The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 316: Cal Newport - How To Choose A Focused Life In A Noisy World

Episode Date: June 23, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk #316: Cal Newport - How To Choose A Focused Life In A Noisy World Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University who studies the theory of distributed systems. In addition to his academic work, he writes about the intersection of technology and culture.Cal is the author of six books, including, most recently, the New York Times bestseller, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World.  Join us for our annual Personal Excellence workshop. Go to www.RyanHawk.me for details Full shownotes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com "Be unambiguously good at something important. Head's down with an apprenticeship mindset." Show Notes: Leaders who sustain excellence = They know what matters and get after it They are not easily distracted... They have the ability to be intensely focused on the task at hand at a tactical level Train to be so good they can't ignore you Concentrate intently -- Introverts are happier doing this.  But it's also a trainable skill. Cal's background: theoretical computer science computation group - Focus and master on a small number of things How to be "so good they can't ignore you?" They want a secret formula.  That's not how it works.  It's not about a life hack.  "The reality is simpler... 'Be relentlessly good at something valuable.' Deep Work = Focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.  This skill is more valuable.  It's how you learn complicated things and produce at a high level. Culture-wise - We are getting worse at deep work We need to be able to be locked in to produce something valuable for work... Deep work can also be personal development.  There is overlap. Digital Minimalism Unexpected consequences of technology = Our attention is captured by glowing screens Phones = Completely banish solitude.  We are never alone with our own thoughts anymore. Do one or two things a day without your phone.  Force solitude. Why do we have a compulsive need to look at our phone?  Social media has been engineered to do this... Junk food is built the same way.  Cal has never had a social media account. A 30 day digital declutter: Be away from optional technology for 30 days. Detox -- Give yourself time and space to see what you value outside of work.  Then ask, "What technology do I want in my life?" What's the best way to use technology? For someone who loves Twitter (like me) for the gathering of interesting people? Create a curated reading list from Twitter.  Click all the useful links to articles, then block out time to just read those. The power of going on walks: "I walk a lot.  That's how I think." Walking with no phone -- It creates reflection, insight, thinking.  Do walking meetings. Get sun - get outside.  It's a form of 'productive meditation.' Focus on a single problem for that walk Thoughts on Kliff Kingsbury building in time every 30 minutes for his players to check their phones? "This is not good.  Concentration matters.  Especially in football." Use the "Get To Know You Document" Why joining The Learning Leader Circle is a good idea

Often people who've had a lot of this success happen, we'll try to look back and maybe they'll start pulling out sort of secret formulas. Well, this seemed important, this seemed important. But really the thing that made all those things pop up in the first place was they're unambiguously good at something rare and valuable. So you figure out what really moves the needle in my industry, in my company, in my division. What's the thing that's really, really important? And then you say, how can I train and get better at that, like a chess player gets better at chess or a professional musician gets better at music? How can I deliberately improve myself and be so good? I can't be ignored.

Do that. All the other good things you're looking for will follow. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 44222 also. Some updates on how to become part of my book launch team if you text learners to 44222.

Now on tonight's featured leader of the great Cal Newport is back. He's an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University. Also a writer focuses on the impact of technology on society, the author of six books. One of my favorites, so good they can't ignore you. Then he wrote Deep Work, and his most recent is called Digital Minimalism. A few of the topics that Cow and I discussed. The counterintuitive way to get promoted at work. then how and why to do a 30-day digital declutter, and then more importantly, what to do next.

Then why alone time is so important and the scientific benefits of going on long walks. Ladies and gentlemen, as always with Cal, this one is so good. It's Cal Newport. All right, Cal, welcome back on the Learning Leader Show. It's been three years since we last talk. It's crazy, man. Yeah, I was telling you off the show. I still wear the Learning Leader T-shirt I have from you with pride.

I love it. I think I probably have a newer version, so I'm going to have to send you another one after we get done with this one. But I appreciate you spreading the good word. But to get us going, Cal, we have talked before, but there's so much this happened since then. And I've even structured the show a little bit differently since we last spoke. But I'm curious from your perspective. You are someone I really look up to as far as you're able to focus and, you're able to focus. and study and learn from high performers from people who I would say sustain excellence.

And when you think about the commonalities among those people, those who sustain excellence, what have you found that are some of the things they all seem to have in common? Well, they know what matters and they get after it, and they're pretty good at blocking out everything else, right? And so they have a pretty good evidence-based understanding of this is what moves the needle for the things I care about. And then they go after that relentlessly. Like, that's what I want to do. I want to do that hard.

I want to do that better. I want to get better. And they're not easily distracted by all of the other sort of shiny bibles that are pulling out their attention or saying, hey, you might get a little benefit out of this. Or maybe this will be useful. Or why don't you just explore this? There is just a sort of intense focus at both the sort of tactical level, like what they're doing when they're doing when they're work and at the career strategic level of what they actually choose to work on. Where does that come from?

