The Art of Manliness - #168： The Value of Deep Work in the Age of Distraction

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Have you ever

00:00:18.900 spent an entire day at work and in your life feeling that you're really busy, you're doing

00:00:24.080 all this stuff, you're sending emails, you're getting to do's done, you're checking stuff out

00:00:28.340 on your news feeds. And at the end of the day, you look back and you realize, man, I really

00:00:33.920 wasn't all that productive. I didn't get much done, even though I felt busy. And on top

00:00:38.160 of that, my brain feels fuzzy. I feel distracted. I can't really focus. I have this sort of anxiety

00:00:43.180 that there's stuff that I need to be doing, but I don't know what it is. Well, if that's

00:00:47.260 you, this podcast is for you. My guest today is Cal Newport. I've had him on the show before.

00:00:52.580 We talked about his book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. Anyways, Cal is back with a new

00:00:56.920 book called Deep Work, Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. And guys, this is one

00:01:02.260 of the best books I've read. And it's a big life-changing book for me. And I'm not exaggerating

00:01:07.660 with this. In Deep Work, Cal makes the case that we live in an environment and in a culture

00:01:12.500 that promotes shallow work, sort of distracted work that doesn't really get a lot done. And

00:01:18.680 it keeps us away from deep work, which requires focused, intense concentration for long periods

00:01:24.660 of time. And that this deep work, if we're able to develop this skill of doing deep work,

00:01:29.060 will set us apart in our career, in the economy, and also give us a more meaningful life.

00:01:35.780 So today on the podcast, we discuss Cal's case for deep work, as well as practical

00:01:40.820 nuts and bolts tips to help you have more deep work in your life. Really great actionable tips

00:01:47.460 in this podcast. So get a pen and paper. You're going to want to take notes.

00:01:50.500 So without further ado, deep work with Cal Newport.

00:02:02.760 Cal Newport, welcome back to the show.

00:02:05.700 Hi, Brett. Thanks for having me back.

00:02:07.320 So yeah, we had you about a year ago, I think a little over a year ago for your book,

00:02:11.540 So Good They Can't Ignore You. And that was a really well-received podcast. I still get

00:02:15.980 emails about that podcast. And you're out with a new book that I think in a way takes

00:02:24.280 so good you can't ignore you and extends on it a little bit. Well, not a little bit, but a lot.

00:02:30.840 It's called Deep Work, Rules for Focus Success in a Distracted World. And loved it. One of my

00:02:36.540 favorite books that I've read. So let's talk about what is deep work? Your book's called Deep Work.

00:02:42.400 Let's talk about what is deep work. Well, deep work is the term I coined to describe the activity

00:02:49.440 of focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.

00:02:56.340 Okay. And how did you stumble upon this? You flesh it out more. We'll talk more about it. But how did

00:03:01.500 you stumble upon this concept of deep work? And what's the opposite of deep work?

00:03:06.480 Yeah. So the opposite of deep work is shallow work, which I define to be work that it doesn't

00:03:14.240 require intense, undistracted focus. It's work that tends to be a little bit more logistical in nature

00:03:21.440 and that doesn't really leverage your skills at a high level. That is, someone else could replicate

00:03:27.460 it pretty easily. So that would include things like answering emails, meetings, maybe optimizing

00:03:35.900 your social media analytics setup, or these type of things that are kind of logistical but don't

00:03:42.620 require a lot of intense focus. So it's an important dichotomy, I think. You have deep efforts on one

00:03:49.080 hand and shallow on the other. And it's not that one is good or one is bad, but they're two different

00:03:54.940 types of work. You know, not all work is work. They both have their value, but recognizing that

00:03:59.020 you need to do both, just having a different term for each. Making that distinction, at least in my

00:04:04.120 own life, was a real step forward because it got me out of this trap of, hey, anything that possibly

00:04:09.760 has a benefit is work, so I should just be doing stuff and be busy all the time. And it gave me a more

00:04:14.500 nuanced understanding of work where I see it more that shallow work is sort of a necessary evil. It's the

00:04:20.540 stuff that allows you to keep your job, while deep work is the stuff that's going to help you get

00:04:25.500 promoted. It's the stuff that's really going to make a difference. So what are some examples of deep

00:04:29.200 work from your own life and maybe from the lives of other people you've looked into?

00:04:35.220 So anytime you're applying your skills with essentially at the limit of your ability to try

00:04:42.460 to produce the best thing you're currently capable of producing with your skills, you know, that's deep

00:04:46.720 work. So in my own life, my day job is I'm a computer science professor and I work in theoretical

00:04:52.260 computer science, which is essentially proving math proofs is what I do for a living. So certainly

00:04:57.540 it's a clear example of deep work is when, you know, I'm grappling, for example, to get a proof,

00:05:03.580 a mathematical proof to work. Or in my life, if I'm trying to read someone else's academic paper

00:05:09.860 and understand their techniques, trying to figure out what they're doing, you know, that's something

00:05:13.920 that requires deep work. But in other fields, you know, this shows up in different guises. So it

00:05:18.000 could be, for example, in your life, Brett, when you're trying to actually write a sort of compelling

00:05:24.240 and well-researched piece of content, that's going to be an example. That's going to be an example of

00:05:29.160 deep work. Or if you're in a business context, you know, really trying to understand, say, the business

00:05:35.600 landscape and come up with a new strategy could be deep work. And finally, I think it's worth noting that

00:05:40.020 the act of learning things that are hard necessarily requires deep work. So anytime you're actually

00:05:45.840 trying to pick up a new skill or master a new piece of information or technique, that's also

00:05:50.380 going to be deep work. So that, that kind of segues like that deliberate practice, you've written a lot

00:05:55.540 about this. Yeah. So deliberate practice is what's required to pick up cognitively demanding skills.

00:06:01.740 And deliberate practice, we know from, from both psychology and neuroscience requires intense

00:06:06.960 concentration. Um, so if you're good at deep work, one of the things you become good at is learning

00:06:11.540 things very quickly. So this is sort of one of the advantages you get from the skill. Well, yeah,

00:06:15.120 let's talk about that. You, you make the case that, uh, deep work is becoming more and more rare today,

00:06:21.900 which makes it more and more valuable. Let's talk about why first, why it's so rare. Why is deep work

00:06:28.160 becoming so rare in today's, uh, economy and environment? Yeah. So, and I, and I think this is

00:06:34.040 the, the core idea, you know, behind this book, I call it the deep work hypothesis. Uh, the whole sort

00:06:40.500 of reason for this book to exist is, uh, deep work, this thing that we're talking about is becoming

00:06:46.600 more rare at exactly the same time that I think it's becoming more valuable in our economy.

00:06:52.640 And because of that, that means that if you're one of the few who actually cultivates this skill,

00:06:58.980 who actually, uh, tries to systematically develop a deep life, you're going to thrive. It's going to

00:07:04.920 be like a superpower. So if you're someone who actually systematically trains your ability to

00:07:08.880 focus, you can become deeper and deeper and higher and higher intensity when you concentrate

00:07:12.880 and that aggressively protects and supports time and you're scheduled to do deep work. Uh, you know,

00:07:18.400 my whole argument is you are going to thrive in almost any knowledge work job.

00:07:22.040 So if we go back to this deep work hypothesis, the, uh, the two elements are,

00:07:25.560 it's becoming rare while it's becoming more valuable. Uh, so you're asking why, uh, is it

00:07:29.980 becoming more rare? And I think this is one of the big stories in, uh, business in the last

00:07:35.160 one to two decades is that as work is becoming more competitive and more complicated, as work

00:07:41.140 is getting to this place where the ability to focus and to learn things and to produce things

00:07:44.940 at high level values becoming more valued, we're actually seeing most of the trends in the

00:07:49.880 workplace being, uh, antithetical to depth. We're seeing things like always on email culture.

00:07:55.420 We're seeing the rise of open office. We're seeing the rise of office instant messenger tools.

