Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 92: LISTENER CALLS: The Perils of Coercive Productivity

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Below are the topics covered in today's listener calls mini-episode (with timestamps). For instructions on submitting your own questions, go to calnewport.com/podcast. - Time block specificity (coercive versus collaborative productivity). [6:24]  - Balancing time spent on different types of work. [11:34] - Project priorities. [18:34] - Building a social life during a pandemic. [26:57] - Making use of unexpected free time. [33:27]Thanks to 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 a deep questions, listener calls mini-episode. Quick announcements. I'm in the process of renovating my studio, and that has gotten me thinking about forward evolution of the show. Now, I should actually be clear. When I say renovate my studio, what do I actually mean? Well, what I really mean is Intel now, because of the pandemic, I've been the only person. in my studio.

So I never actually finished setting up this studio. I just got it to a point where I had proper sound mitigation in my equipment there, but it is not fit for other human beings. I have egg crates taped to the wall. I have loose egg crates leaning against a door. I have some old furniture in here that I am storing. One wall is a bunch of gromited sound blankets hanging on a saggy post. So it's fine for me recording, and I can videotape myself because the background behind

me. I have lit professionally to be white. But I want to actually have people in the studio. So I'm going to actually have to finish that, right? So we're working on this. I'm finishing the studio, figuring out if I have room to videotape multiple people in the same room. This has got me thinking about evolving the format of the show. So here's one idea I had. I'm just going to throw it out there. Thoughts can be sent to interesting at calnewport.com. One thought I had going forward, especially now that I can have people in studio, is one episode type would be the Q&A.

So that's what you're used to for the most part, except for I would probably mix in just the voice calls and read questions all into one type of Q&A episode. A separate episode type in this vision would be deep dives. Now, sometimes this would be just me going deep on a topic of interest to us,

the type of things we talk about. But what I really want to do here, to the extent that is possible, is have people come in and do the deep dives with me. So here's a topic I'm interested in. Here's someone who can help me get into it, go back and forth and try to make some progress. In fact,

I would really love to have a sort of regular cast of characters that comes in frequently. Like, okay, we're going to talk about this. Let's try to figure this out, right? So that would be another episode type. And then there's this third type I've been toying with. It'd be more of a pain, but to occasionally do profiles in depth.

I don't need to actually call these, but bring people in studio when possible. who live interesting deep lives or go to them and really try to interview them not for their entire story but just to understand what that lifestyle is like and how they got there, the pros and the cons, just looking deeper at what it's like to live a deeper life

to have those type of case studies. I have this vision of perhaps even having musical cues and some Anthony Bourdain style narration that's inserted in there. Now those would be more of a pain to do, I think it would be fun to on occasion start to sprinkle those in as well. So that's what I'm,

thinking about now as I move forward to a point when I can have people actually come into the studio, that's the type of changes I have in mind for the podcast. All this is preliminary. I'm just brainstorming. Interested in your thoughts, you can send those to interesting at calnewport.com. Other quick announcement, sign up for my email list. As I mentioned recently, I've been told I should really be talking about this more. I have been writing this famed weekly essay since 2007. It goes to people on my email list, Calnewport.com, you can sign up for that email list.

If you like the show, you should sign up for that because that's also how I announce things that you might find interesting or relevant. All right, so we got a good show today. We got some questions from academics, but they hit at general productivity topics.

So some real bread and butter questions here about time blocking, a question about weekly planning, and a question about quarterly planning. So we're going to get into weeds on some deep productivity topics. We also have a few more general questions, topics like sociality during a pandemic, overthinking, etc.

So it should be a good show. Of course, Calnewport.com slash podcast if you want to learn how to submit your own questions. Before we get started, I want to briefly talk about one of the sponsors that makes my poorly decorated studio possible. And I am talking, of course, about Magic Spoon. You've heard me say it before. What do we associate more with childhood, especially those of us who grew one? up in the 1980s than having that treat cereal in the morning. Well, as adults, we feel like we

cannot indulge in such unhealthiness anymore. That is, until Magic Spoon came along and figured out how to make a treat-style cereal that was good for us. Magic Spoon cereal has zero grams of sugar, 13 to 14 grams of protein, and only four net grams of carbs need serving. Also only 140 calories of serving. It's keto-friendly, gluten-free, grain-free, soy-free, low-carb, and GM. free. The big news is that they have a new flavor. Limited edition. Birthday cake. Birthday Cake Magic Spoon is available in a special five pack for a limited time only, so get it while you can. And they do mean that. These limited edition flavors do tend to sell out, so get on that. You can also build your own variety box. Available flavors to build your very own custom bottle include cocoa, fruity, frosted, peanut butter, and cinnamon.

