Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 26: Habit Tune-Up: My Fall Schedule, Tough Love for a Distracted Listener, and Deep Meetings

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

In this mini-episode, I answer audio questions from listeners asking for advice about how best to tune-up their productivity and work habits in a moment of increased distraction and disruption.You can submit your own audio questions at speakpipe.com/calnewport.Here are the topics we cover: * How I'm scheduling everything I have to do this fall [6:33]* Working on one thing at a time versus rotating between them [16:17]* Some tough love for a distracted listener [18:43]* The perils of context switching [25:48]* Can meetings be deep? [31:05]* Struggling with productive meditation [36:35]As always, if you enjoy the podcast, please considering subscribing or leaving a rating/review.Thanks to listener Jay Kerstens for the intro music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And I wonder if client meetings count as deep work. They require my absolute presence. We have very good deep discussions because we organize our agendas to do that. I'm Cal Newport, and this is a deep questions, habit tune-up mini episode. The format here, of course, is that we take live questions from my listeners about tuning up their productivity habits in a time in which, our professional lives are increasingly disrupted. As I record this, I am sitting here with a sore back, a back that is sore because I have been nearly immobile in this chair here in my Deep Work HQ

for the past three days. It's because I was crashing a big deadline that hit last night. And I bring this up because I violated my own advice in these past three days, and I thought it might be instructive to briefly talk about it. What I did is because I had this big deadline is that I essentially dropped everything else. I did not do daily planning, including time blocks. I did not do my twice daily check-in on my taskboards and calendars to make sure that I have closed open loops and have confidence that I know what I'm supposed to be doing. I did not do schedule shutdowns.

I just fell into this mindset, which is common. I think for a lot of people of this thing is due. it's time consuming. I just want to rock and roll on it and get it done. And I did and the things got done, but I don't think it was great that I had fallen a little bit on my standard habits because here is the reality. How much time would it have added to my day?

For example, to have every day, so let me stand back, let me look at my tasks as stored on my trello boards, let me look at my calendar, let me look at my weekly plan, let me build a plan today and time block it. And then at the end of the day, said, okay, let me do a shutdown. Let me check all my systems. Let me check my inbox. Let me shut down.

Make sure that the loops are closed and I'm on track. This would have added 15 minutes per day of time. That is incidental. An incidental addition. But the psychological benefit would have been great because I would have actually felt as if I know what I'm doing, I'm in control. Again, this is what I always say, face the productivity dragon, just because the dragon is fearsome.

So just because the reality of my time block schedules might have been, I can do very little else except to work on this big deadline. Actually seeing the dragon as opposed to trying to turn your back or cower because you see smoke coming out of the metaphorical cave of your work obligations is always better. Two, doing this type of time block planning, the very quick review of what's on my plate, what's my plan for the day, probably would have got several small things that would not have taken much time but were somewhat urgent,

taken care of or nudged or notes being sent to the right people of look, I see this. But I'm going to get back to you on Thursday. I'm going to get back to you on Friday because I'm crashing a deadline. And so from just a pure productivity standpoint, it would have kept the wheels on the road better than this instinctual knee-jerk response of just shut it down. We're all in on this thing. We've got to crash our deadline. So this is not an actual question that someone asked.

I'm answering my own question here. We're kicking off this mini episode with me answering the question of when is the last time you've gone against your own advice and what were the consequences? And that is the answer. So I'm not proud of how I handled it. You know, my back being sore, to me, that's always a sign. I do this.

Like when I get locked into something, I don't move. I can sit for five hours just working on something. Even though I know getting up and moving, they'll probably make things better, get the blood flow. you might even get the work done earlier. It's just like, I don't want to give up. Like, I can't stop right now. I don't want to give in.

I don't want to accede. And that type of intense focus has its advantages. But again, it's a problem. You cannot just throw everything out the window when there's something hard or time consuming coming up and just go all in. That's college students in the library style work. Facing a productivity dragon is always worth it. Should have done time blocking.

Should have done twice daily to do checking. Should have kept control of my time. it would not have slowed down my progress, but it would have made me feel better and would have made me more productive even amidst those hard times. All right, so there we go. I can be a case study lesson learned.

