Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with cal
newport he's a friend
and someone who's writing like his book
deep work for example
has guided how i strive to approach
productivity and life in general
he doesn't use social media and in his
book digital minimalism
he encourages people to find the right
amount of social media usage
that provides value and joy he has a new
book out
called a world without email where he
argues brilliantly i would say
that email is destroying productivity in
companies
and in our lives and very importantly
he offers solutions he is a computer
scientist
at georgetown university who practices
what he preaches
to do theoretical computer science at
the level that he does it
you really have to live a focused life
that minimizes distractions and
maximizes
hours of deep work lastly he's a host
of an amazing podcast called deep
questions
that i highly recommend for anyone who
wants to improve
their productive life quick mention of
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click the sponsor links to get a
discount and to support this podcast
as a side note let me say that deep work
or long periods of deep
focused thinking have been something
i've been chasing more and more over the
past few years
deep work is hard but is ultimately the
thing that makes life so
damn amazing the ability to create
things
you're passionate about in a flow state
where the distractions of the world just
fade away
social media yes reading the comments
yes i still read the comments is a
source of joy for me
in strict moderation too much takes away
the focused mind
and too little at least i think takes
away
all of the fun we need both the focus
and the fun if you enjoy this thing
subscribe on youtube
or view it on apple podcast follow on
spotify
support on patreon or connect with me on
twitter
at lex friedman if you could only figure
out how to spell that
and now here's my conversation with cal
newport what is deep work
let's start with a big question so i
mean
it's my term for when you're focusing
without distraction
on a cognitively demanding task which
is something we've all done but we had
never really given it a name
necessarily that was separate from other
type of work and so
i gave it a name and said let's compare
that to other types of efforts you might
do
while you're working and see that the
deep work efforts actually have
a huge benefit that we might be
underestimating what does it mean to
to work deeply on something you know i
had been calling it
hard focus in my writing uh before that
well so the context you would understand
i was in the theory group in csail at
mit right so i was surrounded at the
time when i was coming up with these
ideas
by these professional theoreticians and
that's like a murderer's row
of thinkers there right i mean it's like
turing award touring award macarthur
tauren ward i mean
you know the crew right theoretical
computer science theoretical computer
science yeah
yeah so so i'm in the theory group right
doing theoretical computer science
uh and i publish a book so you know so i
was in this milieu where i was being
exposed to people
uh where focus was their tier one skill
like that's what you would talk about
right like
how how intensely i can focus that was
the the key skill
it's like your 4 40 time or something if
you were an athlete right
so so this is something that people are
actually the the the theory folks
are thinking about oh yeah really like
they're openly discussing like how do
you focus i mean i don't know if they
would
you know quantify it but but focus was
the tier one skill
so you you would come in here would be a
typical day you'd come in
uh and eric domain would be sitting in
front of a white board yeah right with a
whole group of visitors
who had come to work with them and maybe
that projected like a grid on there
because they're working on some
graph theory problem you go to lunch you
go to the gym
you come back they're sitting there
staring at the same
same white board right like that's the
tier one skill this is the difference
between different disciplines like i
i often feel for many reasons like a
fraud
but i definitely feel like a fraud when
i hang out with like either
mathematicians or physicists
it's like it feels like they're doing
the legit work
because when you talk closer in computer
science you get to programming
or like machine learning like the the
the experimental machine learning or
like
just the engineering version of it it
it's it feels like you're
gone so far away from what's required to
solve something fundamental about this
universe it feels like you're just like
cheating your way into like some kind of
trick to figure out how to solve a
problem in this one particular case yeah
that's how it feels
right and it's uh i'd be interested
to hear what you think about that
because um programming doesn't always
feel
like you need to think deeply to
work deeply but sometimes it does so
it's a weird dance
for sure code does right i mean
especially if you're coming up with
original
algorithmic designs i think it's a great
example of deep work
i mean yeah the the hardcore
theoreticians they push it to an extreme
i mean i i think it's like
knowing that athletic endeavor is good
and then
hanging out with a olympic athlete like
oh i see that's what it is
now for the grad students like me were
not anywhere near that level but the
faculty
the faculty in that group these were the
cognitive
olympic athletes but coding i think is a
classic example of deep work because
i got this problem i want to solve i
have all of these tools
and i have to combine them somehow
creatively and on the fly but but so
basically i had been exposed to that
so i was used to this notion when i was
in grad school and i was writing my blog
i'd write about hard focus
you know that was a term i used then i
published this book
so good they can't ignore you which came
out in 2012 so like right as i began as
a professor
and that book had this notion of skill
being really important for career
satisfaction that
it's not just following your passion you
have to actually really get good at
something and then you use that skills
as leverage and there's this big
follow-up question to that book of okay
