Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 188: The Books I Read in March 2022

Episode Date: April 7, 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:  youtube.com/calnewportmediaOPENING SEGMENT: The Books I Read in March, 2022  [2:05]- Cal’s frameworks [16:48]- Time blocking beyond work [26:05]- How to structure all-day studying [33:53]- Handling boredom [38:16]- Deep Work vs. YouTube [48:08]Thanks to our Sponsors:Workable.com/podcastPolicyGenius.comBlinkist.com/DeepAthleticGreens.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 E. Questions. Episode 188. I'm here in my Deep Work H.Q. joined by my much older producer, Jesse, who is in a completely different decade of life than I am. I am young and sprightly and in my 30s. Jesse is old and decrepit and in his 40s. So we're completely, I don't know how we even communicate with each other. Jesse is like completely different generations. I find it funny how you always call me a professor on accident. You're my professor. Here's what type of day, by the way, for the viewing audience. This is what type of day it's been?

So if you're not watching the YouTube version of our podcast, I'm holding up two different coffee cups. First one is episode 187 coffee cup. And I'm on the episode 188 coffee cup. I'm tired today. So I got a power up. So, you know, hat tip to Bevco. I don't know, just how have we not figured out?

like some sort of dumb waiter system with the restaurant below us. And it could be coffee like during the taping and then like immediately afterward drinks, you know? That'd be great. Just like completely have those things. Yes, you usually have coaching to do after we record. But you know, it's just going to make you more energetic. That's what we should have that worked out. And it's just they know when it's coming.

Maybe if we make them our sole sponsor. Deep work, HQ happy hour. Exactly. then the show would get lively. All right. Well, anyways, we've got a listener calls episode, looking forward to it.

But we're also now in April, which means we can do our tradition of reporting on the books I read the month before. So I want to report on the books I read in March 22. As longtime listeners know, generally my goal is to aim for five books per month, and that's what I read in March of 2022. I mix genres. I mix difficulties. I want a variety of different books. So let's go through it. Here are the five books I read in March of 2022 in order of completion. The first was

Travels with George. This was written by the popular historian Nathaniel Philbrook. So Travels with George is an allusion to Steinbeck's travels with Charlie. So if you're a Steinbeck person, you know, travels with Charlie. Steinbeck is traveling with his dog Charlie. Well, and travels with George, Nathaniel Philbrook, who's written a series of books about the Revolutionary era in America, went on a travel with his dog. And in particular, the dog was not named George. In this case, George is George Washington. And Philbrook and his wife and his dog traced the post-annoguration tour of the newly formed country of America that George Washington went on. So he did a tour all the way through New England, and then he later did a tour all the way through the south.

And Philbrook retraced the steps of that tour in modern times and then went to the spots and then mixed it in like with Steinbeck-esque anecdotes about the journeys and his dog being a pain, etc. So, I mean, here's the thing. The book was fine. I think the contemporaneous pieces about the dog, I didn't care. I mean, it's like two upper middle age people with a dog and the dog gets dirty and it's hard to find hotels for them to stay. It wasn't that interesting. But the history is great. I'm a big fan of Phil Brooks history.

I mean, I would have been fine if this book really was just about George Washington's post-enagrational tours and just honed in. right on that. I kind of read pretty quickly in the in-betweens. I'm a big Philbrook fan. Here's what I like about Philbrook. I love writers who live in cool places and write full time. And Philbrook, who came to writing late. When I mean late, I'm talking about like Jesse's current decade of life. Talking about someone in their 40s, right? Jesse is all of one day being 40. we're talking people who largely, we would rightly say, have very little productive life left. But somehow at that point, and it's hard for someone like me in my 30s, again, to really understand what that's like. But somehow at that point, he began writing in his 40s.

And his first book was Heart of the Sea about the ship Essex. So this was the ship that was the model for Moby Dick. So it was a fishing, a whaling boat that was rammed and sunk by a whale. and I want a great book. And some people survived in a life wrath, like a boat, a whaling boat, and they were at sea forever. And they ended up on an island. It's all a true story. That's how he like burst onto the scene of doing historical fiction writing.

But he lives in Nantucket. And that's what I think is cool. He lives in Nantucket where he's just a writer on this wind-swept, you know, island. And I always find that very romantic. But anyways, he's a great writer because he's a good archive guy. And you get a little bit of insight in this book. about his methods because in the contemporaneous parts, he's often hanging out with librarians and historical society curators. And you get a sense into what life is like writing that. It's all

about finding primary sources, going to historical archives, going to libraries, pulling out these books that no one has seen in 75 years to try to piece together the context in which history happened. So I thought that was cool. So there you go. Good book. Guy lives on in Nantucket. If you're going to read any Philbrook, start with Heart of the Sea. I also thought Mayflower was very good. Valiant ambition is very good as well. So there are some recommendations for you. All right, now we get a little bit weird, not weird, but fantasy.