00:07:59.760 All of these things make it almost impossible, uh, to work deeply. Um, and, and so I think this

00:08:05.900 is a huge trend in business. There there's, you know, I have several hypotheses for why this is

00:08:09.800 happening, but I think we all sort of agree that it is happening, that most people probably find it

00:08:15.380 harder today by an order of magnitude that might've been 20 years ago to find time to really focus

00:08:20.940 hard on things that matter. Right. Because there's, you're always living in, I mean, for me,

00:08:24.680 like I have the trouble with like living within my inbox and, uh, the problem with email, the way the

00:08:29.940 inbox are set up is that everything is treated as equally important. Yeah. And, and so we could step

00:08:36.060 back and say, so why is, why would businesses ever promote, uh, behaviors that makes the businesses run

00:08:42.100 worse, right? It seems a little bit paradoxical. And my, my hypothesis, the one I lay out in the

00:08:46.900 book, and I think there's other reasons, but my hypothesis is, uh, a defining feature of knowledge

00:08:53.020 work is that, uh, it's very difficult as the economist would say to measure the marginal

00:08:57.700 productivity of an individual. And what that means is because of the complexity of the work,

00:09:02.040 it's very hard to isolate one person and say, uh, here's how much value they're bringing to,

00:09:08.320 to our company in a way that would be easy to do. If you were say a door-to-door

00:09:12.020 salesman, right? You bring in this many dollars, or if you're on an assembly line, you, you process

00:09:16.120 this many widgets and knowledge work is complicated. So, uh, my conjecture is in the absence of this

00:09:21.520 type of direct feedback of this behavior is making us more profitable. This behavior is making us less

00:09:27.880 profitable. What's going to thrive. And I claim what's going to thrive are behaviors that are easier

00:09:35.440 for you in the moment. And this is the reason, for example, why a culture where, uh, everything is

00:09:42.520 done in email, everything goes in the one inbox and you're just sort of expected to respond pretty

00:09:47.420 quickly to any email you receive. Why does that thrive? Well, it makes your life in the moment

00:09:52.820 easier. You don't have to, you don't have to sit there and plan in advance. Okay. How is my work

00:10:00.260 going to unfold this week? What am I going to need to get my work done? Let me make sure that I've,

00:10:04.460 I've sent this memo to this person a few days in advance. So I get the stuff I need. You don't

00:10:08.300 have to manage your workflow in a complicated way. You can just sort of get there in your inbox and

00:10:11.980 just start rock and rolling and figure things out with messages as you go around. Now it turns out

00:10:17.240 that this is incredibly ineffective. It's also psychologically incredibly draining. Um, but it's

00:10:23.240 easier, right? You don't, you don't have to think that much about your work. You don't have to have a,

00:10:27.460 a master of workflow. You just sort of get in your inbox and do things. So I think this is why we see

00:10:32.720 deep work being squelched. It's hard to directly measure its, its, uh, impact on the bottom line.

00:10:38.340 And therefore in its absence, things that are easier in the moment are going to thrive. And a

00:10:43.380 lot of the behaviors that are easier, uh, tend to be behaviors that fragment your attention and hurt

00:10:47.940 your ability to focus. Right. And you talk more detail about that. That was interesting about

00:10:51.140 there's a culture where, you know, yeah, if you respond to your email fast or quickly and you respond to a

00:10:55.880 lot of emails, it kind of shows to the rest of your coworkers, like I'm working, right? I'm, I'm,

00:11:00.380 I'm doing my job or having that green dot on all the time. Even when office hours are over,

00:11:06.800 it shows like I'm really dedicated, but he might not be even doing anything at all, like anything

00:11:11.080 productive. Yeah, that's right. Because I mean, deep work is what allows you to produce things a

00:11:15.260 real value. It's what uses your skills. So if your attention is constantly fragmented,

00:11:18.840 uh, you can't do deep work. So from a cognitive perspective, uh, you're operating at, at a sort of

00:11:24.980 severe disadvantage. And, you know, I, I think it's worth emphasizing that easy is not the same

00:11:29.940 thing as productive. So making your life easier does not necessarily make you better at your job.

00:11:35.600 And I think the right analogy to understand how a lot of organizations work today would be to imagine

00:11:41.320 if you had an assembly line back in the industrial age, and it would say it's a complicated assembly line.

00:11:46.960 There's different materials and tools are needed at different stations and they're used up at

00:11:50.600 different rates. And imagine you said, here's what we're going to do. This is too complicated

00:11:54.020 to try to figure out in advance, you know, the, the, the inventory and, and, and the distribution

00:11:58.700 of tools. Let's just put all the resources and all the tools in a big pile in the parking lot.

00:12:03.580 And that was really easy. No one has to think about workflows and chains and inventories. If you

00:12:08.820 need something, you know where it is. You just go to the parking lot to get it. And as stuff comes in,

00:12:12.240 we don't have to think about how to distribute, dump it in the parking lot. It would be much easier.

00:12:16.580 People would, would, would not have to think at all about, you know, the complexities, the logistics.

00:12:21.840 On the other hand, it's, it would be an incredibly inefficient way to run an assembly line because

00:12:25.660 everyone would constantly be walking out to the parking lot to get what they need. It would also

00:12:29.660 be very frustrating. I think that's exactly what's going on with our connectivity culture. Sure.

00:12:33.920 It's easier if all I, whatever the problem is, whatever the issue is, just send an email to your

00:12:39.660 one email address into your inbox and we can just work it out. That's easier. But like walking to the

00:12:44.200 parking lot for every tool, it's an incredibly inefficient way to work.

00:12:47.620 Right. And it's amazing. You talk about, you know, how it's become such an article of faith,

00:12:50.720 like this connect, it's that connectivity culture is, you know, what you're supposed to do and no

00:12:54.420 one questions it. But then you highlight research where researchers came into a company that was

00:12:59.880 really connected, right? They use their Blackbones, their Blackberries and their email on the phone,

00:13:04.460 even after office hours. And they asked them like, don't do that anymore. Like they took away

00:13:10.240 their email. And what happened when they took away their email capabilities after office hours?

00:13:16.760 Yeah, this was researched by Leslie Perlau at the Harvard Business School. And she did it at the

00:13:20.740 Boston Consulting Group, which was an incredibly connected, high pressure management consulting

00:13:26.480 outfit. And at first, actually, it was called plan time off. At first, she was just getting groups to

00:13:32.060 take, everyone would have one night, one night a week in which they weren't working, which tells you a

00:13:37.520 little something about how connected these guys were. We're not talking about it. Just one time

00:13:42.140 a week and it was a nighttime. And they were freaking out about it.

00:13:44.500 They're freaking out about it. And then they eventually, she pushed it farther and had people

00:13:48.020 taking one full, every member of the team would take one full weekday off during the week where

00:13:53.600 they're unreachable. And not only did their happiness go up, but the client satisfaction went up

00:13:59.260 for these teams. But if you read her book on this, it's called Sleeping With Your Smartphone.

00:14:03.880 And what she talks about, what they learned was the key was communication. That once they had this

00:14:12.460 common thing, they would meet, these teams would meet and talk about it, about trying to make these

00:14:16.140 one day off or this one night off and what was working and what wasn't. And once they started having

00:14:19.840 this conversation, they realized that there was all of these other behaviors they had just accepted

00:14:26.120 as necessary. A lot of behaviors surrounding email and connectivity that were actually very

00:14:32.020 arbitrary. And once they opened up these lines of communication, a lot of the benefit came from

00:14:36.380 once they talked about it, they said, well, this is stupid. Like why we shouldn't have to do this. 0.99

00:14:40.400 It doesn't make sense that we would answer emails at night. It doesn't make sense. In fact,

00:14:44.200 they even ended up after having these conversations, they changed the email software

00:14:48.040 at Boston Consulting Group so that, for example, if you tried to send an email after 6 p.m.,

00:14:53.500 it would pop up and say, the default behavior here is that we'll hold this for you

00:14:56.940 and send it to the person in the morning unless you specifically tell me, no, no, I still want you

00:15:02.340 to send it at night with an urgent tag on it. So the conversations opened up the fact that a lot

00:15:09.160 of this behavior we have in the workplace is not somehow the cornerstone of our productivity. It's

00:15:13.360 really just kind of arbitrary.

