Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 59: Why Be Productive?

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). For instructions on submitting your own questions, go to calnewport.com/podcast.WORK QUESTIONS- Preparing for deep work. [6:41]- Keeping on top of everything when you have many roles. [12:32]- Is it possible to time block without a clock? [18:25]- Overcoming graduate student procrastination. [24:18]- Predictable schedules with unpredictable children at home. [29:36]TECHNOLOGY QUESTIONS- Scheduling asynchronous classes. [34:49]- Plain text productivity using Markdown. [36:57]- Long Term storage of promising ideas. [49:59]- Overcoming fear of what other people will think. [58:49]DEEP LIFE QUESTIONS- Sports as a distraction. [1:02:55]- Leisure that’s very similar to your work. [1:06:19]- Why be productive? [1:09:55]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.

I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions. We have a good show today. I'm looking at my script here and I see we have questions about, among other things, setting up for a deep work session, time blocking without using a clock. That is a topic that I'm probably not going to be too positive about when it comes up. We also will talk about a productivity tool called Markdown that all of the cool guy geeks have been talking about recently. We'll get into whether having kids at home means you cannot have a consistent work schedule. We'll also do some deep questions on productivity and the

meaning of life. So this should be a good one. Now, if you want to find out how to submit your own questions for the show, go to calnewport.com slash podcast. I finally realized after doing 59 episodes of this show that it would probably be easier if I just consolidated the instructions about how to submit written and voice questions at one location. That location is the main website for the podcast, calnewport.com slash podcast to figure out how you can submit your own questions. Let's do some quick announcements. This is the first episode of what I'm calling season two of this podcast. No dramatic changes are happening today.

I actually already started making changes to tighten up and improve the podcast format earlier in December, and I will continue to make those changes as the winter unfolds. So it's not that there's a drastic change now that we've gone from season one, the season two,

but by the time we get to, let's say, February, this podcast will probably sound different in a good way than it did, let's say, in November. So the polishing and improving of this podcast continues. There's no deep dive today. We're taking a break this week, but I have some ideas for the next deep dive. So probably next week we will get moving on with the next deep dive segment to open the show. As mentioned, videos of the last deep dive, the one on the deep reset, will be available soon.

In general, I'm setting up a video page where in addition to the deep dives, I also want to put up video of select questions. so you can go back and look at clips of particular questions without having to fast forward through the whole episodes. I'll also probably maybe move the whole audio of the podcast onto a video platform as well, just so people have other ways of getting at this material. So more information on that as we get there. All right, so as mentioned, we have a good show.

Let's briefly check in with some of the sponsors that make this podcast possible, and then we will get rolling with the questions. Let's talk about purple. Longtime listeners know that I am a mattress nerd. If the firmness is not just right for me, my back gets sore, and that's no good. Also, I'm a hot sleeper, so if it does not circulate air, that is also not good. Purple signature mattress accomplishes both of those difficult feats.

Their purple grid technology really is best in class. But did you know, and this is what I wanted to mention, briefly here, they have other products as well. Their Harmony Pillow, which is also made with the Purple Grid, is something that is quite popular. They also have breathable sheets, which are perfect for hot sleepers like me. They've also introduced seat cushions for those of you who are sitting in the same seat all day, doing Zoom conference calls and checking email.

At least you can do so in comfort. And they've introduced a kids collection as well. so all of that is exciting. Christmas was about giving other people's gifts. Maybe the New Year's is about giving yourself the gift of comfortable sleep. So to do so, go to purple.com slash deep 10 and use the promo code deep 10, the word deep and the number 10. And for a limited time, you'll get 10% off any order of $200 or more.

That's purple.com slash deep 10 with promo code deep 10 for 10. 10% off any order of $200 or more. Purple.com slash deep 10. Promocode deep 10. Are you getting the hint at what the promo code is here? Terms apply. Let's also talk about Blinkist. It would not be a New Year's episode of this podcast

if we did not get into the self-improvement possibilities of this subscription service. You've heard me talk about it before. When you sign up for Blinkist, you get access to very good summaries of over 4,000 nonfiction bestselling books. The summaries take 15 minutes to consume. Over 15 million people are already using Blinkus, so you know they must be on to something.

As I've talked about before on this podcast, I think Blinkus is a great way to do a broad attack on a general idea or habit or topic. Come in, get summaries of a bunch of related books, books, learn delay of the land, figure out which books you should buy to read in more detail. It is a much better way to master knowledge or to find out about new ideas than to just simply buy books randomly and hope they work. What I wanted to mention today is that more and more of their summaries are also available in audio format.

So when you are out there on a walk, when you're walking your dog, when you're cleaning your house, when you're mowing your yard, or I guess more appropriately now into northeast shoveling snow, whatever it happens to be, you can be digesting the wisdom of some of the best nonfiction bestselling books at the same time. It is a great tool to add to your self-improvement toolbox. So right now, Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience. If you go to Blinkist.com slash deep, you can start a seven-day free trial and get 25% off a Blinkist premium membership.

That's Blinkist, spelled B-L-I-N-K-E-E-E-N-K, you can start a seven-day free trial, and get 25% off a Blinkist, K-I-S-T, Malinkus.com slash deep to get 25% off and a seven-day free trial, Blinkus.com slash deep. As always, we start with questions about the world of work, and our first question comes from Dennis. He asks, can you describe in detail the process of setup before the actual deep work is done? Now, I know from Dennis's elaboration that he's not talking about deep work session rituals. Rituals are something we've discussed often on this podcast,

and that's where you have some sort of ritual you do right before you begin a deep work session with the goal of transforming your mind into a mode more conducive to concentration. So maybe you go for a walk on a certain path, maybe you clean the desk in your office and dim the lights and put just, a bright desk spot on your desk, maybe you make a certain type of coffee, whatever it is. That's important. That's a psychological trick. But it's not what Dennis is asking about. He's asking about a topic we have not discussed as frequently, which is this notion of the actual setup of the work you're going to do. What pre-work we can say should you do in advance

of a deep work session to ensure that the deep work session is as effective as possible? Well, I have two pieces of advice to offer here. First, you generally want to separate the gathering of relevant information that will be needed in the Deep Work session from the session itself. So going through your email inbox and finding information from relevant emails, going back to your Slack channels and doing a search to try to find what's the deadline for this, where were those talking points that someone else mentioned, you want to do that in advance. Going on the internet, for the most part, and looking up, I'm going to need these stats.

I need to know how to write this type of algorithm, whatever it is. Any of that work that diverts your cognitive context from the main target of the session and moves it to a different context, try to do that in advance. That's a separate, shallow work block. You could do it right before the deep work block. You could do it the day before. you could do it at the beginning of the week, but think of that work as separate so that when you're actually doing the deep work session,

you can keep that cognitive context relatively fixed. That being said, there will still be things that require you probably to maybe change your attention from what you're working on briefly. You know, if you're writing something, I've come across this a lot, you can try in advance to get all the information you need

for the section or chapter or whatever you're writing, but almost certainly you'll come. across a stat. If I just had that stat, it would be critical, and I need to jump on the internet and get it. That's okay, right? So if you're jumping on the internet or jumping in your notes to grab a key stat or piece of information, that's not a significant context shift. It's within the context of what you're working on.

