Ep. 323: Strategic Procrastination
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On count new port. And this is deep questions, the show about cultivating a deep life in a distracted world. I'm here.

My deep work hq. Going is always by my producer, Jessica. Jessie, unfortunate i'd take justice skeleton out of our H. Q because I needed IT for our halloween decorations at our health.

I I don't even notice. Yeah, I was distract this morning.

He's finally back to his true passion, which has been a part of a halloween decoration and not upsetting journalists that come the interviewing of the hq. But i'll bringing back we'll bringing back up to halloween. I have an announcement and a request for the audience before get into the show today announcement.

This is just a bit of good news, thanks to me. Parade magazine remember, parade magazine from USA today earlier in october had a headline and article titled exclusive good reads reveals the nine most popular self held books of twenty twenty four so far. Here's a little bit the article introduction.

Good reads reveals exclusively to parade its most popular self helps books at twenty twenty four. It's going down a little bit. Good reads dove into the data and offer us an exclusive look at the most popular self help life hacking somebody explain AI to me, books of twenty twenty four, and not a moment to assume.

Or they had a list of nine. Number one on this list, Jesse, slow productivity by now. Newport.

that's exciting. So you .

gotta check IT out. If you have not yet bought slow productivity, you can buy whatever books are sold there. Was that a stone for? I like to think about fifty percent of what we talk about on the show.

Other book on this list are interesting. The other significant others was on here, which has the subtitle reimagine in life with friendship at the center. I've heard about that book.

Ethon mollett's co. Intelligence was on here. Come together and fight, right? We're on here.

Meditations for models was on here all over berkman, who was just on the show last week in the in debt section. That's a new book. I'm surprised that got on their so quickly.

I don't really know how they made this list and I color lely get the new york Charles do hig super communicators on there so exciting. I know how they made that list, but i'll take IT and I will assume its ordered. The number one means something.

okay. And here's the request. I actually need your help in the audience. I'm i'm looking to do a special episode of the program where I want to deal with real people who feel like they are struggling to get their act together from an organization and productivity perspective.

And I want to help them, and I want to talk to him. I want to cut together all this audio, and I want to bring IT on the show. I think it's important that we have we keep intersecting discussions of in your act together with real people. The real situations and their real problems are so justly.

I'm kind of springing this on your life, but i'm going to say if you are interested in, say, applying to be one of the two or three people I select for this project, send an email to Jesse at how new port dot com just briefly to explain your situation um you know your age like a little bit about why you're feeling to organize, like why you want to help to get your act together. We're looking for people who would be able to do one to three virtual interviews, roughly speaking, during east coast business hours that we can be flexible on timing. And we're looking for a variety is.

So not just people who are getting after in their jobs, I think that would be great, for example, to have at least one person be a full time caregiver, if possible. So we're kind of looking for a variety of different people. So again, if you are feeling like you are out of control in terms of time management organization are being overloaded and you want some professional instruction.

Jc, a calm porto com. Briefly I explain your situation. I'll choose a good mix. And for the rest of you when we're doing this project will hear IT here on the feed all right, suggested you might bein a couple .

of the emails is fine like in emails yeah just counting .

for tocom he loves to hear from you aren't. So we've got a good show today. We ve got a deep dive or have a new take on an old topic.

We got ourselves some good questions. We ve got a call. We ve got a case study.

We we even have a new fashion item to show off and then a cool final segment where I am going to react to an off bed by a recent author talking about a big regret in our life and is not what you think. So this should be a good epsom justice. Let's get to IT and get started with our deep dive. A common .

issue for those .

trying to cultivate a deeper life in our current world of constant distraction is that of procrastination. You have a big idea, something that can make a major change to your working life, for your life out of work. Maybe it's a side housework that could become something bigger.

Maybe it's a new serious commitment to fitness. Maybe it's a major change of location where you actually live our hard skill that if masters would give you a lot of leverage in your job, you're inspired, you're excited, but you're having a hard time getting going. You find yourself putting IT off for having a lot of false starts and IT fizzles.

So I want to talk about procrastination today because is important, especially for those interested in the deep life in particular. I want to talk about a new way of talking about procrastination that I think makes IT potentially easier to figure out what IT is holding you back and will offer some new ideas about how to fix things. So to start with, here is a realization I had recently in my own thoughts about procrastination.

It's not a singular phenomenon. There are different types of procrastination, which have different causes and different solutions. So if you mix up the solutions for the wrong type of procrastination, IT might not actually help the issue that you're facing right now.

I want to focus on particular on two major types of a Crystal ation. Uh, IT will go through. The first one, I think is what we more commonly think about, procrastination.

And then the second one's gonna. This new one that I realized more recently is a big deal and it's gona have unique solutions. So let's start with the more common type of procrastination for our purposes.

Let's call this practical procrastination. This is where most the advice of you you hear about procrastination is actually aimed. Practical procrastination is the result of not sufficiently having your act together.

If you do not sufficiently have your act together, IT can be difficult to get going to make progress on a hard project. Now let's be a little bit more specific here. What are the specific causes, like what are the specific types of having your act together that can cause tactical procrastination potentially your brain does not trust your plan.

You haven't really thought this through. Your brain says you don't know what you're doing. And as as we've talked about multiple times on the show before, a if your brain doesn't trust your plan, it's not going to give you motivation to take action, alright? A another cause of practical procrastination could be that your brain is so bathe in distraction that you can no longer sum in the ability to overcome even the most modest chemical obstacles, the activity. If you wonder what I mean when I say chemical obstacles activity, you should listen to last weeks episode on discipline.

But if you are constantly looking at this phone, you're constantly looking at your computer, you're so used to just bathe in yours cells and doping your mind is like, I would you talking about almost any optional effort you show me is going to be much less exciting than just looking at distraction. The final source of typical procrastinating just you're too disorganized. You're in reactive mode, a of too much stuff going on.

You don't have control of your obligations. You don't have control of your time. And because of this, you just can't find the time to make regular progress on the particular problem, right?

Typical procrastination. Ation has obvious solutions, so not easy to implement, but you have obvious solutions. If your brain doesn't trust your plan, learn more about IT.

You need to learn more about what IT is you're trying to do. And in doing so, you have to face the hard truths about how the particular, the particular world in which you're trying to act. You have to face the hard truth about how IT actually works.

The example I give so often on the show is people who want to rewrite how the publishing industry works, instead of actually learning how you actually publish a book. They want their plan they came up with to somehow given in run around how the industry actually don't do an in round around how things actually worked, figure out how IT works. Okay, if you're too distracted to make progress, you need to break your dopamine addiction.

