#168： The Value of Deep Work in the Age of Distraction
Episode Stats
Summary
Cal Newport is back with a new book called "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World" and it's one of the best books I've ever read. In Deep Work, Cal makes the case that we live in a culture that promotes shallow work that doesn't really get a lot done, and it keeps us away from deep work, which requires focused, intense concentration for long periods of time. And that this deep work will set us apart in the economy and also give us a more meaningful life.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Have you ever
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spent an entire day at work and in your life feeling that you're really busy, you're doing
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all this stuff, you're sending emails, you're getting to do's done, you're checking stuff out
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on your news feeds. And at the end of the day, you look back and you realize, man, I really
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wasn't all that productive. I didn't get much done, even though I felt busy. And on top
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of that, my brain feels fuzzy. I feel distracted. I can't really focus. I have this sort of anxiety
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that there's stuff that I need to be doing, but I don't know what it is. Well, if that's
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you, this podcast is for you. My guest today is Cal Newport. I've had him on the show before.
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We talked about his book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. Anyways, Cal is back with a new
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book called Deep Work, Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. And guys, this is one
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of the best books I've read. And it's a big life-changing book for me. And I'm not exaggerating
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with this. In Deep Work, Cal makes the case that we live in an environment and in a culture
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that promotes shallow work, sort of distracted work that doesn't really get a lot done. And
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it keeps us away from deep work, which requires focused, intense concentration for long periods
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of time. And that this deep work, if we're able to develop this skill of doing deep work,
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will set us apart in our career, in the economy, and also give us a more meaningful life.
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So today on the podcast, we discuss Cal's case for deep work, as well as practical
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nuts and bolts tips to help you have more deep work in your life. Really great actionable tips
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in this podcast. So get a pen and paper. You're going to want to take notes.
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So without further ado, deep work with Cal Newport.
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So yeah, we had you about a year ago, I think a little over a year ago for your book,
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So Good They Can't Ignore You. And that was a really well-received podcast. I still get
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emails about that podcast. And you're out with a new book that I think in a way takes
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so good you can't ignore you and extends on it a little bit. Well, not a little bit, but a lot.
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It's called Deep Work, Rules for Focus Success in a Distracted World. And loved it. One of my
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favorite books that I've read. So let's talk about what is deep work? Your book's called Deep Work.
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Let's talk about what is deep work. Well, deep work is the term I coined to describe the activity
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of focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.
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Okay. And how did you stumble upon this? You flesh it out more. We'll talk more about it. But how did
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you stumble upon this concept of deep work? And what's the opposite of deep work?
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Yeah. So the opposite of deep work is shallow work, which I define to be work that it doesn't
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require intense, undistracted focus. It's work that tends to be a little bit more logistical in nature
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and that doesn't really leverage your skills at a high level. That is, someone else could replicate
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it pretty easily. So that would include things like answering emails, meetings, maybe optimizing
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your social media analytics setup, or these type of things that are kind of logistical but don't
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require a lot of intense focus. So it's an important dichotomy, I think. You have deep efforts on one
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hand and shallow on the other. And it's not that one is good or one is bad, but they're two different
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types of work. You know, not all work is work. They both have their value, but recognizing that
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you need to do both, just having a different term for each. Making that distinction, at least in my
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own life, was a real step forward because it got me out of this trap of, hey, anything that possibly
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has a benefit is work, so I should just be doing stuff and be busy all the time. And it gave me a more
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nuanced understanding of work where I see it more that shallow work is sort of a necessary evil. It's the
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stuff that allows you to keep your job, while deep work is the stuff that's going to help you get
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promoted. It's the stuff that's really going to make a difference. So what are some examples of deep
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work from your own life and maybe from the lives of other people you've looked into?