Because you obviously have this. And we're going to get into your story here for those who don't know it yet. But does this a learned behavior slash trait slash skill? Do some people have this more innately in them? I'm curious about this because if this is the superpower here, I would hope that we can find a way to develop this in all people who may be listening? It seems to me that at the strategic level, right? So when it comes to this idea that you want to take a small number of things and be so

good you can't be ignored in those things, that's pretty much training, right? I mean, who are your mentors? What have you been exposed to? Have you been taught sort of the right model of people in this field? This is how they do it. This is why professional athletes who are involved in athletics from a young age and are very heavily coached and mentored all have a really clear understanding. of, okay, I really need to focus on X, Y, and Z in my sport, right?

At the tactical level, like the ability to actually concentrate really intensely, then it gets more complicated. So there's certainly some people who are just naturally wired to be better at it. Introverts, for example, are also more happy doing it sometimes than extroverts. And so there are some actual differences. But I've also noticed that at the tactical level, just focusing on something in front of you, is also something that's really trainable so you can get better at it. So the way I like to think about is at the tactical level, there's a complicated mix of who you are and what work you've done.

At the strategic level, this idea that you've got to put all your chips in on a small number of things, that's almost all experience mentorship and coaching. How have you developed this? So, I mean, for me, coming up as a theoretical computer scientist, right? So what I do professionally outside of writing is I solve theorems. And I did my graduate training at the theory of computation group at MIT. And if you're at the Theory of Computation Group at MIT, I mean, this is a place where focusing on a small number of things that you are going to master and be the best in the world, that's the whole game. That's all you're exposed to. And, of course, at the tactical level, they're all incredible concentrators as well.

But in that environment where I came up in, that was just really natural. Like, you're not going to worry about social media or network or anything else, right? In that group, it's like, we want to be the best in the world at thinking about these type of things. We each want to have our specialty. And so just through a fluke of my professional choices, I was exposed to some of these ideas pushed to an extreme, right? So I knew about them before I started looking at how do they apply more broadly. So there's a great quote. You've already briefly mentioned it in passing.

It's a video I've shared a bunch and it came because of reading one of your books. Steve Martin was asked by, I think somebody who wanted to, like, guess have a career like his. You know, how do you, how do you get an agent or how do you make it? And he said they were all asking the wrong questions. And the quote he used was, you got to be so good. They can't ignore you. And you, I assume, loved that quote enough to make it the title of one of your bestselling books.

Can you share more about how that applies to the current person who's listening, Cow may be a mid-level manager and a big company who really wants to progress. Maybe they even want to be the CEO of a billion-dollar company. And they see a lot of others around who want the same thing and they feel like it's competitive and it's tough, but they also obviously want to lead their team and their people. And I've used that quote when I get that advice. But I'd love to hear from the guy who wrote the book about it. What advice you'd give to that person at that level with those types of ambitions? Well, I think Martin's advice really applies to that situation quite analogously to the entertainment

industry, which is what he was originally talking about. The way he described it is that when people would ask him, how do I make it? What they were looking for was the secret formula, right? Well, this is the right way to find an agent, and then you need to find a niche this way, and then you need to get exposure by being whatever. Like, work these clubs over here. You're more likely to get notice, like some secret formula. do these combination of things and it'll all break out.

And he said, that's not how it works. What you need to do is just be so good you can't be ignored. And his follow-up was, and if you do that, I just think good things will come. Well, that applies almost everywhere, right? We have a kind of a hack, like a life hack, work hack culture out there that tells us, you know, if you could just get the right combination of hacks going on in your career, the formula will come together and good things will start happening. But the reality is it's actually like simpler to understand harder to. to execute, which is you just want to be unambiguously good at something that's rare and valuable. And that's hard.

You need to relentlessly work to get there. But if you can be so good, they can't be ignored, Martin is absolutely right. Lots of good things start happening. And then you might look back and say, oh, you know, trying to understand how all these good things happened. Often people who've had a lot of this success happen, we'll try to look back and maybe they'll start pulling out sort of secret formulas. Well, this seemed important or this seemed important.

But really the thing that made all those things pop up in the first place was they're unambiguously good at something rare and valuable. So you figure out what really moves to do. needle in my industry, in my company, in my division. What's the thing that's really, really important? And then you say, how can I train and get better at that, like a chess player gets better at chess or a professional musician gets better at music? How can I deliberately improve myself and be so good?

I can't be ignored. Do that. All the other good things you're looking for will follow. So that person who is in that mid-level position, it's, I think, a deep, intense focus on being excellent at that role. If you're leading a team, it's being great at that. And I had a mentor tell me that he had risen the ranks. He was at an SVP level when he said this.

And so he started as an individual contributor level. So, you know, multiple levels of promotion. I said, what was your planning like? How did you make this happen? And he goes, you know what, man? I really put my head down at each and every role. And every once in a while, I got tapped on the shoulder. And they would say, we think you'd be good.

good to do this. And then I would do that. And then I would, I would do the same thing. I would try to be great at that. And then they'd get tapped on the shoulder. And that's still going to this day. And that's what I feel like is really the essence, the definition for that person listening in that position of being so good, they can't ignore you. Yeah, that's it. It's, it's this like heads down apprenticeship type mindset. And just lots of good things are attracted to unambiguous value. There's, there's a hunger for unambiguous value. If you can do it. something really well, there's a hunger for that within your organization, within your industry, you know, within the economy more generally. It really is like a superpower is I figure out,

and the key to this, by the way, is being honest about what it is that it actually, you're actually measured, like what it is that it actually means to do well, right? It's easy to come up with some metrics that capture what you want to do, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's what's valuable. So facing those unambiguous metrics, like, no, it's actually going to be revenue, right, or whatever, dollars of revenue that this group brings in and I need to double it. You know, that would be unambiguously valuable. And then maybe you have to face that reality and then say, well, what's it going to take to do that? And then you get into put the head down type crime mode. So you're honest about what really matters, not what you want to matter. And then you go after it. And the reason why I think people don't like this advice is because it's really hard and it's also very simple. You know, it's both the simplistic answer that isn't a hack. There is no formula. But it's about being great at that one aspect of your work, of whatever it is you are doing. And that led from that, I think in the past I've asked you, well, then how do you be so good they can't ignore you at a specific task?

