0:10

I'm Cal Newport and this

0:13

is Deep Question, the

0:15

show about cultivating a

0:17

deep life in a

0:19

distracted world. I'm here in

0:21

my Deep Work HQ, joined as

0:23

always, by my producer Jesse.

0:25

Jesse, we made a little

0:28

run last week on the podcast

0:30

rankings. What happened? Hot on

0:32

us saying like, hey, we're

0:35

proud to be top 20

0:37

in the technology category.

0:39

I was like, is that really

0:41

true? And I went to check and

0:43

we were sitting number five. I

0:45

think that might have been temporary,

0:47

like we just had an episode

0:50

come out or maybe because Tim

0:52

Ferris tweeted about us. It got

0:54

like a little bump, but you know,

0:56

hey, we're there. That was on the Apple

0:58

rankings. Yeah, so it was

1:00

acquired, had taken the number one,

1:03

all in podcast number two, Lex

1:05

number three, New York Times Hard

1:07

Fork number four. when we temporarily had

1:09

number five. So we were we're there. I

1:11

would say like we're pretty different than hard

1:13

for them. They talk a lot about news

1:15

and stuff, right? It's very news. Yeah, that's

1:17

Kevin Roos and Casey, what's his name, about

1:19

him reading his name. He's got a good

1:21

newsletter. Yeah, that's news reaction. So they're very

1:24

much like, okay, here's what's going on

1:26

with like Deep Seek this week or something

1:28

like that. Yeah, we're a little different, but

1:30

we're a little different, but we're doing what we're

1:32

doing what we're doing what we're doing what we can.

1:34

I saw. Kind of reminded me somehow

1:37

of us last night. I went

1:39

to see September 5 You're gonna

1:41

have to pull through this chain

1:43

of connection That's a movie

1:45

about the 1972 Munich Olympics

1:47

about the Israeli athletes when

1:49

they were taken hostage by

1:52

Black September. Yeah, but the movie

1:54

is about the ABC sports news crew

1:56

mad dog did a thing he had

1:58

a guest on that Well, who was

2:00

involved. It was his son, who was

2:03

the McManus, who was the head of

2:05

CBS. Oh, interesting. He had him on

2:07

for like an hour, talked about the

2:09

movie. So it was a cool movie.

2:12

It's short, which I like 90 minutes.

2:14

And, you know, the idea was the

2:16

only American broadcasting network there was ABC,

2:18

because they were covering the sports. Like,

2:20

it was McKay, it was McManus, it

2:23

was McManus, it was McManus, his dad.

2:25

Oh, fantastic. But here's why I connected

2:27

to us, outside of just the fact

2:29

that we're Olympic Alber athletes, at least

2:31

we look that way. The director, who

2:34

I don't really know well, he's a

2:36

Swiss director, really emphasize the sort of

2:38

physicality of that era of broadcast technology.

2:40

I mean, you'll see this if you

2:43

watch the movies, it's all. buttons and

2:45

walkies and soldering things and tapes moving

2:47

through the reals. Like he really luxuriated

2:49

in the sort of analog, the sort

2:51

of techno like electro mechanical technology era

2:54

like the 1970s. Maybe wish we had

2:56

more buttons. I mean it's all like

2:58

switches and but he really gets in

3:00

on it like fingers pressing the buttons

3:02

and the holding the things and just

3:05

the. the film from the 60mm camera

3:07

going through the exposure bath and the

3:09

people moving the things on the reals

3:11

like for whatever reason he was very

3:14

much into the the physicality of the

3:16

broadcast technology. Let me think about our

3:18

setup here. There was a thing about

3:20

them deciding on who to put on

3:22

air there because they chose McKay over

3:25

Cosell just based on Cosell might be

3:27

a little too not as humble as

3:29

needed. And then he was used at

3:31

the end because Cosell. got his way

3:33

back into the Olympic Village. And so

3:36

he was, at least according to the

3:38

movie, he was in a spot like

3:40

when they were bringing the hostages down

3:42

to like the buses. He happened to

3:45

be right there. So he called in,

3:47

they didn't have time. or the technology

3:49

to directly patch the phone into the

3:51

international broadcast. It was like 900 million

3:53

people. So at least in the movie,

3:56

they were holding, he had a walkie-talkie,

3:58

not even a phone. They were holding

4:00

a walkie-talkie up to the in-studio microphone,

4:02

you used like talk into the earpiece

4:04

of the announcer, and then they patched

4:07

the in-studio microphone into the broadcast. And

4:09

so that's how they got Howard Cosell.

4:11

Yeah, he was upset that he wasn't.

4:13

Jennings had been covering the Middle East.

4:16

So it made sense. Like he actually

4:18

knew the players involved and he had

4:20

covered war zones. But I think it

4:22

was McKay, right? That was the guy.

4:24

Yeah, so I guess the difference is

4:27

they had one person on site. Okay,

4:29

so and then they have one person

4:31

in studio. Yeah. Okay, so and then

4:33

they have one person in studio. Yeah.

4:36

So they have one person in studio.

4:38

Yeah. So he got his way like

4:40

into the Olympic village and sort of

4:42

got on the Olympic. Sports broadcaster. Yeah,

4:44

might not have been appropriate. How about

4:47

that? I'll tell you more about the

4:49

Mad Dog stuff afterwards. I don't for

4:51

the audience. But anyways, it made me

4:53

jealous that we don't have. When this

4:55

show gets big, when we go from

4:58

number five, number three, I want a

5:00

70-style TV control room. Completely unnecessarily. I

5:02

mean, we have one switch you press,

5:04

basically. But I want there to be

5:07

like four guys, chain smoking cigarettes. Marble

5:09

Reds, pressing switches and turning things and

5:11

talking to the giant headsets. It would

5:13

go along with your old school keyboard

5:15

too. There we go. We got mechanical

5:18

keyboard and a unionized television crew from

5:20

1970s broadcast television. I love that stuff

5:22

though. I love that choice by the

5:24

director. Anyways, we got a good show

5:26

today. So you know our big three

5:29

topics under the umbrella of modern digital

5:31

environment conflicting with us. We got digital

5:33

knowledge work. We got attention economy and

5:35

we have. the deep life in the

5:38

21st century. We're going to continue our

5:40

look, our theme we've been looking at

5:42

recently of knowledge work in the digital

5:44

age. We've got another cool theme I

5:46

want to get into today. It's an

5:49

idea that I came across. in a

5:51

podcast that someone sent me a clip

5:53

and then I sort of went down

5:55

a rabbit hole. And then as I

5:57

developed this idea myself, I said, wait

6:00

a second, this idea really helps us

6:02

understand a lot of the subtle things

6:04

we talk about on the show. I

6:06

think it's a very useful term I

6:09

want to add to our lexicon. So

6:11

we'll do that. Then we got some

6:13

good questions. And then a tech corner,

6:15

the popular demand at the end of

6:17

the show. I am going to back

6:20

check, I guess we could say. discussions

6:22

of large language models. Jesse, I don't

6:24

want to shock or surprise you. Joe

6:26

Rogan did not get all the technical

6:28

details correct when talking about latest generation

6:31

of pre-train transformer models. So we're going

6:33

to get into it. It's not going

6:35

to be a dunk on Joe though.

6:37

Actually, I'm going to use it as

6:40

a bigger topic about AI I want

6:42

to get into. Actually, that will work

6:44

out well, because then you can be

6:46

invited on a show. Yeah, I got

6:48

to be nice. Joe brilliantly opined on

6:51

language models. He may have like got

6:53

everything wrong, but he's still a brilliant

6:55

guy and should have me on the

6:57

show. All right, so let's get into

6:59

it. We'll get started now with our

7:02

deep dive. So I recently heard a

7:04

term that I really liked on the

7:06

Chris Williamson podcast. The term he used

7:08

was productivity rain dance. So I think

7:11

this idea actually gets at something critical

7:13

a critical concept about work and productivity

7:15

and technology It's a concept that I

7:17

think is exploring because it might explain

7:19

Some of both of your frustrations and

7:22

confusions about trying to produce stuff to

7:24

produce stuff that matters So what we'll

7:26

do is I'm going to load up

7:28

the clip So we'll hear Chris actually

7:30

talking about it himself. Then we'll get

7:33

into a little more detail what he's

7:35

talking about why I think it's a

7:37

problem and to give some advice for

7:39

how to get around it This comes

7:42

from, I think he was interviewing Chris

7:44

Williamson was interviewing Sahil Bloom, but the

7:46

person talking here in the clip is

7:48

Chris himself. So let's load up that

7:50

audio. Look, I come from a productivity

7:53

background when I first started the show

7:55

as chatting shit about Pomodoro timers. and

7:57

notion external brains and ebbing house forgetting

7:59

curves and all of that, right? I've

8:01

been through the ring, which is why

8:04

I'm allowed to say it. And you

8:06

realize after a while that it ends

8:08

up being this weird superstitious raindance you're

8:10

doing, this sort of odd sort of

8:13

productivity raindance in the desperate hope that...

