. People are increasingly burnt out. It's also coming out of the tail ends of, uh, the first decade of the 2000s. There was a whole techno-productivity revolution. This was the whole what they would call the productivity-prone revolution. This is some leetspeak, but basically it was this... there was this moment in the early 2000s where people were really, uh, optimistic about this idea that productivity implemented by smart software was gonna-

Chris Williamson 13:50 Quantified self.

Cal Newport 13:51 It was gonna, yeah, it was gonna revolutionize work. That- that it was like, "Okay, if we get the right system..." And remember, David Allen had kind of introduced this idea of being more systematic and, uh, engineer-y in your systems. That, plus the right software, was gonna bring us to this utopia where work was, like, effortless, like, "Do this now, do that now," and you were just gonna be cranking widgets, and the software was gonna do it. I- I s- I interviewed some of the people who worked on these, uh, these electronic GTD systems back in the day. Um, so there's this big optimism that kind of faded by the end of the 2000s. Now we're even more burnt out than before. We begin to get anti-productivity, right? So th- this begins to emerge. It's- it's picking up some steam 2018, 2019, right? These are when some of the first big books on this emerge, and then the pandemic really accelerates that. So- so by the time I'm actually, you know, writing the- the new book, there's a really big anti-productivity movement. So- so we now have, uh, an emerging an- antagonistic relationship with the concept of productivity, which what it really is is an antagonistic relationship with pseudo-productivity, because the demands of that are deranging, right? I mean, especially when now you're at home, you're working remotely. The work never ends. At every moment, you have to be internally arguing with yourself, "Should I work or do this other thing?"

Chris Williamson 15:07 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 15:07 "I could be working..." Now you're in this constant internal battle. There's no boundaries anymore between work and non-work. So, like, that was the defining relationship with productivity of the last five years, I would say, is this anti-productivity movement.

Chris Williamson 15:20 And where are we now? Are we still in the throes of that or is there something new coming up?

Cal Newport 15:24 Well, I'm trying to put something new in. So slow productivity, in my mind, is a, uh, it starts from the same place as the anti-productivity movement. It goes somewhere different, 'cause the problem with the anti-productivity movement is they're- they're starting from the right place, which is, "We're burnt out from this," but their- their response is typically, uh, anti-work, right? So then the answer they often come to is, um, "Work itself is tainted." And typically, they'll bring more of like a, uh, more like left-wing labor politics, so maybe like more of a Marxist frame, right? "This is, this is an inevitability of the exploitative nature of late-stage capitalism." It's very s-

Chris Williamson 16:00 "We need cooperatives."

Cal Newport 16:02 And they won't even go that far. They'll just be like, "Don't try so hard," right?

Chris Williamson 16:06 Oh, right, okay.

Cal Newport 16:07 Right? "Do Nothing," "The Art of Doing Noth- How to Do Nothing." These are titles of- of- of really good-selling books.

Chris Williamson 16:12 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 16:13 Uh, Quiet Quitting was sort of a... you could think of as like an anti-productivity move. It... so it- it recast... it sort of recast what's going on away from, "Our definition of productivity doesn't work well," to, like, "Let's put this back into more of like an early 20th century labor politics context of, no, it's exploitative managers trying to- trying to exploit labor from you, and now we're in a zero-sum fight. And the way we're gonna fight back and do less work, there's more to life than work." Uh, so that was largely the- the answer. That didn't really catch on, in part because a lot of people that were, um, preaching, "Work less," were, like, working really hard to (laughs) pr- you know, that's not-

Chris Williamson 16:50 Luxury beliefs.

Cal Newport 16:51 Yeah. Uh, I'm... Subscribe to my Substack I'm writing every day about why you shouldn't work hard, that I'm working-

Chris Williamson 16:56 Yes.

Cal Newport 16:56 ... hard on, right?

Chris Williamson 16:56 Yes.

Cal Newport 16:57 Um, and also people, uh, they don't hate work, right? Like, they... a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, are like, "No, I wanna do this well." Like, "I wanna, I wanna-"

Chris Williamson 17:04 "They just don't wanna be killed by it."

Cal Newport 17:05 "I don't wanna be killed by it," yeah. So then that became the central question for my book, was, "Okay, so here's the question. How do we, uh, produce stuff that's good, like that we're proud of, we can support a family, um, without burning out and without having work take over more and more of your life?" Like, that's the real question, right? The question is not, "How do we, uh, deconstruct capitalism?" Like, that's not the right response to the burnout crisis, right?

Chris Williamson 17:28 (laughs)

Cal Newport 17:29 As they capitalistically sell their books on this. Uh, the right question is this, "How do we, uh, produce stuff and be proud and ambitious about what we're doing, but also not burn out?"

Chris Williamson 17:38 I did a- an annual review, and I've used the same process every year for, uh, a- a while now.

Cal Newport 17:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:43 Uh, and I redid it this year, and I tried to ask myself more kind of introspective, artsy questions, stuff like, um, "What would eight-year-old me, uh, look back on and wish that I did more and less of?"

Cal Newport 17:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:55 Um, "What do I think is productive but isn't and what isn't productive but I think is?"

Cal Newport 18:00 Interesting.

Chris Williamson 18:01 Uh, tha- that's a really great question to ask. So, uh, things that are productive but I don't realize that they are, uh-

Cal Newport 18:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:07 ... were going for coffees with people who are just coming through town for a short amount of time.

Cal Newport 18:12 Right.

Chris Williamson 18:12 Dinner with friends, uh, playing pickleball, and, uh, going for walks.

Cal Newport 18:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:17 Uh, those were some. Uh, stuff that I think is productive but isn't-

Cal Newport 18:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:21 ... being on calls, answering emails, spending time in Slack, sitting at my desk when I'm not working. That's a big one.

Cal Newport 18:28 Uh-huh. Interesting.

Chris Williamson 18:28 You know, I'm just like, "Oh, uh, if I'm here and I'm at the seat and the computer's there, something will, something will happen."

Cal Newport 18:34 Even if you're on Twitter. It's g- something will happen.

Chris Williamson 18:36 It doesn't matter, yeah.

Cal Newport 18:36 Yeah, I'm just dicking about.

Chris Williamson 18:37 Yeah.

Cal Newport 18:37 And I'm like, "I- that's not, that's not-"

Chris Williamson 18:39 Yeah.

Cal Newport 18:39 "... productive." And, uh-

Chris Williamson 18:41 The final question that I asked myself, like just notes, and it was the most interesting part of the review process, was just notes at the bottom. And it was stuff that came up that didn't fit into any of the questions or categories that I had created for myself, is fleeting thoughts. And this one was, uh, and this is the main question for this year, and it's so funny that this is the topic of your new book, is it possible to be world-class and have fun?

Cal Newport 19:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:05 That's the main question that I'm asking myself this year.

Cal Newport 19:09 M- many of the most world-class creative minds in history had a lot of fun.

Chris Williamson 19:13 So the answer's yes.

Cal Newport 19:14 Yes. Uh, this is why, uh, it's something some people complain about, but I think it's actually a feature of my approach in, in approaching this topic, is I said, "I am gonna go back and find world-class creators," uh, I call them traditional knowledge workers, scientists, philosophers, artists, et cetera, "throughout history, and I wanna see how they worked." And then the complaint is, "Well, wait a second, I can't work the same way as Galileo. That's like a completely different time and place."

Chris Williamson 19:38 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 19:38 And the- the- the- I was like, "No, the goal is not to try to replicate the workday of Gal- Galileo," but what we can look at is Galileo had a lot of flexibility in how he worked. So with all that flexibility, what did he drift towards? So what, they have a lot of space. Marie Curie had a lot of space. Georgia O'Keeffe had a lot of space to figure out how they wanted to work. So they were running these natural experiments to see, what is the absolute best way to create value with your mind? Then once we isolate those principles, okay, we can adapt 'em to modern jobs. But like, it's just the principles that matter. So if you study these great traditional knowledge workers throughout history, none of them were busy. The idea of busyness being somehow connected with, uh, great production is not inevitable, especially if we're not talking about running a complicated business, but just creating high value things with your brain. You don't find a lot of busyness until you get much more towards the modern era.