And if you're listening from Canada, good news. MagicSpoon now ships there as well. So go to magic spoon.com slash cow to grab this new limited edition birthday cake flavor or build a custom bundle of cereal. Be sure to use our promo code Cal at checkout to save $5 off your order. This offer is good anywhere in the U.S. or Canada, but you have to use that code Cal at checkout. MagicSpoon is so confident they have a 100% happiness guarantee.

So if you don't like the cereal for any reason, they will refund your money. No questions asked. So remember, get your next delicious bowl of guilt-free cereal at magic spoon.com slash cowl. And use that code Cal to get $5 off. And with that, we're off to the races with our first question of the episode. Hi, Cal. My name is Noah. Really enjoying the podcast so far.

I have a question for you about time blocking and planning for an input versus an output during a specific block of time. To translate this to your normal Greek mythology language, imagine I'm Hercules. One project I'm working on is to slay the hydra. For one day, I know that I need to prepare for the battle with the hydra, so I could put prepare for battle with hydra from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Alternatively, I could put something more specific with an actual deliverable, such as sharpened sword from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.

with the expectation that at 10 a.m. my sword is going to be sharpened. I definitely agree that this is probably a better strategy to get more work done because it forces you to be more focused during that time period. But how can you do this sort of strategy when it's a type of task or a task where the actual how of doing the task is not well defined and part of your time doing the task is trying to figure out what exactly you're doing and how to do it. Thanks. Hope you having a great day. Bye. Well, Noah, first, I think we can all agree that Hercules would have had an easier time

with his trials if he had been time-block planning his efforts. That is, as far as I'm concerned, to write. lesson of that particular Greek myth. Now, coming to your issue, I think a useful way of, to use your Greek terminology to cut through this Gordian knot, is to imagine what you're doing when you're creating a time block plan is having your current self collaborate with your future self. Let's do some work now as we're building our time block plan to help future meet and be more effective at getting done what needs to be done.

done. Now, when you're building a plan for your time, what you're really doing here is working alongside your future self. You're saying, hey, future self, you're going to be kind of locked into work as this day unfolds. Let's take off your plate the requirement to try to make decisions in the moment about what to work on next, because sometimes you'll make the right decision, but sometimes you won't. It's really difficult in the moment where there's all these inputs coming at you. You're getting increased cognitive fatigue. You're feeling overwhelmed. It's hard. It will be hard in those moments to make decisions. So I'll do it for you now. We'll kind of figure out what we want to do with our time and then you can really just get after it doing the work itself.

So that's a collaborative relationship with your future self. The other way that people sometimes try to use productivity systems is to set up a coercive relationship with their future self. I don't trust you future self to do the right work when it comes time to preparing for the hydra. You're going to try to get out of things. You're going to try to get out of things. going to slack off. So I'm going to be very specific. You need to get this done during this block. That sword has to be sharpened. There, now you can't escape what this block means. I have coerced you into doing what I think is the right thing. I am not a big fan of using productivity systems to try to coerce your future self. Right. So here is the real distinction. If you were putting down

sharpened sword in your prepare for the hydra in this example, time block. planning block because you're not sure if you're going to remember exactly what that means when you get there, then that's good. If you're doing it because you want to make sure that your future self does the right work, your planning system's not the right place for that coercion. That's an issue of discipline. Work is hard. Are you working on the right things? And then it's a discipline issue. Am I doing the work I need to do even though it's hard? That's a big issue, but it's not one you're going to solve with more specificists in your time blocks or with having a calendar, minder. I mean, look, that type of stuff can help, but discipline is a discipline issue.