And so we've got to be careful here, Jesse, that I get all the names right. So I don't know exactly what path led me to this. I think because I had heard this book was appropriate for younger audiences, I might have been testing this out for my oldest son. But I have never read Ursula K. Leguyn, and I, read her first Earth Sea book, a wizard of Earth

Sea. So it's a fantasy book written in the 60s. It has a lot of prescience towards Harry Potter, right? I mean, there's a young boy who goes to a school for wizards. But it's much more psychologically

astute and sophisticated. It's not the tale of a boy who's meant to be a hero and has to discuss. it. It actually, the whole metaphor of the book is that through his pride, he unleashes essentially like a demon force in the world that is hunting him. And in the end, he has to hunt it down. So it's much more literary, much more using language and scene to try to convey a deeper reality. Not so plot focused or expository as like a, like a JK Rowling or like a George R. Martin. So actually

like a really well, well crafted book in the fantasy job. Ron. And I thought it was quite good. You know, I saw echoes of it. You certainly see echoes of it. To me, it wasn't Harry Potter. I was thinking more of Love Grossman and the magicians, which has a similar sort of literary metaphorical darkness where they sort of unleash this creature from the magical, I don't know, I forgot, dimension or something that literally like kills one of the kids at the break beaks at the school for wizards. And so clearly Grossman must have. been channeling Ursula K La K LaGuin. But it was, I liked it. I'm not going to let my son read it. I think he's a little more too sophisticated and dark for him. He's reading Harry Potter instead.

But, you know, it was a good change of pace. I did enjoy it. Lots of good old-fashioned wizard names. It's all like these weird, crazy Dungeons and Dragons names. All right, coffee refill. All right, book number three, let's zig in a different direction. Every good endeavor,

by Timothy Keller. So Timothy Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. And he's a public communicator, effective public communicator. He's written a bunch of books that have done pretty well. At some point,

someone sent me a bunch of his books. So I have like a stack of his books. So I pulled this off of the stack. The reason why I read it is every good endeavor It's kind from a Christian perspective, but it is a biblical perspective on work, the point of work, finding work that's significant to you. And I thought this would be something I should probably know, like I should probably have this club in my bag, understanding biblical perspectives on work and passion and vocation, because obviously I've written about this in the past. I'm doing this work now on the deep life. and so I was like, let me, let me get the Christian biblical perspective on work.

And so that's why I dive in that book. And there are some good things in there. I mean, it was, they're pick and choose. But, I mean, I think there were some interesting threads of thought that I hadn't come across before. I mean, here's the most interesting, here's the headline, like a headline idea that comes out of that book, which probably puts it at odds with a lot of sort of elite discourse around work right now, is Keller finds, like, a really strong.

biblical justification for work as an intrinsic good. This is quite different than I think a lot of the anti-ambition, anti-productivity type philosophy that's going on now, which sees work as mainly like an exploitative activity to be tolerated at best and in a utopian society to be minimized. Keller comes at it basically saying God worked in Genesis, and that's an argument for work is important. He also has a reading of Genesis that says the seventh day of rest. So God worked and then he rest is basically a biblical, mythological recipe for human satisfaction in which you have the seasonality.

You need to work, but then you need to not let work be all consuming. You need to step back and rest, and it's in that dance, and that's what God did during the first seven days, and that's supposed to be an instruction manual for life and you see what Adam and Eve and like basically Genesis is like a whole manual for work. I mean, I think, you know, Karl Marx's head would explode if he read this

because it's, you know, it seems really different than a lot of sort of economic materialistic analyses from today. But hey, cool. It's cool to see. I love people taking big, like big swing thoughts on things that are drawing from interesting sources. So that was an interesting one. Then I read,

the abolition of man by C.S. Lewis. It's arguable if this is a book. I thought it was a book. I got on Kindle. It's really a collection of three lectures delivered during the World War II. So it's pretty short. But let's call it a book. I forgot how I came across this. I came across it somewhere. I was like, I should just read it. I just bought it and read it. It took me two days. It just sort of reading it. It's not a long thing. It's interesting. So supposedly this is, this is, this is, this. This book, quotation marks, collection of speeches, was very influential in the 20th century. It's an argument for values, basically having rooted values on which you build cultural social systems. It's an argument against subjectivism, this notion of all value is constructed. So it's basically like a preemptive rejection of what 30 years later would emerge in French postmodernism, before that even, existed. So I'm sure this book is not well appreciated

by the modern academy, but I think that's what made it interesting to read. And it's jargon-free and very approachable. But, I mean, you can basically really crudely summarize the argument. I hate to summarize it crudely. But he's basically making an argument that

we have to be careful of the heartless man. And by the heartless man, what he means is, is, or no, the man, not the heartless man. That's not the right wording. No, the right wording was the man without chest.