Chris Williamson 20:31 What was the typical day of some of these favorite famous people from history like?

Cal Newport 20:37 That question wouldn't make sense to them, right? So it's a very, uh, modern notion that we have uniform work days, and so we need to have like a typ- here's how, here's what I do during work days, and I work five days a week, and I work this many weeks, uh, this many weeks a year. They were way more variable about when and how they were working, right? So it'd be like, okay, uh, this two months, I'm working really hard on something, and then I went away and traveled for four months and did nothing, right? There is no typical work day. They had a lot more variation, right? So Georgia O'Keeffe, for ex- the painter, right, what kickstarted her productivity as a, an artist is, you know, she began dating, uh, Stieglitz, and he had land in the Adirondacks. And he's like, "Okay, you gotta come up, we're gonna go up there in the summers." And she figured out this rhythm of they go up there in the late summer into the fall, she has this shack by the lake, and that's where she, she has inspiration, she's doing her nature paintings. And then she brings them, she's there for months, and then she brings them back to Manhattan, and then she finishes them and exhibits them and does the stuff. Uh, and then they go back to, up to the Adirondacks and she gets her creative input. So it's like no typical day for Georgia O'Keeffe, but there's a typical year, and it has different seasons she's doing things. Uh, I opened the book on John McPhee, and I'm like, okay, for five days, uh, it opens on five days of John McPhee's life in the late '60s lying on his back on a picnic table, 'cause he was trying to find his way into a New Yorker piece, and it was, it comp- he couldn't figure it out, right? Like, how, I have all this research, uh, how am I gonna start this piece? And as someone who's written my share of New Yorker pieces, I can tell you, this is like an impossible problem. Like, how do I get into this article? Five days he's laying on his back just to try to figure out how am I gonna make sense of this stuff? Like, what's a typical day for John McPhee, like that? You could look, if you zoomed in on that day, you would say, "He did nothing, he's lazy." You know? And on another day he would be, you know, up in his office next to a Swedish, uh, massage parlor in Princeton where he has this really, um, kind of eccentric way that he would cut up all of his notes and Xerox them and put them on these boards, and he might be in there for hours, and- and another day he might just be doing nothing or doing research, right? So they didn't have typical days, you know? So this idea that there's a work day...

Chris Williamson 22:48 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 22:48 ... how do you structure your work day, we invented that, you know, for knowledge work in the 1950s, and it was an idea we borrowed from factories, 'cause that's how factories ran. You had shifts. And so it's not even the right question for creative work.

Chris Williamson 23:01 Every time that I read, whether it's, uh, Digital Minimalism or Deep Work or- or any of your books, uh, oh, and some of Ryan's stuff as well, it's this, it almost feels like a nervous system reregulation. It's like a reminder of a slower time, it's a reminder of a different time. And so much of the stuff that we take for granted about the rhythm of modern life, about the ferocity and velocity that we go through these things with, we realize is just a creation, a- a- maybe not even a creation, maybe a- a- a malignant bug or a byproduct or a side effect...

Cal Newport 23:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:37 ... some weird externality of a thing that no one really designed. You know, it's the second, third, fourth order effect of some shit that happened 50 years ago. And then reading stuff like that or reading about how much, uh, Isaac Newton or Einstein loved to walk.

Cal Newport 23:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:54 I feel like that was in one of your books at some point, like the- the- the power of walking and- and how important that is. And you think, God... I- I came up with this idea, the productivity purgatory is- is one of those where, uh, all of the things that you do, even the things that you're supposed to do for leisure, you do because you once saw an Andrew Huberman documentary that said 15 minutes of walking improves your dopaminergic response by whatever, whatever, that there's nothing that isn't done in service of productivity, even the things that ostensibly are supposed to be for leisure.

Cal Newport 24:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:23 Uh, and then, yeah, uh, to me and maybe to a lot of people listening, it sounds like hearing Galileo or- or Georgia O'Keeffe, you know, wanking off for four months and then dicking about and then coming back and, oh, I'll do a little bit of work, it sounds bohemian. It sounds new age. It sounds hippie.

Cal Newport 24:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:44 Uh, because our framing is only within the last, we only know the last 100 years of work. We only know that. Before that, it was just people hoeing the- the ground, right? It was just ag- Yeah. ... agrarian shit.

Cal Newport 24:56 And-... changed drastically by the seasons, right? Like, you, you, uh, talk about like the German ritual Yule. 'Cause they had nothing to do, right? It was a pagan ritual, they're like, "We're going to have bonfires for a month because, like, what are we going to do? There's no... It's the winter, there's no crops to whatever." And then in the fall, like, they're really busy. So the agrarian lifestyle was up and down. I went back and looked really deeply into forager, hunter-gatherer life, which is the 270,000, the first 270,000 years of our species. Uh, nature dictated everything, right? I mean, it was, "Today we're on this hunt. Th- the other day it rained, we did nothing. We're in the middle of this hunt, but it's hot in the middle of the day, so we just stop for a while." The only time, uh, in human history, like the first time we really had "Just work hard all day long" was when mills and factories were invented. And it was so unbearable, it was so terrible, they tried to take humans who were used to all of this variation and autonomy in their approach to work, to say, "You have to work all day long as hard as you can." Uh, we had to invent labor unions, we had to invent regulatory frameworks. We had to put all of these huge apparatuses in place just to make that type of incredibly unnatural work tolerable. But the knowledge work emerges, like, "All right, so how are we going to organize our workday, guys?" Like, "Ah, let's do what the factory guys are doing."

Chris Williamson 26:08 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 26:08 We just grabbed that. Like, the least natural, uh, in terms of our human wiring choice that we had, because it was simple and it was what we were used to and it was what was big right now, and we're like, "Well, let's just do that."

Chris Williamson 26:19 Yeah, one of the principles of slow productivity is work at a natural pace.

Cal Newport 26:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:23 W- what is that for humans?

Cal Newport 26:25 Well, there's, there's two parts to it. So for humans, it's what we just talked about, uh, variations in intensity. And it's not just on one time scale, but basically all time scales, right? So, so when I went back and looked at how humans worked before, within a day, you're going to have some periods that are more intense than others. In a week, some days will be more intense than others. Uh, when you're looking at a season, you know, uh, some seasons might be more intense than others. The fall harvest is way more intense than the winter. Uh, even at a bigger time scale, you might have busier periods and less busier periods. "I'm writing a book for two years, and then for the next year, I'm going more fallow," right? So variations. That's much more natural. Then the other principle that came out of that, and this was just from directly studying the great traditional knowledge workers of time past, they take much more time. So we try to go too fast, and a lot of these thinkers who were very productive in the sense of they produced, you know, uh, new scientific work that changed the way we understood the universe, they worked very slowly. Like, their notion of, "How long should I take on this project?" was way slower than what we do today. So we're always trying to charge ahead right away, "What's the quickest way I could get this done?" They took their time, right? They were happy to take their time. Even contemporary traditional knowledge workers do this. Lin-Manuel Miranda was one of the examples I gave. His first play before Hamilton, In The Heights, was a big hit, right? Eight Tony's. He spent seven to eight years working on that play. Uh, not procrastinating, he didn't put it aside for eight years, he just was working slowly on it for eight years. Kept coming back to it, they were doing readings with real actors, then he would go away and do some other stuff and think about it and, and try to get something better, and then he'd come back and do another reading. Year... just this, like, slow process, but that's, like, pretty typical with traditional knowledge workers. We think, in the pseudo-productivity culture, it's like now fast as possible. "I want to do a play, I'm going to, like, go away for a weekend and grind this thing out. Like, let's rock and roll." Uh, that's not the way people used to do things.