Time management, time blocking, scheduling is not a discipline issue. It's a way to help your future self keep rolling and not have to waste too much memory remembering things or going over decisions again and again. So no, that's my suggestion. If you're afraid you're going to forget to sharpen your sword when you get there, yeah, put that down. This is why when you have an administrative block on your time block plan, you'll often list a bunch of to-does you want to get done. Because you might not remember, right? Like, I don't know. When I get there, am I really going to remember five or six to-do's I thought were likely or an important thing to fill that time. Probably not, so it's good to write them down. But when it comes time to prepare to battle, you know, the Hydra, you're not going to

forget, you probably aren't going to forget to sharpen your source. You don't need to put that down. All right. So let time block planning and your calendar and your scheduling systems, let that deal with you organizing your energy to make the best attack on what needs to be done. The issue of actually doing that work is a discipline issue. It's not something that any planner is going to solve for you. So that's a question on daily planning. Let's move up a little. bit in our daily, weekly, quarterly planning scales and do a question now about weekly planning. Hi, Cal, this is Joe. I'm a creative writer and academic at a small liberal arts school in the Midwest, and I got a Gordian knot for you about weekly plans. So I don't remember if it was in what book,

but you mentioned that there was an assistant professor that planned out their whole week based on how many hours they're willing to give to each activity so that they would still have time for their family. So, for example, 10 hours to research, 10 hours of writing, and then maybe 30 hours to classes and service obligations. I thought that was pretty cool, and I've been using it for a long time, but it's stress-inducing because it's never enough time and all that. I've tried using workfully as well to keep it to specific tasks. So let's say I'm working on this project, here all the tasks. And then as the day comes,

I've been beginning to use your daily time block planner in order to block office say, this is what I'm doing. But what I'm finding is with using your time block planner, I can't really conceptualize how many hours over the course of the whole week that I'm doing something. So I just would like to know what sort of advice do you have as far as like blocking out hours throughout the week

or should we always approach it, by day except for obligations like meetings. Thanks. Well, Joe, I like this general idea of trying to figure out how much time or what percentage of your time you want to be spending on the various major roles in your professional career, then working backwards to say, am I doing that? And if not, how do I get there? I think that's a very useful, that's a very useful exercise. It can happen in many different, many different jobs with many different roles. On academia, when you do this exercise,

typically your big three roles is teaching service and research in a different job. It might be different. You know, management versus copywriting versus administrative tasks, or whatever the roles are in your job. This is generally a good thing to do. So how do we do this role-based time allocation? How do we succeed with this strategy?

Well, first you have to figure out what your targets are, what are reasonable targets? And one way to help figure this out is to actually go back and look at time block plans from the last few weeks and actually go in there and measure. All right, how much time am I currently spending in different types of roles? You know, how much time am I spending on teaching related things if you're a professor? How much time in research? How much time doing service or administrative work? Like figure out what the numbers are and then say, where do I want to be? So now you're ground. these initial targets in data and a reality check, right?

So that you're not just abstractly saying, you know what? I am a creative writing teacher at a small liberal arts institution, and I only want to spend a quarter of my time teaching. Good luck. You probably have a heavy course load. That's going to be a lot of your time. So by facing the real data, you can be ambitious, but your ambition is going to be grounded in the reality of your role.

All right. So now you have some tentative targets. What do you do here? Well, you don't just start timing during the week and say, oh, I've hit my quota. Let me switch over to something else. Now, what I would suggest doing instead is trying to preallocate time on your calendar for the week for these different types of roles. So if there's a certain amount of research you want to get done, you might want to say, let me block off this time. And I might want some sort of consistent scheduling strategy.

Every morning I start at 8.30 and for two and a half hours do research or I do it all day Friday or whatever it is, right? starting to think a little bit ahead of time, a little bit intentionally about time allocation. To say, where can I fit in and protect the time I want to put aside for this role? Do the same thing in a professorial role for teaching. Well, here's my classes and here's my office hours. Here's when I'm going to prep these classes. Like, actually, you know what the work is going to be each week. Let's start finding time for it, moving things around on the calendar.

Okay, and here's what's left for service, etc. So do some pre-allocation to see you get used to and make some intention about where am I actually going to do this work? Now you actually go out there and try to execute. Now, let's say that you are not getting what you want done, done. Let's say, for example, some of these things are taking more time than you allocated, or when you're trying to allocate, there's not enough time left over for what you want to do. You put in all your teaching time, all the office hours, all the prep, you put in your committees,

you put in time just to wrangle email and all the other administration, and you see there's no time left for you to do research, right? So maybe you just can't find time, or you put aside. time for some of these big roles and it's not enough time. Other things take longer. Now comes to task of saying, how do I make things fit? And so here you can start by throwing productivity hacks or rules or tips or philosophies at the work. Okay, so let me take the work I have and make it more efficient so it fits into a smaller footprint. Start to get, for example, really intentional about your classes, how you interact with your TAs and the student

how assignments are handed, like things you can do that does not diminish the quality of the pedagogy but reduces time. You're using trello boards and ticketing systems and updating your processes. There's less unscheduled messaging and therefore less context shifting like I talk about in my book, rolled without email. You do what you can do. It reduced a footprint of the work on your plate. I would say things are still taking too much time. Then you eliminate, right? I have a very reasonable quota of service. I'm blowing past it. I have to start. saying no to more things. And if people ask why, it is because I have this very large quota of service that I'm trying to do, and I'm very efficient. I listen to Cal Newport.