well how do i get really good at this
yeah and then i look back to my grad
school experience i was like huh
there's this focus thing that we used to
do i wonder how
generally applicable that is into the
knowledge sector and so as i started
thinking about it
it became clear there's this interesting
storyline that emerged that okay
actually undistracted concentration is
not just important for
esoteric theoreticians it's important
here it's important here and so forth
here
and that involved into the uh the deep
work hypothesis which is
across the whole knowledge work sector
focus is very important and we've
accidentally created circumstances where
we just don't do a lot of it so focus is
the sort of prerequisite for basically
uh you say knowledge work but
basically any kind of skill acquisition
any kind of major effort in this world
can we break that apart a little bit
yeah so
so a key a key aspect of focus is not
just that you're
you're concentrating hard on something
but you do it without distraction
so a big theme of my work is that
context shifting
kills the human capacity to think so if
i if i change what i'm paying attention
to to something different
really even if it's brief and then try
to bring it back to the main thing i'm
doing
that causes a huge cognitive pile up to
make it very hard to think clearly
so even if you think okay look i'm
writing this code or i'm writing this
essay and i'm not multitasking and all
my windows are closed and i have no
notifications on but every five or six
minutes you quickly check
like an inbox or your phone that
initiates a contact shift in your brain
right we're gonna start to suppress some
neural networks we're gonna try to
amplify some others
it's a pretty complicated process
actually there's a sort of neurological
cascade that happens
you rip yourself away from that halfway
through and go back to what you're doing
and i was trying to switch back to the
original thing even though it's also in
your brain's in the process of switching
to these emails and trying to understand
those contexts
and as a result your ability to think
clearly just goes really down
and it's fatiguing too i mean you do
this long enough you get midday and
you're like okay i can't
i can't think anymore you've exhausted
yourself is there some kind of
um perfect number of minutes
would you say so we're talking about
focusing
on a particular task for you know
one minute five minutes 10 minutes 30
minutes is it possible to kind of
context switch while maintaining deep
focus
you know every 20 minutes or so so if
you're thinking of like
this again maybe it's a selfish kind of
perspective but if you think about
programming
you know you're focused on a particular
design of a little bit maybe a small
scale on a particular function
or a large scale on a on a system
and then the shift to focus happens like
this
which is like wait a minute is there a
library that can achieve this little
task or something like that
and then you have to look it up this is
the danger zone
you go to the internets yeah and and so
you have to
now you it is a kind of contact switch
because as opposed to thinking about the
particular problem
you now have switch thinking about like
uh consuming and integrating knowledge
that's out there
that can plug into your solution to a
particular problem it definitely feels
like a contact switch
but is that is that a really bad thing
to do so should you be setting it aside
always
and really trying to as much as possible
go deep
and stay there for like a really long
period of time
well i mean i think if you're looking up
a library that's relevant to what you're
doing
that's probably okay and i don't know
that i would count that as a full
context shift because
the semantic networks involved are
relatively similar right
you're thinking about this type of
solution you're thinking about coding
you're thinking about this type of
functions
where you're really going to get hit is
if you switch your context to something
that's
different and if there's unresolved
obligations so really the worst possible
thing you could do would be to look at
like an email inbox
because here's 20 emails i can't answer
most of these right now they're
completely different
like the context of these emails like
okay there's a grant funding issue or
something like this is very different
than the coding i'm doing
and i'm leaving it unresolved so it's
like someone needs something from me
and i'm gonna try to pull my attention
back the second worst would be something
that's emotionally arousing
so if you're like let me just glance
over at twitter i'm sure it's nice and
calm and peaceful over there right
that could be devastating because you're
going to expose yourself to something
that's emotionally arousing
that's going to completely mess up the
cognitive platform there and then when
you come back to okay let me try to code
again
it's really difficult this is both the
information and the emotion
yeah both both can be killers if what
you're trying to do
so i would recommend at least an hour at
a time because it could take up to 20
minutes
to completely clear out the residue from
whatever it was you were thinking about
before
so if you're coding for 30 minutes you
might only be getting 10 or 15 minutes
of actual
sort of peak lex going on there right so
an hour at least you get a good 40 45
minutes plus i'm partial to 90 minutes
that's a really good
a really good chunk we can get a lot
done but just before you get exhausted
you can sort of
pull back a little bit yeah and now one
of the beautiful and
you know people can read about in your
book deep work
but and i know this has been out for a
long time and people are probably
familiar with many other concepts but
it's still pretty profound it has stayed
with me for a long time
uh there's something about adding the
terms to it
that actually solidifies the concepts
like words matter
it's pretty cool and uh just for me
sort of as a comment there's
uh it's a struggle and it's very
difficult
to uh maintain focus for prolonged
period of time
but the days on which i'm able to
accomplish
several hours of that kind of work
i'm happy so forget being productive and
all that yeah i'm just satisfied