8:15

Later that day, you're going to get

8:17

something done. And some of that stuff

8:19

does really help. And you kind of

8:21

need to go through this process of,

8:24

ah, it wasn't the 15 push-ups before

8:26

I do my calls. Oh, it wasn't,

8:28

it was this thing. That's the highest

8:30

point of life. All right, so that's

8:32

the clip I want to point out

8:35

there. That studio, I've been there, Jesse.

8:37

That's his, one of the studios, Chris

8:39

uses in Austin. I did his show

8:41

last spring. I did his show last

8:44

spring. I love that idea. This notion

8:46

of productivity reigned end, so I started

8:48

looking into it. Chris has talked about

8:50

it before, so then I found this

8:52

post, which I'll load up on the

8:55

screen here for people who are watching

8:57

instead of just listening. This post is

8:59

from last summer, and he elaborates more

9:01

on this idea. I'm going to read

9:03

some from this post because I think

9:06

it's going to help us get closer

9:08

to what the key idea is here.

9:10

So in this post, Chris says, during

9:12

my interview review, I asked myself two

9:15

new questions. What do I do that

9:17

I think is productive but isn't? What

9:19

do I do that I don't think

9:21

is productive but actually is? These were

9:23

surprisingly easy to work out. Sitting at

9:26

my desk when I'm not working, being

9:28

on calls with no actual objective, keeping

9:30

slack notifications at zero, sitting on email

9:32

trying to get the unread number down,

9:34

saying yes to a random dinner when

9:37

someone is coming through town, organizing meetups

9:39

with friends from different social groups, walking

9:41

around without anything in my ears, reading,

9:43

visiting new places. After six months of

9:46

reflecting on my answers, I realized I

9:48

had a fundamental oversight. I hadn't been

9:50

properly linking inputs to outcomes. I had

9:52

basically created a productivity raindance. All right,

9:54

I think this elaboration is useful because

9:57

if we think about the various examples

9:59

that Chris... gave here talking about these

10:01

rain dances, they seem sort of different,

10:03

right? We had on one hand

10:05

him talking about things like external

10:08

brains or ebb and house forgetting

10:10

curves. He's sort of overly wrought

10:12

productivity systems or tools you're trying

10:14

to build. But here he's also

10:16

talking about things like just being

10:18

in his email inbox too long

10:20

or like trying to get the

10:22

slacks all cleared out or just

10:24

sitting at his desk like sort

10:26

of acting like playing at working

10:28

because it sort of feels productive.

10:30

He is somehow unifying all of

10:32

that under the same term of

10:35

productivity rain dance. And the way

10:37

he does it and the way

10:39

I want to focus on here

10:41

is by saying what unifies all

10:43

those examples is focusing on input

10:45

instead of output. So when you

10:47

focus on input, you're focusing on

10:49

activity. You're focusing on the potential

10:51

for future activity. So sitting at

10:53

your desk checking email, you're doing

10:55

something. Productivity, I'm putting lots of

10:57

inputs into my productivity equation, that

11:00

must be good. When you're doing

11:02

something like building a complicated productivity

11:04

system, again, this is like inputs,

11:06

I'm working on my productivity function,

11:08

I'm building up my opportunities for

11:10

finding information, getting things done, but

11:12

what you're not looking at is

11:14

the output. What am I actually

11:16

producing that matters, and am I

11:18

producing enough of it? So

11:21

when you look around the

11:23

modern office environment and see

11:25

everyone frantically answering emails as

11:28

they jump on and off

11:30

zoom meetings or watch the

11:32

solar entrepreneur lose a morning

11:34

to optimizing their chat GPT-powered

11:36

personalized assistant, you're observing raindances.

11:39

Everyone's busy, but no one

11:41

is asking if all these

11:43

gyrations are actually opening the

11:45

clouds. So the danger with

11:47

raindances is that they are

11:49

easier. than the actual work

11:52

of producing stuff. It's easier to sit

11:54

at your desk and jump on calls

11:56

or answer emails than it is to

11:59

actually do something hard. It's easier to

12:01

work on your chat TVT-powered assistants, it's

12:03

kind of fun, you're watching YouTube videos

12:06

and scripting things together. That's easier than

12:08

actually writing the thing that the assistant

12:10

was going to help you with. And

12:13

because it's easier, we tend to gravitate

12:15

towards that. We want to spend much

12:17

more time on it. We're going to

12:20

gravitate towards what's easier versus what's harder

12:22

if we're not differentiating between inputs and

12:24

outputs. And soon you get yourself to

12:26

a point where you're super busy. But

12:29

very little is actually getting done. Here's

12:31

a quote from William Sim on this.

12:33

Obsessing over process while being detached from

12:36

outcomes gives you all the pain of

12:38

hard work with none of the actual

12:40

results. So this is what a productivity

12:43

raindance is, is when you focus on

12:45

inputs and ignore outputs. And the reason

12:47

why they're dangerous is that they're more

12:50

fun and satisfying or easy to get

12:52

started within the moment than the actual

12:54

hard work. And so paradoxically, the stuff

12:57

you produce gets worse. So

12:59

what is the right response to this? Because

13:01

I think a lot of people feel the

13:03

frustration of their productivity raindances without realizing what

13:06

that frustration is coming from. And there's two

13:08

responses that I think are natural that I

13:10

both think are flawed. We hear these often

13:12

though in sort of online discussions of productivity

13:15

culture. The first response is that just demonize

13:17

work itself. Like I don't know, I'm doing

13:19

stuff all the time, I'm feeling exhausted. Not

13:22

much is being produced. Maybe the problem is

13:24

like work itself is kind of meaningless. It's

13:26

constructed. It's like a mirage of late stage

13:28

capitalism. It's all just hustle culture. So you

13:31

can just try to demonize work itself and

13:33

leading to some sort of like quiet quitting

13:35

type mentality. But this is not going to

13:38

solve your problem. Just doing your work worse

13:40

or just doing overall a lot less work

13:42

is going to just get you into other

13:44

types of problems. Your business is going to

13:47

falter. Your boss is going to move on

13:49

from you. The other common response to this

13:51

is to say, ah, the problem here is

13:54

just thinking about productivity itself, so let's just

13:56

get rid of all attempts to organize my

13:58

efforts. That's the problem. But

14:00

this becomes a problem too, because if

14:02

you have no attempts to organize your

14:05

efforts, other people organize them for you.

14:07

Your life will just become this exhausted

14:09

slurry of answering other people's requests and

14:12

trying to make other people's lives easier.

14:14

So we still need some organization. So

14:16

what is the right response to the

14:19

productivity rain dance phenomenon? I think it

14:21

is, as William, some suggest, to turn

14:23

your attention from inputs to outputs. To

14:26

identify the most valuable thing you do

14:28

in your job. and then figure out

14:30

what helps you do that better. And

14:32

this should be what matters above all

14:35

else. This should be where your focus

14:37

is. Now here's the thing. The answers

14:39

to these questions, like what really matters?

14:42

And what is actually helping me do

14:44

that thing better? You know, the higher

14:46

level of quality output. The answers to

14:49

those questions aren't necessarily simple. But they're

14:51

also different. then what productivity reindances will

14:53

produce. They're different because they're not symbolic.

14:56

They're different because they're not busyness for

14:58

the sake of busyness. They're instead focused

15:00

on clear measurable goals or producing more

15:03

results that matter. So we start focusing

15:05

on outputs. You begin to build an

15:07

approach to productivity that just works. And

15:09

it's not exciting and it's hard and

15:12

it's simple and it's probably... There's only

15:14

so much YouTube content you could get

15:16

out of it, but it's the stuff

15:19

that actually works. So let me give

15:21

you a couple specific examples here. What

15:23

are the types of less flashy get

15:26

it done type things that show up

15:28

when you start asking what actually gets

15:30

the important stuff done? You find things

15:33

like work quotas. All right, for each

15:35

of these type of things I am

15:37

expected to do in my job, I

15:39

have a quota on how many I

15:42

do at the same time. Why? Because

15:44

if I have too many things going

15:46

on. I get overloaded. If I get

15:49

overloaded, I can't do the hard stuff

15:51

well. I wouldn't do the hard stuff

15:53

well. So I only take on one

15:56

project of this at a time. I

15:58

only do this many. committees at a

16:00

time, I only do this many paper

16:03

reviews at a time. It's not exciting.