Chris Williamson 28:24 What are the industries or job types for whom this changing of the pace doesn't work quite so well? 'Cause there may be people listening who say, "Well, that's all well and good if your goal is to create, over the next however many years, a really great play, but it, that's not the world that I live in, that's not the profession that I have access to."

Cal Newport 28:47 Right, so the whole goal is then, how do we take these principles that the, the, the great traditional knowledge workers, uh, excavate, and then how do we apply them to just normal knowledge jobs, right? So all the advice is for knowledge work jobs, right? Basically, if you work on a computer screen for a living, if you send a bunch of emails, you're probably a knowledge worker. All right, so what does it look like to start adapting these ideas to a regular job where you have bosses or this or that? Well, now it becomes a little bit more subtle, but you get the same effect. So now when a boss asks you, "Hey, can you put together this report?" Instead of you saying, "Sure, I'll have it done," and then you, you plug in the most optimistic possible estimate. You know how we do? Like, you fall in love with the idea of getting it done that fast. Uh, you instead take that estimate and you double it. Like, yeah, uh, you don't say one month, you say two months. So you're giving yourself more time to work on it. Then what about, like, the seasonality? Well, if you're an entrepreneur, you can just start actually wiring this into, uh, your actual work rhythms, right? Like, I talk about an entrepreneur in the book, she takes two months off in the summer. She just works it out, like the way her contracts and the clients and she's just not around in that summer, earns about 20% less revenue. She'll happily take that hit to be able to take two months off in the summer so she's getting, you know, variation. And then we talk about people who work in jobs where they can't do that, now they start doing them subtly, right? "Okay, so here's what I do. I don't really schedule meetings on Mondays. I don't tell people I'm doing this." Like when they say, "Hey, when are you available?" I give them lots of times, they just don't happen to have any on Mondays. Now we have, like, a slower start. And I know in December, because we're going to lose the last week anyways for Christmas, I'm kind of careful, I don't tell anyone about this, but I'm pretty careful to have projects set up to finish before that and start after it, but nothing gets really due into it. And I am turning down that intensity dial for those three weeks. And it's not long enough for my boss to really notice, but for me, it's a big deal knowing that I can wind down that wee- uh, that month I'm wound down versus another month, right? So people can start implementing these principles, but like more surreptitiously. So we see them really flashily done in these historical stories, but then when we jump to implement them in practice, it's, like, more subtle. But it's the same principles. You're taking longer, you have variations in intensity on different times. This starts to add up, starts to make a difference.

Chris Williamson 30:58 Yes. Your first insight around do fewer things, which is...E- essentially impossible for people to do, because you look at a calendar and there's room in it, and you fill th- well, there's a gap.

Cal Newport 31:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:14 The gap should be filled, sh- should be doing things. And I think a lot of people feel like do fewer things is accomplish fewer things.

Cal Newport 31:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:23 That's the conflation.

Cal Newport 31:24 Yeah, and they're wrong. Yeah. Because w- if I add two words, it becomes clear, do fewer things at once. Right? Because here's what I think is going on, and this is, like, the case I make in the book, is that when you agree to something, the big problem is when you agree to it, that is going to bring with it administrative overhead, right? So whether I'm ready to work on this thing or not, now the team needs to... "Hey, how's it going?" There's emails I'm going to have to answer. There's meetings going on to the calendar, right? You're like, "Oh, we got to check in on this. How's this doing?" I call it overhead tax. Everything you say yes to generates overhead tax. So the problem is when you say, uh, yes to a lot of things, you're not just trying to ke- uh, "I'm keeping my queue really full so I always have something to do." That's not just what's happening. You're generating a lot more overhead tax. So the more things you've said yes to, the more things are generating administrative overhead, which means the more meetings go into your calendar and the more emails that are coming that you have to answer, right? So where do those meetings come from that are filling up your calendar? They're not just random, right? It's not just, "Hey, let's, let's just... you guys want to do a meeting?" You know? No, no. It's related to things you've agreed to do.

Chris Williamson 32:28 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 32:28 So the more things you've agreed to do, the more of your time gets devoted to the administrative overhead of the things you need to do, which means you have less time available to actually accomplish the things. And to make it worse, this administrative overhead does not coalesce into, like, one nice big batch. It jumps all over your calendar.

Chris Williamson 32:44 Fractures your day-

Cal Newport 32:45 Fractures it. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:46 ... in- into... What's the quote from Deep Work? I must have shared it a million times. Uh...

Cal Newport 32:51 Shatters the-

Chris Williamson 32:52 Shatters, shatters your day into fragments so small that you get nothing meaningful done.

Cal Newport 32:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shatters your... Yeah, something like that. Your schedule into fragments so small, like, insufficient for concentration.

Chris Williamson 33:00 Yes. Whatever.

Cal Newport 33:01 Nothing gets done. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:02 Yes.

Cal Newport 33:02 So n-

Chris Williamson 33:02 I think about that all the time.

Cal Newport 33:03 Well, but think what happens now, though. This is why I think people are so burnt out, because it really is deranging. Think about this. So you say yes to too many things. Now your schedule is, like, completely full, not doing the things, but jumping on calls and answering people's emails about the things, right? Um, now you don't have time to really get them done. So what happens? You fall behind. So new things come in. So now, the things you have to do get longer and you fall even farther behind. Um, and then eventually, you get to a place where most of your time is now taken up, uh, just dealing with talking about work. Nothing gets done. You feel like you're making no progress. You have to start getting up at 4:00 or working in the evenings, you know, and now you're completely frustrated because you said, "I'm on Zoom all day long, and now I'm working instead of being at my kid's basketball game." Like, what was the point of the day? And this is what's making knowledge workers cry uncle. So when I say do fewer things at once, this is not at all about accomplishing fewer things, because if you can save most of your schedule from all this administrative overhead, what happens? You start just executing. So now, the rate at which you're finishing things and finishing them at really high quality levels, that skyrockets, right? So doing fewer things at once will make you actually accomplish many more things. That's not the only reason to do it. The main reason to do it is because it's entirely deranging to have your whole schedule be taken up by administrative overhead. I mean, it just makes life bearable not to be overloaded, but you have this bonus, you're also gonna start producing, right? So if you can just bootstrap, and I have a lot of ideas how to do this, but if you can just bootstrap into doing fewer things, get over that initial fear, you're going to pretty quickly earn your ability to keep doing fewer things, 'cause you're going to be out-shipping everyone else in your organization.

Chris Williamson 34:41 Yeah, the, uh, Zoom apocalypse that everybody went through when the overhead of having meetings and this, I guess, pain from management of, of coordination. You know, if you can't see what someone's doing when they're in the house, 'cause they're no longer in the office-

Cal Newport 34:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:56 Oh God, I mean, that's anxiety-inducing, isn't it? So why don't we start looking at Slack dashboards and a- a- activity time and then, you know, a response to this, you know, the anti-productivity movement was that law, was it France that brought it in, where bosses can't message their workers after 5:00 PM, I think?

Cal Newport 35:13 They tried, yeah. I don't know if the law... I- I don't know if it went through or not.

Chris Williamson 35:16 Oh, interesting.

Cal Newport 35:17 Yeah. But, but it was the-

Chris Williamson 35:17 Topic for the podcast.

Cal Newport 35:18 Well, it is interesting. Well, in- in France, they have labor unions that represent knowledge workers in a way that, that we don't in the US. But the problem with that, and I wrote about this some at the time, is, you know, again, it's like putting, uh, the, little bit of a Band-Aid on the wound. We got to stop the things that are creating the big wounds. Like in, in other words, this is the issue with almost any response that is just focusing on, um, "Let's just reduce the time you can work. Let's have a four-day work week instead of a five-day work week," et cetera. The problem with these ideas is if you don't also fix the overload problem, you're not getting to the core issue, right? The core issue is, "I have too many things on my plate at the same time."