00:15:14.300 Arbitrary. It's just us going using the path of least resistance.

00:15:17.780 Yeah. She even has this great thing called the cycle of connectivity where she calls it a vicious 1.00

00:15:22.920 cycle, but she walks through, you know, how does a company like BCG get to a point where everyone's

00:15:28.220 always connected? And it's not something anyone ever sat down and said, here's what we should do.

00:15:32.700 This would be the most productive. It's actually just sort of arises in a feedback loop where,

00:15:37.040 well, well, this person's on a little bit more. So if I answer him, that's good. And then you need to

00:15:41.360 answer me. And then it's the cycle. And then next thing they know, this behavior is ingrained,

00:15:45.900 even though no one ever decided this is what they should do. And there was no real evidence that it

00:15:49.920 was actually a productive way to work.

00:15:51.900 So let's talk about what makes deep work so valuable. Because this is, I mean, on the surface,

00:15:55.740 people, it would seem, I don't know, maybe controversial, not controversial. I think it's

00:16:00.280 intuitive. We understand it would be valuable. But in this age where like the economy, like we're

00:16:05.260 having this great disruption, right? There's a great restructuring. You have to be able to put on

00:16:09.060 different hats, right? You got to be able to answer your own email, be a social media guru,

00:16:14.100 do your own marketing, like do it, do it all, right? Very multitask. But you're saying, no,

00:16:19.980 actually it'd be more, you'd be able to provide more value to the economy by picking one skill that

00:16:27.320 you want to focus on and do it deeply. So how is deep work valuable in today's economy?

00:16:33.740 Yeah, I think, I think you hit on that just right. What's valuable in today's economy, which is,

00:16:38.480 which is very competitive, is that you're able to do something that's very valuable, very well.

00:16:45.240 Something that, you know, it's not easy for them to find someone else to do it or to outsource. You

00:16:49.620 do something very valuable, very well. That's what's valuable. If you're really quick at email,

00:16:54.880 if you use a lot of social media, that's easily replicatable, right? That's not actually something

00:16:59.340 that's, you know, that valuable. But if you have some hard skill that you can do well,

00:17:03.440 that's going to be the currency for thriving in this economy. And deep work is like the mint that

00:17:09.280 prints that currency. Because when you're in a state of deep work, here's what we know about it

00:17:12.640 from the research. All right. So first of all, you need to be in a state of deep work to learn hard

00:17:17.920 things quickly. So if you develop your ability to concentrate, to be very intense, and you regularly

00:17:23.400 have time to apply that concentration, you can really quickly pick up complicated new information

00:17:28.820 and skills, which is hugely important, you know, for being someone who's valuable in the economy.

00:17:34.160 We also know about deep work that when you work in a state of intense concentration,

00:17:38.600 you produce work at both a higher rate of quality and quantity as compared to less intensely focused,

00:17:47.260 more fragmented attention. So someone who regularly does deep work is able to produce a lot and do so

00:17:54.680 in a little amount of time. And you know, I profile some of these deep workers in my book. And a lot

00:18:00.700 of them to the outside world seem superhuman. But they're not supermen. The main thing they're doing

00:18:06.400 that other people aren't that their peers aren't doing is they are actually just treating their

00:18:10.500 ability to focus like a muscle. And they're giving it a lot of reps. And then they're going out there

00:18:14.780 and doing feats of strength.

00:18:16.820 Gotcha. Yeah, some of the people you highlight. So for example, someone who learned who use deep work to

00:18:22.100 learn a very hard skill that's valuable in today's economy is the fellow that who taught himself

00:18:26.500 coding like in a few months, because he needed a job or something like that. What was his name again?

00:18:31.460 Oh, yeah, from the from Jason from the beginning of the book. Yeah, he was in a job here in Northern

00:18:37.400 Virginia, making $40,000 a year, basically filling out spreadsheets. And you know, he hated it. So he said,

00:18:44.560 I need more valuable skills. So he wanted to learn how to computer program. So he gave himself a crash

00:18:49.840 course in deep work by basically locking himself in a room without any electronics and just these

00:18:55.460 programming books. And basically, it was hard at first. But over time, he increases ability just

00:19:00.100 to focus hard on these books. And he was able to teach himself programming in a very fast amount

00:19:07.600 of time, then went out to San Francisco to get a six figure job at a startup. And then once he's out

00:19:12.480 at that startup, he's really been been crushing it because he comes in early, he puts on his brown 0.97

00:19:16.540 noise headphones and is able to just focus like a laser beam on his coding. So he's also a very

00:19:20.600 productive member once there. That's a that's a perfect case study. Because you know, what I'm

00:19:25.660 what I'm going at for this book is that this is, it's it's not social critique, it's actually

00:19:32.260 a guidebook for those if you want to be one of the few who recognizes the value of this skill,

00:19:41.100 then you should actually be happy that most people are ignoring it, you should actually be happy

00:19:45.920 that most people are on their phones all the time and that people are focusing on shallow

00:19:50.620 activities. Because it's this huge economic opportunity that if you know, you take deep

00:19:56.220 work seriously, which again, I think means you have to train your ability to focus and then go

00:20:01.260 through great efforts to protect and support periods to do this work throughout your work week. If you do

00:20:05.300 those two things, essentially do CrossFit for your mind, make that same type of commitment. It's a

00:20:11.400 it's a blue ocean playing field out there. You know, the few people who do that are really

00:20:15.160 thriving. So you know, if you're if you're hearing this podcast, you should be hoping that that not

00:20:19.940 too many other people are. Because I'm telling you, this is one of the big opportunities out there,

00:20:24.580 your focus is the new IQ. But unlike regular IQ, it's something that you can get substantially better

00:20:30.660 at in a short amount of time. Right? I mean, that's a great point. Because like, in today's

00:20:34.260 economy, particularly like, okay, like my where I'm at, right, I produce online content, the,

00:20:39.080 the barrier to entry is extremely low. Anyone can do it, right? Buy $10 domain, you install WordPress

00:20:46.320 for free, you can get going. But like, what makes what separates the people who are really successful,

00:20:51.200 or one of the things that separates people who are really successful is like, they are able to just

00:20:54.000 focus all their time on creating the content that people actually want to read, right? And I mean,

00:21:00.620 that's one of the reasons like, I don't do a lot of traveling or go to conferences, because it takes

00:21:04.240 away from writing. Or I don't do a lot of social media or a lot of tweeting, because like that takes

00:21:09.900 away from writing. Because that the writing is like, what's important, what's valuable. But people

00:21:14.860 a lot of people in this sphere have this idea that we get to be all over the place, go to the

00:21:19.140 conferences, network, do the social media, do the Instagram. But that all that stuff sort of dissipates

00:21:24.980 your impact a lot. Yeah, I think that's a perfect example. Because there's a ton of shallow

00:21:30.460 tasks that surround running a media company like Art of Manliness. But you know, the stuff about

00:21:37.860 your WordPress configuration, and making sure that the mailing list and this and that. But all of that

00:21:44.620 stuff is sort of low value in the sense that it doesn't require a hard won skill. And it's something

00:21:48.880 that could be outsourced or someone else could do with no real effect on the success or failure of

00:21:53.140 your business, whereas the producing of the content is at the core of it. So by focusing on the content

00:21:58.560 and doing that deeply, you know, that's what produces value for your business. So at first,

00:22:03.260 maybe you had to batch and try to handle the shallow stuff as efficiently as you can,

00:22:08.140 whereas now as you've grown, you can probably have other people do it. But you know, I think there's

00:22:11.720 an underlying trend going on here, which is, in our culture, we've lost an ethic of craftsmanship.

