Ep. 326: Time to Unplug
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On called new port. And this is deep questions, the show about cultivating a deep life in a distracted world.

Some here, my deport H Q A joint is always by my producer, Jesse. Just I always want to give a quick update to the listers who submitted their name to you. The potentially participate in the organization chAllenge.

By the time you're hearing this, we have reached out to the initial group of people that i'm going to work with. So if you have not heard back from us, you can assumed that you were not selected for that initial group. However, people might drop out or we might decide to do another group of our larger group.

So you still may hear from us in the future, but just update you on that chAllenge. Right now. We have reached out to the initial group. I will be talking to them soon. And for all of the podcast, listeners were hoping to produce good audio out of this projects, you'll be able to here the real stories of real people who are struggling to organize a disorderly, and then hear about what I recommend to them, and then hear the after effect of what worked, what didn't.

This is all part of my effort to try to make some of the advice I give here for what we call humans productivity, make IT more real and get away from the abstract. So stay tuned for that. I'm still deciding.

Just see whether or not once we produce that package, if IT should be on the main show or if I should be an in depth episode because real people could fit in in depth as well. I'm still thinking about that. yeah.

I guess the one thing I would say is we got a lot of very qualified applicants and is a talented pool with like a lot of people who showed a lot of interest like over like two hundred yeah.

So so we had make a lot of hard choices. And what we are selecting for in the end, this is like the right mix, the right mix of people and circumstances that would work well for what we're doing. Um maybe we'll do a bigger project now.

We did this for digital minimalism where we ran a large group of people with sixteen hundred people. I ran through a digital decoder and got a lot of information backs. So maybe down the line with a larger sort of experiment here to stay tuned on that.

But I do want to continue to make the advice we talked about here on the show more realistic. While we have a good show, we have A A deep dive coming up that is very much tuned to our current moment, especially here in america. We ve got some good questions.

We've got a call about all of a birkin in, and i'm going to talk about Martha Stuart in the final segment. So stay tuned for that. So first get started, Jesse, with the deep dive.

So i'm recording this episode a few days after the american presidential election. For those of us like me who study technology and its impact on our lives, elections can be particularly relevant and particularly worrisome. Now why is that? It's because the dynamics have to lead up to elections, especially american presidential elections have a way of heightening.

A lot of these specific dynamics that make modern technology problematic would be very specific about this. First, the the environment in the lead of twin election amplifies the interrupted nature of digital content. So what I mean by that is the the interrupted nature of digital content is the idea that you feel compelled to check in on, say, a social media feed or an online new side or newsletter scripts and you feel a need to check in on IT during the middle.

Other things that that interprets whatever you're working on during elections, this trend or this pole becomes much more heightened because there is this very strong since that there could be at any moment highly silent breaking news and IT could be something that happened that could change the election or could be a particular hot take that you want to know about because it's gonna you happy or I take is going to make you really upset. But what's going on? Poll numbers as a classic example of these, it's intermittent reinforcement.

They could drop at any moment and that someone could be commenting on them. So during election seasons, this idea that I need to plot that phone one more time, that becomes EXO strong. Why is that a problem? Because context switching is an expensive neural Operation.

When you turn your attention from the conversation that you're having from the the book you're trying to read, the memo you're trying to write, the meeting you're trying to pay attention to, when you switch your attention from that to a phone and you see something as highly silent and emotionally arousing IT trigger and expensive cognitive context shift within your own head, these Operations can take five teen up to fifteen or twenty minutes for your mind to completely change as cognitive context. But you're not given a time to do that. You're glancing, you're initiating and then you're returning to what you're doing before.

So you've triggered this expensive change of where your mind is focused, and you abort that change and try to bring you back to what you're doing before and before your attention can fully settle on what you are actually trying to do. You check something else to initiate a new, unrelated change. The result is an incoherent cognate of context.

You feel mentally exhausted and drained that feeling that people associate with the sort of preelection period. A big part of that is actually exhausted brain. They can't keep switching back.

Cover of context. The second issue that amplified with technology during the preelection season is that the emotional silly ance of the content you're looking at is amplified. That is, its ability to create a strong emotional reaction is much more heightened than a typical content cycle.

You're much more likely to see something that is going to make you arouse in the sense of very happy, very upset, outraged, afraid, frustrated, panicky dread, right? And why this happens is because there's a always a competition going on to create the content is going to move to the top of the curation wars. You have to remember, if you're running in a platform like twitter, there's hundreds of millions of tweet being generated a day.

The average users going to see a couple hundred. So there's this intense informational Darwinian battle for what actually makes IT to your attention. It's somewhat algorithmic.

A lot of IT actually has to do with more cybernetic dynamics such as amplification through power law, expanding follower graphs. Actually wrote whole new yorker piece about this two years ago. I got into how twitter works in select content is not just digital, its people plus digital.

But the point is, is an incredibly complex competition. The things that are most rousing tend to win. You have a lot of competition to win. A lot of people are trying to gain and win the attention again during the election. So they're really pushing and trying all sorts of different angles to get to the top of this catch your attention tournament.

And as a result of stuff you see in election cycle just hits that nervous system and is very innovating, and that itself is also very draining and exhAusting, right? So now that the election is over and our minds are hopelessly scrambled and our nervous systems are strong out, what should we, listeners of this podcast, conscious users of technologies and secure of the deep life, what do we do? Well, I wrote an essay about this for my newsletter of a newport dot com.

IT has a big proposal, I think, is the right proposal, and that's what I want to go through today in today's deep dive. So if you're watching this episode, instead of just listening, you'll see I have loaded, that S A up, uh, my screen here. This was an county.

Porto com is also sent to people who described to my email newsletter the title of this piece is after you vote on plug. Alright, so I want to start with the suggestion. So here's the meat of what i'm suggested going to read here from the article. Here, I have a suggestion that I think could be healing for all points of the political spectrum used to stress of this election to be the final push needed to step away from the exhAusting digital chatter that's been dominating your brain.

So what i'm suggesting in this article is in the post election period, you take a substantial break from these digital content sources that have been so exhausted and draining over the past few months, use the election as an excuse to at least temporarily reform a relationship with the digital. So what does that mean? Step away.

Will I have four specific suggestions are given the article? Number one, I say, take a break from social media. I mean that stop, stop looking at, stop post him.

Just go right now. Uh, cold turkey. I mean, unless you are a political commentator who makes a living off of like twitter commentary on your sub stack.

So basically here, like Matthew, you glass us, take a break from social media. Don't look at IT. Take the apps off your phone, right? So they are just not there.

Log out on your computer so it's not easy on safari on your phone just to go to the sites and look in IT. Certainly don't post anything on IT, don't seek out hot takes on IT as well. Soon cover there's Better places to get information right now and you don't need information all the time.

Social media, I think, is probably the the worst of the offenders in terms of a negative physiological and psychological impact on you during the election season because of the dynamics we just discuss social media of the worse of ender. So I have the strongest suggestion there. Take a break.

Suggest the number two i'm reading from the article here, stop listening to news podcast. Just we've got be really clear, this is not a news podcast. This podcast is the anecdote, right will be the anette to anti anette and we'll tell semantic dotes, but it's the antidote to the news podcast.

I'm a fan of news podcast, by the way. I think it's it's fantastic. It's like hardening back to the days where you would listen to the radio news.

But we've got to take a break from IT. Now there's so much you you've been so immersed in this information. And what you want to take a break from is just people having just these conversations about what's happening, how they feel about IT.

Um you don't need to be immersed further in the trauma or celebration, the pinning on what side of the position spectrum you are right now with strangers. So we're to take a temporary break from news podcast that's both news round up sell podcast like the daily or you if you're going to right like the dispatch but also like the news analysis podcast for the independent media podcast. So very wise as honestly podcast or materia calls IT.

