How to Enhance Focus and Improve Productivity | Dr. Cal Newport

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast

where we discuss science and

science-based tools for everyday

[Music]

life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a

professor of neurobiology and

Opthalmology at Stanford School of

Medicine my guest today is Dr Cal

Newport Dr Cal Newport is a professor of

computer science at Georgetown

University he did his training at MIT

and he is currently both a professor and

the author of many best-selling books

focused on producct ity focus and how to

access the specific states of mind to

bring out your best in terms of

cognitive performance and indeed in

terms of performance in all Endeavors

one of his more notable books is

entitled deep work rules for focused

success in a distracted World deep work

is a book that has had tremendous

positive influence on my work life and

indeed my life in general because it

spells out how exactly to go about doing

one's best possible work for me that's

in the context of Science and podcasting

But it includes tools that I and many

others have extended to other aspects of

their life as well and it's a book that

I highly highly recommend everybody read

Cal also has a new book out now it's one

that I'm currently reading entitled slow

productivity the Lost Art of

accomplishment without burnout and as

the title suggests it gets into specific

protocols to avoid burnout and to bring

about one's highest quality work over

the greatest amount of time today's

discussion starts off with extremely

practical steps that any and all of us

can use in order to enhance our level of

focus productivity and creativity Cal

shares much of his specific practices

and also offers some alternative

practices for those of you that perhaps

do not want to disengage with social

media or with smartphones or with email

to the extent that he does I found the

conversation to be extremely useful in

the sense that I indeed am on social

media I use email I use my phone and

text in quite often so I'm not somebody

who's willing to completely disengage

from those tools but I share in the

sentiment that those tools can often be

an impediment to doing one's best work

so today's discussion gets into not hard

and fast rules for enhancing focus and

productivity but a variety of different

tools that you can select from in sort

of a buffet to suit your particular

needs we also of course discuss the

specific research studies around focus

and distraction task switching and

context switching all of which support

the specific protocols that Cal offers

so whether you're somebody who has

issues with attention and focus or

whether you're somebody that's just

feeling overly distracted by the number

of things in your email inbox or the

number of text or what's happening out

in the world by the end of today's

episode I'm confident that you will be

armed with the best science supported

tools that is protocols in order to

access the states of mind that will

enable you to do your best possible work

before we begin I'd like to emphasize

that this podcast is separate from my

teaching and research roles at Stanford

it is however part of my desire and

effort to bring zero cost to Consumer

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ju products and now for my discussion

