0:10

I'm Cal Newport and this

0:13

is Deep Questions. The

0:15

show about cultivating a

0:17

deep life in a

0:19

distracted world. So I'm

0:21

here my Deep Fork

0:23

HQ joined this always

0:26

by my producer Jesse.

0:28

Jesse, I'm going to give

0:30

an update on the book

0:32

I'm writing. Yeah. So here's

0:35

the timeline of where I've

0:37

been, where I'm going. Where

0:39

I'm going. the outline for this

0:41

book a year ago. So I remember

0:43

it was during like a spring break

0:46

trip. I started writing it over the

0:48

summer. I wrote a draft of most

0:50

of the first half over the summer and

0:52

into the fall. Took a break when

0:54

I was having my surgery and also

0:57

when I took over Kalashaka's column for

0:59

a month for the New Yorker. So

1:01

I was like, okay, I'm working on that.

1:03

Came back to the book and decided that

1:05

none of what I wrote worked. Get

1:07

out. Yeah, the voice wasn't there. The

1:09

whole thing? Yeah. Has that happened before?

1:11

Yeah. It wasn't that much. It was

1:14

half a book. Yeah. Let me think how

1:16

many words. Well, I didn't finish the

1:18

last, I had one, two, three, three full

1:20

chapters, and then the fourth chapter,

1:22

so the first four chapters make up

1:24

the first half of the book. The

1:27

fourth chapter I had written, actually I

1:29

had written quite a bit on. I hadn't

1:31

finished that one. The voice wasn't right,

1:33

and I knew it wasn't right. Right,

1:35

which is how writing often works is

1:37

you have a gut about something whether

1:39

it's working or not. It doesn't mean

1:41

you can get something that your gut

1:44

feels good about easily, but you know

1:46

when something's not right. So I did

1:48

not like it. Went back to the

1:50

drawing board. I've now rewritten the first

1:52

two chapters and I'm in the process of

1:54

rewriting the third, but now I found the

1:56

voice that's working. That's just what

1:59

it's working. I think. So you wrote

2:01

two chapters in basically a month? Yeah.

2:03

So then it took, so you must

2:05

have used some of the thoughts

2:07

from like last summer when you

2:10

were doing all the other stuff?

2:12

Yeah, I was using a lot

2:14

of the material. So it wasn't

2:16

totally of waste. Wasn't totally, the

2:18

first chapter I did rewrite from

2:21

scratch. But that was a shorter

2:23

chapter. It was the introduction to

2:25

part one, which kind of lays out

2:27

the big idea for part one. The

2:29

second chapter is like a beasty 9,000

2:31

word chapter. That one actually, it was

2:33

mainly the opening the first couple thousand

2:36

words. The way I was getting into the

2:38

topic was a chapter on discipline and the

2:40

way I was getting into it wasn't discipline

2:42

and the way I was getting into it

2:44

wasn't working. And so I cut that all

2:47

off and came out from a different way

2:49

and shortened it and then cleaned up everything

2:51

and added a new section. So yeah, that

2:53

wasn't. But the third chapter I'm rewriting from

2:55

writing from writing from scratch. is you have

2:58

to become like a more imminently

3:00

qualified human to borrow a sort of

3:02

jacco phrase before you start the process

3:04

of trying to significantly change your life.

3:06

Like you have to get your act together first,

3:08

like we talk about on the show, you get

3:10

your act together first, then you make the major

3:12

changes, you can't just jump right into the major

3:14

changes. Like one of the things you need to

3:17

do I'm arguing in chapter three of the book

3:19

is you have to have some control of your

3:21

time because making big changes in your

3:23

life requires... Time. Like you need time to

3:25

reflect and figure out what's going on. You

3:27

need time to like learn the new skills

3:30

and make plans and to put things into

3:32

action. If you don't have time, you can't

3:34

affect change. And I sort of tell

3:36

some classic tales of like classic change and

3:39

what do you see in those tales? They've

3:41

got a lot of time. It's like time

3:43

management I'm arguing. Take it out

3:46

of the business productivity context.

3:48

It's valuable for lifestyle change.

3:50

So I'm like that's the chapter I'm

3:52

working on. Was no good. It was no good. And

3:54

so just to give you a sense like what's going

3:56

on with the voice The first time I was writing

3:58

this stuff it was much more like me,

4:00

me kind of thinking about things as

4:03

a cultural commentator and someone who's like

4:05

involved in lots of conversations on these

4:07

issues. So there's a lot more grappling

4:09

with like the tension about time management

4:11

and productivity and sort of Oliver Berkman

4:13

and Ginny O'Dell and whether this is

4:15

good or whether this is bad and

4:18

like why actually we need to think

4:20

about it and sort of countering criticisms

4:22

of thinking too much about structuring your

4:24

life versus sort of being more free

4:26

form and flowing. And it was boring.

4:28

And then I was just like, let

4:30

me just go through like my multi

4:33

scale planning system. And that was just

4:35

sort of like walking through that in

4:37

like great detail. I wrote a whole

4:39

11,000 word chapter just like, let's go

4:41

through what happens at the, what happens

4:43

at like, let's go through what happens

4:46

at the quarterly scale, and like, a

4:48

quarterly scale, or whatever. None of that

4:50

was working. Like, this is not interesting.

4:52

This is not interesting. in the real

4:54

world knows who Ginny O'Dell is, cares

4:56

about like whether time management or productivity

4:58

is like good or bad. No one

5:01

is talking about like well I think

5:03

like hustle culture and this is like

5:05

capitalist constructions of whatever. She's like people

5:07

like generally like I like to be

5:09

more organized. Sure. Like what do you

5:11

have to offer me? She's like that

5:13

discussion is interesting to like you and

5:16

your friends. Most people don't care. And

5:18

so I was like oh you're right

5:20

like none of that matters. What matters

5:22

is why do you need time to

5:24

live the deep life to live the

5:26

deep life. That's what matters and why

5:29

and I've and now I'm rewriting it

5:31

more around like why do we struggle

5:33

so much though if we know it's

5:35

important why do people struggle so much

5:37

to have time management systems that stick

5:39

and I have a new theory because

5:41

I like theories about I won't give

5:44

away too much but like helping people

5:46

understand in like an original way here

5:48

is why people struggle with time management

5:50

systems even though they really actually want

5:52

a system that works they love the

5:54

idea they want that bullet journal to

5:57

like structure their life or some complicated

5:59

digital system to like automate all there

6:01

and they want it to work. it

6:03

doesn't so why not and what should

6:05

you do instead and I'm pulling from

6:07

like the minimally viable system idea we

6:09

talked about a couple weeks ago on

6:12

the podcast and the whole thing is

6:14

like it's moving more but the voice

6:16

I found is much more of a

6:18

voice of like actually talking to the

6:20

reader who's like vaguely on board with

6:22

like yeah I would like to improve

6:24

my life I kind of buy the

6:27

skill as useful like let's get into

6:29

it you know So it's a little

6:31

hard to explain the details of the

6:33

voice, but I think it's moving a

6:35

lot quicker. It's less dense. It's less

6:37

heavy. The other thing I am doing,

6:40

though, with the book, is the final

6:42

update I'll get, the thing I am

6:44

doing with it that I really am

6:46

enjoying, is I'm trying to reverse 180

6:48

degrees, the most common criticism of advice

6:50

books. So the most common criticism in

6:52

advice books, is this is like a

6:55

chapter or a long article. that has

6:57

been inflated into a book. Right. So

6:59

that's often like the critique people have

7:01

of these books is like, yeah, I

7:03

like this idea, but like, you know,

7:05

give me a long essay on this,

7:07

I got it. Why do I have

7:10

to do 250 pages? I'm doing the

7:12

opposite. I'm actually making every chapter of

7:14

the book, could itself probably be expanded

7:16

into a full-size book. So it really

7:18

is. That's why I'm taking my time.

7:20

I extended a deadline on this. This

7:23

chapter on time management. is actually going

7:25

to contain more ideas, more theories, more

7:27

practicality than like sort of most time

7:29

management books. Like you could actually probably

7:31

expand that out into a whole book.

7:33

Like my chapter on reclaiming your mind,

7:35

teaching yourself how to think again in

7:38

a way that's sort of like clear

7:40

and undistracted. The ideas I'm shoving into

7:42

that, the examples, the ideas, the frameworks

7:44

of science, like that could probably be

7:46

blown out to a whole book. So

7:48

I want like every chapter of this

7:50

book. to be something that could be

7:53

on its own an entire book. So

7:55

it's the opposite of the effect of

7:57

this book could have been a chapter.

7:59

This is the use of applied mathematics

8:01

terms. It's an uncompressable information store. Like

8:03

I'm actually sort of trying to be

8:06

at maximum compression. Every few pages, it's

8:08

new. This is new. This is adding

8:10

something new. This is practical. There's no

8:12

extra information. I keep ripcording out of

8:14

sections as soon as you get what

8:16

you need. And then we move on

8:18

to another chapter. So that's the other

8:21

thing. I want this book to be

8:23

very information dense. Like, wow, every chapter

8:25

of this book is like, itself has

8:27

a bunch of stuff in it. Original

8:29

stuff, a lot of details. I can

8:31

have to go back and read it

8:33

again. And then I'm moving on to

8:36

something that something that's very much different

8:38

in the next chapter in the next

8:40

chapter. So none of this like stretching

8:42

things out over. The one thing I

8:44

would say with the bonus or the

8:46

multi scale planning that you cut out

8:49

you could probably include that as like

8:51

a bonus for people who pre-order the

8:53

book. And you'll get the ideas will

8:55

be there but the way I have

8:57

this new way of thinking about it

8:59

with time management where it's much more

9:01

about building up an idiosyncratic system from

9:04

the ground up is actually much more

9:06

likely to avoid the traps that lead

9:08

people to abandoned systems as opposed to

9:10

having a complex system that you take

9:12

in top down. And so when I,

9:14

and I have the key ideas you

9:17

need for a system, here's a question,

9:19

so any system or practice has to

9:21

answer. And it'll, as I give a

9:23

lot of ideas for how to answer

9:25

these questions, the ideas for how to

9:27

answer these questions, the ideas of multi-scale

9:29

planning will be in there. So it'll

9:32

be in there, but not in the

9:34

gory detail that the original draft. if

9:36

you want the 9,000 words on weekly

9:38

plans. Yeah. Pre-order a copy. Give you

9:40

all you ever wanted to hear about

9:42

trello boards. And then one last thing

9:44

I notice you have the shirt back.

9:47

I brought the shirt back. I brought

9:49

the shirt back. I brought the shirt

9:51

back. There's a couple reasons. Well, hey,

9:53

I was not happy with the t-shirts.