Now um where people are talking about the news, we're taking a temporary break from this, not forever. We're taking temporary break, right? Third suggestion, unsubscribe at least for a while from the political newsletters.

Clog in your impact in box with their hot takes, entire infighting. This might be more of a dc thing, I don't know. Jc, this might be something that like, Normal people don't do.

But here in dc, people describe the email news leaders that have all these insider hot takes, some political stuff. You know. I mean, I mean, there's so many of them around here um because you're so political experts here and this is a good business or job for them or whatever.

If you describe to these, do you get like the silver bullet ton or you know jona go burger or whatever is this is a good time to temporarily take a break. We're trying to, again, get away from this content and subject matter that we're associating with being burned out, with being drained again. We're not we're come back to this.

We're not putting these people out of business. Were taking a break. Finally is is the most either confusing or most controversial i'm going to read here specifically. I suggest you switch to a slower pace of media consumption with the formats that remain. Don't laugh at this suggestion because i'm actually serious.

Consider picking up the occasional old fashioned printed newspaper free from algorithm optimization, and click back curation extra local coffee shop or library to check in all IT wants on anything major going on in the world. I think I might set up a sunday only paper description as my main source of news for the rest of the fall. So you want to get some news still, I think that's fine.

It's also would be stressful to be cut off completely from the world during a time, especially in our country of the turmoil of a post election period, especially like a highly fraught election like we just went through. But i'm saying we are slowing down that consumption is what I suggested. We're not on social media.

We're not in a newsletter, not in podcast and say pick up a newspaper. I say coffee shop because I don't have you seen this justice starbuck sells newspapers that's just seen they're there, right? Your library has the newspaper every day.

So like any day, you could walk by the library and sit down and read the front page of the newspaper. I am I don't get any paper newspaper, but I am considering signing up for sunday only paper description, uh, for the near future and for me to think gets, I will read section a of the paper on sundays. This gives you the news you will be up to date.

In fact, you will be more up to date on the news of the country and the world doing that then someone who's on their phone all the time. Because the newspaper is not algorithmic, a newspaper has no way of customizing what you see on the front page to your particular interest and therefore keeping out of your site stuff that you don't have a preexisting interest in. They to show you the articles.

You are gonna what's happening in turkey, for example. And curtis an in the the missile biology exact, you might not have ever heard about that because it's not big on social me. You're going to hear about IT, right? You're going to hear more digested takes.

okay? It's like this is covering I don't need to be tiktok up to the beat on all the back and forth between you, the new administration and the old administration. america.

Want I just read an article about like what was the most important thing that happened? They had an argument about this. I see and hear the quotes.

Now i'm done. You're taking in news. You're not less informed, but the footprint of this news on your day to day attentional landscape is now greatly reduced.

Or I just my suggestion about what to take out of your life. What should you then do with the new found free attention? I even I don't even say free time so much as free attention.

What you're freed up here is attention autonomy. When you're not constantly looking at the phone, what you do with this, well, in the article I talk about, I read IT here. Equally important is how you redirect your newly liberated attention. Consider a minute toward real community, with real people who actually live near you, to retrain your brain to stop thinking of the world is hopelessly fractured in the vicious tribe.

And I say in the article, and I guess I should say this right now in the podcast, but if right now you're scoured ing this post the seek evidence as the whether i'm friend or foe, then you're already severely suffer from the smell when you're online, it's all about the bad and the good and not just the bad and the good, but making sure that you're sufficiently signaling to your team, that you're on their team, this becomes the most important thing and they make your team's boundary stronger. You have to make the other team be defined. Increasingly dire and irredeemable becomes your reality.

When you're on the digital world, that becomes your reality. You have A A hate in your heart for people you've never met. You see people when you're on social media is so much.

You see people to suspicious like i'm what team are they yon and i'm looking for science to try to signify IT to be surprised or maybe not by um how much sort of upset I would say communication I get about why you specifically signal your allegiances like this particular issue I care about you not signaling like publicly allegiances. Ve thing I care about to me, to the people writing in is like very difficult for them. That is a weird mindset until ten years ago.

IT is a weird way to go through the world, right? You wouldn't walk into the supermarket in thousand nine hundred and eighty five and be like you Better tell me whether or not you voted for rag in and you didn't vote for ragin. Why are you going around talking about how much of a supporter jme Carter, you are? whatever.

It's a weird thing that digital media created and we don't realize is overcoming our world. So go spend time with real people. People you can see people that you live with um doing things with them that's unrelated to like whatever fights are going on online IT is your perception of the world.

People who spend time with real people in real situations have a lot harder time seen the world through a lions of um hatred because that's how we're wired to live or wired to CoOperate. We talked about the the mice book tribal. When I did my round up of books I read last month, and he argues the human tribal and thinks one of actual CoOperation that's allowed homosapien to succeed is that we can CoOperate and empathy with people that we don't know there's not in our close family or can.

And that's what allowed homo sapiens to succeed that global level where other close to closely related humanity species that not because they basically just treated everyone that had no way of CoOperating with people that wasn't truck kin, they're just kill him. And so like the neanderthals could never actually grow large trade networks or cities, or are the types of things some of savings to do leaning into that human instinct? Be around real people.

You will really retrain. You just feel happier. You'll feel less upset, right? Another suggestion, consider reading books again.

There's a pleasure in the conquest of deep ideas has been lost as we threshed in digital sea of turning distraction. Books slow down your mind. Books give you a deeper understanding of issue. Then you'll get online. Books chAllenge your perceptions or sharpen and sophisticated your understanding and beliefs in ways they couldn't before books changed the way you understand the world.

So go back to reading more books, books about whatever, just as a principle, but also if you are having a strong reaction to the election the right way, in my opinion, that try to make sense. You feel like you don't understand the world, you don't understand our country. The right way to make sense of things is not trying to sit through fifty thousand hot takes or five hundred different podcast interviews with people pontificating and hope that sort of out of that morrice of like highly engaging, random attention seeking content, Better understanding will come.

It's the, I think the slow encounter with relevant ideas and books are the way to do IT read books you think are gonna help you Better understand what's going on in your country. And it's it's a slower IT feels meaningful. I went through this in two thousand sixteen. I remember doing this very clearly that simpler times, two thousand and sixteen. Jessie and I still remember we're coming out of eight years of obama, you hope a red blue.

And if you were living in a coastal city and you're like an academic, like I was like everything's great, everyone's happy bomb is also is like some where tea party people, but I think they just like trick on their hats and like, that was just our world and then so that two thousand and sixteen trump Victory, much more so, I think, than the twenty twenty four one, was super surprising. And I remember having this feeling, and it's just, I east coast intellectual of my whole life of battle ment. I remember that like, I don't understand, i'm bomb supporter within your times.

I don't understand how anyone could vote for uncial. I remember having this bafflement, right, because I just had never been exposed to whatever that part, what was going on. I had no empathy with the mindset.

And so what I did, because i'm a nerd this way, is I got a bunch of books. I got a bunch of books and like, i'm going to read, and I read on the left in the right all like center left in the right stuff, because like reactionary far right stuff. Not interesting to me. And I was that interesting, like at a far left type stuff for whatever.

But I was reading, and I I remember some of the books, but not of like I I remember reading, like Thomas Franks had this book called listen liberal that was talking about the evolution of the the democratic party from its working class coalition and that in the post next and era how IT moved and realigned around more like salary economic eats like lawyers and know financed years and how this happens or during the clinton era um and and this this movement happened in part because the democratic party was upset with the working class base because of support vietnam and lack of support for civil rights and IT was like interesting I was I read some you've all love and had a book coming from the center right I remember reading that book. I was reading these books. I try to understand um like how did the modern right feel what I had, what's going on with the modern left? And I remember he was very calming because reading is slow and IT IT comes the nervous system and you feel like the structures of knowledge are complicating themselves and IT feels productive but it's sort of a emotional, and in some things from me is very helpful.

