Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep 206 – Striving to do less

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

With Cal away on vacation, he decides to tackle 8 questions in a row, all in one take, with no breaks! Ian Fleming’s writing process [1:13] - How can I get a tech job without credentials? [8:04]- How do I make progress on tasks in a chaotic job? [10:52]- Why do you have a problem with social media? [16:07]- What should I do to succeed in my first internship? [24:16]- What does Cal think about YouTube shorts? [26:37]- Is it possible to avoid studying all the time in medical school? [29:14]- What do you think of Oliver Burkeman’s work on productivity in Four Thousand Weeks? [37:51]- Can I maintain a social life if I move to the country? [43:41]  Thanks to our Sponsors: Blinkist.com/DeepWren.co/DeepZocdoc.com/DeepLadderlife.com/Deep Thanks 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 206. As previewed in last week's episode, I am not at the Deep Work H.Q. I am stead on vacation. I am recording this on the road in the glamorous studios of the northern branch of the HQ, by which, of course, I mean I currently have a blanket over my head propped up on a pile of pillows, increasingly becoming hotter as I've turned off all air conditioner in this room for sound purposes. So again, ladies and gentlemen, podcasting is a really glitzy, fancy affair.

All right, so since I am up north, I am without Jesse, but we will persevere. My goal is to do what I did in the last episode. I pulled out eight written, sharp questions, and I want to go through them one by one. Just answer, answer, answer, keep it simple, get back. the basics. Before I dive into the questions, however, there is one topic I want to briefly talk about. I'm up here on vacation. If you want to be more specific about my undisclosed location, I'm actually in a little

farmhouse in the Mad River Valley of Vermont. And naturally, my mind got to thinking about the various authors who I have heard supposedly have a house like this, that they go to for one season a year and finish a book during that season. This is the white whale of writing, this idea that you could just have a beautiful location you go to for just three months and you come away with a book. Is this actually possible? Well, I got a little bit of insight into the reality stories while listening to Golden Eye.

I've mentioned this on the show recently before. Golden Eye is a nonfiction book about Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond thrillers. It is a book about the house he built in Jamaica called Golden Eye, where he would supposedly write a new James Bond thriller each winter. He would spend the winter season at Goldenite. Each winter, he would supposedly churn out a new James Bond thriller. As I was reading this book, however, I was able to get more details about how exactly Fleming wrote. And what I discovered was it is not accurate to say that he showed up at Golden Eye with nothing and left with a book.

the process took much longer than three months. He instead used his time in Jamaica to help focus on the part of the process that I guess was the hardest. But here's the full process for Ian Fleming and James Bond novels that I extracted from this book I'm reading. He would start in the fall in England where he normally lived. He would start in the fall with the task of outlining his book, figuring out the villains, the beats where Bond would go, what trouble he would get into, how he would escape. He would arrive at Golden Eye in the winter. He'd be there maybe about three months.

That's where he would write a first draft. He had a portable typewriter. He would type furiously. He would churn out one to three thousand words a day. There's a funny little bit in this book that makes complete sense to me right now up in Vermont writing with three kids. When he had his son for the first time come out to Jamaica to spend the season with him, The first thing he did before his son came was build a wading pool down by the beach at the foot of the cliffs where his house was so that his son would have a place to play that was safer than being out there actually in the reef itself. The second thing he did, and this I completely understand, was built a gazebo at the absolute farthest limit of his property as far as he could get from his house.

and that is where he decided he would go right to escape the noise of his child. So, no, not father of the year, but I did think that was a funny wrinkle in the book. And again, one I really appreciate writing in this farmhouse with my kids around. All right, well, anyways, back to the timeline. So Fleming would outline the book. It's not very good what he came away with. I mean, he would just type as fast as he could, but he would outline the book while there. Once he returned in the spring to England, all spring and into the summer, he had to work on

actually editing and polishing the book, getting it ready to submit, and then all the work of actually going to the copy edits and the final preparations for publication. So I suspect when we hear about authors going to a distant location to finish their book in one season, this is usually what that means. To get one of the key phases of writing complete while away, not that they were actually going from zero to done, all in one compressed period, though, again, we all can dream. In the meantime, I'm wondering how quickly can I get a gazebo construction team up here to Vermont. All right.

Anyways, an aside, I just thought it was interesting because I'm on vacation. We got eight questions. I'm excited to rock and roll. But before we do, let me briefly mention one of the sponsors that makes this show possible. And that is our good friends at Blinkist. As I like to say, in our current world ideas are power. and the best source of ideas are books. The question is, how do you figure out which books to read?

