Ep. 324: Taming Non-Work Tasks
01:20:21 Share

On counting port. And this is deep questions, the show about cultivating a deep life and distracted world.

Some here, my deport hq, joined to always by my producer, Jessie. I'll tell the other day, just see there was a reporter, journalist or podcasting, and someone who is interviewing me was here to cover park. And they were excited to see Jessie galleon.

And I had to tell them justice gallopin is no longer at the deep pork Q. I had to integrate them into my halloween display. So I don't want to say that they were very disappointed. But the other very disapointment .

you working duty in the month of .

october got a lot to do. Yeah, it's got a lot that has to he done. What are you going to do? yeah.

And that reporter was bob wood. word. Right in the whole whole book about IT.

Now the missing bones, right?

When a briefly mentioned have a new new york piece, I always like to tell the audience when there's a new new yorker piece to read. This one was a little bit different. Jesse and IT was art criticism, which you .

are a minor in .

college. I was indeed, I was a minor in our history. And college, almost a major. I was just a course or two away.

There's a feature of the new yorker holds photo booth where its essays reacting to some sort of visual art effect, like a new art exhibit or a new art book. And then their things, as they have their different writers from their different topics, write this. You rotate through.

So they asked me to write about the rerelease of a photo book by lars term break term, new york. I believe he's swedish. IT was a photo book from the early two thousands about office, kind of like a stark aesthetic look at office life.

And so I wrote about IT. And the sa was is called the frighten, familiar ari of late nineties office photos. I compared the esthetic of the large book to the aesthetic of mic judges office space, which came out in one thousand nine hundred ninety nine, and said on the service of a very similar sort of starting tagish, sort of anti corporate visual aesthetic.

But then I go out and I make a designation, and I say, what's different between the aesthetic of office space forces, larger photo book? Is that my judges theory about why the office was an tag nc. Place focused on management? IT was lumber great. IT was very cold. Character IT was the main character saying to the consultation, like, I have eight different bosses that are all asked me do the same thing.

So I was a very sort of a dilbert asc critique, whether larger photos, I think that a very good job of capturing technology, people overwhelmed by cables, people surrounded by monitors um people needing looking like they're almost like sully ics brain at the altar of a crt monitor that was above them and I was saying, this is what large was picking up. Is that what changed about work in the late nineties, early two thousands, what made office work seen even grimmer and darker was not managers. Managers have been a problem for decades, but was the role of network technology.

So I do my Normal thing, but with a bunch of pictures. And so if if you new york describe, but check, check that out, the frightening familiarity of late nineties office photos. I think I have to start wearing much more complicated glasses if I can be doing arts criticism.

This is my first problem until I think I don't know what I should wear, probably like of skill reference concert t shirt with a blazer. Yeah, so like, and you like a black flag t shirt from, like, an central dc concert from the late nineties. Like an interesting color blazer and glasses that are very round.

Yeah, I can do art criticism. I think I need, I need a smoke. I think too .

pipe from france.

I need a pipe from france. So so I will adopt all those aesthetics because now I may, i'm in the latest art stub.

put the like and shows. yeah.

So checked that out. I appreciated. Are we have a good episode, we're going to into a technical topic in the deep, that something I actually was dealing with my own life was get nuts and bold.

I like to do that. Sometimes we ve got a bunch of good questions. We got a call, we're got a study, and then we will be doing in the final segment, what I call my tech corner.

I like to react to something going on in the world of technology and how IT infects our life. So we got ourselves a full show that could started the deep dive. So today I want to talk about all of the non urgent but important stuff that you have to do in your life outside of work.

This is a topic i've been struggling with recently myself. I've been thinking a lot about IT. So I want to bring my thoughts what i've come up with to you right now.

Um i'll start by explaining why these non professional tasks can be particularly tRicky to deal with and then i'll describe an approach for dealing with them. I have four different strategies that I want to recommend, all of which i'm currently experimenting with in my own life. The spoiler ert is how you deal with non professional task can look quite different, then how you deal with the obligations in your own job, right?

Let's start by trying to Better establish what the problem is here that we're trying to solve that when IT comes to work, i'm very locked in, right? I'm ambitious, my professor, i'm a writer and a podcast. I do all three of those things at a pretty high level.

And I have a rule that all of that work has to happen within Normal work hours if this requires me to be really on the ball. So I use, for example, multi scale planning. I have a plan for the whole semester. Here's what i'm working on. Here's the big initiatives that each week I do a weekly plan.

When I look at that semester plan, say which of these big initiatives, and I making progress on when, and I could make progress on them, I get things into the calendar, clean up my calendar, I move things around, I cancel things. I see my weekly schedule, like a chess ort on which are moving pieces. And then I have slow productivity principles that act is back pressure, always adJusting my workload, my ratio of execution to overhead.

I try to keep this all pretty much in a line. I'm trying to make a differentiation, actually working on, not actually working on taking things off my plate, adding things I wanted, make sure that my work is sustainable and i'm not overloading myself. Now here's the thing that's a that's a well plan, busy workday.

So what happens once to work day is, well, first of all, i'm pretty hauser because I just executed the sort of productivity equivalent of the da landing. IT feels like that sometimes trying to make all these things work. And my time after the workdays over is often already heavily spoken for with family stuff and personal stuff.

I like to exercise most days that eat up time. I'm slipped kids all over the place that eat up time. And we have all sorts of like non professional obligations to advance that are on the calendar.

There's not a lot of time. So i'm tired and there's not a lot of time. Um somehow, all of the various non professional things needs to fit into his leftover slivers of time.

This is difficult. So today want to discuss some strategy for how to deal with this. Right strategy one, resist the urge to time block your time outside of work.

During my work day, I give every minute of job, I survey the time I have available, and I want to make the most out of IT. Here's i'm doing for this hour. Here's i'm doing for these thirty minutes.

In this gap between these two meetings is what i'm going to handle these small past. This time is all going to be focused on this big project. I'm a big believer in professional time blocking.

And I think at roughly doubles, the amount of stuff you're able to get done with the same fixed amount of time if you have a ambitious professional schedule is pretty much necessary or you're going to fall behind to get stressed out. It's also really hard. It's taxi because you have to keep forcing your mind to say, here's what we're doing now here's the time block or in now this is focus on execution.

Now here's the time block, and let's focus on that. You will have to constantly be on the ball. Your focus, you give your brain very little breaks.

If you try to do this in your time outside of work, it's too much. Your brain needs a break from completely structure approaches the time when you time block evening, when your time block weekend, eventually your brain is gonna cry. Uncle IT needs flexibility.

IT needs a time to actually relax. So resist the urge, the time block, whatever little time remains outside of your work, outside of what art spoken for. Strategy two, on the other hand, weekly plan.

So time blocking each of your evenings and weekends as too much, but you should consider your non professional tacks when you're working on your weekly plan. alright. So a couple of things matter here.

One, just reviewing the non professional things on your calendar each week is useful. You know what's coming? Oh, on wednesday i'm taking the kid the baseball practice um and then I have like a dinner after that.

That's literally actually what i'm doing today and i'm recording this on a wednesday IT allows you to ordinate maybe you and your partner have a relatively intricate dance of who's going to take who and how things are going to get dropped off on a particular day because you a chance to make those plans to figure in advance how that's all going to work. IT also gives you time to make changes. You said, you know what? I agreed to have drinks with a friend on thursday.

