Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 172: CALLS: The Books I Read in January 2022

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). For instructions on submitting your own questions, go to calnewport.com/podcast.Video from today’s episode: tinyurl.com/b2rkctfjCal's January Books: [2:00]Listener Calls:- Implementing the deep life [21:30]- Physical vs. e-books [33:33]- Finding hobby motivation [37:39]- Asking for help [45:14]- Deep student life [52:34]- Deep work for a new father [1:04:27]Thank you to this episode's Sponsors:Policy Genius:  Policygenius.comCentered:           centered.app/deepquestionsMagic Spoon:    magicspoon.com/calExpressVPN:     expressvpn.com/deepThanks to Jesse Miller for production, 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 172. Here are my Deep Work H.Q. Joined, as always, by my producer, Jesse. And we've got ourselves a good old-fashioned listener calls episode, which I am looking forward to. Now, this is the first recording session that we have done in the month of February. We're doing this.

I don't know what today is. February 4th, maybe, February 5th, something like that. So you know what that means? If it's the first session in a new month, we should take some time to talk about the books I read in the preceding month. We're trying to make that a habit here on the show. So I thought we would start things off today talking about the five books I read in January 2022.

Quick background on that. I usually aim to read around five books a month. And the two things I do to accomplish this goal is one, I make reading more of a default activity. So instead of looking at a phone or a tablet for random online distraction, I make looking at a book my default activity. And two, I read a wide variety of books of different styles, different genres, different levels of difficulty so that it doesn't become tedious or doesn't become too much

of a chore. I don't care what format, audio, Kindle, hardcover, whatever. Just keep reading. I also believe in not overthinking what you read. Just reading a lot of interesting stuff is better than having some sort of carefully curated list with which you're trying to impress people. All right. So let's get into it. The books I read in January 2022.

So those who have followed this segment in previous months know, I've been on a kick recently of really. reading books that have to do with the entertainment industry. I'm not sure why. I just like that genre. I did some cinema books. I've done some biographies of directors. My entry in this in the sequence of books for January was Will Smith's new biography, which is titled Will, which I actually quite enjoyed.

Now, Will is co-authored. Will Smith co-authored it with, uh, Mark Manson, who you might know as the author of the subtle art of not giving an F word, that book, which sold, and I'm using the official terms here, Jesse, all the copies. That's what I have here. I have here on my official notes. That book sold an absurd number of copies. I'm talking like 18 million copies. It's a crazily successful book.

So he co-authored. So Will Smith, I think, liked the subtle art and asked Mark to co-author Will with him. You know, the way I learned about this is Mark told me it's a pretty small world. Jesse, you could probably imagine this to be the case. There's only so many of us that are sort of in our 30s or now late 30s now who write pragmatic non-fiction books for major publishers. There's like a group of us and we all kind of know each other, right? because we're all like the same age. We all sort of write the same thing.

So Mark is in that group. Ryan Holiday is in that group. Tim Ferriss is in that group. James Clear is in that group. I'm in that group. So we all know each other. So a few years ago, Mark was giving a talk.

He was doing a lecture tour. He was giving a talk here into D.C. area. Actually kind of near to where I live. Near here, he was in Silver Spring was the talk at the Fillmore, which is near Tacoma Park. So I was like, well, just come hang out. Like before your talk, well, so he came and we, you know, wand to the streets of Tacoma. park and just talked as one does.

And I remember him telling me, he's like, here's what I'm working on now, a biography with Will Smith. I was like, well, that's crazy. That's interesting. Not at all what I thought you were going to say. And it sounded awesome. He's like, yeah, Will's method was he would be like, hey, Mark, I'm going, you know, somewhere cool. Do you want to just come with me?

And he would just bring them and they could just chat when they had downtime. I thought that was the coolest thing. I was like, all right, go for it. And the book is good. It's good. I sent Mark a note about this. It's really hard to write these memoirs because you have to capture like a unique voice and you need to be psychologically self-reflective and yet also capture how did the fresh prince of Bel Air become a show. And I thought it did it really well.

I'm actually surprised this book has not gotten more critical love. So I sent Mark a note and so I think you did a great job. This is a hard book to write. I couldn't have done this. And so I really enjoyed it. It would be my analysis. Have I told you my Will Smith story? No, I want to hear it.

All right. So I was in my first year, maybe my second year of graduate school at MIT. And I just published how to win at college and how to be a straight-A student. And I got contacted by Will's people. And maybe it was Jaden at the time. One of his kids was, you know, of the age where you care about. about grades, like junior high or something. And they're like, can you come like down to Miami and like just talk with Will about how to

study and how to do whatever? And do you play golf? I remember like you want to just come down the golf course. And for various reasons it didn't work out. But I remember, I don't play golf. And I told them. I was like,

I cannot go to a golf course with Will Smith. When I literally, I would be holding. This would be the scene. Right. So Will Smith would walk in superhero shape, you know, like everyone's just. happy to see him there. He's incredibly competitive, so he's probably been at that point

getting one-on-one golf training. He's going to gamble with you. He's going to gamble with me. I'm going to walk out there. He's like, I'm glad you're here, Cal. And then he's going to say, I don't mean to interrupt,

but you're holding the golf club upside down. That's not a handle. That's the face of the golf club you're supposed to hit it with. Point two, I think our business here is done. And that's how that would have played out. That would not have been good. That would not have been good.

but I like his I like that attitude though of like okay you have a problem like I want to help my kid with studying nice situation that be like all right so who's the guy who's like top at study strategies right now let's get him down here and I don't know if Will Smith had anything to do with like that could have been his people he might have just told someone like can you find someone to come talk to me

and they look so did you go down there I didn't go down there because of golf or because you're busy with other stuff yeah yeah I mean also like I'm not a one-on-one tutor, you know? Yeah. I get it. I don't fault.

I don't fault people for trying to get the best, best for their kids, but like it just felt weird to me. I was like, I don't know, man. I'm like doctoral student here at MIT trying to do whatever. I don't. And I'm not good at one-on-one tutoring.

That's not my thing. You know me. If I'm not in front of a microphone, I'm weird and antisocial. That's not true. Yeah. Anyways, that did not make it to the book.

So I flipped to that. I didn't see that in the book. and so I threw it out. No, but it was a good book. I really enjoyed Will. You know, that gets a driven guy. It's just a driven guy. All those people make it that level are so driven.