I remember I was like something to do and. What I IT also changed, like I changed my perception in the world in ways that I think was um I useful for me going. The world became a more complicated place in a way that I think was useful.

Books read, don't scroll. Read, don't scroll. That's right.

Way the same if you're on the right as well, let's say like you're super celebratory or this or that it's graduated this to just say i'm gonna believe in, you know, people dunking online, right? Understand like what's going on with my party, what is the potential positive future? What is the traps to avoid? Like what's happening like get read and get get into the complexity of what's going on, right? So was reading slows things down IT makes the world, Richard, makes you get rid of the the taught nerves, right? Like you people in the library are not stressed.

Being around books is not stressful, so I suggest reading final suggestion from the book. Spend more time in nature to discover that despite the apocalyptic inner of the online world, its analog apart, persist and is beautiful. We feel good when we're in nature, sunshine, walking in nature trail. IT just resets IT resets our nervous systems, which have been artificially put out of work because of the digital go outside, go outside this fall, go outside this winner.

You know, that makes a big difference, right? So there are my advice, right? So okay, quick some mary suggestions of what to temporarily walk away from social media, political podres potier newspapers um and to move the slower media consumption things to do to fill this newly liberated attention, read books, meet real people and spend more time outside.

Now how long should we do this? Because again, I said i'm not talking about um a permanent neck from like political new sources. Here is the the good news about the american elections schedule.

We do these elections in november but nothing changes till l january, right? So there's no um like to do in other countries. We have this election november next week, you know the new person takes over.

So like we and whether we're like worried or celebrating this new person, we really want to be up to date and like what's happening, what they're doing that really matters. We have in the american system this break, nothing can really happen between november and january except for pontification. Nothing can really happen except for the search for clicks, except for the chAllenge online to win the attention curation tournament.

So take a break till the new year. I think that's the right time and you're not missing much. You got holidays that are centered on family.

We got thanksgiving. We got Christmas. Make sure if you know this. But honey ka is starting on the same on Christmas day or or Christmas or Christmas day yeah yeah a rare um a rare confluence of those two things um we get back when on we ve got more importantly than all three of those baseball hot stove season one soda is meeting with Steve cole and everyone this is something you could be paying attention to right now. I think that's good to pay attention to.

Someone actually wrote me back to you when I posted this newsletter and they wrote me back of like, yeah um i've been doing this so a lot of people actually, by the way, they wrote me back and said they started this like a few weeks before the election they were just done right and they kind of been a happier place in any of us. Sorry, now probably but someone wrote and then there's like i've been doing for two weeks, but one of things i've been struggling with the sports news like, no, that's that's good actually want to spend time with sports do that's the solution to healing because I need my baseball trade rumor is right. So do IT for the do IT for the fall and then the new year.

You can reevaluate if you want to reevaluate smart tly. Maybe reread my book, digital minimising, and it'll talk about how to how to reinterpret nose gy into your life after a break. But the main thing I want to suggest is to take this political break and then do this act to the alternative activities.

Do this pretty hard core for the rest november, for all december. Let your body reset. Let your mind reset. Revisit the world of politics in a more serious way in the new year.

So me in the state life, by reading the paragraph that into this article, the republic will still stand without our constant digital vigiLance, but it's unclear for our mental health can survive this status quote. And I really believe that. So what's all unplug time to take a break.

I have a couple fall of questions.

yeah. What I think about the math chance of signing one soto is a good question. Pretty strong actually. I think I think you will .

spend whatever yeah, yeah, I agree.

I'll be fun for us to see him though in alley is like we got to see harper a lot still. So I guess i'll be fun.

Think bad dog always says is how the free agency takes so long and baseball is so drawn out and its like horrible and but anyway, did you use ChatGPT to make that image?

Yeah, I could tell around with that. Is that creepy?

They all look the same. But I could tell you private point like I want to voting sicker and then .

like on the sun yeah it's just curious um I don't think i'll be using ChatGPT for most images in the world because here let me know this on the screen. If people are watch IT, i'll make IT big.

It's so creepy. They all look the same, you can tell.

But let me feel like the things that are creepy, like others. An I voted sticker, but the the font is weird, right? Like this kind of weird and gothic. And there's someone reading, but her face looks weird. Like when I look at this pictures, if you're just listening, there's a Young woman reading a book by a creek with an I vote is sticker out conceptually this is like a good image for this article like you because the the thing the title was after vote on plus. So like I went from voting to, i'm reading a book by a creek.

But everything about this picture screams that if that that Young woman turned slowly to look at the camera, SHE would like, her mouth would be so shut and her eyes would be red, you know I mean, like you just you feel like this is the set up of a scrappy scene in like a blum house movie or that she's like that like she's just reading there and IT zoos out and it's just corpses everywhere. I don't you get that since just yeah she's on a mountain of corpses um she's zoom out and like there's some sort of like dinosaur in the water. I don't know men AI makes creepy pictures.

Couple of our coke questions. I thought you dig at the newspaper everyday. You we get the post OK if we weren't keeping up OK, it's too much news and then I was .

was't um next up when you do reconnect what news post deal, I feel like our audience would be curious.

Well, I don't do news round the podcast because um I used to get the paper. I just read the paper online, but I do like something like the different news commentary podcast, like well so the thing I do typically is i'm often chasing guest, some interested in particular guest. But I do like listening to dinner rights ster left commentary podcast because I feel like those you read a baLance of those you get a really good, I kind of a non political understanding of what's going on and it's sort of good that tried to baLance us just like a good thing, right?

Podcast would be like, listen, andy sol van, you know, he used the editor of the new republic, he to write for new york magazine, has a british accent which makes them like twenty five percent smarter, which is like, it's true, just we've joking about but like all of a birkwood on the show, that accident gave him twenty I Q points because you like us yes profound profound um so you things like that are interesting. I I think of as a cline and left you know very policy focus. So a brilliant guy, brilliant interviewer.

If you take like Sullivan incline and sort of that, like those are good if you're going to get of an interesting baLance takes sometimes like saharas i'll have on um interesting specially when sam Harris doing the technology I think is really interesting. He has that way of just slowly trying to break down and understand what's going on. And so I like to his sometimes that I listen to yeah a good question.

I don't think time of political kind good answer. But i'm missing some. There's definitely more. There's definitely more I listen to sometimes.

cool. And then lastly with the newsletters army, when I was just start listening to pocket when you started, I just have a lot of newsletters, but now I trim like a lot of himself, very selective about my newsletters are coming on my box in box yeah.

I think that's probably good. I mean, mainly need mine. Mine has been like very sport atic recently. I do my plan is to go back there should be a weekly I I wanted write my newsletter weekly, so i'm working on some schedule template changes that's going to make that possible. Not quite there.

Um I would like to be there for the new year years I think more than once a week is like too much yeah ah that's what i'm going for. I might have some sort of more synergy but like we did today, well, I write a newsletter on something really organized, my thoughts. And then I can use that as the foundation for a deep dive on the podcast.

I'm thinking about doing something like that, but i'm i'm not quite there, not quite there yet. I just have so much ready. I do yeah and you know, I just have a lot more writing.

I used the newsletter. What I probably need to go back to was I used to write the news letter in the evening, but it's because my eyes babies before. So like they would go to bed at know six thirty, and then I could just choose one night a week and sit in the big other chair.

Long time listeners know about the big other chair. Sit in the big lather chair, put on a record. My news letter is like nice and meditate.

But now my kids are like staying up later than I am. And that's not as much of an option because I got to fix this out. But you have been selected with news letters definitely like you described, the newsletters for the election cycles undescribed left and right.

