Valuetainment - Why You Should QUIT Social Media - Professor Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 My guest today is Dr. Cal Newport. He has never, ever been on social media before.

00:00:06.600 Seemed like they were engineered to really distract you. Because even early on, this was

00:00:09.920 clear that social media made money off your attention. There has to be other reasons why

00:00:14.020 you kept saying no, no, no to social media. No one really had a good reason why I should

00:00:19.220 be signing up for it. That definitely caught my attention. Wouldn't you see TV as a distraction

00:00:23.980 similar to what social media would be? I was really starting to get concerned when I saw

00:00:29.060 people constantly pulling their attention down to that phone. And yet it also seemed to be

00:00:33.200 capturing so much of people's time and attention that for someone who made a living with my brain,

00:00:37.720 I was very, very wary about this. There is a benefit to social media, even for a guy like you,

00:00:42.780 what you think is social media. When I'm using the term, I'm thinking about attention economy platforms

00:00:48.100 where your data, time and attention is the primary product to sell. There's a part of me

00:00:55.120 that fully agrees with you. The way I think about things through my digital minimalism

00:01:01.100 perspective is there's not something I really value in life for which any of those platforms

00:01:05.680 is a really big win.

00:01:11.360 My guest today is Dr. Cal Newport, who got his PhD from MIT. I whispered to him earlier,

00:01:16.260 I said, I learned how to spell MIT in my 30s. So again, PhD from MIT has written seven books,

00:01:21.600 two of which are New York Times bestsellers. He has tens of millions of views on social media on

00:01:28.680 YouTube. There's only one kicker. He has never, ever been on social media before. We're going to

00:01:36.660 find out today that in the next 60 minutes, can we convince this man to open up a Facebook and a

00:01:42.560 Twitter profile? No one's been successful yet. Let's see if we can pull it off or not. With that

00:01:46.500 being said, Cal, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment. Yeah, thanks for having

00:01:51.480 me on. Let's see if you can get me over to the dark side. I highly doubt that's going to happen.

00:01:55.980 You seem pretty convinced where you're at, and I think it's even deeper rooted in some of the

00:01:59.940 set of values and principles and on the way you live. But I think the question today is really going

00:02:04.240 to be how many people you can convert to come to your dark side to get off of maybe not dark side

00:02:11.440 to be enlightenment. I think it's more, you're probably more free than those that are on social media

00:02:16.500 checks 70 apps every single day. So why don't we go all the way back? So, you know, one of the

00:02:22.540 biggest challenges for all of us is that, hey, I'm on Facebook. You got to get on. What's Facebook?

00:02:28.840 Dude, just get on. Okay, I'll get on Facebook. Hey, I'm on MySpace. You got to get on. What's MySpace?

00:02:32.440 Dude, it's sick. You got to get on. Hey, have you looked at Twitter? You got to get on. How did you say

00:02:37.300 no to all of those temptations every time people said you got to get on a social media platform?

00:02:41.160 No, Facebook was the first. And the way I remember it, it was the spring of 2004, right? I was a

00:02:49.280 college senior in the spring of 2004. Back then, Facebook was going university to university. It

00:02:55.160 was still sort of in a beta stage. So it came to where I was. I was at Dartmouth College. I remember

00:03:00.060 my friends and my girlfriend and everyone was sort of into it, right? They're like, oh, it's the

00:03:03.640 Facebook.com. It's sort of like the literal Facebooks we have, but virtual. And there was like

00:03:09.120 an arbitrary reason why I didn't sign up. And my memory of the arbitrary reason was I don't like

00:03:15.500 listing favorites. It's a weird tick I have. If you tell me what's your favorite book,

00:03:22.240 what's your favorite movie? For whatever reason, I just can't do that. I have an aversion to it.

00:03:27.200 And early Facebook, this is what the profiles were centered on is you would list your favorite quotes,

00:03:32.220 you would list your favorite movies. So for an arbitrary reason, it's like, oh, I don't want to do

00:03:36.180 that. That accident, though, gave me this interesting, almost anthropological separation,

00:03:42.900 you know, like I was Margaret Mead studying, studying tribes on an island or something. So I

00:03:47.380 was separated from social media as it began to spread. And after a while, just observing it from

00:03:52.160 the outside to me became way more interesting than actually being in it. So it was an accident that got

00:03:56.480 me started down this path. So okay, fine. So you decided not to get on your favorite. And that was

00:04:01.680 kind of like your thing. But I mean, from 04 to 2021, there's been 17 years for 7 billion something

00:04:10.360 people in the world to convince you to get on social media, and you still haven't done it. So

00:04:15.340 what there has to be other reasons why you kept saying no, no, no to social media. What was that?

00:04:20.800 What was that reason? Well, so after I graduated college in 2004, I went to MIT. And I was not only in

00:04:27.760 computer science department, but I was in the theory group within the computer science department. So

00:04:32.300 this is the group in which you have all the theoretical computer scientists. So we literally

00:04:36.720 stare at whiteboards and try to solve math proofs. In this really unusual kind of idiosyncratic type of

00:04:44.520 professional environment, focus was everything. Your ability to maintain focus was really highly

00:04:51.420 prized. People did not spend much time engaging with the outside world. It wasn't reading a lot of

00:04:56.820 news. It was I'm locked in trying to solve proof. So I went from college into this environment where

00:05:02.180 what people really cared about is how hard can you focus. And when I was in that setting

00:05:05.740 to expose myself to tools that seem like they were engineered to really distract you,

00:05:10.840 because even early on, this was clear that social media made money off your attention.

00:05:14.700 It's being engineered to get as much attention as possible. We all looked at it with great suspicion.

00:05:19.160 So I didn't sign up for arbitrary reasons. And then once I was in this unusual professional

00:05:23.540 environment, it became really suspicious of why would I bring one of these tools into my life,

00:05:28.080 it seems like it's going to get in the way of what I'm doing. It would be like a professional

00:05:31.000 athlete looking at cigarettes and saying, you know, I don't really want to bring these into my life

00:05:35.120 because I make a living off my lung capacity. Do you have a TV? Do you have TV in your house?

00:05:39.660 Yeah, we have we have TVs. My wife and I are cinephiles. We like to watch movies. So we have that.

00:05:43.700 Yeah. So wouldn't you see TV as a distraction and as cigarettes, similar to what social media would

00:05:52.580 be? Well, so the issue I had with social media was twofold. One, no one really had a good reason

00:05:59.840 why I should be signing up for it. That definitely caught my attention. It was like, because it's here.

00:06:05.160 And I'm like, okay, but what do you do on the facebook.com? Like, well, you know, you see like who

00:06:09.300 your roommates, boyfriends are dating or something. And I thought, that's not interesting to me. Why should I

00:06:13.140 sign up for this? No one was really giving me a good reason. Whereas if you look at a TV and say,

00:06:17.680 there's a great movie, and you can watch it on this screen, I'll say, well, that's a pretty

00:06:21.720 compelling reason. And two, it became clear pretty early on that these platforms had a lot of energy

00:06:28.560 being invested into making them as sticky as an experience as possible. They had the ability to

00:06:33.120 manipulate your attention, to manipulate your emotional centers, to manipulate your social centers,

00:06:37.940 to get you to look at these things much longer than you knew was useful or much longer than you knew

00:06:42.660 was healthy in a way that you couldn't really replicate with something that was as asymmetric

00:06:46.260 and static as television. So it was really starting to get concerned when I saw people

00:06:51.820 with these networks, following them everywhere they went, and was constantly pulling their

00:06:56.280 attention down to that phone, right? So there seemed to be something new going on. So we had

00:07:00.060 these platforms where no one could really explain why I needed to be on it. And yet, it also seemed

00:07:04.280 to be capturing so much of people's time and attention that for someone who made a living with my

00:07:08.860 brain. I was very, very wary about this. Just out of curiosity, Cal, who were you in high school?