00:22:20.440 And I think in the absence of this ethic of craftsmanship, for people who are in, for example,

00:22:26.920 your position running, you know, small companies or online media companies, there's this anxiety

00:22:32.300 about what does it mean to be doing my job well. And I think that anxiety drives a lot of this sort

00:22:39.940 of frenetic, low value, shallow activities, the frequent attending of conferences, the obsessing

00:22:47.100 about your email funnels, and getting the configuration just right on your social media share buttons.

00:22:52.700 Because to be really busy and to be doing lots of stuff and to be doing lots of coffees and emails

00:22:58.280 and all these sort of things, at least you feel like, okay, I guess I'm working. So I, you know,

00:23:02.680 I'm, I can feel a little bit less anxious about this company and its success. But we used to have

00:23:09.080 this culture, this ethic of craftsmanship that placed a lot of value on, you know, we have this sort

00:23:15.560 of ideal image of the art of manliness. We can see this ideal image of the man is sort of you,

00:23:20.040 you, you, you sit there and with your skill, you apply your craft and you produce something in

00:23:25.000 the world that's valuable that did not exist before. And that was a noble task. And that ethic,

00:23:31.720 if you subscribe to it, it allows you to release a lot of that anxiety and to be less worried about

00:23:37.500 am I doing, am I busy all the time and say, I can be very satisfied and confident, really putting

00:23:42.740 my attention on crafting something very valuable. Ultimately, that's what matters.

00:23:48.040 And so if you can, if you can reclaim this sort of, you know, older manly virtue of craftsmanship,

00:23:54.460 I think it's, it's easier to start really prioritizing depth and being okay with that.

00:24:00.020 So not only does, does deep work make you economically valuable, it can also provide

00:24:06.120 meaning, philosophical, spiritual, existential meaning in your life.

00:24:11.560 Yeah, I have a long chapter in the book where I go through all the different evidence for why that's

00:24:16.700 true. And in fact, I was surprised. I mean, I had experienced it in my own life that the more I focused

00:24:21.000 on depth and the less I focused on shallow, not only was I more successful, I found my life more

00:24:25.720 meaningful. But when I started looking into the research for why that might be true, I was surprised

00:24:30.540 by how much evidence there was from different fields that all pointed towards the same conclusion

00:24:38.000 that a life of focused attention on something that is valuable is really a much better life than one

00:24:47.620 in which your attention is frenetically moving around. I mean, if anything, there's, there's this

00:24:51.860 rising hypothesis in psychology and neuroscience that our brain is really not evolved for this type of

00:24:57.280 frenetic constant context switching. And it essentially is messing up your chemicals. And this,

00:25:03.100 it gives rise, you know, to anxiety and anxiety related issues. Our brain is really not made for

00:25:10.460 it. Our brain is much more wired to spend long amounts of time sort of concentrating on a small

00:25:17.060 amount of things. It's sort of a deep life is a good life. Right. Well, yeah, that's from Winifred

00:25:20.980 Gallagher, right? Or from Wrapped. She wrote Wrapped. Yeah, Wrapped. A book that Brett and I are big

00:25:25.820 supporters of. Yeah. 2009, this great book. I mean, she's a science writer, and she basically just went

00:25:31.180 through the science of attention, uh, all the way back from, you know, William James through,

00:25:36.100 through fMRIs today. And it's fascinating. Um, but ultimately her conclusion is, uh, she says,

00:25:44.020 I choose to live the focused life because it's the best type of life there is. That's her conclusion

00:25:47.740 after going through all of this science is to live a life where you're deliberate with your attention.

00:25:51.900 Um, all the different science points to the conclusion. That's a really good way to live.

00:25:57.080 Right. And like William James, he said, uh, like all the way back in the 19th century,

00:26:00.460 like wisdom is knowing what to overlook. Right. I think something like that he said to the extent

00:26:05.040 it's just part of living a good life is just knowing what to focus on and what to ignore.

00:26:10.140 And I think in today's environment, we think where everything is like the, uh, what's there's a book,

00:26:15.540 the, uh, uh, future or present shock. Everything is important. Everything's now we, we lose that,

00:26:21.940 that insight, uh, or that, uh, like you said, our brains not evolved for this new environment and it

00:26:26.740 just creates just anxiety and, uh, distraction and it's not healthy and it's not, it's not

00:26:33.200 productive. Yeah. And in fact, I, you know, I, I, in the beginning of my chapter about that,

00:26:38.260 that, uh, that reality, I said, let me just paint you this picture of, uh, a craftsman.

00:26:43.820 And, uh, it's a guy who, who, who works on near the shore of Lake Michigan and Wisconsin

00:26:48.500 and an open air barn and forges metal. And I sort of paint the picture of this guy and his life. And

00:26:54.220 I say, you're probably have no interest in metal. You probably have no interest in blacksmithing,

00:26:58.500 but if you're like most people, there's still something deeply attractive to you about this

00:27:03.580 image of this guy who's there in the open air barn and all of his attention is on doing this fine

00:27:08.900 crafting of it. And I say, forget all the science. You already sort of know deep down that, that,

00:27:14.680 you know, our souls resonate with this idea of, of paying sort of wrap deep attention to do things

00:27:19.580 valuable. It's, it's, we're, we're wired for that, whether it's at a blacksmith's forge or at a

00:27:25.280 computer screen running computer code, that doesn't really matter. It's the underlying, you know, uh,

00:27:29.960 wrapped attention craftsmanship, giving your full focus on producing something valuable.

00:27:34.700 That's what resonates. Right. And I feel like when I was reading this section of your book,

00:27:38.180 I feel like it really connected or, uh, extended your argument you made in so good. They can't

00:27:43.160 ignore you on a deeper level. Did I read that right? Or was I reading the right way? Yeah.

00:27:48.180 Yeah. Because it's so good. You can't ignore you. Uh, you know, I was asking the question,

00:27:51.420 what makes people happy in their careers? And I said, the leading hypothesis that they follow,

00:27:56.700 they follow their passion is wrong. Um, the evidence seems to support how most people end up loving

00:28:01.840 their work is that they, they get really good at something valuable. And for a lot of different

00:28:06.620 reasons that makes you happy. Um, so in some sense, deep work was a followup to that because people

00:28:12.660 said, uh, okay, I get that. So how do I get good at something valuable? And, uh, and, and so the

00:28:18.640 answer was, you know, well, deep work. And as you just pointed out, there was obviously, you know,

00:28:22.800 overlaps. I noted in so good, they can't ignore you that craftsmanship creates a lot of value.

00:28:27.600 Uh, people seem to really enjoy their lives when they're doing it. And so in this book,

00:28:31.280 deep work, I got to sort of follow up on the science of why that's true.

00:28:35.000 Okay. So we've, we've laid the foundation of, um, why deep work is, is important, valuable.

00:28:40.220 It's becoming increasingly rare and why it can provide meaning. What I want to love about your

00:28:44.080 book though. You don't just stop there, right? You said, it's not a, like you said, it's not a

00:28:47.400 critique, a Jeremiah against the, uh, the current state of things, but you actually provide some

00:28:51.820 actionable things that people can do to, uh, practice deep work in their lives. So what are your

00:28:58.760 what do you think are the, the, the most things that people could start doing today that would

00:29:02.620 allow them to start having more deep work in their own lives? Right. This is the key question. So

00:29:07.960 what does it mean to, if you, if you agree with this premise that, you know, deep work makes you

00:29:12.460 better, makes you more competitive, makes you happier. What does it actually mean to embrace

00:29:17.460 a deep life? And there's, uh, the way I like to think about it is there's, there's three types of

00:29:21.620 commitments you have to make if you want to live a deep life and get all these advantages. Um,

00:29:27.180 so one, you have to commit to training your ability to focus and there's any number of

00:29:33.560 different things you can do, but focus is a skill like playing the guitar, not a habit like

00:29:38.160 flossing your teeth. It's not something that you know how to do. You just have to spend more time

00:29:41.600 doing it. It actually has to be practiced. Uh, most people, if I just took you and locked you in a

00:29:46.240 room and said, concentrate for the next three hours would be bad at it. If you haven't actually been

00:29:51.000 practicing and increasing your, your depths of intensity. So the first type of commitment to living a deep

00:29:55.640 life is you need to train your ability to focus just like you would, uh, have an exercise routine.

