Regain Your Ability to Think (in 60 Minutes a Week) | Cal Newport

We often talk about the ways that

digital devices undermine our ability to

consume

complicated and meaningful information.

If you spend too much time scrolling Tik

Tok, you'll eventually start struggling

to read Holtoy.

But what about our ability to produce

complicated and meaningful information?

I'm talking about original and creative

thoughts or deep insight into yourself

or a new understanding of the wondrous

complexity of the world or exciting new

visions for what's possible. This is

what I want to get into today. Uh I'm

going to go in three parts here. In the

first part of our discussion, I'm going

to introduce an idea that I call long

thinking. I'm going to explain why I

think long thinking is critical to

creating a flourishing life. In part

two, I'll explore why specifically our

modern technological environment is

undermining our ability to perform long

thinking. And then in part three, I'm

going to present a simple but effective

training plan for regaining this

ability. Believe it or not, it's going

to be based on an idea that I first

wrote about in 2009 and have been

practicing

ever since. All right. All right. So, if

you found yourself struggling to hold a

line of thought or to make sense of

complex ideas or material, if your world

seems to have collapsed into shorter

digital takes and crudder primal

emotions, then this episode is for you.

As always, I'm Cal Newport and this is

Deep Questions.

Today's episode, the lost start of long

thinking.

All right. So, I want to start here with

an example from my own life. I'm going

to load on the screen here for people

who are watching instead of just

listening. An essay that I published on

my blog and newsletter back in the fall

of 2012. This was right at the start of

my second year as a young professor. The

title of this article was solutions

beyond the screen, the adventure work

method for producing creative insights.

Now, I've loaded this up because I have

some original photos I actually took

here. Actually, this is not my photo,

Jesse, but someone else took this photo.

I did take photos. Uh there's but this

was not one of them. So, this is a foggy

it's a foggy street uh with trees and

it's sort of desolate and romantic. This

was taken in Berkeley. All right, let me

read a little bit what I wrote here

below that picture. A couple weeks ago,

I made a brief visit to Berkeley,

California for a wedding. My wife,

Julie, had to take a conference call the

first morning after we arrived, so I

decided to get some work done myself. I

didn't bring a computer, so work

couldn't mean email replying, the

standard instinct in this situation.

Just as an aside, Jesse, there was no

smartphones back then. So, like, if you

didn't bring your computer,

>> you weren't doing work.

>> Mhm. Instead, I decided to log some hard

focus hours on what I like to call the

beast, a particularly vexing theory

problem that my collaborators and I have

been battling for many months. Another

aside, notice my use of the term hard

focus. This was actually a year or two

before I actually used a started using

the phrase deep work. I got some coffee

and headed toward the Berkeley campus on

foot. It was early and the fog was just

starting to march down the Berkeley

Hills. I eventually wandered into a

eucalyptus grove. We'll show that on the

screen. Not my photo, but I did. That's

the same grove I wandered into. Once

there, I sipped my coffee and thought.

Our existing strategy for the beast

included a complicated algorithm which

none of us looked forward to analyzing.

Deploying a trick I learned while a grad

student, I avoided needing to understand

why the complicated algorithm worked by

instead turning my attention to

understanding why simpler simpler

strategies failed. After only an hour,

which included a strategic fillup at the

free speech cafe, I had an idea for a

more concise and easier to analyze

algorithm that seemed to work. I

realized, however, uh there's a limit to

depth you can reach when keeping an idea

only in your mind. Looking to get the

most out of my new insights, and

inspired by my recent commitment to the

textbook method, I tked over to a nearby

CVS and bought a 6x9 stenographers's

notebook. I then forced myself to write

out my thoughts more formally. And there

I I here's a picture of my notes from

that day. Hey Jesse, that I did take

that photo. I'm trying to remember from

those diagrams. I can't really read the

text, but I'm trying to remember from

the diagrams exactly what problem this

was I was working on. It looks like it

was in like the local model of uh

distributed communication. But anyways,

the combination of pen and paper notes

with exotic content in which I was

working ushered in new layers of

understanding. Our battle with the beast

continues, but in the latest draft of

the solution in progress, those Berkeley

simplifications play a useful role. All

right, that's a real case study from

earlier in my professional career

and it's a type of activity that for me

had become second nature and continues

to be second nature for me but I think

is uh more rare for other people. What I

was trying to do in that story was

extract from my mind an original new

thought something that had actual value

to me and others not like a eureka

moment just like an idea out of the

blue. Oh, now what if we what if we put

ham on shoes or some sort of like a

great brainstorm like that, but a

persistent focused application of my

brain to slowly but systematically move

towards something useful and new and

then captured in a form that I could

share with others.

There's a term for this type of

cognitive activity that I was doing

there in the hills of Berkeley. Long

thinking now I think the first place I I

actually heard this term was from a

TEDex talk. It was given by the Italian

professor Giovenini Corazi Koraza who

works at the Maronei Institute for

Creativity at the University of Bolognia

where I've been I think ironically the

same year that I wrote that that uh

essay I gave a talk University of

Bolognia super old university very cool

um I want to play a clip from uh Kurza's

talk where he uses introduces this term

long thinking

we need to value long thinking normally

we talk about brilliant thinking past

thinking, deep thinking. But here we're

talking about something different. Long

thinking. What does that mean? It's some

thought that takes us far. It's as if

you were reading poetry or listening to

music. You don't judge the single notes.

You don't judge the single words. It's

the ensemble that gives you a feeling

and takes you far. We must do the same

thing with our with our concepts. We

need to go far and so we can use

association of ideas, combination of

ideas, extraction of principles and

application of those principles to areas

where they were never applied.

>> All right? So notice what he's talking

about there. Again, long thinking is not

about a sudden insight, right? It is not

about practicing something again and

again. It is about that persistent

intentional application of your brain

where you're trying to create something

new. So you're taking existing ideas,

information, you're pulling them out of

their original context, you're

reordering them, you're recombining

them, you're finding new associations.

These are all terms that Corroso used,

trying to come up with new principles or

new structures of knowledge. So, it's

like you're you're in the workshop of

your mind taking pieces that are in

there and then experimenting with

putting them together until you can

build a new useful structure.

Now, long thinking I think is so

important uh that I want to give it a a

slightly more formal definition. I'm

going to put one up here on the screen.

This is just one of many we might use.

All right. So, here's the definition

that I have up on the screen right now.

Long thinking is the persistent and

intentional application of thought

toward a specific issue, problem or idea

with the goal of creating substantial

and useful new insights.

All right, so this is something that I

want to talk about today. Now, a natural

follow-up question before we get into

the weeds about, you know, what this why

this is useful and how to be better at

it. The immediate follow-up question

that listeners of my podcast are going

to have is like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa. This sounds a lot like deep work.

Is this just a rebranding of deep work?

What's going on here? How do these two

these two concepts relate? Well, they

are related, but they're not exactly the

same. Um, and it's worth taking a moment

to uh to explain why before we move on.

So, I'm going to put another diagram up

here on the screen. Um, so for people

who are listening, what I have up here

is a vin diagram. You have a circle

labeled long thinking. You have a circle

labeled deep work. They overlap, but not

completely. And there's different

activities that fall in different parts

uh of this particular diagram. So

certainly in the intersection of long

thinking and deep work we can find

things right like so for example this is

where you might find um you know I'm

going to put the beast right that was

the problem I talked about in my 2012

essay I just read from. It's a

professional problem that required long

persistent thinking to like slowly make

progress on. So yeah, there's a lot of

stuff in the intersection of long

thinking and deep work. But there's

other things that are over here

in the world of long thinking that are

not also deep work. Right? So for

example over here we might have you know

um

you're making sense of your life

that benefits from long thinking. You're

trying to take information you have from

your experiences and knowledge and

rebuild a new structure that makes sense

of your life but has nothing really to

do with work. Deep work is about

professional activity. Focusing without

distraction on uh professional

activities. Uh your world that's another

element that's in long think of but not

deep work. trying to make sense of your

world. Like I just I want to understand

a political concept. I want to

understand a theoretical concept. Uh I'm

you know I'm in this like workplace

seminar and people are throwing at me

like all this this terminology about

like critical theory or whatever. I want

to understand what that is. I want to

make sense of the world. I want to know

uh about specifically the trees in my

yard. There it's not deep work because

not a professional problem but it

benefits from long thinking. And then we

also have things over in deep work that

are not long thinking, right? So, you

know, we would have under this category,

for example, a big one would be I'm

going to put DP for deliberate practice.

Trying to systematically get better at

something that's demanding as I talk

about in both deep work and my book so

good they can't ignore you. That

requires deep work. You're practicing

it. So, you're focusing really intensely

and trying to push yourself past your

comfort level. It's not long thinking.

You're not creating something new.

You're not creating new thoughts. You're

not reorganizing the information in your

head in the new structures. But it does

require uh uh focus. And so it's deep

work but not long thinking, right? Um so

we have these things overlap but they're

not exactly the same. Long thinking can

take you from your career into all sorts

of other types of thoughts as pos as

well. Deep work can benefit from long

thinking but there's other types of deep

work activities that aren't long

thinking at all. The thing that unifies

long thinking is you are uh creating

something new with your brain. You are

creating something new. Whether it's

insight ideas understanding or

vision, professional or personal,

doesn't matter. It's the the the

creation of new things from the

information you already have. That is

what Barza was emphasizing in his

definition of long thinking. That's what

we're going to emphasize here.