with Dr Cal Newport Dr Cal Newport

welcome Dr huberman good to see you I'm

a huge fan I've been a huge fan ever

since I read deep work I can't say that

I've adopted all the principles but

that's on me not you you provide

incredible incentive for y1 ought to

pursue deep work and slow productivity

in service to high quality true

productivity Etc um some of the

protocols as we'll call them are

incredibly easy to implement me others

take some discipline so I'd like to talk

about both sets today but the first

question I have is um do you own a

smartphone I do have a smartphone yeah

well here's the thing I don't use social

media so it turns out smartphones aren't

that interesting if you don't have any

social media apps on it yeah what's that

like so there's there's nothing if you

have nothing that is engineered to try

to grab your attention the smartphone

actually goes back to 2007 Steve Jobs

keynote address smartphone which is this

is a really nice phone and your music

you can listen to things on it and uh

the phone interface is really good and

look there's a Maps app and you can like

look at maps on it like it's actually a

useful piece of technology that you're

happy to have but uh you don't use it

that

much what about text messaging do you

text message and if so do you get into

conversations by text or is it more of a

a plan and meet type tool uh I try right

so so I try I do use text messaging I

mean this is how like my wife gets in

touch with me

uh but I'm notorious somewhat among my

friends of my the ability to capture my

attention with text messages really hit

or miss because I'll go hours without

looking at my phone so it's not this

default appendage I think for a lot of

people if you know someone you can

basically assume like look if I text

them they're going to get right back to

me H my problem is I'll go two three

four hours you know without looking at

my phone and then there'll be text

messages on there from conversations

that people were trying to start and I

typically just have to declare text

bankruptcy a few times a day like like

if they really needed me I guess they

would have called so I do text but uh

I'm not considered to be very good at it

a few other questions about your phone

practices this makes me nervous um is

your phone in a drawer on on the desktop

um while you're working is it face down

face up is the ringer on is it off Oh

you mean if I'm writing or it's nowhere

near me yeah I it could be anywhere it's

just not GNA be anywhere near me so I

have in my house uh two different

offices basically right so there's a

home office the printers there the

filing cabinets are there like the nice

big monitors there you pay taxes that

type of thing then I have a library uh

and there's no permanent technology in

the library no computer in there no

monitor no printers nothing like this I

had this sort of custombuilt desk I had

made by a company from Maine that makes

desks for college libraries like that's

what they do so I had this like custom

fit desk to fit into uh it's not that

big of a space that's where I go to

write I'm surrounded by books that I've

really carefully cured ated what's where

each shelf like what type of book it has

on it so I can look different ways for

different Inspirations I got a fireplace

so I can just turn on a fire if I need

it I'll bring my laptop in there to

write if I'm going to write on a

computer and my phone doesn't come in

there yeah you don't you don't look at

you don't look at a phone in that room

and it just helps me it's a ritual right

if I'm in there I'm thinking I'm

creating with the sort of same patterns

of cogitation that we would have been

using for hundreds of years when people

have been thinking professionally if I

want to be near a printer and I want to

go on to a web browser and pay my taxes

or whatever I have a different place for

that I'm curious about the fireplace I

have this Theory based on my

understanding of visual neuroscience and

the fact that when we're looking at

visual scenes that have some degree of

predictability to them yeah um we get

into a mode of anticipation our thinking

is at least somewhat linear um and so

forth when we are looking at say ocean

waves or um up in a skyscraper we're

staring down at the street of say New

York City and the cars are moving in

obviously not random fashion but at

least to our visual perception pseudo

random you're not tracking any one thing

that the the Mind goes into this sort of

um state where our thoughts become

nonlinear they're not anchored to any

kind of if then kind of what I call DPO

duration path outcome kind of trajectory

there's not a lot Neuroscience on this

but there's a little bit same thing

happens when you're looking at an

aquarium by the way um so I wonder

whether or not staring at the fire which

is something that humans have been doing

for many many many thousands of years um

because it has that uh random aspect to

it does it tend to spark creativity

linear thinking at what point in your

writing do you turn to the fire and

stare at it that's interesting actually

that there's a a neurological

explanation when I use to fire is

actually when I read right so a chairs

by the fire but I think for exactly this

reason right because when I'm reading

I'm looking to spark ideas right like

okay what am I what's my take away from

this what's the connection you're making

between this thing you're reading here

and this idea over there that type of

connection making is a lot of my

brainstorming and I read by the fire

when the weather allows it uh I also

walk a lot so I wonder if there's

something similar going on like when I'm

trying to work through an idea for an

article or a math proof or something

like this almost always I'm going to do

that on foot and there might be

something similar going on there where

you're encountering it's not entirely

exotic stimuli right so it's not oh my

God you know my attention is being drawn

but it's you you don't you don't quite

know what you're going to see and you

also have that that circuit quieting

effect of the walking your motor neurons

are going you can tell me if I'm getting

this right or not are abolutely the

motor neurons are going and you get some

inhibition going on in some of these

these key networks which allows you to

actually um maintain the the the

internal focus on a concept a little bit

better so I do a lot of my original

focused ideating on foot but a lot of my

serendipitous ideating will be with the

fire going right it's a win I read by

the fire and so when I read that I get a

lot of my original ideas I have this

theory that the

two opposite states of mind that both

facilitate creativity and

productivity look something like this

and you can tell me whether or not this

Maps anything that that you know one is

just as you described our body is in

motion um could be running

walking might even be in in the shower

or something of that sort uh but we

aren't trying to direct our mind toward

a specific linear trajectory or outcome

it's not it's not like working out an

equation or a theorem um the same way we

would if we were at a piece of paper or

writing out a sentence a structured

paragraph So it's body and motion mind

not channeled toward one specific Target

um the opposite extreme to me is body

still mind very active um which

resembles rapid movement sleep when we

learn a lot and neural rewiring occurs

and dreaming but uh for which there's

also a lot of examples of very

accomplished um creatives using that

sort of thing of meditative like um

approaches you know forcing oneself to

be still and thinking so it sounds like

you incorporate both um and I'm curious

as a computer scientist who writes code

does theorems does a lot of math where

you can't just kind of wing it yeah um

there's a right and wrong answer uh

involved what is your mode for sitting

down and working through something

that's linear and hard yeah that it's

interesting the way you talk about it

right because when I'm walking uh and

this is actually something you can train

you know and I talked about this one of

my books once that you can actually

train yourself to uh maintain your

internal eye of focus more stably while

you're walking right so I called this

productive meditation in deep work

actually uh and I I practiced this in

grad school right okay so so I'm going

to work on a particular problem while I

walk and then you actually practice

bringing your attention back to the

central problem and it I don't know

exactly what's happening but you get a

little bit more uh facility working with

your working memory a little bit more

efficiency with bringing stuff in and

out of the working memory and so I

trained myself that I could actually

write a couple paragraphs in my head

maybe not word for but basically word

for word like figure out how I'm going

to do it or uh figure out enough steps

of a math proof to capture like a key

Insight like okay I know I'm going to

get around this then you have to sit

down and actually formally capture that

and yeah for me that's still working

with notebooks though when I was coming

up in grad school and I was just

Excavating these thoughts recently we

were talking before the we recorded that

you know I just wrote this essay about

what I learned as a grad student that

impacted all my writing uh as a grad

student in the theory group at MIT which

was just purified concentration this is

where all the Deep work ideas come from

right I mean it was just worldclass

concentrators there the method was

very still more than one person

whiteboard so if you have two or three

people staring at the same whiteboard

you're actually going to up the level of

concentration you achieve because if you

let your attention wander you disengage

that attention there's a social capital

cost because now I've fallen out of the

the Whiteboard effect discussion that's

going to be a problem so you actually

maintain your focus at a higher level

and then when someone else is making

their move okay you know what about this

and they're working math it's all math

on the board you're giving that the

highest attention you're capable of

because you want to keep up right you

don't want to fall behind so it was like

this Hack That was figured out in the

theory group that if you put two or

three people at the same whiteboard that

try to alchemize these insights into

actual mathematically precise proofs you

get a 20 30% boost in your concentration

level and and that could make all the

difference right if you're working on a

very hard proof 20 30% boost could be

the difference between solving it or not

in one of these situations where you're

at the Whiteboard chalkboard and there

two other individuals facing it are they

interrupting you or is the um etiquette

uh in that scenario to just let the

person go until their natural yeah uh

inclination to raise a hand and and

scream help whoever has the marker on

the board they're the ones talking so

you go okay what about this you say and

now you're working you're writing down

equations or drawing your diagram and

everyone is just watching and then when

they're done everyone steps back and

looks at it then you can step forward

okay but what if we did this and then

and you still work on it so so when I

got uh built some offices or worked out

some offices near my house like one of

the first things we put in there was a

whiteboard so they could have computer

science collaborators come because we

can't work on Theory otherwise like it

is the thing we need is a whiteboard

right when I started grad school they

had just built this new $300 million

Frank Gary design building for the

computer science artificial intelligence

laboratory and the Linguistics but half

of it was computer science I know those

buildings cuz the peow and the McGovern

NeuroScience Center and those buildings

are very interesting people should check

them out if they're ever in Cambridge

Kendall Square stop the status Center

yeah right down the street from the K

sop yeah so the sixth floor was where

the theoreticians were this is where I

was uh so I you know they opened that

building the year I started my the

doctoral program and what did they want

to show me when they when they brought

me to this $300 million Building look at

our whiteboards that's what they were

proud of they had filled the common

space on the sixth floor the theory

floor with these uh freestanding

double-sided whiteboards it was like a

maze of whiteboards and this is what

everyone was so excited about was yeah

look at our whiteboard coverage

surrounded by a 3 million meal I Tred I

was trying to explain this to someone

recently uh having good whiteboards to

us as like an astronomer saying look we

got this great radio telescope like this

is going to allow us to get data to work

on that we wouldn't otherwise have

access to I think to a theoretician uh

that's why you see a whiteboard because

you know if you want to think at the

very highest level you need two or three

people staring at the same thing taking

turns with the marker pushing each other

past where they're

comfortable I love this because I often

think about visual maps that represent

our internal memory stores and plans etc

for productivity I've always relied

heavily on the on the Whiteboard I

getting one for home I have one here in

the podcast studio all of my podcast

notes for my solo episodes are distilled

down to four 8 and 1 half by 11 notes

which are photographs of the the

Whiteboard yeah and um I don't use a

teleprompter um that's I've been accused

of using one before I don't even know

how that would work um but um it's

extremely useful to use the Whiteboard

and I think because um ideas are so

easily put up there and removed um

there's something about uh writing on

things that are vertical as opposed to

on a flat surface I really because

that's actually the way our visual

perception casts things we don't cast

visual perception onto the ground we're

used we experience the visual world

mostly in front of us I think the

cognitive map and the visual map are

inextricably linked for at least for

cited folks um so I I think there's

really something there so um in the

absence of colleagues to sit there and

boost our attention by 25 to 30%

um what could one do do you have a you

said you have a whiteboard at home I

certainly use the Whiteboard do you um

work on it the same way you would in

those early days just with in the

absence of of colleagues looking on yeah

yeah so you work on it just like

someone's there uh the other half is

using really good notebooks that's

always made a big difference for me

paper notebooks paper notebooks yeah

yeah though though recently I've been

messing around with a remarkable which

is one of these digital notebooks where

it's eink technology so it's like a

Kindle but you can write on it uh but

you have endless pages on it so I've

been messing around with that recently

but I remembered when I was a postto for

example I found it recently I went and

bought a lab notebook because those are

expensive at least for a postto right

they're like $70 because a lab notebook

has have archival quality paper it's

bound it's bound yeah people might not

realize this lab notebooks need to be

kept for many years yes you uh you're

not supposed to tear Pages out of them

and so they tend to be bound so if you

have terrible handwriting like I do you

just have to deal with it yes you can't

rip it out and it's thick thick paper

assd free archival paper big sturdy

covers um but I bought this because I

thought okay look I'm going to take it

more seriously because I think that's

also part of what goes on with the

Whiteboard is your mind thinks about

writing on uh the big vertical space as

a a public crystallization of thoughts

I'm putting this up for people to see

even if there's no one actually there to

see it and so you take it more seriously

right if I'm writing on a a whiteboard

in class I'm not just going to put up

nonsense like I'm gonna be very careful

about what I'm writing because you

imagine there's an audience this is

something for other people to see and so

you get a little bit of a similar effect

if you have a very nice notebook you

think look I don't want to waste pages

and somehow that helps with the thinking

so then I found this notebook because I

store my old notebooks in my closet so I

found it when I was working on a recent

book I found it I went through it right

and then I started ticking off uh this

turned into a paper this turned into a

grant this notebook I used it for maybe

two years only used maybe about half the

pages it's all very careful neat script

and diagrams I think I found seven

different peer-reviewed papers or funded

grants where the core ideas were in this

notebook so it's like that

$70 was a an incredible investment

because when I when I got to work in

that notebook it must have been pushing

my thinking to a new level because it

was an incredible concentration of

actual publishable results were coming

out of his Pages yeah it seems like we

would all do well regardless of our

field um to have some very low Bar

Method of capture where if we just have

an idea that spontaneously comes to mind

that we can capture that in a voice memo

or um dare I say in a a phone uh notes

segment but then something as you're

suggesting like a a whiteboard um like a

bound notebook where the moment we look

at it it brings about a level of

seriousness yeah to our to our thinking

and to our actions so like this is

different than just um texting um I what

we're really talking about our our kind

of layers of sophistication um but not

in a snobby way in terms of um highest

productivity and quality to kind of um I

don't know bubble gum wrapper on on the

floor type levels of quote unquote

productivity well I mean I become a fan

of this idea of having specialized

capture for specific type of work so for

example I'm a big believer in pretty

quickly you want to capture ideas in the

tool you use to do that work so when I

have ideas for an article or a book I'm

going to go write the scrier which is uh

specialty this is specialty software

writers used to write right I want to go

right to a scrier project and start

putting these in the research section of

that scrier project when I'm working on

a math or computer science thing I might

work out proof ideas on paper

but I pretty quickly want to get that

into a latch document so so the markup

language that you use for doing sort of

like applied math papers right the the

the tool we use to actually write papers

I'm going to move an idea into there as

soon as I can I'm going to move proofs

out of a notebook and into formally

marked up like you would for a paper you

know as soon as I would so this idea

this is something I've been leaning to

more is capture the notes in the tool

you're going to use take out the

middleman in some sense right so it's

it's a reducing friction but also puts

you in the right mind space like okay

this idea I'm going to put it where I'm

going to need it later as opposed to a

more elaborate third party system that

you construct that you then later pull

everything out of as needed uh this is

what I've been doing more recently let's

just get straight to the tool I'm

eventually going to use with maybe a

high quality notebook intermediary if

I'm actually literally working out

thoughts so math you have to work out

thoughts but I'll get that into an

actual paper format pretty

quickly tell me what you think of um

this what I always call protocol if I

want to learn something from a

manuscript I read or a book chapter yeah

I used to highlight things and I had a

very elaborate um extracted from my

University days system of stars and

exclamation marks and underline that

mean a lot to me that can yes bring me

back to a given segment within the

chapter but a few years ago I was

teaching a course in the biology

department at Stanford and for some

reason we had them read a study about

information retention

and um and I learned from that study

that one of the best things we can do is

read information yeah um in whatever

form a magazine research article Etc

book um and then to take some time away

from that material maybe walk maybe

close one's eyes maybe leave them open

doesn't matter and just try and remember

specific elements how much does one

remember then go back to the material

and look at it and I've just been um

positively astonished at how much more

information I can learn when I'm not

simply going through motor commands of

just underlining things and highlighting

them but stepping away and thinking okay

yeah they I don't oh I don't remember

how many subjects there were I'll go

back and check that maybe make a note

and okay they did this then they did

that and then like and then it's

crystallized and and when as I say this

I realize of course this should work

this is the way that the brain learns um

but somehow that's not the way we are

taught to learn yeah well I'm smiling

because I when I was 22 uh I wrote this

book called How to Become a Straight A

Student

right and the whole premise of the book

was I'm going to talk to actual college

students who have straight A's uh and

who don't seem completely ground out

right like not burnt out and I'm just

going to interview them right and the

protocol was uh how did you study for

the last test did you study for how did

you take notes for the life so I was

just asking them to walk through their

methodology the core idea of that book

was active recall that was the core idea

that replicating idea way used to say is

replicating the information from scratch

as if teaching a class without looking

at your notes that is the only way to

learn and and the thing about it was

it's a tradeoff uh it doesn't take it's

efficient doesn't take much time but

it's incredibly mentally taxing right

this is why students often avoid it it

is difficult to sit there and try to

replicate and pull forth okay what did I

read here how did that work it's it's

mentally very taxing but it's very time

efficient right if you're willing to

essentially put up with that with that

pain um you learn very quickly and not

only do you learn very quickly you don't

forget it's almost you have a pseudo

photographic memory when you study this

way you sit down to do a test and you're

you're replicating like whole lines from

like what you what you studied I the

ideas sort of come out fully formed

because it's such a fantastic way to to

actually learn um it was my key like the

whole premise that got me writing that

book is I went through this this period

as a college student where where I came

in freshman year was like a fine student

not a great student but a fine student

and uh I was rowing crew and I was sort

of like excited to do that um and then I

got developed a heart condition and had

to stop congenital wiring in the heart

atrial flutter thing mean I couldn't R

crew anymore is a prolapse of some sort

it was a a a circuit a circuitry issue

that would lead to a extremely rapid

heart beat it's like U really rapid like

tardia right you get two 250 beats a

minute just and it could be exercise

induced right which is not optimal um

you could take beta blockers which would

moderate the electrical timing but beta

blockers reduce your max heart rate and

if you're a athlete where the entire

thing that matters is your max heart

rate so you're doing something like a

2,000 meter rows your performance on

beta blockers just goes down it makes no

sense it's like being a basketball

player that wears weighted shoes it's

too frustrating right it also makes you

super mow I was pretty mellow guy but I

was a worst rower so um so I stopped

that I was like okay I want to get

serious about my my studies I I can get

serious about my studies and writing

right that's when I actually made the

decisions they didn't stuck with for the

next 25 years

after that but one of the things I did

to get serious about my studies is I

said I'm going to systematically

experiment with how to study for test

and how to write papers and I had I

would try this how did it go deconstruct

experiment try this how did it go

deconstruct experiment and active recall

was the thing to turn me all around and

so I went from a pretty good student to

40 every single quarter sophomore year

junior year senior year I got one a

minus between my sophomore year through

my senior year it was like this

miraculous transformation it was active

recall I rebuilt all of my studying so

if it was for a humanities class I had a

whole way of taking notes it was all

built around doing active recall for

math classes my main study tool was a

stack of white paper all right do this

proof white piece of paper and just can

I do it from scratch if I could I know

that technique if I don't all right I'm

gonna come back and try it again later

completely transformed you know I did so

well academically that's why I ended up

writing that book that basically spread

that message to other people so I'm a

huge advocate

for active recall it's really hard but

it it is the way to learn new things I'd

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very time efficient oh yeah yeah I mean

it was a problem it was a social problem

for me that I would have to pretend

during finals period that I was going to

the library to study because I would be

done studying this active recall it's

brutal but it's incredibly efficient you

sit down there I would have my cards I

would mark it okay I struggled with this

I'd put it in this pile I got it done

I'd put it in this pile and so then you

would just go back to the I struggled

with it pile uh and work on that and

then make a new I struggle with a pile

and these would exponentially Decay and

so in like a few hours you could really

Master you know with a few other tricks

that worked you could really Master the

material pretty quickly and then what am

I supposed to do I didn't do all

nighters like it wouldn't make any sense

like active recall is how you prepare

it's going to take four hours and it's

going to be tough so do it in the

morning when you have energy and then

you're done I love it I learned

essentially all of neuron Anatomy

looking down the microscope at tissue

samples and then I would try and take

photographs with my eyes I do not have a

photographic memory but then I would get

home in the evening look through the

neuroanatomy textbook lie down and try

and fly through the different circuits

in my mind and then if I arrived at a

structure in the brain that I couldn't

identify I would then go check my notes

and go back so I just so basically I

learned neur Anatomy which I you know um

I'm poor at a great many things in life

but neur Anatomy I'm I'm I'm solid at um

with and then some if I may say so and

it's because there's a mental map move

through it you know fly through it

dynamically um and that it's the same

process um not all things lend

themselves to that approach um I'm

guessing maybe we could think of a few

that don't um I guess if people were

learning music yeah um that might be

tricky maybe they need the sheet music

in front of them I don't know I'm not a

musician yeah I mean I studied a a

professional guitar player at one point

you were a professional guitar player I

studied one oh so for for a book

everything's from some book I've written

a lot of books so I wrote a book 10

years ago um where I was trying to

figure out as part of it how do people

get better at things and so I spent time

with a professional guitar player that

said I just wanted to see how he

practiced like what is this actually

look like and what I learned from them

is like what they do is yeah they have

the music in front of them but for them

it's all speed so they take a piece uh

he was working on licks for he was a new

acoustic style player and they had these

kind of blueg grassy type licks um and

he probably had it memorized and he knew

how fast he could comfortably play it

for them it's all about adding 20% to

what they're comfortably doing and then

that that that push pass where they're

comfortable and the thing I remember

writing about him was he was

concentrating so hard to try to hit this

lick 20% faster than he was used to it

is he'd forget to breathe so he'd be

like going going going and then just

gasp you know like because his body

would you know force him force him to

breathe so yeah there it seemed to be

all about uh deliberate practice so like

how do you they don't waste any time

professional musicians waste no time

doing things they comfortable doing

every time they spend practicing and

this is also incredibly difficult uh but

every time they been practicing it's

almost entirely in a a state of I'm not

comfortable with this but if I focus as

hard as I can maybe I'm G to pull this

off like I'll pull off the Sonata at

this new speed I'm trying to do maybe

I'll pull it off it's like the maximal

growth stimulating State uh and so I

wrote in the in this chapter why was he

so much better at Guitar than I was at

the same age because I played a lot of

guitar when I was younger and was in

rock bands right and this kid was young

right but really really good and I said

okay now I realize it I can recognize me

when I look back at my time playing

guitar at his age I played stuff I knew

how to play like that's what was fun

like yeah I want to like jam along with

the songs I knew or you know rip some

pentatonic scales you know to like a

jimmi Hendrick album uh it was fun and

he spent almost no time the pro spent no

time having fun practicing was your

brain had to be you know uncomfortable

so I learned a lot from that you know um

this actually led to a bit of a battle

because of my my readers there was this

a a this battle that emerged where

people were trying to combine Andre

Erikson and deliberate practice with uh

Maley chmi and Flo and really they were

trying to make Flo apply everywhere like

it's all about flow uh deliberate

practice is flow everything is flow the

whole thing is to get into a state of

flow and I remember Anders talking about

this at some point and saying like no no

no like the state of practice that makes

you better it's the opposite of flow

right in flow you lose track of time

when you're practicing like that

professional guitar player you know

every second it passes by because it's

like incredibly difficult like what

you're doing your mind is rebelling it's

not natural you know it's not fun it's

not the skier going down the the hill

and it's all Instinct it's you it's all

you thinking about exactly what you're

trying to do and so you know I began to

push this point out here is like it's

not all about flow like actually getting

better at things is really painful

sometimes deliberate practice is not the

same as flow and there's a lot of fights

about this for a while I think there was

a lot of flow Advocates that just wanted

life to be flow all the time but I think

Anders was right because I watched these

professionals practice like that's what

it is it's not fun well everything we

know about neuroplasticity which of

course is the nervous system's ability

to change in response to experience says

that there needs to be some

neurochemical or electrical condition

that changes in the nervous system in

order to queue up plasticity and um to

my knowledge one of the most um robust

of those is the release of the so-call

catac colines dopamine epinephrine

norepinephrine um dopamine because it's

involved in so many things uh can be a

little bit of a distractor so let's just

say epinephrine norepinephrine

adrenaline noradrenaline it create in

the body and mind to some extent a state

of alertness and often a state of

agitation but if you think about it in

the absence of some neuromodulators like

those yeah um that change the conditions

for wiring of neurons you know everyone

loves fire together wire together yeah

beautiful statement by Carla shatz not

Donald Hebb Dr Carla shat said that not

Donald Hebb um but why would neurons

need to change their patterns of

connectivity if you can complete the

operation the nervous system needs to um

it doesn't feel discomfort it creates

discomfort but the nervous system needs

a cue to like okay this is different I'm

failing and it's the failures that

actually trigger the plasticity it's the

discomfort that cues that conditions are

different now otherwise there's simply

no reason to devote energetic resources

to rewiring neurons and I feel like we

don't learn this when we're kids we um

and I think as kids we can learn so much

without that feeling of agitation we get

into these modes of looking for flow and

um I have respect for the the research

on Flow and the people involved in but

I'd like to talk about flow a little bit

the only thing I really know about flow

for sure is that backwards it spells

wolf so um what of flow it's such an

attractive idea right this like Star

Wars it's like you have the force

and you're kind you're doing things

without thinking and um awesome but I

can't flow myself through a paper Y and

extract the critical data I can't create

a podcast in flow but when it's done it

feels great especially if you nail the

the key metric so what do you think

about flow let's I'm not trying to beat

up on it I just want to understand how

how you place it in the framework of

learning and and deep work if it belongs

there at all it doesn't have a big place

in it in the Deep work framework and and

this was what the controversy was for a

while and and I I knew mahale a little

bit like we we corresponded some and I

knew Anders a little bit like we

corresponded some so I sort of felt like

I was um you know and and both of them

actually tragically died in the last

three or four years I think oh that's

very sad yeah I think both recently um

Flo doesn't play a big role in the Deep

the Deep work framework right so so when

I was trying to justify deep work so I

why focusing without distraction was

important I was drawing a lot more for

Anders work work right because uh why is

focusing without distraction important

well you have to quiet the neural

circuitry you can isolate the circuit

that's actually relevant to the thing

that you're doing right you're not going

to get better at something if you have

noisy circuitry this is and that

requires a really intense concentration

so is one of the big advantages of deep

work was if you're used to that

cognitive State you're going to learn

things faster and I think it was all

Anders to understand why so if you're

not distracted I'm really focusing hard

on what I'm doing trying to learn this

new thing you're giving the right mental

conditions uh but it's not a flow State

I always used to say okay when your when

your deep work is not flow because of

this like a lot of deep work is you're

trying do something that is beyond your

comfort zone and that's going to be

difficult that's a state of deliberate

practice and there's a famous paper

about this where Anders uh actually

explicitly says deliberate practice and

flow are very different and and I wrote

an essay years ago called the father of

deliberate practice disowns flow and

again people are really flow partisans

out there it's interesting I think

people just like the idea because it

feels good but I mean flow is the

feeling of performance is the way I

think about it like it's really hard to

train for certain sports but then when

you're actually performing you're in the

game you can fall in the flow right

because then everything is undo it's

really hard to train guitar but like

when you're performing in front of a big

crowd you probably maybe you fall in the

flow maybe you don't but you could right

but it's the performance State not the

practicing getting better state so you

know to Me Flo has like very little role

in how I think about what I do as a

cognitive professional it's just not

something that comes up that

often I agree um that we learn through

focused work and that uh flow does um

manifest itself during performance and

sometimes um so much so that people

exhibit virtuosity there they're

surprising themselves even what what's

in there and that that's kind of I

always think of it's a what is unskilled

skilled Mastery virtuosity virtuosity

seems to incorporate some sort of random

elements of maybe even the performer has

not done that before and they surprise

themselves or something like that who

knows these are these are words for um

for something that uh isn't easily

Quantified in the first place but in

terms of deep work and getting um a

little bit back to kind of practical

steps towards deep work I also have to

ask you because I didn't uh earlier when

you are on your laptop in your library

with your fireplace and these books it's

a beautiful image actually that you've

drawn for us in our minds um is the

Wi-Fi connection to your computer

activated or are you offline uh it's

connected um because it doesn't really

matter to me you know because what what

is it what's drawing my attention um I

mean the most important decision I think

I made technically speaking to be a

cognitive worker is I the lack of social

media like I I I think we underestimate

the degree to which our problem with

digital distraction is not the Internet

it's not our phones it is specific

products and services that are

engineered at Great expense they pull

you back to them when you take that away

the internet's not that interesting like

I don't have a cycle of sites to go to

you know I can check my email but I

don't really know where else to go I

mean I could go to the New York Times I

guess but then you've seen the Articles

right they they change it once a day

there's just not much I've set things up

so there's not much that's that

interesting to

me we've all heard of fomo fear of

missing out I feel like there's the

other thing which is um fear of missing

something

bad right sort of like an anxiety a more

primitive anxiety within us that if we

are not engaged on social media or

looking at our phone often or texting

often that it's not that we'll miss the

party um we'll miss the

emergency um you don't seem to suffer

from those kind of everyday ills yeah I

mean it doesn't happen that much I mean

I have a phone you know a standard no I

mean I have my phone I guess if I'm

working away from it yeah I guess it's

true if there was an

emergency uh but this was the case for a

very long time right we didn't have

smartphones till really relatively

recently this is you know 15 years ago

so we were just used to this until

yesterday essentially that there's just

periods of time where you're you're out

of touch like you're at a restaurant

with someone you're out of touch until

you get back to your office like we were

okay you know we weren't plagued by

emergencies that that uh led to

disastrous results because we couldn't

hear about it right then you go to the

movies like you're out of touch right

and be a couple hours so you're in touch

again and so I don't you know it's not

something that's affected me as much so

maybe working without my phone nearby a

lot of people have this response they

begin sort of catastrophizing like what

if this happens or this or that and I'm

thinking you know I survived before that

my parents survived without that my my

grandparents survived without that um I

don't worry about it as much you know

and and some of this maybe is just this

doesn't upset people as as much as it

used to the fact I don't use a lot of

these apps or have my phone um but it

really does upset people right there's

what about this what about that what

about this and I don't know how much of

this is just maybe I'm oblivious and how

much of this is people back sliding

explanation for why they do need their

phone why they do need to look at all

the time but I I get a lot of it you

maybe they're upset and you don't know

because you're not looking at your phone

that's right hey I'll tell you what

that's a blessing not knowing how upset

people are at you yeah it's a blessing

as a semi-public figure I'll tell you

that uh yeah I can comment on that but I

won't um I am on social media and um I

do enjoy it as I've got started posting

on Instagram and then expand it to other

platforms including the the podcast but

there's a threshold Beyond which it

becomes counterproductive for sure um I

think there's information there um that

like questions that people ask are often

informative it's sort of like ending a

class and asking are there any questions

sometimes the comments that people bring

back are truly informative towards both

where they might have some

misunderstanding but also sometimes some

really terrific ideas yeah um so there's

that but I I completely agree that this

is a a very uh precarious space um

and I'll just relay a quick anecdote

years ago I gave a quick lecture um down

at Santa clar University south of

Stanford and I was talking about this

issue I recommended your book and a

student came up afterwards and he said

you don't get it at that time I was in

my early 40s he said you don't get it

you know you grew up without social

media and the phone and so you've

adopted it into your life but we grew up

with it and when my phone he's speaking

for himself and the first person when my

phone loses power I feel a physical

drain within my body and when it comes

back on I feel a lift within my body so

I I'd love your thoughts on whether or

not you think the phone and perhaps

social media as well are in some ways an

extension of our brain it's almost like

another cortical area that contains all

this information it's sort it's a

version of us this gets into Notions of

AI that we can talk about as well I know

you're involved in in Ai and writing

about AI but you know to me the when the

phone is used in that way um it really

is a almost like a uh a piece of neural

Machinery of sorts yeah I mean there's

two ways of looking at it yeah so so

there is the the sort of cyborg image I

suppose right like you are you're

extending you're you're plugging into

this neosphere like you have this sort

of digital Network extension of

information and what's going on there's

also the much more pessimistic view

which is no no that feeling is the

feeling of a moderate behavioral

addiction right so you you you'll hear

the same thing from a a gambler I really

when I'm away from being able to to play

to make my bets or do whatever like I

feel really I feel not myself and then

when I'm when I'm around it and I can

play make some bets play some poker

whatever it is feeling of the chips I

feel I feel myself that chips right like

they would say so there it could be both

of these things could be true I think

the moderate behavioral addiction side

is is more true than than a lot of us

want to admit actually like it it does

feel bad because moderate behavioral

addictions build these these feedback

response loops and then you get the

dopamine system going when the

anticipation because what's on there is

that have been engineered that you're

going to get this sort of Highly

engaging stimuli and then you see the

Deliverance of that stimuli right this

really nice piece of glass on a piece of

metal I'm going to press this sort of

carefully uh this icon whose colors have

been chosen because we know it's going

to hit various parts of our neural alert

systems to be as engaging as possible um

and I'm going to see something in there

that's going to generate some sort of

emotional response so of course when you

see that thing sitting there you want to

use it and when you can't it's a a stimy

dopamine response you're like this this

is not good I'm uncomfortable and I I

think that's a big part of it as well um

because I've had this you know I've had

this argument with with some people and

I by the way I see both sides of this

like there are great advantages to what

people are doing with these tools it's

just that it's all mixed up with all

these disadvantages and it becomes very

difficult it's like the alcohol in the

neighborhood bar is too potent you know

and and people are going there to

socialize and they're coming home at 3:

