Ep. 328: Analog Mode
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I'm town new port. And this is deep questions, the show about cultivating a deep life in a distracted world.

I'm here. My deep work hq joint is always by my producer, Jessie ah Jesse. Quick show update. We are experimenting with those occasional thursday deep dive episodes. So we call now we call him about in depth, depth, in depth where I have on people to talk about ideas relating to culture in deep life.

Um anyway, i've scheduled to more for december, but I dog, uh, I can't announce in advance who is going to be or how many uh, all time points titles they have one or whether or not their son also plays in the N B A. But we have a pretty big a royal guest. Now it's not lebron James um but he was I liked them.

So we have a couple more coming up. I want them to come out in december, so stay tuned for those. I'll tell you, here's my rule for those is why I like about this being just like an occasional episode.

I I literally just think, who do I want to talk to, right? And and sometimes itll be someone who's really well know and sometimes that might not be. But i'm using IT as an excuse to have cool conversations with cool people.

That's good. yeah. And including people i've been like how we should catch up, like what we do IT on, what we do IT on air. So that's good. Couple announcements will briefly. First, I one of the shut out matt coleman of the company cap three, which just bought big book, order a slow productivity for their office book club. I of course really appreciate when people do that.

Uh, it's a great book club book because not only is an interesting conversation, but you may get a much more happy work, fate of workforce and effective of company after you buy the book. So things we're doing that unhappy to shout at dell, i'll say now on the air, Jesse, here you do a book order for a book club. Let Jessie know and i'm happy to to give you in a shout out on the air.

Yeah, cool. Also, administration of note, we need more calls running low on calls, which means this is probably your best shot right now to get on the show is leaving a call. You can do IT right from your browser.

Go to the deep lift dog conscience. Listen, there's a link there. It's called something like leaving a call or call or both, or something easy to do.

You can do IT from your browser, on your phone, away from your laptop. We need more calls, so bring those in, right? I think that said, Jesse, let's go on with a or deeper life.

So several people recently have sent me the same video, which seems to be everywhere at the moment on youtube. The video is called how to disappear and transform. Last time I checked that had two point five million views and counting.

Here's what I want to do today. I want to play a clip from this video, and I want to get into IT. Because when I first watched this video, to be honest, I was little taken back.

IT seems sort of a needs a chain in a veglione suttles way. But as I look beyond its aesthetics and became clear, there is a deeper issue at play that goes beyond the immediate audience and topic of the video on this probably relevant to use. So we're going to extract some deep truths from this very trendy video, right? So they get started.

I want to play the beginning of this video um if you are watching, instead of just listened, we're going to put the video up in the corner here as well. But we'll have the audio o for those who who are just listening. I just let's load this up.

The more you open your life up for display, the more people find a way to drive you down. It's a natural sociological phenomenon. There's something powerful about disappearing and working in the shadows, becoming unavailable and committing to become the next version of you.

And secret can be exhilarating, exciting because you know that when you reappear, your transformation will shock the world. I just we can. Funny thing is when you do gonna there, um first of all, I I always love the music and popular videos.

This I say i'm thinking strangest things. Yeah, that was compelling. Yeah, that music is compelling.

Again, I think we put that, we put that music behind. Anything we say here is going to seem a lot more, a lot more compelling. Okay, so let's get into a little bit.

So the video, we see the main concept disappear, uh, be where people don't know what you're doing. You're not talk about what you're doing. No one really knows what you're up to transform yourself and then reappear.

I want to walk through just the these are the chapters of the video. So these are kind of like the steps of the process. So disappear with step.

What that's we just heard about, step two was shut up. Step three was only care. Step four was hide your plans. There's a big thing in this about don't talk to anybody about anything you're up to.

They make one exception for if you have a life partner, then we get step one, two, three for five high progress, hide pain, pick targets, crush IT, reprogram and then reappear. The question mark just actually consequential. See there in a second.

Like there's a certain field to this video that is a in the vein of like a Young man really has a kind like Young man feel Young man stepping away from society to grind through pain on root of some dream of becoming an upper tion away that's going to all all of their foes. That's why had that niche I reference from before really kind of has that field to IT. The examples of the goals you might crush IT in this video are also sort of very kind of Young man online examples.

One is getting thread they talk about in the video that you should consider, for example, move in your apartment to be next to the gym so that you can more easily spend more time in the gym. The other example is created in business that quote, prints money in quotes. Alright, for those of us who in other stages of life were not sort like an online Young man, this idea, like we're treating to an apartment next to the gym and completely kind themselves off from other people like IT, sounds unappealing and it's easy to the Smith is like, this is like a bro culture thing, is like a very online thing.

But as I was trying to digest this video with an open mind, i'm realizing there's a deeper issue in here that is relevant to many more of us. okay? So for the generation who is the target audience of this video, here's the thing we have to keep in mind their online selves, that is, the version of themselves that they present publicly online of a various platforms, social platforms, boltin boards, even like gaming platforms, discord, ata their online selves as a major part of just their overall general identity.

And the problem that they are noticing is that their online selves attracts a lot of like this is endemic and unavoidable in almost any major online space. That if your online selves, you're discussion of yourself, your ideas, what you're up to your life and in these online spaces is going to attract troy, is going to attract people who are telling you to check yourself. It's going to attract, attract people who are going to put you down, make fun of what you're working on.

I was just noticing this the other day. I was on a read IT thread for Peter tea fans because I met Peter and I was a read this book and I was looking up some information. But you can't post anything on there without like ten percent of the people responding.

why? However, whatever you're doing, whatever fitness thing you're doing, whatever metrics that you're measure, wherever biomarkers, just not quite right, you don't know what's going on, right? So for the generation where this online cells is actually like a major part of their selves, IT really gives them this feel as if their social standing is um always on the threat and they're constantly being judged.

They're often being judged poorly. So this is where you get this very strong push we see in this video disappear, right? Because to to remove yourself from those spaces, for someone whose online self is such an intro, part of their identity is a major act.

IT is is what requires a stranger things music in those big animations because it's IT really is a major act in a way that for me till like not go onto the Peter tea redit threat is not like a transformative decision in my life. So rebuilding. So what are you trying to do here? These people who are essentially born online is separate themselves from their online cell s.

And this is actually pretty traumatic to do, but they are picking up in a very refined sense. This is like a refined, amplified version of a problem that I think is reliant to the rest of us. So to explain what the general problem is here, um I want to clarify, like a general framework I like to use when thinking about the topics we talk about on the show, primarily.

I see myself when when IT comes to a lot of my public facing writing, is you would call IT like a digital theorist or technology theorist. I think a lot about how technology impacts our lives and what we should do about IT. Sometimes this get subscribe because the solutions, the digital problems, are often analog.

We talk a lot about solutions. So we talk a lot about analog on here. But so much what I talk about has its roots in the digital. So the framework I I use, we're going to apply to this particular problem.

The framework I like to use is I imagine that, that right now, the twenty first century homo sapiens exist in what I called the modern digital environment to nd e, right? We're in. This sort of new kind of novel environment is defined by network digital technologies.

The modern digital environment often conflicts with our pilot thic brains and bodies and our neolithic culture. In these mismatches, we get what I think of as disorders, which I mean in sort of the literal sense of disorders, as ways of living that are notably negative. So it's in these mismatches between our brains and culture, which are evolved in times long past.

With a modern digital environment, we get various disorders and then we have to figure out how to address them at different levels as individuals, as communities and larger up as like cultures and governments even. right? That's kind of my program.

