Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 127: Does Productivity Diminish Leisure? (with Brad Stulberg)

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

In today's episode, I am joined by longtime friend of the show Brad Stulberg, who has a new book out called THE PRACTICE OF GROUNDEDNESS (https://thegrowtheq.com/books/groundedness/).Brad helps me answer your questions on topics including the decision to start a company, recovering from a pandemic-induced demotion, preventing productivity from diminishing leisure, and dealing with inertia. Thanks to Jay Kerstens for the intro music and Mark Miles for mastering. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions. Episode 127. Now, today I have a guest helping me answer my questions. That is, longtime friend of the show, Brad Stolberg. Brad has a new book coming out called The Practice of Groundedness. It comes out the day after this episode first airs. And so I invited Brad to come on the show. I said, instead of just talking to you about the book or talking,

talking to you about your story, which we've already done on this podcast. Why don't you come help me answer listener questions? So as I did with Shreeny Rao a couple weeks ago, Brad, join me and we together dived into your questions so you could get some different perspectives. Now, we do talk up front a little bit about Brad's book in detail. We talk also a little bit about the New Yorker piece I recently published, which featured Brad. I think we really get to understand his new book better in the answers to the listener questions because time and again we're able to come back to. We're able to come back to some of his ideas to help understand some of these issues that the listeners have. So we basically get to put the wisdom into practice. So it's a fun episode.

We have some good questions here. There's a couple of rants I go on as well. So listener be warned. One caveat. So at some point during the interview, I used a wrong keyboard. So I have different keyboards in front of me here in my studio and I was trying to write down the timestamp for a question and I used a keyboard that connected to my computer on which I do the actual recording and it started playing music. We were using Zincaster to record and Zincaster has these sound pads that you can program the play music as part of your show. And so it became a bit of a running joke in the episode because I did it by accident a couple times and then after a while I started doing it on purpose playing the music and we would talk in a really slow kind of sultry

voice because the music was dramatic piano music. Here's the thing, guys. Now that I'm done with the episode, I go back and discover Zencaster does not put the music onto the actual audio tracks. We could hear the music. I don't think you can hear the music. So there's going to be some non sequitorious segments in this interview where we're talking about music or talking in a weird way as if we're talking over music and you're not going to actually be able to hear the music. That's what happened. Now, if I had more time in my life, I would edit this or give instructions for my editor to try to edit this to get around it. But I literally don't have time to actually go through and explain, you know, what to cut out or why. So guys, it's going to be some, a little bit of weirdness in here. That's what happened. It's me hitting the wrong keys on the keyboard and then not realizing that these sound cues don't actually get onto the audio tracks themselves. So my apologies for that. Anyways, let me do a quick ad read, and then we will get started answering your questions with special guest, Brad Stolberg. This show is brought to in part by Blinkist. As I always say, in our current culture, ideas are power, and the source of the best ideas are books.

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It's always a pleasure to be chatting with you. I always look forward to our conversations, whether they're recorded or not. I'm a little nervous to have on the air someone who has been featured so prominently in the New Yorker. So I don't know if you're too famous now for my podcast. Is that the way we have to see this? You reap what you sow. Yeah, exactly. Is this the ultimate humble brag?

I'm like, I'm so impressed that you were in the New Yorker in an article I wrote. But for the listener who has not read that article that features Brad, You should. You'll learn a little bit about Brad Fleen, California for the wonders of Asheville and why Henry David Thoreau predicted the whole thing. Did anyone read it? You heard from a few people, right? Yeah, I got a handful of really nice emails. I got some phone calls from an old friend. So, yeah, people still read The New Yorker. You never know. My wife, Caitlin, maybe five years ago, told me that I don't have to read the New Yorker, but I can't just have the magazine stacked.

So I either need to do something about the stack or unsubscribe. I still stack. I was guilty of having one of those stacks of New Yorkers. And the reason is that it's really good writing. And I always have this aspiration to read the New Yorker cover to cover. But for me, I always go to books first. And then the New Yorker gets like the can kick down the road. And unfortunately, the stack just builds and builds.

But it's so hard to part with the New Yorker. Even if you're going to recycle it, use it to help compost, you're composting like Catherine Schultz's writing. It just doesn't feel right. Yeah, I hear you. I'm a stack or two. My strategy is I'm going someplace where I know there will be a weight that's roughly one long-form article long.

And then you say, great. Now I'm going to choose a article from the recent, magazine. As long as you have one appointment. So the pandemic's been a real killer. That was a real killer for New Yorker progress because you didn't have enough appointments with weights. But that's the key. All right, which article am I bringing? I'm going to the allergist. All right, you know, we're going to do a little bit of David Gran while we sit there. Or we're going to do a little Josh Rothman. So that's my, I hear you. I hear you. So here's, okay, let's do an Asheville test. So I'm always trying to compare Asheville to D.C. as I make, you know, decide whether or not I'm going to imminently move there.

It has been hot. It has been human. what has the weather been like the last week in Asheville. It has been hot and humid here as well. If you want to get exact, I would say between 83 and 85. That's better. I don't pay close enough attention to know the percent humidity. It doesn't feel like you're in a sauna, but the air is a little bit heavier than it was, let's say, three weeks ago. All right.

I'll give you the win on that one because it's been more like 90 here. but I have you on notice, Brad. My Asheville to-poor, that's better. I'll give you, that's a five-degree advantage. So I'll put that point in its column. So we're going to do questions from the listeners. You're going to help me. But before we do, you have a book,

and I think your new book is going to be helpful with some of these questions. But let's just hear about it first, a practice of groundedness. What is the exact release date for this one? This book comes out September 7th. So depending on when you drop this show, it'll either have just come out or will just be about to come out. I'm looking at my calendar. Oh, perfect.

The show is dropping on the sixth. So it is almost as good as out. If you were to hit order now, it would just be like the same as ordering it tomorrow. So if you like what I have to say, check it out. Yeah, no, I love this one. I remember when you first started working on it, when you were first writing the proposal, didn't I, like I gave a blur for the proposal or something? Not a blur.

We have the same. We have the same editors on this one because I wanted to take a really big swing at a topic. And that sometimes makes me nervous because the broader you go, the more there's a chance of kind of losing intellectual integrity. So my process for that then is bringing in some of the more rigorous thinkers that I know in testing the idea to see if there's a risk for doing that. So I distinctly remember sending the book to you, to Ryan, to our mutual friend Dave Epstein, as well as Kelly McGonigal. So other people that write in this genre, oh, and Maria Konnikova, who maybe you know, I don't know. In any event, yes, you were asked about this early on in the process. So what's your current, now that you're warming up for publicity, what's your current entry point pitch for the book?

There's two. the first is the timely one. The second is the timeless one. So the timely one is that is a whole, the Western world thought that we were at mile 23 of a marathon about a month ago, the marathon being COVID. But it turns out that maybe we were only at mile 17 or 18. And that's just the Delta variant, right? So myself included, everyone got very comfortable with this idea that in many communities across the country, COVID was effectively zero. And now COVID is just some areas, the same as it was at peak time. And there is a section in the book on accepting reality and seeing it clearly. So you can then do something wise and productive about it. It's something that so many of us

struggle with before COVID. And I think right now it's been hard for lots of people to accept that we thought the finish line was right around the corner, but actually we were kind of duped. got a couple more miles left to run. That's the timely hook. The timeless hook is that we live in an ethos that is very much epitomized by a term that I call heroic individualism, which is a constant game of one-upsmanship against yourself, against others, where prestige, where progress, where growth, external validation are the main drivers of quote-unquote success. And pursuing these things, while it can be full of excitement, it's not so fulfilling. And this is captured by a research term called the arrival fallacy, which states that so often we think that if we just

accomplish this big goal, insert big goal here, whatever it may be, then we'll arrive, then we'll be fulfilled, then we'll be content, then we'll be happy. And this if then thinking is as old as time. I think it's kind of in hyperdrive now, thanks to the internet. I'm sure we'll get into that. But this if-then thinking is a fallacy. The only way to be fulfilled is to be fulfilled right where you are. And the book explores both the ancient wisdom on this topic as well as the modern cutting-edge science. What is the tension between be happy with what you are now and striving? How do you keep those in a, if you'll excuse the double use of the term productive tension.