The nate silver was very clever, is not super clever, but a smart move. Silver, the watching forecasts, he turned off as we ve got to the fall. He turned off monthly subscriptions. Is like I only have annual descriptions because he knew like a lot of people, like all I really care about is your discussions of your model in the lead up to the election.

So he's like, fine, but you thought to describe for whole year which is smart because then when you finally get around to, okay, now I can finally and describe just like just like some other like mid turned like another election happening that will see, right? So that's if for the deeper I i've got some good questions coming up for covering a lot of topics in those questions. But first, here from one other sponsors, I want to talk in particular about our friends at notion.

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We used to morn when those streets were being washed, and we had to put just regular seat on our bed. We would mn IT. And so we bought enough pair so that we would never have to have a week without cozy or sheds on our bed.

Just that the fabric is so comfortable, is breathable, is soft IT sleep's cool. We also have the Kathy earth comforter duvet cover, very soft. I have causey earth sweatshirt, which has is like, really comfortable, almost cooling sensation, which I love.

And i'm exercising IT. We have to cozy earth tiles. My wife has a cozy earth pjs.

We really are big, cozy earth boosters because I don't know how they make this fabric. But IT is just the most comfortable stuff we have. We've given course your sheet as gifts, so always give giving season.

You got Christmas. Ca, coming up order to these shets or any of the other products. Now I am a big believer. And there's also a nice stuff to their responsible produced, the often or volunteers. Ea, ea, um alright, so rap the ones you love and Lucy is crazy earth, have a good deal here to offer. And trust me, you need the deal. You want to bring the Price down if you can visit cost the earth that comes slash deep and use my exclusive forty percent off code deep to give the gift of luxury y this holiday season that's cozy earth or come slash deep and if you get that post purchase survey, take a second to say you're heard about cozy earth from deep questions podcast that really helps me because they know you came from me and I just see, look ready for some questions. And we got first.

First question comes from Rebecca. With several years worth of emails, notes and files read across various formats and locations, how can I best approach consulting this information without the .

coming to overwhelm amazing use notion? We said that for notion, move IT all on there, but use my promote code. Okay, so here's what I might.

Typical thought for organizing information, you need a digital and physical filing cabin. Physical filing cabin is obvious. This is a literal thing. It's a filing cabin yet folders manella folder within bigger engine folders and you put actually piece of paper in there. The digital filing cabinet is like a particular directory tree within your computer where you store information that you want to know, that you want to keep.

So like on my computer, the fuld's called administrative and that underneath that I have all sorts of sub holders for various things like here is stuffe related like digital files related to tax violence here stuff related to um like important Georgetown like contracts or whatever, right? So digital treat IT like a physical filing cabin. You have particular digital filing cabinet ET I believe in encrypted back up of digital file cabinet.

I use drop box and so it's automatically think and stored encrypted on the drop box server. So my computer is destroyed or lost on not losing those important files. I can access the online, and I can resign those files to a new computer when I get IT.

right? If something is important, you should go on one of those two things, like you say here, like, what do I do with the youth? With the emails? Well, nothing. Most emails, if you just have stored in your inbox, they're just in your inbox. I don't treat that particularly special.

If there's a particular piece information that arrived in an email that's important print IT and put IT in a proper folder in your physical violent cabinet or exported as a PDF and put IT in an appropriate file within your digital filing folders. And what I mean by exported, while technically speaking, the way I take things like emails and I storm you, just go to print like you're printing IT. And then when you select the printer, at least the way IT works on mac, you can say a open in preview or print the PDF.

And so IT just takes like whatever what I printed and that puts in the PDF file, you can just save that moving into the file cabin, right? So just have one digital, one physical notice where you don't have to replicate between the two. Some stuff can be.

That's fine, right? Like maybe you someone since you as a PDF a contract and you throw IT in your digital, but you printed IT to science IT and maybe you want to store the printed, but you don't have the dupes cape between the two, but that's where important stuff goes. Nothing else is a trusted steward system that use a terminology from David Allen.

So if something arrived in your email is important, that is not stored until it's in one of those cabinets, digital or physical, someone gives you a paper IT comes to the mailbox, you get male ed, a former attacks, former contractor, whatever. IT is not stored until you have IT in a folder in your YSL mAiling cabinet, in your digital file storage is either one of those two things are right. So just simplify where things can be stored in physical and store digital and don't consider things store until it's in one of those places.

Everything else you don't have to stress about like you have bunch emails, archives and gmail. Who cares? The key stuff has been put in one of those folders. And what you got next? Next questions from anonymous.

How can I go out of my own when my company has a strict conflicts of interest policy preventing you from performing mycroft on the site? I'm a high performer and objectively good at mycroft, but would eventually like to start my own in business. This goes directly against your advice to prove that you can make money doing something before quitting, leaving your daytime b to pursue your own venture.

So the specific advice that anonymous is talking about, IT, comes from my book, so good they can ignore you. I said, use money as a neutral indicator value. And a specific advice was to know if what you wanted do that says, like a new job is valuable.

See if you can get people to give you money for the key idea here is that people are happy to give you verbal praise or affirmation and cost them nothing. And IT seems like the the pleasant, sociable thing to do. Hey, that's a great idea.

Your business idea is great. You should just go for. I wish I could do that.

You're definitely going to be successful. That means nothing, right? They might not know anything about IT. They're just trying to be nice. But people do not like to give you their money. So like, okay, can I sell enough of this thing to support myself and then I no longer do my job? Well, if you can't, people aren't willing to give you your money for the thing you're selling that is not good enough.

Free to make a living on IT, right? Can I get a big enough book? You, can I get a big book advance on this book, if not that maybe it's not the great book idea.

I thought I was exceptional. That's what we mean. My money is a neutral indicator value. For a person asking the question here is same, but I can't go and try my thing on the side because I signed a contract.

Well, that's sure you can if you signed a contract that says, look, I am a writer for this magazine and i'm not allowed to right for anywhere these other magazines while i'm here then yeah, you can go right for other magazines while you're here. right? Contracts is a contract.

Can you still apply the advice though? Yes, in a couple of very specific ways. In the main way is a job offer. You don't like your current job and you want to bring your skills somewhere else, where to set up Better fits your lifestyle center planning vision, you're allowed to go solicit job offers.

If someone says we will pay you this much money for you to come work for us, that's a fantastic neutral indicator value. Oh, my skills are valued by them. Now I can quit my job and and go take that other job. So you can actually just go out to the marketplace and see if in the other type of work you want to do with your skills that's Better going to fit your lifestyle.

Can you get a job offer that is sufficiently large, that's also using money as as a neutral indicator of value, right? And that probably the main thing you could do in a situation like that, alright, what do we got next that makes you sign a conflict of interest? I think I did.

I said you're not allowed to. What would you be so you're not allowed to. We need an enemy podcast.

As you can say, you're not allowed to produce podcast for we don't have an enemy podcast. We need a emmis. I don't know who the nymex is would be of our podcast. We should just choose someone is famous geological geo rogan .

as broadcast .

is so big you are not allowed to go produce johan's podcast. I'm sorry, I put IT in a contract.

You know, I was listened to him and eat on the other day. I guess Jimmy does buy a lot of golf.

It's a pretty good job. And you already have a kind of symbol name. I mean, if he just started saying Jessie inside a jammy, how many people you think would really notice? Like catch al listeners like that is like.

there's like, you never see his face. You don't know he looks like.

he kind of looks like you. I mean, he's tall and I think has black hair and he was gov, yeah yeah. I if you have been wondering, IT is true. Jessie is the same as jme from the euro.

Gan pog crime makes a tony money doing that because he makes like thirty million a year.