But what he means by that is heartless. He says, without a foundation of values, which the heart, so in other words, like the values that you have these moral intimations about these moral intuitions, that this seems right. If you ignore that, you're just trying to use your brain to think through ethics and mediate, like, and control your gut, which is like, let's go, I'm mad, let's go kill. this person, I want that, to have your animal instincts. And if you try to just tame that with just your brain, let's just come up with what makes sense from scratch. Let's do the, let's be like

Kant and just try to construct a moral system from scratch. He's arguing that's not going to work. You have to ground it all in what you feel in your heart, this sort of these underlying truths. Lewis is a real, obviously a Christian apologist, but he writes this book outside of the context of Christianity. So he's trying to be religion agnostic. I mean, it's interesting. I mean, It's something for sure, I'm surprised we don't read it. Like in a sort of standard, heavily postmodern influence academic culture, it'd be a nice thing to assign to people, too. And here is like a very straightforward standard critique. And this is the tension between those two, the tension between those two things.

Because of course, the postmodern view would say there is no underlying value system that you're picking up through your metaphorical heart. It's all just constructed. It's all just systems that are constructed to support various supremacist. and power relations. And C.S. Lewis, if he had been alive, would probably have an issue with that. So it was interesting to read. Quick to read. No jargon. Very approachable. All right. Final book. And I mentioned this last week in last week's episodes. I actually drew some insights from this book was John McFeed's the fourth draft. So I'll point you towards last week's episodes. I think maybe 185. I got into some details of some things I learned from the book. It's great.

It's a John McPhee book about writing. A little bit of memoir, a lot of craft, very interesting. You'll be impressed by McPhee after you read it. You'll also be insanely jealous. Like, wait a second. You could have spent eight months just thinking about an article and then, you know, maybe at some point write it when it all feels right. Like it feels like a very cool life.

Look, I can't be jealous. I can't complain. I write for the New Yorker. They're very generous in giving me flexibility. in timing when I need it. And so I'm not complaining. I'm saying this awesome. And John McPhee's awesome is a cool book. So if you're into nonfiction writing, you can get a look inside the mind of a master. All right. So Jesse, those are my five books. People like to know what you read. Give us one book, Jesse. What's one book you've read recently we should know about?

I'm almost done with 4,000 weeks. Pulled it off your bookshelf actually. Oh yeah. weeks ago. All right. Well, what's your almost done with it review? I like it. I've been, you know, thinking about it. I think about time a lot anyway, but it's, it's good. I mean, you hear it mentioned all the time. Yeah. Ferris talks about it. You talk about it. Other podcasts talk about it. Yeah. Now, Berkman's great. Ferris always forgets his name. You know, what does he call him? He just always like 4,000 weeks. Well, I messed up the book on Ferris's show. So I called it 4,000, like 40,000 days or something. So Oliver, we're all sorry.

There's nothing particularly hard to remember about your name or that. Actually, a book title that's a number can be difficult. Once you're like in the four digits, that can be difficult. So I'm going to give myself a break. But yeah, that's a great book. Blurbed by me so you know it's good. Yep. That's how you can tell.

All right. So we got some calls, right, Jesse? We sure do. All right. What do we got first? First call, he actually, speaking of which, he came across you in your Ferris interview a couple months ago, and he has a question about your frameworks. Hi, Cal, this is Mike. I've been listening to your podcast ever since your interview with Tim Ferriss.

I'd be interesting knowing the origins or the frameworks and how they were built since some of them seemed familiar based on my work with seven habits of how. highly effective people from the 90s. Thanks. Well, Mike, it's a good question. Covey is very influential, I would say, on my thinking. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by the way, has sold, and I believe this is the official term, all the copies. It's like 20 million copies or something.

It's a crazily good selling book. And one of my arguments is the reason why that book sold so well is not because it was the first book to talk about productivity. or time management. Those books have been around. In fact, I have in my collection, I went back and tried to find the earliest business-oriented time management book that I could. And I actually have,

I don't know if it's a first edition, but it's a 1950s edition of a book that's called, I don't know, time something, time power or something like this. But it's like one of the very first books to introduce the idea that time is something you have to have a strategy for managing. So this idea had been around for a while. Seven Habits are highly affected people. This is the 80s, I think. Late 80s. I don't think it's early 90s. I think it's late 80s. I could be wrong on that, but somewhere around them. And it came in and sold all the copies. And I think it's because it was not that it was a big time management book, but because it was connecting productivity and time management to values and the life well lived. People miss this about Cubby. Like, oh, it's a big seven. So it must be like tips, you know, one of those type of books. 19. ways to maximize your effectiveness, right? So it's dismissed by people who don't know it well

as a tip guide, something that got a really good title, just like people will dismiss Tim Ferriss by being like the four-hour work week is just like this really catchy name, as if like that name alone is going to sell four million books, you know, like as if Ferris wasn't touching on something deep. And what Covey gets to in that book, in which I think is Mike is pointing out is reflected in my deep life philosophy is he has one of his key ideas that start with the in mind. He has you figure out what your values are, what matters to you in your life, and then use that, trickle down from that to actually guide how you execute in your life. And if you read first things first, which is the follow-up book, which elaborates on some of

these ideas, he gets really specific about like, what are the roles in your life? You're a father. You're an executive at this company. You're a leader at your church or like whatever they were. And for each of these, you're trying to figure out what are your values and what are what are you important. And then you work backwards from that to make sure that those values are reflected in how you're spending your time. And this is a lot of Stephen Covey. A lot of it is how do you allocate your time to support the things that you care most about

so that your life is one that reflects your values? That's why that book sold all the copies. Because this landed in the 80s when we were in this weird interstitial period out of the post-war boom, just out of the Carter era malaise. It was very materialistic. This was the era of Wall Street. This was the error of high consumerism. And people were adrift.