Chris Williamson 35:54 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 35:55 Yeah. So this is why people went insane during the pandemic and anti-productivity took off, because that overhead got s- out of control, because A, everyone got sort of like 20% new tasks all at once when they shifted remote, right? Um, and then B, the coordination took 25% longer because things we could have just done in the hallway get a Zoom meeting, but I can't drag a Zoom meeting on my calendar.

Chris Williamson 36:15 "Kyle, did you get that thing sorted?" "Yeah, I'm on it."

Cal Newport 36:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:18 Like-

Cal Newport 36:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:18 ... that's fine.

Cal Newport 36:19 And on Zoom, there is no two-minute Zoom meeting. "Hey, did you, got that thing sorted?" It's going to be a half hour, because I can't drag it smaller. So we had a, a... the footprint of overhead got worse, the quantity of overhead got worse, and we-

Chris Williamson 36:30 Zoom inflation.

Cal Newport 36:31 And we got the Zoom-pocalypse, where... And this is, you know, my readers were writing me and saying, "My main problem right now," in, you know, May 2020, is, "When do I go to the bathroom? Because I have eight hours of Zoom without any gap anywhere in it." And then at this point, it's just absurdities, right? Like, that's like a-

Chris Williamson 36:48 It's like the, uh-

Cal Newport 36:49 ... absurd play or something.

Chris Williamson 36:50 What's that idea? The Red Queen effect?

Cal Newport 36:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:54 Yeah.

Cal Newport 36:54 Running faster and faster to stay in the same place.

Chris Williamson 36:56 Correct.

Cal Newport 36:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:57 Yeah. And this is, you know, b- the

Chris Williamson 37:00 podcast, and it's been interesting, I guess, that you've been in the arc, you've been involved as... on the guest side in, in arc, seeing it from... I know ep- episode s- 200s, you were in one of the first ones, and then maybe like 300s and then 600s and now. And, uh...... operationally, it's so complex behind the scenes, you know, to coordinate something of this size. And increasingly, I find myself doing more and more of being an operator as opposed to being a creator or a visionary or, or, or a researcher or just a learner. Uh, it's all coordination all the time. So much coordination. And you don't like that, it's the thing from Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited, that lady that starts a bakery and then soon enough she can't remember what it's like to bake a cake.

Cal Newport 37:43 Yes.

Chris Williamson 37:44 All that she's doing is on Zoom meetings, organizing factories to start, where's the wheat coming from and have we, what's the new machine that we're going to have to grind the flour and stuff like that. Um, so yeah. I'm, you know, I'm very much living a, um... And, and I can remember when the operation was simpler because the business was simpler and because the, the actual production itself was simpler.

Cal Newport 38:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:05 But I'm observing even within my own life this trajectory, go from simplicity and purity to, uh, much more success and, and, and I'm very, very grateful and it's amazing to do all of this stuff, but there are all of these side effects that come along with it, that build, that build things out. And there are a million opportunities. There's a million things to say yes to, but there's a million things to say no to that you would have begged to have the opportunity to say yes to only two years ago.

Cal Newport 38:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:36 So you're permanently readjusting the sensitivity on what constitutes a hell yeah.

Cal Newport 38:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:42 And like that's the one thing that with Siv's hell yeah or no, uh, rule, which is fantastic, the problem is that-

Cal Newport 38:49 You lag.

Chris Williamson 38:49 Yes.

Cal Newport 38:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:51 What you would have begged for yesterday is something you now need to learn to say no to today.

Cal Newport 38:56 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the guy who has it all figured out, we all have to just nod our heads to Ferriss, because I was on his show in February and, you know, he had this like headset, like NASCAR-

Chris Williamson 39:07 He's old school, man.

Cal Newport 39:08 ... headset, whatever. I was like-

Chris Williamson 39:09 He's old school.

Cal Newport 39:09 ... "What's going on with this thing, man?" And he's like, uh, "If I, if I, uh, do video well, if I build a studio, then I have to stay where the studio is. Then I have to have people to run the studio. And, uh, I want to travel and I have this headset." He's like, "Look at this thing. This is a pretty good microphone. I could just be anywhere, anywhere in the world." And so maybe Ferriss figured this whole game out.

Chris Williamson 39:30 He's, I mean, he's the guy that did it.

Cal Newport 39:32 Uh, but there's a, there's a deeper thing in there though, right? Which is like, that is the central tension when, with slow productivity, when things start going well. Like, this is partially why I wrote this book is because things were going well for me, right? You know? Like, this is not a book that would have been relevant to me as a 23-year-old at MIT doing, uh, you know, theoretical computer science. But now it's like things are hitting well. Like I can... My, my books get read and I'm a tenured professor and there's opportunities and there's e-... You know, and I have a podcast, these other things are going on now. And it was that same fear of, okay, so how do I keep and crystallize the principles of just slowly producing stuff that matters?

Chris Williamson 40:10 Mm.

Cal Newport 40:11 Even with different stuff going on. And it's led actually me to be pretty careful or thoughtful thinking about the different aspects, like what I do and what I don't do. Like when I started a podcast in the pandemic, uh, I was really worried about the footprint because the footprint can get big, which is fine for, you know, um, like a tier one show like this. But this was something I was doing in addition to being a professor, in addition to writing. So I made a rule, I said half day a week, that's what you get. This podcast gets a half day a week. And if I want to grow or add something or whatever I want to do, I got to figure out a way to do that such that the podcast doesn't leave a half day a week. So I'm going to have to hire... You know, and, and that's what happened. And so it developed slowly. Eventually, I hired a producer to touch the computer for me, because that saves a lot of time, right? Like, okay, I don't have to touch any computers and we have, you know, the master and... Okay, so he talks to all of them. So now I can just show up and do the show. Now I have more time to think about, you know, what am I going to say or what are we going to do? Then we want to do video. Well, how are we going to make this fit within a half day a week? Well, it took a long time. We had to find the right person-

Chris Williamson 41:11 Mm.

Cal Newport 41:12 ... to set something up that was super turnkey. Like, we have the studio set up where, like, it's all just installed and my producer can just, like, turn on these lights that en- and these cameras are always in the same place.

Chris Williamson 41:24 Send me home, yeah.

Cal Newport 41:25 Yeah. Uh, with these big C-stands that, like, never move, that the cameras are, you know-

Chris Williamson 41:29 Locked off.

Cal Newport 41:30 ... locked into and everything like that. So, okay, great. That, that's... So everything has been very, uh, slowly... But it also means though, right? There's impacts. Like, if I wanted to have a lot of guests, probably wasn't going to work with a half day a week rule because, you know, guests can do it when they can do it and it's not going to fit. And so I'm not doing that, right? Like it, it... So it's made some, had some impacts-

Chris Williamson 41:51 You pay a price.

Cal Newport 41:51 ... what you can... Yeah, what you can and can't do. Um, but it allows me... But it's slow and it's growing and slow productivity. So, like, the show is growing and it's like, "Actually, this does pretty well." And it generates more money than like my professor salary. This is interest-... Like, it's starting to get interesting. It's probably going slower than maybe it, it could, but it's a slow productivity play, you know. This- I... This is important, but I want to take my time with this and not let it metastasize.

Chris Williamson 42:14 I think, uh, James Clear put in a newsletter recently, uh, over the short term your results are determined by your intensity, and over the long term, your results are determined by your consistency. And it is a trade-off, you know, there is a trade-off between the two. The harder you work, the quicker you burn out. And there is a threshold above which, you know, that's not to say that that's a linear relationship. You know, if you're doing a... the bare minimum, doing double the bare minimum is probably not going to make that much difference-

Cal Newport 42:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:42 ... to your consistency over a long period of time. But if you're running at seventh gear at 7000 RPM, trying to shift that to a little bit faster is something that's really going to hurt.