This is gona blow up that whole day makes everything difficult. Let's move that to another week. You see the whole picture.

So weekly planning matters. The other thing to do when weekly planning non professional events is to get the time sensitive stuff onto the calendar. Alright, so this is a chance for you to look at your task list.

Look at the task list you have for your non professional obligations. If you follow my system, you have boards and you have boarders. If you're nonprofessional rules divided by status, if their stuff this time sensitive, these forms have to get submitted by the end of the week.

The kids have to get their flu shots this week because the deadlines coming up next week, we have to go pick up the titles and tax for a new car this week because the temporary license plate is going to expire at the end of the week or something. All these, by the way, are like things i'm dealing with right now. You can get the time instead of stuff on your calendar.

So winner, we going to do this. You sketch le out time and now you'll treat you a like in the other a venture appointment. Crucially, you can take time away from your workday is needed, like maybe you have to go out to the car dealership to get your title and tags.

You can look at your calendar. So you know that the way I need to do this is take a lunch break on thursday to go to do that, right? So IT allows you to make sure that time, instead of stuff, get done and you know about IT, it's on the counter or won't be forgotten, and you can take time away from work where need him, right? So so far so good.

But strategy three is what you should do with the non urgent but important nonprofessional past that remain. This is the thing i've been struggling with recently, especially if you own a house or if you got a family on cars, you can build up a really big list of things that do not have deadlines. And there is no one looking over your shoulder saying this has to be done, but they all eventually need to get done if you don't do IT in the future is going to cause problems or intelligence done.

IT is increasing sources stress in your life. This is where things get difficult with your non professional works. So what I actually did hear, I just copy won't be concrete.

I copied a bunch of stuff from my actual list that fall into this category of non urgent but important non professional work. I'm going to read some of these um we need to repaint the citing on our house of what exciting needs to be repainted. I'll even know to start on that.

There's a section of one of our backyard fences as broken needs to be fixed. Our patio ceiling needs to be washed, right? It's like dirty.

We have a street facing fence. This White needs to be washed and leave. Anyone know how to do that? Needs to be done. I have four, five different bathroom related repairs. There's regrating ding that needs to be done.

There's multiple table racks that been ripped off the wall, right? Like somehow the dry wall has to be replaced and something has to be mounted on studies. There's a facet somewhere that needs to be tightened.

Like IT just flops back and forth. When you touch IT, there's a shower in which the thing you use to turn the water off and on, you can tell Jesse, i'm like an extra plumber. No water turn thing is like coming very loose and so I like four, five bathroom things. The gods need cleaning after the fall leaves fall.

My filing cabinets need to be empty there too full got pick up the tag for the new car that's more time instead I guess um there's three major rooms on our house that need a serious decretals ing, including my library, which has built up probably about five hundred books in piles that have to be a severely sorted through the kids art station, has to be severely sorted through the home office is storing boxes, needs to be completely cleaned out. There's whole list of innovations we want to do here in the deep cage. Q all cute up needs to be done and working on my home. Jim, trying to bring a barr bell and squat bench is a lot of complexity around that. The garage itself that could need to be cleaned out, there's two different unfitted spaceman spaces that need to be completely depleted, teed and reorganized, and a new primary care doctor.

The risk is on.

None of these things have a deadline. All them need to get on get done, right? So now we're in kind of a tough situation, right, because we have this big list for not time block in our days, our days outside of work.

We're just putting time since of stuff on the calendar, weekly planning. How do we get our arms around these crazy list of non urgent but important household items that need to be done? Now again, the temptation is to go back and try to time block them.

And i've tried this before I say, I am going to look at my free time. Whatever IT is, i'm going specifically start scheduling evening time this hour here, this half hour here, this forty five minutes here for specific things on this list. IT doesn't work. You're too tired, your schedule is too much influx, things change, kids are sick, things take longer, evenings are unpredictable, and your mind .

eventually says enough scheduling.

So what can you do instead? Well, I want to introduce here the notion of what I call the generic household task. This is like a single task, which you can define as, like work on household stuff.

And the goal is most days to spend some time, put aside some time, as you're able to on the genre counsel task. Some days only have twenty minutes. You fit IT in like right after dinner.

Other days yet like an hour free, you spend an hour on IT, but you simplify this huge list. Like most days I want to do some work on the sort of like household stuff. And you can keep this track in your daily metrics if you want to. Did I spend you know, any time on the general castle test today or not? You can try to most days you want to do work on IT.

那 what do you actually do during the time you put aside each day on the fly？ Like, let me go spend some time on the household test well, at the beginning of your a week, you can make a sort of mini prioritize list of, like, well, I want to start with this at any time. I had put a for the general council.

If I finished that move on to this, and I finished that move on to this is like sort of a many lists and priorities, right? So maybe it's like I want to find a fence repair person and see if I can set up an appointment I went to, didn't work on my file cabinet. I'm going to order to the desk for my office innovation and see if I can get the gutter cleaners called this is an ordered list.

So when you first have sometimes like he's going to work on my general counsel past, you're working on the first thing in that list. If you get done with that, next time you're working on the general counsel task you've on to the next time you just see some weeks, you'll get farther than others. But you've reduce this massive list to a simple hero tic.

I try to spend at least a little bit of time every day on the sort of like non urgent but important household stuff, and that's IT and that's horrific. And that's all the planning that happens you exhaust yourself. You're not over structuring.

Some days you have no time. Some days you have a lot of time. Some days you have a little time.

But you do like the pressure, if I want to do at least of a little bit. Most days you check IT off on a list to see. Here's what i've observed about the generic household past.

We call a heroic. A lot gets done over time when you're just used to. Like most days, I put in some time on these type of things and it's clear like what to do if I have time, stuff adds up.

A particular tuesday might not be that exciting. You're like I only spent twenty minutes on something, but if you go tuesday day and wednesday and thursday and friday and sunday on sunday, you rather another week stuff begins to pile up. Progress is made on this big list, and the list will keep growing you up with new things. But the point is the amount of .

accomplished work gets big.

which those gutters do get clean and the fences do get repared. And there is a day where finally someone comes in and fixes all those things in the bathroom. And it's like over time, progress happens.

IT changes your mindset from I have this list I want to finish to I have a process why I always want to be making process progress on this type of things. We were discussing this that came to mind the other day when I was talking to some board members from the school where my kids go. And they were talking about how with facilities, when you run a facility, you just have this this ongoing budget.

You assume stuff breaks on like a regular schedule. You budget for that in advance. You assume like every year, there's like a certain number of things that break in the facilities that you repair. It's not seen as we have a steady state and then something breaks when we go and fix IT.

It's like you just says, this is just how you run a facility, have a budget for the ac will break every ten years like the AV will break on average like every three years. So the goal is, is to have the process you're constantly like fixing a repairing, not you have some list do you want to finish and then you're done. So that has been useful to me.

The gene castle tacked isc very little pressure, very little fatigue, very little over structuring a burnout. But you keep on top of things, right? Final strategy. Want to mention here automation as you go through these general counsel task items.

Anything you get to that happens on a regular basis? Like you cleaned the gutter and you like, you know what? This has to happen twice a year like IT happens, predictive ly automated.