And then he came in and said, we should care about what you want to do, what's important to your life. And that should percolate all the way down to what am I doing today. And so I think that's why that book is effective. Clearly that influenced me. The deep life owes its foundations

to that Covey-like perspective. Start with the end in mind. And then use that to work backwards to engineer your life. Of course, all the details that matter. I'm much more systems oriented. I've sort of merged some Covey value-based thinking with some David Allen systems-based thinking, right?

Like I'm kind of merging those two worlds and then thrown in some neuroscience and psychology to boot. So I've created my own brew, but I do give Covey a lot of credit. So, Mike, that's a good point you noticed because I think that's accurate. Certainly Covey played the role. All right. before we go to the next question, I figure we should probably take a moment to thank one or two of the sponsors

that allows us to keep talking about these things. I have a stack of sponsor reads on the ground. That's how you know we're a high class production here. Okay. I had thrown them on the ground in a fit of anger. I threw my sponsor reads on the ground, but I now have them back. I'll tell you what's one sponsor I'm not angry about, but actually quite excited about.

that is workable. As we talked about in Monday's episode, there are a few things more important in running your company or business than hiring the right people. I know this from experience. There has been no, nothing worse for our company than when I,

when I hired Jesse. It's all been downhill. You know why? Because I didn't use workable. This is what happens. You end up with an old man, 40 plus years old. the fourth decade of his life,

not a young go-getter with energy, you know, and that's because I didn't use workable. You use the net? I put a net in the bookstore next to business advice books. If someone picked up a Stephen Covey book, it was like a snare release, and then the net caught you. The first two people that sprung on,

I ended up accidentally strangled with the net. So then, but I perfected it by the time. Jesse. No, Jesse is not. He is a valued part of the team, but he would have been even easier to hire if I had had Workable. Workable makes it easy to hire. They do a lot of things to make the process go smoothly. So you get your job posting out to all the top job boards from the 200 with just one click. But then, and this is the key to Workable, they have all these tools to make what happens next more efficient. They have video interview tools. You can schedule interviews automatically with tools. E-signature tools. like all the stuff that's annoying. The 100 back and forth emails, Workable makes faster. So you don't have to waste time on the details.

You can focus on just finding the right people. You can start hiring today with a risk-free 15-day trial. And if you hire during the trial, it won't cost you a thing. Just go to workable.com slash podcast to start hiring. Speaking of hiring, if you are worried about potentially being, let's say, accidentally strangled in my net at the bookstore, or you probably need some life insurance. That even if you're not worried about that,

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They don't sell your info. They're the people you should use for life insurance. So head the policy genius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. All right. So I don't know, Jesse. Maybe we should make a note. warning people about being strangled in a net.

Maybe that's not how we should start our ad reads. I'm learning on the fly here, but this is my guess. We're working on it. I didn't actually strangle people in a net, and policy genius is great. All right, so now what I have is a giant, paper papers. We're so old-fashioned here.

So people who are watching on the video just see that I am swamped in paper, essentially. Everything here is run on paper. I guess that's what you'd expect, perhaps, from someone like me, digital minimalist. But I think we're good. All papers been organized. Jesse, let's do another question. What do we have here?

Hi, this is exciting. We have a pro golfer who's a fan of you, and he's been time blocking during his work and training sessions, but he has a question of whether he should time block outside of that. Hi, Cal. My name is Navid Kahl. I'm a professional golfer. I have started using time blocking after reading your book Deep Work and I just wanted to ask, do I use time blocking only for my work or can I use it for the other small things throughout the day?

for example i like when i'm practicing or uh you know training during that time i don't have a problem with uh like focusing on the target hand but otherwise like if i am like if i'm on the way to the shower let's say and i'll just stop pick up the phone and you know start scrolling so that's so do i use time blocking to show schedule like I'm going to show from this time to this time that I'm going to like work out from this time to this time. I hope that's good. All right. Naveed called. Jesse, we should look him up. I did. Yeah. Yeah. He's on tour. Yeah. Yeah. PGA? Uh, yeah. Do you think it's fair to say that he owes all of his success,

the time blocking. Is that a fair read of the of the question? Probably. I think I think we can count that. I mean, what you do talk about does apply to training. Yeah. Well, I think I'm popular in golf after Mickelson was preaching digital minimalism at the Masters a few years ago. So Phil Mickelson was named, he talked about me and Holiday. Right. It's like Newport and Holliday's books have been really useful to me. And he was having a resurgence then. So I think that seeded, seeded some of my work among professional golfers. That's a hard, man, can you imagine a harder sport? Because if you are a professional basketball player or baseball player, like you have to be a course just freakishly athletic and like most people can't get there. But if you're at, let's just say, what is the hardest

