The collapse of modern attention (and how to get it back) - Cal Newport

Dude, you must be feeling like Cassandra at the moment. So precient, the distraction, the necessity of deep work, the inherent bombardment of our attention. Do you do you feel like you

attention. Do you do you feel like you saw the future earlier than what even at the time maybe felt late with deep work and focusing on quality over quantity and stuff?

>> I mean, I think part of what I noticed was the present was crazy to me and no one else recognized it. So, it was less even predicting the future. I I I feel like there was a time, god, like 10

years ago now, where I was looking around and yeah, saying two things. One,

social media doesn't make sense. Why are

we all pretending like this is at the the center of democracy and civic life and all business and we all have to be on here all the time? And two, email doesn't make sense. Not what was going to happen in the future. I'm just like

looking at the way we're working today with email and Slack and Teams was coming. Like this completely does not

coming. Like this completely does not make sense. You're switching your

make sense. You're switching your context once every two or three minutes.

this is a terrible way to actually use your brain. So, I never thought of

your brain. So, I never thought of myself as predicting the future as much as just telling people what was going on then didn't make sense. And everyone

thought I was crazy. And 10 years later, it just kind of jumped from I was crazy to it's common sense. So, it's not even that interesting that I'm saying it anymore. So, I kind of skipped the part

anymore. So, I kind of skipped the part where >> where it sounded precient.

>> Do you feel vindicated?

>> Um, I think certainly on a couple issues. The social media issue was a big

issues. The social media issue was a big one because I used to get a lot of flack for that for for going out and I wasn't even saying the social media was bad or

that no one should use it. Really, what

I was pushing back on was just the idea of ubiquity, the idea that everyone had to use it. I said, "This doesn't make sense. I get there's some people this

sense. I get there's some people this makes sense for. There's a lot of technologies that have markets that make sense for it, but why is there this pressure for everyone to be on these services? This is not going to a good

services? This is not going to a good place. They're they're spending a lot of

place. They're they're spending a lot of money to mine attention and they're going to get better at it, right? And at

the time this was considered uh crazy.

What do you mean like you wouldn't use social media? I wrote a New York Times

social media? I wrote a New York Times oped back I looked this up the other day. It was 2016.

day. It was 2016.

And it argued maybe social media is not the biggest thing for a young person to focus on if they're thinking about their career.

That's what it was. It was like focus on your career instead of social media.

Actually doing things well is what really matters. And you would think, you

really matters. And you would think, you know, that I had just come on and said like, "America has an idea is done and grandmother should be kicked." Like

people were upset about this. The New

York Times commissioned a response op-ed two weeks later that was >> that went through mine. I mean it and said this is what is wrong about Cal Newport's op-ed or whatever because it made such a fear to suggest it. And

today it's it's boring to suggest like h you know social media has problems and most people probably shouldn't use it.

People agree with that. The one that upsets me though, that one I feel like people have come along to and more and more people are being much more selective and minimalist about their social media. The distraction email,

social media. The distraction email, Slack, constantly jumping back and forth between different things.

>> That just got worse. I mean, I think people recognize it now. This is

probably not a good way to work, but I thought because there was dollars and cents here, this is less productive from an economic productivity standpoint to have all of your workers changing their attention all the time. you're just

getting a really low return on all the money you're investing in these human brains. So I thought, oh this is dollars

brains. So I thought, oh this is dollars and cents. This is the one that's going

and cents. This is the one that's going to change. Social media is fun. Like

to change. Social media is fun. Like

that's going to be hard to change people's behavior. But certainly this

people's behavior. But certainly this hyperdistraction thing in knowledge work that'll change because we're leaving money on the table. It hasn't changed at all. It's gotten worse. It's worse than

all. It's gotten worse. It's worse than it was. It's I'm at the 10 year

it was. It's I'm at the 10 year anniversary now of the book deep work.

So this like this month is the 10 year anniversary.

>> Congratulations, dude. That's [ __ ] seinal. Like that that has become a part

seinal. Like that that has become a part of the lexicon. That's really really cool.

>> Yeah. But it's it's got me a little bit depressed because I've been doing this 10-year reflection like, okay, it's been 10 years and the book was a hit and it's millions of copies, etc. >> And that the issues I talked about are

worse. They're like really worse than

worse. They're like really worse than they were 10 years ago.

>> So people know the problem, nothing has changed.

>> What does the data suggest around the worstness of it? Now

>> I've been the the one I've been following the study that I think is useful as a trend line is Microsoft actually does this annual report where they gather data from Microsoft 365. So

it's like Office and Word and PowerPoint and Excel. Nowadays you use this sort of

and Excel. Nowadays you use this sort of the web-based version of these is very common. So they can gather data from

common. So they can gather data from just tens of thousands of knowledge workers actually using all these different the tools. And the latest report they put out in 2025 now has the interruptions on average once every two

minutes.

So, it's just gotten out of control. So,

switching to a communication tool once every two minutes. They also found in the latest report, and this is depressing to me as well, there's one time in the week where they see a notable rise in the use of the

non-communication. So, actually using

non-communication. So, actually using the core productivity tools like Word or PowerPoint and it's Saturday and Sunday morning. So, we've just put the work off

morning. So, we've just put the work off until the weekend when there's no expectations of responses and spend the actual weekdays talking about work,

which I just don't get. Like, that is not economically productive. Like,

companies are leaving money on the table, but it's just where we are. We

really can't quit this behavior. Isn't

it interesting that you had to try and appeal to a very utilitarian approach for this? That you didn't say this is

for this? That you didn't say this is probably making staff miserable. Uh,

it's not a good use of time. We've got

some really strong evidence that suggests that doing one thing and getting better at it over a protracted period of time actually makes you feel more satisfied. You get into a flow

more satisfied. You get into a flow state, etc., etc. You look back on your day and you can look at the things that you did. None of that, which is the much

you did. None of that, which is the much more immediate experiential uh way that people interface with distraction. You tried to appeal to the

distraction. You tried to appeal to the bottom line, which you thought, well, incentives, incentives, a line of [ __ ] incentives. Um, and that didn't

work, which obviously means also that people's level of administrative burden misery is also coming along for the ride at the same time. Yeah, it's a it's a [ __ ] mess, dude. And I think, you

know, even with what I do, it's not a very big team, but Slack Slack is like it's so useful and

invites so much chaos at the same time.

It is. And was Slack? Slack wouldn't

have been that big during Deep Work. I'm

going to guess >> it wasn't big. It wasn't out yet. I I

talk in deep work about these very early instant messenger tools that no longer exist like Hip Chat that was just emerging among the programmer class. I

was basically saying there be dragons like let's be careful about that. But I

wrote an article about Slack years later uh when Slack was bought. So I think Salesforce bought Slack. I wrote an article about it for the New Yorker. And

I think the title of that article gets to the core of the issue you're talking about. The title was the Slack is the

about. The title was the Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work.

And I think what happened, here's my whole theory on Slack, is that when email arrived, it moved us to this new style of collaboration that I call the hyper hyperactive hive mind where we'll just figure things out um on the go with

ad hoc back and forth, unscheduled messaging, just sort of like shooting messages back and forth. We'll figure

things out like we're all just kind of connected all the time.

That's a terrible way to work for all the reasons I talked about. It's

distracting. It's context switching. You

can't do anything deep. It's hard to produce value. But if that's the way

produce value. But if that's the way you're going to work, email clients are not a very good tool for that. You have

threads and it's clunky and it's hard to search through your email and find what you did before. So Slack came along and said, "Look, if this is the way you're going to work, hyperactive hive mind, constant back and forth, ad hoc coordination, we'll build you a better

tool for that." So that's why people both love and hate Slack. It's a really good tool for that style of collaboration. It works really well, but

collaboration. It works really well, but that style of collaboration makes us miserable. So, it's this weird lovehate

miserable. So, it's this weird lovehate relationship we have. Like, this works great. I hate the thing that it's making

great. I hate the thing that it's making easier.

>> Why does it why does it make us miserable that style of collaboration?

>> Because our brain isn't meant to switch our target of attention that quickly. It

just takes us a long time. If we're

talking about targets that are abstract and symbolic, it takes us a long time to switch from one to another. physical

world targets, we can switch quickly, right? We're wired for that. If there's

right? We're wired for that. If there's

a tiger's roar, I can boom, 100% attention what's going on over there.

But when we're thinking about abstract things, information, ideas, things that are symbolic and in our head, that's us.

We're basically uh reappropriating our brain hardware to do something we're not evolved to do. It takes a lot of effort to do symbolic thinking, to think about abstract concepts. And we know it takes

abstract concepts. And we know it takes 10 to 20 minutes to fully change our attention context from one abstract target to another. It takes a long time.

That's why if you sit down to write something, everyone has this experience.

The first five or 10 minutes like, man, this is terrible.

>> Like I I I'm making no progress or whatever. And then after a while, you're

whatever. And then after a while, you're like, "Oh, this is starting to flow.

Like it's going better." That's because it took that much time for your brain to load up all of the relevant information and to inhibit all the unrelated circuits and get your brain really ready to do that activity. So if you now

interrupt that brain once every two minutes, it never can lock in on anything and what you feel then is this sort of diffuse cognitive friction that we begin to experience as fatigue,

cognitive fatigue. And it's a really

cognitive fatigue. And it's a really frustrating experience. It's why if you

frustrating experience. It's why if you go to an email inbox, you're like, I have time. I'm going to empty this

have time. I'm going to empty this inbox. I'm going to go message by

inbox. I'm going to go message by message. Here's the best way to do it,

message. Here's the best way to do it, right? On paper, I'm going to go message

right? On paper, I'm going to go message by message and I'm going to answer these messages. Why does that get so hard? Why

messages. Why does that get so hard? Why

do you find yourself like jumping around and looking for easier messages? Because

each message is a different context in the other and that's torture for the brain. It's really really hard to go

brain. It's really really hard to go from all right this is a complicated question one of my employees is asking me and now this is a completely different issue completely unrelated to that where I have to think of like a good title for something and now here's

a completely different issue and you're trying to switch one after another. Our

brains aren't wired for that. It really

makes us unhappy.

What would you say to someone who wants to try and retrain that attention? Maybe

maybe they're they're going to try and make some sort of a stand inside of Slack and say, "I will only be available at certain times of the day." But

regardless of the inbound, let's say that they fix the inbound because that's a totally separate problem. That's much

more sort of structural. Um, unless

you've got any advice for that as well.

But how how does someone go about re- appraising, retraining their mind away from that? Because we be we do become um we get like Stockholm

syndrome, the slack Stockholm syndrome where our captor tormentor becomes the way that we operate. We've got our favorite little ways of working and it feels like we've done but then at the

end of the day we look back and have this sort of odd malaise thing about well what did I actually do today? What got what got

done? Well, not much not much got done.

done? Well, not much not much got done.

Yeah. Well, it's hard unilaterally if you've changed nothing else about your workload or your communication protocols if you just say uh I'm not going to be on Slack from this hour to this hour. I only check my

email twice a day or whatever that standard advice was from 15 years ago.

It doesn't work well because if you're involved in a large number of projects that are timely and the way progress is going to be made is with ad hoc back and forth messaging. You have to be in there

forth messaging. You have to be in there checking. That's the brutal part of the

checking. That's the brutal part of the hyperactive hive mind is that it has defenses to its elimination built into its very nature.

Because if this is how we're going to figure this out, like we have to have five or six back and forth messages to figure out what we're going to do about this client coming tomorrow and we have to get this done today. That means you have to see my next message right away

so that we have time for me to answer you and you to answer me and for that ping-pong match to happen. That means

you have to be checking your inbox or Slack constantly. Otherwise, you're not

Slack constantly. Otherwise, you're not going to see my next message in time for this whole game to unfold. So, the very nature of that style of collaboration demands constant inbox checking, which is what I think people often get wrong about this. When they think about things

about this. When they think about things like Slack or email, they think too often about uh either information like, "Oh, I've got so many messages in my inbox that I don't need. I have all

these newsletters and spam." That's not a problem. That's a minor problem.

a problem. That's a minor problem.

That's an easily solvable problem. You

It's like clutter, you know? That's not

a big problem. Um, the issue is actually my collaboration style requires me to be in there because if I miss messages in a timely fashion, everything falls apart.

Yeah.

>> And so the issue is not how do I interact with my inbox.