in the morning you know uh passing out

you know it's like the balance is off

not that there's not something good

there but the balance is off so it

becomes pretty difficult to navigate so

I think some of that's what's going on

especially with the younger generation

that was raised on it which is why by

the way I think the cultural norms are

going to change around this I think

we're going to think about unrestricted

internet usage not as something that we

just sort of Beque on youth as they

become 10 years old but something that

we're actually much more careful about

and probably something that's going to

be post pubescent is going to make a lot

more sense once you've had more brain

development once you've had more uh

social entrenchment you sort of

understand your identity Etc because we

recognize you know the the flip side of

plugging this thing into your brain is

yeah you have access to more information

but it also pumps that into your brain

so I don't know I I lean a little bit

heavier towards the pessimistic read

because I know too many people because

of my books um who've really reduced the

impact of these things in their lives

and they don't on the far side of that

transformation they don't typically

report a great impoverishment in exper

experience they don't report um I'm less

mentally agile the information at my

fingertips is less I I'm I'm missing out

on life there's typically this coming

out of the fog on the other side of it

where they're like oh this is fine so

you know I'm a little bit suspicious

about exactly what this mechanism is I

think you're right about the um moderate

behavioral addiction piece years ago

when I was starting my lab I had grants

to write and I found the phone to be

pretty intrusive for that process so I

used to give the phone to somebody in my

lab and announc to everyone in my lab

that if I asked for it back prior to

5:00 p.m. that day I would give everyone

in the lab I think it was a $100 bill my

lab was pretty big at the time I was a

junior Professor they did not do not

sorry uh academic institutions not to be

named um pay us very much despite what

people might think and um and it was

difficult several times throughout the

day or more I was like I really want to

look at that thing but the end of the

day um I'll tell you that no one got

paid I got my phone back but it's

wonderful the amount of work that you

can get done when that thing is out of

the room I mean it's my it's my

superpower right

I don't work that hard in the sense that

I don't do long hours like I'm not

constitutionally suited for long hours

this was never my thing uh my brain

tires right I mean I'm good for four

four and a half good hours a day of

actually producing good stuff with my

brain probably Max but you know I don't

use my phone that much I don't use the

internet that much and I prioritize it

and a lot just gets done it just sort of

piles up over time you know and there's

this sense of like you must be burning

the midnight oil and you have all these

things going on

uh but again people I think

underestimate and it's not the uh they

underestimate the impact of this it's

not just the the accumulation of time

you spend looking on your phone it's

also this network switching cost right

because like the phone is very good at

inducing a network switch and that's a

expensive time consuming energy

consuming neuronal operation task

switching I'm going to switch my focus

of attention from this to that like we

can't do that in two seconds right

that's a hard process it takes a while

it's why when you sit down to work on

something really hard you have that

feeling of for the first 15 minutes this

is terrible you know and then after like

15 or 20 minutes you sort of get into

the groove I always assumed part of

what's going on is it takes a while for

your brain to really start marshalling

okay so what semantic networks do we

need to start activating here oh we

don't need this let's inhibit this we're

not doing that anymore it takes a while

um so what happens then when you have a

lot of these quick checks to social

media you're jumping in on email back

and forth is you have this disaster

catastrophic pile up of aborted task

switches happening right and so it's not

just the total time you're looking at

let's say email or social media it's the

15minute window you have to add around

each of those checks in which you have

this cognitive disorder that really adds

up and then you realize oh there was no

time during my day in which I was more

than 15 minutes away from looking at

something that induced a network switch

the the data I like to site which was

looking at email and slack checks and

knowledge workers this came from Rescue

time the software company the

median average interval between checks

was 5 minutes so the median and the mode

was one minute in this data set so it

was like we are we are checking all the

time that means you were never in a

state then in your day where you don't

have a confused cognitive space where

you don't have partially you were

switching to this task but then you

switch back to this task before that

finish but before you could fully lock

it on this task you look back over here

and so you're spending your entire day

in the state of cognitive disorder which

is is going to be reduced cognitive

output right so you get rid of that I

mean I always say like one of my

advantages is not that I'm doing

anything smarter I'm just avoiding

sometimes the dumb thing just holding

slowing other people down you get rid of

that and you feel like you're on the

world's best uh neurotropic or something

like this like oh I'm just doing this

thing and I'm doing it pretty well now

I'm done you why this didn't even take

that long so I mean I I think people

underestimate what's going on here I'd

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huberman yeah would like to drill into

