The School of Greatness - 770 The Power of Digital Detox with Cal Newport

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

IT'S TIME TO DIGITALLY DECULTTER. Very few of us have the courage to be alone. When we are quiet and don’t distract ourselves, we have to face hard questions. It can be scary. Instead, we reach for our phones. We might be trying to fill a void, or we might just be addicted. Technology is a lot like processed food. We want more and more, but we’ll never be satisfied. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk about focus with someone who has famously never owned a social media account: Cal Newport. Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University. In addition to academic research, he writes about the intersection of technology and society. He’s particularly interested in the impact of new technologies on our ability to perform productive work or lead satisfying lives. Cal recommends building “fences” around our phones so that we’re not using them mindlessly all day. So get ready to learn more tools to be more focused, present and creative on Episode 770. Some Questions I Ask: What do you recommend for people who are always connected to technology? (10:30) How can we build stronger connections? (18:00) What’s the void that we are trying to fill with social media? (24:00) What’s more addictive: social media or smoking? (32:00) How can you train your children to work at things (54:00) In This Episode You Will Learn: How to train your focus (2:00) The three benefits from being alone (8:00) Why you need “analog” hobbies (30:00) Why anxiety has risen in younger generations (32:00) The reason Cal recommends 30 days away from technology (43:00)

This is episode number 770 with New York Times bestselling author, Cal Newport. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Socrates said, the secret of happiness you see is not found in seeking more,

but in developing the capacity to enjoy less. Welcome to this interview. I'm super excited because we have Cal Newport in the house, who is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University and writes the Study Hacks blog focused on academic and career success. His work has been published in over 20 languages, and he's been featured in many publications, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, Washington Post, and Economist. And he's never had a social media account. That's right. He's a New York Times bestseller. He's a thriving author and never had a social media account to promote his work. And in this interview, we talk about the three

powerful benefits of getting out in nature to explore our thoughts, the healing powers of this. Also, how to build stronger connections in person rather than only online. We discuss how our phones and social media can be a big escape from life in a mentally unhealthy way. The power of social media detoxing and what you can do for 30 days to get started. And we discuss the true definition of minimalism and some myths people have about the lifestyle. Now, this is going to be an interesting one because if you're an entrepreneur who uses social media all the time, you may think this might go against the grain of you growing your business. But Cal gives some practical and strategic advice

on how to be on social media less and make more. Very powerful and be happier. Make sure to share this with your friends, lewishouse.com slash 770 and tag myself at Lewis House while you're listening. You can't tag Cal because he doesn't have an Instagram account, but make sure to let me know and I'll pass the information over to Cal.

All right, guys, I'm excited about this one. It's all about how do we use social media responsibly? How do we take a digital detox and a digital minimalism approach to life so we can do deeper, more meaningful, more valuable work that resonates with the world? With the one and only Cal Newport. All right, welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about this. We've got Cal Newport in the house. Good to see you, man. Lewis, my pleasure.

Excited. You had a book come out a few years ago. When did that come out? 2016. 2016 called Deep Work. And it argues that focus is the new IQ in the modern workplace because we have so much social media distracting us. And focus is something that is kind of like a lost commodity, I guess. It's something that is a lost art. No one knows how to focus for more than two seconds. Yeah. Well, there's two forces going on. So focus is becoming more valuable, sort of unrelated to this other tech, just because our economy is increasingly shifting towards high level knowledge work, right? We sort of outsource or automate the low level knowledge work, but the

stuff that really requires some creativity or some thinking or original thought, that's getting more important in our economy, right? So if you can focus, it really helps you produce this type of value. But at the same time, sort of unrelated to that trend, we're getting worse at concentrating because we have this going on all the time, right? We're looking at the screens and then also email culture within work. So it was this sort of supply and demand. Focus is becoming more valuable at the exact same time that it's becoming more rare. And so the book was about, hey, if you're one of the few people that cultivates this thing, you're going to have a huge advantage, sort of a disproportionate advantage. Yeah, you're going to be like the wealthy of value.

Yeah. Because there's only so many few people that are actually able to focus and write a book that's got deep work in it and make a movie or do something that takes a year, two years, three years. The time and energy to go into something, one piece of work to make it magical is so much harder to do. Yeah, but it's very valuable.

Very valuable. But it's practiced as well. And so the book was sort of about, we've forgotten how valuable focus is and we've forgotten what it takes to be good at it. What's it take to be good at focus? Well, I mean, people think about it like a habit, right? Like flossing their teeth.

Everyone thinks, like, I know how to focus. The problem is I'm just not doing it enough, so, like, I should try to make more time to do it. But it's really more like a skill. Like, if you practice, it's like playing a guitar, right? You practice it, you can be better at it. If you don't practice it, you're not going to be very good at it. Even if you put aside the time and you lock away all your devices and you're, here I am,

I'm in the cave, I'm going to write my book. If you haven't been practicing it, it's not going to go very well. And so there's sort of essentially like cognitive athletics. You can actually go in there and train this capability. And you kind of have to. And there's a lot of different elements to how you do it. The training focus. The training focus.

What's for someone who's obsessed with social media, who checks email 20 times a day, who always feels like they're behind, and they're working until 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night because they haven't done focused work during the day? What are some steps that they could start with? Yeah. Well, it's sort of like with athletics. There's general fitness and then the actual training that you do. Skill, yeah. So cognitive fitness means, among other things, your brain needs to be comfortable with being bored. There's general fitness and then the actual training that you do. Skill.

Skill, yeah. So cognitive fitness means, among other things, your brain needs to be comfortable with being bored. I mean, if it's been trained that every time you get a little bit bored, you get a shiny treat, like the stimuli, you get this Pavlovian connection where it's boredom means stimuli, boredom means stimuli. So then when it comes time to actually focus, which is boring in the technical sense, right? Because there's not a lot of different stimuli. It's not exciting. Your

brain's going to say, no way. Like I've learned it, right? When I'm bored, I get the treat. So I'm not going to sit here and stare at the blank page for a couple hours. So in that sense, if you're constantly doing this, it's like junk food eating. If you're an athlete, right? Your fitness is going to be bad. It tastes good in the moment. It tastes good in the moment, but then you get on the field, right? You feel like crap. You feel like crap, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And then there's the training, right? There's specific things you can do that sort of acute training. And so, like, one of the things I write about is something called productive meditation, which is essentially cognitive pull-ups. Like, it's really hard, but it gives you big results. The idea there is you go for a walk, and you try to hold one professional thought in your head,

and you try to make progress on that thought while you're walking. And just like in mindfulness meditation, when you notice that your concentration drifts, which it will do, you come back to it. You bring it back, bring it back. It's really hard at first,

but if you keep practicing this, like I want to just think about one thought, try to make progress on something in my head as I walk. You get better and better at it. And the results can actually be pretty radical. Like do this for a month and you find your ability to sit down and go laser really improves. So you do this a lot for yourself? You'll take walks? Yeah. And you'll start thinking about it. Give me an example of like the last few days, what was it? Yeah, well so I write in my head. So like when I'm trying to figure out a chapter or an essay or something like this,

I really, I work out the structure, and then I actually work out a lot of the wording, and that's mainly practiced. And in my day job, I'm a theoretical computer scientist, so I do proofs, so I do a lot of that in my head. So you roam, and that's literally moving the sort of variables of the equations. In my hometown, I'm considered an eccentric because I'm always walking the loops. Yeah,

and people talk to my wife, like, where was your husband going? Like, I saw him twice. He looped back around. But, you know, I like wandering. And something about walking, it shuts off some non-cerebral parts of your mind that makes it easier to take the thinking aspect and really focus it. Do you take your phone with you when you're walking? Sometimes. Yeah. But you just don't have social media. What about texting and email? Yeah.