So I actually don't think there's as much tension as most people would believe. Generally speaking, if you are content with who you are, what you have now, let's call it, you feel good enough. That is not opposed to wanting to get better. And what I argue in the book and what the research supports is most people actually perform better from a place of feeling good enough. And here's the reason for that. If you feel like you have all kinds of holes in your ego or you're fragile or you're not on solid ground, then whatever you're striving toward is going to become such a big part of your self-worth and your identity that it will

feel like a strong need. I need this promotion. I need this book published. I need to win the medal. And when we perform from a place of need, we tend to be tight. Our shoulders go up, our facial muscles clench. It's a lot of internal pressure. A lot of people that I reported out call this caring like the weight of needing to achieve something. Whereas if you were to cultivate a life in which you feel in this moment good enough, then you can drop that weight and still strive.

And what often happens is the outcome is the same. But the texture of the process to get there is totally different. So there are two ways to climb a mountain. One is to constantly be obsessing about the peak, worrying about are you going to be at the peak, and you might reach the peak. The other way is to really try to be present for the journey. It sounds cliche, but to focus on the process to be where you are. And both climbers reach the peak, but the one that's present for the journey, A, has a better

time on the way up, and then B isn't as likely to feel empty five days. later once they realize that nothing in their life has really changed as a result of being on top of this mountain. So, for example, let's say you're happy with where you are. And then you have an idea for something, a project, a book, an initiative. If you're coming at that from the grounded perspective of, I think this would be an interesting or worthwhile thing to do, that whole process of working on it is itself going to be more satisfying and meaningful. Like, yeah, hey, I thought this would be a cool book to work on and it's fun to work on. It's pretty exciting. I get to go talk to this person today. Whereas if you came at that book from the perspective of, you know, man, Ryan sold this many copies, I have to sell

this many copies of a book because, you know, this book has to do it in this book. I need to get to the next level and why am I not here on the bestseller list or something like this? The whole process you're saying is going to be done from a perspective of nerves and scarcity and is this going to work and maybe it's not going to work. And then, of course, when you actually get to the moment and whatever happens is going to happen, that can become incredibly terrifying. Am I getting that? Is that case study an accurate reflection on what you're talking about? Yes, spot on.

And what the research shows is that if you come at it from that point of nerves or worry or a feeling of need, you're significantly less likely to achieve flow or this state of oneness with the work that you are doing where, everything is just kind of coming together. Whereas if you pursue work from that place of curiosity and openness and freedom, you're significantly more likely to experience flow. Now, what's fascinating is millennia before modern psychologists coined and studied flow, ancient Eastern wisdom traditions were all over this.

They talked about if you string the loot too tight, then you don't get harmony. If you string it too loose, you don't get harmony. You have to string the loot just right. And the loot is a metaphor for striving. They're talking about striving for enlightenment, but it can be striving for anything. If you're way too tight, I need to do this. I have to have this accomplishment or else I won't be whole. You're not going to get there. Or if you do, it won't be very enjoyable along the way. You won't feel great about it. To your initial point, if you're so loose that you're so content that you just want to sit on the couch all day, you're probably not going to get enlightened that way. You're not going to achieve

your goals. So what groundedness tries to offer is a pathway and some practices to string that loot so that there's this balance between wanting to strive because striving gives meaning to life, and at the same time, not doing it from a place of compulsion where you feel like if something were to go wrong, then you wouldn't be enough. All right. So if we get into the summary of that process, this starts with grounding these pursuits in what? How does that happen. So I argue in the book that it happens by creating a really sound foundation of which to launch yourself off of. So if you think about a mountain, which is on the cover of the book, most people look at a mountain and they realize one of two things. They direct their glance to its peak

or if it's really prominent to its rise to the sides of the mountain, the angle at which they rise toward the peak. no one ever, or at least very rarely, does someone admire the base of a mountain? But if a mountain doesn't have a really strong base, whenever there's any kind of rough weather, the mountain's not going to be durable. It's not going to stand the test of time. And what I argue in gratitude is we are very much like mountains. It is so easy to obsess about the bright, shiny objects in our lives, the peak of the mountain, or the ascent, like the striving toward something.

And all that is fine and good if we have a strong foundation. Unfortunately, I think what happens so often is that the foundation gets cannibalized by time and energy spent on the bright, shiny objects, and therefore when rough weather comes, we are not as durable as we wish that we were. So this book is all about how do you create that strong foundation? And it argues that there are six principles to do so. The first I mentioned earlier is this notion of accepting where you are to get where you want to go, really. seeing things clearly. The second is practicing presence so that you can own your energy and attention. This will be a very familiar topic to Cal Newport fans. The third is patience or this notion that while we're told that we should move fast and break things, often what happens

if you move too fast is you or the thing ends up broken. And patience is actually the route to get where you want to go as fast as possible. The fourth principle is vulnerability and how that creates genuine confidence. The fifth principle is what I call deep community, which is a sense of belonging as well as physical connection. And then the sixth principle is this notion of really being in your body in physical movement to help stabilize your mind. So you embrace those six principles in your life once you're practiced in those principles, striving for things, having ambitions or initiatives, the grist of ones up and down in one's life.

You're saying that whole process becomes grounded in a way that you're more satisfied, it's more resilient, it's less stressful. So we practice those six. That's based what the book is saying. You practice those six principles, and you're whatever you do, you're striving for whatever goal it is, it becomes more fulfilling, more enjoyable, and you have a better chance at achieving your goals. I like it. Well, I think my listeners will be familiar. They'll see some familiarity of this is

like roughly speaking the same philosophical conceit as the deep life. It's different in structure, though, because I typically talk about different areas in your life, but some of those roughly overlap the principles of groundness because there's a constitution, physical area. There's a community type area, and each is getting attention and each is having intention in addition to how you're supporting that part of your life. And so there's some interesting congruence here. It's not an exact fit, but I think there'll be some familiarity to the listeners that your life is something that you have to, you have to construct it in a way that it's meant to be a good, resilient, satisfying, meaningful life. If you are just randomly striving for what's pushing the emotional or

psychological buttons in the moment, this feels good, I'm psyched, I want to do this, or I have to have that achievement is going to feel so good if I could just, you know, get that metal or get that mentioned, then you're not going to get anywhere near as far without faltering. So, this is like a sophisticated take on some of the basic ideas, listeners, that we talk about with the deep life. So I'm glad we have Brad here because we can apply, let's do some questions, we can apply some of these ideas as it's relevant. That sound good? Yeah, that sounds great. And I really like how you talk about being pushed and pulled around by whatever frenetic energy is involved in like the busyness or the restlessness or the kind of not so conscious chasing after things.

And to use my mountain metaphor, being on the peak of a mountain is freaking great. But you don't want to spend too much time up there because it's really, really windy up there. Eventually you want to get back down. And what I hear you describing is spending all your time on this top of the mountain, kind of getting pushed and pulled and blown around by all the energy in your life. And what I argue is, again, that that's not really sustainable. We've got to come back to the foundation, which is what allows us to get to the peak multiple times. I like that.