with my life i'm i feel i feel fulfilled
it's like joyful and then i i can be i'm
less of a dick to other people in my
life afterwards
it's a it's a beautiful thing and there
there
i find the opposite when i don't do that
kind of thing i'm much more irritable
like i feel like i didn't accomplish
anything and there's the stress that
then
the negative emotion builds up to where
you're no longer able to sort of
uh enjoy the lot of this amazing life so
so in that sense deep work has been a
source of a lot of happiness i'd love to
ask you
how do you again you cover this in the
book but how do you integrate
deep work into your life what are
different scheduling strategies
that you would recommend just at a high
level yeah what are different ideas
there
well i mean i'm a big fan of time
blocking right so
if you're facing your workday don't
allow
like your inbox or to-do list to sort of
drive you don't just come into your day
and think what do i want to do next
yes i mean i'm a big plan of saying
here's the time here's the time
available
let me make a plan for it all right so i
have a meeting here of an appointment
here
here's what's left what do i actually
want to do with it so in this half hour
i'm going to work on this
for this 90 minute block i'm going to
work on that and during this hour i'm
going to try to fit this in and then
actually have this half hour gap between
two meetings so why don't i take
advantage of that to go run five errands
i can kind of batch those together
but blocking out in advance this is what
i want to do with the time available
i mean i find that's much more effective
now once you're doing this once you're
in a discipline of time blocking
it's much easier to actually see this is
where i want for example to deep work
and i can get a handle on the other
things that need to happen and find
better places to
fit them so i can prioritize this and
you're going to get a lot more of that
done
than if it's just going through your day
and saying what's next i schedule every
single day
kind of thing so as i try to in the
morning to try to uh
have a plan yeah so you know i do
quarterly weekly daily planning
so at the semester or quarterly level i
have a big picture
vision for what i'm trying to get done
you know during the fall let's say or
during the winter
like i want to these are there's a
deadline coming out for academic papers
at the end of the season here's what i'm
working on
i want to have this many chapters done
of a book something like this like you
have the
the big picture vision of what you want
to get done then weekly
you look at that and then you look at
your week and you put together a plan
for like okay what am i going to
what's my week going to look like what
do i need to do how am i going to make
progress on these things maybe
maybe i need to do an hour every morning
or i see that monday is my only really
empty day so that's going to be the day
that i really need to nail on writing or
something like this
and then every day you look at your
weekly plan
and still only block off the actual
hours so you do that that three scales
the
the quarterly down to weekly down to
daily and we're talking about actual
times of day
versus so the alternative is
what i end up doing a lot i'm not sure
it's the best way to do it is uh
uh scheduling the duration of time
this is this is called the luxury when
you don't have any meetings i'm like
religiously
don't do meetings all other academics
are jealous of you by the way yeah
i know no zoo meetings uh
i i find those are that's one of the
worst tragedies
uh tragedies of the pandemic is both the
opportunity to what okay the positive
thing
is to have more time with your family
you know sort of reconnect in many ways
and
that that's really interesting uh be
able to
remotely sort of not waste time on
travel and all those kinds of things the
negative
is actually both those things are also
sources of the negative uh
but the negative is like it seems like
people have multiplied the number of
meetings because they're so easy to
schedule
and there's nothing more draining
to me intellectually philosophically
just my spirit is destroyed
by even a 10-minute zoom meeting like
what are we doing here
what's the meaning of life yeah i have
every zoom meeting is i have an
existential crisis so kierkegaard with
the
so what the hell were we talking about
oh
so when you don't have meetings there's
a luxury to really
allow for certain things if they need to
like the important things
like deep work sessions to last way
longer than
you uh maybe planned for i mean that's
my goal is to try to schedule
the goals to schedule to sit and focus
for a particular task for an hour
and hope i can keep going yeah and hope
i can get lost in it
and uh do do you find that this is at
all
an okay way to go and uh the time
blocking is just
something you have to do to actually be
an adult and operate in this real world
or is there some magic to the time
blocking
well i mean there's magic to the
intention
uh there's magic to it if you have
varied responsibilities right so
i'm often juggling multiple jobs
essentially there's there's
academic stuff there's teaching stuff
there's book stuff there's the
the business surrounding you know
surrounding my my book stuff
but i'm of your same mindset if a deep
work session is going
well you just rock and roll and let it
go on so like one of the big keys of
time block at least the way i do it so i
even you know sell this
planner to help people time block it has
many columns because
the discipline is oh if your initial
schedule changes
you just move over one next time you get
a chance to move over one column
and then you just fix it for the time
that's remaining so in other words
there's not
there's no bonus for i made a schedule
and i stuck with it
like there's actually just like you get
a prize for it right like for me the
prize is
i have an intentional plan for my time
and if i have to change that plan that's
fine like the state i want to be
is basically at any point in the day
i've thought about what time remains and
and gave it some thought for what to do
because i'll do the same thing even
though i have a lot more
meetings and other types of things i