Because you don't have social media. You never had an account. Never had an account. And you and I were born around the same time. You were a year older than me. And we were in college, you know, I guess your last year of college, my junior year was when Facebook came out. Yeah. I think. Yeah. 2004, 2003, something around there. Yeah, yeah. I went back and looked up the timeline. Yeah, 2004. And it was like a big deal when it came out in my

college. Yeah. And we were some of the first people to have it. I'm sure you were as well in your college. But you never signed up for an account and you've never had social media. Never had it. I mean, I think what happened was sort of accidental, but Facebook was the first. Well, Friendster had been around, but... MySpace. Yeah, MySpace was kind of new then. Friendster was sort of out dating, I think. So Facebook came around, people were excited about it, and I wasn't interested in signing up. And I don't quite know why. I think in part because I had had a failed tech company in the first boom. And Zuckerberg is a contemporary of ours. And so it's just like, yeah.

Who's this other kid whose website is so popular? And also my memory is, see, I've always hated listing things. If you tell me what's your three favorite books or something like that, I just can't do it. I'm really bad at listing favorites. And that's what Facebook was in 2004. What's your three favorite books or something like that, I just can't do it. I'm really bad at listing favorites. And that's what Facebook was in 2004. What's your favorite movie? Favorite movie, favorite books, favorite songs. I was like, I don't want to think about that.

And so it was sort of accidental I didn't sign up for that. But then once you didn't enter that path, I had this sort of objective distance where then I could kind of observe as it changed, you know, how its role in people's lives changed over time. Right. Yeah. And the stress that people have. I think the stat is like almost 50 minutes a day people are on Facebook or social media.

50 minutes is, yeah, Facebook products. Facebook products. So Instagram and Facebook mainly. Messenger. Yeah. Do they own WhatsApp now? I guess they own WhatsApp, yeah. Crazy, isn't it? Yeah. Almost an hour a day of your life. Yeah. Do they own WhatsApp now? I guess they own WhatsApp, yeah. Crazy, isn't it?

Yeah. Almost an hour a day of your life. Yeah. Just for those services. Crazy. Okay. So you wander around. Do you do this every day?

You take a walk? I mean, it depends on the day. It's interesting because when I was, what, 10, 11 years ago, I had a mentor. Every day he would take a walk for lunch and just brainstorm. He was an inventor. And he always had creative ideas. And he said, my best ideas come from walking. And I think we lose the art of getting out in nature and having space to be bored. And when we are bored, that's when some of our best ideas come to us. It's crucial. It's crucial. But very few of us have the courage to

be alone. Well, it's scary for a lot of people. So being alone with your own thoughts, right, it's scary, but it does three things. One, it's self-insight. So if you want to develop as a human, figure out what you're about, grow into a new phase of life, become an adult, any of these type of questions, you have to grapple with your own thoughts. You have to process your experiences. You have to try to make sense of it, right? That requires time. Ask the tough questions. Ask the tough questions. You know, what are you upset about that you've done? What are you happy about? And that involves you. You can't do this while you're in input processing mode. So if there's

something in your ear, something in your hand, you can't be doing this type of reflection. And so you don't develop. Professional insight requires it, right? Creativity requires you to actually take in all this input that you've been receiving. You got to think about it. So like someone listening to this podcast right now is in input processing mode. So their brain is in a very particular mode, which is I am now receiving input that comes from another human mind, which is a very special mode. Our brain takes that seriously all hands on deck, right? Yeah, yeah.

from another human mind, which is a very special mode. Our brain takes that seriously all hands on deck, right? If you don't then take some time to just think about what you've heard, you're going to get a fraction of the value out of it because it's two different things. And then finally, there's like a maintenance aspect to it. So, you know, it's a big deal to be processing input from another brain because again, we take that very seriously. If you're doing it all the time, so every time you have a down moment, you're looking at social media, for example, which is all input from other brains. You don't get the downtime that your brain needs just to do all the things it expects to have time to do, and this causes issues.

And so I think this sort of low-grade hum of anxiety that so many people feel today, a lot of that is actually lack of solitude. Really? Yeah. So if more people were actually alone, they'd be more happy. Yeah. No, not all the time, right? So I give this quote from the book. I found it in Ben Franklin's journals when he did his first transatlantic crossing. We went to London for the first time. And so he was really thinking about- A lot of alone time. Solitude, yeah. So I found it in his journals. And he was talking about how, like, well, the great sages talk about the

value of solitude. But I suspect that if well, the great sages talk about the value of solitude, but I suspect that if you made the great sages be alone long enough, they would start to regret it, right? You can't have two months solitude. That's just as bad. I think he kind of hit that on the nose. And so if you're alone all the time, it's terrible. The worst thing you can do to someone is put them in solitary confinement. But if you get rid of every moment of solitude, it can be sort of just as bad in some sense. Yeah. So what do you recommend for someone who's on social media all day, email, text all day, they never have any downtime because right when they get home, they turn the TV on, they're

stimulating constantly. Do you recommend, hey, take a 30-minute walk? Yeah. Just start with that. Do something without your phone once a day. Yeah. That's the easiest way just to get comfortable. Like when you walk the dog or your whatever, going to the drugstore, just leave the phone at home. You see so many people walking, looking down at their phone. I know.

Everywhere you go. Yeah. At the grocery store, at the gym. Yeah. It's funny because two years ago, maybe it was two and a half years ago, I had a realization that for 15 years, I'd had my phone on me every single day for 15 years.

Yeah. Since I was 19, or no, the year 2000, I got my first cell phone. Yeah. I was a junior in high school. And I realized there was not a day that had gone by that I didn't have my phone on me. Yeah. At some point in the day. Yeah.

And I thought to myself, that was wrong. I was like, this is horrible. What a radical change too, in terms of all of human history, right? Before that never had a device on me, maybe a game boy every once in a while or something or whatever it may be. But now 15 years of my life, I had this on me. And so two years ago I made the commitment. I said, I'm going to Hawaii alone and I'm leaving my phone at home. So I went to Hawaii for, I think it was four or five days. And the first day it was terrifying because I rented a car and I forgot my confirmation number and I forgot which car rental service I got it from.