Okay. Uh so why is long thinking

important

in the big picture? We can make big

grandiose claims about it, right? It's

what built

the world as we know it. The world that

emerged out of prehistory

and everything about it that we think

made life better than it was 100,000

years ago came out of long thinking.

We're talking technology, science,

philosophy, uh theology.

That all required long thinking. The

ability to put uh internally persistent

thought on information you had to try to

rebuild it into other structures that

could be useful to you and others. We

would still be in small bands of hunters

and foragers fighting other bands to the

death when our territories became too

crowded. if not for humans developing

the ability to do long thinking. But

that's a sort of like cultural,

historical, societal argument in favor

for this particular ability. What we

care about more today is how long

thinking is going to help you as an

individual flourish in your own life.

Now, long thinking has three big

advantages. Uh, all right. God help me,

Jess. I'm gonna draw a picture for each.

I'm gonna put my arrows here. I'll put

my arrows here. First,

I'm going to have three things and I'm

going to uh I will draw a completely

self-explanatory and fantastically

rendered photo for each. Okay, there's

three advantages that uh long thinking

gives you as the individual. All right,

so for the first, let me draw the

picture as I like to do. I like to draw

the picture first

and then see if Jesse can guess what it

is.

Jesse, is that clear what that picture

is? Somebody thinking

>> he's looking into a mirror. Oh,

>> okay.

>> Right. So, we got someone looking into a

mirror. All right. The first benefit of

long thinking is that it helps you build

over time a more nuanced and grounded

understanding of yourself.

Now, without such an understanding,

you're going to be buffeted by the

world, a conflicting ball of emotions

and reactions. Like, you're outraged.

No, you're nihilistic. No, you're you're

you're radical. No, you just you just

want to numb yourself and escape. Your

journey through life by contrast is so

much richer if you can regularly take

time to just be alone with your thoughts

then try to make sense of them move them

around recombine find associations

extract principles long thinking lets

you do that all right second advantage

which I will now also perfectly draw

all right let's see here

desk I'm giving subtly giving some oh

god oh god

oh god Jesse

I don't know what I'm doing all Right

now that's a person at a desk. Yeah,

that working.

>> Yeah.

>> All right,

that is working again.

Brilliant artwork. Um, it helps you

create useful things that impact the

world and can provide economic value,

right? All great innovation strategies

and ideas come from long thinking. If

you're adept at this, you will find a

much clearer and more rewarding sense of

purpose. So clearly this is what I was

using long thinking for in the example

from the beginning of the episode. It

was helping me figure out how to make

progress on a really complicated theory

problem that me and my collaborators

called the beast. I published a lot of

papers in 2012. So I don't know what

that was at the height of my theory

career uh earlier when I was you know a

new professor. I was publishing a lot of

papers back then. Um so I don't know

which of the papers that was but I was

doing a lot of long thinking back then.

So that was the advantage I was getting.

But there's a third as well. I have like

a it's not an abstract artwork to do

here, but it it it's I'm doing artwork

here that's going to represent

something. All right. So, I'm drawing

for people who are listening, not

watching. I'm drawing what can only be

described as like expertly rendered

humans.

And they're each holding signs. That's

clear right Jesse?

>> Yeah. All

>> right. So, there's like a lot of people

like holding up signs and then Oh, this

is going to get profound. Jesse's going

to wipe a tear away from his face when

I'm done drawing this. There's some

someone over on the side. This is This

is not looking like a hope.

It looks kind of bad. Jesse, he's

helping up someone. You get that? That's

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> He's doing something to someone.

>> Yeah. So, it's like uh there's a whole

group of people like waving signs, but

someone else is off to the side actually

like literally helping someone. So, what

is that supposed to represent? uh it

helps you avoid fall into the trap of an

easy tribalism. Without the ability to

apply long thinking to important issues,

issues you care about, issues that are

important to the world, you will fall

back on a more easy tribalism where you

just choose a tribe to be yours and

you're like, "All I care about is making

sure that we keep calling all the other

tribes blackhearted and scoundrels, and

I just want to focus on hating them

instead of having original thoughts or

or extracting my own principles for

understanding the world. I will just

consume short summaries of what the

leaders of my tribe uh espouse as being

true and then I'll just like parrot

those. I I I have no real understanding

of the world. I just want my tribe to

succeed. I kind of pretend like I'm

helping the world, but really um I'm

just liking being part of a crowd. The

result of that sort of easy tribalism

is, you know, often a mixture of anger

and despair. They might help you feel

sort of alive in the moment, like it

gives you some chemicals. But long

thinkers instead find real fascination

and beauty and challenge in confronting

the issues of the day. They have clarity

that comes not just from a desire to win

over another tribe, but from putting in

the time required to grapple with

something difficult and find their way

to its roots and and really believe to

their core, this is important to me and

I'm willing to go and act on it. All of

the great prophets and activists of

history from Jeremiah through MLK all

depended on long thinking, not an easy

tribalism. So for those three reasons,

self-reflection, production of things

that really are valuable and uh the

ability to escape tribalism and like

really know what you believe in and

really try to make a difference. All of

that depends on long thinking. You take

long thinking away, you have a much more

impoverished life. And I think a lot of

people today are suffering from exactly

that type of impoverishment.

All right, brings me to the second part

of this discussion.

Why are we losing our ability to do long

thinking? Well, obviously the the

general cause, right? This is me. This

is my show. This is a show about

understanding and responding to

technology in a way that helps human

flourishing. Clearly, the problems come

back to our modern technological

environment. They almost always do in

this show. But I want to drill a little

bit deeper. I think there are two

particular reasons that come out of our

modern technological environment that

are more specifically making long

thinking something that's becoming more

and more difficult for the average

person to do. The first thing is the way

that digital distractions undermine our

comfort with sustained attention. Right?

Long thinking requires sustained

attention because you have to keep your

thoughts intentionally and persistently

on trying to work with the information

you have and try out different

structures. Your mind's eye has to be

focused and unwavering. That requires

sustained attention. The digital

distractions that are readily abundant

in the modern digital environment as we

know

makes us worse at sustaining attention.

That's because we have hyper palatable

content. So, we have algorithmically

curated content that's selected for our

own particular interest. It gives us a

pure reward signal. We've talked about

this for the last couple of months on

this show that creates a bundle of

neurons in your short-term motivation

system that are super well tuned to

giving a super clear vote for pick up

phone, pick up phone, pick up phone.

Because it's getting such a clear

consistent reward with the occasional

intermittent very big reward, that vote

is powerful. And so you're constantly

breaking up your attention and you get

less comfortable sustaining it because

you can't politically speaking in this

metaphor, you can't win the vote against

the pick up the phone neurons that long

before you get exhausted. Um, in the

professional setting then we also have

the hyperactive hive mind collaboration

scourge where too much work is happening

with back and forth unsynchronized

messaging which means you constantly

have to check email, you constantly have

to check Slack and that makes it

impossible for you to let your attention

actually do the slow focusing on a

single topic. So we got hyper palatable

content, hyperactive hive mind. You put

those two things together. We really

lose our ability to stand attention. One

of the many casualties of that common

problem that we talk about a lot is long

thinking if something is uncomfortable

because you can't keep that mind's eye

focused when it's phone, email, phone,

email. All right. The second reason the

modern technological environment is

undermining long thinking is that the

necessity for this activity, the things

that drove it drove us towards some sort

of long thinking on a regular basis have

been significantly reduced due to

technological replacements in particular

tools like Google AI and social media.

So, for example,

we used to do self-reflection style long

thinking much more often because we had

a lot of time alone with our thoughts.

And those were often the thoughts we

were having. Hey, something happened.

I'm upset about it. I'm excited about

it. I'm I'm I'm uh down on myself or

like this day went really poorly at this

like work off site. Like what's going on

in my life? What's going on

professionally? And then when we're

alone with those thoughts,

we have no uh nothing else to do but to

start moving them around and let me uh

file them away and take this out. Let me

try rec combinations of new

associations. Here's the structures I

use for myself meaning now. Maybe I need

to do some renovations over here. We got

used to that out of necessity because we

had a lot of time with our thoughts and

those were a lot of thoughts we had. I

mean, think about the like teenager

alone in their room playing the the Lisa

Lo songs, right? What are you doing up

there? you're writing your diary and

like trying to make sense of your

thoughts.

Today, when you have like smartphones

that can deliver alternative programming

that will distract you in any situation,

we're not forced to do that anymore.

We can numb away our thoughts or avoid

the thoughts. The teenager who's upset,

the business person upset after the bad

meeting, we can let father Tik Tok take

that off our hands. And so, we don't get

that experience. We don't get that

experience with uh self-reflection.

Okay. The other way, the other uh thing

that we've lost, necessity for long

thinking that we've lost has to do with

how we just understood ideas. It used to

be

if you didn't actually go pursue

information about something, you were

clearly ignorant about it. Like if if

you weren't reading the newspaper, you

didn't know how to talk about what was

happening in a political campaign. If

like the the day we're recording this is

the mayoral election in New York City.