I hope so. yeah. I mean, and I really more than that, their whole, like my main inspiration I derive from georgian, other than like taking out of human growth home, is he kept his Operation small, like his biggest staffing.

The biggest like staffing he has is actually security IT really is him in jammy, like just knowing for I know a lot of people who know him are been on a show. It's like je a does the things and puts the files online and runs the runs IT and that's IT. And then like joe books, he can just text guests specifically.

So how you get on the euro and podcast, from what I understand, no bit on the show, but I know what people who have is typically someone you know and common will reach out and be like, can I give your phone number to joe and then he'll just like texts you black and could we chat and then you'll talk you on the phone and like, this could be cool. I think we should talk. And then that's that. I think they have someone who like this travel book or something.

But when you go on the show, can you use a gym and they have .

a sick jam matter studio? Yeah, might worried like you use IT before I might do IT both. And then you just spend all day there.

You just there. I come in there just vomiting into a bucket, just pouring sweat ripped my pec muscle. I have an arrow through my shoulder because I was trying to like he does not like elena like an error through my shoulder. Um yes, I can know about, I can know about, but yes, Jessie is not allowed. I'm putting my football is not allowed produce your organs podcast and my right you can't have two giants competing for the same attention is only room in american cultural life for one of these two shows for both b amethi.

I think between us we do something like five million views a week between us and georgians, podcasts that we're very powerful uh you know between our episode on uh time block planning and joe episode where he interviewed Donald trump, two thousand and million views combine, right? That's a lot of cultural power we have. We can't.

You know, you put to, you put to alpha in a in a rink, right? You put two bulls in the same paddock. It's not gonna started. You've got, you ve got to choose your allegiance to see the mirror, an who we've got next next .

questions from Steven. I'm a new listener and just ministry episode about the eight relativity books. I can change your life. What is humanist productivity?

Oh, I like that episode. I don't remember what I remember maybe like half what those books were. That episode was from what last year? I'll pull IT up .

by your answer. yeah.

okay. So humans productivity had been using that term or variations of that term for a while. I actually did a whole interview about that on brad stolberg and steep manages and play skippers.

So we I think I was titled, like humans productivity. So what's the deal here? What do we mean by productivity? There's two big definitions that are both explosively and implicitly dominated sort of economic life.

And then there's humans productivity, which is going to be a third option, which I think is Better. So the first definition of productivity is the oldest definition, productivity. This emerges as an economic concept in the eighteen century, comes out of agricultural production.

And the moves on to industrial production. And it's a ratio, the ratio of output per unit input. So bushes of corn per acres of land, cultivated number of model ties, produce per aid worker hour, right?

In classic economics, typically the goal for anything that produces things is to increase that ratio as much as possible. When you hear, for example, about a country is productivity. Your productivity growth, this is the style of productivity, their measuring.

So typically they'll they'll measure the economic output of a sector and the divided by the number of people who work in the sector. So there it's like dollars generated per worker. When that number goes up, productivity is up.

When that number goes down, productivity is down, right? So ratio based productivity is a standard economic metric. That name productivity IT was at the core of most of the economic growth that funded what we think of as the western world today.

This is the Peter druck er's argument. Uh, this idea of we're measures this carefully and we keep looking for innovations and technique processes that makes this racial bigger and IT just LED to sort of like massive explosions and economic growth. But it's really something that discussed.

It's well into production processes, right? So the knowledge work comes along, becomes a major sector in the twenty eighth century. And this ratio based definition of productivity doesn't cleanly apply.

why? Because of knowledge worker, someone who is sitting and working out a desk doesn't just produce weed or doesn't just produce model ties. There's not a clean output to measure.

They work on many different things, many different projects, some internal, some external. Often these these projects are collaborative. Ves to their role within the project is actually hard to actually like separate or isolate.

And so you don't have a ratio to measure anymore. I can't give you a number that for most knowledge of positions that says here's your productivity number, you want to go up and down. So what did we do? We invented the second major notion of productivity, and this was implicit.

No one release said this out loud until I came along with my books, slow productivity, or I make this big argument. But we came up in the network k space with what I call suda productivity. And so okay, we can't explicit manage our measure productivity because you're working on too many things.

We will just use instead of visible effort as a proxy for useful effort. The more you're doing, the Better we can't kind of figure out what you're doing or what you're doing like how much IT matters or its direct impact on the bottom line. But more visible activities, Better than less that super productivity.

That has implicitly been how we managed knowledge work since like the one thousand nine hundred and fifties, in an age of uh, offices, you came to entire raters IT worked. okay. It's not a great measure, but IT didn't cause a lot of problems.

I just meant ly get to be at the office. When you're at the office, try to hide the fact that you're on your third Martini of lunch, right? You just going to be there, be doing stuff, don't spend too much time at the water, cool, shudder.

Productivity went after rails once we had the front office IT revolution, once we had email on the mobile computing. The problem was there was now no escape from opportunities to demonstrate activity because you could always be checking in on things, answering emails, working on work, wherever you happen to be. And this is when knowledge ork became exhAusting.

It's when knowledge ork eventually became arranging, because now us, the individual, had to constantly fight this battle between work and other things are important. You in your life, the boundary was gone um in equities became amplified twenty and three year old with nothing going on can very easily just demonstrate visible activity by doing nonsense, lack and email answering late into the night. Where's the people with families or caring for securitize or just other things going on that are important to them in their life couldn't do this as much.

And now they're suffer them to this measure even though the twenty three year old doing slack of the night is not actually producing more value if you had a way to really measure that. So we had the ratio base productivity follow by suitor productivity. Human productivity says no to know the thing we want to optimize is your flu.

He knows a person. It's a type of productivity I talk about here on the show. The reason why I want you to take control over what you have to do, and control over your time and attention, and so that you are in control of your life.

Once you're control of your life, aim IT torture where you wanted to go. Now part of that is beat on top of your work, being able to accomplish this stuff, then that only helps you keep your job. That helps you shape your career in the directions that are compatible with your vision of an ideal lifestyle.

So this is a very important part of flourishing, but allows you do IT on your own terms and did not have this take up all of your time and have other time to do other things, and then make sure these other things are important, become a party, your life, to make sure your kids get what they need, that your soul gets what you need, that your community gets from you, what IT needs from a leadership perspective. So i'm a big believer for the individual to deploy the tools of productivity we discuss towards human flourishing. And that is different in ratio based productivity, which is trying to optimize output.

That's different consumer productivity, which are trying to optimize physical activity. And so that's what we talk about here. IT is my response to the anti productivity movement.

I think the anti productivity movement tends to argue that, like any discussion of productivity is about trying to move humans back towards industrial ratio based version of productivity. And I say, doesn't have to be the answer. Productivity movement tries to make this sort of false binary choice either.

You become like the human equivalent of the model to assembly line, where they were try to squeeze as much production as possible. Or your only other choice is to step away from productivity discourses, and I guess, write sub stacks about the city capitalism. I said, now there's a third choice, use the tools of productivity to build a life of human flushing.

Because here's the thing, super productivity is extremely stressful. Step you away from any type of organization. Thinking is also very stressful.

You're going to be working more. You're going be more stress. They're going to be more frazzled, more frustrated and more upset.

So the solution here is to learn the tools you need to control your test in time and attention, but then you be in control of what you want, aim towards and use an aim. Tods human flury. That's what humanism is about.

So we call IT humanist productivity. I have the books right? What were the eight?

Eight were seven habits of highly effective people getting things done for our work week essentialism. Four thousand weeks. How to do nothing, make time, hundred and sixty eight hours.

And what was the episode number for that?

Two sixty five, okay.

so what where at? what? like? Three twenty six. yeah. As a while ago, I have one more book I I would now add to that list, which I think there will be no surprise to our listener's eruption by Michael cronin, James patterson.

tora. Ask in .

its wisdom for human living, i'm not happy about that book, folks. Michael write in this spending in his grave, right? What have we got next?