And that might mean the easiest sense that you just add a recurrent event on your calendar and in that evening of all the information you need. So when you get to go to cleaning time again in the next season, this event pops up call this number set IT up. Here's how much a cost and IT IT just goes on.

Your it's like A A timed thing on your calendar is not something that you have to have on a task less. And get to car washes can go on there um cleaning no, I have the power wash, the patio or whatever. Wait second, just when does that happen? Let me put this on the calendar now.

So when in the future I don't have to wait for IT on the list. It's always there IT takes things off of list and just make them happen when things happen. So the automation also reduces the pressure here over time. More and more things just happen when they need to happen without you having to remember to do them or or have them on an intimidating looking list, right?

So that's my that's my advice, uh, for non where tasks, or summarize again, resist the youth of the time, block everything, but do integrate non work task into your weekly planning for the ology and but important tasks just have the generic household task curis tics of progress is constantly being made without you having to do a lot of planning and finally, automate everything that can be automated as you get to IT and that games going to relieve your stress and get things done with even, even less consideration. And so that's what i'm working on now, my lister endless. But these type stogies helped me keep on top of them without having to make every moment of my life be over scheduled. The household test theistic, just that list is getting long, by the way.

A lock gets done over time is a common theme with a lot of your stuff work related and not work.

yeah. I mean, I think that's the key to a lot of things stuff gets done over time. It's we had a ten year rural episode month or two ago like important projects in professional life happened over many years.

That's when the cool stuff happens. Household stuff is just like you have this background thing going on. It's not something that you ever want to be done. You just want a process to keeps you on top of IT. That's a different way of thinking about IT as opposed like I have a list of things i'm going to do and then i'm then with those things .

that accomplish something, your list is only a long or buy your farm to write with your writing shed.

man. I'm reading a book about a farmer right now. As a lot of work formers do a lot of equipment repair.

I would be a terrible farmer. I would be they repair a lot stuff anyway. Yeah, when I buy my farm with, my writer said i'm going like a staff at thirty.

You know like rich people by these like horse farms is like so farms where they just middle of genia and middle d Virginia. They have like these huge staff. They don't actually have to do anything.

Ah I can have a writing farming like that. This would be a huge staff just to make sure that like, I have a good view from my writing cabin, enough ink. And I think probably people writing by on horses, I feel like that would be inspiring. Look out the window I just want people riding by a horse is in colonial guard. Because the .

west world.

I want to build the west world that helps my concentration for writing. And I think this is only reason of to build an entire fake world full of artificial intelligence. Cy boards, just to put you into the right mindset for deeb work, I think this is reasonable.

All right of way. We've got some good questions coming up. But first hear .

from sponsor hear from a long .

time sponsor and friends at blinkx. You've heard me talk about blink test forever because I have been a loyal blinkx user for a long time. It's an APP that gives you over sixty five hundred books, summaries and expert LED audio guides.

You can read or listen to think about fifteen minutes per title. You're getting best in class actual knowledge from twenty seven categories such as productivity, psychology and more. You get down to go.

It's also pretty entertaining. The way Jessen I use blinkx is as a book trios service. If we are interested in a book, we add IT to our q and then we will for not sure will listen to or read the blink, the summary of that book.

And it's really useful for figuring out, oh, do I want to actually read the whole book or not? The otherwise use the two, you can like quickly cover a topic by listening or reading the blinks of multiple books on the topic. That'll give you the lay of the land if you're looking for advice.

They're audio guide full. Often you can listen to an audio guide from how to work and just like get the key ideas and get executing right away. So it's a great campaign n to anyone who reads one.

There's a new feature I want to mention. All blink is connect with blinkers. You can now give another person on limited access for free.

So you will basically be getting two accounts for the Price of one. So I think that's pretty cool right now. Blankest has a special offered just for our audience. Go to blankest stock comes last deep to start your seven day free trial and you'll get forty percent off a blink kest premium membership that's blinker s spell b la in kite blink custom slash deep to get forty percent off and a seven day free trial blink a star combs less deep. And now for them in a time, you can even use blinkers connect to share your premium account.

You will get two premium descriptions for the Price of one right? I also want to talk about my friends at element l in t element as a year cigar election like drink and Sparkling electorate water, born from the growing body of research revealing that optimal health outcomes occur sodium levels two to three times the government recommendations. I like to use the element drink mix sticks, packs, so you you come like, rip open this powder, you add IT to any water bottle, and that gives you a meaningful those of electronics.

But the key thing is it's free of sugar. It's free of artificial colors or other dodgy ingredients. So you don't have to worry about in pursuing hydration, adding another junk, your body.

I use element all the time, our edition cy since me, big boxes of this stuff, because both my wife and I use IT after every workout, I use IT in the morning, I use IT to get rehydrate after a long day of speaking a podcasts inan I drink IT to get rehydrate scout electrized got create flavors. And, you know, no bad stuff. If you prefer IT even easier.

You can get the the Sparkling water with that already mix. Just grab that from the fridge. You can also drink at hot.

They have these limited time flavors like chocolate meant chocolate chi and chocolate rice for you mix in the hot water if you it's called out, or like me right now, you want to help your voice. Great way to get this electrical lights, but in a refreshing hot average. But good news, we have an offer.

If you go to drink element that com so less deep, you will receive a free element sample pack with any order. You just have to make sure to go to drink element dot com less deep. Just he loves to use .

some questions.

What do we got first.

first questions from jail in your organization system with quarterly goals, weekly plans and task boards, where you would place projects that arrive? Where do you place projects that, that is unexpectedly but are necessary and take longer than a week, but aren't party your quality goals, for example, being tax audited or .

buying a house? A first things first, mixing up a few things here. So you said quarterly goals, weekly plans and task boards.

There's a couple different things going on here that you can mix together. There's multi scale planning, which is quarterly or semester plans than weekly plans than daily time block plans. That's more the scale planning. Then you have task boards. This is a tool for keeping track of obligations.

You would review your task boards, for example, when doing your weekly plan, right? So what you're talking about here, projects with sometimes sensitivity like attacks, audit or buying a house like you're working on them, they are in a certain time time frame that would probably because probably go on my quarterly plan like a one of things i'm working on like this november is house spine like we really want to try to hone in on, you know neighborhood, civic, make an offer or I have a tax out that going on over the next two months. I need to be here's what that means and here's what need to get done and hear some miles times that's perfectly find to be into quarterly plan or a semester plan.

How do you do IT? Because then you'll see that each week when you're making your week, we planned to make sure, if important, that there's time, if possible, put aside to make progress on the school. So that's where I would put in I would put in the corti plan.

Um they could also show up on your task board, right? You could have the next step if it's you know another way to deal with IT is you could have like the next step, I need to get loan approval or I need to like ask the accounting these questions about the information gathering. You could others in your tasks give them their own status list, you know, house project, tax project, you can start building up the task if you have a lot of task you want to keep track up with a company information.

When you're doing you're weekly plan, you'll see those columns and sort of make sure time is put aside. That's what I would say for time sensitive. But on kind of large projects mention in your quarterly or semester plans, and they have a lot of non trivial task involved with them, give them special columns in the relevant task board, help you make progress.