If this was like the mayoral elections

when I was a kid, this is like the the

Giuliani Dinkens before that Dinkens

like that type of years. If you weren't

reading the newspaper, like you would

have no idea. Like I have no idea what's

going on. Today I can I can grab almost

any kid and they'll have like something

to say because like they've seen some

Mandani Tik Toks or you get these little

quick summaries of things and you can

kind of feel in the know. you can see

what your tribe feels about something

without having to like actually just

read more raw information. And so you

don't need that to today, but back then

for anything you want to know more

about, you had to kind of take in raw

information. Not raw, but like not

takes, not like here's how you should

feel how your tribe feels about it. It's

like it's a 2,000word article in like

your local paper. It's a it's a news

report with Dan Rather, right? It's you

a a special at PBS. It's a book. So you

had to like engage with a lot more

information that wasn't yet I'm not

going to say wrong and say unrefined

that you had to then refine yourself to

pull out of it some understanding and

compare it to other things you know and

like okay so how do I feel about this

not today your phone can do this for you

social media will just like okay I kind

of follow people in my tribe I get the

quick takes I like this guy I don't like

this guy this guy it's it's great it's

like young sexy mayor like no no he's

scary socialist or like you get the

answer right away but in those old days

you had to like I would have to read

about this and then on my own figure out

how I feel about that,

right? Because other you weren't getting

this information in a in a a way that

was already partisanized.

So you would read kind of boring,

unrefined information and then say, "How

do I fit this into things? Oh, I guess I

like this guy. I don't like this guy. I

have reservations. We'll see. I want to

see this or that."

And that that was uh that act of having

to integrate less refined information to

your existing understanding so you

didn't seem ignorant or dumb required

long thinking.

But again, we don't do it today because

you don't have to. We can just tell you

how you're supposed to feel. Everyone

has an opinion on everything. People

know very little about it. I know this,

Jesse, because I've been doing a lot of

AI criticism. Everyone has an opinion

about AI. Um and so so few people know

anything about it. It's It's uh It's

crazy. I think I'm gonna grow a beard

like Eleazar Udowski and then I'm gonna

seem more profound.

I'm gonna do Here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm going to wear a wizard's hat, like a

Harry Potter style wizard's hat, and I

think that'll just make it seem and I'm

going to have a long gray beard um like

Rick Rubin. And then I think people

that's it. And then I'll just whatever I

say about AI, that's probably right.

That wizard knows what he's talking

about. I'll talk real profoundly. Um so,

so that's what's going on. So that's the

second reason why technology undermined

our ability to to to do long thinking.

So okay, just to summarize, issue number

one, it fragmented sustained attention.

Now long thinking is hard. Issue number

two, technology made information that's

already refined that just to tell you

exactly what you need to think and know.

Uh gets rid of the like natural need to

have to actually process less refined

information into your own personal

understand structures. People don't have

personal understand structures anymore.

they join teams and then they get uh

quick telegraph updates of how that team

feels about things. Don't need long

thinking in that world either. All

right. So, I've made my case now that

long uh thinking is both important for a

flourishing life and due to the modern

technological environment is

diminishing. The next big question then

is how do you get the skill back if you

want it? That's what we're going to

tackle next, right after we take a quick

break to hear from the sponsors that

make this show possible.

All right, this is a true story. When I

arrived at the Deep Work HQ this

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of the building above the door. Did you

see that coming in today, Jesse, with

the flashing lights?

>> I missed it, actually.

>> How could you miss it? It's massive.

It's flashing,

>> but I was also like flusher cuz I forgot

my keys.

>> Yeah, Jesse was locked out of the HQ.

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Sale ends December 7th. All right, let's

also talk Grammarly. In the knowledge

economy, the ability to communicate

clearly is everything. Not only does it

help you do your job, but if you uh

communicate well, it's going to help you

get promoted. So, you really should care

about your communication, but most

people struggle because writing is hard

and it's not obvious how to get better

at it. This is where Grammarly can enter

the scene. Grammarly is the essential AI

communication assistant that boosts both

the productivity and quality of your

writing. I don't think people really

realize how powerful this tool has

gotten in recent years. I want to tell

you about a particular feature that I've

been enjoying, the proofreading agent.

Right? So, here's a real example. I had

to write an email that was going out to

like a somewhat large group of people.

Uh, so I typed out a quick draft, but

before uh sending I had the proofreading

agent take a look. Of course, it found

some straightforward mistakes. You know,

Grammarly is good at that, which is

great, but it can do a lot more. There's

a whole list of functions you can apply.

Like when I clicked on sharpen opening

point, it suggested ways to be less

wishy-washy in my language in the

opening sentences, which actually made

that a better email without me having to

like sit there and pour over it like I

was writing a New Yorker piece, right?

So, that was really useful. I'm not the

only one to find Grammarly so helpful.

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helps them get more work done. It even

has a new feature called AI chat that

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like kick off your idea or just polish

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there. So, Grammarly helps you produce

better writing faster and that is

incredibly valuable. Sign up for free

and experience how Grammarly can elevate

your professional writing from start to

finish. Visit grammarly.com/mpodcast.

That's grammarly.com/mpodcast.

All right, Jesse, let's get back to our

deep dive.

All right, as promised in our final

section here, we are going to get into

the ways that you can get better at long

thinking now that you're convinced that

it's worth it and you need some

practice. So, I'm going to suggest a

concrete strategy and I'm actually going

to get this strategy from an essay I

first published all the way back in

2009. This is like the early days of my

blog when my writing was still

studentfacing.

It describes a strategy that I started

back then and I still do today and I

think it is the best training the best

single thing you can do to train your

ability to do long thinking. All right,

I'm going to load this on the screen

here for people who are watching instead

of just listening. Uh you'll see here

the name of this method is the notebook

method. Now the subtitle says how can

pen and paper transform you into a star

student? Because again I was I was

writing just for students back then but

stay with me because this advice is

relevant to anyone. That's what I

learned as I uh as I advanced in my

career and kept using it. All right. So,

I'm going to uh scroll down here a

little bit and I am going to start at

the paragraph that says the idea is

simple. There's four steps here. I'm

going to read each of them. Number one,

buy a sturdy college ruled notebook

dedicated to the relevant class. Right?

All right. So, that was for school, but

we can just generalize that to say to

the the the relevant problem that you

want to make progress on. Number two,

buy a good pin. Nothing beats a black

uniball micro.5 millimeter. I keep talk

I've been talking about those. Jesse is

literally holding one. Show us, Jesse.

>> I adopted it because I was always a fan.

>> I've been So, you This is proof. I've

been using those for a long time. Number

three, take your notebook and pen and go

to the most relaxing, meditative,

non-distracting place possible. The deep

stacks of the library is okay. Hiking 30

minutes into the woods or onto the dunes

overlooking a windswept springtime beach

is even better. Number four, spend 1 to

three hours working out of your work

working out your thinking on the task at

hand in your notebook. Spend the last 20

minutes carefully summarizing your

results on a clean page that you mark

with the date and a title. For example,

here's a snapshot from a page in my PhD

thesis notebook. There we go, Jesse.

Look at that. All right. So, I recognize

this uh this was from my doctoral

dissertation which I defended later that

year. The composition algorithm.

You're probably right now I know Jesse,

you're seeing multiple mistakes probably

is as as you're looking at this. Um but

I I actually remembered it. It was it

was taking two um two randomized

algorithms. One of which was simulating

a channel and one of which is simulating

an algorithm that uses that channel. um

treating them formally as as as formal

IO automata and then it's a it's a

systematic algorithm. So it's it's a

conceptual algorithm not something you

actually run that just shows the

existence of a combined composed

algorithm in which the channel the the

algorithm on this channel uh simulator

behaves like the algorithm on the

channel. It was a pain to work out these

details. Um but that was a big part of

this thesis. This was actually

interestingly the work I presented in

Bolognia and so there we go full circle

right this should look familiar because

that's exactly what I was talking about

in the article from the beginning of

this uh podcast from 2012 when I was at

Berkeley working on a problem as a

professor that was three years later so

clearly this notebook method of I'm

going to take a notebook I'm going to go

somewhere scenic and I'm going to sit

there and just work in this scenic

environment on this problem and then in

the last 20 minutes summarizing the best

I can with a title and date to kind of

make it all official. That's exactly in

2012 I was still doing that. I still do

it today. So, this this method has stuck

with me. Why does it work? Well, I'm

going to scroll down farther in this

article because here was my best

explanation for why the notebook method

is so uh successful. I said it's power

sources from the following truths.

Number one, writing down your thoughts

forces you to clarify what you're

thinking and confront ambiguities or

inconsistencies.

It's hard work. You'll probably feel

painful resistance the first few times

you try this method, but you must

persevere. Eventually, you gain

familiarity with a novel sensation of

deep thinking. Number two, you can't

check email using a spiralbound

notebook. You also can't update your

Facebook profile or tweet about your

YouTube channel. That's somewhat timely.

It's that's from a while ago, 15 years

ago, but those technologies still exist.

If you're high up in the library stacks,

or better yet, in the woods or at the

beach, it's just you in your notebook.