We talk about this all the time on the show. Go back a couple episodes and you'll hear more about that. You probably have to stop using social media. IT is not necessary. You are not an influence of the people really care about and is not the core.

What's making your business run IT is you clock into the invisible factory so that mark sucker burger, elon moser bite dance can add another year to their net worth. You have to simplify your phone. You have to rewire your phone, which means you plug IT in when you at home.

You don't keep IT with you. You have to practice spending time alone. We talk about this stuff on the show.

Ah, that will solve that problem. Finally, if you're just too disorganized to find the time to get going, you got to get organized. Go back and listen to my episode called productivity basics from a few weeks ago.

You need to do full, you need to do multi scale planning, uh, you need to have autopilot scheduling. You just need to be on the ball with what's going on in your life, in your time. So these are solvable problems that tco procrastination has solvable problems.

But there's another type of procrastination that I think we talk about less often. And this was sort of my my recent insight and I call this strategic procrastination calling strategic for cradle because we are at another level of scale here. right? Let's set your in control.

You're organized. You understand the field in which you're trying to act. Um you're not addicted to your phone like the issues, a tactic of accra ita just aren't there and yet you're still reluctant to make progress. The solution when IT comes to strategic procrastination is a little bit unexpected. Consider giving up now and .

be a little .

bit more specific about this. There's two things I could mean by this one, give up on the idea that you're proccessing non or to give up on something else major so that you have room for the new project that you're going. The execute.

So the advice is coming from an underlying truth, which I think we often try to avoid, especially those of us who actually go through the hard work of getting our act together. Major initiatives to be executed sustainably require a lot of time. They require a lot of time within your week.

They make progress and they require a lot of weeks so that, that progress can add up in the something significant. We can avoid this reality. So if your schedule is reasonable, full, you might not just be able to add the new thing.

You just might not have time for IT. And in this case, you can either say, you know what, this was an inspiring idea, but I have these other things i've been working on for a while, and I want to keep working on him. Or you say we gotta change something to make room for this.

I'm not going to squeeze in. Major initiatives are not very acceptable to being squeeze in. They require time. They require flexibility. We talked about this actually in last weeks in depth episode with all of our birkwood.

I think all of that was pretty good, or I would say really good, actually, at emphasizing what he calls fine ituc find attitude. You are finite. Your time is finite. It's only so much you can do.

The earlier you embrace that.

the Better. And this is an exactly instantiation of that principles. There's only so many major projects you can do. So how do you know if you have enough time? Well, I say, look, if you have a major new thing you want to work on, add IT to your weekly time plate.

This is when each week when I work on this, this time is set aside, is protected, and you've set aside more than enough time for this has buffer in IT, right? It's not like I have to fill every minute of these small little gaps. I got good chance of time at a time site.

If you can do that, you can make progress on something. If you're having a heart fitting that in your weekly template, then you don't have time. You have to remove something else.

You do have time where you have to move on. So giving up is actually a key strategy when IT comes to strategic across nation. Now I have three advances points to make about this idea.

One in general, when in doubt, even if you're feeling inspired about a new initiative, when in doubt, it's usually Better to polish a improve efforts on existing initials and had a new one, especially when you're feeling and maybe little bored, maybe you've been hit with a rush of inspiration that you want to act on. It's tempting to add something new. And when I want to argue, is it's often Better to say, let me go back to this thing i've already been working on.

I've been becoming a Better writer. I've becoming a Better coder. I've been trying to get in Better shape. Let me improve the thing that I already have regular times that aside for, let me get more out of that time than trying to fit something else in. My second point is the quest to fine time for major initiative can actually be useful as a way of cleaning up some of the clutterin .

your schedule.

Do you get committed to this new initiative? You're trying to find time for the sidestep, strategic procrastination and you might find all the issue as i've little small commitments are made. I am working on this thing, but I don't really care about anymore.

But it's eating up a lot of my day and I have these calls and i'm taking this online course, kind of have have heartedly dly and look at all these days that has taken up this time. I could have, and it's a good forcing function free to realize, oh, if I cancelled this and out rid of this and clean up on these smaller things, I could fit in something else major. So this process of finding time can actually be useful.

Uh, third point, sometimes it's helpful to work on something seasonally. Alright, I am going to temporary stop working on this thing, give three months to this new initiative. That's i'm going to clear up time to give you more than enough time to give you some breathing room, give IT the attention that deserves to see if IT gets legs, to see if IT unfolds, to see if it's something worth adding to my life, right?

So like your podcasting and you go on a summer hiatus to work on another side hustle project like a newsletter, you're not sure if you want to do this or not. Give yourself more than enough time to do that by putting something temporary rely on hold. And that if that new thing goes really well and you can make some decisions, I want to permanently add this.

I have to take something else out. I have to change something about my schedule. So temporarily clearing the decks can sometimes be a good approach as well.

Alright, so when IT comes to procrastination, again, just to summarized, we think a lot about tactical procrastination, which is like get your act together so you can make more progress. But sometimes that procrastination is strategic and the real problem is you don't have enough time. It's not your systems, it's not your organization, is not your willie. It's a reality that you're finite and there's only so much you can do. Do you go just strategic process .

idea with that a lot recently?

Yeah I mean, idea what this all the time really because I have my act together and there's lots of tempting big projects for me, but I don't really have time for anything new. And often I often do put things on hold. It's like going on book.

Leave the work on a book, you put something else aside or this podcast took a long time to get added to my schedule because, you know, I had to find a way to find a regular time for IT. And I didn't have IT until a few years ago, and then I did so. So yeah, cheer crazy ation I didn't have named for, but it's a big part .

about how I think about accomplishments.

Anyway, we got some good questions coming up on all sorts of topics, kind to have a grab back today. But first, let's hear from one of our sponsors want to talk in particular about our friends at element l in t element drink mixes or something that I use A, I use almost daily because what what you get with these things is a the electoral makes you need, but in a powder that is zero sugar, no dodging stuff, so you don't feel bad about using IT.

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You can try totally risk free if you don't like IT just give you away to a sault I friend and they will give you your money back. No questions ask. I also want to talk about our friends at shop of five.

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exhausted. I've been a prey in first grade teacher for six years in an elementary public school. I love the students and I have amazing coworkers. My district has been horrible with annual changes, so I switch counties to teach fifth grade with only .

one subject well. And I use this as an example to talk about two general keys to keep in mind when considering a job change. So the first key, and this comes from my book, so good they can ignore you, is to be careful when making a change that your not throwing out hard one career capital.

So career capital is my term for rare, invaluable skills. IT is your main leverage for controlling the data day reality of your job. It's your main leverage for making your jobs sustainable and fulfilling ah and often made mistake is to chase the content of the job and leave your career capital behind. And it's a mistake because clear capital makes much more difference in the content of your job.

