Ep. 325: Simple Focus Protocols
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I'm counting part, and this is deep question, the show about cultivating a deep life in a distracted world.

right? Well, for podcast listeners out there, this is one we're gona want to make your way over to the video. And because we are recording this real closed the halloween. So Justin, I thought we would dress up this year for halloween.

I am dressed ed up this year as producer, Jessie wearing a ginza hooded sweatshirt and Jessie is dressed up as me wearing the famous blue shirt so you'll have jump for the video. Here's what i'm realized in the Jessie um we don't put the inter in the video. So for people just watching the video, you think they gonna wonder, like, why in this, which I should, I say something at the start of the deep dive as well.

pride during the video, right?

So i'm going to mention this again. So don't be confused. I'm going to mention this briefly again, we start to deeply ve, and that is for our friends that join us just on the video so they know what's going on.

They don't think I want to mention us. Thank you. Everyone who sent in a note volunteering for the chAllenge I announced a few weeks ago, I wanted to work with a small number of people and help them organize their profess, professional and personal lives.

You think of ideas I talk about on the show. And as I promise, there's going to be audio from this that will be able to play on the show. We ve got a great batch of applicants.

Think over a hundred, right? elsie? Yeah, yeah. So we're going to him now. We're going to narrow, wait down and we work slow here.

But we'll be in touch with people soon and hopefully get this project in soon, which means, you know, at some point this fall, you'll be able to hear some audio on the program is all I think that's what we got. So happy halloween for those who celebrate. And just he lets get diving in to the deep dive right today I want to talk about focus first.

However, a quick logistical note you may notice, I am not dressed as Normal. I am in a sweatshirt. And producer Jessie is not dressed as Normal either.

And that is because we are recording this rape before halloween. En, and I decided to dress up as producer Jesse for halloween, and producer Jessie dressed up as me. If you are new to this channel and just stumbled across this clip and have no body, what we're talking about good for you.

It's all nonsense. You don't need to know. Let's get back to what we're going to talk about today, which is focus.

Clearly, I talk about this a lot. I care about this a lot. I even wrote a whole book about this called deep work.

Put simply, distracted for concentration is just a powerful, powerful tool. IT produces quality results quick. It's a source of real creativity. It's deeply human. Focusing, however, is hard, especially in our current moment of digital distraction.

And when I talk about becoming Better at focus on my books and on the show, I have a standard, what I would call long term protocols, a standard set of long term protocols for over time, becoming Better at focus on making, in a party your life. Over the years, these protocols have called less around foreign ticula, brain trading, workload limits, communication reform and distraction moderation. You ve heard me talk about all these before, but someone has been the other day what they could do to get Better at focus quickly, like get some improvements right away tomorrow, the day after.

And I think this is a great question, like you can become an expert focus and have your whole life felt around focus overnight, but you can get Better at IT overnight. And I think having improvements quickly could be an important source of motivation for people looking to make longer term changes. So I love this idea of what can we do to get Better at this key skill right away.

So I came up with five protocols for short term improvements to your focus, meaning these protocols work right away, get immediate benefits from right? Let's get into this protocol. Number one, clearly differentiate your focus blocks.

So when you are working, you have to imagine there's a bit zero one when IT turned on, you're doing something requires focus. When it's turned off, you're not. And you just have a simple set of rules for how you treat focus work.

The key rules being no distraction and no email, no slack, no phone, no web broster. Having a clear differentiation will right away make a big difference. When you try to integrate focused activities with other things you're doing, you're going to be more distracted.

If you are saying, for example, yeah, I just check my email a certain amount of times today to keep up with IT and you're working on something kind of hard. You haven't clearly segregated that focused work from other things are going to have this constant fight with your own mind. Switch a email now.

What about now? What about now? Shouldn't we check in to see like what they're saying on john boy about the yankees lost last night? This would be a good time to do that.

Why not? right? When you have clearly different rate of focus blocks, you don't have found these arguments.

The only argument you have is, do I respect the focus block rule or not? So it's a simple thing, but is differentiating for this specific amount of time, which I have clearly specified nine to ten, thirty, eleven to eleven, forty five from the specific clearly specified duration of time, i'm using my focus rules. That simple change really helped to get more out of this focus blocks by protocol.

Number two, focus less used to think focus is great, but if you get too ambitious, yeah I I want my life to be like the the the writer rober Carol. And i'm just going to eight hours a day slowly turning pages at an archive and writing on a typewriter. If you get overly ambitious, you saying yourself up to fail.

When you fail, your mind can give up on the whole project. Hey, we try this focus thing. That's not for us.

When you have an overly ambitious plan, you might also suffer from your mind realizing your plan is overly ambitious. This is not sustainable. We're not going to be able to focus for six hours today.

I do. If we have six hours free today, we're not going to have that free tomorrow. So why begin? right? Your brain is a plan evaluation machine. And when IT doesn't trust your plan withholds motivation.

So IT sounds counter intuitive, but for a lot of people who are new to focusing, being less ambitious is going to help you in the long term. I just wanted do an hour when get an hour done every day, right? That seems very tractable your mind as I believe this could work.

You're likely to succeed at the momentum builds. I was looking at a book the other day reading the spoke called lost and thought and IT had some quotes that the author, the names inner hurts, had some some quotes early on from two books. I know well, but I forgot these calculations in the books.

Uh, so we talked about OK. What's the book called? I think it's all the intellectual life written by a dominican fire, sir and intelligence.

Gy, something is name wrong? Anyways, I quote this, and deep work is a book from a while back about how to have an an intellectual life and maybe look fit up just to see if it's the intellectual life supposedly according to the hurts in this book. I miss this part. The author says, yeah, your goal should be like an hour day. If you can dedicate an hour a day to like, really focusing on books and thinking you've an intellectual life.

The other book he mentions is how to live on twenty four hours a day by arno binet, a book of which I have a first edition from early twenty centre a list or sent to me um supposedly in there in its argument for what you need to have an intellect al life is he said you should aim for ninety minutes a day that should be enough but three days, week, maybe little more you know where they have formulas for this, formulas for how much time you need to focus to build up like an inaugural life. The key point being these times weren't big. Is IT the actual life? Yeah, I search chAllenge.

Es, yeah. So I always pronounce that name wrong. It's a fantastic book.

What would just say? It's hard to find what the original copy is from. I got out yeah it's new edition. It's a fantastic book. IT was not to go on a side here.

I'll do this briefly. Ninety ninety two.

That's a newer addition probably I think um I had a cool version of I had stumbled across at early in my career in George town in the library stacks just like wandering to the stacks and I found IT and I read IT for those who know George town on there's like a patio outside of the levy center that overlooks you like the business school to your ride and overlooks down to the football field.

I remember reading this outside and taking notes on IT and then I helped shape my thinking around the pork school book the so I read like a one thousand and twenty one edition of this book from the library is very inspirational to make the time. I mean, I was like a first year professor like the such a good book to find IT was all about the mechanics of how to be an intellectually and sometimes deep is inspired by that. So deep is not about how to become an intellectual, but how to become a deep worker.

But was very similar. Like, how do you craft a life built around your mind? Ah, yes, I was a very influential fine for me.