Eventually, your urge towards

distraction will give away. And three,

paper facilitates creative thinking. You

can draw arrows and circle concepts and

sketch structure. Something about a good

ballpoint scraping across a thick grain

paper stock unlocks area of your mind

that tend to hibernate when you're

slumped over your laptop in a crowded

study lounge. I think those explanations

are exactly right. Writing down your

thoughts as opposed to just keeping in

your head makes you be more organized.

That's exactly right. Your thinking is

clearer. It makes your long thinking

better. Being uh without technology in a

very scenic place reduces distracting

poles, helps you focus more. I kept

pushing for inspiring places in this

article. So yeah, library stack, sure,

beach better. So, if you're in an

inspiring place, that gives you an extra

bit of uh of energy. It's so different.

You feel chemicals, but they're not the

standard chemicals. It really unlocks

new things. And finally, you're in a

paper form. You can draw pictures and

squares and boxes and mathematical

formulas and connect things together

with arrows. And so, it unlocks as sort

of like a freer type of thinking than if

you're just trying to hold something in

your head or just typing. I think those

reasons do a very good job. Whatever I

identified back then in 2009 does a very

good job of explaining why this method

works. And so this is what I want you to

do. If you want to become a better long

thinker, implement the notebook method

at least once a week, preferably in the

most scenic places possible. It could be

a work problem. You can you could it

could be something about yourself, like

a self-reflection thing you're working

on. It could be visioning or planning

for your future, like what your deeper

life is missing missing. It could be

about making sense of something in the

world that's catching your attention. It

could be about clarifying your personal

principles, values, or beliefs. Whatever

the target, take that good notebook,

take that good pen, go somewhere scenic,

1 to three hours, last 20 minutes, write

it down. This is calisthenics for your

ability to produce thoughts. So if

reading hard things, like we talked

about a couple episodes ago, is like

calisthenics

for uh being able to understand hard

things for a mind that has new

connections and can can take in

complicated thoughts.

The notebook method is calisthenics for

then how do you produce original complex

thoughts of yourself? So it's a you read

combine that with the notebook method

and now you have a brain that's internet

proof. Now you have a brain that's

algorithm proof. There's other things

you can do to become a better long

thinker. But I'm just saying notebook

method once a week. Simple, but that

really does make a big difference. I

still do that to this day. The idea is

not new. I'm not the only one who does

this. There was a a section in my 2019

book, Digital Minimalism, that I

particularly like that I get into where

I I go and visit the the soldiers the

old soldiers retirement home now in like

Pworth in DC, but sort of in the hills

above where the White House is in DC and

Abraham Lincoln, I wrote about this how

Abraham Lincoln would go there. That was

his like his weekend retreat up into the

hills to this house they had up there

and he would go there to basically apply

the notebook method. He would wander the

grounds and think and try to make sense

of whatever the issue is of the day. And

he would write his ideas as not always

in a notebook but famously on scraps of

paper. Uh some of which he would hide in

the lining or or store in the lining of

his sort of famous stove top style hat.

It was up there wandering trying to make

sense of his thoughts that he reached

like his decisions about the

Emancipation Proclamation, some of his

biggest military decisions. So, I'm not

the first to come up with the notebook

method, but it is a great way of

extracting long thinking from your day.

All right, Jesse, let's do some

takeaways from today's discussion.

[Music]

All right, so here's the thing. We like

to imagine that our brain is a neutral

observer of an objective world that

surrounds us.

and that our daily experience is

therefore determined by whatever we

happen to encounter in the world that

day. But this model isn't right. Our

experience is determined by a

combination of what we encounter and all

of the relevant mental structures that

we have built in our minds. The

structures that help us explain

ourselves and our beliefs and our

understanding about how other people and

the world functions. If you're

comfortable with long thinking, you can

create these structures in ways that are

meaningful and important to you. This

allows you in a literal sense to help

shape the world you live in to be more

rich.

Now, if you allow instead the modern

technological environment to degrade

your long thinking ability, you'll end

up encountering the world through

impoverished mental structures that were

implanted half-hazardly in your mind

through distracting content and random

things you happen to come across. You

are in that case letting a bunch of

random algorithms essentially shape your

world into something that's most likely

to be nihilistic, angry, random, or

boring. So, if you don't want your phone

to determine your world, then you need

to rembrace the joys and power of long

thinking. It's not that hard to do. You

buy a notebook, you hike somewhere

scenic, you work out a complicated

thought on paper, you end with a clear

summary, and you repeat. It's a simple

habit, but over time, it will re it will

help you re-engage with long thinking.

And as long thinking becomes more common

and comfortable for you, you will be

able to transform your world into

something that is much more meaningful

and satisfying. So give long thinking a

try.

All right, there you go. Uh we still

have a lot of great show ahead. Jesse

pulled a collection of questions here

that that a lot of them are about like

notebooks and trying to take notes and

and organizing your thoughts and so like

we're going to get into the nitty-gritty

of of sort of how you have notebook

assisted long thinking. We have a case

study. We've got a call and because this

is the first episode we're recording in

November. At the end, I'm going to tell

you I'll review briefly the five books I

read during the last month. Uh before we

do that though, let's see. Let's do some

uh housekeeping. All right, Jesse. So,

they can find these episodes if you're

listening on YouTube.

>> Yep.

>> Just search for uh what's it? Cal

Newport Media. You'll see the latest

episode. Uh subscribe to the newsletter

if you haven't already at calport.com.

So the the newsletter discussion, it

often complements the podcast. It'll

take it in a different direction or add

something that wasn't in the episode or

vice versa. So if you like the podcast,

you really got to have that newsletter.

It's also where I announce things and

talk about things and hey, here's a book

I recommend or, you know, I'm going to

be showing up in your town to talk. So

>> it comes out the same time every week.

>> Yeah, it's the same time. It's it's they

come out together. You'll get it in your

inbox. Um and the newsletter will tell

you what's in the podcast. And so you

got to subscribe to that. I bet that's

been around for a long time. 2007.

>> Yeah,

>> you could subscribe. caliper.com has

been around for a while. Um, and we love

your questions, Jesse. Tell us about uh

how to submit questions, what type of

questions you're looking for.

>> You can go to deeplife.com/listen.

There's two links there where you can

submit audio questions or written

questions. So, just go there and check

it out.

>> Make them short and sweet. Um,

preferably questions about different

ways of either understanding technology

or responding to different technologies,

whether in your work or your personal

life.

um are preferred. All right, so speaking

of questions, I think Jesse, it's time

for us now to hear some questions from

our listeners.

>> All right, first question is from Tara.

How do you organize your notebooks,

physical or remarkable, for your books

and New Yorker articles?

>> Um, well, I'll still say I'm still

using, by the way, people have asked me

about this. I'm still using my

Remarkable. I'm now upgraded to a

Remarkable Paper Pro. Um, and I still

really like that product. Usually I kind

of fall out of favor of products that

aren't just like notebooks and.5

millimeter ballpoint pens, but I've

stuck with it. All right, so here's how

I uh use my different technologies. I

still have physical single-purpose

notebooks. I use field note notebooks

for uh particular issues that I want to

come back to again and again. So if I'm

like working out a book or I'm going

through like an important uh life

decision or I'm trying to do like an

overhaul or I I want to like do

something like specific I want to come

back to again and again. And I like to

have a singlepurpose practical notebook

that I can bring with me and just let

those thoughts begin to collect. I use

notebooks on my remarkable, so virtual

notebooks on my remarkable e- in

notebook for a lot of ongoing projects

where I need to like organize especially

notes that are taken over time. So like

if I'm having a series of meetings like

uh I'm on the board of trustees for my

kids schools. So, I want to like have a

a notebook to keep track of those notes

from like the different meetings and

they're dated. Like that type of

notebook I just keep as a virtual

notebook within my remarkable my like

Halloween design planning uh I do in the

remarkable. I actually got a lot of I

was happy Jesse like on Halloween I

didn't know if people would appreciate

what went into my my uh customuilt light

sound controller.

>> I was going to ask you about that.

>> I was like people are just going to be

like oh because it's not like it's a

super impress it's not a super

impressive big thing to see. It was just

like a synchronized laser battle. A lot

of people came up and appreciated the

techn like the complexity of actually

the circuits for that. So, I really

appreciated that. I didn't know if

people would get it, but they did. I

have ideas for next year, by the way.

There's going to be movement,

>> which you put in your remarkable

notebook.

>> I you I do use my remark I have a

Halloween notebook in there.

>> It goes so that goes in there as well.

Um, okay. Then for for my like the

specific things I do again and again for

my professional career, the things that

are at the core of what I do for my job,

I have more customized tools. I've

talked about this before, but books and

um non-mathematical articles. I use

Scriber and it's in the Scriber project

for each of those that I collect. All

the notes and clippings and thoughts and

articles and links, they're all in the

various research folders I keep within

the Scriber project. more mathematical

articles of the type like I've been

talking about in this episode that I

don't write as many of those right now

anymore. But my old theory articles I

would use um Overleaf which is like a a

web-based collaborative editor for the

markup language you use for mathematical

articles and I would just start putting

ideas in the actual tool I'm using to do

the writing. So I've got a lot of tools

still um those are the ones I mainly

use.