So let's apply that framework here. The relevant aspect of the modern digital environment is causing a disorder. In this case, I think, is the the introduction of large scale conversation platforms.

So any sort of digital platform in which a notably large number of people are brought together to have a conversation, that's what I call a large scale conversation platform. The most famous examples, of course, would be like twitter sash x or you know instagram, potentially tiktok s have A A huge number of people come together for a conversation. What makes IT large scale is the fact that any individual user is seen, of course, as a ti ti munsch fraction of the actual amount.

Communication is happening. So that's very different, for example, than a conversation on like a what's za group with people where you see every message that everyone is sending. So what is the mismatch between this corner of the modern digital environment and h ourselves, our species? I think IT tricks the brain.

So here is, the problem is, and a large skill conversation plant for me, have a huge number of people say things, responding back and what are talking to each other. The platforms have to curate that down to a very tractable conversation for the each individual user. Twitter slice x has six hundred million users.

The number of tweet per day is astronomical. Of course, you're not seen these. All you see kind of like a accurate feed.

Tiktok has hundreds of millions of videos that are being posted. You can only see a couple hundred in a given day or whatever. So there's this huge creation that goes on. Curation brings down what you're seeing to seem very similar to a Normal social conversation that you would have in a Normal analog social context. So you're kind of looking for some threads on like credit to look interesting.

You're jumping on or you're jumping on to some conversations, twitter, for example, the scale of those conversations as recognized what is your brain is like we're chatting with people around the fire. We're chatting with people at the town square because it's it's not that many people they're talking back and forth. I said this some people talk back IT feels like you're at a tot hall meeting.

But in reality, of course, this is all being super created that the real reality is like you say something, the next store you have medicine square garden full of people all like yelling things in responses and someone comes to and like, hey, over there in section k in the fifth row, that person seems kind of like saying something fun or cutting in attention let's bring them over and put them in front of you to respond. You IT feels like you're just responding to one person but really there's men square are garden full of people and just the most engaging or interesting or attention catching responses are captured so what we get is the simulation um of like a Normal conversation we've been evolved to have, but the conversation is not really real. It's not with people you know there's no social stakes.

There's no tit for tat expectation as this is someone that you have to live with going forward. So injured interactions, you have to keep that in mind. You need sustainable relationship.

It's instead sort of like algorithm, ally matched, retorted bomb thrown. So the disorder this creates is that these created suit of conversations, as I like to call them, when we see them as real, we get very distressed. You constantly feel like you're in a situation that in the analog world would be very rare and very alarming.

We constantly feel, and we're interacting with these curiosa conversations on large globe conversation platforms. We constantly feel as if we just defended someone at the town hall meeting. We said the wrong thing around the pilot of a campfire and now were getting cold stairs from the tribal chief, who's like a real beans holding spirit, both hands.

That is like a very alarming circumstance to most of our history. And our brain doesn't realized that the accurate, suitable conversation is different. So we are distressed at a level and a consistency that would have otherwise been a spelling disaster.

This is like you're about to kick kicked out a salem or burned at the state type of disaster. So we get really upset, right? That is the trend that for these digital natives, these Young men who are watches youtube video is unavoidable because so much of their life is on there.

They have to do something about IT seems so dassie. But the rest of us that may be use these platforms less frequently, but on a semi consistent basis, we still suffered from this. The dosage of the disorder is lower, but IT is still a steady drip of this type of social distress, which just makes us less happy.

So we've seen this mismatch betwen, the modern digital environment and our species. We've identify the disorder IT creates. Now that we know the disorder, we can think about the treatment.

The treatment here is simple. We can take like what the video is saying, and we can simplify that. The oppy so hyperbolic, you don't have to disappear, move next to the gym.

But here is my treatment for this disorder of a curried suo conversation, induce distress. Don't digitally interact with people that you've never previously bit in the same room with before. So what this is saying, this simple, heroic actually does a lot of work for us, right? IT saves us from being too aggressive.

The too aggressive thing to do here would be like, don't ever have interactions digitally. Well, that's going too far. Actually, like digital communication tools, these are pretty useful. It's pretty useful if I can like text message or question to a friend of mine or kind of keep up with like what's going on with my family was like we get out like a text read going back and forth or like the email h some information about an upcoming like we're going to the game on me, email you the tickets over email like just all sorts of digital conversation that's great zoom calls.

Remember this like you're in the pandemic, the ability to see people in your family, your friends, face to face, and how now we can still do that with distance relatives, like all this stuff, is great. I mean, I write about in my book digital minimalism is not as good as in person interaction. So you want to be careful not to replace all analog interaction with people you care about with digital.

But there's nothing wrong with doing the digital. It's only a problem with people, you know, if you let that replace other types of communication. So there's no negative thing that happens being on a text thread with your friends. The only negative thing that could come from that is if because of that thread, you never actually go and do things with your friends ever again. But there's no negative harm from the direct activity.

But what this simple hero tic does telly to take a break from is the strangers online, the post on whatever is now twitter, blue sky or threads where you're angrily replying to someone, the performative posting on instagram of something that, you know, whatever IT is, but you have the hashtag blessed after IT. You're going to get some crap for that because that's kind of annoying, like waiting for that that crap to come back in. We are posting for people you don't know.

That's what the your success hay, step away from that, at least see what that feels like. So I get my treatment here and i'll see you one more time. Don't digitally interact with people that you prev previously have not been in the same room with before.

Now of course, like this obviously version, we're talking recreational communication. This doesn't mean like, hey, I can't respond. I'm applying for a job and I can't respond to the new boss because i've never been the same room with them before.

But just in terms of like casual leiser base interaction, give that a try that solves this disorder we have. You're not posted in public places means you're not explosion, your brining curated seto conversations, which means the digital world is not giving you the steady dose of distress. Now this is what I would even tell, like the Young men who are watching this video is like, I feel the pain that driving you to this.

But you don't have to think about this necessarily for the lens of i'm going to temporarily disappear and then i'm going to come back really is this uber mans idea in this videos like i'm going to come back so shed IT was so much money that you can't see anything wrong about, you can't say anything bad about me, right? I'm going to be the king alpha something there's there's a more consistent solution here. Just don't make this online self so important anymore.

Paying with real people go to the gym, but make friends at the gym and then I go get we crack shots or whatever people who are shaped you like after the gym or whatever you want to start a business is great that you could get together with some people and start a business and go to a co work in space, be around people, build out your analog life, digitally communicate with people you've made in the real world. Do not have this sort of shadow self who has to exist online. And you'll realized your problem was not other people.

Your problem was not that you told people about your goals or that people had heard subtitle kes you vulnerable. The problem is you're telling people who don't know, you don't care. That's the problem.

It's the audience, not what you're saying. So I think I think there's an interesting lesson in IT. So i'm going to give a name too early to give names to things.

Stopping digital interaction with people you have not met before. A person will call this analog mode, you have to disappear, but try analog mode out for a while. This is a particularly good time to do IT. I've been listened to these fights recently josey about these online platforms, twitter versus blue sky versus threads, because someone wrote me and set, by the way, oh, there's a count new port on blue sky.

You know.

blue sky is, it's my understanding is a is a twitter style platform. But IT maintains the style of content moderation that twitter had in like two thousand and one thousand, two thousand and twenty, like the very sort of strong. And then threads is also a twitter style interface.

But IT really downplays politics. So it's trying to be more of like an instagram, my type place ever. So there's a output on blue sky.