00:07:15.020 If I was in high school with you, 14 years old, 15 years old, who was Cal?

00:07:19.920 In high school, I ran track. I was a smart kid, but maybe not considered like one of the brains.

00:07:31.340 I had a longstanding group of friends I'd had since elementary school. I mean,

00:07:35.800 I was relatively popular, went to the parties. By my senior year, I was a little bit unusual. By my

00:07:42.480 senior year, I was running my own tech company, a sort of a web development consulting firm with a

00:07:46.880 friend of mine that was doing pretty well. And I ran out of computer science classes to take. So I

00:07:51.240 would drive nearby Princeton University to take their computer science classes. So there are some

00:07:55.740 things that started to set me apart as I got a little bit older in my high school experience,

00:08:01.060 but I was a relatively sort of semi-popular, normal kid, I would say.

00:08:06.940 As far as being raised by your family, what set of values and principles were you raised on?

00:08:11.940 Well, I mean, one thing my family always valued was the brain as an asset and intellectual life as

00:08:17.960 one to aspire to. You know, my dad had a doctorate and had been a professor for a while. My grandfather,

00:08:24.900 his dad had a doctorate and was a professor for a while. There was something we used to hear stories.

00:08:29.360 My dad would tell stories of like Richard Feynman, the famous quantum physicist. We would hear about

00:08:36.000 John von Neumann. So we really respected the life of the mind and using your brain to create things

00:08:44.180 that was new and valuable. That was definitely in the air when I was growing up, which is why I ended

00:08:47.820 up going to MIT. Why I ended up going to the theory group is I love that idea of the John Nash,

00:08:53.560 beautiful mind, drawing on the window, solving things with just your brain. That was definitely

00:08:58.720 something that had always attracted me. That's so, that's so interesting. Now,

00:09:02.580 how about values wise? Were you a church corn family? Were you a religious family? Did you 0.61

00:09:08.000 guys follow a certain code or, you know, commandment where there's certain set of values that the

00:09:12.400 family followed? Growing up, we were Presbyterian. My dad had been raised Southern Baptist. So for

00:09:18.840 example, there's no cursing, right? That was something I really noticed is like in our family,

00:09:24.240 there was no cursing. I still rarely curse to this day because I just didn't grow up,

00:09:28.380 for example, around it. My parents didn't drink alcohol. That was another thing. I think that came

00:09:33.480 from the Southern Baptist upbringing. So I had both those threads certainly all around me from a value

00:09:39.140 perspective. Got it. So, so, and did that continue on into your teens and young adults? And as an adult

00:09:46.100 yourself, like, have you continued a lot of those traditions yourself?

00:09:48.660 Well, well, certainly not the no drinking. Okay. Yeah. I will enjoy, I will enjoy a good lager

00:09:56.540 now and then, but yeah, I would say definitely have a strong foundation of values. Like I'm very

00:10:03.800 interested in religion and theology. I'm very interested in moral philosophy. I take very

00:10:08.180 seriously having a code and a set of values. I actually, what I do, and I recommend this a lot

00:10:13.540 to my readers is I have a limit. Here's my values and you should have them. It should be written down.

00:10:19.240 Right. And you should review it. And I often tell my listeners and my readers, like review these every

00:10:24.060 week and I'll actually create, I call it a value plan every week, little notes. Hey, here's what

00:10:28.840 I'm working on this week. Right. You know, I think I'm kind of falling short on this, or here's

00:10:33.000 something I might want to punch up. And I write it as part of my weekly plan. Okay. Here's the,

00:10:37.460 I call it the VP of the value plan. So I see it as something that I'm constantly working on because

00:10:41.540 it's really core, I think, to resilience more than anything else. Life's going to knock you down

00:10:45.680 a bunch. That's the, that's the ground that you're going to fall on. So you want to keep

00:10:49.360 that ground pretty firm. And this is all going to a place here. The only reason I'm asking this,

00:10:54.260 because I'm going to a place with this. I'm not just asking it for entertainment purposes,

00:10:57.280 although it's very enlightening to see how you were raised. So recap pops, doctor, grandpa, PhD,

00:11:04.280 and that lineage keep goes up in your family, the life of a mind, you guys respected the mind,

00:11:09.740 no cursing, certain set of values, review your value on a weekly basis. Were there any other set

00:11:15.580 of values or like if I'm, my dad would say, never be afraid of the truth. Okay. And he would say,

00:11:21.160 rather than learning how to fight with your, uh, uh, you know, uh, fit, you know, with your hands,

00:11:25.920 once you learn how to fight with your mind and your mouth, right. Learn, go do your, so you can,

00:11:29.720 what were some of the things you were taught in your family growing up?

00:11:32.260 Well, you know, another value I think was that was unusual to our family was independent thinking

00:11:39.220 and to be concerned about ideology, right? So, so one of the unusual things I grew up in is,

00:11:45.580 uh, my dad's job, most of the time I was growing up, he was the editor-in-chief of the Gallup poll,

00:11:51.580 right? The public opinion pollsters, which meant that publicly he had to be very non-partisan

00:11:57.180 because they did all the, the election polling and approval polling. He lived that in and outside

00:12:03.120 of the house. So in our house, there was no notion of partisanship. There's no notion of

00:12:07.320 we're for this party. And so now what we're going to do around the party is talk about how the other

00:12:12.200 party is bad. Everything came from a place of detached, uh, observation. Well, the people who

00:12:17.500 support this candidate, like they're kind of thinking about this and the people over here,

00:12:20.380 well, they think about this. It was all sort of detached. And so I think it was really,

00:12:24.260 pretty rare, especially today, but to this day, it is very difficult. I'm very wary. And maybe this

00:12:31.080 is also because I don't use Twitter, which might push me into more of tribal thinking, but I'm very

00:12:35.200 wary of tribal thinking. I'm very wary of ideological thinking where you, you fix your team and then work

00:12:42.360 backwards from let's defend our team and not give too much ground to the other team. That is very

00:12:46.700 foreign to me, but I think that attitude is actually that I have is pretty foreign to most people.

00:12:51.300 And it's because of that unusual upbringing where there was no partisanship in our house.

00:12:55.060 Right. I mean, you have to realize the way you're raised is one in a million. Okay. The way you're

00:13:01.720 raised is not very common. So I'm asking this question because, uh, your parents must've done

00:13:07.780 a very good job raising you guys to the point where don't make a decision just to please everybody else.

00:13:12.260 And, you know, don't follow the crowd. If somebody is doing cocaine or pot or ecstasy or whatever,

00:13:17.840 you don't need to do just because they're doing it, question it, make think for yourself. A lot

00:13:21.920 of those set of values, you know, respecting the brain, but alcohol came to later on. So if your

00:13:27.080 parents weren't for you to drink in alcohol, it's not like your 100% loyalty is not to do what your

00:13:32.440 parents tell you to do because you do drink alcohol. So then why social media? Like, and then you're

00:13:37.980 saying, I didn't see any value on being on social media, but I know a lot of people that are on social

00:13:41.780 media that use it as a method where they're on Instagram. They only follow 28 people and only

00:13:48.340 28 people follow them. They don't get any advertising on Instagram. They see pictures of

00:13:52.620 what the 28 people that they love the most are doing. And they get to post pictures and videos

00:13:57.220 of the people, the 20 people that they want to see what they're doing. So there is a benefit to

00:14:03.120 social media, even for a guy like you, why, why would you think a hundred percent of what social

00:14:08.840 media offers isn't good because you can turn off the triggers and all the advertising and the way

00:14:13.720 that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter tries to trigger your mind. You can control that, but why still say

00:14:20.320 no to social media on the positive sides that it offers to you? Well, I'd flip that around and say,