have to do in my various jobs and
i basically prioritize the deep work and
they get yelled at a lot
yeah so that's kind of my strategy is
like just be okay just be okay getting
yelled at a lot because i feel you if
you're rolling
yeah well that's that's what it is for
me like with writing i think it's
writing so hard in a certain way that
it's you don't really get on a roll in
some sense like it's just difficult
uh but working on proofs it's very hard
to pull yourself away from a proof if
you start to get some traction just
you've been at it for a couple hours
then you feel the uh the pins and
tumblers starting to click together and
progress is being made
it's really hard to call pull away from
that so so i'm willing to get yelled at
by almost everyone
of course there is also a positive
effect to
uh pulling yourself out of it when
things are going great because then
you're kind of excited to resume
yeah as opposed to stopping in a on a
dead end that's true
that there's a the yeah there's a
uh there's an extra force of
procrastination that comes with if you
stop on a dead end
to return to the task yeah or or a cold
start
yeah whenever i feel like i'm in a stage
now i submitted a few papers recently
so now we're sort of starting something
up from cold
and it takes way too long to get going
because it's very hard to
it's very hard to get the motivation to
schedule a time when it's not yeah we're
in it
like here's where we are we feel like
something's about to give here we need
the very early stages where it's just
i don't know i'm going to read hard
papers and it's going to be hard to
understand them and i'm going to have no
idea how to make progress
is not it's not motivating what about
deadlines
can we um okay so this is like a therapy
session uh
it's uh why it seems like i don't i only
get stuff done
that has deadlines and so the one of the
implied powerful things about time
blocking is there's a kind of deadline
or there's a artificial a real sense of
urgency
do you think it's possible to get
anything done in this world without
deadlines
why why do deadlines work so well well
it's i mean it's a clear motivational
signal
but in the in the short term you do get
an effect like that in time blocking i
think the the strong effect you get by
saying
this is the exact time i'm going to work
on this is that you don't have to debate
with yourself every three minutes about
should i take a break now right like
this is the big issue with just saying
you know i'm going to go right
i'm going to write for a while and
that's it because your mind is saying
well obviously we're going to take some
breaks
right we're not just going to write
forever and so why not right now
you have to be like well not right now
let's go a little bit longer five
minutes later we'll always take a break
now like we should probably look at the
internet
now you have to constantly have this
battle on the other hand if you're in a
time block schedule
like i've got these two hours put aside
for writing that's what i'm supposed to
be doing
i have a break scheduled over here i
don't have to fight with myself
right and maybe at a larger scale
deadlines give you a similar sort of
effect is i know this is what i'm
supposed to be working on because it's
uh it's due perhaps but we're describing
as much healthier
sort of giving yourself over you talk
about this in in the new email book
is the process i mean in general you
talk about it all over
is creating a process and then giving
yourself
over to the process the
but then you have to be strict with
yourself yeah but what are the deadlines
you're talking about it's like with
papers
like what's the main type of deadline
work
uh also papers definitely but
you know publications like say this this
podcast
uh i have to publish this podcast
next early next week one because your
book is coming out i'd love to
sort of uh support this amazing book but
the other is i have to fly to vegas
on thursday to run 48 miles with david
goggins
and so i want this podcast
this conversation we're doing now to be
out of my life
like i don't want to be in a hotel in
vegas yeah like uh editing the
like freaking out while david goggins is
yelling now we're on our 43
you're terrified but actually it's
possible that they still
will be doing that you know because
that's not a heart that's a softer
deadline right but those are sort of
the life imposes these kinds of
deadlines yeah
i'm not so yeah papers are nice because
there's an actual deadline
but i i'm almost referring to like
the pressure that people put on you hey
man
you said you're gonna get this done two
months ago why haven't you gotten it
done
i don't see i don't like that pressure
yeah i mean we now first i think we can
i hate it too
we can agree by the way having david
goggins yell at you is probably the
top productivity technique i think we'd
all get a lot more done if
he was yelling but see i don't like that
so i i will try to get things done early
i like i like having flex i also don't
like the idea of
this has to get done today right like
it's due
at midnight and we've got a lot to do as
the night before because then i get in
my head about what if i get sick
or like what if uh you know what if i i
don't i get a bad night's sleep and i
can't think clearly
so i like to have the flex so i'm all
processed and that's like the
philosophical aspect of that book deep
work is that there's something
very human and deep about just wrangling
with the world of ideas i mean aristotle
talked about this if you go back and
and read the ethics he's trying to
understand the meaning of life and he
eventually ends up ultimately
at the human capacity to contemplate
deeply
it's kind of a teleological argument
it's the things that only humans can do
and therefore it must be somehow
connected to our ends and he said
ultimately that's where
that's refound his meaning but you know
he's touching on some sort of intimation
there that's correct that
and so what i try to build my life
around is regularly thinking hard about
stuff that's interesting just like if
you get a fitness habit going
you feel off when you don't do it
i try to get that cognitive habit so
it's like i got it i mean look i have my
bag here somewhere i have my notebook in