00:30:00.760 And there's, there's several strategies we can talk about there. The second commitment is you need

00:30:05.720 to actually fight to protect and support deep work in your schedule. So that means you have to put in

00:30:11.180 the effort and it takes a lot of effort to, to put aside and protect on a regular basis, time to

00:30:16.700 actually apply this deeply focused work. And by, you need to support it, meaning you need to put

00:30:22.380 things around this deep work that, that helps you succeed with it. You know, where you do the work,

00:30:27.000 how you do it, the rituals. And there's, there's specific strategies we can talk there. And, and

00:30:30.840 third, and perhaps most controversially, I think if you really want to embrace the deep life,

00:30:35.500 I think it's important to, uh, take some semi-radical steps that demonstrate to yourself

00:30:41.500 that you take your attention very seriously. So, you know, off the, right off the bat, make some sort

00:30:48.380 of bolder move that, that signals to yourself, Hey, you know what, my attention, my ability to

00:30:54.380 concentrate is very important to me. So just as when people want to make the, you know, bold decision

00:30:59.240 to get more fit, they might choke up the money you need to join a CrossFit gym. You know, I'm

00:31:04.100 recommending if you're going to take deep work seriously, you want to do the attentional equivalent,

00:31:07.800 which might be something like quitting Facebook or, uh, leaving your phone in the car after you get

00:31:12.500 home from work. Gotcha. Well, let's talk, let's talk about those one by one. So the developing the

00:31:17.040 skill of focus, I mean, what are some things that people can do, uh, to develop that skill?

00:31:22.100 So, uh, a couple of quick ideas. Um, so, so one is, uh, you need to embrace boredom. So a big thing

00:31:29.320 that makes it hard to focus is if your mind, uh, is addicted to getting novel stimuli, uh, sort of

00:31:37.440 at all times, it's very difficult to then focus when it comes time to focus because, uh, doing deep work

00:31:43.240 is by definition boring in the sense that deep work is a period where you're not going to have

00:31:49.560 a bunch of novel stimuli because you're, you're concentrating on just one thing. Um, so if your

00:31:54.220 mind is addicted to, I always have novel stimuli, I never have to go without them, which is easy to

00:31:59.420 get to this day because your phone can deliver novel stimuli at any moment in any place. It's going

00:32:05.180 to be hard to focus intensely. Uh, so one thing I recommend is giving yourself tons of practice of

00:32:10.300 being bored by which I mean just a lot of practice of, of being somewhere and not having

00:32:15.400 any novel stimuli. And, you know, it could be something somewhat drastic. Like I just got back

00:32:20.560 from, uh, you know, Christmas holidays that my parents brought my family up to New Jersey for

00:32:25.460 four days and I left my phone at home. So there was four days where I just didn't have a phone.

00:32:30.200 I had no portal to any sort of entertainment, so I couldn't get novel stimuli whenever I wanted it.

00:32:35.700 That's great practice. Uh, but it could be something less radical, like just taking certain

00:32:40.280 times. Like I'm going to, uh, put my phone away for the next hour or, uh, at work, you know, saying

00:32:47.260 here's the next time I'm going to use the internet, uh, maybe like an hour and a half or two hours from

00:32:50.940 now. And just give yourself that, that one or two hours to just work and to be a little bit bored

00:32:54.880 and to not have novel stimuli. So, so getting yourself used to not having novel stimuli, um,

00:32:59.960 is a key way to train your focus. Uh, a second quick thing I'll recommend is productive meditation,

00:33:04.560 which is where you simply, you go for a walk, you give yourself a hard problem to work on,

00:33:09.000 and you just try to give it as much attention as you can. And just like in mindfulness meditation,

00:33:13.860 if you find your attention wandering away from the problem, notice that and then bring your

00:33:18.840 attention back to it and keep trying to push yourself deeper and deeper. You know, I started

00:33:22.900 doing this in 2009 after about six months of that training, I found that I had a, uh, significant

00:33:28.900 increase in my ability to concentrate to the point now where I can do a lot of my mathematics work

00:33:33.060 on foot. That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I've done this after that whole embracing boredom thing,

00:33:37.920 I asked that really helped me out a lot. I've found opportunities now. Like the other day I was

00:33:42.140 in, there was a long line at the post office and instead of pulling out my phone from my back pocket,

00:33:47.100 I just said, okay, I'm going to do what Cal says. I'm just going to embrace boredom.

00:33:50.440 And I just stood there. I was probably in the line for 20 minutes and it was long. It was tedious,

00:33:55.000 but I was like, okay, I'm training my brain to be used to boredom. Um, and I've also done things on

00:34:00.700 my phone where I have like an app, uh, that blocks my phone off in the morning and in the evening when

00:34:05.220 I'm with my kids. Um, because you know, look, kids are fun, but sometimes they'd be really boring

00:34:09.920 when they're like five, two years old and they want to like play Legos all the time. And sometimes you

00:34:14.840 had to get in the habit. I go, okay, I'll just, while I'm playing Legos, I'll check Instagram,

00:34:18.780 I'll check email. I don't do that anymore. Um, and so I'm training my brain to be bored. So thank you

00:34:24.440 for that whole idea of embracing boredom. Yeah. And it also reduces anxiety. Uh, boredom's great. I'm a big

00:34:30.000 boredom booster. I'm, I'm, I'm bored a lot. And I, you know, it's, I think that makes my life

00:34:34.760 better. It's, it's, I think it stimulates you to actually like find ways to make your life better

00:34:39.680 in like significant ways or meaningful ways. Right. I, I think so. I think so. So, I mean,

00:34:44.460 that's, and let me ask you, I mean, you've probably probably noticed you do this for enough time.

00:34:49.300 Then when you sit down to write the, the sort of complicated blog article, you probably find it

00:34:55.100 easier, right? Because you don't have this, uh, I need this email real quick. My, you know,

00:34:59.580 your mind sort of sounding off the alarms, like stimuli, stimuli, stimuli. Right. Right. Yeah.

00:35:04.740 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And like when I experienced deep work at its best and when I can

00:35:08.840 remember, I have it now and there's been moments where throughout my writing career where it'll be

00:35:13.680 really great. And then sometimes I'll get off the wheels of fall off the wagon and then I'll have to

00:35:17.640 get back on. But like when I was in law school, that's when I, I really, when I experienced the deep

00:35:23.300 work that you talked about in your own personal experience where, you know, from like seven o'clock

00:35:28.200 until eight o'clock at night, I was pretty much just a treated, I was studying all the time and I

00:35:33.280 would just have to go through these very obscure, poorly written 19th century legal cases and suss

00:35:39.360 out, you know, the case law or what's the law from that and like apply them to the facts. And,

00:35:43.900 and I, I would, I mean, I was seriously, I would get so zoned in on it. Uh, it would feel like it,

00:35:50.360 to me, it felt like only a few minutes had passed by, but it'd be like an hour. Um, but I was like

00:35:54.440 in the flow and I, I really did well in law school because of that. And I, I, I attributed

00:35:59.480 to that whole deep work concept. Yeah. I love it. The image of sitting there with a, a 19th century

00:36:05.040 law book for those of us who are deep work proponents, you know, that's like deep work

00:36:09.060 porn right there. Right, right, right. Exactly. And the walking thing, that's great too. Cause I mean,

00:36:13.660 there's research that shows that, uh, taking breaks, right. Um, and doing something else that might

00:36:20.080 not be super focused, but you're thinking about the thing you're thinking about, right. In a very,

00:36:25.900 but while doing something else like walking or doing a walking meditation, you actually get insights