It's insane. The thing about that personifies Will Smith that I learned in that book is he hired a Monopoly coach at some point. Just because they played Monopoly a fair amount and he's like, I want to be the best at Monopoly and hired a professional monopoly player, which exists. the tournament player to drill him until he could

for sure dominate his family wouldn't play monopoly that tells you everything you need to know about why he was the biggest superstar in the world it's just there was a driven mentality

of like let's get after it like I don't want to lose you know which I all of these guys and women that are at the top of their field the same way like if I'm going to play monopoly I'm going to win

yeah they're extremely competitive business athletes Yeah. All right. So I like that book. Then I read, oh, I should say good audiobook, too. They do clips and audio, like his songs. We was talking about his songs. Like, they play the audio of the songs. It's actually, it's well-produced audiobook.

All right. So I actually did two books in January that had to do with the entertainment industry. The other one was The Late Shift, which was a book that came out, I guess, in the 2000s or the 90s, about the battle. between Jay Leno and David Letterman to see who was going to get the Tonight Show after Johnny Carson retired. And the reason why there was actually this show, our show, that motivated me. I was like, I actually would be interested to find out more about this world of late-night TV and how these top performers crafted these shows and tried to build audiences.

And that was actually my inspiration. Interesting book there. What I learned is Dave Letterman was a huge broadcast. casting talent, right? So his show was incredibly original and he was pushing the medium. He was very much understood the medium of visual television and would do things with the camera and take it different places and had a very distinctive voice. So he was a huge talent. Jay Leno didn't have that talent so much, but what Jay would do was the monologue. And that was his whole thing. The jokes in the monologue are going to be top notch and topical

and it's going to be longer than Letterman's monologue by far. It's going to be longer than Carson's monologue was. And he was all about the monologue. And that in the end sort of won the late night war. The people just, let me just turn over and see like really funny jokes about what's going on in the news.

I was a huge Letterman fan. Huge Letterman fan in the 90s. Me and my friends got tickets. We went out to the Ed Sullivan Theater. I've seen him perform back when he was doing the show. But, you know, it was like smart, weird, wry, eccentric humor beautifully done. In the end, what won that late night war was just, I want like a really good

Clinton joke, you know? And so it's, but it was fascinating, fascinating book. And the other thing I learned from that is like, it's incredibly hard to run a late night show, just to not come across as weird on camera. Like to be someone who can be on screen like that for 90 minutes and the audience stays with you, it's just really hard to do. And so if you were one of the few people who could do it, they would just dump truck money at your house.

Like the money involved in this was crazy. Leno was getting $7 million and that jumped up. Letterman was in the teens per year, $15 plus million dollars per year in the 90s because no one could do this. People tried and it was a debacle. But like if you could, you got all the money, basically.

Are they around equally wealthy? Yeah. They're just super rich. Yeah. Yeah, they both just got really wealthy. All right. Moving away from books about the entertainment industry, I read this book, which we've talked about on the show now multiple times in the last few weeks,

how to take smart notes. So this was the book about Zettelcast and note-taking. And I mean, I think it's, I don't know if this is true, but I think it was one of the books that helped bring the details of this method to an English-speaking audience. So the author is drawing from research that was done in Germany, where they were studying the productivity of the sociologist Lumen who used this Zetelkastin method to great effect and had this incredibly productive academic career

and then this team from the University of Berlin was trying to study how he's so productive and they were like, oh, this note-taking system. So this was kind of a German thing and how to take smart notes brought the concept over to English-speaking audiences. This book took a long route to get to me. actually one of my readers sent it to me at some point early in the pandemic.

Now, Georgetown was pretty good. They shut down for a long time. Long story short, Georgetown shut down for a long time. So I don't know how long this book. Someone at some point, someone put it in my office with a big stack of mail. But I was gone for a year. They shut down, more than a year. I mean, they shut down in March of 2020.

And I was back in my office in the fall of 21, like five months ago. Right. And so there's a whole stack of. mail and this was in there. So it might have been in my office for a year and the whole thing got water damage. There had been a flood and so, but I rescued from this stack,

this book that some, a reader had sent me and it's really cool. It's always interesting. So if you're interested in the Zettelcast and stuff we're talking about, that's the book. That's the book. It's short. It gets into it.

It's incredibly optimistic. It has this loom in philosophy of if you have your system right, writing becomes effortless. Listeners know I don't quite buy that. But it is the right introduction, I believe into that type of note-taking. All right, moving on now. Then I read the Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything.

So this was a non-fiction book that basically surveyed for a popular audience, Jesuit theology, and tried to extract lessons from the different parts of Jesuit theology that would be applicable to a large crowd, including. large secular crowd. I'm at a Jesuit university. I figured I should know more about Ignatian spirituality. So I read the Jesuit guide to almost everything. So it's really advicey.

So it'll be, okay, here's something that we Jesuits do. But here's why this is important. And here's why, whether you're a Catholic or not or religious or not, you should think about doing these type of things in your life. That's the general format of this book. And it was pretty good. It was long. But it was good.

It was good to get a nice service. in history of the Jesuit order, you also got a pretty good insight biographically into what it's like to join a monastic order. Like what that process is like, what life is like as a Jesuit, like what that's actually like. And the author, Father Donovan,

gets into it. You know, here's what's like. Here's the hard parts. Here's why I did it. Here's how old I was. Kind of interesting. You and Ferris kind of had a religious conversation when you were on this podcast yesterday

or two days ago. Yeah. Yeah, we got into it. Yeah. Yeah, we were joking about it before because we had a similar conversation with Lex Friedman that for some reason for the tech podcast crowd, I've become the sounding board for like thinking the role of, thinking through the role of religion in your life.

It's an interesting role. Maybe because I'm one of the few commentators in that space that will just talk religion straight up and just treat it as something like think about and look through its advantages. I mean, there was such a powerful, not to digress, but there was such a powerful impact on that space caused by the new atheist in the 2000s that has like it really boxed in religion, especially if you're a Silicon Valley type,

to like an untouchable thing. And that box is only now, I think, starting to dissolve. Like people are taking tentative steps, people who are hardcore tech or whatever. Let me just think a little bit more about religion. But for a while it was the new atheist, you know, Dawkins and Dennett and Harris

had just packaged that up and it was sort of intellectually unavailable. So it's interesting to see it come back. It was probably, honestly, I think it was probably Jordan Peterson that his rise and fall and rise again or whatever, I think had a big impact on

shaking loose a new atheist grip on religion in certain types of circles. That's my best guess. And I think what we forget about the new atheist is that they were a reaction in large part to the Bush era. You know, so it's, for the younger people listening, they might not have this background.