Cal Newport 42:53 Yeah. Look at a famous novelist, like they figured this out, right? Novelists do have very long careers. They figured out no more than a... if you're a genre, one book a year, and if your literary, like one book every two or three years, maybe even every four years. Do very little outside of the writing, like the whole industry understands this. Like, we don't need to hear from John Grisham until, like, he has a, a book coming out. But it allows them to produce large literatures over their lifetime, right? So like, we could all take a lessons from that. Like you don't see John Grisham being like-... you know, if I really get after it, I could probably get three books done, you know, I could do the whole James Patterson thing. Like, I could have three books a year and then I could get a team to write other books and then we could merchandise this. I'm going to have John Grisham land and it's, we're working with you. No, it's like, I, I, if I do all that, I'm going to last five years.

Chris Williamson 43:40 Have you seen

Chris Williamson 43:41 Brandon Sanderson's output?

Cal Newport 43:43 Yes.

Chris Williamson 43:44 Yes. I mean, so there's a, I think it's in the r/Fantasy subreddit. And if you have a look at that, the number of words that that guy writes per year is terrifying.

Cal Newport 43:57 It is t- but I worry about him.

Chris Williamson 43:58 Me too.

Cal Newport 43:59 Because he's adding other things. He started adding a- he's, he's, he's building out more of a company.

Chris Williamson 44:05 A merch wing and-

Cal Newport 44:06 Merch. Wer- well, and yes, exactly, merch, and, uh, fulfilling their own, the- their own po- uh, printer now. They do some of his books, they print themselves, uh, as opposed to going through, like, a standard publisher. And he has a big team now, and like, his whole thing, like everyo- he's famous in writing circles for exactly this. Like, he just sits and writes, and he generates, like, a lot of words. Like, that's what he d-

Chris Williamson 44:27 I think it's, I think it's, uh, maybe 300,000 words a year.

Cal Newport 44:31 Yeah. It's, it's crazy.

Chris Williamson 44:32 Yeah.

Cal Newport 44:32 It's crazy. I mean, you, you saw his video, his whole surprise video thing in the pandemic, where he was like, "I have a surprise for you. I wrote five extra books and I'm going to, like, sell them directly."

Chris Williamson 44:42 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Cal Newport 44:42 He just wrote five extra books. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:44 I did see that, yeah, yes.

Cal Newport 44:45 The thing he did, which I do admire (laughs) because it's crazy, but I love it. It's a deep work thing. So he lives in, like, a normal cul-de-sac in Utah, right? So it's just, like, a cul-de-sac of houses. Um, eh, he bought the lot next to his was empty, right? What he did was, instead of building, like, a cool workspace there, he dug down and built an underground lair, right? So he built it, uh, uh, a whole Victorian Gothic underground lair-

Chris Williamson 45:12 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 45:12 ... where there's, you know, old fish tanks with weird things in it. He writes in there. There's a, a full screening room movie theater in there. They podcast in there. The whole thing's decorated like a Tim Burton movie. Built it underground, right? 20, 10-foot ceilings, like they dug all... I have photos of all this. Then he covered it back over, and then they put, like, a garage on top of it, and he has a secret entrance (laughs) to it from his house. So he goes under... He's, the suburban house, it's like secret entrance in his garage, and it takes him into this, like, massive underground lair. I think it's awesome. Uh, it's, uh, preposterous.

Chris Williamson 45:44 (laughs)

Cal Newport 45:44 But hey, what if you're writing fantasy novels though at his level? Like, yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:48 Well, that's one of your lessons, which is that the space you inhabit when you're trying to do your productivity can influence the way that you feel.

Cal Newport 45:56 Yeah, and that's a slow productivity idea, right? Is that, like, okay, the environment matters because you're trying to produce the best possible stuff, not just trying to be as busy as possible. So yeah, so environment matters. So Sanderson built that whole underground lair 'cause it inspires him to write, you know, fantasy well, in much the same way that Dan Brown, who wrote The Da Vinci Code. He, he has a similar kind of quirky house he built in New Hampshire with like secret passageways and code and you pull down the statue head.

Chris Williamson 46:20 Oh, cool.

Cal Newport 46:21 'Cause he writes sort of conspiratorial genre thrillers, so, like, why not, like, put ourselves into that, that mindset? Other people did other things. So, like, one example, uh, Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola, he brings, wherever his production offices are, old electronic gadgets 'cause he likes this connection to building, like, "I'm building something that's, you know, I'm bringing together parts." And he used to solder and do all this stuff as a kid, so he, like, brings them wherever he's going. But it's not just, uh, the positive, which is have stuff in your space that's inspiring. It's also get away from the stuff that's distracting, right? And this is the problem, for example, with just working out of your home office, that's just right there in your home next to everything else, is that you're exposed to all of these highly salient distractions-

Chris Williamson 47:07 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 47:07 ... that have nothing to do with what you're doing, but when you see them, are going to trigger... All these neural networks are gonna start to be activated and, "Ah, there's a laundry basket. Oh my God, the laundry."

Chris Williamson 47:17 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Cal Newport 47:17 "And when do I need to do the laundry? And what is going..." And it's, this is very difficult. So I also tell these stories of people, uh, these are mainly writers too, who go through, like, great lengths to get away from the distractions. And my favorite was Peter Benchley who wrote Jaws, because he lived right down the street from where I grew up when he was writing Jaws. So I, I know his house. I could see it from mine. It's a beautiful house. And when he wrote Jaws, he didn't write it in that house, but in a back room at a furnace repair shop that was on the other side of town.

Chris Williamson 47:45 (laughs)

Cal Newport 47:46 And we, the fact checkers at The New Yorker talked to Wendy Benchley about this. Peter's dead, but they talked to Wendy, and she was like, "Oh yeah, they were, like, hammering in there, man. It was like loud metal hammering." That's where he went to write Jaws, because he was trying to get away from the distractions. Like, the distraction of loud hammering, whatever, that's not something that he has a lot of associations with. He can associate, right? That's no big deal. But the laundry basket, you know, th- now you're gone for the next 20 minutes thinking about it.

Chris Williamson 48:10 Did you ever hear the story about Victor Hugo being locked in the room by his own servant?

Cal Newport 48:16 No.

Chris Williamson 48:17 So this-

Cal Newport 48:18 I haven't already.

Chris Williamson 48:18 This is, um, a guy who wanted to write six pages per day, this writer, and he paid his servant every single night to come in during the middle of the night and pull the bedsheets off him, just slide the bedsheets off him, and then there was a quill and an ink pot and six pieces of paper-

Cal Newport 48:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:37 ... that were left on the table next to him, and then he would lock the bedroom door from the outside and he wouldn't unlock the door until Victor Hugo slid-

Cal Newport 48:45 Oh, six pieces-

Chris Williamson 48:46 ... six pieces of paper, double-sided, written underneath the door.

Cal Newport 48:49 I like that.

Chris Williamson 48:50 That's the (laughs) level-

Cal Newport 48:51 People, by the way-

Chris Williamson 48:52 ... of extremity that writers have had to go through in order to be able to overcome the writing hump.

Cal Newport 48:57 My, my Angela would do this. She would go to, typically, like, cheaper hotels, take all the artwork off the wall. She wanted it to be white box, uh, and she would write on the bed.So she would just, like, prop up on one arm with a legal pad. And like that, so there was nothing to do. You were in a completely distraction-free box.

Chris Williamson 49:11 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 49:12 Steinbeck had this beautiful property at Sag Harbor. He would get his rowboat and go out into the middle of the harbor-

Chris Williamson 49:18 (laughs)

Cal Newport 49:18 ... and write on a little hand desk. David Mercola lived in, uh, um, Martha's Vineyard. Beautiful house, West Tisbury. He wrote in basically the garden shed. So he had a great home office, like where he would do his like correspondence or whatever. He wrote his books on a typewriter in the garden shed. Like, it was pretty absurd. He was in the backyard in like a shed. But yeah, they would do anything to kind of, "Let's get away from distractions. Let's, like, lock ourselves someplace where it's, you know, it's hard to leave, there's nothing here that's distracting. Let's get some work done."