And also, you know, there's this thing of stochasticity that people call it luck. People call it randomness. It's not really that. It's just that something to throw into the mix. Like any interesting pursuit, any serial pursuit that has elite stakes has this. element of, it's not pure randomness, right, in the sense that whatever happens is luck, but what you're really doing is with each book you write or each business you launch or what have you is you're basically setting up a stochastic system. You're trying to build the best

system you can, but there's going to be a lot of coin flips that are going to influence each other and determine how that particular system turns out. And so getting too attached to the outcome becomes, well, just an exercise in futility. I mean, you might have this system come out and somewhere you don't like four times in a row before it comes out somewhere completely different. The next time or the first time out of the gate, the system might explode to a really big outcome, and then you never are able to recapture it again. So it's another element that makes me think about what you're talking about. If you're doing anything worth doing, there's going to be so much of it you can't predict

that coming at it from an outcome-only centric perspective is basically guaranteed. The one thing you're guaranteeing is that you're going to be anxious and unhappy at some points along the way. Yep. And the only outcome that we can be certain of is death. And I don't say that to be morbid. I say that because it's like we should be able to have fulfillment and have fun along these more finite pursuits. Because in the infinite game, our life, like, we're all going to die. And if you're lucky, you do something that lasts and you leave a legacy, but no one, very few people leave legacies because they set out to leave a legacy. They leave legacies because they were grounded. They were. They were doing work that they felt connection to, and it resonated with other people, and they left it behind. All right, well, let's put this in the practice. We have a question here from Danielle. That's kind of a long one, but a good one. Danielle says, would you be willing to share advice on how to choose between an entrepreneurial path that could lead to a great success?

Sounds familiar. Or a standard job post-graduation. I want to be an entrepreneur, but I'm worried about financial stability if things don't work out. I've been trying to time block plan my day to balance my current grad school work, my startup company, my personal life. But I'm not sure if I should focus on making a base income at a job or investing more time in a company or if I should fully commit to my startup. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you. So this is a standard young entrepreneur question, I guess.

Should I go after it or should I be a little bit more circumspect, more patient? I don't. Do you have a stock answer for that one, Brad? I don't have a stock answer. I'd have to know more about this individual's situation, and in particular their financial situation, how much autonomy they have, how much personal runway they would have financially to just go after the company. I do have two interesting data points that might help this listener. The first is that we know that entrepreneurs that are starting companies truly from the ground up have a greater chance of success.

if that company starts off as a side hustle. And that is because, paradoxically, you can take more risk when you have a stable job in the company's a side hustle. Now, you have to have a stable job that allows you the time and energy to focus on the company. If you're working a really grueling, intense, quote-unquote, normal job,

well, then the company that you're building probably won't take off because you have no time for it. If you can find a job where the lifestyle, the hours worked, the stimulation level might not be so all-consuming, well, then that basically subsidizes or funds you're building out the company. So that's the first data point. The second data point is very much a part of the patient's chapter of the practice of groundedness, and that is contrary to what we think, which is that you have to be really young

to have a good startup, a good tech company, the average age of a successful founder, measured by the company's net income and or their IPO value is 45 years old. So this notion of you have to do it when you're young turns out not to be true. And the researchers that conducted this study out of MIT in partnership with Northwestern, they suspect because even though our energy and maybe even our cognitive flexibility, how quick we are on our feet, how quick our thinking is peaks between 22 and 28, our wisdom is very low. And as we grow older, we have more life experience, we obtain more wisdom. And perhaps the curve of sharp thinking and wisdom crosses somewhere in our mid-40s, hence that's the best time, at least the research shows that you have

the most successful chance of starting a company then. I like that patient method. I think that that makes sense to me, Danielle. I think the way I talk about it and so good they can't ignore you is you should pursue promising companies, not promising lifestyles in this instance. And what I mean by that is if you are getting honest signals that this particular company has a good shot, it's getting investment, or selling things and making a lot of money selling the things, or real good talent is interesting in being involved. honest signals that the specific company is doing something right, that is worth pursuing. If you're not getting those signals, but you still want to go after it, you might just be pursuing the lifestyle idea of being an entrepreneur, and that's where it gets dangerous. You say, you know, grad school is kind of hard right now, and I'm kind of bored, and, you know,

I think it would be cool to be jumping on calls and having coffees, and I just sort of liked the idea of being an entrepreneur. That's where the danger comes up. And so trying to wait until you get the honest signals that a company has actually has some momentum. It's catching some energy. It's not just your friends telling you, I love this idea. It's people giving you money for the idea. People investing, good talent, when to be involved, then it's probably something worth pursuing. That gives you you end up with patience in that instance. And you know what? It might be the thing you're doing right now. It might not be until you're 45. So I'll just add that addendum. Don't make the company what you want it to be. Measure what it actually is. Before.

before deciding, you know, if you want to go, if you want to go forward. Yeah, I think that that's a wonderful agenda, Cal. One second, guys, I just turned on a dramatic piano cue. Ooh. Did you hear that? I did. That was very... That was great.

Very dramatic. Yeah. Now, I will tell you the reality of this dramatic piano cue is that in my studio, I have multiple keyboards, and I forget which goes to what computer. But what I'm going to tell you is that what Brad was about to say is so dramatic. that it requires a queue. So, okay, here we go. Pressure's on. All right, Brad, what is your excited? I really like this. It does put the pressure on it. I love this. I do think the other thing to consider, particularly if you have some opportunity to pivot coming out of grad school, is if you think

building is going to be something that is core to your identity, whether it is building a company now, building one later, joining a young company, I would consider that a big part of the geography in which you live. You probably don't want to go to a place that is going to demand a very high income right off the bat because then you won't have as much time and space to work on building things. So I would also think about the surroundings, which will allow you to best pursue building a company or at least having the most optionality to do so. So that's interesting though because

what that means has changed dramatically with technology, right? So if it's the expense, you would say, don't go to Oakland, right? Because that's where you were bad

and it was more expensive. And we talked about in the New Yorker piece, it required, required a lot more working just to make the monthly nut. On the other hand, it used to be, but that's where all the other,

that's where the companies are. And that's where the talent is. So this is a shift, I guess, is what you're saying, is we have to change our mindset, maybe it's not, go to where all the other talent is, because you're all connected virtually and who cares. Go to where you can have the flexibility to put in the time. In other words,

now we can prioritize time affluence over the diversity and thickness of in-person social network connections. Yes, and there is nuance here too, right? Like, you probably don't want to go to the middle of Mississippi to start a high-tech company. But I think that the difference between, let's say, a Bay Area or Boston in a Denver or a Salt Lake in terms of talent connections isn't as much is the difference in autonomy you get

by going to one of those smaller markets. Interesting. Yeah, so we're just re-we're not, we're rebalancing the cost and the advantages. Yeah, that's interesting. All right, well, here's a related question. And let me give myself some more dramatic piano as we move on to our next question here with Brad Stolberg.

This is my new toy. I love this. Okay, so our next question, I want to ask it because it actually is, look at this. Now I'm just doing that on, now I'm just doing that by accident. All right, so this next question is going to contrast slightly with what we just said. That's why I think it's useful. RM says, since I've read your article about building a lifestyle-centric career, I've been working towards it. however the pandemic has destroyed all my hopes.

It'll be ironic if the career he had been building towards was a kissing booth franchise. So that's why that's why the pandemic has destroyed all of his hopes. It's really the bad time to be having a kissing booth. Yeah. Okay. I had a good job with a lot of autonomy and little stress. However, the arrival of the pandemic, with the arrival of the pandemic, my company had to restructure and transferred me to an entry level support rule in another department. It was my only alternative to unemployment.

This change meant not only a significant loss of career capital, but also a total loss of autonomy and increased workload stress and earning the minimum wage. I don't want to give up the pursuit of a lifestyle-centric career, but I feel stuck and powerless to proceed with my endeavors. So, Brad, I'm going to break this into two things. So one, before we get to the specifics of what RM is talking about here, let's just talk briefly about lifestyle-centric career planning.