00:36:30.300 that you otherwise wouldn't have if you just try to brute force, get at it. Right. Yeah. I think

00:36:34.880 that's true. I mean, to give you a recent example, uh, earlier this month, my family did a, uh, we spent

00:36:39.860 a week in the Bahamas for our vacation this year. And, you know, so I showed up there with, I just had

00:36:44.780 this hard proof that I, I knew I needed to prove this thing. I had no idea how to prove it. Um,

00:36:49.700 so I just walked the beach and I, you know, I walked the beach for a week. It wasn't until day

00:36:53.360 five of the trip that, that, uh, I see how to do this. And it wasn't that hard once I'd actually

00:36:58.260 identified, but I don't, you couldn't have brute forced it. Uh, you know, it needed to be just,

00:37:03.940 uh, my mind needed to just, just come at it from different angles, work at it. Uh, and, and,

00:37:08.780 you know, that's the type of thing that if you practice that at first, you'll find it hard. And it

00:37:12.380 really only takes a few months, um, before you find that you're able to actually hold things in your

00:37:17.180 mind with practice and work on them. So I also do a lot of writing in my mind. Um, many of the

00:37:21.840 chapters of so good, they can't ignore you, for example, were, you know, outlined on my walk back

00:37:27.020 from the campus where I was a postdoc at the time to my apartment across the Charles river. Uh,

00:37:33.380 because you can write in your mind, you can solve problems in your mind. Uh, it, it takes practice,

00:37:38.540 but, but maybe not as much as you think. Yeah. That's what both my wife and I do when we,

00:37:43.120 like, we both write when we're like, sometimes I'll just be like, like, what are you thinking

00:37:47.360 about? She's like, Oh, I'm writing. And like, and like, or like, I'll be doing the same. I'll

00:37:51.200 zone out. And she's like, what are you doing? I'm like, Oh, I'm writing the, like the first

00:37:54.620 paragraph to like, and then you get when you're, when you're actually at the computer, you can sit

00:37:57.980 down and write it. Yeah, exactly. I love it. As opposed to just staring at this computer screen

00:38:02.060 and trying to force it. And you have all the distractions, a couple of mouse clicks away. It's not

00:38:06.880 always the most conducive thing for getting work done. Right. So let's talk about the second

00:38:10.340 aspect of, um, setting up structures to, uh, of, to protect your deep work time.

00:38:16.460 Yeah. So now, no, no, once you have your ability to focus honed, the next thing you need is to

00:38:20.780 actually have the opportunity to apply it on a regular basis. So you don't get the benefits of

00:38:25.160 deep work unless you're actually regularly doing deep work. Uh, so I'll, I'll give you three quick

00:38:30.260 things that, that can help you protect and support deep work, you know, in your routine one, having,

00:38:35.500 having rituals and routines surrounding deep work sessions, uh, really helps. So something

00:38:40.300 that you, some sort of ritual or routine you always do, uh, right before you start deep

00:38:44.980 working, uh, that helps your mind transform into that, that deep work mindset easier by,

00:38:51.940 by contrast, if you just, uh, in an ad hoc fashion, try to wrench your attention away from something

00:38:56.800 you're doing and say, now I'm going to concentrate that takes a lot of willpower and energy and

00:39:01.860 it's going to be less successful. So I, I talk about a lot of routines people have, and they're

00:39:05.480 as simple as, you know, you, you change the lighting in your office and put a do not disturb

00:39:09.300 sign to as elaborate as, you know, relatively long walks through certain locations or going

00:39:14.240 to a cabin in the woods. I mean, uh, there's, there's a whole, there's a whole scale there.

00:39:18.420 Uh, another thing that I, you know, a basic strategy that works really well is at the

00:39:23.420 beginning of the week, schedule your deep work sessions on your calendar, like you would

00:39:27.540 any other meeting or appointment, and then treat them like any other meeting or appointment,

00:39:31.720 which means if someone says, Hey, can you jump on a call on Tuesday at nine? You can say,

00:39:37.300 Oh no, I have a thing from, you know, nine to 12 on my calendar. I can't do it. Then let's

00:39:40.780 do it later. Or if someone says, I sent you an email, why not hear back from you? You're

00:39:44.380 like, Oh no, I was, I had a thing. We have, it's a thing. We have a semantics already around

00:39:50.180 appointments and meetings, the modern workplace. People understand that, you know, when you have

00:39:54.180 an appointment or meeting that, that you're inaccessible during that time. Uh, so that's a

00:39:58.380 simple thing. The third thing, which I think is a little bit more complex, but I think

00:40:02.080 is important is that you open up a dialogue with your boss, be it an actual boss, or if

00:40:08.280 you're self-employed, a dialogue with yourself, um, about how much deep work you're doing,

00:40:14.980 uh, how it's going and what it's producing. And in fact, I even recommend in the book that

00:40:19.080 you ask your boss, what percentage of my hours should be deep work hours versus shallow work

00:40:23.980 hours and, and, and agree on, on a ratio there and then have a regular conversation with them

00:40:29.620 about, okay, what, what help do I need from you? What do I need to do in order to hit this ratio?

00:40:35.000 You know, I only had two hours of deep work last week. We agreed that I should have 15. Um,

00:40:40.800 this isn't good for either of us. What can we do? And on the flip side also discuss, Hey, you know,

00:40:45.860 my 15 hours of deep work last week produced X, Y, and Z, which I'm really proud of. And I think is

00:40:50.540 really valuable for the company. I think having that dialogue, be it with yourself or with your actual

00:40:55.000 boss is really important. If you're going to try to, you know, uh, get the accommodations you need

00:41:00.180 to really integrate this type of work and, and to do so in a way that everyone's happy about it.

00:41:05.440 Awesome. Now I'm going to make a plug for your blog, Cal. Uh, if you guys are looking for more

00:41:09.240 information about planning deep work, uh, time management, Cal's got some great stuff on his

00:41:14.720 blog, calnewport.com. Um, really great stuff. It's one of the few blogs I subscribe to. So go check that

00:41:19.620 out. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, definitely. I've been, I've been, uh, I've been writing. Yeah. I have

00:41:24.800 this deep habits series on there where, you know, once or twice a month, I just talk about

00:41:30.460 nuts and bolts things that help you build a deep life. Right. Really good stuff there. And that's

00:41:35.760 great supplement to the book. Um, so that last thing, making a bold move to show to yourself and

00:41:41.800 maybe to others that you take your, your focus and your attention very seriously. And you're,

00:41:46.880 you suggest like one of them quitting social media. That's crazy talk. What do you, you're,

00:41:52.140 how can you quit social media in today's media landscape? And how are you going to keep track

00:41:57.820 of your mom and your, your cousins and how are you going to like market yourself? Right. And how

00:42:02.840 are you going to, how are you going to brand? You got your personal brand new new Cal, what are we

00:42:06.700 gonna do about our personal brand? Yeah. It was, Hey, you know, I've never had a Facebook account and

00:42:10.520 I'll tell you, I, I, I haven't heard from my mom in three years. I have no friends and I haven't sold

00:42:15.000 any books. So I guess I should be on Facebook. Yeah, I know. What a failure. Yeah. So, so, uh,

00:42:21.260 you know, in my own life, here's what I do. I, I've, so I've never had a social media account

00:42:24.360 because honestly, I mean, these, these companies, uh, uh, hire very high priced, uh, people,

00:42:32.660 they pay them a lot of money to sit there and to try to think out how can I grab and disrupt as much

00:42:38.540 attention as possible from our users? It's, it's, you know, it's called attention engineering

00:42:41.980 and, uh, they have world-class experts who are working on how can they get as much of your

00:42:47.620 attention? How can they get you coming back to the phone and looking at it as often as possible

00:42:52.560 and for as long as possible. And to me, if you're someone who, who recognizes that your attention is

00:42:58.100 your main tool, it's your main tool you use as a knowledge work craftsman to use a tool like that.