>> It really has to be how do I change the way the inbox is being used. I I mean so I ended up I like had three big ideas on this that span three different books, right? So um in deep work like one of

right? So um in deep work like one of the big ideas was you can train your personal ability to focus. Uh focusing

is really important putting aside for now all the things trying to prevent you from focusing you have to practice it and if you practice it you'll get better at it and if you get better at it you'll be a superstar because like that's what

matters in the knowledge economy.

Everything good comes out of focus. Then

I wrote a book after that called a world without email. And in that book I was

without email. And in that book I was arguing uh the way we the thing I was telling you about hyperactive high communication is a problem. This is a real problem. The fact that we are using

real problem. The fact that we are using this method for coordination is causing all these trouble is really causing problems. And I went through all the data and all the research and made the case this is super non-productive. I

went back through the archives uh the New York Times business session in the 80s and 90s to exactly document the rise of email and how people were talking about email when it first came onto the business scene. And I made the case the

business scene. And I made the case the way we work is arbitrary. This

hyperactive highine was not a plan. It

wasn't seen to be more productive. We

stumbled into it. So we really should change it. So that was that book. And

change it. So that was that book. And

then the the most recent book slow productivity from a couple years ago. In

that book I argued, oh wait a second, workload matters too. The other issue of this problem is we don't put any limits or transparency on how many things we're working on. And if you pile too many

working on. And if you pile too many things on your plate, too much communication interruption becomes unavoidable because they each have little issues they need you to deal with. So, so I've now over this 10-year

with. So, so I've now over this 10-year period have kind of broken down this problem. There's like training yourself

problem. There's like training yourself to focus, >> fixing your communication protocols, like how do I communicate in a professional context? How do we

professional context? How do we collaborate? And then managing workload

collaborate? And then managing workload to be more reasonable. All three of and this might be why this problem's not solved. There's no one thing to fix,

solved. There's no one thing to fix, right? So all three of these things go

right? So all three of these things go into the the issue. They're each

complicated.

>> What of across those three books, all of which are great and everyone needs to go and check out. I think we've done episodes about each of them, so they can just go and listen to those and then and then buy the books. Um,

>> looking back across this portfolio of productivity advice, what have you heard from readers or what has been the stickiest

strategies for you? you look back and you go, "Okay, that's the 8020 of of of what I've published over the last three books."

books." >> To me, I think the the big two that give you the biggest results, and I'll tell you the one that's the hardest, and that's why this book probably sold the least. Um, the big two that gives you

least. Um, the big two that gives you the biggest results is taking focus seriously like a skill. That really does make a difference. Practicing focus, you get better at it and it has a a

demonstraable difference. you sit down to work and

difference. you sit down to work and you're just producing better stuff or you're trying to pick up some complicated new thing like oh god I can learn this faster that makes a huge difference um and then the second one

which was more recent in my life was oh you really got to control the workload so much is downstream from how many things you've agreed to work on you have to leave the mindset of everything I say

yes to brings with it value so saying yes to more things is just going to aggregate more value that's not the right mindset that's not the way it's it's a nonlinear uh you um reward

function there. There's a certain point

function there. There's a certain point as you add more things. So, not only does value stop growing, uh it begins to go down on the other side and that there's a real uh saying no to many more

things is actually a way to optimize reward and output which is not natural.

Uh it doesn't make sense at first. It

doesn't feel like common sense. So,

workload and focus training, you can control those more than you think and you're going to have huge results from those. A quick aside. Do you remember

those. A quick aside. Do you remember learning about the mighty mitochondria back in grade school? Here's a quick refresher. It's the tiny engine inside

refresher. It's the tiny engine inside of your cells that powers everything you do. But here's what they didn't teach

do. But here's what they didn't teach you. As you age, your mitochondria break

you. As you age, your mitochondria break down. That's what can cause you to feel

down. That's what can cause you to feel tired more often, take longer to recover, and wake up feeling like you're never fully recharged, no matter how long you sleep. I started taking

Timeline nearly 2 years ago because it is the best product on the market for mitochondrial health. And that is why I

mitochondrial health. And that is why I partnered with them. Timeline is the number one doctor recommended uraliththin a supplement with a compound called mitoure. Basically, it helps your

called mitoure. Basically, it helps your body clear out damaged mitochondria and replace them with new ones. Mitoure is

backed by over 15 years of research, over 50 patents, and nearly a dozen human clinical trials. It was

recommended to me by my doctor, and that is why I've used it for so long, since way before I knew who even made the product. And best of all, there's a

product. And best of all, there's a 30-day money back guarantee, plus free shipping in the US. and they ship internationally. So, right now you can

internationally. So, right now you can get a free sample or get up to 20% off by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline.com/modernwisdom.

timeline.com/modernwisdom.

That's timeline.com/modernwisdom.

The learning to say no thing is interesting, especially as people progress inside of their career and they get better at what they're doing. They

have to learn to be able to say no to opportunities that they would have only begged to have had the opportunity to be in the room to have maybe said yes to >> Yeah.

>> only half a decade ago.

>> Yeah.

>> In that time, you've had to go from needing that opportunity to actively being able to say no to something that's probably better than it. Uh Alex, my friend, taught me about, you remember,

uh in the Matrix, the woman with the red dress, and Neo turns around and he says, "Were you looking at me? We looking at the woman in the red dress. Look again."

and it's an agent with a gun in his face. And the analogy that Alex used

face. And the analogy that Alex used was, "And now imagine that she's not a 10 out of 10, but imagine a thousand hypothetical 1,000s out of 10." And you

need to be able to say no to them, which previously you didn't even know existed.

So this I think the kind of um it's almost like reverse entropy or habituation. you know, your

habituation. you know, your opportunities get better, which means that your capacity to say no needs to get better more quickly than that. You

can't be chasing your tail trying to learn to be able to say no less quickly than the opportunities get more seductive.

>> Yeah. It's almost perverse uh the way that works. It's like when you have all

that works. It's like when you have all the time in the world, all you want is opportunities. And then when you have

opportunities. And then when you have opportunities, all you want is all the time in the world. I had to change I don't know what you do but I had to change my rule at some point. This was

hard for me to the default no like that's just how I have to operate now it because as soon as you try to have a triage rule well look I'm not going to do this opportunity unless I only do

speaking gigs that have this much money or this or I only going to go meet with someone if they're like this interesting or this or that.

>> Eventually the number of things that satisfy that criteria overwhelms you just as well. It's just so I've I I've just had to fall back on the default.

No, >> you're you're talking to somebody who came back from a two-day trip to Qatar at the start of this week. So, I spent as much time traveling as I did in the

country to to give a talk. And as I looked around, there was this first the first night dinner. There was maybe 300 people there. And I'm talking to Logan

people there. And I'm talking to Logan Paul and Steven Bartlett's over his shoulder. And the CEO of Qatar Airways

shoulder. And the CEO of Qatar Airways is here. in the Middle Eastern director

is here. in the Middle Eastern director for meta over there. And I was looking around thinking, everybody here wants to be here. It's very exciting. Everyone's

be here. It's very exciting. Everyone's

really lovely. But also, everyone here can't say no. Everybody in this room is chronically incapable of saying no because >> I've said no to this one several times,

by the way. I the amount of invites to the the Qatar and the UAE and other places. I have I have said no to

places. I have I have said no to >> All right. Well, consider me a [ __ ] consider a [ __ ] compared to you, Cal.

Whatever. Whatever it I must be easy an easy booty call. They tried to get Cal Newport. We couldn't get Cal. So, we'll

Newport. We couldn't get Cal. So, we'll

ring Chris instead.

>> The default. No. Oh, man. Yeah. It's

It's crazy the things you end up saying no to after a while. But that I mean there's a currency shift for me. Time to

think is such a valuable that's a more valuable currency than money, right? You

get to a point where you're like, "Oh, I'm doing fine, but if I don't have time to think, what's the point?" And then that becomes this like really rare currency that's that's much harder to get a hold of. And that's the only way I

can protect it now is anything that requires me to like go somewhere. It's a

default. No. And then I can talk myself out of it later, right? I'm like, you know what? I could bring my family with

know what? I could bring my family with it. We could have a trip, right? So,

it. We could have a trip, right? So,

actually, you know what? I I will do this or uh you know, I just did a had a masterclass course released um this week. I spent a year and a half saying

week. I spent a year and a half saying no to that. And then like eventually I sort of talked myself I talked to some people >> uh they're like we'll come to DC to do it. I talked to you know James Clear had

it. I talked to you know James Clear had just done one and I had a good talk with him about it and I was like you know what this is this will be interesting and it took me a year and a half. Um but

I finally talked myself into it. So I

will say yes but it just the default no means that you don't have to >> high standards.

>> Yeah. You don't have to run it through the ringer and then you're like okay if it really sticks with me then maybe I'll be like all right I'll do it.

>> How much should people actually be working?

Well, it depends what you mean by work and what they're doing, right? Because

think about it. Let's say you're an athlete. It's super well defined. Like

athlete. It's super well defined. Like

here's optimal training. Here's optimal

rest and like that's what you should be doing. Like you the that's really clear.

doing. Like you the that's really clear.

We don't have those limits as clear in the culture for other types of jobs that we probably should. If you're at a high wage hourly build job, like a law

partner at a big law firm, there the economic model is the more you work, the more profitable it is. And we'll we'll pay you big money to do this, but like you should basically work as much as you can that your body will take it. That's

the economic engine there. That's why I think those jobs are those jobs are scary. If you're a novelist that writes

scary. If you're a novelist that writes literary fiction, so you're like, I really need to be award nominated for each book or I'm going to fall out of this like slipstream of because no one's going to read these books unless they're

some of the best books.

>> Then you should be doing like four hours in the morning and then just disappear, right? Like you should be doing very

right? Like you should be doing very little more work than that because almost anything else will get in the way of you like sticking in that position.

And so it all just depends on what on what you do, you know?

Didn't you look at some experiment of shorter work weeks?

>> Yeah.

>> What what did you learn from that?

>> There's a lot of these right around the pandemic right before and then right after in Europe and Iceland. So some

European studies I think Germany did one, Iceland did one, UK did one and they were looking at four day work weeks. So what would happen if we take

weeks. So what would happen if we take away one one day? The interesting thing about those experiments is what they found is the whatever measures of productivity they came up with uh they

didn't get worse which I thought was very interesting. They took a day away

very interesting. They took a day away and yet the perceived productivity or the measured productivity didn't go down. And there's there's two ways to

down. And there's there's two ways to look at it. The one way to look at it is to say, "Oh, this means that like we should have a 4-day work week because it things didn't get worse and okay, maybe maybe right, but to me there's like a bigger observation that came out of

that, which is like, wait, so what were we what are we doing during the work days?" Like this there's something going

days?" Like this there's something going on here that should really catch our attention. What does work mean that we

attention. What does work mean that we could take an entire day off the table with no other preparation and the the valuable stuff being produced doesn't change? This tells us that like whatever

change? This tells us that like whatever we're doing while we're sitting here in work is not just sitting down and trying to produce value. We're clearly have all sorts of other sorts of distractions

going on. Uh context switching, time

going on. Uh context switching, time that's being devoured, Parkinson's law is at play. Uh work must be broke. To

me, that was the more important observation is that like if you can take away a day and nothing changes, then I don't think we're doing in the office what we think we're doing in the office.

>> Parkinson's law was on the tip of my tongue. Work expands to fill the time

tongue. Work expands to fill the time given for it. And if you give people 5 days, they'll take five. And if you give them 4 days, then they'll do it in four.

And and look, everybody knows just how much time they waste not doing the work, not doing the thing that they're supposed to do. And

this isn't victim blaming. This is a lot of the time dealing with admin unnecessary meetings. You can't get out

unnecessary meetings. You can't get out of them. You have to be there for

of them. You have to be there for whatever reason. So it's not as if it's

whatever reason. So it's not as if it's bottom up. A lot of it is top down

bottom up. A lot of it is top down dictated. this is the environment that

dictated. this is the environment that you work in and you have to do this. But

even outside of that, when you do have your 1 hour in between meetings, your inability to not I I remember I used when I used to run nightclubs and I get

in at 2:30 in the morning. The final

part of the night was cashing the till.

So this was before we switched to tickets, which was sort of the late teens, just before co uh digital tickets online, which meant that you didn't have to cash as much money in the till. Uh

but before that it was all you know5 and10 note and 20 pound notes and single pounds and all the rest of it and I would go into the office with the manager of the venue and we would be counting the money. But this is the

final task the final bit of the night.