the concept of context and task

switching a bit more uh I do think that

the brain has something akin to a

transmission system where you know for

people that drive and have driven you

know the the amount of energy that needs

to be used in order to accelerate a

vehicle to get up to a you know higher

gear it's very different than the um

equal amount of increase in speed at a

given gear right so it's sort of the

this is you hear this if you're not

familiar with Transmissions say it

sounds

like it sounds as if there's it's more

fasile at at higher speeds well how

could it be that you're burning less

fuel at a higher speed it's not exactly

that way but but I think the brain has

these sort of transmission systems and

what you're describing with um people

switching back and forth and checking

email and phone Etc and back to the work

um that should be at hand is sort of

akin to going up and down the the gear

system constantly yeah trying to arrive

at a given destination and sure you

might arrive but you're going to burn

far more fuel it's the least efficient

way to go about it you want to get into

that deep Groove and I think when we

hear about flow I feel like at least for

me that's the sort of notion of flow

that I'm looking for dropping into that

deep Groove even if there's some

friction within that groove of the the

challenge of the work that I'm doing

it's about not thinking about anything

else it's really about Focus yep right

and the word flow is just a wonderfully

attractive word um that I think gives us

the the false impression that we can

just drop into things like a square wave

function sit down pen and paper go and

there's no possible way that neural

circuits could work that way no we let's

let's invent a term and I'm you tell me

if the term makes sense I'm invent it's

on the fly but uh neuros semantic

coherence this is going to be my

alternative term for flow when you're

working on something hard um it's not

that you're in an actual Flow State

where you lose track of what you're

doing you're concentrating really hard

but I'm why I'm saying neuros semantic

coherence is you get to this place where

the sort of relevant semantic neural

networks are all um those that are

activated are all relevant to what

you're doing and you've uh over time

inhibited most of the unrelated networks

that were fired up before and so you get

in this sense of it's hard maybe I'm not

losing track of time but like I'm all

focused on this you know I'm grappling

with the the the bear here the the math

equation the the book chapter whatever

it is um and so it's something different

than flow but it's also different than

Linda Stone had the term partial

continuous attention which is what

you're that cognitive disaster of I'm

constantly Network switching back and

forth so we'll call it neuros semantic

coherence I'm got to coin that term um

because it's uh you have this coherence

of the semantic neural networks on what

you're doing and that's the feeling of

I'm getting after this hard problem and

it might be really hard to do I mean I

know the feeling of trying to solve a

math proof for me for example could be

so difficult because I mean what does it

actually feel like in your head when

you're solving a math proof it's a lot

of you hold this here and then you try

to get to the next step by doing this

and it doesn't work but you have to keep

holding this here which takes a lot of

concentration okay let me try this that

didn't work either but this looked

promising okay so now I need to go back

and in my mind's eye update this setup

and now let me try this so it's a lot of

holding things in your working memory um

and keeping them loaded while you try an

extension and then evaluating how that

worked without and so it it requires um

just internal concentration which isn't

pleasant but in neuros semantic

coherence it's all that's happening in

your world you know is that in that

proof so maybe that's what we should be

pitching what people should be looking

for is yeah forget flow but also

remember like this default where you're

like the rescue time data set

participants checking email once every

five minutes that's cognitive nonsense

that's crazy that's like you're trying

to you know play football and you're

covering over one of your eyes and

wearing like a 50 pound ruck sack on

you're just like handicapping your

abilities here for no reason right so

what's in between is this idea and that

requires Focus you know that requires

deep work yeah we're playing football

and then um every three Downs or so

running into the stands and having a

conversation trying to work out

something challenging with your spouse

or whatever then going back and try a

totally different play set right um at

risk of throwing too different too many

analogies and and stories I'll just

briefly say I went and saw the the play

in New York with my sister this year I

think it was Harry Potter and the cursed

child or something like that um I didn't

really enjoy the play that much but the

set stuff was amazing and they have this

magic Library I think is very very

relevant here where essentially um the

book that you open um has a certain

topic I don't know maybe it's spells or

something as Harry Potter again uh fun

show but great set stuff didn't didn't

really resonate with me too much in any

event and then the books around it

change their that but are related to

that Central bookes and then if you look

at one particular thing like maybe it's

potions or something I'm making this up

and then all of a sudden the books the

books around it change they become

either more specific there might be a

distant but related idea that could lend

itself to creativity so sort of that's

the way the brain works in cognition is

that we get into a frame of of a certain

discussion or a certain theme and and

the and the the books on the Shelf

change according to their relatedness

based on memory of past what's going on

now and plans for the future I think

anytime we look at uh we change context

and we look at you know a raccoon video

on Instagram or our calendar and oh

there's that thing the books become very

scattered so when we return to it

there's a lot more friction uh a lot

more work or neural neural energy

required to get back into that um this

uh narrow states of cognition just that

exactly explains sort of my experience

and the way I think about it yeah yeah

because you're it takes time uh to to

load up the these sort of relevant these

secondary and tertiary semantic ideas

and now they're there so like you can

pull from them and then as you shift you

have to sort of shift this whole thing

around that takes a lot of concentration

I mean I I wrote this this article once

that got me a little bit of trouble not

not trouble but mild trouble uh but it

was it was called was for the Chronicle

of Higher Education um and the title

they gave it was is email making

Professor stupid which wasn't my title

you basically called every every one of

your colleagues stupid we all check

email the dean at the time did call me

in for lunch but actually he was here's

the thing he was like hey this is real I

agree with this um but what I was

arguing actually in that article

essentially was what do we do at a

university is is partially what we're

supposed to be doing is trying to teach

what the life of the mind is and how

that works and we've kind of forgotten

that so what we should maybe think about

like at universities we need to be

explicitly not just teaching how to

think but also modeling the life of the

mind at the at the highest level and so

this idea that we just allow the the

professor serot to to be drowned in um

emails and and uh tasks and being as

distracted you know it's the main war

that every research Professor has is how

do I how do I fight the admin overload

until I become famous enough to get an

assistant right like this is the big

problem and I was making this proposal

of University should be the citadels of

concentration I said if you want to get

the the best academics in the world to

your University just tell them uh here's

at the top of our contract you will not

be assigned an email address like you're

going to get Nobel laurates coming from

you know all over the country to come to

this place and so I was making this

argument um we should think a more about

thinking we should talk more about it we

should model it exactly the type of

things you're talking about but we don't

it's much more contents focused but

really this should be something more

that we we get into specifically like

this is how you actually use the mind to

produce Innovative uh interesting high

value new cognitive artifacts this is a

very hard thing we're asking you to do

um but you can Apprentice here because

this is what we do and we've mastered

we're going to teach you how to do it uh

but we never have that sort of meta

conversation sort of meta cognition

conversation always thought that'd be

important I think you'd have much better

outcomes if that's part of what you

learned at the University was how to

take the thing in your head and really

put it to work you know really extract

out of it his capabilities or even high

school or even Elementary School level I

agree yeah U you have kids yeah and um

do they have smartphones no yeah how do

they feel about that well I mean they're

not they're not old enough yet that it's

a it's a real problem um but they're

they're not going to be happy with me

probably soon

hate me now love me later as my mother

used to say basically because I you know

I'm I'm convinced having spent some time

thinking about this writing about this

doing some journalism on this talking to

a lot of the experts that like I think

where we're going to end up where all

the the arrows from the the relevant

social psych research which um I've been

following This research since you know

2017 this is 2017 is roughly when you

see the first warning signs going up

that we need to worry about the

potential mental health impacts of these

tools especially social media and

smartphones on young people and I you

can track this right I have a talk I I

actually gave it my kid school not happy

about this where I tracked how this

research evolved and you know like any

literatures it's contentious at first

and then you see um you you begin to see

uh consilience between different lines

of evidence and I think where where

everything now in the last couple years

is starting to come together this idea

of we don't really know if this is bad

or not I think that's just an old take

the researchers moveed past that and I

think where we're we're we're landing on

is unrestrict internet use

pre-puberty is risky and like the new

standard is going to be uh post puberty

is probably the right time to be given a

device that gives you unrestricted

access we're talking like 16 is probably

the appropriate age so this does not

make me popular at the middle school

where my son's my oldest son's about to

go um I think in two or three years

that's just going to be common sense

that's this is the direction I see the

research literature and the advocacy

going and I think there's a solid ground

for

this because you're a computer scientist

I can ask this question what about video

games I'm not a big consumer of video

games it's been years since I've played

one in fact um but video games are so

very different than smartphones and um

and other Technologies because they uh

seem to put at least the kids I've

observed playing them and adults um into

a very narrow trench of attention yeah

uh I mean there are definitely issues

with it I mean look I'm not a social

psychologist I just sort of play one in

my articles but but I've I've looked

into this

a lot um there's a bit of a a gendered

breakdown that has a lot of overlaps

where when they're looking at uh

potential harms of these Technologies uh

young adolescence right pre-adolescent

young adolescence you tend to see social

media to be more signal for cognitive

distress for young women and girls and

the video games to actually be the

bigger culprit for uh young men and boys

right there is a bit of a difference

here because with the the social media

impact

the the content of what's Happening

matters in this picture right so so um

what I'm seeing the engagement I'm

having how this impacts my social life

this is part of the mental distress with

video games it seems to be more uh an

impact of just disharmonious passion and

Obsession just the time it takes right

because the games can be incredibly

addictive so the problem that young men

are having are just they're playing it

all the time that I'm staying up late

because I have a an iPad in my room and

I'm 14 and I going to play fortnite

until 3 in the morning because my brain

cannot handle

like what you're what you're giving me

here right um so it's less of a a

Content concern than it is just a Time

concern right that seems more solvable

to me you know like my solution with my

own kids I don't mind video games I'm a

computer scientist but I said nothing

that's online right nothing that was

free because if it was free that means

uh their business model involves getting

you to play it all the time so you can

upcharge or whatever uh they have

Nintendo switches like I like Nintendo

okay Nintendo switch here's a $60 Zelda

game that someone spent 5 years making

or whatever you can only play those

games so long at a time before you know

you're tired you come back to it um they

don't have an addictive response to it

if they get an iPad with a a game on it

they'll just like play that till their

eyes bleed because those are meant to be

to be addictive so I'm wary about video

games but there it's all just a usage

game so you stick away from the more

addictive games it's it's a much easier

problem to solve I think than the social

media the social media issue earlier you

talked about books um I still read um

hard cover and paperback books um what

are your thoughts on audiobooks and

learning by way of um Audi book uh

versus paper in front of you flipping a

physical device or Kindles I don't know

if there's any real research on this

I've seen a little bit but I'm curious

what what you've encountered and what

your thoughts are as well you could

speculate yeah I mean I I'll tell you

personally I can only do fiction and

audiobooks right because when I'm in a

non-fiction experience I'm just very

used to constantly looking for

connections and ideas you know and so I

have to be able to slow down and then

speed up and then go back to something I

just read um so I really have a

distressing experience trying to listen

to non-fiction audio books Fiction's

fine that's great let put a thriller on

you know audible great I you know I'll

listen through it and I think some of

this might be particular to my my

engagement with books which is I'm you

know I'm a writer and a thinker so I'm

constantly looking for ideas and so I

might have a different engagement with a

non-fiction book than someone you know

just listening to one of my books but I

can only do fiction on audio that makes

sense thinking about what works for me

what doesn't I agree I I love stories

and fiction by by audiobook um you

ideally consumed on a long drive or a

hike um but non-fiction requires that I

take notes and see things in their kind

of um respective spatial layout and yeah

um in your most recent book um you

describe this concept of pseudo

productivity is pseudo productivity a

general term to refer to

some of the things we've already talked

about this test switching context

switching or pseudo productivity

something that uh includes other

categories of of limiting ourselves as

well I mean I think it's more specific

than that right so it to me Pudo

productivity was the answer that we came

up with a knowledge work to a real

dilemma which is that's a sector you

know using your brain primarily to

create value that's a sector that

emerged as a major part of the economy

in roughly the mid 20th century um when

that emerged all the definitions of

productivity that we had were inspired

from Agriculture and Industry right so

so in agriculture we can have ratios U

bushels of corn per whatever acres of

land under cultivation in industrial

manufacturing we have ratios modalities

per input labor hour um so you could

just measure these things H we also had

clearly defined systems of production so

you could then say if I change this

about the system of production what

happens to this number and you could do

gradient descent right okay I do this

that number goes down let's not do that

by make this change it goes up that's a

better way of building it like this was

the dominant way of thinking about

productivity since basically Adam Smith

the knowledge work arises that doesn't

work right because I'm working on

whatever five different things it's

different than what you are working on

um how I'm managing my work is entirely

off youc right in knowledge work uh

organizational ideas is entirely left up

to the individual how you manage your

work and your workload and collaboration

that's like up to you that's all off you

skated there's no number to measure

there's no system to improve so I think

it was a real quandry my argument is

what essentially the management class

came up with is PUD productivity which

is okay in the absence of being able to

be quantitative about this we will use

visible activity as a proxy for useful

effort so that's it like we see you

doing things that's better than not the

more we see you doing the better I call

that pseudo productivity and I think

that's implicitly how we've been

organizing the management of knowledge

work labor since the

1950s and when you say visibility people

doing things it this is the um

conflating of busyness with actual

productivity yes and so the problem came

when we had this General way of

measuring approximating productive

effort which wasn't very good but

whatever right I mean I want to see

you're at the office and you're doing

things the problem was the front office

it Revolution right because I'm I'm

essentially a techn Critic I see

everything through the lens of

technology in my writing we got

computers we got networks we got email

pseudo productivity can't be sustainable

in that context because now with

something like email and then later

tools like slack I can demonstrate

effort at a very fine grain right

because I can send an email respond to

this jump onto a slack conversation I

can now do that at a very fine grain

level um and essentially everywhere and

anywhere all throughout my day I can be

demonstrating labor at home I can be

demonstrating labor because we have

mobile Computing we get the smartphone

Revolution um so there there's a now an

ability to constantly be demonstrating

effort at all points of our day and

that's where I think the wheels came off

the bus right and and led to this this

this point that got worse and worse

starting the early 2000s and hit ahead

in the pandemic of a knowledge worker

burnout knowledge worker exhaustion and

nihilism of like what's going on with my

job like all I do is zoom all day what's

happening I think that pseud

productivity plus front office it

Revolution they did not play nice

together and you can see this by the way

if you look even at productivity books

you see this huge shift that happens

early '90s versus early 2000s it's like

a completely shift in tone right early

90s it's stepen cvy is very optimistic

it's like how are we going to

self-actualize and like carefully choose

the most meaningful activities to

fulfill all of our dreams for all of our

roles early 2000s now we have email you

have David Allen this like oh my God

we're so overwhelmed with task all we

can hope for is like these little

moments of Zen in the day if we can just

automate how we're just churning through

these widgets at least we can find some

cognitive piece uh what happened in

those 10 years was the front office it

Revolution and now we just felt like we

had to constantly be demonstrating that

visible effort so you know I think

that's where we got to the problem pseud

productivity plus

technology recently my podcast team was

in Australia and um my producer and uh

close friend here uh Rob Moore uh

instructed all of us to get rid of

social media on our phones except one

guy who would post our weekly episodes

announcements um and it was pretty

brutal at first and then coming back to

social media has actually turned out to

be more challenging you really

experience the friction coming back the

other way and then one experiences the

the lack of friction and that's where it

gets scary it's it's so interesting the

way that the brain can adapt um the

friction leaving something behind um the

friction coming back to it um and I

think for people listening to this I I

raise this because I think of course

many people listening are you know have

work that they really need to focus on

they may be having issues with uh

productivity and burnout Etc I think a

lot of people use the phone and social

media because it fills their life you

know it provide some enrichment and they

aren't necessarily committed to specific

projects but I guess through the lens of

the the let's just call it the Cal Newan

lens one might argue that those people

uh almost certainly have untapped

creativity untapped resources within

them that um they don't yet know about

because they're essentially using that

energy elsewhere yeah I mean I think for

a lot of people it's papering over the

void right you have this void in your

life because there's a unmet potential

uh unmet interest um living in

misalignment with the things you care

about right I mean a lot of people this

is the classic sort of catastrophe of

life right social media and there's

before this it was other things right

there was other intoxicants or other

sorts of distractions it's a way for

some people of essentially putting a

screen over that like gaping void and it

like just makes it bearable enough that

you can kind of go on with life and so

it is true if you just rip it out you

see the void and that's really difficult

right I mean because I I did this

experiment for one of my books I ran an

experiment with 1600 people and they all

turned off all their social media for 30

days 30 days 30 days right these are

young people old people a whole mix a

whole mix right not just University

students I recruited them from my my

newsletter readership so they weren't

University students and it wasn't formal

research it was you know I put out the

call right so this is not randomly

sampled right but I put out the call and

I said here I'm going to walk you walk

you through this and then I got a lot of

information back so people reported back

how it went and this was like the number

one thing I heard was it's really hard

at first right and so who are the people

that succeeded for 30 days versus those

who didn't the the ones who didn't

succeed it tended to just try to White

Knuckle it just be like I don't like how

much I'm using social media I'm just

going to stop because it's bad and I

don't want to do a bad thing I'm just

going to like you know hold on the table

with White Knuckles they wouldn't make

it through days the people who did

succeed followed my advice to incredibly

aggressively pursue Alternatives in

those 30 days so it's like go learn new

hobbies join things right away get like

really structured about your day um get

into exercise again learn how to knit

again a lot of people said oh I learned

about I forgot how fun libraries were

like you can go into this building and

like all the books are free and there's

there you could just grab whatever and

it's okay if you don't like the book

because you didn't have to pay for it

I'm going out with friends again I'm I'm

okay every week I'm going to have you

know we're going to have drinks with

this person and every Thursday morning

I'm going to go running with this person

the people who aggressively try to put

in place a more positive alternative

through self-reflect experimentation

they lasted the 30 days and Beyond right

and so then I came to realize like oh I

see what's happening here is you have

these unmet needs these tools can give

you sort of a a simulacrum of meeting

them I need I'm a social being I need to

be connected to people well I'm texting

and like doing comments on social media

it's sort of touches that a little bit

just enough that you don't feel

hopelessly lonely but it's not really

fulfilling that um I have a need to like

see my intentions made manifest

concretely in the world humans want to

do this well I'm you know posting these

things and people are responding it's

sort of this simulacrum of real creation

so it's like kind of satisfying that

just enough that it's not just

intolerable right um and so what happens

is if you remove that you have to

actually fill those things the right way

so now I'm not socializing on social

media but I'm going out of my way to

sacrifice time and attention on behalf

of other people I'm feeling the social

void in the right way now I don't really

feel like I need to go back uh I'm

actually build making my intentions

manifest I'm learning skills and

Building Things now this sort of pseudo

construction and Collective attention

economy of social media I'll post this

and you'll like it I'll like this um I

don't need that anymore to fill that

void so it's like you have to fill the

void first so so you know five years ago

I wrote a book that was about reforming

this part of your life and a lot of the

book was nothing to do with technology

but about how to actually just rebuild

parts of your life and on my podcast

honestly like one of the big topics we

talk about which is crazy that I'm a

technologist and I write about trying to

find focus in a distracted world is this

thing we call the Deep life which is

just straight up building a meaningful

life 101 and it's like crazy that my

podcast is talking about it but on the

other hand it's not because my the

podcast people go to when they're fed up

with the digital world and it turns out

if you don't get the analog

world working right for you you need

something to avoid staring to that void

and and the digital world will do that

well enough it's like just good enough

to keep life

tolerable there's a lot of discussion

nowadays about ADHD attention deficit

hyperactivity disorder sometimes U minus

the H minus the

hyperactivity uh a lot of kids have true

clinically diagnosed ad ADHD so we want

to be um sensitive to that it's a real

issue for a lot of people a lot of

adults have true ADHD um but nowadays

people talk about ADHD the same way

terms like um depression trauma

gaslighting and um Etc are discussed in

in non-clinical territory OCD people use

clinically as well right right and um

and I'm not disparaging that it's just

that we we have sort of a dilution of

deeper understanding of what these

things really are and aren't um what are

your thoughts I realize you're not a

psychiatrist but what are your thoughts

on the idea that um many uh people that