Next questions from jail on a software student very distracted by my phone. I have an iphone and apple watch ultra and a flip phone. What's your view on apple watches and just use a football m in college.

Look, here's one going to suggest you in college. And this is a general thing I often suggest the people, is when IT comes to technology and its negative impact on certain things you're doing, the problem might be caused by technology, but you don't solve the problem solely with technology as well. We kind of have this implicit technical determines narrative out there that the tools you own specify, like what the rythm of your life is like.

So if you want to change something you dislike about the rythm of your life, like i'm very distracted to what i'm studying, you have to choose to change the tools you own. I argue, you know, change your behaviors, change your processes, change how you approach things, uh, then the tools themselves probably won't matter that much. Yeah, if it's helpful because of like a really strong addiction to a smart phone that that replace that with an on, if that's the only way to replace with the non smart phone is like the only way you think you can break the addiction, okay, go ahead.

But keep in mind on someone who is very nondistracted by the digital world that I own a perfectly Normal smartphone sounds. The technology that matters is my rules and systems. So when IT comes particularly to college, i've been arguing this now for almost two decades.

It's hard to believe it's been almost two decades and so I polish my first book, focus is a superpower. If you were comfortable with and frequently deployed academic sessions with no context, switching to no quick checa phone and anyways text message of social media web, you just can focus without distraction compared to your peers who are contact shifting back and forth. It's like fifty I Q points.

IT really will be like a superpower. You'll finish your assignments the two x faster in your performance. I'll be like too much Better.

So how you do that? It's not so much what technology you owns about what your rules are going to give you a few when you do studying, whether it's reading, working on projets writing, do IT with zero connectivity. Do not bring your phone.

You're in college, right? You're not the fema director. It'll be OK if you are unreached for ninety minutes are you ve got to get over yourself a little bit.

Don't bring your phone, turn off the wifi on your computer. Don't give me the whole thing about you use the internet to get the sources. And so therefore I have to look a tiktok on my phone, really study, if you need to use the internet, that's a separate session.

Go gather everything you need on a separate session, bring your computer, turn off your lap, turn the wifi. If something you do without a computer, even Better, don't bring your phone with you go to and out of the way. Library practice studying without connectivity.

It'll be very hard at first. As you get used to IT. It's like taking the limitless pill like wall. This is so much easier than I used to be. You need to regularly practice being disconnected even outside of these session so that you're more comfortable with IT. Do something every day without your phone and go have a meal, go drop off a book at the library doesn't have to be long like ten fifty minutes. Just get used to this idea that sometimes you do things without highly silly and algorithmically created distraction.

IT just gets your brain used to the idea of like, that's fine and you'll have more success with those study sessions if you're really struggling in those study sessions, use timers and can do fifty minutes and then I can go to back to my dorma room and look at my computer or phone and then i'll come back and set another timer. When you're aiming towards A A time limited goal, like I just want to survive fifty minutes without looking at my phone, it's much easier to succeed. Then if you're just generally saying a study for hours I don't want to look at my phone, your mind will convince you like we have to look at some point.

Why not now? Why not now? Time makes that much simple er like I can last fifty minutes, come on and be embarrassing if I can um right outside of those two things, okay, only had two outside of those two things. The text doesn't really matter. You just you practice studying and riding doing school work without connectivity and you practice that other party, your life and that's just how you do IT superpower. I don't care of back in your room, you have an iphone nineteen is plugged into one of those like apple vision pros, and you're wearing in a tinder power glove, whatever you want to do with your technology outside of the studying, whatever. But get used to that and you're really, really going to do well by what do we got next.

We have our corner.

I really hear some music.

So as regular users now every week, we like to have one question that deals with an issue from my latest book, low productivity, the law, start of accomplishment without burnout. If you've not read that book, you need to IT is probably at the core of at least fifty person of what we talk about on the show. Go find that books slow productivity, whatever books are sold. Or I just see what is our slow productivity corner question of the week.

It's from Angel, my work day. My workday is consist of coding a new feature or fixing a bug. Our company works in three weeks experience, and many my co workers crush IT. How can I work at a natural place when it's out of my hands?

I actually think spirits can be quite compatible with working at a natal pace as quickly to find those two terms. Sprint is an idea that comes out of agile software development methodologies where you have a particular bug your fixing, your future you're working on and you just do that, right? So it's like just sprint working on this one thing until it's done and IT will change its status and then we can figure out what you should work on next.

It's a methodology I really like because IT recognizes the reality of instead trying to work on multiple things concurrently slows down the actual time perth thing to get done, right? So I work on three features concurrently. And then once I finish all three features, divide that time by three.

Like, what was the average time? IT took me to finish each of these three features. That average time tends to be much longer than if you did a sprint on the first feature stopped, the sprint on the second feature stopped in the display on the third feature and stopped.

And just because of the administrative overhead of working on something and when you have to keep switching your context as lose you down. So springs are a great idea. I think they can be compatible with working at a natural pace.

Now that's the second principle for my books or productivity, which says humans are not meant to be working all out all day, all week, all year. We need variations on our intensity and multiple different time scales. Otherwise is really artificial and stressful.

Spirits can help you hear in two ways. One, at a microscale IT gives you a natural down cycle period. You finish a hard sprint.

That sprint is over. You can now explicit, take a break until the next sprint begin if you have a natural place to downcycled. Some software companies do this explicitly. Base camp does is explicitly.

You can read a downcycled and their employee handbook online where after you finished sprint on something big, they want you to take a sufficiently long down cycle where all you're doing is reflecting on what you just did, thinking about what you want to do next and closing up lue sens. They said, you can skip this. He said, that might be natural.

You feel more productive to jump in to an x print right away, but don't because if you don't restore overall, you're going to burn out and your affecting this will go down. So consider adding a similar methodology like this. Just ask for IT. It's like get this spring was really hard. I want to take two days that just close up to lose sense and recharge and they will start the expert if you're doing good work, you know it's fine just like whatever just this sounds good idea and I can report stuff like go for IT, right? Springs can also be useful for vying up your intensity at the smaller scale as well because you're just working on one thing, you have a lot more autonomy moment the moment.

If the main thing i'm doing is working on this feature, I can, for example, do like a three hour like really intense working on IT and then maybe like take two hours where i'm like going for a walk and just like recharging and thinking like exercise and or something like that. You have more flexibility to do this because you just have nothing to work on. So there's not as much of a public trace of your efforts.

Compare this to A A typical super productivity shop. We just working on lots of stuff at the same time. Now you have a lot more heart edges on which down cycling your intensity could hit.

You have a lot of meetings everywhere that like it's hard to get away from me. You have all these emails going back and fourth, about ten or fifteen different things. What's notable if you don't answer an email for two hours, right? When you have a lot of things going on simultaneously, it's hard to uh downcycled for a few hours or take a day lighter than others.

When you're working on one thing you can maybe like really good after at monday and don't too much tuesday, but then give you a big push on wednesday, that all kind of adds up to the same if you're working really hard when you we tend to do Better with variations anyway. So it's not onna take you longer and because you're sprinting, I think you have a lot more flexibility, at least in shops. I don't have this madness ly self destructive habit of you should be slacking with people while you spring which makes no sense to me.

I think that's like only in an MBA team and making your player smoke bunch of cigarettes. Um it's counterproductive to make your programmer have to be on slack all day. Makes them significant dummer in the moment you can do that contact that way. Sorry, I think sprints can be a multiple scales compatible with working in natural pace. I guess you made .

IT when I was read in the question to I was on the impression that the sprints were like right after the others but you answered that by saying .

you should ask for yes, it's ask for yeah it's interesting when you're doing good work. And this is why the third principles, slow productivity, is obsessive equality. When you're doing good work, the biggest fear of your employer is losing you.