But like new atheism, in 2003 when you're writing this type of stuff, like new atheism, you had two really strong motivating factors. You had the 9-11 attack. So this was this big, strong motivating factor, especially for people like Harris, about, you know, religious fundamentalism just leads to terrible things. why are we tolerate it? And you had the sort of elite liberal reaction to George W. And the evangelicals that helped him get elected. And so it was like very counter, it was countercultural back thing. Like you were pushing back against this, especially when he got reelected in 2004,

a lot of people felt like, oh, man, there's this religious majority. And I'm rejecting that. Like religion's no good or whatever. So there was a countercultural feel to it. And then the cultural whole flipped. Everything flipped. and now to be religious is, you know, now you're in the cultural minority

and have very little cultural leverage. And I think it's in that environment that that box around religion is starting to open up a little bit. So I don't know why I'm the person people are asking about this. Talk to Father Donovan. That's the guy you should talk about.

I don't know why people ask me, but I just think it's interesting that like it's a conversation now that Ferris is interested. Basically, I felt like he was saying I can't be religious, but maybe I should be religious. I think you're just looking for your advice on certain things on how to, as you would term it, live a deep life and be fulfilled, to be quite honest.

Because, I mean, I've listened to every single one of his podcast. And I think he's, you know, he's got a lot of organized, but I think he's trying to figure some stuff out too. And you have a lot of organized and you can bounce the ideas off them. I think you just wanted to, you're well read, obviously. So, yeah. Yeah. So anyways, that was interesting.

That was interesting. So that's a trend to keep an eye on is the, maybe this is all just cyclical. Things like religion come and go, come and go. In cycles, you have flips in the cultural mainstream. All right, final book from January 2022 was called Giants. I don't have the subtitle here, but so Giants is a dual biography of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. And so it contrasts their life, their life.

And, of course, in the end, they then become interdural. Their lives actually collide during the Civil War presidency of Lincoln. This is a book, so this was written by John Stauffer at Harvard, and I don't know why I haven't read it yet. So I'm a big Lincolnophile. I read a lot of Lincoln. This is a signed copy of the book that I've had since it came out earlier in the 2000s because when we were in Cambridge, when I was at MIT and my wife worked with John's, John Stauffer's wife at a history. education focused nonprofit. So John was always doing, you know, events and was kind of intertwined in that world.

We babysat for his kids and stuff like that. And so when this book came out, we went through the book release. I had a signed copy from. Big Lincoln fan never read the book until now. I don't know why. It's fantastic. It's really good. I mean, it's very hard for scholars sometimes to be able to write in a way that is accessible.

I thought it was very accessible, but very smart. and just a, I know it won some awards and rightly so. So I'm glad, basically, I guess I'm glad that I finally got around to reading giants. I think it's a really good profile of that age, that period leading up to the Civil War, and that contrast between Douglas coming out of slavery and trying to define himself and make his way in what he faced. And then Lincoln coming out of the rural frontier poverty and how their views evolved over time. It was really well handled in a very readable way. So, you know, thumbs up to giants.

Thumbs up to giants as well. There go, Jesse. Those are my five books. Let's see. It's November 4th or 5th. Fourth. Fourth. Okay.

I'm almost done with my second book of February. I was going to, I was just going to ask you that. I was like, how many you have done in February? I'm almost done with my second. Well, I have a beast of a book I'm working on. I started it back in January, 600 pages. And I'll talk about it when we get there.

But I'm just working on that a bit, bit at a time. So I'm front-loading a little bit. I don't know if I'm going to finish it in February or not, though. It's a beast. It's 600 pages, but 600 pages of dense writing. And I'm taking my time with it because I really like this book. So I'm kind of front-loading some other

reading to see. If I can't get this done in February, I'll get it done in March. And I have a... I'm going to Florida in a little bit, so that'll give me some good reading time too. So I feel good about February. I'm on track. Less days. That's true, though. Less days. Yeah. Yeah, you got

You got to get after it. All right. Well, speaking of getting after it, let's do some listener calls. So who do we have here first? All right. So our first call is from Jeff. Basically, he has a deep life question. He wants an example from you.

So we'll take a listen. See what he has to say. Hi, Cal. My name is Jeff, and I am an IT consultant. I've been a big fan of yours ever since so good they can't ignore you. And I've read similar books such as ultra-learning. peak performance, grit, and atomic habits. These books are full of practical advice on how to improve learning and skills and contribute to the deep life.

However, I find myself never implementing them. What kind of strategy would you suggest using to incorporate concepts found in books of this genre? How long should one try something new before deciding it doesn't work for them? And I think it would be great if you can give an example of a habit or advice you once read about and then incorporated into the same. your daily life. Thank you. So, Jeff, the systematic advice I give for

laying the foundation for a deep life integrating new ideas into the deep life is based on the deep life buckets. I think that's exactly what you need for what you're talking about here. You define the different areas that are important to you living a life well lived. We call these the

deep life buckets. The standard examples we give, for example, is craft, which is the things you produce. your work to things you build, constitution, which is your health and fitness, community, your connection to people

that are around you and that matter to you and contemplation, theology, ethics, and philosophy, just as a starting point, but you have your areas that are important to you.

Then you want to have a keystone habit in each of these areas, something you do every day. So this is where when you learn new things could be integrated into what this keystone habit is.

And that's a warm up. So now you're, you say, okay, I'm in the habit of doing optional activity in each of the areas of my life that are important on a regular basis, even though I don't have to. So you're signaling to yourself, I take these parts of my life seriously. Then you dedicate four to six weeks to each of these buckets one by one to say, now I'm going to do a more systematic overhaul of that part of my life, where I might remove multiple things out of my life related to that bucket that are just in the way that are cluttered, that are taking up time, streamline, and then I might add into it. or refine the things I do in that part of my life, so I get a maximum value return. So it's all about focusing on things that are high return and avoiding the things that don't give you much return or get in the way.

That is exactly where you can be integrating new advice. So just do this once a year. I suggest doing it in the lead up to your birthday. That's the way I like to think about this. You're doing an overhaul in the months leading up to your birthday. And that's where you can look at what's working, what's not working in each of the areas of your life. integrate new ideas,

integrate new systems, integrate new habits. That's what I would recommend. In terms of examples from my own life, things that I've integrated or not integrated, let me think about that. I'm thinking of my mind,

if you want to know what's going on here, I'm thinking through my mind in different categories. You know, like I've had a pretty major, pretty major constitution So health and fitness overhaul, I do those, you know, every once in a while. And I've done, I put a lot of time into that. So I gave it its four to six weeks focused to overhaul somewhat recently.

And so there's a few things I do. So the keystone habit, the keystone habit I do now is there's a tracking habit where I track the, as I've done before, the exercise I do. Like, what did I do today? And the steps I take. I had been doing that. I added to it weight every morning. You got to look at it. Look at the number.