And the interesting thing is for your career and certainly at least from your writing career. One of the ways to do that is to be able to focus. and there's a book called Deep Work. People who have been in my keynote sessions, you've seen this book as a slide from time to time. It's yellow. It says deep work on it and it's the ability to focus on a codomely demanding task. And that's what you wrote next.

Can you share more about what deep work means and why it's so important in order to be so good they can't ignore you? Right. See, that causality there is exactly right. So, you know, 2012, I published So Good They Can't Ignore You. It's about that strategic level focus in your career. The feedback I got from that book was, okay, great, but then how do I do that? So once I figure out what's really important, how do I become so good, I can't be ignored. So that led right to Deep Work, which came out in 2016.

And Deep Work was a big part of the answer of this is how people get really good at unambiguously valuable things. And so as you mentioned, Deep Work is my term for the activity. in which you are focused without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. And so the without distraction part that's really important. This means you're locked in on something

and you're not even glancing at a phone. You're not even glancing at an inbox, right? All you're doing is focusing on this one thing really hard. The argument I made in that book is that this skill is becoming more valuable. In general, in the knowledge economy, it is becoming more valuable because it turns out this is how you learn complicated things.

So if you're in a fast-moving industry like most of us are, the better you are at concentrating intensely, the better you are at quickly pick it up new complex things. It's also how you produce at a high level. So if you want to be so good they can't be ignored, you probably better be good at concentrating. It's how you actually produce at high levels of quantity and quality output with your brain. So this skill is becoming more important as the knowledge economy becomes more competitive and as we automate and outsource more of the sort of more rote activities in the economy. But at the same time that's becoming more valuable, we're getting in general as a culture worse at it because of some unintended consequences of

new technologies like low friction communication channels like email and slack, purposefully addictive, digital entertainment like social media, etc. It's making us worse at concentrating. And so it's a supply and demand problem. The skill is becoming more valuable so the demand is going up at the same time that is becoming more rare so as the supply is going down. So econ 101 says the price on that's going to be really high. And so not only is Deep Work the way to actually engage with the quest to become so good that can't be ignored you, because of these dynamics, it's also being really overvalued by our economy right now.

So if you're one of the few to really cultivate this ability, the when you're going to get the advantage is going to be sort of disproportionately large. One of the questions I've got about Deep Work, Cow, as I've shared your work, and maybe the answer is both. but the question is, is this, do you mean focus on a project or a task at work that I need to get done? Or focus on me time, self-development, reading, listening to podcasts, watching TED talks, consuming information to get smarter, wiser, or perhaps it is both. Or that could be broken down. When you think of deep work, how do you balance between those like, I got this work project that I've got to get done versus, this self-development time that needs to be blocked on the calendar daily? So when I was thinking about deep work, I was really thinking about the professional context

where you were directly producing value with your brain in that moment. So I'm locked in on using my brain to produce something valuable. So I'm working out, I'm writing the memo, working out the report, I'm working out the new business strategy, writing the new chapter of the book. I'm actually right now using my brain to produce a little. something valuable or learning something really complicated. So I'm learning a new programming language. I'm learning a new suite of business software tools, things that are directly important and they're complicated and I have to concentrate to learn it. And so that can overlap development

in the sense that if what you're doing is learning something complicated that's directly going to help your career, the ability of deep work is absolutely crucial. So even if it's, I'm reading this book on statistics because I need to understand how to do these things for our new big data suite of tools or something like this, deep work's going to help you there. Because that is place where intense concentration is going to allow you to pick this thing up much faster and you're going to get big advantage out of it. But then there's this whole other suite of behaviors, which is, well, there's just relaxing, recharging, doing the activities that revitalize you outside of work.

And that's really the territory that we'll probably get to in a little bit. That's really the territory that the new book actually tries to cover. Yeah. Let's go to that. So chapter four and your newest book, Digital Minimalism, choosing a focused, life in a noisy world. Chapter 4 is titled, Spend Time Alone. Can you expand? Right. So to set the context for this new book, basically to put all the trajectory, 2016 Deep Work comes out. It's about these sort of unintended consequences of tech in the workplace, what to do about it.

One of the big pieces of feedback I was getting from readers is, okay, maybe I buy that premise, but what about the unexpected consequences of technology in our life outside of work? But like what's happening when we're not working? We're just, we're with our family, with our friends, we're alone. We're just sort of our life outside of work. There was this growing sense that it was becoming impoverished because of how much of our attention outside of work was being captured by these little glowing screens that we're holding in our hands. So people are getting uneasy about it. So I wrote this book about here's the problem.