So I'm going to each rental service, they do have my confirmation, right? I finally get the car and now I need directions. I'm like, how do I get to my hotel? I start asking people, where's this at? I stop at a gas station like we used to do in 1995 or whatever and I was like wow this is actually really scary but I remember on day two I was at the beach and I was thinking to myself I was laying in the ocean was just like looking up at the sky and hearing like the birds and nature and I had zero anxiety because I wasn't

worried about where my phone was yep it's just like it's safe in my home yeah it's not on the beach like no one's gonna I don't need to check anything I don't need to post anything and I remember at the end of this four or five days I felt so much peace and calm and zero anxiety it was almost like I didn't want to go back home to the phone. And that's just getting back to our baseline. Baseline. That's the baseline. We underestimate how artificial it is to have a constant companion, a digital constant companion. I mean, it's incredibly artificial.

Nowhere in our evolutionary past were we in a context where we had sort of this sort of constant connection to other people and ideas and thoughts. And so you faced all the worst-case scenarios, right? The stuff that makes people worried about not having their phone with them. What if I need to look something up? What if I get lost? What if I get hurt? Yeah. Yeah. Call someone. Yeah. Yeah. Except for this is the way we all lived our lives. This is how we used to live. Yeah. And I was fine. Yeah. So in the book I talk about, I find these stories. It's a sub-genre online of people who lose their phones or have their phones stolen and then decide, I'm not going to replace it right away. Wow.

And then they write about the experience. You can find all these stories online. And they often have a very similar… It transforms their lives. Transform them. And there's these inconveniences, but they're not as many as they thought. And maybe it'll be like one really bad thing that happens in a month, like they're late for a meeting with their boss and… They couldn't check in. She was taught, one young woman was talking about

she had her laptop out in the cab and was hoping that as it passed the Starbucks, she could get enough Wi-Fi. Oh my gosh. Yeah, right? Okay, so that's stressful. But that's one of the things I push back on. So I mean, you had your phone on you for 15 years.

But actually more recently is when we shifted towards not just having a phone on us, but looking at it all the time. That's like six or seven years old. Yeah, because the first, I don't know, eight years, there was no smartphones, right? It was just like you're texting and you're calling. And then there was social media,

there was Wi-Fi, there was everything else. Social media is what changed it. And not just social media, it was the Facebook IPO. So if you go back to the beginning of the consumer-facing smartphone era, so like the iPhone in 2007, I went back and talked to the original development lead for the first iPhone. And what he confirmed is there was nothing about this tech

that meant for you to look at it all the time. Steve Jobs was a minimalist. His whole thing was, I want to take something that's really important to you, and then I want to make the experience beautiful. And so for him, it was playing music. Music was incredibly important. Huge. It was big. Yeah. And everyone was listening to iPods, right? And so the iPhone had a touchscreen and he was like, look, I can make the experience of playing music even more beautiful. And he was offended by the interfaces on cell phones at that time. He's like, phone calls are important. I want to

make that a beautiful experience. I want to put them in one device so you don't have to have an iPod and a phone both in your pocket. And that was from like 2007 to 2012, that was smartphones. It was this beautiful tool that you brought out occasionally to do specific things.

Like I want to listen to a song. I want to call my mom. I want to look up directions, right? Around 2011, 2012, the social media companies were now past the stage of just we're trying to grow and saying we actually have to get our revenue up because it was the Facebook IPO in particular, right? How are we going to get people to engage much more on our services? Because the Facebook.com is pretty static, right? I mean, you would go check your friend's

relationship status, but if you checked it in the morning, it was probably not going to change that day. It's not something you would spend all day looking at, right? And so they completely re-engineered the experience to be not about posting and reading other people's posts, but instead about social approval indicators. Wow. And then we got the likes and the retweets and the favorites and the photo auto tags. So now every time you hit this app, you could see some indications.

Are people approving of me? Were people thinking of me? And that's what changed our relationship with the phones from this Jobsian vision of this is a beautiful object that does a few things really well into I have to look at this when I'm walking the dog. I have to look at this when I'm in the bathroom. I have to look at this when I'm walking the dog. I have to look at this when I'm in the bathroom. I have to look at this when I'm in the line. There was nothing fundamental about the tech that said we need to be looking at this all the time. That was essentially a business model

that was proved very effective. Very effective. Very addictive. And this, you know, as that expands and grows, the more likes you get, it's almost like you feel less worthy of yourself. It's like you have less self-worth because you constantly need to be reminded that your like or what you posted was cool or interesting. Oh, you have cute kids or a cute dog.

And so we have to constantly remind ourselves, yes, I am worthy. I am enough. Look, it keeps growing. Let me post more to remind myself that I have. I need the likes. Except for when you're hunting the likes, then what you're not doing is actually sacrificing your time and energy to be with a close friend or family or community. Or create something meaningful. Or create something meaningful. Like the things that actually we've evolved to crave to feel sort of accepted and connected and impactful.

And so it's this irony that you're doing this because you're like, I want to feel accepted and connected to people. But by doing this all the time, you're actually feeling less connected and less accepted because our social brain, it doesn't really know what to make of, like a number next to a thumbs up icon. It knows about this.

It knows like I'm sitting across from someone and I'm looking at someone and I'm seeing facial expressions and I've made time to be here and we're interacting. It knows about this. It knows like I'm sitting across from someone and I'm looking at someone I'm seeing facial expressions and I've made time to be here and we're interacting. It knows about that. That's connection. But without some sort of sacrifice, like I had to go and be and spend my time with someone. If you take all the friction out you just hit happy birthday or like or something like that it's not a strong connection. So how do we build stronger connections? Well I mean when it comes to social life we kind of know, we've known for a long time what makes people feel connected.

It's strong relationships with sacrificing time and attention for taking on responsibility on behalf of family, close friends, and community. There's no shortcut. I mean, if a friend has a baby, you could send them like, congrats, three exclamation points. But what you really should do is go over there and say, here, I'm bringing you a box full of like, this is, you know, it's snacks and food and towels. It turns out towels are really useful when you have babies. Yeah, this is something I've discovered, right? And that's hard. And it just took an hour of your time, right? But that leaves you feeling connected. That leaves that

other person feeling like you're connected. The congrats with the three exclamation points, it's not bad, but it's not giving you what you need. And it's not like a deep work of building relationship. It's the small attention that's not as meaningful as showing up. Even a phone call is better than just a like or congrats. It's taking the time. I try to go even a step further with people that I'm really connected to and send them just a video message. And they're always in shock because they're so used to someone just saying a quick text. I'll send even a minute video message of just acknowledging them for what I appreciate about them or congratulating.

They're just always like, wow, I'm so thankful, a video. It probably hits you instinctually, something about it when you do it. It probably feels something about it feels more real. It's more attention. It probably hits you instinctually, something about it when you do it. It probably feels, something about it feels more real. Absolutely. It's more attention. It's more time. It's more a piece of quality, I guess, communication, right? But showing up is really the key in person if you can.

But if someone's not in their city, then it might be harder. So do you feel like our quality of our life is diminishing because of social media or because of the lack of our attention to deeper work in our work and our relationships? This is what I've been hearing, right? So I wrote Deep Work, which was really about tech and its impact on the professional world. And what I kept hearing when I was on the road was readers saying, yeah, but what about tech in our personal lives, right? There's something going on here. So tech in the work life, meaning?