This is where Blinkist enters the scene. They provide 15-minute text or audio explainers called Blinks of over 5,000 non-fiction titles spread over 27 categories. This allows you to very quickly get the main idea of a book and figure out you know enough from that, or is it worth actually buying the book to dive in deeper? Let's say, for example, you read Yuval Harare's Sapiens and you enjoyed it and you wanted to know if you should buy Homo Deos' follow-up, do the 15-minute blink. I did to get the lay of the land and figure out, is this book worth reading, or do I know what I need to know? So right now, Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience.

Go to blinkest.com slash deep to start your free seven-day trial and get 25% off a Blinkist premium membership. That's Blinkist, spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T. Blinkett's.com slash deep to get 25% off in a seven-day free trial. That's blinkus.com slash deep. I also want to talk about RIN, W-R-E-N, which is a website where you can calculate your personal carbon footprint based on your lifestyle, then offset it by funding projects that plant trees, protect rainforest, sequester CO2, and more. Now, if Jesse was here, I'd make fun of his old pickup truck and all the pollution it produces, but he's not, so I will resist. I do want to mention, though, and this is just science, that if Jesse had driven his pickup truck up to Vermont, you participate in this podcast, that drive alone would have generated enough pollution to melt over 70% of the ice mass of Greenland.

That's just science. I'm just reading that here off of this paper. sent to me by the good people at Wren. No, but seriously, though, signing up for RIN is an easy way to do something meaningful about the climate crisis. I mean, these are your options. Sign up for RIN or slash Jesse's Tires. Those are the two options you have to actually take some real action. So it's a cool idea.

A way to actually see what you're generating and do something about it. So it's going to take all of us to end the climate crisis. So do your part today by signing up for RIN. go to Wren.co slash deep, sign up, and they'll plant 10 extra trees in your name. That's WR-E-N dot CO slash deep. Start making a difference. All right, let's get rolling with some questions. Our first one comes from Giuseppe, who says,

I live in a rural farming community, and the boom in remote tech's jobs finally seems possible. But in this ultra-competitive environment, how can I stand out without the typical credentials that tech companies look for? Well, Giuseppe, tech is more flexible than other types of fields when it comes to credentialing. In the sense that credentialing for tech is not abstract signaling, so much as it is actually trying to find evidence that you can do the specific type of craft that they sink. So in particular, assuming you're talking to. about coding jobs. What a tech company wants to see is that you can code complex things. You can take on a

complex coding challenge, a project, something you want to build that's going to require the integration of a lot of skills and carefully written code and you can make it happen. You can not only handle that complexity, but push things through to completion. So the credential, and I'll put quotation marks that you need, is the public demonstration that you can complete such thing. So it's actually working on real projects, typically using open source repositories for your code. It's probably the right way to do it so people can see and comment on and look at the version history of what you're working on. You have to be able to produce good things. Let that goal be the thing that drives you to your training. You have to figure out how to code.

I don't care how you do this. I don't care if you are, if you're taking online courses or books or just reading stack exchanges. Maybe you're doing something like my friend Scott Young's MIT challenge where he went through the whole MIT computer science curriculum for free because all of the videos of all the main courses and all the assignments are posted online at the MIT OpenCourseware website. So however you want to do it, you know what your target is. Not to have the abstraction. Here is my badge.

Here's my grade. Here's my diploma. But to get to a concrete goal. I built this. Here it is over in GitHub. Other people have looked at it. Some people have helped build it. I drove this project.

So it's good news, bad news. The good news is you don't have to get a fancy credential to get a remote check job. The bad news is there's no hiding behind what your actual abilities are. You have to actually produce something that's hard to get the hard to get job. That's a little interesting turn of phrase. Do something hard to get the hard to get job. I'm on vacation, Guseppe. you know, so you just have to put up with them like to be as tight as normal.

All right. Let's look on, let's see what our next question is. This one comes from Nathan. Nathan asks, for people with chaotic jobs, where problems come at them all day long, how should they maintain a constant forward momentum with other tasks

while fulfilling their day to day requirements? Now, to give us some context, he explained to me in his elaborate. He's a doctor. And he has a lot of other things going on relating to his practice. He's training for new certifications. He's training students. There's other things going on in his life.