And that's, you know, you got to face it. Best motivator is a very powerful keystone habit. You have to face it and you know you have to face it. And it can really keep you away from, you know, I should not be eating this or drinking this as much. And so that was a keystone habit. Then I've had a pretty radical overhaul in terms of my actual fitness. I'm going through a rowing program.

concept two rower and the stave off the winter can't be outside as much blues and not get as much sunshine blues I have a daily it's a daily rowing program where it's every day here's the workout you're doing here's to work out you're doing so that gives me flashbacks from my old college

crew days I've replaced I used I always have a baseline of doing a thousand pull-ups a month but I've now added into it I think I've that right a thousand yeah 36 am I doing that math right Jesse 36 a day That's all.

Yeah. And I've always done that. But now I'm actually doing workout routines beyond that. But let me tell you, just to walk you through this, to me, that's all just breaking the seal. So this was what I was going to be doing in January. I'm doing it now January through February because I hurt my back in January, so I've got a slow start. I'm just breaking the seal.

I'm getting used to like I'm doing a rowing, rowing workout. I'm getting used to doing like real workouts beyond just my pull-ups or whatever. all of that is just to get me used to that being a non-trivial part of my life so that then I can upgrade that when we get later in February. And so now I want to do some serious training. But I didn't want to jump straight in the serious training. I figured I had to overhaul my life to that that's a big part of my day and I'm used to it. And I'm in that groove and I'm doing hard work every day somewhat randomly, but I'm doing it. Right.

And then when I'm done doing that for a month or two, then I'm going to say now I can now I can up my game. And actually, Jeff, my idea is I want to train for something. And I don't know what yet. But that is an example of deep life thinking. That's me focusing on the Constitution bucket. So I'm turning 40 this summer. And I figure I really got to start caring about my health and fitness more because that's the age for men where a lot of things. A lot of things go downhill.

And so there's a high leverage moment to be in really good shape. And so that's, I made that whole overhaul plan. And that's just for the Constitution. bucket. And now that plan's kind of operating. So now I can, there's other buckets I could think about. That's an example of what those overhauls look like. I should get your advice. So when the time comes, Jesse, I'll get your, your advice. Jesse knows about gyms and exercise. So you'll get me, that's what we should do with the HQ. So we just have it be essentially like a gym. That'd be weird. We could put a pull up bar in. We should put a pull up bar in. You can just put one

right in the door. Can I tell you something about pull up bars? Those ones you just put in the doors that are supposed to somehow like counter just counter lever in and you can use them. I've never in my life got that to work. Really? I have one on my house. I've had it forever. It works. We're just like,

there's no screws or anything. It's just, I must be doing it wrong. Yeah, it works great. I've had it for years. I must be doing it wrong because I've had multiple of these because I've been doing pull-ups ever since I was,

you know, left 22 and left college. It was a rowing thing, right? I've never got it to work. I'm like, there's no way this is going to work. I put it up there and it just drops to the ground. Like, how am I supposed to do pull-ups on this thing? I'm doing something wrong.

All right, we've got to figure that out. We'll start doing pull-ups here. Anyways, thanks for that question, Jeff. All right, now, before we move on to our next call, we want to take a moment to actually talk about the sponsors that makes this show possible. Pull-up bars aren't just given out for free on the street. They actually cost money,

so we do need to have some sponsors for this show. And our first sponsor is Policy Genius. Now, PolicyGenius is a one-stop shop to find and buy the insurance you need. We're talking here. Home and auto coverage, PolicyGenius can help you save money on how much you are paying. It's really easy to do. You go to PolicyGenius.com and answer a few questions. PolicyGen shows you price estimates for different policies that fits what you need.

You can just look at it right there and say, is any of these cheaper than what I'm paying. Now, they're pretty good at finding you good deals at PolicyGenius. They will look, for example, at bundles. Maybe you have home insurance, bundle with your auto insurance, and the whole thing gets cheaper. But if you do this, you are probably going to save money. Jesse, quiz for you,

what do you think the average amount per year policy genius saves their users over what they were paying before in home and auto insurance? I think the average month. for insurance for like a new car is probably what 600 and then they probably save uh six to eight hundred dollars they save one thousand two hundred and fifty so they do a good job now here's the thing jesse's numbers are biased because his truck which i believe is 75 years old and is 65 percent rust is his pickup truck i i believe the insurance cost on that is like 17 dollars a year or something $200 a year.

$200 a year. So he's a little bit biased. He's not exactly driving a brand new. I don't even know cars. I don't know what a fancy car is. A brand new Bentley or something. But if you don't have a truck that's 75 years old, you could be saving a lot of money if you go to policygenious.com.

Keep in mind, their team works for you, not the insurance companies. You can trust them to offer you unbiased health. Help, no extra fees. They don't sell your. information third parties. They've helped over 30 million people. So head to policygenius.com to get your free home and auto insurance quotes and see how much you could save. Now, Jesse, our other sponsor here, we were talking about it on a Monday's episode. I was excited about this sponsored is centered, C-E-N-T-E-R-E-D, centered, a application for productivity.

You run this software on your Mac. You run this software on your Windows computer. and it helps you do better, less distracted, deeper work. And as I said, they have a few different features. They bring all your to-does together in one place. They have this great library of ambient music to help you focus. The founder of the company I was talking to him was telling you people love the music, right? You get used to the music. You get used to this music means it's time to work.

They have a do not disturb mode on your Mac, which I really love. So it keeps people from being able to bother you, which I think is by itself worth all the money you would pay for a service like this. And it has a virtual coach that nudges you to, hey, wait a second. Bring your attention back to what you're working on. I've told you, Jesse, I love these type of productivity apps. I hate this idea that productivity software is all about just getting quicker access to information and faster communication. No, productivity software should be about helping you get the best work out of your brain to do your best, work and that is what centered does.

And look, if you're not using centered, as we talked about on Monday, your only other option is to basically hire me to come stand over your shoulder and yell at you. Get deep. Every time I see you try to check your email or every time I try to see you check Slack and no one wants that. It's probably not going to happen because you didn't do it for Will Smith. So you're not going to do it for, you know, somebody else. If I didn't help Will Smith, I'm not going to help you get more productive.

So you have no other choice. but to use Cynard. I am very excited about this product. I'm glad it exists. So you can download Cynardt today at cinderd.app slash deep questions. Use that promo code deep questions

to get a free month of Cinerd and that free month will come with all of the premium features. Cender.com app slash deep questions. All right. Well, speaking about productivity, we should probably keep going here.

Let us move on to our next listener call. All right. The next question is from Brian, from D.C., actually. And it's kind of fitting because he's got a question, goes into detail about physical versus e-books. I know you brought it up before, but he talks about some good stuff.

So let's take a listen. Hi, Cal. My name is Brian. I'm a lawyer down in Washington, D.C., so I guess in a way we're neighbors. This question has nothing to do with my profession, but I heard you're looking for more questions, so I thought I'd give this one a shot.