00:14:25.120 why spend all that time? Like, what is the big win I'm going to, you know, spend all this time

00:14:29.680 trying to set up triggers and reconfigure, uh, unless I have a compelling reason, oh, this solves a big

00:14:35.280 problem for me. Watching a movie doesn't solve a problem for you though. Well, I enjoy the,

00:14:40.240 I enjoy the format. I enjoy the medium, you know, I enjoy, I enjoy movies. Right. Uh, you know, I don't,

00:14:47.320 to me, I see it like some people like bike riding. Right. And so I won't say, uh, uh, I get that you

00:14:53.720 really enjoy bike riding. Uh, it's very enjoyable, but I don't happen to like bike riding. That's not one

00:14:58.620 of the things I do, but I did actually write a whole book about how you should make these decisions. So,

00:15:02.840 so back in 2019, I wrote a book called digital minimalism where this was the question, how do

00:15:08.380 you figure out the use of technology in your personal life? And the answer to that book was

00:15:13.100 not, here's the good things and here's the bad things. No one should use social media. Everyone

00:15:16.900 should use watch movies or whatever. The philosophy that came out of that book was essentially what's

00:15:22.020 important here is working backwards from what you value, what you care about your vision of what

00:15:27.800 you want your life to be like. Once you're really set what's important to you in your life,

00:15:31.340 then you can work backwards and say, what's the best way to use technology to amplify these

00:15:35.220 things I care about. And I had 1600 people go through this experiment where they got rid of

00:15:40.140 all the technology, all the optional technology in their personal life, spent a month really

00:15:44.040 reflecting. What do I care about? What do I want my life to be like? And then rebuilding their digital

00:15:48.600 life from scratch. About 50% of them had social media as part of that answer. So to me, what's

00:15:54.180 important is not what tech is good and what tech is bad. It is, are you deploying tech

00:15:58.780 intentionally? Oh, here's something I care about. You know, I'm an artist and there's

00:16:03.080 these other artists who put their works in progress on Instagram and seeing other artists

00:16:07.880 in my fields, works in progress is crucial to my creative process. So yes, I use Instagram

00:16:11.580 for this purpose. That's fantastic, right? That's deploying technology intentionally to

00:16:17.840 support things you really care about. And so that philosophy, which I call digital minimalism

00:16:21.060 is what I really been pushing. Now for me, when I go through the things that are important

00:16:24.340 to me and I want to spend time on, and I use tech in a lot of intentional ways, social

00:16:28.480 media just hasn't made to cut, right? There's, there's no particular thing in my particular

00:16:32.380 life that this is very important to me where social media is a really good way of using tech

00:16:36.760 to benefit it. So it's not in my life, but for other people, they answer that question

00:16:41.000 differently. I care about how people ask it, not necessarily the answers that they end up

00:16:45.660 with.

00:16:46.880 So can you tell me what you think is social media? So maybe say this company, that company,

00:16:51.340 this company is social media. What is social media to you?

00:16:53.960 You know, typically when I'm using the term, I'm thinking about attention economy platforms

00:16:58.280 where your data time and attention is the primary product, the primary thing they're extracting

00:17:04.500 to sell. And I make a distinction between social media and the social internet. I'm a big early

00:17:09.940 booster of the internet and the social internet. I think using the internet for expression and

00:17:14.740 connection is very important. So it's really that attention manipulation aspect. It's a large

00:17:19.240 platform, closed garden, trying to extract, monetize your data, your attention. So that

00:17:24.500 would be, you know, it's hard to keep up with, but the classics would be Facebook. It'd be

00:17:28.640 Twitter. It would be Instagram. It would be TikTok. On the other hand, things like there's,

00:17:33.660 there's really hazy dividing lines, instant messenger services, probably not.

00:17:38.460 WhatsApp, right? WhatsApp is sort of, they're trying to be more like a social network, but it's,

00:17:43.560 it's in its own sort of in-between space, for example, group text messages is not obviously

00:17:49.660 things like being on a podcast or something is not right. YouTube, I don't know how to think about

00:17:54.220 it, you know, because YouTube is a very complicated thing. It is the best video is incredibly important.

00:18:00.300 It's a great platform for it, but they have this recommendation engine, which is trying to grab

00:18:04.820 your attention, but it, so like, I think YouTube is in a weird space, right? So it's not super clear

00:18:08.900 cut. Some things are, I think Twitter's pretty clear cut. I think Facebook's pretty clear cut.

00:18:13.440 I don't know how to think about YouTube. I don't know how to think about WhatsApp. You know,

00:18:16.880 I don't know how to think about Clubhouse. Like what, what is Clubhouse? I don't really know.

00:18:20.580 I'm doing a Clubhouse, you know, shortly with a tech reporter from the New York Times to see what

00:18:26.160 it is, because I don't even know what that is. So it's not an easy question to answer.

00:18:30.300 Got it. So do you watch YouTube?

00:18:32.420 I mean, not a lot, but I'm fascinated by YouTube because I think democratizing video is incredibly

00:18:38.640 important. And it seems to be really the only game in town, right? If I'm understanding,

00:18:43.040 obviously you're a master of the medium. There really isn't a, is this true? There's not really

00:18:47.420 a comparable platform that makes it, that's so good at hosting video and displaying video,

00:18:53.740 and you can play it on all these different tablets and TVs and phones. And so, yeah, I use,

00:19:01.240 I use YouTube often like a library when I'm trying to look something up or when it's okay.

00:19:04.920 Yeah, exactly. Or there's someone I'm interested in. I want to see them interviewed.

00:19:08.640 Um, I, you know, so I'm very interested in YouTube. I don't, I don't know quite how to

00:19:13.420 think about it, but I think it's something very important happening there.

00:19:16.660 Well, you, you seem very sincere and almost like an innocent way of thinking and a very clear set

00:19:22.540 of, uh, uh, uh, standards on what you, uh, uh, classify as social media or not. Some would say

00:19:29.060 YouTube is a social media company, second largest, you know, on traffic, et cetera, et cetera. And

00:19:34.400 you're right. There's not necessarily a comparable to them. Vimeo, some of these other companies,

00:19:39.080 Facebook may say, yes, we are a direct competitor of YouTube, maybe on short clips. Facebook's not

00:19:45.780 big on long form. Like you're not going to see too many three hour podcasts on Facebook. Instagram

00:19:51.120 may say, we also get on the short videos, one minute, two minute, five minutes, 10 minutes,

00:19:55.860 not necessarily our type of thing. So, so then that, uh, uh, goes back to Twitter, Facebook,

00:20:02.880 Instagram being ones that you have a challenge with. And it's, is it mainly because they get to

00:20:10.260 dictate what you watch next and they're able to trigger and kind of manipulate the whole thing to

00:20:17.340 say, Hey, Cal, you like this? Let me feed you some more of this. Hey, like the whole social dilemma

00:20:21.740 documentary, I'm assuming that's the part that you, uh, uh, don't see any value in using those

00:20:26.560 social media platforms. Is that a good, uh, uh, way of putting it? Well, I mean, I want to, I want

00:20:32.420 to put it so starkly. So, so again, the way I think about things through my digital minimalism

00:20:37.460 perspective is there's not something I really value in life for which any of those platforms is a really

00:20:42.820 big win. The thing I I'm very wary of is what in another book I wrote, I call the any benefit

00:20:48.500 mindset. I think, especially with tech, it's very dangerous to approach tech from the S the mindset

00:20:52.580 of, could there be some value here? If so, why don't I try it in some settings? That's okay.