Well, Nathan, let me start with one of two points I want to make. And this first point is more general. Often the right answers for people who feel like in their professional context, they can't find enough time to get the things done they want to get done. Often the right answer is not the one you hear, which is do less things. Now, I used to preach this to college students. When I used to work with college students as someone who wrote college advice books, I would work with college students who were completely overwhelmed by their work,

and I discovered pretty quickly that the problem was their schedule was too hard. They were taking too many hard courses and they had too many activities. I used to call these heart attack semesters. If you go back to the early archives of my study hacks blog at calnewport.com, you'll find these references. I say the most important thing you can do is have an easier schedule. Don't do a heart attack semester. Less courses.

Don't triple major. Get rid of all these activities. Make your work more tractable. Then we can work with strategies. Then we can work with time management. Then we can work with study habits. That will all help. But no amount of strategies or discipline or grinded out hustle can make an impossible schedule

possible. So the realization of, I've had more recently, as I've been working on my book about slow productivity, is that this idea I used to preach to college students, I need to preach to professionals as well. Too often, we arbitrarily fix this heavy load of activities in pursuit. So we just assume, well, this is what the given is. This is necessary. Now, help me make it work.

And we never actually step back and say, well, why did I decide that in addition to my practice, I need this certification. I need to train these students and I need to expand the side business. Why did I decide that was to write load? Can I do less? Can I reduce what's on my plate? Again, and not to be too repetitive here. There is no lever that is going to give you more power against an overloaded schedule than actually just reducing what's on your schedule in the first place. So I want to say that first, Nathan, and I don't know if that's your issue, but I want my audience to hear that. don't assume your current load is fixed and all you can do is try to make your habits better and better to make that load more tractable. You want to reduce your load if possible to the point where you

don't really need great habits to survive, but the great habits make things a lot nicer. All right, so that's my first idea. And then let me be concrete for my second idea. Let me give you some sort of concrete advice. I know it's not too useful just to hear someone say, add do less. So I will give you one concrete strategy. If you're finding that you're having a hard time getting the ad hoc or smaller tasks done because of the chaotic nature of the other type of work you're doing, I'd recommend autopilot schedules. So for regularly occurring categories of tasks, set time, set days, set locations with set rituals for tackling those tasks. okay so maybe you have i don't know uh coding coding coding your records for e billing when do you do that

where do you do that you know maybe it's monday and wednesday it's right after breakfast you get breakfast at a particular place and then you go straight to the back office of your practice where you have the the papers laid out the ritual of all the notes are laid out and you grab them and you process them those times that location that ritual that's how you get them done do this for as many different categories of regularly occurring tasks that you have. And you will find that their footprint is going to be reduced because you're not expending mental energy, the plan, to keep track of, to figure out when and where you're going to get it done. The footprint's going to be reduced.

So it will feel like you have less of those tasks, even though the actual quantity hasn't reduced. And you will also find that it will be a more stable pattern of execution. You have these autopilot schedules in place. you work around them. Chaos happens, but you work around them because you put these autopilot schedule blocks attached to things you can't get out of, the meals, begin the day, the end of day, as you move to the building, the hospital from your practice for the rounds, or whatever you're doing, you're less likely to step on them than what most people do, which is, hey, I've got some task I need to get done today. I hope I find time to do it. So I'm a big believer in autopilot schedules,

a big believer in applying autopilot schedules to tasks when in the professional context. So Nathan give that a try. All right. Moving right along here. We have a question from Umi who says, Why do you have a problem with social media? Well, Umi, it's a good question. Here's the thing you need to know.

Mark Zuckerberg and I are roughly contemporary. So he was at Harvard right around the same time I was at Dartmouth. We didn't start exactly the same year, but we're roughly the same age. We're both computer science students. And so our world's overlapped. And it's a story I haven't told often. But when I was at Dartmouth, I spent a little while rowing crew. I rode for the crew team.

And I remember we had a race down at Harvard. It was on the Charles. It was Dartmouth versus Harvard and MIT. I'm an MIT guys. No offense to M. MIT, but they weren't exactly in that race. Anyway, so I was here down there on the Charles, rowing in the boat, three-seat,

rowing in the eight against a Harvard team, going down the Charles, neck and neck. Neck and neck, coming up to the finish line, this was a 2000-meter race. As we're getting closer, right off of the port side of our shell, surfaced a mini submarine piloted by Mark Zuckerberg. It was one of his plans for,