Chris Williamson 49:47 I don't have the keys.

Cal Newport 49:48 They don't have the... Yeah, Mark Twain when he, he had this off building that he would go, an outbuilding he would work out, and so his wife had this like horn she would blow to try to get his attention, you know. (laughs) "It's time to come back for dinner." 'Cause he was-

Chris Williamson 49:59 (laughs)

Cal Newport 49:59 ... so far away, right? It was like hard.

Chris Williamson 50:01 Wow.

Cal Newport 50:01 I have an off, you know, I have a, at my house I have a very nice, uh, library, but I also rent office space like a three-minute walk away. It's just like a different place to go to.

Chris Williamson 50:11 Yeah.

Cal Newport 50:11 And so my podcast studio's there, but also it's a place to go to write.

Chris Williamson 50:15 What is a

Chris Williamson 50:16 more accessible solution for someone who doesn't want to dig 20 feet underneath their house in Utah?

Cal Newport 50:23 Everyone should do that. Come on.

Chris Williamson 50:24 That's true.

Cal Newport 50:25 More underground lairs.

Chris Williamson 50:26 That... I'm pro-underground lairs. This is the revolution that we really need.

Cal Newport 50:30 Podcast lairs I think would be awesome.

Chris Williamson 50:32 That would be cool.

Cal Newport 50:33 Yeah, you go to, like, the small office and you go down the stairs and you just have like-

Chris Williamson 50:36 Through this, you could pull the statue of the tiny owl and it opens up the door.

Cal Newport 50:39 Yeah, and there's just like a killer underground... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:41 I love it.

Cal Newport 50:41 Yeah. You could also, like, kidnap and murder your guest down there, I guess the problem with it.

Chris Williamson 50:44 Imagine that, imagine if it was a podcast run by a serial killer, and each guest, that was just our last day on the planet.

Cal Newport 50:50 The ratings would be... I mean, the downloads would be off the charts.

Chris Williamson 50:52 It would be briefly-

Cal Newport 50:53 Briefly.

Chris Williamson 50:53 ... and then-

Cal Newport 50:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:54 ... they'd may get caught.

Cal Newport 50:55 Because of the murdering. That would be the problem. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:57 Yeah.

Cal Newport 50:57 Like, eventually.

Chris Williamson 50:58 Yeah. It's looked down on.

Cal Newport 50:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:59 Need to redo that.

Cal Newport 51:00 Yeah, but you got to innovate. You got to innovate. Yeah, so, okay, what... Let's say you're not, you're not going to build an underground lair. Right? Um, I'm a big fan, for example, in what I call work from near home. Which is you don't need to build an underground lair, but also if you don't work in an office, find a space to work in that's not your house. Like, that is a worthy investment. Um, and that might just mean leasing just like, you know, low-cost office space nearby. That might be worth it, right? And don't think of that as an expense. Think of it as you are going to be able to be... Your mental health's going to be much better, you're going to be able to produce much more. Or taking an outbuilding in your backyard and make it into something that, uh, you can work in. I mean, I think this idea of going out of your way to find places to work that's not just your home is the right idea. Don't think about it in terms of, "Uh, my home is free, and this is not free." No, think about it more as, "My home is this terrible place to work that I really wish I didn't have to work there. Oh, this is, I only have to pay this much to avoid that? Oh, that's great." You know? You're, you're, you're paying to solve a problem.

Chris Williamson 51:57 A good reframe.

Cal Newport 51:58 And then be careful about, uh, your environment. But the rituals can be not just, uh, aesthetic, but can also be functional. Right? So, so it, it might not just be here's what's in my space to inspire me. It can be here's what I do as a ritual before I work to inspire me. So it could be I walk the same route, like to this coffee shop, I get this coffee. As I walk with that coffee back, that's when I'm beginning to frame up what I'm about to work on. And then when I sit down after those sessions, it's like hard work time, and that's how I mentally separate from email time. And, you know, like I do this, for example. There's a particular walk I'll do, about 15 minutes, transition walk. Okay, I'm, I'm, I'm switching... I'll often switch locations, but also I want to switch my mindset into I'm writing now, not answering emails or doing something like this.

Chris Williamson 52:51 It's the reason why training at home during the pandemic was so difficult, that there is something ritualistic about you get in the car and, and you drive to the gym and you say hello to... Or you're playing your music, you say hello to the receptionist, and then, you know, you dump your bag down. There's something about that that's, "Right, okay, this is gym time." And in some ways, there's a bit of a costly signaling thing going on, which is-

Cal Newport 53:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:16 ... "I've driven all the way to the gym. I'm not not going to train now."

Cal Newport 53:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:19 "I've driven 15 minutes to get to the gym." Whereas if you go, "I walked into the garage," like, wah-

Cal Newport 53:25 Yeah, a little bit.

Chris Williamson 53:26 It's a bit of a fucking thing, yeah. So, um,

Chris Williamson 53:29 what about going back to the do-fewers-things thing. For the innate people pleasers amongst us-

Cal Newport 53:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:37 ... how can we get better at learning to say no-

Cal Newport 53:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:40 ... to things? Both philosophically, emotionally, and then tactically as well.

Cal Newport 53:45 Yeah. Transparency about your workload. Right? I think this is the, the number one issue that when solved makes workload management better, is getting transparent with other people, "This is what's on my plate." Instead of keeping it this obfuscated thing, no one knows what anyone else is doing and we just sort of throw tasks at each other and, like, sometimes they come back and sometimes they're accepted, and we just imagine why that is. Be more transparent. So many of the tactics in the book are all under that category for under, doing fewer things, are all under this category of making your workload more transparent. So, like, here's a, a really direct way of doing that, for example. This is like sort of on the nose, but people are actually doing this, so now I, now I say, like, this is not a thought experiment, but really do this. Uh, imagine you have a shared document. And at the top it says, "Okay, here's what I'm actively working on right now." And you should have like three things under there. Like, "I'm working on these three things." Below it, like big dividing line. "All right, here's the ordered queue of things that, like, are lined up for me to work on next, and in the order in which they're going to, like, sort of pop into here as I finish things." Right? Now imagine someone's like, "Yeah, Chris, can you do whatever?" Now someone just be like, "No," or "Yes," you could be like, "Yeah, just go add it to the queue." Right? "This is where I keep track. I'm very careful about my work. Add it over there. Uh, if there's any information I need to know to do it, you know, either put that in there or put a note there that I should, like, call you when I get closer." And now they have to confront the reality of your workload.... right? Which means either they're going to say, "All right. Never mind. Like, I kind of need to get this done. You have, like, 15 things (laughs) waiting to happen. I... You know, it would take too long," or their expectations are reasonable, like, "Oh. Okay. Uh, I see you're not starting to work on this tomorrow. I'm not going to start bothering you. In fact, I can keep checking in on this document and seeing this thing marching its way up to when it's active, so I'm going to generate no overhead tax until you're working on it. Yeah. Of course, we're not going to have standing meetings or emails until it's one of your three things you're working on." So you either get much more realistic calibration of, like, when d- you're going to get work back, or you're like, "Oh. Don't, don't bother about it."

Chris Williamson 55:44 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 55:45 Now, if they're a boss, they say, "No, no, I need to get this done now," now you can put it back to them, "Great. Tell me which one to move," and I'll let them know they s- you said that, like, uh... And, and so now there's... People have to actually be involved.

Chris Williamson 55:59 What about the emotion that you feel of... Uh, th- there's this sort of default to yes. You know, you don't want to appear lazy. There's almost this sort of self-flagellation that I certainly have with my productivity work. It's like, "I should be able to take on more. I shouldn't be as inefficient," or whatever malady I think I have that's causing me to not get a million things done in a day and only-

Cal Newport 56:23 Right.

Chris Williamson 56:23 ... to get half a million things done in a day.