16:05

There's no AI involved. There's no cool

16:07

notebook and a new pen involved, but

16:10

it works. Separating active versus waiting projects.

16:12

This also works, a big concept from

16:14

my book, slow productivity, from my book's

16:16

slow productivity. Here's the things, a big

16:19

concept from my book's slow productivity. Here's

16:21

the things you have to do. Just

16:23

look at the first few and say

16:26

I'm actively working on emails or emails

16:28

or calls about it. This prevents the

16:30

totality of the things that you have

16:33

to do generating concurrent administrative overhead. Now

16:35

suddenly you can spend more time working

16:37

on the stuff that matters. Again, this

16:40

is not an exciting system. I can't

16:42

build a software tool that's going to

16:44

make this way simple for you. This

16:46

is just a notation in your notebook.

16:49

This is active. This is waiting. You

16:51

can keep track of this even in

16:53

your head, but it works. Rubber to

16:56

the road works. Office hours work. I

16:58

can't be... chiming in on a dozen

17:00

ongoing back and forth ad hoc conversations

17:03

throughout the day because then I can't

17:05

get the important stuff done. So I

17:07

have daily office hours. That's where I

17:10

try to deflect more of my back

17:12

and forth interaction. Come to my officers,

17:14

we'll talk about it, take five minutes

17:17

and the rest of my day. I

17:19

don't have to be checking this inbox.

17:21

Again, I don't need a special tool

17:23

for office hours. It's just a declaration.

17:26

Another type of idea that comes here,

17:28

time block planning. It's not sexy, you

17:31

can do it on a piece of

17:33

paper. I sell a notebook for doing

17:35

this. It's the oldest of technologies. You're

17:37

drawing boxes on paper. But it forces

17:39

you to be intentional about your time.

17:41

What do I want to do today?

17:43

When am I going to do it?

17:46

And if things don't fit, you have

17:48

to confront that productivity drag and say

17:50

there's a problem here we need to

17:52

fix. Again, not exciting, but it works.

17:54

Realize that deep work is different than

17:56

shallow work. And when you're working on

17:58

deep work, the stuff that's cognitively demanding

18:01

that... matters, don't context switch during it.

18:03

You have to protect that time and

18:05

say, I don't also check my email

18:07

during that time. I don't also have

18:09

slack open during that time. I realize

18:11

if I give this work my full

18:14

attention, it'll be two X better than

18:16

if I'm sort of context switching back

18:18

and forth. Like that's not a thing

18:20

you can get a cool app for.

18:22

There is no like back in Reasy

18:24

model integration with Claude. It's just a

18:26

simple mindset. But these are the type

18:29

of things that work when you get

18:31

away from productivity raindances and say. What

18:33

moves the needle on the output? The

18:35

people who sell tools or have a

18:37

lot of fancy YouTube videos about this

18:39

advice online, they like productivity raindances because

18:41

they're fun. You get to wear fancy

18:44

costumes and jump around and chant things

18:46

and it's interesting to watch and it's

18:48

much more interesting to watch than the

18:50

actual pretty boring efforts that go into

18:52

trying to do things well. But for

18:54

you who cares about doing things well,

18:56

this is what matters. So

18:59

I wrote an essay about this recently,

19:01

it's on my newsletter. If you don't

19:03

subscribe to my newsletter, you can do

19:06

so at Cal newport.com. Here is how

19:08

I ended that essay. Productivity raindances can

19:10

be satisfying. They make you feel like

19:12

you're doing your part to support a

19:15

rich harvest, all while providing endless details

19:17

and rituals to adjust, giving you a

19:19

sense of being hard at work without

19:21

requiring you to do anything, actually challenging.

19:24

At the same time, however, the farmers

19:26

who are most likely to succeed are

19:28

those who are instead down among their

19:30

crops sweat on their brow tilling their

19:33

fields. So it's not the fun thing

19:35

to do, but it's the hard things

19:37

that actually produced the good work. So

19:40

there we go. Congratulations Chris Williamson. I

19:42

like that term. Productivity raindances. We should

19:44

use that more. Yeah. The thing that

19:46

like I was struggling with and then

19:49

when I found more of his riding

19:51

on it, it made more sense to

19:53

me was unifying. sort of productivity prong

19:55

culture where you're building these elaborate productivity

19:58

systems with busy work. like being in

20:00

your inbox all time, or it's not

20:02

about a fancy system, but you're just

20:04

being busy. And the idea that that's

20:07

all the same thing is just focusing

20:09

on inputs as opposed to like what's

20:11

actually being produced. Because once you focus

20:13

on what's being produced, you realize both

20:16

that the super fancy AI power productivity

20:18

system isn't moving the needle, takes a

20:20

lot of time, but it's not making

20:22

you produce more work really, and also

20:25

being your inbox all the time, it's

20:27

not making produce more work more work

20:29

either. When you focus on the output,

20:32

you know, it's not as fun, but

20:34

like that's how stuff gets done. That

20:36

would be a good book, I guess,

20:38

just like do work. So for you,

20:41

is writing, right? Yeah, I got it

20:43

right. Yeah. And there's like stuff that

20:45

mean we want to have the right

20:47

tools. You know, time blocking matters, like

20:50

you're doing it at the right time.

20:52

Maybe you have a little ritual to

20:54

help switch your mindset over to it.

20:56

Right, I think the gym, like exercising

20:59

is the same way. Like you need

21:01

to have tools. You either learn like

21:03

what is my workout, like why is

21:05

this going to work? Like you do

21:08

need information. You can't just like randomly

21:10

go after it, but then once you

21:12

have the information, it's not that interesting.

21:14

It's just a matter of like going

21:17

to the gym and doing the workout

21:19

and tracking it and doing proper progressions.

21:21

Like it's actually in the end, it's

21:24

the work that matters that matters, it

21:26

matters, it's not the information. And we

21:28

got some good questions coming up. But

21:30

first, let's hear from one of our

21:33

sponsors. I want to talk about the

21:35

uplift desk. This is a topic that

21:37

is near and dear to my current

21:39

state. As listers know, rehabbing from an

21:42

abdominal injury I had in the fall,

21:44

I ended up having to spend about

21:46

two months kind of barely using my

21:48

abs or my back. And now in

21:51

the new year, my, you know, back

21:53

is making me pay the price. Like

21:55

you can't just stop using me for

21:57

two months. So I'm doing all sorts

22:00

of PT, all sorts of training, and

22:02

one of the things you realize right

22:04

away when you're recovering from something like

22:07

this is that little things about your

22:09

posture matter. How you hold yourself matters.

22:11

Are you slumped a little bit? Are

22:13

you back more? Are you on your

22:16

heels versus your your mid soul in

22:18

terms of what muscle supporting want? It

22:20

really makes a difference. And where is

22:22

the place where we're sitting or our

22:25

posture is probably most stably impacting us?

22:27

It's going to be when we work.

22:29

This is why a tool like the

22:31

uplift desk. Makes so much sense because

22:34

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22:36

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22:40

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22:43

They also have all kinds of accessories

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22:47

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it's like a wobble stool where you

22:52

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22:54

moves. So you can be moving and

22:56

working your core and supporting yourself, but

22:59

it's not going to fall over, but

23:01

it moves to like a good range

23:03

of motion. I also got the standing

23:05

pad, so if you're working out the

23:08

uplift desk, or it's in general like

23:10

standing, so you're kind of giving your

23:12

body different varieties of posture, it's more

23:14

comfortable than just standing on the hard

23:17

floor. So it's not just the uplift

23:19

desk, it's the whole line of products

23:21

that surround healthy posture and healthy ergonomics.

23:23

So I'm fans of what they're doing.

23:26

I now appreciate posture quite a bit.

23:28

So the uplift desk in particular, this

23:30

is cool. 200,000 configurations. So you can

23:32

tailor your workspace perfectly to your style

23:35

and needs. They also look great. Talked

23:37

about this last time, that the form

23:39

factor is like very compact and small

23:42

enough. It's like a good looking desk

23:44

and the lifts are sort of hidden

23:46

in the legs in a way that

23:48

it's like not some giant contraption that

23:51

you have to like turn a giant

23:53

crank on like they look really nice

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24:22

If I just say I talk to

24:24

some of those guys over there prepping

24:27

for this ad, they're really into this

24:29

mission. Like they care about ergonomics. Yeah.