evil genius world domination. Eventually this plan where he used a submarine to try to create a giant tsunami to deluge to East Coast. Eventually he gave up this plan to instead try to conquer the world with Facebook. But it was one of his early plans. And the wake from that mini submarine surfacing made me catch a crab and we lost the race. And I said at that point, and I swore to my brothers in that boat and to the heavens above, whatever Mark Zuckerberg did with his life, I would oppose it. So Umi True Story. story. I don't know if I've told that before, but that's why I have a problem with social media. Okay, look, I've had a blanket on my head too long. Here's the real issue here, Umi. I don't have a problem with the idea of the social internet. I don't have a problem with the idea of creating digital platforms that leverage the internet to help people connect with other people and express themselves. All of that is great. All of that is embedded into the basic promise of the internet. My issue has always been with what I call social media universalism. And this is the idea that there would be a small number of social media platforms that everyone would feel obligated to use. And the small number of monopolies would essentially define internet activity for the whole world. That was the state we ended up in not too long ago when you had Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, a few other pretenders to the throne that would come and go, that everyone felt like they had to use.

That was the problem, the universalism of a small number of monopolistic platforms. This caused two big issues. One, that sense of obligation meant people were trapped or captured in services that was causing for many people, not everyone, but for many people, obvious problems, obvious issues, obvious hardships, but they felt like I have no other choice. We have to use these platforms. So you had people looking at the carefully curated portrayals of their friend's life and getting a lot of, lot of anxiety from it, but they felt like, what can I do? I have to use these platforms. You had parents that found themselves coming back to their phone again and again that the addictive hook of something like Twitter or Instagram or the Facebook feed was drawing their

attention to these devices more than they wanted to, that they were there at reading hour or bath time with their kids and couldn't wrench their attention away from the phone. They knew what they were looking at on that little glowing piece of glass was much less important to these other things than these other things in their lives. But they felt obligated to use the services. And once in that ecosystem had to expose themselves to the carefully engineered addictive attention traps. So again, universalism was causing problem.

I mean, it's not in like a world in which it was just expected that you smoke. It'd be weird if you didn't. You'd have a lot of hacking cigarette addicts frustrated with how many packs they're going through each day, but saying, what can I do? I have to smoke. We all smoke. And I find these to be really addictive. The other issue caused by universalism is that humans are a social animal, but we're a social animal that is not meant to operate in the context of everybody being in the same tribe. And what I mean by that is having access to the thoughts, opinions, critiques, frustrations,

craziness, brilliance of millions of people. our brain has the social context of a paleolithic tribe. Our brain is the context of, I don't know, a hundred people maybe. That we know, we know what's going on, and we have to take seriously what they're saying. They create the whole information context in which our survival depends. That brain does not do well with Twitter. It does not do well when something you can post will get seen by millions of people. And if only 0.01% of the people who see it are off their meds that day.

or mad at you or don't like the way they look, those responses will come across you as strong as having a sizable faction of your 50-person tribe decide that they're going to kick you out. It's going to make you anxious. It's going to make you upset. It leads to weirdness. It leads to hyper-partisanship.

It leads to conspiracy theories. It leads to anger. I have seen this again and again. People who just have turned angry because they're exposed to this universalist social information context that we're not wired for. So there are problems when you say, hey, everybody, you have to use these services.

No matter how many negatives they cause, and no matter how unnatural it is for so many people to be connected on the same homogenized communication context platform. So I did not like universalism, but I like social media. And I'm a big believer of a future in which we fragment and diversify the world of social media technology. A future in which there are many, many different platforms for many different purposes. and interests and types of people. Where there's options. If you don't like something, if it's weirdly addictive,

if you're looking at it when you're trying to give a bath to your kids and you don't know why, you say, forget that, I just won't use it. Why would I use that? I'll use this other one instead. I'll choose this thing that's dedicated just the bike enthusiast in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Or I'm really into DIY and maker stuff.

I have a community here where we post videos and we know each other and we have these real world get-togethers and I really like it. or, you know, I have a particular sensitivity to certain types of information, but I found this great group that shares my sensitivities. And as a small group, we've come together and set community standards that makes me feel safe. This world of diversified and fractured social media technologies, I think, is a world in which the internet is improving things.

You contrast this to a world with three platforms owned by two companies. Bad things and bad things will ensue. The good news is I think we are moving towards that more fragmented, diversified, robust ecology of social media technologies. Actually, while I'm up here in Vermont, I'm in the final stages of an essay that will talk about this. They'll give some more thorough explanation for why I think that's happening. I won't say much more about that now. I'll wait for this to actually be published, but stay tuned for that. But, Umi, that's where I am.