I'd be curious in your thoughts on e-books versus physical books. instinctually, I always prefer physical books. I like seeing them on bookshelves. I like the visual reminder of the books I've read and the thoughts I've digested. And perhaps most importantly, I like the idea that maybe my kids will see them and be exposed to them and perhaps one day decide themselves to read some of the books that I found influential. I know I enjoyed doing that when I was a kid. But I also noticed that ever since I've dusted my Kindle off the shelf, I read a lot more.

I think I can read at night while I get the baby to bed. I can take it with me more easily. I can get library books very easily on that. And so my volume of reading has really gone up. I also have noticed that I'm much more into taking and reviewing notes since I can just export that when I'm done reading. Paradoxically, though, that means I very rarely, if ever, go back and reread passages out of the electronic book like I might in a hard copy book.

And so not a productivity question, but I'd be really curious in your thoughts on e-books versus hard-copy books. Thanks so much. Well, Brian, I would say use all formats and don't overthink it. I use all formats. They all have their advantages. If we look at the five books I read this month that we talked about earlier in the show, this particular month, two of them are audiobooks and three of them were physical books. I would say in a typical month, maybe one audiobook, one or two Kindle books, and then two or three physical books. So I have a mix and I don't have a huge rhyme or reason for it.

I mean, I do like having a physical library. When you have a reading habit like mine where you don't overthink it, you just grab things that are interesting, you just readings better than non-reading, I am often taking these books out of my existing library. So if we look back at this week, this month's books, for example, two of them, two of the books I read in January, Giants by John Stauffer and the Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything by Father Donovan.

Those were just in my library. I just looked through my life. I want to read something else. I just, hey, I should read this. I pulled it off myself as if I was in a real library. So I'm a big believer in having a robust library, not just the books you've read, but books you want to read. And I agree with you that it's good for your kids to see that and they can see books around and see them as a physical artifact. But I think it's completely fine to use Kindle as well.

If you add real books to Kindle, you're just going to read more. And then throw audio into that as well. you're going to read even more. And so I will go to Kindle if, A, I want to start a book right away and don't want to wait to have it sent to me. It's one reason I'll use Kindle. Or two, if I'm going on a trip or something where I don't want to bring a physical book or sometimes it's a book I'm not sure about I want to own. Maybe I'll get it on Kindle. So I would say, don't overthink it.

Use all the formats. And how you make the decision, you can just do it like me, which is, I don't know, randomly. And it should pretty much work. out. All right. By the way, reading with your kid, putting the baby to bed, that's, that really resonates with me. That's when we bought, my wife and I bought the Kindle paper whites. So we had Kindles that were unlit and it was midnight feedings. Like, okay, we got to get a Kindle that you can read like while you're holding a baby or while you're trying to rock a baby to sleep. And so, yeah, that brings back memories. When I think my Kindle mini white, I think about having a baby

and being tired. All right, let's move on here. What do we got for our next question? All right. This is kind of random, but we actually have another question from Grant, who also just moved to D.C.,

but he has a question about specifically establishing KPIs for his career goals. This is a tech guy, isn't it? He works with Google Ads. Yeah, I know the tech guys when I hear him. We'll take a listen.

Hi, Cal. My name is Grant. I work as a embedded software engineer. I'm also very interested in DIY electronics in the maker community. In college, it was easy for me to sit down and work on personal projects that involved coding, simple PCB and circuit design, et cetera. Now, even though I do have mental energy when I end my workday, I find it difficult to sit down and do more coding. You briefly mention coding as a hobby in your book digital minimalism, but you then go on to describe more traditional offline hobbies to get your

mind off of social media and the internet. I've tried some of these things first thing in the morning, but I find it to be a little bit unsustainable, and more than that, this is supposed to be a hobby to take my mind off of things after work so that I don't end up just binging Netflix. Is this hobby destined to fall out of my life just because I happen to also do something similar full-time, or is there a way I can find a happy medium for both personal and professional coding? Thanks. Well, Grant, that's a good question. It hits home.

That's actually a specifically a hobby I'm interested in as well. I would like to do more DIY electronics projects. And I've actually had a hard time, just like you, getting this up and running. the time just isn't there right now. I'm finding I don't quite have the time. I'm not getting the right momentum going. I've had computer programming hobbies before. So a couple years ago, I used to build computer games for my older boys.

And I kind of got in a groove on that computer game programming, even though I was working on computers all day. So I feel you. Because I'm struggling to get the exact same hobby going and not, haven't been that successful at it. I have four things to suggest that might make this helpful. Underscoring everything I'm going to say here, however, is don't sweat it. Like, ultimately hobbies are hobbies, right?

Like, it's not the end of the world that you have this working tomorrow that you have your own channel on tested.com by next week. It's, you know, it's a hobby. Nothing bad is going to happen if in the end it's you're busy or you're exhausted or it's not quite clicking. nothing happens, you're fine. There's no bonus points for having hobbies. It's just you want to do things that are interesting. You want to live deep.

You want to avoid the shallow distractions. Okay. So let's not sweat like we have to get this hobby up and going right away. But here's four things that would help. One is project choice. I think that really matters. For me, when I struggle with a new hobby,

it's I don't have the right project that has gripped me. And so nothing happens, nothing happens. Then the right project grips me. And I find myself, fighting to make time to work on it. I definitely had this experience with the computer game programming projects I would be doing. It had to be the right level of difficulty.

If it was too hard, nothing would happen. If it was too easy, I'd be bored. But if it was the right level of difficulty, I'd have to force myself to get started. But then I would begin to make some progress. And then I would find myself putting aside time just to work on it. Like looking forward to like, okay, you're putting the kids to bed tonight. then I'm going to go work on the program. So it was all about having the right product,

the right project. Like the last game I did, for example, was I wanted to do a ray casting 3D engine. I was using Python and using the PiGames library for some simple low-performance graphics, right? And I wanted to make a game where my boys could, in 2D, create a maze, and then you could jump into that maze in 3D

and actually try to navigate it. So I had to build a 3D engine so you could actually build the maze. I was like, let me just do a Wolfenstein 3D style ray casting engine where you literally are casting rays from the virtual camera location and seeing where it hits walls and how far away that wall is. So we can figure out how high to draw that particular piece of the wall. There's a lot of geometry, basically. Slow, slow, slow until I got that first screen of something is drawing. It kind of looks 3D.

And then I couldn't not work on it. So project selection, don't underestimate that. That's my issue right now with Maker Electronics. I don't have the right project with the right equipment where I know how to do it and I can see progress right away. I just don't have the right project yet, but I think it's going to roll quick when I do. Two, community, get connected, if possible, to a community of people who are working on this. That changes a lot. There are, I'm sure there's robust Maker communities in the Washington, D.C. area.