This name is interesting, right? Yeah, we are interesting. Argo, argo, A R G H Y A.

yeah. Argo, argo. yeah. Hi, what's the question here about .

the going to my final year college? I've been building my career capital by studying programing. I'll probably work as a software developer. How can I implement lifestyle ate planning if my life has been laid down by my parents, teachers and professors?

Well, we've got to be careful about terminology here. What is being laid down by our parents, teachers and professors if it's a particular skill development path, right? Learning computer programme, i'm not so worried about that.

right? Lifestyles into planning. You establish your vision of the ideal lifestyle and then you work a backwards and and we've closer to that, taking advantage of your skills and opportunities and looking for ways around obstacles.

Having learned something like computer programing, whether IT was your ideas or your parents, is just another skill you have in your basket. When you're trying to figure out this plan, it's another orienteering tool in your backpack. As you make this journey across the landscape of possible lifestyle, les is great. It's something that IT has some value. You can figure how to use IT.

On the other hand, if you're getting pressure from your parents about what your lifestyle should look like, you need to live in this type neighborhood, you need to have this type of working life, you need to be sending your kids of the schools, like we get a lot of this pressure. If if you maybe have a parents that come from a very specific upper middle class lifestyle like this, our expectation is that you should follow this very specific same uup middle last lifestyle, which might require pretty narrow pass you have to go through that's we could get a class with lifestyle planning. But when it's like my parents kind of pressured me to study this in school, just see that as a skill you have to work with as you construct your own lifestyle plan.

And like with programing go, there's any number of ways you can build interests in lifestyles with that, in slow productivity. For example, I do a nice profile of a web developer designer who left. He was on a track of building a pretty big business around his skill.

He was living in a vancouver's were expensive to live there. And he said, you know what, i'm going to use the skill, uh, to pursue a different lifestyle vision, one that is slower, has more nature ton's, more autonomy. So he moved with his wife outside of the small town, a tulf o on vancouver island, which is sort of a rural place out there in the bay.

Tulf o has a surf break. His wife was a surfer. He did not grow out a big development business, but just sort of kept his early rate high and his expenses low.

So now he could live in this cool place with a very reasonable amount of work because their expenses were very low. As he said. There's there's not a lot of opportunities where they live to spend money. And he used that skill in a really original, innovative way that was specific to the lifestyle planned he device. This was his name is pojar is anyways, that's what I want to say here.

It's not a big deal because look, if my parents like i'm going to help you figure this study, you might have not known what the study and it's good to have valuable skills, but where you need to have autonomy and figure out what the lifestyles you're moving backwards from. So focus that this is more of a problem Jesses like a parental pressure. It's actually more of a problem, not for lifetime le centric planters, but for people who described as the passion hypotheses.

right. So if you this comes from my book so that they can ignore you if you subscribe to the idea that you're meant to do one thing, if you don't find your true passion, you're going to be miserable. That's where the parental influence psychologically becomes a real issue, because you really worry, what if the things they are encourage me to learn? What if the classes of jobs they're encourage me to pursue are not my one? You passion and i'll be miserable?

So the passion, hypothesis, beliefs are much more sensitive, the pressure than live tele sic planters who just see skills as tools. great. These are more tools in my toolbox for building the life I once.

So i've used three different metaphors here. By the way, you put them in your basket, use them as or orientating tools that are in your backpack, and now is tool in your toolbox for a symbol, your ideal life lifestyle. So you go, guys, that's what, you know, a writer. I would got next.

next questions from then, I want to start building career capital, but i'm not sure what were valuable skills to pursue. I'm worried about investing years, developing a skill and having a turn out to be not as lucrative or a lie with my lifestyle vision as I hoped.

Yeah, this is partially a hard question, a partially an easy question. So the hard thing about finding skills is IT IT can sometimes be difficult to even identify what's valuable. And some feels this is obvious and other feels that really takes work, right?

Like let's say, you get involved in political campaigns, you get started is like an intern and college. You get a position on a campaign you're trying to figure out this world of politics IT might not be obvious at first. What are the things I could master that would make me invaluable in this world of political campaign? And you need to figure that out. You have left to talk to people and observe right, who's getting ahead, who's in demand, who's influential, why, what are the particular skills that they have, its independent, all right. So I can be tRicky sometimes .

to figure out what .

actually matters. On the other hand, is not too difficult. Two sides stepped the trap of a dead in skill, just biased towards skills that, in a general sense, have a long track record and in a specific sense of very adaptable, right?

So computer programming, in a general sense, computer programing has been and will continue to be valuable because we programmed computers to do lots of things in our lives in the specific or small scale since you might have to adapt on the way what language you're using. But that's okay. If you're good at computer programme, you can change to a different language when an emerge is pretty quickly.

So that's a pretty safe skill that ten skills are skills that are are tied to a particular cultural trend, business moment or technological device. They're tied to that. And if that goes away, they have no a other value.

So for example, I would be very wary right now if you said what i'm going to specialize in is tiktok videos for certain types of like marketing. We're going get really good to like what works and doesn't work on tiktok and how to build videos for like my political candidates are for brands that are going do well on tech tok. What happens if tech tok banned in the us? Or more likely, just another tool rises? And as like guys, and that one goes away, that skill is hypo specific.

And now, you know, you, you, you tied your horse to a wagon that looked attractive in the moment, but the the wheels are gona come off pretty soon. So you do want to be careful and think about there's probably lot of people out there that like specialized and vice or you know, hey, instagram stories is my thing. I know exactly what works on instagram stories.

The problem is, once people stop using that, you have to start from scratch from skills. So look for the summarize here. Do to work to figure out what actually matters in your field. That might not be what you think. That might be non obvious.

Two, biased towards skills that are in a gentle sense, have a long track record that are going to be around for a while um even if IT requires that you adapt exactly how you applying that skill in the short term and three, be wary of more fats skel ls skills that are tied to a trader technology that if that goes away, the skill itself is dead. You do those things. I think .

i'll be OK .

who .

we got next questions from. Margaret. I'm a mother, three, in a writer. I had success with my first book, but needed to quit social media to write my second. It's said to be published next year.

Should I go back on social media for promotion? Now that is finished. I don't think my presence on social media moves the needle at all in terms of sales, but I can be important for connections and driving attention at events that OCR with publication.

Well, look, you're right. In the long term, IT doesn't matter. IT doesn't move the nail needle on sales and any sort of meaning away. It's not going to be what stands between you have any successful career as a writer or not. And i'm completely fine with you're not using social media.

If you feel like for the .

relationship with your publisher, you need to be doing something new media. I think that's completely fine. If you don't really care about IT, you can set these things up in a way that has very limited impact on your life.

So what i've seen fiction writers do, I think this is a perfectly fine template. They are ultimate goals to get people onto an email list, an email list where they can send updates about events, what's going on with their books. Email is convert very highly when IT comes to books sales, much more so than almost any other type of metric of online following that you can have.

So they have an evening list and how to get people onto that mAiling ing list, have some sort of regular content to slow lift. But interesting and IT really could be like updates on your writing or your writing progress. Um IT could be here's the book I read.

Here's the books I read this month. This is a good one and is gonna through what I read this mount only at the right this once a month. And here's, you know, here's the book I read and cook.