>> So you use your remarkable pretty much

every day.

>> Yeah, I use it a lot. Yeah. Yeah, I use

it a lot. I like it. I think it's a

really good product. They're not even a

sponsor. I just, you know, they sent me

one, but I appreciate that they did. Um,

all right. Who do we got next?

>> Next up is Megan. How do I get better at

reading? I'm an 18-year-old student and

my reading has dropped in recent years.

How do I reverse this? Should I just

read more? Are all books or articles

fair game?

>> Uh, yes. And, right. Yes, you need to

read more. Uh, for now, just whatever

you're most excited to read, great. The

key is actually uh minutes of eyes on

page because you're reactivating those

reading circuits. You're re sort of

mileelinating them. You're trying to get

uh you're trying to get that the

friction reduced for the active reading.

So, if you can get involved in like a

reading fandom, I'm going to read uh

whatever like dark academia books, which

as far as I can tell are tend to be it's

always like young women and these like

always like some sort of weird secret

society cult and then at some point like

a ghost is beating them up like so

whatever if that's your thing or fairy

romance or whatever it is um whatever I

don't care what it is minutes and

minutes on page but I said yes and

because the other thing you need to do

is make attention

sustained attention be less foreign and

scary. You're an 18-year-old student, so

I'm going to assume that the very best

way to do that is you have to stop using

your phone so much. You got to stop.

Having your phone as a constant

companion is not normal or healthy. And

I don't care if everyone does it. You're

noticing the beginning of those side

effects. Now, reading is like the basic

activation of

advanced symbolic thinking. If you're

struggling reading, your whole brain is

struggling because of that stupid piece

of glass.

So, I take social media off of it.

They're not going to miss you. Take

social media off of it. Keep it in one

room when you're at home, not with you.

Just be used to having long periods of

your day where the phone is not there.

You cannot be interrupted. Your mind has

nothing to check. You have to

drastically reduce the footprint of your

phone in your life. I don't know how

else to tell you this. If you want your

brain to get recomfortable again with

sustained uh attention, which you'll

need to do reading, the reading will

build the circuits. That sustained

attention will then help you do long

thinking. and all this is going to make

your life better. The phone wants to

make it worse. So, you got to

renegotiate now that you're an adult.

Renegotiate your relationship with your

phone so that you can build a life on

your own terms. All right, who do we got

next? Next up is Francis. My father was

an English teacher who passed away a

couple years ago. While clearing out his

house, I was reminded how I used to

enjoy creative writing. I'm currently a

university profess professor that writes

for my work, but not creatively. I don't

want to write on computer. So I was

wondering if you had any suggestions. I

own and use a remarkable.

>> Yeah, it's interesting. I mean speaking

of uh professors like I always thought

this was an interesting

observation.

So my my dad was a professor for a

while. My grandfather was a a professor

and my grandfather was a very prolific

professor. So I'm from a line of you

know scholars. My grandfather wrote a

lot of books. I don't remember how many

but like at least a dozen. um you know

academic ebooks. He was a a Baptist

Christian apologist was at Rice for a

long time as an endowed chair and then

the provost of the Southwestern Baptist

Theological Seminary right before the

fundamentalist takeover. So he was like

in that world of religious scholarship.

Wrote a ton of books. Never had a

computer. Bought his first computer

after he retired. He would handw write

those books on yellow legal pads and

then a a typist would type it up and he

would look at the type drafts and he

would mark up those type drafts and then

someone would type it up again and he

would look at those. To modernize we

have this this efficiency thinking we've

taken the idea that comes out of like

industrial manufacturing in which like

all that matters right because it's a

set process so all that matters is the

speed at which things happen. We look at

that and we say, "Oh, that's so slow.

Writing on a tablet is slow. Having it

typed, you have to hand mark it and hand

it back. That's slow." But he wrote way

more books than most professors. He

wrote more books than I've written

because with cognitive activities, it's

interesting. Efficiency and slowness

isn't the same thing as an industrial

manufacturing. In fact, going slower

probably made the books better. And also

like the raw hours that you're actually

writing when you write a book is like a

fraction of the time involved in like

creating that book. So anyway, I always

thought that was interesting. So you

have a lot more flexibility than you

think when it comes to writing. I have a

friend who does a short story writing on

typewriters. He really likes it. So if

you're looking for an alternative um

there's several things you can do.

There's a product I'm interested in

called the Freewrite

Writ.

It's an e- in product. So it's like the

same type of screen as a Kindle. It's a

keyboard with like an e- in screen. They

have a couple different models.

And basically it's a drafting tool. So

you can see what you're typing in the

little screen as you're writing. All you

can do is like write and you can have

different folders with different files

in it. You can select one through a a

pretty slow interface and then just

start writing. You do basic editing.

There's like a backspace key or you can

move to your recent text and but you

can't do you don't have a mouse. You're

not cutting and pasting and

spellchecking and doing this. The whole

idea is you're supposed to is for

creative writers like I just want to get

a draft of this done and I have a really

good mechanical keyboard and I see the

words there and I can fix my typos in

the moment but I'm just writing till I'm

done. Then you can export them off of

the freewrite into like Google Docs or

Word or something and and uh do like a

better editing pass and work from there.

But it's like meant as a drafting tool

that you can just carry and it's

portable. I think that's really

interesting. Another thing that some

people do, I believe I first heard about

this from I think it was I think it was

Dave Edgars.

It might have been Michael Sha I don't

think it's Michael Shabban. I think this

was Dave Edgars. Um he had an old laptop

where it had no he had disabled the

internet. So it had it had no workable

Wi-Fi and it's old. There's nothing else

on it but like Word and he would use

that laptop to write. So now like you

can edit like a little bit, right? You

can do all your editing on there. You

copy and paste and move things around

and like it's not just like I'm writing

a draft, but you can't do anything else

on this computer. There's no there's no

internet. And then when he's done, you

uh USB key. All right, I'll move the

file over there and I can move it to

like my other computer and then I can if

I want to email it to someone or do

something like that. That to me is a

cool idea. So, you just get like a

simple computer and just never activate

um never activate the internet. I would

go so far as like break that wireless

chip and have someone do that for you.

Like I really can't use this on the

internet. So, this is just like a nice

writing machine. I spent $300 on it. So,

you have options from paper to something

like freewrite. The remarkable has a

keyboard. I bought a remarkable with a

keyboard. I don't I'm not going to

recommend that. Um it's too clunky. When

you're trying to type with the keyboard,

the keyboard's fine, but it's um you

have no control. I I feel like I don't

have enough control of where that text

goes. It's too hard to edit. It's not

really It's meant for like adding some

annotations to notes. So, I I wouldn't

use a remarkable for it. But I think the

free write might be an interesting tool.

Uh and then really the best solution is

cheap laptop, no Wi-Fi, nothing else on

it. All right. Uh let's see here. All

right. So, we have some more questions

coming up, including a a call that's on

these topics, and we'll review the books

I read last month. So, you're going to

want to keep sticking around for the

show. We're going to take just a brief

break to hear from uh a couple other

sponsors, then we're going to get right

back in it.

All right. So, as I mentioned, the

holiday season is here. We know it

because the wreath is up at the Deepwork

HQ and this brings with it a lot of

excitement and joy, but also a lot of

chaos and busyiness. So, I want to make

a suggestion. Give yourself the gift of

turning your home into a sanctuary. A

place where you can slow down with your

family, get comfortable, read a book by

the fire, hopefully with some snow

falling outside, and just enjoy the

quiet. You want to fully realize that

vision, you need Cozy Earth. Let me tell

you about the Cozy Earth products that I

use regularly and really do feel like

help me create a sanctuary in my home. I

have their famous sheets. Talked about

this a lot on the show. I've never slept

in a more comfortable pair of sheets. It

honestly makes it a pleasure to get in

bed each night. I love those sheets. I'm

very sad when we're somewhere else. I

stay at the Algangquin Hotel recently

just in New York. Famous hotel. Famous

hotel. But man, that bed was way worse.

Both my wife and I are like, "This is

way worse. We miss our bed." All right.

The second thing I have from Cozy Earth

is their PJs. My wife has long had a

pair, but I just got the men's variety.

It's the long pants and long shirt. I

actually had them on last night. It was

a little chilly in the house. Similar

material to the sheets. Comfortable.

It's what I went to. I was like, I am

changing I always say I'm changing out

this monkey suit, like old slang for a

suit. No, I'm usually in like jeans, but

whatever. And I put on those PJs.

Finally, the bubble cuddle blanket. We

have It's so popular in our house that

we have to have rules about who gets to

use it and when. So, to prepare for the

holidays, you too should give yourself

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Cozy Earth. Jesse, I want to tell you

something that I'm not very good at.

That's hiring. As I've mentioned on the

show before, we recently hired a uh

creative director to help run the

newsletter and you know, it made a big

difference. I was really neglecting that

newsletter and now it is going out

regularly. Um what mattered was he was

the right person with the right skills.