Cal Newport 56:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:25 What about dealing with that, you know, guilt almost-

Cal Newport 56:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:30 ... like productivity guilt?

Cal Newport 56:31 Yeah. So never give a yes or no in the room helps with that, right? So once you have some sort of system, now you're kind of tracking, "What am I working on now? What am I waiting to work on?" however you want to do that. Your answer can always be, uh, "Yeah. That sounds great. That sounds really important. Like, that sounds like the type of thing I could really do. Uh, next time I get a chance, let me just go... You know, I'm very careful about... I have these, like, work management systems. I track my time very carefully. Let me just run it through that and see, like, what I'm dealing with, and then I'll get back to you." And so you're not giving a yes or no in the room. And now the next day or, like, later that day, you can actually go through and look at it and come back and, and either you say, "This is important" and figure out when you're going to work on it and give them a good estimate or be like, "And, uh, you know what? I took a look, and, um, really I don't have a lot of... I'm looking at my time. I tracked my time very carefully. It'd be like a couple months before I had enough cycles, so this is not going to work. I'm not going to be able to fit this in now."

Chris Williamson 57:22 Yeah. That specifically, the, the wordage-

Cal Newport 57:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:25 ... of delivering this to people, have you found any better or worse ways to actually communicate, "This is a thing that I don't think I can get done"?

Cal Newport 57:36 Yeah. Well, there's, there's two things here. The first is just you have to be super clear with the no when you give it. So when you give the no, it has to be, you know, hammered into the tablets that Moses is holding clear, right? Like, "I can't do this." And then you can put whatever... Then you soften all... The softening should be around the very clear no when you actually give it. Do not leave any wiggle room for, like, "Maybe I could do this."

Chris Williamson 58:01 It's, yeah. "I can't do this right now."

Cal Newport 58:02 Right now, because you know what'll ha- Their whole goal in life is to get this thing taken care of that's on their list. So if you give them... They're, they're not going to. A lot of people just hope that the other person who gave them the task in the first place is going to do the no for them.

Chris Williamson 58:15 "I will take this-"

Cal Newport 58:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:17 "... off now."

Cal Newport 58:17 "Yeah. You're right, Chris. I'm looking at your sch- Yeah. This... You do sound busy. No. Don't bother. I'll take it on." They'll be like, "Great. So when are you available? Two and a half weeks? Great. Uh, I'll expect in two and a half weeks." Like, that's... So you got to be clear. "I can't do this." Um, and then you can be nice around it, but don't let the niceness make the no be ambiguous. But the, the thing I mentioned before, that's the second piece here that could be useful, signaling that you're very careful about your time. This earns you a huge amount of leeway, right? 'Cause a lot of, uh, no resistance, right? Resistance is someone saying no, comes from the fact where, "I don't really trust that you have your act together."

Chris Williamson 58:52 Yeah.

Cal Newport 58:53 Um, "I just... I, I don't..." Are you-

Chris Williamson 58:54 Is this overwhelm or is this laziness?

Cal Newport 58:56 Are you laziness? Are you all... Uh, you know, just you're entitled. It gets all these mi- Do your work. But if you have the reputation of, oh, like, you're like a Cal Newport nerd, right? Like, you have your, you have your stuff together. So if you're signaling that, "Yeah. Let me just, let me just run this through my system because I actually track, like, everything I work on, and I find the time in advance when I'm going to work on it. Let me just run it through the system and let you know, like, when we could fit this in," and then you come back and say, "I can't fit it in," now they're dealing with, "Ah, Chris has his act together on this. He's... So he's probably not lying. He probably doesn't have enough time for this. And, yay, isn't it awesome that Chris, like, has his act together?"

Chris Williamson 59:32 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 59:32 You know, and it's a, it's a... The technical no, so, like, the no based on, "I have a very technical system," can actually raise your esteem in the eyes (laughs) of the people you're-

Chris Williamson 59:40 Absolutely.

Cal Newport 59:40 ... saying no to.

Chris Williamson 59:41 Absolutely.

Cal Newport 59:41 They're like, "Oh. This guy. Okay. T- Wait a second. Maybe we... This is someone we should keep their eyes on. Like, they really seem to have their act together."

Chris Williamson 59:47 Yeah.

Cal Newport 59:47 So having some sort of system where I'm managing my own workload, "Here's what I'm working on. Here's what's active. Here's what's not active," that division is critical. You cannot treat everything on your plate as all active at once. It has to be, "This is active. This I'm waiting on." Like, that, that's how you get rid of that overhead tax problem. And then you need to communicate to other people, "I'm really careful about this."

Chris Williamson 1:00:09 So to recap the nos for people pleasers. Uh, be transparent about your time.

Cal Newport 1:00:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:15 To help people buy in and understand what's going on.

Cal Newport 1:00:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:18 Say no-

Cal Newport 1:00:19 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:00:19 ... when you mean no. And relate it back to your time management and availability and the fact that you're careful with your usage of time.

Cal Newport 1:00:27 Yes. And to make this all easier, don't give the yes or no in the room. So in the moment where all of the social pressure is on you, have your set answer, which is not a yes or a no, but is a, "This sounds great. Let me... Next time I get a chance, I'll run this through my system and see, like, when I might be able to get this done."

Chris Williamson 1:00:43 Is that to give you a little bit of emotional buffer-

Cal Newport 1:00:46 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:00:46 ... so that you're not as, "Oh, yes" (laughs)

Cal Newport 1:00:49 Yes. Because the emotional pre-

Chris Williamson 1:00:50 It just squeaks out of you.

Cal Newport 1:00:51 The power dynamic is to, like, "Chris."

Chris Williamson 1:00:53 Yeah. (laughs)

Cal Newport 1:00:53 "Can you do this f-" You don't... You can't... You do not want to say no there.

Chris Williamson 1:00:56 Yes. Okay.

Cal Newport 1:00:57 But if you send an email four hours later-

Chris Williamson 1:00:59 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:00:59 ... now you got the courage, right? (laughs) 'Cause you don't s-

Chris Williamson 1:01:01 Very good. I think I heard a story. Is it Daniel Kahneman maybe? I think it's either Daniel Kahneman or Warren Buffett.... that say something along the lines of, "I never say yes or no on the phone."

Cal Newport 1:01:14 Yeah. I've heard this before. Uh, 'cause I'm kinda stealing this. I don't know who it was, but I've heard this before. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:20 Yeah. Well, it seem- just, there is a particular, uh... I, I don't know. I- I'm seeing people pleasing everywhere at the moment, and I'm very hesitant about, like, my shiny new psychological pattern toy being used to rea- you know, like-

Cal Newport 1:01:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:35 ... there's this great tweet I saw the other day that said, um, "I've just learned about the availability bias, and I have to say, out of all them, I think it's my favorite one."

Cal Newport 1:01:43 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:01:43 Uh, uh, like-

Cal Newport 1:01:43 I love it, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:44 Yeah. And, um, I'm very hesitant about, uh, about, like, pattern matching this to everything. But I, I can't imagine the mindset of a person who doesn't feel that compulsion, doesn't feel that sort of desire to... Well, I mean, I- I don't wanna say no, but he's waiting on me. He's there on the phone-

Cal Newport 1:01:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:59 ... or he's there in the person. And, uh, and yet, it seems to be giving yourself a little bit of psychological distance, you know, that mindfulness gap, as Corey Allen calls it-

Cal Newport 1:02:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:10 ... uh, to just go, "Okay, let's..." Uh, a s- in the cold, harsh light of day, "Can I do this?"

Cal Newport 1:02:18 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:02:18 Probably not.

Cal Newport 1:02:19 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:02:19 And I don't think... You know, when I think about this stuff that I say yes to, additional calls, many of which I said in the Uber on the way here yes to, I'm looking at my Monday and I'm like, "That's nice and free." And someone goes, "Do we got a c- time for a call next week?" I'm like, "Yeah, Monday looks great." Um, giving yourself as much psychological distance as possible just helps you to... Like, I probably can't do this. I don't really even need to look at my schedule, because if it's something that's optional, and it doesn't fire me up, and it's not mandatory, I- it can ju- it's a no.