That's where I am. So there's really two things to remember here. universalism monopoly platforms is a problem that's not the right way for the social internet to operate and number two Zuckerberg I have not forgotten your submarine we should have won that race revenge will be mine all right we're moving right along here I am literally sweating by the way I am in a blanket surrounded by pillows I am hot but again I do it all for you all let's keep rolling We're going to do a quick episode here, old school style. Taylor is next. Taylor asks, do you have any advice for students starting their first internship? Well, Taylor,

my advice when you're starting out in any new professional context as a young person, be it an internship or your first job, is to deliver what you say you're going to deliver when you say you're going to deliver it at a good level of quality. And then just repeat that again and again. It's not very exciting, but it is the foundation of the most rapid possible advancement. Do not be the person who let things fall through the cracks. Let be the person, Taylor, your supervisors, your colleagues, your coworkers trust. Oh, if we gave Taylor something to do, he'll remember it. He's not going to forget it.

It will get done. If he says he's going to get done by Wednesday, he will. And if he's not, by Tuesday, he will let us know. Hey, remember that thing I said it'll get done by Wednesday? There's some complications that it can be Thursday. instead, and then he delivers on Thursday. And when he gives us this good, he goes above and beyond. Like, what do they really need from me here?

What could they really? You know what, I'm going to add a little extra to this. He wouldn't even think about this going to make their lives easier. So if you can do this, this dependability and quality, if you can do this again and again, it is like a superpower for an entry-level position in the context of knowledge work. The people above you will fall out of their seats to help you advance and get more opportunities. That is the whole ball game when you're starting out. Down the line, you can worry about innovation and big ideas and taking big swings and making

sure you get enough deep work and producing, you know, brilliant new ideas. That will all come. You will build that power of becoming so good they can't ignore you. That vault that will store all your career capital. You will build that all on a foundation of I deliver what I said, deliver, when I said I would deliver it at the level of quality that impresses you. All right, before moving on, my next update from Vermont. So not only am I under a blanket and sweating, it has just turned dark as night outside.

I think a large thunderstorm is about to pass through. Probability that I am hit by lightning before finishing the next question. Let me just type this in my calculator. 74%. So just keep that in mind. Again, I am sacrificing on your behalf. All right, persevering. Our next question here comes from Muhammad.

Muhammad says A lot of the creators nowadays use tools like YouTube shorts to solve or explain various concepts, problems, topics with very less time. Could you give us your thoughts on this method of acquiring information whether it's beneficial or harmful? Well, Muhammad, I am withholding judgment on YouTube shorts.

In general, I'm withholding judgment on a lot of the recent innovations that are occurring or experiments or variations. I don't know what word to use here, but these various different forms of video and video delivery. I'm withholding judgment because I think democratized multimedia content is a major emerging sector of our economy. That is the ability for people who are not in professional media to produce professional quality media,

I think has already started to be, but it's going to become a very disruptive force in the entertainment landscape. I think audio that is podcasting like you're hearing now is just the first step of a much broader revolution that is going to be more video focused than audio. I mean, TV dominated radio. Radio was great in a world where you didn't have it. TV was even better. So I think there's these revolutions are going to happen, but I can't predict how it's going to unfold.

So I look at a lot of the churn and experimentation happening right now. in user-created video content. So like YouTube shorts versus longer YouTube's. I mean, maybe TikTok. TikTok, there's two separate things going on there. There's short content. And then there's the algorithm for selecting it, which is its own beast.

More on that later. Again, I have an article coming out soon to talk more about that. And I'm just stepping back and saying, let's let this ecosystem do its thing. Let's let new species of video production arise and compete for resources and see what survives. I'm trying to withhold judgment. I don't want to dismiss.

things too quickly. Maybe shorts can be better than long. Maybe professional quality, raising up the quality is going to be the key, not duration. I don't know, but I just know video is going to be the future. User generated democratized multimedia content. This is going to be the future of the entertainment sector. And I just don't quite know yet how that's going to play out. It is, however, why you can find me doing video. I know it's important. I just can't tell you exactly how it's going to be important in the years ahead. All right, we got a question here from med school sibling. Med school sibling says,

I have many friends and some family members in medical school who seem to be perpetually studying most hours of the day, most days of the week, yet they all seem to think it is just what you do in med school and that's impossible to do otherwise and perform well. What are your thoughts on the matter? Well, med school sibling, let's do a little thought experiment here.

So one thing we know is true, I know this is true because I'm literally a world expert on this. Structured studying, so where you're intentional and using evidence-based methods for being as effective as possible in your studying, requires less time than haphazard studying where you just sort of go for it, get after it. Let me open up my textbook, go to the library, put on my hoodie. I love kids still do that. That's what I remember. You put the hoodie on and put the hood over your head and kind of hunch down at the library. and look at your laptop and look at your books, haphazard studying.