Right enough diversion protocol. Number three, use a focus space, have a different place to go to do focus work. I don't care what IT is, just make a different kitchen table.

If you're working from home conference room, reserve a conference room at your office and the ones you can reserve when you have to do zoo meanings, whatever, reserve those just just like an hour a time for a focus block every day, going to a different space makes them much easier to focus. If you really want this to work, don't bring your phone I write in out. People are started getting the dt a little bit.

Don't bring phone and if you're working on your laptop, the activate wifi when you go there. Now we're really cooking. You're in like a conference room where you're outside on your paddy or a kitchen table.

You have no internet connection, is just an hour right away. You're going to get a big hit to your ability to focus per call. Number four, produce artifacts.

And what I mean by this is especially if you you need to focus, you do not want to just say for this block, i'm gona think is going to be me alone with my thoughts like i'm used to doing that now, but have been doing this professionally y for a couple decades of for most people, it's. Difficult to maintain focus, your mind wonders IT could be frustrating. So I recommend you should be producing some sort of tangible artifact as you go of your focus section.

Typically, this is something you're right. You're writing in shaping notes about your thoughts and then refining those notes when I would work on math proofs. For example, during deep work sessions, I had a new book, and i'd be working through my thoughts.

What about this proof? This equation doesn't work. Let me label where this equation breaks.

What about this? Let me analyze this. Okay, let me know this proof strategy failed.

Let me say where when you're leave in an artifact like this, IT focuses your thinking. IT gives you a scaffold. Am for your thinking, which makes IT much easier to proceed. And IT helps you sidestep a pernicious ous effect that we don't even know that's happening when we're trying to do intellectual work, which is our mind likes to save energy.

So often it'll be sort of near an intuition or insight and you begin to get that that biochemical feeling of aha, like i'm kind of on to something, but your mind doesn't actually fully articulate that insight IT just gets close enough to I think we're near to something good that you get that good feeling and you sort of move on feeling like I did good thinking, but you didn't actually finish that insight and pull IT through to a completed thought, which can actually take a lot more work after the fact you already feel like you're on the something when you're taking notes. You have these physical artifacts IT forces you to write IT all out. This would happen a lot with me when I was working on a proof for, like, an algorithm alysa.

Like, oh, I think that works, but did not have to force my self to right out why IT works and do the math. And a lot of times I feel I discovered, like, I didn't really have that right or this insight IT seems good, but I actually don't know how to apply IT yet. And here's where i'm stuck.

And there's always resistance to do that. But that's what actually helps you. I think of IT is like the head of your thought is poked above the ground.

You have to pull the whole thing out of the ground. You have the harvest, the thought before you can, in this metaphor, I guess, cook, you need IT if this is like a vegetable or something. And created artifact as you go along really helps you do that.

So that gives you struck to your thinking, and IT helps you finish out your thoughts. I particle number five, walk. We're good by we are mean humans and thinking what we walk.

Now this might be because we have A A long evolutionary history of covering great distances, walking or by petal. We can't. We're not meant to sprint for short distances and then rest like an analog.

We're not meant to stay relatively stationary in one place and occasionally moving. We are made a very efficiently to be able to walk. We can walk all day long.

We can walk in the the heat of the african savannas where evolutionary past comes back from. We're not heavily. Third, we can sweat to change our temperature.

Our hip serge set up in a way that has a very efficient by by pedal with emotion. We're a walking animal. So I think IT makes sense that we're very good at thinking over walking.

I also think there's an argument to be made for walking suppresses certain circuits just because that gets your mind automatic persons, your mind working on the taking the steps, which sort of suppresses some circuits in your brain and actually freezes you from sort of random brain distraction. I can always think through. I thought much more clearly walking than sitting still.

There is also probably something about the sensor experience. When your brain is seeing novel sensory scenes, you're in the word, it's a tree. Look at this bushido really bright and contrast nicely with the stream over here.

That novelty opens up brain circuits, which allows for more creative insight, whether if you just like your same desk, you always work, there is nothing novel, and you might entrance in sort of the same circus and have a higher time being creative. That's the easy thing to do. So OK going to work for now and a half on something, focus, spin, the first half hour, thinking about IT walking right away.

You're gona feel smarter. You're going to Better thoughts. You're going to enjoy the experience more. This is my five protocols.

Let me go through again, clearly differentiate your focus blocks from non focus blocks, focus less, use focus space, produce artifacts along the way, and spend more time walking there. Go just say, I don't know what I call on protocols. This time I often use that term because i'm a computer scientist, but also Andrew superman uses that term. So maybe that means we'll get two million views on this video.

when you were at M, I, T, you talked about how there were the all star brands who just or like above and beyond anything, did they do this type of stuff that they just not need to as a kind, like professional athletes, or just so we can eat whatever they want and still be fine.

That's a good question. They would do a lot of this stuff. I mean, they they are sitting still thinking there was a lot of that um but there is a lot of motion and thinking so there's A A mentor of mine uh a professor from E P F L in switzerland said at the decide he was a visiting professor at MIT kind of early on my career. He was really big on runs so you would do he did his best thinking running, uh, because the motion sort of just helps him think the problem was he was in much Better shape than I was so be like you let, let's go for a run and we can like, work on this .

proof that be too far away.

It's seven miles like a fast pace heep like other key as you should be running fast enough to talk but not singing and I was like, I can breathe. What about not being of the breathe? Is that is that's where I am right now.

That's the problem with running. So I think for hand for someone isn't a really good shape to them. A slow jog is like a walked other people, it's not really taxing you, but a man, I don't know how many insight I got out of those runs, but you I saw a lot of that. Definitely, people had very specific ways they took notes, like how they built out and notes somewhat they were working on. I think that was a big thing as well.

Dear current students, ask you about this a lot.

Um no, but I am talking about IT, uh, soon. So we have this new class at Georgetown for the graduate students called research methodologies and a class where it's like just learning how to be like a researcher. And i'm given to talk to this class.

I would talk about these things, yes. So we should talk about these things more. And mmt was just assumed is so sinker swim IT was like, you Better to fix this stuff out because others SE you're out.

And so people were like, highly, and I would learn from mentors like the one I was talked about, who these weren't students and are, are professors. They taught me all these rules about OK. Here's how you work on a problem like I learned from received. For example, in theory problems, you start with the simplest possible formulation of the problem. We've call all IT a toy version.

So like you've simplified a lot of the complexities, uh, you've made the model very simple and something that just get to like the core of the thing that you're interested in is like solve the toy problem, understand the toy problem and then you can add back complexity. okay. Now that I have this insight, what happens when we make the model more standard, that we add of the things to IT, you end up with something is kind of complicated and contingent, but it's like starting with the the the core problem.

So like, for example, I worked on this paper with him way back when, think the title, if you want to look this up, the rico computer sciences out there, I think the title, the paper was on malicious motes and suspicious spicious sensors. And IT was a paper about trying to communicate wireless y in like an abstract model when you had maybe like a malicious source nearby that could be trying to, it's like jam, you're signal, try to trick the receiver and the thinking something else was going. And like how do you communicate security on a share channel, right? And he simplified IT.

I remember this, we simplify ed IT down to like lucious. Start with time is in rounds. And my my entire goal is there's there's two.