sport once you have normalized for you have the right genetics and training that you're playing? it. Right. So not what's the hardest sport to get into, but like the hardest sport once you're there to perform. And if you're doing football and basketball, and you, it's very hard, but it's not like

if you lose your concentration for five seconds, like the game has been lost. You know? Like, you'd be like, you know what? I, uh, I ran a bad route. I'm a cornerback and I lost a step and, but it's fine. They didn't even throw it to them. Or worst case, like, they threw it to him and the secondary had to tackle them and they, they, they

they gain some yards. But if you're a golfer, that's your game. You lose your concentration. You hit into the water. You're not winning the tournament. Or if you're a basketball player, it's like I missed a shot.

It's fine. You get 50 more attempts. Baseball is somewhere in between, because now it's like these at bats, but you can have a bad swing. Anyways, it just seems like the hardest sport of professional sports to actually do once you're good enough to do it.

It's like the one I would least like to be in. Well, one of the things happens with these guys that are so good. is they get so many birdies. So the birdies can make up for a mishap like a bogey on a certain hole in thing. Like a bogey, but you can, you see these guys melt. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's right. So, I mean, I guess they have some leeway. You know, my uncle wrote a cool book about this. John Paul Newport wrote a book when I was a kid called The Fine Green Line. So he was a very good golfer. And he made a go at trying to get on the tournament and wrote a book about it. So he was like doing the, what they call it, Q school or the qualification tournaments. Because he was like a really, really good golfer.

And the fine green line that he talks about in that book, it's mental. So it's like, yeah, I, he's a very athletic guy. He was a star quarterback at Harvard, you know, like athletic guy. And he complies. Like I have the physical ability to do the shots that a top golfer has. I can, I mean, not like a, like a. winning the tournament, but like of a PGA player count. Like I could have a PGA caliber round.

But the biggest, there's a lot of people that that's true of. Like very athletic people who train really hard. It was the mental because you can't make a mistake. It's like, I know I can do it, but I have the next four hours. Like I can't make a mistake, you know? And it was just so then that was what the book was about. That's the fine green line. Who can who can put up with that mental pressure?

Who can Tiger Woods and just be like lasers? Well, actually, when this episode airs, the Masters will begin. And a lot of times you're going to see the storyline of the people competing. So that's where you see, like, you know, where those errors make extreme, you know, difference in the thing. But in terms of qualifying and earning some money and stuff like that, like getting on tour, these guys just get so many birdies. Sometimes I can make up for. Yeah, the birdies can make up for the bogies, but, like, even they hit the birdies, like, just consistently.

and like to read every green. And I mean, you see it in the top players. They're just, you know, I'm going to destroy this hole. And I'm going to destroy you. And I'm going to make, it was like woods in his prime. I'm going to make this putt. And like from over here. Like I just, this is mine.

I own it. This green is mine. Just like that energy. Mm-hmm. All right. But Navid's question. So here's the thing. Professional athletes, Navid, you're a professional athlete.

You're in an unusual situation because like a lot of what you do is training, which is structured. you. I mean, it's effectively time blocked, but time blocked by your coaching and training regimes, I'm assuming. And so in that type of job, you're like, kind of my job is I have this, like, really prescribed training. I would say you have to basically invent what I would call a pseudo job. And I would divide my life into now three things. So most people's like I'm at work or I'm not at work. But for you, it's like I'm training. I'm in my pseudo job, which is like administrative stuff that needs to get done for your life to function, and then I'm in leisure. And I would differentiate

between those three things. Your training is already highly structured, I assume. The pseudo jobs, like, technically I'm not training. I'm not on the course. I'm not in the gym, but like I need to pay these bills and get this information to my sponsor and go by the bank. Time block that. Because you don't want to waste too much time on the pseudo job. Time blocking is great for this. How do I make the most out of the time I have? So yes, time block your pseudo, your pseudo job. and then have a clear distinction between that time and leisure time, and don't time block to leisure time. Because you have to have unblocked time or you're going to burn out. But if you don't block the administrative kind of work stuff you need to get done for your life to function,

it's going to eat up all your time. And it's going to be a source of distraction. It's going to maybe even hurt you on the course. So you need a tri-partite definition of your life, training, pseudo job, and leisure. Time block to pseudo, be much more flexible in the leisure. That's cool. Professional athletes. Who do we got next?

Okay. Next up, we have a question about full-time studying, but basically that's his job is studying. He does it eight hours a day, and he's got a question about that. Hi, Ka. I'm a standard time software developer intern. My job now is to basically study full-time. and I'm working from home so I can decide how to structure my schedule.