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So anytime you're applying your skills with essentially at the limit of your ability to try
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to produce the best thing you're currently capable of producing with your skills, you know, that's deep
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work. So in my own life, my day job is I'm a computer science professor and I work in theoretical
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computer science, which is essentially proving math proofs is what I do for a living. So certainly
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it's a clear example of deep work is when, you know, I'm grappling, for example, to get a proof,
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a mathematical proof to work. Or in my life, if I'm trying to read someone else's academic paper
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and understand their techniques, trying to figure out what they're doing, you know, that's something
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that requires deep work. But in other fields, you know, this shows up in different guises. So it
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could be, for example, in your life, Brett, when you're trying to actually write a sort of compelling
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and well-researched piece of content, that's going to be an example. That's going to be an example of
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deep work. Or if you're in a business context, you know, really trying to understand, say, the business
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landscape and come up with a new strategy could be deep work. And finally, I think it's worth noting that
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the act of learning things that are hard necessarily requires deep work. So anytime you're actually
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trying to pick up a new skill or master a new piece of information or technique, that's also
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going to be deep work. So that, that kind of segues like that deliberate practice, you've written a lot
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about this. Yeah. So deliberate practice is what's required to pick up cognitively demanding skills.
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And deliberate practice, we know from, from both psychology and neuroscience requires intense
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concentration. Um, so if you're good at deep work, one of the things you become good at is learning
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things very quickly. So this is sort of one of the advantages you get from the skill. Well, yeah,
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let's talk about that. You, you make the case that, uh, deep work is becoming more and more rare today,
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which makes it more and more valuable. Let's talk about why first, why it's so rare. Why is deep work
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becoming so rare in today's, uh, economy and environment? Yeah. So, and I, and I think this is
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the, the core idea, you know, behind this book, I call it the deep work hypothesis. Uh, the whole sort
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of reason for this book to exist is, uh, deep work, this thing that we're talking about is becoming
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more rare at exactly the same time that I think it's becoming more valuable in our economy.
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And because of that, that means that if you're one of the few who actually cultivates this skill,
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who actually, uh, tries to systematically develop a deep life, you're going to thrive. It's going to
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be like a superpower. So if you're someone who actually systematically trains your ability to
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focus, you can become deeper and deeper and higher and higher intensity when you concentrate
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and that aggressively protects and supports time and you're scheduled to do deep work. Uh, you know,
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my whole argument is you are going to thrive in almost any knowledge work job.
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So if we go back to this deep work hypothesis, the, uh, the two elements are,
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it's becoming rare while it's becoming more valuable. Uh, so you're asking why, uh, is it
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becoming more rare? And I think this is one of the big stories in, uh, business in the last
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one to two decades is that as work is becoming more competitive and more complicated, as work
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is getting to this place where the ability to focus and to learn things and to produce things
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at high level values becoming more valued, we're actually seeing most of the trends in the
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workplace being, uh, antithetical to depth. We're seeing things like always on email culture.
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We're seeing the rise of open office. We're seeing the rise of office instant messenger tools.