So like if you were leaving teaching to go work you know at E S P N because you love sports, that would be probably a mistake because you're getting rid of all the clear capital you had built up for teaching just to go after a job whose title or content is more appealing to you. But you will soon realized the main thing that matters is not what your job is, but what you can do with to your clear capital. You don't have this problem.

In the scenario we're discussing, you're moving from teaching the teaching so that would take your care capital with you. The second thing to keep in mind when thinking about changing your job is to make sure that if you're unhappy with something about your current employer, you're not making a move to sort of protest or express your anger at the current employer. They don't care, they won't notice your new employer will have other things to know you.

The main reason to make a move from one place to another within the same industry is that the job related lifestyle factors are Better. If you're doing lifestyle center planning, you have a vision of a life, will live the elements of what you want in your life. You have this clear vision, including sort like to feel in rym of your job.

If the new job is a moving you notably closer towards ds this vision, that's a good reason. The change if you're just annoyed with the way that your current job is handling some things that much less of a good reason to change, right? Because here's the thing.

Let's say, for example, you're annoyed with how your current district handling annual changes. You go to this other dito teach, they'll do something else that I noise you and you certainly never want to make a change to try to make a point because again, known cares in your mind. You imagine when you change districts because you don't like the way they they handle annual changes that there's like some war room somewhere in the school administration building, but they like, oh, no, we just had a teacher leave for the fifth grade.

Why did they do IT SHE didn't like the annual changes and they're like, he was right. What have we done? What have we done? And like winding their clothes.

And like, we knew that we knew this was bad. SHE really showed us. And and you know, there's someone just heading the table.

why? why? You know, no one notices, so don't make a change despite for someone. Don't make a change to make a point.

Don't make a change because you are annoyed, because you will be annoyed in almost every job, especially if you have a job in the public sector like public school, t gm. Public sector bureaucracies are going to annoy you. Spoiler alert, we're going to change, bring your car capital and make sure that you're changing because the lifestyle implications are positive.

Now that could be the case for you right here. That sounds like that might be. So that would be a good reason change if you're clear that this new position would get you closer to your lifestyle. But those two points, I think, apply to any potential job change, right? We got next, next questions from Kevin.

Coding can be used to automate a lot of tasks. If you probably set up on the front end, do you use coating to automate task or the task that you recommend trying to make time to automate with scripts?

Um here's the thing about automating personal sale work as opposed to what most of these tools were creative for, which is like automating processes that an organization or a team does. But to me, it's a hobby like if you're a coder, IT could be fun if you like. IT like this is cool.

I got zp r to connect uh, to this API over here. And does this automatically IT could be fun. And if you're into IT, go for IT. Uh, it's not going to make your work in life significantly Better and is far from a necessity for people in general to do.

This is just an extension, I think, of the productivity pron movement, which erodes in the early two thousands, which has always sold this promise that with the right technology and the right technological skills, work to become significantly easier than, if you just deploy the right tool in the right way, work will become significantly easier, just from a subjective experience. This was the big poised, for example, the early two thousands in the merlin man forty three photos. Community people thought, what if we take David islands getting things done methodology, and we connect this with mac based computer tools? We can basically have the computer take over most of the hard stuff of work and will just be cracking widget.

And work will get easy and IT in IT. Because work is hard, you can automate in the end, having to actually do the thing, figure out what detail the right do, the reading, producing the new code, producing the words that need to come into the strategic memo. That's the hard stuff that's going to be hard, the context which is going to be hard.

You can automate that away. Most of what you do automate is actually not big of footprint, like it's not the problem. The problem is not, how do I get these proposed dates from this email? And under my calendar doesn't take long.

You open up a calendar over here and you put the dates in, right? The hard thing is like, I have to think about which these dates works when I was just working on something else and now my mind is context shifted over so you can automate your way at work being hard. That being said, there is nothing wrong with that.

I think it's cool if you're kind of like a geek or a programming like me yeah have at IT. But if you're not, don't worry about IT. This is not somehow necessary for making you work much Better. Who we got next? I next questions from tender.

When reading for pressure, I have no problem, but when I comes to reading with a goal of retaining information for a project, I struggle specifically, I have several biographies, classic tacks and self help box. I can't seem to get through, sometimes only reading fifteen pages in an hour.

Uh, so this is just practice, right? Thought I mean, I think you're jump in in the head, uh, into books that you're not that interested in and you're not that used to reading in your mind is like going to way up to hear and that's not a big deal.

Um here's what you do in these genres where you are struggling, put in the work, define books in those honor's that you are super sight about in love, right? So instead of let's say you not you're not used to biography, don't jump straight the sae i'm gonna ad, uh all four extent volumes of Robert carers want to be john biography, right? Instead find A A shorter biography of someone who's really interesting to you and it's like really motivated.

Like maybe what what you read instead is something more, maybe even more. Meanwhile likely it's let's really like rich roles finding ultra, something worth like getting into like someone's life. They're doing something inspirational or whatever IT is, but find something you love in self help.

You know that its own genre, find your self help books and slight, put IT in my veins. This is exactly what i'm interested in. This is exactly talks to what I care about.

You're going to zip, do epoca quick as you can use to those generalists. And you can kind of wander a little bit like farther from the things that you absolutely love, and you get more used to reading other types. thanks.

I think that's fine. Um you can also experiment with audio. And some people really like losing the biography and audio.

Maybe you want to try that, you know as well, and you'll get more use to IT. A A related point here, party, your problem might be doping edition. So the .

problem might .

be in addition to not being used to these type books, is that your mind is used to look at your phone every hint to board. I get a quick hit of algorithmically optimize distraction.

If that's the case, you need to work on that as well because your brain could basically be saying, this is boring if you're only going to through fifteen pages an hour, your brain keeps disengage from what you're doing, probably because it's seeking dopamine and probably you're feeding IT. Probably you're getting twenty five checks of your phone in that hour. We are only reading fifteen pages.

So there might be a deeper problem here. You need to reduce the noise in your life, and that's probably gna mean, step in away from social media. My apologies again to musk socks burgan by dance.

But you provide to step away from social media, probably after what I call rewire in your phone, which is plug your phone in when you're at home and keeping in that one location. It's not with you as a defauts when you're reading your phones, not there. We need to look something up.

You have to go where your phones plugged in and look IT up and go back to where you're reading you. You got to reward your phone and spend more time alone outside walking, just with your own thoughts as you reduce a dopamine addiction. You'll also probably have an easier time keeping your your mind focused on the abstract for longer periods of time.