24:31

Yeah. You cannot work at that company

24:34

and be like completely slunched over in

24:36

like a metal folding chair at your

24:38

desk. Like it's not going to work

24:40

out. They'd run you right out of

24:43

there. I also want to talk about

24:45

our friends at my body tutor, speaking

24:47

of trying to do what your body

24:49

needs. My body tutor I believe is

24:52

the way you if you want to

24:54

get fitter it's the thing to do

24:56

their model is what I love about

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it is they connect you to a

25:01

coach that holds you accountable daily so

25:03

the coach helps you figure out like

25:05

what are your goals let's get you

25:07

a workout routine that works with what

25:10

you have available let's talk about your

25:12

eating and health requirements like let's try

25:14

to make a plan that makes sense

25:17

but you check in using their app

25:19

every day with a dedicated coach it's

25:21

the accountability here that matters the information

25:23

is great They can customize the information

25:26

to like what's going on in your

25:28

life. That's great. But it's the accountability

25:30

of checking in every day that gets

25:32

you to actually stick with the plan.

25:35

And because it's delivered online, it's going

25:37

to be significantly cheaper than having, you

25:39

know, a trainer in person, a nutritionist

25:41

in person. So I just think it's

25:44

a fantastic idea and it works really

25:46

well. If you're serious about getting fit,

25:48

Adam will give deep questions listeners. I'd

25:50

say Adam was Adam Gilbert. I should

25:53

mention I know the founder of my

25:55

body tutor. I've known him for ever

25:57

great company Adam the founder great guy

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Is giving deep questions, listeners, $50 off

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their first month, if you just mentioned

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this podcast when you join? There also, that's

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the same guys who are doing the done daily

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we've been talking about. So like the accountability

26:10

coaching for like getting your being productive about

26:12

the work that matters. I'll throw that in

26:14

your being productive about the work that matters.

26:17

I'll throw that in as like a bonus

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ad. Check that out at done daily.com. But

26:21

my body tutor, if you want to get your

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body tutor. Go

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to my body

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tutor.com. T-ut-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T First

26:31

questions from Lindsay. I currently

26:33

use a Trello column for items

26:35

to discuss in meetings and block

26:37

time afterwards to process it. During a

26:39

meeting, do you write notes of topics to

26:41

remember to say or do you have a

26:44

Trello card open? All right. It's a

26:46

good question. Let's just briefly to find

26:48

the two things that Lindsay mentioned. So

26:50

one is the items to discuss Trello

26:52

column. I use Trello boards to organize

26:54

my obligations to organize tasks. I have

26:56

one board per roll and then I

26:58

have columns for each role for different

27:01

types of statuses for these tasks. And

27:03

one of the key statuses is like

27:05

to discuss. To discuss next time I

27:07

meet this person. To discuss next time

27:09

we have this standing meeting. The other

27:11

thing she's talking about is the post

27:13

meeting processing block. Another thing I'm a big believer

27:15

in, you need 15 minutes on your

27:17

calendar. So it's protected. You schedule a

27:20

meeting, you schedule 15 minutes later than

27:22

the actual meeting time. And that extra

27:24

15 minutes is for processing. everything that

27:26

came out of the meeting. So you

27:28

can close those loops right then. The

27:30

worst thing you can do is come

27:32

out of a meeting with a dozen

27:34

open loops that were introducing that meeting

27:36

and go right into an unrelated

27:39

new meeting. That's going to be a

27:41

cognitive pile up. That's going to be pain.

27:43

All right, so to answer your

27:45

question, Lindsay, if the culture of

27:47

the meeting is one where people are

27:49

on laptops, then I'll work right with the

27:51

trolley. into a card onto the right board into the

27:53

right column so they're just there i also want to

27:56

edit the things that are already there as you mention

27:58

if there's something to discuss in this on my

28:00

trello board and we discuss it, I

28:02

want to take it off right then. If there

28:04

is not a culture of being on

28:07

your laptop, that's when you use the

28:09

post meeting processing block to immediately

28:11

take care of all of this. You can

28:13

take notes with paper and then when

28:15

you get to that into the meeting

28:17

processing block, you go through and update

28:20

your trello, you send off the messages,

28:22

you put the waiting to hear backs

28:24

for those messages, but you really one

28:26

way or the other, here's your goal,

28:28

with nothing open in your head. No

28:30

new open loop generated by that meeting

28:33

that is not being processed. You wanna

28:35

make sure that the meeting is

28:37

not just discussing with other people

28:39

a given topic, but you processing

28:41

everything that was discussed to the

28:44

point where you don't have to keep

28:46

anything open in your head. So however

28:48

you need to do that, that really

28:50

should be your goal. All right, who got

28:52

next? Next questions from

28:54

Jennifer. To what standard are various

28:57

AI technologies being evaluated

28:59

for current performance and

29:01

future potential? How could a layman,

29:03

not a computer scientist, test the

29:05

veracity of the claims of an

29:07

AI system or its potential? And

29:09

my theory on this is that you

29:12

don't need to be testing the veracity

29:14

or really paying that much attention yet

29:16

to claims about AI. And here's why

29:18

I say this, and this is a claim

29:21

that I think is more generally

29:23

about technology tools. When a technology

29:25

tool finds a killer app,

29:27

you'll find out about it. It will

29:29

show up in your life. Everyone will

29:31

be using it for a way that

29:33

has obvious value. You will see

29:36

an obvious value in your life.

29:38

It will come into wherever you're

29:40

doing your work. And then like that

29:42

will now be a part of your life.

29:44

You don't have to go out and keep

29:46

up with it. Let me give you

29:48

some examples of this. Email. No one

29:51

in the late 1980. Computer networks

29:53

are becoming a bigger thing. We're going

29:55

to be able to do probably low

29:57

cost, low friction digital communication.

29:59

these networks, you really need to

30:01

keep up with like what might happen.

30:03

You really need to keep up with

30:06

the advances in the technologies and what

30:08

the way this technology might change your

30:10

work. There was no need to do

30:12

that. What just happened is once that

30:14

technology hit the right, what just happened

30:16

is once that technology hit the right,

30:19

just happened is once that technology hit

30:21

the right elements, just showing up in

30:23

offices. They're like, oh, by the way,

30:25

we're using email now because like all

30:27

these other companies are you say how

30:29

does this work? You didn't have to

30:32

be preparing for it. Most people did

30:34

not have to be following search engine

30:36

technology development and really trying to closely

30:38

understand what is the potential for the

30:40

web, for information development. Most people in

30:42

their day-to-day life, there's just this point

30:45

where they said, hey, use this tool

30:47

to look things up. You're like, wow,

30:49

that works. I type in the thing,

30:51

it figures out what I mean, and

30:53

it points me towards pages that have

30:55

information about it. That's interesting. I would

30:58

apply that same standard to AI. I

31:00

think there will be AI killer apps.

31:02

I think they are probably going to

31:04

be industry specific. This has been my

31:06

sort of developing claim is that different

31:08

niches of the economy are going to

31:10

have their own AI enabled killer apps.

31:13

When they come, they'll be inevitable, they'll

31:15

be unavoidable, and they'll take you nine

31:17

seconds to learn. So I would not

31:19

worry about. There's a lot of hype

31:21

like attention economy hype behind AI. It's

31:23

not hype in the sense that the

31:26

AI is going to generate these killer

31:28

apps But the coverage is hypy right

31:30

now because they don't really have something

31:32

to write about yet This is like

31:34

the so-called outcome or application gap the

31:36

technology has to fight expectations like it

31:39

keeps everything you say it can't do

31:41

it six months later can do But

31:43

the actual impact in real jobs in

31:45

the real economy has Underperformed expectations up

31:47

to now so you're at this point

31:49

if you're not actually like a CIO

31:52

or running a tech company where you

31:54

need to keep a prize of what's

31:56

happening in a techno landscape. If you

31:58

weren't already doing that five years ago

32:00

for other technologies. AI will let you

32:02

know when you need to know about

32:05

it. It's not really your job to

32:07

be a technology reporter, unless it's literally

32:09

your job to be a technology reporter.

32:11

Tim Ferris had Seth Godin on the

32:13

other day, and they were talking at

32:15

the end about Claude and Perplexi and

32:18

ChatGPT. And Seth said that he goes

32:20

on Claude and Perplexi like an hour

32:22

a day, and he used it to

32:24

help him fix a broken pump in

32:26

his basement. He went down, take a

32:28

picture, came back up, he went back

32:31

down, went back down. Yeah, so you

32:33

know, maybe that'll be useful. I think

32:35

most people are still using Google for

32:37

that. Yeah, right? Like they're googling it

32:39

and then they're finding a YouTube video.