it because
i was thinking on the uber ride over i
was like you know i could get some
i'm working on this new proof and it
just so you train yourself you train
yourself to appreciate certain things
and then over time the hope is that it
accretes well let's talk about some
demons because
i wonder it's okay there's like deep
work
which uh and the
the world without email books that to me
symbolize
the life i i want to live okay
and then there is i'm like despite
appearances
an adult at this point and this is the
life i actually live
and i it's i'm in constant chaos you
said you don't like that anxiety
i hate it too but it seems like i'm
always in it
it's a giant mess it's it's like
it it's almost like whenever i establish
whenever i have successful processes for
doing deep work
i'll add stuff on top of it just to
introduce the chaos yeah
and and like i don't want to yeah but
you know it's so
you have to look in the mirror at a
certain point and you have to say like
who the hell am i like i keep doing this
is this something that's fundamental to
who i am or do i really need to fix this
what's the chaos right now like i've
seen your video about like your routine
it seemed very
structured and deep in fact i was really
envious of it so like what's the chaos
now that's not in that video many of
those sessions go way longer
i don't get enough sleep yeah and then i
the main introduction of chaos is
it's taking on too many things on the
to-do list
it's i mean i suppose it's the problem
that everybody deals with was just
saying
not saying no but it's not like i have
trouble saying no it's that there's so
much cool in my life
yeah okay listen i've there's nothing i
love more in this world
than the boston dynamics robots
and the other yeah and they're giving me
spot so there's enough to do
what am i going to say no yeah and so
they're getting me spot and i want to do
some computer vision stuff for
for the hell of it okay so that's now
what to do item
and then you go to texas for a while and
there's texas and everything's happening
to all the interesting people down there
and then there's surprises right there
power outage in texas there's constant
changes to plans and all those kinds of
things
and you sleep less and then there's
personal stuff like just you know
people in your life sources of stress
all those kinds of things and
but it does feel like if i'm just being
introspective
that i bring it on to myself i suppose a
lot of people do this kind of thing
yes is they they flourish
under pressure yeah and i wonder if that
um if that's just the hack i've
developed as a habit
early on in life that needs you need to
let go of
you need to fix but it's all interesting
things
yeah that's that's that's interesting
yeah because these are all interesting
things
well one of the things you talked about
and deep work which is like really
important is like
having an end to the day yeah like
putting it down
yeah like that i don't think i've ever
done that in my life
yeah well see i started doing that early
because uh
i got married early so you know i didn't
have a real job i was a grad student but
my wife had a real job
and so i just figured i should do my
work
when she's at work because you know hey
when when works over she'll be home i
don't
i don't want to be you know on campus or
whatever and so real early on i just got
in that habit of
this is when you know this is when you
didn't work and then when i was a
postdoc
which is kind of an easy job right um i
put artificial
i was like i want to train i was like
when i'm a professor it's going to be
busier because there's
demands that professors have beyond
research and so as a postdoc
i added artificial large time consuming
things into the middle of my day i'd
basically exercise for two hours in the
middle of the day
and do all this this productive
meditation and stuff like this
while still maintaining the nine to five
so it's like okay i want to get really
good at putting artificial constraints
on so that i stay
i didn't want to get uh flabby when my
job was easy so that when i became a
professor
and now all of that's paying off because
i have a ton of kids so
so now i don't really have a choice
that's what's probably keeping me away
from cool things
is i just don't have time to do them and
then after a while people
you know stop bothering well but that
you know but that's how you have a
successful life otherwise you're going
to
it's too easy to then go into the full
hunter s thompson
yeah like to where no nobody
wants nobody functional wants to be in
your vicinity
like you're driving you attract the
people
that have a similar behavior pattern as
you
yeah so if you if you live in chaos
you're going to attract chaotic people
and then it becomes like this uh self
fulfilling prophecy yeah and it feels
like i'm not bothered by it
but i guess this is all coming around to
exactly what you're saying which is like
i think one of the big hacks for
productive people that i've met
is to get married and have kids
honestly it's it's very perhaps
counter-intuitive
yeah but it gets it's like the ultimate
timetable enforcer yeah it enforces a
lot of timetables
uh though it has a huge kids have a huge
productivity hit those he got away
but here okay here's the complicated
thing though like you could think about
in your own life
starting the podcast as one of these
just cool opportunities that you put on
yourself right
yeah like you know i could have been
talking to you at mit four years ago
and like don't do that like your
research is going well right
but then everyone who watches you is
like okay this podcast is the direction
that's taking you is like a couple years
from now
it's gonna it'll be something really
monumental that you're probably just
gonna probably lead to right there'll be
some
really it just feels like your life is
going somewhere it's going somewhere
it's interesting yeah
unexpected yeah yeah so how do you
balance those two things and
so what i try to throw at it is this
this motto of do less do better know why
right so do do less do better
know why it used to be the motto of my
website years ago
um so do a few things but like an
interesting array right so i was doing
mit stuff but i was also writing you