It's [ __ ] 2:15 or 2:30 in the morning. We've just taken the taken the

morning. We've just taken the taken the till off as it's called. Anybody that's

coming in doesn't get to come in blah blah and we're not going to take any more money. And I'm sat up there doing

more money. And I'm sat up there doing like light lift mental arithmetic, but for me, somebody who hadn't done math since I was 16, it was a relatively heavy lift, flicking through the money, flicking through the money. It was

light, you know, huge fluorescent overhead lights just before. And then I get to drive home and I'm like thinking about and I got to go put the money in the tilt and I got to write it in the the spreadsheet and then I get into bed.

And as I go into bed, my eyes below my eyelids would start flicking left and right. I wouldn't be able to tune. I'm

right. I wouldn't be able to tune. I'm

also doing this. Let's not forget in a sweaty beer stinking office above a room going.

Yeah. I've had to walk through the club.

I've had to shout at the the hostesses.

One of them's getting fingered on the dance floor. Stop doing that. You're

dance floor. Stop doing that. You're

supposed to be at work. The DJ's pissed.

I need to, you know, it's chaos. And

I've tried to coordinate this orchestra of [ __ ] And then I've had to do mental arithmetic. And then I get to

mental arithmetic. And then I get to drive home. And then I'm like, okay,

drive home. And then I'm like, okay, chill out, brain. It doesn't want to.

And that eyes moving left and right thing I think is the sort of >> optical equivalent, ocular equivalent of how people feel when they finally get a

moment. Oh, okay. All of my stuff is

moment. Oh, okay. All of my stuff is done. And then they try and sit down to

done. And then they try and sit down to work on the thing that ostensibly they're actually there to do, right?

Because all of the other [ __ ] the meetings, you're not there to do the meetings, you're not there to do the Slack, you're not there to do, all of that is foreplay to get you to do the thing that you're there to do. And then

you sit down to do the thing you're there to do and your eyes are moving behind your eyelids is the equivalent.

You're swiping and moving across the screen and you've got a few different other well I'll just check on this thing. Like what the living [ __ ] is

thing. Like what the living [ __ ] is going on? I've like trained the

going on? I've like trained the environment that I work in has trained me out of being able to do my work.

Well, it it we are meant to do like what would be the ideal workday in an office environment that would actually mask the human brain? It would probably be you

human brain? It would probably be you come in, you work on something hard for a while like that's what you do in the morning, you have lunch and then you like catch up with have some meetings,

talk to some people, hey, what's going on? And and you know do some task and

on? And and you know do some task and that's your day. Like that's basically what we can do like two things. one big

burst of like let me focus on something hard and then we can kind of come down the mountain after that with let me chat with people what's going on some decisions need to be made or whatever that's probably about optimal instead we

juggle a dozen to two dozen tasks that all have their own demands they all have their own communication needs uh this is why the Microsoft data shows oh the work happens the Saturday and Sunday morning

it is really hard you can't go from and meetings are very hard as well we think like oh I'm not actually doing work during meetings But what you are engaging in a meeting is all the parts of your brain that deal with social

interaction. And those are a large part

interaction. And those are a large part of your brain. And that is a fraught and mental energy consuming activity to sit in a room or on a Zoom screen and try to manage all these different people and

how do I look and what am I saying and what's going on here and I have to say the right things. It's draining and you come out of something like that, it's difficult just to jump right back into something else. And if you come out of

something else. And if you come out of something like that and there was a lot of obligations generated, oh, we discussed in this meeting things I need to do and now you try to go straight from that meeting into another. Well,

now that's really in the back of your head. What about this? What about this?

head. What about this? What about this?

We can't forget this. We just made our obligations. That that feeling of

obligations. That that feeling of fatigue. It's a it's a really is fatigue

fatigue. It's a it's a really is fatigue is what it feels like. A mental fatigue like there's a sand in your brain. Sand

in the gears of your brain. That's the

state that a lot of people who work in front of a computer screen like that's the state they're in most of the day.

and they don't even realize, oh, that's a bad feeling. That's a negative state.

That's that's not how it needs to feel because you have nothing else to compare it to. Yeah. The amount of things we're

it to. Yeah. The amount of things we're doing, the amount we're trying to switch back and forth. I always thought that part of the problem was a lot of our current thought about work culture and

hustling and what it means to produce was influenced by Silicon Valley in the 90s and 2000s because that was considered this very um ascendant part of the economy you know through the 2000s through the Steve Job era we

looked at Silicon Valley these are the coolest companies they're doing all the coolest stuff over there I think they adopted a model of work that was very inspired by computer processors Right.

So because that was what was in the air in the 80s and 90s in Silicon Valley was the computer processor worse. You know

the 386 versus the 486 versus the Pentium. And it was all about speed. And

Pentium. And it was all about speed. And

the thing with a computer processor if you're a computer type what matters is uh you never want the pipeline to be empty, right? You want to always make

empty, right? You want to always make sure you have stuff for that processor to do so. So it never wastes time. The

processor will every command you give it, it operates the same as any other.

It can switch. It doesn't care what they are. It just sits there and operates one

are. It just sits there and operates one command after another. And the whole game with getting processors to be effective is like don't have downtime.

Like the real fear, I can put on my computer scientist hat for a second. The

real fear in computer processor design is that you sometimes get to a command that's going to generate a huge delay.

So you say like, oh, go get something from memory. Uh that takes a lot of time

from memory. Uh that takes a lot of time from the perspective like a computer processor cycle. It's just sitting there

processor cycle. It's just sitting there cycle after cycle doing nothing while you're waiting for the memory bus or whatever. So we invented these processor

whatever. So we invented these processor pipelines like oh while we're waiting to get something back from memory here's some other stuff the processor can run so that it's never not working and the idea was you want to move as fast as

possible and you never want to have downtime and that's how you get the most out of a computer processor. The human

brain is like 180 degrees different. We

can't just switch back and forth between unrelated commands. You switch me from

unrelated commands. You switch me from one to another thing and boom 30 minutes of my mind is fried. Humans operate very differently. But I think Silicon Valley

differently. But I think Silicon Valley associated it said here's the thing we're going to associate with being really good at your job. It might have used I don't know your skill. It was uh Don Draper and Madman. Remember that

conception of of what does it mean to be good at your job? They weren't showing Don Draper grinding it out like man Don Draper is like in the office till you know 3:00 a.m. every night or whatever.

Now he took the five o'clock train back to you know Connecticut or whatever. It

was he he was really really good at coming up with ad copy. He was good at what he did. That's what you used to respect. And then after the 80s, 90s,

respect. And then after the 80s, 90s, Silicon Valley became pervasive. Like,

no, what matters is you never have a noop. You never have a down cycle. You

noop. You never have a down cycle. You

might as well say yes to more things.

You might as well get more emails. You

never have time or you're not working.

That's what productivity is going to be.

And that was a disaster for the human brain. If you struggle to stay asleep

brain. If you struggle to stay asleep because your body gets too hot or too cold, this is going to help. Eight just

released their brand new Pod 5, which includes the world's first temperature regulating duvet. Compare it their smart

regulating duvet. Compare it their smart mattress cover, which cools or warms each side of the bed by up to 20°, and you've got a climate controlled cocoon built for deep, uninterrupted rest. The

new base even comes with a built-in speaker so you can fall asleep to white noise, nature sounds, or a little ambient Taylor Swift if that's your thing. And it's got upgraded biometric

thing. And it's got upgraded biometric sensors that quietly run health checks every night, spotting patterns like abnormal heartbeats, disrupted breathing, or sudden changes in HRV.

Which is why it has been clinically proven to increase total sleep by up to 1 hour every night. Best of all, they've got a 30-day sleep trial, so you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights. And if

you don't like it, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get

internationally. Right now, you can get up to $350 off the pod 5 by going to the link in the description below or heading to eightsleep.com/modernwisdomdom

to eightsleep.com/modernwisdomdom using the code modernwisdom a checkout.

That's ei.com/modernwisdism

and modernwisdom a checkout.

There's definitely an element of this that it's very public productivity. It's very obvious.

public productivity. It's very obvious.

Look at how hard I'm working. Right? If

you're the one that replies quickest on Slack or on email, then it's evident that you're the one. It looks like you're the one that's working hardest because you're the one that's most responsive. Whereas the person who's

responsive. Whereas the person who's silently working on their own, they can't broadcast it by design. They can't

broadcast it to everybody else. So yeah,

this uh um obvious productivity in a way is way less sexy. So I think you know the new elephant in the room is AI and

how that is enabling an increase in pace uh of output but almost certainly a

decrease in quality. So

fold AI into your existing world view because to me it just seems like a huge force multiplier for what already was pretty sloppy. Slack, email,

async communication that's always on, people taking their work home with them, never being able to not context switch, not focusing on quality and instead focusing on quantity, not being able to

to dial themselves in to do deep work for one moment. And now

that is enhanced and magnified even more by the use of LLMs to help you put out more, to help you think less. So your focus is actually you're you're in Slack with

your LLM. It wouldn't surprise me if

your LLM. It wouldn't surprise me if there is a LLM integration into Slack at some point in future. I don't know whether there is um where you can just do it in there. So you're just talking

back and forth in one [ __ ] workspace.

Talk to me. Fold AI into this. You must

have a million thoughts. Oh, there's a lot going on with AI. Uh, I mean, I think in its current instantiation, so we think about like an office worker for the most part put programmers aside.

I'll get back to them, but non-programmers are really interact with chatbots. Like, that's the main way

chatbots. Like, that's the main way they're integrating right now with AI.

It's exagger exactly what you said. For

a lot of people, it's exaggerating the problems that already exist. Now,

there's a term for this that comes out of a Harvard Business Review article from last year. They call it work slop they put together as one word and they have some pretty compelling data on it.

>> So what's work? Define work slop for me.

>> So work slop is AI generated work products in the knowledge work sector.

So like emails, reports and powerpoints or what have you that are generated quickly by AI but they're so low quality that they actually it's very difficult

that they make everyone else's jobs harder. This seems to be this is like

harder. This seems to be this is like the defining aspect of work slob. that's

quick to produce, but it's so low value that it actually no real progress is made. So, like you get a work slop email

made. So, like you get a work slop email from, you know, your boss or whatever, and like this isn't useful to me. It's

this weird wordy thing that's broken up into sections and it doesn't get to the core of the problem we have to solve.

So, you made that email quick, but in the bigger uh scheme of things, we made very little progress towards uh what we want to do. or you put together a work slot PowerPoint presentation so that you would have something at the meeting but

now we're spending 20 minutes looking at this nonsense and nothing it's not helping us it's not helping us actually do things so this is what's happening or at least my fear I mean the reality is most people aren't using these tools in

the office uh I let's just set the reality right so but for the people who are using them right now um which is a healthy percentage but it's not >> you know what the numbers are >> well it's difficult because there's a

lot of fudging of the numbers here there's a lot of mistaking taking have used or experimented with with are regularly using them. So I see this

mistake happen a lot um and so it's difficult to get good numbers. There

there was like famously um maybe it was an Ethan Malik article where he was talking about in my world like academia the homework apocalypse and he's like look at this study students just don't

do work anymore. Nine out of 10 are just using chatbots now. But you look at that study and what it actually said was nine out of 10 had tried using a chatbot at least once and if you looked at who's

using them regularly it was like two out of 10 right because like for most of the students it was wasn't helping them the way they thought it would. So I don't know what the numbers are. Um, if you

count like advanced Google use, I think it's larger. Like, yeah, I searched for

it's larger. Like, yeah, I searched for information on this instead of going to Google, that's larger. But in terms of people who are actually making office work product out of it, I think it's smaller >> than the people who follow AI commentary

or talk about it on AI Twitter, AI YouTube, I think it's a lot smaller than they probably assume just because in their world, it's pervasive. But the

people who are using it, this is the problem, uh, they're trying to avoid.

This is my theory on this is like what how is AI helping like an office worker now? Well, their brain is exhausted from

now? Well, their brain is exhausted from all this context switching.

>> So, what problem are they looking to solve?

>> They're looking to avoid having to do hard moments of cognition because their brain is so fried.

>> It's really difficult to like solve the blank page problem. Oh god, I got to send this email. I got to it's a blank screen. I got to start writing from

screen. I got to start writing from scratch. That's really hard. Yeah.

scratch. That's really hard. Yeah.

the inertia that they've been trained out of overcoming because of the primer.

It's almost like a a one-two punch.

>> Yeah.