As long as you're diligent about not exposing yourself to unrelated distraction, that's okay, but you want to sort of minimize that. to the extent in which you can just work, the better. I do this off and on when I'm working on research problems. I like to set up my work to happen on foot often when I'm in an early stage of trying to make progress on, let's say, like an algorithm or a proof. Because that forces me to gather all the information I need ahead of time because I'm away from a computer. I'm out there on a trail somewhere with a notebook, just taking notes. And that helps force me into a mindset of gather what you need, which often means by the

way on printing relevant papers and going back through email threads and rereading them, email threads with my collaborator so that I know, okay, here is what, I have all the information I need to try to make progress today. Then I'll go outside and try to do the work on foot just to try to force myself to stay just with the problem. All right? So do that work in advance. If you have to look up a few things, that's fine, but you just want to try to minimize that. The second piece of setup, I think, is important is having some sort of concrete artifact that you figure out in advance that you want to come out of the session having produced. Nothing derails a deep work session more consistently than ambiguity. If you come into a session and say,

I just want to make some progress on this problem, work on my book, try to solve proof, get new business strategy. That is incredibly ambiguous. It can be very difficult to get going or produce much. What you want to be doing is sort of fighting the clock while getting towards the accomplishment of some concrete artifact. It could be something as simple as I'm going to explore this approach and I'm going to write up a summary of it in the shared document I use with my collaborators. That summary in this document is the artifact I want to come away with. Or it's a proof sketch in a notebook. Or it is a draft of the opening section of this book chapter. or for the business thinking example.

At the end of this, I'm going to write up my thoughts to send to my business partner. So you want to be working towards producing something tangible. You can focus your energy on. I'm trying to make this intention manifest in the world. It is much easier to maintain that focus.

So as part of your setup, you should be figuring out what am I trying to come away from this session with? Right. So hopefully, Dennis, that helps. gather as much information, do all the communication, all the context switching you can in advance, do that in a separate block,

and then make sure that you've identified a clear, concrete, tangible artifact that your deep work session is aimed at producing, and you will get a lot more out of those sessions. Moving on, Zach asks, I am in charge of departments that range from legal to records, to IT, to operations, and maintenance, to capital project development, etc.

When I meet with my staff, not only do I switch areas of focus, but it feels like I have to use different parts of my brain. How do I keep on top of everything? I feel like the small details slip through the cracks. Well, Zach, I can tell you, first of all, the very worst way to try to keep on top of all of these different roles that you are currently serving would be to just have a single general purpose email address. Zach at OverloadCompany.com and then just have everything come into that inbox and just scramble every day and try to keep on top of things. That's probably what you are doing since that's how most people

approach their work in our current moment, but for your particular circumstance, it is a terrible way of doing it. I want you to instead think of each of these roles almost like a separate job. You have a job where you run a legal team. You have a job where you run a records team. a job where you run an IT team and operations a maintenance job, a capital project development job.

It's like you have many jobs, each of which is part time. Each of which doesn't take up 40 hours a week, but they all have their own demands. Now, I'm assuming you can't have a separate email address for each of these roles, so actually that would be really good if you could, but I want you to maintain and manage and organize your obligations for each of these roles in distinct areas. So you know I like to use Trello. This would be a place where Trello or a similar tool could be useful. In my setup, if I was you, I would have a separate Trello board for each of these roles. As stuff comes into my inbox and I process my inbox, it goes out of that general purpose inbox

and onto the appropriate Trello board for the appropriate role. It could be as simple as, you know, I have a column here under operations and maintenance of things I need to still deal. with and to process and they're just in there. You have things in there waiting to hear back from. You have columns with task for particular capital projects that you're working on. Here's the project we're working on now. Here's the one we're planning for. So relevant task and information get puts in there. Maybe you have a column for each role about, okay, these are things that I definitely am trying to get done this week. As more information comes in, you move it onto the relevant Trello card. As files come in, you attach it to the relevant Trello card. And then you're switching between

these boards. Now if all of these tasks and all of these obligations and all this information exist in a single general purpose system like an email inbox, it looks overwhelming. There's a hundred messages in this inbox and how do I even make sense of it. If that same amount of information is spread across the appropriate role-based boards, now any one of those role-based boards is tractable. So in this example, you had one, two, three, four, five different boards. Maybe there's 20 emails worth of information on each of those five boards. That's a lot more reasonable to deal with. And then you go to each of those boards and those 20 pieces of information,

maybe only one or two are in a column for it. Let's get this done this week. And some of them are in a holding pattern and some are waiting to hear back from and some are just being filed away. You have a lot more tractable situation when you can get this information into role-specific configure-type systems. You can actually start working with it. The other thing I'm going to recommend

is you're going to have to lean heavily on your weekly plan because you have a lot of roles and you're going to have to look at the time you have available in a given week like a chessboard and move the pieces around. You're going to be very smart about things. If you're just haphazardly, for example,

setting up or accepting Zoom meetings for all of these roles whenever they come across, you're going to have a very frustratingly fragmented week and you're going to find yourself like so many people actually getting worked on at night or in the morning. But if you are seeing the whole week like a chessboard, you might start, for example, to theme things. This day is about this, that day is about this.

I only do this type of meetings then. I consolidate all these meetings into a twice a week staff check-in that we break into three different parts, or we have one staff check-in on Tuesday for these three roles and one on Thursday for these two roles, begin to optimize. You might have in your weekly plan some ideas like, okay, every morning for the first two hours is all about making progress on important but

non-urgent projects for one of my role. Monday's legal, Tuesday's records, Wednesday's IT, and so on. You can start to be smart about how you spread out and move this workaround. You're really going to need that because, again, you cannot just come to each day and say, oh, what's in my inbox? What's due? What seems urgent? That's way too haphazard for the complexity of your particular.

job. So, Zach, you know, I talk about this in my book coming out in March, which I think I'm supposed to announce this book more formally soon. Maybe I'll do that next week. But I get into that in my world without email book that comes out in March, this notion of you treat yourself like you're a little company. And you play different roles in the company and you have kind of separate systems and processes and systems for each of these different roles. And we get away from this homogenizing approach of trying to get everything into just generic messages and chats. and emails that you just grind through randomly and haphazardly. You have to get away from that. So if you do those things, Zach, I think you will find your demanding job. And it's a very complicated setup you have. You'll find that at least it becomes a little bit more tractable. Elena asks, what kind of modifications could you recommend to the time blocking method that aren't as dependent on the clock?

And instead take into account that projects and work may have to move around throughout the day. Well, Elena, time blocking by definition requires a clock. If you're deploying a productivity method that is not connecting work to specific times of the day, you're not time blocking, you're doing something different. That's not to say something different can't work, but if you want the particular advantages that time blocking offers, you do need to actually have blocks connected with times of the day. so the clock will play an unavoidable role.

Of course, I should offer as an aside right now. If you're new to the podcast and wondering what time blocking is, go to timeblockplanner.com. I explained a method at that website. All right, so let's get to the core of the problem then. I know from your elaboration, the issue is you have found yourself recently having to move things enough, things you schedule for one time that have to get moved to another time.