Here's a potential solution. One of the things I talk about in that book, and this is chapter four that you're mentioning, is that an unexpected consequence of having smartphones. So ubiquitous access to the internet with us at all times of the day is that it made it possible for the first time in human history to completely banish solitude from your daily experience, by which I mean just time alone with your own thoughts. So you can now at every single moment that you're not doing something have this phone deliver you some sort of input that was generated by other minds.

And what we're learning is that this is actually really bad for the brain. I mean, if you're alone all the time and alone with your own thoughts all the time, you're going to become lonely. It's no good, right? people don't like that. But if you have no moments during a typical day where it's just you taking in the world around you alone with your own thoughts, it's not healthy for the brain. And it makes people anxious. It also cuts down their ability to have professional and personal development, spontaneous insights. It basically just impoverishes the experience of life.

And so this was an unintended consequence of making smartphones so appealing. But I really argue that we need to be wary of that and perhaps artificially reintroduce regular moments of solitude into our daily experience. How do we do this? It's where most of us have some form of an addiction. I'll all explain. So leading up, we've had this scheduled for a while for us to talk. And one of the things I noticed is that I don't look at my phone while I'm driving,

but I always look at my phone when I'm at a red light, always. And it was, it was, I didn't even think. It became a habit. And I thought of it because I was thinking about you in this book and reading it and getting ready for our talk. I thought, let me just try a one week experiment where instinctually I'm going to reach from my phone to check whatever, Twitter or something at the stoplight to check that to learn about the most recent news or an article that somebody may have published, which is the primary reason I use Twitter to learn. But I'm not going to do it for the week leading up to this conversation. and it's amazing how I messed up, how hard it was, how I failed without even thinking, and how I had to be super intentional about leaving the phone kind of in the charger or the cup holder or wherever at the red lights when, you know, you're just sitting there waiting.

And so I'm curious like what your research shows about this and how we can, are there some ways that we can get better at this? than just saying, don't pick up the phone, don't pick up the phone when you're at the red light or wherever you may be. Well, there's a small and a big issue there. So the small issue of just what's the easiest way to get some solitude back into your life is just do one or two things a day where you don't have your phone with you at all. And it doesn't have to be long things, but like I'm going to go to the laundry. I'm going to go to the drug store. On my commute today, I'm going to keep the phone in my bag in the back of the car. Do a couple things each day where you literally don't have your phone with you and enforce solitude, right?

So that solves the problem. but there's the bigger issue, which is why do we have this compulsive need to look at the phone? Why is it when we're driving, your kids are in a car, and a text message comes in, why do you look at it? Like, even though you know rationally, it's not that important that you see it right then, and you also know rationally that it's like significantly increasing the danger to the health of your family, yet people still have to look at it, right? Like, where is some of this coming from? Well, a big part of it, especially when it comes to social media, is that it was engineered to do that.

just like when we started getting major industrialized food companies in the mid-20th century, they figured out, okay, junk food, how do we make it hyper-palatable? So that people eat a whole bag of potato chips at once, right? They figured out how to make food hyper-palatable. The social media companies had to go through something similar. They invented these services. They were great. You could log on the Facebook and sort of checked a relationship status of people you knew,

but it was like a relatively static thing, right? It was a fun thing you did occasionally. You would log on on your browser and look at some social media sites. this was no good. They needed many, many more eyeball minutes from their users because they had these big IPOs lurking. And so Facebook took the lead in this process, but the social media companies in general re-engineered their products specifically to foster moderate behavioral addictions.

And there's a lot of reasons how this works, but the bigger picture observation here is the reason why you're picking up your phone all the time is not that we all just as a culture had a sudden collapse of willpower. And it's not that that information suddenly became crucial to our everyday existence. It's because a small number of companies had to really maximize eyeball minutes, and they completely re-engineered the way their apps worked to foster exactly that effect, just like Lays figured out that right mixture of salt and fat and sugar to make it impossible not to eat the whole bag of potato chips once you opened it. And so there's two things going on here. You have to get away from it in the short term, do stuff without the phone. But we've got to keep in mind the bigger background of all these issues, which is the reason we're looking at all these.

phones is because a small number of companies trained us to look at the phone all the time. They needed it for their stock price. There's nothing fundamental about it. There's nothing necessary about that for us to live a good life. How have you managed to do this? I'd be curious to, do you have an iPhone? If so, what does it look like? I mean, what are some things you've put in place? Well, so I'm an interesting case study because I've never had a social media account. Right. So I've been able to observe. I mean, I watched this. engineering happened from afar. You know, I have an iPhone.

Did you really, did you ever say like, you know what? I bet I would sell more books if I was on Twitter. I could share my articles on Twitter. I could learn from other really smart people on Twitter. I'm saying Twitter specifically because I think it's, for me, it's one of the greatest learning tools ever created. Now, there are downsides to it, absolutely. But for me, it has been perhaps the greatest learning tool of my life.

because you can, I choose who I want to follow and I follow people who share interesting things. They write great blog posts or they share Cal Newport's work among, among their own. So that's the big one for me. I could, I could deal without the other ones. But for you, you would blow up on, on Twitter and probably Facebook as far sharing your information, LinkedIn, right? It applies to all those things. Do you, you weigh kind of the pros and cons to say, no, I'm fine. I could still be a New York Times bestseller without it, or how do you manage that?