00:43:04.040 I, you know, it's the equivalent of being a professional athlete who smokes. Uh, it doesn't

00:43:07.940 make sense to me. And I think this idea that these, these media companies in California that sell ads

00:43:12.860 are somehow, uh, at the, at the core of our modern culture and what it means to be, uh, you know, a

00:43:19.860 citizen of the digital world. I just think that's somewhat preposterous. I mean, I've never had a

00:43:23.640 social media account. I've never had any negative ramifications. It's just, it just doesn't, uh,

00:43:29.180 factor into my life. It has, it hasn't really been an issue. Um, so the way I like to think about it,

00:43:34.120 it's not that social media is, is, is like intrinsically bad. Um, I just don't understand

00:43:39.720 this notion that it needs to be universally used. I, my, I think the analogy should be like

00:43:44.480 Game of Thrones, right? It's something that, that, you know, you know, a lot of people are

00:43:47.800 really into, but a whole lot of people could care less. And I, to me, that's where tools like

00:43:52.800 Facebook or, uh, uh, Twitter should be that, yeah, there's some people who are techie and they

00:43:57.620 really like it, but most people say this has nothing to do with my life and that's not the way it is

00:44:01.080 now. Um, so that's my own crusade, which, which, uh, a lot of people push back on.

00:44:06.520 Tilting at windmills, Kyle, you're tilting at windmills.

00:44:08.620 It's probably tilting at windmills though. I just don't understand these, these attention economy.

00:44:12.620 Um, I, I also, uh, I don't use, I don't use the internet to entertain myself. Uh, by which I mean,

00:44:18.760 I've, I've, I've opted out of the whole sort of attention economy out there of these, uh,

00:44:24.940 websites with the, the algorithmically engineered headlines that, you know,

00:44:30.320 made and easily accessible and made to grab your attention. Yeah. I wrote about this a couple

00:44:34.740 of years ago that I don't know how to web surf. So I don't have a stable of sites to go to. Um,

00:44:41.320 you know, people usually have their cycle. You, you go and you click there.

00:44:45.080 My wife, my wife and I call it the wheel.

00:44:47.560 The wheel.

00:44:48.140 You're stuck. I like when, when I can see her clicking or she's like, you're stuck on the

00:44:51.580 wheel, aren't you? Get off the wheel.

00:44:53.400 Yeah. So I don't have a wheel. I got rid of that and, and it's, it's great. So, so, and in other words,

00:44:58.380 I don't have these things pulling at my attention. Um, and you know, it's not the fact that if I,

00:45:02.620 if I joined Facebook tomorrow at my age, uh, I'm not going to suddenly be using it, um, 30 hours a

00:45:09.080 day. And, you know, a lot of people make this argument. It's like, well, it's not like I use

00:45:12.140 it that much anymore. Um, so for me at this point, it's really about the signal to myself.

00:45:17.060 Yeah. You know, it's, it's just like when I get, when I want to take my, my health seriously,

00:45:21.380 I stopped smoking, uh, I stopped eating, you know, even the, having even the occasional

00:45:25.960 cigarette, same thing. I, I, I treat my attention like a tool, uh, because I think it generates a

00:45:30.740 very rich life and a very successful life. Um, so these types of things are commitments. Now,

00:45:35.660 it could be something different for you. Maybe, you know, for some people, social media is key

00:45:39.020 to their job. If for example, you run a media company, the manliness, well, okay. Uh, you know,

00:45:44.860 social media is great for companies because so many people use it. And so it'd be folly,

00:45:49.040 for example, for you not to be on there. Um, there's other things like this that could,

00:45:53.840 that could help you this demonstration. And I, you know, I've found lots of interesting

00:45:57.020 examples. There's, there's this whole underground movement, for example, that no one knows about

00:46:00.440 the dumb phone movement, uh, where relatively high, like high level executives are, uh, getting 0.73

00:46:06.440 rid of their smartphones and they've all actually, they, there's this one dumb phone you can get 0.90

00:46:11.340 on Amazon that they love. It's like very simple and it's become like the cornerstone of this

00:46:15.240 movement, but there's like hedge fund managers and all these people that no one knows

00:46:18.440 this. Um, they all use the same like simple 1980s style phone purely to, to, to gain back

00:46:27.260 their attention so they can, you know, make better decisions in the workplace. So there's

00:46:29.900 all these interesting things that people are doing. Um, but to me, it's the intent that

00:46:33.660 matters.

00:46:34.340 Right. I've actually contemplated getting a dumb phone a few times, but what I've done instead,

00:46:40.000 I've made the compromise and maybe this will be useful for people out there who aren't ready

00:46:44.180 to like go full hog and just quit social media. Um, but yeah, be intentional about it. So

00:46:48.640 like I've, I've make my devices dumb temporarily. And so there's different apps out there that

00:46:55.500 you can use to, that'll basically shut down the internet or shut down certain apps, uh,

00:47:01.000 for, you know, set periods time that you set. So with my phone, like I can't access it in

00:47:06.340 the morning when I'm with my kids and I can't access it at all. Like certain apps, uh, like

00:47:10.840 Instagram or Gmail or my, those are the two ones that are really distracting, um, in the

00:47:15.900 evening. And then during the day, I only give myself, like, there's an app that allows me,

00:47:19.740 it's called stay focused that only allows me like 30 minutes on each of those apps. And once I use

00:47:25.560 that 30 minutes up, like I can't get on them anymore until the next day. Yep. And that's helped

00:47:30.100 out a lot. And those are clear commitments. That's great. I mean, another simple thing you can do is

00:47:34.440 like once you're home from work, you're there, your family's there, your kids are there,

00:47:37.640 they don't need to reach you. Uh, you just leave your phone in the car. Yeah. Uh, and then, then

00:47:42.240 it's, I mean, if there's an emergency, you can go get it, but you're like, no one needs to reach

00:47:45.320 me in an emergency. And then you just don't have this thing, uh, that, that you need, you know,

00:47:49.880 when we go out to go out or go out to dinner or something like that, um, I'll often just leave my

00:47:54.280 phone behind because I say, well, my wife has hers. So if there's an emergency, she can, you know,

00:47:58.300 she can call, but I want to make sure that I don't have, you know, an outlet. So there's simple

00:48:01.740 things like that you can do. Um, and again, it's the intentionality of it. It's you have to signal to

00:48:06.700 yourself. I've made, there's some sort of behavior that's a little bit difficult. It's not trivial to

00:48:11.780 do and it respects my attention. So by doing that, I'm, I'm signaling to myself, this is something

00:48:17.180 that's valuable. Right. And then also I thought it was interesting on some of the same line you,

00:48:20.980 you, uh, you cite our, our good friend Antonio Centeno, who's written a lot of style content here,

00:48:25.880 the art of manliness, how he, uh, manages the influx of email that he, he gets. Uh, can you talk a

00:48:31.800 little bit about that? Yeah, I have a sort of whole chapter in a book called drain to shallows,

00:48:36.440 where, um, the idea is you can't get rid of, most people can't get rid of shallow work

00:48:41.500 obligations in their work life. It's part of what just helps their job function. Um, but you have

00:48:47.340 to get your, your arms around them and constrain it, or you'll never have any time to do deep

00:48:50.920 work. So I really get into how can you minimize shallow work and then take what you have and do

00:48:54.640 it more, uh, efficiently. So, so one of the examples I point to is, uh, how do people, especially

00:49:00.640 people who, who run their own companies or solo entrepreneurs, uh, what are strategies they can

00:49:05.860 use to try to reduce the amount of back and forth communication that they have to do? Because

00:49:10.880 that's a huge killer of time to concentrate if you're constantly having to communicate with people.

00:49:15.000 And I found this, there's this, uh, kind of a cool subculture that includes myself, but then I

00:49:19.660 discovered there's a lot of other people doing this too. Um, sort of public figures or people who

00:49:24.120 run their own companies who, who have this notion of a cinder filter as my terminology, but basically,

00:49:29.760 uh, instead of saying, Hey, anyone can contact me for any reason. Here's just an email address.