It's happening enough that you're worried that time blocking, the overhead of time blocking is going to become too much. That's a valid concern. I also know from your elaboration, this is due in part to the fact that you have a kid at home doing online learning, and you find that that creates unintended interruptions or disruptions because things shift. It sounds like your son's school will change certain Zoom times or something won't work. So I get that. So let's talk a little bit about how to make sure your time-blocking discipline is flexible when there is this type of malleability, this unpredictable malleability in your schedule. So one thing to keep in mind is to get rougher and granularity

with your blocks. So maybe there's a few key things that are specific and tied to particular times, but you might also have broader blocks, broader in their what you've assigned to them, so that there's some flexibility there, that you don't have to rebuild your schedule, if you have to take 15 minutes and go change a Zoom setup configuration file or find another activity, you know, for a kid that instead of 30 minutes on this, 30 minutes on this, 30 minutes on this, it's a two-hour afternoon block of, you know, make progress on general tasks. And, you know, you have your tasks. You've identified your weekly plan. You're going to do the best you can with that time you have. Or make progress on general tasks. Here's the three priorities. But beyond that, just do the best you can.

you might use conditional blocks, you know, where you say, work on this, keep working on this or work on this, unless you don't have time, in which case you can fall back to this. So there's things you can do, and I talk about some of these in the front of the time block planner. There's strategies to make your time block schedule able to absorb more unpredictability without requiring a lot of schedule change. two, I would say, I don't know your setup, but when you have, let's say, two people at home, two parents at home, working from home, and you also have kids at home that are creating unpredictability, clearly defined shifts, I think, are very helpful. I am kind of on call during these times, you're on call during those times. During the times in which your partner is on call, you can be a much more aggressive and specific about your time block schedule. on the times when you're on call, you might have more conditional blocks, more generic blocks. You're giving yourself some give. And third, just don't be afraid of changing the schedule. It's not a bad thing to change the schedule. I think some time blockers think the goal is to come up with

the schedule that you stick with. That's not the goal. Schedules are unpredictable. Things happen. The goal with time blocking is to have intention about the time ahead of you in the day. So if you get knocked off your schedule, next time you get a chance, build a reasonable schedule for the time that remains. If you're using something like my planner, you just hop over one column to the right and the time block grid. Make a reasonable schedule for the time it remains and try that. If that gets knocked off at some point, hop over when you get a chance.

Reasonable schedule for the time that remains. What gives you the real win in time blocking is just that repeated step of, okay, given what the reality is of the time I have left in my day, what's the best way to make use of. it. It does not make that much time. It does not take up that much time to fix the schedule. It takes five minutes or four minutes, right? It's often pretty obvious. Well, I only have two hours left and I have this call. So I guess I only have an hour here and an hour there. Let's just do this and this. Like, it's really quick to do. The overhead is minimal. But taking those few minutes to keep saying what's the best thing to do with the time that is left, that aggregates

a lot of value. The intentional application of time just just generates more meaningful work accomplished than a reactive or haphazard approach to your time. And having to actually say work on this during this time, that is to connect the work to the clock is what really gets that intention crystallized. So to briefly summarize, get more rough granularity about your time blocking so that small changes don't require new schedule changes. Two, try to have clear shifts if possible with your partner so that you can be more specific and aggressive about your time blocking when you are not on call. And three, change your schedule four times a day. The overhead of that might be seven extra minutes for

schedule updates. The benefit in terms of how much extra meaningful work you get done might be like having another hour or two in your day. Moving on, Molly asks, I'm in graduate school and have found that I often leave papers and studying for tests to the last minute. I rarely have to ask for an extension, but practically I find myself writing most of my papers the week before they are due and stressing myself out. Well, Molly, thanks for that question. I'll start with a mild tough love dose and then we'll get into some specifics. So my mild tough love is, look, you're in graduate school. That means you're an adult. So stop it. Right. You know, you're not 19. Don't leave things until last minute. This is your job. You're a professional. Let's figure out how to do this

job well and take on that responsibility and execute. I think leaving things to the last minute, it's one thing if you're a teenager, you've just started college, and there's a lot of other things going on in your life, like trying to emerge as a fully autonomous adult and build a new social life from scratch and figure out your identity. And schoolwork is one of the things going on. And there's some social capital. And look, I stay up late, you know, I'm sort of a tough guy type thing. But by the time you get to graduate school, it's a job. So, you know, you're doing your job poorly right now, so let's figure out how to do it well. All right, tough love sermon over. Let's get specific. There's a couple things I recommended specifically for students back in my early study books,

in particular, how to become a straight-day student that I think are relevant for you here. One of the strategies I had was that basically for any assignment that is large. So like a, studying for a big test or writing a big paper. Very early on in your semester, you build a plan for it. And that plan goes onto your calendar, and you have a folder just for keeping relevant information for that project.

But you figure out, okay, here's this paper. When do I need to start researching? Put it on the calendar. When do I need to be done with a certain phase of my research? Put it on your calendar. When do I need to have the first draft done? You put that on your calendar. And then you just execute.

Same thing for studying. Okay, three weeks out, you've got to really start this part of your studying. Two weeks out, you should be doing this part of your studying. And then you just follow what's on your calendar. Like, this is my assignment this week. I have a job. My supervisor came in. Here's what you're working on this week.

Looking at the calendar, here I need you to be working on. You're trying to get this research pass done for your paper, and you're doing this type of review for this test that's coming up in two weeks. And it's just your job for the week. And you go about and you execute. And I would suggest doing something like time block planning in a well-defined part of your workday. You should have working hours if you're a grad student.

You should time block plan those working hours. You should do shutdown complete when you're done and move on and do the rest of the other things that make life good. You have a lot of flexibility as a student, so don't make those working hours too severe. And then you just kind of execute your job. So you make a plan and then you execute the plans. Don't be vague about it.

Don't be, ah, I should maybe get started on this. Or what do I want to do today? No, no. It's like, I saw this paper was coming up on my syllabus two months. months ago. And I built up my plan and now I just execute plans when I get there. I look at my week. I say, what's on my calendar? What do I need to be working on? I make a plan. I time block every day and I get it done. The other thing along these lines I would recommend, again, this is another idea I talk about in my book about becoming a straight-A student, is that you automate all of the

regularly occurring work in your semester. If there is a class that requires you to do reading every week, there is set times on your calendar for doing that reading and it's on a recurring appointment setup. It's just there every week. Do you have a class with a problem set? The time to work on that problem set, you do it on the same days or the same times. It shows up on your calendar recurring automatically.

You automate all the things you know you have to do every week so that you're not thinking, what should I do today? What do I want to work on today? When do I want to work today? You know? So now when you approach your week, all of the regularly occurring work, it's already scheduled on your calendar for optimal times, and all you have to do is execute. You never have to think about it. You never have to make decisions.

And then you're looking at, okay, what have I scheduled more generally this week for big projects? That's what needs to actually make its way in the particular times during particular days, and I'll capture that on my time blocking. I believe I used to call the combination of these tactics the student work day. And I used to advise undergraduates and graduate students that you had these very structured work days, where you've put a lot of advanced, thinking into when work gets done. The alternative is to say, what do I want to work on today? And there's two problems with that. One, you won't start working until four or five, because there's no particular pressure to do so. And two, the only things that will catch your

attention to the things that are due real soon. So you're just constantly doing panic work to try to get things done at the last minute. That means you're going to be stressed. That means you're going to stay up late. That means you're going to produce things at lower levels of quality. So I think it's time to get a little bit more professional about your student endeavors. Those two pieces of advice I know from experience will make a big difference. The next question is from Connor, who says, I am working from home with my wife and our two-year-old daughter. The house is small enough that there isn't a clear workspace out of proximity of my family.