Summer of them. People love, but recommendations, especially if you're in the fiction roles, you have some value on there, but it's a very little lift. Then you can have some sort of algorithmic presence to try to drive people to IT.

So by algorithms, mic presence, I mean, somewhere where you are out there in the world of new media and recommendation algorithms could drive audiences to you that you otherwise want to have direct access to the key. Here's whatever you pick the automated and not spend much time on IT. So maybe it's an instagram thing um if it's an instagram thing though, again, I don't want you on instagram.

I don't want you looking at an instagram post. I don't want you reading comments on instagram. It's I post a quote, I post a book I like I post a writing update um maybe I even have someone doing for me, it's not on my phone is done for my desktop.

It's a schedule as much of a schedule as watering my plants. And I think about IT when i'm not outside of those moments, I think about IT just about as much as I think about water and my plants. What i'm not water is just not a big part of my life.

But I do IT in the plants they alive. So maybe you're doing instagram, maybe you're doing tiktok, though that can be pretty difficult. Maybe you're doing youtube.

Brandon sAnderson, who if you're not familiar with Brandon sAnderson, he wrote name of the wind and if you have any comments about that, you can send them to Jesse account or tocom. He loves to see him. I should clarify, every time I make this joke, a new listener gets really upset.

We know Brandon on standers did not write name of the wind. This is an insider joke on the show. okay? A patrocles ous fans can, okay, we can chill branded. An has really, really leaned into youtube.

And like one of things he does is have these writers updates on youtube where he's like, here's how many pages I wrote this week. Here's was going on with this project. Here's was going on with that project.

Like people love that and that that's a way for audiences the potentially find them and so sure have an algorithm mic presence. If you care about this, I can I don't think IT doesn't make a matter. Long, long term does not matter.

What matters is the book great? But I get IT in the short term, you want your publisher happy. It's anxiety reducing anyone. People have shop to your books, science. I get IT.

So have something that is in the algorithmic media world that you post to intentionally and on a regular basis, but otherwise completely ignore the technology and always be driving towards a mAiling lissy have some sort of value on IT. I think that's probably the sweet spot right now for writers. So you're taking your intentional swing in algorithmic space, but not like to be a part of your life.

And then you have a mAiling list. IT probably do nothing but that set up it's not gonna urt you if something catches on, though, IT does give you the chance of like writing that way for taking advantage of IT. But again, with books, what matters is the book being great.

Like ultimately that matters most of the the writers who are killing IT right now, no one cares about their online presence, right? Like no one cares about Christian han's twitter account, like her books sell because they get passed around. Hey, I love this.

I love the women. Like, you should read this novel lessons in chemistry, sold all the copies in the world, not because a tiktok, but because people started to pass in around. You gotta read this bat book groups, right? Deep work solo tonic copy is not because of my blog.

People just, hey, I like this book. You should read this book. So, you know, ultra doesn't matter, but that's what I would recommend if you're an author and you want to be doing something that's probably right now.

I think the sweet spot don't podcast, by the way, unless like you really wanted do podcasting as a business, right? Like podcasting is very hard. IT takes up time in money and it's not worth that unless you're making a real run and having a real business. And so don't do that unless like it's actually a party or business plan that's not casual.

Sound quality is big too.

Sound quality is big. Youtube, you have to be careful about youtube is hard like just and I have learned this IT can just record yourself and put IT up there and say people will find IT. It's like pretty difficult.

Thn nails titles exactly like how you cut into these videos. So you have to be super specific and intentional and and the stuff you think that will do well probably won't. But you know it's not a bad idea if you find something that clicks a form at at that works like brand and Anderson here so much I wrote this week. Like if you find a format that works, that could be good. So that's my recommendation.

So a brand does .

IT from the layer. He does IT from the layer. yeah. So he does. We should bring that up.

Can I bring that up on here? Yeah, i'm actually curious. Let's look. I still want to get out there and see the layer, just I got invite, but we just have not been able to make that work.

Um right? What going to do? Check out the youtube APP or the web go web.

Alright, some loving up here. youtube. Don't switch to IT.

Yeah, all of justice video recommendations are about pop real arrangements. Interesting, I don't realize. Type Brandon sAnderson.

All right, all right. Here's his channel. I have IT on the screen now. It's not huge. Six hundred thousand describes. There's like double our channel yeah is also a lot of books, look, look, videos s chonodemaire. right.

So what's you up to weekly update? Fifty thousand views last week, fifty eight thousand views weeks before sixty five thousand views. So that's like his very consistent thing, is a base of like fifty to sixty thousand people who watched the weekly updates.

They put one up here. This is in his layer so i'm sure it's filmed. Yeah so he's a very nice set up with the bookshelf and professional, professional writing. no.

Why youtube, I guess, default close captions now for international audiences, right? So here you up. See that. See on the screen that graphic.

Yeah, that's like, what percent of the book is done with? So like, this is his most popular thing. He does.

He's tried other things. So he has this podcast intentionally blank. These do half the traffic.

So this is like him talking with the cold. They do like half the traffic. And then that's more for him. I think the weekly updates keeps his fans engaged.

I don't know that the video podcast, this is more, this is him with someone else and they chat about things was not nearly as popular and then he does one off things on here as well like a fan of IT, like let me put up a video of me doing a fan event eeta and those undo as well either so no, I think it's kind of cool, right? Like he has a very sort of extra text. He does his weekly updates that that his relationship with his fans, that's what he got to set up once.

But but notice these aren't huge views for someone that famous with six hundred thousand. And subscribers know all of that work is still going to be like a core group of people. You so there's there's an example, let's what we got next. We have a slow projectile .

ity corner.

ExcEllent to see something music.

For those who are new, we like to have one question, eats week. That relates to my most recent book, slow productivity, the lost start of accomplishment without burnout. If you have not read or listen to this book yet, you should, I estimate about half of what we talk about on the show actually references ideas from that book. So it's sort of like the source guide to the deep questions podcast. Just see what's today's slow productivity question.

It's from Rachel. How can I do fewer things that i'm expected to build forty client hours every week?

Well, I think this is one of the more common questions I hear about the philosophy of slow productivity. There's three principles to this physical y that I outline in the book, do fewer things. So what the questions about work at a natural pace and upset over quality, the concern people have about due fewer things tends to be based on a misunderstanding of what's being proposed.

They really do fewer things as work fewer hours or accomplish fewer things. That's not actually what that means. I think we become used to over the last five years, we've become used to a sort of anti work rhetoric that really focuses on antagonistic relationship with work. And therefore, to repair our existing issues with burn out, we need to reduce the amount of work we're doing.

So IT, there's a that hoogan ized all work is work and what IT measures how much you're doing and IT says, like there's these pressures with them, capitalistic or cultural is pushing you too much and you need to do less, right? This would be at the core of books with do nothing in the title or the quite, quite movement. Ea productivity coming at this from another angle, when IT says do fewer things.

What IT really means to do fewer things that wants is actually a very practical argument. Everything you agree to do has two components with IT. There's the actual execution of the work itself, and there's the administrative overhead that comes along with collaborating with other people and gathering the information you need to do the work.

The amount of administrative of overhead per task is fixed. So as you say yes to more and more things, the total amount of administrative overhead in your calendar goes up. But administrative overhead is highly destructive and highly inflexible because it's not just you decide to do IT, you've got to send a message, you ve got to wait for response, you ve got to get on a call, you've got to go to a.