You get involved with some other people that have some, equipment, you make it social as well. That makes all the difference in the world. Start one up and I'll come to it. Okay, how about that? You get it going and I will come to it and we'll build some DIY electronics. Work less would be my third recommendation. So, yeah, do less work at work.

Give yourself some more surplus energy. I know that's a bold thing to say in the abstract, but here on this podcast, we know how to get that done. I mean, we know how to actually apply time management theories that actually are incredibly effective. Go back, go to the YouTube channel, watch the Core Ideas video from the Core Ideas playlist on time management, and I will walk you through the principles of how I organize my time. If you're doing those type of things, you can claw back a bunch of time. And still, as far as your bosses are concerned, be an incredibly productive person that they can count on. Don't be worried about doing that.

Don't be ashamed about doing that. If you get more productive, that is your benefit. You know, if right now you're producing work that everyone's happy with and you find a way to do that in two less hours a day, that is not a problem. That is a benefit you should cash in on. So consider working less. Take some projects off your plate and get much more organized about the work you have. Free up more energy, more time so that you have that energy and time to actually work on the project. And finally, do the physical first.

The number one hobby you need to do, and by hobby I mean activity outside of work, is make sure you have a lot of physical activity. You're outside, you're moving, your exercise, and you're training for something. Just like I was talking about earlier in the show that I'm doing in my own life right now for the last caller, do that too, because that's a separation between your work and your non-work life and it's going to get your energy back up much higher than if you're just coming home from work and sitting on the couch and saying, I guess I should bring out another screen. All right. So those would be the four things I would suggest. but all of this is built on the underlying foundation of don't over sweat this. If you're really busy right now,

if you're really tired right now, if you're really mentally struggling with whatever, pandemic, etc. It's okay. We'll take our time. I'm taking my time. You're taking your time.

We'll give ourselves a few months, but then I want to be in a really cool maker lab that you ran building cool electronics. All right. That was Grant. All right, Jesse. Let's see what we got here. What's our next question?

Our next call is from Jacqueline. She basically has a question about asking for help and how you go about it. Hi, Cal, thanks so much for your podcast. It's helped me so much. Almost every day I refer to something that you said in your podcast, in conversation with other folks. I really appreciate listening to your outlook on life, especially your sense of gratitude and lack of shaming. So I was really interested in your discussion with David Epstein in episode 39 about people

being hindered by their own expertise or ego and how these can keep people from asking questions or asking for help. My question is about how you approach this problem. What is your mindset when you are asking questions or asking for help? Do you fear looking stupid? If so, how do you deal with that? Also, at a more technical level, how do you get help? For example, how do you know when to reach out who to reach out to and how to get what you need from that interaction. Just quickly, I consider this a productivity question because I think my inability to ask for help has been slowing my ability to get anything done. My PhD took me roughly nine years, and now I'm still having trouble publishing chapters of my dissertation. I have the mindset that

I should figure things out for myself, and I'm also scared of looking stupid. I think asking for help would help, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. Thanks so much. All right, Jacqueline, I like this question. Let me set your mind at ease. I'm a relatively smart guy and I ask for help constantly in all areas of my life. And here's why I feel comfortable doing that. So you can learn from my experience here. I had, I guess you could call it the privilege or you could call it the lack of luck depending on how it's going to impact your mindset. But whatever it is, I got to train at a place that were surrounded by the very smartest people in the world. Right.

So I was at MIT in the theory group at MIT, literally the smartest people in the world. I could throw a stone and hit three Turing Award winners and three MacArthur Genius Grant Award winners, one of whom who won the MacArthur when he was 17 and had been a, tenured professor at at MIT since he was 18 incredibly smart people not just oh that guy's sharp but their brain can move

things by staring at it they ask questions all the time like completely the smartest people in the world will use phrases such as pretend like I am a child and explain

this to me they are the very first people to say at a talk. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know what that word means you just said. Wait, slow way down, slow way down. Like, I don't understand that equation. Why is that right? Like, slow it down for me. Assume I don't know anything. It was the defining factor of the very smartest people in the world is that without any shame, they are constantly, constantly asking for people to slow down to explain things simply. And they're constantly faced with people who go way too fast because they're intimidated and say, well, this person's so smart. They're going to think I'm dumb. I got.

And they don't want you to go fast. They want you to go real slow. You want to understand each piece before they move on to the next. So to me, that was incredibly instructive. Now, the reason why, of course, they don't care about doing that is that they know they're smart. They literally have a, you know, a certificate that says genius in the 600,000 that comes along with that fellowship. So they know they're smart. So they don't care about trying to look smart.

So by studying the smartest people in the world, you say what is probably the right thing to do? and it turns out to ask questions all the time. So it's not a flaw with you if you don't understand something or someone's explaining something very confidently

and you're like, I didn't get that. Nine times out of ten, it's not because you're missing something it's because they're going way too fast and they're just trying to look smart. This effect is so powerful that you can then,

if you've been around these type of super brains, it becomes a counter signaling situation. When you see someone not asking for help or acting like everything is obvious or explaining something really fast, you immediately think,

ooh, that person's probably not that sharp. That person's compensating for something. That person is really worried about what people think about them. So it becomes a counter signaling effect. The more questions you ask, the smarter you actually seem. So Jacqueline, I'm going to say you learn from that experience. If you want to actually live in the world like a smart person,

ask questions about everything you don't understand. And when you don't know how to do something right, ask questions about that. I do this all the time. I call people. I'm known for this at Georgetown. If I'm put on a committee for something, I was like,

I have no idea how this works. Like, what do I need to do? I just like, let me just hold on, dial my phone. You know, hi,

I'm dumb. I have no idea how any of this works. No, no, slow down even more. Like, I got to put, I was doing this recently,

we're starting a new academic program I'm involved in. And I, you know, had someone, I had to do this with someone from the registrar's office. I was like, just start from scratch.

I don't, I don't even know what that system is. What do you mean major? I am 12. And then I did this the other day. I had to call the admissions department because they needed to turn something on. I was like, look, just start from scratch. I don't know anything.

And it's really useful to everyone involved. Everyone always pretends like they understand things. No one understands anything. So Jacqueline, that is the mindset you should be in. By asking the most fundamental questions about how things work or why something is true, you are going to be setting yourself up for having the very smartest insights in the very best work. And when it comes to help, ask for it. hey, I'm having a hard time writing my chapters.

Like, let's talk about it. I need help. Talk to your old advisors. Talk to people you know. What's going on here? Should I rethink this? Should I change my habits? Be in that habit.