This is this idea I sometimes talk about where instead of focusing too much on this is the specific content of the work I want. This particular job is a job I need. When you're young, you might think about what do I want my life to be like. If I envisioned a week and weekend in my ideal life, what would it be like? What type of place would I live? How much work am I doing? What's the role of family and community? Am I in nature?

Am I in a high rise? Am I a master of the universe type in a building or am I working on a boat five days a week? thinking about the lifestyle and then working backwards and saying, okay, let me think through some various reasonable career paths there, given my situation, my background, my opportunities, my skills, etc. It's a little bit, it's a little bit at odds, I guess, with what we were saying to Danielle,

because I was telling her, like, be worried about just going for your startup company because you like the entrepreneurial lifestyle because it might be a terrible company and you're going to end up worse off, make sure the company is actually valid. So before we get to RM's first. particular issues, which I think are real and I want to dive into it. Let's maybe hit, I want your take on this, this notion of working backwards from your lifestyle. When does that work? And when, like in Danielle's case, we have to be careful that that doesn't lead you to making bad decisions.

I don't necessarily think that they're so at odds. I think that you can pursue a lifestyle and still have a really crappy idea for a company. And then you need to just have a better idea for the company. So if you like the idea of being in new environments, uncharted territory, the pace that comes with a startup, the all hands on deck mentality that's often there where you're both the chief of vision strategy and operations and HR, then trying to build a company or joining a very young company is going to give you that lifestyle. It doesn't mean that it's going to work out if it's not a good idea, but okay, maybe the first one doesn't work out. Well, then you can try the next one. So I really like how you think about building a lifestyle career fit, I guess I'd call it. And I don't necessarily think that it adds at all with what you just said, Cal. So maybe it's a with lifestyle-send your career planning, the right clarification is,

once you know the lifestyle, you try to build a practical, but like a real, realistic path there. I think a really good way to make this more concrete is to look at other people that you really admire or whose lifestyles that you like a lot and ask yourself, well, what are the things that I like about them and or their lifestyle and what steps did they take to get there? There's very little need to reinvent the wheel, right? There's like 7 billion people on this planet, even though we like to think that what we're going through is super unique, generally.

Many people have trod in very similar paths before. And I think it's super helpful to look at examples because that gives you so much more granularity and what it could actually be like. Let me tell you the thing that as long as I can remember has always hit that for me. Because I agree with this 100%, that it's through the exposure of stories and examples

and seeing what actually feels really aspirational. That's an intimation of something important that you should pay attention to. You have to be exposed to examples and see what sticks. Here's it for me, from the back when I was promoting So Good They Can't Ignore You. And since then, the type of stories I've come back to. And so I used to tell this one story while I was giving talks about So Good,

They Can't Ignore You back in 2012. And ever since I've been collecting stories of writers who, I guess it might be you, Brad, so maybe I'm talking about you. But basically, like, writers who live somewhere really interesting in write or live dual location. Like, they live in the city and then they go somewhere else in the summer. and they write. And it was just like the freedom and the flexibility of that. So I used to always talk about Bill McKibbon's story,

about how he left the New Yorker, left New York, moved to the Adirondacks, wrote the end of nature, and just became this I live. He eventually moved near to Middlebury, Vermont, so more of a small town instead of completely in the woods, but just he wrote and thought and lived somewhere really interesting. Or Simon Winchester lives in Manhattan during the winter, but Western Mass, the summer and writes in a barn. So maybe this has stuck with me. So I got to figure that out,

right? So it's a good case study. I have to deconstruct and I've been trying to. What is it about that that keeps resonating with me and why is it that, you know, right now as I start a new semester at the university, I feel like my life is the opposite. I have the opposite. Do you want to go there? Yeah, let's go there. So let me give you a warning, by the way. I had someone at the university after my article about you came out, ask, are you thinking about career downsizing your role here at Georgetown, we're a little worried. So I already raised some eyebrows with that article. So let's be careful. But yeah, we can go there. Yeah, I don't want to get you in trouble. But my hypothesis is that you can be damn near perfect, Cal. Shoot, let's say

90% on all the principles that you write about in your book. You should say books, plural. Deep work, time block, take things off email that don't belong on email. And yet, if you're still in a big bureaucracy, it is very, very, very hard to have the degree of autonomy that you might desire. And I think that the question that you probably need to continue to ask yourself are the very real benefits of being at a university and being amongst other intellectuals, doing the computer science work that you do, the potential upside of starting a new institution, all of these great things. Is it worth the current kind of attention vampire of being in a big bureaucracy? And that's probably a very hard question for you to wrestle with. It's a good one. And it is really hard because the university environment, which does have a lot of bureaucracy,

and don't get me started about my committee assignments right now, is the only game in town for doing elite academic intellectual work? You know, it's really it's the only game in town where you can, you can be around professors who are experts in the field and you're trying to advance the field and they're trying to advance the field and you're all bouncing off of each other. And I wonder sometimes if it's like, all you want to do is play basketball. I want to play basketball at the elite, most elite levels. But if you're a really good NBA player, suddenly all this other stuff of being a professional athlete shows up. But in some sense, if you leave the NBA to get rid of all the stuff you have to do with your, your, your, your, your,

and the contracts and the whatever, and it's all complicated and annoying, you don't get to play basketball at a high level. You know? And so it's, yeah, it's an interesting quandary because I love- And I would argue that you're trying to play basketball and baseball or basketball and football at the same time. Because the books that you write, while they're, of course, based in your experience as an academic in the research, that is a whole different ballgame than what I imagine that you're

doing, like trying to solve proofs or whatever it is that you do on your whiteboard. Yeah. Well, can't I be Bo Jackson? Is that not an option? He was really a good player in Tecmo Bowl. If he really had a fast run in Nintendo Techmo Bowl. I'm just trying to be an intellectual Bo Jackson. Come on. What's the problem? Yeah, it's really hard. In Bo Jackson's a once-in-a-generation athlete. So I think that, you know, my advice to you would be be patient with yourself and then really try to deconstruct and ask these questions. Ask yourself, could you get that level of intellectual stimulation in other settings, is there any way that you can downsize that level of

intellectual stimulation? So maybe you become a once a month lecture, but when you're on campus, you're having all these meetings with other professors and it's really challenging you. Or is it just something that you're going to have to say, hey, this is what's in front of me right now. It's pretty damn good. And I actually don't need the cabin next to the pond. And I'd have to give up too much to get it. And I think there's no right or wrong. answer. The only wrong answer is not examining the question. Yeah, and this is lifestyle-centric career planning in action. It's me trying to deconstruct. What about these stories is resonating? And then as you do that deconstruction, you say, oh, this is very interesting. Like, I'm getting

some insights about things that are important to me and other things are important to me. So it's not easy, R.M, I guess, it's not easy to do this type of planning, but it's much better than I would, I guess, the alternative, which I guess would be in my case, well, what's the most prestigious thing I could do. What's the thing that's going to get me the most praise from people around me? And I think I've shown I'm not I'm not really good necessarily always at that. Okay, but then we have the second half of this question, which is more, it's different here. I mean, the way I read the second half of this question is basically things have taken a bad turn, right?

Just because his job was in a good place, Akami took a hit, his job became much worse. And it's not 100%. It's not like he has clear options of, well, someone else has offered me a better. job I can jump to. This maybe is a good way to touch on if you're properly grounded, thinking about the ups and downs that are going to happen, and some of the downs are going to really suck. What are the principles that are going to help us here? I mean, if we're grounded, how do we think through something like this? Like, my professional world has just, you know, imploded. So the principle that I'm coming to most here, well, I guess there's two. I'd say that

It's a combination of accepting where you are to get where you want to go and then practicing vulnerability to build genuine strength and confidence. And the reason that I say that is it sounds like RM is in a really vulnerable situation right now due to factors wholly out of his control. And it is very easy to want not to accept that, to wish it was better, to hope it was better, to dream it was better. And that is often a lot easier than doing the hard work of acceptance, which is saying, this sucks, this hurts, this is painful, this is scary. So I think that there has to be some vulnerability to realize that we're all humans, we're living in a crazy world,

particularly right now, and something has happened that was a jolt to RM's plan that sucks. The second thing that I would say is not to judge yourself in this moment. So there's this parable in ancient Eastern traditions of the second arrow. And the first arrow is the stimulus. It's some kind of event, internal or external, that you can't control. In this case, it's COVID and your company restructuring. The second arrow is all the judgments that you layer on top. What does this mean for my life?