That makes all the difference in your

business. And this is where Indeed

enters a picture. It took me like over a

year to find the right person and in the

end it was because I just happened

someone else I knew knew this person or

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Indeed is all you need. All right,

Jesse, let's get back to those

questions. Who we got? Next question is

from Cidi. You have discussed Teddy

Roosevelt's astounding productivity and

his ability to read at least one book

per day. When I read, I don't get the

most out of the book unless I write

reflections or spend time thinking about

the concepts presented. And reading one

book per day would not allow me to

maximize benefit from each book. I'm

still not completely sure how Roosevelt

did that while in the White House. Mind

you, while in the White House, he

supposedly read a book a day. I think he

was a very good skimmer. I think he was

very good at getting to exactly the

points that were because he had read so

many books. You could be like

interesting interesting skip skip

skip interesting skip interesting

got it. Like, I think that's what was

happening. When it comes to your own

reading practice,

read at the pace that allows you to get

the most value. And for a book where

you're really trying to extract new

ideas, like so a book that's going to

trigger a lot of long thinking could

take a long time to read, and that's

fine. Annotate it. I often do that with

those books with my uh pencil marking

method. Do summary notes. So for big

idea books I really want to understand,

I'll I'll start a document where I write

summaries of each chapter. That really

helps me like long think through like

what the ideas are. Go for long walks to

try to integrate ideas in your life.

That's all great. The only thing I would

add to that is having some diversity of

books. You don't want every book that

you're reading to be such a heavy lift.

You're going to burn out. So mix those

in with other types of books that you

could read fast, maybe even in a day.

And go back and forth between these. But

let each book get the time that it needs

for you to get the most out of it. It's

not a race. Um, and so you don't have to

do the Teddy's pace on everything.

>> I was recently listening to Tim Ferrris

interview with uh David Senra who runs

the Founders podcast,

>> right?

>> And he reads a ton of books, but he was

saying he reads really slow. He only

reads like 25 pages an hour.

>> Yeah. So, it's like it I like this idea

of like minutes of eyes on page is

important

>> because it's all a stage where your

brain is making connections and you're

building up your knowledge and speed

depends on like the book and the person.

I'm not a particularly fast reader. It

It takes me the full month to do my five

books for sure.

All right, who we got next?

>> Next up is Bridget. Can you revisit your

explanation of singlepurpose notebooks

and reflection walks? Is this something

that you do every day or just

sporadically? So now we have terminology

for this. That's basically the notebook

method, what we just talked about in our

deep dive. So going for a walk somewhere

scenic with a single-purpose notebook

that can do nothing but hold notes on

this one topic,

it forces you to do exactly long

thinking, persistent thought towards one

problem that you're trying to make

useful progress on. You have to

reorganize, build new assoc association,

extract principles, write it down, think

about that's not quite right. So the the

single purpose notebook in the short

term acts as like an extension of your

working memory. It's a way okay, let me

write this down, let me think about

that, let me reorder it. Okay, now this

is what I really mean. So it allows you

to hold more pieces together and

rearrange them over time. It also

becomes a repository

for how your thinking has evolved. So

you might have like a few pages of kind

of scratch pages as you're working

through thoughts on your walk. And then

the final page you maybe have like a

star or a box around like okay that's

kind of the the work product of this

walk. That's the key observation. And

then the next time you do a walk or go

somewhere scenic whatever you start from

that like okay I can get up to speed on

where I was. Now you're doing more. So

in the short term it's like a working

memory. long term is like a record of

your thoughts and is that notebook fills

you're capturing an artifact of the

human brains doing what only human

brains can do. So, I love the practice

of single purpose notebooks on on

thinking walks aimed at a given problem.

That is purified long thinking. And once

you've started doing it, it really can

be addicting. Like I really always look

forward to my my long thinking. I have a

stack I have a like 50 single purpose

notebooks just waiting for me and uh a

hundred of my pens. So, I I love the

idea that I no matter what comes up, I

can grab a clean notebook and a fresh

pen and head out the door. I keep like a

big stock of those in my library at

home. All right, we got a case study

this week where people uh they send in

their examples of their stories of using

the type of advice we talked about on

the show in their own life.

>> We have case cutting. Yeah, we have

music.

>> We have music. Let's hear some music.

[Music]

Now, we're in the mood for a case study.

All right, today's case study comes from

Mason.

Mason says, "I struggled for a long

period after college. Then I discovered

your concept of deep work and was

immediately a convert. I consumed your

content. I made my phone as dumb as

possible and have long been off social

media. I wrote out my key documents,

drafted a quarterly plan. I set up a

working memory.txt file. I ordered the

time block planner. I made a Trello

board and uh assessed what kind of deep

to shallow ratio was possible given my

weekly responsibilities. I put my phone

in the kitchen and tried, though often

failed, to meditate productively. I

embraced boredom. I enrolled in you and

Scott Young's course on the focus life.

And then I started evangelizing. Through

all of this, I got promoted. I got

married. I started visiting immigration

detention centers. I'm working through

be funny like you think that's like for

a positive thing like to help the uh

people who are detained. It' be funny if

he's like to rob them.

Turns out he could steal the wallets of

people in detention centers. If you

think deeply enough about the security

lapses. No, you're doing something very

noble, Mason. I'm sorry to joke about

it. I'm working through Toltoy and spent

a lot of time practicing photography. I

go to therapy and I coach at a local

CrossFit gym. I massively reduce my

anxiety and I've created systems that

are a ballast when things feel out of

control. But these systems aren't

perfect, and I'm still vulnerable to

slipping back into the old ways, which

include you YouTube rabbit holes and

hours on my phone. I'm not expecting

this to be easy, and maybe I just need

to keep practicing. But when it comes to

cultivating the deep life, I feel like

something is missing. Maybe your new

books get into whatever that something

is. Do you ever get tired? All right.

It's a great case study followed by a

great question. So, what I like about

the case study is it indicates like a

lot of the things I talk about, I talk

about a lot of things. They're all like

loosely responding to either

understanding technology or responding

to the culture or problems that

technology creates. One of the

categories of these things I talk about

is like about the type of things he

talks about there. They try to like

organize your life. be less distracted,

but also be more intentional and have

plans at different levels and deep to

shallow work ratios and like be super

intentional. Because a lot of what makes

life today seem like busy or boring or

nihilistic or or exhausting is that

these different forces, a lot of them

technological, can like push you into

this sort of unintentional, artificial,

like frenetic state where you're

bouncing off the walls. You're like,

what's even going on? When you get

intentional about all this stuff, look

at look what all this the good stuff

that happens. promotion, marriage,

helping people, reading hard things, in

good shape, anxiety lower, talking to a

therapy therapist, like his life is

under control.

And that's why, by the way, I would

always get frustrated. Well, first of

all, I don't like being described as a

productivity guru because like these are

one column of like a massive structure

of things that all come back to

technology, right? But I get even more

frustrated when people who don't know my

work assume you they they they think

they they're the first person to

discover Frederick Winslow Taylor who

they completely misite and completely

inflate his importance which really

wasn't that much. His main importance

was for later writers to look back and

try to feel like they're smart and like

you you're just trying to you're just

trying to squeeze more work. Basically,

this is like warmed over Marxist

critical theory. It's just you're

creating this sort of false

consciousness so that you can squeeze

more labor out of the out of the sort of

brainwashed bgeoisi. It's it's work for

work's sake and hustle culture and all

this type of thing. No, it's about

gaining control of your life from the

technological forces that want to make

it chaotic, frenetic, and seemingly

meaningless. So, these things work.

Think about time smartly. You think

about attention smartly. Think about

workload smartly.

It matters. you can get your arms around

this current world that has so much

that's being thrown at you with so

little controls.

So, it's for making your life better,

not making you faster and more efficient

or more hustly. But Mason brings up a

good point here. Is that enough? And

there the answer is no as well. This is

so you can get control over stuff, but

you still it's up to you to cultivate a

deep life. This is the major turn that

my thinking and writing made around the

beginning of the pandemic, especially

the first months of the pandemic when I

coined the term the deep life because I

was at peak form then of I uh you know I

was worried about technology and

distraction and email and I was working

on my email book but I was in peak form

of like I understand information flows.

I understand human psychology. I

understand neuroscience. I understand

modern work culture and technology

culture and like how to the problems all

these things are creating. how to be

intentional and push these problems

back. But the pandemic began, I said,

"Yeah, but then what? Push them back to

do what?" And that's when I began to

talk about the deep life, which was

about being systematic about what your

life is about, reducing the stuff you

don't you don't like, amplify the stuff

you do, make a life immediate

satisfaction on your own terms. And I've

I've become, you know, increasingly

convinced the deep life is really really

important, especially if you're trying

to deal with technology.

It's the bigger better offer you make so

that Tik Tok and Sora and you know

Reddit wars with your tribal compatriots

is not so interesting anymore. You have

nothing else going on in your life. Your

life is super stressful. You're like

well that's better. But if your life is

built on your own terms

like I don't want to watch Bob Ross

break dancing on a piece of glass. I'm

living life here. This is like more

important. So like the deep life

ultimately is the the anecdote the

antidote rather the antidote to like a

lot of the poisons of the modern

technological world. So how do you do

that? Well that's the new book I'm

writing now and I you know I'm in the

middle of it. It's still we're more than

a year out from this book coming out. So

you know there's a lot more to go but

the approach I'm taking on this book is

Mason you will like this. The whole

point of this book is I don't want to

tell you what you need in a deep life.