I'm glad you asked this because I want everyone to be in this habit. Ask for help all the time. That is what's going to make you paradoxically seem way smarter than the guy on the other side of the room trying to play it cool and is fooling nobody. The guy who's trying to desperately make it seem like I guess I know everything and I understand everything. No one is fooled by that person. It is slowing down their ability to have original thoughts or get useful things done. Ignore that person. Ask questions.

If I do it, if those supersized brains at MIT were doing it, then you should feel absolutely secure doing it yourself. That being said, whenever Jesse asked me for help, I yell at them. But that's more of like a discipline thing. If you don't know how to do this, maybe you don't belong here. That's what I say. Take your $250,000 a month out of here. What are you doing with that? Buy a pull-up bar.

What do you do with that $250,000 a month? I know you're not putting it into your truck. I know that's not where you're investing it. Go get our pull-up bar installed. What the hell's going on here? All right. Let's move on now. We have time for two more questions.

Okay, let's get another question. I think we have time. Who do we have here? All right. Next question. We have, it's basically about the deep life during the pandemic and he's a student. So he's got some good question.

He's got a good question for you. There's a pandemic. That's the first I'm hearing of this. Hey, I'm Mukul. I'm a long time listener of your podcast. I'm a college student. Last year when the pandemic hits,

I moved back to my home. Throughout the pandemic, my life become way more structured. I took your 30 days social media challenge, removed social media completely from my life after that challenge. I really started to enjoy deep life. But now colleges are opening back again and I moved back to the university.

The structure which I implemented in my life during the pandemic is completely stressed away. I tried time blocking to add that structure again. But my classes are not properly scheduled and most of the time they are random. This left me small chunks of time but I cannot figure out a way to use those small chunks and mostly waste that time on YouTube. This led to me a burnout feeling throughout the day. These days, I'm mostly stressed out and just looking forward to the weekend. I really want to add that structure in my life again and enjoy this deep life.

Any suggestions, how can I implement the structure back again to my life? Well, your old structure is not going to work, but you're going to build a new structure that does. So yes, the whatever deep life structure that was working when you were at home, it's not going to work at school, but there is plenty of options for deep life structures at school that will work. So I have a few pieces of advice for you. Number one, I want you to autopilot schedule the hell out of your schedule. So autopilot scheduling was invented originally for college students. And the idea is you look at each one of your classes.

and you identify what is work that has to get done every single week or every single month, what sort of work happens regularly for these classes, prompts that have to be solved, reading assignments that have to happen, essay prompts that have to be written. And you say, when and where do I do that work every week. And that goes on your calendar like a dentist appointment or another class. It's in time that you are not going to violate. This is just when I do that work. And you do that for all of your classes.

And now you can move these around like a puzzle piece and figure out what's a pretty good sustainable schedule for my work. And more importantly, you're not asking every day, what should I do and win? That's all figured out. All right. So you're going to autopilot schedule. And then you're going to upgrade your study skills so that you're not wasting time by spinning your wheels with inefficient study habits.

I don't want you spending more time than you need to. So go back and read how to become a straight-A student. Walk through that advice to completely overhaul your study habits. The other thing you can do is go to my blog, calnewport.com, slash blog. and read the first two years worth of post, 2007, 2008. It's all advanced study advice for college students. I want you to reduce the wasted time doing your school work. So that's step one.

Now, let's say you've done that, and you still have no time. You see, I figured out autopilot schedule, proms, that's reading assignments, prompts. And my whole calendar is filled up. And I still, and I have no time left except for the weekends. All right. Step two, under schedule. Drop stuff off your schedule. Drop some classes. Simplify your load.

Even if you're going under the load you need probably to graduate, do it for a semester or two as you're trying to get back on your feet after the pandemic. Whatever you do, do not try to super overload your schedule. You need to step away from the mindset that the job market or the graduate school market, a couple years down the line, is going to say, look at how hard we'll semester. was in the spring of 2022, that's a really hard semester. We really like them. They don't look at that. No one cares. They're like, what's your major? What are your grade? So simplify your schedule, under-schedule,

cut things out of your scheduled until your autopilot schedule fits with plenty of room. That means dropping classes, dropping activities, swapping classes for easier classes. You need breathing room. So if you're autopiloting with smart schedules and you're properly underscheduled, you're going to find yourself now

with some breathing room, which is what you absolutely need. Now I want you to reinvent your leisure time and get involved in some sort of high-quality leisure activity, preferably involving other human beings. They're also on the college campus, something that you can really get into. It could be exercise related. It could be writing related or theatrical, artistic related, but something you can really get into for no other reason than you like it that other people are involved in, and

that can really start to funnel your energy away from YouTube. The only YouTube I want in your life is looking at my channel so you can watch my videos, and I don't mean to be strict about this, but I only want you doing that for, let's say, three hours a day. No more than that. Three hours a day, watching my videos, maybe another two hours trying to convince people you know to subscribe. But that five hours is the only five hours I want you spending on YouTube.

The final thing I'm going to recommend. Thing number four, I want you to Google, I don't have the link off the top of my head, but there's a series I did on my blog back when I was aimed at students called the Romantic Scholar. And so you can just Google Calnewport.com Romantic Scholar. And it was a series about

how do you reconstruct your college lifestyle so that you have an intrinsically motivated deep interest in the work you're doing as a student. How can you rewire your relationship to your schoolwork? So it's not this thing

that's intrinsically being imposed upon you that's causing stress and burnout, but instead something that's a deep part of your self-definition and a real source of interest and motivation. And it has a lot of advice about how you do that. And I want you to read that series and put that into action. This is a hard transition for a lot of students.

The pandemic was incredibly disruptive. Coming back to school after the pandemic is really disruptive. It's not just let's load up our schedule and get after it and do 17 majors and, you know, and just grind it and something good will happen. We have to take this transition with care. I like that you're thinking about using this transition. transition is a way to preserve depth in your life. That's my advice to do it.

So here's a quick summary. Autopilot schedule plus smarter study habits. If you're still overloaded, under schedule. Quit, reduce course load, switch to easier courses. Once you've done that, get involved in a deep leisure activity that involves other human beings. And four, read my Romantic Scholar series on my blog and take those ideas to heart. You do that. plus five quick hours of working on my YouTube channel every day.

Those two things, I think we're all going to be much better off. Now, speaking about being better off, Jesse, there's a couple of the sponsors I want to briefly mention before we get to our last question today. The first one is a longtime favorite of the show, which is Magic Spoon. As you've heard me talk about before, I used to love eating those type of treat cereals that were popular in the Asian. Now that I'm a grown man pushing 40 and realize that those cereals are made out of 50% old used industrial waste oils, plus wood filling and sawdust, that is actually probably not very good for me to eat that. That's where Magic Spoon enters the picture. It's a great tasting cereal with flavors like cocoa, fruity, frosted, peanut butter, blueberry, cinnamon, cookies, and cream.