Like the distractions like email and Slack and how that's keeping people away from doing highly concentrated work and how this is probably a mistake. Yeah, just doing meetings all day and communicating, but not actually creating work. Yeah, we're really bad at knowledge work. So that was deep work, right? So a lot of the readers say, yeah,

but something is going on in our personal lives with tech that is sort of arguably more important. And so you look into this and you see there is this unease. Maybe around two years ago, people really started the shift from this sort of self-deprecating mode to like, wait a second, there is a problem. But if you talk to people, it's not utility, right? So it's not that they say, this is useless. I hate what I'm doing when I'm on my phone, right? It's not like cigarettes or something, where like most people who smoke would just say, I just wish I wasn't smoking. There's something good that comes from it. There is, right? I mean, there's good things happening. The issue is autonomy. So people were feeling like I am losing

control over my life, and that's why I'm upset. Not that this is always bad, but it's that I'm doing this more than I should. I'm doing this more than it's useful. I'm doing this more than it's healthy. I'm doing this to the exclusion of things that I know are much more meaningful. I feel manipulated, like how I feel, my emotions, that somehow these algorithms are changing how I feel. And so the argument is I'm losing my autonomy as a human being. That's what was making people concerned.

Now, the social media companies for a long time, because I've been a long sort of public critic of some of social media, they would always push back with the utility argument. They would say, wait a second. Here is something useful that someone is doing on Facebook. Stop criticizing. Checkmate, right? Like, we've won. And what I was finding is that's not really the grounds on which this argument is occurring. It's not, is this useless or useful? It is,

am I in control of this and using it for good means or is it in control of me? I think more people feel like, okay, it's shifted and now it's in control of me. Especially when you, now on the iPhone, you can track to see how many hours you spent on an app or social media account. And you're like, wow, I just spent 20 hours this week on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. It's just like, what could you have done with all that time? I'm guilty for this too. But you split that. Take 20 hours, right?

Split that between some strong interaction with people, self-reflection, and let's say some skill building or creation. Yeah, or working out or nature. And multiply that by, what, like five or six weeks even. And it's a vastly different outcome. And now think about the compounding return, right? Now you take those 20 hours and you repurpose it week after week. And now you're growing off a bigger and bigger base. And you go three or four years down the line, it's a completely different life. Completely different. And people who complain about wanting to write a book but never have the time or wanting to learn a new language or a new skill, just look at the amount of time you spend on social

media or your email or on nonsense. This is why people are getting upset about social media. Again, it's not that they think it's what they're actually doing is evil or what they do when they're on these screens is, you know, you're looking at baby pictures of your niece or something. It's not bad. What they're upset about is that it's keeping them from getting after it in these other aspects. So like this isn't bad, but not learning the language, not learning the skill, not getting healthy, not taking on responsibility, right? Like becoming a figure in my community, right? That people respect.

Like these things that we actually crave, that's what people are picking up on. There's all of this stuff over here that instinctually I know, like if I'm doing this, it's key to flourishing as a human. And I'm just distracting myself with this so much that there's nothing left over for me to do that.

And the fact that why am I so distracted on this is because they tweaked it so that I would do this a lot. It's so that the real estate prices in Northern California can be really expensive. It's not like I'm curing cancer over here and I'm making sacrifices over there. It's they tweaked this so that I would use it 20 hours a week. And you said before we jumped on here about, you know, the deeper conversation of what's the void we're trying to fill. Yeah. What's the thing that people aren't willing to look at within themselves that makes them so distracted?

Have you been having those conversations a lot lately? This is a lot of what surprised me when I was working on the book is that I did this experiment where I put out a call to my readers and said, I'm experimenting with this idea of a digital declutter where 30 days you step away declutter where 30 days you step away. 30 days you step away. And this is kind of the core sort of suggestion in the book. Like 30 days you step away. From all social media? All social media. All optional technologies in your personal life. So I can't get you out of answering your boss's email, but online news,

social media, games, streaming media, YouTube, right? Almost everything you do in your personal life with tech for one month. TV as well? It's a – Movies and TV. Well, yeah. So different people had different rules for that. Like one of the rules I liked is people said no streaming media by yourself. So like, yeah, I can watch a movie with like a friend or my wife or something.

Not just in bed streaming a movie. Just watching The Office or whatever. Which is what everyone does. And that was the idea was that you do this 30 days. Then when it's over, you rebuild your digital life from scratch, right? So it's like Marie Kondo. You clear out the whole closet. Yes.

Right. And what brings you joy? Yeah, you figure it out. And then you rebuild it from scratch, right? But I kept getting these reports from people, especially younger people, who did not have an adult life before social media, that it was terrifying. That taking this away that first day was really terrifying for them.

And I had underestimated the degree to which for a lot of people that this is a serious escape. It's not just like this is dumb, I spend too much time on nonsense. It's actually an escape from hard things they don't want to deal with. Like what? Well, it can be a lot of things, right? I mean, for some people, there's actually hard questions about their life. Like, what am I supposed to be doing?

What's my purpose? Am I really living up to my potential? Am I really happy with, like, the type of person I am? Am I just going out partying too much or this or that? And this stops them from having to confront that. And it's incredibly uncomfortable to confront. And for other people, they don't have high-quality analog leisure options in their life,

which is another thing I learned about. It seems sort of superficial, like leisure activities. But it's actually really important to have things you do. Like things you do in your time outside of work that is requires skill, something you can get better at, something that maybe connects you to other people as you do it. It could be like athletics for a lot of people, like even like their pickup basketball game or something like this, but also skilled hobbies, community or church group engagement. Like these type of things that we always use to fill our time with outside of work

are really important, but it takes some practice and it's harder. And so getting back into that if you've never been there before is difficult. I think you said in your TED video that you read a book every night and you relax on a rocking chair and you're like- Yeah, I'm such an old man. And I read a newspaper at the table with my kids in the morning. That's how I do it. That was like my dad.

My dad would read the newspaper either in the morning, but after work, he'd come home and just read the newspaper. Just sitting in the room with us while we were watching TV or playing video games, he was reading the newspaper. And then almost every night, he would just fall asleep in his chair, reading the newspaper or a book and just pass out. And I'm like, man, he just looks so restful. Yeah, I know. I'd be a good farmer a hundred years ago. I could just sit on a porch and whittle. Again, it sounds superficial, but I get into it. Like we go all the way back to Aristotle, right? In the Nicomatean ethics. And you see that it's crucial to have activities you do just for the intrinsic quality. That's crucial for making it through the inevitable ups and downs in life,

right? That you have activities that you do do that you do just because you appreciate quality. If you have that, it's kind of a buffer against various ups and downs. If you're really good at cooking or playing music, if you're a musician, even amateur, you can really just appreciate a good piece of music. Or if you're a knitter or something like that and just constructing something good it all seems superficial but it's actually a really important buffer really and we in between times the in between times and so maybe you're having a hard time in life at the moment having this sort of anchor but there's things i do that i just appreciate them for the their intrinsic quality

is like deeply human we take it for for granted, but having the screen, I mean, you can avoid all of this. Avoid everything. Because it's easier in the moment. And more rewarding. More rewarding. It's this algorithmically optimized content. You've been reduced to a data tuple of 19,000 data points. Statistical algorithms are processing.