32:41

But yeah, something like that will come

32:43

around. I mean, I think, you know,

32:46

I've talked about it before. I think

32:48

it's going to be industry specific. Scott

32:50

Galloway talks about it as like the

32:52

application layer is where all the interesting

32:54

stuff is going to happen, not the

32:56

underlying technology. I think the big companies

32:59

want to have these. half billion dollar

33:01

data centers, but the impact is not

33:03

going to come from that. It's going

33:05

to come from the apps built on

33:07

what we already have. And I think

33:09

a lot of the initial productivity gain,

33:12

I've been on record saying this, is

33:14

actually going to be not adding new

33:16

capabilities to software, but giving more people

33:18

the capability to use all of what

33:20

software can already do. So it's going

33:22

to be a novice user of a

33:25

powerful software package. We'll be able to

33:27

easily use more of the powerful functions.

33:29

because the AI will help them. I

33:31

think that's where we're going to see

33:33

the first. We're going to talk about

33:35

this more in the final segment though,

33:38

some more far-fetched concerns and we'll have

33:40

some fun there. All right, what we've

33:42

got next? Next question is from Kelly.

33:44

My company has ended all tell works.

33:46

My company has ended all tell works.

33:48

I'll be going back. My company has

33:51

ended all tell works. I'll be going

33:53

back to all tell works. I'll be

33:55

going on my phantom part-time job. How

33:57

do I make the most of this

33:59

opportunity? I mean, probably

34:01

the number one advice would be doing

34:03

something like a weekend at Bernie's situation.

34:05

So, and this is, this is just

34:08

common sense. You start by identifying like

34:10

clothes you normally wear and getting a

34:12

second set of those clothes. All right.

34:14

Step two, acquire a corpse. Step three.

34:16

You address the corpse in your clothes

34:18

and you put the corpse at your

34:20

desk and then, you know, the man

34:22

who walks by and they're like, oh,

34:24

there's Kelly, Kelly's working, no big deal.

34:26

You could do a little bit of

34:29

Ferris Bueller days off, magic, you know,

34:31

where I think it was hooked up

34:33

in Ferris Bueller, when his mom opened

34:35

the door, was on a pulley, so

34:37

it kind of like, Oddly and spasmetically,

34:39

like, lurched when I opened the door.

34:41

So no need for me to walk

34:43

in further. I'm certainly not going to

34:45

talk to him, even though he just

34:47

lurched upright, I'm certainly not going to

34:50

talk to him. And the fact that

34:52

there's snores clearly coming out of a

34:54

tape deck that is going to be

34:56

a way lower fidelity than real sound

34:58

that is not where his head is.

35:00

No big deal. I'm sure he's fine.

35:02

No, okay, here's what I say to

35:04

people when it comes to phantom part-time

35:06

jobs. You got a time block, right?

35:08

So you got to know what am

35:11

I doing and when am I going

35:13

to do it? And it's like, when

35:15

are my blocks? You'd be very systematic.

35:17

Like, here's the blocks, I'm working on

35:19

this other project, and here's the blocks,

35:21

I'm working on what's going on at

35:23

work. Then you've got to be on

35:25

the ball in terms of keeping track

35:27

of keeping track of what you have

35:29

to what you have to do and

35:32

planning what you have to do and

35:34

planning when you have to do and

35:36

planning when you have to do and

35:38

planning when you have to do and

35:40

planning when you have to do. So

35:42

you know what you need to work

35:44

on that week, you put aside time

35:46

for it that week, you see the

35:48

bigger picture, so you know how to

35:51

get out ahead of things. So if

35:53

you're in control of your time and

35:55

you're in control of your tasks, You

35:57

can stay on top of things, which

35:59

is also critical for this situation because

36:01

people don't bother you as much. If

36:03

you're getting things done, they don't have

36:05

to stay on you. They're sort of

36:07

less bothering you. So be on top

36:09

of things, be wary about your workload.

36:12

It can be easy when you're back

36:14

in the office to just more informally,

36:16

take on more things, because it's... social,

36:18

the person's there, like, hey, what's going

36:20

on? You're like, oh, I can help

36:22

you with that. Keep your workload reasonable,

36:24

so it's like work you can keep

36:26

up with without being overloaded. And then

36:28

finally, you want to be careful about

36:30

how you collaborate so that it's not,

36:33

you want to avoid having too much

36:35

collaboration based on ad hoc back and

36:37

forth messaging. That really kind of locks

36:39

you into a hyperactive hive mind mode.

36:41

It's hard to work on something else.

36:43

If you have to be keeping up

36:45

with these like ongoing back and forth

36:47

conversations, so you know, the type of

36:49

stuff I talk about in my book,

36:51

a world without email, that becomes more

36:54

important. This is the collaboration protocols I

36:56

use for different type of work I

36:58

do. There's shared documents, we have a

37:00

fixed schedule, there's office hours, there's, you

37:02

have these different ways of things that

37:04

are getting done that's very predictable, so

37:06

you can do your work and not

37:08

have to be constantly monitoring different types

37:10

of inboxes. Can put you

37:12

so much ahead of the game with

37:15

your work in the office environment that

37:17

You still have more than enough time,

37:19

but also a final piece of advice

37:21

and this Is makes it all work

37:23

put sunglasses on the corpse That's what

37:26

they figured out on weekends at Bernie's

37:28

that was what you know people like

37:30

I don't know I think it's odd

37:32

that there there's a decomposing like 230

37:34

pound man that they're dragging, but he's

37:37

got sunglasses on so I guess it's

37:39

probably he's probably just tired just tired

37:42

Corpspses with sunglasses. All right, what I

37:44

got next? Next question is from Javier.

37:47

I'm getting my MS with the single

37:49

purpose of wanting to teach at the

37:51

collegiate level. I plan to teach as

37:53

an adjunct instructor at first while I

37:56

still work as a software engineer. Maybe

37:58

eventually this will develop in attempting to

38:00

become a full-time instructor. somewhere. Is there

38:03

a big difference in how full-time instructors

38:05

or adjunct faculty are viewed by the

38:07

institution and PhD staff? Yes, but I

38:10

think more important than whatever specific information

38:12

I could give you is the bigger

38:14

picture suggestion here, which is you got

38:16

to go do a heap of evidence-based

38:19

planning. Right. So we talk about our

38:21

two dual paradigms. When we talk about...

38:23

how do you pursue the good life

38:26

in the 21st century set up, right?

38:28

There's these two planning paradigms that orbit

38:30

each other. Lifestyle-centric planning and evidence-based planning.

38:32

So lifestyle-centric planning is working backwards from

38:35

your general vision of a life-well-lived. So

38:37

you're not trying to work towards a

38:39

particular goal, but work backwards from a

38:42

lifestyle. And it sounds like you've done

38:44

some of this lifestyle-centric planning and that

38:46

you have a vision. You have to

38:49

pair lifestyle-centric planning with evidence-based planning. So

38:51

once you have your lifestyle vision, you

38:53

work backwards to figure out, given my

38:55

opportunities and obstacles, how do I move

38:58

closer to that lifestyle vision? This is

39:00

where you need evidence. Don't use the

39:02

word maybe. Don't guess, don't assume, don't

39:05

write your own story. When you're looking

39:07

at a particular path to get you

39:09

towards your lifestyle vision, Go research that

39:11

path like you had been assigned an

39:14

editor from business week said go write

39:16

me a story About the reality of

39:18

life as a computer science instructor You

39:21

got to go to the institution that

39:23

you would like to teach out or

39:25

the type of institution like to teach

39:28

that you want to take an instructor

39:30

out for coffee and you say tell

39:32

me all about it like how did

39:34

you get here who gets hired? What

39:37

are they looking for? What's the reality

39:39

of your life? Like how much? work

39:41

do you have to do? What's the

39:44

schedule like? What's the pay scale like?

39:46

Like get the information. Like if you

39:48

don't have that information, your plan for

39:50

moving towards your ideal lifestyle is not

39:53

a... plan is a fairy tale. There

39:55

might be some good lessons in it.

39:57

The intentions might be good, but probably

40:00

in real life, you know, you're not

40:02

going to find a wolf and a

40:04

cloak or whatever happens in the fairy

40:07

tale. You've got to have evidence. So

40:09

I want you, here's my instructions for

40:11

you. Go talk to some real people

40:13

in this position. Sandy check your plan,

40:16

get the details. Not only will this

40:18

help you avoid you from traps, like,

40:20

oh, I just, this was a romanticized

40:23

image and it's not what I thought

40:25

it would be. It also

40:27

can give you advantages. Because so few

40:29

people do this, like let me just

40:31

study this thing I want to do.

40:33

In really well-known competitive fields, people do

40:35

this. I want to be an actor.