And it's a mindset shift you have to make as you get organized using a type of stuff I talk about and get good using a stuff I talk about, you have to leave the mindset which fits earlier in your career, which is my employer is looking for reasons not to keep me on. My employer is looking for reasons to fire me. My employment here is contingent.

They are not sure about me. At some point, you change from that too. We don't want to lose them.

And if you're doing great work and they know you're super on the ball and you listen to my podcast and that like your super organized and you're really focused, and you say, here, I want to take these two dam cycles, here is why they don't want to lose you. I mean, worth I saying, they might say no, but they are not going to get mad. Speak to basketball.

I saw the other night stuff, curry playing the wizards. Are you going to the game? Yeah, but he had a luxury box. nice. yeah. Eat a lawyer.

So we just needed one of us to have like, a legitimate reason for something like that wasn't, look, I want to go out on a limb here with a hot take. Stuff here is good at baseball. He's very good at basketball. He's been doing .

for a long time too.

And he's really .

good to golf too.

I believe. IT, right. So that was a question. Let's get something. Music to the corner.

Now I just say we ever call this week, we do last year. Now my name is amy, and i'm a PHD candidate in nursing living in canada. My question for you focus is on in perfectionism verses doing really good work that gets noticed or being so good they can't ignore you.

How do you know when your work is good enough to ship? Does IT measure whether the work is like the type of work you're doing? Um and i'm just thinking about your recent conversation with all of a burkman en on improvement ism.

Thank you. You want tangible evidence about the life of your work, at least when he comes to your career and career shaping. You want to be working on things where the value is more unambiguous.

This ship, this many units, this sold this mini units, this got this much praise from the client. I brought in this much work. We have this much demand.

And why does this matter? Because it's the main trading ship you have for shaping your career demonstration of unambiguously valuable capability or skills, that is, your leverage, for shaping the reality, your professional life. And if you can shape the reality of your profession life, you can shape IT in the really cool configurations that resonate was what's important to you.

This is my whole bit about lifetime le centre planning. You figure out your vision, the ideal lifestyle, and you tried to work backwards from that. Your profession is a big piece of that.

Getting good at what you do in an unambiguous way is how you take control of your profession. And you're going to be much more likely be able to save your idea listy le that way. I mean, what Oliver did, right, like he has his life right now.

He's just like a full time writer. He's not even to call this anymore, just write the books. And so like what he talks about this lifestyle of, right, do def for, like three hours a day, like, right, do your best with the time.

That remains that a just have a to do this and like, do some useful stuff and then and and kind of be OK and then, you know, go enjoy yourself and just be OK. That is a particular vision which resonates with me as well, by the way, a very particular vision of a lifestyle that Oliver was able to engineer, in part because he was a successful writer. He became a journalist.

His column is very successful that gave him a name in this particular area. He began writing books, I think his first book and IT had is big, but four thousand weeks really did. IT was a culmination of this training, and that really opened up this ability for him to then reduce the urgency and load of the things he has, so that this particular lifestyle of right do a little bit of admin and then enjoy as possible.

So he's like a great example of lifestyles into career planning. So this is why I can slow productivity. I say obsessed over quality is this critical principal is because IT enables everything else.

But again, to get to the specifics of your question, don't shy away from unamid us evaluation. That's where lifestyle central planning really can play. It's scary because unambiguous evaluation can be unambiguous negative evaluation. I'm going to attack by a fly.

I know. Is that here? Actually.

I think I described IT alone. I did not. I did not.

I thought I was like mr. magic. I did not. Um it's tempting to the steer away from things that is going to be unambiguous about how variable IT is. Like dissolved this many units.

We will or will not give you the deal for this book like the clients bought this or not because IT makes failure clear. But the flip side of things that have a unambiguous downside that you're afraid of is that the upsides going to be unambiguously useful. And so that's the territories you swim terms.

Not everyone has to do this. Some people's vision of idea of lifestyle doesn't require this. So like, look, I have this particular job um it's not so hard to do IT well IT pays well as me live in the place I want to live.

I like the people that are there and build IT on top of this. I can make the rest of my life what I wanted to be. That's fine, but there's something more radical you want to do with your life. That's where you're gonna have to do something. We have a big chance of notable failure because the flip side of that's what's going to give you the big leverage you need to make radical changes.

So maybe that's the way I would put IT is care about stuff that is too good to be ignored if you have visions in your lifestyle that are too desirable to be easily obtained and is a good way to think about IT. I think we have a case study here, so I like to do these now. And again, we retails of people talk about the specific ways in which they put the type of advice we talk about on the show, how they put in the practice in their own life.

So you do have a name Susan, right? Susan says I am a new manager with one direct report that is outsourced. I was very confused at first on what to include him in and when I should involve him in stuff he's new to the business.

So I just see, see them on everything, inviting him to every meeting. Maybe some, maybe some of the emails will be educational, like my notes from various meets or client responses. Maybe he would learn the business at the various meetings we met once a week.

But I was very unclear on what he was working on. I would send one off tasks his way, but I was unclear if he had enough to do or too much. Well, thanks to slow productivity, my clarity is jarasch ally Better?

When I was whittling down the non super productive work for him to do, I had to get very clear and what was important. Now we meet more often for short updates, and he's got max three projects in a shared list. Since I know exactly what he is working on, I can stop spamming him with vegan relevant emails and I can just update the list when I need to share details or additional worker projects for him to do further.

I started sharing my project list as well. At first, I was uncomfortable to have him see what I was working on. I was holding myself accountable to his judgment.

What would you think? But having another human see what my projects are and having the frequent update meetings to show my incremental work has been rewarding. I look forward to one day having a larger team where we can all cross collaborate in this way, right? So Susan is demonstrating an important concept.

This is from principal, one of my bookstore productivity. Manage your workloads Better. It's like the key thing.

The key thing that we don't think about IT all acknowledge work is worker management. And this is what causes so many problems. So what does Susan do? Follow my advice.

He said, let's be explicit. What are you working on and how many things should you work on? Oh, you probably shouto be working on more than three things at once. So let's be clear about what these are.

Will put them in a list if other things come up, we can put them in a waiting to you right next to won't forget about him, but i'm not going to ask you to work on them. And currently, when you finish one of these three, we can figure out together what's the right thing that put into your activist to replace IT too. You put in place a particular communication protocol for collaboration.

Three day week meetings is great when you have a one on one like this, because this means you don't have to send a one off email. You're never more than a day away from having a conversation. So now he could just keep track of what questions do I have and when next meet, you guys can efficiently go through on.

You can keep track of questions you have and go through, you know, you're gna get an update on exactly where he is within a day, thirty minutes, three days a week, could take the place of thirty emails a day, five days a week, which is gonna cause a constant state of having to go back and forth, check in boxes and stress. So Susan, I love the way that you made workload explicit. And by doing that, everyone got more effective is structure effort.

Effort gets more sustainable. Effort gets easier, right? So we got a final segment coming up for I promise i'm going to talk about Martin ward, the first here for a sponsor.

Just as I drink from the big White mug, we need sponsor. Actually IT says midd star health on IT. So the response ory middle head, I talk. I gave a thing. I met our health .

board meeting. Can they gave you a mug? Give me a mug and a free MRI.

IT was interesting. Yeah, they give me an MRI for free. This great in a blood transfusion. IT felt a little excessive, but know what they had on hand.

But the head on him, when I talk today about long time, sponsored the show my body tuder. I ve known adam gilbert, my body to ters, founded for many years. He used to be the health advice columns for my blog, his company.

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It's not hard to figure what you should be doing. The hard part is to actually do IT. With a dedicated coach, you're much more likely to actually do IT, and the dedicated coach can help you adapt to your specific situations.