9:55

I still want a better shirt, but

9:57

I think it should be. I don't

10:00

like my other options. So I brought

10:02

the shirt back for now. So we

10:04

clip things out of this or that.

10:06

So the shirt is temporarily back. I

10:08

still haven't. of like I'm gonna upgrade

10:10

the outfit, but I don't know how

10:12

to do that. If I try to

10:15

upgrade the outfit, I don't know what

10:17

I'm gonna end up with. Well, a

10:19

couple years ago you talked about how

10:21

you got a person who helped buy

10:23

stuff for you, right? Yeah, I should

10:25

get him back involved. Yeah, the stylus

10:27

guy? Yeah, for my book tour. Yeah,

10:30

he was great. I actually should just

10:32

call him and be like, I don't

10:34

know. I think we need like a

10:36

fruit of the loom white t-shirt and

10:38

soccer shorts and um-brows. I don't like

10:40

I don't I don't have it there.

10:43

You remember um-brows? And some somba sneakers.

10:45

I want some sombas and some um-brows

10:47

and some um-brows and fish t-shirt. It's

10:49

just I just don't have enough brainroom

10:51

for that. There's a bunch of 90

10:53

references. All right, well this is enough

10:55

nonsense. We should probably get started with

10:58

our with our show and start as

11:00

always. their deep dive. So one of

11:02

the things I love to do is

11:04

a computer science professor who also thinks

11:06

more broadly about how we live and

11:08

work in the modern digital environment is

11:10

to draw connections between these two worlds

11:13

of mind, the computer science and the

11:15

advice world. So I went to a

11:17

talk the other day. It was given

11:19

by a computer security researcher from around

11:21

this area and it sparked in my

11:23

mind that interesting thought about one of

11:26

the reasons why we often feel so

11:28

exhausted and unhappy with contemporary knowledge work.

11:30

So what I want to do here

11:32

is try this out for size. I

11:34

am going to connect a very narrow

11:36

computer security issue with the very broad

11:38

question of how do we make our

11:41

work less exhausting. All right, so let's

11:43

get into it. I've pulled up on

11:45

the screen here for people who are

11:47

watching instead of just listening a meme

11:49

that gets out a clear computer security

11:51

issue. So here's what this meme is.

11:54

There's someone at a computer and here's

11:56

a computer and here's the text. Sorry,

11:58

but your password must contain an uppercase

12:00

letter. number, a haiku, a gang sign,

12:02

a hieroglyph, and the blood of a

12:04

virgin. Does this sound familiar?

12:07

Starting the early 2000s and

12:09

picking up with increasingly

12:11

urgency has been these

12:13

ever escalating requests

12:16

from software and security

12:18

ops to make your

12:20

password increasingly better from

12:22

a hard to crack or

12:25

security perspective. And the way

12:27

this sort of process unfolded was like

12:29

at first there were sort of suggestions

12:31

like hey a good password you know

12:33

should have this people ignored that and

12:35

so then they started educating like well

12:37

we're going to give you some like information

12:40

about like why you want a better

12:42

password or what makes a better password

12:44

that was largely ignored and then the

12:47

software and security operators finally just begin

12:49

forcing people like your password has to obey

12:51

all these rules or we're not going to

12:53

accept it. So you have to figure

12:56

this out when you set up your

12:58

password. There's other rules as well. It's

13:00

not just what a new password has

13:02

to do. They begin adding rules about

13:04

like we looked at your last passwords

13:06

as well and it can't be too

13:08

similar to your most recent password. Also

13:10

rules about like you have to change

13:12

this password roughly like once every 18

13:14

minutes. It seems roughly what they seem

13:17

to request. So from a security

13:19

operation perspective, it's as if

13:21

their mindset is why are users resisting

13:23

these rules? Having more

13:26

complicated passwords. objectively makes

13:28

these systems safer and harder to crack

13:30

and it's bad if these systems get

13:32

hacked into and cracked. And from

13:35

the security people's perspective, it's

13:37

not like these rules are somehow super

13:39

onerous, like people don't know how to

13:41

do them or it requires some sort

13:43

of complex skill that people don't have.

13:45

It's just coming up with a password

13:47

that matches these various rules. Like we're

13:50

not making that big of an ask

13:52

and it's like important for passwords not

13:54

to be cracked. All right, so

13:56

this is like a mindset in

13:58

the security world going to give

14:01

it a name, the mindset behind this

14:03

approach to computer passwords, I'm going to

14:05

call the isolated optimal mindset. So I'm

14:07

going to try to generalize this mindset

14:09

and then we're going to bring it

14:11

out of computer security here in a

14:14

second. But the isolated optimal mindset looks

14:16

at specific behaviors and isolation and asks,

14:18

what's the optimal thing for a person

14:20

to do in this situation? So let's

14:22

just look. in isolation setting up a

14:24

password for this IT system at our

14:27

company. What is the optimal thing for

14:29

user to do here? Oh, to give

14:31

a password that we know will be

14:33

largely resistant to brute force cracking attempts.

14:35

And the way that this isolated optimal

14:37

mindset unfolds is like, look, if the

14:40

optimal thing to do here is not

14:42

crazy. Like, okay, you need to go

14:44

on a quest of ever increasing, you

14:46

know, difficult obstacles and when you make

14:48

it back on the other end of

14:51

the quest, you'll have your password. As

14:53

long as it's not crazy like that

14:55

or something that people just won't know

14:57

how to know how to do it.

14:59

Or something that people just won't know

15:01

how to do, right? So you're not

15:04

saying, yeah, we just need you to

15:06

write a quick C-sharp-oriented, so that reference

15:08

might have just upset. Jesse got really

15:10

upset. When I made a reference the

15:12

property of object oriented programming when referencing

15:14

C sharp or famously you would use

15:17

C plus plus more often than C

15:19

sharp for object oriented programming And and

15:21

Jesse did he just like rolled his

15:23

eyes and shook his head he gets

15:25

really mad Would you say that's true

15:27

when I mess up computer programming references?

15:30

All I can think of is like

15:32

Neil Stevenson's cryptography books when you're talking

15:34

about all this and I'm like I

15:36

don't understand any of this if there's

15:38

one thing that upsets Jesse is When

15:41

we're talking about polymorphism and objects and

15:43

object oriented programming, not correctly referencing the

15:45

ingrained polymorphism support in various language classes.

15:47

We fight about this all the time.

15:49

But anyways, all right, so trust me,

15:51

we're leaving the nerd. in a second,

15:54

but we're starting on computer science and

15:56

we're going to move to the world

15:58

that 99% of you care about. So

16:00

this is the mindset that drives all

16:02

that annoying password stuff, the isolated optimal

16:04

mindset, which again, is just, hey, what

16:07

would be the optimal thing for someone

16:09

to do here? And if that answer

16:11

isn't crazily complicated or onerous, and like,

16:13

why won't they just do this? I

16:15

think this mindset explains a lot of

16:18

the expectations in the broader world of

16:20

work that tend to exhausts us as

16:22

well. This mindset and security, which I

16:24

heard it talked about in a talk

16:26

the other day, got me thinking about,

16:28

you know what, this is the mindset

16:31

in the world of work more generally

16:33

that is causing some problems. I want

16:35

to give you two concrete examples to

16:37

try to make this more clear what

16:39

I mean. Consider all the issues surrounding

16:41

email. Let's apply the isolated optimal mindset

16:44

to help explain these issues. Isolated in

16:46

the moment. If I send you an

16:48

email with like a question. The optimal

16:50

behavior is for you to just respond

16:52

right away, right? Because think about it.

16:54

If you would just respond to my

16:57

message right away, it gives me a

16:59

lot more flexibility and ease in how

17:01

I do my work. Like when I

17:03

need information, I can get it much

17:05

in the same way that when I

17:08

need information from the internet, Google will

17:10

just give me that answer. And if

17:12

I look at this behavior in isolation,

17:14

you answering my email. It passes the

17:16

test of this is not super onerous.

17:18

I'm not asking you to go do

17:21

something really hard or beyond your ability.

17:23

In fact, it will probably just take

17:25

you three minutes, right? You just have

17:27

to look this thing up and get

17:29

me back and answer. So the isolated

17:31

optimal mindset says, yeah, just respond to

17:34

my email right away when I send

17:36

it. But out of this comes that

17:38

culture of responsiveness that we know creates

17:40

a lot of problems. Let me give

17:42

you another example of this a play

17:44

in the world of work. Think about

17:47

meetings. Isolated in the moment. If you

17:49

could just agree to a meeting when

17:51

I need to get a group of

17:53

people together to make a decision or

17:55

to gather information, or better yet, as

17:58

is they're trying to make the norm

18:00

in certain parts of my university right

18:02

now, better yet just have your calendar

18:04

made public so that other people can

18:06

just see all your free time and

18:08

just choose a time that works on

18:11

everyone's schedule and just have a meeting

18:13

invite show up. So I don't even

18:15

have to interact with you to pull

18:17

you into a meeting. We don't even

18:19

have to talk about when you're available.

18:21

If you would just do this, it

18:24

would make my life easier. It would

18:26

be optimal in isolation because I have

18:28

this thing and I need feedback from

18:30

these three people on it. That would

18:32

be a good way to make progress

18:34

on it. And if I could just

18:37

without having to do much else just

18:39

have a meeting go on the books

18:41

and we'll all get together at the

18:43

next available time we could all get

18:45

together and talk about it. That makes

18:48

life easier. It seems optimal in isolation.

18:50

And it's not super onerous, like what

18:52

do you care if like some meetings

18:54

show up on your calendar, this work,

18:56

work has meetings and your time was

18:58

free and like what's the problem, not

19:01

asking you something onerous. So the optimal

19:03

isolated mindset says, yeah, you should just

19:05

be able to auto schedule people in

19:07

the meetings when we need them. This

19:09

of course creates that culture meeting availability,

19:11

which itself leads to all sorts of

19:14

problems in practice. So what is the

19:16

alternative? Well, this is where I want

19:18

to go back to the world of

19:20

computer security. approach the passwords is now

19:22

something that's getting a lot of pushback.

19:25

And if we look at how the

19:27

computer security world is beginning to push

19:29

back on the give me the super

19:31

complicated password because it's going to make

19:33

our system more secure. If we look

19:35

at how the computer security world is

19:38

starting to push back on that narrow

19:40

issue, we can see that that solution

19:42

is going to generalize to our broad

19:44

work issues as well. So we're going

19:46

to get some insight about how to

19:48

fix the world to work more broadly.