I'm a failure. I'm trying to time block plan, but it's just impossible. I'm never going to be able to get where I'm going. And in these parables, these great wisdom teachers teach that it's often the second arrow that hurts worse. So where I come out at this is that in the, let's call it, business, personal growth, deep thinking, self-help genre, there tend to be two kind of books. One book is all about self-discipline.

This is Jocco Willenek, Navy CEO. wake up at 4 a.m. It doesn't matter what your situations are. Personal responsibility, go get them, take control of your life. The other kind of book is let's all sing kumbaya, self-love, everything is structural, you know, feel bad for yourself. And unfortunately, I think that there are these two camps when the truth is to be any kind of long-term successful person, at different times of your life, you need to draw on both of those skill sets. So it's not fierce self-discipline or fierce self-compassion. It's a marriage of the two. And right now, I think the self-discipline is to say, hey, here are the things that I can control

that I am going to try to act on to make my situation better while accepting that in this moment, those things might be few and far between and that's okay. And it would be futile to wake up at 4 in the morning to exercise. If you didn't go to sleep till 2 a.m. because you have a kid up at night crying, and you shouldn't beat yourself up about that. You should say, hey, my kid's up at night crying right now. It's not going to be forever.

So I'm going to let myself sleep in until 7. In RM for you, this might mean for the next few months, phone it in at your job, just get through, wait for this to pass. The self-discipline component might be make sure you're doing a few things to stay sharp on what you actually want to do. But don't kill yourself right now because there is so much that's structural if it's outside of your control. And it's a hard pill for type A driven people to swallow. But otherwise, you risk fighting against this immovable wall. It's like Sisyphus trying to get the rock up the mountain and the rock keeps falling back down. You can also just walk off the

mountain altogether for a few months and then come back. I like that. I think my summary sometimes this sucks now what? That's my mantra. It's an acknowledgement. Like, okay, yeah, this is not good. All right, so now what are we going to do? And so I love the way you said that, Brad. And, R.M, by the way, you are going to improve your situation.

I've cut out parts of your question here. But Brad, he was talking about, like, the time block planning he does and, like, the intention with which he plans out where he wants his career to go. And he's, look, this is a guy who is structured and intentional. and has that discipline piece of it. So I think what you're saying is exactly right. Throw in the self-compassion piece. I also like your connection to the pandemic.

This has been my experience. It's such a great case study. It's been my experience of the pandemic too. That for a lot of people, especially people in our situation, that it's, you know, we're not, we weren't during the unvaccinated worst of it on the front line, having to be exposed,

knowing a lot of people who are getting very sick. So it was really more the second order, the second order impacts of mitigations. It was like the primary things that we and a lot of people who may be listening this podcast had to deal with. 80% of the pain came from

wishing what was happening wasn't happening. That was where it seemed like what's the pain came from is like, I don't want there to be these mitigations having to come back again. And I just can't get past the fact

that they're coming back again. And that is so much more painful. Whereas if you had done the opposite, which is like, okay, here's what we have to do now is X. And let's just take that abstractly. Now what? Like actually,

we can still live a pretty good life even with X and X will eventually go away so why sweat it? Let's just, you know, let's work in a world with X. And when you would approach waves or surges with that mindset in my experience, it was so much better. You know, I mean, it's like looking at the fall, Delta, whatever right now. I mean, come at it.

Like, I just don't want to go backwards on X and Y or Z. So I think a lot of people came out of that way. Or you can look at it forward. Like, let's just forget all of that and just what's the reality we have to deal with now. Okay, like we're wearing masks inside, maybe some complexities with the schools, you know, so let's be like prepared for that. Pretty much though, like the things I need to go to are the things we do. I'm still able to do still to see people. Like it's not that overbearing. It's fine. Like, okay, great. How do we want to build a good fall?

it's not onerous. We're not in the blitz. There's not bombs blowing up our neighbors. You know, and it was just a different mindset. Are you coming at it from what are we facing? Let's accept that. Let's acknowledge the pieces that are annoying and then say, what do we want to do with it?

And in a situation like this, you look around and say, well, it's not the hardest thing. I mean, I went to a baseball game recently. We're not, again, we're not blacking out the windows and houses are blowing up. So I like that aspect. Yeah, just accept it.

But accepting doesn't mean, say, oh, this is no problem. Right. Accept it is more. Acceptance is not the same thing as passive resignation. This is really important. Acceptance is seeing something clearly for what it is, so you can do something wise about it. Yeah, like, okay, I'm not going to fight it. I'm not going to say it's good.

In fact, let's take a moment and be like, this is what I really hate about it. You know, it was like last spring or two spring. Man, it's been a while two springs ago. Like, you know, it's sad the schools are closed because this was my son's last year here and this and that. And let's take a moment to say that's, you know, boo. You know, okay. Now like, all right, so now what are we going to do going? forward. Well, actually, there's some things we can do here that I feel good about it. You got to be

patient, too, because when you're in the thick of something that sucks, it feels like it's going to be forever. Yes. But once you get to the other side of these things and you look back, they often feel like much smaller moments in time. I was really sick with OCD, secondary depression a couple years ago. When I was in the thick of that, it felt like it was forever. Now, with a couple years buffer, looking back on it, it doesn't feel like it was that long of a time at all. Researchers have studied this. There's something about the human brain and the meaning-making machine that can draw lessons from really challenging moments, but you look back on those moments and they don't seem as terrible as uprooting. So I think the last part of this is, again,

be patience, and it doesn't have to be meaningful right now. Like sometimes just showing up and getting through is enough, and then you can make meaning on the other side of it. And RM, if you're really in the thick of it, do what you need to do to pay your rent, control the controllables, as Cal alluded to, and then just show up and get through. And even if this goes on for two years,

and those two years feel like forever, two decades from now, those two years will probably feel like just a moment in time. Yeah, B, you want to come out on the other end proud of how you handled it. That's another mantra for myself. The key here in hard times, various hard times, is pride after the fact

in how you handled it, not good chemicals in the middle of it. And sometimes that comes down to it, right? You're like, I just want to feel good right now and not feel bad. Too bad, right? Like, it's not going to happen. Well, that's the whole heroic individualism ethos,

right? That, like, this book is trying to just completely turn on its head. It's not surprising that we struggle with acceptance. The consumer culture that we live in is all about non-acceptance. You don't feel good, buy something. You don't feel good, drink something. You're bored? Tweet.

You think that you look pretty? Well, here's airbrush for your Instagram or a filter or whatever the heck they call it. So the whole environment that we live on, you could argue the whole consumer economy is fueled on delusional thinking. And the delusional thinking is that if something is wrong, you can use. some sort of substance or consume something to make it better. And that is so rarely the case. No, with the exception of the book, the practice of groundedness, which will, if you buy that, we'll solve your problems.