think they perhaps have true attention

issues have either um built those

attention issues through neuroplasticity

um uh into their system meaning their

system probably worked nervous system

probably worked pretty well to focus but

they engaged in enough task switching

that the circuits of the brain involved

in cognition became optimized for um

this very distributed cognition um as

opposed to um narrow focused attention

and what are your thoughts about um just

the amount of of stimulant use on

college campuses and in in adult

populations to to try and overcome this

I feel like there's a lot of um attempts

to use pharmacology to match the level

of distraction to try and make that

distraction not seem like distraction

but you know this is uh this is an area

I hear a lot about given the nature of

the things I cover on the podcast I

think a lot of these issues are phone

induced right um and and I think the

problem is yeah not solvable as much you

don't need pills you need a different

phone relationship my optimistic

hypothesis is again this uh

non-clinical uh difficulty with

maintaining attention like in your work

or if you're a college student or

whatever um it's not necessarily

representing sort of knock on wood like

a wholesale neural rewiring like that I

basically rewired my circuits on my

brain to be a sort of distributed

switching processor I think most of this

is is persisting um in that much more

malleable area that gets affected by

moderate behavioral addictions right so

the the we we have parts of the brain

that are part of these like feedback

reward Loops that's meant to be

malleable right I mean this is supposed

to be so we can have really rapid

learning about what's happening in our

environment how we're supposed to

respond to it and and this is what gets

hijacked when you you build up these

behavioral addictions and so it's it's

very quick to change um but that

malleability means you can change it

back right so so I I I think this this

drive to I have to keep checking my

email or my phone is again you build up

a moderate behavioral addiction because

of like standard reward cues and and

that's a part of the brain that you

can't it's difficult but it's not your

whole brain is now a social media brain

and that's just the brain you have

because you're exposed to this um it's a

matter of you know getting the stimuli

out of your life doing the same type of

training you would do uh ex boredom

exposure like get used to the idea of

feeling that drive and not actually

doing it you can work with blocking apps

like there's stuff you can do this is

sort of like standard it's painful it

takes two months and then like you're

doing better on it so I do think we have

a a a large stratum of

subclinical attention issues that are

not representing wholesale neural

rewirings but are like absolutely sort

of expected outcomes of working with

malleable reward CU circuits in the

brain we can fix those just like we can

if you know you're you're uh you're

gambling too much or compulsively eating

the junk food or something we don't say

your whole brain got we red for junk

food it's like no you have this ex this

particular Q cycle that we have to work

on so maybe I'm being optimistic there

and you know the brain better but like

it would be extraordinary if in like a

10-year period right your entire brain

somehow got rewired in a way that it

couldn't sustain Focus anymore I totally

agree with that statement unless uh

you're a young person and you grew up in

a distracted world and your brain

optimized as the young brain does for

the conditions it's in and then I think

you have a real issue yeah um which is

not to say it can't be rescued through

the use of discipline tools protocols

pharmacology nutrition great sleep and

if necessary prescription drugs right

because there is a case for prescription

drugs in certain um instances for ADHD

and and as I understand it um you know

anytime people say wait aren't those

drugs just meth isn't it just speed yep

they are amphetamines in most cases and

the idea is to increase the deployment

of C certain neuromodulators ones I

mentioned before um as a means to induce

neuroplasticity so that the focus state

becomes more of a default state

um so I think that young people are in

trouble I think that we I do worry about

young people I think we it's um it's

akin to putting them in a kind of a well

we know this in the visual system if you

take an animal or human and you put them

into an altered visual environment um

the visual system changes and your

perception of the visual world is

becomes inaccurate um and the way I

think of this cognitively with respect

to attention the analogy would be I

think we've been for the last 10 years

or so 10 15 years we've been raised in

kids in a sort of um House of uh fun

house mirror things which is anything

but fun where you look at yourself and

your legs are shorter than and your

torso is long and so everywhere you turn

you're getting a distorted perception

and trying to navigate the world through

that distorted perception is very very

difficult you can do it but it's a lot

of extra work that's what I feel we've

done to young people I'm I'm very

concerned about that as well yeah yeah

and and I think I don't know what your

take on this but like do you think at

the undergraduate level

that we have just been not explicitly

but just sort of implicitly uh

professors in general we have been just

sort of slowly adapting the difficulty

of what we're teaching Etc because we

maybe there's a reduced cognitive Focus

capacity which is like the key skill for

this sort of very artificial thing of

learning you know complicated college

level work I think this would be an

interesting experiment to find out is

have we been implicitly having to sort

of simplify things to keep roughly

speaking distributions where normatively

we feel comfortable I mean do we see the

signal yet that's my interest do we see

the signal yet if we look back a

generation 20 years ago versus now I

don't know for courses of the sort that

I teach or taught until very recently I

still teach but I was directing the

neuron Anatomy course and there's a

laboratory module so the students

dissect brains they're holding actual

human brains um that's a real physical

contact that cannot be

recapitulated um digitally you just

can't do it you can try you use VR but

it's it ain't the same I mean how would

you like it if you're a neurosurgeon

learned um on a virtual brain and then

it does surgery on a brain no not no

such thing should uh happen I think that

um my experience with this is

perhaps most relevant with respect to

social media where I teach Neuroscience

yeah and I use a variety of duration of

Clips you know the 902 real the you know

7 minute thing the 2 and 1 half hour

podcast that you know we have podcast

solo podcast 4 and a half hours um I

don't know how many people listen start

to finish but I think having a variety

of different durations really helps um

and I'm told by my team I have a Tik Tok

account although I've never logged on

there um you know I think Tik Tok

represents the extreme of kind of bubble

gum level um information SL

entertainment and they really nailed

some some circuit that can handle

information of about 30 to 60 seconds in

a format that um tickles the brain just

right to keep swiping liking commenting

and sharing yeah um and I don't think

that's anything like a real

understanding or education yeah I mean

it's nothing like a real understanding

or education yeah I mean Tik Tok in

particular like I think something PE

what people get wrong about Tik Tok is

they think that there was a uh real

algorithmic Innovation which is actually

not the case like as far as I understand

the machine learning algorithm

underneath Tik Tok is probably like a

relatively standard sort of multi-arm

bandant you know intermittent feedback

reinforcements algorithm all they did is

they cleared out all the other noise so

you know if you're Facebook or something

like this uh you're trying to use

algorithms to curate things but you have

all these other Legacy structures you

also have to try to satisfy there's

friends and you know you want to show

stuff that your friends like more than

other people and there's groups you're

joining Tik Tok just got rid of all the

noise and so we're just going to all

we're doing is optimizing uh watch time

we we think we don't know but we think

watch time is the main thing that

they're they're uh optimizing so want to

optimize it watch time and everything

all these videos all Just exist as

multi-dimensional points in this sort of

semantic cloud and all we're doing is

just showing you things and then you

swipe another thing swipe another thing

so when you get rid of all the noise

from a machine learning algorithm it

doesn't also have to satisfy that I

follow this person on Instagram or this

is my friend all I have to do is

optimize this one number how long did

they watch before they swiped it just

turns out oh it's really easy like you

do that for a couple hours you're going

to hone in on these sub regions in this

massive multi-dimensional space of stuff

that just tickles this particular

person's brain you know and it's very

cybernetic because now I'm the user of

Tik Tok I'm the content creator I'm

getting immediate feedback what's

working what's not I really quickly find

these particularly Rich regions in this

sort of cybernetic space and so it's

like Tik Tok just purified something

that was simple basic machine learning

but just like purify what we're doing

here and that turned out to be enough to

create what's like probably the most

addictive Force we've seen in the

digital world in a long time so Tik Tok

is optimized for dwell time yeah that's

the thought right because it's not

public so like we don't exactly know how

the algorithm works but people have been

studying it like a Skinner box you know

100 phones and we we looking all these

accounts looking at the variables it

seems like that's largely what it's

optimizing for is uh how long did you

watch before you swiped right and that's

it so there I mean it's not this was

both uh what was smart about about Tik

Tok and also why I've been arguing it's

it's destabilized the whole traditional

social media narrative is because the

traditional massive social media players

of the last decade had this uh first

mover advantage on these giant actual

social networks right so like Twitter

and Facebook and Instagram had these uh

massive networks of people's uh

preferences of I'm following this person

and this person I'm following uh and

they could leverage these actual social

graphs as a huge source of producing

interesting content right and this was a

huge first mover Advantage because you

can't it's hard to get a 100 million

people to use something now right Tik

Tok got rid of all that we don't want a

social graph you as a user don't have to

declare anything you don't have to

follow people or say who your friends

are we'll just start showing you things

and that was more compelling than what

you could generate with a social graph

but now there's no first mover Advantage

so as the big social media players

follow the Tik Tok model which is much

more algorithmic let's just try to

curate based on gorithms not who you

follow or who your friends are they're

now much more vulnerable because Tik Tok

could come along and do this without

having to spend 5 years getting people

to clear their friends and now if

someone else could come along and do

this so I think the major players are

giving away their competitive Advantage

which is this uh the social graph IP

that no one will ever replicate again

they're giving away that advantage and

now it's a free-for-all playing field of

all sources of attention engagement so I

don't know I think Tik Tok accidentally

destabilized the social media decade

that had been defining until I think

just recently L what I find so

interesting about social media platforms

like Tik Tok is that um sure it makes

sense that um kids and teens would use

it they were raised with it Snapchat Etc

but when I see my peers who you know we

call ourselves adults um people in their

mid to late 40s 50s essentially like

playing kids games or engaging through

these platforms that are they're not

childlike necessarily but they they just

prove that the um or rather that their

adherence SL addiction to them just

proves that this is tapping into some

core neural circuit that exists in

everyone um so while it might be shaping

the uh young brain a lot this is adults

basically eating junk food all day um

which raises a question you know I think

um while there are many different ways

to eat and it's not a topic we want to

get into now um Lord knows that's a

great way to to create um a lot of

social media content debating which diet

omnivore carnivore vegan Etc the notion

of intermittent fasting um limiting On's

a portion of the day where they eat to

whatever 6 hours 4 hours 12 hours um is

an interesting one that maybe has some

applicability here um what are your

thoughts about simply not turning on the

phone maybe even not turning Wi-Fi on if

people are are not as disciplined as you

are with the laptop or tablet um for the

first two hours of the day or four hours

of the day or for a portion of the day

sort of like you're taking a a social

media fast that isn't 30 days it's you

know which I think for a lot of people

is going to evoke um High cortisol

release uh just the idea of it yeah uh

know this is an idea I've written about

before you know in deep work I had this

chapter called Embrace boredom that was

the entire idea right so the idea was um

boredom by itself is not I think

laudable right there there's a reason

why it feels distressing when things

feel distressing that's usually an

evolutionary signal that there's

something going on here um but was

arguing in that chapter was exactly what

you're talking about you should have

some moments every day where you're free

from distraction even though you could

be accessing distraction and you want to

and like a little bit each day 20

minutes each day and then maybe a longer

session once a week like a couple hours

um my argument for that was it's about

breaking a pavlovian connection in this

sense right so if it's every time I feel

boredom lack of Novel stimuli I get this

release of the phone your mind is really

going to make that Association of like

this is what we always do if sometimes

you don't it's a different cognitive

landscape right your mind is uh

sometimes we get the distraction

sometimes we don't that's a much better

place to be because now when it comes

time to actually focus on something you

know your mind's like I've been here

before like we don't always get the

distraction so you know this is going

back you know early 20th century

psychology there's probably a more

neuroscientific way to think about this

but it's like breaking pavlovian Loops

if like sometimes at the end of the day

I'm exhausted it's Instagram time and it

like scr scratches an itch but other

times I'm bored I'm in line at the

pharmacy and I don't look at the phone

my brain learns like yeah we don't

always do it and and so the idea is that

you know if you make boredom more

tolerable then you're much more likely

to succeed with doing things that are

boring but hard and I think deep work

for example is boring just in the

clinical sense of there's lack of Novel

stimuli you're just doing the same thing

for a long time so I've always advocated

for that is like you shouldn't be un

super uncomfortable with boredom like

don't go seeking it I'm not a big

believer of and boredom is where

all creative Insight comes from I think

it's a strong evolutionary cue like

leave this state but you do have to have

some tolerance for it I wonder if we

need a different word than boredom um

are you familiar with this notion of Gap

effects in learning these Gap effects

are similar to the effects of um neural

processing during sleep um focused

attention with some agitation triggers

neuroplasticity and learning but it's

during sleep in particular deep sleep

rapid eye movement sleep states of deep

bre maybe in some forms of meditation

that the actual rewiring takes place and

then there's this literature about Gap

effects which have been demonstrated for

music for math for many things in which

if people say are practicing new scales

on the piano for instance but could be

any scale and then they um

intermittently are are queued by a

buzzer to just stop and do nothing the

the hippocampus which is involved in

learning memory replays the action

sometimes in Reverse just as occurs

during sleep um at a rate of maybe 20 or

30 times faster at the neural level

we're not talking about boredom what

we're talking about is pauses during

which perhaps

um we are obtaining accelerated

neuroplasticity the Gap effects

certainly accelerate learning I've

talked about these in other podcasts but

I wonder whether or not this thing that

you're calling boredom so being in line

um to get some groceries yeah and not

taking one's phone out while the Checker

is you know scanning the groceries

through and just not really doing much

of anything it's entirely possible that

the thing that we were working on

earlier that day or the previous day is

being processed in the hippoc campus at

un conscious level at a much more rapid

rate where we to look at our phone we

would inhibit those Gap effects which

are truly beneficial yeah well I mean

professors feel this all the time right

at least a lot of ones I've talked to

with peer reviews so I don't know if

you've had this experience but you're

like reviewing a paper I often have this

experience where when I'm first engaging

with the paper I feel incredibly

frustrated like I I don't quite

understand what they're doing here like

this mathematics isn't quite making

sense to me and it'll often be the fact

I come back later like well let me just

like write up what I have so far and

your understanding is like much much

better right so there's this this sense

of maybe something's been processing I

took that so seriously when I was uh

especially at post stock like when I was

at the height of just all I do in my

life is produce value with my brain

every day I would do what I call

thorough walks because I I discovered

thorough while a grad student I read it

down by the Charles like the full sort

of you know just minus the Beret like

pretentious grad student thing but I was

really in the the the Walden um real

influential book for me so every day

when I would walk back I was was living

on Beacon Hill walking from MIT so

people who know Boston it's it's going

across the Longfellow bridge I would say

nothing but nature observation like

that's what I'm doing I'm just uh oh the

ice is thinner on the Charles today like

look at this tree or the leaves coming

back partially I think what was going on

is like this was right after I'd been

whiteboarding it right uh I think it was

letting stuff process right so I had

this explicitly in my routine uh a lot

of time where I was okay I can't think

about work at all I can't do anything

else but you know I'm thinking about the

tree I'm thinking about the water like

really sort of minimal cognitive lifts

and I wonder if that's what was going on

there like to me that I that was a very

productive period of my life yeah I feel

like in the in the last five 10 years

thanks large Le in part to Matt Walker's

book why we sleep and the advocacy

around sleep from others um we've come

to understand that sleep is essential

for mental health physical health and

learning cognitive Performance Physical

performance so much so that now people

devote immense amounts of attention and

and uh resources to trying to get the

best possible night sleep whereas it was

the I'll sleep when I'm dead mentality

prior to that yeah and I I would love to

see a world where um people Embrace not

the notion of boredom per se but the

notion of gaps um lack of external

stimula coming into our our eyes and our

cognitive system as a means to get

smarter to get more creative to get

better we just need a language for this

yeah and I think it's the you know so of

often language is a separator when it

comes to health and performance tools

and something I really strive for is to

try and um create language that's not

linked any one person that illustrates

what something is for so maybe um no

small task Cal but maybe we'll just uh

have you rename boredom as um neural

rewiring um epox or something like that

I'll go up with the term my whole

writing crew by the way is based on

taking things people already intuitively

know in their gut and giving it a

two-word name and just having the

language around that really matters like

deep work oh okay that's like this

activity I kind of knew that was

important I didn't have a name or

digital minimalism like oh yeah that

okay I kind of know what that means like

it's a different different philosophy

towards it but there's all so I do have

a name related to the the gaps we're

talking about but but for one of the

other negative effects right so we have

the positive effects you talked about

which is consolidation of learning and

acceleration of learning we had the one

negative effect which was the pavlovian

connection to distraction the other one

I've written about before is solitude

deprivation right so so I'm using a

different definition of solitude than

the colloquial one most people think of

it as a physical thing I'm I'm just

isolated but there's a there's a

cognitive psychological definition of

solitude which means absence of stimuli

created by other human Minds right so

I'm not taking in information that's

coming directly from another human mind

U having no period with this Solitude so

having no period in your day where

you're free from stimuli creative from

other Minds is Solitude deprivation and

it's a real issue and partially it's a

real issue because when we're processing

input from another human brain it's all

hands- on Deck right I mean we're very

social beings a huge portion of our

brain is dedicated to this right um so

it's a very cognitively expensive

activity when I'm trying to understand

another human's what they're saying I'm

simulating their mental state I'm trying

to understand like where do they fall in

this sort of social hierarchy and one of

my arguments was um when you spend your

entire day in that state it's exhausting

and anxiety producing and like until we

had smartphones and ubiquitous wireless

internet the idea that you could banish

all Solitude from your day is laughable

it's just impossible right so of course

we had a lot of portions of our day

where our brain was not like ramped up

in gear four like the sort of social

processing mode but smartphones makes it

possible that you can be in that mode

all day long and so like one of the

things I hypothesize is some of the

anxiety Rises that goes with the age of

smartphones is brain exhaustion right so

that's another negative effect of the

constant we have two negative effects

now for the constant stimuli and one

positive effect for the absence of the

constant stimula so I think we're making

a case here for not always being on your

device yeah I agree one of my favorite

literatures from neurosciences I think

most people have heard of the so-call

critical period stages of development

when the brain is essentially

hyperplastic to any input um for better

or worse this is a stage of Life called

childhood um and then of course people

throughout the number 25 after age 25

plasticity possible requires more effort

tension Etc and then sleep um so forth

but we know based on really beautiful

studies that if you

deprive someone of sensory input um for

even a few hours um and we're not

talking about sitting in a completely

blackened room um with no input but you

essentially limit the amount of sensory

input in the period that follows you get

a uh an opportunity for a hyperplastic

response to any stimuli and this just

makes sense if you understand Basics

about signal the noise in the visual

system and uh and the and the Brain it

just means when there's a lot of

background shatter of stuff it's harder

to see the stuff that matters and the

stuff that the brains should rewire to

um very computer sciency

neuroengineering type perspective but um

yes I would love for you to come up with

a a two-word description of of this um

it's not boredom induced plasticity it's

this quiet induced hyper plasticity or

something I don't know maybe we can Riff

on this together sometime not trying to

move into your space but um I have a

very practical question um and I'd love

to get a little more insight into the

structure of your days um but are you a

list maker like do you wake up in the

morning and make lists and cross things

off and then decide what are the key

items on that list no I'm a Time blocker

time blocker yeah yeah so I'm not a big

believer in to-do list I I like to

Grapple with the actual available time

like okay I have a meeting here I have

to like pick my kids up from school here

here's the actual hours of the day that

are free and where they fall all right

what do I want to do with that time well

okay now that I see that there's a lot

of gaps in the middle of the day here

they're short maybe there I'm going to

do a lot of small non-c conly demanding

thing oh this first 90 minutes in the

morning is like the main time I have

uninterrupted okay so this I'm going to

work on writing so i' I've been a big

believer of this since I was an

undergrad like you give your time a job

as opposed to having a list which is

somewhat orthogonal to what's actually

happening in your day and then just as

you go through your day saying what do I

want to try to do next which I think is

a lot less

efficient I'm going to try your method

um I try and structure my as much as I

can but it just never quite Works um do

you work late into the night or you no

no I'm I'm a 5:30 man okay yeah so 5:30

p.m that's it yeah more or less that's

my cut off now the the one exception is

um if I'm writing on Deadline I'll

sometimes like if I need to get more

writing done I can do uh an evening

writing session which which I got used

to through long experience of I used to

write my blog post at night after like

my kids went to bed now they're older

and they don't go to bed as early so

it's like the one thing have left that

I'll do after 5:30 it's like every once

in a while I'll do like a 90minut

evening writing block um but I call this

by the way this whole philosophy I call

fix schedule productivity and I've been

doing it since I was a grad student fix

the work hour schedule that's my

commitment I work in these hours um and

then work Downstream from that for

everything else so like this controls

like even what you decide to bring into

your life because you know I can't go

past a schedule um and it drives you to

be more Innovative in how you deal with

your time and schedule you have to be

efficient because you only have these