40:38

There's a lot you can learn about

40:40

how that happens. I want to be

40:42

a writer. There's a lot you can

40:44

learn about how that happens. I want

40:46

to be a writer. A lot of

40:48

people want to be a writer. A

40:50

lot of people want to be a

40:52

writer. A lot of that works. So

40:54

do your research and you'll probably find

40:57

a cool path. Once you have a

40:59

lifestyle, you'll find a cool path there.

41:01

And maybe it'll be through instructing or

41:03

maybe it'll be like part-time instructing plus

41:05

a different type of like part-time software

41:07

thing. I don't know. You have to

41:09

actually get the details to figure this

41:11

in the reality. I was just talking

41:13

to someone, a friend of mine. Computer

41:16

Science Professor, but he was thinking, he

41:18

was like, you know, it'd be fun

41:20

or meaningful, I guess. In the summer,

41:22

we have a really nice community college

41:24

around here at Montgomery College. And he's

41:26

like, I would love to do some,

41:28

I think it might be like fulfilling

41:30

to do some like CS instructing over

41:33

the summer. I was like, that probably

41:35

would be pretty cool. And that's a

41:37

good community college. It is. They just

41:39

built a new math and science building.

41:41

I drive by it all the all

41:43

the time. But anyways, I appreciate, I

41:45

admired that, right? That's a move, I

41:47

mean, he's a well-known professor, but it's

41:49

like a move, like, you know, I

41:52

want to put these skills to use.

41:54

not just with this one singular population.

41:56

I thought that was cool. I wonder

41:58

if I have podcasting stuff over there.

42:00

You know, so what I was thinking

42:02

about, when you have these like nicely

42:04

well-funded community colleges, they probably have like

42:06

production studios. Yeah, I'm sure. Like with

42:08

nice cameras and mics and mics and

42:11

stuff. Good for us to know about.

42:13

All right, what do we got next?

42:15

We have our corner. Oh, slow productivity

42:17

corner. Once a week, we have a

42:19

question related to my book. But we

42:21

do this segment so we can talk

42:23

about ideas from the book, but more

42:25

importantly, play the segment theme music. So

42:27

let's hear that song, Jesse. All right,

42:30

what do we got? It's from a

42:32

grad student and a mom. Same person.

42:34

I'm a PhD student in biomedical sciences

42:36

in a full-time mom. I need a

42:38

PhD to pursue my career and lifestyle

42:40

as a tenured professor at an R2

42:42

university. My advisor wants me to do

42:44

lots of experiments unrelated to my thesis

42:47

during the day and read papers at

42:49

night. I have mother duties at night.

42:51

Is there a way to apply the

42:53

slow productivity principles to my situation? How

42:55

can I convince my advisor to allow

42:57

for experiments only related to my thesis?

42:59

Let's put the advisor conversation to the

43:01

side for a second. The first thing

43:03

I want to reassure you on is

43:06

you can absolutely excel in a doctoral

43:08

program as a mom. This happens enough

43:10

that there was a, it being, let's

43:12

say having your first child while you're

43:14

in a doctoral program just because of

43:16

the roughly the age where people are

43:18

when they're in this program. This is

43:20

not an uncommon occurrence. I used to

43:22

have this talk I gave. There was

43:25

I would give this talk at colleges

43:27

and some of these memories are a

43:29

little bit hazy for me But I

43:31

used to give talks to colleges and

43:33

I at some point I think I

43:35

was going to Duke in a bunch

43:37

of talks of Duke, but I gave

43:39

a talk at Duke years ago and

43:42

I remember I talked about this phenomenon

43:44

because at the time I guess I

43:46

was a graduate student or a postdoc

43:48

and there was this phenomenon that I

43:50

had observed and then also my advisor

43:52

had told me about I think she

43:54

might have been in the same situation

43:56

back when she was younger where a

43:58

grad student has a baby and they

44:01

become much more productive like they become

44:03

a much better grad student baby paradox

44:05

I think I called it and I

44:07

would ask well why is this right

44:09

because you you you get much more

44:11

constraints on your time You know, you

44:13

have a baby, like, it's a lot

44:15

of constraints on your time. And the

44:17

answer was, well, we waste a lot

44:20

of time as grad students, like, it's

44:22

kind of diffuse, because there's so few

44:24

constraints, it takes us 90 minutes just

44:26

to kind of get warmed up to

44:28

start working, and not until like 9

44:30

o'clock, do we really get things rolling?

44:32

And when you have these sudden, like,

44:34

parenting constraints, you know, like, My mother-in-law

44:36

watches the baby for three hours in

44:39

the morning, I have to make every

44:41

inch of that three hours, every minute

44:43

of that three hours count. And it

44:45

turns out like most grad students are

44:47

so far from the ideal of giving

44:49

things full focus that suddenly you're like

44:51

a superstar. You know, your dissertation gets

44:53

done, etc. So your advisor aside, that

44:56

could be a different problem. You can

44:58

make the most out of when I

45:00

work, it will add up. And remember

45:02

you have flexibility. This is what's nice.

45:04

It's not like if one day you

45:06

can do less than another, it doesn't

45:08

matter. There's not as many, you know,

45:10

you have to be at this client

45:12

meeting. I mean, there's a lot of

45:15

flexibility there. But focused work done consistently

45:17

can produce what you need in these

45:19

jobs. So for your case, maybe it's

45:21

like a nine to five schedules. So

45:23

maybe it sounds like you have some

45:25

sort of child care coverage during sort

45:27

of normal business hours. I was a

45:29

nine to a nine to five to

45:31

five grad student. But my wife worked

45:34

a normal job. I got married young.

45:36

My wife worked a normal job and

45:38

I wanted to be home and she

45:40

was home. So I would just show

45:42

up at nine. I'd come in with

45:44

the morning commuters and I would leave

45:46

at like 4.30. When like most of

45:48

the grad students were just arriving to

45:50

start their their pushes, but when I

45:53

was there I worked at like a

45:55

nine to five job I actually gave

45:57

I was organized and time blocked and

45:59

executed and it was more than enough

46:01

time to be a very successful grad

46:03

student. My colleagues thought I was weird,

46:05

but I got a lot done. You

46:07

know because grad students, it's not actually

46:10

that hard to be a grad student.

46:12

It's not that hard to be a

46:14

grad student. It only gets harder from

46:16

there. So you can absolutely do it.

46:18

Just set your limits, this is when

46:20

I can work and work with great

46:22

focus and purpose during that time, it'll

46:24

add up. When it comes to your

46:26

advisor, like you gotta just tell them

46:29

that, I got a baby, I have

46:31

a, this is when I can work,

46:33

this is a substantial amount of time,

46:35

this is the amount of time, that

46:37

like most of these other grad students

46:39

are working as well, I am very

46:41

organized, I listen to Cal Newport, like

46:43

I'm gonna get after it, but these

46:45

are the hours I can work, I

46:48

can work, I can work, I can

46:50

work, I can work, I can work,

46:52

I can work, I can work, I

46:54

can, I can, I can, I can,

46:56

I can, I can, I can, I

46:58

can, I can, I'm reading papers in

47:00

between those experiments, I'm controlling my time,

47:02

and I'm doing good work. Probably what

47:05

will happen is there's different configurations to

47:07

grad students have different relationships they have

47:09

with their advisors. Some grad students have

47:11

like this much more of this employee

47:13

relationship where you're sort of doing lots

47:15

of stuff your advisor asks you to

47:17

do, others get more of an autonomous

47:19

relationship. It's like, okay, great, then just

47:21

you own this series of experiments and

47:24

just like do this because we need

47:26

this for one of our research grant.

47:28

just evolve into a more autonomous relationship

47:30

with your advisor, which is what you

47:32

want. It's what I did. I wrote

47:34

a bunch of papers with my advisor.

47:36

Most of my papers were not. So

47:38

I could just kind of do the

47:40

work when I want how I wanted

47:43

to do it at my own pace.

47:45

I think it'll work how I wanted

47:47

to do it at my own pace.

47:49

I think it'll work out worst case

47:51

scenario you switch advisors to one who

47:53

says that's fine work on this project,

47:55

figure out how you want to do

47:57

it, show me. The secret to grad

47:59

student life, which is under the right

48:02

circumstances, it doesn't really require a huge

48:04

amount of time to do what you

48:06

do well. I mean, I wrote books

48:08

as a grad. student that were unrelated

48:10

unrelated to my job as a grad

48:12

student. So it really doesn't take that

48:14

much time. I mean experiments take time

48:16

as a mathematician so you know that

48:19

was easier but yeah I had plenty

48:21

I used to blog three times a

48:23

week that was like what it was

48:25

like back then like 2006 2005 you

48:27

had a blog like you blog a

48:29

lot so I was writing blog post

48:31

all the time. Yeah and books and

48:33

a bunch of papers. All right. What

48:35

we got a call? We have a

48:38

call. All right, let's hear it. Hey,

48:40

Cal and Jesse, my name is Aaron.