Do we have that exception, right? And a world without email or digital minimalism. I think these books really acquiring them and not just acquiring them, but documenting your acquisition and ownership of them on your social media channels with easy to click links and hashtags that people can share. That plus being present, plus the wisdom of the ancients, those three things, I think, together. We agree with that, I think, Brad. Those three things together is going to be the key to life. We all can agree. Let's take a quick break to talk about another one of our sponsors, For Sigmaatic, a wellness company that is well known for its

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insurance, it's nice to get it right. In all seriousness, like there's a component of that yes, and there's a big difference in a book like The Practice of Groundedness or any of your books and 10 ways to feel more resilient in 10 days. Like, if that's what you want, you shouldn't read our books. Because we're actually asking you to sit down with a big topic and wrestle with it for weeks, months, sometimes even years. And our books would probably sell a lot better if, you know, a world without email was titled, The Email, Hack.

Or my book was titled Six Principles to Be Bulletproof in Six Days. but that stuff never works. If it worked, the wellness industry wouldn't be valued at like $70 billion or whatever it is. All that stuff's bullshit. And the whole fuel of that bullshit is that you can buy or numb or tweet your way out of a shitty situation instead of learning the skills to see a situation for what it is. This sucks. And then coming back to here's what I can control. Here are the people around me.

here's how I can be vulnerable, one foot in front of the other show up. So now let's apply that. This is like the same issue from the opposite end of the seriousness spectrum. Mike Kay, how do you deal with being overwhelmed with to-do list and aspirations and instead focus on what's important and then stop working and enjoying leisure time? I'm a big, big, big fan of setting really rigid boundaries. And particularly, if you were, are someone with a temperament that is high energy. Sorry, Kell, you said the listener's name here is

Mike. Yeah, it's Mike. Yeah, it sounds like Mike is really engaged in what he's doing. And maybe his issue is in the moment, he struggles to turn it off, but then he wishes that he would have turned it off because he feels burnt out or he feels regret for things he might have missed out on or he didn't get to enjoy leisure, what have you. I think it's very hard to tell yourself that I'm only going to eat a little bit of dessert most of the time, instead of just saying I'm never going to eat dessert. And when we think about how we manage our time and energy, if you're someone that struggles to turn it off or struggles to switch,

not because anything's wrong with you, but because you get super engaged in what you're doing, I think there that boundaries give us the kind of firm nudge we need to be able to shift. What's the boundary mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So boundaries can be spatial or temporal. So spatial boundaries mean I only do work at the coffee shop or I only do work at the office or I only do work in this area of my house. And when I leave, I'm leaving my work behind. And then temporal boundaries are the same but around time. So come 6.30 p.m., my computer is shut off. My phone is shut off and I don't open it up until 6.30 a.m. or whatever it might be. Instead of kind of having this fluidity, which so many people are struggling with during COVID,

where we're kind of always working, but we're kind of not always working. I'm having coffee with my partner, my wife, my kids, but the computer's on the table. And even if I'm not opening it, just the site of it's making me think of the emails that I have to write. That kind of blurring has been a real challenge for people

and has messed with a lot of people's minds, I think. Let me add a third element here because I've done, I do that type of boundary. So famously, I'm a fixed schedule productivity practitioner. here's when I work, try to make it fit in there. If it doesn't fit, you don't do it. Right? And that has been useful, right?

To have those hard boundaries, I just, you know, I don't work in the evenings. I don't do, you know, Saturdays, whatever it is. And that's been pretty successful with me. Part of the issue, though, is I am very organized and I become more organized as time goes on. So you can actually fit a lot into that time. And now I am trying to grapple with a third type of boundary, which is, I guess, a commitment. or activity boundary, which is I only do this many things. Because I can actually, I can touch a bunch of plates in a nine to five and keep each of

those things spinning and keep things moving. And I still find it overwhelming and I still find it stressful. And more importantly, I think it slows down progress on all of them and the quality that I achieve on the things I really care about, gets muted. And there's these other factors at play. And maybe so that's the third boundary. Yeah. And we don't have to do this on air because I don't want to get you more in trouble.

with your job or at least have the potential for it. But I think most people, if you step back and you ask yourself, what are the two to four things that I really care deeply about right now and that I really want to put my time and energy toward? Most people can answer that. That's the easy part. The hard part is starting to say no to everything else. Yeah.

The no is hard. The no is hard. And it's complicated. And there's one other practice here that's related to the no. and it's the low-hanging fruit of the no. In the chapter in the book on being present to own your energy and attention, I talk about this notion of a bullshit list. So once a month, write down everything that you did that past month

that was just complete and utter bullshit, and then commit to not doing it again in the future. And something that I found when I was reporting this book is the number one concern with the bullshit list was, well, my bullshit involves other people. So I think that this meeting's bullshit, but my direct report really likes the time with me and I feel bad canceling it or I feel bad telling this person that I can't read the report because they think that it's important.

And I constantly encourage these people to test those assumptions. And sure enough, the mid-level manager who couldn't cancel the meeting because she felt that her direct report thought it was important, when I asked her direct report, her direct reports that, oh, that meeting's total bullshit. I can't cancel it because I don't want to piss off my manager. So there's a lot of opportunity to cut stuff from our life that is junk. Once you've cut all that, if you still feel like the cognitive load, the number of balls that you're trying to juggle is too many at any given time, that's where there's some intuition here, but it's like, okay, I've got six balls I'm trying to juggle. I really think I can

only do three. What are the three right now? And then it takes real guts to figure out a way to wind down those other ones or doesn't have to be permanent, hit pause on them. So is this question, is this the same territory? Now I'm wondering about this. So Nali says, I love your books and in an avid listener, your podcast. One area I struggle with is inertia. When I am working, the momentum keeps me going and I'm reluctant to switch to relaxation mode. But the weekends come and I am busy with households and Harbys, I find myself procrastinating

about getting back into work mode. So how do you deal with inertia? So I guess going in both directions. this seems more tactical, right? Whereas with Mike, we're talking about something strategic. You have too much going on, or you know boundaries around it,

but inertia seems very tactical that I'm doing this particular thing, in that cognitive context. It's really hard to say, now I hit that boundary. Let's stop. And it's just being sharp about the boundaries to key, or is this a self-compassion area? Like, look, if you're in the flow with the thing you're doing,

then let it run over. It's okay. You know, like that was important to you. How do we balance those two things? I'm actually curious about this one for my own life as well. I think it's both and. So if you're in the flow, heck yeah, ride it out. Now, if you tell yourself that you're in the flow every single time you have a boundary, then like by definition, that's not the flow, right? Because the flow is fairly rare. I give it like twice a month. You can blow off a boundary because you're just crushing what you're working on. say follow boundaries. Follow boundaries. And where it gets hard is often what you're doing in the moment feels really good, but then later on it doesn't. So eating pizza, I know that if I eat more than four slices of pizza, four proper slices, not like little slivers, four proper slices, I end up not feeling too great the next morning. But when I'm done with that fourth slight, I want a fifth slice. And over time, I've paid close enough attention to what I get from that fifth slice that I've learned to picture my future self, waking up, kind of bloated,

not feeling great, burping pizza burps to not eat it. And I think in the case of work, it's the same. If you pay close attention to what you get when you're constantly overshooting boundaries, what you probably get is exactly what you described. Procrastination on other things, restlessness, exhaustion, feeling like you're constantly busy and rushed. So in that moment, it takes some confidence to say, hey, I know I'm going to be able to pick up in the flow of things on Monday, on Tuesday, whatever the boundary is. And I know that if I work right now, I'll feel better, but ultimately it'll make me worse. And then you just have to stick to that boundary. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, it sounds like Sonali, figure out what you're trying to do. I work and then I

stop at this point. I relax and I have to get some work done at this point. And you basically have to go with that. And using these psychological tricks of trying to imagine, like, yeah, being on my phone right now feels what I want to do, it's distracting me, is giving me good chemicals. But how am I going to feel if I just blow past not going on this hike or the walk I was going to do or I was going to bring a book to the coffee shop? And I just don't do it. I just look on the phone. How am I going to feel an hour from now? Yeah. I like that. I'll say one other important thing here. It's those, the tradeoffs that we're describing are really simple, right? Four versus. versus six pieces of pizza, another 10 minutes on Instagram versus doing something meaningful.