And they're feeding you. Like, look at this nugget, look at that nugget. It's reduced you to a statistical gadget. It feeds you these isolated nuggets. And it's just optimized so that you'll want to keep. It's the same as processed food. Yeah. Same idea.

You want more and more of it. You're never satisfied. You're never satisfied. But if you move away from a real food culture to eat McDonald's, like, you're not going to be happy in the long term. Wow. Yeah. So this void that we're trying to fill, you're saying that when we have hobbies or other things that we can do that add value to us, the buffer times, as opposed to going on the phone to try to fill the void, what will that do for us emotionally, mentally? You also talked about how a lot of professors or maybe, what is it, the therapists on college campuses or professors in mental health are

saying that mental health is rising. It's off the charts. Because of social media anxiety. Yeah. So do you think if we were able to eliminate some of that to do more arts and crafts, music, other buffer type experiences, that anxiety would go down? Yes. Really? Yeah. It would definitely go down. So for young people, so Generation Z, which is the first generation to have sort of ubiquitous access to smartphones, social media, as they enter their young adolescence. This generation, that's where anxiety and anxiety-related disorders were literally off the charts. So the demographers that measure different traits of generations and see how traits change from generation to generation, had never seen something change that severely. So it was off their charts. Looking at anxiety and anxiety-related disorders,

and the turning point from this was, if you were born just late enough to have social media and smartphones, like when you enter junior high. When you were like 10. Yeah. And so this was off the charts. I had been hearing this informally from mental health experts on college campuses where they would tell me, like, it was crazy. It was overnight.

They used to have the standard array of mental health issues, sort of a cross-section of what you would expect, like country as a whole. And then it just shifted overnight. It was all anxiety, anxiety-related disorders. And it was like 5x more students coming in than they ever used to got before. And they would say it was the students who started arriving on campus with smartphones. It was, like, that year. Because we're not wired for it, right? So what do we need to flourish as human beings?

You take on responsibility for friends, family, close friends, community. Take on responsibility. Commit to them. You know, I'm going to sacrifice for you. You'll sacrifice for me. I'm going to be involved. You do activity that has intrinsic quality, right? So you go out there to, I want to do things with You do activity that has intrinsic quality, right? So you go out there

to, I want to do things with my time that itself is high quality and there's value in just doing that. And then in your professional life, you look to make impact. You do these things. It's not a secret formula. This is what we've always needed is the nutriments of human flourish. And so this is the issue with the phone. And again, the social media companies wanted all to be about utility. It's not useless to be on Facebook, but it's not the issue. It's that this has become so compulsive that it's taken us away from these things that we absolutely need to flourish. So you take those all away and you just do this instead. You're going to be anxious.

You're going to get dumber. You're going to get dumber. It's going to impede professional progress. And then life gets really hard. And then you need this more and more to escape. I mean, when things become dangerous in our life is when you start using them to escape harder things that you don't want to confront. And so then it becomes a cycle. So then you know, like, I'm not, I'm probably not doing what I should be doing with my life. And you feel guilty. You feel guilty. And so you escape the guilt by going back to this.

And it's a cycle. What's more addictive, social media or smoking? Well, I mean, it's an interesting question. I talked to a psychologist about this. It's a different type of addiction. Smoking is a substance addiction. So there's actually chemicals that can, nicotine can get through the blood-brain barrier. And it can mess around directly with your neurons. So that's really strong. And when you have a substance addiction, you can feel strong physical withdrawal symptoms,

for example, if you stop using it. Phone addiction, psychologists tend to categorize as a moderate behavioral addiction, which means, okay, if I take away your phone, like it might be difficult, but you're not going to have the same type of withdrawal you would have if you were like an alcoholic and you were being taken away from alcohol. But moderate behavioral addictions lead you to using something much more than you know is healthy if you have access to it.

So it's just like if I put the bowl of potato chips in front of you every day, you're going to eat probably way too many potato chips, right? But if I don't, you're not going to sneak out in the middle of the night to go buy it. So that's where we are probably with the phones is that if we have it with us, we're going to use it more than we think is healthy. On the phone. Okay, so let's make this an area.

There's a lot of entrepreneurs that listen, a lot of people that have products and services and companies and trying to build their brands and get exposure and build a following. What would you say to the people that their business is mostly online and is evolved around building communities on social networking platforms? How would you suggest they manage their time on social media? Can they eliminate social media all in all or let someone else run it for them? Yeah. What's your recommendation? I mean, all those are possible, right? So I definitely recognize in the professional context, there's a certain thing that social media enables that's really powerful. I mean, there's a reason, for example, why Facebook is worth $500 billion because let's say you're trying to advertise.

It's crazy. This thing can pinpoint exact human beings that you want to try to sell to. I mean, I see why they're making lots of money and I understand why people would use it to crazy. This thing can pinpoint exact human beings that you want to try to sell to. I mean, I see why they're making lots of money and I understand why people would use it to advertise. I also understand having some sort of presence in social media is useful in certain industries. And so what I typically advise is if you think social media is very important for your business, treat it as something important. Like actually get after it and understand where am I really getting value? What activities really matter? Do they really matter? Make sure you're not telling yourself a story, right? Treat it like any other tool. Then once you've really

figured out, okay, these are the ways that social media is helping me professionally, then use it like a professional. So there's no reason for it to be on your phone. Really? Yeah. Email's on your phone, right? I don't use email on my phone. Really? Yeah. Email's on your phone, right? I don't use email on my phone. Really? Wow. Yeah.

I deleted the app. You only open the computer to do the work on email. Yeah. And on your phone, you're not checking or being notified. So once you've identified X, Y, and Z on social media is a big ROI, do it like the pros. So I interviewed some sort of social media brand managers for major companies in the book. Like, okay, how do the professionals use it? It's on their desktop.

They've got tools. They've got schedules. They've got systems. They often have staff that helps them. And it's a completely different interaction than I'm in line at CVS. Right. Or on the toilet. I'm on the toilet.

Yeah. 20 extra minutes, which I do all the time. Right. So like a lot of people sort of tell themselves the story. They allow the sort of professional use to completely change what's happening in life outside of work. And so those are the two things that happen. So sometimes people just generically see professional social media as like I don't want to think about it more than just in general being on here and using a lot is beneficial. I think we've got to think about it sharper than that.

And then, two, they let it infect over. But like if a friend of mine was running a business and we were out to dinner and he's doing QuickBooks, I was like, well, why are you making QuickBooks invoices? Like, I don't doubt that maybe QuickBooks is useful for your business, but this is weird that you're using it on your phone all the time. Yeah. It's not just enough to, if he came back and said, but my business needs QuickBooks, that's how I invoice my clients or whatever. I'd say that's true, but like, do you need to be writing up invoices on the toilet? And at dinner and at the movies. Yeah. So when I talk to professionals, I'm like, if you need social media, use it like, if you're using it professionally, use it like a professional and it should have very little to do with your personal life. What are the non-negotiables for you every day,

in terms of screen time and your phone? That's a good question. Well, I don't really need that many non-negotiables because it's never there. So I don't have social media accounts. So I'm free from that re-engineering. So when you don't have that re-engineering towards the compulsive use model, the phone just goes back to the way it was in 2007. So I was like, great, I need to look up, you know, I'm looking up like whatever the address of where I'm going or something like this. Use maps. Yeah, I can use maps.