48:42

I'm a busy dad of six living

48:44

overseas. I've been intrigued listening to you

48:46

over the last few months, and I

48:48

particularly like what Cal has said a

48:50

couple of times. That college isn't that

48:52

hard when you treat it like a

48:54

job. I've been enjoying applying your ideas

48:57

my own life, but I think many

48:59

of them would also help my kids

49:01

to. We're about to spend six months

49:03

in the USA transitioning my first into

49:05

college. And we'll be thinking a lot

49:07

during that time about college with my

49:09

next two. I've this last week been

49:11

through this how to be a straight-A

49:13

student and how to win in college.

49:16

I haven't found where this particular idea

49:18

of treating college like a job is

49:20

fleshed out. I want to make reading

49:22

one of your books required for my

49:24

three high schoolers over spring break and

49:26

then discuss with them. But I'm thinking...

49:28

The best one is going to be

49:30

how to win at college, but I'm

49:33

wondering if there's something you might recommend

49:35

more for students facing college in the

49:37

modern digital environment. Thanks. Yeah, it's a

49:39

good question. I think that idea that

49:41

people treating college like a job have

49:43

an easy time at it actually came

49:45

after I wrote those books, right? But

49:47

what I started doing, I think, especially

49:49

once I got to Georgetown, is I

49:52

would do advising for... various groups supporting

49:54

non-traditional students, so by non-traditional meaning students

49:56

who weren't just sort of coming right

49:58

out of high school. And I did

50:00

some work with a group that was

50:02

veterans, so coming back to college on

50:04

the GI Bill, and another group that

50:06

was working with like first generation college

50:08

students, many of whom were coming in

50:11

the college not right out of high

50:13

school, who had worked or done other

50:15

things. And they used some of these,

50:17

if I remember correctly, we used in

50:19

some of these groups, how to become

50:21

a straight-day student as like an assigned

50:23

text. And these students, these non-traditional students

50:25

who had had real jobs just aided

50:28

up just aided up. They're like, okay,

50:30

let's get after it. What's the secret?

50:32

Do this, do that? What's the best

50:34

practices? I've got kids at home, you

50:36

know, I'm older, I've got things to

50:38

do, and they just destroyed college. They

50:40

really destroyed it. And that's when I

50:42

realized, like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be

50:44

as proud as I was about all

50:47

my good grades. Like, I just happened

50:49

to treat college more like a job.

50:51

I wasn't brilliant. I just wasn't. go

50:53

to the library and put on their

50:55

hooded sweatshirt and capital S study. You

50:57

know, they've got their phone open and

50:59

this open. They're like, I'm going, I'm

51:01

studying all late and trying to convince

51:03

their parents how hard college is. The

51:06

people who treat like a job, but

51:08

you know, they schedule, when does this

51:10

thing do? Like, when do I want

51:12

to work on it? I don't want

51:14

to work on it until... two in

51:16

the morning the night before I'll start

51:18

a week earlier. When do I have

51:20

time for this? They move around their

51:22

schedule. They move things around. They use

51:25

techniques that work. They don't waste time.

51:27

Low friction study and low friction note

51:29

taking. What's the stuff that's actually going

51:31

to help me learn this? What is

51:33

just nonsense structure on top of that?

51:35

So it's not actually in one of

51:37

my books, but it's something I observed

51:39

about how people use to books. So

51:42

I'll give you a little bit of

51:44

guides. There's. How to become a high

51:46

school superstar? This is a book about

51:48

college admissions and high school success aimed

51:50

at high school students and it makes

51:52

the argument that you can do really

51:54

well in college admissions without having to

51:56

be a superstressed out grind. So the

51:58

whole premise is I profile a collection

52:01

of. what I call relaxed, superstars, kids

52:03

who weren't stressed, I got in the

52:05

good schools, and we kind of pick

52:07

apart how they do it. So that

52:09

can be kind of a useful thing

52:11

if you're thinking about high school and

52:13

college admissions. The part one of that

52:15

book has a playbook, the part one

52:17

playbook, which adapts a lot of my

52:20

college studying and time management advice to

52:22

simpler versions aimed at high school kids.

52:24

So if you have a high school

52:26

kid who's, you know, has at least

52:28

a year left of school, you might

52:30

want to read at least part one

52:32

of how to become a high school

52:34

superstar just so they get used to

52:36

a more professional structured way of doing

52:39

their schoolwork. When it comes to college,

52:41

how do when a college is like

52:43

an intro to the mindset of like,

52:45

oh, I want to be a successful

52:47

college student and it's a bunch of,

52:49

it's very easy to read. The first

52:51

book I wrote, it's a first book

52:53

I wrote. You should experiment, you should

52:56

care, like don't just stumble through your

52:58

experience. And some of them are academic

53:00

studying related roles. Some are related to

53:02

how you choose courses. Some are related

53:04

to things like physical fitness or keeping

53:06

up with news or mental health or

53:08

keeping your room clean because it's going

53:10

to change the way you understand the

53:12

organization of your life. It's like a

53:15

mindset book. And it's based off of

53:17

in theory I interviewed like Rhodes Scholars

53:19

and Marshall Scholars and Goldberg Scholars and

53:21

sort of based on like these ideas

53:23

that like really successful students have. How

53:25

do you come straight up? Here's how

53:27

to study like it's your job. You

53:29

got to read that at some point

53:31

if you're going to college. It's how

53:34

to do your academic work like a

53:36

professional. That's the best selling of those

53:38

three books. I think that's quarter million.

53:40

I think that's the best selling of

53:42

those three books. I think that's quarter

53:44

million, maybe 300,000 copies. That's just straight

53:46

up. Here's how to study like it's

53:48

study like it's your job. This will

53:51

be relevant as you go a little

53:53

bit farther into your college career, but

53:55

it's going to talk about how do

53:57

you ultimately cultivate a career that you're

53:59

passionate about. And it breaks a bunch

54:01

of myths that college students are going

54:03

to hear, which is like it's all

54:05

about your passion. It's all about pursuing

54:07

some grand goal. And it talks about

54:10

the value of getting good. It's level

54:12

sets your expectations for what work should

54:14

feel like in your first few years

54:16

out of college. And so you will

54:18

want to read that book at some

54:20

point before you graduate. So I'm kind

54:22

of giving you a long reading list

54:24

here, but you can choose from those

54:26

summaries, which of those books you want

54:29

to start with. All right, we got

54:31

a case study here. It's where people

54:33

send in stories of them. yourselves applying

54:35

the type of advice we talk about

54:37

on the show to their own lives,

54:39

so we can see what it looks

54:41

like out in the wild. If you

54:43

have a case study, you can send

54:45

it to jessie at cal newport.com. Today's

54:48

case study comes from Derek. Derek says

54:50

you have stressed that systems and processes

54:52

don't make work easy. They make it

54:54

consistent because work is hard. I've always

54:56

done a new partonian style system, but

54:58

a year ago entered a job on

55:00

a contract within my existing government organization

55:02

to be a coordinator for major federal

55:05

grant. I'm responsible for receiving, processing, tracking,

55:07

servicing, and reporting on four major grants.

55:09

I've been doing multi-scale planning, so less

55:11

catches me by surprise. In my quarterly

55:13

plan, I've committed the developing my obligation

55:15

management practice through a big weekly capture,

55:17

consistent shutdowns, and time block plans, including

55:19

breaks so my brain can be on

55:21

board. On the weekend, I do a

55:24

weekly plan to be on the offensive.

55:26

Some of my biggest successes so far,

55:28

have been the one for you, one

55:30

for me scheduling, and one for application

55:32

processing. Working Memory.T. also has been a

55:34

lifesaver, although I admit it's turned into

55:36

a kind of diary. I also have

55:38

a centralized shared spreadsheet for applications received,

55:40

and have defined a protocol to track

55:43

statuses and actions taken that I've shared

55:45

with my team. These have been a

55:47

game changer as I have over 50

55:49

applications and projects to monitor. While this

55:51

has so far been a story of

55:53

success, no hero's journey is complete without

55:55

setbacks, minus correspondence. I have two email

55:57

inboxes to manage and voicemails to return.

55:59

I think I need to autopilot these.

56:02

How can I keep on top of...