There's a single receiver, Alice and bob. And Alice has a single bit and see there's zero one. And Alice just wants bob to figure out is her pit zero or one and will make time and like exact round.

And in every round, like Alice can send something or not and in every round there's one ever said will call charlie can also seen something or not. And if they both send something, it's they kind of collide like you just a technos like we simplified IT as much as possible. And this really like deep insight about the amount of communication required to jam communication.

This gaming game, there's like whole, like really deep inside, came out of looking at the simplest passible problem and then like a lot of papers have been written on this or whatever. But yeah, as the point being, how you think matters not just like how you focus, but how you approach problems, how you approach articles, how you approach books. A lot of this information is often implicit and not made explicit, and you cannot just have to figure IT out, and other peoples don't.

So I really love efforts to try to surface thinking, like I have this idea for a short book I want to write at some point called in defense of thinking like a manifesto, and really get into thinking as a skill. And there's all of these like skills and different types of thinking. There's different ways to do IT as this whole, like lively, rich actual activity and not like we think about IT now is just just like vague thing like I don't know, I am just in my head thinking about things.

So i've spent my life thinking for a living. So I think a lot about thinking right. Well, we ve got some good questions coming up. I should say, before we get there just I don't know how you wear these sweatshirts all the time there.

They warm when you get really hard. I get really cold in the dio.

yeah.

it's crazy. Like right now i'm cold, but you you run hot when you what you're talking a lot.

I I do run hot. Like to me, this is what I would wear outside, I would say like down to twenty five degrees very night.

I hope you don't have .

been there in this recording. I like onna make IT nonsense or in the arctic I have the air conditioning blast into that's why why this is cold that this punishment for making me where a switcher let's we've got some questions coming up. But first here for one of our sponsors, I will talk about our friends at zc, doc and APP that I just use the other day.

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You think I can make that like a trend for people, just say october com, probably quickly. right? What we got here, oh long time sponsor of the show, our friends at grammar.

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questions from confused. You stated no time block and outside of work, but my life outside of work is more complex than work itself is. Where I like to be more productive. How shall I manage family time, friends, volunteering in very commitments and a side hostel?

But first i'll make A A clarification in case this is helpful. The main thing, I want people to avoid this time blocking all their time. If you time block all of your waking hours, it's too exhAusting.

It's too much to to remain in the time block mindset and you're going to give up. You're also going to stress yourself out. Some people are in situations, however, where it's not like a traditional here's my job from nine to five and then I have time off after my job.

People have unusual situations. Maybe they have worked that happens in the evening or split shift work or they're not working a traditional job. And actually like the main thing they're doing is like organizing what's going on in their house.

And a lot of these efforts happen not during the day. That's the easy time. It's like in the afternoon or evening is why I think this more generalized rule helps.

Your goal is down the time, block all of your time. So for some people, this might mean actually earlier in the day is on time locked. But this complicated part of my day, like three to seven, I really time blocked that because that's what it's complicated.

The other thing you can do, so let's that you have a nine to five job in your time block in IT, because you need to do that to keep your job. Some other things you can do to help control your life outside of work is one, make use your calendar. So a lot of things you mentioned like doing things with friends, your volunteering ing, a some side house activities, these probably are happening at set time.

So that's on your calendar. That's fine, right? You look at your calendar, what am I doing this evening? Okay, here's my event.

Um I know when they happened. That's fine. This is your calendar. That's not time blocking every minute of your day, you can autopilot schedule regular work like on a side hollar hobby. I always do IT in this place on these days, at this time that make sure this work is done.

But it's not the same as building an ad hawk time block plan on spec for every evening knowing that like tuesday and thursday, you leave work early and you work on your side household at the local coffee shop and that's just your routine is not the same as time blocking, knowing you always work out like right after work before dinner starts, that's an autopilot routine is not the same as time blocking because um it's is something you do. It's not you saying, okay, I built this on spec schedule for the next few hours that I have to follow that that takes more work um finally, it's okay to sketch a plan for evening. Just don't be super minute by many per size like, okay, before I pick up the kids from baseball, I want to try to get this done tonight.

After dinner, remember to take out the garbage or cycle, you can sketch out these plants that help guide you without having to have, like every minute spoken for. So really, our principle here is do not time block your whole day every week an hour, but there are still a lot of structure you can have. You don't have to just have a big to do this if your work is over in just rock and roll. Er you can still have a lot more structure .

than that when they .

do work .

on the side hospital and they go the cop shop and tuesdays, they should always still time like that right?

Um yes so if it's an autopilot schedule, you just know that when you do IT. So I see that is different in time, blocky, but you're same like within that look yes yeah I think that's fine. So because your site work o so I think that's fine.

Yeah if you like OK of ninety minutes of the coffee shop, what am I doing um if that helps the time blocks that out some I think that's that's fine. What got next? Next questions from anonymous.

I'm twenty five and live at home. I discovered you on youtube from your guiding side. Now, scheduled times for gaming, no more.

Youtube browsing in reading is my main form of entertainment. I just started taking some more classes online from my battering computer information systems. I got your time block planner, but I have trouble.

Priorities ing. What to do? There are so many things I want to get done.

I like this idea that for more people were the the last youtube channel they ever discovered, because like once they listen to us, they don't browse on youtube more. And you know, my advice for youtube was treated like a library or a cable TV station, right? So look, things up that you want to learn more about have a stable of shows like mine that are bookmark.

You watch the same way that you might have used to watch the myth busters on discovery channel. These are programs i'd like. It's funny enough to do in AIGC. But like last night, we were watching a youtube video, two different youtube videos maker youtube video, so a mark rober video and a hax Smith video.

And and my wife was watching with me in the boys and what he remarked, which is absolutely the right, is they are converging on exactly the production style of, like circuit two thousands cable reality TV. So when you watch some of these videos now, it's just like watching one of these reality shows, you know, a three o'clock in the discovery channel, know the cuts, the talking heads, the like kind of forces union is like we're all having fun. So it's interesting.

It's like youtube. The higher funded youtube is now basically rediscovering class a cable TV a reality competition program styles. Anyways, back to your question, right? So here's I usually recommend the people who are going from unstructured, the structured for the first time.

First of all, congratulations. The structured life is much Better than the unstructured. It's one of my preparation steps for the deep life more generally, right? We've talked about this before.

If you wants to cultivate in a deep life, you have to get your act together first. In this requires practicing and cultivating discipline, organizing all the stuff you have to do in your time. And then I have a third one in there about taking back control your brain.

So you sort of on track what you need to do. The cultivates deep life. Here's what to recommend the people who are new to this.

Three things. Number one, autopilot, the things that are most important IT sounds like you have a lot of flexibility in your schedule. That's great.

You don't want to just come to each day and say, what are the things I wanted do today? What's important to me? You want to autopilot important for you.

That should mean autopilot, your time for your online classes. If you autopilot at that time, you can attack these classes much more systematically and get through them much faster. Actually, you be surprised by how many classes you can complete when it's like every day for ninety minutes.

Typically, I tell people who are new to structure to also autopilot fitness or exercises in there, and something community oriented every week. I have this like volunteer thing I do. So you get the big rocks to use, as Steven covey term, automatically happening on your schedule.