We know structure studying takes less time, and of course it does. You're using careful strategies. You're managing your attention well. You're managing your time well. Most med school, med students, like most undergraduate students, use haphazard studying. So it stands to reason if you apply more structured studying to med school, you would study less than most med students.

So if most med students are studying all the time, you would not have to study all the time to produce the same marks or better. and that is exactly what I have heard from the many med students who use my core ideas on effective studying in the med school environment. Learning is learning. There's nothing special about med school versus any other context. So let me give three quick suggestions. I'm going to mention three quick pieces of study advice from the many pieces of study advice

I've talked about in my student books in the archives or early post from my blog. But let me just pull out three that are relevant to med school just to get you a taste, med school sibling of what structure study might mean. One study without distraction, your work produced is a function of your time spent and the intensity of focus during that time. This is the core equation when it comes to academic pursuits. If you can get your intensity of focus higher, the number of hours you have to spend studying to get the same amount of work done falls proportionately.

So when you study, do not context shift. Do not have WhatsApp open. Do not have Twitter open. Do not have your text messages on your phone available. Actually, just be focusing on the studying as intensely as you can during the well-defined study periods. Take well-defined breaks to context switch to look at other things like communication. That one change will reduce the number of hours required to get an academic task done by almost a factor of two. All right.

two at med school there's a lot of memorization active recall is the only thing that matters i have to create this information produce this information from scratch without looking at notes if you can do that you will remember it if you can't you can't do not do passive recall do not read highlighted notes again and again that's not how our mind retains things you need to use flashcards you need to see prompts you need to answer the prompts from scratch just using your brain that is how you burn information into your neurons. And finally, study using an autopilot schedule. I mentioned autopilot schedules earlier in the context of professional task,

but the concept was originated for student study scheduling. That's where the idea was first created. An autopilot schedule says you look at your classes. You look at the regular work that each of these classes generates. So the reading you have to do, the assignments you have to do, the labs you have to do week after week, and you figure out when and where each week you do that work, do not leave it to yourself each day to say, what should I work on today? Regular occurring work should have a fixed schedule that you don't even have to waste a moment's thought

to determine. Between these two classes, I write the initial lab report. I go to lunch here. For 90 minutes after lunch, I go to this biomedical library. That is where I do flash card memorization on the O-Kim, you know, the O-Kim equations from the week, whatever. Same location, same times, same days every week. You put these three things together, studying without distraction, relying on active recall and ignoring passive recall, and scheduling with autopilot schedules, you will study half the time as the other students. It's not so hard.

They're just bad at studying. They might be smart, but they're bad at studying. Be good at studying, you don't have to be nearly as smart to do just as well. All right. Moving along here, I have two questions left, and they're good ones, both sort of philosophical and deep life focused. But before we get to those last two questions, let me just talk briefly about another sponsor that makes this show possible. And that is our friends at Zok, Doc. As Jesse knows, if he was here, he would acknowledge this and confirm this. There is no URL I like saying more than.

then Zocdoc.com. What is Zocdoc? It is a free app that shows you doctors who are patient reviewed, take your insurance, and are available when you need them. This is one of these ideas that makes so much sense.

It'll be hard to remember why you ever did it any way differently. If you're going to go to a restaurant, right, what are you going to do? You can look up reviews? Where is the restaurant? When is it open? Can I get a reservation?

Do people like it? Why aren't you doing the same with your doctors? and Zoc Doc allows you to do this. I need this specialist. Which ones are nearby? Which ones take my insurance? I also read some reviews.

Do people actually like this place? And then if I do, why don't I book that appointment online? Instead of going back and forth trying to find a time that works, I can just look at a calendar and pick a timed it works. It's very efficient. It gets you the information you need. It saves you time. Again, Zoc Doc is one of those ideas that once you start using it, you will say, how did I ever live without it.

I now have two different doctors in my life that I book through ZocDoc, my dentist, and my primary care physician is now also on ZocDoc as well. So I am up to my ears in ZocDoc.com. So I speak from experience here. So go to ZocDoc.com slash deep and download the Zoc doc doc app for free. Then start your search for a top rated doctor today, mini available within only 24 hours. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash deep. Zock-D-com slash deep.