I do all those things. And I'm still, it's blowing through my quota. So yeah, I'm just going to have to say no and let the awkward silence stand. I'm not going to say, but if you really need me to or maybe I can help a little bit, just no, I'm sorry, I can't do it. All right. So productivity followed by elimination to try to get things to fit these targets. It's a period of experimentation. You do not forever need to be constantly blocking all of this time on your calendar, but I don't think it's a bad idea to block the regularly occurring things. This is when I prep. This is my office hours. This is when I catch up on my emails. You kind of get into these rhythms of when these things happen, especially in a job like academia that doesn't have a lot of

unexpected large reactive work. There's no client emergencies, no litigation that suddenly goes to court two weeks early. So you can be a little predictable about it. But you don't have to have all of this time always blocked in your calendar, but that's a good way to get started. What do I want to do for each of these? What's reasonable? Where am I going to find that time? Why am I falling short of those targets and how can I get closer? All right.

So having just done a question on time blocking, which is daily planning. And then a question, roughly speaking, on weekly planning, it's only fair that we finish this particular collection of queries with one on quarterly plans. Hi, Cal, this is Danielle. I'm a research scientist at an R1 university, and I have a question about quarterly planning. I've been doing weekly plans and daily time block planning and found these to be extremely helpful, but I'm struggling with quarterly planning. I easily identify two priority tasks that need to get completed in a quarter, typically one grant proposal and finishing one academic paper. So that's good. But then I look at all my other projects and commitments and get overwhelmed.

There seem to be more things there than I can make progress on over a quarter, yet I can't can't justify leaving anything off the quarterly plan. And at this point, I get stuck. Any advice you have on how to get unstuck would be much appreciated. Thank you. Well, Danielle, it sounds like when it comes to projects and obligations that exist at the semester or quarterly level, you are distinguishing between two different classes. So there's the class of projects that you find to be really important. So your examples there were research papers and grants. And then there's this whole other category of other types of you call them projects and obligations to fall on your plate that you can't really get out of or you feel

like it would be hard to get out of, but eats up all the time. It makes it hard to get to that first category. You seem to be treating these as two different categories because you didn't just say, I have a lot of projects on my list for the quarterly plan. I don't know how to I don't know how to narrow them down. And so I don't get everything done. You did clearly distinguish these sort of important non-urgent projects from everything else, which makes sense. With professors, just like with many other jobs, often the things that move the needle are important but non-urgent. There's no one directly asking you, hey, where is this peer-reviewed paper you're working on? Hey, where's the grant application? Right? So that it's non-urgent in the sense that

there's not a deadline or someone pushing you on it, but it's at the absolute core of your professional success. This is a classic quad two problem. to use Eisenhower matrix references. But what I would suggest you do is all these projects should be on your quarterly plan. There's nothing you should be on the hook for that's not written down. You're not looking at every week

when you make your weekly plan. But when you make your weekly plan, put aside the time for the important slash non-urgent projects first. When am I working on my paper this week? What progress I want to make? Oh, am I working on the grant now? What progress do I need to get done this week? When am I going to get that done?

put aside that time first. And then look at all the other stuff, the stuff that falls on your plate, the committees, your chair, everyone's asking you this vice dean wants you to do that, what have you, and say, okay, let me do my best with that as well. To use investment terminology,

it's like your important but non-urgent tasks are your Class A shareholders. They're going to get paid first when the business makes money. And then, and if and only in the business makes money, will those other tasks, your metaphorical class B investors will then get their returns. Now this will put a back pressure forcing function on the other types of projects and tasks are eating up your time. You're now squeezing them in the less time. And if you're still chronically

not getting things done, well, what suffers are those tasks, those projects, those obligations. And that back pressure can help motivate you to say no more to take more off your plate, to call uncle. This is how it works in academia. Basically, people are overloaded until they call uncle, at which point people allow them to back off a little bit. So you need to make that point of uncleness clearer and not pay too much penalty on your way to getting there. So that's what I would say. Do the critical stuff first

and then try to make the other things fit to the best that you can. Now, to some degree, this is just fixed schedule productivity thinking, having less time for those urgent but not important projects. We'll just force you to be more efficient about them so you can actually maybe just get more done in less time. but also again, it's a back pressure issue. I don't have enough time left to get this done. I'm not going to stay up and work every night.