know
so a couple of things are you know they
were interesting like have a couple bets
placed on a couple different numbers on
the roulette table
but not too many things and then really
try to do those things really well and
and see where it goes like with my
writing i just spent years and years and
years just training
i want to be a better writer i want to
be a better writer i started writing
student books when i was a student
i really wanted to write hardcover idea
books i started training i would
i would use like new yorker articles to
train myself i'd break them down and i'd
get commissions with much smaller
magazines and practice the skills and
it took forever until you know but now
today like i actually get to write for
the new yorker but it took
like a decade so a small number of
things try to do them really well and
then the know why
is have a connection to some sort of
value like in general i think
this is worth doing uh and then seeing
where it leads
and so uh the choice of the few things
is grounded in what like a little like a
like a little flame of passion like a
love for the thing like a sense that you
say you wanted to write
and get good at writing you had that
kind of
introspective moment of thinking this
actually brings me a lot of joy
and fulfillment yeah i mean it gets
complicated because i wrote a whole book
about
following your passion being bad advice
which is like the first thing i kind of
got infamous for
i wrote that back in 2012. but but the
argument there is like passion
cultivates right
so what i was pushing back on was the
myth that the passion for what you do
exists full intensity before you start
and then that's what propels you
or actually the reality is as you get
better at something as you gain more
autonomy more skill and more impact the
passion grows along with it so that when
people
look back later and say oh follow your
passion what they really mean is i'm
very passionate about what i do and
that's a worthy goal
but how you actually cultivate that is
much more complicated than just
introspection is going to identify
like for sure you should be a writer or
something like this so i was actually
quoting you i was uh
on a social network last night uh in
clubhouse yeah i don't know if you've
heard of it i was wait i have to ask you
about this
because i was invite i'm invited to do a
clubhouse i don't know what that means
a tech reporter has invited me to do a
clubhouse about my new book
uh that's awesome uh well let me know
when because i'll show up
but what is it okay so first of all let
me just mention that i was in a
clubhouse
uh room last night and i kept plugging
your exactly what exactly you said about
uh passion so we'll talk about it it was
a room that was focused on burnout
okay but first clubhouse
is a kind of fascinating place in terms
of
your mind would be very interesting to
analyze this place
because you know we talk about email we
talk about social networks
but clubhouse is something very
different and i've encountered it in
other places discord
and so on that's voice only
communication
so it's a bunch of people in a room
they're just now eyes closed
all you hear is their voices real time
real time
live it only happens live you're
technically not allowed to record
but some people still do and you know
especially when it's big
big conversations but the whole point is
that they're live
and there's different structures like on
discord it was so fascinating i
have this discord server that would have
hundreds of people in a room together
right we're all just little icons that
commute and i mute our mics
okay and so you're sitting there not so
it's it's just
voices and you're able with hundreds of
people
to not interrupt each other but first of
all
like as a dynamic system yeah like you
see icons just like mics muted or not
muted basically yeah well so everyone's
muted
and they unmute and they start it starts
flashing yeah
and oh so you're like okay let me uh get
precedence
yeah so it's the digital equivalent of
when you're in a conversation like a
faculty meeting
and you sort of like kind of make some
noises like while the other person's
finishing and
so people realize like okay this person
wants to talk next but now it's purely
digital you see a flashing
but in a faculty meeting which is very
interesting like even as we're talking
now
there's a visual element that seems to
increase the probability of interruption
yeah when it's just darkness you
actually
listen better and you don't interrupt so
like if you create a culture there's
there's always going to be but
they're they're actually exceptions
everybody adjusts they kind of evolve to
the
the beat of the room okay that's one
fascinating aspect like okay
that's weird because it's different than
like a zoom call where there's video
yeah uh it's just audio you think video
ads
but actually seems like it subtracts the
second aspect of it that's fascinating
is when it's no video just audio there's
an intimacy
it's feel it's weird because with
strangers
it you you connect you know in a much
more real way it's very
it's similar to podcasts yeah but
with a lot of people with a lot of
people and new people huh and then you
and they they bring okay first of all
different voices like low voices and
like high voices and
and it's it's more difficult to judge in
discord you couldn't even see
uh the people it was a culture where you
do funny
profile pictures as opposed to your
actual face your clubhouse it's your
actual face
so you can tell like as an older person
younger person in discord you couldn't
you just have to judge based on the
voice
but there's a there's something about
the listening
and the intimacy of being surprised by
different strangers
it feels almost like a party with
friends and friends of friends you
haven't met yet but you really like
now clubhouse also has an interesting
innovation where there's a large crowd
that just listens
and there's a stage and you can bring
people up onto stage so
only people on stage are talking and you
can have like five
six seven eight sometimes 20 30 people
on stage and then you can also have
thousands of people just listening i see
so there's a i don't know a lot of