Well, there's a couple things going on there. I mean, one, yeah, I do weigh the pros and cons. And what I'm looking for is a digital minimalist is a slam dunk pro. Here's something I really care about, and this is a way to use tech that's going to give me a big win. And that's not really there when it comes to book sales, right? I mean, social media is great because it allows people to talk about your book. but it actually doesn't move a ton of books if it's just you talking to your your followers you know okay i have this book that's actually not as high have a conversion rate which is interesting

but even more importantly is that i have steve martin drilled into my brain right i mean this is exactly the stuff that he was telling the aspiring entertainer not to get caught up in for him it was like finding the right agent or which clubs to go and all these small things that could matter he says don't get distracted by that you're going to get much better return making your acts so good it can't be ignored and that's the way i've always approached my books don't get caught up and all these other things that may all add a little bit of value or open up new opportunities to move the book

focus on writing better books. That's sort of the Steve Martin adage executed. Also, I'm just worried about it because I watched this unfold. Everyone had iPhones in 2008, 2009, 2010, and they used them occasionally. It was just like beautiful tool

and it did certain things really well, things that people already really cared about like listening to music or making phone calls. It did it really well. They were great. And then this great re-engineering occurred, 2012, 2013, where the social media company said, we have to retrain people to look at the phones constantly because that's how we're going to make our money. And I watched as the entire culture changed.

And now people can't stop looking at their phones. And when you see it happen from afar, you see how engineered it is. And that just seems terrifying to me. I'm thinking, well, I make a living thinking hard about things. That is scary. Then I'm going to let into my life something that a lot of money and a lot of smart people have thought about, how do we get you to look at this so much that, you know, even when your kids are in the car and it's going to put their lives in.

danger, you can't help a glance back down at it. And so that have that effect going on as well. And that's just, that's minimalism and sort of maybe the foundational idea of this new book. Minimalism is take the things that are really, really important and give them all your energy, don't worry about missing out on things that are good, but not as good. Focus on the things that move the needle and don't worry about the things that nudge the needle. Because if you dissipate your energy to the things that nudge the needle, you're going to end up worse off than if you had just concentrated that energy on the things that really does move it. So what's your phone look like? I don't know. Let's see. What do I use my phone for? So I listen to the podcast on it.

You have an iPhone? I have an iPhone. Okay. I listen to podcast on it. I text message with my family, like my wife, let her know what I'm up to. Yeah. I have to look up directions sometimes. So that's it? I mean, that's, yeah. And baseball scores. But I mean, come on. Right. No, I just think it's, in a way, it's inspiring. And I think it shows. So one of the things you've written about is a 30-day digital declutter. What does that mean? How could we do that? I'm going to get practical for a second. This goes for really anybody, but a 30-day digital declutter. Yeah. So this is the heart of the new book. So let's say that you're one of the millions who feels uneasy about your relationship with technology. You just feel like you're looking at these screens all the time. What can you do? So I think this 30-day process of all the things I've been out there and tried and had people tried, this thing really seems to work. I don't

know why, but it does. And so it's what I tell people this is kind of the key. And really, thousands of people have done this. It works as follows. So for 30 days, you basically take a break from any of the technologies in your personal life that you can step away from without it causing a big trouble. So for a lot of people, this is like social media, online entertainment, YouTube, video games. Like anything is like optional technology in your personal life, the stuff that you look at your screen when you're trying to kill boredom. So you step away from this for 30 days. So what do you do during these 30 days? So what do you do during these 30 days? Well, at first you are going to get a detox effect.

Like in the first week or two, you'll lose the compulsion to check your phone. And that's nice. But that's not really the idea. The real idea is to give yourself enough time and space to figure out what is it that I really care about doing with my time outside of work? Like, what are the things I really value? What are the activities I want to spend my time on? Like, what do I really want to get after with my life, especially outside of work where you have much more flexibility on it? And then when the 30 days are over, you use that as a foundation for figuring out what tech.

do I want to let back into my life? And so you don't just go back to everything you were taking a break from. You actually rebuild your digital life from scratch, just like when you take everything out of the garage and say, okay, now I'm just going to put back in the stuff I really need in the garage and I'm going to throw out everything else. It's just like that. And you only let back in a piece of tech onto your phone or your tablet or your computer

if there's a compelling case that it's really the best way to use technology to boost one of these small number of things you really care about. And even then, if it passes that test, you put a how and when fence around it. well, how am I going to use this? When am I going to use this? So that it doesn't have untrammeled access to your time and attention. So it's really like a closet or garage cleaning, but for your digital life, where you figure out this is what I really want to do.