00:20:58.140 It's nice to explore, but because of the things you're talking about, that's a dangerous decision

00:21:01.960 in the world of the social media networks, because innocently, let me just like do some Instagram

00:21:06.880 might end up being seven hours a day. It might end up being, uh, I am on this way more than I think

00:21:13.060 it's useful way more than I think is healthy. So you have to be a little bit more wary with these

00:21:16.840 platforms because they are very good at grabbing your attention once they're there. So I keep

00:21:21.920 coming back to look, if there's a big win, I'll use it, but it could be interesting. You could find

00:21:26.360 some new readers. There might be something interesting. That's not going to be compelling

00:21:29.460 enough for me, especially when there's so many of these attention traps that have been engineered

00:21:32.940 into the services. So I'm very wary. Cal, do any of your family members, uh, uh, use social media?

00:21:40.000 Probably. Yeah. I'm not sure which platforms, but I mean, I think I'm the only person between the

00:21:44.780 age of 20 and 45 left in this country, uh, who doesn't use social media. So I think I can

00:21:52.180 confidently, I think I'm it, uh, you know, I mean, I think when they have board meetings at Facebook

00:21:57.000 and they have audience acquisition charts, there's only one thing left on it, which is a picture of

00:22:00.800 me. All right. We're almost done. We're almost done. So where do you, where do you keep pictures?

00:22:05.580 Where do you keep pictures of family like albums? Uh, on my phone. So which, which by the way,

00:22:12.260 is I think a, probably a strategic mistake that was made by the major platforms is starting around

00:22:19.500 2012 to 2015, they said, we're going to shift away from the original premise, which is, this is a place

00:22:26.340 to connect with people, you know, and we're going to switch instead towards a newsfeed model. We are

00:22:30.860 going to use algorithmic information to get you a steady stream of things. That's going to be engaging

00:22:36.040 to you. And a lot of people just migrated things like sharing photos with their family. They're like,

00:22:40.260 well, fine. I'm not gonna do this on Facebook. I'm going to do it on a group text message chain.

00:22:44.340 I think ultimately that's probably going to be an issue for these platforms because if they lose

00:22:47.680 their network effect advantage, if it doesn't matter to me, whether or not my cousin is on

00:22:51.700 Facebook, because I can just send him a picture of my kids on iMessage. Now, Facebook's advantage,

00:22:59.320 why I have to use that platform gets way reduced. Once it becomes just a source of entertainment,

00:23:03.280 yeah, it's a stream of stuff that algorithms are selecting. It's engaging. It's competing with every

00:23:07.160 other form of entertainment out there, much more competitive landscape.

00:23:11.500 Kyle, what do you do for fun outside of watch TV and movies?

00:23:14.720 Well, I mean, I only have so much time. I have three young kids, three young kids and a couple

00:23:18.860 jobs. So I don't have a ton, I would say, of downtime. I do, as you might imagine, read quite

00:23:24.660 a bit since that is my life as a writer, you know, depends on consuming and producing the

00:23:31.880 written word. So I do read quite a bit, but I'm not someone who has quite a bit of downtime.

00:23:35.880 Do you document a lot of what your kids do with videos and save them?

00:23:40.440 No, not really.

00:23:41.640 It doesn't have a value for you?

00:23:44.080 Yeah, we don't. I mean, we'll share pictures and videos in the moment with family members. I think

00:23:50.520 that would be more the more way we do it. But we're not of the old school of the camcorder

00:23:56.900 and building up the library of tapes.

00:24:01.140 Yes. When you said in 2004, when the Facebook came out and it was kind of making the rounds

00:24:06.380 through school to see who's dating who, and you said, my girlfriend and I, is that girlfriend

00:24:11.000 of yours now your wife?

00:24:12.600 Yes.

00:24:13.360 So you guys have been together for over 17 years.

00:24:16.600 Yeah, we actually, we just had our 20 a year, yeah, our 20 year because we started dating

00:24:22.260 before that. So we hit our 20 year anniversary.

00:24:25.000 Congratulations.

00:24:25.440 Last week. Yeah. And is her personality like yours? What's her personality like?

00:24:32.260 She has her own thing. She's not weird like me. Yeah. Thank God she has her own personality.

00:24:39.380 No, it's different. She has her own thing going on.

00:24:42.060 But both of you guys are on the same page of not using social media.

00:24:45.940 She does whatever she does. I mean, I'm not going to tell her or anyone what tech they should

00:24:49.980 or shouldn't use. The main things I write about is what is my suggestion for how you make those

00:24:54.840 decisions? That's the main thing I care about. Again, I don't have a list of good and bad tech.

00:24:59.200 Does she use social?

00:25:00.980 I don't know. I think she might have a Facebook account. I'm not quite sure. I mean, again,

00:25:04.460 we're both pretty busy with the kids and everything else going on.

00:25:06.620 You're married to your wife. You would know if she's on Facebook. No?

00:25:10.520 I don't know if she uses Facebook or not. I think she has an account, but I don't know.

00:25:14.900 I don't think she, if she does, I don't think she spends much time on it.

00:25:18.540 Got it. So I ask because, you know, look, okay. So one part on what you're saying,

00:25:26.800 I took a 90 day break from YouTube four years ago. Let me tell you, it felt like a million. I mean,

00:25:35.020 I can't even say a million bucks because a million bucks doesn't feel that big. It felt like

00:25:38.300 unlimited supply of freedom for 90 days. Okay. When I said, I'm not going to post,

00:25:44.160 I don't want to create content. I don't want to do interviews. I don't want to do more. I don't

00:25:47.220 want to do this. Get that camera away from me. It felt amazing. No joke. It felt amazing. So

00:25:53.280 sometimes when I watch these guys like a Johnny Carson or a Jay Leno or a Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy

00:26:00.520 Kimmel or David Letterman, I'm like, Oh my gosh, what a life to go 20, 30 years. And you got to be on

00:26:07.040 that camera nonstop and fake it. Even though you just got into a bad fight with your wife and you're

00:26:12.420 going through a divorce or your kid just got caught smoking weed or your mom just passed away

00:26:17.140 or you, Oh, what a amount of pressure to have to fake and act for that long of a time. So there's

00:26:25.620 a part of what you're saying. I get when Facebook first came out, I didn't even want to get online

00:26:29.640 because I'm the private guy. I'm the guy that you never knew who I dated. I was like, you know,

00:26:34.240 Pat's, Pat's always got a girl, but we just don't know who are you with today? Who are you? Like,

00:26:37.720 dude, I don't really want to advertise who I'm dating. I'm good with who I'm at.

00:26:40.420 We're having a good time together. But if you see me out there, I'll introduce her to you,

00:26:43.800 but it's not something I want to advertise. So there's a part of me that fully agrees with you

00:26:49.560 and can see that direction. There's another part of me that's sees it as another form of

00:26:56.440 entertainment where strategically you can control on how to use it. You know, like back in the days,

00:27:04.040 a lot of people were worried about radio or, or Elvis's song. Yeah. Hey, you know,

00:27:08.560 oh my gosh, you're moving your hips too much. And all girls are thinking about is sex. And this is 1.00

00:27:12.900 not good. Our daughters are going to start having sex with hundreds of men. And this is not the 1.00

00:27:16.380 direction we're going. You know, what about this hip hop music? Look at this. Why is, you know,

00:27:20.940 Tupac and Biggie and all these guys, why are they cursing so much? And why are they saying this kind

00:27:24.620 of, this is not good. And you know, it allows us to make the choice to do what we want to do.

00:27:29.940 The way you've taken it, you've taken it to a whole different level. Now, maybe this is a question

00:27:36.220 that I'd be curious to know what you, what you would say to this. Do you think you will ever

00:27:39.940 get on social media? Like, do you think there'll ever come a moment where you'll say,

00:27:43.280 I think it makes sense for me to open up an account now, or do you think you'll never do it?