I also want to talk about ladder as I sit here with my head under a blanket in my farmhouse with this killer thunderstorm I've mentioned rolling towards me, meaning I'm minutes away from electrocution-based death. My mind has turned towards life insurance. I'm glad I have some. you have some. If you don't, you need it. You don't want to leave your family or loved ones in the lurch if disaster strikes. So why don't you have it? Well, for most people, the answer to that question is because they don't know how to get started. Where do you go if you want insurance?

Who do you talk to? This is where ladder enters the scene. Ladder is 100% digital. No doctors, no needles, no paperwork. When you apply for $3 million in coverage or less, you just answer a few questions about your health and an application. You can do this right from your laptop or on the phone. It takes a few minutes. There's smart algorithms and work in real time. So you'll find out if you're instantly approved. No hidden fees. Cancel any time. Get a full refund if you change your mind in the first 30 days. They're going to offer you policies that come from good insurers, those with long proven histories of paying their claims, those that are rated A and A plus by A. Best. This is why Ladder's customers rate them 4.8 out of five stars on Trust Pilot.

So now is the time to get insurance. Ladder makes it easy. So go to ladderlife.com slash deep today to see if you're instantly approved. That's L-A-D-D-R-Life.com slash deep. Ladderlife.com slash deep. All right, let's get back to these final two questions. The first comes from productivity geek. He asks, What do you think of Oliver Berkman's work on productivity in 4,000 weeks?

Well, as listeners of the show knows, I am a fan of Berkman. I'm a fan of that book. I blurbed the book. You'll see my quote on the back of it. That book did really well this year. I think it really hit a nerve. And this underlying idea in the book is that to be happy as humans, We have to rein in this ambition to do everything, everything, do it all at high levels. Because this leads to ultimate frustration. We become obsessed with productivity. We become disillusioned with our inability to get more done. With our dreams always being just a little bit beyond the horizon, he's basically saying, chill out. You do not need to do more and more at higher and higher levels to be a fulfilled human.

And I think that really hit a need, especially in this current moment. of burnout. So I want to add my own little spin to this. I'll throw in a thread of argument that Birkman helped me think about. It's an argument I'm also thinking about in my own writing on slow productivity. I think one thing just happens, a trap that happens for humans, especially those who are ambitious, is that striving feels good.

Productivity enthusiasts know this. It's a high. I have a goal and a plan. I'm implementing the plan and I'm making progress towards the goal. That feels good. That's our drug. And of course it feels good. There's an evolutionary advantage to this.

The human drive to make a long-term plan to simulate the world to see if the plan's going to work, to put that plan into action and then feel that chemical rush of the plan actually working. There's a reason why we have that. It's what allowed our species to move forward. It's what allowed us to collaborate in more complex ways. is what allowed us to put together multi-day hunts that we're going to use complex strategies.

It was the foundation of community and culture and art and science and everything that helped our species emerge to be the pinnacle, the pinnacle player on this planet comes from that planning ability. So striving feels good. The problem is, in our current context, where we have so many possible targets for our striving,

and we're given because of the wonders of low friction digital communication and digital media. example after example of people striving and succeeding at higher and higher level. So we have these exemplars of extreme accomplishment that we're just being bombarded with. You combine these two things. And we get to that place that Oliver Bergman warns us about. We get to a place of fast productivity.

Or more, more, more, more action, more projects, more striving. We can't get it all done. So we need to optimize more. We need to get rid of the fat in our system. We need to be more efficient. We need to be more hard on our system. about each wasted moment. That's where the exhaustion comes from.

That's where the ultimate nihilistic disillusionment will finally bloom from. So what do we need to do about that? Well, one thing I've been arguing, I've been thinking about this from thinking about slow productivity is that you can't get rid of the striving instinct. This is the issue when you see the, think of it's a do nothing category of books that just stop. It's weird and capitalist and bougie and, and, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you all other sorts of bad things that you're so productivity obsessed, just chill.

Flowers are nice to look at. That doesn't really work consistently for people because to strive it is a deep instinct. It's like, stop it with all the water drinking. Come on. Don't drink water. Like, we need to drink water. So what we need to do, I think, is redirect striving, not villainize it, not try to repress it. And here's where I want to try to redirect that striving towards a small number of things

that are important to you. Not to generating more things to pursue, but to generate more value from the small number of things that you commit to go after. Now, what does this striving mean in the context of just a small number of things that you're coming back to again and again over time?

Well, part of it might be improving craft. Like, we see this with literal craftsmen. I am an expert woodworker over time. As I pick up new abilities and skills, I get new appreciation for the, wood and the tools and the tooling. So it could be actually improving your craft. But it could also mean finding new angles to appreciate what you do, new wrinkles to uncover, a striving to find more meaning in the small number of things you find valuable.