The final thing, if you really want to try to train this year, if you really think it's an attention issue, do interval training, don't sit down for an hour and have your mind start wondering ing only get through fifteen pages and set saying going to sit down with this hard book for ten minutes and i'm going to read the hell out of him for ten minutes as soon as my mind wonders like no back, let's do this. Let's move and focus on it's just for ten minutes I can do them and after you get comfortable with that, which may take a few weeks, you make IT fifteen, then you make a point. So you can also directly interval train the specific focus that is induced when you're read in in a book and your brain will get more used to this.

So all of this, I need to giving you all these different ideas to help prepare and train your brain for reading these books. It's all casting. Reading books like you would cast, shooting free throws are planning the guitar.

That means it's not at all surprising. That means very little to me that you say, look, I just start trying to shoot the basketball. I'm not really making very many free throws or I just picked up a guitar and that sounds very terrible.

Yeah, of course a train. Yeah, I get your fingers stronger. You've to find the muscle memory for the shot you've got. You have to throw a thousand three throat before starts coming easier.

You're going to have to it's going to take a lot, a lot of times trying to play that d car before your fingers were able to hit cleanly. But you will get Better. Of course it's not impossible but is not trivial. And that's what i'm trying to point out here is you can get Better at this.

That's kind of a big point here.

right? You regard next next questions from w.

My company Operates using the hyperactive high mine approach. I've implemented all your tactics, and I was promoted last spring, but i'm unfulfilled. Should I return and finish my P, H, D to pursue academic work or lean more into my hobby?

Alright, well, this is you got the special question here because the answer here is going to deal with life sales planning, perhaps not surprisingly. But I want to use this excuse the show off, uh, for those who are watching, instead of just listening, the latest piece of deep questions podcast sorata al a gear. We've got new hats. I'm going to put mine on here.

Hold on one second.

These are our new and improved uh, deep questions hat. So for those who are listening instead of watching, uh, this is my V B L C C P hat. Now based on our feedback, our man's Zachary David, who made these hats for us, has given me a smaller, I had a resize and put in the corner like a surfer hat.

V B L, C, C P, values based, lifestyle centric career planning. This is an awesome looking hat. Jessie is a showing off a deep life hat, looking good. So I fired. I put on my V V L C C P hat.

If we're going to give an answer about vbl ccp, I do want to shut out exactly, David, at company outfitters that net that you do these hats s for us. So hit him up. He's got this company called, say, IT with stitches.

good. A company outfit is not net. You wants to get your cold gear.

Now, my head on, Jesse. I am ready to go. All lifestyle centre planning. The hat method of my earphones is interesting and all sounds weird. R, A, W, i'm going to harness the power of the hat and give you an answer here about lifestyle centre planning before you run out the door and sign up for A P, H D program. Uh, let's get more strategic. You need a broad vision for your ideal lifestyle, that this broad vision should be based in your values as the v in v bl, ccp and IT should be cover all aspects of your life.

What does a typical day look like? What's rhythm of your day? What does that look like around you? are? How does your work fit into this day? What is the feel of what your work is doing? Are you stepping out of a rural home, the walk to a pond in the woods where you're going to be riding in a new book with a coffee? Or is IT you're heading to like a gali loft in the city where there's all sorts of high energy creative work going on?

Is that a vision that's really centered around taking your kids to school and being there to pick them up on the way back and and being plugged in in to your town life? Is IT been a master of a universe type that's, you know, moving numbers and making bank. And like, you gotta get this vision, don't be specific about, I live in this town, I have this job, but you ve got to get the vision that resonates, the vision of your ideal lifestyle. Working backwards from that vision is .

the whole ball game.

That's how we figure out what you should do for your job. And when you have this vision of a different aspects of you, your life and what IT feels like, and you start thinking through all of the many different options you have to get closer there. A lot of options will come up for your job, like IT might turn out that way to second.

My job is a fantastic engine for a moving towards this this vision. I I you know it's contained um there is hyperactive, but I can change that a little bit or okay because it's just nine to five and I like where we live and IT opens up these other opportunities. Or maybe you realized how this job is almost right. But just like the hype of high mind element is is making IT really training work. Why don't I use my career capital to switch over to this lateral move within the organization is not going to make me more money.

In fact, maybe onna lose a little money, but it's gonna more autonomists and the hype of high mine aspect goes away um but otherwise that we can still live here in the income and allows me to work remote and my my vision works out or maybe when you do this exercises you realized like I got to get out this job all together. We've got to move to different part of the country. I need a completely different structure at work.

All of these decisions become clear when you're working backwards from an ideal vision, a vision of the ideal lifestyle. What you don't want to do is be reactive. The feelings in the moment, all right? So if you say, like, I don't know, i'm unhappy, I think I feel unfulfilled.

That leads to grand goals and this myth that a grand goal can solve everything. So if I just quit and get A P, H D, this will solve everything. If I just like, switch to a different job, maybe that'll solve everything.

Pursuing a singular grand goal rarely is going to fix all the issues, because your vision of the ideal life has all these different attributes. When you focus on just one thing, you're not only just ignore in a lot of those attributes, you might actually be making them worse. Now people don't like this.

Grand goals are fun because they're inspirational. And we want to write the inspiration like you write a drug. So it's romantic.

I'll get my PHD. You don't want to think anything more about IT, but follow through the story line. Pull this thread a little father.

Where does that go? Does IT lead to? What's the lifestyle this leads to? Or what does IT are going to be teaching somewhere? Well, it's not going to be probably a great teaching job if like later in life, you're going back to a PHD, right?

I mean, the like in your track types of romantic professor jobs like I have typically require that you're like a hot shot out of college and good like a number one program like I did and you really busted for six or seven years and become a real force in your field and publish all these papers or whatever. So like, you might just end up doing a junk teaching. And that's going to be frustrating.

Maybe that at this stage of alive and not have the income you need, like you gotta pull these threads. And the best way to avoid, again, finding this trap is to work backwards from the ideal vision of a life will live, and not forwards towards a singular grand goal. The other advantage of doing values based lifetime le center career planning, or is I typically my book to say i'm just kind of life's center planning.

It's a bit of a mouthful. I love IT on the hat, which I am going to wear because this is not going to find my tribe. Only so many people will know this, that I am kind of simplifying IT. The key to this is that gives you a sense of autonomy and improvement in your life right away. And IT might turn out as you work on all these other aspects of your life that you're fine that like actually your unhappiness was not coming from the email frequency of your job.