Cal Newport 1:02:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:49 It's obviously a no.

Cal Newport 1:02:50 Yeah, but you're not gonna say it in the moment.

Chris Williamson 1:02:51 Chris.

Cal Newport 1:02:52 Well-

Chris Williamson 1:02:52 It's obviously a no, Chris. (laughs)

Cal Newport 1:02:54 Well,

Cal Newport 1:02:55 speaking of which, can we get on a call later? Is that-

Chris Williamson 1:02:57 (laughs) Yeah. Uh, Monday.

Cal Newport 1:02:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:58 Monday looks great.

Cal Newport 1:02:59 Uh, but another thing that goes along with that would also be templates and quotas. Like, it's another way... So, how do you deal with things where you're gonna say yes to some, but you can't say yes to everything? So, you could quota it, right? "Yeah, uh, I'd love to take calls with, like, whatever, new people or whatever, but I, I only do three a month. So I already hit my three this month, so I can't do it this month." Like, quotas are a way to keep you doing things or... It doesn't, you don't want to say no to every single time, but if you say yes every single time, you get overwhelmed. And then templates, which would probably be great for you, actually. I've been messing around with these too. For certain types of really common things, you have to have a whole templated process in place, so that it doesn't have to just be the interaction. So, like, if you, uh, if you write Adam Grant to blurb a book, he's got this great, "So you want me to blurb a book document." And, like, it walks through, like, and so, "Here's how it works. Like, I can't blurb most books, but you should send it to me and, and here's how many I get. And so, in the end, I blurb a few. And so if you don't hear from me, then that means it wasn't bl-" and he lays the whole thing out. So now, because you're- I- you know, I get this request a lot as a writer. You know, when someone's like, "Okay, uh, can you blurb my book?" And it's often, like, someone you kinda know. Now you can just send them the thing. You've templated it, right? So it's not an initiative-

Chris Williamson 1:04:08 Or you could even have, uh... We've started using this on the website for a few things, um, like dark links on your website, you know, secret URLs. CalNewport.com/testimonial or whatever.

Cal Newport 1:04:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:21 And you just set... Well, there's the, there's the URL. Have a little look.

Cal Newport 1:04:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:24 I think there's a, a type of legitimacy that the URL gives it as well, which is quite nice.

Cal Newport 1:04:28 Yeah, they're like, "Oh, it's a system."

Chris Williamson 1:04:29 Oh my God.

Cal Newport 1:04:30 It's a system.

Chris Williamson 1:04:30 He's got, he's got a, he's got a URL for it. This, this means that it must happen an awful lot.

Cal Newport 1:04:34 Yeah, like CalNewport.com/blurb-request or something.

Chris Williamson 1:04:37 Yes, yeah, precisely.

Cal Newport 1:04:37 And now it seems, like, real, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:38 Precisely.

Cal Newport 1:04:38 Do you have this issue with, like, unsolicited guest? Is this, like, or-

Chris Williamson 1:04:43 Uh, the-

Cal Newport 1:04:43 ... or do people kinda understand in this world, you know, the, the host and their team, it's r- it's pulling in guest? Or do you get a lot?

Chris Williamson 1:04:51 So, I get an awful lot of requests to come on the show. One of the problems, and this is, uh, I guess a unique challenge of going from total cottage industry solo influencer to niche micro fame, to whatever version of, of platform we're at now, like, hyper niche, slightly larger fame. Um, I built up along the way. You have my email.

Cal Newport 1:05:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:20 And, like, fucking David Allen has my email.

Cal Newport 1:05:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:24 And, and Ryan Holiday has my email.

Cal Newport 1:05:26 And that's-

Chris Williamson 1:05:27 And Mark Manson has my email.

Cal Newport 1:05:28 And it's clearly a personal email address-

Chris Williamson 1:05:29 Correct, yeah.

Cal Newport 1:05:29 ... that you set up a long time ago.

Chris Williamson 1:05:30 Yes.

Cal Newport 1:05:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:31 It's, it was, I- I've had it for 10 years. Dude, my, my phone number, I probably shouldn't say this but I don't care. My phone number was on every flyer for a club night that we ran for years, years and years. And I haven't been... Uh, you don't start something off most of the time with the systems and processes of, "And one day, this is going to reach half a billion people a year."

Cal Newport 1:05:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:57 And, like-

Cal Newport 1:05:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:58 ... there's g- there's gonna be all of these weird external-... You just do the thing.

Cal Newport 1:06:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:01 You just, in this sort of scrappy, can-do-

Cal Newport 1:06:03 Scrap it together.

Chris Williamson 1:06:04 Yeah, exactly, which is cool, and I like the fact that we did that. But, um, yeah, I am reaping the whirlwind of this Frankenstein's mon- monster that we built before. Uh, up until a year ago, we, we got our first, like, additional member of staff one year ago. One, one year ago, it was me and video guy Dean, still.

Cal Newport 1:06:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:23 Same thing. Uh, and then we got another guy, and he was like, "Oh, so what's your systems for, um, like, communicating and stuff?" And I went, "Oh, we have a Facebook Messenger chat." He said, "What do you mean?" I was like, "Well, there's me-

Cal Newport 1:06:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:34 ... and Dean, and a Facebook Messenger chat."

Cal Newport 1:06:37 We just rock and roll.

Chris Williamson 1:06:38 And we- we just go back and forth-

Cal Newport 1:06:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:40 ... and we do a mess- 'cause you can reply.

Cal Newport 1:06:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:42 And, you know, Facebook maintains the quality of, of media. And he said, "That's insane to do that. That's absolutely insane." I was like, "Yeah, but we've released 600 podcasts and 1,000 clips-"

Cal Newport 1:06:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:55 "... through a Facebook Messenger chat." And then w- he moved us over to Slack. I know you got a problem with Slack, but it's a slight problem. But that was revolutionary for us, because it segmented things into different channels, and we could find things much more easily. And it's got a record, it's a history of everything we've ever spoken about, organized by topic. But, uh, yeah, it's...It's a real interesting time. I'm really thinking an awful lot about the operations of the show because I found myself becoming increasingly distracted by being an operator, not being a creator. Not- not spending time reading, not doing that stuff, 'cause it's just this huge, big behemoth.

Cal Newport 1:07:26 It- it must be the stage right now is that- that transition to-

Chris Williamson 1:07:29 It is.

Cal Newport 1:07:29 It becomes... You become the head of a organization.

Chris Williamson 1:07:33 I'm a-

Cal Newport 1:07:33 Not just, like, someone who's doing a podcast that people are talking to.

Chris Williamson 1:07:36 No.

Cal Newport 1:07:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:36 It's- it's- it's very quickly become I am now COO, uh, chief brand, uh, the- the leader, host, head researcher, guest curator, all of these things. And, uh, yeah, we've got... Right now, we've got an exec, uh... After I finish up with you (laughs) , I've got a two-hour meeting with, uh, an executive consultant who I literally just needed to be like, "I need a Navy SEAL-"

Cal Newport 1:07:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:59 "... kind of guy to come in and kick the door down, and just say, 'Right, this isn't a problem for you. Uh, this is something I'm gonna take off your plate, and I'm gonna reorg everything.'" 'Cause if you look at the org structure of Modern Wisdom, it's a 15-legged octopus with one head.

Cal Newport 1:08:16 Because you- you-

Chris Williamson 1:08:16 And it's me.

Cal Newport 1:08:17 ... you hired people here-

Chris Williamson 1:08:18 Precisely, yes.

Cal Newport 1:08:18 ... and there to do specific things. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:19 I piecemealed everything together-

Cal Newport 1:08:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:20 ... and then didn't vertically pull anything out.

Cal Newport 1:08:22 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:08:22 And especially because it's all so recent. It's all