That's not me. It's really trying to be me. It's my picture is my books. Fortunately, whoever this is has been posted in cindi things.

But you know who knows um anyway, the point is i'm looking at this and all these people who the assumption behind this conversation is like, clearly we have to be on a global conversation platform having Carried suo conversations. And I I know the answers. You don't want to be on any of these things.

I went to new york article about this two summer ago called we don't need a new twitter that really gets into this argument about why global communication platforms, conversation platforms, are not in transit to the internet. They are not somehow um they're not somehow anonymous with like digital expression. Free speech.

It's like a weird business move, right? It's the free speech equivalent I guess of like amazon a wallman t saying it's important that everything you buy comes from one giant company that's not that important and actually like we'd like when there is a main street and there is many other smaller shops. So you don't have to have these digital cells.

I mean, it's I run IT because i'm very exposed online, but the places I guess i'm exposed or not places people comment it's podcast and newsletters. It's like in the people's years and they read IT. It's not in these conversation platforms where where people talk about the analog mode. I think this is a great time to give that a try.

Yeah, I also fall rogan advice. I never read the comments on youtube.

so i've heard him say posting ghost this advice, meaning like if you post something, I don't don't go back and read like the comments. I think if for everyone on his show, my pitch to him would be like don't post because I would be so influential, right? Because I don't really know.

I guess we could check IT out. Can you load up? And I can see me on twitter probably right?

His buddies always on. I'm sure he's on twitter.

Do I wonder if you even post on there that much but I think would be really influential if joe rogan said, um I I don't post on social media. There's like more important things in lives. Be a leader, your community, do cool things, build things. Don't wait time posting at all. I think that be so powerful, don't you think um and yeah so he could do that yeah I convent and Harris sleeve twitter may that had some influence with some people the men of joe rogan did IT.

I never heard, I don't listen on all the time, but I never heard him complain .

about now I think he barely, he barely uses IT. So I here's that, okay, not to get into a whe organ conversation. Uh, he barely uses IT, right? And I think he is super discipline.

So to him he is saying, what's the problem? right? I think he barely uses IT.

He doesn't check comments. He's been in the public eye since you know, a Young age. He's very used to IT. So it's like, what's the problem like I post in ghosts like I put themselves on there think is funny um it's fine but the promise most people can't do what he does like most people can't kind of be on IT.

So even though he doesn't have to like not going to make his life much Better to quit because he probably barely looks at IT him quitting would probably be a model to other people. I mean, he started, it's really like the most arbitrating when like cam hains convinced them that hunting deer with a boy narrow was like a cool thing to do. Half the men on the internet started hunting gear with bozano es.

Right now that's a bad thing. But it's like super, super specific. What he decided that like brazilian jujitsu, like this very specific martial art, was like a cool thing to do. Half the men on the internet started to doing brazilian and judici, which is like a very, very specific things. I imagine if he's like.

I just stop using social media, but think there's any do because these boys, are they on any life? Go on next. The problem, he's really good friends of them as a prom, so he's never going to do IT.

I got to come into even first to shut down. Ex, my list is getting harder. Je me too, getting harder.

Alright, we've got some good questions. We ve got a call. I've got a tech corner coming up. But first briefly here from sponsor, I talk about one of my favorite products in the last couple of years.

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The really cool part to pod learns your sleep patterns over time and automatically adjust the temperature throughout the night to optimize each phase of your um my wife and I had become complete addix of having the pod on our bed so so you put this cover on your bed just like a like a matters cover and then there's a tube that comes out of IT and then like somewhere next you're Better behind your bed. You have IT looks like a like an old fashion PC like, you know, the tower but it's like kind of black and sleep and that has water in IT and like cools or heats IT and IT goes these capitalists and IT can cool side of the Better heat separately. We can't sleep very well without this is a problem.

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First questions from Tyler. I'm from the ashwell area that was recently hit by Helen. This shake up made me reflect on how I want to structure my life. How do you recommend someone spend the week or a long weekend this way? What documents, systems and protocols would you recommend some we put in place as a good foundation toward the deep life?

Well, first of all, I hope things are going Better for you. And ash fill, a good friend and friend of the show bread stolberg lives in ashlee. So really had been able to hear through him kind of like the details of the chAllenges there.

And in fact, that would be my first bit of advice is check out, uh, brad's work at the growth equation is god is a website runs with Steve baggers, another front end of the show, great newsletter. They're got a great podcast as well called fair. Well, that a bit on a couple times he's thinking about these issues because he's going through IT as well.

So i'm just going to give a plug to that team over there. Bad and Steve and cave, except I let's get more general here. The the general question here is relevant to everyone is a there's some sort of disruption has happened in your life and that could be I climate is actually like this, but I could be medical and other big one.

You get a health scare, uh, someone gets really sick, someone dies IT could be professional like you lose a job, um you know you have to move suddenly or whatever. How do you reset, not just reset, but come out of a disruption aimed towards, uh, reconstructing your life to be not just deeper as I was before, but perhaps even deeper. I got some specific advice here.

First of all, I would spend at least a week er or two using a single purpose journal is dedicated the trying to capture and make sense of your reactions to the disruption. So a single purpose journal, we've talked about this in a prior episode. It's a small journal that you use for, uh, one specific purpose.

So you like, i'm trina, figure out this one thing like an idea for a book or a life transformation. I like to use the field notes notebooks for these because they're very small in your pocket. They're about the right size for dealing with. Just like a single issue, you have to make sense of your intimations about your life that have been inspired, changed or evolved because of the disruption.

What is IT about your life that now, in light of the disruption, is feeling out of wake or is feeling like a draggy? What is that, that feeling like newly valuable in a way you didn't think about before? What are the insights that are coming up? What type of media is suddenly appealing to you in a way that I didn't before?

It's like why am I suddenly listening to serve podcast or why is IT that like i'm being really attracted to hearing about a gneiss lix documentaries on sports stars like you. It's it's a time to become a tune to how you're feeling because this is a concept I talk about. The book are writing now about the deep life.

These types of disruptions often shake the sand loose and reveal insights. There are other previously obscure. So we want to capture those you just taking notes right habit with you whenever you're walking the dog, you just commuting to work.

You feel that like a particular russia insight because you had your first cup of coffee of the morning, dutt down those notes, right? Once you've done that for a while and your sort of refining these are information into actual insights, it's time to try to update your lifestyle vision. I would do this in nature.

I would try to take one big swiming at this. The actual area has beautiful hiking up there in those mountains. Go for a hike. It's a couple hours.

And at the summit, sit there and try to work through an updated vision of your ideal lifestyle, integrating these insights you found to your single purpose journal. This will be a different vision, likely than whatever vision you had before the disruption, and maybe you weren't doing lifetime le center lining before. So this this might just be your first vision you ve ever done.

Now once you return from that mountain, which uh, for you, Tyler, is probably literal because you live in asia el, and for other people might be now you do the whole lifestyle planning thing. We work backers from the vision to figure out how you can move forward closer to IT. And now you're talking to your partner if you if you you're marry.

Now you you're thinking through your options now are getting tactical. Now you're having those sort of strategic and tactical decisions. Do we want to really change something about our work situation?

Do we want to change something about where we live, our school situation? Is there is there a big change we want to make in our lives? That's kind of the fun part, also the scary part.

But what i'm sort of arguing for here don't start there. That's the the feel the r of this whole advice. Don't start with sitting down.