And then when you're done, you get this very intentional suite of tech tools that really help those things and miss out on everything else. That's how you become a digital minimalist. And you've done this with people. Yeah. So I ran an experiment. It was actually kind of interesting. I put out a call to my readers and said, is anyone willing to try?

this, right? It's 30 days. You don't use technology. Then you carefully rebuild it at the end. This was a big ask, right? To step away from all this stuff for a month. So I thought like two dozen people would sign up. In fact, I actually thought I was going to spend time with these people. I'll talk to them every day. I'll see how it's going. It'll be good research for the book. Over 1,600 people signed up to do that. Wow. Which was a sign that there's a real, there's a big enough hunger out there for change that people are willing to take drastic actions. And of the hundreds of reports I got back, what I learned is that this really works. And what I also learned just trying to do something that's easier. Like, well, why don't I just put a few more hacks in the place or a few more tips? Or why don't I make my iPhone screen in gray scale? Or why don't I just kind of nickel and dime this?

Like, maybe I'll just rearrange what's on my screen or take a couple of things off. That doesn't seem to work. Like, the forces here are so strong. It's like the people who really make substantive change in the relationship with tech have to do something drastic. And this 30-day thing seems to be about the right level of drasticness to get permanent change. Got to go all in, in a way. You got to go all.

You know, it's the same with food and fitness. You know, like when we got this processed food and, man, it tasted so good and everyone got obese. And so how do we get people healthy again? We tried the tips, you know, like eat better, move more, you know, eat more vegetables. Here's the food pyramid. That didn't work. And then you look around like, but who do we know that are really healthy? They almost always go all in on something, right?

They have a philosophy. They're paleo or they're vegan or something. It's more of like a framework. You know, this is big in my home. My wife is really deep into understanding wellness. and it's not a diet. It's a, it's a framework at a foundational level. This is the way that we're going to eat.

Yes. Yeah, it's not like we count points or stuff like that. It's like, no, we just eat these foods and we don't eat those foods. And one of the greatest ways not to eat those foods is don't have it in your house. Because if it's there, at some point you'll get hungry and when you get hungry, you're going to eat it. And so that's just, I know for me, I like to think of myself as a pretty disciplined person. but that is certainly necessary to eat the proper foods. I think that's why I'm trying to,

I really have dug into your work because this is really hard for me. Like I'm not going to lie. I love some of the benefits that come, especially as a learner from some of the social media platforms. I mentioned before, particularly Twitter because I follow, I think people who are smarter than me and share these great articles, and I want to be able to access them daily.

And so to take, To take that away would be extremely painful. And that has nothing to do with like self-promotion of my show or my upcoming book or anything like that. It's all about consumption and wanting to learn and read. And so like when you hear me say that, what do you think? I don't really care about likes and stuff on Instagram, which we could talk about that in a second. I guess that's fine. Like I'm not going to lie.

I guess you get dopamine rushes when that happens if people think my family looks beautiful or that speech. I look awesome on stage, whatever. I mean, I guess that makes me feel good. But what I really like most is this opportunity to learn from so many smart people that's literally right there. I can just click through. And there's the article that I can read. And so what do you think about that? Well, this type of thing comes up all the time when people go through this 30-day process of becoming minimalist, right?

Because during the, it's a good case study. During the 30 days, you really get clear about what really matters to you, what you want to spend your time doing. And then at the end, you ask this question, like, what's the best way? way to use technology to help the things you care about and you put these how and win fences around it. So let's say, for example, like in this example, you go through this process. And during your 30 days, you really clarify that learning from smart people is really important to you, right? I mean, it's in the name of your show. Like, learning matters. And so you say, well, what's the best way to use tech to do this? And let's say you sort of survey the different technologies out there.

And maybe for you, it's links that people that you really admire intellectually, what you're what they post on Twitter is like a really good way. It's like having a curated reading list, and that seems really important for you. So you would say, of all the different stuff out there, Twitter is the right way to serve this thing that you now feel pretty good about that you value. So then the final step of the minimalist, I call this the minimalist technology screen in the book,

you say, great, okay, so how and when am I going to use Twitter to try to get this value? And then so what you might end up saying is like, okay, well, I use Twitter a lot more than just that. I use it in a lot of ways that's beyond that. But if really what I want to get out of Twitter is exposure to articles curated by interesting people, why don't I curate my list of who I follow down to like a good representative list of these people? Why don't I take it off my phone? And what I'm going to do is actually have a schedule, right? This is what I do, you know, Monday night, Wednesday night and Friday night.

Like I go on for, you know, I'm just spinning out a hypothetical. But I go on for 20 minutes. and I see what articles, the people I follow, have sent, and I grab the ones that look most interesting into Insta paper or like some sort of reader, or maybe I print them or something. And then maybe you have a ritual that's like Sunday, you go to a coffee shop with a tablet where just all those articles are there in like a nice Insta Paper interface and you spend an hour and a half and you read them, right?

That would be classic digital minimalism. You find something you care about, you find a way that tech could really boost that. So you can learn more than you could before this tool existed. And then you create rules for like, well, how do I use this tech in such a way? I can I can really maximize that benefit without it maximizing the cons. And I came across like example after example like that of people in all sorts of different walks of life who ended up strategically deploying some of these tools that could otherwise be a major source of distraction in a way that made their life much better. That, one, a great kind of tactical piece of advice is on the fly. So I appreciate that.