00:27:48.840 Well, I mean, first thing I'm going to push back a little bit on the analogy, right? Because

00:27:53.260 I mean, let's imagine rock and roll music is, is sweeping through the country in the fifties and

00:27:57.860 sixties. And there's somebody who says, look, I'm a, I'm a classical guy. I don't really like

00:28:02.600 rock and roll, whatever. You know, I'm into the piano. I think these chord progressions are

00:28:07.480 too simplistic or whatever it is, right? That would be fine. And we wouldn't go and say to

00:28:13.280 that person, like, no, you have to listen to rock and roll music. You're not allowed to dislike rock

00:28:18.080 and roll music. When the person's like, look, I'm just into music appreciation. I write books about

00:28:21.460 music appreciation. That I think would be the right analogy here, right? So for me to say, I don't see a

00:28:27.720 lot of value in social media for what I'm doing right now. It's not an indictment on the existence

00:28:32.480 of the technology, right? Just like I was saying with the bike riding analogy before I'm happy if

00:28:38.820 someone's really friends who are really in the bike ride, I think it's a cool sport, but if they

00:28:42.560 really started bothering you, like Cal, why don't you bike ride? Don't you see that this is going to

00:28:46.000 make you healthy and has these advantages or whatever. I was like, look, just because I'm not doing it,

00:28:49.600 I'm not trying to put down that you do, but I'm not out there saying we should burn bikes.

00:28:55.740 Oh, you've never said that. I don't think that's the position you hold.

00:29:00.420 Yeah, yeah. But just to set that platform. So would I end up, yeah, because I'm a digital

00:29:04.540 minimalist. I mean, again, the way I come at things is do less, do more, do better, right? So I'm very

00:29:10.820 intentional, very picky, but I mean, think about the tech I do use. I like the strategic deployment

00:29:15.640 of the tech when I see a big win. So like I have a blog, which I've had since 2007. That's been a big

00:29:21.780 win for me. You know, I have this audience, I've developed my thinking, I've had an audience for

00:29:25.600 15 years now, who's been a part of my been part of my interactions. One of the reasons why I didn't

00:29:31.040 need, for example, to, let's say, go on Facebook, just to go back to that, another aspect here is

00:29:37.940 that because I was an early adopter of tech, I sort of already had my own platform. Whereas if I

00:29:42.680 didn't, right, if I wasn't so tech savvy, it would obviously have been much easier maybe to post on

00:29:47.280 Facebook or Twitter, because one of their advantages back then, in that early web 2.0 days was

00:29:52.260 easier just technically speaking. It's a pain to set up a WordPress and get a server or whatever,

00:29:56.280 and I kind of already had that going. I've embraced podcasting, right? It's another tech that

00:30:00.580 I've embraced, I thought, and it's been good. You know, I've been doing it since last summer,

00:30:05.940 but we're coming in on 2 million downloads. It's been a great way to interact with fans.

00:30:11.420 So, you know, absolutely, I think any technology that comes along could come through that process of

00:30:18.260 thinking I do. And so, you know what, this is going to be a big win for this thing I really care

00:30:22.320 about. The existing platforms just haven't passed that threshold for me yet. And because, again,

00:30:29.380 I'm very focused on the things I do, they haven't been a big win, I care a lot about distraction. So

00:30:33.860 for me, and my minimalist calculus, they haven't crossed that threshold. The only thing I would say,

00:30:40.320 which is just to give credit to what you're saying before, is like, it is right, I do have a

00:30:44.900 sort of underlying antipathy here. And that does come from the social dilemma style,

00:30:49.920 attention manipulation. I'm also as an early internet booster, I do not like this idea of

00:30:55.060 taking something as democratic as the internet, and then trying to build your own private versions

00:30:58.700 that exist in server farms that you own. So I have a philosophical sort of techno utopian

00:31:02.720 disagreement with that. So you are actually right that beyond just my minimalist analysis of what I

00:31:10.280 use and don't use, there is a little bit of underlying antipathy. And I don't want to pretend like

00:31:13.820 there's not. And those are the grounds on probably on which that antipathy is formed is I'm an early

00:31:18.660 internet guy. I don't like this idea of trying to build your own private internet. And I don't like

00:31:23.200 some of the attention manipulation things that some of these companies do. So that is there.

00:31:27.140 And that is a general thing I'm concerned about. But more generally, I've got, this is the way I

00:31:32.600 think about tech. And so I podcast, I blog, I could certainly see something that we would, you know,

00:31:38.140 categorize as a social media platform entering my life. And the key to me is the intention.

00:31:42.300 Yeah, you're born on the same day as my best friend is born. Okay, you guys are identical. So

00:31:50.280 weird how wiring. I mean, I don't even know how much there is, you know, whether you're Gemini or 1.00

00:31:55.320 cancer. And I think you're maybe a cancer on the day you're on the cusp of it, right in the middle of

00:31:59.600 it. You and him are born on the same exact day. Are you crypto guy? Do you do you believe in

00:32:06.300 blockchain? Are you someone that says I think crypto is going to go places?

00:32:09.760 Oh, yeah, there's a can of worms. I know a lot about crypto. I taught a doctoral seminar last

00:32:19.280 year on some of the mathematics behind a lot of the blockchain technologies. I'm not an expert. So

00:32:26.120 I want to be all right. So I'll be careful. I'm not a real expert on the specific products and usage

00:32:31.200 of this underlying technology, right? So I'm not deep in the weeds of exactly what's happening with

00:32:35.600 non fungible tokens and how Ethereum smart contract language, you know, is going to be

00:32:40.200 different than what you can do on a more limited blockchain style language. Like I'm not really an

00:32:44.200 applied expert. I do have a my general skepticism. Here's my here's my output. It's just as long as

00:32:51.760 we're being controversial on everything that people like my general skepticism about the crypto future

00:32:57.140 is that I think what we're learning from these various blockchains is that it is immensely useful

00:33:02.040 to have some sort of shared ledger that we trust, that can have especially interactive contract style

00:33:09.960 entries that we can't go back and change it, right? I think the real promoters of the technology,

00:33:16.200 though, what I'm thinking is they're over, they're overestimating the degree to which people are

00:33:19.780 distrustful, though. And I just imagine a future in which, okay, let's say a big company, let's say

00:33:24.240 Google, this is going to give crypto people heartburn, says, yeah, we have a ledger. And no,

00:33:28.700 it's not, it's not a crypto ledger. We're not doing proof of work. Like, you know, we're, we're,

00:33:33.420 we're transparent about it. It would be very hard for us to kind of fake and go back and do and

00:33:37.060 change the ledger. And we'd probably be caught if we did. And also, why would we? And, but just use

00:33:41.920 this when you want your shared public ledger to build these apps. I just have the sense that for

00:33:47.380 95% of the applications that are being developed right now, people say like, yeah, I trust them enough.

00:33:52.380 And their services, it's an easier ledger to work with. It's faster. We don't have to do proof of work.

00:33:56.560 We don't have to, you know, it gets rid of some of the weird hard edges. So what I think is going

00:34:01.480 to happen is you have, there's this deep philosophical political core that helped push

00:34:05.360 this technology. And I think there's going to be a wide audience that doesn't care so much about the

00:34:09.080 deep political philosophical core. And it's like, oh, this is just really useful having a universal

00:34:13.520 shared ledger that doesn't change that you can build many different applications on top of. So

00:34:17.180 there's, there's my prediction is that the trust aspect is going to be depreciated as we get more

00:34:25.180 used to the value of having these universal shared ledgers.

00:34:32.500 That was great.

00:34:33.580 What else can I, what else can I destroy? What else can I destroy right now? That's going to get me

00:34:38.420 yelled at by internet people.