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So my body to has become very popular for the very simple reason that IT works. When you have a coach who is dedicated to working with you, you actually get results. And because the coaches are online is not nearly as expensive as actually having to have a nutritious ist or a personal trainer that come to your house or come to your kitchen because a fantastic um fantastic c product.

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Oh, right. So you load on the screen here for people who are watching. Instead of just listen, this is the trailer for the new nefer x documentary, Martha, about Martha Stuart.

A good documentary. Have you seen? H. C, I have. yeah. Does good. right. Let me tell you, I caught my attention early on, especially when her career was taking off.

I was remarking he was being increasingly busy because he had this property, the turkey hill farm that SHE was sort of customer renovating his acres and acres are property intel like all these, like custom gardens, SHE had this catering company is like, really famous catering company would to do these major catering jobs that were, like, very famous. This is a complicated logistical battle with with your clients, but also with the the people who are working with you and the chefs and the servers. And SHE was writing he is writing these books, which are on the screen right now, and she's writing these books like once here.

I mean, of course, as her empire grew into a big media publicly traded company, which was super busy, but we're kind of a use to the idea of, like ceos, a big companies been really busy having big staff. S, I was interested in this, like earlier part of her life where SHE had so much different things going on. I mean, I still have skeleton of my yard josey, and i'm not nearly i'm not working on nearly as many stuff as he was.

And SHE was landscaping by hand, like fifty acres of a farm. So I started thinking, I was like, you know, that time mass. The book, I would be curiously, is one written by mars, Stuart.

Like, how does he manage her time? Like, how did that work? And IT turns out he did.

SHE did write a book. I didn't know this. And I was called, like Martha stewards organizing of a picture of her hear on the screen. SHE did write a book about time and dress. I'm just fastly like, how does he do all this? And then I look at this book, and I look at the tips in IT, and I say, this has nothing to do with how someone like Martha steward organizes her life.

So here's the book you could already already see by the cover with like paper clipsed in a neat box and a well wrapped up USB cable that this is not about how mother Stuart built her empire. Writing books will also renovate. Notice land.

Look at some of the tips that he highlighted from this book, keep your kitchen draws well organized, maybe using her expandable and enjoy utensil tray. Have a ceramic c tool crock on your kitchen countertop to keep those kitchen utensils needed put away. Make sure in your home office that you have firefox ders with vine details on them so they're esthetically pleasing.

SHE has a planner, the marthe's ward spiral update, a weekly calendar. It's very pretty. IT has like a roughly enough space on IT for like seven things the right down.

And that's all the advice gives. I bring this up because IT points to an important divide when we talk about time management and productivity that we don't always a lose a date. And that's the different between atheling productivity and real productivity.

So these products in what Martha stew is talk about in that book is we what I call aesthetic productivity. It's typically based on organizing physical things in a pretty way, and that uses that metaphor for organizing your life. You should have like a beautiful little notebook and draw these pictures in IT and have stickers you put on IT.

And then there's real productivity, which is I have a huge amount of stuff in my life. My schedules very crowded. My attention is being pulled in all source of directions.

I need to take control of this shit. Like what Martha Stuart did at the height of her early business is to try to build this empire that he did. And none of that has to do with jaw.

Organizers are pretty planters that have pictures of flowers on the cover. It's complicated, hard, um super focused work. IT is the equivalent to athletes for all the training they do in the gym.

And like when IT comes to athletes to are good at what they do, we don't downplay how hard that is and how important the training is. Well, I think for any sort of knowledge work, IT is the continually adjust to fight, to keep control of the chaos. Is this like very difficult thing we have to do to be able to succeed with our our jobs and aesthetics?

Productivity, I think downplays IT, makes IT me more minor, makes IT seem like, you know, it's a matter of taste or sort of owning the right tools. So I would be really interested in like an actual an actual productivity book from arth steward. I could tell you, I know what you think.

Just you for the documentary be pretty brutal. I would assume. I would say, like only sleep four hours a night.

What he did, fire fools. SHE was firing people left and right. If you need something done, yell, not the nicest. Not the nicest person. I bet he was super time blocked.

If I had to guess super time blocks exactly what i'm going to fit in these things to make IT all work. I bet information systems were locked in tight like every order of food and who were hiring and wears the staff. I think he hired good people and fired anyone who wasn't great.

Like I mean I think um man that that the real marth is your time management book would probably be um like sun zu are a war to be a pretty brutal book if I had to guess they don't know. I'm not suggested most people need to do that level of extreme organization because she's way too stress what he is, way too stressful. But IT is interesting that we don't as like another asset.

We don't often see a lot of windows into how like the like the hyper busy organized themselves. I'm very curious about its like a curiosity. I only know of one such book but I think is actually called hyper productivity.

And IT literally was just like a very busy executive. We SAT on a lot of boards and said, here's how I organised my stuff and yet it's hard. And lot of systems, i'm really fascine by the type of stuff.

Again, not that people need to do that because most people's ideal lifetime does not involve like what marthe's war's ideal lifestyle involved IT doesn't involve strugling five boards and like two public companies are whatever. But it's a curiosity to me how they do IT. But the one thing I know about how they do IT, it's not to jw organizer er or file holders with vine on them. The one thing that .

I looked at a lot of documentation was just, you know, that stock Price obviously went down a lot when he was had her legal trouble and stuff. So I just checked at at at six point four now. So SHE surprised to billing now, right?

I don't know. That's a good question because when he was a billion era was in the eight one wasn't .

IT IT was the initial offering was at eighteen, of which I gets in today's doors like thirty three.

not an optimal, he said he saw IT too like a brand management company or something he said, yeah license .

in company I .

got how longer um after jail okay probably really two thousand ten yes they just licence the the brand name. The thing that OK here's if you're going to talk about marth of the other thing to caught my attention is the scoreboard aspect like the fact she's like I want to make I want this to be a company to go public and I want to be like the richest self made woman in the world at time. There's no functional reason to do that, right?

Because this is when you have a brand to built around a person like what we've learned like today's economy is you can make a killing. When is built around you and you have a real talent for you, you can make a killing and have all sorts of autonomy, flexibility. There's no reason to like build and on the media company that has like all these employees or this or that, right?

There's no reason he could have been making a killing with like books and could have a magazine in a TV show and just be like, i'm really well known. I'm really good at this. I get paid a lot of money to do this.

There's no reason to have to start a major company yeah and then once you have that major company, they have to have like a fifty different magazines and like twenty different ship just to try to like justify whatever sounds interesting to scale to that were today is like the podcast economy if you have that level of talent. So like he was exceptional enough, you could build this whole company around her. You can get hundred fifty million doll podcast you, except for now, what are you doing for one hundred fifty million dollars, your podcasting once a week or whatever, which is so much different that being the CEO of a public company. So I really caught my attention that he wanted to start a big company.

I think SHE likes the limelight to, obviously, if you wanted to do the documentary.

how old do SHE we look at? up? A, she's eighty one.

Eighty two. good. Yeah, yeah. Because he was sixty three when he was to jail.

Yeah, yeah. She's anything looks great. yeah. I guess that's just me is life is also planning. I'm like, oh, if my if I had this big brand that could be built and I kind of a reason brand built around me, all of my instincts is not how do we build a huge media a company.

It's like how do we build like a very Thomas flexible business of that, that doesn't require yeah bord means interesting topic. You know it's all the time we have to will be that back next week with another episode. If you look into my advice from beginning may, we'll be one of the few podcast will be listening to next week until them, as always, stay deep.

I cw, here, one more thing before you go, if you like, in the deep questions podcast, you will love my email newsletters, which you can sign up for at cal 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, you got to sign up for my newsletter called me where dot com, and get some deep wisdom delivered to your inbox each week.