people are being surprised by this
why is it called a social network it
seems like it doesn't have there's not
social links there's not a
feed that's trying to harvest attention
it feels like a communication
uh so the the social uh network aspect
is you follow people
yeah and the people you follow now this
is like the first social network that's
actually correct use of follow i think
you're more likely to see the rooms
they're in so there's a
your feed is a bunch of rooms that are
going on right now okay
and the people you follow are
the ones that will increase the
likelihood that you'll see the room
they're in
and so the final result is like there's
a list of really interesting rooms like
uh i have all these i've been speaking
russian quite a bit there's practicing
uh but also just like talking politics
and philosophy in russian
i've never done that before but it
allows me to connect with that community
and then uh there's a community of like
it's funny but like i'll go in a
community of all african-american people
talking about race and i'll be welcomed
yeah
i've never had like i've literally never
been
in a difficult conversation about race
like with people from all over the place
it's like fascinating and
musicians jazz musicians i don't know
you could say that a lot of other places
could have created that culture i
suppose
uh twitter and facebook a lot for that
culture but there's something about
this network as it stands now because it
ain't no android users
it's probably just because it's iphone
people yeah uh is there it's
conspiratorial or something
well like less listen i'm an android
person so i i got an iphone just for
this network yes it's funny yeah
is for now it's all like there's very
few trolls
yeah there's very few people that are
trying to manipulate the system and so
on
so i don't know it's it's interesting
now the downside the reason you're going
to hate it
is because it's so intimate because it
pulls you in
and pulls in very successful people like
you just
ever like really successful productive
very busy people uh it
it it's a huge time sink it's very
difficult to pull yourself out
interesting you mean once you're in a
room well no the uh leaving the room
is actually easy the beautiful thing
about a stage with multiple people
there's a little button that says leave
quietly okay
so cultural uh no etiquette wise it's
okay to just leave
yeah so you're not in a room when it's
just you and i it's a little awkward to
believe if you're asking questions i'm
just gonna
yeah but and actually if you're being
interviewed for the book
that's weird because you're now in the
event
and you're supposed to but usually the
person interviewing would be like okay
it's time for you to go it's more normal
but the the
normal way to use the room it's like
you're just opening the app
and there'll be like i don't know sam
harris
uh eric weinstein
um i think joe rogan showed up to the
bill gates
these people on stage just like randomly
just plugged in
and then you step up on stage listen
maybe you won't
contribute at all maybe you'll say
something funny yeah and then you'll
just leave
yeah and there's uh the the addicting
aspect to it the reason it's the time
sink is you don't want to leave
what i've noticed about exceptionally
busy people yeah
that they love this this the their i
think might have to do with a pandemic
because might be a little bit yeah
there's a loneliness
yeah but also it's really cool people
yeah like
when was when was the last time you
talked to sam harris or whoever
like you think of anybody uh tyler cope
like
any any faculty this is like what
university strives to create
but it's taken because you know here's a
cultural evolution try to get a lot of
interesting smart people together that
run into each other
we have really strong faculty in a room
together
with no scheduling this is the power of
it it's like you just
show up there's no none of that baggage
of scheduling and so on
and there's no pressure to leave uh
sorry no pressure to stay
it's very easy for you to leave you
realize that there's a lot of
constraints on meetings and like faculty
there's uh like even stopping by
you know before the pandemic a friend or
faculty or colleague and so on
you know there's a weirdness about
leaving yeah but
here there's not a weirdness about
leaving so they've discovered something
interesting
the but the final result when you
observe it
is uh it's very fulfilling i think it's
very beneficial
but it's very addicting so you have to
make sure
you moderate yeah that's interesting and
okay well so maybe i'll try it i mean
look there's no
the things that make me suspicious about
other platforms aren't here
so the feed is not full of
user-generated content that is going
through some sort of algorithmic grading
process with all the weird incentives
and nudging that does
uh and you're you're not producing
content that's being harvested
to be monetized by another company i
mean it it seems like it's more
uh ephemeral right you're here you're
talking the feed is just actually just
showing you
here's interesting things happening
right you're not jocking in the feed for
look i'm being clever or something and
i'm going to get a light count that goes
up and that's going to influence and
right and there's more friction there's
more cognitive friction i guess involved
in
listening to smart people versus
scrolling through
yeah there's something there so there's
no why are people so i see a lot of
there's all these articles that seem i
haven't really read them but
why are we why are reporters negative
about this competition the new york
times wrote this article called
unfettered conversations happening on
clubhouse is
uh so i'm right in picking up a tone
from even from the headlines that
there's some like negative
vibes from the press no so i can say
let's say well i'll tell you what the
article was saying
which is uh they're having cancelable
conversations like the biggest people in
the world
almost trolling the press right and the
press is definitely before channing the
press yeah
the press but by saying that you just
you guys are looking for click
bait from our genuine human
conversations and so
so the i think the honestly
the press is just like what do we do