Next, you want to use multiple ale planning for everything else. This prevents you from having to grapple moment, the moment, with the full scope of your ambition. So once you realized, like, I can control my time, and as you say here, there are so many things I want to get done.

IT could be paralyzing when it's ten a clock on tuesday. H, my god, which of these things should I do? I'll never get through them all. Mult scale planning cares you of this paralyzing because you don't have to think about everything all the time at the scale of the season or the quarter. You're figuring out your big goals like what do I want to do this fall?

Then now when you make your weekly plan, you're saying, okay, which of these things I want to make sure reflecting in my weekly plan, you're move IT around appointment scheduled and sub stuff on your calendar and they want to get to your day. You have your autopilot schedule, you have a stuff. You are the add on there in a weekly plan.

You're really just time blocking in your day. You're looking at your task. Less is much less fraught.

So use more to scale planning to, I would say, confine your ambitions. So that is not constantly rattled in your brain. The third thing, avoid overload. IT is tempting, as you gain more structure in your life to try to fit in a lot of things, to try to catch up all at once, you will burn yourself out this way.

Keep your schedule reasonable, keep seeking out time for a gratitude, and on just straight up enjoyment of things, you're going to see the sun, set the long walks, the go into the concerts. That sense of appreciation of life is going to be the fuel, and that help you keep pushing on making your life more interesting because it's exactly this type of appreciation and gratitude for cool things you're doing that you want more of. So don't fill all your time with productive activity, baLance the productive activity with the enjoyment of the fruits of these these efforts. right.

Who got next? Next questions from seb. I work in consulting where there are lots of shower meetings.

How can I do deep work to increase my job? Skills of my days are filled with meetings, several out to me. He was actually in asia before, and that's where there was a lot of things. And I moved to germany in the same problem occurred there.

Oh, this was the guy who was saying, but in asia there was over time, yes, yes. And in germany there's not right.

So ah so it's more structured in asia, more structured like well, the meeting rooms have been compensated for if this gets in the way of other work in germany's more western works like now yeah I like to high mind so said my short term advice to schedule meetings with yourself if your name meeting driven job, and then just have some meetings on your calendar for deeper work because you have to keep in mind you're being bombarded with meetings. You say yes to a lot of them, you say no to others. Some days are more food than others, and have the move meetings forward to try to find time for them.

So it's not like you're going to notice a difference if you inner do some new meetings into this mix. It's all still going to be you trying to fit meetings into your days and some days are more full than others. No one else is going to notice the difference either.

But if your mindset is in one of meets, if that is the fundamental structure of work at your company, you have meetings, we talk about things. Your calendar is your destiny, then just put out the cool stuff on your calendar. So at this three days, a week, ninety minute meeting, it's with myself and it's when I worked deeply on this project.

But I treat you like any other other. It's on my calendar, treated like any other appointment. If we use a shared calendar in our companies so that we can see when people are available that this shows up as a time when i'm busy, don't make a big deal about IT, don't preach about IT.

But you know, we have this tendency and modern knowledge work to somehow value meetings with other people above the time we have been doing stuff with ourself. And this is an inversion of reality. Meetings are typically supporting the efforts that eventually have to be done on our own through focus.

So the focus has to be very, very important. You can't just talk about the work you have to do IT as well. So as this weird value we have about what matters is mean with other people.

So scheduled meeting with yourself um to try to reduce meetings. I know that scary in a meeting culture, but there's a few ways to do that. One to say no to more meetings, you don't have to say yes just because IT comes your way.

You know, people thought out meeting in facts all the time at all sorts of things, especially just like you might be interested in this. I thought you might be interested in this, want to listen in just like now my counters falls a busy week. I've hit my work with limit.

I'm trying to cut back on that. People don't care to use office hours. So if if if there's a one off meeting like chaos, discuss this thing because is too complicated.

You via email, for example, if you just have a set time twice a week, you can defer more those that set times as a smaller footprint, uh, and then use protocol processes more. Don't let people to the extent of this as possible, don't let people use standing meetings as a replacement for real process thinking in time management. Don't let people say, okay, we're going to work on this project where we're not going to make progress.

So here's what we're going to do. I'll put a stand the meeting on our calendar. So you know at least every we talk about IT now, I don't feel stressed to progress.

What would make progress, right? That is a weak way to organize work. No, no, no. We're going to work on this project. Let's take a moment to figure how we're going to do IT.

What are the steps, who's going to do what? How do we find out who needs what from when, where we going to keep the information? What are our deadlines for different things to happen? Like how do we actually want this work to unfold, not just like to have a meeting in small talk for twenty minutes in the new five minutes of talking, or if you need, say, look, uh, if we just want to check in, come to my office hours once a week, the, hey, how's a going or say, i'll stop by your office once a week just to put my head in and be like how we do and going okay, okay, any questions you have? Anything that prevents a meeting that takes thirty minutes to an hour?

Squatting there on your schedule is program event so you can cut down on meets, but then ultimately just make what you do with yourself, your deeper committing as well. A lot of meeting in my life these days just do you like that? No, want to write me left alone.

I used lot office hours though. Yeah, right. What are you next?

Next questions from cartin. What are your all time favorite books?

H A long timelessness know. I can't do favorites like an any category, movies, books, foods. I am incapable. It's not like an intentional choice. I am incapable of rain ordering things they like.

I don't know why there's probably we can come up with A A term about IT like ordinary and alphabet, something like that anti ordination, theism. Now maybe ordinary. I ordinal ism, ordinal phobia.

I yes, can do IT. I did. However, in preparation for answering this question, I take a bunch of category that just look at my shelf. I took a bunch categories and like, what's a book that I that was influential to me in that category? You're right now, this is not exhaustive because I was literally just looking at my bookshelf, but i'll give you some ideas.

Aren't in religion a book that was very influential to me was Carrying armstrongs the case for god? This sort of came out during the period of the new Richard dawkins, Chris, her hitchen etch up. And he gives me much more interesting, I guess, presentation of religion and the time in which religion emerged and how IT was pre enlighten time, and the issue that happen when you begin to combine post enlightenment understanding of a piston logy with the way religion Operates.

Really powerful book. Those ideas have affected me. They show up beginning again in all sorts of of theological and religious writing and apology.

But I thought this book was just deep ideas. Well, we're very interesting. IT starts with, like the cave paintings at the book opens with like the earliest impulses. Torch religion is, it's pretty cool when IT comes to the arts, cinema speculation by tentless. O fantastic book.

Just like in the mind of a movie enthusiast and just how they think about movies and their pieces and their values very well in collection of essays and cy lumet making movies. Fantastic book about filmmaking, where he he uses his own movies. He looks at the different aspects of filmmaking and uses his own movies for each to talk about his experience, history.

Remember john Adams, by even a cola, being very influential when I first read that, just because I was the way the narrow of momentum and the psychological realism I know is fantastic book won the police. So look on the verse to say IT links versus by Miller. We're I i'd never read something like that before.