This means a lot of muted Zoom calls as my toddler runs around near me. I recently added a desk and chair to the detached garage that I can use for my deep work, writing poetry, nonfiction, slash reading, but I haven't been able to establish a consistent schedule due to work and family demands. What are some ways I can shift into deep work mode if I suddenly and surprisingly have an hour to work? Well, this is similar to the question before about time blocking without a clock, but I figure it gives us another angle at some of these issues.

I have a few things to suggest, Connor. First of all, I would not give up on this idea that a consistent schedule is impossible. I think the reality is it's more difficult, but it's worth putting in the effort to figure it out. You should have an agreement with your wife about who is watching the kid win. Now, if the situation now is that you've brought your two-year-old out of a child care situation because of, let's say, the pandemic, and yet you're both working full-time. you have to acknowledge that's a really hard circumstance because watching a kid is a full-time job and we're deluding ourselves if we think, well, I can watch my kid while I also work.

Now, for a lot of people, this is unavoidable because of current temporary circumstances, but you should acknowledge the difficulty of that and do everything you can to try to salvage some work. And what you're probably going to need to do there, like I talked about before, is have shifts. This is when I'm responsible, this is when you are responsible during the times where you are not responsible, you need to be very aggressive about scheduling things and time blocking and getting done what you can, and during the times in which you are, you should be very realistic. Very little is going to get done. Yes, maybe you're on a muted Zoom call, kind of listening, which, by the way, I don't think is the worst thing.

I mean, I don't want you wasting a lot of your productive hours on Zoom calls, so do you agree that you can kind of have those on in the background while you're pseudo-child carrying? I get that. But you're realistic about it, that very little is going to get done. during that time where you're also watching the kid. I would also say use that detached garage for more than just your hobbies. That should be where you go to work.

You mentioned you use it for poetry and reading, but when you're working, go there or when you're working during the shift where you have no child care, go to that completely different space. You know, buy a space heater if you have to, wear a parka during the winter. Maybe invest a little bit of time and money

to make it nice because, again, there's a benefit that comes from the aesthetics of a space that have been maybe over the top design to be useful for work or depth leverage that psychological effect, but I would use that space a lot more aggressively. And I would really get on the same page with my wife, if I was you, you know, about these various scheduling things, not just a child care thing, but, you know, if you want to do deep work on like your poetry writing and she wants to do deep work on something else, when does that happen? should have a shared calendar. You should be looking at your day together.

There should be some overlap with your time blocking. You should be weekly planning together. I think a lot of couples have realized that pre-pandemic, you could get away with quite a bit of independence in scheduling. Because, I don't know, we both go to work in a separate building, kids at child care, you know, who cares? You don't need to know what I'm doing when I'm at my office. I don't need what you're doing.

And then we can kind of, when we both get home, on the fly, be like, hey, I'm going to go do some poetry, or she's like, I'm going to go, you know, hang out with some friends or whatever. It can be kind of informal. Now when we're all stuck at home, or at least those of us who are, you have to be a lot more clearer.

There's a lot less independence than scheduling. Everyone has to be on the same page. So that would be another suggestion I would have. So in other words, I'm not going to throw up my hands here, Connor, and be like, everything's just unpredictable, and I just kind of figure things out on the fly. I think you need a lot more structure.

Now, again, this is all temporary. But getting these habits and mindsets and scheduling optimizations, getting these things really locked into place during this hopefully final, almost certainly final wave of this pandemic, means that when we leave this stage, when we get to a stage of vaccines, when we get to a stage of work is more flexible and schools are all open and child care is more abundant, you're going to have a real leg up. because you're now going to be operating with a sharper, more optimized approach to scheduling than you actually really need, which means you're going to get a lot more out of your time. So that's my optimistic gloss on this advice, is do the hard work of getting more organized

and structured now with your schedules, because when you get to the point where you don't need to be that structured, you're going to get huge wins from it. All right, with that in mind, let's do some technology. questions. Tristan asks, how do you recommend maintaining a schedule with asynchronous classes, that is classes that aren't held live? Do you have any tips for catching up on schoolwork in the pandemic? All right. So what Tristan's talking about for those of you who are not in college during this pandemic or don't have kids in college during the pandemic is that a lot of colleges are doing classes virtual. A lot aren't, by the way, but a lot are.

And then that brings up a decision. Do you do the virtual course live? So the students are there on, let's say, Zoom in real time, or do you tape it and just make it available for students to watch at their own pace? And so Tristan is talking about classes at his university, which are using that second option. And how does he approach his work as a student if there is no set time in which lecture actually happens? Well, of course, first I'll point out the obvious that this is a time. timely question is certainly not a timeless question because, you know, it's relevant this semester. I do not suspect this question will be relevant starting in the fall or even probably for summer

classes. But this semester is upon us. So let's figure out how to make the best of it if you are at a school that is doing virtual classes and an asynchronous format. My advice, Tristan, is to pretend as if the class is scheduled. Schedule the times for these lectures on your calendar. During those times, watch the virtual lecture as if it was being delivered live, as if that was your only option for when you could watch it. Do not fall into the trap as saying, well, I don't have to watch it now, so maybe I'll watch it later,

which you then say, well, maybe I'll just watch it when I need information from it, and then the amount of learning you're doing plummets, and it can be very difficult to do well. So simple advice, pretend like the classes are synchronous, have a class schedule on your calendar, watch them during those set times each week.

And I think that is going to be the best way to sort of spread out your cognitive energy and get the best academic returns for the time invested. Peter asks, please share your thoughts on plain text productivity such as that implemented with Markdown. All right. I like this question because it's a classic geek technology question. I should probably try to briefly explain what markdown is. So markdown is a particular markup language, which for those of you who are not geeks, such as me and Peter, the right way to explain it is a markup language is a way of taking a plain text file

and using special formatting tags describing how it should be formatted. So in addition to just having text in it, you might put some special tags that say this is supposed to be a headline. And this text here is supposed to be a hyperlink, and this text here should be arranged into a bullet list. So you have this plain text file that uses all these special formatting tags that just explain how things should be formatted, and then you can take that file and feed it into something that actually follows those instructions and creates, the formatted document. Right? So when you're using Microsoft Word

and there's all sorts of formatting going on, some things are bold, some things are big font, some things are small font, some things are indented, some things are within bullet list. You're seeing that all formatted, but if you actually go to the dot doc file

and open it up, you know, it's a plain text file where you'll see, in theory, it's more complicated than this now with Microsoft Word, but just basic ideas. you'll see all the text in your Microsoft Word file, but surrounded by all sorts of tags that explain

this is bold, this is this font size, this should be in a bullet point list. Okay, so that's what a markup language is. One of the more famous markup languages is probably HTML. So if you actually look at the source of a web page you're looking at, you'll see underneath the covers. There's a bunch of the text you see on the page surrounded by these angle bracket encased formatting tags.