>> Humans were primed to not like heavy co Well, we already didn't like heavy cognitive load. Then our ability to deal

cognitive load. Then our ability to deal with it and get through that initial resistance was decreased through the context switching. And now we're don't

context switching. And now we're don't worry about it. Don't worry about don't worry about it. Carbon based life forms, the siliconbased life forms are coming.

And let's throw in one uh one one other aspect in there also. Outside of work, we had these distraction machines in our hand that were further degrading our comfort with concentration because any possible moment of introspection we

would have had even outside of work. Why

would I do that when Tik Tok has like the perfect dash cam video of you know a Karen getting punched or something like I got to watch that right?

>> Uh and so we've we we have that revolution comes along plus the email revolution. We completely atrophy our

revolution. We completely atrophy our ability to think and we exhaust our brain. The other aspect of it as we

brain. The other aspect of it as we talked about it's really exhausting to go through your day >> context switching. So like I don't have any reserves left to write this PowerPoint. That seems impossible. And

PowerPoint. That seems impossible. And

then AI is like hey I can do it for you.

It'll be fine. It'll be fine. It'll be

good enough. It'll be good enough.

You're like oh okay I can smooth over I use this analogy in a New Yorker piece last year. It's like it takes your

last year. It's like it takes your effort graph looks like spikes like an EKG or something like that and AI smooths over those peaks and so you don't have to your peak concentration

required can come down like well you can fill the blank page and then maybe I have to work with it a little bit that's easier than doing it from scratch but the stuff being produced is no good and

so I feel like work slop it's almost less of a uh it's less of a um critique of AI than it is AI making obvious a

problem with the way we were already working. I think that's what's going on

working. I think that's what's going on there. I think this is even happening

there. I think this is even happening with computer programmers. This is

considered, you know, heretical right now, but I guess I'm used to being yelled at. Uh people are really excited

yelled at. Uh people are really excited by this workflow where I have seven or eight cloud code agents going concurrently producing code and testing them and I'm just a manager of all these

different processes and they're all producing this code on my behalf and it feels really cool and interesting like this has to be the future. I don't know that that is I mean I don't know the

context. The problem is outside of like

context. The problem is outside of like demos or internal tools or just having fun, that's not really code you can trust very well. And it it does though

completely lower the peaks of being a computer programmer, those peaks of cognition. It's much much easier to

cognition. It's much much easier to manage a bunch of clawed code processes than it is to come up with an algorithm.

And you have that same blank page. So

I'm I think the jury is still out on even where we're going to end up in the AI impact on programming. I don't know where it's going to end up, but the way it's being talked about in the last few months after the latest Cloud Code uh

update, which is sort of I guess that's something humans don't do anymore.

>> I don't think we're there ready to say that yet. I get popped with Claude Code

that yet. I get popped with Claude Code ads. I get I I you give me a terminal, I

ads. I get I I you give me a terminal, I have no idea what to do. I'm like I'm like, you know, someone's grandmother trying to use an iPad. I have no idea what's going on. So, they are pushing very very hard at the moment for this.

It's it's kind it's funny but it's a little bit crazy but it's my world right I'm computer scientist is that uh for engineer computer scientist types they they forget how technically advanced they are. So yeah, cloud code uh works

they are. So yeah, cloud code uh works in the terminal, right? And that's why it works so well. It exists in a world of text only text command line commands like the old DOS command line. It's all

text commands um which you can do a lot with. You can create and edit and

with. You can create and edit and compile computer programs. So it's very good at that. And it's a limited set of textual commands. That's perfect for a

textual commands. That's perfect for a language model. Um and the engineers are

language model. Um and the engineers are like, oh, we can use this terminalbased tool to do all sorts of other stuff that's not computer programming. Great.

This is the pro. this has solved the pro. Everyone's going to be doing this.

pro. Everyone's going to be doing this.

Everyone is going to have these sort of personal assistance based on something on cloud code. I'm like, man, do you realize how foreign a command line interface is to people? You realize like how weird and nerdy and complicated your

world is? You're like, yeah, this will

world is? You're like, yeah, this will be great. My grandma will just on the

be great. My grandma will just on the command line understand that like the cloud code agent can bring up a bash script that's just going to cat those files over to the the regx GP, you know, and it'll be fine. They don't no one knows how to do any of that type of

stuff. So, it's sort of funny seeing the

stuff. So, it's sort of funny seeing the engineers building these incredibly intricate, nerdy, wonderful tools they've customuilt for cloud code to help them in their life and they think

the gap between that and everyone else having AI automate things in their life is like, "Oh, it's this real small thing." I'm like, "Oh, man. I don't

thing." I'm like, "Oh, man. I don't

think you understand." I mean, people are still not quite sure about the right click. I think you got you still have a

click. I think you got you still have a ways to go before they're >> I see this uh I I saw this this tweet uh from Robert Frlaw uh lawyer uses chat GPT to help write a

brief chat GPT hallucinates cases in quotations court sanctions lawyer and four co-consel for not catching the errors the lawyer who used chat GPT has practiced for over 30 years he prompted

prompted chhat GPT write an order that denies the motion to strike with case law support told the court he doesn't normally use chacht and he used it this time cuz he was caring for his dying family members said no of his co-consil

were aware of this use of generative AI course says that because all five attorneys signed both documents that included these errors and they admit that not one of them verified that the

case law in those briefs actually exist their conduct violates rule 11b2 there's hundreds of those happening right I I heard I don't know where this

site is there's a site that tracks this lawyers getting busted for chat GPT written briefs that just make things because it will for sure make up things

if you ask it because again what it tries to do is you know not to get people know this but right at the very bottom what is a language model trying to do is trying to solve the word guessing game that's how it was trained

it was given real text you knock out a word and say replace that word can you figure out what word was really there in the real text so the language models just think they're trying to expand a real text that really existed so they're

trying to produce text that makes sense given the prompt They're not there's not world models or structured reasoning in there of like, okay, this is a legal brief and we have a notion of a

citation. Uh we don't know how it thinks

citation. Uh we don't know how it thinks about that. There's hundreds and

about that. There's hundreds and hundreds of cases of this happening. I

heard Scott Galloway talk about this on the Pivot podcast that he track there's some site that tracks this that he keeps an eye on and he says it astounds you.

You think it's a handful of people. It's

not. It's all the time. I got here's my story of getting burned by that. I sort

of learned my lesson. I was working on uh because the the the one way I'll use chat GPT is just sometimes instead of Google, right? Um especially if I'm if I

Google, right? Um especially if I'm if I want like instructions for how to whatever change settings on something.

It's great. It has a lot of really useful >> spectacular for all of that stuff. If

you want to use it as basically a glorified Wikipedia that's more instructive like >> Yeah. Yeah. And you could like Wikipedia

>> Yeah. Yeah. And you could like Wikipedia you can ask questions of Yeah. So, so,

um, I was using I was writing a an essay and it was on Isaac Azimov's, um, Rules of Robotics. This was a a New Yorker

of Robotics. This was a a New Yorker essay. And, um, I left my copy of iRoot.

essay. And, um, I left my copy of iRoot.

I was here in my studio and I left it at home. I was like, "Oh, I needed to add

home. I was like, "Oh, I needed to add this quote, right? Uh, I left it and I was like, "Oh, you know what? That that

story is in the public domain. It's all

over the internet." And this seems like it would be perfect for chat GPT. like,

"Hey, can you just grab a copy and find me that quote and that'll save me a little bit of time?" Like, "Yeah, here it is. Here's the quote." I was like,

it is. Here's the quote." I was like, "Yeah, it's best roughly I remember I put in put in there." And then the fact checker was like, "Where's this quote from?" I like, "Yeah, it's from the

from?" I like, "Yeah, it's from the story or whatever." I get the book. It

had just hallucinated a quote that was more or less like what was said, right?

Because again, it's kind of playing the game of this is the type of text that would make sense giving the prompt, but it wasn't the actual quote. it had full access to it, right? You can search

this. It's in the public domain. So that

this. It's in the public domain. So that

the actual story is everywhere. So I had just naively assumed if you ask it for some information that exists on the internet that oh it'll just go find it and format it for you. Uh it didn't. And

then I went through a whole dialogue with it where I was like this is not the right quote. And it's like yeah you're

right quote. And it's like yeah you're right. You know what I thought you meant

right. You know what I thought you meant paraphrase a quote. Here it is made up.

I was like that's not the real quote.

Can you go get the real quote and give it? At this point I was just

it? At this point I was just experimenting. I'd already filled it in

experimenting. I'd already filled it in the article and like you're right, you know, I was being hasty. Here you go. I

could not get it to give me the real quote. So anyways, so I I learned my

quote. So anyways, so I I learned my lesson. I was like, oh, don't assume

lesson. I was like, oh, don't assume even if it's common information that it has access to.

>> Dude, the desire the desire to [ __ ] reprimand an LLM. And I I've shouted at them a capital letter exclamation marks.

It's like, what what are you doing? What

are you do is what what what are you hoping to achieve by throwing your emotional distress at this [ __ ] disembodied voice on the other side?

Okay, we bit aside. I [ __ ] love Chip PT. I think it's been really really

PT. I think it's been really really fantastic for tons of things.

>> It What's important is learning the limits and not using it for case law. Um

this episode is brought to you by Whoop.

I have been wearing Whoop for over 5 years now. Way before they were a

years now. Way before they were a partner on the show. I've actually

tracked over 1,600 days of my life with it, according to the app, which is insane. And it's the only wearable I've

insane. And it's the only wearable I've ever stuck with because it tracks everything that matters. Sleep,

workouts recovery breathing heart rate, even your steps. And the new 5.0 is the best version. You get all the benefits that make Whoop indispensable.

7% smaller, but now it's also got a 14day battery life and has health span to track your habits, how they affect your pace of aging. It's got hormonal insights for ladies. I'm a huge, huge fan of Whoop. That's why it's the only

wearable that I've ever stuck with. And

best of all, you can join for free. Pay

nothing for the brand new Whoop 5.0 strap. Plus, you get your first month

strap. Plus, you get your first month for free. And there's a 30-day money

for free. And there's a 30-day money back guarantee. So, you can buy it for

back guarantee. So, you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you do not like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and that

30-day trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join.woop.com/modernwisdom.

join.woop.com/modernwisdom.

That's join.woop.com/modernwisdom.

What opportunities do you think an increasing reliance on AI opens up?

because I I get the sense that as more people use LLMs to do the work for them, this will create advantages in some areas for people who don't need to be

reliant. So, have you thought about the

reliant. So, have you thought about the the holes market openings that have will occur?

>> It will. I mean, the way I think about LLM based AI versus more advanced AI that we don't know how to do yet is, you know, my theory is the what is being affected is going to be more narrow at first. It's going to be places where

first. It's going to be places where there's an exact match between what generative AI existing tools can do um and existing uh market sectors. We saw

this actually the week we're recording this, we actually saw this reflected in the stock market. There was this interesting paradox that was going on this week where the stock price of

software companies that deal with stuff that is well suited for an LLM went down. There there was they call it the

down. There there was they call it the the the SAS apocalypse, right? The

software service apocalypse. So um you know companies that do like legal advice uh companies that do graphic design like Figma and Adobe because a lot you know we have generative image generation is

making building images from scratch is less useful uh customer service. So

companies that do a lot of customer service type software. We saw the stock was sliding on these very specific software industries because like look I think LLMs are going to be able to do this. It was triggered by Anthropic

this. It was triggered by Anthropic releasing some plugins that made it easier to integrate LLMs into your services without having to hire these other companies.

>> But you would think that's would be good news for the big tech companies building the AI that's going to replace all this.

>> Their stock was sliding as well.

>> And so the big tech companies had this big slide that at the end of the week we're recording this, there was a rebound at the end, but it was like a trillion dollars in market cap disappeared from the the big tech companies at the same time. So what does

that mean the market was betting on?

what are investors betting on at that point what was going to happen and they were betting that in the near future the next year or two what we're going to see is uh se selective impacts in specific

fields from generative AI but also that too much money is being invested in these AI companies uh as it uh already which means they're betting that they're not about to automate most of the

economy they're not about to you know just one more iteration away from a huge economic disruption they're not they're not uh at this peak of like complete transformation because if they were you would be trying to increase your

holdings in these companies like I don't care how much money they're investing these companies are going to be worth an astronomical amount of money but the market is betting I think the impact is going to be more limited in the 1 to

twoyear window than uh a lot of the commentary was seen so I I think that's important because talk is cheap but tech stocks aren't and so people the way they spend their money actually often has

more of I think there's a lot of information in that versus just I've been reading these articles online and my god the vibe really seems to be saying this is a big deal. Uh so that's

I kind of agree with the market's consensus right now for sure there's going to be industries that are affected but it's not going to be one of these situations where you say okay any work that's not just the deepest creative

work is all going to be automated the next few years I better go learn how to like do art or something like that. I

don't think it's going to be that broad at first. I don't think the current

at first. I don't think the current generation of AI technology can support as broad of impacts as people think.