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All of these things make it almost impossible, uh, to work deeply. Um, and, and so I think this
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is a huge trend in business. There there's, you know, I have several hypotheses for why this is
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happening, but I think we all sort of agree that it is happening, that most people probably find it
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harder today by an order of magnitude that might've been 20 years ago to find time to really focus
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hard on things that matter. Right. Because there's, you're always living in, I mean, for me,
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like I have the trouble with like living within my inbox and, uh, the problem with email, the way the
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inbox are set up is that everything is treated as equally important. Yeah. And, and so we could step
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back and say, so why is, why would businesses ever promote, uh, behaviors that makes the businesses run
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worse, right? It seems a little bit paradoxical. And my, my hypothesis, the one I lay out in the
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book, and I think there's other reasons, but my hypothesis is, uh, a defining feature of knowledge
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work is that, uh, it's very difficult as the economist would say to measure the marginal
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productivity of an individual. And what that means is because of the complexity of the work,
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it's very hard to isolate one person and say, uh, here's how much value they're bringing to,
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to our company in a way that would be easy to do. If you were say a door-to-door
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salesman, right? You bring in this many dollars, or if you're on an assembly line, you, you process
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this many widgets and knowledge work is complicated. So, uh, my conjecture is in the absence of this
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type of direct feedback of this behavior is making us more profitable. This behavior is making us less
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profitable. What's going to thrive. And I claim what's going to thrive are behaviors that are easier
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for you in the moment. And this is the reason, for example, why a culture where, uh, everything is
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done in email, everything goes in the one inbox and you're just sort of expected to respond pretty
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quickly to any email you receive. Why does that thrive? Well, it makes your life in the moment
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easier. You don't have to, you don't have to sit there and plan in advance. Okay. How is my work
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going to unfold this week? What am I going to need to get my work done? Let me make sure that I've,
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I've sent this memo to this person a few days in advance. So I get the stuff I need. You don't
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have to manage your workflow in a complicated way. You can just sort of get there in your inbox and
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just start rock and rolling and figure things out with messages as you go around. Now it turns out
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that this is incredibly ineffective. It's also psychologically incredibly draining. Um, but it's
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easier, right? You don't, you don't have to think that much about your work. You don't have to have a,
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a master of workflow. You just sort of get in your inbox and do things. So I think this is why we see
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deep work being squelched. It's hard to directly measure its, its, uh, impact on the bottom line.
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And therefore in its absence, things that are easier in the moment are going to thrive. And a
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lot of the behaviors that are easier, uh, tend to be behaviors that fragment your attention and hurt
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your ability to focus. Right. And you talk more detail about that. That was interesting about
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there's a culture where, you know, yeah, if you respond to your email fast or quickly and you respond to a
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lot of emails, it kind of shows to the rest of your coworkers, like I'm working, right? I'm, I'm,
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I'm doing my job or having that green dot on all the time. Even when office hours are over,
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it shows like I'm really dedicated, but he might not be even doing anything at all, like anything
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productive. Yeah, that's right. Because I mean, deep work is what allows you to produce things a
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real value. It's what uses your skills. So if your attention is constantly fragmented,
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uh, you can't do deep work. So from a cognitive perspective, uh, you're operating at, at a sort of
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severe disadvantage. And, you know, I, I think it's worth emphasizing that easy is not the same
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thing as productive. So making your life easier does not necessarily make you better at your job.
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And I think the right analogy to understand how a lot of organizations work today would be to imagine
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if you had an assembly line back in the industrial age, and it would say it's a complicated assembly line.
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There's different materials and tools are needed at different stations and they're used up at
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different rates. And imagine you said, here's what we're going to do. This is too complicated
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to try to figure out in advance, you know, the, the, the inventory and, and, and the distribution
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of tools. Let's just put all the resources and all the tools in a big pile in the parking lot.
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And that was really easy. No one has to think about workflows and chains and inventories. If you
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need something, you know where it is. You just go to the parking lot to get it. And as stuff comes in,
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we don't have to think about how to distribute, dump it in the parking lot. It would be much easier.
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People would, would, would not have to think at all about, you know, the complexities, the logistics.
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On the other hand, it's, it would be an incredibly inefficient way to run an assembly line because
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everyone would constantly be walking out to the parking lot to get what they need. It would also
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be very frustrating. I think that's exactly what's going on with our connectivity culture. Sure.
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It's easier if all I, whatever the problem is, whatever the issue is, just send an email to your
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one email address into your inbox and we can just work it out. That's easier. But like walking to the
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parking lot for every tool, it's an incredibly inefficient way to work.
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Right. And it's amazing. You talk about, you know, how it's become such an article of faith,
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like this connect, it's that connectivity culture is, you know, what you're supposed to do and no
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one questions it. But then you highlight research where researchers came into a company that was
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really connected, right? They use their Blackbones, their Blackberries and their email on the phone,
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even after office hours. And they asked them like, don't do that anymore. Like they took away
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their email. And what happened when they took away their email capabilities after office hours?