Tonight and saying should we move, you want to get there after you've clarified your intimidate ons in the insights and then use those to try to form a lifestyle vision that really resonated them work backwards from that vision. That's how you'll avoid just finding the trap of just trying to do something big for the sake doing something big, right? That's how you'll avoid the trap of um sliming your hand in the door just to feel something.

That's what I sometimes call IT, where people make major changes in their life just because they feel stuck and like at least there's some motion and making a major change. But if that changes aimless or random when the excitement wears off, you don't have to be in a Better place, right? So I think there's opportunity working in here.

Here is a quote i'll see if anyone recognizes where this for where this is from. Here's my question. My quote, Jesse, the one character from the anonymous quote says, you know that the germans have the same word for crisis and opportunity.

And the father in this quote is, yes, Crystal unity. You know that quote term now the simpson at least a talk to home um but it's true right in crisis to his opportunity actually speaking of bread, read his book as well. Masters of change is like all about how to be resilient, the change to come out stronger.

So this is not been a big pitch for bread. Tyler hot, that helps. Hope you have water back and know that's the last thing to come.

As he was beautiful. It'll rise up again. But thanks for giving me a chance to discuss this topic.

Who do we have next, next questions from jack. I constantly use my airplanes during gap times. Throughout the day, I listen while driving to work, doing chores around around the house, cooking dinner in lunch.

I'm torn. Always listen, interesting stuff. But am I properly embracing boredom?

Yeah, I listen to my airport's a lot as well. Um here's what I recommend. I think the easiest thing to do is to actually schedule the times that you want to not use the airports, like schedule the gap times, as you call them, where you want to be embracing bold m and then you don't have to worry about at the other times.

So in other words, you can make listing the podcast or audio books a perfectly reasonable default activity of doing the dishes you having in the morning i'm waiting at the car wash. Just make listing the interesting stuff of default, and just schedule on a regular basis. Time to be without IT.

That's easier than trying to debate with yourself moment the moment like, oh, I should feel guilty. I've been listening to stuff a lot. I should have time where i'm not listening to things should have be now.

Well, maybe not now. Don't have this debate with yourself all the time schedule the burden, because asking me less often in the airports could be the default key is to have a good mixed stuff you listen to. IT doesn't all have to be incredibly intellectually demanding, but some of IT should be right.

Expose yourself interesting ideas, list in the interesting books by one piece of advice that if you have a regular time, you listen. That is kind of time bounded. And i'm thinking of particular, like a morning commute.

So what I used to do, where are you like? I listened. I am pretty good energy and is a bad amount of time every day.

Think about using that for listening, like something really advanced, complicated, like a learning company, great course of style course. Or you can listen to, like one lecture, poor morning on your way to work. So have some sort of regular listing session where you're really trying to uh, push yourself in the something smarter.

But yeah no, I don't mind less in especially list in our show schedule time off instead of scheduling the time when you are listening, I always loses. I have just knows this, this a special the time we have many airports boxes because we lose them and then we find them again. I have an airports with me.

This case is probably at home. I I guess I just had one in. And so I have a single ipod with me without a case.

That's kind of story of my my relationship at airports. My wife bought me a true story, air tags. And I lose these things all the time, lost the air tags.

ironically, loves to resident of airtel ed for golf balls.

Are they too big?

People are always spent a time .

looking for their golf balls. Million dollar company. You right there? Yeah, yeah.

Find your golf not relevant for me and I. Where to find my golf ball? Bit on the Green, baby. But for you duffers out there, you know my real golf, because I used to term duffer, right?

We got next, next questions from stuck can knock. As a recovering perfectionist to use over berkman's term, i'm trying to take a just start approach to my work. Instead of thinking endlessly about the perfect way to get that done, I used to get hung g up on the right way to do IT. To the point where I struggle with implementation is our way to adopt your disciple letter idea to incremental, getting Better at frameworks like multi scale planning.

I love the details. This is a new party and nerd questions. I love perfectionism, berkman's, perfectionist, framework discipline, latter multiple ale planning, you're speaking my language, stuck connect. Um okay.

Here's the first key point I want to make as an important point to emphasize frameworks and systems for organizing your work and effort can make hard work, not hard. This was like the major trap of the productivity pron movement from the early two thousands. This was, we've talked on the show before.

This is where you got this marriage of sort of sophisticated time measure productivity techniques, mainly David islands, getting things done, which was this like very h complicated productivity technique and software. So we're starting to get powerful personal computer software. And you had these these two words of people who were in particularly like mac fishing autos and David Allan efficient autos, who said, wait a second, if we build custom software tools to implement complicated time managment, organza productivity systems, maybe we could make workless hard.

Like work itself could become like relatively automated. We're kind of just task will pop up automatically out of our kinka gtd set up, which is kind of execute small tasks, and then over time, stuff get done. That was the productivity of promise, that technology plus sufficiently complicated systems will make hard work as hard.

The reality and why that movement failed is that hard work is hard to do, and a productivity system can make IT on hard. It's hard to write that book chapter and nothing you can do makes you like more likely to want to do IT or make IT fun is still going to be hard. Writing code is hard.

Figure out that business trade is hard. Uh, having the the interview is just hard. Things are hard, alright.

So what do frames and systems and the right technologies do? I think the Better analogy is thinking about like fitness routines at the gym, right? You have a good training program, does not make the specific day or in the gym any easier.

You still have to go to the gym. Every one of those weights is heavy to lift and you still to convince yourself to like lift everyone of those weights. But over time, having a structure to how you do your exercise is going to make you stronger and you're going to get more results like so over time is Better, but IT doesn't make work not hard in the moment.

So so first of all, we have to change our expectation. No system is going to make hard work, not hard. That being said, okay, we've lowered the stakes then yeah I think it's perfectly find the discipline matter in the systems to use to organize your your task in time.

So start with something simple. I do some sort of basic organization and i'm that's consistent and then i'm gona latter that up like a slightly more complicated system that's fine anyway, are careful with that. So that's gonna you kind of ease and like full multi scale planning um that can be more consistent than just trying to jump into a full system.

I think that's absolutely fine, but do not have the expectation that the system have done right right gonna hard work, easy and don't go too far, like a good organizational system should require very little effort from you. IT should be automatic. IT should be born.

You barely even think about IT. If you're having a hard time, keep you up with the system. Maybe you later red up too fast, but also maybe is just too complicated, right? Again, it's like a gym routine.

If in the gym you have to spend five minutes before every set like clogged all this information to an APP, it's going to tell you what like you're now ideal like A I generated best next set to do and he wants to track with like diodes on your muscles exactly what the contraction is or whatever you're get. Stop working out. That's too complicated.

What you really want is a piece of paper and is like bench press times three, great. I know what to do. It's helping me be structured, but the system take very little my energy.

So yeah, if you want to lad a rup a little bit to a more complicated system, yeah but if you're having a hard time sticking with the system, keep in mind that system might be too complicated and keep your expectations reasonable. We want a structure effort over time to keep work sustainable and keep us working on the things that matter. But systems can transform the actual experience of doing our work. Alright.

what do we ve got next? Next questions from rebeca. I struggle with feeling like time has lost its usual structure, particularly due to force isolation, health chAllenges. This been going on before copy of many years now. How can I build a system that helps reiner me to a more traditional sense of time, while also allowing for the flexibility I need to do .

my current life conference? Or we're back first, but i'm impatient with you're talking about here a lot of people of experiences in the short term. So you have some sort of disruption to your Normal realm of life, like a health related disruption.