It says this is a headline, this is a link, etc. Markdown is a particular. markup language. I didn't know this. I just looked it up, but it was actually created by John Groomer and the late Aaron Schwartz. So two really cool giants in the field of tech in that sort of late 90s, early 2000s period. So it's a good pedigree. It's a markdown, a markup language in which the formatting tags are non-intrusive and intuitive. So if you look at it, you look at a markup language in which the, the formatting tags are non-intrusive and intuitive. So if you look at it, you look at the formatting tags are non-intrusting, an HTML file, it's not natural to read it. There's tons of these tags. In HTML, the formatting

tags are in between angle brackets. There's all these tags, and they're all complicated that describe all this different information about how it wants to lay it out. It's not meant to really be human readable. With Markdown, the tags are all really natural. Like to make something into, I'm not an expert at Markdown, but to make something into a heading, you might just put a line of equal signs under it. And that'll make into a big heading. And if you put a line of data, under it, it makes it into a small heading. And if you want something to be a bullet list, you actually just use asterisk to bullet it. If you want to bold something, I think you put double asterisk on either side of the words you

want to bold. The idea is, in other words, if you look at a markup document formatted using Markdown, looking at that raw code, it's still really obvious what your document's supposed to be and how it's supposed to be formatted. You can then feed that markup document into a renderer. So I believe like the original renderer was a pearl script that John Gruber wrote that then translates that markdown file into HTML and you could view it in a browser and actually see the bold stuff bold and actually see the bullet point list. Formatted as a nice bullet point list. But the idea was you don't even really have to render it if you don't want to.

It's a way of like really clearly talking about formatting and plain text that everyone agrees on is really natural. You can format it to look really nice. but even without formatting the plain text is really readable. It makes a lot of sense. Okay, that's the geek background. What Peter is talking about is that a lot of sort of classic life hacker types

use Markdown to help organize their lives from a productivity perspective because you can type really fast in text files, especially if you're something like a computer programmer. You live your life out of VI or out of Emacs, and you're all about typing very fast and commands and quick shortcuts.

And so you can just really quickly format up list. You know, here's bullet point list of here's a project. I have a horizontal roll and then I bowl the name of the project and I have a collapsible bullet down list of the points under it. And I can append them and move things just by copying and pasting text into this is now in the completed task. And you have a lot of flexibility and structure to create structure documents all using plain text. And you can convert it to something like HTML and make it look nice. But I think most programmer geek types can just read mark down fluently. And it's just kind of obvious.

Like think of that as bold, think of that as a bullet list or whatever. And you can kind of go back and forth. Generally speaking, Peter, I am a fan of using these mildly formatted text files as a hub for productivity. I'm a fan of that idea for the people that that is right for. So if you go back, for example, and look at Corey Doctrose's sort of underground famous notes from Daniel O'Brien's presentation. on life hacks and life hackers from 2004. So these are these notes of this presentation that Daniel O'Brien gave that sort of led to the introduction of life hacking into the cultural lexicon.

And Daniel O'Brien talked about, here's what I've learned, surveying people in my world, which is like computer developers who are very productive. How do they use technology tools to help stay organized? And above the fold headline is they all use text files. They had text files that they had configured in their text editors to be very easy to edit, and they were structured, but mildly so, so they could very quickly capture information, organize information, find information they need, and figure out what they should be working on. So from the very beginning of geeks using technology to stay more productive, text files played a big role. Now this is something that I went on to promote. There's some earlier articles on my study hacks blogs

that talk about what I called plain text productivity. And it was basically this idea. I was talking about places where just using a blank text file as the foundation for capturing and organizing information making plans had a lot going for it because there's huge flexibility in a plain text file. When you're dealing with, let's say, a web application, you are being confined by the format and structure of that application. You have to fill in a title into this particular form, and these things have to be stored as notebooks, and maybe you can add a to-do list, but they have to be scheduled. There's a lot of constraints with most tools.

Text files have very little constraints. You want to bold things, great. You want to make a list, great. You want to make a list within a list, within a list, great. If you want to have just an expository section, here's just my thoughts on how we should deal with this. Do you want to have a section like notes? Here's just notes from a meeting I went to or a book I read that I think are important.

You can do this all in a text file. You know, much in the way that you hear like writer Carroll, for example, with the bullet journal method talking about how you can have this one notebook that you capture in it, everything is relevant to your life. These old life hackers that Danny Bryan was talking about were already doing this just in really large text files. And they were very good with text files because they were computer programmers. They had really good text editors, their whole life existed in text editors.

If you've ever seen an accomplished programmer use VI, it'll blow your mind. I mean, everything is commands. Even just going and deleting a line or jumping to a new line of code, it's not clicking with a mouse. It's all commands, and they type really, really fast. So it makes sense. They're very familiar with this idiom. It's incredibly flexible. I love the flexibility of text files.

So Peter, if that describes you to building a productivity system on top of loosely formatted text files, I think is great. But the bigger point I think that is relevant here is this general notion that the format or technology that you use for organizing your life might be personality and experience specific. So for Daniel O'Brien or Corey Doctorauer for Peter, text files mildly. formatted with Markdown, make a lot of sense as a way to keep all the things in their life organized. They can quickly search through it and move through it and see it, and that's the idiom in which they live their technological lives. Well, let's return to writer Carroll's example in the bullet journal. The bullet journal was very popular among graphic designers and freelancers because they are very familiar with the idiom of the blank page and creating something

that is not just aesthetically interesting, but aesthetically functional out of a blank page, that through graphic design, you're going to create something that captures information in a way that matters, like the design of how you write things and draw things. And there's a reason why Instagram images of bullet journal pages have these nice illuminations and illustrations around them, because the best bullet journal practitioners are people who come from graphic design. So this idiom of the blank page that you then transform into a tool of information delivery, that's where they speak.

So a computer programmer has a really hard time with a bullet journal. They find it inefficient. It's too slow to write. I'd rather do a quick grep search over my text file repository. The graphic design or the idea that you would have these asterisks and crude marked down things and an ugly text file just wouldn't resonate. That seems weird and antiseptic and completely overwhelming. I think a lot of office workers who don't fall into.

to either those categories, like, let's say, structured to-do list apps, because they're used to this notion of like office productivity software, that idiom of software that gives you custom digital interfaces for different things you do. Here is the menu bar for PowerPoint. Here is the menu bar for Word. For tasks, I want, you know, a new task button, and I want to go into a list. I want it to be official and my, I want this to be structured by the tool, the tool. So they're used to that. They're used to this idiom of dealing with these sort of gooey interface productivity tools. And so I think that's a general point. The type of system that works for one person might not work for another and it has more to do with your experience and your personality than it

does about any one system being superior to another. Like I fall in between a lot of these things. I use plain text productivity for planning at the weekly and quarterly scale. I'm a computer scientist, I'm a bit of a geek, I like text files. The most used file on my computer, I just think I have a lot of computers, but the most used file that shows up on all my computers is working memory. text. I always have a text file open, plain text file that I loosely format where I capture things and organize things throughout the day. It's like an extension of my mind.

And then I tend to process that into other systems by the end of the day. that's a very sort of computer programming type thing. My weekly plans are all plain text. My quarterly and strategic plans are all plain text. I just feel like it's a very flexible, expressive, low friction format. But on the other hand, when it comes to collecting notes for articles and books, I use a more structure tool. I use Evernote. And that kind of draws a more of my writer, artistic side.

It's a little bit more structured. It's notes and notebooks that stack up. And I'm comfortable with that idiom as well. And I plan, of course, he's in a time block planner, which is its own type of compromise between structure, but not so much structure that it's like a digital tool. You know, so I'm kind of in between a lot of these different worlds, and you might find yourself there as well. So, Peter, this is a long answer to a short question, but that's what I'm coming away with. Use Markdown. If you like Markdown, I think it's awesome.