It's like an ethical biography of lincoln and is written in this like sort of interesting style, very influential. And ideas, idea box, you're not a gadget by journal air that was very influential. And I just like the idea of even like the polymers and a single person and the expLoring of ideas from different angles and trying to wrap your intellectual arms around the sort of complex emerging phenomenon as an influential book, I talk a lot, obviously, about walking by the row.

I think one of the original big idea books, and should be read as an idea book, amusing ourselves to death when your postman, it's like, you are not a gadget, but without the insane parts postings are more of a careful thinker than Jerry is. The gear is a very fun thinker and shop class a soul craft. I met crawford two thousand and eight, maybe two thousand and nine.

That was very influential when I read. IT was like a really big idea. And IT was new, and IT changed to understood things and IT was humanist and as cool ook finally in philosophy that was very influenced by all things shining by hover dry fish.

And shannon Kelly is a cool book I I pulled from its some in deport but it's worth a read on its own to sort of understand our current moment and how we see the world differently, for example, and someone living during the age of the the hero, age of the ancient greeks. And it's in those I thought it's a very fast and thought of voting book. So I don't know.

These are my favorites, but these are all influential books to me in in category. So you could do worse then they read any one of those books. And what will go next?

We have our corner, the productivity corner.

Let's hear something, music.

Just, I think we should sell sponsor space on my big White t mug. I think you should kind like the patches and md just have like .

an element logo right here and the logo on the helmets.

Yes, like I was tried what the yankees had the straw.

everyone had IT. I don't know stress, I don't know either, but every team had IT in the l plays.

So in some sense has been effective advertising because we all know IT. In some sense, it's not because i've nobody what IT is a slow productivity corner. For those who don't know, we like to have one question each week that draws for my most recent book, slow productivity, the lost start of accomplishment without burnout.

If you like to show, you need to buy that book. But half what we deal with is relevant to that books. So check that out where ever books are sold. I just see what is today's slow productivity corner question.

It's from tissue. I run a small, high and consulting firm that experiences a lot of highest pastie. They went from four to fourteen people.

I read slowly activity and decided to incorporate principles with the new highs that all work great. However, as a business owner, i'm still stress and have tones of work. How can I apply the principles to myself to ease my burden?

Yeah, sometimes it's harder for the the owner of the business and the people that works for them because as as the owner, you can kind of control what's been given to the people below you. You can kind of give them processes and structures that helps, but you're the back stop. So everything that needs to get done that's not being handled by the other people, the company like eventually you have to do IT.

You're also the intake, so much new things, business development issues that need to be solved linders that have solutions that come through you. So it's like the hardest position. The hardest position. The good is, is you have plenty of autonomy.

And the bad news is you have a lot of work are a couple of things that I think help business owners separate active projects from waiting projects, rates, a workload management, you can't say no, do most of these things with the things you are working out, these things the business has to do. But just be really clear about i'm only actively working on these three things. So once I hit a milestone of one of these, i'll pull something else in.

So IT reduces the number of things around which you're doing, active administrative overhead that will help you've gotto make sure that the people collaborating with you on the work that you're waiting on know that, right? So I could be a winter. So you're the owner of a company.

One, the things you have to do is upgrade your email service and whatever. I got to talk to the rep from google workplace and see if they have a solution for us that could be a pain and they kind of reach that I want to do this, but it's not active. It's on your list is like two things away from your act of projects.

Tell that vendor we're going to work on this um it's in waiting status. I have two things ahead of IT. I will email you as soon as this moves to active and they will sell up a time the the chat right? So when people are trying to set up meetings, for example, or send the new emails about stuff you're waiting on, don't set up the meeting, don't reply with the answers, instead, say, look on on this.

This is my waiting q when he gets to my active q, which I, which I estimate will happen within this time frame, I will reach back out you and we'll set this up an email and i'll be giving this a lot of my attention will make progress. So only working actively in a few number things of time is going to make your work is much less overloaded because you're putting the overhead of everything in the waiting list on pause a to separate your job in the different roles and treated to like a multiple part time jobs. There's like an administrator role of like trying to run the company.

There's a strategy role. I'm overseen the teams and making the decisions about the products and like what we're going to go with. And maybe there's like I don't know whatever role there will be.

There's technical role. You making sure that we have the the best technology or whatever IT treat, those are separate jobs with their own task list on their own board. You have different times, different days for working on these different rules.

This will prevent the context switching. That's going to make you feel more harried when you're work on strategy. You're just work on strategy for that morning.

You don't think about anything else when you're working on a ministry of stuff. That's all you're doing. You can really pick up speed and starting a lot done.

This also will make delegation easier er later because you've divided things in their roles. And now it's much easier when you hire that COO. And so I create this role, I can just move over to you.

IT makes IT easier to delegate what you're doing. Finally, create processes, stuff that happens regularly should have a regular way that happens. This type of a report we always produce here is how IT works. It's like clock work. The draft goes here and this full there.

I sign off of IT digitally by this closer business on this day, using that to the designer who has all the instruction SHE needs the posted to the client, what page or whatever IT is make processes for things that happen regularly so that their footprint on your life and time is very predictable. They're not just a another thing floating. You're trying to minimize the active flooding, things you're trying to juggle and have to trade emails and slack about.

You're the owner so you can push for as many processes as you want. The only copy out there is make sure that the people involved in the process are involved in the details of the process and feel like they have the ability to suggest changes without buying. People will resist the process with bian that can make your lifely easier, right? So yes, I want to validate IT could be much harder to be slowly productive as the owner of a business than as an employee of a business always like a solar entrepreneur.

But it's still possible. You've got plenty of autonomy. You've ve got to just deploy that, implement the right sort of things, right?

So I think we have a call this week, right? Just we do right here. We've got hey, calendar as he just listen to the tech minute segment from this week's show. And I have to say as someone working in a tech and analytics, uh my first inclination when I heard the um correction that was going with my first thought was, oh my goodness. In the future with um visual headsets as the three um window desktop of the future, my first thought was the I tracking is required to make that tech possible, will um really opened up the flag gates for um work from remote um surveilLance, some of the um mouse gigas that we're seeing to give the proxy for useful effort more just essentially skyrocket.

So uh anyway, I was just curious what your thoughts were on that that was immediately my brain brain went when you started on the discussion and I just want to see what your thoughts are um if we are living in the future with a glasses on everywhere we go, especially at work um when we put on our headsets um what kind of future is that present for us as far as proxy for meaning effort um well I track can really be useful um in the future of work and and kind of graphics are released to that thanks for the pot and thanks very work. Right a great question. The first of all, tech minute no no, no.

That corner there is a huge different tech minute. That's a whole other thing we call that signal the tech corner. Um it's a good question um is a concern not a deep concern. And let me explain why when we look at the current trajectory of the virtual screen apparatus of the advisers to put the virtual screens into your life, they're taking that screen from your laptop. okay.

So like as IT stands now, if i'm using like the immerse visor, which is still in testing, or i'm using apple vision pro to put screens in my real world, request three to put screens in my real world, the actual things i'm seen on the screens are just my Normal applications running on my laptop. So the applications don't know they're being viewed on advisor, right? So IT doesn't.

And the first iteration of this vision, you're not writing as a company that's writing the software that people are seen in the virtual world. You're not writing the software for the virtual world. It's taking your laptop screen, right? So when these are virtual screens is the exact same is just plug in your laptop into an external monitor.