I'm not paid for that. So, no, I can't do this committee. No, I can't do this. I'm taking this off my plate, right? So I would recommend this, I think, in many different business situations. When looking at your quarterly plan as you build out your weekly plan, treat the obligations differentially. The stuff that is at the core of your success in your professional life,

give that their due and then scramble to do what you can with everything that remains. I want to take a moment to talk about one of our sponsors. Optimize. Optimize is a subscription service run by my longtime friend Brian Johnson. It is aimed simply put at helping you live a deeper life.

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That stamps.com promo code deep. Stamps.com never go to the post office again. All right, let's do a pivot now from some hardcore productivity questions to something that's a little bit more in the digital minimalism domain. Hi, Cal. Recently, I've been rereading your book, Digital Minimalism, and I've been trying to do a digital declutter after a couple of failed attempts. But right now, the issue that I've been struggling with is that living alone during the pandemic, I don't really have many ways to fulfill my social needs. I've recently graduated college, and so many of my friends and I have been in a very time. adjusting to our new life situations and don't really have time for long phone calls or meetups.

And I haven't found any clubs or meetups that meet safely or frequently enough to satisfy those needs. I found that I was able to partially satisfy those needs using things like Reddit and Discord to discuss TV shows with other people online as it is airing live or talk about niche interest. But being on those platforms for a long time makes me antsy and anxious. But when I do the digital declutter, I get frustrated in losing the social aspects of being connected online and eventually give it up. However, I do find that during my attempts to declutter, I'm able to make time for other satisfying hobbies that I haven't been able to do before. Do you have any advice for what I should do? Or am I just being hard on myself during this temporary situation?

Sociality, especially at your age, is very important. So I'm glad you brought it up, and I'm glad that you're concerned about. it. And this is something that you want to give the same type of intense attention that you would give to, let's say, your physical health if you were feeling like you were sick or really out of shape or unhealthy. This is similarly important. It requires a similarly intentional and intense focus. Now, there's two aspects of sociality that are relevant here, digital and analog. You touched on both. Let's touch on both now in our response. When it comes to the digital element of sociality, The digital minimalism philosophy is the right approach here.

That is, once you've recognized that, okay, my social life is important, connecting to other people is important, ask and answer the question, what are the best ways to use existing technologies to amplify or support this thing I care about? And once you've answered that question, very importantly, be happy missing out on everything else, right? So you're actually circling this proper digital approach. You talked about intentionally choosing certain things you do in the digital realm that you feel like can give you a boost of sociality, right? So maybe I'm on a Discord server that's dedicated to a particular TV show. I watch that show live while I'm on that server and I can connect and talk

to a lot of people about that show. It's a fantastic example of digital minimalism in action. Right, here's a specific thing that does really well. Now, because you know why, you're using that Discord server in this example, you can also place guide rails around it. I see, this is helping me because there's a group I talk to when this show is on, but that's just what I'm going to use the server, no other time. The issue people have is when they just, in a blanket sense, say, well, technology will help me socialize, so just in general I'm going to use social-related technologies, and they find themselves up for hours yelling with people on Twitter or numb scrolling on Instagram or swipe, swipe, swiping through TikTok to numb themselves

or distract themselves. And that's what you want to avoid. So you want to say, I'm using this tech for this reason. Great. If another tech was not assigned a particular reason to use it, I am by default going to ignore it. So you're kind of doing the right thing there. Just keep that intention sharp. these technologies, it's a Reddit board, it's a Discord server,

maybe there's a long-tail social media platform you can join, these technologies are really helping when I use them in this way, and so I use them in this way, and I get a lot out of it, but I don't use them outside of it, and I ignore the other technologies that aren't these target tech, right? So that's the right way to integrate digital tools into your sociality right now. If done right, the cost-benefit ratio is going to be heavily in your advantage.