I think where this gets challenging is when there are two meaningful things that bump up against each other. So I am crushing my work right now. And I know I'm supposed to meet my friends at the trailhead for a hike, but I can just text them and say, hey, like, sorry, not going to work today, not feeling great, whatever it is. And what I argue in the practice of groundedness is, precisely this example. Community is the thing that tends to get cannibalized for efficiency or optimization and work. And if it's the exception, that's fine. But I think there's creep where this becomes the rule. And then what happens is for a month, for two months, maybe even for a year, when you're crushing on your work, it feels great. You are moving at light speed. You're moving so

fast you can't even see people passing you by. You don't feel the loss of community. But when you slow down because eventually we all slow down and you look around, you will not feel that sense of community and belonging. And ultimately, not only will that make you less happy and less well, I argue that it'll hurt your work because having that sense of community and belonging, it's the foundation of the mountain, right? It's a key practice of groundedness. So I think there's kind of two different levels here. There's the easy level, which is you're eating junk food you need to stop. You're consuming junk content you need to stop. Then there's the hard level which is, hey, these are both noble, honorable, meaningful pursuits, and yet I know that if I go way too far in one and completely leave behind the other long term, it's not going to be good for me.

This is the slow productivity principle I've been preaching recently that if you're looking at the long term, on this thing I'm doing in work, I want to do this well and produce good work on the scale of years, then the difference between crushing past your timeline and missing, those hikes, adding that extra hour and a half, the blowing off the other thing, it doesn't make a big difference on that overall rate of how many important things that I did, did I leave a legacy or not in my work. But it has all that huge impact short term. And somehow that principle is one I've been trying to embrace more, which is the big picture impact of let me go a little farther, let me work a little more today, let me cancel this thing, let me add an extra hour to my normal workday. It doesn't really make a huge difference, big picture. Yeah, and I'm going to blow your mind.

Here's the paradox, too, and I write about this a lot in the book, particularly for creative pursuits and deep work, often being inefficient now is the most efficient thing later. So not pushing, hanging out, daydreaming, going for a walk, meeting up with other friends, that's the stuff that's going to help you fuel your creative ideas in your deep work. Now, again, there's nuance here. If all you're doing is hanging out and never working, no. But I think for listeners of the show, certainly in my own life, it sounds like maybe in parts of your life, like the pendulum has swung too far to the productivity now. And what I found is part of what enables me to be efficient over a five-year or 10-year horizon is that I'm so inefficient day-to-day in learning that it's okay. Now, again, I'm not saying throw the baby out with the bathwater, but I'm saying that you can build in enough or at least a little inefficiency, and that will ultimately make you more efficient. This is part of the chapter on patience and going slow to go fast. Okay, I like to go slow to go fast because this dovetails with the slow productivity ideas we've

been talking about. And, you know, a way I sometimes summarize this, and I think this will be in line with what you wrote, what I remember that you wrote in that chapter, is, for example, if there's something that's important to you, then it should get regular investments of high quality attention. So you come back to it and it really gets your attention when you work on it. Like you really are trying to do it at a high level when you actually work on it. And these efforts should have what I nerdily call multi-scale seasonality, right? So on the scale of a week, there's a couple days in that week. You really work on this and other days you don't, right? It's seasonal within the scale of the week on the scale of the semester. It might be October was

really when I was putting a lot of work on this, but November I was doing something. else. And on the scale of years, it might be, I was really working hard on, you know, a book this year and kind of took another, the year after that, I did almost nothing, right? So it's seasonal on all the scales. And that is very sustainable. That's very meaningful. And it produces really good work on the big scale. And it's baked in. It's totally, oh, go ahead. Sorry, I thought you're done. Go ahead. But basically that, right? And that is what you should be doing. Now, if you, if you go from that to, okay, but also, let me just add that extra 20%, you know, like, it's a little bit too often or push into other things or sacrificing the moment or not do the seasonality, do it every

day or do it all the time. I mean, yeah, you do get something out of it, but you lose the sustainability, you lose the satisfaction, you lose their resiliency out of it, and it doesn't make a huge difference. And, you know, I wrote about this when I was talking about scientists. I was reading this book, The Scientist, and I talked about some podcast a few months ago, and it was famous scientists, profiles of all these famous scientists historically. We're talking Galileo, we're talking Newton, and I was struck by the patience of that work. It was a different lifestyle back then, but it would be,

I was working on this and then three years passed because we were attacked. We were attacked by Italy, and I was helping him with the fortifications and had a job as a court mathematician. But then there was a couple years in here where I was thinking about it, and you look back,

you're like, yeah, Galileo, you did really good work, and everyone's very impressed by it. Even though if you look at Galileo's life up close, there's periods where he's really working hard, on in periods where he's barely working on it, and there's periods where he's coming back and forth to it. In the moment, it looks excruciatingly drawn out and slow. But when you step back to a historical moment, you say, what a productive guy. He produced all these discoveries

and theories. And it's something I'm trying to wrap my head around. So I like your patience principle, I think, gets at this. Regular effort, do it good when you do it. I mean, give it your attention, but be uneven. It can be seasonal. And just keep coming back to it. And over time, good things will pile up. I just don't see adding that 20% of overhead that causes 80% of the pain is really not a tradeoff that seems worth it to me. And it's the 20% of overhead that will most likely cause you to burn out and not produce the masterwork that might have been in the tank one year, five year, 10 years down the road.

So this is where I'll plug some more of my own work. So the week that we're recording this, which is just a week before your book came I had my latest New Yorker piece come out, and I was asking the question, why do we work too much? And I was giving this hypothesis that in a bunch of types of office work-style jobs, most people don't work a crazy amount, right? So, Karoshi, Death by Overwork is very rare, so we don't like go out over-of-control. And very few people work a reasonable amount. I said very few people where it's like, yeah, I work a very reasonable amount.

It seems great. I have more than enough time to get things done. We all do 20% too much. and I argue that that's like a terrible liminal zone in between the two places because it's sustainable so you can do this forever but it's really really painful because it's like there's constantly just not enough time and it hits all the stress buttons and the question is why and I said look I know all of the takes on this right now is really drawing from conflict theory which is saying you're working 20% too much because

someone's trying to exploit you and you have to fight and I see but you know there's this other thing going on which is our work is so autonomous these days and so haphazard and so unstructured that we need some heuristic to figure out how much is enough. When do I start saying no? When do I start triageing what I'm doing? As most people say, well, I wait until I feel stressed. Because that's a good signal. I feel overworked. I feel stressed. And so now I have

psychological cover to say no to what follows. It's a perfectly reasonable heuristic because it's easy to apply and psychologically satisfying, but it will lead you to a point where everyone now is working about 20% too much because you have to work enough to get the stress. You have to be overworking before you start saying no.

So you get a negative inhibition complex system that's going to stabilize at this unintentional place, which is the highest level of stress that's still really sustainable for a long time so it can do maximum damage. So, you know, there's an arbitrariness to where we end up. And we go back and tell the stories, like, no, that's the workload I need to not lose my job or fall behind or to get the workload I need to get ahead. But it could just be this arbitrary feedback system we've created in the absence of something

more structured. So it's more self-promotion. But it's an idea I was quite fond of, the self-regulation of work. that's otherwise haphazard can lead you to very consistent convergences, but those convergences might be completely not arbitrary, but really not at all be what you're intended and not giving you the benefits you think.