And you have this sense of like your term, you like your you're just oriented or unanchored like my days are just kind of passing by people in a hospital report this or if you're recovering from like a really bad flu or from a surgery or something, and IT really can be disoriented. The good news is when IT comes to enquiring ourselves to a sense of structure and meaning, there's incredible flexibility. There's no rule that says you have to be doing this many things.

There's no rule that says like structure and meaning won't work unless you have a certain type of temporal consistency like IT always has to be these things at these days. IT can be much more flexible than that. So you can have some anchors that like these are things that are important to me to do um and I have some flexibility.

About how I do them, like depending on what's going on that they are this or that, but I don't let them I don't take my focus off of them like I am going to connect to people that matter to me, no. And i'm going to do every single day something along these lines maybe even check IT off and like a metric track in place. Now what that means can vary on the day.

I can make the call on the day if i'm like feeling really bad that day, there's a healthy you going on IT really could be texting someone on to the hand. If i've having a good day, I want to go and see someone spend some time with somebody. Key is i'm anchor to this value and I do something to orses value every day.

Maybe there's like a professional creative project you're working on this important to you like I work on this, you every week or every day. I'm making progress on this serious progress IT can very day to day what that means. And maybe for the like, the next two weeks is like the most minimal thing.

I'm reading A A few pages or writing down one idea in the other days i'm doing more. But what you're anchoring to is like, I work on this thing is important to me everyday. Same thing with physical. I get this a lot. I hear about this a lot from people with um health issues that makes their physical capacity highly variable day to day.

And they will talk about the importance is still prioritizing that and again, just having inflexibility and what that means right? Mean you can imagine someone in their life who is exercises a lot, is really important to them, and then they get like hip surgery or is something like this right now, they're kind of laid up. They can't go do like a hard workout at the gym.

But what they can be anker on is, like in my state recovery, what can I do physically, that's going to be good for my recovery and kind of like the best I can do with my current circumstances. It's like that's what they're getting. They're anker out of.

So that's what I would say. And I think it's going to hold more generally for people. A lot of situations have the things that matter, these anchors in your life take action towards them, a classics, local therapy, have action towards things that matter.

And make these things that really matter, these relationships really matter, is a project i'm working on that really matter. I think this important, not arbitrary progress on them, anchor to them and then just be very flexible. And what that progress is depending on the state you're in, the general rule you want to apply probably is I made progress on this thing to the best of my capabilities given my specific capabilities today.

And that's the thing that you get pride out of um and that's how you find that's how you find structure, even when it's highly variable in terms of what specific activities you can actually do. When I do this, even when I get sick, i'm like, okay, I don't feel well that i'm going to walk around the block or i'm going to try to read a chapter. You like a symbol ally almost i'll a text. I'm going to come down and like see how my kid's day went at school like IT might be very, very minor what i'm doing with respective the things I really anchor to, but I just like completely adjust what that means. But I don't disannul from them what you got next.

We have our slow productivity corner.

I realize here that theme music.

It's a slow productivity corner as where we answer a question that is related to my most recent books, slow productivity, the lost art of accomptant without burnout. I now call IT. Just see my award winning book after one of the S A E B W S B A S A B E W B E S at one a major award.

I always get the according, also one of amazon's best business books of twenty twenty four. A lot of what we talk about on the show comes from that book. So if you haven't read IT yet, please do. Now I just see what is our slow productivity corner question of the week.

It's from delbert. I'm a full time journalist with Young kid. I'm also slated to write a book and I got to start up. I try to eliminate one of the projects, but can is our way for me to pursue these activities in parallel, or is our neurotic element here? And k, let's see how things line up approach in terms of possible books, deal, start, attraction, job progress.

Well, IT is a lot of things. Of course, i'm i'm speaking as like the king of doing too many jobs, seemingly simultaneous sleep. So I will tell you for my experience, raising kids, writing a book, doing geral some job and starting something new like a start up IT feels like too much.

You're going to have a hard time doing all of those at like a reasonable level. So if it's possible to sort of pause one of those, I would the word pause sometimes helps people so they don't want to think about quitting something. You're stop in something.

If you can't, i'm going to say lean into the slow productivity principle of work at a natural pace IT. Just slow down th Epace a t w hich y ou e xpect t o m ake p rogressive t o t hese t hings, double the amount of time you're going to spend on your book. We kind of key in on these things sometimes of like, in theory, I could have this book done in eight months.

In fact, my publisher would be happy if I got this book down in eight months. My friend over there got their booked one in eight months. So I have to get this done in eight months.

But if you say, look, I have these other things going on, it's going to be sixteen months. Then grammer, grammer, grammer people move on their lives. And now you've given yourself the the ability to go slower takes steady progress, but slower progress you're guiding to startup, sure.

But maybe you end up having to like more limit or the start up is gna start much slower. We're going to just really try to get just this one product and just do a few clients, and we're going to take two years instead of one to get this thing up and running. The number of articles are running as and my journalist is like gonna fewer than I was doing before.

Um I during this period, I can't volunteer for all the things for my kids. I to say i'm in this busy so i'm saying notice on these volunteer things and later, but i'm less busy, all volunteer for more, right? So you can just slow things down.

You don't have to do everything at what would be the theoretical maximum pace. That is a strategy a lot of people use as a strategy I use. I take time for things also.

I'm often interleaving things so you should think about, I told you, like maybe the POS a couple of things. So you finish something, then bring something else back. There's something called the illusion of concurrency that you see often when you look at the records of what seemed to be a highly accomplish people.

And that's where you, uh, you do temporal collapse. You see this long list of things that people did, and you collapse your understanding other execution, how you imagine they were done. You collapse the time you imagine them all being done.

At the same time, I am often subjected to the illusion cy of concurrency. There's like various things of other in a books. I have um a bunch of like papers of written in a bunch of locations, right? I've written all these articles for the new yorker of the podcast.

People see that just written next to each other, and they do temporal collapse. And imagine someone doing all that stuff at the same time, like bow. That would be impossible.

You must like super be hussein in or something like that. But the point is, I don't do IT all the same time i'm going to writing a book. Maybe i'm not working on other things.

I take years off in between books from focusing on this. And when i'm publishing publishing five papers year to get ten year, that was kind of like the main professional thing I was doing. I wash in podcasts I I was writing for the new york ker. Um I had like one book in that whole period that I wrote, and I took my time on that book.

Like slowing down on things in their leaving between things in the moment you IT feels like hopelessly like hopeless level of impedance like, oh my god, i'm going so slow but you zoom out the ten years like, well, there's that startup you did in a booky road and you have your journalism who are going well and and we're like the room parent for your kid school and and IT adds a up to a lot in the end. So I goes, if you have to do these, things can currently slow down. And whether you are slow down or not, also pause, things be more sequent do this and didn't do that.

These are short, but life is long. So there's a lot that can add up. What you want to avoid is like, I want to do each of these things at the theoretical maximum.

Little I can be doing IT if I was doing IT by itself, and I wanted reach that little for all the things i'm doing, and i'm going doing all the same time, because this other persons had done all these things they must have done. I could do IT too. But you're forgetting, they did that over five years, and they did this thing before they did that thing, and this took much longer than you thought.

So slow down and if possible, be a little bit more sequential and a little bit less concurrent. Suggest that illusion of concurrency is something I studied way back with when I was writing in student books, I was set in route scholars. And the phrase I had for her back then was the paradox of the relaxed road scholar.