There's a lot of extrapolation from well, if it can do this with code, >> certainly it could do this with all these other jobs. If it could do this with this industry, well, certainly next it'll do it for all these other industries. We have to be wary of those

industries. We have to be wary of those extrapolations, >> right? You you I think I read an article

>> right? You you I think I read an article from you. What if AI doesn't get much

from you. What if AI doesn't get much better than this? Yeah. sort of if we have I don't know some sort of Flynn effect thing that kicks in but for AI where

you know because I think a lot of people would agree chatt2 to three [ __ ] hell to four 40 I know is this there's a whole fur on the internet about people

that have got girlfriends or boyfriends that are virtual on 40 and they're all getting upset and sad about it uh and I don't understand I don't think I use the tools sufficiently deeply to be able to test this and benchmark market. It's

like my Fire TV Sticks remote isn't working well. Um like it was able to do

working well. Um like it was able to do that [ __ ] 5 years ago. Um but is your your thinking is that we're maybe going

to reach asimtote for what LLMs generally and transformer technology is able to do and then it's going to be a new architecture entirely if we're going to actually get beyond this.

>> Yes. Yeah. That's what that article was about. I think that was a very of the

about. I think that was a very of the articles I've written, I think that was a really important one that that came out um in August. And the and the story it tells and a lot of other people have told the story as well, you know, around that time and since, but the story it

tells is basically what happened is there was this big paper that was published in 2020. The lead researcher Kaplan, Jared Kaplan, I think was at Anthropic at the time and it was this paper where they said, "Hey, something

weird is happening here. If we make LLMs bigger and we train them longer, they perform better." And technically they're

perform better." And technically they're saying the loss decreased. That sounds

kind of obvious but in like machine learning circles that was surprising because there's this idea of overfitting where if you just make your model bigger um the performance goes down. So it used to be like you have to find the perfect

size model for your problem space.

That's the way people thought about machine learning until this paper came out like I don't know transformbased LLMs uh they were using GPT2 and they were systematically making it bigger and they were seeing that the performance

just kept going up. like this is interesting so let's try it and that was GPT3 all right let's actually make this like 10x bigger surely this can't be right and it was it matched the Kaplan

curve exactly like oh my god this actually got way better just by making this bigger like all right well certainly that must be the end of it let's try it with GPT4 they made it bigger they trained it much longer months and months they trained it you

know Microsoft had to build these custom data centers to train it with new AC technology didn't exist before and it fit the curve it was like way better.

And the thing GPT4 did that really got so GPT4 set off the whole industry. The

thing it did is it started showing abilities beyond just language. And

that's where people got excited like, oh wow, if you train a language model on enough language, it learns about things that isn't just producing language. It can play games.

producing language. It can play games.

It can do math problems. It can do logic. I mean, this was super exciting.

logic. I mean, this was super exciting.

It was super exciting. So the assumption was do this two or three more times you have AGI. So that's what the whole

have AGI. So that's what the whole industry was based off of when we went from three to four was this is legitimate justified excitement.

>> Expand the size and the training duration two or three more times and the economy is going to happen in a box. I

mean it was so that's where all of that was the the engine for all this excitement. So they tried uh at OpenAI

excitement. So they tried uh at OpenAI was called Project Orion. They made it bigger modeled than four. They trained

it even longer. Like here we go. And

they tried it and they said it's not much better. And this was this big uh

much better. And this was this big uh brick wall surprise for the industry.

Like wait, it didn't get better. Um

everyone else tried as well, right?

Grock, they tried this with Grock as well with the Colossus data center. Like

we're going to have 200,000 GPU data center. No one's ever built anything this big. And it was like a little bit better. Meta tried this. They

had a model called Bmoth like we built the biggest data is bigger than anyone we've had before and they didn't release it because it was marginally better than the last model that they had. And so

this was a huge issue, right? You

couldn't just make the models bigger and train them bigger. So what they did was they switched to what are other ways we can get uh performance increases and can we get more narrow by what we mean with

performance and this is when we began to get all the alphabet suit models. Well,

it's GPTO 03- mini whatever. Uh, and

they switched the focus from just this is amazing if you use it to we have these benchmark graphs and look at these graphs. Things are going better on these

graphs. Things are going better on these benchmarks. It all became about

benchmarks. It all became about benchmarks because these are very narrow things that you could train models to do well on. They weren't intuitive. GPD4

well on. They weren't intuitive. GPD4

was just awesome. By the time we got to GPD5, their whole launch, their launch page had 28 graphs of uh benchmark names that no one knew what they were. And so

then they had to look for all these other ways to get improvement. And

that's where you got like inference time compute. Well, what if we we compute

compute. Well, what if we we compute longer for harder questions? And they

began really pushing fine-tuning. Well,

for specific types of problems, we can get data sets that have answers and uh questions and answers. And we can use reinforcement learning that try to take this pre-trained model and make it

better at this particular type of problem. And then we can have a

problem. And then we can have a benchmark that shows us we got better at this problem. And my argument in that

this problem. And my argument in that article is like this is a way different game than we were playing when we went from two to three and three to four.

We're no longer scaling to AGI. We're

taking basically GPT4 and we're doing all of this like tuning and adding extra stuff on top of it and around it and and measuring these very narrow benchmarks.

And that's why people have this feeling ever since like I I guess they're better, but it's not in an obvious way.

It's better in specific tasks or if I vibe code this it looks better I guess and it seems more narrow. Um, and so yeah, we're we're reaching an this there's a long answer to a short question, but we are reaching an asmtope

on um just pure fine-tuned LLMs as an engine for AI. We're going to need more architectures. It's going to take more

architectures. It's going to take more time.

>> Well, presumably Chad GPT6 could come out and oh [ __ ] they just blew through the entirety of my prediction. This

curve no longer curves flat in the way that I thought. And [ __ ] this is this is a different universe now. Yeah, but

that won't happen because they they tried and it they don't know how to do that. So, it's not going to be just an

that. So, it's not going to be just an LLM. Uh I mean my my prediction of the

LLM. Uh I mean my my prediction of the future of AI is I think what we're going to see I think LLMs are very powerful, but what we're going to see is much more of hybrid models that are custom custom

fit to particular problems where okay, this system does this thing better than a human. And in its guts, there's like a

a human. And in its guts, there's like a an LLM in there, not a huge frontier model, but one that's like souped up and optimized for this particular type of thing. But there's also like five or six

thing. But there's also like five or six other models and go there's an explicit world model. There's a future predictor.

world model. There's a future predictor.

There's a policy network trained through reinforcement learning to try to evaluate situations to see what's good or bad. There's a whole logic engine on

or bad. There's a whole logic engine on top of this that hooks these together.

These are what I think the the AI systems of the future going to be like.

They're going to be bespoke and there's gonna be a ton of them. So when we get to AGI, it's not going to be GPT7 can do everything you ask it as well as a human. It's going to be a world in which

human. It's going to be a world in which there's 10,000 different AI products.

And you realize everything I can think of now, there's some product out there somewhere that can do this better than humans. Just like there's AI that can

humans. Just like there's AI that can play chess better than humans. There's a

different AI that can play go better than humans. There's an AI now that can

than humans. There's an AI now that can beat uh professional poker players at Texas Hold of No Limit. They're all

different systems with their own pieces in them. And a lot of them have some

in them. And a lot of them have some language models in them as well, but a lot of other pieces as well. It's

distributed AGI. That's what it's going to be like. We're just going to wake up one day and say there's fewer and fewer things where we say humans can do this better than computers. And it's a

different model than PAL 9000. There's

one giant. It's a really inefficient way to imagine solving this problem. If we

just have a big enough language model, it's going to do all activity. It's

going to power all agents. It's going to automate all systems. that really doesn't make sense. I think it's going to be a much more distributed path towards AGI and AI

>> given what AI can and can't do and what the quality of work is that it puts out at the moment. What is some good advice for

the moment. What is some good advice for somebody who wants to work against the weaknesses that are going to be exposed in other people because of their reliance on AI by

avoiding it themselves or by using it appropriately. What would you focus on?

appropriately. What would you focus on?

Because again, it seems to me like >> quantity is easier to achieve than ever before. Quality is going to be rarer.

before. Quality is going to be rarer.

That inertia, getting the project off the launchpad, the blinking cursor of the blank page.

>> Yeah. where where should people focus their time and their attention in order to capitalize this?

>> I think you need to begin thinking about the feeling of cognitive strain the way that you know a weightlifter thinks about the burn of a muscle or a runner thinks about burning lungs as a thing

that is uncomfortable in the moment but man I'm excited about this feeling because it's I'm getting stronger.

You got to make yourself really comfortable thinking hard. That is the differentiating factor. I mean obviously

differentiating factor. I mean obviously I've been saying this since well 10 years now but that's that's even more now going to be the differentiating factor right and if you talk to athletes they're like this is like Schwarzenegger

and pumping iron talking about pump and that's really painful what he's doing actually right like lifting the the the level of weights the the physical pain he's in is high and he compares it to an orgasm right because if you're a

weightlifter you're like oh that pain is directly translating to more strength and more more muscle mass you got to think that same way about your brain you cannot flee cognitive strain

You have to think about it in a knowledge work cognitive age. That is

the feeling of my brain getting more capable. Yeah, I want to seek that out.

capable. Yeah, I want to seek that out.

Let's go get it. Let's go get some.

Right? Like I want to this I'm nope.

Bring my focus back to this thing. I'm

going to try to push this through and then when you're done be like, "Oh man, I exhausted my brain." That's awesome.

That was like a that was like a really good cognitive workout. M

>> so don't while everyone else is using AI to run away from strain you should be the person running for it because especially in the American context I mean the knowledge economy is now a massive portion of our GDP and the

knowledge economy itself is shifting more towards uh cognition intensive work so you know knowledge work can capture anything where you're not building things but now all the lower level

knowledge work is being outsourced or automated a lot of it has been replaced over the last 30 years by software we don't have support staff and assistants and secretaries like we used to because well you can use Microsoft Word and

email we don't need separated people and so the the work that's left in our economy the knowledge economy has been getting more and more cognitively demanding and so the number one skill is I'm used to straining my brain learning hard new

things and maintaining focus that's what I would train that's so good I I I really really agree and it's so the funny thing is that's

why I asked at the top if you just felt like [ __ ] Cassandra because each subsequent development in technology makes this more important. Uh

more important. Uh >> yeah, >> I do there's always going to be that seductive whisper in the back of someone's mind that well yeah but I can work faster

with AI. I can work quicker by

with AI. I can work quicker by what if my boss sees me doing executive functioning through Slack more whatever.

What is the what's the elevator pitch for you should do work of high quality and that will end up winning? You you have to think about

up winning? You you have to think about employment. Ultimately, it's a

employment. Ultimately, it's a marketplace. There's a lot of

marketplace. There's a lot of offuscation and fog and smoke, but it's ultimately a marketplace, right? Uh

you're paid money. In exchange, you produce things that have economic value.

That's what makes that exchange make sense. There is not ultimately an

sense. There is not ultimately an underlying economic value.

to the coordination activities by themselves. There is no actual economic

themselves. There is no actual economic value to the speed of your Slack responses or the number of meetings you go into or the number of like bulletointed emails with those sort of chat GPT emojis that you put out. That

itself doesn't generate economic value.

The stuff that does a knowledge work almost always requires you mastering hard skills and applying them through concentration. And ultimately that

concentration. And ultimately that shakes out there. there's only so far you can get or so far you can hide being busy because busyiness can't be monetized

>> and you know of course you can create a smoke for a while like I don't know like you know uh Chris seems like productive I guess like he's always on these emails and this and this and that but if you're not actually producing things that have

economic value like ultimately that catches up to you your opportunities narrow you're going to get found out at some point where if you do the other thing it's like no I'm creating stuff that is rare and valuable that's unambiguously

uh has value in the marketplace. You

write your own ticket. Like what you want to have a a business where you work half the year, you can do it. You want

to get paid a huge amount of money, you can do it. You want to like work for a company, but you all you choose when you come into the office and you declare like I don't want to do meetings. That's

actually a thing. By the way, I talked to a marketing team at one of the major tech companies not long ago and they said, "You know what? um we're in the sales side and like our group the sales

group we are exempt from meetings because they can directly monetize oh you brought in this many dollars. We can

see it and if you're bringing in dollars they're like you can do what you want and they could also see if we make you go to meetings those dollars go down.