If that sounds really weird to you, however, don't think that's a problem. You know, just like in Harry Potter, the wand finds the wizard. In productivity, the system finds the worker. So I think we've now set some sort of record for geekness by somehow combining a detailed discussion of markup languages with Harry Potter. I think all we're missing is a Star Trek reference and we'll hit the trifecto. So Scotty, power up those engines. We're moving on to the next question. Gray asks, what do you do with physical or digital materials that you stumble across that you might not have a specific project for right now, but you envision needing down the road?

I'm a pastor, and as such, I'm always thinking about future classes, sermon series, or writing down what I can do for the church, so I may come across something that I don't need a reference now, but know or think I might need it in 15 months. So, Gray, for now, forget the system. and we can talk about systems in a second. There's a lot of options there. They all work fine. This kind of follows from the discussion we just had with Peter. By far the most important thing in this particular scenario is having a rule that you follow in which you check in on whatever system you choose

for the long-term storage or promising ideas, a rule that you follow in which you check in on it regularly. I would recommend once a month where you actually go and you rifle through the system. If you have that rule and you follow it, whatever system you use will be very effective. If you do not have that rule, no matter what system you use, it will not be effective. You will still be trying to hold things in your head, they will still cause anxiety, and things will get forgotten. So that rule is more important than the details of how you actually set up your repository.

Now let's talk about that repository. Look, you got a lot of options here. You can use files. that's fine. You know, if you have something physical, it goes into a file. If you have something digital, you print it,

you put into a file, have file folders. Those folders can be labeled by general category. It's in a filing cabinet, sermon ideas, church attendance, growth ideas,

et cetera. That works. David Allen talks about a tickler file. The thing about a tickler file is that that's more about things that where you know in advance when in the future it will be useful.

So in a tickler file, you actually have a, a folder for each day coming up in the current month, and you have a folder also for each month coming up. And so you can file things into the folder when you want to deal with it again. So if you know, here's an article that I want to get to next Friday

when I'm doing some thinking about this topic. You put it in the folder for that date, right? So you have 30 folders, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I guess 31, so some months have 31. So you put it in the folder for that date. Or you might say, I'll deal with this in the summer. So you put it in the June folder, et cetera. The tickler file is actually where

43 folders, Merlin Mann's famed productivity website, that's the number of folders in a tickler file system. So you have 31 days, gets you to 31 folders, and you have 12 months, so 43 folders. That's fine too. And then with a tickler file,

you just always look at the folder for the current day of the month. When you get to each month, you look at the folder for that month. So if you kind of know when you want to look at something, you can use that. digital is fine too. I use Evernote.

As I just mentioned in my answer to Peter's question, I like that metaphor of notebooks with notes in them. So I have a lot of notebooks. And then I can collapse notebooks in the stacks. It's like here's all notebooks related to books. Here's all notebooks related to ideas. Here's all notebooks related to my business. And then you open up a stack.

You have notebooks. You go to a notebook. You can scan real quickly through the names of the notes. I think it's efficient. You can attach files. You can put in links. You can throw in text. I'm happy with that.

You can do the same thing with just folders on your computer. You're just throwing in files. If you do that, just be really comfortable just opening up a text editor and typing notes and just saving that text file into a folder on your computer. I know some people use, like Peter was talking about, they'll just use really long text files. People who are a little less tech savvy might use like really long Microsoft Word documents because you just throw in lots of notes and bold and bullet point things.

And if you're more of a geek, you can use long text files. and you can search and do all sorts of stuff. So have a system, whichever one fits, but what matters is that rule. And I actually have a recurring calendar notification every month, review your note system. That is the key. And you can do it real quick.

You're not reading in depth every note. For like a notebook of like, oh, here's ideas for growing my church attendance. You're just scanning through the list. You kind of remember things as you scan through, and maybe one of them catches your attention. It's like, oh, I should really think about that now. And after you've reviewed these things enough times, you kind of know what they are.

It's pretty quick to review. But if your mind trust that stuff in that system will get reviewed, it will release. It will allow you to put things in there and it'll stop thinking about it. It'll stop causing anxiety. And if you review these things again and again, what you're going to find is that the best ideas will emerge. Be signal among the noise. After four or five reviews, this thing keeps catching my attention where these ideas have it. forget those ideas, this is what I need to do.

It's a great way of sort of checking. What really should I work on next? So put that rule in place. No matter what you use for the system, I think you will find some success. I want to take a moment to talk about one of the sponsors that makes this podcast possible. And that is My Body Tudor.

Now, guys, this is not some really large, slick tech startup with $50 million of funding trying to take advantage of the pay. pandemic. My Body Tudor is founded by my friend Adam Gilbert years ago. As I've talked about on this podcast before, Adam used to be the guest fitness calmness on study hacks, my blog, back in like 2007 or 2008. He has been at this for a long time. This is a hand-built business. It's been polished and optimized over the years and it's been successful because Adam gets results. The idea is real simple. If you want to get into better shape in this new year, if you sign up with

my body tutor, you get an online coach who works with you directly. Let's work on your meals. Let's work on your exercise routine. And then this is the key. They check in with you again and again and again. The point is, Adam realized that the problem with health and fitness is not information. It's not knowledge. It is lack of consistency. If you have to talk over Zoom with your coach every day, you're much more likely to actually do the things that you need to do than if you're just trying to do it on your own. Adam's customers are fiercely loyal because he gets great results.

All right, so here's the thing. Go to mybodytutor.com to find out more. If you tell them that you're signing up because of deep questions, they will give you $50 off your first month. Just mention to them that you're coming here because of deep questions and you will get that discount. If you want to get into better shape, if you want your health to improve in this new year,

my body tutor will help you get that done. I also want to talk about ladder. Not to get somber here, but for those of us who are not that old, there have been few times in recent history where we have felt more vulnerable from the perspective of health than we have over this last year, this should be a helpful reminder of the importance of having life insurance.

I'm not talking about that whole life nonsense. I'm talking about term coverage. Term coverage is surprisingly cheap, even for a large amount of coverage. It is something that if you have a spouse, if you have kids, you have to have it. Now, if you're relatively young, it's not going to be nearly as much as you might fear,

but it's something that we have to have, which brings us to ladder, which makes it both impressively fast and impressively easy to get that life insurance coverage. It literally just takes a few minutes. You use your phone or your laptop to apply. They have algorithms that work in real time and do algorithm stuff to,

figure out if you're approved and to get you a policy that works. There's no hidden fees. You can cancel any time. The younger you are now, the cheaper this type of coverage is going to be. So if this is something that's been lurking on your to-do list, now is the time to take action. Use Ladder to do so. Check out Ladder today to see if you're instantly approved. Go to ladderlife.com slash deep. That's L.A. D-D-R-Life.com slash deep. That's ladderlife.com slash deep

to get insured today. Our final technology question comes from Austin, who asks, how should one deal with severe self-doubts and fear of what other people think? Now, you might be wondering why I put what seems to be a psychological question under the technology category.

But the reason I did is to emphasize that there is almost certainly a large technological component to the issue that Austin is facing. And in particular, Austin, my advice is get off social media. Social media is a extreme amplifier for self-doubt and fear of other people, fear of what people think about you. Are they looking down on you? Are they going to attack you? Are they better than you?