But there's all these other things that mattered to you that were not being expressed like your connection to community, maybe like nature, maybe like A A sense of like your mind and being able to be engaged interesting ideas or like your a sense of productivity of a very, maybe your job is very abstract and you have no sense of them, make my intentions made manifest completely in the world and you feel unmoor right. Maybe this is something about the neighborhood you live in, in the hythloday IT and moving a mile wake change. All of that IT might turn out that your lack of a film has something to do for your job.

And you and you can't fired this out until figure out what IT is. I actually what you need to do some lifestyle centre planning right now. We have these hats on, Jessie. I think every question have to bring back to this.

I feel going away. It's kind of like golf in terms of because he eluded to the fact that he does lifestyle centric planning. And but even with golf, like you figure red one thing out as I go, well, but you maybe this part of the swing is going to do something. So yeah.

I mean, I would like to talk to him about what planning he's doing is when I hear someone say maybe I should go get my PHD yeah, I know the three life's service planning right? right? I mean, unless it's again someone who is on like a hot shot academic track that is like the epidemic, I don't know what to do yeah and like, maybe this will fix me and he almost never does.

I mean, look, I say my my rules for gradual. I say all the time when we repeat in one more time, do not get a graduate degree unless there is a specific position that you want. You have good reasons for one in IT, and you have concrete evidence that the specific degree you are going to get at, the specific place where you are going to get the degree, we ll make that position available.

And if you don't.

it's not right. You have to have here's the concrete thing I want to do and why. And I have evidence that if I get this degree from here, I can, I could probably do this, and I can't without. Sometimes this is obvious.

Like I wanted to be a professor when I was at the in my undergrad degree, is trying to figure out what do I want to do? And I said, you know what, I think I want to be a professor if because I want to make a run at that because I think the autonomy, the intellectual engagement, the focus on results, not super productivity, that's what I really wanted that met me well, um you have have a pd to do that so I made plenty of sense for me to go to school um and I had the hard evidence or right I when I talk to my professors, I dark with like what does IT take to become a professor at a place like this and they're very clear about IT like, yeah, look, you're GTA go to you're not like a top five graduate program and killing, it's probably not going to work. We get three injured applications, you know news limit to doctors for every position you got to be going to a top place, right? Okay, I got in the MIT so I can go to a top place.

And here's what you will take. Here's what you have to do. And I, okay, so I know what I have to do and I get there, but I have the plan.

I might not succeed very hard, at least that was possible. That makes sense here in dc, both in the government and in companies that work with the government. There are often just formal requirements.

You have to have a masters degree in one of these subjects we don't really care from, but you have have a master degree in order to get x this position of this contract. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So like, okay, in my career, I want to go from here to there.

I need to get one of these degrees. And I know getting these degrees necessary. I know if I get this degree, it'll make IT possible.

Yeah, of course i'm gonna do that. That makes a lot of sense. If you're a in banking right or consulting to get to a certain level, you have to get in MBA.

This is how IT works. So that makes a lot of things. This is why i'm going to get my masters degree because I want to be managing director at Solomon brothers or whatever.

And i've been there for four years. And this is like the thing you have to do that makes sense. But if you're born in on the filled and say, I don't know, I kind of like college, you know, my flat was fun. Let's go get A P H. D.

That's not the, that's not the right reason to do IT.

We should get a had here's my new thing and I think this would be great for youtube. We should have a hat for like every single topic we deal with and just constant switching that way. You you're never you're never a in the no mystery around what we're talking about is everything we put on.

Put another hat right? I got here. Do you have a slow productivity corner? We do. I like that theme music.

Each week, we like to identify one question that is specifically relevant to my new book, slow productivity, the last start of accomplishment without burnout, if you have about that book by IT. Now IT is a cheat sheet for at least half of what we talk about here on the show. Hi, what's today's slow productivity .

corner question questions from? Usually, i'm a director of an innovation at a university in the ukraine. After three months here, I have a team of three and thirty seven open projects. We joked that our goal is to choose what project, not to start what's a good way to handle the pressures of our university to complete projects, while also not overgrowing my team and causing burnout.

right? Well, this is A A great example of a key principle from the books, slow productivity when I talk about doing fewer things. And what I mean about that is exactly actually what we see here is don't do too many things at once.

Now IT teams, innovation teams, project based teams like the team being discuss here in this question, they're actually pretty good at this. I loved here. We have a oh, oh, I see.

Oh, okay, actually got i'm i'm going to revise myself here. I here's what I thought you were saying europe. So I going to tell you what I thought you were saying and it's not what you're saying.

But then the thing I thought you were saying, i'm very happy about going to push you target. So what I thought you were saying is that your working your team is working on three projects right now and you have a backlog of thirty seven. That's what I wanted to here, right? Because the key principle, I don't care how many projects the university has pushed in your direction. I don't care if it's thirty seven, I don't care if it's three hundred and seven. What I care about is how you decide how many you're going to be actively working on.

And with a team of three, you should be working probably on three projects at a time, right? And so the key here is like your workload, your daily workload, the members of your team should be the same no matter how many projects are in your q because the number of things you work on IT once is fixed and is the same, whether there's five hundred things waiting or ten. All right? A that is the way you have to deal with this.

Now in slow productivity, in particular in principal, one that shows up in chapter three, I talk about the principal doing fewer things. I discuss a team at IT. This is that the broad institute in cambridge I talked specifically about.

Here's this team that is, given all of these projects by the broader institute, their technology projects, tools, they want them to build, systems, they want them to innovate, that's going to make the institute run Better. It's a very similar situation here to what you're talking about here. And what they did that was very successful is that every potential project they wrote on an inx card and they put IT on the wall, the columns they had marked off, like waiting .

to work on next to that.

they had a column of currently working on, and they had a note on each of the things in the currently working on, who's taking the lead on this, who's working on this. And the key was you couldn't have too much stuff in the currently working on if you you could lead one thing yourselves, if you have three t members, maybe can have like three projects going on as soon as a project finished or hit a break point.

Like okay, now we have to wait for feedback or whatever. Um they would move IT out of that column and bring something new from the waiting to work on into the currently working on product column. As I report in the book, the number of projects they completed win up when they are working on a fewer number of things at time, they could give IT their full attention, complete them well and complete them fast.

The rate at which projects were completed when because they weren't having the overall of trying to switch between too many things. That's what you need to do here. You need to have a wall where you have all the things we've been asked to do, any of the wall.

Here's what we're working on. And all that matters is your limit for how many things can be in that. Here's all working on and the pressure from the number of things you've been asked to do should not affect the number.

Things you work on works to feel like work. No matter how much stuff is cute up, you should not be trying to work on more things the same time. There's no other real answer here like you can't work on thirty seven projects that you might as well be three thousand.