It's can personally make me think and will be helpful. And you're right. When you are able to do this and you're a digital minimalist that has to free you up, I would imagine so much. I mean, the mindless scrolling on social for everybody listening, most people listening, we all do it too much. What is it, what is a day like for you? I'm fascinated by this.

from when you wake up to when you go to bed, what's a normal day like for you? Yeah, it's an interesting question. I guess it depends on the day. But like, let's think about today, for example, because I'm in the middle of it.

Right, so I woke up, you know, wake up by exercise. My kids are still asleep. I've been working on a particular proof for computer science paper. And so I was working on this proof,

took a break for breakfast, worked on the proof some more, walked my oldest kid to school, worked on some proof, worked on the proof some more, did that until about an hour and a half ago. And I ate lunch and sort of typed up my thoughts. And then did an interview. Now I'm doing this interview. Then I'm going across town to do a speaking gig. And then I'm done with work.

Then I'm coming home. And then the evening is going to be all family stuff. Like that's kind of like a typical, you know. There's a typical day. Yeah. And so here's a thing about today, for example, I was just realizing earlier is there's, I'm not going to see my email inbox today. And I was thinking about it today.

I was like, oh, you know, there's this thing, this logistical thing. We're hiring someone. And I really need to coordinate various people involved in this hiring process. And I probably should send an email about it. And I realized, like, well, I'm not going to be doing that today. I'm just not going to get to the inbox. And that's going to be a little bit of a pain, but not a huge pain. Like, I probably will have an email like, hey, where is this?

And then tomorrow, which is a different type of day where I have some time put aside for email, I'll get back to people. And that's kind of typical, right? Like, today is a day where I'm not really doing any email. I'm focusing really intensely on one hard thing and then focusing really intensely on another hard thing and then I'm unwinding with my family. Tomorrow, by contrast, I'm teaching and I have office hours and have a meeting and getting my haircut. And so, like, that whole day, because it's fractured, and purposely so, it's been consolidated.

It'll be more like catching up on things in between these meetings. It's like meeting with people doing email, like catching up on logistical things, doing small tasks. And so it'll feel very different than today. So my days are, it's really kind of bifurcated. It might be just be a day where I'm just doing a small number of hard things or a day where, okay, now I'm meeting with people and students and teaching and answering emails and then maybe back to another long, hard day.

And, but I think just more importantly, you mentioned we spend a lot of time scrolling on social. This is absolutely true. And I just want to mention quickly that one of the biggest predictors of who succeeded and who failed with the 30-day experiment that I ran was, whether or not they actually spent those 30 days figuring out what they wanted to do instead. Because a lot of people don't have that answer offhand. And the people who just tried to white knuckle it and just saw it as a break. I just want to take a break from everything because I think I used these things too much.

But didn't really put in the effort to figure out what they really cared about. They went back to it. This stuff, the scrolling is filling a big void in most people's lives. And you have to replace that void with things you actually really care about and believe that you care about. And if you don't, it's just kind of terrible and gaping and you're going to go back to the scrolling. Do you, or should I say, what type of pressure, perhaps, do you feel as you live your everyday life now, as someone who's written about being so good people can't ignore, about doing deep work and about being a digital minimalist? as people view you and see you and they watch what you do, whether it's in class when you're teaching or when you go and give a keynote like you're doing today.

What's that like? Is there a pressure there or what type of pressure do you feel? Well, I'm more careful about looking at my phone in public, I guess. Not that I'm recognized that often, but certainly we're in more of an age of video than we used to. So I am occasionally recognized. So that's true. I'm probably unlikely to find myself using social media because it would be, you know, in public conflict to some of the things I write about. So I think about it, right?

Like my whole thing is be so good. They can't ignore you. Focus on a small number of things. Do those things intensely. Don't allow yourself to be easily distracted. You know, be really respectful of your mind and your attention. And so I do think about that a lot. Like, I'm known in my town as sort of the eccentric professor because I walk a lot.

Like, that's how I think. And so, but, you know, there's only so many places to walk. And so I kind of do the same route again and again. And people will call my wife or whatever and say, what was your husband doing? He walked by our house like three times today. Is he lost? You know, what's going on? So, I mean, certainly my reputation is out there as someone who's outside a lot, walking a lot, thinking a lot.

I'm known for being slow to respond to things, which, you know, let me just blanket apologize to everyone because it does, it's a problem. But it's not a huge problem. And so, yeah, I definitely feel that. What do you think about walking? It helps me think. This is true for a lot of people. I mean, I talk about in the book, I get into all the historical examples of people

who leverage walking without input from other minds, so no phone with you. Walking with no phone is really, really good for reflection, insight and thinking. a way that when you're sitting still, it's somehow harder. What about with your wife? Well, walking with other people is great. I think we should do more walking meetings. Steve Jobs used to do these. And I don't know.

I haven't told my PhD student this yet, but that's one of my plans for the summer. I think we should do our meetings on foot more because I think we're going to have more insights. Yeah, so walking, and probably is primal. I mean, you know, how much of our Paleolithic path do we spend just walking, walking, walking with our tribe, walking across the Savannah, walking in search of food. I mean, there's something about it that's just deep wired in us. I'm a huge believer in walking, especially I love doing it with my wife, Miranda. And we don't go with a set schedule or a set topics or anything.