00:34:40.480 Who would have taken the angle of going to the ledger as far as crypto goes, whether you trust

00:34:46.280 the ledger or not, what a lens you got. Like again, one of your favorite games to play

00:34:53.300 based on what you said is your favorites, right? You love playing favorites. Like what's your

00:34:58.100 favorite? Okay. Is your favorite movie, like the beautiful mind? Are you like one of those types of

00:35:04.920 guys? Like, have you watched the beautiful mind or no? Yeah. What do you think about that movie?

00:35:09.660 Hey, look, I liked the book even better. I look, I grew up on those books, like those guys,

00:35:14.820 the women that had these brilliant minds. And I don't have that, but man, I aspire to it. I don't know

00:35:21.960 why. Okay. Yeah. I don't have that. What do you mean you don't have that? I mean, listen,

00:35:25.460 John, John Nash got a Nobel for, for figuring out the sort of group dynamics. Like I don't know,

00:35:30.040 you know, look, I'll tell you what knocked that out. And he was going to MIT. I thought I was a

00:35:34.820 smart guy. And then I went to this theory group and man, was I disabused of that notion because

00:35:39.480 are you being serious? Are you being sincere about this? I'm being sincere. So one floor of this

00:35:45.040 building at MIT, there were three MacArthur genius grant winners. You're talking about genius.

00:35:49.260 They're literally MacArthur genius grant winners and two Turing award winners. I could see all those

00:35:54.460 offices from my office. One of the first professors I met when I got there was, he became a professor

00:36:00.340 at MIT at 19, 19, became a professor at a MacArthur at 19 as well. He was tenured at 21. Like he

00:36:08.560 couldn't go with his grad students to get drinks because he wasn't old enough. I mean, that's crazy.

00:36:13.220 Right. So it's all relative, I guess. He couldn't go to the park with his students to have drinks.

00:36:21.060 He was 19. Wow. Well, you know, for the rest of us geniuses, we look at you and you qualify as the

00:36:30.260 way you see the world as a, so how about investment wise? What do you think about mutual fund? What do

00:36:35.020 you think about stocks? What do you think about real estate as a source of an investment?

00:36:38.480 Well, like I'm one of these boggle head, efficient market hypothesis type nerds, right? That which is

00:36:46.080 partially born out of, I just don't have enough time and attention to think much more for it. So

00:36:50.540 I'm a big Vanguard guy. I'm a big passive guy. I'm not a big, I'm really worried about the Kruger

00:36:57.040 Dunning effect when it comes to investments, right? The most dangerous people when it comes to

00:37:00.800 investments are people that are pretty smart because they're smart enough to believe, you know,

00:37:05.300 I feel I'm smarter than most people. So especially in tech, we have this problem smarter than most

00:37:08.840 people. So I can believe the hypothesis that I can figure out, you know, secrets in the market and

00:37:14.720 stocks to invest in and make money on it because I'm smarter than other people, but not smart enough

00:37:19.020 to realize that actually the people at these hedge funds and at these banks that are already working

00:37:24.080 in the market spend their entire life studying this, right? And, and it's an efficient market and

00:37:28.900 there's not really, it's being, you're flipping coins and you're, you're getting, you're getting too

00:37:32.800 excited about gamblers ruin going in your direction for a while. Right. So I mean, I find like smart

00:37:37.660 tech people get in the most trouble with investments because they believe in themselves enough to

00:37:41.620 believe in the idea that like, if I study stuff, I can figure out stuff. The market hasn't realized

00:37:47.020 yet. I can, I can figure out advantages in the pricing. So I'm all about like, man, let's get this

00:37:52.120 in a, let's get this in a Vanguard fund. Let's get this low expense ratio. Let it ride. I always say,

00:37:59.180 I'd rather spend more time trying to think how to make more money than spend that time trying to get

00:38:03.500 a little bit more money out of what I already have. But then again, I'm infamous for being bad

00:38:07.560 at money. So, uh, don't take any of my advice around money as, as something that you should

00:38:14.320 follow because, um, it's not my strong suit. Let's talk about one of your books that you wrote deep

00:38:19.520 work. Okay. Uh, rules for focus success in a distracted world, phenomenal subtitle, right?

00:38:26.400 Uh, how do we stay focused, you know, and succeed in a ridiculously distracted world today?

00:38:34.760 Well, I think 80% of the value of that book is the title. I'm a big believer in, you know,

00:38:40.660 sometimes just having the right terminology opens up all the decisions you need to make. Right. And

00:38:46.000 when I was writing that book, I thought the big thing that was an issue is that we didn't divide

00:38:50.820 different types of efforts into different types of efforts. We just like work was work and I'm

00:38:55.560 either busy or not. Like how much am I doing? And like the main thing I was trying to argue there is

00:38:59.380 let's break up work into two different types of categories, right? There's deep work where you're

00:39:03.120 doing one thing for a while without distraction and you're really thinking hard and there's everything

00:39:07.020 else. The emails, the zoom, the, the jumping back and forth on, you know, Slack or what have you.

00:39:13.620 And it's not that the, everything else is not important. It's what keeps the lights on. You

00:39:16.800 have to submit your timesheet if you're going to get paid, but it's not what moves the needle,

00:39:20.780 right? It's not where you create the new thing. It's not how you get promoted. It's not how your

00:39:24.260 company grows. And so I said, once we realized there's two different things, now you can ask

00:39:27.260 the question, well, how much of the deep work stuff am I doing? And once you knew how to measure,

00:39:32.220 like what it was you were measuring, I just think a lot of people realized the answer was zero.

00:39:36.920 And once you realize the answer was zero, the alarm bells go off and then you start to make changes. And in some

00:39:41.040 sense, how you make the changes, I think is less important than you realize that it's a problem.

00:39:44.940 And so just that term, that that is a particular type of effort, just putting that semantic

00:39:50.960 distinction into the universe was probably 80% of the value of that book. Let me, let me ask you,

00:39:55.360 you know, in this whole thing with deep work and straight A method, you know, I think that's another

00:40:00.900 book that, I don't know if that's a book you wrote. I think that's a book that you wrote, right?

00:40:03.640 Studying is a skill. If you get good at skill, you can learn how to get better. So what is your

00:40:09.000 method of researching? I think the one skill that we all have to get better at today is researching.

00:40:15.120 It's quite frankly, I don't think it's something that we give enough credit to and we don't talk

00:40:19.080 about enough. You don't see a lot of guys online talking about I'm the research expert. Here's how

00:40:24.160 to go do research effectively. But I think like almost everybody I know that it's super, super successful

00:40:31.140 in the world of business and investment. They're one of the best at their method of researching a

00:40:36.940 topic and studying a topic. What is your philosophy and approach to research? And by the way, even if

00:40:43.980 you guys were taught at MIT, and you were around all these other MacArthur geniuses, that you learned

00:40:48.920 from them, what did you learn as far as how to become a better researcher? Well, I think we've lost

00:40:54.660 familiarity with thinking as an activity. You know, it used to be something that there was, there's very

00:41:00.840 few people for which thinking was relevant, because there's very few what we would call today knowledge

00:41:04.760 jobs, right? Like almost every job you would have involved moving, you know, a hoe through soil, 1.00

00:41:09.420 right? Or butchering a carcass or whatever. And the only people doing knowledge jobs were theologians

00:41:15.340 and philosophers. And there's a few scientists and writers around, but they used to think a lot about

00:41:19.380 thinking what it feels like. It's hard, right? The way we talk about doing exercise, like we're pretty

00:41:25.360 used to like weights is hard. And here's what it feels like. And you get the burn. And then there's a

00:41:29.580 runner's high and all this type of stuff. It all exists for thinking it's, you're applying cognitive

00:41:34.620 energy to take information and move it into internally in your mind into a more useful structure.