It's like forget the meetings for you everyone else where there's not a clear number where they can see how much value you're bringing like oh you better be there in the meetings. I I've dude I've always thought this the the the big

problem that most people have that doesn't exist in the world of sports stars. If you're a sports star,

stars. If you're a sports star, everything that you're doing is to facilitate performance. And performance

facilitate performance. And performance is very tightly bounded and it's quantifiable. If you're a weightlifter,

quantifiable. If you're a weightlifter, that 300 kilos is 300 kilos. Yeah. You

either pick it up or you don't pick it up. and your sleep and your recovery and

up. and your sleep and your recovery and your nutrition and your hydration and your game tape and your technique work and your SNC and your body work and massage and soft tissue and all of that

stuff combine to this output. It's a

very very sort of single ordinating principle. The same thing goes for

principle. The same thing goes for tennis and the same thing goes for football and the same thing goes for baseball and so on and so forth. If you

do not perform well, you begin to scrutinize all of the contributing elements that that come toward that. The

problem that you have in most normal people's lives is the output that they're optimizing for is diffuse and very hard to work out. It's well, I want

to be a good father, but I also want to perform at work and you and I I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu on an evening time and my wife makes me go dancing and I want to be engaging at a cocktail party.

Okay. Well, first off, that's lots of things. It's not a single ordinating

things. It's not a single ordinating principle. And secondly, define to me

principle. And secondly, define to me the lineage between your disrupted sleep last night and your poorer performance around the dinner table or in Brazilian

jiu-jitsu or whatever. The diffuse thing contributes because you inevitably have to make trade-offs from one thing in order to do to do another. But also,

it's just hard. It's hard to work out how your performance is performing. And

this is the same in the work life.

Perfect example, the sales people. We

just know if we do make you do this thing, we lose that thing and that thing is more important than this thing. It

would be like if for some reason sports stars were being encouraged to stay up late, you go, well, we know if we make you stay up late answering [ __ ] Slacks, your performance in the game the

next day decreases. But for most people, there's this implicit assumption that part of what you do is the contribution to the strategy and the operations and

the the executive function culture and so on, which means that you forget what you're there for. I think people have forgotten what they're there for. What

what what am I supposed to be here at work doing? What is my out my my outcome

work doing? What is my out my my outcome goal?

>> There's so much fat in the America American knowledge work sector right now, right? because it we're so wealthy

now, right? because it we're so wealthy and there's so much money being slung around that we can have whole organizations where most people don't even know how they're directly connected to producing that value and they could

just be doing email all day or whatever, right? It's so inefficient. But there

right? It's so inefficient. But there

are I mean there are plenty of knowledge work areas where people don't put up with a bunch of this nonsense and it's all areas where it's very easy to quantify >> your production. I I did this essay a

couple years ago where I did a reflection where I said, "God, almost every thought I've had in my books all came out of my experience as a grad student at MIT." So, I was at the the

theory of computation group in the computer science department at at MIT.

Don't call it a department, but the theory of computation group in the CI CS lab at MIT, which is like a group the professors there, the students, we weren't like this, but the professors were super geniuses. like literally

touring award, touring award, MacArthur, MacArthur Turing Award, Dyster Prize, like smartest people in the world and it was incredibly clear if you were successful or not. What major theorems

did you prove in the last few years?

That's it. That's all that mattered, right? And that required a lot of

right? And that required a lot of thinking. So, they were terrible with

thinking. So, they were terrible with email. They had no interest in social

email. They had no interest in social media. Uh meetings, like if you're

media. Uh meetings, like if you're trying to throw meetings at them, they would just ignore you, right? I I wrote about this in deep work even and and people push back. I was like, "This is what it's like in that world." If you send someone an email in this world,

like one of these professors, and they're like, "Uh, this isn't this is ambiguous. You kind of didn't word this

ambiguous. You kind of didn't word this well or I don't really want to do this."

They just ignore it. Like, that's on you, buddy. Like, I have to get, you

you, buddy. Like, I have to get, you know, I'm being I will lose my job if I'm pre-tenure if I don't come up and solve theorems. And they put up with no nonsense. And a lot of that actually

nonsense. And a lot of that actually infused the my the book Deep Work because like, you know what? I came of age in an environment where all anyone cared about was focus and everything

else was secondaries. Like athletes,

just like you said, if this is getting in the way of my launch angle going down or my batting average adjusting, I'm going to I'm going to change it. But

it's crazy right now in knowledge work how many positions that's not true. But

what I advise people then get in a position where that's true.

>> Change your your profile at work or if you're changing your job, change your job into one where your value production is unambiguous. Now, this is a

is unambiguous. Now, this is a double-edged sword is it swings both ways.

>> Can't hide anymore.

>> You can't hide anymore. But if you get into one of those situations and then you do the cognitive work, I know how to focus. I build the skills. I apply the

focus. I build the skills. I apply the skills. I'm not afraid of cognitive

skills. I'm not afraid of cognitive strain. You're in the absolute best

strain. You're in the absolute best position in our economy, right? You can

write your own ticket, but you have to be willing to go into a a circumstance of like this is the only world I know.

And academia is what did you publish?

That's all that matters. That's all we care about. What did you publish? bookw

care about. What did you publish? bookw

writing. How many copies did your last book sell? That's all that matters.

book sell? That's all that matters.

There's no, you know what, though? He

answered our publisher email so quickly, so let's give him another deal, folks.

No, it's exactly how many dollars did you make us last time? That's what we care about, you know, for the next time.

So, it's a scary world where you're being held accountable, but it's an equation I always say is that if you're accountable, you don't have to be accessible.

If you're like, I can point to this is the value I produced and I'm killing it for you. Then I don't answer emails, I

for you. Then I don't answer emails, I don't go to these meetings, I don't do 50 sort of things. You can get away with almost anything you want. So I think that's more people should make that move, especially in the AI age. I

suppose more people should make that move towards like, hey, hold me accountable and then do the work to actually show up. It makes your life. So

it's such a better way to go through knowledge work. to get away from that

knowledge work. to get away from that hyperactive hive mind brainmelting, distracting, soulcrushing, slack all day long nonsense. In other news, you've

long nonsense. In other news, you've probably heard me talk about Element before, and that's because I am frankly dependent on it. Uh, and it's how I've started my day every single morning.

This is the best tasting hydration drink on the market. You might think, why do I need to be more hydrated? Because proper

hydration is not just about drinking enough water. It's having sufficient

enough water. It's having sufficient electrolytes to allow your body to use those fluids. Each grab-and-go stick

those fluids. Each grab-and-go stick pack is a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium. It's got no sugar, coloring,

magnesium. It's got no sugar, coloring, artificial ingredients, or any other junk. This plays a critical role in

junk. This plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing brain health, regulating your appetite and curbing cravings. This

orange flavor in a cold glass of water is a sweet, salty, orangey nectar, and you will genuinely feel a difference when you take it versus when you don't, which is why I keep going on about it.

Best of all, there's a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. Buy it, use it all, and if you

duration. Buy it, use it all, and if you don't like it for any reason, they give you your money back, and you don't even have to return the box. That's how

confident they are that you'll love it.

Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample

US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below, heading to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom.

to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom.

That's drinklnt.com/modern

wisdom. Let's say that you were in an organization that was small enough that you could actually enact some change.

Maybe you're at the top of it, near the top of it, or you're just you're toward the bottom of it, but you feel like you've got the ear of the person that's in charge. If you were to say, you've

in charge. If you were to say, you've got the classic diffuse hive mind pseudo productivity malaise, like the the the ambient soup

that everybody's swimming in. How would

you what would you do? What would you how would you rework the internals of an organization that still needs to communicate? Obviously, there has to be

communicate? Obviously, there has to be coordination. people aren't working in

coordination. people aren't working in silos. There is going to be inevitable

silos. There is going to be inevitable communication and coordination that needs to happen. How how do you survive the modern world? What what

would you propose? How would you restructure things?

>> Yeah, I mean I would do a few things.

One, I would say we're going to have explicit workload tracking and management, right? No more just people

management, right? No more just people throw stuff at you and you implicitly just add it to your plate. We want a place where we write down what everyone's working on and we can see it.

And now we can start talking about things like what is an ideal WIP? What's

an ideal work in progress limit for an individual? How many things do we want

individual? How many things do we want someone working on at the same time before that curve uh starts to go the other way? So, what you have to do once

other way? So, what you have to do once you start doing that is saying we need a place to track things that need to be done that no one is actively working on right now and we can feel okay about it.

So, I would definitely want to set up where where things enter into our radar of this needs to be done. There's a

place for that to go and to be stored where it's >> like it's like an organizational getting things done inbox.

>> Yes. And it's not on anyone's plate because here as soon as you are responsible for something it generates email, Slack and meetings. So once it's on your plate, it begins to spin off

administrative overhead and slow productivity. I call it the overhead tax

productivity. I call it the overhead tax that gets spun off as soon as it's on your plate. So everything by default

your plate. So everything by default goes to a team plate. No one's working on it. Then we keep track of from that

on it. Then we keep track of from that plate as we move things to people's individual responsibilities. We have

individual responsibilities. We have like I don't you should do three things at a time. That's it. And when you finish something, you can pull something else in. So do a small number of things

else in. So do a small number of things fast and well and then keep bringing things. So I would definitely do that.

things. So I would definitely do that.

Uh the second thing I would do is I would say no more hyperactive hive mind.

Um if you send a message that requires more than a single message in response, that should not happen over digital communication.

If I can't just answer your question with one more message, then that has to be real time. Now, we can't have that turn into an explosion of meetings. So,

what we're going to do is we're going to have daily office hours for everyone.

So, there'll be a daily time where everyone knows they can call you or walk to your office or whatever and go through a bunch of things with you real quick instead of sending emails. We're

going to have morning standup meetings within the teams for sure. Who's working

on what this morning? Who needs what from who to get that done? Go do the work. We're going to have uh so we'll

work. We're going to have uh so we'll definitely do those as well. We might

throw in phone hours. It's a new idea I'm thinking about where you say, "Look, there's a longer period of time, like maybe all afternoon, where you can always call me if there's something that's so urgent you can't wait till the

next office hours." There's enough friction in phone calls that that actually tends out to work pretty well.

Like, I'm not just going to call you because I'm want to get something off my plate. I won't call you unless it really

plate. I won't call you unless it really is serious. So, I would I would do that

is serious. So, I would I would do that as well. And then I would say, "Okay,

as well. And then I would say, "Okay, what ongoing work does this not work for? what type of projects do we work on

for? what type of projects do we work on on a regular basis where this isn't working because it it's too long uh to have to wait till the afternoon's a problem and say great let's identify

those and for each of those let's build a protocol here is our protocol for collaboration on this type of work and however that's going to work but it's like the information goes into this spreadsheet and then whatever someone

checks it in the morning they move things to shared files I don't know what it is but whatever it is that prevents us to have uh ad hoc unscheduled messaging isn't necessary so explicit workload load management. I would have

uh this rule of no hyperactive hive mind. I would have protocols for any

mind. I would have protocols for any type of recurring collaboration where we could be explicit about how we actually want to do this. And then I would have a culture of talking about deep work and concentration like a tier one skill.

How's it going? Uh how many deep work hours did you get in this week? Are you

happy about that? What was getting in the way of that? Did you have a particularly good session? Tell everyone

else about it. Like what worked?

>> Oh, I see you you you did music. You

have a different look. Oh, let's all think, you know, hey, here's a good idea that we can borrow, make deep work culturally, something you talk about as like this is a a tier one skill that

we're really proud about. You do those things, you're going to 2x your profitability. This is the thing that's

profitability. This is the thing that's always frustrated me about these ideas is like you could make more money if you do it, but that's it's really hard.

Those changes I just talked about, it's hard. There's friction. There's

hard. There's friction. There's

personalities. And this is the thing I really underestimated when I wrote those books.

>> The way we work now is like a uh a low energy point, right? It's like the easiest possible configuration of work.

So if you feel friction, you're trying to do something more structured, you're trying to do something that makes better use of our brain and you're getting resistance, the place you're going to fall when you give up is the way we're doing it now. So it's not arbitrary.