You know, I think I was just rusty because it's the fall. And we're coming off to summertime. Summertime is a laxer time for a professor. And so now I'm back in the maelstrom of early September, which is a very busy time for me. And I let my habit slip there a little bit.

All right, lesson learned. I'm back in the cave. I'm facing the dragon, but hopefully you can learn from that lesson and apply it to your own professional life as well. Before getting started with your questions, let's quickly highlight the habit tune up review of the week, writing over on Apple iTunes.

Aaron of Krypton gave a five-star review and said the following. I've been an ardent follower of Cal Newport for years, going all the way back to his first book, straight-A student. I'm so thankful he's got a podcast to go along with his great writing. People from all walks of life, regardless of profession, will benefit immensely from listening to Cal and his dynamite strategies. So thank you, Aaron, though I do have to correct you.

Stray-A student was actually my second book. My first book was How to Become a College Superstar. But I appreciate that review, and I appreciate everyone else who has been leaving reviews or ratings on their podcast platform of choice. that plus subscriptions helps people both discover and decide to try out this podcast, and I appreciate, of course, those efforts. If you want to contribute your own voice question to the Habit Tunup mini episode, you can do so at speakpipe.com slash Calnewport.

And as I always remind you, if you want to find out more about what I do or get my writing sent to your email inbox, sign up for my mailing list at Calnewport.com. All right, that's enough administrative preamble. Let's get started with our first listener question of the episode. Hi, Cal, I am half of a two-career couple with three little boys about the same age as yours. And I was curious about your time blocking for the fall, particularly, like specifically when you've scheduled different time blocks. I would imagine that your day job takes you from, you know, nine to five, your work at Georgetown.

But then when do you block your writing time during the week? And you also mentioned homeschool. And, you know, that resonates with a lot of us right now. When are you time blocking homeschool with your kids? So just purely pragmatically, I'm curious what your schedule is like this fall. Thanks. Bye. Chelsea, that's a good question.

Now let me caveat my answer with the realization that the fall semester is new. We just got started and so I don't quite have exactly how my schedule is going to unfold finalized yet. With that in mind, I can give you some sense of how I'm dealing with my competing obligations. So first I'll say Monday and Wednesday are my teaching days. So I teach my class at Georgetown on Monday and Wednesday. days I teach that virtually from my video podcast studio here at the Deep Work headquarters. As I typically do, my teaching days also become my meeting days. I do not like fragmented schedules every day of the week. It's a real source of stress for me when I look at every

day and there's a call here, an hour gap, a Zoom thing here, a two-hour gap, and then another appointment. I find it very difficult to fall into a groove to get deep work done. Even if I do have time to get important work done. Just seeing my calendar be full, just changes my mindset. So I tend to put my recurring meetings on Monday and Wednesday. I give you a sense of that. I have recurring research meeting with my PhD student. I have a recurring meeting in my role as a director of graduate studies for my department with my graduate program manager. That's within those times. It's when I meet with my teaching assistants for my course. There is some weekly, it's a essentially podcast style recording I do with Scott Young every week for the life of focus course

that we're running right now. There's sort of an expert edition of that course that involves this fireside chats with Scott and I, so that gets done. Monday and Wednesdays, etc. That's why I work on problem sets, work on exams. So that's Monday and Wednesdays. Class days, sort of Georgetown teacher mode days. Tuesday and Thursdays, These are more open. I tend to put less professional meetings or calls on those days. These are days where I am integrating more of my part of the homeschooling curriculum. So within that workday, we're still adjusting the schedule right,

but there is definitive blocks of time put aside when I'm working on homeschooling. And so there's this whole curriculum I'm developing based around this maker lab that I have at my HQ. and yada, yada, yada, yada. I'm working out this curriculum. We do a lot of it at my HQ. That's Tuesdays and Thursdays. Like that time just gets scheduled. It's just the reality of right now is there is time that would normally be work time

that has to go towards emergency measures like needing to educate your children when the schools are temporarily closed. So that happens on Tuesday and Thursdays. It's also where I do a lot of my research, so working on academic papers, etc. Now I'm recording this on a Thursday, and so I often will record my habit tune up podcast episode on Thursdays as well. The Deep Questions, longer podcast, main episode format I tend to record over the weekend. So that should give you some sense on what Tuesday Thursday Thursday is like Friday as well. Friday is just a day for again, writing, thinking, working on academic papers, working on writing, writing, working on my business.

Friday's often where I'll throw things business related. I need to meet with my web designer, et cetera. And so that should give you roughly a sense of how I spread things out. Now, when it comes to writing, by design, I'm not doing a ton of writing right now because, look, it's sort of all hands-on-deck emergency mode. You know, with the homeschooling, with our kids at home, with everything else going on, I'm trying to be a little bit careful. And so I'm not doing a ton of writing right now.

I'm in the final stages of locking in my book, A World Without Email, which comes out in March. And so I'm at the moment doing the copy editing. So technically speaking, I'm reviewing the manuscript that the copy editor sent back and answering a few questions. So we're really doing finalizing the manuscript. We're working on the flap copy. We just got the layout nailed down.

So there's some final efforts happening for that book. I'm locking in a major magazine article, but that's really almost at that copy editing stage as well. And I'm in the early stages of a new major magazine article, but I haven't even really fired that up yet. In the weeks ahead, as I really get rolling on that new article, that work is going to start getting integrated into Tuesdays, into Thursdays, in the Fridays.

Occasionally weekends as well, especially if I'm reading. So in preparation for an article or book chapter, I need to read a book or read other articles, that's something I'll do on the weekend. I see that more as intellectually stimulating, whereas checking email or doing an administrative task, it would not want to do over the weekend, as that would bring me back into a professional work style mindset

that I'm trying to get away from to recharge. All right, so that's what's going on with my writing as well. My blog post, of course, I always write those in the evening. So I don't have a lot of free time. I am time blocking really assiduously, trying to make the most out of the time I have, trying to face the productivity dragon. This is why I opened this episode talking about how I was upset with myself for letting that slide over the past three days because of that major deadline I have.

That is an exception. For the most part, I've been pretty rigid about my time block planning so I can get the most of the time I have available. Also, I just have to be really clear. Like, how am I going to fit into homeschooling with my class, with this meeting? I mean, I really have to be in control of my time. I really have to be moving those temporal chess pieces around the metaphorical board here very carefully. if I'm going to make things all fit. I do not right now have a lot of free time.

I would say that is an accurate description of COVID fall. Not a lot of time for hobbies. Not a lot of time for leisure activities. I often get a walk in pretty early in the morning. I mean, my wife and I are up before the sun is up. I often will get a walk in pretty early in the morning. Sometimes I'll stop and do some reading under a particular large gnarle-rooted tree I enjoy at a park that I walk to. I am also, I mean, often the other time I'm reading is going to be after everyone's asleep.

My exercise is often happening after nine because there's just not time to do it before then. So, you know, I don't have a lot of free time right now. I am very rigidly controlling my time, but I'll tell you, it's right now it's working. And this is the advantage of, you know, facing the productivity dragon. This is on my plate. This is what I have available. How do I make it work? Okay, this can't work.

So I can move it off. This can work if I do it this way. That type of confrontation and control. I find allows you to make the most of the situation and allows you to avoid the stress of just running around from one fire to another wondering how you're going to make it all works. Okay, that's what's going on now. That's my schedule. It will probably evolve. I mean, obviously things are going to get easier and I'm looking forward to that. My administrative role as director of graduate studies I talk about often on this podcast, that ends on October 1st. So that's a big deal.

I'm on a research, essentially like a sabbatical, a research leave starting in mid-December that last until the following September where I'm not teaching, I'm just working on research. Right. So that's coming up. I plan to, I mean, I basically want to write a book during that period. So I'm trying to get, I have to figure out. I'm working pretty hard. I mean, a little peek behind the curtain.

I'm working really hard. My goal is to have a book to write in that period because I think it's going to be a great opportunity to make progress. And I do have some ideas there, but not ready for not ready for prime time yet. I also have, you know, a book launch in March and in the spring. I don't know what that's going to look like. Typically a book launch means I travel all over the country, if not the world. There might not be merely that much travel, but probably lots of podcasting, et cetera. But anyway, so things are going to get better. And because I'm controlling my schedule and time blocking and doing weekly planning and quarterly planning, I'm going to be able to take advantage of that

newly opened up free time as it arrives. And so that's another advantage of facing the dragon is that once the dragon moves on, you're locked in. And the metaphorical monsters that remain are going to be easily dispatched. So Chelsea, that's a view inside my life. That's how I am trying to make things work right now. Hopefully in your own efforts with your own three boys and God knows I empathize. I empathize with that reality. Hopefully in your own efforts, you're finding it tractable as well. And that would be my takeaway message. confront the dragon, figure out how to attack it. It's always better than running and hoping that it doesn't catch up.

All right, so that was sort of a big question. Let's move on to a question that has a sort of technical quicker answer to it. Hi, Cal. This is Nino from Sunny Old England. So I'm currently trying to utilize deep work while studying two subjects, maths and physics. The only time I've got available to me is two hours first thing in the morning. What I'd like to know is, am I better studying one hour of maths followed by one hour of physics each morning, or studying just one subject each morning for two hours and then alternating that, you know, throughout the week?

I've always been fascinated by the British use of the term maths, plural, whereas here in America we say math. Now, it initially struck my ear as odd when I used to work with people from the United Kingdom, but it actually makes more sense. I mean, what are we abbreviating? We're abbreviating the term mathematics. Right? I'm studying physics, plural, and mathematics plural. So if you're going to abbreviate mathematics, maths does make sense, but hey, it's something that I had to get used to. Anino, as for your question, I would say that you should probably dedicate each two-hour block in the morning to a single subject.

And generally speaking, if you're doing something that's very cognitively demanding, in a practice activity like trying to master a complicated topic, you might find it hard to do that shift, because you're going to lose the first, what, 10 minutes, the 15 minutes, just context shifting, right, getting your cognitive network refocused on what you're doing, say physics. So then if you turn again after a one hour mark, you've gotten, what, 45 minutes of work. And I're going through another context shift and you get another 45 minutes of work.

I would say for something this cognitively demanding, like university-level physics and map. Once you've got locked into the topic, I would want to spend as much time as I can. So in that case, I would say, do two hours at a time and be a little bit loose about how you alternate. I mean, just depending on what type of groove you're in and the reality of the magnitude of the particular topic, you might do a few days in a row of just physics, then a few days of math. You might do a whole week of physics, then a week of math. I mean, don't have a strict schedule there. Go by your gut. But try to take advantage, I think for sure, of that deep work. work, momentum.

All right, that was an easy one. Let's move on to a question here about distractions pulling you away from your professional efforts. Hi, I really love the show. And I just had one question because I've been struggling with putting in place, also working for more than 15-minute chunks. I always find myself distracted either by my own. my phone or by YouTube. I don't really have a social media problem, but I just wanted kind of a

solution to really extend my average work time, at least to be in 30 minute chunks. So I wanted some of your feedback. Fabrice, I appreciate the question. And I'm going to use it as an opportunity to deliver a little bit of tough love because I think it's relevant for a lot of people. in my listening audience. Based on the wording of your question, I think you have a problem. You have a work problem. The amount of time, it sounds like you are distracted,

this idea that you are constantly looking at your phone or constantly looking at YouTube, the idea that getting to 30 minutes of undistracted work would be the accomplishment that you're trying to aspirationally obtain. This is all a problem. These are all red flags. You know, I was just recently listening to the comedian Ron White on Joe Rogan's podcast.

And Ron mentioned, he said, you know, I'm trying, I've been better, been taking care of myself better. You see, I'd been drinking half a bottle of tequila a night. But, you know, since the pandemic, I've really got that down the closer to like a third of a bottle. The idea is No, there's a bigger problem here The problem was not a half a bottle of tequila versus a third of a bottle of tequila The problem is that you're drinking so much tequila every night

And that's sort of what I'm picking up in your question The problem is not, hey look, I need to get from 15 minutes Of Undistracted Workup to 30 It's that you need to throw that metaphorical bottle Out the window and get a little bit more serious here So here's my tough level love. If you're doing work, if you're a professional and you are doing knowledge work, work that makes use of your brain as your primary instrument, your primary way of producing value,

you should not be looking at your phone, you should not be looking at YouTube. And don't give yourself the excuse of, well, you know, I can't help it or I deserve it. I just need to try to maybe spread it out a little bit more. Don't make it a narrative of just I'm helpless against this technology. Let me shrug my shoulders. What can I do? This is just what people do. They look at their phone all the time. They look at YouTube all the time. No. What I want for you, Fabrice, I want for you a working life where you control your time and you control your attention. And when you control your time and you control your attention, going down YouTube rabbit holes is going to have very little role in your workday. Picking up your phone haphazardly because

your board is going to have very little role in your workday. I think you're probably not even scratching the potential of what you could be accomplishing and how you could be feeling once you actually command to your control over your attention. So this is my tough love message. Let's have a drastic change. So how do we do this? Well, first, let's set some hard rules. No internet for entertainment during your workday. Use a blocker. Use software like freedom. Use software apps like screen time on your phone, whatever it takes. But make it essentially impossible to go to YouTube. Make it essentially impossible to look at your phone. In fact, I would go farther with your phone. Take that phone, put it into airplane mode, put it in a different room.

Don't even have it near you. Now, if this requires that you have to put some other systems in place because of whatever, I mean, I always hear this like, well, I can't do that because every once in a while a colleague has to text me and blah, blah, blah, blah, figure out an alternative. Even if that means buying a burner flip phone. So I'm trying to get serious here. You're going to have to cold turkey some of this stuff. I don't look at YouTube when I work. I don't look at my smartphone when I work. And then I want you to put in place a capture, configure, control-style productivity system. I'm going to talk about this a lot in a lot of my episodes. Here's where you capture everything that needs to be done. Obligations that come in via email or Slack gets moved

on to those lists. Configure, you have a place to store and organize and put those things into context, get them out of your head, then control. Time block plan your day. Here's when I'm working. Here's the minutes that are available. Here's the minutes when I'm in preschedule, calls, meetings, or appointments. Okay, I'm going to give every other minute a job. You follow that schedule. And then when you mess up with that schedule because it's hard to do it first,

next time you get a chance, you fix the schedule for the time that remains. When you go up that schedule, next time you get a chance, you fix the schedule for the time that remains. You keep intentionality. When your work day is over, you do a shutdown ritual, schedule shutdown complete. Then you can go look at YouTube. Then you can look at your phone. Then that beckons.

I just want to set a standard here. I just want to set a standard here that you should not be thinking about your intersection of your work life and the distracting attention digital economy as this inevitable thing where you're hoping to do a little bit better. As a bottle of tequila where you're trying to get your consumption down from a half a bottle to a third. I want you to instead reconceptualize your work

that you're like an athlete. But instead of trying to fine-tune your body and apply your physical gifts, you're trying to fine tune your brain and apply your cognitive gifts. And I think you can do this. I think you're not only going to get a lot more done, you're going to feel a lot better. So let's throw out that metaphorical tequila bottle and get in shape.

And this is how I think you do it. No YouTube, no phone when you're working. When you're working, you're working. Capture configure control. You get after your productivity. The systems are hard. You get used to it. You adjust them.

You evolve them as needed. You find work around. Someone needs to call you on the phone by a burner phone. You need information from YouTube or something like that for some reason for some project and you do that during a set time, gather it so that when you need it later, you can actually work with it, whatever you need to do. But that's what I say, Fabrice, I think the fact that you're listening to this podcast means you're on board with the general idea of productivity as something that can be optimizable, as productivity is something

that can be pushed to an extreme, but in doing so it can give you extreme positive results. And so I'm cheering for you and I think you can do it. Let's take a big step here. Let's take a massive change. I think you are a hundred percent ready for it. So all that's left is to actually get started. All right, I guess as long as I'm in tough love mode, I have another question here I'm going to get to that I think is probably going to trigger a sort of a similar level of stridency. Hi, Carl. My name is Tatiana. I'm a 24-year-old, fifth-year medical student in France. My queries with regards to attention switching, given that's the problem I have at the moment. 50% of my time is devoted to my school work, 40% to trading and 10% to writing.

Given that I am a financial trader, I need to be constantly monitoring the financial markets, and this has got me switching my attention between my charts and my school notes, at least every 15 minutes and at most every hour. I use time blocking to guard against other distractions so they don't encroach on me, but I am wondering if this attention switching is having an impact on my studies. Well, Tatiana, the answer is 100% yes.

If you are a financial trader who has to check the markets every 15 minutes, So in other words, not only expose yourself to information that is a complete context shift away from the schoolwork you're doing, but information that is fraught. It could be tied to urgency. It could be tied to your finances. So it's emotionally innervating. That's going to create an incredible cognitive toll. It is going to significantly reduce your ability to effectively learn and significantly increase the time required to actually complete the schoolwork.

that you need to complete. Now, to say that your time block planning to try to protect your life as a student from other distractions, but you still need to check financial information every 15 minutes. That's almost akin to telling me, I'm really worried about my house being robbed.

And so I have a really fancy security system put in place. It has moving lasers to detect movement and shatter sensors on the door and extra cameras that are aimed at the rooms where your valuables are kept than a state of the art, but you put the keypad code for disarming it on a post-it on your front door because you worry about forgetting it. All of that effort and expense you went to put that fancy security system in place is all wasted

if the keypad is out the front door. Same thing. You can do all the time block planning you want. You can get rid of all the incidental distractions you want, but if you're doing something as intrusive as having to check the financial markets every 15 minutes, you're doing the damage at about as high of a level as you can probably induce. cognitive network switching damage. So really, my advice is, first of all,

we have to accept this reality. I think, you know, again, I don't mean to be administering tough love here. I'm just using this as a springboard to talk about a broader point for the audience, which is network switching matters. Network switching is a real problem. Network switching does really reduce your cognitive capacity.

We really have to take that seriously, even if it's inconvenient and even if we don't want to. So this is a message as well for like a manager. It says, yeah, I want my engineers to do smart work, but it's just I need them to answer my emails quickly because it's inconvenient otherwise. I'm going to have to figure out some other systems. I just need them to answer my emails quickly.

Hey, it's incompatible. If they have to monitor an inbox, they can't do the engineering work well. Same thing for a university administrator. Like we want our professors to produce world-class, cutting-edge research, But we really need them to do fill out this form and they need to answer these emails and need to attend, you know, these sessions. And I need to answer a quick question on this because we're trying to put this program

into place. Hey, they're incompatible. Network switching reduces cognitive capacity. We can't pretend like it doesn't. So that's the case here. I mean, it is a very difficult proposition that you're suggesting. I would say, look, I don't know your situation, but if I would either find a way to not have to make trades during your student hours or find a way to put one of those two pursuits temporarily on hold. I do think it's going to really slow you down. I do think it's going to hurt your performance. And so that's what my answer would be there.

I mean, I'm glad you're doing the other things. You're doing the time block planning. You are being careful about distractions. It sounds like you're really doing control of your time because you told me what your exact percentages were of how much time was put aside for other things. You have all the tools in place to really optimize your productivity

and optimize, therefore, the sort of impact, meaning and satisfaction you can derive in your life, but I think there's one last piece is throwing you. You kind of don't want it to be true that you can't do these two things at the same time, but I sort of think it probably is. And again, I'm only harping on this because I want to emphasize for the listening audience that we need to take network switching seriously. It really does reduce your cognitive capacity.

And if it is a reality in your working life, reduced performance in this life is also a reality. All right, let's shift gears here and get to a question about the definition of deep work. Hi, Cal. My name is Rebecca, and I wonder if client meetings count as deep work. They require my absolute presence. We have very good deep discussions because we organize our agendas to do that. And we solve problems together. But because I do them with other people and they're just called meetings, I don't count them as

deep work. At least I haven't before now. Well, Rebecca, the type of meeting you are describing sounds like, yes, it should count as deep work. So an important part of the definition of deep work is that it's agnostic to the number of people involved.

The definition says the efforts must be cognitively demanding. They should preferably be pulling upon skills, so not efforts that, as I often say, you could just train a 21-year-old right out of college to replicate, so it's skilled work as cognitively demanding that you execute in a state without cognitive network shifts. If you're not glancing at your phone, you're not glancing at

email, it's getting your full undivided attention. You have those three things. Your efforts are deep. Now, if there's a few people doing that with you, fine. If it's you by yourself, fine. It basically doesn't really matter, you know, whether you're talking through this hard thing with a person, whether you're at a whiteboard solving a problem with a person or whether you're thinking it through on your own on a walk or you're at a whiteboard by yourself. It doesn't really matter. It's immaterial to the definition of deep work. So a client meeting where you really are trying to understand their issues and work through problems with them, that seems to me to qualify as deep work. Because again, it hits all those

criteria, cognitively demanding skill, and you're not contact shifting. Now, meetings in general come in a lot of different flavors. So the type of meetings that you have to be wary of from a deep work perspective or from the perspective of trying to hit a search. certain deep to shallow work ratio is meetings, let's say, that are predominantly logistical in nature. Meetings where you shoot the breeze for a while, then it's like, okay, who needs what? Okay, maybe you can jump on that next week. And anyone have anything else to report?

Like, Bob, what about that? Okay, well, maybe Rebecca can handle that. Where are we on this project? Let's all check in. I mean, those meetings can be important, but those aren't deep work because it's not skilled or cognitively demanding. It's just logistical. is just administrative.

And so if you're trying to optimize a meeting calendar, the extent to which you can shorten, consolidate, or eliminate logistical, or administrative meetings and replace them with better-defined processes, that can take the coordination efforts away from back-and-forth ad hoc conversation and ossify them instead into well-defined rules, that's good, because those aren't particularly deep efforts. They don't move the needle.

So you can just consolidate or eliminate them is only going to make things better. But meetings in which you're actually doing skilled cognitive work and producing value, then that's just the same as being alone in your cave. That's just the same as Carl Jung in his tower. You know, that's just the same as Thoreau staring at the ice near Walden. And that's fine. And you shouldn't feel bad about those.

There's a lot of jobs where most of the work happens in a collaborative context. So the relevant chapter, if you have my book Deep Work, The relevant chapter is work deeply. Look inside that chapter, there's a subchapter titled Don't Work Alone. And that's why I really get into this. I talk about Bell Labs. I talk about the whiteboard effect. But you've gotten the short version there.

Hey, I don't care if there's people there or not. If it's cognitively demanding, you're not context shifting, that stuff that's moving the needle. And if it's not, it's not. And if anything, and I say this in the book, if anything, some deep work when done and groups is actually better because you obtain higher levels of focus. As I've mentioned on the podcast before, this so-called whiteboard effect, that's what I named it in the book, is due to social pressure. You're working on something with other people.

You don't want to drop the ball. You want to make a contribution. So if you're not concentrating intensely, you're not going to make as good of a contribution and the client's going to notice that your colleague's going to notice it. If you break your attention and check your email and miss the threat of argument, you miss your colleague working on the proof on the board, you're going to have to stop them and say, sorry, you have to go back. I let my attention wander. And there's a social cost to that. And you want to avoid that cost so you don't check your email.

So actually, this so-called whiteboard effect says for a lot of deep efforts, doing it with other people can actually allow you to achieve even deeper levels of concentration. So I'm glad you asked this, Rebecca, because I want that, that, that, that, idea to be well promulgated among my audience here that I don't care if you're with people or not. Depth is about cardly demanding work without switches. Hey, if you can do it with other people, might even be better. Right. So there is no blanket assessment for meetings. It's all about the activities that you're doing, whether they're with people or not.

They're either moving the needle or they're administrative and you want to get that ratio right. So Rebecca, the fact that you have a lot of these client meetings. You can celebrate that instead of cursing it. All right, we're running up against our time limit here, but why don't we try to slip in one more question here? Hey, Kyle. My name is Seunke, and I'm a medieval history student from Germany

and aspire to be a professor one day. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old son and another baby coming in October. The idea of using walks to be alone with my thoughts, maybe even using this time to do some productive meditation, sounds great to me and I really want to do it. However, every time I go for a walk to be along with my thoughts, my brain switches into party mode. Literally everything comes up. It almost seems like if I would listen to a podcast, my mind would be calmer than if I try to be without any input by other minds. What are some tips to get my brain to calm down and really use this rare

time I carved out of my day? Well, first of all, congratulations for the upcoming addition to your family. you know, I always thought that grad school was a great time to start a family just because you have so much flexibility, not to mention youth and youthful energy. My wife and I sometimes think that maybe we should have started our family even earlier. When we reflect back at our time when I was a student or a postdoc, we think, hey, that might have been a great time to be hanging out with some young kids. Also, another pro tip relevant to both kids and your question, baby carriers and strollers are, perfectly legitimate accompaniments to productive meditation walks. It's actually a great way to accomplish two goals at the same time, especially if you have a baby who early on gets used to that carrier like an

ergo where you strap them on and they'll sleep in it and enjoy it. You can go for long walks now. And while you're walking, get some really good productive meditation done. You can also push the older kid in a stroller, you know, and get some productive meditation done. I've gotten a good amount of work done. with kids of various ages either being pushed or strapped on me in various ways. So just a little parental deep work pro tip there.

Now to get to your specific question, you're struggling with productive meditation. You find it when you go on a walk and try to focus your mind on a single professional problem. There is a, quote, party going on, in quote, in your brain. So what I can tell you is that's completely normal. and the solution is practice. It's why I use the term meditation in the description of this work habit is because mindfulness meditation,

which was an inspiration for this habit, in mindfulness meditation, the assumption is there will be a party going on in your brain when you first attempt the habit. And what you practice is that you notice that chatter, you notice that voice trying to write an email in your brain and a voice thinking about your calendar and a voice thinking about your schedule.

You notice it. You don't judge that your mind is wandering. You notice it and then you bring it back to the present. You notice it. You bring it back to the present. In productive meditation, you're doing the same thing except for instead of just bringing it back to let's say like your breath, you bring the attention back to the professional problem

that you're trying to make progress on. This gets better with practice. Back to the problem. Back to the problem. Back to the problem. First few weeks, your sessions are going to be frustrating. But then they're going to get a little better. And then it's going to get a little better.

I mean, I went through this same training at a very similar stage of my life that you're in right now. Now, I've talked about on this podcast that I got deep into productive meditation during my two years as a postdoctoral associate at MIT. I lived across the Longfellow bridge in Beacon Hill. The status center I worked was about a mile, mile and a half away walking over that bridge. And I did that walk a lot. I would actually, not the details are that important, but I would bring my dog. I'd walk my dog to my office. I'd work in my office for a while.

Then I would change and run the long way home over the Mass Ave bridge with my dog, stopping to do my calisthenics on one of these, I guess they're floating, docks that they have out there on the Charles River on the Boston side off the promenade, go back to my house, drop off the dog, come back to the campus, either on foot or taking one stop on the tea, and then walk home after that. So I spent a lot of time walking, and I didn't want that to be wasted time. So I used a lot of those sessions to do productive meditation, and it was hard at first, and then I got better. And so I think the fact that you're struggling with it is all the more reason why you need to do this practice. It just means that you're

your head is not very comfortable with sustained concentration. This will make you better. I often say it's the physical equivalent of pull-ups. If you find yourself weak in many situations, like, I have a hard time lifting heavy things, my muscles tire out, start doing pull-ups every day, which is one of my habits.

At first, you won't be able to do any or barely do any. So this could be incredibly hard, way harder than your muscles in your upper body are used to having to work. Eventually, you can do one. then eventually you can do five and then eventually you can do 10 and at this point it's like a completely different body it took a lot of work but now your upper body is very used to doing things that are physically very demanding so this is the same thing with your mind you do the productive

meditation maybe you have a kid strapped on maybe you're pushing a kid maybe not i mean you really probably should at first because i think you need to give uh your wife as much of a break as possible especially when the baby is here but okay put that aside you're doing your productive meditation you got to just get after it back to the problem back to the problem back to the problem back to the problem. You'll be frustrated, frustrated, frustrated. Then you'll be less frustrated. Then you won't really be that frustrated at all. Then you'll be pretty proud of what you're able to accomplish. Give it three months of doing it at least three or four times a week. You will for sure, I guarantee you see massive progress if you actually give it that needed focus of I really am going to try

bringing my attention back to the problem. It's a great exercise, especially for an aspiring academic. I swore by it. It made a big difference in my career. I think it'll make a big big difference in your career as well. All right. So that's all the time we have for today's habit tune up mini episode. Thank you to everyone who contributed their questions. If you want to contribute your own audio question, you can do so at speakpipe.com slash Cal Newport. I'll be back on Monday with the next full-length episode of the Deep Questions podcast. And until then, as always, stay deep.