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Yeah, this was researched by Leslie Perlau at the Harvard Business School. And she did it at the
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Boston Consulting Group, which was an incredibly connected, high pressure management consulting
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outfit. And at first, actually, it was called plan time off. At first, she was just getting groups to
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take, everyone would have one night, one night a week in which they weren't working, which tells you a
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little something about how connected these guys were. We're not talking about it. Just one time
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a week and it was a nighttime. And they were freaking out about it.
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They're freaking out about it. And then they eventually, she pushed it farther and had people
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taking one full, every member of the team would take one full weekday off during the week where
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they're unreachable. And not only did their happiness go up, but the client satisfaction went up
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for these teams. But if you read her book on this, it's called Sleeping With Your Smartphone.
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And what she talks about, what they learned was the key was communication. That once they had this
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common thing, they would meet, these teams would meet and talk about it, about trying to make these
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one day off or this one night off and what was working and what wasn't. And once they started having
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this conversation, they realized that there was all of these other behaviors they had just accepted
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as necessary. A lot of behaviors surrounding email and connectivity that were actually very
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arbitrary. And once they opened up these lines of communication, a lot of the benefit came from
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once they talked about it, they said, well, this is stupid. Like why we shouldn't have to do this.
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It doesn't make sense that we would answer emails at night. It doesn't make sense. In fact,
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they even ended up after having these conversations, they changed the email software
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at Boston Consulting Group so that, for example, if you tried to send an email after 6 p.m.,
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it would pop up and say, the default behavior here is that we'll hold this for you
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and send it to the person in the morning unless you specifically tell me, no, no, I still want you
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to send it at night with an urgent tag on it. So the conversations opened up the fact that a lot
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of this behavior we have in the workplace is not somehow the cornerstone of our productivity. It's
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Arbitrary. It's just us going using the path of least resistance.
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Yeah. She even has this great thing called the cycle of connectivity where she calls it a vicious
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cycle, but she walks through, you know, how does a company like BCG get to a point where everyone's
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always connected? And it's not something anyone ever sat down and said, here's what we should do.
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This would be the most productive. It's actually just sort of arises in a feedback loop where,
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well, well, this person's on a little bit more. So if I answer him, that's good. And then you need to
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answer me. And then it's the cycle. And then next thing they know, this behavior is ingrained,
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even though no one ever decided this is what they should do. And there was no real evidence that it
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So let's talk about what makes deep work so valuable. Because this is, I mean, on the surface,
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people, it would seem, I don't know, maybe controversial, not controversial. I think it's
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intuitive. We understand it would be valuable. But in this age where like the economy, like we're
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having this great disruption, right? There's a great restructuring. You have to be able to put on
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different hats, right? You got to be able to answer your own email, be a social media guru,
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do your own marketing, like do it, do it all, right? Very multitask. But you're saying, no,
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actually it'd be more, you'd be able to provide more value to the economy by picking one skill that
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you want to focus on and do it deeply. So how is deep work valuable in today's economy?
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Yeah, I think, I think you hit on that just right. What's valuable in today's economy, which is,
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which is very competitive, is that you're able to do something that's very valuable, very well.
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Something that, you know, it's not easy for them to find someone else to do it or to outsource. You
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do something very valuable, very well. That's what's valuable. If you're really quick at email,
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if you use a lot of social media, that's easily replicatable, right? That's not actually something
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that's, you know, that valuable. But if you have some hard skill that you can do well,
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that's going to be the currency for thriving in this economy. And deep work is like the mint that
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prints that currency. Because when you're in a state of deep work, here's what we know about it
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from the research. All right. So first of all, you need to be in a state of deep work to learn hard
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things quickly. So if you develop your ability to concentrate, to be very intense, and you regularly
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have time to apply that concentration, you can really quickly pick up complicated new information
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and skills, which is hugely important, you know, for being someone who's valuable in the economy.