with this we can't
yeah um first of all it's a lot of work
for them okay
uh it's what naval says which is like
this is skipping the journalists
like they interview you uh if you go on
clubhouse the interview you might do
for the book would be with somebody
who's like a journalist and interviewing
you
yeah that that's more a traditional yeah
it'd be a good introduction for you to
try it
but the like the way to use clubhouse
is you just show up and it's like
again like me i'm sorry i'm like
i can't i keep mentioning sam harris as
if it's like the only person i know but
like a lot of these uh major faculty i
don't know max tegmark
like just just major faculty just
sitting there and then you show up
and then uh i'll ask like oh don't you
have a book coming out or something
and then you'll talk about the book and
then you'll leave five minutes later
because you have to go get
coffee and interesting so like that's
the yeah it's not the journalistic
you're not gonna actually enjoy the
interview as much because it'll be like
the normal thing yeah like you're there
40 minutes or an hour and there'll be
questions from the audience
right like i'm doing an event next week
for the book launch where it's like
jason fried and i are
talking about email but it's using some
more
like a thousand people who are there to
watch virtually but it's using some sort
of traditional
webinar clubhouse would be a situation
where that could just happen informally
like i jump in like jason's there and
then someone else jumps in
and and yeah that's interesting but for
now it's still closed so
even though there's a lot of excitement
and there'll be quite
famous people just sitting there
listening to you yeah
but the numbers aren't exactly high so
you're talking about
rooms like even the huge rooms are like
just
a few thousand right and this is this is
probably soho in the 50s or something
too
just because of the exponential growth
give it
seven more months and if you let one
invite be gets two invites because four
invites begins pretty soon it'll be
everyone and then the rooms in your feed
are going to be whatever
uh marketing performance enhancing drugs
or something like that
yeah but then and a bunch of competitors
there's already like 30 plus competitors
sprung up twitter spaces so twitter is
creating a competitor
that's going to likely destroy clubhouse
yeah because they just have a much
larger user base
and they already have a social network
so yeah i
i i would be very cautious of course
with the
addictive element but it doesn't just
like you said this particular
implementation in its early stages
doesn't have the like
yeah the the uh well it doesn't have the
context switching problem
yeah it you'll just switch fantastically
and you'll be stuck
yeah the keep a context is great yeah
yeah
and but then i think the best way i've
found to use it
is uh to acknowledge that these things
pull you in
yeah so i've used it in the past
uh like almost you know i'll go get a
coffee and i'll tune into a conversation
as if that's how i use podcasts
sometimes i'll just like play a little
bit of a podcast
and then you know i can just turn it off
the problem with these
is it pulls you in it's really
interesting and then the other problem
that you will experience
is like somebody will recognize you yeah
and then they'll be like oh lex
come on up come on no way i had a
question for you
and then it takes a lot for you to go
like to
to ignore that yeah yeah so yeah and
then you pulled in and it's fascinating
and it's really cool people so it's like
a source of a lot of joy but
it uh it's yet to be very very very
careful
the reason i brought it up is we uh
there's a room there's an entire club
actually on burnout and
i brought you up and i brought david
goggins as the process
i go through which is you know my
passion
goes up and down it dips and
i don't think i trust my own mind to
to tell me whether i'm getting close to
burnout or
exhaustion or not i kind of go with the
david goggins model of i mean he's
probably more applying it to running but
uh when it feels like your mind can't
take any more
that you're just 40 percent uh at your
capacity
i mean it's just like arbitrary levels
the navy seal thing right the navy seal
thing yeah i mean you could put that at
any percent but it is
remarkable that if you just take it one
step at a time just keep going it's
it's uh similar to this idea of a
process if you just trust the process
and you just keep following even
if the passion goes up and down and so
on then ultimately
if you look in aggregate the passion
will increase
yeah your self-satisfaction will
increase yeah i think and if you have
two things this has been a big strategy
of mine so that you can
what you hope for is off phase off phase
alignment like that
sometimes it's in phase and that's a
problem uh but off phase alignment's
good so okay
my research i'm struggling uh but my
book stuff is going well
right and so when you when you add those
two waves together like oh we're doing
pretty well and then
uh in other periods like on my writing
you know i feel like i'm just not
getting anywhere but i've had some good
papers i'm feeling good over there
so having two things that they can
counteract each other
now sometimes they fall into sync and
then it gets rough then when
you know when everything because
everything for me is cyclical you know
good periods bad periods with all this
stuff so
uh typically they don't coincide so it
helps compensate
when they do coincide you get really
high highs like where everything's
clicking and then you get these really
low lows where like your research is not
working your program's not clicking
you feel like you're nowhere with your
writing uh and then it's a little
rougher
is do you do you think about the concept
of burnout
because i personally never experienced
burnout in the way that
folks talk about which is like it's not
just
the up and down it's like you don't want
to do anything ever again
yeah it like it's it's for some people
it's like physical like to the hospital
kind of thing
yeah yeah so i do worry about it
so when i used to do student writing
like writing about students and student
advice
it came up a lot with students