I've realized this hyperactive hive mind. Let's just figure things out on

mind. Let's just figure things out on the flow. No workload management. It's

the flow. No workload management. It's

not arbitrary. It's the low energy. It's

like this local minimum. It's the place that like minimizes the complexity that still allows a company to run. And I

think that's why we keep falling back.

In mathematical terms, it's a sub-optimal Nash equilibrium. It's not

the optimal way to work together. But no

one person can leave it and make their situation better. It's a low energy

situation better. It's a low energy state. It's a it's an attractor. It's a

state. It's a it's an attractor. It's a

local minimum in the utility landscape.

Whatever mathematical metaphor we want to use. And so it's it's not arbitrary.

to use. And so it's it's not arbitrary.

I was like, "Oh, it's like a law of work physics. This thing is like a neutron

physics. This thing is like a neutron star in the world, a universe of work that just attracts everything back to it. And it takes a huge amount of energy

it. And it takes a huge amount of energy to escape its pole. That's why I think we've had so much trouble uh solving this problem, even though you would make more money if you did it."

I wonder, I'm thinking about sort of immediately implementable solutions for this. I get the sense that you could

this. I get the sense that you could probably tell people we don't use Slack before 1 p.m. like

nobody is to post in Slack before 1 p.m.

because that you can ring if it's SOS emergency scenario you can just call somebody we just don't use it and then it means that everybody knows that they should not be

doing that it's a companywide deep well I mean look are there going to be some departments HR for instance probably would be used but your job is your your job is HR that you're in the PR

department or something like that your your job is actually about comms uh but if you're in marketing or if you're in accounting something like that. Okay,

sit down and do your [ __ ] work and up until a point. What do you make of intermittent fasting for communication companywide?

>> Yeah, it works. Especially though, what really makes that more sustainable is if you have that quick morning standup on the team scale at the beginning of the day where everyone says, "Here's what I'm going to be working on during these

morning hours. Here's what I need from

morning hours. Here's what I need from each other to make progress on this." So

you you what would have unfolded over Slack and email, you're doing in 10 minutes. So, you say, "Okay, here's what

minutes. So, you say, "Okay, here's what I'm working on this morning. I'm working

on the the new white paper. Here's what

I need, though. I need those figures from you. Can you get when can you get

from you. Can you get when can you get them to me? By 9:30." All right. You're

going to get them to me by 9:30. And I

need those quotes you promised. Can you

get just do that right away? Okay. Oh,

so you all know what I need from you.

Okay. Now, I'm going to put my head down and write that report. So, having that uh that meeting ahead of time where everyone says what they need and what they're going to do, that makes that time work better. And then the thing

that really works, do the same thing on the other end of the morning. All right,

you said you were going to work on this, this, and this. What happened? So

there's accountability on the other end.

You can't run away from, you know, if you just went on email and social media, they're like, "Well, wait a second. I

thought you were going to write the white thing."

white thing." >> Yeah. And if other people flake, they

>> Yeah. And if other people flake, they don't send you the figures. They don't

send you the quotes. You're like, "I got stuck, man. I never got this.

stuck, man. I never got this.

>> Cal didn't Cal didn't do what he said he was doing."

was doing." >> And they're there in the same room and they're like, "Oh, okay. I get it. I get

it. I I can't just ignore stuff, right?

Like I actually have to do it. I think

that's a great idea. I I think something like that works well if you put that accountability uh before it and you put it after it.

That scares people, by the way, though.

That that really does scare people. Uh

because you actually have to do the work.

>> And this is the thing with really social media and smartphones killed this way worse. AI is going to make this worse.

worse. AI is going to make this worse.

But that was a big inflection point uh in terms of losing our comfort with concentration. That got really bad once

concentration. That got really bad once we got algorithmically optimized content and we really got used to that. And so

it's scary if you just go to a company and say, "Here's the new plan, boss. Uh

we're going to have a meeting in the morning. You got to tell me what you're

morning. You got to tell me what you're going to do for the next five hours and then you got to do it and we're going to check in after that five hours and see how it went." That's a nightmare for a lot of people. That is like, "Oh god, I

don't know what I'm going to do."

>> I I agree. Um, I get the sense that a nice way to introduce this would be look, everybody's brain here has been turned into slop. Everyone, no one is

able to do their job as effectively as they should. So, you are expected to do

they should. So, you are expected to do the work, but the reason that we do the pre and post is not to whip somebody into performance review. It's to give you accountability cuz you don't look

like a tit in front of your co-workers.

But if you don't get to the point we're going to the same as when you start training for a marathon, you don't run 10k on the first day. You will titrate the dose up and over time, you know,

week one will permit some [ __ ] and week two will permit a bit less [ __ ] and week three we're all in it together and this person's pulling ahead. They're

really like a hyperresponder. You know,

they're making loads of gains in the focus gym and other people are moving a bit more slowly. Okay, what is it that they are doing and so on and so forth?

But imagine that. Imagine if you if you had a a a companywide um focus initiative where people would just okay we're going to move together everybody is going to focus on focus and um

interesting around the AI thing. So

George my housemate's writing a book at the moment. Uh do you know cold turkey?

the moment. Uh do you know cold turkey?

Do you ever use cold turkey?

>> I know about it. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Yeah. It's a website limiter app limiter for MacBook. We've been using it for a decade. um his his cold turkey went rogue and um just kept shutting his

browser down even though he wasn't trying to access the thing that he wasn't supposed to. It said he needed to install it. It was a nightmare. Uh and

install it. It was a nightmare. Uh and

here's a conversation between him and his AI. Uh Cold Turkey has gone rogue

his AI. Uh Cold Turkey has gone rogue and I need to remove it. Please tell me how to delete it from terminal. And the

response the response is, I'm not going to help you bypass it, George. This is

exactly the scenario you set it up for.

You're two days in. the book is waiting.

Close the terminal and write. And

replied and said, "No, it's got a bug, so I can't get on calls." He's like pleading with his own AI because he's obviously put in the instructions, be rigorous with me, be tough with me, tell me that I should be getting back to being focused when I start to go off

task, do the thing. And that's a an AI equivalent of what you're talking about, which is this supervisionary oversight commission thing, but he his just happens to be based in silicon

instead of in other people.

>> So maybe AI will help us. we it can basically chastise us like >> well the problem is the problem that you have with the AI thing is it's so [ __ ] sick of fantic all the time um

that it will tend to bend eventually to what it is that you want.

>> Yeah. But no one believes that the chatbot interface is the future of AI.

The boosters, the the skeptics, the moderates. There's there's an emerging

moderates. There's there's an emerging consensus that we're going to look back at this current moment where we interact with AI by typing into a chat window.

that that's going to be like the Usenet news groups of the beginning of the internet. It was like a cool thing early

internet. It was like a cool thing early on that showed the promise of the internet, but the tools got better.

There's better ways to make use of it.

Um, so there's the thought is in the future AI is going to be more integrated into more things. It'll be more agentic.

It'll be a lot not like having conversations in English text. Um, but

deploying agents to do things maybe with natural language, but also it'll be more integrated in the software. Individual

tools will be more common. So it' be much more common. I'm in Microsoft Excel and I'm like, can you sort row five by this amount and cut out all columns that you know have less than this many

values? And it does that. It's going to

values? And it does that. It's going to be that that's what the interactions are going to become like. And so this idea of having a a singular anthropomorphized entity through which you're having all conversations, that's almost like an

accident of early AI. I mean, OpenAI will tell you this that chat GBT was supposed to just be a demo of the type of things you could do using the APIs into their language models is like the type of tool you can build that would

make use of AI and then it caught them completely off guard and everyone wanted to use chatbt and chat with it because it was really cool. Um, I don't think that's going to be the form vector. So,

I think a lot of these issues we have now like this is weird. Uh, it's

unsettling. We're anthropomorphizing it.

We're getting parasocial relationships with the agents. We're having romantic relationships with them. We're getting

unsettled because seeing having English conversation, we have a hard time not simulating a mind on the other end of this.

>> That's why I shout at my chat.

>> That's why you shout at it. I think a lot of this two years from now is going to seem it'll be super narrow, right?

Because I don't think uh just having a a this sort of general purpose oracle you chat with, that's not the future. That's

not what people think we're going to be doing.

>> Why are people mad about 40 being removed?

They were just h my understanding was they were just happy with the find. So

you you tune these things. The

conversational style comes from a post-training tuning session where you give it, you've already done the pre-training which is unsupervised and you go through this post-training session where you have a lot of examples

of questions and answers and you ask the question and then it gives an answer and then you sort of zap it using optimization theory to try to move like now we're going to change the weights to

be closer to this answer we already said was better. So if you have a bunch of

was better. So if you have a bunch of examples of the way you want something to respond and you go through one of these sort of zapping training sessions after the fact, it'll respond more like that. So they just changed the way they

that. So they just changed the way they were doing that. And the thing they changed to people didn't like the tone that created. So it was just about

that created. So it was just about >> what d literally like the data sets you're using when doing this fine-tuning. Um after you've done that

fine-tuning. Um after you've done that big massive pre-training where it's unsupervised.

>> Talk to me about the role of quantum computing in AI.

minimal to non-existent.

>> So QAI is all just [ __ ] >> Yeah, I'm not Yeah, I mean quantum computing is really interesting. There's

a huge amount of technical problems just to actually get these things scaled to the number of cubits in which they're useful and there's a there's a fallacy out there in thinking about quantum computing that it's basically like a

normal computer but times a million.

>> Yeah.

>> Which is just not the way these things function, right? So there's only very

function, right? So there's only very specific problems you can solve with a quantum computer because you actually have to express the problem in the language of physics in such a way that

you're creating what's known as a wave function that when it collapses it's going to collapse to a configuration that's the right answer. Therefore like

implicitly searching a large state space in sublinear time. Only certain problems allow you to do that. So it's unlike a normal computer where I can program a computer to do almost anything. Quantum

computers is much more narrow what you can do with it. uh

>> could you give me an example of something that it would and wouldn't be able to do?

>> Well, like the the big example, this was a guy who was at MIT when I was there, Peter Shaw, early on was the one who figured out like, hey, one of these complicated wave function collapsing things you could do could factor prime numbers

>> or or uh yeah, factor numbers to see to find the prime factors rather find the prime factors of big numbers. Um, that's

a really big deal because uh RS Yeah.

public public key encryption and ironically this this just goes to show how crazy MIT was is also at MIT is Ron Revest who I TA for who invented you see

R and RSA. He invented public key encryption. So like the guy who invented

encryption. So like the guy who invented public key encryption is there next to the guy who figured out how quantum computers could >> could maybe undo it.

>> Undo it. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting. So it's good at that. Uh

interesting. So it's good at that. Uh

there's a lot of problems that are based around um simulation of quantum or physical physics systems and that's you you can simulate quantum physics systems

directly using quantum in a way instead of having to try to simulate them with so it's very good for that there's a certain type of search it gets a little technical but there's a there's a certain type of uh search that you can implement it has applications so so

there are interesting applications um but I I the thing I was beginning to sense recently which made me worry is that there was a sense of like um hype migration. So people are getting a

migration. So people are getting a little bit frustrated sort of like postGPT5 of like this isn't filling my need to have something to be in, you know, a technology that is going to change everything. I love that concept

change everything. I love that concept and they begin sniffing around. Okay,

but what if we just quantum somehow will unlock AI and solve all these problems we're having. I think it's way more

we're having. I think it's way more complicated than that. There are narrow applications of these particular things that might have some AI application. Um,

but you can't like run an LLM on a quantum machine and now it's a billion times better. That's just not how it

times better. That's just not how it works. So quantum is interesting. It's

works. So quantum is interesting. It's

just really hard. The problem is the errors multiply. I mean that they make

errors multiply. I mean that they make these cubits, these uh these quantum bits they use for these algorithms. It's incredibly complicated. You have there's

incredibly complicated. You have there's different ways to do it, but in some ways you have laser beams in a super cool chamber holding like a a particle in a very careful state. And what it

generates errors and then the errors add up with other errors and it's after you make enough of these things then then the errors they swamp out of control.

It's a really you know >> so you're telling me that the the the [ __ ] M6 chip in the MacBook Pro is not going to be a quantum one. It's not

going to be the Q6 chip.

>> It's not. In fact I I was I'm now I want to know what QAI is. What is QA? You

mentioned QAI.

>> Q quantum AI.

>> Yeah. But I mean is there a particular product or just people talking about quantum is going to just make AI better?