00:41:39.120 And it's difficult and there's strain. But there's a euphoria when you make when it clicks, because

00:41:43.560 your mind likes when things fit together. And we used to think a lot about thinking. Now that it's

00:41:49.520 relevant to a lot of people, we haven't thought as much about it. And people just aren't that

00:41:54.080 comfortable with what it feels like to think hard. It feels hard. And then it feels good. And you

00:41:58.760 practice it and you get better at it. And it's a core activity. That's the way I approach research,

00:42:04.100 right? Whether I'm talking about in computer science or whether I'm talking about in my book

00:42:09.540 or article writing, I see it almost like an athlete thinks about training. I think a lot about thinking.

00:42:14.360 I'm going to try to understand this hard idea. Yesterday, I spent the morning yesterday trying

00:42:21.900 to understand about a half page of mathematics in a paper. I need to understand what they're doing.

00:42:26.580 If I could understand what they're doing, I might be able to use that for this related

00:42:29.440 problem I'm working on. And it was just a couple hours of sitting at my whiteboard here

00:42:32.920 in my offices. And it's, okay, here's the math on the board. Why are they doing that? Come

00:42:38.480 back to it. Okay. Think about it. Come back to it. Think about it. Come back to it. That

00:42:41.260 sort of just comfort with cognitive strain, where you're putting your energy towards things

00:42:45.760 that are a little bit beyond what's easy for you to understand, exerting cognitive energy

00:42:50.080 to try to move that information to a more useful structure to build understanding.

00:42:53.200 I mean, that is the axiomatic action of valuable knowledge production. It's something I think

00:42:59.880 a lot about, and I protect a lot about, and I'm comfortable with and used to. I think a lot

00:43:03.460 of people aren't, and it's something we should probably discuss more.

00:43:07.000 Interesting. Crazy question for you. If Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, I don't know, Friedrich,

00:43:15.060 Nietzsche, you take a Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, if all these guys were around today and their

00:43:20.640 social media, which one of them wouldn't be on social media?

00:43:25.320 All right. That's a good question. I don't know if Aurelius would be on social media. I think

00:43:30.400 Socrates for sure would, right? Because he would say, this is great. What is Twitter if not a giant

00:43:36.440 dialectical experience and trying to find, or he would be terrified by it because actually, okay,

00:43:42.500 let me reverse that. Socrates would have been an early user of Twitter, let's say, and then would

00:43:50.040 have become a sharp anti-Twitter critic. Wow. This is what I'm going to say, because here's the

00:43:56.400 thing, right? Like the Socratic method, like at the core of his approach to knowledge, right? He had

00:44:03.360 this approach to knowledge in which you clash ideas back and forth, and he did it through dialogue,

00:44:08.780 and in this dialectical collision, you got deeper roots of understanding, and this is what all of

00:44:12.720 his dialogues were like. And one of my critiques of Twitter has been that it's actually moved us

00:44:17.480 away from that and towards a more like tribal notion of knowledge, where it's much more about

00:44:22.720 my team thinks this, your team thinks that. So he would call it sophism back then, right? And all that

00:44:29.240 matters is that you don't give ground to the other team. Like you want to find an angle to dunk

00:44:32.860 on the other team, but whatever you do, make sure you don't give ground. That was really sophism,

00:44:38.040 which Socrates was against, and he was much more for this Socratic approach, where you're like,

00:44:42.700 okay, let me get the best possible argument against what I believe, and then collide that

00:44:46.420 how I believe, and in there I learn even more. So I think Socrates would love the idea of a global

00:44:51.260 discussion, because we're all going to get smarter. And then he would see the way it tribalized

00:44:55.380 and say, digital sophism, this is making things worse. So that's where I'll put down my chip.

00:45:00.080 Socrates would be one of the earliest users, and then one of the most, he would be the Tristan 1.00

00:45:03.280 Harris of philosophers or something. He'd be really anti-Twitter after he'd been there for a

00:45:09.120 while. But Aurelius would have never gotten on it. I guess. I mean... Is it because he could

00:45:14.520 cheerless for recognition? He's like, I don't need the recognition. I don't need to get the exposure.

00:45:18.360 Is that why the reason? Yeah, and he was so intentional, right? And he was so intentional about

00:45:23.200 this value-driven activity in his life. But then again, if you're an emperor or what have you,

00:45:29.820 maybe it's useful because you can reach your... These are weird. These are weird mix. If we

00:45:34.520 brought him, you know, if he had Twitter back in that time, maybe it'd be useful for talking to your

00:45:38.100 subjects or something. But he feels like someone that would be, say, like, I don't know, this is

00:45:43.280 not deep enough, right? Let's go. Let's go write poetry. I feel like if Twitter was around back in the

00:45:47.880 days, he wouldn't be wearing the clothes he wears. It'd be different clothes he would wear.

00:45:52.300 Well, if Instagram was around for sure. Yeah. I don't want photos of that.

00:45:58.200 Oh, my gosh. So, okay. So, books-wise, how many hours do you read and how many total books do you

00:46:04.520 think you've read in your lifetime? I'm curious. Yeah. I mean, so the reason why it's a little hard

00:46:09.300 for me to answer is it depends, you know, whether I'm doing research or not. Like when I'm working on

00:46:13.080 a book, I might be reading a book a day. But like what reading means here is a little bit tenuous when

00:46:18.920 you're talking about research because you could be shooting through some things quickly and diving

00:46:22.120 into other places. I would say I typically am reading about five or six books at a time.

00:46:26.980 And I switch back and forth between them throughout the day, over the weeks, over the months. And some

00:46:32.320 things I keep coming back to again and again over a long period of time. Some books I just read in a

00:46:36.320 single day. So, I probably spend about an hour a day reading. Usually have five or six things I'm reading

00:46:44.480 at a time. So, you know, I've probably read a decent amount. I mean, I'm not, my friend Ryan

00:46:51.880 Holiday kind of pushes this to an extreme, right? Where he reads like 20 books a month that he didn't

00:46:57.200 give as big summaries of. I don't always hit that. But sometimes I do. Sometimes you hit 20 books a

00:47:02.120 month. If I'm researching something for sure, right? Like if I'm writing an article for the New Yorker,

00:47:06.200 for example, those are long form articles that are often like highly citational based. It's not

00:47:10.820 uncommon that there might be six or seven books I need to go through just as a foundation for that

00:47:14.940 particular article. If I'm writing a book chapter, to quickly go through six or seven books for that

00:47:20.260 chapter is not unusual, right? So, this stuff could really add up if you're, especially if you're

00:47:24.840 doing research. Wow. Very impressive to see that. You wrote a book having to do with passion. You have

00:47:30.820 strong opinions about passion because we're living in a time right now where, you know, you hear a lot of

00:47:35.700 motivational speakers saying, go chase your passion. You know, you drop everything. It doesn't matter if

00:47:41.000 you're broke and you lose everything. As long as you are pursuing your passion, that's the way to go.

00:47:46.040 Are they right? Yeah. So, we're going through the whole list of things that people are going to dislike

00:47:50.840 me for. So, we've done social media. I don't like social media. We've done cryptocurrency, right? I've been

00:47:56.360 mean about cryptocurrency. So, yeah, let's go on to follow your passion. Next, I'm going to talk about how

00:48:01.180 soccer is dumb. That'll be it. And then we'll have hit every topic that, yeah, I wrote a book in 2012 0.99

00:48:07.580 that argued follow your passion is bad advice, which was, so here, I mean, okay. So, here's the

00:48:14.380 background behind that, right? The background behind that point was when people say follow your passion,

00:48:23.380 like people who are living really interesting lives or whatever, what they often mean is follow the goal

00:48:29.780 of ending up passionate about your work, right? Life is short. It's worth having your work be a

00:48:35.680 real source of satisfaction, which I think is really important, but then it gets simplified to

00:48:39.280 the shorthand to follow your passion. And my argument in the book is if you study how people

00:48:43.440 actually end up passionate about their work, it's usually not what that simple advice says, right?