So my question is, do you think studying is considered a deep work? Because I know that the maximum deep work hours per day is around three to four, but now I have to study around eight hours. So do you think this deep work and this is possible? to do and how you structure for time studying. You know, this is the thing that's going around

now. I'm not very internet savvy. But when I talk to people who are more YouTubey and kind of know what's going on, there's this whole culture meme out there, especially on YouTube, of these super studiers that, like, look, I'm going to study

for 12 hours. They have like a time lapse camera on them doing it. And there's a lot of this out there. I guess It's hustle porn, which again is the whole thing I don't know much about. But suppose on Instagram and on YouTube there's a bunch of this like you got a inspirational over the top hustle type, it would be affirmations or videos or whatever. And this is one of them. Like I study for 12 hours.

People like, my God, that's awesome. Could you imagine? And I think that whole thing is nonsense. You should not be studying eight hours a day. And you're probably not doing productive work for eight hours a day. There's nothing that requires that much studying. it's, and I don't mean to be accusatory here, but I think it's often like oddly performative and I don't quite understand it. So yeah, studying done right is deep work is cognitive.

Three or four hours in a day is probably a good limit. What you should do with studying is make sure that you're doing the actions that actually matter. What do you need to learn? What's the best way to actually learn it? So you want your energy to go where it actually matters. usually for studying that's active recall. So you're trying to recall the information from scratch without looking at notes. That's what helps stick it in your head. Be wary of transfer theory.

Study the actual things you need to know. The specific knowledge you need, not kind of knowledge in general. So in the specific form, you're going to be doing it. Sample tests are always better than just reading textbooks. Like, yeah, these type of things matter. You can read, like, my book,

How to Become a Straight A student for more details about study tactics that really matter for multiple different types of courses. You can look at the first two years of my blog at Calnewport.com. The first two years, I really focused on advanced study tactics. There's a lot you can do, but you should be doing two, three, maybe four hours and two sessions. That's it. And then do other stuff with the rest of your time.

I mean, I really think when you see a lot of this, I study eight hours a day, I study 10 hours a day. Part of it's performative. Part of it is guilt. Like I'm somehow not properly putting in the effort to live up to my potential. if I'm not just doing this all day. This should be like a normal job. But I'm saying put that aside. You're not going to effectively study that long.

Use good techniques, a reasonable amount of time each day, and then use the rest of your time for something else that's important, that's meaningful, that's values driven. Don't be one of those hustle porn guys on YouTube that's like, look, I'm an hour 12 of studying and everyone's like, wow, how do you do it? That's not impressive. It's weird. It's a David Blaine stunt.

It's not the right way to learn things. All right. So hopefully that's a relief for this. a person asking the question and not like an accusation, but I've seen these things. It's a whole thing. Like, it's time-lapse videos of people just studying like ridiculous hours. And people, I guess it's supposed to be impressive or something like that. The video's getting a lot of views. Yeah, maybe we should do it. Yeah, I should do. I would be, I can't see, look, I'm lazy. That's why I do all this like focus and be organized because I can't just like grind it out or

whatever. So it'd be a pretty, pretty boring video. Well, you have 17 jobs. so I don't think you're lazy, but you just have a lot of those things. I just, I'm not a good grinder. Yeah. All right. What we got here? Next question. The next question is about embracing boredom.

Howdy, Cal. Erica here. I've been listening to some of your older episodes again. And you would talk about boredom at times. I'm curious how you, how you are bored. You read a phone book, watch clouds in the sky. I'm kidding, but I am curious about what you do to be bored so that way you can embrace the boredom as opposed to feel like you want to climb up walls and escape. Love your work.

Thanks a lot. Take care. Bye. I mean, she jokes, but have you heard of these podcasts, Jesse, where it's people reading the phone book? No. They're popular. They're popular. So my wife and I were listening to an NPR thing that was talking about these podcasts. Like this is a real thing. They could probably find one if you search. Like they, it'll read a read from a phone book for like a couple hours and with like a nice voice, the good mic. And NPR was trying to argue this long complicated argument about like overstimulation and blah, blah, blah. And no, it's people trying to fall asleep. So some people like to hear just, you know, a voice. just kind of reading.

There's no actual, the content triggers nothing in your brain, but you're just kind of like hearing it and for some people find it relaxing. So there's like a lot of these podcasts. I mean, some of it might be ASMR too, but there's a lot of these podcasts

and it's really just people reading. Which, by the way, it would be much easier for us to produce. All this nonsense. I mean, I'd still have you in the studio. So we'd just cut to you. I would just be reading names.

Like, I could still make my 200K a month? Exactly. I'd be like, Erica. Alex Donald Jesse

what do you think you'd like good names good names then I would just go back and keep reading names that'd be easier but what was the question

how do I embrace boredom okay so here's the thing about boredom I'm not a boredom booster so I argue in deep work embrace boredom but I don't argue like let's go see

seek out staring at the wall and that like we're going to get inside or whatever. As Erica was hinting at here, the reason why I think you should become comfortable and familiar with boredom is that otherwise your mind is going to demand stimuli. When you're doing something like deep work, which is devoid of a lot of diverse stimuli, it's just doing the same thing. It'll be comfortable with it. And if you're not, if you always look at your phone when you're bored, your mind won't tolerate the lack of stimuli and doing something like deep work.