00:49:34.540 They instead, uh, put a filter that the people who want to contact them essentially are going to

00:49:41.440 filter themselves. They say, here are the different reasons why people can contact me. Uh, and, and

00:49:47.500 here's how I want you to actually do it. And in essence, if you don't fit into one of these

00:49:51.060 categories, maybe you shouldn't contact me. Um, so it can be simple. Like in my case, I just don't

00:49:56.880 have a general purpose email address you can use. I have a, an interesting at calnewport.com and I have

00:50:02.580 rules around it where I just say, you can send me opportunities you think I might be interested

00:50:06.720 in, but the rule is I don't really respond to them except for in a couple of rare cases.

00:50:10.180 It's just setting expectations. It's just not something for conversation. Antonio had this

00:50:14.560 great, um, online form you had to go through. You had to click things and select things. And it kind

00:50:19.700 of walked you through this process of who you are, why you wanted to contact him. Yeah. The certify,

00:50:24.240 like this is not something that I could find on Google. This is not something that was in the FAQs.

00:50:28.400 I looked at the FAQs and then finally, if you made it through this process, they were like, okay,

00:50:32.660 now you can put the information that you want to send to me. Um, so I think those, you know,

00:50:37.980 those type of trends, maybe it'll be more common in the future things to reduce the constant back

00:50:42.800 and forth communication. Yeah. Our filter that we have on our site is, uh, you have to mail us a

00:50:47.420 letter. We've had that up for a few years now. We took down our contact form and now, yeah,

00:50:53.380 we have our PO box. We're like, Hey, if you want to contact us, write us a letter. And that,

00:50:56.800 that in itself filters people out immediately. How many letters do you get?

00:51:01.000 Um, not very many actually. I mean, I mean like it depends. It fluctuates from week to week. Um,

00:51:05.480 so I go to the post office once a week and there could be five to 10 letters in there a week. And

00:51:12.400 what's, what's, here's the interesting thing, Kyle's like the, the nature of the communications

00:51:15.860 I get have changed dramatically. So when I had a contact form, I was just getting a lot of PR stuff,

00:51:20.640 PR pitches, um, emails from angry people who had read a post and they were just angry and they 0.98

00:51:27.360 wanted to tell me how they're angry and how they disagreed with me and how it was a piece of crap. 0.81

00:51:30.960 Um, people who had questions, like they would like answer, like ask me these really complicated 0.98

00:51:35.340 questions, right. That would take me. And I, here's the thing I would spend like hours answering

00:51:39.760 their email and then I'd never get a response back. And I'm like, what the heck? Or the worst was

00:51:44.200 like they had entered their email address in incorrectly in the form. So when I responded to them,

00:51:48.460 I spent, you know, an hour on this email, I got a bounce back. I was like, geez Louise. Um,

00:51:53.920 and so when I, when I, when I took down the contact form, what I get now is this primarily

00:51:58.120 just thank you notes. Um, let me, let me ask you this. Have you seen, has there been any negative

00:52:04.240 ramifications on your business's profitability? No, not at all. I mean, we, we still continue to,

00:52:09.620 to, to grow and to prosper. And the thing is like, if, if people like who really have like a business

00:52:14.000 prop for me, like really want to get to me, like there's ways to get to me, right. They're,

00:52:18.240 I mean, they, if they really want to make it happen, then they'll make it happen.

00:52:22.860 Right. But people who, but if they've gone through these extra efforts and have found your email

00:52:26.740 address hidden somewhere, the expectations are different. I'm not expecting a response because

00:52:31.560 I'm on, I'm going into a back door here. It puzzles me that there's still this mentality out there

00:52:36.820 that, uh, your business will flounder if you don't make this habit of responding to everyone's emails.

00:52:43.340 And then you, you write people who are in your situation, but on other, uh, websites and media

00:52:48.100 companies and you get back these sort of plaintive auto responders about like, you know, I, I'm going

00:52:52.980 to try to answer everything. And, uh, and you know, there's a, um, what's his name over at, uh, Pat Flynn

00:53:00.240 at the passive income podcast, massive, massive blog, massive podcast. He had this post recently about

00:53:04.900 how he now has this full time, uh, assistant, a former executive assistant. So like a high level

00:53:10.720 assistant that just sits there with them to help them make sure that like all his emails get

00:53:15.260 answered. And the underlying, you know, assumption under this is this one to 2000 emails a month he

00:53:20.640 gets or whatever, like answering those is at the core of succeeding in his business. So I love your

00:53:25.740 example because it just tests that hypothesis. Like what actually happens if you just can't email me

00:53:30.580 and nothing. In fact, your business is probably better because think about the time you gained

00:53:35.340 back, the attention you gained back to write better blog posts.

00:53:37.900 Right. Exactly. I mean, it, it reduces their amount of anxiety, uh, completely. And we,

00:53:41.760 we have more time to write, you know, do podcasts, read books for podcasts, get questions ready for

00:53:46.260 podcasts or write content for the blog. Um, yeah, so it is, it is really weird. We, we, we've all bought

00:53:52.240 into this idea that you have to be connected. You have to answer emails that it's, it's an article of

00:53:56.560 faith, right. But, uh, it's an apostasy that it isn't, but I think the apostasy is actually our

00:54:01.000 salvation, right?

00:54:02.180 I think so. Yeah. And, and, and so I think maybe having a term like deep work helps because you can,

00:54:06.520 you know, I found that it's, it's difficult to just focus on the downside of distractions

00:54:12.200 because it's complicated. Um, things that cause distractions also have value and it's,

00:54:17.360 and, and people get defensive and it's just a little bit messy. But when you focus instead

00:54:21.960 on the value of the opposite of distractions, a different conversation and you, you can give

00:54:26.140 people, and it's what I'm trying to do with this book is give people, uh, a template. Okay.

00:54:30.700 If you're just fed up with just this frenetic, distracted, whatever, what is the alternative?

00:54:36.200 And I think the deep life is an answer to that question. This life where you, you, you train

00:54:40.580 your ability to focus, you spend a lot of time and intense focus, uh, because of that, you really

00:54:45.720 try to cut down and, and efficient, be efficient about anything else. And, uh, you know, you treat

00:54:51.880 your attention like a tool and that it's an actual, uh, instead of just saying, here's what's

00:54:55.640 bad about Facebook, it's, here's what life would look like if you didn't spend all your

00:54:59.240 time on Facebook. And this is like a very positive thing that there's, there's a, there's

00:55:03.680 a positive thing you can do. If you're one of the few to embrace the deep life, it's,

00:55:07.580 it's like an actual positive step you can take and the distractions will kind of work

00:55:11.640 themselves out. Awesome. Well, Cal, where can people learn more about your book?

00:55:15.560 Um, so, uh, calnewport.com, my website, you can learn about it. Uh, otherwise you can find

00:55:20.180 it at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever else you find books. Cool. Well, Cal Newport,

00:55:24.460 thank you so much for your time. This has been an absolutely fascinating conversation.

00:55:27.100 Yeah. Thanks, Brett. My guest today was Cal Newport. He's the author of the book

00:55:31.500 deep work. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. And really go out there

00:55:35.980 and get it. One of the best books I've read just following just a few of the principles

00:55:39.500 in it will radically improve your life and your work. Uh, believe me as someone who's done that.

00:55:46.040 So go check that out. You won't regret it. Also for more information about Cal's work

00:55:50.080 on deep work and productivity and time management, go to calnewport.com. He's got a great blog there.

00:55:57.100 Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:56:03.180 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy

00:56:06.840 this podcast, I'd really appreciate it. If you give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher

00:56:10.200 that helped get the word about the podcast, as well as give us feedback on how we can improve

00:56:14.120 as always, we appreciate your support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

00:56:18.700 manly.

The Art of Manliness - January 12, 2016

#168： The Value of Deep Work in the Age of Distraction

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