So as you had more and more administrative overhead, more and more of your day is spent servicing administrative overhead leaves you less time to actually execute to work quality. Your life goes down. Exhaustion goes up in the rate at which you finish.

Things goes down as well. So do fewer things means do you fear things that wants IT has nothing to do with the total hours of work that you do. And if anything, you will increase what you accomplish. So in the context of billion hours, IT would mean, look, work on less clients at a time, but you'll able to give each of those clients more consecutive time, and we'll probably finish or get the major milestones with these clients faster in a higher level. equality.

All of this against the same backtrack of I build forty hours just like what are you doing with your forty hours? What's the ratio of deeper k execution verses administrative overhead us forty hours as you make the former larger, your work will be of a higher quality. I'll also become more sustainable, right? So that is our slow productivity corner question of the week as you're that theme music, one more time.

right? You ever call this week chasse we do. All right.

just hear IT. Hi, my name's anna, and I work in campus ministry at a college campus. Um my deep work ministry is definitely focusing on relationships and events that we have. So I love your idea of simulating my own support staff sort of get the administrative task to done so I can focus on what's most important um I have a student worker um that I use um to take care some of the administrative recurring tasks in one off tasks um but I actually do get to hire a new administrative assistance.

So i'm wondering if you have any advice on how to integrate them into a new party, an kind of system I without having to spend a ton of time creating tasks for them. cool. Thank you.

Uh, well, that's great. The fact that you get a higher administrative assistant, I think, is great. The fact you have autonomy over what this assistance going to do is also great. So how do we get a new portal ony and set up here? Well, have a couple of notes here first.

So when I just start by underscoring something you mentioned in passing, this idea of treating IT admin work like a different job, I would just briefly elaborate that for listeners, if you're unfamiliar, i'm a big believer if you have a sort of autonomists role like this that has some major deep requirements, but also some major administrative requirements, is to treat those two roles as two part time jobs. I have my admin job where i'm in charge the logistics and budget of running a particular campus ministry. And I have my minister job where i'm forming connections, thinking big thoughts.

I'm variety on stage, are in the room with other students and helping them feel secure in their spiritual community, right? Treat us different part time jobs that have different schedules. This is when my administrative job, this is when I do IT.

Um my deep pastoral job is when I do that and so you're not mixing the two together. You still giving the same amount of time to each that you would have fear if you were doing them in a more haphazard style, but you're not mixing them together. So when you're doing admin work and maybe that's like what the afternoons are like or the first hour of the day and from three to five is like, that's all you're doing.

And in the other hours, all you're doing is your office open, students are coming in, you're writing, you're thinking, you're inspiring, you're not contact shifting, costly back and forth between these two world is a good way of handling what's increasingly common in non entry local position of the ology economy. Which of these multi role jobs treat the role separately, right? Your administrative assistant .

IT will .

be helpful if you keep this in mind, right? What you want to avoid is the administrative assistant having a high mind style collaboration relationship with you, where you're just constantly going back and forth about things, hey, what about this? I'm working on this. What about this?

You do not want to sort of mild your minds into a high mind because that assistant then is not going to save you from context ship in distraction but will actually amplify them because when it's just you, at least you have some control over i'm writing now so i'm not gonna on getting the cater in order right for the event staff. But when there is someone else involved, they don't know that they're working on the cator in order they're to come in erruptive right then. So can actually be worse if you don't do this, right.

So what does work is a processes. You have to do the hard work of figuring out what are the regular things that we do, what our systems and processes for dealing with them. And then the admin can be logged into that existing system. The adman can't come up with these systems and processes is because you know the role and you know what's important. So for example, it's be specific, i'm guessing here, but maybe one of things you have to do is meet with students, right?

Students will come to you and say, I, whatever, I I just want to talk to someone on campus for my my spiritual background and and these are one you don't know when students are going to make these requests in the big important part of your job. Have a scheduling process that you can then plug an admin assistant into, oh, you want to set up a chat with me, send the no to the admin, right? The admin then knows we've set aside specific times for student meetings. Maybe that here you can schedule them gently into or maybe we have um on mondays you sit down with the admin.

You have a list of students who want to meet with you, and you figure out like where you want to put those meetings in the week, and then they go back and tell the students, right, maybe when the students right in the rules, the advent says, OK, what is your class schedule next week? What are generally the times you're available will get back to with meeting times on monday morning, right? Whatever IT is, have a system that you're then plugging the adman into the other thing you want to do.

In addition, the process and systems to have a communication, all of these ideas, by the way, or in my book, a world without email, if you want to look deeper into this, but have a communication protocol so that the defauts does not become, as the adman thinks of something, your needs feedback. They just ping you and need the answer quickly, so they don't want want to keep track a bit real time, but regular is the right way to do IT with an admin. At some point in the morning, you should check in on the day what's going on, what's open sometime in the afternoon, you should do the same.

In between those times, they can consolidate everything that you need to talk to with you. So I think frequent, but please scheduled real time conversation is the right way to actually communicate with an admin is very nuanced. Things get done.

But IT involves IT prevent ts rather unscheduled distractions and interruptions and make sure that everything you have, the adam doing that you have some sort of well defined processing system that surrounds IT write these things down, right? You do those things and adam can be very um effective if you don't IT connection make things worse if it's just i'm just gonna will just be talking through out the day i'll give you work. You'll checking with me with what questions you have about that.

Um you're going to find the admin is actually adding more work. They're saving. So it's a good question. You're a good situation if you handle that carefully. And I think that based on your call, I think you probably will yeah advance are interesting.

Just I always I always think of joe rogan advice, which we talk about on the show a lot, which was at least in hollywood entertainment, if you need an assistant, do less things because that's like I start assisted. You're doing too much. But in some roles like, you know, the role is released well defined in campus ministry.

There, a well deploy assistant can really make your life easier. Yeah, there should be more support staff in general, I think. And like most jobs, it's crazy. It's crazy the way we do this to have so many rules and individuals.

We think that this is somehow more economically efficient but is not a campus minister that also has to be the administrator of like a complex campus minister is very bad, is like doesn't do as much ministry, right? An executive that has to spend all this time like ealing back and force with hr and booking flights or this or that it's just way worse, have been an executive we don't always think about them. alright.

Looks like we have a case study. So what we try to do is people sing in the just a called you porto com. There are stories of using the type of advice we talk about on the show in their own life, so we can see what that looks like in practice.

Today we have a case study from hanna hana says i'm a software developer in software development. We have this process called pull request review. When your work is put in a poll request and I must be approved by one of your peers before can be considered done and merged into the code base right is a technical thing, but programmer know about IT.

This is me talking. Now, just think of a pull of requests. You basically saying, I change some code from this complicated system that I want to know. Add back to the system in a pool request as someone is going to check IT before I get added back. And so like you IT ensures that someone doesn't like mess up something .

about the system, right?

I joined the team as a margin or developer, and I used to feel like a big part of my job is to immediately checked pull request from the senior developers, and if there's no serious bug, I should give a quick stamp of approval so that work can move on to emerged. I was partly too nice and scared of block in the process and partly chose to be visible busy by participating the pole across ss review.