You can't work on thirty seven projects the same time, right? There's only so many hours in the day. So like once your past four, five, five projects, there's no more you can you can sustain an approach like which just work on everything has been pushed away.

So be clear about IT be cleared, the university. Be clear to anyone else who's giving you pressure. Here's how we work. We here's our list of things we're cute up to do. Here's the things we're working on.

Um we work incredibly hard and efficiently and with focus on the things we're currently working on as we finish, we bring more things over. There is no way to go faster. You know, this is how fast this team can finish things.

You're welcome to give us feedback about prioritizing the stuff for waiting to work on. You're welcome to come in at any time you want and cross things off this list. Forget about this.

Forget about that. Forget about this. But we cannot change the number of things were working on.

And currently, that's like squazing blood out of a turn up of a rock. Whatever the expression is, our time is our time. We've saturated IT. This is how we produce the best work. The big thing I try to advise in that section is like, we should do this even if you got in a team like really where knowledge work needs to get is that individuals are doing this as well. You can push as much stuff at me as you want, but I work on three things at a time.

And as I finish things that bring more things in, that is the key, that sort of workload management, that binary appreciation between an active and waiting is like the number one key for reducing burnout and IT. Maximize the rate of completion, which has to be the metric care about, right? If I run an organization, IT does not matter .

to me how many things .

to work in on at once. IT does not matter to me how many things people say they're going on. All care, best of things, to finish the rate at which things finished, how many things that we finish this month, how many things that we finished this quarter, that's what matters.

And if you want to maximize that, yeah, have to reduce and constrain the number things are working on at any one point, right? So look, I get into that in depth and slow productivity, but it's a critical point to making productivity more sustainable. It's also our excuse, Jessie. They hear that theme music one more time.

Right now, now I feel relaxed. You know the music, I find relaxing. So if you haven't you like the music and you have not listened to either of our in depth episodes yet or semi regular through the listen to IT for no other reason than the theme music.

And it's the same, let's give credit, credit do is current who did the main theme for slow for the podcast or techno nerd thing, which I love so much, he did our kind of cool in depth theme as well. So for no other reason you should listen to those episodes just to hear the cool guitar music. I think so it's it's like guitar cords. Me cool. If like when you lost on youtube, IT was just me rocking out on a guitar, just playing those chords and putting my guitar side, that would be that's how a good views just in hats, but a thread in your acts like let's get to call in sounds good.

Hey, how long time? Listen, love the podcast question for use this. I died between three and forty five minutes each way to school every day. Um that's plenty of time in the car. Normally I like to into audio books, music podcast, but I feel like i'm wasting this perfectly good time that I could be working my brain towards learning material that i'm staying at the time.

Um so my question for you is this as an engineering student, how can I maximized my productivity in this time while i'm driving um when I can't necessarily just listen to an audio book on physics, where is more of a understanding conceptual formulas and that kind of thing? I love the show and I can't wait your answer. Thank you so much.

Well, I have a similar length commute to George town. It's like thirty five minutes. So I can speak from personal experience of a couple suggestions here. Um one what I like to do is the morning commute to the commute in the school where you have your coffee and energy is high, is a commute that I want to be productive with quotation Marks.

I'll define what I mean by that, right? But usually my drive home right now, this is like unwind time, you know, especially if I can do a schedule, shut down riches, al, before I leave to come home. Now it's it's podcasting.

Let me to listen to a podcast. Let me listen to like an interesting book on tape, and just take that unwind, especially after a hard day school. So first one, I like that productive morning, relaxing afternoon right now.

What do I mean by productive? You're not going to make progress on your engineering studies by your driving. I got I i'll see that happening. So by productive, I mean, and actually engaging, interesting like an exercise that if you did IT, even if not in the car, you be like this added value of meaningful depth to my day. There's several things I do, so just list them all, and maybe some of these will resonate with you.

One thing i've done before is i've gotten a book on a on a book course, audio course like the great courses, right? Uh, on the topic i'm interested in but not this is dead right in the middle of research, right? So maybe i'll get a book on the the big ideas of western civilization or the history of role or something like this and what I would do, and i'm going to one of these books, is typically the lesson would fit with the great courses.

The lessons would fit pretty well. And like a thirty to forty minute commute, I going, I going to pay attention to this on the drive when I get to my parking space, I am on my laptop in the car gonna take notes on everything I just listen to. Then I build out this document of notes unlike the course on taking um the notes will submit IT.

But knowing that you have to write those notes is also going to get you to pay attention Better to whats going on. So that's one thing I would do. The other thing I would do is i'll give myself like A A particular problem I want to make progress on in my head like so for me right now, this will often be, i'm thinking about a book chapter that's coming up and like how I going to make this work.

And all this I think through as I drive, and i'll think through different options. What about this? And I let my thoughts unfolding. And again, when I get there, I write down my thoughts before I leave the cars like you can do interesting brain storming in the car. Like you have your coffee, your motivation is high.

I'll do that of outline in my head podcast episode deep types for example of the um i've worked on that if i'm working on an article like a new yorker peace, I might say, great. I can try to figure out a structure here. I don't like the way i'm getting in and let me tried to figure something out.

And then when I get there, i'll take my notes. If you have a hard time doing thinking in the car, there is easy practice for, this is product meditation. Go for a walk. You try to make progress on one idea just in your mind. When your attention wanders, you bring you back to what you're thinking about.

This is a great way to sharing your brain's ability to be facile with this working memory, to keep something in your working memory, to explore a piece of IT and come back and update to working memory. What you need to think in your head to, write in your head, to structure your head, that come up with ideas just in your head. And remember room, this is practiced.

Just do a bunch of productive meditation. You will get Better at IT. And then there's more you can do. Well, you're actually driving. So that's what that's what i'd suggest. You don't have to make progress on your engineering studies, but you can make progress on interesting ideas and thoughts in the morning, and in the afternoon should be listened .

to the deep questions podcast.

So when you take off your computer after you park, you're just like, you like a word file, the notebook .

yeah word files yeah. I mean, you should have a bunch of word files or whatever you use for, like, ideas you're working on, things you're trying to understand. I mean, is something I often preach, especially ideas like, okay, this feels important to me, something going on the world feels important to me.

And I want to clarify my thoughts on IT write IT down. Otherwise, especially if it's important to you, you're gonna just be repeating stuff you've heard h be reactionary or just sort of deal with crupp activation. What do I think my group is supposed to think about this, which is not like a bad thing, but like if something matters to you and you really want to have a considered understanding of IT, begin recording your thoughts.

And you should be doing this about like a lot of things in your life, like if you're a meditator, you should have a document somewhere really like why? Like why am I meditating? What am I trying to achieve here? Why do I think this is important?