19:51

So this was the talk I was

19:53

hearing. within this broader topic that's known

19:55

as human-centric security. And the subfield does

19:57

something. interesting. They work with, talk to,

19:59

and observe at their actual jobs real

20:01

people. So they're not just sitting back

20:04

and saying, for example, what level of

20:06

complexity of a password means that like

20:08

these cracking software we have is is

20:10

going to struggle. Like what's the technically

20:12

what's going to be the thresholds we

20:15

need in our standards that's going to

20:17

make it hard for a hash attack.

20:19

you know, crack it. They're actually watching

20:21

real people. Hey, what's going on in

20:23

the day when you get a request

20:25

to set up a password? What else

20:28

are you doing? What do you do

20:30

with this password? Why aren't you setting

20:32

up this password? Like what else is

20:34

happening? What's your concerns here? So they

20:36

actually talk to real people and they

20:38

figure out the context in which these

20:41

individual decisions are being made. So instead

20:43

of using the isolated mindset. of just

20:45

in isolation, this would be the often

20:47

way to set up a password. They

20:49

say, no, what's the whole context of

20:51

this person's life and day and IT

20:54

situation when they're asked to do that?

20:56

And what they realize when they did

20:58

this type of human-centric research, was like,

21:00

well, wait a second, users are dealing

21:02

with all sorts of different IT systems,

21:05

both in their professional life and their

21:07

personal life, and all the time they

21:09

have to set up accounts, and all

21:11

the time they have to set up

21:13

to set up accounts. is not that

21:15

they couldn't come up with a password

21:18

that meets those demands, they worry about

21:20

forgetting them. They're not memorable. And if

21:22

you forget it, it's a problem. Now

21:24

you've added a big time overhead of

21:26

having to get your password recovered. And

21:28

that can be stressful that like what

21:31

if this system doesn't even let me

21:33

do that? But the IT professional might

21:35

say like, well, there's these like password

21:37

managers you can use, but that's not

21:39

obvious. And people have different systems they're

21:41

using. Like while I use this computer

21:44

at work and this phone is not

21:46

for work, but also I use it

21:48

sometimes for work and my computer at

21:50

home is both and this system though

21:52

I might want to access it. on

21:55

both systems, it's not obvious if you're

21:57

not much more in the weeds on

21:59

these type of computer security systems. And

22:01

I hate to say this computer researchers,

22:03

but these password managers you talk about

22:05

are not so obvious, especially when you

22:08

have many devices of different operating systems

22:10

used and owned for many different types

22:12

of purposes. People aren't that confident about

22:14

how do I set up these passwords.

22:16

They don't necessarily trust those things. They

22:18

say, well, why is this any more

22:21

secure? Like, what if that gets hacked,

22:23

all my passwords are there? You might

22:25

say instead, well, write it down somewhere,

22:27

but that's really fraud as well. Where

22:29

am I writing this down? What if

22:32

someone gets access to that? Where am

22:34

I storing it? Well, when I'm at

22:36

a hotel, I don't have, you know,

22:38

access to that, right? That might be

22:40

at home in a filing cabinet and

22:42

how am I going to remember this?

22:45

And so they're like, if there's any

22:47

way we can resist the rules to

22:49

try to just get something in here

22:51

that I'm going to, People are calling

22:53

back to that not because they don't

22:55

understand the rules, not because they don't

22:58

understand that yes this makes a password

23:00

more hackable, but they're doing a calculus

23:02

and saying this is not worth it

23:04

for me. The overhead of trying to

23:06

obey these rules in the right way

23:08

is worse than the overhead of trying

23:11

to obey these rules in the right

23:13

way is worse to me than the

23:15

fear of like your system might be

23:17

compromised. Like maybe we need to set

23:19

up systems. that don't require passwords for

23:22

the security. Or maybe we as a,

23:24

because there's alternatives you can do here.

23:26

Or maybe we as a company have

23:28

to make standard the password manager. And

23:30

we've pre- installed it and as part

23:32

of your training when you work here

23:35

and we, you learn about it and

23:37

it's not so scary and it kind

23:39

of makes sense how it works and

23:41

it's been explained to you and that's

23:43

worth doing up front or whatever it

23:45

is. But you're meeting people where they

23:48

actually are, you're not tackling problems in

23:50

the abstract. All right, so let's bring

23:52

this mindset back to our work problems

23:54

we had from before. So if we

23:56

return to email, for example, we said

23:58

the problem with the... at optimal mindset

24:01

is that, yeah, it's optimal for you

24:03

to answer my email fast, but if

24:05

we all are making that same decision,

24:07

I get 300 emails a day. And

24:09

all I'm doing is trying to answer

24:12

the emails and I get exhausted. You

24:14

would bring a human-centric mindset to the

24:16

email picture and you immediately see,

24:18

wait a second, this is exhausting, the

24:20

actual behavior I'm watching this user doing

24:22

at their real desk and a real

24:24

job. They are exhausted because they have

24:26

200 emails they have to answer. And

24:28

they're all different contexts. They have to

24:30

keep shifting their brain from one context

24:32

to another. And when they're away from

24:34

the email, they know more are piling

24:36

up. And that has its own sort

24:39

of social psychological cost as well, which is

24:41

also stressful. Wait a second. This is

24:43

not good. This approach to communication makes

24:45

people like miserable and cognitively fractured and

24:47

not very effective. Oh, great. We need

24:49

to think up other ways. to deal

24:52

with communication that doesn't cause this

24:54

problem. I don't care what's optimal

24:56

for you in this moment for

24:58

this one question. I'm like, what's

25:00

the best way to run this office?

25:02

So understanding the context tells you like,

25:05

okay, we need to get away from

25:07

ad hoc unscheduled messaging is our primary

25:09

vector for like information flows. Same

25:11

thing when we apply the

25:13

human-centric approach to meetings, right? As

25:16

talked about in the isolated optimal

25:18

approach. If it's, look, it'd just be optimal if

25:20

you make it easy for me to grab you

25:22

to a meeting, we get over-scheduled.

25:24

And that becomes, we get a situation

25:26

here where your schedule becomes so full

25:28

of meetings with these little gaps of

25:30

time in between, but all you're doing

25:32

is going from meetings to meetings with

25:34

no real time to recover or do

25:36

anything else, that it can become deranging.

25:39

You have no breathing room, you're exhausted,

25:41

you're falling deeper in. The task whole instead

25:43

of trying to get out of it because

25:45

every meeting generates more things But before you

25:47

can even process those things and make sense

25:49

of them and write them down you're in

25:51

the next meeting and more things are piling

25:54

up So it could be uniquely deranging You

25:56

can't actually get work done. It's exhausting It

25:58

also becomes super inequitable because

26:00

the only way to succeed in these

26:02

setups is to actually do your work

26:04

outside of the work hours and guess

26:07

what not everyone is set up to

26:09

be able to do that. Not everyone

26:11

is like a 24 year old living

26:13

with roommates and board who's like yeah

26:16

let me just like crush it from

26:18

8 to 12 at night like other

26:20

people have things going on in their

26:23

lives. The human-centric mindset would say okay

26:25

let's look at the context of auto

26:27

scheduling meetings. We look at the context

26:29

of a real person in their real

26:32

day. They have a ton of meetings

26:34

on their schedule. This looks really stressful.

26:36

So I don't care that it's optimal

26:38

for the person in the moment saying

26:41

up this meeting, the whole context shows

26:43

that this is a very stressful way

26:45

to do it. So we need another

26:47

way of having group interaction or collaboration

26:50

that doesn't fracture the schedule so much.

26:52

And then at least of the other

26:54

types of solutions we talk about like

26:57

office hours and docket clearing meetings and

26:59

pre-scheduled standing meetings and things where you

27:01

have regular opportunities to have real-time interaction

27:03

with people. But the footprint is constrained,

27:06

right? These are not, you know, the

27:08

alternatives to ad hoc communication, the alternatives

27:10

to ad hoc meetings. They don't pass

27:12

the test of, is this the optimal

27:15

thing in the moment for this, what

27:17

I need right now? They don't pass

27:19

that test. They're more inconvenient, they're less

27:22

flexible, some bad things will happen. But

27:24

when you look at them from the

27:26

human-centric approach, they make the actual day-to-day

27:28

experience of the human users involved. Significantly

27:31

better. So this is basically what I'm

27:33

calling for. This is the idea that

27:35

I'm pulling from the security world and

27:37

trying to bring to the world to

27:40

work more generally. I think in a

27:42

lot of different ways we think about

27:44

productivity and digital era knowledge work, a

27:46

lot of these ways we are acting

27:49

like the computer security engineers from the

27:51

early 2000s. We're just thinking in isolation,

27:53

what's the most efficient way to do

27:56

this thing I need to get done

27:58

right now. Oh, technology can make that

28:00

really fast. We need to be thinking

28:02

more like the human-centric security researchers of

28:05

the 2020s, who are saying what matters

28:07

is the actual experience of the... What

28:09

they're thinking, how they're feeling, what's easy,

28:11

what's hard for them. And we want

28:14

work to be effective and sustainable for

28:16

the humans, not for the task. We

28:18

want the humans to feel energized and

28:20

successful and do good work, not individual

28:23

tasks and isolation feeling like they got

28:25

executed in the most efficient number of

28:27

cycles. This human-centric approach, I have found

28:30

this to be a useful analogy. for

28:32

thinking about, how to think about work.

28:34

There's a page we can take from

28:36

the world of computer security, and we

28:39

can bring that over here. Let me

28:41

tell you, Jesse, it was funny, awkward

28:43

about that talk. Great talk, but the

28:45

professor had done this really cool research,

28:48

but I was, it was awkward for

28:50

me, because they was talking about, they

28:52

were looking at the way that people

28:55

online doing, VP and ad reads. We're

28:57

misinforming the public. I'm like, oh, we

28:59

do VP and ad reads. And I

29:01

eventually raised my hand. I was like,

29:04

look, let me give you like the

29:06

insider view, because it was interesting. I

29:08

think her view was that it's like

29:10

these YouTube personalities are just like riffing

29:13

on VP. I was like, oh, let

29:15

me tell you about like how this

29:17

happens. So it's interesting. I was like,

29:19

I'm in a very unusual situation where

29:22

I'm a computer scientist. who also does

29:24

ad reads on technical stuff. What you

29:26

say? I don't know. I think she

29:29

was like, am I in trouble? Is

29:31

he mad at me? She thought it

29:33

was interesting. I was just talking about

29:35

like, it was an interesting discussion. Let

29:38

me tell you what that world looks

29:40

like on the other side. There's really

29:42

cool research actually. They random sampled YouTube

29:44

and were able to calculate like how

29:47

many people are actually seeing some of

29:49

these ads. by like figuring out like

29:51

how many people are doing these ad

29:54

reads and they're their view and the

29:56

idea was actually basically for anything, not

29:58

just for VPNs. If there's a brand

30:00

that is spending a lot on advertising,

30:03

on like YouTube or something, you could

30:05

be hitting a huge amount of people

30:07

because actually the cost per person is

30:09

pretty low on YouTube. So you could

30:12

be reaching like a huge amount of

30:14

people so you have to care about

30:16

the information that that you're reaching. The

30:18

other thing I thought about that was

30:21

awkward when I was writing this deep

30:23

dive. is I thought about our password

30:25

security here at the HQ, which I

30:28

don't think, I don't think past muster.