Microsoft word doesn't know if you're looking at IT on an external monitor. Not and doesn't care more broadly. However, going forward, I think this is a critical point. This is a privacy feature that has to be made Crystal clear as physical privacy.

If I am a manufactured of advisor that can put screens in the world, I need to be very clear as what is my API? Like, am I exposing to applications, things they can access? I think the easy thing to say, no, just be a display.

There's no A P I. There's nothing that microsoft word can access from the glasses themselves. There's no interaction between the software in your computer and the glass is accept display. This is not going to be the case for most software because what's going to happen eventually is that people are gonna to actually modify their software to take a danger of the fact that they exist in a virtual space. I mean, we see this in, for example, the magic leap demos.

They seem to think that it's important that like your google messages are things you can swipe with your hand and and sort around as opposed to there's just a screen floating in space. And as a web brows on IT in the future, I guess more apps might want to actually take advantage the fact of a virtual space, the privacy. He has to be very clear, what information about my physical state does the applications accessing the device? Ap, I have to have any information about my eye, eye tracking location that's gonna.

To be very clear. Maybe they even have to be regulatory, but we have time until that's a problem because I think, and i've argue this before, the magical leap vision of we need special A R apps and IT needs to look like minority report were throwing things around and it's all like visually beautiful. And I grab b the email and I throw IT over there and I sweep things around.

That is not where we're going to go immediately because no one cares. I just want more screens. I want a bigger screen.

I got an email in my phone. I want a type, a response. I want a sixteen and screen to do that.

I don't want to look at my phone. That's gonna the first generation of this type of of lifestyle where we're looking at the virtual screens. So and down the road that API privacy has to be clear.

But it's not going to be the initial problem that makes sense to see the like. Yeah if you think about the glasses is is just a monitor. No, we're not worried about the our monitor doesn't um talk to the application. You know the application doesn't care how it's been displayed. I think that's that's the way that this technology is going to be, at least for a while.

All right, let's see here we have a case study, but actually i'm going to jump past the case study because i'm looking at the the final segment where we're going to read about the books I read, and I have a sort of long digression on one of the books there. So I will save some time for that. And so let's jump to the books are in october.

But first, before we do, you're about another sponsor. This show is sponsored by Better help. Now here's the thing we talk a lot about, cultivates deep play on the show. One of the key properties of a deep life is you have a good relationship with your own brain. We talk about YSL health a lot, we talk about organization a lot.

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time I drink, I think.

yeah, I think logo, i'm seen IT on the camera here for people don't know who are watching and we use teleprompter so I I can sort of I can see in front of me every time I .

raised my glass. You don't speak as a telecomm though.

I me know you talk, that's clear.

K, you talk off the cough all the time. We talk off the cough and .

we do live the tape. The teleprompter loves me to see what is currently being recorded, right? So like now I see myself.

But if Jessie cuts to camera to himself, I see I can see what the current shot is. And if you're doing ipad drawing, I can see, like the ipad, what's up on the screen. So it's basically, this is showing me the master shot that's actually been recorded, right?

I want to talk about the five books I read in october. I got a little riff on the first one be where I haven't done a sort of like intellectual academic ript in a while. So the first book I read buckle in on settle er colonel ism by adam curse.

Alright, so why this book? Uh, I got interested. The thing to coming interested in in this book was october eighth of last year. So the day after october seven, twenty twenty three, well before there was, for example, the subsequent war in academic circles, there was in some circles excitement, celebration of what had happened the day before. Now this is worrisome.

Just is like a general heroic um whenever you are seeing a sort of a dehumanization of the jeos people in particular, whenever hear people started saying about jews where they had IT come in, you gotta twitch. You inten as a little bit right hyste ics, this is not gunning. So what is going on? What is this reaction coming out of academia? IT was inter twined pretty quickly, pretty clear with rhetoric, with specific terms like settings and settle er colonialism.

So of a lot of france phenomenon ort of also being channeled as well, which as an aside is actually kind of ironic. France for non was actually a supporter of design is project a supporter of israel's? Interesting he sort of, he liked the socialist nature of what was going on over there, sort of like an interesting sort of contradiction.

Anyways, a lot of this turned out to be coming from a lot of this rhetorical c in that sort of immediate celebration of what happened. October seventh was coming from an academic theory known as setzer colonialism theory. So following my own dictate, tes, which is read about the things you're hearing about, you know, try to understand things by books where people have taken time to sit down to think about IT.

I said, I will write. I want to read a book on this. And a book came out this summer by adam curse.

And he was called on set their colonel ism. Adam is A A poet and literary critic. I believe he was the poetry editor. I think for harpers, I might have that wrong.

And he wrote this book, let me say, as an a side, I love the idea of this style or form a publishing, or you write a short book that's dealing with something just like very new, you know, as opposed to I can spend four years and work on this book or whatever. We said more of this, like smart people that, like, i'm going to turn around a book on this quick. I've been taking a lot about IT.

I know about IT. Let me see you can get books into the conversation faster. So bravo to the publisher and adam, just in the general sense for doing IT um so I read his book let me set this up course is not a fan of set their colonialism theory.

You ve got to take that into account when you read this book. I do think he does a good job, however, for most of the book, just trying to give a straightforward, here's what this is here, the ideas. Here's where I came from here, the key readings and writings.

And then at the end of the book, he gives more of his own critics. I think he's pretty fair, but you have to come from the point of view that the book is not positive about something. Colonial m theory, okay, so what did I learn? cells. Onisim theory rose out of the nineties and was developed in two thousands.

IT emerged in australia and then later in american circles IT was getting this bigger influence and academic and academic active of circles but IT was not as well known to the general public as other theoretical frameworks that picked up more prominent, especially in two thousand tens. Um racial and gender theories. I think we're getting more attention.

People are more familiar with those as theories. And they were set or colonels m theory. But IT was growing in influence even if IT was quieter.

So for example, land acknowledgement, you're probably used to this if you work in sort of any sort of large organization or art organizations were um at the beginning of the event you acknowledge the indigenous peoples on whose which land you're currently doing, the event of the player, the meeting or whatever that actually, as hard I can tell, came out of sector colonel ism theory so came out of these economics circle. So IT was having influences. Just its name as a theory was not as well known.

And then IT really took off, began taking off when a they turned their attention from U. S. And australia. So the original writing was really focused on the settler project of the us.

In the seventeen and sixteen century of australia, in the thousand nine hundred th century and eighteen century, when they turned their attention, more to israel began to pick up more speed. And then, of course, after october seventy came the more public prominence, because you had people using terminology from the theory that people had to heard before. Okay, I came away, uh, not feeling very positive towards this theory.

I have two reasons. Number one is very general. It's not specific to this theory, but I think it's an important point just worth emphasizing.

As you go through your own intellectual journeys and think about the world of knowledge, there are two different types of academic theory. I put him into these categories, predictive and radical predictive theory. This is like the traditional notion of a theory.

There is some phenomenon you're trying to explain. You come up with a theory that has a mechanism that explains what has been observed, right? This is A A plausible explanation for what we've observed.