Are you falling short? If you are already someone who leans a little bit towards those insecurities, which are very common, Austin. I mean, there's nothing unusual going on there. You already lean that way. Social media is like poison. It's like poison, right? So even if you loved bread, if we took you to the lab and they said,

look, Austin, you got celiacs disease? Like, sorry, dude. There's a lot you love about bread. You shouldn't be eating bread. This, I think, is the social psychological equivalent. If you are crippled with self-doubt and fear of what other people think, you can't use social media. Can't use it.

You got to find another way to keep in touch with your friends and family. Get a text thread going with your friends. Get another text thread going with your family. Hold office hours to get people to call you. Whatever you need to do to make sure that you have contact. There's a lot of ways to do it. But I think social media is very ill-suited for your friends. current situation. So I would say you need to get off it. If there's specific things you still

have to do on social media for your job or maybe there's a Facebook group that's important to you, get it off your phone, just do it on your computer, do it on a regular schedule, type in your password manually, use plugins and bookmarks to bypass things like the news feed on Facebook to get directly to the thing that you have to use if there's something you have to use. In other words, if you need social media to have a small footprint in your life, build a wall around that footprint so that it barely affects your every day. I mean, Austin, I don't know if that's exactly what your issue is, but I know for a lot of people that is the issue. So I'm using this as an excuse to make that PSA for some people. This is a large category. Social media is going to

exasperate an existing issue to the point where its harms are far outweighing its benefits. So stop eating the digital bread here. Get more intentional about your life. Get some good in-person friends. Find ways to interact with them that are much more normal to the human experience and posting pictures and clicking little icons. And I think, Austin, you will find right off the bat that you will feel a little bit better about some of these issues.

And now to be clear, quitting social media is not necessarily a full cure for these particular insecurities. and if you find that self-doubt and fear of what other people think is still incapacitating, it's still getting in the way of you doing the things that you want to do with your life, you should also seek out some professional help, just like if your celiacs was really messing with your health. I would say, you got to get going with a doctor who's on top of this. Same thing.

If this is messing with your mental health, you got to get to someone who can help you with it. There are so many validated good, psychotherapeutic tools to help you address exactly this. I mean, they're so good that I'm like, oh man, do not ignore these possibilities you could be doing so much better. But my more general point is that

social media is probably feeding this. And so that is a good first step, even if it is not the only step you take. All right, with that in mind, let us move on to questions about the deep life. Nadim, For the past 20 years, I've been consistently watching NFL football on Sundays. My team this year, the Chicago Bears, have been horrible, and it finally made me decide to skip a few games.

I'm shocked at how much more time I have now. What are ways you have managed your interest in baseball without the time commitment of watching every game and commenting on forums? Well, Nadine, generally speaking, I'm a sports fan. I like following sports. I love the unscripted nature of the drama. I love the excellence. I love the discipline. I love the character arcs.

I love the intricate details. I became a baseball fan at MIT. At MIT, the Red Sox were a big deal. And I've stuck with that sport since. Now, I'll say my typical strategy with baseball, there's a lot of baseball going on in a given year. You know, they play almost every day. So my approach was always to carry a battery powered radio with me as I was doing various

child care duties. So my boys have a lot of memories of, you know, summer evenings where we're taking, you know, I'm giving them a bath or something like this. And there's Charlie and Dave on in the background on the radio. I would sort of just bring the radio with me as we were, you know, taking baths or preparing dinner and a lot of baseball listeners do something similar. It's a backdrop. But then I would also, you know, arrange in advance times where I want to listen to this particular game this afternoon or this evening. And I would try to convince my older boys to listen with me, but they can only last

so long. And I would try to occasionally make an event out of it. I like to listen to baseball outside. I want to be hot. I want to be a little bit sweaty when I'm listening to baseball. As I've written about on my blog before, I like to have a book with me. So I read. read during the commercial breaks. Or if we're in a pennant race, I read while our team is pitching sometimes because I can't take the stress. And then I'll listen when the other team is pitching because, hey, nothing bad can happen. Only good things can happen when your team is batting. And I'll occasionally put aside time to do that.

And you know what? I think that's fine, right? You occasionally put aside time for an activity. Otherwise, it's something that's sort of in the background or subordinated to other activities. So basically what I'm saying, Nadim, is I don't think it's the worst thing. if during the months that football season is going on, that most weekends you watch one game, your team's game. It's on Sundays, and it's a set time,

and your family kind of knows what that time is. I think that's fine, you know, especially if you're really into the team. I think it's good to have things like that to follow. I would probably avoid, you know, some people really just, really just hunker down on Sundays. We're going to watch all the games all day.

I don't think that's very productive, but to take two and a half hours for whatever it is, 16 Sundays. Yeah, I don't think that's the... I don't think it's the worst thing. Now, this might just be coming from someone who misses sports as really looking forward to the baseball season getting started again.

But I'm letting you off the hook here a little bit for having watched some Bears games during this last season. But you know what? Now that season's winding down. So make sure that you are aggressively reinvesting that time that you were spending watching games doing something else deep.

All right, Brando asks. I really like learning more. I often like learning about random areas of math just for fun or programming more for the fun of it. How can I learn more of these sort of things without burning out? Looking at the elaboration here, Brando is a computer programmer. So what he's saying is that his leisure activities are very similar to what he does for work. And he's worried about that being too much. Well, Brando, I'm not as worried as you are.

I think if you take a closer look at burnout, there's usually two causes for it. One is just an overload of cortisol and stress. Like it's just too hard. You're doing something that's so physically demanding. So like you're trying to launch your startup and you're working 15 hour days. You're doing that day after day. Eventually your body just can't take it. So you have a physical burnout.

The other type of burnout that's common is much more of a psychological burnout. This tends to come from a notion of or from the situation in which, you are, you're working on something that's hard, you know, it's demanding, and you do not feel like it's completely under your control or completely your choice. So really you look to intrinsic, extrinsic motivation theory. That can also cause a type of psychological burnout where it's not that your body has completely broken down, is that your brain is tired of doing this hard thing again and again that it's not fully on board for.

Now, I've talked about before on this podcast, a phenomenon of deep procrastination, which I used to observe among college students, especially college students at elite schools, where they felt pushed into a particular, let's say, course of study, or they've been pushed into a particular path of, I've got to go to this school and get these grades to get this job. They've been pushed into it by their community or their family or whatever, and the work is really hard. So they're doing this hard thing again and again. it's not that their body is breaking down, it's just that their mind gives up. It's like, I don't even like economics. And we're up late doing these problem sets again and again, and they can hit this psychological burnout

that I used to call deep procrastination in which they lose the ability to work. Their brain basically says closed for business. And there's a lot of ramifications of that as well. So, Brando, if your leisure pursuits are triggering neither of these issues, you're probably not going to burn out. right? So if you're not overtaxing yourself, you'll stand up real late working on programming,

and if it's something you want to do, it's fun. I'm programming a computer game in my spare time, even though I program information systems for my job, because I don't know, I like learning about programming computer games, or I like this type of math. You're not really at risk of burnout. That's not how it works. Burnout is not caused by lack of diversity of activity. So as long as you're doing these things, things because they're interesting to you and they're exciting and you are motivated to work on them. That's great. You have found something to do with your time outside of work that is exciting. You're motivated to work on and it's deep and interesting and so good. And if it begins to feel like a burden, if you're giving yourself really rigorous goals for your

math learning after work or something and you're staying up late to hit these goals and it begins to feel like a burden, then that's a problem. And you might want to change course. But for the most part, I'm not worried. I'm not worried, right? So as long as you're not running down your body or forcing yourself to do things with your free time that you don't want to do, you have a lot more give and flexibility there than you might assume. Kurt asks, what's the ultimate why for being productive? So let me start by saying, I'm not sure that I buy that question as a reasonable one in the first place. productivity is not an activity that is fully defined by itself. It's not a standalone activity.