As soon as the notification came in, I felt people can see me working step in away again. This is a classic example of what I call my book, school productivity, studio productivity, which is the use of visible activity as a proxy for useful effort. I back to the case study.

This approach, however, requires constant context switching and turns me into a zombie check in slack and emails all the time, hunting visible work. After reading deep work, I decided this has to change. I started with time block recording just to have an account to how my time was spent, and was appalled to find out how much when in the checking slack and get distracted.

After seen this pattern for one week, I start to actually do tail daily time block planning. In addition, I also planned t for the coming week and retrospectively review the previous week to understand myself Better, and now try to start today with at least an hour block of coating work without opening slack or emails, which is a game change when he comes to setting the mood for the day. Then I schedule all poll request reviews for ten years after the team's daily meeting, and again at three pion after my afternoon walk, each review time block last at most one hour, usually less than I move on with own tasks.

I thought my co workers would notice and be mad, but IT seems like waiting a few hours for review doesn't bother them at all. In most cases, with this new system, I become more effective and happier with my own work. My deep, the shallow work ratio went from twenty percent to forty percent. I was able to complete a complicated a project and got a lot of positive feedback. The team when the product is done, I feel i've earned more trust from others and a lot more confident in myself to keep optimizing my schedule, to fit my vision, like skipping a revved meetings to get more deeper done.

Right is a classic .

example of the hyper principle we talked about here on the show in x super productivity convinces us we talk about this all the time on the show. IT convinces us that there's these committee meetings where our peers and bosses are studying our every response. They have bar charts of the average latency between poll requests and completions, and they're looking for anything different.

And as soon as they see a change, I ve noticed that see， this was from hanna. Hanna seems to be waiting till ten to handle their poll request. This won't stand at all and they're getting really upset about these people don't care.

They're busy. They finished something. They move on to something else. What they notices of your if you skip pull request, if you would often have a day or to go buy, that would flag negatively and people would notice.

But the fact that you've bad sees attending three, no one cares. They get done right, but you've made your life more easier. The other thing that happens, as we see in this case, studies that as you move away from super productivity, you begin to obsess over quality.

One of the principles of low productivity, i'd like doing depok. I like producing stuff that matters. I get good feedback when I do stuff that matters. Suddenly to the .

productivity.

And all the performance of business seems less appealing. The more you care about quality, the more likely, as we seen in this case study, you are to say i'm not going to that meeting or i'm not gonna look at my slack until ten um because you get addicted to the rewards and positive feeling of doing good work. And that's why obsess over quality, I say, is the glue for the slow productivity pho sophy.

If you don't do that part, everything else becomes just like an tagging c relationship with your work. You don't obsess over quality, but you're still trying to reduce the number of things you work on. Can currently in work at more natural places is like I don't like work.

I want to do less if I want to be less hard. When you have sess over quality, you start doing those things because that lets you do Better work. When you have sess over quality, you gain more freedom to do those things because you're doing Better work. So I see this as a great case study of what happens when you leave super productivity and you embrace the .

type of ideas I talk about .

in slow productivity. Are we have a final segment coming up a tech corner, talk about a trend in the world of technology that is critical, but you are not .

paid enough attention to first.

however, I talk here from a sponsor. Uh one talk about notion notion combine your notes, dogs and projects in the one space that simple and beautiful ly designed. And now with the new notion AI, you have the capabilities of multiple A I tools built in to the notion workspace. You already know in love, this means you can search, generate, analyze and chat all within notion.

I've talked about notion before because I think it's a fantastic tool if you want to build customs systems around the information that matters to you in your business ways to have, for example, and add tracking system that was built on notion that made IT really easy for us to get to the various information relevant to the ads we do here on this show. So like you could see a calendar view, for example, of each of the ad reads coming up on upcoming recordings. You could click on one of those ads and see all of the upcoming ad reads for just that advertiser.

Um you could jump on a particular ad, read for a particular day from that advertiser, get the script and enter the information about the timestamp. Etra, there is a great custom tool that allowed us to get at all the information surrounding ads, in this case, in very useful lunch de of an efficient interface to. So I love notion, but notion AI makes us all even Better as IT integrates A I into the tool.

You can, for example, now search across notion and other apps. You can generate dogs for you in your own style. You can analyze p dfs and images.

You can chat with IT about anything. Notion AI is connected. The multiple knowed sources. IT uses A H A I knowledge of GPT four and claud the check check with you about any topic.

You can search across thousands of notion dogs in seconds to quickly answer any question. These are questions about your own information. When was the last time we did an ad read for notion or something? It's over here.

What are the what are the main points from the script for this add that we did whatever goes, find that your information gives you the information back. Conversational database, fantastic technology. Unlike other specialized tools or legacy sweets that have you bouncing between six different apps, notion is seamlessly integrated, infinitely flexible and beautifully easy to use.

You're empower to do your most meaningful work. Also, notion is really big on privacy. Notion AI parties are contractually prohibited from using your data to train their A I models. Notionally, I respect the permissions of your content, so only reference content that you have access to. So try notion for free.

When you go to notion dot com, sas cow typed ed, that in all lower case letters, notion dot comes less coal to try the powerful, easy to use notion AI. Today, when you use our link, you'll be supporting our show notion that com flash cow else. When I talk about our friends at the biotics ah just in our old men that's beyonce are in our forties now.

Uh, it's not likely we were when we were in college. And what that means is like if we're going out with some friends like tonight i'm having dinner with three friends will probably have like a drinker too because is a nice dinner that could be enough for us. Old men, black knocked us out the next day.

They gets off to a more slugger start. This is not the way I was in college, my memory of dark yuh and maybe I have this little around Jessie. My memory of jarmo h is that um natty light came out the water founders.

I think he was just like part of our student fees went to you could just like this big. It's right. It's not the case when we're four anymore.

okay. So into in is the biotics, which is A P alcohol pre biotic drink. It's the world's first generally engineered pro biotic IT was invented by page, the scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking here.

How that works when you drink alcohol gets converted into a toxic by product in the gut. It's this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for your rough next day. So p alcohol produces an inside me to break this by product down.

You take you remember to take xiao tics um make that you're first time to the night drink responsible. You feel your best tomorrow, right? So it's something you actually take before you go out and make your friends and then those couple drinks you have want to feel quite so bad the next morning.

Kind of a call idea. So much for those of us who aren't that Young anymore. So good is the BIOS t comm.

Slave cow to learn more and get fifteen percent off your first order. When you use cow at check out, the BIOS is backed with one hundred percent money back guarantees. So if you're unsafe fied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked.

Remember to head to the biodyl not calm sass cow and use that code cow at checkout to get fifteen percent off. I just lets do our final segment. I want to do something, and maybe we should get eventually. I think we need the music for this justice, but I want to add something I call tech corner occasionally to the, into the episode. Look, i'm a technologist of a computer, scientist of founding faculty, a member of Georgetown center for digital thick on, the director of the computer science, ethics and society academic program at George's town.

I think a lot about technology and its impact, everything going to show is vegan about that, right? The deep life is something that were often establishing as a bullard against a distracted life of those distractions come from the electronic world. But sometimes I want to get geeky about specific technologies.

Today, I want to briefly talk about advanced in a trend that I think is one of the most important trains and technology that most people are ignoring. And IT has nothing to do with A I are i'm putting a video on the screen here for people who are watching instead of just listening. What you're going to see here is a video from a company called immersed.