I'm going to call my wife and see how the kids are doing or something like that. But because I've never been exposed to the constant companion model, it's just never something that I worry about. And then online, I had trained myself not to web surf. Really? So I don't have a cycle of sites to go through. Now, in part, I can do this because I have a lot of autonomy in my job. So as a professor and a writer, it's not like I never have to just be at an office to be there.

I can decide what I'm going to work on. And so because I have kids, I tend to tightly schedule my work day. And so I don't want time, the web surf during my work day. It's like I'm doing this for two hours and this. Like I wanna be trying to work every single minute. I'm working till I can be done and then I can be home. And then when I'm home, you know, I have three kids running around.

So you're just a present dad. That's what I wanna do. Wow. You're just hanging out, throwing a baseball in the backyard, whatever, getting dirty, whatever it might be. Yeah, we literally do that, yeah. Wow. Just like the old days.

I remember after work, my dad would come home. He'd be in his suit. He'd roll his sleeves up. He'd get to two minutes, and we'd go play catch in the backyard. Yeah. For 20, 30 minutes. It was so powerful. And the summer in Ohio, just like the smell, the grass,

just like throwing catch you know yeah simple little things that build connection and there's a memory it's a memory and it's physical and it's tangible and you're taking responsibility for relationship my oldest is only six but we're working on swings Wow has game better all right you'll be doing t-ball soon he did t-ball last summer really are you coaching I you coaching him? I'm not the coach. I'm not the coach. Maybe I should be.

But you go. Now, it's interesting. When you go as a parent to see, I guess, T-ball, and I'm sure you'll be doing more activities with your kids as they get older. Yeah. Do you see all other parents just on their phone the whole time? There's a lot of that. Really? Yeah.

And playgrounds, too. Really? This is one of the sources, I think, of the pushback that I've been picking up on the last couple of years on our digital lives is that our generation, so people like us who were exposed, the social media generation, right? We got it when we were in college. 20s. The first adopters, basically, right? Is we're starting to have families. And so it's interesting.

A lot of the unease is coming from new moms and dads. Wow. Right? Because now suddenly you have to confront, it's pretty clear that this thing in front of me here is very important and something that I want to dedicate to and take responsibility and then why am I looking at this? Right. Well, my kids are the most important. Yeah. And so it's one of the source of the growing unease is that the social media generation, the first adopters, is now getting old enough that it's not just we're in our 20s and we're going out and hanging out with friends and who cares. And so I think that's part of the pushback. So for people who are entrepreneurs that use social media to build their business, what do you recommend? Do you recommend them deleting for 30 days?

Do you recommend them saying, okay, you're only going to be scheduled online for these hours a day like a working professional would? Yeah, put fences around it. Okay. Yeah, so take it off your phone and put fences around how and when. Man, that's scary. Yeah. Yeah. Take it off your phone.

And have fences. How and when. How and when, yeah. So a lot of the digital minimalists, right, like a lot of the people who go through this process, like of that 1,600, probably 50% added some social media back into their life after the 30 days. So you had 1,600 people go through this process? Okay. And they would send in reports. Of the reports I got, about 50% were saying, okay, I can't think of any huge wins I'm getting out of social media.

Because the whole minimalism game is just about focus on the big wins and ignore the rest. And so the whole idea is you go through all this tech after the 30 days and say, if it's a big win, I'll bring it back in. And if it's not, I'm happy to miss out. So about 50%, when they did this calculus for social media, were like, I'm not getting a big win. And I'm a minimalist. I want to focus my attention on the things that really matter. So that's okay. 50% had big wins, right? What do you mean they had big wins? There was a value, something they really valued for which, let's say, a particular social media tool was a big boost, right? For what?

Their business or their career? Either, right? So it might be a personal thing, right? Like this is the only way I connect with these people who are very important in my life. A lot of like soldiers deployed overseas have a very different relationship with some of these social media platforms because of the time changes and the difficulty of the synchronous communication. That's really important for them. A lot of visual

artists told me that Instagram is crucial. For their business, for their awareness. For their creativity. If you're a visual artist, you have to see other people's work. That's why they all used to live in Greenwich Village because that's where the galleries were, right? And now…

It's an online gallery. Yeah, so Instagram has been fantastic for visual artists because you don't have to live in one of three cities anymore. So about 50% had some value that social media really helped, but of that 50%, probably 95% took it off their phone and transformed it into, I use it like Sundays on my desktop to do X, right? The visual artists were like, I took my Instagram followers. I went down to 10 artists I really admire.

Sunday night, I go on my desktop. The password's not saved. You know, it's in a Post-it note or whatever. It takes about 20 minutes. I look at the things they posted that week. I'm getting all the value I need out of this tool without letting it turn me into a widget. So the how and when is sort of the secret sauce to minimalism. So it's not just the what.

So they really cut down, right? It's like taking the junk out of your house. But then they have this extra element, which is unique to the digital world, which is how and when am I going to use the things that I kept in the closet? Interesting. which is how and when am I going to use the things that I kept in the closet. Interesting. So in the book, Digital Minimalism, do you have a guideline for how people can do this for 30 days?

Is there a process? Yeah. The process is you figure out, okay, what am I going to step away from? And for the things that I do need to keep, you actually write down the rules. So you see it. Here's my tech rules. And you have 30 days. So what are you supposed to do during those 30 days? Why is this not just like a Marie Kondo weekend type thing, right? Yeah, like what-

Five-hour declutter. Yeah. Yeah, well, there's two reasons. So one, it takes about seven to 10 days just to sort of detox from the need to compulsively use the phone. Until you get rid of that feeling of compulsive use, it's very hard to make decisions about what's important or not. So the first week or two is you're just kind of getting away from it. But more importantly is 30 days is enough time to actually do the hard self-reflection on these key questions. Like what am I all about? What do I care about? What do I want to do with my time? You can experiment and try things out. You can talk to mentors. You can go for walks. You read inspiring books. I mean, it takes quite a bit of self-work to figure out what do I really care about. And then once you know that, when you get to the end of 30 days, now you have a foundation to make your

decisions. So now when you're like, should I come back? Maybe should I put Instagram back into my life? You can now run that against, here's the things identified I really cared about. If it really helps one of these things, yes, I'm using it for a huge win. If it doesn't, I'm really secure missing out on it because this is what I really care about. I really care about these five things. This is what I want to do with my time. This is what's important to my life. I want my energy to go to that.

And now you can just make these tools back into tools and not this sort of constant companion escape. Addiction. Yeah. Wow, man. This is powerful. Powerful stuff. How many people do you think actually, after reading this book, will take on the 30-day challenge? They seem to be doing it.

Really? Yeah. I mean, the whole idea of a 30-day challenge is a little bit more self-helpy than I normally am. I mean, right? I mean, I was a little bit uncomfortable. My books tend to be more, a little bit more like idea books. It has practical things, but, like, I'm an academic, right? Right, right.