I interviewed all these road scholar from my first book, not stressed out grinds. Some of them are, but a lot of them were. There's a paradox like so if they're so accomplished, why aren't like jittery I haven't slept in three years type of locked in yeah it's because it's like, oh, they tend to aggregate accomplishments.

I did this. I did that and then I kind of took my time on this. And over time, the list looks long in the way of the illusion of concurrency. And we imagine someone doing all those things at the same time. But people are less concurrent than than you than you really imagine how many books you .

think you will have written by the time you're like seventy five?

I don't know. Um let me think here. I started writing when I see my first book came out when I was about twenty two and forty two. So it's like four year a decade I going to write four books a year.

Forget slowing down, i'm going to write for king currently because i'm going to disappear and transform myself and i'm going to live in the gym and i'm going to crush preacher curls while dictating. Here's going to do. I'm going to dictate multiple books at the same time and i'm going to have voice recognition softer and then AI is going to fill IT out.

I'm crush, preach curls and right for books here, we awesome. So I guess at that pace though, okay, thirty years from now, three decades, I don't know, maybe in another twelve to fifteen books, if I keep writing books, we will see. I like writing book though.

So my favorite I do, you got to call this week we do. I will hear IT. Hi kl. I'm Sarah, an associate professor at the university of ottawa.

I've been the director of graduate studies for my department for the past three years, and I teach many of your deeper and slow productivity techniques to my M A N PHD students, which they have found incredibly helpful. So thank you. But now I have a productivity question of my own.

How should I time block on sebastian? I'm about to start a full year sabbatical and want to make significant progress on my research and writing. I'm starting a new book project and also preparing my application for full professor.

While I know how to time block when I macks ed out on service and teaching, and just not sure how to organize what feels like vast expenses of time to dedicate to my writing, I also have busy school age kids, and so i'll need a clear shutdown complete ritual every day at four P M. When the after school activities start, any advice would be much appreciated. thanks.

Well, Sarah, um first fly, I can completely understand your situation. I've been a director graduate studies before. I'm currently the director of undergraduate studies for the department and just gave a talk about the ebola to our grad students.

So we ve got some concurrency here. I here's the key for sabha. I've done one or two sabbatical to this.

I once abbatial i'm up for a second sabbath ticals um holding off on IT for now um but my summers ers are kind of like sabbaticals every year because I don't teach or do research on the summer. Don't take summer salary. Here's what i've learned.

You have kind of two goals for this time when you want to make really good creative progress on your writing. So you have a writing prog checks like a book or something, and your full application, which I did last year. So again, like sir, we're really linked tear in our timelines.

That is like another writing project as well. You wants to make good create a progress on those much more progress than you would Normally make during a Normal school year. But you also want to a rep relaxation and flexibility and recharging, right? Like that's a key part of sabbatical.

So how do you do this? Here's what I do in my summer, and i'm going to suggest you consider this fears abdal. Instead of time blocking, use an aggressive scheduling. So i've talked about on the show before the idea of like a weekly scheduled in template or it's like a general set of rules for what you do on different days of the week.

And i'm going to give you my exact weekly schedule template I used in the summer because I could be perfect for you or you could use this as the foundation for evolving your own. So my schedule template was out monday through friday. First thing I do is right, right? So I start my day with writing on monday and friday.

I'll take that riding until after lunch, do a very quick admin block. Hey, what's going on with emails or anything I need to do? And then shut down my work.

Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, I write to lunch. I leave like ninety minutes after that for meetings and phone calls and the type of interact with other people that you still even have to do during sabbatical. I might have more of this. My life I knew, because I my writing career as well, follow by adman block and shut down before schools out like that can be a scheduling temper, right? You don't really need the time block as you know what to do.

You get the kids to school, you write monday on fridays, you write longer to someone day thursday, you don't write quite as long and you have time there for like meetings and stuff you have to do you know when your day is done, do a clear shut down and then is all just like family household stuff, right? You don't even really need the time block. That's more or less what I do in the summer.

The one addition being on one of those days we have in the afternoon the podcast recording, right? Just do something like that and that's going to make sure that you're making daily progress on writing at the best time. IT also gives you like I like that in plate because IT gives you freedom from meetings friday all the way through monday if you add the weekend and that's really nice going to get the thursday you like.

I ve been enough to look at my calendar for professional stuff until you get to tuesday. That's like, really nice. I really recommend that IT still keeps you doing just enough admin that you don't fall off the radar stuff that's important, and you can still have meetings and stuff like that.

I learned this lesson. You have to have time poltice de for meetings or what's gone to happen is you're going to convince yourself all i'm going to do is right. And then when the inevitable meetings come up, you see each of them is like a failure or a problem and that psychologically not good. So just put a side time for my other peace of advice after you shut down. This is a cool time to have a lot of like household personal projects you're working on, like leaning into stuff around the house with your kids.

And we're going to we're going to like completely renovate this room, or we're going to like transform this or we're going to learn this new thing or we're going to go see all these shows or whatever, like it's easily tell yourself what you want because work is so exhausted till you get your spot, al, just to be able to kick your feet up and and not have to do anything in the evenings and afternoons. But actually humans like to do things, especially for stuff that is self directed with no deadline in your in charge of, and you like IT. So be really busy with your non work stuff because it's kind of fun.

I've learned out of my syntactically at my summer that helps to have but use a weekly scheduling template. Maybe start with mine. And if that doesn't work, you can adjust IT as fit, but you don't even need the time blocks eries about ticket.

You have this like automatic schedule. You do, you love you, you want to think about IT and you'll get a lot of writing dumb. And I can't wait my next article.

When was your .

last one? IT was when josh was born. So that would have been six years ago.

Oh, so last year you just had a semester off.

Was that IT? yeah. yeah. So sabbatical typically is six years. Six years of Normal semesters earns you as a article which is the year which is well is so depends, right? Depends on the program like George town does what a lot of places do, which is IT can be half a year, can be one semester full pay or IT can be a full academic year, two semesters at half pay a the idea there being like if you want to take a full years of article, it's typically because you working on a project you might have funding for.

K I have a grant from the national um no institute of health to work on this thing and and that's gonna ver my salary. A lot of computer scientists will take a full your sabbath ticket and kind of work is a research and residence set, like google or something. And like google will pay the other half of their salary.

I can just if i'm working on a book, I will use like the book advance to fill in the other half of the salary. So so you know kind of depends on on places um but this is that would makes sense because I when my Young gust was born, I was on saturday he sex and i'm due for sartin next year that I make sense. I made my six year, but i'm not take IT next year because i've all stuff i'm doing for the university that i'm kind of seen through.

So i'm take a little bit more time before you take IT. But man, when I get there's a bacally, i'm going to be coming in here. I can be like a tank top. I'm going to be like rushing a beer, going of sunglasses on on my legs up. Be some last podcast to .

move the studio next to a jim.

be right next to gaming and a crush IT preacher curls while I podcast, well, I dictate tes so my podcast will also be, uh, me dictating, just me dictating chapters one, my four books and will just multitask. Baby can be awesome. Russian, alright, let's see here.

We ve got a case study this week, a case study with visuals. yes. Uh so cases were people write in to Jesse, Jessie, a cl new tocom to give their case studies of using the type of advice we talk about here on the show in their own life.

And today's case studies from zac who sent some visual. So those who are watching, so just listening to pull some itself on the screen, he was access. I am twenty nine and have a full time job as a church media specialist.