But it's not bad for you. zero grams of sugar, 13 to 14 grams of protein, and only four net grams of carbs and eat serving, only 140 calories a serving. It's keto-friendly, gluten-free, grain-free, soy-free, and low carb. You can build custom bundles of the flavors you like. Our esteemed producer, Jesse, is a magic spoon cereal consumer. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jesse. It is the only food you eat. Is that right?

That is not true, but I do really like it. I like the peanut butter the best. Yeah, and as we talked about on Monday's episode, Pro tip, mix the peanut butter with the cocoa. So get those two flavors in your custom bundle. You got Reese's flavor cereal. Can't go wrong. So go to magic spoon.com slash cow to grab a custom bundle of cereal and start your new year off right. Use the promo code Cal, C-A-L, when you check out, and you will get $5 off your order.

Magic Spoon is very confident in their product, so it has a 100% high. happiness guarantee. If you don't like it for any reason, they'll refund your money and send that cereal to Jesse to eat. No questions asked. So remember, get your next delicious bowl of guilt-free cereal at magic spoon.com slash cow and use that code cow to get $5 off. Also want to talk about ExpressVPN. Jesse has heard my computer scientist's lectures before about how a VPN works. He could probably explain it well himself now. Jesse, I should put you on the spot and ask you incredibly complicated questions about

packet filters and IP proxies. I'll do like 20 minutes of intense questioning on VPN technology. Are we ready for this? And then you'll lose all your YouTube subscribers and your fans. And my sponsors. Okay. All right. So we won't do that.

We'll let the computer scientists tell you. Take it from me. You can trust me. You should be using a VPN. especially when you're away from your house. It is a way of securely connecting to a VPN computer that then talks to the Internet on your behalf. So people nearby don't know who you're talking to and why.

There's a lot of reasons to do this. You can do this for privacy is one of the big reasons. Your ISP can't figure out who you're talking to or why. But ExpressVPN sent me some copy about a really cool bonus feature of using a VPN, which is you can get around geographic restrictions on content. Netflix, for example, shows different content depending on where you're connecting from.

So if you're an ExpressVPN user, you can connect to a VPN server in a different country and then connect to Netflix from that server. And Netflix thinks you're in that country and will show you that country's content. ExpressVPN has over 100 different server locations so you can try this, trick with a lot of different locations. So that's just a bonus feature you have for using a VPN. And if you're going to use a VPN, use ExpressVPN. They've got the most server locations. This is why I like them. And they're fast. You have to have that bandwidth. I also like how easily it integrates into my machines. Very simple to use. You turn it on, select a server, and then you just

load up Netflix, load up your browser, and it's fast. You don't even realize that you're going through a VPN. You should use a VPN. And if you do, make it ExpressVPN. If you have any questions, don't ask Jesse. Ask me. I am the expert on this technology. So be smart and stop paying full price for streaming services and only getting access to a fraction of their content. Get your money's worth at ExpressVPN.com slash deep. Don't forget to use my link at ExpressVPN.com slash deep. Don't forget to use my link at ExpressVPN.com deep, get an extra three months of Express VPN for free. All right, Jesse, I think we have time for one last question. So let's see what we have here.

Hi, the last question is a new father. And he's got some questions about managing that and doing some deep work. Hi, Cal. My name is Judd, and I'm a longtime fan of your work. In a recent podcast, you said nothing has negatively impacted your productivity as much as being a new parent. I'm a father of two children under the age of two, and I'm experiencing the same thing. Do you have any tips for parents of babies to help navigate the challenges of being a new parent?

While I love being a father, the sleepless nights and near constant attention the girls require have seriously reduced my ability to do deep work. They've also killed my creativity and ability to come up with Greek mythological references for which I apologize. Thanks so much. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Well, I mean, I think in order to reprioritize mythological references, a toddler boarding school is what we need. where you send off your daughters. They'll come back for the summers and for the holidays, and then you can really focus on good mythological references. No, Judd, I think it is, there are seasons.

And there's a big idea from slow productivity. Seasonality at multiple scales, from the week to the month to the years to multiple years. Two young kids under two. This is a season in which you're not writing the Great American novel. I think that's okay. Life is long. you have babies.

It's batten down the hatches time. I had seasons like that, obviously, with young kids. I had a season, I think the pandemic caused some seasonality for me. Our schools were closed. There's chaos. And I had to pull back on a lot of things. And in the grand scheme of things, I think that's reasonable. That was a slow season.

Different seasons are different. I mean, when my kids finally all go off to college, I know exactly how old I'll be when that happens. We've done this math. Trust me. I'm either going to explode into a frenzy of productive output. I'll be writing three books a year or I'll just die. It'll be one of the two.

I'll either just be at the end of the finish line and die or I'm going to be writing three books a year or something. And I see different seasons or different. So first of all, I just want to give you that. I want to give you that reassurance. I think it's fine to slow down. And this is a very important thing in your life. Give it some focus. Now, keep a handle on the other things.

You don't want the work you have to do to become a major source of stress right now. So go watch my core ideas video on time management, for example, and make sure that you have a ship-shaped organizational system so that you have the breathing room necessary to not work so much and not have it be a crisis. The only other advice I'll give, and I got to be wary about giving parenting advice, I get yelled at a lot, but I got to tell you sleep training. And don't yell at me, anti-sleep training people, but you've got to do sleep training. Right. I'm very trepidacious. Jesse can see it like very trepidious because the parenting advice gets you in a lot of trouble. If your strategy is just, I think eventually the kid will figure it out and start sleeping, they will torture your soul.

And they'll, they'll fake you out and they'll start sleeping more. And then you'll all be high-fiving and like telling your friends, like how good you are. Like your kids are good sleepers. And then they'll just twist the knife and start getting up at four and getting up at two and getting up at nine. And so this was my wife and I's survival strategy is we're doing a lot for these kids, but these kids need to do one thing for us, and that is they're going to have to go through some sleep training. So don't put up with four years of not sleeping. A lot of people do.

You could make that four months if you're willing to think about sleep training. Any complaints about that? That always upsets parents. So you can send all your complaints to Jesse at calnewport.com and really, really let me have it. But send those to Jesse at calnewport.com. All right, Judd, well, good luck and congratulations. And yeah, go easy on yourself and look into sleep training. All right, Jesse, I think that's all the time we have for this episode.

Thank you, everyone who called. Go to calnewport.com slash podcast to find out how you can record your own calls for these listener calls episodes. If you like what you heard, you will like what you read on my newsletter, which you can subscribe to at calnewport.com. videos of all these episodes and individual videos of every question we do can be found on YouTube look for the link in the show notes we back on Monday and as always until then stay deep