You see a man holding up what looks like like a smaller version of apple vision pro collects like si ogles. These are important, right? Here's someone wearing them.

right. So just see what do you think about these gotten? This is still aren't casual.

You would notice if someone was wearing these, right? But they're like small ski goggles with a cable coming off to them, right? So what do these do? I'm going to sum my head here to them in progress, right? We see on the screen what the person wearing deviser sees, which is their computer screens, but floating in space against the sort of scenic background.

You can also use these with path through password to that, where you see your actual space around you. But with these computer screens floating, here's what's important about this particular product. It's called advisor from a company called a merse, a company that I actually profiled in new yorker back in two and twenty one.

It's about a third the Price of application pro, right? Why is IT about a third Price? They have specialized in one particular use case, which is when I put on these augmented reality goggles, the only thing I want to do is have virtual computer monitors.

I want to take the the screens from my computer i'm using right here, make them bigger and put them in virtual space, if that's all you're doing. IT simplifies a lot of the hard problems about augmented reality when you don't need like the whale to come out of the floor of the gym. nazi.

And like we see in the famous magic leap demo, when you don't need the ability to be walking through a building and have a charge, are beings character walking along side of you, when you don't need the ability to to walk three sixty around a carefully rendered three d minecraft map that's getting the lighting right from all directions. When you don't need any of that, all you need is I want screens floating in space and they stay fixed in one space and in fact, my laptop will be there in the scene so we can anche me to where my laptop is. The chAllenge of augmented reality gets much easier, so the Price can go way down. The reason why I think this is important is because the particular use case that immerse is focusing on a deviser is the killer. The killer up IT is the thing we should be paying attention to.

virtual monitors.

This is the big change of talk about this before, but now we're making progress for IT. This is the big change that is coming. I do not need A T, V.

I do not need, buy a desktop. I don't need to have multiple laptop computers. Screens will be virtual when you think about this IT makes a lot of sense, right? What I bring with me is a pair of glasses.

When I put on those glasses, I get a big monitor computer screen, I get four computer screens, or I get a TV on my wall, whatever wall I happened to be in. And I can watch a movie there. I can watch A T V show there.

This makes so much more sense when we think about IT than having to have all of these pieces of glass on top of early d um lighting diodes that we hang and put on hinges and put in all our spaces and that we use to sort of see things. Why not just make all these screens virtual that don't have to buy all these different things? And he one powerful competing device in this part, glasses.

This is the future for everyone who is making fun of the apple vision pro. This is what apple has in mind. The other demos are weird, and people do all sort of crazy stuff with them.

What they have in mind is their whole hardware business is going to go away when this technology advances and they want to be at the forefront. So why I think this announcement is important is because the Prices is coming down. When you acknowledge this is what we're trying to do, you begin to get competition in the space.

When you get the farm factor for these glasses to be more or less Normal glasses form factor, and you get the Price of thousand the races on. Now you're in a killer APP space. We're going start to begin to see widespread adoption.

So is there gonna be a future in which everyone has on IT, just walked on the street, on the subway, at their chairs, at starbuck, at their officers, where everyone has on basically what looks like thick ray band glasses? Is that can be the future where everyone has on glasses? I say the answer is yes, but I think that that feels weird to us right now.

Could you imagine everyone you see has his glasses on that can just put screen in front them when they need IT? But is that really any weirder to someone in the thousand nine hundred and eighty? If you talked about a world in which everyone was going to be Carrying around a small rectangle with a piece of a glass and just looking at IT everywhere, like holding this thing up in front of their head like this looks pretty weird.

And yet now we're completely used to that, that you walk into almost any public space. Everyone is looking at this thing in their hand. If you in thousand and eighty two, when I was born, if you told people that's what we're going to see forty years from now, the future.

They've you mean like star trek, like the thing commander kirk looks at when they beamed down to the surface of the planet. Come on, you're crazy. And now we're completely used to IT.

I think ten years from now, everyone's going to have on glasses. Everyone is going to have on glasses IT just makes too much sense. They'll be some computing devices as well. It'll be like a phone maybe little bit thicker is going to have like most your computation, your data is going to be in the cloud. This is going to make and we're going to see this, we'll be first adopters.

But companies are going to be quick to this once the Prices, right, because you can just look at a budget nt budget for our company, right? Man, we have to buy all of these computers. We have to replace them every three years.

We have all these projectors in the conference room and these TV projectors and those break and we have to replace some um we have like the phones people use and those have to be updated and we have to keep the software updated and we have to force people to update the software and all these different devices and to see what if we just bought everyone of five hundred dollar per glasses, right? And now every conference room, every desk like we just have, all the screens they need is all their virtual. Everything is software base.

We can update IT in the back. And as needed, IT just makes a lot of sense for individuals like, yes, I want five monitors or three monitors or I want my email over here and the thing i'm writing to know over here and the chat slack chatt over here, yes, I want multiple monitors. People can get used to that.

And putting on the glasses gives that to you at home, at the office. When your hot swapping desks on the seat in front of you on the delta flight, people will want that the ability to shut off the world and replace IT with a virtual reality world, I think that will be useful as well. And people want to focus, I want to focus.

I want just one screen where i'm writing, and I want to be know in more ore or whatever like that can be important as well. So anyways, I have been pitching this future, this into reality, and what screens become virtual. I've been pitch this for a long time.

This is a key milestone. Other OEM figuring out, oh, if all we need to do is screens, we can make these things cheaper. This is the beginning of the info screens. Now that is no longer the super high in products is not met as quest doing some of this, but also doing games. It's not apple vision pro trying to do all possible August to reality things for three thousand dollars.

It's a smaller paragon lasses that just a screens for thousand, and that's going to lead to a smaller paragon lasses that just a screens for five hundred, that's then going to lead a smaller glasses that does the same thing and then they're going to have a real change. So that's my tech corner for the this week. Keep an eye on augmented reality.

Forget the crazy stuff. This is all about having three screens at your desk at starbucks. We're getting closer to that future.

I heard, however, the event and to go well, oh, right, yeah, there's a big event of summer. They invited me, but I think the demos won't yet. So a lot of people came and the device already.

But anyway, I think this direction mean immerse a do well. Apples can have lower in product. Everyone else that met is working on the frames. Summit has the right size frames with limited functionality. And the working backwards from the frames to the technology, people are working on this.

And again, I think we're so distracted by genre of I we don't realize that this is a technology is going have a bigger data footprint probably on our life. So there you got my tech corner. Obligation of the day is spreading the word about that.

But for now, I will shut down our old fashion screens because that's all we have to talk about in today's episode. Thank your one for listening. Will be back next week with another episode of the podcast.

And until them, as always, they need. I is cow here. One more thing before you go. If you like the deep questions podcast, you will love my email newsletter, which you can sign up for at cow newport dot com. Each week I sent out a USA about the theory or practice of living deeply.

I've been writing this newsletter since two thousand and seven, and over seventy thousand subscribers get IT sent to their in boxes each week. So if you are serious about resisting the forces of distraction and showiness that afflict our world, gotto sign up for my newsletter. I called me where dot com and get some deep wisdom delivered to your inbox. Each three.