30:30

They give people, without giving away our

30:32

passwords, I would say the password I

30:34

use on our machines here is like

30:37

the second easiest possible password. Would you

30:39

say if the first easiest possible password

30:41

would be password, would you say without

30:43

saying what ours is that it's probably

30:46

the second most guessable easiest possible password

30:48

that you would use? It reminds me

30:50

of Space Falls when he's like, your

30:52

luggage combination is one, two, three, four.

30:55

It basically is like that. But my

30:57

thought, and this is why I'm not

30:59

a computer security researcher, is my password

31:02

protection on these computers is the doorlock.

31:04

Like we've already lost if someone is

31:06

in here trying to log onto our

31:08

computer. They're just going to grab all

31:11

of our stuff and go. Also, it's

31:13

like, congratulations. You have just gained access

31:15

to... Four years of local archive copies

31:17

of the Deep Questions podcast. There you

31:20

go. It's not exactly missile codes on

31:22

these machines. The one other thing that

31:24

I think about is for YouTube is

31:27

I can't believe more people don't pay

31:29

the $12 a month for ad-free YouTube.

31:31

You're talking about me, basically. That blows

31:33

my mind. I just haven't got around

31:36

to it. I was telling someone about

31:38

this the other day. Because people are

31:40

like, oh, see ads. Like I never

31:42

see ads on YouTube. Let me give

31:45

the context. Jesse is on my back

31:47

because no it wasn't necessarily you are

31:49

but he is rightly rightfully on my

31:51

back and whenever I load up a

31:54

YouTube thing on my computer I get

31:56

the ads and we make I don't

31:58

know we generate just on YouTube ads

32:01

alone probably like tens of thousands of

32:03

dollars a year and I don't pay

32:05

the whatever 12 dollar what is it

32:07

12 dollars yeah it's like less than

32:10

20 dollars a month yeah it's I

32:12

just don't know how to do it

32:14

that's this goes back to this question

32:16

of like human-centric computing so you can

32:19

be like YouTube pro or something like

32:21

I know it's something you sign up

32:23

for yeah but I don't know what

32:26

it is so I just am constantly

32:28

skipping skipping skipping ads and like watching

32:30

ads and I'm really plugged into the

32:32

world of advertising on YouTube. I definitely,

32:35

I'll tell you what we need is

32:37

like Liberty Mutual Insurance, that I'm seeing

32:39

a lot of Liberty Mutual ads, and

32:41

then also ads for like whatever I

32:44

just was talking or thinking about, somehow

32:46

those always, those always show up. So

32:48

what is it though? Pro? Yeah, premium.

32:50

Premium. Yeah, okay. I guess it, I

32:53

mean, we do. YouTube Premium. We have

32:55

like a 275, 275,000. subscriber channel and

32:57

I don't pay the $12. I should.

33:00

I should. All right. Well, there we

33:02

go. So we nerded out about as

33:04

much as I think our audience can

33:06

take. So we've got some good questions

33:09

coming up. But first, let's hear from

33:11

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in particular about our friends at Uplift.

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33:22

know this Jesse, you're often called the

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Like the one I keep seeing

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Jesse, so you can see it. It's like

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38:07

Speaking about questions, Jesse, let's get on

38:09

with our listener questions for the show.

38:11

First questions from Raphael. I struggle with

38:14

contact switching, especially with complex problems that

38:16

take days to solve. How can I

38:18

effectively switch to smaller tasks? Should I

38:21

treat the larger tashes like the small

38:23

ones externalizing things into trello until I

38:25

get back to them next? Well, it's

38:27

a complicated question. There's two different possible

38:30

things going on here. So one is

38:32

approaching bigger projects using the David Allen

38:34

approach, and this might be what you're

38:37

suggesting. So let's deal with that first.

38:39

The David Allen approach the big projects

38:41

is there are no big projects. I

38:43

mean, there are, but you don't work

38:46

on big projects, just the way David

38:48

Allen would say it. He would say

38:50

all you can do is next actions.

38:53

Actions that are in them take a

38:55

few minutes to do that are clearly

38:57

defined and you know exactly how to

38:59

execute them. So like in his approach,

39:02

projects just get turned into next actions

39:04

that go on list with any other

39:06

sorts of next actions, whether they're associated

39:09

with projects or not, and work remains

39:11

turning through next action list. And the

39:13

fact that some of these next actions

39:15

are supporting a bigger project is great,

39:18

but you don't actually treat it different

39:20

in the moment. It's a computer processor

39:22

paradigm, right? Like a computer processor just

39:25

executes instructions from a limited instruction set.

39:27

It doesn't care or know that this

39:29

particular instruction is part of this big

39:31

program that does this particular function that

39:34

does this particular function and this particular

39:36

function and this instruction from another program

39:38

doing this type of function. It doesn't

39:41

care. It just says give me the

39:43

next thing to do. Increment register done.

39:45

Retrieve this value from memory done, right?

39:47

So that's kind of the David Allen

39:50

approach. If you can just be executing

39:52

instructions that are very clear. You save

39:54

yourself from having to constantly be trying

39:57

to think about what you need to

39:59

do. and why and what that means

40:01

when you're not negotiating with this with

40:03

yourself all the time work becomes

40:06

less stressful. I believe that David Allen

40:08

approach you have he calls some stakes

40:10

in the ground you have a list

40:12

of projects but you just sort of

40:14

review that semi-regularly to say like do

40:16

I need to generate some I need

40:18

to generate some more next actions

40:20

from some of these projects to put

40:22

over my next action list and

40:25

then otherwise you're just executing those

40:27

lists I tend to think this approach

40:29

a sequence of isolated next actions

40:31

that you can just interleave with

40:33

other types of next actions. Most

40:35

of these type of projects, especially

40:38

in sort of non-entry level knowledge

40:40

work positions, require non-trivial sustained

40:43

engagement. You have to go through the

40:45

time required to build up the

40:47

cognitive context relevant to the project

40:49

you're working on. swap in the right things,

40:52

inhibit the things, or unrelated to it. And

40:54

then once that cognitive context is loaded, really

40:56

gives some time to try to grapple with

40:58

the project, make progress on it, learn from

41:01

that progress, adjust how you understand that when

41:03

you're all done, sort of like update your

41:05

notes and your understanding of what's going on,

41:07

it requires sustained attention. You can't just break

41:10

down that project into two-minute steps. You can

41:12

interleave with changing the cat litter and calling

41:14

the credit card company to renew your card.

41:17

So I don't tend to be a

41:19

big believer in breaking down big projects

41:21

into just small isolated things that you

41:23

treat like anything else. I think projects

41:25

have to be scheduled on multiple scales.

41:28

This is why I recommend with

41:30

multi-scale planning that you kind of have

41:32

the open loops are there and your

41:34

quarterly plan which you review every week

41:36

and you can look at your week and

41:38

say when am I going to make progress

41:40

on these big projects this week and

41:43

you're moving things around and actually making

41:45

a time block plan. for your day

41:47

that's based first and foremost on what's on

41:49

your calendar so the time gets preserved and

41:51

that's the way I like to think about

41:53

big projects right it's like to be

41:55

more concrete here's a big product I'm working

41:57

on writing a chapter from a new book that does

42:00

break down in the small next actions

42:02

I put on a trello board. It's

42:04

instead, each week, one of the big

42:06

things I keep in mind is I'm

42:08

working on my book. This is one

42:10

of my big things this quarter, and

42:12

in fact, what am I trying to

42:14

get done this quarter? I'm trying to

42:16

get done these two chapters. So how

42:18

can I make sufficient progress on this

42:20

this week? And I'm looking at like,

42:22

well, most of these mornings I can

42:24

start each day with writing, let me

42:26

like protect them. This day I can't,

42:28

I have a faculty meeting, so maybe

42:30

I'm gonna put together like an evening

42:32

block. And then these are big blocks

42:34

to make sustained effort on a hard

42:36

project. So in general, I'm not a

42:38

big fan or a big believer in

42:40

treating all work the same, it all

42:42

gets knocked down small tasks. Who

42:46

we got next? Natalie's next. How do

42:48

you think AI will affect living the

42:50

deep life? Do we need to pivot

42:52

to new skills because AI would be

42:54

able to automate some watch and deliver

42:56

things like hard tasks and deep research

42:58

better than humans? Are you making any

43:01

adjustments yourself in your approach? Well, I

43:03

mean, more generally, lifestyle-centric planning says you

43:05

should always be keeping up with what

43:07

is my career capital, that is to

43:09

rare and valuable skills I offer to

43:11

the market. Because that is your main

43:13

source of leverage for continuing to shape

43:16

your life in ways that resonate and

43:18

to take it away from things that

43:20

don't. So like in a broad sense,

43:22

well sure, you want to be aware

43:24

of anything that might be reducing the

43:26

value of your current career capital and

43:28

or give you an opportunity to build

43:31

up new career capital. If we get

43:33

more specifically, I would say for most

43:35

people, like 99% of people in the

43:37

knowledge economy, AI is not that relevant

43:39

in its current form? It's not that

43:41

relevant yet to these questions. I mean,

43:43

if you're a freelance photographer, sure. But

43:46

if you're an executive, it's not there

43:48

yet, right? So what I keep arguing

43:50

about AI is you don't have to

43:52

be a technology prognosticator. I don't think

43:54

you need to be trying to guess.