You're trying to increase understanding of like how something works. What makes theory effective is its predictive. Once you have this mechanism, there's other predictions you can draw from IT. Well, this was true. We would also see this or we wanna see that.

And so you can then kind of test these predictions as a way to either strength in your conviction in the theories, effectiveness, or to discard the theory oh this says a work or to modified the theory we have to modify the mechanism because these observations over here um didn't match with the with what would be predicted. Now we're used to thinking about this for science, but the same predicted framework holds for theories and other field ds as well. For example, sociologist max favor had this sort of well known famous theory for the capitalist energy in the us.

He said, well, this is because it's the protestant work ethic to early U. S. The pilgrims, early settings. A lot of these were protestants.

And there's like a very specific component to post and religion, especially with predetermination that would polish like really hard work and that explains a sort of economic DNA ism of colonial amErica and honored ard right? It's it's a good Sunny theory. Economic sense explains what's going on um but over time, I made other predictions that didn't prove true.

I'm not an expert on this, but then people started looking at other countries around that time that were primarily protestant. They did not have anything near the same type of economic dynamics as the us. And then we saw similar dynamics once we had a more religiously mixed population.

We didn't see much difference in the dynamics. You know, we had catholic immigration wasn't causing these groups in the population, were not acting notably different, economically speaking. And so the theory is like largely been abandoned or at least heavily modified by sociologists.

It's that's predictive theory at work. Radical theory by context has some other elements. And one, they try to explain large swash of human behavior with a single explanation.

Sort of the the wider, the swap, the sort of more exciting the theory too. They tend to modified information they encounter to fit the desired conclusion, as opposed to modify their conclusions to fit the observed information. That's a radical theory.

Does that? Three, they tend to propose radical solutions as queues. They're often solutions that are kind of impossible.

But okay, if we could just do this, everything would be solved. That's where the radicalism comes from, the name radical theory, for they tend to enforce purity. They tend to have structures to enforce purity on their hearings.

There's a lot of like careful self observation and austria za, or punishment of insufficient purity, which is kind of needed because especially when you have these other factors like you're having to bend information to fit the conclusion and sort of to put some history away um that makes you sort of fragile as a theory. So you have to you have to enforce purity, typically radical theories, including theory, for why people would critique, because dismiss theory for while. So if someone critiques theory, our theory explains they're doing so out of bad motivations.

So we have the tickets. seriously. The classic graphical theory, the twenty century, of course, was marxism, which, as IT evolved, was explaining more and more, especially as you you got into sort of early critical theories of the modern pute as well.

So much was explained by these underlying mechanisms, these economic mechanisms that mark put out. Everything had to be sort of explained and driven by these underlying mechanisms. All of sort of human behavior could be explained by these mechanisms.

And all sorts of information was ignored or modified, the or just out right suppressed, especially once you actually took this theory, made IT the foundation of running countries. There's a lot of that going on. The solutions for radical, obviously like running A A markers coming.

This government was a big, radical solution with these big revolutions rate. And finally, of course, there is strict purity enforcement. So of course, in the political context, this was actually violent enforcement. One of the academic context, for a while I was IT was seen as like unsophisticated, did not follow these type of mechanism. So it's a classic radical theory versus predictive theory.

As presented by adam curse set licinian theory of radical theory, IT explains IT tries to explain basically everything bad through the ongoing impact of the original dispossession of the indigenous and assembler event. So like everything bad in amErica stems from the fact that amErica uh would dispossessed indian people of amErica with the settings coming from. England is not seen as a one time thing.

It's seen as that the classic, the classic phrase from silicon alisa theory is that SAT lean is not it's not in a single event. It's an ongoing thing, right? So then they explain everything, everything.

Climate change is income and inequality, all racial strife um anything that is bad is all has to come back to some sort of like sustained an ongoing impact of this sort of single particular bad thing that happen so that there's that sort of grandiose large swot ih to IT. As at points out, there's huge amounts of just bad history. Ignoring information is inconvenient.

There's no rigorous scholarship. It's a radical theory. Just everything it's reshape the fit this conclusion.

So that's not a predictive theory. That's a radical theory. The radical solutions. I mean, just come the problem with IT.

Basically the radical solution is decolonization, which actually literally means, like in the case of the us. Or australia, the three to fifty million people who live in the U. S. Basically leaving, I suppose, and the remaining native american population takes back over the country. There's no other real solution.

Is this propose other than a decoding ization, which that's literally worth there's not there's no other sort of solution predicted and is a lot of purity restrictions within IT, right? So if you're within these circles, everyone has to one up each other with their purity to the decoder zone maines IT. okay.

So again, i'm separating right now. Actually, even the particulate, like the subject of the theories, very important, like the colonial history of the world, is a devastating history. Your silicone, alison came out of the broader post colonialism academic study project, which was like a really important ongoing project to understand when the age of empire was finally dismantle in the mid twenty years century, to understand, like what that had done and and what was needed to enforce empire.

right? We, after world war two, we realized, oh, empire, not a good thing. Before world, they were too like a course you can take over countries or whatever they make on for you.

After all, the were to like, what's maybe empires? Not so great, right? This doesn't lead the good places.

And so like post colonial studies was like, necessary. And there is a lot of really interesting thinking in there. This came out of that, but it's just going to like a radical direction.

And now it's just, at least in my opinion, reading what i've read about IT. It's it's a shati scholarship and people trying to one up each other with who can be more purely adhering to more radical, and I think that's dangerous. And general radical theory, I think, is a dangerous direction for academy to go.

So I don't like gradual theory in general, right? Studying colonists important colony ism is bad. Confront IT is important. Radical theory is bad.

We can have both of those things be true at the same time, right? So I came away just, I word thinking negatively about settling colonialism theory divorced from the specific content of the theory, but because of its attributes as a radical theory. And I don't think radical theory is helpful for Better understanding the world.

And I don't think it's helpful for progressivism, meaning progressive. Sm is not the political sense, but in the philosophical sense of striving to improve the world, which I think people and academic institutions should be doing. You know, all the support, implicit or explicitly, from the state to be a professor.

I guess you should be using your brain at at least part, to improve the world. And radical theory gets in the way of them. The other reason, like i'm specifically suspicious of this theory, this goes back to what I said before.

I just suspicious of any theory for which one of the immediate consequences is violence for shoes. Historically, this has never ended up well for that theory, right? I'm not talking about the war in the middle east.

I'm talking about the three to five hundred percent increase in enthymeme c crimes. I'm talking about jewish schools being shot at, jews being randomly shot at. This happened in chicago just a few days ago.

Just for being visibly jewish is not in israel. This is not the war. This is just north american jews.

I'm talking about all of the students I hear about on college campuses who are saying, I feel like I have to hide visible signs of my religion every time in the last hundred twenty years. Or a theoretical framework LED to that brand. And violence against jews, jews trying to hide their identity every single time.

The inherent sets theory said, yeah, but you know what kind of you know, look, you got a breaks and make and make them less that kind of have to coming. And there's a really bad thing that we're attributing to them, at least you somewhere. And so that's kind just like unfortunate sequence every single time we've gone down that roads that are bad.

So I just see that is like the alarm system with any theory, the alarm system with any theory that if that is happening, your theory is probably a problem. So that is my that is a general alarm system I have. okay.