00:48:47.760 It's usually not, I'm pretty wired to do this. Once I match that to my work, I'm passionate. It's

00:48:53.120 usually a more complicated path with discovery and growth along the way. And so, my argument is if we

00:48:57.060 make the advice too simple, we actually hold people back from the destination that we all agree on.

00:49:01.520 It's you cultivate passion for your work and it can be a complicated, rich, and rewarding

00:49:05.980 process and journey. Let's not simplify it down to you are wired to be a social media brand manager for

00:49:13.300 a major sports franchise. And until you get that job, you're going to be miserable. And then when you

00:49:16.760 get that job, you'll love it because you were brave enough to follow your passion. It's a more

00:49:20.040 complicated story. We should tell the more complicated story. Last but not least, you got a book coming out

00:49:24.640 called World Without Email. Can you tell us about your book, World Without Email?

00:49:29.680 Yeah. I mean, my argument in that book is the way we're working today is almost absurd. We spend

00:49:35.500 almost all of our time in many office jobs, checking communication channels constantly,

00:49:40.560 inbox, Slack, Teams, whatever it is that you use. And some of the data I cite is once every six minutes

00:49:45.380 or more, we check in on one of these channels. And I argue if we look at the neuroscience and psychology,

00:49:50.000 you can't do anything useful with your brain in such an environment because the context shift

00:49:54.640 that you generate when you turn your attention to an inbox and try to turn it back to what you're

00:49:58.400 working on is incredibly disastrous to your ability to concentrate. And so it's a terrible

00:50:02.400 way to try to actually do knowledge work. And people have to try to do their work in the early

00:50:05.520 morning or in the evening. And none of it makes sense. And so this book argues that that way of

00:50:10.440 working was pretty arbitrary. Once email spread, and it spread for very good reasons, it was replacing

00:50:15.160 fax machines and voicemails. Once email spread, in its wake, people started working in this way.

00:50:20.020 We'll just figure everything out with back and forth messages real quick. It's killing our

00:50:23.680 ability to actually work and it's making us miserable. The future of the world of work

00:50:27.600 is going to say, we're going to have other ways of collaborating. That's not just back

00:50:32.420 and forth unscheduled messages. And we're all going to be much happier and get a lot more

00:50:35.360 done. It's gonna be more of a pain to figure out these new, you know, there'll be more hard

00:50:38.460 edges, more systems, more rules. Sure. But what we're doing is so terrible that it's going

00:50:42.960 to make everyone better off. That's the world without email I pitch. Not that the tool is going

00:50:47.420 to go away. I don't want to fax anyone, but I'm not going to be using these hundreds of back

00:50:51.060 and forth messages all day as the main way that I collaborate with people.

00:50:54.560 Listen, if I ever see you becoming a massive Twitter, Facebook, Instagram star, or TikTok,

00:51:01.100 like if one of these is I wake up and I'm reading an article on New York Times, TikTok superstar,

00:51:08.260 Cal Newport, video goes viral, 93 million views in two days, quoting how Socrates would use Twitter

00:51:16.920 today. He is with us right now. And you got like a purple color hair with like three earrings and

00:51:22.940 nose ring and tattoos. And singing a sea shanty about how Socrates would not use Twitter. That

00:51:29.460 would be wild. I can see that. I can see you being a massive TikTok star where, you know,

00:51:37.640 who knows the Dwayne Johnson calls you saying we want to we want to have you in the next movie

00:51:40.980 so your followers can watch it. I'm telling you, if that ever happens, I will be calling for part

00:51:46.580 two interview to say, why don't you tell us this? You got the star in you, you're hiding. You're not

00:51:51.680 telling the rest of the world. First of all, you're a genius yourself. Second of all, you have the right

00:51:57.440 values and principles and you're a social media superstar. You kept us all this away from us. So

00:52:02.520 I'm looking forward to that follow-up call to see you being on Instagram and Twitter. And I

00:52:08.900 follow and click like when I see that picture. I don't know. Isn't that one of the signs of the

00:52:13.780 apocalypse? It's the, there's the horseman, there's Cal Newport on TikTok. Like there's a

00:52:17.880 couple of signs that when you see him, you know, the end is nigh. Yeah. I've really enjoyed talking

00:52:22.600 to you. Listen, you know, there's a part of me that agrees and would think many, many, many people

00:52:31.840 would benefit from life if they actually subscribe to your way of thinking. There are a lot of people

00:52:36.420 that would benefit from it. I think a part of it also has to do with the business and the industry

00:52:41.180 and career you choose to be a part of certain industries and careers. Like, you know, I was

00:52:45.780 talking to a guy the other day who came out and said, you know, remember the guy, Dan Price,

00:52:50.520 who came out years ago saying, I'm paying all my employees $70,000 and I'm taking my income from

00:52:54.840 $1.1 million a year income to only 70 K. And all of a sudden his executives left and, but he was

00:53:00.760 running a merchant account company. Everybody made 70 grand a year. And it was like the story got 500

00:53:05.020 million most viewed story ever on NBC. And I interviewed him two weeks ago and he and I were

00:53:12.600 speaking and I said, you know, Dan, you can do that in your industry. You can't apply that method

00:53:21.040 in every industry. So maybe your approach works for you or Ryan Holiday. Ryan's on social, not as much

00:53:28.060 as the rest of the guys. He is on social. He writes great books, anything he comes out with. I'm the first

00:53:32.840 to pick it up and have everybody in our company read it. I think obstacle is the way or ego is

00:53:37.440 the enemy is excellent book. We've read it multiple times. I kind of see you guys as a similar place

00:53:42.280 that you think as stoics. And I apply a lot of those thinking as well. So I'm not far off from

00:53:47.580 where you're at, but there's a benefit to it on the business and to do, which helps the business I'm

00:53:53.220 currently a part of. If I ever become a 4.7 GPA, MIT graduate, PhD, that I can go write books where I

00:54:00.640 read six books to write one article for New Yorker, I'm going to contact you. I just want you to know

00:54:04.460 this. Yeah, but I'll be on TikTok. I'll be on TikTok so I won't get your call. See that, that's,

00:54:08.980 we're just going to, let's just swap this around. Well, buddy, appreciate you for your time. Gang,

00:54:13.880 we're going to put the link below for world without email for you to go order it. And I was going to say,

00:54:18.700 if you want to reach out to him, go send him a message on Twitter, but you cannot find this guy.

00:54:22.820 He's hiding. He's the hiding, go seek champion of the world today. Cal Newport. Cal,

00:54:27.380 thank you for your time. Well, thank you. I enjoyed it. Take care, buddy. Bye-bye. Can you see yourself

00:54:31.760 never been on social media? Meaning like no Facebook, no Twitter, no YouTube, nothing,

00:54:36.260 nothing social media, no Instagram. And would that benefit you in your life and would allow you to make

00:54:41.360 better decisions and spend more time reading and getting better? It's an interesting way of thinking.

00:54:45.300 I definitely think we need more folks from his end to balance out those who are far right on one end

00:54:52.160 with social media. Because if there is a philosophy today that would benefit many people that changed

00:54:58.240 my life, I'm a big Marcus Aurelius guy. I've read the book Meditations multiple times and the philosophy

00:55:04.360 of Stoicism would benefit so many different people in business. If you've never looked into it, I did a

00:55:09.060 video one time called Stoicism, the ancient philosophy for entrepreneurs. If you've never seen that before

00:55:15.180 and you enjoyed today's topic, I have a feeling you're going to enjoy this video that I did, I think

00:55:19.500 it last year or two years ago. Click over to watch the video. I want to hear your thoughts. Comment

00:55:23.500 below. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - April 16, 2021

Why You Should QUIT Social Media - Professor Cal Newport

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript