Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 287: Minimalist Notes

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

A deep life requires that you encounter and make sense of a large amount of incoming information, from narrow data relevant to a professional project, to broad insights into your purpose. How do you keep track of all of this? In this episode, Cal proposes a minimalist approach aimed at minimizing the friction required to keep tabs on what matters.Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvoVideo from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmediaDeep Dive: How to track information that matters [2:55]- How should I make use of non-cognitive time? [27:37]- Can people with ADHD become better at learning? [32:49]- What does Cal think of Gloria Mark’s “4 myths of attention span”? [36:31]- How can I concentrate on my dissertation when I have a full-time job? [47:04]- How can I stop wasting my afternoon time blocks? [53:20]- CALL: How can I better organize my idea notebooks? [1:01:38]CASE STUDY: Avoiding the hyperactive hive mind to work more efficiently [1:05:46]   CAL REACTS: Is it bad to be slow? [1:13:46]Links:dailystoic.com/try-not-to-be-so-slow/gloriamark.com/attention-spanUse this link to preorder a signed copy of “Slow Productivity”: peoplesbooktakoma.com/preorder-slow-productivity/ FREE download excerpt and 2 Bonuses for “Slow Productivity”: calnewport.com/slow Thanks to our Sponsors: grammarly.com/podcastdrinklmnt.com/deepcozyearth.com (promo code “cal”)expressvpn.com/deepThanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, Kieron Rees for slow productivity 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, the show about living and working deeply in a distracted world. So if you're new, I'm a computer science professor and digital theorist who writes about the intersection of technology and the way we live and work. On this show, I give concrete advice about the big ideas I write about. I'm recording today in the Deep Work HQ, joined as always by my producer, Jesse. Jesse, once again, I continue to be happy about the people showing up for this pre-order campaign for the new book, Slow Productivity. The numbers are great. I think it's catching attention of people in the industry, so thank you for that. If you haven't pre-ordered and you're thinking about it, we put everything at one place, calnewport.com slash slow. The bonuses you can get for pre-ordering are there. Links to pre-order are there. You can download a free excerpt.

If you want to pre-order a signed version from people's book here in Tacoma Park, there's a link to that. So just go to calnewport.com slash slow. And for all of you who have pre-ordered, thank you for supporting me and the book. An administrative point specific to our podcast, we need more calls, right, Jesse? Yeah, we do. It's easy. So if you go to, and I'm throwing a lot of URLs at you. So we'll put this in the show notes too.

The people always say that, Jesse. This is what would happen. All right, here's my question about podcasting industry question. A lot of podcasts, they're constantly saying, put this in the show notes. Put this in the show notes. Let's say that there was a law passed that said no show notes for like one month. Would it really change much? Are people reading the show notes?

Maybe they are. Some of my favorite podcasts, I do go to the show notes. You do read the show notes. But you're not representative, I think, of normal people. But I only do that for a couple podcasts, probably. All right. Well, we will put in the show notes, the second URL, the deeplife.com slash listen. That's the page of the podcast. There's a link right at the top for how to submit a call. And you do it right from your browser. You can do the browser in your phone or on your laptop and you can just record right through your browser. We're short on call. So this is actually a good time to leave a call because you're more likely to get chosen. The link to do are written questions there as well. So submit your written questions, but also while you're there, submit a call. We want to put more calls in the show. because it's an audio format and it's nice to actually hear your voice. All right, that's all I got.

I think we're ready, Jesse, to actually dive into today's deep dive. So to cultivate a deep life, one of the things you have to do is take in a lot of high-quality information, information relevant to your current work, information relevant to ideas or projects you might one day soon do with your work, information relevant to just making your life in general, more meaningful and satisfying. The problem, of course, is there's also a lot of noise surrounding this signal. We live in a distracted world. We're bombarded by information, so we need some way to efficiently keep track of the information that matters. That's what I want to talk to you about today. The system I use for keeping notes on information

for all parts of my work and life. Now, here's the thing. There's a lot of these types of systems discussed online. Typically, there's complicated software coupled with even more complicated note-taking philosophies for how to use that software. As you will soon see, my system is the opposite. It is minimalist. It is as low friction as I can make it while still having it functionally captured notes in a way that I can one day use. So I'm going to start by explaining why when it comes to note-taking, I lean towards extreme simplicity, and then I'll walk you through the three different types of ways I take notes in my actual life and work. All right, so why don't I use complicated systems and software?

Well, this comes down to friction. Friction is an important concept. When we're talking about work, friction describes the extra effort or time or complexity that surrounds the actual task you're trying to accomplish, right? So that's what we mean by friction here. In some cases, when it comes to work, friction doesn't matter. So I have an example. This is actually one I go into in detail in my upcoming book, Slow Productivity, is an example

about how the New Yorker writer John McPhee works on his articles, his famous long-form articles. TLDR, there's a lot of friction in his approach. It is a very slow, over-complicated approach to purpose. preparing his articles. I won't give the full procedure here, but it involves, among other things, typing up every single note from every interview that he did, organizing them, cutting them out with scissors, having these slivers of paper that he moves around in the different piles, grouping these piles into themes, putting the themes in the folders. And then when it comes time to write a particular section of his book, taking out a piece of plywood, and he starts arranging slivers on the plywood in the order that he might want to actually use them so that when he finally writes all that information is a ton of overhead. It's a ton of friction. In this case, it doesn't matter. The primary thing John McPhee is trying to do is think deeply and write really well. So friction in this context slows him down in a way that's actually beneficial. It allows him to organize his thoughts.

It allows him to better recognize what's working and what's not working. He doesn't want to speed up here. To give John McPhee an app on his phone that allows him to just tap his airbud and immediately start talking and it will transcribe automatically into a New Yorker article that a Zapier script will then take and send off to a script that will then run it through chat GPT to look for errors and then automatically send it to his editor. He doesn't need that. He needs to take a long time. Friction is fine. In other cases, however, friction can be a real problem. Note taking, I think, is one of those cases.

When information is coming at you, your time to act, your energy to think, both are probably pretty limited. So if I have a relatively complicated system, I have to boot up and start using markup code to take this article I just randomly came across and enter into my system and cross-reference it with the right Zetel-Cat. and categorization system so it will semantically link to other related articles, I'm probably just going to say forget about it. That friction stops me from taking action. Or if I have friction over something I need to do like reading a book, I have an elaborate way of how I'm going to copy every note from this book into my system, I might not just read that book because I only have so much energy for reading and it might be taxing every last bit of energy I have just to tackle this book. You make that 20% harder, I might not just read the book.

Or I'll read it and say, forget it. I'm not taking notes on everything, and that information then is lost. So when it comes to actually capturing information from all the stuff that's out there, unlike, say, writing a long New Yorker piece, friction is a problem. So you want your note-taking systems to lower that friction so that you can actually capture effectively as much of the important information as is possible. Another problem with elaborate systems is that they often, aim to take everything out of your brain. It should be in this external system. The system will

organize the information. You don't have to remember anything. When you want to know about something, the system, you can dive down in the system and it will unearth for you everything you've encountered that's relevant to it. I actually think when it comes to the big things in your life, be it big work projects or be it things about just the way you live, keeping some of this in brain is not a bad thing. Because what your brain is doing with this information is updating its internal schemas that it used to make sense of the world. And if information is useful, if it's in your brain, it's going to get integrated into these systems. And then when you apply these systems to try to make decisions, you'll remember this information, or at least some of it.

Okay, this is relevant to me. This idea sticks. In other words, when it comes to big ideas and important information, you want your brain to be part of the curation filtering system. you remember you had this book it stuck with me it had these examples i remember were really important for x now you might have to still go to your notes to see what those examples are but the fact that your brain remembered that book was important that i think is that i think is crucial we don't want to outsource everything out of our brain we want it to be involved in filtering and prioritizing curating and trying to make sense of information in the background simple systems allow that that because they're not trying to capture everything relevant to the information you come across.

All right, so let's actually talk about my systems. I'm going to break this up into three sections. The first, we'll steal with books. I read a lot of books. Hopefully you read a fair amount of books as well. There is information in books that's relevant to your work. There's information in your books is relevant to your life. The last episode, we had a big long thing about how to actually encounter self-help information

of various levels of quality. This is important. So how do you take notes on books? Well, I'm going to show you my method. I'm going to draw here. Jesse will bring up, for those who are watching, if you're listening, go to the deeplife.com slash listen, episode 287. The video will be at the bottom.

I'm going to draw a picture of a book page here, Jesse, so I can show you. We'll pretend like this is a real book page. And then I'll take some sample notes on it. So I'm putting some, like, words on here. The method I use for taking notes on books, I call it a corner marking method, and it is as low friction as you can possibly make note taking on books while still actually being useful. Here's what I do. If there's something on this page, like the page you see here, that is interesting to me or I want to remember, first thing I do is I marked a corner like this. So just mark a line across the corner.

Now I know if I'm flipping through this book that that page has something important on it. what do I then do with the information on this page that is actually I want to remember? Simple marks in the margins, right? So I might, for example, put a little box. See here. I might put a little bit of a box around text that's important. Or I might just put a little bit of a checkmark next to a line. Or I might put a curly brace next to a paragraph that I want to remember.

just small marks in the margins to indicate what lines are important. Occasionally, I might scribble a little note to myself as well if there's like a particular thing that reminds me of. That's it. This barely slows you down as you're going through a book. Mark, mark, mark. I usually keep, you'll see me all of a pencil of my teeth as I'm reading. I'll pull it out.

Mark, mark, mark. That's all it is. So it barely slows you down. But here's the reality of the corner marking method. If you go back to that book way later, So it's out of your working memories. A year later, it's five years later. I've done this before.

And you start going through that book, looking for the pages that are marked in the corner, and then reading the sentences or paragraphs that have been marked in the margins, you will in about five minutes reconstitute all the important ideas from that book. So it's a very effective way of capturing that information. It's not in some fancy system

where it'll automatically show you all the quotes, but you get to them almost as fast. It takes a little bit longer to, go through the book, but the information is there. So the low friction here is important because it doesn't prevent you from reading. In other words, if the effort required to read, you're just there in terms of what you have available. Cornermarking note-taking barely changes that effort, so it's not going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. You'll still read that book. You don't have to sit there and transcribe things into an elaborate markup system. On the other hand, it is still

going to be effective for getting the information you need. The one shortcoming, which I don't think is really a shortcoming at all, is that you still have to remember, oh, that book, vaguely speaking, had some important ideas about X. So later, when you need some important ideas about X, you do have to remember to go back to that book and then use the cornermarking to very quickly hone in on where those ideas are. But as I mentioned before, that's not a problem. I want you to have to try to remember that book is useful. If you don't, it probably wasn't that useful. And remembering that book is useful allows you to then, and I do this all the time, even without remembering the specific quotes, use the gist of what I learned from that book in the schemas

of knowledge that I'm constructing and modifying and growing in my head. That's not really a bug but a feature. You do have to remember some about what's in what book, but you can do that. You'll become a better reader. You'll become better at remembering and connecting books without having to reference your system. And when you need the specific examples, this very simple system will get you there. very fast. All right. So that's the part one. Part two, projects. Now, typically what I'm thinking here is professional projects, but we'll see this can apply to personal projects as well.

So think about my life, I write books, I write articles for popular press, like magazines. I write academic articles. All right. Where do I keep notes relevant to these things? It's like have a book that maybe, you know, I, it's due in three years. I'm not going to start writing it for another year. I come across a podcast interview and I'm like, ah, this is relevant to that book. Where do I put this? Where is my magic system that I put it? My approach is to store notes relevant to projects in the location where you will one day work on that project. So, for example, I write my popular press articles using Scrivener. So if I have an idea for an article, I'll create a Scrivener document for it. If I come across an article or a link or even

just a brainstorm that is relevant to that article, I will go to the Scrivener project for that article. I will go to the research folder for that particular article. I will add it right there. I write my books in Scrivener. So I'll have a Scrivener project for a book, be it a book that I've already been paid to write or a book I haven't even pitched yet, but I'm thinking I might one day want to write. And as I have ideas, I go to the research folder in the Scrivener project for that book. That's where I put it. And then when it finally comes time to work more seriously on an article or a book, everything potentially relevant that I've come across is right there, ready for me to use it, low friction. I'm not gathering it. I'm not navigating a system and

hoping to encounter interesting ideas. I'm not hoping my system is going to write the book for me. Hey, just give me all the ideas. No, no, no. Ideas are hard. You have to think really hard about what's going to make sense. The information needs going to be there when you get there. It's not an elegant system. An article might find its way to a couple different projects, but it works. Same thing for my academic articles. So as a theoretical computer scientist, my papers are largely mathematical.

So we write them using a rendering engine called L-T-E-X. Any scientist knows about this. I use software for it called Overleaf. It's web-based software for writing these articles. because it's collaborative, so my collaborators and I can write at the same time. I just put relevant notes for potential papers, create an overleaf project, start adding sections and subsections. Any ideas or notes I have about that project goes right into the document. And then when it comes time to write that paper, we start adding sections to the beginning of this document, pulling stuff from later on, and at some point when the paper takes shape, we hide all the notes and we're left with just the polished paper.

you can do the same thing for personal projects wherever you plan a project and this could be just like a folder in Google Drive that's where you should go and put the inspiration pictures, the ideas, the recommendations for contractors put the notes immediately into the place where you're going to one day do the work. Big believer in that

for making effective use and bonus, there's always a bonus to all these approaches. The bonus here is that every time you come across something new for one of these projects. I come across a link that's relevant for an article. When I go to add it to the Scrivener Research folder for that article, I encounter again and again everything else I've already found. And that refreshes a mental picture of that project in my head and my head can do some more background processing. You know when some of the best ideas for my books or articles come? Like six hours after I add something new to the research folder.

because it loaded all that stuff up again. My mind was like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that. And then it's thinking about it and some new cool angle comes up. And now you're rock and rolling and you get a real insight. So I think it's an effective system. But minimal friction. It's the easiest possible thing. Load, type it in, out.

All right, final thing. What about ideas about your life? Big ideas about living a more meaningful, sustainable, deep life. I'm inspired by what I saw in this movie. maybe I should get really into this particular hobby. Like where do you store ideas, not connected to work or projects, but to your own life? Here I think you should have an awesome notebook. This is where having a notebook that's actual form as cool and aspirational and just interesting to you is, I think, important.

This is where having a really cool pin is really important. So all of that fetish that surrounds note-taking and systems, most of that is not a lot. to your work, it can't keep up with the volume of stuff relevant in your work. You can bullet journal, you know, until your fingers bleed, you're not going to keep up with working on six New Yorker articles and three academic articles in a book per year. There's probably four or five hundred, maybe a thousand different notes to get taken for that. You're not going to keep up in, you know, your paper notebook with that. But your life, you can't. Ideas about your life you can keep up with in a physical notebook. That's where you want the cool one.

That's where you want the form of the notebook to matter. For a long time, I used moleskins, long-time listeners know this. Earlier this year, I switched over to a remarkable. So a sort of digital notebook, which I really love. Again, it's ridiculous because it's like $500 or something, right? I mean, it's stupid. But I love it because I have like 15 different digital notebooks in there now, and I can just go to any of them at any time, and I really love the technology.

We did a whole thing about it on the show. But whatever. The point is it's cool and aspirational to me. it's interesting. That's where you have your cool notebook for keeping track of ideas about your life. And all you need there is some sort of semi-regular process of reading through these. The very simplest thing you can do if you're using a physical notebook is when you fill it, put aside an hour to review it, and to only copy into your new notebook short summaries of the most important or lasting ideas from your previous notebook. So there's a very natural triage you can do.

that way. See what sticks and what you lose interest in over time. So that's my approach. It is low friction. It is simple. Very little custom softers required. One cool notebook and whatever else you're already using for your work. But because you're adding very little friction, you can keep up. And the stuff that matters will get captured and put to the place where it matters. And then, of course, you get all the bonuses. So again, for books, the bonuses, having to remember which book had what is a feature, not a bug. It allows you to continue to work with and build on these ideas after you first encounter them. When it comes to your projects, having your notes where you want to actually do the work is not just efficient, but it allows you to re-encounter the gestalt

of what you know about that project again. And again, as you grow those notes, allowing your mind to work more with it. And cool notebooks put you into that mindset of a cultivator or crafter of your own life. So we're sort of hacking the brain here. We want the brain to be involved in the process of dealing with information, but in ways it doesn't overload it or overtax it. That's my system.

It's not as exciting as other systems. Some other systems, people actually make this clear disclaimer. Like building systems. And that's fine. I mean, if that's like your hobby, I think that's fine. If you like building the complicated system

because you get enjoyment in the system, you might actually take more notes because you really love to use this cool system you built. It's like when you build a pool and you customize it, you really want to have a lot of pool parties, right? So I get that. But if that doesn't appeal to you, don't worry,

you do not need a super complicated system, but you do need something. So this is my suggestion. At least it's one place to start. It doesn't really give us, Jesse, like a complicated software package we can sell. That's the only problem. On our new Shopify store.

Yeah. Our new Shopify store is going to have like a Molskine, a Unibal micro pin for marking the corners of book pages and like a Scrivener subscription? I don't know. It's not as fun. I could rabbit hole in that stuff pretty hard

if I wanted to. Like note taking systems? You know I could get going down there. Yeah. But I resist. All right. So there you go. That's what I had to say.

All right. So we have some cool questions coming up, roughly on this topic and some related. First, however, let's hear from some sponsors. Hmm. Let's talk first about our friends from Cozy Earth. Oh, I love my Cozy Earth sheets. This is true, Jesse.

Last night I was actually noting this. Fresh pair of Cozy Earth sheets on our bed, and I was so happy to be in that bed. They really are so comfortable. I am such like a Cozy Earth cult believer at this point. It's really comfortable stuff. So what am I talking about? If you haven't heard me talk about it before,

Cozy Earth, they describe themselves as life-changing luxury. I agree. Cozy Earth bedding is the most comfortable bedding I have ever slept in. It has ruined me to travel. It has ruined me to the occasions when they're dirty and we have a non-coat-the-earth pair of sheets on our bed. There really are that good. They're bamboo. That's the material.

It's 100% premium visquois from bamboo. So they're naturally temperature regulating and breathable. So you can sleep comfortably all year round. They get softer with every wash. I think that's what's happening with mine. I think that's why I noticed it last night. I was like, this is getting really comfortable. They've been named on Oprah's favorite things five years in a row.

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We own multiple Cozy Earth loungeware items of clothing. I will admit this because the comfort of the sheets you want to bring with you when you're doing other things. I am a huge Cozy Earth believer. So if you've never tried Cozy Earth, I've got awesome news. You can save up to 35% off Cozy Earth right now. Go to CozyEarth.com and enter my promo code Cal at checkout for up to 35% off. That's CozyEarth.com promo code Cal. cozy C-O-Z-Y-E-Earth.com and use that code Cal.

I also want to talk about our good friends at ExpressVPN. Look, if you're going online, you need to use a VPN. Not just in public, in your own, the privacy of your own home. And here is why, even if you were talking to an encrypted website, the header of your packets is plain text. and I'm using a lot of geeky terms here, Jesse. It's my only excuse on this show to use computer science talks. I'm going to.

I'm going to lean into this. The header of your TCPIP packets, which is something everyone worries about, it's plain text. So anyone can see what websites or services you're talking to, even if they can't see what you're saying. So if you're in public, anyone with an antenna can just say, oh, that guy over there in Starbucks is, you know, spending maybe like a little bit too long on the Cozy Earth website. I don't know what's going on here, right? They see it. But even at your home, your internet service provider, they can get all the statistics on what services you're using, what sites you're accessing.

They can sell that data and they do. Right now they sell to advertisers, but who knows what else they could do with it. VPN protects you from that. The idea is simple. When you use a VPN, instead of directly connecting to a site or service, you connect instead to a VPN server. You tell that VPN server with a special encrypted message that no one can read, this is the site or service I really want to access. The VPN server does it on your behalf, encrypts the response,

and sends it back. The guy with the antenna at the coffee shop, your internet ISP, they learn nothing about what you're doing. All they know is that you're using a VPN server to do something. Your privacy is then maintained. So you need a VPN server, and if you're going to use a VPN server, used the one I use, which is ExpressVPN, best in the business. They have been around forever. It's easy to use. You fire up the app, click a button, and it's on. You use your sites and services, just like before.

All this happens automatically in the background. You can use this on all of your phones, laptops, even routers. You put ExpressVPN on your router. Everyone who uses your Wi-Fi is automatically getting this protection, and they don't even have to do anything. They've got servers all around the world. So wherever you travel, there's probably one near your... buy, they've got a lot of bandwidth, so the connections are lightning fast. ExpressVPN is the easiest way to get VPN protection.

So secure your online activity by visiting expressvPN.com slash deep. Today, that's EXPR, E-SS-V-SvPN.com slash deep, and you will get an extra three months free, but only when you go to expressvpn.com slash deep. All right, let's move on to some questions. Who do we got first today, Jesse? First question is from Margo. I'm a mother to a nine-month-old and also work as a professor at R1 University. Right now, I have a lot of time when I'm doing something that engages my hands or body but not my mind, often at least five hours a day between mother and house duties.

I have good and bad days on what I do at this time. Any suggestions on how best to use it? well i'd be careful about this idea of best using it is what we're talking about is just time you're not working so like another word for that is like your life outside of work so when you say how do i best use my time outside of work you're really asking how do i live well in some sense it's like a huge question and what i'm worried about here is that the type of organizational productivity thinking we might apply to your work as a professor is going to bleed into this work outside of your job as a professor.

But life outside of work is about a lot of different things, many of which have very little to do with the efficient use of your time and resources. So I don't want you to think about optimizing your time outside of work. I don't even want you to evaluate your time outside of work. don't and I'm giving you what I'm trying to do here is it's not critique but give you an excuse to

relax about this that's saying it's okay not excuse permission let's say giving you permission you say you have good or bad days with what you do with this time outside of work I don't want you to think about

any of these days as good or bad I want you to think about them as days that interesting stuff happened you had a good moment with your kid you blew off the whatever chore you were going to do because it was sunny and you went for a long walk with a friend.

That's a good day. You read an interesting book, you know, this is the permission I want to give you, Margo, is work is hard, so be organized. So you can get as much done as possible in a small amount of time and have flexibility to not be stressed out. Outside of work, you know, we just roll with it. It's not good days. It's not bad days. It's intentional days.

And sometimes intentional is like I am. going to get after, you know, we got to get the cars, oil changed, and I got to get the forms in for the kids camps. And, you know, maybe it's a day where, like, you're really getting through a lot of stuff. Intentional might be, you know, I'm not touching a thing of chores. Like me, I'm taking the baby. And, like, we're using the ergo, we're going hiking. So it's not good.

It's not bad. Because it's not work. So let's think about it in a different way. And I'm basically talking to myself, Margo. So, you know, I'm using you as an excuse. You know, it's not good days or bad days outside of work. They're just days. So you and I together, Margo, can make a pact that we're going to relax.

And dare I use a word, oh, I'm going to hold up my book here. Go slower. So those who are watching are seeing me holding up slow productivity to the camera there. Slow down in our time outside of work. All right. What I got? Should I, by the way, Jesse, I'm doing a bunch of podcasts, you know, to promote the book. Yeah.

Like I'm traveling out. out west to do a bunch of stuff. I got to think of a way to subtly have slow productivity on the screen all the time when I'm on these shows. Just talk really slowly. Well, but I mean, I'm thinking like physically.

So like a necklace around my neck and the book is just hanging. And then like if I use a little motor, like a servo motor, I can have the book kind of shake a little bit every once in a while because that draws the eye. So that's what I'm thinking is like when I'm on like Andrew Huberman show.

Yeah. I got slow productivity hanging. hanging around my neck. And like every minute it like shakes a little bit and maybe like there's like a red chase light that goes around it. That way I don't have to be, you know, talking about my book all the time. It'll just sort of be there. Or here's my other idea for people who are watching. You don't see this. I want to have like an articulated arm. And so behind me, it's on a backpack. You have battery powered backpack. So while I'm talking every once in a while, the book just kind of comes up from behind my back, kind of like on like an articulated arm, kind of waves a little bit,

and then just descends back behind. That's what I'm thinking. That way I don't have to be like a self-promoter. It also needs to get on Pat McAfee's bookshelf on his desk. Oh, is that the key? Is he, who's the guy who stands up? That's Pat. That's Pat. Okay. Yeah. Because he has books up there when he's reading a new one or whatever, and that gets a lot of eyes. I worry if I was on that show, he would crush me on the head. It just seems like a guy who could just be like, boom, and just sort of like crush you on the head. Well, he's a kicker. I don't think he's like that big of a guy.

He's probably pretty big. He looks like a strong guy. Yeah. I mean, you go sleeveless on your national show, your televised national show. There's some confidence there. I don't do a lot of sleeveless. Maybe I will. No sleeves, fully articulated robotic arm that just raises the book behind my behind my

head. All right, enough nonsense. What have got next? Next question from pineapple. Can people with ADHD really improve their ability to learn new things and actually remember it? A hundred percent. Yes. So pineapple, I want you to keep this in mind. If anything, and what I'm basing this on is earlier in my career giving advice when I focused mainly on student advice. There's a lot of the themes you hear today for me were back in the advice back then. I had an audience, in time back then that I interacted more deeply with my readers, I would spend an hour to a day, like actually just helping students who would email me and I would help them apply their advice. A lot of students I heard from, it was non-trivial percentage, had ADHD or some other type

of neurodivergence. And what I heard from them is it is more important for us to be thinking intentionally about these things than other people. And in particular, the general approach of being more structured about your time makes a big difference, especially with ADHD, very intentional and structured about when I work on this, how I work on this, what systems I use to work on this. That is very important because you're minimizing the need for you to have to sort of latch your attention onto the objective in an ad hoc fashion, bypass other distracted influences and focus on it. And sometimes what I've heard from the, again, these same students is having that structure that worked well with ADHD turned it into more of a superpower. Because now what it allowed them to do was to activate hyperfocus on a regular basis. When you have the structure, I'm going to work on this.

Here's how when I work on it. The distractions are out of here. You could turn on the flip side of some of the ADHD is the flip side is the ability to focus incredibly intensely. And then you would get these super deep work sessions. So you could unlock almost like a cheat code that other people didn't have. Now, I want to condition this by saying the other thing I learned working with students who had ADHD or similar neurodivergences is there was also very specific things they had to do. Very specific ways they modified, for example, my study advice to fit better with the best practices for ADHD. And typically this was working with the counselors or doctors that were already helping them with ADHD.

So you have to sort of customize this advice with best practices for this particular context. But I've heard a lot that, yes, you do want to worry, concerns about distraction and a bias towards structure and intentional systems for your attention. This is like really powerful if you have ADHD. Even if you have to modify the types of things I talk about, the more realistically fit, your trigger. and what works with you, it's worth going down that path. You don't want to just open yourself, like, I'll just figure it out, right? You don't want to abandon having structure or advice when it comes to your attention because that's when things get hard.

I remember, Jesse, when I had to finally make the decision, I can't answer these emails anymore. It's kind of traumatic. It just, there's so many, it just grew as the books grew, and it became too many. and I was trying to answer some, but that was hard. And finally I had to just not answer any. Yeah. Yeah.

I remember it was traumatic. It was still, it was nice. There was like kind of a glory period where my audience, I could like fit my audience into an auditorium. Like we knew each other and I really could. And I learned a lot, you know, doing like this one-on-one, a lot of one-on-one work. It's really useful. So I sort of missed that. All right.

What I got next? Next question is from Jason. There's been a lot of talk lately about declining attention. spans and the dwindling ability to actually learn things. I recently read Gloria Mark's book, Attention Span. I'm interested to know your thoughts on Gloria's four myths of attention span. I like Gloria's book. I blurbed her book.

I think my blurb is on the cover of that book. I have them here. So you can find her four myths of attention span and her website, GloriaMark.com slash attention dash span. So the book has four myths of attention span. So four things that we think is true about attention but are not. That's what Jason's asking about. So let's go through these one by one.

And then I'll tell you whether or not I agree or not that this is a myth. All right. Gloria's first myth. We should always strive to be focused and should feel guilty if we can't or can't be. Yeah, I completely agree with that that's a myth. to strive to always be focused is absurd. It's like talking to someone who wants to get stronger or an athlete and be like, you should strive to always have your muscles like in a state of load-bearing strain.

That's crazy, right? There's only so much load-bearing strain you can do, like modern bodybuilding orthodoxy says, really you want to have eight to ten sets per week per muscle group, right? Like otherwise it's overload. So just because you need to know how to put hard strain on your muscle and do it on a regular basis to get stronger, it is obviously a reducto ad absurdum to then say, therefore, it is good to always have your muscles under strain. Same thing with attention. Focus is important. You need the focus to produce things of true value using your brain, but to then extrapolate from that to say you should always be in a state of focus is absurd because that's impossible.

So I agree. That's definitely a myth. All right, Gloria's second myth, mindless activity that we do in our computers and phones is wasteful of our time. Now, I agree here as well. I'm going to draw from my book Digital Minimalism to tell you what I believe. So the whole premise of that book, like, why did I write that book? Not because I believed there is some intrinsic evil in particular activities. but because my readers and listeners were reporting to me,

I am spending more time on these activities than I know is useful or healthy. This is when distractions become a problem when you know they are keeping you away from things that are more important, that they are lowering the quality of your life. That's when you say this is a problem. And that was the problem people began feeling around 2016, 2017, this tipping point where more and more people who bought their iPhone in 2010,

because they saw the Steve Jobs speech about having your iPod and your phone combined, like, that's awesome, woke up seven years later and said, I checked this 150 times a day. I'm not paying attention to my kids. I'm not socializing anymore. I feel strung out and anxious. I'm not doing the activities that used to matter.

That's the problem. So there's nothing intrinsic. This is evil to look at it. It's, I can't help but look at this when I'm trying to do bath time with my kids. that's when it becomes a problem. Good analogy here would be something like alcohol, right? Same thing. It's not, hey, you should never touch alcohol, that's bad.

But what's the cliche about it? When does it become a problem when it's messing up your life? And I think that's what happened for a lot of people with their relationship with their phone. So yes, you want to measure technology from your values. Is it helping or preventing me from doing the things I care about? So it's perfectly fine to have perfectly distracting, low quality things in your life, as long as it's not having a footprint

that keeps you away from things that you value. Problem is for a lot of people they do, and then the real problem becomes when we look at kids because they can't help it. I'm yet to find a 13-year-old who you give unrestricted access to the internet with on their phone, and don't like I use this a little bit. You know, I want to go outside and play.

Nah, you're a kid, that thing is going to brainworm in there. So there we have to have some more protection. All right, but so far, I'm on track here with Gloria. All right, myth number three, the inability to focus on our devices are due primarily to notifications and our lack of discipline. That's an interesting one. I agree with the notifications piece. That's like 2003 thinking. Notifications are the problem.

I get the notification that I have a new email, and that's the problem. And if I just turn off my notifications, I'll be fine. No, that's crazy. We come back to these things again and again, not because we were notified, but because what they're offering us, whether we were notified or not. And it is a complicated picture. When it comes to work, you can turn off your email notifications, but you're still going to check that inbox once every six minutes.

Why? Because of the hyperactive hive mind mode of collaboration. This is the core of my book are rolled without email. We work out so much of our... our collaboration through asynchronous back and forth messaging. These conversations required many back and forth messages. They're timely. So now I have to keep checking my inbox so that I can see your most recent message and

bounce it back to you so you can bounce it back to me and I can bounce it back to you. And we can get an answer before lunchtime. So we check our work email all the time in this example, not because of notifications, but because we have a collaboration method that requires us to constantly check this email because that's how we keep these asynchronous conversations going. on our phones, it's more complicated. I don't go back to Twitter compulsively if I have a problem with Twitter because of a notification, but because of what it gives me.

It presses these emotional buttons. There's an addictive design element to it. I don't need a notification to grab a cigarette if I'm addicted to smoking. It's already wormed its way into my rhythms of the day. So yeah, notifications have nothing to do with it. Discipline is complicated. often directly speaking it's not disciplined i can't just fix my email problem by being disciplined i'm not going to check my email the whole structure my work requires me to do it so i have to put in place an

alternative structure collaboration that does not require email a little bit harder when it comes to your phone in some ways a little bit easier yes i agree just white knuckling it i don't want to look at these digital cigarettes is hard because they they're helping you paper over voyage in your life they're giving you emotional stimulation they're scratching deeply human urges you have in a very superficial way but you need to scratch those urges, and it's easier to be seeing something on social media or, like, pornography than it is to actually fulfill those human urges with, like, real relationships with real people. But there is a discipline aspect to that as well, but it's just indirect. It's the disciplined construction of a more intentional, cultivated deep life that begins to make the superficial pleasures of the attention economy superficial and optional. It's that disciplined effort to actually build into your life what really matters to get a taste for it that makes the digitized junk food no longer appealing.

So ultimately discipline will be involved, especially with the non-work digital life. But it's not the obvious discipline of just avert my eyes and grip my knuckles. It's a more indirectly subtle, relentlessly applied discipline to build a life where you don't just avoid those things, but you find out. them increasingly intolerable. So look at that like I 80% agree. Number four, fourth myth, flow is the ideal state we should strive for when using our technologies. Yeah, I agree.

Flow state, be wary. It's overrated. We have this argument a lot. Flow state feels great. And there's certain times in work where a flow state feels great, for example. But also, there's a lot of important work activities that are not a flow state. It's pulling teeth. Why?

Because you're straining your brain to do something that is. past your comfortable ability, which is critical if you want to get better or produce your best work. Flow state requires that you fall into a zone, which requires that you're right in this sweet spot of like, I have to focus, but I can do this pretty well. The guitar player, flow state is when you're playing a hard song,

you can play well. It's great. You get lost in it. Your fingers are doing it. Deliberate practice is when you were learning that song in the first place, and you couldn't play it fast enough. And that feels like the opposite of flow. You feel every second when you're,

trying to, with your full concentration, do something you cannot yet do comfortably. So flow state's great, but it's not the be all end all goal. When it comes to technologies, Gloria is right. Be very wary, especially addictive video games, want you to get into a flow state because you look up seven hours later and you've been focusing on that thing all day long. They want to just pull you from one experience to another. There's no more purified example of a flow state than the TikTok interface. swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, you know, just here's something, here's something, that's not good.

That was really good. This one wasn't, but if I swipe some more, I should get some more. They get you lost in this flow state, so there you go. They've just gathered three hours of data on you. So Gloria's right. In technology use, flow state's not the goal. In work in general, flow states are great, but they're not the only thing that's good. So I think we sometimes, we probably sometimes put too much popular emphasis on them.

And by the way, Mahaley-Chic sent me high. would agree with this, right? I mean, he studied these very specifically in the context of psychology. He wasn't saying you should be in a flow state all the time. He said there's a very observable thing that's important and we can measure it and we should understand it. But people took it and said flow states all that matters. So some wisdom in those. So thank you.

Who asked this question? Jason, good question. It was a chance to go over Gloria's four myths. And I recommend that book, Attention Span. If you read my book World Without Email, I have a whole long section on Gloria Mark. I talked about her whole story. I've interviewed her on multiple occasions. Really one of the top thinkers on attention and distraction.

So definitely check out that book if you're a fan of what we talk about here. All right. What have we got next, Jesse? Next question is from Murmira. I'm working on my dissertation with a full-time job and need help on my reading and writing. Some days it's almost impossible for me to be able to concentrate. I read and reread to no avail. Time blocking is help, but I still get distracted.

How can I concentrate better? Well, first of all, Ramiro, don't feel bad that this is hard. You're doing something that's very difficult. Now, because of my line of work, I encounter more people who write dissertations under unusual circumstances than the average person. So I sort of hear a lot about this. And it's really hard. And I want you to think about this like, I don't know, you're training for a marathon while you also have a busy executive job. It's hard to do, and it's not always going to go well.

So first thing I want to do is just tell you you're doing well, and not every day is going to be great. And actually, what you're doing is really hard. And you can't just expect, I have my system and every day is good. So we're okay. Now, beyond that, what tends to help? Well, if you're going to tackle this really hard thing, I think my marathon example is a great one. because how do people who are busy who train for marathons, and I know people like this. I've good friends who do this.

My sister's a big marathon runner. They do it in the morning. It's the only thing that works. It's the only time they get up early. It sucks, though running in January at like five in the morning is a great alarm clock. So keep that in mind. But it's the only time that they can consistently, they know consistently how they're going to feel. They kind of tired, but they haven't used their brain at all.

There's no decision to be made. There's no work to do yet. they just go out and they do it. That's how people train for marathons. This is what I see for dissertations and full-time jobs. If it's a busy job, you've got to get up earlier and have like a 90 minutes, a two-hour block in the morning, full ritual locked in, then you're done. That you can be consistently successful with probably 80% of the time. It's going to be a much higher hit rate than trying to fit dissertation work into your day later in the evening or try to make time for it after your brain is exhausted from everyday work. Here's the thing. If you have an office job,

for example, one hour of the avalanche of context switching caused by the hyperactive hive mind workflow, the having to check your inbox once every six minutes. One hour of that is going to torch your brain. Like, try to work on a dissertation. Here's my experiment. At 8 a.m., first thing you do, or at 10 a.m. after an hour of hyperactive hive mind, you were going to feel about 50 IQ points dumber in that second scenario. If you're doing this at the end of your day after hyperactive hive minding all day long, sending and receiving 126 emails, pretty soon your dissertation is going to start to read like a third grader wrote it.

You know, pretty soon your reappraisal of Thomas Aquinas's just war policy is going to have like a whole long section where you're just transcribing the lyrics from that song, War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. And it'll just be that for a few pages. and then your advisor will be like, Ramiro, I mean, this appendix here

full of pictures of tanks you drew, and you'd be like, yeah, I did a different camo pattern. So, like, this is nice, but I don't understand

how, you know, the Enlightenment reappraisal Thomas, like Thomastic scholarship on Just War really plays in here. That's what it's going to be like. So you've got to get to this before work melts your brain.

You got to do it in the morning. And that'll actually work, but you need ritual, you need structure. I'm going to give you a reading assignment here, Ramiro, I get my book deep work, searching the appendix for Brian Chappelle. And you're going to find a story in there about Brian writing his dissertation while having a full-time job.

He did in the morning, but I want you to focus on the specificity of his rituals. He had it dialed in to the point of like when he went to the bathroom. But having that ritual so, here's where I work. I do this and I make this one cup of coffee. then I work this long. That allowed him to just make constant progress, no matter what else happened in the day. So it's like running a marathon mirror.

You've got to get up and lace up your shoes for the sun comes up. It's the only way to do it. All right. Let's do one more question here. I was dying about your description of John. Thanks. That's where you end up, man. I mean, where are you after like five hours?

Like, we're podcasting today at the end of the day. And the only thing that's saving us is it was a teaching day. So on teaching days, like I'm in front of the class and I'm not doing email and stuff like that. It's the only thing saving us from this turning into like, I don't know, like a Joe Rogan type podcast. I'm a sure. I mean, he's a good interviewer, but you know what I mean? Like I just start like going off my gut and talking about kettle bells or whatever. Like the only thing saving us is I didn't do a lot of email today.

But you also have your strategies in place where you don't fall victim to the hyperactive high of mind. Well, that's true too. Yeah. So that's right. That's right. I mean, what I'll usually do is just consolidate. And it can be a beast because I have a lot going on during book launch time. It's like a two-hour block where it's just like, rah.

And I get on top of everything and then I ignore everyone for another week. You don't want to talk to me after that two-hour block. I usually just go exercise after that. But yeah, that's how I do. All these like mega blocks and then just be like a bad emailer for four days. Have you still been doing the labeling technique that we talked about on a prior F show? Right now it's just like the water's coming into the ship and I'm just down there with the bilge pump, you know? Because book publicity is like everyone needs everything at the same time that your normal job's going on.

And like everything else normally is happening in your life. And it's all happening at the same time. Yeah. So it's the good thing is so it's my eighth book. I've done this before. I've designed these systems for my publicity teams, these interactive protocols, like how we interact and do all the work. So I have it dialed in. Yeah.

So I've really minimized the urgent communication and how I do it. I mean, that would be a very narrow book. I should one day write a book about the systems I use to help publicize books without burning out. That's a small audience book, Jesse, but I've given that a lot of thought. All right. What's our final question? All right. We have Caitlin.

I always have more work than can fit into the two to four hours I'm comfortable working. I'm seriously struggling. I'm pretty good at time blocking my mornings and get a minimum of one to two deep work hours and every weekday. But once I take a break, I find it nearly impossible to get back to work. Even when I try to regulate simple tasks

such as admin work and grading to the afternoons, I struggle, how can I turn my afternoon time blocks from 100% wasted time to time I'm actually accomplishing something? I'm thinking meth. What's going to sharpen your mind and get you that energy you need?

Good afternoon hit a meth. No, Caitlin, I've got a good answer. And in fact, you're lucky because I'm going to label this question our slow productivity corner question of the day. It's the segment where I answer a question where the answer can come from my upcoming book, Slow Productivity, which you should pre-order. Find out more atcalnewport.com slash slow.

So why am I going to treat this as the Slow Productivity Corner Question of Day? Because I'm going to give you some non-standard productivity advice here, Caitlin. Right. So what I'm seeing here is you're exhausted. You're getting to the afternoons and your mind is saying no moss, right? I don't want to grade. I can't do any more email. It's exhausted, which I empathize because I get there a lot as well.

We have the same job. Caitlin's a professor. I've been there before. So I empathize here. This is not something wrong that's happening with you, right? So this is not a discipline failure or your system being non-optimized. I think this is your body and in particular your mind telling you

something about the current state of your job. It's like this is, I'm not, this is too much, I'm not liking it, I'm losing that mojo. Now this is very common, I think this is a common in academic jobs, a lot of other jobs too, just because you can kind of hit these points of stagnation

where it's no longer fresh and there's nothing. So I think your mind is telling you something here. So here's my non-traditional productivity advice. Don't tell your chair and don't tell your dean. Do less, end your work earlier, spend longer on things. Give yourself longer times to finish things. So basically, and this is why I call it the slow productivity corner question of the day,

let's embrace some slower productivity. You're at a phase of whatever's going on in your life and your relationship with your work right now, that the pace that you're going, which was probably the assistant professor, I'm going for 10-year pace, isn't working with you anymore. So what would happen if you took some things off your plate? What would happen if you end your day? I don't have to tell people this, but you're kind of winding down your day three o'clock. What would happen if you're taking longer on projects so you don't have to work on it as much?

You get a few hours in the morning, a long walk, some admin, you see some students, like you're kind of checking out and getting into other things by the late afternoon. I think you're going to find a couple things. A, it's not going to be as big of a hit to your output as you think. Because I think you're ailing a little bit right now. So your mind's probably not on board with anything you're doing right now. And you're going to find, okay, I'm spending more time doing less stuff, but the quality is good. And overall, actually, like, papers are getting published and my class is pretty well organized. And I'm just giving myself a breather.

You might find your output is fine. The second thing you're going to notice is no one else is going to notice. It's subtle. It's just like you don't set up meetings in the afternoon. You're saying no to more requests for committees and journal stuff. But no one knows you're saying no more because remember right now you're saying no, I'm just making up a number to like 30% of the request. Like 30%.

So people have experience you say no. You move that to 50% of your request. Who's going to know that? They just know that sometimes you say no to me. Sometimes they don't. That's the way it was before. They're not doing a hidden Markov chain analysis here. to try to understand what's the base rates of assigning positive or negative responses to my

request. They're like, oh, yeah, Caitlin can't do this. Let's just ask Jesse, right? People aren't going to notice. I would also couple this with a serious new non-work interest and start spending a lot of time on that, right, like in the afternoon, kind of surreptitiously, you know?

Let's reinvigorate your connection to life. you probably want to, if we're going to throw things out here, if you're too much on your phone right now, it's a great time for an information diet, it's a great time to do a digital minimalism style declutter, change your relationship to your tools. That's going to help you, I think, from a mental health perspective as well. When you are working, look for more adventurous places to do this. There's some articles I wrote on my newsletter and blog earlier in my Georgetown career where I spent more time on campus just before we had like a bunch of kids at home and it was like, what else? Where else am I going to go? I would have these rotations of locations on campus that I'd move through during the day to do my work. Some outside, some insight, some libraries, some benches. One of them was a picnic table in the woods. And I would rotate through these things to keep work interesting. This thing kind of interested and motivated, not just be stuck in my office.

So you're having like a, you know, careers have their equivalent of midlife crises where your past one phase. There's not a clear, exciting next phase. is like no moss. So that's what I'm going to say. Do less, end earlier, take longer, get some other interests you lean into, make the work you do, do more exciting and adventurous. No one's going to notice.

You might produce a little less, but just quality be good? It's not going to make a big impact on your career. And, of course, read the book, slow productivity to get all of the details of this advice. You don't have to do that, but I do think you should slow down. All right. Let's get our theme music, Jesse. he just needs to listen to our theme music. Yeah.

Every 30 minutes. Just hard to be stressed. I really like the cover of the book. Yeah? Yeah, the more I look at it, it's... It was definitely really... I push for this. Yeah, I mean...

I push for this. The normal thing you would do for a Cal Newport book before this would be slow productivity and big text, and it would be single-color background. Yeah. like maybe one little bit of iconography. Yeah. Like a turtle filling out a to-do list.

Just a turtle with glasses on filling out a to-do list. Like a sketch of that. It's kind of like on the nose. And I said no. I was like, I want the cover to capture visually the emotional feeling of encountering slow productivity as an idea. So I was like, and we went through a lot of things. on this and I kept insisting. And so this cover captures, like,

it's supposed to create a reaction. So if you're listing the cover, and you can find this at calnewport.com slash slow, it's a path through the woods, and in the distance there's a cliff with like a cabin up there and sort of mountains beyond it. You just imagine, like, walking through those woods,

that cabin, nothing. There's no email in this world. You know you're taking your time, but you're probably, like, writing something awesome in a field notebook or something like that. It just captures that feeling of, like, slowing down, focusing on what matters, producing stuff that's really cool, and giving you an encounter with productivity as a concept that has almost no overlap with what we think about

the term now in modern knowledge work, which is like email and busyness and to-do list and optimization. So it's like, how can I give you a picture that makes you think about productivity, but it's a completely different way, like move your mindset completely different. So I don't know. We'll see if it works. But I felt good. about it. So I'm glad it's working with you. Yeah, yeah. I've been looking at it. There we go.

Do we have a call this week? We do. All right, let's hear that. Hello, Cal, Sean here from Balmy, Miami. I'm finding particular benefit in my nascent application of the idea notebooks that you have suggested. So far, this approach seems to be the right way for me to tame what is otherwise in excess of ideas without letting them creep into my workspaces. My question to you, how do you go through your idea notebooks once you've completed the notebook? Do you reread page by page? That takes a while. Do you schedule time for it or does it somehow conveniently happen to you when you have a spare moment?

And what does that process look like? By the way, Moleskin should definitely make a branded Cal Newport Idea Notebook. Tropical regards. And thank you. Well, I appreciate this question from Miami. Appreciate that as well. So we put this in the show because this is an evolution of my thinking. Now, the idea notebook idea was, hey, have these.

different notebooks for different categories of ideas. So you have a place to put ideas that you don't know what to do with, but you don't want to have to just hold on to it entirely in your brain. I do a little of this still, but as I talked about in the deep dive earlier in the show, ideas that are connected at all to an existing project or potential project, I now keep in whatever tool I use to work on those type of projects, right? So an idea related to a particular article, I'll just put into the Scrivener document for that article.

So much more of my ideas now are going into the particular tool I'll use to eventually work on it. However, there are still ideas I have about my life or my business that aren't tied yet to a specific project, like something I'm writing where I can put it, and there I still have idea notebooks. It's just now they're all within my remarkable. So if I had it with me, I'd see there's a bunch in there. But it was like working on ideas for the media business, like the podcast and like video. I have like a notebook to put ideas there. Parts of my life, I'll have a notebook specific for them.

So I still have idea notebooks for what can't be captured in an existing work tool. So it's less than I had before. In terms of reviewing those, I review them when I need to. So if I'm thinking like, okay, I want to figure out a plan, a new question. orders coming up. I want to figure out, like, what's my plan for my media business? I'll go back and look at that notebook then. I have another notebook. Like, let's say, this is not one I have, but let's just say, you know, you're really interested in owning a cabin. Like, this is an idea that's interesting to you. And you might have, like, a notebook you've built up for ideas about

where that cabin could be or cabin living or what you would do there. And there might be a notebook you really don't look at. You're just putting stuff in there until, like years later, some sort of opportunity comes up, like, hey, we could buy some land. Someone, like a relative of selling, I think we can put a cabin there. Ooh, let me go look at that notebook now. So I put those two pieces of my answer together. One, if you have ideas or information relevant to specific work projects or processes where there's like an actual tool you will eventually use to act on that idea,

stored in that tool, everything else you can use idea notebooks for. You can use mole skins. You can use field notes. They're smaller if you have a lot of them and less ideas. You can use a remarkable if you want to do it digitally. And when it comes to reviewing them, review them when you need to review them. I know that sounds vague, but it will make sense.

It will make sense once you get going. Notebooks are a hard business, I've learned. Well, because the planner? Yeah, it's a hard business. I mean, it's just hard, like, it's hard to make, the details I'm making a notebooks are hard, like what paper you use and, and it's low margin, too, which is interesting.

It's not a way to make a fortune. It's not a software company. No. it's not an app that 100 million people can sign up for. There's no notebook billionaires, I don't think. Charles Moleskin, just sitting in a private jet just bawling out somewhere, all his Moleskin money. Let's do a quick case study.

There's someone writes in to give a more detailed account about how they put some of the advice we talk about in the practice. This one's from Jose. There's a work-related case study. so it's about email in particular. Jose says last fall I was in charge of setting up a quarterly project at work. It required many of our volunteers to input a lot of data and for me to collect and design it. At first I was acting on the hyperactive hive mind model and sending replies via WhatsApp, email, etc.

Many people asked me tons of questions and I was going back and forth with them. After I realized that was happening, I drafted one super clear email with all of the information necessary and links to supporting documentation. and I didn't hear from anyone for a while. They just got their work done once they had clear guidelines and step by step of what they needed to do. We were into producing our second quarter content and people have already gotten used to what they need to do. So no more reminders.

I love it, Jose. I call that process-centric emailing or in world without email. I call that smart system design. You will default to just back and forth messaging if there's not an alternative way that people can figure out what they need to do and how to do it. So create the alternative. And it can be really easy. And that's why I liked Jose's example.

It doesn't have to be, like coded from scratch, like a distributed system, virtualized world in which we have AR-based group visual collaboration. He just sent an email. It was like, look, guys, I thought about this. Here's what we have to do to get this content together. So let's just, I'm going to write through, here's how we do it. Here's the guidelines. Here's the information. here's where you put it.

This is the process. It's all right here. So we can all kind of go off like adults now and we have what we need to get it done. It can be as easy as that sometimes. Just doing a process-centric email. Let me take five minutes to explain the process for how we're going to do this work. That five minutes can save five weeks of back and forth messaging. It's a great example, Jose, taming the hyperactive hive mind with some common sense.

All right. Well, I want to get soon to our final segment where I react to something cool. have seen in the online world. But first, let's hear from some advertisers. I want to talk in particular about our friends at Element, spelled L-M-N-T. Element is a zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix born from the growing body of research, revealing that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels two to three times government recommendations. Each stick pack delivers a meaningful dose of electrolytes free of sugar, artificial color,

or other dodgy ingredients element is formulated for anyone on a mission to restore health through hydration and is perfectly suited for athletes, folks who are fasting, or those following keto, low carb, whole food, or paleo diets. I had Element, the orange flavor, which I like right before I came to the studio today. I was teaching earlier, which means I'm expelling, you don't realize when you're talking, you actually get very dehydrated, and I wanted to hydrate up, and I really, element gets me that with no sugar. Also, I like to taste. I will sometimes, this is not the official use of it. It was like later at night and I'm kind of bored.

You know, bored in the sense of like, I'm just going to start eating some junk. I'll sometimes put a little bit of element in the water. And then it's like, taste, like, oh, this is good. This is like I'm drinking something interesting, you know. But there's no sugar in it. So you don't mind it. So I'm a big element fan and a customer. So I learned about it through years ago they were a sponsor.

Now I buy it all the time. it's used by impressive group of people. It's the exclusive hydration partner to the Team USA weightlifting team, mini Olympic athletes, professional athletes, and the NFL, NBA, and NHL use it, as do Navy SEAL teams, FBI sniper teams, and Marines. Jesse, I like to think that when, like, Jocko Willink does an Element commercial on his podcast, he's saying to his listeners,

like, element is used by an exclusive group of communities, such as, and then it's all my world. Computer science professors, productivity, scholars, people who think a lot about sustainable living. Turtles making to-do lists. Turtles wearing glasses making to-do lists.

Maybe we would have sold a million copies of that book. Turtles wearing glasses. We had a lot of merch. Great. I love on the nose stuff. Element also has a new hot version. Their chocolate medley features chocolate mint, chocolate chai,

and chocolate raspberry designed to be enjoyed hot. So you work out like I do in the winter I mean, I'm a big believer, Jesse, and I'm proud of this, is you should work out year-round and whatever the outdoor conditions are. So I just work out in my unconditioned garage. So when it's summertime, it's hot. And when it's wintertime, it's so cold. And you build up heat when you work out. Yeah.

what's going on outside. What I'm trying to say here, Jesse, is I'm as manly and cool as the NFL, NBA, NHL, and Navy SEAL sniper teams. I'm trying. I'm trying to be as cool. Anyways, Elements great. It's the right thing to do. Don't do sports drinks, do Element. The good news is members of our community can receive a free Element sample pack with any order. You just have to go make your purchase through our custom URL, drink element.com slash deep. that's drink element l mn t.com slash deep. Keep in mind they have no questions asked

to refund so if you don't like it they'll give you a full refund. Also want to talk about our friends at Gramerly. It'd be funny if Gramerley's copy also said used by Navy SEALs, Marine sniper teams, and the US Olympic weightlifting team.

They probably do. It's a cool product. Gramerly is actually one of the first sponsors that we had on this show and for good reason, because writing is everything. How you communicate is how people perceive you. It's how clearly your thinking is and how clearly people think of your thinking.

In knowledge work in particular, you have to be a clear communicator. Grammally helps you do that. It's like having a wizened editor looking over your shoulder on whatever device you're writing on and whatever app you're using, helping you make that writing clearer and more effective. they have any number of different tools to help you do this, including even AI enhanced tools that harnesses the power of generative AI to help you brainstorm ideas, but they also have tools to help you change the tone.

Hey, this is informal. How do I make this more formal? They give you suggestions about how to rewrite things. Making sure that you have no mistakes in that grammar as well. Writing with grammarly helping you is much better writing than writing without. And you need that much better writing to get ahead in the world of knowledge. work. This is why 96% of Grammarly users report that Grammarly helps them craft more impactful writing. Keep in mind, it works across 500,000 apps and websites. Any writing you're doing,

if you're using Grammarly, it can work there and help you out. You can use their tone suggestions. It'll give you personalized suggestions about what you might want to say or how you might want to say it better. It's very efficient to use. I can't say enough about it. You've got a communicate clearly, Grammarly will help you do that. So make a bigger impact at work with Grammarly. Sign up and download for free at Grammarly.com slash podcast. That's G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L-Y.com slash podcast. Easier said, done.

All right. Let's do our final segment. Typically what we do here is react to something that we have seen online. Today I want to react to sort of a funny coincidence that many readers helpfully sent to me. This was the day I sent out an email to my newsletter, which if you're not signed up to, you should be, Calnewport.com. Join 90,000 subscribers who get my wisdom delivered to their inbox every week. Anyways, I had an email sent out today. Ryan Holiday had an email sent out to his newsletter on the same day.

And a lot of people who subscribe to both of our podcasts and both of our newsletters because we have a lot of readers in common like to send me our two subject lines, one on top of each other. I'll load this on the screen now for those who are watching. This is a shot, a screenshot from someone's inbox. All right. So you see my email first says subject line, Heschel on the joys of slowness. then below it you see the daily stoic subject line try not to be so slow. So a lot of people had those come back to back. I will say, by the way, and I don't want to brag, Jesse,

but at least for this particular user's email inbox, notice the priority tag is activated for my email, but not for Ryan's email. So I like this reader. I like this reader. All right. So that's funny, right? Because I'm saying to Joy's a slowness.

It was a post about, I was actually drawing from A.J. Heschel, Abraham Joshua Heschel's book, The Sabbath from 1951 and these sort of interesting ideas about what it means the rest and its relationship to work. But it's a real, like, slow productivity type idea. And then Ryan's email said, try not to be slow. So let's get into it. I'm going to load up, I'm going to load up the actual article itself. So we can take a look. All right, here we go. So those who are watching, you'll see it on the screen.

I have the actual email, Ryan's actual email here, try not to be slow. It turns out he's not saying slowing down your work is bad. All right. As we dive deeper, of course, it turns out we're talking about two separate things. Ryan's email is actually really interesting. He starts with stoicism talking about how Seneca watched Nero help to break down the Roman Empire with his erratic activities and Seneca for various

reasons just didn't really act on it or talk out about it, at least not until it was sort of too late and then he connects that to the more recent book Empire of Pain the Patrick Rating Keith book about the Sackler family and the opioid crisis and he talks about the people involved

with the production of these opioids knowing something bad was happening but being slow to act on it because hey they were making money and there was other benefits they didn't want to give up. So Ryan's saying, when it comes to issues of the conscience, don't be slow. When you realize something that is happening is contrary to your deep values, act. Speak up, act out. Even if it's inconvenient, you don't want to be slow to act. I agree with that.

And it's an important reminder that slowness as a term is not a talisman. It's not magic. It's not Everything should be slow. Slow is good. There's lots of things where you don't want to be slow. Driving on the interstate, you don't want to be too slow. That's going to be a problem. Reacting to a moral crisis. Being slow there is going to be a problem.

Being called slow from your teacher, that's probably a problem too, right? That means that's not good. You don't want to be the slow student. So we should be very specific then when we talk about slow. We use the term a lot, but we use it here to talk about something very specific, your pace of work, slowing down your pace of work. And here we're using slow, we're not even celebrating slowness so much as we are castigating the fastest that has become the new normal.

When I say slow down, I really mean stopping unreasonably fast. What we call slow in my book slow productivity is what most people would call normal work until recently. So slowness here is a reaction to an unnatural fastness. It's a reaction to pointing out something that is not good. It's not sustainable. It's burning people out, exhausting them, and rupturing their relationship with work. So we're using slowness in a very specific way, and that's important.

You've got to be careful about jargon, especially jargon, where the term has an immediate appeal. We have to go to a layer deeper and ask what specifically are we saying this word applies to and why? and do I believe it? Listen to my case for slow productivity before you sign on. Don't be quick to apply the term slow to other things just because you want to make merchandise with turtles on it, which I understand because it looks awesome. Looks awesome.

But that's not an excuse to embrace slowness in all things. So actually, Ryan and I are on the same page here. Conscious issues of the conscious, don't be slow. Your work, slow the hell down. So it really depends on the context. I'm actually, you know, Jesse flying down there in a couple weeks, hang out at Ryan's bookstore. We're going to podcast in person at his new studio he bought.

So that's going to be cool. So maybe we can get into that. That would be cool. Yeah. So that should be, look out for that. I think that'll come out. Ooh, I think near the book or something like that. But that's going to be fun.

I haven't seen the store yet. You have to buy some. You have to bring an extra bag to buy some books. I will have to, I will definitely have to buy a lot of books. Yeah. And as you know, Ryan is the one who tricked me into getting the Deepark HQ. Because it was his pictures in March of 2020 of his bookstore. Then it was just an empty building.

But his pictures of having a place to go during the early pandemic, I was like, we got to do the same. So I keep giving him credit for the Deep Work HQ because I was so jealous and impressed that he had a place to go during those months where everything was closed that it was a few months later where we signed a lease for this place. So I both tip my cap and shake my fist at you, Ryan, for, no, the HQ's been great.

So it'll be good. So I look forward to that. I'll let you know when to get down there. All right, Jesse, it's all the time we have. Remember, questions, especially calls. The deeplife.com slash listen to links are at the top. Record a call. Send a question.

We want to hear from you. I'll be back next week with another episode. And until then, as always, stay deep. Hi, it's Cal here. One more thing before you go. If you like the Deep Questions podcast, you will love my email newsletter, which you can sign up for at calnewport.com. Each week, I send out a new essay about the theory or practice of living deeply. I've been writing this newsletter since 2007, and over 70,000 subscribers get it sent to their inboxes each week.

So if you are serious about resisting the forces of distraction, and shallowness that afflict our world, you got to sign up for my newsletter at calnewport.com and get some deep wisdom delivered to your inbox each week.