43:56

Okay, where is this going to evolve

43:58

towards and let me try to preemptively

44:01

start building up skills that will meet

44:03

AI when it gets there so I

44:05

can take advantage of that skill? I

44:07

think right now these efforts to try

44:09

to learn new skills to be AI

44:11

ready are largely wasted effort because you're

44:13

learning skills relevant to AI in its

44:16

current form and its current form is

44:18

clearly not the forming which is going

44:20

to have the biggest economic impact. So

44:22

AI, we argue this all the time

44:24

on the show, so I won't belabor

44:26

it, but AI right now is like

44:28

a generative AI based on language models,

44:31

will be more specific, is largely right

44:33

now interacted with in a chatbot paradigm

44:35

of I type text into a box

44:37

and then an entity that sort of

44:39

acts like an Oracle, answers back, that

44:41

kind of answers my request. There was

44:43

this hope, Open AI in particular had

44:46

this hope, that if the AI Oracle

44:48

and the other site is sufficiently advanced

44:50

and powerful, that just having this text

44:52

box interface with an all knowing Oracle

44:54

would just people would find ways to

44:56

make it useful for their work and

44:58

this by itself would be a killer

45:01

app or lend itself to killer applications

45:03

in many different fields. That didn't happen.

45:05

I mean this was the in 2022

45:07

this was the thought. Yeah we're like

45:09

six months away from massive disruption that's

45:11

just going to start. pouring like waves

45:13

over niche after niche in the knowledge

45:16

economy. But year after year past, that

45:18

didn't happen. Even as the technology got

45:20

better. So it's pretty clear now, like,

45:22

oh, there's another evolution of sort of

45:24

classic product market fit that's going to

45:26

have to happen before we get the

45:28

biggest professional disruptions from AI. Most people

45:31

interacting with a chat bot is not

45:33

actually, they're not building killer applications for

45:35

their work. It's going to be some

45:37

new integration into existing software, some sort

45:39

of new way, this hasn't been invented

45:41

invented yet. But clearly this current chatbot

45:43

form is not causing the disruption that

45:46

was seen. But a lot of people

45:48

were still saying, well, I need to

45:50

learn to be really good at using

45:52

the chatpots. So like a lot of

45:54

people invested a lot of time into,

45:56

for example, prompt engineering for the current

45:58

generation of chat bots, that's going to

46:01

be a worthless skill. Two years from

46:03

now, if we're looking at industries being

46:05

highly disrupted by AI, it's not going

46:07

to be people typing these carefully constructed

46:09

prop sequences into a chat pot. It's

46:11

going to be something that's going to

46:13

be way more intuitive and easier to

46:16

use. So what I'm arguing is you

46:18

have to wait until the disruption vector

46:20

is visible. before you can adapt to

46:22

it. And we just don't know what

46:24

that's going to be for most jobs.

46:26

So if you can't point towards in

46:28

my job, AI is starting to disrupt

46:31

it in this way. There's more and

46:33

more people doing X, this company is

46:35

doing it, this is going to make

46:37

a lot of the things I do

46:39

now less valuable. If you don't see

46:41

that happening now, or similar things happening

46:43

in related industries, you don't really know

46:46

what skill to build up. So I

46:48

always say let's have cautious watch and

46:50

wait and wait and wait right now

46:52

with AI for most jobs. We

46:54

don't know how it's going to evolve

46:56

into the vectors that are going to

46:58

have disruption, but right now, if we

47:00

think about the disruption like a viral

47:03

infection through the job market, the current

47:05

form of this virus is not highly

47:07

infectious. Like a lot of people, maybe

47:09

a lot of people have been exposed

47:11

to it, there's a lot of people

47:13

who mess around with these chat bots,

47:15

but really it's still the enthusiasts who

47:17

are using them most right now. So

47:19

let's keep an eye for it to

47:21

evolve to tell you to pick up.

47:23

or what skill of yours might become

47:25

less relevant. This might be slower and

47:27

messier and more bespoke than you'll realize.

47:29

I mean, my big argument I've been

47:31

making on the show is probably my

47:33

best guess is the first wave of

47:35

actual disruption will be unlocking advanced features

47:37

that already exist in existing software. Like,

47:39

you can always do this advanced stuff

47:41

in Excel. I just don't know how

47:43

to do it, but with an AI

47:46

natural language interface, now I can. So

47:48

it's going to be unlocking productivity in

47:50

terms of... latent ability and existing skills.

47:52

It's like a very different vision to

47:54

what people fear, which is going to

47:56

be somehow chat GPT. it's going to

47:58

just like start on its own doing

48:00

parts of your job or something like

48:02

that. So keep an eye on it,

48:04

cautious wait, but it's unclear now where

48:06

the disruption is going to happen or

48:08

what skills it is you should be

48:10

learning. All right, who's next? How to

48:12

say no is next. I work on

48:14

a multi-year transformation project, but I'm also

48:16

seen as one of the faces of

48:18

the department. I use time blocking and

48:20

compound, but the work still never stops.

48:22

My waiting for others is overwhelming. Is

48:24

there a way to say no to

48:26

certain requests that don't derail our long-term

48:29

goals? Well, you need the first face

48:31

to productivity dragon here and actually like

48:33

write down in one place all the

48:35

different types of things that you find

48:37

yourself responsible for right now. And I

48:39

think you're going to find that you

48:41

have yeshed your way into an overwhelming

48:43

number of information slows or systems where

48:45

you have to be involved. To be

48:47

the face of a department means like

48:49

you're reasonable, you're reliable, people like you're

48:51

person like you're personable. So of course

48:53

people are going to come to you

48:55

and say, can you do this? Can

48:57

you do that? And there's like a

48:59

little thrill you get when you say

49:01

yes. But if you face a productivity

49:03

dragon, you might just like, well, this

49:05

is too many things. Like this fractures

49:07

my time too much. It's more than

49:09

I can service well. And then you

49:12

need to simplify down from that overwhelming

49:14

amount to an amount that is more

49:16

reasonable. The key thing I can tell

49:18

you is based on how you describe

49:20

yourself. You're a face of your department.

49:22

You're sophisticated in your use of things

49:24

like time blocking and conbon. People really

49:26

like working with you. They don't want

49:28

you to go. Their fear is not,

49:30

oh, are you going to say something

49:32

unreasonable or make an unreasonable request? We're

49:34

just waiting to drop the acts on

49:36

you as soon as like you say

49:38

something or show any sort of like

49:40

lack of gratitude. No, no, no, their

49:42

fear is what if this person goes.

49:44

This is a really good person. So

49:46

for you to come in and say,

49:48

look, I'm documenting all the different things

49:50

I'm working on. This is too many.

49:52

This is the amount that I think

49:55

actually allows me to be effective on

49:57

them. So I am going to reduce

49:59

down to this. If you have

50:01

clarity, you have numbers, it's clear

50:03

you know what you're doing, you're

50:06

responsible, you're responsible, you're responsible

50:08

for your personal people like you,

50:10

you have a lot more latitude than

50:12

you think. Because your leverage here is

50:14

you going. People don't want good people

50:16

to go. It is very hard to hire

50:19

good people. So my instinct here is you're

50:21

going. People don't want good people to go.

50:23

It is very hard to hire good people.

50:25

So my instinct here is an ad hoc

50:28

decision that you personal load for you. And

50:30

then saying, hey, trust this assessment, I

50:32

have to find one way or another

50:34

to get there. I mean, it is hard.

50:36

I've been saying, I say no to so

50:39

many things. So many things. I always

50:41

think like my public system, I

50:43

speak an agent, think I'm either

50:45

crazy or like don't want to

50:47

be successful. But I have to say no to

50:49

so many things. I'm still doing too

50:51

much. Every week you say no things? Yeah.

50:54

Cool stuff too. I don't know. It's just

50:56

hard today. Too many jobs,

50:58

things to go. You gotta write chapter

51:00

three. I'm good at time management. That's

51:02

why it's easy, that's why I know,

51:04

like, this seems like you, it would

51:07

be nice to say yes in the

51:09

moment, but I know too much about

51:11

my productivity dragon to be like, no,

51:13

no, I know the impact of doing

51:15

that and where I am and how

51:17

much of this stuff I can do

51:19

and I just can't be doing that

51:21

right now. I found that people

51:23

are actually pretty reasonable

51:26

about it. a thing that was coming on

51:28

we need people to sign up to like do

51:30

X Y and Z and I just had to

51:32

be like look I can't I can't participate

51:34

in any of this this month just

51:36

I'm sort of scheduled about two months

51:39

out now and I just don't have give

51:41

for this and I know it'd be good if

51:43

I'd be there I normally would I've done

51:45

this past years I just can't do any

51:47

of it this year you know if you're clear

51:49

people get it like okay yeah must be

51:52

busy You know, so I get a lot of

51:54

it. Say no is hard. I'm excited. That's

51:56

why I'm excited for Tim Ferris's new book,

51:58

which is just about saying no. That one's

52:00

gonna be good. All right, who

52:02

we got next? David's next. I'm

52:04

an architect that left a traditional

52:06

practice for an in-house design leader

52:08

for a hospital system. An executive

52:10

has encouraged me to take on

52:12

a diverse roles to broaden my

52:14

skill set. How do I balance

52:16

openness to opportunity while staying focused

52:18

on a deliberate career trajectory? Well,

52:20

just be deliberate about your openness

52:22

opportunity. So, okay. What they're really

52:24

saying is like, don't just do

52:26

one thing. You might want to

52:28

pick up other skills. That's fine,

52:30

but be very deliberate about that.

52:32

Well, if I'm going to do

52:34

that, what is my current workload?

52:36

Let me face a productivity dragon.

52:38

Let me just do one new

52:40

skill at a time. That's what

52:42

I'm doing this. This is one

52:44

new skill at a time. That's

52:46

what I'm doing this year is

52:48

like I'm going to take on

52:50

this year. Again, your workload is

52:52

your workload and be very careful

52:54

about it. Yes, this executive has

52:56

a vision for what they want

52:58

your trajectory to be and maybe

53:00

taking on these diverse roles is

53:02

like a good path forward towards

53:04

an executive position like his or

53:06

hers. But maybe that's not what

53:08

you want. Maybe that's not what

53:10

you're looking for. You're like, no,

53:13

I want to just like do

53:15

this type of project and eventually

53:17

get like more autonomy so I

53:19

can like move over here and,

53:21

you know, build my farmhouse and

53:23

door county up in Illinois or

53:25

something in Wisconsin and and. Walk

53:27

among the trees and I don't

53:29

know you could have just some

53:31

different vision Great be specific about

53:33

that and like that's what I'm

53:35

working towards if you're working towards

53:37

something specific It's easier to resist

53:39

the blandishments of people who were

53:41

trying to push you over there

53:43

which is not where you actually

53:45

want to go So get clear

53:47

about what you want to do

53:49

and if having experience and other

53:51

roles will be key for what

53:53

you want to do be very

53:55

deliberate about that you can be

53:57

obligations in the office without taking

53:59

on all the other obligations in

54:01

the office. So you'll be careful.

54:03

of traps where a good intention

54:05

creates a bad scheduling situation. Oh,

54:07

I was thinking about Door County.