Yep. And to make it not just about your self-promotion in the practice of groundedness, another section in the chapter on patients is what I call learning how to stop one rep short. And I think this is exactly what you're saying. So in any kind of fitness training, there's a myth that you want to train to fatigue, you don't. To sustainably grow any muscle in your body, any physical system,

you want to go just below the point of fatigue. And why do you want to do that? Because if you're constantly going to fatigue, you're constantly going to the well, long term, your body stops adapting. So you want to get just up to that line and then stop. And we do not apply that to knowledge work, but in the book, I argue that we should for all the reasons that you just said. once you hit that stress point, once your hamstring starts hurting, it's too late.

So at least if you want to be a sustainable peak performer. So we have to figure out in knowledge context, what does it look like to stop one rep short? And then tell ourselves, back to another term, that, hey, this might feel in the moment inefficient or it might feel unproductive, but long term, it's actually more efficient and it's that route to slow productivity that you mentioned. I love that example. Yeah. If you're, if you wait till your hamstring hurts as an athlete, you're screwed, right? You're going to be out for six weeks on an injury, right? So if you're training until your hamstring hurts, you're screwed. But in knowledge work, the equivalent of your hamstring hurting is feeling that overload stress. Yeah, and I don't buy the argument. I'm going to get, I'm sure that I'm going to upset some, some listeners. But I generally speaking, I'm painting in broad strokes, I don't buy the argument that like it's like, you know, the structural system. and there's abusive practices, not in knowledge work. I think if you're talking about an Amazon warehouse, that's a whole different ballgame. But I think most knowledge workers that complain about overwork are all complicit in a system

where everyone is overworking because of the reason that you just said. Now, are there exceptions? Yes. I'm sure there are some corporate jobs or some law firms where there truly are just crazy, malicious leadership that force you to work or you get fired. But generally speaking, I think in most knowledge work, again, knowledge work, jobs. We're all complicit in doing this, and it creates this upward swirl. And if everyone is training to fatigue always, and that becomes the norm, then what's going to happen? Everyone's going to train to fatigue. People are going to burn out, but parts are part. You'll burn out. You'll take

some time off, whatever. The next person will come in. They'll train to fatigue. And what do we have? We have a really fast-paced, powerful economy with a lot of miserable people. Which is probably operating below the output it could be doing, because athletes, with hurt hamstrings don't run the 40 as fast. You know, exactly. You know, there's an element to it. Well, there's an element to that. So I went down, we've talked about this before, but now I've gone down the academic rabbit hole.

So I have a stronger theoretical basis for the argument there that you're dismissing. And I think I largely agree with your dismissal. There's a complicated, if you want to get academic, there's this complicated piece to it. And again, I think a lot of people deploying this argument don't really know all these underlying sort of academic lineages, but it's what's informing it. So Marx had conflicts theory, which was saying, you know, this context. Basically, it's a fundamentally exploitative relationship between the owners and capitalists and the worker.

So if you're working too much, it's because someone's trying to screw you. But then he added this more complex element because we had to keep, you know, students and graduate seminars interested, which was superstructure-based theory. And he says, okay, there's also complicit in this system, the superstructure is a culture the cultural cues that are created to try to reinforce the base, which is the interest of the capital holder. So that there will be a culture of hustle or overwork that itself is created by the capitalist themselves are reinforcing this culture self-interestedly

because you think it's just we're supposed to hustle and this is great, but it's really all part of this complicit plan to trick you to work more so they can make more off of your back. So it becomes like a really complicated, mentally interesting for very, smart people type argument. But what you're saying is what I've been arguing. And I argued this in the page of the New Yorker. And I actually talked about conflict theory and Marx right there. So we'll see. And no one's yelled at me yet. So we'll see. And I think what you're saying is actually probably 80% right, which is like most of the explanation, which is like also it's just really haphazard and

arbitrary and autonomous and no one knows what they're doing. And we end up there for in weird, bad places. But you can't take something so complex of how do you design an optimal work system and say, let's just leave it up to people. You know, like, I don't know. It's like up to you. Go for it, right? I mean, this is another piece I'm working on now, so I shouldn't give away too much.

But up until recently, productivity, I mean, it's an economic measure, obviously you have inputs and you're trying to, what's the value of the outputs we get out, given the value of the inputs we put into the system. But how do you increase productivity? And like, until recently it was all about optimizing systems. Well, we have to optimize how we plant crops

and figure out how to do a rotation system and use tilling and whatever. or okay, in industrial manufacturing, we have to optimize how the factory runs. And in all of these optimizations to increase measurable productivity, really smart people do nothing but think about this. Millions of dollars is invested into it. There's huge experiments, companies that go out of business. I mean, it was hard to figure out how to make fields more productive.

It was hard to figure out how to make the assembly line work. And now we just basically say, everyone just do this on their own. All the optimization just happens with the individual. figure out, you know, Boris, I'm forgetting the name, Gorlog, who did the dwarf wheat that saved, stopped the famine in Italy, like figuring out how to get way more capacity out of the wheat fields. Or you figure out, it's crazy. We just placed us all in the individual, something that used to be researchers and engineers would just do nothing but think about how do we make this system more productive. Well, when the system is the person, and we tell the person, make yourself more productive, like, of course we're going to end up in random place. And it's going to be haphazard and we're going to get resentful and we're going to just kind of hate the whole term and work itself is going to become this weird burden. And now I'm ranting just because I've been thinking about this too long. But it all comes back to, I agree. Yeah, I was just going to say that that's a great rant. And I think that, you know, I would say that a world without email to plug your book, that tries to address it on a system level. And I think the practice of groundedness tries to address it on an individual level. So why do

individuals feel like it has to be so haphazard. Why can't you take more control of your values, your time, your energy? Why can't you develop a foundation where you don't feel like you constantly need to go to the well and exert that last 20 percent? And much like a world without email is very contrarian. So is this book. It does not sit next to normal self-help books, which are about crushing it and being better and doing more. It really argues, in some ways, step back from the crazy frenetic energy, just like your book argued, step back from the crazy swirl of email and ask yourself, like, what, ultimately, what's really important? What do I want to do here? And then it's going to require swimming upstream, but just do it. Yes. And that's it,

in a nutshell. Yeah. And so I think we're completely in conciliance because the underlying idea for both of these is it's the lack of structure or systematic thinking in knowledge work causes lots of problems, right, that we just kind of go at it haphazardly. So there's a lot we have to do about this. If we want to fix the overwhelming communication this generates, that's like my book. We're going to have to think through probably as a company how we actually want to communicate. Because if we don't think about that, the haphazard nature work will make it be that. But your book, The Practice of Groundness gets into like, okay, you're going to have a ton of other decisions you're going to have to make.

And at a higher level and a lower level. Like, what projects do I want to take on? What do I want to do in my career? How do I feel about this failing? How do I think about my ambitions, both professionally and non? And it's saying there, again, there's no structure for you. We just sort of throw people out there and document stuff on Instagram. You need the, it's all a reaction.

With the filter, don't forget. We filter it too. So even the stuff that's documented is not real. Yes. Yes, with a filter and wearing white linen. So we have no structure. So this is the core cause to everything is that there's a lot of haphazardous. We're missing cultural and professional.

structural structure to figuring out what our life means, what work means, how to do it, what's the right way to do it, what's the relationship between us and work. It's all up for grabs. So we better have a plan. And some of those plans are going to require a lot of people to work together, namely basically just if we don't want a thousand emails and a knowledge work company, okay, we've got to work together. But a lot of this is about what you do. And that's, I think this is where the groundliness is a perfect book. It's like, well, you better figure out what you're about and start developing these practices that you need to, you need to have really mastered to go out. there otherwise into this chaos, into this haphazardness, and blaze a path that will get you up that mountain where you're actually enjoying the wildflowers you see along the way. There's rant number two. Love it. All right, we've gone a little long here. We should probably wrap it up. Brad, thank you as always. All right, well, thanks to Brad Stolberg for coming by and helping me answer some questions. Check out his book, The Practice of Groundedness.

I'll be back on Thursday with some listener calls. And until then, as always, stay deep.