We don't do 30 days. You're a researcher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't do 30 days. But it's what works. And, you know, people want there to be, like, I get asked the question a lot, like, but can you give me instead, like, some tips? Like five things I can do or whatever. I was like, I can, but.

Just delete your accounts. But you've got to do the 30. Like, something about this 30 days, this declutter, it does work. And coming up short of that, trying to kind of do it piecemeal, it doesn't seem to be as effective. And so I was like, all right, I'm putting it in. I'm going to Marie Kondo it. I'm going to have a process, you know.

I love it. But that's the feedback I'm getting. So that's why I tell people. I was like, you can do things to get in shape. Prepare for the 30 days, but rip the band-aid. I really feel like when you do this 30-day challenge. I had another friend, Baratunde Thurston, who did this a couple years ago. And he wrote a whole article, I think, in Fast Company about what he learned about himself in 30 days.

I wrote about him in Deep Work. You did? Yeah, because he stepped away from Twitter. I think he stepped away from like every, was it just Twitter? Maybe everything. But then he went back to it all. And now is he back? Well, I don't know.

I just remember at the time I wrote the article, I went and looked at how much he was using afterwards. Yeah, he stepped away for 30 days or maybe a month or something. And then he did like a whole article about what he learned about himself. I think he was able to do the deep work finally on certain projects or connect with friends more. You have to have the time. It can't be a weekend closet clean. That's the interesting thing about it.

If it's just like, okay, this weekend I'm going to just step back and figure out what do I want on my phone. I'm going to delete apps and stuff like that. It doesn't get it done. You have to have that space. Yeah. I mean, I think't get it done. Like you have to have that space. Yeah. I mean, I think it's the same, honestly, I think what's going on here, we've seen in health and fitness, right?

We got highly palatable processed foods. Yeah, get it out of your system. Yeah, and everyone got, you know, we had the BCV epidemic. Take the grains out. Yeah, and we tried tips, just, you know, the banal stuff, right? Like eat less, move more. You've got to get rid of it, though.

The food pyramid. Yeah, and what works is the people who have a whole philosophy. They're vegan, they're paleo, they're whatever. But they've got a whole philosophy based on something they care about. And so that's why this book is not about tips. It was like, what's veganism for digital life, right? What's the philosophy that can be based in values that allows you to make like consistent decisions about what you do?

It's interesting. My COO who manages my business, he doesn't have social media. He has a Facebook account because he got on in 2004 when we were in college, but he never uses it. I don't even know if he knows his password. He's not on Instagram, Twitter, nothing.

And he's probably the most productive person I know. He's got a daughter, you know, a year and a half daughter. And he's not anxious a lot. Yeah. He's calm. And he can think clearly. Yeah. And he's my inspiration because I'm probably on it too much promoting, you know, my show or whatever it may be.

Yeah. But I realized after this conversation, like, I could just be on the desktop for an hour a day doing what I need to do on social media. With some professional help probably too. Yeah, with some systems, some software, some team, you know, around that. And I've been doing that more and more, but I still feel like there's a couple things I hold on to

for whatever reason. And maybe I get to reflect more of like, what's the void I'm trying to fill? Yeah, well, there's value. Or is it just an addiction now that it's just like, maybe there's no void, to reflect more of like, what's the void I'm trying to fill? Yeah. Well, there's value. Or is it just an addiction now that it's just like, maybe there's no void, but it's just like, you're just so used to it. That's the complicated thing, right? But you can't figure out the void unless you do the whole Nietzsche thing, right? You have to confront it, right? Okay. I feel really uneasy because I don't have the thing

I normally look at. That uneasiness is good because now you have to figure out why do I feel uneasy and how do I make this go away and and that's where actual development comes out yeah you gotta be uncomfortable sometimes I love this you know my mom who lives a few blocks away she has been knitting her whole life and she still knits I don't know two three hours a day yeah there's a blanket a huge blanket a scarf a sweatshirt every week yeah that she finishes and she always knits, I don't know, two, three hours a day. Yeah. There's a blanket, a huge blanket, a scarf, a sweatshirt every week. Yeah. That she finishes.

And she always shows me like her masterpiece. Yeah. Like that's so cool that she focuses so much on her craft and she has that as her buffer time. She's always knitting in the car when someone else is driving. She's knitting in the car. When there's a movie, she's knitting. She's always knitting. Yeah. And it brings her a lot of peace yep it helps like her mind i'm sure she's probably

thinking a lot during those times but just like reflection time and i just continue to think about what are all the things that we could be mastering with this buffer time and it's primal right there's something primal let's say say, about knitting or woodworking. Because what differentiates, there's maybe three species. It's like chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans. One of the things that differentiates us is that we can plan. So we can have an intention and we can manifest it in the world. Crazy.

So I can think about a spear and I can take the rocks and I can do the different things and create it. And that really helps us succeed. So we're wired to be very fulfilled when we can take an idea and manifest it in the physical concrete world, which is why there's a type of fulfillment we get when you knit something or you carve something or whatever it is that you don't get on a screen because seeing our intention manifested in the concrete world is something that's primal. It's something that we're wired to crave because that's what allowed us to stop being tiger food. Right. Once we could start doing that. And so like someone I really admire is, I don't know if you've met Nick Offerman. I haven't met him. He plays Ron Swanson. Yeah, I haven't met him. Yeah, but he's got this somewhere around here in LA. He's a woodworker, right? He's got this shop around here. Yeah. And

he spends, it's got to be the most healthy way probably to be in Hollywood. Amazing. Screen star. But he's there all the time. And it's a serious shop. Like a light industrial warehouse type things. And he's really serious. I also look at like Jim Carrey.

I don't know if you've seen his work. He had a video last year that was like the most viewed video on Vimeo. Okay. He's a master artist. Interesting. He has this huge warehouse in I think think, New York City and in L.A. where he just goes and paints something new every single day. Yeah.

And he's an unbelievable painter. Yeah. And he just has all these colors and he's just painting whatever he wants. And I actually have one of his paintings because I was so inspired by it. But here's a guy who's probably, he's been wrapped up in the Hollywood scene for a long time, but to have like a craft that you can keep focusing on. Yeah. Probably gives him a sense of peace as well. Yeah. Because we're wired for that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to do that more in my own life. Really? Like what? Well, so I'm getting back into my guitar playing. Really? Same thing, right? You

have inflexible metal strings and a piece of wood and you're sort of trying to manipulate this real world thing to make it some outcome. Sound good. Sound good. That's good, man. A big thing I like to do is salsa dance. Yeah. I love salsa dancing. I play a little guitar as well. And I just started singing lessons a couple months ago. That's great.

So I'm trying to just use more of my body to manifest my skills. Yes. And things that I'm not that good at. Yes. Things that I'm trying to get better at. But you can get better at. And this seems to be, it good at, you know. Yes. Things that I'm trying to get better at. But you can get better at, and this seems to be, it's skilled and you can get better at it and it's demonstrable that you're getting better.

It's rewarding. You know, like, I'm better at this now than I was. And I think when we do these things, like guitar or whatever it may be, and we get better, that's when we build true confidence. We don't build confidence by getting more likes on social media. It might be a false sense of confidence for a moment, but we haven't really built a skill that's valuable. Yeah.