54:09

Door County, God, it's just coming

54:11

up from deep work. I think

54:13

that's the, I think it's deep

54:15

work, where I talk about Rick

54:17

Fur making the Viking sword. And

54:19

he works with at a. a

54:21

barn with the doors open, like

54:23

overlooking one of the Great Lakes,

54:25

and that was in Dorr County.

54:27

That's what I was thinking about.

54:29

It's cool up there. It's a

54:31

nice country. All right, who do

54:33

we got? Next is Jay. Is

54:35

it possible for a nurse to

54:37

implement time blocking in a 12-hour

54:39

shift? No, it's a different type

54:41

of job. Time-plocking presupposes a job

54:43

more like a knowledge work position

54:45

where you have a relatively large

54:47

amount of autonomy in terms of

54:49

how you execute your work. So

54:51

anything that's objective-based. Like yeah, here's

54:53

the things you've taken on to

54:55

do, you need to make progress

54:57

on these things and maybe attend

54:59

some meetings, but how you feel

55:01

your time between that meeting is

55:03

up to you. Time blocking is

55:05

very useful, so that time is

55:07

not wasted. A nursing shift typically,

55:09

no, no, it's way more structured

55:11

than that. Like you're seeing patients

55:13

either as like assigned by the

55:15

incoming appointment flow if it's out

55:17

of private practice or what's going

55:19

on on the big board if

55:21

you're in a like a like

55:23

a emergency department department type of

55:25

situation type of situation. It's way

55:27

more structured type of situation. It's

55:29

way more structured type of Time

55:31

blocking is not that relevant. There's

55:33

other things that are relevant in

55:35

the medical scenario that could make

55:37

work more sustainable or less exhausting.

55:39

Like I'm a big believer in

55:41

looking at places in the medical

55:43

context where there's unnecessary friction that

55:45

adds up over time to a

55:47

lot of exhausting heat, like the

55:49

way that people have to wrangle

55:51

with electronic medical records, for example,

55:53

can sometimes be like a big

55:55

source of friction that really makes

55:57

things less sustainable. Being explicit about

55:59

the sort of patient per hour

56:01

load. and saying what actually is

56:03

a reasonable number there as opposed

56:05

to just like let's push people

56:07

as far as they can physically

56:09

go. So there's a lot of

56:11

things that could be done in

56:14

health care to make these jobs

56:16

more sustainable. But they typically aren't

56:18

the type of things I talk

56:20

about which are more cued into

56:22

a more highly autonomous knowledge work

56:24

type role. All right, what we

56:26

got. So we have a bonus

56:28

question from Bill. Bill that we're

56:30

going to dedicate the theme music

56:32

to. Is our excuse to still

56:34

play the slow productivity theme music?

56:36

Yep. All right. Let me show

56:38

you, by the way, Bill sent

56:40

me, not to encourage this behavior,

56:42

but I kind of do. He

56:44

sent me a first edition of

56:46

the Good Shepherd. A book I

56:48

praised on this show is what

56:50

I think like one of the

56:52

very first techno thrillers takes place

56:54

on the deck of a destroyer

56:56

in World War II, and it's

56:58

written in this sort of tight,

57:00

I don't know if it's third

57:02

person or first person, let me

57:04

see, but it's tight perspective. So,

57:06

by tight perspective, I mean, it's

57:08

third person, but it follows the

57:10

captain. So the perspective never leaves

57:12

the... where the captain is what

57:14

the captain sees. And it just

57:16

follows them to this like very

57:18

stressful 24-hour ship on the destroyer

57:20

and it's written and it feels

57:22

like in like a real-time type

57:24

format like it just unfolds linearly

57:26

like what's happening, tight third-person perspectives,

57:28

you're just from the perspective of

57:30

a single person and it's impressionistic

57:32

like trying to build up what

57:34

it's really like, but also tons

57:36

of technical details without much explanation

57:38

just like the... They just talk

57:40

about the stuff like they would

57:42

be talking about it, even though

57:44

you don't understand as the reader

57:46

what all this stuff means, like

57:48

a good techno thriller. I just

57:50

think it's a really cool, interesting

57:52

book. It's from, I'm gonna guess

57:54

1955, let me see. It's post-war,

57:56

but not super-post-war. You've earned yourself

57:58

whether you ask for or not,

58:00

the slow productivity corner

58:03

theme music. All right,

58:05

what's this question? Can

58:07

a Conbon system work

58:09

across all departments in

58:11

an organization without being overly

58:13

complex? So for those who don't

58:15

know, I mean, we talk about

58:18

a lot on the show, but the

58:20

Conbon style system is where you

58:22

have the columns and you have

58:24

the cards in the column. So

58:27

like in Conbon, typically you have like a

58:29

waiting to be done working on

58:31

and completed column. And if you're

58:34

in a team, you might have a working

58:36

on column for each team member. So

58:38

you can clearly see who's working on

58:40

what and clearly how much they're working

58:42

on. Conbon has clear limits called WIPs

58:44

or work in progress limits on how

58:47

much cars can be in anyone's column.

58:49

So it's a great workload management.

58:51

I also like about Conbon systems

58:54

that. Stuff that needs to

58:56

be done, it's not all spread

58:58

out on people's plates, but exists

59:00

by default in a generic team

59:02

level waiting to be done. And

59:04

the only thing you're responsible for

59:06

are the things that are on

59:08

your column. This is important because

59:10

it's the things you're working on

59:12

that generate administrative overhead. So sometimes

59:15

people just say, hey, it's just

59:17

convenient. This stuff comes in, I don't

59:19

know who... Let's just spread it out. You

59:21

don't have to work on it all

59:23

at once. But like... is that once

59:25

something is in your hands, it can

59:27

generate administrative overhead you have to deal

59:29

with, emails, meetings, and cognitive cycles.

59:31

So by keeping things by default off

59:33

of any individual's hands, it can't generate

59:36

administrative overhead. There's no one

59:38

that you can email about it. There's no

59:40

one that you can email about it. It

59:42

doesn't belong to anyone. It doesn't belong

59:44

to anyone yet. There's no meetings that

59:46

it's not being worked on a reasonable

59:48

number of things at the same time.

59:50

They're dealing with a reasonable amount

59:53

of overhead. Use Conbon style

59:55

boards. This is why it's a

59:57

little bit confusing. They also have

59:59

boards with columns and cards. representing

1:00:01

things that have to be done. There's

1:00:03

more of a variety of what those

1:00:05

boards are and different collections or rules

1:00:07

and terminology that surrounds them. So, agile

1:00:09

methodologies and con bond have similar metaphors

1:00:12

for dealing with work, but they differ

1:00:14

in the details. Can these apply to

1:00:16

a lot of different type of work?

1:00:18

Yes. Can they apply like every team

1:00:21

in a big organization uses things like

1:00:23

this? Yes. Here are the two caveats.

1:00:25

A, you want these to exist at

1:00:27

the team scale. So, six people, sure,

1:00:29

this works fine. 60 people, you can't

1:00:32

have one big board for that. There's

1:00:34

gonna be too many things and too

1:00:36

many people. You can't easily coordinate with

1:00:38

all the people. So usually these systems

1:00:41

have a very efficient approach to coordination.

1:00:43

Like, let's all just like stand up

1:00:45

and talk to each other for 10

1:00:47

minutes. Like, how's your card doing? What

1:00:49

else you need? What else you need?

1:00:52

What should we do? What should we

1:00:54

need? And the key thing is to

1:00:56

resist, I think the thing that bogged

1:00:58

down these approaches in software dev, where

1:01:01

they really got big, is that we

1:01:03

nerded out too much on them. Software

1:01:05

types, we just nerded out too much

1:01:07

too much, and software types, we just

1:01:09

nerded out too much, and we begin

1:01:12

to obsess about the rules and sub-rule,

1:01:14

and it became about the rules themselves,

1:01:16

because, you know, I'm a computer scientist

1:01:18

so I can use the second person

1:01:21

plural here. We love complicated rules. So

1:01:23

we want our dev system not just

1:01:25

to be like, here's a place to

1:01:27

keep tasks. and see who's working on

1:01:29

what we want to be rolling like

1:01:32

2D10 to see if like I my

1:01:34

attack number is above your hit point

1:01:36

level and like the goblin got killed

1:01:38

by the wizard like we want to

1:01:41

have all these rules and rules and

1:01:43

all these complexities and it can get

1:01:45

pretty absurd like agile in a software

1:01:47

development environment people have Scrum masters and

1:01:49

secondary scrum masters and dungeon master screens

1:01:52

and I don't know all the it

1:01:54

just becomes super complicated and everyone gets

1:01:56

obsessed with doing it just right because

1:01:58

we're all like slightly antisocial in these

1:02:01

circles if you're adopt these ideas outside

1:02:03

of software don't overburden it with rules.

1:02:05

What matters is we have a centralized

1:02:07

place to store what needs to be

1:02:09

done so it doesn't by default these

1:02:12

things do not by default exist on

1:02:14

individuals plates. We have clarity about who's

1:02:16

working on what, we have constraints about

1:02:18

who's working on what, and we have

1:02:21

a clear way to check in with

1:02:23

everyone about what they're working on, what

1:02:25

they need, and when they're done what

1:02:27

they should work on next. You do

1:02:29

those things, that is good. I'm going

1:02:32

to read some complicated scrum manual and

1:02:34

have all the different roles and do

1:02:36

all the different like the story requires

1:02:38

this and that. It gets over the

1:02:41

top. You don't need that. My book

1:02:43

World Without Email and Slow Productivity both

1:02:45

talk about this. World Without Email gives

1:02:47

both talk about this. World Without Email

1:02:49

gives a particular case study of a

1:02:52

health care group that I think is

1:02:54

a good example of a compound style

1:02:56

system outside of straight up software dev.