56:04

the application project obligations while still ensuring

56:06

I'm staying on top of the emails.

56:08

All right, Derek, I appreciate the case

56:10

study. I think what this underscores is

56:12

this idea that one of the unique

56:14

attributes of office work in the digital

56:16

age, right, in the modern digital environment,

56:19

is the degree to which your job

56:21

can become like this, where you're basically

56:23

running like a complicated mini organization where

56:25

the only employee is you. Because in

56:27

this age of low friction digital communication

56:29

information flow, it's just so easy. It's

56:31

like great, you do all of this.

56:33

And because we can just give you

56:35

an email address and people will just

56:38

bother you and we can just say

56:40

just handle all of this. We have

56:42

workloads, so quantity of workloads and the

56:44

velocity at which these workloads unfold would

56:46

turn to hair white of someone from

56:48

like 1985. It really can explode the

56:50

complexity of work. And the only way

56:52

to survive in this type of new

56:54

digital environment. is you have

56:57

to really structure yourself. Like you have five

56:59

different departments you oversee and they each have

57:01

their own processes, even though you're implementing each

57:03

of these departments with your own brain, if

57:05

you don't structure the information, the communication, and

57:08

how you go through your day, you will

57:10

be swamped. Derek would be completely swamped without

57:12

these tools. And probably there's been half a

57:14

dozen people who have gone through the same

57:17

position who were doing a quarter of what

57:19

you're doing here, Derek, and probably then still

57:21

had a hard time had a structure in

57:23

a structure in a way that. 30 years

57:25

ago, you didn't have to worry about. So

57:28

I appreciate hearing that case study. They get

57:30

to your kind of question within your case

57:32

study. You're worried about the volume of calls

57:34

and voicemails and emails. You say, how can

57:37

I autopilot this? So in other words, like,

57:39

have fixed times for doing this. So I'm

57:41

not just in my communication boxes all day.

57:43

You have to reset these processes. You have

57:46

to retrain the way that people who are

57:48

communicating with you. which is where they when

57:50

they think about this email address they think

57:52

about you this email address is fused with

57:54

you and I am talking to you and

57:57

asking you something and it's rude if you

57:59

don't get back to me right away. You

58:01

need to move them off of that and

58:03

in the protocols or processes where the right

58:06

information gets captured and stored and you can

58:08

go through a lot of it efficiently and

58:10

action can be taken and expectations are appropriate.

58:12

There's a lot of things you can do

58:15

here. This goes back to my book, A

58:17

World Without Email. There could be things like

58:19

for specific types of queries people have about

58:21

their applications. Don't use email. Say whatever it

58:23

is. I have a shared document for our

58:26

spreadsheet for collecting concerns or modifications and just

58:28

go in there. Here's like pending and here's

58:30

what's done. Just go in there and you

58:32

add a row when you have a question,

58:35

you make sure all the information I need

58:37

is in there and you can watch as

58:39

things above it get. handled and yours moves

58:41

closer to the top of it, you can

58:43

see exactly what your status is. But it's

58:46

not just an email, it's an email. Again,

58:48

we conceptualize as like, I just tapped you

58:50

on the shoulder, why are you ignoring me?

58:52

But when it's no, I'm entering your information

58:55

to a cue in this document, and I

58:57

see there's six things ahead of it, and

58:59

I'm waiting until my thing gets processed, they

59:01

need clarity. You have the information, I know

59:04

you have the information, I know I'm going

59:06

to get an answer, I know my status,

59:08

I'm fine, I have a hundred other things

59:10

to do. I don't need you to respond

59:12

right away, I just need you not to

59:15

forget it. You can use office hours, hey

59:17

here are my open hours for like application

59:19

questions, just call me up, my phone, my

59:21

phone is on, it's really easy, just you

59:24

know you can always call me at three

59:26

and like we'll get into it, I'll answer

59:28

any questions you, I'll answer any questions you

59:30

have, I'll answer any questions you have, I'll

59:33

answer any questions you have, I'll answer any

59:35

questions you have, you, you, you, I'll answer

59:37

any questions you, you, you, you know, you

59:39

know, I'll, you know, you know, I'll, you

59:41

know, you know, you know, you know, you

59:44

know, I'll, you know, I'll, I'll, you know,

59:46

I'll, I'll, I'll You can have an email

59:48

address that's not your name, but is like

59:50

a project or a query type that diffuses

59:53

the communication channel from a person and people's

59:55

expectations changes. When you send something to, you

59:57

know, application requests as opposed to like Jesse

59:59

at government.gov. You have a different way you

1:00:01

think about it. Like, oh yeah, this is

1:00:04

going into like a system where people are

1:00:06

going to process these requests. And then you

1:00:08

have other sorts of protocols. Like, yeah, like

1:00:10

this is how this works. We have the

1:00:13

shared folder and applications. When you're ready, you

1:00:15

put them in the shared folder. We empty

1:00:17

this on Wednesdays and Friday. So, you know,

1:00:19

if you get it in, whenever you get

1:00:22

it in, by the next Wednesday or Friday,

1:00:24

we'll empty it. Here's the next Wednesday or

1:00:26

Friday. So when people like bother you like,

1:00:28

hey, I want to do an application, what's

1:00:30

going on, you just send them back this

1:00:33

like instruction link, it's like, yeah, here's how

1:00:35

it works. You put this information, put it

1:00:37

in this folder, we'll process it the next

1:00:39

Wednesday and Friday, we'll send you a confirmation

1:00:42

of that, you can then track it in

1:00:44

this spreadsheet over here. You got to retrain

1:00:46

and redevelop your people you're communicating with and

1:00:48

your communication protocol, so it's not just ad

1:00:51

hoc conversation ongoing. It's critical to get away

1:00:53

from that, especially in this type of role.

1:00:55

IT departments learned this a long time ago

1:00:57

with ticketing systems. You cannot just, once you

1:00:59

have any volume of dealing with people and

1:01:02

their concerns, it cannot just be ad hoc.

1:01:04

It cannot just be, here's my name at

1:01:06

agency.gov, just talk to this, like you're talking

1:01:08

to me, like in the same room, it

1:01:11

just doesn't scale. So you have my permission

1:01:13

to try to build things that are more

1:01:15

structured. with

1:03:14

better help. Visit better

1:03:17

help.com/deep questions

1:03:19

to get 10% off your first month.

1:03:22

That's better help

1:03:24

help.com/ deep questions.

1:03:26

I want to talk about our

1:03:28

friends at Shopify. I know a

1:03:30

lot of people in the same

1:03:33

game of podcast and books

1:03:35

and videos who sell things

1:03:37

online. And by far the

1:03:39

most consistent choice they use

1:03:42

of software to do this

1:03:44

is... I

1:16:27

have this theory that where you're

1:16:30

going to get the first uncomfortable

1:16:32

AI, by uncomfortable I mean, I

1:16:34

kind of am worried about what

1:16:36

it's doing or worried about turning

1:16:38

it off. It's going to be

1:16:40

the combination of relatively simple dynamic

1:16:42

programs that can loop and create

1:16:45

sort of like cybernetic control loops

1:16:47

for doing things like actuation drives

1:16:49

and world state connected to an

1:16:51

unpredictable, complicated understanding of the world

1:16:53

like in a language model or

1:16:55

something similar. And there's going to

1:16:57

be this sort of runaway effect

1:16:59

where simple control logic plus complex

1:17:02

world understanding could lead to unpredictable

1:17:04

complex seeming behavior that has real

1:17:06

world impacts. So I don't mean

1:17:08

to geek out too much, but

1:17:10

like it's good news. No, chat.

1:17:12

GPT doesn't have instincts. Plato factories

1:17:14

can't. There's nothing. It just things

1:17:17

pushed through it and nothing changes.

1:17:19

It's ossified. Built and stone. Yeah,

1:18:45

for sure. But we are our technology

1:18:47

podcast now. Number five, temporarily the

1:18:49

number five technology podcast in the

1:18:51

world. So we gotta do more,

1:18:53

we gotta do more tech coins. Yeah,

1:18:56

I'm gonna listen to that again for

1:18:58

sure. All right. Man, I should do

1:19:00

some more AI stuff. Complicated world. All

1:19:02

right. Anyways. While we are still here

1:19:04

and AI hasn't taken over yet, I

1:19:06

will thank you all for listing. We'll

1:19:08

be back next week with another episode.

1:19:10

And until then, as always, stay deep.

1:19:12

Stay deep. Hi,

1:19:18

it's Cal here. One more

1:19:20

thing before you go. If

1:19:22

you like the Deep Questions

1:19:24

podcast, you will love my

1:19:26

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1:19:30

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