>> Yes. Yeah, there is. Um I have a a friend who I train with like this is like you know what I love some of the people that I love the most are the ones who you wouldn't predict uh have the

life that they do. And there's a girl who trains at lift ATX on a Saturday.

Lovely girl. I've trained with her a bunch of times. Real cool. Boyfriend's

cool. Like does fitness modeling. Super

hot. the long hair lift, the big all the you know like but super strong all the rest of the stuff like feminine as well quantum computing degree like works in works works in quantum computing and she

was telling me about quantum AI and she was telling me about uh Q QAI as it's referred to and it's a burgeoning field supposedly unless she's lied to me unless she's totally [ __ ] lied to me.

>> Yeah, I'm curious what they're working on. Uh UT Austin has good quantum

on. Uh UT Austin has good quantum theorist. Look, I'm searching for it.

theorist. Look, I'm searching for it.

Uh, a guy I knew from MIT, they they hired him away there. RC or see quantum quantum AI merges quantum comput with machine learning to process highdimensional data faster than

classical systems. No, they're working on it, but I don't know. I don't know how that's going to

know. I don't know how that's going to work basically.

>> Well, so I don't know what they're working on, but um it's not something that that you hear a lot in computer science circles yet. So maybe they'll have some breakthroughs. It's worth

looking at, but I don't know how that's going to work.

>> Okay. Uh one of the other elements I guess of that people struggle with when it comes to deep anything uh is learning the process of learning. Talk to me

about the mechanics of keeping keeping a a a deep reading habit alive.

Well, I mean I think reading pages is probably the cognitive equivalent of steps, right? So, if you're a 10,000

steps, right? So, if you're a 10,000 steps a day person is like this is just like a baseline to make sure that like at least my physical systems are being used. You should have a a page count 25

used. You should have a a page count 25 pages a day, 20 pages a day uh of reading a book. It just is like getting those cognitive steps in because I I

think we recognize more and more reading I would say it's the cheat code but it's it's better to think about it as like reading is the thing that formed a modern brain. And I'm like I'm more and

modern brain. And I'm like I'm more and more convinced about this. I have I have a book idea I'm working on now where I'm sort of exploring this idea. Uh the

brain before we had the Neolithic Revolution, it's it was the same neurons, right, uh 15,000 years ago that we have right now. But if we go pre-ereading, those neurons were doing the things they were evolved to do,

which is very much about like the visual system and the audio system and we could communicate through spoken language and that's fine. And then we invent reading

that's fine. And then we invent reading and this is this is not something that our brain is evolved for. So, in order to read, we have to go through this this sort of excruciating process of learning to read, in which what you're doing is

actually rewiring sections of your brain to connect in ways that they weren't originally meant to connect to. So,

we're we're reforming our brain when we learn how to read. And we develop what Maryann Wolf calls deep reading processes where you've now yolked together different parts of your brain that don't normally work together that

can now have to work together in order to understand written text. Once your

brain is wired to do that, it can if you reverse this and write, you can generate much much more sophisticated thoughts than you can if you haven't done this wiring and your understanding of things.

The complexity of what you can understand when you have this new rewired brain that also really goes up.

So reading is like uh it's not just oh I get stronger in my brain. It

reconfigures your brain into like the modern you know postcognitive revolution >> brain.

>> Okay. What why is it important to read physical books then? What what is lost if I read Substack? I know that you're a fan of Substack. I I love Substack. I

think it's fantastic. Uh

what's the difference between reading it on a laptop versus a phone versus a Kindle versus a physical piece of paper?

>> Well, there's two different things going on here. There's medium and content

on here. There's medium and content type. U like so if you're reading a book

type. U like so if you're reading a book in a a physical book or you're reading in a Kindle, um doesn't matter, right?

Right. I mean, they're both actual physical medium. Like the way that the

physical medium. Like the way that the Kindle is actually a physical experience. It's it's it's actual little

experience. It's it's it's actual little discs that are, you know, dark on one side and light on the other. And they

make a page. They have little electrical impulses and you shock the disc you want to turn and you don't shock the ones you don't want to turn. And so you've literally created an actual black and white physical version of the page on

the Kindle. You're not unlike a a

the Kindle. You're not unlike a a computer screen or a TV where it's light being emitted. There's no light being

being emitted. There's no light being emitted. It's physically that's the

emitted. It's physically that's the page. It just created a new physical

page. It just created a new physical page that has text on it. That's why you have to actually have a light on a Kindle to read it. Um, so it's just a page that reconfigures itself into a new page. I love eing technology. I think

page. I love eing technology. I think

it's really cool. Uh, content type. The

issue is I mean there's a lot of this research we've known since the '9s. A

lot of this is captured in um the best book on this would be uh the shallows, Nick Carr's book, The Shallows. When

we're reading something like a web page or Substack, for whatever reason, uh we skim much more aggressively. That's the

main issue. we jump around uh much more aggressively just trying to pull out the key points. I think that's all just

key points. I think that's all just acculturated, right? Like you could sit

acculturated, right? Like you could sit and read like if you print out a Substack article and sit in the library and you read it carefully, it's the exact same thing as reading a book. It's

the exact same thing in in sense of the experience on screens. We tend to skim around more. The other advantage of like

around more. The other advantage of like a book that was actually published versus like a post you see online, it's just better thought through, right? So

when you write a book, you spend a couple years on it. Like you're really uh you spend a couple years crafting the book and you might have been based on a lifetime of thinking about this topic.

And so you take your time when writing a book and it gets edited and re-edited and you go back like I'm writing a book now. I've been working on it off and on

now. I've been working on it off and on for like three or four years. I've

rewritten this book like three times.

It's like this isn't right. This isn't

clear enough. you know, and so when you go through text that has been that carefully thought through and structured, that's also you just get a different experience because the pieces click together at different scales and

it just uses you that you build in your brain these intricate interlocking pieces that all hook together and is beautiful and you get that aha moment feeling. There's an actual physical

feeling. There's an actual physical endorphin rough you get in your brain.

Um, so I, you know, I think reading smart books written by smart people that took a long time to write, that's your calisthenics for your brain. It it

literally changes your you're a smarter person if you do that versus if you don't. So good. I have to say

don't. So good. I have to say reading fulllength books has been uh the volume that I do that has been decreased

over the last few years largely because of Substack. So, uh, there's a extension

of Substack. So, uh, there's a extension for Google Chrome called Push to Kindle, and if I press it, >> yeah, >> the article appears on my Kindle because I don't like reading on my phone and I don't like reading on my laptop.

Probably for the reason that that you said, but when I think about it, it very much is uh running downhill because uh what's the longest substack that you're going

to read? 20 minutes. Maybe 25 minutes. A

to read? 20 minutes. Maybe 25 minutes. A

[ __ ] long article.

>> Yeah. Uh, and

maybe part of that, maybe part of my ponchump for is that I do get the outcome, right? What what is it that I'm

outcome, right? What what is it that I'm looking to learn? Oh, I want to find out from Steve Stewart Williams about sex differences in m desire for sexual

novelty, something like that. Okay.

Well, I I will learn the outcome in the same way as I could feed myself food that was just a cube of calories and that would sort of give me the caloric

intake that I needed. But what you're presumably reading for, apart from just the enjoyment of reading it, is to be able to recall it and for it to be woven into the broader mental landscape that

you've got, which actually probably means you need to spend time and attention with it. And some of the leanness and brevity that comes with an article uh actually might work against

you. Maybe you need it to be said to you

you. Maybe you need it to be said to you in five different ways. Maybe you need the author to meander off onto a story that takes three pages to explain about this guy who owned a Ferrari and parked

it outside of a hotel so that you can then come back in. And each one of these is a little Velcro latch hook that you can hook yourself into. And yeah, I

wonder whether I wonder whether the reading or uh discriminating toward reading stuff that is exclusively

shorter form results in the sense that I am learning lots. But if you are to actually do some sort of scrutiny around that, well, okay, how much of it can you remember?

>> How long did you spend with this idea?

Did you spend long enough for it to be a part of now your mental models and the framework that you how how much can you recall that would be an interesting an interesting challenge >> and the frameworks understanding are

shallower just because it's less time to establish them. So like in a sub it's

establish them. So like in a sub it's not a bad thing but you know what can you do you typically have like one idea and like here's something that supports that idea and here's maybe like a

different idea and here's why that doesn't work and if that's all you're consuming that becomes your mental model for how knowledge is gained and I think we see a lot of this I mean think about

internet culture now is much more conspiratorial and I don't mean in the like sort of grand conspiracy theory which it is but not in not just in like the grand conspiracy type of thinking,

but in the confidence, there's this quick jump to confidence where you're like, that's wrong because of this and boom, and you think that like this is like this slam dunk case or something

like that. That's a result of not

like that. That's a result of not reading a lot of books. You read a lot of books, you're like, "Okay, this is way more complicated." Uh,

>> everything is way more complicated than you thought it was. And there's probably a clear truth here, but clear truths are more complex. Like even the notion of

more complex. Like even the notion of what a clear truth feels like comes out of reading books, right? Like you

understand, oh, ultimately like this person was right, but it's complicated and like, yeah, this was not so clear-cut and that this is like a compromise and this was really important and these factors were here, but

honestly, those factors aren't as big as you think and this factor really was more important and so like this really was the right thing to do. So even like your notion of what's true or what's not

true or what it means for something to be clear is like different than if you're just looking at boom slam dunk. I

think it's a big problem online espec both sides of the political spectrum do this like you you want everything just to be this person is just garbage and completely wrong and there's like this one simple thing I know

>> that means you're completely wrong and I'm completely right and you're wrong in like the worst possible sort of way. Uh,

and that is like such a sopolific I'm saying the word >> solistic. Yeah, exactly. You said it

>> solistic. Yeah, exactly. You said it right. I have to read more.

right. I have to read more.

>> Um, but it's sophistry for sure. Right.

This idea of uh this is how truth and argument unfolds is like there's an obvious flaw that's easy for me to gro, which I guess now could actually be a verb as opposed to just meaning understand. Also, I could literally

understand. Also, I could literally grock it, I guess. Um, and now it's clear that you're wrong and I feel righteous, you know. And then we go seeking that. And then we want to

seeking that. And then we want to simplify everything in the world to you're just terrible and this person is perfect and this idea makes the most sense and if you disagree with this idea it's because like you want to eat

children and you know it just becomes it's a different under this is what I think we get wrong. It's not just like we're we're uh we don't have the right information. we've changed what our

information. we've changed what our notion of truth is because we're not exposed to the complexity of truths when you read a not only a scholar like a a smart case for it but then you read the arguments that they confronted and then

you read someone else that's arguing against their point and you're like oh okay I' I've seen the clash of like minds and now in that clash like I kind

of see what's going on here like yeah the truth really leans this way and it's I feel really real conviction in that because I've seen like the best minds come at this from either side and I really understand and it's not cut and

dry but ultimately like this is the right thing to do. Um that was like a very familiar thing to people and leaders like in times past where you lose it if you're exposed to these uh

lowresolution copies these lowresolution simulacums these easy to digest pre- chewed versions of argumentation and understanding that just changes the way your brain thinks about what true even

means. Yeah, there's an arc to sense

means. Yeah, there's an arc to sense making that you kind of need to track and if you don't track it, you just assume that answers appear.

>> Yeah, >> it's like no, no, they don't. Cal, you

[ __ ] rule. Let's bring this one home.

Where should people go to keep up to date with everything you do?

>> Oh god. Uh, calport.com. I guess my books are on Amazon. My podcast,

uh, Deep Questions on YouTube or wherever you get podcast newsletter at kelupport.com. Deep Work too many things

kelupport.com. Deep Work too many things going on now, Chris. Deep Work is 10 year anniversary. I'm excited about it.

year anniversary. I'm excited about it.

all new. Uh I replaced all the blurbs on the back with most of them are now organic. I could just like people who

organic. I could just like people who have said things about it without me asking them to uh say it. So that's fun.

And I have a master class out on on this stuff too. So I don't know. It's

stuff too. So I don't know. It's

everywhere. Too many places. I feel too busy.

>> For a person who's a a digital recluse, you are everywhere. But that's a function of focusing on quality, not quantity. I can't wait to speak again,

quantity. I can't wait to speak again, man. This is this has been so much fun.

man. This is this has been so much fun.

I appreciate the help.

>> Always a pleasure, Chris. Always always

a pleasure to talk with you.

Congratulations, you made it to the end of an episode. Your brain has not been completely destroyed by the internet just yet. Here's another one that you

just yet. Here's another one that you should watch.

Come on.