To be productive is to seek strategies for being intentional about what you do with your time, energy, and intention to try to get more of what you want out of your limited supply of time and energy and attention. and there's various strategies and philosophies and system and techniques that can help you do this. The thing that matters, of course, in this equation is, well, what's the stuff you want? Productivity is just about helping you get more of the things you want, but the things that matter is what is it that you want. So to say, why bothering being productive, it's almost like saying to someone who, let's say, is talking a lot about how to keep your car maintained. And saying to them, why drive? What's with all this driving?

What's the point of all this driving? To which, of course, you would answer, well, because I need to get places. I need to get places that are important to me. I have to go get, you know, pick up my daughter from school and go to the store to get food and driving is how I get to these things that I need to do. And so, you know, I want to make sure that I keep my car running and don't waste too much money on it. I see productivity a similar way. In itself, makes no sense. It's an approach to trying to get more of the things that you want to get out of your time, out of your energy and out of your attention.

So now I think the issue here is that a lot of people mistakenly think of the term productivity synonymously with working more. So they think, okay, if I want to be more productive, what that means is I want to do more work. I want to produce more proverbial widgets, you know, sign up more clients, get more contracts, produce more whatever. And the question then you're asking is like, well, what's the point of just trying to do? more and more work. What's the point of life if all you're trying to do is more and more work? But I reject that definition of productivity. And again, I'm more general. Productivity is I've got these resources, time, energy, attention. I'm going to invest them into my life and get things back. Hey, maybe I should think about how I make that investment so I get more back of the things that I care

about. Now, someone who is really careful about productivity is not necessarily working more. In fact, they may be working much less because they realize, okay, for the various things I care about, I need like this much money. And I can get that really efficiently if I'm really careful about how I do it. So let me do my Tim Ferriss thing over here and I'll get four hours a week and kind of get that money. And then I also want to be really careful about I want more meaningful connection with people. That's a productivity issue. So maybe I want to design things around my life. So I spend more time around people I care about or interacting with people.

and I also care about contemplation. And so how do I make sure that I have like meaningful reading? And so I'm going to restructure the way I do my evening routine to make sure that I can sit there with my books. All of that is productivity. All of that is here's what I care about. How do I get a good return on these things? How do we get as much of these things into my life

given my limited budget of time, energy, and attention? Now for someone else, maybe what they care about is very centered in their professional sphere. and so as they're applying productivity ideas is they're really trying to emerge in that sphere and try to spend less time on the shallow and more time on the deep and making sure that they're making progress

and the things that matter and they're whatever, a neurosurgeon that's trying to innovate a new surgical approach and they want to make sure that they're doing that and they're making progress and they're going to make an impact on the world of medicine. That's productivity too.

But all of these issues fall under the umbrella of productivity. So either you're being intentional about your time, energy, attention, or you're not. and if you are, you care about productivity, and if you're not, you don't. Now, going back to the issue of people often thinking of productivity as being synonymous with just overworking or working more, I think that is a fair critique in the sense that this is where people often end up,

if they don't actually take the time to figure out the question of what is it I want to be doing? What is it that I value? What is it that I want to get more of into my life? If you don't spend time thinking about those issues, there's a couple defaults where people fall. And if you're on a kind of common white collar, middle class, college educated, knowledge work trajectory, you know, that answer is going to default probably to work.

I guess I'll work more. The one thing you have in your life where there's some obvious rewards and some structure, so I guess I'll work more. So in that sense, I think it's a fair critique. I think for other people in other stages of life or other circumstances, the default answers might be very different, but equally probably non-good or destructive for people.

So I think that's a fair critique that if you don't answer the question of what I want, productivity has nothing to work with. It's like having your car all souped up, but you've never figured out what errands do I need to run, and I guess you end up just driving aimlessly or just driving to the place you already know how to get to if I'm going to stretch that metaphor. So the key point then is when you say,

what's the ultimate why for being productive? the real question is, what's the ultimate why for what I'm trying to do with my life? Work on that. And then adopt a productivity mindset to be like, okay, then now how do I actually get after that? How do I actually get those things I care about? Obviously, the new year is a good time to be thinking about these issues. I highly recommend people spend this new year going through this exercise. I always talk about on the podcast of figuring out the buckets in your life,

the things that are, the areas that are important to you. You can use my default list, which kind of mutates over time and is needlessly alliterative with C's, but craft, Constitution, community, contemplation. I more frequently throw in celebration as well. So craft is like what you do for a living, what you create. Constitution would be your health, both mental and physical. Community is your family, your friends, the communities that you're involved in and your connection to them. The contemplation is theological, philosophical, and ethical foundations to your life. and celebration is being able to sort of like appreciate, pursue and have gratitude for like really cool or interesting or high quality things in the world, the kind of things that makes life rich.

You can have your own buckets. Those are the type of buckets I talk about, but kind of identify here's the things that matter. I typically recommend you tune up a keystone habit in each of those things, something that you do on a regular basis that you track. it's not super easy but is also tractable. It just signals to yourself, I take this bucket seriously and make sure that you have a foundation of activity in each of those buckets,

and then rotate from bucket to bucket, spend a month on each, and try to do some overhauls to that aspect of your life. Look, if you undertake this exercise now in January, you'll finish your first pass through overhauling all these buckets, let's say late spring,

which from a pandemic perspective, for example, will probably be a very optimistic good time to be emerging with your life overhauled, at least to some degree. I recommend doing this exercise at least once a year. I'm going through it again as we enter into this new new year, tuning up my keystones. I'm going to take these areas one by one in my life

and tune them up for the new year. This is the right time to do it. And, Kurt, you get this right. Here's my buckets. Here's what matters to me. Here's what I'm trying to do. you know, in each of these rebuild my life so that each of these buckets

is respected and represented, then productivity has a destination. Productivity has a use. Now suddenly to be productive is I'm trying to get the most out of my life. I'm trying to take the time, energy and attention that I have and build something deep with it.

So if you can figure out the answer to why productivity is useful. If you can't, I agree, Kurt, you're going to land on some sort of weird default that is going to be at best neutral and a waste of time and at worst going to be actively disruptive. So the question is not about whether you should be productive or not. It is what is the thing you are trying to be more productive for? What is the thing you're trying to do more productively? And I think now it's the new year, season to think about that.

It's the final grim push of the pandemic with brighter times ahead. this is the time to go through that exercise so that we come out on the other side of it running at full speed knowing what we're all about and really able to take advantage of all the things that get better as things get better.

So Kurt, I'm glad you asked that question. I rejected the initial form, but I understand the sentiment of it and it brought us to what I think is an important point for the new year and a good place to end this week's episode. So thank you everyone who submitted their

questions. Again, to figure out how to submit your own questions, go to Hal Newport.com slash podcast. I have all the instructions there. I'll be back later this week with a Habit-Tune-up mini episode. And until then, as always, stay deep.