If there is like A A political issue that pushes your buttons, don't just let your button be pressed. Really try to understand IT right? If there's know if you're thinking about the U. S. Presidential election and your democrat and don't really understand trump ism, articulate like what the core principles here are, right?

Don't ah what is that that upset to you if you're republican, you don't like like the progressive life, like what is the core thing? What is the core principles here you dislike and why and what's your alternative? Otherwise what you're going to deal in is just particular antidotes and examples exaggerations.

This happened so often. The gap between billing and understanding the gap is so common that you'll see this often. Where's someone who feels very strongly about something, but like a gut feeling?

My group pates this, and I and I agree, and they're just sure they get put in a situation where you like someone chAllenges them and they're so sure of like, oh, madly, this is so wronging going to wipe the floor with this person. And then they find themselves, they are really struggle in like, what what about this and I don't know like that or this. And they struggle to articulate their feelings.

You can see that frustration in their face because you haven't work through your underlying feelings. So I think it's really important. If you're religious, you should have a document that works through your theology. Don't avoid IT your political.

You should have a document that understand here's my political principles um if there's a practice like physical you really into you know I know someone tell me the other day how going into extreme on inspiring natural settings is I got to call their physical a life, worked that out, work out the principles, write down, write IT down, have work files. So you should have a sort of this, I believe, folder somewhere that you're constantly working on because IT gives you a more sophisticated understanding. Your understanding evolves Better.

You can build off IT Better. You understand the world is Better. So yeah, I think in general, that's a good that's a good exercise.

So just like one logistic question in terms of that. So if you're using the word files on your laptop, say people use like google drive or something, yeah, I can merge them.

Yeah, you can merge them. So like if you really want to write off your commute in the parking lot, what I think works like I just want to shut this down. You can write that in word and then later on copy IT I can to a google drive if that's what you're doing.

Or a google dog, if, like, if you want to keep IT accessible from different devices, some people will use the diction, the auto translation, like in their iphone. And just like, let me just say all the thought, some of my notes about this now in the car, and like auto translated and like a email that to myself and then like a later, i'll actually put that in into something else. So I think all that's fine.

Or if you do that on your phone, you probably have internet on there already, like from the parking lot. You can dictate right to google dog. So you I don't care about the tech, but anyways, in general is good to have idea this.

I believe documents and more specifically, that's a good use of a morning commute is coming up with a way to update one of those documents, right? Let's see here. I think we have a case study.

So this is where people right in to talk about how they have put my advice to work within their own life. If you have a case I can share, you can see that straight to Jessie and county per tocom. Now today's case study comes from amy.

Amy says, for various reasons, i'll be attending a graduate program at the birthday school and music at thirty four years of age. My plan to succeed, inspired by your advice, is as follows. Time block planning and fixed schedule productivity.

Being a fan a calls for years, i've been time block king off and on for a long time, mostly on because when I do time block, my life is infinitely Better than what I don't and is less about getting everything done and more about structure in my day to day life. Two specific places for specific work. Even after taking social media off my phone, I still noticed I was checking my email too much.

I took that off as well, and now check my personal email on my computer at home. Number three, no social media. I have had problems with facebook and instagram in the past.

In fact, I set up a contract with my boyfriend to keep me accountable. I believe that contract said, if SHE violated IT, SHE had to wear A V B L. Ccp had for one week was this one, two, three, four, four.

Only have my school, email my phone. Five, keep my phone and do not disturb our airplane mode during class. If someone really needs me, they can call the school.

That is true sex. The ipad I had to buy for my program as she's only for schoolwork, practice materials and writing. Seven, use the phone for your method as we keep your phone plugged in, not with you while you at home.

And eight, planning assignment study in practice time way in advance. Amy goes on to say, I don't want to work past six P. M, and I planned to do most of my work on campus. Since i'll be commuting the cambridge from quinsy v of the red line in the commuter rail, I will use the inbound time to prep and prime myself for the day, and I will use my commute home as my schedule sit down, complete a report back later in a year as a flashback commuter around the quenching station red line from quenching in the cambridge, just just like me.

al boston days SHE.

Imagine that I love the team I have. I might be going back to boston. See, i'm looking .

ford to IT A R O foobar game.

uh, is not the harvey al football game. Go big Green dr, with him. IT is a podcast, why? I won't say what name, because IT, whatever, but a major podcast surprisingly records out of boston. So we're trying to find a time for me to go up there.

My guess is someone with Alice, quora. why? Why the red dogs need help?

I wish, I wish. Yeah, I could help him out. They need these heads. This should be that the home runs celebration hat should be V, V, L, C, C, P.

They just him, many.

It's still, yeah, I know. Let me tell you this. And I don't look no expert in baseball. I believe in data. I was in boston from two thousand and four to two thousand and eleven rints x one two role series so i'm going to saying I don't say I get complete credit for that but less to say they have ve had much more rules, very success when I was in boston. The nut.

so you are responsible, right? And curse I the .

course was broken soon after I arrived and i'll leave IT at that. I got to get too much into IT will leave IT at that big popular deport. Big, deep FM, right?

Amy, what you're you're you're going to cross IT you're going to cross IT like that type of structured to your life. You are gona find that grad schools, not that heart and and you're absolutely across that. I was very structure and grass, so I got bored.

I rote books, simple teens who fall the other stuff I was doing like, you are going to do great. Um this is what that looks like. I mean, let's let's bring this back.

The last thurday conversation with all over birkwood Oliver is rightly worried about like obsession of a productivity and like trying to get more and more done and trying to deny the reality that we're fine out. And those are all really good points. But I think the band of people that fall into that problem is relatively narrow.

What i'm talking about with sort of humanistic productivity, exactly what amy is talking about here, this type of structure to her time and attention is going to make her time at berkely so much more sustainable and interesting and productive. She's gonna kill IT in the program and she's not going to running around and be reactive and then and then get really sort of resent for about school. And however thing's unfair, she's going to be able to enjoy that commute like as the red line gets your quinzy and you can see the water, and that's all really nice.

And after I fixed red socks, you can go to game of fin way like it's it's gonna her life will be happier and Better then if he was just instead been like, let's just rock and roll. And for students in journalist, the case for most people doesn't case. So that is a case study.

I think a humanistic .

personal productivity is taking control your time and obligations so that you can steer your life somewhere good. She's not trying to optimize. He's not trying to be the best she's not trying to get after IT.

She's not trying to like i'm going to graduate early and i'm going to be the best music and ever is like I want to do this thing well and not have to control my life. So me control in my life first is going to help. So I think it's a great example of humanistic c persons productivity, productivity to make your life Better.