The job is mostly graphic design work and people asking me to blast out announcement on social media. It's a good job. For the past decade, my creative pursuit has been music, primarily in the pop Rogero. After most of that time writing, recording and performing in a couple of bands, I recently made the decision to start a new chapter as a solo artist. Starting in late twenty twenty three, I began the process of self recording my first album and IT was only possible because of deep work.

My wife and I would determine which evenings would be good for recording, and I would head out after dinner on those days to record as much as I could of whichever instrument I was tracking at the time. I didn't always feel excited and energies to start, but the work always got done. Some of those sessions got cancelled, erupted, but the minutes added up.

I recorded a total of sixteen songs over nearly a year, ten of which officially made the album, which is currently in the mixing face. The majority of recording for the album was completed in a ten foot by twenty foot indoor storage unit that was a short drive through town. Other than always being too hot or too cold, IT serve me well as a studio space.

During that time, my wife and I were blessed to be able to build a home, as well as a sixteen by sixteen standalone shed that my father and our names studio c, inspired by my productive times in the storage unit and by hearing about the concept of the riding shut on the podcast, I decided to go all in on setting up the studio shed in a way that I am hoping will Spark creativity and productivity. The studio is just for creative work. IT contains every instrument and piece of equipment I own, as well as some key books from the life, my library, my grandfather's cw on a typewriter, cozy Brown with the furniture and other key items to make an interesting environment.

The desk was made from a massive hickery tree that was in the middle of our property before the build. I even ordered some studios coasters. All of this makes the studios feel very official in IT still holds unique charm of a riding shed or small cabin.

In addition, because Billy materials aren't cheap, the whole thing feels as wide as a high end lab. No book, if you don't know, that reference is from slow productivity. Let's see some pictures before we get into this upon the screen.

Now for those who are watching, as the storage said, a storage unit in which he recorded the first album. So what we see here is its narrow. You can see on the side that this is like crowded metal.

So this is like a storage unit. There's I guess is they're not even carpet on the ground and that must be echoing in there. There's a couch in some guitars.

See some strategy sters. I appreciate that there's a pan on there, some drums, right? So this is a non condition space in which he would go to record.

Now i'm going to to shoot over to the shed with that looks nice. So here's an exterior shot of the shed. It's like a nice looking, like mini house with great siding.

Look inside the shed, very nice space, good hardwood floors. We see a many split units, so we got heating and got conditioning. And here IT is all IT out.

Create jussi grandmother chairs, hardwood floors, cool stuff up on the walls, a nice desk, some specific studio. Z paraffinic, including this logo. See, well, there's my books.

Are this places awesome? There's a studios. C there's a chronic pe rider in the corner.

IT looks like something like, or maybe remarkable, he has down there. Zack is speaking my language. This is awesome, zack.

right? So a couple of things to say about this. one. We see in this case, study the slow productivity principle of working at a natural pace. We just talked about this earlier as well.

And one of our questions doing work consistently, good work consistently. Sometimes you feel like that, sometimes I don't adds up, and in the end you really care how quickly IT adds up, right? That wanted to record an album. Now you might say, if I want to cord an album, I have to be able to spend a month and go to expense of recording studio and just do IT.

And because I don't have access to a month to do this, and I don't have access to expansive recording, you do, I can, but that use a slow productivity approach of, like, well, why don't I just record some nights each week? I have a space is not perfect, but it's a space I only dedicated that and i'll record what I can record. IT might just be laid down a base track that I threw out the next time, and some of these will be cancelled.

Yes, were busy, something comes up and not feeling well, but i'll just keep coming back relentless lesly couple nights of vehicle and make time. And I took a year, but whole of them came out of IT. So that's number one i'm going to take out of the story.

Number two is the power of spaces having a space to go, even if IT wasn't a great space with a storage unit, helped to make that progress. This is a space of dedicated to work. And you take that serious ly, I love in that once he had the resources, one of the things he invested in was a really nice space for creativity.

We undervalue space. The guy had the deep work. Hq, probably don't need you, right? I could record this podcast at home.

I could record IT and just like a small office, but it's like a fantastic investment. I come here to write. I come here to work.

I've got my library here. Um we had the studio like the nice studio here. It's a place that just changes my mind set to get away from IT. The shed that's act built is fantastic.

He's got studios custom artwork there and big weather chairs that the total amount is are like creativity and peace and just energy that's going to inject into his life is a fantastic investment. So we under under values space, we feel like I say so perfect investment. But it's often not cool spaces really have cool effects.

So was happy to see those pictures back and happy here, your stories. So our two lessons are work at a natural pace and space matters build cool spaces. More people should build cool spaces.

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There is a kind of a cool list of the various people who use element U. S. olympia's. Professional athletes, including bradlee, bill, uh, many different special forces teams, health experts all use them. And always makes me wonder, I wonder if, like the navy seals of professional athletes, when they're doing their ads for elements, say, like computer scientist, technology theorist, use IT IT somehow feels like less compelling. Have to like cow newport, who has written mini articles for the new yorker about the impact of technology and society, uses element that somehow is probably not compelling to their audiences, in the way that me saying the braddy bill uses element is compelling to our audience.

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Just just to our final segment. I don't know if I should call this final segment tech corner or cow reacts. These are like the two things I Normally do in the segment.

Either I react to something in the news or I explain something about technology with my nerd computer science head on this this kind of a mixed of both. I do have an article to bring up, but it's from four years ago. So it's not like IT is uh, timely in that sense.

But there is a technology issue that I wanted just briefly dive into because it's important to know about, and I have a sort of a rogue point to add to the discussion. So the particular technology issue I wanted talk about is so called section to thirty. And I have an article appears i'm going to use to help explain IT.

This is an article from pro market, the journal pro market. I said an article in process not long go about age structures on social media um this is an article written by tim woo about section to thirty. It's up here. I can explain her because tim is great. And he does a good job explaining that is not that this is a contemporary article or it's if you're unfamiliar with its section to thirty refers to section to thirty of the one hundred and ninety six communications decency act IT grants in immunity, the platforms that hosts the content of others.

Critically, what IT says is even if you are moderating on your digital site, even if you're moderating contents so you are making decisions about what's on there or not, you're still not liable for what this content says, right? So so what this was trying to address back in the day was, uh, IT was sort of agreed honor seemed kind of like obvious that if you were just like purely a hosting platform, like i'm an internet service provider like i'm not responsible for what people are doing on the internet through me but didn't we began to get services that hosted information so you had like protect and copy, serve and then A O well and they are worried like, okay, but we're actually making decisions here. Like if you come on here and um post a bunch of credit numbers, we're going to take that down.

Are we going to be treated like newspapers? Or can we still have treat like we're just like an internet service provider and we're not responsible for anything that was on there? Um this clarified that and IT is now widely and strongly embraced in particular by something that did not exist back in, which is a social media platform.

So it's sort of like the core of the legal immunity that social media platforms have for issuing them um about stuff is under now this doesn't actually stop all of these lawsuits. There has been especially more recently, lawsuits aimed at social media companies. There has been some, for example, aimed at meta about h one of them i've from a couple years ago i've written some about was about you helped exacerbate your content, exacerbated a eating disorder for like our child, and you should be responsible.

There's another lawsuit about our child committed suicide and we think in part because of what they're exposed to on your platform. And this is sort of your fault. So there are some lawsuits, but there would would be a lot more safe for section to thirty right today.