And I think that's the thing. There's fake confidence when we're growing online. But when we actually do something that we know is hard, deep work, and we see the growth, that's when we have that intrinsic confidence that supports us for a longer time. My Uber driver yesterday was telling me that he used to do music lessons, professional musician. And he said this was one of the shifts he saw that kind of got him out of that industry was that sort of younger people now aren't willing to practice. And he'd been doing this for a long time, right? I mean, it's not a random sample. It's people who

are coming to get lessons and just a discomfort with the discomfort of practicing. But when you're doing something like this, like learning how to play guitar, you probably remember when you first learned. The guitar is like completely unyielding at first. Oh, it's so hard, man. It takes like a year and a half to figure out like three songs. Just for like your fingers to get comfortable.

It's painful. But we used to be more comfortable doing these things because what else were you going to do? There was no other time. Yeah, we had all this free time. There was free time. What are you going to do? Like I want to play in a rock time it was free time what are you going to do like i want to play in a rock band right you know girls like guys in rock bands is what i was told right so i'm going

to learn all afternoon i'm going to practice all afternoon i'm going to put on the hendrix and do you know pentatonic scales or whatever but you know we if you're used to that as confidence you know what skill is you don't have to be world class at something but you know about i was bad at this and then i did this deliberate effort, and now I'm not bad. Yeah. And now you know what that is. The competent person, this was Matthew Crawford said something like, the competent person who has a skill is sort of quiet and easy with themselves. The non-competent person is out there yelling into the void online, desperate to get, will someone validate?

Wow. Will someone validate me? But when you know how to do something really well you're quiet and easy what do you recommend as a parent to other parents on how they can train or teach or educate their kids to do the hard work growing up yeah on certain skills or activities as opposed to take your ipad and iphone and watch a movie and play games. Yeah. Well, modeling is important. So they see.

Wow. They got to see what you're doing. See you reading a book. See you reading a book. See you doing. Playing guitar. See you doing hard things. Yeah.

See you doing hard things. Seeing you respecting other people who do hard things. That was important to me growing up for sure. Just being exposed to that and seeing that. It's just having that message. And then when I was growing up, the other rule was you always have to be doing an instrument, you always have to be doing a sport. And I was like, okay, that's pretty good, actually.

Because those are both things that are, two things are very unyielding, like trying to get a guitar to do something or trying to get a bat to hit a fastball. Yeah. So hard. So hard. That's right.

My dad tried to get me to do piano when I was a kid. And I went to one lesson and I just like screamed and cried about it. And he was like, okay, you don't have to go anymore. But I was in every sport. Yeah. So I was like obsessed with sports and all that. Sports is great. I mean, this is part of why it's so great is because, I mean, it's hard.

And you want to get better. It's demonstrable when you get better. Like, it's clear that you're better, and you're connected to other people. You're learning with a group. You're getting coached. You're helping the team as you get better. I mean, having that model, like, skills matter. We respect people who do something well.

It's worthwhile learning how to do something hard. Hard things is what moves life forward. Hard things is the foundation of fulfillment. The more I think that that is sort of modeled and talked about, the better. Yeah. This is great, man. I love this. Make sure you guys get the book, Digital Minimalism.

I've got a couple questions left for you. But Digital Minimalism is out now. Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. You can't find him on social media, but you can go to your website, calnewport.com. Is that right? Yeah, that's right, yeah. You can subscribe to your newsletter there.

You can learn more about you, not on social media, but on there. Do you have a newsletter once a week? Yeah, well, I blog, and it goes out to the newsletter. I'm a blog nerd. Blog nerd, love it, okay. This question is called The Three Truths. So I want you to imagine it's your final day on earth whenever you want it to be. It could be hundreds of years from now. It could be whenever, but at some point you got to go.

Yeah. And you've got to take all of your work with you. So all of your writing, your material, the content you've created, it's got to go with you when you die. Yeah. But you get to write down on a piece of paper, three things you know to be true about all of your experiences and leave that with the world. Your three lessons that you've learned that you would want to share back with the world. What would you say are your three truths? So this won't be worded elegantly because I'm thinking about this on the fly. Probably something about responsibility.

So taking on responsibility for other people to do things of value is in the end going to be more important than worrying about happiness in the moment. Doing hard things is sort of the foundation for a good life. Hard things are good. Push yourself to do hard things. Serve other people. Family, close friends, community, I talk about these things. Yeah, serve other people. I mean, I guess all of these, if I'm thinking about it, all three of these things is, and this is probably common to a lot of wisdom traditions, so I'm not coming up with anything new, but all three of these things, I guess, are really about taking the focus away from yourself, what's happening to yourself, what do people think

about you, how do you feel, sort of shifting the focus away from that. Take on responsibility, take on hard things, try to rise to it. Do hard things, produce things that are valuable. Serve other people, as opposed to worrying too much about are other people properly serving you? Are they liking the right things or saying the right things to you? Sure. Yeah. Those are great, man. I love those. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Cal, for, man, you set the example for what is really hard for a lot of people right now. People are so focused on likes and being on social media and doing the easy things and you constantly do the

hard things and set that example so i want to acknowledge you for going against the grain because it's not easy to do that and a lot of people are seduced with the easy out and filling the void by getting likes and all these things so i appreciate and acknowledge you for creating this type of work because it is the most rewarding things when we do the hard work. And when we eliminate distractions and really connect to other people and other human beings. So I acknowledge you for that, my man. My final question is what is your definition of greatness? Rising to your potential.

We all have a potential. Like what we could be doing. And so fighting the rise for that, like that's greatness versus throwing in the towel early. All right. There you go. I love it, man. Thank you, man. Appreciate it, brother. There you have it, my friends. Big thank you to Cal Newport. All about doing the deep, intimate work that creates more value in the world with that more focused attention. As opposed to being scatterbrained all over the place, never really building true relationships and true value in the world. Again, if you enjoyed this, make sure to share it with your friends.

in the world. Again, if you enjoyed this, make sure to share with your friends. If you know someone who's always on social media and is struggling and overwhelmed and stressed, or feels like they never get anything done or they don't have any time, make sure you send this to them. Be a friend. Send this to them right now so they can get the inspiration to start detoxing some of these things from their life. Again, send them the link lewishouse.com slash 770. send them the link lewishouse.com slash 770. I want to remind you how much you matter in the world. No matter how much stress you are facing right now, how uncertain you are about your career, your finances, your health, or that relationship in or the uncertainty of finding the right person in your life. You matter. I want you to know how much you matter. I've been to too many dark places in my life where I didn't think I mattered. And it's not worth it. It's not feeling

that way worth it. It's not supportive to a greater purpose for your life. So I want you to remember right now how much you do matter, how important you are to this world. I hope you continue to push through the challenges you face, to lean on support in your life, to find friends, mentors, lean on family members, find people who think like you, who can support you as well, and put yourself out there. Start giving back in other ways because whenever you feel like you don't matter, all you need to do is start helping someone else and remember how much of an impact you truly can make. You matter, my friends.

I love you so very much. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Hello?