This is not like Oprah and um Arthur

Brooks book where it's like let me tell

you the five things you need to care

about in your life uh for your life to

be better, right? It is a book that on

the topic that not enough people talk

about which is just the straight up

pragmatic

technical processes that'll let you

succeed in directing your life to

something more meaningful,

whatever that is. And in fact,

I've given you the technical processes

for how do you figure out what meaning

even means for you? And then once you

know that, how do you actually make

progress towards that? How do you avoid

just like having these sort of sporadic

burst of inspiration where you're like,

uh, we're going to move. I'm going to

like buy a dumbbell or whatever. Like,

how do you actually like systematically

um and more consistently succeed in, you

know, making your life more meaningful?

So, it's it's all about just the

practical details. The chapters, the

sections are all numbered in it. there's

a huge amount of like diagrams and all

right then you might format it this way.

I'm being like purposefully technical in

it. But to answer that final question,

but here's the thing. All that stuff you

did, Mason, you kind of have to be able

to do that before this deep life sort of

instructions, you're going to be able to

follow through with them anyways. Like

what you did, I now think about as like

the preparation for cultivating a deep

life. I call it becoming a more capable

human. You became a more capable human

who's in charge of like your time and

your your workload and your life around

you. then you need to know what to do

with that and that's where like deep

life cultivation methods come in and

you're like okay now I'm going to start

figuring out what really matters I'm

going to start making my life really

cool and radical and remarkable so

that's the book I'm working on but

you're pointing out a good thing a lot

of this stuff that people call my

productivity advice is like how to

become more capable human what you do

with it is also where the really cool

stuff happens and that's its own type of

topic so stay tuned on that Mason I'm

thinking about this stuff all day

there'll be a lot more of this to come

as I get closer to finishing that book

all right do we have a call this week

Jesse

>> yes we All right, let's hear this.

>> Hi, Cal. My name's Juan and I wanted to

ask you some advice on some extended

adventure working. I'm currently hiking

the Continental Divide Trail. I'm taking

a pit stop in Santa Fe, New Mexico

before continuing on through the snowy

mountains of southern Colorado. And

yeah, for the next 5 months, uh my only

real priority is to make it through this

next adventure. However, I don't

completely want to pause my creative

life. I draw graphic novels for fun, and

I'd love for my next project to be about

this hike I'm doing right now. So, this

brought to mind your idea of adventure

work, where you make progress on work by

engaging with ideas while immersed in a

totally unrelated environment.

How would you recommend that I use my

time on this hike towards that goal? I

have some pocket notebooks that I could

use as sketchbooks or single-purpose

notebooks and I also have a journal.

However, the vast majority of my time uh

needs to be spent on the trail so that I

can cover the 20 or 25 miles that I need

to do each day.

Um okay, so this is a long thinking push

to the extreme type of case study. You

have all day long you're just in scenic

environments alone with your own

thoughts. It's a perfect environment for

long thinking. The real issue is you're

doing too much. You're going to burn out

your brain. I would choose sessions

throughout the day where like for the

next hour, I'll be working on the

following thing in my brain. Long

thinking target, making sense of a new

creative idea, making sense of yourself,

trying to make sense of the the insights

that you're gaining on the trail. Now, I

know you can't stop that often. So,

you're going to get really good at

working with these things in your head

and then during like a brief water

break, adding those notes pretty refined

to your page or if it's a graphic novel

thing you're working on, maybe you have

a sketch. So, really, you're probably

working more on

ideas and styles and plots and

innovations like in your mind because

you don't have much time to draw and

then maybe at night you can do a little

bit of drawing. But yeah, have long if

you do long thinking sessions, multiple

long thinking sessions every day, you

can figure out a lot of stuff. be more

ambitious than just I want to think

about my novel. Think about like your

whole creative career, the future of

graphic novels. Build a whole intricate

universe Brandon Sanderson level of

complexity type of uh uh you know

creative universe of ideas that all hook

together in which you're going to build

20 graphic novels that all intricately

inconnect. You kind of have all these

notes in your notebooks that is you have

the the raw number of brain cycles you

can now deploy towards whatever you want

on this continental divide trip is

massive and you can come out of it with

some like really fun creative output.

So, uh, fill those notebooks. Do most of

your thinking while you're walking. It's

the best way to think anyways. And raise

your ambitions about the type of things

that you think about.

All right, that brings us to our final

part of the show. Uh, because this is

the first uh first podcast we're

recording November. Not the first one to

come out in November, the first one

we're recording in November. I want to

talk about the books I read in the

preceding month. As you know, my goal is

to to read five books every month. helps

keep my mind connected and sharp so that

when I produce ideas, I have a better

tool to work with. All right, so here's

the five books. I've I wrote down some

notes for each. Interesting. October was

an interesting collection. All right, so

here we go. Book number one, The Gift of

the Jews by Thomas Cahill.

So, Thomas K. Hill, this is book two of

a series called Hinges of History, where

every book in this series is about like

a small group of people in a historical

moment that ended up having an outsized

impact of history. So, I know K Hill

because I read his first book years back

from the series, which was called How

the Irish Saved Civilization. I read

this right before my first trip, the

Ireland, you know, a long time ago. And

the the small group of people here were

the Irish monks.

And it was about how during like the

dark ages, these monks were keeping

alive all these manuscripts and

recopying them over and maintaining them

off on like kind of the corner of the

world. And then those were the

manuscripts that like helped spur the

Renaissance because they kept them alive

even as like the rest of Europe was sort

of uh burning up in the fall of the

Roman Empire and the dark ages that

follow. So like that was like a really

cool history because it was a history

but it was about a small group had this

outsized impact. So the gift of the Jews

is his second book. The premise is

interesting, right? It's about how this

like this small small group of uh you

know herdsmen in Canaan um ended up

coming up with these ideas that shaped

like all of the modern world stuff that

we just think now are like self-evident

or came out of philosophy but they

didn't. things like the worth of the

individual or progressive notions of

justice. Um, even the idea of

non-yclical his just history as a thing.

Cahil does a really good job of talking

about like the the context of like at

the time of when like Aram left Harin

like in the the Sumerian culture and the

Egyptian culture of that period there

was no history. time was cyclical like

they're they're all of the people of

these first the first great

civilizations as well as like all uh not

like indigenous peoples all around the

world. They kind of looked like to the

stars and said they're repeating and

everything's a cycle and the same things

happen again and again and no individual

is that important and everything's just

going to repeat and what's going to

happen is going to happen. The Greeks

thought the same thing and and the Jews

like no there's an actual history. Look,

this person was this person's son and

this person this person and history as a

linear thing matters. Like these were

like big ideas. So I I came to this book

like oh this is great. Uh he's setting

the context which I love of like this

the ancient world roughly like second

third millennium BC and like how this

small group of people had a completely

different way of thinking about things

that was going to explode and change the

world. But then I think the book fell

off a little bit in my opinion. I don't

know if this was filler, but like long

parts of the book is just sort of

retelling the stories from the Hebrew

Bible, like we're just going to and then

this is what happened in like the book

of Joshua. And it felt filler like,

well, wait, you had these like great

there's these these ideas about their

impact are great with a small group

having a big impact, but I don't need

like the entire Hebrew Bible just

summarized. So probably the Irish Saved

America was a stronger book, but like

the I the first this is like 50 pages of

this book were really like a tour to

force of popular history making in a way

my favorite type of popular history

making like oh I didn't know this like

this is a really smart explanation of

what the world was like and you're

making it very accessible but it's

actually pretty complicated what you're

pulling from. So great beginning but

then I think it was too much of like and

then David did this and I was like okay

I've I've heard those stories before.

So, but interesting read nonetheless.

All right. The next book I read was uh

this was actually from a listener

recommended this the the new Lin Manuel

Miranda biography by Daniel Pollock

Pelzner who's a New Yorker writer. So,

this is I think the first like biography

actual biography of him written with

cooperation um with Linam Well. Um, so

it's interesting like you know first

biographies of contemporary figures it's

really like a big part of the goal is

just getting the timelines right because

you're working with the person and

various resources and people there's

been profiles and stuff and I wrote

about them in my my most recent book and

there's all these like pieces out there

that are kind of right and stuff that's

not right and like it's just a tick tock

of like I want to get this happened then

he went here then he went here and so

like you know it's it's it establishes

that. So, it's really interesting to if

you want to just get what is the beat

bybeat actual story of Lin Manuel up to

this point. I mean, it's it's a it's a

bit heographic, but you kind of expect

first biographies to be especially

because you have the participation of

the person for first biography. So,

you're not going to be like this guy

sucked, you know, because he's

that was the first sentence of the

biography actually was kind of

interesting like Hamilton can blow me.

He's

Miranda sucked. There's one very No,

that's not how it started. It was a

biography. Couple things I noticed

that I learned that were interesting.