these hours here uh that's been you know

a signal for my my life since I was in

my early 20s fix the schedule and don't

work outside of that schedule now it's

your move to figure out anything you

want to do you have to make that work

you want to become a professor figure

out how to make that work you want to

write books while you're being a

professor figure out how to make that

work you don't have the option of just

throwing hours at it and you innovate a

lot I think when you have the

constraints where do sleep and exercise

fit into your schedule uh what's your

typical to bed time wakeup time what's

your um typical exercise r and the

reason I ask about this is because I

think nowadays we hopefully people

understand that exercise and cognitive

function are are inextricably linked

yeah and we're all going to live longer

lives and be sharper mentally by doing

exercise yeah so I mean my main like

actual working with weights I do this

pre- dinner right and this was an

innovation the last couple of years it's

it's a fantastic psychologically for me

this is a transition from work to like

family time after work so so I'll do

like 45 50 minutes uh garage gym you

know that we built during Co after I'm

done working before dinner and once you

get used to that like it also forces you

like I got to finish work because I got

to get this in before dinner but then

I'll do also quite a bit of walking if

it's not a teaching day so I'm not on

campus uh I do a lot of thinking on foot

um you know walking my kids to the bus

stop which isn't particularly close in

back so I'll do a lot of walking but

that's when I my serious exercise now is

always always pre- dinner then uh I want

to be up you know in our room by

10 and then at that point I don't track

so I have uh insomnia issues which which

actually has been a key driver of a lot

of the things I think about especially

with slow productivity is I'm very wary

because I can without any control on my

own just find myself unable to sleep

sometimes fall asleep or stay asleep

fall asleep yeah I mean I used to get it

really bad um not so bad now but you

know it comes and goes that really

affected the way I thought about

productivity because it's seemed like to

me the the definition of just I get

after it with a bunch of stuff wasn't

really on the table because if my notion

of productivity depended on me like

every day being able to just like hammer

on a bunch of stuff I'm very busy I have

lots of commitments what would happen if

I couldn't sleep I wouldn't be able to

do that so it I drifted naturally

towards a definition of productivity

which was it doesn't really matter if

you work tomorrow but it is important

that like this month you work like

writing a book it doesn't matter if you

work on your book chapter tomorrow in

particular but like this month you have

to spend a lot of time working on it so

it was uh like an insomnia compatible

definition of productivity was sort of

morphed into this idea of slow

productivity taking your your time with

it so it's interesting so like sleep

issues really shaped the way I thought

about work and put me on these much

longer time scales of productivity try

not to be dependent on any particular

day being critical to what you do I

don't want the high stress situation I

don't want the like I'm just going to 10

hours a day for the next 10 days we're

going to make this deal happen like I

can't operate in that space because I

worry about it any time my brain could

betray me and I could like lose sleep

for a couple days I think it's really

important that you're sharing this

because while people's challenges differ

I think oftentimes people hear the

content of my podcast or other podcasts

and think oh gosh I have to have

everything dialed in just right when in

fact most all of the tools and protocols

that have been discussed on the huberman

Lab podcast are in response to a

particular challenge that I've had um or

that others close to me have had had um

and I I love this well I I'm sorry that

you suffer from insomnia U we have a

series uh on sleep with Matt Walker in

which he lays out some some great tools

that we haven't yet discussed on the

podcast I'll just um send you I'll text

you I'll call you with with a short list

of those and hopefully they'll help but

as we do cover insomnia in some depth

but but I think it's important that

people realize that they can be very

productive with the hours that they have

and the the moments or hours of of high

focus clarity that they have um even if

they're not sleeping great even if

they're raising small children um

because that's the real world and

certainly that's the real world of

deadlines and Academia but um family and

um colds and flu and travel and jet lag

and arguments and all the happy stuff

too Vacations so um sounds like you're

very good at adapting your day to what's

going on around it but that you have

certain sort of committed time um it am

I correct in assuming that you have at

least one period of say 60 to 90 minutes

of real what you would call Deep work uh

let's say at least 5 days a week I know

that might be an underestimate but seems

like that's what what I'm that's what

I'm extracting from this that's the goal

right so so to me uh depending on the

season is how extreme I can get so the

the busiest season would be like a

teaching semester right but even then

I'm going to make sure that five days a

week I'm starting with deep work and the

non-teaching days I'll more than the

teaching days compare that to the summer

for example where like all I do for the

most part is deep work no meetings on

Mondays and Fridays all admin stuff is

uh midday to early afternoon Tuesday

Wednesday Thursday um everything else is

deep work you know just locked in you

know hours at a time but I want if I'm

not getting five days five days of

starting the day with deep work I'm I'm

unhappy right because I mean I keep

coming back to this is okay because I'm

not going to be able to I mean

fortunately the insomnia doesn't bother

hasn't bothered me in years but the the

the threat of it like completely shaped

the way I I think about things and

because I know I'm never going to be uh

have sort of like an Elon mus style

energy of like I can just take on seven

companies and make it happen right I

just don't have that ability um I've

always focused on the long game and to

me the long game plays out with get your

deep work time in you know just keep

working on the stuff you do best and get

better at it you know tomorrow doesn't

matter but if you if you're doing this

most days for the next four months like

that's going to matter you know and so I

often think about productivity in my own

life at the scale of decades what do I

want to do in my 20s you know okay what

do I want to do in my 30s you know what

do I want to do in my 40s you know U and

that helps like in my 30s I had a lot of

young kids like it's yeah I mean the

amount of time I could spend total

working is like much less right but I

could still think about what do I want

to do in my 30s how do I make that

happen let me make sure I'm pushing like

on those things then everything else I

can adapt to I can give here and there

you know it allows you to be very

adaptable when you're thinking about

what do I want to do you for the next 10

years it also means you're not on a

random Tuesday chiding yourself because

like why didn't I get three more hours

of working that becomes sort of a

nonsensical question when what you care

about is like what happens in the next

decade which is that's a long game it's

not about you know hustling today it's

about I came back to deep workk day

after day after day when other people

got distracted by Tik Tok you know like

I'm GNA you whatever it's that coming

back to what matters again and

again years ago I was in a scientific

competition SL battle and one of my

tools it wasn't really the kindest tool

was I would just suggest to the

competitor um great television series so

the wire you which at that time was

great and um we won a few they won a few

but um you know there's something very

addictive about those um yeah Netflix

shows I you know I mean they're

unbelievably addictive just even seeing

the the the um slider next episode

slider come up you can skip the intro

it's it's just like they've just dialed

in um so I suggest those to competitors

all the time no longer but um and who

knows what role they played but I just

noticed in myself um how distracting

they could be they could take me to when

I started watching Ozark yeah I found

myself waking up in the middle of the

night perhaps to use the restro or

something and then starting another

episode of O is wild and um I I wonder

whether or not a way to reverse engineer

one's way to uh productivity or reverse

hack our way to productivity would be to

think about all the ways that you would

um

benevolently deploy distraction for a

competitor and then um ask yourself

which which of those you're still

engaging in and think of yourself as

sort of in a competition with the highly

distracted version of oneself yeah um

because I think that one task um I think

for us today is to try and think about

for the person listening to this who's

not an academic um who's hearing about

all this distraction that enjoys some

social media you know how how can they

bring about the version of themselves in

terms of productivity but also presence

for family um presence with self um Etc

and um and if one isn't in a competitive

environment um then maybe it's about

setting up different um mental maps of

the self and then trying to pit them

against one another and be the best

version literally I think that's

interesting right like think about what

would be yeah what what I like this idea

of thinking about my competitor you know

what what would really give me a leg up

you know am I doing this I mean but I

would also add in here this is like a a

slower productivity type idea um you

figure out the thing you really care

about you figure out what you would need

to do to really show up for that thing

and then if you're doing that like give

yourself a break on everything else too

you know what I mean it's like I'm this

way with WR if I'm getting in my writing

time I have to write I'm very

uncomfortable when I'm not writing I

just write all the time articles books

you know I'm always writing if I'm

getting in my writing time then it's

like okay the rest of the day maybe like

this week was kind of a loss like the

kids were homesick or there was a crisis

at the University or whatever and like

I'm just trying to keep that under

control and like have good productivity

habits and like don't contact switch too

much and don't be too distracted but

still have your fixed of productivity

like end at 5:30 every day uh and time

block and try to be reasonable with that

time limit the damage but if I'm doing

the thing that ultimately really matters

I'm going to be pretty happy with it so

it's like moving the the definition of

am I happy with what I'm producing away

from a quantity metric

and to this more am I aggregating the

quality reps you know and like I think

in weightlifting this would make a lot

more sense right it's like yeah there's

a there's a certain number of like a

certain amount of time under load each

muscle group needs to be on and like if

I'm doing that I'm happy if I'm you know

weightlifting right there's no notion of

like why can't I why didn't I exercise

five hours more this or that and so I

sometimes try to think about my core

intellectual work that way like if I'm

getting in the core deep reps on the

thing I care most about which for me is

almost always writing then like the rest

I just want to it's it's like damage

control like I want to like do the other

stuff well and like not get too stressed

out about it and you know there's the

productivity habits then that are about

doing the stuff that matters and

protecting it and then there's the

habits that are all just about let's not

let the other stuff get out of control

um you know I find a little bit easier

you go easier on myself when I think

about it that way do you listen to music

while you work no well the data

certainly support not listening to music

or if you do listen to music listening

to music without lyrics yeah you have to

train even to get used to it right I

mean even to get used to music without

lyrics you got to get used to it I guess

your brain's building the filters um

some people I have met have trained

themselves to work with lyrical music

which I think it took them a long time

but I I met a self-published novelist

who does like a million words a year

which is crazy U and he blasts because

he has four kids he blasts Metallica in

NASCAR earphones and I like how do you

possibly write like this I think he just

trained his mind has just like a pure

auditory filter that it's uh that it's

he adapted I guess or maybe his books

aren't that good I don't know I but I

like silence or like background noise

but even background noise is hard I have

a hard time riding at cafes for example

like I really do like lack of stimuli do

you use visual blinders you know like

some people actually do this they you

it's like a hoodie and they'll like

really try and tunnel their Vision which

makes perfect sense from the perspective

of Neuroscience I mean your visual World

strongly constrains to the the

narrowness or the or the um broadness of

your cognitive Maps yeah I mean I just

have my spaces engineered right so like

where I write in my uh my library at

home all the interesting windows are

like behind me and over here I'm staring

across to Windows that just is right

next to the neighbors and like just

typically blinds down well as you say

this it just makes me want to you know

shout that you

know so many people who think they have

attention deficit issues um have

probably just put themselves in

compromised environments which include

smartphone um apps and things that I

mean like like there's absolutely no way

that they ought to be able to focus in

fact perhaps the fact that they can

focus at all is is miraculous given the

the constraints like trying to run with

shackles on yeah I I mean look we're

used to this with physical stuff right

if if we analogize to physical fitness

we're so used to all these details right

like it matters like what you're eating

like how you're sleeping the details of

how you train and when you train and how

much like we're very used to this idea

that that really matters we have no

intuitions for cognitive development or

application we we like treat our brain I

guess because we associate it so much

with a sense of self it's just this sort

of um an effable connection to us as a

person we don't think of it as much of

an organ as like a muscle or something

like this but we don't have a

sophisticated vocabulary at all for

thinking about how do you do stuff with

your brain which is the if you're in

knowledge work that's the whole game

like the whole game is this brain takes

an information adds value to it it

alchemize value out of out of mind stuff

and people who who alchemize value out

of you know muscles I'm a relief pitcher

in baseball I know like my whole job is

like to take a certain muscles on my

kinetic chain and use them to move a

ball very fast and if I if I really am

very careful about this I can have a

multi-million dollar deal those of us

who do this with our brain don't have

any of these intuitions it's just like

you know you have to uh work hard you

know and we're on our phone all day I

mean this has to be the physical

equivalent if you had like an endurance

athlete who was smoking all the time

like this is crazy like this is directly

contraint

it's like you have to treat what you're

doing like a a professional athlete with

their their game like prioritize sleep

prioritize food prioritize time

prioritize you know it's and we as you

point out we don't do that with the mind

we we tend for cognitive stuff we tend

to assume that we just flip a switch and

like Focus time and I think that's in

part because there are certain things

such as social media such as a great

movie such as certain social

interactions that can immediately and

completely harness our attention unlike

a marathon or where sure I could

probably finish the 26 miles or wherever

it is 26.2 3 I forget what it is um if I

had to do it right now to save my life

but it's not like I can just hit a

switch and and and I think that's the

that's the kind of um caveat here is

that the kid that loves video games can

definitely Focus yeah give him or her a

video game they love and boom they're

focused so it seems as if there's a

problem when they can't um but they know

they can right stuff's obvious when

States it but I think um it's worth

pointing out that this stuff needs

attention it needs it needs work yeah

which means and it starts with

vocabulary it starts with intention

starts with examples you know I mean

there should be a book like how to think

that we just give to everyone learn and

learn right yeah like how to use your

brain like the user manual you know like

that would be a very useful user manual

and I think in like Elite cognitive

professions this gets handed down as

lore and people figure it out right I

mean like this was like my experience

training at MIT in the group is that you

know everything was focused on getting

the most out of your mind and so it's

been passed down from you know person to

person it was also in the culture it was

in the way that people acted but most

places that do cognitive work don't have

these don't have these cultures yeah but

here's the advantage though here like

here's the Silver Lining right if you're

one of the few who cares about it it's a

huge Advantage right now like it's a

it's a big part of like my success I

don't think I have the highest

horsepower brain but like it I care a

lot about trying to you know get the

most out of it like to push it to like

the edges of like the Reps I can I can

actually RPMs I can actually get out of

it you know so it's an advantage as you

know someone who's listening to this you

start caring about your brain how it

works how you want to take care of it

what you want to get out of it you start

caring about this um you're going to get

advantages compared to the person right

next to you like suddenly in your office

or you know in in your grad program it's

gonna be like what's going on here yeah

you know little superpower and sometimes

there's a bit of a social cost upfront

yeah when I made the shift from being a

let's just call it a not serious student

to a serious student in college um and I

was coming from behind I had to put so

many more hours in and so

partying was a something happened fairly

seldom I still did it but and it was

isolating actually lived alone in a

studio apartment I mean it's isolating

there you're you're going to miss out on

certain things there there's some

deprivation there but um you eventually

end up in a position to do far more with

your life yeah of course what um you

said a moment ago also reminds me David

goggin the David goggin no no

introduction needed um

has been um quoted as saying you know

it's easy nowadays to be exceptional

because so many people are just

distracted and and wasting their time so

you put in 20% more effort to being more

focused or to uh toward your fitness

program and you're going to you're going

to surpass many many people so it's not

that hard to accelerate it's just it it

takes some practices that are um

socially challenging to implement it's

it's funny I had that same experience as

an undergrad that you had yeah because I

care preped I was impatient to be done

with college and like to do things with

my brain I want to be a writer I want to

be an academic but you know that takes a

lot of work and I I really cared a lot

about it so I was a I was a uh

fraternity brother for one day and I

went to the first meeting where they're

doing you know just held up pledging or

whatever and I remember I this not for

me and and I walked away I like I'm not

gonna because this is going to be

distracting like the the hangovers and

this and that and and you know I want to

focus on writing I want to learn how to

do this it is pretty isolating

yeah um and I know some people that were

in the Greek system that also benefited

tremendously from that I I wasn't one of

them um but uh I I definitely resonate

with it with so not everyone yeah I mean

way saying is like they don't all have

to be as intense as you and I were right

um but but caring about your brain it

gives you a lot of options and if you're

playing catchup it there's almost always

a social cost associated with it but you

eventually are joined by many other

people you find the other nerds that's

been there's a lot of the other the

other nerds Misfits and people who um

who are who are you know seeking

something uh they they come around you

find you you find them uh I'm interested

in this concept of burnout yeah um we

hear about

burnout um we associate with it too much

adrenaline lack of sleep tired and wired

um feeling disengaged the poet David

White has a beautiful um poem I forget

the title about burnout where he says

that that I think the cure to burnout is

wholeheartedness um and I I always like

that's a bit more abstract than the

kinds of things we're talking about

today um but I like that because there's

something about

wholeheartedness um really leaning into

something with with the the true desire

to be there and to explore it no matter

how hard that is um the opposite extreme

of burnout yeah well I mean I think

burnout in if we're thinking knowledge

work like people with office jobs my

diagnosis there it's not exactly

quantity of work that that does play uh

role it's the kind of work because I I

think what's happening what what's been

deranging actually for people in these

jobs is uh workloads are getting larger

right in part because communication is

low friction and we always want to be

demonstrating activity because of pseudo

productivity and people are always

asking us to do things we say yes

everything we say yes to brings with it

administrative overhead right which is

talking about the thing but not actually

doing it so it's like emails about the

commitment it's a meetings about the

commitment um because our workloads are

larger what happens then is more and

more of our time has to service this

administrative overhead because

everything we say yes to brings with it

its own overhead it adds up it

Aggregates right so now more and more of

our day is spent talking about work and

not actually doing the work and then

make it even worse it's not like this

overhead is all batched together it's

sort of spread out throughout your day

so it's also putting you in that state

of uh constant distraction which makes

it hard to do work what I think is

burning people out is they're now in

this state where they're saying I'm

spending most of my day talking about

work sending emails attending meetings

very little time is left to actually

make progress on the work and then the

the workload gets larger and larger this

by itself is deranging right this it

feels like you're in some sort of um

nihilistic experiment like what what is

this why do I have six hours of meetings

I'm not actually this can't be the right

way to work um and then what happens of

course is you have to recover time in

the morning in the afternoon maybe after

kids go to bed they try to actually make

progress so now you also have just a

straight where quantity is so you're

working more hours there's an energy

drain but I think that psychological

piece of this can't possibly make sense

that like I am checking email once every

two minutes and spent six hours in Zoom

like doing very little actual high value

work like this can't be the right way to

work that's what I think the burnout

epidemic right now is coming from is

it's that psychological component of we

all know this is stupid but no one is

saying the emperor has no clothes on we

all know that the amount of email and

meetings I'm doing is such a waste of my

salary like this is a highly trained

brain like I could be writing these

reports or this code or creating these

business strategies um but we're all

just accepting this so I think the

absurdity of the current situation is

creating as much of the burnout as it is

just we also have to add these extra

hours there just like a straight

aggregation of work

quantity it's almost analogous to taking

professional athletes or would be

professional athletes and having them do

a bunch of other physical labor so that

they're showing up not fresh for the the

game and little micro injuries and

distracted and um and no one's admitting

that this doesn't make sense and

everyone's just getting injured and no

one's talking about it so it's the

absurdity of it would drive people crazy

and it is driving people

crazy it it's so difficult though

because certain things like smartphones

are very useful on the hospital Ward I

mean doctors can communicate nurses

communicate so much faster now um

parents and kids can communicate who's

going to pick up the kids nope got stuck

in traffic you go this way alternate

route Google Maps and and on and on so

it's all woven in with stuff that's

that's also highly adaptive it makes it

tough yeah you know it's almost like the

work of being a selective filter yeah is

half the work of trying to deload the

cognitive systems that would allow you

to do deep work yeah well and in the

workplace is even harder than that right

because because part of the issue is

email and slack let's just say digital

communication um I spent a lot of time

studying that closely right from like a

techn Critic standpoint the introduction

of digital communic to the workplace and

the problem there is the reason why

we're checking this all the time it's

not some like individual

habit deoptimization it's not oh I

should just check this less often what

happened is when we introduce low

friction digital communication to the

office this emerging consensus came

about that said great let's just use ad

hoc messaging as our major way of

collaborating like we can just figure

things out on the fly I can just be like

Andrew what's going on with the whatever

and you can answer me and I can send it

back um this was very convenient the

activation cost was low and so this is

how we began actually collaborating on

work now what happens is as workloads

get higher we now have many things at

the same time they're all generating

these asynchronous back and forth

conversations most of these have some

sort of time sensitivity right so if I

email you and say like what's going on

with like the guests coming later today

we have to kind of resolve this before

later today um so now it's not just that

these messages are going back and forth

with all these different threads but I

have to keep checking my inbox to make

sure the gap's not too big this is not a

failure of habits it's not a moral

failure it's uh necessitated by the fact