Then there is the analog nature of sociality, you absolutely have to have it. You cannot substitute a purely digital social life for it. You need to be talking to people analog, hear their voice. You need to sacrifice non-trivial time and attention on behalf of people that you care about. You need to be of service to other people in groups. You need to see people in the real world in person. I don't buy the claim that right out of college, you don't have time for phone calls or to spend time with people. If that's the case, then you need to stop doing some of the other things to take up that time. It's that important.

If you told me, look, I don't have time to eat and I'm wasting away. I would say, well, then you need to change what you're doing so that you do have time to eat. The same thing you should be thinking about sociality. I know it is hard, right? It is hard to figure out how to spend time with people, but it's worth the effort. That's the main point I want to encourage here. Don't give up just because you went to meetup.com and didn't find something nearby. You got to stay at this.

You need to make a non-trivial amount of time and energy to be invested in being around other people. Joining thing is a good way to do it. If you have friends in the area, you need a regular Audi. We go for a walk. We go for a bike ride. We have coffee. We do happy hour drinks on this day at this place. This is our routine.

Get back to going to movies with people. Or if you're in the food, going to different food. Look, I don't know what country you're in, but if you're in the U.S., no matter where you are, if you're not vaccinated, you can be vaccinated really soon. get that done and get back out there, right? So what I want to underscore here is, yeah, it's hard. This is hard work that you need to do. So to summarize, especially at your age, especially if you're living alone for the first time,

sociality has to be one of the most important things on your radar. Be very intentional and minimalist in your digital sociology. Find some big wins. Optimize those big wins, but don't get caught up in unrelated tech. And then really put an effort now, make it one of your primary focuses, is regular time with analog interaction with people that I care about every single week. Get that in place. That's going to be a key foundation.

That's going to be a key foundation for kicking off a life out of college with a foundation of depth. All right. We're running a little long here, but let's try to squeeze in one more question and I'll try to keep my answer quick. Hi, Cal. My name is Sarah, and I'm an anatomic pathologist. I work in academia like you do.

I was wondering how you handle having a sudden gift of time when a meeting is canceled or a project runs shorter than you expected it to take. Obviously, this doesn't happen a whole lot. But I find that if I have a whole hour back, I know how to reappropriate that time. But when I find myself with an unexpected 15 to 30 minutes, I struggle with how to use that time without getting distracted through the Pandora's box of email. All right. This is a good question. you are absolutely right that if you come across an unexpected relatively small block of time, if you don't have a plan, it's very hard to fill.

And what most people do is they either fall back on distraction or hive mind. So they either fall back on, let me just jump on to social media and see something that's going to press some emotional buttons, or let me jump on the email or slack and continue playing proverbial conversational ping pong with all these messages coming back and forth. both of these things can be quite draining. It's quite a draining use of that time

because emotionally salient information or information that is tied to things that other people need from you, which is what you see in an inbox or on a Slack channel, induce really severe cognitive context shifts. They're going to be difficult to come back from 15 minutes later when you move on to your next task.

So I would say your time for, let's say, email and Slack is scheduled and batched and you pay that context shifting price when you pay it, don't fill in your breaks with it. Same thing. If you want to take a long time and go on social media and check up whatever it is you like to do on social media, like put aside time for that,

like your lunch break or whenever it is, and don't have it be a slow drip throughout the day. It can make you more tired, make you more fatigued, make your work actually more difficult to do. So what should you do with this time instead? Well, you really have two options. One, you can just speed things up. Great, let me just jump to the next block.

I'll jump to the next block early. Now I have more time for that block. So if it runs long, it's not a problem. And if I get that done early, then I can jump to the next block early or move a later block back to the space. And let's maybe get our whole day done earlier, shut down complete, more completely unencumbered relaxation once our day is done. And we can shut down that part of our mind. The other option is deep breaks. So have not a standing task to work on, but a standing break.

that you enjoy to engage in when you have these unexpected gifts of free time. As I've talked about before, what makes a break good is if you don't press those emotional salency buttons and you don't press those exposure to unresolved needs from other people button. So no social media, no email, have a book or magazine you're reading, have a walking route you go on, go to a coffee shop you like to go to get a certain type of coffee. Have something you enjoy doing. It's not really related to your work. He doesn't press. those buttons that create hard contact shifts and just enjoy when you get extra time to engage in those particular quality leisure style activities.

All right, let's wrap up this listener calls mini episode here. Thank you everyone who submitted their questions. Go to calnewport.com slash podcast to figure out how you can submit your own questions. We'll be back on Monday with our next whole length episode of the Deep Questions podcast. And until then, as always, stay deep.