There's a lot of discussions today about technology regulation, a lot of fights, a lot of agreement as well. Section to thirty reforming is one of these things is on the table. Now IT turns out both the political left and the political right here in amErica have some interest in reforming two thirty or getting rid of section to thirty altogether.

Donald trump has talked about this as well recently. I think the bad administrations talked him about IT. But here's the thing, and this is what's point IT down this article.

They have different reasons for wanting to do the same action, right? So tim woo in this article summarizes how the left and the right think about the issue is section to thirty. So here's what the left says, according to him, woo, we have a huge problem with fascist, this information and propaganda.

And the platforms are a big part of IT because they bear no responsibility for what appears on their platforms. So according to time, the left wants to remove section to thirty reforms so that you can hold platforms responsible for this cortical. Bad information are allowing to be on the platform.

The right has a different reason. So here is tim woo summarizing the right argument. The platforms are grossly biased against conservative speech, and they should only have community if they don't sensor anyone.

So what the right is upset about is especially like in the this nineteen, nineteen, two thousand and thousand and two thousand and twenty, two thousand and fifteen, two thousand and twenty, there was this period in which there was um heavy control of of the information, the moderation. And conservatives felt like things that are mainstream conservative points would be would be censored, but not even like relatively extreme points from the left. They said, this is because these companies are based in very blue states and the employees are just proportionally blue. And this is not just moderating unsafe information, but it's like bias against conservative.

So they kind of have this sense that and maybe somehow you can uh modify two thirty, they kind of want to modify not not um remove IT in such a way that it's like if you are censoring us that if he feels you're sensory conservatives, it's like this time bomb two thirty disapearance you going to be suit about everything but if you don't sincere us, then like you're still going to be protected whether the left says like if we could issue, then we could stop you from publishing bad stuff so they both want reform to thirty, but for different reasons right? So tim's argument here is that both of them are misguided, both the left in the right because reforming to removing two thirties, not a couple. There are these goals but I think is interesting um so he says, for example, yes, no one can deny that facebook and twitter not the main four.

Chand had been the breeding ground for lots of crazy disinformation propaganda. But as ten points out, so has newsmax bread bar, o and I, the gateway pundit and dozens of other sights and broadcasters that are not subjected to thirty protection because they are not digital information platforms. So in other words, he's saying getting rid of that protection is not going to, in some sense, make IT possible free to stop the information.

Don't like because there's plenty of new sources. They don't have that protection and you don't like the things they are saying. So he says the liberals have a fantasy that potential civil liability would finally force platform to do more about this information on their sites to take responsibility.

A tim who is skeptical to that, what I actually work, all right, then shifting to a the right wing, he says the right wing fantasies about two thirty repeal, or even more off base for one thing without section two thirty community. And well, this is going to date this, a figure like that. Trump IT almost certainly be kicked off twitter because he costly to famous people.

He was kicked off soon after that. But but his argument was, you would have the opposite effect that if they didn't like things that conservative figures were saying, they would actually be more likely to just kick the figures completely off because they don't want to be suit about the bad things. They say they'll be more worried about that then you know being sued for for kick in the office.

You could get the opposite, uh you could get the opposite um result um this basically would be too expensive to keep anyone controversial around because of all the lawsuits. Anyone controversial the ginerally. So he is like, no know what you're going to get is massive censorship and then these platforms are just going to be people sharing like pie recipes. Um as for a racing anti concerted bias repeal, resection to thirty would have no obvious ous effect on that at all.

The decisions to remove things like false claims of election fraud are actually decisions of the platforms, decisions for which they already be reliability of any uh zero effect, right? So basis is like i'm looking at this from a lawyer's perspective, neither of these fantasies is going to be successful for removing to thirty or I want to introduce a third reason. Uh, not a lot of people are pushing this reason, but it's interesting to me.

I call this the the poison pills strategy. What's intriguing about something like section to thirty reform is not the idea that is gonna these global conversation platforms Better, but that IT might make them financially unviable. That's interesting to me.

I am interested and nothing I wanted do this if I was in charge of the ftc tomorrow, but I am interested in this idea of poison pillar regulation, that regulation that is invented to basically, say, certain forms of communication which have been negative, just sort of become kind of financially and viable. Better ones will happen before. I know tinkering and innovation like this is dangerous. Tinkerin the markets is like this is dangerous.

But in this particular case, the argument I made in the deep dive today and I made in my writing before, is that global conversation platforms, trying to build a platform like twitter slash x in with six hundred million people are trying to talk on the same platform, is not in transit to the internet, is not in transit to expression, is not in transit to free speech IT is a corporate play to try to maximize profits that doesn't work well IT plays poorly with humans IT is an aspect of the digital ah the digital environment in which we are surrounded of the modern digital environment that creates tons of disorders. The internet does not need six hundred million people on the same particular internet sider APP to give you all the benefits of the internet promises. But smaller new organizations, people publishing their own information accessible to anyone.

They stand by small groups that are self created by community that actually has stakes in what each other has to say. Plus, easy accessibility of information is published in ways for people stand by, like newspapers, for example. All of this is fantastics of the internet.

Does the problem is the mobile revolution and the shift of our experienced the internet to our phones and the domination of mobile social media apps on our phones worked a lot of people's brains in the thinking that these small number of apps that exist on our phone and have these massive global conversation platforms are somehow anonymous with the internet, but they're not. And so if something is up being a poison pill to these hype, global conversation platforms would probably be the medicine that the internet needs. We do not need these for the internet to be successful.

So i'm always secretly hoping with some of these regulations that they are accidentally going to be a poison pill that suddenly makes the business model for something like instagram, mar tiktok no longer make a lot of sense. I think a smaller, weirder, more esoteric hearing is distributed. More individual in large corporate internet is a good one.

And so there's the poison pale interpretation in section to thirty reform. I don't think many people share that, but i'm going to throw that into the conversation as long as we're going to keep out. And I think it's another interesting way to think about what might be happening with these particular technological reforms. Alright, you say there we go, that's our policy. Take policy corner .

and the poison pills from the matrix.

Um no IT actually comes from uh, corporate takeover vers, right? So in the eighties for corporate raters, you know what, borough, a tone of money, and then use that to buy enough stock in a company to take control of IT, right? So you like corporate raters in the eighties really have these brands whose market capitalization was less than like how much money, even just the stuff they owned is worth, right?

Like we have one hundred million dollars for the assets and, uh, our stock, the full market capital of our stock is ninety million dollars. So what you could do is, like, i'm onna borrow. And ninety million dollars buy all the stock and then sell all the stuff from the company and make a two million dollar profit. So what boards started doing, and a business people out here are going to see, you ve got this wrong.

But my understanding is what board started doing is they change the bylaws of their companies that have these rules and IT to basically said things like if a single person owns more than this much of the stock um like all our employees have to be cancelled or are pulled and think the engines of our planes, they all employees and pills, things would go into effect that makes the company like not valuable okay yeah if like someone knows fifty one percent of our stock, then like we're going to burn all the printing Prices that so they would put these poisons and pillow provisions into their I think that works from anyway SE. That's all the time we have for today. Think you're for listening with back next week with another epsom and and tell them as always, they deep.

I was called here one more thing before you go. If you like the deep questions podcast, you will love my email newsletter, which you can sign up for at town. New port not come. Each week I sent out a new sa about the theory or practice of living deeply. I've been riding this newsletters since two thousand and seven, and over seventy thousand and 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 for dot com, and get some deep wisdom delivered to your inbox each week.