But here's the thing. My answer is hidden in, like my solution is hidden in that answer. Like the reason why I say embrace boredom is so that when you're doing deep work, which is boring, you won't feel that urge to look at something else. So that means the type of quote unquote boredom I seek is actually just doing monofocus things that can be of value and have interest but just aren't super stimuli. Don't have a lot of stimuli, right? So just reading for a long time.

It can be really interesting. But then there's also parts of your mind's like, can we look at something else? We look at our phone and you're like, you don't. You know, so reading can do it. Walking is another big one for me. Don't put on the headphones when I do the walk. Now, I'm not, again, I'm not trying to induce boredom. I'm not meditating.

I'm not staring at the sidewalk. I'm thinking about things. I'm reflecting. I'm trying to have ideas. But I'm avoiding the really highly super palatable digital distractions. Going into a store. You're just going to the store and see what's going on. So for me,

This is how I'm defining boredom is absence of highly palatable digital distraction. So it doesn't mean you have to be doing nothing. To me, it just means you have to be doing something that you could have done 25 years ago. It's like you're trying to simulate whatever, 1995. Or I'm not reading from the phone book, but I can't look at my phone while I'm waiting in line. Or I'm on a walk, I don't on my walk, man. And so that's what I'd recommend for everyone is that on a regular basis. We want to do things where you have no highly stimulating digital distractions, even though you feel the urge for them.

Can't I just take this out? Even watching TV can accomplish this. I'm watching TV and my instinct is, can I look at my phone at the same time? I'm not getting enough stimuli and you don't. So, again, I'm not staring at clouds. I'm not reading a phone book. I'm watching TV. But by removing highly palatable digital distractions from many different.

points of your life, you get used to being in situations where you don't have access to those highly palatable digital distractions. So maybe I need a different word. Instead of boredom, it's like stimuli freedom or 1995 mode. It's getting away from that and being okay with getting away from that, where that is for listeners, me holding up a fake phone. That is the key. All right, let me talk for a second here about the key to understanding books, which is our sponsor, Blinkist. So Blinkist is a long-time friend of the show. It's a subscription service in which you get access to 10 to 50-minute summaries of thousands of bestselling nonfiction books.

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So we worry, like, are we getting the right nutrients? Do I have the right minerals? Am I getting enough vitamin, whatever, right? I mean, these are things we worry about, especially as we get older. I worry about this a little bit, but I'm still in my 30s. Jesse is in his 40s, so this is all he thinks about because his body is falling apart on him. How are you going to get the right things you need? Well, as I've always said, you have two choices and only two choices.

Number one, you can go into a GNC and get lost among all of those. shelves of all this random stuff where you have a 50% chance that a brooded up bodybuilder will beat you mercilessly for walking into the store. That happens 50% of the time. Or you can do athletic greens. You have to choose. Let me tell you why I think you should choose athletic greens. In addition to you not getting beaten mercilessly by a steroid bodybuilder, it is the top, in my opinion, the top supplement source on the market because what they do is say, we will figure out for you what you need, but also where the very best sources of these different things are, we will put it together in just one product, this powder.

It's all we do is this powder. We're always improving it. They have different versions. They upgrade it every year. Can we get a better mineral? Can we get a better adaptogen? And all you have to worry about is the consumer is one scoop once a day. Put it in water in the morning, drink it, you're done.

They obsess about getting the right ingredients in here. They obsess about getting the right form that's going to be the most effective so that you You don't have to. You don't have to go to the G&C. You don't have to get punched by a bodybuilder. You just take the athletic greens powder every morning, and you can trust it's done. So I take athletic greens. Jesse will attest to this.

I have told him about it. I have sold him on it. I take it each morning so I don't have to worry about anything else. And I recommend you do too. So right now it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition, especially now that we're in flu and cold season. It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day. That's it.

No need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you free a one-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit Athletic Greens.com slash deep. Again, that is Athletic Greens.com slash deep to take ownership over your health. All right, Jesse. I think we have time. Ooh. All right, we have time for one more.

So the viewing audience doesn't know is I'm running a big search committee meeting imminently. And so we're sort of podcasting under the wire here. One of my 17 jobs is running the faculty search committee. So we've got to switch from athletic greens to a question to faculty recruiting. This is why I have two cups of coffee. So let's fit in one more, Jesse. We can fit in one more. Hi, sounds good.

This is a fitting one. We've got a question about deep work in YouTube. Hi, I'm Daniel, a high school student from Toronto. My question for you was, how do I ensure I'm doing deep work when I need to be connected to a distracting source like the internet? I'm trying to learn web development, so HTML, CSS, and Zoom JavaScript. And the best way I found to do so, and from talking to other people, the best way to do so is through YouTube and the internet, which is also.

an incredibly distracting source that you've mentioned as a killer of deep work. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on how I can reconcile those two things. Thanks. Well, Daniel, first of all, don't trust anyone who puts content on YouTube. Because I can't someone who, it's all garbage. And anything that's on YouTube, I would not trust if I was you. Hold on. Jesse's handing me a memo here at we're on YouTube.