1:02:58

And I get a lot more details

1:03:01

and slow productivity as well about like

1:03:03

what are the key ideas of these

1:03:05

systems that matter. exist across large organizations

1:03:07

if they're integrated properly. All right, do

1:03:09

we do we play it twice if

1:03:12

it's a bonus question? Yes. All right,

1:03:14

let's hear it. All right, we have

1:03:16

a call this week. We do. All

1:03:18

right, let's hear it. Hey, Cal and

1:03:21

Jesse, it's Derek from the case study

1:03:23

in episode 340. Thank you very much

1:03:25

for the advice. It was really validating

1:03:27

hearing your thoughts. As you'll recall, I

1:03:29

have two trello boards right now, one

1:03:32

for admin and one for grant application

1:03:34

processing. I've been doing a lot of

1:03:36

deep diving and slow productivity, a word

1:03:38

without email, and the podcast on what

1:03:41

else I can do to help keep

1:03:43

my work sustainable. And to this end,

1:03:45

I've figured out how to create a

1:03:47

taskboard within Microsoft teams that have shared

1:03:49

with my coworkers. My vision is this

1:03:52

will serve as one of those two

1:03:54

status lists that you've written and spoken

1:03:56

about. Right now, my columns are Q,

1:03:58

Active, Backburn, and done. My question is

1:04:01

what granularity of obligation should live on

1:04:03

this board? Do I put grant-related activities

1:04:05

in the queue like draft financial agreement

1:04:07

for X? Should administrative tasks go in

1:04:09

here too or just your definition of

1:04:12

what a project is from slow productivity

1:04:14

which is any work-related initiative that cannot

1:04:16

be completed in a single session? Lastly

1:04:18

how does this board interact with the

1:04:21

existing ones that I have for admin

1:04:23

and application processing? I'm really excited to

1:04:25

take this for a spin-in report back.

1:04:27

I would just really appreciate clarity about

1:04:29

what types of things go in such

1:04:32

a taskboard, especially since this is shared

1:04:34

with my team. Thank you very much.

1:04:36

Usually I don't put projects on taskboards.

1:04:38

I want the granularity of what's on

1:04:41

a taskboard. It doesn't have to be

1:04:43

like a David Allen style next action,

1:04:45

but something you could work on in

1:04:47

a single session is typically the way

1:04:49

I like to think about that. So

1:04:52

when there's projects you're working on. They

1:04:54

can exist in your larger scale plans,

1:04:56

and then you can decide on the

1:04:58

smaller scale plans what progress you want

1:05:01

to make on that project that week

1:05:03

or not. Whether or not that interacts

1:05:05

with your taskboard, it depends. So sometimes

1:05:07

if it's a project like I'm writing

1:05:09

a grant application and it's on your

1:05:12

quarterly plan, when you make your weekly

1:05:14

plan, what that really means is I

1:05:16

want to like block off 10 hours

1:05:18

of writing this week. And it'll be

1:05:21

on my calendar and when I get

1:05:23

to those days, I'll work on the

1:05:25

writing, then I'll be making progress on

1:05:27

it. There's not really a task you

1:05:29

need to put on a task list

1:05:32

somewhere. I mean, you could put right

1:05:34

10 hours and at the end of

1:05:36

the week, take that off your your

1:05:38

taskboard, but that seems like a little

1:05:41

bit over the top or superfluous, right?

1:05:43

On the other hand, a project might

1:05:45

be kind of complicated, like that it

1:05:47

generates different types of tasks. Six or

1:05:49

seven different things I need to get

1:05:52

done for this project this week that

1:05:54

are all sort of tasky. There I

1:05:56

would put them on my task list

1:05:58

perhaps. What I might... that situation is

1:06:01

create a temporary column for that project

1:06:03

and then have those tasks under it. Or

1:06:05

if I have like work on this week

1:06:07

I might label certain projects related to this

1:06:09

project like with that just in caps like

1:06:11

the project name and then then have the

1:06:13

task in it. And there when I'm working

1:06:15

off my task list, I sort of see

1:06:17

those there. Oftentimes, though, if it's something that

1:06:19

I know I want to make progress on,

1:06:21

I might have put aside time for working

1:06:23

on that project. And so I'll know when

1:06:26

I get to that time, oh, the details

1:06:28

of what I should do right now are

1:06:30

on my task list. So I really just

1:06:32

think about the interaction between those

1:06:34

taskboards and projects about whether I

1:06:36

need help knowing or remembering what

1:06:38

about that project I need to

1:06:40

work on this. And if the answer

1:06:43

is no, like it's just writing,

1:06:45

it doesn't have to interact with

1:06:47

your taskboard. But I would keep the

1:06:49

cards on the taskboard at the

1:06:52

granularity of things you can do

1:06:54

in a single session. It's why you

1:06:56

need other stuff in your practice other

1:06:58

than just a taskboard, right? That's why

1:07:01

you need your like, this is what

1:07:03

I'm working on this quarter and its

1:07:05

deadlines on my strategy for getting this

1:07:07

done. start ramping up this work on

1:07:09

the website overhaul, but let's wait till

1:07:12

then to do it. Like you need

1:07:14

that type of thinking in like some

1:07:16

sort of quarterly plan or

1:07:18

semester plan document. And then how

1:07:20

that translating the actual work again

1:07:22

just depends on do I need

1:07:24

help remembering what it is specifically

1:07:27

I need to do to work on this each week.

1:07:29

So a lot of my project work

1:07:31

just exists as projects. Like my taskboard

1:07:33

is more like one-off specific things. I

1:07:35

would say if I really looked at

1:07:38

it. It's fine, by the way, I like

1:07:40

that Derek had specific, he had some

1:07:42

specific taskboards for

1:07:44

recurring obligations in his work

1:07:46

to come up all the time. And like

1:07:48

the application processing or this or

1:07:50

that, like, okay, I get this stuff all

1:07:53

the time and like, here's my dedicated board,

1:07:55

I kind of have a system going with

1:07:57

that, I think that's good, that's fine.

1:07:59

This is where people write in to

1:08:02

talk about ways they've put the advice

1:08:04

we talk on the show in their

1:08:06

own life so we can see what

1:08:08

it looks like out in the wild.

1:08:10

Today's case study comes from Jake. Jake

1:08:12

says the other day, I was beginning

1:08:14

to explain to my wife the concepts

1:08:17

regarding career capital and traded it in

1:08:19

for more control of one schedule versus

1:08:21

traded it in for more responsibility and

1:08:23

increased pay. While doing so, I realize

1:08:25

that she has done exactly that with

1:08:27

her career. She is a pediatric dentist

1:08:29

who has worked at an office for

1:08:31

about 10 years. While doing so, she

1:08:34

has focused on doing great dental work

1:08:36

and interacting with the patients in a

1:08:38

way that leaves them happy with the

1:08:40

visits, making her the company's top earner

1:08:42

and most senior doctor. We recently had

1:08:44

two boys, now two and a half

1:08:46

and four years old. One thing that

1:08:49

was really important to her was that

1:08:51

she was able to pick up our

1:08:53

boys after school every day. When her

1:08:55

older son started school, she told her

1:08:57

work that she was unable to work

1:08:59

past 2 p.m. because she needed to

1:09:01

pick up our son. Being the top

1:09:04

earner, they created a new schedule for

1:09:06

her to work 7 to 2, doing

1:09:08

op only. She not only gets to

1:09:10

pick up her son every single day

1:09:12

from school, but because she is op

1:09:14

only, she actually makes significantly more money.

1:09:16

I have read all of Cal's materials,

1:09:18

so it goes without saying I also

1:09:21

have tremendous work flexibility and I'm able

1:09:23

to drop him off in the mornings

1:09:25

every day. Us being able to drop

1:09:27

off and pick up our son every

1:09:29

day as working professionals is incredible. Did

1:09:31

you know what he means by op?

1:09:33

I was wondering that when I first

1:09:36

read it. She is op only, op,

1:09:38

capital op. Is that operation? That could

1:09:40

make sense. So see, she's a pediatric

1:09:42

dentist. Yeah, maybe she's only doing operations.

1:09:44

Yeah, as possible. Well, regardless, I appreciate

1:09:46

the case study. What I like about

1:09:48

it is that. This gives you a

1:09:50

realistic view of lifestyle-centric planning the deep

1:09:53

life. So when we think about living

1:09:55

a deeper life... Especially in a modern

1:09:57

distracted world, again, we like to connect

1:09:59

with the idea of the grand goal.

1:10:01

So the traditional grand goal thinking would

1:10:03

say, if you're in the situation, we're

1:10:05

like, I'm unhappy with my work because

1:10:08

I really want to be there to

1:10:10

pick my boys up from school and

1:10:12

I kind of work these longer hours.

1:10:14

The grand goal thinking was that you

1:10:16

need to make a radical change. You

1:10:18

need to like start your own, you

1:10:20

know. open up a store in town

1:10:22

where you can control the hours or

1:10:25

become like a full-time novelist or some

1:10:27

sort of grand change and we need

1:10:29

to make our life completely different. But

1:10:31

what did Jake's wife do instead? He

1:10:33

said, I have a lot of career

1:10:35

capital. I'm very good at what I

1:10:37

do. People don't want me to go.

1:10:40

And so I'm going to say, I'm

1:10:42

going to leverage that capital and say,

1:10:44

here's what I need. I want to

1:10:46

create a situation in which I am

1:10:48

done it too. And because she was

1:10:50

very good at what she did, they

1:10:52

said, okay, we'll make this work. You

1:10:54

can start early and you'll just do

1:10:57

this and not that type of work.

1:10:59

And now she's done it too. And

1:11:01

because she was working backwards from not

1:11:03

a vague dissatisfaction with being busy, which

1:11:05

again would lead to the radical change,

1:11:07

but with specificity about what would my

1:11:09

ideal lifestyle look like? And a big

1:11:12

part of that vision was very concrete.

1:11:14

I'm there to pick up my kids

1:11:16

from school. She's like, well, well, how

1:11:18

could. change to configuration of my job.

1:11:20

And I'll probably get away with that

1:11:22

because I'm pretty good. So that's like

1:11:24

classic applying career capital theory in lifestyle-centric

1:11:26

planning. These are the type of things

1:11:29

that can make like a really intentional

1:11:31

life. The intentional life doesn't necessarily mean,

1:11:33

uh-oh, I guess I need to quit

1:11:35

this job and we're going to sail

1:11:37

around the world with our kids on

1:11:39

a sailing boat. It doesn't have to

1:11:41

be that type of dramatic radical change.

1:11:44

It just has to be figuring out

1:11:46

what attributes you want in an ideal

1:11:48

lifestyle and then working with what you

1:11:50

have. What are my opportunities? What are

1:11:52

my obstacles? How do I make that

1:11:54

actually work? So there's a lot more

1:11:56

of that possible than people realize. Once

1:11:58

you understand the game. It's not this

1:12:01

vague radical change. And it's more like

1:12:03

I'm trying to reconfigure and change

1:12:05

and shift towards the ideal lifestyle

1:12:07

and knowing that it's skill and

1:12:09

rare and valuable skills is what's

1:12:12

going to help you actually get there.

1:12:14

I think it's a cool story. All right,

1:12:16

we got a final segment coming up,

1:12:18

another tech corner. It's just one

1:12:20

thing you haven't heard for me enough.