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We also know about deep work that when you work in a state of intense concentration,
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you produce work at both a higher rate of quality and quantity as compared to less intensely focused,
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more fragmented attention. So someone who regularly does deep work is able to produce a lot and do so
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in a little amount of time. And you know, I profile some of these deep workers in my book. And a lot
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of them to the outside world seem superhuman. But they're not supermen. The main thing they're doing
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that other people aren't that their peers aren't doing is they are actually just treating their
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ability to focus like a muscle. And they're giving it a lot of reps. And then they're going out there
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Gotcha. Yeah, some of the people you highlight. So for example, someone who learned who use deep work to
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learn a very hard skill that's valuable in today's economy is the fellow that who taught himself
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coding like in a few months, because he needed a job or something like that. What was his name again?
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Oh, yeah, from the from Jason from the beginning of the book. Yeah, he was in a job here in Northern
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Virginia, making $40,000 a year, basically filling out spreadsheets. And you know, he hated it. So he said,
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I need more valuable skills. So he wanted to learn how to computer program. So he gave himself a crash
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course in deep work by basically locking himself in a room without any electronics and just these
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programming books. And basically, it was hard at first. But over time, he increases ability just
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to focus hard on these books. And he was able to teach himself programming in a very fast amount
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of time, then went out to San Francisco to get a six figure job at a startup. And then once he's out
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at that startup, he's really been been crushing it because he comes in early, he puts on his brown
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noise headphones and is able to just focus like a laser beam on his coding. So he's also a very
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productive member once there. That's a that's a perfect case study. Because you know, what I'm
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what I'm going at for this book is that this is, it's it's not social critique, it's actually
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a guidebook for those if you want to be one of the few who recognizes the value of this skill,
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then you should actually be happy that most people are ignoring it, you should actually be happy
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that most people are on their phones all the time and that people are focusing on shallow
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activities. Because it's this huge economic opportunity that if you know, you take deep
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work seriously, which again, I think means you have to train your ability to focus and then go
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through great efforts to protect and support periods to do this work throughout your work week. If you do
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those two things, essentially do CrossFit for your mind, make that same type of commitment. It's a
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it's a blue ocean playing field out there. You know, the few people who do that are really
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thriving. So you know, if you're if you're hearing this podcast, you should be hoping that that not
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too many other people are. Because I'm telling you, this is one of the big opportunities out there,
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your focus is the new IQ. But unlike regular IQ, it's something that you can get substantially better
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at in a short amount of time. Right? I mean, that's a great point. Because like, in today's
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economy, particularly like, okay, like my where I'm at, right, I produce online content, the,
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the barrier to entry is extremely low. Anyone can do it, right? Buy $10 domain, you install WordPress
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for free, you can get going. But like, what makes what separates the people who are really successful,
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or one of the things that separates people who are really successful is like, they are able to just
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focus all their time on creating the content that people actually want to read, right? And I mean,
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that's one of the reasons like, I don't do a lot of traveling or go to conferences, because it takes
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away from writing. Or I don't do a lot of social media or a lot of tweeting, because like that takes
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away from writing. Because that the writing is like, what's important, what's valuable. But people
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a lot of people in this sphere have this idea that we get to be all over the place, go to the
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conferences, network, do the social media, do the Instagram. But that all that stuff sort of dissipates
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your impact a lot. Yeah, I think that's a perfect example. Because there's a ton of shallow
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tasks that surround running a media company like Art of Manliness. But you know, the stuff about
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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.
00:44:48.140
You're stuck. I like when, when I can see her clicking or she's like, you're stuck on the
00:44:53.400
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
00:46:06.440
rid of their smartphones and they've all actually, they, there's this one dumb phone you can get
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
00:46:34.340
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
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.
00:51:30.960
Um, people who had questions, like they would like answer, like ask me these really complicated
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
00:54:02.180
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