that all these back and forth

conversations have to keep moving

forward so it is difficult then if

you're in this system to step out by

yourself because this is the way we're

collaborating is these asynchronous back

and forth messages and I can't disengage

myself from that without slowing things

down like from a like a mathematical

Game Theory point of view it's a

suboptimal Nash equilibrium it's not the

right place not the right way to run

this the the the utility value of this

configuration is low but no one

individual can deploy a different

strategy that's going to be higher value

we're stuck in it right and so now it

becomes really hard for an individual

just to say I want to check my email

less often it it's built in systemically

into this hyperactive hive mind workflow

and the only way to break free from the

suboptimal configuration is to basically

have the organization itself do like a

really high cost change to the rules of

the game these are how we're

collaborating now we're not using email

freely anymore we're going to use this

system instead here you it's a very

expensive top down procedure to free

ourselves from the suboptimality it's

like in the world of work that's

partially why this is such an

intractable problem I I tried to write a

book about this recently um and it was

really hard to gain traction because

it's not easy to solve this like no

individual can move out of this and you

have to put in a lot of energy as an

organization to try to to change this um

so it's in some sense email is a a more

insu problem than social media on the

phone because at least over here this is

my engagement with this and I might have

these moderate behavioral addictions but

I could make differences here in my

company oh this is much worse this is

like a systemic problem it's a an

emergent deterministic work impact on a

economic social cultural system that was

completely dynamical and went in a way

we didn't really expect so it's it's a

it's a really tough situation sometimes

especially in the world of work how do

we get out of this constant distraction

it's why you know I wrote deep work and

I was like well why don't people just do

this that's why they don't just do this

because it's not so easy to to reclaim

this time well it's like um when I was a

graduate student in postto I was focused

on eating pretty well meaning just

clean-ish food and um people talked less

about that at that time I was also

really committed to exercise since I was

16 um people were less committed to that

in the academic sector at that time now

I think it's common place for people

like I'm going to my yoga class I'm

doing my zone 2 cardio I go to the gym

you know men and women do this you know

I remember having like like sneak off to

the gym like oh yeah um and um you know

you felt like a bit of a of an oddball

if you were the one bringing your lunch

to the the you know the pizza lunch in

not there's anything wrong with pizza

love pizza but I was trying to eat well

I have for a long time I feel better

when I do and I'm grateful that I did

but you get some weird looks like oh do

you have an eating disorder or something

like that that's what people would say

then yep um now people would probably

look and go that looks better than the

pizza people start to understand so I

think there needs to be a cultural shift

yep um and I think there has been a

cultural shift around food and exercise

certainly food meditation sleep y um I

think people are far more accepting and

actually encouraging of their workers

and co-workers um taking really good

care in order to function better for

longer yeah I think it's going to be the

next Revolution and it's going to be a

revolution that's going to unlock we're

talking on the scale of like a trillion

dollar GBP when we go through knowledge

work and have this revolution I call it

like the cognitive Revolution

let's take really seriously how the

brains of our workers work like these

are our number one assets like not to be

too mechanistic about it but what is our

main capital asset if we're a knowledge

work organization we have some buildings

but it's really these brains that we

have like employment contracts with

these brains create value let's take

seriously how the brains actually

operate and as soon as we do we'll say

oh my God these brains are checking

email once every two minutes what a

disaster it's like if we had a car

factory and we spent $20 million on one

of these German robots that can you know

put cars on the doors or whatever and we

just weren't taking care of it and it

was like rusy and it was dropping the

doors and the production pipeline was

going down like this is crazy we got to

take care of this equipment right um

when we have the cognitive Revolution

the sort of cognitive Capital Revolution

and knowledge work I think it's going to

unlock a trillion dollar GDP I think

that's how unproductive we've been if we

just think in the pure raw terms of

brains

producing stuff that's worth money like

if it's like super deterministic and

kind of inhumane about it uh so much is

being lost because we're in these

suboptimal Nash equilibriums everyone

just email everyone all the time

everyone's just on slack all the time

that when we finally have the revolution

to get over that it's going to be a

massive economic hit and you know AI

might play a role in this right because

maybe AI once it gets planning

capabilities is going to be able to take

the burden of some of this back and

forth planning I think it's easier to

get there with cultural shifts I don't

think we have to wait to build an email

capable chat GPT to do this like you

could solve this tomorrow this is

cultural as much as it's tool-based but

I think it's going to be a huge

Revolution when we get there akin to uh

like the assembly line in manufacturing

which was like a 10x Improvement in

productivity metrics when we figured out

the continuous motion assembly line with

interchangeable parts was a massive it

created this uh productivity engine I'm

using the economics in productivity now

um you know dollars per worker uh the

economic miracle that came from this

process-based industrial Innovations in

the the late 19 early 20th century that

the money generated by that the wealth

generated by that was the foundation of

the modern West like the whole world as

we know it was built there's these huge

latent potentials um and right now I

don't think we're there with the brain

and I think it's going to be a huge

Revolution it's just it's just difficult

right it's not an easy Revolution to

start but I think it's going to change

whole Industries in ways that we're it's

going to be hard to even imagine yeah

and I think as long as there are

individuals who either by virtue of lack

of family or other constraint or by

virtue of just having more energy and

requiring less sleep because these

individuals do exist out there um there

will always be these individuals that

can kind of apply themselves more than

others in the sense that they can get in

earlier and stay in later um and and

that trying to be

them is not a good idea that we all need

to optimize for our you know best

balance of productivity deep work and um

work life balance for lack of a of a

better term uh when I was a graduate

student

um I was really committed to My My Craft

and I remember that hearing about a

student he's now a professor a very

accomplished OC chronol just um I'll

just give him a name because he he did

this thing he doesn't know me but I

heard about this guy that had been in

the department Randy Nelson and everyone

was like he used to work a 100 hours a

week yeah so I was like all right great

I'm going to start logging my work hours

silently I'm going to do 102 hours and I

ended up with a flu and an autoimmune

condition I literally had an autoimmune

condition I've never had one since and

then I stopped working that much started

working quote unquote smarter on the

lines of many of the things you're

saying here although I didn't implement

or know about all these tools that time

and of course the autoimmune thing went

away it was a fairly minor thing never

had it again but you can destroy

yourself simply by working more yeah um

even if it's deep work so that the

solution is not necessarily more it's um

just like with exercise I guess that

stand it's obvious but I I thought I'd

share that anecdote because uh Randy

Nelson taught me what I'm capable of and

what I'm not capable of yeah well the

other thing that happens by the way too

it's not just who's capable of working

more get these advantages there's these

other unpredictable inequities um I

talked at a law firm once years ago

about deep work and I was uh invited by

a group it was actually a a group of

women lawyers who had a reading group

and they said part of what was happening

at this Law Firm is that people who were

uh disagreeable like just sort of gruff

and jerks would get asked to do less of

what they would call non- promotable

activities or can you organize this or

whatever which meant they had more time

to do deep work uh which meant they

would do better and they would rise

faster and then what was happening then

was you had accidentally built a system

that said let's make sure we have a fast

track for like our most disagreeable

employees to the partnership level where

actually you need to be pretty agreeable

because you're uh client acquisition is

really on the partners and so they

accidentally had you know push towards

this this uh inequity and these type of

inequities happen all the time when we

leave it like halfhazard and okay so

who's doing less work like like well I

just sort of like I'm Gruff and people

don't like me or I have something going

on at my house that means I don't have

the the same time to do this um and you

end up pushing people up these paths

that might not be who you really want to

select because you're selecting for uh

things that are sort of unrelated to

their actual underlying Talent or like

how much they can actually produce and

so I'm I'm with you on that yeah it's a

complex problem but a tractable one

nonetheless I'm interested in your

thoughts on remote work versus in-person

work and the hybrid model yeah um I've

heard uh about a hybrid model recently a

friend who owns a big um record company

here in Los Angeles said that um they

require one in-person day per week

unless on sick leave um they require one

at home day per week and then the other

day is it's at your discretion yeah it's

kind of an interesting model for in a

five day a week model yeah I mean I my

my proposals I've thought about this a

lot is okay if you're going to do hybrid

work and I I propose this Atlantic

article recently which created some

positive some negative waves I like

here's the way you should do it uh

synchronize the schedule here's at home

days here's an office days but for

everybody for everybody okay or have a

few of these schedules but like groups

of people who work together have the

same schedule but then make the rule at

home days no meetings no email like

that's the way to really get the full

benefit out of hybrid work when we're in

the office we have meetings and we can

talk about work and we're at home we're

just doing work and we can do it without

distraction and we can just stay deep

and really turn through things I think

it would really make a big difference on

the overload issue I think it would be

much more sustainable remote work so I

did a lot of coverage of remote work as

this was first emerging the early

pandemic there I became convinced uh I

was doing this twice a month column for

the New Yorker back then that was just

looking at the pandemic transforming

work and I came away with the idea that

remote work can be um fantastic but it's

difficult and it can't just be do the

job you were doing in person but just do

it at home and we have zoom and we'll

figure it out like if you're going to be

full F remote we have to rethink what

work means for that uh and there's a lot

of differences it needs to have it needs

to be way more structured it probably

needs to be um you're working on less

things it's very clear what you're

working on the collaboration is much

more defined and much less frequent you

probably need to be freed from the sort

of hyperactive hive my dance of we're

just emailing each other all day and in

Zoom meetings all day you have to sort

of

reconstitute what a remote work job is I

think before it works and we know this

in part because software Developers pre-

pandemic we're one of the only knowledge

sectors to have a a really successful

track record with remote work that is

the only sector within knowledge work

where we had large companies fully

remote they did that because their jobs

they they had really structured them

around these these agile workload

Management Systems where okay here's

when we talk about work here's how long

it takes here's how we assign you new

work you work on one thing at a time you

sprint till it's done they had all this

structure around work which then it

didn't really matter if you in the

office or not so the less structured

work is the more free-for-all the more

you need we have to be in the office so

like I'm a huge fan of full-time remote

work but I think those jobs have to look

very different than like a standard 2019

job yeah I've always done a hybrid of

remote work um I used to take Wednesday

mornings at home from the lab yeah um

but nowadays it's wild because

especially during the pandemic but still

now I mean you can do the whole day in

pajamas and getting work done and I love

this idea of no um no email and limiting

text and social media while at home

doing work to really extract the most

out of it yeah are there any data um

maybe from the pandemic era or um prior

or Beyond about zoom and things like it

in terms of how they enhance or diminish

or perhaps have no effect on

productivity like Zoom specifically and

and meetings I we just found ourselves

in Zoom all the time for a while that

was the bigger problem I mean so so

there is data that says for example a

hybrid meeting some people are online

some people aren't these are less

effective meetings they don't they don't

work as well um but the bigger problem

with zoom I think was the quantity and

and part of it was just the the

technology involved right so so if we're

in the office together and I have a

relatively quick thing to talk to you

about I can just grab you and we can

talk about this and then the footprint

is going to be five minutes that's not

just that it's five minutes it's five

well allocated minutes because I'm

probably going to use the social cues of

your doors open or you're going to get

coffee anyways right um in the zoom era

instead we would say well we should set

up a meeting right because you know we

have to talk about this but if you think

about a standard online calendar it's

difficult to have a meeting that's less

than 30 minutes long I mean you just you

have to drag it you know I mean 30

minutes is like the default smallest

length meeting so we're taking a lot of

informal back and forth and inflating

the time I think that was part of it so

we just had too much Zoom going on right

if it was just I do one meeting a week

now it's on Zoom it used to be in person

we were all on Zoom we used to all be in

person it's that's not that big of a

deal it's maybe like a slightly less

effective meeting but it's fine it's

good enough but if it's I have 4X more

meetings than I used to because of the

the inherent inefficiencies of having to

go to prescheduled Virtual for basically

all collaboration that could be a huge

problem the data I saw from Microsoft

the last data I saw was a 22% increase

in these meetings from 2020 to now and

it's not a number it's not like it

peaked and then it started coming back

down again once we went to hybrid it we

just it's just high and it's still

creeping up right that's a lot of time

that just vanished and we sort of

pretend like it didn't but that's a lot

of time that is not actively working on

things and just talking about work or

talking about other stuff while we get

around to talking about work I think

it's a real issue is there a top three

list of things that if you had a magic

wand you would see everyone do um each

day you know if you had if you had three

wishes um yes what would they be

enhancing work creativity focused work I

mean I think you and I both um clearly

agree that there's not just great value

in terms of productivity yeah but a

great degree of of Life Enrichment yeah

like a deep level of enrichment in terms

of Happiness feelings of well-being con

time for connectivity with others

lessons about deep work that can be

exported to time with others where we

are really present Etc just so much be

gained from these from engaging in deep

work and things like it that you've

written about in your various books um

and talk about on your podcast are you

know is there a top three yeah yeah yeah

so if I do three I would say Okay um

first of all with your workload simulate

something like a pull system instead of

a push system and what I mean by that is

when you keep track of what you're

working on have the the top part of that

list which is I'm actively working on

these things and keep that top part of

your list to like two or three things

everything else is in the bottom part of

the list it's to work on next and it's

in an ordered queue and so when you

finish something that you're working on

you pull something new to take a slot

from the list below right so what I'm

trying to do with that advice is reduce

all this administrative overhead because

now even if like you can't get away you

have to say yes to these things because

it's the way like your your organization

works the stuff that's in the waiting to

work on Q you said I don't have meetings

about that I don't do emails about that

I wait till I'm actively working on it

and I only actively work on three things

at a time now I'm going to finish those

things really quickly because I don't

have 15 items worth of meetings I'm

going to every day so things are going

to pull up there pretty quickly and so

the rate at which I'm accomplishing

things will probably be higher than it

was before but I only work on three

things actively you could even make this

visible it's in a shared document if you

want to when someone asks you to do

something new tell them to put it on the

end of your Cube they like oh okay so

like Andrew is not working on this right

now he's working on these three things

and there's seven things here and I'm

adding something number eight so I know

not to expect something for a while um

in fact I can keep checking this list

until I see Andrew is working on it so I

can see it's making progress and then

once I know he's working on it I can

start email him about it and we can do

just a normal type of overhead you would

have with with projects right uh that

alone is going to have a huge difference

like now the amount of distraction your

day is going to uh plumm it because

that's generated from overhead of things

you've agreed to do and that's going to

that's going to plummet that down all

right so that'd be number one could I

just thank you could I just ask a few

questions about that just to clarify so

for I use myself as an example selfishly

but then of course I don't know what

everyone else out there is pursuing but

so substitute the specifics I'm about to

insert here for whatever it is that you

care about in your life so um

researching podcasts yeah SOLO podcasts

in particular for me is my major task in

life these days yeah uh with respect to

work so that would be top of the list

yeah um and then

um there could be two other items on

this you know top of queue um would

daily activities like like exercise

Social time with loved ones Etc would

that be included there or we're talking

specifically about work yeah let's just

keep just work okay so it would be you

know podcast prep you might podcast

prepcast you might have the particular

topic though right right okay so right

I'm working on an episode right now

about about skin Health yeah um you

could you could have two different

episode topics you're prepping those

could both be up there yep so skin

Health allergies episode These are that

I'm spending a lot of time on um months

in fact yeah right and then your third

might be something that that involves

the uh the media company something

around the business side like okay we're

trying to figure out um a plan for

whatever right content for

forand Association or something okay got

it great so that those three would be

top of the list and every day until

those are done they could sit top of the

list and then there are a number of

items underneath those that fall under

whatever yeah and and critically when

these other items come up right like oh

this is like a topic for example I want

to do a show on you have a place to put

it where it's not being forgotten or

here's a here's a business idea like we

need to figure out like whatever we want

to add do something with our camera

configure okay put on the list so it's

not being forgotten like it it's on

there and you can see where it is not

only is it on there but like this could

be shared among your team so as people

had extra information or things to add

to one of these projects they can add it

to it on the list right so the

information is aggregating so if you use

a tool like Trello for this Trello

spelled t r l l o okay is it an app it's

a webbased service that the metaphor is

just index cards in piles it right but

they're virtual um but you can flip over

the index card digitally attach files

write notes and and so I use Trello for

my own organization what I'm working on

so now you have a place where you can

gather like oh we just I just heard

about something that's relevant to this

thing I need to work on you have a place

to put it like it goes onto the Trello

card or you could do this with shared

documents doesn't matter you're just

like literally typing things into a

Google doc you know or a whiteboard or a

whiteboard yeah yeah you could be we're

keeping track of these things right I'm

going to do this by the way yeah well I

mean I'm a big believer in this and then

everyone can see what you're working on

um and then uh but the key thing is if

it's not in your active list you don't

have meetings about it and you don't

have emails about it right like if

people have ideas or things they just

add it to the card so when that gets up

to the active list we can work on all

the information there we haven't

forgotten anything and what two-word uh

language do you use to describe this

first point this method I love this I

called it a pull based pull based right

what pulled up you pull into the so

you're fixing in advance here's how much

concentration I have to give on work and

you pull stuff into that the alternative

is push based which is how most

organizations run which is when I want

you to do something I just push it onto

you and now you have to deal with it got

it um I once heard email described as a

public post to-do list yeah that made me

scared of email in a way that nothing

else had um it's newport's pull-based

system I called it that by the way um

this is what in the a lot of the advice

in the first uh one of the chapters of

the new book is basically how do you get

away with implementing this and when you

have a boss and there's like all sorts

of different so you're Your Own Boss you

can just say this is what we're doing

here's the board but there's a lot of

like subtle ways you can do yeah um

right so that's number one that's number

one the um Cal newport's pull-based

system I'm going to do this and I'm

actually going to report back on this at

some point um you won't see the post on

social media because you're not there

but others will all right so that's one

all right number two would be multiscale

planning okay so now this is planning uh

you're planning on three different

scales daily

weekly seasonally or quarterly however

you want to think about it right so you

have a a plan for like the semester the

season or the quarter like this is what

I'm working on these are the big

objectives I want to hit here's the

reminders to myself about like what

matters like remember like I'm I'm

overhauling my my workout routine we're

trying to like do this with the podcast

you look at that scale of planning every

week when you build your weekly plan and

the weekly plan it just free form text

you don't need anything you know any

special tools your weekly plan you're

looking at the actual calendar all right

uh what from my bigger scale plan my

seasonal quarterly plan what am I trying

to make sure I can make progress on this

week and you you confront the reality of

your week you see where's the empty

space or there's the busy space you also

change what's on your plate right here

you know if I cancel this thing that

frees up that whole morning which means

like I could really make progress on

this which I really want to make

progress on so great I'm going to cancel

that thing on Friday so you're looking

at the whole week as one unit then every

day you look at your weekly plan like

okay so so I'm going to use this when I

make my plan for the day and when you do

your daily plan you do time

blocking now I'm every I'm giving a job

every minute on my workday not my day

after work but every minute on my

workday I'm time blocking so I call it

time blocking because you're literally

drawing blocks around the free time okay

this I'm working on this this I'm

working on this so you're making a plan

for your day that is informed by the

weekly plan

so in multiscale planning you have like

the the big picture things you care

about trickle their way all the way down

to okay I'm what am I going to do during

this hour during the day um but you

don't have to

Grapple every this what most people do

every time I'm figuring out what to do

next I'm not grappling with all these

scales at the same time what are my

objectives what's my big plan what's

going on this week uh you're you're

dealing with each of these scales when

the time is right and so when it finally

gets down to it's now 3:00 you're just

doing what that block is and you figured

out that block earlier today when you

looked at your weekly plan that weekly

plan reflected what was in your semester

plan which you figured out you spent a

whole afternoon working on at the

beginning of the semester so multiscale

planning uh it keeps you focused on what

matters it prevents you from wandering

through your day and how you disperse

your energy um and it gives you control

over your time on different scales from

like canceling major ongoing obligations

to just being more efficient about what

you do during a given day uh so I swear

by multiscale planning to try to keep

this whole lumbering ship that is sort

of like Kell Newport um aiming in the

towards the right Shores you know like

keep correcting and keeping it aimed

back I love this I this is more or less