We're just going to go walk for a few miles. And I think idea generation, some deeper important topics just kind of naturally come up. And it really spans wide. and then it gives an opportunity to go deep as well if you're spending an hour or so walking. I highly, to anyone who's not doing it, just like deep work, it's like block out the time to do this. Even if it's cold out, you know, now that it's starting to warm up is a little bit better. But it's so beneficial to do that. It's funny, I had someone in a Q&A say, I don't know how it got brought up, but it was about relationships.

I'm like, look, just block out at least 15 minutes, which, sounds crazy, crazy small to spend with your spouse alone, unencumbered, no topics, no kids, 15 minutes every single day. And it's like, yeah, and if you could do that walking, I think that could be super powerful. Yeah, I have this little old-fashioned pedometer. It's just like a little thing with an LED screen I put in my pocket. But the rule is, you know, at least 10,000 steps every day. And then you work backwards from that. But the winter is where it's even more important because you've got to get out there. You've got to get the sun. And I just want to add a small tactic on top of that is if you're walking, a thing that is incredible for increasing your ability to concentrate is

what I call productive meditation. I talked about this in deep work, but basically go for a walk while you're walking, try to keep your attention focused on a single problem. And as soon as your attention starts wandering, which definitely will do, just like in mindfulness meditation, you notice that, and then just bring your attention back to the problem. And then I'll wander and start thinking about some email you have to send. You notice that. You bring it back.

Like, nope, I'm trying to structure this chapter. I'm trying to figure out this business strategy. I'm trying to, you know, whatever, right? At first, it's really hard. Like, your attention wanders all the time, but you get better at it. And it's actually like a crash course in concentration. I did this during my postdoctoral years at MIT, and I know a lot of people who read deep work who've done it with similar effect.

You have to be walking to do this. I don't know why. It's just, it doesn't work sitting still. The walking makes it tractable. But if you do this every day, you'll find after about a month that your ability to sustain concentration on one problem is going to be 5x bigger. It's like doing a daily pull-up habit for your mind. So just to throw a bit of a tactic in there, that's a great walking-related tactic that I swear by. I love it. Cal, this is great stuff. I'm glad you're wearing the shirt all over town

on your walks, so I appreciate that. And I certainly want to continue our dialogue as we both progress. And hopefully we don't take three years in between the next conversation to record. But we're Would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? I know it won't be any social media. So where would you send them? Well, there is calnewport.com. I'm a blogging nerd. I'm a big supporter of blogging.

I think it's sort of the right way in some sense to use the internet. So I've been blogging there for over a decade. So if you want to kind of dive into my ideas, you go there, dive in that archive. And it's a great introduction to the sort of the weird monastic, non-social life of Cal Newport. Real quick, I just saw this. Cliff Kingsbury head coach of the Arizona Cardinals gives his team phone breaks every 20 to 30 minutes. NFL players. What do you think about this?

I wasn't too happy about it. I mean, especially, and I got to say, I've had a non-trivial number of conversations in recent months with front offices from professional sports teams. Really? Why? Because, yeah, they recognize that concentration is, absolutely crucial to performance. And when you're at the elite level, like the professional level, small epsolons and performance can make the difference between a game. And so if your concentration is a little bit shakier, when you're getting a little bit tired and you're in the

fourth quarter, like that's going to be when you're the cornerback and the receiver shakes you, right? And so concentration matters. And so I've been talking to more and more people in professional sports about, hey, you've got to get us serious about what's happening with your players' brains as you are serious about what they put in their body. So the phone breaks are stupid. I think it's stupid. Yeah. I was like, yeah, I get it that they're antsy and want to look at their phone.

But you don't look at that and say, well, we better give into that anciness. You look into that and say alarm bells are going off. This is like a flaw that we can improve and it's going to give our players a competitive edge. And so, yeah, that's the way I think about that is, you know, change the underlying cause of that symptom. Don't just give into it. Yeah, good tough. Be a pro. That's part of the deal.

And like you said, you can't. You're not going to be able to look at your phone in the middle. of the second quarter or the fourth quarter. It's the way it works. There's no phones on the sidelines. Yeah, man. I know you got to run to a speech. I appreciate you knocking this thing out.

Kyle, as always, you crushed it, man. Like I said, let's continue the dialogue, man. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Yeah. Let's not wait three years next time. Definitely. All right. Thanks, Kyle.

All right. Thanks, Ryan. See you. Wow. That conversation knocked me back a bit. I, like a lot of people probably have a bit of a phone addiction. Look at it too much. And I appreciated Cal sharing the science, the research behind that, and then how we can fix it, how we can get better.

I'm going to work on this. I hope you will as well. I'd love to talk with more of you about this. Feel free to email me, Ryan at learning leader.com, and we can talk more about this. And in addition to that, if you found this useful, please don't hesitate to share it with a friend or two, perhaps one that has never listened to a podcast before. This could be a good place to start. It continues to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.

You spreading the word does that for me, and I will forever be grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Talk with you next week. Can't wait. Okay. I know you got to run, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. It was awesome. Just crushed it. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sorry to run a little bit early. That was my fault for. No, it's all good. I wasn't thinking clearly about how long it took to get various places.

No, it's all good, man. I appreciate it, and I'll share with your team when it's going live. Great. Thanks, Ryan. All right, man. Thanks, man. See you.