Final key point because if there's anything you come to listen my podcast forest, to hear about the middle ast is I do want to make very clear when IT comes to specifically what's happening in the middle east. Most people engaged in debate, in protest and discussion about the wars in the middle east could care less about sit ler colonialism theory. They don't know what that is.

It's not at the source of what they're thinking. So IT would be intellectually dishonest to try to use the problematic nature of this theory, which I think is very clear, to try to, for example, dismiss everyone who is protesting, debating and arguing against what's happening with this real goa. This is sort of unrelated from that.

In that sense, you cannot paint everyone on one side um with this broad brush any more than for example, you can look at every israeli and say they all would be comfortable in net yi's right when cabinet right. We're talking about this particular theory, not talking about this much larger conflict is happening. But I do think if you are in is a serious issue that require serious people, making serious arguments and throwing radical theory into the mix doesn't help.

If you are serious about this issue, do not use this particular theoretical framework as your guy. If you're a college student and you know, you want to think hard about these issues, that's fantastic. Be wary of this theoretical framework.

This particular theoretical framework is not helping any side of this conflict. This particular theory, ical framework, I think, is only going to come up the works, only going to get in the way of serious people trying to do serious work on this serious issue. I do not like radical theory in general, and so that is kind of my, this is my PSA against radical theory.

And again, the book I read and the things i've read about IT are somewhat biased and but pretty easy to identify that the tennis are radical three years when you see him. So as a scientist, academic and not somebody in the social science, is easy for me to say that. I'm just going to say, I don't like radical theory.

I don't like that radical theory. It's a specific thing i'm saying. But there you go. There is my there's my lecture, Jessie.

detailed, detailed.

There was a good book.

You you should do like a detailed description like that on cranes eruption you had a couple months ago.

I now want to spend thirty minutes, and I actually am equally passionate about this, on how jams patterson messed up. Michael cronin, s. erruptive.

I don't know who the characters were, two hundred pages in this book and like so and so Susan walks in the door. I don't who Susan, this two of your patience in. I don't know who this character is.

I can't tell you right now the name of a single person from that book. You tell me just the park. So, like, I got doctor grand, you ve got sadler, you ve got malo, right? Like, we we know these things.

I, as soon as I finish that book, I got to tell you it's bad writing, bad writing. What are the box that I read? IT breaks the record for the lungs that I have talked about a book.

Um I also read the small and the mighty by sharing, make my home, make my home ah so sure. Make my home is like a huge social media presence um this is like a government history scholar so surprising and fantastic he has just like huge instagram mates like about interesting people from history. SHE wrote this book called to a small and the mighty my publisher sent to me and I really enjoyed IT.

It's it's been yet of historical figures that you don't know, but who lid consequential lives and inspiring lives that is divided in the sections, divided by kind of categories, ies. Then IT follows these figures. And and this is what I think sharing does if if I understand properly on our social channels as well. This is like a drawn out version of IT. So I like that book is all ryan holiday mention as reading this as well.

You guys the publish I think book I think is what IT is.

IT must be portfolio ook. Um then I read chasing dreams by bob wise, former head of the imagine years at disney IT wasn't when I was hoping now you know of this like we are justly book obsession uh and so this book came out by the former head of just the imagine ery. I think what I was hoping it's not a knocked on the book.

But I think what I was hoping was a lot more about the technical details of how they built these theme parks, like what goes into the technical innovations in the building, like the next generation arises or whatever. But IT was more of a traditional business memory, so much more like bob and where he was going in, the people he met and the the stresses of the job, which is fine. But I kind of want to get into like how the power to the carribean works.

Yeah, mainly because I was doing my halloween decorations. I said I want to get some like techniques. I want to build some animatronics.

So it's fine if fearing the disney was fine, good business in an interesting wife, bob boys. Then I read the wave. I sues in casey, huge Susan casey fan, i'd read the wave a long time ago.

I went back and reread IT great book. It's about big waves. So half of the book is her hanging out with lid hamilton and other big wave surfer has come.

That is, that's fantastic. But like outside magazine of venture writing. And the other half is like hanging out with wave scientists and that they're kind of inner leave together.

But he was, I love that book. And then I read tribal by Michael Morris. This was an interesting book.

So he studies tribal ism, but not not in the sort of service, and not like a sociological perspective of like the way we talk about travels now, but like how our brain is evolved, right? Like, how does like the homosapien brain deal with tribes? And how is that different than other species of humans? And has that affect us today? And his big argument, what I thought was nicely contrarian, is that trivialising gets about rap.

He says, no, no, no. The thing that allowed homosapien to succeed over all of these other human style humanity, whatever they call humanity species, like the Andrew ls. Homo erect is a como fluence.

This he's like, what about human homo sapiens to succeed is that actually we have this capacity to connect with, work with other people at a much bother scale, like we can. You've all our talks about this incipient to some degree, we can come up with a way to feel like our state, like a million people, are all our brothers, like we can. We can connect to and work with people at a much larger scale in other species.

In the end of all, is like I have my band. And if someone else comes in like, what was just going to eat them, like we're gonna ill, them have no ability. Chimpanzees, the same way you're not in my band, yeah.

What what do we care? Will just kill you, right? But but home sapiens could CoOperate with people from far away, huge groups of people.

It's a lot of to do things like trading and they allow knowledge to move. And we could build up giant city. So he's actually saying the homosapien tribal instinct is one of um compassionate CoOperation. And so what we should do is leverage that to try to build good over divides that actually like are built in mechanisms. Tribal mechanisms are things to leverage, to overcome divides.

That this idea that our instinct is the quickly draw line between us and others and to be very suspicious of people who are not in our immediate group, he's like that's not actually homosapien s instinct. We have a huge capacity for greatly expanding who counts our group. And that is actually he documents to build what we tribal ism now like in group out group, IT takes a lot of work to try to put up those divides, and you have to do a lot of work to try to demonized another side to carefully set them up as being very different.

Like it's more of the IT takes effort to keep people apart and our default is like we're much Better at connecting. So that was a cool contrarian thesis and he said so we should leverage in like business and life in politics, leverage this fundamental mechanisms of homo sapiens to like CoOperate Better, have teams Operate Better, to overcome like a political divides and hatred and countering. Um this is when these cases where it's like the topic, the professor has been studying forever.

So these are always good books. When the professor writes, they're like big book on the thing, they've been study forever. So IT has that type of energy of like i've done all these studies and i'm putting to a book for the first time, that's a prety good book.

tribal. And Michael s, well, I think that's IT my books. May this will, this will be our new standard. Jessie, i'll give a thirty minute speech on one book. every.

Really, I have to put on my professor hat occasionally, but they always say, police in all hate mail on this to Jesse account talk, we'll definitely get to me and will IT. I'll definitely read this and everyone think you will listen to be back next week with another episode that until then, as always, they did. I cow here.

One more thing before you go. If you like the deep questions podcast, you will love my email news' letter, which you can sign up for at town new port dot com. Each week I sent out a USA about the theory or practice of living deeply. I've been writing this newsletters 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, you got to sign up for my newsletter at called her dog com and get some deep wisdom delivered to your inbox each week.