1:12:22

It's overly technical jargon. But

1:12:25

first, I hear from another one of

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our sponsors. And talk about in

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particular, our friends at Shopify,

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let's do our final segment. So I

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want to do a quick tech corner.

1:15:40

I want to follow up on our

1:15:42

recent tech corner. So I had talked,

1:15:45

I believe it was on the last

1:15:47

episode about the Ezra Klein podcast episode

1:15:49

that was generating a lot of attention.

1:15:52

It was an episode on... how AGI,

1:15:54

artificial general intelligence, was closer than people

1:15:56

thinks. He had on someone who knew

1:15:59

a lot about it, who was saying,

1:16:01

yeah, we will. probably quote unquote reach

1:16:03

AGI at some point during the current

1:16:06

presidential administration and this generated a

1:16:08

lot of energy and attention. And

1:16:10

I came on the show and said we have

1:16:12

to be very careful about what

1:16:14

AGI actually means. I think

1:16:17

it gets misinterpreted and it's

1:16:19

not unimportant but it's not

1:16:21

as scary as you think but

1:16:23

it gets misinterpreted with other types

1:16:25

of things that people fear with AI.

1:16:28

This happened and I want to

1:16:30

bring up a particular example of

1:16:32

this so that we could maybe be

1:16:34

a little bit more reassuring when we're

1:16:36

thinking about AI in our current moment.

1:16:38

So up on the screen here for

1:16:40

people who are watching, instead of just

1:16:43

listening, is a clip from the Breaking

1:16:45

Points TV show, so a Sagar and

1:16:47

Crystal. They did a segment on this

1:16:49

very good segment. This is

1:16:51

Sagar and Crystal who's up here,

1:16:54

but what caught my attention is

1:16:56

how their YouTube guy. label this

1:16:58

video. So it's not them, but

1:17:00

it's how their YouTube guy labeled

1:17:02

the video. I actually met them.

1:17:05

Yeah. When I wrote that New

1:17:07

Yorker piece a few years ago,

1:17:09

I went and hung out at

1:17:11

their studio. And I remember Sogger

1:17:13

telling me about their YouTube titles.

1:17:15

And they have a person who

1:17:18

does it and they have caps

1:17:20

and blah blah blah. These caps

1:17:22

lost. They sort of had like

1:17:24

someone who does this. former

1:17:27

AI insider colon AI, AI

1:17:29

super intelligence coming under Trump.

1:17:31

All right, so here's what I

1:17:34

want to emphasize. This is the

1:17:36

type of conflating of issues

1:17:38

that we need in our

1:17:40

current moment to be very

1:17:42

careful about. Super intelligence

1:17:44

is a very different thing than

1:17:47

AGI. All right? that Ezra Klein discussion

1:17:49

had nothing to do with super intelligence

1:17:51

and certainly the the person he was

1:17:53

talking about was not claiming that super

1:17:55

intelligence was coming under Trump. He was

1:17:57

talking about AGI. So I want to just

1:17:59

again. briefly emphasize the differences and why

1:18:02

the differences matter. So AGI as we

1:18:04

discussed last week, artificial general intelligence, is

1:18:06

a subjective threshold at which point we

1:18:08

just kind of agree more or less

1:18:11

that the the types of things that

1:18:13

these AI systems do right now that

1:18:15

we know that we're doing and we're

1:18:17

seeing them doing the generating text and

1:18:20

conversations and data searching and photo generation

1:18:22

whatever. When they can start doing the

1:18:24

types of things they do really well,

1:18:26

when the ability at which they do

1:18:29

them are doing them, gets that what

1:18:31

we roughly agree is like comparable or

1:18:33

better than like the average human who

1:18:35

does them. That is not a main,

1:18:38

it's not a binary threshold that like

1:18:40

you cross that threshold and then everything

1:18:42

is different because these systems are already

1:18:44

doing things very well. If you look

1:18:47

at the text they generate or the

1:18:49

photos to generate, you're like, well, that's

1:18:51

as good as a person or the

1:18:53

person or close to it. as good

1:18:55

as a person. It's like we're not

1:18:58

that far from that right now. And

1:19:00

that's what that official was saying. So

1:19:02

that is what AGI is. In general,

1:19:04

it's an arbitrary threshold. Why it's important

1:19:07

is just from like a general like

1:19:09

economic and security disruption standpoint, the better

1:19:11

these models get at the things they're

1:19:13

already doing now, like the more we

1:19:16

have to worry about various economic and

1:19:18

security disruptions. And so certainly as they

1:19:20

get better, we're going to have to

1:19:22

care about that more. But there's not

1:19:25

like something that happens post AGI that

1:19:27

like, oh, we've crossed some Rubicon and

1:19:29

our relationship to technology is different because

1:19:31

these systems already do things close to

1:19:34

human level. Right. So I mean, we're

1:19:36

not going to notice something different immediately

1:19:38

when the systems that can do pretty

1:19:40

well, like a certain type of math

1:19:42

exam can now like do as well

1:19:45

as like a good, you know, human

1:19:47

test taker. Like these are not necessarily

1:19:49

major epsilon. So they matter, but they're

1:19:51

not scary, but they're not scary, but

1:19:54

they're not scary. Super intelligence is talking

1:19:56

about something very different. So it's over

1:19:58

in this different sort of tree here.

1:20:00

for looking at the theology of AI,

1:20:03

it's on this different tree, where you

1:20:05

get first some notion of artificial consciousness,

1:20:07

where you have a system that has,

1:20:09

it's alive, it has like autonomy in

1:20:12

a sense of itself and can take

1:20:14

autonomous actions. We talked about that in

1:20:16

the last episode, and Super Intelligence is

1:20:18

a step beyond that. It's where a

1:20:21

system that is autonomous with some notion

1:20:23

of self and consciousness. begins creating ever

1:20:25

better versions of itself. And the idea

1:20:27

there is that can somehow recursively speed

1:20:29

up so that it creates a better

1:20:32

version of itself, which is now really

1:20:34

smart, so it can create a better

1:20:36

version of itself, which is now really

1:20:38

smart, so it can create a better

1:20:41

version of itself even faster, and you

1:20:43

get some sort of exponential speed up

1:20:45

until you have something that's not only

1:20:47

conscious and self-aware and autonomous, but it

1:20:50

is like exponentially smarter than humans. That's

1:20:52

sci-fi stuff. That's really different than like

1:20:54

the moment when the research reports generated

1:20:56

by AI, which right now are pretty

1:20:59

good, but kind of are sloppy in

1:21:01

some areas or like less sloppy in

1:21:03

those areas. That's what AGI is. Hey,

1:21:05

you know what? This like memo is

1:21:08

now good enough produced by... Like right

1:21:10

now, it's like okay, but there's like

1:21:12

a few things in here I'd be

1:21:14

embarrassed about, but now it's good enough

1:21:16

I could use it without editing it.

1:21:19

That's important. That's very different than super

1:21:21

intelligence. And so what I guess I'm

1:21:23

trying to emphasize is we have to

1:21:25

draw a clear line between this tree

1:21:28

of discussion around like artificial intelligence coming

1:21:30

alive and the existential implications. That is

1:21:32

very different than these discussions that are

1:21:34

happening like on Ezra Show about what

1:21:37

happens when capabilities in certain things get

1:21:39

comparable to people and its economic impacts

1:21:41

and security impacts. It's a very different

1:21:43

thing. Crossing AGI, we're still talking about

1:21:46

using chatGPT, doing the types of things

1:21:48

we're doing now, it's just doing it

1:21:50

experts and better. Those are two completely

1:21:52

different things. I made that point last

1:21:55

time, I'm trying to clarify at this

1:21:57

time, but this is the type of

1:21:59

thing I don't want people thinking. Because

1:22:01

when I talked to people about that

1:22:04

article, their sense was like a Rubicon

1:22:06

was being crossed. If we get the

1:22:08

AGI, now systems will be able to

1:22:10

do X and now we have a

1:22:12

new thing in our world. That's not

1:22:15

the case at all. They don't do

1:22:17

anything new they can't do now. They'll

1:22:19

just be doing it X percent better.

1:22:21

So super intelligence. I'm still have the

1:22:24

school of the school of thought by

1:22:26

the school of thought by the way

1:22:28

that we have to believe that. computationally

1:22:30

possible. Like we're just making huge assumptions

1:22:33

that A, our level of intelligence can

1:22:35

create a more intelligent version. B, that

1:22:37

that is recursively true, that there's always

1:22:39

these new levels of intelligence that are

1:22:42

possible and computable. And that the speed

1:22:44

at which these intelligences can be created

1:22:46

somehow also speeds up. So like going

1:22:48

from intelligence level 10 to 11 is

1:22:51

somehow going to be faster than going

1:22:53

from intelligence level 1 to 2. Even

1:22:55

though, like these are all just like

1:22:57

massive assumptions that like Nick Bostra made

1:22:59

in a philosophy seminar at Oxford, right?

1:23:02

It's not anything we actually have any

1:23:04

reason to believe is true. It's also

1:23:06

just as plausible that like when it

1:23:08

comes to like general self-aware intelligence, like

1:23:11

evolution got us about as good as

1:23:13

it can get. This is it. Like

1:23:15

there's not like some higher plane of

1:23:17

really complicated, you know, understanding that just

1:23:20

that's out there that we computers can

1:23:22

achieve, but humans aren't there. We just

1:23:24

don't know. A lot of assumptions there.

1:23:26

All right. So there we go. That's

1:23:29

my PSA this week. Just a continuation

1:23:31

of last week. Superintelligence and artificial consciousness

1:23:33

are different concepts in AGI. I don't

1:23:35

know if that makes people feel better

1:23:38

or worse. I think it should make

1:23:40

you feel better though. AGI is an

1:23:42

economic. It's an issue of economic and

1:23:44

security disruptions and the threshold itself is

1:23:46

arbitrary. It is not like the thing

1:23:49

is aware now and it wasn't yesterday

1:23:51

and now we've crossed a line. It

1:23:53

is not that. It is like an

1:23:55

arbitrary subjective threshold and how we evaluate

1:23:58

the things of these systems. are doing,

1:24:00

the type of things we're already doing

1:24:02

when they get sufficiently better, we sort

1:24:04

of say that we pass that threshold.

1:24:06

It's a big deal, but it's not

1:24:09

a big deal from like a sci-fi

1:24:11

movie way. It's a big deal from like

1:24:13

the powered loom was bad for

1:24:15

textile workers type of way. So

1:24:17

hopefully that makes sense. All right, well

1:24:19

that's all the time we have for

1:24:22

today, back next week with another episode,

1:24:24

and until then as always, stay deep.

1:24:28

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