what I do with my physical workouts

every week I know I'm going to get three

resistance training sessions two or

three cardiovascular training sessions I

know I'm going to train my legs once

it's either going to be on depending on

travel Sunday Monday or Tuesday I'll

train torso muscles in the middle of the

week I'll train sort of um limb

accessory muscles on a Saturday yeah

long run on Sunday or hike on Sunday or

some other day there'll be some sort of

hit workout in the middle of the week

and ideally there's a jog in there too

and you can adjust it a little bit based

on the reality of the week yeah I might

double up for two days then take a day

off I have my ideal schedule but

sometimes it gets compromised and um and

then I do that for 16 we Cycles where I

vary the kind of intensity load Etc um

and I've done this for years and it's

just kind of works for me um now with

cognitive work I tend to do this it

tends to be more deadline based yeah but

I think that the um the pull-based

system is really going to help um if I

dovetail it with this multiscale

planning um I love this and you can see

the deadlines now you see them coming

right so that's part of what's nice

about multiscale planning is you know

the deadlines coming up and so when

you're doing your semester planning you

start thinking like okay the big

deadlines like when I get to December I

need to be really starting getting after

this thing that's going to be due I've

got a book due yeah so then you know and

so this really helps me bookwriting

because now when I'm planning it's like

you know a year in advance I know this

month I need to get like roughly the

rough draft of chapter 2 done you know

and then that trickles down to my week

where I'm going to make sure I have

enough time cleared to like be on track

for finishing it and then that trickles

into my day now I know to like block

those mornings to work on it so it all

it all works together an added bonus of

the daily scale is I would say

communication should get its own block

email social media whatever that's like

you communicating with the outside world

goes into your time block plan so if

your block doesn't include that you

don't do it so it's like this block is

writing it's not email it's not social

media so the rule is really simple I'm

not going to use email or social media

um but I still need to do email at some

point so I have to put a block in for it

and when I'm in my email blocks I'm

doing the email if I need to go on

social media to see what's going on with

like the latest episode or something I

got to give that time and then you can

mono Focus because then uh it's a

psychological hack but basically um when

you particularly would you schedule

communication and distraction now the

only thing you have to muster willpower

to do is obey the single rule of I'm

follow me in my blocks if you don't do

that if you're like I just sometimes do

email and social media sometimes I don't

now what you have to do is just

constantly be having this debate is now

the right time to do this I know I'm

going to do it at some point today why

not now well what about now what about

now like you're just constantly asking

yourself right that's impossible right

that's going to drain you but if all you

have to do instead is say my commitment

today is to follow my blocks and I get I

really feel good when I do it and like I

check off a box if I do give yourself

some feedback here it's a much easier

cognitive battle to win than just trying

to be reasonable about well let me wait

a little longer to check my email like

you're going to lose that battle you

know eight times out of 10 which is like

enough to to Really overcome it so

that's like a a hidden bonus of time

blocking is now you can really get your

arms around separating different

cognitively distinct activities this is

where the analogy of time restricted

eating comes to mind yep um again not

that that's the best way to lose weight

or maintain weight or it's its role in

longevity is still debated Etc but I

think for many people not all but for

many people the decision that they do

not eat during certain time blocks and

they do eat in other time blocks is just

far more tractable in the real world for

them than trying to limit portion size

decide whether or not they're going to

eat they going to pass the cookie and

have a little bit nope they're they're

in their fasting window it's just it

simplifies the issue yep and as a

consequence I think it improves um

Behavior overall although the clinical

trials point to some mixed results with

that last statement again I don't want

the uh nutritionist does after me the

point is the time blocking and the and

the the the thick black lined of the yes

no the binary yes no as um eat don't eat

or single commit email communicate don't

communicate in a given time BL I think

that's that really um is what it's about

it it honors the the the power of of

those sorts of neural computations

and there's another hidden bonus of time

blocking too is visually distinct blocks

so what I do for example is I put uh

double thick line around deep work

blocks focusing on some not just deep

work but deep work on things I really

care about this just gives you a visual

record how much deep work am I doing

right like it's this diagnosis I use a a

paper based time block planner so uh you

flip through those pages and you're just

looking for dark blocks right so you see

if I see I don't have a lot of dark

blocks

I say this is my whole job like my whole

life I've been trained in a lab to think

really hard about things and write

things why do I not have very many dark

blocks you get this feedback mechanism

so there's all these bonuses when you

start doing this type of doing this type

of planning before you tell us about

number three I often have fantasized

about a web-based program that seems to

run countercurrent to much of what

you're talking about but goes back to

this the Whiteboard MIT Observer stuff

that you talked about at the beginning

which is I often longed for okay I need

to write today I need to write a book or

I'm going to do some podcast prep I'm

going to pop up a few Windows of other

people that are also doing deep work and

we're not going to communicate in fact

if we do or if music comes through on

the microphone or somebody coughs that's

going to be considered a distraction but

if does anyone want to join me for some

deep work yes where we don't communicate

and I've often thought I would just pay

someone to be there yeah to just sit

there and um but I haven't done that

there are multiple companies that do

this okay yeah it's interesting where

you you're you're online with with uh or

in person with just other people doing

deep work so a deep work Club the

challenge is synchronizing schedules

because I might want to do this with

somebody on the east coast and they

might not be doing deep work at the same

time and a recording isn't the same

because then you know they're not really

watching but but there's something

really to this right I especially for at

home workers or people like me that work

often in isolation students do this

right dissertation boot camps I don't

know if if you had this experience but

Georgetown does a lot of colleges do

this uh okay everyone working on their

dissertation we're all going to get

together and we're going to work on it

together because they would often have

me come speak at these things earlier in

my career it would just be a bunch of

grad students they were just coming to

the same space and they would work for

like okay 90 minutes and then they would

have like a speaker come in or launch

and 90 so the the group cohesion of

everyone working deeply at the same time

writers Retreats are the same way we all

go to the same house in the middle of

nowhere um so that we're all just going

to encourage each other to write because

that's all what everyone's doing here

yeah so social pressure I'm with you I

was thinking if I ever needed to you

know put a big extension on my house

that's that's what I should do just like

okay pay me money and I will sit there

on zoom and do deep work with you this

is my secret plan i' pay money I'd pay

money to do deep work in parallel with

you by with a virtual window there

there's C in his office doing that I

think there's something nice about

having some knowledge of who people are

you know like hey logging in today yeah

yeah all right let's get down to it set

the timer and go and then you know AA

I'm out you know working at the library

academic libraries why do people do that

right just everyone there is working

right yeah no I'm a big believer in that

there's really something sticky to that

okay number three all right uh have a

shutdown

ritual which clearly demarcates uh the

end of work in the start of the night

after

work and the shutdown ritual so it has

to uh you have to close open Loops right

so you got to make sure this is like a a

review type period let me look back at

my inbox and look at my plan let me look

at my you know my time block in my

calendar um really make sure I there's

nothing urgent that needs to be dealt

with that I didn't and there's nothing

that's just in my head that I don't want

to forget it's not written down

somewhere like take care of all of that

right so you review all these things you

get what am I going to do tomorrow you

don't have to build your whole plan for

tomorrow but you have a sense for it um

and then you need some sort of

demonstrative thing you do to indicate

that you finished the routine right so

my my longtime newsletter readers know I

used to actually have a I would say

schedule shutdown complete like a crazy

phrase right it's not how normal people

talk right um now I have a planner that

has like a checkbox that says shut down

complete next to it the reason why that

it's a demonstrative anchor is that you

use this then for cognitive behavioral

therapy because at first people have a

hard time shutting down work I mean I

invented this because I had a very hard

time shutting down working on my

dissertation I just what if this proof

doesn't work and blah blah blah so what

you do is when you're you get a

rumination post shut down down hey what

about what's going on with our work are

we doing the right thing do we forget

this or that instead of engaging in the

rumination well it's like no I think

we're okay let me think about my

schedule tomorrow what's my plan you

instead can just say um I said that

crazy phrase or I checked that box I

wouldn't have said that phrase unless I

had gone through everything and made

sure that I had a good plan and

nothing's being missed and it was okay

to shut down work because of that I'm

not going to engage with you rumination

I said the weird thing let's get back to

what we're doing this is like cognitive

behavior therapy that after a month or

so you were really able to actually uh

effortlessly disengage from work and do

everything you know all the other stuff

that matters right without having the

constant ruminations about work which

gives your mind an actual break to you

know do other things so I mean this is

more mental health than productivity but

for me it was critical I mean I can

really remember when I came up with this

you know exactly where I was in my grad

student career and there's just too much

too many ideas and concerns that were

just roiling and like once I did this

you know it took a few weeks and then I

could actually like shut down and go on

and do other things yeah the par

associative nature of the brain can make

it um really problematic if you're

thinking about work at the dinner table

you start to associate the dinner table

with work I mean when Matt Walker came

here to do this six-part series that's

soon to be released um and we were

discussing insomnia he said you know one

of the major issues with insomnia is

people who have trouble falling asleep

or staying asleep will often stay in bed

when they can't sleep and then the bed

becomes associated with challenges with

sleep that you know hence the

recommendation that virtually every

sleep coach and sleep scientists um

recommends that people actually if they

can't sleep for 20 minutes or so of

effort then you get up and leave the bed

and go someplace else until until you

feel sleepy enough to go back and try or

fall asleep on the couch elsewhere um I

put put that in as a as a as a note to

you um but um this seems incredibly

important also for enrichment of of

relationships with spouses and children

and people in your life I mean the the

problem is the first thing that we ask

people when they walk in the door

typically was how was work today yeah

how was work what' you do today yeah

tell me about your school day tell me

about your work maybe we need to come up

with better questions yeah like here's

something interesting we could do or

here's like something I read about

unrelated the work yeah no I think that

I think it makes a huge difference uh

and again there's all these meta

benefits for these things so so one of

the meta benefits for all of these is

also these are all very structured

you'll begin to build a reput

as someone who is very careful about how

they manage themselves in their time

like if you're doing multiscale planning

and certainly if you're doing you know

pole Bas workload management people are

going to start thinking this is someone

who thinks a lot about like how they

manage their workday and how things

happen this gives you massive leeway

right yeah because we we think what like

our colleagues want from us is

accessibility but really why they want

accessibility is because uh they have no

clarity about you know are we going to

do this thing are we going to remember

to do this thing

um am I going to have to keep bothering

you you know what if I don't really

think you have your act together I just

wish you would just do this right away

or respond to me right away because I'm

going to have to worry about this until

I hear back from you that you did it

like accessibility is born from lack of

trust or lack of clarity right so if you

have the reputation of someone who

really has to act together you can for

example lean into a shutdown I don't do

email at all and people they don't think

that you're being lazy or that you're

not keeping up with the work they're

like no like Andrew has his act together

with this stuff I trust him when you

show them something like this workload

management system like this is where the

queue is like I can't get to this yet

like okay that's reasonable like you

have your act together so there's this

meta benefit of starting to get a little

bit more structured about your your time

and cognitive work is that people will

give you more flexibility to work with

the better you get at actually working

with you know the resources you have as

your reputation grows um your autonomy

grows yeah and of course as your

reputation grows um more gets thrown at

you it probably takes a bit more

discipline to to enforce these things

but I always remind myself and other

people that you know the reason people

want to access you is because of

presumably the consequences of the deep

work you did yeah not um but people love

meetings gosh do they um I won't do

brainstorm meetings anymore unless it's

with my close team it's like you can

pitch me a contract and we can reverse

engineer the idea you know um but it

just doesn't work to to meet with people

and kind of brainstorm stuff but I don't

know what this is like I think maybe

people are taking their own lack of

structure and um projecting it onto

other people as a way to fill the time

yeah it's Pudo productivity as well like

this is what I have like visible

activity and so let's can we have

meetings let's talk let's hop on calls

like that all feels useful when

ultimately it's not like I'm with you on

it like remember the reason why everyone

wants to talk to me is because not I'm

so great at brainstorming meetings you

know people like this is great like

Andrew's great at brainstorming meetings

so that's why you want to bother no it's

because you were really good at

podcasting you were doing like the Deep

thing and then that brings in the better

you get at what you do best the more the

world conspires to take away your time

to actually work on it uh like

professors know this well like pre- 10

year they most big universities are

pretty good at preaching the professors

all that's going to matter is going to

be your research but they throw a ton of

other stuff at you at that time it

depends on the school like I would say

like Georgetown was very good about this

they're like we don't uh from our

perspective it's a waste of resources to

hire you and and have you not get tenure

so like we want to try to protect you

from the service requirements low for

example and like just focus on you know

just focus on your research because

that's what's going to matter and at

least professors know this right like uh

there's a clear process like the tenure

process most people don't understand

tenure they think it's like getting

promoted at a job and there's like all

these different ways you can sort of

impress your boss it's none of that

right I mean it's these confidential

letters from leading scholars in your

field that are doing nothing but

brutally assessing your research how

good is Cal who are two people who are

better than him on the market right now

who are like two people he's slight

better than would you tenure him at your

University what university could he get

tenured at I mean it's all that matters

is yeah research quality um so you have

to somehow ReDiscover what that is if

you're not a professor like ultimately

like this is the thing I do best for my

company so let me do that let me do that

really well there's also an aspect by

the way of uh if you do a deep thing

really well that does not attract as

much work as if what you do is you're

just really good at like responding to

people's things and putting out fires

it's like you don't want to get too much

trapped in that game unless that's the

game you want to play you know if you

get trapped in the game of how I

distinguish myself as I reply right away

doesn't matter when it is I make your

life easier you're playing the game of

making other people's lives easier and

that's what they're going to ask you to

do but if instead you play the game of

I'm competent with this like I'll

respond to the emails and not be uh I

won't be pathological about it but the

real thing you care about is like this

code I'm producing or these reports on

producing are just really Second To None

then you're not going to get a much of

the small stuff they're like okay well

do that then you know like that's what

we want that's what we want you to work

on so like what is your equivalent of

research is probably a really key

question for a lot of people how do you

treat um social engagements through work

like you know like the company barbecue

I don't know anyone does company

barbecues anymore but um you know like

happy hour or I don't know if anyone

does that either um and social

engagements with family like you know

because obviously those things are

important too yeah um are those on your

schedule well you know I treat uh work

schedule different from notw work

schedule right so my work schedule is

this time block plan part of a

multi-scale plan um really dialed in

like when I'm working I'm working right

um but then when I'm not working I'm way

more LAX you know so I don't do time

block planning of my weekends or my

evenings uh the work shutdown being

clear gives you more flexibility there

so it's like okay what do we want to do

like let's go like see these people

let's do these things with the family um

I like to be flexible and not overly

planned outside of the work day but then

during the work day itself you know it's

much more machine like so you're you're

fairly

um not laxed but you're a bit more

relaxed around social engagements and

engaging with the kids but at at work or

when you're working at home or or in the

office you're you're obese yeah I'm like

a black box in the work days like when

I'm when I'm working like I disappear

nice yeah and then when I'm done like

I'm I'm around but like my family and

friends and they've learned like if you

text me during the workday I'm I'm not

part of that game of like I'll just

respond back to it people know like it

may have been four hours since I saw my

phone that's like Lex fredman yeah and

people often ask to get in touch with

Lex and I've you know made that connect

for a few people but I always point out

you know Lex will go long periods of

time where we don't connect and then

we're close close friends we spent a lot

of time in person on the phone text but

I understand that if I text Lex I might

not hear from him for four or five days

and it's all good

yeah you know it's just in fact that it

tells me he's good it's like that that

scene at the end of Goodwill Hunting

where he's like I just want to show up

at your house know you're not there he

gets there and he smiles his friend's

gone he knows he went the direction of

of his of his heart you're saying if you

start to get a lot of like memes texted

to you from Lex that's not going to

happen you're going to be like what's

going on that's never going to happen

What struggle what struggle are you

having in your life right now I'm a big

believer in the phone I'm old school

pick up the phone make a call we'll get

on a call sometimes FaceTime um we do

text one or two things back for it's AES

and really quick yeah really quick and I

have other friends in the podcast space

for which it's the same it's just um

phone is a great tool yep and you know

drop in and then get back to it not a

lot of chitter chatter on I like that I

I always like text is like a great

logistical tool you know like wait what

what restaurant are you at oh you know

okay I'll meet you there or are you free

to talk like I love text as a logistical

tool but you're right as a

conversational tool yeah it's not for me

either and do you take vacations where

you are on pure vacation so just with

family or or maybe even Solo or with

your spouse where it's like no digital

anything uh yeah digital's not a problem

for me on vacation but my wife won't let

me not bring something to work on on

vacation because because I become a

monster got it your brain needs that it

needs it yeah when we had little kids I

tried this right I was like okay like

this is it I'm not going to think about

anything like this is and I would just

become a like an anxiety case so what

I've learned is bring one thing that's

like very deep and non-urgent

um like a book concept I'm trying to

make work or an academic paper that I

was like trying to crack or like

something new and I need like that 90

minutes a day to like walk on the beach

and think and I have to have a notebook

I have it with me in here I have to have

a notebook with me so that like I can

capture notes and get them out of my

head on vacation and that now we have a

happy medium like I work a little bit

every day no email I don't get not email

not no deep work thinking uh I'm much

happier it's like an itch that you have

to scratch yeah if I'm not writing or

thinking it's it's I I get cognitively

antsy I get anxious you know like I'm on

I've been now I'm talking to you now but

I've been you know traveling doing some

podcasts and stuff like this and I'm way

out of my cognitive comfort zone here

because I'm not vlogging like early in

this trip I I was uh on a New Yorker and

Atlantic deadline like riding all the

time you know California time up at 5:00

am like you know and I'm done with that

now and I'm really cognitively ay like I

just feel out of sorts right now you

know like I'm not working I'm not

thinking

love

it Cal I for me this has been such an

honor I mean I should have said this at

the beginning of the episode but I've

been such a fan for such a long time um

long before we met or communicated at

all uh I started reading your books and

um I would say you and Tim Ferris are

the people who early in my academic

career had such a profound influence on

how I approach work and and it required

that I do things um kind of against the

grain people around me and very quickly

I saw um that I was making progress much

faster than I would have otherwise yeah

and I never looked as a competitive

Endeavor with others but and um you've

just continued to churn out valuable

information actionable tools you know

book and after book after book and um

and obviously they require some

structure and some some restriction but

also some moving toward um action items

and I love these these top three that

you provided us um the the pull forward

the uh multiscale planning and and the

shutdown ritual and all all the others

um that you put forth and I guess the

the um major takeaway for me today is is

that yes you've developed all these

tools but you also use them and um it's

not lost on me that you also have a

flourishing career as a computer

scientist so you're not just somebody

who talks about and here I'm not dissing

anyone else in the in the information

sphere like just talks about habits or

just talks about protocols you do these

things and you implement them in the

context of your work life your creative

life your family life and your

relationship to self and you exercise

and um and I think that that all

combines to to be an amazing example of

what's possible if we introduce um a bit

of understanding about how we function

as a as a being um and that we Implement

some of these tools in in the user

manual that that you've come up with and

so I just want to say on behalf of

myself and everyone who's listening and

watching you know thank you so much this

is incredibly valuable information

regardless of what one is doing in life

and um I'm certainly going to implement

this um three-step uh system and I do

have the book I always like to read

books after guests are on I'm going to

read the book um and I'm going to do

some posts about uh what I uh experience

as a consequence so thank you so much I

would pay a substantial amount of money

to do deep work sessions with you in the

on the screen there but I won't put that

on you I'm just going to I'm going to

just bite down and and uh and do this

stuff so thank you so much for being a

Pioneer in this space and for such a

clear Communicator we all owe you a debt

of gratitude oh thanks Andrew well and

for the rest of us professors who are

also podcasting we owe you a debt of

gratitude because you're showing us

what's actually uh what's actually

possible so this has been great meeting

you as well has been fantastic right

well thank you we won't um we won't see

each other on social media but we'll

we'll share a meal at some point U

before long thank you for joining me for

today's discussion with Dr Cal Newport

to find links to Cal's website books and

to his excellent podcast please see the

links in the show note caption if you're

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