Oh, oh. No. But you know what, Jesse, but we're not very popular on YouTube. So I think that means that we are not being distracting. So we can keep the YouTube channel alive. Yeah. Keep the YouTube channel alive.

Yeah. No, Daniel, you need to watch our channel. And you need to ring that bell and smash the subscribe button. And once we start giving away briefcases full of money to our guests to try to get people to watch YouTube. Oh, man. Okay, Daniel, it's a good question. So I hear this a lot, this general, this general point to a lot,

especially from high school students, which is like, I have to use, there's something I need from the internet that's part of this bigger work I'm doing. How could I possibly not just like be inlessly distracted on the internet? And I think you can separate the two things.

You can separate the two things. So you're learning how, you're learning how to code. Okay. And you're getting information from the internet. Makes sense. A lot of good information on there. You can Google commands that like you don't understand. You can watch like a YouTube tutorial.

Okay. And you're saying the problem is when you look for those other things on the internet, you also end up doing other types of distracting things. Like you go to look up at a YouTube video about CSS and you see like recommended a Cal Newport video where I'm giving briefcases of money to professional golfers and like, there you go. Like you have to click on that and then you have to watch that. my advice is don't click on the other things. You know, I mean, I think there's this helplessness a little bit of, look, if I'm on the

internet and I see things that are appealing like I have to click on it. And I don't think we're so helpless. I mean, at least if we're talking about very specific context, you're like, this is a specific thing I'm doing. I'm trying to learn how to code and I'm spending the next hour working on it. just say I'm not going to look at non-coding related things, even if I see a link. Now, I know in general, it's very difficult if I say, I'm just going to try not to use the internet. Like, come on, you have all this different times, your life, you're bored, you're watching TV.

Like, you're fine, that's very difficult. But in the specific context of I am doing this activity, I don't think that's a hard rule to follow because it's very clear and it makes sense. Like, I'm trying to learn something right now. I'm not going to, I'm not going to go on the internet. right? I think just being clear and tough love you about that might be all you need. If you're serious about learning how to code, don't click video recommendations. And yeah, you can do plugins and do a distraction-free tube plugin that gets rid of the recommendations when you're on YouTube. I can tell you treat YouTube like a library, not a television channel. So you search for

the specific things you need. You don't surf serendipitously to see what's interesting. I could tell you all those rules. I could talk about putting on blockers on your internet that you can configure so you can't go to other types of things. But I think it's just simpler to say when you're programming, don't click on anything else. And that act of individual discipline, I think, is actually going to empower you. Because you're like, you know what? I don't have to click on this nonsense when I don't want to. And I'm learning something because it's important to me and I see these links and I don't click on it. I have power over that. I mean, I think feeling that power, feeling that effort, I'm in charge of what I look at.

This algorithm doesn't run me. These links don't run me. I'm constructing my world is a very important thing to have. And this might be a place as a high school student. So you're new to this to say, yeah, I might be a teenager. You know, I'm not an old man like Jesse. I'm much closer to like a young in his 30s type personality like Cal. But so your young man, this is the time to say I'm an adult.

I'm about to become an adult. I can use the internet without losing control. And I know a lot of adults can't do that, but I think you can, Daniel. So that's my tough love thing. Just don't click. Just don't do it. See the recommendations don't click.

It's a simple rule. I'm not saying in your whole life. But when you're doing programming, just do programming. Block off that time. Look up what you need to look up. Don't follow links. You're going to come out on the other side of that invigorated.

Like, oh, I guess I am kind of in control of this. And that could snowball to more and more feeling of efficacy, more and more discipline with digital distraction. So it actually could be the entry point, the entry point. to a much better relationship to these technologies. So we'll skip all of the plugins, we'll skip all of the blockers,

we'll skip all of the rhetoric, and just say, don't buy into that narrative of helplessness, that you have to follow distractions because you're young, and young people are out of control on the internet, and they can't help themselves, and they live on YouTube.

You can do what you want to do, and I think what you're doing is cool. Learn hard skills, learn cool things, build cool things, connect to people who are interesting, expose yourself to ideas, all the interesting stuff to make a good life good at your age, do those things, and you can leave the going down YouTube rabbit holes

for a time when you have nothing else to do. All right, well, I think that's all the time we have. I have to go run a meeting. Thank you everyone who sent in their listener calls. And if you like what you heard, you'll like what you see on our YouTube channel. I feel weird saying that after just telling Daniel not to click on YouTube links. So if you go to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash Cal Newport Media,

ignore the recommendations. Treat it like a library. Go there just because you're specifically are coming to listen to some Cal, not because you're web surfing. If you like what you heard, you'll also like what you read at my newsletter. Sign up at Cal Newport.com. We'll be back next week on Monday with our next episode of the Deep Questions podcast. And until then, as always, stay deep.