Now, to try to turn your life into an optimization puddle, we got a cool final segment coming up. I want to react to an author admitting what her greatest regret is. First, however, I want to tell you about another sponsor that makes this .

show possible.

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Save time and money on providing a financial safe for your family had to policy genius star com slash deep questions or to click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save that's policy gentle com slash deep questions just he lets move on to our final segment. So in our final segment, I often like to react to interesting stuff I have seen in the news today. I want to react to an article from the new york times.

And I bet that many of you sent to me, I have IT on the screen here. For those who are watching inside of just listening is IT not bed from october fifteen. And by the novelist.

And patched here is the provocative headline, the decision I made thirty years ago that I still regret. Now, when I saw this headline, I thought to be something grim, like, I don't know. I was like, okay, this is going to maybe like that, like a health thing, or like a big moral quandary.

I was like, am I about to read that? You know, and patched, murdered the hobo thirty years ago and hit the body they're in tennessee like an oil drama is now regretting IT is admit IT like I thought was going to be dark. That's not exactly what he was regretting and I was sort of surprised and pleas to see her answer.

So here we go. I'm reading from the third paragraph. I signed up for email in one thousand and ninety five.

SHE goes on to explain how email was signed up for an innocent reason. He could communicate with friends. He did not on a well. And now he regrets IT SHE email as a thing. SHE regrets most from the last thirty years, laredo quote here um because I do regret .

email .

even though i've turned off the pink that once held at every new message. I regret how acceptable I am to its constant interactions. I regret all the times I look only to find there's nothing there.

I regret that the minutes that takes for my attention that fully returned other work at hand after stopping the check. I regret how I can spend an hour a day writing back to people I never met, explaining why I can't speak at their school or judge their contest or read their novel. They regret how every person who hits reply all to the holiday, as is sent to one hundred people, saves off a few seconds for all of our lives. Those seconds add up.

Then he says.

can I manage without IT? Well, look, people with smartphones look at me as if i'm the last, the care pigeons. So, and patched does not use a smartphones, right? But she's OK.

So maybe the same is true for email. So she's considering this article. Do I really need email? And he says, he is going to practice a potential experiment with giving IT up.

I like this article because IT underscores a key point of my personal philosophe about technology, which I call techno selections ism. He read an new yorker essay about this last year call this time to fight back against the technology. You can look that out a few new or describer, but here's the point about technology.

lectionary. M technologies have impacts that are hard to predict in advance. And accordingly, the only sensible way to live in a world in which technologies is going to play a big part of our advancement as a species is to be willing to continually reevaluate and investigate impact of technologies and be willing to step away or radical modify technologies after they were brought into your life.

We have to get away from what I call techno fatalism. Or once the genius out of the bottle or ten doors, boxes been open, we can go back. Smartphones exist.

We started giving them to our kids because we didn't know. How could we go back? Kids need social media. We introduced the email because the facts machine stunk, and this was Better than voice mail.

And now it's like taking over our lives and making work on sustainable and and actually impeding the growth of east productivity at a macroeconomic level. What can we do? We can't just stop using email.

And pat is, why not? I hate IT. Let's change. It's hard by I did the stuff. Hard to just do the way that technical selection ism.

We need to be willing to say regardless of why we introduce this, regardless of the reality that this technology exists, what is IT doing this to us? Now, if the answer is something really bad, to be willing to migration ticket changes. And I when to comes to email, yeah, novels like I patch IT can aggressively scale back.

You can't do that tomorrow. Your job, I get that, but I wrote a whole book called the world without email that gets into what IT would look like to build A A workplace that was not dependent on all of this unscheduled back and forth method. It's absolutely possible there's particular notebook sectors that actually do this anyway as a type of thinking.

We need the current movement to take smartphones out of schools. That technical lectures ism. It's stepping backwards from what we did after we observe the impact adults I uh deactivate in the social media account that's technology co ism.

Yeah he was found our interesting in two thousand fourteen. It's a source of darkness in two thousand and twenty four. I'm gonna change.

Adults are giving up smartphones, technical selections, ism, adults that are rewire in their phone. Okay, I have a smart phone, but IT stays plug in when i'm at home. It's not with me.

I don't take IT when I walk the dog. That's technical selection ism, and we need more of that, especially as technologies have the ability to have impacts at population wide scales and at very fast rates. I always good to see to read and patched IT my heads off to you.

We gotto get a copy gotta get a copy of a role without email to. And he's got a great bookstore. And tito sa, she's got ta feature that book.

She's got ta know about IT. So look, if if and patch its agent is listening, I want to send her some sign copies of world without email. I think you're on the same page. But the broader message here, techno selections ism. We have to keep evaluating the impact of technologies that we already admitted to our lives and be willing to make changes even after the fact.

What about in terms of like personal email in work email, do you think he has a combined in a one SHE said earlier.

a good question, he said earlier in the S A SHE get some separately, okay, and even then a civil problem. So he took on both our phone, yeah, I guess. So we should get in on the phone. You think you come on the show?

sure.

I think you're pretty. Magazine.

I am in parade magazine dcom, which means i'm guessing when the premier magazine power one hundred hollywood list comes out, i'm proud of going to be top ten. How many people are are featured in parade magazine dot com?

Come on.

Um we should have on the one I think this is true. I don't it's possibly true. So i've talked about this I think I think i've talked to this more and like tim fairs to show than this show.

But when I got started professional writing in college, I talk to an agent who was like a family friend that just figure out how the industry worked and what IT would take for someone like me to get a book contract to the age of twenty one. And IT was a fiction agent. So like like, i'm not trying to sell myself to you, but just explained the world.

And once I knew the world how would actually worked, I was able to get the book contract. My vae memory is that might have been am patch at agent. Not sure. Like you know how like you forget this, it's been over two decades now.

Wasn't SHE a family friend?

The agent was, yeah yeah the agent, my uncle.

newer be like, we can look that up.

I don't know how i'm going to look up here. I'm looking up one thing here. This is there's nothing is more simulating audio then someone looking something up on google live.

But let me look up one thing. I have one, one clue on polling here. Yeah, I think so because here's my memory, my memory that very vague.

They had just had a big hit with bell cando, which was an patches like big breakthrough novel. So I think and patches agent is responsible for me being a professional writer. So every guy should thinker, and we should get an on the show to talk about email.

What I need to do, obviously, to save my voice. I'm sort of lose my voice today. And I have to go on national radio on canada pretty soon.

So I guess I got to yet. Welcome to the life of a podcasting and author. Thank your one for listening.

Remember, if you want to volunteer for the organization, study in the note to just a comme com will be IT next week with another episode, and until then is always stay deep. I is cow here. One more thing before you go.

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