I think there's a certain segment of very successful contented parents you find this in striving towards their parenthood. Not to be an alpha parent, but to really appreciate their kids and the moments. And in this particular age, their kid happens to be at this particular particular moment and what's good about it and the downplay the bad. We see it in athletes. We definitely can see that. We see it in artists. We see it in writers. As their craft gets more advanced, as their ability to express gets more nuanced as they mature in how they're producing. So this is my spin. I'm going to pull out of the foundation laid by Oliver Berkman. We get obsessed with productivity because we are a striving species. This is problematic. The best

solution to this is to redirect that striving instinct not towards doing more, not towards just ratching up the level of accomplishment, but taking the things that we already know are meaningful and finding more meaning in it, that is worth striving for. All right, let's do one more question here. This comes from Steven. Stephen says, how do people who escape to the country maintain a satisfying social life? The idea of escaping to a small town is appealing to me, but I live in a large metro area where I have many friends. I can't imagine starting over. How do people you often

write about deal with not having their friends around? Good timing with this question, Stephen. I am in a pretty beautiful place. It seems pretty relaxed here. I can drive for hours without having multiple people honk or swerve around me, as happens in D.C. every two minutes. So I feel your similar magnetic drawl towards the country towards small towns. So, you know, I don't have a detailed answer. I've never done that's before, Stephen, but let me point you towards one relevant case study, and that is of the Frugal Woods. So I wrote about Elizabeth Thames, who along with her husband, Nate, make up the, what they call themselves, the frugal Woods. They're part of the fire community, the financial independence

community. I wrote about Elizabeth in digital minimalism. But here's the point about their life I want to make. They were living in Cambridge, central square, actually. So they're living in a townhouse and central square neighborhood of Cambridge. For those who know the Boston area, this is a, it's an urban area. This is, it's densely populated. It's, you know, half mile from MIT, half mile from Harvard. It's sort of in between those two things. So you're in like a densely populated college town. They moved from there. The 66 acres on a mountain in Vermont This was a isolated location. They had a good internet out there, but no phone line, no cell service.

So if that line goes down, if the power goes down, they're out of luck. They have to hike. They have to hike through snow to get to a neighbor's house. And they're near a small town. Up a mountain, you have to drive for a while down a long driveway that Nate spends a lot of time having to clear fallen trees from to get to a small town. All right. So what happened to the social life of the frugal woods when they move? from densely populated college town, Cambridge,

Central Square of Cambridge, to 66 acres on top of an isolated mountain. Liz told me they've never felt more social in their life. Moving to the small town embedded them more thickly into existing social networks than they had ever experienced

in the densely populated city. They got to know people, people depend on each other more, there's a lot more hospitality. People will just come by to bring you food because they think you would like it. They got involved in events. They got involved in the local church, which embedded them even thicker into these connections. They have good, deep friends. There's a grandmother in the town who watches their kids because she just misses kids and likes to do it. They have various friends who come by. Because everyone has land up there. They do these elaborate celebrations for different holidays, grow pumpkins. for Halloween or et cetera.

Anyways, I just thought that was interesting. It's one data point. They left the city. They went to the country. They have never felt more social. So, Stephen, keep that in mind. Maybe go read some of the Frugal Woods blog post. Maybe even send them a message.

They'll respond. But I know it would be sad to lose your existing friends. But this happens to people all the time. People have to move for a lot of reasons, professionally for education reasons, to follow a spouse who maybe whatever gets deployed in the military. People move all the time. You stay in touch with your good friends. It's a little bit sad not to be around your other friends, but that's not new.

The question is, would you be able to build new friends in a rural location? The answer is maybe. At least don't assume that's going to be impossible. But if you do, don't move up here to Vermont because I like it up here, and maybe we'll have a house up here one day, and I don't want it to be more crowded. So here you would be lonely, but other places I think you might enjoy. All right, well, that's all the time I have for today. I literally just got a text for my wife,

since she's coming back to the house with the kids from the swimming hole where they were, which means my ability to record here is about to disappear. So let's wrap it up. Thank you, everyone who's listening. If you like what you heard, you will like what you read in my newsletter at calnewport.com. Get my weekly article. No video for this episode because I'm not in the studio,

but there is video of all of my other episodes at YouTube.com slash Cal Newport Media, so check that out. be back next week. I have a special interview episode next week that I pre-recorded. And until then, as always, stay deep.