The thing that uh first sort of vaulted

Linmo Miranda like uh got the attention

of producers coming out of college and

got him on the route the his first

Broadway musical. It was the hip-hop

freestyle narration. So he had put that

into In the Heights, the version that he

produced and wrote as a college student.

had a lot of issues, but it had that

hip-hop narration that like you're

probably more familiar with from

Hamilton, but he was a really good

freestyle hip-hop freestyle artist

because he was in a freestyle improv

group that would it was like an improv

group, but they would do it was like,

you know, you do rap battles, but it

would be they would rap about like

things the audience would talk about and

they got really really good. So, he's a

super fluent and he was really inspired

by 90s era, you know, he's roughly our

age, like 90s era hip hop where they

where you had these like super talented

uh wordsmiths and rhymers and you know,

you you had the notorious B.I., you

know, you had um whatever, right? Okay.

That's what they the the producers that

were like, we're going to bankroll you

like working on your first play for

eight years. That's what they saw. Like

that is what's new. It then turned out

later that he was like a melody prodigy

as well that like he could just make he

could just play with melody and make

really catchy or interesting or like

melodic songs. So like he had these

other skills as well, but that was the

thing that caught him out. He was not a

great musician. Um so he had to hire,

you know, it's when he started working

with great musicians that it really made

a difference um in his career. Um he

wasn't a great storyteller. In the

Heights they had to hire, they brought

on a a storyteller to write the book. um

that's not his his skill, but he was an

unmatched songwriter and Hamilton you

when he got to Hamilton, he could really

just between his melodies and his

hip-hop skills, it was just no one was

in his same league. The other thing I

learned was uh Hamilton is like a

significantly more important piece of

artistic work than In the Heights. It's

just a much much better play. Even

though In the Heights won the Tony, it

like barely won the Tony for best show.

Whereas Hamilton was like the other

Broadway other shows like I guess we

should just shut down. like this is just

like significantly

it's just significantly better than

anything we're doing. So I thought that

was interesting as well. Um and

everything I did took forever. I tell

this story in my book Slow Productivity

in the Heights is like years and years

and years of work to get it there. And

Hamilton took years and years and years

of work before that came out um as well.

So it's a it's a good slow productivity

case study. So if you like Lyn Miranda,

this biography will just gift you right

down the middle. Here's what happened.

Here's what happened next. Um here's a

weird one. And so someone gave this to

me as a gift. Uh inspired by Rachel Held

Evans, who I who I think died. Um she's

not one that old. I don't know maybe I

don't know what the circumstances were.

She's a Christian writer. Um so she

wrote she's like a progressive Christian

who writes about the Bible. And I think

your most famous book was about the

women in the Bible. There was a a more

catchier name for it. Um, but actually

someone I know who's Jewish said, "Oh,

you would like this book. It's a So,

she's Christian, but it's really mainly

about the Hebrew Bible, the Old

Testament stories, right?" Um, I got

started in the buzz, okay, I'll read

this, right? Someone gives it as a gift.

I get I get started going and I'm like,

"Oh, is this going to be like a cheesy

Christian book, you know, like these

like very very accessible books where

it's like, h my emotions and this and

it's bubbly." And I was like, "Uhoh."

But then I was actually like really

impressed. Evans just takes like a lot

of like really complicated biblical

scholarship and then um makes it

incredibly accessible and it like really

getting in the weeds about how people

understand like how the Bible was

written and what it means and how

different people thought about it over

time and how not to think about or think

about it. So both theological and

historical critiques of the Bible and uh

Apologia and makes it like super

accessible. I'm like wait a second I've

read some of these sources. This is like

really deep stuff and she's making it

like seem really interesting and

accessible. So, I was actually very

impressed by that book. So, if you're

interested in like biblical stuff like I

am, um, it was much better than I

thought it would be. Uh, so I was I

guess that person knew me well. Next

book I wrote I read was actually written

by a friend of mine. The book is called

The Future of Tutoring. It was written

by Liz Cohen. Uh, this is it's an

academic press book. This is Harvard

Education Press. So, it's a book about

high impact tutoring, which is this idea

that got a huge amount of resources

during COVID. this idea that if like a

school is struggling and students are

struggling, actually the thing that

works best is high impact tutoring

one-on-one, a tutor is going to sit with

you and work with you. It seems like an

obvious idea, but there's this movement

now that's like, yeah, obvious, but why

don't we do more of this? Like, let's

not try to be fancy with complicated

educational philosophies. How do we just

get more of someone's going to work with

you three days a week for 90 minutes

until your math gets better? Like, just

go directly to the problem. So, this is

a book that it's it's exhaustively

researched and it just goes in. There

was so much money that got thrown into

this. Liz makes sense of all of these

different types of programs, how they

were structured, what happened, what

they learned, what worked, what didn't

work. So, really, it's a book that if

you're like an organization or a school

or a researcher who's interested in this

approach, this is like the definitive

book on what we learned in the co years,

what happened, what tried different

models, what's working and what's not

working. Um, but very well researched.

So, I appreciated that. Final book I

read was Society of the Spectacle by Guy

Dbor, a 1967 book. Uh it's a collection

of 221 short essays. Dbor is a Marxist

critical theorist and this was kind of

back in the heyday like kind of the the

very end of that like Marxist critical

period uh that that period you get the

like early 20th century of or Dorno and

others who are beginning to do critical

theory. This is like right before the

postmoderns came in and were like, "You

guys are all nerds, right?" So, this is

kind of like the end of it. I'm not a

Marxist expert, but like roughly the way

I think about Marxist critical theory is

it's when Marxists begin saying uh we

want to study not just like the economic

stuff that Markx wrote about, but the

ways of these subtle things in society

that are uh constructed implicitly to

help reinforce or support or protect the

economic stuff that Marx originally

wrote about. So this is where it's it's

just like hey the these cultural

artifact these the culture around us is

actually like a tool that helps keep you

know the proletariat press and the

owners of capital you know rich and

whatever right so critical theory was

like we're going to go beyond economic

analysis to like cultural analysis right

and then the postmodernists came along

and they were French and they were cool

and um and Fuko had a shaved head and

they smoked and they were like you all

are nerds meaning is for wimps, you

know, you're stu, you know, whatever.

And they made the whole thing seem like

you're all so self-s serious and ups

have these little details and you guys

wear berets, you're all nerds. And that

was kind of like the end. And that and

you know, we got reports from the Soviet

Union that like, oh, actually socialism

is not that great necessarily like

they're sitting on the goolags. Those

two things, the postmoderns and social

basically came together and that was

kind of like the end of um the heyday of

Marxism. So this is kind of at the

heyday. Uh so there's a lot of stuff in

this book. the part so the person who

recommended to me I think this was the

part they had in mind um there's a part

of this that I think is relevant to some

of our technological analysis today so I

I like getting these type of smart

analysis um it says the boore's idea of

the spectacular

society

um I think it connects to social media

culture let me read a quick summary I'm

taking this from Wikipedia of what he

means by the spectacle society the

spectacle is the inverted image of

society in which relations between

commodities have supplanted relations

between people in which passive

identification with the spectacle

supplants genuine activity the spectacle

is not a collection of images the boore

writes rather it is a social relation

among people mediated by images all

right so that's of course how like

French Marxist critical theorist wrote

but like the idea here is he's talking

about you have this sort of like um this

new falsely this society that exists

between it's like the relationships

between these over-the-top like images

and commodities that relate to each

other it's not actual society of humans

interacting with humans. That's kind of

the social media internet age. I mean,

he argues that that helps uh, you know,

keep the capitalist imperatives in place

and hoodwink the bgeoisi to thinking

that they're happy when they're really

just allowing the proletariat to be

stepped on. We can give other analyses

for it, but uh, I think there's

something there. I think it's really

interesting, right? Like society is

mediated between like images and memes

and ideas that are floating around is

it's not people talking to people

anymore. And I don't think now it's

because of like some sort of capitalist

imperative. I think it's, you know,

there's a profit-making imperative for

these companies, but a lot of the harm

it causes, I think like the harm caused

by like the modern social media

spectacle society, um, is not harm

that's directed directly at it then

loops back and helps the owners of those

companies make more money. It just has a

lot of harmless side effects.

So like replacing a society with a

special society is good for stockholders

in those companies, but a lot of the

harms that are created are just also

just is like the side effects of doing

that of making life virtual and

disembodied and digital. So I don't

know, he was probably on to something. A

smarter analyst than me should go write

this would be like a Harper's essay.

Someone should write like a Harper's

essay about revisiting Deborah. It' be

you'd be a lot you'd be doing a lot of

like intellectual flexing in that essay.

I can imagine it now. Um, and you smoke

a cigarette and shave your head and just

be like, "These guys are wimps." That's

my impression of the postmodernist.

You know, all right, nerd.

Yeah, I get it. It's the the the wheels

of history, right, nerd?

Why don't you go write in your little

red book, nerd?

Meaning's an illusion. Like those old

postmodernist smart guys. All right,

that's all the time we have for today. I

know you like to hear more postmodernist

impressions, but once we get to those

impressions is when Jesse gives you the

high sign that we got to shut this down.

So, thanks for listening. We'll be back

next week with another episode. And

until then, as always, stay deep. Hey,

if you like today's discussion about how

technology has undermined long thinking,

you might also like episode 370,

which is about deep work, a related

concept in the age of AI. Check it out.

I think you'll like it. But what about

the more practical promise?